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Auguste says, “Someone’s coming over later to fix the shed doors.”
It’s Thursday, the sixteenth, and the kitchen smells like overboiled milk with too much cinnamon. Standing by the stove, wooden spoon in hand, Halvik goes through the spice cabinet, most likely looking for dried lemon zest.
Laurent lifts his spoon, slides it into his mouth, and swallows down the oatmeal. It could be worse, he thinks. Thursdays were scrambled eggs at the clinic.
“Did you tell the guy about the leak in the cellar?” Halvik says. She still has not found the zest.
“Guy s . And yes, I did.”
Halvik closes the cabinet with her hip. “How many men does it take to fix a door?”
“More than one,” Laurent says, “if they’re Akielon.”
The joke slips by, unnoticed. Over his head, Auguste and Halvik keep their conversation going.
“They’ll be here at three.”
“I leave at two today.”
“I know,” Auguste says. “The dog thing, right?”
“Cat.”
“Laurent can handle them. It shouldn’t take them longer than half an hour to fix it.”
Halvik turns around, fully. The steam from the milk she’s boiling makes her hair look like it belongs to a frazzled animal. “What about the leak?”
Laurent doesn’t need to look at her face to know what her eyebrows are doing. She’s not really talking about the single-drop rain in the cellar; she’s talking about him.
“It’ll be fine,” Auguste says.
Halvik opens her mouth— the leak, Auguste, think about the leak —but then Auguste’s phone goes off, batting itself against the wooden table. While Halvik stirs the milk, Auguste slips away into the hall, talking about spreadsheets and the new collection of oil paintings at the Fabvre.
Laurent swallows spoonful after spoonful of oatmeal and tries not to think of anything.
*
The doorbell rings. Halvik left ten minutes ago, and Auguste is on his way up the stairs with his phone to his ear. He makes vague gestures at Laurent to get closer to the door and open it.
It’s the first task Laurent has been given—trusted with, Herode would say—since he got here. The slow walk from the living room to the door is exquisite, the exact reverse of a shameful one. He takes the doorknob in his hand and for a moment doesn’t do anything else. It’s cold between his fingers, pure bronze. The first letter of their last name is carved into it in elegant cursive, and Laurent wastes another five seconds tracing it with his knuckle.
The doorbell rings again.
“Hey,” the guy says in good, accentless Veretian. He’s tall enough that Laurent’s first thought is that he won’t need a ladder to fix the leak. He’s also young enough that Laurent’s second thought is that he’s not an actual plumber. “We’re here for… Some door hinges?”
There’s a clinking sound. When Laurent looks to the left, he finds another guy holding a toolbox. “The shed,” he says, like he’s tired or bored or both. He’s— “That’s what we’re here for.”
“Shed doors,” Laurent says, a bit stupidly. “Through here.”
Despite the date, it’s not so unbearably hot outside that Laurent has to stay in the house. He walks them through the foyer, then the long crimson hall Auguste keeps talking about re-painting, the living room and, finally, the glass doors that lead to the backyard.
They trail after him in silence except for the dull sound their boots make against the wooden floors and then, at last, the stone-like tiles of the yard.
The shed is a battered old thing except for the new digital lock Auguste had installed. It works with magnets, according to Lazar, and will beep loud enough to alert their fifteen-mile-away neighbors that someone is trying to break in.
“My brother says one of the hinges is broken,” Laurent says, standing awkwardly to the side. He tries very hard not to think about the fact that this is the first time he’s talked to another person—that is not being paid to talk back—in a whole week. Or more. “He wants that replaced. And… do you also paint?”
Tall-guy smiles. “Of course. What color do you want it to be, sweetheart?”
That’s—
“Is it just the hinges that he’s worried about?” toolbox-guy says as he lowers himself to his knees to get a better look. His hand is big against the lock and all the screws. “This wood’s rotten.”
“Looks fine to me,” Laurent says, because it’s true. He blinks when the guy extends a hand. “What?”
“Give me your hand.”
Laurent doesn’t move.
The guy turns to look at him. “Well? I’m not going to keep it. I wanna show you something.”
His hand is hot but dry around Laurent’s as it guides it toward the bottom part of the door. The paint there has faded the most, light pink where it ought to be red. The guy presses Laurent’s fingers against the only splinter-less patch.
“It’s wet,” Laurent says. “Doesn’t mean it’s rotten.”
The guy presses his hand harder, and the wood begins to make cracking sounds as it gives.
“You could kick a hole into it if you wanted,” the guy says, letting go. “Which is the case with rotten wood. It gets weak.”
Laurent doesn’t wipe his hand down the front of his shirt. That’d be uncouthly common. “Okay. I’ll tell my brother you need to replace the entire thing then.”
“You haven’t answered me yet,” tall-guy says from behind him. “About the color? We can buy the paint if you tell us what you want.”
The shed is red right now, most of it anyway. “Blue,” Laurent says.
It’s getting too warm under the sun. Laurent’s sleeves start making his arms itch, so he steps away from the shed and towards the cool shade by the pool, closer to the house. Half of him is still bathing in sunlight when tall-guy calls after him.
“What’s your name?”
Laurent could ignore him. He’s done that with Jord and Lazar, and Ancel, too. “Laurent,” he says after a paused moment. There’s nothing in a name. “You?”
“Damen.”
“Aren’t Akielon names long?”
“It comes from Damianos,” Damen says. His eyes are lighter where the sun touches them, glazed and honeyed. “But that’s a mouthful, isn’t it? Damen fits me better.”
“And you?”
Toolbox-guy doesn’t look away from the door. He’s got half the hinge put apart. “Nikandros,” he says, and then nothing else.
“That’s also a mouthful,” Laurent says. “What do they call—”
“Nikandros.”
Damen laughs, curls shaking. He doesn’t stop when Nikandros throws a screwdriver at him. “Nik,” he says. “That's what I call him.”
“Pass me the screwdriver.”
“Don’t think I will,” Damen says. “You shouldn’t have thrown it at me, asshole.”
“Pass it or I’ll throw my fucking fist.”
Laurent slides away. Half of his face feels too hot because of the sun, and the other half catches up when Damen looks over his shoulder to watch him leave.
*
There’s a knock on Laurent’s open door. Two of them, actually. When he looks up from his book, he finds Auguste leaning against the doorway, not quite in the room.
“So,” he says, hands in his pockets. “How was it?”
The light from the hall makes Auguste look older, his hair a halo of thin blonde curls. He should get a haircut. He would have gotten one already if they were in Arles, and Charls was available, and Laurent could be left alone for more than ten seconds at a time.
Laurent presses his palm to the open book, keeping it spread. “How was what?”
“The neighbors. Did you like them?”
“Why?”
Auguste shrugs. The light behind him shifts. “I checked the cellar with them. They’ll be coming back for that.”
“And?”
“And so you’ll be seeing more of them these next couple of days.”
“How long,” Laurent says, “will it take two men to fix a leak? The hole’s the size of my thumb.”
“There are other things that need fixing,” Auguste says. “Or moving. All those boards in the cellar need to go. A couple of trees need cutting, too.”
A thought goes through Laurent, hot and quick as a flash—Damen and Nikandros, taking turns to bring an axe down on a tree stump. It’s embarrassing enough to make Laurent’s head hurt. “Okay,” he says.
“They seem nice enough,” Auguste says.
“I guess.”
It’s quiet for a long moment. Laurent returns to his book under Auguste’s stare and decides to wait it out. Any second now, the phone will ring, or there’ll be a knock on the front door, or the computer in the office will begin chiming with emails. The result is always the same—Auguste, slipping away.
The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, and these are of them. Whither are they vanished? Laurent clicks his tongue. Banquo is not the brightest.
“Jord will be here at ten tomorrow,” Auguste says. “Try and have breakfast before that.”
“Okay.”
“Laurent.”
Laurent looks up. “Yes?”
Auguste is staring at him, very much like he did at the beginning. The Immediate After, as Aimeric liked to call it. Aimeric’s IA was a wailing ambulance, and puke, and aching kidneys. Laurent’s was Auguste.
The phone rings.
“Goodnight,” Auguste says.
Into the air, and what seemed corporal melted, as breath into the wind. Would they had stayed!
Would they have, indeed.
*
The next morning, they get to the house before Jord does, which is neither surprising nor unwelcome. The first knock comes when Laurent is putting his bowl of oatmeal in the sink, and the second when he’s walking down the hall to get to the door.
It’s Damen, because of course it is. “Hello,” he says, and lowers his fist. It’s bigger, Laurent realizes, than the knocker.
Nikandros is standing farther away, against the pebbled wall of the front porch. He’s wearing the same shirt he wore the day before, white and rumpled near the stomach, speckled with green at the shoulders. The metal toolbox dangles from his hand, loosely, like he could drop it any moment if he’s not careful. But he looks like the careful type, Laurent decides.
“You know where the cellar is,” Laurent says, and opens the door wider.
Damen steps inside, boots thudding against the wooden floor. It’s summer, hot and humid, and yet. “Don’t know if I remember, to be honest.”
“Up the stairs.”
“Care to show us?”
“I’m busy,” Laurent says. To Nikandros, “Do you remember the way?”
Nikandros’s cheek twitches. “Up the stairs.”
Laurent goes with them, in the end. There’s nothing else to do.
The cellar smells of wood dust, regular dust, and humidity. It’s bigger than Laurent remembers it, with a big window that faces the backyard and gives one a good view of the lazy, swaying stretch of field behind the wall of trees that surrounds the house.
By the window, it’s easy to switch back and forth between staring down at the backyard and staring up at them. Nikandros is the one on the little metal stairs, with Damen’s foot on the second step as a stabilizer. When he lifts his arms to hammer away at the rot on the ceiling, his shirt rides up and up and up. Laurent gets a flash of tan skin and dark whirlpools of hair.
“So,” Damen says. “What do you do?”
A couple of leaves have floated down to the pool. “Things,” Laurent says.
“I meant for a living.”
“He knows what you meant,” Nikandros says, but it comes out garbled. There’s something in his mouth. Nails, Laurent sees.
“Is this a business?”
Damen frowns. “What?”
“This,” Laurent says. It’s hard not to be annoyed. “Fixing stuff. Home renovations. Etcetera.”
“No.”
“So you do it for free?”
“Your brother’s paying us,” Damen says. He steps down harder when the ladder seems to wobble, sharing a look with Nikandros. “But yeah, it’s just… a summer thing. We’re students, remember?”
“What do you study?”
“Law,” Damen says. “Nik’s going to be an architect. What about you?”
Laurent shrugs. “Haven’t decided yet.”
“You’re out of high school though, right?”
“Eighteen,” Laurent says. He isn’t queasy about it, he’s not. “You…”
“We…?”
“You don’t look eighteen.”
“Who said we were?” Damen passes Nikandros a cloth. “Closer to twenty-five by the day.”
“Shouldn’t you have graduated by now?”
Damen laughs. It’s a deep sound, with ripples. It seems to fill up the entire cellar. “You sound like my dad. No. We took a gap year after high school, and another one last year. We’re halfway there, though.”
Nikandros’s pants are a stereotype all on their own. Cargo, and beige, and riddled with pockets. They sit low at his waist, showing off the elastic band of his boxer shorts. CK, they read, in boxy black letters.
“You’re from the city,” Laurent says, trying to remember what they were talking about.
“So are you,” Nikandros says. He’s holding out the hammer for Damen to take, not even looking at Laurent.
“How do you know I’m—”
“Your accent.”
“I don’t have an accent.”
Damen sticks his hand in the toolbox, takes a smaller hammer out. “You kind of do, sweetheart. The Rs.”
It’s hot in the cellar, and standing in the sunlight is not helping. Laurent takes a step to the right and into the cool shadows. “Why are you spending your summer here?”
“Here, in your cellar?” Nikandros says. Still not looking.
“In Delpha, away from the city.”
“Needed some quiet,” Damen says, but his own voice has gone low. He flexes his hands, eyes on Nikandros. “It’s good to get away sometimes; the city is... Well. We used to come here every summer until we turned thirteen.”
More hammering. One by one, the nails dangling from Nikandros’s mouth disappear. When the last one goes, Nikandros says, “Why are you in Delpha?”
“It’s summer,” Laurent says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “This is my family’s summer house. Where else would I be?”
“So you come here every summer.”
Laurent’s blood feels thicker than usual, thickening. It’s taking a long time to reach his fingers and toes. “No. It’s—a new thing.”
They’ll ask why. Laurent would if he were them. They’ll ask, and when they do, Laurent will lie. The words are already in his mouth, savory and sweet, waiting to be said. My brother’s an artist. He wasn’t inspired in Arles, and so here we are. We probably won’t be back next summer.
“There are some cool things to do around here,” Damen says after a moment. “Are you free tomorrow? We could drive to town and—”
“You’re busy. You have to cut down two trees tomorrow.”
“After the tree-cutting, then.”
Laurent steps back into the sunlight. “I don’t know. What is there to do in town?”
“Nothing,” Nikandros says. He steps down the ladder and ignores the hand Damen is offering as a joke. “But there’s nothing to do in this house either, so. Your call.”
“There’s a cinema,” Damen says. “A couple of restaurants. A bakery.”
Laurent doesn’t want to go. He doesn’t want to hang out with them, doesn’t even know why he’s in the cellar right now when he could be downstairs waiting for Jord, or reading in bed, or doing anything but having this conversation. But summer stretches before him, long and lazy, completely empty, and Laurent knows himself well enough to know there is only so much reading he can do, only so much waiting before he gets bad. Again.
It’s good to get away sometimes, Damen said.
“Okay,” he says, trying not to think about it too much. “We can go after lunch, when you’re done with the trees.”
Damen smiles, a flash of something warm and playful. Nikandros closes the lid of the toolbox and walks out.
*
“Hey,” Laurent says. He’s not inside the office yet, and so technically Auguste can’t kick him out. “I—”
Auguste’s typing doesn’t stop. “Not now.”
“I’m going out tomorrow.”
“I said not now, Laurent.”
“Okay,” Laurent says.
Auguste types and types, then curses, then goes on his phone to look something up or text someone or do whatever, and finally, he types some more. It’s ten minutes later that he leans back against his squeaky office chair and pops the knots out of his back.
“Can we talk now?”
“Yes,” Auguste says, but he doesn’t sound all there. His eyes keep flickering to the laptop screen. “What do you want?”
“I’m going out tomorrow,” Laurent says for the second time. “With the neighbors. We’re going to town to see a movie.”
Now Auguste is looking. “ Are you going out?”
“Yes.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“Auguste.”
Auguste simply stares.
“I’ll go out, and I won’t do anything bad or stupid. I’ll be back before it gets dark. I’ll--what else do you want me to say?”
“Halvik’s going to search you when you come back,” Auguste says after a moment. He ignores Laurent’s face completely. “Your room as well. So don’t do anything stupid.”
Like what? Laurent almost asks. Buy a kitchen knife and bring it home? “I need money,” he says instead. “For the movie and stuff.”
“You can have my card extension.”
No cash, then. “Are you going to look at the statement?”
“Obviously,” Auguste says. Then again: “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Can I take my phone with me?”
The laptop chimes. “No,” Auguste says. “Damen’s got my number. Tell him to call me if anything happens. Will anything happen?”
“No.”
“Good,” Auguste says, and goes back to pretending Laurent isn’t real.
*
In true country fashion, Damen and Nikandros drive a truck.
“It’s not a truck,” Nikandros says when Laurent brings it up. It’s surprising that he fits behind the steering wheel, big as he is. “And this isn’t the country.”
“You live on a farm.”
“It’s a breeding farm.”
Laurent lets the back of his head touch the cool glass of the window. He’s wearing linen again, not all white--Lazar pointed out it makes him look like Charles Manson--and he’s as refreshed as he can be. The AC is on, too, blowing cold gusts against his calves.
“So?” he says. It’s easier to stare at Nikandros like this. “A farm’s a farm.”
“He’s got a point,” Damen says from the backseat.
“Fuck you.”
Damen laughs. “We should buy him a hat when we get to town. What do you think, baby? A cowboy hat for a—”
The last word never makes it to Laurent’s ears. Nikandros puts on blaring, screaming music with a flick of his wrist. The Bentley is dirty, my sneakers is dirty, but that’s how I like it, you all on my dick.
“Is this American rap?”
For the first time since they got in the car, Nikandros glances at him. “Yes? Let me guess, you don’t like it.”
“It sounds like shit,” Laurent says, and then remembers he doesn’t know these two that well. “I mean… What is he even saying?”
Damen leans forward, his head between Nikandros’s and Laurent’s seats. “I might hit the blunt, but I’m liable to trip,” he says, right on time with the song. “ I ain’t popping no pill but you do as you—” He cuts himself off, laughing.
“What do you like?” Nikandros says. His eyes are on the road again.
“Everything.”
Nikandros and Damen both snort.
“What?”
“That’s what people that don’t like music say,” Damen says. He’s leaning back again, thighs spread enough that his shorts have ridden up a bit. Enough for Laurent to see short curls. “If you liked everything, you’d like this.”
“What even is this?”
“J Cole.”
“I think he’ll like Kendrick,” Damen says.
“No,” Nikandros says, “he won’t.” Still, he changes the song.
Nazareth, I’m fucked up. Homie, you fucked up, but if God got us then we gon’ be alright. It’s… something.
“I like the biblical references,” Laurent says after a moment.
The comment makes Nikandros’s cheek twitch and a line appear by his mouth, thin and interesting. Laurent wonders what it would feel like to see him smile.
“Come on,” Damen says over the curses. And the chorus. “What rappers do you know?”
“American ones?”
“Yes.”
“Eminem doesn’t count,” Nikandros says. “So.”
“Because he’s white?” Laurent says.
“Because everyone knows him. Answer the question.”
No one at the clinic liked rap. Unsurprisingly, Erasmus liked Broadway musicals--Wicked, Les Mis, Dear Evan Hansen, but not Heathers or Beetlejuice. Too dark, he said. Aimeric liked nothing, which was not surprising for him. Vannes liked instrumental garbage and high-pitched voices that sang about body weight and being ethereal.
“I know Drake,” Laurent offers. “What’s wrong with that?” he adds when Damen starts laughing. “He’s not Eminem.”
“He’s just like you, Nik. Fucking Drake.”
Nikandros shifted while Laurent wasn’t paying attention. He’s holding the steering wheel steady with one hand, and his other arm is bent at the elbow, resting over the window sill. “I don’t like Drake.”
Laurent doesn’t have to turn around to look at Damen, although the thought is tempting. He uses the rearview mirror instead, studying the way Damen’s spread legs connect with the rest of his body underneath the nylon cover of his shorts. The material is stretchy and indiscreet; Laurent can make out the faint outline of Damen’s cock without really trying.
The song changes again, this time to something softer and with an easier-to-follow rhythm. Whatever jokes might have passed between them dissipate, and they sit in silence listening as Nikandros drives them through the empty road.
*
The movie theatre is closed. There’s a big red sign with boxy white lettering that covers both front doors: OUT OF SERVICE. It’s a funny thing to write on a sign, Laurent thinks, when the out-of-service thing is not an elevator or a bathroom stall.
“Ah,” Damen says, leaning against the truck. When he crosses his arms, the veins in his neck thicken. “Well.”
Nikandros doesn’t say anything at all.
“What else is there to do here?” Laurent says. He’s trying not to enjoy this outing too much, and failing. No Auguste, no Jord, no Paschal. “You mentioned a bakery.”
“It’s a takeaway place,” Damen says. He doesn’t sound very disappointed. “We could… Nik, you think that spot behind the park still has all those oaks?”
Laurent tugs down on his sleeve, the bad one. “A picnic, then.”
“Don’t worry. If the oaks are still there, then the shade is still there.” Damen’s smile is uneven. “Wouldn’t want you to burn. I’ve got a feeling that’s not a pretty sight.”
“Why?”
Damen’s smile stretches as if being pulled. “You—”
“Bakery’s that way,” Nikandros says, finally looking away from the sign. “Also, I’m not going.”
“You’re not coming to the picnic?” Laurent says.
“No, baby. He’s not coming to buy the pastries, because he’s a boring fuck. You owe me.”
“I don’t. You suggested the bakery, you handle it.”
Damen pushes himself away from the truck. “Right. Maybe drag Princess Porcelain to the shade while I’m gone. Just a thought.” He’s not even three steps away when he clicks his tongue and says, “He’s turning pink, Nicky.”
For a while, Laurent and Nikandros are quiet. Laurent doesn't know what to say, doesn’t know if he should say anything at all, because Nikandros doesn’t seem like the type to enjoy talking that much. Or maybe he just doesn’t enjoy talking to Laurent.
Eventually, Nikandros opens the door and holds it that way. “Get in and turn the AC on.”
“I’m fine.”
Nikandros looks at him. “Alright,” he says, after a second. “Have it your way.” And then he’s sliding into the car and closing the door behind him.
Laurent stands under the sun for three exact minutes after that. His eyes are burning a little, which is stupid because he has no reason to cry, hasn’t cried in months. He certainly doesn’t care how this half-assed cowboy wannabe treats him.
