[Closed] Laughing at the Danger

[Tom Cooke]

The Three Flowers • Thul Ka

Late Night on the 13th of Loshis, 2720

S
trange to be kissed after such an admission; stranger still to taste the same on his lips, to feel it in his breath. He wanted to kiss him again, but he didn’t want him to stop speaking. He felt godsdamnably selfish for both.

Is it the fear, he wanted to ask – is it the fear that makes us –?

Aremu drew back, looking at him; he looked back into the other man’s eyes, uncertain. Us, he wanted to say, and didn’t think he could. It’s different, he wanted to say, what you are. You shouldn’t have to fear. You’re a man; you’ve always been a man, even with what you can do – with what gets done to you. I wouldn’t hurt you, he remembered absently, was the first thing Aremu had ever said to him about it. Had it been true?

I’ve made ley channels now, he wanted to say. Do you know how it –? It’s more powerful than any I’ve ever seen; there’s a word for the kind of scrying you do, and it’s something only a master could do. The thought might’ve sent a chill over him, but he stayed himself. He hadn’t been sure Aremu wanted to know, really, what he thought.

He found Aremu’s hand cupping his cheek, and he stroked Aremu’s. He wasn’t sure where to even begin pulling at the string, so tightly was it knitted, but he brushed the backs of his fingers over the other man’s cheekbone and listened.

He hadn’t expected it, the question.

The rain was pounding the window panes now. The Turga must’ve been gorged with it, spilling out over the banks. Too much for even the great river to drink.

“I thought you’d been told,” he said quietly. “I kept wondering if you knew better than I did.”

I did think of you, sometimes. Did you ever guess? he wanted to ask. Surely you must’ve, he wanted to say; everybody knew. They were saying it years before I kicked the can.

He hadn’t even said it, and he thought the cruelty of it left the taste of blood in his mouth. He tried to separate it from what was true; slowly, achingly, he let himself look directly at it, and he didn’t look away.

“I don’t remember it,” he said, almost softer than the rain. “What happened. How it happened.” His voice was thick with shame. “When I told you it hurt, I meant – the after. The… in between. But for it – I wasn’t, uh…”

He shut his eyes and felt a few more tears slide down. “That hurt, too. It still hurts.” his fingers curled into the sheets; he felt a few warm tears patter into the back of his hand.

Itself, it stuck in his throat. It wouldn’t have been a lie to take that last step off the edge; it wouldn’t’ve even mattered, for all he’d already admitted, for all anything he didn’t remember would’ve been his fault. I know how it happened, he almost said. I don’t remember, but I know.

He went so far, but no further. He couldn’t tonight. Wordless, he reached up to brush Aremu’s shoulder again, stroking it gently.

“I am sorry,” he said soft, hoarse. For laying it on him? For not? For the grief? “I’m not the man I was, but I carry… I don’t know what I would do without it, either.”

He swallowed thickly, opening his eyes. “Was there anything else you wanted to know? That I never…” His hand tightened in the sheets. After all Aremu had told him. “I’m sorry for that, too – that I never – offered to explain, or to…”

He had, maybe, once, in the study. The moment had snapped like a gunshot. He looked at Aremu uncertainly now. Is the fear in not knowing, he wondered, or knowing too much?

Or is it all just fear?

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Night, 13 Loshis, 2720
Dzigid’achyas Hotel, Three Flowers

Aremu shook his head, slightly, when Tom asked if he had been told. I think Uzoji knew, he could have said; he didn’t tell me the specifics. I didn’t ask, either. There’s space in truth for silence, I think; there’s space in truth for not knowing.

There are so many ways for a man to die. The night in the mangroves was tangled up with them, too, with the memories of Aremu’s knife cutting deep inside the three men he had killed to keep Tom safe – to keep himself safe. He remembered them, too; he didn’t remember their faces. He didn’t know if he’d ever seen one of them; he had climbed into the trees and lay along the branches, and dropped down on to him from above, dropped him face down into the water and made sure he would not rise again.

He knew the feeling of it, the jolt.

Was that how you died? He wanted to ask.

