[Closed] Laughing at the Danger

[Tom Cooke]

The Three Flowers • Thul Ka

Evening on the 13th of Loshis, 2720

L
ook at me, Aremu said. He couldn’t look away, at first; it was as if the weight of his eyes were what was holding the bridge up, and if he looked away –

But he did, after a moment; the dizziness that rushed up almost made him stumble, as if all they’d climbed in the last few minutes had caught up with him. He met Aremu’s eyes, glittering, dark except for the whites. His eyelashes were thick and dark in the low light, and the shadows underneath his cheekbones were deep. He was used to seeing him at this angle, but it was jarring just now, all the same.

The water slopped below in the quiet. Hold onto me, Aremu said, and the gentle stroke of his thumb wasn’t enough at first; he was all seized up with fear. He felt a low burn of shame – he could never seem to help it, the way it came over him sudden like this, the dizziness and terror – but Aremu kissed him gently, and he couldn’t seem to focus on all those things at once, so he held the other man’s hand instead.

When he kissed him again, it was deeper, and he answered in kind. There was no looking down, then; there was no thinking of anything.

With his eyes shut, there was nothing but darkness and breath between them.

The memories mixed, heady, in his mind. Aremu took one step back, then another, balanced and strong as a sapling; the wind ruffled their amel’iwe and tugged at the hems around their ankles, but the smell of stagnant water was distant to the smell of him and the warmth of his breath. His eyes were shut now, his nose just brushing Aremu’s.

He had his other hand on Aremu’s right shoulder, he realized. It had gone there almost reflexively. He followed Aremu, breathing in and out – reflexively, too – on the step; Aremu’s left foot, his right. One, two, three, he found himself counting in his head, in some distant galdor’s voice; one, two, three.

He smiled. Every line of him was tight with it, but slowly relaxing. Suddenly he couldn’t separate the sharp ache of fear in his stomach from the thrill of having the other man close, the tug of desire. It all mingled together into something else, something new but familiar at its bones. They moved across, one quiet, creaking step at a time, and he kept his fingers knit with Aremu’s and his hand on the other man’s shoulder.

“Eyo’ziq i’xupo,” he murmured, thick-voiced, on the other side. He kissed Aremu this time, slow and soft, and when he came away, he was laughing breathlessly.

They came into the shadow of a balcony, an empty doorway with its door hanging half off the hinges, a floor scattered with glass that glittered in the light that leaked in. It crunched under the soles of their sandals. He breathed heavily, though he’d opened his eyes and looked around.

It was empty, except for a glass-windowed nook that must’ve been an office once. A blue light leaked out of it. However long it’d been here, the phosphor lamp – half shaded – was still glowing softly.

Without the great swath of empty air and the water below, he was suddenly sharply aware of Aremu pressed up against him. Of the lean, hard muscles of his chest, of his right shoulder underneath his hand. Aremu was still holding his hand. He got the strangest desire to find the knife again, to – disarm him – he eased himself away from the imagining, and a little away from Aremu too, though he couldn’t quite bring the two of them apart.

“Uh –” He swallowed dryly, blinking. “Thank you,” he said, grinning slowly. His voice managed not to break, but there was a hoarse edge to it.

How close are we? he knew better than to ask. I can wait, he didn’t have to say; this is a damn good way to wait. I trust you, he said with his hand, sliding off Aremu’s shoulder. Show me the way, he said, squeezing Aremu’s hand.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 13 Loshis, 2720
Dzigid’achyas Hotel, Three Flowers

The first time he kissed Tom, he felt the other man’s hand squeeze his, felt him shift and shudder. The second time, Tom kissed him back, deep and lingering, and he heard as well as felt the other man’s faint exhale as they eased apart, not too far.

Aremu led them together along the bridge, slow, even steps backwards, Tom’s hand holding his hand and his shoulder. He felt Tom’s breath shuddering against his face with every step; he felt the other man’s grip tight against him, and he didn’t mind it in the least.

They came through. Aremu grinned, and what was nearly a laugh at Tom’s Mugrobi, this time, was swallowed up in the kiss that they shared between them.