The car is blissfully cold when he gets in. He avoids the passenger seat and instead sits where Damen did during the ride here, and it gives him a perfect view of the empty street with all of its half-dilapidated shops. He tries not to look at Nikandros, and yet.
“He didn’t ask us what we wanted,” Laurent says. “Is he always like that?”
“Yes,” Nikandros says.
“You didn’t even ask me what I meant.”
“I don’t need to. I know Damen, I know what you mean.”
“Okay, tell me what I mean.”
Nikandros shifts in the driver’s seat. “Like an only child,” he says, looking at Laurent in the mirror. His eyes look smaller there. “I know what you mean.”
“Is he—”
“No, and don’t bring it up.”
Laurent traces the uneven patch of leather next to him with his thumb. “Brother or sister?”
“Brother,” Nikandros says. “I mean it. Don’t bring it up.”
“And you?”
“Sisters.”
How many? But Laurent doesn’t ask. He knows Nikandros doesn’t want to answer. “How did you meet my brother?”
“We’re neighbors,” Nikandros says, like Laurent is stupid. “Damen saw him when he was moving in a couple of weeks ago, went up to say hi. Now we’re here.”
“You don’t sound particularly excited about that.”
Nikandros gestures around. “Yeah, well, can you blame me? This town’s shit.”
“You knew that before today, I’ll warrant.”
“It’s—” Nikandros scrubs his face with his hand, up and down and up and down. The hairs of his eyebrows are all messed up when he finally stops. “Look. Damen is—”
“Damen is what?” Damen says, prying the door Laurent was leaning against open. He doesn’t seem upset at all. “Think you can move over a bit, sweetheart? I’m not quite small enough to fit there.”
Laurent doesn’t move. “Take the passenger seat.”
Damen tilts his head to the side, just slightly so. Laurent scoots over to the left to make room for him. A lot of room, apparently, because Damen’s legs keep spreading and spreading and spreading until he seems to take up most of the backseat.
The white boxes in his lap look comically small. “They didn’t have the stuff you like,” Damen says to Nikandros. “Sucks to suck, huh.”
“What does he like?”
“Silence,” Nikandros says, and starts the truck.
*
The park is not really a park, but an abandoned half-field with a bunch of dry trees scattered around. Laurent doesn’t really complain; he was promised shade, and shade there is.
“Did you get anything to drink?” Nikandros says, already sitting against a tree trunk. “Tell me you at least bought a bottle of water.”
Damen stops putting the boxes on the ground. “I bought three. What, did you want us to share one? Did I burst your little fantasy there?”
“Just water?”
“And coffee,” Damen says. One of the boxes opens to reveal carefully stacked coffee cups. “And yes, they’re fucking iced before any of you two decide to ask about it.”
Laurent keeps his knees tucked to his chest so that no part of him is under the sun. The air smells of dry leaves and heat, and it’s thick enough that every breath he draws feels labored.
“I’m vegan,” he says, when Damen asks him to pick a coffee.
Nikandros and Damen look at each other. “No, you’re not,” Damen says, after a beat.
“How would you know?”
“Your brother would have mentioned it.”
Laurent’s stomach feels tight, all of the sudden. He wonders what other stuff Auguste might have mentioned. “Okay.”
“Any other jokes up your sleeve?” Nikandros says, in between sips. “You’re allergic to gluten or something?”
Damen finally sits down. He does so very close to Laurent, close enough that his body heat is revolting. Laurent tries not to notice this, focusing on the spread of pastries on the grass.
“Am I supposed to pick the croissant because I’m Veretian?” It’s a good, heavy pastry. At the clinic, they were Friday's breakfast. One bite in, he says, “Oh, it’s—”
“Cream-filled,” Nikandros says.
“Creampied,” Damen says, at the same time. He laughs at his own joke, the way a kid would. “That’s a good one, come on.”
Laurent licks the corner of his mouth, where some cream is threatening to drip down his chin and onto his clothes. He pretends not to notice the two of them watching. “What do you do here in the summer?”
“Take care of the horses,” Damen says. He’s almost done with his coffee. “Play any sports that work out between two players. Drink a shit ton of beer.”
“So, tennis.”
Damen tsks. “Paddle, too. Ping pong. Uh, what else?”
“That’s literally it,” Nikandros says. “Unless poker counts as a sport, which it doesn’t.”
“What do you do?”
Laurent blinks. He didn’t think they’d ask. “Read,” he says, then wonders why. He could have made anything up. “It’s too hot to do anything else.”
“What do you read though?” Damen says. There’s a joking edge to his voice, but no cruelty. “Shakespeare?”
Laurent doesn’t say anything.
“For real? Do people still read that stuff?”
“Still?” Laurent says, a bit dryly.
“Out of high school,” Nikandros says, as though Damen’s words need an explanation attached. “Let me guess, Romeo and Juliet?”
'Tis better thee without than he within. “No.”
“The storm one,” Damen says. He puts his empty cup down, then shifts. Laurent doesn’t realize what he’s doing until it’s too late to tell him to stop—Damen’s head is coming down to rest on his lap, forcing Laurent’s legs to stretch. “You know, the one we had to read for Mrs. Eres class.”
“The tempest.”
“No,” Laurent says. He doesn’t touch Damen’s hair, or breathe. “It’s one word. One name, actually.”
“Hamlet.”
“No.”
“The bad one then,” Nikandros says. He’s staring at them openly now, at the place where Laurent’s body disappears under Damen’s head.
“Bad one?”
“It’s supposedly cursed,” Laurent says. “People think if you say the name of the play, your luck turns bad. It’s stupid.”
“Do you think that?” Damen says, shifting again so his nose is touching Laurent’s stomach. Every word he speaks is a little puff of hot flames. When Laurent shakes his head, he adds, “Say it then.”
“Damen.”
“Macbeth,” Laurent says. “Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth. There.”
Nikandros twirls his cup in his hand, the coffee in it making sloshing noises. “Say bye to your luck for the next—what? Thirty years?”
Thirty years. That’s the kind of exercise Herode would have given him. Think about what you want to be doing in ten years from now, twenty years, thirty . Laurent can barely, tentatively think about the death of this summer.
“Tell me something,” Laurent says after a while. The quiet is getting prickly.
“About?”
“Ios. College. Girls.”
Against his stomach, “Just girls?”
When Laurent turns to Nikandros for help, he finds an arched eyebrow and half a frown. “Anything,” Laurent says. Anyone.
“Nik threw up on me once.”
“I was fourteen,” Nikandros says, not quite defensively. The line by his mouth his back. “You’ve thrown up on me plenty.”
“When was the first time?”
Damen stills. “A while back. Why?”
“First times are interesting,” Laurent says. He doesn’t quite know what he means by it. “Where were you?”
“We were in college last time I threw up on him,” Nikandros says. It’s sudden, and awkward, and too close to pity for Laurent’s liking. “It was a whole—”
“A funeral,” Damen says, calmly. He’s not stiff anymore. “We sort of ran away from the wake and drank ourselves stupid. Makedon was furious when he found out.”
“Makedon?”
“My dad,” Nikandros says.
“Are you two… Is he your uncle?”
Damen tenses again, in a way that is new. “Did I fucking say he was?”
“Damen.”
“We’re not related,” Damen says, another snap. “Why does everyone always—”
“Because you look alike,” Laurent says. His fingers find a curl, then another. He doesn’t let himself pet or stroke or anything like that; just touching is enough. “You get along, you’re similar. Makes sense to assume.”
“Aren’t you going to ask whose funeral it was?”
“Damen,” Nikandros says again. “Shut the fuck up, man.”
“I don’t care enough,” Laurent says. “Can you eat the rest of this? I’m done.”
A moment passes, then another. Nikandros isn’t making a sound, doesn’t look like he’s breathing. Slowly, by stages, Damen dislodges.
“Well,” he says, smiling. “Maybe if you feed it to me.”
*
Halvik’s hands are big and cold. “Had fun?” she says, patting up and down his thigh.
“Yes.”
“Good. I already did your room.” Laurent’s calves, next. His ankles. “Shirt off, please.”
Laurent doesn’t move.
“What,” Halvik says, stepping away. Her nails are long and red this time. “We’ve done this before, kid. Shirt off.”
“Just pat me,” Laurent says. “Isn’t it easier?”
“Gotta check.”
“Check what?”
Halvik doesn’t reply right away. “Should I call your brother in?”
“No,” Laurent says, because he hasn’t done anything stupid, and he doesn’t need Auguste asking him that.
It takes him a moment to get all the buttons of his shirt undone. He’s glad, suddenly, that they’re not doing this in the bathroom. He doesn’t have to look at himself this way.
Halvik doesn’t poke or touch or pat. She stands close and looks. “Healing nicely,” she says, to Laurent’s arm.
Laurent wouldn’t know; he doesn’t even look down at it anymore.
*
They establish a routine, which isn’t hard since there is nothing but habits to fall back into. The town is less of a town and more of a three-shop street, and the houses bring little fun despite all their luxuries. In Delpha, because of the heat, the woods come in patches—a cluster of trees here and there, with long stretches of prairie-slash-field in between. That is where Damen leads them a few days after their town trip, mapless but bursting with confidence.
“Come here often?” Laurent says once they’ve found the spot. It’s nothing to be overly proud of: stepped on, drying grass and a stream so thin it might as well just be a puddle.
“Used to,” Damen says. “Then we got a bit tired of it, as it happens.”
Always? But Laurent doesn’t ask.
Nikandros pulls out a flattened cigarrete box from his pocket, then extends a hand out to Damen. A lighter is given, tiny and black with something scribbled on it in white. IsA , Laurent reads, but then the letters turn too messy to be understood.
“So,” Damen says, as he accepts the cigarette from Nikandros. The way he holds it does something to Laurent’s stomach: pinched tight between thumb and pointer finger. “You don’t like music. You like reading. What else?”
“What else what?”
Damen’s second drag is longer than his first. Deeper, too. “Tell us your friends’ names or something. I don’t know.”
“Why would I tell you my friends’ names.”
“Because there’s nothing to do here,” Nikandros says. He’s smoking too, more slowly than Damen. “Unless you wanna talk about politics?”
“You didn’t offer me one,” Laurent says.
“What?”
“A cigarette.”
“You don’t smoke,” Damen says. It comes out curiously, like the first quick dip in cold water. “Wouldn’t want you to start now.” A smile. “It’s a shit habit.”
Nikandros doesn’t smile back. “Here. Have a drag of mine, see how you like it.”
Usually, Laurent would be squeamish about putting his mouth where someone else’s has been. Now, the thought makes something in him stir, slowly rising. He accepts the cigarette.
Damen laughs when he bends over and starts to cough. “Yeah. Sorry, sweetheart, it’s not for everyone.”
“Fuck—you.”
Two hands help Laurent upright again, one on his back, the other on his shoulder. Nikandros looks him over once, perhaps to make sure he’s not going to cough again, then grabs Laurent’s wrist. The hand that is holding the cigarette follows the movement.
“Okay,” Nikandros says, slowly. He’s touching Laurent’s chin without a real explanation. “Try again. Put it between your lips and breathe in. No, not like that. You have to suck it in.” A thumb nudges the cigarette in Laurent’s mouth. “Pretend you’re just breathing in. Steady.”
Laurent wants to do something stupid. He sucks in instead.
“Then you hold it in for a second or two. Now let it out through your mouth.”
Smoke comes out of Laurent, clean and hazy white. He can feel Damen’s eyes on him, on his mouth.
“Good,” Nikandros says, and the rising thing in Laurent seems to peak.
Up close, Nikandros’s face is harder to look away from. There’s more to notice. Laurent’s staring at the early shading of Nikandros’s beard when he notices it, a smudged dot on Nikandros’s right cheek. Bright blue. It looks like a fingerprint.
“You’ve got paint on your cheek,” Laurent says. “Have you gone near the shed? I thought you got the grill today.”
Nikandros steps away.
“Huh,” Damen says. The smoke curls around him, crawling up his arm. “Isn’t that weird, Nik?”
“Extremely,” Nikandros says, and rubs himself clean.
*
“Nikandros and Damen invited me camping,” Laurent says over his chicken breast.
Auguste doesn’t stop drinking his water. After he’s done, he puts the glass down, picks his fork up again. “Camping? Where?”
“There’s a spot in the woods.”
“I—”
The upstairs phone rings, in Charls’s office.
“Auguste?” Laurent says. “Can I go?”
“Huh?”
“Camping.”
Auguste is halfway up the stairs by the time realization reaches him. “Yeah. Just… Where was this?” The phone stops, then starts again. “Whatever. If you need money take the credit card.”
*
“Had fun?” Jord asks. He’s in charge of the patting today, since it’s not Halvik’s day.
Laurent shrugs.
“Good.”
*
“We’re not ten,” Laurent says. I feel younger, sometimes, he’d told Herode on the phone. Younger, yes, but not ten. Fourteen, maybe. Thirteen.
“I don’t think ten-year-olds play Truth or Dare.” Damen puts the bottle of vodka down on the floor, then sits with his back against the couch. The shot glass is a tacky blue color, small and big at the same time. Three of those are Laurent’s limit.
“Do we have to play on the floor?”
“Apparently,” Nikandros says. His spot is next to Damen, also against the couch. Laurent does not notice how his sweats stretch over his front, or what hides beneath them, only half-shapeless. “Usual rules?”
“Yes. No lying, no skipping.” Damen’s eyes flicker to Laurent, the edge of a smile on his face. “Well, there is skipping, but then you have to drink. If you chicken out of a dare, you take two shots.”
Laurent tries to keep his face from doing anything. He could get up and leave if he wanted to. He could call Auguste to come downstairs. “Okay,” he says, like a shrug.
Nikandros stretches his legs. “Who starts?”
“You,” Laurent says. “Truth or Dare?”
“Truth.”
Damen smiles. His hand is loose around the neck of the bottle. “Of course. I’ll let Laurent do the questioning, then.”
“How kind.” Nikandros rolls his eyes.
Slow and steady, Laurent thinks. Nothing too bad. “Why did you take a year off uni?”
It’s quiet, except for the sound Damen’s thumb makes when it brushes against the plastic cap. Nikandros doesn’t look surprised, or embarrassed, or angry. He looks the way he always does to Laurent—distant, like the question has barely reached him.
“I failed my way through the first semester,” Nikandros says, “and then decided to skip the second one altogether.”
“That’s not really an answer.”
“Sure it is.”
“I asked you why,” Laurent says. “You were failing, fair enough. Okay. Why were you failing?”
Nikandros’s eyes are dark, darker than Damen’s. Now he’s really looking at Laurent. “That’s another question.”
“Come on,” Damen says, nudging Nikandros’s foot with his own. “Entertain him a little.”
“I didn’t give a shit about my classes. I was bored. I… didn’t think I was going to fail until it was already too late to try and stop it.”
“Why not try again your second semester?”
“Now that’s a whole different question,” Damen says, sounding apologetic. “Don’t be greedy, sweetheart. It doesn’t suit you. Nik?”
Nikandros turns to Damen. “Truth or Dare?”
“Dare.” Proud.
“Bring me a beer from the kitchen,” Nikandros says. “And sing something while you’re at it. Celine Dion.”
Damen is anything if not diligent. He gets the dare done in ten minutes, bringing not only beer but also water. When he sits back down on the floor, it feels as though no time has passed at all.
“Cute voice,” Laurent says. “Ever thought of taking singing lessons?”
Damen laughs like a bark. “Fuck off.”
“I mean it.”
“Of course you do. Truth or Dare?”
Truth is dangerous. They could ask—well, anything. Laurent could lie, and they’d be none the wiser. It’s a stupid game, no matter how one looks at it. “Dare,” he says, not really thinking of it. He can take a trip to the kitchen, and more.
Damen hums. “Tie your hair up.”
“What?”
“Your hair,” Damen says, slower this time. “Tie it up.”
“Why?”
“Ask one more question,” Nikandros says, “and you get a shot.”
“I don’t have a hair tie.”
Damen lifts his hand, showing off his wrist. There’s a thin, black elastic around it. “Lucky for you,” he says, as he hands it over.
Laurent takes his time. His hair is not too long, only chin-lenght, but it is the longest it’s ever been. Maybe he would have let Ancel cut it, had either of them been allowed near scissors. A strand breaks loose, suddenly, and Laurent has to begin all over again. He doesn’t exactly miss the way Nikandros leans forward, as though to get a better look.
“Good?”
“Good,” Damen says, but it’s not really Laurent’s hair he’s looking at.
“Truth or Dare?”
“Dare,” Nikandros says.
“Take—”
But Damen cuts him off. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he says. “You asked the question last time. Now the dare’s up to me.”
“Whatever.”
“You feed the horses tomorrow and don’t wake me up before ten.”
“Fine,” Nikandros says. And then, “I’m gonna fuck your face at ten o’ one, just so you know.”
“If you say so.”
“That’s it?” Laurent says, blinking. “That’s the dare?”
They both turn to look at him at the same time, which ought to be comical but isn’t. “We’re just starting out,” Damen says, slowly, “but I’m sure we could spice things up if—”
“Let’s not,” Nikandros cuts in. “I’d rather not add shoveling horse shit to my list of tasks for tomorrow. It’s Damen’s turn now.”
“I know whose turn it is,” Laurent says. “I’m not three.”
Nikandros ignores him. “Truth or Dare?”
“Truth,” Damen says and taps the bottle with his thumb. “Make it bad, though. I’m getting thirsty.”
“Have you ever,” Laurent says, “done anything together?”
A second passes, placid and slow with a lack of understanding. Damen tilts his head a little to get a better look at Nikandros’s face, who is looking straight back at him. They’re both frowning.
“Done anything?” Damen echoes. “Activities? Sports? Obviously, yeah.”
Laurent licks dry lips. “I mean sex. Shared a girl or a guy. Made out, even on a dare. Stuff like that.”
Surprisingly, it’s Damen who hardens first. His frown dissolves into something more stoic, and his fingers curl up tighter around the bottle. He tilts his head again, to the other side, probably aiming for looseness.
Laurent starts, “I—”
“A gentleman never tells.” Damen twists open the bottle, flicks the little plastic cap off. The shot glass lies forgotten on the floor between his legs. Laurent counts the seconds in sync with his gulps. One, two, three, four. Damen puts the bottle down. “Your turn,” he says, lips still wet.
“Truth.”
“Are you a virgin?” Damen says.
“It wasn’t your turn to ask,” Laurent says. His mouth is dry, getting drier by the second. “Nikandros—”
“Are you a virgin?” Nikandros says.
The question is tritely boring. Expected. It’s not the first time Laurent has been asked this, but it is the first time he considers telling the truth. I’ve never, he’d told Nurse Gerrin and the gardener at the clinic. They’d both believed it.
Men like virgins.
“No,” Laurent says, and the word tastes like honey in his mouth. “I’m not.”
Damen spreads his legs, now only one knee bent. “Go on.”
“I answered your question already.”
“One-word replies aren’t—”
“That’s not a rule, is it?”
Nikandros rolls his shoulders, rolls his eyes. “Leave it, Damen. Just ask him next round.”
“This game’s shit,” Laurent says. “Is this what you did all day in college? No wonder you failed.”
They both ignore him.
Damen says, “Nik?”
“Truth.”
Damen leans back against the couch. “What were you thinking about last night in bed?”
If there is something to be ashamed of, Nikandros does not show it. Instead, he plucks the bottle from Damen’s hand and takes a sip. Then another. He doesn’t give it back.
“Truth or Dare?”
Damen pretends to think about it. “Truth.”
Unlike the two of them, Nikandros takes his time thinking about what to ask. He balances the bottle on his thigh, tilting it to the side from time to time, just to watch the vodka inside of it swirl. He looks up after a moment.
“Why did you break up with Jokaste?”
“Who’s Jokaste?” Laurent says.
Damen doesn’t reply.
It’s an effort not to feel twelve again—on the very edge of thirteen—at the dinner table, no eyes on him, no questions about his day. He’s about to open his mouth to tell them he’s done, he’s not playing third fucking wheel, when Nikandros beats him to it.
“They dated for three years. He was going to propose when we all graduated.”
“I wasn’t,” Damen says.
There’s something there, asking to be prodded. Laurent says, “Did you buy the ring?”
“Didn’t have to,” Nikandros says. The bottle’s open again, close to his mouth. “He’s got his mom’s. It’s a whole thing.”
Wordlessly, Damen gets up and slips out of the room. The route he’s taken leads straight to the backyard, which Laurent knows is dark and humid from the sprinklers. Without Damen in it, the living room feels smaller, the distance between Laurent’s foot and Nikandros’s thigh not quite unbreachable.
“Shouldn’t you go after him?” Laurent says, just because.
“You go,” Nikandros says. Three long gulps of vodka later, “It’s what he wants.”
“You did it on purpose.”
“What? Ask him a question? That’s the point of the game.”
