The communal showers proved less difficult than the doorway had promised. Kai stayed within speaking distance without hovering. He complained about the soap, identified which stone shelf had a habit of dropping anything placed upon it, and carried on an argument with a boy across the room while Jack washed the yard dust from his back. No one asked why Jack watched before using the taps. No one touched the healing wound at his hip or the ring concealed beneath his body. By the time he dressed, the crowd had thinned and steam had softened the hard voices bouncing from the tile.
Kai left him beneath the clock arch. He had promised to settle some matter involving a borrowed practice guard before evening meal, though his account of who had borrowed it changed twice while he told it. Jack watched him cross the square, brass chain bright against his fitted vest, and then returned alone to South Wing.
The sun had sunk behind the forested ridge. Light remained above the western wall, green-gold through the wet leaves, but the galleries had already gone dim. One by one the glass globes were waking inside their bronze cages. Their warmth caught on damp footprints and the brass strips protecting the edges of the stairs. Students moved through the fortress in groups loosened by the end of lessons, calling through open doors, trading books, making plans for the hour before supper.
Jack's room held the quiet they carried past it. He set the new notebook on the desk and examined his hand. The opened blister had bled through the strip of cloth he wrapped around it after washing. He unwound the cloth, rinsed the palm in the basin, and found the Academy needle kit on the wardrobe shelf. The kit contained no proper bandage, but the spare piece of linen beneath the thread would serve if he cut it along the weave. The work steadied him. Measure twice. Keep the cut straight. Fold the raw edge inward so it would not shed fibers into the wound. He had been good with his hands before this body, and that small inheritance remained entirely his.
Someone knocked while he was threading the linen around his palm.
Jack expected Kai, returning with a third version of the practice guard. He opened the door without asking who stood outside.
The boy from War Arts leaned against the gallery wall. He had changed out of his training clothes. His vest was black, edged in dark green, and the emerald chain lay between its open halves over his bare chest. The dirty-blond hair had been combed back while wet and had already begun falling loose again. Up close, his face was handsomer than it had appeared across the yard, narrow through the cheeks and assured around the mouth. The amber globe above him put light into his eyes without warming them.
He looked Jack over from the damp ends of his hair to the unfinished bandage in his hand.
"You could have answered me," he said.
Jack kept one hand on the door. "Did you call my name?"
The boy's mouth altered. Not quite a smile, not quite disbelief. "I didn't think I needed to stand in the yard shouting after you."
Behind him, two students passed carrying a laundry basket between them. He moved aside to let them through, then stepped into Jack's room as if the same movement had brought him there by accident.
Jack closed the door halfway, unwilling to leave his room exposed to the gallery and more unwilling to shut himself inside with a stranger. "What do you want?"
"There. That." The boy gestured toward him with an open hand. A green stone flashed at his breast. "You've looked through me since you arrived. You ignored me in the dining hall. You ignored me in the yard. Then you went into the showers hanging off Kai as though you needed him to hold your cock while you pissed."
The words were ugly, but the anger beneath them had been waiting longer than one afternoon. This boy had expected him. Perhaps he had been expecting him since the term began.
"I wasn't hanging off anyone."
"That is the part you object to?"
Jack pulled the loose end of linen around his palm. "I don't know who you are."
For a moment nothing moved in the room. Voices traveled along the gallery outside, near enough to distinguish as voices and too far away to make out the words.
The boy searched Jack's face. His attention caught on the healing cut and stayed there.
"Dorian," he said. "My name is Dorian."
Pale hair flew loose in a dark street. Bare feet struck wet stone. A hand locked around Jack's wrist while both of them ran naked beneath leaning windows. Then the memory caught and tore free: a mouth closing warmly around him in the shelter of an arch, a lantern swinging nearer, Dorian looking up from his knees with laughter pressed into the corners of his eyes. He rose and dragged Jack onward before the guard could catch them. A narrow room followed, their cold bodies tangled beneath one blanket, Dorian's breath breaking against the hollow of Jack's throat.
Jack returned to the dormitory with his injured hand clenched hard enough to darken the linen. Dorian had seen the recognition. Some of the anger left his shoulders.
"I'm sorry," Jack said. "I wasn't ignoring you. I truly didn't know who you were until you said your name."
Dorian searched his face again. "But you remember me now."
