Only, no. God. Of course he didn’t want that. He felt guilty even thinking it. He didn’t want Noam to get hurt.
Unless ... there was a chance Lehrer was totally different with Noam. The bond they shared might be different, more affectionate, less violent and—
Dara scrubbed the heel of one hand over his face and made himself exhale hard.Stop it. This is unproductive.
“Dara.”
Dara lifted his head. Claire stood right next to his chair, arms crossed over her chest and brows raised.
“You’re alive,” Dara said, the words coming out all on one breath. “I thought—when we didn’t hear—”
“Yeah, I’m alive. And you’re out of your room.”
Oh, right. “Sorry. Couldn’t sleep.” But that was rather beside the point, of course.
He pushed at the legs of the stool next to his, dragging it out for Claire to sit. And, after a frustrated beat, she did.
“What happened?” he pressed.
Claire lifted a hand to get Leo’s attention. He dropped the dishcloth he’d been using to wipe out a cocktail shaker and came to join them, both hands braced against the edge of the counter.
“Lehrer,” Claire said in low tones, “is far more powerful than he lets on.”
“I could have told you that,” Dara said.
“Yeah? Well, you didn’t tell us he could heal a goddamnhead shot. I blew his brains out. He wassuppressed. How the fuck did he survive?”
Both she and Leo were looking at him expectantly. Dara shrugged. “I don’t know. You should ask Álvaro.”
He had to admit he was surprised himself. He’d known Lehrer could perform magic so quickly that it seemed instantaneous—all those decades of knowledge so well engrained in his memory as to become intuitive—but this ... this was something else entirely. Inhuman.
But more than that, he was surprised Lehrer let himself get shot at all.
“Are you sure your friend actually dosed Lehrer?” Leo asked, something almost apologetic lacing his voice. “If he’s Lehrer’s new favorite, he might have chickened out.”
“He didn’t chicken out.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” Claire said. “I’m not necessarily saying he betrayed us, just ... all kinds of things could have happened. Maybe he never got a chance.”
“Noam told me he dosed him,” Dara insisted. “And if he said he dosed him, he dosed him. End of story.”
Claire and Leo exchanged glances, and Leo sighed. “I hope you know we’re taking your word on this. It better not backfire.”
Dara couldn’t bring himself to reassure them.
“Well, Álvaro was right about one thing,” Claire said grimly. “We’re definitely gonna need that vaccine.”
Dara lost track, sometimes, of the fact it had been over a year since he first met Noam Álvaro.
November 2123—that was the month, even if Dara couldn’t remember the precise date. But he remembered everything else with the kind of crystalline clarity that accompanied the most formative events in one’s life: first kills, first kisses, first fucks.
First loves.
He’d hated Álvaro so much at first. He’d hated Álvaro’s stupid ill-fitting clothes, his gratingly southern accent, his penchant for eating crunchy pork rinds during the sad parts of movies. Hated the way Noam tilted toward Lehrer as if Lehrer were the only light source in the universe.
But Dara couldn’t stay out of his mind.
Past that angry, devil-may-care façade, Noam Álvaro was ...more. Dara could have spent hours listening to him internally debate the merits of communism versus anarcho-syndicalism, changing his mind every two seconds, it felt like, only to get distracted because someone brought up the Velvet Underground (which, as Dara had learned, was Noam’s favorite vintage band).
