Chapter Text
I find you again, years later. A decade? I’m not sure.
The years haven’t been kind to you, but then again, I’m don’t think they know what kindness is. I’m doing my best not to forget either. I tell myself it may be the thing you loved about me, amongst other things. That I can’t lose it. But I don’t know, we never got that far, never got to talk.
The world hasn’t been good to you either. Wolves, at the moment, infection, and a sickness I can smell from the roof of the hideout that’s going to become your grave tonight.
Not if I can help it.
You’re a hard man to find, but then again, not to me. Was that on purpose? Even Brencis needed my help back then, offered me everything I thought I ever wanted in return. I keep thinking, maybe it was just a play, toying with me, seeing if I would. But he wouldn’t have offered so much if that were true.
I don’t know. I never will now. Bastard’s dead and gone, doubt I’d find him even in Anachora.
Doesn’t matter. Found you. And just in the nick of time.
“Are you gonna come in? Or just hang from the rafters like a bat?”
Have I started to forget your voice? I don’t know. It sounds like thaw when I hear it then. Fresh, quiet. I savour it. I drop to the floor, let you hear my weight, my body. Let myself take up the space. It’s the little things that keep you human.
“Just admiring the sights.” Can’t keep my eyes off you. You can barely keep your eyes open, though much like with anything else in life, you put up a good fight.
“It’s good to see you, old friend.” You mean it, and you mean more than just friends. I can hear that tone in your voice that’s for me and no one else.
“Your men are further down the mountain,” I say. No need to hide any more. “Told them you were infectious.”
“Oh.” You realise what I mean, what I’ve done. Just you and me tonight. “Might as well be true. I feel like shit.” You cough as if to prove your point. Even without my senses I can tell that it’s not good. With my senses I hear tissue tear, mucus clog.
I sit down on your bedside. I’m very close, very suddenly, and neither of us knows how to take it. Too used to hiding, defences, distance.
“It’s not the plague.”
“What, are you a doctor now?”
I take your hand. Small steps.
“Coen, what are you—“ You sit up, pull away. I let go, but don’t move. Don’t look away, I can’t. I’ve missed you.
I should tell you these things. You deserve to hear them.
“I missed you. It’s good to see you.” A lot of other things. Perhaps later.
You smile, miserable and in pain, but the sentiment is real. I can feel you pulse, weak and sluggish, making an effort to quicken at my proximity. Fear and attraction sound the same.
“Why are you here?”
Ever the paranoid. It’s good. It’s kept you alive this long. Strangely enough, I realise it makes me feel safe. Only half the things hunting me can get to me near you.
“You’re hurt.” Deep cuts along your ribs, over your back and side. Infected. It’s a race now, what will finish you off first. We’ll never know.
“Coen, please. If there’s anything I can do for you, there isn’t much time.”
I look up, my eyes catch the light of the simmering hearth. Your heart beats, and I wonder if you could unlearn that fear with time. If anyone could. Or if it just sits too deep.
“So you know.”
You nod, sagging against the headboard. You look away, hesitating. I watch your face as you turn your words over and over in your head, weighing risks, resources, opportunities. I wait.
“Would you laugh if I said I was waiting for you?” You don’t look at me. Your father’s shame sits deep. “Hoping you’d come.”
My heart seizes, a pain so delicious I cannot help my smile, the little intake of breath. It hurts to think of you alone, hoping, battling down your own expectations, trying not to get hurt by disappointment. I reach for you again, and this time you don’t pull away.
“No,” I say quietly. I squeeze your hand. “I… I’m sorry I left you waiting.”
You shake your head immediately, wave me off and try to absolve me of what the world has done to us.
“Don’t be. It’s… better this way. Yes.” You look down at our hands, your thumb traces over a claw. “I’d have slipped. With you here. I don’t think I could’ve kept it a secret.”
“No. I wouldn’t want you to.”
You laugh. “Yeah, you’d have been of no help, like with Catalin back then.”
I too have to smile, thinking of memories that seem golden in past sunlight. Then you cough again. I catch you, hold you up. There’s blood on your hands. Your skin is cold, clammy, and you sag into my touch, your strength to hold yourself up is leaving you.
“Coen, please. I appreciate you coming, you have no idea how much I do. But you don’t have to be here for this.”
For your dying.
“I’m not leaving, Marat.”
“What are you—“
I pull out a vial of blood so red it’s black in the dim light of the hut.
I had to ask a friend. Not Lacra, not Vicho, not this time. New friends, new enemies. They pitied me when I asked for their blood, undiluted fresh vrakhir blood. Either they knew or they guessed what it was for, and they pity me for the heartbreak that is to come. Loving you, loving any of you - my father, my mother, Yenna, Mirto, even Lunca - there’s nothing but pain and grief on my horizon.
I haven’t let that stop me so far. I try to stay kind. I try to watch the sunrise. Because while it hurts, there is also plenty of this. You, in my arms, looking at me.
“No.”
Your pride, your eyes on me. Would I do anything to keep this?
I think of Xanthe, of others I’ve met in the meantime. I hope not. I help you lean against the headboard and sit back, I let go. I hand you the vial.
