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It was, Cliopher thought when he was awake enough to think much of anything that was oh no not again, a bit like being back in the vaha, after they came crashing back down from Sky Ocean. The aches throughout his body, the general feeling of malaise—and the presence of Fitzroy beside him, warm and wearing nothing much.
This time, alas, he and Fitzroy were equally affected; they had eaten from the same platters, Cliopher as hungry for the sight of Fitzroy's enjoyment as for the delicately arranged raw fish.
Some of which, evidently, would have been better cooked. Fitzroy had fallen ill first, but Cliopher had had only an hour's reprieve. He dimly recalled that Rhodin and Sardeet had proven very practical and competent in the face of food poisoning. He was not altogether sure why he and Fitzroy were sharing a bed, unless one of them had perhaps failed to get to a chamber pot in time and made a mess of the other. Perhaps it was simply for the convenience of whoever was looking after them in their illness.
Cliopher made the monumental effort to turn his head and look over at Fitzroy, only to find that his eyes were slightly open, looking back. Cliopher tried to smile, tried to reach over and touch his fanoa, and was not sure if he succeeded in either before his eyes slipped shut and he could only lie there, feeling the cruelty of gravity and the draining effort of being alive.
His mind slipped back to the vaha, to the hours after their precipitous return to the world—and the moments before, too.
Even Fitzroy would not dream of kissing now, Cliopher thought, and it was a mildly consoling idea. He was not the only one who was not always thinking of such things; there were times when no one did. And then—
Kip's eyes flashed open as the exact comparison came to him, and he managed to roll onto his side and put his hand to Fitzroy's cheek. Fitzroy's eyes opened fully at the touch, though they were at their very darkest amber just now, scarcely a hint of their wonderful gold.
"Like coconuts," Kip informed him, knowing that his beloved would remember and guard this insight for him. "Kissing is like the coconuts. And sex."
Fitzroy blinked a few times, and when he spoke his voice was barely above a whisper, but steady and true. "Kissing is like coconuts. And sex is..."
"Like a really big coconut," Kip agreed, and then his eyes closed and he was asleep again, deeply, before he could say another word.
I lay a while looking at Kip. I had begun to recover a little earlier than he had, which is to say I had ceased my desperate need for the chamber pot somewhat earlier. Kip had alarmed us all with how long he continued to, in Rhodin's delicate phrase, lose fluids. When he finally settled into an only mildly feverish sleep it had been decided that I could nap beside him and be a sufficient guardian—in large part so that everyone else who had nursed us through the worst could go and sleep in other places.
"Like... a really big coconut," I murmured aloud, wondering if it would make any more sense that way. It seemed, in fact, even more like the pure ravings of a feverish man, except that Kip had been so clear-eyed and intent and himself for that one moment.
It had rather the sound of a riddle: How is kissing like coconuts, and sex like a really big coconut? Put that way, I knew that I would remember it, and that the itch to know the answer to the riddle would prompt me to pry the answer from Kip, who could himself be rather like an oyster—
But I could not happily think of oysters, just yet.
I redirected my thoughts to the topic of Kip—Kip!—spontaneously bringing up the subjects of kissing and sex, which had absolutely never happened before. As he had informed me: he did not dream of kissing. Nor did it ever seem to come to his mind, now that I was free to observe him in the sort of friendly and casual conversations where that might become apparent.
For a thousand years, I had assumed that Cliopher's libido was, much like his homeland, something that was never mentioned in my presence because it was your presence, freighted with Imperial protocol. Kip might not be expert in all the nuances of court etiquette, but naturally he kept the bawdy jokes and off-color remarks to himself.
I was learning, however, that this was not so. Kip was nearly always the last in the group to register a double entendre—though when in a group making competitively saucy remarks, his wit was certainly equal to the task. He hardly blushed at my most detailed erotic dictation, and yet it never seemed to... inspire anything beyond the page. It seemed not to occur to him that friends who had firmly decided not to kiss or touch or make any other advances upon their very dear and platonic friends—indeed, their fanoa—would not normally spend an hour or more a day composing explicit erotica with their assistance.
