Aiden would always fall asleep quickly when lulled by the sound of that voice.
There was no story tonight, only silence, and Aiden wakeful through many silent hours of the night.
He had a suspicion Harvard was awake, too. The steady and reassuring noise of Harvard’s breathing was missing from the room.
Aiden was very aware of every sound—and every other sensation as well. The sound of sheets, rustling over Harvard as he shifted in the bed next to Aiden’s. His warmth next to Aiden’s, lying close in the night, when that body had been all over Aiden’s at this very door.
What total idiot suggested pushing our beds together? Aiden wondered, then had a vivid and terrible memory of making this suggestion on their first day of the semester.
That night, Aiden slept incredibly badly.
The next day, Aiden woke up with the certain knowledge there were some truths that could not be denied.
He reached out and touched Harvard’s shoulder. Harvard came awake almost at once, sitting up and leaning over Aiden with soft eyes and a softer voice.
“Hey, Aiden. You all right? You can’t be, if you’re awake.”
“I don’t wish to alarm or distress you,” Aiden said in a low but impressive tone. “But I am dying.”
“Okay, so it’s a bad cold.”
Harvard was a fool, but a beautiful fool with gentle hands, so Aiden allowed him to talk nonsense while he laid said hand carefully upon Aiden’s brow.
He frowned. “So, I think you’re running a fever.”
“I may be running a fever now,” Aiden said with dignity, “but I will soon be cold in my grave. Bury me with my best épée. Make sure my hair looks great and everyone weeps that someone so foxy was taken so young. Don’t let Nicholas Cox attend my funeral; he’ll only lower the tone, and removing him will leave space for more weeping suitors.”
Harvard didn’t seem to be paying attention to Aiden’s important instructions about his funeral. Instead he was rising, dressing, and preparing to abandon Aiden to his wretched, lonely death.
“I’ll tell the nurse,” Harvard told him. “You’ll feel better soon.”
When Aiden was little, he used to get sick constantly. It was a nuisance for his dad and the stepmoms, though they mostly made Aiden go to bed and stay there so he didn’t bother anybody with his whining. Except the time the sweet Brazilian singer, the one who had pretended she wanted to adopt him, sat at his bedside and sang to him. That was the only time anybody at home even faked concern.
Aiden used to beg to go to school, even when he was sick, because Harvard would be there, filled with tender concern and bearing juice boxes.
Once he grew up and started going to Kings Row, with Harvard there all the time and much less exposure to slamming doors and the screech of sports car wheels, Aiden got sick far less. He still did occasionally, around the time of important fencing matches or tests. It was always a swift thing, fever running high then vanishing in a day like steam in cold air. It only happened when Aiden was at his most stressed out. Harvard always took good care of him.
Maybe Aiden was stressed now.
Maybe Aiden was consumed by guilt. He should be. He was lying to his best friend in the entire world. He hadn’t exactly lied, he told himself, but he was aware his behavior wasn’t on the up-and-up.
If Harvard knew how Aiden felt about him, Harvard wouldn’t want to lead Aiden on. He would never have suggested the practice dating if he had all the information. Getting Harvard to agree to something by withholding vital knowledge from him felt uncomfortably like a lie.
Aiden didn’t want to act the way his dad did, lining up stepmother number nine while stepmother number eight waited at home. His dad always laughed and said, “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.” He’d never wanted to be like that. What they didn’t know always did hurt them eventually.
He’d just wanted… a memory to live on. A few days to remember, when Harvard had been his and not Neil’s.
Now he was being punished by fate or his own treacherous immune system. Aiden coughed into the pillow. His mind felt fuzzy, thoughts trying to swim in pudding, all his feelings as oversensitive as the surface of his skin. He didn’t want to feel small or helpless ever again. He wanted to make a huge fuss so somebody would tell him it would be all right. He wanted Harvard back at once.
He went back to sleep, having confused dreams in which he was lost and searching, and occasionally was harassed to drink medicine.
