“How are you?” Jace asked carefully, searching Khoth’s face for something.
Khoth’s expression was bland. “I am quite…” He stopped. He did not want to lie to Jace. They close. Friends. Lovers. More? “I do not know how I am. I will have to spend some time meditating to bring my Xi and Xa back into balance. My mother… High Councillor Voor did not do this after Daesah’s death. She believed that she could leave it in the past.”
“You can’t do that.” Jace struggled to understand this.
“No, you cannot. And attempting it causes damage,” Khoth admitted.
“Yeah, yeah, I can imagine that,” Jace said. He put a hand on Khoth’s arm. “What can I do for you? To help you?”
Khoth stared down at Jace’s hand and covered it with his own. Blue over pale. He stroked the back of that hand.
“I do not know what I need,” Khoth admitted.
“Well, if you do want something--need something--that I can help with, even in a little way, please let me know,” Jace told him, squeezing his arm.
Khoth nodded. Emotions were like glass sticking in his throat.
“C’mon, you didn’t eat. You need to eat something and we can just be quiet together,” Jace said.
Khoth looked carefully at Jace’s expression and his body language. “You are tired.”
“What? No! I’m good!” Jace yawned.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Really?”
Another yawn. “I maybe could close my eyes for a minute. Just a minute.”
“Yes. Just a minute.”
“I mean I didn’t do anything physical here.” Jace flapped his hands. “Yesterday, you and me handled a Hive and--”
“You have not fully recovered from everything you have gone through. And now, you have faced a great opponent and won,” Khoth said.
Jace nodded, his shoulders dipping a little wearily. “Yeah, that was harder than I thought. I feel like I’ve run a marathon.”
“Then come. We will both rest and eat after.” Khoth offered a hand to Jace.
Jace took it and Khoth helped the lithe, young man stand up. The two of them walked together--still holding hands--out of the negotiations room. When they entered the hallway, there was no one there but them. The Osiris was a huge ship and it did not have its complement of crew yet. But still Khoth wondered what the rules should be about them when people could see.
“Jace?” Khoth asked, using the Pilot’s name to indicate that he was speaking to the man and not his higher officer.
“Yeah?” Jace rested his head against Khoth’s shoulder, humming a little happily as he did so.
They walked down the hall like this towards the lift and Khoth found himself loath to ask what he was about to. It might stop the touching, the comfort, the sweet humming that seemed to vibrate through him.
“What’s up?” Jace asked as the lift doors closed behind them.
Jace had turned and taken both of Khoth’s hands in his and was gazing up at Khoth with an eager--if slightly exhausted--smile on his face. Khoth didn’t want that smile to fade one iota or for more tiredness to seep into that expressive face.
“I… we… should begin as we mean to go on,” Khoth said.
Jace tilted his head to the side and blinked. “Ah, okay? I’m not tracking.”
“I believe you call it… PDF,” Khoth said uncertainly.
“PDF? You mean like the file type? Wait, no, you mean PDA! Public displays of affection!” Jace grinned, amused at his mistake.
“I thought it was a public display of feelings.” Khoth frowned. Both seemed appropriate.
