Page 30 of Tending the Ache

Indrie laughs before he can stop himself, and it echoes off the stone, and Harrak looks so pleased with himself that Indrie laughs again.

"Where are you from? Not here."

"The Isles beyond Kalkoa."

Harrak nods as though he has heard of it but does not press for details.

"And how do you find Valen?"

"It is beautiful. More beautiful than anything I have seen."

Harrak's face lights up with the pride of a man who loves his home and is pleased when other people notice. "And these? They live up to whatever they told you?"

"They exceed it."

"Best-kept secret in the kingdom," Harrak says. "Worst-kept secret in the city."

The conversation is easy. Comfortable. Harrak is warm and patient and does not seem frustrated by the pauses while Indrie searches for a word or the moments when he has to repeat himself with different phrasing. He makes little encouraging gestures when Indrie stumbles, a nod, a tilt of his head, a hand motion that says take your time, I'm listening, and Indrie finds himself relaxing into the exchange in a way he didn't expect. It is pleasant. Simple. The uncomplicated pleasure of talking to someone who is interested and kind.

Harrak is closer now than when the conversation started. Not aggressively so, he has moved naturally, the way people do when they are engaged and interested, shifting along the stone ledge to close the distance so they don't have to raise their voices over the noise of the cavern. Indrie notices with a prickle of awareness at the back of his neck, a subtle alertness, but he does not read it as anything more than friendliness. He is not accustomed to reading these signals. He has no experience with them. In Kalkoa, no one moved closer to him unless they intended to hurt him, and the men and women of Valen are physically affectionate in ways he is still learning to interpret. They clasp arms. They embrace. They sit hip to hip and lean into each other while they talk, and none of it means what it would mean in Kalkoa, where touch was either violence or transaction.

"Are you married?" Harrak asks.

Indrie understands the question perfectly. That is not the problem.

The flush comes anyway. The heat that had been pleasant and ambient turns sharp and specific, rising across his cheeks. He remembers Eskil and the Cara fruit. Remembers Eskil in the lamplight of the cabin, taking his jaw in one hand to make him listen.

He swallows the ache and tells Harrak, "No. I'm not. I don't have anyone."

The words taste like truth and like loss and like something he is giving up by saying them aloud. Because he doesn't, does he? He doesn't have anyone. He has a one-sided ache for a man who does not want him. Whatever Indrie carries, whatever warmth, whatever hope, whatever stubborn foolish flame, it is his alone. Eskil did not ask for it. Eskil does not want it. And declaring it here, in the steam and the half-dark, to a stranger who asked a simple question, feels less like an answer and more like a confession.

Harrak smiles. It is a warm smile, open and unhurried.

"Am I interesting to you?"

Indrie hears the sentence and turns it over and it comes apart in his hands. Do you find me interesting? A friendly question. The kind of thing a person asks when a conversation has gone well and they would like to know whether the other person enjoyed it too. Harrak has been kind and patient and easy to talk to and has made him laugh twice, and Indrie is so pleased to have understood the sentence at all that he answers it immediately, with a smile of his own, genuine and unguarded.

"Yes, of course."

Harrak scoots closer, closing the remaining distance between them until their bare thighs are touching under the water, warm skin against warm skin, and his hand comes up to the back of Indrie's neck, large and warm, fingers curling against the base of his skull, and he leans in and kisses him.

The world stops.

Indrie's mind goes blank, completely and catastrophically blank, and then floods with sensation and panic in equal measure. Harrak's lips are warm and firm against his and his hand is broad on the back of Indrie's neck, and for one fraction of a second Indrie's body does not know what to do, because his body has only ever been kissed by one person, and the memory of that mouth, Eskil's hands, Eskil's low voice in the dark, collides with the reality of this one and the wreckage is instantaneous.

He jerks away.

The motion is violent and graceless, a full-body recoil that has to do with the bone-deep animal response of a body that has been touched without warning by someone it did not expect. His foot slips on the smooth stones beneath the water, the surface that was so pleasant to sink into moments ago now betraying him, and his temple cracks against the stone edge of the pool.

Pain blooms white and sharp across his vision. He gasps, hand flying to his head, and feels the warm wet trickle of blood begin immediately. A cut. He knows from the sting of it that the rough edge caught the thin skin at his temple and opened it.

Harrak is immediately concerned. His hands are up, reaching for Indrie, his face stricken. He is talking, rapid worried Rengaran, too fast now for Indrie to follow, and Indrie hears sorry and didn't mean and are you hurt, but the words are muddled by the ringing in his ears and the throb in his temple and the roaring tide of mortification drowning everything else.

Are you interested in me?

Not interesting. Interested.

One syllable difference. He has been in this kingdom for a week and he has learned three hundred words and he can name every bone in the human hand in two languages, and he reached for the jar on the wrong side of the shelf and told a stranger yes.