Chapter Sixteen

“And what did you do today?”

Oh, the most loaded of questions to answer, particularly when one’s answer involves preparing for a coup. But just, like, a minor one.

Dad sits at the head of our massive dining table, a commanding presence in crimson, me at his right, and his question makes my body freeze mid-bite.

The whole of our court and a few reporters are spread down this cumbersomely large mahogany table, Renee’s best dishes strewn under flickering golden chandeliers. Utensils click on plates, voices murmur idle conversation, but only the dozen or so people on this end of the table hear Dad’s question. Including Kris, nearby; Iris, next to her dad across from me; Hex, on the other side of Neo.

We’d made it back to the palace with plenty of time to change for dinner. And we’d all agreed to come to dinner, some overly formal affair in celebration of a lord of House Caroler’s birthday, and even though Hex’s magic had worked and no one had been waiting to scold us in my suite, I feel breathless.

Or is it visiting the Route Planners that Dad’s talking about? Wow, I’m losing track of all the things he could berate me for. Almost like old times, really.

“Oh, um—finalized the class schedule for my last semester,” I say, then realize that I do, in fact, need to finalize the class schedule for my last semester. I’m almost certain I’ve missed a few key deadlines.

Dad lifts one eyebrow. There’s a beat where I expect him to explode on me, that he found out what I’m doing, but I hold his gaze. I hold it because for the first time in our relationship, I know I’m in the right, about everything.

I wanted you to be better.

Now, I’ll just be better for you.

All the other people Kris and I talked to in the city felt the same as that initial couple: Christmas is superior, our king is so great he shits tinsel, why is he the best, he just IS the BEST how DARE you QUESTION IT—

It was more and more harrowing to see that Dad has, very successfully, instilled not just an unwavering loyalty to Christmas in our people, but a devotion to him. Though everyone I dared to mention any blackmail or seedy methods to did seem shocked by it, like it’d be more feasible to move the whole North Pole to a desert than for Christmas to do shit like that.

I try to lean on what Hex said about not changing everything overnight. This is a long game, but it has to start at the places where people are suffering most: unraveling Christmas’s seizure of joy. Preventing my dad from being able to see through his blackmail threats by taking away his power. Everything else will come later. One step at a time.

Brave, admirable, honorable.

Buffeted by hope, I smile at my father.

He nods. “Very good, Nicholas. Responsible.”

“It seemed the best use of my time.” I turn back to my plate, glancing at Hex as I shift.

He wore another corset vest to dinner. A different one. Still black, but with vertical ribs of deep, rich orange, and the collar of his black shirt underneath is popped. The table cuts him mid-chest but I saw him walk in; I know exactly how that whole blessed contraption turned his body into an arrow pointing down, down, so tightly down.

I have my phone on my thighs and I inconspicuously swipe to his text thread.

HEX

you know exactly what you’re doing to me, don’t you?

Hex looks down at his lap.

HEX

Doing what, precisely? I do a lot.

those corset vests. those goddamn motherfucking corset vests.

HEX

Wow, they certainly seem to inspire a strong reaction from you. Is this angry Coal I’m seeing?

oh, no, this is a side of me you are well acquainted with by now.

the side of me that wanted to slam you up against the courtyard wall earlier today and aggressively make out with you at the risk of our mouths freezing together

or do this

I wait until he looks up at me.

Then I let a drop of gravy roll off my fork and hit my thumb. I lift that thumb, the one wearing his ring, and stick the whole thing in my mouth.

Leisurely pull it out.

His eyes bulge.

God, I’m so clumsy, how embarrassing.

Hex drops his wide eyes to the table, one hand white-knuckled around his water cup, lips flattened in a suppressed grin way too similar to mine.

Dad asks Neo something. No one is watching me so I let my gaze linger on Hex until, finally, he gives me that look of annoyed amusement and a slow head shake.

I pulse my eyebrows at him, reveling in the rose-pink flush across the tips of his cheekbones, but I’m not done yet.

now i know what you’d say to that: but coal, you sexy beast, if just our lips would have been at risk of freezing together then we definitely couldn’t have done THAT outside

and to that i’d say: it’s a fantasy, hex, you sexier beast, let me paint you a word picture

imagine the courtyard’s empty, because i don’t share. imagine i slowly strip you under one of those very expensive space heaters until you’re shivering and begging. and imagine i warm you up head to toe by only putting one part of your body in my mouth

I catch his reaction as he reads, his eyes sweeping back and forth across the screen of his phone.

His lower lip rolls between his teeth. He shifts on his seat, folding one leg over the other, and I barely restrain a crow of victory.

He doesn’t look up at me, and I see him fighting not to, that bit lip getting abused viciously.

HEX

You have quite the imagination.

only when i have the proper muse

HEX

I am confused though: what, precisely, is taking the place of the gravy in this scenario?

the gravy is a metaphor

HEX

For?

“i licked him so he’s mine”

Hex barks a laugh. A sharp crack that echoes out over the table.

My face flashes in a reckless, ecstatic smile. I haven’t heard him make that sound before. Adding it to the list of noises that are now my life’s purpose to bring out in him again.

Everyone at the table has gone silent as they eye Hex, see nothing funny, then gradually go back to their conversations.

Hex’s cheeks are red and he takes a sip of water, mimics choking on something like that would explain what was clearly a laugh.

I have to put my hand over my mouth to hide my beaming smirk. God, I love seeing him like that, like he didn’t know he was capable of this kind of happiness and it’s shocking him as much as he enjoys it.

