by Bauer, Tal
Adam, the note read. I’m gone. Maybe one day I’ll find my own ending. But for now—
He bowed his head, pushing everything down, deep down, to the hollows of his soul.
Doc was gone, too.
* * *
6
McLean, Virginia
“Thought you were at the mosque with Behroze?”
Dawood shut Kris's office door and leaned back against the glass. “I dropped him off. I had to come home to you.”
Kris peered at Dawood. One eyebrow slowly arched.
“How do we fix this?” Dawood whispered. “How do we make this better?”
Sighing, Kris tossed his tablet on his desk. “I don't know, Dawood. How do you fix when someone hates you for who you are? Isn't that exactly what we've been fighting for twenty years?”
“He doesn't hate you.”
“He doesn't like me.”
“I don't think that's true—"
Kris scrubbed his hands over his face.
“I didn't think it would be this way,” Dawood said softly. “When we talked about you, he seemed so... curious. Interested. He seemed desperate to know you. He always asked about you.”
“Did he know I wasn't Muslim?”
“Yes.”
Kris sighed. He stood, carefully making his way across the study to Dawood. Plush carpet whispered beneath his bare feet. His toes curled. “I hate this,” he breathed. “I hate how this has come between us.”
“You mean Behroze?”
“No, not him.” Kris hesitated. “Not only him. It’s how we’re not united about him. How it feels like I'm the outsider. Like it's the two of you that are the family in this house and I'm the invader.”
“What?” Dawood’s lungs stuttered. “That's not—That's not true at all. Kris, you're— You're my everything. If...” He exhaled hard. Sniffed. “If you want me to send him back—" His heart fractured, a fault line spiking into the center of his soul, anguish like a pry bar ripping him in two.
“No.” Kris closed the distance between them, wrapping his hands around Dawood’s neck. “No, you can't send him back. He loves you. You love him.”
“I love you. I can't live without you, not again. Whatever it takes to get us back to right—”
“I'm not going anywhere. You’re not going to lose me.”
He trembled, exhaling hard. Fear made him lightheaded. He swallowed, too twisted with terror and relief to speak. “I thought—"
“I'm not leaving.” Steel laced Kris’s words. He gripped Dawood’s skull, fingers cradling his head. “We will figure this out.”
“Together,” Dawood whispered.
“Together.”
They kissed slowly, as if hesitant, as if asking permission. It had been almost two months since they’d been together, one long day of being parents and trying to navigate their new life bleeding into the next, and then the next, and the next. The tensions rose and fell, rose and fell, and then kept rising as things fell apart faster than they could manage.
Finally, they were at the crest of everything, the waves that had beaten them down now breaking and drowning their hearts. Touches on skin that hadn’t felt each other’s hold in too long felt like rain striking the desert sands. Kris’s hand on his skin, caressing him, made him hunger, made him thirst. Kris had always been the oasis to his soul.
Too quickly, they were stripping, pulling sweatshirts and jeans from each other's bodies, hands traveling over weathered and weary skin, over scars and tan lines and healed stitches. Kisses traveled after fingers, and tongues followed.
Kris laid back on his desk, shoving his tablet, his laptop, his students’ papers, all of it, away. Dawood followed, hovering over him, pressing their bodies together.
Eighteen years he'd loved Kris, eight of those at his side, ten apart, but every single day with the same searing intensity, the sun in his soul burning for Kris and his love. He counted kisses like moments now, hoarded them and kept them sealed in his heart. Touches on Kris’s body turned into hours spent rememorizing him, mapping his body, his soul. His world revolved around Kris, their love the gravity that bound the orbit of his existence.
During the daily Ramadan fast, sex was forbidden. But they’d been fasting from each other for months now, not by choice, but by life. He didn’t think twice as he pressed into Kris, as he nuzzled their foreheads together and kissed him. Shared his breath.
Loving Kris, in every way, set his soul on fire.
