Page 2

Bohdi swallows greedily and the cleanup is thorough enough to make Morgan's oversensitive body twitch and shudder. He tugs Morgan’s trousers back up over his hips, then presses a kiss just above the waistband, sealing it. He sits back on his heels looking thoroughly satisfied with himself and Morgan would find his smug face obnoxious if he had any capacity for greater cognitive function. But he doesn’t.

He’s leaning against the wall with his eyes closed and his chest heaving, his trousers still unlaced and his hair sticking to his temples. He is the crown prince of Rengara and he has just been sucked off in an alcove at nine in the morning and he is reasonably certain this would not appear in any of the aspirational texts about noble leadership he read as a child.

He opens his eyes. Looks down at Bohdi, whose grin has gone lazy and warm. Reaches for him. "Come here."

Bohdi takes his hands and rises up onto both feet, fluid and unhurried. Morgan’s hands go to his trousers, fingers finding the laces, and Bohdi catches his wrists.

Morgan frowns up at him. "You don’t want me to?”

"No need."

Morgan stares at him. Then he looks down, and the evidence is visible, the damp stain spreading at the front of Bohdi's trousers, and Morgan's brain requires a full three seconds to process what he is seeing. He looks back up.

"You already–" Morgan starts, and then stops. "From that? Just from that?"

"I like to watch you," Bohdi says, and his voice is rough and low and entirely without apology. He leans down and nips at Morgan's jaw, teeth scraping the hinge of it, and adds against his skin, "I like the sounds you make when you're trying not to make sounds. I like your hands in my hair. I like the way your thighs shake." He pulls back enough to meet Morgan's eyes. "I like watching you come apart, Morgan. It's not a hardship."

Morgan’s heart is doing something obnoxious in his chest. He reaches up and takes Bohdi's face in both hands and pulls him down and kisses the taste of himself off Bohdi's lips, slow and thorough. Bohdi's arms circle his waist and for a moment they are standing in an alcove in the half-light, foreheads touching, breathing each other's air.

One moment. Morgan lets himself have it. He has become an expert at portioning these out, measuring them the way he measures grain allotments and trade margins, and the skill of it would be impressive if it weren't so deeply pathetic.

He straightens his clothes. Smooths his tunic, does up his laces, runs both hands through his hair in an attempt to restore some semblance of order. Bohdi watches him with that warm, heavy-lidded look that means he is memorizing the picture. Morgan occupies himself with a crease in his sleeve because looking back will cost him the composure he is actively rebuilding.

"I look like I've been ravished in a hallway," Morgan says flatly. “I’m going to have to tell the council I ran to my next meeting being chased by goats.”

Bohdi laughs. He reaches down and picks up the ledger Morgan dropped, brushes the dust off the cover, and hands it to him. Morgan takes it and tucks it back under his arm and then there is the part he hates. The part that comes after every stolen moment. The part where they stop being two people who have every reason to stand together in broad daylight and start being a prince and the king's second who happen to share the same corridor.

Bohdi checks the hallway. Leans past the edge of the alcove, looks both ways with the practiced ease that comes of doing it regularly, and turns back with a nod. Clear. It is a routine they have developed and it makes Morgan feel seventeen again and sneaking out of someone's quarters, except that he is not seventeen and this is not someone. This is the man he’s loved since before he knew the word for it.

Morgan should go. He has grain discrepancies to hunt down and trade disputes to arbitrate and a merchant guild representative who has sent another letter, this one containing the word compromise only nine times, which Morgan supposes constitutes progress.

He reaches for Bohdi's hand instead. Bohdi's fingers close around his in the dark, warm and rough and tattooed to the knuckles. Morgan holds on for a moment. Allows himself that.

"Have you thought about it?" he asks lightly, trying not to make his tone too hopeful. “About telling Eskil?”

He watches Bohdi's face change. The easy grin falters. Not much. Barely enough to see. But Morgan sees everything. What he sees is fear, genuine and deep and completely at odds with a man who does not flinch at combat or carnage or anything Morgan has ever witnessed him face. Bohdi is afraid of exactly one thing in this world and it is the conversation that begins with Your brother. I am in love with your brother.

"I will," Bohdi says. “Just not yet.”

It’s the way someone says no without coming out and saying the word. It doesn’t hurt. He’s not expecting the answer to change. He’s not sure why he keeps asking.

He squeezes Bohdi's hand once in the dark. Then he lets go, before anyone can see, and steps out of the alcove and into the corridor alone.

The light hits him and he is the prince again. Ledger under his arm. Face composed. Back straight. Walking with purpose toward his study, where the grain discrepancy waits and the trade disputes wait and the merchant guild's letter waits and the day stretches ahead of him in an unbroken line of work that is considerably easier than the thing he just walked away from.

He does not look back. Looking back is a luxury he cannot afford in a corridor where anyone might see the way his face goes unguarded when it turns toward Bohdi, and Morgan has spent twenty years learning which luxuries to cut from the budget.

He thinks about telling Eskil himself. He has considered it more than once. Has pictured it in detail: walking into his brother's study and sitting down across from him the way he does when he has something to say that Eskil is not going to enjoy hearing, and saying, I am in love with your second in command and he is in love with me and we have been in each other's beds for a month and I am sorry I did not tell you sooner.

He has rehearsed it. He has rehearsed it a hundred times, turning the words over until they are smooth and polished and entirely useless, because the problem has never been what to say. The problem is that Eskil's opinion is the only one in the world that matters to Morgan, and Morgan cannot bear the possibility that the answer is no. Not about this. Not about Bohdi.

Every other time in his life that Eskil told him no, Morgan went ahead and did it anyway. It is his defining quality and his worst habit and the thing that makes council members alternately adore him and want to wring his neck. He has argued with Eskil about trade policy, military strategy, and once, memorably, about whether goatherds should make more than sheepherds.

He has never once let Eskil's refusal stop him. He wore the man down about goats. He can wear anyone down about anything, given enough time and sufficient spite.

But this is different. This is Bohdi, and Bohdi is not a goat or a trade agreement or a diplomatic mission. Bohdi is the man who has stood at Eskil's shoulder since they were children, who has bled for the crown and killed for it and would die for it without a moment's hesitation. The bond between them is thirty years deep and forged in famine and blood and the kind of trust that does not bend. If Eskil tells Morgan no, Morgan can survive it. If Eskil looks at Bohdi differently because of it, if the weight of that trust shifts even a fraction, Bohdi will not survive it, and Morgan will have been the one who broke him.

So Morgan waits. And practices silence. And steals what he can in the dark and tells himself it is enough and knows it is not and keeps going.