[Closed] [Mature] Dancing After Death

[Tom Cooke]

In the Acacia Tree

Late Afternoon on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

E
verything dissolved – he was straining muscles, scrabbling, the air coming in and out of his lungs. Aremu’s hand and prosthetic, firm in his, firm and very warm now that his own warmth had leached into the wood.

The bark was rough against his foot, when he braced it against a slightly higher branch. It slid, and he was conscious of a scuff of pain. But he wasn’t thinking.

He thought he might’ve overshot, and for a moment the whole world tilted – Vita tilted, some part of him thought, Vita turned, Vita turned – he thought with a rush of air out of his lungs he might fall – but he didn’t let go, and neither did Aremu, and both the hand and the prosthetic were easy to hold onto. Strong, he realized with another wave of leiraflesh, with another almost-laugh. With an intensity he hadn’t felt since he’d carried him back from the shore, and even then half-asleep: now he was awake in every fiber of himself, and he felt Aremu’s solid strength through him like a bolt of lightning.

And then he was over the branch, Aremu settling him like a scruffed kitten. He didn’t have the breath to speak at first. Good, Aremu was saying, good, here, his voice soft and glowing, and he folded himself into the sound, wrapped in it. The hand knotted in his shirt guided him upright, and he squirmed to settle himself on the branch.

There was no looking down; there couldn’t be, not yet. So he shut his eyes and felt it out with the hand Aremu had let go of, the branches that moved even now underneath him. He held to the prosthetic still with the other. He could still feel the reverb of the straps, and there was something terribly comforting about the solid wood of it, with all Aremu’s strength bound into it.

Good, Aremu said again, in the same tone.

“Good,” he repeated with a breathless laugh. He felt lips in his hair; he saw the shadows of leaves against his eyelids. “Ah,” he murmured softly, “good,” and let go of the prosthetic only when he felt wholly sure of himself, and even then his hand lingered, though he knew Aremu was still close enough to reach for.

His back was against the trunk. He didn’t think he’d snagged or torn any of his clothing, though it was a little disheveled; he might’ve been embarrassed for Aremu to see him so, but – somehow, he couldn’t think.

He breathed in, his chest aching. His legs were wrapped round the branch. It moved a little bit underneath him, especially when he shifted. He didn’t open his eyes yet. Instead, he tilted his head back, resting it back against the trunk, looking up; then, he opened his eyes.

Aremu was smiling down at him, the sunlight blazing through the leaves and prickling at the edges of his hair. Just above – just close enough. “Good,” he half-whispered, and leaned up and kissed him.

He reached to stroke his cheek when he finally looked around, as if the touch could anchor him. The fear dropped through his stomach again, but he couldn’t see much: they were in a thicket of branches and shivering leaves, the path and the shrubs invisible.

Shame, he thought with a lance of selfish anger, running his thumb over Aremu’s cheek as he looked at all the leaves. He hoped Tsofo pez Erfuan was off climbing; whatever he was doing, it wasn’t the smallest fraction as wonderful as this.

But he didn’t want to think about Tsofo, not now, not yet. He meant to speak of the gaps they’d left soon enough, but – maybe, he thought, for just a few moments more…

He looked up at Aremu again, smiling softly, and leaned up to kiss him. “This,” he said, laughing quietly, “is the first tree I have ever climbed.”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Afternoon, 38 Loshis, 2720
In an acacia tree, Away’qexo College, Thul'Amat

Tom looked up – not down, Aremu thought – and kissed him. Aremu leaned his head down, just a little, and kissed back; he was careful, careful not to put too much weight on the other man, even when – after a moment – he wanted to deepen the kiss, just a little, to make it more than a careful brushing of lips.

Tom’s fingers came up, brushing softly over his cheek; Aremu smiled, watching him, as he finally looked around, at the thick branches and leaves at eyelevel. Don’t look down, Aremu wanted to warn him, remembering the Eqe Aqawe, and he swallowed the words, because he didn’t think it right to offer the warning, not with Tom sitting here beside him in the tree. The leaves and branches were thick here, but they were thinner below – it was the way of all acacia trees, that the branches started only from well off the ground – and Aremu wasn’t sure Tom would like what he saw.

