Empty Vessels

by Meredith Katz

  Keith swallowed. Hiraeth deserved an answer, but he wasn't sure if he could give one yet. Things with Lucas were terribly new, tentative, and the most they'd even talked about it in there was in terms of whether it meant he was letting go of Lucas.

  Did having a proper, living relationship mean that he was picking Hiraeth over Lucas? But if he rejected Hiraeth here, was that picking Lucas over him?

  His head hurt.

  "I…" He tried to smile, felt it come out a bit wobbly. "Your bed's pretty comfy and I'd love to say yes, but it's probably best for both our injuries if we don't try to share right now. Besides, I kind of want to sleep in my own bed. Maybe for a week. I just want to… do something normal. Read some Tolkien. Eat crappy university food."

  It was a non-answer, and he hoped Hiraeth would take it as one. He couldn't accept the offer, not yet. But even if it felt like just putting off the inevitable, he didn't want to reject Hiraeth.

  Not until he absolutely had to. He hoped that wasn't cruel to both of them.

  Hiraeth hadn't stopped smiling, and Keith couldn't tell if he was hurt, or if he was taking it at face value. "True enough," Hiraeth said. "Sometimes there's nothing better than what you're used to, right? Listen, at least let me call you a cab and cover it for you since I can't drive you."

  "You've been spending an awful lot on me, with all these meals—" Keith protested.

  Waving a hand dismissively, Hiraeth said, "I own my own business and you're a college student. Let me pay for the taxi, sweetheart."

  Fair enough. He allowed it, accepted the ride, and sat in silence with Lucas in the back until he got back to campus. There, he bought a cup of instant noodles from the campus corner store, the only thing still open, ignoring the cashier's looks at the bandages and bruises on his skin.

  He ate without tasting the food—probably just as well—and headed back to his dorm. Down the long, shadowy halls, passing people who would give him weird looks even if he weren't all banged up, back to his room. Unlocking it, he let Lucas in first, shut it behind himself, then walked the five feet to his bed and collapsed onto it.

  "Ow," he muttered into his pillow as every inch of his body seemed to protest the impact.

  But it felt like the right decision—relationship stuff aside, his body fit into the groove in the mattress that had formed around him over time, and he felt himself relaxing all at once with a sigh. Tears prickled at his eyes and he didn't move, let the pillow absorb them.

  He didn't think he'd been so tired in his life.

  The bed didn't creak because Lucas didn't weigh anything and couldn't force himself to act on the physical world right now, even if he were trying to, but Keith felt his presence come closer.

  "Hey," Lucas said softly.

  Keith inhaled through the pillow and slowly let it out. His eyes were dry again. It wasn't so much that he'd been crying, he thought, as leaking. He was just really overwhelmed.

  Understandable, honestly. He allowed himself that much.

  Slowly he shifted over, looked up at Lucas. "Hey."

  "You didn't need to turn him down."

  Guilt struck all at once. He hadn't, really. Did Lucas know that? "I—well, I meant what I said. I just wanted to be back home right now."

  "Ah," Lucas said. He smiled a little, quiet. "He seems really into you. You seem pretty into him, too."

  "I love you." It came out all at once, with a rush of air. The first time he'd said it out loud, really, with his actual voice instead of his mind. Throat humming with the words. Then: "I like him, but I love you. It's… as choices go, it's a no-brainer."

  He didn't sound confident. He saw that in Lucas's expression.

  "Do you regret sleeping with him?" Lucas asked, almost taken aback.

  Keith wondered if Lucas would feel better about it if he lied. He didn't want to lie, though, not after everything. Better to be honest and work out whatever they had to work out. "No," he said honestly, the word tasting terrible in his mouth. "I really wanted it. I maybe even needed it right then."

  "When you two met," Lucas said, "I was jealous."

  Keith felt his stomach drop.

  "Of both of you," Lucas added.

  "What…?" His exhausted mind could barely follow that, pulled along by his initial helpless despairing thoughts, then snapping back like an elastic.

