by Tal Bauer
It was good to laugh again. Dinner turned to dancing, and Dan led him through swings, spins, and dips. He’d loved it, every moment, drank in the way he felt alive for the first time in four years.
He’d never had the chance to dance with David.
When a slow song played, Dan had stepped back, letting Kris go. There had been a heaviness in his gaze, a resignation that hadn’t been there before.
Kris had reached back for him, drawing him close again.
“Are you sure?” Dan had whispered. His hands had landed softly on Kris, as if afraid to actually hold him. “You know, don’t you? How I feel about you?”
“I know.”
“I’ve never asked you for anything. I never will, Kris. I know, I know how much you love him, still. I can’t replace him, I know that.”
“Dan...”
Dan had smiled, looked down at the floor. “This is the part where you say I’m just your friend. It’s just, dancing with you, like this—” He’d cradled Kris in his arms, so close their noses brushed. “I can’t help it. I am so in love with you,” he’d whispered.
Kris had felt something snap then, the final break of something he’d buried and buried and tried to erase. The bottom had fallen out from beneath his feet, and again, like four years before, he was falling, plunging, a freefall into a darkness that he was already so intimately familiar with.
But, God, he couldn’t go back there. He couldn’t survive the freefall. He’d known he wouldn’t survive that darkness again.
He was lonely, and aching, and four years into a broken heart that hadn’t mended. He was riding high on adrenaline, on a fuck you to the CIA that had put him there, and on waves of champagne. And Dan was there, warm and alive. He knew all of Kris’s sins and he still forgave him, still loved him.
If there was a bottom to the abyss Kris was lost in, if there was something after the freefall… Maybe it was Dan.
He’d nuzzled his nose against Dan’s, heard Dan’s sharp inhale. Felt Dan’s fingers curl on his back, into his tux. Felt Dan’s hand holding his tremble.
“Kris…”
He’d cut Dan’s words off with a kiss.
They didn’t stay long after that. Dan had nearly set a land speed record driving back to his house in Maryland, even in his shitty little electric car. He’d helped Kris out, wrapped his arms around him. Had kissed him, trying to guide him through his house without ever breaking their kiss, their hold.
Tuxes had flown, landing on the carpet and the back of a couch, a table in the hall. Dan had laid him down in his bed like Kris was the last copy of a timeless novel, a priceless jewel recovered from a shipwreck.
For a moment, Kris had hesitated. His wedding ring had been heavy on his left hand.
But David was gone.
Dan had hovered over him, his gaze filled with so much desire, so much care. He’d crawled over Kris, their faces hovering, skin brushing. “If I could make it all go away,” he’d breathed, “I would. I would do anything to make it better. Anything.”
“Make me feel,” Kris had whispered. “Make me feel alive again.”
Dan made love to him like his touch could heal Kris’s soul. His hands mapped Kris’s body, the long, lean lines of his legs, the taut muscles of his back. The scars on his chest. Kris was more awkward, having to relearn how to love, where to move, how to slide and arch and press into a new lover. Into someone not-David. But, it was easier than he’d thought, tumbling into bed with Dan.
Dan kissed him through it, watched him. Traced his eyes and his lips and his face, captured every gasp with a kiss. He took his time, until Kris thought he was going to come apart at the seams. His fingers had clawed Dan’s back, grabbed his hair, his ankles had wrapped around Dan’s hips, and he’d just managed to not shout David’s name.
Dan had buried his face in Kris’s neck when he came and breathed, “I love you.”
They came together twice more that night, Kris riding Dan and then Dan pounding him hard and fast as Kris screamed face-first into a pillow. They’d been a sweaty, sex-ruined mess when they finally fell asleep.
In the morning, Kris had woken alone, listening to Dan whistle softly to himself as he cooked breakfast.
It had felt wrong, suddenly, all wrong. He was still wearing his wedding ring. David wasn’t having sex, not in the afterlife. He’d said he’d wait for Kris. He’d said he’d always be Kris’s. None of that seventy-two virgins in paradise for David, they used to joke.
