by VK Fox
“Um, hello? How do linked books and golems and magic swords happen if unlinked people can’t do magic?”
Blue was chattering on, but her words slid through his mind without sticking, the folder weighing a thousand pounds in his hands. He had to read the health section of the file at a minimum. Flipping to the correct tab, Dahl focused on every word, whispering them into the stifling air under the white noise of the foundry.
Then Dahl was sitting on the floor somehow, his stomach liquifying. Blue crouched in front of him, her brow creased in concern. A cup of water was pushed into his hands, and he drank it automatically while a high whine echoed in his ears.
Blue was leafing through the folder, her voice heavy with concern. “Is this the folder Management brought?”
“One of them.” Dahl ran a hand through his hair. “Everest’s been struggling and I wanted to rule out side effects…” Dahl should have known better. Ockham’s razor: the simplest explanation was usually correct. Everest has been burning power on a daily basis for eight years while reporting only ephemeral side effects. That didn’t add up.
“Oh my God.” Blue went pale and sat heavily on the floor. “He’s had symptoms for as long as I’ve known him: anxiety, trouble finding the right words, compulsive fiddling, fear of betrayal—”
“That doesn’t mean anything!” Dahl was yelling at her. He didn’t want to, but the fear was bigger than logic. “That’s just Everest! It’s who he is and what he’s gone through!”
Blue was watching him gently. Her tenderness was a coffin nail. “Has it gotten worse? Is that what you mean by him struggling?”
“He called me Adam.” Dahl scrubbed his face with both hands. “He was frightened and confused. You know about him getting lost in the snow between the Grit Room and our block. He’s been drawing these horrible pictures and saying they’re from Fitz—” Dahl’s voice choked off.
“God, I’m so sorry.” Blue had a hand on his shoulder again.
Dahl closed his eyes. “There has to be another explanation.”
Blue cleared her throat, reading from the file. “Fiver agents develop symptoms of magical dementia slowly in tangent with the more obvious anxiety side effect. Dementia is ephemeral with intermittent power use, becoming permanent with continued consistent activation of second sight. Due to the necessity of future knowledge to Sana Baba’s work and the potential to compromise agent focus, this side effect is classified from participants in the Fiver program. The issue of mentally compromised Fiver agents is self-resolving, as inaccurate future sight correlates directly to the probability of the link becoming available for a new candidate... Shit, Dahl, I am so, so sorry.”
Dahl couldn’t even muster anger. Of course they fucking knew. Everest was more useful to them burning out over a decade than being safe and sane until retirement. They didn’t see him as the man who would pour all of his focus into a game of checkers, or walk for hours with their son at night, or look at Dahl like he was a miracle. Officially, Everest was a number: a warm body to hold a position until it was more convenient for him not to be warm anymore. Dahl couldn’t find anything to say. His mind was static.
“Dahl?” Blue’s voice was kind.
“Yes?”
“Many people live mostly normal lives in the early stages of dementia. There’s no reason to think these symptoms will get worse if he manages his magic carefully. This is a side effect, not a degenerative disease.”
Silence. He couldn’t make his voice work.
Blue continued with more conviction. “Everyone has scars. Yours are outside. His are inside. That’s all.”
Fitz was climbing in his lap, game forgotten, mismatched eyes serious. Dahl pulled him close, savoring the boy’s solid, warm weight. “Blue, do you mind keeping Fitz tonight?”
“Like overnight?” Blue frowned, closing the file. “Starting when?”
“Now. I have to take some time with Everest before the next crisis hits. Please? I don’t trust very many people with him, but this is…”
“Of course.” She squeezed his shoulder again. “It might push my Mr. Mirror timeline back a little.”
“Thanks.” Dahl set Fitz down and climbed to his feet. “And see what you can do to keep the golem project on track.”
Blue chuckled. “My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—It gives a lovely light!”
Dahl frowned. “Emily Dickenson?”
“Nope! Sana Baba would fire you for sure now. It’s Edna St. Vincent Millay.” Blue grinned wider. “Now get out of here. Don’t waste your borrowed time.”