Their joining was hurried, the buildup of going too long without each other. Kris’s legs wrapped around Dawood’s waist, drawing him close, pressing their hips, their cocks together. Dawood hissed, thrusting, matching Kris's passion, his rocking. Arms wrapped around each other, hands slid over shoulders, down hips, squeezed asses. Kisses started, merged with breaths, became a trade of life between them. This is how I am alive, Dawood thought. Through you. Because of you. My path has always and will always lead me to you.
He couldn't last, not with his love for Kris boiling over and erupting out of his soul. He thrust, once, twice, buried his face in Kris's cheek and shuddered, his release painting Kris's belly. Kris gasped, kissed his temples, his closed eyes. Ran his hands down Dawood’s sides and pulled him closer.
Kris was still hard.
“Let me take you to the bedroom.” He inhaled Kris's scent, tried to draw his lover into his soul. “Let me make love to you. Please, I want to be back on the same page with you. In all ways. Let me show you how much I love. And then let's come up with a plan. Together.”
They were stronger together. And, though Kris was a translator, a linguist, a professional intelligence officer, the best way they always communicated was through their love. He came to life, reborn again, each time they came together.
Kris kissed him, cradling his cheek, one thumb brushing over his cheekbone. “Love me forever. And take me to bed.”
Dawood scooped Kris up, into his arms. Laughing, Kris wrapped his legs around Dawood’s waist and his arms around his neck and he let Dawood carry him down the hall to their bedroom, where Dawood laid him down gently and rained kisses over his body and every inch of his skin.
“We have hours,” Dawood said, winking. “I'll use every minute.”
Beneath his lips, Kris shivered. “Please do. Please, please do.”
* * *
Hours later, they padded naked to the kitchen, dehydrated but laughing. Dawood kept his arms around Kris’s waist, walking behind him with his face buried in Kris’s neck and pressing kisses to his hairline, his sweat-warmed skin. “I don't need anything,” Dawood said, nibbling Kris’s ear. “I can live on you. Allah surely agrees, or he wouldn’t make loving you so perfect.”
“I think you need more than my come.” Kris swatted at Dawood’s thigh as he filled a glass with water and downed it.
“It’s protein.” Dawood kissed his jaw and dropped to his knees, his hands cupping Kris’s perky, round ass. “And everything else I need is right here.” Dawood licked a long line up Kris’s ass before sucking on the skin and leaving behind a blooming fuchsia hickey.
“Aren’t you supposed to be fasting? No protein for you.”
“Oops.” Dawood bit his ass cheek gently. “But loving you isn’t wrong. I know that. Allah knows that.”
Dawood pressed his face between the mounds of Kris’s ass, tongue searching for the warm, wet entrance.
Kris leaned forward on the counter, sighing. “Fuck, you're too good at this.”
They'd made love all morning, and Kris was open to him, still slick. Dawood could taste himself inside of Kris, their bodies mingling, the deepest part of Dawood inside the deepest part of Kris. Greedy, he lapped at Kris’s hole, wanting more, wanting everything. His cock hardened once more, always desiring his husband. After ten years of celibacy, being back with Kris had lit a fuse within him, his libido wanting to make up for lost time.
Kris had always had that effect on him. They'd been firecrackers from the start.
“Holy shit,
” Kris snapped. His legs widened. He gripped the counter. Dawood felt one of Kris’s hand reach down and stroke his hard cock. “Again,” Kris whispered. “Fuck me again.”
Standing, Dawood lined his cock up with Kris’s hole. Kris bent, his back arched, one hand stroking his own cock as Dawood speared him slowly.
He could never get enough of this, of Kris, of the feel of them becoming one. He groaned as he filled Kris, liquid heat wrapping around him. His hands roamed up Kris’s back, stroking warm skin, tracing the muscles of his love.
“Fuck me,” Kris pleaded. “I love it. God, I love it.”
He thrusted, a rolling pace, deep pushes in and out, burying himself inside Kris. Kris gasped and groaned, his head arching back, his eyes closing, mouth dropping open as he panted Dawood’s name over and over. Dawood grabbed his shoulders and pushed deeper. “I love you,” he said, rocking in and out. Slick suction filled the kitchen. “Yallah, I love you.”
