The Uncrossing

by Melissa Eastlake

  Sergei had only been so mad because he was afraid.

  Luke leaned forward with his elbows on his knees to watch a high pop-up, and Jeremy ran one finger down the arch of his back. He still thrilled that he was allowed—and, with each touch, lost a breath to anxiously wondering when this was going to get taken away. When Sergei was going to assert his authority, or Luke was going to change his mind.

  Luke glanced over his shoulder for a beat, then twisted around. “This is nice, getting to chill for a minute. Just being with you.”

  Luke was quick with the lines, but something so simple threatened to undo Jeremy completely. “Don’t talk to your nachos when I’m sitting right here.”

  “Ha.” Luke sat back. “For real though, these are not good.”

  “I’ll eat them.”

  Luke passed them over, and Jeremy tried one. It was sort of like eating cardboard dipped in plastic, but not in a bad way.

  “Sergei does feed you, right?” Luke asked.

  “I’m hungry! I ran eight miles this morning.”

  Luke’s jaw dropped. “Why, were you lost?”

  Jeremy laughed, and all the stupid feelings he was trying to play cool came bubbling over his lips in a spill of light. He clapped a hand over his mouth like he’d burped too loud.

  Luke danced his fingers, making the light splash and melt into the sunshine. “Do that again.”

  Hand still clamped over his mouth, Jeremy shook his head.

  “Please? I want to see.”

  It was hard to stay embarrassed when Luke was looking so entranced. Jeremy took a deep breath and blew a bubble for him.

  Luke caught it with a pop. “You’re doing this on purpose, you little monster. There are people around.”

  “You asked me to do that!”

  “Not the light. Sitting there all pretty, when I—what?”

  Jeremy went as rigid as a dead thing on the sidewalk, paws up. “Don’t call me that.”

  “A monster? I was kidding.”

  Jeremy shook his head once, tightly.

  Luke blinked. “Pretty?”

  Jeremy crossed his arms over his chest.

  “For real? But you—” He gestured up Jeremy’s body, encompassing his pink T-shirt and long blond hair and the way he swooned when Luke kissed him and all the other princessy things about him.

  “I like this shirt,” Jeremy said.

  “I like it, too. I think you look pretty in it.”

  Jeremy’s body jerked like he’d been hit. “All right,” Luke said. “My bad, I’m sorry. I just don’t understand.”

  A roar rose from the crowd like a low wave, chasing a long fly ball. Jeremy turned his attention away, watching the ball land neatly in a fielder’s glove as the sound drooped into a sad ohhh. Luke sat back in his seat, staring flatly out at the game.

  When Jeremy was tiny, before Sergei had given his second son his name, people had called Jeremy “mini Sergei” or one of the Russian diminutives. He’d followed Sergei around like a puppy, and Sergei hadn’t minded because he’d dealt best with his responsibility by keeping one eye on Jeremy all the time. Even Jeremy didn’t know how or why he’d branched off, preferring books to martial arts and excited squeals to low growls, but Sergei had taken it like a betrayal. Somehow Jeremy’s blossoming personality had been a choice: there were two ways to live, and he’d picked Alexei’s.

  Jeremy knew in theory that was wrong, but that didn’t mean he could untangle all the roots of it. He figured out what he wanted to say and got it all out in one go. “I dress like this because I like it, but also because I want to get the girly thing out of the way before people say it. The point is not to make you say it.”

  Luke needed only a fraction of the time Jeremy did to collect his response. “First of all, I didn’t say you were girly. Second, even if you were, that doesn’t mean anything. My sister’s a girl, and she can kill rats with her mind.”

  It meant something to Jeremy. They were skirting too close to things he couldn’t talk about, to things he could barely think about without getting hot and sick. The curse that trapped him was undeniably princessy, and, too, he suspected the reason he couldn’t get free was that he was missing some vital princessy virtue. He wasn’t loving enough, or lovable, or whatever intersection made those the same thing, and if he couldn’t figure out how to be good enough in that way, for Luke or for some other person, he was never going to move forward at all.

  The heat pressed too close, and Jeremy took a wet, shaky breath. Luke narrowed his eyes, curious.

