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“So, okay, I’m really bad at—” Drakka scrubbed a hand through his hair, features tight as he struggled.
They had been meeting up randomly for nearly a year; sometimes they’d manage to spend several days together if the machine races drew enough of a crowd to keep the racers close by, or a new and exciting course was being tested out fairly close. Other times, it was weeks before they’d see each other.
They’d argued, discussed, fought with fists and knives and bows, made up with words and their bodies. Nil always came back, and Drakka always welcomed him, always held out hope that he’d see him soon.
Drakka understood Nil’s responsibility to those kids, supported it in a way that few others could really grasp—they were kids who had abandoned their posts, but not because of fear or because they were traitors, but because they were kids and were still working out where they fit into the world. Their clan and tribe had failed them, failed to give them the things they needed, so Nil had stepped in and was letting them work it through for themselves while protecting them and providing for them while they did it.
The responsibility to the Desert Clan as a whole—Nil didn’t begrudge Drakka that, either. They understood that about each other, despite such disparate responsibilities taking them away from each other. They made their relationship work with the time they had.
It was working.
“Fuck it,” Drakka sighed, lifting his gaze to meet Nil’s cautiously curious one. They were holed up in a shelter, halfway between Scalding Spear and The Dry Yern, sitting opposite each other over a small fire where their dinner was slowly roasting. “You don’t have to return it, and I don’t expect you to, but I need you to know.” He breathed in deeply, let his breath out in a slow, controlled sigh. “I’m in love with you.”
He hadn’t even finished speaking before Nil had started shaking his head.
“Aloy never told you about me, did she?” Nil asked, completely off topic.
“I’ve told you—”
“—that you don’t care about that; yes, I remember,” Nil interrupted. “But, the thing is, I think you will.” He met Drakka’s gaze frankly, lips held in a flat, unhappy line. “Before this, before I even met Aloy, I was a soldier. I was,” here, Nil paused, teeth grit as though forcing the words from the depths of his chest, “I was the sharpest blade ever forged, and I reveled in it.”
Drakka held his tongue, though the urge to snap off a sharp response danced behind his teeth. He could see, however, how much simply speaking these words was costing his usually sarcastic and stoic lover.
“I was good at it, but it isn’t just that.” Nil’s odd silver eyes seemed to chill, seemed to freeze as though plunged into the deepest icy stream the Sky clan had ever plumbed. “I enjoyed it, sought out murder and the sickest atrocities a person could commit, and did so without a care in my heart. People were disposable to me. I could just as easily rip out the entrails of a person with my bare hands as hold a conversation with someone. I usually did hold a conversation with someone, typically my victims, and typically while I was in the middle of ripping out their entrails.”
Nil gave an unconcerned shrug. “I didn’t bathe in their blood, didn’t dress up in pieces of their flesh or carry pieces and parts of my victims with me, as some of the other soldiers would. That shit stinks after a few days, and I didn’t care about it. I didn’t care about them.I did it because it was fun.” He reached out and turned the rabbits on their spits, then pulled them from the fire and set them on unfolded River Bloom leaves to rest and cool. “I spent time in prison because of the horrors I committed, and when Aloy met me I was killing bandits because no one cares about them so I could kill them without repercussions.”
A chilling smile curled Nil’s lips even as his eyes warmed to their now typical silvered softness. Drakka raised a sarcastic brow at him, unimpressed. “I challenged Aloy to a duel, you know. To the death. When she denied me, I was furious, heart broken, but then I decided to fight at her battle because there was a high chance I wouldn’t live through it. It obviously didn’t work out that way.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?” Drakka demanded, finally feeling like he had Nil back. The sarcasm was definitely back.
“You need to know who you’ve let into your life, into your bed.” Nil turned his gaze out toward the night blanketed terrain outside of their shelter. “You need to end this, because I can’t. I don’t have the strength to leave you. I’ll keep coming back until you stop letting me.”
