Kalen
Kalen spends some time outside, watching the
horses and the direction the stallion and the child came from. When he
eventually comes back inside he drifts past where Sid and the child
are. Quiet. The girl, at least, is sleeping.
After a few seconds
of hesitation he heads not for the library but for the small room
upstairs where he sometimes slept in another world. It seems like
another life now. Still, he picks up a blanket draped over the back of
the couch, shakes it free of dust, and then spreads it over the couch.
He
doesn't bring any books or anything up to the room with him, save a few
candles. He keeps only the one he was carrying lit, sets it and the
other unlit candles and a lighter on the table. And then stretches out
over the couch, eyes on the flickering flame.
Ian
The
house was quiet around them as the girl slept, and Ian eventually
relaxed enough to leave her in Sid's care. By the time Kalen re-entered
the house, Ian was back in the kitchen cleaning up what little mess
remained of their evening meal. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence to find
him doing things like that. Since they'd arrived, he'd been doing a lot
of cleaning, and he was usually the one who ended up washing dishes.
Maybe it was just habit, but it also seemed to relax him a little.
He
didn't move to follow Kalen right away. Instead he finished what he was
doing and put out the flame in the gas lamp on the island counter. Then
he checked on Sid and the girl one last time and made his way upstairs.
His
steps were light-footed outside the door. Barely detectable on the
carpeted hallway. He appeared in the half-open door to the spare room
and leaned against the frame, eyeing Kalen on the sofa.
"You know there are beds, if you're tired."
Kalen
Kalen
doesn't respond immediately, at least not verbally. He does move to
curl up, now more sitting than laying. He does not retreat all the way
to the corner of the couch, but he does leave Ian a full half of it.
"Not
like that," he says quietly. "And I know. I just...I always used to
come here. When there were other people. They lived here and I only
stayed on occasion so I...." He sighs. "I know it doesn't matter now.
I just...."
But he doesn't finish that thought, just lets his voice trail off and then lets his eyes shift back to the candle.
Ian
Ian
stepped into the room and shut the door. Less out of an urge for
privacy and more so that their voices would not wake the sleeping girl
downstairs. He shrugged lightly at Kalen's explanation, accepting it for
what it was. "Whatever you need to do."
They all had their habits, here.
He
walked over to the couch and sat down, lifting his feet to rest them on
the edge of the cushion with his knees bent. His boots were covered in
dirt from the pasture so he'd left them downstairs by the front door.
Reaching up, he ran his fingers over his scalp, feeling the soft buzz of
his hair beneath them.
"Do you think the other people here are real?"
Kalen
Kalen
reaches out to touch Ian's shoulder. Slow. Cautious. He hasn't tried
to touch Ian since they first met here. He isn't even sure he can now,
but if Ian seems okay with it he'll let his hand rest lightly on his
shoulder. "You seem real."
He sighs. "Sid, probably. I think
the three of us are real. At least...where we came from. I
mean...reality is fluid. Like time and fate and dreaming and memory. I
think...maybe other things are real. Like...our real. If we could
find them, maybe we could figure more out.
"I had hoped this place
would be our kind of real. Or that parallel worlds would
have...knowledge in the same places. If not the same exact knowledge.
But other worlds aren't really things I know. I'm not even entirely
sure what were in. How we got here.
"And, I'm not glad you're
trapped here too, but I am really glad you're with me. As not really
compatible as those two threads of logic are."
Ian
Kalen
put a hand on Ian's shoulder, and Ian let it stay there. He was close
enough to Kalen that the heat from their bodies could be felt in the air
between them. Close enough that Ian's weight dipped the cushion where
Kalen sat. Kalen said that he was glad to have Ian there with him, and
Ian glanced at Kalen with an unreadable expression.
"That girl feels real to me."
Kalen
probably didn't want to talk about the girl, but it was hard not to.
Maybe he was right, and this was just one of many possible realities.
Ian's mind wasn't so fluid as Kalen's, and he frowned softly as he
thought about it, his brows furrowing with tension. He pulled his knees
closer to his chest and rested an elbow on one, putting a hand to his
forehead. After a moment he closed his eyes. The flicker of candle
flames cast an eerie glow through the thin skin of his eyelids.
"You
said something about us being in a horror movie. Maybe this isn't
naturally occurring. Maybe someone built this place, and we just filled
in the details."
Kalen
"Whatever this place is, we're here now. And we, you and me and Sid and maybe this girl, we will figure it out.
"I've
been kind of unsettled. I know. And I don't know what exactly to do.
But I think it will be okay." He squeezes Ian's shoulder, very
gently. "I'm not saying that because it's what I think you need to
hear." There is a pause, because has to remind himself not to curl up
against Ian's side. Not to overwhelm him.
"I went out chasing
visions before we came here. I saw a whole jumble of contradictory
things that happened here. But I also saw me waking up in a hospital.
And that symbol I told you to look for. I...don't know what happens to
you, but that's because I wasn't...I don't think your future is
something I should really look at.
"Here's the thing, okay. I'm not leaving you. So if I wake up in our actual world, so will you."
Ian
Ian
glanced at Kalen, but didn't say anything. There was a shadow of tired
skepticism in his eyes, but it held less bite than usual. Maybe there
came a point when a person just lost the energy required to chase people
away. (It didn't necessarily mean that this place was making him kinder. More perhaps that it was changing his priorities.