“Let’s play a game.” The sun was low, and their feet marred the immaculate snowfall. Pristine scenery in ruthlessly bitter cold. Dahl’s nose was running and every inhalation needled his lungs. Going on a walk had seemed like a sane option back in their warm room.
“Like a board game?” Everest’s voice was soft against the snow falling in lazy, thick flakes. “This game doesn’t end with snow down my shirt, does it?” Everest narrowed his eyes.
“More like twenty questions.” Dahl’s breath was frosty. “You only get snow down your shirt if you lose, duh.”
“Of course.” Everest had slowed to his thoughtful pace, which wasn’t as warm as his avoiding-frostbite pace, but how long could twenty questions take? Everest spoke after a few heartbeats. “Are you ready?”
“I am. Commence.”
“Is it alive?”
“Yes.”
“Is it a plant?”
“No.” Dahl caught a snowflake on his tongue.
“Vertebrate?”
“Yes.”
“Warm blooded?”
Dahl chuckled. “Yes.” Hot blooded, red-blooded … all of the above.
Everest paused and scrutinized. Dahl stared into his game face and went carefully blank. With any luck, Everest would assume the purged emotion was for strategy and not because he was a bundle of crazy nerves. “Does it live in the Northern Hemisphere?”
“Yes.”
“Is it smaller than a housecat?
“No.”
“Smaller than a man?”
“Ah…” Dahl fumbled. Everest’s hawk eyes were on him and he tried to play it off. “Do you have a tissue?”
“Answer the question.” Everest’s voice had that smarmy edge it got in games sometimes.
Dahl couldn’t help but grin. “It is not smaller than a man.”
“So larger than a man?” Everest ceded a tissue.
“No. It is not larger than a man, either.” Dahl wiped his nose, folded the tissue twice, and tucked it away.
“So it’s man-sized?” Everest’s mouth was a frown, snow in his eyelashes, self-satisfied arch to his brow.
“You’re man-sized.” Dahl snagged Everest’s belt loop and pulled him closer. After considering him for a moment, he kissed Everest’s lips with a quick smile. Dahl was rewarded with an answering grin, like the expression rubbed off between them. “Eleven questions.”
“That’s a yes, then?”
“Yes. Man-sized. Continue.”
Everest was edging freezing, icicle hands under the back of Dahl’s shirt, eyes sparkling. “Is it someone I know?”
Dahl returned the favor. Everest squirmed but didn’t push him off. His fingers started to thaw. “Yes.”
“Is this some ridiculous scenario where Ian has a secret middle name and you’re going to say I didn’t win because I don’t know it?”
“I won’t even count that as a question, because I am a fair and just arbiter. This is not a trick or a deception. First or last name will do.” Dahl’s heart skipped a beat. Everest was pressed against him, lips red with cold. He looked ridiculously cute: snow-frosted and shivering, eyes lit with affection and strategy. What if they had left from the beach and driven the other way? Would it have made a difference? “Ten.”
“Is it someone here at Camp Nowhere?”
“Yes.” Dahl’s stomach lurched. Everest studied him more
seriously.
“Is it someone younger than I am?”
“Yes.”
“Is it someone in my arms trying not to think about the feeling of a snowball down the shirt?”
Dahl chuckled despite himself. “Yes. Seven.”
“Is it you?”
“‘You’ is a pronoun, not a person. Six.”
“Oh, that’s flimsy.”
“Rules are rules.” Dahl tried to smile. Maybe it wouldn’t happen. Maybe…
Everest cocked an eyebrow, “Very well. Is it…” his voice trailed off into the downy, soft air. Dahl waited and held him. He was almost warm with Everest in his arms, but he couldn’t feel his toes and his lungs hurt. “Is it…” Everest shook his head with a shudder and dropped his gaze. He shifted stiffly, heavy shame shadowing his face.
“Everest. Hey, it’s alright. It’s going to be fine. I’m here.”
He was hair-trigger tense and breathing hard. Dahl gently stroked his back. “Hey, look at me.” Everest slowly raised his wild eyes. “You’re safe, and it’s going to be alright. My name is Michael Dahl, yes? If you can’t remember, I can help.” Everest swallowed, moving the lump on his throat. Dahl pressed on, “This is a side effect of your magic: forgetting details or mixing them up. I realized you were struggling and I had Sana Baba send over the Fiver file. The good news is that some of this will probably clear, but you need to stop using magic for a while.”
