Chapter 17

Chapter Seventeen

Sazahk slowly turned around and found Garin flushed red.

"I am so sorry about that." Garin dropped his head into his hands. "They're not great with boundaries."

"I didn't mind. I valued the opportunity to interact with the people who have had such a formative effect on your life." Sazahk approached Garin's bed, irrationally itching to touch him and ensure his wholeness despite Sazahk's own eyes verifying his integrity. "May I examine you?"

"Uh," Garin looked up and blinked, flushing a little darker. "Yeah, sure, be my guest."

"I've been monitoring your vitals from the moment you were admitted, but there's a difference between equipment readouts and concrete observations." Sazahk cupped Garin's neck to feel the pulse in his throat beating beneath his fingertips. Garin's breath caught, and his pulse quickened at the contact, but stayed strong and steady. "I recognize that accessing your medical readings without your permission is a violation of your privacy and almost purely selfish on my part since I'm not a doctor and have limited tools at my disposal to aid you in the event of your readings taking a negative turn, but I couldn't stand being ignorant of your state."

Garin's blush didn't fade, but his lips pulled into a smile. "You can monitor my vitals all you want, Sazahk."

"I don't think it'll be necessary once you're discharged." Sazahk lifted the edge of Garin's shirt to eye the bandages wrapped around his midriff. They were still taut and white, so Sazahk let them be. "It's not necessary now, not that it was before either, but I'm reluctant to relinquish my visibility."

Garin lowered his arms when Sazahk admitted to himself there was no additional part of Garin he could justify examining. "Sazahk, were you…worried about me?"

Orange flooded down Sazahk's forearms to his fingers playing with the sheet beside Garin's hand. "Of course I was worried about you!" Sazahk scowled at the man. "Your chances of surviving that excursion onto the Wate station were slim. I was worried about you the second I was informed of where you were and why. And when I learned that you'd—" Sazahk snapped his mouth shut, the words scraping up his throat like glass and too painful to get out. Been shot. When he'd found out Garin had been shot.

"Hey." Garin's warm hand covered his own. "I'm alright. It's not the first time I've been shot, and it probably won't be the last."

"That doesn't make me feel better!" Sazahk snapped, and he winced at the harshness of his own tone echoing in the small room and Garin's stunned expression. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay." Garin recovered and laced his fingers with Sazahk's. He stroked the back of his hand with his thumb.

"No, it's not. I shouldn't yell at you." Sazahk brought his other hand to the bed to hold Garin's in both of his. "You've done nothing wrong, and I understand the risks of your profession and why you've chosen it and I have no right to disapprove."

"Do you though?" Garin cocked his head. "Disapprove?"

Sazahk pressed his lips together and answered honestly. "I don't think that violence suits you."

Surprise passed over Garin's face. "Really? Most people have disagreed. I've historically been pretty good at it."

"Being good at it isn't the same thing as it suiting you." Sazahk pursed his lips. "I know individuals suited to violence. And I don't consider that to reflect poorly on them. I think it is a useful skill and an important societal position to occupy." Fal'ran and Patrick came to Sazahk's mind. "And I know individuals for whom violence became a necessary part of their life that they adapted to, despite its unnaturalness." Tar. "I believe you to be the second type."

Garin huffed a breath through his nose and looked down at Sazahk's hands holding his. "It wouldn't be good for my professional reputation to admit, but I don't think you're wrong." Garin cleared his throat. "I—" Then he coughed and swallowed. "Sorry, I need some water."

"Of course." Sazahk mentally scolded himself. Water should have been the first thing he'd thought of when Garin awoke, rather than a pointless examination. He spied a plastic pitcher and cup on the table against the far wall and grabbed it with a few of the flex metal tentacles tucked into the base of Garin's hospital bed. "Here."

"Thank—holy shit!" Garin reeled back when he saw the tentacles holding out the pitcher and cup for him. "Are those—" Garin whipped his head around to stare at Sazahk. "Do you have an implant?"

"I do." Sazahk drew himself up tall and pulled more flex metal from the base of the bed, an embarrassingly proud grin tugging at his lips. He didn't know why it pleased him so much to show Garin his returned power, but it did.

"That's amazing." Garin murmured, reaching for one. "May I?"

"Of course." Sazahk swayed the tentacle closer.

