Archive of Our Own ^beta

Paul has lived on Caladan his entire life, damp wind on the back of his neck and the rumble of far-off storms marking his days, but as he ages, a feeling settles over him. A damp miasma in his lungs, an aura in his mind, a wave cresting over him again and again. He feels it most when he straightens after a spar with Duncan, or the scant times he's been permitted to sit with the soldiers in their quarters and listen to their stories. It collects in the joins of his elbows, the creases of his thighs, behind his knees and ears. Sticky like sweat.

Strange, given the dryness of his recent dreams, which are blazing and parching. He wakes from the latest one and feels uncomfortably dusty under his clean clothes, until, in the hangar, he sees a shadow he recognizes. Tall and broad-shouldered striding toward him, fresh off a flight. Moisture pools inside his mouth and his palms turn slippery as his feet pick him up in a trot years of etiquette training has never managed to beat out of him. The light in the hangar is dim, but just before he collides with the figure, Paul realizes that part of the haze in his vision is a sudden wash of tears in his eyes that he can't pin down exactly why they're there.

He swipes his face over Duncan's shoulder and surreptitiously dries his hands on the back of Duncan's flightsuit as Duncan, forever unbothered by Paul's abysmal etiquette, twirls him through a hug elegantly and deposits him back on the ground.

"My boy," he says, full of warmth and happiness, "Paul, my boy."

Paul inhales harshly, and the dust from Duncan's clothing strips the excess moisture out of his mouth. He has to swallow the mud in his mouth and dredge up his courage before he can say what he's been practicing the entire time Duncan has been in the air.

"So, you're going to Arrakis tomorrow. With the advance team."

Duncan removes his helmet and brushes his hair back, catching none of the flyaways from his bun at all. Paul's own father wouldn't recognize the searching tone of his voice, but Duncan is familiar, knows how Paul begs.

"Yes," he confirms cautiously, "I'm going to Arrakis tomorrow with the advance team." There's no smile on his face, but it's lurking behind his held expression. Edging to the realm of indulgence, but tempered by duty. His voice is dry from flight and his helmet. Paul should have brought him a flask. He imagines the words gratitude Duncan would shower him in, the way his thick throat would pulse as he swallowed.

Paul blinks. He must not get distracted.

"I'd like you to take me with you." He focuses on sounding calm and mature, capable of being a partner, not just an obligation.

"You would?" Duncan says, lowering his voice, approaching. Paul can smell the damp of his flightsuit, atmosphere and sweat, and his stomach flips like they're in flight. He tamps down his joy with a controlled nod.

"Well, that's too bad," Duncan says in his silky voice, "'cause no." The back of his hand slaps Paul's belly, more a sound than a sensation, but it reverberates through Paul and breaks his composure. Duncan turns away, busying himself with his ship.

"Duncan," Paul pleads to the back of Duncan's head.

"Are you trying to get me court-martialled?" Duncan asks.

Paul never is, but he's aware of all the ways Duncan could be, if he…if they…

"What's going on?" Duncan continues, unable to resist offering peace to Paul even as he denies what Paul wants, needs.

"Can I trust you with something?"

"Always. You know that." Earnestness from Duncan again, forever on Paul's side.

"I've been having dreams," Paul admits, aware of the stupidity of such a sentence, but desperate enough to say it regardless. "About Arrakis, and the Fremen."

"Okay, so?" Duncan is listening because he's always paying attention to Paul, but he remains unmoved. He doesn't know what Paul knows.

"I saw you. With the Fremen." He sees it in his eyes now, Duncan, nearly a stranger in clothes uneasily reminiscent of his flightsuit, surrounded by others in the same dress. A still, predatory air to him, not at all like the wry clarity he turns to face Paul with.

"Ah, so I do find them," he chuckles, turning away once again, from Paul. "There you go; that's a good omen right there."

Duncan cannot see what else Paul still sees, hours after waking. A figure, no longer with Duncan's spirit, clad in its strange suit, no longer living.

"I saw you lying dead," Paul tells Duncan. He knows he's looking at some crates on the ground, but his eyes are full of Duncan's death. "Fallen in battle…It felt like…If I had been there, you'd be alive."

His dream had dissolved over a lingering image of a harmless beetle struggling over the bloodied sand, and somehow, thinking of it now is what curls a lump in his throat. Words are futile. He wishes he could put these images directly into Duncan's mind, share the ocean of grief and rage he has suffered through today as he waited pacing for Duncan to come home.

Duncan turns to back him, concern finally on his face, the first small mercy he has granted Paul today. But all he says is, "First off, not gonna die," because no one ever thinks they're going to die when they will.

"You're not taking this seriously –"

Duncan cuts him off with a heavy hand on his shoulder and an arresting, gravelly voice. "That's why you want to come with me. Listen: dreams make good stories. But everything important happens when we're awake. 'Cause that's when we make things happen."

He pauses, considering the entirety of Paul in a heartbeat, and shakes him by the bicep, sending another tremor through Paul. When he speaks again, his voice is different. Lighter, all the silk and gravel gone, replaced with flirty humour. He squeezes Paul's arm.

"Hey, look at you. You put on some muscle?"

Paul feels spun around, a coin sided with condescension suffered and praise given whirling across a pitted table, tossed by Duncan's lucky fingers. "I did?"

"No," Duncan says, to Paul's body, his dreams, to everything, and leaves Paul behind, still spinning.

*

The following morning, Paul stands with the ground team to watch Duncan take off for Arrakis. He slept badly, never deep enough to either escape his worries or to dream up more, leaving his body sore and his mind foggy from unrest. His shirt is rumpled under his jacket. It's the same one he wore yesterday. Duncan is the only one who would notice, but he only waves from a distance before disappearing into his ship.

"May his bravery be blessed," someone standing in front of Paul murmurs to her companion.

"And his life long," the other says, touching her chest over her heart. Faintly, Paul repeats the gesture.

The ship takes off quickly and perfectly, bringing part of Paul with it, unravelling him as it disappears from sight. Paul stays until he cannot strain his eyes after it any longer, and then, empty-chested, he goes to his rooms.

*

He attempts to fill the emptiness with savagery, beating a line of training pells with weapons and his own hands. He hears Gurney coming down the hall long before he opens his mouth to bark at Paul:

"Don't stand with your back to the door. How many times do we have to tell you?"

Paul sneers at the pell, imagines it wearing Gurney's face as he strikes it one last time. "I could tell it was you by your footsteps, Gurney Halleck."

Those heavy, sure footsteps keep coming, undeterred by Paul's attitude.

"Someone might imitate my stride," Gurney says, apparently unaware that the specific gruff character of his voice and his rough attitude could never be replicated. Something hits the table, muffled-metallic. Gurney messes with it, unrolling-clanking, and Paul places the sound before he turns around: a leather roll of blades. Normally, he hears it in Duncan's hands, sees his broad back at the table, preparing to spar with Paul. Not Gurney's rangy musculature clanging the blades together all wrong.

"I know the difference. Are you to be the new weapons master?" Paul doesn't hide the displeasure in his tone. Gurney has his strengths, but Paul already has a weapons master and a sparring teacher, and will accept no substitutes.

"With Duncan Idaho gone I must make do as best I can." Gurney removes his jacket to reveal a wrinkled exercise shirt. He doesn't seem pleased to be here either. Paul wonders who commanded him to come, and with what words. His father? The boy is too idle; we're wasting his growth. His mother? His emotions are cloudy; Paul needs to work on his control. Duncan? His strength is his safety. He's in your hands, Gurney.

Gurney does not divulge the source of his motivations. He tosses his jacket onto the table. "Choose your blade."

Paul, disobediently on the other side of the room instead of at attention, sullenly pours water into a glass and mutters, "I've had quite a day, Gurney. Give us a song instead." The water tastes sour in his sad, ashy mouth.

Duncan has him too well-trained to drop his glass when a blade thumps into the table edge beside him. The sound of it vibrating with kinetic force sends a tingle up his spine, but he doesn't let it leak into his voice. "That's rude."

He pulls the blade out of the table and finally turns. Gurney is there to meet him, having stalked up on somehow silent feet. Paul barely manages the block, an undignified bawl of sound coming out of his mouth as the hit jars him.

Gurney smiles at him, spinning his own blade in his hand.

Paul activates the shield on his wrist, testing it. He and Duncan generally spar bare-skinned and friendly, but he can tell he's going to need protection today. The shield holds blue until he forces the blade through with patient pressure, turning his wrist an alarming red, the shield on the edge of giving out. Good working condition.

He spins his own blade and goes for Gurney. They slide past each other and he sees a flash of blue; Gurney's tagged him in the back.

"C'mon," Gurney coaxes. "C'mon." He's a touch out of breath already.

Paul resettles back into his disdain and frustration, suddenly ready to fight. "Old man."

They meet in the middle, blade on blade. Cutting a tight circle on the floor, like they're dance partners. Gurney is shorter than Duncan, but faster, and more vicious. Sometimes, Paul can tell Duncan is reserving his strength, not touching when Paul has a strike opening. Gurney has no such impulse; Paul's vision blinks blue from his shield nearly faster than he can track and block.

Then Gurney catches his wrist, paralyzing his blade arm, and his own blade closes in on the exposed side of Paul's neck. It flickers blue, blue, and then: red. Paul feels steel on his throat. His pulse leaps to meet it.

Caught, Paul has no chose but to be led backwards by Gurney's hand and his blade in surrender, the end of their dance.

"Ah," Gurney grits out in mean satisfaction. "The slow blade penetrates the shield."

He tosses Paul away. The shield seals up, but Paul is shaken. He turns away, annoyed with Gurney, disgusted with himself, devastated beyond rationality about Duncan leaving and mad that he feels so much. He should have left. This room, when Gurney came to play pretend as weapon master, but even before that. With Duncan. He should have used what power he has as the Duke's son and forced Duncan's hand. Duncan would have understood eventually, when he was safe.

"Guess I'm not in the mood today," he grunts, the very best he can verbalize the strangling hold his emotions have on him.

It's the wrong thing to say to someone like Gurney Halleck, who has all the emotions of a rock lobbed through a glass window.

"Mood?" he latches onto the word like a bloodthirsty lamprey. "What's mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises." He points his sword at Paul, a crime any other time and day, advancing behind it. "No matter the mood. Now: fight!"

He comes at Paul like he means to kill. Paul, used to the way Duncan smiles at him even during their hardest spars, stumbles. He has to leap over the desk to get away, taking up two new blades from the roll as he goes.

His sweat boils under the shield, and his fear is real. Still, Gurney keeps coming, relentless as a sea-storm, beating Paul back until he can get his bearings.

Gurney is fast, but he's rising like a wave above Paul, and Paul is able to use his lower centre of gravity to catch Gurney's leg and flip him into his back. It's his turn to put his blade to Gurney's neck until it turns red.

"I have you," he spits, fear turned to fury.

"Aye," Gurney concedes. But then he follows it with: "But look down, my lord." Paul glances down, sees the blush across his chest and feels distant pressure on his side. "You'd have joined me in death."

Gurney's breathing hard and he's been defeated, but he finally smiles up at Paul. "I see you found the mood."

Paul backs away instantly. The red on both of them disappears, no harm done other than what was already hurt in Paul. He doesn't know what mood he's found, or what mood has found Gurney today. He doesn't want to know.

He offers a hand to Gurney to help him up, even if he doesn't really want to. Duncan allows him to be frustrated, but he doesn't allow Paul to behave in unsporting ways. Between their bodies, their clasped hands are red.

Paul turns his shield off.

"Will it be that bad?" he asks.

"You don't get it, do you?" There's a new fervor in Gurney's voice that has nothing to do with sparring. "You don't really understand the grave nature of what's happening to us. Eighty years Arrakis belonged to House Harkonnen." Gurney begins to advance on Paul again, fists squeezing eighty years as his voice grinds into Paul. "Eighty years of owning the spice fields. Can you imagine the wealth? Your eyes – I need to see it in your eyes – you never met Harkonnens before. I have. They're not human. They're brutal. You have to be ready."