For a moment, Aremu thought of other nights long, long past – of moonlight dappled over ruined roof tiles, of sinking to his knees on the hard attic floor, of Tom’s hand steadying his head. He thought, oddly, then, of lying side by side apart, of the chill wind whisking in off the Tincta Basta; he was grateful, suddenly, for all the warmth of Mugroba, and all the warmth of Tom’s hand in his, and the familiarity of it, too.

Tom broke the kiss between them, this time. Aremu’s breath came a little hoarse, too; he pressed against Tom, their hands mingled at the other man’s hip, and they were close enough together to feel everything.

Tom’s hand eased off his shoulder, and Aremu exhaled. He lifted their joined hands to his lips and kissed Tom’s like a promise, and led them onwards.

There was a staircase down towards the factory floor, but brackish water moved, sluggishly, at the bottom of it, gleaming dark in the pale light. Aremu led them in to the alcove; a breeze was drifting in through the window, and when he glanced out there was a winding staircase downwards, and a dry street below. There was a desk, too, messy with dust and yellowed papers. For a moment, looking at it, Aremu thought – but he glanced back over his shoulder at Tom, and he thought better of it, too. I can wait, Aremu promised himself.

“Last one,” Aremu said, grinning, “I think.”

They climbed down the staircase, Aremu one handed and Tom with two. Aremu took Tom’s hand in his again as they set off; he didn’t think anyone would look twice at them here. The streets were quieter; it was later, now, though not so much later.

Dzigid’achyas was as quiet it had been the day before. They went in to the small front room lit with a flickering candle in a wall sconce; Aremu took the key, and led Tom up the last of the stairs, burning. The room was on the third floor; he unlocked the door, nearly fumbling it.

The bed was unexpectedly comfortable, wide, with a thick mattress and clean sheets; an open window drifted in the coolness of the night, the distant scents and sounds of the city. There was a small dresser against the wall, a basin of water on a stand, and little else.

Aremu couldn’t think what else he needed. He turned back; Tom was coming in behind him, and he eased forward and kissed the other man again, pressing him gently back against the door. “I want you,” Aremu whispered, with his lips, his tongue, his hand, with everything he had which could speak. “I need you,” he promised, sinking in to it, down, letting all the rest of the world dissolve away. “I love you,” he offered, in every way he knew how, thinking of every touch shared between them, every kiss, of his hand on Tom’s thigh and Tom’s hand on his knife, and the hot brush of the other man’s breath as they danced backwards together through the dark.

[Tom Cooke]

The Three Flowers • Thul Ka

Evening on the 13th of Loshis, 2720

H
e’d been surprised when Aremu had taken his hand again. His wanting’d lurched and stumbled over itself, and he’d shivered to move through the last of the streets hand in hand, the flood and the skittering rats and the old broken-windowed factories behind them. These were quiet streets, but not empty.

It was a quiet place Aremu took him to, in the end. He knew such places, not sleepy but silent-watching – lights peering down at the street from upper windows, nameless shadows moving.

Aremu’s hand threw long shadows across the wall in the wavering candlelight; the key glinted in his fingers.

They were apart for the last leg of it, and he held breathless to the wobbling banister, the wood uneven and unpolished under his fingertips. His hip ached – his feet ached – he pushed himself up, and up, and he was barely a step behind Aremu the whole time. When Aremu finally stopped he thought he could’ve climbed three more with spirit to spare. He felt the fumbling of Aremu’s hands in his bones and everywhere else.

He didn’t look around at the room, dim but lit by Thul Ka out the window, ever-bright. Aremu turned and met him when he came in; the door shut, and suddenly his back was against it, and there was nowhere he’d rather’ve been. It was all lips and breath and Aremu’s hand finally wandering down, and his own wandering up to run its fingers across his scalp. He heard what was said and felt what wasn’t.

I need you, he was gasping, barely audible between his kisses. They were wandering back now, meandering toward the bed. His words were urgent; his hands were not, unhooking the knife from the harness slowly.

There was a winding, careful line they both knew. He knew Aremu knew it; his hand was careful, and when it asked questions, it always waited for an answer. He tried to know it too, though he thought once they’d not cared so much to keep it, or not known how, even if they’d wanted to. He held those memories close all the same – even the ones that pinched or bit or pulled at his hair, or carried a regret that tasted like cheap spurs.

