[Closed] This Man in My Skin

[Aremu Ediwo]

Night, 29 Loshis, 2720
The Streets of Slowwater

The taste of the kofi sat thick on his tongue; Aremu felt all of him strained, as if he had run a long distance, or else been in a fight. And yet, his muscles themselves were taught and tense, aching with not movement but stillness.

Tsila rose, and so did they all. Aremu bowed very deeply, one bow for Tsofi and one for Tsila, for all he knew there was no honor in him offering himself so. He was smiling still when he rose. “I will be at the Koketa’s Hive in Nutmeg Hil,” Aremu said, “at least through the end of the exhibition. I am at your disposal, ada’na.”

It was a lie, perhaps; perhaps not, Aremu thought. What Tsila wanted from him, he thought she would get; he was at her disposal, though perhaps it was not by his own hand.

They went out, through the red lit room, past the masked imbala at the door, their eyes a dark gleam in the spaces of their mask; they went up the stairs into the alleyway, past the statue of the fish headed god, whom Aremu still did not gaze on too directly.

Aremu wore his own mask, smooth and settled heavily on his face; he gazed out from beneath his even smile, his own eyes dark flickers in the space for them. His left hand and right wrist were in his pocket both, once more, though he had never bothered to hide anything of himself in Tsila’s meeting room.

Slowwater never slept, but the parade had long since ended, and it was awake in quiet places at this hour, awake in noise that drifted from behind colored doors and washed through phosphor street lamps, noise that smelt of tsenid and aqiti and stronger and stranger things by far.

“We can find a carriage on Udúqaqer’egid, sir,” Aremu said, quiet; his voice trembled briefly on the last word, but caught and did not break, not this time. His gaze lingered half sideways on Tom, and then looked out before them once more, back to the blue phosphor light casting strange long shadows against the ground.

They turned another dark corner, and Aremu stopped, looking at the wash of the main street ahead, bright with noise and sound, even further from sleeping than all the rest. Laughter and music drifted towards them, and a loud cheer went up and echoed distantly through the night. He didn’t begin again, didn’t - couldn’t - come out of the shadows to the street beyond.

“I need you,” Aremu said, turning to Tom. His voice was low, and soft, and he didn’t close the distance between them or take Tom’s hand in his; his lips twitched, and pressed together, and there was a furrow sunk deep into his forehead, squarely in the midst of it.

I need your hands, Aremu wanted to say, your lips and your tongue; I need to be myself with you, and I need for you to be yourself, with me; whatever that means for you, whoever we are together. I need to scrub this mask from my face, and I need to see you peel yours away; even if it is only in the shadows where I dare to whisper such things, even if we can be together only in secret, with the taste of orange on our tongues and the memory of poetry in our ears.

“I need to hold you and speak with you,” Aremu said, and his voice did tremble, this time, “tonight, Tom. I need -“ his throat ached, and he cleared it, and went on as best as he could. “I don’t have any plans, or any ideas,” he admitted, a crooked smile aching on his lips, “and I - whatever danger there is, I need you.”

[Tom Cooke]

Tsila’s Bar, A Street in Slowwater

Growing Later on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

T
he word –

Aremu lilted through the Mugrobi with his accustomed grace, his fluid, Cinnamon Hill ease. His voice shook on the last word, not breaking, but like a branch in the wind. They were alone in the alley, or at least he thought they were; all the same, inside, he’d called him – they hadn’t –

He half turned to look up at Aremu, who was smiling across at him. The only light was what drifted from the windows and shone, ghostly, from the lanterns laid by the statue of Hulali. His eyes drifted over Aremu’s face, following the slope of his cheekbones down to his smiling lips. He couldn’t, just now, imagine kissing them. He felt odd for thinking about it, like he had on the Uccello di Hurte. He swallowed tightly, the word ringing through him like a blow.

He realized he was still smiling, too. He didn’t have to worry about losing the mask; this face held that smile in all its lines, so well – so practicedly – that it fell into it at rest. He studied Aremu’s smile, his own still on his face, and inclined his head politely.

He did not speak.

They walked down the alley, turning the corner. Aremu seemed to know where to go. But there were too many lights, even with the parade long gone, for stars. He didn’t look for them.