You upset him. Laurent almost says it, but the silliness of the words stops him at the last minute. They’re friends, the two of them, and they’ve been friends for much longer than Laurent has known them. They don’t need Laurent to act as a referee. They don’t need Laurent at all.
“I’m going to bed,” Laurent says. “You can take the couch if you’re too drunk to walk home. Share with Damen.”
Nikandros just drinks.
*
In the morning, there’s no trace of them left in the living room. They’ve tidied up the coffee table and couch, aligned and fluffed all the pillows, and vanished the shot glass and bottle of vodka.
It’s Saturday, bright and hot like any other summer day in Delpha. Laurent spends it curled up on the windowsill of his room, reading and taking little peeks at the backyard below. It’s Saturday, and so it makes no sense for Damen and Nikandros to show up and trim Auguste’s trees, or clean the pool, or fix the grill Jord broke last weekend. Laurent doesn’t expect them to come. And yet.
*
Sunday is Auguste’s day. Not Halvik’s, or Jord’s, or Lazar’s—all Auguste’s. The night before, over dinner, he promised something fun. We can go to town or drive to the beach. Three hours is not much if the weather’s nice enough.
Laurent wakes up early, just as the sunlight is starting to warm his bed, but he doesn’t leave his room. Yet do I fear thy nature; it is too full o' th' milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great, art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it. A servant walks in, Lady Macbeth stops her ranting, and Laurent sits up in bed to get away from the sun. It’s midday.
Knocking, unhurried. Laurent crosses his legs under the sheets.
“Sorry,” Auguste half-says, half-mouths. His head is tilted so as to balance his phone between his shoulder and ear. “Meeting. Berenger said it’s important.”
Laurent nods.
“Had breakfast yet? Maybe later we can—yeah, I’m here. October seventeenth? I haven’t checked that spreadsheet yet.” Auguste pauses in the doorway, the whispers coming from his phone loud enough that Laurent can hear them. It should have been forwarded. The deadline’s tomorrow . “Have breakfast, please.”
Laurent nods again. The door closes.
No trip to the beach, then.
*
“Guess what I have in my pocket,” Lazar says. “And don’t make any dick jokes.”
Laurent moves one of the checkers. Red on black, ten against two. “I don’t know, and I don’t care. Your turn.”
Lazar makes his move without looking at the board. Laurent is not entirely convinced he understands how the game even works.
“You do care, is the thing. It’s something of yours… something you miss…”
Eleven to two. “Your mom’s cunt?” Laurent says. “No, wait. That’s what you miss.”
Lazar ignores him. “Try and guess what it is, come on.”
“Car keys.”
“No.”
“A bus ticket.”
“I said it’s something you miss,” Lazar says, rolling his eyes. “Something you used to have. Did you use to walk around with fucking bus tickets in your pockets?”
“Give me a clue,” Laurent says. “Also, your turn.”
Lazar moves a random checker. Another loss. “It wasn’t a thing back in my day.”
“A brain?”
“Watch it, you fuck. Your brother said I could take it away if you didn’t behave.”
Behave. I’m nineteen, Laurent almost says, and doesn’t. His birthday isn’t for another ten days. “Just give it over, Lazar. Your clues are shit.”
“This game is shit. What color am I, again?”
“Red.”
Lazar puts something down on the coffee table, then slides it towards Laurent. “You get two hours with it, and I have to be in the room with you while you use it.” He moves a red checker. “There. Did I win something?”
“No,” Laurent says, not looking at the board.
The phone on the coffee table used to be Laurent’s, before. It’s now Auguste’s, Laurent supposes, which ought to make him feel something but doesn’t. His brother probably thinks he’s being generous, that this is a good enough apology for the day before, but Laurent can barely muster up enough enthusiasm to reach out and grab the temporary gift.
Who is he supposed to text? Or call? He thumbs through the apps just because, and finds that all of his old accounts have been blocked. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. His contact list has been trimmed as well. Nobody from high school, nobody from the one college class he went to.
Uncle’s contact information is there, between Auguste’s and Jord’s. Laurent pretends not to see it.
Busy?
Laurent sends it, and waits. It’s ten more minutes until they get out of group therapy, back at the clinic.
yeah in arts and fucking crafts
dumbass
u coming back?
No
How’s Erasmus?
idk ask about me first
How are you?
good
hes also good
Vannes?
“Your turn,” Lazar says, also on his phone. “Come on, I want this shit game over so we can play a round of poker. Hurry up.”
“I thought Auguste had said no to poker.”
“He said you shouldn’t play every day. It’s been two days. So.”
Laurent moves his last checker. Victory tastes of nothing, with Lazar sitting across the board from him.
no idea
miss mukbang went and guzzled down some toiler cleaner when drs werent watching
so theres that
erasmus says hi
There are no obituaries on Google under Vannes’s name. Her family’s the kind to do that, an online obituary, and so Laurent relaxes back into his seat. He thinks, for a second, of googling what exactly is in most toilet cleaners, what the chemicals can do to one’s throat, and what their effectiveness rate is.
puppies, he types into the search bar instead. cute puppies, he self-corrects. That’ll make Auguste smile when he scrolls down the search history later.
Are you still getting out next month?
idk
“Who are you texting?” Lazar says. “Got a girlfriend? Boyfriend? You know I don’t judge.”
No. He doesn’t judge, he just reports back to Auguste. “A friend,” Laurent says.
“From school?”
“The clinic.”
“Ah,” Lazar says. Then, “I thought they didn’t allow phones in there?”
the most random shit happened today
flowerman asked about you
“They don’t. Aimeric has one because he’s—Aimeric.”
“Is he the tiny blonde one?”
Laurent blinks up at Lazar. Right. He’s been to the clinic before. “No, that’s Erasmus. Aimeric is the one with the curls.”
Lazar makes a face. It’s the one people usually make when talking about Aimeric. He doesn’t ask much after that.
*
Damen is painting the shed when Laurent goes outside for his after-lunch nap. He’s in cut-off shorts—a monstrosity that might have once been a pair of sweatpants—and a shirt with a neckline so low it resembles a vest. There’s paint on his chin and eyebrow, two splashes of it.
“On your own?” Laurent says, sitting down on his chair. Next to him, the pool water gleams with sunlight.
Damen does not stop painting. “Nik’s in town with his dad, taking care of some things. He’ll be back tomorrow.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“No,” Damen says, “but you wanted to know.”
Laurent ignores him. The last time they saw each other was days ago, Friday night, and Laurent still doesn’t know how he feels about it all. Are you over your tantrum? Too harsh. You ruined the game. Laurent doesn’t care about the game; Damen knows this. Maybe it’s best not to say anything at all.
Naught’s had, all’s spent, where our desire is got without content. Laurent dog ears the page.
“You like hockey?” Damen says, dipping his brush in the tin. It comes out dripping blue blood. “Not playing, just watching?”
“Do I look like I like hockey?”
“There’s a game tomorrow night. Nothing huge, but… Nik and I are watching it.”
Tis safer to be that which we destroy than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy. “And?”
“You could come over,” Damen says. His strokes are clean, not as good as Auguste’s, but clean enough. “Watch it with us. Hang out.”
“Play a game,” Laurent says. It comes out less scornful than he aimed for.
When Damen smiles, he does so with all his teeth. “If you want.”
For a while, neither of them speaks. Laurent reads through the murder and the chaos all the way to the feast, then stops to watch Damen work. His shirt is sticking to his back, translucent enough that Laurent can spot a mole or two between his shoulder blades. Little beads of sweat cling to the hair on his nape, then slide down and down and down, disappearing into the secrecy of his shirt.
It’s only upon watching Damen that Laurent’s body remembers it is summer. He’s hot in his clothes, even though they’re made of fine, thin, airy linen, even though he’s sitting so close to the pool he might as well be in it. He thinks of rolling up his sleeve, just to get some fresh air on one of his arms, but then remembers how unhinged that makes him look. One sleeve up, the other down—all he’d be missing is the crazy grin.
“Should I bring something?”
“Like what? A pie?”
“There’s some vodka left,” Laurent says. “Some whiskey, too.”
Damen is trying not to smile. “Don’t. We have enough.”
*
Makedon’s house is made up of three materials—wood, stone, and glass. It’s tidy, for a man, and decorated enough that it feels homely but not overcrowded. Laurent likes the narrow halls, the pictures on the walls of people he doesn’t know, black and white and sepia and colors, and all the dark cedar pieces of furniture. It’s the kind of place Hennike would have loathed.
Laurent walks into the living room to Nikandros putting away empty boxes of pizza. “You had dinner without me? Rude.”
Nikandros’ hair is wet, darker than usual. He doesn’t look up. “Damen can make you something.”
“I thought you were the cook here.”
“You’re his guest,” Nikandros says. Not mine, Laurent hears.
Behind Laurent, Damen laughs. “I couldn’t make you shit even if you asked for it, sweetheart. Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“Problem solved then. Nik, the cups?”
Nikandros stops on his way out of the room. “In your bag. The red one, by your bed.”
Laurent sits down. The couch is more comfortable than it looks, leather soft instead of crinkly, and it’s big enough to fit the three of them and more. He watches them come and go, putting bottles and cups down on the coffee table. Two of the bottles are beer, a blonde and a ginger, and the last one is wine. Laurent decidedly does not read the label.
Damen is the first one to come back for good. He sits down next to Laurent, right side, and spreads his thighs wide enough that Laurent is tempted to make fun of him for it. In his hand, everything looks comically small—in this case, the TV remote—and Laurent should be used to it but isn’t.
“So,” Damen says. “How much do you know about hockey?”
A lot. Laurent spent the last three hours doing research on Auguste’s phone, under Halvik’s supervision. “Not much,” he says. “It’s on ice, right? The ball’s called a puck. Etcetera.”
“You know what team to root for?”
“The Akielon one.”
Damen smiles, his profile dented with a dimple. “And what’s their name?”
“Lions.”
“They’re shit,” Nikandros says, sitting down. There’s a whole cushion between him and Laurent. “And they will lose tonight.”
“Then why are we watching the game?”
Damen is already shuffling through the channels. “It’s either this or tennis, which fucking sucks. If you get too bored, we can switch to a movie.”
“How kind,” Laurent says.
The game starts, and Laurent gets bored. It’s a steady thing, like a tower being built, block by block, until his boredom seems to have reached its wobbly peak. Next to him, Damen and Nikandros pour themselves a cup of beer, down it, and go for the next one. They lack the hurry of thirst, and so Laurent watches them out of the corner of his eye, sipping and tilting their cups and smiling into them.
On TV, the red team is losing, as Nikandros predicted, and all the players seem mad about it. The puck comes and goes, hits a guy in the head, bounces off his helmet, goes again. Zero to zero, before the first half is over. Damen’s halfway through his third drink; Nikandros on his fourth.
Laurent tucks his legs closer, knees to chest, and watches.
“Okay,” Damen says, after the third missed goal. The volume goes down and down and down until Laurent can barely hear the crowd cheering. “This is worse than bad. Movie?”
It’s silent except for the murmur of the commentators. They’re asking him, Laurent realizes. “You’re too fucked up to follow any plot,” he says.
“Fucked up,” Damen echoes. He’s looking at Nikandros over Laurent’s head. “Nik, am I drunk?”
“Drunk enough that you have to ask.”
“No,” Nikandros says, as though Laurent hasn’t said a word. “Am I?”
“Not one bit.”
Damen’s thigh is touching Laurent’s socked foot. He’s hotter than a furnace.
“Beer?” Damen’s holding the bottle, about to pour Laurent a cup.
“He doesn’t like it,” Nikandros says. “He probably doesn’t like wine either.”
Laurent feels drunk already, hot and sweaty and slightly dizzy. “I like wine,” he hears himself say, and then doesn’t dare take it back when Damen pops the bottle open.
“We should play something.”
“Damen,” Nikandros says. It has an edge to it.
Laurent picks up his cup, sees himself on the surface of the wine. He’s wobbly. “Are you gonna dip out in the middle again?”
“Never,” Damen says, shifting so that his back is against the arm of the couch and he’s facing Laurent instead of the TV. “Unless you dare me to, of course.”
“So we’re playing Truth or Dare?”
“Damen,” Nikandros says, a second time.
Damen ignores him. “I’ll start. Truth.”
Laurent should have prepped for this. He thought they’d talk about hockey, and goals, and goalies. It’s hard to think with Damen’s eyes on him like this, unblinking and unmoving. “Tell us about your first time,” he says, the words only half-digested.
“First time doing what?” Damen says, smiling. “Riding a bike? Eating Chinese?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Do I?”
“Having sex,” Laurent says.
“With a girl, I was fourteen. With a guy…”
The pause stretches, and Laurent has never been good at waiting. “Yes?”
“Eighteen,” Damen says. He’s not smiling anymore. “It was fine, both times. Don’t know what else you want me to say.”
Next to Laurent, Nikandros pours himself more beer.
“Some details would be nice,” Laurent says. “How long did you last?”
Damen’s eyes flicker to a point above Laurent’s head. Nikandros, most likely. “Not much. I was pretty drunk.”
“Both times?”
“No. With—at eighteen.”
Fourteen’s young, Laurent thinks of saying and doesn’t. It’s not that young, not really. “Okay. Who’s next?”
“Which one did you like more?” Nikandros asks. When Laurent turns to him, he finds Nikandros staring at his beer cup.
“I don’t know,” Damen says slowly. “They were different. You can’t really compare the two.”
The tension in the room melts away the more Laurent sips his wine. He has a vague feeling that the quiet uneasiness is not going anywhere but rather that he’s growing number and number to it. Either way, he doesn’t care.
He’ll be fine. Two cups are his limit, and he’s only one-third done with his first.
“—into it,” Damen is saying. His hand on Laurent’s knee is startling. “It’s your turn. Unless you’d rather take some shots?”
“Of what? Beer?”
“Tequila,” Nikandros says. “Or whiskey, if I can get the cabinet open.”
Laurent licks his already wet lips. He knows what they’ll ask if he picks Truth. “Dare,” he says.
“All right,” Damen says. “That’s good. Give me a moment to think of something.”
The game is still on, and Laurent focuses on that instead of how Damen and Nikandros are both looking at him. Somebody scores, eventually, but it’s the wrong team. Laurent sips more wine and does not compare it to other kinds. Sweeter, whiter, the kind that leaves no acidic aftertaste.
“Come here.”
Laurent blinks. “Here?”
Damen’s thighs are spread, as they were before, but now his hand is patting the right one. It takes Laurent another slow, delayed second to realize what he means. One moment, his heart is pounding blood to all of his limbs, to all corners of his body; the next all the blood is rushing to his head, a roaring river in his ears.
Laurent moves.
“Took you a minute,” Damen says, close to a hum. He’s burning hot under Laurent, the muscles of his thigh solid enough to be felt through the fabric of his sweats and Laurent’s linen pants. Up close, he smells less like Laurent imagined. Deodorant, the spicy kind, and sweat. He tsks, loud and clear. “That’s no way to sit, sweetheart. You’ll give yourself a cramp.” And then he’s moving Laurent himself, not even bothering with a command. His hands push Laurent’s legs open, push Laurent down, push Laurent’s hair away from his face. “‘s better.”
It feels better. Laurent is straddling Damen, legs like brackets around him, numb hands on Damen’s chest to keep himself in balance. If Laurent had had more to drink, he could bear down and grind forward and do something stupid, like give Damen a kiss. But he’s only had one cup.
Damen’s hands curl around his waist, thumbs on hip bones. “Good?”
Laurent nods.
“You should ask Nik the question,” Damen says. “He’s next.”
“So this was the dare? Sit on your lap?”
Damen tilts his head, and the world tilts with it. “Disappointed? It did take you a while to crawl here, so… I wouldn’t bite off more than I can chew if I were you.”
“Truth or Dare?” Laurent says, to Nikandros. It’s a struggle to look at him, his body contorted in a weird position, but Laurent doesn’t mind. He wants to look.
Nikandros looks tired. One of his eyebrows is slightly scrunched up, like his face can’t quite decide if it wants to frown or not. “Truth.”
“Did you like Jokaste?”
Under Laurent, Damen’s body locks up. His thumbs stop rubbing circles into Laurent’s hips and instead begin to sink in. Pain explodes on the two dots, but Laurent ignores it.
“What,” Nikandros says. It’s not even a question.
“Jokaste. Damen’s ex-girlfriend. Did you have a crush on her?”
Silence.
“Did you want to fuck her?”
“I think you’re too drunk to keep playing,” Damen says, trying to push Laurent off and away. “You’re—”
“You fucked her,” Laurent says. “Didn’t you?”
Wine should be sweet , Uncle used to say, and make you sweeter . Laurent doesn’t feel sweet now. He wants to feel bad about the way Nikandros is looking at him, about the way Damen has gone quiet and still again, and yet he can’t bring himself to feel anything. He must be right, for them not to say anything at all. He’s sensed it from the very beginning, this swollen and throbbing thing between them, and now he has a name for it. Jokaste.
“No,” Nikandros says. “I don’t like blondes.”
Laurent’s hands are shaking. When he looks down, he realizes it’s not him but Damen, who’s trying not to cackle. “You know the point of the game is you’re not supposed to lie,” Laurent says.
“He’s not lying.”
“Oh?” Laurent turns to Damen, finds him still balancing on the edge of laughter. “How would you know? Do all your friends tell you they’ve fucked your girlfriend?”
Damen’s hand on his chin is even hotter than the rest of him. He touches Laurent’s jaw, then the loose skin of his earlobe. “I know because I asked him to do it, and he said no. He had no reason to go behind my back, not when I was offering.”
“You asked him to fuck your girlfriend.”
“Yes,” Damen says.
“And he said no.”
“Yes,” Nikandros says.
“Then why…”
A moment passes. Damen hitches him up closer with a startling jerk of his legs. “Why what?”
“Nothing. Who’s next?”
“That’s it?” Damen says. “You’re not going to ask any more questions?”
“There’s nothing more to ask.”
“Why would be a good start.” Damen’s hand on his lower back, pinkie moving across the elastic band of Laurent’s pants. “You’re not curious?”
“I don’t care.”
“I think you do.”
Laurent uses his sluggish hands to push himself away. “Okay. This game’s shit. I’m—”
“Who’s dipping out now, mid-game?”
“It’s not a game if no one’s fucking playing,” Laurent snaps, or tries to. It’s hard to be mad when he’s drunk.
“Fair enough,” Damen says. “Truth.”
That gets Laurent to settle, if only to think. The questions slip away from him, no matter how hard he chases them. In the end, he says, “Do you like blondes?”
“Does he,” Nikandros says. He’s rolling his eyes.
“It’s not a thing.”
“You haven’t answered the question,” Laurent says. “Yes or no.”
Damen’s hand leaves his throat and goes up, where Laurent’s hair curls around his ears. It takes a lot not to tilt his face into the touch. “Yes,” he says. His fingers go through Laurent’s hair like a comb. “But that’s not what you wanted to ask, is it? Go on.”
“I didn’t—”
Damen’s hand closes, Laurent’s hair trapped in between his fingers. It’s not quite a tug. “Oh? You didn’t want to ask anything else?”
“No.” Laurent swallows.
“Heard that, Nik? I think that was a lie.”
Nikandros doesn’t reply.
“You’re blonde,” Damen says, which should make him sound stupid but doesn’t. Slowly, he brings Laurent closer by the hair. “That was a pretty self-centered question, I think. A blonde asking about blondes.”
“Fuck you,” Laurent says conversationally. He squirms, just to prove he can. “It’s my turn now.”
“Truth or Dare?”
“Dare.”
“Hmh,” Damen says, then is quiet.
“Well? What—”
Damen moves instead of talking, forward and fast until his mouth is wet and open against Laurent’s. He tastes like the beer he’s been drinking, not quite bitter but close enough, and Laurent’s mind is blank for the first few seconds before he’s moving his own mouth too, kissing back, pushing into the heat under him, and—
Damen holds him in place by the hair. “Easy,” he says. He’s still so close Laurent can taste the word in his own mouth.
“Is that all,” Laurent says. Out of breath.
This time, when Damen moves forward, Laurent is expecting it. He lets his mouth slack, forcing himself to stay still on Damen’s lap. What he isn’t expecting is for Damen to move his hands down his back, touching every knob of his spine like he wants to press them in. He laughs when Laurent shivers.
Everything is too hot, suddenly. The room, and his body, and Damen’s. There’s a dot of heat in him, low in his belly, and it’s spreading lower. He grinds his hips into Damen’s, without thinking, and finds the friction of the linen so good he could almost cry.
“Easy,” Damen murmurs.
There are footsteps. When Laurent opens his eyes, Nikandros isn’t in the room anymore.
“What—”
“Watching gets a bit boring after a while,” Damen says. Both of his hands are on Laurent’s thighs now. “A bit unfair,” he adds, and leans forward again for another kiss. It’s shorter than the other two. “Go on.”
Laurent blinks himself into steadiness. “Go where?”
“Where do you think?”
One of the lower cabinets is open, as well as two drawers. Nikandros is pushing them closed with his hip when Laurent walks into the kitchen. He stops moving when the padded sound of Laurent’s first footstep reaches him.