  Lucas leaned over him a little, one hand placed as if he were bracing himself on the bed. He smiled, a bit sadly. "Jealous of him for being able to flirt with you so easily. Jealous of you for getting flirted with. I miss… being alive. Interacting with people. Connecting. As soon as I realized what I was doing, I tried to dial it back. Not his fault that you were available to a living person where you wouldn't be to a dead one. Not your fault that people would be interested in you, find you attractive, be able to act on it."

  "Oh," Keith said dumbly.

  "I think you should keep seeing him," Lucas said, bright-eyed and earnest. "He seems like the kind of person that'll be good for you, and it would be nice for you to get to have a relationship with someone who knows what you experience and, hell, knows that it's real. He could probably teach you a lot. You'd have fun together."

  Keith stared at him, knowing the whites of his eyes must be showing in his panic. "But what about you?"

  "He seemed pretty easy going about me, so my being stuck to you shouldn't be—"

  "No, what about me and you?"

  Lucas blinked at him slowly, then smiled again, the expression soft. "Well. I don't know how we’d do anything, uh, physical. But after what happened in there, I kind of assumed we’d be in a relationship too?"

  Keith's heart seemed to stutter in his chest. "Is that… is it okay? I don't want—you’d be okay if I were with him—?"

  "Well, I mean," Lucas said, surprised, "I think we can make it work?"

  Keith stared at him.

  Lucas stared back. "Keith Marose, will you go out with me?"

  His heart seemed to be doing Olympic events in his chest. He couldn't seem to find his voice, staring at Lucas, his friend, his ghost.

  In the face of his silence, Lucas seemed to deflate a little. "Well," he admitted. "I mean, I don't know what we could do together, but…"

  Keith reached a hand out toward him, seeing, to his embarrassment, that it was trembling. He didn't let that stop him. "May I?"

  After it was out of his mouth, he realized he didn't make it clear what he was intending to do. But that didn't seem to matter. Lucas just bowed his head, leaning his intangible face into that touch. "Sure, man, whatever you want."

  He let himself fall into Lucas.

  This time, he didn't have to go looking, and there was no fog. It was still the street corner, but the car and pole were both gone, and there was no body on the ground. Just Lucas, standing in the spot where he'd died, wide-eyed with surprise.

  It wasn't exactly the most romantic date location, but it was what they had to work with. At least here, he couldn't feel his body, didn't feel in pain at all. Felt healthy and excited and terrified.

  "Hey," Keith said, mouth dry, and walked up to him. He raised both hands to Lucas's head, passed his palms gently over the short tight coils of Lucas's hair.

  Lucas's answering smile was brilliant. "Hey," he said back, and leaned into that touch, eyes half-closing, greedily eating up the sensation.

  "Can I—" Keith began, voice unsteady.

  "Yeah," Lucas breathed out, and leaned down himself before Keith could lean up.

  Lucas's mouth was soft on his, full lips catching at Keith's lower lip and tugging gently, a slow, sensuous pull. It was gentle and tender, and Keith found he couldn't match it, urgent and desperate, opening his mouth into it and catching at Lucas's mouth roughly in return.

  Breath hitching, Lucas groaned and pulled Keith closer. Between them, the kiss became something frenetic and needy, kissing each other as though they were afraid of being parted. He couldn’t help but feel that, if they came up for air, they might not find the other there
anymore.

  Keith pressed himself more tightly to Lucas. He felt overheated, dizzy for lack of air, and like only the pressure of Lucas's body could ground him.

  "God, Keith," Lucas muttered when the kiss broke briefly. His tone was reverent. Keith shuddered at the sound of his name in Lucas's voice, low and husky with arousal, and started kissing down Lucas's jaw to his neck.

  Lucas tilted his head back, hands roaming over Keith's back to his rear and up again, squeezing and pressing, keeping Keith close to him. He shifted, then began to sink down, pulling Keith with him, a steady, insistent tug.

  Somehow, Keith ended up on top of Lucas. He sat up to catch his balance, straddling Lucas's hips with a grinding sway, a spike of helpless pleasure. Even so, he couldn't keep himself from staring down at Lucas lying in the road, whole and beautiful and gazing at him with love, but in the road nevertheless. His heart squeezed terribly, and tears sprung to his eyes. "I—"

  "Don't," Lucas said, and put his palm to Keith's cheek. "This is what I am."

