Jesse Hajicek

Up all night writing again. Oops. This is totally unedited, because I need to get some freakin sleep; please forgive any typos or nonsense you find.

Index post: http://www.livejournal.com/users/gomichan/185409.html

19,668 / 50,000 (39.3%)

"I never wanted to be a soldier, you know."

The red glow of James's cigar bobbed. The human didn't reply; he seldom did, when Eamon turned confiding. That was all right. Eamon knew now that it didn't mean he wasn't listening.

They were walking along the river bank. A month ago it would've been more of a battle than a stroll, but James and his humans had built a broad road from the docks below the fort all the way to the new mill. They'd cut through the forest, flattened hills, and built up hollows. Where little streams tumbled into the river, they'd built sturdy, graceless wooden bridges. They'd rolled the dirt hard and then covered it with bricks set in sand. Two and a half miles from dock to mill in two and a half weeks, through what had once been impassable jungle.

Eamon had seen humans hard at work countless times in his life. His family, like every house of means, had owned a stable of them. Their suffering had distressed him, and he'd been punished whenever he attempted to ease their lot, so he'd avoided them as much as he could, but it was impossible to avoid them completely. He'd thought them dull, poor things, unsuited to labor. Slow. Stupid. Easily confused, easily discouraged. And ugly.

Watching the Black Berets build things was an entirely different experience. They were fast, methodical, enthusiastic, and precise. But they hadn't been, before James had transformed them. Eamon had, at first, chalked it up to pure unknowable genius, but over time he'd begun to understand how it was done. James broke the work down into simple parts, gave them clear instructions, and had an absolute focus on the task that they picked up by example. He didn't care for anyone's opinion of him, he only cared how well the work was done. So he didn't bully them, frighten them, nor hold their faults against them; should one fail, he searched into the reason for the failure and showed them how to correct it. Without pity, but also without condemnation.

And he let them take credit for what they'd done. The humans of the town now looked up to the Black Berets as the pinnacle of humanity, gave them presents and did them favors. James never attempted to take their glory to himself. Eamon believed he didn't even realize such a thing could be done, let alone that it was the manner of all officers.

The Black Berets were still ugly, mostly, though less so now that they were better groomed and better fed. James, whom Eamon had thought not-unpleasant at first, had become beautiful. Eamon was not sure which of them had changed.

Every seventh day, the men were given leisure. Some few were married, and spent the day with their families, but most took advantage of their growing fame to flirt with -- and probably bed -- every girl in the Zoo. James made no secret of his proclivities, and though he didn't exactly flaunt them either, he'd had a few offers from handsome boys. He'd turned them down. He told Eamon they'd all been too stupid. He said he couldn't get it up for a tard. He used that word, tard, to describe the majority of the human population. Eamon wasn't sure exactly what it meant, except that it seemed even more perjorative than stupid. His hauteur, sometimes, would've been right at home among any collection of noble Truebloods; it was, Eamon thought, his only flaw.

But Eamon wasn't about to complain. It meant James would rather spend his free days like this, walking and talking, sometimes drinking too much, sometimes falling asleep together -- clothed -- in his bed or on the hearth rug in Eamon's quarters. It was a casual, standoffish sort of friendship he offered, but it was friendship. Though he didn't like to talk about himself, he would listen as long as Eamon wanted to talk, and when Eamon fell silent he seemed to enjoy having some companionship with his quiet.

He was listening like that now. Eyes turned to the river, narrowed against the smoke of his cigar, face as closed as the Windward Gate. It had taken Eamon weeks to understand that this didn't mean he was miles away or bored with the company. It meant that everything he heard was being collected and ground up in the ponderous gears of his mind, and would eventually come out as startlingly clear understanding.

Although some things, like a few confessions boozily stammered at the end of a long night's drinking, seemed to disappear into the machinery forever. At least so far.

"All my family's had some connection with military matters," Eamon went on. "Even the women. Of course, female soldiers were more common under the True King. The Regent discourages them. My mother was a famous knight, but she threw away her sword in disgust some decades before Tarlach rebelled. If he'd done it sooner, perhaps she would've joined."