My attention tugs down the table, following the members of my court, even though every part of me wants to keep teasing him.

The moment my attention strays, though, I sit up straighter. Hex and I may be locked in secret relationship bliss, but the mood for everyone else is… well, it’s dull, that’s what it is.

I see one member of our court yawn.

There’s music playing but it’s like the elevator version of Christmas songs.

Iris keeps casting glances at her dad, her forehead creased with contemplative worry.

Kris is picking at his food and staring off into the middle space.

I honestly couldn’t name whose birthday it’s supposed to be—no one looks remotely celebratory.

It’s such a stark, jarring difference from North Pole City and all that sincere joy. And it’s always like this here; our events are strained with performative bullshit, because they’re meant to be formal displays of the best that Christmas has to offer.

It’s soulless as fuck.

Things are going to change, right?

They’re going to change.

I slam my hands on the table and shove to my feet. “Let’s move to the next part of the evening, shall we?”

Dad whips a frown up at me. “Nicholas?”

He wants credit so bad for how great Christmas is doing. He wants to be the one and only recipient of our people’s adoration.

That’s fine by me, honestly. I’ve never cared about our public image. So if it’ll get us to where I want to go, he can have every ounce of credit.

“My father has arranged a surprise for us all,” I say. “If you’ll follow me.”

Dad grabs my arm. “What are you doing?” His face is all calm propriety, his words all hardened steel.

“Trust me,” I say down to him, hoping my voice doesn’t shake, but his grip on my wrist is tightening. “New Nicholas, remember?”

For a moment, my resolve goes slippery and weak under his critical glare. Even with everyone at the table watching. Even with a few reporters lurking, as always.

He doesn’t trust me and he has no reason to and that puts me in the worst position, and I already know how far he’s capable of pushing things, but there’s always further. There’s always worse. And every single one of those possibilities hangs over me as my mind goes blank in that incapacitating way where I’m a kid again and I realized that I need to start being afraid of my father because Mom’s absence changed something fundamental inside of him.

But then he says, “Yes. Let us adjourn.”

He lets go of me and stands.

My chest deflates. I start for the door, and gradually, the table follows, chairs scraping back.

Somewhere behind me, I hear a half-pitiful mutter of “But what about my birthday cake?”

I wince but lead us all out the door. Dad keeps close on my heels, his eyes burning the back of my skull as I twist us through the palace—

And kick into the theater room.

Kris and I normally use it to dick around between Christmas events on various multiplayer games. But as I hold the door and step aside, I see a lot of our court give the room looks of Wow, I had no idea this was here.

It’s not quite the size of a real movie theater, but it has tons of recliners and a massive screen at one end and a popcorn machine.

As everyone pours in, I clap for their attention. “Take your seats. The feature will begin shortly. Note your emergency exits, and—”

Dad stops in front of me. “What are we doing, Nicholas?”

We. Okay, not too bad.

I nod at the chairs. “Let me prove myself. Sit. This will be good, I promise.”

He’s studying me. Considering.

He walks away without a word.

Kris is on me immediately. “What’s your plan?”

“Something fun.” I shrug. “That dinner was killing my soul.”

“How is that any different from our usual court dinners?”

“Because they’re capable of feeling the joy we felt today too. And I’m fully sick of pretending we’re not .”

Iris slips over, Hex in tow, but they give us space, remembering my dad’s none too recent reprimanding of us all. The rest of the crowd is busy trying to figure out how to sit in recliners while basically wearing evening gowns and tuxes.

There’s a door off the theater room that holds the projector equipment, a hookup to streaming services, extra popcorn and such. I back into it with pleading eyes at Iris, Hex, and Kris, and a few seconds after I slip in, they stagger in with me.

The walls are black, sound-deadening carpet, and the low light throws everything in a dreamlike haze that’s hard to shake after coming out of that godawful elevator music in the dining room.

I yank off my suit jacket, unbutton my cuffs, and roll my sleeves to my elbows so when I start flipping through the streaming services, I’m all business. “Okay. Someone in the square mentioned they were doing a Christmas movie marathon and it sounds like the sort of normal-person activity to make everyone out there remember that our Holiday is supposed to bring joy to us too. So we’ll need popcorn—last time I tried to run that machine, I burned it all within an inch of our lives. Someone else should take that task. And we need to bring that birthday cake here, I feel bad.”

There’s a pause.

I throw a glance over my shoulder to see the three of them gaping at me.

“Oh, come on, my taking charge can’t be that shocking still, can it?”

Iris scrunches her nose. “Yes. It will never not be shocking. And I am not making the popcorn.”

“I’ll do it.” Kris lifts a jar of kernels. “I can let a member of staff know about the cake too. What movie?”

I scroll through a list. “ Rudolph ?” It’s the first to come up and I have a vague memory of watching it when I was younger.

“Absolutely not,” Iris snaps.

“What? It’s listed under Classics .”

“And it’s classically a misogynistic mess. One of the lines is literally ‘ This is men’s work. ’ Pass.”

I flip farther down. “Like half of these are called Santa Claus. Oh, It’s a Wonderful Life ?”

“Isn’t that one sad?” Kris asks. “He dies, right?”

“We need a few with like actual Christmas cheer. Why is Die Hard on this list? Wait, something called Silent Night ? Look, there’s a family on the poster.”

“You have got to be kidding me.”

