I was five when they enrolled me. My sisters were excited, and therefore I was excited; it was a great honor to be here, they said, and so I was honored, because at that age I didn't know enough to have my own opinion. It was a trying day, with the sounds of rowdy teens and hollers of instructors flooding my ears, and I resisted the urge to hide and play with the little truck a cousin had sent me. All around me children were being led away from their families by orderly adults, and my mother and aunts and grandfather wept over my head before I went with the others. Some of the kids were scared but my uncle told me to be brave, and so I was.
I remember what I looked like that day only because I have a picture from it; my hair was mud brown, unlike the annoyingly long amber-red I’ve sported every year since, and I was at least a head taller than the slower aging humans around me. He is in the picture, by the corner, but his back is turned so I didn't notice him for years--no one did, really. He dressed strangely, he was white as a cloud, and he always had his head in a book.
That day, I went up to him and pushed him, because I was kind of a brat and didn't mind showing it. He did nothing but shrink away into a ball, without a sound of pain or protest, and the teachers swarmed over me immediately. Don't touch him. That isn't nice. Keep your hands to yourself, Szymon.
He recognized my name, because he gave a jump, and then he came over and kicked me in the shins. The teachers, perplexed, reprimanded him as well, and he walked off, but then I knew exactly who he was. The one my mother warned me about.
His name is Daiei, and he was my enemy, because everyone said so. It became our custom, kick, punch, bite, whenever we met.
Every day, always the same. He is my enemy, and that’s how it has to stay.
There is running. I can hear the footsteps behind me, echoing off of the bricks relentlessly, and I despair with the knowledge they will never give up. I know, know throughout my blood and bones, that if I were to just turn around and strike out, they would go away. Not a one of them is in this for money or duty. They do this to see my blood on the street.
Marcus doesn’t. He does it because he is honestly concerned, simply can’t understand why I never defended myself, and wants to cure me of the primal fear that keeps me from running missions with even the mere threat of violence. Today he shows this concern by lunging ahead of the others, catching me by my always-too-slow heels, and flinging me to the ground with a force that makes me bounce on the graveled cement. The others are there already, hauling me up: these are the lonely ones, the bitter ones, the ones no one cares about, and my heart aches in pity of them even as this fake form of mine gets driven through the blender. They can sense this pity, and they curse me as much as I curse myself for loving this world that causes me such pain.
They do this outside of the barrier and never think to question why I would venture outside of the gates so often when I know they’re waiting for me. I know they need this, and I know I deserve it, know that it is penance for everything I said to him today and the other days this week.
The blows have stopped already and it hasn’t even been five minutes, couldn’t have been, so that means it is either the police or the guards again. The police have a woman who watches for me now, asks questions with a sympathetic tone, and leans closer ever time we meet; I cringe with the mere thought that one day she will be emboldened enough to touch my bare skin. She is no virgin and her fingers would leave scars that would cause her distress and surely get her fired, and I would be put through the grill by my father, who would just as surely want to know what things I had gotten myself into on this terrible planet of pain.
The blows may have stopped, but the sounds haven’t. I open my eyes to peer through the blood and turn my heart to stone, because of all people he is standing there. They are running away, so he was victorious, although I can see from the limpness of an arm and blood in his absurdly colored hair that he hadn’t prepared for iron knuckles. He was harmed, because of me, and so were they: just another long line of sins to add to my less-than-stellar record.
Szymon--a ridiculous name only marginally pronounceable in my native tongue--stalks over to my location on the ground, crouching over me with his topaz eyes flashing hate. “You unicorn bastard,” he hisses, but my enemy doesn’t strike out or touch me, and for that I am grateful. His tone and words hurt, but I deserve them as much as the beatings. “Why don’t you ever... never mind. Your stupid code of conduct.” He breaks off into swearing that makes me cringe back, but I say nothing. To defend is weakness. To attack is sin.
Behind us, on the other side of the wall, I can hear the bells of classes changing. The Force, they call it, an uppity mage’s school that recently caved into complaints of species segregation. It gave me a chance to redeem myself in front of my family, but also allowed for the likes of Szymon, a unicorn’s only and most hated enemy, to join as well. My father doesn’t know a pegasus walks the same halls as me, and I have never seen cause to give him yet another reason to cast me out of the herd.
