“Sorry,” Kiem said.
He apologized to make Jainan feel better when it wasn’t even his fault. Jainan’s chest hurt. Kiem meant well; if only Jainan weren’t so inadequate. If only Jainan could be good enough for anyone. He shut his eyes. It was his cardinal rule not to ask questions in a situation like this: they tore away more remnants of his dignity and they irritated his partner. But Kiem said everything he thought, and Jainan had to try. “Is there anything I can do,” he said, his voice coming out flat and toneless, “to make myself less repellent to you?”
“Repellent,” Kiem said, and stopped.
Jainan tried not to pay attention to the shriveling feeling inside him. The moment’s pause stretched out to eternity.
Then Kiem said, “What?”
They should never have gotten into this conversation. Jainan wished he could erase the last five minutes from existence or somehow switch to a continuum where he had not asked the most inappropriate question possible. He turned away to take the water off the heater. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Where the—what the—Jainan.” Kiem leaned forward on his hands in the tiny space. Jainan stopped in the middle of screwing a lid on the water cup. He had seldom seen Kiem reduced to stuttering. “What do you mean, repellent? You can’t mean you. We’re not talking about—” His hand gesture included Jainan from head to toe, but he seemed to realize what he was doing and snatched his hand back.
Jainan put the cup down and tapped the heating canister, which was quietly hissing. He couldn’t make himself meet Kiem’s eyes. “I know you’ve tried to spare my feelings, and I am grateful. But you don’t have to pretend.”
Kiem didn’t say anything. Jainan had handled this so badly that even Kiem couldn’t think of anything to say. He was just looking at Jainan as if Jainan had hit him over the head. Jainan opened his mouth, ready to take it back, but then stopped. It was better to have it in the open.
Kiem groaned and dropped his face into his hands. “Jainan,” he said into his fingers. He pulled his hands down until his dark agonized eyes met Jainan’s. “You’re beautiful.”
The world twisted sideways. “What,” Jainan said.
“It’s really distracting,” Kiem said. Then he added hastily, “Not that that’s your problem. That really isn’t your problem, sorry, I’ll get over it.”
“I don’t understand,” Jainan said. “If you think I’m—” He broke off, and his mouth moved but nothing came out. He tried again. “If you think—that, then why—” Another sentence he couldn’t see how to finish. “Then why?”
“You were grieving!” Kiem said. “Are grieving, I mean.”
Jainan’s thoughts were transparent and slippery, and every time he tried to face one, it fled. All this time he had been trying to figure out Kiem: what he wanted, what he liked and disliked, what made him angry. Jainan felt as though he’d been asking himself the wrong questions the entire time. Kiem wanted him. It was true he was in mourning; had that held Kiem back? When he looked back Kiem’s eyes were still locked on his, and a jolt ran down his back—not fear, but something foreign or forgotten. He knew fear. This was something else entirely.
“I haven’t stopped living,” Jainan said. He meant it as an explanation, but it somehow came out more like a challenge. Kiem had already had a chance and had turned it down. “You left. The night we were married.”
Kiem hadn’t taken his eyes off Jainan’s. Jainan could see the shallow rise and fall of his chest. “I thought you were just doing your duty,” Kiem said. His hands had clenched where they rested on his knees. “You were shaking. You had to force yourself to touch me. I might be slow, but I can tell when someone’s not interested.”
Oh. Jainan hadn’t expected that. Whatever was happening between them felt like pebbles gathering speed at the start of an avalanche; a voice in Jainan’s mind told him stop, told him that he was misreading Kiem’s intent. He deliberately blocked it out. He didn’t even let himself listen to his own voice as he said, “I’m interested now.”
He saw Kiem’s throat move as he swallowed. The sight of it sent a curl of warmth to Jainan’s stomach.
“So…” Kiem said. He trailed off. For once he didn’t seem to know the right thing to say.
“So,” Jainan echoed. The shadows of the tent wavered. Jainan took his courage into both hands and plunged over the edge. “Come here.”
Improbably, unbelievably, Kiem moved. He was drawing closer even before Jainan’s voice died away, as if his words had weight enough to make this happen. Jainan knelt up in the cramped space to meet him. Kiem’s mouth on his was warm and sure. Jainan didn’t remember it feeling like this. He barely recognized this feeling in himself at all, not this hunger for another body pressed against his. Kiem’s hands had crept around to the small of his back, but lightly, as if he wasn’t sure he would be welcomed. Jainan leaned forward in an experiment, pressing their bodies together, and Kiem’s hands tightened convulsively.
Jainan felt his breath constrict, his blood starting to thump. He tugged at Kiem’s shirt, and after a moment Kiem realized what he was doing and stopped kissing him just long enough to get it over his head. Jainan felt a spike of victory which he capitalized on by putting his arms around Kiem, feeling his glorious, solid weight and the warmth of his skin, and pulling him down with him. They fell into a tangle on top of the sleeping bags, barely cushioned from the ground below. Jainan didn’t remember consciously wanting anyone to touch him—he’d spent so long avoiding it—so he didn’t understand why the heaviness of Kiem’s body against his was like water after a drought. He pulled Kiem closer.
“Jainan—” Kiem caught himself with a hand on either side of Jainan’s head, not quite on top of him. It cast a shadow over Jainan’s anticipation. He had misunderstood something again, somehow. Kiem was going to stop. Jainan shut his eyes as if he could change reality by ignoring it.
He felt the fabric of his shirt move just before he felt the warmth of Kiem’s hand resting on his bare hip. It took him a moment to realize the shaking wasn’t coming from him. Kiem was trembling.
Jainan opened his eyes as something coursed through his body like molten metal: shock and need, his own desire casting off its last restraints. Kiem’s face was very close to his and his eyes were dark. Jainan said without even thinking, “You really do want me.”
“Oh, fuck yes—please—Jainan, I’m losing my mind—” Kiem broke off and swallowed, his touch still a pool of heat on Jainan’s skin. “Not if you don’t want it,” he said. “And not for duty. Never for duty.”
Jainan had spent so long not knowing what to do. He had spent so long misunderstanding Kiem, wasting time, that it came as a surprise to find he had no doubt anymore. He covered Kiem’s hand with his own. “Yes,” he said. He could hear his voice come out rough and edged. “Kiem. I mean it.”
That was all Kiem needed. He kissed Jainan and eased up his shirt, and Jainan lost the ability to string together words under the touch of Kiem’s hands. Shivers of pleasure went through his muscles; Kiem’s touch was light, almost wondering, and Jainan’s body answered it without Jainan even having to think. Kiem talked in fragments that were barely audible, can I, and you’re beautiful, and Jainan, Jainan, his name whispered against the skin of his neck over and over like a prayer.