The three of us turn to Hex. His brows are popped in a triangle of confusion.

“ Silent Night is a horror movie,” he says like he’s half expecting us to laugh and say all this was a joke.

When we stare at him, he squints. “How many Christmas movies have you watched?”

“Maybe like two or three? When we were kids.” I bob my head. “ Rudolph for sure. That Charlie Brown one. And something with a career-focused dad trying to get his kid the perfect gift like that would make up for him being an absent parent the other 364 days of the year.”

Hex looks, succinctly, mortified. He cups his hands over his face and gives a defeated sigh into the hollow of his palms.

“All right.” He bats me away from the screen. “Step aside.”

I give him maybe an inch of room so he’s forced to stand right against me. He nudges me with his shoulder, then starts scrolling.

“Here.” He stops on a poster for something called A Christmas Prince. “It’s cheery and will appease everyone in that room. There are sequels, if you truly want a marathon. We can—”

He sees my wide-eyed smirk.

“What?”

“How do you know that movie?” I ask.

Hex studies my growing amusement with resignation, like he knows I’m about to tease him for whatever he’s going to say but there’s no helping it.

“You have to understand,” he starts, tongue pressing on the side of his mouth, “that there are very few Halloween romantic comedies. I believe Easter can attest to that as well.”

Iris’s eyes go to slits in thought. “Oh my god. You’re right. Why did Christmas commandeer that too? You guys suck.”

“It’s a sorely overlooked travesty,” says Hex. “Halloween is unutterably romantic.”

“I agree,” I say. “So do you like to study Holidays in cinema, or…?”

Hex sucks in a breath and tugs at the edge of his vest, suppressing a smile. I watch him until all he says is, “Sure. Let’s go with that.”

Iris is the first to giggle. “Hex is a Christmas movie fan!”

“Oh my god.” Kris’s grin is wide. “You’re a Christmas groupie, aren’t you? That’s why you’re after my brother. I knew it couldn’t have been because of his personality.”

“I am hardly a groupie ,” Hex counters. “I have three young brothers for whom your Holiday has, against our best attempts at reminding them of the diplomatic ramifications, appealing aspects, and—” He heaves a bone-cracking sigh. “There is no salvaging my dignity from this, is there?”

Even in the low light, he’s blushing, and it’s so damn cute I hook my thumb in the waistband of his pants.

“You like my Holiday,” I say like I’m six and teasing him on a playground. “You liiiiiike my Holidaaaaay —”

“You should be more concerned by the fact that a Halloween Prince upstaged you in a fundamental tenet of modern Christmas traditions,” he tries.

I consider.

Then push my face against the side of his. “You liiiiiike my Holidaaaaay .”

He shoves against me, but it’s half-hearted. “You’re insufferable.”

“And you’re adorable.”

“And I think it’s time for popcorn,” Iris pipes in. “I’ll do it after all. Excuse me.”

She snatches the jar from Kris and ducks out of the room.

A beat of strained silence falls.

“She seem upset?” Kris asks.

I haven’t told him what she said to me, that she used to want the sweeping romance her parents had but doesn’t believe in it anymore. It wells against my tongue. The urge to tell him so he can rush out there and confess his feelings to her and put us all out of our misery.

But she’s my best friend, and he’s my brother, and this is the weird line I always have to walk between them.

All I can settle on is to shake my head. “Yeah. Maybe. I can talk to her later.” And say what, that hey my brother would be willing to help you rediscover your belief in love? Speaking of a Christmas rom-com.

Though I’m one to talk, aren’t I?

Kris scratches the back of his neck. “All right. I’ll go get that cake, then,” he says and leaves.

I hit play on the projector screen. Out in the theater, the lights automatically dim, and the rolling noise of the movie kicks up in the sound system.

“So. A Christmas Prince ?” I beam down at Hex.

“Shockingly, it is not a film about you or any Prince of Christmas. It’s rather deceptively named.”

“You’ve watched it before.”

“We established that.”

“Were you hoping it was a movie about me?”

He rolls his eyes. “It’s remarkable your ego can fit in this projector room. I saw it before I came here.”

“But after we kissed at the bar?”

His lips thin. “Possibly.”

I brace his hips in my hands and press myself over him. “You were watching movies about me. You liiiiiked me. And my Holiday.”

“Teasing me for being interested in you is hardly an effective form of mockery after everything we’ve done.”

“No, this was before—wait, oh my god! You admit it. You had a crush on me!”

“A crush on you? Are we twelve? Did you have a crush on me?” He shakes his head. “No, you wouldn’t have, would you? You didn’t know who I was.”

But I laugh and wobble into him and catch myself by kissing his neck. “I was, though. Interested in you. Not the Halloween Prince. Just—you.”

He peels back. “You were?” His tone changes, banter to shock.

“Why is that surprising?”

He holds, eyes searching mine, uncertain, or maybe self-conscious. It makes him look so much younger, like for a flash we are back in that alley, in the dark and the hot summer air.

“I had no idea who you were,” I tell him. “But all I knew, needed to know, was that you made the fuses that were burning up towards me—my responsibilities and my irresponsibility and my future and my mistakes—feel cut off, and in those seconds, I wasn’t destined to explode. I was just there. With you.”

He blinks quickly, rocking into me, forehead to my lips.

“You said it was hot when I talk?” he whispers. “Hardly. Can you hear yourself?”

I grin into his skin. “Come on. We’re missing the movie.”

