The coffee had gone lukewarm an hour ago and Ethiopia kept drinking it anyway, small bitter sips from the chipped cup, because putting it down would mean admitting he'd spent most of the night on the crest of the dam doing nothing except looking at it
Below him the spillway roared, a long white throat of water tearing itself loose and falling, falling, falling into the black gorge, and the sound got into his teeth and ribs and stayed there like a second pulse. Behind him the reservoir lay flat and dark and enormous, the kind of water that made you lower your voice without knowing why. Kiremt was nearly done. His highlands had rained themselves hoarse for three months, every drop of it running down his mountains and into this, and off to the left the switchyard lights glittered in neat orange rows like somebody had pinned medals on the night.
He liked looking at it. He liked looking at it the way some countries liked catching themselves in shop windows, with a private little smirk, and he'd have shoved anyone off the parapet who said so out loud. His regions had bought the bonds for this. His cities had scraped together the money nobody else would lend, so every slab of concrete had his own sweat in it, and as far as Ethiopia was concerned the dam was the most his thing that had ever existed.
GERD stood a few paces off at the rail, huge and gray and patient, mist beading in the seams of his shoulders where his skin looked poured instead of grown. His voice came out low and level, a turbine hum running underneath every word. "Reservoir holding at six hundred forty meters. Gates at partial. Eleven units turning." Then he paused, which he never did, and Ethiopia glanced over. "Egypt is at the downstream gate. He's angry."
Ethiopia's first thought was a word he wouldn't say in front of the dam. His second thought arrived before he could stop it, a quick hot jolt low in his stomach, and he scowled at the reservoir as if the reservoir had done it to him. "Of course he's angry. When isn't he? Let him stand there and drip."
"He's already on the stairs," GERD said.
He was. Ethiopia heard him before he saw him, shoes scraping wet steel and a voice already mid-rant, carried up the maintenance stairwell on the spray. Egypt came over the top step with his trouser hems dark from the mist and his coat flapping open like he'd been walking fast for a long time, and he didn't bother with hello. "Do you know how many of my river islands are under water right now? Sudan is wading through his own streets, my villages are bailing out their houses with buckets, and you're up here sipping coffee like a tourist."
Ethiopia's eyes did the stupid thing they always did around Egypt, which was look at him properly. Short red hair, wind-shoved and damp. The red forehead cut clean at the brows into white, and right in the middle of the white sat that gold eagle, glinting under the switchyard lights with its chest puffed and wings spread, so pleased with itself.
Egypt wasn't even looking at him anymore. He'd turned to GERD with his chin raised, the tone he probably used on stone quarries a few thousand years ago. "You. How much are you holding back? How much are you dumping on me tomorrow? Give me a number."
Ethiopia stepped between them so fast the coffee sloshed over his knuckles. "You don't talk to him. You talk to me."
GERD looked down at both of them from his great gray height, unbothered, vapor curling off his arms. "I answer to rainfall," he said, "and to him." Then he turned and walked back toward the powerhouse, each step a dull thud through the crest, and the steel door shut behind him with a clang that left the two of them alone with the roar.
"Unbelievable," Egypt said. "You've even trained the concrete."
"He has manners. You should borrow some."
"Manners." Egypt barked a laugh. "Fourteen years you've told everyone it's just a power plant, the flow will be gentle, nobody downstream will feel a thing. Fourteen years I've told them you'd choke me. And now you fling the gates open and drown me instead. You can't even ruin me consistently."
Ethiopia laughed right in his face. It came out of him like a cork leaving a bottle, loud and rude and impossible to stop. "You're furious I gave you water. Listen to yourself. For a decade you cry that I'll starve you, and now there's too much and that's my crime too. There's no number you'd be happy with. You just can't stand that I'm the one turning the handle."
"I was building on this river when you were mist on a mountain," Egypt snapped, stepping close enough that Ethiopia could smell the river on him, silt and wet wool and something warm underneath. "I am the river. Everyone knows it. Every child of a city along my banks learns it before they learn to swim. You're an upstart with a bathtub."
"The rain falls on my mountains." Ethiopia set the cup down on the parapet harder than he meant to and it cracked. Great. "You and Britain sat at a table and carved up my water like a roast, and nobody even pulled out a chair for me. Then you did it again with Sudan and gave me zero. Zero. You wrote a number on paper for a river that starts in my house." He knew he sounded petty. He didn't care. "I didn't let Italy tell me what to do with my own land. You think I'll let you?"
Egypt's jaw worked. For a second the anger in his face slipped, and what came out of him was quieter and rawer and clearly not meant to come out at all. "Do you know what it's like? Needing something that somebody else holds? Waking up every morning and checking whether he's decided to keep it?" Then he heard himself, and his mouth twisted, and he covered it fast. "No. Of course you don't. You've never needed anything you couldn't take off a hill."