"I've seen qesh do some things with their implants before, but it's always been at a distance, and I've never seen such fine motor control." Garin touched the tip of the tentacle, and Sazahk slithered it down his palm and wrapped it around his forearm, prompting a delighted laugh.

"Many qesh don't have such a high-quality implant, my level of mental control, nor my access." Sazahk crawled a second tentacle loosely up Garin's other arm while a third poured the water from the pitcher into the cup.

Garin chuckled as he tried to untangle himself. "So, when you said you've been monitoring my vitals, you didn't mean looking at a screen, did you?"

"No." Sazahk released Garin so he could drink his water. "I've been having the readings delivered directly to my implant."

Garin shuddered as he drained the cup of water, but he spluttered before he finished it and shoved the cup onto his side table, before turning his whole torso to face Sazahk. "Shit, you got your implant re-inserted."

"Yes." Sazahk frowned and waved a tentacle in front of himself. "That's what we just discussed."

"But, I mean, you underwent the procedure to get it inserted." Garin grabbed Sazahk's hand, and his green eyes filled with a concern that cracked something in Sazahk's chest. "That must have been difficult."

Sazahk lowered his tentacle as a lump formed in his throat. ‘Difficult' didn't fully encompass the experience. It didn't even partially encompass it. Sazahk looked down at Garin's hand, clutching his. "It was unpleasant."

Garin's other hand approached slowly enough for Sazahk to decide not to dodge it. He let Garin cup his cheek and lift his gaze up to meet his. "I can't even imagine, Sazahk."

"I wanted you," Sazahk blurted without thinking.

Garin's face slackened in shock and Sazahk wanted to reel the words back into his mouth, shocked as well that they'd escaped.

"That is, I felt an irrational certainty that the experience would have been less traumatically unpleasant if you had been present." Sazahk cringed and turned his face into Garin's palm, hiding the spots of gray he knew rose in his cheeks. "I don't have a justification for that certainty. You wouldn't have erased my memories of the past or prevented the flashbacks, but you—" Sazahk squeezed his eyes shut, more and more honesty spilling out with all the words Garin let him finish. "Most people would have interrupted me by now."

Garin lifted his other hand to cup Sazahk's jaw in both his palms. "I'll never interrupt you, Sazahk."

Sazahk met Garin's green eyes and twisted his lips. "I'm sure there are life-or-death situations in which it would be beneficial for both of us for you to interrupt me."

"This isn't a life-or-death situation." Garin twitched a smile, but his dark brows pulled down in a pained expression. "I'm so sorry I wasn't there, Sazahk."

Sazahk couldn't shake his head in Garin's grasp, so he shrugged a shoulder. "I didn't think I needed you. And I wasn't wrong exactly, I didn't need you, but if I had known how I was going to feel, I—" Sazahk huffed. "I wouldn't have stopped you from chasing Dom. It was the right thing to do."

Garin sighed and rubbed his thumb over Sazahk's cheekbones. "Yeah, I think you're right, but…I still wish I could have been there for you."

Sazahk wrapped two tentacles around Garin's wrists and gently pulled his hands from his face. "The sentiment is appreciated."

But did nothing for Sazahk.

It was right that Garin had gone after Dom.

Just like it was right that he would take the job offer from Alistair Turner.

Sazahk silently killed the opportunity for Garin to join Squad M. Garin was finally free of the anxiety over his mother's medication. Sazahk didn't want him to pick up that burden again. And he remembered Garin telling him of past lovers who had wanted to be prioritized above his family. Sazahk resolved without hesitation not to make the same mistake. He valued and respected Garin too much to hoard him and, in so doing, ruin one of the things that made him so special.

It was a horrible no-win situation, though. Garin's love for his family was an attractive quality that, among other things, made him deserving of love himself, but also made it impossible to give it to him. It didn't sit well with Sazahk, but maybe that was because Sazahk had little experience with either familial or romantic love. Maybe it made sense to someone more qualified. Maybe the predicament was even solvable by someone more worthy.

"Saz—"

"I'm pleased you've found a solution for financing your mother's medications." Sazahk forced yellow onto his cheeks as he stepped back, and Garin's face fell.

"I…yeah. Yeah, I'm incredibly relieved." Garin's tone didn't sound relieved as he dropped his hands into his lap.

"She seems lovely. Your whole family, of course, seems lovely, but I suppose I was primed to feel positively about them given their association with you and my feelings for—" Sazahk caught himself "—our time together in the Dead Zone and the emotional echoes of our activities and my satisfaction with the research we obtained."