He surfaced from fuzzy dreams and hot blankets when he felt relief, and knew it must be Harvard. There was a cold facecloth being dabbed on Aiden’s forehead and his flushed cheeks. Aiden made a soft welcoming sound and tilted his head so the cool droplets of water would run down his neck.
“Cease forcing vile concoctions upon me and accept the fact I am doomed.”
Harvard sighed. “The nurse was the one giving you cough syrup. She said you had a nasty cold, but you’d be right as rain in no time.”
Aiden cracked open one eye. “I did think you looked less attractive than usual,” he admitted.
Harvard hit him on the head with a pillow, which was simple brutality to an invalid.
“I’m gonna get you something to eat.”
“I can’t eat, I’m dying!” Aiden yelled as Harvard shut the door.
Harvard shouted back: “Try!”
Aiden didn’t know why Harvard wouldn’t just have the decency to accept that Aiden was fated to perish, and hold a nice vigil at his deathbed and not let go of his hand until Aiden passed.
Harvard returned with chicken soup he’d coaxed from one of the dining hall ladies, caramel waffles in a little packet, and tea with honey in it. Then he sat beside Aiden and cajoled him to sit up, half leaning against the pillows, and half leaning against Harvard’s chest. Harvard held a glass to Aiden’s lips, and the water soothed the hot ache of Aiden’s throat. Then Harvard bullied Aiden into eating soup.
Aiden complained, but Harvard was patient. Aiden was privately incredulous that Harvard actually believed that he needed lessons in how to be a good boyfriend.
Harvard was a dating savant: He was a natural. There was no way to teach him anything, and Harvard would soon realize that himself.
He was so good at this, it was sickening, and now Aiden was literally sick.
Harvard also brought gossip, which was deeply interesting and a welcome distraction.
“Apparently…,” Harvard said once he’d taken away the dishes and come back, climbing onto the bed and sitting cross-legged in the dip just beside Aiden’s bed, where they often sat knee to knee when telling each other the news of the day. “And I heard this from Roy, who heard it from a Bon, who heard it right from Eugene’s mouth—a group of masked boys in Kings Row uniforms broke into the Kingstone Bank and stole all the money and the safety deposit boxes. One of the students in school currently has four dozen gold bars in a safe under their bed. Everybody’s on high alert!”
This information was so compelling, Aiden almost forgot he was dying so tragically young and attractive. He eased himself up on his pillows.
“Go back outside!” commanded Aiden. “Find Eugene! He’s our teammate; he should have brought this gossip directly to us! Discover who these thieves might be!”
Harvard went and returned, but sadly he did not come bearing updated information.
“I found Eugene,” he reported. “But he turned a funny color and said, ‘Please don’t make me say it to you, Captain.’ He seems more shaken by this than I would’ve thought.”
Aiden moaned with outrage, then started coughing and couldn’t stop. He was enraged by his own body, which didn’t happen a lot. Usually, Aiden felt he and his body were in this together, making each other look good.
In less than a week, Harvard was going to call on his darling Neil and explain how sorry he was for all his imaginary offenses, and Neil would say that he’d only been put off by Harvard’s awful best friend. Then Harvard would realize everything had been Aiden�
�s fault all along, and also Neil would tell Harvard that he missed him, and they would get back together. Aiden would have to pretend he was happy for them.
This was one of a very few, very precious days, like fairy gold turning to dust and leaves as they slipped through his fingers. And Aiden was wasting it by being sick and disgusting.
“Sorry for being gross,” Aiden murmured into his pillow.
“Hey, no,” said Harvard. “You’re still really cute.”
Aiden scoffed into the pillow, which turned into more coughing. Harvard patted him on the back.
Harvard was so good at this boyfriend thing it was ridiculous. He was screwing up the boyfriend curve for all other boyfriends. That was why Aiden didn’t want any of the others.
He felt horrible and unpleasantly hot, and he could only bear this when Harvard was with him. Most of life was generally unfair and unpleasant, but it was all right if Harvard was there.
“Stay with me until I go to sleep,” Aiden murmured, willfully forgetting that lunch was over and Harvard should go to class.
