Dara’s hands visibly tightened around the railing, his body a straight line from his hips to the back of his neck. For a second Noam thought he might not answer at all, but then: “I knew you worked there sometimes,” Dara said. “I . . . keep thinking about what you’d said, that night on the beach. About me being lucky.”
Noam stayed silent.
“I wanted to see if you were right.”
Noam’s chest kept clenching uselessly, a dull pain humming beneath his sternum. The humid air felt suffocating even when he breathed it in. “And was I?”
Dara’s mouth turned to a small and humorless smile. He looked at Noam again, raindrops glittering on his lashes, falling onto his cheeks when he blinked.
“I don’t want you to think I don’t sympathize with the refugees,” Dara said.
“But you still support Sacha.”
“Over Lehrer, yes.” Dara sighed. “There are more than two sides to this story, Noam. What would you say if I told you Sacha didn’t make these decisions on his own recognizance? What if he was just a character in someone else’s play, and all this suffering and death was smoke and special effects distracting you from the real agenda?”
“I’d tell you those are actual people whose suffering and death you’re talking about.”
“Of course they’re real,” Dara said. There was an edge of sincere passion to his voice this time, his body turning to face Noam more fully even though his hands stayed frozen in place. “That makes it worse! Lehrer doesn’t care about the refugees. He just wants Sacha as a convenient scapegoat so he can seize power.”
Noam frowned. Dara didn’t know about Lehrer’s coup—right?
“Dara . . . if Lehrer wanted to seize power, don’t you think he’d just do it? He controls the whole army. He wouldn’t need a scapegoat.”
“That depends,” Dara said. “I think I know Lehrer somewhat better than you do, having had the past fourteen years to make his intimate acquaintance. He won’t want power he has to take by force. He wants it given to him, the way it was when Carolinia was founded. He wants people to beg him to take over.”
“Lehrer gave up the crown because he wanted to return power to the people. That’s why we have a social democracy, Dara. I hate Sacha as much as anyone, but even I have to admit he was elected fair and square.”
“No,” Dara said flatly. “Sacha is a figurehead. Lehrer is in power now, just as he has always been in power. Absolute power.”
Noam looked back down at the courtyard, which was empty now, even the soldier presumably having gone inside in search of shelter.
What if Dara was right?
What if all Lehrer cared about was control?
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said eventually. “Why bother trying to be chancellor himself, in that case? If he already had absolute power as minister of defense, according to you, then he wouldn’t need the title. Seems pointless to go through all this trouble.”
Dara just shrugged.
“I take it you don’t have a good answer to that, then.”
“No. I have no idea why he’d want the title now. Maybe he feels like people don’t appreciate him enough anymore. Maybe he hopes he’ll finally figure out resurrection magic and bring his brother back and make him king instead. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It’s still true.”
Dara’s words reached into the heart of Noam’s last lingering doubts, twisting them into something larger: What if Dara’s right? What if Lehrer’s just power hungry? What if we lose and the refugees are no better off and Lehrer blames it all on me?
Dara leaned forward as though he was thinking about letting his body weight pull him over the railing and into the rain. Noam glimpsed the base of Dara’s neck, where his skin vanished beneath the collar of his sweater, and swallowed.
“I’m glad you came, anyway.”
Dara’s weight dropped back onto his heels. “Why’s that?”
Noam chewed his cheek, wishing he’d thought before he spoke. That he wasn’t having to admit now, quiet and half expecting Dara to laugh in his face: “Because I’m always glad to see you.”
He heard Dara’s soft inhale, and for a moment time stood still, stretching out around them. The world had condensed down to the two of them, the patter-fall of water muffling everything else, and Noam was too aware of how close Dara was. If he leaned in just a few inches, their noses would touch. Dara’s would be cold from being out here so long. But Noam imagined his lips would be warm.
