Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Garin's fingers snagged in Sazahk's hair and pulled viciously when Sazahk yanked back the moment before their lips touched.

"Shit." Garin winced as the fine strands cinched around his knuckles, cutting off circulation. But the spasm of pain across Sazahk's face as the hair tugged across his scalp made Garin want to cut the damn things off. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault." Sazahk held still as Garin hastily freed his fingers from the snarled mess he'd made of Sazahk's beautiful hair. "I shouldn't have moved so suddenly."

"No, no, I shouldn't have…" Garin wished he could turn off the mycelium lights around them and hide in the darkness. "I shouldn't have…"

"Attempted to kiss me," Sazahk provided in his clinical, detached tone.

"That." Garin's chest cratered. His vision spun with the dizziness of the plummet from cloud nine to the emotional fetal position.

What the hell had he been thinking? What had he thought was going to happen? He hadn't been fucking thinking at all. He'd gotten caught up in the amazing sex and the vulnerable discussion the night before and the sleeping in each other's arms. Shit, though, was a kiss from him that bad? He knew what the colors that had flooded Sazahk's face meant, the reds and oranges of terror and surprise.

"I'm sorry." Garin wanted to curl into a ball but he couldn't with Sazahk still sat between his legs, so he covered his face with both hands.

"It was a perfectly understandable emotional impulse given the moment." Sazahk rustled and shifted on the blankets, but Garin didn't open his eyes to see what he was doing. Probably cleaning off whatever he'd come in. Because it hadn't been in Garin's ass. He didn't feel the telltale drip of spunk sliding out of him. Why hadn't Sazahk wanted to come in him?

Garin didn't have an answer, but that didn't stop the weight of inadequacy from compounding his self-loathing.

"You've done nothing wrong." Sazahk's long fingers wrapped around Garin's wrists and pried his hands from his face. Garin opened his eyes and tracked the colors undulating across Sazahk's pretty features. The pink of sad, the purple of frustration, the blue of anger and the gray Garin hadn't quite pieced together but wasn't good. "But I couldn't in good conscience allow you to execute on such an intimate gesture, brought on only by the temporary hormonal imbalance of a sex act performed for functional rather than emotional purposes."

"Yeah, no, of course, I get it." Garin sat up and scooted back to close his legs again. Goddammit, that hurt. "I understand." He understood that he'd—foolishly, stupidly, idiotically, what the hell was wrong with him?—developed feelings for Sazahk that Sazahk did not return. That Sazahk had never once given him any reason to believe he returned or might conceivably ever return.

Functional.

Not emotional.

"It's psychologically delicate to engage in these sorts of behaviors even for the purposes of scientific inquiry or physical regulation." Sazahk sat back on his heels, his soft cock nestled between his thighs, and hooked his fingers together in an achingly uncertain gesture. "Neither of us has stated an interest in, or I believe, is in any position to pursue, a relationship with the sort of commitment and sense of obligation that such an act as kissing might imply, so given the aforementioned psychological delicacy, I didn't want to allow an additional level of confusion."

"And I appreciate that," Garin assured him, forcing an assuaging smile onto his face. He wasn't confused now. There was not a single level of confusion left in Garin's mind, only the searing burn of embarrassment and the raw ache of rejection. "I was just a little…out of it."

"You were overwhelmed." Sazahk pulled a clean swab from his bag and hovered it over the congealing semen under Garin's belly button. "May I?" Garin nodded and tried not to let the shame that he'd forgotten this was a damn science experiment show on his face. After Sazahk stowed his sample away, he fished out a pack of hygiene wipes and passed him one. "Overwhelming you was deliberate on my part, in an effort to bring you the maximum amount of pleasure I could."

"Well, mission accomplished." Garin injected some levity into his tone and glued his eyes to the wipe as he cleaned up the mess of his own cum across his chest. And the mess of lube around his hole that had no cum to speak of. Which made sense now that Garin's brain had more blood in it and Sazahk's position had been clarified. Sazahk had taken pains to ensure Garin's consent and to avoid overly ‘intimate' acts. He would never come inside Garin without explicit permission. "You're very talented."

Sazahk smiled with dark yellow cheeks as he wiped himself clean. "I'm calculated and attentive more than I'm talented, but I'm glad I pleased you."

And gutted him, but Garin blocked that thought before it appeared on his face.

"I believe I've collected all the information I needed and observed enough to reach conclusions on the questions I had." Sazahk stuffed his used wipe in a bag pocket and put on his own clothes. With their loud exertions wound down, the strangely adorable little creatures Sazahk called ‘Fauna A' crept closer and nosed at their blankets. "Thank you very much for your participation."

