what a fucked up situation it was, and how horrifically wrong Bryce had been with his choices. Yet, he couldn’t help but be grateful. Julian deserved better, even if it meant getting hurt along the way. “I understand why he had to come.”
“You’re a good partner,” Fredric said, and Archer winced and hated himself that he was grateful Fredric couldn’t see it. “I always thought he and his friend Ilan would end up together one day.”
“Doctor Ilan,” Archer said quietly, and Fredric laughed.
“He’s always been a force to reckon with—that boy. The first day Julian brought him home, Jacqueline was livid. He was rough, and foul mouthed, and his shoes had holes in them. She was always so damn convinced that if Julian assimilated enough—that if he dressed well enough and said all the right things, kids wouldn’t be…”
“Assholes?” Archer offered, and Fredric chuckled.
“I forget about the scars, but I won’t forget the surgeries. He was a gorgeous baby, but Jacqueline was horrified that something we produced had come out different.” Fredric released Archer’s arm, then sank down into the sand and waited for Archer to join him. “I don’t think he realized he was different for a while. Not until kids at school started to notice. But he always took it. He never complained.”
“Not once?” Archer asked.
Fredric shrugged one shoulder. “When he was about thirteen, he got suspended a couple of times for picking fights. Jacqueline was always ready with a check though—always made it go away. I think Julian realized at that point there was nothing he could do that his mother’s willingness to pay couldn’t erase, so he put his head down and forged his own path.”
Archer felt another intense wave of affection for him and threw a wish out there into the universe that things could be different. Like he could open up a wormhole and creep back into the past and find Julian before all the real hurt set in.
“He did very well for himself,” Archer said after a while. “I’m in awe of him a lot.”
Fredric’s face was soft in the moonlight, glowing a bit from the way it reflected off the water. “Does he know he’s lucky to have you?”
“I don’t need him to be,” Archer said. He dragged his fingers through the sand, then leaned back on his elbows and tipped his gaze back toward the sky. “What he is right now is enough. It should be enough for anyone worthy of his time.”
Fredric said nothing for a long while. “Are you looking at the stars right now? Or is it cloudy?”
“It’s clear,” he said. “I came out to…I don’t know, contemplate. I haven’t done this in a while, though.” When Fredric made a curious hum, Archer smiled. “Stargazing. I’ve spent so much time locked up in my labs looking at numbers—looking at raw data, recording it. It’s easy to lose touch with the first thing that sparked this feeling inside me.”
Fredric turned his face up too, his eyes wide as though he could see them. “What do they sound like?”
“A billion different things,” Archer said. He laid back and put one arm behind his head. “The high and low density of hydrogen sounds like a rainstorm falling on bells.”
Fredric let out a small laugh. “Will you show me?”
“Yes,” Archer said, pushing up higher onto his elbows. “I promise, before I go, I’ll get in touch with someone and get you the recordings.”
“Does it make you happy?” Fredric asked after another moment of silence. “What you do?”
“Yes,” he answered. “It’s just… recently I’m starting to realize that maybe it’s not everything.”
Chapter 13
For the second morning in a row, Julian woke with no recollection of how he managed to sleep with a stranger beside him. Only this time, he was curled into Will. He had one arm curled around Will’s middle, his face pressing into his shoulder. Will’s entire body was relaxed, one arm above his head, his legs slightly sprawled. He looked carefully at ease, especially with the way his other hand was curled over Julian’s wrist.
It took several moments to extract himself, but he breathed a sigh of relief when Will didn’t wake up, and he snuck to the bathroom, then grabbed his phone and hearing aids and slipped out the back door. The tide was still out, but he kept closer to the dry shore as he adjusted to the sounds of the seaside morning, and when he felt steady on his feet, he pulled up his contacts and called