Ethiopia caught that crack the way you catch a cup falling off a table, without thinking, and then had no idea what to do with it now that it was in his hands. So he did the stupid thing and got meaner. "Maybe you should've thought about that before you spent a century acting like you owned the sky."
Egypt grabbed him by the collar. Fabric bunched tight under Ethiopia's chin, Egypt's knuckles hot against his throat, brown eyes furious and too close. "All options," Egypt said, drawling it out, bitter and mocking, "are on the table."
Everything in Ethiopia went white at the edges. He shoved, Egypt shoved back, and they rattled against the rail, the spillway howling under them. Egypt jerked his head at the stairwell. "Come down. Come down and look at what you did."
Ethiopia followed him to win the argument, obviously, and absolutely not because he wanted to be somewhere with no powerhouse windows and no GERD and no orange medal lights. They went down the wet steel stairs fast, Egypt's coat snapping ahead of him, the roar getting louder and colder with every landing until the air turned to a fine stinging spray that soaked Ethiopia's shirt straight through.
At the bottom the service path gave out onto mud and black rock. Upstream the outflow churned white and vicious over the stones, but here it curled into a broad slow eddy, chest-deep and dark, licking at a muddy bank. Egypt rounded on him at the waterline, pointing at the churn like a prosecutor. "That. That's mine. That's my fields, my cities, and you just pour it out like dishwater."
He shoved Ethiopia one more time, both palms flat to his chest, and Ethiopia didn't shove back. He went in low and took Egypt around the waist, and they hit the river together.
The cold punched the air out of him. Then his feet found silt and he was on top, chest-deep, one fist knotted in Egypt's wet coat and the other spread over that red hair, and he pushed. Egypt went under. Ethiopia held him, the river shoving at both of them, bubbles bursting up through his fingers. "You want to talk about my water?" he said to the surface, to the bubbles, to nobody. "Taste it."
He let him up after a few seconds. Egypt came up choking, khh-hah, hah, spitting brown river, hair plastered flat, and the first thing out of his mouth was "You absolute" before he coughed again. But his hands were on Ethiopia's forearms and they weren't pushing very hard. Ethiopia noticed that. He noticed other things too, stupid things: silt streaked across the red of Egypt's forehead, water beading in fat drops on the gold eagle, the black chest heaving under a shirt gone see-through.
He pushed him under again, and this time he counted. One. Egypt's fingers flexed on his wrist. Two. Three. Upstairs GERD was counting cubic meters per second and down here Ethiopia was the one deciding. Four. That was the thought, and it landed in him hot and ugly and sweet all at once: he decided how long Egypt went without air the same way he decided how much water went downstream, with his hand on the gate, and Egypt could thrash and threaten and file complaints with whoever he liked and none of it mattered while Ethiopia's palm sat on his skull. Five. It went through him like a shot of strong araki on an empty stomach, and part of him was horrified and most of him was hard. Six. He hauled Egypt up by the hair.
Egypt came up with a long tearing gasp, hhhhaaa-khh, hah, hah water streaming off his chin and his eyes squeezed shut, and he folded forward against Ethiopia without meaning to, and that was when Ethiopia felt it. His thigh had wedged between Egypt's legs in the scuffle, and pressed right up against it, through two layers of soaked fabric, was Egypt's cock, rock hard and twitching.
Ethiopia went very still. The river kept shoving at their waists. Somewhere upstream a big log thudded over the rocks. Egypt's breath sawed in and out against his collarbone, and Egypt's hips, slowly and traitorously, rolled once against his thigh before Egypt caught himself and froze too.
Ethiopia started laughing. He couldn't help it, it bubbled up from somewhere mean and delighted in his belly and came out of him loud over the roar. "Fourteen years," he said. "Fourteen years crying about the flow, and this is what it does to you. You're getting off on it."
"I am not." Egypt shoved off his chest, red-faced under the silt, the eagle between his eyes smeared brown. "That's cold water. That's adrenaline. That's, that's a medical thing, you illiterate goat herder."
"It's a medical thing," Ethiopia repeated, and pressed his thigh up, and Egypt's mouth fell open on a strangled nnh that no medical thing on earth would explain. Ethiopia's own cock throbbed against his wet trousers in answer, which pissed him off nearly as much as it thrilled him. His body had apparently decided to cooperate with the enemy without asking him.
He let go of Egypt's coat, all of it, stepped back in the chest-deep water and spread his hands like a man setting down something he didn't want. "Go home, then. Stairs are right there."
The bank was three strides away. Egypt looked at it. Ethiopia watched him look at it, watched that black throat work around a swallow, and then Egypt lunged, grabbed his collar in both fists and dragged him back close, nose to nose. "You don't get to decide," Egypt hissed, "when it stops."
It was a lie and they both heard it. Ethiopia took the fistful of collar as the only permission he was going to get and didn't ask twice.
