Recluse returned with two glasses and plopped down on the other end of the sofa hard enough the spring creaked and cushions bounced. He tipped the bottle, and pungent amber liquid glugged into both glasses. After handing one to me, he raised the other to his lips and downed it in two gulps. 

When the liquid hit my tongue, I sputtered, swallowing half of the liquid and spraying the other half over the coffee table. “Oh, fuck. Fuck, I’m sorry.”

He frowned. “It’s been a while since you’ve drank, I take it.”

“Actually, I…” I fidgeted with the folded edge of my coat sleeve. “I’ve never drank before.”

His hand froze over the bottle as he moved to refill his glass. “Never?”

I shrugged one shoulder. “Well, I was seventeen when the Infection started, and I pretty much just studied all the time before that. I used to think I’d change the world.”

For a few seconds, Recluse studied me with a soft contemplation somehow scarier than the usual hard indifference. Then he lifted the whiskey bottle. “More?”

I set my glass on the coffee table and slid it toward him, glass resonating against wood with a rattling hum. Amber liquid splashed the glass again, stopping at a meager inch. 

I cocked an eyebrow at the full bottle. 

One side of his lips twitched. “Pace yourself, hey?”

Sweet Ether, this was bad. With that lopsided smile and bionic leg, he made magazine models look downright boring.

I jerked my gaze away from him, took a small sip, and swallowed fast. “So, I thought we could maybe, you know…” Fuck it. I tilted the glass to my lips and choked it all down. As the liquid burned a path to my gut, the words tumbled free. “I thought we could talk.”

“Talk,” he repeated slowly, as if learning a new word. “Talk about what?”

I clutched the empty glass tight. “Ourselves, I guess?”

He huffed a breath and leaned back, draping his free arm over the end of the couch. “I don’t talk about myself.”

“Well, I can talk about myself… if you want.”

He shrugged. “I won’t stop you.” 

The offhanded mumble carried the same indifference as when I told him my name. But he remembered my name.

I sucked in a double-inhale. “So, I never really, uh… got along with my father.” Something flickered below the surface of his eyes, but I continued before he could respond. “My mother was amazing, though. Truly incredible.”

“Was she? So your father, when he…” He nodded vaguely toward my chest. “Where was your mother?”

I thumped the glass on the table in front of him. “More. Please.”

Wordlessly, he obliged. Then he poured twice as much for himself. He gulped his again, and I managed to choke down most of mine before wheezing a cough. 

Gaze fixed on the glass in my hand, I continued. “My mother couldn’t focus on her work with a kid around, so she had to stay elsewhere.”

A quiet exhale. “She left you.”

I furrowed my brow. “No. She came to see me every month. Took time away from all of her important work just to talk to me. To teach me about medicine, and computers, and how the world works.”

“But she never realized what your father was doing?”

“He only did it where no one would see, and I never told her.”

“Why not?”

A wave of hot defensiveness strained my tone. “You don’t understand. I couldn’t waste our time together like that. She… she was a genius. Many people would have given anything to spend a few hours with her. I was lucky.”

“Hmm.”

The liquor fueled my indignance. “Hmm, what?”

“Nothing,” he said quietly. “Just doesn’t sound very lucky.”

The tears I had held back earlier chose that moment to prick my eyes. I clawed my left hand into the couch cushion as the glass in my right hand swam in my vision, blurred by alcohol and tears. Fuck you, whiskey, I told the glass. You were supposed to help.

Recluse dropped a hand onto the couch, and his pinky edged toward mine, an infinitesimal brush of bare skin. “Zaf? You alright?” 

When I blinked back tears to meet his gaze, the lantern light splashed gold across the brown of his eyes. Breathlessness burned my chest, and my words croaked. 

“I’m fine, Recluse.”

His eyes dipped to the place our pinkies still touched. After several beats of silence, he said, “That’s not my name, you know.”

I blinked at him. “I... guess I figured that, but I didn’t realize it bothered you.”

“It doesn’t. It didn’t.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “My name is Rekkan.”

“Rekkan.” I tasted the sounds slowly. “I like it.”

His breath hitched, and his eyebrows ticked together. Then he twisted toward me, and his shoulders curved as if itching to close the space between us. 

Tentatively, gauging his reaction every second, I withdrew the pinky touching his and trailed one finger over the veins on the back of his hand and up his muscular forearm. The fragile space where our skin touched glowed in the fuzzy light of the lantern. 

I drew my left leg onto the couch between us and lifted my gaze to meet his. He stared back at me, pupils wide and chest swelling with irregular breaths. 

In that moment, two strange thoughts passed through my alcohol-saturated mind. One, that in this instance, Recluse — Rekkan — was more naive, more fragile, maybe even more pathetic than me. And two, even if I had to leave tomorrow, I would very much like to kiss him first.

In slow, unsteady movements, I leaned toward him.

He yanked his hand away and jolted to his feet.

My leg slid off the couch with a fast exhale. “Sorry, I thought you were… I read that wrong, obviously. Please forget —”

Then my eyes dipped to his waistline, and I blinked.

Perhaps he was not so repulsed, after all.

“Zaf, it’s not… you don’t have to...” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Just tell me what you want.” 

So quietly I could barely hear myself, I said, “I wanted to kiss you.”

He shook his head. “No, I mean what you really want.”

A moment ago, this had felt different than my experiences with other men. Maybe even meant something. Now a bitter cold extinguished the desire like a snowdrift blanketing a fire. I set the glass beside the newly-annotated science book and stared at the rainbow of refracted light on the table. 

Rekkan drew in a shaky breath. “Listen, do… do you like plants?”

I blinked at him. “What?”

“I plant a garden around the fortress each spring. I wouldn’t mind some help.”

Hope fluttered in my chest, but I clamped down on it. “Planting season must not start for two months.”

He shifted and cleared his throat. “Three, actually.”

“You’d keep me here for three months?”

“I know I’m not easy to live with. If you want to leave before then, you —”

“Rekkan.”

He clamped his lips together, and a wary vulnerability breached his eyes — like he had just handed me a loaded gun and was waiting to see what I’d do with it.

I like you, I wanted to say. I like your humor and your eyes and your lopsided smile, and I like that you make me feel safe.

I swallowed. “Yeah, Rekkan. I like plants.”