The pegasus is turned away, doing something out of sight, and I force myself to sit up. He is trying to unknot a pack, one handed, cursing as he goes, and seeing his injuries adds to my pain, something he most likely knows and is trying to inflict.
Do not aid the enemy.
Do not fail to give aid to any individual in need.
I am spared from an agonizing decision by Szymon, who grabs the traitor hand already creeping towards his arm, his tanned skin contrasting sharply with my pallor. “Don’t even think about it, hornhead.” He jerks on the grip unexpectedly, and I tumble once more onto the ground. This I am allowed to fight against and I kick out, but this is not our first battle by any means and he is expecting that particular maneuver. He throws his weight across my legs, and I dig my fingers into his wrist, and he bites my shoulder and freezes, because we can both hear the sounds of shouts and whoops coming from the end of the alley.
We make our escape, somehow. I do my best to assure they follow me, and later that week, when Szymon and I pass in the halls, we say nothing. We are indebted to each other, and that is unacceptable.
Life goes on.
I can feel lips on my neck, and I have to take awhile to remember why that is. Ah, yes, I had gone drinking with a vampire, my buddy Asher, and had managed to drink the thought out of my head that alcohol does not actually affect him, which was most certainly not the case with me. The person kissing his or her way up my neck probably isn’t him, then, unless he has changed his sexual preferences, shrunken a few inches, and dyed his hair black.... or was it black to begin with? I’m pretty sure Asher is a blonde. Asher... blonde.
I am so drunk.
The lips are against my ear now and my stomach churns. I hate anything touching my ears. The magazines and movies and girls I know all say that ears are a major turn-on, so maybe it’s because I’m a guy, or maybe, and this is a thought I hide beneath layers and layers of booze and denial, maybe because only girls have been the ones doing it.
I'm pretty certain that this one is a girl as well, because inch-long painted nails have wandered into my view as they attempt to remove my shirt, and far from being in the euphoric state that this is supposed to bring on, I feel more annoyed by the moment. When she moves down to my waist, I get my act together enough to push her off the bed--not maybe the nicest of motions, but I am furious now, and drunker than I ever have been.
"Get out of here," I manage, and she slaps me, an act that does more to wake me up than it hurts. She can't be drunk, or at least not as much as I am, because I can barely figure out which of her to look at, let alone which I could make physical contact with.
"This is my room," is her answer, and it seems to be true, because my walls are white and I don't have a picture of Asher stuck onto the wall with heart stickers. She probably wants to use me to get to him, so I don't feel too bad about pushing her off the bed. I do stumble to the door, and write a drunken, slanted mental note to myself for the creep who seems to have ditched me to stay away from girls with black hair and nails, before going down the hall.
After an agonizing walk to the window, I realize that this can't be my dorm, and that there isn't anyway to get all the way to the other side of campus in the state I've gotten myself into. All my friends live over in my building, so there also isn't anyone over here that I could crash with.... hell, the only person I even know in this spinning, blurry pile of bricks is him.
And that's enough to send me reeling that way, because even flat-out drunk I can make it to Daiei's room, having spent so much time there stringing up buckets, doorknob currents, and precarious jugs of water throughout the years. The last one makes me laugh, in a stuttering kind of way, until I remember the crickets he had put into my room in retaliation. I couldn't go to sleep for a week in there.
Yep, room 209, this is it. I sort of fall against the door, too out of it to knock, and try to remember to what end I was there. If he was me, then I would be promptly locked outside, but the kid can be somewhat sympathetic when he isn't being in a holier-than-thou grass-eater mood.
Realistically, he would probably kick me in the head before locking me out, but that would be sympathetic because it might make me unconscious.
He must have yanked the door open in a "what the f someone doing bothering me at this hour" way, with the asterisks because Daiei never would dream of doing something as terrible as swearing, but anyway, must have done that because I was now laying facedown on the floor in his room. I know that because what's in my mouth now is dirt, as the lovely accommodating school board let him transfigure his carpeting to whatever would make his blessed self feel most at home, and dirt seems to be the "feel good" substance of the day. My body gets sick of suffocating and rolls me over, so I get a close-up view of his too-bizarre golden eyes and pale lips as he checks me for a head injury. I doubt, even with Asher as a friend (because who isn't our resident vampire buddying up to?) that he has ever been drunk, and probably doesn't even know what alcohol is, so I may come away with more sympathy than I expected.