What the fuck had he done? What would David think? Jesus, he had to get out of there. He had to go, just go. He’d jumped up, grabbed his pants and his button-down, gotten dressed.
He’d collapsed while trying to find his socks and ended up slumped on the carpet, his back to the bed he and Dan had partially destroyed.
David was dead. David was gone. And there wasn’t anything after this life, nothing waiting for him, for them. David, everything he was, everything they had, was gone.
Dan had walked into his bedroom with an omelet and mimosas and had found Kris sobbing.
“I’m not ready,” Kris had finally whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m just not ready.”
Dan had dumped the omelet in the trash and driven Kris home in silence. Anguish, tinged with anger, had poured off him, nearly drowning Kris.
He hadn’t been ready to love again. He hadn’t been ready to care for Dan, or anyone. He hadn’t been ready to try and resurrect his heart, a heart that wasn’t even inside him anymore.
His heart was six feet deep in Arlington.
No, his heart was in the back of a burned-out sedan in Afghanistan.
His heart was nothing but a pile of ash.
But, the easiest way to get over someone was to get under someone else, or so the saying went.
He couldn’t fall for Dan. But he could fuck his way through DC and feel nothing at all.
And he did.
CTC
Langley, Virginia
September 7
1430 hours
“Hey.” Kris leaned into Dan’s office, smiling. “I made it back in one piece.”
Dan was elbows-deep in a red-bordered intelligence file, scouring eyes-only intercepts and source intelligence. He snapped the thick file closed as he looked up. Shock, and joy, broke over his face. “Hey you,” he said softly. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”
Kris shrugged. He padded inside Dan’s office and collapsed in one of the dark leather club chairs. Dan had done well in his career, surging where Kris had faltered, had failed. He’d become head of CTC. His glass-walled office overlooked the operations bay, the workstations and monitors they had once worked at together, so many, many years ago.
Why was he here, though? Why come see Dan, put that glowing smile on Dan’s face? Dan knew his game. He knew exactly how Kris was. Some nights, it was Dan’s bed he ended up in after a few drinks, or a long week of hating everyone and everything at the CIA. Other times, months went by before he showed up at Dan’s door.
Sometimes, with someone else’s fingernail scratches still on his back.
Maybe it was Mike. Maybe his best friend finally finding the love of his life, finally settling down, was affecting him. He’d been happy like Mike, once. He’d had the house and the love. The joy and the laughter. The smiles over coffee in the morning, the warm body to curl into. He’d had it, and he’d loved it.
Maybe part of him wanted that again.
Kris propped his boots on the edge of Dan’s desk and crossed his ankles. “All quiet on the Western Front?”
“I wish.” Dan snorted. He jerked his chin to the folder he’d closed. “Something strange is rumbling out of Afghanistan. Pakistan. Yemen. Even Iraq.”
Kris’s mind still went sideways, like a radio channel tuned to static, whenever anyone mentioned Afghanistan. He blinked. “Similar chatter? From different locations?”
Dan rubbed his temples, frowning. “Yeah. Different al-Qaeda affiliates are starting to echo each other. They’re talking abo
ut someone coming.”
“Someone?” Kris’s eyebrows shot up.
“Mmhmm.”
“Think it’s Bin Laden’s kid? Is he starting to take the reins?”
Dan shrugged. He opened his mouth—
“Never mind.” Kris waved him off. “I don’t care. I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me anything.” He’d forgotten, for a moment, that he didn’t care at all, not one single bit, about the CT world anymore.
Knocks pounded on Dan’s door, just before Ryan poked his head in. “Hey, have you looked at the—”
He stopped. Glared at Kris. “What the fuck are you doing here? You’re not part of CT.”
“Personal visit.” Kris slouched in the chair, getting comfortable. “Visiting my boo.” He blew Ryan a kiss.
Purple bloomed over Ryan’s features, a furious fuchsia. “Dan, we need to get the most recent dump from Islamabad analyzed. They’ve got something.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
“And, have you seen the FIAs?”