They were both half-undressed now, the breeze drifting cool and prickling over his bare skin. Aremu had bent to kiss him one last time. He found it reflexively – he hadn’t meant to, and it sent a jolt of uncertainty through him.

He paused on the small buckle, the metal cool underneath his fingertips. “Aremu,” he murmured.

It wasn’t the only one; there were a few, and he knew where they were, too, if not with his eyes, with his hands. It wasn’t the first time he’d touched them. He’d never touched the hand – there was a balance, too, in awareness and forgetting – and his hand hadn’t wandered below Aremu’s right elbow in three years, not since. All the same, he was no stranger to the straps, and once they’d even left a tracery of lines across his own palm.

But he’d never – he’d dreamt of it, one way or another. It was separate now, somehow, from his need; it was a different, stranger, tender kind of feeling. He was thinking of the way the edges dug into Aremu’s skin, and the way the muscles were tighter-knotted along the lines, even after hours.

“May I?” he asked. Say no, wanted to say, and I won’t; say anything other than yes, and I won’t. He kissed Aremu again softly.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 13 Loshis, 2720
Dzigid’achyas Hotel, Three Flowers

May I? Tom asked, and his hand held still. Aremu didn’t need to look to know it was on the straps; they dug into him, and itched and ached in a way they hadn’t all day. No matter how often he wore them, it didn’t seem to get better; he didn’t notice it, most of the times, and then abruptly it would become unbearable, and he could do nothing but to bear it. He was breathing hard; he shuddered, and pressed himself into Tom’s lips.

May I? Tom asked. It was another set of stairs Aremu thought of, and a kitchen drifting with the smell of mint and junia, and the cool island breeze whistling through the windows, and a mirror covered with a coat. It was a mirror he thought of too, and flat gray eyes staring out of it. It was, too, the way Tom guided his hand, sometimes, the places where he knew to avoid, to trace around, although he had never asked why.

May I? Tom asked.

“Yes,” Aremu whispered, into the space between their lips, his breath tickling the other man. “Yes,” he said, again, a little more loudly, a little firmer.

Aremu felt it, when the buckle came loose; he felt it, when the strap eased against his body, leading behind a tracery of lines and shapes and nothing more to bear. He groaned, and his hand wound a familiar path down, and down again, and he bent his head to kiss Tom once more, gasping aloud as the last of the pressure came away.

Tom,” Aremu murmured, softly. He shifted, and pressed his lips to the other man’s neck, softly, tasting Tom’s beating pulse beneath them.

They were tangled in a spread of cool white sheets, lit by the city lights, the wind whisking in through the window and stirring over the both of them. Aremu curled his arm around Tom, his palm cupping the other man’s shoulders, and eased him a little closer. He came up, shifting over him, his left hand pressing into the sheets. He bent down, and kissed Tom’s lips again.

Will you stay? He wanted to ask.

Can you stay? He didn’t know what he should say. I know it’s risky, he thought of saying; I know it’s risky for us both. I want you here; I don’t want to be left to sleep alone again, not tonight. I know there are risks, but you will you stay, please?

Please, Aremu thought instead. Please, Tom, will you stay? He was looking down at the other man, at the tangle of red hair threaded through gray and white against the pillow, his gray gaze turned sleepy and soft up towards him. He kissed him again, soft and tender, and thought it better to ask nothing. He knew – they both knew – how risky this was, for all that the meeting in Windward Market and the walk through Three Flowers had felt like a game.

Is it safe for you to stay? He could ask it that way, instead, not outright but careful and cautious, hiding behind the edges of it. Would you think about it, that question asked; can you think about it. No, that question suggested as its answer; no, if only I could.

Aremu tasted all of these and more on his lips and Tom’s, in the air between them, lingering. Tom was smiling up at him now with his eyes; Aremu knew that, he couldn’t but see it. There were fading lines over all of him, still, tracks of the harness and marks left behind by the buckles from where Tom had pulled them free.

