Kane swore at him, throwing the towel in his face. “You’ve been fine this whole time?”
“Oh, no, my chest hurts.” Dean scrubbed his face with the towel. “But I was enjoying the attention. And I do need help.”
“What did Poesy do to you?”
It took Dean a long time to put his words together. “She tried to take away my sight when I refused to tell her where Sophia’s reverie manifested. If it wasn’t for the Dreadmare armor, she would have taken everything from me. As it is, she got me pretty good.”
Dean wouldn’t look at Kane. Downcast, his eyes weren’t their usual shade of green. They weren’t brown, either.
“Look at me,” Kane said.
Dean’s gaze rose. His eyes were pure white.
Kane fell backward until he was against the opposite wall. “You’re not…”
Dean crossed his arms over himself, turning to give Kane his profile and closing his eyes again. “Not what?”
Real.
Kane couldn’t say it. He didn’t want to say it. He didn’t understand what he was seeing. White eyes told you who was real in a reverie, and who was from the reverie itself. And Dean’s eyes were undeniably white. He was reverie-born.
Finally, Dean spoke. “I told you, anything Poesy wants from a reverie, she takes.”
A hundred moments replayed in Kane’s mind. A hundred unspoken thoughts shouted through him. Kane had wondered from the start what someone like Dean was doing working for someone like Poesy, and now he understood. Dean had no choice. He was a weapon, salvaged from a world crushed by Poesy long before this battle began.
“I’m so sorry,” Kane whispered.
“Don’t be,” Dean said, still looking away. Kane knew there was nothing he could do but wait for Dean to go on, if he wanted to, and soon enough he did.
“The world I come from is a cruel one. People like me are hunted. Slain. Eventually, I got caught looking too long at the wrong person, and that was my end. They found me, but Poesy found me, too. She offered me a choice, and I’m glad I took it. I survived and my cruel world didn’t. That’s it.”
“What do you mean, people like you?”
“People like you and me. There is no nice word for it in my world. To name it is a crime.”
Kane knew. He himself had lived a life beyond the true horrors of society’s many hatreds, but the one he could glimpse easiest into was the horror that would have been his own if he’d been born into a different place, at a different time, or within a different life. Dean’s life, maybe.
Kane scooted forward, unable to resist the need to touch Dean and confirm the boy was solid. Dean’s hands rose automatically to rest on Kane’s hip, the same place they held Kane when they’d kissed.
“It’s okay,” Kane said. “It wasn’t—”
Dean’s eyes flashed. “Don’t say that. It was real. It was real to me.” His hands tightened, and he pulled Kane closer, like he needed to hold on to him or risk fading away. Or apart. His shoulders shook under a weight Kane couldn’t see.
“I feel real,” Dean said into Kane’s chest.
“You are,” Kane said back. “It doesn’t matter where you came from, or how you got here. You survived, and you’re here now, and you’re real.”
Dean’s breathing steadied. “That’s what you told me the first time.”
He held on tighter, and Kane let him. Their past was an ache between them. A knot that wound tension and tightness through the space they shared and the skin they touched. Kane had fought to untie that knot and destroy it a few times now, but he knew he had to let it live. He couldn’t destroy the past Dean loved any more than he could unravel this reverie. It was real to the person who needed it, and Kane was powerless against that need.
Kane put his head against Dean’s, who traced infinity symbols into Kane’s temples.
“So you can’t teleport us off this ship,” Kane said.
“Correct.”
“And we’re trapped here until we land?”
“We are.”
Kane had closed himself to wonder when he’d entered this reverie, but now wonder was everywhere within in. Wonder about the vast dreams around them, about the bad power within him, and about the nightmares that raced ahead of them. In every scenario, he faced what came next with the boy before him. They would figure it out together.
Dean got Kane’s hint and pushed through his pain to sit up. He placed a hand on Kane’s jaw to kiss him. It felt very real.
Kane closed himself to wonder once again, turning away from all the world’s bad potential to face this one good thing. This was real, was right now. To Kane, it was better than real. It was fantastic.
Kane stopped wondering, and he kissed Dean back.
• Thirty-Five •
LAST CALL
The walls were still damp when the cabana unlocked itself for the robotic cleaning staff, but the boys were gone long before that. They had made the bed as best they could, which the robots were programmed to appreciate for three full seconds before stripping the sheets entirely.
Many floors away, Kane and Dean sat at a bar sipping fruity drinks, dressed in the clothes they’d scavenged from the pool floor. The shirts were bold and floral, giving the appearance of resort wear, but every seam was lined in pudgy piping. To Kane, that put this version of the future deep in the imagination of the ’80s. That explained all the buttons on the ship. And the synth music. And many of the haircuts.
“I can’t stop thinking about those space burgers,” Kane said over the din.
“I know. You’ve said so six times.”
Kane’s face burned. Since the shower he couldn’t seem to shut up, which was the opposite of his usual aloofness. He got like this when he was excited. Being with Dean felt like nothing he had ever known. The newness for Kane combined with the assuredness in Dean’s touch—it was exhilarating, a world within itself. Kane wasn’t about to shut up anytime soon.
“Last call,” said the bartender. “Docking in one hour.”
“Come on,” Kane said, pulling Dean from the bar and onto the crowded dance floor. Dean hugged his arm as they made their way to the side of a platform atop which a dancer twirled and flexed.
“Are you sure about this?” Dean said.
“Yeah, we blend in better here than at the bar.” People were watching the dancer, not the two boys off to the side.
“No,” Dean said, stiff in Kane’s arms. “I mean us. Together. Isn’t it…you know?”