He thought, too, of a heavy pipe being passed from hand to hand far underground, of Tom’s large scarred hands pouring eza into cups and drinking them back, one after another. Was it the job, Tom? Or –

I don’t remember, Tom whispered. There was a deep welling up of shame in his voice.

Aremu shifted; he came upright a little more, and wrapped his arms around the other man, and held him close. His right arm, too; it shifted, resting behind Tom, out of sight. There was strength enough in it still to hold Tom, and so he did, and he didn’t let himself feel the shame of it.

It hurts, Tom had said, hoarse; his fingers dug into the sheets. There were tears gleaming down his cheeks. Aremu shuddered, and he felt a wetness on his own as well, listening, like an echo of the other man. A mirror, he thought, aching; he didn’t know if Tom had shattered, yet, in his arms. He felt each of them like fragments; he turned, and it was one eye he saw, reflected a thousand times, and then a snatch of lips, of nose, and in the dark he couldn’t tell if it was his or Tom’s which he saw.

Tom’s hand stroked his shoulder.

“You tried to tell me, in Dentis,” Aremu said, quietly, pressing his lips to the other man’s head. “I was too wrapped up in my own emptiness to listen. I’m sorry for that, too, Tom,” he had apologized for that too, between the two of them at the table in the Pendulum’s hotel room, in the bathroom with smoke clouding the air and the scents of orange misting through it.

“You told me of a community of raen,” Aremu said, carefully, offering Tom the still-unfamiliar Deftung word with the same careful deliberateness which he had brought to it before. “I’d like to know more about that, some day. I’d like to know…” he swallowed, frowning.

If not now, Aremu thought, when would he ask? If not now in the dark with tears in his lashes and Tom’s, with their secrets spilling out like blood into the bed all around them, then when? How would he – would they – know when to stop, know when one more drop would be more than they could bear? Aremu thought he could go on; he thought Tom could, too. He knew that he had been wrong before, not once but many times. All the same, he tried, pushing it just a little further between them, because: if not now, when?

“I’d like to know what will happen to you,” Aremu said; his hand came up, and stroked through Tom’s hair, gently, untangling the soft red strands, which, despite their thickness, seemed to tease apart well. He rubbed Tom’s scalp with his fingers, soft and gentle, finding familiar paths and strange ones too; what mattered most to him was to hold the other man close. “Such as you – know.”

[Tom Cooke]

The Three Flowers • Thul Ka

Late Night on the 13th of Loshis, 2720

A
remu wrapped both arms around him, his right forearm a soft pressure against his back. Don’t, he’d been aching to say; it’s damned shameful. He couldn’t, in the end.

It was stranger than he’d thought, both familiar arms but one hand; it was strange and it warmed him through, all at once. He thought all the muscles in Aremu’s right arm felt tenser, by just a little. He’d wondered sometimes if something in him might betray him, something stirred up from the shock he’d felt seeing him so for the first time, the set of his shoulders uneven, that wooden hand sliding out of his pocket at the railing of the Uccello di Hurte.

If there was strangeness, there was mostly warmth. Both of them had changed, edges sanded or gone altogether, new shapes cut into the pieces. They still fit, somehow.

He settled in, nestling his head against his chest and breathing in the scent of him.

He grunted softly in his throat, but he didn’t tell Aremu not to apologize. If he was saying it again, maybe it was because he needed to; he didn’t know. He felt ashamed, all the same, for bringing him to it, and ashamed for making him feel it in the first place, those months ago.

How can you still believe it? he wanted to demand. He couldn’t find the force for anger, wrapped up in both Aremu’s arms. It fizzled out to a sort of helpless sadness. How, after everything, could you believe you’re empty? He stroked his fingers over Aremu’s back, solid and alive, feeling the muscles shift underneath the skin, the bumps of his spine, the swell and fall of his breath underneath. He was underneath the warm, smooth skin against his cheek, and in the breath that stirred his hair when he kissed his head.

He knew that wasn’t how Aremu meant empty; he’d known that for some time now. He wasn’t sure why that didn’t help.