The crackle of the fire consumed the silence that fell between them at that pronouncement. Drakka was stuck staring at Nil’s profile, shocked, and Nil refused to tear his gaze from the landscape and meet the eyes of his lover.
For a moment, Drakka simply watched Nil hide his gaze. The hard line of his jaw, the full curve of lips and chin down into a strong neck, the breadth of his shoulders. They’d bathed together before night had fallen, laughing and just playing around in the water, so there was no paint to obscure the tattoos beneath Nil’s eyes, no armor buckled over his shoulders. They sat together in simply their shorts, clean skin, and bare feet.
Nil was probably the most beautiful man Drakka had ever seen, regardless of his past.
It hit him, then, exactly why Nil wouldn’t look at him, and Drakka’s heart squeezed tightly even as he wanted to slap the idiot on the back of the head and call him a moron.
This idiot, this utter dumbass, was actually afraid that he’d take him up on his offer to leave.
Drakka shook his head at himself. He was in love with a moron. It just figured that the one person who wasn’t put off by his personality, who actually wanted him to be himself and wouldn’t sneer at him for his sarcastic humor had to be an idiot about it.
There was just no help for it.
Finally, Drakka sighed and pushed himself to his feet. He moved around the fire to Nil’s side.
“You’re an idiot.” Drakka held a hand down to Nil. “Come on. Let’s go to bed.”
“But…” Nil looked up at him, lips parted, surprised.
“Yeah, yeah; big bad Carja soldier. I’m so scared,” Drakka said sarcastically. “Get your ass up and come to bed already.”
Nil sighed but took Drakka’s hand and stood, and then he caught Drakka’s shoulders and met his gaze seriously. “I love you, too, you know.”
“I know.” Drakka smirked. “I’m just that fucking loveable.”
Nil rolled his eyes. “You’re an—”
“Loveable!” Drakka cut in, grinning wider. “Naked. Bed. Now.”
“I don’t—”
“I will absolutely strip off your shorts, suck you until you’re ready, and then ride you like one of your Chargers,” Drakka cut in again, his expression suddenly determined and utterly serious. “Try to tell me you don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“How is that a reason to listen?” Nil asked, lips quirked on one side, allowing just a hint of the small gap between his teeth to be visible.
Drakka huffed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Because I would be the only one who gets to come. You’d have to wait until I’m ready to forgive you.”
Nil’s brows furrowed. “What—forgive me?”
“Forgiven, now let’s go to bed.” Drakka grinned wide and dropped his hands to the ties on either hip, tugging the lacing and letting the shorts fall to the dirt. He was already half-hard, despite the seriousness of their conversation, which immediately drew Nil’s eye as intended.
“You are,” Nil said as he watched the sway of Drakka’s arousal in the warm firelight, “a wily little bastard.”
“I get what I want.” Drakka shrugged and took Nil’s hands in his own, tugging gently to lead the taller man to the pallet they’d laid out earlier before their bath.
A huff escaped Nil’s lips and he shook his head, exasperated. “You sure do.” He pulled Drakka closer and dipped his head, nosing at the curve of Drakka’s neck. “Sun to Shadow,” he sighed, “I don’t deserve it, but I’m going to keep you.”
“You don’t get to decide what you deserve,” Drakka pointed out. “I do. That’s my job. I say you get to keep me until we’re sick of each other.”
“Fuck, I’m never escaping you, am I?” Nil teased, dragging his lips along the slope of Drakka’s neck and down to the junction of his shoulder. He grazed his teeth gently.
“You’re not lucky enough to escape,” Drakka agreed, head tipped back to give Nil more room. He eased them further back toward their pallet. “I’ll find you wherever you try to hide.”
Nil hummed against Drakka’s throat as he lowered them to the pallet. “You wouldn’t have to try that hard.” He pressed Drakka into the pallet, settled atop him, and began to drop kisses along his jaw. “I’ll always come home to you.”
“Good.”
~*~