James flicked ash and glanced at him. "What did you want to be?"

"I don't know." Eamon gave a helpless shrug. "It's not as if it would've mattered, or so I thought. My future was made for me. My name bought me rank. It goes some way to cover up my incompetence. Though of course Tarlach is too wise to give me charge of troops in battle again."

"What'd you do, freeze up?"

Eamon sighed miserably. "It would've been better if I had. Surely you've heard. I lost a hundred horsemen to a single dragon."

James was silent a while. He flicked the end of his cigar into the river. All he said when he spoke was, "We don't have dragons."

"No. They worship stability even more than we Truebloods do. They would never lend a hand to upset the existing order."

"I meant where I come from."

"Oh. I suppose you should count yourself lucky. Horrible creatures." He gave a convulsive shudder as a half-second's flash of dirty orange fire and screaming horses shot through his mind. "But a century of lancers should've been able to conquer one. Our losses would have been heavy, perhaps half of us would have died... but not all. All but me."

"What went wrong?"

Divulging this felt awful and good at once, like throwing up a bellyful of sour wine. "I didn't lead the charge. Perhaps I lacked the nerve. The courage to die for our cause. The first wave, you see, was doomed. They would die to cover the advance of the second rank. I told myself I would be needed to direct the battle, and I charged with the second. But the first faltered."

James just nodded, eyes on the river, hands in his pockets.

"We, perhaps, fear death more than your kind. It's a stranger to us. Few things other than iron can kill us. Dragon fire is one of them. The first charge faltered, and rather than forcing the beast to focus on them while the second charge bore down, they were slain before they reached it." He used his hands to describe the battle, brow furrowed with the effort of recalling the details without reliving them. "I saw that we had failed, and called for the men to turn. I turned. They didn't. I'd filled them with so much talk about how it could be done, how killing a dragon was not impossible, only a matter of strategy, that they didn't think to give way. And so they, too, died, and I raced away like a coward."

They walked for several minutes. Then James snorted. "Bunch of idiots."

"Ah, but there's no place in war for caution, for prudence. I should've died with them."

"Who says?"

"No one would ever say it to my face." He let his tone convey the knowlege that they said it behind his back. "I never wanted to be a soldier. I'm not suited to it. I had silly boyish dreams, impractical dreams -- I'd never have caught them, but I do wish someone had told me to chase them."

"Huh. Always thought that was bull, myself."

"Eh? Dreams?"

"Chasing them. Wrong attitude. Don't chase your dreams. Don't follow them."

Eamon sighed sadly. "You're such a font of inspiration, James."

"No, I mean... dreams. A dream is..." The human's pale hands sketched a vague shape in the air. "A dream is inherently unreal. Its purpose is to be unattainable. If you get stuck on dreams, you forget to have goals."

"Oh? And what, pray, is the difference?"

James scratched his chin, thinking it over. He gestured uphill toward where the Zoo lay behind its wall of illusion. "A dream would be if I imagined the town all lit up with electric lights, with good sanitation -- and modern medicine and public transportation, and everything we know how to do back home and don't because we're selfish twits. That's a dream."

"A worthy dream. To want to improve the lot of your fellow man --"

"It's too big to get your teeth into. It's not real. It's... it's arrogant, to want to do all that. I'd be assuming I know what's best for everybody."

"And you never come within scenting range of arrogance, of course," Eamon said, lifting an eyebrow.

James flashed a grin. "Not that kind."

"Then do be so kind as to offer me a goal, so I can compare the two."

"I want to play my guitar again."

Taken aback by this apparent non sequiteur, Eamon tried several replies in his mind as they came around the bend below the mill. He settled on, "I've seen you play it."

"Seen. Not heard, not really. I told you that's not what it's supposed to sound like."

"You need a device to get the sound out. Yes, I understand. So your goal, then, is the guitar, and to follow it --"

"Achieve it. Goals, you don't follow, you go get 'em."