And yet I had fairly recently had a conversation with a very drunk Ghilly who apparently still, now and then, fondly remembered Cliopher's hands. And mouth. And other parts.
All in all, my fanoa remained a mystery to me in this respect, and however strange it was, I believed that his riddle was a chance at another clue. I fell asleep still mulling over the possibilities, and no nearer to an answer.
We were afforded a period of faravia after emerging from the acute stage of our food poisoning—as much for the others' sake as for ours, as it seemed to have been grueling for everyone in various ways. We all needed some time to be a little apart from each other and the world, to rest before crashing back together as a group and proceeding with our adventuring.
I suspected that this was attributable as much to advancing age as increased wisdom in how to handle such a situation. We did all simply get tired more easily than I ever remembered from my first span as Fitzroy Angursell.
But whyever we were all so comprehensively amenable to it, the end result was that Kip and I passed a few quiet days scarcely seeing the others; some had retreated so far as separate guest houses, while others were simply keeping to their own rooms and schedules. I was content to continue sharing a—well-aired and freshly changed—bed with Kip, to make our few ambling outings to establishments that served no seafood at all, and to otherwise spend the majority of our time sitting in the guest house garden or parlor, alternately talking about nothing much, reading without deep comprehension, and dozing.
We were somewhat more than a day into this—sharing a broad swing seat in the garden, which I had set to a slow and steady, not to say oceanic, rhythm—when I remembered the riddle. Kip was blinking drowsily at a book of not-very-good local poetry, so I concluded I was not interrupting anything terribly important and gave in to the itch to know the answer.
"Beloved," I said, and clearly I spoke with a certain tone, because Kip looked over at once, his gaze sharpening on me in a way that it had not for the book. I let my own expression go mildly beseeching and said, "How is kissing like a coconut, exactly?"
Kip blinked, and his lips parted, and then his gaze drifted a bit, his brow wrinkling as he thought.
I sat very still, and hoped against hope that I was not about to be left with only, It made sense at the time, but I was still feverish, as an answer. It would be one of the many sorts of truth which are deeply, deeply unsatisfying, and sheer narrative urge would compel me to arrive at an answer to the riddle. Before falling ill I had been approaching a delicate and absorbing bit of El and Auri's epic which I looked forward to resuming work on soon, and detouring onto a riddle about kissing and coconuts would—
Kip's gaze abruptly sharpened, and his face flushed hot, red rising on his cheeks and ears.
Ahh. So he did remember, then.
I smiled and sat back into my side of the swing, slowing it a little and arranging my face into a calm and inviting open expression.
Kip snorted and shook himself a little, and came to rest in a posture that mirrored mine, outwardly calm and relaxed. His hands, of course, betrayed him, gripping hard on the book, but he was communicating that he wanted me to see him at ease: the topic did not require formal care in negotiating, nor would he have me believe him as uncomfortable as he clearly felt.
He sighed, and then nodded. "It is not, of course, the way I ever intended to raise the topic."
"For all your plans," I agreed, "none of them that I'm aware of ever entailed giving yourself food poisoning."
"Or you either, beloved," Kip put in, but he was nearly smiling, so we were on the right track.
I nodded to accede the point without interrupting further.
Kip wrinkled his nose, staring off into the garden over my shoulder. "It was, you understand, one of those ideas that seems terribly eloquent when you are feverish, and which you come to find rather... less so, later on."
"No need to polish drafts between us," I said at once. "We are workshopping, we are sounding things out."
Kip nodded slowly. "I ask that you... take it in that spirit, then, and not... rush to judgment. This time."
My mouth was already open to insist that of course, of course, I would not judge, and Kip's last two words, softly spoken, hit me like a slap.
I could not think of any time when I had rendered any sort of judgment on Kip in relation to kissing and sex. For a moment I thought, absurdly, of that spy who had seduced him, a matter I had handled entirely via intermediaries and which Kip had never yet acknowledged in my presence—another perplexing wrinkle to his disinterest, which I was sure could not be as simple as utter heterosexuality. And yet...
