InDescent
Page 22
“Yes. Completely. Remember that grand elder I told you about? Rugh?”
“Yeah, the one who was at your party last October. You were…companions for a while. A long time ago. But what does—?”
“He knew how much I loved studying and learning languages,” Swift said more hurriedly. “So he used to filch ancient tablets and papyri for me. We’d go over them together, and then he’d return them. He tutored me for decades. That’s how I came upon the phrase.”
I waited patiently for the full dawning of comprehension. Spey’s gaze, too, moved over my form…but in disbelief. His incredulity began to dissolve as he sprinkled it with logic. An answer rose up.
My smile, and my admiration, were still in place. A truly marvelous mechanism.
“You, M,” Jackson said. He cleared his throat, for a residue of emotion still clotted his voice. “Your guidance. That’s what’s been most important to me recently. That’s what’s most important to me now. If it weren’t for you, Adin and I would’ve been lost in this structure and subjected to things that would’ve torn us away from each other and ripped our minds to shreds. Even if I had stumbled upon the breach, I wouldn’t have known how to repair it. And I wouldn’t have known how to get us out of here.”
“The sacrificial lamb is the shepherd that leads itself and Menders to the broken altar.” I glanced at the horizon. “So state your intention, Mr. Spey. How do you choose to close this rent in the fabric?”
He hesitated, but only briefly. “With you. I choose to use my invaluable Shebra’felim guide to seal it.”
“Very good. But first, I must call back those who’ve escaped.” I faced the portion of horizon that bore testimony to inept or malicious magic, and sent out a message.
Soon, the creatures that belonged to this plane began returning to this plane. Like other Shebra’felime, I had no power to command them or destroy them, only to communicate with them. So once the creatures knew they must return now or never return, they rushed back. Like a beacon, I guided them.
They had their proper place and instinctively knew it. Most had likely wandered beyond their world without intending to do so. Confused and angry, they would be eager to return.
“Do you see that?” Spey said to Swift.
“Yes. They look like scraps of chiffon shooting through a mail slot.”
Both men’s voices conveyed their awe. I didn’t share it. A Shebra’felim was no more awed by events within the Prism than a human was by the mundane activities that took place within his own home.
When all the vagrant creatures had been recalled, I turned to my companions. “It’s time.”
Spey’s face showed a faint reflection of his previous distress. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I asked. “For determining the best way to do what needs to be done?”
“But what you’re about to do—”
“What I’m about to do, dear man, is fulfill the ultimate purpose of my existence. How regrettable so few humans perceive what that purpose is. I commend both of you.” I then turned to Adin. “You need no longer fear the resurgence of your former nature. The influence of the creatures that slipped into your world, or the force of the beliefs that created them—”
“Was like the moon tugging at the tides,” Adin said. “Yes, I understand that now.”
I nodded. “That is indeed what stimulated your reversion.”
Spey grasped my arm. “Tell me, did you enjoy any of what you were called upon to do?”
I briefly pondered this. “When I was in your world, I enjoyed your company. I believe my reaction could be described that way. I would no doubt have enjoyed Mr. Swift’s company, as well. But Ivan Kurtz and his silly coven made me tire quickly of being in-native.” I paused, interpreting the subtle signs of the men’s amusement. They understood my aversion to Ivan Kurtz. “Here, I simply do what my role dictates I do, in whatever form I must do it. I am pleased, though, by the outcome of this particular journey. Make good use of what you’ve learned, Jackson.”
“I’ll certainly try.” He dropped his gaze to the ground under his feet. To his human eyes, it must have appeared as a ragged blur of brown and gray spiked with green and dotted with white, yellow, blue—ethereal, not solid. He gave a desultory kick, but his foot didn’t disturb the pebble-strewn grass and wildflowers any more than it would stir a beam of light. Clearing his throat, he looked back at me. “What’s going to become of the Prism? The physical structure, I mean.”
