“Hey.” Noam toed off his shoes by the door. “You’re up late for a weeknight.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
Noam edged around the coffee table so he could sit on the arm of the sofa nearest Dara’s chair. The corner of Dara’s lower lip was flushed, like he’d been chewing on it. “You have this problem a lot,” he said. “You should talk to Howard. She could get you some kind of prescription.”
“I have one,” Dara said dryly. “But thanks for the suggestion.”
Noam couldn’t stop looking at that spot on Dara’s lip. He wanted to lean over and kiss it, find out for himself if the flesh was as warm and swollen as it looked.
Concentrate.
Dara glanced away from him, turning his face toward the window. “I don’t mind being up,” he said. “It’s a nice night. No clouds. You can even see Mars—look.”
There was no way to look without sliding off his armrest and moving into Dara’s space. But Dara seemed to want that. His hand caught Noam’s wrist and tugged him closer, until Noam was leaning over him with his free hand braced against the windowsill, Dara’s left thigh perilously close to Noam’s groin, and,fuck.
Dara shifted in his seat, perhaps oblivious—but then again, perhaps not. His shoulder bumped Noam’s, Dara squirming in the narrow space left between Noam’s body and the armchair to face the window properly. Only then did he let go of Noam’s hand.
Noam wanted to place it right there, at the small of Dara’s back where his shirt rode up to expose a slice of naked skin.
“Do you see it?” Dara said.
Noam put his hand on the back of the chair instead. Just behind Dara’s head, close enough that one of Dara’s curls grazed the underside of Noam’s wrist.
“No. Where?”
“East of the Lucky Strike tower. The reddish-looking star.”
That wasn’t what Noam wanted to look at. He looked anyway. And there it was—tiny, only slightly ruddier than its fellows, glinting like a dropped garnet in a field of diamonds.
“Now?”
“I see it,” Noam said. His voice came out rougher than usual.
Dara smiled. The book slid off the seat of his chair and fell on the floor, and neither he nor Noam moved to retrieve it.
“It’s strange,” Dara murmured. He was still looking up at the sky, eyes overbright. “Any one of those stars could be dead now. And we’d never know.”
Noam followed his gaze back out into the night. “Wouldn’t we?”
“No. Not until it was too late. It takes thousands of years for light to travel from those stars to Earth.” He exhaled softly, breath fogging the window glass. He looked so... happy, as if he’d swallowed one of those stars and it illuminated him from within. Noam was struck with the urge to capture this moment somehow, so Dara could relive it.
Noam slid one knee onto the seat cushion next to Dara’s, half expecting Dara to push him away. He didn’t. His hip was feverish hot against Noam’s leg; his throat shifted as he swallowed—but he didn’t move.
“Do you ever think about...” Dara started, then broke off. His hand tightened on the armrest, fingertips digging into the upholstery. “All of it—it’s all random chance. The universe. Us. An infinite cascade of chaos. A series of impossible accidents is the only reason we even exist.”
Noam hadn’t thought about it. That was the sort of thing he’d known, on some level, but neverfelt. Not before Dara said it to him, like that, soft as a secret.
Dara had a way of making even the mundane extraordinary.
If he spoke, the moment might break. In the window light, Dara’s face was glazed with silver. Juxtaposed with the amber lamplight on his hair, he was...
Noam had thought Dara was beautiful that night on the beach. That was nothing compared to this.
Dara looked at him, turning his head just enough that Noam could see the curve of his opposite cheek, the glint of both eyes.
If Noam kissed him right now, Dara would think Noam was just like everyone else.
And maybe Noam wasn’t special, but he wanted to be. He had to be more than the next in line of a hundred men who wanted to have sex with Dara Shirazi.
