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He doesn’t know. It’s a bitter recrimination from Dara’s own head the second he slams the door behind him. He can feel the jump in Taye and Bethany’s brain, sluggish as they are, but neither of them seem too concerned with loud noises when it comes to Noam and Dara. He doesn’t know the truth, you’ve made sure he doesn’t know the truth and then you went and acted like a maniac anyway and you’ve done it this time, he’s going to really hate you this time.
It’s hard to tease together all the different versions of reality that Dara knows. He's spread so thin these days - the witching, the ward, the assassin, the slut. And Noam Álvaro messes with all of them, makes it impossible to keep track of who he’s supposed to be. Maintaining any pretence of social normality had burned up with Noam’s mouth on his; now that he knows what it is to have him, some small and sordid piece, he’s lost whatever minor ability he had to keep his head around the other boy at all.
There’s no reason for the Dara that Noam knows to care what he thinks. What do they have between them, really? A collection of fraught silences and heated glances, more words bitten out and broken than any real understanding. One night ended in ruin, but so fucking precious in the middle that Dara isn’t convinced it actually happened.
(Why not? You’re an attractive boy, Dara. And he was looking for experience.)
Lehrer’s voice is always gentle in his head. The kind of voice that lets you read into it what you want. He thinks it had felt warm, once.
All Dara feels these days is the other shoe, waiting to drop. He just wants Noam to be okay when it happens. Alive, if okay isn’t possible.
He gets all the way out of the barracks before his feet pull him to a stop. Part of him had thought - wondered, hoped? - that Noam might follow him, because Noam is always charging into stupid situations without thinking.
But that’s not right either, because Dara knows he’s thinking. Can feel him now with his forehead pressed to the slick tile in the shower, skull full of self-recriminations. Dara rubs his wrist, the lingering kiss of Noam’s touch doing its best to heal the brand of something older and uglier.
(Blame me, he thinks, squeezing until his middle finger meets his thumb. I was an ass, I was awful, you were only trying to help and I threw it right back in your face)
But Noam doesn’t blame him, because Noam has never met a problem that he hasn’t immediately declared his responsibility, and Dara wants to hate him for that. Has tried to spite his naivety for months, extinguish the angry heat of hope the boy carries in him, only to - what? Believe him? Believe in him?
Dara doesn’t think that’s true. But Dara stabbed Gordon Ames sixteen times last night because Noam Álvaro thought the man should be dead, so what the fuck does he know.
He waits for Noam to get out of the shower. This far away, picking up on his thoughts is like wading through molasses and he shouldn’t be doing it at all. Should give Noam the dignity of being alone in his own head, but if Dara is an alcoholic, he thinks he’s probably addicted to this too. The comfort of slipping into the mind of someone good, someone who gives a shit, someone vibrating to pieces with the urge to make the world right.
(Someone who looks at and wants, not with the oil-slick of possession, but a vibrant tang of wonder. Dara has waded through the shores of Noam’s thoughts for months now, but he still doesn’t fucking understand him).
Noam doesn’t get out of the shower. Still outside the barracks, Dara thinks about texting Taye to go check on him. But Taye is out of it at this point and it’s stupid, ugly, he literally knows that Taye isn’t interested, but maybe Dara doesn’t want to encourage people interrupting Noam when he’s naked and wet.
(He’s an attractive boy, too, Lehrer notes mildly, and Dara bares his teeth to the empty air, lingers on Noam’s thoughts repeating sixteen times, feels scrabbling fingers digging into his flesh, bare. Thinks of blood. Thinks of Lehrer. Noam stays in the shower).
He should just go. Find a body to bury himself in, a brain, sink himself into the skin of someone else until it’s time to crawl out and start another day of not dying. Another hour of making sure Noam doesn’t get himself killed. Or anything else, although as the black stain of Lehrer’s influence spreads through the boy’s mind, the chances of saving him (from what?) steadily wriggle themselves out of Dara’s grasp.
It’s been ages. Dara’s not sure when Noam slid down to the floor of the shower, isn’t sure when he joined him on the cold concrete outside the barracks, back pressed tight to the wall. He can’t feel Noam’s bruises, but he can feel the boy thinking about them. Can feel the sick echo pressed into his own thighs, a different kind of violence.
How is it he’d stabbed Gordon, a man whom he could at least think fondly about, and yet every time his skittering thoughts converge on Lehrer, they scatter just as quickly?
Dara checks the time. Realises that he has no idea when he left Noam to his own devices, let alone when he got into the shower. The water is starting to turn cold, and he listens to the tinny sound of Noam wondering if he should just stay in there, if he deserves to be uncomfortable. Dara’s body moves without permission, easing his way back into the barracks.
Noam hates waste. An annoying habit on the outside, maybe, but one that traces back to something bright and golden inside of him, the need to make sure that other people are cared for. That people have enough. And Dara, who has spent a life living in excess scant miles away from where people starve, can’t help but be drawn towards that light.
It makes him want to crack open his own tough exterior, peel back the soft and fleshy parts of him, let Noam peer inside. I want to be enough, he thinks, finds himself hovering outside the bathroom door as Noam towels himself dry. Let me be enough for you.
He already knows the answer to that, of course. Noam deserves something more than Dara, who can barely pull the pieces of himself together these days. But as he knocks on the door between them, holds the meager scraps of his love gentle in his mouth (are you all right in there?), he has to hope anyway.
Noam hasn’t left him with any other choice.