His legs were wrapped around the branch, slim thighs strong enough, at least, to hold him in place; he jerked, a little, once and then again, with the shifting settling of the tree, the minute movements it made in the wind, from their shifting, and in so many other ways.

Tom was smiling when he looked up again, and Aremu, smiling too, realized he’d never looked away. He leaned up and Aremu leaned down, once more, just a little, finding the softness of the other man’s lips with his. Childish, Aremu thought, wasn’t the word for it: innocent, he thought, maybe, or naïve. As if they could hide in a tree and be apart from the rest of the world.

For all he knew they couldn’t – for all, Aremu thought, they both knew they couldn’t – it was nice to pretend, just a little while.

“It’s a good tree for climbing,” Aremu said, in answer to Tom’s question, grinning a little as they came apart. He’d felt the tickle of the words on his lips; he knew Tom would feel his breath, too, the soft brush of it.

It was, he thought, a good tree for climbing; he’d always liked acacia trees. The top of Cinnamon Hill, he might’ve said, is thick with trees. Not only acacia, but plenty of them too. There was, he might’ve said, this enormous old acacia tree at Uzoji’s family’s house, where I’d play as a boy; the lowest branches were so high we couldn’t even jump to reach them, back then. We spent hours searching for ways up the trunk, digging in bare toes and fingers and squirming up it a little higher each time.

When we climbed it, he could’ve said – he remembered, with an ache lessened by all the joy – he’d been the first one to reach the branch, and he’d crouched on it and stretched a hand down, and together they’d hauled Uzoji those last precious inches. It, and every other tree they’d managed to crawl in to, had become an airship for them, those few feet off the ground as precious as flight.

I’m not sure I remember mine, Aremu wanted to say. It couldn’t have been the acacia; they wouldn’t have started there. He remembered tsug trees in the Muluku Isles as well, but by then he’d been old enough to have climbed his fair share. It would, he thought, have been one of the trees at Uzoji’s home, not his own, but that, too, seemed strange to share here, in the midst of Tom’s bastly joy.

Thank you, Aremu thought, was what he really wanted to say, but he didn’t know how to say that either, and it didn’t quite seem right. Whatever he’d feared, whatever ached in the pit of his stomach and the depths of his heart, Tom wasn’t here as a favor to him, or at least not only. This, he understood, was a gift Tom had given him, but it wasn’t joyless for the other man.

Here, now, crouched together in the tree, Aremu thought, it was easy to see that. He pressed another kiss to Tom, softly, and eased away – not very far, but enough to settle in a little more amidst the branches, his feet tucked between them and the trunk. He smiled, looking at the other man, and reached to set his hand on Tom’s, balanced easily even without it.

[Tom Cooke]

In the Acacia Tree

Late Afternoon on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

G
ood company to climb with,” he murmured, feeling the warm stirring of their mingling breath, the last whisper of Aremu’s lips against his. They were smiling; he had opened his eyes just a little, enough to see warm dark eyes, to see stirring leaves and light. Aremu drew away a little more, and he didn’t look away: he watched, a soft smile still on his face, a little breathless.

For a few moments he thought Aremu might say something else. He shifted against the tree, feeling the limb waver underneath him and jerking a little less this time.

Whatever it was, he didn’t. Birdsong and the rustling of the long strange leaves whisked in to fill the silence, and Aremu laid another kiss on his lips.

The first time he’d kissed him, it’d been light as anything, at first. One hand had been braced against the branch, the other on Aremu’s cheek: one had tightened on the branch, and every muscle in him had gone rigid.

It had been, he’d thought then, almost like the first time. Fear – tight and breathless, even in muscles trained from years of spilling sap – and then the brush of his lips, the then-new taste of him and his breath mingling with the coppery taste of adrenaline. Mingling and blooming into something new, and excitement that dropped through him and burned like fire. Then, the solid boards of the deck had been underneath him; now, there was nothing but a branch and the empty air. This time, when Aremu had deepened the kiss, careful but bold – now he had felt the creak underneath him with something even deeper than burning. When he’d leaned up to meet him with his own deepening, he’d been aware of every muscle, every inch of skin brushed by linen and the breeze, and he had laid his hand flat on Aremu’s cheek and let his fingers wander up through his hair.