Garin opened his mouth, but it took a few seconds for him to reply. When he did, his tone was easy, but his face shuttered. "Right. But still, I'm glad you liked them."

Sazahk wanted to kick himself. Goddess take him. How could he talk so much and never say the right thing? He shook his head and re-closed the distance between them. "No, I'm sorry, that was disingenuous of me."

"What was?" Garin leaned back, his face neutral, but Sazahk saw the hurt in his eyes.

"What I should have said was that I was primed to feel positively about them because of my feelings for you ." Sazahk gripped the sheets on the side of Garin's bed with as much force as he could generate, grounding himself and forcing the words out. "I think you're wonderful." Not specific enough. "You're intelligent and kind and nurturing in a way that I've never encountered and that I find makes me feel better about myself than I've ever felt, and it draws me to you and I'm incredibly grateful to have spent the time with you that I did."

Sazahk released a deep breath. That. That was accurate and complete information that Garin deserved to know, and a weight lifted from Sazahk's chest now that he'd shared it.

Garin stared at him, a blush climbing up his neck. It took a whole three seconds for him to blink and clear his throat and raise a hand to the back of his head as he looked away. "Shit, Sazahk, you've got a way with words."

"A poor one that involves too many of them." Sazahk wished he had Bar'in's ability to read people.

"No," Garin laughed awkwardly. "No, I wouldn't say that." He met Sazahk's eyes. "Sazahk, you've got to know I feel the same about you. And then some."

"No, I don't know that." Sazahk shook his head. He knew nothing at all about how Garin felt. He only barely understood how he himself felt.

"Well, I do." Garin grinned, his lower lip still caught between his white teeth. "You're something else. Something really fucking special."

Warmth filled Sazahk's chest. He was something else. He knew that. He'd always been the most outlandish person in the room. But Garin made him feel good about it.

They stared at each other, Sazahk's hand on the bed a few inches from Garin's.

Right.

Well.

Sazahk had said the words. That was it, right?

He wasn't going to offer a relationship, not now that Garin was preoccupied with more important things.

So he should leave.

Except, Garin's eyes were still on him and while Garin would leave soon, he hadn't gone yet and there was one other thing Sazahk had regretted.

Sazahk squared his shoulders and swallowed his nerves. "You've previously exhibited an interest in kissing me."

Garin didn't collapse in shock again, perhaps having expected another blunt declaration, but his pupils dilated, and his breath hitched. "Yes, I have."

Sazahk bunched the sheet in his fists to stop his hands from shaking. "Are you still interested?"

Garin searched Sazahk's face. "I'm only interested in kissing men who want to be kissed."

Sazahk nodded slowly. "That aligns with my understanding of you."

"Sazahk." Garin inched his hand close enough to brush their fingers together and the warmth of Garin's skin sent lightning up Sazahk's arm. "Do you want to be kissed?"

"As a general rule and by a general partner, no." Sazahk caught Garin's fingers in his, afraid his honesty might drive him to break the contact. "But by you, yes." Sazahk nodded vigorously. "Yes, I do."

"Fuck, Sazahk." Garin surged forward and captured Sazahk's lips.

Sazahk froze, paralyzed by Garin's fervor. The heat and urgency of his lips on Sazahk's stuttered his brain to a standstill. Desire swept through him, both his own for Garin and the undeniable desire Garin had for him.

"Sorry, I—" Garin broke the kiss and pulled back, but Sazahk chased after him, slotting their mouths together again.

He tasted rich.

It was an odd adjective for the flavor of a human man's mouth, particularly one who had received his sustenance from an intravenous drip for three days, but it was accurate. Sazahk swept his tongue along the seam of Garin's lips and Garin parted them with a groan. Musky and decadent and addictive.

Garin ran his hands over Sazahk's jaw and up into his hair, and Sazahk smiled against his lips. Garin loved his hair. Goddess knew why, but he did.

"Is this okay?" Garin breathed into the space between them.

"Yes." Sazahk stared at the man's glistening lower lip and didn't fight the urge to lean back in and nip it. Garin gasped and pulled Sazahk's hair, so Sazahk followed up with more nips and kisses, exploring all the different ways Garin's lips molded against his own.

Garin melted before him, and Sazahk kissed him back against the bed.