Like, maybe he would kick me in the groin before the head, because then he thinks this is another cruel joke I'm playing on him due to a just-now, too-late realization that this is going to look like the boy who cried fox or bear or whatever. As his expression slowly darkens, I feel pressed to explain it to him... as soon as I figure out which him to explain it to. The one on the right is prettiest, as loathsome of a thought that is.
The pretty one goes away before I can start, though. He's so thin that he keeps fading out completely, and the roaring in my head doesn't help. A part of me is fairly sure that I'm drugged, not just drunk, and some of this must have worn off on my looks because he actually does look concerned. This was a rather cheerful thought, because it means I can possibly stay.
"Prnxyl," I begin, and then panic for a bit before realizing he can't speak Pegazi and has no idea what I've said. "Daijei," I try again, and that is at least fairly close and a hell of a lot more pronounceable than his name actually is, "Don't... kick inna' head." That wasn't what I was going to say, but it at least conveys the important part of the issue.
"Why?" is all he replies, and I curse mentally because I was forgetting he was smart, and mentally because he'd break my fingers before the nuts n' noggin if I did start swearing.
Anyway, it means that I will actually have to think of a reasonable answer, which I can't. "Feel bad...ed," I conclude.
The kid does nothing but watch me suffer, except to reach up and fix the thin golden frames on his nose. "I'm sure we both would feel bad, yes," he says, and my heart sinks. I was going to be sleeping in the hallway, and I would wake up naked with my hand in a bucket of water. He picks me up, even though I have at least six inches on him and he can hide behind saplings, because unicorns are crazy strong and my bones are built for flying. Instead of throwing me out, however, he tosses me onto a nest of grass and exits, just walking out and closing the door behind him. The unicorn is most likely going to get the campus cops, but I don't care. The green stuff is soft, the room is too dark to be spinning, and there isn't any girl to bother me: in other words, as close to heaven as I'm going to get. I take a drunken moment to ponder why he picked grass for bedding, when leaves are so much better. It's a unicorn thing, I suppose.
Daiei comes back, no guards in sight, and sits on the edge of the nest... bed... thing. "You know I'm not--" he starts, and stops. "You can't..." This is amazingly funny to me, because he's usually rather eloquent and stuff when talking, and I start to laugh. That certainly helps him find his voice, and his eyes narrow.
"Who were you sleeping with?" He asks, and his voice is as icy as I've heard it get. I'm feeling less drunk than before, and the tone makes me feel ashamed, and, to some extent worried, because my reputation for the night is hinging on the goodwill that's letting me stay. I take a breath, and feel better--maybe these grasses have healing properties or something; plants aren't my strong suit.
"Nobody," I reply, because that's an easy question. The boy looks furious, and I give myself a once-over: bite marks on my shoulders and chest, spots of lipstick on the corners of my vision, no shirt, pants undone. I close my eyes and sink into the grass. "Wasn't my idea. Wouldn't take no for an answer."
His voice is down to a hiss now, and I can't for the life of me figure out why he's so upset, unless he's going to have to burn his now impure bed down. "Yes, right." I'm just as furious as I was before, now, because I've never lied to him, never lied to anyone, and now he isn't believing me just because. I yank off one of the black leather gloves he always dons and grab his hand before he can move, because a pegasus is always going to be faster than a unicorn.
"See? No burns." I glare at him triumphantly, but he has turned his face away, bottom lip caught between his teeth and exotic eyes squeezed shut. Unbelievable.
"What are you crying about?" He has lost me completely, even though I'm feeling relatively focused now; the drug, or whatever it was, seems to have warn off. I loosen my fingers from around his, just in case that's the cause of his tears, but the skin beneath them is the same pale as the rest of him--not that anyone ever sees the rest of him, so I have to go off of his neck and face, and those are the same color.
In this school, at our age, the number of virgins is approximately two: him, and, as annoyed as I am to state it, me. As a unicorn, he cannot touch anyone who isn't without ending up with a set of oozing red blisters, and so he dresses as carefully as an astronaut to prevent this. These clothes involve a lot of skin-tight black, and if he didn't run away when anyone tried to talk to him, he could have easily lowered the number of inexperienced people down to one. Realistically, I was fairly popular and my hall mates utterly moral-less, so I could have remedied this myself fairly quickly as well, but... I just never found a girl I was interested enough in, in addition to other reasons.