  Jeremy couldn’t take it, and he couldn’t—just couldn’t—tell Luke the truth. Instead of anything real at all, he said, “Can she really?”

  Luke nodded. He gave Jeremy an appraising look and launched into a rambling, slightly scary story about the magic games he and Camille played as kids. His blustery confidence rose as he spoke. After an inning, he draped his arm around the back of Jeremy’s seat. A half-inning later, Jeremy dropped his head on Luke’s shoulder. He spent too much time fighting—with Luke, with Sergei—and it wasn’t their fault he was so studded with land mines.

  After another half-inning, Luke picked up Jeremy’s hand to play with his fingers, whispering, “I am sorry,” one more time. Jeremy sighed and started to say it was okay, or something, when the precise shape of one horrible word, loudly and clearly pronounced, zinged their way from a couple of boys who were walking to their seats a few rows down. Jeremy wasn’t so bothered—you can’t spend your whole life climbing out of luxury cars wearing neons without getting used to some shouting—but Luke stiffened, hurt or afraid, and dropped Jeremy’s hand like it burned.

  Jeremy’s overstretched temper snapped, and he yelled back, “May your actions bind you!” The golden rule turned into a curse.

  He said it to be cranky—he couldn’t even kill rats with rat traps and had no particular skill with jinxes—but the boy slipped and fell onto the armrest between two seats, and slipped again when he tried to get up.

  “Defend him?” Luke said, tentative.

  The boy popped up, and his friends scurried to their seats. “Huh,” Jeremy said.

  “You can’t go around cursing people!” Luke said, though it would have been more convincing if he wasn’t laughing.

  Jeremy shrugged. “They were bothering you.”

  Luke laughed harder, tension bleeding away. “My hero.”

  “You’re welcome.” The scuffle had drawn some attention—curious gazes hit the boys down the row, and Jeremy. He caught a turning-away figure he recognized in the next section.

  Jeremy sat up straight. “What?” Luke asked.

  “Natalya, do you see?”

  She was fleeing down the section stairs. Luke frowned. “What’s that about?”

  “She’s watching us, is what. Alexei said he was handling it; he said no tail. He promised—” Jeremy stopped and swallowed hard. The world was a dangerous place—but that was always true. He was trying to do something real with Luke, and he couldn’t have that with his brothers breathing down their necks. He texted Sergei: Don’t spy on me!

  Sergei wouldn’t indulge a text fight, but Jeremy still sat and fumed. He wasn’t enjoying the game, and Luke was worrying about him, and it was all a mess. He was surprised when Sergei did reply, and got his foolish hopes up that it would say—he didn’t even know what. Sergei had only written, The hell are you talking about?

  Jeremy replied, We saw Natalya I. hate you so much, before he remembered he’d meant to stop fighting.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  After another afternoon cleansing for Alexei, they took a long walk back to Jeremy’s house. Luke would catch the subway from there. The extra time together, the paradox of privacy on a crowded street, was worth it. Jeremy noticed things in a funny way—seeking out color and glitter like a magpie, staring unabashedly at interesting folks they walked by—and shared his delight at each detail by tugging on the hem of Luke’s T-shirt and pointing with his chin.

  As they got
close to the house, Jeremy made a low, disgusted noise and looked pointedly away from one corner of the street. “Uck! Paparazzi.”

  “Huh?” Luke had never imagined worrying about paparazzi—his first impulse was more flattered than annoyed. “Where?”

  “Over—” Jeremy stopped.

  Luke followed his gaze to a car rolling its darkly tinted back window up and sliding away from the curb. “The silver one?”

  Jeremy nodded. “I thought that was paps, but they don’t usually stop when you notice them. Or drive S-Classes.”

  That must have meant really nice car, because that’s what was pulling away. “What do you think?”

  “Malcolms?” Jeremy twisted his lips in thought. “Why don’t you come in for a while?”

  “Is that all right?” Luke hadn’t been back in the house since their first kiss in Jeremy’s attic. He didn’t know what was going on between Jeremy and Sergei, but it seemed tough.