He smiled at the word raen on Aremu’s lips again, nodding. His fingers were curling through his hair. “To me,” he murmured at last, after a pause. “Such as I – know.” He shut his eyes. “I’ll keep on living,” he went on, “like this, until… For as long as any man can live, whatever the Circle decides. And then I’ll come back, and – on, and on.”

He imagined all Aremu’s muscles tightening; he imagined the other man slipping away, padding over to the window. He imagined more and worse. Abomination, he imagined hearing on his lips.

He wouldn’t be too wrapped up in it, tonight; what Aremu had offered meant more. For better or worse, he took a deep breath. “I’ll die eventually,” he admitted. “But it’ll be a long, long time.” Shorter for some than others, he couldn’t bring himself to say. I’ll lose something every time, he couldn’t bring himself to say. I’ll be less, every time.

His voice was still hoarse; the tears were drying sticky on his cheeks.

He smiled a little. He wasn’t sure where he found it, but he knew he had to; he pushed himself up, and he smiled, his hand wandering down to rest on Aremu’s knee and stroke it with his thumb. “Kzecka,” he offered, more lightly. “I went there. I’ve wanted to tell you about it.”

I’m sorry, he wanted to say, I thought you’d be too disturbed by it to want to know.

“I don’t think I’d ever, uh… It’s cold, up in the mountains.” His smile went slanted, a little wry. “And I don’t think I much agree with the way they do things. They were welcoming – it was beautiful, and I’ve much to tell you. But I didn’t, uh… they didn’t feel like – my people, not really.”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Morning, 14 Loshis, 2720
Dzigid’achyas Hotel, Three Flowers

Like this, Tom said, and then I’ll come back, and on and on. It was hard for Aremu to imagine it; he wasn’t sure he could. He couldn’t stretch himself that far, not quite, not far enough to see Tom beyond and beyond again, his own fractured mirror.

All Aremu could do was hold him – was love him, Aremu knew to call it, now. He thought maybe it always had been, or at least much longer than he’d known it. He didn’t know when or where it had changed, because the heat between them had never seemed to soften for long – only deepened, Aremu thought, and taken on something else.

If this had been falling in love, Aremu thought, then there seemed to be no bottom to it; he didn’t know if that relieved or frightened him. I won’t, he wanted to say, Tom; I’ll go back to the cycle. Tom knew that; they both did. He didn’t think there was any need to speak of it, not here tonight, not between them.

Tom smiled, and Aremu smiled too. “Kzecka,” he repeated, carefully, finding the harsh consonants stacked one on top of the other. “I’d like that,” he promised, and pressed his lips to Tom’s hair. Aremu held him close.

They spoke, both of them; Tom went on for a little while about the snow and the mountains, and a place where life seemed to Aremu to mean something else. He was grateful to listen; he was grateful to ask, when he thought of asking, and to be answered, when Tom could answer him. He was grateful for every word, as strange as they were in the dark, and the rest of it seemed to slowly settle through him, in time.

When Aremu had run dry of words, when he had said all that he could say of love, he found other ways to show it too; he offered Tom love with his lips and his hand, with their searching and finding together in the tangled sheets, and everything else he had. There was no urgency, no haste, not tonight; they had the whole of the dark together, and it was more than Aremu had dared hope for.

He drifted off to sleep with Tom’s warmth pressed against him; he dreamt of the cliffside, and the deep dark water below. He dived, and he went down and down and down, with no need to breathe, and Tom was always beneath him, just out of reach, a drifting tangle of dark hair, pale limbs twisted. Aremu swam; he kicked, his arms stretched before him, two hands whole, and he reached.

Tom’s hair was in his hands, streaming through it; he grabbed hold and it turned red streaked with white beneath his fingertips. Tom twisted up, looking at him through flat gray eyes, and took hold of him, pressed himself to Aremu and took the breath from his lips –

Aremu woke gasping, trembling; it was late enough not to quite yet be early, no pre-dawn light visible through the glass of the window.

“Dove,” Tom was whispering.

Aremu buried himself in the other man, and held on tight, shaking, and in time his eyes closed once more.

