You Were My First

3: Truce?

I heard him before I saw him; the gravelly crunch of his hesitant steps on the packed earth of the mountain pass flooding me with guilt for ever having made him feel as though he needed to tiptoe around me.

I wanted to apologize—to tell him how many times I had regretted putting the distance between us from the very second following the moment that I all but ran away from him; unable to face the concern in his voice when he'd asked after my sexual preferences. But there was my pride to consider, and the fact that groveling didn't much suit me.

Besides, I didn't have the foggiest idea what I would say to him even if I could muster up the face to beg for his forgiveness. Anything I could say to explain my behavior would lead to questions; questions that, when answered, would put that wounded look in his eyes that twisted me up inside.

Better to just pretend that nothing had happened at all.

Which was why I was doing my best to ignore his approach. Perhaps if I could force myself to focus hard enough on the words I was reading he'd decide not to bother me after all.

But gods above, I wanted so badly for him to bother me. Mostly because he had never once been a bother to me at all. Rather, spending time with him had been effortless and easygoing. Something I did wholly for myself when connecting with others had only ever felt like something I did to appease my master.

I enjoyed him. He made me feel light.

He made me laugh.

His smile was like sunshine I could hold in my hands; pure and radiant pleasure.

He paused beside my tent, silent and looming. I felt his presence like a bruise, sore and obtrusive. But I resisted the urge to press on the sensitive spot to feel the sting of pain, and instead turned a page in the book that I was reading with careful deliberateness.

The sound of paper against paper was loud in the silence.

He didn't speak, so I didn't either.

Instead he simply waited, and I kept up with the pretense that I didn't know he was there out of some misguided need to stubbornly wait him out.

I thought he'd leave as the seconds dragged painfully on, fed up entirely with dealing with my temperamental whims.

But, for what seemed like the fist time in my long life—thank you, thank you, thank you—, the gods were kind and he simply came to sit beside me.

"Truce?" His voice shattered the silence so suddenly that I nearly jumped clear out of my skin. The shock of it, though, was soon chased away by a wash of frigid shame. He hadn't been the one who had created the awkwardness between us, and he certainly should not have been the one coming to me trying to make amends.

I might have managed to say as much—pride be damned—if I had not had the book I was reading so suddenly pulled from my grip and replaced with something much more insubstantial.

It was a sheet of parchment with one torn edge as if it had been ripped carelessly from where it had been previously bound. Drawn on it were concentric circles comprised of strange symbols I could make no sense of whatsoever. I stared at it wordlessly trying to discern what these inane scribblings had anything at all to do with the subject at hand.

Nothing came to mind.

He met the question my arched brow conveyed with a chuckle. "It's infernal. Your scars. It occurred to me last night that I should have drawn them out when you asked me to look at them for you. This is from memory, but... I'm fairly confident in it's accuracy."