"Very well, to achieve it you must build that device?"

"Right. But it's not that easy. It takes electricity, which takes a generator, which takes a strong magnet and a lot of copper wire --"

"Which were, as I recall, delivered three days ago," Eamon interrupted, starting to see where this was going. As he expected, James turned up the path to the mill.

"Then you have to build the amplifier. Even a simple speaker is a complicated critter to manage from scratch. Get it wrong and you blow the cone, or even fry the wires. I could've managed a volume control eventually, but Christ, I'd have been at it for years just building the tools to build the tools. Had to use a simple switch. Three positions: off, loud, and holy-shit."

"I suspected you were up to something, skipping our fighting lessons to come out here."

James shrugged. "You did say you can't teach me any more."

"Well, yes, I did, but we could still spar. And I'm certainly not the most proficient of warriors. You could find a more advanced teacher."

They reached the heavy, padlocked door of the mill. While James wrestled with the key, Eamon went over to touch the wall of the blast furnace. It fascinated him how it stayed hot all the time, even though the workers had gone home hours ago. He'd known that iron was forged from brittle bloom that smelters somehow got from ore, and that when heated to glowing it was as malleable as gold was when cold. Inside this dome, though, it bubbled like stew and poured like syrup, blazing yellow-white. He'd never seen anything like it before James started throwing miracles left and right.

James called for him from the open door of the mill. Eamon followed him in. It was dark inside, and he waited for James to light a lamp, but James instead shut the door and plunged them into utter darkness.

"James, what..."

"Ssh." James moved away, navigating by touch and memory, his footsteps soft on the sanded floor. The sound of the dam machinery was soft, not the clamor of huge wooden gears as in an ordinary mill, but rather the purr of oiled brass. The loudest sound was the ominous humming of the three stone flywheels in their wooden shed.

Eamon stood listening to this, irrational fear gnawing his belly, no longer able to hear James's steps, until he had to say something. "James?"

"Okay," the human replied from some distance off. "Cover your eyes."

Eamon did.

"You covering them?"

"Yes."

There was a thunk, a snap, and suddenly brilliant light burst around the edge of his hand. Eamon gasped and pressed his hand tighter to his eyes.

After a moment, James laughed. "You can look, Eamon. Carefully. It's bright."

Slowly, cautiously, he took his hand down. Blinking, wincing in the glare, he could hardly make out James's form at first. Gradually he distinguished the sources of the light. Three fist-sized globes evenly spaced along the roof beam glowed pure white, too bright to look at. James was standing by a confusing pile of wires and other incomprehensible business, laughing like a child at the look on Eamon's face.

He looked happy. Purely, honestly, openly happy. It made Eamon's heart turn over, and the answering laugh he summoned was rather weak.

"Did I blow your mind?" James said apologetically.

"You impressed me," Eamon rallied. "Is there any way you can tell me what these are without being at it all night?"

"Sure. You remember how I made you look for an alchemist who knows what tungsten is?"

"No, I've entirely forgotten nine days I'll never have back," Eamon drawled, carefully plucking an apple-crate full of coiled wire from a workbench so he could sit. "But as you never got your tumsen, I thought you'd given up."

"Turns out you call it something else here. That lot of samples you brought me had a suspicious little ingot labelled 'waframite' -- I suppose some European chemist your folks abducted ages ago taught his apprentice how to reduce Wolframite with charcoal, and the name warped. Anyway, it was a bitch to draw, because it wasn't pure enough. Took me about thirty tries to get a filament the right size. Sealed it in an evacuated bulb -- had to build a vacuum pump, but I was going to do that anyway -- and ran some current through it. Voila."