When Aremu woke again it was to pale light streaming through the window, and the soft scrape of a mortar and pestle. He opened his eyes to see Tom wrapped in one of the blankets, crouched by the burner and grinding beans for kofi.

Aremu smiled, and held still, content to watch a little while. Tom ground the last of the beans, the water already come to a boil, bubbling softly. He watched Tom pour the kofi into the kofi pot, and before long there was warm, flavorful steam drifting through the room. Aremu smiled a little wider, still curled on his side in the bed.

He didn’t think it was a lie, though he knew he couldn’t know. Aremu closed his eyes again, and he thought it was nearly sleeping, lying there those few moments to let Tom surprise him.

[Tom Cooke]

The Three Flowers • Thul Ka

Morning on the 14th of Loshis, 2720

H
e’d fumbled for them in the dark and pulled them on sleepily, though they fit too loose to be his trousers. There was something terribly comforting about it. The thin tan fabric was soft underneath his fingertips, and it draped loosely about his legs, the hems only a little too long.

Quiet as a temple mouse, he’d thought satisfiedly. It wasn’t the first time he’d ever lain low in a hotel room. He’d padded down the hall in the dark, finding his way more by touch than sight.

Aremu had been sleeping easy when he’d left him, his breath deep and thick with sleep, his chest rising and falling. He’d waited ‘til it evened out; he wasn’t sure how long, stroking the tense muscles of his back, murmuring. Aremu had held him tightly then. When he’d drifted awake, shivering, the other man had rolled over and taken most of the sheets with him.

Now he came back from the tap, the eschana heavy with water. It was a cheap, battered old thing, the heavy clay bumpy under his fingers. Watery grey light streamed through the window, and Aremu was still swaddled on one side of the bed.

He blinked in the soft light, rubbing his eyes. The air smelled of rain and old wood and the sheets; it smelled of Aremu, and it smelled of lavender, too, and another scent he was beginning to recognize as his own. He found the small burner, a shadow in the gloom. He set about grinding the beans, careful and methodical, the pestle grinding and crackling the mortar.

He hadn’t dreamt; he wasn’t sure how much he’d slept, though he knew he had. He remembered the night sharply, at first, and then as a whirl of soft voices and hands and pleasure.

It was snow he thought of now, as he scooped the kofi grounds in and heated them in the eschana. He’d seen so much of it for weeks. He knew now – he hadn’t, just months ago – what it was like to be knee deep in the stuff, to have the hems of his trousers drenched with it. He thought of the Eqe Aqawe, too, in places where thin sheets of it whirled down; he thought how they’d wandered, how he’d turned the questions to Aremu and listened raptly to steppe grasses driven flat by the wind and different mountains.

(There were questions he’d known not to ask, of course. He never wanted to ask, Why were you there? That was itself familiar and strangely comforting; it was an old game, that, as old as that first night on the wharf. There were coy smiles sometimes, and pauses and gaps. The qalqa had always been there.)

The eschana was bubbling and the room was full of the smell of kofi. When he pushed the window open again, grunting with the effort, it was joined by other smells. The rains had stopped, but the air was still thick with their passage.

Out the window, dawn sparked on the waterlogged streets. He stood there looking at it, breath taken; for a few moments, he stood watching Thul Ka, which had never really gone to sleep. He thought more kofi smells drifted up from somewhere to join his, mingling with the smell of frying batter.

Aremu was still bundled in sheets when he went to get the eschana. He looked over his shoulder at him. His eyes were shut, his long lashes casting shadows on his cheeks; there was something like a smile in the set of his lips.

He smiled to himself. The cups and the tray were old battered things, but clean, and the sunlight caught the copper rosy. They put him in mind of Quarter Fords; he was still smiling softly when he brought the whole service over, rattling gently, to the bed.

“Aremu,” he said quietly. He poured the kofi, steam whirling up, thick and dark and fragrant. He reached out for Aremu’s shoulder, stroking it gently with his thumb.