“Snacks are on the table,” Nikandros says, not turning around. There’s something in his hand, flashing silver, and it takes Laurent a moment to realize it’s a corkscrew.
“Are you opening another bottle of wine? There’s still some left in the living room. And beer.”
“This is red. That one’s white.”
“So?”
“I don’t drink white,” Nikandros says.
“Like you don’t like blondes?”
A man of taste, Uncle would say. Laurent forces himself to keep walking, ignoring the searing cold of the tiles against his socked feet, and doesn’t stop until he has reached Nikandros. Or rather, the wall that is Nikandros’s back.
The bottle of red wine is in the sink, sweating beads of icy water down the drain. The cork already has three holes, as though it’s been stabbed in a rush to get the bottle open. It probably has.
If Laurent took another step, he could rest his forehead right between Nikandros’ shoulder blades. He does not.
“Why did you leave?”
Nikandros tenses, the lines of him becoming more defined. “You were busy, and I was thirsty. Is there a problem?”
“You’re upset,” Laurent says. “Why?”
“I’m not upset.”
There’s only a tiny, narrow space between the cabinets and Nikandros’s body. Laurent slips into it, his hip rubbing against the counter and his thigh being stabbed by one of the drawer handles. Like this, he can see Nikandros’s face, which shows very little except for the tilted mouth and the line by it.
“I was going to pick dare again.”
Nikandros doesn’t look at him. “So?”
“You could have asked me for a kiss,” Laurent says, “if that’s what you wanted.”
“It’s not.”
Laurent’s mouth stops before the easy, flirty reply can sneak out. There’s a seriousness in Nikandros, all around him, that makes it impossible to misinterpret what he’s said as a tease. This is, partly, what Laurent liked about him that first time he came over to the house with Damen. Nikandros, stiff and serious and nonchalant, always standing one step behind or away or to the side, not ostracized but ostracizing.
But he is upset, too. If not about not having Laurent, then about something else. Laurent’s head throbs a little at the temples, most likely from the wine. He pats the thought down, tells it to wait; there’ll be time to figure things out in the morning.
“I want it,” Laurent says. It’s the sort of thing people say, in these situations. Normal people.
Nikandros snorts. “You were getting it, last I checked.”
“Not from you.”
The TV is back on. Laurent can hear the shouts from the commenters trickling slowly into the kitchen, acting as a buffer. He can almost see Damen nodding, pushing him forward. Go on.
“Whatever you’re playing at,” Nikandros says, “you should stop. Go hump Damen some more if you’re bored, but don’t drag me into it. I’m no one’s fuck toy.”
Something sizzles hot in Laurent’s head—bright as light, blindingly bright, like an idea. He’s too drunk to make out what it is.
“Okay,” Laurent says.
“Okay,” Nikandros echoes, firmer.
Laurent makes himself taller—an inch on his tiptoes—and tries to reach Nikandros’s mouth. He gets the right corner of it instead, the one that was pinched and sagging downwards moments before. Prickly, sharp hair burns Laurent’s chin as he slips down, then again as he rises to his tiptoes and goes for the kiss one more time.
This time, Nikandros moves his head, and kisses him back.
Comparison is the killer of joy, a little voice whispers inside the empty chamber that has become Laurent’s skull. It’s an easy voice to ignore. Nikandros shifts, pressing him harder against the cabinets, both of his hands on the counter behind Laurent. Why shouldn’t Laurent compare them? Niklandros doesn’t kiss like Damen does. He doesn’t kiss like Damen at all.
And maybe he’s not thinking of Laurent, right now. Maybe he doesn’t want to kiss Laurent more than Laurent has ever wanted to kiss anyone, ever. Maybe he just likes the wetness of it, the need. It’s nice, Laurent thinks, to feel needed.
Laurent whines at some point, the handle of the drawer digging so hard into his lower back it might as well be a knife. Nikandros doesn’t stop kissing him as he hoists Laurent up onto the counter, where there are no handles or edges to worry about. The marble is cold under Laurent’s ass and thighs, but he can barely feel it when Nikandros moves closer, right into the spread of his legs.
They’re not kissing anymore, Laurent realizes. It’s like static on a screen, like flipping through channels too fast. Something always gets lost, even though it shouldn’t. He shouldn’t be losing time anymore. Herode said—he said—something. Nikandros is still pressed against him, not as warm as Damen was, but warm enough. He’s kissing the spot under Laurent’s ear, trailing down—
“Hey now,” Damen says, all the way from the door. Behind him, the game is still going. “I’m missing out on all the fun.”
Nikandros’s forehead is on Laurent’s shoulder, bone on bone. He seems to sag forward, like something without a spine, and Laurent bears his weight as best as he can while trying to keep the world from tilting out of focus.
“Damen,” Nikandros says. Laurent’s shirt swallows most of the word. “It’s…”
Damen walks towards them, slow and steady. “It’s fun, that’s the word you’re looking for. Isn’t it, sweetheart?”
“Yes,” Laurent says, because he thinks Damen might be talking to him. “Fun.”
“It’s fun, and it’s summer, and we’re stuck here for another month and a half. Nothing wrong with this.”
“This,” Nikandros starts, but quiets down when Laurent puts his hand on the back of his neck. It’s damp, the hair there curling with humidity. Laurent rubs a thumb over the crease of it.
Damen says, “Pass me the bottle.”
Laurent does. He’s got a free hand, which he uses to lift the bottle out of the sink and into Damen’s fingers. It’s so cold it burns, but Laurent doesn’t let go until he’s sure Damen has a good hold on it. He dropped the bottle, once. It shattered in two, perfectly neat even in its mess. It wasn’t wine, though. It was—there was foam, white and frothy. Cider. More static, this time loud and grainy. Damen is offering him a full red glass, maybe has been for a while.
“I like white better,” Laurent says, instead of the truth. It’s strange, talking with this mouth that Nikandros just kissed. He licks his lips. “How’s the game?”
Damen drinks. “We’re losing. Seems like this season’s gonna be shit.”
“It just started,” Nikandros says. He’s standing straighter than before, his face no longer tucked into Laurent’s neck. “God, you’re shit at hosting.”
“Me?”
“No,” Damen says. “Me. He’s upset that I didn’t let you pick a movie. Or give you real food.”
“Were you hoping to get me drunk faster?”
Nikandros laughs. He’s laughed before, under his breath or into the back of his wrist or while he snorts. Not quite like this. “You’re giving him too much credit. Damen doesn’t usually think that far ahead.”
“I’m just rude,” Damen says.
“We can watch a movie tomorrow.”
“Why not now?” More drinking, the wine momentarily staining the corners of Damen’s mouth a deep red. It’s like his gums are bleeding. “Don’t tell me you’re that drunk. I don’t believe it.”
“It’s late.”
“Not too late,” Damen says.
“I didn’t tell my brother I was spending the night.”
Nikandros pulls away the rest of the way, stepping back from the hug of Laurent’s legs. His hands move from the counter to Laurent’s knees. They’re cold from the marble, soothing. “We’ll walk you home.”
Damen doesn’t move an inch. “Now?”
“I doubt he gives a shit about the game results.”
“We were playing something,” Damen says. “ That game isn’t over.”
Laurent slides off the counter, scraping his back on the drawer handle in the process. It takes a moment for the room around him to settle, not quite spinning but vibrating, blurring at the edges. “Tomorrow,” he says, and hates the part of him that wishes they’ll force him to stay.
They walk him home, once Damen has found his shoes and Nikandros the keys. The night is hot and humid, but placid enough. Under the croaking toads and buzzing bugs, Laurent thinks he can hear an owl.
It gets awkward when they reach the front door. Laurent doesn’t know if he should just walk inside the way he usually does, or stay and—well. He steps on the porch.
“Ah,” Damen says. “No goodnight kiss for me?”
Laurent looks up. There’s a camera above the door, courtesy of Jord. “No,” he says. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“If I’m good?”
“You’re never good,” Nikandros says. “Come on. Let him go to sleep.”
Inside, the house is quiet and empty. Tonight, there’s no one there to pat Laurent down.
*
“Did you sprinkle sugar on top?” Halvik says, for the third time.
Laurent doesn’t look away from the oven. The glass door is so clean he can see inside, where the cake is rising out of the Bundt pan, threatening to spill over and drip to the bottom of the oven.
“Laurent?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to give the pizza dough a chance?” Halvik folds the dish towel in half, then again in quarters. “We still have some time. The sauce shouldn’t take—”
“No,” Laurent says. “Auguste left me money, so it’s fine. Maybe next time.”
“Next time, huh?”
“Shut up.”
Halvik shrugs. Only one of her shoulders does it properly. “It’s nice to have friends over, isn’t it? You should invite them more often.”
“They come here every day,” Laurent says, dryly. And they’re not my friends. Except they are, sort of. They could be.
“Yes, for work. This is for fun, right? It’s different.”
It feels different. When Damen and Nikandros arrive, Halvik has already left for the day, the cake is cooling on the kitchen aisle, and the pizza and beers are waiting in the living room. Auguste is in Charls’s office, pacing. When it’s quiet enough, Laurent can hear the little thuds of his steps, like something leaking down from the ceiling. He won’t join them for dinner.
“Horror movie or romcom?” Damen says as he steps into the living room.
Laurent sits on the couch, close to the middle. A strategy. “Are those the only two genres you know?”
“Yes,” Nikandros says.
“No,” Damen says at the same time. “That’s just my mood tonight. If you want to watch some kid fight cancer and lose halfway through the movie that’s fine.”
“So you’d watch that?”
“Fuck no.”
Damen sits down to Laurent’s right, Nikandros to Laurent’s left. This couch is, from all angles, bigger than the one in their house, and yet they fill it out almost completely. Some of their limbs overflow, Damen’s arm dangling off the edge, Nikandros’s leg spilling to the floor. In Laurent’s memory, they’re always smaller, play-sized. Laurent turns on the TV and wonders if their cocks are proportional to the rest of them.
He’s flipping through the movie titles when Damen shifts, sprawling further, and puts his hand over Laurent’s thigh.
“ Endless suffering ?” Nikandros reads out loud. It’s the movie Laurent stopped at, too busy trying to get his legs not to spread under Damen’s heat. “Sounds… intense.”
Damen’s fingers find the laces on the front of Laurent’s sweats. There’s no knot to untie, no bow to tug at, yet Damen yanks softly on them anyways. He’s not even looking at Laurent. “Put on something fun,” he says. There it is, that word again, like it’s the only one he knows how to say.
“I don’t like rom-coms.”
“You don’t like anything,” Damen says. A twirl, then a tug. “Just pick one. They’re easy to watch and you—I’ve seen that one already.”
Laurent turns to him. “What? You’ve watched Failure to launch ? On your own?” He turns to Nikandros next, only to find him frowning at the description.
“Yeah,” Nikandros says. “I’ve seen it too. Sucks.”
“This is the Patran remake though.”
“All the more reason not to watch it,” Damen says, more tightly than before. He’s staring at Nikandros over Laurent’s head. “Patran humor is weird. Right, Nik?”
“Put on The Orphanage ,” Nikandros says.
Damen’s fingers leave Laurent’s laces to snatch away the TV remote. He goes through the rows of movies so efficiently Laurent can’t even complain—Horror, Popular Choices, The Orphanage. Names show up on the screen, then fade away. Director, main actors, sound team. Maybe Jokaste is Patran.
They eat for the first half of the movie. This time, Laurent pours his own drink and only pretends to sip it, while Damen shares golden beer and foam with Nikandros, one can after the other. Instead of watching the movie, Laurent counts the seconds between each popping sound of a new can being opened. There are not a lot of them.
Eventually, Laurent puts his warm and untouched beer down on the coffee table, leans back into the couch with perfect clumsiness, and lets his body sag slowly, slowly, to the left. He knows Damen’s looking at him, but he doesn’t stop. Nobody tells him to either.
Nikandros’s shoulder is bony under his cheek. Laurent shifts again, trying to make it look like he’s stretching, and goes for the neck.
Damen’s hand closes around his ankle. “Need a nap?”
“No,” Laurent says. He blinks, once, twice, keeping his eyelashes as close to Nikandros’s skin as possible. “Do you?”
This time, when Laurent goes to shift again, Nikandros beats him to it. He turns so as to face Damen, resting his back on the arm of the couch, and gives Laurent a proper place to lie: half on top of him, half tucked against the back of the couch.
A tsk. “I thought we were going to play a game. We can’t do that if you fall asleep on us.”
The waistband of Nikandros’s shorts is not too tight. Laurent hooks a finger on it.
“Yes?” Nikandros says.
“What?”
Nikandros’s hand closes around his, hot and dry and hard in places, and drags it down and away from the waistband. The shorts he’s wearing are not cotton but polyester, and thus thinner. When Nikandros squeezes his hand, Laurent’s closes around the bulge of a growing cock.
It’s easy, not having to look at either of them. With his nose touching the place where Nikandros’s shoulder ends and his throat begins, Laurent can only catch little glimpses of what’s going on around him. He sees—and feels—Damen turn away from the TV screen, probably so he can watch them better. He sees Nikandros’s chest and the spot where his shirt has ridden up slightly to reveal a downward path of hair that disappears into his shorts.
His fingers have gone lax. He presses down and rubs his thumb against something. By the way Nikandros twitches under him, it might be the head.
“That’s not very kind, sweetheart,” Damen says from across the couch. “If you’re going to touch him, you should do it properly.”
“Hmh,” Laurent says, and sneaks his hand down the pair of waistbands in his way.
He doesn’t grab Nikandros’s cock right away, doesn’t want this part to be over so quickly. He likes the way Nikandros is breathing now, or rather not breathing. The way he’s waiting for it. Instead, Laurent traces his navel with shy fingertips, dipping lower so slowly he might as well not be moving his hand at all. Nikandros’s thighs tense under him, muscles hardening like he’s waiting for a blow.
Laurent could jerk him off like this. It really is easy, not having to look at either of them, but easy is boring. Easy will get him nothing.
As he lifts his head up, Nikandros looks down at him. His eyes are not really open. “D’you—”
Nikandros’s mouth tastes like beer. Bitter, but not too bad. There are worse things. He opens up when Laurent pushes, wet and hot and breathy, and uses the hand that isn’t squashed under Laurent’s body to cup Laurent’s jaw. He stills a bit when Laurent finally gets to his cock, skipping the base so he can slide this closed fist down the head. Nikandros is wet there, and it doesn’t seem to hurt him when Laurent goes up again and twists down with more strength.
Usually, this is when Laurent drifts away. He doesn’t mean to, sometimes, but the static grows thicker when there’s a cock in his hand, or his mouth. It’s like the channels are easier to skip. Up, down, go as fast as possible so as to get it over with. Now Laurent doesn’t go anywhere. He knows Nikandros is close when the kiss gets too sloppy, when Nikandros starts bucking into his hand like he can’t help himself. Then Laurent slows down.
“Fucking,” Nikandros starts. He’s laid back down, his head thrown back over the arm of the couch, his eyes closed all the way. When he breathes out, it’s shaky. “Tease.”
Laurent kisses the corner of his mouth, the one where the smile line always is. His hand gets away from him then, moving on its own, close to the rhythm he’d kept before. He doesn’t kiss Nikandros again, but makes sure to keep their faces close enough that he can feel Nikandros’s pants when they come. Laurent runs his thumb over the head, feels the slit there, wet and open.
“Stop,” Nikandros says, when Laurent presses down. He’s squirming and trying not to. “Stop, stop , I—”
Laurent doesn’t.
Come pools around his fist, still warm, and Laurent lets it. He gives Nikandros’s cock one more tug, so slow it bores even him, and takes his hand away.
“Hmh,” Nikandros says. Or maybe it’s a word.
There are footsteps over their heads. Laurent listens to Auguste’s pacing as he grabs a paper napkin from the table and carefully wipes his fingers clean. The urge to sprint towards the bathroom rises in him, but Laurent ignores it. Herode would be very proud.
“Give me one,” Damen says, making Laurent startle back. He tilts his head to the side, a fun look on his face. “I meant a napkin, not a handjob.”
“Oh.”
Damen doesn’t need a handjob any more than Nikandros does. Laurent passes him a cluster of napkins, then watches him wipe his own hand and down his shorts.
“He’s fine,” Damen says, two napkins in. “Just let him be for a minute or two.”
It takes Laurent a moment to realize who Damen is talking about. Nikandros has an arm thrown over his face, and his breathing is so slow and steady it looks like he’s fallen asleep. His thigh is twitching though, the only part of him still dealing with the aftershock.
The footsteps stop and start again, this time a circle of thuds on the east side of the house.
“Does he do this often?”
Damen balls up his third napkin. “What?”
“Come in front of you,” Laurent says. “How else would you know just to let him be for—”
“We’ve shared a room a hundred times.”
And a girl? “Even here?”
“Even here,” Damen says. The tightness is back, and easier to spot than before. His neck looks stiff. “Makedon’s house is big, but the best beds are in Nik’s sisters’ room. Pass me a beer.”
“Sisters?”
“Plural. More than one.”
“I know what plural fucking means,” Laurent says. It’s too late to pull the beer away, so he lets Damen take it from him. “Why aren’t they—”
“Can you both,” Nikandros says, muffled by his elbow, “shut the fuck up?”
They obey for different reasons. Laurent is surprised. Balled-up, come-soaked paper napkins, and weird family conversations—it is not the aftermath he is accustomed to. It’s usually quiet, with a lot of movement (his own, mostly) and then he’s left alone. The gardener at the clinic had patted him on the back, after. Nurse Gerrin had said something about STDs.
“Want some help?” Damen says after a while. He’s looking down at Laurent’s tangled laces.
“I’m not hard.” He is, a bit. That is also new.
“Okay. Come here.”
Laurent doesn’t move. “Where?”
“Here.” Damen pats his thigh.
“You just came,” Laurent says. Still not moving. “You can’t possibly go again.”
For a while, Damen doesn’t reply. He looks at Laurent though, intently enough that Laurent turns to the TV to get away from it. On screen, a woman is yelling about stairs and a locked room. Laurent feels a bit like yelling himself, but he doesn’t know why.
Ten minutes pass, and then Nikandros decides to be a person again. He sits up and blinks, cranes his neck one way and the other, and stretches his legs until his toes curl. “That was good,” he says, as he leans forward to get his old beer back. It’s probably warm and uncarbonated and Laurent itches to pop open a new one and give it to him.
“Good?”
“You’ve offended him,” Damen says. “Sometimes honesty’s not the best policy, Nik.”
Nikandros shrugs.
“I’m right here,” Laurent says. It feels weird to say it out loud, even though he’s thought it before. At the dinner table in Arles, at the clinic’s office, at Uncle’s old apartment. “Stop talking about me like I’m not—oh, fuck off.”
Damen stops trying to cut the cake. “What?”
“I was supposed to cut it.”
“Why?” Damen says. “I know how to cut a cake. Speaking of, don’t you have a fucking knife? This fork isn’t…” His voice dies down, word by word. The slice has been cut-slash-ripped off. “Whatever.”
Laurent tugs on his sleeves. It’s fine, it’s a normal question to ask. Blood is rushing to his ears so quickly that it leaves him dizzy and slightly deaf. Next, to Nikandros, he says, “Why good?”
“Good is not bad,” Nikandros says.
“It’s not great either.”
Nikandros’s mouth twitches. “It’s not, yeah. We’ll see how you do next time.”
Next time. Laurent cuts a slice of cake for himself with the fork Damen left on the pile of napkins. He tries to watch the ending of the movie, but his ears have not stopped ringing yet. If anything, the high-pitched sound has increased to the point where he feels like steam might come out of his mouth any second, like a kettle left too long on the stove.
Something wet touches his right temple. “He’s teasing,” Damen says, suddenly very close. He kisses Laurent’s cheek next. “You were great, sweetheart. Amazing. Best handjob I’ve ever seen.”
Laurent burns. “Fuck you.”
“I mean it,” Damen says. “It’s just…”
“Just what ?”
“You have two hands, don’t you?”
Upstairs, a door opens and closes. Laurent follows Auguste’s footsteps with his eyes, a straight line on the ceiling that ends where the stairs begin. The fifth step is the one that creaks—Damen and Nikandros are supposed to fix it next week—but Auguste skips it, and the creak never comes.
Auguste crosses the hallway with his phone perched on his shoulder. “Laurent, have you seen my—oh, I didn’t know we had guests over. Hey.” He lingers in the doorway, not quite coming in.
“Hello,” Damen says, when Nikandros doesn’t.
Auguste uses his free hand to cut himself a slice of cake. Looking at Laurent, he says, “Where’s my white charger?”
Laurent shrugs.
“You guys having fun?”
“Movie night,” Damen says, even though that wasn’t the question. “Did you watch the hockey match yesterday?”
