Page 14

Chapter Fourteen

S o they kept trying. They glared at Angharad in Lyford’s bedroom, where they’d had years and years and years of sex. They glared at her in the stables, surrounded by all of Lyford’s horses. They glared at her out in the barn with the cows lowing gently around them. They brought her back in for another feeding when she woke up, as Mrs Hart had instructed, and then took her out to the orchards, and then to the manor kitchen since the day was starting to go and Tam didn’t at all like the idea of Angharad taking the slightest chill.

And then, somewhere in all that glaring and pushing at himself to grow and do better and understand , some small thing clicked into place in Tam’s mind.

There was something wrong. Something small and—and hidden , like voles or grubs eating away at the roots of a plant, undetected on the surface until the whole plant collapsed at once. He tried to push harder, to see what it was, or where it was, or—or anything...

“I’m getting a headache,” Lyford sighed. “Maybe we should take her back to Isa and have some supper.”

Tam looked up from Angharad slowly, cold fear kindling into rage. “You’re not trying ,” he snarled. “Fuck your headache. She’s sick. ”

“No sicker than she was yesterday,” Lyford said, rubbing his forehead. “We’ve been working all day. We ought to take care of ourselves too. We won’t be any good to her if we run ourselves off our feet.”

“There’s something wrong with her!”

“Yes, she was born too early and she’s little— ”

“Go fuck yourself, ” Tam screamed at him, which woke Angharad up rather definitively. He clutched her to his chest and strode out of the kitchen and down the hall to the library, where Mrs Hart was already setting aside her book and reaching out for her baby.

“Are you comfortable, Isa?” Lyford asked, in that infuriatingly calm voice that Tam hated more than anything else.

“Yes, your lordship—er, Lord Nicolau—”

“Really, just Nicolau is fine,” he said firmly. Just as firmly, he took Tam’s arm. “I need to speak with Tam privately, if you’ll excuse us.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” Tam snapped. “Fuck off.”

“That’s nice. I have something to say to you, though.” Lyford dragged him out of the library and down the hall to his study, where he released Tam and quietly shut the door behind them. He kept his hand resting on the door for a moment, breathing deep and slow. Tam seethed and went to the window, glaring out at the stupid fucking gardens around the house, the stupid fucking orchard beyond them, the stupid— everything, everything, the whole world—

“I understand that you’re scared and frustrated,” Lyford said, infuriatingly calm.

“I said go fuck yourself,” Tam said. “You’re not even trying. ”

“I am trying. I am trying as best I know how.” He heard Lyford’s footsteps across the rug, heard the creak of the desk as if he’d perched on the edge of it. Tam could just picture him, arms crossed, so fucking calm. “You’re treating me abominably again. I thought we were past this.”

Tam whirled on him—he was sitting exactly as Tam had imagined. “I’m trying to save her life! She’s not fine, she’s not, there’s something wrong and I can’t see what, and you’re being no help at all!”

“Maybe I could be more of a help if I wasn’t spending half my energy walking on eggshells trying not to offend you, ” Nicolau replied. There was just an edge of sharpness in his voice. He never spoke sharply to Tam; he never spoke sharply to anyone. Tam hated it. He hated the calmness, he loathed how fake it was.

“Who the fuck cares about offending me!” he shouted. “We have a job to do, asshole, and you’re just—”

“Stop speaking to me like that,” Nicolau snapped. “I don’t like it .”

“I’ll speak to you however I fucking want to, as long as you’re—”

Nicolau surged off the desk and into Tam’s space. “ No, you won’t!”

Tam staggered half a step back in shock. Nicolau had never once raised his voice in anger, never, in all the years Tam had ever known him.

Nicolau’s fists were clenched at his side—every muscle of him was quivering-tense—his eyes were flashing, his color high. “You won’t speak to me however you fucking want,” he said loudly. “I understand that you are scared and frustrated, but you have no right to take it out on me.”