How did you sleep? he thought to ask, but he remembered, and he thought better of it. “How are you feeling?” he asked instead, shifting onto the bed, crossing his legs over the sheets.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Morning, 14 Loshis, 2720
Dzigid’achyas Hotel, Three Flowers

Aremu curled himself up in the lavender-scented sheets. He breathed in deep, once, all of it mingling together in a heady rush of pleasure and contentment, and then let his breathing even out once more.

In the end, he wasn’t sure, quite, whether he went back to sleep or not; he didn’t know if it was a truth or a lie, but he startled, just a little, at the brush of Tom’s hand on his shoulder, and then he smiled, smelling the rich, fragrant kofi, gazing up at the soft, tired lines of Tom’s face.

Aremu shifted himself up against the headboards; he glanced down, and realized with a strange pinch of surprise that Tom was wearing his pants, tan and creased and just a little too long. It wasn’t the first time that Tom had worn them – it was his own pants he had lent the other man on Dzum – but that hadn’t been accompanied by this sort of warm satisfaction, this tenderness which swept over him now, and tangled in a lump in his throat.

“Grateful,” Aremu said, quietly. The echoes of the nightmare lingered, snatches and glimpses, dark hair tangled underwater and the feeling of all the breath leaving his body. He crossed his legs beneath the sheets, and looked down at the kofi, and smiled. He looked back at Tom, and took the other man’s hand in his, drawing it up to his face and pressing his lips to the center of Tom’s palm.

“How about you?” Aremu asked. He lowered Tom’s hand, letting it go with a soft squeeze. Aremu took the kofi closer to him, lifting it to his lips to breathe in the steam and take a little sip. It was better than it had any right to be, which most of what was said of Dzigid’achyas, and brewed well, as far as he could tell, finely ground and made just strong enough.

Do you have to go? Aremu wanted to ask. He didn’t; he couldn’t. The answer would be yes, whether it was now or in an hour; even if it was in a house, the answer would be yes. He felt a strange ache, a longing sort of sorrow that the night had passed so quickly after all; one night was what he had asked for, and more than he had ever expected to receive and now, on the other end of it, he found himself greedy and selfish and wanting more.

One day, he wanted to say; one day, just us, somewhere like this where you’re comfortable being yourself. One day, just us, where we can talk and laugh and not think about who’s listening, who sees – one day, where we’re not ada’xa and sir, even when the sun’s still in the sky.

If not – if not – then when can I see you again? Not like this, if that’s not possible, but just to see you, somewhere.

Or just promise, Aremu wanted to say – to beg – he’d have gone down to his knees, he thought, aching – that you’ll come to Dzum, that you’ll be with me there. He thought now that he had asked wrong, after all; he couldn’t remember the words, but he was sure that they could have been better, clearer, more convincing. If he had begged, would Tom have understood him then?

He had already asked; the night was over, and sunlight was streaming in through the open window, the world outside thick with hazy humid morning light, all the rain from the night before beginning to rise, hot, into the new day. There was, Aremu thought, no going back, no second chances.

Except –

He thought of the middle of the night, of the drifting winding conversation there, of how they had gone back over familiar ground. There had been old hurts, and some had stung, then, but he looked at them now and thought the pain lessened.

When do you have to leave – will you come to Dzum – when will I see you again?

Aremu smiled, instead, soft, with a little aching weight at the corners of his eyes and running through his forehead. He took another sip of kofi, breathing in the warmth of it, and eased himself closer to Tom. He didn’t know the answer to any question he hadn’t asked, but Tom was here, now, and Aremu could let his knee brush against the other man through the blanket – and so he did, and tried not to ask for more.

[Tom Cooke]

The Three Flowers • Thul Ka

Morning on the 14th of Loshis, 2720

A
remu startled under his hand; he wondered a moment if he’d woken him from another dream. But there was a smile on his face when he shifted in a rustle of sheets, and the light streaming in from the window was enough to catch it in full and spark in his dark eyes. He couldn’t help the smile that spilled out onto his face, warm and unfamiliar in every crease.

I’ve missed this, he wanted to say, and he knew it would’ve been a lie. We never got a chance to do this; now that we’ve got just one, I don’t know what to do with myself.