Gurney is shaking. Paul can smell his sweat, feel it slick on his bare skin as Gurney clasps Paul's face in his hands, searching deep in his eyes for some sign of Paul's readiness. He must be disappointed to find none.

*

Paul sleeps through a great storm pounding the castle and the water, but wakes when his mother's voice penetrates his dream, her voice echoing over others both familiar and new, all of them saying: Paul. He wakes, never able to resist her commands, dresses in the clothes she sets out for him, and lets her lead him into a dangerous dream he's never had before.

His hand in the box. Pain cracks him open like a boot does to a beetle, letting the Reverend Mother read his guts for omens. As he suffers, he knows she sees parts of him he wishes were hidden. His dreams. Those of the sun and the endless sea of sand, a girl – the girl – beckoning him to a future he does not yet understand. Other dreams, shifting and murky, his body entangled with Duncan's, paired, rubbing like slippery fish underwater. The Reverend Mother sees all, and knows his desire for both.

He bears it because he must. Poison is not the death for him. He grabs hold of the pain in his blistering hand, makes a home for it in him, and then wills it to live there.

"Enough," The Reverend Mother barks after a thousand years, after cities of pain have been built and razed, generations of hurt have lived and died, after it is all dust. At her command, the pain is gone as if it never came, leaving only a lingering, aching knowledge of its possibility.

He stumbles away from her, cradling his hand. The pain is gone, but his hand remembers it, cramping. He's unable to trust the sight of it unharmed.

"Like sifting sand through a screen, we sift people," The Reverend Mother tells him, sitting haughty in a chair that does not belong to her, hiding cowardly behind her veil, still unimpressed by him despite his resilience. "If you had been unable to control your impulses, like an animal," he thinks she would spit at him, if she could, "we could not let you live. You inherit too much power."

"What, because I'm a Duke's son?"

"Because you are Jessica's son," The Reverend Mother clips in. "You have more than one birthright, boy. Jessica!"

The door behind them opens immediately. Paul can hear the panic in his mother's breathing as she swoops in, hastily covering her hair again and trying to compose herself.

"You've been training him in The Way," The Reverend Mother says, the barest hint of approval in her voice for Jessica. To Paul, she says: "Tell me about these dreams."

There is nowhere to hide between these two women. "I had one tonight," Paul confesses.

"What did you see?" The Reverend Mother presses.

Paul's eyes are hot, but there's no point in lying to her. "A girl. On Arrakis."

"Have you dreamed of her before?" Paul cannot tell if The Reverend Mother's voice hits her harder. His adrenaline is fading, leaving him tired and brittle but he must not let her win over him.

"Many times," he says. It's true of her, of him.

He would not expect this Reverend Mother, loathsome as she is, to extend him any mercy, but she does, in a way, asking not about his other dreams, the dark, wet, ones, but instead about the trueness of them in the waking world.

"Not exactly," he says. He has not been permitted to go to Arrakis to see a girl or anyone else, and Duncan has never held him as a lover would.

The Reverend Mother suddenly stands.

"Goodbye, young human," she bids him coldly. "I hope you live."

Jessica follows her out. After a calculated pause, he follows his mother out into the foggy, rainy night.

He does not hear everything said between the Bene Gesserit, but he hears enough to frighten and anger him.

"What does it mean, that I could be The One?"

"You heard," Jessica whispers. "The Bene Gesserit serve as powerful partners to the Great Houses, but there's more to it."

Paul's lip curls. "You steer the politics of the Imperium from the shadows, I know."

"You don't know everything," Jessica insists. "For thousands of years we've been carefully crossing bloodlines, to bring forth – "

"The One?" he asks, disgusted. Breeding them, like livestock. Is Paul so little to her, a purebred animal to parade about for show or slit his throat if he's deemed defective?

"A mind," Jessica protests, "powerful enough to bridge space and time. Past and future. Who can help us into a better future. We think he's very close now. Some believe he's here."

"All part of a plan." Separated from Paul by the night's fog, Jessica is little more than a shadowy creature that might haunt his dreams, ready to devour him in pursuit of power. He turns away and she follows after him, close as his own shadow does.

They walk back inside together, and by the warm light of the lamp, Jessica is his mother again. She takes him by the elbow and turns him in the direction of his rooms.

"Go back to bed," she commands, as if she wasn't the one to pull him out of it. "Go to sleep. You don't get enough as it is."

Paul tugs his elbow free, bristling. His skin feels sensitive still, phantom pain coursing through him. "Can't we talk about it?"

His mother peers down the hall to the room she shares with Paul's father. "Not now. For now, this is a dream to you. Let it fade. Go on."

She prods him again, and in order to get away, he has to take a step in the direction of his room. From behind him, his mother hums in approval.

In her contagious haste, Jessica left a lit lamp on the table next to Paul's armoire. He undresses by it and begins to fold his clothes before deciding against it. He only wore them for minutes, and it's only rainwater on them, but he already does not want to put them back on again, shy like a shocked animal. He leaves them on the floor in a heap. He sits on the edge of the mattress, where he had not long ago been truly dreaming, and puts his hand on the damp imprint of his body left on the sheets. He doesn't sleep again that night.

*

The last day, when they actually leave Caladan, there is no ceremony. It is only because there isn't enough time, Paul's sure, but he's grateful regardless of whatever the facts are. Every maid and worker is too busy hauling and cleaning to spare him more than a terse nod in the hallway when they see him, so he is left to his own devices. He hasn't seen his mother today, can only hear her voice in a distant corner of the house, issuing domestic commands.

When he slips outside, he can only hear the wind and the waves. He walks along the greengrass path toward the water, looking out over the foam and the waves, and tries to imagine it all gone. Flat land instead. Covered in sand, glittering with heat. He's done his reading, watched everything available for his projector, even caught glimpses in his dreams, and he still struggles to conceptualize it. The cold wind coming off the water makes it harder. He gathers his coat tighter around himself and heads down to the shore.

His boots leave prints in the sand. He walks backwards to look at them. The prints are slushy, soft-sided, filling with water once his weight is gone. There will be sand in his future, but not the same kind, and it won't meet at the water. Paul walks until his boots are wet, and his only choice is in or out of the water.

How long would he swim, he wonders, before no one could see him anymore? How far would he make it? There are craggy, algae-stained rocks in the distance. Paul can see them from the shore, has probably glanced down at them from a ship, and thought nothing of them. How long could he cling to them? Long enough everyone would leave without him?

They wouldn't. He knows this. Paul has his part to play, even if he's reluctant. Neither his mother nor his father would leave for Arrakis without him. And anyway, he'd drown in the day's choppy waves before they noticed his absence from the house.

He must go, and Caladan must stay as it is without him. There's moss and stubby seagrass growing in the tidepool next to him. The water is clear as glass, peaceful, only ebbing slightly with the pull from the enormity of the sea-tide. If he wants to bring Caladan with him, it will only be in his memories, verdant and wet.

In the distance, a ship's engine begins to fire. One of the scout ships preparing for take-off. Time is short.

Paul rolls up his sleeve and crouches down to submerge his hand into the tidepool's water. It's welcomely frigid on the tender inside of his wrist. He flexes his hand, trying to memorize the exact feeling of it, the temperature, the weightlessness. The sea is part of his blood, he knows, but that doesn't mean he isn't wounded about losing daily sight of it.

Behind him, from the house, a voice calls. He hears the tone and knows it's his mother, even if he can't hear the words. He imagines the long grasp of her voice reaching out to him: Paul, mixed up with the hush of the wind in the grass and the exhale-inhale of the waves. Paul looks out over the water as he holds it in his hand one last time. Caladan is a stormy place, but today the sun is slipping through the clouds to light the foamy cradle of the waves.

Paul pulls his hand from the water and as it drips onto the sand and moss, he tells himself: The sun will be the same on Arrakis.

*

The sun on Arrakis is not the same. Not at all. When the door to the ship opens, Paul cannot see a single thing in the blister-brightness reflecting off the sand and the offramp. He squints and tries to focus on the shape of his father, a nearby dark smear, for some reprieve from the light. When they step out of the ship, the sun envelops them totally, swarms their shadows and consumes them. Leaves them bare and baking.

Even the wind is hot, and brings with it a hundred tiny stings from sand granules pelting them. The only reason Paul does not cover his face with his hands is because it would be improper to do so under the watch of the locals come to see them. Their eyes are just as all-seeing as the sun. Paul feels the people's gaze all over them, searching for meaning in their new rulers.

As they walk, Paul hears, for the first time, Lisan al Gaib, and for the last time, does not bear the crushing weight of it.

*

The dimness of the palace is just as blinding as the sun, but easier to bear, once Paul learns how to see by the natural light allowed in by the long, horizontal windows. Paul's quarters are smaller and simpler than his rooms on Caladan, much of the furniture molded in place, but there are nooks where he can hide from the sun, the whisperings of everyone around him, and his own thoughts.

Despite the window design and the deepset nature of his rooms, they're hot during the day and cold at night if he doesn't manage the shutters correctly, which Paul finds difficult to get used to. The armpits of his shirts and jackets begin chafing immediately upon dressing, thick with his sweat. But at night he huddles under the thin blankets on his bed, moving his legs around like one of the hand-sized crickets back on Caladan, trying to spark heat. To distract himself while he waits for sleep to finally meet him, he runs his fingers along the wall carving at the head of his bed. It's a celestial pond full of huge-eyed, long-whiskered fish, but Paul hasn't found an explanation for it in his books yet. The shape is already becoming familiar to his fingers though, comforting. In the mornings, he can see what he's been touching at night, the parts of the carving where the wood has been burnished by fingers well before Paul, someone else self-soothing the same way Paul is, their hands touching through time.

*

It burns, when he crushes the hunter-seeker in his hand. There's enough power in its little body to scorch his palm. Paul makes it worse by squeezing tight tight tighter, until he's sure it's dead. He doesn't even think about it, just moves on instinct.

He's not even sure what happened until he peels open his hand and sees the destruction of machine and flesh, a wisp of machine and meat smoke rising from his palm.

*

After the yelling dies down, after he pries his mother's worried hands off him, after Dr. Yueh has treated the burn on his hand from the hunter-seeker's circuits, Mapes runs him a bath, his first in this house. To calm his nerves.

She brings him to a room a room far too large for the single bathtub in its center, steam rising, dissipating before it reaches the high windows. There's plenty of water in the tub, more than enough to cover him. A luxury, a sign of power, of command over this planet. Paul had a shower a day prior, short and utilitarian. He does not need a bath, but he's alive and so he will have one.

He undoes the first button on his jacket staring at the steaming stillness of the water, suddenly thirsty, before remembering his decency.

"I don't need you to - " he starts, turning, button pinched between his fingers, but Mapes is gone. He's alone with all this water.

It's so hot it feels cold on his feet when he steps in, tenderizing the insides of his thighs and tickling his flanks as he sits. He puts his unbandaged hand into the water and shivers at the heat, gasps when he splashes it over his face. It feels just like leaping into the sea on Caladan, even though that water is frigid.

There is no soap nor washcloth to bathe with; Paul leans over each side of the tub to check the floor. There aren't even any towels laid out. Just Paul, stranded in his hot bath in the centre of the room. He considers calling out, but decides against it. He does not want his mother's maid to come in and see him with nothing but his hands to cover himself with.

He stays in the tub until he can't see the steam rising to the high slit windows anymore, trying to relax and empty his mind, but every time he moves his injured hand, he remembers the pulse of fear that had hit him when he noticed the hunter-seeker, and how it had been swallowed by the thrill of becoming the hunter when he disappeared into the projected grass after the desert mouse.

Balanced on the edge of the tub, his right hand slowly curls into a fist. It hurts. His other hand, under the water, touches his thigh. He looks down at his penis under the water. It's red from the heat. He glances at the doorway, pictures it opening to reva hand into the water to touch Paul, as a reward for his instincts and bravery. Paul forces himself to imagine instead his mother or Mapes coming in, skirts swishing, until the arousal passes, washed away by mortification.

The water is still warm when he gets out, but a chill sets into him as he stands beside the tub with nothing but his dirty clothes beside him. After a moment, he dresses in his clothes. He leaves the room still with all the dirt and sweat he came in with, just wetter. He starts to walk down the hall, but a hand shoots out to touch his arm. Mapes.

