Born to Darkness (34 page)

Stephen reached for him, his hand against Elliot’s face. The connection, as always, was quick—and hot.
My favorite color is you
.

Before Elliot could respond or react to what was, undeniably, the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to him, Stephen pulled Elliot with him, back into his mind, through a whirlwind of what must’ve been memories—seven years of them.

All focused on Elliot, his dirty-blond hair a mess, his glasses crooked, his clothing disheveled, his lab coat hanging open—and yet through Stephen’s eyes, he managed to be gleamingly attractive.

Elliot saw flashes of himself smiling, laughing, talking—either in meetings with the full staff, or to Bach or Mac or one of the Forties or trainees, all while Stephen quietly stood off to the side …

And listened.

It was mind-blowing, particularly since Elliot had never even realized that Stephen Diaz had been paying all that much attention to the things he’d done and said.

There was one memory of an event that had happened just a few weeks ago, and Stephen slowed it down, so they both could look at it. Relive it together.

Elliott, Bach, Mac, and Stephen had been down in one of the classrooms, working with one of their promising young Thirties—a very serious girl named Ahlam.

She had notable telekinetic power, but like Mac, she struggled
to control it. On that day, she had been doing an exercise in telekinetic delicacy—involving several dozen raw eggs. She’d started out with promise, moving one egg at a time carefully across the room, taking it from one bowl and setting it gently into another.

But then, suddenly, an egg that was in mid-air exploded—almost as if it had been crushed by an invisible hand. The scrambled contents sprayed in all directions. And it went downhill from there. All of the eggs launched out of both bowls and went flying around the room, exploding wildly, like miniature, single-color fireworks.

It happened so quickly, there was no time for the Greater-Thans to shield. And of course Elliot, who was the only fraction in the room, didn’t have that ability.

Except, when it finally ended, Elliot and Stephen were the only ones in that classroom who were dripping with raw egg. Elliot used his fingers to try to clear the slime from his glasses, and Stephen wiped his dark hair and his face with his hands, as Ahlam turned toward them with tears welling in her big brown eyes.

“I couldn’t shield everyone,” she told them apologetically in her delightful, lilting accent. She looked at Stephen. “You’re just too large.” She turned to Elliot. “And you? I figured …” She shrugged. “You’re probably used to it.”

“I’m fine, and you’re right, on both counts,” Elliot reassured her even as he worked to keep a straight face, unwilling to give in to his laughter. There were times when laughing at mistakes helped provide the necessary levity for some of the younger trainees, but for others it was detrimental. And with this particular girl, the language barrier combined with her fear of men made what would seem to be his laughing in her face a big giant
no
.

But Elliot was on the verge of losing it. He started to cough to cover it, as Bach and Mac jumped all over what Ahlam had just said
—she’d
shielded herself and the two of them? Multiple shielding was a talent even the maestro hadn’t yet mastered.

Stephen, meanwhile, saved the day, using his mind to open the lab door as he gestured to Elliot, who took it for the escape route that it was. He made a dash for the hall, with Stephen on his heels.

It was only when Stephen closed the door tightly behind them both that Elliot allowed himself to let go. “
You’re used to it
,” he hooted as he completely cracked up. “She has
no
idea how true that is. And yet, every time it happens? I’m still completely caught off guard.”

Stephen laughed, too, catching Elliot’s eye and holding it as he grinned. “Come on,” he said. “We should clean up and get back in there.”

Elliot straightened, his laughter fading as he looked at Stephen. He paused the memory and said, “Wait a minute. This isn’t what happened. I mean, yeah, that’s what you said to me, but you didn’t say it
that
way. You weren’t laughing, and you didn’t … You didn’t even look at me.”

“I wanted to,” Stephen admitted, starting the memory up again as they went down the hall toward the locker room, as he caught Elliot’s hand in his, sticky fingers interlocked as they walked together like the lovers they now were. “But I couldn’t.” He opened
that
door with his mind, too, and went in first, pulling Elliot behind him.

He used his telekinesis to take his cell phone out of his pocket, no doubt so that he wouldn’t have to touch it with his eggy hands. He set it gently on the little metal shelf above the row of sinks.