One last kiss, not so deep, and the shaking of the branches didn’t trouble him. He smiled up when Aremu eased away, still tasting the sweetness of it on his lips. He had some of his breath back now, enough to think.

He wondered if he ought to have asked about first trees or good trees to climb; he wondered how Aremu had filled the silence in his mind, and he could picture things, shadows of other places and times, in the lines of Aremu’s smile. Maybe they were just the shadows of the leaves.

Aremu eased away and down, and though he didn’t dare look down through the branches – kept his legs wrapped tight – he found himself relaxing against the trunk, even as the branches moved. He found he could admire Aremu’s movements, glimpses of tan cloth rippling over familiar muscles, flashes of skin, one hand moving deft and easy. Then he’d settled, and he’d laid that hand warm on his, and Tom smiled over at him and sighed.

He couldn’t’ve said how long they’d sat that way.

The observatory, he thought once, troubled. And if it were still–? If Aremu were right, and he wasn’t admitted? The only thing worse than that, he thought, would be for him to throw a tantrum over it in the middle of campus; and – all the same – the only thing worse than that would be for him to turn his face away and accept it in front of Aremu.

He tried to think how tense Aremu’s muscles would be even in the next hour, two hours, walking up to those gates after Tsofo. If he spent hours, if he worked his fingers into every knotted muscle, could he even begin to ease that?

He turned his hand upside down and laced his fingers with Aremu’s, letting out another sigh. Careful, he eased one leg away from the branch and let it dangle, feeling a spot of warm sun on his bare foot.

“I don’t,” he said, after what felt a long time. “Want to be with him – ada’xa Tsofo. I don’t think I want much to do with him at all, after we’ve met about his… book. I don’t know.” He swallowed. “You don’t have to – say anything about it, dove. But, uh… It would matter to me, if you did object. I trust your judgment, when it comes to men.” His brow furrowed.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Afternoon, 38 Loshis, 2720
In an acacia tree, Away’qexo College, Thul'Amat

Aremu sat, a little while, his eyes half-closed, aware of the soft warmth of Tom’s hand beneath his. With his fingertips, he could trace out the shape of the other man’s hand, the diagram of it – the soft knob of a knucklebone here, and the line of the finger bone to the wrist there. It wasn’t the diagram he’d known once, when Tom’s hand had been marked with the cuts and bruises of a lifetime of fights, when his knuckles had were thickened and scarred, up and down his fingers, and when anywhere Aremu touched, he’d have found the edge of a scuff or a scar.

Different, Aremu thought, didn’t mean worse.

He sat with that for a little while; he didn’t try to chase it too far down, or follow it along every twist and turn it had to offer. He didn’t try too hard to turn it back on himself or to poke holes in the doing so, though he knew he could do both, and well, if he gave himself the chance. Instead, he just sat; he felt the softness of the breeze on his face, the traces of flood season sun as they crept through the green leaves, the hard roughness of the branch beneath him and – most of all – the warmth of Tom’s hand beneath his.

He thought, if he thought of anything, of oil run through a filter – of the first drops coming through thick and clean, and then the slow weighting down of all the rest at the bottom, the sludge which mixed with it, and the last drops – slowly, slowly, one by one – easing themselves free of the muck, and sliding through the holes.

Tom’s hand turned over beneath his, shifting; Aremu made room, thinking he’d pull away, and instead he found Tom’s fingers twining between his, gently interlocking. Why, Aremu wanted to ask himself, did you think he’d pull away? Why – he thought of Tom’s question earlier, asking why he’d thought Tom would want an appointment with anyone else tonight, and wondered whether he was the oil sliding through, or the sludge that remained behind, trapped in the filter.

Tom spoke, and Aremu listened, and didn’t try to say anything in the midst of it. The breeze ruffled the light line of his clothing; he had felt the tree shift beneath them, gently, as Tom moved, even his slight weight enough to feel it ripple through the trunk and branches. Aremu leaned his head back against the trunk, his eyes sliding shut a few moments, though he felt as if he could see, still, the imprint of the leaves and all the light against his eyelids.

