Page 91 of Tending the Ache

Eskil cards his hand through Indrie's hair. The braid is long destroyed, another casualty, and the dark strands are tangled and damp with sweat and he works through them with his fingers, patient, unhurried.

"I have wanted you since I first saw you," Eskil says. His voice is quiet, the rough edges sanded down to something almost tender. "Standing in Armond's quarters with that satchel clutched to your chest and your eyes the size of the fucking moon, and I thought—" He stops. Laughs at himself, softly. "I thought, there he is. Like I'd been looking."

Indrie goes very still against him.

For a long moment he does not say anything at all. His breathing has changed, the slow even rhythm hitching and going unsteady, and his hand on Eskil's shoulder tightens hard enough that Eskil can feel every finger.

"I thought I was too young," Indrie says.

Eskil frowns into his hair. "What?"

"For you." The words come out flat and quick, the way things do when they have been sitting in somebody a long time. "You have spent your whole life taking care of someone my age. And I have spent mine being kept. And I thought that when you looked at me, that was what you saw. Somebody else who needed rescuing and got it."

Eskil groans like he's been wounded. Long and heartfelt, from somewhere deep in his chest. "Indrie."

"I am only telling you what I—"

"You are naked in my bed," Eskil says, "with my mouth on your neck and my hand on your ass, and you have brought up my little brother."

There is a pause.

Then Indrie starts to laugh.

It comes out of him in pieces at first, a huff and then another, and then it takes him properly and he presses his face into Eskil's chest and shakes with it, and Eskil can feel the laughter going through both of them. It is not the polite laugh Indrie gives to patients. It is not the startled one that gets surprised out of him. It is loose and helpless and slightly wet at the edges, the laugh of a man who has been carrying something heavy for a long time and has just been permitted to put it down.

"I am so sorry," Indrie manages, and does not sound sorry at all.

"You should be."

"It has worried me for weeks."

"I can tell." Eskil catches his chin and tips his face up. "Listen to me. There is not one thing about you that has ever put me in mind of my brother, and if you say his name again in this bed I will put you out of it."

"You could not put me out of it. You are wounded."

"I would manage."

Indrie laughs again, and kisses him, still laughing, and Eskil kisses him back and feels the tail end of it against his mouth.

When they settle, Indrie's voice is different. Lighter, somehow. As though a weight has come off it.

"Ermin said you were courting me," he says. "And I didn't believe him."

Eskil laughs. Warm and quiet. "Is that what you want? Courting?"

"No, I just—"

"Tell me what you want and it is yours, Indrie." He kisses the top of his head and lets his lips stay there. "Anything. I told you that before and I meant it."

Indrie lifts his head from Eskil's chest. He takes Eskil's face in both hands, small hands, the hands that stitched his wound and cleaned his blood and held his own through the longest night of his life. His palms press against the scrape of Eskil's jaw and his fingers curl behind his ears, and he is not hesitant. Not uncertain. Not apologetic.

He knows the answer to this question. He has always known it.

"I just want you," he says, and he does not look away.

Eskil holds him. Pulls him closer. Feels the bare skin of Indrie's chest against his own, the press of his heartbeat, the warmth and weight of him.

"You have me," he says, into Indrie's hair.