Page 103 of The Boy Bride

“I don’t—I don’t know—sometimes you have to do these things, don’t you? Sometimes you have to do horrible things.”

Vanu reached up and put his hand into Lill’s loose hair near his scalp, almost as he might have done if they were in bed together and he was being affectionate, only the gesture was rough, a harbinger of violence. Lill tensed, ready to be dragged down off the cupboards by his hair—which would hurt less if he was prepared for it, he knew from experience.

But Vanu wasn’t dragging him. He had a fistful of Lill’s hair, he was blazingly angry, and something else—hurt, he was hurt. He thought Lill had done something terrible and wasn’t who he’d imagined. He was right. He’d drunk a whole bottle of Tirtu’s fucking plum wine. Would he not just do something?

“Angels of the Blue Heaven,” Lill whimpered.

Vanu yanked his hand out of Lill’s hair and stepped back. Lill yelled in his face, the Order’s feral battle cry rising out of his throat without conscious intention. He’d always privately thought he was rather good at that battle cry, even if no one in the Order had ever admitted it.

He didn’t know what he intended when he launched himself off the cupboards at Vanu. He felt as if he were the one who’d drained the bottle of plum wine; maybe he was trying to do to Vanu what he thought Vanu should do to him.

Vanu caught him, of course, and threw him down onto the floor, quite hard. There was a carpet, a thick-piled wool carpet with a pattern, so it didn’t really hurt, but it left Lill dazed for a moment. When he started up again, Vanu was on his knees, reaching out to help Lill up.

“Not like that!” Lill slapped his hand away. “Why do you—why are you⁠—”

He realized what he wanted. He grabbed the front of Vanu’s shirt.

“Fuck me.”

Vanu pulled free of Lill’s grip easily and pushed Lill back—the barest little shove—onto the carpet again.

“Fuck me!” Lill popped up again.

Vanu pushed him back again.

“Fuck! Me!”

“No!” Vanu growled.

He flung up his hand, and Lill popped up from the carpet at the same moment and hit his face on Vanu’s forearm.

“Ow! Please! Vanu, do it. Throw me down on the floor and do it.”

This time when Vanu pushed him back, he held him down, hand in Lill’s hair again. But he just stayed like that, holding Lill down. Lill could hear him breathing hard.

He squirmed around under Vanu’s hand so he was facedown on the carpet and tugged at the knot in his sash until it came undone and he could pull the whole thing off and toss it aside. He wriggled out of his trousers, kicking them down until they were bunched around one ankle. The night air was cool on his bare skin. He screwed his eyes shut and clenched his fingers in the thick pile of the carpet.

He’s drunk, and he wants me. He’ll do it now, finally. And it would hurt horribly, and Lill would be able to come to his senses after that.

It seemed like a long time that he lay there with his face pressed into the carpet, his cheek throbbing where he’d whacked Vanu’s arm. Then finally he felt Vanu move beside him. Vanu’s hand—the one that wasn’t fisted in his hair—landed warm on Lill’s hip, and Vanu moved over him. Vanu’s knees were on either side of Lill’s thighs, nudging them back together. He released his grip on Lill’s hair slowly, as if he had difficulty unclenching his fingers, and withdrew his hand.

There was a whisper of cloth, and Lill felt something land lightly on his bare thighs. He squeezed his eyes tighter shut. He did not need to see anything that was happening here.

What was happening here? Vanu’s hand tightened on Lill’s hip, and Lill could hear Vanu’s breath catch, a tiny sound.

And then other soft sounds, skin against skin. Lill’s mind was full of the prohibitions of the Order, the beatings—he felt as if he could smell blood—the frantic noises in the dark dormitory. Vanu made hardly any noise, just that hitching breath. There was nothing to distract Lill from his thoughts. He couldn’t bear this; it wasn’t even sex, but his body was screaming for him to flee, flee, curl into a ball, anything to escape.

Something warm and slick touched the small of his back. Vanu’s hand came down next to Lill’s face, planted on the carpet, fingers spread. Lill realized he’d opened his eyes in surprise. There was a hard-soft, hot weight nestled along the cleft of his rear. It was distracting beyond anything⁠—

Vanu moved his hips, sliding his hard member against Lill’s ass, and Lill felt as if he could melt into a puddle on the carpet. It was so nice, the feeling of him. The tension in his strong thighs, the touch of rough body hair, the silky heat of his cock—so strange and so pleasant. Lill’s whole body felt warm, his mind quiet. He wanted Vanu to go on doing this to him for days.

In fact, it didn’t last long. Lill did remember hearing, in a conversation on the streets of Torakand, that too much drink interfered with sex, and this seemed to be true for Vanu. He didn’t climax; his arousal just seemed to give out, and he collapsed forward onto Lill with a low noise of frustration.

For a moment Lill felt crushed under Vanu’s weight, and he rather liked that too. But Vanu rolled off him, ending up on his side on the carpet, facing away from Lill. He had pulled up his trousers, and he lay so still that Lill thought he might have fallen asleep. Or passed out—didn’t drunk people do that, sometimes?

Lill pushed himself up onto his elbows and reached down to feel around for his own trousers. A shaft of moonlight was streaming in one of the high windows of the front room, and it fell on his discarded sash, a crumpled white shape on the floor.

Like a bolt sliding home, something thunked into place in Lill’s mind.