If you're wondering why I had to find a girl, you've never met my family: self-explanatory.
Daiei doesn't answer my question, choosing to sit and shake instead. We aren't exactly on terms where we'd offer the other support in situations like this--really, I've made him cry more than probably anyone else, although it's somewhat annoying to think of now. He hasn't taken his hand away, so I look at it while I'm waiting. Like the rest of himself, his hands are small, but his fingers are long, maybe the length of mine. His nails are short, I note with relief.
Then he moves his hand to touch my forehead and murmur a string of vowel-y words in unicorn and all I can see are the inside of my eyelids... and dreams.
When I wake, he is gone, and we're back to the same routine again.
Fire. My hand is flat on the table, and they are leaning over it, admiring the red marks they make. Even if I could stop them, I wouldn't, because he made me so angry yesterday that I struck him. I pay penance with physical pain because...
Because.
Asher would say it's because I wound myself so often inside my head that I have no room to do so anymore, but that can't be it, because unicorns are self-healing. He would hate me if he knew I let myself get caught again. I hate me for that reason, too.
Maybe what he says does have some merit.
Szymon isn't coming, because he's gone back to his home for the break. That's all right. This group isn't the old one, who flunked out years ago, and all they're interested is making me cry out, not breaking bones. Burns are easier than bones, and when I've earned the right to leave, I'll cry. I would have done so by now, but last night I dreamed a human dream of him, and I don't know how much pain I need to serve for that.
"Hey, you," says one of them, kicking my leg. They seem to have given up on the matches, I notice as I look up, and he jerks my head back, making me fight for my resolve not to make a noise. He leans forward and his breath makes me turn away, but he uses my hair to turn me in the direction he wants, facing him. "Let's try something else. Take off your pants."
I stare at him, because I honestly don't understand his request, but it can't be part of my penance. "No," I say after a moment, quietly, because I'm not sure if that counts as crying out, not sure if I've lost yet.
There is a low laugh behind me, but I can't turn to see the noisemaker without a responding roar of pain from my scalp. "That's not how you do it. This is." I have to wonder if he knows I'm a unicorn, because he lifts my shirt and lays his hand across my back, and this time I do scream; scream and scream because the pain is so bad, worse than it's ever been because this person is so tainted that I'm seared by their presence alone. The pain is never going to stop, and I hear shouting in the background through the noise from my lips, but he only moves his hand lower until it is suddenly taken away.
I fall. I'm crying, because that's the only thing I do well, and where my tears fall the moss spotting the ground of the warehouse grows greener. The pain has narrowed my gaze to only things in front of me, and paying attention to moss is better than going mad through agony. I can’t move, and this is something to focus on outside of the pain, so I work on growing myself a nice patch of moss while the sounds dwindle down and stop. Luckily for the plants, I am too useless to partake in helping the situation around me, so I can give them some of the attention they deserve.
"Well, that's bloody wonderful," says a strained voice somewhere above me. "I'm risking my life, and you're trying your hand at gardening." It can't be Szymon because he's gone away, and I find myself in tears again because I knew he was coming, knew that when it really counted, he would be there, even if I didn't know why, even if I didn't want him to. He collapses down beside me, and the pain has eased enough that I can look at him, see the blood on his face and arms, and I cry until I can't see anything anymore. For once, he doesn't yell or kick, just lays and watches calmly. After awhile, he picks up my hand, the one I hit him with, and flips it over to see the burns, those ones having already faded to perfect pink circles. He sighs, but doesn't hate me.
"Don't do this again. Not ever," and his brilliant blue eyes promise trouble if I do. I nod. He does not explain how he came to be where I needed him instead of a planet a galaxy away. Asher tracks us down by the scent of our blood, and Szymon and I say nothing when we meet next, and things continue like before.
I am going to flunk, absolutely, because the calculus test is tomorrow and I can't seem to remember what an integral is, something the study sheet assures me is a bad thing to forget. When I ask Asher for help, he smiles sheepishly and says that he was contemplating sleeping with the professor, but if I want a more moral way out, he can hook me up with someone that knows what they were doing. The F from my last test makes me leap into accepting the offer, and he shoves me into a room and locks the door before I can back out. Daiei is sitting at the desk, looking ethereal, furious, and math-y in a way I can appreciate once I get over being mad at Asher.