"Anytime," Garin replied automatically, pushing the long-snouted, big-scaled creature away from the sleeping bag. Then he realized what he'd said. He couldn't fucking take another round like that with Sazahk, only to be reminded Sazahk didn't even want to kiss him. He couldn't take it and he wouldn't do it to himself. "Actually, no." He tossed his own wipe and climbed out of the blankets now damp with his sweat. "If it can be avoided, I'd rather we didn't have sex again."

"Oh." Sazahk's higher pitch made Garin turn around, but Sazahk had his back to him as he dug through his chaotic bag. "Of course. That's an entirely reasonable request and I will make every possible effort to ensure it's satisfied."

Garin watched Sazahk pull out various scientific tools and fought the ache in his throat.

The gray and pink on Sazahk's hands almost made Garin take back his words. But he resisted. He wanted the sex, but he wanted more than that. He wanted Sazahk to want him like he wanted Sazahk. God, the thought felt pathetic.

He was like a teenager, shocked and dismayed by the casual cruelty of the world and struggling to comprehend how he could have feelings for someone, and they could just sit there and fiddle with microscopes while their saliva dried on Garin's skin.

And Sazahk wasn't even mean about it. He was just…not interested.

Garin turned to the sleeping bag and found a Fauna A backing out of it with Garin's pants clutched in its grabby little hands. "Hey, stop that! That's not yours."

He snatched his pants back and the creature's scales lifted and ruffled and shimmered with purple. It chittered at him and cocked its head.

"I only brought so many pairs of pants and I already lost some to a hot spring," Garin told it as he pulled his pants and underwear back on.

The creature chirped and ambled past Garin to his bag.

"No, don't." Garin lifted the bag and moved it to the other side of himself. "There is nothing in there for you."

"It's unlikely to understand Universal." Sazahk cocked his head at Garin in an uncanny mimic of the creature, with his dark eyes and colorful skin.

"I know that." Garin scowled and put the bag in his lap and wrapped his arms around it while the Fauna A pulled on a strap, and another trotted over to get in on the fun.

"So why are you speaking to it?" Sazahk stood with his bag over his shoulder, probably off to amuse himself in some corner counting fungi.

"Well, I'm not going to grunt at it." Garin took his shirt away from the second Fauna A and grappled it back over his head.

Sazahk chuckled, and the sound lightened Garin's chest, despite the undercurrent of sadness it triggered. "The human capacity to anthropomorphize truly is unparalleled."

Yeah, that wasn't the only irrational thing humans were good at.

Garin watched Sazahk wander off, as predicted, to a corner of the cavern overflowing with colorful fungi. A small group of Fauna A followed at his heels, wrestling each other and yipping as they padded along.

They were pretty good at pining after impossible things, too.

They stayed in the cavern with the disruptor rod and the nest of Fauna A for three days, which Garin only knew from the clock on his tablet, because the mycelium-lit twilight never changed.

During that time, Garin lounged more than he had since his father died. There simply wasn't anything for him to do. He'd serviced all their weapons, cleaned the guns, and sharpened the knives. He'd shaved every day. He'd mended every rip and tear in their clothes with his field sewing kit and he'd even scrubbed the nastier stains out of them to the extent that responsible resource conservation allowed.

He'd pored over the maps from Dom and scouted the surrounding tunnels as far as felt prudent, which, admittedly, wasn't very far. The only thing that hurt worse than looking directly at Sazahk was not seeing him at all and not knowing if he was safe.

Taking clippings of fungi and recording the antics of the Fauna A for Sazahk's research filled up some of the hours. Watching the little creatures just for fun filled out a few more.

The concerningly long claws Garin had noticed the first time he'd seen one turned out to be used for digging and climbing more than violence. He'd initially doubted that one of the armored, dense-looking creatures had been what had grabbed and sliced his rope when they'd entered the cave, but after seeing a pair chase each other across the walls and ceiling, defying gravity by anchoring themselves in the rock with their talons, he believed it. After seeing them grab and shake and gnaw on every new thing that caught their eye, he was certain.

It was definitely one of these little bastards that had tried to kill them.

And he couldn't even be mad because they were too fucking cute.

He'd taken well over a hundred photos on his own tablet to send to Beaty. She'd love them.

While Garin took videos of funny animals and checked the water generator, Sazahk forgot to eat and barely slept.

Garin helped him with the eating, pushing a protein pouch or bar into his hand as he hunched over his tablet. But he could do nothing about the sleeping. Sazahk was an adult, and aside from a few gentle suggestions and reminders about the mental benefits of sleep, it wasn't Garin's job to nag a grown man on a mission.

And Sazahk was on a mission.

As curious as he clearly was about everything around them, pure fascination didn't drive a man the way Sazahk was driven. When he wasn't peering through his microscope for so long his brow furrowed with a headache and he rubbed his eyes to alleviate the strain, he was running complicated simulations on his tablet over and over and over. Whether he was getting the results he needed, Garin didn't know.

