A poem for sad times - kullwahad - Dune Series (2024)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

The dream is unusual, though it doesn’t seem prophetic. Those are of a white-hot desert, endless sands, a blue-eyed freemen girl on a distant planet. Today, he dreams of Caladan.

He’s floating on his back in its vast waters, watching the constellations in the night sky, and from their unfamiliar pattern, he knows that he must be far away from his northern homeland. The silky water wraps around his shoulders and tickles the sides of his face, the warmth of it dissolving his skin until he can’t tell where he ends, and the darkness begins.

He doesn’t need to breathe anymore. It should feel like drowning, but the water can’t drown in the ocean, and he’s become a part of it. There’s an unfathomable depth below him and thousands of lights above him, and he can reach in both directions solely through the force of his will, taking possession of anything he’ll find there. This is how immense he feels. The memory of what he was before loses its meaning in the face of this power; and there’s nothing left of him but his purpose.

Paul.

The sound of his name brings him back, and he looks away from the stars to a flickering fire on the shore and a shimmering moonglade leading to it. He knows that someone is waiting for him by that fire – someone, who whispered his name in his ear just a second ago. He follows the moonlit path on the water, swimming through the night until his feet touch the seabed. The beach seems deserted, but there’s a hint of movement in the shadows outside the circle of dancing light, and Paul’s heart beats faster as he walks towards it, still waist-deep in water. In the absence of wind, he can hear the hum and crackle of the fire over the soft lapping of the surf.

The fresh night air smells of salt and wood smoke, and also of something that he can’t quite place, but the vaguely familiar scent makes his blood pound heavily in his temples. From the remaining distance, he sees the shadows shifting near the fire. Someone is sitting there, right on the sand, and the way he rests his hands on his bent knees is enough for Paul to recognize him. He draws in a deep breath to call out the name he knows so well, only to be jolted awake by the sounds of the storm ravaging outside and rain lashing against the windows.

The end of the strange dream fades from his mind – he can’t remember who was waiting for him on the shore, but the joy of recognition still drums within him. He’s drenched in sweat and achingly hard for no apparent reason, and when he touches himself, it takes him a couple of strokes to come with a shudder, his hips bucking desperately as he curses under his breath.

He doesn’t move for a while, spent and boneless, absentmindedly checking the hotness of the release on his fingers and the cooling sheen of sweat on his chest. This not-quite-nightmare of the dark sea and the fire on the shore, this gray spring morning, even the intensity of his org*sm shouldn’t mean anything, but somehow it does. He’s left with an unpleasant feeling of incompleteness, as if he’s unable to interpret the signs being revealed to him.

He goes down to breakfast, feeling drowsy. The table is set for one, as both his parents have traveled to Salusa Secundus in the run-up to the Landsraad Council meeting to be held on Caladan next week. While the visit is being staged as a diplomatic courtesy, in reality, it’s another round of negotiations over the recent Arrakis decision with the Emperor’s Truthsayers, and that’s why Leto has brought Jessica and Thufir with him. Duncan Idaho has gone off with his crew to some obscure mission, so now there’s no one to keep Paul’s company except Gurney Halleck.

Briefly considering going to the officers’ mess, he eventually decides against it, since his current woozy state surely won’t go unnoticed by Gurney. Paul doesn’t want to risk their training session being canceled, and Gurney dragging him to see Dr. Yueh instead.

His schedule for today is pretty light and boring: there are lectures on the heraldry of the Great Houses and the ecology of Caladan, and weapons practice with Gurney, which is clearly going to be the highlight of this otherwise dull day. That's what his life has been for the past decade – lessons in Mentat and bindu, history and politics, diplomacy and cosmic physics, engineering and languages, and of course, endless training. Leto insists that he must work out daily; and Paul suspects it’s not only for safety reasons but also to transform his body into something more presentable.

As he passed puberty, it became clear that his scrawniness would outlive his growth spurt, because that’s apparently how he is – skinny and narrow-chested, with knobby knees and twig arms, and ribs sticking out enough to be seen through his clothes. Although he has managed to put on some muscle recently, standing next to the castle guards or Duncan Idaho still makes him feel like an underweight teenager.

He drinks his coffee, wondering how many sparring matches he has to win before Gurney stops calling him an insolent imp every chance he gets. Paul has long grown accustomed to his grumbling and taunts; he has learned not to take offense and to respond in kind when Gurney cracks one of his jokes, putting him in the spotlight in front of the whole barracks of soldiers roaring with laughter. But there’s another side to their friendship, less obvious to those around them and undoubtedly Paul’s favorite: baliset lessons, songs and poems recited, long conversations about everything on this planet and beyond as they walk side by side through the castle grounds. It’s strange, really, how you can know someone all your life and still find them so interesting to talk to.

All day long, he keeps slipping into the fruitless meditation on the dream, finding it difficult to concentrate on what his lecturers are saying. Despite seeing himself drowning, the dream doesn’t feel ominous. On the contrary, some of its parts were pleasant: water enveloping him, a flickering flame on the shore and a wave of reckless joy washing over him just before he woke up.

Rachel Mitman, Chief Planetary Ecologist and his teacher, probably notices him daydreaming and suggests they visit the castle’s desalination system to illustrate the lecture topic. He agrees gladly, hoping that a change of scenery will help him to focus on the lesson. However, as they head to the dungeons, he’s acutely aware of the guards who are accompanying them.

There are only two of them, the older one looks familiar, and the younger one must be new; at least, Paul is sure that he would remember someone like him – a head taller, with bright red hair. He can’t help but notice that the redheaded guard always seems to be a step closer than necessary, and every time Paul looks over his shoulder, he sees a pair of pale blue eyes on a pinkish albino face staring at him curiously. That feels…weird.

In the dungeons they stop on the gangway above the desalination plant, and Rachel tells him about the reverse osmosis, gesticulating enthusiastically. Paul usually finds her eagerness contagious, but today he barely listens to her, his attention is divided between the redheaded guard behind him and the heavy, humid air that smells of brine and rotten seaweed. The dampness and scent make Paul dizzy, and as they walk along the gangway, he stumbles and grabs the railing. Someone takes his elbow to steady him – and when he turns back, he sees the redheaded guard with a big, stupid smile on his face. Is he hitting on me, Paul thinks, taken aback.

“Thank you,” he says carefully, pulling his hand back as the guard is still holding it.

“You alright, my lord?” Rachel asks, sounding worried.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Mitman, I’m not feeling well,” he says apologetically. “We’ll have to reschedule this lecture to another time, I think.”

“No problem. Let’s get you back to the castle,” she says, and only then does Paul notice a murderous look on the older guard’s face.

“Go and open the doors,” he growls to the redhead, reminding Paul of Gurney for a moment.

“Yes, sir,” the redhead nods, then turns back to Paul, bowing his head slightly. “My lord.” The broad, dazed smile is there again. If he’s indeed flirting, he isn’t being particularly subtle.

“Now!” the older guard barks. The redhead retreats hastily, glancing back at the stunned Paul.

Once back in the castle, Paul’s dizziness subsides, and he decides against visiting Dr. Yueh. He shows up too early for weapons training and spends half an hour practicing attacks on a target dummy. Normally the warm-up isn’t enough to tire him out, but when Gurney finally arrives, it takes Paul less than twenty minutes and two failed blocks to hear the oh-so-familiar: “What the hell is wrong with you today? You already got killed twice!”

Paul sighs without getting up from the floor where he’s lying on his back. “I guess I’m not in the mood.”

He looks at the carved ceiling, dappled with shadows, and at the dust, swirling in the air, almost like spice in his Arrakis dreams. Gurney’s head with its salt-and-pepper buzzcut swims into the line of his vision, and expression on the scarred face is strangely calm.

Sensing the coming threat, Paul rolls onto his side half a second before the sword stabs the floorboards. He gasps for air as Gurney plucks the blade out of the wood and lunges at him again. This time Paul reacts quickly enough to kick Gurney’s feet away, knocking him down. He presses his knee into Gurney’s chest, holding a blade at his throat with one hand and squeezing Gurney’s thick wrist with the other until the sword falls to the floor with a clatter.

“Do you yield, old man?” Paul pants, feeling light-headed, as the space around him threatens to spin out of control.

“Look down, my lord,” Gurney says, his dark eyes mocking, and Paul sees a small, curved blade pressed to his abdomen, coloring his shield red. Rolling off Gurney, he sits with his knees up to his chest, clicking the shield bracelet off as his opponent gets up from the floor and hides the curved knife back to the side pocket of his fatigues.

“Come on,” Gurney says, holding out his hand for Paul. But when Gurney pulls him up, he stumbles forward, overcome by the new wave of dizziness.

“Are you ill?” Gurney asks, frowning, and Paul shakes his head slightly, careful not to provoke vertigo.

“I didn’t sleep well, that’s all,” he says. Suddenly he is keenly aware of how close Gurney is standing to him, of the sweat soaking the front of his T-shirt in the neck area, and of the familiar scent – earthy and sharp, but oddly pleasant. Gurney takes Paul’s temperature, and his big palm with calloused fingers brings an unexpected relief.

“Good god, you’re burning.” He cradles Paul’s face, his brow furrowed with worry. “And you came to fight in such a state, you fool. What were you thinking? Let’s go, you need to see a doctor.”

Gurney takes him by the shoulder, dragging him towards the door, and that’s when Paul feels a sharp pang in his guts. A dark, chilling wave of pain ripples through him; his knees buckle as he staggers forward, right into Gurney’s arms, inhaling that tangy scent, only to lose consciousness the very next moment.

*

When he wakes up in his bedroom, it’s already dark outside. He rolls his head on the pillow to see Gurney sitting at the writing desk.

“Hey,” Paul calls huskily, sitting up in bed. Gurney turns to him, and Paul notices a small book in his hand.

“Hey,” Gurney gets up, pressing the comm behind his ear and saying: “He’s awake.”

He perches on the edge of Paul’s bed, followed by the suspensor lamp. In the dim yellow light Paul sees that he is in the same clothes as before, a gray T-shirt and fatigues, and that his eyes are alert. He touches Paul’s forehead lightly with the back of his fingers.

“Your fever seems to have broken,” Gurney says quietly, as if there were someone else sleeping in the room. Paul is indeed feeling better – still weak and lightheaded, but strangely refreshed.

“Afraid you’ll be court-martialed for knocking me out?” he teases, attempting to wipe the grim look off Gurney’s face. Gurney huffs a short laugh at his words, shaking his head.

“Why didn’t you tell me anything?”

“I told you I wasn’t in the right mood,” Paul replies smoothly, reaching for the glass on the nightstand. Gurney twitches like he’s about to jump off the bed and pass him the water. Paul raises eyebrows at him, and Gurney sighs, rubbing his eyes tiredly.

“Can’t even remember the last time you were in the right mood for weapons practice.”

“I blame your teaching method for that,” Paul smiles, happy to drag Gurney into their usual bickering.

“You’re an ungrateful imp,” Gurney grunts half-heartedly, but the worried look is still there, in the tight set of his mouth.

“Come on, old man,” Paul says, nudging Gurney’s thigh through the cover with his foot. “I’m alright.”

“Paul, you passed out during the training, you’re clearly not alright, and—” A sharp knocking on the door interrupts him and Dr. Yueh enters, carrying a wooden tray.

“My lord, Lieutenant,” he bows his head slightly and goes straight to the bed, putting the tray at the nightstand.

They dismiss Gurney, who leaves without protest, though Paul would bet anything that he’ll be pacing back and forth in the hallway outside the bedroom during the examination. Dr. Yueh gives Paul the usual checkup, placing his fingers on his head and neck, and over his heart. The unusual part is when he palpates Paul’s abdomen and takes blood from his hand with a thin metal syringe.

“I’m one hundred percent sure that it’s not a poison, my lord,” Dr. Yeuh explains while putting a cap on the syringe full of Paul’s blood.

Paul has already figured out that he hasn’t been poisoned, because if he had, the fuss would have been much bigger than it is now. “Is it a disease, then?” he asks.

“A condition would be a more appropriate term. Give me time until tomorrow morning to finish your blood analysis and prove my suspicions.”

His phrasing is unsatisfyingly obscure, and Paul can’t help pressing him for more details.

“But you think this condition…”

“Is related to your secondary gender, my lord,” Dr. Yueh says, looking up from the tray and directly into Paul’s eyes.

All he can manage is a quiet oh. It hasn’t even occurred to him. This part of his life hasn’t surfaced in years. Frankly, he thought it never would. Stunned into silence, he watches as Dr. Yueh takes the chair from the desk and puts it by the bed, clearly preparing for a long conversation. That’s never a good sign.

“You surely know how rare your case is.”

Paul nods, for how could he not know? Sometimes, he wishes faint-heartedly he could go back to not knowing, to being Leto and Jessica’s son, the future Duke, one of the many Dukes and duch*esses who have lived and died for the glory of House Atreides, never having to leave Caladan.

But another destiny was chosen for him, and he knew of it even before his mother told him, through whispers and sidelong glances: oh, that is the Atreides boy? The offspring of a bound concubine, a witchling, whose birth was sanctioned by the Bene Gesserit but ended up disrupting their plans.What this disruption caused has been his worst secret for years – being a male omega.

“Your body is undergoing natural processes that I believe are making you feel unwell.”

Paul recalls his feverish dream of drowning in black water, waking up aroused and sweating, a stupid smile on the redheaded guard’s face, and his sudden awareness of Gurney’s scent. Again, it would never occur to him to connect these…symptoms with what he knew from biology lessons.

“You mean like heat?” he asks incredulously.

“Yes, I believe that you’re in a pre-heat state, my lord,” Dr. Yueh replies, to Paul’s shock.

“But I thought it wasn’t possible for males.” Or so Paul assumed, because in his study books male omegas were only mentioned as an uncommon deviation from nature’s norm.

“It’s an atavism that rarely manifests itself, depending on genetic predisposition and individual physical characteristics.”

What he means is that Paul should thank the Bene Gesserit for this “genetic predisposition”. Omegas have always been at the core of the Sisterhood: their schools take the most disempowered people – female omegas – and train them to develop mental powers beyond belief, making them willing tools of the breeding program. For hundreds of years, they’ve been crossing and recrossing the genetic lines of those who are at the top of the food chain with those at the bottom, hiding ancestries and orchestrating otherwise impossible unions in order to shape politics.

Paul isn’t sure what the main reason for his birth was: the intricate eugenics of the Bene Gesserit, his mother’s grudge against the Sisterhood, or simply the love of two people with complicated ancestries. Whatever the cause, it now looks like a failed experiment to him. His grandfather fought bulls for sport, and he is about to have a heat.

Dr. Yueh explains that the symptoms will eventually worsen, and that soon the fever and dizziness will give way to “the next stage, characterized by hypersensitivity to smells and increased sexual appetite”.

Paul winces at the prospect of being locked up or sent away somewhere to keep servants and guards from spreading rumors. Being a ducal heir and a male omega are mutually exclusive, and he spent much of his teenage years fearing that his secondary gender would be discovered or deduced from his parentage. His recurring nightmare from that time was of standing before the Landsraad Council and being expelled from his House – but for what, he didn’t quite understand back then. He didn’t look or act all that different from the people around him. The difference was based on hemanalysis, and endocrine profile, and also on various propensities that he was supposed to have as a male omega: a propensity for infertility, a propensity for same-sex relationships, a propensity for hormonal fluctuations – there was the entire list, including propensities for submissiveness and pathological indecisiveness, whatever the hell that meant.

When his mother began teaching him the ways of the Bene Gesserit, he came to realize that much of the traits ascribed to male omegas were nothing more than prejudice, though deeply enough ingrained in the culture and tradition of the Great Houses to disinherit him. In time, he learned to treat his secondary gender as some kind of hereditary disease. If you’re careful, no one outside your immediate circle will know of your troubles. And now this. An atavistic heat. However unjustly male omegas are treated, it’s honestly hard to think about honor and dignity, when you have to lock yourself up and jerk off for a…

“A week?!” he blurts out when Dr. Yueh tells him how long it’s going to take.

“Considering this is your first heat, my lord, that’s my most optimistic estimate.” He looks at Paul apologetically.

“Oh, it’s at least a week now. Great.”

It’s unclear why he fainted in the training hall, but the pain in his abdomen is a sure sign that slick production has begun, as Dr. Yueh tells him dispassionately. This adds insult to injury, because Paul had no clue that he, as a male, could produce slick from anywhere.

Eventually, he’s given some painkillers and advised to stay in bed for the rest of the night. He finds it impossible to sleep after everything he has learned in the last hour, instead opting for a calming breathing exercise his mother taught him. It doesn’t do much good as his thoughts are still racing, his mind too overwhelmed to go blank. He inhales the close and humid air of his bedroom, recalling the moment before he passed out in the training hall and wondering if he reacted to the physical exertion of sparring with Gurney or rather to his scent.

The knowledge that Gurney is an alpha has always been abstract to Paul, as have other aspects of his mentor’s personal life. Moreover, Paul is certain that Gurney doesn’t know about his true secondary gender – not that his family doesn’t trust him with such a delicate matter, but simply because it has been unnecessary for him to know. That is, until today, when Paul collapsed in his presence, and most likely because of it.

However, he can’t help being curious about how it works. He tries and fails to catch traces of Gurney’s scent in the air, then gets up from the bed and heads to the writing desk, where Gurney left his book. It was clearly published long before Paul’s time, judging by the pages, frayed and yellow with age, and the worn black leather binding, smooth under his fingers. This is one of the things that he will always associate with Gurney, like the baliset, or the scar on the side of his face – things that Paul has known since childhood.

He opens the book at random, and from the way the pages are loose, he can tell that Gurney reads this place often. It smells of old paper but lacks the musty undertone of books that lay forgotten on shelves for years. Paul vaguely remembers a lengthy ballad of noble knights, and cruel wizards, and cosmic darkness from the early history of Caladan.

He doesn’t notice how he loses himself in the text, captivated by its sinister imagery. He is nearing the end, when the door to his chambers opens without knocking, and the owner of the book himself halts in the doorway, obviously surprised to find Paul not in the bed but perched on the writing desk.

“My lord,” Gurney says, closing the door behind him. “I thought you were asleep. Dr.Yueh said he’d medicated you.”

“You don’t have to forget your things here to find an excuse to check on me, you know.” Paul waves the book in the air.

“The excuse was for the doctor, not for you.” Gurney walks up to him, and that close Paul can see how anxious his eyes are. So, Yueh didn’t tell him, he thinks, relieved and regretful at the same time.

“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” Gurney asks, his voice softer now. Paul shrugs his shoulders, snapping the book closed and handing it to him.

“Just wanted to pick up something to read. What did he tell you…about me?” he asks hesitantly.

“Only that it wasn’t a poisoning,” Gurney says. “What did he tell you?”

Paul wonders what will happen if he confesses to Gurney right now, without talking to his parents first. Will their friendship change drastically with one less secret between them? Even though he trusts Gurney with his life, something stops him from speaking up. Maybe he’s afraid that Gurney will never look at him the same way again – frowning slightly, his warm hazel eyes full of worry.

“I don’t have to know the details,” Gurney says quietly. “Just tell me what you need.”

If only I knew, Paul thinks grimly. He doesn’t smell any distinctive scent, either because Gurney isn’t standing close enough to him or because the sensitivity to smells has worn off, but it doesn’t matter. It’s probably for the best.

“No, it’s fine,” he shakes his head. “It’s a temporary thing, I’ll be okay soon.”

Gurney looks unconvinced, but doesn’t insist. “Your parents will arrive by morning,” he says. “I can stay with you until then.”

“I’m not a five-year-old, Gurney Halleck. Why do you keep forgetting it?”

“Or I can bring the Suk bastard to stay with you,” Gurney offers, totally unfazed by his irritated tone. Paul chuckles, amused to once again witness his proverbial dislike of Dr.Yueh.

“I bet you never call him a Suk bastard to his face,” he says, jumping off the desk.

“Let me get him here, and you’ll see,” Gurney replies without missing a beat, making Paul roll his eyes and grin. He takes Gurney by the shoulders, pushing him lightly towards the door.

“There’s no need to babysit me. Go get some rest, I’ll be fine.”

Once he’s alone, he searches his textbooks for more information on omegas and heat, finding nothing new. Apparently, it usually lasts between 4 to 8 days, just like Dr.Yueh said, making omegas particularly susceptible to alpha scent and accompanied by the release of pheromones that attract potential alpha partners. Pausing, he recalls the redheaded guard taking him by the elbow in the dungeons. Paul did that to him – chemically attracted the bloody potential partner. The thought makes him cringe. Thanks to this atavism,manifested in him so suddenly, he will probably have to take suppressors for the rest of his life – assuming that the existing medications work for such an abomination of nature as a male omega. And only god knows what other genetic predispositions he may have; it could easily be resistance to hormonal drugs.

There’s no chance he’ll be allowed to stay in the castle to wait out the heat, especially with the imminent Council meeting his family is hosting next week. If he were in his parents’ place, he’d hide his omega heir to ensure that his “difficulties with self-control” and “mood swings” went unnoticed by all the guests, emissaries and spies from the Great Houses arriving at the castle. His body chose the worst possible time to tumble into heat.

It occurs to him that Gurney didn’t react to that pheromone release,or at least Paul didn’t notice that he did. Was it due to his self-control or rather his age? Or is it simply too early for Paul to…attract him? But it was enough for the redheaded guard.

The blood rushes to his face, and he feels his cheeks burning. He imagines that Gurney’s attention should be much harder to ignore. Though he has never seen Gurney in love, let alone consumed by lust, the picture appearing in his mind is surprisingly vivid: the intensity of it, and force, and demand that Paul draws not from their friendship, but from their sparring matches. He sighs and rolls over to his side, pressing his flushed face into the pillow. Not that he will ever have the chance to see how close these fantasies are to reality.

Even if he did, the heat would make it unfair to both of them. Whatever happens, he owes Gurney the truth about who he really is. He’s sure that Gurney will understand.

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

When Gurney is called in by Leto, he’s on the parade ground with his soldiers, overseeing the drill. The Duke and Lady Jessica returned to Caladan ten hours ago, and he hasn’t seen them since a brief report he gave upon their arrival. There's no doubt that the reason for the call is yesterday's incident when Paul collapsed in the training hall.

Yueh assured him that it wasn’t a poisoning but left out the diagnosis. Gurney suspects that the illness has something to do with the Bene Gesserit and their so-called “way”. Paul has been having strange, semi-prophetic dreams for the past few years, and for all Gurney knows, these dreams could have deteriorated into a daytime trance.

He strides through the wide corridors and echoing halls of the castle, past the saluting guards. He didn’t panic yesterday when he walked the same way, carrying the unconscious Paul in his arms and trying not to look at how lifeless Paul’s head was thrown back, and his long neck exposed. He did his duty, calling for the doctor, checking the pulse and listening to Paul’s breathing. He waited patiently for hours, until Paul finally woke up. He waited again, pacing restlessly outside during Yueh’s examination. He talked to the doctor afterward, keeping himself in line and sticking to polite questioning rather than outright interrogation. After all, Gurney has seen far worse than this. He has lost people before.

Last night, despite being told “not to disturb the young lord”, he slipped into Paul’s bedroom, finding him awake. From his look – more worried and sad than scared – Gurney guessed that Paul knew the reason for what had happened, but didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t push, instead doing a little investigation of his own.

It took him a couple of late-night calls to discover that Paul had been showing the symptoms since at least the middle of the day. The ecologist reported that Paul apparently suffered a vertigo attack during class, bad enough that a guard had to help him stay on his feet. Gurney checked the files on all three – the ecologist and two guards – and found nothing suspicious. He keeps the files on his desk, in case the Duke decides to bring in Hawat on this after all.

To his surprise, Leto is not the only one waiting for him in the spacious room, lit by the powdered gold of the approaching dusk. Lady Jessica and Wellington Yueh are sitting in the tapestried chairs, and from their relaxed poses and a nearly empty water carafe, he can tell that this meeting has been going on for a long time.

Leto starts without any small talk. He wants Gurney to take Paul away from the castle for several weeks, and before Gurney has time to ask if the heir is in danger, Jessica intervenes. She straightens her back, her eyes steely cold, and informs Gurney that her son is an omega, just like she is, and that he’s about to have his first heat.

Though Gurney knows how to keep a straight face, he finds it incredibly hard to hide his shock. For a moment, he is speechless, absorbing what he’s just heard. So, this is the reason. Not a poison and not a disease. Gurney looks from Jessica to Leto – the Duke’s face is grave, his brow furrowed – and suddenly it all makes sense to him. Paul resembles both his parents, but the features that he got from Jessica predominate: his lean frame and long, elegant limbs, his smooth, pale skin, his deceitful fragility. It is so unexpected and yet so obvious, that Gurney wonders how he could have missed it for so long. Of course, Paul is an omega. He’s a rare creature in every way, who else could he be?

“Who else knows?” Gurney realizes how dangerous this rareness will be if the Great Houses or, God forbid, the Padishah Emperor himself knows that the Atreides heir was born a male omega.

“The Sisterhood.” There’s a finality to Jessica’s tone, surely to make a point that the ways of the Bene Gesserit and their ability to keep secrets are not to be questioned here. “Otherwise, it’s just us, and we obviously tend to keep it that way.”

So, now there are four of them, and of course Paul himself. Considering the risk of disinheritance and the level of social stigma surrounding male omegas, his secretiveness isn’t all that surprising. But how long he must have been hiding it! Dr.Yueh appeared on Caladan when Paul was…what? Thirteen or fourteen? Still in a growth spurt, lanky, awkward, his hair cropped short to show his ears and neck. Was that when he presented? Without Gurney even noticing it, and he would never have known about Paul had the Atreides not decided to confide in him.

Turns out Leto needs Paul to stay at a secret house on the island called Migido near the Thagasta military base, until the Landsraad Council meeting is over. Gurney has never been there, though he can easily picture the map, with the base placed on the ria coast of the Oyster Sea and dozens of small islands scattered around.

“When do you want us to go?” Gurney asks.

“Tomorrow at the latest,” Leto says, glancing at Jessica. “His current…state is hard to predict, the sooner he’s out there in safety, the better.”

“I need to prepare the shuttle and the supplies, and we’ll be ready by tomorrow morning. Do you need any more time, Doctor?” He turns to Yueh.

“I’m not going with you, Lieutenant,” the doctor says, his face and voice impassive.

“But I can’t monitor his health, I only have basic first aid training,” Gurney says.

“There will be no need for any special medical care,” Yueh smiles thinly. “I expect the young lord to go through the process naturally. He’s in perfect health.”

“You just need to keep an eye on him,” Leto says. “Gurney, this is not an order. This is a request. Migido is safe enough for him to stay alone, and he would if the timing wasn’t so unfortunate.”

The timing is indeed unlucky. Within a week, Castle Caladan will be teeming with delegations from the Great Houses, which means a dramatic increase in all the usual risks, from assassination attempts to coup d'etat. Leaving the heir alone in such a vulnerable state would be the height of recklessness. Gurney isn’t sure, however, how safe it is for Paul to spend his heat without health supervision – he didn’t even know that male omegas were supposed to have heat, for that matter. But if Yueh is telling the truth, it would be wiser to have a family Suk medic close on hand here, in the castle, given that the last Landsraad Council meeting resulted in the semi-successful poisoning of the Countess Moritani.

“It’s not only about his safety and discretion, Gurney,” Lady Jessica adds, before he has time to answer the Duke, and to his surprise, she sounds anxious. “He’ll need a friend more than he’ll need a doctor or a guard. True, it’s not strictly necessary for you to be there with him, however, we don’t want him to feel like an outcast, and I’m sure you can understand why he might feel exactly that way. That's why we’re asking for your help.”

“And I will be glad to help, my lady,” he bows his head slightly to Jessica. He might suspect a manipulation in such a deliberate show of emotion, were it not for the circ*mstances. Sometimes things are simpler than they seem. Jessica may be a Bene Gesserit and the Duke’s concubine, but she is also a mother, worried sick about her child.

He spends the rest of the evening preparing for the mission: finding a free aircraft, arranging for the supplies, giving Lanville the necessary instructions, adjusting the drill schedule for the troops, and doing a million other things before the departure. When he returns to his quarters to finally start packing, the files that he wanted to show to the Duke and Thufir are still on his desk.

Now he knows what to look for: the ecologist, 37, female, beta; the first guard, 44, male, beta; the second guard, 28, male, alpha. Gurney calls Lanville and asks for more details about what happened in the dungeons yesterday. He’s not surprised to hear that one of the guards was behaving oddly. He tells Lanville to promote that odd-behaving one.

“Yes, sir. Where do you want him? He’s not very bright,” Lanville asks.

“Wherever you see fit,” says Gurney. After all, the guy’s only fault is that he’s too sensitive to pheromones. “I want him off the castle by the time I get back.”

It’s not like he’s going to purge every alpha from the castle guard, but you can’t be too careful when the ducal heir is a male omega.

Long after midnight, he goes to Dr.Yueh’s chambers, relieved to find that the lights are still on.

“What can I do for you, Master Halleck?” The doctor shows absolutely no emotion at this late visit, stepping aside to let him in. Gurney does indeed have a request. The thought has been nagging at him for hours now since his meeting with the Duke.

“I need something to make sure that I won’t be affected during these weeks with Paul.”

Dr. Yueh looks him up and down doubtfully. “I don’t think you would. Forgive me, but given your age and the nature of your relationship with the young lord, the effect will be very mild. You won’t need any aid to suppress it.”

“What if I need something just in case,” he says.

“Well, if you insist,” Yueh shrugs. “Have you ever been with an omega in heat?”

“Years ago,” Gurney replies, sounding gruff even to himself. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“Without any suppressors?” The doctor goes to the cabinet at the back of his room, talking over his shoulder. The last thing on Gurney’s mind at that time was f*cking suppressors. And he doesn’t like the fact that they’re suddenly talking about his history with omegas.

“Yes,” he says, determined to give away as few details as possible.

“I see,” says Yueh, rummaging through the cupboard. The aid that he finds for Gurney is a wristband that looks like a shield bracelet, but the gadget attached to it is different. It doesn’t look familiar at all, though Gurney can deduce that it’s also some sort of a shield.

“I thought it’s going to be a pill,” he says.

“No, I’m not going to give you a chemical suppressor,” Yueh says. “It will change your scent, and we don’t need that.”

Gurney raises an eyebrow at this “we.” He’s already regretting his decision to ask the doctor for advice. “Why do you need my scent unchanged?”

“Paul needs it. The scent of a familiar alpha will have a calming effect on him. Spending the heat alone is a difficult enough experience, and the presence of someone whom he knows well, a friend, if you will, could help him in his…struggle.”

Gurney looks at him for a long moment before saying in what he hopes is a clear and meaningful tone: “I’m not spending the heat with him, Dr. Yueh.”

“I’m not saying that you are,” the doctor says with a smile. “But you’ll be around, so why don't you take a chance, and help him a little? Especially now that you have your aid.”

Yueh nods at the bracelet in Gurney’s hands. “This is a blocker; it neutralizes the omega scent. It works like a shield bracelet, you activate the power field when you don’t want to be exposed to pheromones.”

Gurney tries on the bracelet, clicking the switch on and off and feeling no difference. The thing seems suspiciously like a placebo, but he chooses not to comment on this.

“And it won’t block my scent from Paul?” he asks.

“Yes, it only repels omega pheromones. The technology was designed for the guards in the infamous pleasure houses on Giedi Prime.” The doctor’s eyes shift to the whipscar on his cheek, and Gurney frowns, tugging the blocker off his wrist. His past has been brought up too many times for one night, let alone one conversation.

In the early morning, he finds himself in the launch bay overseeing the loading of the supply crates onto a standard intercontinental shuttle; his own things have already been packed and left in the cabin – a single spacebag, training equipment and the baliset.

“We’re almost done, sir.” The officer approaches him with the tablet in her hand as the autoloader lifts the last crates into the cargo section. He spends another half hour making sure that the necessary supplies are here. Bottled fresh water, canned fruits and meat, food of all kinds, pre-inspected with a poison snooper, extra fuel, first aid kits, batteries, basic maintenance tools – with all this they can easily survive a crash in the middle of the desert.

When the list is almost over, he notices a black box in the far corner of the cargo section. It’s smaller than a normal crate, maybe two feet long, and has no visible markings on it.

“What’s in this one?” he asks the officer.

“Oh, that’s for the young master.”

“Did he bring it himself?” Even before she answers, Gurney knows he didn’t. Yesterday Paul didn’t leave his room to avoid any more incidents.

“No, sir, Dr. Yueh did. He said it belonged to lord Paul personally.”

Now Gurney dislikes this mysterious black box even more. The Suk bastard could have given it to him if he wanted it on board, so why didn’t he? Hastily, Gurney dismisses the officer, telling her that he will finish the check himself. He doesn’t take the box outside in case it releases some kind of poison gas – it would be much easier to contain deadly fumes inside a shuttle than in the vast launch bay. The box is made of dark polished wood and has no code locks, opening easily when Gurney presses two buttons on either side.

As the lid lifts, he sees a set of strange objects carefully placed in the slots of the padded velvet lining. There are metal rings, neatly folded strings of beads that are too large to be a jewelry, several oblong objects, some curved, some straight, and other things that leave Gurney completely lost in guessing what they might be. He picks one up for a closer look; it’s a surprisingly heavy thing in the shape of a teardrop, with a stem on its wider side that ends in a small flat disk. Gurney turns it in his fingers, looking back into the box at the objects of the same shape, but of larger calibers, and it’s then that it finally dawns on him.

He puts the plug back as if it burns his skin and snaps the lid shut with a muffled curse. He shoves the damn box back onto the crate and strides out of the cargo section, blood pounding in his temples and his face running hot. Once outside, he calls for the tech crew and busies himself with the final checkout, hoping to erase what he has just discovered from his memory.

Paul shows up just as Gurney is about to press the comm and ask where the hell he is, because they are supposed to take off in five minutes, and Gurney is already in the pilot’s seat with the headset on. Paul looks like he has just woken up, with his eyes half-closed, his hair a mess, and his voice still raspy from sleep, as he greets Gurney with a sullen: “Is there any particular reason why we have to fly at the crack of a bloody dawn?”

“Aye, my lord, we must arrive there by noon,” Gurney says fondly, provoking his grumpy protégé with both his answer and his tone.

“Yeah, exactly, arrive by noon to an empty island and no civilization for miles around. To do what?” Paul puts his bags next to Gurney’s things and pauses for a second, noticing the training equipment.

“What are you bringing that for?” he asks, nudging the duffel bag with his foot. “I thought I’m supposed to do nothing for almost a month.” He walks to the co*ckpit and flops into the second pilot seat, a bit too dramatically for Gurney’s taste.

“You may try to, my lord, but that’s not my plan.” He waits for Paul to fasten the safety harness and put on the headset before starting the engine. As it hums louder, he can hear Paul exhaling through his nose and muttering to himself: “So it’s going to be a personal military camp. And I was hoping for a secluded resort.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to relax,” Gurney says absentmindedly, the black box immediately springing to mind, and a soft chuckle only makes it worse, because it sounds like Paul knows exactly what he's thinking of.

*

The flight takes nearly five hours, and Paul sleeps peacefully for most of it, compensating for an early start. Gurney doesn’t mind, enjoying the vast space above the clouds, where the weather is always fine, and the sun shines in full force. They’re heading south, and soon the blanket of churning gray below recedes into the cotton clouds, revealing the land. The shuttle glides over the dark, velvety folds of the mountains, over patches of fields crisscrossed by thin threads of roads and occasional towns, and finally over the glistening sea.

“Hey.”

Gurney turns to see that Paul is awake, stretching his arms lazily and squinting against the bright sunlight.

“How are you feeling?”

“Pretty good actually, thanks. I haven’t slept that well in days,” Paul says, stifling a yawn. “And you must be tired.”

“It’s not like I’ve been doing any hard piloting,” Gurney says with a shrug. “We’re arriving in an hour.”

“Is that the Oyster Sea?” Paul nods at the coastline and the mass of shining water blending into the murky horizon.

“Aye, my lord.” He glances at Paul, who’s stretching his neck in an attempt to see more. “You want to do the landing when we get there?”

“You’ll let me?” There’s so much childish surprise on Paul’s face that Gurney can’t help grinning.

“Only if you promise not to smash up the shuttle.”

Paul smiles back at him before replying: “Even if I do, you’ll pull us out safely, old man.”

The island is a dark spot on the smooth surface of the water, and as they fly closer, rises up from the sea like the curved back of some primordial deep-dwelling monster. It stretches along the parallel, its eastern part undulating into a cliffy shore covered with patches of vegetation that look like sparse woodland from above, and its western "tail" running down into the clear, emerald coastal waters. There, among shrubs and white sand dunes stands a tiny house – the Atreides hideout.

Gurney spots the clearing near the shore, which looks flat and level enough for the shuttle to land on. “Go over there, on the sand behind those pines,” he instructs Paul as they descend.

“Isn’t it too far from the house?” Paul’s face is focused, his eyes darting between the control panel and the windshield, one hand firmly on the yoke, the other clicking the tumblers with such confident efficiency that Gurney feels a hint of pride for his student handling an aircraft far more serious than a ‘thopter.

“We’ll walk,” he deadpans.

Paul carries out his task perfectly, landing the shuttle smoothly right in the middle of the clearing. When the engine dies down, Paul smiles triumphantly at Gurney and gets an approving: “Atta boy!”

Before Gurney has time to unbuckle his safety harness, Paul is up and out of the shuttle, and Gurney can hear his happy whooping from outside as he sends word of their successful arrival to the castle. He picks up his spacebag and the training gear, tucks the baliset under his arm and heads for the lowered ramp.

The air on Migido smells of the sea and sun-dried pines, and it’s warmer here than in the cold mists of the Atreides homeland. Paul has already shed his jacket and stands outside in his white shirt, pale in the bright sunlight, his dark curls ruffled by the fragrant breeze.

“I officially love this climate,” he says to Gurney. “And they’ve never even told me we had a house here!”

“I guess your parents just wanted a place to hide from you for a change.”

They walk uphill towards a one-story house, making their way between patches of sedge and dog rose shrubs. The house is far from the luxurious residences of the noble families. It is made of wood and meta-glass, with tinted floor-to-ceiling windows and a roof covered in black solar panels. Its austere lines and lack of decoration make it look like a cozy fish tank.

The glass door opens right into a spacious room with a couple of couches and armchairs in front of a concrete fireplace, ugly and useless at this season. On the far side, Gurney sees a long dining table separating the main room from a kitchen unit – wooden cabinets along the wall with cookware hanging above, a stove and a black glass door that must be some sort of built-in fridge.

“It’s smaller than my bedroom,” Paul comments, walking past Gurney and across the room. “That means that the bedroom must be the size of…” He opens the wooden door facing the kitchen table and pokes his head in. “…Yep, the size of a bed.”

Gurney comes closer to look over his shoulder. The bedroom is tiny, especially by the castle standards, the double bed taking up most of the space, but thanks to the windows the room is filled with sunlight and has an unobstructed view of the blooming dog rose, the dunes, and the sea.

“Do you want to take it?” Gurney asks Paul, who is clearly in doubt.

“With a glass wall like that? Let’s see what else they’ve got here.”

“Who’s going to watch you, the seagulls?”

Paul looks at him for a long moment, then chuckles, lowering his eyes.

“You take it. I’ll check the other one.”

The second bedroom is at the end of a dark, windowless hallway, and it’s predictably smaller than the first, with no sunlight or a sea view, because the only slit window is placed near the ceiling like a ventilation hole.

Paul drops his bags on a large double bed.

“You sure?” Gurney asks. The idea of the heir of House Atreides living in a pantry for weeks on end makes him uneasy. “Isn’t it too dark?”

“If you don't want to wake up at the sunrise – it’s just fine. And perfect for filmbooks.”

So that’s that. The strangeness of the situation begins to sink in as Gurney unpacks in his room. Their journey to Migido doesn’t feel like the usual missions when he accompanies Paul to another city or off-planet. There he always knew where to look and what to do, and here his constant vigilance is useless.

He’s noticed old daysigns left by Hawat’s people, who must have inspected the house at some point. Even if there hasn’t been any inspection, the place just doesn’t feel dangerous – at least that’s what his gut tells him. The first thing that comes to his mind is a summerhouse, abandoned for the dark winter months and brought back to life as soon as the days grow longer and warmer. It lacks the polished grandeur of the hotel rooms; instead Gurney sees dust gathered in the corners and sand scattered across a poorly cleaned floor, reminding of the last season. In the nightstand, he finds a volute seashell, picked up by whoever slept on this bed for its bizarre orange-on-white pattern and crown-like horns.

That’s what disturbs him the most: the subtle intimacy of someone else’s home. He feels out of place here, because neither the seaside view nor the mattress of such softness and width clearly weren’t meant for an old soldier on duty. It feels like being on holiday he doesn’t deserve.

Back in the kitchen, he sees Paul standing in front of the open fridge with a puzzled look on his face.

“Yeah, we’ll have to eat what we cook ourselves.” As Gurney walks past him, he lifts his hand to pat Paul’s skinny shoulder, but decides against it, judging that an unnecessary touch will only make Paul uncomfortable in his current state.

“Gurney,” Paul says, his eyes narrowing. “Are you telling me that we have to carry the freaking crates over here by hand?”

“Not all of them, just the ones with food,” Gurney shrugs.

“But we landed, like, three hundred yards from here!” Paul slams the fridge shut.

“Think of it as training.” Gurney takes the baliset he left on the couch to his bedroom, and Paul follows him, leaning against the doorframe. Unlike Gurney, he doesn’t at all look like an intruder in these interiors, thanks to his unblemished skin, dark curls, and effortless elegance.

“And I told you that we should land closer to the house,” he reminds smugly, crossing his arms over his chest.

“We’re not reparking the shuttle,” Gurney says, searching around for a proper place to put the baliset, and not finding any. Paul plops down on the unmade bed and watches him with that little mischievous smile of his that promises nothing good.

“Come on, old man,” he says. “Admit that you simply forgot about the crates.”

“I didn’t. We can’t do it because the ground is too steep,” Gurney grumbles, leaning the baliset against the nightstand. He feels cornered. Not so much by Paul pestering him – that’s their usual dynamic – but by the cramped space itself.

“The steep ground is to blame, sure. You’d rather throw your back out than spend twenty minutes reparking the shuttle,” Paul taunts.

Gurney has no trouble with rebuffing the insolent imp, and occasionally opts for a good cuff, but now even the thought of touching Paul here, in this small bedroom, seems wildly inappropriate. Paul must have read his confusion, because the smile on his face fades, replaced by a silent question in his eyes, bright green in the sunlight.

Gurney swallows around a lump in his throat, looking down at Paul and thinking in a flash of panic: can he smell me? Paul blinks, opening his mouth to say something, and Gurney uses the moment to finally break the awkward silence.

“Let’s go, the sooner we get them, the sooner I can make you lunch.”