Aremu eased himself back down, and he wrapped his arm around Tom once, and he pulled him close. “We have the room for the night,” Aremu said, quietly. He closed his eyes, pressing his forehead forward to rest on Tom’s shoulder, all of him curled around the other man. “Stay,” he said, softly. “Stay with me, Tom. Please.”

[Tom Cooke]

The Three Flowers • Thul Ka

Late Night on the 13th of Loshis, 2720

T
om, came his soft voice.

He swam out of the dream and into the half-lit, blurry room, one step at a time; Aremu had never rushed him. He felt the bed creak as Aremu pushed himself up. He didn’t have to rise far to meet the kiss, and he nestled back into the pillows, smiling up at the face hazy-lit by the phosphor streetlamp through the window.

It was still strange, drifting off beside the other man. His skin still wore the ghosts of his touch. He’d thought – once, in Dentis – that he’d be afraid to sleep beside him afterward; instead, it was something like being held helped him hold his shape. Like he found the shape of himself as Aremu found it, and it was a different shape than the mirror or his own hands could show him.

It was a comfortable shape, swaddled up in sheets and wrapped in Aremu’s arms. If it was a sort of magic, he didn’t know how; he’d never felt it that way in life.

Aremu was looking down at him, his face beginning to sharpen with wakefulness. It was still too full of shadows for him to read the expression. The tide swept back more and more. I have to go soon, don’t I? he thought, suddenly aware. Just a little longer, he wanted to beg selfishly. It all fits, and when I leave, it won’t fit anymore.

The other man settled back down, and he felt his left arm slide warm around his shoulders. Outside the window, he heard a sound like wheels hissing through puddles; somebody somewhere whistled and laughed, but it was a distant echo of a sound. Aremu nestled closer, and he pulled the sheets up gently round the other man, wrapping his arm around him.

He made sense of the words; he untangled them from the feathery, warm breath against his chest. He took a deep, shuddering breath, pressing his lips to the other man’s hair. “I’m staying,” he said almost without thinking, stroking his back along the lines. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Half the Vyrdag, he wanted to say, disappears from their hotel rooms sometimes. Let them make their guesses; this man already has a closet full of skeletons.

I’ve thought about it already, he wanted to say. I got lost, and I found a room for the night instead of hobbling all the way back to the cable cars. Then there was more flooding – it’s going to rain – and I was hard-pressed to get back across Thul Ka in time. All my things are in order at the office, and Cardinal and the rest will cover. There’s nothing I have to show up at personally ‘til later in the day tomorrow. We can even have the morning, like old times, if you want. If – you want.

It seemed wrong to say all that now, in this strange, dreamy place. He rested his cheek against Aremu’s scalp and breathed deep and even instead, surrendering himself again to the drifting.

It was in and out, not fits and starts but lulls. Sometimes he woke with Aremu’s lips in his hair; sometimes he stirred Aremu with a kiss, and held him instead. He got up once or twice to pad out to the water closet in the dark, and he came back and tucked himself in. The night drew deeper and deeper still.

It was a mist first. The breeze picked up, filling the room with the smell of the Turga, ruffling the drapes. Then the rain came down harder, tapping and then pounding, and the walls creaked and the drapes snapped and rippled with the wind. Aremu was breathing soft and even beside him.

Careful quiet, he stood and ambled over to the window, where the rain was whirling in and the boards were slick-damp. He pushed it shut with a creak, so the rain pattered and rattled the glass pane.

When he came back, he saw the glitter of eyes in the dimness. The soft blue light that crept into the room was full of shivering raindrop shadows now.

He sat down on the bed, tucking himself back under the covers with a grunt. “It’s really coming down now,” he murmured. He leaned to kiss Aremu again. I’ve missed this, he wanted to say; he put his arm around him again.

[Aremu Ediwo]

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

Aremu slept. If he had thought about it, he would have known he would; if he had ever doubted, he would have known there was no reason for it. He had not thought about it, not before he asked and not after. There wasn’t space in the warm, close bed, with Tom’s arms wrapped around him and the other man’s lips in his hair, his cheek pressed against the top of his head, both of them curled together, tangled with one another and the sheets and blankets.

