Karik’s diary. He got up and fetched it from the writing desk, and turned to the date from which he had been forced to read in Deptonu’s settlement. He had thought it was an expression of friendship—true friendship—but now he realised it had been so much more. A cry from the heart, a heart so recently scarred—young, inexperienced but still full of the capacity to love. And Romi had just squashed it like a marsh bug.
He snapped the book shut. He had to fix this mess somehow. And he had to do it now.
It was pissing freezing up on deck, and Karik hadn’t taken his coat. Romi found his quarry hunched by the stairwell, and he might have thought the shivering was just because of the cold, if it weren’t for the tears on Karik’s face, glinting in the light of one of his fire sprites. He handed Karik his coat, and it was snatched from his hands. “Go away.”
“No. Put that on, you’ll freeze to death.”
“Who cares?”
Romi sighed, forcibly took the coat from Karik’s fingers and dropped it around his shoulders, pulling it tightly around him. “No need to be childish. Come down below and we can talk about this.”
“No. Leave me alone.” Karik turned so he was facing the wall. “ ‘m sorry I was so stupid,” he whispered.
Romi put his hands on Karik’s shoulders and made him turn around, before pulling him close, wrapping his arms around him both for warmth and for comfort. “It’s not you who should apologise, it’s me. I should never have let things get this far. I’m your superior—it’s actually illegal for me to even think the things...to want the things....” He made Karik look at him. “If you think you misread the situation, you didn’t,” he said quietly. “But I still can’t.”
Karik’s eyes were huge, wounded things as he looked up at Romi. “I’m your healer. It’s wrong of me too...but I can’t help it anyway.” He buried his face in Romi’s coat front, his body trembling with convulsive shivers.
Romi hesitantly laid his hand on Karik’s head, and gently petted his hair. Didn’t expect it to be so soft. “You’re not really my healer. Don’t worry about it.”
Karik lifted his head and glared furiously at him. “You’re not my superior either—at least you won’t be the moment we get home.”
“That’s a small but significant difference. Gods...I can’t do this. I can’t let you do this to yourself either. Look at you—you’re young, handsome, a prize for anyone. You’ve not even begun to explore what love is, and I’m too...battered...to let you use me for that.”
The glare became glacial, as Karik pushed him away, shrugging into his coat and doing it up, lips pressed thinly together. “I see. I’m a child and a selfish child at that. I guess I did misread things. I thought you liked me, thought you respected me. And all this time, you’ve been protecting yourself against my exploration.”
He pushed past Romi, but Romi couldn’t let him go with that mistaken assessment. He grabbed Karik’s shoulder and found himself being faced by a coldly hostile man. “Let go of me.”
He dropped his hand in shock at the bitterness in Karik’s voice—it was like that first time.... “You’re wrong. You’ve heard me wrong. I need you to hear me right.”
Karik’s hostile look became puzzled. “You said—”
“You heard wrong. Listen with your heart and not your head for a change!” Romi put his hands on him again, expecting a rebuff but receiving none. “It’s not you I’m afraid of,” he said quietly, drawing Karik close. “It’s me. I don’t want you to break my heart—but more than that, I don’t want to be the one to break yours. And I will. I would have to. First...first love....” He smiled to take the sting from his words. “Or whatever you call it...can’t last. Someone will break your heart for the first time. I just can’t bear it to be me.”
“You won’t be. Soza broke it first.”
“Karik...he never broke it because he never had it.”
Karik tilted his head quizzically. “I...could break your heart?”
“Easy as breathing.”
Karik stepped forward, sliding under his hands, and stood hard against him. He put his arms around Romi’s waist, looked up with those extraordinary eyes, and Romi was lost, irrevocably. “You could break my heart too. But you won’t.”
He leaned up, lips parted, so desperate, so beautiful. Romi should be stronger, resist this because it was so very wrong for them both, but there seemed nothing he could do but give in to the inevitable, meeting him halfway and pressing his mouth against Karik’s own. Gods, I’ve lost my mind. But he found it hard to care, just then.