“When I met him,” Aremu said, carefully, slowly, “I hadn’t yet come to understand all that I was, and what it meant for… what I had the right to expect.” Something tensed in his jaw, fluttered against the corner of it; he closed his eyes for a moment, and opened them again, looking out at the thick screen of branches, the dark long leaves. Tom was in the corner of his gaze, the other man’s fingers still laced through his.

“Whatever hurt I felt, I think,” Aremu went on, “was the fault of those expectations I had not learned to let go. He was always honest with me; it was just that I didn’t know how little I understood of honesty.”

He shook his head, a little; he turned, and looked down at Tom. “It was a long time ago,” Aremu said, evenly. “Much of what I feel is shame for what a fool I was. It was just unexpected, to see him, and to find that you know each other.” Like a wound, he wanted to say, I didn’t know I had – something bruised or broken I didn’t feel until my weight rested on it. He didn’t go that far with it; some tight ache in his throat held the words back.

He offered Tom something like a smile, or at least the best he could manage of one; his thumb stroked over the other man’s hand, and he squeezed his fingers, lightly, and stopped there, at least for now.

[Tom Cooke]

In the Acacia Tree

Late Afternoon on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

A
ll that you were?

He hadn’t expected Aremu to let go, but he wasn’t sure what he’d expected. Silence, maybe; he hadn’t expected this, not quite. The words unfolded out into the air, soft as the breeze but cutting as Aremu went on. He looked over once, when Aremu spoke of right, and watched a muscle jump in his jaw. He frowned, lips pressed thin, and looked down at their hands, fingers interlaced.

If there was a part of him that wanted to feel a brush of discomfort, still – bitterness or worry – another, newer, less unpleasant strangeness – at watching Aremu’s thumb drift over the pale, freckled skin, it wasn’t a part he could focus on just now. All that you were, he thought again, glancing back up briefly at Aremu’s face, as if it could give him any hint. Hint of what?

How, he thought wryly, with a sad sort of humor, could you have ever felt transparent? He felt he’d been skimming the water for years, trying to gauge what was underneath by the ripples he made and the bubbles that drifted to the surface. Now he had stepped deeper, feeling of the stones with his toes, some solid and some shifting dangerously underfoot; feeling the scales and fronds of older, stranger things brushing at his ankles, warm and cold, deep-rooted and lingering or swimming back into the dark.

Once he’d’ve told himself he had no right to step in – no right to step into any man’s water, to disturb the stones that lay on his riverbed and wake what slept among the seaweed. Once, he’d told himself he hadn’t cared to.

Now he felt strangely transparent, as if he’d got something wrong all along, as if a man had been looking at him straight in the eye for months and he hadn’t known a whit of it. Now he felt strangely as if he were grasping at the edges of something he should’ve grasped a long time ago; he felt as if he’d darted a hand into the water fast enough, and had almost caught a fish.

Aremu called himself a fool, then turned and looked at him and smiled.

He felt the imbala squeeze his hand, gentle-like; his thumb brushed warm over it again. He smiled back, but his brow was furrowed, and the set of his lips twitched. “He is,” he said, trying to keep his tone neutral, “honest,” and he swallowed the word and glanced down.

Tsofo, with–? The surprise was still washing over and through him. You were a student, he thought, though he didn’t say it; there was no need to press. Clairvoyant diableries. A dozen more whispers came to the front of his mind on a waft of kofi smells, a familiar laugh. Many gardens, he remembered, and many flowers…

What I had a right to expect, Aremu had said, and he turned it over in his mind again, trying to work through it. You loved him, he thought, simple and aching. An arata. And he let you, honest or not. It hadn’t occurred to him, and it sank through him like an anchor.

Aremu, Tsofo had said. Ada’xa, Aremu had said.

And what do you expect of me? he thought, brow furrowing deeper. He thought with another spur in his gut of another memory: a canalworks, a strange walk through pools of blue phosphor light; furtive, even then, glances over shoulders, tense silences, mirror-dark water, ripples and bubbles. He looked down at the hem of his sleeve, lit blazing white in a patch of sunlight, and felt an even deeper sinking.

