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Garin glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, still reluctant to fully face him, but achingly drawn to him, nonetheless. “What, you’re not even a tiny bit curious about what that drink tastes like?”
“Oh.” Sazahk blinked. “No, I hadn’t considered it. My mind was elsewhere.” He pulled the glass toward him and peered into its depths. “Is it alcoholic?”
“A little. Not much.” Garin shrugged. “I think you’ll like it.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s complex.”
“I’m not much enjoying complexity at the moment, to be honest.” Sazahk turned on his bar stool to face Garin. “I recognize that I am expected to apologize, but I don’t actually understand what I am meant to be apologizing for.”
Garin sighed and rolled the base of his cup around on its edge. “Try your drink, Sazahk.”
Sazahk sagged and took a sniff, then a small sip. He swallowed, cocked his head, swirled his drink, and sipped again. “This imparts an impressive variety of distinct flavors for such a translucent liquid.”
Garin tapped his glass with a smirk. “Told you.”
“Could you also tell me what I’ve done wrong?” Sazahk wrapped both hands around his own glass and stared at it as though intense scrutiny might yield the answers to both its flavor and their fraught relationship.
Instinctively trying to spare his feelings, Garin almost told Sazahk he’d done nothing wrong. But if Sazahk had done nothing wrong, then why was Garin so damn angry?
“You…I thought you…” Garin tipped his head back to glare at the ceiling, summoning the strength to say the words, to expose his raw feelings to Sazahk’s meticulous examination. “You could have at least told me you didn’t want me to stay.” He dropped his chin down and glared at Sazahk, letting him see the anguish and anger in his eyes. “At least then I would have had a clearer understanding of our relationship, and I might not have been so goddamn blindsided.”
Sazahk pressed his lips together. “You think I should have told you about Patrick’s offer?”
“Yes!” Garin pounded his palm on the bar. “And then you could tell me that you didn’t want me to take it, and I wouldn’t, but you could have at least told me about it. You should have told me about it.”
Purple swelling up his throat, Sazahk shoved his glass away from him. “You had an established prior obligation.”
Garin leaned in, finally giving in to the fury of the betrayal. “But you should have still told me.”
“Why? So you could decide I wasn’t worth it?” Sazahk burst from his stool, rising above Garin in a trembling tower of purple and blue, mottled like a bruise. “So you could think I was someone that didn’t understand you? So I could be just another selfish man trying to hoard you for himself?”
“What?” Garin reared back, his own anger blown away by Sazahk’s accusation. “I would never think that. That’s not…” He shook his head and pushed his drink away. Maybe he really had had too much. “That’s not what I’d think.”
Sazahk took a deep, shaking breath, then sat back down and folded his hands in his lap. “You have thought it about others. It was reasonable to assume you might think the same of me were I to make the same mistakes.”
Garin rubbed his temples. Shit, Sazahk made sense. When he put it like that, how the fuck could he have done anything differently? Given everything Garin had ever done and said? It wasn’t like Garin had been forthcoming with his own desires.
“You couldn’t take the offer, so I didn’t give it to you,” Sazahk murmured in a small voice.
Garin dragged his hand over his face, then stared at Sazahk with eyes he knew were too desperate. “But did you want me to?”
Pink and brown swirled up Sazahk’s elegant neck and over his cheeks. “Did I want you to take the offer? Did I want you to stay?”
“Yeah” Garin half-hid his face in his hand, and he clenched his other into a fist on his lap, struggling to keep it from reaching out to the qesh. “Everything else aside…did you want me to stay?”
Sazahk broke in front of him. “Of course I wanted you to stay. I want you to stay. I—” Sazahk reached for him and Garin met him halfway and tangled their hands together. “I have come to the irrefutable conclusion, based upon the evidence provided in numerous sources, both philosophical and scientific, that I—” Sazahk’s deep breath caught in his throat like a sob. “I love you, Garin.”
The thread of caution that had pulled tauter and tauter in Garin’s heart with every one of Sazahk’s words snapped, and he lunged for the man.
Sazahk captured him in a kiss halfway. He cupped the back of Garin’s neck and sealed their mouths as he stood and loomed over him on his stool.
He loved him.
Sazahk loved him.
Garin nearly shook apart with the cascading implications and realizations, but Sazahk held him together, pinning him back against the bar as he devoured him. For someone who had been so reluctant to kiss in the first place, Sazahk kissed him now with an enthusiasm that bordered on ferocity.