Forty minutes later, they’re on their third trip from the shuttle to the house in the blazing sun, and Paul seems finally at peace with the task, even though his temples are damp with sweat and his soaked shirt is clinging to his back. Gurney isn’t much better, but when Paul offers to get another crate of water and another of cans, he just nods.

Back to the shuttle, he gulps down the delicious fresh water from his crate and waits for Paul, who emerges from the cargo section with a black box in his hands, and it’s a true miracle that Gurney doesn’t choke, cursing himself inwardly for forgetting about the damn thing.

“Look what I found,” Paul says, showing him the box.

“This is…this is from Dr. Yueh,” he croaks. “He said it was for you.”

“Yeah? He didn’t tell me anything.”

Honestly, Gurney can hardly imagine anyone announcing to the Duke’s son that he’s been given a box of sex toys for spending his heat. Paul shakes the box, trying to hear what’s inside.

“He said it was private,” Gurney adds in case Paul decides to open it right now.

“Hmm…probably some medication. But if it’s cookies, I’m not sharing them with you.” He winks at Gurney and places the box on top of his crate.

On the way back to the house Gurney can’t stop looking at Paul, feeling like an old fool. His attempts to regard this as a normal mission are laughable. This secluded place with nowhere to go and nothing to do, this matchbox house, this small dark bedroom at the end of the hallway, all serve a single purpose, and Gurney soon won’t be able to ignore it.

He can only imagine how much this weighs on Paul, who has always been too clever and perceptive not to see the situation for what it is. For others of his kind the heat can be a pleasurable experience to share with their partners. For him – due to his birthright – it is staged as a shameful illness, and instead of a caring lover attending to his natural needs, Paul has only an old teacher, who’s no more than a silent, helpless witness.

Gurney knows that he might be exaggerating, and that Paul, for whom he’s always had a soft spot, is stronger than he thinks, but it’s difficult to ignore how vulnerable Paul seems. Even at this exact moment, when he walks uphill with the crate in his hands, his gait looks so funny and familiar that Gurney could easily recognize him even from afar.

“Hey, old man,” Paul looks at him over his shoulder. “How’s your back?” he asks innocently.

Gurney catches up with him in several long strides. “Ready for combat training.”

“Whuh?..” The indignation on Paul’s face looks genuine. “That is supposed to be training, isn’t it?”

“This is just the warm-up; there’s no combat in it.” In fact, Gurney is unsure whether he should be pushing Paul too hard.

“Well, personally, I combat your unreasonable stubbornness,” Paul quips, grinning at him.

They stuff the fridge full and put the rest of the crates in a small storage room that is empty except for a control panel and an old washing machine. Gurney looks through the frozen ready meals, searching for something least difficult to cook, and finally settles on a mixture of rice, vegetables and shrimps that takes ten minutes to heat up in a pan.

“How are you feeling?” Gurney asks when the lunch is over, and Paul rises from the table to fill the glass with water from the kitchen tap.

“You already asked me that today. I can’t believe you forgot already, that’s too fast even for you,” Paul counters, taking a sip of water only to sputter it all over the kitchen sink a moment later. “Okay, this one’s got seawater in it,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Gurney can’t help feeling a little avenged for all the teasing.

“I must have forgotten to turn on the filter system for the kitchen,” he says. “You do the dishes, I’ll check the control panel.”

“Why not the other way around?” Paul complains, just for the sake of it. “Are you planning to dump all the dirty work on me? And I’m feeling fine, by the way, if that’s what you wanted to know.”

Gurney grins at the fake exasperation in his voice and heads to the hallway, the sounds of the running water and cutlery clattering behind him. In the storage room, he yet again sees the black box that Paul has left right on top of the crate of cans, just as he has carried them.

This time Gurney is annoyed by the bloody thing that seems to be following him, so he grabs it and goes to Paul’s bedroom. It’s half-dark inside, and he can hear through the open door that Paul is safely occupied with washing the dishes. He doesn’t look around or dwell on the weight and texture of the box in his hands as he places it on the empty nightstand and leaves, trying to make as little noise as possible.

He keeps their training light, afraid to overwork Paul in the heat of the day and going for defense rather than attack. Paul drives him into the corner more easily than usual, and Gurney is pleased to notice how fast he is adapting to the environment that differs so much from their normal training grounds: uneven sand, mounds of sedge, shrubs, and the scorching sun. Paul is more like an opponent of equal strength than a student – he’s still not a perfect fighter, but a skilled one, and what was once merely a lesson now feels like an enjoyable challenge to Gurney.

When they finally click the shields off, panting and drenched in sweat, the sun hangs low, drowning the dunes in a soft evening light. Were they in the castle, at this point Gurney would leave for the officers’ quarters, and Paul – to whatever was next to his schedule. Instead, they go back to the house together and part in the living room without much talking. The uneasiness Gurney feels undoubtedly is due to going through their routine in such a small space, which is never the case back home. Despite him and Paul spending a lot of time together outside their lessons, there is always someone around – servants, guards, other mentors – someone who can share responsibility for Paul’s well-being with him.

After washing off the sweat and sand and changing into clean clothes, he realizes how tired he is. His muscles are relaxed and aching pleasantly; the drowsiness seeps slowly into him, reminding him of the sleepless night and a very long day – his first day on Migido. Gurney opens one of the windows and breathes in the fresh night air for a few minutes, listening to the surf lapping, the screeching of seagulls and the distant hum of aircrafts.

The quivering twilight outside smells like sea, and pines, and sun-dried stones, and there’s also a faint, tingly aroma Gurney can’t quite place – probably, some local night-blooming flower, or seaweed washed ashore. When he walks into the kitchen, he’s surprised to see Paul standing over the stove, stirring something in the frying pan.

“I thought it was my turn to cook,” Paul says with a smile. He’s wearing what looks like nightclothes – a short black tank top revealing a pale strip of skin at the small of his back, and baggy trousers of the same color and fabric. Gurney sits down at the table, a little dazed at the sight of the Atreides heir with a spatula in his hand.

“Well, it’s not really cooking, I only used what was left in the bag that you opened for lunch.” Paul puts a plate of the leftover rice mixture in front of him. “What?” he asks as Gurney watches him, amused.

“Nothing, it’s just strange to see you serving a meal.”

Paul shrugs his bare shoulders, and Gurney notices how well defined his muscles have become. He often senses this increased strength during their sparring, but rarely has a chance to see it in the flesh.

“You’ve got three weeks to get used to it.” Paul sits opposite him, his posture relaxed, both elbows resting on either side of his plate in an apparent disregard for the table manners that also adds to the strangeness of it all.

With the sunset now passed, the summer night flows through the fish tank windows, casting bluish shadows across the house and leaving the kitchen table as the sole spot of warm light. In the diffuse yellow glow, Paul looks less pale, his eyes and lips a shade darker, the hollows and planes of his face more pronounced, his hair still damp from the shower, reaching the sharp line of his jaw.

Gurney doesn’t know whether it’s the trick of the artificial light or his tiredness getting the better of him, but suddenly he does not recognize the young man in front of him, though it’s undoubtedly still the same Paul Atreides whom Gurney remembers first as a curious, impish kid, then as an intelligent and lonely teenager, haunted by strange dreams. This new Paul is calm, his movements precise and controlled, and a heavy burden of secrets adds sadness to his eyes. He is an adult, Gurney realizes. Also, he is undeniably, unfathomably, and unforgettably beautiful.

“So, what’s our plan for tomorrow?” Paul says, and Gurney snaps back from his trance-like state.

“We could walk around the island,” he suggests, not quite sure where to look after his untimely revelation. When he dares glancing at Paul, his exhausted mind immediately registers the thick eyelashes fringing Paul’s green eyes, the sunburned tip of his nose, and all the freckles scattered across over Paul’s cheekbones, and the two moles beside his mouth – things that he knows so well and has never seen before.

“After the sparring, I mean,” he adds pathetically, dropping his gaze back to the plate.

“Sounds exciting,” Paul replies, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “I assume on my third day here I’ll hijack the shuttle and fly off to that military base.”

“I have only a baliset to entertain you, my lord.” It’s supposed to be a joke, but to himself Gurney sounds like he’s apologizing. Paul just sighs and rests his chin on one hand.

When they wish each other good night, and Gurney returns to his bedroom, he finds it hard to fall asleep despite his exhaustion. Paul once told him about a Bene Gesserit meditation technique to help with insomnia, but he can’t remember exactly what it was, some kind of a breathing exercise. He could get up and walk to the other side of this tiny house to ask Paul, who must still be awake, reading a book or just lying alone in his bed and staring into the darkness, just like Gurney himself.

That last alien thought and the vivid image of Paul waiting in the dark room makes something twinge hotly in his stomach, and he sits up, wondering what the hell is wrong with him. The answer comes easily. He pulls his half-unpacked bag from under the bed and rummages through the side pocket. His fingers find the small object he's looking for: it’s the blocker that Dr. Yueh gave him, a shield meant to suppress any unwanted reactions. Gurney doesn’t put it on, only hides it inside the nightstand. Just in case.

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

Neither the three-week exile, nor the chosen location – an island in southern waters – came as a surprise for Paul. The timing was caused by the Council meeting, and as for the place, he can understand why his parents have their hideout on Migido. Nothing here reminds you of the castle; the glorious nature makes you forget your duties and birthright and pretend to be someone else. Someone as simple as the sea around or the sky above; not the duke and his concubine, but a man and a woman. An alpha and an omega.

The fact that he ends up here with Gurney feels like a cruel joke. Before his mother talked to him, he saw the heat as a major inconvenience and never thought that it would snowball into a whole f*cking military op, complete with aircrafts, and supplies, and secret houses, and the warmaster of the House, pulled out from life for almost a month to babysit him while he’s…Yeah. And Paul has no one to blame for this but himself.

He still doesn’t know why he named Gurney when Jessica said he needed someone to accompany him to Migido for security reasons. It’s just…he can’t think of anyone else with whom spending several weeks on a desert island wouldn’t be boring. It's a mere coincidence that Gurney also happens to be an alpha.

“Is it going to be a problem?” he asked her, realizing that he had never thought about how his heat might affect Gurney.

“On the contrary, I think it’s a good idea,” Jessica said to his immense surprise. “It will give you a chance to test your tolerance to pheromones.”

“And what if I have zero tolerance?” He shuddered at the memory of the redheaded guard with a goofy smile. At least, Gurney clearly wasn’t that sensitive to omega scent.

“That’s highly unlikely. But if you ever feel like you’re losing control, you can always call me, and we’ll figure something out.”

“What, send Dr. Yueh there instead?” he asked, and Jessica nodded. Back then, the thought of being observed by Yueh made him unexpectedly uncomfortable. From what he’d learned, the heat actually wasn’t as dramatic as it was often shown in filmbooks or described in novels; it was basically just a few days of being extra-horny and emotionally unstable. So, he figured it wouldn’t be much different from the numerous trips off- and on-planet he had taken with Gurney as his guard and companion.

Needless to say that nothing goes the way he thought it would, and he constantly doubts his choice. He didn’t have a chance to ask Gurney himself, as they only met on the morning of their departure, and the moment Paul saw him, he knew everything had changed between them. The signs of the change are subtle, and it takes Paul a while to figure out why he feels weird around Gurney. Mostly it’s in the way Gurney sometimes looks at him – like he dutifully tries not to avert his eyes. Or in the way he pauses only a half-second longer before answering and avoids touching Paul, making him feel like a leper. Like a male omega in atavistic heat.

Their weapons practice is the most telling: Gurney doesn’t deign to meet his attacks properly, acting little better than a target dummy. On their first day on Migido, Paul wrote it off as exhaustion from the flight and the baking weather; the next few days show him that it’s their new normal. He wants to tell Gurney – or, more likely, to shout at him rather than to tell – that he’s not sick, that the bloody heat changes nothing because he’s still the same person whom Gurney has been teaching all these years.

Only they don’t really talk. They discuss their plan for the day, the weather, the meals, and make half-hearted jokes occasionally – but never talk. Gurney has never admitted that he knows the true reason for their trip to Migido, or what Paul’s secondary gender is. And that’s a relief, because the truth is that Paul’s afraid of confirming his worst assumptions about what Gurney thinks of him now. However, it doesn’t stop him from getting angry at everything and everyone at once, a rage smoldering inside him, impenetrable to all the B.G. tricks he learned from his mother.

There’s also the scent.

Two days ago, they spent the whole afternoon exploring the southern part of the island, hiking the rocks along the shore and through the maritime pine woods for hours. By the end of the day, Paul was so tired that he fell asleep right in the living room, while they watched a filmbook, and Gurney read to him in his deep voice, intoning the text almost as if he were singing. Paul snuggled into the far corner of the couch, but Gurney’s scent was still all over him – sharp, tangy, with a heady undertone, like sun-heated skin or thick fur.

He woke up in the middle of the night, alone and covered with a blanket. His pants were wet with come down the front and slick down the back, and the latter had been released in such quantities that he feared it had stained the upholstery. Paul wrapped himself in the blanket and tiptoed into his bedroom, glancing at Gurney’s closed door. He didn’t bother to take a shower, just took off his clothes and climbed naked into his bed. He lay there, shivering with cold and simultaneously burning with shame at the thought of Gurney covering him with a blanket after Paul had come in his sleep. Even if Gurney had, he didn't show it in the slightest, for the next day was exactly the same as all the previous ones, with the small exception of something that looked like a shield bracelet appearing on Gurney’s wrist.

So, Paul doesn’t ask him about that night or about the bracelet, and Gurney doesn’t say anything either, and this double-edged ignoring of the obvious drives Paul mad.

The only way he can relieve the growing tension seems less effective every morning when he wakes up painfully hard after hazy, feverish dreams. Far from being prophetic, they are filled with the suffocating heat of another body clinging to him, sweat-slicked skin sliding against his own, limbs tangled, someone hugging him from behind, squeezing his ribs with such delicious force that he can’t stop himself from pressing further into their arms. Like he wants more of this pressure. Like he wants it deeper. Like he wants it right there.

He wonders if it’s time to finally use Dr. Yueh’s black box, which spontaneously appeared in his bedroom after he had left it in the storage room. This magical teleportation and Gurney’s odd behavior around the box were explained when he opened it on the first night – only to think in horror that he would never be able to look Gurney in the eye again.

Now, on his fourth day on Migido, the whole thing seems hilarious rather than terrifying. At least, he can’t suppress a grin at the mental image of Gurney sneaking into his bedroom to hide a box of sex toys, when he greets him in the kitchen: “Morning. What’s for breakfast?”

“Morning, and it’s cornflakes. Help yourself.” Gurney eyes him suspiciously. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Paul says as he busies himself with the cornflakes. “I didn’t know we had milk.”

“We do, it’s in the crate with cans,” Gurney replies through a mouthful.

“Funny thing about these crates.” Paul sits opposite him. “I put that black box on top of them – the one Dr. Yueh left for me – and now I can’t find it.”

He can’t remember a time when he’d enjoyed looking at Gurney’s face so much. The frozen shock on it slowly morphs into the reproachful and unimpressed look that Paul has always seen as the non-verbal equivalent of the words “you little sh*t”. Though Gurney usually goes for a more poetic version, calling Paul an insolent imp.

The cornflakes taste surprisingly good, especially as Paul observes Gurney’s attempts to school his expression into something neutral. Finally, he clears his throat, gets up from the table, and fixes Paul with a meaningful stare.

“I think I saw it in your room,” he says casually, putting the empty bowl in the sink. “What’s so important about it? Did you find out what’s in it?”

The jab reminds Paul of their sparring; when he has Gurney on his back, holding the blade at his throat, and even then, his mentor finds a way to get the better of him. It’s maddening, but never boring.

“No, not yet. I thought that we could open it together,” Paul replies innocently. Gurney turns to him, arms crossed over his chest, his biceps bulging. From where Paul is sitting, he seems so big and broad-shouldered that Paul feels like a kid again, looking up at him.

“As you wish, my lord. Should we go and open it right now?” he says, convincingly feigning ignorance.

“Sure, why not.” Paul stands up, daring him to make the next move, immensely curious about how far they can go with this game.

Turns out, Gurney isn’t so stubborn after all, for he lets out an exasperated sigh and growls: “Cut this horsesh*t. I’ll be waiting for you outside.”

“You want to open it outside?” Paul tries, not quite dropping the pretense, but Gurney just snorts.

“You’re insufferable. Get your shield bracelet, we’ll start with sharp blades.”

“And you’re such a killjoy, old man.”

When Gurney leaves, Paul doesn’t rush to follow; on the contrary, he lingers, deliberately dragging out the time, remembering how his habit of always being late annoys his teacher. To find Gurney completely unaffected is even more infuriating, and the desire to punish him grows stronger – but for what, Paul couldn’t possibly explain.

“Let’s fight without shields,” he says, wishing to exercise his power out of sheer spite. Gurney raises his eyebrows without saying a word, and Paul snaps: “Did you hear me? I want this round without shields.”

Gurney’s heavy stare leaves him on the verge of trembling from excitement, but when the old man finally obeys, clicking the shield off with a dry “As my lord commands”, it enrages Paul even more.

The intensity and speed of their fight make the sand beneath their feet rise into the air in a dusty cloud. Paul can see the sparks flying from the clashing blades as he attacks Gurney again and again. Irrational anger flares up within him when Gurney parries his every move, and Paul can’t say why he’s so determined to break his defense. This isn’t the way to fight, he’s been taught to be cool-headed, to look for his opponent’s weaknesses, to calculate risks. What Paul does now is exactly the opposite; he lunges at Gurney viciously, forcing him to back off. The fury makes his attack more powerful, and soon he manages to knock Gurney down to the ground, straddling him and holding the blade at his throat.

“Do you yield?” Paul asks him, enraged by his silent stubbornness and by the unreadable intensity of those dark eyes. “Do you yield, old man?” he repeats, pressing the blade against Gurney's skin. A sudden flicker of movement from the left catches him off-guard, and before he can react, he gets a handful of sand in his face.

He lifts his hand in the instinctive and futile attempt to shield his eyes, giving Gurney the opportunity to tackle him down, reversing their positions. Within seconds Paul is face down in the sand, both hands locked behind his back in a steel grip of Gurney’s calloused fingers and a knee pressed in between his shoulder blades to prevent him from getting up. He tries to throw Gurney off anyway because it’s humiliating.

“Easy, easy, now,” Gurney says right above Paul’s ear, his knee pressing harder.

“Get off me,” Paul mumbles, craning his neck, his eyes watering, his mouth full of sand.

“As soon as you calm down.”

Paul breathes through his nose, until his frantic heartbeat slows and his strained muscles relax somewhat. When Gurney finally releases him, he scrambles to his knees and rubs his eyes with both hands.

“Rinse it with water.” Gurney hands him the open bottle from above.

Paul washes his face till the itching in his eyes subsides. “That was unfair,” he grumbles at Gurney’s boots.

“And you expect every fight in your life to be fair?”

Paul ignores Gurney’s outstretched hand and gets up with an effort, brushing the sand from his shirt and pants.

“I guess we’re done with combat training for today,” Gurney says, and only then does Paul really look at him and see a cut on his neck.

“That’s...” he stutters stupidly with a sickening drop in his stomach. It’s from Paul’s blade, of course. “I cut you.”

Gurney blinks as if he doesn’t understand what Paul means, then touches the wound lightly, looking at the blood on his fingers.

“I cut you and you’re bleeding,” Paul says, horrified at how easily he’s lost control and hurt Gurney, unable to get a grip on his anger.

“It’s just a scratch; I’ve had worse from you.” That’s true, but it was back when Paul was an inexperienced teenager and didn’t know when to stop. Is that a symptom of the heat? Emotional instability and lack of control, and as a result he’s ready to cut Gurney’s throat.

“We can’t spar anymore. At least, until all this…” he waves his hand at himself, “…is over.”

“We can only use dull blades,” Gurney says like nothing has happened and he isn’t standing there bleeding from his neck.

“And next time I will smash your head with it. No.”

“It’s not that easy, my lord.”

Paul knows it’s not that easy. He also knows that he can overpower Gurney if he wants to, and he doesn’t need a blade to do it. He must be isolated – that was the sole purpose of his exile to Migido. He’d rather stay here by himself than risk Gurney’s – or anyone else’s – safety; after all, there’s nothing new for him in being alone for long stretches of time. Gurney, stubborn and loyal as he is, may not listen to him, but he will certainly obey the Duke’s order. Until then, Paul can only hope to stay coherent enough and hide in his bedroom. That’s where he heads, leaving Gurney outside.

He stops at the foot of the bed and stares transfixed at a wide strip of white light falling through the slit window, splitting semi-darkness and illuminating the swirling dust. When he places his hands into that hot blinding space, he’s surprised to find his fingers trembling. He recalls a cut on Gurney’s throat and his own rage – at nothing, really, at the unspoken truth that has always been there, and all at once unbearable misery washes over him, and he falls on the bed, sobbing uncontrollably.

It goes on for ages. He can’t remember the last time he cried so hard, maybe only in his childhood – but he can’t stop weeping into the pillow till it’s soaked with tears and snot, and he’s actually hiccupping. He drags himself to the bathroom, cursing quietly after every hiccup; in the mirror his face is swollen and blotchy, making him look more like a little boy after a bad tantrum rather than a grown-up. He washes his face again and again, and by the time he’s finished, the front of his shirt is wet. Though he’s completely drained by hysterics, the hot tears start trickling down his temples as soon as he’s back in bed.

When he wakes up, the strip of light has shifted, now tinted red by the approaching sunset. He lies for a while, unsure of what to do next and unable to sleep. The longer he stares at the plain white ceiling, the more his room reminds him of a prison cell. Finally, he decides that he needs some fresh air, hoping to sneak out of the house without Gurney noticing. Once outside, however, he hears the quiet sounds of the baliset. He stands in the dark hallway for a minute or two, listening to the familiar melody and Gurney’s faint muttering, half-singing, half-whispering the lyrics. Paul sighs, then walks briskly out of his hiding place and across the living room; the melody stops when Gurney sees him. Barely glancing at him, Paul says, "I'm going for a walk," and without waiting for a reply, walks out of the house.

At first, he wants to go to the far end of the island, where he and Gurney hiked a few days ago, but the sun is close to the horizon, and Paul is likely to return from such a distant walk in the total darkness, so he heads for the clearing where they landed the shuttle. There, behind the line of crooked maritime pines, he finds a narrow beach, without much room to walk, and he ends up sitting close to the surf.

He used to climb to the highest towers to watch the sunsets – the dramatic, monumental sunsets, with the light pouring down the sides of the surrounding mountains and reflecting in the deep lakes. The landscape of Migido is much simpler: nothing, but a single line, separating the sea from the sky. But the drowning sun paints it in so many shades of red, and orange, and yellow, and purple, that it feels oppressive, as if another planet were looming ominously above, full of liquid fire. This madness of color is quiet, accompanied only by the rhythmic rush and retreat of the waves, screeches of seagulls, and the ever-present distant rumble of aircrafts.

Paul thinks that he might like it here. Spend the evenings on the warm sand, under the fragrant pines, be a careless observer of what happens to someone else, contemplate on the numerous paths not taken, and gradually lose his fragmented visions to mere dreams.

The sky grows darker by the minute, and soon night falls over Migido, revealing stars dimmed by flickering orbital stations and satellites. Paul watches it all from a far. He doesn’t hear Gurney, but smells him, a sharp note wafting through the air filled with the biting iodine of the sea, the warm pine tar and the pungent seaweed.

Gurney remains silent, stopping behind Paul’s back. Paul doesn’t start talking either, not even turning his head to see the wound he left on Gurney’s neck today. For as long as Paul remembers, Gurney has always been attuned to his moods, able to tell when Paul needs to be pushed and when he needs to be left alone. He trusts Gurney to make the right decision now and go back to the house without saying a word. Instead, he hears a rustling behind him and in a second his shoulders are covered by Gurney’s jacket.

The contrast between the cool night air and the sudden warmth of the jacket sends goose bumps up his forearms. He doesn’t move, just sits there, breathing evenly through his nose, drowning in Gurney’s scent with each inhale. Were they still in the house, its heavy musk would be suffocating, but here it mixes perfectly with the sea salt and pines, leaving Paul pleasantly lightheaded and making him unfold his limbs and put the arms into the sleeves, wrapping himself tighter in the jacket.

Gurney sits beside him on the sand, and Paul mutters a quiet “thanks”, still avoiding to look at him.

“Do you want me to leave?” Gurney asks after a lengthy silence.

“You know that I don’t,” Paul admits with a sigh.

“But you intend to stay in your room or walk around alone from now on?”

Paul scoffs at this, though without any real spite. “As if I have other options than isolation. Isn’t that why I was sent to this sh*thole of an island in the first place?” He’s unjust in his definition of the beautiful Migido, but only to emphasize the point.

Despite the swearing, Gurney’s reply sounds serious, almost solemn. “You are not isolated here; I am with you.”

Something in Paul’s throat tightens at these words and he finds himself perilously close to tears. God almighty, not this again, he thinks, afraid that he’s going to have a second round of hysterics.

“Yeah, you’re with me until I slash your throat in a fit of rage.” Paul looks at him – at the wound he left on Gurney’s neck. It’s the same old Gurney with the salt-and-pepper buzz cut and the scar, and the T-shirt clinging to his muscular back. The thin cut on his neck is barely visible in the dusk.

“Don’t exaggerate.” To finally meet his dark eyes is almost shocking to Paul, though he finds the usual warmth there, expressed not only by the color, but by the familiar pattern of lines across the scarred face, and the arch of the eyebrows, and the smile hidden in the corners of Gurney's mouth.

“At least, if you don’t stop to give in on purpose,” Paul says, bumping him lightly on the shoulder.

“So, you noticed?” Gurney smiles a little. “I suppose I should have tried harder to hide it.”

“Of course, I noticed,” Paul says, averting his eyes. “That’s not what I fear, Gurney. I have other means to best you, and you have no defense against them.”

“Why are you so sure you’ll use it on me?” Gurney doesn’t sound surprised, and that’s a relief. At least he gave it a thought before agreeing to this.

“I’m not sure, but I didn’t think that I would be so…unstable. And it’s clearly only getting worse. What if I lost myself completely, what would you do then?” Though he still finds it hard to believe that the heat will unhinge him enough to use the Voice on Gurney, he can’t ignore the possibility, not after today’s outburst.

“You don’t lose yourself to it,” Gurney says matter-of-factly.

“And what makes you so sure?” Paul asks, snapping his head up only to find Gurney gazing impassively into the star-speckled sky.

“Because I’ve seen people in heat before.”

Paul is glad they’re sitting in the dark on the beach and not in the well-lit room of the house, because his face is burning. He can think of nothing better than to hide his embarrassment with a lame: “Oh, now you’re going to give me the talk.”

Gurney grunts a short laugh, and Paul expects his words to be harsh and unrelenting, as his attacks sometimes are, but instead, Gurney sounds calm and somehow sad.

“You’re too old for the talk, Paul, and I’m not the right person to give it to you. I only want you to know that people of our kind go through this all the time without tipping over into a killing and raping frenzy. Yes, you get overwhelmed with emotions, and you have trouble controlling them, and you’re afraid that you’ll do something ugly. But you’re more than capable of getting through it and learning to accept it simply as an inevitable part of our nature.”

Paul hates himself for what he’s about to say. “But we’re not of the same nature.”

He hears a deep sigh followed by an exasperated: “I’m not pretending to understand your—”

“No, really,” Paul says. “If I presented as an alpha, would they send me here? Would they hire a Suk medic to observe me for the rest of my life? Would they hide it so much?”

Tears well up in his eyes as he speaks, and he tucks his face into the crook of his elbow to wipe them away. A warm hand rests on the nape of Paul’s neck, slowly stroking up until Gurney’s fingers are tangled in his hair, rubbing the top of his head. His scalp is itchy from all the sand, wind, and sea salt, and the gentle scratching brings such relief that he wants to purr.

“I’m sorry,” Gurney says quietly. “The Houses are obsessed with their traditions and ancient views on these things. They dread everything new and rare.”

“It’s not just new and rare, it’s a deviation.” The firm fingers halt at Paul’s muffled reply, so Paul tilts his head slightly, nudging Gurney’s palm to show that he doesn’t want him to stop. He’s not ready to voice it and, luckily, he doesn’t need to, as Gurney’s fingers start moving again, combing soothingly through his hair.

“They treat it like it’s a deviation.”

“It doesn’t make much difference. I mean, for me, the deviant.”

“And I’m sorry for that too.” Gurney’s voice is as soft as his touch. “I’ve never thought of you as a deviant.”

“Only because you didn’t know that I was an omega.” It feels strange to finally say it out loud. Gurney’s reaction is immediate; his palm slides down to rest cautiously on Paul’s shoulder.

“It doesn’t change anything,” he says, but Paul shakes his head.

“It’s too early to say that. You know only for, what, a few days, and you’ve already decided that I’m too weak to spar on equal terms.”

“Of course, I don’t think you’re weak. I was just afraid you'd collapse again and I didn't want to push you too hard.” Gurney replies gruffly, squeezing his shoulder. “But now I know you’d rather slit my throat, and I promise I won’t hold back.”

This attempt to cheer Paul up has no effect, though he does like the fact that Gurney is sounding a little more like his usual jovial self.

“This is only for a couple of weeks, Paul,” he adds. “And when it’s over, you’ll be fine again.”

“It’s humiliating.” Paul pulls his knees closer to his chest to protect himself from the chilling sea breeze.

“No more than many other needs of the human body that we used to hide.”

This time Paul snorts out a laugh at the unpoetic simile. “Yeah, thanks for giving me a whole new perspective. Now I can imagine having month-long food poisoning.”

When he glances up, Gurney is grinning at him, his eyes full of mirth. Paul notices that he’s sitting there in a T-shirt, and the air around them is rapidly cooling as the wind picks up.

“Are you cold?” Paul asks, trying to take off the jacket, but Gurney stops him.

“Keep it.” He stands up, holding out his hand. Paul takes it, as he’s done a thousand times before, and Gurney tugs him off the ground effortlessly, as he always does. They stand nose to nose, and instead of stepping back, Paul lunges forward and hugs him – with both arms, burying his face in Gurney’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, ashamed at how much he’s enjoying the warmth and the earthy scent, and the broad palms, stroking up his back. Well. This is only for a couple of weeks.

“It’s alright. Let’s go home.” Gurney says in his ear, not moving away as if waiting for Paul to decide.

Back in the house, Gurney heats up the dinner for him; their conversation at the table is light and laced with old jokes. When he leaves for his bedroom after saying good night, his jacket is still hanging on the back of the chair, where Paul had put it earlier. Of course, Gurney could have simply forgotten about it, or maybe he’s been leaving it there since day one, and Paul just didn’t notice until now. Whatever it is, now the jacket is in Paul’s room, and he’s not quite sure what to do with it when he gets into the bed.

The scent tingles Paul’s nostrils, milder than it feels on Gurney’s skin, but it has a clear effect on Paul, warming him up to arousal. He’s too tired to fight this – supposedly, natural– reaction, so he takes the jacket closer to his face, slipping his other hand into his pajama pants.

As his co*ck grows heavier under his fingers, he tries to focus on the scent alone, without much success; memories of tonight flood his mind, evoking the feel of Gurney’s touch on his skin. Paul doesn’t imagine sex with him, not really, just remembering their hug, though it’s enough for a hot coil of pleasure to tighten in his abdomen.

He inhales through the coarse fabric of the jacket as he strokes himself, not willing to consciously acknowledge what or why he’s doing. The precome isn’t enough for a comfortable slide of his hand, and instead of spitting into his palm like he used to, he reaches between his cheeks to swipe up some moisture, but the moment he feels the pad of his index finger brush over his hole, he stops. He has never touched himself like this before – just as he has never before masturbat*d while smelling Gurney’s clothes, so does it really matter now?

The slick makes it easy for his finger to slide in; the feeling is pleasant, but not nearly enough, so he adds another, choking out a quiet “f*ck” from both the sensation of penetration and the spasming hotness of the inner walls. Yes, he thinks, I might actually like it, and sinks both fingers in, deeper this time, till his knuckles press against the rim that burns from the stretch.

Despite the awkward twist of his hand and the straining erection, once he starts rocking his fingers, he can’t really stop. It’s… good in so many new ways that he’s torn between the desire to chase the approaching org*sm greedily and the need to make the feeling last. His muscles are pulled into an almost unbearable strain – everything sharpens, ready to burst in a single blinding flash of ecstasy, and instead turns into a long, slow tide of pleasure that washes over him, rolling through every bone in his body and flooding him with long-awaited relief, contrasted by the spasming of his hole around his fingers.

Is it because of the scent, he wonders, trembling slightly and barely registering the physical sensations of sticky come in his palm and the muffled soreness of his ass. His hands are smeared with come and slick, and there’s a round spot of saliva where he has drooled on Gurney’s jacket. He’s wet all over, his skin clammy with sweat, but instead of feeling filthy, he feels snug – warm and sleepy, with his whole body still humming deliciously in the aftermath of the org*sm. He grabs the jacket weakly, staining it with his own scent and unable to say why he has the urge to do it. Maybe to make sure he’ll never give it back to Gurney.

*

He expects the next morning to bring shame and self-loathing, and finds himself feeling neither, though something has unmistakably changed. When he opens the door to the dark hallway leading to the living room, he knows immediately that Gurney is already in the kitchen, sitting at the table with his face to the front door, like he always does. At first, Paul doesn’t even realize that he’s smelling it. The thread of Gurney’s scent is steady and clear now – he can smell him as easily as he smells freshly-brewed coffee, scrambled eggs in the frying pan, and the morning sea breeze drifting in through the open windows. Paul stops at the threshold of his room, because the tangy, musky aroma reminds him of what he did with the jacket, and he needs time to adjust before he meets Gurney.

To his immense relief, Gurney doesn’t seem to notice his uneasiness, and they have their breakfast like nothing had happened yesterday. Unlike the previous morning, the quietness and mundanity of it doesn’t irritate Paul, as if last night's conversation had cleared the air between them.

“How’s the cut?” he asks, looking at the thin line on Gurney’s neck.

“It’s not a cut, it is literally a scratch,” Gurney says, tracing it with his fingers in what looks like an unconscious gesture. Paul feels a sharp pang of shame – not only has he lost control of himself and hurt Gurney, but he can’t help thinking about how he marked Gurney’s skin with this cut.

“I’m…” he begins apologizing, but changes his mind midway. “Thank you for everything you did last night. For being with me, I mean. And for the jacket,” he adds, tempted to see if Gurney will acknowledge that he meant to leave it. Instead, Gurney looks genuinely puzzled.

“The jacket?” he asks, frowning at Paul.

“I thought you left it on purpose. For me.” It’s clear now that he didn’t, so Paul gets up from the table, muttering “I’ll bring it back”. Actually, he can't bring it back, not until he cleans it properly, but it's better than blushing helplessly under Gurney's astonished gaze.

“Paul, wait.” The cadence of Gurney’s voice alone seems to make him obey. He sits down, resting his elbows on the table and wondering why it suddenly feels so good – to do what Gurney tells him.

“I might not have left it on purpose yesterday,” Gurney continues, “but only because I didn’t think about it. Of course, the scent helps. Keep it.”

Does he even know how exactly his scent helped me, Paul thinks, blood rushing to his face at the memory of it.

“So I’m right,” he manages, avoiding Gurney’s watchful eyes. “You’re helping me with my heat.”

At this, Gurney clears his throat and shifts in his chair as if he too has been affected – if not by Paul’s scent, then by their conversation.

“Not quite,” he says curtly, and the silence that follows feels charged, because Paul is sure they both are thinking of the same thing right now – how it’s just the two of them in this house and on this bloody island.

“I don’t mean being my partner, obviously,” Paul adds hastily.

“Obviously, yes,” Gurney nods stiffly, his discomfort visible. A day ago, Paul would have taken the slight twitch of his mouth as a sign of disgust, but after the last night’s breakdown their perfect understanding seems to have been restored. Or Paul is simply calm enough to think clearly.

“It’s only to calm me down, right?”

“That was the idea,” Gurney grumbles, and the warmth blooming in Paul’s chest feels entirely disproportionate to this little confession.

“And…what can I do? To you?” he asks carefully.

“Whatever you need,” Gurney shrugs. “Touch me whenever you want to. Ask me to stay close to you whenever you need my scent. I can give you more of my clothes.”

For a moment Paul imagines Gurney, flying back home in nothing but his underwear like he’d lost a game of strip poker – given he only brought a single spacebag with him on Migido, his clothes probably won’t last long.

“What if I need something that you don’t want to give?” Paul asks, hoping that Gurney won’t take it as an innuendo.

“Then you won’t get it,” he replies simply. “Paul, we’ve talked about this before, you’re exaggerating the effect of the heat on you.”

“But we can’t rule it out either, can we?” Paul says. “What are you going to do if it happens? If I make you?”

To his surprise, Gurney gets up and rounds the table. “Come here,” he says and Paul hesitantly joins him. “I’ll show you how it works.”

There’s nothing new about the way he cradles Paul’s face; he often does this when he wants Paul’s full attention. It’s funny, really, because for the last few days Paul has hardly thought about anyone or anything else. He has missed it, he realizes – the feeling of Gurney’s hands on his skin.

“The greater the distance between us,” says Gurney, “the more frustrated you get. The more frustrated you get, the less self-control you have.”

Before Paul has a chance to reply, he’s pulled into a hug, Gurney’s hands stroking his back very much like yesterday; only now, in the sunlit quietness of the morning house, it feels far more intimate. Paul relaxes into the touch, turning his head slightly to nuzzle at Gurney’s neck and breathe him in.

“It’s simple chemistry,” Gurney’s voice rumbles pleasantly next to his ear. “The scent is meant to calm you into…submission.”

Paul isn’t sure about submission, but the scent does indeed take the edge off things, bringing him back to a much-needed equilibrium. Despite being pressed so close to Gurney, Paul doesn’t feel horny, like his body has decided that this is neither the time nor the place for it; or it’s the way this simple chemistry works, letting him derive from the scent what he needs the most at the moment. He wonders what it’s like for Gurney.

“And what about you?” His question comes in a whisper. “Does my scent affect you?”

“I have protection.”

“The one on your left wrist?” Paul assumes that the bracelet also has some sort of a field barrier, and makes a mental note to ask Dr. Yueh about it the next time he sends in his vitals.

“I knew you’d notice sooner or later,” Gurney steps back, releasing Paul from his arms.

“It’s hard not to after seeing you wear the same three T-shirts for the last five years.” He stretches, smiling back at Gurney. “I think I finally get what you mean. Are we going to do this every morning?”

“Until it helps,” Gurney shrugs, the mirth fading from his eyes. And what will you do then, Paul wants to ask, but holds his tongue at the last moment.

He doesn’t risk sparring, afraid that the fits of rage will return. Instead, he spends the whole day inside with the book on the history of the region, not so much reading as looking at the pictures, distracted by the scent that grows fainter and thicker in turns as Gurney moves around the house.

Paul’s thoughts keep coming back to what he’s been offered: apart from sharing clothes, it’s not so different from the way they’re around each other at home. He’s used to touching Gurney or finding him when he needs advice or simply feeling down. It’s always been easier with Gurney than with any of his other friends; at least, he can’t imagine Thufir cuffing the back of his head for being sloppy or Duncan dragging him out for a long walk in terrible weather to lighten his mood. The understanding they have isn’t the only reason, it is also about Gurney’s unique ability to ground Paul with his words, or sometimes just with his presence – and now, with the heat going on, the usual effect seems to be ten times stronger.

He has a pretty vague idea of the rules for spending heat with an alpha partner, having never expected to be involved in one, but it certainly doesn’t look like the first time for Gurney. He can’t help wondering about the person to whom Gurney has helped before, and about how far they went. Did they stop at the platonic hugs as well or is this half-measure only for Paul, because Gurney finds sex with him unacceptable?

The memory of Gurney pressing him into the sand is suddenly so vivid in his mind that he feels a shadow of pain in his strained muscles, and despite humiliation of defeat, he can’t deny that he wishes it would last longer. Surely, this must be the effect of the pheromones Jessica warned him about, causing his increased awareness of the deliciously rough scent that threads through the air and brings him back to reality.

He finds himself staring at the page without seeing a single line, and clutching the jacket with one hand. He tries to concentrate on reading instead of succumbing to the urge to leave his bedroom immediately and find out what had caused this change in Gurney’s scent.

The book is surprisingly well-written, resembling a travel-guide rather than an academic work; and he’s pleased to find a short paragraph on Migido, describing it as a “tiny island with scarce remains of a pagan sacred site”. The sacred site seems like a perfect hike destination to him, and he eventually decides that his hiking plans for tomorrow are worth sharing with the only other human here.

Paul finds him in the main room, lounging tiredly on the couch with his arms behind his head. He always seems to be on duty in the castle, and despite Paul having witnessed his exhaustion many times – seeing him swallowing antifatigue pills in the mess hall, or dozing off in the back of a ‘thopter – it’s hard to imagine Gurney being so relaxed anywhere other than in the privacy of his quarters.

“What tired you out so much?” Paul asks, his eyes sweeping over Gurney’s biceps and chest muscles under the sweat-stained shirt.

“Went to get the spare batteries from the shuttle and saw seagulls sitting all over it. Thought that one might get into the turbine. False alarm, as it turned out,” Gurney actually stretches, and his T-shirt bunches up, revealing the navel and the treasure trail that disappears down the waistline of his fatigues. “I was on my way to the shower,” he adds somewhat apologetically.

The heavy scent makes Paul’s head swim a little as he steps closer. His gaze falls on Gurney’s thick, muscular thighs, spread invitingly before him, and he catches himself staring down at Gurney’s crotch where the fabric is pulled taut, leaving no doubts about his mouthwatering size. Paul’s heart misses a beat, and he hastily averts his eyes, doing his best to remember what his excuse was for seeing Gurney in the first place.

It must have something to do with hiking and…ah, that’s it! The sacred site.

“I think I’ve found a great place for us to hike tomorrow,” he says, hoping he doesn’t sound nervous. “There are supposed to be ancient ruins on the cliffs to the southeast. My book says so, anyway.”

“Sounds interesting,” Gurney says as Paul carefully tries to look only at his face. “We should move out early then, it must be literally on the other end of the island.”

“We can go first thing in the morning,” Paul suggests, wondering what exactly Gurney meant by saying that Paul could touch him whenever he wanted. It’s too cruel to ask for a hug and make him get up from the couch where he’s settled so comfortably; of course, Paul could just straddle his thighs, though he can hardly imagine doing it in a purely platonic way. The thought sends him into a slight panic, because it feels like his brain is malfunctioning, letting the subconscious flow freely at the forefront of his mind.

“You are not going to oversleep?” Gurney asks him with a hint of a smile, fortunately unaware of what’s happening in Paul’s head.

“Unless there’s someone to keep me up all night,” Paul replies without thinking, not having the faintest idea why he’s just said that, but amused to see Gurney’s befuddled expression. He can only blame his heat-related lack of self-control – and well, at least he’s not trying to kill anyone this time. He suspects, though, that things might indeed get physical if he stays here a little longer, basking in Gurney’s undivided attention.

