by Kit Fortier
The two lay side by side for a few moments when Fox turned to Jake and pulled him closer.
"Can't sleep like that. Need you."
Fox returned to a state close to normal as he lay curled against his bear of a man. Tugging on Jake's pelt was a self-soothing thing to him. Breathing in Jake's scent, clean or otherwise, was a balm on his recently ravaged senses. Jake put an arm over his shoulder and held him close as he idly scraped his fingers through Jake's thick forest of hair.
They lay in this manner for a long time, breathing together, listening to the other man pull in a breath, letting it go.
Neither man said a word. Fox stared at the space between the television and the open bathroom door.
"You asleep, hon?"
"You got a sweet tooth, papa bear? Maybe some dessert?" Fox asked sleepily. "That's the third time you've called me 'honey'. Not that I'm complaining."
Jake chuckled.
"I think my mind was wandering back to that day we spent tearing each other's ass up in Devils Tower."
"Jake, that was you owning my ass, not the other way around. You got off easy."
A laugh. But Fox knew he was right.
"I kept calling you-well, what came out of you, honey. Something about it--"
"Stuck? I should hope so. Honey is sticky. What can I say?"
Jake playfully pinched Fox's side, earning him a yelp and a nipple pinch in return. They spent the next moments soothing the offended areas.
"My filthy boy scout," Jake cooed.
Fox could have purred.
"Fox," Jake began, earnestly.
Fox sat up and looked at Jake. His serious expression caused Fox to lay on top of him, his chin on his hands on Jake's chest, looking intently. Jake pulled the blanket over them, as the air conditioning kicked on.
"You're like a housecat in the sun, Foxy." Jake pushed back a hank of hair that came down over Fox's eyes.
"What's on your mind, big bear?"
"What did the voices in that void say?"
*** Fox
"It was… beyond strange," Fox began. "The void was everywhere, and I couldn't see anything but myself. It was like I was made of glass, and inside me, instead of organs, there was a flame. It was pretty damn bright.
"I kept moving forward-at least I'd hoped I did-until I saw a golden glow. It was small. I ran to it and it turned out to be an amazing flower.
"It could hear my thoughts! And it talked about my brain and how they thought it was fast and how I picked up on alchemy so quickly--"
Jake shushed Fox gently. "Slow down, love." Fox smiled.
"All these pet names, papa bear. I can't get enough of them."
Jake smiled. "Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. I don't want you getting worked up so soon after all that we just went through."
Fox nodded. "I want to say 'the flower' spoke to me, but that's not quite right. It seemed like a lot of people, hundreds, maybe thousands? Whatever it was, it was definitely a wide group of people were speaking together in this strange conversation.
"They talked about my mind, then they-whatever it was, it pulled things you said out of my memory, repeating them at me."
"Like what?"
"How I made your first time beautiful. How alchemy can't be used to make life. How when you cut me to bleed me, it made sense to balance things if I cut you. How I shouldn't kiss any frogs, that I needed a real man.
"How you said you'll never give me up."
Neither spoke for a handful of moments.
"Anything else?"
Fox pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Before I woke up, it said to honor you, and love you."
Jake blinked.
*** Jake
Those words caught Jake's attention, but he'd come back to that.
"Was there more?"
Fox's face turned puzzled. "Something about 'we're in touch, so you be in touch', and what sounded like a recording from an old black and white TV show. Something like 'say goodnight Gracie'…"
Jake half-grinned. "'We're in touch' was a sign-off from a news show, babe. And 'goodnight Gracie' was from the fifties. I think this… collective was having fun with you."
"But before those sign-offs, like you called 'em, there was something... Something about remembering to honor you, love you, when the spark gets too bright, not to snuff it out. I thought the spark was a fixed amount in everyone? Everything?"
Jake struggled to put two and two together. He had a thought.
"Do you have any light clothes?" Jake asked, gently displacing Fox so he could get to his pack.
"Yeah," Fox replied. "Get dressed?"
"Yep. Let's go to the boulders out back."
Fox and Jake dressed quickly. Neither of them bothered with shoes.
They padded around the building to the hill dotted with boulders behind the inn.
"Okay," Jake began. "I want you to do this. Look at that boulder," Jake indicated the nearest one to them. "You said you could see your own spark. See if you can see the one in the boulder."
Fox's eyes tracked from Jake to the boulder. Jake watched Fox, saw the concentration plain on his face.
"Holy shit," Fox said.
"You see it?" Jake exclaimed.
"Yeah! You try!"
Jake turned his eyes on the boulder. He thought of the elemental makeup, the breakdown. But something beneath that called to him, called attention to itself. Threads. Golden threads shimmered in a geometric, three-dimensional network. It wove throughout the inside and outside of the massive rock.
"Oh my god," Jake whispered. He reached out, and imagined he pulled on those threads--
And the boulder fell apart, crumbling to dust, which crumbled into nothing. He turned to Fox and realized he was still focused on seeing the spark-and fell over, shielding his eyes.
"What--what just happened?" Fox asked, scrambling to help Jake to his feet. Jake shook his head, and the spark sight went away.