  And then, as if to make a point, he shifted under Keith, grinding up. He was hard in his pants, rocking against Keith, gazing up at him with a smile and his dark eyes heated.

  Keith moaned, heard the sound come out of his mouth in an impossibly lewd way, and clapped a hand over it to bodily shut himself up.

  "Hey," Lucas protested, pulling Keith's hand away. "Let me hear you. Share that with me."

  As if he wouldn't anyway, here inside Lucas's mind, Keith thought helplessly, but let the next rough sound come out unbarred. Everything he had, he'd share.

  Together, they rolled around on cement that should have been coarse and hard but wasn't, pulling clothes open and off until they were naked together in the street, surrounded by a pile of their clothing all mixed up together. Lucas was gorgeous, he thought helplessly, running a hand over warm, soft skin. Toned and strong and vital. He looked at his unhealthily pale fingers against the rich brown tone of Lucas's stomach, and thought of his own unimpressive body, gangly and awkward. It couldn't be his looks that Lucas wanted him for.

  But Lucas did want him. That much was clear.

  Lucas groaned, and Keith slid his hand down further, wrapped around him. With a helpless, pleased sound, Lucas thrust into that grip and pulled Keith closer to himself, pulled him down into another kiss and took hold of him as well.

  They moved together, kissing and touching, exploring everywhere their fingers could reach without forcing them to stop kissing. Pleasure built and built, until Keith thought he might lose his mind, gasping and whining into Lucas's mouth.

  Lucas bit down on Keith’s lower lip while dragging a hand along his length, and suddenly Keith was coming, spilling out over Lucas's hand. At the same time, impossibly caught up in the feedback of Keith's pleasure, locked as they were in Lucas's mind, Lucas came as well, arching under him, pressing up as they strained through it together.

  After, Lucas relaxed into the cement and Keith rested his head on Lucas's shoulder, sprawled half on top of him. Neither one of them spoke, just holding each other, sticky and warm in the middle of the street.

  Keith's eyes slowly focused on something next to Lucas: a crack in the road, grass and flowers growing up through it.

  ***

  Keith woke facedown in a puddle of his own spit, sheets sticky underneath him. He groaned, shifting and rolling over.

  There was a cold patch next to him, and he blinked slowly, rubbing sleep out of his eyes until his senses came back online.

  Lucas smiled at him, head resting on the pillow next to his.

  Keith smiled back.

  epilogue

  Keith, predictably even to himself, dithered on telling Hiraeth anything for what he was sure was at least two weeks too long.

  They talked together, of course, just about other things. How they were recovering (which was well). How he'd done on that test (also well). How things had gone with getting Marion new arms, finding someone to dispose of Walter, how things had looked in the mansion when Hiraeth had gone to the remains to check it out (well, well, well).

  Eventually, it was Lucas who, looking over his latest texts, said, "God, Keith, you're making yourself miserable. If you don't do something soon, I'm going to shake you."

  Keith, who was pretty sure Lucas had enough energy to do at least that much, winced. "I don't know," he said, unhappily. "We've got something good going on. What if he doesn't want this now? What if he does, but would want me to be just with him? What if this ruins everything?"

  "What if it doesn't?" Lucas countered.

  ***

  They went over to the shop at 4:45, right before Hiraeth was due to close up for the day. Hiraeth was on the shop floor, selling a doll to a young woman—shit, one of Walter's old dolls, Keith realized with a shock. Not one that had been in the mansion, though that was his first thought, but there had been dolls just like this in the shop before.

  Well, he'd been a famous doll-maker in this town, Keith had to remind himself. No wonder there were plenty of antique dolls around. It still felt weird to realize, though.

  Hiraeth had frozen in spot, staring at them with the air of a startled deer when the bell over the door had rung. The woman said something to him and he seemed to jump, turning back to her with a smile. "Be with you in a minute," Hiraeth called to Keith.

  "I'm in no hurry," Keith called back, voice sounding discordant and scratchy to his own ears. He stood awkwardly to the side of the entryway, watching as Hiraeth packed up the doll and handed it to the young woman, deftly leaning his head back out of the way of her own grateful nod to keep his antlers out of the way.