“She’s in there—”

“Shut up! Gods! Brassu’s balls , Tam, shut up for once in your life! Stop changing the subject! I’m not talking about Daisy, I’m talking about the way you treat me. ” All the fight went out of him all at once, all that quivering tension and the flash in his eyes... He stepped back, fell into the chair by the desk, and buried his face in his hands. “ Angarat ,” he said, with a sort of half-furious despair that pierced Tam to the heart. That’s how he’d felt on the road back from the Highlands. Fuck. “Angarat, how long am I supposed to keep trying with him?”

Tam’s throat closed up. Part of him wanted to look around in the hopes that the Lady of Lambs would appear from nowhere and fix everything. The rest of him knew that she wouldn’t.

He stood there by the window, and he hated himself. He was awful. Worse than a goblin. Even with all the apologies in the world, even with all the quests in the world to force him through his personal growth, that terrible truth still remained: He was no one but himself, Tam Becket, and he was unlovable.

Worse than that—more hateful than that—he was selfish. Even now, with Nicolau shouting at him, crying in front of him, he was thinking only of himself and what a terrible, wretched person he was. Maybe he should have been Idunet’s.

But he wasn’t. He was Angarat’s somehow, even though he didn’t deserve to be. Angarat had pushed him and Nicolau together, because...

Because Nicolau was the only one patient enough to fight his way past all of Tam’s thorny hedges. Because Tam wanted so badly to be loved, and Nicolau wanted so badly to love him, apparently. At least according to Kel Gauda, who might or might not know what he was talking about.

But that was still selfish, wasn’t it? It had to benefit Nicolau too, but Tam didn’t know how it possibly could, not when the other person involved was as awful as Tam Becket.

Nicolau just sat there with his hands over his face, and Tam stood there hating himself, sick with terror that all the work he’d done in the past few weeks, trying to fight forward to something better with Nicolau, might be—falling—to pieces—smashing on the floor—

When he’d come home and collapsed at the sight of Nicolau flying down the lane toward him, Nicolau had embraced him, held him together, cared for him. Tam had thought he’d let that caring in, but maybe he hadn’t, not really. Not fully. Maybe that was the most hateful thing about him, that inability to let it in.

But he wasn’t Idunet’s, and caring focused inward to the self was not his strength. He was Angarat’s—caring focused outward. That was, theoretically, his greatest power. Or it should have been, except that something had gone wrong somewhere.

He didn’t want to be Tam Becket anymore. He didn’t want it. He hated it, and he didn’t want to keep taking it out on everyone else. On Nicolau.

He dropped to his knees by Nicolau’s chair and, tentatively, slipped his arms around Nicolau’s shoulders. “You’re right,” he whispered against Nicolau’s shoulder. “You’re right. I’m sorry. You’re right.” He had that throttling sensation, once again, that a mere apology was not going to be enough. Was never going to be enough. “Please,” he whispered. “Please. I’m trying too. Please don’t give up on me yet.”

“What’s my name, ” Nicolau choked out from behind his hands. The emotion in his voice hurt. It hurt Tam right in the center of his chest.

“Nicolau,” he sniffled. “Your name is Nicolau, and I’m sorry, I’m trying— I swear I’m trying, please.”

Nicolau slid out of his chair to the floor and—and fucking wept , great wrenching, racking sobs that terrified Tam down to the roots of his soul, and all he could do was cling around him and try to hold tight enough to keep him from falling apart. He didn’t know what else to do, and he was so, so scared.

And fuck, he was furious. If he’d ever seen Lyford—Nicolau—cry like this because of anyone else, Tam would have destroyed that person’s life. He would have been the nastiest, pettiest, most awful villain. He would have spread insidious gossip about them like poison on a bed of weeds. He would have torn them down. He would have uprooted them and cut them apart and salted the fields behind him.