Sports and art Auguste can talk about. He grins through a mouthful of cake. “Fucking Geris. It’s like he doesn’t know where his feet are. Next game is in two weeks… I was thinking of asking your—no, I’m still here.” He stands up straighter, hitching the phone up. “It’s on the fourth slide, Berenger. I told—yes, I told—can you let me finish?” And then he’s walking away, the way he does. The door stays open behind him. “Where’s my fucking charger?”
“Pick another one,” Laurent says, tossing the remote at Damen. “Not a rom-com.”
Damen spreads his legs, one of his feet on the floor. “Come here then. Help me choose.”
Laurent does.
*
Aimeric calls him three days later, right before the new week begins. Auguste is washing toast crumbs out of his hands, readying to go back upstairs into Charls’s office, when Laurent’s phone goes off in his pocket. He looks down at the number, frowns, then slides up to take the call.
Laurent watches from the kitchen table, his eggs getting cold while Auguste speaks.
“Right, you’re—and Dr. Paschal said this is—okay.” Auguste looks down at his wristwatch, which Laurent knows is saying late, late, late. “You’ve got fifteen minutes, kid. I’m supposed to be working right now.”
The phone gets to Laurent, after some awkward, dripping maneuvering. “Hey?”
“Tell your brother to suck my dick,” Aimeric says. “Fifteen minutes? Where are you, prison? Fucking hell.”
“He has to go to work,” Laurent says, slowly and aware that Auguste is standing four steps away.
“What does that have to do with anything? Are you still not allowed to have your—”
Laurent does not feel like explaining phone rules. “Why are you calling?”
Uncharacteristically, the line goes quiet.
“You getting out?” Laurent prods. “Don’t come visit me if you are.”
“Erasmus had a little slip-up,” Aimeric says.
“What—”
“I thought you’d like to know, because it’s Friends & Family day in a couple of weeks, and—well, he’s kind of a fag about it, obviously, so he’d—I bet he’d like it if you could come. Cheer him up with your stories from the outside and all.”
Laurent fishes out some leftover pulp from his orange juice. “How bad was it?”
“Bad.”
“Okay,” Laurent says. “Text me the date and time and I’ll—is he around right now? I want to talk to him.”
“He lost his phone privileges. Well,” Aimeric adds, after a second. “All his privileges.”
Auguste steps closer to the table, frowning. “Laurent,” he says, and nothing else.
“Tell him I’ll bring him something to F&F day. Something fun. How’s Vannes?”
“Er,” Aimeric says.
Auguste outstretches his hand. “Laurent. Come on.”
“I have to go,” Laurent says. “Text me the date. Don’t forget.”
“I won’t fucking—”
The phone disappears. Laurent doesn’t try to hold onto it.
“We’ll talk about this later. At dinner, maybe,” Auguste says, slipping the phone back into his pocket. He’s wearing a nice shirt today, which means Zoom meetings. “Lazar’s a block away, he just texted me. Go wait for him at the—”
Laurent’s elbow finds the glass of juice. The first orange splatter hits Auguste’s stomach, then the white tiles of the floor. It’s so satisfying Laurent has to bite his cheeks to keep from smiling.
“Sorry,” Laurent says, steadying the now empty glass. He throws his cloth napkin over the puddle. “Sorry, I didn’t—it was an accident.”
Auguste is already gone, unbuttoning his shirt before he reaches the hallway. The low string of curses behind him is the only thing that remains.
*
The next time they do it—whatever it may be, vague and unnamed and undebated—is two days later, after Nikandros has fixed the creaking step in the main stairs and untangled the blinds from Grandma Cecile’s study room. Damen is outside, giving the shed another coat of blue, first with his shirt open, then with his shirt off, lastly with a wet rag over his shoulder. Laurent takes turns reading and watching them both, waiting and telling himself he’s not.
They come to him as the sun is beginning to set and the treetops Laurent can see from his window have gone from green to black.
Damen knocks on his open door twice. “Nik’s dad is in the city for two nights.”
“Good for him,” Laurent says. It’s a struggle not to look up from his book.
“You coming then?”
“Coming?”
There’s a snort in the hallway. Nikandros’s.
“With us,” Damen says, patiently. “To the house.”
“I don’t know. What’s in it for me? A bunk bed?”
Damen leans more heavily on the door, which whines under his weight. “We already asked your brother, and he said yes. Pack a bag or something.”
The words on the page all seem to blur together. “You asked my brother for permission to have a sleepover with me?”
“Would you rather I’d asked him if I could fuck your hand?”
“Maybe.”
Laurent takes his time packing. He doesn’t have a lot of things to pack per se, but he likes the way it helps him focus. Toothbrush, hair comb, his dad’s old Serpents t-shirt. At the clinic, he used to sleep in Auguste’s Okton shirt, blue and white and striped. But this one has long sleeves.
He tucks a clean pair of boxers at the very bottom of his bag, just in case, and is trying to decide whether or not he should take his book with him when Damen finally cracks.
“Nik can walk you. I’m taking a fucking shower right now.”
“You do reek,” Laurent says.
Damen sniffs. “No, I don’t,” he says, and then he’s gone.
The book stays, Laurent decides. If he gets bored…
“You know,” Laurent says, slipping into his laceless shoes, “I don’t really need to be walked. It’s a three-block trip.”
“Five-block,” Nikandros corrects. “Countryside blocks are longer.”
“Are they.”
Today, Nikandros smells like dryness—wood splinters from the step he sawed and chalk dust from the marks he wrote on the backdoor—and looks more tired than he did when Laurent was watching him work. He doesn’t do anything stupid when Laurent gets to him, like kiss him on the mouth or the cheek or anywhere, and waits outside when Laurent stops in the middle of the hallway to knock on Charls’s door.
“What?” Auguste says from inside the office. His voice is muffled like he’s talking through several layers of water.
“I’m going out.”
There’s a beat—not of silence, Auguste is still talking on the phone—and then a soft pat on the door. Laurent waits for a second, thinking perhaps it’ll open and Auguste will burst out to say what he is supposed to. Have fun, maybe. Be safe. You know the rules is more likely. But the words never come.
“—not until six thirty,” Auguste is saying, dimmer and dimmer, because he’s moving away from the door. “If you can get her to send Robard the email, then yes, but she said—”
Outside, the air feels heavy and marshy, the way it always gets before rain. Laurent focuses on taking the right steps, avoiding fallen branches and rocks; he’s tripped enough times wearing these shoes. Sometimes, Nikandros’s arm brushes against his, a shock of something scalding, and then is gone.
Laurent doesn’t mind the quiet. The crickets are beginning to awaken and gather in the tall grass that embroiders the side of the road. It reminds him of the clinic, how the ugliest toads would hide in the sad, small puddle that the nurses and helpers called a pond, only to jump out when it got silent enough. Erasmus was always the biggest squealer, flushed from chin to hair root, the reality of his fear laughable only to those that didn’t really know him. It’s hard to know Erasmus and laugh at him, Laurent thinks.
A slip-up, Aimeric said. How bad—
Nikandros has stopped walking.
“What?” Laurent says, looking around for toads and crickets and cars. There’s nothing.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”
I’m not forcing you, am I? the gardener had asked in the darkness of the supply closet, brow pinched so tightly it looked sutured. He’d been hard though.
“Damen can be pushy sometimes,” Nikandros goes on. He’s looking Laurent in the eyes. “If he thinks you like the—struggle, then he might not get the hint that you’re not actually down. But if you tell him no outright, he’s not gonna—”
“Force me?”
The wrong corner of Nikandros’s mouth tightens. “You can say no.”
Laurent doesn’t reply.
“Listen—”
“I am listening,” Laurent says. He tilts his head, the way he’s seen Damen do it. “You won’t force me, I can say no, Damen is pushy. Is he pushy with you?”
“This isn’t a joke. You get that, right?”
“He is, then.”
Nikandros’s gaze dulls. He sounds bored: “You’re fucking annoying.”
Aggravating. That’s what you are when you get like this. Laurent swallows around the sudden pang of hurt at the very base of his throat. It’s just banter. “Should I pick a safeword or is that up to Damen too?”
They’re moving through the field again, both of them mindful of their steps. Laurent tries not to think of Ezra Miller’s poem, of how he left his book at home, of how he feels like he’s on his way to the slaughterhouse. He’s already half-forgotten his question when Nikandros speaks again.
“Safewords don’t work for this sort of shit.”
“This sort,” Laurent says, slowly, “of shit?”
The house comes into view, ranch-like and half-hidden away in the dark. Three of the windows are painted yellow with light, and as they get closer Laurent sees Damen’s shadow cross from one room to the other, his back turned to them.
Laurent starts, “The traffic light system—”
“Doesn’t work.”
“What?”
Nikandros doesn’t say anything.
“I’ve never met anyone too stupid to know what red, yellow, and green mean.”
“It’s hard to remember,” Nikandros says. “It shouldn’t be, but it is. Everything’s hard to remember without context. You scream red in the middle of it, no one’s going to know what the fuck you mean. Might offer you a fucking apple or something, if you’re lucky.”
Laurent licks his lips, finds them chapped. “If I can remember what it means—”
“Chances are you won’t. And if you can’t remember something as easy as the traffic light system, you’re fucked if you think you’ll remember some other random word that you pick right now.”
Uncle, he thinks. He’d remember that one. “There’s nothing wrong with my short-term memory, that I know of, and you’re delusional if you think your cock’s good enough to wipe my brain clean.”
Nikandros stops again, so abruptly Laurent almost staggers and falls despite not even being behind him. “What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?”
Something jumps over Laurent’s feet. It doesn’t startle either of them.
“He didn’t tell you,” Nikandros says. Not a question.
“Tell me what?”
Nikandros tilts his head back. His exposed throat is black and orange under the road light, the shades of it all wrong. Laurent likes him better in sunshine, in tree shade.
“Let’s go,” Nikandros says, after a moment. Laurent can’t quite read his tone.
*
Once inside, they part ways without many words—Laurent excuses himself to the bathroom, Nikandros stomps to the kitchen.
Laurent took a shower with Halvik earlier, made sure to scrub his scalp a nice raw pink color, using some of Auguste’s shampoo, and then paid special attention to all his creases. Summer in Delpha can make any corner sweat. Elbows, knees, neck. All the crooks of the body. Hair exists where it is to be expected, and there is nothing Laurent can do about it. You can just tweeze it all out, Ancel suggested once, but Laurent does not have tweezers, or the patience to pluck out a hundred golden spikes while Halvik waits outside the bathroom door. Instead, he devoted all his precious fifteen minutes of uninterrupted shower time to cleaning himself out the way one would carve a pumpkin hollow. Ancel’s simile, again.
Now, in Makedon’s bathroom, he examines himself under the warm lights that frame the wall mirror. Hair is there, but it’s short. He’s clean everywhere. He should be able to keep his shirt on for the most part, and if he isn’t… Well. He doesn’t quite have the words to construct that scenario. There’ll be laughter, maybe. Pity, certainly. He’s clean though, and that is what matters most.
Damen and Nikandros are not in the living room when Laurent walks out. The hallway is empty, too, and Laurent doesn’t yet feel like darting out into any of the other rooms. The closer he gets to the couch, the louder the voices coming from the kitchen rise.
“—to me,” Nikandros is saying. “Do you even know if he’s taking something else? And even if you did, fucking magically, you failed fucking Biochem. You don’t even know—”
“I know it’s nothing to worry about. Worst case scenario… Everyone has a bad one eventually.”
“Did you lace it?”
Damen makes a sound, something like a hum. “A little. It’s not—oh, come on, Nik. It’s all natural. I’m not giving the kid fucking acid.” He laughs, short and aspirated, like a hiccup. “Not the first time.”
“Damen,” Nikandros says.
“Nik,” Damen says back.
A cup meets the counter, glass on marble. “We have enough shit on our plates as is. If his brother finds out about this, he’s not gonna let us go with a slap on the wrist. Damen. Damen , he’s not—it’s not going to be like the thing with Isander. This guy owns half the fucking Fabvre. You can’t pay him off.”
“I don’t need to. Kid’s nineteen. He can make his own choices, and it’s not like his brother is some fucking—”
Suddenly, silence. Laurent touches his ears, but they don’t hurt. There’s no ringing sound, either.
“Sweetheart,” Damen says, from the kitchen. “Are you done spying?”
“Are you done arguing?”
The kitchen is tidier than it was last time Laurent was here. From the doorway, Laurent has a perfect view of the shiny fridge door and the lonely yellow note on it. feed horses 11-15. The magnet keeping it in place is of a smiley face, its eyes black dots. Laurent focuses on them.
“We were just talking,” Damen says.
“About me.”
Damen’s hair is wet and dripping down his front. The shirt he’s wearing is dotted as if with rainwater. “Maybe,” he says, and stretches an arm out, hand open in invitation. Laurent lets himself be pulled forward. “You know what this is?”
Laurent rolls his eyes. His hands feel wet. “A joint.”
“Have you ever smoked before? Other than with us the other day.”
“Anything,” Nikandros interjects. “Not just weed.”
“Yes.” A drag of a cigar, once. It counts; it has to.
Damen is smiling down at him. The kiss he plants on Laurent’s face makes no sound at all. “Aren’t you full of surprises.”
“There’s chalis in it,” Nikandros says. Another interjection.
“It’s what makes it sweet. This weed’s from Vask, which is… not ideal. It’s not warm enough there, doesn’t rain often. But chalis makes it better.”
“Okay,” Laurent says.
Another kiss, lower, next to Laurent’s mouth. This time, Damen takes his time pulling back. “You’ll like it. Wanna try it now or after, with some wine?”
Laurent doesn’t know what he wants. He has a feeling that saying so won’t do him any good. He wonders if Isander said no to the joint, too.
“Now,” he says, after a moment.
There are rules around drugs, it turns out. No smoking in the house, Damen tells him as they move to the backyard, or anywhere near curtains and hay. Makedon has a good nose, apparently, and he’d be able to tell what they’ve been up to with just one sniff. They, also apparently, do not want Makedon to know that they’ve been up to anything at all.
Nikandros supplies the lighter, flame flicked into existence with just a tiny movement of his thumb. He holds it steady as Damen leans in, joint pinched between his lips, and takes the first drag of the night.
Laurent watches them. There is something about the way Nikandros leans back once Damen is done and the joint is lit, something about the way Damen takes his second drag, then presses his lips together in a line and hands the joint over to Nikandros.
“You do this,” Laurent says, without thinking.
Damen barely turns to look at him. “Do what?”
“Sometimes,” Nikandros says, then shifts. When his thumb touches Laurent’s mouth, the backyard seems to get quiet. “Don't worry about spit, the filter absorbs most of it. Inhale and then take a deep—”
It burns. Laurent’s throat feels rubbed raw and hot, and he can’t keep the coughs in. Before the first one even comes, Nikandros has already taken the joint away.
“That’s—”
“Breathe through it.”
“Can you taste the chalis in it?” Damen says. “It’s that kick at the very end. Like burnt sugar.”
Laurent can only taste his own bile rising inside him, sloshing around the back of his throat. “‘s—shit.”
Quiet, quiet, and then Damen and Nikandros laugh. They sound good together, Laurent thinks.
There’s a full moon out tonight. Laurent watches the clouds drift by as the wind picks up. After three drags, it gets a bit hard to remember which way is up and which way is down. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be looking at anymore.
Static comes and sweeps him into the living room. It’s unlike any other static he’s ever experienced—not frizzly and grainy but smooth and silky. It feels sly, wet. He’s sweating. The leather couch doesn’t feel good against his skin.
There’s a hot body pressed to his. It takes him a long moment to realize it’s Damen’s. “How does it feel?”
“Hot,” Laurent says, which is a stupid answer. He doesn’t know he’s laughing until he hears himself, and even then he doesn’t know the reason. When he tries to turn his head, the whole room turns with him. “Where’s…”
“Nikandros?”
“Here,” Nikandros says calmly, on Laurent’s left. He doesn’t complain when Laurent dumps his feet on his lap. “Hmh.”
Damen’s shoulder smells like minty deodorant. Laurent rubs his nose into the hem of his short sleeve, liking the way each inhale makes his nostrils burn.
“Sit up,” Damen says. Or maybe it’s Nikandros. “Open your mouth, just a bit…”
Wine slides down his throat, cold and sweet. It’s a good harvest. White, no older than a couple of years. Laurent drinks it not because he’s thirsty, but because he’s quite forgotten how to use his hands to pull the cup away. His hands don’t feel like his own anymore, heavy as they are on his lap.
He’s lying down again, on someone. When a mouth meets his, a thought pops up in his head, blinking like an alarm of some kind— red —and then is gone.
It’s really hot in the room. His back is wet with sweat, even though it’s not touching the couch at all, and there’s something—there’s—
He’s hard. He’s sitting up, blood rushing everywhere all at once.
“Where are you going?” Damen says under him. His hands are the only reason Laurent hasn’t toppled to the floor, off balance as he is. “Huh? Wanna run away already?” His grip tightens, and dots of pain explode all over Laurent’s lower back where Damen’s fingertips are resting. “Sit down.”
Laurent is sitting down, but there is a small space between his body and Damen’s lap. Before he can make the decision to close the gap, Damen is pushing him down so that his ass is flush against Damen’s thighs. Damen’s cock, held back only by two thin layers of clothes, rubs right against Laurent’s crease.
One of Damen’s hands leaves Laurent’s waist. “Are you hot, baby?” he says, and for a second he sounds concerned enough. His thumb rubs a circle on Laurent’s nape, which is dripping with sweat. “I think you are. I think you’ve got too many clothes on.”
Laurent doesn’t say anything when Damen hoists him up and helps him out of his pants. The first slap of fresh air against his naked legs feels so good he whines with the feeling, and Damen laughs under him like it’s the funniest sound he’s ever heard. It’s still too hot in the room, and Laurent wants to do something except he can’t exactly remember what, and when Damen is taking off his shirt it’s impossible to imagine why that’s a bad thing, why that’s not something that should be happening.
“That’s better,” Damen says. “Put your hands here so you don’t fall off. Good.”
Laurent is leaning forward, both hands spread on Damen’s chest. They can’t quite kiss like this, there’s not much point to it. He opens his mouth to say so, but then Damen starts moving him, and all words dissolve.
It’s so good, having something to grind against on both ends. His cock drags against Damen’s stomach on the way up, and his ass grinds against Damen’s cock on the way down. It’s good, it’s really good, and eventually, Damen doesn’t have to help him bob up and down anymore because Laurent is doing it on his own.
Distantly, Damen is talking. “—anywhere. There’s not even a cock in you yet, and you can’t stop.” He laughs, and Laurent’s rhythm stutters. “What’s wrong? You don’t like me saying that?”
“No,” Laurent says. His mouth’s very wet.
“Am I wrong?”
Laurent tries to stop, he really does, but the way Damen’s cock feels against his ass is too good. It could just slip inside, if they were doing this naked. The thought makes more static come, and with the static comes a moment where Laurent forgets how to swallow. Drool tries to drip down the corner of his mouth.
“Am I wrong?” Damen says again. “You don’t like it? You don’t like humping me like a dog while Nik watches?”
Nikandros. Laurent forgot—Laurent actually forgot—He starts to twist around, to try and look behind him, but Damen’s hand cups his entire jaw, keeping him in place.
“Say it if it’s true. Go on.”
“‘s n—” Laurent can’t quite speak like this, with Damen’s hand where it is. The words come out half-said, slurred. “Don’ like—”
“Don’t like what?”
Laurent can’t. He can’t speak, can’t stop his hips from twitching either.
“Seems to me like you like it well enough,” Damen says. His fingers are digging into Laurent’s cheeks too hard, but even that feels good. “But you’re not a dog, are you, sweetheart? You’re a little bitch. Say it.”
“R—” Laurent gets out.
The smack comes out of nowhere, and it turns Laurent’s head to the left. Laurent’s ear is ringing.
“That’s not the word,” Damen says. “That’s not the word at all.”
Laurent can’t remember what word he’s supposed to say anymore. He focuses on what he does remember, and that’s the fact that he felt good moments before, grinding down, and so he goes back to that. Damen doesn’t stop him.
“You don’t want to say you’re a bitch,” Damen says after a while, in between two of Laurent’s pants, “but you’re wet here.” His hand touches the front of Laurent’s boxers. “‘s that your cunt?”
The boxers get wetter, stickier. Laurent is so hard it burns, and he wants them off, he wants it all off, off, off, offoffoff —
Damen’s hand moves, following the waistband of Laurent’s boxers to the back of them. He presses his thumb firmly to Laurent’s tailbone, then down Laurent’s crease in a perfectly straight line.
“This is it, isn’t it?” Damen says, rubbing through the boxers. “This is your cunt, you fucking—”
Laurent doesn’t hear the rest. He pushes against the thumb, trying to—do something, and that’s enough. He comes hot and dizzying, so hard he forgets to be ashamed of it. Forgets to want to clean it up.
After that, there is nothing at all.
*
In the morning, Laurent’s head feels like something that’s been crushed open, and stepped on. Like a fruit that’s been left in the sun for too long, soft with rot. He’s surprised to find his fingers don’t sink right into the mush of his brain. He’s the first one to wake up, but he doesn’t move for a long time from his spot on the couch.