Eamon was surprised how much of that he understood. After spending so much time around James, he supposed he shouldn't be. 'Current' was one of James's many names for electricity, along with 'juice', 'voltage', and 'power'. It had been no shock to Eamon to hear plans for controlling electricity -- he'd seen lightning spells used to devastating effect in battle -- but it was an education to see how casually James mastered it. Apparently his people had been doing so for ages, and understanding this power's nature and habits was something in the nature of apprentice-work for an engineer. Ask him about masterworks, and one got rantings about 'robots' and 'rockets'. Feeling a bit too head-full for one of those, Eamon chose not to ask James for his long-term plans.

"Are these lights involved in playing your guitar?" he asked instead.

"Indirectly." James bent over the other table, the one covered with the leavings of his experiments, to fiddle with some wires. His voice was muffled. His trousers were delightfully tight, too. "A light bulb's a real simple test for power. Couldn't build a voltage meter or anything. Besides, I'm a bit rusty on wiring. Wanted to get that down before I started messing with speakers and maybe fried the guitar's innards. I have no freaking way to repair those if I wreck 'em." Finished attaching inexplicable things to other inexplicable things, he squatted to take his guitar case out from under the table.

Eamon had heard him playing it many times. It had a tinny, uninteresting sound, and Eamon hadn't understood the explanation James had rattled off, something about how magnets would make it louder. He'd seen the bright orange cable coiled in the case, but had never seen James take it out. Now James clamped one of its ends into a makeshift contraption on the table and flipped a switch. A wooden box with a convex cone in it began to make a low humming sound.

James looked to him with eyes shining, a little-boy grin hovering at the corners of his mouth. He tapped the other end of the cable with his finger, producing some crackling noises. "I don't have exactly sixty cycles here. Sounds a bit funny. But that's amp hum all right. Dare me to plug it in?"

"Uh... yes?"

"By your command." He slotted the end he held into a metal-rimmed hole in the guitar's wood. It made a louder version of the crackling sound. Eyes like mad silver lamps now, he caressed his hands over the strings.

The richest, strangest harmony Eamon had ever heard washed over his body, stopping his heart, burning him to ashes. He didn't know how long it took to pass through him from ears to soul, but when it was over he had a dry mouth and a painful erection, and he would cheerfully have cut off a finger or two to hear it again.

"You all right, Eamon?" James sounded worried.

"I... that... was... it sounds..." Unable to construct a sentence, he gave up.

"Ynyr got that look too." He caused more shivers as he checked the tuning, producing lesser, purer tones.

Eamon found himself jealous that the Prince had also heard that sound. Nonsensical... but it had been like a physical touch. A very intimate one. He wanted more of it. A lot more. "Play a song."

"Which one?"

"I'm hurt you have to ask," Eamon half-joked.

"You have like ten favorite songs, Eamon. Every time I sing one you tell me it's your favorite."

"But my favorite favorite. The one about going to dizzy land."

"Oh, yeah. That favorite favorite." James chuckled. He tried a couple of notes, reminding himself where it began, and then launched into the song.

Without the device, it had sounded like it would be a fiddly little dance tune, something to show off fast fingers, the sort of thing a minstrel would choose to impress a potential patron. And for the first few moments, now, it was the same but louder. Eamon was disappointed.

Then James's lips stretched over a mad huge grin, he put his shoulder into it, and the music jumped to life. He stomped the floor in time, and Eamon's heart pounded along.

James had been singing with a fraction of his true voice before, he realized as the human warmed into the first verse. The scratchy, whispery way he'd always sung -- he'd been trying not to drown out the muffled guitar. He sounded much better now, clearer, more versatile. Enjoying himself, too; his smile came through in his voice.

Then, gradually, the smile went away while he concentrated. By the time he got to "I just saw a good man die" he was as serious as the words, frowning down at his hands as they worked wonders, hammering noise into melody. He leaned into the fancy bit toward the end, the part where he bent strings and disjointed the rhythm and yet somehow kept it all together, shoulders jerking, head nodding, hips twisting, for all the world like a man in the throes of passion.

When he struck the last chord and slapped his hands on the strings to still them, Eamon was ready to worship him like a god.

Either that or marry him.

"You all right there?" James said with an uncertain smile. "You're catching flies."

"Uh... huh?"