He didn’t know what to do with all that rage directed at himself. It burned through him—but maybe he needed to burn his fields to ashes to be renewed, to sprout something worthwhile. So he stood back, and let it spread, and felt it, watched it, paid ruthless attention instead of fighting against it or turning away: Nicolau was right; Tam was wrong. He had done wrong again, and in the same way he always did—infuriating, infuriating, how did anyone stand this, how did anyone stand him? He had a field of thorns and weeds within him, useless to anyone but the birds, and he was fed up with it and wanted to be rid of it, and so he was going to destroy it.

He took Nicolau by the shoulders and pushed him just far enough away that Tam could see him. “Hey,” he said sternly. “Take your hands down. Look at me.”

Nicolau obeyed, wearily—gods, that expression made Tam so angry. Hopeless, exhausted, hurt. His fault. His face was wet; his eyes and nose and mouth were red.

Tam set his jaw, called up every ounce of obstinance he had, and dug in his heels against himself. “ Listen to me ,” he said fiercely, shaking Nicolau’s shoulders a little. “I’m sorry. I fucked up, talking to you like that. And I am never going to do that again. ”

Nicolau looked even more tired and hopeless. His eyes welled up again; his mouth trembled. He looked as small and hurt as Tam had felt at age nine with that marrow smashed on the floor.

How many of Nicolau’s marrows had Tam smashed over the years? Nicolau had kept hoping , he’d always kept hoping, and Tam kept taking those hopes and breaking them to pieces, again and again and again. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair when it had happened to him, and it wasn’t fair for him to keep doing it to Nicolau. It wasn’t fair.

His throat felt so tight it was painful. “ Listen ,” he said, his eyes burning. “Never again. That was the last time I speak like that to you. On Angarat and Angharad, I swear it. If I should fail, may the Lady of Lambs never smile on my fields again—may she withdraw her favor from me entirely, because I won’t deserve it anymore, if I ever deserved it in the first place. Never again, Nicolau. ”

Nicolau dug for a handkerchief in his pocket and dried his eyes, his breath still hitching now and again. “What am I supposed to do?” he said thickly.

“I don’t know,” Tam said, still fierce. “Send me away to Brassing-on-Abona so you never have to look at me again, maybe. I’d do it.”

“I can’t do that.” Tam hated that tone—small and defeated.

“Then you’ll just have to keep me around where I can keep fucking up. And I will try my fucking best to figure out new, exciting ways of fucking up instead of—instead of the same old hateful, boring ones. Alright?” He loathed this. He felt shaky and fragile in his chest, as if he were about to shatter. Fuck it. He slogged forward through the muck. “You don’t need to give me another chance or any of that bullshit. Because that was the last bloody time that happens, ever.”

Nicolau wiped his face with the handkerchief and studied him, sober and sad yet... yet maybe... Maybe just a tiny seedling of... not-quite-hope.

“You’re too nice for me, you know,” Tam said, his voice cracking. He let go of Nicolau’s shoulders and sat back. “You deserve better than an awful fucking goblin. I don’t know why Angarat thinks we’re any good for each other. I’ve never been any good for you, have I.”

“Yes, you have,” Nicolau whispered, looking down at the handkerchief crumpled in his hands. “You didn’t start treating me differently after I inherited the manor. Everyone else did. My sisters, and the servants, and everyone in the village. No one here was my friend anymore, except you.” Tam hurt, and felt like choking on his anger. “And you’re real . You don’t ever hide your emotions, even when they’re fucking irritating .” Nicolau swallowed and looked away. “I think that if you hadn’t been here, I’d have a hard time remembering that anger even exists. You—you stir up the soil. A harrowing, in the agricultural sense.”

“You’re never angry.”

“I know. Even when I ought to be, it doesn’t come naturally to me.” He looked bitter, tired, lonely. “Maybe that’s something that I should work on.”

“Yes,” Tam said vehemently. “You should. You should be angry with me a lot more often.”

“It’s not fair to be angry at you.”

“It damn well is.”