"You're to go to your room," she murmurs. If she notices that Paul's sleeve is wet under her hand, she gives no sign of it. "Your father is coming."

"Even with the - ?" Paul starts, even though there's nothing left. He caught the hunter-seeker, crushed it in his fist. Right in front of her. It can't hurt him now.

She nods. There's nowhere else for him to go, he supposes. He takes a step, and then stops. His fist, crushing the hunter-seeker, smashing into the doorframe. The startled look on her face.

He turns back. "Are you alright?" She looks at him now, her expression closed off. "When the, when I...I hope it didn't seem like I was trying to hurt you."

She nods again, understanding coming into her eyes. "You wouldn't." She absently makes a motion toward her side.

She had a knife, Paul remembers. A crysknife, they call them. Apparently, she brought one with her and offered it to his mother as part of her service. Perhaps she carries it even now. If Paul had moved in some other small way, toward her instead of the doorframe, he wouldn't be wet from the bath, but from blood pouring out around her knife.

Paul presses his fingers against his sore palm. "I'm glad," he says.

*

He stalks the perimeter of his room in his chafing-damp clothes. Past his rumpled bed, his armoire, his books and projector. One of the books has fallen to the floor. Paul picks it up, carefully tugs the creased pages straight, and closes it again. Someone turned the projector off, or it broke in the soldiers' sweep of his room. Paul walks to the window, gets on his toes to look out. No one is moving and the air is warped by heat waves. He should close the shutters or the room will be sweltering soon.

Even behind the thick wall and out of the direct sunlight, it still hurts Paul's eyes to look out on the afternoon. He has to turn away, rubbing sunspots out of his eyes. When they clear, he can see again: the carving above his bed, the impossible fish swimming. One of them has a dark spot on the edge of its face now.

Paul goes to his bed, knee-walks across his mattress to see it more clearly. It's so small it could be a knot in the wood, if Paul didn't already know this carving intimately, hadn't spent hours tracing its curves. He reaches out, touches the edge of the hole with his index finger. But that's not right, doesn't feel right. He moves his hand down to the fish's left flank, where he can reach when he's lying down. He begins his tracing there, as he always does, following the fish's side, its gills, its curious eye, even the whip of its whisker.

His finger moves across its bulbous mouth, the curve pleasing in its perfection. Paul watches his finger find the fish's second eye, another whisker, its opposite gills, until he reaches the side of its face. His finger glides smoothly along, until it reaches the void of the hole from the hunter-seeker. The rim is burnt in a perfect circle, but Paul can feel the micro-rough edge of it on his fingertip. He rubs his finger around the edge, watching it, feeling it.

He wonders where the operator hid. Did they see him in his room, believing himself to be alone? How long have they been watching him? What did they see, lying in their own cradle near his bed? Could they hear Paul dreaming?

Suddenly, Paul feels like he's right back in the hot bath, flushed and damp. He looks around the room again, like the mouse looked around the safety of the grass. He thinks he's alone, but he always did, didn't he?

Paul pulls his hand away from the wall, looks at his fingertip in the low light. There's a crescent imprint in the skin, harmless and impermanent. It doesn't feel like anything when Paul touches his thumb to it. He glances over his shoulder again and wishes he had closed the windows, shut out all the light.

His hand finds the carving again, covering the hole with his palm, pressing until he feels the lacking place against his skin. He shuffles closer, kneels higher, body casting a shadow over his hand. There's darkness on darkness when he moves his hand again to reveal the hole, and when he slips his middle finger into it.

He goes slow, eyes closed so he can focus on how it feels, the drag over his fingerpad, the scuff on his nail, how the grain provides a sliver of resistance to his knuckle until he twists his finger a degree or two.

Paul presses forward with his entire body, wrist on hand on arm on torso on hip, until he's flush against the carving. The wood is cool through his damp clothes, against his hot body. His breath moistens the carving under his mouth so when he inhales he tastes the veneer and the wood underneath. He has an erection. It's rubbing on the empty space beneath the fish's body, over smooth water. Paul rocks his finger half out of the hole and back in, and his hips against the wall in time.

The assassin, whoever he might be, burned a perfect hole for the hunter-seeker to pass through, but inside, the hole is not perfect. The exposed woodgrain scrapes at Paul's skin in a way a body never would, but that brings its own tingling thrill. He takes a deep breath, licks his mouth - licks the carving, he's so close, all the history he's tarnishing on his tongue, and practices thrusting his finger in and out of the hole. At the same pace, he presses his hips against the wall, draws them back, rubs up against the wood again. He's never done it - any of it - before, but there's a seed of knowledge in his flesh, watered by his dreams.

Behind him, boots on the stone, the creak of the door.

Paul rips his finger out of the hole, flings himself to the edge of the mattress just as his father comes into the room.

"Paul," he says, in relief, and sweeps Paul up off the bed like he's a child once more, crushing Paul into his body.

Panic turns Paul into a wriggling fish, levering his hips to the side and away, scrabbling for purchase on his father's jacket with numb hands to hold him at bay.

Reflexively, Leto holds Paul tighter, pinning Paul to him, before he presses Paul away to look at him, His face is stricken.

"Are you hurt?" he demands.

"No," Paul insists, but when his father’s frown deepens, he can’t lie. "Just my hand," he says, offering up his palm.

Leto takes Paul’s hand into his own, examines the bandage Dr. Yeh put on it with military focus for a few seconds. When he’s satisfied, he loosens his grip, guiding Paul to sit on the edge of the bed again and joins him there.

"Do you know what happened?" Leto asks.

Paul shakes his head. "I stopped the hunter-seeker, and then mother came, and then they made me leave." He considers his hand for a second. "I'm alright. Do you know what happened?"

"Some," Leto says, which means he knows everything but won’t share it all with Paul. "There was a Harkonnen agent sealed in the wall."

"The wall?" Helpless to his guilt, Paul glances at the wall behind them, the intricate fish and peaceful pond he’s traced so many times already, the perfect circle of the hole and its rough insides. His middle finger pulses with awareness.

Leto follows Paul’s look to the wall, and touches his arm gently.

"Not there," he says in relief. "Down the hall. He ran the hunter-seeker through a pipe here."

"Oh." Paul rubs his thumb over his fingernail. "He's dead?"

Leto nods. "Was before we got to him. He never had a way out of the wall. It was a suicide mission."

Paul nods. Away from the bath, the wall, and his father’s embrace, his body is cooling and a shocky fog is settling over his mind.

His father seems to take his shock for fear, and tells him: "Don’t worry. We’re searching for any other intrusions. Thoroughly. Do you want to sleep somewhere else?" His voice softens further than normal. "You can sleep with your mother and I, if you want."

"I’m not a child," Paul objects, already feeling the claustrophobic shame that he’d deserve if he slept in his parent's bed. Where would he sleep, at the end of the bed, like a tolerated pet? Worse: in between them? Kicking and squirming, still begging milk and afraid of shadows?

"I know you’re not," Leto says, and the relief is back in his voice. He never wanted it then; it was an offer from his mother made in his father’s voice.

Leto’s eyes rove around the room, seeking threats; instead, they find the shield still sitting on the corner of Paul’s bed. He leans for it, gives it to Paul. "I want you to wear this at all times. Even when you’re sleeping." His mouth thins. "Especially when you’re sleeping." He watches Paul obediently strap the shield on his wrist on with sharp eyes. "And I’m having guards posted at your door at all times."

Paul frowns, not eager to have any further possible witnesses to his dreams or his conversations with his mother. People already believe him strange. But his father doesn't see his frown, isn't even looking at him at all. He leans forward, mends his hands together between his knees, and sighs.

"I know you don’t like that,” he says. "But it’s necessary. You’re too important to me, now and forever." He wrings his hands once harshly. "If only Duncan were here to guard you." He glances at Paul, a corner of his mouth lifting. "That wouldn't be so bad, would it? He’s always good to you."

Paul’s finger throbs and his armpits prickle with nascent sweat. His face burns. He leans back and away from his father, but then aborts the movement, lifting one foot onto the bed frame so his knee hides any lingering swelling in his lap.

Paul hasn't spoken, but Leto pats Paul’s lifted knee as if he did, signet heavy on his finger. He levers himself to standing.

"You'll also join me at the council strategy meetings. It’s no longer optional. If the Harkonnen believe you to be a target, then we must make you an impossible one for them."

Paul's eyes are on the floor, the weight of what that means for all of them, for him, crushing his shoulders down, bowing his back.

Leto allows the silence for a moment before he prompts: "Yes?"

"Yes," Paul mumbles, instead of begging once more to only be a son, not an heir. Caught at the edge of the bed, by his physical condition and his father's attention, he cannot reach back for the comforting lines of the fish carving. He follows the lines between the tiles, trying to set his thoughts and feelings in a similar grid to know them properly.

He hears Leto turn toward him. "Listening is your only task now, learning. Don't worry about knowing everything." His hand lands again on Paul, on his shoulder this time, another weight to bear. He squeezes and it aches Paul's bone marrow. "Are you alright?"

Paul nods his head quickly. "Yes," he says again. "Just tired."

Leto chuckles, not entirely in good humour. "To be expected. Rest then. The guards won't bother you." With another gentle, hurtful squeeze, he leaves Paul.

Paul says in his hunch until his father closes the door behind himself, gives orders to the guards in his rumbling voice, and the echo of his bootheels fades down the hall. Then he flings himself back down onto his bed. Twice denied now, his body begs for his hands on it, but Paul ignores his foolish, selfish body and covers his burning face with his hands instead. He stifles his breath until he can't take it anymore, and then settles for only covering his eyes with one hand.

He extends his other hand out, his right hand, trying to find the wall, a grounding line to touch, but he can't quite reach it. He reels his hand back in. Puts his sore, dry, middle finger knuckle in his mouth and rubs his tongue over it until it doesn't hurt so much. Almost feels good.

*

He survives his first strategy meeting by keeping his eyes open and holding onto the armrests of his chair. He offers nothing and no one asks him for anything, but he doesn't breathe right until they're in the open air outside and Thufir says, "He's here," and Paul understands what that means.

Paul runs at Duncan with the abandon of a child, trying to outrun the heaviness of the meeting and his fear and his father's long shadow.

"My boy!" Duncan calls to him and no one else. He catches Paul like he's weightless, swinging him around with a rough, doggish joy in front of everyone. The combination of deep safety in Duncan's arms and the thrill of everyone, even his father, seeing them caught up together makes Paul's heart pound, but he can't stop smiling, even when Gurney joins them and receives his own warm welcome from Duncan.

Paul stays safe under Duncan's arm the whole way to Leto's office. Duncan is so warm, and each inhale Paul takes fills his lungs with Duncan's smell, sour and grown. He shamefully almost forgot it, but having it inside him again makes Paul want to weep and laugh and slip a hand under his own waistband.

They're finally forced to part in Leto's chamber, when Leto gestures for Duncan to stand before him. Duncan does so, appearing to be completely at home even at a polite address to his lord.
There's no reason for Paul to stay at Duncan's side so Paul is forced to lean against Leto's desk with the others. His own side is already chilling without Duncan's warmth, and he's afraid of losing the scent of Duncan again. He inhales deeply, trying to tattoo the scent on his memories.

"Tell us," Leto says, beckoning Duncan. "Tell me."

Paul does his best to listen, and part of him is noble and focused enough to take in Duncan's description of his time so far on Arrakis, receiving the word sietch like a gift to be explored later, taking part in his father's pleasure at the reveal of the true Fremen numbers.

But a greater part of Paul cannot do more than soak in Duncan. His face is dry and worn, but invigorated by his return to them – to Paul, Paul hopes, and the knowledge he brings incredible news. The stubble on his face and braid are dredged in desert dust.

The suit he's wearing – it's familiar in a way that makes Paul's belly cramp confusingly. He mistook it for a flightsuit outside, but it's not. Form-fitting like a flightsuit, but not in the same way, not Atreides-issue, made by other hands. It fits Duncan perfectly but Paul hates it, for some reason he cannot discern.