Dara’s eyes lowered—looking at my mouth, Noam realized with a shudder of exhilaration. Slowly, slowly, as if moving too quickly might shatter it all, Noam edged his hand closer to Dara’s along the railing, until the edges of their fingers touched. It was perfect. The wind tugging them together, everything cold outside the two of them, golden market lights shimmering through the downpour. He’d never have a better moment, Noam knew, his pulse pounding in his temples. This was it. Noam should—
“We should go inside,” Dara said, and just like that, the moment unraveled. Dara turned away, a small step taking him outside the circle they’d built around themselves.
“Oh,” Noam said. His voice sounded stretched and surreal to his own ears. That warmth was gone, the aching chill in its place like poison darting through Noam’s veins. “Sure. All right.”
Dara started off across the roof, feet sure even on wet stone, leaving Noam to falter after him.
It was a silent descent down to the barracks, Dara two steps ahead of Noam on the stairs, the back of his neck wet and flushed. Noam tried to think about nothing at all. Not the shape of Dara’s body beneath those sodden clothes, not how badly Noam wanted him, not how much Noam hated himself right now for being such an idiot.
Inside felt too hot. His clothes were freezing against his skin. Dara smiled as if nothing was wrong, laughing when someone made a comment about the trail of water they’d left behind them on the floor and heading off toward the showers.
Noam didn’t want to follow him. He wanted to go into the bedroom and curl up still-soaked in his bed and sink through the mattress, through the floor, into the center of the earth.
He waited until he heard the bathroom door shut before he opened the door to the bedroom. For a moment he just stood there, staring at all the artifacts of their lives that he never paid attention to normally—Taye’s rumpled sheets, the book on the floor by the head of Noam’s bed, the bourbon he knew was hidden in a slit beneath Dara’s mattress.
Had Noam imagined it? Was there no substance to the way Dara looked at him, no secret to his smiles?
He unlaced his boots using telekinesis and peeled them off, kicking them into a corner. His squelching socks joined them a moment later.
Ridiculous to think that Dara would be interested in someone like Noam when he could have anyone he wanted. Had anyone he wanted, from what Noam could tell.
Don’t think about him. But Dara always found a way of creeping back in, like a persistent virus.
Noam had just started in on the buttons of his shirt when the bathroom door opened.
He spun around. His head pounded with too much blood, skin hot.
Dara stood in the open doorway, a watercolor painting with clothes plastered to his skin like streaked paint, the blur of his eyes beneath wet lashes. He was—angry, Noam thought, because why else would his mouth knot like that, or his pupils glint so brightly.
“What is it now?” he snapped.
Dara didn’t answer. He stepped forward, water dripping in his wake, closer and closer until Noam moved back—but nowhere to go, nothing but the window glass pressing against his spine, freezing through his thin shirt.
When Dara touched him, his cold fingertips sliding over Noam’s damp cheek, Noam shivered.
“Dara,” he started.
Dara kissed him.
It—Dara’s mouth, that was Dara’s mouth, Dara’s teeth catching his lower lip, Dara’s hands twining in his hair, Dara’s body, Dara’s heartbeat against his chest.
> The shape of him was both familiar and new. Familiar because he’d studied it in sidelong glances, in fantasies. New because none of Noam’s fantasies did justice to the topography of Dara’s ribs beneath his palms or the smooth plane at the small of his back, his body shifting muscle and shallow breathing, short nails digging into Noam’s skull.
“Wait,” Noam said—gasped, really, against Dara’s open mouth, because what if this—he wanted Dara to mean it, for this to mean something, not just . . . not . . .
Dara drew back a fraction of an inch, just enough that Noam could see him properly. A bead of water cut a quick path down Dara’s cheek. “You don’t want me to wait,” he said.
He was right.
This time Noam kissed him, surging forward and clasping Dara’s perfect face between both hands, keeping him there where Noam could feel every part of him—including that part of him, which was hard and pressing against Noam’s hip. Jesus.
Dara’s fingers found the last of Noam’s shirt buttons, pushing them free with expert efficiency. The cotton fabric stuck to Noam’s skin—Dara had to peel it off him.
This was happening. This was really happening.
