Wretched Wicked Page 7
They were swallowed by the Void.
It took months for either of them to discuss the yacht incident. In Fritz’s defense, a lot elapsed in that time. He rebuilt the Office of Preternatural Affairs from the ground up, bootstrapping installations across the reborn-from-apocalypse version of America in a hurry to provide essential services to the newly Rebirthed preternatural citizenry. He had to adjust to a life where he was disinherited from much of the Friederling billions, and where even the millions that remained had been devalued by an economy in ruins.
And he had to get used to Cèsar being Rebirthed as a faerie.
The proper term was unseelie sidhe—a cait sidhe, in fact, which meant that Cèsar occasionally turned into a giant cat that fed on human souls. It was almost disastrous. Most humans who had been Rebirthed into preternaturals changed during Genesis, but Cèsar had changed weeks later, and he had nearly eaten Fritz’s soul in the process.
Fritz had gotten his soul back—whatever little he’d had in the first place. He’d been left weak, sickly, and permanently chilled to the bone, but his soul was intact.
His sanity was in much greater doubt.
Sidhe were sensual creatures in the traditional sense: sensory as well as sexual. They transferred magic with touch. They fueled it with the burn of passion.
And in order for Cèsar to return Fritz’s soul, they had kissed.
It would have been easy to laugh off if Cèsar hadn’t said, afterward, that he’d wanted to do it.
Now they were both in recovery, adjusting to a new life in a new world. They’d originally picked out a house in Sacramento as their base of operations, but given Cèsar’s condition, they ended up promptly moving to Greenland.
Of all the Friederling properties Fritz thought he might eventually occupy with a family, the one outside wind-swept Reykjavik hadn’t been among them. It was a fine enough property—stark, minimalist, and hyper-modern in a way that still somehow felt inviting. For every bleak eggshell wall, there was a fluffy sedan chair with color-coordinated pillows, and the fireplace never stopped burning. The squat white cube was nothing but windows on one side, offering a view of the arctic desert.
It hadn’t taken long for Cèsar to “customize” the minimalist house with all of his crap. The tastefully pale wood floors were scattered with gym equipment, life-sized cardboard cutouts of TV show characters, and huge boxes of hardbacks that Cèsar had yet to unpack. There wasn’t even a dining table to find under the laundry. Fritz was surprised to find himself so annoyed by the piles of garbage. Cèsar had just gone to ridiculous lengths to save Fritz’s life—most likely for the dozenth time in the last decade, not that anyone was keeping score—and Fritz was feeling irate over disorganized boxes of books.
His annoyance faded when he stepped up to the broad window, looking out at Cèsar. It must have been zero degrees or colder—and the wind blowing hard over black rocks probably made it feel colder still. Cèsar was wearing nothing but a pair of gym shorts. With his arms spread wide, he let the freezing wind blow over him, and his whole body relaxed into it.
Fritz never would have expected to end up somewhere like this, with someone like Cèsar. But if he’d known that this had been waiting for him...well, it would have made the wait unbearable.
Cèsar seemed to feel Fritz’s gaze on him, and he threw a grin over his shoulder. The beach-bronzed Los Angeles boy was contented in weather colder than Lucrezia de Angelis.
Genesis had changed the world in so many countless ways.
Cèsar came inside around the time that Fritz finished sipping his tea. He brought a single blast of wind with him, and even though Fritz’s hands were immersed in hot, soapy water, he shivered.
“Feeling better?” Fritz asked.
“Kind of,” Cèsar said. He was looking down at his exposed, shredded torso. The wounds from attacks he’d sustained in the Summer Court were deep, and even though they no longer wept gemstone blood, they still caused him constant pain. “Getting in the cold helps numb it, and I feel stronger.”
Worry pinched the back of Fritz’s neck. He set his mug on the drying rack and grabbed a bathrobe, sweeping it around his shoulders before approaching Cèsar. “We should have stayed in the Winter Court longer. You’re not ready to be away from all the magic.”
“You couldn’t have stayed another hour,” Cèsar said. “And besides, my life’s not there. I have to figure out how to do Earth again. Taking a break in a blizzard is nice, though.”
“It’s too bad I won’t be able to stay here either.” Fritz checked his phone again. He had already taken so much time away from the Office of Preternatural Affairs in its embryonic stage.
“When are you going?” Cèsar asked.
“I can stick out the week. Then I’ll have to return to Washington for at least a month.”
“So,” he said, “a week.” Cèsar rocked back on his heels. “This is going to happen, isn’t it?”
“Do you mean, are we going to have sex?” Fritz asked.
“Obviously the unresolved sexual tension is off the hook. It’s more intense than Mulder and Skinner.” But even though Cèsar sounded like he was joking, there was seriousness in his eyes. He was guarded. Still careful.
They were both still so careful.
Fritz had never known the likes of it. He’d never decided he wanted to have sex with someone and then waited. Even when he’d met Isobel—and she’d hated him—they’d ended up having sex in the stacks of her college library three days later. Typically, Fritz had sex with people before he even knew their names.
Perhaps that was why it was so much harder. Cèsar had already been his family for years, and Fritz had loved him from the first time he scried Cèsar’s life as private investigator in Los Angeles.
They knew everything about each other.
Except this.
“You’re still healing,” Fritz finally said.
Cèsar nodded. “All right. If you want to wait—“
“That’s not what I said.”
“I don’t care,” Cèsar said.
They still slept together in the same bed. They had been every night since Ofelia took them in at the Winter Court.
But they didn’t have sex that night.