The man who Leto allows to keep his knife strides into the office wearing the selfsame suit, and Paul thinks he understands. It's a Fremen custom, or piece of equipment. It looks more correct on the man than Duncan, who should be in Atreides dress, now that he's home, with Paul.

Everyone but Duncan recoils when the man, Stilgar, Duncan says, spits on the desk in front of Leto. Even Paul, down the line of the desk, flinches at the vulgarity. He hasn't shed tears, vomited, spit or sweat near his father in years.

"Hold," Duncan says gently, awkwardly. "Thank you, Stilgar, for the gift of your body's moisture."

A gift, Paul thinks, in mortification and what may be arousal, splattered on the desk, nearly as abject as seed on sheets or blood on underwear.

"We accept it in the spirit in which it was given," Duncan continues, placating, and then he too spits tidily on the desk, mindfully away from Leto.

Paul feels faint at the sight, the sound of it. He has to lean his thigh against the desk and clasp his hands in front of himself. It echoes in his mind, ingrained.

His father spits too. Of course he does; he's too canny to ignore a gesture so significant, no matter his personal feelings about the abject nature of saliva, if he has any.

The conversation sweeps along as if there isn't three men's saliva littering the desk between them all. A deal is offered in plain words, Leto's, and then Paul's. Stilgar does not appear to take either offer, and then says something Paul does not quite understand, but a frisson passes through him regardless hearing it.

No one else seems to have heard what he said, or they assume it to be beneath their notice.
Gurney passes the easiest judgement, muttering, "I don't like him," but Thufir and Leto don't share the sentiment

"Our plan bears fruit," Thufir says.

Leto shares a look with him. "But it will take time?"

"Yes," Thufir agrees. "It will take time."

"Time," Leto agrees. "Our curse and our asset." He starts to say something more and then glances at Paul. "We'll discuss this further later. For now," he claps his hands together over the desk, "we wait."

He takes the time to meet the eyes of Thufir, Gurney, and Duncan before speaking again. "And while we do, I would have you all join us at our table and eat with us. To celebrate our new beginnings. A few days from now. It would mean everything to me if you could all attend."

Gurney, Duncan, and Thufir all nod in agreement and supplication as Leto leaves the office, off to some other grand task.

Paul lingers at the table, willing himself to digest everything that was said. But he finds himself looking at the three little lakes of saliva on the desktop instead of considering the words. His father's and Stilgar's are close but not overlapping; they share borders. Duncan's is off to the side, singular. There's some froth ringing his spit, otherwise it's nearly a perfect circle. It would be cold now, if he touched it, slimy on his fingers. But it was warm once, clinging to the inside of Duncan's cheek, filling the divot in his tongue. If Paul leaned down and kissed it, it would taste the way Duncan's mouth tastes.

Someone clears their throat and Paul's head snaps up. In the doorway, Gurney waits for him. His face is impassive; he might know all of Paul's secrets and hate him for it, or he may be smiling. Embarrassed, Paul looks away from the desk, and hurries to catch up.

*

Paul stays late in the barracks. It's astonishing no one makes him leave; few of the soldiers save Gurney and Duncan really know him, but they don't object to him being there long past the length a noble visit would entail. They may not truly want him there among them, but after someone takes Paul's cup to refill it, Paul stops caring.

When the soldier brings it back sloshing full, Duncan intercepts the cup before Paul can take it, and brings it to his own mouth.

"Thank you," Paul crams out to the soldier, and then: "What are you doing? You have your own."

Duncan looks at Paul from the side of his eyes and raises his eyebrows as he drinks. He swallows loudly. A single droplet of alcohol slips down the side of his chin, no more beard to catch it, shaved off now that he's home.

"Can't be too careful, Paul. There are poisons you can't smell or taste."

Paul flushes in a dizzying mixture of mortification, unease, and arousal. "Then you can't drink any!" His voice comes out wobbly and overly loud; he can hear the drink in it. He presses his hand to his swampy cheek.

Duncan chuckles. "If not me, then who? Would you sacrifice Gurney to the noble cause instead? I always knew I was your favourite."

Gurney gives Duncan a quelling look, but he's not truly upset. "No one here is going to poison Paul. And if they did, I'd skin then with one of those Fremen knives."

"Crysknife," Paul murmurs, tasting the sharpness of the word. He is drunk. He's sitting down, can feel the bench underneath him, but he thinks he might slip off it at any moment. Gurney gestures at Paul, who leans away from his hand, closer to Duncan.

"Maybe it's time for the young lord to go to bed." He's not looking at Paul. He's looking at Duncan. His face is very serious.

Duncan's face isn't serious. Paul can see all of it, no helmet or beard to keep him from savouring every cell of it. Duncan smiles at Gurney, and Paul smiles at Duncan.

"Let us have our fun," Duncan says, showing Gurney his teeth. "I've missed my boy something fierce. It's good to see him again." He lifts his eyes to see the room and all the faintly pulsing soldiers in it. "I missed everyone. Even you, Gurney Halleck."

"Hmm," is all Gurney says, but he leans away, drops his hand in defeat, leaving Paul in the care of Duncan's radiant body heat. "Fine. But make sure he makes it to his room. Soon." He stands. "My lord. Be good." He disappears into the darkness surrounding Paul's tunnel vision.

Paul is still smiling. He drinks from his cup, lips smudging the place he hopes Duncan drank from. The liquid in it tastes like fire, like a burn before Dr. Yueh has tended to it.

Paul drinks and drifts. Around him, the soldiers talk, their voices stirring like wind over sand. A mile away and right next to him, Duncan debates the merits of flying over sand versus water with someone. His own cup is barely anchored in his fingers, swaying gently as he talks. He doesn't drink out of it.

Paul already told the story of the hunter-seeker, so no one wants to talk to him anymore, which he's fine with. His tongue is buzzing. He closes his eyes for a second, imagining how it would sound and feel if he used The Voice now. Told everyone to leave, except for Duncan, so they could talk, only to each other and no one else. He probably wouldn't be able to get the words out if he tried.

The cup loosens from Paul's hand and he opens his eyes, expecting to see the rest of his drink all over the floor and all the soldiers staring at him. The configuration of shapes and faces around them is different than when Paul closed his eyes, but no one is looking at him but Duncan. Duncan is holding his half-empty cup.

"Time to go, I think," he pronounces gently, and sets Paul's cup to the side.

Paul is slow to get up, but can do it by himself, can trail after Duncan on shaky legs as everyone gives their regards to Duncan with warm voices and clasping hands and either ignore Paul or give him stoic nods and salutes.

In the hall, Paul squints at the lamps. All the windows have been closed, against either the daytime heat, or the nighttime chill.

"What time is it?" Paul mumbles.

Duncan hums. "Late enough."

"You can go back in," Paul says, setting his feet in the direction of his room. "I can make it by myself."

That makes Duncan snort. "I don't believe you. And besides, Gurney put the fear of his skinning skills into me. I'll take you."

Paul's stomach swirls with heat. He shoves his hands into his trouser pockets to keep control of them. "I'm alright."

"I know you are." Duncan mimics Paul, hands in his fatigue pockets. "I want to keep it that way."

They don't talk as they move through the halls. The nighttime hush is contagious, and Paul needs to focus on his feet, which are leaden and clumsy. Even though he's not inside, there are guards on either side of Paul's door. Duncan nods at them and they nod back. Paul doesn't say anything, falling into Duncan's shadow, head down, eyes on the floor. He tries not to think about what they'll report to his father. His mother.

Paul expects to feel better once they're in his bedroom, away from his parents' proxy eyes. And he almost does; he's alone with Duncan, what he wished so badly for. But that settles on him suddenly, opens his eyes to the disorder of his books on his desk, the jacket slumped on the floor, dripped from the chairback. How the blankets are flung back on his bed, revealing the rumpled place that held his body just this morning.

"You've never been in my room," he says, startled. Resets his tongue to say, "Here. On Arrakis."

Duncan smiles at him softly, no teeth. "I've hardly been anywhere indoors on Arrakis. But no, not your room." He turns to look toward Paul's disorderly desk, the closed shutters.

Paul turns away too, struggling out of his jacket. He drops it on the corner of his bedframe, too tipsy to put it away properly. He fists the hem of his shirt, glances over his shoulder. Duncan is still looking away. Paul rips his shirt off, sways putting it on top of his jacket, and lets the movement wash him onto his mattress. He moves his arms like he's swimming, pushes his toe off the tile and ends up an inch further up the mattress. The sheets are wonderfully cool on his fevered skin. Paul closes his eyes to soak it in.

Somewhere outside Paul, Duncan laughs. It's puffy, airy, slips out of Paul's ear as soon as he hears it. He waits for more, but doesn't other sound from Duncan. He opens his eyes, worried Duncan has abandoned him.

Duncan isn't looking at Paul. He's looking at the wall. At the carving of the fish above Paul, at the perfect hole in it. Even though the veil of alcohol, Paul can see just how intense his eyes are. It makes his blood simmer, and his dick stir sluggishly.

He forces himself up onto his elbows, sucking his belly in so it doesn't pooch out childishly.

He licks his mouth, says, "You can touch it." Duncan would have to get onto the bed with Paul to get closer to the hole, straddle Paul's body to get to the empty space beyond him. His fingers are thicker than Paul's; they wouldn't fit inside, not even one, not even if he wet it, in his mouth or Paul's.

Duncan looks sharply down at Paul, and it should make whatever compelled Paul to say that curdle, but it doesn't, boldened by alcohol.

"Your father told me what happened," Duncan says, instead of No.

Duncan's hands are behind his back. Parade rest, if Paul had to guess. He wonders how tightly Duncan's hand is holding his own wrist. He imagines it bruised under the strength of Duncan's fingers, struggling to keep still. The thought makes him reach for the covers, hauling a corner over himself to hide his erection. The weight, even of a blanket lighter than what he'd use for a summer on Caladan, is comforting. He slips from his elbows, back onto his back. His eyes close of their own volition again. The dark behind his eyelids is so seductive.

He doesn't know how long the quiet lasts, can't tell if it's been seconds, or if dawn is creeping outside the windows, but it's him who breaks it again.

"'M glad you're here," he mumbles. "I wanted to see you in my room."

Duncan sighs heavily, but he's smiling when he speaks. Paul knows he is because his belly flutters at the sound of it in Duncan's voice. "You're sweet."

It's the last thing Paul hears. He drifts away into the darkness on it, and doesn't try to come back. Nothing will hurt him while Duncan's here. The last thing he hears is Duncan's boots on the tile as he leaves the room. There's no echo of his footsteps down the hall, just the gentle click of the door as it's closed by careful hands.

*

Paul wakes late, headsick for reasons he remembers, and heartsick for reasons he doesn't. He drinks from the cup on his bedside, wincing at how much clay taste has steeped into his water overnight.

He stays in his room for most of the day, behaving as though he's forbidden to leave. Hiding, he knows, but not exactly from what.

He finally emerges deep into the day, hungry enough to work up the courage to open his door, only to find two guards he doesn't know posted outside. They don't even look at him as he sidles out, say nothing as he takes long looks in either direction of the hallway before leaving the safety of the doorway, and hurries down the hall.

*

He keeps close to his bedroom for several days, even after his head stops throbbing. He trains as best he can in his smaller quarters, and spends a lot of time lying on his bed, reading books, or with his projector balanced on his belly. There are no strategy meetings, and they cannot meet the Judge of the Change until she makes it back to Arrakeen from wherever she's hidden herself.

The time becomes tedious, the hours long and lonely, but Paul still startles when one afternoon, his door opens. He grabs for his shield beside him, fumbling it against his wrist as his mother comes in. She has a stack of clothing in her hands. She looks around Paul's room, which is stuffy and further disheveled, and wrinkles her nose.

"Paul," she says in disapproval. Luckily, she provides no lecture, and instead says, "Get up." She holds the clothing aloft in his direction, a bid to come get it.

Paul drops his shield and puts down his book, spread-paged, on the messy bed next to him. "Why?" A sense like he's been here before tickles at him. He's not eager to repeat that experience.

Her eyebrows go up. "Duncan, Gurney and Thufir are going to eat with us tonight. Your father 's idea."