"A piece of you." Jack loosened his hand before the new bandage became useless. "The arch and the room afterward. I don't know the town, when it happened, or what came before it."
The account took the remaining anger out of Dorian's posture. He crossed the space between them and raised one hand toward Jack's face, slowly enough that Jack could have withdrawn. Jack remained where he was. Dorian's thumb settled below the healing cut without touching it.
"What happened to you?"
Concern made the question harder to answer than anger would have. Jack could not tell whether it was concern for him or for an arrangement Dorian believed had been taken away.
"I was attacked on the road. My head was hurt badly."
"So I've heard." Dorian's thumb moved once against Jack's cheek. "You found Thornfield. You walked through its gates, dressed yourself in emeralds, and made half the lower hall stare. Yet you forgot me."
"I remembered Thornfield, Drake, and Eomer. That was nearly everything." Jack lifted the half-wrapped hand between them. "Sometimes my hands know a skill, or a name pulls loose one moment. I can't reach whatever comes before or after it."
Dorian's attention dropped to the bandage. Jack finished wrapping the linen and tucked the end beneath the fold.
"If I hurt you by walking past, I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to make a point."
Dorian let his hand fall. "I thought you were still angry."
"I might have been. I don't know why."
For a moment Dorian appeared to accept that there would be no better answer. Then his attention hardened around the part of Jack's new life he could see. "Fine. But sitting with Ashwell and that library corpse? Letting Kai trail after you? He'll tell every boy in the South Wing what you look like without your trousers before he learns which side of you he prefers."
"Kai hasn't done anything to me."
"Of course he hasn't. He wants an audience." Dorian's contempt sharpened because Jack had defended him. "And the other two are freaks. No one sits at that end of the hall unless they have nowhere better to go. You always knew that."
Jack thought of Finn pushing water toward him while keeping soil from his cup. Edric moving three books to clear a place. Kai looking down at his folded vest so Jack could say only as much as he chose.
"Then I had worse judgment before the road."
Dorian stared at him. The last trace of concern vanished.
"When did you become too good for me? You were always down for a quick fuck, Drake."
The surname landed as Master Draek had made it land in the yard, but the command inside it was different. Instructor, rank, family, memory: everyone who used it appeared to know what Jack owed.
Jack's attention dropped to Dorian's mouth. The memory beneath the arch sent heat through his stomach and into his cock with none of the dread the sword had carried. Dorian was handsome, familiar to the body, and standing close enough that Jack could decide for himself whether he wanted to know more.
Dorian answered the pause by catching the open edge of Jack's vest and drawing him forward, slower now, leaving enough room for Jack to stop him. Jack did not. Their mouths met without the violence Dorian had brought into the conversation. His lips were soft, his breath faintly sharp with mint, and when his tongue passed over Jack's lower lip, Jack opened for it.
The kiss carried recognition the rest of Jack could not share. Dorian's hand settled at the back of his neck and knew how firmly to hold. Jack gripped the black vest over Dorian's ribs and pulled him closer. The emerald chains pressed together between their chests, gold links shifting over bare skin, until Dorian turned them and backed Jack toward the bed.
Jack's knees touched the frame. Dorian kissed down the uninjured side of his jaw and worked loose the tie at his waist. He paused with his fingers beneath the overlapping cloth. Jack could have closed his hand over them. Instead, he lifted his hips enough to let Dorian pull the trousers open.
His cock rose hard between them. Dorian gave a low sound against his throat, dropped to his knees, and took the head into his mouth.
Pleasure tightened Jack's hand in Dorian's hair. Dorian knew this body. He knew the place beneath the crown that made Jack's breath catch and how far to take him before easing back. His tongue moved beneath the shaft while one hand closed around the base, and the remembered sensation joined the real one until Jack could no longer tell which part of the response had been learned before he arrived.
He did not care. He wanted Dorian's mouth and chose to keep it there.
Dorian rose before Jack could finish. His lips shone. He kissed Jack once, tasting of skin and salt, then opened his own trousers and freed his cock. It stood hard from a nest of dirty-blond hair, the foreskin drawn back from the wet head. Dorian pressed it against Jack's thigh and put both hands on his hips.
The first pull tried to turn Jack toward the bed.
Jack resisted. "No. Not that."