The very first time Kip and I ever discussed that topic, back on the vaha in Sky Ocean, Kip had shortly after been reduced to tears. I had climbed up out of my own megrims to retrieve him from what seemed to be a dreadfully painful doubt that I would wish to be fanoa with him. I had not, to this moment, ever quite stopped to construct what must have been his train of thought leading up to that paroxysm.
"I had not intended to pass judgment before," I said carefully. "That I evidently did, and perhaps made it so difficult for you to ever raise the topic again that it required a case of food poisoning, I apologize."
Kip made a gentle negating gesture. "I understood your position, of course. Or," Kip's mouth twisted wryly. "I thought I did, at least. Perhaps it is time to lay those particular sails out and give them a good going-over, to see what may need mending after all."
I nodded, intrigued indeed. Kip's matter of fact rejection of my long-overdue and perhaps too oblique pass at him, and the placating offer which followed it, had been entirely overshadowed in my own mind by the discussion we had had afterward, agreeing to be fanoa. At the time, of course, it had also been promptly followed by falling back into reality, and Kip being quite prostrated, needing more care than I had seen him require—
"Is that what made you think of it now? Or the other day, rather? Feeling again nearly as bad as after we fell from Sky Ocean?"
Kip smiled and nodded. "Just so. Because, you recall, we had to begin to eat and drink again, not just because it would be pleasant or seemed like the time for it, but from necessity."
I nodded slowly. That morning we had each gingerly begun to eat again; neither of us had remarked on how that process was proceeding internally, but nor had we strayed far from the guest house facilities.
"And it was not," Kip went on, warming to his as yet inscrutable topic, "that, when we were in Sky Ocean, we disliked coconuts, or even were necessarily indifferent to them, as such. I was perfectly glad to climb trees for them and do the work of cracking them open, assuming that we would want them, even though I did not feel true hunger or thirst."
His point was beginning to dawn on me, though I was briefly distracted by the fondly remembered sight of Kip clad in only a grass skirt climbing coconut trees. But he had been content to climb them, and never suggested that I should be doing so instead of him, even though logically there was no need for anyone to do any such thing: we did not hunger or thirst as we would in the mortal world. And yet what had been finer than all the meals we had eaten by the fire with Auri and El and their crew?
"And so those coconuts resemble..." I could not bring myself to say it.
"Kissing," Kip said easily. "Or sex, though that is more so. A higher tree to climb, a tougher shell to crack. That part of myself has perhaps always been off in Sky Ocean, all my life, or somewhere else as I did not discover it there either. The... appetite, the need that others seem to feel, is not there in me. And that can make me rather... unsatisfying, of course, as a lover, if what one wants is to be hungered for."
His words came slower as he neared his conclusion, his gaze drifting away from me. He sounded quite resigned, at the end—aware of a failure, a lack in himself, which made him unappealing to people he... evidently would have liked to appeal to, if he could choose.
I abruptly recalled that somewhere in that fractured conversation on the vaha, he had been reaching for me, and that I had pushed him away magically, flung him down to the deck.
Of course he had felt that as judgment.
"Well," I said, trying not to sound so flippant as to be dismissing this heart-truth he had patiently spelled out for me, as I had utterly failed to grasp it the first time. "I cannot say that I ever found you the least unsatisfying in the department of coconuts."
Kip smiled, but it was the worst sort of smile, the polite acknowledgement that an attempted witticism had been uttered.
I winced, realizing that instead of flippant I had instead managed to sound condescending, perhaps even—
I remembered, then, with disorienting vividness, being on the vaha in Sky Ocean with Kip, having just been told about the beautiful house in Gorjo City, feeling sick with longing for it, for Kip, for a life that had in that moment seemed cruelly impossible. I had snarled at him that he need not pity me. And now I had done it to him, or he must think I had.
The silence went on a little too long before I mustered the words to try again, but at least Kip was still beside me, still looking at me. "What is more," I tried, daring to smile a little myself, "Ghilly does not seem to have found you at all lacking in that department. In others, evidently, but..."
Kip's polite smile had gone a bit rigid, and his face was flooding a wonderfully bright pink as his eyes squeezed shut. "What... when..."