Eventually the sounds and lights – and smells, rich and spicy, fried batter and something sweet and sour – of the thoroughfare spilled into the narrow side street, though it didn’t quite shine itself on either of their faces. So when he turned to Aremu again, it was with the shadows and soft lights behind still cradling his face; his still-smiling face, which he searched and searched, silent.

It was the qinnab at first, he thought: he’d wondered briefly if some spell had been broken, or if he’d dreamt up the last few months, and Aremu didn’t know him after all. He remembered familiar fingertips and hands shaping this body into something more bearable, but he knew as well as anybody those sorts of dreams could be terribly vivid.

It wasn’t that, he’d known; he’d steered himself gently away from that by the time they’d left the alleyway. What he couldn’t steer himself away from was the dread. It was almost like…

It was almost like her. He’d never thought of Aremu that way. A more honest, honorable man, he might’ve said once, he couldn’t imagine.

Dheza’s voice came drifting back to him, as if on the breeze that carried the distant echoes of the parade. He thought of Tsila’s quiet doorman. A little something had chipped Aremu’s smile; the set of his lips was a little tighter, and his brow a deep, familiar furrow. As if in trying to take it off, he was straining and tearing at himself.

Dove, he wanted to say suddenly, let me help. You have to find the edges, don’t you? You have to be careful, or you’ll take your face off with it. He blinked at the other man’s words, raw and shaking, taking a deep breath. Tom, he named him, and there was something wry to Aremu’s smile. He looked a little more like Aremu, though still much less familiar than he had a few hours ago.

“I need you, too,” said Anatole neatly, and he swallowed a lump and tried again. He didn’t know who spoke, when he spoke again, but it sounded more like him. “I, ah – I don’t have a plan, either, but…”

He glanced at the street, lips pressed thin at the passing of a moa-drawn coach. “We could go to the Koketa’s Nest,” he said, very quietly, calculating, “but I think our sisters may be watching us. They might expect you to see me back to Cinnamon Hill, and not the other way around.”

Godsdamn, he wanted to say, shit, hell’s teeth. A whole stream, a whole avalanche of swears. He wanted to crack a joke and laugh at it, loudly. Somehow, he didn’t think that would work with Aremu.

“If I spoke for you at the Crocus’ Stem, would they let you come up with me? Would it raise suspicion, if I spoke of your business with me? With the Incumbent.” He turned to Aremu now, taking a deep breath; he stood as straight as he’d stood inside. “If anyone did suspect, they wouldn’t suspect…”

We came close to speaking of it once, he thought, in Dentis. That was my place; that was the Incumbent’s. This is yours. But I’m still the Incumbent here, he thought, with a smile that was almost wry breaking through, whether I like it or not. And it’s damned unlikely, what we have, and I think we can work that to our favor, if we look it in the face properly.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Night, 29 Loshis, 2720
The Crocus' Stem, Cinnamon Hill

I need you too, Tom said, or something like him. Aremu’s breath caught in his throat and on his lips, and he couldn’t look at the other man for fear of what he might do. He looked away instead, trembling; he stilled himself with a deep, careful breath. Tom went on, and Aremu looked at him once more. He nodded at the first suggestion, his jaw clenching lightly.

I don’t think, he thought to say, they’ll follow us out of Slowwater – but they may think to ask the carriage driver what he sees in us. He felt a prickling down the back of his neck, slow and strange, and all the hairs rose on his arms, beneath the thin fabric of his shirtsleeves.

“I don’t think they’d refuse you,” Aremu said. He closed his eyes for a moment; his left hand scrubbed, briefly, at his face. We won’t have long, he wanted to say; he could taste the bitterness in the words. I can’t stay the night; I’ll have to come out before it’s too late. An hour, maybe two; his throat moved in a silent swallow.

It was enough, Aremu thought, bitterly; it’d have to be. He thought of all his fine words about how he would take what he was given, and he thought he was a liar if he’d ever said he’d be glad for it. He would take it, though; he hadn’t lied about that. “And I don’t think they’d suspect.” Aremu agreed, very quietly, his voice even once more, his lips shadowed by darkness and the press of his hand. He rubbed his face one last time, and lowered his hand back to his side. Is it too late? He wanted to ask, and he couldn’t, then; he didn’t have the least idea of the time. Men do business at all hours, he thought; only behaving as if it were not in the least exceptional could get them through.