“It will remain with its owner until passed on to a new owner. How the transference takes place doesn’t matter. The Prism always ends up where it’s meant to be. Beyond that, I know nothing of the conditions that govern its placement.”
Reaching out, I put a hand on each man’s arm, reveling in the feel of them. But they looked weary, so weary. Indulging in this pleasant contact was an act of selfishness. Reluctantly, I withdrew my hands. Selfishness was unacceptable in a Felim.
“Thank you for everything,” Spey whispered.
I smiled. “You’re welcome.” It was, for even a temporary human being, the proper thing to say.
Chapter Seventeen
Jackson walked through the front door of his home, the same ordinary door he’d rushed through to get to Ivan Kurtz’s apartment. It was just there, and he and Adin were moving through it.
The flat was dark and still. Jackson flipped on a floor lamp. Nothing scrabbled at the window panes or dove beneath the stove.
“How long do you suppose we were in the Prism?” Adin asked. He stood just behind Jackson’s right shoulder.
“I don’t know. It feels like months.” Jackson glanced at the wall clock set between the dining area’s two windows.
He and Adin spoke with muted voices but, Jackson knew, didn’t need to. No creatures, seen or unseen, were eavesdropping on their exchange. They were alone. And out of harm’s way.
No time had elapsed at all.
Without a word, Adin moved farther into the flat, giving his lover’s hand a small lift and light squeeze as he did so. His fingers, loosening, glided over Jackson’s as he walked toward the hallway.
Jackson’s hand fell back to his side. “Adin…”
Languidly, he turned. He didn’t seem reluctant, just tired. His expression was as alert as he could make it, his curved eyebrows slightly elevated. Jackson was struck yet again by his uncorrupted beauty. The sight left him speechless for a moment. Then he found his voice.
“I love you.” He didn’t charge forward and sweep Adin into his arms. He didn’t move at all.
He simply waited for Adin to absorb this declaration and feel the weight of its sincerity. Nothing he’d ever said to anybody had meant so much to him, had carried such stark, consequential truth. “I love you passionately, devotedly. I love you more than I can say, really.”
Adin met the words with a smile at once tender and radiant. Its warmth filled the air between them.
“And it hurts like hell,” Jackson added, because that was part of the truth, too.
The smile melted away. “Why?” Adin asked. “Tell me why.” Without moving his gaze from Jackson’s face, he went to the dining table and sat down.
“I love you so much it’s too much. Sometimes I want to cut it out of myself.” Jackson finally overcame his inertia. He moved to the table and sat directly across from Adin.
It was time to stop mucking around in delusion and denial. His experiences in the Prism had made that conclusion unavoidable.
“Why do you want to be rid of it?” Adin asked. “Just let us be in love. Is that so hard?”
The question’s naiveté was both endearing and exasperating. It was also understandable. Adin had put a lot on the line to bring them together. If he hadn’t had the balls to come clean with Celia and drive down here last November, they’d both still be playing Let’s Pretend. Of course he wanted to bask in his triumph, enjoy the fruits of his risk.
Jackson felt stymied for a moment. He decided honesty had to prevail.
“Yes,” he said, his voice subdued, “it’s hard.”
Adin compressed his lips and pressed his thumb and fingers against his eyes. He knew. Maybe he’d been trying to assuage his own guilt by ignoring the fucked-up circumstances of their relationship, but he knew.
Jackson took a breath and audibly expelled it. “It’s the missing you I can’t stand. A three-day weekend every couple of months amounts to eighteen days out of—”
“I know,” Adin mumbled. “I’ve done the math.” He let his hand fall to the table. There were puffy crescents beneath his eyes.
“It isn’t easy for me to admit this.”
Adin nodded. He slid an arm across the table.
Jackson did the same until their hands connected, fingers lacing, unlacing, stroking. They both stared at the idle interplay.
Maybe, Jackson thought, he should put the brakes on his confession. He was swerving too close to ultimatum territory, although it wasn’t his intention to do so. He didn’t want Adin to feel pressured. Never, ever would he presume to make demands he had no right to make.