It occurred to Garin that part of Sazahk's avoidance of sleep might be to avoid sharing the sleeping bag with him after their last incident, but he discarded the thought. That was wishful projection. That was him fantasizing that the event had affected Sazahk in some meaningful way and Garin already knew it hadn't.

Sazahk didn't think of him as anything more than a temporary colleague, but Garin was too far gone to make it back to safe disinterest now.

He didn't know when he'd fallen, exactly.

He hated to think it had been when Sazahk sucked his cock. That made him feel dirty and crude and worse: it simplified Sazahk into sex as though that was the single thing about him that Garin cared for.

Even if that first time had been what pushed Garin's feelings over the edge, the catalyst hadn't been how good Sazahk was in bed. It had been the intoxication of Sazahk's unparalleled focus, intelligence, and kindness fixated on Garin and no one else. It had been all the things that made Sazahk so incredibly attractive wrapped around Garin himself and making him feel more wildly valuable and fascinating than he'd ever felt in his life.

Sazahk had hooked Garin without even meaning to.

And Garin couldn't act on it, so he sat on the ground and scratched behind the ear nubs of a Fauna A and worried. He worried about the bags under Sazahk's eyes, his decreasing food consumption, his lack of sleep, the sad tangle of his beautiful hair. He interspersed his fretting with liberal amounts of guilt about that hair since he'd been the one to pull it out of its braid and snarl it up in the first place.

But maybe that Sazahk would let him fix.

"Do you want me to redo your braid?" Garin offered when Sazahk returned from gathering samples of Fauna A scat.

"No." Sazahk plopped onto the ground and disassembled his favorite microscope. "I think we should leave."

Garin blinked as he processed the two statements. "Right now? And it's really no trouble. I'm good at long hair."

"Our blood tests have shown that the pollutants ceased to build up in our system the moment we entered the caves, meaning the mycelium is likely the cure we're looking for. I can't test whether or not the Insect growth infrastructure is the vehicle through which to deliver that cure from here, so yes, I think we should leave now. Within the next hour or two, unless you have a compelling reason not to. You've already chosen our exit route, haven't you?" Sazahk disassembled his second-favorite microscope. "And why do you have any experience with long hair? It's an impractical style for military and security personnel."

"I've chosen a route, yeah. And no, I don't have a compelling reason, so I guess we can leave now." Garin had, in fact, charted out four different routes in case they ran into obstacles not identifiable on the map. He stopped scratching the Fauna A's head and began packing. "Beaty went through a princess phase where she always wanted her hair done in a fishtail braid. Why the sudden urge to get going?"

"I thought a young daughter's follicle management was usually the purview of a mother or other parental figure, and you've mentioned that your mother is alive, albeit anti-social." Sazahk threw his belongings into his bag without rhyme or reason, making Garin wince. "We're leaving because there is nothing more I can do here and the discoveries I've made have massive implications for the future of Qesha and potentially the future of the Insect species. They must be developed and shared immediately."

"My mother was…" Garin's tongue stuck on the roof of his mouth. "Sick."

Sazahk paused his packing and turned to him with a concerned frown. "I'm sorry. Is she recovered?"

Garin carefully transferred the water generator's contents into canteens, then took the little machine apart. "She's started a new medication. I'm hopeful." He'd been hopeful ever since his father died. By now, the feeling might be better described as stubborn denial.

"You don't look hopeful." Sazahk studied him for the first time in three days. The whiplash of being the focus of Sazahk's formidable attention, to being ignored, to being its focus again unbalanced Garin.

"I am, it's just…" Garin didn't talk about his family struggles, but Sazahk tilted his head with that brown and forest green on his cheeks and honesty came out, anyway. "Her medication is extremely expensive. More than I can afford, really, and I haven't…" Garin looked away from Sazahk's increasingly distressed expression and tucked the water generator into his bag. "I haven't figured out what I'm going to do about that."

"Garin, I'm so sorry." Sazahk stepped closer but didn't touch him and Garin shook his head. Sazahk had already rejected Garin. He didn't need to pity him now, too.

"Don't be. It's not your fault, and it's not your problem." It was Garin's problem. No one else's. He felt Sazahk retreat to his own bag.

"Of course."

Damn it, pushing Sazahk away felt even worse. Garin glanced at him over his shoulder. "So, you have a plan, don't you? For how to clean up the Dead Zone?"

"I have ideas for a plan. I want to get them to Dominic as soon as possible. He has much more experience with putting scientific theory into practice." Sazahk scrunched their sleeping bag into a ball and shoved it into the top of his pack.