He half woke with the awareness of something missing beside him. There was an echo like noise in the air, and Aremu glanced up, eyes closing and opening once more, to see the slim drift of Tom’s silhouette by the window, what little light there was gleaming in his red hair, casting it almost purple in the dark. Aremu smiled.

It was pouring rain outside. It battered the glass, and the smell of it drifted in through the room, winding through all the gaps in the boards, along the window; they were none of them big enough to let moisture in, but there was the sense of it, somehow, all the same, the feeling of it in the air.

Tom came back beneath the covers once more. Aremu pulled him close, settling his arm around him, and kissed him back, softly. Tom’s arm curled around him, too, and Aremu smiled.

“I’ve missed this,” Aremu said, softly. He curled his head onto Tom’s shoulder. They’d had a only a handful of nights together, Aremu thought, in the last three and a half years.

Before – he remembered so many nights he’d spent in Tom’s arms, burning up with guilt and shame and uncertainty, tossing and turning in his sleep and banishing the half-remembered shades of strange dreams. He had wanted this, then; he had wanted it long before they had ever had it, long before the first night when Tom had asked, uncertainly, if he wanted to stay, after the two of them had fallen asleep in a tangle of junia and arnica at the old kitchen table in the Quarter Fords house.

It hadn’t been like that in Yaris, and not in Dentis either; even in Brunnhold, in The Pendulum, where Aremu knew he had been less than a man to them. Strangely, he was grateful for it; if they had given him his own room, he did not know if he and Tom would have shared what they did. This part of it had always been comfortable, since, almost easy. Too easy, Aremu thought, sometimes, but he put that thought aside, just now.

Aremu found Tom’s cheek with his hand, and stroked it with his thumb, his head still curled against the other man. He felt the brush of Tom’s lips on his hair, and smiled.

It’s my fault, Aremu wanted to say, that we missed out on so many nights we could have had. I was afraid, at first of what I had lost, and later of what I had done. He had apologized; he remembered that, at least, standing in the mangroves, panting for breath amidst his tears, and offering up the words that had brewed in him the last day and a half, mixed in and amidst all the fear and terror and uncertainty.

He didn’t think he needed to say it again; he didn’t know, Aremu thought uneasily, what it meant to make amends for something like that.

“You wanted to talk about Dzum,” Aremu said, softly. He was awake, now; he thought perhaps he could have drifted back off into sleep, but he was awake, and he thought Tom was too, curled around him and stroking him gently with one hand. He shifted, and pressed his lips to Tom’s neck, kissing down to the hard line of his collarbone. “Do you still?”

I don’t know if we’ll have time in the morning, Aremu wanted to say; I don’t know when we’ll have time again, time when it’s only us, when we can hold one another through the ache. They’re so precious, these moments; I didn’t know that before, not enough, not deeply. Maybe I needed to waste so many of them – needed to hurt, and ache with grief and regret – so that I could understand.

[Tom Cooke]

The Three Flowers • Thul Ka

Late Night on the 13th of Loshis, 2720

I
’ve missed this, Aremu said, and he didn’t have to. He couldn’t help his smile; he laid another kiss and then another in the other man’s hair, and he nestled closer against the pounding rain and the draught that curled in through the wood. It wasn’t damp or cold, but it was thick with the smell and the taste of rain.

I remember, he wanted to say, the first time we ever did.

You know, don’t you, that some things go? Aremu’s fingers were caressing the line of his cheek, warm and tender, and he was still tracing kisses over his scalp. They’d never spoken of it, he realized; he wondered if he had ever thought to tell him. It was unsettling, strange – jarring with the soft rise and fall of Aremu’s back against his bare arm, the muscles finally loosening, the harness’ sharp lines blurred.

Between lives, he wanted to say anyway. It was as if the effort of shutting the window’d woken him up. His fingers wandered over Aremu’s shoulder, and his mind wandered down its corridors. It had wandered them often, since Serkaih.

You know I remember that night, he wanted to insist, even if I can’t remember where I got the tin from, or whether it was junia or arnica, or where – where the table was, or how big the kitchen was.

