“
Yes, he is,” he said with a brave, albeit damp, attempt at a smile. There, at last, was a glimpse of the spirit which had kept him sane and alive for four years in such a terrible situation.
“
But he only wants me to be his friend. I want to be his friend because he needs one. So do I. And so do you.” He set his jaw at that. “Yes, be angry with me. I didn’t go through what you did, I know, and I’m sure you think I’m an intruder. But I would be your friend anyway. Jaime...Jaime spoke about you with such love...I hated you a little too. But he showed me a man of strength, a brave man who didn’t deserve what happened to him any more than Jaime did. That man I would be proud to be a friend to.” I raised my arm, showing my hand. “I need help, Seve, and Jaime has asked for mine. Will you take pity on us and let him have his way, at least until I prove myself?”
His handsome face twisted in sheer distress. “I don’t know what to do...I don’t, Nikolas.”
Another voice joined the conversation. “Then let me decide, at least for now.” We both looked over to where Jaime was walking into the room with a tray in his hands, which he set on the table nearby. He came to his lover’s side and laid a hand on his shoulder. “I will not betray your trust, Seve.”
“
I know, Jai, I know that,” Seve said, placing his hand over Jaime’s.
Jaime bent and kissed him. “Minas is the enemy, not Nikolas. Nikolas brought you back to me.”
“
Jaime, don’t force him to accept this out of gratitude....”
He glared at me. “I’m not.” He turned to Seve. “I’m
not
. But I owe Nikolas more than I can ever repay. Will you have me start our new life together by spurning that debt?”
I sighed. Jaime obviously adored Seve, but he didn’t know how to handle him. Not now, at least. “There is no debt. I did it for my own reasons, some of which were to do with you, some of which were to do with sticking it to Minas. You had me rescued....”
“
I nearly got you killed...!”
“
Enough.” We both looked at Seve who seemed rather exasperated with us. “Enough, Jai. You’ve made your point. Nikolas, I grant your wish for his sake, and for mine. I could use a friend too, I know that. Gods, if you can argue this hard when held together with spit and good will,” he added, and now with a little real humour in his voice, “what are you like when you’re fit?”
Jaime grinned, looking very relieved. “Stubborn. Incredibly, irritatingly, impossibly stubborn.”
I pouted. “That’s right, abuse me when I can’t fight back. Seve, you have my word. I won’t ever hurt you or Jaime by any deliberate act.”
“
Good, because I would hate to have to kill you if you did.” He stared back at me, but then gave me the first genuine smile I’d seen from him this day. “Since someone is going to have to spoon feed you until your hands are healed, that guarantees your good behaviour for that long.”
“
There’s also the matter of who wipes your arse,” Jaime added cheerfully.
I groaned. “What am I letting myself in for?”
He just smiled rather smugly at that complaint, then made Seve move so he could sit in his place with the tray. Seve carefully helped me sit a little, and he was nothing less than gentle and respectful. It appeared he was prepared to be generous, and give himself over to this experiment whole-heartedly.
I had no idea if I could help, or if I would just make it worse. But these two beautiful men had survived an experience that should have crushed them. Between us, surely there was nothing we could not heal and nothing we could not defeat. I was content to put my faith in them, because if we got through this, we surely have more happiness than the most devout of Paon’s followers.
And I really hoped it pissed him off.
The end
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reincarnate
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A sequel to
The Surrogate
“
Jai?”
Jaime jerked upright in terror and knocked the inkpot over. He grabbed it, but not before a little ink had splashed over the letter he’d spent an hour composing, and which was the reason he hadn’t heard Seve come in. Fright and annoyance made his tone sharp as he turned to speak to his lover. “I’ve told you not to come up from behind me like that!”
Seve was holding handfuls of freshly pulled root vegetables, and his expression turned cold as Jaime looked at him. “I don’t have a lot of choice in this room, seeing as how you sit with your back to the door. I was hardly sneaking up on you.”
Jaime sighed. “Yes, I know. I’m sorry.” There wasn’t space for a table as well as a bench in this little room which he had reserved as his own office cum library, and Seve was quite right that he hadn’t had much choice but to approach from behind him. “What did you want?”
“
Did I have to want something before I can come talk to you?”
Jaime looked down at his spoiled letter. “I
am
working, you know.”
“
Well, so was I and I just dropped in to see what you were up to. Sorry I bothered now.” He turned on his heel and walked out of the room.
Jaime put his head in his hands and sighed again. That had been his fault entirely. But he still wished Seve would stop thinking he was merely indulging himself when he worked alone in his office. He had to keep in contact with his academic colleagues, and he had lectures to write, letters to reply to. Just because Seve was interested in the garden and nothing else, didn’t mean Jaime could be content with so little.
The letter was beyond saving. He would need to write it out again, and he really wouldn’t have time before supper. Faroz was an old windbag, anyway. Jaime didn’t know why he spent so much time on writing to him when the man never seemed to get the points he was making.
He got up and followed his nose to the kitchen. Now he’d been snapped out of his own little world, he could smell that Seve had begun to prepare their evening meal—which was probably what the vegetables had been for. He knocked on the door frame, not wanting to scare Seve the way Seve had unwittingly done to him. Not that Seve shouldn’t be used to him by now, but he tamped down on the uncharitable thought. “Sorry,” he said quietly.
“
Should I make an appointment to see you? Would that give you enough warning that I live in the house with you now? Perhaps you’d be happier if I was still in a cage and you only dropped in to see me every few days to fuck people in front of me.”
