It was on the tip of Wesley's tongue to tell her not to tear it. Then there was a rumbling, growling sound from the doorway."Angel, there's blood in the little fridge in the back room. You don't have to be invited to go get it, you know," Cordelia said without looking up from her worship of the cheque.
"That wasn't me," Angel replied, turning around, and Wesley looked as well, knowing what he'd see even as he denied it.
"No..." Then, stronger, a last chance at sounding in control before his confidence and most of his sanity fled, "No, it wasn't." Then he stumbled backwards, mind casting frantically about, checking himself, checking his surroundings. Was there anything that would provide instant disapproval? Besides, of course, the fact that he was here.
Angel was stepping out of the doorway as an expanse of smoke appeared, coalescing into a form. Three demonic forms: red skin, horns, glowing yellow eyes -- and all well-dressed, two behind the one now standing right beside Angel. Angel and Gunn were turning to face them, hands going for weapons and only restraining themselves when the persons who'd appeared only stood there, as if calmly, looking for all the world to be clients in search of help.
Wesley dropped to his knees, and pressed his face to the floor.
And the door doesn't open, and nobody lets him in. Andrew bites his hand, crouches down on his heels and wishes he were home. Home, with the safety bars on his windows and the big locks on the door and his old He-Man figure under the pillow so he can touch it when he's dreamed that he's somewhere horrible and scary and he has to remember that he's actually in his bed.He sniffs. He rubs his eyes. He hunches into the wall and chews on the side of his thumb.
If he's alone, nothing awful can happen, right? It takes people to do horrible things.
Right?
She scrambled from the chair automatically, but her mouth was still moving. "I wanna know what's going on. What are you doing? What's happened? Buffy, tell me what's going on!""Slayer," Spike said. "Outside. Please."
"Shut up!" The cross bow jerked dangerously.
"Oh my God, Spike," Dawn said. Her knees buckled and then she was sitting on the hard floor looking up at him, eyes all glittery from tears about to spill. "What have you done?"
His own eyes ached, sought relief and solace in the dark places. But there weren't any left. Every corner was illuminated, too bright and sharp as glass. He gazed at the toes of his boots, comforting sooty black, and the curse of irony reared its mocking head. He hadn't done a sodding thing he'd intended to do tonight. Nothing to show for his freedom but a carton of smokes, bruised knuckles, and an empty belly. He started to laugh.
"You think this is funny you son of a bitch?" A chink in the Slayer's armour. Oh. This was going to hurt her. Hurt like hell. He was such an idiot.
He sleeps on my floor that night. I haven't got a couch, not in my dorm room. I'm lucky not to have a roomie. But it's ok. I watch him as he sleeps and it occurs to me how beautiful he actually is. He looks innocent asleep.He's still there when I return from class the next day. I wonder if he'll be the same as he was last night. Because now he's sober, he might be the rude Spike who barely speaks to me again. Except, I do remember, when I was�away�he was kind when I hurt his hand. I remember that. And I remember when he punched me just to prove I was human, and got a headache for it. I didn't appreciate that much at the time, but I do now.
On the dark winding drive home, it strikes Xander that her visit was completely gratuitous, not at all business related, and--a bit tipsy--he almost starts to cry. They're all freaks, damaged and alone, and it's wonderful, like being part of a secret club--the ones who've saved the world--but it's also terrible sometimes.He says nothing to Spike of what he's feeling, but maybe Spike senses it. They don't make love that night; they walk down the beach with their bare ankles in the waves. No demons attack.
I have a demon, Xander thinks. It's walking next to him, made colorless by night, just a figure in shadows. He is unutterably happy. The universe is huge and strange. Unkind but strange. And it's the strangeness that makes it bearable. He's only getting that now.
I don�t want to insult her � would it insult her? � but it seems like she was born to this. She loves to shape her hands in cups and curves, holding my face or my breast so amazingly softly, like I�m a flower floating in a dish of water. She runs her fingers down the roundest part of the inside of my thigh, runs her knuckles back up, and the way her eyes shine and her breath comes in deep, round wheels, in and out all on the same endless spin, I know she loves it. Loves the way I feel in her hands as much as she loves what�s in my head, the Tara who was her friend first and forever.
