Page 66 of Fought it Through the Teeth

Has not pushed. Has not pressed. Has not looked at him with expectation or resentment or a single one of the things Bohdi has thoroughly earned. Morgan has been exactly what he has always been. Sharp-tongued. Professional. Present. He sits in the councils and delivers intelligence about the Wolfe clan with calm detail, and he answers questions without looking at Bohdi, and he eats his meals without looking at Bohdi, and he moves through the Keep without looking at Bohdi. The not-looking is so carefully, perfectly calibrated that it functions as its own form of looking and they both know it.

Morgan said I understand your position on the riverbank, and he meant it. He has been extending Bohdi that grace, the grace of acceptance, of patience, of loving a man who won't love him back and not making it the man's problem, for years, and he has gotten so good at it that it no longer shows on his face.

It shows on Bohdi's.

It keeps him up at three in the morning when he's lying in his own bed staring at his own ceiling, unable to sleep because the bed is too large and too cold and there is nobody in it. The nobody that has blond hair and blue eyes and a sharp tongue and the most infuriating, brilliant, stubborn, beautiful mind Bohdi has ever encountered. The nobody who is sleeping in his own room a short walk away and Bohdi knows the distance to the step because he's walked it in his head four hundred times tonight.

He gets out of bed.

He pulls on trousers and a shirt and walks barefoot through the dark corridors of the Keep. Past the dozing guards and past the guttering torches that throw dancing shadows on the stone walls. The Keep at night is a different place. Quieter. The daytime noise of business and bodies replaced by the deep silence of a building holding its breath.

He stops outside Morgan's door.

He stands there a long time. Long enough that the guard at the end of the corridor glances over and then, wisely, finds something else to look at. Bohdi presses his palm flat against the door and feels the grain of the wood under his fingers, rough, old, the same door that has been here since before Morgan was born, and tells himself to turn around.

He tells himself this is the line. The actual line. The one he drew himself, on a riverbank, with blood on his hands and Morgan's hand in his. The one he drew in a bed at an inn with his body pinning Morgan to the mattress and the words I can't have you in his mouth. The line that says this far and no further, the boundary that protects the thing between him and Eskil, the wall he has been building and that Morgan has been throwing himself against for two years.

He tells himself Eskil is asleep down the hall. That the trust between them is the single greatest thing Bohdi has ever been given. Greater than the axe. Greater than the title. Greater than his place in the kingdom or his seat at the war table or any of the things that come with being the man the king relies on, and he is about to destroy it entirely and on purpose.

He tells himself all of it and it is all true and none of it is enough. None of it has been enough since Morgan screamed his name across a stable yard and Bohdi's world broke open and what was underneath was not duty or loyalty or the carefully maintained distance of knowing his place. What was underneath was just this: a man standing outside a door, wanting what's behind it, and being done, finally, completely, irrevocably done, with pretending he doesn't.

He knocks.

There's a pause. Not long. Then footsteps. Light and careful on stone.

The door opens.

Morgan is there. Hair loose around his shoulders, blond, mussed, the chaos of not sleeping and running his hands through it in the dark. Rumpled sleep clothes. Eyes heavy-lidded with the long, wakeful hours that pass for sleep when you're staring at your ceiling and thinking about someone two corridors away.

He blinks up at Bohdi in surprise.

"Bohdi," he says. His voice is rough. He clears his throat. Tilts his head. "Has something happened?"

"Yeah," Bohdi says. "A lot has happened."

The words come out of him and they are the least adequate explanation for anything he has ever given in his life. They are a masterwork of understatement. He huffs a laugh at himself, a short, sharp exhalation that is not quite amusement and not quite despair, and rakes a hand through his hair.

"I can't sleep," he says. "I can't focus on the brewing war at our doorstep. And I'm losing my fucking mind over you."

Morgan looks struck.

The composure, the beautiful, graceful, maddening composure that Morgan has been wearing for five days, his armor, fractures. Not visibly, not to anyone who isn't standing two feet away looking at his face in the torchlight, but Bohdi is standing two feet away and he sees it. The slight widening of the eyes. The color rising in his cheeks. The almost imperceptible parting of his lips. And his hand, his hand on the edge of the door, knuckles going white against the wood, the involuntary tightening of fingers that are trying to hold something together.

The corridor is dark and quiet around them. The torch at the far end gutters and spits. The guard has found something riveting to examine in the opposite direction.

Morgan says, with measured precision, holding himself under very tight control, "I told you I wasn't going to ask for what you can't give me."

Bohdi takes a breath. Then he reaches out and takes Morgan's face in both hands.

His palms settle against Morgan's jaw. His thumbs rest against his cheekbones, the bruised one fading to yellow now, five days of healing softening the damage. His fingers curve around the back of Morgan's neck, into the loose blond hair, and the touch is firm and possessive and Morgan's breath catches audibly in the dark.

"My prince," Bohdi says, "I'm not going to make you ask."

He kisses him.

Morgan's hand falls away from the door. Both hands come up and grab the front of Bohdi's shirt, fisting the linen, pulling, and Morgan steps backward into the room and Bohdi follows.

The door swings shut behind them.