Kov neared the place where he had first encountered Tavin, still uncertain whether he wished to see Koss again or learn more about him. What purpose would either serve, if the architect didn't want to accept the Awakening between them? He had thought, before he met Tavin, and found an acceptance that came with no cost other than his presence, that he would use the time and the shared office space to urge Koss to reconsider.
But why should he need to do this? It was Koss who had come to him. Though he had been drawn to sit and watch the other man, Kov would not have chosen to intrude upon him. Koss had suggested the touching. He'd known the way of it. The memory was still alive within Kov's mind, the remembered sensations causing his heart and breathing rates to accelerate.
Koss had said he had never touched another so; now Kov was uncertain whether he could trust that the other man had told him the truth. It was not an untruth to omit; but an omission was a form of dishonesty, in a situation such as this.
Had Koss been dishonest with him?
But Kov had the answer already, in the way Koss had invited him to explore their Awakening, but then refuted his own motives and interest, withdrawing precisely when everything that was in both of them was singing for a deeper, more permanent joining.
There was dishonesty in that. It wasn't omission; it was subversion.
Koss had known the point beyond which he would not go, and he hadn't indicated it in any way while he was guiding the nature of their sharing.
Koss's deceptive approach was undesirable. Almost, Kov wished that he had not been Awakened to such a man, that a part of him didn't, even in this moment, orient toward Koss, and yearn still to deepen what had begun between them.
However, that Awakening had revealed an answer he had sought without understanding that he was seeking, and there was value in that. Even if that Awakening withered into a hollow promise, there was a deep benefit in knowing himself in this new way.
He could now spare T'Sia the grief of a husband who could never desire her, even in the depths of his Burning. If she would but choose a champion for the kal-if-fee, or even a consort to be for her what he could not, she could pass her life in the manner she most wished, with children and a partner for all parts of her life.
But what of him?
If he could not have Koss, would he die when the Burning took him?