He doesn't know how Fraser knew. Maybe he only knew Ray was coming in, cold. But he has tea going, and when Ray throws the wrapped body at him, Fraser steps in. Pulls the guy in near the fire and starts pulling blankets off their bed.Here, at least, there's light. Coal oil and firelight, yeah, but Ray can see that what he's hauled in is a skinny mess of not-quite-a-kid. Bad scars and ginger hair, bloody and tattooed, wrapped in hemp-and-bone jewellery. Like somebody you'd see at a city festival, or a kid from the underground record stores Ray used to go to in Chicago. Only naked. Half-frozen and cut up and lost in the arctic.
Still fear all through him. He doesn't think it's an orc, but only because he's never seen an orc lass. But orcs were elves once, and elves have lasses, and wouldn't an orc lass be only an elf lady, mad out of all recognition and torn away from her skin? "Who's there?"She drops down. This, then, must be what orc-lasses look like. Luminous elf-maiden under the bloody damage of her: bone and blood all over, torn through her skin. Antlers reach up from both sides of her skull, but not symmetrically. Some of the bones look very sharp.
"I understand that Vulcans do not encourage homosexual relationships." He sighed. "Lieutenant, I'm not asking you to bond with him. You're the best Guide instructor the Academy's had in fifty years--we'd like to keep you. But we need Ellison to be able to do his job more than we need you here. You're the only Guide with extensive deep space experience, the only one even close to his own age who is unbonded." He leaned back and shook his head. "I'm not making him wait for a Guide to grow up, and I'm not assigning a Guide to someone twice their age. You don't have to bond with him, but we need you to Guide him."
Jim looked at him, his expression faintly puzzled. "Think about it. He's all alone, worried about his sanity, trying to research some kind of terrible -- ability, something -- that he doesn't understand and I will swear to you, doesn't want either, on the run from a military organization that I also guarantee is only interested in his strategic importance -- Sandburg, if you hadn't found me when you did, that would be me in there."No. Not ever, not in a million years, Blair thought. But what he said was, "I hear you, man, I really do. Now I want you to hear me. This is the way I see Daniel. This guy's probably been way too brilliant for his own good his entire life. A few years ago he decided to step out of academia and he thought all those smarts would be enough to see him through. They weren't. So whether he screwed up or was just unlucky, the world has turned out to be bigger and scarier than he ever thought, and now it's too late for him to go back to the place where he could be more than just a cog in the military machine. I think I'm still angry at him for turning his back on his real gifts, but mostly, I just feel sorry for him. Either way, he's not our problem."
Jim smiled then, but it was an expression as sad as one of Daniel's. "Chief," he said, and reached out to pat Blair's face, "Do you even hear what you're saying? He could be you."
Blair expected the blue-tinted rainforest he saw once he met his eyes. He did not expect the skinny raver-chick sitting in front of him conducting a regiment of chirping Siamese cats in what appeared to be the last scene of Hamlet, while a circle of miniature men standing around them did the Macarena. This was seriously disappointing.
Willow was the one who opened the door. Cordelia stepped inside, looking around with an eager expression. Behind her, Wesley was carrying a satchel and looking over his shoulder. They both moved aside as a trench-coat-and-blanket wrapped figure sped through the door.As he dropped his protection from the sunlight, Angel asked, "What's wrong?"
"They didn't tell you?" Willow began to ask, giving Cordelia and Wesley a curious look.
They were interrupted by a young voice screaming "DADDY!!!" and a small white blur flung itself at Angel. The vampire instinctively flung his hands up to ward off whatever might be attacking, then, just as instinctively, reached them out towards the scent of his childe. Who was... um...
"He's a *child* ?" Angel asked as Spike practically swarmed up his body until he was somehow being carried upright in Angel's arms, his head bobbing almost as high as his sire's. "Spike?"
"I am *not* a child." Spike whacked him on the head, and stuck his tongue out through thoroughly vampy teeth. "So there, you big poof-head."
Angel just stared at Spike for a moment, then looked at the others. "He's shrunk?"
"He's so cute!" Cordelia said, hand snaking up to pinch Spike's cheek. Spike growled at her, and she giggled. "I have got to have a picture of this."
She started digging through her purse. Wesley was merely watching, a distinctly amused expression on his face. Then they heard, "Hey!" They looked over in time to see Buffy bouncing off the couch...and towards Angel. Who caught her reflexively, holding her even as he sent the others a confused, bewildered, and totally lost look. "Tell your dodo-head childe that we are *not* watching Pokemon!" she demanded, in that imperious tone only little girls can ever manage.