The lights are so dim in the theater that if Dad was watching—and he is, I know he is—with the movie screen black, Hex and I are swathed in darkness momentarily.

I feel through the shadows and take his hand, pull him so my lips find his ear. “I want to know what other Christmas movies you like. How about you pick a few of your favorites and we watch them together?”

The movie sends a pulse of white light that floods the theater, and I pull back, but I don’t step away from him. Not yet.

He looks up at me, his teasing paused, a held breath. “And when would we watch them?”

Our time is quickly becoming limited. If all goes well, the Christmas Eve deadline won’t matter—I’ll have the start of a collective to back me up, we can unify against any repercussions Dad threatens, and all the arranged marriage alliance bullshit can be dissolved.

But if I lose what flimsy control I have over this situation… what will happen?

“We have more than a week,” I say and give a hopeful smile. “And then—”

Hex’s eyes dip over my shoulder. “Your father is looking at us.”

He steps around me and I feel like something slipped out of my hands in the last five seconds, a lifeline slithering away from me.

But I know how delicate all this is. I know what could happen if this blows up in our faces.

And then is too far off to think about yet.

Staff wheel in the cake, Iris manages to make popcorn—it’s a little burned, but good—and, blissfully, the only seat left in the theater is near the back, a reclining love seat barely big enough for two people. But Iris, Kris, Hex, and I drop into it, throw it all the way in recline, and pelt each other with popcorn and gorge on Renee’s chocolate cherry layer cake and settle in to watch a movie that has nothing whatsoever to do with a Prince of Christmas.

It only takes about twenty minutes into the movie before the mood of the room shifts. A few stray laughs at first. Then giddy murmurs, an overall welling of fun. Even the reporters relax into their chairs and end up enjoying the movie, the atmosphere.

The sequel kicks on after the first, and I expect people to take that transition as a cue to leave.

But they stay.

They stay and watch the second one.

Then the third.

And by the time that movie is over, members of my court are laughing, smiling, in ways I haven’t seen… ever.

Everyone starts to leave as the credits on the last movie roll. I disentangle myself from Iris—and Hex, who somehow ended up right next to me, oh how did that happen; but luckily we get to our feet before any reporters can swing cameras on the dogpile all of us made—as Dad excuses himself from a conversation across the room.

A reporter from Morning Yuletide Sun intercepts him before he can get to me. “King Claus! Are we to expect more events of this nature? I have to say, this was unorthodox!”

Dad’s eyes flare to me.

Oh, shit.

But the reporter doubles back. “In a good way! This was a refreshing change.”

Dad holds his scrutiny on me. “We shall see how this progresses,” he says to the reporter. He nods my way. “Good night, Nicholas.”

Dad and the reporter head out of the room.

No snide reprimands. No lingering pause to yell at me for sitting next to Hex. No threat to never pull a stunt like that again.

Well, fuck me running.

Headline: Prince Nicholas may not be a complete disappointment to his father, apocalypse possibly imminent.

Kris punches my shoulder. “Look at you. Making good choices.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe. How about that.”

“All right, I’m going to bed.” Iris shakes a popcorn kernel out of her hair. “Did I get them all?”

There’s like a half dozen stuck across her head.

“Yeah. You’re good.”

Her glare tells me she knows I’m lying. She flicks me in the nose. “Good night, dumbass.”

She pauses.

“We did good things today, Coal,” she adds, gentle.

I nod. My throat is welling, or maybe I’m exhausted—today has been a lot and I’m not sure how I’ll be able to process everything we set in motion, but I flick her nose right back.

She leaves, and Kris, Hex, and I stay to help the staff fix the disaster that this room became. Popcorn, just, everywhere.

By the time the room is in order, I’m fully drained, but I catch Hex’s wrist as he passes me.

“Come to my suite tonight?” I ask.

“It’s past midnight.”

“So?”

His gaze goes molten. “So, my suite is… far from yours. And if I stay in your room for any amount of time, it will only get later, and later.”

He can portal back to his room, but I don’t mention that, because his lips unfurl in a sultry smile that yanks something deep in my gut.

The staff have left. Kris is straightening one last chair.

“Stay.” My voice cracks. The plea echoes, stay, a request I only mean for tonight, but I can feel it tendril out, snake around Christmas Eve and get on its knees and ask him, impossibly, stay.

He’ll leave. I know he’ll leave. He was always going to leave.

But now that I’ve started thinking about our shortening time together, it’s a growing, gluttonous beast arching up behind my true intent and I hate the idea of him not being under the same roof as me.

He exhales, warm breath on my collarbone. “Just one night.”

No. All the nights. Every one you’ll give me.

It’s late enough that we don’t bother trying to stagger back to my room. We walk, side by side, and don’t run into anyone. Kris parts ways at my door and though he doesn’t care, I wait until he’s gone down the turn for his own suite.

Then I push into my room.

Hex walks in after me, almost statuesque in his movements, like he’s performing again, hiding behind his fa?ade.

The door shuts. I lock it.

And I kiss him. Claim his mouth in this dark room and he goes supple for half a second; then he grabs my neck in one hand and kisses me back like he’s trying to bruise me. I let him, I want his bruises and his marks and every scar he’ll leave on me, because then I’ll stop thinking about how this all might end, I’ll stop thinking.

Just stop thinking.

He makes a desperate, throaty sound, all plea and ecstasy, and maybe there’s a little of that gluttonous beast in him too. He pushes me back, back, until my knees hit the bed and I drop, and before I can utter a word, he’s flattening me on the comforter and climbing up my body, straddling me, fitting over the saddle of my hips.