"Can I touch more of you?" Sazahk's hands shook with the pent-up desire to feel Garin's body beneath them again.

"Yeah, fuck, get up here." Garin dropped his hands to Sazahk's hips and hauled him onto the bed.

"I don't want to hurt you." Sazahk straddled Garin gingerly, not knowing where else to fit himself on the small hospital bed, but not wanting to jostle the injured man.

"I'm not in pain." Garin ran his hands up Sazahk's flanks to grab his chin and pull him down for another kiss.

Sazahk dove in enthusiastically, enjoying the novel sensation of the angle and Garin's panting as his breath quickened. But after a few moments, he pulled himself together and broke his lips free. "Your lack of pain is likely due to topical and intravenous painkillers, not because my position isn't harming you."

"I know you'll be careful." Garin took his lips again and Sazahk closed his eyes and gave in. He would. He would be careful, but, goddess, he didn't want to stop kissing this man. And he wanted to do so much more than kiss him.

Sazahk shifted his hips to make room for his hand to trail down the length of Garin's shorter body. He tasted the man's gasp as his fingers brushed down the bandages around Garin's abdomen and paused at his waistband.

Garin whined and arched his hips off the bed, so Sazahk immediately skated his hands into his loose pants and gripped his bare length. He swallowed Garin's deep moan, amazed a sound could have a taste and that it could be so intoxicating.

"Orgasms release hormones in humans known to aid in the healing process," Sazahk panted in Garin's mouth when Garin broke the kiss with a groan. He rubbed his thumb against the vein on the underside of Garin's cock, just the way he knew he liked it. "Can I bring you to orgasm, Garin?"

"Please." Garin nodded so forcefully he almost knocked their foreheads together. "Please, Sazahk."

Thank the goddess. Sazahk didn't know what he would have done if Garin had declined. Well, no, he knew what he would have done. He would have stopped, and his chest would have caved in.

Sazahk pulled his hand out of Garin's pants to lick a broad, generous swipe across his palm before Garin's wide eyes. He didn't care if there were better lubricants. He didn't know where they were, and he didn't want to stop long enough to find out.

He couldn't stop. All the terror of the past few days, and the mounting horror at the possibility that he might never see Garin again, flooded out of him in a torrent of need to touch, to kiss, to pleasure, to prove to himself that Garin was still here and still pliant and needy under Sazahk's hands.

Without conscious thought, the tentacles embedded in the bed's base snaked out to wrap around Garin's arms, legs, and torso as Sazahk wrapped his hand around his length again.

"Oh, shit." Garin stared at the metal spiraling loosely over his body and his cock pulsed against Sazahk's palm. "Fuck, that's hot."

Sazahk laughed and swept in to take Garin's mouth in another kiss. It made sense that the potential for extreme overstimulation aroused Garin, and yet the man's excitement for everything Sazahk did to him and everything Sazahk was still surprised him.

Every glint in Garin's eye when he looked at him inched open a door in Sazahk's mind that he'd never thought he'd see behind.

But this flex metal wasn't near high-quality enough to perform the sorts of acts already spinning through Sazahk's imagination, and Sazahk didn't have the patience for them at the moment, anyway. He needed Garin with his head thrown back and a moan on his lips as he came in Sazahk's arms, and he needed it now.

Sazahk pumped Garin faster and tightened his grip, knowing his saliva slicked his way enough for Garin's tastes.

"Sazahk." Garin's returning kiss broke down into a whine. "I'm not gonna last long. You—" He whined again when Sazahk added a twist to his motions. "I'm too—I won't last."

"I don't want you to." Sazahk licked into him and tangled their tongues. He ran his tentacles over every part of Garin's body his hands were too busy to touch.

Garin released his head onto the pillow as Sazahk plundered his mouth and thrust his hips up into Sazahk's fist. Heat built in Sazahk's stomach at Garin's display, the knowledge of the man's arousal pinging back into his own.

"Sazahk." Garin's brows pinched, and his eyes screwed shut, as he tangled his fingers in Sazahk's hair and Sazahk's whole body ached with adoration.

"Garin," Sazahk whispered against his lips before taking them roughly, and Garin's cock pulsed against his palm as he cried out into his mouth.