“I, uh – I don’t know him very well, I suppose,” he murmured, sighing. “I wonder if anyone does.” I wonder how much there is to know, he thought wryly, but kept it to himself. “I feel as if he’s made a fool out of me. I don’t want to think too hard on some of the compliments he’s paid me.” He grimaced. “His honesty doesn’t feel much like respect,” he said quietly, before he could stop himself.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Afternoon, 38 Loshis, 2720
In an acacia tree, Away’qexo College, Thul'Amat

Tom looked back at him, and he smiled, though there was something uneven in the set of his lips, a furrowing of his brow.

I never told anyone about him, Aremu wanted to say, swallowing the odd, illicit sense of betrayal. I never so much as hinted to the friends I had at the time, and never corrected anyone when they assumed I was sneaking off to meet a woman. I never told Uzoji, when he came back from Brunnhold; not then, when it was newly ended, and not in all the years since.

I won’t tell anyone about you, he wanted to say, but he didn’t think Tom needed reminding, not here and not now.

I trust you, he wanted to say, but he thought the words worth less than the rest of what he had shared, and he was afraid of cheapening them in the offering.

Tom was quiet a little while, and Aremu was quiet, too. There were little shifts on Tom’s face; his brow furrowed and lightened; his lips sank together in a thin line, and came apart once more, as if he meant to speak; his gaze searched Aremu’s face, then drifted away, off to something else.

He didn’t know that he could bear to be more direct; he didn’t think he needed to.

It was Aremu’s turn to frown, a little, when Tom went on. He’s made a fool of me, Tom said, on the heels of saying that they were going to meet to discuss Tsofo’s book, of saying that he didn’t want Tsofo, not in his bed, perhaps not at all. I’m not sure I understand, Aremu had said, earlier, and Tom had said that it was – that it had been – feeling unattractive in front of him which had upset him.

Aremu still wasn’t sure he understood; he thought, with a sinking ache in his stomach, that it seemed strange to ask twice.

“Men of honor can share honesty without respect,” Aremu said, after a moment, his fingers still intertwined through Tom’s. He shook his head a little. “But I don’t see why he wouldn’t respect you; he’s the fool, if he doesn’t.”

Aremu shifted; he frowned, a little. “We spoke once of men who are honorable, and men who are good,” he said, thinking of the kitchen in Uzoji’s house, the drifting smell of mint tea mixed with junia, how much they had said and how much they had understood without saying. “I thought him a good man, when I was younger.”

For his kindness to me, Aremu wanted to explain; because he listened, at least at the start, when I knew I didn’t merit it. It wasn’t his fault, he wanted to explain, that I thought more of it than there was, that –

It was strange to look back on it and to know that, as subtle as he’d thought himself at nineteen, that he must’ve been obvious. He felt it like a knife sliding in to him, pressure and then the sudden heat of pain, and he didn’t know what to make of it. He must, Aremu thought, frowning, have been obvious. He knew that Tsofo had known by the end; Tsofo had told him, smiling, that he’d done him a kindness by never bringing it up.

It didn’t matter, Aremu knew; the fault had lain with him, and not Tsofo. He looked down a little at Tom, at the messy spray of his red hair, and the frown on his face, and looked down a little more, at his long elegant fingers and thin freckled hand wound tightly through Aremu’s own.

Find other friends, Aremu wanted to say; there are better men than –

I don’t know, he wanted to say; I can’t know what it must be like between the two of you, men of honor both. I can’t say anything about it; don’t you know that, Tom?

“I don’t know,” he said, in the end, at least; that, and not all the rest, because he thought perhaps it was the only honest thing he could say. He looked down, at the long empty space between them and the ground, unafraid of it, and then back at Tom, and found whatever was on his face shy, still, of a smile.

[Tom Cooke]

In the Acacia Tree

Late Afternoon on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

I
t wasn’t quite a laugh; it was more an exhale. He shook his head slightly, drawing in another deep breath, though he didn’t say anything. He might’ve protested, but he pressed his lips thin again and waited for Aremu to finish, watching him evenly. Their fingers were laced together all the while, a tether.

He nodded slowly as Aremu went on, trying again to work his mind round it.

I don’t know, Aremu said finally, and looked down. It was second nature to follow his eyes, a strange and perilous sort of second nature; he almost did, before he jerked his eyes away.