“Fuck, I love you,” Kris panted. “I fucking love you so much.” He gasped, his eyes screwed shut, head twisted to the side. Grinning, Dawood sped up, drilling that spot inside Kris, angling his cock to grind over his prostate. How many orgasms had Kris already had? Not enough. He needed more. And Dawood was going to give them to him.
Howling, Kris’s hand sped up and down his own cock. He chanted Dawood’s name as sweat trickled down his back. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” he shouted. “I'm coming! Fuck, I'm coming!”
Kris shuddered and shook in Dawood’s grip, his entire body quaking as he orgasmed. His legs nearly gave out, but Dawood pulled his back up against his chest and cradled Kris against him. His cock throbbed in Kris’s ass, and he kept up a steady thrust as Kris came down from his high. Light spatters of come dotted Kris’s stomach. Dawood ran his fingers through the warm liquid. He kissed Kris’s neck, his jaw—
Kris screamed.
Behroze stood frozen in the entrance to the kitchen, directly in front of their fucking, his eyes as wide as dinner plates and his mouth forming a perfect O.
Dawood’s gaze snapped to his. Behroze dropped his books, his Quran and his sunnah and his notebooks from the mosque.
“Shit! Behroze!”
Behroze fled, racing upstairs and slamming his bedroom door.
Kris pulled away, sinking to the floor and burying his face in his hands. Dawood backed up, leaning against the counter as he swiped a dishtowel and covered himself.
Little late, his brain hissed. Too little too late.
* * *
Kris hesitated outside Behroze’s door. He closed his eyes, one hand on the doorknob, trying his speech again. Even in his own mind, he sounded lame. Dawood was hiding in their bedroom, his soul shattering in mortification. Behroze had come home for the afternoon prayers, seeking out Dawood. How were they to know?
His fist hovered over the door. Knock knock. “Behroze?”
Silence.
“Behroze, we need to talk.”
“We do not!” An angry bark, Behroze’s voice trembling.
“Yes, we do.” Kris pushed open Behroze’s bedroom door.
Behroze glared, hurtling daggers from his eyes as he sat hunched on the end of his bed, elbows balanced on his knees. His face was downcast, his eyes red-rimmed, cheeks flushed. Snot dribbled from his nose.
“Behroze… I’m sorry. I’m sorry you saw us like that.”
Behroze sniffed hard. He looked away, stared at the wall. Anything to not look Kris’s way.
“Walking in on anyone in a private moment is embarrassing. But for your father... I understand why you’re feeling upset.”
“You have no idea why I’m upset!” Behroze spat. He seemed to forget he didn’t want to look at Kris and speared him with a glower, then whipped his head away again.
Kris sat cross-legged on the carpet directly in front of Behroze. “Tell me why you’re upset. Talk to me.”
“Where is Baba?” Behroze choked out through gritted teeth. “Why are you here?”
“Dawood is dying of mortification and self-flagellating in our bedroom.”
Behroze frowned. Kris bit his tongue. Behroze’s English was good, but he was still learning mountains of new words and phrases. Maybe that’s one area where we rubbed wrong. Kris loved his languages, his words, his twists of phrase. The fancier the better. How many times had he left Behroze in the dust of incomprehension? “He thinks he’s a terrible father and has failed you.”
Behroze curled even more inward, as if he could roll into a ball. His jaw clenched. “He has not,” Behroze grumbled. “He’s—” A tear slid down Behroze’s cheek.
And then rage filled his eyes again, and he snarled at Kris, “It’s you who ruin him! You who fail him!”
Here we go. Kris stayed impassive, not moving, not blinking. Who would have thought all those years in interrogations would come in handy with my… stepson? Is that who Behroze was? “Because I’m gay? Because Dawood and I are together?”
Behroze made fists with his hands and scowled, burning holes in the wall over Kris’s head.
“He was gay long before he and I met, and he will be gay even if I walk out the front door right now and never return. It’s who he is. It’s who I am. And we love each other.”
“If you loved him, you’d actually support him! His soul! You’d convert to Islam!” Behroze shouted suddenly. “You don’t care about his soul!”
Kris counted to ten silently. “I have loved Dawood for longer than you have been alive, Behroze. I care very, very deeply about his soul.”