The window latch dug into Noam’s back. He didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything but the way Dara touched him like he couldn’t get enough, his mouth at Noam’s neck and kissing its way toward his collarbone. Noam dragged the hem of Dara’s shirt up, off, over his head. Dara’s hair was a mess now, looked like he’d already had someone twist their fingers into the curls, like he’d already done unspeakable things.
Noam made a soft, desperate sound, and Dara smiled, a sharp little expression that suggested he knew exactly what he was doing.
“Come on,” Dara murmured. His thumbs hooked into Noam’s belt loops, tugging him forward one step, another.
Belatedly, Noam locked the door. It was a distracted, careless bit of magic that probably melted the latch. Whatever. That was a problem for later, when Dara wasn’t half-naked in front of him saying things like come on and pushing Noam back onto one of the beds and shoving down his trousers and, and . . .
“The light?” Noam murmured against Dara’s mouth, once Dara crawled onto the bed after him and straddled his hips. He held Noam there with his hand on his chest, thumb pressing into the hollow of Noam’s throat. It was ever-so-slightly uncomfortable, each breath pushing back against the weight of Dara’s hand.
“No,” Dara said and nipped at Noam’s lip before he drew back, hands finding Noam’s belt buckle.
“What?” Noam smirked. “Are you afraid of the dark?”
Dara glanced up, raised a brow. “Something like that.”
Any other day, Noam would never let him live that down. Today, he had Dara’s bare skin beneath his palms. He wasn’t saying anything to put that in jeopardy.
Noam grasped him by the hips and pushed him over onto his back instead.
Dara was born to lie on mussed bedsheets with wet hair spilling like an ink stain onto white pillows, flush cheeked. Noam could use his power to undo Dara’s fly, but he didn’t want to, wanted to use his hands, rubbing the pad of his thumb against the brass buttons and pressing his palm against what was underneath that fabric.
“I don’t want you to think I’m just like all the others,” Noam said, hesitating there with his hand in Dara’s lap and Dara frowning expectantly up at him, Dara’s fingers loosely curled round Noam’s wrist.
“I know you’re not,” Dara said.
“I’m not going to fuck you and then just—”
“I know.”
“I like you, and I want . . . I need to make sure you know that, because—”
“Noam.”
Noam stopped talking.
Dara arched up to kiss his chest, and Noam pushed the last button free on his fly. He tugged Dara’s trousers down, then off, and smoothed his hands over Dara’s skin. He kissed the inside of Dara’s knee, the dusky bruises on his thigh where some other lover held him a little too hard—Dara shivered when Noam did that—his hip bone, the flat plane beneath his navel. Dara was warm, still rain-damp, and smelled like bourbon and boy.
“Just fucking do it,” Dara gasped, and it was the first time Noam had ever heard Dara say the word fuck, and he didn’t have it in him to disobey.
Afterward, Dara kissed him openmouthed and hot and messy, grasping at Noam with both hands like he’d die if he didn’t have more—more of that, of Noam.
And as it turned out, Dara’s mouth was good at more than just talking.
Later, when their hair was nearly dry, they lay tangled up in the narrow twin bed, Noam’s fingers laced into Dara’s curls. Dara tracked a trail of languid kisses along Noam’s sternum.
Noam had been with boys before, but Dara was definitely the most experienced. A part of Noam felt awkward in comparison, like a child pretending to be grown up.
“Don’t,” Dara murmured and bit him just beneath the collarbone.
“Don’t what?”
“You’re overthinking things,” Dara said. He lifted his head, propping his chin against Noam’s chest. “I can tell.”
Noam made a face at him, but there was no point denying it. Dara’s forefinger traced little patterns on his skin, as if oblivious to the way that made Noam’s heart stumble.
“All right. I won’t overthink things.” He skimmed his hand down Dara’s side instead, again incredulous that Dara’s skin could be so smooth. “You have been with a lot more people than I have, though.”
“So?”
“So . . .” Noam turned the words over on his tongue, not sure how to phrase this. They felt unwieldy, like holding stones in his mouth. He looked at Dara and bit the inside of his lip until it hurt. “I know this doesn’t mean we’re together. I know you’re not really a relationship person.”