Okay, think, a little at least.

“Today’s been a long day,” I whisper.

A column of light comes from the seam around the closed door, a soft glow emanates from a Christmas tree in the corner so we’re mostly in black, some in red-green-gold. It’s enough that it lets me see the way his pupils have blown wide as he leans down, the silhouette of his arching body in that corset vest, his laser focus intent, control that makes everything in me go malleable and submissive.

His lips suction to my neck. Teeth bite down.

I’m thrown fully into the cosmos, only staying in this dimension thanks to the weight of him, holding me down. His mouth, the things he can do with that goddamn mouth—

He takes a break from that torment to tongue the spot and I belt my arm around his torso and spin us so we’re on our sides. One of his legs arches on my hip, and I run my hand up his thigh, down to his calf, his ankle. And I hold there. I stop there. Forehead to his cheek. Hand on his ankle. I am stone and I will not move because if I do, if I so much as breathe too strongly, then—then—

“Coal,” he says my name like one of those hymns I imagined moaning. “Kiss me.”

A shiver charges from the back of my neck down my spine, setting off a series of smaller, no less destructive quakes in my lungs, my stomach. “You’re not asking for me to just kiss you.”

“No,” he says with Mephistophelian simplicity. “I’m not.”

I rear back. “We’re both exhausted. We’re… emotional. Or at least I am. And I don’t want to… take advantage of that.”

“If anything, I’m taking advantage of you.”

“That’s a flat-out impossibility.”

“So kiss me.”

“Stop telling me to do that.”

“Why?”

My hand is a vise on his ankle.

Hex takes the top of his vest in a fist that could rip apart the fabric of reality, I’ve seen him do that, dance magic from those fingertips. Only now he specifically undoes my reality, because he tugs apart the first latch.

“Hex,” I growl, and I clamp my hand over his. “You don’t—fuck, this vest.”

He leans back in an air of such delicious, sinful defiance that I’m no longer merely on the edge, I’m plunging into the abyss. “What does this vest make you want to do to me?”

“Don’t. Don’t. I’m begging you—”

“And I’m begging you .”

“You can’t be. I—I’m not—hang on a second.” I’m babbling. Full-on mental breakdown of all the ups and downs of emotion from today coupled with how he is asking me, how he wants this.

My eyes are shut. I don’t know when I closed them.

The pillow of his thumb brushes across my eyelids. “Coal,” he says again, more tender than enticing. “We don’t have to do anything. I shouldn’t have pushed—”

I catch his hand as it slides off my face. “That’s not where my reaction is coming from.” And I look at him, aching, how are there still raw parts of me I can show him after today? But here I am, fatalistic in the way I open his fingers, kiss the lines of his palm with my trembling lips.

Part of me will never understand how you can see something worthwhile in me. Will never understand how I got lucky enough that you not only came back to me, but want me. Is terrified that this is all some joke I’m not getting because what the fuck did I do to deserve you.

“You’re nervous,” he fills into my silence, a wavering, stilted guess, and I hear his own nerves in it, winding up.

My laugh is broken and frantic. Holy shit, he can read me—I don’t think I’ve ever been nervous before being with someone, but yeah, that’s what this is, isn’t it? At the root. Nerves.

“You know what? Yes.” I laugh again, that pathetic warble. “That’s—yeah. Fuck. I am.”

Hex presses his thumb to my chin. “Just nervous, though? Not wanting me to leave?”

“Yes. I mean, no, don’t leave. Don’t ever leave my bed again, in fact—unless you want to. Unless you’re—”

He inches his thumb up to cover my lips. “I can work with nervous.”

“Yeah,” I mutter against his thumb. “Nervous is good, honestly. We should be nervous. An overabundance of cockiness in situations like this is generally—not a sign of—” He puts my hand on his vest. Uses my fingers to work off another clasp, another. “A sign of—not a sign of—” The vest falls apart and he’s in my bed and he smells like popcorn and citrus and a fantasy. I splay my hand in the center of his abdomen and can feel the erratic cadence of his heart beneath his button-up, the swell of his stomach blossoming to fit my palm. “Of—shit, what the hell am I talking about?”

“Nerves.” His voice is all tangled in a bated breath.

“Yes. Yeah. Nerves.” My fingers have little anarchic minds of their own and pull up the hem of his shirt, and when I spread my hand on his bare stomach I careen into the sky, stars and darkness and swaths of velvet warmth.

I think, in another reality, in another version of myself, I’d be capable of making the better choice. If there is a better choice.

But the moment I look into his eyes in the shadows, there is no choice at all.

“Tell me to stop,” I demand. “At any point.”

He smiles. His skin is all gilded in the lighting and his black hair is half falling over his shoulder where he’s bent towards me and he’s unutterably, diabolically beautiful.

“I know,” he whispers. He pulls at my collar. “Right now, I don’t want you to stop.”

I whimper, a cavalcade of falling apart, and my hand slips beneath his shirt as I scoop him up, maneuvering us so we’re lying on the pillows. His hips curve into me with the pull of my hand on his lower back and I try to relax my fingers but I am all stiffness helplessly bound to disbelief, how did I get this lucky, how is this man unfurling his body for me.

“Keep talking to me,” he whispers.

My mouth is dry. “I’m going to take off your shirt.”

He nods. A frantic bob against the pillow.