“Then why don’t you convert? Why do you refuse to join Islam?”
“It’s not what I believe. It’s not my faith. I love him, and I even love you, though you make it hard sometimes.” He smiled weakly. “But false belief would be worse than not believing, right?”
How could he explain to Behroze the length of his life, the things he’d seen, all the reasons why and why not? Behroze had seen war and death and murder and madness as well. But he and Kris were on different sides of experiencing that same life and death, of war and peace, and now were sharing a roof and the love of one man.
Sometimes the twists and turns of Kris’s life made him lie awake at four in the morning and wonder if there wasn’t some kind of fucked up insane plan to the universe. Too much coincidence for accident, right? Or was humanity that fucked up that they created their own cycles, their own self-fulfilling prophecies? He’d watched America build her destiny, for good and for ill, over two decades in the CIA. Was that the hand of some God? Or was that men making shit decision after shit decision, a tumbling wheel of time?
Behroze scowled. His fists opened and closed, and he kept glaring, as if he could glare the world into the way he wanted it to be. “But…” he finally said. “But what about when you die? And you’re not a Muslim? What will happen to Baba then?”
Oh. Kris rocked back as the world shifted, the pole axis of reality canting three degrees to the left. Oh. He blinked. “Do you think I’d go to Jahannam?” Hell, or at least Islam’s version of it.
“It’s in the Quran,” Behroze said. “‘Surely, God has cursed the disbelievers and has prepared for them a flaming fire where they will abide forever.’” He rattled off the line in Arabic from memory.
“Chapter thirty-three, verse sixty-four.” Kris grinned as Behroze’s eyebrows rose. “I know the Quran by heart, too.” He held Behroze’s stare until Behroze looked away, squirming. “Do you think everything in the Quran should be taken literally?”
“I… don’t know. Baba and Imam Youssef have been teaching me how to read the Quran deeper. And we look at the hadith, and history, and the fiqh. I know there are things in the Quran that are…” He fumbled for the English word and switched to Pashto. “Stories. Fables. To guide us.”
Kris nodded. He stayed in Pashto for Behroze. “That is true. And for all religions, this is true.”
“I’ve seen men burned alive before,” Behroze blurted out. His Pashto was soft, almost broken. “I’ve seen how flames can consum
e a man. I’ve heard them scream. And wail. They cry out for Allah, but they were never saved, not in this life. Their salvation was in the next life. And—" He stared into Kris’s eyes. “I think of you suffering like that, lost, without Baba, and—" He looked down, his shoulders shaking.
Honestly, Kris had truly thought Behroze hated him. Or barely tolerated him. Behroze fearing for his eternal fate in the afterlife hadn’t even been a distant, remote possibility in his mind. “That won’t happen to me,” Kris said softly.
“But you don’t believe. And if you die...”
“I promise. I’ll be all right.”
“You cannot promise that.”
Kris kept his mouth shut. No, he couldn’t.
“Baba already spent ten years without you. I saw him praying to the moon every night. He was praying to you, praying for you. Do you know the first word I learned in English? It was your name. He spoke to you in English at night, and always said your name. I thought ‘Kris’ meant the moon. It was the saddest word in a language I didn’t know. It wasn’t until I read Baba’s email that I learned who you were. Bismillah, I know how much Baba loves you. I’ve seen it. What I don’t understand,” he said, his scowl returning, “is why you don’t love him as deeply? Why you would choose to be apart from him in eternity. Why you would choose to let him suffer for eternity without you? Again?”
His jaw hung open. His voice, any words, any thoughts, wouldn’t come. He had no idea what to say. “I choose Dawood every single time,” he finally whispered. “Every time. Always.”
“Then—"
Kris closed his eyes.
He’d never imagined it from Behroze’s viewpoint. From his eyes, his life, his experience. He’d packaged Behroze into a little box—immigrant, Muslim, war child, traumatized, minimal education—and had assumed cascading thoughts upon cascading thoughts from that simple reduction of the boy. He’d feared Behroze, in truth. Feared how Behroze viewed their love, but for an entirely different reason.