His brow furrowed. He kissed Aremu’s hair again, holding him a little closer. I remember it enough to miss it; I remember the way the light looked on you, when I woke up with you beside me. I even remember what we talked about, and frying eggs. I don’t remember if they were any good; I think they must not’ve been, but I can’t remember how they looked.

Can you? Is that a thing a living man would remember, from three and a half years ago? I don’t remember all of the nights, he thought; some of them blend together in my mind – some of them…

His mind was wrung out and limp. He rested his cheek against Aremu’s hair again. Shut your damn head, he wanted to chide himself, and just hold the man you love. Right now’s too precious to waste with thoughts like those. He shut his eyes, but he opened them when Aremu spoke again. His breath was warm against his collarbone.

He thought for a moment, silence filled up with the steady drum of rain.

“Yes,” he said finally, quietly.

No, he’d thought to say; no, not now. And then: no, I don’t want to, but we should. And then that both of those would be lies, because he thought he did want to talk about it, one way or another.

He breathed in deep, finding Aremu’s hand and twining their fingers together. “I do,” he went on, sighing. “I don’t know that I know where to start.” Enough to frighten me, he remembered, but not enough to let me understand.

... I cannot bear to know, whispered in his mind underneath the patter of the rain; and, … if it can be explained…

He shifted, pushing himself up a little more. He held Aremu’s hand on top of the sheets, and he didn’t ease away. All the same, he propped himself up against the headboard, the rough wood creaking under his back. He rested his head against it, stroking over the back of Aremu’s hand with his thumb.

“I was, uh – I was an ass. I don’t come across people I’ve known, people I’ve loved, very often, but when I do…” He swallowed. “I liked seeing you on the isles. I was curious, even when you were afraid. I – even wanted…”

The shame almost stuck the words in his throat, but he knew if he were going to ask Aremu to speak of it, he had to speak of it himself. “It’s strange, to know so much about somebody else, and them – look at you and have no idea who you even are. I was afraid - I’m still afraid I don’t have – consent – to know what I know.” He trailed off. “I don’t think either of us was ready to know.”

[Aremu Ediwo]

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

Tom shifted, and Aremu stayed against him, curled against the other man. Yes, Tom said, and Aremu nodded. Tom’s hand had found his, and their fingers were curled together, now. Aremu let himself be, for just a little while, sinking into the ease of the moment.

I was an ass, Tom said. Aremu frowned, looking at him, and he didn’t interrupt; there was something in him which said that Tom needed to speak. He listened as Tom went on; I even wanted, Tom said, slowly, and trailed off, and it was a moment before Aremu understood.

I didn’t know, Tom, he wanted to say. You didn’t – before I knew, you never made me uncomfortable. He didn’t know how to speak about it; he didn’t know what to say to the other man. You were strange, I thought, in the way Anaxi galdori are strange; if ever you frightened me, it was only that, at first.

It was the Uccello Aremu thought of then, and the moment when Tom had come down the stairs to see the ship’s engineer unconscious, the man’s head in Aremu’s lap. He remembered fear, then; it was Tom, then, all along, he thought. He told himself to look at it, and to think, and he didn’t quite know what to make of all of it.

Tom was still talking, his voice low and deep and thoughtful.

You didn’t make me uncomfortable, Aremu thought to say, because I understood so little of – you, then. He didn’t know that he could imagine it; he tried to think of Tom not knowing him, and that ached, and ached well.

Aremu exhaled. He didn’t say anything; he didn’t think there was anything to say. Perhaps it wasn’t about saying but about telling – about showing – whatever words Tom had said, Aremu lay curled against his chest, and their hands were clasped tightly together. He didn’t know, Aremu thought, uneasily, if they were uncovering a wound to the air or digging one between them, but he knew that he loved Tom, and trusted him, and that he had to keep going.

“As I understand it,” Aremu said, quietly and evenly, “the way it works is that I’m made a scryer, and whomever I was thinking of last becomes the witness. I knew you were - you, in part, because I was thinking of you while sitting on the cliff. Maybe it was you that put me in mind of it, without my knowing, but I… did think of you, sometimes,” he looked up at Tom, and curled his cheek against him.