My fingers fumble the buttons, but I work my way down, bowed over him with my thighs on either side of his. The last button slips free and he sits up, lets me guide both his vest and shirt down his arms, off. And my god, this would be enough. Just to see him half bare like this, ripples and rises of smooth, pale skin, it might need to be enough, it might be too much.

He kisses me. Rocks up against my body and his fingers work at the buttons on my shirt just as clumsily. It’s a small comfort knowing he’s shaking too. We’re falling apart together—that word binds us, holds my vibrating pieces into one cracked whole.

I tug my shirt off and wrap my arms around him, holding him to me, skin on skin on heat on shivers. My fingers climb and descend the mountain range of his spine, his long hair tickling my cheek as I lick the contours of his shoulder, all lean, ropey muscle, collarbone protruding when he tips his head back and gives himself over to my exploration with a contented moan.

Every moment of touching him has left me rattled like I don’t know what I’m doing, but no one else mattered before him, no one else could have prepared me for him. There is power, such power inherent in desire, and in this moment, I’m playing out the creation of a whole new origin story with him. It’s so easy to create gods or monuments of importance or cruxes of joy, and I’ve done that for him now, I am his most fervent steward. But he looks at me like he’s created a god of me too, and that’s the clash I can feel building up around us, isn’t it? What happens when two monuments fall together. What’s left behind after the impact.

“I want to taste you,” I whisper into the curve of his neck.

“Where?”

Draw me that map again. Take me beyond the edges. And then, and then, and then—

“Everywhere.”

He nods, brows in a deep furrow, eyes shut, lips parted a slit to let his shuddering breath through.

I press him back against the bed and work my lips down his collarbone, to the plane of his chest. The low prismatic light paints him red and gold as I lick around one nipple, and he fists the comforter with a sharp inhale. I move over, repeat the motion, and he bears down more and I’m an earthquake in human skin.

My fingers go to the fasten of his jeans. I rest my open mouth against his stomach, inhaling the rise and fall of his quaking breath. Sugary citrus, spice, the musk of sweat—I pull at the button, free it.

“I’m going to take off your pants,” I say, and he’s looking down at me already, black hair splayed on the pillow.

I should be saying more. Waxing on about what he’s doing to me, but all I can manage are these sharp, instructive warnings, and it sets a mood over us of intimate focus.

He shifts up and helps me work off his boots, socks, pants, boxers, until he’s naked in my bed.

He’s naked in my bed.

I dive back down over him, not giving myself a moment to come undone. I start all over again. I have to. Collarbone, lips there, hand on his pec, tracing lines; he shivers, I work lower. Nipple, one, then the other, he comes off the bed with a moan. Lower, the taste of salt and the smell of sugared oranges on his stomach. I pause at his navel and lick and kiss until he’s wriggling and he hisses something that sounds like “Ticklish,” and I smile against his skin.

Lower, hair leading in a trail down, down, leaving kisses like offerings.

I run a hand across his thigh, lift his leg so it bends, and put a kiss on the inside of his knee. He trembles, and I reel, giving myself a beat to feel his subtle reactions, controlled slips because he’s still holding himself taut.

Another kiss, the inside of his thigh, skin getting progressively softer against the violent tension winding through my body, his body too, concrete and glass.

“I’m going to—” I can’t find words. There aren’t any. All the constant nonsense I spew, and in this moment, the only thing I have to give him is minimalism in its rawest form. Just me.

But he shudders out, “Yes,” and then, “Please,” and that might be better than all the whines and cries I’ve heard so far. Please, a groping word.

I take him into my mouth. Slowly, to savor it, and because finally, finally, he breaks with a swerving moan that rises from the deepest part of his chest and ends on a quake-like wail, his hands grasping up into his own hair.

His reaction is so panicked and miring that I pull away. “Has anyone ever done this for you?” I ask, throat raspy and I haven’t even really gotten to work yet.

His lips are swollen like we’ve been kissing and his head is pressed back into the pillows so I see the underside of his chin, ligaments bundled.

He shakes his head, breathing labored, arms falling in sharp angles on either side of his body. “Given. Didn’t receive. It was a mess anyway.”

That has me pulling up onto my forearms. I keep one hand around him though, stroking sluggishly, and he whimpers but finally looks down at me.

“You said you were with one other person,” I clarify. “You went down on them. They didn’t for you? Or at least finish you off some other way?”

“Is now really the time for this conversation, Coal?” He thrusts his hips in my hand but I flatten my other palm on his thigh to hold him down.

“Absolutely,” I say like I’m swearing an oath to him, and it is, an oath and fealty and acquiescent devotion. “I want to know you. All parts of you.” I pause, reining in my zealotry. “What parts you’ll show me, at least.”

He presses his head back again, staring up at my bed’s canopy. But I keep stroking him so his breath catches, so he doesn’t quite topple into whatever memory is trying to creep across his face.

“It was—ah—right after Raven died,” he says in breakneck succession.

I go still. Release him, come up onto my hands, and lean down over him. “What?”

His eyes slam shut and he swallows. “One of her friends—she and him had been dating before… and the funeral was over and we ended up alone in my room. It was stupid, Coal. It was a huge, idiotic mistake. So yes. Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

His voice grates, red color staining his chest that has nothing to do with arousal now. He’s angry. But when I take his chin in my fingers and pull until he looks at me, the darkness in his eyes feels so fucking familiar, that terrified unworthiness I’d shown after I told him about the New Koah incident. Something dug up from shame and shadows.