Fraser pressed his lips together and did not answer. He seemed calm, even though the plane was shaking almost out of control, and I could smell metal burning."I swear if you say 'turtles' I will kick you in the head. We will have no turtles on this flight."
"Ray, I--"
"Shut up and fly, Fraser!"
"Ray--"
"No! You did not kill Vecchio when you crashed the plane and you are not going to kill me. And you are not going to throw me out--do not say 'turtles', you got that?"
"He's crashed planes before?" I asked.
"He's crashed everything. Maybe he never crashed my GTO but that was pure chance." Ray was shouting over the increasing noise, and behind him was Jim, eyes closed tightly.
"Do you want me to check out Dr. Burton?"He sighed.
"I guess it wouldn't hurt." He tilted his head and smiled. "If there's chicken parmesan waiting when you get home, can we renegotiate on the other issue?"
I casually ran my fingers across the back of his hand.
"If I *have* to ... "
He laughed. His eyes always had a nice light to them when he did that.
I walked him back to his office on the theory that I'd get a kiss when we got there, which I did. On the drive back to the station I amused myself by wondering what Simon would do if, this time, I actually told him the truth about why I was late.
"Demon!""Angel! And that's Anti-Christ to you, by the way."
Stops Clark for a second. "Really?"
Lex snickers. "Yep. Bother you? I really hope not..."
"I really wish I was drunk."
"I haven't figured out a way around that yet. But when I do... you'll be the first to know." Lex rests his hand on Clark's knee, small, vicious jolts of feeling hitting him whenever he touches one of the torn spots. "Clark. They want to start End Times."
"Armageddon, not just a bad movie anymore?"
"Basically. So, my... Dad summoned me down into Heck a few days ago, all gung-ho for battle. All I had to do was say a few words -- don't ask -- and Gog and Magog would ride -- or maybe ride again, this is none too clear -- fire would rain down, I spew some blasphemous frogs, etc., etc. You know, I was much happier about life when I thought John had just eaten a few too many magic mushrooms on Patmos."
He hunches forward a little, trying to think unsexy thoughts. "Bart, this... Is this you trying to distract me from finding out about your horrible trauma?""Jesus flippin' Christ on a little tiny pony." Bart explodes. Kon blinks and Bart's wearing a white t-shirt with 'I HAVE NO HORRIBLE TRAUMA' written on it. He points to it, waits until Kon blinks a second time, then tries to glom onto Kon again, hands just all over. Kon backpedals awkwardly, trying not to dig divots out of the lawn.
It isn't fair that the thought's a turn-on, because... It isn't fucking fair. It's freaky and sick that he's been all but living with Robin every damned weekend, and fighting at his side, and the whole time...God, he had to be laughing at him. The big, stupid slut who'd fuck anything who smiled at him -- especially if they were short and lean and --
Kon heads for the woods and aims himself at a tree.
And another one.
And another.
And... okay, maybe he shouldn't be deforesting Rhode Island, but he has to do something, and he can't actually beat Robin to death. Maybe.
"So Domino used to be Robin?""Yes. When I was thirteen, I went looking for Batman. There hadn't been a Robin for a while, and Batman was getting sloppy. It scared me. I wanted to fix things."
"No offense, I bet you were a creepy-as-hell kid, Rob."
"Probably," Robin agrees with a nod. "Anyway, I was tracking down an associate of Batman's. I went to his apartment, and suddenly I'm pinned against a wall and this guy's holding a knife to my throat. He'd been following me while I followed Batman. He thought I was a threat. After a bit of a scuffle -" Robin rubs at the scar again. "- we worked out that we were on the same side. We've been, well, friends, since. In a broad definition of the word."
Dick watches the tightness, the *hardness* settle over Tim's features like a layer of stone, and his first instinct is to match it. Channel Bruce: go stoic, beat the hell out of Tim in the interest of sparring, and don't talk about anything but the mission. Let Tim live with the attitude. Treat him the *exact* same way Bruce had treated Dick when he became Nightwing. And before.Which just kicks off the *second* instinct -- the one that actually *brought* him here today -- which is all about shutting his inner Bruce the hell *up*, and it's an effort to lower his staff and really *look* at the boy in front of him. And... God, nothing but tension, all tamped-down anger just waiting for patrol so he can let it out on whoever will be stupid enough to underestimate the kid in the tights. Dick *remembers* how that feels and how often Bruce just *left* him like that so he'd be more useful on the streets later.
