Chester’s breathing sounds shaky. “I—I don’t need you to protect me, Obie. Or take care of me. I’ve been doing that myself since I was ten.” He grabs Obie’s hand, squeezing tightly. “What I want—what Ineed—is for us to take down the Sanctum together. Just like we always planned. I want to spend the rest of my life doing that, okay?”
Obie’s heart cracks. “I… don’t. I don’t want that. Not for you, and not for me, either.”
Chester’s face crumples. “Obie?—”
Obie shoves himself to his feet, pulling his hand out of Chester’s. Putting some distance between them. “I need to run some chores around town,” he lies, running his hands down his jeans. Trying to erase the feeling of Chester’s skin underneath his fingertips. “And you have work. I’ll be back tonight. Probably after bowling, if the binding spell lets me stay away for that long.”
“What? But that’s—” Chester grabs for his cell phone, checking the time on the screen. “Obie, it’s not even six a.m. yet. That would be over sixteen hours.”
“Great,” Obie says, trying to inject some false cheer into his voice and probably failing miserably. “New record, right?”
Chester’s eyes narrow. “You know as well as I do that we don’t need to test the binding spell, Smith. It doesn’t need to work to keep us from leaving each other, not anymore.” His jaw twitches. “Or it didn’t before now, at least.”
He looks almost angry. Good. Anger is better than the gaping hole that’s currently raging in Obie’s chest. “Last night was… probably a mistake,” he says briskly, and Chester jerks back like Obie slapped him. “We rushed into things. As usual. Won’t happen again.”
Chester’s lips press tightly together. “Obie?—”
Obie peels open a rift before Chester can say anything else. “Later, Locke,” he says, and he escapes back to his own house, landing in the middle of his bedroom. He tries not to let his eyes wander, tries not to remember all the ways he’s imagined Chester in this room, tries not to linger on how he wanted to weave their lives together?—
Tries not to think about how everything just shattered in less than ten minutes.
He’s left standing there for a long time.
36
The water in the showers is cold.
It’s probably for the best, Chester thinks bitterly. He needs that shock of frigid water on his body, needs that encouragement to scrub every trace of Obie’s touch off his skin?—
Needs to get in and out and back to reality as quickly as possible. He hastily rinses the shampoo out of his hair before turning off the water, grabbing a towel, and heading to a secluded corner to dry off. A few of the other hunters glance his way as they stumble in for their own showers, flat and disinterested, and Chester wraps the towel more firmly around his waist, irrationally scared that they’ll be able to see the evidence of what he did last night—what heletObie do to him last night—written all over him.
Obie doesn’t have these problems in his stupidnon-communalshower. Chester scowls as he wrestles on his work uniform, tosses his towel in the laundry, and shoulders his way into the hallway, heading straight downstairs. He feels antsy, jittery, unfocused, like he’s waitingfor a hand to drop onto his shoulder or an amused voice to wind through his head or?—
Stop thinking about him. Focus.Chester takes a deep breath, trying to clear out some of the tightness in his lungs as he slips into the dining hall. He’s only about fifteen minutes later than usual, but the line is nearly twice as long, and he keeps one eye on the clock as he waits, hoping he won’t have to rush to eat before his shift.
That’s another thing he can blame Obie for. After he rifted out of Chester’s room without a backwards glance an hour ago, Chester had to bury his face in his knees and spend a long few minutes trying to remember how to breathe, trying to fight back the burning behind his eyes, trying to patch over the gaping wound he could feel throbbing in his chest?—
Goddamn Obadiah Smith. Goddamn Nostringvadha and his captivating true form and his unilateral ideas about what their future should look like.
About whatChester’sfuture should look like. Some of this morning’s anger stirs back up behind his sternum, and he focuses on that as he grabs his breakfast and walks to his usual table on autopilot. Good. Anger is easier to deal with,saferto deal with, than all the other emotions raging through him.
Because Obie knows exactly what Chester has been through over the past twelve years. He knows exactly how much the Sanctum took from Chester, knows exactly how much they hurt him and the people he cares about.
And Obie just wants Chester to forget all that? To abandon the goal they set for themselves last month, the very thing that brought them together? Obie wants to throw away the purpose that Chester finally found for his life, wants to fit Chester into the mold of who Obie thinks he should be?
Wants to take away Chester’s choices, just like the Sanctum did?
He brings his fork down so hard that it skids across his plate with a hair-raisingskreek.Wincing, he rests his forehead on his palm, closing his eyes.
No. No, that’s not fair. Obie just wanted to give destroying the Sanctum a slightly less prominent place in their lives, that’s all. He just wanted to give Chester the chance for a new life—a life where he wouldn’t have to worry about blacking out during interrogation duty or taking a beating if he made the slightest mistake or being disparaged by every hunter in the building.
A better life. Asaferlife.
A life where Chester could truly be himself.
But Chester doesn’t want that. Not until the Sanctum is no longer a threat. He can’t rest—won’trest—until they can never hurt anybody ever again. Not like they hurt him and his family.
Not like they hurt Obie and his family, either.