“I’ll go...finish the chapter,” he says, turning toward the hallway and feeling Gurney’s stare with his back. Once safely inside his room, he leans against the closed door, his heart still pounding and thoughts racing in the wake of the scent. He can’t see why his condition has deteriorated so badly since morning. It's not that he’s discovered that Gurney is attractive – he has been aware of that for a while now – it's that Paul suddenly can't keep his mouth shut about it.

At least he can report to Jessica that his tolerance to this particular alpha’s scent is very low. The most reasonable thing for him to do next is to send Gurney back to the castle and spend the rest of the heat alone; a military base within reach should be enough for his security. Yet he doesn’t call her.

The thought of asking Gurney to be his partner doesn’t shock him; it’s like this idea has already existed in the back of his mind long enough for his fear to be replaced by curiosity. Of course, he might be affected by the scent, but he’s still sane, and Gurney has his protection, so why not talk it through and just…go all the way?

The mere possibility that Gurney will agree sends a sweet shiver down Paul’s spine, and he can feel his co*ck fattening and slick building up between his cheeks. This could be his heat deciding for him, and maybe he should resist the urge, but it feels so utterly, so unmistakably right, that he wonders why it took him so long to come up with it. He’s not risking much, because the worst-case scenario is the old man rejecting him and leaving for the castle, and Paul spending the remaining weeks with the black box instead of an alpha. But if only Gurney agrees…

He doesn’t let himself dwell on it further, suspecting that he‘ll end up jerking off in the broad daylight, and forces himself to read instead. When he gets to the last pages, he discovers that twilight has already set in, and the scent tells him that Gurney is in the kitchen, probably busy with making dinner for them.

“Is it okay if I sit there?” Paul says, indeed finding Gurney in front of the kitchen counter, no trace of earlier confusion on his face.

“Of course, it’s okay, why do you even ask?” he says, and Paul shrugs, sitting at the wrong place at the table, with his back to the front door, just so he can watch Gurney cut a loaf of red meat.

“Don’t want to distract you from your cooking, I guess,” he can feel a smile tugging at his lips as he opens the book that he brought with him only as an excuse.

“It’s no big deal,” Gurney replies, getting back to the cutting, and he’s right because it’s Paul who actually gets distracted. He watches the back muscles shifting beneath Gurney’s threadbare shirt, the expanse of his shoulders, the perspiration on the nape of his sunburned neck, captivated by the efficiency and utter lack of fuss in Gurney’s movements. That’s how Gurney does things, whether he’s sparring with Duncan, sharpening blades or tuning his baliset; in the unique way of his that Leto once described as casual, shoulder-set capability. Now, watching those hands rub pepper and salt on the meat and place both steaks in the pan with the dexterity of a professional chef, Paul finds it infinitely sexy and soon forgets to turn the pages and keep his pretense of reading.

“Not sure I can compete with that,” he says later as they eat the steaks, which taste unsurprisingly perfect. “Maybe the kitchen should be your domain, and I’ll stick to doing laundry or whatever else.”

“Thank you,” Gurney says, his smile emphasizing the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. “Just a little practice, and you’ll outshine me here, too.”

“Do I really outshine you at anything?” Paul asks, expecting a taunt.

“Your knowledge of weaponry is superb, at least on par with Duncan’s, and certainly better than mine,” Gurney says, pushing his empty plate aside.

Paul just snorts. “That doesn’t look like the result of superb knowledge,” he says, nodding at the pink cut on Gurney’s neck.

Gurney shakes his head: “It’s nothing but a temporary slip, happens to the best of us. Do you remember?” he asks, putting his right hand on the table, palm up as if preparing for an injection.

For a moment Paul can’t possibly imagine what he means. Then he notices a thin, white scar on the underside of Gurney’s hand, where the skin is paler and softer, making the scar tissue barely visible. Of course, he remembers: he’s ten years old and has been taught to fight with sharp blades; he’s excited to show Gurney a trick parry he’s learned all on his own, and the surprise effect plays so well that he manages to cut Gurney’s arm open, drawing blood from another human being for the first time in his life.

Now, after all these years, the memory of poor Gurney trying to stop the bleeding while comforting a weeping Paul seems almost comical. But back then it was a nightmare – their walk to the infirmary, Gurney with his arm wrapped in a towel, Paul in his tracks, blood-stained and crying incessantly; Leto, pulled out of the meeting and bursting into the ward, wide-eyed and out of his breath from running; Jessica, pale as death, grabbing Paul’s shoulders and asking in a high, strained voice: “Tell me where you’re hurt?!”; his own choked sobs: “I could have killed him, mum, I almost killed him!”. He only calmed down when the nurse confirmed that Gurney was not going to bleed to death and only needed stitches. After the incident, Paul refused to even touch blades until Duncan became his new weapons master – that’s how stubborn and spoiled he was. And probably still is.

“Hard to forget such clusterf*ck of a day,” he says, pausing for a second and then reaching out to trace the thin line with his fingertips. Gurney’s fingers flex, but he doesn’t take his hand away from Paul’s touch.

“You got the better of me even then,” Gurney says, his eyes bright like he genuinely finds everything that happened amusing. Paul smiles crookedly, resting his fingers at Gurney’s wrist, just above the pulse point.

“You had bad luck,” he says, suddenly overcome with the desire to take Gurney’s hand to his lips in apology for yesterday's meltdown, and for leaving that scar over a decade ago, and for dozens of other times he has hurt Gurney physically or with his behavior. It must have reflected on his face, because the moment pulls between them like a taut string, turning what should have been a pause in the conversation into a ringing silence. Gurney’s smile fades, and Paul can feel the frantic twitching of the artery with his finger pad as Gurney’s pulse quickens.

The scent reaches him slowly like a heat wave, its familiar earthy note no doubt intensified by the pace of the beating heart, the blood pumping through the veins at double speed, the clean skin warming up and exuding sweat, and before Paul knows it, the realization hits him of what exactly he’s feeling in this scent.

“Is your shield bracelet on?” he asks, his eyes snapping to the bracelet on Gurney’s left hand. Gurney blinks, breaking the contact and taking his hand from Paul to touch the gadget on his wrist.

“The blocker? Yeah, it’s on,” he says huskily as he rises from the table and busies himself with the dishes, turning his back on Paul. And yet you ended up with a boner, Paul is tempted to say, but luckily his self-control doesn’t fail him this time.

Gurney wasn’t lying about the shield – the blocker – so, either he believes that he’s not affected by Paul’s scent, or his arousal was provoked by something else, and in that last case… If there’s a chance that Gurney is, well, interested in him, it’s all the more reason for them to spend the heat together. He only needs to find the right words to explain all this to Gurney, which appears to be harder than he expected.

Paul is on the verge of asking him, and yet he remains silent, afraid to frighten Gurney away and not quite sure about how to put it. It’s okay that you want me, because I think I want you too – but what he really feels is not that crude and straight-forward. Even if he blurts it all out, he’ll probably get no more than a startled look in return, given that it took Gurney four days and one tantrum just to acknowledge that Paul is an omega in heat.

Paul sighs, resting his head on his hand – god knows, it didn’t seem so complicated back in his bedroom. “Old man,” he says a little desperately, more to himself than to the said old man, who turns to him from the sink, drying his hands with the dish-cloth and looking positively hot.

“Now you’re just going to insult me on a whim,” Gurney says with mock seriousness, and a month ago Paul would have accepted his invitation to friendly banter or simply responded: “What I meant is that I love you, old man,” because that’s what he really meant; and Gurney would say: “I love you too, you fiend,” and tousle his hair as he had done a hundred times before, and that would be it. No awkward pauses or sneaky glances, no burning shame and hopeless yearning for what he shouldn’t have. The damn heat seems to be gradually destroying everything good between him and Gurney.

“The fact that you find the truth insulting speaks more about your age than anything else,” he mumbles tiredly, dropping his head on his crossed arms and not even trying to hold back another heavy sigh. That way, Gurney’s out of his line of vision, so he closes his eyes, focusing on the sounds: subtle rattling of dishes, the fridge opening and closing, the rumble of aircrafts outside, and the quiet steps of bare feet across the kitchen.

“Don’t know about you, but I’m going to bed. We have an early start tomorrow, remember?” Those husky, purring notes in Gurney’s voice feel like a caress, leaving Paul warm and fuzzy as he hums in reply without opening his eyes. If Gurney touches me before he goes to his room, I’ll spend my heat with him, he thinks suddenly with surprising clarity, and his whole body immediately becomes alert to the surrounding noises. And if he doesn’t, I promise not to tempt him to spend the heat with me, neither with my words nor with my deeds. After making the oath he holds his breath, waiting to hear the bedroom door closing, desperate for the moment when all this will finally be over. At first, there’s nothing but the heartbeat in his ears. Then, the firm fingers rustle his hair, lingering only for a second, and Gurney says, “Please don’t fall asleep at the table.”

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

His shield is up. It has been on since the night they watched “Songs of Asterion”, and Paul dozed off in the living room.

The last scene of the filmbook hovered in the air above the floorboards: a tiny human figure, standing in front of an ornate portal that led to the dark depths of a labyrinth. Gurney remembers every detail of it, every crisscrossed tendril of green and gold light, because he watched it for almost an hour, afraid to move and wake Paul up.

Paul sprawled out in his sleep, pressing his feet to Gurney’s thigh as if checking that Gurney was still there. His face looked peaceful in the soft glow of the projection, with no trace of his usual nightmares, and that was yet another reason why Gurney stayed instead of getting up and going to his bedroom.

He could easily spend a night guarding Paul’s sleep and keeping his feet warm if not for the scent. He hadn’t quite paid attention to it when Paul was awake and curled up in the opposite corner of the couch, but once Gurney was alone with his thoughts, it was much harder to ignore. He hadn’t been near an omega in a pre-heat for so long that he’d almost forgotten what it felt like. The scent wasn’t just a mixture of isolated elements of sweat, clothes, and soap that Gurney used to associate with Paul, only noticeable at a close distance; it was much stronger now and had a distinct tinge, a pleasant bitterness of something like juniper or oak with a warm, dry spice underneath.

Gurney knew that the pheromones had a build-up effect, but he didn’t leave even after he felt Paul’s scent tingling his nostrils; he just sat there, listening to the steady breathing at his side. A self-indulgent old fool, he had stayed around Paul long enough for the chemicals to start messing with his brain, like drugs. Slowly, he drifted into that half-forgotten feeling of deep, sated calm that came from having an omega sleep peacefully next to him, warm and safe.

Paul must have sensed him too, because at one point he rolled over to lie on his back, displaying himself to Gurney: his long white neck, the flatness of his chest and stomach, and a wet spot on his crotch, where his co*ck was straining the fabric of his pants. It was not only the sight that brought Gurney back to his senses, but also the wave of the powerful scent: pungent and spicy, the scent of a young, ripe omega in a state of arousal. For one horrible moment, he watched Paul, seeing only a beautiful, healthy body, properly slicked and ready to be taken – willing to be taken – right now.

The icy horror washed over him, and in seconds he was up from the couch and back in his bedroom, closing the door to cut off the scent, which didn’t help much since he was drenched in it. As he put on the blocker bracelet, he thanked God that he had pushed Yueh for protection instead of just hoping that the effect would be very mild. He had his reasons. He hadn’t been with omegas for years, so he suspected that it would be like having a drink after decades of staying sober. And well, he wasn’t wrong, because at his age you shouldn’t get a hard-on at the first waft of an omega. He waited for his arousal to subside and returned to the living room to turn off the filmbook viewer and cover Paul with a spare blanket, trying not to look at his curled-up body for too long.

The pheromones had worn off his system by the next morning, but the urge remained, awakened by the first true taste of Paul’s scent. And despite his best efforts to crush it down, sometimes Gurney looks at Paul or hears him say something mundane, and the tantalizing promise resurfaces his mind: you can have more of this.The blocker may be an effective shield, but it’s powerless to suppress his instincts.

As the days pass, Paul grows more frustrated, being snappy and unreasonable, venting his anger on the only person around. Gurney knows that words alone won’t help, yet he can’t bring himself to act on Paul’s resentment because the memory of his disproportionate reaction is still fresh. After the inevitable breakdown, Gurney finds himself standing in the dark hallway under the closed door to Paul’s bedroom, ready to open it and beg for Paul’s forgiveness.

He mentally kicks himself for being so useless, for hesitating instead of helping Paul through this misery. Gurney spends several hours on watch in the living room, first making dinner, then tuning up the baliset and thinking on his new strategy. He must help Paul without crossing the line. He knows the basics – to stay close, to let an omega smell you, to touch, to talk – all of which should be enough to calm Paul down. Gurney’s shield is up, his mind is clear, he is in total control of his own impulses.

He has a chance to try out the new approach later that evening when he finds Paul on the beach watching the magnificent Migido sunset – like he has found him so many times before on one of the castle towers. Gurney looks at the familiar outline of Paul’s narrow back and hunched shoulders, at the unruly mop of curls ruffled by the sea breeze, realizing that he doesn’t need to calm an omega in distress, he just needs to talk to Paul, his Paul, lonely, sad, and probably disappointed in the whole world at large and his teacher in particular. So Gurney does what he always does, offering Paul warmth and soothing words. It’s not much, but Paul responds beautifully, relaxing under his hands and finally able to voice his fears.

The next day Gurney talks Paul through his plans, having figured that it would be better to save that part of their conversation for the morning, when Paul is calm and well-rested. He’s not a hypocrite enough to pretend that his offer to Paul is a self-denying act of kindness. He is affected, it’s hard not to be, when Paul clings to him with badly concealed insistence. Hell, if he’s brutally honest with himself, he downright enjoys it – the press of Paul’s body against his, the shadow of the scent that Gurney knows must be only a memory because his bracelet is always on.

However, he tries not to guilt-trip himself over his possible ulterior motives because the closer contact between them serves Paul well. Paul’s frustration disappears literally overnight, and he’s visibly more relaxed – perhaps even a bit too relaxed for Gurney’s liking.

On the morning of their hike, Paul is late, despite all his promises. The moment he enters the kitchen, Gurney’s immediately aware that there’s something different about him: in the raspy “hey” of his greeting, in his too-warm smile and the sleepy mirth in his eyes, in the extra pallor of his skin or the blooming red of his mouth. His disheveled hair and lazy, smooth movements give him the look of someone…well-f*cked. As he passes Gurney on his way to the stove, his palm briefly rests on Gurney’s shoulder – and it’s not that unusual; Paul has always been affectionate around close friends. Still, Gurney can’t help but look up at him, wondering if the notorious black box has anything to do with this change.

“Whoah,” Paul comments, taking the lid off the pan. “Gurney Halleck, this is master chief level.”

“Sure,” Gurney grunts. “It got cold, so…”

“Yeah, I overslept, apologies,” Paul replies absentmindedly, sounding not at all sorry.

He chooses to sit right opposite Gurney – with his back to the front door, of course. Gurney would chide him for his recklessness if he weren’t busy processing the fact that Paul’s bare foot is resting on top of his. Technically, Paul is staying within the limits of propriety, simply maintaining a point of contact, but it still feels vaguely indecent, especially when Paul looks up at him, smiling like nothing is happening under the table.

Gurney has enough time to dwell on the reasons for this not-so-subtle shift from words to action as they venture out into the eastern part of the island. They walk in amicable silence, enjoying the early morning weather and the view of the wilderness around. The land rises higher beneath their feet, and the grass becomes scarce and gives way to patches of brittle yellow moss that grows on solid rock. Soon, they found themselves at the top of the cliffs that tower along the eastern shore of Migido. From the highest point, they can see their house, its roof, covered with black solar panels, the shuttle, and their beach with a line of pine trees along it.

In another life, Gurney might have been tempted to cram the ancient, everlasting beauty of this place into rhymed lines. Now he just takes it in, observing the vast expanse of water and sky from the roof of the world. There’s nothing oppressive about this land, and nothing precious to conquer or cultivate, only rocks, sand, and pines. The gust of wind smells of iodine and wormwood, bitter and bright, and brings him an unexpectedly distant cry from Paul: “Look, the sacred site!”

He has wandered off to a distant rock ledge and is sitting on a big dark stone with a smooth, flat surface. As Gurney approaches, he sees that it is a megalith with roughly squared sides and a wide belt of carvings. The ledge itself is barren of vegetation, extending over the sea like a tongue, a fitting place for a sacred site. It’s so easy to imagine a long parade of worshippers in billowing white robes, circling the stone and chanting a monotonous invocation, and then falling to their knees in awe as a deity appears – suspiciously young and freckled for a demiurge, perched on the altar with his legs crossed and looking around with laughing green eyes.

“It has bulls on it,” Paul says, nodding at the carvings. “Do you think it has anything to do with our House?”

“Aurochs, not bulls,” Gurney corrects him, tracing the coarse lines with his fingers. “If it is, you might be sitting on your forefathers tomb.”

“Nope. It’s not a tomb, it’s a sacrificial table. See this?” Paul points at the groove, cut from the upper corner to the foot of the stone. “That’s for virgins blood.”

He sprawls on a too-short surface like a starfish, his long legs dangling from the edge.

“They’d have to find something bigger, if they wanted me for a sacrifice,” he muses, putting his hands behind his head and staring into the cloudless sky. His shirt rides up, exposing a strip of creamy white skin of his lower stomach to the harsh sunlight.

“Why would they want you for a sacrifice?” Gurney says, uncertain of where this is going but following the path anyway.

Paul turns his head, his eyes locking with Gurney’s as if springing a trap, his voice dropping to a velvety murmur: “Wouldn’t they? You are so sure that I’m not a virgin?”

“You don’t smell like one.”

In fact, he’d known before he’d even felt Paul’s scent. There had been one occasion when Paul returned from a month-long visit to a distantly related House Minor, a little too-cheerful and self-assured; and from his excited whispering and exchange of obscure jokes with Duncan Gurney had guessed, that a short-lived affair had taken place and some poor lady, or gentleman, had been left heartbroken. He doubts, however, that Paul’s partner was an alpha – Gurney’s pretty sure it would have left a trace in Paul’s scent, which still lacks the visceral undertone that appears after drenching in alpha’s pheromones. And not only in pheromones.

“…hey? Are you with me?” Paul looks like he’s about to wave his hand in front of Gurney’s face. “You had that thousand-yard stare, like you were remembering all the virgins you’ve ever smelled.”

Gurney is now certain that the altar was made for some annoyingly sharp-tongued trickster.

“I asked if you could smell it on me now. Not being a virgin, I mean.” Paul sits up, staring curiously at Gurney.

“No. Those nuances are blocked.” He raises his hand with a bracelet and startles when Paul gently touches his wrist.

“May I?”

It should be fine in the open space and in windy weather, so he nods, clicking the blocker off and handing it to Paul. The effect should take time, but Gurney’s still focused on every change in the mix of sea breeze, sun-heated stones, and dry grass he smells and doesn’t pay attention to Paul, who fiddles with the bracelet, putting it on and sniffing the air.

“You smell the same.” Paul tentatively clicks it off and on, then jumps off the stone and in one swift motion steps into Gurney’s space, nuzzling the base of his neck.

“It’s only supposed to work for m…oh f*ck,” Gurney manages to say as all the bloody nuances hit him, all the subtle threads, that the blocker had smoothed into nothing. Gurney guiltily inhales a lungful of that scent, deliciously warm and tingly, and it’s not pheromones that muddle his brain, but the information he’s getting from them. In an instance he becomes aware that Paul’s back is covered with a sheen of salty sweat under his shirt, and that he’s a little aroused, and there’s also a tinge of something that must be slick – a good sign that heat is approaching. And yes, there’s nothing virginal about Paul’s scent, it’s too ripe, too sharp, too spicy, it bores into the nostrils and goes straight to Gurney’s co*ck.

He bites down on another curse and moves away from Paul, until there’s a sacrificial stone between them. So much for the f*cking build-up effect.

“Am I stinking that badly?” Paul’s expression is unreadable, though his tone seems more ironic than offended.

“Quite the opposite, I would say,” Gurney replies gruffly, still in the wake of it.

Paul flashes him a smile, before taking the blocker off and placing it on the altar like an offering.

On their way back from the cliffs the memory of the scent ripples through Gurney like an aftershock, leaving him uncomfortably half-hard. Paul, on the contrary, seems completely unperturbed and – most suspiciously – doesn’t ask any more questions about the bracelet, almost as if he wants Gurney to see that he acted out the whole thing to make him turn off the shield. Though the uneasiness between them is gone, and Gurney is glad to see less fear and anxiety in Paul, he didn’t expect the pendulum to swing to blatant flirtation so quickly.

When he agreed to fly to Migido, it had never occurred to him that it might be Paul, not him, who would push the boundaries under the influence of pheromones. He just has an extremely hard time imagining that Paul, young as he is, being a noble-born of exquisite breeding and training, could choose a seasoned soldier twice his age as the object of his pursuit. Apparently, Gurney underestimated the intensity of the first heat that bombards Paul’s brain with chemicals, since his experience with omegas is scarce.

The only omega he had been with before was a timid and frightened woman, traumatized by years in a pleasure house on Geidi Prime. Back then, Gurney regarded his service simply as protection and comfort, and didn’t pay much attention to subtleties; they were roughly of the same age and definitely had a rapport, so when she asked him, he agreed to help her, not thinking about whether or not he might influence her decision just by staying close. For all he knows, Paul’s little – so far – provocations could be a side-effect of an alpha being around.

Back at home, Paul insists on cooking dinner, and Gurney hides in his bedroom, intending to use these moments of peace to recalibrate his tactics. He’s already laid down the rules, allowing Paul to touch him and use his clothes in ways Gurney doesn’t really want to think about; now it's time to set the proper boundaries, the first of which is: no sex.

It might be terribly arrogant of him to assume that Paul deems sex with him possible, but he doesn’t want to leave anything unsaid and let misunderstanding and frustration grow between them again. However, when he thinks of Paul’s reaction, instead of shock and disgust, he pictures a flushed look on Paul’s face and his darkening eyes, and also imagines the spike of spiciness in his scent – stronger and brighter than it was in the morning. Thoughts of Paul’s scent make him restless, and he goes to the adjacent bathroom to wash his face. The narrow, black-tiled space with a high ceiling looks like a cave, a resemblance accentuated by a washbasin made of a hollowed-out granite block on a crude wooden countertop. He sighs heavily, putting both hands on it and leaning forward to look in the mirror, where he sees scars and haunted eyes – a beast in his hiding place. As he washes away sweat and dust, he finds out that there’s brackish water running from the tap.

“I think we have the filter system turned off,” he mutters, walking back to the kitchen where Paul is slicing something with the slow deliberation of a novice cook.

“Yeah?” Paul asks with his eyes still on the cutting board. “Dinner is almost ready, by the way.”

Gurney heads for the storage room, secretly glad to have a problem to occupy his mind with other than rules, boundaries, and heat. To his surprise, the filter is on, just as he left it on the first day here. He tinkers with controls and shouts to Paul to check the kitchen tap. There’s a sound of running water, and then Paul’s loud: “Nope, it’s still the same!”

Well, if the house is only used once or twice a year, there are a lot of things that can break. He hopes, though, that they won’t have to commission a plumber from Thagasta to fix it.

“It could be a desalination filter.” Paul says, stepping out of the doorway and standing right behind him, close enough for Gurney to feel the warmth of his body.

“Yeah, I think so as well. The problem is that I have no idea how to fix it.”

Paul looks at the control panel over his shoulder, his breath tickling the side of Gurney’s face. “Hmm. Luckily, I might have an idea.”

“Do you?” Gurney asks skeptically, turning his head a little to look at a smiling Paul, who is still alarmingly close to him.

“Thanks to my ecology classes, yes,” Paul replies smugly. “We’ll check after dinner. Come on.” Paul leans to plant a kiss to Gurney’s shoulder and walks out, leaving him standing in shocked silence, acutely aware of the spot where Paul’s lips touched him through fabric. He fights the strong desire to hide his face in his hands, feeling like an absolute dumbass at the prospect of voicing his two boundaries: no sex and no kisses.

In the kitchen, Paul is happily devouring his meal and looking up at Gurney like nothing had happened: “Honestly, I went above and beyond with this soup, you got to try it, old man.”

That’s exactly how Gurney feels – like an old man.

“Paul?”

“Yes?”

“We need to talk about this.”

“About what?” Paul plays it well: raised eyebrows, innocent eyes with devils dancing deep inside them.

“About what happened in the storage room.” Gurney puts his clasped hands on the table.

“Well, my idea is that the desa—”

“You can’t do that,” Gurney cuts him off, unwilling to participate in this nonsense. Paul, who always has a keen sense of his mood, immediately drops the pretense and mirrors his position and tone, ready to negotiate.

“You said I could touch you whenever I wanted.”

“But not like this,” Gurney replies, mentally cringing at the question he’s sure will follow.

“Like how? You need to be more explicit when you tell me what I’m allowed to do.” Paul says it with deadly calm, instantly reminding Gurney that he is the heir of House Atreides, who doesn’t get used to taking orders.

“I can’t afford to be more explicit,”Gurney cowardly plays with words, unable to say his sex and kisses rule out loud, and Paul smirks mercifully. “I’m only helping you with your heat, but you’re spending it alone.”

His words may sound harsh, but Gurney has to draw the line before it’s too late. Paul nods to him impassively and gets back to his meal.

“Thanks for clearing that up,” he says after a couple of mouthfuls. “Let's consider everything that happens in my bedroom as me spending the heat alone, and everything that happens outside – as your help from now on. Just for convenience, you know.”

So, today his dear protégé has decided to be insufferable to the end. Thanks to years of knowing him, Gurney has a tactic for each and every kind of his mood. He looks at Paul reproachfully, trying not to show that he actually finds these silly innuendos amusing.

“It might look like a joke to you,” he says with all the gravity he can muster. “But have you ever thought about how that joke reflects on me? Did you ever consider that I'm in the service of your family here, just as I am in the castle? And that I really have no choice but to give in to your whims, no matter what I want?”

The downside of knowing someone for so long is that this someone can be just as skilled at recognizing your thinking patterns and thus spot your bullsh*t a mile away. Paul looks completely unimpressed by Gurney’s passionate speech, running his fingers over the half-open lips in a very distracting manner.

“Playing the loyal servant card, very thoughtful,” he drawls, his eyes boring into Gurney’s face. “Has it ever occurred to you that I can actually smell what you want?”

Gurney swallows heavily, utterly speechless, remembering all the times when he was aroused by Paul’s scent, or by the closeness of his body, or just simply by looking at him – like now. Fine fingers tracing the full bottom lip, eyes clear and unrelenting, a smooth, high forehead with a dark curl falling on it. Please, have mercy on me, Gurney silently begs this dangerous and beautiful creature, please don’t say what you smell on me now, or ever.

“What do you want me to do?” He’s afraid that the upcoming heat unhinges Paul enough to answer truthfully.

“For now – finish your meal and check the desalinator with me.” Paul’s smile isn’t unkind, but he’s still watching Gurney sharply, obviously aware of his miserable state. However, Paul chooses not to comment on this, not saying more than necessary through the rest of the dinner and later, when he goes down to the crawlspace to fix the filter.

Gurney would read his sudden quietness as a sign of resentment, were it not for the warm glances Paul occasionally throws at him, making Gurney wonder if he overreacted with that kiss. He might be unfair by mistrusting Paul to set the bloody boundaries himself. After all, Paul isn’t doing anything terrible – just being overly clingy and making questionable jokes – to get chastised for overstepping the lines that Gurney didn’t bother to establish in the first place.

“Can you say what’s wrong with it?” he asks when Paul reappears in the hatch, his hair covered in cobwebs and dust.

“The filter chip is fried, so there’s no more power field membrane, so there’s no more reverse osmosis, so we have brackish water in the house.” Paul shows him a piece of plastic with fused edges, looking as delighted as if he’s just gotten an A-plus for a perfectly done class assignment.

“Can you fix it?”

“f*ck knows.” He shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly, suddenly reminding Gurney of Leto.“Well, in theory, I can replace it. The chip from your blocker should be just fine.”

“And a chip from a shield bracelet?” Gurney recalls that Dr. Yueh said it worked on the same principle as the blocker.

“Yes, but stripping down your blocker will be so much more fun,” Paul replies with a sly grin, clearly back to his insufferable flirting.

“We’ll stick with the shield bracelets then, ” he says, offering Paul a hand and helping him out.

“Why? Are you so afraid of losing your protection?” Paul shoots back immediately, his fingers never leaving Gurney’s forearm.

“Aren’t you tired of this yet?”

Paul drops his hand, exhaling adorably through his nose. “Come on, old man, let me have this. No more kisses, I get it. But… can I at least talk?”

The exasperation in his voice makes Gurney smile. “Never knew how to shut you up anyway,” he says and takes a nudge in the ribs from Paul’s sharp elbow.

The desalinator quest appears to be more complicated than Gurney expected, as the only shield repair kit they have is still somewhere in the shuttle, and when Gurney volunteers to go look for it, Paul tags along. Eventually, they catch the sunset while sitting on the crates in the open cargo section and tinkering with the chips.

“Which one looks more like it?” Gurney asks, putting all three of them – a fried one, his own, and Paul’s – on his open palm.

“Uh…this one.” Paul picks up two and brings them closer to the light. “At least they are the same size. And yours is older than these two – no wonder.”

Gurney ignores the taunt and focuses on reassembling his bracelet, trying and failing to fit the chip into microscopic holders.

“Let me,” Paul takes it out of his hands, seemingly unable to stop pestering him. “Your fingers are too thick. Not very handy for fixing gadgets, but extremely useful for so many other things.”

Gurney stares at him, slowly processing what he’s just heard. If this is what Paul meant by “at least talk”, he should have settled for chaste shoulder kisses. The shameless imp doesn’t even lift his head from the bracelet and just sits there, nibbling at his lower lip to keep from smiling.

Gurney takes a moment, turning his eyes to the sand hills lit by the red sunset.

“So Dr. Yueh’s help isn’t enough?” he says, and the soft clicking at his side stops abruptly. Gurney congratulates himself on a well-chosen tactic, for he can feel Paul's eyes burning a hole in him.

“So you did open it, didn’t you?” The smile in Paul’s voice is audible.

“As if you didn’t know,” Gurney says, rolling his eyes as Paul bursts out laughing.

“I kind of guessed, yeah. When I found it, you looked like I was holding a f*cking rattlesnake. Here.”

Gurney takes the shield bracelet from Paul and finally looks at him, finding the familiar mischievous grin and eyes sparkling with glee.

“Yeah-yeah, laugh at my silliness,” he grunts, getting up and jumping heavily off the ramp. “Let’s move.”

“If this doesn’t work, I suggest we continue tomorrow,” Paul says tiredly as they walk to the house that glows with a mellow golden light like a lantern in the twilight.

“Of course. We got plenty of bottled water here.” Gurney isn’t particularly amused by the idea of spending half a night in a damp, mildew-smelling crawlspace either, so he closes the hatch firmly as soon as the chip is replaced and Paul is out. In the kitchen, Paul fills two glasses with tap water, and they drink it together, in tentative little gulps. The water is fresh and tastes just fine.

“We did it!” Paul clicks his glass with Gurney’s and downs it in one go, like he's at a drinking party in the barracks.

“You did it, for the most part,” Gurney says, amused by his giddy happiness. “And sacrificed your shield bracelet for it.”

“Yep, won the fight with the plumbing and proved that a male omega in a household is not as useless as he may seem.” Paul clearly means it as a joke; there’s irony in his voice, but Gurney doesn’t really like the subtext.

“You’re not useless. Not in any way.” He puts his glass down on the counter and watches the smile disappear from Paul’s face. “And your secondary gender has nothing to do with all that you are.”

Paul looks like he doesn’t quite believe what Gurney is saying. “Thanks. But I mean…this is for life, right? Imagine if tomorrow everyone in the castle knew that I’m an omega. Would it really matter to them who else I might be? That will always define me.”

It’s easy for Gurney to imagine, especially the looks he’d get from his subordinates when they knew he’d spent weeks with the heir in heat. Paul doesn’t need to hear about these nightmarish fantasies.

“Your mother is an omega, and everyone in the castle knows it. Does that define her?”

“My mother is Bene Gesserit first and foremost,” Paul counters. “And her example is irrelevant because she is female. Her heat makes biological sense, and this whole affair – an island, a house, even you, torn away from your life for a month – all for nothing. Because that’s what I am. An atavism.”

What you are, Gurney thinks, stepping forward to cradle Paul’s face in his hands. “You are the heir of House Atreides,” he says. “You are the son of Leto and Jessica, you’re a great friend to Duncan, Thufir and half the castle, because you are nothing like the spoiled noble-born brats from other Great Houses. You are my best, and the smartest, and the most talented, and the most insufferable student. That’s who you are.”

He pulls Paul in and kisses his smooth, pale forehead, cool against his dry lips. It lasts only a second and feels like an extension of what he is saying to Paul, of what he wants him to understand. When Gurney draws back, Paul smiles at him shyly, scratching between his eyebrows.

“You’re prickly.”

“All the more reason to refrain from kissing,” he nods, and Paul’s grin widens.

“Your resolve didn’t last very long. Not that I’m complaining.”

Gurney looks at him patiently, till Paul drops his head, laughing and hiding his face in his hands: “I’m sorry, I feel like I drank a bottle of wine, and, you know, just saying things…It must be close.”

The end of their sixth day on Migido, he thinks, yes, the heat must be close. Gurney sensed it on the cliffs this morning, and without the blocker, he would surely smell it now as well, with the scent hitting him even faster indoors.

Soon after, he sends Paul to bed, and Paul obeys without protest, yawning and blinking sleepily, as if Gurney’s words flipped a switch inside him. Gurney himself struggles to sleep, instead staring out the open window into the night where the whispering sea is tamed into stillness by the heavy, humid air. All the smells are heightened in the absence of wind, and he wonders if he could feel Paul’s scent right from here.

The sultry weather keeps him tossing and turning until the dark horizon bleeds with the red of dawn. He recalls blurry fragments of what he saw in his uneasy sleep: someone sitting on top of him, almost riding him, sharp knees digging into Gurney’s sides, and the weight of that someone and his slim waist in Gurney’s hands leaves no doubts as to who visited Gurney’s shamefully wet dream.

He covers the tracks thoroughly, first scrubbing himself clean in the shower, then tiptoeing to the storage room to put his ruined underwear in the washing machine. After that, he makes himself a cup of coffee and goes outside to eliminate the traces of any unwanted smells.

Gurney sits on the dune behind the dog rose shrubs, his bare feet half sunk in the cool sand, watching the morning sea and breathing in the air that is slowly warming under the sun. Since the first day, his routine on Migido has been nothing but leisure, except for sparring matches with Paul, yet he doesn’t feel like he’s on vacation. Time passes at a different pace here; it slows down like the endless hours before an attack, when there’s nothing to do but wait.

He’s not sure what he’s waiting for: the culmination of this mission will be the peak of Paul’s heat, when he’ll stop leaving his bedroom for two or three days until the acute phase is over. Meanwhile, Gurney will probably be sitting on the same spot, sipping his coffee and planning their flight back. It couldn’t be simpler. He watches jets take off from Thagasta, leaving parallel trails of white smoke in the cloudless sky. The sun climbs higher and burns the back of his neck, promising a very long, very hot day.

The main room is cool and quiet, so when he returns, he decides to read for an hour or two, since it's too early to make breakfast. To his surprise, he finds the door to his bedroom open, though he’s certain he left it closed. Paul is sitting on his bed, sleepy and rumpled, and not quite himself, as he greets Gurney with a terse: “Where have you been?”

“Outside,” he replies simply, noticing that Paul is clutching at a bath towel that looks suspiciously like Gurney’s. Paul gets up, pulls the sheet off the bed with one hand wordlessly, while Gurney just stands in the doorway, watching him. When he’s done, he walks over to Gurney, the sheet and the towel are piled in his hands like he’s about to do the laundry.

“I need these,” he says, his face strangely determined, without a trace of unease, his hooded eyes darkened by dilated pupils.

“Sure,” Gurney steps away from the door to let Paul pass.

“I thought you left.” The glassy stare softens a bit as if Paul is waking from a sleepwalk for a second.

“I won’t leave without you.” He shouldn’t make such a promise, but he does anyway. Paul gives him a long, silent look from under his lashes, then crosses the kitchen and disappears into the hallway, taking Gurney’s sheet and towel with him. Taken aback by the whole scene, Gurney wonders which of his things Paul will choose next time, and whether he should hide a spare set of clothes in the shuttle just in case.

When he settles down on the couch with the book, he keeps looking up from the pages into the darkness of the hallway, expecting Paul to come out at any moment. He can’t stop thinking about the way Paul looked at him earlier – with a somber accusation in his eyes as if blaming Gurney for forcing him to make do with sheets and jackets instead of an alpha.

Gurney struggles with these recurring thoughts for some time, unable to finish even a single passage, and finally decides to check the washing machine that he’s loaded more than an hour ago. He finds his things washed and dried, and smelling safely of detergent. When he steps out of the storage room, he heads for the far end of the hallway instead of the kitchen.

At first, he hears nothing. Then there’s a loud hiss, followed by a gasping “f*ck” that resembles a response to a sudden and sharp pain. Gurney leans closer to the door, now hearing muffled rhythmic sounds that leave no doubt as to what Paul is doing. There’s nothing surprising about it for Gurney, and nothing for him to witness – not only out of respect for Paul, but also for his own peace of mind. Yet he hovers there, holding his breath, straining to hear something else, or, if he’s honest with himself, to hear more. He doesn’t wait too long, because soon there’s a shuddering inhale, followed by a low moan, shockingly loud in the silence of the morning house. So this is what you sound like, Gurney thinks and retreats from under the closed door, unable to explain to himself why he feels so content with this new knowledge about Paul.

The heat that Gurney has felt in the morning grows unbearable by noon when they spar in the shadow cast by the house. They fight with dull blades, and Paul wears the only shield they have. Gurney was surprised at how easily Paul had accepted the bracelet and at his quiet obedience in general. He barely ate his breakfast, sitting with his eyes glued to his plate and ignoring Gurney's cautious questions.

They go through the warm-up smoothly, slipping easily into their training routine. Paul’s movements are precise and well-practiced, he’s focused enough to avoid mistakes, and Gurney doesn’t push him, enjoying the steady exchange of charges and blocks.

When a powerful parry makes him step back, he uses the pause to breathe in the sweltering air and wipe the sweat from his brow. Paul takes a rest too, lowering his blade and suddenly beaming as he brushes away the hair that had stuck to his forehead.

“What?” Gurney pants, wiping his sweaty palms on his fatigues. He feels drenched in sweat thanks to the horrible weather.

Paul shakes his head. “Nothing, I just thought that you could replace not only Duncan, but also a dancing master once in a while.”

Gurney chuckles because dancing is a pretty accurate description of what they’ve been doing for the last half hour – such seamless sparring has a similar rhythm and synchrony that could only be worked out over years with the same partner. While it is certainly not the best technique for combat training, it is a pleasant alternative to the frenzied scuffle they had a few days ago.

“Shall we make it harder?” he asks Paul, and there’s something wicked in the smile that he gets in return.

“Let’s make it harder.”

This time, Gurney takes the effort to attack Paul in the least expected ways, gradually increasing the speed of his attacks, till Paul is forced into a total defense. Or, more likely, he wants to be cornered, because he doesn’t seize multiple opportunities to counter-attack, though Gurney is certain he sees them. After a while, Paul misses a particularly simple blow that knocks the sword out of his hands. Gurney chooses to ignore the apparent deliberation and continues with the same intensity, catching Paul in a headlock much more easily than usual.

"I thought we agreed to make it harder," he says, feeling Paul’s shoulder blades press into his chest. "Or is this supposed to remind me that I gave in?"

Paul squirms against him, making no attempts to wrestle out of Gurney’s arms.

“I’m sorry, I got distracted,” he says eventually when Gurney lets him go. “We should try again.”

So, they try again, and Paul lands on his back in no time at all, with Gurney hovering over him and holding the weapon against the humming red shield at his throat. Gurney can’t help noticing how Paul opens his knees: not to kick Gurney off at the right moment, but invitingly, like he’s going to wrap his legs around Gurney’s waist and pull him closer.

When he gets up, he doesn’t hold out his hand to help Paul off the ground. “Are you going to keep doing this?”

Paul clicks off the shield lazily, regarding Gurney with a warm gleam in his eyes that feels like a caress. “Letting you be on top all the time, you mean? I don’t really mind.”

Gurney pinches the bridge of his nose, giving himself a second to get his thoughts in order. "Well, then I do mind. And you promised me yesterday that you would only talk."

Paul sits up on the sand, crossing his legs. “But that's what I’m doing – I’m just talking.”

“No, you are not.” Gurney looks at him with exasperation. “Your training isn’t some kind of… replacement.”

A short chuckle tinkles like a drop of a silver coin.

“That’s an interesting perspective, Gurney Halleck.” Paul gets up and activates his shield. “Alright, give me another round.”

Gurney eyes him suspiciously, convinced that Paul is trying to trick him into something. When they begin, Paul indeed takes the fight seriously. He meets Gurney’s attacks with unyielding efficiency, leaving behind the relaxed “dancing” and mischievous holding back. Completely unlike the last time they sparred, Paul shows no rage, though the swirl of charges and blocks does feel intimidating, and soon Gurney finds himself on the defensive. He’s pleased to see how clever Paul corners him anyway, proving that all the lessons have not been in vain.

There is a moment when Paul recklessly lays himself open, and Gurney takes his chance, only to realize belatedly that it must be a trick: Paul dodges the blow and sweeps his leg, and now it’s Gurney's turn to fall onto the sand. He feels a familiar solid weight pressed on his stomach and bony knees digging into his ribs. When he opens his eyes, Paul is straddling him with a winning smile.

“Old man.” Paul shoves his blade aside and deactivates the shield without waiting for Gurney to concede. Even from this position, Gurney could wrestle free, but he does nothing, just watches Paul’s smiling face, wondering how he got himself there.

Paul doesn’t rush to get off him; on the contrary, he places his palms on Gurney’s chest in an unabashedly intimate way, sliding down a bit to sit right on his crotch. Gurney’s mouth goes dry, and he puts both hands around Paul’s waist, hearing Paul exhale: “Do you like it like this?”

The thing is – yes, Gurney really, really likes it, he likes it so much that Paul must have already felt it through his fatigues. Paul looks down at him with clouded eyes, rolling his hips and grinding his skinny ass harder onto Gurney with a faint gasp. As soon as his knees stop squeezing Gurney’s sides, he throws Paul off in one powerful motion and gets up from the sand.

“Don’t do that again,” he grumbles at Paul, whose face shows absolutely no signs of regret.

“I thought you were supposed to help me.” Paul’s eyes sweep over Gurney’s body, lingering just below the belt on his undoubtedly visible bulge.