He doesn't want to be Bruce. Not... not like that. And maybe he has all of Bruce's communication 'skills' when it comes to things like this, but there are other ways. He swings his own staff back to ready, and gives Tim his smirkiest come-on.
"I don't know," Barbara said, "I only met him as Batman, and even then only a few times. Ow, Dick!""Pain is the body's way of telling you something is wrong," Dick growled as he scrubbed out the bullet graze on his sister's arm.
Her blood swirled through the basin of soapy water between them. I stood between the curtained windows and changed into civvies. I knew her story: She was inspired by Batman from afar and put on his costume after he disappeared. Her pesky little brother Dick found her out, the way little brothers do, and after some threats and arm-wrestling decided to help. "I know you don't know. You must have looked, though," I said.
It's tempting to say something about this entirely random -- but surprisingly pretty -- road being the one Tim had *led* him to, but... "I was worried when I hadn't heard from you. And then when I tried to e-mail, your address was no longer valid, and I... was more worried."Tim turns his head to the side, and the skin at the corner of his eye tightens. Nothing else. If he'd been wearing a mask...
Connor takes a breath. "I went to Gotham to find you, but you were already gone."
"How did you know where to look?"
"Batgirl and... the new Robin."
Connor watches Tim's expression get even tighter, and thinks about touching his face. "They just... told you?" There's an edge of hurt in Tim's voice, and Connor gives up and puts his hand on his shoulder. It feels like a compromise.
"They seemed to think that you... might want someone to talk to."
The only thing Dick's sure of is, you couldn't call it dating.He knows how to date. He's really pretty good at dates, at least for the first half-dozen or so. He knows what he's doing when he's dating, and this--with Tim--that's not what he's doing. Patrolling Bludhaven together, as much fun as it is, does not count as a romantic outing, and Tim's not going to--take him to his prom, or anything.
Although that might actually be fun. Maybe he could be the bad-ass older boyfriend who shows up on a motorcycle. But then Tim would have to be Molly Ringwald, and he can't really pull off curls.
"When the snow falls you can't really hear it, but... it feels as though you can. The silence isn't the same as other silences.""It's... heavier."
"Yes, that's it exactly."
"You get that in the cities, too, sometimes, Frase."
"You're right, of course, but..."
"It's never really quiet for you, is it?"
"It is now." Another squeeze and Ray suddenly knew, knew that the first person to honk their car horn would die very, very painfully.
In a second, Ray was up and after him. "Fraser," he called out, as Fraser pushed through the heavy oak door that led to the street. "Fraser, wait!" Ray pushed through after him, then jogged a couple of steps until he could grab Fraser's arm.Fraser stopped, turned--and his face was like nothing Ray'd ever seen before, absolutely thunderous in its emotion. "I'm sorry," Fraser began.
Ray interrupted him. "You're not sorry."
"I'm not sorry." Fraser looked on the verge of helpless, furious tears.
I look at myself in the mirror and see what Fraser must see, a skinny guy who looks like he's been beaten to shit. Dark circles under my eyes, and my hair is every which way instead of standing up like it should, and even I can see the shirt I'm wearing is too big. Hey, radical diet, golden bullet, and what the hell, I look like more of a loser than usual, but I'm here. I'm here, and that means I'm not a loser, I had the balls to face up to me and come up here. Amazing what death does to a guy.
Fraser visualized his words as an avalanche burying the three of them and cooling them down. Huey was the first to glaze over, while Dewey was stuck at some shade of disbelief. Ray was�different. Ray watched his face very intently as he was speaking, but somehow Fraser didn�t think that Ray was completely engrossed in the story.��As the whale dove, the woman got tangled in the harpoon line and was pulled out into deep water. Sometimes out at sea you can still hear the woman calling, �Luma, Luma�."
There was a longish pause and then Ray asked evenly, �Fraser, did that have anything to do with anything or was it just a whale-related anecdote?�
He breaks away, panting a little, but still looks pretty damn pissed off. Again, the corner of my brain telling me to just enjoy this and shut the fuck up loses out. "Guess you're not gonna hit me, then?"It would have been better if my voice sounded more grouchy and less like I was begging him to fuck-me-do-it-harder.