Don’t overexplain, he wanted to say, suddenly, oddly afraid. He remembered sitting at Yesufu’s dinner table with Tom; he remembered half shouting at him in his study, his jaw tight and tingling, telling Tom not to treat him like a man. The memory ached, and it made him smile, too, just a little, thinking of what he’d learned.

They didn’t speak of it anymore; they didn’t touch. It’s safe to talk, in your room? Aremu didn’t – couldn’t – ask that either, not once they were in the midst of the cafes and the restaurants, the air heavy with the scent of frying batter and liquor of all kinds, with the chatter of laughing voices, all the colors of phosphor and fire both strewn across the bright street.

“I’ll see you to Cinnamon Hill, sir,” Aremu said, in front of the carriage driver, unflinching, and his voice did not catch. “I think there are some matters of business left to discuss.”

They sat, inside, and in the dark beneath the seats Aremu reached back and took Tom’s hand, and held it. He clung to it, Aremu thought, like an anchor; he closed his eyes and let himself go on the swaying of the carriage, and Tom’s hand held him to Vita, to himself, to this strange, painful place he could not yet leave.

It was easy, in the end, at the Crocus’ Stem; the woman at the desk was smiling polite, and raised no eyebrows, cast no judgmental looks. Aremu followed Tom up the stairs, maintaining a polite distance just out of caprising range; followed him down the hall, where Tom’s hands shook just a little on the keys; followed him into the room.

He didn’t know which of them reached for the other first; he didn’t know if one could have counted the seconds, the spaces between. He dissolved, a little, Aremu thought; he came undone, and let Tom put him back together, as only a lover could. He was lost, or else he was found, or else he was both; he didn’t know, and he couldn’t care.

[Tom Cooke]

The Crocus’ Stem, Cinnamon Hill

Growing Later on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

M
aybe he had overthought; maybe he hadn’t thought enough; maybe ada’na at the desk had looked at them too long, when they’d gone; maybe he’d misspoken –

They all vanished in time, swept down the drain. He didn’t know who it was that came to Aremu, eventually; he knew his hands were shaking by the time he caught hold of him, or by the time they caught hold of each other. They had held hands in the carriage, in the dark, and there’d been nothing different or unfamiliar about Aremu’s hand there. It had been the same hand that had touched him days ago, the same hand he had held and kissed, and he had held on tightly.

And then? In the hotel room, surrounded by his half-unpacked bags, where he’d left the bed unmade and covered in poetry books?

He’d barely been able to drop the bag; they’d barely taken their clothes off. There’d been something different about it, this time. He tried to figure whether the lips he kissed felt as much like a mask as they’d looked, and he felt ashamed he’d thought so, and somehow also ashamed he’d only just realized what it must’ve felt like: he couldn’t shake it. They held onto each other, Aremu’s fingers in the white cloth of his shirt and then the skin underneath, and he wondered if it should’ve felt like a costume, all of it. They were quieter this time, in this place, and more careful.

But they came apart eventually, at least enough he thought he found something under or inside the pieces. They got lost for a little while. No soul? he had kept thinking, all the way back. No soul? If there’s no soul, then what is this–?

He had never really believed him. Maybe that had been calling him a liar, too, in his way.

He thought the man whose arms he fell asleep in felt like Aremu; he clung close to them, running his hands all along the familiar muscles, finding the shapes of familiar scars. It didn’t feel like a mask, anyway, when he shut his eyes and nestled in close, pulling the sheets close about them as if to block out the room and all the other trappings. They still lay in the blanket of his field, the mona settled comfortably about them – he wondered – too comfortably.

He had unbuckled the harness this time too, not with relish or urgency but with an aching tenderness. He had taken the knife, too, and laid it gently on the bundle of his amel’iwe.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d slept when he stirred. The windows were open but shaded – he could take no risks – a warm, humid breeze with just the edge of a chill whisking the curtains. He could smell the courtyard, strange sweet plants he still didn’t know all the names of; he thought he smelled tsug from somewhere, too.

He’d gone to shade the phosphor lights after they’d finished, but it wasn’t so late: gold light still leaked in from somewhere, making soft shadows stretch out from the chairs and the low table, from the bedposts and the wavering leaves of the plants.

