Then breathing.
Then the slow, careful return of a world that wasn’t made of gold.
Riot’s vision cleared in stages. Gold to amber to green to the dim wooden entryway of Lilac’s house, where two people were tangled together on the floor in a mess of sweat and slick and cum, and one of them was shaking so hard his teeth were chattering.
Did I break him? Did I push too far?
“Cass.” Riot’s voice was stripped to nothing. “Talk to me.”
For a long, terrifying silence, Cass’s body just twitched with small, involuntary shudders that ran through him like ripples. His face was pressed into the crook of his own elbow, hidden, and Riot couldn’t tell if the shaking was pleasure or fear or something worse.
Then Cass turned his head.
His expression was peaceful.
The pain lines around his eyes, the ones that Riot had stopped noticing because they were always,alwaysthere were gone. The constant tension in his jaw had dissolved. His scent had gone soft and golden, the sharp edge of heat-need dulled to something that glowed warm and steady under the surface instead of screaming.
“The aching.” Cass’s voice was dream-distant, slow. “It’s so quiet.”
“Good.” He pressed his lips to the curve of Cass’s ear. “That’s good, princess.”
“You called me a word,” Cass said, after a while. His voice was conversational but almost sleepy. “The s-one. I know that word is bad. I don’t... what does it mean?”
Riot exhaled slowly, gathering Cass closer, so they were sitting instead of sprawled.
“It means someone who wants too much.” He kept his voice even. “Someone who’s desperate for… touch. More than they’re supposed to want. People use it to make someone feel bad about needing things.”
Cass was quiet, processing. His fingers traced patterns on Riot’s arm where it crossed his chest. “You didn’t say it like it was bad.”
“No.”
“You said it like it was...” He paused. Searching for the right word. “Like when you saygood boy. The same voice.”
Christ. He’s right.
“I shouldn’t have—”
“Is there a word for wanting things and it being okay?” Cass interrupted. “For needing a lot and it not being wrong?”
The question was so earnest, so stripped of irony, that Riot had to close his eyes for a second. “Human. The word is human, Cass.”
“Oh. That’s much better than what I’ve been called before.” Cass sighed. “And the other one? Freak.”
Riot’s jaw tightened.
“I know what that one means. When Chrysalis didn’t work. When I couldn’t…” He stopped and swallowed. “Some of my peers called me that because I was too broken for the universe to reach.”
The rage that flooded Riot was old and deep and human. It was the fury of someone who’d had his own identity rewrittenby a corporation and recognized the same violence done to someone else.
“That’s not how I meant it.” He turned Cass’s face up toward him, and Cass shifted until he was practically sprawled across Riot’s lap, looking up at him. “When I said it, I didn’t mean broken. I meant... outside the categories. Something that doesn’t fit in a box because the boxes are too small.” He was fumbling. Words had never been his weapon; that had been Brennan’s department. “I meant that everything they told you was too much…I think that’s a good thing about you. It’s not a defect.”
“At home, everything about me was wrong.” He shifted in Riot’s lap, settling deeper. “When you say those words, even the ones I don’t know, it doesn’t feel like being told I’m broken. It feels like... permission.”
“You are allowed,” Riot said roughly. “You always were.”
“I know.” Cass smiled, tired and luminous, still carrying the faint bruise offreakunder his skin. “I’m going to need time with that word, though.”
“Take all the time you need.”