“Some of this will probably clear?” Everest’s voice snagged.
“Yes.” Dahl didn’t know what else to say, so he shut up. Everest was likely working through as much as he could handle anyway, so Dahl held him. After a few minutes he kissed Everest’s cold nose because it looked vulnerable and lonely. Then he withdrew his toasty hands and stooped to pack a nice, fat snowball.
“What are you doing?” That snapped Everest back to the here and now.
“Well, you did lose.” Dahl tried to affect an apologetic air.
Everest laughed, bright and ringing. When Dahl made a grab for his collar, he moved like a cat, dodging sidelong and flinging a handful of freezing white full in Dahl’s face. Dahl threw and painted Everest’s thigh with a satisfying smack while he stumbled away, gasping with laughter. They played like kids for almost an hour until, soaked and red-faced, they stumbled back to their room and peeled off wet clothing.
“This works for you? Sex, I mean?” Dahl pulled Everest into the mattress and under the pile of blankets he’d heaped on the floor. “You’ll tell me if you get confused or want to stop?”
Everest nodded, brow creasing, shivering and naked. “What if I call you the wrong name?”
“You did that already.” Dahl cupped his cheek, fingertips in snow-damp hair. “So don’t worry about it. It happened and it probably will again. It’s not worth getting twisted up over.”
“I was aware things were off, sometimes.” Everest’s breath hitched in his lungs, pupils huge. “I think I’ve been getting you confused with… someone else.”
“Adam. Your partner who you loved deeply.” Dahl shoved aside the ache in his chest. “He passed away a little over a year ago. Do you remember?”
Everest nodded.
“It’s alright, Everest.” Dahl caught his unfocused gaze. “Hey, I will happily take credit for all of the good things Adam did.”
Everest chuckled, his eyes shiny and overfull. “And the bad things?”
“I’ll gently remind you that wasn’t me, it was him. Same goes for everything since he passed as well, by the way. We can handle this just… be patient with me, yes? I’m figuring it out as we go too.” Dahl closed his eyes, willing him to believe. After almost half a minute Everest’s muscles relaxed, melting against him, warm and gorgeously strong. His kiss was a dizzying, consuming press like the flow of the tide. Buzzing in Dahl’s brain escalated to a dull roar. Everest’s hand brushed his cheek, holding him as he pulled away a fraction of an inch to meet his eyes before closing the distance a second time while sensation short-circuited Dahl’s motor functions.
The first time they’d fucked was on an autopsy table in someone else’s house, so it seemed reasonable that would be the most awkward, but this was worse. Dahl ached to take charge, but his hands wouldn’t obey. Half of his brain was screaming to pin Everest down and animalistically own him and the other half was piteously cowering because maybe Everest was thinking of someone else. Bright hunger pains in his belly, chest, lungs, and groin transcended emotional and physically hurt as his body cried out for contact and relief. He hadn’t even broached the whole ritual sex subject and didn’t know how to with Everest hard and heavy against him, sliding their hips together while they kissed.
“Good?” Everest’s voice was husky with friction—the tone alone forced a moan from Dahl’s lungs. Everest closed his hand around Dahl’s solid body: practiced and firm, commanding but nuanced—a marksmen’s grip. Dahl pulled a sharp hiss through clenched teeth as the pressure swelled. “Talk to me.” Dahl’s words tumbled out through the thickness in his throat. Everest didn’t chat during sex, but maybe he would make an exception. With a bemused grin, he rubbed his thumb along Dahl’s left eyebrow. “You have a scar here.” He kissed the spot. “I always notice it when I study your face. I like the character it gives you.”
Dahl had his fingers tangled in Everest’s hair. He couldn’t look away,
“I get lost in you.” Everest’s whisper was molten. “When I let myself wander in your eyes, it’s like I’m standing in the warm rain. You own every one of my senses.” He paused to kiss Dahl’s lips, tasting him open-mouthed, inhaling the breath from his lungs.
