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“Enver, would you indulge me a blasphemy?”
The room around them is dim with soft candlelight, the sheets soft and warm, the man before him smells of sex-musk and smoke, and not a single muscle in his body is tense.
In short, he feels about as far from his father’s embrace as he ever has. Somehow this makes him feel bold.
His lover hums sleepily where he rests, he’s always tired after sex and now is no exception. He’s dozing with his head tucked into the crook of Kazaran’s neck, soft breaths puffing against the skin over his pulse. “I will always indulge your blasphemies, my love,” he says, though his voice is a half-asleep rumble.
“Do you ever think about running?”
Kazaran feels Gortash tense slightly, feels his brow furrow. He decides to continue anyway, “I don’t remember what it’s like to be just a person,” he says, voice quiet but it felt as if he were screaming, “To not have the weight of my destiny and my parentage and every single responsibility every single day never stopping never ever ending blood and duties and always looking over my shoulder and never trusting and-“
He cuts himself off with a gasp, finally running out of air. He shudders in a second one and feels Gortash reach a hand up to brush rough fingers gently over his cheek. He squeezes his eyes shut, “Who would I be if I weren’t Bhaal’s favoured spawn?” He asks, and in truth he doesn’t really have a clue, “Who would I be if I were allowed to be anything else?”
Gortash hums, a sign for him to continue, and his thumb pets idly back and forth on Kazaran’s cheek. Kazaran leans into the unfamiliar comfort readily, “I think sometimes… If we ran far enough, hid well enough, for long enough, maybe we could even find out.”
“We?” Gortash asks, and there’s something odd in his voice Kazaran can’t recognize.
“I wouldn’t have the courage to do it alone,” Kazaran replies, “Nor would I want to.”
“I admit, the prospect seems less daunting when not facing it alone,” Gortash says, and Kazaran finds himself almost wishing he’d laughed and called him ridiculous. Then the ache in his chest might not feel so sharp. “Sometimes being like this with you feels as close to freedom as we can get.”
“Men like us are never free. I sometimes wonder if it’s not braver to defy one’s destiny then it is to pursue it.”
“We don’t do what we do because we’re brave , though, do we?” Gortash sighs into Kazaran’s skin, his still stroking thumb balming the ache he feels, if only a little.
There is a moment of silence between them. It’s long and heavy, not uncomfortable but thick with fear and yearning in equal measure. It’s a silence born of the knowledge that it’s something they both dream of, and that it’s something they will never have. Because as much as they long for each other and for the great limitless expanse of a free life, they both fear the cost much more fiercely.
“Do you think we would have a cat?” Kazaran asks, in a desperate attempt to lighten the mood.
“Oh, several,” Gortash replies, tone unreadable until he continues, “maybe you could take up knitting and make them little cardigans.”
Kazaran snorts, “and you could take up the family business and make them little shoes.”
The comment earns him a pinch. He laughs again.
The conversation moves on to other topics, other bickering quarrels that end in laughter… but now the words have been said between them neither can forget them.
They both dream that night of a kinder world that allows them to be whatever they wish. They both awaken the next day heavy with the mourning of a life they both know they cannot have.