He’s the fool, if he doesn’t, he’d said so easily. Second nature. What I had the right to expect, he remembered in the same breath; how little I understood of honesty. He shook his head again, the two rattling round.

He swallowed dryly, drawing in another deep breath. “I remember. Maybe he is honorable. But I...”

You’re going to have to look down eventually, he thought. Funny, how often he’d thought that – since – breathing hoarsely, keeping his eyes up as he changed, as he washed, as he moved. Funny how he wanted to follow Aremu’s eyes down to the leaf-strewn ground now, dizzying as the thought was; funny how following a man’s eyes had a way of showing you something you were afraid of.

His eyes went down, but not through the branches. He studied their hands instead.

They had long-fingered hands now, both of them. He’d never thought of it that way, how they fit together now. Aremu’s hand was a little larger, but not so much larger, as his own had once been. He studied the smooth skin on the back of Aremu’s, broken up by the occasional glossy or pale mark; he compared it with what he could see of his own.

It wasn’t himself he tried to find in it. It was them, the line between them, the way they fit together – now. Not a man and a ghost, but a man and a man. It was still a strange thought; he still half-disbelieved it.

He tried to imagine Aremu’s hand back then, too. A decade at least, he thought, if he’d been at Thul’amat. He tried to imagine the oldest of the scars fresh, the rest gone.

Unsettled and unbidden, the image of that hand interwoven with Tsofo’s fluttered in and out of his mind.

A tan hem and a white hem, like these. It washed over him in waves; he didn’t know where to put it. What did you see, when you looked at them? he wondered, aching. How did you think you and he fit together?

What had that secret been like to carry? Had anyone known –?

Aremu was looking back at him. It wasn’t a smile he found on Aremu’s face.. The set of his lips was a fraying line; there were more fraying lines round his eyes, like breaking glass.

“I thought he was kind, too. He told me I could be – confident, in his way,” he said quietly, after a few moments, “for a man of my…” He swallowed. “I wanted to take that confidence to you, show you I could… I don’t know. That I was still...”

He shifted, feeling the branch move underneath him; the breeze tugged through his hair. “I don’t know if you can respect what you don’t know. I, uh – I don’t want him to know me any better than this. I don’t want his respect, either. After how he talked to you, I don't trust him a whit.”

He hadn’t meant it to come out so sharp; he glanced up, then back down.

“But,” he murmured, sour, “he seems to me a man who’ll use whatever he can, and I – he’s good at knowing what to use.”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Afternoon, 38 Loshis, 2720
In an acacia tree, Away’qexo College, Thul'Amat

Aremu listened; he hadn’t asked, not precisely, but Tom explained, a little more, a little haltingly. You are, still, Aremu wanted to say, because he thought he understood now what words would have followed, for all he hadn’t before.

I’m sorry, he wanted to say; I’m sorry, Tom, that I didn’t understand, that I left you vulnerable to this. Before he could begin to think of saying the words he knew them unfair. They were unfair to him, because he had done his best, even if it hadn’t been good enough; they were unfair, he thought, to Tom, because they seemed to trivialize his feelings, as if they could be vanquished by a few compliments, however genuine.

He thought of Tom making plans for them tonight, too; he didn’t know if he would have gone himself to Three Flowers or have sent someone. No, Aremu thought, no; he did know. Care for him - for them - had been in every piece of him, and Aremu couldn’t see him doing anything other than going himself, searching for a hotel. The thought of it swelled like a lump in his throat, and for a few moments it was hard to swallow past it.

I don’t want him to know me any better than this, Tom said, and Aremu exhaled out a breath he hadn’t known he held, surprised by the rush of relief which swept through him.

He wanted to argue, all the same; he wanted to argue. Not with the choice, but with the reasoning. He said nothing less than truth, Aremu might have said, and tried not to flinch at the memory of the words clairvoyant diablerie. A shame, he thought: a shame.

“Yes,” Aremu said, instead, a prickle of something down his spine, when Tom spoke of using. He thought of Tom saying he looked forward to climbing together not with warmth, but with a little tinge of icy fear, cold in his veins. The whole of the conversation had felt like a nightmare, and him paralyzed throughout.

