It was very quiet in the bedroom because if you moved you would get shot. The blinds made the windows a series of cellbar slits, bright with sunshine. Jesse lay on the rough carpet staring up at the ceiling being aware of everything, the pale dust ruffle of the ruined bed next to him, aware of how still his body was, aware of his own voice as he told Dylan over and over again how not to move. The explanation wasn't language, but it was coming from his mouth anyway and it made sense to him: if Dylan did everything he said and did not move than they would not get shot. The sniper's bullet would not burst in through the window and shatter his skull in the sunlight. He would be still. He could be still.

Dylan was lying right next to him. They were alone. There were pale, nearly invisible hairs on Dylan's forearm that touched his own. Jesse's chest was willed not to heave even minutely with his breath, and soon Dylan was going to move.

"My nose itches," said his Prince.

He wanted to make his palm slide up, slick with sweat, to press over Dylan's mouth and nose. The breath there would make wet puffs between his fingers and convince him Dylan was alive. The room continued to be silent and bright, and the blinds were stiff with stillness. His brother was a puddle of orange and black, but he was in his Hillworth greens with his tie undone and his buttons coming off, and even the slightest movement would shake the gold at Alexandros' throat and the bullet would come. So he said underneath his breath: "It's all right. Don't move."

"I'm all right. Are you all right?"

"Don't move. Don't move, please."

The ceiling was blank, whitewashed, no cracks. He said: "I brought you here, Alex. I'll get you out."

"Don't you always get me out?"

"Shush. Don't move." It was so important he did what he said. "Listen to me."

The light was very bright, even next to the bed. Presently Dylan said again: "My nose itches."

"All I want from you is one true thing," his mouth said. "Not a kind thing. I hate you, kind." Dylan blinked restlessly. "I could peel you up and cut away each bit of you until you were a hundred pieces, yeah -- and I'd have a hundred pieces of meat and no you at all."

"No."

"You and me are one."

"You and I are one," said Dylan.

"You little liar," said Jesse. "I ain't like you at all, most of the time."

"'You and I,'" corrected the other boy, eyes closed and the lashes waxy pale. "'Am not,' Hector."

His teeth grit down hard. "'I am not.'"

Prince Alexandros stood up suddenly, his coat brushing the floor, and all at once Jesse stood up with him and the bullets smashed through the window: they hit him in his shoulders and back and hips as he stood in front of Dylan, trying to be his shield, hit him over and over again with all that noise and all the waving curtains as he steadied himself against the wall and watched red get on his brother. Freckles of blood got on Dylan's pale, expressionless face. Suddenly Jesse was angrier and more in pain than he was scared, and he sort of wrenched himself away so Dylan was left exposed -- and Dylan fell across the bed with holes in him, curled up in a fetal position, looking at the wall and at the floor and not at Hector. His pale gold hair flopped over his face, stained pink. There was no taking that back.

"You give you up to everyone but me," he was screaming, his hands shaking. He was screaming like a ********, it was humiliating. "You never did a thing I ever asked you. Jesus, Helen did. Helen! Not my brother, not my only brother."

The last bullet got him in the back of the skull -- but he only woke up in stages, not all at once, slow frightened stages still hearing the thud of the bullet through the glass and into the boy on the bed. The mattress had jerked with each shot: back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Jesse Alvarez was sweating.