"Okay."
"Are you okay?"
"No." Seth pulled back. Looked up at him. Rain on his face, or something else. "But I will be."
They went back to the safehouse. Jack handled the body. Ghost scrubbed the nearby cameras. Nate was waiting with medical supplies he didn't need and hot coffee he did.
Seth sat on Zain's bed, not his own room, not tonight, and stared at his hands while Zain locked the door.
"I killed someone," Seth said.
"Yes."
"I thought I'd feel more."
"You will. It comes in waves."
"How do you know?"
Zain sat beside him. Close enough to touch. Not touching yet.
"Because I remember my first," he said quietly. "In Fallujah. I was twenty-two. He was running at our position with something in his hand, turned out to be a phone, not a detonator. I didn't know that until after."
Seth looked at him.
"I threw up. Then I didn't feel anything for three days. Then it hit me all at once, in the mess hall, of all places. Someone dropped a tray and I was on the floor."
"What happened then?"
"A sergeant pulled me up. Said something I didn't understand at the time. He said, 'The first one changes you. The ones after that just confirm the change.'"
"Is that true?"
"Parts of it." Zain's hand found Seth's knee. "The part he left out is that you get to choose what the change looks like."
Seth covered Zain's hand with his own.
"I don't want to be alone tonight," Seth said.
"You're not."
"I mean…"
"I know what you mean."
Zain kissed him.
CHAPTER 21
The sex that followed was not gentle. Seth didn't want gentle. Gentle was for people who hadn't just killed someone on arain-slicked street. Gentle was for people whose hands weren't still warm from a dead man's gun.
"Harder," Seth said before Zain had barely gotten him through the bedroom door. "I need… don't be careful with me right now."
"Seth -"
"I mean it." He grabbed Zain's shirt and pulled. Buttons scattered. "If you treat me like I'm fragile I will lose my mind. I need you to fuck me like I'm still here."
Something shifted behind Zain's eyes. The careful concern burned away and what replaced it was darker, hotter, the thing Zain kept leashed because he thought Seth couldn't handle it.