  “We should tell someone.” Jeremy waved vaguely at the corner the car had disappeared from, but he flashed Luke a smile. “And we could hang out.”

  They took Jeremy’s shortcut to the kitchen door. Marta leaned against the counter, looking unsurprised. “Luke, it’s been a minute.”

  “Well, you know. Been working.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She glanced at Jeremy.

  “There was a weird car outside,” Jeremy said. “Somebody was taking pictures of us, but it was too fancy to be paparazzi.”

  Marta grimaced. “Uck.”

  “That’s what Jeremy said.” Luke couldn’t hide a grin.

  “I bet so.” She waved her hand at Jeremy like he was pestering. “I’ll talk to Sergei.”

  Jeremy rolled his eyes and walked away. That felt like the wrong response, so Luke said, “Thanks.”

  Marta made precisely the same eye roll and giggled as she said, “Go on, then.”

  They made it to Jeremy’s room without seeing anyone else. As soon as Luke shut the door, Jeremy was on him, pressing his hands against Luke’s shoulders and leaning hard into a kiss.

  Luke slowed it down, cupping his hands around Jeremy’s hips to push him back, creating enough space for breath between them. He snuck his thumbs under the hem of Jeremy’s shirt, tracing the waistband of his shorts. He had more body hair than Luke did, but it was different, invisibly fine. He was like a little peach.

  Jeremy smoothed his hands across Luke’s chest, slow, like he was enjoying the breadth of it, which made Luke feel broader. Jeremy ducked his head, but his voice was sure. “Can I take your shirt off?”

  Luke took a big inhale and went with him, thinking cold, boring thoughts as he sat on the bed, pulled Jeremy over him, and let Jeremy kiss him and take off his shirt. He lay back and put his hands behind his head, where they couldn’t cause any trouble. Jeremy’s expression was shuttered, but his eyes and fingers moved over Luke’s body curiously.

  “I want.” Jeremy stopped as if that were the whole sentence. Luke wanted to roll Jeremy over and devour him; he wanted to put Jeremy in a glass box where no one, least of all Luke himself, could touch him. He wanted to put his shirt back on; he wanted to take his pants off. He wanted to know why everyone was angry; he wanted to know why Alexei wasn’t. He wanted and wanted.

  “Come here,” Luke said.

  Jeremy leaned down slowly, still thoughtful. He touched Luke’s mouth. “You have the nicest lips.”

  Luke knew that, but he said, “Nah,” as if he were shy of it. He caught Jeremy’s fingertips in his teeth, and Jeremy’s eyes popped round.

  A single hard knock slammed on the door before it flew wide. “Keep this door open,” Sergei grunted, already walking away.

  Luke froze. Jeremy’s fingers fluttered away from his mouth. Jeremy’s expression melted apart, then tightened until his eyes were angry slits.

  “What the fuck, Sergei?” He scrambled off Luke and ran out of the room. He slammed the door behind him, but Luke still heard him holler, “You can’t just make up rules!”

  Luke found his shirt and pulled it back on. It smelled like incense and sweat. Sergei’s voice was a muffled rumble but Jeremy’s rose. “—not my father! You’re no one! … You don’t know anything!”

  It started to rain, the patter drowning out some of Jeremy’s words. Luke looked over the shelves until something caught him—a bowl with a pair of fish. He stared at them until he understood. It was a pair of humpback whales the size of guppies.

  “You’re not my father!”

  “He already said that,” Luke told the whales. One broke the surface, flipping, and splashed a tiny drop of water on the shelf below. They were so beautiful it made him want to sweep his arm across the shelf and watch it all shatter on the floor. Something twisted in his chest. He picked up one of the orbs of light, and although he couldn’t feel it, it burst in his fingers, trickling over his hand like lava and dissipating.

  “Maybe you don’t want it to work!”

  Sergei’s voice rang: “I would love to get rid of you!”

  The house got quiet. When Jeremy came back to the room, shutting the door with a snick, Luke had to tell his body to turn a few times before he managed it. Jeremy leaned against the door, curled over on himself and flushed red.

  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Luke said.