Then again, maybe he did have a right but feared the consequences of exercising it.
“I’ve needed to hear this,” Adin said. “I didn’t realize…”
“Well, now you do. I’m sick of barely being able to function because all I can think about is your next visit, your next kiss. All that damned yearning. It’s like having an open wound. And I can’t do anything to heal it.”
The fine skin around Adin’s eyes contracted.
“I thought I could handle this arrangement,” Jackson told him. “I truly thought I could. But—”
“When you’re in love, it just isn’t enough.”
“No, it isn’t enough. And then knowing when we’re not together, you’re with—” Jackson did put the brakes on then. If he brought up Adin’s relationship with Celia, he would be perilously close to ultimatum territory.
There was a slight flinch at the crests of Adin’s cheeks. “I know I don’t have a right to say this, but I don’t want you turning to somebody else.”
“I don’t want that, either.”
If he did, Jackson knew, his choice would be a man. Adin probably knew it, too. There was a reason he’d never had a serious romance with a woman or even an affair that lasted beyond two months. There was a reason for the superficial and ephemeral nature of all those hook-ups and his long period of near-celibacy.
There was, in short, a qualitative difference between his attraction to women and his attraction to men, and this impossible love cemented that difference. Bisexuality had merely been a comfortable mask before last year, before Adin ripped it off…maybe for good.
“Tell me,” Adin said, his voice unsteady, “about those fears you had to face.”
Jackson’s gaze became more vacant as he watched Adin’s fingers skim over his, dropping secret, seductive messages into his pores. “There’s only one. It’s an amalgam of all my fears. Or it’s emblematic of them all.” My own dark river.
“What is it?” Adin whispered.
With effort, Jackson looked into those lovely, searching eyes. “You.”
Adin wasn’t shocked or hurt or indignant. He didn’t draw back and gasp. He didn’t ask Me? Why? Immediately, he understood.
Pulling his hand back, Jackson dropped his face to it. Adin Swift embodied every reality and possibility that made his soul cringe. Having his control stripped away; with it, his better judgment. The vulnerability that comes with intimacy and, especially, with love. The haunting threat of loss, of loneliness. The nature of his sexuality and its merciless assault on his self-image. Ever-growing, harping hungers that couldn’t fully and always be sated.
All distilled into one relationship, all contained in one man. Finally, Jackson looked at him. He had no idea what his own face conveyed.
Adin likely hadn’t stopped watching him. He seemed troubled. Then, softly, he spoke. “Don’t let me go.”
A defining moment made up of four monosyllabic words. After thirty odd years of self-containment, Jackson lost it.
His response took him by surprise, almost frightening him. A deep, lurching sob rose from the pit of his belly. And then another. Uncontrolled and uncontrollable, they came sluggishly at first, rumbling up on shuddering breaths. Soon they picked up speed, piling one on top of the other. The sounds were alien to Jackson, hitching in and grinding out the way they did, and so harsh they made his throat hurt. Dropping his head to his hands, he felt his shoulders rise and fall, his stomach begin to cramp, his face get slick. He couldn’t stop any of it.
Then Adin was holding him, or trying to. Jackson slid, limp and wretched, off the chair and onto the floor. Hunkered on his knees and curled over, he gulped air as the thunder began to subside. Droplets rained to his thighs, darkening the denim. Within moments he had nothing left to pull out of himself. Like a stage magician who slides scarves out of his fist, one tied to another in a long, garish chain, he released every shred of feeling until he was empty.
As his father would’ve said, he’d cried his heart out.
Adin showered Jackson with desperate encouragements. “I love you. We can fix this. I know we can. I love you so much.”
Without realizing it, Jackson had leaned into him. It must have felt natural, the right thing to do to find the right place to be.
“Just stay there,” Adin said, kissing Jackson on the head as he gently disengaged himself and rose. “I’ll be right back.”