He thought he could’ve spent the whole godsdamned time just staring at the other man, and he busied himself pouring the kofi instead, because he knew that wasn’t the way to spend it, either. His hands were steady with the qalqa as they’d ever been. Aremu had pushed himself up, and the creases of the sheets had pressed different patterns into his chest, his shoulders.

Aremu took his hand and kiss his palm; he inclined his head, blinking, when he squeezed and let go. He blinked again. “Grateful,” he rasped, because he couldn’t’ve thought of a better word himself, just then.

He reached up and brushed Aremu’s cheek with the backs of his fingers, then passed him the cup, trailing a tendril of steam. The tray rattled on the bed as he pushed himself back and bent to get his own cup, the eschana’s clay still giving off warmth.

Aremu took a sip and settled in closer. He breathed in the scent himself, smiling. He thought the other man was smiling, too – though something strange lingered about his eyes and at the edges of his lips.

For a second, he looked at him with something like concern. Was it the dreams? he wanted to ask. Do you want to talk about them?

He didn’t think Aremu had ever told him about them; he’d never been sure there was much need, between men whose dreams were often strange and bloody. He’d never much liked speaking of them, but he wasn’t sure if that, too, was out of shame.

Whatever Aremu was thinking, it didn’t pass the crooked set of his lips.

“The kofi is Dzet’es,” he said. He’d bought just enough to grind for the two of them earlier at the convention, hoping like a fool, like the happy fool he was sitting here now. “But I don’t like it as much as yours.” Ibutatu’s, he thought to say, and didn’t; he thought of kofi growing in the shade of tsug, and he was warm with it.

He took a sip of kofi; he’d had some practice now, in the grinding and the roasting and even the brewing, and he’d got it right this time, he thought satisfiedly. He glanced down at the warped tray, now with just the eschana on it. He felt a pang.

I couldn’t find any spices, he wanted to say, and there’s no dzutan; there was nothing to break fast, no… He swallowed it, smiling, and suddenly – he let out a soft, genuine laugh. “I remember –” He settled in closer, feeling the gold shiver out into the clairvoyant mona. “I tried to make you breakfast in Quarter Fords, once. I’ve been trying to remember if I – did I burn the eggs?”

He laughed and nudged Aremu’s knee through the sheet, and rested his head on the other man’s shoulder.

“I’m not much better at it now, I’m afraid. I helped ada’na Ahura with the cooking at least.” It was easier to think about now, somehow; he sighed, wistful. “I didn’t know Niccolette cooked,” he added, grinning.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Morning, 14 Loshis, 2720
Dzigid’achyas Hotel, Three Flowers

Aremu smiled. He took another sip of the kofi, considering; Dzet’es was another of the smaller producers, though their whole plantation focused on kofi, and they had their own drying and packaging facilities. What would you think, Aremu wanted to say, if?

They had edged around it in their formal letters, the business correspondence where every word promised that each man was thinking of the other. Aremu hadn’t come out with it, his plans – his dreams – what he wished to do to honor Uzoji’s memory. Yours, Tom had called it, and Aremu’s head shook, just a little.

Uzoji’s, he wanted to say; Uzoji’s and Niccolette’s, and not mine. But it felt strange to, just now, as if it would lay the thought of the two of them between them, where they did not belong. He didn’t want to speak of Uzoji; they had enough grief already to share. He didn’t want to speak of Niccolette either, of knowing and truth and honor, of complications.

Aremu grinned, and then grinned again when Tom asked about the eggs. “You did,” Aremu admitted, grinning a little wider. It wasn’t the eggs he thought of, but Tom’s determined frowning down at them, his lips tucked together in the thicket of the beard he’d had then, full and thick, the smell of kofi in the drifting kitchen and the kisses and more that they had exchanged, until the eggs had long since grown cold.

They had eaten them anyway; Aremu remembered promising Tom that he should eat all six. They had been cold, by then, burnt black on the bottom, the yolk cooled through to a hard yellow mass, and they’d eaten them with bread and cheese and more kofi, not even quite half-dressed, when they were too hungry to care, and the morning had wound onward until Aremu had gone, then, back to the Eqe Aqawe; the memory was sweet and painful at once.