He woke up in a tangle of limbs, breathing in deeply the scent of Aremu’s hair, and with it dried sweat and his own lavender. His lips were in the other man’s hair, too; somehow he was holding him, though he remembered falling asleep with Aremu’s arm around him.

In spite of the shades, noise drifted up from the streets. It wasn’t so late; they couldn’t let it get so late.

He had slept, at least – he knew – a half hour, maybe an hour; more like dozing. Aremu’s breath rose and fell softly underneath him. “Aremu,” he murmured, resting his forehead against the other man’s crown.

There were still books scattered about the bed, though he’d moved some of them to the side table.

“Are you awake?” We should talk, he thought – no. I want to let you sleep longer, if you aren’t awake. He ran his hand through the other man’s hair, squeezing his eyes shut and nestling closer. He felt strangely sad.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Night, 29 Loshis, 2720
The Crocus' Stem, Cinnamon Hill

He hadn’t slept, not quite, not fully. Sleep would have meant a letting go, and he couldn’t let go, just then; he couldn’t close his eyes and trust that he’d wake up before too long had passed, that they’d both wake up when it was still safe, when he could still walk down the stairs just one man leaving another after a business meeting.

He wasn’t awake either, not quite, not fully. He didn’t think he was, at least; he was too close to sleep to hold on to the scattered thoughts that drifted across his mind, like clouds reflecting down on the surface of him, as if there were some light to shine through and illuminate them.

Once – once – he had the urge to tell Tom he hadn’t done this, not like that, not in years – not since, he might have said, before Uzoji, before my hand – and the words tangled themselves up on his tongue, strange and heavy. In the end they weighed too much to speak, and he felt instead in drifting silence and steady breath, as Tom’s chest rose and fell steadily against his own.

Tom called his name. Aremu heard it, and felt it; the words reached down beneath the surface and drew something up, back to where there were no hiding from the sun or the clouds that stretched across it. Back to where, he thought, he couldn’t hide from them any longer.

Tom’s arms were around him, both of them; the other man’s breath tickled the planes of his face.

“Yes,” Aremu said, after a moment. He sighed; he opened his eyes. His left arm settled more firmly around Tom. He pressed his lips to the other man’s hair, soft drifting strands of red and gray and white mingled together, clinging briefly to his lips. His mouth was dry – the smoke, Aremu thought, idly, for in the end he hadn’t had much in the way of aqiti wine or tsenid – but he ran his tongue over his lips, and they did not crack.

He felt tired; there was a part of him that wanted to go, and now, before this could become any more familiar or comfortable, before any more of him could learn what it was to relax into Tom’s arms. He knew without thinking that he would walk home; he needed, he thought, not just the cool city air on his face but the movement, the stretching out of his limbs and the easy rhythm he could settle in to.

You know, he wanted to say then, what they saw when they looked at me, don’t you? I know; whatever else I am, I know.

“Close to the vines on your tree,” Aremu said, quietly, “and a familiar hand. At Thul’Amat, or related to it – during the exhibition, perhaps,” he pressed his lips to Tom’s forehead, and eased away. He didn’t disentangle himself from the other man, but he leaned back against the headboard, and closed his eyes, sitting up just a little bit. His hand came and found Tom’s hair, and traced slow patterns of his own devising against Tom’s scalp.

His eyes held closed, a moment more. You’ll come back to me, won’t you? He wanted to ask, then, and the words burned somewhere in his throat. If Tsila was being coy or evasive in her honesty, if the knife comes for you, after all, and this time – he thought of Tom’s teeth gleaming white in the torchlight amidst the mangroves, sinking deep into the arm which had held him fast.

Aremu shifted a little more, his hand still slow and soft against the other man’s scalp. His eyes opened again. “Do you have a sense of what it might mean?” He asked, no louder than he had been before. He looked down at the other man, tangled up with him beneath the sheets; he could feel the soft, aching frown at his brow, and not even the sight of Tom could coax a smile from him, just then.

[Tom Cooke]

The Crocus’ Stem, Cinnamon Hill

Growing Later on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

H
e felt him shift, and he felt the word vibrate through him, his voice soft – and all the same fair loud – in the quiet close between them. He shifted too at the rasp of dry lips in his hair, at the arm that settled itself round his shoulders. Then go back to sleep, he wanted to say for a fleeting, burningly indulgent moment. It was almost spiteful: then hold me closer, and let me hold you, and go back to sleep, and we’ll sort out whatever the hell comes in the morning.