Nikandros is sitting on the floor with his face on Laurent’s thigh. That posture is atrocious, half-crouched, half-bent. He doesn’t rouse when Laurent touches his hair.
Damen is nowhere to be seen, at first. Then Laurent shifts and finds that it’s not the couch he’s laying on, but a field of flesh and muscle. Also asleep, Damen throws an arm over his face to keep the light away, and goes on breathing deeply and loudly, each new exhale closer to a snore than the one before.
Gathering his clothes and slipping them on without waking either of them up feels a lot like playing Minesweeper. He stuffs his stiff, crackling boxers into his bag without a second thought, and doesn’t worry about what he’ll say if Halvik finds them. It’s only after he’s finished buttoning his shirt that he realizes he could have grabbed one of theirs. That’d make for a good morning picture, Laurent thinks. Cute, domestic. They’re short-sleeved though, and the day’s unforgivingly bright.
By the time Nikandros comes wandering into the kitchen, Laurent is halfway done with the eggs.
“I don’t like eggs,” Nikandros says. He’s standing right behind Laurent, thighs to thighs.
“Eggs in general or…?”
“Yes.”
Laurent scrapes the wobbly yellow mess out of the pan and onto a plate. He keeps his breathing normal when Nikandros’s chin meets his shoulder. “I didn’t see any bread.”
“Top drawer. Make me some toast?”
“Make it yourself.”
“You made the eggs for Damen,” Nikandros says into Laurent’s neck. “What do I get?”
Laurent makes three pieces of toast. He plates their breakfast while Nikandros filters the coffee, cup after cup of black jittery liquid. By the time they’re both sitting at the table, the entire kitchen smells like a diner.
“I’ll go wake him up,” Laurent says, and is lassoed back into the kitchen by Nikandros’s arm. “What—”
“You didn’t say no last night.”
They’re going to talk about it, then.
“Is that a question?”
Nikandros looks at him. His lashes are not long, but very curved.
“I liked it,” Laurent says. “Smoking. It was—interesting. Is that what you were worried about? I’m not going to freak out over a fucking joint.”
“It’s never about the fucking joint,” Nikandros says. “If you didn’t like it, now’s the time to come clean about it.”
“I just said I did.”
Nikandros’s arm shifts from barrier to anchor, his hand looping around Laurent’s bad wrist. For a moment, Laurent does not dare breathe. But Nikandros doesn’t unbutton the sleeve, doesn’t roll it up past Laurent’s elbow where the scar fizzles out, doesn’t run his thumb across the uneven skin. Nikandros gives Laurent’s wrist a tap over his shirt.
“Wanna talk about it?”
Laurent does. Laurent doesn’t. “No.”
“Okay,” Nikandros says, letting go. Something in him seems to soften, and it makes him so unbearably ugly Laurent has to look away. “You know, if you—”
“No,” Laurent says, and disappears into the living room to wake Damen. The eggs are getting cold.
*
“Have you been journaling?” Herode asks. His voice sounds deeper on the phone than it really is in person. “Or drawing. I’m sure Auguste has many supplies you can—”
“I’m reading.”
“And that’s good, Laurent, that’s really—but we’ve talked about this. Reading’s very passive. You need something more engaging. Less input, more output.”
“How’s Vannes?” Laurent says, uncrossing his legs. Even with them completely stretched out, his toes don’t touch the end of the mattress. “I know she’s alive, so don’t say that, but…”
“She’s okay.”
“Just okay?”
“We’re not here to talk about Vannes,” Herode says, kindly, which is really the worst part about it all. “She’s alive and getting treatment. That’s all there is to say about it. Now, about the journaling—”
“I want to shave.”
“Ah.”
“Not just shave,” Laurent says. “I want people to stop patting me down every time I come back to the house. I want to take a shower with the door closed. I want—”
“Yes,” Herode says. “I get what you mean.”
“Talk to Auguste about it.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you,” Laurent snaps. You fucking old cunt, you. “You set those rules, tell Auguste to drop them.”
“Why do the rules exist? Remind me.”
Laurent shuts up. He doesn’t need reminding, and neither does Herode.
“Laurent…”
“Because of what I did.”
“What did you do?”
“Something stupid,” Laurent says. “He listens to you. Just tell him that I—it’s unreasonable. It’s been fucking months.”
“All conversations must come in their own time,” Herode says. “Now, about the journaling, don’t you—”
Laurent hangs up.
*
“Rise and shine,” Lazar says, “birthday boy.”
Laurent doesn’t look away from his book. “How much did he pay you to say that?”
“A lot.” Lazar puts the breakfast tray down on the bed, by Laurent’s thighs. “The balloon was extra, by the way.”
PARTY ANIMAL!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! the yellow balloon reads. It’s the ugliest thing Laurent has ever seen, and for a second he has the throbbing urge to text a picture of it to Aimeric. Birthday breakfasts at the clinic consisted of a slice of birthday cake—store-bought, obviously—and a drink of choice—protein shake, orange juice, and sometimes milk. A feast, truly.
Now there is tea and cookies, an uneven number of them. Lazar probably ate one on his way up the stairs.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Halvik always does even portions,” Laurent says. “So don’t lie.”
“Halvik’s not here.”
“She prepared this last night before she left. I literally saw her do it.”
“God, you’re so fucking annoying,” Lazar says, not really looking at him. He punches the balloon once, twice. “What’s this made out of? It doesn’t sink.”
The cookies are nice. Oatmeal and peach. “Ever heard of helium?” Laurent says.
The rest of the day is like any other. He plays checkers with Lazar; Lazar loses. He eats lunch alone in his room under Jord’s boring gaze, then naps, then goes downstairs to set as much of the table as he’s allowed to. He can do most silverware, except knives. All glasses are made of that weird, plastic-like material that doesn’t break, no matter how hard one throws it against the floor.
Two plates, two glasses, two complicatedly-folded napkins. One centerpiece in the middle. Two forks, the ends of them dull. Halvik left some cake in the oven for Laurent to decorate if he felt like it, but the blue frosting seems like a hassle. It’s not like Auguste will eat any of it anyways.
Laurent sits at the table. He crosses his legs, then uncrosses them, then stretches them, then tucks them on the chair and close to his chest, then plants his feet on the floor. Fifteen minutes. He waits another ten until he walks into the kitchen and takes the cake out of the oven. Knifeless, he tears himself a slice using his fingers, and a rain of crumbs follows him all the way back to the table. Thirty minutes.
When the seventy-five-minute mark is over, Damen and Nikandros arrive.
“Cute party,” Damen says, like a whistle. His eyes are on the clean plates. “Is your brother…?”
“He’s working.”
Nikandros has something in his hand, a small box poorly wrapped in tacky red. “You’ve got any wine?”
“What’s that?” Laurent says. He doesn’t smile. “A gift?”
“Maybe,” Damen says. “If you’re good.”
“So it is for me.”
“Not really,” Nikandros says, rolling his shoulders. The shirt he’s wearing is white, the neckline a deep maroon color. “I was in town the other day, and I thought—God, I really need to buy Laurent’s cleaning lady something. So I did.”
“You’re not funny,” Laurent says, but he wants to laugh. “Wine’s in the cellar. Remember the way?”
The line appears. “Up the stairs, yeah.”
They don’t come back to the living room once they’ve picked out the wine, but to Laurent’s room. Auguste’s voice is flooding the hall despite the office door being closed, and Laurent walks by it without looking.
His room looks doll-sized with them in it, the proportions all off. When Nikandros sits on his bed, the whole thing creaks.
“You have your wine,” Laurent says, standing by the bed. “Can I have my gift?”
“I don’t know,” Damen says, hands sneaking into Laurent’s front pockets. “Can you?”
Nikandros leans against the headboard. “Guess what it is first.”
“A book.”
With one single movement, Damen tugs his pants down. They’re loose enough that they fall to the floor without any struggle, and pool around Laurent’s ankles like white foam at the beach.
“Try again,” Damen says, and his hands are now resting on Laurent’s shoulders.
“Strip poker?” Laurent says. He knows that if he moves back enough, if he grinds back just right, he’ll be able to feel that Damen is hard in his jeans. “This is stupid.”
Damen pinches him once, hard, right below his belly button. “Try again.”
“New pants.”
Laurent’s shirt comes off next.
“Again.”
“How many chances do I get?”
“A bunch,” Nikandros says.
“What happens when I run out of clothes?”
“I don’t know,” Nikandros says.
Damen’s hand is splayed over Laurent’s stomach, his pinky brushing the waistband of Laurent’s boxers.
“Jewelry,” Laurent says, and then Damen is shoving the boxers down and out of the way. “Chocolate?”
Damen pinches him again. His side. “No.”
“Give me a clue.”
“It’s something you put on,” Nikandros says.
“Lingerie? What—stop,” Laurent says, like a yelp. Damen’s got two fingers on him now, twisting his right nipple. “Stop, that’s—”
“But it’s not lingerie,” Damen says, hot against his cheek. “Go again.”
“No.”
Laurent’s nipple is a hot, white point of pure pain. “No?” Damen says, and he moves to pinch the other one as well.
“Shoes,” Laurent says, squirming. “R—ings. Socks. Socks. Socksockssocks—stop. ”
“You crying?” Damen says. The pressure dies down a little. “Oh, baby, there’s no need to put on a show like that.”
“What?”
“Why are you acting like you don’t like it?”
“I don’t,” Laurent says. “It hurts.”
“Your cock’s hard though,” Nikandros says, all the way from the bed. “So which one is it? You like it, or it hurts?”
Damen tsks. “I think it’s both.”
“I need a clue,” Laurent says, because Damen’s fingers are tightening again. “A—single clue.”
“You got your clue already.”
“Another one.”
A moment passes, slow, silent. The bedroom door is completely open, Laurent realizes, which makes little sense considering he was the one that closed it. He closed it.
“No,” Damen says, and pushes Laurent forward so hard all the air leaves him when his front touches the mattress. He doesn’t climb on top of Laurent though, the way Laurent thought he might. Instead, he puts one hand between Laurent’s shoulder blades, and presses down. “Sorry, sweetheart. You lost. Nik?”
The sound of paper being ripped fills the room. Laurent tries to turn his face towards it, but Damen’s hand on his back prevents him from moving at all. With every open-mouthed breath he takes, only some tepid air makes it inside his lungs. The rest is blocked out by the comforter on his face.
“Close the door,” Laurent says, when he feels like he can.
“Hmh? The door?”
Laurent nods, rubbing his face against the sheets.
“No,” Damen says. “I don’t think we will.”
And then the ripping sound stops, and Laurent tenses, because he can’t see, he can’t move, and Damen is holding him down like he knows Laurent will want to. Something splashes against his tailbone, dripping down his sides, down his ass. It doesn’t stop coming.
He squirms, or tries to. Damen presses harder down. “What’s that?” Laurent says.
“Your gift,” Nikandros says. “You like it?”
It feels like honey. He wouldn’t put it past them, to pull a prank like this. The wetness is running down his thighs now, and if he concentrates hard enough he can hear the dribbling sound of it hitting the floor.
“That’s not—on.”
Damen lets him up, only slightly. “What was that, sweetheart? Couldn’t hear you.”
“That’s not something you put on, asshole.”
“Well,” Nikandros says, somewhere from behind him. “We’re putting it on you now, aren’t we?”
Damen’s half on top of him now, not just his hand pressing Laurent into the mattress below but his entire body. It isn’t fair, Laurent thinks, that he’s naked and they’re not, that the door is open, that he can’t see Nikandros at all. It’s his birthday.
“We had to make your first time special,” Damen murmurs into his ear. One of his hands travels down Laurent’s back, down and down and down, until it gets to the curve of his ass. He stops there, hand splayed, but pushes his middle finger a bit further. Crooks it until the pad of it touches— “Wouldn’t want to hurt you, not when you’re so sweet for us. And you are sweet, aren’t you?”
Laurent can’t quite think. Damen’s finger is completely still, not inside but applying the faintest of pressures. “No,” he says, lagging. “‘m not—”
“You’re really fucking wet here, did you know?”
Of course he is. They just poured half a bottle of whatever on his ass. Laurent opens his mouth to say so, tenses his legs to deliver a kick, but then Damen is pushing his finger inside in one clean move, from pad to knuckle. In.
Laurent tenses like a string being pulled.
“You’re so wet,” Damen says, “that it’s dripping down my hand. And that’s not even—come here, Nik. Look at this.”
Laurent kicks then, once. He grapples with the comforter, trying to claw his way forward and away, trying to do something other than lie there like an idiot.
“What’s wrong?”
Laurent tries to kick him again. Fails.
“Mhm,” Damen says, moving his finger. His other hand is in Laurent’s hair, pushing his face into the mattress. “You don’t want to show Nik your cunt? Are you embarrassed, sweetheart?”
New hands join in, spreading him open and keeping him like that. Laurent’s ears are ringing, his head feels like the lit end of a matchstick.
Damen adds another finger. He hums when Laurent whines. “I know, I know. Feels good. Are you watching that?”
Nikandros lets go of one of Laurent’s cheeks, puts his thumb right where Laurent is truly stretched open, pets the very rim. “It’s sucking you right in. Add another one.”
“No,” Damen says, pumping in and out and in and out and Laurent knows, Laurent can feel the way his ass is clinging to Damen’s fingers, trying to chase them on their way out. “First time’s the tightest. I don’t want to ruin the fun.”
Eventually, the fingers disappear altogether. Laurent doesn’t have the energy to move anymore, not when he can feel his hole convulsing around nothing and the lube or oil or whatever it is drying on his cheeks.
Then, where there were once fingers, there is something wet. It comes to rest right over Laurent’s hole and, much like Damen’s fingers, it stays put. At first.
“What do you want?” Damen says. He’s got the courtesy to lift Laurent’s head off the mattress to let him answer. “We’ll start slow, how’s that, baby? But I know you can take it.”
Laurent doesn’t open his eyes. “Close the door,” he says. “‘s what I wan’”
“Why?”
“Brother,” Laurent says. Complete sentences evade him.
“You don’t want your brother to hear you getting fucked?” Nikandros says. He’s right behind Laurent, right behind. It might be his cock that’s— “A door’s not gonna do shit. You just need to be really quiet, huh?”
“Condom,” Laurent says, randomly remembering.
Damen laughs. “Sure,” he says, and then the cock is inside Laurent.
*
Sorry about last night. Meeting ran late. Cake tonight? - A
Laurent doesn’t have any scissors to cut the note up, or matches to burn it, or access to knives and razors and hammers and shears. He puts the paper in his mouth, tastes the ink, then rips it with his teeth.
*
“This,” Damen says, “is a cookie.”
The pill in Damen’s hand doesn’t look like a cookie. It doesn’t smell like one either, and it’s not crumbly or sweet when Damen pushes it onto Laurent’s tongue. What is it? Laurent knows he should ask. Where did you get it? Is it safe?
"Swallow," Damen says. "Good. Now come lie down until it kicks in."
The bed in Makedon’s guest room is big enough for the three of them. Laurent sits in Nikandros's lap, knees folded, facing him like there’s no space for his body anywhere else. Nikandros lets him and doesn’t complain when Laurent leans forward to kiss his jaw.
“You’re being nice today,” Nikandros says as he traces the shape of a bone under the fat of Laurent’s cheek. “Something you want?”
“I’m always nice.”
“Are you?”
“Damen,” Laurent says, and feels rather than sees the mattress dip. Damen’s hand is on his back, big enough to cover most of his ribs. “Am I ever not nice?”
Damen laughs into his nape. “Never, sweetheart.”
“Feeling dizzy?”
Laurent blinks. “No.”
“Hmh.”
“Am I—”
“Twenty more minutes or so,” Damen says. His fingers brush hair away from Laurent’s neck. “You’ll like this one. It’s different.”
Laurent doesn’t feel any different, until he does.
His neck turns into a spring, loose and tired, something that can’t hold his head up anymore. Laurent lets it lol on Nikandros’s shoulder and tries to swallow some of the spit he’s starting to drool.
When Nikandros leans back, Laurent follows his movements. Suddenly they’re lying down, and there are hands moving across his back, tugging at the waistline of his shorts, pulling at his shirt until it comes off.
“First round is the sleepy one,” Damen says. A metallic jingle fills the room—the sound of his belt buckle coming undone. The scratch of his open zipper follows. “It takes a while to fully kick in, but when it does… How are your fingers?”
Fingers. Laurent blinks against Nikandros’s collarbone, tries to locate his own hands. He has hands, and his hands have fingers attached to them. Right. He flexes one hand. Five fingers. He flexes the other—
“Can’t,” he mumbles.
No one replies.
Time passes. Laurent knows it does, not because they tell him, but because he slowly grows warmer and warmer under the morning sunlight. The shadows of the room shift with the minutes, and a couple of blinks later Laurent is no longer lying down on top of Nikandros but on the soft, unused mattress. Rumpled sheets tickle his nose, but his fingers don’t obey him when he tells them to scratch.
Hands—not his, he realizes stupidly, but someone else’s—are rearranging him on the bed. They’re sliding his arms down and back, then crossing them at the wrist. He can’t feel any of his fingers, but he can feel the weight of his hands over his tailbone, right at the base of his spine. He blinks, and sees little more than an expanse of white; the sheets are in the way.
“Easy,” one of them says. Laurent strains against the sound, trying to make it out. “It’ll start to feel good in a second.”
Laurent’s pants are slid down to his thighs and with them come his boxers. He’s cold for a second, but then the sunlight warms him there, too.
“—good?”
A hand cups him, begins to knead, then stops. “Can you talk?”
Laurent doesn’t know. It’s hard to remember how one does that sort of thing.
“Yes or no,” Nikandros says. Or at least, Laurent thinks it is Nikandros talking. There’s a thumb in his mouth, suddenly, prying it open with gentleness. It tastes like Nikandros. “Does that feel good, yes or no?”
“Hmh,” Laurent says around the thumb. Drool comes out, unstoppable.
Another hand cups the rest of him. They spread him open, but Laurent can’t quite feel it. He feels the hot sunshine spilling into him, then an intermittent puff of air on his hole. There is laughter.
“Don’t clench,” Damen says, and spreads him wider. He’s still laughing. “I mean…” He presses the pad of his thumb to Laurent’s very center, then rubs it around. For a second, Laurent floats away, to a place where words have no meaning. “—a little. We could skip the—”
“No,” Nikandros says.
Something wet and cold splatters his right cheek, then drips down to his hole. It’s too thick to be spit, not warm enough to be come. Laurent squirms against the feeling, especially when fingers begin spreading the mess around.
They press him into the bed by his wrists. “Stop moving,” one of them says. Laurent can’t tell which one it is.
The static gathers around him, but it doesn’t take him away. It’s a new kind of frizziness—clumsy and rabbit-like, hopping from one moment to the next with big chunks of time missing in between. He comes back when the first finger is knuckle-deep in him, moving as though trying to hollow him out.
Laurent’s tongue touches his hard palate. The beginning of a sound wants to come out.
A hop in time, and he’s moving. He’s moving forward and then—not. The sheets are scratching his face, which is being rubbed back and forth into them. One of them is fucking him. He clenches as though to check, as though to see if he can make himself feel it. He can’t.
The moans above him are punched-out sounds, more heaves than actual words. Over them, Laurent hears little clicks. One, two, three. Smile! he hears inside his head. Pictures.
“D—” he starts, but his tongue won’t twist the right way. “M?” he tries. Then, “Th—o?”
The cock inside him doesn’t still. Laurent doesn’t feel him come, whoever he is, but he does feel the wet mess of it when he pulls out.
“Let’s help you up. Come on, sweetheart.” Damen, then.
Laurent is pulled up by the armpits, which should feel embarrassing but doesn’t. He can sit up himself, he’s—big. He’s big now, he thinks. He doesn’t need help getting out. Or up. The hands under his arms are lowering him, all of the sudden, and Laurent can only sag forward as they set him down on another cock.
The sunlight has a smell. It’s like laundry detergent and water and the color blue, which in Laurent’s head tastes like apples. God, he’s—what is he doing?
On his stomach again. “He can, he can,” Damen is saying. “Go on. Fuck.”
The pain cuts through everything else, technicolor and explosive. It hurts. Laurent grabs a fistful of sheets and tries to push himself forward and away, tries to crawl, but then there are hands on his waist dragging him back.
One fucks out, while the other fucks in. Laurent doesn’t try to crawl away again, and instead lies where he’s been told to, stomach tight and head fuzzy. He thinks he sobs when a hand meets the meaty part of his thigh.
“Clench up,” Damen says. More laughter, two more slaps to Laurent’s ass. “If I wanted to fuck something this loose, I’d fuck my hand. Clench. Up.”
Laurent tries. It hurts when he does, but the slaps hurt more. Pain is bright red, and tastes like hot, sticky iron.
*
“You never kiss each other,” Laurent says, when it’s just him and Nikandros in the kitchen.
