Page 38 of Icarus

But Icarus remembered the way Helios’s arm had felt across his throat, remembered his hands being wrenched behind his back, and . . . wondered. Helios’s grin widened, and he brought their hands back from Icarus’s winning side toward the middle and then a few centimeters in his direction.

“What the fuck,” Icarus breathed, gripping the side of the bed hard for leverage.

Helios wasn’t bracing against anything. His other hand lay inert on his thigh. There were bruises around his wrist.

“Oh, darling,” Helios breathed. “You’re very good.”

“Don’t call me that. I didn’t say you could call me that,” Icarus huffed, straining.

“Hmm,” Helios said. Then he slammed Icarus’s hand onto the bed in an easy win. Clearly, he had been holding back.

Icarus gasped, snatching his arm to his chest. He cradled it close. His fingers burned like Helios had ground the bones together. Careless, careless for someone who had to climb back down a wall.

“Oh, shit, are you okay? Here—let me . . .”

Helios tugged Icarus’s arm to him very gently and stroked between Icarus’s fingers. Too much feeling was bouncing around Icarus’s chest, so he just let him. Icarus sighed, discordant and raw.

“I don’t understand you,” he whispered.

“Hmm?” Helios rubbed Icarus’s joints like he knew what he was doing, and the pain was beginning to subside.

“I think about this . . . all the time,” Icarus confessed. “I don’t understand you. Everything about you throws me off guard and I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. I never feel like that.”

“Never?” Helios seemed amused again. “Well. That sounds lucky.”

“You know what I mean,” Icarus said seriously.

Helios tucked his grin back into the corner of his mouth, like a secret, and looked up into Icarus’s eyes.

“I’m a dancer. I lift a lot of people.” Helios raised one shoulder, clearly trying to be casual. Clearly trying to brush it off. “Ballet, you know. People don’t really think of us as strong, but we kind of have to be. Don’t feel bad or anything. I’m sure if you spent the last couple years tossing around all your friends, you’d blow me out of the water.”

He pressed into the webbing between Icarus’s thumb and pointer finger and worried the skin until the throbbing faded to a warm glow.

“Thanks,” Icarus said.

“Don’t sweat it,” Helios replied. He lay Icarus’s hand down on Icarus’s knee, and then folded his own in his lap.

“So. What do you want?” Icarus asked. “What did you win from me?”

Helios tilted his head back to gaze at the canopy above them.

“You bring me so much already,” he sighed happily. “What more could I ask for?”

Icarus waited patiently in the silence. He wasn’t a sore loser and he knew when it was important to be quiet.

“Can . . .” Helios started, then stopped, hesitant. “Can you hide with me under here?”

Flow

It was even darker under the comforter.

Icarus could feel Helios’s breath on his face, even though they were more than a foot away from each other. The proximity was dizzying. It was indescribable.

He was like a sunflower stretching toward the light.

“When I was a kid, I always used to imagine someone with me under here,” Helios admitted. “When things got really bad.”

Icarus stayed quiet.