FenceStriking Distance - Sarah Rees Brennan Page 0,74

to turn off the movie.

Tonight, Harvard was here with him. They were both lying on their stomachs with their legs kicked up and their hands cupped in their chins, as though they were six years old.

They weren’t.

Aiden tangled their legs together slightly, deliberately. It felt far more dangerous than crossing swords. Aiden couldn’t imagine a match with so much at stake.

“During a date when you stay in,” Aiden said, teaching, “you should try to see if the other person is receptive to you getting closer.”

Harvard gave Aiden a look out of the corner of his eye, and let their legs stay tangled, resting with light pressure against one another. Love was a delusion, nothing but an electrical impulse in the brain, but there were many impulses running electric under Aiden’s skin right now.

The man in black smiled beneath his mask and switched his sword to his right hand. The clash of swords rang over the sound of the sea.

Aiden sneaked another look at Harvard, the shine of his dark eyes and white teeth in the silvery glow from the screen. Harvard caught him looking, but he returned Aiden’s look with a look of his own, warmly affectionate and never suspicious at all. Harvard never suspected a thing.

Because Aiden was his best friend, and Harvard trusted him. And Harvard could trust him. Aiden would never do anything to hurt Harvard, not anything at all.

Aiden moved in still closer, his arm set against Harvard’s, solid muscle under the thin material of his shirtsleeve. He could put his arm around Harvard’s shoulders or slip an arm around his waist or lean in. He was allowed, just for tonight.

“Why are you smiling?” Harvard asked, teasing.

“Because I know something you don’t know,” Aiden teased back.

Harvard raised an eyebrow. “And what is that?”

“You’re really cute,” murmured Aiden, and leaned in.

His lean was arrested when Harvard laughed. “Ha! That’s such a line. These things really work on your guys?”

Overcome by the magnitude of this insult, Aiden snapped, “Invariably!”

Harvard rolled his eyes. “I hate to tell you this, buddy, but I think they’re letting you get away with substandard lines because you’re cute.”

Aiden paused, torn between being deeply offended and ridiculously flattered.

Harvard bit his lip, seeming to think this over.

“I guess if you guys both know you’re just playing around, what you say doesn’t really count,” he offered. “That’s why people call them lines, like the things you say in a play. I know this isn’t real, but…”

Aiden tried to keep his voice soft, to be understanding. “But it’s practice for being real.” His mouth twisted on the name, but he forced it out. “For Neil.”

Harvard winced. Aiden supposed it might feel a little weird, to hear the name of the boy he actually liked, while tangled up with another. For Harvard, who was so good, it might feel close to cheating.

Aiden didn’t want to say the name or hear it or think it. Harvard seemed to be struggling with a thought, and Aiden waited to hear Harvard tell him what he wanted. That was all Aiden wished to know or to do. What Harvard wanted.

“Have you ever… liked anyone for real?” Harvard asked in a voice that started low and sank with every word, until it almost disappeared on the word real.

Aiden didn’t trust himself to speak, so he only nodded.

“What did you say to him?”

“I never said anything to him,” Aiden answered slowly. “But there were things I wanted to say.”

“Like what?” murmured Harvard, then shut his eyes, lashes black silk fans against his cheekbones. “You don’t have to say. Not if it hurts. You don’t have to.”

It hurt, but this would be Aiden’s only chance to say all the things he wanted to say. He wouldn’t get another.

Life always hurt, but Harvard was the only one who could ever make it feel better.

Aiden leaned in toward Harvard as close as he could get, so close that every breath was like a storm in the tiny space between them. The blood beneath his skin seemed like thunder, every faint electric impulse turned to dangerous lightning, and every whisper to a desperate shout.

Aiden whispered: “Listen.”

25: HARVARD

Aiden was very close, and it was very distracting. His shirt was off in all the ways it could be off while still being nominally on. At least if the shirt had been entirely off, it could’ve been normal, part of the everyday routine of getting dressed and undressed in the dormitory. Instead of this deliberate gesture toward nakedness. Half of Aiden’s