Page 26 of Salt in the Wound

Indrie's eyes widen. His breath catches, a small, sharp intake that Eskil hears clearly in the stillness between them. But he doesn't step away. He stands where he is, fingers still loosely entwined with Eskil's other hand, and his throat works beneath Eskil's thumb and his eyes don't leave Eskil's face. His fingers tighten on Eskil's hand, just enough to notice.

Eskil's eyes move back up to Indrie's face because they can't stay anywhere else. Every other point of focus in the world has been rendered irrelevant by the existence of this one.

Indrie flushes under the scrutiny. A gorgeous pink that starts at his cheeks and spreads downward, across the bridge of his nose, along his jaw, disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt. The color is vivid even in the moonlight, warm against his pale skin, and it makes something hot curl in Eskil's stomach. Not just desire, though there is that, there is always, endlessly, relentlessly that. Something deeper, possessive and protective and dangerously close to tender.

Fuck, Eskil thinks. He's so sweet.

The thought arrives fully formed and undeniable, carrying with it the weight of every interaction they've had, every flinch, every careful glance, every tentative smile given and immediately retracted. This young man who holds his ground against armed invaders but blushes when someone touches his chin. Who tries to stop a flogging because he took a vow to ease suffering. Who stands on the deck at night looking at the water and deciding whether the world is worth staying in.

Eskil wants to ruin him. Wants to take him apart, slowly, thoroughly, until the only thing in those dark eyes is pleasure and the only sound from those lips is his name. Wants to put his mouth on the pulse point beneath his thumb and feel that frantic heartbeat against his tongue.

"I should get to bed," Indrie says.

The words are quiet, a little breathless, and his gaze drops away from Eskil's, the eye contact too much, too heavy, too close to something neither of them is prepared to name. His cheeks are still flushed and his fingers are still curled around Eskil's and the contradiction between his words and his body would be amusing if it weren't causing him internal harm.

Eskil thinks, briefly, about that bed being his own. About asking the younger man back to his quarters. About pressing Indrie's small frame into the mattress, hands pinned above his head, and finding another way to ease the tension in his spine. About what those dark eyes would look like blown wide beneath him, about what sounds he could coax from that bruised throat if he kissed it gently enough, about the flush spreading further down, beneath the shirt, across skin he hasn't seen.

He shakes that off. Hard. Physically clenches his jaw against it and forces the images back into the box they crawled out of.

This young man spent years in the ownership of a tyrant king who beat him for every slight. He doesn't need another man staking claim to him a week later. He needs safety. He needs certainty. He needs someone to show him that not every hand that reaches for him in the dark intends to harm.

And Eskil is well aware of the circumstances. They are in the middle of the sea. He is a king. This young man is at his mercy and has nowhere to run to. The power dynamic is unfavorable, to say the least. Any move Eskil makes, any desire he acts on, is tainted by the simple, inescapable fact that Indrie cannot leave. Cannot say no without consequence, or at least without believing there will be consequence. Cannot know if his own feelings, if he has them, and the flush on his cheeks suggests he might, are genuine or the conditioned response of years spent learning to please his captors to survive.

Eskil releases Indrie's hand. Lets his thumb fall away from the bruised throat. Steps back, just enough, and nods.

"Sleep well," he says.

Indrie looks at him for a moment longer, a searching look, wide-eyed and unreadable, and then nods, once, and turns. He crosses the deck toward the hatch and disappears down the steps into the ship, and the last thing Eskil sees is the moonlight catching in his dark hair before the shadows swallow him.

Eskil stands at the railing and stares at the sky. The north star is fixed and bright above him, unchanging, and the constellations wheel slowly around it in their ancient, indifferent pattern.

He grips the railing until the wood creaks beneath his hands, and then he lets go, and turns, and heads back to his own quarters.

Chapter 11

Indrie is struggling.

After Eskil's visit last night, he wakes feeling lighter than he has the past few days. The weight is still there, the memory of the whip, the screams, the splash, but it's shifted, redistributed, no longer pressing down on his chest with the suffocating totality it had before. Something loosened on that deck in the moonlight, some knot inside him that had been tightening since the night of the fire, and though he can't point to the exact moment it gave way, he knows it did. He knows because he slept. Not well, not deeply, but he slept, and he didn't dream of blood or water or the sound of leather on flesh.

He dreamed of stars.

He dreamed of a warm hand around his, lifting his fingers toward the sky, and a low voice telling him things he only half understood. He dreamed of a thumb against his throat so gentle it made his eyes sting.

He pushes the dream aside before it can settle too deeply and gets out of his bunk.

In the galley, Gunnar is already at the stove, stirring something that smells less offensive than usual, which is either a sign of progress or a warning. Indrie takes his place at the prep table and picks up a knife and begins dicing onions, and when the familiar sting hits his eyes he's almost grateful for the excuse.

He jokes with Gunnar about the ratio of potatoes to broth in the stew.

The words come haltingly, he has to pause twice to find the right term in Gunnar's language, and resorts to holding up potatoes and making exaggerated drowning gestures to indicate too much broth, but the meaning lands, and Gunnar turns from the stove and stares at him with the deeply offended expression of a cook whose life's work has just been critiqued by someone who was peeling his first potato ten days ago.

"The ratio," Gunnar says, in Indrie's language, enunciating each word with exaggerated precision, "is perfect."

"The ratio," Indrie responds, in Gunnar's language, with considerably less precision, "is soup."

Gunnar's mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. He points the wooden spoon at Indrie and says something in his own tongue that Indrie doesn't fully catch but that has the cadence and conviction of honor being defended. Then his eyes crinkle and his beard twitches and the big man laughs, a deep, booming sound that fills the galley and rattles the pots on their hooks, and Indrie feels his own mouth curve upward.

Gunnar seems outwardly pleased to see him smiling and moving with purpose again. He doesn't say so. He doesn't comment on the past two days, doesn't ask where Indrie has been or why he stopped eating or what happened on the deck in the middle of the night. He just claps Indrie on the shoulder, gently by Gunnar's standards, which means Indrie only staggers one step instead of two, and turns back to the stove and tells him to chop faster or breakfast will be lunch.