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“No, Sazahk.” Garin gave in to the desire to touch and brushed his thumb over Sazahk’s sharp cheekbone and tucked his hair behind his ear. “I don’t.”
Sazahk released a shuddering exhale and looked away. “Will you braid my hair, please?”
Garin’s heart squeezed, and it took everything in him to resist the urge to wrap the man in his arms. Instead, he shuffled back behind him and parted his hair into three sections. “With pleasure, Sazahk.”
Sazahk slumped before Garin, as though the confession had taken everything out of him. “I really did want to help them.”
Garin arranged the locks of hair, muscle memory kicking in from the hours he’d spent with Beaty. “I know you did.”
“And their parents.” Sazahk’s voice eased, the tension that had pulled it taut since the disruptor rod finally abating. Had this secret been eating him alive? Had he really thought Garin would reject him when he discovered it? “Given my poor relationship with my own progenitors, I found the extreme care and love displayed by the parents of those sick children oddly compelling.”
“That makes sense.” Garin wound Sazahk’s long hair into thirteen-year-old Beaty’s favorite style, the functional but elegant inverted braid.
“I never found out the results of the last round of experimental treatments.” Sazahk picked up a twig from the ground and studied it. “They took my implant and cut me off from all Qeshian-controlled scientific databases, which is almost all of them, as well as the Qeshian National Archives, which is everything our species has ever developed or discovered.”
“That must be frustrating.” Garin slid the tip of his tongue between his teeth as he focused on not making the very end of Sazahk’s braid uneven.
Sazahk’s chin drooped, and he nodded as he peeled off a strip of bark from his stick. “It’s isolating and crippling. It feels like they cut out part of my brain. They essentially did.”
“I’m so sorry, Sazahk.” Garin tied off the end of Sazahk’s braid and squeezed his shoulder. If Sazahk were anyone else, he’d pull him into his arms and hold him, but as it was, Garin thought grabbing his shoulder might already be pushing it. “I can’t imagine what that’s like.”
“Don’t try.” Sazahk turned and pulled his braid over his shoulder to examine it. “The Senate said they’d give me back my implant and clear my record if I proved instrumental in nullifying the Insect threat.”
Garin’s lips parted as Sazahk’s stubbornness, defensiveness, and drive finally slotted together, but Sazahk powered on before he spoke.
“Which was the only reason I returned to sanctioned organizations, but of course, as usual, I’m curious, as well.” Sazahk spat the word ‘curious’ as though it were his own original sin and unzipped the sleeping bag roughly. “I want to believe that I’m motivated by the millions of lives hanging in the balance, but the evidence doesn’t support that conclusion.”
“You can have more than one reason for wanting to do something.” Garin gently pulled Sazahk’s hands away from yanking on the zipper when it got stuck. “It doesn’t make any of them invalid.”
Sazahk watched Garin open the sleeping bag, then climbed into it when Garin motioned for him to. He rolled onto his side and turned toward Garin so that when Garin slid in beside him, they lay face to face. Sazahk stared into his eyes, gray darkening his cheeks. “Garin, do you believe I care about anything other than myself?”
Garin’s heart ached, and he cupped Sazahk’s cheek and pushed the few hairs he’d missed behind the man’s ear. “Yes. I have no doubt, Sazahk.”
Sazahk’s gray shifted into brown and Garin traced the swirl of rich color across the qesh’s temple with his thumb. What did it mean? Garin was both desperate and afraid to know. He wanted it to be about him, and he didn’t want to ask and have the fantasy shattered. He’d rather hold on to the hope.
Sazahk closed his eyes and turned into Garin’s palm, making Garin’s heart beat faster. He hoped the other man couldn’t feel it through his hands. They’d never done this. They’d never touched for the pure comfort and intimacy of it.
Garin fought away his nervous shake and prayed his palm didn’t turn clammy as he pet over Sazahk’s hair, careful not to mess up his braid. He stroked along the back of Sazahk’s head and down to the nape of his neck.
Sazahk shivered when Garin’s fingertips brushed his scar tissue. “You have to be awake, you know. When they cut your implant out.”
Garin’s gorge rose. “Awake?”
Sazahk nodded without opening his eyes and shuffled closer, pressing their fronts together and tucking his head under Garin’s chin. “May I have some of your body heat?”
“Of course.” Garin wrapped an arm loosely around Sazahk’s shoulders, his head spinning. “What do you mean, you have to be awake?”
“To ensure neural tissue remains undamaged and the majority of neural connections are maintained.” Sazahk’s voice had that faux detachment as he wrapped his arms around Garin’s waist and slipped his hands under Garin’s shirt. “You must be awake to answer a continuous stream of questions testing your cognitive and perceptive functions.”
Garin knew better than to tighten his arms around Sazahk, so he nosed into the hair on the top of Sazahk’s head and hoped that conveyed the comfort he desperately wanted to give.
“I didn’t undergo the surgery willingly, and I fought against the orderlies assigned to restrain me.” Sazahk held on to Garin’s middle tight enough for the both of them, his blunt nails digging into Garin’s skin and belying his calm tone. “Until I felt the scalpel and realized the danger I was in. Then I let them administer the paralytic.” Sazahk’s throat clicked as he swallowed. “And then they didn’t need to hold me down, because I couldn’t move.”
And that’s why Sazahk panicked when he was grabbed.
He’d said it wasn’t about touch, it was about being held down, but Garin hadn’t grasped the nuance.
Now it fucking made sense and Garin wanted to take Sazahk far away, back to Earth, back to the home with his family, where no one would ever hurt the sweet man again. No one would ever hold him down and cut him open, rip out a piece of him, and call him the monster.