“I’m not supposed to do anything. I volunteered, which means I can change my mind.”

Gurney grabs the blades from the ground and heads back to the house, wanting to wash away the sweat and the heat as quickly as possible. He doesn’t risk taking the blocker off in the shower, even though it’s obvious now that his reaction has nothing to do with the scent. Apparently, you can’t just cut off the pheromones and hope that having an omega in heat close to you won’t interfere with your instincts.

The house is eerily quiet as he leaves his room. The door in Paul’s bedroom is open, and there’s no one there, or in his tiny bathroom, or in the storage room that Gurney checks on his way back. Once outside, he briefly considers going to the shuttle, then turns around the corner of the house, stepping out of the sunlight into a slightly less searing shadow.

A stretch of flat ground between the wild rose shrubs and a dune overgrown with sedge, where they sparred, is empty, except for footprints in the sand, leading down to the sea. He just wants to make sure that Paul is there, to see him sitting by the water, but all he can see from the top of the dune is a pile of clothes on the sand. He scans the empty beach and the silent sea, unable to spot Paul’s dark hair anywhere on the surface, and that’s when a stupid, wasteful panic grows in him, making him practically run forward shouting: “Paul!”

There is only the monotonous lap of the surf and the distant cries of the seagulls to answer him. He takes a lungful of humid air to call out again, and a second before he does, he hears Paul shout back: “I’m here!” Gurney finally sees him – a good hundred yards out to sea, swimming back to where Gurney is waiting for him.

“What happened?” he asks, running up to Gurney from out of the sea, his skin glistening from water.

Gurney, with his heart still thudding, can’t even come up with a decent excuse except admitting out loud that he’s a paranoid old man. Paul’s eyes are anxious under the wet strands of hair, and as he approaches, Gurney notices how pale he is, his skin still bearing the pallor of the long winter in the castle.

“Nothing, I just…” Gurney pauses. “What do you want for lunch?”

He expects Paul to mock him for such a pathetic question, but Paul just shrugs as if that’s reason enough to drag him from the other end of the beach.

“Don’t know. Do we still have that shrimp thing you cooked on our first day?” He tilts his head to shake the water out of his ear.

“I think we should. I’ll go check.”

When Gurney turns to leave, Paul stops him by putting a cold wet palm on his forearm.

“Gurney, wait. I'm…you couldn’t find me?”

“Well, I found you in the end, so it doesn’t matter now.”

Paul hums, and his hand slides down to Gurney’s wrist without applying any pressure.

“I should have told you. But I thought you needed some alone time.” His smile is shy and mischievous, making Gurney wonder if he went swimming for the exact same reason.

“Don’t swim too far from the shore, it could be dangerous there.” He turns his back to Paul, breaking the contact, and walks uphill with more determination. Paul catches up with him in a few seconds, still in his underwear and carrying the rest of his clothes and shoes in his hands.

“I only saw jellyfish. Lots of them, though, I almost got my leg stung. And I found a massive coral reef; we should swim there together and I’ll show you…”

Gurney doesn’t really listen to his chatter until they reach the house and Paul steps in his way, blocking the entrance.

“Are you pissed about sparring?”

“I am,” Gurney admits, and Paul’s face falls as he lets Gurney pass and follows him silently. His nearly naked body, with the skin that must be salty and cool from the seawater, is distracting, so Gurney sets on rummaging through the fridge, looking for the shrimp thing that Paul asked for. He can feel Paul hovering behind him as if unsure what to do next.

“Are you pissed because you enjoyed it so much?” he finally asks, and when Gurney whirls around to face him, a bag of frozen food in his hand, there’s nothing but curiosity in those green eyes.

“Yeah, and what are you going to do about it?” Gurney snaps, but instead of flinching Paul turns red in the face and stares at him with his mouth slightly agape. Gurney doesn’t give him a chance to talk back, shoving the bag with the rice mixture onto the table.

“I have a call with Lanville; you have to cook it for yourself.” He doesn’t, it’s just a convenient excuse to sit in the shuttle for a few hours. Paul doesn’t say a word as Gurney leaves the house, however illogical his actions may seem to him.

There’s an immediate relief when Gurney is outside in the stifling heat, and this ambivalence is also driving him crazy: he can’t be near Paul for too long, and he can’t be away from him either. God knows, he needs a break.

The shuttle skin is scorching hot from the sun, and the air inside is stuffy and dry. Gurney turns on the engine, waits for the air conditioning to cool the interior to a pleasant 75 degrees, and only then does his brain begin to function. He takes off the blocker bracelet, and instead of feeling naked and insecure, he realizes that he’s finally able to breathe again.

He’s lucky enough to catch Lanville at the end of his shift. The unplanned call quickly morphs into a feed of the latest news and gossip and an exchange of old jokes. Gurney is happy to lose himself in castle business; the time passes unnoticed until Lanville stifles a yawn when they discuss the frequent visits of the Harkonnen mentat to Salusa Secundus. The sun is low on the horizon, and Paul must think that he has left for good, so Gurney wraps up the call, letting a tired Lanville go. He briefly considers spending the night in the shuttle, but then envisions Paul all alone in the empty house, sleeping with a filmbook still playing, and drops the idea.

The windows are dark, even though dusk is creeping in, lengthening the dense shadows on the uneven sand. Inside the house there's a smell of something burnt – Paul’s cooking has probably not gone well this time. The door to Paul's bedroom is closed, and the dark hallway is silent.

The rice mixture is stuck to the bottom of the pan, but the top layer tastes good. Gurney eats alone, sitting at the empty table, then washes his plate, deliberately making as much noise as possible. Paul doesn’t show up.

Gurney brings his baliset from his bedroom and settles on the couch facing the hallway. The first thing he picks isn’t a song; it’s just a melody, a draft of an old unfinished ballad. As he plays it, the images emerge in his head, morphing into lyrics: an endless steppe road from nowhere to sunset, mist purling down from barrows, the trembling sides of a horse walking cautiously through scattered bones. He hums along with a sorrowful tune, softening it and letting it fade away completely.

“Is that a new one?”

He looks up from where his fingers are touching the strings and sees Paul walking out of the hallway, fortunately with his clothes on this time.

“No, it’s the old one that I almost forgot.”

Paul rounds the couch, stepping soundlessly on the floorboards, and sits down in the chair, tucking his bare feet underneath him.

“Will you play something else?” he asks, and Gurney nods.

“What would you like to hear, my lord?”

“Don’t know. Something I’ve never heard before.”

Long, long time ago, on a planet a dozen light years from here, Gurney met an old cripple, who laughed and smiled despite dire circ*mstances they were in. When Gurney was thrown into their shared cell, he tended to his festering wounds for months, speaking incessantly in a language Gurney didn’t understand at the time. He taught Gurney five stanzas, humming them constantly, muttering them in his troubled sleep, till the foreign words were burned into Gurney’s brain, inseparable from a simple melody. This is what he sings.

Paul listens intently, his curly head resting on one hand. Gurney is surprised at how effortlessly the half-forgotten lines resurface, as if the melody were reviving them. The song is short, and Gurney repeats the last two stanzas – the part that he knows and loves most. Paul’s eyes flicker with interest.

“This is Tiglath, right?”

“One of the dialects.” The language had fallen out of use decades ago after the Imperium took the planet. Tiglath speakers were scattered across the galaxy, either killed or imprisoned for trying to save the last thing left from their homeworld – the speech.

“I can only make out a few words. Something about slaves and dungeons.”

“Pretty much, yes,” Gurney smiles. “The person who taught me this song also translated it for me.”

He doesn’t sing this time, just chants the lyrics the way the old cripple used to do it, lulling him from pain to sleep.

“Were I a man of great wisdom,

I would squander my gold and treasures,

I would give up my post and title,

I would guard other men’s orchards.

Then I’d become the freest man

In Mizraim.

Were I your lowliest slave,

I would spend my days in the dungeons

And once every year or two years

I would glimpse golden straps of your sandals

When you’d walk past my cell on occasion.

Then I’d become the happiest man

In Mizraim.”

“Did you learn it when you were in the pits?” Paul’s voice is cautious, almost a whisper.

“Yes, my cellmate used to sing it to me. Not the most comforting lyrics for the pits, but it was his favorite.” The wrinkled, smiling face swims in his mind, and he chuckles, remembering the first weeks in the cell, when he was sure that his cellmate was a lunatic.

Paul’s green eyes, huge on his thin face, are full of sorrow. “I can’t imagine how anyone could survive what you’ve been through.” Paul doesn’t know a quarter of what he’s been through, and thank God for that. Gurney is certainly not the one who is going to tell him. Some things are better left forgotten than to be told.

“You’d be surprised how resilient human beings are. When I was your age, I thought that I would never make it. But here I am.”

“Here you are,” Paul repeats serenely, not taking his eyes off Gurney. “Will you show me how to play it?”

They sit side by side on the couch, Paul focusing on playing while Gurney adjusting his fingers on the strings. It’s almost like their usual evenings at the castle, except Gurney is acutely aware of how close they are. Paul picks it up quickly and gets all the chords right on the second try, humming along with the melody.

“What was the last word in that line?” he asks Gurney, not raising his head from the baliset.

“Met Mizraim, that’s what their capital was called,” Gurney says, watching his sharp profile and the delicate, neat curve of his lips. Paul mouths the foreign word, the strings under his fingertips sounding weaker as the melody fades away.

“You should write the lyrics down for me, in Tiglath. It sounds beautiful.”

“Aye, my lord.” His knee-jerk answer earns him a heated look from Paul, clearly irritated by the overuse of honorifics. Gurney meets his indignation with a smile, and there must be something else in his expression, because Paul exhales, putting the baliset aside, and slumps back on the couch, his shoulders and neck a half an inch from where Gurney’s hand rests. Gurney knows he shouldn’t touch Paul, not after today’s escalation, but his fingers seem to act on their own as he traces up the long line of Paul’s neck, burying his hand in the dense curls and massaging the back of his head. Paul doesn’t shy away from him, accepting Gurney’s touch as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“How’s Lanville?” he mumbles, eyes closed, as Gurney gently scratches his scalp.

“A little overworked,” Gurney says.

“Figures, with you gone and Thufir up to his ears in preparations for the Council meeting. He must be happy that Duncan is back earlier than planned.”

“How do you know about Duncan?” Lanville told him that Idaho had been summoned rather urgently from his mission on Grumman two days ago. Paul cracks open one eye, like a cat disturbed from its sleep.

“I talked to Mom today.”

“So, you already know all the news.”

Paul shrugs and tosses his head back, prompting Gurney to slide his fingers forward and comb Paul’s hair away from his forehead.

“There’s not much going on, except for the Council meeting. Everyone misses you, though.”

“I’m sure they do,” Gurney scoffs. “When I told Lanville I was going away for three weeks, he announced to the soldiers that they had a whole month free of the old fart. He didn’t realize that I could still hear him through the closed door.”

“He just holds a grudge against you after all these years of being your subordinate. But the soldiers love you, Gurney,” Paul says with a chuckle.

“I heard them cheering at his words.”

This time Paul laughs, his head shaking, and Gurney’s fingers gently untangle from the soft curls. God knows how much he loves to hear that sound.

“They should thank me for bringing your wrath down on me instead.” Paul stretches, crossing his arms behind his head.

“Am I too harsh on you?” Gurney wonders distractedly, mesmerized by the grace of Paul’s movements.

“You’re not harsh enough. If Duncan were here instead of you, he’d have run me into the ground by now.”

The image brought up by Paul’s words feels like boiling water splashed over a bare stomach. The sudden surge of heat jolts Gurney back to alertness, and he is sure his reaction reflects on his face as well, for Paul’s eyes are no longer soft and sleepy but laser-focused on him.

“Don’t like what you heard?” Paul asks innocently.

“What do you mean?” Gurney plays dumb, unable to openly admit that the thought of Paul and Duncan sharing moments like this is unbearable to him, and the irrational jealousy he feels at even the hint paradoxically makes him feel a lick of arousal.

In the loud silence that follows, Paul inhales slowly, taking in Gurney’s scent, which will give him all the answers he wants. He’s benevolent enough to break the loaded stare and let Gurney go without further embarrassment.

“Fine,” Paul sighs. “Let’s call it a night, then.”

He doesn’t say good night as they part, and Gurney is left with the feeling that he’s somehow managed to hurt Paul again. In the bedroom, he finds a bunch of somnolent night flies attacking the suspensor lamp. He thinks of nothing better than to hold it out the window and wave the insects away, and that’s when someone – Paul – knocks on his door.

“Come in,” Gurney says, taking the lamp back and closing the window.

Paul stands in the doorway, eyeing the lamp in his hands with mild interest. “What are you doing?”

“Ah, just catching some butterflies,” Gurney says, letting the lamp roll upward.

Paul chuckles softly, but there’s an uncharacteristic timidity about him, as if he’s uncertain of what to do next. Eventually, he peers at something behind Gurney’s shoulder and mutters: “Could you…could you please give me your T-shirt? So that I don’t have to rob you of your bedclothes again?”

Gurney glances at the bed, still crumpled and sheetless from the morning. “Yeah, sure,” he says, but before he can reach for his bag, Paul clears his throat, watching him patiently, and suddenly Gurney understands.

“What, this one?” he asks, grabbing the hem of the T-shirt he’s wearing.

Although Gurney has seen it a hundred times, he still marvels at the way Paul’s fair skin rapidly darkens as blood rushes to his face. Paul nods curtly, but doesn’t look away or leave. Gurney tugs off his old T-shirt, faded to a pale reddish color, and hands it silently to Paul.

Paul’s eyes are glued to his naked torso, and from the way they move up and down Gurney can tell he’s tracing the scars. However, Paul's intense gaze doesn’t make him feel awkward or uncomfortable, because there's a profound, gut-wrenching sadness on Paul's face that eliminates all his earlier misbehavior.

“Thank you,” Paul murmurs, clutching the crumpled T-shirt to his chest. “Sleep well,” he adds over his shoulder as he turns to leave.

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

Gurney doesn’t sleep well.

A sweltering night feels like a too-short break in the middle of a hot, endless day. It’s all-consuming, blinding sunlight once again when he wakes up, drenched in sweat and rutting against the mattress. He rolls his hips, chasing the remnants of the dream, and even this inadequate friction brings him to a shattering org*sm that hits him like a tidal wave, wiping out everything but the burning rage at the absence of a body at his side.

The intensity of the climax stuns him. As soon as he’s able to move again, he reaches for his wrist, only to find bare skin. The icy horror at the absence of the blocker is dulled by the endorphins released into his bloodstream. Gurney pushes up on his forearms and glances over at the nightstand where only a book lies. If he took the blocker off in his sleep, it should be somewhere around. He searches blindly across the bed, throwing the pillow to the floor – and there it is, the blocker on a twisted wristband. He pulls it on, clicks the switch, and falls back, not bothering to pick up the pillow.

The second time he wakes up, the sun is high and shining directly into Gurney’s face. He rolls onto his back and feels the crusted sem*n covering his abs. God, he must reek through the bedroom door, and he’ll be lucky if Paul doesn’t notice.

He lethargically goes through his routine – scrubbing himself until his skin is raw in the shower, loading the washing machine with his come-stained sheets, staring into the fridge stuffed with bags and boxes.

Paul must have been awakened by the clatter of dishes and the noise of running water, because he enters the kitchen shortly thereafter. Gurney responds to his raspy greeting without turning from the stove, but within seconds, hands slide under his elbows, hugging him from behind, and Paul nuzzles the back of his neck.

“It’s crazy how good you smell,” he breathes out right next to Gurney’s ear. “If you only knew.”

Gurney doesn’t try to wriggle away, letting him take what he needs. The blocker sanitizes Paul’s scent to a faint mixture of toothpaste and aftershave and whatever soap he used this morning, and it’s easy to ignore unlike the invasive presence of the warm and solid body, pressed against Gurney’s back.

“Is it bad?” Gurney asks carefully, referring to Paul’s state. Paul pulls away a fraction and rests his chin on Gurney’s shoulder.

“Mm-hmm. Definitely worse than it was yesterday. Do you think it has started?” he asks.

“Probably. It’s about time.”

“And what should I do now? Go and lock myself in the bedroom?”

“Which one – yours or mine?” He has no idea why he’s asking this. An attempt to cheer Paul up sounds like a flimsy excuse even to himself.

“Better in yours,” Paul replies, unfazed, loosening his grip around Gurney’s chest with a sigh. “Though, if you keep supplying me with your clothes, it won’t matter that much.”

Paul picks at his plate, barely eating anything, but gulps down two glasses of water in a row. He chooses to sit next to Gurney so that their elbows touch; it’s not very convenient for table talk, and breakfast passes in a silence that doesn’t, however, feel oppressive. When Gurney’s about to rise from the table, Paul puts a hand on his forearm.

“Can you stay with me a little longer before I…go back?”

“Of course. Want some coffee?” he asks, and Paul nods after a second of hesitation.

Paul’s melancholic mood is evident from the slump of his slender shoulders, and as Gurney makes two cups of coffee, an idea strikes him: “Let’s drink it outside.”

Paul gives him a doubtful look. “It’s a scorcher out there.”

“No, it’s too early. I had my coffee there yesterday, it’s fine. Let’s go.”

“But where to?”

“Don’t know, to the shore. I sat on a dune just behind the shrubs.”

A smile slowly spreads across Paul’s face.“I didn’t know that you were a fan of picnics.”

“I am not,” Gurney shrugs. Picnics have always been a pain in the ass in terms of security protocols, and he has never learned to like them. What he does have is a military habit of taking any chance for peace and quiet outside the barracks, whether it’s a smoke or a cup of coffee.

“If you say so. You may enjoy sitting under the shrubs, but I’m taking a chair.”

“Then get one for me, too.”

They go outside, Gurney with two mugs of coffee in his hands, Paul with two chairs. The dune is too uneven, so they set the chairs on the beach, where the sand is dense and heavy, and the surf reaches Paul’s bare feet. Gurney takes off his shoes, too, and rolls up his fatigues.

“Almost like fishing, only better,” he says over his mug to a grinning Paul. They sit like this for a long time, sipping lukewarm coffee and watching the aqua sky over the Thagasta base.

“It’s pretty quiet today,” Paul observes, nodding at the single white trace over the horizon. “Do they have a day off?”

“Sort of. All the jets must be redeployed to the castle for the Landsraad Council meeting.”

“Have you ever been there?”

Gurney frowns at him, puzzled by the question. “Where, at the Council meeting?”

“No, at the base.”

There are hundreds of bases all over the planet, and Gurney has never been to most of them.

“No, never. I should probably do an inspection after this is over, so they don’t think that they’re at a beach resort.”

After a brief pause, Paul muses absentmindedly as if addressing his next question to himself rather than to Gurney: “What do you think it’s going to be like? After this is over.”

“It’s going to be fine. Just back on track, like it always was.” His words carry a confidence he doesn’t really feel.

“Well, certainly not for me.” Paul smiles at him with an impish twinkle in his eye.

“Why not? You’ll be back in the castle, back to your lessons, and you’ll forget everything in a week.”

“I don’t think I’ll forget your scent so soon,” comes a quiet reply.

To be truthful, Gurney will have a hard time forgetting it all, too: the spicy bitterness of Paul’s scent, the warmth of his skin, the weight pressing down on him with a wicked deliberation. It’s simply too much to unsee and unfeel.

“But you will stop reacting to it.”

The silence that follows is so long, that it seems like Paul has dropped it, until he speaks again: “Why did you agree to come here?”

“The Duke asked me.” This is a perfectly true, but somehow inadequate answer to Paul’s question, so Gurney adds: “And I didn’t want to leave you alone.”

“I wouldn’t be alone; I’d have Dr. Yueh’s magic box with me,” Paul drawls, sliding down the chair and digging his toes into the wet sand.

“The magic box can’t take you to the beach for coffee.”

“But it can satisfy other, more pressing needs.”

Gurney looks away from Paul’s mischievous smile to the cloudless horizon. “Now that you’ve got me and the box, you can’t complain.”

“I don’t have you, not really.”

There are a couple of sharp inhales, and then Paul speaks again, his tone dropping down an octave. “What if you were asked to spend the heat with me, I mean, all of it? Would you agree?”

Gurney shifts in his seat, uncomfortable with Paul jumping subjects. “First of all, nobody in their right mind would ask me to do that. Second, even if they did, I still wouldn’t agree.”

“But this isn’t the first time you’ve been with an omega?” Paul asks tentatively.

“No. I only did it once, long before you were born.” Paul stares at him expectantly, obviously waiting for more details. “I was a partner to a woman, who had also escaped from the Harkonnens.”

Strangely, Gurney can’t even remember her name now, only the haggard face and the emaciated body, fragile under his hands.

“Why did you help her?”

“I felt sorry for her,” he shrugs his shoulders. “She had been imprisoned longer than I had, and in far worse conditions. And when she asked, I agreed. I thought she needed a little comfort.”

“Do you regret it?”

He recalls the look of misplaced adoration on her sunken face and how desperately she clung to him – a person she had known for only a few weeks – and the abrupt shift to sober, appalled astonishment when everything was over. She wasn’t disgusted by him, no, but their mutual sympathy had been so tainted by the heat that it soon faded.

“I do, yes. It’s not a casual thing, Paul. It messes up with your emotions, especially when you are… on the receiving end. And I don’t think you should spend your heat with a random person.”

“You are not a random person to me,” Paul murmurs, barely audible over the gentle rumbling of the surf. “What if I—”

“No, let’s just leave it there, no more what if’s.” Maybe he’s being unnecessarily harsh. It’s useless to reason with Paul, when it’s only the heat that is to blame for his – actually endearing – infatuation with Gurney. Paul opens his mouth to retort, but Gurney gets ahead of him by saying: “And don’t tell me that I’m supposed to help you.”

The vulnerable expression on Paul’s face turns ominous. “Dr. Yueh’s box is certainly more manageable than you are. Old man.” He gets up and walks slowly towards the house.

“What about the chairs?” Gurney says to his retreating back, but Paul waves him off over his shoulder, not deigning to reply.

Gurney stays for a few more minutes, enjoying the meditative lapping of the waves, then takes both chairs and moves them from the shore, closer to the shrubs. It’s not their last morning on Migido, after all, and Paul might be in the mood for a picnic again.

Back at the house he finds Paul washing his face in the kitchen sink.

“We can hike around the island again or spar, if you feel like it,” he offers, hoping to lift Paul’s spirits a bit.

Paul looks up, brushing the wet locks back from his face. “Not sure if either is a good idea, I’d better go to my room.”

“Will you at least come out for dinner?” Gurney asks, walking up to him and putting the coffee mug on the table.

“Would you want me to? Or would it mess up your emotions too much?”

Standing so close, it’s easy for Paul to use his advantage and stare down at Gurney. He has had this habit of lifting his chin contemptuously since he was twelve, back when the top of his head only reached Gurney’s chest.

“I’ll survive,” Gurney says peacefully. “Come here.”

Paul falters, chewing on his lower lip, so Gurney steps forward and pulls him into what he hopes is a bear hug, resting one palm on Paul’s neck and the other between his shoulder blades. Turns out, he’s not such a desperate case of an alpha, because within seconds Paul relaxes in his arms, almost draping himself over Gurney.

“I hate these f*cking mood swings,” he mutters, and Gurney smiles at the teenage angst in his voice.

The midday heat falls on Migido like a thick blanket, stifling all sound. Even the omnipresent seagulls are tamed by it, sitting silently on the tops of the stones scattered in the still water. Gurney seals the door and windows to keep the heated air out, but it doesn’t help much; the house has a surprisingly poor air conditioning system. That, along with the ugly concrete fireplace, make him think that it was built for colder seasons.

The picture of the island in autumn is so vivid in his mind, as if only the thought of the chill northern winds could bring him relief. A quiet fall day on a windswept shore; fire under the pines, logs crackling and sparks flying in the gathering darkness. A kiss in the trembling shadows, the cold tip of the nose and warm chapped lips tasting of cinnamon and salt.

Before he knows it, the images that resemble a distant memory are transformed into a bittersweet lament for a long-lost love. Gurney tries out the melody on the baliset, and soon it morphs into some of his older, equally doleful ballads, followed by another one, and another. They call him a minstrel warrior, though a more apt comparison would be a pining knight. He doesn’t expect Paul to appear; he’s not even sure if Paul is awake. But he continues to play just for him, all the songs he knows Paul favors – of a gentle, sorrowful kind, ballads for long winter nights, when blizzards howl outside the castle.

When dusk finally falls, Gurney is tired despite the whole day of doing nothing. He remains in the living room, now with a book in his hands instead of the baliset, and he can’t pretend anymore that he has any reason to be here other than waiting for Paul. He checked on him during the day, listening to the muffled sounds of the shower through the closed door, so he knows that Paul is alright, and he knows he should leave Paul to his heat – but he just can’t.

The darkness outside the windows deepens, and the yellow suspensor lamp is reflected in the black glass, resembling a second moon. He stays for another hour, fighting down drowsiness, and just as he’s about to go to bed, Paul emerges groggily from the hallway in his underwear and Gurney’s T-shirt from yesterday, which looks oversized on him.

He gives Gurney a half-hearted wave, then turns to the kitchen for a can of fruit and a fork.

“I can heat up dinner for you,” Gurney suggests tentatively as Paul flops down next to him and opens the can.

“No, I’m good,” Paul says, shoving half a peach into his mouth. “Thanks, though,” he adds, swallowing a mouthful.

Gurney watches him eat messily, table manners completely forgotten, the heavy syrup dripping down the front of his – no, Gurney’s – T-shirt. Paul devours the entire can with the speed and hunger of someone recovering from a long illness.

“You want me to get you another one?” Gurney asks.

Paul puts the now- empty can on the coffee table, wiping his glistening mouth with the back of his hand.

“No, thanks,” he hiccups, smiling apologetically to Gurney. “Sorry for the mess. I just needed something…sugary.”

“How are you doing?” Gurney asks. With Paul now sitting within arm's reach, all his earlier restlessness evaporates, replaced by a delicious, sated calm.

“Fine,” Paul shrugs, slumping onto the couch. “Better than I thought, actually.” He gives Gurney a sidelong glance and adds: “It was a great concert, by the way.”

“I didn’t know that you were listening. I thought you were asleep.”

“You woke me up,” Paul smiles. “And why are you staying so late?”

Gurney shows him the book that he’s been reading, and Paul squints at the cover.

“Xenebian crisis,” he reads out loud. “I wouldn’t call it light reading.”

“It’s hard to find anything light in that epoch,” Gurney agrees. “It’s a great cautionary tale, though.”

He waits for Paul to ask what is so cautionary about a two-hundred-year-old story and drag him into a lengthy discussion of the book, but instead Paul says: “You were waiting for me.”

Gurney is silent for a moment, not wanting to deny the obvious, and Paul’s mouth twitches as he tries and fails to hold back a smile. He leans in, bumping his forehead against Gurney’s shoulder.

“I got bored, I guess,” Gurney says carefully, wondering if Paul senses truth in his words.

“You should have called for me.”

“I didn’t want to disturb you.” He can feel a spot of warmth through his shirt where Paul’s face is pressed to him. “Do you want me to read to you?” he says to the tousled curls on the top of Paul’s head.

When Paul looks up at him, the calmness of his hooded eyes feels dangerous. “No, that’s not what I want.”

Gurney’s pulse quickens, and he can’t look away from Paul, entranced by that lethal serenity of his expression. He knows what Paul is going to ask for, and he should use this brief pause to find an excuse and hide in his room, but he can’t move.

“I want your scent on me,” Paul continues, his eyes fixed on Gurney. “Not just your clothes, but all of it. I want you in my room.” He wets his lips, the pink tongue flashing for half a second, and Gurney mirrors him, finding his own lips chapped and mouth dry.

“You know I can’t do that,” Gurney says quietly, but it’s like Paul doesn’t hear him.

“In my room,” he repeats. “Watching me, like you are supposed to.” He breathes audibly through his nose, no doubt getting a lungful of Gurney’s scent. In the soft glow of a suspensor lamp Gurney can see Paul’s pupils dilating with each inhale.

As he cups Paul face in his hand – only to ground him with the familiar gesture – Paul nuzzles at Gurney’s palm, almost kissing it, his breath hot and humid on the rough skin.

“Paul, I can’t go with you.”

“Why?” he sounds muffled, so Gurney tries to move his hand away, but Paul holds his wrist. “You want to. I can smell it.”

“We can’t always master our bodies.”

The grip of Paul’s fingers loosens. “Exactly. Then why don’t you just take what you need?”

Gurney doesn’t have time to answer, because the next moment Paul’s lips are on his. Whether Gurney opens for him out of shock or curiosity or something else, he can’t explain. The hot, wet tongue slides in, and he tastes the sweetness of the peaches as Paul licks into his mouth with hungry desperation. It’s too late for Gurney to resist, so he meets Paul there in a mutual blind touching of their tongues, pushing against him and taking the lead. He guides Paul’s head into the right angle, turning their kiss in a pure self-indulgence, biting at the full bottom lip, savoring Paul’s faint whimper at the force of it. To his utter shame, it’s not he but Paul who pulls away first, gulping for air and blushing, with his dark lips swollen and the skin around his mouth red from Gurney’s stubble.

“I can’t force you,” he whispers as he catches his breath, his palm sliding right over Gurney's frantically beating heart. “But I’m asking you to spend the heat with me. Properly. Please, Gurney.”

Nothing would be easier than pulling him into another kiss, pushing him onto his back, and making him part his smooth thighs. He will say yes and beg for more because that’s what he’s going through. And there’s no logic to explain it, his unreasonable affection, blind to who Gurney is and what their lives were like before they found themselves on this empty island in the faraway sea. Paul's desire for him is driven solely by their physical proximity, though he remains unaware of it, his judgment clouded by hormones

“Paul, you’re in heat,” he says, and Paul jerks away with an indignant tsk. “Wait, listen to me.”

“I know what you’re going to say, but—”

“You’re in heat,” Gurney repeats, lowering his voice. This time, Paul doesn’t interrupt, pressing his lips into a thin line. “And when your heat is over, you will have to face the consequences of what you’re offering me.”

“No one will know,” Paul replies quietly, dropping his eyes and suddenly looking younger than his age.

“We will both know. Think about what it will be like when we get back to the castle.”

Gurney could ask himself the same question, if he didn’t already know the answer. For him, life at the castle will never be the same, not after today, because he will have to find a way to look at Paul without thinking about what he tastes like.

“I will never mention it. If you don’t want me to.” The last phrase sounds hesitant and hopeful, as if Paul is suggesting that Gurney might want him to remember everything that happened on Migido.

“You don’t get it, do you?” he says, and Paul looks at him sharply, clearly stung by his tone. “Every decision that you’re making now is affected by your heat. And when it’s over, you will no longer want me as your…partner. What’s worse, you will have no idea why you even asked me to be with you in the first place.”

The charged silence settles between them for several unbearably long moments.

“Do you find it so hard to believe that I could want you outside the heat?” Paul finally says, his voice grim. Frankly, Gurney finds it not hard, but completely impossible to believe.

“It may seem to you now, that you could,” he says carefully, and Paul scoffs in his face.

“Thanks for telling me what I should feel.” He gets up from the couch, looking down at Gurney tiredly. “I should have spent my heat with a random alpha instead of you. At least he wouldn’t be in denial about what he is doing here.”

He doesn’t leave immediately with a loud bang of the bedroom door; on the contrary, he picks up the empty can and goes to the kitchen to toss it in the recycling, bends over the sink to drink water from the tap, and only then disappears into the dark hallway – mundanely, as if Gurney had already left and he was all alone in the empty house.

Gurney has no right to feel hurt, but he does anyway. He sits there, slowly tracing his lips with his finger, unable to erase the feeling of Paul’s kiss. The brief mention of a random alpha makes him wonder if Paul actually has a choice of candidates to spend his heat with. The pang of jealousy inside him mingles with the urge to call for Paul, to bring him back into his arms, to taste his sweetness again – Gurney just waits for this whirlpool of emotions to pass like a fit of dizziness.

It turns out he can’t sleep, can’t even get himself to lie down and close his eyes, smothered by the humid air flowing through the open windows of his bedroom. The night is completely devoid of scent, unnaturally so, adding to the impression of a great nothingness staring back at Gurney from outside. He turns off the blocker just to see if he still has his sense of smell. It slowly comes back – first a delicate scent of wild rose, then wet, pungent seaweed, and the briny freshness of the cooling sea. Migido reveals itself to him through the nexus of familiar aromas, but he searches for the core note, hidden within the layers of darkness, and finally finds the thread of it leading back to the house.

In seconds, he’s out of his bedroom and in the hallway, where the scent thickens, its spiciness tickling his nostrils and scratching the back of his throat. He’s not sure if he’s asleep or awake when he steps closer and hears the sounds: rhythmic shuffling and obscene squelching, accompanied by shallow breathing and soft, broken moans. The sounds of his omega f*cking himself, while he sits with his back to the closed door, guarding Paul from non-existent random alphas.

The bitter and tingly scent is in his mouth, salty and slimy, coating his tongue like slick. Both the sounds and the smell would be enough to make him come, and he is already painfully hard,precome soaking through the thin fabric of his underwear. He strokes himself, still in that dreamlike state, his hand moving at the same pace as the lewd noises on the other side of the door; as Paul’s breathing gets heavier he picks up the speed, following the rhythmic sound, until the darkness erupts with a stifled cry, and Gurney bucks into his fist immediately after, coming in spurts so hard that he bumps his head into the door.

He tries to catch his breath, his thigh muscles trembling, and the sweat trickling down his forehead stings his eyes. The release clears his mind enough to blanch at what he’s just done. He tucks himself back, wipes his hand on his T-shirt and gets up unsteadily. That’s when the sound of his name, muffled by the door, makes him freeze.

“Gurney,” Paul calls quietly. “I can smell you.”

Gurney remains motionless, his pulse pounding in his ears.

“Can you come in here, please?” Paul’s voice is small and pleading, cutting through him like a knife. The only adequate response is to either open the door or flee, and Gurney chooses the latter, walking away without a word.

Paul was right about the denial. The way his scent affects Gurney has a little to do with the heat. Gurney could hide in his bedroom with ten blockers on each hand and a chemical co*cktail of suppressors in his bloodstream, and still crave Paul like a semuta addict craves the next dose. He should never have agreed to go to Migido in the first place; he was driven by his loyalty to House Atreides and his protectiveness of the heir, and he managed to betray both. He couldn’t possibly have foreseen that his affection for Paul would so suddenly erupt into a desperate, all-consuming feeling, in which lust, love, and possessiveness merge to the point of indistinction. He doesn’t know how he’s going to survive another day here.

He spends the rest of the night and much of the morning sleepless, restlessly thinking about his options. Truthfully, he has only one: to leave. It’s either that, or risk staying another night and sleepwalking to Paul’s bedroom again. The steady beep of the comm awakens him from the half-conscious hibernation, and for a moment, he hopes it's an emergency call from the Duke, giving him a legitimate reason to leave Migido immediately. But it turns out to be the Thagasta base warning them of the coming storm.

“We’re expecting it this afternoon, sir,” says the operator. Only then does Gurney check the time and discover, with a slight shock, that he has to decide now whether to stay or to fly away and send someone – a random alpha – from Thagasta to look for Paul during the storm until Gurney’s replacement arrives from Castle Caladan.

Before leaving his bedroom, Gurney listens to the silence behind the door. For the first time in his life, he dreads meeting Paul – and longs to see him at the same time. He checks the blocker and opens the door only to halt in shock when he sees Paul sitting at the head of the table and looking directly at him as if he’d been waiting in ambush for Gurney for a long time. Under other circ*mstances Gurney would find the scene comical; now, he can’t even force a smile.

“Sit down,” Paul says instead of a greeting, his voice raspy from a night spent awake, his eyes steely cold. Gurney obeys, lowering himself onto the chair at the other end of the table, directly across from Paul. He feels like a convict invited to his own execution.

There are dark circles under Paul’s eyes, and his shoulders are slumped tiredly; his face is pale and hard-lined, like a mask, with an unfamiliar expression of a barely suppressed rage. Despite all this, Gurney is still struck by Paul’s astonishing beauty, however ominous it may seem to him now.

“Why didn’t you come in last night? When I called you?” Paul’s tone is flat and shows no interest in Gurney’s answer. Indeed, Gurney has a little to offer him other than the feeble excuses.

“I shouldn’t—” he starts, but Paul cuts him off.

“I don’t understand. First, you deny me the ability to make conscious decisions. Then you come to my door – to prove what? That you, unlike me, have enough free will not to open it and do what you so clearly want to?”

There is no sign of distress in his voice; it’s cold, low and threatening. Gurney waits for him to continue, hoping that Paul will vent his frustration by lashing out at him, and that will be it. Paul glares at him silently, regal even in his fury, his nostrils flaring, his eyes unrelenting.

“I made a mistake,” Gurney says heavily. His mistake goes far beyond last night, back to the castle, to the meeting with the Duke and Lady Jessica, and his reckless decision to accompany Paul to Migido.

“Yes, you did, by not coming in when I called for you,” Paul says, his face softening as he adds, “Gurney, what’s the point in denying it now? I heard you last night, I smelled you, everything that you did, how could it be a mistake?”

Gurney is glad there’s a long table between them because this desperate pleading in Paul’s voice is far worse than the stone-cold ruthlessness.

“Come on, old man. What have we got to lose?” Paul asks quietly, and the only thing Gurney can think of is I will lose you – words that he’s unable to say out loud. He has to nip it in the bud, though it’s probably too late for that.

“You’ve got it all wrong, Paul,” he says slowly. “I don’t want you. I was foolish enough to rely only on this thing,” he raises his hand with the blocker on it. “Your heat affected me stronger than I expected, and I can only blame myself for not foreseeing it. The feelings that you… attribute to me are not real. You’ll see that once it’s all over.”

As he speaks, Paul schools his features into polite neutrality, an expression Gurney often sees on Leto’s face during negotiations with dangerous or highly unreliable counterparts. They sit in silence for a few moments, staring at each other.

“So, what are you planning to do?” Paul asks him casually as if they were having breakfast in the castle. “Are you going to keep jerking off under my door every night till my heat is over?”

Gurney sighs and rubs his tired eyes. “It won’t happen again, my lord. I should fly back to the castle and send someone else.”

“Oh, really?” Paul says mockingly. “I remember you promising not to fly away without me.”

“That was a careless promise on my part, and I regret making it to you, my lord.”

“This is very unlike you,” Paul says, leaning back with his arms crossed over his chest. “But I’ll help you to make your next decision irreversible.”

Gurney frowns, watching closely as Paul inhales and exhales in quick, short succession, as if doing a breathing exercise, a trick of his Bene Gesserit mother to prepare for…Gurney gets up from the table belatedly realizing that he should cover his ears, and just then he hears the command.

“Destroy your blocker.”

A multilayered voice makes his skull vibrate like the walls of a chiming bell. Time stops short, then speeds up in an instant, and instead of Paul’s face he sees his own hands, breaking and crushing the brittle plastic. When he’s himself again and his vision returns from double to normal, he looks up at Paul in shock.

He has never experienced the Bene Gesserit Voice, let alone the Voice from Paul, and its raw, undeniable power overwhelms him. To his surprise, Paul looks equally shaken as he stands hastily and says in a faltering voice, “Please, Gurney, just go.”

He leaves Gurney standing over the pieces of the blocker scattered on the table. So, Paul has made a decision for him. Gurney sweeps up the debris in his cupped hand and shakes it into the recycle bin. Then he goes to his bedroom and packs his things – meticulously, checking every drawer and surface, leaving nothing behind. With the spacebag over his shoulder and the baliset in his hand, he heads out of the house, not even glancing at the hallway that leads to Paul.

The light outside is blinding, the scorching sun high in the endless, empty sky with no sign of storm clouds. As he walks downhill towards the clearing where the shuttle is landed, he notices two chairs behind the shrubs – the site of yesterday morning's impromptu picnic. He should probably save them from the coming storm, but he’s afraid to go back to the house, unsure if he has the strength to leave it a second time, so he turns his back on the deserted beach. Inside the shuttle he goes through the takeoff checklist, trying not to look at the empty co-pilot seat where Paul had slept on their way to Migido.

Once everything is ready, he calls the Thagasta base to tell them about his arrival. However, when he hears the operator, he asks for the weather report instead.

“The storm will be here in about 2-3 hours, sir. Make sure you finish any fights you have planned before then, as it will most likely last into the night.”

He’ll be at Thagasta in mere minutes, so he has enough time, just he doesn’t know what for. He stares at the control panel, till the image of Paul, left alone in the house, listening to the ravaging storm appears before his eyes, making him slump into the seat and rub his face with both hands. By destroying the blocker, Paul left him the choice of fleeing to the castle or returning to him, no matter the consequences. An easy choice for Gurney, and yet, instead of taking off he presses the comm and says the name of the person he thinks could help him. A few seconds later, he hears an impassive voice.

“Hello, Gurney.”

He swallows a lump in his throat and says huskily: “My lady.”

She remains silent, waiting for him to continue.

“I’m going back to the castle. We need to find someone else to look for Paul here.”

“Did you leave already?” she says, showing no sign of surprise or anger.

“No, I’m still here, but I’m ready for takeoff.”

“Why did you decide to leave?” she asks, and he sighs heavily.

“He made me break my blocker. With the Voice. I can’t stay any longer; his heat is getting to me.”

“He used the Voice on you.” Now Jessica sounds as if she expected something like this to happen. “How did he react after?”

“I think he was afraid of what he had done.” His heart clenches at the memory of the pure panic in Paul’s eyes.

“Good,” she says. “That means that he’s still in control of his emotions.”

“Not…quite. He offered to spend the heat with him.” Gurney isn’t sure that he’d be able to say this if he were face-to-face with Jessica.

“Why didn’t you agree?” she asks with genuine interest.

Gurney absorbs the question, keeping in mind that he’s talking not only to Paul’s mother, but with one of the Bene Gesserit witches, known for their art of manipulation.

“Because it is beyond my direct duty, my lady,” he says pointedly.

“Everything here is beyond your direct duty. Your duty is Paul’s safety and his training, but not his heat. We didn’t order you; we asked you, and you agreed to help, though you could have chosen not to.”

“Well, I’m choosing not to now.” He finds himself irritated by her blunt attempt to rub this “free choice” in his face, when they both know that he has never refused the Duke any of his requests. Especially requests concerning Paul.

“Fine,” she says matter-of-factly. “Since it’s not your direct duty and you came there voluntarily, you don’t need my permission to leave. So why are you calling me?”

“I…” Gurney falters, because she’s right. He could reach her from Thagasta, but instead, he’s calling her in the last moment before takeoff. “I wanted to warn you. To give you enough time to find someone else to look after Paul.”

“We will send Dr. Yueh,” she says. So, it will be Yueh, then. He feels strangely relieved that it it’s not Duncan.

“Send him tomorrow, we have a big storm coming in a few hours. The weather will be unflyable. I’ll leave for Thagasta now, and Paul will have to stay here alone for a while.”