“No, it isn’t.” Nicolau whispered, as if this were something devastating. “There’s always a reason you act like that. You’re scared or frustrated, or the shop isn’t doing well, or—”

“Stop it. Stop, ” Tam snapped. “You said I don’t get to speak to you however I like, and you’re right , so don’t give me that tripe about reasons. I don’t deserve that sort of blind empathy. Nobody does.”

Nicolau closed his eyes and tipped his head back against the side of the desk. He swallowed again, his throat bobbing, and he whispered, “Well, I don’t know how to stop doing it, so don’t ask me to.”

Fuck. Fucking... Angarat. Checkmate. She’d gotten them good. “Fine, whatever you say. But it is fair to be angry at me. You don’t have to swallow it down—I fucking hate it when you do that, I can always tell when you’re faking it and pretending to be a patient bloody saint . Pisses me off like nothing else. That’s the person I’m talking to when I’m calling you an asshole, you know. And it is a bit of an asshole move. It’s lying.”

“It’s good manners.”

Tam made a scathing noise. “Manners! It damn well isn’t manners when it’s me . Do you have any idea how much more I’d like you if you started telling me off more often? If you were real?” He extended a leg and lightly kicked Nicolau’s ankle. “Meet me in the fucking middle, at least. I already swore up and down that I’d be nicer to you, so you have to swear that you’ll be meaner to me.”

“I don’t want to be mean to you.”

“Just a bit! Gods, man, now who’s stubborn! Just be mean enough to say, ‘Fuck off, Tam’ when I’m running my mouth like a complete bitch.”

“You’d hate it. You’d take enormous offense.”

“Well—yeah, probably! Probably for a while! I can’t grow you this marrow overnight, Nicolau. But I’ll also fucking respect you for it, and I absolutely don’t respect it when you’re simpering and sighing and pretending like you’re not furious. So that’s some bloody improvement, isn’t it?” Nicolau still didn’t look convinced. Tam was warming to the idea, though—it felt right. It felt like the path forward, like a wheat field that could grow if it had this thing it had been missing. “Don’t you want to?” he whispered, scooting up closer to Nicolau and leaning in. “Don’t you just want to go rabid sometimes? Wouldn’t that feel great ? You should try it. You should tell me off.”

“I already did,” Nicolau said bitterly. “I’m tired now.”

“You haven’t told me off about the Angharad business yet. Go on. You’ve been gritting your teeth all fucking afternoon. Let me have it, and then I’ll snap at you, and you can snap at me, and then we’ll make up and feel better and come up with something new to try.”

Nicolau opened his eyes and studied Tam again for a long, silent moment. “We haven’t fought like this before.”

That was true. Most of the time it was just Tam saying something bitchy, and Lyford sighing or pursing his lips silently, which sent Tam into a rage, so then he had to either stomp away to sulk, or be worse and worse until Lyford actually looked honestly annoyed . “Yeah. Can’t stand it when you don’t even react. The earlier you snap at me, the shorter the fights have to be.” Gods, what an intoxicating thought. He could picture it: forgetting himself and doing something a bit rude or abrasive just because he wasn’t in the habit of being sweet, and Nicolau saying, “Oi, ouch,” right away—he could picture himself jumping with surprise like he just had a few minutes ago, saying sorry reflexively before the rest of his brain caught up with what was happening and had time to be angry about it, and then...

Then the fight would just... go away. As easily and effortlessly as stepping on Nicolau’s toes by accident and jumping away when Nicolau squeaked in pain. Just sorry and then maybe are you alright if it had been a particularly ill-timed one, and then it would be done. And then he’d like Nicolau more for that. He would. He already liked that imaginary version of Nicolau who wasn’t a bloody faker.

Gods, what would they even talk about, if they weren’t having fights anymore?

Maybe just... normal things. The things everyone talked about. How the farms were doing, things that were happening in the village and across the manor, people who needed help, whether Nicolau might let him have some space in his kitchen garden to play with...

