content edited as of April 11, 2011; author's notes untouched.
Warning: Shounen-ai. Because I ship the Seal Boys with each other but never in a threesome. Very mild spoilers for Book 2: Spirit Walker.
When Asrif woke, it was slightly past dawn and Tenris, Torak and Bale were already gone. Detlan was still asleep, his leg swelling slightly.
He pursed his lips. He didn't like it at all when Detlan got hurt. He also didn't like it when he slept so much his stomach felt like a pit of hunger. He addressed the hunger first, because there really wasn't much he could do for his friend.
Detlan woke up as Asrif ate.
Asrif offered him some food, but he declined, instead drinking an entire skin of water and sleeping again. He hoped Detlan wasn't sick. Injured he could deal with, but sick was a whole different matter.
He sent the fire to sleep and sat cross-legged next closer to Detlan, keeping his gaze on the Sea.
About noon, he woke Detlan.
He groaned, shifted, then woke suddenly, gasping.
"What?" he asked, dropping his head on Asrif's lap.
"You need to eat," he said, offering him a strip of dried whale meat.
Detlan groaned again. He did not like broken bones.
"Could you. . .?"
Always the polite one, Detlan was. Asrif would have simply instructed him to help him sit, to which Detlan would willingly oblige with a smile an a laugh.
Leaning on Asrif, Detlan ate the meat. Then he was out again, slumping even more prominently against his companion. The conscious Seal boy scooted to his side so that Detlan's head once again rested on his thigh. Without thought, he brushed his lips against his temple. Then he laughed. He liked Detlan, yes, but who ever heard of a boy kissing another boy?
"D'joo jus' kiss me?" Detlan asked, his speech sleep-slurred. Clearly, he wasn't as asleep as Asrif believed.
"No," he said firmly, returning his gaze to the Sea. Somewhere, the World Spirit was stirring up a storm.
"Liar." And he was silent, his breathing even again.
The next few days were spent like that. Detlan in a daze, Asrif feeding him. It took a while for whatever Tenris had given him to wear off and it was only on Midsummer that he was fully conscious for more than five minutes.
The scene was quite familiar, Detaln leaning on him, still a little out of it.
"Asrif?" he asked, looking at said boy.
"Yes?"
"You did kiss me."
Asrif flushed. In the bright sun, it was painfully obvious.
"The Sea Mother hates liars," he says, almost laughing, "So does the World Spirit." And everyone wants the favor of the Sea Mother and World Spirit.
He nods, embarrassed.
And now Detlan does laugh. He brushes his lips against Asrif's shoulder (it was the only place he could reach that way without moving his leg). "I like you, too."
Author's Note: Bale gets the most screen (well, page) time, so I figured I'd play around with Detlan and Asrif's characters a bit. Particularly this way because there's nothing at all said about whether or not same-sex couples were socially acceptable. A slightly AU, one-sided Asrif/Bale may be coming next.