"I'm sure Dom is as eager to get his hands on this data as you are to show it to him." Garin checked each pocket of his bag and each zipper of each pocket, then hooked the straps over his shoulders. Despite their dwindling food reserves and Garin's lost supplies, the extra gallons of water and the obscene number of samples Sazahk had collected still made his pack heavier than when they'd set out from the compound. He bit his lip as he watched Sazahk mess with his things and ignore Garin in a way that felt more pointed than before. "It's a long journey back though and it'll only take me a few minutes to re-braid your hair. It'll keep it out of your face."

"I don't want you to braid my hair."

"I don't have to braid it," Garin assured him, wracking his brain for different techniques Beaty had requested. "I'm sure I can remember some other styles."

"I'm not interested in other styles either." Sazahk cinched his bag shut, and stood, fully packed and ready to go.

"But I can still brush it and get it out of your face." Garin stepped a little closer and ran his eyes up and down the tangled mass.

Purple and gray snaked up Sazahk's jaw. "I said no."

"It won't?—"

"I don't want you to touch my hair, Garin." Blue exploded from Sazahk's temples and Garin recoiled.

Shit.

Gray, then black, then purple and blue again raged across Sazahk's cheeks. He ground his teeth, then gritted out through his clenched jaw. "Which way to the exit?"

Garin pointed wordlessly to the eastern tunnel, and Sazahk turned on his heel and stormed into it.

Shit. Sazahk didn't like when Garin touched his hair. Shit, shit, shit.

He followed the fuming qesh. Fauna A scampered after them, somehow oblivious to the waves of negative energy rolling off Sazahk's frame.

Garin had put his hands all over Sazahk's hair when they'd fucked. He'd pulled it and tangled it, and Sazahk didn't like Garin touching his hair! Garin should have guessed. Sazahk had told him not to touch his neck, but he hadn't realized that was about his hair. He hadn't realized, and he hadn't asked. He'd just helped himself right to Sazahk's locks. No wonder Sazahk had pulled away when Garin tried to kiss him.

How did Garin keep getting everything so wrong?

Except… Sazahk had been the one to put Garin's hand on his face. Garin ran over the memory in his head again and again as they trudged through the tunnel. The glow of the mycelium faded as they left the disruptor rod behind, only flaring up where they stepped on it or brushed up against it. Garin definitely didn't remember their coupling wrong. Sazahk had been the one to initiate touch.

But he'd done it for Garin. He'd probably been gritting his teeth and bearing it the whole time. Of course, he didn't want Garin's hands on him now, and no wonder he was frustrated with Garin for pushing him. Garin should have realized how far past Sazahk's boundaries he'd catapulted when they'd been together. He prided himself on being an attentive and conscientious lover. He hated that he'd been greedy and inconsiderate.

"I'm sorry for pulling your hair during sex," Garin blurted as they walked down a broad tunnel, only a few of the more daring Fauna A still lumbering along beside them.

Sazahk sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Don't apologize for things for which you bear no fault."

"But it is my fault that I pulled your hair." Garin pulled out two headlamps as they left the ambient glow of the mycelium behind and passed one to Sazahk.

"Yes but pulling my hair during intercourse is not a wrong and thus requires no apology." Sazahk took the headlamp but fitted it and kept walking instead of stopping to engage in the conversation.

"It is a wrong if you didn't like it." Garin increased his pace to keep up.

"I did like it."

Garin's foot snagged on a rock, and he stumbled. Wait, what?

"Which way?" Sazahk stopped at a fork in their path and Garin caught up and looked at his tablet, despite his brain's unwillingness to focus on it.

"That way." He pointed left and Sazahk strode on while Garin scrambled to put his tablet back in his pocket. "So, you're saying you did like it when I pulled your hair during sex?"

"Yes, that's what I'm saying."

"Oh." Well, that was a relief. "Did I do something else you didn't like?"

"No, Garin." Sazahk sent him a bemused and somewhat exasperated look. "I enjoyed every aspect of our consensual sexual intercourse. You were the one that said you didn't want to have sex again, not me."

Garin flushed, torn between being incredibly pleased that Sazahk had enjoyed himself, and incredibly peeved that their lack of future sex was being blamed on him. It was true that he didn't want to have sex again, but only because he also wanted kisses. "But you just said you don't want me to touch your hair."

"That is an entirely separate discussion." Sazahk finally stopped and turned to him, his face scrunched in confusion. "No, I don't want you sitting behind me and fussing over me for the better part of an hour. That is not related to my feelings on you pulling my hair during intercourse. Does that make sense?"

Well, when he put it like that. Sex: acceptable. Casual intimacy: unacceptable. Garin looked away. He supposed he could have figured that out on his own without causing a scene about it. "Yes, that makes sense."

"Alright then. Please let me know if you require any further clarification." Sazahk turned on his heel and continued on.

How did he do that? How did he make things seem so cut and dry and logical when Garin knew in his gut that they were more complicated than that? Garin did require further explanation, but at this rate, he was pretty sure it wouldn't come from Sazahk.