His voice comes out as a growl. "I just might."
"Because you find me attractive?" I'm trying to shut up, but my brain just will not cooperate. This is why it's so complicated to be me. Or to be friends with me. Or to be around me.
He stopped, of course. Under hypnosis, he was liable to do anything Fraser told him to. He knew what he ought to say, now: he ought to promise Ray that he would pretend, to his dying day, that he hadn't heard any of that. It was a courtesy he deserved no less than Francesca, and probably more. Ray hadn't been eager to share this secret, after all. Still, despite the circumstances, Fraser found that promise did not fall from his lips. For a moment he stared at Ray, still smiling in his unaccustomed serenity, and, for this one moment, unabashedly admitting to something Fraser had not dared to hope for. Then, as gently as he could, he said, "When you wake up, Ray, you will remember none of this."
Hey. You're back." Fraser, perfectly calm, more calm than he's been in weeks, it seems. Bad news--must be, gotta be."I just wanted to return the keys to your automobile. And to thank you." Oh boy. Automobile, not car.
He's gone polysyllabic. Nuh-uh, not good. "So how'd it go? Or shouldn't I ask?"
"It went very well, I think. A most enjoyable evening."
Most enjoyable. Riiight. That's why you look so fuckin' happy, buddy--I hear the song in your heart. "You wanna come in?"
"No, I think I'd better be getting back. I have several important tasks to oversee in the morning."
Worse and worse, but what can I do? No way I can break through this; he's nearly a machine, he's so locked down.
He had to walk through a few blocks of office buildings on the way, places where everything was shut down and ghost town quiet after five. It was barely past midnight, but it could be three in the morning just as easy. It made him think of that night on the way home from Casey's, and for a second, he thought he was just remembering.Then the old guy, in his dark suit and dark hat, carrying his funeral flowers, put his hand on Ray's arm. Same fierce grip, same musty smell, same stupid feeling of panic pounding in his chest. Only the ache in his ear, throbbing fast with his pulse, told him this was any different. "Raymond Vecchio," the old guy said, and tapped his thumb along his nose. "I still know who you are, my boy. A little trick with names won't put me off, and it won't put off the thing that's coming for you, either. Anyone who cares to look can see who you really are."
"Nothing's coming for me," Ray said, but even to his own ears it sounded dumb.
The old guy smiled and shook his head. "I think I know better than you, my boy. I'm close to it myself, I can see these things. You're going to walk right on out of this world and into the next, soon enough, and there's no use fighting it. It's coming for you. Best you can do is be ready."
"Yeah, well, you get it yet?" I cuffed the back of Fraser's head lightly and turned partway back toward the steering wheel -no, I did not caress the back of his head, I did not stroke his hair. God, that hair, what is with that hair? How can it be that...shiny? And dark? And thick? And soft? Because it was soft, I could feel that when I, uh, cuffed the back of his head there, except now the car was out of the parking spot and it was time to move the car forward and not sit there with my hand on the seat behind Fraser's head and my body all turned toward him like, like...like I was going to lean in for a kiss or something. Oh, crap.
Neville looked at him, hesitantly."So - if you aren't coming to tell me you don't want to work with me again, then why are you here?
Suddenly, at that bald question, his voice went back on him, and croaked in his suddenly dry throat.
I know exactly why I'm here. I'm just not certain if I can stand to tell you, now I've got myself here to do it.
Rubbish. Go for it.
He cleared his throat, deliberately. He took a deep breath.
Now or never. What do you have to lose, after all?
"I - ah - I - er - more or less was planning to seduce you this evening. Actually."
The words dropped onto the evening air in the cold room like small, super-charged balls of lead. Neville suddenly moved forwards to sit on the edge of the bed, paused there, momentarily frozen, and then began to turn, inevitably, towards the sound of Draco's voice. Caught in the full blaze of his startled, appalled gaze Draco appreciated, instantly, the moment when one small noise in the high Alps triggers an avalanche. In real time he watched the moment when a snow-covered hillside shudders, thinks, pauses - and then reaches the point of no return and goes tumbling down in heedless ruin to the valley below.
"What??!!"
Neville's voice was high and panicky sounding.