Foreign Intelligence Agents. Occasionally, the CIA hosted officers sent from overseas agencies for six-month training missions. Currently, Israel and Saudi Arabia had sent over an officer each. Not an easy combination to handle.
“Noam is spending time at the satellite bay.” Noam Avraham, from Mossad in Israel. “I don’t know where Zaiden is.” Zaiden Asfour, from Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Directorate.
Ryan nodded, glared at Kris again, and ducked out.
Dan stared. “Your boo?”
He shrugged. “It got rid of him.”
For a second, Dan couldn’t hide the hurt. He looked like a kicked puppy, quickly turning back to his desk and stacking folders, making sure the edges were obsessively straight. Anything to not look at Kris.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did.” Dan smiled, sadly. “It’s okay. I know your rules. I’m just one your ‘boos’.”
“It’s not like that. I don’t…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I want anymore.”
“It’s been nine years,” Dan whispered.
“Some days it still feels like yesterday,” Kris snapped. “Time doesn’t heal all wounds. That’s crap. It’s bullshit, what they say. You’re never over it. You’re never fine.”
“I’m sorry.” Dan held up his hands, surrendering. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just…” He exhaled hard, his face twisting. “I wish I could see you smile again. I wish you were happier. And I know I can never replace him. I know I can never be who he was, and I know you can never love me like you loved him, but—” He stopped, drawing up short, like he’d let too much slip free. “I wish you would let me love you,” Dan finally breathed. “I wish you wanted to come see me right away when you got back. I wish this wasn’t a surprise for me. I wish I was your only ‘boo’. I wish we could really do this, Kris. And... most of all, I want to be the man who makes you happy again.”
Kris’s jaw dropped. Dan hadn’t been that blatant, that direct with him, ever. It was the thing they never spoke of: Dan wanted more. Kris… didn’t know what he wanted, except a good hard fucking, something to numb the pain. But now Dan had said it, had actually put words to his feelings in their twisted little dance.
Damn it, he didn’t want to know. Knowing made things complicated. Knowing tugged on things he didn’t want to feel, didn’t want to think about. His eyes darted around Dan’s office, hiding, searching for somewhere to look, somewhere that wasn’t at Dan. He fumbled for something to say.
Dan ended the conversation for him. He always did. How many times had he let Kris off the hook, accepted the tiny morsels Kris threw his way without complaint? “Look, I’ve got to get going on this new dump of traffic from Islamabad. This thing, from al-Qaeda… it’s getting big. I’ve got to go.”
Kris stood. “You, uh, will probably be working all evening?”
“All night.” Dan rubbed his forehead. He looked exhausted. “I might crash here for a few hours and keep working tomorrow.”
“’Kay.” Nodding, Kris backed out of Dan’s office. “I’ll see you around.”
Dan chuckled, once. “Yeah. See you around.”
Kris felt his gaze on his back as he walked away.
Chapter 27
Kandahar Province
Afghanistan
Three Weeks Prior
War came to the mountains.
Dawood tucked his face into his scarf as the wind of the valley whipped around the trees, sluiced down a rocky gorge. Towering peaks shielded their valley. Their new camp.
Rickety trucks clambered over the flinty shale roads, carrying the brothers and their supplies. They slid, skidding out, and came to a stop beside an eternally dry wadi, desiccated for over a millennium. The sun, just starting its descent for the evening, glinted through the scraggly trees at the top of the range. Sharp rays cut through the fading daylight, sucking color from the valley.
Kandahar, Afghanistan, was a wild, untamed, vastness. He thought he’d been at the end of the world before, in Bajaur, on the mountain with no name. But, this, in the depths of Afghanistan, was the bitter end. A land of endings, of ghosts, of dead things.
The wind seemed to carry voices, snippets of whispers and soft cries, echoes of screams and laughter, the lives of so many cut short, the voices as broken as the bodies who once spoke. Their valley, for the moment, seemed to shiver, echo like Dawood had picked up the world and held it to his ear, as if he could hear all of the world’s woe like holding a seashell and hearing the ocean. Torment scratched at his bones.