Nicolau was still looking somber. Uncertain. Tam considered his options, considered how nice it had felt to be held when he was upset, considered the realistic likelihood of Nicolau slapping his hands away and taking offense at impertinence... He hadn’t slapped Tam for hugging him, a minute ago. That was something.

Tam braced himself, shoved away a powerful desire to throw himself out of the window rather than do what he was about to do, and took Nicolau’s hand. “I’m sorry that I was mean.”

Nicolau blinked. Tam might have done the same. It felt... different. It felt like a different kind of apology. One that meant more, maybe—one that wasn’t just useless, empty words.

“Goblin,” Nicolau whispered, accusatory but... gentle. “It’s not fair to be angry at me because I’m having a hard time doing something that comes easily for you.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

“It’s even less kind to be angry at me when we’re both struggling.”

It wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t pleasant, hearing this. He didn’t like it. “You’re right, it’s not,” he forced himself to say. “I was... scared and frustrated, like you said.” Not the words that he would have chosen for himself, but they were probably also truer than what he would have said.

Nicolau sniffled and looked a bit mollified. “We’re supposed to be on the same side,” he said, in a voice that hurt Tam all over again. “I want to be on your side, but you attack me as soon as things start going wrong.”

Tam looked down at the carpet. Nicolau was still holding his hand. That was something. “If it helps at all, in the absence of you, I generally attack myself just as badly, or worse.”

Nicolau squeezed his hand and sniffled again. “Maybe you ought to promise to be nicer to Tam as well, as long as you’re promising to be nicer to me.”

Tam winced.

“Maybe that’s your third quest,” Nicolau continued, because he was still an utter prick. “Grow a giant marrow for Angarat, call me Nicolau, and be nice to my—my friend.”

Friend, was it? Was that what they were? After twenty years of squabbling, and a bit more than ten years of fucking? “Asshole,” Tam grumbled without heat. Nicolau laughed wetly and wiped his face again. “Fine. Are we done fighting?”

“I don’t know. Are we?”

“Do you want to snap at me for anything else?” Nicolau shook his head. “Are you going to accept my apology?”

“Oh—yes. Apology accepted.” Nicolau paused and looked down at his lap. “I’m sorry for—saying what I said to Angarat in front of you, about ‘How long will I have to keep trying?’ I’m sorry.”

“Oh, fuck off, you’ve got every right to say that.”

“No, it wasn’t fair. You weren’t being cruel to me the way you would have been three or four months ago, shouting at me and storming off. You weren’t even actually angry at me, just frustrated and loud. It upset me because it felt like before, and I shouldn’t have said what I said, as if you were doing the same thing you’ve always done.” His mouth twisted. Tam squeezed his hand, his heart aching. “You’re right that you can’t grow a marrow overnight.”

“Yeah, takes at least a few days, I hear,” Tam said weakly. He sniffled, and was surprised when a couple of hot tears spilled over his cheeks at his next blink. He scrubbed them off with his sleeve and hauled himself together. “You really didn’t have to say sorry for that. But—thanks. I guess. Apology accepted.” The words felt strange and awkward in his mouth, like trying to carry several bricks at once in his bare hands. He cast around for something else, something easier, something that might make Nicolau laugh again and clear the air... “Is that it? What are we supposed to do now? I don’t know how to end a fight except by storming out and not speaking to you for a week.”

It did get another soft huff of a laugh as Nicolau folded his damp handkerchief neatly and tucked it into his pocket. But then he said: “I don’t know how to end a fight except by watching you storm out and then moping alone in my room for as long as I can get away with, so I’m not much help here.” Tam’s heart twisted again. Fuck. He’d never thought of what Lyford did afterwards. “I’ve heard people talking about the fact that one should kiss and make up, but not about how it’s done.”

Tam managed to clamp down on the impulse to flinch a split second before it happened—clamped down secondly on the impulse to hurl himself out the window—dug in his heels against himself, hauled on the reins until the spooked horse of his worse self stopped dancing about and saying no thank you!