Oh fuck. I mean - oh, fuck, what else could I possibly mean? Oh fuck. The one halfway decent thing you ever had going for you round here. The one person among this bunch of arsy sanctimonious bastards who could stand to be with you without trying to kill you. The one person in all this base who cared if you lived or died. And that was the sound of your just blowing all of that. Oh, fuck!
Perhaps he and Dudley weren't allowed in because, it was rumoured, the bookshop belonged to the strange man who lived on the corner of Privet Drive, the only one on the whole block who didn't own a car or have gnomes in his front yard. Instead his yard was overgrown with rows of strange herbs, and he owned -- this was the most brilliant part -- he owned a motorbike.Harry didn't see why sharing a street with strange Mr. Black should mean he couldn't go into the bookshop. After all, nobody actually knew that he owned it, and he had it on good authority that the shop itself was mostly run by another man named Moony. Harry reasoned that anyone named Moony could hardly be a bad person. And he'd often seen a great black dog lazing on the doorstep, its coat dark and sleek in the afternoon sun. It had a collar that read "Padfoot" and all the children said it was a brilliant smart dog who would fetch books if Moony told him to, or do tricks or watch little children while their parents browsed.
Harry thought Sandust Books might just be the best place on Earth, especially since it was Forbidden.
Billy sighed, and rubbed at his face with one hand while the other clamped around his keys in his jacket pocket, like that hand was preparing for a quick getaway, if the possibility presented itself. Billy could almost see himself bolting, off like a shot to the parking lot with Orlando racing after him, bow in hand, Legolas hair streaming behind him like a banner. He could do that thing you always saw in movies, jump and slide across the hood of his car to the driver's side, where his ever-prepared key-clenching hand could make short work of the locks, and away he'd go. He could watch Orlando shaking a frustrated fist at him in the rearview. "Why the hell even bring it up?" he demanded instead.For a moment, Orlando looked a little puzzled, more Orlando and less Legolas, even with the too-blue eyes and pale makeup and the golden fall of hair. "Because," he said simply. "I love you, and I love Dom. And you look at him like you want to eat him alive, Bill. And he looks at you like he wants you to. But you're not fucking anyone, and Dom's still walking out of clubs with people whose names he won't remember in the morning."
The day that Dom falls from his surfboard and slides limply underwater, Billy almost slips. He gets as far as the dropoff and is about to dive when he remembers.He dives anyway and swims with his too-heavy human body out to Dom. When he reaches Dom, Billy wraps his arms around his friend and slogs back to shore, keeping himself between Dom and the battering waves.
Elijah will later tell the story like it was a fantastic adventure, but Billy is shaken.
Dom comes to bed smelling of sea, and Billy dreams of leading Dom deep into inky water.
Aspirin! What the fuck did he need with aspirin? He needed a fucking lobotomy, he needed fucking electroshock treatments! God, why was this sick shit happening to him--what the hell was wrong with his fucking brain? Jim gasped a little and then opened his eyes. How had he come from thinking about that? Thinking about it now, consciously, made him ill, made him feel like his cock was shrinking right back up into him.Blair was coming back up the stairs to his bedroom and Jim sucked in a deep breath and tried to control himself. He looked up at Blair as he approached the bed and sat down on the edge; Blair looked so fucking worried.
Well, hell, maybe he should be worried: he was living with a maniac.
Blair cocked his head, conscious of a tiny alarm bell ringing in his head. Unfortunately, he was too tapped out to try to decipher what it was trying to warn him about. �You really think that, don�t you?� he murmured. �You really think the equation should be reduced, rendered down to simplest terms, unemotional, cold figures. Like three million.�Jim pursed his lips.
�I swear, Jim, if you say right now that I should have taken it, I will try that windpipe trick.�
�I wasn�t going to say that. But there are other alternatives, and I never even gave you a chance to think about them.�
�Such as?�
�Such as the private sector. Such as a hundred other things you�d be suited for.�
Blair smiled ruefully. �You underestimate me. I thought about my options.�
�And?�
Blair held Jim�s gaze without faltering. �And here I am,� he said softly.
Jim looked a little wobbly on his feet for a moment, as if Blair had sucker-punched him. �I, ah, I�� He rubbed a hand over his eyes, wiping away the sweat that had formed on his forehead. Blair wanted to laugh until he burst. Now he was sweating. That was Jim, sure enough. Give him the choice between running around Cascade five times or talking about his feelings, and he�d have his sneakers on and be out the door before you could blink.