"Oh," Paul says. "Right." He sits up slowly.

Jessica brings the bundle of clothes she chose for him over. "Are feeling alright? You haven't left your room. Has something else happened?" Concern steeps into her voice.

"I'm alright," Paul says quickly. He reaches out for the clothes to appease her. "It's just new here. Not like Caladan. I still tire in the heat."

"Mmm," Jessica hums, pushing some of his hair back with her cool hand. "You'll get used to it."

Paul rubs the shirt between his fingers. The clothes his mother has chosen for him are nicer than the soft sleep clothes he's currently wearing, but not so nice he needs to anticipate company beyond Gurney, Thufir, and Duncan. He glances toward the open door. "How much time do I have?"

"An hour," Jessica tells him. "Someone will bring you enough water to wash up. Do you need anything else?" She's still stroking his hair.

He shakes his head as little as he can, to not dislodge her fingers. No one is here to see him enjoying her soft treatment. "No. I'll be there. An hour."

Jessica parts from him slowly, leaving him with a sense of anticipation twined with dread.

*

Paul emerges from his room with two minutes left of his given hour. He's self-conscious of the wetness of his hair and his cuffs, his attempts to tame his hair and cool himself off in the meagre time given to him. A servant is waiting outside; she leads him not to the large, formal dining room near his father's office, but to the room where Paul typically eats by himself or with his mother watching him, as part of her campaign to know him better than he knows himself. By the way everyone looks to the door as he enters, he's the last to arrive.

His mother looks the same as she did an hour ago, just with a smile on her face and her hand on his father's elbow as they speak to Thufir, the third point in their conversational triangle. To the side, Duncan is in his soldier's dress, hair neatly braided away, but unshaved. Gurney hasn't changed anything about his grey hair or beard, but he's standing less stiffly than normal.

With all eyes on him, shyness shudders up Paul's spine. He recombs back his damp hair and tugs where his wet cuff is caught under his shield strap. "Am I late?" he asks.

"No," his father says.

"It's fine," his mother murmurs.

"Come here," Gurney says, and Paul goes to where he's standing, even though approaching Duncan makes Paul's stomach swoop. Lucky for him, he recognizes the glint hidden deep in Gurney's eyes and lifts his forearm to block the swat Gurney aims at him. His shield crackles and everyone looks at Paul again.

"You're learning," Gurney laughs, and the tension in the room slacks off.

"Not from you," Paul jabs back, and dodges another swishing movement from Gurney, but it's good to joke. Settles his stomach. If he's joking with Gurney, he doesn't have to say anything to Duncan.

Gurney stops pestering Paul to squint at him. "You been busy drowning somewhere? Is that why no one's seen you lately?"

Paul immediately regrets choosing to obey Gurney's request to join them. Water droplets slide down his hot neck, humidify the inner collar of his jacket. He should have chosen to speak with Thufir, or his father, or willfully gotten lost on the way here.

"No," he mutters, and the only escape from Gurney is Duncan, who's watching another water droplet track down the side of Paul's throat. Paul feels both the water and Duncan's eyes on his skin. It's a mercy when the water hits his collar and is swallowed up by his thirsty shirt, just as someone beckons them all to the table to be served.

*

Sitting down to dinner together is more relaxed than Paul anticipated. Leto sits at the head of the small table, a place Paul doesn't sit even when he eats here alone, Jessica at his right and Gurney on his left, as would be in any other situation, but his expression is warm and generous as he offers words of welcome home to Duncan, and thanks for everyone taking the time to join them tonight. He even subtly nods at the server hovering a wine bottle above the glass in front of Paul.

Paul holds the glass up in toast, but only touches his lips to it, lets the wine come to his lips like a wave on the sand, and licks the couple drops that remain as he sets his glass down. He's lost his taste for alcohol for the moment.

"How is it?" Leto asks.

"Wonderful." Thufir, seated on Paul's right, places his glass down delicately.

Leto wipes his mouth on his napkin. "It's from Caladan. A souvenir."

"My lord," Thufir murmurs in gratitude.

Leto leans forward in his chair to address them. "I know Arrakis has presented, and will continue to present, challenges for all of us, and sometimes it may feel like leaving Caladan was a mistake." Leto does not betray any of them by meeting a single pair of eyes around the table. "Your steadfast support is integral to our success on Arrakis, but that doesn't mean you must forget your memories of Caladan. As part of my gratitude, please enjoy tonight's meal. May it be as good as your memories."

Servers come from the nearest kitchen bearing dishes Paul hasn't eaten for weeks, and thought he never would see again after they left Caladan. Pickled greens, savoury, cloudy soup, meat topped with a blood-red berry sauce. Whole salted fish, the olive-finned ones Paul would see leaping from the water at dawn and dusk, served on a red clay platter.

Seeing it all, suddenly the table is warmer and homier than it's ever been. Conversation flows happily, Duncan and Gurney talking of how it felt to fly close to the water on Caladan, riding the line of sea and sky, pilot talk Leto is all too happy to indulge in. Thufir, in between bites of fish and greens, talks to Paul about his ongoing studies of Arrakis' language and culture in contrast to Caladan's.

"So they use sand as cover and in defense? That's very - " Thufir's face contorts and at first, Paul thinks he's being given some horrible knowledge. But then his lips tremble and he tries to swallow before he's forced to give in to a heavy coughing fit.

"My lord," he chokes out in apology, covering his mouth with one fist while his other grapples for his water glass. He drinks once and then coughs again. It comes easier. A servant rushes to refill his glass; he drinks deeply, swallowing multiple times to smooth the way down his throat.

"Are you alright?" Paul asks, abandoning his fork and knife, hands ready to help.

Putting his near-empty glass down, so the waiting server can fill it again, Thufir pats his chest. "My apologies to everyone. It's been some time since I've had salted fish. I forgot the thirst it causes, and it's only more pronounced on Arrakis."

Smiles crack across the table. Everyone except for Paul and Duncan reach for their water glasses. Paul has hardly eaten, too focused on talking and only taking tiny, adult bites of his food. Duncan, across from Paul, has nearly cleaned his plate, but his water glass remains full.

Lips still touching his water glass after his drink, Gurney says, "The thirst on Arrakis can be ferocious. Unrelenting." He eyes Duncan's full glass and Duncan behind it. "Although our Duncan seems not to feel it."

"I feel it," Duncan responds evenly. He reaches for his glass, swiping his thumb over the damp side before taking a barren sip. "But given the unforgiving conditions on Arrakis," his eyes cut to Paul, who cannot bear to return his gaze directly, instead helplessly watching Duncan's gentle thumb caress a wave of condensation across the glass, "I'm trying to learn to live without."

*

Once dinner is over, the plates cleared, conversations dwindling, Leto and Jessica excusing themselves with Leto's blessing to finish the wine and enjoy the room as long as they want, Duncan leans to Paul and says, "I'll take you back to your room."

Paul could protest, wanting to stay and be indulged in whatever political conversation Gurney and Thufir are deep in, or object to being escorted around his own home like a guest, but he can smell the soap Duncan washed himself with and Duncan's water glass is the only one left on the table, full to trembling, exactly how Paul feels.

"Okay," he says. And faintly, to Gurney and Thufir: "Goodnight." If they respond, he does not hear it.

As they walk the halls, the familiarity of it hits Paul like a dream. He both can and cannot remember this, having been here before, walking beside Duncan. His stomach turns, not unpleasantly. He's sweating in the clothes his mother picked out.

Duncan said he would take Paul back, but he doesn't seem to be in a hurry, taking a wanderer's pace that makes Paul want to scream in frustration. His mouth will not work though, too full of an emotion he doesn't understand that strangles his tongue. He tries to match Duncan's pace, and find the right place to walk that isn't too close, but not too far away either.

Before he can figure it out, they turn the corner to reveal the door to Paul's room, glowglobes and a guard on either side. The emotion in Paul crumbles into one he understands well: regret. Duncan will leave him here and return to the barracks, to talk to the other soldiers, maybe drink with them as he tells stories about the boring dinner he had with the pathetic, puppyish little witch boy he's been saddled with for far too long.

Duncan holds a hand up in greeting to the guards. "You're relieved. I need to speak to the boy privately. I'll watch the door for now. When it's time for the next shift, send them as normal."

Paul's head whips around and he nearly chokes on his own heart. Duncan's face is serious but kind; he doesn't look at Paul at all, watching as the guards, who don't seem to find the request unusual, leave.

Duncan opens the door to Paul's room, and shuts it behind them. Inside, the dark is so total, Paul can nearly see light in it, his eyes struggling. There's a lamp in here, he knows, on his desk or near his bed. If only the shutters were cracked, he'd be able to find it.

He takes a step.

"Don't," Duncan tells him from the darkness, and his voice is so deep that Paul stops immediately, as if Duncan has a kind of Voice solely for Paul's obedience. He doesn't move but his heart tries to escape his chest.

"Stay here," Duncan says, much more gently. Paul tries to relax, but it's difficult. His impulse – animal impulse, he remembers – is a kind of fear, of the darkness of his own room, of Duncan invisible in it.

"Paul," Duncan says, and when he shifts, Paul knows roughly where he is: not far away, Paul could reach him in a step or two. "Do you know what you're doing?"

"I – " Paul says, because he thinks he understands, hopes he understands. He's thought about it, dreamed about it.

"To me," Duncan clarifies, a desperation Paul has never heard in anyone's voice before in Duncan's. "What you do to me, Paul –"

"You do it to me too," Paul blurts. His shirt is humid with sweat and his stomach aches. "You're, you…" He doesn't know how anyone talks about want to another person. He has never heard someone speak the words to know them himself.

In the dark, Duncan takes a breath, and it's shaky, like Paul has bested him at sparring. A soft noise comes out of Paul's mouth from his guts in response.

"Do you still dream about me?" Duncan asks. "Have you been dreaming about me?"

"Yes," Paul says. He thinks he's always dreaming of Duncan, the damp, twisting dream, the thoughts he has when he masturbates, even the hallway just now. His cock jumps in his trousers and his heart throbs.

"And now," Duncan presses, "are you awake?"

"Yes," Paul insists. He is, he is, he knows exactly where he is, who he's with, and he thinks he knows what's possible. If this is only a dream, it's the cruelest one and Paul hopes he dies in it.

He doesn't know the words, can only ask in return: "Are you still thirsty?"

"Yes," Duncan groans, and Paul rushes through the darkness to him, mouth already open to be drank from.

Before they can touch, Paul's shield snaps between them, scaring him so badly he stumbles back gasping. There was only a little light from it for a moment, but Paul is blinded. Tears come to his eyes. He turns away, scrubbing at them.

"Hey," Duncan says, in the darkness again and leagues away. "It's alright, it's alright."

"It's not," Paul swears, drowning in embarrassment. He can hear his panicky breaths and nothing else for too long. Denial makes him want to weep.

Finally, over Paul's hyperventilating, Duncan murmurs, gently, "Should I go? You can go to sleep." They will not speak of it, he means. This really will be like a dream, fading from Paul's memories in the daylight.

"No," Paul says, turning back toward where he hopes Duncan still is. "No. Please. Stay with me."

A deep breath from the darkness, a steadying exhale, close enough Paul feels Duncan's breath of his neck. He shivers, fumbling for the catch on his shield strap. It hits the ground heavily, its weight replaced by Duncan's broad, strong fingers around his wrist.

*

What Paul knows of sex comes from dry descriptions of conception from his mother, or is gleaned from books, most about animals. He understands words like breeding and mating, and has imagined two bodies nude under the covers, united in a single creationistic goal.

He doesn't understand this, with Duncan. Being pulled onto his unmade bed, only to be turned away from Duncan, curled back in the cradle of his body, as if Duncan is a throne, and he is an emperor, or Duncan a cage, and he a bird.

They have not kissed. Even though Paul took his shield off, abandoned it dangerously on the floor somewhere in the dark - assassins be damned, he has Duncan – all Duncan has done is seat himself on Paul's mattress, back to the carving above the bed, and taken Paul into his arms.