He’d never kissed Lyford outside of... well, sex. He’d never kissed him just to kiss him.

“I think probably we just do it,” Tam said vaguely.

“Do what?”

“Kiss.”

Tam scooted closer and leaned forward as Nicolau said, “Wait, what?” and then, “Oh,” and then, breathlessly, just before Tam kissed him, “Wow, okay, yes—”

His mouth was as plush and warm as ever, but the kiss was so much softer, shallower, slower. Not a mad rush to devour each other, for once, but—something else.

Tam sat back on his heels after a moment, absolutely sure he was fiery scarlet and unable to look at Nicolau at all. He felt strange. Confused, both in his mind, because he didn’t know what to think, and in the rest of him, because his skin was prickling with desire and warmth was pooling in his groin as if his whole body had lit up and said, Oh, are we having him again? Now?

Stupid force of habit, that’s all. His body only knew one thing that happened when he kissed Lyford, but that was not the point, and there wasn’t any time to roll around on the floor of his study when there was actual work to be done.

Tam scrambled to his feet. “There. Now we’re done fighting. Right?”

“Ah. Yes. Right.” Nicolau cleared his throat. “We should return to—to Mrs Hart and Daisy.”

“Yep,” Tam said quickly, already scuttling to the door. It didn’t count as hurling himself out a window, not really.

There is no fucking reason to behave like this , Tam told himself firmly. He was all jittery in his stomach, and he didn’t want to look at Nicolau ( Lyford , that is) at all, and his heart kept banging against the inside of his ribs in a way that was horribly uncomfortable.

He shoved all those thoughts away and focused on Angharad, his little crabapple, who could not afford for her Uncle Tam to be out-of-sorts. He’d spent twenty years sulking in Brasshenge, and he knew better than anyone how to slog stubbornly through the muck without giving up.

He wasn’t going to give up on her. He wasn’t.

Lyford’s servants brought them dinner, and Tam ate it with one hand, and held Angharad in the other arm, and glared at her—tried to glare into her, tried to root out what that pressing, hair-raising sense of wrongness was. The servants took the dinner away again, and Tam kept glaring. He gave up all pretense of propriety and perched on the arm of the settle like a gargoyle to glare at her while Mrs Hart fed her, while Nicolau changed her, while he himself paced around the room with her and sat near the hearth, while Mrs Hart yawned and yawned and eventually said she needed to be shown to a bed or she was going to fall asleep right there in the library.

“It is late,” Nicolau said. “Tam.”

“Mmn,” Tam said without taking his eyes off the baby.

“Maybe we should think of resting as well.”

“No,” Tam said.

“When she’s hungry again, you can just come wake me,” Mrs Hart said, levering herself to her feet with a huge yawn. “Goodnight. And, er, thank you for the hospitality, Nicolau.”

Nicolau looked up at her with a bright smile. “Goodnight, Isa.”

She smiled back, and went out to the hall. Tam glared at Angharad. His eyes were beginning to feel gritty and gummy.

“Tam.”

“Mm.”

Very, very gently, Nicolau said, “We’re well into Nevainy?’s hours. Do you think Angarat’s work might be more effective in Angarat’s hours?”

Try again in the morning, that’s what he meant. “Don’t know.”

He heard the creak of wood and the hush of moving fabric as Nicolau got up and came over to Tam’s low footstool near the hearth. “You’re allowed to rest,” he said. “Angarat would want you to be sensible about this, don’t you think?”

Fuck. That was probably true. He was leaning too hard on Brassu, maybe, trying to push his way through instead of letting it grow naturally. “I’m not leaving her.”

“I know,” Nicolau murmured. “I had the servants dig my old cradle out of the attic and clean it. It’s in my room—we can take shifts with her, if you’re worried. But you need to sleep . Even Angharad is sleeping.”