“He said that he wants us to talk,” the unicorn says, sharpening a pencil and using it to scratch an answer down. I had just finished that assignment: Mr. Bates, History of the Fire Mage, and the answer he has just written is wrong, but I’m not going to correct it. He gets better grades than I do anyway.
“Do you want to?” I ask. The room is roughly the size of a walk-in closet; Daiei has the only seat. I lean against the door and consider guilting him into giving it up, but I’m fine with standing and not in the mood to be mean.
He fills in another answer, and lays down the pencil, eyes focused on it. “Not really.” His muted hair looks interesting in the light from a dying overhead bulb, turning the lightest shade of pink here, the lightest blue there, with faint gold glimmers on the ends. Someone who wasn’t focused right could be hypnotized by the sight. I must not be focused, because I don’t realize that I am watching him until he glances up and away, blushing, and murmurs, “Do you mind?”
I don’t, really.
“Can we talk about calc?” I find myself asking, and it is apparently his turn to stare, because he does until I hold up the study sheet and he curves his gaze that way. “I can’t pass the class without at least a C on tomorrow’s test.”
He takes the paper from me, looking at it for a long time; I get the feeling he is doing so just so he doesn’t have to look at me, rather than intent study of the properties on the page. Finally, he glances up from it. “What parts don’t you know?”
“All of them,” I admit, feeling a little irked but knowing there wasn’t a point in hiding it, as he was sure to see immediately that cluelessness was my case anyway. He seems about to protest, but I cut him off. “It’s not like we have anything better to do. Asher locked the door.”
His eyes narrow that way, and I can almost appreciate the feral hostility in his expression, now that it for once isn’t directed towards me. Daiei inclines his head, finally, and that hair catches me again before he clears his throat. “I still don’t--”
“Aaron Stormbringer took over Fiera twelve years ago, not ten,” I point out, motioning to the history page. There. Now he is in my debt, and he won’t allow that.
The unicorn fixes the answer, allows a sigh to pass through his lips, and taps a gloved finger to the top of my list. “For this one, on the coordinate grid…”
Whatever Asher is expecting, it doesn’t happen; when he opens the door later that night, we leave and are the same to each other on Monday.
Light bubbles are spinning in a dizzying, breathtaking way over the walls in my room and I lift the crystal up higher, making them grow. Perched on the edge of my bed, I feel almost relaxed and content, watching the light split off into a thousand different directions around me.
It is not hard to guess who ruins my mood.
He comes storming in, wrenching the door open in one fluid motion and snatching the pendant from me. The bubbles bounce wildly over his surfer’s tan and brown-coral necklace before disappearing as he shoves me onto the dirt of my floor, eyes blazing in what I tend to think of as his normal state of expression.
“Do you know how long I have been looking for this? I retraced my steps ten times. I pulled teachers out of their lunch break to unlock their classroom doors. I cleaned my room.” He starts pacing back and forth in front of me, and I watch calmly from the floor, which is as good of a place as any.
“It’s pretty,” I say, the only thing I can think of, because the crystal has for a moment reminded me that not everything is terrible and I don’t have to be terrible all the time either. He stops, and stares, and opens his mouth but says nothing for a moment.
“It belongs to my sister… she wouldn’t stop crying when she found out I lost it,” Szymon mutters, tracing a pattern on my dirt with quickly darkening feet. His youngest sister has just turned five and enrolled in the Force, Asher had told me during his regular report of the school gossip.
“I’m sorry that I brought her grief,” I reply, and genuinely mean it. He is surprised, and then something else, an expression I have never seen on his or any other face. Szymon actually reaches down to help me up, but has forgotten our relative weights and strengths, and suddenly he is on top of me, supported in a quick-movement sort of continual pushup that leaves him close enough for me to feel his body heat. The way we are situated gives him no room to rise, and certainly none for me to escape, and he watches me in impasse.
I can feel his hair through the cloth on my neck, feel it brushing against the few bared patches of skin I allow, and it is softer than I ever believed.
I will never have a chance to do this again, so instead of objecting, I slide off my gloves and press my fingers lightly to the side of his neck. No pain greets the touch. “Still,” I whisper, not very eloquently, but he understands because he looks away with a blush through his tan. I can’t understand why his skin still doesn’t burn me, not when he receives practically daily offers from all over the people spectrum, and I know the pegasus are nowhere near chaste or prudent.
