Danny couldn’t sleep. He lay awake in bed, staring into the depths of his humble Enfield cottage, wondering if it would still be his in a few weeks’ time.
Sighing loudly, he turned onto his back. The curtains were drawn across the window near his bed, but moonlight shone through the crescent window above, splashing across his sheets. Most nights, the moonlight crept up the bed, caressing his face briefly before it hid beyond the window. It seemed almost purifying.
He didn’t want to think about tomorrow, or the day after. He wanted to stay right where he was and force the moon to stay still, to refrain from pulling the night onwards. But on the nightstand his timepiece ticked away the seconds, reminding him that the night would eventually end and time would go on as usual.
There had been a moment—just one moment—when Danny had been able to manipulate time beyond the normal limits of the clock tower. Reaching out, he picked up the small cog that rested beside his timepiece and ran a thumb over its surface, thinking about how his blood had connected him to Enfield, when he had shifted time with just a thought.
In India, time was moving forward even when towers were destroyed. Who was to say someone wasn’t controlling it the same way he’d controlled Enfield’s?
A small knock made him jump. Danny threw off the covers and hurried to the door.
Colton stood on the threshold with a sheepish smile.
“What are you doing here?” Danny demanded.
“Sorry. I wanted to see you.”
Danny leaned out the doorway, looking both ways, then ushered Colton inside before he was seen. “Is something wrong?” Colton usually didn’t knock, taking great joy in waltzing into the cottage whenever Danny least expected it.
“No, nothing’s wrong.”
“You saw I couldn’t sleep,” Danny guessed.
Colton shrugged. The spirit, like Cassie, tended to worry about him. Danny recalled the fever he had run back in February. He’d been too sick to leave his bed, so Colton had fed him broth and watched over him as he slept. It had almost felt normal.
“I just wanted to see you,” Colton insisted. “To stay with you.” When Danny hesitated, studying him for the signs of weakening he’d shown in the factory, Colton added, “Please?”
The thought of having Colton beside him was more comforting than having only the moon for company, so Danny passed him the small cog to put in his pocket for strength.
“I still have to sleep, though,” Danny said as he crawled back under the covers. “You’ll be terribly bored.”
“I won’t be.” Colton joined him under the blankets, settling into the space Danny left unoccupied.
Danny shifted so they were face to face. “Did you mean it? About speaking to my father?” Colton nodded. “I don’t know if it will help, but you can try. Dad’s not unreasonable. I think he’s just scared.”
“He was trapped in Maldon. It makes sense.”
Danny breathed, in and out, a slow and steady pattern that Colton couldn’t imitate. As if reading his thoughts, Colton placed his fingers against Danny’s neck, feeling for his pulse.
“I wish I could be like you. Things would be so much easier.”
“Stop talking about it, Colton.” It’s too painful.
Colton idly traced the vein down Danny’s neck until Danny shivered. “But it’s true. Your father likely wouldn’t have a problem if I wasn’t … this. I could offer you so much more.”
“You’re fine just the way you are.”
He couldn’t tell Colton that he secretly wished for the same thing: for them both to be the same, equal in all things. That he wanted what Colton could never give him. That life didn’t have to be made up of secrets and compromise.
Slowly, Colton scooted closer. Danny could see the faint glow of his skin, the amber gleam of his eyes. The moonlight inched up the bed, contesting its silver shine against Colton’s gold.
The spirit leaned in and kissed him. His lips were soft and parted easily. Danny closed his eyes and returned the pressure, matching the slow, thoughtful rhythm of his mouth as Colton’s thumb swept over his throat.
The air around them warped slightly, and Danny could almost sense it gliding over his body. The timepiece still ticked on his bedside table. The moon still journeyed through the sky. But in this bed, time was momentarily forgotten.
Colton reached under the covers and slid a hand up Danny’s nightshirt, over his bare ribs. Danny’s breath hitched.
“I can’t give you much,” Colton said, “but I can give you something.”
Colton gently turned him onto his back. The touches on Danny’s chest and sides seared into his skin. They made something deep within him tremble, the first signs of an earthquake traveling from core to surface. It didn’t feel like his body—it was as though Colton were touching someone else entirely.
When Colton’s fingers reached his stomach, he finally found his voice. “You don’t have to.” His words barely stirred the air between them.
“I want to.” Colton looked at Danny through his lashes, and they were spangled with moonlight. There was a tenderness in him that broke Danny’s heart a million times over. It was in the way Colton caressed his cheek, the slope of his neck. It was in the way he leaned down and kissed Danny on the mouth, slow and gentle, like testing new waters.
“Can I?” Colton asked against his mouth.
Danny shaped the word yes.
Colton’s lips trailed down his neck. He found his pulse, life under his lips, and then there were teeth. Danny gasped, and Colton let out a small laugh, lower than usual, as he traced his name on Danny’s hip.
Danny was burning. It scared him; he had never felt this way before, this punch-drunk sensation of affection and longing, allowing his body to speak for him. Allowing Colton to read that body to his own interpretation. Even the slight weight of him lying on top of Danny was too much, too close, too everything. He was going to turn the bed to ashes.
His bones ached with the force of his want, this intangible thing now being measured in sighs and kisses and whispers. He ran his hands over Colton’s shoulders, pressed his palm to the still chamber where Colton’s heartbeat would have been. But Danny’s heart beat so hard he could feel it for the both of them, monstrous with desire.
Everything was raging and desperate and splintering. The cracks started straight from the middle of his chest, where Colton’s tongue tasted his skin, to the insides of his thighs, where Colton made patterns with feathery fingertips. He opened his eyes but couldn’t see. Only feel. Only breathe. Only hear his blood echo on Colton’s lips.
His chest pulled like a magnet, toward this brilliant golden boy who was everything.