“It is time to pray!” Dawood called. He waved to the drivers, to the brothers in the backs of the trucks. “Time for salah!”
The brothers hurried to form lines behind him, jostling shoulders. He waited while they unfurled their prayer mats and quieted.
In the mountains and as they crept across borders, they did their wudhu, their ablutions, with dust.
“In the name of Allah, the most compassionate, the most merciful.” Dawood kneeled, cupping the cold earth and rubbing it over his hands. He let the grains blow away, then rubbed his palms over his face.
He breathed in, the scents of life, of Afghanistan. Allah was in these hills. He was with these men. He’d been with them the day war arrived in their mountain home, in Bajaur, three years before. When the bullets and the bombs fell, and the soldiers arrived, and the sky had burned the mountain to the ground, turning everything to dust.
Pakistan Northwestern Frontier
Bajaur Province
Federally Administered Tribal Areas
Three Years Before
Pakistan, pressured by the United States, pushed into the tribal territories, sweeping for extremists, for terrorists. Their sweeps were broad, their attacks indiscriminate. The bees, the drones flown by the CIA and the US military, appeared overhead, as did their constant, ceaseless hum.
When the bombs fell, and the fires burned through the farms, everyone tried to hide. Tried to hunker down and ride out the surging violence, the waves of attacks from the military trying to cleanse the mountains of all living souls. No matter who they were.
Bombing the mountain out of existence seemed to be the strategic plan. All night, fire rained, stars seeming to fall, bombs that erased families from the face of the world. Farms. Homes. Lives. Dawood huddled with ’Bu Adnan in the trees, lying on his belly.
He heard every agonizing scream. Every cry from the children he’d cared for, had helped bring from infancy to adolescence.
He heard their cries go silent, cut short, after the blasts, after the shock waves tore through their homes.
One bomb took out Behroze’s family home. Another the qala. A third and fourth obliterated farms, spread fire to four families’ homes.
It was no use staying. It was suicide to remain. They fled, running from the flames, running for their lives. Dawood carried Behroze, burned, but alive, playing in the fields behind his house when the bomb fell. They stumbled down a ragg
ed goat path, hiding from the sky.
’Bu Adnan made it halfway down the mountain.
He stumbled, fell. Cried out to Allah.
Dawood, leading everyone, called for a halt. Tucked his people into dark spaces between the trees, hiding women and children and old men as best he could.
The drones hovered overhead. He could feel their optics, feel the hunting gaze of the pilot. Predator drone. Predator. What an apt name. He felt like an animal. Desperation flooded him, sang in his veins.
He slid to the dirt beside ’Bu Adnan, the man who’d become his baba. Six years, they’d been a family. Six years, he’d had a father again.
“Baba, we must keep going.”
“Astaghfirullah, ibni. I cannot.” ’Bu Adnan clutched his chest. His heart. Six years, and ’Bu Adnan had gone from the man of strength, built like an ox, to an old man, almost paper frail. He’d aged before Dawood’s eyes, as if time was robbing him. Robbing them. “I knew I could never make it down the mountain. Even with Allah.”
“You can do this, Baba. You can. I will carry you—”
“You must carry Behroze now, Dawood. He needs a father, now more than ever.”
Behroze was a young teenager, wide-eyed and wondering, forever slipping away from his family. It was that which had saved him. He had too much curiosity in his eyes, too many questions that wanted answers. He was destined for heartbreak.
“Baba—”
“It was never Allah’s will that I leave this mountain, ibni.” ’Bu Adnan clutched his chest again. Heaved a ragged breath. His eyes were wet, burning into Dawood, twin rubies shining through the dusty depths of time, strong despite his withered frame. He reached a shaking hand for his Quran, lying in the dirt beside him, the one item he’d carried from their home. “This belongs to you, now, habibi.”
“Baba, no. We are all getting off this mountain.”