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Gieve has remained unconscious for almost two days.
When a medical officer finally arrived on scene that night, the musician, with his hand grasping tightly onto the knight’s throughout their exchange, finally slackened his fingers and eyes fluttering close. The bruised shadows casted by the dying campfire almost made him seem lifeless, his skin waxy and pale, and for a long, long moment – which, when he ponders back upon it now, must have only lasted a few seconds – Isfan thought Gieve was gone.
It was the longest two days Isfan has ever experienced, and he’s been through much worst before – battles seemingly impossible to win, and so defending behind a thick wall becomes a waiting game for death to claim him.
This is a different kind of waiting, and it isn’t much of an improvement.
He has no time to dawdle or worry, however. Many responsibilities await him: paper work, field training, and meetings. These duties take up most of his day and keep him busy, his mind buzzing with one task and planning the next item on a never-ending list. But in the silence of the night when most of the capital falls into a deep, peaceful slumber, Isfan drags his exhausted body and returns to Gieve’s bedchamber.
Lowering himself by the side of the bed, Isfan carefully holds the musician’s hand – fingertips calloused from pressing into the oud’s strings for hours at a time and winding up the bowstring that sings a brief requiem before the arrow hits its target. Isfan holds it within both of his own hands because no one is watching.
It’s just the two of them, breathing together quietly, the full moon scattering milky strands of light through the open window.
He remembers the blood on his hands, Gieve’s blood – warm and sticky and trailing down from a deep incision along his upper arm – and he remembers the lost, hazy green eyes staring back up at him and the weak, crooked smile despite the excruciating pain.
How close has he been to losing him? Too close for comfort, Isfan thought to himself that same night, soon after the physician had dressed his injuries and proclaimed that other than the blood loss, Gieve’s injuries were otherwise manageable. Only then did Isfan feel the suffocating heaviness that had been pressing upon his chest lifted slightly.
The brunet places his lips softly on the back of Gieve’s hand, smooth and cool to the touch, and he murmurs the three words he doesn’t dare breathe out when the musician had been within earshot.
He hadn’t want to say it, because hearing the words out loud is to make it a reality, and that reality is something Isfan is not ready to face. And what would Gieve think?
He doesn’t dare wander into that trail of thought, either. The possible answers Isfan may receive from the musician are as dizzying and fantastical as the man’s flowery poetry and pretty flattery.
“I love you,” Isfan professes in a whisper – almost imperceptible except for the moist warmth against the back of his hand – an admittance of defeat.
Gieve’s fingers give a little twitch, as if responding to Isfan’s words.
“Hnn… wh-what was that?” His voice cracks from disuse, dragging on granules of sand and parched as dying leaves.
“Gieve-kyou, when––?” Isfan scrambles back with a start, golden eyes opened wide and staring at the figure half buried in clean sheets. Tired sea-green eyes, gummed down by sleep, gradually blink open and he turns to face the stunned knight, whose cheeks are stained a delicate hint of red. “When did you wake up?”
“Just now…” Gieve’s brows dip into a confused frown, dry lips slightly parted. “Why?”
“N-nothing! I’ll, um, I’ll notify the physician right away, now that you’re awake,” Isfan scrambles to pull himself up, a hand supporting his weight braced against the wall, and he barely makes his way towards the doorway.
“What’s the hurry, Isfan-kyou?” Gieve wants to know, a shadow – discomfort or perhaps doubt? – passing over his pale face, his cheeks still harboring a few scratches that are slowly healing. “Can’t stand to be near me?”
“N-no, not at all.”
‘Has he heard?’ Isfan takes another step backward, half-way out of the room.
The utter panic thrumming through his body and rendering him immobile is strange, something he rarely experiences. Before a battle, he can only feel a charged sense of energy coursing through his veins, and fear only injects a sort of electrifying vitality that makes him bold and fight with more abandon; “panic” merely equates to chaos on the battlefield, and Isfan has learned from his early years to keep that in check.
That urge to run and hide is roaring loud.
“Go on, then,” Gieve says, tone a little morose, or maybe the pain is finally catching up to him.
The knight seems to want to say something – to correct himself – but ultimately decides to give a stiff nod instead, and turns on his heels without another word.
-
It’s one week and two days before Isfan and Gieve have a chance to talk again.
Not that Isfan has been counting.
He’s been evading the musician – quickening his pace as soon as he spots the familiar head of bright violet hair, or pretending to take no notice of him when they’re in the same room – and Isfan is certain that Gieve knows this as well.
Avoidance is a coward’s way, and Isfan, if anything, is no coward.