It took almost another week, actually.
Cèsar seemed impatient one night, and he wouldn’t stop staring at Fritz at the market. Even when they’d been in separate corners—Fritz selecting produce, while Cèsar stood in the freezer section with his jacket open—he’d been able to feel Cèsar watching. He didn’t even try to hide it.
Cèsar sat at the bar in the kitchen while Fritz cooked that night, huffing like he was annoyed and wanted to be asked why. Fritz had discovered this to be another of Cèsar’s more annoying habits, just like leaving his socks wherever he took them off, and he chose not to acknowledge it.
Fritz was plating dinner when he realized Cèsar was suddenly standing behind him. The air was so cold.
“What’s the problem?” Cèsar asked. “Did you change your mind?”
“What?”
“You’re leaving tomorrow and you haven’t tried to fuck me yet.”
Fritz turned around. Cèsar was standing very close, and he was very tall, and slightly blue. “You realize that you’ve been capable of initiating sex with me for years at any given moment? Literally, any moment. I’ve bribed multiple police precincts to overlook public sex incidents I’m involved in.”
“It’s different now,” Cèsar said.
“For you, yes.”
“So you’re just waiting on me to make a move.”
“I’m waiting on you to take a step back before dinner gets cold,” Fritz said. “I just spent an hour on this sauce. We should eat it before it congeals.”
But when he tried to grab the plates, Cèsar put his hands on the counter at either side of Fritz, and he leaned in to say, “I’m not hungry.”
Suddenly, neither was Fritz.
Fritz had already known more details about Cès
ar’s sexual habits than the average friend. They’d both been involved with Isobel at the same time, over a period of years, and Isobel had realized at some point that Fritz got off on hearing about her encounters with Cèsar. She’d happily recounted them in detail.
Everything that Isobel said was true. Cèsar’s arresting athleticism. His slavish dedication to mutual satisfaction. His puppyish eagerness, and the surprising way he sometimes laughed when he climaxed.
Isobel couldn’t have prepared Fritz for Cèsar with sidhe powers. Together, on that first night, they discovered that physical intimacy turned Cèsar’s flesh crystalline, and his pleasure painted the room in icy starlight.
He should have been too cold to embrace. Fritz had been trying to think of ways to get around that in recent days, and failed to find a solution. But Cèsar’s temperature seemed to modulate to his. When Fritz became feverish, so did he. They were in tune—one pulsing, sighing, growling being that moved like ice-capped ocean waves.
Fritz had never done magic before. He had never been a witch. But he’d be damned if that wasn’t some kind of spellwork that left them curled together in the fractal heart of ice their magic spread across the arctic.
“How serious is this, anyway?” Cèsar asked a few months later.
Fritz didn’t hear the question. He was too busy trying to figure out how to tie Cèsar’s necktie from the front, when everything seemed backwards. “Hmm?”
“You and me. How serious?”
Even once he heard the words, Fritz couldn’t believe Cèsar was asking them. Even if only the last months of flying to be together literally every weekend was meaningless, they had more than a decade of history to point at.
“Cèsar, we live together,” Fritz said. “In another lifetime, we tied our fates together. Only now that we have sex you begin to wonder how serious it is?”
“But are we going to keep doing it?” Cèsar asked.
“I’ll be disappointed if we don’t.” Fritz’s tone was drier than the Sahara—a remote fantasy in such chilling climes.
“What are Suzy and Isobel going to think?”
“I expect they’ll be annoyed we didn’t wait for them,” he said.
Cèsar knocked Fritz’s hands away. “You keep messing it up. You’re not even paying attention.”
“I already share Isobel with you,” Fritz said, all seriousness, “and neither of us have ever been interested in monogamy. I’m in love with Isobel. I’m in love with you. You’re also in love with Suzy. It goes in all directions. There’s no reason we can’t all be in love.”
Cèsar had a stupid smile.
“What?” Fritz asked.
“You said you’re in love with me.”
“I also frequently suck your dick, and you don’t seem as giddy about that.”
“Sorry,” Cèsar said. “I guess I’m just realizing how serious this is.”
Fritz managed to tie Cèsar’s bowtie properly at last. “Remember, there’s no pressure tonight. We’re only making our first public appearance where I’m one of the most powerful politicians in America and you’re essentially my husband and everybody in the world is judging us.”
“We should get rings.”
“I already gave you a watch,” Fritz said.
“I like rings,” Cèsar said.
“You’re a very demanding house cat. So clingy.”
“And you’re in love with me,” he said. His kiss felt even colder than it had been lately, and a chill wind vortexed around them. Fritz had to catch himself against Cèsar’s arms to keep from falling.
When Cèsar stepped back, they were at the head of the red carpet leading into the White House. They were surrounded by press. Cameras were flashing. Everyone had seen them arrive at the Preternatural Benefits Gala kissing, which was certainly one way to make their relationship public.
Fritz was too surprised to get angry. “I thought that Ofelia was going to planeswalk us here.” Some sidhe could walk the ley lines to travel quickly, but Cèsar hadn’t been able to do it. He still barely controlled any of his powers.
“She taught me how to do it this month,” Cèsar said with a sheepish grin. “Now you can come back to me every night instead of just weekends.”
Fritz tried to sound mean when he said, “A very clingy house cat.”
They held hands as they walked into the White House. Fritz’s fingers were cold by the time they got to the end of the carpet, but he wasn’t bothered in the slightest.
Want the story between Chapter 4 and the Epilogue? Cèsar and Fritz made an appearance in Lonesome Paladin too!
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