Chapter 18 #2
Eventually, I pushed myself up. Diego made a small sound of protest. I climbed off carefully, pulled on my jeans, and padded into the hallway, because walking around naked and covered in cum seemed like a bad first impression. The communal bathroom was empty, thank fuck.
I ran warm water over a washcloth, then wrung out a second one. The mirror over the sink showed a man with color in his face for the first time in weeks.
When I got back, Diego had shifted onto his side, eyes already half-closed. I sat on the edge of the cot and ran the cloth over his skin. He smiled at the warmth. When I got to his wrists, my hands stopped.
The zip ties had cut deep, leaving angry red welts where he'd pulled hard enough to break the skin. My thumb traced the worst of it, and something behind my ribs clenched down hard. They'd done this to both of us, hooded and stripped and searched us like threats instead of allies.
Diego opened his eyes and looked at where my thumb rested on his wrist.
"It's nothing," he said.
I brought his wrist to my mouth and pressed my lips to the raw skin. He sucked in a breath. I held there for a second, then set his hand down and finished with the cloth.
He caught my wrist and pulled me down for a kiss, slow and lazy, tasting like contentment.
"Thank you," he said against my mouth.
I kissed him again and cleaned myself up. My whole body was loose, the kind of satisfied exhaustion that usually only came after a good fight. Except this time nobody was bleeding.
Diego's eyes were closing. I pulled the thin blanket over him, and he grabbed my hand, held it against his chest for a second, then let go. He was asleep in under a minute.
I grabbed my shirt off the floor and pulled it on. He needed food when he woke up, and I was going to make sure he had it.
The hallway was empty. Old cigarettes and cooking oil led me to what the resistance called a kitchen: a supply closet with a hot plate older than me, a rust-stained sink, and shelves sagging under canned goods.
The cabinets gave up their inventory one at a time: canned beets, a tin of sardines with Portuguese writing and a picture of a fish that looked disappointed with how its life had turned out, half a jar of dill pickles shoved in the back, bread that was only slightly stale, and cheese that had seen better days but wasn't growing anything yet.
My babushka used to eat like this when I was small. Whatever was in the cabinet, no ceremony, beets and bread while she told me stories about Koschei the Deathless and Baba Yaga.
The can opener fought me before the sardine tin gave.
The smell hit: salt and oil and fish. I dumped them onto a plate, added beets that stained everything pink, and sliced off a chunk of cheese.
The pickle stayed in its jar because I wasn't dirtying another dish for a pickle. I tore the bread with my hands.
The plate and the jar made it back down the hallway without incident, which was more than I'd expected from myself. The door was still ajar. When I pushed it open, Diego was awake, sitting up, jeans back on but shirt still off.
He studied me, then the plate. The corner of his mouth twitched.
"Are those beets?" he asked.
"Yeah." I set the plate between us and sat on my cot. "And sardines. And pickles. It's what was in the kitchen."
He picked up the bread. His fingers were still pink from where I'd been working his shoulders. He tore off a chunk, used it to scoop beets, and ate. His expression stayed neutral.
"This is terrible," he said.
"I know."
"Like, genuinely bad food."
"Yeah."
He ate another bite anyway. Then he met my eyes. "Thank you."
I grabbed a sardine with my fingers and ate it. Oil ran down my hand, and I wiped it on my jeans.
We ate in silence, passing the pickle jar back and forth. Diego's fingers turned progressively pinker from the beet juice. He just kept eating, kept looking at me like I'd done a thing that mattered.
"She used to eat like this." I hadn't meant to say it. "My babushka. Whatever was in the cabinet. She'd sit at her table with beets and bread and tell me stories about deathless men and witches."
"How old were you when she died?"
"Six."
"That's young."
"Yeah." I ate bread. "She was the only person who took care of me before..."
I stopped. Too much honesty for canned beets. But Diego understood. He always understood. He set down his bread and shifted across to sit beside me, cupped my face in both hands, palms sticky with beet juice and oil, and kissed me.
This kiss was different from earlier, slower. The hunger was gone, and something else had taken its place, something I had no name for. When he pulled back, he kept his hands on my face.
"You've got me now," he said. "You know that, right?"
"Yeah." The word came out rough and low.
He kissed me again, softer this time.
I love him. The thought hit me like a cold slap.
I loved Diego. I loved Eight. And Koschei's whole survival strategy was that nobody knew where the needle was.
I'd spent a decade keeping the needle buried, and now I was sitting on a cot in Casablanca with beet juice on my lips and the needle in plain sight, beating in my chest where anyone could reach it.
I pressed my hands flat against my thighs and held them there.
Diego was still holding my face, looking at me like he could see everything I wasn't saying.
"Okay," he said, barely above a breath. "Okay, guapo."
He let go and picked up his bread. We went back to eating, our fingers pink and our jeans oil-stained.
After a minute, Diego spoke again, lower. "I've been thinking about after."
"After what?"
"After we get Eight back. After Zeus and all of it." He picked at the bread. "My parents have a house. Outside Sevilla. There's a vineyard. My father wanted me to learn it. I told him to go fuck himself and left when I was seventeen."
He tore the bread into pieces he wasn't eating.
"I want to take Eight there," he said. "Teach her about grapes instead of killing. Let her be a kid." He looked at me. "Fill the house with noise. Normal family chaos."
"You'd be good at that," I said. "The chaos."
He grinned. "Weed on the front porch. Our own bed. Waking up together without wondering if today's the day." The grin faded, and what replaced it was something unguarded, something he didn't usually let me see. His voice dropped. "Just peace. As long as you're there with me."
Diego sat on a cot in Casablanca with beet juice on his fingers, asking me to learn how to grow grapes.
"I know nothing about grapes," I said.
He smiled. "I'll teach you."
"I want that," I said. "The vineyard. The kids. All of it."
Relief broke across his face. He reached over and took my hand, laced his fingers through mine, and held on.