Aremu took a slow, deep breath. “I didn’t know what to do,” he admitted. “I was disoriented, and frightened. Mostly, I didn’t understand; I knew it was you in a way I couldn’t reason with, but it went against the evidence of my eyes and everything I thought possible.”

Aremu turned, and kissed Tom’s bare skin, softly, once more. “I know something of knowing things without consent,” he said, quietly. His fingers were still laced through Tom’s. “Strange is a good word for it. I felt as if… I have always felt it wrong, what happens, because it’s… there’s no intent, no will. Only knowledge which I did not ask to have, and did not want.”

Aremu shifted a little. “I’m glad the knowing came out between us,” he said, quietly, “even if it hurt.” He swallowed. “It was a hell of a night, Tom.” If he had had a second hand, he would have traced down to the scar on Tom’s back, the thin line left behind by the knife; as it was, he glanced down at his right arm, and the line of scar tissue that ran down his forearm, left behind by the blow he’d taken there. He looked back at Tom, then.

Aremu shifted; his lips pressed together for a moment, and a hurt he hadn’t known he felt came spilling out, thinking of blood in the moonlight, and Tom fumbling off his ring, convinced of what Aremu meant to do. “How could you have thought that I would…” His lips pressed together again, and his forehead drew together in a frown, and he looked up at Tom. He swallowed, and cleared his throat, and shook his head, and he found he couldn’t finish the question after all.

[Tom Cooke]

The Three Flowers • Thul Ka

Late Night on the 13th of Loshis, 2720

A
s I understand it –

Aremu had been frowning up at him, but there’d been no flint in his eyes. He thought he’d seen something change in his expression after I wanted, but he couldn’t’ve said what; it didn’t look angry, he thought. He felt the other man breathe in deep, then out, and he held him, thumb still stroking gently over his shoulder.

With every word, he’d felt like he was taking a step in the dark; he expected to feel the edge of the cliff underfoot, then – to tumble into the dark, again into strange, awful places.

And he’d spoken them anyway, and he wasn’t sure if he was a fool for it.

As I understand it, Aremu began, and his eyes widened slightly; he held onto his hand, still. I wasn’t asking, he wanted to say again. I wasn’t asking you to tell me, if – but Aremu was choosing to speak of it, as he had once a long time ago. His brow knit, and he breathed in deep himself, in and out. His hand slid back to trace soft shapes over the other man’s back.

The last piece slid into place. He’d thought it was because of what he was; he’d thought maybe it had even been the wild fizz of his field that’d triggered it. He couldn’t bring himself to say that now, but it loosened something inside him and tightened something else.

The rest wasn’t easy to hear; he shut his eyes, and there was a deep frown in the lines of his face. But he listened anyway, nodding slowly. It burned; he wasn’t sure if it was a cleansing sort of burn, but it was clarifying, at least, he thought. He held to Aremu all the same, the other man’s cheek warm on his chest, and neither of them shifted away.

He kissed him as he went on; Tom fought an awful burning behind his eyelids, breathing in deep. It’s not the same, he wanted to say. You didn’t ask for it, but I made that choice, I kept making that choice, and I spoke to you as if –

It was a hell of a night, Aremu said, and all he could do was nod. A small, wistful smile twitched at his lip. “I am, too,” he said, his voice rough with honesty. Was it worth it, to have gone through all that? he didn’t ask. For this? For me? He didn’t call him a liar.

He opened his eyes, in time enough to see Aremu’s flick down toward his arm. It was nestled in the sheets on his other side, and though Tom didn’t look, he knew where the scar was. The memory flashed through his mind, vivid and sickly-sweet with dzum’ulusa and sap spreading crimson in his shirt.

He was still watching him when he shifted away slightly, when his expression changed. Tom straightened a little more against the headboard, studying him.

Aremu trailed off. He didn’t understand, at first.

“You – would…?” he repeated as Aremu shook his head, looking back down. His frown deepened. That you would what? Want me? The shame was like leiraflesh all along his skin for a moment, and burned deeper underneath. I wouldn’t’ve told you, he thought, if I’d known you’d –

Their hands were still clasped together. He had just kissed him. No, he thought, no. Aremu had shifted just enough to look at him eye-to-eye, that pinched frown on his face; he hadn’t shifted away.