Dara’s mouth flattened. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I just mean . . . I mean, you like to . . . I don’t know, Dara. It’s pretty clear you’re not into relationships. That’s all.”
But Dara had already pushed himself upright, twisting one hand in the bedsheets.
“I can fuck whomever I want.”
“Of course you can,” Noam said, baffled. “I’m not saying you can’t.”
He ignored the part of himself that felt like it was withering just saying so, hearing Dara talk about wanting to fuck other people—it wasn’t like Noam thought he and Dara were, would be . . .
Dara wasn’t a monogamous person, maybe, which was fine. But.
“I can’t not say something, Dara. I’m sorry. But you have bruises on your leg, and on your ribs, and here . . .” He reached for Dara’s arm, to brush fingertips against the yellowing marks just above the elbow, the ones Noam hadn’t noticed until Dara had his head down between Noam’s thighs.
Dara jerked his arm out of reach.
Noam put his hand back on his own knee, safe. “I’m not going to be a shitty friend and pretend not to notice.”
“Maybe you’d rather whisper sweet nothings in someone’s ear and have boring, predictable sex, but not all of us aspire to such bland heights.”
Wait. Did Dara think Noam was boring?
Noam bit the inside of his lip, suddenly adrift in an uneasy sea. He didn’t know how to respond to that. “Okay. So someone gave you those bruises during sex?”
Dara’s cheeks flushed darker than Noam had ever seen them before. For a moment Noam was so sure Dara was going to—hit him? Curse at him? Something. But Dara swung his legs off the edge of the bed and grabbed for his trousers instead, movements jerky and inhuman.
Noam sat up, abruptly conscious of his own nakedness. “Dara. Please just talk to me.”
Dara rounded on him again with flashing eyes and his shirt gripped between both hands. “I do talk to you. I talk to you all the time, Álvaro, but you never listen.”
“Okay, like when? You don’t say shit, Dara. I feel like I barely fucking know you sometimes, and that’s not for lack of trying.”
Dara j
abbed one finger at Noam’s chest. “I try to tell you about Lehrer.”
“That’s such bullshit, Dara, and you know it. Just because I don’t agree with you—”
Dara hurled the shirt onto the floor so violently that Noam startled where he sat, knocking back against the headboard. “Shut the fuck up. If I have to listen to you justify your own willful ignorance one more time—you—” He dragged a hand back through his hair too roughly, fingers tugging at the messy curls. “I try to tell you, but I don’t tell you, do you understand? You think you know everything, but you know nothing, you know absolutely nothing. It’s not about you agreeing with me. Lehrer—”
“I don’t want to hear it, Dara. I swear to god. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Oh, believe me,” Dara snapped, “I know.”
Okay. Okay, fine—fine. Noam shoved the bedsheets aside and got to his feet, heat flooding his whole body in an unexpected wave.
“You wanna talk about some fucked-up shit? All right. Yeah. Let’s talk about that, because you’ve known about Ames’s dad for I don’t even know how long, and you haven’t done shit about it.”
Noam was taller than Dara when they were both standing straight, and right now he needed that. He needed the way Dara took a half step back when Noam crossed his arms over his chest, that brief retreat like a victory, fuel for Noam’s anger.
“You won’t shut up about Lehrer and his hypothetical corruption or whatever, but there’s somebody in government we both know is corrupt. You made me keep quiet about it. You said you’d handle it. Well? What have you done, Dara? Because as far as I can see, you’re content to let a murderer sit as home secretary and do nothing.”
“I told you I’d handle Gordon Ames, and I will. That’s not the point, Noam!”
“You have a point? Well, thank god for that.”
The noise Dara made was wild, derisive and deranged all at once. He spun on his heel, striding toward the door—but as soon as he reached the other end of the room, he just turned round and paced back again. If Noam weren’t so furious he might be worried, because Dara . . . Dara didn’t look well. He looked like someone who hadn’t slept in a week, manic and fevered.
The Fever King Page 24