It’s been happening more lately. Nikandros stays for a few minutes after Damen has gone back home, or arrives earlier, or comes to see Laurent during his break from fixing whatever’s broken around the house. If Damen notices it, he doesn’t mention it. If he’s upset about it, he doesn’t show it.
Lazar is in the bathroom, dicking around on his phone. Laurent can hear the music of the game he’s playing all the way across the hall.
“Is that a problem,” Nikandros says.
“No.”
“Then don’t fucking make it one.”
Laurent doesn’t flinch or recoil or have any stupid reaction. “Okay,” he says.
A whole minute passes. Laurent doesn’t need to count the seconds, because the microwave does it for him.
“How are your knees?” Nikandros says, not quite softly. Soft enough. “Have you put anything on them?”
“Yes,” Laurent says. Halvik forced him to, when she found the burns. Laurent told her they’d been out hiking, and he’d fallen down and scraped himself raw against a rock. She’d believed him. “It’s fine.”
The toilet flushes.
“Go back to work.”
Nikandros leans in so they’re nose to nose. There are footsteps on the hall, and Laurent’s hammering heart, and—A single kiss, wet and rough, and then Nikandros isn’t as close anymore. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Ah, lunch” Lazar says, as he enters the kitchen. He smiles at Nikandros. “You eating with us?”
*
The calendar on the fridge door is wrong.
“Did you re-print August?”
“No,” Auguste says, not looking at him. His work tablet has been pinging incessantly for the past hour. “I haven’t touched that in weeks. Why?”
“Yesterday was the eleventh,” Laurent says. He touches the red circle he drew a week ago around the small day-box. “Sunday. The eleventh.”
Ping. Ping. Ping. “And?”
“It was Friends & Family day at the clinic.”
“You’re not at the clinic anymore,” Auguste says.
Laurent should turn around and snap that yes, he knows that. He should feel annoyed or hurt or angry. He only feels shame, twisting inside him like a serrated knife. “I need to use my phone.”
“Why?”
“Do I need to beg?”
Auguste looks up from his tablet, frowning. “Laurent—”
“Can I,” Laurent says, “have my fucking phone back for fifteen minutes?”
“Not if you ask for it like that.”
“It’s my phone. I shouldn’t have to ask for it.”
Auguste stands, and his chair stumbles back. “You wouldn’t have to if you had proved you could be trusted with it. I’ve got work to do.”
“Give me my phone for fifteen minutes before you go,” Laurent says. He doesn’t care if it sounds like he’s begging. He is, after all. “Please,” he adds, and tries to shuffle his feet the way he knows Auguste remembers from years ago.
A new ping comes. Auguste tucks the tablet under his arm and looks for the phone in his pocket, all the while complaining about it. He looks a lot like Aleron, more than he’d be comfortable with. Laurent keeps the comment hidden away.
I’m sorry
Is he okay?
I’ll try and go next week when it’s visiting hours
Aimeric? I can see you online
“If you ever talk to me like that again,” Auguste says, calmly, “I’m throwing your phone into the pool. I’m not one of your little fucking friends.”
Laurent nods, not looking at him. The blue tick comes, but Aimeric doesn’t reply. He’s not even typing.
I was sick all weekend
That’s why I didn’t go
Aimeric stop fucking around
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Ten minutes are up,” Auguste says. “We can talk about screen time after work. Hand it back now.”
Aimeric
“Laurent.”
Tell him I’m sorry
“I’m not saying it—”
“Here,” Laurent says, and pushes his phone into Auguste’s chest. “Fucking keep it.”
*
Days trickle by, and he and Auguste don’t speak again until a week later. Laurent spends most of his time at Makedon’s, who is out of town for four days on a business trip. He’s out selling horses , Damen clarifies, and Nikandros doesn’t correct him. They fuck in all the crevices the house provides them with—kitchen counter, laundry rack, hallway. When the last day of being on their own comes, Damen leads him to the stables to surprise Nikandros.
“He’s in charge of feeding them,” Damen says, holding the barn door open. “And I’m in charge of convincing him to shovel their shit.”
“Doesn’t seem fair.”
Nikandros comes out of the last stall, plucking his gloves off and throwing them over one of the little doors. “Nothing’s fair when Damen’s involved. Hey, don’t. I just stacked those.”
Damen stops trying to make Laurent fall on the piles of hay. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Damen says, and pushes Laurent down with all his strength.
The hay smells fresh, which is a relief. It tickles and stings at the same time, but Laurent doesn’t let himself worry too much. He can breathe even with his face buried in it, and when he opens his eyes he sees a world of beige and filtered light instead of the darkness he’s used to getting in their bed.
This time, when the first cock pushes into him, Laurent is almost certain it’s Nikandros’s.
“Your brother just texted me about dinner,” Damen says, after. He has sweat and oil stains all over his shirt, and short sticks of hay are sticking to them. “Family’s coming over, huh?”
Laurent stops drooling on Nikandros’s thigh. “Family?”
Damen twists the phone around so Laurent can see the screen. The light hurts his eyes at first, a testament to how dark it’s gotten inside the barn since they first walked in. Tell Laurent dinner’s at 9. Our uncle is coming over. You’re more than welcome to join. When Laurent reaches out, Damen takes the phone away.
“We’ll shower and go then,” Damen says. He bends down, then pretends to sniff Laurent’s scalp. “You need a shower too, sweetheart.”
Uncle is already at the house when they get there. He and Auguste have come out to the backyard, and Auguste is crouching down by the pool pointing at something, rambling, and Uncle is nodding along. Both of them have half-filled cups of wine in their hands.
Uncle hasn’t dressed up for this—dark blue pants, a simple white shirt with the soft collar ironed out, black shoes—or shaved. He went through a clean face phase, some years ago. Laurent pretends not to notice.
Greetings are exchanged by the pool, some Laurent hears, some fade away. He doesn’t offer any of his own, and nobody demands them of him. In fact, nobody seems to see him at all, pressed into the tight space between Nikandros and Damen’s bodies.
“Public defense?” Uncle asks, almost smiling. He’s good at looking interested. “I’ve heard it’s not as bad as people make it out to be.”
Damen shrugs, and the movement rattles Laurent. “I don’t know yet for sure. Whatever lets me stay close to—in Ios, basically.”
“You’re both from there.”
“Yes,” Nikandros says.
“I’m assuming you also want to stay close to the capital?”
Nikandros doesn’t shrug, doesn’t smile. When he talks, each word comes out overly clear. “I suppose. What do you do?”
Uncle’s mouth opens, but Laurent cuts in first. “He buys cheap properties, gives them a makeover, and then rents them out. Or sells them.”
“So, a landlord,” Nikandros says.
“And a photographer.”
Uncle doesn’t look at him. “I quit photography a long time ago, and I wouldn’t dare say I was ever a professional.”
“Really,” Laurent says.
Placidly: “Really.”
“Would you like some wine?” Auguste says, suddenly.
“Yes,” Damen says.
“No,” Nikandros says, at the same time.
“We should go inside anyways. I think it’s going to rain.”
It doesn’t rain. Dinner is something Halvik left ninety-five percent prepared, vegetables and pasta, along with three wine bottles that Uncle offers to get down from the cellar. The conversation is liquid smooth and avoids Laurent like there’s a dam around him. College? He’s not going. Friends back home? He doesn’t have any. Hobbies? Reading, he’d say, if anyone was interested enough to ask him about it.
Uncle used to ask, Laurent remembers, about that and other things. Innocuous things. Things Auguste didn’t care about, didn’t know about, didn’t think were important. Reading, at first, then school drama and Youtube videos and snacks and hair trends, until there was nothing Laurent wasn’t willing to share, asked or not.
“You haven’t mentioned Annika in a while,” Uncle says, his thumb on the stem of his wine glass. “She’s in Arles, isn’t she? I didn’t see her when I stopped by the Fabvre last week.”
Auguste leans back in his chair, makes a vague gesture with his hand. “Didn’t work out, so. She’s still making art though. I’ve, er. I’ve seen it on Instagram.”
“Still into painting eyes?”
“Well—”
“Who’s Anikka?” Damen asks after a particularly long sip of wine. There’s a curl on his face, brown and springly because it did not dry properly. Laurent wants to tuck it away. “Sister? Cousin?”
“Girlfriend,” Uncle says. “Auguste’s, more specifically.”
“Ex-girlfriend,” Auguste says.
Laurent stares down at his plate, thinks he can see the shape of Annika’s face in the smears of sauce. She was nice and stupid, which is the best combination for anyone that chooses to engage with Auguste. She baked Laurent brownies once, when he was still at the clinic.
Uncle tilts his head to the side, just barely so. His eyes are on Damen. “Do you… Well, I suppose it’s impolite to assume.”
“Do I…?” Damen says.
“Do you have a girlfriend in Ios?”
Damen’s dimple blinks in and out of existence. “Not at the moment, no.”
“And you?” Uncle says, looking at Nikandros.
“No.”
“Isn’t that curious.”
“Curious?” Damen says. He’s smiling again, his sardonic smile, the one he uses when he’s calling Laurent a cunt. “Can’t really think of why.”
“I’ll do the cleaning up,” Laurent says, and slips away into the kitchen before they can tell him not to.
Forks, plates, side plates. Laurent scrubs each piece of cutlery with Halvik’s favorite pink sponge, hard enough that the pads of his fingers go from white to pink to red under the hot water in the sink. Bubbles come and go, white foam too. He’s on the last two plates when Uncle walks in.
“Auguste said there is cake for dessert,” Uncle says. It sounds like an answer even though there have been no questions.
Scrub, rinse, then scrub again to ensure there are no spots left. This isn't Macbeth, after all, and Laurent is no lady.
Uncle gets closer, as does the faint smell of his Poivre cologne. The first month, the one Uncle spent away in Chastillon, Laurent would sneak into his bathroom and sniff the cologne bottle, hard enough that his nose would burn for hours after. “Halvik’s cooking has gotten better,” Uncle says. “It’s a shame Auguste didn’t think to invite her over tonight.”
“Why would he?”
“He invited some of the help.”
Laurent holds onto the plate tighter, watches rivers of soapy water whirl down the drain. “Damianos and Nikandros? They’re not the help.”
“They work for your brother,” Uncle says, slowly, calmly, like he’s savoring something. “Isn’t that the definition of being the help?”
Laurent doesn’t reply. Any answer would be pathetic, which Uncle knows. Only one plate left, cream-colored with a golden rim.
“You like them.”
No reply, again.
“They’re a bit old for you.”
“Not too old,” Laurent says, although he knows he doesn’t need to defend this. He knows. Words slide out of his mouth as though drenched in oil. “It’s only for the summer anyway. They want to go back to Ios, and I want—”
“Which one are you fucking?”
Laurent stills, then tries not to. It’s a failure from all angles. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I thought it was the rude one at first,” Uncle says, “but now…”
“Nikandros isn’t rude.”
“Ah,” Uncle says, and Laurent doesn’t dare look at him, doesn’t dare turn around at all. “So it’s both.”
The plate slips. Laurent isn’t quick enough to grab it, and it hits the bottom of the copper sink with a rattling, startling sound. A crack appears down the middle of it, and when the water touches it the two halves split.
Laurent closes the tap, and silence settles over the kitchen. It’s not until all the water has escaped that he lets himself reach down for the first ceramic half.
“Be careful not to cut yourself,” Uncle says. Again, Laurent hears.
*
“Tell me a secret,” Damen says, eyes on Laurent’s boring ceiling. Zoloft makes him slow like this. Contemplative, Nikandros would say.
Laurent turns his head to look at him. The floor is nice and cool under him, if only a little hard. Lying like this should not feel as good as it does, but it’s the closest to juvenile he’s had since the clinic. It’s like a sleepover, or what he’s always imagined them to be.
“I don’t have any.”
“Now that’s a big fucking lie,” Damen says. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
“Damen,” Nikandros says. Chiding.
The sunlight is fading. Only Laurent’s right foot is drenched in it. “I fucked someone I shouldn’t have.”
“Shouldn’t have. Interesting choice of words.”
“Who?” Nikandros says. He’s looking at Laurent, his cheek touching the floor. “Us?”
“That’s not a secret, is it?”
“Seriously though,” Damen says, climbing to his elbows. Any moment now he’ll do a plank. “Who was it?”
“There was a—when I was away. The gardener.”
“Why?”
“I was bored,” Laurent says. “Your turn.”
“You haven’t given me any details,” Damen says. “What—”
“I sucked him off in one of the supply closets a couple of times.”
“You said you fucked them.”
“Damen,” Nikandros says again. “Cut it out.”
“He didn’t get hard,” Laurent says, just because. He likes the way Nikandros’s mouth twists when he’s upset. “I guess he was too nervous about getting caught. Your secret?”
“I also fucked someone I shouldn’t have.”
Nikandros sits up, his back to Laurent. He doesn’t say anything, but Laurent knows he’s trying to tell Damen something. Annoyance bubbles up inside him like acid, nibbling at every organ. It isn’t fair that they get to do that.
“Who?” Laurent says. “Isander?”
They don’t reply.
“That was his name, right?”
“It’s late,” Nikandros says. He stands, then offers Damen a hand. “Where did you put my shoes?”
Damen ignores the hand. His pupils are black and huge, and they stay on Laurent the entire time. How many pills did he take? Three? Laurent took one, then another quarter. Nikandros didn’t take any.
“Wanna talk about Isander?” Damen says, heavy enough that the name seems to curl into itself towards the end. It’s not quite a slur, but… “You’re jealous.”
Laurent’s blood thickens. “I don’t care who you’ve fucked.”
“You cared enough to ask about Jo. Now this.”
“It’s called making conversation.”
Damen laughs, leaning back until his shoulders touch the base of Laurent’s bedpost. He’s so fucking annoying, so pointlessly rude and confrontational, that it makes—it makes Laurent—
A hand closes around Laurent’s elbow. The grip is tight enough to make his arm ache. “Keep your mouth shut,” Nikandros says, very quietly.
“He’s—”
“I said keep your fucking mouth shut.”
The grip tightens to a hot point, where the pain peaks and radiates up to Laurent’s shoulder, and then is gone. Nikandros has moved away from him and towards Damen, is helping Damen up, hauling him forward as best as he can so they can both get out the door.
It slams shut so hard dust and plaster rain down from the ceiling.
*
Auguste establishes new rules. Laurent is allowed his phone for one hour after dinner, to do with as he pleases. After the hour is up, the connection cuts off and Auguste blocks all the apps with some new parental control system that Jord has helped him set up.
Laurent lies in bed with the sheets over his head, a too-hot cocoon filled with white and blue light from his phone screen. He only has one hour; he has to make it count.
Aimeric hasn’t texted him back, hasn’t even opened the scattered texts Laurent has sent him, half-apologizing and half-promising to do better next time. There’s a part of Laurent that flares up with annoyance at the lack of response, but another one—bigger and growing—that can’t help but feel ashamed. He thinks of Erasmus’s face when he found out Govart was getting out, of Erasmus’s face when Laurent didn’t go see him last week. Erasmus has the kind of face one can’t help but look at.
isander, he types into Google. It’s a stupid thing to look up all on its own, and so Laurent adds a mix of random, barely connected words. ios akielos ios university damianos. Predictably, nothing comes up.
Uncle’s name takes him to a chain of useless links. Charity event, construction company, charity event, charity event, charity event. Laurent doesn’t stop to squint at the photographs, to look for little grubby and grimy hands, to check whether the charity events have taken place at orphanages or nurseries or primary schools. He would have, in the past.
He’s just beginning to type out Erasmus’s name when the connection dies out.
*
It happens four days later, and it is partly Laurent’s fault. He’s been thinking about the gardener, about the tiny closet, but also about what came before that. During group therapy, sometimes Aimeric would lose it and babble, which was just fine with Laurent because it meant he didn’t have to speak up himself. I just want to do it right , he’d say, just one more time, just—if I can do it again, I can do it the right way. Then all the bad ones won’t matter at all, at all, because I’d have—I’d have this one good thing.
There were two kinds of bans on words at the clinic. Hard bans— kill yourself, razors, suicide, rape, slut, you were looking for it, cunt, faggot, bitch, inbred —and soft bans— right, wrong, supposed to, should, have to, insane. There is no right or wrong way to do things, Herode would say. Except there is, Laurent thinks. Aimeric is stupid and annoying and mostly insane, but he was right about that.
And it’s not like Laurent hasn’t done it—since. He has. He just wants to do it again, and do it right.
“I want to suck your dick,” Laurent says, in front of the bathroom mirror. He makes a face, then rearranges it. “I want… to suck your dick.”
Mirror-Laurent cringes with him again.
“I want to suck your cock.”
Slightly better, but it’s still not quite right.
“Breakfast’s getting cold,” Halvik says, knocking on the door. “You there, kid?”
“Yes,” Laurent says. Then, when her footsteps have faded: “Can I please suck your cock?”
Later, when he asks, Nikandros blinks at him. “What?”
“I can suck Damen off,” Laurent says, “if you don’t want to.”
“I want to,” Damen says, from where he’s sprawled out on the couch. “In fact, I insist.”
“Why?”
Laurent forces himself to shrug. “If you really don’t want to…”
“Why are you asking ,” Nikandros says.
That makes Laurent pause. It’s true; they’ve never asked before. He doesn’t say that, obviously, because saying it would mean admitting he’s going about it the wrong way. Instead, he walks up to Damen, lowers himself to his knees, and pries Damen’s legs open. He can do Nikandros after.
This is the right way, Laurent thinks as he untangles the mess of a belt that Damen is wearing. He takes his time with the top button of Damen’s jeans, then even longer dragging the zipper down. Under the dark blue denim, Damen is wearing soft black cotton that stretches easily. AK, the waistband reads. It’s not a brand Laurent recognizes.
Damen whistles, low and sardonic. “No warm-ups?”
“What?”
“I’m not hard.”
That’s the point. Laurent is supposed to tease him through his boxers, then jerk him off a bit, then—well. Not supposed to, but. He presses his thumb to the place where he thinks the head is, rubbing in, then up and down. The black cotton gets wet, drop by drop.
His knees hurt a little. The carpet is not the place to be doing this, but rolling it up and tucking it away would have taken too much effort, and this is supposed to be effortless. This is supposed to be fun, like the pills or the sex or the banter.
“Well?” Damen says. He’s hard now and out of his boxers, but other than that there is no straining to him, no override. “Are you—”
Laurent takes the head into his mouth.
The pace is slow, at first. Damen tastes like skin and the white soap they keep in the barn, and Laurent focuses on that as he laps and mouths at and sucks. He doesn’t know where Nikandros is, can’t see him, but he knows Nikandros is watching, and that’s good enough for now.
Damen doesn’t moan like the gardener did, or at all. He breathes calmly like he doesn’t really care that someone’s mouth is on his dick, and stretches his legs and arms. After the first two minutes, he lowers his right hand to Laurent’s head as though to pet it, but then closes his fingers around as much hair as he can and pulls so hard Laurent’s entire scalp burns.
“D—”
The first gag comes, then the second. Damen keeps him down though, through all the drool and panicky fumbling, and then, for a split-second, pushes Laurent’s head even harder. Then he lets up.
Laurent sits back on his heels, coughing and heaving and still drooling. “Fuck—you.”
“Me?” Damen says. He has a hand around his cock, at the very base, and it looks like he’s holding it there just for Laurent to look at. “I’m not the one that doesn’t know how to suck dick, sweetheart.” With his thumb, he angles his cock lower, lining it up with Laurent’s mouth. “Come on. Try again.”
It isn’t easier the second time around, but Laurent is more prepared. When Damen grabs him by the hair again and forces him down, he doesn’t startle back or try to complain. He makes a fist instead, and inside there is his own thumb, being squeezed so tightly the blood stops reaching the very tip.
Damen’s cock slides all the way in past the first ring of his throat, gliding against Laurent’s palate. No moans come from Damen, but his thigh tenses under Laurent’s splayed hand. Nikandros reacts this way, too. His thighs were rock hard that first time Laurent touched him on this very same couch, and the thought of them being so alike, so similarly responsive shouldn’t make Laurent feel anything—except contempt, perhaps—but instead Laurent finds something slightly warm spreading through him, something like—
“What,” Auguste says, “the fuck?”
The hand in Laurent’s hair disappears. Everything disappears, actually, for a hot, blinding moment. The room melts away, then is replaced by Auguste’s bedroom back in their Arles apartment, and there is blood that Laurent can’t stop, no matter how tightly he presses into his wrist, and Auguste is so angry it is simply unbearable.
But Laurent isn’t in Arles, or bleeding. He’s here, and it is so much worse.
“—idiot? Is that it?” Auguste is saying. He has Damen against the east wall, which is pretty far away from the couch Laurent just saw Damen sitting on. “I’m going to fucking ruin your life, you—”
“Let go of him,” Nikandros says, “and then we can talk.”
Laurent blinks. He’s the only one sitting down on the floor, half sprawled there. “Auguste.”
“You need to calm down,” Damen says. It comes out of breath, which is no surprise given the way Auguste is pressing his forearm to Damen’s throat. Still, Laurent knows this is simply an illusion of a confrontation; two against one, or three, if one takes Damen’s size into account. “Let’s—”
“Shut up, mongrel.”