He looked – hurt, he thought. He cleared his throat, that soft, familiar sound.

He remembered that expression; he remembered the way he shook his head sharply, the way his voice had come out harsher and hoarser then than now, but no more hurt. He felt the remembered ache of his ankle, and his hands slipping on the cold metal of the revolver as he laid it down among the roots. “I…”

To save a life with one hand, and take it with the other. “I thought – any man, faced with something like this...” His lip twisted; he swallowed tightly, then opened his eyes. “I wasn’t thinking,” he admitted.

I should prefer, he remembered, to decide for myself.

His eyes squeezed shut and budded with tears; one slid down his cheek, and he couldn’t bring himself to wipe it away.

“I didn’t think,” he said in a low, wavering voice, opening his eyes again, “I didn’t think I was a man. Much less the man you knew, or the man you’d promised to protect, or any of those men. I thought I must’ve –” He blinked away another tear. “I don’t know what I thought, Aremu. I trust you, and I trusted you from the moment you told me to let you decide.”

And what have you decided? he wanted to demand now, even nestled together in sheets, even – still! – with their hands all tangled up together. He didn’t disentangle them. “I was frightened, too,” he said quietly. “Of myself as much as you. I’m always – frightened, of what I am.”

The words came out thick.

[Aremu Ediwo]

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

Nearly four years ago, he hadn’t told Tom how the diablerie chose the witness. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to it; he hadn’t wanted to open the door to all the thoughts it invited. The more I think of someone, he couldn’t say then to the man holding him, the better the chances are.

It had happened, already, now; he didn’t know if it was better or worse for Tom to know, but he thought it was too late, in the end, for it to make much difference.

For a time I thought I would try not to think of anyone, part of Aremu wanted to say. After - a time between understanding and moving forward, when I had begin to know what it might cost me to see what I should not. That wasn’t for tonight. That, Aremu thought, grimly, was where he stuck now, he supposed. Four years, and he had gone one sentence ahead, and no further.

He didn’t know what Tom thought of it. The other man said nothing, but he held Aremu close, and traced patterns of his own design against his skin, and they went on from it, back towards what Tom had asked him to speak on.

He hadn’t been able to finish the question, in the end; that, too, Aremu thought, was as far as he could go. It was, he understood as Tom studied him and slowly went on, far enough.

Aremu nodded. He didn’t know what to do with the answer. You should have thought, he wanted to say, and he knew it for unfair. He wanted to let go of the hurt of it; he wanted to be free of the sting. He wasn’t sure how; he wished he could let go of the ache of so many small moments, the dozens - hundreds - of tiny cuts which had lain him open over the years, and all the scars they had left behind. He was covered in them, he knew, and there was no pride in those.

I trust you, Tom said now, and something eased in Aremu’s chest, something clinging tight at the edges of his emptiness. He shuddered out an exhale, and he nodded, and he felt as if it had closed, this wound he did not even know he had. He turned his head, and he kissed Tom once more, closing his eyes.

Tom finished, then. Aremu sat back, looking at him, his breathing shaky. He leaned in, and kissed Tom again, softly. “I am too,” he said, quietly, “frightened of what I am. I’ve always thought I needed the fear; I don’t know what I would do without it,” his hand cupped Tom’s cheek. He took a deep breath.

“I told you then I couldn’t bear knowing,” Aremu went on, thinking of the taste of blood amidst the mangroves, remembering tear tracks on his cheek and the half-drowned ache in his chest. “I think I could bear it now, if you wanted me to know.” He kissed Tom again, gently, and held the other man close.

I dream about it, he didn’t say. I didn’t before; I do now. I don’t know why. I wake up having watched you - drowned, usually. I don’t know why. Stabbed, sometimes, or shot, or falling from a great height. I don’t think about it when I’m not asleep, and I don’t have the dreams often, but they come, Tom.

Will you die again? He wanted to ask. What - what happens, next time? He thought of Tom fighting, vicious, biting the assassin Yesufu had sent after him. He didn’t ask; he didn’t know if it mattered. Tom was alive in his arms, warm and breathing and willing to fight for it; that was what mattered to him.