Paul wants to kiss, but he doesn't know how to ask, he's not facing the right way and couldn't bear another rejection. Can't ask anyway, busy gasping for air as Duncan unbuttons his shirt to touch his belly, his heaving chest. Thumbs rub over Paul's nipples, and he whimpers.

"Good?" Duncan asks, breath hot in Paul's hair. His thumbs press down on the deep roots of Paul's nipples.

Paul doesn't know how to differentiate one touch from another. It feels as good as the heel of Duncan's hand resting on his ribs, but he knows nipples are generally hidden, touched only by babies' mouths or lovers, so it must be good. He pants and shifts under Duncan's hands, trying to understand it. Behind him, on the small of his back, there's a line of flexing stiffness, big enough to scare him.

"Mmm," Duncan hums, his hips doing a single slow roll against Paul's back as he leaves Paul's nipples, hands slipping down his stomach. One stays there, flat pressure across Paul's belly, while the other skims over the aching place where Paul's cock is crammed into his trousers. Duncan cups it, hardly any pressure, but it's enough to make Paul sob.

Duncan pulls Paul back tighter against his body with the hand on his middle. "I can tell that's good," he murmurs. He touches the fastenings. "Do you touch yourself?" he asks, mouth still buried in Paul's hair, words electric on Paul's sweaty scalp. "Or is that forbidden?"

"I - " Paul chokes. There has only ever been talk of marriage, brought up by one parent and dismissed by the other immediately as a future problem. No talk of such base things as masturbation. "I touch myself."

Duncan undoes the fastenings without fumbling. He tucks his thumb under the waistband, against the hot skin it's dug into. "Has anyone else touched you?"

Paul shakes his head. No one has even dressed or undressed him for years. Only his own hands, until now.

"My boy," Duncan says, pleased, using both hands to bring Paul's trousers down, his underwear caught in the tide of the motion, leaving him bare to the knees and trapped in the tangle.

Paul cries out when Duncan's hand wraps around his cock. Duncan's hand is rough and so big, catching Paul's cock deeply, swallowing it up in long fingers and a broad palm.

"Shh, easy," Duncan says, steadying Paul with a flat hand on his chest, keeping his fist still while Paul shivers and throbs in his grip. "It's alright. Hold onto me."

Paul's flailing hands catch Duncan: holding his thick wrist as it holds Paul down, bracing on his bent knee outside of Paul's own. "What do I do?" he begs, afraid of ruining this before he even has it.

"Shh," Duncan soothes. He kisses the burning back of Paul's neck. "Nothing, you're perfect. Just relax. I've got you." He draws his fist up Paul's cock, until only the tip is in his grip, and Paul sobs again, raising his trembling hips after it. The downstroke is just as tortuous: his shaft held, pressure on his belly, but the sensitive head exposed.

"Sweetheart," Duncan says in surprised admonishment when Paul strains hard against his hands.

"Faster," Paul cries out. When he touches himself, he's almost always at the edge before he touches himself, lured there by his thoughts, his dreams. He can't bear Duncan's gentle thoroughness.

Duncan's hand leaves his cock. Paul's hips thrash after it, cock swaying and sore. His eyes heat with tears. He smells Duncan's hand next to his face, soap and a sour skin smell that makes Paul's belly cringe, and then he hears it. The throaty hock of Duncan spitting. On the desk it was almost a perfect circle. What is it in Duncan's hand? A slippery line? A frothy puddle seeping through the cracks of his fingers? The thought of it sends Paul shivering.

There's no point in looking; it's too dark to see, and before Paul can open his eyes and try, Duncan's hand wraps back around his cock, slippery with warm saliva this time. A wounded sound comes out of Paul and his hips slam up as much as they can, enough to force the head of his cock out of its foreskin and into Duncan's slick grip.

His whole body shakes. It's just like his dreams: warm and fluid. How did Duncan know the feel of Paul's dreams? Paul can't make his mouth ask, too busy biting the air as Duncan's hand works at him, sure and steady. Paul holds onto Duncan at his two points of contact and tries not to float away.

Behind him - around him - Duncan's body is strong and solid. The only betrayals of his composure are the thick press of his erection in Paul's back as he clumsily fucks into Duncan's hand, and the tense squeezing of his thighs against Paul's when Paul leans back into his cock to fuck up. Paul can't know for sure, but given how tall and broad Duncan is, his cock must be big. It feels huge against him. He's never seen it, but he's dreamed about it. In his dreams, it's perfect.

The thought of it has him stutter-fucking up into Duncan's hand. The spit between them has gone sticky from time and friction, nearly painful in a way Paul's body recognizes from his own masturbation. He's close, belly boiling, squirming and groaning, unable to hold his desperate body and noisy mouth back at all.

Duncan spares a finger from his tight fist to rub the skin below the head of Paul's cock. The saw of it is so pleasurable Paul cries out and quakes. Helpless wetness comes out of the tip of his cock, but the pleasure doesn't crest. He doesn't understand it but wants more of it, gnawing his lip raw. It's not everything, not the mess he makes in his hand or in his underwear, just enough for Duncan to worry with a fingertip as his mouth burrows under Paul's hair, kissing the flat, sweaty nape of his neck with an open mouth and damp tongue.

He reaches back, skims Duncan's stubbly cheek, searching. If he strains his arm, he can just touch it: the cool wood behind Duncan. His fingertips find the curve of a lip; one of the fish's, swimming peacefully despite the wound the Harkonnen left in it. When his orgasm hits him, he scratches at it as his body throbs, until the tender tip of skin beneath the nail burns. Semen spatters onto his stretched-out trousers, and as Duncan keeps stroking him, his own bare belly. Some of it slides into his navel, turning it into a warm little lake.

Paul has never, ever felt like this before, body taken by pleasure so fiercely it's hot and cramping, shivering with feverish intensity. His mind is a fading supernova, light behind his eyes dimming to the room's blackness. He collapses back against Duncan, grateful enough for his solidity he could weep. He wants Duncan to wrap him up in his arms, compress his trembles back into stillness, soothe him gently, but Duncan has other plans.

Duncan does hold him, sweeping his semen-coated hands up Paul's ribs, cupping him at the nipples, but then he uses that grip to tip Paul forward, over his soiled stomach and shaky knees. Paul folds like a doll.

"Yes," Duncan grunts, hands busy in the cooling gap between them, "stay like that."

Paul's unsteady fingers find one of his ankles, the hem of his trousers. He holds them tight as Duncan groans in hungry relief. Nearly hurts himself holding on when something hot and damp taps against his exposed lower back.

He whimpers, unsure if he should move into it or away from it. Duncan rucks Paul's shirt up his spine so he can anchor a hand on Paul's flank, keep him right where he is. Behind him, the sound of skin-on-skin beating, as fast as his heart.

This isn't mating or breeding. This is something else, Duncan cursing under his breath, jostling Paul in his seashell curl as he pleasures himself with a brutality he didn't use on Paul. The edge of his fist and the tip of his cock keep kissing against Paul's sweaty skin. Each time it happens, Duncan groans.

Paul doesn't know how he knows, but some animal part of himself recognizes the change in Duncan's rhythm when it comes, the harder timbre of his breathing. The hand on Paul's side sinks lower, pawing at the flesh of his ass. Duncan's thumb traces the top of his crack, tries to spread it even though Paul is sitting.

Duncan wants inside. Even Paul, never touched in this way before today, can understand that. It's obvious, from the speed of his hand on himself, the urgent, throaty sounds he's making, the hungry dig of his thumb into Paul's flesh.

He can't have it. Their positions make it impossible, and Paul doesn't even know if they can do that. The thought thrills him as much as it frightens him, but even if Duncan can't have it, Paul wants to give it to him.

He leans forward tighter, trying, and Duncan's thumb works into his crack. He's sweating even there.

Duncan is making noise continuously now, moaning as if he's in pain, straining his thumb, stripping his cock. The very tip of his thumb finds where Paul's body begins to split deeper. It hooks and pulls. It's so close to…something that feels too nervy and big for Paul to handle. He gasps and clings to his own knees, about to beg for it to stop when Duncan's breath gutters out of him in a raw-sounding way and warmth splashes across Paul's back. Across the bumps of his spine, the soft flesh of his ass, into the space where Duncan's thumb has him pinned.

Duncan shifts his grip on himself, hiking his hips closer so he can paint through the semen he's leaving on Paul's body with the head of his cock, spreading it as far as the curve of Paul's flank. His cock nudges hopefully at the crack of Paul's ass, but his thumb is in the way, and Paul can't give him more. Thankfully, it slides away.

Duncan curves back around Paul. Not close enough to touch the mess on Paul's back, but enough to touch his forehead to the back of Paul's shoulder. He rubs his hands up to the furnace of Paul's armpits.

"Paul," he murmurs, worn out but pleased. He's never sounded like this before, no matter how well Paul has performed in their spars.

Paul can't speak. His mouth is dust-dry and he thinks he might cry. His muscles are sore in a way he both loves and hates. His stomach is in flight inside of him again.

"Here," Duncan murmurs, dropping Paul's shirt down his back, working Paul's trousers back up his thighs. Paul lifts obediently, letting Duncan dress him. The waistband of his trousers is damp all the way around as soon as it touches him. His cock twitches against the fabric of his underwear, scratchy where he's sensitive.

Duncan untangles himself from behind Paul, levering away. He puts a hand on Paul's shoulder, pressing. "Lie down."

Paul's body is still too hot but it feels good to lie down in the warmth Duncan left behind. Paul's head finds a corner of a pillow and he tries to orient himself correctly.

Nearby, Duncan shuffles around, putting his feet back into his boots.

"Do you have water in here?"

"I don't know," Paul says. His voice seems small in the vast darkness of his room. "Are you leaving? I asked you to stay."

In the darkness, Duncan is still, untraceable. "Paul…"

Paul reaches his hand out beyond the safety of his mattress. "I – " he says, grasping. "I never even got to touch you."

Duncan groans, but it's not all exasperation. There's desire too. Paul knows the sound and shape of it in Duncan's voice now.

Suddenly, Duncan's weight is above him, knees on either side of Paul's head, and Paul freezes. This is a sparring position, a killing position, a knife in the throat, snapped neck position. His heart thuds in his chest, and his heel digs into the bedding, trying to find leverage to push away, but on his back, there's nowhere to go. His left arm is pinned at his side by Duncan's calf, his other wedged up high, bent like a bird's wing.

His mouth opens.

"Shh," Duncan murmurs to whatever noise he was about to make, and frees Paul's one arm from its wing-bend, lifting it to the gap of his zipper.

Inside, it's hot and moist, hard to tell fabric from skin for a moment, everything the same sort of soft until Paul's fingers find the weight of Duncan's cock. Even soft, it's big enough he has to catch his breath, a heavy weight in Paul's hand, curving over Duncan's testicles. There's plenty of hair, crinkly under Paul's knuckles, slick in spots.

There's no leverage here either; all Paul can do is squeeze Duncan's cock and smooth his thumb over whatever skin is beneath it. A slow heave goes through Duncan's flesh, his sack contracting and his shaft pulsing. In answer, Paul's hips lift off the bed, his lower back protesting the rise but he's unable to quell the instinct.

Duncan grunts, brings his own hands down. Paul's afraid he'll be peeled off as a bother, but Duncan just inches his trousers and underwear down further, freeing his cock and testicles. He touches Paul's hand, but only to cover it, so they're stroking Duncan's soft cock together.

Duncan doesn't get hard, at least not the way Paul has again, cock painfully stuck in the trap of his trousers under the covers, but the shaft thickens some, and the broad tip emerges partway from the foreskin. Paul slips his hand out from under Duncan's to press two fingers to the head. The little hole there kisses wetly against Paul's middle finger.

Still stroking himself, Duncan edges himself closer. His hand on his cock is moving in long, tugging strokes. Paul can feel the air moving near his face.

His mouth is still open, has been open the whole time in animal awe as he tries to understand this all, so there's nothing in the way when Duncan leans over him, jostling Paul's hand out of the way so he can milk a splash of seed over Paul's dry tongue.

It's so thick and salty, dredged from deep inside Duncan. The last of it, all Duncan has left to give. There's so little saliva in Paul's mouth that when he swallows, the seed coats his tongue, the top of his throat. His throat clicks on the gulp. The taste in his mouth remains.