It wasn’t to be so. Aremu shifted back up against the headboard, and he shifted too, settling at first deeper into his side. His skin was warm and a little sticky; he thought he could still smell something of the smoke, feel something of the cling of it against his skin. And the warm, moist air whisked in from the window, that smelled already like rain.

He shut his eyes a moment, wondering. There was quiet, but it was full rather than empty. It was full of the taste of aqiti wine and tsenid in his mouth, turned syrupy-brown by the hours and by sleep. He swallowed and found his throat sore; his head was beginning to ache, up from the back of his skull, a squirming that was bound to become a splitting soon enough.

Aremu spoke again and he opened his eyes, turning to look at him. He felt tired, achingly tired. The light cradled one of Aremu’s cheeks and cast the other side of his face in shadow. A little gold glinted in one eye.

And the other man pressed a kiss to his brow, as if it might lighten what they had to speak of, what the Ehafsu’d laid between them.

He smiled anyway, a little. He nestled closer, and he yielded for a while to the feeling of Aremu’s fingertips tracing their way through his hair, ruffling the curls. He gave himself a few moments, at least, to let his head catch up with the rest of him: vines and hands, oes, but exhibition in Aremu’s soft Cinnamon Hill accent was like the tip of a knife, and it came into focus in his head.

At the question –

He lay still at Aremu’s side; he didn’t look up, but he could hear in the other man’s words the soft frown on his lips, and he could picture the set of his face. No, he wanted to say, I don’t know. I don’t know this tree, dove, it’s all new to me; you know that.

Somehow it was the thought of Aremu outside Tsila’s bar that stopped him. Of the strange half-dreaming thoughts he’d had since then, of finding the edges of the mask at Aremu’s chin, at his jaw, of the other man finding the seam of whatever thing it was he wore. Or maybe it was the thought of him inside, weaving with his words, back and forth, and him like a tongueless songbird flapping its bright useless wings as the netche talked business.

He didn’t feel much like he was wearing a costume, and that was the problem. He looked up at Aremu, who wasn’t smiling anymore – not genuinely, not wryly, not thinly. It was his well-worn frown, with that furrow at his brow, and Tom’s heart ached.

He laid a hand on Aremu’s knee and squeezed. “I might,” he admitted after a moment. “I can’t be certain, but I – have a sense. And I don’t, uh… I don’t like it.”

It was a precious moment, Aremu’s fingers in his hair, his thumb stroking back and forth on Aremu’s knee under the sheets. He took a deep breath, sitting a little straighter; his hand found his lap again. He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t come any closer, either, and though he tried to smile – even grimly – it didn’t last.

“I have –” He licked his dry lips, then amended, “This man has a daughter. She… She’s in Thul Ka right now, for the exhibition, because she’s a duelist on the Brunnhold team.”

He blinked, glancing down at the tangle of sheets in his lap and then back up. “It might not be her, but – I thought of her, when ada’na Tsila said that. If they were going to strike at the incumbent…”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Night, 29 Loshis, 2720
The Crocus' Stem, Cinnamon Hill

One man leaving another after a business meeting, Aremu thought, and he thought there was enough of it that it was nearly true. We spoke of business, Tom might have said – if anyone had thought to ask – without making a mess of his honor. Aremu would not have vouched for it; he knew he did not know.

Tom had been right, earlier, Aremu thought; no one would ask. He knew that, too, well enough.

It wasn’t precisely that it was unheard of it, but it was unlikely, improbable – shameful, Aremu thought, and then, in the memory of another voice, long ago, sullying. He thought of that, for a moment: as if he, through his presence, through his touch, was a stain. Lying in the bed with Tom, tangled together, he didn’t feel it; but, then, he supposed, that was the problem with him. If he’d stained Tom, he thought –

He’d tried, not so long ago, last Dentis, to warn him. He knew Tom cared for his honor, his relationship with the mona; he could feel it in the sage-soft strength of the field around him, in how far it had come since Yaris, and since Dentis too. He had never decided if trust meant letting Tom make his own choices, or if that was only his own selfishness, whispering lies in his ears which he could never know the truth of.