"A week or two ago now," I said, trying to remember which world we had been on. "That night at that lake house, with the drinking games."
Kip groaned and buried his face in his hands. "Why?" He sounded plaintive.
"On reflection," I said, piecing together memories, "I do believe she was trying to tell me the same thing you are trying to tell me now, albeit without your own perspective on it. I think I missed some of what she said, or at least I've forgotten it, but I suspect she started out to offer advice on being in a relationship with you—having to be very direct and even demanding, even when it feels quite rude to do so."
Kip's fingers were digging in a bit at his hairline.
"But by the time I really started paying attention she was just... talking about the things she missed."
Kip's fingers parted, and he peeked through at me cautiously.
I smiled and gently tugged his hands away from his face, then dared to kiss his knuckles. "These, for instance, as I recall. And I have always admired your hands, so I did not doubt her."
Kip blinked at me, and I watched the blush recede and then saw his brain engage; I could see when he started considering what he had done with his fingers for Ghilly, and how precisely that would translate to me. His fingers twitched in my grasp, and I let go of them abruptly, feeling my own face heat.
I felt immediately foolish, and cowardly, and unspeakably old, but then Kip said, "So... not now, then. Of course. Not a very private location. Or very comfortable," he added, eyeing the swing.
"It's been... a long time, for me," I said, before he could suggest more suitable alternatives. "A long time since I did more than dream of kisses—and for a long time in the middle there I did not even dream. So... perhaps we could go quite slowly. For my sake."
"It will be something new for both of us," Kip agreed, reaching out to take my hand again, which seemed manageable, though it did nothing to reduce the heat I could feel in my cheeks, nor the excited/terrified fluttering of my heart. "A different way to be fanoa than we have been before now. We will go slowly. And you will remember that I may need to be prompted. I may forget when it is time to go a bit faster. But, as a first step, we could say... one kiss a day?"
I made a face quite without meaning to and Kip, wonderfully, laughed. "That does sound a bit stingy, when I say it that way. Two kisses per day, minimum? Three? If you simply give me a target I shall know how to direct my efforts."
"And," I said, though I did not think I could reasonably doubt the warm grip of his hand, or the sparkle in his eyes that meant his attention was engaged on an enjoyable project. And still, I had to ask. "When you say efforts, you... you do not mean..."
"You must remember what my calendar looked like. I would work on budgets and reports until midnight, every night, because I was glad to make those efforts. I lived to make them. This is quite a different sort of effort, and one I enjoy in what seems to be the usual way when I am in it. I simply need a nudge to turn my attentions in the correct direction, if it is desired. And if it is not desired, or if you need a break, or to go slower, you need never feel that I shall consider myself neglected—only that I may forget again and need more reminding if and when you'd like to resume."
I nodded slowly, trying to sort out how I felt in this barrage of pragmatic considerations.
I desired Kip, of course, as I had for roughly the past nine hundred years, or however long it had been since I had met him. I felt... skittish, at the prospect of acting on my desire for anyone in any fashion at all. And I now knew that Kip, while he did not desire me in precisely the same way I desired him, was happily amenable to sex and kissing—indeed, I knew well what a profession of passion it was, to be compared to his reports. And he would feel no more tyrannized by me than he had by Ghilly, if I required his attention.
I also knew that Kip, deep down, rather liked being tyrannized a little, now and again. I could see where that liking might translate rather handily, in sexual terms, as long as I did not think too hard about actually literally doing that.
For now, we were going quite slowly, for both our sakes.
"I think," I said, "that a daily minimum of three kisses will be sufficient for the time being, though you must tell me if I become a nuisance in requesting more."
Kip nodded seriously. "We are in the very early stages of information-gathering, really. Three is simply a benchmark to test against. We will soon work out the true supply and demand pressures and arrive at a sustainable budget—"
He broke off, laughing, when I pulled him toward me, and kissed me easily, as if he might have done it at any time. As if no special effort were required—no tree to climb, no shell to crack.
I pressed my lips to his again, just to feel it, the softness and warmth, the kissing Kip of it all. The fluttering in my heart traveled all through my body, and Kip was all pink again, and that, I thought, was a very good start.