Duncan makes a sound that comes from that same deep place as his come, base, nearly mournful in the depth of it. He drops his cock. Paul hears him panting, rubbing his hand over his face.

"Mercy," he begs, as if Paul's the one primed to kill him.

*

Duncan, cock finally put away, the finality of his zipper being done up echoing in Paul's ears, pulls the thin blanket high over Paul's body, nearly tucking Paul in. If he notices the way Paul's cock tents the blanket, he doesn't say anything, just sits beside Paul. Gentles him with a hand in his hair until Paul's more tired than he is aroused.

Paul keeps swallowing. His mouth is still salted, sour like earth. Nothing will grow there but a rebellion, he thinks stupidly.

Duncan's hand stops moving. "I'll go get you some water soon." He's whispering, but Paul can hear something sad and guilty in Duncan's voice. He tries to lick his lips, but his tongue just sticks there. He liked it. It was the closest he's ever been to a kiss. And he swallowed; no one can take that part of Duncan away from him now. It's his forever.

Duncan's hand moves through his hair once more. Paul sucks on his own tongue, soothes himself to a deep sleep with the lingering taste.

*

After a peaceful, dreamless night, Paul wakes to the knowledge that he's alone, and the disappointment that knowledge brings. He looks on either side of himself; the bed doesn't appear disturbed in any way he can't attribute to himself. He moves around, and grimaces at the pull of his shirt and pants on his back and belly. He lifts the blanket off, and has to peel the waistband of his trousers away from his stomach, wincing at the pull of the hair there. The inside of the waistband is greyish-white. Paul's face cooks in the dim room. He pulls his shirt over his head - more itchy discomfort - and finds a dry, crusty spot on the inside of it too, near the small of his back.

He throws the shirt on the floor, and then, thinking about it, scrambles after it. He tosses the shirt back onto the bed, and gets out of his trousers and underwear. Normally, someone takes his laundry from his room, a thought he's having for the very first time. Their hands on his clothes flash in his mind, touching things similarly soiled, but not like this. The image is followed by one of his mother's hands, sifting through his things. He knows she comes in when he's not around; he can smell when she's been here.

Paul takes a deep breath; he can smell his own sweat, but also something more. A funk that reminds him of the barracks and of the sea. So that's what that is; Paul understands now.

Still nude, he finds the apparatus to open the shutters and cranks them, letting in the watery dawn light and fresh, neutral air.

Paul dresses as quickly as he can, ignoring the semen flaking off his pubic hair and penis, and the incipient urge to masturbate despite his growing panic. His need is often at its peak in the morning. If Duncan had stayed the night, they could have seen each other. Maybe they could have kissed.

"Stop," Paul hisses to himself, still blushed, doing his fresh trousers up brutally. He gathers up his dirty clothes and wads them up tightly, churning the stains to the inside, and cracks the door. He only recognizes one of the guards at his door, and only by sight. He doesn't greet them, or even look at them, trying to walk away without appearing guilty. When did they come? He wonders, in the middle of the night, or was it Duncan there outside Paul's door while he slept? Even if he couldn't sleep beside Paul? Paul's stomach flutters.

The halls near the family quarters are empty, but as Paul moves deeper through the palace, he hears more sounds of the work that keeps the Atreides house running, and sees more. Workers preparing food, carrying items, hurrying. Someone comes by with a basket of folded clothes; Paul walks in the direction they came from until he feels the humidity and hears water behind a door.

He opens the door to a large round room, the laundry. There's steam in the air, making it thick in Paul's mouth, the slope of the walls dripping. Some workers use scrapers to sluice that water into buckets for collection. Others knead clothes in basins, the sounds of their arms and the slosh of the water creating a rhythm like a heartbeat, as if the house's laundry is a great wet beast and they're working inside its chest.

A few people glance up, but none show any recognition of Paul on their face, something that might irritate Paul on another day but today he is grateful for. He stalks the nearest basin that has clothing and water in it, a woman lathering soap in a separate bucket to be poured in, and drops his bundle in, pushing them down with his fist. The fabric of his shirt balloons to the surface, and Paul, guilty at the sight, punches the dirty clothes down to drowning.

The woman, one arm frothed with soap, raises her eyebrow at him. He can hear a few light chuckles and scoffs echoing off the wet walls, but they're swallowed up by the rhythm of the room before Paul can find who made them.

He skulks out of the room, hoping they forget about him. In the hall he pinwheels his arms around tips his head side to side, trying to shake off the humidity before someone sees it clinging to him.

*

He can't find Duncan. He spends the day looking, hunting through the house, the hangar, even wandering outside the barracks until a pair of soldiers come out. When he speaks to them, they look at him with sharp eyes, and when he asks after Duncan, they share a cool look.

"Gone early," one of them says. "Before daybreak. On the say-so of the Duke, I imagine."

"Oh," Paul says, disappointment welling like blood from a cut. He steps out of their way, gnawing on the inside of his lower lip. Duncan could have told him. If it was on his father's orders, Paul would have understood.

He asks about it at the briefing late in the day, part of their preparations for the arrival of the Judge of the Change in the morning.

"Father," Paul asks, once most of the officers have left the room, "where did you send Duncan?"

Leto's expression is one of surprise. He glances at Gurney beside him.

"Nowhere," he says. "Why? Is he missing?"

Paul resists the urge to put his teeth back into his lip. If his father doesn't notice the gesture, Gurney surely would, and he would say something about it.

"No," Paul hedges, unwilling to get Duncan into trouble. "I was just looking to spar with him earlier."

Leto nods slowly. He doesn't quite believe Paul, but he's willing to accept the lie.

Gurney snorts like a bull. "Maybe he shook all the sand out of his shorts and needed to replace it." He scratches his stubbly jaw. "In a sietch." His voice is heavy with upsetting meaning.

Leto cuts his eyes to Gurney but doesn't respond to that. To Paul, he says, "I'm sure he'll return soon. I trust him." He smiles tightly, sparing little patience for Paul when there's other matters of import. "Don't you?"

"Yes," Paul says in a rush and with a hope he's clinging desperately to.

*

He doesn't find Duncan, hope curling like a letter fed to the fire the longer he searches. There isn't even a trace of him, aside from the two soldiers' hearsay. It seems he wasn't lying about learning from the Fremen. Paul's room, when he returns to it in dejection, doesn't even hold his smell anymore.

Duncan doesn't show the following morning, when they gather to meet the Judge of the Change. No one remarks on his absence, although it must be strange. Why not have the closest person the Atreides have to their own Judge of the Change present?

No one but Paul notes Duncan's absence, too distracted by the stranger finally before them. Dr. Kynes is calm and aloof, but when she checks Paul's stillsuit, he feels a hesitance in her hands, a knowledge of the weight on his shoulders as soon as they touch.

"You've…worn a stillsuit before." Her voice is puzzled.

Paul shakes his head. "No, this is my first time."

She meets his eyes, spice-blue, searching, and then she looks away. "Your desert boots are fitted slip fashion at the ankles. Who taught you to do that?"

Paul sucks his lip. "It seemed the right way."

Paul is not lying; the stillsuit made a kind of sense to him when he put it on, but that sense was bolstered by studying how Duncan's stillsuit fit, the arrangement of the straps on his limbs, the way the fabric creased. He ducks his head and doesn't tell Dr. Kynes this secondary knowledge. Nor does he ask if she knows Duncan, even though he would like to. He does not wish to embarrass his father in front of someone who may still report to the Harkonnen.

She mutters something, soft enough that his novice ears can't discern all the words, but he understands nevertheless. It's another weight on his suffering shoulders for him to carry.

*

Seeing the harvester at work chewing up the desert and sucking down spice, is thrilling. Inhaling the spice as he tries to help the workers is terrifying. It coats the inside of his nostrils and throat, fills his lungs with glass and his eyes with a barrage of visions so powerful he believes himself to be on the precipice of death, neurons firing their last. Wishes he was after a few seconds, and then...nothing. Paul is nowhere and nothing more than a speck of spice swirling in a universe of his creation he has so much power over he might as well have none.

Gurney's hands drag him out of the future and back into the present, slam his body into a seat on the ornithopter so it can gain altitude. His vision is orange and hot. He lifts a hand to his face, touches the grit of spice on his cheeks and the wet trail of tears through it.

*

Dr. Yueh helps him remove his stillsuit and his shield and washes the sand and spice from his face and hands with water, but he cannot wash away the sting of Leto's anger, or the spice still swirling through Paul's blood. He pronounces Paul spice-sensitive, with nothing to do but rest and wait it out. He leaves Paul alone with his mother and the world of truth Paul knows now.

There is no adequate description of his vision that he can give his mother with words. Nothing to truly tell the love and pain of it, the death and birth. His temple throbs as he speaks.

"I know you're pregnant," he says, one of the few things he can say for certain.

His mother is shocked to the point of revulsion. "How can you know that? I barely know that."

Paul cannot say, but he knows it as if it's his own body dividing, creating. He can nearly feel the pulse of new cells in his own belly.

His mother stands up, does not cradle him or comfort him further. She paces away from him, and then turns back to face him, but keeps a safe distance.

"Paul," she says, not able to hide the shake in her voice. "Stay here and rest as Dr. Yueh said. We can…you'll feel better in the morning."

She closes the shades and douses the lamps, unable to look at him. Obediently, Paul lies down on his bed in the dark with one hand over his face and the other pressed to the carving on the wall, his pulse in his fingertips beating beating beating against the wood.

*

He assumes it's a dream at first, a merciful one. Weight on the edge of his bed, the slow breath of a soldier, Duncan's smell. Being brave, Paul takes his hand away from the wall, touches his fingertips together to ground himself, and turns over. His body is sore in protest, strange for a dream.

"Duncan," he breathes in hope.

The apparition sitting at his bedside lifts its head. The room is dark on dark but still somehow Paul sees him, the light in his eyes, and the fall of his hair, no braid or bun to contain it. Duncan turns to him, weight shifting.

"My boy," he answers mournfully. He puts a hand on Paul's shoulder over the blankets. It's heavy enough to feel real. "What have you gotten into this time?"

"I didn't mean to," Paul mumbles. "It just happened. The spice -" He tries to clear his gritty throat. Sand sparks between his teeth when he talks, even though they washed his mouth out. His mother's hand on his back as he spit and drooled into a cup.

"I know," the apparition soothes. "You were helping. Saving those people. I'm very proud of you." A hand on his face now, thumb smoothing his dry cheek. "You're a good boy. We don't deserve you. I don't deserve you."

Paul closes his eyes. You have me, he tells the dream in his mind, afraid that if he says it, nothing but dream-static will come out of his mouth. He hopes the dream can hear him anyway.

The hand on his face settles him as well as touching the carving does; familiar lines against his skin, the pulsing of another distant heart. He needs it now that he's floated away from the wall, couldn't find it again with both hands.

"Stay this time." He tries to use The Voice, but his mouth is tired, his throat a pinhole. He wants it so badly, the comfort of Duncan's body around his on the bed, but he can only whimper for it.

He thinks he feels the heartbeat in the palm lose a beat, and isn't it impossible for a dream to have a heartbeat?

The thought pierces Paul's drugged peace, and he knows for sure this isn't a dream when Duncan's hand lifts away from his bereft cheek and Duncan apologizes with the regret of the real world, saying, This isn't my place before he once again leaves Paul adrift, anchorless on a sea of slowly-fading spice, his cheek cooling bitterly alone.

*

It seems Dr. Yueh has a special sense about Paul; nearly as soon as Paul has dredged himself over to his desk to wallow in his confusing, upsetting feelings by the warm light there, Dr. Yueh lets himself in and places down a serving of sleeping pills and water to wash them down on the desk. He tests the pulse in Paul's neck and his bare wrists before insisting on the pills.

Paul shouldn't need any more sleep; his body is sore from it, his mind foggy. But sleep, especially pill-soft, would save him from having to think, to feel.

On his tongue they taste like nothing. There's barely enough water in the glass to wash them both down, but he manages.