"Close your mouth."

Eamon snapped his jaw shut.

"You okay?"

He managed a nod.

"It caught Ynyr kinda funny too. He said I was casting spells. I think maybe he was just surprised and covering it. What do you think?"

Eamon swallowed hard. "Do you recall that other song I liked?"

"You liked a lot of --"

"The sad one. With the flowers in the tomb."

"Uhm. No."

"My wings have been denied. That one."

"Oh. 'Down in a Hole'. Yeah."

"If you play that one, James, and it comes to life as the last song did, I'll -- I'll lay down my life for you, I'll follow you until I die."

James gave an uncomfortable little laugh. "Not sure I want that."

"Play it."

James played. Warm and slow, serious-faced from the beginning. Some of the complexities of the melody were beyond his voice, but that didn't seem to stop the magic. The song dived into Eamon's heart like an arrow, took root, and tore him apart. There were tears dripping off his chin when it ended.

They looked at each other for a while, in the humming quiet after the music. It was hard to tell what James was thinking, and Eamon wasn't up to guessing. He was too full of the unbelievable beauty James had given him. And the beauty of James himself, with his pink-and-white skin and long gray eyes, his worried mouth and his clever hands.

"I'm so desperately in love with you," Eamon blurted.

James's lips curved down, eyes full of pity. He ducked out from under the guitar strap. "That's enough music for you, I think." He turned off the humming device.

"I'm not bespelled." Eamon stood and stumbled two steps toward him. "I meant it all those times I said it. I had to be drunk to say it, but it wasn't a product of the wine. I'm drunk on your music and thus have the courage now."

Kneeling to put the guitar away, James glanced back over his shoulder, puzzled. "What? I don't remember you saying..." He stopped with a sigh and finished closing the case. "But then, I forget everything after we get into the second bottle," he admitted as he stood.

"Do you really? Or do you only refuse to be held accountable for it?"

"What's that mean?" James's black brows drew lower, worry threatening to turn into anger. "I really don't remember. If you tell me I -- if you want me to believe we -- you don't like to touch humans, how can you tell me --- no, it's the music. I don't know how it works, but --"

"It's not," Eamon insisted, stepping closer. His face heated as sense began to return, and he knew in a moment he'd be mortified at his nerve, but now that he was in the fray he had no choice but to bull through. "Touching humans is rather more intense a sensation than one likes to feel from a stranger. Touching you -- the merest brush of your hand is like a kiss, and a kiss is like making love. I can't imagine what making love would be like, but I want to find out."

"Are you saying I kissed you when I was drunk?"

"Rather, allowed me to kiss you. And then laughed at me."

James tried to turn away, but glanced sideways at him. Distrustful, guarded, ready for an attack from any quarter, as always. "Every time we've passed out together, we both had our clothes on."

"Of course. I'd never take such a liberty, not when you're in your cups. I've resolved several times to speak with you sober, but my nerve always failed me before."

"Yeah, well, you're not exactly sober now," James said tightly. "I don't know why, but an electrified instrument seems to fry you guys' brains. Ynyr said it made him -- what did he say -- gawk like a lovesick fool, or something. He was righteously torqued off about it afterwards. He said --"

"To hell with what he said!" Eamon shouted, flinging an arm wide. "Answer what I said! Is the idea repulsive? Do you hate me for it? Have I destroyed this friendship that I need so much? Am I an idiot, James? Tell me." His shouting had fallen to begging, and now he whispered. "I haven't asked you to open your mind to me once. I think I've earned an honest reply."

Over the course of two long minutes, James's locked and barred look relaxed into something just a shade more vulnerable. Not open, not by a long, long way. But he was considering it. He chewed his thumbnail and watched Eamon with gated eyes.

"I'm sorry for my outburst," Eamon admitted softly, "but I dare not back down now. I'll never summon the courage to ask again."

Slowly, as if every word cost him in blood, James said, "I don't want another boyfriend. I'm over Jared now, I guess, mostly, but that was bad. We really loved each other and we still couldn't make it work. I'm not up to trying another one. Not now. Probably not for a while."

