Chapter 7

Cam said, after a second, "I'm not asking you for that. Not like that, like payment."

"It's not that. It's…" He couldn't look up, had to look, found quiet green empathy right there waiting. A healer, through and through. "I don't know what to do. You do. I just want…"

"Ah. I think I see." Cam put out a hand, tentatively at first. Rested it on Blake's head. "Needing an anchor, are you?"

The rug lay thick and expensive under Blake's knees. The fire heated his back. Cam's hand was large, heavy, incontrovertible. "I need…I don't know. You. Him. All of it."

Cam stroked his hair, fingers gradual, pensive.

"Please," Blake said. "Please save him. That's all I can know right now. I'll give you anything, I'll do anything—anything you ask. I want to anyway. You know I do—you know me. But first please save him."

Cam's hand ran through his hair some more, tender enough to be a torment. "You truly love him, don't you?"

"He can never know that. Not ever. He—he shouldn't have to know that."

"Are you so ashamed of it, then? How we feel, who we love?" The petting hadn't ceased; Blake buried his face in Cam's leg, craving the touch or hiding from it. He wanted to sob, or to run, or to stay here forever and let himself be soothed.

He whispered, "No. Not for that. I know who I am. And if he knew he'd try to be kind about it. Because he is kind. He wouldn't judge. He might even try to want me. But it would be pity. He's too good for me. Too bright at heart. I have scandalous affairs and write provocative memoirs and tell shocking stories for fun. He's not meant for someone like me."

Cam's hand stopped. Then tugged Blake's hair, lightly: strands of black gathered into a physician's grip. "And what would he say if he heard that nonsense?"

"He…I…it isn't nonsense." He wanted to be more indignant. He wanted to cry. He wanted to believe Cam's tone, and he knew he couldn't.

Cam's hand slid to Blake's cheek, then to his chin: making him look up. "What would I say, do you think? Seeing as I saw you and thought you were someone I'd like to go home with."

"Oh. But…you…" He swallowed. It hurt. "You could've had anyone. You're a doctor, you help people, you're a hero—you said you felt sorry for me. A puppy. It's not that you wanted me. I mean—not like that. Not for anything more than that."

The lines around Cam's mouth held entire volumes of emotion, if Blake had known the right language to decipher the script. "Someone hurt you so badly, didn't they, lad? And it's still hurting, inside."

"No one ever—"

"Not physically, no. I'm not meaning that. But the way you see yourself, the way you see us…you're right about one thing, I'm made for helping people, and I see you, all torn up inside, and trying so hard to give up everything you want, for the people you care about…" Cam's hand tightened, holding Blake's face. "Do no harm, that oath says. Heal. And I don't think you're broken and I don't think you're wrong at all, except maybe in trying to be a martyr all the time, but I do look at you and I just…I wanted that back home and I want it now. I want to be the one telling you you are good enough, you please me just as you are, and I want you to listen."

Blake trembled, on both knees with Cam's hand in his hair.

"But you love him. You wrote to me for him. And I won't get in the way of that."

"I told you I don't know," Blake said, half anguish, half searing billowing bliss at the weight of the hand. "I don't. I don't know anything. I want you and I want him and I want him to wake up and I want you to tell me all those words again and I need…I need…"

"Shh," Cam said, suddenly very Scottish, a thistledown whisk of sound, and pulled him up from the floor and held him, while Blake wept against that sturdy shoulder, coming to pieces and being sheltered. "Shh, you're all right, you just let that out, that's me telling you, giving you that order, go on…"

After a while one of his hands found Blake's wrist, and encircled it, and held on. Hard. Blake nodded, shivering with sensations, nerves open and stinging.

"Sit down," Cam said, and put him into the more comfortable chair, with a blanket, with authority. Those big hands did more touching, affirming: squeezes to Blake's wrists, and the nape of his neck; a light caress along Blake's thigh, a cupping of Blake's cheek. "Drink a bit of that willow bark tea. For the headache."

"I'm—"

"You're following orders is what you are. Being good."

Another tiny champagne-sparkle, exhausted, went off somewhere in Blake's head.

"Right, then," Cam said, and made sure he finished most of that cup. "I'll get you if I need you. Rest."

Blake accepted that order because it felt good, because he was so weary, because he wanted to show that he could be good, he could do this right; and maybe if he could do that, he could wake up and be rewarded by the two men he cared about smiling back at him, Ash alive and healthy, Cam pleased; and they wouldn't even have to say anything, because they'd be here and happy, and that would be enough.

Blake would be happy with that. Maybe they'd smile at him, or nod, and he'd be allowed to love every little gesture of it.

He put his head down, drowsy, floating in some half-awake state, surrounded by fire-crackle and the lingering presence of Cam's order for him.

He did not sleep, not entirely, but he let himself drift. Perhaps when he woke that dream would be real.