I might, Tom said, into the brief silence between them; it hadn’t had much time to descend. Aremu looked down at him; Tom straightened up, a little, thin chest swelling with breath. His hand rested on Aremu’s knee, and then eased away. Something like a smile shaded his face; Aremu’s lips twitched at his own attempt to match it, and they were both left solemn once more.

Aremu did not say anything, for a long moment. “His daughter would… make sense as a target, and would fit well with ada’na Tsila’s words,” Aremu nodded, slowly. His, he had said, following Tom’s correction – not, he thought, uneasily, the way he had first started to speak of her.

“I know something,” Aremu said, slow and careful, “of the weight of a dead man’s obligations.” His hand didn’t pause in its movements, still tracing shapes over Tom’s scalp.

Do you care what happens to her? It was a cruel question, and he couldn’t bring himself to ask it. That Tom had thought of her answered the question already, he thought, a little wryly, or so it seemed to him. He found he couldn’t quite imagine her; he found he couldn’t be comfortable with the idea, Tom sitting in her father’s skin.

Does she know?

He couldn’t ask that either; he couldn’t. Tom had told him, Aremu knew, only because it had become relevant between them. He had asked the other man only about the edges of his life he lived, and Tom had never volunteered more. You can, he wanted to say with one breath, and then but please don’t, with the next to follow.

It was – uneasy. When he thought of Anatole Vauquelin, he thought of Tom, though they were not quite one and the same to him; he didn’t know what to do with the rest of it. He had killed, many times; he had taken things from the men he killed. Not, he thought, their faces – their lives – their legacy, and what they left behind on Vita, or at least he didn’t think so.

“Can you warn her?” Aremu asked. There must, he wanted to suggest, be protections for an incumbent’s family – a threat from an unnameable source, you could say, that you believe she is in danger – it seemed to him overstepping. He didn’t know where the bounds were; what had passed between Tsila and Tsofi involved him, and he would pass along something of it to Niccolette.

And this conversation? Aremu wasn’t sure; he didn’t know where the boundaries were, and he wished he did. Aremu, Tom’s lover; Aremu, the Bad Brother; Aremu, Niccolette’s brother: they intersected here, not quite in harmony, and he didn’t know how to tease them apart, how to fulfill his obligation in each. He didn’t let go of Tom, all the same; he wasn’t ready, Aremu thought, with a deep ache in the heart of him, to let go of being the lover just yet.

[Tom Cooke]

The Crocus’ Stem, Cinnamon Hill

Growing Later on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

H
e’d pulled himself straight, ramrod spine and – everything but the thin smile, which even he, muddled and strange as he felt, knew had no place here. But he’d gone tense, too, because there was no helping it; he couldn’t hold that posture easy here, couldn’t shape himself or fit the skin. His muscles felt rigid and strange, and in the silence that followed, he felt more stiff and tense against Aremu than straight or proud.

He didn’t have any arguments prepared. He hadn’t thought the other man’d argue, or call him down; he didn’t even know what he’d expected to see on his face. He half expected it to be as it’d been in his study once, when Aremu’d gone fair still. A silence, maybe, or a mask.

When he looked up, it wasn’t either of those things. It wasn’t the same kind of worried frown, either. The shadows picked out the furrows stark and deep; he looked no less drawn than he had. But there was another edge to it, he thought, a pull to the corner of Aremu’s lips. It wasn’t so much a stiffness in his muscles – leastways, there was no more than there had been, knotting the base of his neck and along the lines of the harness. It was a different sort of discomfort; there was a studying, hesitant sort of look in the other man’s eye.

It was a funny sort of thought, but he thought it looked almost like the way Dheza’d looked at him in the end.

He ignored the prickling consciousness of himself, ignored the urge to pull the sheet up and hide himself. I’m sorry, he got the useless urge to say, but that wasn’t quite right.