It renders me dumbstruck. Not that he’d have something to make him sink down into that drowning pool of mortified self-deprecation; but that he was so recently a gulp of air for me in my own drowning pool, and I get to be that for him. Shared lifelines shift the perspective. Not one-sided, me —a delicate widening, us.

“You blew your sister’s boyfriend after her funeral?” I ask.

Hex’s laugh is throttled. “It sounds even worse without my fumbling decorum.”

My turn to press a thumb over his lips. “Hex. You were grieving. He was too, I’d expect. It really wasn’t surprising that you sought comfort from someone. What’s fucked up is that he didn’t give you any comfort back .”

Hex’s tumbled guilt and humiliation harden over. “You—you’re upset that he didn’t reciprocate. Not the manner in which we messed around.”

“Reciprocation isn’t the point. I’m upset he didn’t take care of you,” I say, and yeah, my tone goes a bit pissed, because I can see it all too clearly. Hex, so pushed to the brink of grief that he opened himself up to someone, got used for a quick one-off, then was left in his room, alone.

I plunge my fingers into his hair, unable to stop this need to lay claim to him in some way, to let touch be a reminder that he’s here with me now, and what we make will be good.

All my nerves vanish, I have purpose anew, purpose and a gift in that purpose.

“That guy was an asshole, sweetheart. Let me show you how you should be treated.” I bob my head down at where he’s gone soft during this conversation. “If you think you can now.”

He nods immediately. Seems incapable of saying anything verbally, but the sheer, scrambling need in his eyes is different than it was before. Stripped and whittled and that’s where today has brought both of us, shucked of all our walls, all our pathetic vestiges of protection, until we have no choice but to be fully present and feel all of this.

I kiss him, letting that be the only part of us that touches until I feel his muscles give, those fluid, writhing motions that tell me he’s back in his body, not his head. Then I slide down with less reverence, more hunger; I got a taste of him and I’m crazed for it, and now, now I know—this is his first. I want to ruin him for anyone else, it’s only fair.

Tongue, lips, teeth, I focus on those parts of my body, because everything else is given over to nerve endings swelling under my skin. His moans start up again in a flash flood, forcing their way through his pinched lips until he’s crooning to the ceiling. The easiest movements are driving him wild to the point where I almost feel cruel doing more, but I want to be cruel.

I look up at him, seeing him over the curves and planes of his body, and the sight burns into my head, becomes a fixed point: all long lines and sharp edges, laid out as a contrast on the soft bedding, hair a mess and eyes saying that mess is internal too. I remember the way he’d reacted when I pulled his hair, so I slip my mouth off him—to his garbled protest, a lusciously distressing nuh-huh —but pump him in my hand as I press my teeth experimentally into the soft, sensitive skin inside his thigh.

He makes a stunned noise, an intake of breath that could cut glass.

I bite at him again, soothe the spot with a kiss, my tongue. He’s shaking now, the heels of his hands digging into his forehead. So I do it higher, the apex of his thigh; then up the length of him, gentle nips interspersed with soft kisses, sharpness and velvet.

“Coal—I’m gonna— mmph— ” He breaks off into babbles and muttering and I think stops himself from cussing—wouldn’t that be kind of hysterical, though—and I gulp him back down in a greedy rush.

A bright, shimmering cry accompanies his back coming fully off the bed, shoulders digging into the pillow, hips bucking into me. I have been drunk on many different types of alcohol before, but I’ve never had an intoxication like the one I’m getting from the barrage that is him fraying because of me. I’m so obsessed, so enthralled, that I nuzzle and lick until he flinches in an over-sensitized daze and grabs at my shoulders, my hair.

“Coal—” I cut him off by surging up to devour his mouth and he makes that cry again but it’s trapped between our tongues. He digs his nails into my back, scrambling me closer, and I obey, my full weight bearing down on him, hands everywhere, his hair, the slope of his side, his thigh where it wraps around me and yanks me in.

“I want—” he rasps, and I’m already agreeing, whatever he wants, anything. “I want you inside of me.”

My eyes pop halfway out of my head and I rear back, propping on my elbows.

His words hang in the air, and he looks up at me, all liquid shadows.

“We—wow, we don’t have to,” I say, and it comes out hoarse. “This isn’t a—it doesn’t have to be—”

He drags his hand out of my hair, down my cheek. “I know. I want to.” He pauses, bites his lip, brows twisting in something like entreating as his chest rises and drops in jackrabbit breaths. “I assume you… have? Before.”

“Yeah. Both ways. So if you don’t want to be on the receiving end, I can—”

He smiles. He fucking smiles and my heart isn’t in my chest anymore, it’s taken flight and lapping around my head.

“I want it this way,” he murmurs. “I want you.”

I kiss him, I’m still in my jeans but I can feel the angles of his body pressing against mine. It hits me again, a palpitating gong—he’s naked in my bed.

And then another gong, can he taste himself in my mouth? I kiss him deeper, willing him to, that awareness, that reminder.

I rest my lips on his and my nervousness erupts back over me in a brazen storm. “I meant what I said before. About wanting to make you feel good. About wanting you to want this. That’s it. You don’t owe me anything. That’s all I—”

“Coal.” He digs his nails into the small of my back, light enough to shut me up. “This is what I want. I—” He stops, suddenly, and pushes his head back into the pillow. “Is this not what you want?”

I whine and drop my forehead to his shoulder. “It’s possible I’m overthinking your comfort.”