“I was grateful for your eggs,” Aremu said, quietly, looking at Tom. “I liked that you cared to make them for me,” he set the kofi down, and found Tom’s knee with his hand, cupping it and stroking over it with his thumb. “That was the first time we spent the night together,” he didn’t want to mention Nevio or Ipadi or all the rest of it, but he tried to nudge a little more into the past, not sure – Tom had opened the door, and while he didn’t step through it, Aremu found himself lingering in the doorway.

He swallowed; he went on. “I think I loved you even then,” Aremu said, quietly, “or at least felt the beginnings of it,” he looked up at Tom, frowning a little. “It frightened me; this,” Aremu’s voice quivered, and his hand squeezed lightly, and he went on, “frightens me too, a little. I suppose love is like trust,” Aremu said, looking at the other man, his frown not shifting. “It’s a gift we give or receive, and not something which be earned.”

His thumb stroked Tom’s knee again, and Aremu eased his hand away, and took the cup of kofi once more. He found a smile for the other man, slow and tender. “Those eggs were a gift too,” Aremu said, quietly. He paused. “I'd eat them again; I'd eat them every day, if I could, but they tasted awful. You're not a very good cook.” He leaned forward, and kissed Tom, grinning almost boyishly.

Some day I’ll cook for you, Aremu wanted to promise, and he couldn’t quite find the courage. I’d like to cook for you, he wanted to say; I’d make you lamb, not island style, but the style I like best, with ajwain, nigella seeds, chili, coriander, garlic, fenugreek, basil, paprika, mustard, with tomatoes and peppers; I have it all on the island. The ahu’arip, he wanted to say, I’d make as well.

“The kofi’s good, though,” Aremu said instead, grinning still, and leaned in to kiss Tom again.

[Tom Cooke]

The Three Flowers • Thul Ka

Morning on the 14th of Loshis, 2720

H
e was grinning back. They were both grinning then, the last edge of a laugh dying in Tom’s chest – his expression softening into something else, as Aremu went on. He laid his hand on top of Aremu’s on his knee, clasping it gently and then stroking it. Aremu was frowning thoughtfully.

He felt it: dizzying, breathtaking, not quite pleasure and not quite pain. He’d done his best in life to squash the feeling into a shape he could hold, though it’d seemed to him a strange, flowing thing, flowing and overflowing, spilling out of him and trickling between his fingers. It wasn’t a man’s to feel, he’d always been told, least of all a man like him. I know, he wanted to say, I know that fear.

He couldn’t pretend at a fleck of ground kofi in his eyes this morning; he blinked and blinked, still smiling.

When Aremu came to it, he laughed, and it jolted a tear down his cheek. He laughed again, wiping it away with his fingertips. “For a Cooke,” he rasped, not quite able to help himself. He met Aremu’s lips halfway, tasting the kofi on them.

Not as good as yours, he wanted to say again, but he remembered the slight shake of Aremu’s head. Whose is it, then? The Ibutatus’, who’d been in the air for the King? He thought of Aremu sitting in the kitchen, the light spilling round his shoulders, dappled by the shaking leaves of kofi plants just outside the window; he thought of the lines that were beginning to wear themselves into Aremu’s brow, of the bump on the middle finger of his left hand, of the tense muscles of his back –

Aremu leaned to kiss him again, and kissing him back – leaning into it with breath and love – took the thoughts from his mind. When he eased back, he found himself looking at Aremu again.

“I always –” He shook his head, eyes trailing down to the tray. “I’d’ve made them every morning, too, though I hope I’d’ve gotten better at it with the doing. Maybe there’s still hope for me, eh?” He grinned briefly.

Do you, he wanted to ask – d’you cook? You’re not a very good cook, he’d said, like a man who knew what good cooking was, and not just somebody else’s. He felt a spark of curiosity, studying Aremu. I never knew, he wanted to say. I never asked, he thought.

Had it frightened him back then? As much as anything in his heart had, he supposed. He’d had hama for nearly ten years, then; he’d’ve said he knew much of loving another man, that he accepted it freely, that he knew what to do with it. Had he known it as well as he’d thought?