  Jeremy’s head shot up. “Did you already figure it out?”

  Luke’s mind raced in two directions at once, fitting clues together and reeling away from anything that might make Jeremy look like that. He lifted his hands in surrender.

  Jeremy got rid of a breath like it was hassling him. “Follow me.”

  He led Luke down one level and into an office. It wasn’t as nice as the rest of the house, dull and practical, with rows of metal filing cabinets. Jeremy pointed to a chair at the battered desk and went to one of the cabinets as Luke sat down.

  Jeremy slapped a thin file labeled Jeremy - 1 on the desk. Luke waited before he opened it, but all Jeremy did was sit down next to him and wait, too.

  He took Jeremy’s hand. It stayed slack in his, but Jeremy didn’t pull away.

  Luke started flipping. Two photocopies—a page of typed text from Ivan’s will and a page in fine, scrolling Cyrillic. The second showed shadowy margins where the edges of the original paper were ragged from attempts to burn it. There were two signatures at the bottom, one precise and one a weak X.

  The last piece of paper was typed as well, titled Jeremy’s Contract—English. Luke found the sentence he was looking for right away, as if his eyes already knew where it would be on the page.

  This contract will be rendered void and the child freed from his obligations to the Kovrov family only by his true love’s first kiss.

  “If you make a princess joke, I will have you killed,” Jeremy said.

  Luke had never wanted to joke less in his whole life. He squeezed Jeremy’s hand; Jeremy didn’t squeeze back. “That’s not real mojo,” Luke said. “That’s just in the movies.”

  It was not possible—it could not be real. The contract was too old, the magic too precious. But Jeremy made a disbelieving squeak and pointed at the paper with his free hand, and there was no arguing.

  Luke’s adrenaline rose: love love love love love.

  That meant Jeremy had thought it might be love.

  It meant, now, he was sure it wasn’t.

  Luke felt bereft, too hectic to think, and he wanted so much to put his arms around Jeremy again he couldn’t think of anything else.

  He made himself focus on the other words on the page, and the chatter in his mind fell silent. “I didn’t expect it to say ‘first.’” They’d had a first—and a second and a third and a dozen more. It was already too late. “I don’t understand why you’re still kissing me at all.”

  Jeremy whipped his hand away and rocketed out of the chair so he could pace around the room. “Fine. You and Sergei can kiss each other for all I care.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “That’s what he k
eeps—” Jeremy’s voice cracked, and he paused and started again. “I’m still kissing you because I want to. Is that not a good enough reason?”

  “Of course it is.” But out loud, it sounded false. The paper glowed—true love’s first kiss.

  His dissatisfaction must have been clear. “Why were you still kissing me?” Jeremy asked. “That reason.”

  Though it had only been a few minutes ago, Luke couldn’t remember what combination of want and hope had brought him into the house and up all those flights of stairs to Jeremy’s room. He couldn’t remember what the world was like before this piece of paper—before this impossible thing that Jeremy needed, and the corresponding truth that Luke wasn’t it.

  The paper swelled and shrank as Luke’s head drifted away from his body like a helium balloon. He blinked hard but couldn’t get the room back in order. Jeremy snatched up the paper and returned it to its file and the file to its drawer. “Do you want to go?”

  Luke blinked again. That stung hard, but he kept it together. “All right.” He stood, patting his pockets to check for his things. He wanted to insist on staying and run away at the same time. “I guess, if you want to call, then…” He was going to say something ignorant. He stopped.

  As soon as he turned away, Jeremy spat, “Really? Really.”

  Luke spun back, arms out. Jeremy’s hands clenched into fists at his hips, and for once he was not blushing. His face was white and raw. “We were about to—” Jeremy spluttered and started over. “And now you’re going to leave.”

  “You told me to leave.”

  “No, I didn’t!”

  It took everything in Luke’s power not to press his hands against his forehead like Jeremy was giving him a migraine, because Jeremy was going to give him a migraine. He held his hands against his legs instead, so they wouldn’t move. “Jeremy,” he said clearly. “Come on. What would you like me to do?”

  “Just shut up and keep standing there like an asshole, can you do that?”