A sinking feeling plunged through Jake's heart. The implications of what this meant for the both of them were staggering.
"Baby, what I just asked you to do, forget it. Never do it again, do you understand?"
"But--"
"Fox, listen to me," Jake took Fox by the shoulders, not unkindly, but firmly. "This thing we've learned, seeing the spark?"
"Yeah?"
"It also means we can destroy it."
"You mean-you took the spark out of that rock?"
Jake nodded. He looked around, took Fox by the hand, and went back into the room.
*** Fox
Fox had never seen Jake so nervous, so unsure. It was almost frightening. He poured a glass of water for Jake and for himself and brought them into the room proper. Jake sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. Fox put the waters on the TV carousel and came to his knees in front of his man.
"What's wrong, Jake?"
"This was never about the ability to kill someone. I just wanted to even the odds between me and some Aether-drunk magic user. Like your m-Meredith, or the one that killed Sully, or the one who murdered Khaled and his family. I was tired of running, Fox, do you understand?"
Fox hesitated. Until today, he'd never seen death. The eagle-man was a puppet of magic, so he didn't count that. But this, what happened with the woman he once called 'mother', it was the first human death he'd witnessed up-close. He could only imagine how it killed Jake, having seen so much more.
"Hey, papa bear," Fox whispered.
Jake's hands fell in front of him, one over the other. He looked away.
"Don't," Fox gently demanded. "Look at me. Please."
It was a few short moments before Fox's man turned his pale blue-silver eyes on his.
"You got my side of the story of what happened in there. Tell me yours."
Jake gave a thoughtful face.
"The voices spoke in all kinds of languages, and the words kinda cascaded into place, one at a time. It said, 'we are', 'honor', 'love', 'yours.' When I said your name, the collective
agreed with me.
"I told them I would, and then I woke up."
Fox considered with care what the collective was saying. Why it was insistent on both men honoring and loving each other. It sounded a lot like an emotional conscience that wanted to keep them together.
"I think we need to think about what that collective con--"
Jake wasn't tracking.
"Consciousness. The collective consciousness--it's the sum of all the sparks in the world put together!"
Jake's eyes first doubted, then connections were made, and he agreed with a nod.
"When I first met--um, found the flower, I thought about picking it up, but then I thought against it. I literally thought, in my head, that the flower might die. The consciousness said, 'that's a good way of thinking.'"
He realized what Jake was getting at.
"I understand, I think," Fox began. He placed his hands on Jake's knees, and Jake took them in his own.
"What do you understand, baby?" Jake asked, kissing his man's hands.
"For whatever reason, we got this, you and I. We can take something's spark, this is true. But because we can do a thing doesn't mean we should do a thing."
Jake nodded.
"I wonder, though-can we…" Fox thought about what he'd said before when he talked about dissolving human flesh. It's all energy. Might he have come to the root of it all?
"Do you think we can shift the spark from one thing to another, or even give the spark to someone else?"
*** Jake
The questions boggled the mind. Jake was just getting used to the idea that the spark was an animate thing. It seemed right that the whole of it linked together in some sort of hive mind. But why were they given this? It was one thing to transmute at will, but this became an issue most normal people would guard against or kill for.
"In theory," Jake replied. He stood up and pulled Fox to his feet. "I need to get to my books."
"With Ben, right?"
Jake nodded. Ben was important. This was important. Fox was important. Connecting to the life force of the world and not destroying it with a thought was important. A headache began to fester.
"I'm gonna be sick," Jake said, putting his head in his hands again, trying to breathe as deep as he could muster.
Fox got up. "Just sit there, Jake. I'll get us ready to leave." As he promised, Fox and pulled all their gear together. He put away his flip flops and pulled on his boots. He picked up Jake's boots and put them on him, tying them up. "Do you need water?"
Jake shook his head. He kept still and kept breathing. Fox's booted feet disappeared from view. The mattress dipped, followed by exquisite pressure on his neck muscles.
"You are one giant knot, papa bear," Fox said as he worked his way up and down Jake's spine. As he came back to Jake's neck, he leaned into his ear as he massaged his man. "You okay?"
Jake's head cleared. Tension was causing the headache, and Fox went right to the source.
"You're amazing, baby," Jake said, leaning his head back. Fox met him for an upside-down kiss.
"Come on," Fox said, scampering off the bed. "Let's go meet your son."
27. Reunion
*** Fox
Mountain Home was only two hours away. Fox held the map in Jake's tablet. Fox saw the faraway look in Jake's eyes--that he was driving. His mind was elsewhere, and Fox didn't have to guess why.
"How was he before you left?" Fox asked.
"Ben?"
It was an opportune moment to reply playfully, but Fox simply nodded instead.
"I tried to leave him in the best situation. The first time I ran, Ben was only six. He was just making friends. I ruined that for him. We left pretty much everything behind in my home in Flagstaff and tried to get lost in the shuffle of Austin. The raven that warned me said to go to San Diego, but I wasn't thinking straight. I wanted to keep Ben safe.
"But as I started teaching myself from Khaled's primer, I realized I needed more. I uprooted my son yet again, and we moved to San Diego.