“I think he’ll manage.” She sounds unruffled. Gurney doesn’t expect her to beg him not to leave her son alone, but this nonchalance surprises him. He waits for her to continue because he has nothing more to say. He should end the call and start the engine.

“That’s all I have to—” he begins, but she interrupts him with a sigh.

“Gurney,” she says in a much warmer voice. “Do you really want to leave?”

“I just can’t stay,” he says, wiping the sweat off his brow. “Not like this, not without the blocker.”

“But he wants you to stay.”

“He wouldn’t want me to stay if it weren’t for the heat.”

“True,” she agrees easily. “And I don’t see a problem with that.”

Though he’s never doubted her sharpness, the lightness of her tone makes him think that she’s gravely misunderstood him about what Paul has offered.

“My lady,” he says, choosing his words carefully. “He asked me to be his partner. As an alpha.”

“Yes, I get it, Gurney. He asked you to sleep with him,” she says. “Not surprising given his current hormonal state. That’s what heat is – a mechanism for instigating procreation. Yes, atavistic in males, but powerful nonetheless. I still don’t understand, though, why you didn’t agree.”

“What are you saying?” he says weakly, wondering if the woman is deranged.

Jessica huffs out a short, mirthless laugh. “I see now that people call you a romantic not only for your baliset playing.” Gurney keeps silent, unable to figure out what she could possibly mean. “Forgive me the prejudice, but that is such an alpha way of looking at these things.” She intones alpha with notable disdain. “For us it’s not a honeymoon, Gurney. It’s yet another test to prove that we’re not sex-crazed animals, but humans.”

“I fail to see how any of this applies to Paul. Whatever his secondary gender is, he’s the ducal heir first and foremost.”

“He has more than one birthright,” she says coldly. “And he will learn the ways of the Bene Gesserit as long as I see fit.”

“It is not for me to decide what learning he needs, my lady,” he says. “I just don’t want him to get hurt.”

“Did he look hurt when you told him that you were flying back to the castle?”

You bitch, Gurney thinks, clenching his jaw – her manipulation is as clear as day, and still effective. Jessica seems to be reading his thoughts from his silence.

“Don’t hold a grudge against me, Gurney,” she says in a milder tone, trying to appease him. “I’m his mother, I want the best for him more than any of you do.”

Rage blooms inside him, and he doesn’t bother hiding as he retorts, “This is what you think is best for him? To coerce him into sleeping with the first alpha he smells while he’s in heat and not giving a damn about his consent?”

“You’re much more than the first alpha he smells. You’ve known him since childhood, you’re his mentor and his best friend, and—”

“That’s exactly why I can’t do it!” he barks, forgetting about manners. “And f*ck me if I know why we’re still talking about this madness.”

“I’ll explain, if you give me a chance,” she says calmly, unfazed by his swearing.

“Do me a favor,” he growls.

“You think Paul should spend his first heat with a partner he loves, or at least with a partner whom he consciously chooses.”

“We all have the right to choose partners if not for marriage, then at least for sex. Why should Paul be denied that?”

“Indeed, Gurney,” she says, and he can hear her smile. “Do you have someone in mind?”

“Excuse me?”

“Someone Paul is in love with, or at least someone he could choose?”

“I suggest you ask Paul about them, not me,” he says sarcastically.

“That I did, the day before you left for Migido. And I wasn’t very surprised when he said that he would spend his heat alone.”

“Spending the heat alone isn’t a bad option compared to what you’re offering.”

“He can’t afford to spend his first heat alone.” Her voice suddenly turns wiry. “He must experience it at its worst, when simply being near an alpha is enough for your own mind to manipulate you into submission. He must see what it’s like and learn to get over it. That’s his duty as the heir.”

It takes Gurney several stunned seconds to grasp what she’s really saying.

“Wait,” he says incredulously. “You wanted him to spend his heat with an alpha from the start and you sent me with him? Like we were some lab rats?”

“You volunteered,” she says grimly.

“I volunteered to keep an eye on him, not to bloody mate with him while you watch!”

“You’re frustrated because you still see the heat as just another aspect of sex and relationships,” she says, cutting him off when he tries to protest. “No, let me finish. That may be true for alphas, but not for Bene Gesserit or someone like Paul. This is a chance to test his strength against his primal instincts. This is a rite of passage. And your role is not to mate with him, but to guide him through it, as befits his mentor.”

“You can call it whatever you want – a test, a rite of passage, or a sacred ritual,” he says. “It doesn't change the reality. I may be an alpha, but I’m not a circus animal. You need to find someone else for your plans. When I get back to the castle, I’ll meet with the Duke to tell him what you’re really putting his son through.”

“The Duke is well aware of what is happening to his son. And who do you think I’m going to find for him? I can’t risk disclosing his secondary gender and jeopardize his safety by bringing in a random person. It will take months just to ensure they are not Harkonnen spies.”

He’s irritated by the casual weariness in her voice, as if she were discussing her son’s bad grades with an annoying teacher. “Then leave Paul alone and let him choose his partner himself later!”

“I wish I could, Gurney. As I said, we don’t have time for that. The Reverend Mother wants to see him before we leave for Arrakis, and I need him to be ready. He must be ready.” There’s a short pause, and then she speaks again, sounding choky and frightened. “Listen, no one else knows this - only me, Leto, and now you. She will bring the gom jabbar with her. She wants to test him. And I…” she stumbles. “…I can’t help him anymore. I can’t postpone it any longer. I need him to be strong enough to pass. I need him to survive.”

The fear in her voice seems genuine, the fear of someone who once stood a hair's breadth from death on the tip of a poisoned needle. And Gurney can imagine what that’s like: in the slave pits, he saw how horrible such an end could be when Beast Rabban entertained himself by reenacting this infamous Bene Gesserit ritual. What he fails to understand is why Paul has to go through all this. He hears Jessica tame her labored breathing, too quickly for him to believe that her confession was unintentional.

“He’s attached to you, you know,” she says, regaining her composure. “I remember how he worshiped you as a kid; he used to repeat your songs and stories all the time, even wanted a scar on his face like yours. You were his hero. You still are.”

“What are you trying to say, my lady?” he says dryly.

“His offer to you was undoubtedly sparked by heat. But his instincts were right. You’re a good man, you’re loyal to our family, and you put his well-being before everything. He knows that, which is why he chose you—unconsciously. In heat, we don’t seek to satisfy our lust as much as we seek comfort.”

Gurney recalls Paul kissing him and thinks darkly that she has written off lust far too easily.

“The heat makes him vulnerable by damaging his self-control. He faces human nature in all its ugliness and absurdity for the first time, when brain chemicals turn a rational being into an animal. Believe me, you don’t want a stranger to see you in that state.”

“Why are you so sure he wants me to see him like this?” Gurney says, tired of this web of words and manipulation.

“Because he trusts you,” she says softly. “More than he could possibly trust a casual lover. You know how male omegas are treated. Many of your kind see them simply as exotic creatures for spicing up their love life at best, or as genetic freaks unworthy of living at worst. Anyone would have trust issues with such an attitude. Paul knows that you love him in your own way, and that you could never hurt him. And when his mind returns to normal, he will be grateful to you for not leaving him alone.”

Her words seep through his resentment like a sweet poison, though he clearly sees how she is pressing his pain points by bringing up the mental image of Paul, alone and insecure. With her devilish intuition, she offers him the most comfortable way to view this hideous situation, coaxing him into thinking that Paul might actually need him. Presumptuous witch.

“From where I stand,” he says, “you’re throwing away the most reasonable solution to this problem because of some tales that you witches spin. I don’t know why you’re so sure that I’m going to play your games willingly.”

He listens to the dead silence for what feels like a full minute.

“Do you want to know why you’re calling me, Gurney?” she finally asks, and he recognizes the threatening notes in her quiet voice that he sometimes hears Paul use. “Not to warn me that you’re leaving. You’re calling me to ask for my permission to stay.”

“I’m not—” he starts, but she raises her voice commandingly.

“Here it is! I give you my permission to stay with him for as long as you feel necessary. I have given all my reasons why I think you are the best option for him. Now it’s up to you to decide. Because, as I told you before, we didn’t order you, we asked for your help. Come back here or come back to Paul. I have nothing more to say to you.”

He doesn’t answer her, abruptly cutting the line. Without giving himself time to think, tugs on the headset, fastens the safety harness and starts the engine. He feels the dull rumble under his feet and sees the dusty clouds of sand rising from under the shuttle behind the windshield as the engine speeds up. He has to take off right now, and fly away from here to save Paul and himself from what Jessica has prepared for them. It’s the only right thing to do, and her words are full of deceit, even if they are made up of twisted truth. He wipes the sweat from his brow and curses himself for his weakness. The shuttle around him vibrates with the force of the engine running at takeoff speed.

“Come on,” he says through clenched teeth. “Come on!”

His hand reaches for the switch and turns off the engine, and the bubble of anger at himself bursts inside him, making him punch the yoke, spitting out: “f*ck-f*ck-f*ck!..”

He can’t get rid of the images that the witch has conjured up: a needle with the gom jabbar pointed at Paul’s neck, his face twisted in pain from unknown tortures they’ve devised for him, his body collapsing to the floor when he fails the test. What parent would put their child through this? She may be lying to him about the Reverend Mother and the test, but what is the purpose of this deception?

But there’s no denying she was right about jeopardizing Paul’s safety and reputation by hiring an outsider to be his partner. Gurney is sure that, for a certain amount of solaris, you can find whoever you want as quickly as you need. But you must keep in mind that people who provide such services can easily be tempted to sell your secrets for a better offer, especially if that offer comes from the owners of the only spice-producing planet.

Such a delicate task would require someone loyal, someone who could never be bought or threatened into revealing to the Landsraad Council that the Atreides heir is a male omega and should be stripped of all his birthright privileges.

You would also need to reduce the possibility that the heir would view his temporary partner as a lover and become emotionally attached to them, carrying on the affair and risking exposure. You would need someone, whom Paul knows well enough not to be intrigued by their unfamiliarity and freshness. This well-known someone should lack the personal charm that might affect Paul once the heat is over. Now Gurney sees how unreasonable his jealousy was. Jessica would never choose Duncan for this, not with his sheer magnetism that makes him irresistible to all genders. There would be too much risk of Paul falling in love with him.

Who is left, then? The minstrel warrior, righteous in his hatred of Harkonnens and devoted to his duke. Could Paul accidentally fall in love with his mentor whom he has known for years, so much older and with a mutilated face and body? Doubtful. How will he get through inevitable mutual awkwardness and gradual distancing that awaits them afterwards? It will be unpleasant, but nothing unmanageable. He sees now that she has chosen wisely.

If he stays, he’ll increase Paul’s chances of surviving the gom jabbar test, at least, according to Lady Jessica. That alone should be enough for him to make up his mind, but he can’t see any logic in it, just obscure Bene Gesserit manipulation. What if it’s true? A single sting of a needle, a lifeless body at the feet of the old witch. The heir wasn’t human enough, after all. The possibility that she has shown him would be too heavy a burden to live with.

“What am I? A shard of the ancient feuds. An arrow that fell on the grass,” he whispers, a line from a poem coming easily to mind.

He leaves the shuttle and walks to the spot where he and Paul talked a few days ago, a small beach behind the pines. He doesn’t know how long he sits there, staring at the measureless mass of water ahead of him, so lost in thought that he doesn’t notice the sun-heated air around him turning into a cool, gusty wind.

Behind him, the darkness falls on Migido; murky-gray storm clouds rushing toward the clear part of the sky where the sun still shines, and the wall of shade divides the island in two. The eastern end is already drawn into ominous daytime twilight, but the house remains in the bright sunny day. It’s too late now, Gurney thinks with relief as a monstrous bolt of lightning whips across the dark mass of clouds, and the thunder roars almost without pause. The storm is already here.

By the time he picks up his bag and the baliset from the shuttle, the heavy rain is pounding against the fuselage. He steps out into the solid wall of water that soaks him through in seconds. The way back to the house usually takes about ten minutes but trudging uphill against the wind and the heavy downpour, with zero visibility and muddy rivulets under his feet, slows him down.

After the roar of the rain, the silence inside is deafening. He drops the bag on the floor, places the baliset on the couch to dry and wipes his face with a small pillow as the thunder rumbles outside, shaking the windows. The top lights are out, and the storm leaves the house in half-darkness as if night has already fallen.

The green and gold lights of the filmbook viewer glimmer in the open door at the end of the hallway. He stops in the doorway, watching Paul who sits on the bed with his legs crossed, his face somber and somehow more beautiful than Gurney remembers. The scent here is overwhelmingly heavy; the familiar notes – bitter, spicy, warm – are condensed to heady, pungent extremes, but Gurney gulps it down greedily, feeling a shiver run through him. Paul turns off the filmbook and gets up from the bed, stepping closer to him.

He kisses Gurney on the mouth, his soft lips closed, the tip of his nose is warm against Gurney’s clammy skin. It’s a quick kiss, almost a peck, and Gurney barely has time to close his eyes before Paul pulls away, putting his hand on Gurney’s chest, which heaves beneath the wet T-shirt.

“You’re all soaked,” he says quietly. “Take this off.”

Gurney just nods, pulling the shirt off and dropping it on the floor in a soaked heap. Paul traces the scar that runs from his right shoulder down to his ribs, left by a scimitar years ago. Gurney waits, stunned by the closeness, by the feel of the warm, dry fingers on his skin. He looks at Paul, taking in all the familiar details of his face: the shape of his eyebrows, a pockmark on his cheek, the delicate outline of his mouth. When their eyes meet, he sees understanding mixed with sorrow, as if Paul knows what truly led Gurney to where he is now.

“Go take a shower,” Paul says, pushing him lightly toward the bathroom, and Gurney obeys without a word.

Inside, he takes off the rest of his clothes, realizing that even his underwear is soaked and his muddy boots are full of water. He stands in the hot shower, wearily pressing his forehead against the tiled wall. There's no turning back now, but it's as if he's still trying to buy himself time before he returns to Paul. When he’s about to fall asleep on his feet, he reaches for the soap to wash himself. It smells faintly of juniper and thyme – an unmistakable fragrance of Paul’s skin – and the thought of it arouses him. He doesn’t give it a go, washing it off with a cool water that refreshes him a little from his fatigue. He needs to keep his head clear as long as possible.

When he turns off the water, the small bathroom immediately fills with the sound of rain beating against the roof. He’s surprised to find the fresh towel and dry clothes laid in a neat stack on the toilet lid and his wet things gone along with his boots. He dries himself off and slips into boxers and a T-shirt that Paul must have taken from his bag. All the while, he remains painfully aware of the intimacy of this situation: him preparing himself for what will inevitably happen next.

As he opens the door, Paul looks up at him from the bed. His eyes are dark, and his skin is golden in the dim glow of the suspensor lamp.

“I had to open your bag to get your things,” he says quickly.

“It’s fine,” Gurney says, carefully lowering himself onto the opposite side of the bed. Paul doesn’t move, and in the loud silence that follows, Gurney can hear his own breathing.

“Lie down?” Paul says. It’s not a command or even a request, but merely a suggestion that Gurney gladly accepts. As soon as his head touches the pillow that smells of Paul, the lack of sleep hits him, making his eyelids grow heavier by the second. He watches Paul move across the tiny space, putting the opened spacebag aside and turning off the lamp, emerging the room in a grayish semi-darkness. With his eyes closed, Gurney hears the rustling of clothes and the shuffling of the sheets as Paul comes back to the bed. The sound of thunder and rain outside reminds him of the castle, and he’s almost lulled to sleep by it when Paul breaks the silence.

“You think it’s too late but it’s not,” he whispers. “You can still go when the storm is over. I’ll be fine.”

Paul is wrong; it was late even before the storm, and Gurney’s desperate attempt to escape was doomed from the beginning. Fondness for Paul wells up inside him like a wave, washing away his fears: the first true sign that the scent is affecting him. He lets it flow through him, giving in to its warmth. Gently, he reaches out and strokes Paul’s bare shoulder, tracing the smooth skin with the tips of his fingers.

“I’m not going anywhere. Come here,” he says. After a moment’s hesitation, Paul rolls right into his arms, allowing Gurney to spoon him. Gurney can feel his frantically beating heart both where Paul’s back is pressed against his chest and beneath his palm resting on Paul’s sternum. He nuzzles the tangled curls, breathing him in, and every nerve in his body hums with a low-keyed satisfaction.

“I’m sorry that I used the Voice on you and broke your shield,” Paul says, squirming against him and entangling their legs like he’s trying to make as many points of contact as possible.

“Don’t be,” he replies quietly. “The shield didn’t matter much.”

“But if you don’t want to—” Paul starts, and Gurney squeezes him, pressing the slim body harder against himself, sliding his hand down, over the tender skin of Paul’s belly.

“I want to,” he murmurs into the soft hair at the back of Paul’s head. Paul relaxes in his arms with a quiet sigh, his heartbeat slows down as he calms his breathing, and Gurney involuntarily imitates him, drawing deep breaths and feeling Paul’s chest rise and fall in unison with his own. He listens to the measured pace of their breathing and the thrumming of the rain, encased in Paul’s scent and the warmth of his body. He’s half-asleep when Paul shifts slightly, clutching at his hand.

“Thank you for staying with me,” Paul says in a broken voice, and instead of replying Gurney kisses the back of his neck, skin hot and silky against his lips. Before he drifts into a deep and dreamless sleep with Paul in his arms, he thinks that it was a completely unnecessary thing to thank him for because it couldn’t possibly be otherwise.

Chapter 6

Chapter Text

Paul is awakened by the scent. He’s at the epicenter of it: what once was a tantalizing thread or a fading sillage is now all over him, condensed to the point of assaulting his senses with its heavy musk. Paul breathes in softly, afraid to move and wake Gurney, who even in his sleep holds onto him as if Paul might vanish into thin air at any moment. By the pale, milky light falling from a high window, he can tell it’s predawn.

His head swims, so he closes his eyes, focusing on the sensations. The moist air from outside, fresh after the storm, sending goosebumps across Paul’s bare shoulders; Gurney’s breath fanning the side of his face, his thick thigh pushed between Paul’s legs, the grip of his hand across Paul’s chest; the invasive warmth of his half-hard co*ck pressed against Paul’s ass.

Over the past few days, Paul has lost the ability to distinguish between his own desires and the effects of the heat. It’s all intertwined now, with Gurney at the center. The nagging need to have more of him is still there, making Paul clench his thighs and rub himself against the firm muscles of Gurney’s leg. The pressure sends shivers up his spine; his hardening co*ck twitches, tucked uncomfortably in his underwear. Almost immediately, Paul hears the breathing next to his temple lose its measured pace. Gurney behind him tenses and goes completely still before slowly pulling his hand away. Paul grabs his palm, and Gurney stops.

“Did I wake you up?” he says, his voice husky with sleep, his thumb gently stroking the back of Paul’s hand.

“Nuh-uh,” Paul hums. The soothing touch makes him loosen his grip, but instead of letting go, he guides Gurney’s hand down. Paul holds his breath as those big, firm fingers slip under the waistband of his boxers and circle the base of his co*ck. The first strokes are slow and delicate, dry skin on dry skin, though enough for Paul to arch against Gurney, clutching his forearm in a weak attempt to muffle the acute pleasure.

Gurney’s broad palm continues to pump him to full hardness; the calloused thumb circles over the head, gently rubbing the slit, and Paul bucks his hips desperately into the touch. His co*ck twitches, drooling precome, as the deft fingers glide up and down, smearing it along his length and adding to all the wetness he can already feel between his cheeks. The hot, insistent press of Gurney’s erection against his ass and the near-perfect slicked friction leaves him craving more.

“Harder,” he breathes out, his face burning.

Gurney lets go of him, moving his knee away and leaving Paul’s thighs clamped against nothing. For one horrid moment Paul thinks that he has crossed some line by asking, but Gurney just makes him roll onto his back and tugs his boxers down. Wincing as the waistband catches on his co*ck, Paul awkwardly kicks the boxers off until they’re bunched around his ankle and he's lying there completely naked, hard and leaking precome. Look what you’re doing to me,he wants to say, meeting Gurney's heavy, dark stare. He touches the side of Gurney’s face, tracing the sparse stubble along his jaw, his closely trimmed beard, and finally his lips—dry and unexpectedly plush.

Gurney tilts his head slightly, pressing his lips right into the center of Paul’s palm, and takes Paul back in his hand, fingers tightening around the twitching co*ck, the grip indeed harder this time.

“Like this?” he asks, and Paul nods, enjoying the alien feeling of Gurney’s beard scratching his palm. Gurney strokes him languidly, spreading beads of precome from the leaking glans to the base, scooping up his balls to massage them gently. The long, broad fingers slide further, rubbing the tender patch of skin right behind his sack, making his hole contract and release a wad of slick. Paul sputters a muffled curse, instinctively closing his legs around Gurney’s wrist. It’s just too much for him, not only because no one has touched him like this before, but because it’s Gurney who’s touching him, relentless in his tenderness.

There’s relief when Gurney’s fingers are on his co*ck again, setting a pace that's hard and fast enough for Paul to stop thinking and lose himself in mounting pleasure. He squeezes his eyes shut and just goes with the flow, mindlessly rocking his hips, f*cking into that deliciously tight grip. The molten heat pools in the pit of his stomach, and all he can do is chase, and chase, and chase it until his co*ck throbs, making him buck desperately in that final, sweet spasm. He lets out a shaky breath and opens his watering eyes, realizing that he has been clutching at Gurney’s shoulder all this time.

Gurney leisurely wipes his fingers on the sheet and rests his heavy hand on Paul’s belly, and the sheer possessiveness of the gesture is somehow more shocking to Paul than what just happened. He could blame the absence of the blocker if he hadn't seen that barely there smile on Gurney's face before.

Paul swallows against the tightness in his throat as he catches his breath, still struggling to believe that Gurney is here, in his bed. He slides his hand down to palm Gurney through his underwear, partly to ensure his touch will be welcomed. Gurney immediately gasps, murmuring, “You don’t have to.”

Like hell I don’t, Paul thinks, turning to face him, nuzzling the scratchy underside of his jaw, feeling drunk on his scent. Though he’s not a virgin, he doubts he would ever have had the courage to be with Gurney like this if it were not for the heat: taking him out with a surprisingly steady hand, openly marveling at his size, and placing a bruising kiss on his neck.

He’s not good at it; the lack of space between their bodies puts a strain on his wrist. But Gurney’s breathing grows heavier anyway, and his eyes seem pitch-black in the predawn gloom when Paul looks at him, feeling dizzy from the hot slide of the throbbing length under his fingers. He can’t help thinking about having this co*ck inside him, about its hotness and painful stretch, because Gurney is big – Paul isn’t at all sure that he can take it. And he’s embarrassed by how much he wants to – to have Gurney even closer than they are now.

It takes Gurney a surprisingly little time to come with a powerful thrust of his hips, his fingers digging painfully into Paul’s waist as he groans. For a moment, Paul forgets to feel self-conscious about the stale morning breath and kisses him sloppily, desperate to eliminate the last remaining inches between them. When he pulls away, Gurney pants heavily, squinting down at the sticky mess all over Paul’s stomach. Paul wonders if Gurney, too, is intoxicated by the heady mix of their scents, or, rather, of their sex – heated skin, come, and sweat. Gurney hikes up his T-shirt, attempting to wipe the come off Paul’s abs with the hem, and his bleary-eyed, f*cked-out determination makes Paul smile.

He enjoys seeing Gurney come undone in front of him like this, out of breath and sweating, not shying away from Paul’s touch. Paul traces the veins that stand out on Gurney’s sun-burnished forearm, running his fingers along the hard swell of Gurney’s bicep and over his shoulder.

“I should have just left you with a towel yesterday, instead of bringing all these clothes,” he says, and Gurney frowns for a second before getting what he means and pulling the shirt over his head. Paul watches him undress, feeling a lick of arousal at the sight of Gurney’s flexing muscles. When Gurney is as naked as he is, Paul clings to him, wrapping both arms around him, hooking one leg up his thigh, almost crawling on top of him, making Gurney chuckle softly at this awkward neediness. Gurney holds him tighter, and Paul’s body rings electric from the feeling of them pressed so close together, bare skin against bare skin, aware of every tiny movement, every breath, as if they have become one being instead of two.

*

Since his heat began, he had been waking up in a half-feverish state, dizzy and aroused, unable to tell what time of day it was, craving release but getting none. Everything he did to himself just wasn’t enough, leaving him raw, oversensitive, and unsatisfied. His own scent, intensified by the fresh come and slick, felt nauseating, adding to the stuffy air in his tiny room. A string of climaxes that felt more like painful spasms exhausted him enough for several hours of troubled sleep, and then the cycle started again. Still, it would be bearable, if not for Gurney.

Before, Paul thought all the talk about primal instincts overpowering reason and the inner animal taking over was just a flowery metaphor for being constantly horny. He was infinitely surprised when he discovered that lust was merely a backdrop to the excruciating longing he felt. He failed to pinpoint exactly when it had started; perhaps even before he decided he would spend his heat with Gurney.

Paul had been waking up to thoughts of him, instantly aware of where Gurney was — in the kitchen, standing at the stove making breakfast for them or drinking coffee alone; in his bedroom, still asleep; right outside Paul’s door, listening while Paul held his breath. He didn’t think about Gurney in any coherent way, but as if he were watching a filmbook; snapshot memories flashed before his eyes, firing up his imagination. He didn’t just see the line of Gurney’s shoulder or his big, capable hands with calloused fingers; he felt the absence of their touch like a phantom pain. Sometimes, it was more than he could bear.

In the dead of night, he tiptoed across the house, following a steady thread of scent in the air, to stop at Gurney’s door. Like a pining dog left out in the cold. Turns out, that was his inner animal — obsessive, greedy, overcome by the need to have as much of its master’s company as possible, and unreasonable in its rage when it didn’t get what it wanted.

He was certain he would use the Voice sooner or later, though there were moments when he caught Gurney looking at him with such heated longing in his eyes, that it gave him hope for a different outcome. He tried to convince himself, like a petulant child, to give Gurney space and not push him — but failed spectacularly anyway. Paul can’t tell if breaking the blocker was the right thing to do, but it doesn’t feel like a failure at all now, with Gurney sleeping by his side, his steady breath warming Paul’s neck.

On their first day together, they don’t leave the bed until it’s dark again. Paul, of course, is to blame, succumbing to the ever-growing need to be with Gurney without a single twinge of conscience. Even though Paul hasn’t much experience, what Gurney does to him feels… exquisite. There are small, simple things that add a hidden layer to the pleasure flowing through him, making it somehow less carnal. The way Gurney’s fingers trace his jawline and rub his earlobe in the aftermath of a heated kiss; the peculiar pattern of kisses trailing down Paul’s chest and stomach, as Gurney presses his lips to every tiny mole on his skin; the slow glide of Gurney’s hand up the inner side of Paul’s thigh, gently parting his legs. It’s like he’s enjoying Paul’s body, taking a special delight in driving Paul into a half-coherent state with his touch, rough and tender in turns.

Still, despite the exhausted bliss fogging his brain, Paul sees that their sex is pretty much one-sided. The last org*sm leaves him on the verge of sobbing, his hips thrusting desperately into Gurney’s mouth; the hot, wet suction around his co*ck is mind-numbingly good. By the time he regains his breath, Gurney is off his softening length, reaching for the bottle of water from the nightstand and handing it to Paul.

“Drink it.”

Paul sits up with an effort and takes the bottle with weak fingers, the abating climax draining all his strength. He gulps down half of it, then watches silently as Gurney drinks the rest of the water, head thrown back, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. Washing me down, Paul thinks, his face running hot.

“Gurney,” he says, reaching for him. “Just give me a moment, and I'll…” He doesn’t know how to say it—blow you, too? Let you put it in me? Do anything to make you come?

“There’s no need. Get some rest,” Gurney replies, brushing the wet strands away from Paul’s forehead. This is probably how a proper alpha partner is supposed to behave—putting an omega's needs first and keeping his distance. But that’s not what Paul is here for.

“This is not a service,” he says. Gurney leans in, placing a closed-lipped kiss first on his brow, then on his cheekbone, and finally at the corner of his lips.

“It doesn’t feel like a service to me,” he murmurs against Paul’s skin. “And you need a break, you’re exhausted.”

Paul flops back on the pillows, looking at Gurney with heavy-lidded eyes. He has noticed lately how Gurney can talk him into instant drowsiness, as if Paul’s body obeys his words on its own. Whether it’s yet another symptom of the heat he was unaware of or simply one of his own quirks, he doesn’t know. He watches Gurney move around the room naked, muscles flexing under sweat-slicked skin. Everything that is so familiar to Paul—the outlines of his body, the unrushed and confident way Gurney carries himself—now seems overwhelmingly strange yet recognizable. The contrast takes his breath away, and as his eyes roam the span of Gurney’s back, his ass, whiter than the rest of his body, the scars running across his ribcage and down to his lower belly, he feels like he’s running a fever.

He wakes up alone and notices that the light under the bathroom door is out, which means that Gurney is somewhere else in the house. Paul can't catch his scent in the air as clearly as before, probably because it’s all over him—on the sheets, on his skin.

He finds Gurney in the kitchen, standing at the stove and eating a steak straight off the knife, his rumpled shirt and boxers back on. Paul hops onto the counter, joy bubbling up inside him for no reason, making him dangle his feet a little.

Gurney nods at the frying pan with half a steak in it.

“The other half is for you. Go ahead.”

Paul takes the steak, not even bothering with utensils, feeling hungry for the first time in the last 24 hours. They both chew on the meat, tough from overcooking, and stare at each other until Paul bursts out laughing.

“What?” Gurney asks with a quizzical frown.

“We got wild here on Migido,” Paul says, gesturing with the piece of steak in his hand. “Just look at us.”

“Getting back to the roots, I guess,” Gurney shrugs, a smile hiding in the corners of his mouth.

Paul chuckles, surprised at the lack of unease between them. Sure, it’s not quite the same as before because it’s better now, and he can’t grasp why. Just the sight of Gurney, standing there and scratching his stubbled jaw, leaves Paul lightheaded with affection. It’s as if his longing has been replaced overnight by a drunken, coltish happiness. Somewhere in the back of his brain, he knows he should think this through—the fact that he used the Voice on Gurney, and what Gurney told him back then at the table before Paul made him break the blocker—but he can’t do it now, just like he can’t stop smiling. Maybe the heat is altering his mind, pheromones attacking him, Gurney’s scent diluting his own—whatever it is, he loves it, loves it all.

He grabs the edge of the counter and closes his eyes to steady himself in this flood of love, and when he opens them again, Gurney is watching him. Paul snorts a laugh at his perplexed expression. He feels high.

“You okay?” Gurney asks, closing the distance between them but not yet touching. Paul shakes his head no a little too vigorously, so it swims again, and he has to let go of the countertop and grab Gurney’s shoulders instead. He digs his fingers into the muscles, delighted by the firmness and breadth, and by the whole bulk of Gurney, standing so close to him and emanating warmth. Gurney’s eyebrows are raised in a silent question, and Paul leans in to brush their noses together, gasping as Gurney nips at his lower lip. Despite the sudden roughness, the kiss soon turns from heated to languid, and this unhurried, ebb-and-flow caress grounds Paul, sobering him up a little.

“It’s so great,” he murmurs as they part with a wet sound that is shockingly loud here in the kitchen.

“M?” Gurney hums, sliding his palms up and down Paul’s thighs and applying barely any pressure.

“I mean, you,” Paul says, his lips still tingling from the kiss. “I couldn’t imagine… I didn’t understand when you said that the heat wasn’t a casual thing, but I see what you mean now. I love being with you.” To his own ears, he sounds a bit breathless, and his meager words don’t seem enough to express what he feels, but he continues anyway. “But please don’t think that this is some kind of obligation, because it’s not, and you don’t have to… satisfy me all the time.” Paul was sure he had lost the ability to blush after everything they had done today, but somehow, here he is, with his whole face heating up.

“I don’t see it as an obligation,” Gurney says, stroking Paul’s flushed cheek with the back of his fingers. “And I love satisfying you as much as you need.”

“I need you to f*ck me,” Paul says, though he wasn’t planning to, but something in the featherlight touch on his skin unhinges him. “Tonight. Will you do that?”

He can feel Gurney’s fingers twitch slightly at the question and how Gurney holds his breath for a second, but despite the hesitant pause, the answer is already there, in his sharpening scent.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” Gurney says.

*

He can’t explain what’s going on in his head because he should be nervous as hell, and he isn’t. He finds nothing to worry about when Gurney is here, on top of him, pinning him to the mattress, and it feels f*cking delicious—the way his chest is crushed against Gurney, the perfect heaviness of every breath. He wraps his legs around Gurney’s waist, digging his heels into his ass to nudge him closer in search of friction, as his stiffening co*ck is trapped between their bodies. Gurney rolls his hips, dragging his own tumescent length across Paul’s skin; his soft groan is muffled as he hides his face in Paul’s neck, inhaling audibly. Paul giggles from the rasp of his beard, filled with the drunken glee that makes him do stupid things like bite Gurney’s shoulder.

“Come on,” he whispers. “I want you inside.”

At his words, Gurney pushes up on his elbows to look at him and asks huskily, “Have you done this before?”

Paul nods and then laughs because he means the exact opposite. Gurney frowns at him from above, his face dark and beautiful, and Paul really wants to touch his lips and lick them, and—good god, he must focus.

“I did, but the other way around,” he finally says, not wanting to share any details with Gurney. It doesn’t matter what happened before; why even ask? What they have now is a million times better, and Gurney should know that.

Gurney untangles himself from his grip and sits down beside him, giving Paul a chance to take a good look at him. Paul openly admires him—the pale scars crossing his skin, the broadness of his shoulders and chest, the veins standing out on his biceps and snaking over his forearms, his thick muscled thighs, and the engorged co*ck between them. The mere sight leaves Paul dizzy with want.

Gurney sighs, his broad palm traveling up Paul’s leg, his thumb stopping at the knob of Paul’s hipbone, circling it slowly, and then he says, "Turn on your side."

Paul obeys immediately, rolling over as if his body instinctively knows the best way to show how badly he wants Gurney to take him. That must be it, he thinks—the heat. Something that strips him of his dignity and shame and makes him expose himself like this.

He turns his neck to see Gurney stretched out beside him, not quite spooning Paul but leaving enough space between them for him to cup Paul’s ass and feel it up slowly. His big fingers slide between the cheeks, rubbing over the slicked hole, and Gurney rests his stubbly chin on Paul’s shoulder, saying softly, “Tell me when it’s too much, okay?”

Paul answers with a hum, his attention focused on the rough pad of Gurney’s thumb pushing at his entrance. There’s enough slick for it to sink in smoothly, all the way to the last knuckle, making Paul’s insides spasm at the intrusion.

Gurney loosens him unhurriedly, pressing small kisses at the angle of his jaw or nipping at his earlobe, eventually replacing his thumb with what feels like two digits at once. Paul arches at the sweet tingling from the stretch and palms his own long-neglected co*ck, losing himself in the overlapping sensations.

Gurney’s hand moves steadily, scissoring the twitching ring, as he works Paul open with relentless efficiency. There’s a moment when Gurney hooks his fingers just so, eliciting a surprised gasp from Paul. He continues to press over the same spot, sending bolts of white-hot pleasure through Paul again and again, until Paul can’t hold back the choked moans or stop himself from rocking down on Gurney’s fingers to meet the maddening touch. His scalp prickles with anticipation of the almost-there org*sm, but something stops him just as he toes the line — an anchor point, a thought of how he wants Gurney to join him this time.

“Wait,” he pants, willing himself to calm down. “Gurney, please wait.”

Gurney’s fingers slip out, and Paul inhales sharply as his hole spasms against emptiness.

“What’s wrong?” A careful question is a puff of hot air next to Paul’s ear.

Paul drags several deep, calming breaths before he says, “I want you with me this time. Let’s do it.”

There’s something unknown smoldering in Gurney’s eyes, something Paul has never seen there before, and oh, how much he wants more of it, he wants every bit of it. He reaches for Gurney’s face with an unsteady hand, pulling him closer until their lips meet in a chaste kiss.

“I need to prepare you for a little longer, or—” Gurney whispers, his breath wet and hot on Paul’s skin.

“It’s fine, it’s enough,” Paul cuts him off with embarrassing desperation in his voice. “I’ll be fine, come on.”

Gurney obeys; his fingers sweep along Paul’s crack and over his hole, scooping up slick; the sensation is followed by the muffled slippery sound as Gurney lubes himself with it. Although Paul knows what will happen next, even craves for it to happen, the first press of the hot, blunt tip of Gurney’s co*ck against the rim is still a shock. Paul holds his breath, aware only of the painful strain of Gurney breaching him. The thick length slowly inches forward, spreading him open, and Paul’s muscles spasm fitfully, resisting the relentless pressure, but it drags on and on until Gurney bottoms out, panting heavily against his temple.

“Breathe,” Gurney whispers, and Paul does, trying to adjust to the almost unbearable stretch that leaves him stiff with tension. Gurney’s co*ck throbs against his walls, and it's such an alien, crazy feeling that he can’t hold back a whimper as Gurney rolls his hips, pulling out and sinking back again in a smooth grinding motion.

With each next thrust Paul feels the hot, hard volume lodging deeper inside him, and despite the burning ache the pleasure crawls up his spine just at the thought that it’s Gurney taking him, and it’s Gurney’s hand splayed across his belly, it’s Gurney’s chest, slick with sweat, pressed against his shoulder blades.

The slapping and squelching sounds of their f*cking, deliciously filthy, and the harsh, unsteady panting next to his ear heighten his arousal. The remaining tension in his body melts into a feverish desperation that makes him meet Gurney’s thrusts halfway, following the set rhythm. Paul knows that he should be driven by a pure instinct to chase the building pleasure to its peak, but somehow, apart from feeling exactly that way, he’s also acutely aware that their sex has a purpose other than mindless friction. At least, Paul has never wanted anything as much as he wants and loves what Gurney is doing to him now—what they are doing together.

He's not quite prepared for the sudden splash of pleasure when Gurney grips his waist, changing the angle slightly and nudging that oversensitive bundle of nerves inside. The sensation exploding in Paul is so strong that it knocks the breath out of him, making him stutter a curse. He’s barely noticing the scratch of Gurney’s beard against his shoulder and Gurney’s muffled moan, aware only of the sweet shocks that surge through him with every brush of Gurney’s co*ck against his prostate. Before he knows it, an electric shudder pierces through his spine, and his muscles tense abruptly, only to be followed the next moment by the painful clenching of his insides around the hot, thick hardness.

Gurney f*cks him through the tremulous aftermath of the org*sm, his pace quickly faltering, reduced now to short, brutal jabs until he hilts in one last time. His hand tightens around Paul’s ribs in a crushing grip, his co*ck throbbing heavily, and the liquid heat blooms deep in Paul’s belly, making it impossible for him to separate his own thrumming pulse from Gurney’s. His whole body is rendered weak and pliant from sweet exhaustion, yielding to Gurney completely.

They lie still, clinging to each other, too overwhelmed to move or talk or do anything but listen to their unsynced labored breathing. Paul slides his hand over his abdomen as if he could feel through the skin where Gurney is slotted inside him, and only then realizes that he came without touching his co*ck.

“You alright?”

Gurney’s face is wet with perspiration, his brow creased in obvious concern that makes Paul smile. He can’t even begin to describe the dizzying elation that drowns out the distinct pulsing of pain inside him. The afterglow of being taken feels like nothing he's ever experienced before, so much so that it seems impossible that Gurney couldn’t share it. Paul can't think of an answer to his completely unnecessary question other than to pull him into a kiss.

“I'm going to…” Gurney mutters against his lips, the circle of his hand around Paul's chest loosening as he pulls out, making Paul gasp from a painful twitch of his hole.

When Paul rolls over to face him, wincing from the dull ache and the filthy feeling of come trickling out of him, Gurney wears the same sour expression.

“Next time I want to see your face,” Paul says, grinning broadly as Gurney’s frown begins to soften.

“I’m not ready for the next time yet,” he says, the corner of his mouth tugging up.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Paul kisses the scar line on Gurney’s jaw. “But I'll let you take a rest,” he presses his lips to Gurney’s nose, “and have a good sleep,” — and to the pulsing vein at his temple. “And then we’ll do it again,” he whispers against Gurney’s mouth, and the big hand frames his face before Gurney kisses him slowly and deeply, as if they have all the time in the world for each other.

When Gurney dozes off, still holding him, Paul remains wide awake, overflowing with new experiences and unable to sleep. He stares into the darkness, listening to the distant sounds of the sea and to the steady breathing next to him. His mind is blissfully blank, and everything that has been gnawing at him seems so far away and unimportant. He’s left with the simple fact that they now know each other in a way that the O.C. Bible describes. And that knowledge doesn’t feel like a sin, or deviancy, or a side effect of the heat. It feels like the deepest, most precious secret that will stay with him forever.

*

These are strange days, or rather nights, coming and going unnoticed because he loses the sense of time for a while, as people do in the quietness of subterranean caves. He opens his eyes to the rays of light falling through the slit window, and it looks like noon, but how many hours have passed since Gurney took him – he can’t tell. Not much, because he’s still sore, still unbearably horny, leaking, and outraged at the empty side of the bed next to him with a crumpled pillow and no Gurney in sight.

He vaguely remembers waking up in the dark, his whole body pulsating with urgent need, nudging Gurney out of sleep, and how Gurney responded—muttering groggily at first, then flipping him over onto his stomach and entering with almost no preparation. He recalls the fullness and the stretch, Gurney’s hips digging into his ass as he bottomed out, the rasp of pubic hair on his skin, Gurney's heavy body crushing him against the bed. The intensity of the quick release scoured his half-awake mind, and he thinks he might have cried from how good it felt to finally have what he so desperately needed. He soon fell back asleep as Gurney stroked his back soothingly.

That dim memory is enough for him to come, but the satisfaction is laughable compared to what he has with Gurney, and he feels hollow and lonely. He wants to bury his face in Gurney’s pillow and wait for him like this, wallowing in the scent. Instead, he makes a conscious effort to get up and go to the bathroom, where he washes himself with ritualistic meticulousness, though the familiar herbal scent of his soap now seems unpleasantly chemical.

Back in the room, Gurney is waiting for him, fully dressed and tasting like coffee as they kiss. Paul asks him about where he's been and how he’s feeling, and they even manage to talk for a few minutes before Paul’s hands undo Gurney’s fly and pull up his shirt, and then it’s all a blur again.

So much sex is exhausting, but it doesn’t stop Paul from wanting more. His drunken, bubbly giddiness is gone, and now he finds himself calm and strangely confident as he straddles Gurney, leaning in for a quick kiss and smiling at the sting of his beard.