What was love? He glanced back up, taking a sip of kofi. “I thought,” he murmured, shaking his head, “I thought I knew what love was, back then. I don’t think I knew a whit of what love and trust have to do with each other. Or that it’s giving and receiving, and not just – one or the other.” His lip twitched, bitter.

Hama, he’d thought over the years, hama, hama – he dreamt of long-fingered, callused hands, of soft voices and lips, of being held. He never dreamt of busted glasses and shrieking and hoarse apologies, of half-sleeping cramped on the couch.

I loved him, he wanted to say; I was the death of us then. I’ve been the death of many loves.

“I never knew to admit how much love frightened me,” he said. “I loved you then anyway; I remember that night. How it felt, looking over and seeing you were still there, with the sun coming in and all. Damn me.” He smiled up, tilting his head. “I liked the way you talked to me, even before the Breckenridge job. I felt like you saw me. Maybe that’s it, too, seeing and being seen. Letting yourself be seen. That scares the hell out of me.”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Morning, 14 Loshis, 2720
Dzigid’achyas Hotel, Three Flowers

Stop, something in Aremu whispered, careful and quiet. Stop, pull back; you’ve gone too far. He had the feeling of the man of the edge of a great, dizzying height, staring down over the edge; he had the feeling of being so high up that you couldn’t be sure what of the ground was beneath you, that it all spread out like an enormous patchwork, and what you could put together of it wasn’t enough to tell you where you stood. Such heights never scared him on an airship, even now, but they scared him here.

“I think I’ve always been afraid of it,” Aremu said, quietly. He looked at Tom, frowning once more against the other man’s smile. The words swept over him: seeing and being seen, and he swallowed, and looked away.

I’m empty, Tom, he wanted to say; you’ll see through me, in time. This was more familiar ground, solid beneath his feet; Aremu thought of words shouted at him amidst the mangroves, Tom insisting he wasn’t what he said he was, and of Tom quiet in Dentis, speaking of respect. He didn’t know how to put it together, or how it fit with the nexus he knew he was inside him, the thing he had which was not a soul nor a field, and surely meant nothing. He didn't know, sometimes, if there was more to him than that emptiness, in the end.

Whether or not there was, whether or not he should have, Aremu found that he went a different way.

“I mistook desire for love, once,” Aremu said, quietly. “I thought that if an honorable man listened to me, spoke with me, yearned for me, that…” he smiled, but it was twisted and aching, probing at the long ago wound, the heartache of a boy who should have known better. “I loved again afterwards, and I ran away from it. Maybe it wasn’t enough; maybe it wasn’t love, in the end, if I could put it aside so easily. Maybe neither of them was, only… that with each, for a time, I wanted them to be.”

Aremu swallowed, unevenly; he found he couldn’t take another sip of kofi, not just yet. He set the cup aside, looking at Tom, still frowning. “I liked you too,” he said, quietly, “even then. I knew who you were before we met, and that Uzoji respected you.” He exhaled, a slow, even breath, shaking his head. “I liked your curiosity, and the way we could speak; I liked that you listened, when I spoke, and you took my words and made something of them.” He swallowed.

“You still do,” Aremu leaned forward again, kissing Tom once more. He took the other man’s kofi cup in his hand, and he set it aside, too.

I don’t know, he wanted to say, what mistakes I’ve made; I don’t know what mistakes I’ll make ahead. I’m sure they’ll be many.

When Aremu pulled away, he was smiling again, despite himself, despite all the many aches and the cuts and the fractured reflections, despite all the metaphors he cared to muster up to explain to himself all which he lacked, all the damage done, all the tenderness.

There was so much we didn’t know, Aremu could have said with the breath he offered Tom as he bent back in; there was so much we didn’t see, and didn’t hear. Maybe there still is; maybe there always will be. Just then, he felt no expectation, no urgency; just then, he felt nothing missing. There was the two of them, and the precious words they had offered; there was his past, and Tom’s too, and their presents, intertwined. Just then, Aremu thought he could see a future too, with mingled dread and delight, and he leaned in, as it to take it, despite the fear.