Of a sudden the words wanted to come spilling out of him. She looks like me – like this, he amended without pausing for a second. That same thin face and grey eyes. It’s funny, sometimes it’s like looking in a mirror. But it’s not that; when she throws a punch, she throws it like she knows where it’s going to land. I’d know. She’s got this stubborn set to her jaw that reminds me of nothing on Vita more than –

He blinked, because he hadn’t expected these words; he swallowed and inclined his head. Don’t, he wanted to say, even as he was achingly grateful. The fingers tracing gentle shapes through his hair felt undeserved. He laid his hand back on Aremu’s knee, squeezing it gently and stroking it with his thumb. He thought of Niccolette staggering drunk on the Bean in Roalis, of that mant plantation, of all of it. But he chose you, he wanted to say, and loved and trusted you.

Instead, he took a deep breath; he shut his eyes and thought. “I can,” he said after a moment. “Warn her.”

He studied the hand in his lap, smoothing the sheets over his knees with it.

“She, uh – she won’t like it.” I was planning on taking her to the ring, he couldn’t bear to add. I don’t know if I can in good conscience now, and that’s not going to be a – fun conversation. “If I tell her to be careful, she might well do the opposite. That’s her, uh… way. With me, at least.”

He shut his eyes again, feeling something tighten in him. “She’s young still, and she shouldn’t have to carry the Incumbent’s dangers. Those are mine; it’s mine to keep her safe.”

He felt a prickling heat behind his eyes.

His jaw was set, and the tears didn’t fall. “Damn,” he murmured. “Sometimes I don’t know – where – where it all ends, and I begin. Maybe it’s not so clear-cut.” And you–? He thought again of his strange desire to find the edges of the mask, and how he’d traced the warm line of Aremu’s jaw what must’ve been a hundred times and found only smooth skin.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Night, 29 Loshis, 2720
The Crocus' Stem, Cinnamon Hill

Mine, Tom said, to keep her safe.

If there’s anything, Aremu wanted to say, that I can do –

The words lived, he thought, somewhere in his chest, floating in the midst of an emptiness with nothing to anchor to. He couldn’t seem to pull them out, not even up to his throat, let alone let them spill out into the air between them. I would, Aremu wanted to say, if you asked me to; I don’t know that I understand, but if it matters to you, that’s enough for me.

He didn’t offer; he couldn’t. He didn’t want to make Tom have to turn him down.

No, dove, he thought Tom might say, soft and gentle.

He couldn’t imagine how Tom would explain him; he didn’t want to meet her, Aremu thought. He had met Anatole’s cousin, that morning, and it had been strange enough; no part of him wanted to meet the other man’s daughter. He would have, if Tom asked him to, all the same.

It wasn’t the separation between Tom and – his – body that Aremu thought about, but the two of them; he remembered, long ago, drifting on a chan-induced high, remembered visions of purple and gold light around the two of them, remembered visions of them twining together, sinking into one another, remembered visions of Tom’s hands tracing over him, and leaving glowing light behind.

I don’t know, Aremu wanted to say, where you end and I begin.

It was hard, just then, to face it, in the quiet privacy of Tom’s room, knowing all that could not be between them. Come to Dzum, he wanted to say again, suddenly; promise me, Tom, that you’ll come –

Tom was a still deep pond of clear water, Aremu thought, and he was a dark stain spreading over the surface of it, spilled in from the side and sinking, inky black, all through; sullying, he thought again, for a moment indulging in that old ache. He turned away from it once more, easing his mind out of the familiar grooves of its path.

Is this a place I belong? He didn’t know how to ask it; Tom hadn’t mentioned her, before, this daughter of Anatole’s – not in Idisufi, not in Three Flowers, not in Nutmeg Hill. He didn’t think Tom would have mentioned her, if not for Tsila’s words. When they had spoken of magic, Aremu thought, though he found the comparison odd, he’d told Tom that he’d take whatever of him he could get, or near enough.

He couldn’t offer; he couldn’t ask. He would have accepted, he thought, whatever Tom told him or asked of him, but he found that when it came to it, he didn’t want to reach out for it himself. Perhaps it was the strangeness of it, the reminder that there had been another man, once, there; that another man had carved the familiar grooves into Tom’s cheeks, had moved his thin, long-fingered hands, had breathed air into his chest and spoken with that deep voice. With the other man in his arms, he could not think too deeply on it, not quite.

“Maybe not,” Aremu said, quietly, after a moment, knowing he needed to speak. His fingers were still moving gently against Tom’s scalp, slow and comforting.