The kiss went on and on, Karik resting trustingly in his embrace, letting Romi guide this moment as if Romi had the least damn idea what he was doing. He didn’t. All he knew was that this felt good and Karik was perfect in his arms, his lips soft and eager, his body a solid, delicious weight against him. It was a powerful, dangerous feeling, and Romi had no strength to fight it, and no will to try.
Finally, a little common sense prevailed, and he pulled back. Karik made a little noise of protest. “Your beard feels strange,” Romi said with a smile, his voice husky with lust. “And I’m freezing my damn balls off.”
“Cabin?” Karik’s voice was as rough as his own. He was already tugging Romi towards the stairs and to shelter. Romi let him lead—it wasn’t as if he knew what he should be doing any more.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Karik’s arms were around him again, and Romi was drawn into another enthusiastic, if rather artless kiss. The sheer clumsiness of it touched him unfathomably—knowing that he really was the first person Karik had ever done this with, frightened and amazed him, and left him with a huge responsibility. This had to be perfect.
“This is madness,” he murmured, leaning his forehead against Karik’s.
“Why?”
Romi pulled back to look into Karik’s smiling, puzzled eyes. “Because.... Damn it, there are a hundred reasons this is wrong, and only one that makes it right.”
“But the one reason...can help us find the answers to the hundred others?” Karik asked hopefully.
Romi shook his head, raising his hand to stroke along the peculiar coarseness of Karik’s short beard. It was odd, but not unpleasant. He resisted the urge to scritch his fingers in it, and sighed. “Love doesn’t, as a matter of fact, conquer all. Nor does lust. If anything, it just complicates things.”
“Oh. I wasn’t even thinking about lust.”
Romi mentally cursed himself again, taking Karik’s hands in his own. “We should slow down if that’s the case.”
“Oh!” Karik backed away a little. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean...I don’t want to tease....” His face had turned the most amazing red. “I just wanted to be close to you. I’m sorry.”
“You know, people I kiss don’t usually have to apologise this much,” Romi said, smiling to reassure him. “Come here.” Karik came into his arms without hesitation, and Romi held him tight against him. “You’re not a tease, but we should slow down and give this a bit of thought. There are all sorts of problems ahead of us, and I really don’t want you hurt.” He kissed Karik’s forehead again. “I won’t be the one to break your heart,” he said firmly. “I won’t allow that.”
“I know. But can we just...be together while we think? I miss you...I mean, sleeping with you. I just want to be near you.”
His expression was a mixture of hope and a little misery. Romi kissed his forehead again, and then, gently, kissed him on the lips. “I missed you too,” he admitted. “But, uh, sleeping together often leads to, er...sleeping together. You don’t want that yet, do you?”
Now it was just misery on Karik’s face as he shook his head. “I’m sorry....”
Romi made him look up, and stared into his eyes. “No more apologising. I understand. I think it’s a good thing we don’t—I’m breaking enough damn regulations as it is,” he muttered.
“I just want to touch you—I can’t stop,” Karik said, sounding rather confused by this phenomenon.
Romi grinned. “Now that’s normal. Why don’t we go to bed anyway? It’s late and I’m cold.”
“Um...will you kiss me again?”
For an answer, Romi did just that—regulations or no damn regulations, he couldn’t get enough of the way Karik melted against him. “Try and stop me.” Karik smiled under his lips. “I won’t ever do anything you don’t want me to, and you’re never to think you can’t tell me ‘no’, is that clear?”
“You too?”
“Absolutely. Now, bed.”
It was like coming home, having Karik nestling against him. “I really missed this,” Karik whispered, snuggling close with Romi’s arm around him. “You always felt so good.”
“You too—too damn good,” Romi said, tilting his head and kissing his companion again, to his companion’s obvious delight. He was glad Karik liked kissing—it was one of his favourite things in the world, and Karik felt wonderful, with lips almost too soft for a man’s but with the strangeness of the beard to make it real. He rubbed his fingers against the curly mass.