“
Seve!” His lover hadn’t turned around, but the rigid, straight line of his back and his clenched fists made it perfectly obvious how angry he was.
Seve whirled. “Why can’t you get used to it! You jump every time I go into that bloody office of yours, and most of the time you act as if nothing I could possibly be bothering you with could be as remotely important as whatever piece of obscure shit you’re reading!”
“
That ‘obscure shit’ is my work, and a lot of the time you don’t even have a reason to interrupt me. Is it my fault you’re bored? You could take up your education again.”
“
And do
what
, Jaime? There’s not a lot of use for ex-whore fake gods, or hadn’t you noticed?”
“
This ex-whore found work, why can’t you?” Jaime said through clenched teeth.
“
We don’t
need
you to work, why this obsession with your scholarship? Who cares about the history of Gidin or Jendon? At least the plants are real and useful. We can eat them.”
Jaime opened his mouth to say that Seve’s vegetables earned them not a penny while he was earning a decent salary as a tutor at the Hamer academy, but then, with a huge effort of will, he bit back the toxic words. “My scholarship means as much to me as your garden does to you. If you take that away from me, all that will happen is that I’ll be left with nothing to occupy my days. Do you want that for me?”
Seve turned away and addressed his words to the window above the sink. “Clearly I don’t occupy any of your time worth speaking of.”
“
Seve, you know I have to go to work. You could find a job yourself, you know.”
“
No.” Seve’s fist descended with a dull thud onto the work surface, but his voice was quiet. “I can’t.”
“
Would you like me to bring you back some seeds...?”
“
Oh, please spare me the attempt to indulge the poor little mad lover, Jai.”
Once, Jaime would have just gone up to Seve and hugged him and kissed the bad temper out of him. Once, such bad tempers had been very rare things. Once, Jaime knew how Seve would react to an attempt to hold him. And once, they would never have been arguing like this in the first place.
Now he was just exhausted, and in need of someone to kiss
him
out of his bad mood. Failing that, he had his work. “If you’re done feeling sorry for yourself, this ex-whore has things to finish up tonight before he heartlessly tries to do something with his life that doesn’t involved sitting around wailing about how much he’s suffered.”
He turned to go, but stopped on the threshold. He’d heard the smallest sound, very quiet. One that broke his heart every time he heard it. It was Seve trying very hard to not let him hear he was crying.
“
Seve?” He came closer. “Seve, love?” Seve shook his head and wouldn’t turn around. “I’m sorry....”
Seve turned then, his face devastated by grief. “So am I,” he said in a choked voice, then charged out of the room, pushing past Jaime. Jaime heard him start to run as he got to the doorstep. Jaime had no hope of catching him.
He clenched his fist. Why was he so cruel to Seve, when he had spent so long dreaming of his return? Why was Seve so desperate for his companionship, but so unwilling to share any real intimacy with him, or to understand anything about Jaime’s interests and work? Why did they seem to do nothing but fight these days? It had been over five months since they’d been freed. They had a new life, were in a new country where no one knew their pasts, or would have cared if they did. Why could they not move on?
He’d cried so many tears of anger and frustration over these things, he had no more left. Now he was just numb. Anger was the only emotion he seemed to be capable of these days.
If he couldn’t help himself and he couldn’t help Seve, the least he could do was make sure the house was secure. He forced himself to pay attention to what Seve had left half-done. He’d been preparing a roast fowl—no point in putting that on to cook until he returned, which would either be soon or not at all. He covered the bird with a cloth, made sure nothing was left on the stove, and then put a lamp in the window so his lover could find the house if he decided to come back that night. He wondered if he should go after Seve, but he was reluctant to take that refuge away from him. For two men who had been desperate to return to each other, the two of them seemed to need a lot of time apart. Unfortunately, the need for that solitude didn’t often coincide.
He found himself yet again wishing he could talk to Nikolas about it, but he’d only seen Nikolas once since they’d left Egin, a fact that rested uneasily on his soul. The whole issue of Nikolas did, because he was conscious that neither he nor Seve—but especially him—had treated their friend very well.
His
friend, if he was scrupulously accurate.
That had not been the plan, in the beginning, and the three of them had had such good intentions. They had reckoned without Nikolas’ recovery being set back by infection. He’d needed far more nursing than Jaime or Seve could give him and so their plan to move into private apartments had been thwarted. It hadn’t helped that Seve was coping less and less well during the days leading up to Minas’ trial, sparking bitter arguments followed by desperate pleas for reassurance which Jaime and Nikolas had both tried to give him, but which put a tremendous strain on a still very sick man, and on Jaime’s own fragile nerves. The offer from the Hamer academy of a teaching position for Jaime had come two days before the verdict, but he’d said nothing at first, not wanting to leave Nikolas and not wanting to put pressure on his lover.
Seve had been reading to Nikolas that afternoon when Jaime came in to tell him the news from the trial. He’d listened in complete silence as Jaime had reported the death sentences on Minas, Senku and three other senior temple officials. His lack of reaction had clearly worried Nikolas, who’d laid a bandaged hand on Seve’s arm.
“
W-will they be.... Is that all they...?” Seve had asked, his voice choking on the words.
Jaime had mutely shaken his head, wanting to spare Seve the gruesome details of the sentences that had been delivered, even though Seve had some idea what was involved. But his reticence had made no difference to Seve’s reaction—his lover had made a peculiar noise before getting to his feet in a rush and knocking over his chair. He ran out of the room without another word to either of them.