*

Paul wakes to a nightmare. Strapped down in a humming ornithopter, in sight of his mother similarly trapped, surrounded by rape-minded Harkonnen while flames from somewhere lick up the skyline.

His mother, still protecting the Bene Gesserit's investments, tries to hold him off, but he can't allow this to happen to him, to her. In his dreams, he can't speak well, but tonight he speaks in his Voice, and it's enough, barely. The Harkonnen remove his mother's gag and his mother's Voice is so powerful Paul squirms in his bonds, trying to do as she says as if he's one of the Harkonnen who would hurt her. He'd cut his own throat if she commanded him to.

Her Voice is terrifying, but it saves them. Without it, they'd be two bodies given to the desert. Their water evaporated, their bodies turned to sand, no Voice between them but the wind.

Paul owes his mother's Voice everything, but standing on the ridge he sees he has nothing to offer as they watch their home, and the Atreides' claim to Arrakis burns, lighting the desert night to a premature ghoulish dawn.

*

It's suffocating inside the tent, hot and moist from their sweat and tears, cramped as a womb. Grief-twisted, spice-shaken and despite his fury at her and the Bene Gesserit, there's nowhere for Paul to go but into his mother's arms, curling up against her belly, as if he's his unborn sibling's twin, safe in the amniotic waters within.

*

In the morning they take turns drinking the water the tent saved from their bodies. It's deeply salty, stoking Paul's thirst instead of slaking it. It reminds him of the taste of Duncan, which hurts, but Paul drinks because he must. Survival is the only way forward.

Paul understands now that wearing his father's ducal ring – his ring – is part of that survival.

*

Paul's books and projections warned of the madness that could grip someone unprepared for Arrakis' desert. You could go blind from the light, have visions from the heat, or lose every sense of yourself. People have been found with sand in their mummified stomachs, having spent their last hours sipping sand from their cupped hands, burning brains believing it to be quenching water.

All of this knowledge is running ragged through Paul's mind, so he nearly doesn't believe it when the ornithopter swoops overhead, no matter how his heart soars with it. It could be, should be, a Harkonnen come to make sure the bloody deed is done.

Still, he says, "That's Duncan," with his heart, yearning for his words to have some vestige of his Voice in them, enough to make it true.

Somehow, there's enough mercy left on Arrakis that it is Duncan. He knows Duncan by the first footstep on the sand, the shadow of his hair in the sun, the grief in his eyes. Duncan embraces them both so tightly Paul can feel how he's shaking.

"My lady, Paul, I'm so sorry. Your father…" Duncan seems unable to look directly at Paul, but neither can he look completely away.

"We know," Paul says hollowly. He did know. All his father's guile and strategy are no match for the destruction still smoldering. Still, hearing it from a trusted mouth hurts worse than anything, makes his body weak.

Duncan's the one who drops to his knees though. Exhaustion, or an injury, Paul thinks at first, but then Duncan takes his hand. The one with the ring banging up against his knuckle each time he makes a fist. Duncan takes that hand in both of his and presses his forehead to the ring. The sweat from his brow stings the skin on Paul's finger that's already begun to chafe under the ill-fitting band.

"My lord Duke," he murmurs, head bowed, on his knees in front of Paul, his chosen place.

*

The ecological testing station is a wonder, so hugely built and yet one with the desert. It’s silent as a tomb save for the scuffling of them and the Fremen within. They're like mice, skittering through the tunnels of an underground burrow, Paul one among them.

Paradise, he repeats to himself as he follows Dr. Kynes, trying to envision Arrakis lush and damp, like Caladan, instead of stark and shifting, as he knows it. It's difficult to begin with, and worse to remember Caladan as they left it, the castle empty above the dark and frothing sea. His father no longer its ruler, and never to be again.

He's not sure he believes her, but then he finds Duncan in a small room tucked down a corridor, examining pots filled with tiny green remnants of paradise.

He sees Duncan in profile, framed by the open door, half-shrouded in the fabric he wears over his stillsuit, but the reverence on his face and the tenderness in the way his bare knuckle brushes over a round green bud makes Paul's eyes burn and his mouth water. In his chest, his tired heart aches in a way he thought he'd never feel again.

"I didn't know it could be like this," he says, stepping into the room. Allowed to have the sun for the plants, the sand under his feet is warm.

Duncan looks at Paul instead of the plant, lowering his hand to his side. The look on his face is still devout, loving.

"What could have been," he sighs.

"It." behind his own back, Paul feels for the door. Blocked by sand, it only closes partway, but it has to be enough. "It could be again."

Paul approaches Duncan, and the plants. Some of them, recently watered, shine in the sun. He can smell the soil, deep and mineral-rich, trying to perform a miracle.

"My lord - " Duncan tries. Paul shakes his head, hides the hand with his father's ring behind his back.

"Paul, I'm Paul," he corrects. Here, with Duncan, he cannot be the Duke. It wouldn't be right; it's not what he wants. He thinks my boy would be too much to ask for now, so Paul, like the half-closed door, will have to be enough.

"Paul," Duncan says, his voice like the soil. He wets his lower lip with his tongue, and it shines. He leans in closer, his braid slipping over his shoulder, his mouth soft.

Rooted to the sand, kneading his fingers into his palms nervously, Paul whispers, "I don't know how."

So close his shadow covers Paul's face and close his breath warms Paul's cheek, Duncan, forever patient and willing to teach, murmurs, "Then follow my lead," just before his mouth touches Paul's. Paul jolts, expecting the frisson of his shield activating. He slaps one hand over his opposite wrist, but finds it bare. His shield is gone, removed by Dr. Yueh as he washed the spice from Paul's hand, crushed or melted in the wreckage of Arrakeen. His pulse thunders under his own thumb.

Duncan smiles against his mouth, lifts off to say, "It's okay, you're okay," before slowly pressing his mouth back over Paul's.

Years of no kisses, and Paul has two already in the span of a moment. Unsure what to do, he clutches his own wrist and pauses his mouth in the position Duncan kissed it. His eyes closed of their own instinct when Duncan got close enough; he hopes that's alright.

Duncan's mouth moves gently against his, open enough that their lips catch and tug. Duncan sighs into Paul's mouth and Paul's stomach twists. His armpits flush hot, his sweaty, sandy sleep-shirt sticking to them. He digs his nails into his wrist so hard it hurts.

For the second time, Duncan breaks their kiss. This time, he straightens out of kissing range. Paul turns his head toward the door, listening for any sign someone is coming, in case that's why Duncan stopped.

But Duncan isn't looking at the door; he's looking Paul over, warmth in his eyes. He cups Paul's cheek and Paul is surprised by how hot it is in Duncan's hand.

"Are you alright?" he asks.

Paul presses his own lips together. They're sensitive now. "Yes."

Duncan passes his thumb over Paul's cheek slowly, as if savouring the heat. Then he reaches for Paul's unshielded wrist. "C'mere."

He leads Paul away from the sunlight, the little plants, and the door, to a bare corner of the room. With light hands, he encourages Paul against the wall, and then he leans in, forearms against the dusty wall, close again.

"Kiss me," he says. "You can touch me too."

"Oh," Paul says, lost, but the part of him that's ached for this for as long as he can remember takes over: crashes into a kiss with Duncan, grabs his bicep, digs his fingers into Duncan's braid and loosens it with his fumbling.

Duncan laughs, but it doesn't hurt. It's full of joy and relief, and it means his mouth is open wide enough for Paul to put his tongue in, an act he's only ever heard about when eavesdropping on servant gossip.

His tongue passes over Duncan's teeth, the sharpness of them grazing the veins hidden underneath and Paul whimpers. His thighs clench, cock stirring helplessly in his dirty sleep clothes. He holds on tighter and tries to breathe through his nose. He's rushing, he knows, but he can't stop. He almost died. They almost died. He yanks Duncan close by his thick waist, rubs himself against Duncan's thigh like a rutting animal. The heavy cup on Duncan's stillsuit bangs into Paul's hip and he whimpers, remembering the weight of Duncan's cock in his hand, hungry for it.

"There's no time," Duncan tells him, but his mouth brushes against the corner of Paul's when he speaks, his unwillingness to leave Paul a small, wet mercy.

Paul pulls Duncan's face away from his own, holds it far away enough in the cradle of his hands to see how much Duncan wants it. His mouth convulses internally, drawing.

Duncan opens his mouth to speak, more nonsense they have to wait, or maybe that this isn't right, even though it is. Paul spits in it before any word comes out.

Much of his gathered saliva lands on the broad pinkness of Duncan's tongue, but it covers Duncan's red upper lip too, his unshaven chin. A fleck lands in the trough of skin under his left eye.

They hold together, mouths open, one dry, one wet. Paul's palms are clammy on Duncan's jaws. He can't let go, he won't, not now.

Reverent on Paul's face, knuckle skimming up Paul's belly like there's something new and green growing there he must be tender with, Duncan swallows.

*

Duncan is right; there isn't any time right now. Later, Paul will make time for whatever he wants to do with Duncan, no matter what he must do to get it, but for now, he has to wait.

As his first act of waiting, he sifts a handful of sand through his palm, imagining all the years it took for the sand to form. Millenia, wars and cities rising and falling, love and loss, all for this sand to be here, in this empty place, now touched by Paul. Like the sand, like the ecological station once had, Paul is full of potential.

"You know what the Great Houses fear most, Dr. Kynes?" he muses as sand falls through his fist, catching under his ring. "Exactly what has happened to us here. Sardukar coming and picking them off one by one." He stands to face her. "Only together can they stand a chance against the Imperium. Would you bear witness, testify that the Emperor has moved against us here?"

"If," Dr. Kynes hedges, "they believe me, there would be general warfare between the Great Houses and the Emperor."

"Chaos," his mother ponders. "Across the Imperium."

His mother's eyes meet his. Paul understands her with no words spoken and no sign made.

"And suppose I present the Emperor with an alternative to chaos," he says. "The Emperor has no sons, and his daughters are yet to marry."

Dr Kynes scoffs. "You'd make a play for the throne? The Emperor feared the Atreides. He brought you here to kill you. What don't you understand? You're a lost boy hiding in a hole in the ground."

Paul moves, slowly, and Dr. Kynes matches him. They circle.

"The Fremen speak of Lisan al Gaib – "

"Careful," his mother warns, mindful of her part in this prophecy.

Paul does not heed her. This weight has been on his back since the moment he set foot on Arrakis, heavier each day. He has the strength now to lift the weight, to wield it.

"The Voice from the Outer World," he continues, "who will lead them to paradise." A paradise greater than this, an abandoned ecological station and struggling plants anointed with dust from Duncan's fingers, same as Paul's belly.

"Superstition," Dr. Kynes says, looking away, but Paul knows she looks away not in dismissal, but in avoidance of the truth.

"I know you loved a Fremen warrior," Paul tells her another truth, "and lost him in battle."

Dr. Kynes looks up at him, complicated emotions dawning in her eyes. Among them: belief, hope.

Reading her body as though they two are locked in battle, Paul approaches. "I know you walk in two worlds and are known by many names. I've seen your dream. As Emperor, Dr. Kynes, I could make a paradise for Arrakis with a wave of my hand."

"Enough," Dr. Kynes says, or at least tries to say. Paul hears her regardless, and lets her go. She believes him now. It won't do to frighten her needlessly. He turns from her, to let her gather herself.

He catches his mother's eyes. She makes a sign by her thigh, likely a plea for him to wait or slow down, but Paul doesn't bother to read it. He can see the approval in her eyes, no matter how she tries to hide it.

He turns from her too.

Nearby, just outside the door of the room, Duncan crouches in the sand, looking at something. He's rebraided his hair, smoothed out the mess Paul's hands made of it. It's beautiful, he's beautiful, even the little black beetle crawling over his knuckles has a kind of beauty to it. There's no indication on his face that he was listening to Paul speak, even though Paul knows he was because he always is. Nothing Paul has said just now changed Duncan the way it changed Dr. Kynes; he already believed in Paul, because he always has.

Watching him play with the beetle, faithfully waiting for Paul's next move, a feeling washes over Paul that's so powerful, familiar and crushing that Paul, in his naivety, buoyed by his righteousness, does not see it as the doom it really is, and instead believes it to be love.