They stumbled toward the bank in a tangle of elbows and mud, knees giving out in the shallows, and Egypt went down on his back in the silt with his head and shoulders lying in a few inches of moving water, the current combing his red hair downstream. Ethiopia straddled him and went for the waistbands. Wet fabric fought him like it was paid to, clinging and bunching, and he swore at it in three languages while Egypt called him useless, until he finally yanked both their trousers down past their hips and their cocks sprang free into the cold night air.
Ethiopia looked. Egypt looked. Egypt's was black and thick and cut, flushed dark at the head, leaking already. Ethiopia's red cock lay heavy across it and was very clearly, visibly, satisfyingly bigger, the fat head of it resting well past Egypt's. Bigger upstream too, Ethiopia thought, and grinned like an idiot. Egypt glared up at him with murder in his brown eyes, and his cock jumped against Ethiopia's shaft anyway.
"Don't," Egypt said.
"Didn't say anything."
"You're thinking it so loud the dam can hear you."
Ethiopia wrapped one fist around both of them, river water and the slick bead of precum smearing between his fingers, and dragged slow from root to tip. Egypt's back arched off the mud, hhah, ahh, fuck and Ethiopia put his free hand flat on that heaving black sternum and pushed. Egypt's face slid under the shallow water. Ethiopia held him there and stroked, his cockhead dragging along the underside of Egypt's shaft, the two of them slippery and hot inside his cold fist.
One. Two. Three. Bubbles broke over Egypt's lips. Four. He let up and Egypt surfaced coughing and moaning both at once, khh, hah, hhhaa-nngh water spilling from his mouth, hips bucking hard up into Ethiopia's grip like the air had gone straight to his cock.
Ethiopia got a rhythm going after that. Stroke and push, hold for a count, let up, listen to that wrecked wet gasp, stroke again. He was counting in his head the way GERD counted cubic meters, steady and flat, and he was managing the flow, and he loved it more than he would ever admit to anyone, least of all himself.
Egypt wouldn't shut up, which was very Egypt of him. "Upstart," he panted between dunks. "Thief. Bandit with a cement mixer." His hips were humping helplessly into Ethiopia's fist, cock leaking a steady thread now, slick and twitching against Ethiopia's bigger shaft. "I swear to you, when I get up from here I'll" and Ethiopia pushed him under mid-word, and the threat finished itself as a stream of bubbles. Ethiopia snorted out loud.
When Egypt came up this time his eyes were glassy and unfocused, the gold eagle streaked with mud, red hair full of river grit, and he didn't say anything at all, just made a high broken sound, aah, ahh, hah, and pushed his cock harder into Ethiopia's hand.
Then Egypt's hand came up out of the water and closed around Ethiopia's wrist, the one pinning his chest. Ethiopia braced for him to rip it off. He didn't. He held it there. His fingers curled loose and warm over the bones of Ethiopia's wrist and stayed, almost steering it, and Ethiopia understood with a cold drop in his stomach that Egypt was trusting him to let him back up. Every time. Egypt was lying in the silt with his face in the river and his life on Ethiopia's palm, trusting the upstream bastard he'd spent a decade calling a thief.
It frightened Ethiopia more than anything else that had happened tonight. So he covered it the only way he knew, ground down harder, fisted them faster, and leaned close to snarl, "You'd let me keep you down there, wouldn't you," and pushed him under again before Egypt could answer.
He counted to five. He hauled Egypt up, and Egypt came the second the air hit his lungs, a huge shuddering gasp tearing out of him, hhhaaa-ah, ah, AH his whole body locking up in the mud while his cock jerked in Ethiopia's fist and spurted pale ropes of spunk across his black stomach, one, two, three, striping him from belly to chest.
The sight of it did Ethiopia in. A few more rough strokes, Egypt still twitching and oversensitive and whining under him, and Ethiopia came with a low ugly groan, hnnh, hhah his forehead dropping to Egypt's wet shoulder as he pumped thick spurts over Egypt's cock and belly, mixing their mess together. The river licked over Egypt's hips and carried it off downstream in pale threads. Well, Ethiopia thought, that's headed to Cairo now. He bit his lip so hard to keep from laughing that he nearly drew blood.
They lay in the shallows for a long time without touching anymore, breathing like they'd run up the dam, the spillway roaring on upstream as if nothing had happened. Nobody apologized.
Eventually Egypt sat up, coughed a mouthful of river onto the bank, wiped the silt off his face with the back of his hand and dragged his ruined trousers back up with as much dignity as a soaked country could manage. "This changes nothing," he said, voice scraped raw. "I still want it in writing."
"No," Ethiopia said. It was the same no he'd been saying for over a decade, word for word, except it came out softer around the edges, and he hated that, and he could tell from the look Egypt gave him that Egypt had heard it too.
Ethiopia got up, hitched his trousers, and squelched up the bank to the rock where he'd tossed his jacket before the first shove, the only dry-ish thing for a kilometer. He picked it up and threw it hard, straight into Egypt's face. Then he started up the wet steel stairs without looking back, and after a few steps he heard Egypt's soaked shoes slapping on the treads behind him, following.