Dorian held him for a moment, breathing against his cheek. Then his hands loosened. He went down again without arguing and took Jack back into his mouth.
Relief let Jack's shoulders release. He braced one hand on the bedpost while Dorian worked him deeper. The other hand remained in Dorian's hair, guiding without forcing. Dorian's cheeks hollowed around the shaft. His own cock stood between his parted trousers, untouched and darkening at the tip.
While Jack watched his mouth, Dorian pulled the gray trousers lower. The waistband passed Jack's hips and gathered around the tops of his thighs. Dorian rose in the same motion, caught him around the waist, and tried to turn him again.
"I said no."
Jack planted one foot. Dorian pulled harder. His thumb drove into the tender line of the healing wound at Jack's left hip, sending pain through the newly closed flesh. Jack caught his forearm and tried to wrench it away, but Dorian shoved forward, using the bed behind Jack's legs to take away his balance.
"Stop."
Dorian kept fighting him, one hand forcing at his shoulder while the other dragged his hips sideways. Jack's trousers trapped his thighs together. The bedframe struck the backs of his knees, and Dorian bore down as if refusal were only another part of a game they had played before.
"Stop, you're hurting me, Dorian!"
Dorian did not stop.
The room narrowed to the half-open door behind him, Dorian's weight, and the old body's certainty about how to move a boy who expected resistance to go backward. Jack dropped his center, drove one shoulder into Dorian's middle, and wrapped both arms behind his thighs.
He surged forward.
Dorian's back struck the door hard enough to throw it open. Jack kept driving, bare feet finding the stone beyond the threshold while Dorian tried to brace with trousers already slipping down his legs. The cloth caught around his knees. His next step failed, and Jack released him into the gallery.
Dorian hit the floor on his back and one elbow. His black trousers had fallen around his calves. His hard cock remained free in the open air, bobbing once with the impact before lying against his stomach.
Three boys had stopped outside the neighboring room. One still held a folded shirt against his chest. None of them pretended they had not seen.
Jack stood in his own doorway with his gray trousers bunched below his hips and his cock hard against his stomach. Rage reached him before shame. He shoved himself into the trousers with one hand and dragged the waistband up.
"Fuck off, Dorian!"
Dorian fought his way onto one elbow. His face had gone red, but whether from fury, humiliation, or the fall, Jack could not tell. He made no attempt to cover himself.
"Fuck you too, Jack," he yelled.
Jack slammed the door and locked it. He leaned back against the thick wood, both palms flat upon it, while Dorian cursed and gathered his clothes in the gallery.
What the fuck is happening to me?
His breathing remained fast, his erection painful inside the hastily tied trousers, and the healing line at his hip throbbed where Dorian's thumb had driven into it. Jack stayed against the door until the footsteps and voices outside moved away.
The room contained no second bolt. The lock was a simple ward plate and an iron tongue sunk into the old frame, adequate against a stranger who lacked a key and useless against anyone Jack admitted himself. He tested it twice, then dragged the desk several inches from the wall. Its legs rasped over the floor. Wedged beneath the latch, it would at least make noise if someone tried the door during the night.
Only after that did he examine the damage. One eyelet had pulled loose from the vest, and the cord at his waist had stretched where Dorian dragged the trousers down. Blood had worked through the linen around his palm. The hip wound remained closed, though the new skin around it had reddened and begun to swell. Matching bruises had begun to rise behind both knees where the bedframe struck him.
His hands shook while he threaded the needle.
Wanting Dorian at first did not alter the refusal that followed. Dorian had mistaken old access for permission now.
The supper bell sounded while he was closing the last stitch. Doors opened along South Wing, and the corridor filled again. Jack changed into his spare vest. He placed the torn one on the wardrobe shelf beside Caleo's folded cloak, then washed the new blood from his palm and retied the linen.
He considered remaining behind. The room no longer felt safer than the hall, and hunger had already begun its deep pull beneath his ribs.
Jack moved the desk away from the door and went to supper.
The long tables had filled unevenly. Finn and Edric occupied their usual end, books and plates sharing the available space. Kai had not arrived. Jack sat across from Finn, accepted the bowl Edric moved clear of a stack of papers, and began to eat.
At the table beneath the windows, the other emerald chain flashed when Dorian turned his head.
Jack saw him. This time he knew exactly who was looking.
He turned back to his supper.