  All at once, the strangest realization hit Keith—that this was the first time he'd seen an Other interacting with a human beyond himself. He'd known that it had to have happened of course, in that Hiraeth had bought him food, ran a shop, all the rest of the proof—but there was some part of him that had still felt convinced that he was imagining all this, making it up in some way. Even though he knew that it had to be real, he was too good at doubting his own reality.

  He swallowed as she walked by, and he felt her brush past him, undeniably human to his sixth sense. He could still be making this up, of course, he knew—of course he could imagine details like touch—but he hushed that part of himself.

  There came a point where doubting the evidence might actually be crazier than believing it.

  The door closed behind her with another jangle, and Hiraeth burst into a brilliant smile. "Thought I might not see you two gentlemen again," he said lightly.

  Guilt rose, stomach and heart both flip-flopping, but he pushed the feeling down. It was an understandable enough sentiment, with how he'd been avoiding things, but they were here now.

  "Good to see you too," Lucas said.

  His heart squeezed again. In the midst of his own emotional dilemma, he'd overlooked how few people besides himself could see Lucas, talk to him as if he was any other customer coming through the door. A glance up at Lucas showed him smiling, expression warm.

  "Now," Hiraeth said archly, "I hope you're not here chasing after some other antique to help solve a mystery."

  "It's not nice to call yourself an antique, however old you are," Keith said.

  Hiraeth burst into a melodic laugh, silvery eyes glittering. "Oh, and are you chasing after me? That's good news. Excellent news. Just let me close up and I'd love to hear more. Why don't you let yourself upstairs in the meantime?"

  He tossed a key to Keith, who completely failed to catch it before it slid under a shelf. "Right," he said, and ducked down to dig it out and hide his red cheeks. Lucas, behind him, was laughing. "We. We'll do that."

  The small room over the shop had somehow become quite familiar. It smelled like Hiraeth, that warm wet leafy smell, and Keith ran his hands over his face, scrubbing at it as he looked between the bed and the desk before sinking down in Hiraeth's desk chair.

  "Don't freak out," Lucas said.

  "I'm freaking out," Keith said i
nto his hands.

  He felt Lucas's presence come lean next to him. "Babe, surely you don't think he's monogamous. If nothing else, the suggestion isn’t gonna surprise him. Even if he doesn't want to, he won't be weird about it."

  "God," Keith wheezed. "This was easier in the middle of an existential crisis."

  "Who's having an existential crisis?" Hiraeth asked, entering sooner than expected. Keith dropped his hands and stared at him. "That's a ghastly look. Is it you, perhaps?"

  Despite himself, Keith found himself smiling. It was a weird smile, but a smile nonetheless. "Yeah. Kind of. I missed you."

  "I missed you too." Hiraeth sat on the bed, spreading his hands on it and leaning back on them. "I imagine you needed time to yourself after all that."

  "Kind of," Keith said, then blurted, "Lucas and I are going out."

  "Congratulations," Hiraeth said, without even a beat of hesitation. "I know you'd really been struggling with that. I'm sincerely happy for you, love."

  That word caught in Keith's chest. He drew an unsteady breath around it. "We were wondering if you'd go out with us too."

  Again, Hiraeth didn't miss a beat. "Yes, absolutely." And then, looking between Keith and Lucas, "Was that… somehow in question?"

  Keith put his face in his hands again. Beside him, from the tone of his voice, Lucas was struggling not to laugh. "He overthinks things sometimes," Lucas said.

  "You know, I noticed that," Hiraeth said.

  Keith heard the bed shift as he got up, and uncovered his face to unexpectedly find Hiraeth inches away. He caught his breath with a hitch.

  "I sincerely did," Hiraeth continued. He glanced aside, to Lucas, without moving any further away. "Is the best way of dealing with it to just give him space to work things through? I've been trying to do that, but I worry I may lead him deeper into his own rabbit hole."

  His scent washed over Keith. He shuddered and let himself raise a hand to touch Hiraeth's side.

  "Depends on the situation," Lucas said. "In my experience, anyway. You just kind of have to go off context."