“You must be sore,” Gurney says, running his hands up Paul’s thighs and around his waist. Paul is indeed sore, but as he carefully lowers himself onto Gurney’s co*ck, all the way down until his ring stretches around the thick base, the heat and fullness send delicious shivers through his entire body. He holds still, breathing deeply to adjust to the humming pain, and then his insides spasm as if trying to squeeze Gurney out.

“f*ck, Paul,” Gurney curses huskily, his thumbs pressing onto Paul’s hipbones. Paul waits a few more seconds before rolling his hips and starting to ride Gurney properly. The unfamiliar rocking movements put a strain on his thigh muscles, and he bends over a bit, digging his fingers into Gurney’s pecs.

Gurney’s chest rises and falls under his touch, his breath heavy but measured. Suddenly, the quietness of it all—the muffled slap of their skins, the moist blackness of Gurney’s eyes fixed on him with a new kind of intensity—builds into the sweet, cooling rush that washes over Paul, contrasting with the unyielding hardness inside him.

Do I have him now? Paul thinks. His need to move and take Gurney in grows so unbearable that he wants to moan from it, and he does. Gurney bucks under him, his breath hitching and hands gripping tighter on Paul’s waist, and this momentary slip of control doesn’t escape Paul’s attention. It’s as if Gurney is neglecting his own desires in favor of Paul, and if it weren't for his dutiful service, they would be doing it differently.

Paul can feel the tension in Gurney’s abs from holding back, though Gurney tries to hide it. His fingers circle Paul’s co*ck, finding the right rhythm to jerk him off in perfect sync with Paul’s movements. The sensations make every nerve in Paul’s body buzz with pleasure, and he basks in it, unable to slow down for even a second.

“Come on,” he breathes out, squeezing Gurney’s sides with his knees. “Come on, old man. Do it as you want.” There’s a tremor passing through Gurney’s thighs, and then he thrusts up, slamming to the hilt in one go.

Paul inhales sharply, barely noticing the burn from the stretch, focused only on the way his hole seems to be sucking on Gurney’s co*ck, the walls contracting around the thick volume, and it feels so dirty, and obscene, and the best Paul has ever felt in his life.

Gurney holds him by the waist, dragging Paul down with every thrust; and just seeing the powerful flex of his abs and hearing the wet smack of skin against skin almost brings Paul to the edge, eliciting weak, breathy noises from him.

Gurney f*cks him in deep, steady thrusts, the grip of his hands on Paul’s waist is strong enough to leave bruises. Paul arches from the sweet shudder rolling up his spine, the sensation swelling inside him, skin-crawlingly good, and then something twangs like a string’s been broken, knocking the wind out of him and making him spill over Gurney’s chest.

His insides tense around Gurney, who hammers in past the spasming walls, gasping a choked "Paul" at the same time with a heavy, fat throb followed by a burst of heat inside Paul. Gurney’s hips jutting forward, fingers digging in the slippery skin, and it’s like Paul can’t stop clenching and can’t breathe properly, pulled taut by the org*sm.

He crashes down on Gurney like dead weight, quivering from bone-deep relief; Gurney’s chest rises like a dome under his cheek, and he hears Gurney’s heart pounding.

“Why didn’t we do this before?” he asks, licking the saltiness from Gurney’s skin simply because he wants to. Gurney grunts an indistinct reply, still catching his breath.

“Like the last time we sparred,” Paul continues, resting his chin on his folded arms. Despite the pleasant weariness, he finds himself in the mood to talk. “Did you imagine it back then? I mean, us, f*cking?” He savors the word, thrilled to hear Gurney’s sharp inhale.

“You’re a little rascal, aren’t you?” Gurney says before rolling them both over onto their sides.

“So, did you?” Paul asks, grinning.

“I did,” Gurney says. The leisurely glide of his palm across Paul’s ribs borders on ticklish.

“And what else did you imagine?” Paul loves this lazy exchange, filled to the brim with exhausted contentment. Gurney smiles at him, eliminating the last inch between them, and his voice is a low, heated rumble against Paul’s skin.

“I imagined loving you in every possible way you would want me to.”

His words send sweet spikes of pleasure through the overworked muscles of Paul’s abdomen, but he feels so molten with satisfaction that he simply absorbs the fact that Gurney admits that he has fantasized about Paul just like that.

“Good,” he says as Gurney kiss-bites his neck. “I have so many plans for us. Do you want to hear?”

Gurney chuckles, scratching Paul lightly with his stubble. “Yes, I do.”

*

Sometimes Paul thinks that they can’t be any closer than they are now. It’s an unsettling thought, one that inevitably leads to the question of what will happen to them afterwards - the question Paul has avoided since the moment Gurney walked into his bedroom, soaked from the rain, with raw desperation in his eyes. But Paul finds him entertaining a similar line of thinking when they lie, slowly recovering in the calms of love, and Gurney says contemplatively: “The Council meeting must be over.”

Paul hums, stroking his forearm and the back of his hand, lingering on each knuckle, rough, hard and shaped like a plum stone. The Landsraad Council, and the castle, and everything before Migido seem insignificant compared to this impossible existence where every second stretches into a lifetime.

“When it’s over, we’ll hear jets again, not just seagulls,” he says, feeling Gurney’s hand flex slightly under his fingertips.

“Fair point. Want to have another picnic?” Gurney asks, and Paul smiles, remembering his unsuccessful attempt to talk the old man into spending the heat with him.

“I’m afraid our chairs didn’t survive,” he says, realizing he never brought them back to the house after Gurney left.

“Torn apart by the storms of love,” Gurney intones, a quote that makes Paul gasp and turn to face him.

“I swear I was thinking about that poem just a second ago,” he blurts out.

“Really?” Gurney meets his frantic joy with serene contentment. “Well, no wonder, since that's what’s happening to us.”

“That’s what’s happening to us,” Paul echoes, caught off guard by how easily Gurney admits that whatever is happening between them goes beyond just spending the heat together. These little phrases and other subtle signs of tenderness and care give Paul hope that what they have will continue even when they’re back at the castle.

All his life, he has been taught not to avoid the truth, yet now he fails again and again, clinging almost desperately to Gurney, nuzzling into his chest as if he could hide from the fact that all this will soon be over. He’s already noticed how it's harder for him to catch Gurney’s scent when he’s not around, how he can sleep longer without waking up every few hours, and how there’s not as much slick as before. While his body is slowly returning to normal, he himself isn’t ready to let go just yet.

This sense of the approaching end eliminates the last restraints he has, along with the shame of being wanton and demanding. “Let’s do it on all fours,” he says one night, eager to exert the power he has over Gurney while he still can. Gurney watches him for a moment, his expression unreadable, then places a scratchy kiss on Paul’s cheekbone. “As you wish, my lord,” he says with a smile.

”I might think of that now every time you use honorifics,” Paul grins. In seconds, Gurney’s warm bulk is off his side, but Paul doesn’t follow. Instead, he stretches his legs until he can touch Gurney with his feet. Gurney shakes his head, sitting up on the bed.

“You lazy bones.” The reproach comes more like an affectionate purr, making Paul chuckle.

“I like when you manhandle me,” he says, poking Gurney’s side with his toes, and before he can add anything else, Gurney’s hands are on his waist, not so much flipping him over as guiding him to lie on his stomach, and then gently pulling him upwards until Paul is on his hands and knees, aroused just by being exposed in front of Gurney like this.

The firm, broad palms slide up and down his back, making Paul arch into the touch as anticipation floods him. He feels the warmth emanating from Gurney’s body right behind him with the backs of his thighs. He tries to press closer, but Gurney holds him in place with both hands.

"Do we have lube?" he asks, the matter-of-factness of his tone contrasting starkly with his fingers kneading Paul’s ass.

"Do you think we need it?" Paul manages to say, growing a bit impatient with Gurney for not touching him properly.

"But you'll be sore," Gurney says, his thumbs drawing circles on Paul’s skin.

"’S'fine," Paul mumbles, thinking there's still enough slick and Gurney's just being contrary for no apparent reason. "I like it like that. Just… rough," he says, shifting his weight from one knee to the other, his untouched co*ck hanging heavily between his legs and dripping precome on the sheets.

"So you want it to be rough?" There's an unusually smooth cadence to Gurney’s voice, as if he’s deliberately stalling for time to drive Paul into a frenzy.

“Gurney, come on—” Paul begins indignantly, only to gasp sharply the next second when calloused fingers wrap around his co*ck, giving him only a couple of nice, firm strokes that are enough for Paul to let out an undignified mewling noise, his hips jerking uncontrollably. Gurney steadies him, resting both hands on his waist, leaving his co*ck without attention again—surely only to tease. The slow slide of his palms over Paul’s thighs and ass is anything but rough, and despite the relaxing caress, Paul finds himself tense with anticipation of what Gurney will do next. When he feels the soft lips and prickly stubble pressed to his tailbone, he’s still not sure what this is about. Then, his cheeks are spread apart, and there’s a warm, humid breath against his hole followed by a brush of a hot, wet tongue.

“Whuh—” Paul rasps out, turning his head just in time to see Gurney looking up at him.

“Do you want me to stop?” Gurney says quietly - and, god, what kind of question is that?

“Please don’t stop,” he pleads in a ragged whisper. I would never want you to stop, he thinks as Gurney’s hand is around his co*ck again, please, never stop, please do with me whatever you want. The second wet touch against his entrance is still shocking enough for him to sputter a curse. Gurney rolls his tongue along the crack, slathering the sensitive skin with saliva, licking broadly over his hole, making it tighten at the contact. Paul’s sure that he’ll come the very moment Gurney does this again, because it’s just… It’s not supposed to feel that good, at least compared to the firm ring of Gurney’s fingers around his twitching co*ck. It must be some heat thing, one that makes him drop his head in submission and arch to meet Gurney’s mouth.

The tongue probes inside, stretching him open, until Paul feels himself clamping down on that moist, supple hotness that withdraws to slide maddeningly across his spasming rim, gathering the slick. After several seconds of this insistent, impossible caress, a pulse starts thrumming in his ears, drowning out every other sound — and it’s not just from the nerve-fraying sensation, but from the idea of Gurney eating him out, and doing it god-damned perfectly, because just as Paul is about to come, Gurney squeezes the base of his co*ck and pauses this sweet torture, gently biting at his ass cheek.

Soon Paul is a drooling, whining mess; his hands are so wobbly that he collapses onto his elbows, desperate for Gurney to finish it and ready to beg. The wave of tremor from the almost-there org*sm passes through him with each new friction of Gurney’s fingers around him, and he can’t bear it any longer — the obscenely kiss-like licks, soft and sloppy; the scratch of stubble; the calloused thumb rubbing the slit of his leaking co*ck. The crazy, deafening drum of blood in his head halts abruptly; his whole body tenses for a fraction of a second, and then finally erupts with release. Gurney mercilessly milks him through it, until Paul’s knees slide apart and he’s flat on his stomach, blissfully numb to everything except the pressure of Gurney’s hands on the small of his back.

Paul turns his head — barely enough for his words not to be muffled by the pillow — and says in a strained voice, “Do it now.” He registers a slight dip of the mattress, then Gurney grips his waist, yanking him upward until they are flush together, Gurney’s co*ck gliding between his cheeks with deliberate slowness. “Please,” Paul begs, weak from exhaustion and so, so terribly empty, “please, Gurney, f*ck me. I need you now. Please—”

There’s a silent, ever-conscious part of his mind acknowledging that this pathetic plea is his heat speaking for him, but it doesn’t really matter because he wants the same thing anyway, even more than that. When Gurney thrusts inside him, digging his fingers into Paul’s waist and setting a punishing pace from the start — rough and perfect just like Paul wanted it — something feels off in his brain, like his body has been set on autopilot. He can’t control the way his spine curves as he meets the punishing jabs, nor can he hold back throaty moans escaping his mouth, matching Gurney’s ragged breath. He can’t even say if he’s hard again because his sole focus is on the thick length slamming into him, eliciting bursts of dizzying pleasure every time it rubs over his prostate.

The simmering sensation under his skin doesn’t grow more intense; it just lasts and lasts, even after Gurney grabs his hips and drags him closer, lodging deep inside him and coming in long pulses. His groan shakes Paul to the core, and Paul clenches around him, not involuntarily this time, but consciously tightening his muscles. He’s immediately rewarded by Gurney’s gasp as he bucks forward, crushing Paul down with his weight.

Gurney’s bulk squashes him against the mattress, and Paul is reeling, so happy he wants to laugh. He can feel Gurney’s wet forehead pressed against the back of his neck, the hot breath tickling the skin between his shoulder blades, followed by prickly kisses and a heated, gruff whisper: “How come you’re so perfect? Because you are. So, so beautiful. You’re so beautiful.” Paul can’t help but smile at how even Gurney Halleck, a true poet at heart, isn’t immune to saying all sorts of silly things in bed.

When Gurney rolls off him and catches his mouth in a surprisingly hungry kiss, Paul tastes the saltiness of his own slick on his tongue. Gurney blinks at him sleepily, settles into a more comfortable position and pulls Paul along with him with an unwavering possessiveness that Paul sees as another sign of how deeply Gurney is affected by this. I f*cked him out, he thinks, weirdly proud of himself. He registers the all too-familiar feeling of come slipping out of his ass and knows he should get up to clean himself and Gurney, but he just doesn’t have the strength for it anymore.

“I should go get a wet towel or something,” he whispers against Gurney’s lips and, despite his words, snuggles closer.

“Yeah,” Gurney agrees, his eyes already closing. “It’s gonna be a mess tomorrow,” he mumbles, his hands wrapping tightly around Paul’s sweaty back. Paul hums into his shoulder and falls asleep the very next second.

*

The next day, it’s not the predictable mess that worries him; it’s the fact that he wakes up to see the ray of morning light on the wall. It means that he slept through the night for the first time since his heat had started, and what is it if not a sign of the end?

Turns out, Gurney was right when he asked about the lube, because Paul’s less... wet now, and notably so. He suspects that in a couple of days they will have to use something, and after giving it some thought, he rummages through the black box and finds what he's looking for under the velvet-lined top tray. Thankfully, the lube smells of nothing when he rubs a drop of it with his fingers, but the tube is small and clearly going to run out soon if they keep having sex as often as they do now. The thing is, Paul doesn’t know how much time they have left.

He puts together dates and symptoms, doing a hasty calculation and realizing with a jolt that the last day of his heat should be tomorrow – and this is probably why he’s able to focus and finally think about it. This realization drives him to the verge of panic, his heart beating so fast in his chest that he has to recite the mind-calming litany, drawing long, steady breaths as he closes the box and hides the lube in the nightstand.

His mind whirls frantically, structuring the chaos of emotions and facts into possible outcomes of what’s going to happen next. First of all, his calculation might simply be wrong; biological cycles are not that precise, especially in his case. Secondly, even if he tells Gurney that the heat will be over in a day, they can’t fly back to the castle without making sure that Paul doesn’t attract alphas with his scent anymore, because discretion was the whole bloody point of hiding here in the first place. Wherever they decide to leave Migido – whether it be tomorrow or next week – he’s sure that what they have with Gurney won’t disappear once they’re home.

But he knows Gurney too well to believe that he would change his mind so quickly. The stubborn old man probably still imagines himself helping Paul out with his temporary insanity — and that could not be further from the truth. Whatever Paul tells him now will be written off as a side effect of the heat, and though this unshakeable doom spiraling irritates the hell out of Paul, he understands why Gurney is like this.

Everything he is now — a loyal lieutenant of House Atreides, a highly efficient warmaster, a jovial troubadour warrior, an overprotective and grumpy mentor — is a product of the string of tragedies that shattered his previous life to the core. Paul can’t fathom how damaging it can be to deal with even one of these things — the loss of your family or years in the slave pits. Such wounds don’t heal. And the young man captured by the Harkonnens all those years ago would be far easier to convince than the old soldier Paul knows.

What he needs is time; he has to wait till Gurney can see for himself that it’s not just bloody hormonal fluctuations; that it’s not only Gurney’s scent making Paul’s knees go soft but simply the memory of the last night.

Paul expects them to spend a long, sleepy day alternating between cuddling and f*cking, but Gurney, who seems to have noticed the melancholy shift in his mood, drags him outside. This is the first time Paul is leaving the house since their morning coffee on the beach.

Several days after the storm, Migido still looks battered: the thick dog rose bushes near their house are all tangled up, the ground beneath them littered with leaves and petals; the sedge is rain-beaten and bent into the sand; the pits and dried puddles left by the flooding have rearranged the dunes, forcing him and Gurney to find a new path downhill to the shuttle. But despite the too-bright sun that hurts Paul's eyes, it feels as if the air on Migido has multiplied, washed clean by the storm and bearing the intoxicating taste of moist freshness and sea salt.

"What if we can't get it started again?" he asks, bumping Gurney's shoulder as they walk to the shuttle, which has sunk a bit into the sand but otherwise looks undamaged.

"We hunt seagulls for a living," Gurney deadpans. Indeed, it's like the whole flock of them is covering the fuselage and wings, not reacting to Gurney's angry "Shoo! Shoo!"

“Let’s send a distress call to Thagasta about our shuttle being hijacked by ill-disposed aves.”

“I’m telling you, they’re getting brazen,” Gurney mutters, cursing as he sees the array of white smudges on the shuttle's skin. “Bloody birds.”

To the chuckling Paul, his grumbling sounds all too familiar, and for a stark moment, he’s back in time, before Migido and the heat, when his friendship with Gurney wasn’t complicated by…Just wasn’t complicated.

Now he can’t shake the feeling that by leaving the house, they have crossed the invisible borderline that separates lovers from old friends like a power field protection. He's surprised to find himself lacking the courage to walk over to Gurney, who is sitting in the pilot seat, and claim his mouth for a kiss. Somehow it doesn’t seem appropriate here, in the shuttle that suddenly reminds him so much of home. Is this how it’s going to be—them just slipping back into their old selves and ignoring what happened for the rest of their lives? Paul doesn’t like it at all.

Oblivious to Paul’s thoughts, Gurney tinkers with the controls and starts the engine; its low rumble is immediately followed by the noisy flapping of wings and startled screeches as the seagulls finally take off.

“Are we going somewhere?” Paul asks, leaning against the wall and trying to sound casual and relaxed, though he feels none. “I wouldn’t mind visiting Thagasta.” Gurney turns to him, switching off the engine a little too abruptly. Gotcha, Paul thinks, not even trying to hide a satisfied smile.

“Just wanted to check how it survived the storm,” Gurney says, adding apologetically, “And I'm not sure it would be safe for you to travel there now.” Sometimes it’s so easy to catch him off guard that it's actually endearing.

“So you can still smell me?” The slightly panicked expression on Gurney’s face proves Paul’s guess about the border because that’s the kind of reaction he'd seen in their first days on Migido.

"Not as good as before, but that's how it's supposed to be after we..." Gurney is gesturing at the windshield rather than the person he rimmed last night, so Paul decides to set the record straight.

“After we f*cked?” he asks as he steps closer, prompting Gurney to spin his chair around to face him.

“Look—” he falls silent the moment Paul takes another step and kneels in front of him. And God, Gurney looks gorgeous from here, his brow furrowed, a drop of sweat trickling down his temple, the washed-soft T-shirt doing nothing to hide the swell of his chest muscles. Paul spreads Gurney’s thighs and leans forward, pressing kisses on the tense abs through the fabric.

“What are you doing?” Gurney grabs him by the shoulders, trying to push him away.

“Hands.” Paul's voice drops to a low, warning pitch he didn't know he was capable of, and Gurney clutches at the armrests instead.

“Paul…” The soft reproach is meant to appeal to Paul’s conscience. Paul looks up, taking it as an invitation to talk.

“I just want to suck you off,” he says. Gurney’s flushed, breathless look and the increased heat that Paul can feel at such close distance are more telling than anything he’s about to hear. “You did it to me,” he adds, sliding his palms up Gurney’s thighs, mirroring the soothing caress he has experienced so often these days.

“I’m not…objecting,” Gurney says with a nervous smile. “But maybe we should get back to the house?

“Why can’t we do it here?” Paul asks, genuinely interested in the answer. He’s not sure if Gurney is consciously aware of the border, but he should at least explain this to himself somehow. Gurney’s expression shifts to something less flustered, as if resigning to the fact that Paul is kneeling before him. He traces Paul’s jaw with the back of his fingers, slow and gentle, and at this tenderness, Paul feels almost ashamed to have put him in such a tight spot.

“We can do it here, if you want,” Gurney says, tucking a lock of hair behind Paul’s ear and smiling at him with a heart-melting warmth that seems incongruous with the crude reality of what Paul is about to do.

All his previous experiences had been a mix of lust and excitement, and despite the undeniable pleasure, it had always felt more like a bodily function rather than something done out of affection—perhaps because he had always been on the receiving end. Or maybe it was simply because he had never had the chance to do it with the man he loves.

“I do,” he says, and before Gurney can distract him again, nuzzles his crotch, feeling the hot, hardened shape of Gurney’s co*ck through his fatigues. Gurney bucks up with a hiss, and there’s a distinct twitch under Paul’s lips.

“Take yourself out,” he commands, pulling back to see the wet spots on the gray fabric where his mouth had been just a second ago. Gurney obeys after a shocked pause, fumbling awkwardly with his fly. His co*ck is fully hard already, dark, and bobbing an inch away from Paul’s face. As he tugs Gurney’s pants and underwear all the way down to his ankles, forcing Gurney to lift his hips, the smooth head smears a bead of precome along Paul’s cheek.

“Sorry,” Gurney says hoarsely, gripping the base tightly, and from the way he holds his breath, Paul can tell he’s afraid to move. Paul does it for him, turning a little so that the co*ckhead is pressed against his closed lips. He laps tentatively at the slit, then opens wider, sealing his lips around the spongy tip and hearing Gurney’s sharp inhale. Paul doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing—his plan wasn’t that detailed—but he hopes that his instincts will be enough to make up for his lack of experience. After all, his only goal is to make Gurney enjoy this as much as Paul is enjoying it himself.

He hollows his cheeks, suckling on the head, while moving Gurney’s hand away to wrap his palm around the shaft. His knees already ache from the punishing hardness of the dialuminium floor, but the pain serves him well, distracting him from seeking his own pleasure. Paul sinks his head down, tracing the slide of his fingers around Gurney’s co*ck with his lips, and almost gags as the hot tip brushes his soft palate, causing him to pull away—too quickly for Gurney not to notice.

“You don’t have to—” Gurney starts, cupping Paul’s face and wiping the string of saliva from the corner of his lips with his thumb. Instead of answering, Paul takes him in again, now trying to match the up-and-down bobbing of his head with his hand pumping the co*ck, and it seems to work as Gurney curses breathlessly. Paul follows the found rhythm, adjusting to the weight and heat of the flesh filling his mouth with each new friction. Though he tries to breathe through his nose, his head begins to swim from the lack of air and the concentrated scent. He pauses, licking a long stripe across the veiny underside, then mouths at the balls through soft, loose skin.

Looking up, he wants to laugh at the dazed shock on Gurney’s face. Whatever the old man thinks about their return to the castle, Paul makes sure he'll never fly that shuttle again without certain…memories.

“I want you to come in my mouth,” he says, rubbing his cheek against the co*ck still slicked with his saliva. Gurney lets out a choked sound, his eyes wild.

“Is that a ‘yes’?” Paul asks, his palm continuing to glide up and down, and Gurney seems too distracted to offer anything but a quick nod.

Paul’s jaw aches as he opens to sink back again, not quite expecting Gurney to buck into his mouth, dragging the heated length across Paul’s tongue till the co*ckhead nudges the back of his throat - Paul stills, drawing careful breaths and trying not to gag. Suddenly everything is just a fraction too much - the heavy, thick volume straining his lips wide open, the bitterness blooming on his tongue, Gurney’s hand pulling at his hair and guiding him to take it even deeper. He closes his eyes and lets it happen, bobbing down till the blunt tip grinds at the entrance of his throat. Paul gags with an ugly, gurgling sound, swallowing reflexively around the twitching thickness and then coughs as Gurney pulls back with a loud guttural groan. Good God, Paul needs to hear more of this.

The second thrust of Gurney’s hips is a little more bearable, though this time Paul gags as well, his eyes watering and his face burning as the swelling heat tries to force its way down his throat. Gurney is far from bottoming out since Paul’s hand is still wrapped around him, preventing him from going all the way in, but the inches that slide over Paul’s tongue already feel like more than he can possibly take. He moans around Gurney’s co*ck, trying to relax his throat and stop his stomach from contracting - and who knew that the B.G. training would be so useful in circ*mstances like this? For a while, Gurney is actually f*cking his mouth, groaning deliciously as Paul’s throat strains and eases at the intrusion. The fat throb of the co*ck on Paul’s tongue is probably the weirdest thing he has ever felt in his life, as well as the hot liquid hitting the back of his throat - so unexpectedly that he barely manages to swallow it down.

“Ah…f-f*ck,” Gurney rasps, thrusting up and nudging the roof of Paul’s mouth like he just can't stop. Paul pulls away, dropping his head on Gurney’s thick thigh and coughing so violently that for a moment he’s sure he’s going to retch. His abused throat is hellishly scratchy, and it hurts to swallow, his mouth is all slimy and filled with the acrid aftertaste of come, and his knees are sore as f*ck. And he wants to do it again so, so f*cking much. What a lazy, selfish bastard he has been all these days, always letting Gurney blow him and never reciprocating.

The gentle hand runs through his hair - a little shakily, as far as Paul can tell. “You okay?” Gurney asks.

Paul lifts his head with effort, his hands splaying on Gurney’s hairy thighs for support, and croaks, “Me okay.” He chuckles at how terrible he sounds, but it turns into a coughing fit. Gurney just stares down at him in a f*cked-out awe, catching his breath.

"God in heaven, Paul…" he finally says, rubbing his face with both hands. "You’re killing me." He's sitting bare-assed in the pilot seat, his pants still pulled down around his ankles. And they call this guy a romantic, Paul thinks with a smile.

“I’ll go get us something to drink,” he wipes spit from his chin and gets up stiffly from the floor, heading for the cargo section.

The crates are stacked right in the spot of darkness between the well-lit co*ckpit and the bright sunlight outside the lowered ramp. As he rummages through the top ones for water, it occurs to him that the shuttle is loaded to at least half its capacity, which means they have enough provisions to stay on Migido for several more weeks. It's either a cunning plan to prevent them from returning to the castle on time or the result of Gurney’s hypervigilance, which normally borders on paranoia. However, the prospect of staying here longer doesn’t seem that impossible to him, especially now that Paul knows exactly how he wants to spend his time.

He gulps the water greedily, noticing the rawness at the corners of his mouth from the recent strain. Instead of going back and sharing the water, he hops onto a crate and watches as a frowning Gurney meticulously tucks in his shirt.

Maybe that’s what awaits them - midnight meetings and stolen kisses in a dozen of their secret places in the castle, a mix of sorrow and excitement that such bittersweet love in the shadows should bring. Paul, with his position to uphold, can’t possibly ask for more, but even that would be enough, if only the old man would agree.

Gurney approaches him, stepping from the light, tugging Paul to his feet, kissing him, kissing him, kissing him - and this tenderness feels so unbearable that Paul can’t hold back a small, desperate sound when they pull apart.

“My heat is ending,” he whispers into Gurney’s mouth.

“When?” Gurney doesn’t seem surprised or distressed by the news.

“Tomorrow.”

“Good. We’ll give it a few more days, and then we can go home.” Just like that, Paul wonders, amazed at the lightness of Gurney’s tone.

“Or we can stay here a little longer,” he says, though he knows that they can’t - the Council meeting is over, Gurney has to get back to his duties, and Paul has to get back to his.

“As long as you want,” Gurney says, making Paul tilt his head a little and placing a chaste kiss on his forehead.

It occurs to Paul that whatever he asks Gurney now, the answer will be a variation of those words - and it won’t be a lie. At least, not the kind of lie that Paul’s Truthsay can detect. The thing is, his dear, loving, stubborn Gurney, Gurney the valorous, believes in his promise to stay with Paul as long as he wants - just as he believes that Paul will stop wanting him once the heat is over.

Only a week ago, Paul would have been enraged by this - and he was - but now, after everything that has happened between them, he’s simply acknowledging the fact that the man he loves has a complicated background, and Paul has to adjust if he wants this to work out. He has to stop being a self-absorbed prick and let Gurney process this at his own pace, without pushing him too hard.

Gurney holds him closer, peppering Paul’s face with kisses, palming his ass in an unmistakably suggestive way, and whispering, "Do you want me to?"

And even though Paul has been uncomfortably half-hard for a while now, he shakes his head. “No, it’s fine.” This time he wants it to be just about Gurney, without mixing it with the damned heat. “I found lube for us,” he adds. “Turns out it was in my magic box the whole time.”

He probably should refrain from these little provocations, but Gurney’s nervous look at Paul mentioning the box is so funny that he can’t help himself.

Gurney self-consciously clears his throat and asks, “Was it?”

“Uh-huh,” Paul tries to hold back a smile at Gurney’s unsuccessful attempt to feign indifference. "I'd have found it sooner if I’d opened the box a second time after discovering what’s inside."

Gurney frowns, puzzled: “So, you never..?”

“Yeah, I’ve never used anything from it,” Paul says, wondering if Gurney actually imagined him doing so. “Would you like me to?”

Besides the now-familiar shock on Gurney’s face, there’s something else in his expression—a barely visible darkening of his eyes, a slight twitching of his eyebrows—that makes Paul grin.

“Okay, just tell me exactly what you have in mind, and we'll see if I can make it happen.”

“Paul…” Gurney's exasperated words sound like a reproach, and Paul laughs, giddy from everything at once—Gurney's hilarious bewilderment, and all their days and nights on Migido, and the love that fills him to the brim.

“Sorry, but if you could only see yourself now,” he says, hugging Gurney by the neck with both hands in an apology for his misbehavior. Everything is fine. They are together now. Gurney can’t see it yet, but he will, sooner or later. And Paul will be waiting for him.

When they are outside the shuttle, Paul goes to see what has happened to the small beach behind the pines where he watched the Migido sunset. He makes his way to the surf through the scattered debris, occasionally picking up pieces of driftwood tangled in the green ribbons of smelly seaweed until he gets an armful and has to pile them on the sand to pick up some more. He doesn't realize what he's doing until Gurney calls to him from under the pines: “You need a hand there?”

Paul waves at him, and Gurney begins to clean his end of the beach, choosing what seems to be the heaviest driftwood. They're too far from each other to talk; even when they meet at the growing pile in the middle, they only share a smile, and somehow, it’s better than any words.

This simple, mindless work relaxes Paul, bringing him into a meditative state, and he barely notices the sting from the sunburn on the back of his neck. Soon there’s nothing left but sea sticks, which will probably be gone with the next high tide, so Paul goes to help Gurney, who's standing in front of a large, gnarled piece of tree trunk with twisted branches. Bleached into a pale gray by water and sun, it resembles the heavy bone of some giant deep-sea creature - even dragging it across the sand makes Paul’s muscles tense pleasantly.

“A big motherf*cker,” Paul grunts as they roll the trunk over near the pile of driftwood until the branches dig into the sand and it’s steady enough to sit on.

“Promise me you’ll stop swearing so much when we're back,” Gurney says in his teacher’s tone when they sit side by side, facing the sea.

“I f*cking promise you, man,” Paul says, immediately getting a jab in the ribs. “Gurney Halleck, you are a hypocrite,” he announces, rubbing his side. “Do you know how much you swear?”

"When was the last time I swore in front of you, you impudent fiend?”

Paul turns to him, raising his eyebrows wordlessly, and by the way Gurney’s eyes shift downward, no doubt looking at Paul’s mouth, he can tell that the old man remembers.

“That…doesn’t count,” Gurney manages, and Paul snorts out a laugh.

“Of course it doesn’t,” he drawls, nudging Gurney’s side with his elbow in return.

By the time they have cleaned the rest of the beach, there is a pile of debris in the middle of it, high enough to make a decent bonfire.

“Do you think they’ll see our fire from Thagasta?” he asks Gurney, whose sunburned face glows with cheerful satisfaction.

“I can call them on the radio and ask when we light it,” Gurney says, beaming. “Do you want to do it tonight?”

“Don’t know,” Paul shrugs. It would be nice to watch yet another sunset, sitting by the fire with Gurney - a perfect end to a perfect day, but somehow it seems more significant to him than it should. “And what do you think? Should we light it tonight?” he asks, suddenly very anxious about what Gurney will answer.

“Let’s save it for another day,” Gurney says, and Paul is overcome with the urge to thank him, though he can’t really say what for.

It is only later, as he sits at the kitchen table watching Gurney cook their dinner, that he remembers the dream he had a fortnight ago of himself dissolving into the ocean and then swimming back to the guiding light of the fire on the shore. The memory of it is so vague that he can’t tell if the place in his dream looked like Migido - it’s just the feeling of the warm, dark water around him, the distant flicker of the flame, and also the awareness that he's forgotten something important.

But now he's sure they'll light the fire on their last night here, and Gurney knows it too. It shouldn’t matter much because, were it not for Gurney, this place would mean nothing to Paul. But he will certainly miss their quiet evenings together and the way they can belong to each other, uninterrupted by duties, politics, terrible purposes, and looming catastrophes.

Chapter 7

Chapter Text

He makes a second attempt to escape, though this one is not as earnest as the first—he runs no further than his own bedroom, which feels desolate after all these days with Paul. Paul is sleeping soundly at the other end of the house, his body compensating for the strain the heat has put on it, and that’s the main reason Gurney left him to sleep off the exhaustion without an alpha at his side.

The heat is over. Paul’s scent is once again a familiar mix of sweat, soap, and clothes—fresh or not so fresh—and the fact that Gurney still finds it arousing has nothing to do with pheromones. He’s dangerously close to being infected by mood; at least, he can’t explain to himself why he keeps postponing their return to the castle. He could say it’s up to Paul, but if it were, they'd never leave Migido. Gurney recognizes the aftereffect of the heat, when the feverish urgency gives way to an attachment that can easily be mistaken for something more.

These days, the affection emanates from Paul in waves, palpable and undisguised, and totally undeserved by its object. Such a display of emotion goes against everything Paul has been taught all his life, and Gurney only adds to his own guilt by enjoying the unguarded adoration he sees in Paul’s eyes. He never thought anyone could look at him like that—it is something from his past, from the times before the Harkonnens and the slave pits.

When he chose to serve the Duke, he was driven not so much by gratitude to his rescuer as by a devastating desire to take vengeance on his captor. Beast Rabban was at the center of his life at the time, and what a miserable life it was. Blinded by rage, Gurney reduced his daily existence to planning his revenge, and though he pledged his allegiance to House Atreides, Leto had for a long time been a means to an end for him. It took Gurney years to get used to the Duke and his people treating him like part of the family, not just a hired sword. He couldn’t hope for more than to have things in his life that he wanted to protect; he has always been content with the future of becoming the second Thufir Hawat, mentoring generation after generation of Atreides until his knowledge is of use.

Even if his old foolish heart threw him such a curveball and he ended up falling for Paul, that future would still be possible. He could find solace in loyal service to the heir and wait for his improper desire to fade into a peaceful longing for what could never happen. Only now it has happened, and he knows so many things about Paul that he has no right to know, and that knowledge is as addictive as an intake of semuta.

Gurney dreads the moment when Paul finally realizes the role he willingly played in his heat. The chances of Paul being grateful to him, as Jessica has promised, grow slimmer with every day they spend on Migido: it’s one thing to process what happened in the safety of your home, with as much privacy and support from your loved ones as you need, and quite another to suddenly wake up to the fact that your alpha partner is an old, ugly lump of a man who has used your condition to satisfy his own needs.

Somehow, the solitude of his bedroom and the ambient night noises flowing through the open window feel more like a dream than the insanity of the last few weeks. He wasn’t supposed to get used to it, and yet here he is—running away only to spend the night wide awake, longing for Paul when it’s not even over yet. But it has to be soon. It has to be.

The approaching footsteps are so light that he can make them out only a second before the door opens to let a slender shadow in, and the very next moment, Gurney feels the familiar squirming warmth between his sheets, gasping as cold feet touch his ankles.

“I know you got tired of me,” Paul murmurs into his ear, “but you just have to hold on for a few more days.” Gurney - overwhelmed, defeated - wraps his arms around Paul, pressing his face into the center of Paul’s skinny chest, breathing him in, shamefully relieved that he could have this for just one more night.

“What did I do? Snored too loud? Kicked you in my sleep?” Paul demands, propping his head on one hand, his smile gleaming in the moonlight.

“You do have sharp knees,” Gurney admits, huffing out a laugh as Paul lightly kicks his leg. “I thought you needed some rest,” he says, and Paul sighs, reaching for Gurney’s face. His fingers run across the scar, feather-light and tender, tracing it from Gurney’s temple to his jawline.

“I could literally hear you from my room lying here in the dark, and overthinking,” he says in a dramatic whisper, making Gurney grin. “Old man, I…” he trails off, leaning in for a kiss - so forceful that their teeth clank together.

“Hey,” Gurney chuckles, cupping the side of his face, marveling once again at how crude his fingers look against Paul’s fair skin and fine bones.

Paul blinks at him owlishly, his expression somewhere between sleepy and awed, then nuzzles at Gurney’s palm, murmuring, “Stay with me for a little longer.”

From that night on, they move into Gurney’s bedroom, so he will remember the last days on Migido as filled with the brightest sunlight, the ear-splitting screech of what seemed like dozens of seagulls and the constant hum of flying jets.

This is his new old strategy—to memorize everything, every tiny detail, in the hope that he will be able to recreate it in his mind when the necessity arises, just as he did all those years ago in the slave pits. Back then, he used to lose himself in images of his childhood home until his grief was dulled to something bearable, though each time it became harder to tell the difference between memory and fantasy.

What he takes with him from Migido should be enough for the rest of his life: the outline of Paul lying on his side with his back to him, his waist and the curve of his hip looking feminine from this angle; the way he buries his face in Gurney’s neck to hide from the early morning sunlight; how he bites into Gurney’s shoulder when he org*sms; the hot silk of his pale skin; his kiss-stung mouth, his youthful impatience, his heart-wrenching tenderness. All of these memories will no doubt be spent, drop by drop, in the darker times to come.

They don’t talk about when exactly they will leave for home, but there's an unspoken understanding in the air that it will happen soon. Gurney can’t help but count down the moments when they do something for the last time, like the last time they watch a filmbook together, and Paul, snuggled up next to him, muses, “If it weren't for the blocker, we wouldn’t be spending so much time for nothing.”

“If it weren't for the blocker, I wouldn’t be here at all,” Gurney says, but Paul just chuckles lazily, looking at him from under his eyelashes.

“That I profoundly doubt. You’d spend a couple of days imagining all the terrible things that could happen to me and still fly here.” Despite Paul’s smug tone, Gurney smiles at how accurate his guess is.

“See? You know I’m right,” Paul says, tracing the old scar on Gurney’s hand, then adds quietly, “And I wouldn’t humiliate you by using the Voice on you.”

“I wouldn’t call it humiliating,” Gurney says after a moment's thought. “A little scary, yes, but very effective.”

“I’m sorry I scared you. Frankly, I didn’t know if it would even work.” Paul sits up on the couch, hunching his shoulders. “I trained with Mom, but I've never managed to find the right pitch… Until you.”

“I guess she’s more resistant to these things than I am,” Gurney says, running his hand soothingly down Paul's back. “Do you want to try it?”

“Try what?”

“Use the Voice on me. To see if you can find the right pitch.”

“Why on earth would you want me to do that to you again?” Paul stares at him, the haunted expression from a moment ago replaced with wide-eyed surprise.

Gurney shrugs. “I always thought the Bene Gesserit Voice was more of a strategic exaggeration than a real thing, but now I see how indispensable it can be for your safety. It’s a useful skill to learn.”

Paul is still clearly confused by his offer. “But you said you were scared.”

“How scared would you be if I attacked you with a sword?”

“It’s not the same,” Paul scoffs. “I can defend myself when we spar, but what defense do you have against the Voice?”

“I can plug up my ears for starters,” Gurney says, unable to suppress a grin as Paul rolls his eyes. “My point is that you trust me to stop at holding a blade to your throat, just as I trust you not to overstep with the Voice,” he says, resting his hand on the nape of Paul’s neck.

Paul bites his lip thoughtfully. “When you put it that way, it makes more sense.” He sighs, finally giving in to the idea. “What should I... order you?”

“Something simple,” Gurney finds himself strangely excited, partly because he now knows what to expect, and partly because he’s immensely curious to see if he can resist the attack this time. “Like getting you a glass of water or, I don’t know, opening a front door. Anything you want.”

“Something simple, huh?” Paul says dreamily, his nostrils flaring as he begins the breathing sequence, never taking his eyes off Gurney. The thrill of anticipation raises Gurney’s pulse to a heavy pounding in his ears, almost drowning out the sound of the command.

“Mark me.”

Just like before, his head vibrates from the otherworldly chorus of voices, reality snapping before his eyes too fast for him to react. He's dragged out of his body, only to be thrown back a few moments later when he pushes Paul down onto the couch and bites at his neck, not stopping even after a pained yelp. There’s another snap, and he’s finally in control, panting and staring at Paul’s grinning face in shock. Gurney hastily climbs off him and looks at the angry-red spot on his long, pale neck.

“Is it bad?” he asks, thinking of the sound Paul made.

“On the contrary, I think it’s perfect,” the imp has the audacity to answer, “How did you find my pitch?”

Gurney shakes his head, muttering, “I should have known better.” Did he really think Paul would command him to just get a glass of water? Was he really going to resist? Three weeks off duty and he’s already out of shape.

It's not until the next morning that he has a chance to assess the damage, when he opens the bathroom door and finds Paul standing in front of the mirror. The mark Gurney left on him isn’t just a hickey; it's a large, smudgy bruise that contrasts sharply with Paul's fair skin because of its dark purple color.

“God in heaven,” Gurney gasps as Paul turns to look at him.

“Yeah. Maybe we should stay another week until it disappears,” he says, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

“So that was your plan.”

“Do you think I’m that devious?” Paul says.

“Yes,” Gurney deadpans and steps around him, reaching for a toothbrush.

“Alright, old man,” Paul drawls, not a hint of regret in his eyes as he raises his chin to look at the horrible bruise again, “I owe you an apology.”

Gurney naively thinks that he’s talking about making breakfast, but when he returns from the bathroom, he sees Paul sitting on his heels in the middle of the bed, motionless and absolutely naked.

For a moment, Gurney is unable to do anything but halt, taking in the straight line of Paul’s back, hands folded on his thighs, and the way he tilts his neck just slightly, as if he wants to emphasize this pose of ultimate submission.

“Are you just going to watch?” Paul asks without raising his head.

The sheer insolence and daring in his tone makes something deliciously hot uncoil in Gurney’s lower abdomen. He’s still getting used to the commanding manner in bed, which seems only natural given Paul’s upbringing, but stands in stark contrast to any concept Gurney has of omegas.