Say what you have to, Aremu wanted to say, about me, about us. I won’t ask you to do it to my face, not again, because you’ve made how you feel about that clear.

For a moment he could imagine Tsofo - smiling - encouraging Tom to - the world spun beneath, and he felt dizzy, and he knew it had nothing to do with the height. Aremu let out a little exhale, slowly, and for all he knew better, he didn’t think he could stay silent.

“Be careful,” he said, quietly, instead. I have nothing, he wanted to say, over him; I am a liar, Tom. “Nothing about this matters to me as much as your safety.” That was as much of truth as he knew, and unequivocally; he meant it in every word. Say what you want about me, he hinted at the edges of it, if it keeps you safe; he couldn’t seem to go any closer.

It was strange, uncomfortable, to think of Tsofo that way, and yet, as Aremu settled in, he found it easier and easier. He takes, he could have said; he took me, although I didn’t make it hard for him, and he took all that I offered, and told me what else I should give him.

Then, in the next moment, he wanted to argue again. You know what I am, Tom, he wanted to say; we all know what I am not. That is what it is, whatever you might want it to be. How he treated me has nothing to do with how he would treat you: you, an honorable man, a man who could merit his respect.

He kept silent, instead; he squeezed Tom’s hand, lightly, and sat there in the branches of the tree, and tried not to think.

[Tom Cooke]

In the Acacia Tree

Late Afternoon on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

Y
es, Aremu said softly, and he felt a prickle of surprise. He’d expected another rebuttal, another careful balance on a shaky limb.

The more he thought on it, the more it sank through him, heavy now with nowhere to go. He tried to bend his mind into the right shape for it: honorable, he thought, and honest; dishonorable, he thought, liar… His hands felt too shaky to unwind this knot. Every time he found the edge of a thread and pulled, the knot grew only tighter. Every time he found a loose loop and widened it into something he could hold, the rest snarled worse; sometimes it felt like he was only tangling his fingers up in it, snaring himself in so tight he couldn’t move.

Suddenly he thought of Aremu in the knot, and Tsofo drifting outside it. Suddenly he thought of Tsofo looping another bit of thread, pulling it experimentally with one long, elegant finger, making yet another snarl in the knot.

His hand was all tangled up in Aremu’s, and Aremu was squeezing it, gentle-like as ever, and going on in his soft voice. Be careful, he said, and Tom looked up, his eyes widening slightly.

He studied Aremu’s face.

He drew in a deep breath, breaking eye contact after only a few moments, looking around at the sun in the foliage. It was still afternoon; the light hadn’t begun to slant orange. Chatter still rose up on the breeze, distant and pleasant. He squeezed Aremu’s hand back.

He’s not even a professor, he wanted to say then, smiling, not really. He couldn’t do a thing to me – not unless he’s connected – and I don’t think he is. That’s not what I meant, he wanted to say, when I said I didn’t trust him.

“I understand,” he said instead, inclining his head. “I, uh – I’ll give him his recommendations and listen to him talk about radiomancy.” It’s not an uninteresting study, he thought to say, but didn’t. I don’t think he’ll be too hard to shake after he’s got what he wants, he thought to say, but it seemed cruel.

There was something else in Aremu’s eyes. He glanced down, then back up.

He wouldn’t think that, he wanted to say.

He swallowed the words, bitter and dry in his throat. He thought of what Tsofo must know of Aremu; he thought of what Tsofo knew, now, of him, rambling about flowers and honor. But I’m, he wanted to protest. But you’re, and I’m – if anything, he’d think I was hopelessly –

A sharp surge went through him. The pieces rearranged themselves. He thought of every furtive look, every hiding place. He would think, Tom thought slowly, trying to set aside his feelings. Because he would know.

He had been sucking at a tooth. He blinked. “I think I understand,” he said more softly, this time honestly. “But Aremu, I –“ He shut his eyes, brow furrowing.

You don’t have to treat me like a man, he remembered.

A twitch went across his face, and he looked back at Aremu. “I promise you I won’t do anything to endanger you,” he said, “and I promise you I won’t do anything foolish. All this, this – I don’t want to tangle you up in a scandal, or put a target on your head any more than I already have. But I’m not concerned about my safety, not from him. I don’t… understand.”

