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“One month,” says Jesper, kissing Marya’s knuckles. She smiles at him, only a little distantly, and he gives her a wink before joining Wylan in the doorway. Wylan hands him his suitcase and nods a farewell to his mother.
“One month plus travel,” Wylan says as they turn down the Geldstraat. “So two months.”
“Less if the winds are fair.” Wylan’s never chatty, but he’s been downright quiet the last few days, and Jesper’s been treating him more carefully than usual. “Back before you know it.”
Wylan just nods and says nothing. Part of him wants Jesper to ask Are you angry? or Do you want me to stay? just so that he can say No, of course not. Just to have said it.
“You’ll give my best to Mr. Fahey?” he says finally, the silence unbearable.
“Of course.”
“Of course.”
“Wylan—” Jesper trails off and switches his suitcase to the other hand so he can reach out for Wylan’s. “You will be all right, won’t you?”
Wylan almost wants to ignore it, to keep walking, but there’s something vulnerable and strange about his long fingers reaching out. Something not right about seeing them empty. Or perhaps it’s just that he can’t deny Jesper anything, never can. He takes the offered hand and says, “Of course.”
“Don’t lie.”
Wylan stops walking and sighs, scrubbing at his face. “It’s fine. It’ll be fine. I’m just—I haven’t slept much lately.”
“I know.”
“I’m just— I don’t know. The last time you went away you nearly died half a hundred times or more. And I was with you, then, but now you’re on your own and I just wish—”
Jesper bites his lip. “You said you didn’t want to come.”
“That’s not what I said and you know it.”
“Can’t come, won’t come, same result.”
“Are you angry with me?”
“Are you angry with me?” Jesper asks, accusing.
“No one’s angry with anyone!” Wylan says, throwing up his hands. “Saints, you’re infuriating.”
“Furious, but not angry, got it.”
“Jes, please. Not on the day you leave.”
It’s Jesper’s turn to sigh, and he takes Wylan’s hand again, pulling him closer. “You’ve been off for weeks. You barely talk to me, I feel like I’ve hardly touched you for ages.” He runs his thumb over Wylan’s knuckles, leaning in. “I just want—”
“I just want—” Wylan starts, overlapping. He smiles slightly, and shuts his eyes in embarrassment. “I’ve been weaning myself off you.”
“What?”
“In case it goes bad. The voyage or, I don’t know, some slaver finds out you’re a fabrikator or—”
Jesper cuts him off with a kiss. Wylan lets him for a moment, then pulls away, blushing.
“Nothing bad’s going to happen, sweet boy. I’ve promised you that I’ll come home, and even my bad luck can’t stop me.”
“Ghezen, we were fine until you went and said that.”
Jesper laughs and wraps and arm around his shoulder. Something settles in Wylan’s belly at the warmth at his side, and he drags his feet all the way to the quay.
“Who’re you then?” the man loading barrels up the gangway shouts down to them.
“Fahey,” Jesper yells back. “Booked passage.”
“Delay.” The man comes down towards them and gestures out to sea. “Dispute with the Tides, some fucking mercher. Won’t board for another hour at least. I’ll take your bag if you want.”
Jesper narrows his eyes. “Tyril, is it? Conrad’s cousin?”
The man looks surprised. “Aye, lad. And how do you know that?”
Jesper looks relieved. “Did a job with your man not long ago. I can trust you, can I, as a friend of the family?”
Tyril laughs at him. “You worry I’ll run off with your little carpetbag, do you? Full of precious coins and jewels, I suppose. Leave it here with the others; the sooner we’re loaded, the sooner we leave ones the Tides sort the shit from the silver.”
Jesper chuckles at the expression and hands over his bag. “An hour, you say?”
Tyril shrugs. “We hope. Go get a drink or something, be back here at quarter of. No guarantees.” He walks back up to the ship, bellowing at a deckhand as he goes.
“Where should we wait?” Wylan asks, looking around. “Doesn’t seem worth going back to the house.”
Jesper shrugs. “There’s cafes anywhere you look down here. I’ll buy you a coffee.”
“Deal.”
