Page 20 of Sidhe
Red flared to life in Sasha’s eyes, his body going rigid and flinching forward like he was one harmful word away from clocking Nathan hard across the jaw. Nathan wanted him to. Thepain would be a relief, something physical he knew how to grit his teeth through and survive.
“You wanna hit me?” he goaded Sasha. “Hitme. At least then I’d actually feel something. If it wasn’t for being rough with you, I wouldn’t have even had the energy to get it up.”
Red flashed in Sasha’s eyes again and his body gave a telling jolt, but this time his momentum took him right off the bed. “Stop saying things like that. I know you’re frustrated. I know you’re angry. But you don’t mean this.”
Maybe Nathan did. Maybe he meant all of it. One thing he knew for certain was that the most alive he had felt since his return was right then. “Are you really that delusional? You and Jim, looking at me like I haven’t changed when youknowI have. You can’t live a whole year of one life and then just go back to your old one like nothing happened!”
“I don’t expect you to!” Sasha countered, standing defensibly before Nathan, who was still on the bed. Then Sasha paused as it registered that Nathan had admitted it had been a year for him. “I just want to help you get back what you can so we can havesomething. Do you hate me that much for what I did to bring you back? Because I couldn’t save you sooner? Is what Malak made of me enough that you really don’t want this anymore…?” His eyes shimmered back to blue, filling with sudden dampness.
“Are you even listening to me? I don’t feelanything,” Nathan shot back. “I thought I did, thought I could again, but I shut down a long time ago and every day I’m reminded a little more that there is nothing left. I don’t even know…if I love you anymore.”
Those words might as well have been a knife to Sasha’s gut for all the devastation they left in their wake. The tears dried in Sasha’s eyes, too overwhelmed to fall as he stumbled back. “You don’t mean that.”
Standing slowly from the bed, Nathan kept his expression like stone. “You so sure?”
“I know you, Nathan. I know what you’re doing. You can’t deal with this so you figure better to suffer alone. But you can’t push me away. I’m not going anywhere.”
Christ, how that stubbornness riled Nathan even more. “I. Don’t. Love. You,” he said deliberately as he stepped into Sasha’s space. “Nathan’s not home right now. Nathan’s an empty meat sack. Nathan’s still in Hell!” Only this was worse. This was worse because it should be right, it should be okay, but it wasn’t. “Thanks so much for your help getting me out,” he finished bitterly.
Sasha stumbled in place like he no longer had the strength to stand. His mouth quivered, his hands shook, but still he wouldn’t give up. “You’re wrong. You’re wrong, Nathan. I know you’re still in there. And I know it’s hard, I know I can’t ever understand what it was like, what you’re going through, but we can find our way back to the way things were, we can. You want that as much as I do, I know you do, or you wouldn’t have tried so hard to be with me tonight.”
The cruelty building so sharply within Nathan almost had him laughing. “I thought you could show me, remind me of what I should feel. You out of everyone should be able to do that, I thought. Then you know what I thought? I thought who the hell cares, I just wannafuckand forget for a while.
“There is nothing to stir up and dig out of me. This isn’t something you can magically fix with a little time and TLC. The harder you try, the harderItry to fake this into working, the more I want nothing to do with you.”
And it was true. It filled Nathan with despair he wouldn’t let Sasha see, but it was true.
He turned away.
“Nathan.”
“Shut up.”
“Nathan,” Sasha said more insistently.
“Just leave me the fuck alone.”
“Damn it, Nathan!” Sasha grabbed Nathan’s wrist.
Nathan whirled on him, wrenching his arm back. “I said leave me alone!”
Startled, Sasha instantly backed off. Nathan knew why too, as the lights in the bedroom flickered. His eyes were black again and Sasha looked downright terrified.
“Are you afraid of me?” Nathan asked mockingly, lessening the gap between them again with a few quick strides. “I don’t even have any powers like Jim. You could tear me apart. Andyou’reafraid ofme.”
Sasha sighed, simpering and sad again. “I couldn’t tear you apart, Nathan.”
“Right,” Nathan scoffed. That was Sasha’s problem, the reason he had given into Jim so easily in the Veil. The damn bleeding heart couldn’t accept that sometimes other people needed to hurt.Nathanneeded to hurt. “Yeah, ‘course you wouldn’t. You’d just lie there and take it, wouldn’t you? And why not? It’s in your blood.”
Sasha flinched and his expression hardened. “I know you love me, Nathan,” he said. And then he finally gave Nathan what he wanted. He punched him so fast and so hard, Nathan’s head cracked to the side and the room spun around him. “That’s why you deserve that.” Sasha turned and began scrounging for his clothes. He put them on without saying another word.
It took Nathan a moment to realize that the room’s spinning had ended with him half-sprawled on the bed, his jaw aching painfully. It felt good. It felt real. Apparently the Gatehouse wards wouldn’t protect himfromviolence anymore either.
“You can’t get rid of me, Nathan,” Sasha said when he was dressed and a little less flush from anger and dwindling arousal.“I’m sleeping somewhere else tonight, but I’m still going to be here in the morning.”
For a while after Sasha left, Nathan just stayed there on the bed, lying back on it with his jaw pulsing. He didn’t really feel any physically different than he had before the Veil. He could feel when his eyes were black if he really thought about it. But that was it. Whatever had changed in him went deeper than his body.
Eventually, he got up, found his own clothes, dressed. All of his things were in the room. Nathan still had car keys in his jeans pocket. It was easy to pack up what he would need.
