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"You can open your eyes," Arkady said. "We're here."
Aral obediently opened his eyes, even going so far as to push up on his elbows to look around. Arkady had told him to close his eyes perhaps ten minutes ago. He'd been trying to track their progress by feel, but they were still in deep water, and the sun was still pouring in from his left.
Arkady had taken his shirt off while Aral's eyes were closed--very quietly, too--and Aral focused for a moment on watching him reef the mainsail rather than looking beyond the edge of the little sailboat's deck. When Arkady had finished and was looking down at him, pleased and faintly expectant, Aral sat up all the way and looked around.
They were surrounded by Sergyar's startlingly turquoise sea. There were a few smudges of distant islands to the north, and a scattering of fair-weather clouds overhead in the deeply blue sky.
"And where," Aral asked, smiling in anticipation of being let in on the joke, "is here?"
Arkady's smile widened from expectation to pure pleasure, and he walked over to sit beside Aral on the deck. He passed over the pocket-sized locator unit as he did, which showed their little green beacon-pixel surrounded by a great deal of sea and a scattering of islands to the north.
"Here," Arkady said, with immense satisfaction, "is over the horizon from every other living soul on this planet."
Aral looked down at the locator and then out at the sea again. He rose to his knees--bracing himself with a hand on Arkady's shoulder--to look around properly.
He knew, of course--he had been briefed and had observed it before--that ImpSec didn't keep such a close eye on him anymore. Not here on sleepy, provincial Sergyar. They'd offered an escort today, but they'd been content to accept that Arkady, being a serving military officer, was a sufficient security precaution. The change had never quite sunk in until now; how could it, after very nearly thirty years of being constantly watched?
But ImpSec wasn't out there hovering solicitously in a skimmer (though he was sure they'd scramble something quickly enough if he hit his panic button). There were no other boaters on this stretch of the sea, no vantage points in any surrounding hills as there were all around the Long Lake.
"Those islands..." Aral said, not doubting Arkady's word in the slightest, but wanting it confirmed all the same.
"Quite uninhabited," Arkady said smugly. "Thickly populated with their own subspecies of those floating jellies, if you want to go have a look later, but not very hospitable for tourists. No one's gone out there since the last biological survey team a few months ago."
Aral looked around, and then sat back down, shoulder to shoulder with Arkady. He was suddenly self-conscious. "So we're alone."
Arkady nodded firmly. "Entirely."
Aral laughed a little, and Arkady looked over at him, smiling. "I just thought--Cordelia's going to be so very dry about--"
"All we had to do was move to a new planet and sail for two hours," Arkady filled in, so much in her style that Aral suspected he wasn't merely predicting but quoting. Well, of course he'd have brought her in on his plan.
"Still," Arkady added, his smile undimmed. "It was worth it, don't you think?"
And whether Arkady meant being teased by Cordelia, or the long journey that had brought him here--even if he traced that journey all the way back to its start, with Aral's heart attack and the rather abrupt changes of career path it had brought about--Aral couldn't disagree.
Aral took one last look around at the open sea and the empty horizon, and then he shifted his hand to settle it over Arkady's between their thighs, interlacing their fingers. Arkady scooted closer, turning his hand to press his palm to Aral's, and when Aral turned his head Arkady was watching him. Waiting.
"Yes, Arkan, of course," Aral said, and Arkady's grin flashed as bright as the sun on the waves as he leaned in for a kiss in broad daylight.