“This takes some getting used to.”
“Sorry.”
“No more apologising, I said.” He sighed, and held Karik a little closer, extinguishing the hovering fire sprite as he did so. “This doesn’t solve anything, you know. We still live at opposite ends of the country.”
“I’ll move. I’ll go wherever you are, I swear.”
“No, you won’t, damn it. I won’t let you throw your career away for me.”
He felt Karik move back a little. “I would give everything up for you,” he said in a low voice.
Romi sighed again, and found Karik’s face, so he could rest his cheek against his companion’s. “Yes, I know you would, but I can’t let you do that. A future can’t be built on a ruin.”
“You sound...like you regret this.”
Romi wove his fingers into the base of Karik’s braid, and began a gentle massage by way of apology. “No, I don’t. I just wish it was all as simple as you want it to be. My heart’s battered, I told you that. I can’t help but see the possible problems.”
He entwined his fingers in Karik’s. “This may not end how you want it, but my feelings are real, and I want you, and this. I just won’t promise more than I have, and I don’t want you to sacrifice your life.”
“You’re all I want,” Karik said stubbornly.
“Oh yes? So you’d be happy to never see your Ma and Pa and Kei and Jes again, just to be with me? You’d give up your important work for me?” Karik didn’t answer, but his complete stillness was enough for Romi. “I won’t be the cause of you losing them. Don’t ask it of me.”
“I can’t bear it if we have to part, Romi. It’s been tearing at me for weeks, you know it has.”
“I know, I know.” Romi kissed him again. Karik reached up to touch his face and Romi caught his fingers to kiss those too. “It’s not fair on you, I know, cynical old me pouring cold water on your happiness. But I can’t help it—not after Daiso. Forgive me?”
“Nothing to forgive, Romi. It’s...hard...to hear it. But I promise to be brave about it. I won’t whine.”
“Thank you.” He held Karik more tightly, wishing that somehow a solution would just magically appear, but the odds were very much against them. “I could never regret you. I’ll always be glad I met you, that we became friends.”
“You said ‘what about memories?’ Can we...make memories here, now? While we can? Even if...we can’t be together?”
“Of course we can. Why be miserable before we need to? That’s just silly.”
For an answer, Karik leaned up and kissed him again, and tucked his hand under Romi’s armpit, cuddling close like he was trying to get inside Romi’s skin. Romi felt like a boor, bringing hard realities into Karik’s first experience of intimacy, and in truth, he was so intoxicated by being able to hold him in this way, knowing he was welcomed and desired, that he found it hard to be realistic.
But he would not allow Karik to suffer because of false promises or dishonesty. There was pain ahead for both of them, and he couldn’t prevent it all—but he would do what he could, he vowed, his hand resting over Karik’s heart.
Staying Power: 42
Karik had always considered himself a steady person, even rather dull. Not prone to emotional storms, or fancies. The attack in Visiqe had rocked that view of himself, and he was far more volatile after the attack than he had been before it. But that was as nothing to the giddy way his feelings now swooped and plummeted from minute to minute. From the headiest joy when Romi smiled at him, lean in to give Karik one of his oh-so-wonderful kisses, or run his fingers along Karik’s beard or down his braid, to the deepest depression when he realised that only this one thing had changed, and their fate was still to be separated, his emotions rang the changes all his waking hours and left him, at times, exhausted and fretful.
Romi seemed unaffected, but then he was good at projecting calm confidence when he wasn’t deathly ill, so Karik didn’t know how much was genuine calmness and how much not. All he knew was that Romi’s hand on him could send him into ecstasy, and his lips were the sweetest thing Karik had ever known. Being with Romi, having his arm around him, made him tremble with pleasure, with the need to be closer, to touch, to taste. No matter how much he got of Romi’s caresses, he always wanted more—embarrassing, when he had never been a slave to any appetite. He discovered that he could be very greedy when he was offered what he truly wanted.