Survival did that to people.)
"We'll see," he finally offered.
And
then he went quiet again. What was there for him to say, really? More
questions that neither of them had answers to. With a sigh, Ian reached
over and set his hand on Kalen's knee, tracing the edge of his thumb
over it.
"Are you ticklish?"
It was perhaps the oddest question he could have thought to ask in that moment.
Kalen
Kalen
opens his mouth to respond to that, and then sighs. "I know," he says
softly. "That's not the kind of thing that you believe in. It's okay."
He
sighs when Ian rests a hand on his knee, this more release of tension
than anything. "I'm...I don't think so? No one has ever really tried.
It's not. Is that really a thing that people do?"
Ian
"What,
tickle each other?" Ian smirked half-heartedly. It was difficult for
him to imagine that a person could not know every particle of their own
body. It was so much a part of who he was. "I guess. I just asked
because some people are, here."
He meant the way he was touching
Kalen's knee, tracing the nail of his thumb over it. But Kalen didn't
seem bothered by it, so perhaps that was enough of an answer. After a
while, Ian let his hand slide further up. He looked out the window at
the black sky.
"Tell me if you want me to stop."
Kalen
Kalen's eyes flutter closed and some of the tension eases out of his shoulders. "Why would I want you to stop?"
Ian
Ian
could think of quite a few reasons why Kalen might want him to stop. It
was why he'd asked. After a beat, he stood up and blew out each of the
candles in the room, shrouding them in dim moonlight from the open
window.
"You have to be quiet," he said softly, conscious of Sid
and the thirteen year old girl downstairs. Then he dropped down to his
knees in front of the couch and lifted the edge of Kalen's t-shirt,
leaning in to kiss the skin just below the arch of Kalen's ribcage. His
other hand found the clasp of Kalen's belt and pulled it open without
looking.
He did not say: I hate the things I see when I close my eyes. I'm afraid that all I'm good for is tearing things apart. Maybe he should have. Instead he breathed against Kalen's skin and kissed him again, twice, moving lower each time.
He
hadn't kissed Kalen on the mouth - not once since they'd gotten here.
They hadn't even hugged since that day when they'd found each other on
the road.
He was doing this wrong. Maybe Kalen was ok with that. Either way, Ian pushed his hand between Kalen's legs.
Kalen
"Well
that takes out half the fun...." Kalen says softly. Because he cannot
say in that soft voice so many other things he wants to say to Ian.
He
does not stop Ian. Does not call attention to the ways Ian is willing
to press into contact. But now that Ian is willing to touch he slides
off the couch so that he is sitting straddling Ian's lap. And he leans
over to kiss Ian on the mouth. Softly, perhaps. But unlike some of the
other soft kisses Ian has gotten from him in the past, this one is more
deliberate statement than surrender. He'll stop if Ian pulls back, but
he will, at least, try.
Ian
When Kalen moved, Ian
sat back on his heels, shifting to accommodate Kalen's weight. His hands
circled around to Kalen's back, grasping folds of Kalen's shirt between
his fingers. Then their lips met, and...
It started soft.
Intimate and deliberate and slow, and Ian sucked in a breath at the
contact. It felt as though it had been months since the last time anyone
had kissed him. Ian tightened his grip on Kalen's shirt and dropped his
other hand to the back of Kalen's hip, and surged forward into the kiss
as though the contact had suddenly flipped a switch inside his head.
And then it was not soft or deliberate, but rather rough and needy and
desperate. Ian pulled Kalen down hard into his lap, thrusting up against
him once, frustratingly. And again, harder.
He had his hand under
Kalen's shirt, scratching his nails up Kalen's spine, when suddenly Ian
just... stopped. His eyes were closed, and his breath gusted heavily
against Kalen's mouth.
Everything was falling. Crashing, burning.
(The girl was the same age his sister had been. This is what he'd been doing then too.)
It
was almost painful, how suddenly Ian pulled away. He pushed Kalen off
of him and crawled back in a swift motion. When he stood up, his hands
shook, and he touched his mouth like he'd been burned there.
"I can't. I'm sorry."
Kalen
Kalen,
who has practically melted into the contact, goes back into the couch
and blinks. He rises slowly, less because bruises and more because he
doesn't want to spook Ian. He settles back onto the couch, not as close
to the center this time. He leaves more space.
"Okay. It's okay. I'm not...." He takes a slow breath. "Will you sit?"
Ian
Will you sit?
Ian
looked away and closed his eyes. After a moment he gave this slight,
barely perceptible shake of his head. Then he opened the door and left
the room.
A few seconds later, the door to the bedroom down the hall slid shut, and the lock clicked quietly into place.
Kalen
Kalen sighs and gives Ian a minute.
And then five.
And then twenty.
But then he does go to where Ian has closed the door.
"Hey,"
he says. Quietly. Gently. "You don't have to open the door and you
don't have to answer. I'll be in the bedroom across the hall. If you
want company or need anything, I will be there. The door won't be
locked. Don't worry about waking me up or anything like that.
"I
know you want space. And time. You can have those things. It's okay.
It's fine if you come and it's fine if you don't. I'm just letting you
know where I'll be."
There is a pause. And then a soft breath. And then footsteps headed for across the hall.
