dearly beloved

It was new for Urien, this experience, the collapse of mutual exhaustion. They sank into each other in a way they never had before, their need for rest overriding the borders between them, each limb and head finding its perch on the other’s crisscrossed body. They sat in silence for a while, and Urien relished in it.

There were plenty of things he could say. He was good as saying things, after eighteen years of practice in the fine art of conversation, but somehow Ruta made all of it seem sort of pointless. It was like trying to dance with someone with no sense of rhythm. But, he realized, he didn’t particularly want him to have rhythm. Maybe he wanted the silence sometimes.

In lieu of speech, Urien tilted slightly, just enough to press a shoulder against Ruta’s, and Ruta somehow understood the invitation. He curled up around Urien, knees tucked and head on his chest, cradled around his bump.

“Have you felt it move?” Ruta asked, sleepiness coloring her voice after the long quiet.

“No,” Urien lied. Half lied. He’d felt little twinges, flashes of foreign sensation. But it didn’t feel like movement. It didn’t feel nearly as horrifying as the prospect of a living thing moving inside him sounded, and he had been dutifully ignoring each instance, anyway.

Ruta traced a short line across the fabric on Urien’s middle, then stopped, tiredness overtaking him, and simply moved a finger a millimeter back and forth, a ghost of a caress, and Urien had a very sudden and sharp revelation. 

“Ruta,” he said, “tell me, are you in love with me?”

Her breath hitched for a second. “...I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Is that true?” Urien asked. There was no malice in it, no sense of interrogation. Ruta took a long while. 

“I don’t think I have that part of me,” he said, soft and even. “I think it’s missing.” A beat. Then, quieter. “But I do love you.” 

“I’ve been thinking,” Urien said, ignoring the little flash inside him, “that I didn’t—I never—hell, I really never thought I’d admit this. I didn’t want to do this.” Somehow, saying this out loud, this statement as obvious as the sun in the sky, made him feel sliced open, laid more bare than he’d felt even in the middle of his crying, screaming rages. “I didn’t ever want this. I don’t want it now. I don’t want to be married. I don’t want to have a baby. I don’t want to be pregnant. I certainly didn’t want it now, but, I don’t—I never would want any of this, not ever, not with anyone on earth but, god, I’m very glad, Ruta, that if I have to do it, I’m doing it with you.”

He took a breath. Ruta said nothing, but curled closer, tighter, like a shell around their baby, growing gently in his womb. For a moment, Urien thought she’d fallen asleep like that, until he felt a sudden damp on his chest, and he saw that she was crying.

He stroked her long hair, dirty and wind-tangled as it was. He wouldn’t have, a month ago, but why? Hadn’t he always been the type to stroke a crying friend’s hair? Ruta shook, gently, under his hand, trying to squeeze away the tears.

“I love them so much,” he said, barely audible, voice too quiet not to crack with the tears. “I already love them so much.”