Very little changed, and yet everything had changed. They spent their days in the cabin as before, but now fingers brushed along hands and arms, and there was always time for a gentle kiss, a smile at the way words could have several meanings if spoken with affection. Romi’s arm would steal around Karik’s waist as they talked, or he would take Karik’s hand in his own big paw, brown and callused against Karik’s pale skin, his long fingers exploring the lines and dimples of Karik’s palm with surprising delicacy. When Romi loosed his braid in the morning to groom it, it was natural for Karik to be the one to comb it carefully and plait it with love, and Romi took as much pleasure from braiding Karik’s own hair. Each touch carried a message—’you are loved, you are wanted, you are needed’—and every look betrayed longing that this strange little idyll might never end.
Nothing in his life had prepared him for this. All the little crushes and unrequited longings he had experienced before were weak and feeble sensations compared with this desperate desire. His body was one huge urge, one unsatisfied itch. He felt so good when they lay together at night, so at peace, but his body would not let go of this nagging want. It was what it wanted, that scared him to death.
Romi assured him there was no hurry for more than kisses and hugs, nothing more they needed to do. That was a kind lie. Even if he’d been the innocent everyone assumed he was, spending any time with his parents or Kei and Arman would make it obvious that a healthy, loving relationship involved healthy, loving sex. He knew perfectly well what men did together too. Not only had it been part of his training because healers had to know the potential health risks, but also Kei, the only person in his intimate circle to whom he had confessed that he really preferred male beauty to that of women, had answered his embarrassed questions as honestly and openly as he did everything else.
That wasn’t the same as really knowing, not the same as feeling, but he had nothing to use as a reference. Sex with Mila had been a hurried, awkward thing, for all that the three of them had wanted a child, and Karik had never seen it as anything to do with his own desires or sexual feelings, never thought it made him in the least bit experienced. It roused no emotions in him other than the joy of being part of Jes’s creation.
That wasn’t true for his only other experience of sex. Confused, fractured memories of the attack tormented him, dark dreams made him wake gasping at night in horror. Worse—Romi kept inadvertently setting Karik’s terrors off. He could gently stroke Karik’s face nine times in a row, and evoke nothing but pleasure—the tenth time
would trigger uncontrollable shaking, and Karik would be lost inside his panic, caught by reactions he simply could not control or predict.
The first time it happened, Romi waited patiently for the fit to end, and then took Karik into his arms. “Feeling better?” he asked quietly, kissing Karik’s forehead.
“I’m s-sorry.” His teeth were still chattering, and he could hardly make out his own words.
“What for?”
“B-Being so s-stupid.”
“I see.” He just sat back on the bunk and pulled Karik closer. Karik loved resting in his arms—it made him feel warm and wanted—and as Romi stroked his hair, not saying anything, his steady breathing helped him calm down. “As a scientist, what would you say was happening? If you saw this in someone else?”
“My m-mind....”
Romi held his hand up. “No—pretend it’s someone else. Observe it from the outside. What you would see, not what you’re feeling.”
Karik frowned, and concentrated. “I wuh-would see...a s-simple action, setting off an e-extreme reaction.”
“Yes. And knowing nothing of what the person was feeling, but knowing the background, what would you guess was going on?”
“Th-Their m-memories...are being dredged up?” Romi nodded, clearly waiting for him to continue. “The action...is something that huh-happened...before...and...somehow...I—they—know.”
“Yes.” Romi kissed him then, long and sweet, and then took his hand. “So why apologise when you can’t control it, and it would be the same no matter who it happened to?”
“I h-hate this,” Karik spat, furious at the way his mind and body betrayed him.
“I know how you feel. Every time I think about what I could be doing, but can’t—for now at least, until I recover—I feel trapped. But I’m getting better—and so are you. Don’t tell me, as a scientist, you couldn’t have predicted a little of this.”
Staying Power (Darshian Tales #3) Page 53