While I was there, I ran into Taylor and Sarah. They were vacationing. If something happened to me, I didn't want Ben out in the cold, so I asked them to take him home with them. I told them I'd be with them as soon as I could.
"The Samuelses loved him like their own. Ben cried when they came for him. I cried when he was gone.
"I found Sully soon after. I should say, he found me. He explained he had a network of Freed ravens who worked for him. He started to train me. Taught me about the use of silver. How to focus, how to activate, restructure, reinforce aspects of alchemy.
"While Sully was training me, Sarah would overnight legal documents for me to sign. They empowered them be the ones to take care of his health and schooling. They kept sending me pictures. I practically memorized each one.
"Then came the day Sully and I faced down a wizard that had been dogging us. It was bloody. We fought at Fault Line Park. Sully sacrificed himself so that I could get away, and he could kill everything in one fell swoop.
"I was adrift. No mentor, no nearby friends. After you and I met in San Diego, I picked up what little I had and went and saw the Samuelses. Ben was eleven. He was…"
Jake let out a shuddering breath. Fox pulled up the armrest between them, undid his seatbelt, and shifted to the middle. He lifted Jake's arm and put it over his shoulder, curling into him like they would do in bed.
"Whenever you're ready, baby. I'm here."
Jake ran his fingers through Fox's hair, his breathing normal. "Ben was so happy to see me. The three years we were apart had been kind to him, thanks to Sarah and Taylor. He said, with me home, we could do all kinds of things the Samuelses told them about. He was just so… so happy.
"Baby, I missed out on so much. I wasn't there when he was born, I ripped up his roots--twice--and then there I was, poised and ready to break his heart again.
"I stayed for a year. I tried to give him the best of myself, so that he could survive what was coming. But shortly after his birthday, I told him I had to go again.
"I watched him shut down. Shutter me out. There'd be no more crying out of him. Not in front of me. He told me to go. That when he woke up, he didn't want to say goodbye.
"That night, I sat next to his door. I listened to my son cry himself to sleep, and just kicked myself over and over again. I left before dawn."
Fox took the hand that was over his shoulder and kissed it. Jake clasped his fingers over the back of his hand.
"Taylor and Sarah both try to keep me in a positive light for Ben. They told him I was getting therapy, and that I couldn't be around anyone. That held up for a while, but the last thing Taylor said told me that Ben probably doesn't care anymore."
They drove in silence for a while. Fox wrapped his arms around Jake's waist and held him tight. The truck came to a stop in front of a two-story track house with light blue paint and white trim. The sun was nearing the horizon in the west.
"Fox," Jake said quietly.
"Papa bear?"
"I'm not ready to see him."
Fox sat up and saw the grief on Jake's tear-dampened face.
"Baby, you know it's gotta happen."
Jake refused to look at him.
"I know the day began in nightmares and death. Then our heads get filled with some really intense shit. But you're not going to face this alone. Be the strong man I know you are. You are Leighton Jacob Hughes, and you are the man I love."
Jake's eyes turned to Fox's.
"Let's go together."
*** Jake
Jake pulled out a few ingots of silver, tore open his canister of salt, and set them on the ground. With a thought, the paper can that held the salt disintegrated. The white crystals spilled over the silver ingots. Another thought created a large pile of silver and salt powder. Jake used it to create a thick circle around the house while standing still in front of it. He sealed it with a thought and sighed.
"No surprises," Jake said. Fox nodded. Jake took Fox's hand in his and
walked to the front door. He took a cleansing breath, exhaled, and rang the doorbell.
"I got it, Mr. S!" A deep voice said. Jake looked at Fox. Fox pointed at the door and mouthed, Ben?
The door opened on a young man with short, clean-cut jet black hair. He was a couple inches taller than the both of them. His sky-blue eyes glittered in the fading light. He was definitely a younger version of his father, from the form of his brow right down to the shape of his chin. He had a smile, but his smile faded into a blank expression when his eyes fell on Jake's.
"Who is it, Ben?"
Without breaking his gaze, the young man called out, "Some guys, Mr. S. You might want to take this." He backed away from the door, bolting up the stairs just as Jake lunged forward.
"Ben, wait, please…" Jake said.
Ben turned at the top of the stairs. "Welcome back, Dad. Make sure you leave quietly when you're done here. You're good at that. Don't bother to wake me." He disappeared from view, and a door slammed.
The barb wasn't for Fox, but he felt it, just as he was sure Jake did.
Jake stood there, staring at the space where his very grown up son stood before he took off to his room. Fox neared, seeing Jake's shoulders shuddering slightly.
"This was a mistake," Jake said. "I shouldn't have come here."
Jake turned to leave, but Fox pressed his hands against Jake's chest, stopping him. Drops of wetness left little splashes on his hands. It was just not a good day for his man.
"Wait, baby," Fox said softly.
"Leigh?" a man's voice asked.
"Yeah. Hey Tay," Jake said, quickly wiping his eyes. A short man with a blond buzz-cut and a fit, trim figure entered the room the door opened into. He had a big smile and held out his arms, bringing his old friend into a big hug.
"Good to see you, buddy! Man, whatever you're eating, pack some up and send it my way, huh big guy?"