Sazahk kissed Garin through his orgasm, plunging his tongue into the man's mouth and when Garin sobbed against him, Sazahk's own need crested and crashed over him like a rogue wave. They moaned against each other, their hips twitching, Sazahk's mind alarmingly wiped clean of everything but how much he wanted this man and how good he felt.

Sazahk worked Garin until he softened, then loosened his grip into a fondling.

They didn't part as they came down, their lips turning gentle and sweet. Garin tasted like the heaven the goddess promised that Sazahk had never believed in. Sweeter even in his sated sleepiness.

After a few moments, Garin reached for Sazahk's groin. "Can I…?"

Sazahk shook his head, his face heating with embarrassment. "That won't be necessary." He fell to the side to lie next to Garin, pressed against him in the small bed, feeling like he should give the healing man space, but uncertain his legs could hold him up yet. "I found your orgasm stimulating to the point of my own."

Garin's heart thudded under Sazahk's hand. "Oh." He wrapped an arm around Sazahk's shoulders and pulled him in close. "I thought…" He bit his lip and rubbed his thumb against Sazahk's deltoid. "I don't quite understand."

"What don't you understand?" Sazahk slipped his leg between Garin's and nestled into his side, lying his head beside his so could stare at his handsome profile and watch the thoughts flit behind his green eyes.

"I thought you didn't have any interest in sex or find it particularly enjoyable." Garin blushed and glanced at Sazahk. "So I guess I'm surprised that you…instigated and that you…" He blushed harder. "Came. Like that."

Sazahk tilted his head and picked at Garin's shirt over his beating heart. "I've never felt any spontaneous arousal from or sexual desire for unfamiliar strangers or casual acquaintances, but you're neither of those things." He smoothed his palm over Garin's chest to feel his quickening pulse. "As I said, I think you're wonderful and I believe I've developed a personally unprecedented level of affection for you and an equally unprecedented level of sexual desire has accompanied that."

Something that looked an awful lot like awe, then delight filled Garin's eyes. "Shit, Sazahk, you—" Those eyes flicked to Sazahk's lips. "Can I kiss you?"

Sazahk nodded. "I give you my standing consent to do so."

Garin rolled him onto his back and kissed him hard. He broke for a breath, then followed it up with two more, before breaking long enough to speak. "You don't know how good it feels to hear that."

"I don't," Sazahk admitted. He wrapped a few tentacles around Garin's ankles and wrists to hold him close. "To be honest, it's quite frightening and uncomfortable to say and I probably wouldn't have, except that it was painful to know that you didn't know how I felt and painful to consider the opportunity for closeness to you I would forgo in my silence."

"I appreciate your bravery." Garin stroked his cheek and smiled.

"I appreciate the results." Sazahk hooked his arms around Garin's shoulders, surprised at his lack of discomfort at having the man above him. "Short-lived though they may be."

The bubbling, ecstatic energy in Garin's frame fizzled out. His face fell and Sazahk's heart with it, but he pushed through with a happy yellow on his skin.

"You've found a way to bring your mother back." Sazahk gripped Garin's shirt tightly. "It's a good thing."

"Yeah. Yeah, it is." Garin fell to the bed to lie beside Sazahk. "The job's a huge relief."

"I'm happy for you." Sazahk rolled onto his side again to fling his leg and arm over Garin, careful to miss the drying semen, and trying to think his way to a solution for Garin's downbeat turn.

Long-distance relationships were not unheard of or impossible things, but they were difficult and generally found to be untenable in the long term. And while Sazahk thought it unlikely that he'd view commitment to an absent Garin as a hardship, he couldn't say the same for Garin. The man's mind didn't work like Sazahk's. He had needs and desires and an ability to find relief with others. Sazahk didn't want to stand in his way of that. He didn't want to trap Garin in a relationship he'd feel compelled to stay in. He didn't want to be another obligation for the man.

"And I appreciate that, too." Garin wrapped his arm around him again and tugged him close enough to kiss his forehead. "That you're happy for me."

Sazahk blinked as his forehead tingled where Garin had kissed it, the casual affection stinging as it sank in. "Short-lived is not the same as over." He tangled his fingers with Garin's and reached up to kiss his jaw. "We have a week before all the treaties are enacted and finalized and your new employment situation begins."

"That's true." Garin tightened his grip on Sazahk's fingers and turned to him with a smirk. He bumped their noses and kissed Sazahk's lips as naturally as if he'd been doing it all along. "How ever shall we fill it?"