“It’s from a friend of mine, from earlier tonight,” I start to explain.
“Why not yours?”
“I’m not fully vrakhir, not even at night. My blood, it wouldn’t help. Not enough.”
You eye me, suspicion and paranoia. Another thing I love about you. Even with all there is between us, I am never exempt from your suspicions, never free of your scrutiny. It makes me feel safe. If ever I start to slip, to become like Brencis or Xanthe or Bhakir or Ambrose, you’d notice.
“And this… friend. They know of me?”
I wince. “No. I did not tell them what I needed it for, and they did not ask. But while there are many applications for fresh vrakhir blood, there are few that I know, and fewer I would ask for.”
“They know you have a lover.” The word is cold in your mouth, like the glint of a blade. I want to shy away from it, but I don’t. I always knew this was a risky move. If your suspicion and this pain are the last things I’ll ever get from you, I want them.
“They know I have someone I care about enough to ask.”
You turn the vial over in your hands. “What are the conditions.”
I want to reach out, touch your hands, your sunken face. But I’m getting nothing if not good at taming my desires.
“None. It was freely given.”
You nod. “And you want me to drink this.”
I do, I desperately do. “It will cure the illness, rid you of the infection, the fever. Then your wounds can heal, and you can recover.”
“So that you can keep watching over me, like I watch over Ascar.”
Guilty as charged. I don’t deny it, don’t try to play it off.
“I can leave, if you want. I…” My throat works, my mouth is so dry, suddenly. I told myself I’d be honest, made sure to set everything up that I could. Turns out the one thing I didn’t account for was my courage failing me.
I feel your hand on my shoulder. Hot and heavy, lingering on my back for a moment. I close my eyes and force myself to say the truth.
“I love you.” Alright. Continue. “I miss you. I think about coming back to see you all the time, but I don’t. You’re busy, and this— it’s not what you want to do with your life, I know. Always careful, always running. You’re too good a man for that, you want to help, and your men won’t follow you if they knew.” I swallow. I miss Anca then. I could have practised this with her. “So yeah, I ask around, I listen for you when I can. I want to hear that you’re well. Terrorising some monster, human or otherwise. I know this can’t be, I know I can’t stay, no matter if you or I want me to.”
I look at you. I can’t read your face. Out of practice.
“Coen…”
“I don’t want you to die,” I whisper. I don’t mind the tears, I’m too busy keeping my hands still, but you do. You make the valiant effort to reach for me, brush the off my cheeks.
“Even if I drink this, you’re outliving me, Coen. You already are.”
New tears. “I know.” Deep breaths. Keep going. “It’ll hurt then or it’ll hurt now, I know. It’s… it’s your choice. It will not harm you, it will not change you. It was freely given, it’s fresh.” My hands are wound together so tight they’d hurt if I could feel anything over the ache in my chest. “That’s all I could do.”
You watch me. Suspicion, scrutiny, paranoia. I do my very best to let you. I sit there, keep my hands still and my mouth shut, and let you see your fill.
You lift the vial, tilt it, watch the liquid move. Something in me pulls me to it, even to the blood of my own kind.
“All this effort, all this fighting, and all this loss, only to drink this filth again, out of my own volition,” you say. I say nothing. Keep my fucking word, best as I can manage.
You look at me. “Your friend. Why did they help you?”
I look at you, gauge the intent. I never learned what you sound like when you’re jealous, there wasn’t the time. I smile. “We trade in favours. To keep ourselves busy between other things, entertained. She raise horses, far south of here. She said next time I have to help her break the young stallions.”
Your eyes are heavy on me, assessing whether I’m lying to you.
Marat, I wouldn’t know how.
Then you smile, laugh. It turns into a cough immediately, the sudden movement too much irritation for you lung, but when it finally eases up, when you can pull back from where I’ve caught you, you’re still grinning, blood on your teeth.
“I like her already. Alright.” When you can breathe again I sit back, hands to myself. You settle back, hold up the vial. “Alright.”
And then you drink it. So fast, no preamble, you knock it back like a shot. I stare, watching your throat work, your tongue licking over your lips, chasing the last drop. The low light of the glimmering coals catches in your hair, your eyelashes. I listen to you breathe a moan of relief as the blood does its work, and your breathing gets easier, and the ache in your body fades.
As soon as you can, you shake yourself. “Urgh, and I’d almost forgotten what that tasted like.”
You look up at me and catch me staring, eyes wide and reflective in the firelight, unable to look away.
“I can help you with that,” I whisper, my voice a rasp. You can hear it all, my elation, my desperation, my hunger. You grin, the blood still on your teeth, and lie back, comfortable for the first time in weeks. You look so good when you’re teasing me. Your hair spills out around you, your weeks old beard hides your jawline, some of your smile.
“And how would you do that?”
I am over you before either of us can blink, holding myself above you, my hands clenched with the effort of keeping myself still. What if I’m wrong, what if you don’t mean it? Whatever you want, I deserve it, but what if—what if—what if—
“C’mon, Coen,” you whisper, your voice just as wrecked as mine.