He remembered, too, Tom standing in the midst of the mangroves, slowly twisting the ring off of his finger, as if he couldn’t bear to die wearing it; he remembered the taut stillness on the other man’s face that morning, as his cousin lingered alongside them through all of Thul Ka.

“You’re fond of her,” Aremu said, still quiet, after a moment more. It wasn’t a question; he’d heard it, somewhere in the way Tom spoke of her. He offered it, carefully, though he didn’t quite know where to take it, afterwards. Does she know? She couldn’t, he thought; he didn’t think he wanted to know if she did.

He left it there, in the end, because he didn’t know where to take it; he didn’t know what he could offer, didn’t know what would be welcome nor what he truly wanted to give. But Tom was still in his arms, and he shifted and brushed his lips over the other man’s hair, once more; that, at least, he knew how to offer.

[Tom Cooke]

The Crocus’ Stem, Cinnamon Hill

Growing Later on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

H
is fingers were still moving through his hair, gentle and rhythmic.

He thought he could’ve filled up the silence with a hundred things, if not for those fingers, and even so: he felt a little dizzy with it, with the thought of what he’d just said. It’s not right, he wanted to add. Shit, he wanted to say, mostly. It was as if the wall had turned to a curtain, sheer and fluttering, and he could only imagine what Aremu saw on the other side. He didn’t know quite what he saw, either, except that it’d frightened him, and he was disappointed with himself for it.

All those words that’d spilled out between them in the Koketa’s Nest felt jumbled up and backwards. Even with the calm of what they’d just shared hanging about them, spreading like cool water through his field, he couldn’t hold onto them in his head.

You wouldn’t, he’d wanted to protest then, if you knew. You won’t want me when you understand just how deep all this shit goes. Or maybe I’ll get just moony enough – maybe I’ll fall with my head over my heels, fall down into it so much I can’t find my way back out again, and you can’t find me, either.

What would that be like? he wanted to ask suddenly, with a painful sort of desperation.

He thought of Aremu’s smiling face in Tsila’s bar, of sir by the niche with its idol Aremu’d never quite brought himself to look at – and the fact that he’d noticed that time, and all the times before that he must not’ve, even though there was plenty to see. Now he’d seen it, he felt like he was losing his grip on something, something that was sliding away from him.

What would it be like, if one day we come up here, or wherever it is we’ve found, and you turn around, and the only name you can find for me is sir? And I can’t scrub that godsdamn look off my face, or burn any part of him out of me, and you put your hands on me and you don’t want me anymore. And I reach for you but I can’t find anything anymore; I pull the mask aside, and you were right all along somehow, there’s nothing underneath –

It was a thought he swallowed with a sudden, shocking burst of shame. His hand was shaking a little on Aremu’s knee. He could still feel the tension in the other man’s side, but he was stroking his hand through his hair still, gentle.

Maybe so, Aremu said, and it was a little while before he heard his voice again. It was less dry now, he thought; it was stronger, though no less soft. He thought they might leave it at that, and he didn’t know how to ask what he wanted to ask.

But Aremu spoke again, and pressed another warm kiss to his scalp.

He thought to be angry for a second, but a second was all he could hold. “I don’t – know…” Liar, he chid himself. He shut his eyes.

He took a deep breath and then – shuddered it out, feeling like the wind in dead leaves, feeling hollow and bone-tired.

“I’m very fond of her,” he said, so soft it was almost a whisper. “I don’t know how it happened. I tried to stay away for – a year,” he felt it pouring out of him, like a hole in a dam, “but that was wrong, too; I don’t know what right is. She came and found me, angrier than a hatcher, and I – she – she fights with her fists, and she’s stubborn as all hell. At first, I thought it was just… I don’t know what I thought. We wrote each other for almost a month, and she lent me a book. And she looks so surprised when I actually…”

He realized how tight he was holding his jaw; he’d gone almost clenched in Aremu’s arms. He wasn’t sure he could bear to finish the sentence. Want to, he thought, want to spend time – “I never had,” he began again, slowly, “I never thought I…”

He couldn’t.

His eyes were shut. He took a shuddering breath and opened them. “I didn’t want to make you complicit in it,” he murmured. To make you a part of the lie, he couldn’t bear to say. “In whatever the hell I’m doing. I would’ve told you about it, but Circle, what the hell am I doing? And if anything ever happened to her, I’d…”