Dry Season - An MM Romance

Lemiso came to the field site to prove himself. As a hydrologist on a cross-border climate initiative, he needed this assignment to work. To show that his data-driven approach could succeed where previous experts had failed. What he got was a cartographer who didn't trust him and a landscape that refused to cooperate. Kaene's skepticism cuts sharp from the beginning. He's seen too many UN experts arrive with theories and leave behind dry holes.
He maps the land through local knowledge, through conversations with elders and attention to what the earth reveals. Lemiso maps it through surveys and calculations. They're supposed to be partners, but from the first day, they're adversaries. Except tension isn't the only thing building between them. Over seven days in disputed territories where water is power, they learn to read each other. Lemiso discovers that listening matters more than being right.
Kaene discovers that not all experts are the same. Around campfires and in village squares, through arguments and reconciliations, something shifts. Professional respect becomes awareness. Awareness becomes want. But field assignments end. Countries separate. And neither knows how to say what matters most before the engines start and the moment passes. Dry Season is a grounded, emotionally layered BL romance about a hydrologist and a cartographer who find connection in the last place they expected.
Featuring third-person narration, an East African setting, realistic professional tension, slow-burn attraction, and a bittersweet ending that proves some things are worth carrying even when they lead nowhere but memory.