Eamon had been expecting rejection, but it still hurt. He couldn't look at James. Ashamed, he studied his hands. "I see."

"Hmm... no. I don't think you do." James's feet stepped into his field of vision, and a warm hand rested on his arm, the iron of the human's blood making the touch ten times too real. James ducked a little, trying to see Eamon's face. "Will you look at me?"

It was hard to drag his eyes upward, but he did it. "Only tell me we're still friends, and I'll be satisfied," he lied.

"Dude, you're the only person in this whole weird world I can talk to. Of course we're still friends." James pushed at him gently until he caught on and let himself be steered to an armless wooden chair. He sank onto it. James went to one knee beside him, looking sympathetic. "I don't even know how I feel. I hardly ever do. My feelings never seem to match the way other people describe theirs. I can put a name to... grateful, definitely. You saved my ass. I'd never be able to do my job without your help. And like, I like you." He cracked a wry grin. "And I'm somewhat hot for you, too, so you could probably get me into bed if you tried."

"But it wouldn't mean anything?"

James sighed. It might've been exasperation or sorrow or anything at all. "That was part of what went wrong with Jared. I never could get this idea of things meaning other things. Look, I'm not saying you and I could never ever work out. I'm saying it'd be a long hard road and I just can't handle that."

Eamon forced the words through a lump in his throat, and his attempt to smile around them failed. "Then you can be sure you don't love me. If you did, that wouldn't matter."

"Aw, bull, Eamon. I bought that once, and it was a big fat lie. Love conquers fuckall." He stood up and turned away, but after two steps he came back and knelt again, eyes full of concern. "Are you sure you're not under a spell?"

Eamon heard a strange noise come out of him instead of speech, and found himself laughing and crying both at once. He couldn't express how much too much it was, that James could be so kind and so cruel at the same time. How he wished he'd never spoken, and was also deeply relieved he'd gotten it out in the open. How he was about to die of shame at being refused, and yet felt light as a soap bubble at this proof that James did care about him.

James patted his hand and then jerked back, perhaps remembering what Eamon had said about his touch. And it was like a kiss, and perhaps just for the sake of not having to talk anymore he'd tolerate sober what he'd laughed at drunk. Eamon cupped his face in a shaking hand, palm afire with the intensity of his blood. James tried to smile but only managed to look perplexed. Eamon leaned forward and kissed him. Three eternal seconds of soft red lips more real than pain, and Eamon pulled back to search James's face for an answer while his heart tried to shake him apart.

James gave a gentle, rueful chuckle. "So that's why I laughed at you."

Crushed, Eamon snatched his hand away, but James caught it.

"Hey, I didn't mean it's bad. Just... you can't possibly be a virgin, can you?"

"I... have had some few... I never found... not technically, no," Eamon admitted. "But I haven't done a lot of kissing. I'm sorry. I botched it."

"You didn't botch it. But you kiss like a kid."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." James chewed his lip, considering Eamon's face, for a long moment. Then he said cautiously, "I wouldn't mind giving you some practice. If you don't expect it to be anything but what it is."

"I would be grateful for your instruction," Eamon said formally.

That got a cautious smile. "All right then. Stand up."

They stood, Eamon rather shakily. James took Eamon's hands and placed them on his waist. He put his arms around Eamon's neck and tilted his face up. When Eamon did nothing, waiting for a command, James wrapped a hand around the back of Eamon's neck and pulled him down.

It was a kiss that could break spells, crack mountains, call lightning, wake the dead. It was the end of the world. It was so much more than Eamon had hoped for that hope was broken and there was only this overwhelming futureless now. His mind was blank, but on some level deeper than thought, he knew that if he died in this moment he'd count his life to have been a happy one, because this kiss erased all sorrows. When James let him go, he was dizzy and shaking and senseless. He didn't even try to speak.

James quirked a lopsided smile as if it had been nothing. "You're getting it," he said.