It only takes a few steps for him to sit down on the edge of the bed and run the back of his fingers up Paul's spine, savoring the shuddering breath Paul gives at his touch. Despite the visible shift of muscle beneath the smooth skin, Paul’s back is boyishly narrow, his shoulders skinny, especially compared to Gurney’s own broad frame. He climbs onto the bed, settling heavily behind Paul, resting both hands on his slim waist. The dark curls falling down Paul’s neck look so invitingly soft that Gurney can’t help but bury his face in the untamed mess of hair, chasing the remnants of the familiar tingly scent.

He wonders fleetingly if this is going to be their last time as he presses his lips to Paul’s bare shoulder and reaches between Paul’s cheeks—only to be rendered speechless for the second time this morning by the feel of a hard, flat disk underneath his fingertips. In the startled pause that follows, he can tell that Paul is smiling, and he doesn’t need to see his face to know it’s true.

He tugs at the disk, afraid that he'll come on the spot, either from the act itself or from the breathless whimper Paul makes as his rim stretches around the fattest part of the plug and then clenches at nothing, unable to fully close and drooling slick and lube. Gurney scoops up some of it with unsteady fingers and slicks himself hastily, mashing the tip against the gaping entrance and taking a couple of deep breaths before hilting in. He can feel Paul’s back stiffening into a rigid arch, his insides clamping down on Gurney’s co*ck—madly, perfectly— and in that very second Gurney is sure that in all his life he has never wanted anyone as much as he wants Paul now.

He rolls his hips, splaying his hands over Paul’s fanning ribs and tense stomach, his nerves sizzling from the feeling of smooth, wet heat tightening and relaxing around him, and from the way Paul responds with a beautiful, broken moan — it’s another thing that Gurney will probably never forget: how amazingly vocal Paul is compared to his own reserve.

He sets a gentle pace at first, despite Paul not being as sinfully tight as usual thanks to the plug. When the tension finally bleeds from Paul’s spine and he starts meeting Gurney’s thrusts with feverish eagerness, Gurney grabs him by the shoulders with one hand and speeds up, guided by the small, breathy noises Paul makes and by the way he desperately clutches Gurney’s forearm, powerless before the tidal wave that will crash over them both in a second.

Gurney’s movements grow joltingly fast, almost viciously so — at least, he can’t slow down when he hears Paul crying out his name and sees him dropping his head to one side, almost as if it’s too heavy to hold straight. With Paul’s neck exposed like that, Gurney can see the mark he left earlier. He doesn’t know if Paul is displaying it on purpose or if it’s pure, uncontrollable instinct, but he bites into the bruised skin as his co*ck pulsates heavily, spurting out a load deep into the spasming heat. Paul goes pliant in his grip with a pained sob, so incredibly hot inside that it feels like their bodies are melting together.

The org*sm leaves Gurney disoriented. For a while, he can’t utter a word, can’t do anything but hold Paul tight, as if they were both brimming with electrical charge and would explode if they lost contact. This is too much, he thinks; this isn’t what a morning quickie in the aftermath of heat should feel like.

Paul appears to be in the same shell-shocked state, his fingers sinking bruises in Gurney’s forearm, the frantic beating of his heart against his ribs matches perfectly with the dull thudding of Gurney’s pulse in his temples.

When he’s sane enough to pull out, Paul lets go of his arm and scrambles to face him — tears are still trickling down his cheeks.

“Oh, f*ck, Paul…” Gurney mutters weakly, cradling his face and inspecting the inflamed skin around the bruise; it’s a miracle he didn't draw blood with his bite. “I’m so sorry.”

“What are you talking about?” Paul says quietly, his eyes wide, damp eyelashes clumped together. He tilts his head a little, allowing Gurney’s palm to slide down his neck to the blooming mark.

“I want more of these,” he whispers, as Gurney traces the uneven outline of the bruise with his thumb.

“I shouldn’t have done it,” Gurney says, but to his shame, he wants the same thing — to leave his marks on Paul’s perfect skin, to claim him again, to show anyone who dares to look: he is mine. He must be out of his mind to think about the Duke’s son like that.

“It was a fair trade,” Paul smiles, leaning in to plant a kiss beneath his jaw, and Gurney belatedly realizes he means the cut from a while back.

“No,” he says, making Paul look at him again. “Paul, it’s time for us to go.”

Gurney expects him to flare up at once, since the heat makes him uncharacteristically short-tempered, but instead Paul just nods, the smile on his face never fading.

“Do you want us to leave today?” he asks, as if it doesn't matter — as if what they have now will undoubtedly continue after they leave Migido.

“Tomorrow.” After the verdict is finally pronounced, Gurney feels no relief, nothing, just a sharp pain in his chest at the thought that it really is over now.

“Then tomorrow it is,” Paul says calmly, both hands on his shoulders, and Gurney looks away, unable for a moment to bear the unquestioning, unyielding love bordering on devotion he sees in Paul's eyes.

Paul doesn’t leave his side all day. He’s quiet and clingy, almost as Gurney remembers him being at the beginning of the heat, but now there’s not a trace of shyness in the way he invades Gurney’s personal space — without a second thought, as if he’s sure he’s welcome there. He's not wrong, because Gurney has a hard time keeping his hands to himself when Paul is all f*cked-out softness, and even his most innocent, trivial gestures are full of sensual languor; his fingertips now and then probe the darkest part of the mark on his neck, eliciting a gentle shiver.

Gurney takes him for a farewell walk around the island, using a well-tried tactic to shake Paul out of this unresisting tranquility and back to his normal, defiant self. He also hopes it will be enough to distract him from how sweetly submissive Paul is, how he wordlessly obeys everything Gurney says, to the point where it doesn't seem to make any difference at all whether Gurney offers to fly home in an hour or to f*ck on a kitchen table. Though Paul would probably be more enthusiastic about the latter - and that’s another reason why Gurney needs some fresh air.

Nevertheless, he pays little attention to the breathtaking landscape around them, his thoughts returning to his last conversation with Lady Jessica, who had insisted that Paul should experience the heat at its worst. Now, as Paul silently takes his hand while they leave the house, he begins to understand what she meant.

Sex is a powerful tool in its own right: God knows how many dignitaries and nobles have fallen into this trap, paying dearly for what may not even be a dirty secret, but simply an ill-timed affair. For omegas, the threat should be a hundred times greater, because what Gurney sees in Paul goes beyond lust; it’s an outright desire to belong to someone. Whoever decides to use this against the Atreides heir will be a wise person indeed.

What Jessica called a rite of passage seems more like a lesson to him; perhaps she wanted to show her son how far the heat-induced delusions could go, and Gurney’s sole purpose is to illustrate the dangers that await Paul as an omega. Every time Paul looks at him, he is reminded of the sorry state the heat has left him in: the future Duke, blindly trusting his subordinate, exposing his vulnerabilities, infatuated with someone like Gurney— the least likely partner for him. And all this has unfolded in a matter of days, despite years of training and even basic common sense.

Lost in thought, he doesn’t notice them veering from their route and entering the sparse pine forest, where the sea shimmers—blue and infinite—unreachable like a promised land.

“You’ve been quiet today,” he says as they make their way between the crooked trees and mossy rocks. Paul squeezes his palm in a wordless response, refusing to let go despite the sweat and the heat. Gurney stops suddenly, their joined hands taut between them, and Paul turns to him with a questioning stare.

“Talk to me?” he asks, pulling Paul slightly closer, and as if they were dancing, Paul follows the hint of a movement, stepping back to rest his heavy head on Gurney’s shoulder. A boy lost in the midday woods. His wayworn lover. His future Duke.

“What about?” The question is no more than a puff of air on Gurney’s neck; the voice, husky from long silence, sounds almost sulky.

“Anything,” Gurney finds himself saying into the tangled mess of curls that tickle his face. “How do you find the weather today?”

Paul lets out his heady, contagious laugh, his arms tightening around Gurney’s waist.

“Terrific.”

Standing in the middle of nowhere, deep in a summer forest bathed in sunlight, with Paul leaning heavily against him, feels like a fragment of someone else’s dream, where the logic of events is lost the moment you wake up, but the sensation lingers. It could easily be one of Paul’s—a rare good one that makes him smile softly in his sleep.

“What do you think about us going back home tomorrow?”

Paul swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down against Gurney’s shoulder. "I think we've run out of excuses to stay here any longer.”

“But you would want to?” Gurney asks, though he already knows the answer.

Paul pulls back to look at him. “It’s not a matter of want, but of what needs to be done.” There is an endearing sprinkle of freckles across his nose and cheekbones, and a light stubble on his upper lip, untouched since this morning. “And you made it clear that you wanted the opposite.”

Paul's tone is equal parts petulance and sadness, making Gurney cradle his face and stroke the tender dips behind Paul’s earlobes with his thumbs. “Just as you said, my lord, it’s not a question of want.”

It amazes him how incredibly responsive Paul is even to such a simple caress; he sways just a fraction toward Gurney, heavy-lidded, his mouth slackening. It's impossible not to meet him there for a kiss that ends up being unforgivably long and dizzying, Paul pressing into him with hot insistence, groaning around his tongue, letting him in so readily that it alone leaves Gurney light-headed with arousal.

When they finally break apart, Paul wipes away the string of saliva with the same grim determination he might use to wipe blood from a split lip in the middle of a fight.

“If you call me your lord one more time while we’re here,” he says, catching his breath, “I’ll punch you.”

Gurney is too busy adjusting his pants to ease the uncomfortable pressure on his co*ck to notice the threat.

“Where are we anyway?” Paul looks around with the puzzled frown of someone who woke up sleepwalking.

“I have no idea, you led us here,” Gurney answers - not quite honestly, because there are so many things that led them to where they are now. He can’t even begin to name them.

“Did I? Yeah, I guess I did.” Paul sighs, then gives him a sideways glance, the corner of his mouth twisting up. “Thought we could take a shortcut to that altar and go do something sacrilegious.”

“Not a chance,” Gurney replies gruffly, picturing the flat stone in the open space and amused that his own thoughts are going exactly the same improper way as Paul’s.

“Don’t you have a taste for adventure, old man?” He interlocks their fingers again, tugging Gurney along through the sunlit heart of the grove and up the rocky hill, further into the wilderness where the sea breathes in the background, soothed by the noonday heat.

By the time twilight begins to settle in, they are back in the house. Paul volunteers to cook dinner—their last one, Gurney thinks—as the night air flows through the open front door and windows, cooling the sweat on his brow and bringing with it fragrances so unlike the ancient stones of Castle Caladan, yet already so dearly familiar.

There is no bitterness in the thought. This long summer day, the day they spend together, feels oddly normal, as if hundreds of such days await them in the future, which Gurney knows cannot be true. But hope is planted in him, unreasonable but unyielding, a small golden grain that he can’t ignore: whatever the real reason they found themselves here on Migido, they have at least one perfect day, and maybe, just maybe, Paul will remember it as the happy one, too.

“You’ve changed,” Paul says to him as they sit across from each other at the table, their meal finished. Gurney runs the hand over his head, finding more hair than necessary.

“Yeah, I might need a haircut when we are back.”

“That too,” Paul chuckles, casting down his eyes. "You didn't say anything about me sitting with my back to the door."

The empty living room behind him is full of shadows, the darkness creeping out of the corners as the light dies in the reddening sky visible through the glass walls of their house. Paul is right, of course; this is an inexcusable disregard for safety.

“I’ll watch it for you this time,” Gurney says, watching Paul instead of the front door - his thin, knowing smile, the inkblot of bruises at the base of his neck, a mole on his collarbone. The image of Paul from before shines through like a semitransparent layer, recognizable in the small details that will forever remain the same, but otherwise Paul has changed irreversibly - at least, in Gurney’s eyes, now that he's been burdened with an intimate knowledge of this face, which he's seen lit by tenderness and strained in the throes of pleasure, and which he won’t be able to forget as long as he breathes.

“Well, no need to watch anymore,” Paul says, getting up from the table. “Let’s go out and set it all on fire.”

The pile of driftwood is still in the middle of their beach and still not dry enough to ignite with a lighter, though Gurney makes several honest attempts while Paul mocks his camping skills with abandon.

“I think you should try friction,” he says, grinning down at Gurney, who is kneeling in front of it to rearrange pieces of wood.

“Go get us some jet fuel,” Gurney grumbles, not quite feigning irritation but certainly playing it up because he knows Paul will find it funny. After all, sooner or later he’s bound to fall back into the familiar role of a grumpy teacher confronting a bratty student. At least, he hopes it’s still possible, that their friendship hasn’t been damaged too badly.

Paul brings an entire can from the shuttle and splashes it liberally on the pile. When he throws the ignited lighter in, the fire roars up into the night, causing them both to step back from the burning heat.

“I smell like gasoline,” Paul announces, taking off his shirt and bending down to unlace his boots. “I’m going for a swim, and you watch our fire.” As soon as he’s barefoot, he pulls down his pants—underwear and all—and practically runs into the sea as if he’s late for something. Gurney watches his pale, naked slimness, only able to look away when Paul is far enough out to dive in and start swimming.

Gurney picks up Paul's clothes and boots and sits down on the sand in front of the fire. He makes an effort to spend this time not worrying about Paul swimming too far from the shore, dreading tomorrow, or sulking over his own petty grievances, but remembering this night in its entirety.

The smell of smoke and shadows swaying in and out of the circle of flickering orange light. The monotonous lapping of the surf. The sky, coruscating with stars and satellites. The outlines of maritime pines, their faint aroma in the distance. The contrast between the wafts of heat on his face and the cool night air on the back of his neck. He has a feeling that he will be revisiting the memory of this night many, many times, searching for strength and solace, reminding himself that there were moments of pure happiness in his life.

The wickerwork of shadows and flames, along with the soft crackling of the fire, distracts him enough for a cautious “hey” to startle him. Paul steps into the light, wet and naked as a water sprite, shivering with cold and a little breathless. Gurney opens his knees wider, wordlessly inviting him closer, and in seconds, Paul’s back is pressed to his chest, and there he is —drenched, trembling, and skinny in Gurney’s arms.

“Do I still smell like gasoline?” he asks.

“No, you smell like seaweed,” Gurney says, burying his nose in Paul’s wet hair. He can feel the goosebumps on Paul’s skin as he rubs it back to warmth, encouraged by the small, satisfied noises Paul makes.

“I just remembered dreaming about this fire,” Paul says after a while. His shiver is gone; he’s warm enough to rest the back of his head on Gurney’s shoulder and stretch his long legs forward on the sand.

“Was it a good dream?” Gurney whispers, his lips brushing the shell of Paul’s ear.

“Felt like it. You were there too, waiting for me by the fire.” His quiet words are drowned out by the sounds of the night around them. “I couldn’t remember it was you at first, and now, when I was swimming, I saw you sitting there, and it all came back to me.”

“So it was a prophetic one?” He literally knows nothing about Paul’s strange dreams; they’ve never talked about it, but it always seemed to him more like Jessica’s influence than anything real.

“I have never thought that a prophecy could actually be about something good.” Paul shifts in his arms, looking up to the stars; Gurney follows his gaze to see a string of flickering satellites, crossing the sky above their heads. The thousand-eyed darkness stares down at them as they huddle together on the deserted beach, in the light of their fire, which will burn out before dawn.

“My planet Arrakis is so beautiful when the sun is low,” Paul breaks the silence so abruptly that for a moment Gurney is unable to grasp what he’s talking about.

“What?” he asks, his arms tightening around Paul’s bare shoulders.

“Dune,” Paul says. “We are leaving Caladan, Gurney.”

The thought of leaving Caladan for Dune seems so foreign to Gurney, so incongruous with this beach fire in the summer twilight, with the warmth of Paul’s naked body pressed against him, that he is not at all surprised it has never crossed his mind during their weeks on Migido. It’s as if he has developed a blind spot for it all: the Reverend Mother, the gom jabbar, the Harkonnen animals.

“It hasn’t been decided yet,” he offers, though they both know that the only decision that matters is the Emperor’s, and it has already been made. The future has been prepared for House Atreides - a trap, a death sentence in the form of Arrakis, and how reckless it was of him to forget it, when his immediate duty is to protect Paul and to explain to him the gravity of what’s going to happen.

Paul sighs, his chest rising and falling under Gurney’s touch. “We are meant to go there, just as we are meant to be here with you tonight. This future cannot be avoided. I see it so clearly now.”

“No one is meant to do anything, Paul. You could be left with no choice or manipulated into it, but nothing is predestined.” The elfin face of his younger sister swims to the forefront of his mind, followed by a painful spasm somewhere between his lungs. She wasn't supposed to die in a pleasure house for Harkonnen troops, and Beast Rabban wasn’t supposed to leave that scar on Gurney’s face; he did it because he finds joy only in torture and destruction, raised by the Baron like a rabid dog devoid of compassion. A series of choices led to the murder of Gurney’s family, not blind fate.

“The choice has already been made,” Paul says, as if he's been reading Gurney’s mind. “All we are left to do is to deal with the consequences. Accept facts, calculate risks, and account for uncertainties in making our own choices on top of the choices of others.” The fluency of his speech and the flatness of his tone reveal a well-learned Bene Gesserit maxim rather than his own thoughts. “What we call destiny is, in fact, a prediction of the most probable outcome, no more and no less.”

“Most probable doesn’t mean the only one.” Due to his love of poetry and ancient tales, the Bene Gesserit narratives always struck Gurney as aggressively manipulative and tainted by bad infinity. “And yet, by labeling that possible future as destiny, you are led to believe it is inevitable and do nothing to avoid it.”

“Not necessarily. You acknowledge the factors you can't change and use them to your advantage. Take my father, who believes that His Majesty has set a trap for our house by giving us the fief of Arrakis. And yet, he sees not only the mortal danger in the now inescapable future of going there, but also an opportunity.”

“He’s a great optimist, your father,” Gurney chuckles bitterly. He’s being unfair - Leto’s optimism is nothing more than a facade, the duty of a head of the House.

Paul wriggles free from his arms, turning to face him, and climbs astride his thighs with unapologetic insistence. If it’s an attempt to end an uncomfortable conversation, it's definitely working, because for the life of him, Gurney can’t have a naked Paul on top of him and not think about sex.

“Do you think we will fail on Arrakis?” Paul demands, looking down at him, his mouth thinned into a tight, haughty line.

“I think we have a choice other than mounting the scaffold our enemies have set up,” Gurney says, his hands gliding down the muscles beneath the smooth skin, over two dimples on the small of Paul’s back, and to the slight swell of his ass, covered in sand. My lovely, beautiful lord, he thinks.

Paul’s lips curl up into a wry smile. “Going renegade and fleeing the Imperium? You call that a choice?”

Gurney shouldn’t be surprised that Paul's reaction is identical to Leto’s - Paul is his father’s son, after all - but somehow he expected Paul to show more pragmatism. Apparently, Bene Gesserit training wasn’t enough to quell the famous Atreides honor that attracted so many loyal soldiers to the Duke, including himself. However, when it comes to Paul, he can’t help but notice its dangerous naivety: a noble disregard for survival that he, a commoner, finds so inexplicable.

“Not to flee, but to take ourselves beyond the reach of Harkonnens and Sardaukars,” he says, echoing the same points he used in his argument with the Duke.

“To surrender without a fight. To live the rest of our lives on the run, being hunted like wild game.”

“Yes, if the alternative is slaughter.” The words hang heavily in the air, revealing his primitive fear of voicing the worst of the future aloud, as if he were reluctantly making a prophecy himself.

The flickering flame casts uneven light on Paul’s face, shadows drowning half of it in ink-black darkness, altering his features and transforming his smile into something ruthlessly confident — the marble face of an ancient statue that has witnessed this world for millennia.

“There are multiple alternatives, Gurney.” Despite the strangeness of Paul’s expression, Gurney recognizes that voice, its velvety cadence settling inside him like the sweetest bait on a deadly hook, ready to be pulled. “And by denying all but the worst, you show yourself to be a total fatalist.”

Paul doesn’t understand. He simply can’t—not just because of his age or the sheltered life that has confined his experiences to training grounds and theoretical knowledge, however exquisite they may be. Over the years, Gurney has realized that it's almost impossible to convey the terrible reality of having your home destroyed and your family killed to someone who hasn't faced similar circ*mstances. As he grew closer to the Atreides, observing their lives—shadowed by calamities yet happy—and becoming accustomed to their generous sharing of that happiness and love with him, what had once seemed like frustrating ignorance became something to cherish.

Of course, Paul doesn’t understand, and, God willing, he never will, for Gurney carries the burden of this grim knowledge to shield him from the same horror and despair and to protect his House at all costs.

His fear that Paul will distance himself after the heat, disgusted by Gurney's actions, seems ridiculous compared to what awaits them—the gom jabbar, the Harkonnens, the desert planet; challenges much larger and much more dangerous. His eyes grow hot and tingly, and he nuzzles Paul's neck, nibbling gently at his skin to conceal this unwanted display of emotion.

“And what do your prophetic dreams tell you about Dune?” he asks, holding Paul closer, so tightly that it must be obvious how desperately Gurney doesn’t want to let him go.

“That it’s going to be sad times for us,” Paul murmurs, suddenly sounding not like himself, but like someone older, speaking from the distance of all those years ahead. Gurney hopes that Paul has many years ahead of him—sad times, happy times, all kinds of them—and that he will be here long after Gurney himself is gone.

When they're back in the silence of their bedroom, Paul doesn’t let him turn off the light, and Gurney uses this last chance to look at him properly, to memorize the constellation of moles and freckles on his skin and the lines of his body, softened by the glow of the suspensor lamp, to savor his every gasp and cry of pleasure, every shudder coursing through him. Things Gurney shouldn’t know. Things he will never forget.

“Mark me there,” Paul tells him, his face glistening with perspiration, his mouth carmine and moist in the immediate aftermath of their lovemaking, “so that only you can see.” He puts his fingers just below the tightened bud of his nipple, showing Gurney where he wants it, and there's not much to do but obey.

Paul guides him as he leaves marks on the taut stomach, on the milky skin of the inner thighs, near the collarbone, on the underside of Paul’s arm, and by the end, he’s painfully hard again from how wrong it feels, this last-minute attempt to claim someone who shouldn’t be his in the first place, and from how much pleasure he takes in it.

The last time he takes Paul, they are both delirious from exhaustion, and the night has already faded into a gray predawn. Paul’s thigh muscles tremble as he squeezes Gurney’s sides, oblivious to everything but the chase for release, oversensitive to the point that every thrust of Gurney’s hips makes him whimper. Gurney isn’t much better, he can’t tell if he’s hurting Paul — he probably is, because there is no tenderness in it, no care, just burning desperation.

“Gurney,” Paul pants, short nails scratching his back painfully. It’s unclear what he’s begging for, and Gurney doesn’t have much to offer, only press him closer and ram deeper, barely registering the hot, damp drag of Paul’s co*ck against his lower abs. He's not sure if he can come again, he's not sure if Paul can either, because they've been wearing each other down for hours, too much, too long, and...Paul tenses in his arms, biting into his shoulder to muffle a sob; his hole contracts around Gurney at intervals, milking the org*sm out of him, strangling him out, but he keeps grinding against the clenching walls, keeps moving together with Paul until they're both are drained of power.

His muscles vibrate with overexertion as he slowly recovers, noticing the bitemark burning on his shoulder and Paul sniffing as if he’d suddenly caught a cold. Gurney forces himself to look at Paul’s face, expecting to see tears of pain, but finds only wide-eyed wonder.

“There it is,” he whispers, his lips brushing Paul’s sweaty temple, his wet cheekbone. “Now you need to sleep.”

“Gurney…” Paul doesn’t make a single move to untangle himself from their tight embrace, staring up at him in the greyish morning light. “Gurney, I—”

“No,” Gurney cuts him off, his voice croaky, unsteady. “Please don’t say anything. Not now, please.” He can pretend he’s silencing Paul for his own good, saving him from the future embarrassment of something impulsive he might say, but in truth, it's pure self-preservation.

Paul doesn’t take offense at his cowardice; he just smiles tiredly. That enormous, unspeakable love still glimmers in his eyes as he says, “Next time, then.”

They were supposed to leave for Caladan in the morning, but predictably, they didn’t. When Gurney wakes up, the sun is past its midday peak. Paul is sprawled out beside him, hand thrown over Gurney’s chest, completely dead to the world.

“Paul, wake up,” he says, stroking Paul’s forearm gently. “We have to get ready for the flight.”

Paul stirs, his fingers running up Gurney’s collarbone and neck, over the stubble on his chin and jaw, to rest on Gurney’s lips.

“What time is it?” he mumbles groggily, not lifting his head from the pillow.

“It’s late,” Gurney says.

If he's honest with himself, he's dreading these last hours on Migido, unsure of Paul's reaction; will it be tears, anger, or, on the contrary, yesterday's lustful obedience? What he doesn't expect is that things will be completely—frighteningly—normal.

He switches to his usual working mode of maximum efficiency and time saving, as if he were back at the castle: taking a short military shower, opting for milk and cornflakes instead of cooking breakfast, chastising the bleary-eyed and yawning Paul for choosing the wrong place at the table.

“How many times do I have to tell you? Keep your eyes on doors and open spaces; it's basic safety.”

Instead of moving to the opposite side of the table, Paul stretches his arms over his head, revealing the hickeys on the undersides of his biceps.

“I feel like I’ve been hit by a ground car,” he says casually, as if talking about a particularly harsh drill.

Gurney's first instinct is to apologize, even though he feels beaten up too; they got carried away last night, but to his shame, he’s not sorry at all. “You can sleep in the shuttle on the way back,” he finally says.

“No, I think I’d better have a second cup of coffee,” Paul rises from the table, making his way to the kitchen counter. “Want to pilot the shuttle this time.”

"Is that a good idea, though?" Gurney tries, but his question is met with a surprisingly piercing stare and the familiar stubborn set of Paul’s jaw.

"It's a perfect idea," Paul says, and Gurney knows better than to argue.

He manages to pack up his meager belongings in no time at all, while arranging with Thagasta over the comm for the remaining food crates to be picked up by whoever comes to clean up after them. His hope of making up for their late start expires the moment he enters the living room, finding Paul's things scattered in a whirl of clothes, shoes, and filmbooks, with half-stuffed bags amidst it all, and Paul himself nowhere to be seen, as if he had simply grown tired of packing and left.

In the end, Gurney finds him in the bathroom, shaving.

“Thought I should look the part, since I'm piloting,” Paul flashes him a smile, not looking even remotely appropriate because of the blue and purple bruise at the base of his neck.

“We need to do something with…” Gurney trails off, touching the same spot on his own neck as Paul raises a questioning eyebrow at him.

“Oh, sh*t,” Paul checks the mark in the mirror. “I completely forgot about it. Not sure I brought anything with a high collar here.”

“Then wear my turtleneck.” God knows, he doesn’t want Paul to come back home wearing his clothes, but the alternative of the heir showing up with a giant hickey is ten times worse. He digs the turtleneck out of his already neatly packed spaceback and lays it on the bed for Paul.

“Thanks, man,” Paul says matter-of-factly, stepping out of the bathroom. “Why the hell did you bring a wool turtleneck to the subtropics?”

"It came in handy after all, didn't it?"

“Don’t make it sound like you actually had a plan, when we both know it’s just your paranoia.”

“I prefer to call it forward thinking.”

After the exchange, they silently eye each other for several seconds, until Paul snorts out a laugh, and Gurney joins in, delighted by the lightness of the moment, by the almost-forgotten feeling that nothing has changed at all. This illusion of normality is fragile, especially when they are standing next to a double bed in a small, poorly-lit bedroom, but to Gurney’s relief, Paul chooses not to shatter it.

Room by room, the house becomes deserted; the last weeks they spent here fade to mere traces: a couple of mugs by the sink, chairs settled haphazardly around the empty table, an old filmbook viewer left on the couch. Gurney has never had the chance to return to his homeworld, let alone visit the house where his family lived. However, as he stands on the threshold, waiting for Paul and ready to lock the door, he can easily imagine what it might be like — to walk into a place so saturated with memories that past and present collide before your eyes. This must be how ghosts are made, he thinks, caught up in a surge of mood.

The desolation is brewing like a storm; the stillness and silence are already here, waiting in the corners for the people to leave and for a long stretch of unchanging days to begin. It’s going to be a painful memory — a house full of absence — but he wants to keep it anyway.

Paul strides out of the hallway, travel bags slung over his shoulders and the black box tucked under his arm. “We need to ask the guys from Thagasta to also check the filter system, too. I’m not sure our chip will last long,” he mutters as he walks up to Gurney.

“I’ve already told them; they’ll check,” Gurney says, letting him out and closing the glass door. "Are you sure you haven't forgotten anything?"

“Nah, I’m fine,” Paul says with a small smile and heads downhill to the shuttle without a single glance back.

This nonchalance must have its roots in the same place as his overly optimistic view of his family's move to Arrakis. Paul has never been away from Caladan for long, never lost anyone close to him, and thankfully, hasn't yet developed the ability to perceive the fragility of things around him. Despite Gurney finding himself infected with an odd sentimentality for this place, he couldn't possibly wish the same for Paul. The future head of House Atreides is bound to experience grief and loss in due time, and only God knows who will be there to support him through it. For now, it's just good to see him... well, healed, for lack of a better word.

The shuttle's ramp has already been lowered when he approaches, but instead of boarding, Gurney crosses the sandy clearing unhurriedly, heading for the line of pines that guard their beach. He notices the skeletal tree trunk, washed ashore by the storm, huge and white like a dragon bone, and the black smudge of ash on the sand right beside it, marking the spot where their fire burned. Where Paul walked out of the sea and into his arms, seeking warmth and maybe something more - something they will leave behind here, on Migido, locked in the empty house.

A strong gust of wind blows across the beach, raising a cloud of sand, forcing him to close his eyes to stop the treacherous tingling, and for a few seconds there is nothing left of the sea but its sound. Surf lapping. Breath in. Seagulls screeching. Breath out. Wind swaying the pines.

“What were you doing there?” Paul asks, when he’s back in the shuttle. “Meditating over your new song?”

“Maybe,” Gurney smiles at his unwavering readiness to trade taunts, “I find Migido very inspiring.” As he places the spacebag and the baliset in the luggage section, there’s a short, scornful laugh behind his back. “Don’t you?” he says, turning to Paul.

In the silence that follows, he can hear the clicking of tumblers under Paul’s fingers and the mechanical hum of the ramp being raised.

“This place means nothing,” Paul says, still not looking at him, his voice strangely tight. “This whole f*cking planet means nothing.”

“That’s very nihilistic of you, dismissing the entire planet,” Gurney sits in the second pilot seat, watching Paul’s profile and wondering from where this sudden flash of irritation came from.

Paul lets out his trademark exasperated tsk as his hand drops from the control panel. “Don’t you see?” The intensity of that green glare knocks the breath out of Gurney. “We could be anywhere - here, in the castle, or on bloody Dune; it doesn’t matter. Only you matter.”

Gurney gapes at him, thrown off balance by this near confession he'd been so desperate to avoid, not least because he doesn't know how to react, hopelessly at a loss for words to describe the volatile mixture of bliss and disquiet swelling in his chest. The thing is, Paul is absolutely right; they could be anywhere, out of sight of each other, a hundred light years apart. Even if Migido hadn’t happened, Gurney would have woken up one day and realized that he would love Paul till his last breath. Simple as that.

Paul doesn’t seem to notice his hesitation, sighing heavily and running his hand over his face as if trying to wipe away the pained expression. “Good God, old man, what am I going to do with you?”

Gurney wants nothing more than to hold Paul until he’s calm and relaxed, but it's a bit late for that if he's supposed to be fighting these inappropriate urges instead of indulging himself.

“Let's start by flying me home.” He hopes to alleviate at least some tension by hinting rather hypocritically that there might be a future for them, whereas the truth is they’re flying home to end this. He’s not sure if it works, but Paul smiles - his eyes softening, affection radiating from him, and if they were already in the castle, the way Paul looks at him alone would be totally incriminating.

The return journey is fairly uneventful; they have to fly around a thunderstorm once and cross rough air a couple of times, but Paul handles it without fuss, following the instructions wordlessly. Seeing him focus on the task is a stark reminder to Gurney that his student excels in what he does, and soon Gurney will have no knowledge left to offer him, only advice.

When Paul asks, “Care to sing me a lay?” Gurney welcomes the opportunity to distract himself as the sleepless night catches up with him and he’s feeling drowsy.

"What would you like to hear, my lord?" Gurney says when he’s back in his seat with the baliset in his hands. He adds the honorific mechanically, as he usually does when one of the Atreides asks for a song. Yet, saying it now feels like a sign of their return home, to the order of things that existed before Migido.

“You choose, Gurney,” Paul says quietly.

The tune has been haunting him for days, not as simple and catchy as he prefers, so it takes him several attempts to get it right, and the words he sings are nothing but raw material of half-formed images and impressions from which a poem should emerge.

“That, I can say, is a new one,” Paul says once he’s finished.“Beautiful, as ever.”

“Thank you, my lord, I will polish it into a proper tone poem.”

Paul hums in response, without offering anything else, and just as Gurney is about to start another song, he breaks the silence: “We haven’t even landed yet, and you've already turned it into a memory.”

Gurney puts the baliset aside, giving himself time to search for the right thing to say.

“Yes, and it’s a good memory,” he finally replies. It's the best memory of his whole life so far,a lifelong charge of happiness for him. "And I hope one day it will be a good memory for you too."

"One day," Paul repeats, his eyes back on the controls.

They arrive at the castle late at night, choosing to land in the launch bay that is farthest from the central area to avoid drawing unnecessary attention to their coming back. Paul tugs on the turtleneck right over a shirt he has been wearing; his lean frame makes it look baggy. The flight has visibly tired him out, and he holds back a yawn every now and then as they pick up their bags and walk outside, met only by a night-duty technical crew.

The ancient stones of the castle carry a damp, musty smell that Gurney has almost forgotten, the gargantuan vaulted ceilings and the endless hallways they pass through on their way to the residential wing feel oppressive and inhuman. Perhaps he should blame his long absence for these thoughts, but suddenly he feels pity for all twenty-six generations of Atreides who have grown up within these walls.

Paul remains silent until they reach the darkened intersection where one of the passages leads to the barracks, with no guards in sight. He stands before Gurney, resembling a skinny kid drowning in adult clothes, as if the centuries-old grandeur of his ancestral palace makes him shrink. There isn’t much to say, and Gurney would prefer to touch, knowing it would surely comfort Paul, but even at this hour, it’s too risky. He holds out his hand, and instead of a parting handshake, Paul grasps it as if to tug Gurney along with him.

“You won’t come with me to my chambers if I ask, right?” he says with a faint smile.

“I need to get back to my duties, my lord,” Gurney answers, squeezing his narrow palm.

“At a quarter past midnight?” Paul raises an eyebrow sarcastically, though his taunt is softened by his palpable fatigue.

“And have a good night's sleep.”

“That sounds more convincing.” Paul’s fingers caress the back of Gurney's hand, not letting go. “Then I guess I should wish you a good night.”

“Good night to you too, my lord.” As he turns to leave, Paul circles his wrist in a tight grip.

“But I’ll see you later?” Paul asks, his tone casual, in contrast to his fingers digging painfully into Gurney’s flesh.

“Of course, you will,” Gurney says.

It is only as Paul disappears into the dimly lit hallway that he remembers that the heir is, above all, gifted with an outstanding truthsense.

Chapter 8

Chapter Text

He finds out during the dinner party when he overhears his father casually remark to a visiting dignitary, “Shame you won’t hear my warmaster sing tonight; the weather is perfect for staying indoors and enjoying somber ballads.” The dignitary smiles politely, and as if to confirm Leto’s words, thunder rumbles in the distance, muffled by susurrant table talk and the clinking of silverware.

The night is heavy with the late spring storm, adding a suffocating dampness to the air; Paul would indeed prefer to spend the evening with a book in his chambers rather than engage in perfunctory socializing. He would pay no attention to Gurney’s absence from this particular soiree, but looking across the table, he notices Jessica glancing at him with the unchanged expression of benevolent detachment she has worn throughout the night. This inconspicuous check on his reaction is enough for him to join the clustering of House Troops officers and inquire about Gurney.

“Oh, he left last night, my lord,” one of them says. “To continue the inspection of our bases at Narcal and Clant, I believe.”

Despite expecting something like this to happen upon their return, the news still feels like a gut punch to Paul. He can only hope it goes unnoticed by the people around him.

“Yeah, we hardly see the old man these days,” the second officer adds, slurring his words a little. “You should have seen Lanville’s face when he found out he was on his own again. I think a few more weeks without Sir Halleck, and he’ll quit.” The officer lets out a loud, full-throated laugh, his friends snickering, amused at his drunken disregard for a member of the ducal family. This is yet another sign of Gurney's absence—he rarely allows his men to take liberties at formal events like this one.

“You’d better stick to the water for the rest of the evening, buddy,” Paul says, patting him on the shoulder. Later, however, he himself is downing flute after flute of sparkling wine in a hopeless attempt to silence the names rattling in his brain like train wheels: narcal and clant, narcal and clant, narcal and clant. This is not just another continent; this is another f*cking hemisphere. Does Gurney really have to run away that far?

In the morning, he wakes up with a throbbing head, and to his surprise, the pain gives him an idea of what he’s experiencing this first week at home: a bad hangover. No doubt, Gurney would appreciate the metaphor, had he not fled to Narcal and Clant.

“His Ducal Highness graces us with his presence!” Duncan’s voice booms through the training hall, making Paul wince. "Only forty minutes late—I'm honored, young master!"

“I had a rough morning,” Paul mutters, considering whether he should make up an excuse and cancel the weapons practice, since Duncan is so disgustingly cheerful today.

“Looks more like a rough night to me.”

At first, Paul thinks Duncan is referring to his rumpled state, but the sh*t-eating grin on the Weapons master's face is too suggestive for such a simple jibe. Half-consciously, Paul reaches for the mark on his neck, only to realize that instead of the high-collared shirt he had been careful to wear since his return, he must have put on a regular one, sparkling wine be damned.

“That's not what you're thinking,” he mumbles pathetically, trying to adjust his loose collar.

“Should have come to that soiree of yours,” Duncan drawls. “Apparently, it wasn’t as boring as I thought it would be.”

“Well, it can’t be helped now that you missed all the fun.” He goes to the table and takes a rapier from the usual arsenal. The sooner they begin, the more likely Duncan is to drop the subject. “I thought I was here to fight, not to gossip.”

“Such a thirst for knowledge, my lord, is the best reward for a humbled teacher.” Duncan bends his neck in a courtly bow, his sly grin turning it into a mockery. “Please make sure to activate your shield before we start.”

Paul looks down at his wrist, finding only bare skin there, his shield bracelet apparently forgotten on the nightstand in his bedroom.

“You’re an asshole,” he says wholeheartedly to the snickering Duncan, picking up the spare bracelet from the table.

“Just wondering who the brave soul was that dared to mark the ducal heir so shamelessly.”

As he speaks, Duncan grabs a rapier and activates the shield; Paul mirrors him, hoping in vain that the shimmering power field will hide his blush. No luck.

“I see,” Duncan bursts with smugness. “Someone special.”

“Brace yourself, Idaho.”

He’s sure he won’t last long, but he’s wrong again. He has already noticed that after weeks of sparring exclusively with Gurney, it’s paradoxically easier to deal with Duncan. It turns out Idaho is just a fraction too slow in predicting his movements, giving Paul a slight head start, which he seizes upon, leveraging his advantage in agility and speed.

"Okay, give me a break," Duncan pants, as the tip of the blade colors the power field next to his throat red for the third time in a row. "Impressive. Halleck didn’t waste his time while I was gone."

Paul fills two glasses with water, wondering if he's going to feel a surge of tingly warmth in his chest every time someone compliments Gurney from now on.

“Neither did you,” Duncan says, coming over and elbowing him.

“Thanks.” Paul hands him the glass and adds with a smile, “Or maybe it’s just you regressing.”

“Getting old is more like it,” Duncan lets out an amiable laugh.

Paul hesitates for a second, unsure if the moment is right, then asks, “Do you know when he’ll be back?” To his own ears, the question sounds anything but relaxed.

“Who knows,” Duncan says with a shrug. “Looks like our mutual friend has a round-the-world tour in mind.”

Paul swallows around a lump in his throat. “But we’ll see him again before we leave for Arrakis?”

“We don’t have much of a choice, my boy,” he replies, slapping Paul on the back.

He may be right, and Gurney has no choice but to return to the castle sooner or later, though the uncertainty gnaws at Paul. Gurney could lead the family troops in the first wave, from what he knows. It was clear he would distance himself after Migido; the nostalgic lament he sang on their way back was so telling, writing it all off as simply a good memory. What came as a surprise for him was Gurney's decision to literally put distance between them.

Paul is ready to give him time to realize that nothing is over, but he was kind of hoping that he'd at least have a chance to see Gurney occasionally, if not have him around. And now, facing an unknown number of days — or even weeks — without him, it hurts more than he expected.

He doesn't have much to do but fall back into the established routine of the castle, catching up on his studies and trying not to dwell on Gurney's whereabouts. Yet, despite his best efforts, the awareness always lingers in the background like a subtle, debilitating ache: where is he? Still at Narcal or already at Clant? Or perhaps on his way back home, and tomorrow Paul will enter the training hall to find him there, standing in front of the arched window, rearranging the blades on the table.

He hides the turtleneck he managed to snatch from Gurney on the top of the bookcase in his room to ensure the servants don’t find it and take it to the laundry — a pathetic thing to do, he knows, but who cares since he needs it for a good sleep. The scent fades with each passing day, until there’s just a hint of it remaining, yet enough for Paul to imagine Gurney sleeping next to him.

By the third week — the exact amount of time they spent together on Migido — he is desperate enough to seek out Lanville and press him for any news of Gurney.

“We have a call once a week; he seems to be fine as far as I can tell.” Lanville looks surprised and suspicious at the same time. “Has something happened, my lord? Should I contact him immediately?”

Paul would give anything to hear Gurney's voice right now. But on the other hand, it would never occur to him to reach out to Duncan while he's on the mission, or to Thufir for that matter, and if he made a fuss about getting in touch with Gurney for no apparent reason, it would definitely raise some eyebrows. He doesn't even know what time zone Gurney is in. And what will he say— "I miss you"? Stupid.

"No, just tell me where he is," he says, running a hand through his hair to hide his embarrassment. He shouldn't have come here at all; he should have just waited.

"Somewhere up north, my lord. I don't know the exact base," Lanville says. "He has a pretty tight schedule, lots of sites to inspect before we leave."

“Thanks for the heads-up.” Paul rises from the chair, Lanville follows him, standing behind the table. “I hope his mission goes well.”

His hand is on the doorknob when Lanville suddenly says behind his back: “Should I tell him to contact you, my lord? When he has time.”

“That could be arranged?” His heart starts racing at the mere suggestion.

“I don't see why not,” Lanville says in a gentle, reassuring tone that Paul has never heard him use before. Apparently, Paul isn’t as good at concealing his emotional state as he thought he was.