Wylan follows Jesper back towards the crowded street, paying little attention to where they’re going until Jesper looks over his shoulder with a smile like trouble and ducks out of the crowd down an uneven set of barely visible stone steps.
“What—”
Jesper hushes him with a finger to his lips, grinning. They make their way down a precarious path that winds its way down under a small footbridge and along the canal. A few distressed pigeons flap out of their roosts as the boys go by, nearly startling Wylan into the water. Jesper pulls him into a little alcove of uneven stone walls that looks like it once held a sewer pipe. They can hear the noise of foot traffic above and behind them, but can’t see anything around the stone.
“This isn’t a cafe,” Wylan says carefully.
Jesper drops to his knees. “Nope.”
He has Wylan’s trousers nearly undone before Wylan can react. “Jesper!”
“You won’t send me away without one more taste, will you? You couldn’t be that cruel.”
“What if someone—”
“No one comes down here except for this. Promise.” He looks up at Wylan, smile faltering. “Do you want—?”
Wylan groans, nods, then drops his head back agains the wall and covers his face.
He can feel Jesper’s huff of laughter against his skin, and he can feel himself start to harden even before Jesper gets his trousers fully open.
He hast to look, then, at least for the start of it. Every time they do this, Jesper gives him a moment to just look, Jesper’s dark eyes looking up under long lashes, mouth open and relaxed, the rosy head of Wylan’s cock resting on the soft, dark cushion of his full lower lip. Wylan let’s him self see it, take it in, and feels the head-to-toe shiver that takes him every time. He suspect that it might always be overwhelming, the sight of Jesper on his knees. You’re allowed this, he reminds himself, almost lightheaded. You’re allowed this dream.
Then, devilish and deliberate, Jesper flutters his eyelids, rolls his eyes back, and swallows Wylan down with a filthy, melodious groan. Wylan whines, high-pitched, and covers his face again as he tries not to pass out, come, or burst into tears.
Jesper is relentless, sloppy and wet and humming his satisfaction, eyes closed but wrinkled up at the corners. He tries to duck his head and suck kisses onto Wylan’s balls, but can’t get far before the taut fabric of his open trousers chokes him. Something about it, the clumsy turning of Jesper’s head as he tries to reach further, lower, sends sparks down Wylan’s spine.
Wylan’s hands scrabble at the stone behind him and on either side as Jesper sucks him in again, gasping like he’s drowning to keep from crying out.
“God, saints, Jesper,” he breathes, and the three words sound the same, feel the same in his mouth, the weight of them. His eyes are squeezed shut and Jesper digs his nails into the back of Wylan’s thighs, willing them open. Wylan looks down at him and chokes on his own spit, eyes locking with an intensity that shakes both of them. Wylan grits out a high pitched “Shit” and comes so hard he bends nearly double, curled over Jesper like he’s protecting him from a storm.
Jesper surges up and kisses him, Wylan’s release still clinging to the edge of his lip. Wylan knows his knees have gone weak and Jesper is holding him up, and it takes a moment for him to feel the wetness on his own cheeks. He tries to take a steady breath, but it catches and he can’t hold back the smallest sob.
“Wylan?”
“Sorry. Sorry, I—”
“No. Shush, it’s fine.” Jesper kisses his cheek, light and gentle, and it makes Wylan want to slam him face first into the wall and finger fuck him until he screams.
He twists his hands in Jesper’s shirt and shuts his eyes instead. “Will you miss me?”
“You know I will.”
“Will you think of me, even back home?”
“Hey. Look at me.” Jesper tilts his head up, but Wylan keeps his eyes closed. He’s not sure why he’s being like this, why he’s suddenly got this frustration building up, burning up inside him. Leave, he almost spits. Like everybody else. Like Nina and Inej and Matthias. Just leave. He bites his own lip viciously to keep it in. He doesn’t mean it, not really. He isn’t angry, scared, he isn’t a child anymore, crawling on his belly to keep from getting hit.
“Wylan,” Jesper whispers, and cups Wylan’s cheek in his hand. Wylan can’t help but lean into it, can never help that. “I will think of you every hour. Ten times an hour.”
“Will you?” Wylan whispers.
