The Koketa's Hive, Nutmeg Hill
If I can be scared for him, Aremu thought, very slowly, then - perhaps it isn’t so wrong if - he didn’t quite know what to make of the thought. It pried at something inside him. He didn’t know why it should be different, this sort of care from Tom, than the worry he knew Uzoji had felt on his behalf, or Niccolette’s stern sharp lectures when he had been a fool. It was different, all the same, and Aremu set the tea on his lap and kissed Tom’s neck once more, feeling the soft flutter of his pulse beneath the skin.
Tom went on, wandering through it. Aremu shuddered a breath when the other man said he wanted to sleep the night through together. We didn’t know, he wanted to say, half-laughing, what fools we were to waste a single night we could have had - I was a fool too, Tom, a scared fool - but they didn’t speak of such things, even here and now with all the rest laid out in the open between them, they shied gently from such talk. Aremu thought it might hurt Tom; he found he didn’t want him to think he was comparing him to as he had been, whether it was true or not. Surely some silence could be a gift, between lovers.
I’m sorry, Tom rasped, and when Aremu glanced at him he saw glittering tears like scars on his cheeks.
“It’s not easy,” Aremu said, quietly, and he tasted the faint memory of bitter nausea on his tongue, some ache he didn’t want to place too deeply. “But if it‘s me you’re worried about, then let me choose. Don’t protect me by trying to take the choice away.” His head was still on Tom’s shoulder; he relaxed into the other man rather than pulling away, and he found it easier than he had expected.
“I want you,” Aremu said, softly. “I want all that we discussed and more and if the only way I can is with you as - him,” he frowned just a little, struggling still with how to speak of it, “then I’ll bear it, and gladly.” To his dismay he found himself sniffling, just a little; he wasn’t quite crying, but he wasn’t far from it, either.
His arms settled around Tom and held close, and he pressed a kiss to the other man’s neck, and then his cheek, and then his lips, once more, as if he hadn’t just gorged himself to the brim on the taste of the other man. He was always hungry, Aremu knew; he could always have more.
They frighten me too, Aremu couldn’t quite say, all these places I haven’t been in so long. You’ve changed, and I know it isn’t the same, but I’ve changed too. My hand, perhaps, to start, but more than just that I think. I don’t know who I was then, that Aremu who needed Ediwo on his name, and I don’t know who I am now, either. Maybe it’s the lack in me that makes it so hard; maybe whatever emptiness is inside me swallows that up too. You’d think that’d keep me from fear, if it were so, but it doesn’t seem to help.
I want it, all the same. That was all Aremu could think just then, really. I want it all the same.