But the knowledge fills me up with a euphoria I can’t understand, and I dare to move my fingers up to his face.
The skin there is rougher than I expected on his cheeks and chin, and smooth over the brow of his eye. His gaze remains off to the side, but he doesn’t pull away or say a word as I lay my hand flat on his cheek, running the other up and through his hair. Every breath Szymon takes I prepare to pull away until I slowly get used to the movement, and every moment sends his lids drooping just a little move over his eyes until they are closed, lashes resting on his cheeks.
He leans down towards me and I wildly contemplate the idea he may kiss me, wonder frantically what I should do, until my mind simply decides that all I need to do is kiss him, and so I meet his dark lips with mine. I have no experience with such things, but it strikes me that this is what I’ve needed since I first saw him; that the need to punch and strike was simply a much coarser, less satisfying version than this; that I am now complete in a way I never would have been expected as I twine my arms around him.
It strikes me that he hasn’t moved; had not, in fact, moved in the first place; his lips are motionless against mine and I have shoved him off and am out the door before even he can react. I go down to the empty classroom Mage Karen always forgets to lock and cry, because that is all I am good for.
The next day, things are not the same, because we don’t meet in the halls--I have changed my schedule so that we never pass, and sleep in my room only when I know he is gone or at class.
Life continues, emptier and more meaningless than ever.
I can’t sleep, because I have a pounding headache that won’t go away with any remedy I try, magic or medical. I’ve tried walking it off, and cold packs, and scent therapy. Nothing helps.
Someone from my Summoning class jokingly commented that a unicorn’s touch could probably cure me, and I came as close to snapping as I ever have.
The healers are concerned enough that they gave me today off, and I have spent it laying down, feeling sorry for myself, and reading medical manuals for every known headache cause and cure. I might have brain cancer. Someone could be sticking pins in a doll of me. I may be suffering from such enormous amounts of grief and shame that I can’t contain it and so it expresses itself physically as a dull roaring pain.
I’m hoping it’s the second theory, because then I can do something about it--unless he is the owner of the voodoo doll, in which case I’d lend him another sharp stabby poker. Finally, I give up. Anything is better than this. Death certainly is. I can just ask Asher to drain me dry, and yay, no more headaches. Bliss. I am at his door and opening it when I hear the soft, painful sounds of Daiei crying inside, and I shut the door and glare at it halfheartedly. Once again, the unicorn is between me and a peaceful night’s sleep.
Nothing escapes a vampire and within seconds our places are switched, my increasingly annoying friend outside of the room and me with my back against the wall. I hear the familiar click of a door lock behind me, because Asher enjoys continuity with jokes. At least this room has a window, so I can probably get out if I really need to, if I’m willing to pay the school a few hundred to replace the glass.
Daiei is curled up into the smallest possible position in the uncomfortable visitor’s chair, and he hasn’t noticed me, for which I feel briefly grateful. There is still time to escape. I have forgotten about my headache’s unnatural powers, however, and a sudden burst drives me to my knees, stars sparking in front of my vision. I curse human bodies with fervor, because surely no self-respecting pegasus gets headaches like these.
I have to whimper to let some of the pressure off and almost immediately, cool, blessed relief moves through my head. Unicorns are drawn unconditionally to heal pain, even when said pain is coming from their worst enemy who has hurt them so badly that they become nocturnal in response. He heals me until I can see again, and then skitters back.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he stutters, and I grab his hand before he can bolt.
“Stop apologizing,” I growl, and the way he winces back only makes me more upset, which makes my headache return, and I grit my teeth. He reaches out again, and when I don’t knock his hand away, he does whatever blessed thing he did before that makes the pain stop. This is something I can live with.
Daiei is sitting as far as he possibly can while still being able to touch me, far enough away that I can see all of him, even with my eyes slitted as they are. There is blood on the floor where he crawled over here, and it makes my head hurts again.
“Why are you bleeding?” I ask, annoyed, because being with Daiei always makes me annoyed.
He shifts, blushes, and murmurs, “Asher’s room hurts me.” That is a polite unicorn way of stating that our friend resides in a den of sin. But, I do think it is unfair that he is making me not hurt while he does, and I am as much of an avoider of debt as he is.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” I suggest, and he looks at me with those huge golden eyes before nodding his accent. I teleport us to my room, a trick I just perfected over the last year, and am pleased that I am able to do so once again, thanks to my headache-less state.