After a few sharp taps, the owner of the small brick hut opens the door. From his companion’s mussed curls that fall against his cheeks, the hastily wrapped cloak around his willowy frame that shows hints of his bandages underneath, and the wary emerald eyes that glare unabashedly back at him, Isfan quickly surmises that Gieve must have been about to go to bed.
When he sees that it’s Isfan, his expression brightens visibly, one hand reaching out for the knight’s arm and pulling him in before the other man can protest.
“Well, well, look who’s decided to pay me a visit at last?”
“My apologies, Gieve-kyou,” Isfan starts, the tremor slightly detectable in his voice, “I should have paid you a visit sooner and––”
“Stop,” the shorter man places a palm over the knight’s mouth, and the brunet raises an arched brow in question. “I don’t want to hear an apology from you.”
Isfan waits until Gieve lifts his hand away from his face before he continues, golden irises cautious as he mutters, “Then what would you like to hear me say?”
Gieve laughs as lovely as a bird’s song and steps closer, one arm dangling off of the knight’s broad shoulder and the other hand gripping Isfan’s chin until he’s willing to look at him in the eye. His grin is wide, bordering on impish, as he murmurs, hot breaths fanning across Isfan’s cheek, “What you told me right before I gained consciousness.”
They’re standing too close, and even Isfan is momentarily distracted when he thinks that it’s highly possible the musician is wearing nothing beneath that thin silk cloak of his.
“I-I’ve said a lot of things.” Isfan tries to turn his head away but for someone who has their arm injured not even two weeks ago, Gieve’s strength is not to be underestimated as he maintains his grip.
“Will you keep playing games with me like this, Isfan-kyou? Are you having fun toying with my emotions?” Gieve traces a lingering finger along the other man’s neck and kisses him softly under the crook of his chin; he feels Isfan’s frame shudder with his touch.
“Are you sure I’m the one toying with you, or perhaps it’s the other way around?” He winds his arms loosely around Gieve’s middle, careful not to jostle his wounds too much.
“The way you twist my words around is so unbecoming.” The musician drags a hand down Isfan’s back, pressing his lips against the pulse point on his neck.
“I suppose it’s because I’ve been heavily influenced by someone with a very talented tongue.”
“I shall take that as a compliment.”
They both seem to agree that this is the end of their conversation, and they kiss in earnest at last, words being rendered too heavy, poisonous lead caught in their throats.
Gieve helps the brunet out of his trousers, and Isfan loosens the fastening of his cloak, sending the fabric fluttering down onto the ground.
Most of the bruises have faded to pale greens and yellows, a smattering of ghost flowers blooming beneath Gieve’s skin, and Isfan leans down to kiss each and every one of them – along his arms and the sides of his abdomen. The wound on his upper arm is still bandaged, so Isfan takes care not to accidentally jolt that arm too much, and opts to kneel on the floor instead, scattering wet, open-mouthed kisses on the flat plane of the musician’s stomach and wandering lower still, leaving a bite on his hipbone, and finally swallowing him down.
His arm aches a little when he reaches for the back of Isfan’s head to hold him steady, but the guttural groan that tears out of his throat is more pleasure than pain, as the slick wet heat of the knight’s mouth envelops him whole, making it difficult for Gieve to breathe and almost impossible not to thrust deeper.
“Hah… Isfan, I’m close…”
The sweat that forms on his skin prickles and stings the cut like sparks, but it’s taking all of Gieve’s concentration not to beg out right for the other man to finish him off.
He swipes a thumb along Isfan’ cheekbone, gently trying to get his attention. Neither of them knows when Isfan has closed his eyes, and so when he opens them, black-ringed in topaz, and his spit-shine lips stretched around the musician’s length, the swirl of liquid heat at the pit of his stomach coils tighter until it becomes too hot, too much.
He spills into Isfan’s mouth uttering curses and the broken syllables of his name, and his knees buckle beneath him after he’s spent. The knight swiftly catches him before he hits the ground, and with a tenderness seldom shown to others, Isfan places him on the bed a few gaz away.
Gieve grabs onto the other man’s sleeve when Isfan is about to move away – maybe to clean himself up, and then maybe to leave.
After all that has happened – that near death experience, especially – Gieve will not let him slip away that easily again.
“What if…” Gieve pauses, chest burning with each inhale, and he swallows noisily before looking back up at the knight with an unyielding gaze burning emerald, “what if I tell you I’m not playing around, and that it has never been my intention to do so? What does that make us then?”
The firm line of Isfan’s lips softens just the slightest into a small smile, and Gieve thinks that’s the only answer he needs.