For Aiden, Harvard would usually break the rules.
“If you want me to,” Harvard murmured back.
Aiden was ill and miserable and unguarded enough to whisper, “I never want anything but you.”
“Okay.” Harvard laughed quietly, kindly. “I think the cough syrup has made you a little loopy.”
Aiden wanted to be angry with Harvard for never understanding, but thank God Harvard didn’t. Besides, Aiden never could entirely manage to be angry with him. The emotion wouldn’t coalesce in Aiden’s chest, always collapsing in on itself and changing into different feelings.
As Aiden slid into sleep, like tumbling beneath a blanket of darkness, he felt an awareness even with his eyes closed that someone was stooping over him, like an intuition of a shadow, and then the soft press of Harvard’s lips against Aiden’s forehead. More a blessing than a kiss.
He woke up when two teachers knocked on his door and asked if they could search the room. Aiden was interested enough to let them.
“Have you found any information about the gold bars yet?” he asked when they were done searching.
“Oh dear,” murmured Mr. Gaudet, their history teacher. “The boy’s delirious.”
Aiden feared Harvard was bringing him inaccurate gossip since he wasn’t actually very good at gossiping. All that believing the best of people got in Harvard’s way when it came to getting the real dirt.
Once Aiden had risen from his bed of sickness, he would ascertain the awful, criminal truth.
The vile medicine seemed to be doing its job. His head felt marginally clearer. Aiden now believed he would live.
Before he was restored to his full power, though, he needed more beauty sleep. Aiden had a lot of beauty to maintain.
When he woke up next, it was dark outside. He’d slept and coughed and dreamed the whole day away.
Harvard was sleeping in the bed next to his. Whenever Aiden was forced to go home, he’d wake up feeling sick with panic in the night. He’d realized years ago that what woke him up was not any noise, but silence. He missed the steady sound of Harvard’s breathing. You could ask a friend to sleep over, but you couldn’t ask him to sleep over every night. In order to get away from the echoing quiet of his own house, Aiden was willing to go on vacation with practically any guy who offered.
If they were hot and going somewhere cool.
Harvard was having the untroubled sleep of someone who never woke in the night with wild panic caught at the back of his throat, who was never cruel or careless. Someone who never did terrible things to satisfy longings he didn’t dare to speak.
The word tantalizing, being endlessly tormented by the presence of something so near but always out of reach, came from the name of the king Tantalus. After the king died and went to hell, he was tortured by being forced to stand in water he could never drink, with fruit hanging above his head that he could never eat.
Enough of being tortured.
Aiden wasn’t going to make it to the weekend. This had to end. Everything ended; everyone went away, if you tried for love. Friendship was safe. Aiden had thought this would make him feel better, to practice and pretend, but it only made him feel worse. Like having the taste of fruit lingering ghostly and sweet in your mouth, all the while knowing you could never eat.
Aiden’s throat ached, as it had earlier, but he didn’t want water.
He turned sharply away from Harvard, tossing under the bedsheets and trying to find a cool, soft place in bed. Somewhere he could rest.
Turning his back on Harvard didn’t work. Harvard stirred because of Aiden’s incautious movement and reached out. When Aiden felt Harvard’s hand gentle on his arm, he went still.
“Aiden?” Harvard whispered drowsily.
Aiden turned back to face him and said, “Yes.”
Harvard’s eyes were still closed, but his grip on Aiden, while gentle, was firm. Aiden didn’t want to get away, and never had. Moonlight made the contrast between Harvard’s skin and the sheets deeper, and caught at the gleam of white teeth as he spoke.
“’S all right,” Harvard murmured.
His mouth barely moved as he said the words, shaped for gentleness, for soothing and sweet long kisses that made the world seem different. Not like Aiden’s own mouth, made for curling and cruelty, for wicked kisses and worse lies.
“It’s not all right,” Aiden told him, his voice clear as a confession in the dark. “I’m not all right.”
He had to stop this. And, he vowed, he would. He would give himself just one more day. Just one more day, to live on for the rest of Aiden’s life. Then he’d tell Harvard they should stop.