If it were an egg, it would not have broken.

Elliot didn’t have the no-hands option, so he let go of Stephen and went to the sink to rinse—same as he’d done on that day. He glanced at the Greater-Than questioningly as he turned on the water. “You didn’t do
this
, either,” he pointed out as he dried his hands, then set his phone and scanner down near Stephen’s. “You opened the door for me, and essentially dropped me off and then went down the hall to another bathroom.” He gestured around them to the multiple shower stalls. “As if this one weren’t big enough for both of us.”

“I know what I did and didn’t do,” Stephen told him quietly. “This isn’t a complete memory. It’s more of a daydream I had, a fantasy version. It’s what I wished I could’ve done. Just … stuck around and talked to you, you know? Just … be your friend.
But … You kill me, you know, every time you laugh. It’s so beautiful, and joyful, and … I wanted you, in every way, Elliot. I always had to walk away. But not anymore.” He took Elliot’s hand again, and just like that, they were back in his bed—right where they’d always been.

I’ve got plenty of time
, Stephen told him.
You can take as long as you need to learn to trust me
. He kissed Elliot again. “We should get something to eat. And shower.”

The big meeting was in just less than an hour.

“We should maybe go in to talk to Dr. Bach a little early,” Elliot suggested. “In private, so that—”

“I don’t need to do that,” Stephen said. “But you know what we should do, before we go into that meeting?” He smiled at what Elliot was thinking.
Besides that
.

But Elliot
did
know. “We should see where your integration levels are—and see how long they take to drop, without physical contact.”

He let Stephen pull him up and out of bed, and together they went back to the sofa.

Stephen positioned himself in front of the laptop’s sensor, as Elliot grabbed his glasses from where he’d left them on the table and leaned in to look at the screen. The program had managed to continue scanning Stephen, even from across the room, and he had been steadily at sixty-one for the past busy hour—with no dips and no peaks.

The program had automatically scanned Elliot, too, and he had remained a dull and consistent Fifteen. It was disappointing, but not surprising.

Stephen glanced at him, surprised.
I never realized …

That I’m envious of you and Mac and Dr. Bach and Ahlam and all of the others …?
“I am,” Elliot spoke aloud as he broke their connection, moving slightly away from Stephen’s warmth. “But I’m also grateful that despite my lack of aptitude, I’m still able to contribute in my own way. And okay, you’re still a healthy sixty-one without contact. But there will be decay—we know this from
experience. I scanned you after you left Shane and me in the examination room, and it wasn’t long before …” He frowned at the screen and Stephen’s unchanging numbers. “Although proximity might play into it. So I think I’m going to …” He stood up, pointing toward the bathroom. “You stay here, keep that sensor on you and watch the …”

“I got it,” Stephen said, instead watching Elliot pick up his now-empty coffee mug and carry it to the kitchen counter on his way toward the only room in the apartment that was separated from the rest of the place by a door.

Elliot turned on the light, illuminating the pristine bathroom, and closed the door tightly behind him.

The entire wall was a mirror, just like in his apartment’s bathroom, and he looked at himself as he stood at the toilet. He had a serious case of the bedheads—and surreal-itis, at the idea that he was taking a naked leak in Stephen Diaz’s bathroom after having spent the morning in the man’s bed.

“I’m dropping,” Stephen called from the living room.

“Already? That was fast,” Elliot called back, raising his voice to be heard through the closed door.

“I’m at sixty.”

“A jot scan’s imprecise,” Elliot reminded him. “With a jot, sixty means you could be anywhere from an actual sixty to sixty-point-nine-nine-nine. Hang on, I’ll be out in a sec—I thought I’d be in here longer.”

“Take your time.”

Elliot flushed and washed his hands, drying them on one of Stephen’s plush towels. There was no point in trying to tame his hair. He’d need to get into the shower to do that and …

Yeah, he wanted to get into the shower to
fix his hair
. Right. Like he wasn’t
really
thinking about getting Stephen into the shower with him and … Great. Now he was going to walk out of here with a very healthy hard-on—except there was a thick, white robe hanging on a hook on the back of the door. He took it down and put it on.