All the way back to his bedroom, he keeps tapping the comm button behind his ear compulsively to ensure it's working, even though he knows his message won't reach Gurney right away. This notion doesn’t stop him from waking in the middle of the night to check if the comm is blinking with a red light, indicating missed calls. But as the days go by, there are no missed calls from Gurney.

Paul can think of a million reasons why. A tight schedule, like Lanville said, and a lack of free time, plus Paul never told Lanville it was urgent. Also, if Gurney is up north, there could be a poor connection. So maybe in a couple of days...

It takes him a week to accept that there will be no call. By this point, he has replaced the comm button twice, suspecting it was broken, and almost visited Lanville again, changing his mind at the last moment. Instead, he asked the housekeeper for the key to Gurney’s room under the pretext of searching for a book. He’s not proud of himself for that either, but it seems better than begging for an emergency call when Gurney probably won’t even pick up.

He can’t remember the last time he was in Gurney’s private quarters. These days they meet in the training hall, the officers’ mess, or the barracks, for duty dictates Paul’s life now, not leisure and curiosity as it did in his childhood. Back then, he could invite himself here and demand a song, no matter the time, and he was often met with a closed door or sent away by a tired Gurney.

When he opens the door now, the suspensor lamp rolls past his head and up to the ceiling, casting a yellow light around him. The room seems smaller than he remembered. It’s furnished simply, like most rooms in the castle: a single bed covered with a standard-issue gray blanket, a wooden writing desk—sturdy and ancient—a mismatched tapestried chair, a tall bookcase crammed with books, balisets hanging on the wall, one hanger left empty. Compared to Paul’s own chambers, cluttered with things, the space looks unlived in.

He opens the wardrobe, finding nothing but dust and an old duffel bag, then checks the desk drawers—a pencil stub, three sets of baliset strings, and scissors. Next, he goes to the bookcase, thumbing through the books he remembers Gurney reading to him. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for; everything here should remind him of Gurney, but instead, it feels like a room full of dull objects that lose their meaning without their owner.

A half-empty bottle of amber liquid, hidden behind the row of books, makes him huff out a laugh. He takes a too-generous swig, coughing as the alcohol burns down his throat. Then another one, and another, until the warm rush relaxes his muscles and the necessity to maintain composure doesn’t seem so important anymore. By the time the bottle is empty, he stumbles across the room and falls onto the hard mattress; the walls around him swing and lurch as if the entire castle were caught in a sea storm. He shuts his eyes tight, pressing his face into the pillow, which smells of nothing—just clean, ironed bed linen, with no trace of Gurney. The darkness swims sickeningly behind his eyelids, bringing him no comfort.

Soon after that night, his miserable state is finally noticed—or, more likely, it is deemed bad enough to intervene.

“I want to talk to you about your attitude,” Jessica says to him at breakfast.

Here we go, Paul thinks. “What’s wrong with my attitude?”

“You’re distracted,” she says, her tone abruptly shifting from casual to sharp. “The things you study require focus. How are you supposed to excel at Mentat or bindu if you can’t even get to your classes on time?”

“I just needed some time to adjust. I won’t be late for Thufir’s classes anymore,” he says, already knowing he won’t get off the hook that easily. The lackluster promise hangs in the air between them as Jessica gives him a long, wordless look.

“Nothing will change when Halleck is back,” she says at last. The sound of his name makes Paul touch the spot on his neck where the mark had been, now long faded.

“Everything's already changed, whether you like it or not,” he says, meeting her shrewd stare. Her truthsense should be enough to read those words as a dispassionate statement of fact, not as a childish attempt to contradict her.

“It did, in a way,” Jessica nods. “But only for you, not for him.”

“What makes you think that?” And what could you possibly know about us, he wants to add.

“He treated your heat as a mission. And like any good soldier, he knows that when the mission is complete, you have to move on.”

Paul is aware of this tactic: she offers the worst explanation for Gurney’s actions as if it’s the only natural way to look at it. But seeing through her manipulation doesn’t make the possibility any less real.

“Well, I intend to convince him otherwise when he’s back,” he says with a reluctant smile.

Jessica sighs, rubbing her forehead with a tired exasperation that Paul rarely witnesses in her. "I keep telling myself that this is your first heat and I shouldn’t expect much from you. But some lessons are too important to be learned through mere communication of facts."

“You did fine with the communication of facts part.” Paul says, referring to a lengthy lecture on the perils of heat he received from her before leaving for Migido. “Everything was exactly as you told me. I didn’t think we would…go that far, but isn’t that what you wanted me to do? To see how I would behave around an alpha?”

“What I wanted,” Jessica says slowly, “was for you to understand the cruel tricks the heat plays on your mind. Your fixation on Halleck is a temporary aftereffect, nothing more. He understands this better than you do, which is why he did the only reasonable thing - he left you to sort it out on your own, instead of staying here and perpetuating this dangerous illusion.”

"Whatever she's trying to accomplish by telling him this, she's not lying, and that's somehow worse than all the manipulation.

“You're oversimplifying what happened between Gurney and me,” he says, his throat tightening."

“Believe me, I don’t.” She looks at him pityingly. "I've been there; I know how you feel. Heat is like falling in love on steroids, compressed into a much shorter period of time. And just like falling in love, your mind attaches meaning to a purely biological mechanism."

“What, are you going to forbid me from falling in love now?” Paul huffs out a bitter laugh.

“As your Bene Gesserit mentor - I would, if I could,” she says, the corner of her mouth twisting up. “As your mother, I can only hope you find love and happiness. But I must warn you not to confuse the heat with that.”

"My heat ended a month ago. Don't you think that's a little too long for a temporary aftereffect to linger?"

"Just because you don't want to let it go," she says, and Paul barely holds back from rolling his eyes. Everyone is so eager to explain to him what he should feel. Nothing really changes here.

“Fine, let’s agree I don't want to let it go. I’ll figure out the rest with Gurney when he gets back. Can I go now?” The thought of sitting here and listening to her well-phrased nonsense suddenly feels unbearable.

“What if I told you that nothing in your heat is left to chance?” Jessica says instead of answering. “ Nothing, Paul. Not the time it began, not the person you spent it with. What if I told you that your heat can be engineered by anyone who has access to crucial information? Does that sound dangerous to you?”

“How did you know when my heat would begin?” His mind races as he tries to make sense of what she's saying. Is this some Bene Gesserit trick he is unaware of?

“Not only did I know, I chose the moment it would begin. Just as a poisoner chooses the moment his subject dies, tainted with a latent poison."

The simile she uses is shockingly self-exposing yet deliberate. The latent poison—a wicked weapon, perfect for controlling hostages or subordinates. The subject’s body is impregnated with a poison, an antidote is administered daily without the subject's knowledge, and the moment your hostage escapes, the absence of an antidote will trigger the poison. That was Jessica’s answer to his question: the trigger is the absence.

Slowly, his past circ*mstances come into focus: a Suk doctor with Imperial conditioning, brought into service right after Paul hit puberty; a pill on a wooden plate and a shot glass of water he brings to Paul every other day, providing the Atreides with sedatives, vitamins, or painkillers, as befits a family doctor. Paul has been receiving medicine from him for years.

“You've been feeding me suppressors,” he says, too distracted to get angry because everything is falling into place so quickly. Yueh stopped giving him suppressors, triggering the heat, then — a long stretch of lonely days, his parents traveling, Duncan on the mission god knows where, no parties or visitors, all Paul’s classes then were lectures in the cool quiet of the library. All, but one — training with Gurney. Weapons, and close combat, with so much sweating and touching. If he wasn’t the only alpha Paul interacted with, he was certainly the closest and the easiest to smell.

"Is that how you set it up? Withdrawal from the suppressors and exposure to the alpha’s scent?” he asks, and Jessica gives him an answering nod.

“Yes, as simple as that. Imagine what a great opportunity the heat gives to those who want to influence you. If it were anyone else instead of Halleck, your reaction would be the same. Your mind would trick you into believing it was something more than pheromone sensitization, just like now."

“You can’t know that,” says Paul. The bitter truth is, he can’t know either.

“I’ve seen it happen many times, Paul.” Her voice softens as she touches his arm lightly. “Dissecting your feelings is a painful exercise to perform, but for you, with your position to uphold, it's a necessity.”

“And what do you want me to do? Dissect my feelings into nothing in the blink of an eye just because you told me to?”

“Of course not, that’s not possible,” she says, her fingers squeezing his arm lightly, and he fights the urge to recoil. “A true understanding of what happened to you will take time. Now that you know everything, make an effort to reflect on the dangers the heat poses. Disengage from the sensory experience and see it for what our enemies could exploit - a lever of pressure against you.”

The saddest thing is that even though he knows she's wrong, and even though he has a counterargument to every point she makes, he's forced to analyze every aspect of the heat and his relationship with Gurney, and he won't stop thinking about it until he believes what she's saying. That’s what the Bene Gesserit do — plant a seed of doubt that will grow inside him whether he wants it to or not. However, understanding does not diminish his deep-seated anger toward the Sisterhood of Old Hags and their schemes.

“First I knew I'd been trained as a Mentat since infancy, now you tell me you’ve been stuffing me with suppressors for years. What other plans do you have for me that I don't already know about? It feels like they're only getting worse,” he chuckles dryly. To his surprise, Jessica tenses.

“You will know everything you need in due time,” she says, no hint of irony in her voice. Paul just closes his eyes and shakes his head in disbelief.

Since they had this conversation in the morning, the rest of the day is ruined. If Jessica wanted him to pay more attention to his studies, she failed spectacularly because he literally can’t focus on anything. He keeps thinking about suppressors and the heat, realizing that he knows surprisingly little. Now he suspects the main reason for such a gap in his knowledge is that his interest was never encouraged. He probably needs to talk to Dr. Yueh or visit the library — at least to gather enough information to prove Jessica wrong, or to confirm that she’s absolutely right.

“Alright, enough of this sh*t,” Duncan growls, losing patience with Paul’s detachment when they are only halfway through the warm-up for weapons training. "You're somewhere else, my boy, I can't waste my time like this. Something happened?"

“Nothing, just…I guess I’m not in the mood,” he says, smiling, as the phrase brings back an unexpected memory of Gurney. Duncan stares at him with a menacing frown, but before he has a chance to say anything, Paul asks, “What’s the next on your schedule?”

“Wanted to fix the stabilizers on my scouting ‘thopter,” he looks taken aback by the question. “Why?”

“I could give you a hand. There isn’t much use for me here, anyway,” Paul says, putting his blade back on the training table.

“More like you’d finish breaking it, judging by your mood,” Idaho says, eyeing him suspiciously. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about whatever's gnawing at you instead?”

Paul is sure. Even if he wanted to talk about it, he couldn’t—not with Duncan. But he hopes the change of scenery will help him disengage, because it’s impossible to do so in the training hall, where everything reminds him so much of Gurney.

As he watches Duncan rummage through the inside of the ‘thopter, he can’t help but think of what Jessica said—if it were anyone else but Gurney, Paul would feel the same way. It's hard for him to imagine himself pining for Duncan, and it doesn't really matter since it never happened, but the mere possibility that she might be right is unbearable. The latent poison of her words has already tainted him.

They tinker with the stabilizers until late in the evening; the manual work helps Paul clear his mind a little, as does Duncan, who takes him for a test flight around the castle after they finally fix the ‘thopter.

“Never know what to do when you get in a mood like that," he grumbles when they're back in the launch bay. "I admit, Halleck has me beat there, with his songs and words of wisdom."

"I couldn't agree more," Paul chuckles at Duncan's sour tone. "But thanks anyway, my friend."

Back in his chambers, he collapses onto the bed without bothering to take off his shoes. The solitude and silence weigh heavily on him, causing him to curl up tightly as if shielding himself from the poisonous thoughts his mother had planted in his head. He should have spent his heat alone. He had never questioned Jessica’s insistence on having someone accompany him for security reasons, never considered why he had chosen Gurney, and why she had agreed with him so readily, almost encouraging him to do it. Does this pheromone sensitization act like a f*cking love potion, determining his choice even before he was aware of making it?

Even if she’s right and his wild yearning for Gurney is nothing more than a side effect that will pass with time, he'd figure it all out sooner with Gurney around. Paul might never have him as a lover again, but he wouldn't have to lose a friend over this mess. They could just talk. Paul would explain.

“Good heavens, I want to see you so much,” he whispers into the empty room, no one to hear him. “If you only knew how much I want to see you.”

A long, barren summer begins. He spends his evenings in the library, reading every book on omegas he can find, and the more he learns, the clearer it becomes that the picture Jessica painted is far from being exaggerated. The sensitization to an alpha’s scent, which supposedly caused his brain to go haywire, is actually a gradual increase in oxytocin production triggered by pheromones, common among couples but extremely rare among strangers since it requires prolonged close body contact, like regular sex. Or, as Paul now realizes, like throwing each other around for hours in a training hall.

The only thing Jessica may have exaggerated is the danger; his heat was a perfectly orchestrated storm, and whoever decides to set a honey trap for him will have an extremely hard time arranging it. The effect was sharpened by the fact that it was his first time, and also by the withdrawal syndrome, which can of course be recreated if Paul starts taking suppressors again. Only he doubts that he ever will.

The Sisterhood Monograph on Selected Biopharmaceuticals gives him the reason why Jessica may choose his heat to happen now. Paul discovers that the Bene Gesserit consider hormonal drugs to be “incompatible” with the nature of the training, and specifically discourage the use of suppressors for omega students for they might impair the poison transmutation ability. He wonders why his mother decided to give him suppressors in the first place; perhaps, she deemed him to be too young—he presented at fourteen—and the thought that she would make him mate with an alpha at that age gives him chills. Well, it's a small relief that she never did.

After his extensive research, the only question left is how long the side effect will last. It's not that he didn't find the answer in his books; they promise that the acute attachment will fade a few weeks after the heat ends. It's already too late for Paul, which proves that Jessica is wrong and he is right, but still.

He should feel better after learning all this, but instead he feels less. Gurney is still there, always at the back of Paul’s mind; the memories of their nights on Migido still surface now and then, evoking a sweet and painful longing in him; but somehow, the edge of it is gone. IIt takes him some time to realize that he's been obsessively reading books on secondary genders for days now; and a battered copy of a poetry collection he took from Gurney’s room to leaf through at night lies forgotten on a nightstand. A trifle that feels like a betrayal.

The rains stop as the summer swings into its full force, the castle grounds grow green and dry, his lonely walks grow longer, and sometimes he daydreams about having Gurney walking beside him, and other times he thinks of nothing, absorbing the landscape - the river orchards, darkened by dusk and no longer in bloom, the outline of the mountain against the evening sky - the beauty of it seems heavy, somber, tinged with the understanding that he will soon leave this place behind.

It has never occurred to him that Gurney might stay on Caladan. The possibility is laughable; after all, he is the warmaster of the House. He’s also the man whom Leto trusts enough to leave his homeworld in Gurney’s care. Paul’s father, known for his sincerity and honor, will undoubtedly offer his people the choice of joining him in the new world or remaining on their home planet. A year ago, Paul would have said that Gurney's loyalty would not allow him to leave the Duke's side, but now he's not so sure.

The apathy he’s developed lately doesn’t let the idea get under his skin, cushioning the blow like a power field. He thinks this until he wakes up that same night, his face wet with tears from a dream of the dark ocean and a flickering fire on the shore. Gurney’s turtleneck under his pillow smells only of unwashed clothes, and in a flash of choked horror he realizes that he can’t remember Gurney’s scent.

He’s sure he’ll recognize it the moment he smells it again, but he can’t conjure it as easily as he can Gurney’s voice or face, or the feel of his hands, as if a slot in his memory had been erased without him knowing it.

He gets up, bumping his head against the suspensor lamp, and hastily starts pulling on his clothes, though he doesn’t yet know what he’s going to do. Pausing in front of the door, he envisions a nighttime walk through the dark hallways and the desolate silence of Gurney’s bedroom. Even if he were to go there now, he would find only empty space. So, eventually, he stays and spends the rest of the night awake, watching a filmbook about Arrakis and trying to disengage.

Disengaging gets easier over time. Everything does. Old dreams fade, and though he still wakes up sometimes in tears, he can’t clearly remember anymore what he saw in his sleep, guessing that it must be something about Gurney and Migido.

One night, his mother visits his bedroom and takes him to meet the Emperor's Truthsayer. She’s nervous — terribly so, to the point that she can't bring herself to hide it. He can’t believe she’s afraid of the fatuous old witch, who so arrogantly dismisses her, and what happens next proves him right.

The pain is…blessing, it washes over him in a wave of cleansing fire, incinerating his flesh and bone like a stone burner — fatally, irretrievably, and when it’s finally over, the unscathed skin seems to be no more than an illusion cast over the charred and twisted remains of his hand.

"Is this what you were preparing me for?" he asks Jessica after Her Reverence leaves. "For the Bene Gesserit to see if I'm good enough to be their pet messiah?"

She is visibly shaken, hunched over herself as if her arm is also throbbing in the aftermath of a torture.

“Don’t let your pain speak for you, Paul. There have been centuries of effort to produce the Bene Gesserit Totality. I see that potential in you, and now the Reverend Mother does too."

He watches her, standing in the thick morning fog, a small, thin figure garbed in black. Her rebellious disobedience to the Sisterhood has always been a romantic family legend: she was told to bear only daughters, yet she loved her Duke so much that she gave him a son. The reality, as is often the case, is more complicated. Turns out, the true reason for his birth was Jessica’s ambition to be the mother of a prophet, nothing less. It all makes sense to him now; why risk producing a male omega who could be disinherited at any moment? Surely, she didn’t do it out of love, or even out of a desire to strengthen her position as a ducal concubine. The stakes she is playing for are higher than he could ever imagine.

“What if I am not the Kwisatz Haderach?” he says. “What are you going to do then? Dismiss me as a botched attempt and try again?”

"So far, you have met my expectations," she says dryly. His ire flares up, but he holds it in check, inhaling the moist, heavy air slowly.

"You've made me an abomination to pursue a myth."

Jessica jerks her chin as if to loosen the grip of the high collar around her neck. “You don’t understand what kind of power it is—to reach the unknown, to bridge space and time. But you will, someday.”

The old hag and her poisoned needle, the foggy courtyard, all seem to be straight out of his nightmares, which he intends to forget, but the burning in his hand doesn’t let him, staying with him for weeks after, echoing in his muscles every time he remembers the gom jabbar or the kwisatz haderach.

He has to admit that the ordeal has changed him. The excruciating pain has tempered something within, bringing him to a state of unshakable equilibrium. When he thinks of the future, it unfolds before him, imminent and, ultimately, not daunting; a combination of plans nested within plans and choices on top of other choices, driven by ambition, politics and feuds; not yet a catastrophe — just the attempt of his enemies to obliterate his House.

He focuses his attention on Dune, choosing for his studies the dimly lit reading hall where Gaius Helen Mohiam once tested him for humanity. He wants to be reminded of it. Jessica doesn’t interfere, not even when he rearranges his schedule to spend more time with his books at the expense of training. He cuts the weaponry and close combat classes to two per week. Duncan has left to lead the first wave to Arrakis anyway, and none of those who remain are expert enough to mentor Paul. What he learns about the desert planet and the Fremen shows him that there will be plenty of opportunities to regain his fighting skills.

The Padishah Emperor gave his family a cruel, barren world that had been ravaged by Harkonnens for decades. As Paul watches the giant orange globe of the Arrakis projection slowly rotate before him, he notices the poetry in the strange-sounding names: Great Bled, Red Chasm, Wind Pass. All those ergs and plains, and mountain ridges, endless and monochrome — it must be a depressing landscape after the lush green of Caladan. Yet, he finds the planet fascinating, not least because of its mysteries. The source of the melange. The sandworms. The near-ideal air balance in the absence of widespread plantlife. One could devote a lifetime to studying just one of these phenomena.

The sound of the door opening makes him snap his head up from the book. He'd been so lost in his thoughts that he'd missed the approaching steps — a shortcoming he'll have to work on, but at least he's not sitting with his back to the door.

“What are you doing here?” he says to Leto, who walks up to him, followed by a suspensor lamp.

“I could ask you the same thing, it’s two in the morning.” His father wears the usual black working uniform, but the jacket is unbuttoned, revealing a simple white shirt underneath. He must have been on his way from the office to the sleeping quarters when he decided to stop by the library.

“Found a really interesting book on the old Imperial botanical projects on Arrakis.” Paul rubs his eyes, realizing how stiff his neck and shoulders are from the hours of hunching over the table.

Leto hums, walking around the projection and eyeing it with defiant puzzlement that makes Paul smile.

“You don’t like our new home,” he observes as Leto raises a sarcastic eyebrow at him.

“Well, I’m glad that at least some of us find it interesting,” he says, nodding at the piles of books cluttering every surface around Paul. “I see you take your studies seriously.”

Paul shrugs his shoulders. “I just…got bored, I guess.” To his surprise, Leto lets out a laugh.

“Boredom has never before made you lock yourself in the library for days.”

“We've never before moved to another planet,” Paul says without missing a beat, then shifts to a more serious tone. "It's a good thing you stopped by, actually, because I'd like to ask for your permission to attend a strategy meeting."

Leto turns to him from the globe, the orange glow cast over his face like the light of the setting sun. “You have it. I was going to offer you a seat on the council myself, but never found the time to talk to you properly.” He sighs, lowering himself on the armrest of the chair. “You’ve matured lately.”

Paul watches his tired, handsome face, wondering how much his father knows about Jessica’s plans. Perhaps nothing, and that gladdens Paul. Leto has enough on his shoulders without discovering that the woman he loves bore him a male heir only to make a bid for power. But he’s surely aware of the reason why Paul…has matured lately.

"That doesn't mean you have to be indoors day and night. Even the Duke needs his share of small pleasures,” Leto says, stifling a yawn.

"When was the last time you were outside?" Paul asks, and just as Leto opens his mouth to answer, he adds, "Apart from ceremonies."

Leto gives him a comical sideways glance. "Maybe we should double up. Fly some antenna kites, weather permitting."

Paul chuckles, remembering his favorite childhood game; he's pretty sure one of his kites is still stuck on the spire of the North Wing tower. He made everyone fly kites with him, and only Leto, to Paul’s pure delight, shared his excitement—no doubt because of his undying love for anything that can fly.

“Did you come here to invite me to fly a kite?” he asks, grinning, and Leto smiles back at him.

"Why not? It's a healthy alternative to poring over Dune studies. I'm told you've hardly been in the training hall since Duncan left. Have we run out of decent fighters to compete with?"

“I use a fencing mirror,” Paul says through a yawn, “and spar with Lanville. That should do for now.”

Leto looks at him curiously, then lowers his eyes, fiddling with the shield bracelet on his wrist: “I could summon Gurney back from his inspection tour.”

“If you think it’s necessary,” Paul replies in the same casual tone. It's all right. He doesn't need to disengage any more.

“If you want to sit on my council,” Leto says, unexpectedly sharp, “you should at least have an opinion to share.”

“My opinion is that you should let him finish the inspection and not bother him with trivial matters.”

Leto nodes, his face inscrutable. “Noted, son.” He gets up lightly, no sign of fatigue in his stance. “See you at the strategy meeting.”

After he leaves, Paul stays in the library for another hour, but instead of reading he looks closely at the globe, at the areas of solid color that indicate endless miles of dunes. He doesn't know why he finds this vast wasteland so comforting; its emptiness is immense, a world ocean of sand, and just like any great body of water it promises him a long journey — perhaps, that’s why he enjoys watching it so much.

That night he dreams of the blue-eyed fremen girl, asking him to tell her about the waters of his homeworld.

The signs of their imminent departure are everywhere in the castle. Paul is no longer surprised to stumble across a room emptied of furniture and filled with boxes and crates, or to see the square shadows on the walls gradually replace the paintings in the ancestral portrait gallery. Almost everyone, from Thufir and Yueh to the guards and servants, is infected by the same nervous anticipation, by the subtle fear of the unknown that Paul has developed an immunity to, thanks to his Dune studies.

The end of summer brings an abrupt change in the weather. The days are dry but abnormally cold, forcing him to wear a heavy overcoat for his long walks—a piece of clothing he's sure he won't need in his new life on Arrakis. As he strolls along the cliffy shore, a giant cargo ship emerges from the bay, breaking the water surface like a mechanical sea monster. Paul knows from the strategy meeting that it's carrying the atomics, and the magnificent sight of its slow, relentless ascending, with tons of water cascading down its back, reminds him of the irreversible nature of what’s happening to his family.

However, when he thinks about not seeing Caladan again — the round stones on the gray sand, the mellow sunset, the scarce northern beauty of its landscape — he’s not even sure he’s going to miss it. Parting with people is a sadness; a place is only a place, he remembers Thufir telling him, and well, it feels like he has already parted with everyone who really matters.

These days, the castle is swarming with people, making it impossible to walk down the hallway without someone scurrying past with a box or crate in hand. Despite all the mayhem, Paul finds himself breakfasting alone in the small dining room he used to share with his parents. Just like every other corner of his home, the room is already missing some of its furnishings—the crooked bonsai tree is gone, as is the antique copper wind chime that has hung from the ceiling for years. The portrait of his grandfather, however, is still here. So does the matador figure that Paul has always loved, though to his great disappointment, it was inseparable from the shrine to the Old Duke. He wonders if he should take his chance to snatch the matador and pack it away with his things.

His dwelling on this tiny theft is interrupted by his mother’s old servant, who enters with a coffee pot in her wrinkly hands.

“You poor thing,” she coos, as if he were a kid left unsupervised by careless parents, “sitting there all by yourself again!”

“It’s fine.” He takes the coffee pot from her, pouring himself a cup. “The fewer, the better.”

“I could serve you lunch in the officers’ mess, dear. Halleck and his boys will keep you company, you shouldn’t be alone all the time.” He’s half listening to her sing-song muttering, so it takes him a couple of seconds to grasp what she’s talking about.

“He’s back?”

“Who, Halleck? Arrived this morning, from what I heard.” Paul watches her deft hands fly over the table, rearranging the dishes. Disengage, he thinks, disengage. The inspection was supposed to last another month and a half, his father confirmed at the strategy meeting. She must have misunderstood or misheard something. She's as old as this damn castle.

“Drink your coffee, my lord, will you?” Paul drinks up obediently, burns his tongue. His pulse pounds so hard he can feel it in his twitching fingers. Disengage, he repeats. He has been preparing for this moment, of course; he just didn’t expect it to happen today.

He goes to the barracks only to check — to make sure that there has been a mistake. The first officer he meets says that Gurney is in Lanville’s office and then asks Paul what the emergency is. There is no emergency, says Paul, I just wanted to see him.

He basically runs through the halls and corridors, oblivious to the confused glances from the guards. As he approaches Lanville’s office, he slows down, giving himself time to catch his breath and relax his facial muscles so he won't look like he's panicking. He isn’t. He only wants to see for himself that it’s over — one look at Gurney should be enough. Just one look.

He opens the door without knocking, met by Lanville’s surprised “My lord?” For a moment, he watches Lanville sitting at his desk, with two empty chairs in front of it, and thinks with a crazy mix of relief and frustration that Gurney must have already left.

“Paul.”

Paul's eyes snap to the other side of the room, where Gurney is sitting on the couch, his baliset and spacebag next to him. He seems smaller. Older than Paul remembers; his face thinner, his skin sun-bronzed as if he’s spent all these months outdoors, the tan contrasting with the silvery gray of his buzzcut and freshly trimmed beard. His eyes, dark and desperate, hold all the answers Paul needs.

With a swishing feeling in his stomach, Paul takes a step forward, then turns back to Lanville, saying in what he hopes is a steady voice, "Hi, I just wanted to have a quick word with Gurney."

There is a long pause as they both stare expectantly at Gurney, until he clears his throat and finally tears his eyes away from Paul, saying, "I'll come by later then."

"Of course, sir," says Lanville, and Paul isn’t quite ready for Gurney to be standing in front of him the very next moment, with the spacebag over his shoulder and the uniform jacket in his hand.

"Shall we go, my lord?" Gurney looks him in the face, his eyebrows raised in an expression of gentle inquiry—nothing incriminating, but Paul’s knees soften anyway.

The hallway is packed with people, so they have to make their way past clusters of soldiers, accompanied by occasional salutes and 'Good to see you, sir'. Paul isn’t sure where Gurney is leading him so determinately, as they haven’t exchanged a word since Lanville’s office. It's only when they are stopped by an officer who asks Gurney about the accommodation for the newly redeployed troops that Paul looks around and realizes they must be heading for the officers’ private quarters.

“Let’s go,” Gurney says with a shaky breath, tugging at Paul’s elbow once the officer disappears around the corner. Why is he in such a hurry, Paul wonders as they walk down the deserted hallway, and why on earth is he so nervous?

There are no more witnesses, but they both remain silent all the way to Gurney’s room. Gurney rummages awkwardly in his bag in front of the closed door, looking for a key and cursing under his breath as the jacket he is still holding in his hand keeps getting in the way. Paul wordlessly takes it from him, and Gurney mutters gruffly, almost as if he’s talking to himself: “Just hold on for a second.”

Paul watches as he fumbles with the keys, the muscles of his broad back shifting under that ancient T-shirt, its cheap fabric washed out to a pale reddish color. There are little holes on the frayed shoulder seam, with skin peeking through. I should get him a new shirt, why do we have the warmaster of the House wearing rags, this is ridiculous, he thinks. “I love you,” he says.

The door finally opens into a flood of sunlight that blinds Paul, leaving him for a couple of seconds with only sounds: the thud of the spacebag being dropped on the floor, hurried footsteps, and then Gurney pulls him into the room, slamming the door closed behind them. Those hands cradle Paul’s face, calloused, so gentle, fingers sliding under his hair, thumb tracing along his upper lip.

“Paul, I’m so sorry,” Gurney’s voice is gravel, his eyes wild. “I shouldn’t have left like that, I should’ve—”

“You’re back now,” Paul cuts him off, his lips brushing Gurney’s thumb. “That’s all that matters. And I have so much to tell you too, but let’s talk after you kiss me.”

The moment the words are out of his mouth, Gurney pulls him in, covering his face in a flurry of kisses, his beard tickling Paul’s skin until Paul catches his lips and opens wide for him, welcoming his tongue.

The reality of having Gurney so close to him again is cruder than he’s thought it would be; there’s no subtlety to it, just an overwhelming mixture of desperation and need. All of it— the shock of Gurney’s body pressing against him, the slick heat of his mouth, the earthy, heavy scent of his sweat— makes Paul’s memories fade into nothingness. He manages to toss Gurney’s jacket aside and finally has both hands free to hug Gurney by the neck, to let him in deeper.

He forgets to breathe through his nose, as he always does, and his head swims from the lack of air and the lack of restraint in the way Gurney bites into his lips and sucks on his tongue, making their kiss as far from chaste as humanly possible. When Gurney finally takes pity on him and gives him some breathing space, it feels like Paul’s mouth has been f*cked: there’s spit cooling on his chin, and his lips buzz and burn at the same time.

Gurney nuzzles under his jaw, inhaling and murmuring into his skin, “I have no idea how I've lived without you all this time.”

Well, Paul can relate. Still dazed from the kiss, he marvels at how naive it was of him to think he could have Gurney as a friend, and how arrogant it was of his mother to think that her advice to disengage would be enough to stop it. Despite his longing for Gurney, he can’t ignore the physical aspect of their relationship, not when he's trying to stop himself from grinding his hardening co*ck against Gurney's unmistakable arousal. And when you think about it, what is sex if not just another perfect thing they do together?

“I profess my eternal love for you, and you respond with this. That’s simply rude,” he says to a laughing Gurney, who squeezes him in a bone-crushing hug and lets out a sound that suspiciously resembles a sob.

“It’s alright, old man,” Paul continues, running his palms up and down Gurney’s back, “you can write me a love song instead. Where is your baliset, by the way?”

Gurney pulls back to frown at the spacebag at their feet and the jacket lying on the floor next to it.

“Oh sh*t,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “I must have left it at Lanville’s.”

“That’s an outrageous negligence for a troubadour-warrior,” Paul says with all the seriousness he can muster.

“More like an old fool than a troubadour-warrior,” Gurney grins at him, laugh lines softening his features, then cups Paul’s face again as if he can’t keep his hands to himself. “You said we would talk after.”

“It’s going to be a very long conversation, so I suggest we have it tonight in my sleeping quarters,” Paul says, lowering his voice. “Do you agree?”

Gurney watches him, mesmerized, his thumbs stroking Paul’s cheekbones with featherlight tenderness.

“As my lord commands,” he says.

*

In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about has reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, and everyone around him seems so busy they barely have time to talk, Paul miraculously finds himself with nothing to do.

He meanders through the castle, which is slowly morphing into an uninhabited pile of stone, and the rare objects left behind seem like exhibits in a museum of times forever gone. Why am I so sure I will never come back here, he wonders idly, is it because of the dreams?

Almost every night, he dreams of Dune, of things he’s never seen before—Imperial botanical stations covered in sand, blue-eyed faces he can’t recognize, a labyrinthine city that must be Arrakeen or Carthag. Sometimes there are nightmares of battles in clouds of sand dust, or of a roaring pillar of fire, or of a spiked black hole reeking of spice. On nights like these, he wakes up to Gurney whispering soothingly in his ear, and he wants to cry with relief.

At first, Paul thought that he and Gurney couldn’t last for long without getting caught. After several unsuccessful but honest attempts to talk, Paul accepted the fact that for them being alone in a room would never lead to any meaningful exchange between them. Compared to Migido, where they had enough space and time to themselves, here in the castle, with the imminent departure to Arrakis, their future is so uncertain that Paul wants to seize every chance to be with Gurney.

It’s not easy to fit their relationship into the established routine, but eventually, through trial and error, they managed to work out their arrangements. They resumed the long walks together despite the autumn storms and made sure to meet regularly in the places full of people; Gurney outright forbade him from using the training hall for anything other than training. Paul, of course, tries to push the boundaries a couple of times, but instead of relenting Gurney drills him so hard that by the end of the sparring session Paul can barely move, let alone think about sex.

The training is harsher than ever—this is how the disquiet manifests itself. Turns out, even Gurney the valorous is as affected by the looming unknown as everyone else in the castle. On one particularly memorable occasion, Paul has Gurney growl in his face about the deadly danger of Arrakis and the savagery of the Harkonnens. Paul would find his manner unnecessarily stern and his outburst undeserved were it not for the scar carved into the side of Gurney’s face, as well as other scars all over his body that Paul now knows so intimately. And he would gladly ease this tension, but unfortunately the limits Gurney has set for the training hall won’t allow him to.

Gurney later apologizes for the lashing out — so unreservedly that a night guard knocks on the bedroom door asking if Paul is all right. Paul, disoriented from the org*sm, barely holds from laughing at the mortified look on Gurney’s face, but manages to answer truthfully that he’s perfectly fine.

“I need to find out who that idiot on patrol is,” Gurney mutters once the threat is gone. “What was he thinking, for f*ck’s sake.”

“Maybe he thought I was having a nightmare,” Paul muses, stretching his arms and legs, his body still singing from the pleasant strain after riding Gurney.

“That didn’t sound like a nightmare.”

“Sorry,” Paul grins at him. “Let’s hope the Arrakeen castle has better soundproofing.”

Gurney rolls onto his side, resting his head on one hand, his hazel eyes searching Paul’s face, sharp as ever.

“I don’t think we’ll have much time for that in Arrakeen.” The calloused fingers trace Paul’s eyebrows and run down the ridge of his nose, rubbing the tip in the gentlest of caresses. “I don’t think we’ll have much time for anything there.”

“Sounds like I infected you with my mood. Never knew it was sexually transmitted.”

Gurney huffs out a laugh, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “You don’t understand, Paul,” he says with a sigh. "The Harkonnens attacking us isn't something that might happen, it will happen. The only question is when. You have to be ready."

Paul catches his hand and plants a kiss on the heel of his palm. “Humor me for a second and imagine that I actually do understand. First of all, you can’t be ready enough for those things. Second, whatever happens, I have you.”

Gurney looks at him like... he can’t remember Gurney ever looking at him like that, not even during the heat — drinking Paul in, as if the moment he looks away, Paul will vanish into thin air.

“You have me,” he whispers.

The official ceremony of the Arrakis fief handover takes place in foul weather. The cloudy sky hangs low, filtering the light and making everyone look paler - this, along with an overall air of gloom, frowning faces and black full dress conjures up a certain image in Paul’s mind.

“Like we’re hosting a f*cking funeral,” he comments in a hushed voice.

“Language, my lord,” Gurney chides, watching the soldiers line up along the carpet.

From the ultimately stony expression on his face and the tight grip of his hand on a service cap, Paul can tell that the old man is nervous.

“You look great in full dress.” The compliment finally earns him an indignant glare from Gurney, which Paul meets with a smile. “Make sure you wear it tonight, will you?”

“I think it’s time for you to take your place, my lord,” Gurney says through gritted teeth, walking away without waiting for Paul to answer. Paul sighs, watching Gurney's retreating back, then notices Jessica staring at him coldly, leaving no doubt that she witnessed the whole exchange. He smiles at her as well; after all, she has played her part in his happiness, whatever she may think of it.

“Don’t forget you have your duties to fulfill,” she says, taking her place beside him. It's a strange piece of advice coming from a concubine whose main duty should be to step away at the right moment to allow her Duke to make an alliance with another Great House. However, standing there in her gray-blue dress to welcome the Imperial party, she looks no less regal than any other noble-born who might be a good match for the Atreides.

The Bene Gesserit hide the lineage of their sisters, so Jessica could easily be an illegitimate daughter of some Great House, or perhaps even related to the Emperor himself. It had never occurred to Paul before that she is also a part of the Bene Gesserit selective breeding program. She doesn’t know her parents; instead of parental love, which Paul has had plenty, she has only known years of indoctrination at the Bene Gesserit school. Yet, she risked disobeying a direct order from the Reverend Mother, despite being taught all her life that she exists only to serve. Where does this outsized ambition stem from? Her mysterious ancestry? Or is it revenge on the Sisterhood for what they did to her?

He finds himself immensely curious to know what she’s thinking now that her plans for him and Gurney have essentially failed.

“Do you regret choosing him?” he asks her, certain she understands whom he means. Jessica glances at Gurney, keeping her face perfectly composed.

“He has a core of obedience in him,” she says, loud enough only for Paul to hear. “He will be a valuable asset. If you intend to keep him for long, I suggest you start teaching him some prana-bindu.”

Paul can't decide whether to be offended by this or to take her advice in good faith.

"Me? Teaching him?"

"Your knowledge is sufficient, and he is a skilled fighter. He can grasp the key principles, despite being an alpha. He will serve you well in the future."

“You see a future for us,” Paul wonders aloud. He seems to have stumbled upon another plan within a plan here—assigning Gurney to be his personal bodyguard in case the side effect turns out to be something more after all.

Jessica gives him a stern look. “We all have the same future now— the fief of Arrakis. Considering the danger, it would be wiser to reduce the number of people you have to take care of. But since you have chosen otherwise, be prepared for the consequences.”

Paul wants to argue that he would take care of Gurney anyway, but then sees him—standing at attention with a frown on his scarred face, watching the descending Imperial ship as he might watch an enemy on a battlefield—and realizes his mother is right. No one has ever meant as much to him as Gurney does now.

Soon after the Imperial party leaves, the rains give way to an Indian summer, a warm last goodbye from Caladan. By nightfall tomorrow, they will be flying into orbit to board the Spacing Guild liner and never return to this planet again. Instead of watching his last Caladan sunset from one of the towers, as he used to, Paul wanders around the castle, looking into every room along the way. The library—not a soul; Leto’s office—stripped of furniture; the audience room—servants struggling to take down a bull’s head from the wall while his parents watch.

"Hey, have you seen the matador figurine from the dining room? It wasn’t there when we packed your grandfather’s portrait," Leto says as soon as he notices him. Paul shakes his head, hoping it will be more convincing than saying his lies out loud. Leto squints at him suspiciously, Jessica raises an eyebrow. She despises the Old Duke—Paul can count on that. If he managed to steal the bull’s head with its bloodstained horns as well, she would be delighted.

“It was probably packed with the wind chime, dear, I’ll ask the housekeeper,” she says, rubbing Leto’s shoulder. He sighs and turns back to the grunting servants, raising his voice: “Careful!”

Paul gives Jessica a small smile behind Leto’s back and continues his tour. The barracks — deserted; the officers’ mess — a kitchen worker wiping tables; Gurney’s bedroom, when he opens it with a spare key — empty and filled with fresh evening air. A faint melody floats in from outside, causing Paul to lean out of the window to locate its source.

He heads for the guest wing, to a seldom-visited hallway that ends in a small balcony, and as he approaches, the sounds grow stronger, confirming his guess. The balcony is unpopular with the visitors of the castle because it offers no view of the mountains or lakes, but instead overlooks an old circular courtyard, all green with mossy cobblestones and ivy creeping over the walls.

Gurney sits there with his head tilted over the baliset, watching his fingers move over the strings as if they were producing the sounds on their own. When he looks up, his bright smile takes Paul by surprise.

“Why are you so pleased?” Paul asks, lowering himself to the opposite end of a sturdy balustrade, but the place is small enough for him to nudge Gurney’s boot with his toe.

Gurney shrugs, still beaming at him. “Don’t know, it's been a good day, and I’m glad to see you.”

Paul feels the corners of his lips tugging up; it’s strange how even after all this time together, such small things can still leave him breathless.

“Is this the place you chose to say goodbye to Caladan?” he asks, nodding at the stone walls slowly being drowned in twilight.

“No,” Gurney laughs, shaking his head, “I just like this courtyard; it has decent acoustics.”

"I thought you were going to get all brooding and nostalgic like on Migido."

“Weren’t you the one who told me that places don’t matter?”

“But still,” Paul looks up at a seagull crossing the round, cloudless sky above them. “Wouldn’t you miss it?”

“This isn't the first planet I’ve left.” There’s no bravado in his words, nor self-pity; for what Paul can tell, Gurney sounds matter-of-factly. Sometimes it’s so easy to forget how deeply that scar on his face runs.

“I just finished something,” Gurney puts the multipick back on the strings. “Do you want to hear it?”

“What, a love song for me?” Paul asks, unable to suppress a grin.

“Not a love song, my lord, just a tone poem for sad times.” Gurney gently strums the first chord.

“Yeah, I bet you made it for sad times,” Paul scoffs and gets up, closing the distance between them and leaning over the baliset to cup Gurney’s jaw and guide him into a kiss — clumsy and short as Gurney laughs against his lips instead of kissing him properly till Paul pulls back with a sigh.

“Old man—,” he starts, but Gurney puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Stop or you’ll throw me off this balcony,” he says, still chuckling. “Sit down.”

Paul obeys, this time sitting right next to him and making sure that their legs are touching.

Gurney resumes his position with the multipick against the strings and turns his eyes to something far above Paul’s head: “Now listen to this:

I remember salt smoke from a beach fire

And shadows under the pines…”