23: NICHOLAS
That morning Nicholas woke up to an undeniably startling sight. Seiji’s face was hovering over him, pale and intent, like a vampire who came in the too-early morning rather than the night and made you do fencing drills rather than drink your blood. Nicholas flailed and made an incoherent sound of protest at the fencing vampire.
“Wake up, Nicholas,” said Seiji, poking him.
“It’s not even dawn!” Nicholas objected.
“It is ten minutes before the time you usually rise,” Seiji corrected. “And you could use those ten minutes to present a more appropriate and put-together appearance to the world.”
“’S inhumane,” Nicholas told him, hiding under his blanket.
Seiji stripped it efficiently off him. “Come now, Nicholas, I require your presence. I will be waiting on the other side of the curtain.”
Curiosity killed the cat, and it even got Nicholas Cox out of bed early in the morning. Nicholas climbed out from under the covers and into his clothes, though since Seiji had made a crack about his appearance, Nicholas made sure his tie was even more haphazard than usual.
When he stepped out from behind the curtain, Seiji’s face went dark with surprised disapproval. It was possible that Nicholas literally throwing his tie over his shoulder had been a step too far.
“I was thinking,” Nicholas offered. “Now that we’re friends, maybe we don’t need the curtain at all? I could take it down.”
Seiji clung to the curtain as if it was a security blanket and he was a big baby. “I need the curtain.”
“You need me,” said Nicholas.
Seiji blinked. “What?”
“You require my presence?” Nicholas reminded him. “You said so five minutes ago, on the other side of the curtain. What do you require my presence for? Is this about fencing?”
“Oddly,” said Seiji, “no. I want you to come sit at breakfast with me.”
“But we eat breakfast together every day?” Nicholas pointed out.
“It’s very strange you characterize something that only started last week as a regular appointment,” Seiji said. “In any case, I wish for you to accompany me to Eugene’s weight-lifting acquaintances table.”
Nicholas raised both eyebrows. He would’ve liked to raise just one eyebrow, to b
e cool and sardonic, but whenever he tried, he just ended up raising both. “I’d characterize them as his weight-lifting bros. Why do you want me to do that?”
Seiji gave him a measuring look. The curtain fluttered in the breeze from the window that Seiji insisted on opening every day, for fresh air. Yellow ducks rippled on the blue surface, as though they were escaping downriver.
“I wish to speak with Eugene on an urgent matter, but I don’t find the weight-lifting bros to be congenial company. You must not let any of them fist-bump me,” said Seiji. “Warn me if they make any sudden movements. Chad hits me on the back.”
“Slaps you on the back?” Nicholas asked. “So do you mean, like, he likes you?”
“I don’t like it!” Seiji exclaimed. “Will you come or not?”
Nicholas didn’t understand why Seiji was resisting popularity. Nicholas thought it would be awesome to have lots of people admire you, but apparently it stressed out Seiji.
“I will come with you and protect you from the bros’ friendship,” Nicholas promised. “I will be your social bodyguard.”
Social secretaries organized people’s social appointments, and Nicholas figured social bodyguards prevented people from having them.
After a moment’s consideration of this proposition, Seiji nodded. As they walked together down the halls and the back staircase, Nicholas studied the ceiling, which was all white with twirly bits like a wedding cake. He had a troubling thought.
“You hate fist bumps?” he asked. “But you’ve fist-bumped me and Eugene.”
“I don’t mind if it’s you,” said Seiji. “And I don’t mind much if it’s Eugene. But not Chad!”
“Okay, not Chad,” Nicholas soothed, and grinned at the back of Seiji’s head as they entered the dining hall. Seiji was wearing his mended watch again today, Nicholas couldn’t help but notice.
He mouthed an apology to Bobby as they passed their table, pointing to Seiji. Dante eyed Seiji and made shooing “take him far away” gestures.
Dante didn’t seem to enjoy Seiji’s company. Nicholas wasn’t sure why.
Fence--Striking Distance Page 18
