Page 34 of Tending the Ache

Eskil cleans the wound. He clenches his jaw and forces himself through it, through the sensation of flaying himself open in a room with a man who is sitting on his couch in his shirt and bleeding from a wound someone else gave him.

"I have been a coward since you—"

He hesitates. Because naming what happened between them on the ship makes it inescapable, and escaping is all he has been trying to do since. If he says it, then it becomes real in this room in a way that it was not real while it lived only in his memory and Indrie's memory and the silent space between them where neither of them had dared to put it into words.

"—since you saved my life," he finishes. The words are rough, dragged out of him. "I didn't even bother to ask if I hurt you."

Indrie startles. The flush comes back, that beautiful, devastating bloom of color across his cheekbones, spreading down his neck and into the collar of the shirt, and his hand comes up and lands on Eskil's wrist. The one holding the towel to his temple. His fingers are delicate against Eskil's scarred skin. They curl around the thick of his wrist and hold, not pulling, not pushing, just holding, and the touch is electric. It travels from the point of contact up Eskil's arm and lodges somewhere under his sternum.

"You did not hurt me," Indrie says. Adamantly. His voice is firm in a way it rarely is, the voice of a man who is certain of what he is saying and will not be moved from it. "Eskil, you were kind. And patient. And—"

The flush deepens. He looks away and does not finish the sentence, but the unfinished end of it hangs in the air between them, heavy with everything the words would have contained if he had let them out.

Eskil feels a pain in his chest that has nothing to do with the bruise from Bohdi's training bout. Indrie is so forgiving. So generous. He took a man's body into his own to save a life and is now sitting here, bleeding, assuring the man whose life he saved that the saving was a kindness rather than a violation.

And Eskil cannot even let the selfless act stand without his desire for Indrie tainting it. He should not remember that night with heat in his belly and fire in his veins. He should not wake up dreaming of Indrie's skin under his mouth, of the sounds he made, of the way he trembled and gasped and came apart so completely that Eskil had to hold him together. He should not long for a man who gave himself out of duty, out of the same duty that has governed his entire life, the duty to heal, the duty to save, the vow that does not come with exceptions even when the exception is a king who does not deserve what it costs.

He finishes cleaning the wound. It has stopped bleeding. The gash is small, half an inch, maybe less, and the surrounding tissue is bruised but not dangerously swollen. He asks Indrie questions to determine the severity, falling back on the field medicine he learned years ago, a practical refuge from the emotional terrain they have been navigating.

"What time is it?" Eskil asks.

"I'm not sure. After dusk?"

"How many fingers?" He holds up three.

"Three."

"Is your vision clear? Any blurring, doubling?"

"Clear." Indrie's mouth curves. A small, tentative thing, barely a smile but aiming in that direction. "I'm not usually on the receiving end of care."

Eskil grins at him. Cannot help it. The grin happens of its own accord, summoned by the quiet humor in Indrie's voice and the sight of him, disheveled and damp with a blue bruise forming at his temple, making a joke. Making a joke while sitting on a king's couch after a night that should have been miserable, because Indrie's first instinct is always to make the person in front of him feel better, even when the person in front of him is the source of the problem.

"I've done enough field dressing in my days to be passable at basic medicine," Eskil says. "But I'm not claiming to be of your caliber."

Indrie's smile widens. He ducks his head and looks away, the habitual deflection, the inability to receive praise without flinching from it, and Eskil watches the smile happen and reminds himself, forcefully, with the grim discipline of a man holding a rope over a precipice, that he cannot have him.

He finishes up. Sets the towel aside. Stands, putting distance between them, between his hands and Indrie's skin, between his mouth and the curve of Indrie's neck, between the wanting and the having that the wanting will never become.

He keeps his back turned while Indrie dries off. Busies himself at the washbasin, rinsing the blood from the small towel, wringing it out with more force than the task requires. Behind him he hears the rustle of fabric as Indrie pulls on his trousers, a small grunt of effort as he cinches the waist, the whisper of wet linen shifting against skin, and it is a test of willpower he was not prepared for this evening.

"I'm decent," Indrie says, quietly.

Eskil turns. Indrie is standing by the couch, dressed now, trousers cinched, shirt still too big, hair damp and beginning to curl at the ends. He looks better. The color has returned to his face and the bleeding has stopped and he is standing instead of sitting, which Eskil takes as a positive sign.

"I'll have some clothes sent to the clinic," Eskil says. "Since you're still wearing mine from the ship."

Indrie rubs his arm self-consciously, caught in something he did not realize was visible, and his voice drops. "Morgan already saw to my wardrobe. I just–"

He plucks at the hem of the oversized shirt. Eskil's shirt. The linen is worn soft from use and hangs to Indrie's mid-thighs and the collar slips off one shoulder no matter how many times he adjusts it. His voice drops further, into something almost inaudible.

"I wear this one sometimes."

A pause.

Heavy. The kind of heavy that has weight and density and takes up space in a room, displacing the air, making the walls feel closer.

"I can give it back," Indrie stammers. The words come out in a rush, tumbling over each other. "If that's, if that's what you desire, I can—"