“They didn’t force me,” Laurent says, loudly. It feels necessary.
Auguste’s reply comes instantly, so sharp it might as well be a knife thrown at Laurent. “You can’t even drive a fucking car because you’re not medically competent, and you’re saying you gave consent to—to—and these fucking opportunistic pigs—”
“I don’t think you wanna be talking about that,” Nikandros says. He puts a hand on Auguste’s shoulder, and instead of a simple pat there is a squeeze. He’s shoving Auguste away from Damen. “Unless you’d like me to get my mouth running. Let go.”
Now free, Damen touches his jaw. The buckle of his belt is dangling open. “Calm down. It was just one time. Nothing else happened.”
“That’s not what a first time looks like.”
“How would you know?” Nikandros says. “Do you always stand there and watch when your brother gets fucked?”
Auguste hits him, closed fist and all. Blood splashes the wall in three places, all red weeping dots from Nikandros’s nose. Auguste goes for a second shot, but Damen steps in between them, his fist also raised.
“Get the fuck out of my house,” Auguste says. “Fucking junkies. I’m going to call the cops and have them raid your dad’s entire fucking farm. Did you hear me?”
Nikandros stops cupping his nose. “Why? You want your money back? Gonna have to explain all those payments though.”
Laurent rises from the floor. Surprisingly, his legs support him. “What are you talking about?”
“Laurent, go to your room.”
“Explain what?” Laurent says without moving from his spot, because he isn’t a ten-year-old kid that has to do as Auguste says. “You fixed shit around the house, you got paid for it. What’s there to explain?”
For the first time, the room is silent.
“Just get out of my house,” Auguste says after a while.
Damen tilts his head. “Are you going to call the cops?”
“I will if you don’t fucking leave.”
“You know what’s going to happen if you tell them,” Nikandros says. “Or my dad. That’s a shit move for you.”
Auguste laughs. “Oh, I’m sure it’s just shit for me, huh? He’s just going to forgive and forget about this all, and you three will continue to be the best of friends. Or whatever the fuck you are.”
“We are friends,” Laurent says. “I’m of age. I can do whatever I want.”
“Can you stay out of this?”
“You’re talking about me.”
“Laurent,” Auguste says. “Laurent, just shut the fuck up.”
“You shut the fuck up,” Laurent snaps. He can’t quite feel his toes. “I’m not ten. What are you going to do about this? Take my fucking phone away? I’m nineteen, so stop acting like I’m some—”
“Laurent.”
“—fucking retard. It’s no one’s fault but yours that you’re a shit brother, and you don’t—”
“I paid them, you idiot,” Auguste says, loud and right in Laurent’s face. “I fucking paid them.”
Laurent wants to laugh. It’s such a stupid thing for Auguste to say, especially now. Of course he paid them. They did things around the house, they fixed the leak. There was a leak, and it was driving Halvik insane. Then there was the shed, which needed painting, and the creaky step, and the doors, and—
And there was Laurent, too. Laurent, who needed watching, who needed friends, who needed.
He looks at Damen first, and soon finds that Damen isn’t looking at his face but as his hands, and isn’t that strange? Damen always looks everyone in the face. Next, he turns to Nikandros. Laurent doesn’t even have to ask to know that it is true. It’s in the set of Nikandros’s mouth, in the hand that’s fisting by his side.
“Get out,” someone says. Laurent thinks it might be Auguste.
There are some advantages to losing time. One of them is that he doesn’t have to put any effort in turning around and leaving the living room, or hiking the stairs, or walking into his room. Laurent’s body does as it’s supposed to: takes off his shoes, tucks him into bed. When he turns his head to the right, he finds Siward’s words staring back at him. Some must go off. And yet, by these I see, so great a day as this is cheaply bought.
Laurent throws the book off the bed and goes away inside his head.
*
Auguste comes to him, eventually. He sits on the edge of Laurent’s bed, right by Laurent’s feet, and talks the talk that he believes is expected of him. This is what a father would do, Laurent thinks, and their father is dead. Thus.
“I’m sorry,” Auguste says, which is not something Aleron would have said. “We all agreed… We thought it’d be good for you. And it would have been good, was good, until you—for fuck’s sake, Laurent, why would you do that?”
The we bounces around Laurent’s skull like a little red plastic ball. Doctors and Auguste, or the help and Auguste, or Uncle and Auguste. Laurent doesn’t know which option makes him feel stupider.
“I’ve called Halvik to come spend the night,” Auguste goes on. “You shouldn’t be alone, and I… It’s the worst fucking time possible. The exhibitions are just starting again. I can’t—are you listening to me?”
Laurent is. He turns, and the room turns with him.
“Maybe Herode can drive here over the weekend… Or Jord could drive you to see him. Let’s—just stay away from them from now on and we’ll deal with the rest as it comes.” The bed creaks when Auguste stands. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
In the strange stretch of time between Auguste leaving and Halvik coming in, Laurent has an open-eyed dream. It’s a silver flash of cold, familiar enough to make him fist his hands, and then the watery calm of a red pour. He doesn’t move though, doesn’t try to sneak into the kitchen or break open the locks on the drawers to get a knife out, or go after them . He dreams his dream awake, and when it’s done he turns off the light.
“Wanna talk about it?” Halvik says, softly, from the chair in the corner.
Laurent doesn’t want anything.
*
In the morning, Lazar replaces Halvik. He tries jokes and bribery—chess, checkers, cards—and food. He eats his breakfast and then Laurent’s, too. He prods for bathroom visits, for a shower, for medication time. Laurent ignores all of this.
“You know, kid,” Lazar says, three bites into his lunch. “No offense, but you’re boring as shit when you’re like this. All catastrophic.”
Catatonic is the right word. Laurent feels the urge to correct like a twinge inside his stomach, a pathetic throb. He turns away from it.
“You need to eat something,” Lazar says when his shift is coming to an end. It’s six thirty-seven, and Laurent hasn’t had food since lunch the day before. “I’ll tell your brother to cut you up some fruit or something. Do you want some gum?”
At the clinic, gum was considered a choking hazard. Not allowed.
At eight, when the sun outside is finally dead, Auguste walks in. He’s got a tray with him and on it, there’s something that clinks with every step he takes, something like ice cubes. He draws Lazar out into the hall where they talk about something—Laurent, obviously—in pitiable whispers, then he comes back and sits where Halvik sat, closer to the window than Lazar usually chooses.
“So,” Auguste says. The curls in his hair are back, humidity-born and shapeless. “I’ve tried to call Makedon, but he’s out of town and won’t be back until Monday. Until then I think it’s best if you stay home and don’t do anything stupid. You know, behave like the adult you’re always saying you are.”
Laurent leans back against the headboard. It’s a struggle to keep his head up. “Why Makedon.”
There is some decency left in Auguste; he flushes. “We had an agreement, the two of them and me. They wouldn’t…” A pause, awkward and unnecessary. “And I would pay them but not tell Makedon about it.”
“Did he think they were working for free?”
“He thought they’d get paid at the very end of summer.”
Laurent doesn’t conjure up their faces, their voices, their hands. He doesn’t think about them walking up and down the stairs, carrying tools, painting doors and old tables with varnish. He doesn’t think about them fucking him because they were being paid to. “Why Makedon,” he asks again.
“So he can ship them off to fuck knows where,” Auguste says. “Why do you think it was so dire that he didn’t find out they had money in their pockets? They’re here on punishment.”
“Punishment.”
“Better than an actual rehab farm.”
Laurent doesn’t reply. Fucking junkies, Auguste had called them.
“I’m going to talk to that little shit’s dad and tell him they’ve been buying drugs with my money. Let’s see how long it takes him to kick—”
“Did you know,” Laurent says.
“Know what?”
“The drugs thing. Did you know they were into that when you—when they started—” Laurent forces himself to stop. Babbling is pathetic. “When the leak was a problem.”
Auguste flushes again, hard and splotchy. The blue in his eyes is that much brighter against the red. “It’s more complicated than that.”
Laurent doesn’t think it’s complicated at all. You wanted me off your hands, he thinks without any real bitterness. You wanted me gone. He can’t blame Auguste for that, when it’s what he’s wanted all along, too.
“Anyways,” Auguste says, like the clearing of a throat. “I’ll speak to Makedon when he gets here, that’s what I wanted you to know. Herode’s coming over on Saturday.”
“Don’t.”
“It’s not really up for negotiation. I’ve already set up an appointment, which was not fucking easy. Or cheap.”
“Makedon,” Laurent says. “Don’t talk to him.”
Auguste stops fidgeting in his chair. “Why?”
“Don’t.”
“Not if you won’t tell me why.”
There are many reasons. Only some are not pathetic enough to be spoken out loud. “It’s petty,” Laurent says, because it is. “And you don’t want… You shouldn’t piss them off.”
“Piss them off,” Auguste repeats. “What do I care if they’re upset? You think I’m not upset?”
“Just don’t.”
“Laurent, that’s—”
“They’ve got pictures,” Laurent says. He doesn’t look at Auguste as he says it, but rather at the window behind him. He thinks of how he tried to rattle it open the first night he got here, only to find that Auguste had had the latch fused into a permanent lock. He’s suddenly so tired he has to let his body slide down the headboard and lie on the bed. “Just don’t.”
There’s a grey stain on the ceiling, right over his bed. It’s yellowing at the edges.
“The leak’s back,” he says.
*
Charls’s library is divided into centuries. Laurent avoids Shakespeare, and Austen, and anything with a speck of romance in it. The Metamorphosis is short enough to be read in one single day, but still Laurent makes it last two, then goes back to the first page and reads is again, and again, again. ‘ What's happened to me,' he thought. It was no dream. Laurent knows; he also wishes it was a dream, he also feels like a roach.
The Karamazov Brothers lasts him an entire week. Throughout those seven days, Laurent eats saltine crackers that Halvik shoves down his throat, drinks exactly three liters of water, and says two words a day: bathroom and no.
Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Laurent underlines the first half of the sentence. only in dreams? He himself is greedy, and greed is what has always made him stupid.
Herode comes around. He wants to talk, but not about journaling this time.
“Why do you think you felt the need to do that?” he says, fifteen minutes into the session.
Laurent doesn’t reply.
“You know,” Herode says, “I thought we’d worked on your impulsivity. What changed?”
It is sometimes very pleasant to take offense. Yes, Laurent knows.
“Have you had any dangerous thoughts?”
“Red thoughts?” Laurent says. That’s what they called them in the clinic.
“Yes.”
“No,” Laurent says. He hasn’t thought about kitchen knives since that very first night, since he found out, because that would be the epitome of patheticness. That would be—histrionic. That would not do. To kill himself because he’s been rejected, because he’s not been an option all along, because he’s been a cock sleeve and nothing else. No. He won’t try to kill himself over that a second time. “Of course not,” he adds.
“What about orange thoughts?”
Harm, not death—the balance of orange. “Not at all,” Laurent says, which is not true. He’s been eyeing the stove when Halvik is busy, the bright blue flame of it, the way it licks the iron grill. He wants to put his hands there, flat and splayed. He’s been waiting for Auguste to leave the office door open, so he can slip inside and snatch something sharp or pointy or serrated or anything at all, anything. Even a pencil will do. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Do you feel hurt over what happened?”
“No.”
“How do you feel about Erasmus? About what happened?”
Laurent sits up a little. “What?”
“Your brother mentioned you were planning on visiting,” Herode says, “and then didn’t. You seemed worked up about it, and considering everything that happened—”
“What happened?”
Herode frowns his old, tired frown. “Laurent…”
“I forgot about F&F, that’s all. And I know he’s upset, he’s always fucking upset over something, which is… which is fair.” Laurent swallows, spit and air and vile. “I know Govart’s getting out, and he’s scared of that, but it’s not—I only skipped one fucking time, okay?”
“Okay,” Herode says. “Okay.”
Laurent tunes him out, calls for the static. The rest of the session is over in a hop.
*
Lazar googles it for him, later. Laurent tells him if he doesn’t, he’ll go to Auguste and tell him Lazar’s been fingering him under the table every time they play poker together.
“As if he’d believe you,” Lazar says, but still he hands his phone over to Laurent.
18 YEAR OLD ABUSE CASE VICTIM COMMITS SUICIDE - EARLY RELEASE & SOFT PENALTIES
KIDNAPPING SURVIVOR TAKES HIS OWN LIFE FOUR YEARS AFTER ASSAULT
ERASMUS TRISKOS (18) DEAD BY SUICIDE
Laurent hands the phone back.
*
Ten days after Auguste finds out—after Laurent finds out—a black elastic band appears twisted around the backdoor handle. Eleven days after, there’s a splatter of red paint on one of the shed’s doors. Twelve days after, pebbles rain down on Laurent’s fused-shut window.
On the night of the thirteenth day, Laurent pours Auguste a glass too many of wine during dinner, then slips out of his room when the house is sleeping. He brings a flashlight with him, the one he found in the cellar a month ago when he was rummaging through Cecile’s old boxes. Flashlights are allowed everywhere—they don’t burn or cut or hurt. He walks out, expecting the alarm to go off, and when nothing happens he walks more slowly, not wanting to get lost and have Auguste call the cops on him. Again.
If he’s misinterpreted the little signs, then no one will be there to shame him for it. He’ll simply turn around and go back home, go back to bed, go back to reading about Madame Bovary’s dress collection. The dark doesn’t frighten him, nor do the bugs and toads and puddles and swaying grass. He wishes for wolves, then feels stupid. He wishes for rain, pneumonia, failing lungs, and feels stupider. It’s summer. He keeps on walking.
He spots the fire first, small and not very bright. Then Damen, sitting by it. Then Nikandros, standing just a bit to the side of it all.
“You came,” Damen says. He doesn’t look bad or tired or like he spent the last two weeks crying himself to sleep. Unsurprisingly.
“You asked me to,” Laurent says.
“You could have ignored us.”
“Like that was an option. What was going to be the next sign? A fucking dead deer on my porch?”
Damen smiles. The fire makes his face look warmer than Laurent knows it to be. “Maybe. You’re a bit hard to reach, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“My brother’s not going to call the cops,” Laurent says, “or your dad, as long as you don’t leak any of the pictures. So you can stop now with the harassment.”
“Pictures?” Nikandros says.
“Harassment?” Damen says. “You came here out of your own free will.”
“Fuck you.”
Damen stands up, his shadow taller than him by a mile. “No. Did I sneak into your room and drag you out of bed, sweetheart? Am I holding you hostage in the woods right now?”
“Don’t call me that,” Laurent says.
“What? Sweetheart?” Damen tilts his head. “You liked it well enough before. Do you prefer darling now? Princess?” The tilt changes directions. “Cunt?”
Laurent should turn around, turn his flashlight on, go home. He’s said what he came here to say. And yet… He wants the so much. He’d almost forgotten what it’s like, standing in front of them, having their eyes on him, having them talk back. He is so thoroughly, entirely, wholly pathetic; he wants to stay where he is, with them. They’re the stove, Laurent realizes. And the kitchen knife, and the window of his room, thrown wide open. And he wants them. He’d sniff and snort and drink cologne bottles, if they left them laying around. It’s even worse than it was with Uncle.
“Come here,” Damen says, the way he used to. All that’s missing is a pat to his thigh.
Laurent goes, like the dog that he is.
Even though summer’s starting to wane, it’s still too hot for the fire to be enjoyable. The closer to it Laurent gets, the sweatier and stickier he feels. Damen’s hands come up to cup his face, and Laurent tries not to relax into the touch.
“Don’t tell me you’re upset, sweetheart,” Damen says, not quite kissing him yet. Close enough to. “It was hardly a chore, spending time with you. You know that, right?”
“Nothing’s a chore when you’re getting money out of it.”
“We haven’t spent it. Ask Nik.”
Laurent snorts, practically into Damen’s mouth. “Right. He’s got no reason to lie.”
The hands on his face clench a little, a finger digging into his jaw. “Are you calling him a liar?” Damen says. “That’s not very nice.”
Nikandros says, “It was shit, what we did, but it’s not like it wouldn’t have ended up like this anyway.”
“What?”
“We would have fucked you, money or no money. Result’s the same.”
Laurent tries to pull away, but Damen doesn’t let him. “I don’t believe you.”
“Hear that, Nik?”
“Mhm.”
“Wonder how we can change that.”
Laurent hasn’t heard Nikandros approach, but suddenly he feels someone right behind him, a chest brushing against his back, real and solid as a wall. His breath’s hot when it splashes on Laurent’s nape.
“We’re not getting paid now,” Nikandros says.
“You’re sick.”
“You’re also a little sick, sweetheart,” Damen says. “More than a little, if we’re being honest.”
Nikandros’s chin comes to rest on Laurent’s shoulder. “What do you think?”
Laurent isn’t thinking. If he were, he wouldn’t be here. “Are you going to give the money back?”
“Fuck no,” Nikandros says, so close to laughing Laurent almost laughs with him. Damen does. “Although it’s only fair that you get some of it, if you want it.”
“Or,” Damen says, “you can win it back.”
“Win it back.”
“A hundred if you let Nik fuck you against that tree.”
Laurent rolls his eyes. The corners of them ache. “Did you get that from one of your porn—”
“Two hundred,” Damen says, and leans in. For a second, Laurent thinks it’s Nikandros’s mouth he’s going for. “Should I beg?”
“What about you?” Laurent says. “Are you just going to stand there?”
“Sure.”
Damen shakes his head. “Nah,” he says, slow and tilted. “I know he’s your favorite.”
“And it doesn’t bother you.”
“Sweetheart,” Damen says. “He’s my favorite too.”
Damen doesn’t need to beg, in the end. Laurent’s not sure what he does or where he is while Nikandros has him against the tree, pinned to it by the head. The bark is rough and uneven, and every new thrust makes the burns on Laurent’s cheek throb even more than the one before.
“Can you come like this?” Nikandros says. He’s stopped thrusting, pressed flush against Laurent’s ass.
“No,” Laurent says, and it’s not even a lie. The tree doesn’t feel good against his front, and the friction is not enough. It occurs to him then, out of nowhere, that he could ask for it. “Can I—”
“No.”
“Please?”
Nikandros starts fucking him. “Learned a new word?”
Stupidly, Laurent tries to nod, and scrapes himself raw against the tree. “I’ll—can I please—”
“Say it again.”
“Please.”
“Again?”
“Fuck you,” Laurent says. When he tries to kick him, Nikandros presses him so hard against the tree it’s hard to breathe. “S—”
“Sorry? Is that the word you want to go with right now?”
Only a thin, misty trail of air is making it inside Laurent’s body. His throat feels crushed, crushing. He can only whine.
The pressure dies down a bit. “Are you going to be good now?” Nikandros says. “Say the right word this time. Go.”
Laurent says it again, and again, and again. Nikandros doesn’t let him come.
It’s mind-numbing hot by the fire, but they sit around it anyways. Laurent has only kept his shirt on, more out of habit than shame, and lets Damen pull him over his lap with only faint complaints about staining his pants.
“Then make sure not to let it out,” Damen says, thumb running up Laurent’s thigh like it’s looking for a seam line. His neck smells like paint. “You were getting a bit loose towards the end. I just didn’t want to say anything.”
Laurent doesn’t nuzzle him. He doesn’t. “How kind.”
“You’re welcome,” Damen says. “It’s good you’ve got a mouth though, or else we’d be in trouble.” The thumb that was on Laurent’s thigh finds his lips, then the meaty part of his gums, then his teeth.
Nikandros is lying next to them, arm thrown over his face. “Stop treating him like a horse,” he says, even though he’s not looking at them at all. “It freaks me the fuck out when you do that.”
Damen removes his thumb from Laurent’s mouth. A wet sound follows. “Does it?”
“You draw the line at horse play?” Laurent says. “That’s…”
“This isn’t horse play,” Damen says. “Whatever that is.”
Nikandros is stretching. First his stomach tenses, then his legs, lastly his toes. The arm covering his face goes away. “‘s nothing personal, baby. He’s still in the closet about it.”
The fire burns hotter, and Laurent’s blood reaches a simmer. Baby.
“Fuck you,” Damen says. He turns to Laurent, mouth to his temple. “Did you know he’s a nerd?”
“A nerd.”
“He does crosswords over breakfast. How fucking nerdy is that?”
“Honestly,” Nikandros says, sounding bored. “My biggest sin so far. Crosswords.”
“Your biggest sin is your feet fetish,” Damen says.
“Fuck you, I don’t have a fucking—”
“You like feet?” Laurent says, trying not to wiggle his toes. “You’ve never…”
Nikandros stands, all of the sudden. He kicks Damen when he walks past them. “I’ve got to piss,” he says, when Laurent looks at him questioningly. At Damen: “What? No, say it. What now? Fucking say it.”
Damen is smiling. “Wouldn’t want to drag you out of the piss closet, man. I’m not like you.”
It’s too warm, and Laurent is starting to sweat. He takes off his shirt.
*
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.