The conversation was meant as a distraction, a soundtrack to lighten the mood, but the words stirred deep. “I’m desperate for you.” Dahl’s voice cracked. “I feel like I’ve been dying of thirst.” Everest’s intense, focused touch was so genuine it made the rest of the world sepia. Warm lips pressed into Dahl’s neck, and his fingers drew long, solid pulls, transforming Dahl’s body into an instinct-driven machine rolling over his last mental hesitancies. Everest knew him. They loved each other. It wasn’t always easy, but it was simple after all.
Dahl traced his smooth chest, taut stomach, watching his lover shudder as rock-hard velvet filled his hand. Everest pushed into their shared grasp, glorious and dark and uncut. Dahl moaned and arched against him—his sense of purpose was reduced to thrust. The world telescoped to a single point of surging friction before light burst inside, golden, warm, and consuming, immolating the lingering chill in an exquisite instant. When the last convulsion drained out, his muscles lax with dopamine, Dahl pulled their sticky bodies flush and kissed Everest slowly.
“You smell like pear blossoms.” Everest was radiant with afterglow—basking in his aura was like lying in the sun. Dahl was full again, and the tingling aftershocks sparked from his scalp to his toes.
“I always thought of it the other way around: pear blossoms smell like jizz.” Dahl gave him another lazy kiss. Everest chuckled and rested against him. He brushed wisps of hair out of Everest’s eyes with his butterfly hand. “You good?”
“So much better than good.”
“I love you.”
“Dahl.” Everest’s drowsy voice brought tears to Dahl’s eyes. The man endlessly struggled to find the right words, but in this moment he had whispered the one Dahl longed for most.
Chapter Twenty
Everest was still sleeping when Dahl crept out of bed. In the dim light his thick eyelashes fluttered over soft cheeks, but his breathing returned to even and easy while Dahl sat on the edge of the bed trying to figure out if he should wake him up and fuck him again while they were still alone. In the end, Everest likely needed the sleep more than the love, so Dahl snuck out, retrieved Fitz from a frizzy-haired, manic Blue, and went to secure breakfast.
In the Grit Room, Lizzie Davis and Zack Slaughter sat at the round table, drinking lemon tea and playing rummy. Zack also had a mug of Theraflu in front of him. They greeted Dahl in a distracted way
when he came in with Fitz but didn’t start a conversation. Zack was obviously under the weather. Always pale, his skin had taken on an ashy cast, and he coughed into his shoulder every few minutes. Lizzie made tutting noises and asked if he was okay, but mostly they played in companionable silence. The atmosphere was oddly relaxed.
Fitz sat on the linoleum floor, directly underfoot, picking at his bowl of canned peaches while Dahl heated the skillet for pancakes. The little boy hadn’t let him be more than six inches away since they left Blue’s room, and Dahl was mired in guilt. There were also additional practical challenges. It made walking hard, cooking harder, and Dahl had no idea how to go to use the bathroom with Fitz in tow.
“Love you, kiddo.” Dahl ruffled his hair and removed the rejected peaches to eliminate one tripping hazard. Fitz held up his pinkie, index finger, and thumb in response before tapping his lips twice, the way he always did for Dahl. A huge grin spread across Dahl’s face.
“I love you, Dahl.” Using two signs together was new.
Lizzie breezed into the kitchen and unlocked the medical cabinet.
“Thanks Mama Davis!” Zack called in a scratchy voice from the other room. Lizzie selected a bottle of cough syrup and some Tylenol from the shelf full of morphine, codeine, ether, chloroform, and a dozen others. Keeping the drugs secure was a protocol Dahl insisted on for Fitz’s safety, but it made his stomach turn how often he saw both Everest and Zack wistfully gazing at the locked cabinet.
Fucking Adam.
“Are you feeling alright?” Lizzie Davis caught his eye, and Dahl shook himself and recommenced cooking. “There’s something going around.”
“I’m fine.”
“That poor boy.” Lizzie shook her head, glancing at Zack. “I’m worried about him.”
Dahl paused in whisking the flour and baking powder to focus on the woman. She looked tired but sturdy: her short stature and pretty, feminine touches like a blue bead necklace and floral blouse camouflaging stalwart posture. “Go on.”
