Chapter Nineteen #5
Ethyr reached across the space between them to grip Mikel’s hand, squeezing it. “You’re really here,” he murmured. Mikel’s expression shifted, morphing between several different emotions before settling into tired relief.
“I really am.” His hand lifted and he brushed his knuckles along Ethyr’s jaw, as though he too was marveling that Ethyr was real and solid before him.
He’d missed Mikel’s soft brown eyes, the scattered freckles across his face, that sweet solemnity he reserved only for Ethyr.
When Mikel didn’t speak for a long while, Ethyr scooched closer and took up his hands, kissing his dry lips.
“You came here for me,” Ethyr said softly. “Didn’t you?”
“Of course I did,” Mikel whispered, so sincere, almost hurt at Ethyr’s questioning.
Ethyr was so unused to bare honesty, it was hard to believe now.
But he knew he could. Mikel may have loved mischievous tricks, but he was too sweet and genuine for the slippery lies of the palace. It was the freshest breath of air.
“Why don’t you stay a few weeks?” Ethyr asked.
“You know I can’t.”
“I don’t know that. Why can’t you? Your family is already halfway through the winter without you, they can last the rest. You should stay here with me.”
Mikel pressed his lips together. Ethyr kissed them again, and kept kissing, until they opened for him and he could taste the wine still on Mikel’s breath.
The warm promise of him drew Ethyr closer, until without realizing it he was straddling Mikel’s lap again, the heat of the fire at his back and the heat of Mikel at his front.
He kissed harder, wrapping his arms around Mikel’s shoulders to pull him in tight.
Mikel reciprocated this time, wrapping him up as well and crushing their bodies together.
Emboldened, Ethyr prodded his tongue deeper and shifted his hips hard to Mikel’s, a spark of thrill running up his spine at the tantalizing friction of their arousal together.
Then, all at once, there was cold emptiness in front of him, and Ethyr realized he’d been deposited on the ground again. Mikel was clambering upright.
Ethyr popped to his feet. “What’s wrong now?” he demanded, too indignant and he knew it. But Mikel’s answer just drove stubbornness further into him.
“I told you I don’t want to do this.”
“We’re alone in a closed room!” Ethyr pointed out, exasperated. “This is way more privacy than anything we’d get in the village!”
“That’s not the issue,” Mikel spat.
“That’s what you said the problem was before!”
Mikel looked askance at him. “Then you weren’t listening.”
Ethyr crossed his arms, jaw muscles clenching to prevent a true outburst. “Well I’m listening now.”
Mikel’s sigh was growling and reluctant. “I… I don’t know what to tell you, Ethyr. I don’t want to.”
“I thought you missed me!” Ethyr burst out. “I thought you wanted me! I thought you loved me!”
Mikel whipped to him from where he’d started pacing away. “I do! Since when does not taking you mean I don’t love you?!”
Ethyr’s nape tingled with the anxious heat of the argument, but that only spurred him on further. “You were supposed to be here for me,” he snapped.
“I am!” Mikel threw up his hands. “Is sex the only thing you want from me? What does that say of how you think of me?”
“Don’t you dare,” Ethyr warned. “I proved to you, I proved it to you, over and over again! Just because the rest of the commune lusted after me doesn’t mean I was using you! I wasn’t going to abandon you at the first opportunity.”
“Then you were chosen to be king,” Mikel said, as though that was Ethyr’s fault.
“I didn’t ask to be!” Ethyr yelled. “I never wanted any of this! And no one—none of you—none of you did anything to try to stop it!”
Mikel’s face twisted. “What were we supposed to do?” he asked sharply.
“I don’t know!” The words exploded out of Ethyr in a final, embarrassing crescendo, and he reeled himself back in, sucking in a deep breath.
He closed his eyes, swallowed, rubbed between his brows.
“I don’t know,” he repeated, quieter. “But anything would have been better than nothing. You say you care for me, and yet…”
“I do,” Mikel said, agonized, stepping forward but not quite closing the space between them again. “This is all—all this is just—overwhelming. I don’t know what I expected when I came here but it… it wasn’t this.”
“And what is ‘this,’ exactly?”
“Everything’s different,” he whispered. “Even you, you’re…”
“I’m still me,” Ethyr reassured him impatiently. “I’m the same boy I always was.”
“Are you?” Mikel asked seriously.
“Stop saying that!” he burst out. “How can you say that? Deny me who I am, after telling me I’m not who I always thought I was?!”
“You can be whoever you want, Ethyr!” Mikel told him harshly. “But this? Is this really who you want to be?”
Ethyr stared at him, agape, speechless in the face of such an insult. Mikel looked back with open, raw honesty, but not an ounce of regret. Ethyr shoved past him to leave, and when Mikel did and said nothing to stop him, it compounded the hurt.