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Connor snorted. “Gods. Don’t look so appalled. I barely touched you.”
“You–”
“You were making a scene,” Connor said, adopting a stern tone, expression hardening so the dim torchlight deepened the shadows beneath his jaw, and cheekbones. He might have adopted the role of lord once more, for the war, for their survival, but he looked like nothing but a Stranger, now; a wraith outlaw from the forest, chin dark with stubble, eyes deep black wells of remembered horror and suffering. His gaze, in that moment, snapped Reggie’s teeth together with an audible click; his sanity was not the only casualty of the past year.
“I may play the fool,” Connor continued, “but I’m not, in fact, stupid.” He edged in closer, and thrust his face into Reggie’s personal space. “I know where your head went the moment that letter arrived. You got stuck in your own memories and you couldn’t even breathe, could you?”
“I wasn’t…” But denial got stuck in his throat.
Grimly victorious, Connor said, “I dragged you out before you could fall apart completely.”
“Oh, well, then, I suppose I owe you a great debt of gratitude.” But though he aimed for a mocking tone, he missed his mark, still dizzy, still swinging wild as he’d done with his fist moments before.
Connor sighed. “Reggie–”
“Donotsuppose you have the right to call me that. We are not friends. There is no intimacy between us, just because you see fit to proposition everything that walks upright–”
He saw the next slap coming, and ducked it; scuttled backward until he bumped up against the balustrade. “What in thegods’names–”
Two hands fisted the front of his tunic and bore him back against the railing. Connor gave him a light shake. “Would you please just stop being such a stuck-up, entitled prick?” he growled. “I know it was terrible what happened to you – what those bastards did to you. They’ve ruined the lives of everyone here in some fashion. This war’s touched everyone.” His knuckles ground into Reggie’s chest through his clothes. “I know you have nightmares. I know you wake up nights thinking the rope’s still around your neck. Your face inside just now, it was awful. You were crumbling in front of everyone, and so I brought you out here, so you could collect yourself. So you can be a general, and contribute, and not fall apart in front of a scared boy who was forced to leave all his friends behind at the Sels’ mercy.”
Oh. He’d not consideredthat.
“We few stand poised at the head of an army unfit to launch an assault on a child’s birthday party, much less the Devouring Empire. Our men are young, and untrained; all those unfit to fight in the first wave, now handed spears and swords and told to march to their doom. A smile and a lie that they won’t all be killed the moment the fighting starts is the only thing that keeps them here, and on their feet. You can’t go to pieces in front of any of them without your panic spreading through the entire camp like a disease.”
“I…” He swallowed with difficulty. “Yes. You’re right.”
“I usually am,” Connor said, and for once it wasn’t a joke; his expression was grave, his voice tinged with regret. “It’s not much fun, that: being right, when the world’s gone to shit.”
He released Reggie’s tunic; flattened his hands over his chest, smoothing the fabric…resting there, after, heat of his hands bleeding through the weave. Reggie still breathed harshly, and each inhale swelled his chest forward, deeper into Connor’s cupped palms. They stood close enough for the moonlight to pick out all the laugh lines and little scars in the skin of Connor’s face; to edge his swollen pupils, his gaze fixed on Reggie’s face in a way that pierced him straight through. His hands weighed heavy as stones. His touch burned, and Reggie wanted to lean into it with a sudden, familiar fierceness.
Visions of coat closet trysts filled his head, a tumble of electrifying memories: hands groping in the dark, wet slide of mouths together, fast and frantic; working himself against a strong thigh, pulling at fine fabric until buttons scattered and threads snapped. Trysts in which he’d always led, always been the one steering, but the glint of moonlight in Connor’s hungry eyes made it abundantly clear that there would no leading here, with him.
A part of him wanted that so badly that heachedwith it. To give himself over to someone; stop worrying, stop trying, and just be; let himself go where he was told, and justfeel. No ulterior motive, no strategy, no fear. Only feeling.
But the panic boiled up in his throat anyway. Laughing white faces in the firelight, his fingernails breaking off as he scrabbled in the dirt.No, no, please, and a ringing slap to his face so he saw stars.
He started to pull back –
Quick as a blink, Connor shifted a hand to his nape, gripped him tight by the hair. “Come here, lad.”
“No, I–” But he went…and then found that Connor only intended to pull his head down to his shoulder; to pull him in close, chest to chest, so he could put his other arm around his waist and hold him even closer. The hand at his nape spread, cupping him there, and on his next inhale, his ribs pushed against Reggie’s.
“Breathe,” he said.
And Reggie breathed. Painfully, at first, but then he found himself matching the steady rhythm of Connor’s breaths, and the tension bled out of him, by degrees. In its absence, exhaustion swamped him. His knees buckled, but Connor held up him, sure and strong.
“You’re all right,” Connor said, squeezing him tight – squeezing all the poisonous thoughts from him, so there was only room for the cold of the wind on his skin, and the heat of another strong body against his own. “Breathe, and it’ll pass.”
And it did pass, that old terror. Memory all too often put him on his knees, gasping for breath, sweating through his clothes. But here, now, Connor had seen, and Connor had stopped the process.
Reggie wanted to cry from relief. He wanted to kiss him even more, less frantic, more sticky-slow, dreamlike desire, the indulgent sort that led to bedrooms, and fine linen, that he’d never had before, locked in coat closets and ducked behind hedges.
He turned his head, and ghosted his lips against Connor’s neck. He tasted of salt and dirt, the contrast to the perfumed and powdered Sels a reassurance, as his tongue darted out, and he lapped over a pulse that skipped.
But Connor murmured, “No, darling.” He gripped Reggie’s shoulders and pushed him back, putting an inch between them that the cold rushed to fill, shocking after the warmth of contact. His smile was a sideways crook, nearly sad. “You’re not ready for that. Just…” He patted Reggie’s cheek, fond. “I’m not gonna do anything while you’re…not sure. Yeah?”
Reggie’s stomach plummeted. Shame, regret, unanswered want. But he was too tired to throw a fit. He sighed, scrubbed at his face, and cleared his throat. “They’re expecting us in there.”