There are more skeletons in this man’s closet to find than this, he thought, but it seemed crude. You think I don’t have a way of dealing with men like Tsofo pez Erfuan? But he didn’t think, anyway, it was at the heart of this, all this: the sir, the ada’xa, the way he knew Aremu didn’t act around Niccolette. He was beginning to think not even his position was at the heart of this.

He swallowed tightly, removing his other hand from the branch underneath him – careful – to lay it on Aremu’s cheek. He couldn’t think what to say. He should’ve let it go; somehow, he couldn’t.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Afternoon, 38 Loshis, 2720
In an acacia tree, Away’qexo College, Thul'Amat

Tom looked at him, when he offered the warning, and Aremu wasn’t sure how to read what he saw on the other man’s face. You don’t know, he wanted to say, if we were discovered, how bad it could be. We both know the best defense for us is our implausibility – and sitting together in the tree, hands tangled in a tight grip, Aremu felt implausible beyond compare – but to Tsofo, it isn’t implausible.

Aremu nodded, when Tom said he’d give Tsofo what he wanted. It was the same thing, he told himself, that the other man would’ve done if this had never happened; none of this, he told himself, should affect it. Tom had already told him that wasn’t so, and he tried, resolutely, to set that aside.

That isn’t what I mean, he wanted to say, too, but perhaps it was, or at least close enough; it would get them to the same place. He didn’t say it; maybe he didn’t have to. Tom looked away – down, this time, Aremu thought – and then back at him, and frowned a little. He saw it, in the moment when Tom understood, and knew then perhaps he hadn’t before, not quite.

Is it a danger to you? Aremu wanted to ask, to be known? Tom had said, before, that – he knew his relationship with this body wasn’t the same as the one Aremu had with his own, that he could leave it behind and continue on, Tom; he thought of Tom speaking of Vauquelin’s daughter, and of the snippets of conversation he’d overheard – Tom, he thought, Tom Cooke, guiding the politics of Anaxas. I don’t want to take those things from you, Aremu wanted to say, even if you’d survive their being lost.

Tom shifted; he eased against the branches, and his hand came up to cup Aremu’s cheek, gentle and tender. Aremu closed his eyes a moment, feeling the curl of Tom’s hand against his cheek. “The safety of the life you live, I suppose,” Aremu said, softly. He turned, and brushed his lips against the edge of Tom’s hand, and retreated back from the edge of the cliff he’d crept towards, thinking he’d already gone too far towards old arguments, old wounds.

“I know you can handle yourself,” Aremu said, and found a little smile, looking at the other man. “I just wanted you to know where I stood,” He squeezed Tom’s hand, lightly. The prosthetic was still off to the side; he had no second hand, he thought tiredly, to reach for Tom’s cheek in return, to settle on the hand on his own. A shame.

Don’t defend me to him, Aremu wanted to say; don’t behave as if you care about me. And then, in the same breath: I don’t know, I don’t know. What passed between him and I was a long time ago, and means, perhaps, nothing to what could pass between you.

I stain you, Tom, Aremu wanted to say. I don’t know if it’s really your honor that I stain, in the end. He thought of sitting in the circle with Tom in Brunnhold, kneeling in the midst of the arcane, uncertain and unknowing and afraid for the other man, and Tom confident in himself, then and since.

But at least, Aremu wanted to say, it’s the perception of your honor and that matters, too, for a man – for any man – for a politician – for a man trying to keep his cover as a politician. For the life you want to live, like this.

He didn’t say any of it; that which he might have been able to he thought Tom knew, already, by now. Of the rest, he thought, even if he’d known what it was, he wasn’t sure he could convey it properly, in the end. He knew there were distances between them, on such matters; he wasn’t sure, anymore, that he knew how wide.

That too, Aremu thought, looking at it, he feared, still; for all that Tom had said otherwise, he found himself afraid of it. Your honor, he imagined Tsofo saying, with a smile – just the idea of it pinched down his spine, and he closed his eyes for a moment, breathing in and out again, and looking at Tom once more, trying to find his own smile again.