“You make me feel human. Do you understand that? You are the only person in ten years, Cass,ten yearsnobody has touched me without a weapon hidden on them— and you just—you touched me like I mattered and now I—”
Four steps. Turn. Cass was blurry through the gold.
“I don’t care if it’s selfish. I don’t fucking care. You make me feel like a person who exists for a reason other than breaking things and it terrifies me and I am not going to lose that because your best friend is busy sorting fucking fruit while the man that r—”
The sentence was going somewhere. It was going to the place Riot had been holding behind his teeth since Lilac’s bathroom floor—the thing Cass had described without understanding. He could feel the words forming.I know what he did to you. Not the scars. The OTHER thing. The thing you can’t remember.
He looked at Cass.
Cass was crying. Not the held tears—the real ones, streaming, his face blotchy and crumpled with his good hand pressed over his mouth and his body curved inward like a thread was pulling on him from the inside.
Riot’s mouth closed.
The silence was enormous. It filled the little blue house from floor to ceiling and pressed against the windows, and Riot stood in the middle of it with his fists at his sides, his eyes burning gold and the knowledge that he had just come within a single word of shattering Cass’s world.
Monster. Weapon. Thing that breaks things. Even when you’re trying to protect him, you break him. Even when you’re trying to help. Even now. Even here.
“I’m sorry,” Riot said, like his throat had been taken apart and put back together wrong. “I’m sorry. I went too far. I—”
“Are you done?” Cass asked from behind his hand.
“Yeah.” Barely a whisper. “I’m done.”
“I’m sorry too,” Cass said as he wiped his face with the sleeve of his robes. His voice was small and it was the worst sound Riot ever heard because it was an apology from the one person who had nothing to apologize for. “I know you don’t like him. I know.”
“It’s not about—”
“I don’t like the way he makes me feel now.” Cass said it fast, like the words might not come out if he gave them time to reconsider. “Since I came back. Everything feels wrong. The way he touches me and the way he says my name. It felt like—before, it felt like he was the only person who liked me other than Honey. He said I was like a son.” His voice cracked onson.“Nobody else had that. Nobody here has parents. And now I’m back and it feels like—like a copy of something that was never real. And I don’t—”
He pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes as if he could push the tears back in by force. It didn’t work.
“I’m really scared,” he said. “I’m not scared of the session. I know what it feels like. My body knows what to do. I’m scared for you. That your eyes are going to—and then he’ll know. And Sage. And Honey. And I just—”
He couldn’t finish. He pressed both hands over his face, gasping as his shoulder moved, and let out a small squeak from behind palms like he was choking off a sob.
Riot crossed the room, desperately wanting to hug Cass, but unsure if he was allowed to do that after what he’d just done with his voice in this room. He stood in front of Cass with his hands at his sides and hated himself with a thoroughness that bordered on professional.
“Are you mad at me?” Cass asked from behind his hands.
“No. No, princess. I’m not mad at you.”
Cass’s hands came down as he walked towards Riot, and even through the tears and hurt and fear that was still there in his body language like a bruise, his face was one of concern. “You’re still gold.” His hand came up to Riot’s face anyway, shaking and warm, settling against his cheek. “Riot, you’re still—you need to calm down. If he sees this tonight—”
“I know.”
“You need to—”
”Iknow.”
Riot turned his head and pressed his mouth into Cass’s palm. “I’ll go splash some water on my face and cool down.”
He went to the bathroom.
The mirror showed him what Cass had been seeing. Green eyes ringed with gold, but not the solid, flat brightness that turned the world into a targeting system. This was worse in some ways. The gold wasleaking,seeping into the green like ink into water, flickering with every heartbeat, visible enough that anyone looking at his face for more than three seconds would see it and know something was wrong.
He splashed his face. Once. Twice. He pressed his wet hands against his closed eyelids until the pressure made his sinuses ache.
Still gold.