“I will. I’ll think of your eyes. Let me see them.” And Wylan can’t deny him, never can.
“There we go. I’ll think of them every time I see the sky, and of your voice every time I hear the wind through the jurda fields. The way your hair curls when it dries after a bath. And there, that blush, even now, even after everything, that I can still make you blush. Your perfect mouth, the taste of you—” Jesper runs two fingers over his bottom lip, eyes focused as a sniper on a mark, voice gone distant and hushed and serious. His fingertip catches on the slight crack of Wylan’s chapped lip and suddenly Wylan can’t take another second. He turns his head and sucks both fingers into his mouth, hard and firm, pressing his tongue up against them and running the tip along the seam between them.
Jesper grunts like he’s been punched in the stomach and jerks forward, and Wylan can feel him hard against his thigh. He gets Jesper’s trousers open in a matter of seconds, dragging his teeth up Jesper’s fingers and swirling his tongue around the tips before sucking them back down and swallowing so Jesper can see his throat work.
“Oh,” Jesper gasps, his free hand fluttering between Wylan’s hair, his shoulder, his hip. “Oh saints, Wylan. You menace, you miracle.”
Wylan groans and pulls him forward, one hand firm and merciless on his cock, the other plunging down the back of his drawers to grab a handful of his ass. Jesper cries out as he pinches the skin but rocks back and forward and buries his face in Wylan’s neck, his free hand digging into Wylan’s curls and yanking back so he can bite at his neck.
“I haven’t left you any marks,” Jesper mutters, and he sounds mad, raving, and even though Wylan can’t see them he knows the fire in his eyes. It’s the late night, early morning, bad decision smolder of one bet too many or one target too far. “God, I want you with me, always. Come with me.”
Wylan says nothing, just bites the fleshy base of his fingers for the cruelty of the offer and twists his palm over the head of Jesper’s cock. Jesper shouts and attacks Wylan’s jaw, sucking a line of marks leading down to the collar of his shirt and then under, letting go of his hair to yank the fabric away and bite at his collarbone. If Wylan could come again he probably would.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Jesper chants and pulls his fingers out of Wylan’s mouth to wrap his hand around the head of his cock and squeeze once as he comes, gasping.
Wylan should make space between them to save them both the mess, but instead he pulls him closer, wet hand sliding around his hip and other arm strong around his shoulders.
“Don’t go,” he whispers. “Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go.”
“Wara,” Jesper says, Zemeni vowels rich in his mouth. Wylan hasn’t built up the courage to ask him what it means, but he feels the breath of it warm against his ear and it settles something between his ribs, smoothing out a sharp edge he’s been trying to breathe against.
After a long moment, Wylan lets him pull away. “I’m sorry.”
“Never be,” Jesper says, soft and serious. “I’ll be back before you know it. No time at all.”
Wylan straightens and nods. “Of course. Yes. Of course you will.”
Jesper nods back, solemn as a soldier, and then his mouth goes a bit crooked. “I think I packed all my handkerchiefs.”
“You’re kidding.”
He bites his lip and looks up under his lashes. Wylan rolls his eyes.
“What am I going to do with you?”
“I can’t get on a boat looking like this, can I? Cabin full of rowdy sailors, no telling what they’ll think.”
Wylan glares at him. “I ought to toss you in the canal.”
“Like you can toss me anywhere.”
“You wait, you won’t even recognize me when you get back. I’ll take a job piling salt barrels and be all muscles—”
“Just give me your damn scarf, Wylan.”
Wylan hesitates long enough to make his point and then pulls the scarf out of his satchel with a sigh.
“I do like this scarf, you know.”
“You can wash it. Or leave it as it is. Keep it under your pillow while I’m gone.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“Give another kiss before we go back up, yeah? Just you and me.”
"Then you’ll buy me a coffee?”
“Then, my dear, I’ll buy you the fucking ocean.”
Wylan feels himself turn pink and presses his cheek to Jesper’s so he can feel the warmth of it.
“And ocean of coffee. Keep me warm while you’re away.”
Jesper pulls back to look at him a long while, then kisses him gentle and warm.
“One month,” he whispers, and for the first time, Wylan believes him.