He gasps, because I’ve forgotten how strange my room has gotten—an inch of water over mirrors, to give the appearance of depth, with the furniture disguised as stacks of the boulders that make up my family’s home. Daiei immediately kneels down, tracing his fingers through the water, and I remember reading about unicorns’ near obsession with the fluid liquid. That would probably have been the day that I changed the ground from rock to this, now that I think about it.
Oh, shut up.
“It’s beautiful,” he says, sounding almost awed, and I realize he doesn’t think it’s my room. He hasn’t been here in years, after all, and I feel a bit proud of my handiwork. I may have scraped by in math, but I can cast a decent spell now and then.
We don’t talk about the kiss, or whatever it was, because it’s easier to just ignore it and go on like we have been all of our life. I also know the instant that I even hint that way, he will be gone again, and my headache will be back a million times worse than before.
“You’re soaked,” I point out at some point, and Daiei looks at his sleeves and giggles. I have never seen him so much as smile and I gape at him until he notices and blushes, looking down. “Do you want a different shirt?”
He shrinks back, eyes wide, and shakes his head in a way that makes his golden curls scatter in a rather lovely manner. In return, I make a show of sighing and looking offended, because I’ve realized this is probably the one opportunity anyone will ever have to see more of him than his face. Instead of protesting my protests, he holds up a gloved hand for me to stop, and says, “You don’t have anything that will fit me.”
“I’m not that fat,” I point out, and he blushes for the millionth time, shaking his head again, and plucks at his sleeves. “There’s no one in here but me, hornhead, and we’ve already established that isn’t a problem, much to my displeasure. You can just stay in here until the shirt dries, and put it on to go out.” My voice has taken on an annoyingly soothing tone, so I stop talking.
Daiei looks down at his hands, then nods, and I bite back a grin. “What color, do you think?” I open a boulder-faced drawer and start looking through it. Everything is too big, although he would look depressingly cute in an oversized t-shirt.
“Black?” he suggests timidly. “I only wear black.”
“I don’t own anything black,” I point out, which is actually true. “I guess you’ll just have to go shirtless, then.”
To my shock, he nods, looking depressed, and starts undoing the complicated setup of snaps and buttons on his sleeves. I am curious about how he looks, but not so much that I’m going to force him into doing something he doesn’t want to. “You can’t compromise on the color?” Daiei nods once more, eyes fixed on the ground, and pulls the turtleneck over his head.
His skin is the same flawless alabaster as his hands, broken up only by a complicated loop of necklaces handing low on his neck. The unicorn is half turned away from me, so I can see that the burns I arrived too late to spare him from have molded permanently on the small of his back. He seems to realize that they’re in view as soon as I do, and he arranges himself into a more uncomfortable profile view, holding out the damp shirt my direction silently.
For once, he isn’t blushing, even when I take the cloth from his still-gloved hand, although he isn’t shaking, so it doesn’t seem to be that he’s afraid. If anything, he seems to think that I’m skittish, for his movements are slow and careful, as if he’s trying not to spook me. I don’t know what to make of his mood.
“Do you want me to hang your gloves up, too?” I ask, because I have to say something to break the silence, and he hands me those as well without a sound. Okay, fine. I take as long as I possibly can arranging the clothes into the best drying position, stealing a glance over towards him now and then. He hasn’t looked up from his hands at all, and it’s starting to unnerve me.
Feeling like I have to do something or go insane, I lean down, trailing my fingers in the water, and splash him. Instead of flipping out like I expect, or doing nothing like I dread, he turns his head, gives me the most heart-stopping smile I’ve ever had the pleasure of viewing, and returns the gesture.
For an hour, nothing is the same. Then his shirt dries, and he puts it on and leaves, and except that I see a glimpse of him now and then, everything is back to normal.
The air seems to be especially thick today, the mix wrong for consumption by human lips and lungs. He, pinned beneath me, also seems to be having difficulty breathing, chest rising in bursts and gasps that makes mine clench all the tighter. His brilliant eyes are hazy as he watches me with the same expression that he showed in my room so long ago, and my eyes too are blurred with something I can’t quite pinpoint.
I lean in, running a hand down his bare chest, and he arcs up with a sound that fills me completely. I kiss him, and he kisses me in return, and then a crow flies past because this is a dream and I wake up and hate my life.