Blair let his dissertation cover fall closed. Then he closed his notebook too, laid his head down on top of it and shut his eyes. That's why Jim hadn't wanted to know about other sentinels. If there were others, Blair was sure to leave him some day. And that's why he had stolen Blair's chapter and read it in secret. He'd been trying to figure out when Blair would leave him, the one question Jim would never be brave enough to ask him face to face.
Then it hits me. The sum total of our entire relationship lies in the details of this moment. Jim thinks I might be crazy and I'm visiting with dead people, so, of course, we talk about soup and try to take care of each other in the only way we know how. We've spent three years trying to figure it all out; three years screwing up and trying to make it right, hurting each other and healing each other in equal parts until we came to this minute.
We fall into our usual argument about him accompanying me to class. He has a dozen reasons why he should, I have a hundred why he should not. He ducks but not fast enough. I mess up his hair and give him a soft slap upside the head. Another new thing for me.Truth be told, I kind of like the kid, now that we had gotten past our antagonistic first couple of weeks when he tried to make me see my condition as a gift. He's wrong about that, it is no gift, but he does have some pretty good ideas about how to work around it.
He talks too much, is interested in a million things, is as enthusiastic and unrepressed as a puppy. Bumps up against my glass wall like it isn't even there, like he expects, no, demands admittance. And then invites me to come out and play.
Jim looked up to see a wild looking Blair charge across the bullpen, and he rose out of the chair, preferring to meet the coming whirlwind on his feet. The door to Simon's office banged open and shut and Blair yelled "Where the hell have you been?" like Jim was some teenager who'd broken curfew. Then Blair's fists were knotted in the back of Jim's shirt, his face buried in Jim's shoulder, and Jim could feel him shake. His own arms were around Blair in a grip that must have been painful to the smaller man. Finally, Blair took a deep breath and pushed back from the embrace. They were in the PD, after all, in Simon's office.Blair and Simon gave each other a look that Jim couldn't decipher and then standard operating procedures took over. Jim wrote and signed a statement. He said that he recalled going out to get food, and that he remembered nothing else until he found himself walking the streets on his way back to the station. When Simon tried to insist on a medical exam he remembered how he had listened to the woman, done what she asked. He pushed Simon, just a little, muttering the magic words, "sentinel stuff" and Simon subsided. Jim did get some spare clothes from his locker and permitted Forensics to take away the clothes he'd been wearing. His hands shook a little when he handed them over, even though he was sure there was no blood on them.
Delighted with Blair's exuberance, Jim allowed himself to be coaxed and they'd spent an hour dancing like crazy men around the living room, goofing and laughing, while the sun set through the picture window and the room got darker. Finally, they stopped, chests heaving and grinning at each other in the dimness. It felt like there was something there -- an electricity -- a sense of something important about to happen. Jim stopped breathing. All he could think was, 'Now. Now now now,' and he had no idea what he meant. So he stood there frozen, feeling slightly ridiculous.
It does not seem remotely right that he should get hard thinking about what happened. But his body is just this hot bog that he has no control over anymore. In bed late at night, it all comes rushing back, how Lex looked, debauched and beautiful, how he felt, like something so finely made that Clark's farm hands had no business touching him. He even goes over in his mind the-- whatever you call it-- what he did to Lex, something he could never have imagined wanting, but that was so intimate, so-- well, hot.
Clark is twenty minutes late by the time he gets to Lex's building. The doorman gives him a skeptical look, but checks his name against a list on his palm pilot. Clark's only been here a few times over the summer and just once since he moved into the dorms so they don't recognize him yet. He's not used to being delayed in reaching Lex and he shifts impatiently, staring at the plaque commemorating the high water mark from the 1956 floods. The doorman's head barely clears the high water line and Clark thinks about ratting him out to Lex, calling him "the short one." If they'd been standing here in 1956, Clark would have had to fly him to safety. If Clark lived here, he'd be home by now.
Now Lex did cock his head in that mildly ironic, thoroughly intense way of his. Clark realized he'd been longing for that look for years, instead of the one that said: 'I'd really like to dissect you, and it would be a bonus if you were still conscious while I did it.'"I assume you'll be explaining that outfit and why the door wouldn't open for me."