Still drooping forward, Jackson had only enough strength to sniffle hard. Weakly, he tried wiping away the wetness, but that proved an exercise in futility. His face was drenched.
Adin knelt beside him once more with a roll of paper towel. He tore off a sheet. “I’ve never seen you like this. I didn’t even think you were capable of it. Here, lift your head.” When Jackson didn’t, Adin ducked down to look at him. “Jesus, you’re a mess. Tears, snot, drool…” He raised the towel just as another drop of fluid extended the Rorschach blot on Jackson’s jeans.
Irritation masking his affection, Jackson snatched the rectangle out of Adin’s hand. “Don’t dab at me like a grandmother. I’m not a two-year-old.” His throat had taken a beating, leaving his voice thick and hoarse.
Adin sat back on his haunches. Jackson straightened and began swabbing his face, clearing his nose. His eyes felt like sandy, overripe fruit ready to burst.
“Damn it, Swift,” he croaked in the middle of a good blow, “what are we doing to ourselves?”
“Trying to make the most of what we’ve got.” Although Adin’s smile didn’t touch the whole length of his mouth, it managed to be forlorn and hopeful all at once.
Surrendering, Jackson shook his head. He knew there’d be no letting go. A person shouldn’t reject a blessing…and couldn’t reject a curse.
“Celia wants to talk to you, by the way.”
Jackson abruptly turned his swollen eyes to Adin’s face. “When?” What the fuck was more the question he had in mind. He stretched his lids and blinked against the burn.
“Soon, I guess. She mentioned it to me before I came here.”
“Why didn’t you bring it up before now?”
“You had too much else on your mind. I was trying to be considerate.”
Jackson coughed out a laugh. Reaching up, he let his fingertips wander over Adin’s features—adoring them, marveling at them. Well, ma, I’ve finally found it. Your son might love a man, but he’s sure as shit in love. Reluctantly, he lowered his arm.
“I can stay for a while, you know,” Adin said. He sounded a bit sheepish, as if Jackson might think he was being thrown some mollifying crumbs. “Another week. Maybe longer.”
Jackson didn’t feel patronized. He couldn’t feel anything through the love that kept bubbling up, warm as the waters of a spa.
So maybe this was worth the regular, dull ache of solitude and the predictability of his hand delivering needed relief. Maybe it was worth a lot more than that.
“Okay,” he said, grateful for the time they did have together. “Why, uh … why does Celia want to talk to me?” And why does it make me feel I’ve been called to the principal’s office?
“I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. She said it was between you and her and not to worry about it.”
“Well.” Jackson sighed. “I suppose it was inevitable.”
“Just don’t jump to any conclusions, okay? And be candid with her. She isn’t going to castrate you.”
“I wouldn’t blame her if she wanted to.”
They kept sitting on the floor, hip against hip, exchanging heat, not looking at each other.
“Say it again,” Adin murmured.
His head was turned down but his eyes were turned up, an irresistible persuasion. Their color in this half-light was beguiling, a can’t-refuse cobalt blue. Jackson had seen it before. He didn’t want ever to stop seeing it.
He was about to repeat his declaration when something else came out of his mouth. “If I could ask you to marry me, I would.” And fuck him if he didn’t mean it.
Smiling, Adin slid the edge of his hand between the low mound of Jackson’s genitals and the curvature of his thigh. “Why can’t you? No one’s going to stop you from asking. There’s no law against that.”
He dipped down and kissed the mound, his lips molding to it nearly as well as they molded to Jackson’s mouth.
Conniving little bugger.
Then Jackson thought of Celia. Then he pushed the thought aside, because Adin was an adult and he wasn’t legally bound to Celia. Then he realized how nutty it was to have popped off with that statement in the first place, since he’d never had the slightest desire to be married to any-damned-body, much less another man. And then his beleaguered mind came full circle…and he once again knew he’d meant it.
“Will you marry me, Adin Swift?”
“First I want a ring,” Adin said, a clear ploy to divert attention from the pools in his eyes.