I roll over and scream into my pillow, because tomorrow things are going to be the same between us, and I am sick of it, sick in a way that makes me get up and throw the door closed behind me.
Tomorrow is not going to be the same, and whether it will be because I’m dead by his hand or gone from this place, I don’t care any longer.
Things are going to change.
I wake up because I’ve fallen out of bed. Bed is a stack of rocks six feet off the ground, and I’ve also woken up because my wrist is sprained, twisted, or broken. I fell out of bed because the support that prevented me from doing that in the past has fallen off, and it has fallen off because a potted plant fell over on top of it. The plant fell over because someone is knocking on my door with enough force to vibrate the wall.
At this point, I really am not in the best of moods.
I fling open the door, and manage to snarl, “What--” before I am shoved up against the wall and pale lips have affixed themselves to mine, lips that taste like sunlight and rain. I find myself slumping down, having never experienced anything like this before, and he takes the chance to press in, slipping a tongue like silk into my mouth and a hand around my waist. He is wearing a satin robe--black, of course--and it seems to be too much clothing for me, but the pain in my wrist, pinned between us, has gotten to be too much as well.
I certainly can’t back away through the wall, so I am forced to push him away with somewhat more pressure than I wanted to. Daiei’s whole demeanor is crushed, but resolute, and I realize that he expected this from the beginning. This makes me laugh, and gives me the courage to lean forward to lightly, lightly touch my lips to his, before pulling away to smile at his shocked expression.
“I broke my wrist, moron,” I explain, and hold up my arm to show him. He takes my hand and kisses beneath it, and this seems to have a more potent affect because the pain is gone in an instant. I smile, looking at it, then glance back to Daiei, where he stands in apparent terrified silence. This is going to be difficult.
I take a deep breath, trying to come up with something to say, and he takes the opportunity to twine himself around me, capturing my mouth with his again once more. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, and he’s so sure that I just let him carry things along wherever he wants. It feels better than anything else I’ve ever known.
Someone is going to have to do it, though, so I break him off again, catching his chin between my fingers. “How far,” I say, speaking slowly, “do you want this to go?” He is panting against my grip and the feeling is making me shiver in a way he probably doesn’t desire, and if he continues in this vein, I know he’s going to regret it.
“As far as you’re willing to let it,” he responds, shocking and thrilling me to the core, but I’m still confident he has no idea how far that is.
“You realize that you could be killed, right?” He nods, but looks no less resolute. I take another deep breath.
“Go out with me Friday,” I say in a rush, and am rewarded by the sight of his lovely eyes widening in surprise. “We need to talk.”
“Very well,” he responds softly, and lowers his head to smile, which is so endearing that if he suddenly took out a gun and shot me I wouldn’t have minded that much. The smile disappears as he looks up, voice hesitant. “Does that mean…”
“…you have to leave?” I ask, and he blushes and nods again. “No,” I say, “No, I don’t think so.”
He smiles, and life is suddenly, unstoppably, wonderfully different from before.
“Hold still!” Asher reprimands for the hundredth time, and Szymon glowers at him.
“I am wearing. A. Skirt,” he snarls, and I carefully fight the urge to smile. “I don’t care if you call it a kilt or drapes or what, that’s what it is.”
We have been posing in rotation for the last hour in the stifling hot studio, with no success. The good pictures are blurry; the others, atrocious. Asher especially is at his wits end, but Szymon is just as close to snapping.
“I have to wear one too,” I point out, trying to comfort him. He looks back at me and reaches out, hooking his fingers through the end of my necklace and tugging to get his revenge at what he sees as impertinence. I pout in protest, and the lights of the camera go off again.
“Success! I may have finally gotten something…” Asher thumbs back a tab on the digital display and sighs. “Daiei, you’re scowling. Look, guys, I know you hate each other, but is it too much to ask for you to get along for two seconds--" He stops in confusion, because we’re laughing too hard to pose any longer, even if we are going to flunk art without this, and when we stop because Szymon has pulled my head up and I’ve got my tongue down his throat, Asher takes up where we leave off.
We don’t know what Szymon’s family is going to do when he finds out, or my father. There are harsh penalties for things like this, punishments that include death, but until that day comes, we are together.
It looks like, on the whole, tomorrow is going to be the same as today, and that suits us just fine.
The End
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