Welcome to Gaia! ::

Detraeus blinked, floored. “I…” He rolled his shoulders, pulse speeding in spite of himself, and he narrowed his eyes a fraction. “…‘interests’…?”

Detraeus sputtered. Heat swam up his neck to his eartips even as the rest of him went rigid as an old blade. He opened and shut his mouth several times, tail lashing as he worked to get a grip on his various reactions. Eventually, clenching and releasing his fists, he took a single step backwards.

“What I do…in my bed…is no one’s business but mine.”

Detraeus narrowed his eyes. “I swore to you by my goddess and yours that I wouldn’t hurt her. I haven’t, and I never will. I haven’t touched her. I haven’t taken her to my bed. And I won’t. Ever. Even if she would have me. Does that please you?”

The tip of Detraeus’ tail flicked, and he lifted a hand to his shoulder, brow pinched in confusion. ‘If she cares about me, I fail to see why.’ ‘I never said I had no interest in her, only that I wouldn’t…can’t take her to my bed…’ ‘She is my friend. One of few.’

“I pay rent. I bring meat. I keep my spaces clean. This house has a faucet. Where I last lived, there was one well for fifty tenants and it smelled of urine and the s**t of old men. I am…comfortable…here.” His frown deepened, a hand reaching up to rub at his forearm, absent mindedly scratching over the markings there. “I don’t…touch people. You’ve nothing to fear. I don’t understand what more you want of me…”

Detraeus grunted and shrugged, glad to be off the previous subject. “Not badly. It’s cleaned and bound.”

New scars, shallow and deep, had become such a frequent part of his existence between the pit and the mercenary jobs he took that he quickly forgot one or another of them, tending to them as needed and then ignoring them the rest of the time as a normal constant. He eyed the door, wondering how long it could possibly take for Ara to gather vegetables from a small garden.

Detraeus’ attention flit back from the door, to her. “You’d heal an oblivionite,” he said, half in curiosity and half in disbelief. “You were ready to draw a sword on me when I first entered.”

“Nnh. You’ll be done with your questions if I do?” Detraeus asked.

The woman glanced up from his hand to his face. Curiosity still pinched her expression, the set of her shoulders firm, but not stiff. After a time, however, she sighed. “I suppose. Some questions, I think, are best left for other times.”

Detraeus eyed her, posture wary, but eventually he worked to unbind the wrappings on his hand, moving carefully when he got to the most clotted area, wanting to disturb the wound as little as possible before holding his hand out to her.

Detraeus’ attention flicked to Ara the instant the door opened, but he held still, waiting out the older woman’s treatment before drawing his hand back to himself and thumbing over his palm with his opposite. It was amazing, to an extent, what healers could do. He just, didn’t, like…any of what it entailed. Easier, since Niyal was a woman, but it still left his skin prickled and muscles tense. He backed up though without a word, dipping his head and then stepping away to help Ara with her goods.

Niyal, true to her word, did not pester him with any additional questions, but Detraeus knew, from the look in her eyes alone as she watched him, that those she had remaining were plenty, and weighty. Nothing she was about to forget anytime soon. He wondered if he could find a job to get him out of the house until the woman had left the premises. While she was not wholly objectionable, her questions made him think in ways that unnerved him, and it felt strange — in a way he did not appreciate — to simultaneously want someone’s ‘approval’ (for what, he couldn’t begin to guess) and want to drive said person away and keep them from forming unrealistic expectations of him.

He would not be what she thought he was. He would not pursue her daughter, because he would never be what Araceli needed. But the more Niyal interrogated him on that front, the more Detraeus came to realize that he wished he could be.

And it scared him.