Other than eating, Angharad didn’t do much of anything but sleep, so that didn’t seem like a very persuasive argument. Tam was very tired suddenly, as tired as he’d been that morning in the Highlands when he’d awoken in the abandoned cottage. Tired, frustrated, scared. Utterly drained. “Alright,” he said, and Nicolau gently took Angharad from him and helped him to his feet. He guided Tam out of the library and up the familiar path to his rooms, and Tam trudged along stubbornly and thought how nice it would be to collapse into a heap on the stairs and cry.

Why did everything have to be so hard? Why did he have to try and try and try all the time and get nowhere? The tight lump in his throat pained him again.

Nicolau opened the door to his bedroom and ushered Tam inside. Tam shuffled wearily to the bed and sat on the edge, his hands limp in his lap, and watched dully as Nicolau laid Angharad in an old, old wooden rocking-cradle—it couldn’t have been just Nicolau’s own cradle, it must have been three or four generations old. It was carved along the sides with a pattern of wheat-sheaves and twining grapevines; the foot panel bore a scene in chipped paint of sleeping baby animals, and the little hood cover at the head had been fashioned with both carving and paint to look like a miniature of the standing stones and thatched roof of Anghenge. Tam’s heart hurt.

“Lady of Lambs,” Nicolau murmured, tucking a little blanket around the baby. “Watch over her, and all of us.”

Tam hadn’t been able to look directly at him since that—that kiss. But he was too tired now to care about anything, too tired to be confused and skittish, too fucking tired to look away when Nicolau glanced over at him. When Nicolau stood up and came to sit by him. When Nicolau took his hand.

“Do you want to take shifts?” Nicolau said. He sounded nearly as tired as Tam was. “Or do we trust Angarat to do her bit while we rest?”

Tam swallowed hard, tried to swallow back the ache of tears in his throat. He nodded.

Somehow, they both managed to wrestle off their shoes and at least the outer layers of their clothes. Somehow, they heaved back the covers and crawled in and blew out all but one of the lamps. Somehow, Tam had the strength to wriggle across the bed, wind his arms around Nicolau, and clutch him tight.

He was so warm—as warm as the first days of proper spring after a long winter. Nicolau turned toward him and slipped his arm around Tam’s waist, touched the fringes of his hair with the other hand, looked at him in the velvety near-dark.

Tam was too tired to care about where he slept, or what it meant, or what Nicolau might think or say or—anything. He was too tired to care that he had never gotten into a bed with Lyford without the intention of having sex in it. Gods, even the thought of sex was ghastly.

But. But Nicolau was lying there looking at him, and Tam was so tired that he couldn’t even feel sleepy yet, and he’d kissed Nicolau earlier. Fuck it. Fuck it, he didn’t care, he was too tired for that as well. He’d kissed him. So what? People kissed. Nicolau had kissed back. It had made Tam feel better; it had set the fight behind them; it had confused Tam for hours.

He was also too tired to be confused now. That was one way to get rid of the tangled field of thorns, wasn’t it. He’d kissed Nicolau, and it had been soft and slow and really, really nice. He’d liked it. He’d never kissed anyone like that before; he’d never been kissed like that before. He wanted—that. He had some vague idea that he shouldn’t want it, or that it wasn’t safe to want that, but—fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck it. He was too tired to tear himself up over it. He just wanted to be kissed. He wasn’t sure he had the energy to ask.

But maybe Angarat was kind and merciful, maybe there were a few little miracles in the world, because in an act of absolute heroism, Nicolau whispered, “Can I kiss you?” and all Tam had to say was a little, broken, “Yes please.”

It was even slower than earlier, but it was deeper, and it went on and on. Tam kept expecting that all his skittishness would surge up again and make him pull away, but it didn’t. He kept expecting for that fluttering-butterflies feeling in his stomach to start up again, but it didn’t. It was only warm and familiar and necessary—as necessary as a home to shelter him and something hot to eat when he came in from the cold.

He might have wept, but he was too tired for that too. Too tired for anything but relief and the tender pleasure of being touched and kissed and held.