It smelled like Stephen, which only served to make him even more aroused, but the robe was thick and heavy enough to—

“Whoa, hang on,” Stephen called from the living room. “I’m back to sixty-one.”

Elliot opened the door and came out of the bathroom. “You went down, then back up—while I was out of the room? That doesn’t make sense.” He came over to look at the computer—not easy to do while Stephen was sitting there all distractingly tall, dark, and naked. But sure enough, he could see the graph dip down and then back. “Crap, I wish the reading was more precise. Did you … do anything different?”

Stephen spread his hands. “Just sitting here.”

“Okay, then … What were you thinking about?”

Stephen looked up at him. “You.”

“Me, like … fucking you blind?”

“Both romantic
and
poetic.” Stephen laughed as he reached up to take Elliot’s arm and pull him so that he was sitting beside him, close enough that their legs were touching. And just as it had done all along, their connection clicked back on.

And the Greater-Than replayed everything he’d been thinking, starting with watching Elliot walk naked across his apartment.
Jesus, he’s hot, is this really happening? God, I’m happy. There’s probably enough time before the meeting to … Wow, after all that, I still want more. I wonder if he also wants to … If not now, then later … Except I can’t assume he’s just going to want to spend tonight—Okay, integration levels dropping, gotta tell Elliot. Yeah, good point about the imprecision of a jot scan. Huh, look at my reflection in the computer screen—I’m sitting here, grinning inanely. Jesus, I’ve got warm fuzzies simply from having a conversation through a closed bathroom door. And okay, maybe that’s not inane. Living alone for far more than fifteen years, isolated … But now …

Stephen had gone into a full-blown fantasy then, imagining Elliot coming out of the bathroom and helping himself to more coffee, completely at home in Stephen’s kitchen—which morphed into Elliot in the kitchen in the morning, in Stephen’s bathrobe,
bedhead and all, as Stephen kissed him good-bye as he left on an early
A.M.
assignment. He went out the door, but then he came back in, to kiss Elliot far more thoroughly before leaving for good.

God, as far as fantasies went, that was ridiculously G-rated, but it was also beyond sweet. Elliot’s heart was actually in his throat.

And Stephen was a little embarrassed. “Apologies for appearing to want to move too fast,” he murmured. “It was really just a fantasy. You know, a
someday
thing.”

Elliot nodded and used the bathrobe to wipe his glasses. “For what it’s worth, it’s safe for you to assume that I … want more, too. But just so you don’t have to assume … I can state, unequivocally, that I want to have many, many more conversations with you through the bathroom door. Hell, next time, I’ll just leave it open.”

Stephen smiled. “Good.”

“Good.” Elliot put his glasses back on and focused again on the computer and the numbers displayed there.
Okay, so it doesn’t appear to be purely sex or sexual attraction that creates your surges of integration. Still, we should re-test. Maybe see what happens with greater distance between us. I should leave—see if you can’t keep your integration levels up. Simply by thinking—what did you call them? Warm fuzzies
.

Maybe we were right earlier, and it
is
the intimacy
, Stephen suggested, interlacing their fingers again.
Sex is just one part of an intimate connection. And for some people, it’s the easy part
.

Like Mac
, Elliot thought.

Very much like Mac
.

They were both well aware that, after Dr. Bach’s meeting, Mac was going to be chomping at the bit to get out there to find Nika Taylor. And as long as Shane Laughlin wasn’t around to dangerously rev up her integration levels, she could safely hit the streets as a Fifty.

She’ll want to go
, Elliot concluded.
Immediately. And you’ll want to go with her
.

“You know what they’re doing to this girl,” Stephen reminded him.

“I do.” Elliot took a deep breath and stood up, cutting their connection. He turned to face Stephen. “But if your integration levels don’t drop back down to fifty, we need to test you before I can clear you to go out. We need to see how many volts of energy you command—and whether you have control of it. I’d also like to know what other talents—besides this nifty telepathic connection—that you’ve added to your list. And we should test that, too. The telepathy.” He headed back toward the bathroom. “See if that’s something you can do with everyone, or exclusively with me. Come on, we should shower and grab some food, go find an open lab so we can get some of this work done.”