So Lex had tried to get out. Clark felt a moment of betrayal that the Fortress hadn't warned him. He crossed his arms over his chest, feeling exposed. The suit had always been proof against blushes. It displayed Superman, not Clark. This Lex changed all that, mashing his identities together.
Clark cleared his throat. "There's no good way to say this. I'm an alien, this is my secret hideout."
On the first day of the quarantine, Lex and Clark went through the mansion to assess damage."I can't believe you did that to your laptop," Clark said, looking at the remains of precision circuitry scattered over the floor of the library.
"I wasn't myself."
"Obviously not."
"I thought I was being attacked."
"By a white, furry Sasquatch from beyond the stars."
"You said you weren't going to repeat that any more."
"No, you said I wasn't going to repeat it any more."
"I was hallucinating! I had a fever of a hundred and four!" He stepped over the shattered pieces of the Sung vase that had once been on a shelf nearby, and muttered something. Clark's superhearing caught, "...never said the word 'Sasquatch.'"
Like now, with Clark on the arm of Lex's chair, breathing under a red sweater that his mother probably knit, innocent the way nobody is, and tempting, like this is a mountain in Israel and souls are at stake. Clark's leg under the jeans is very long, running the length of the armchair and onto the floor, and it's hot. Lex wants to hit him. Sitting beside him is just plain come-and-get-me-queer, and even this suckled-at-a-cow's-teat farmboy has to know this. Hell, they're like a poster for Gay Pride, so don't tell him that Clark's unaware.Except Clark is the most sporadic tease Lex has ever met. One minute, Clark's talking about homework and why Shakespeare's obsolete (okay, "sucks"), young and almost resistible. Then Clark's quiet, staring at Lex before launching a smile that crams everyone else into dusty corners. Could be just pretty, only it's edged with things Lex doesn't quite understand except that it's closer to honest than anyone else. Ever, which is the problem, and the reason why Lex's hand is calloused and his sleep's full of dreams where he's skinned.
Scully stretches, muscles sliding over bone. Her body, painfully alert, waits. It has been a patient body, she must admit. It waits without much hope of fulfilment, only her hasty inadequacies when it's too late at night for guilt. She feels like confronting Mulder. She would like, just once, for them to admit that what they feel for each other constitutes more than friendship. He certainly has laid to rest any doubts concerning his attraction to her. He seems unaware that she is receiving his thoughts, or of the response he strikes in her being. The hallucinations they shared underground are fading, but not the connection that mitigated them.Despite the disapproval of her conscience her physical self has been preparing for him for years; it expects him the way the jungle expects the rainy season. Their bodies code-talk their way through elaborate exchanges as boring old Mulder and Scully chew over the mundanities that foundation their existence. Their beings cast pheromones in friendly swathes at each other, trade body language and eye contact, and unload endorphins by the grateful truckload whenever they're allowed to touch.
Not that her avoidance tactics always work - at least, not for long. Sooner or later she's going to have to come out of the bathroom. She's already been in here for ten minutes, and there's not a whole lot left to check out. Her blouse, which she slipped off a few minutes ago in order to scrub out the blood and the soot, is drying over the radiator, and for a moment she briefly debates taking a shower. It seems a tad presumptuous, and besides all she has to put on are the clothes she's wearing now, or Mulder's red bathrobe that hangs on the back of the door. She tests it out, letting it pool around her feet and swallow her hands. It's much too large to wear around his apartment without tripping on the excess length, still, she keeps it on for a moment and avoids looking in the mirror. The minute she catches sight of herself doing something so dumb she'll become disgusted, and that's the last feeling she needs tonight.
As you stood there, I know you thought about not coming back to me. You had been an individual longer than your host had been alive. Longer than his father had. You'd grown used to the loneliness, to having a blanket of flesh between you and the world. You wondered if you could ever rejoin the whole again, and you were afraid. I know you thought about making your home in that host. I know how you tortured yourself with the thought of betraying me. Betraying yourself
The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I put my hands protectively over my stomach. "You're an alien?""Yes, sir," he said.
"And your name is Steve?"
His smile faltered. "I'm sorry," he said, confused. "I assumed your first questions would be about your sudden pregnancy."
"You're going to get to that eventually, right?
"Well, yes, but --"
"Steve?!" I practically shrieked. Hey, I had an excuse for all the weird behavior, all right? Any more strange crap happened to me, and I was going to legally qualify for a lifetime supply of straitjackets in forty-seven states.