He hums. “It’s sweet.”

“Bit of a mood killer.”

“More than me telling you about my disastrous first time? No.” He says it with unarguable soft confidence.

His eyes are glossy, hazed still in the afterglow, and I nod at his look, his decision.

I scramble off the bed, shaking, and dive over to the dresser on the side, wrench open the top drawer. A moment of searching reveals a handful of stuff and I present it to him like a truly pitiful worshipper bringing erotic sacrifices. A condom, lube.

Hex reaches for me, an earnest ache in his eyes. “Come here.”

I step up to him, set the stuff on the bed next to him, lean in.

He grabs my neck in one hand, the other gripping the waistband of my pants and tugging intently. His forehead anchors to mine and he sets to work, unbuttoning, unzipping, I kick my shoes off and shrug out of my remaining clothes and it’s warm in here, so very fucking warm in here, but goose bumps prickle up my legs, anticipation crashing headlong into reality.

I stay crouched beside the bed, bent over him, Hex sitting up, his hands blazing their own trails over my chest, stomach, hips, then—

He touches me, feather-soft fingers.

I groan, a slow-detonating bomb.

“Lie down,” he tells me.

I climb over him and obey, but I can’t not touch him now, and so I keep my hand on his arm as he twists, grabs the condom, the lube, and then positions himself across my hips.

My nails bear down on his thighs, fuck, this is all pain, pain on the borderland of pleasure.

His certainty wanes, chest glinting in the low lights, sweat-glossed. “I know the basics. But how should I—”

“Let me.”

I take the lube and force my mind to be miles away. Eons away. To not think about the task I’m doing to him as I sit up, him propped over my lap, and snake my hand around him. He braces on my shoulders, one arm wrapping around my neck, and my mouth rests open on his stomach and I press sloppy kisses to his skin. His breathing catches, warps, cracks and reknits over and over until he’s hard again between us; we’re both shuddering and shaking and my skin hurts.

He holds the condom out to me. The simple function of that task, too, lets my brain have another moment to reset, which is good, desperately needed, because when I’m done with it, he puts his hand on me only it’s slick now and I buck into the pillows.

God, do not fucking ruin this, do not fucking come this soon.

He’s up on his knees, aligning me with him. I can feel a shake in his hand on me.

I hold still. I hold so fucking still, concrete and glass again, solid and breakable all at once, he will shatter me.

His eyes snap to mine, one hand in the center of my chest for balance. It’s good my throat is nearly pinched shut, because I want to beg him, I want to sputter out all kinds of nonsense about how pretty and perfect he looks on top of me.

“Relax,” is all I say. But I have to close my eyes, jaw clamped, fingers iron clawed into his legs because fuck if I can take my own advice.

He lowers down, up again, down, working in increments, but that gradualness only makes the devastation of his tightness and heat suck me in like quicksand and I beg myself now, Open your eyes, open your eyes—

I do. His full lips are split in a winded scowl, hair sheeted around a face set in dire concentration. Those eyes flick up to meet mine and as if he’d been waiting for that contact, that connection, he sinks all the way down.

Sparks of pleasure scattershot through my body to the point of agony, everything impacted by its barrage, veins and muscles and my hips buck up involuntarily like I can both chase and get away from the onslaught.

His sudden gasp is ruinous, and I barely have time to feel it before “Sí, otra vez,” rips out of him, a rough tumble, and I don’t need to use any sort of translation magic to get that meaning, because just the sensation of him switching languages has me fucking soaring.

I do it again, hips punching up, and I hiss at that edge coming way too close. His shivering cry tells me he’s right there too, the noise so delicate and otherworldly as to be fey-like. His head dips back, and all the tension he’d been keeping at bay races on him tenfold until he’s nothing but corded muscles on top of me, lines of sinew and abs sweat-painted; my lips were there, and there—

At my next thrust, he moves to meet me, hips rolling, and I hold on for dear life, half sensation, half action. My hand finds the space above where we’re joined and I wrap my fingers around him again, pumping, and fuck it’s a cataclysm now, his whole body straining and shuddering but he drags me with him as the storm builds.

“Coal—I need—” he babbles, trembling, and I feel the thrum of his words in the base of my stomach.

I sweep up, a wordless dance where my other arm braces him to me, and I hook his leg and flip us on the bed. The angle of me on top hits him deeper, so fucking deep that both of us moan.

“I got you,” I promise. He locks my free hand with his, thrown overhead, gravity tangible in the space between our intertwined fingers. I’m thrusting now, entirely whittled to his need and his pleasure so that’s all I am, his, and I say it again, again, “I got you, sweetheart, I got you—”

“You too,” he says into my mouth, and it pitches, goes whiny and pleading, “Now, Coal, now .”

His body seizes up around me a moment before he cries out and then we’re both falling, blurring into each other, laving tongues and heels digging into my back and dewy satin lips.

He said joy creates a foundation, and we do create that foundation, every kiss and caress sets up a reality where the sun will rise tomorrow and I’ll make him tea and we’ll leisurely figure out what we want to do with our day, no schedule, no events. We’ll go down to North Pole City and buy ornaments and then come back and turn this bed inside out again. And in that reality, we don’t worry about days passing. We don’t worry about losing everything, because our everything is impenetrable, and we create and create with every shake and beg and heartbeat.

I love him.

I love him, and I can’t put it into words with how big it is, so I keep talking, and showing, and creating with him.