TITLE: For lack of better recourse, “White”.

AUTHOR: Polly Burns

EMAIL: go_rimbaud@hotmail.com

SUMMARY: Andrew and Jonathan a year later. Something unexpected happens, angst ensues.

SPOILER WARNINGS: Ooh, none. Ooh, one, for “Villains”, cos I mention the untimely demise of one Warren Mears.

RATING: Most definitely NC-17, for graphic sex, some of it that side of non- con, swear-words, bad magick, some violence and disturbing content.

DISCLAIMER: Playing with other peoples’ toys- I am such an outlaw. Jonathan, Andrew, Ethan Rayne and anybody else I happen to mention from Buffy the Vampire Slayer all belong to Joss Whedon and some other guys, I don’t know their names. As always, Tijuana belongs to itself. The line “You make me smile with my heart” is from the song My Funny Valentine, and you can call me an idiot, but I don’t really know who wrote it. I just know that I didn’t.

NOTES: This takes place about a year from right this minute- hey, it’s like looking into the future! Ooh, ooh! Jonathan and Andrew are in Mexico still, and well, you can read the story now.

White

White, Jonathan said to himself, feeling every letter, imagining the cool absence of color. He was watching Andrew, who was not aware that he was being watched. Andrew stood by the window, swaying from side to side a little, obviously bored out of his mind. Jonathan was supposed to be preparing charm-bags to sell to the owner of an occult shop that had just opened that week. Really, it was no more than a hole in the wall, you could call it a “stall” if you were feeling generous- but it was money. To spite the way the shop itself looked, Jonathan knew that the man who owned it actually had quite a lot of money. The appearance of the place, Jonathan guessed, was meant to be a deterrent against tourist-types who would come in looking for Voodoo dolls or some other ridiculous thing.

Watching Andrew, though, was far more interesting than grinding up herbs, concentrating on their energies, waking them to life, combining them and directing their respective powers toward a common goal. He had spent a large part of his life yearning to be able to do just what he was supposed to be doing at this moment. Suddenly, though, it was less important than watching the boy at the window, losing his mind in the milkiness of his skin, the pale candle-light of his hair, the clarity of those eyes and the soul behind them. All of which he knew by memory- Yet, he could not stop looking.

Andrew was nearly twenty, but no less skinny, coltishly awkward, soft- skinned and soft-hearted than he had been when Jonathan had met him two years earlier. It were as though time were purposefully indulgent of him, allowing him extra hours, months, years in the valley of adolescence, letting him stay forever lithe, delicate, soft… And Jonathan could not stop staring. The dried herbs he held in his hand were mingling to paste with his sweat, they were singing out, making his palm tingle. This would not be the first time he had accidentally put the whammy on himself. He shook his head, tried to remember what plant he was holding, what he was supposed to be doing. Wormwood, mixed with a little dragon’s blood; he laughed to himself, wondering if it were really such a good idea to have Andrew around while he was trying to make a lust charm. Then he became serious, and wondered if it were the mixture of herbs that were putting thoughts in his head, or if were not the thoughts in his head that activated the herbs, made them stronger. Deep in thought, he was formulating theories, really intelligent ones, considering experiments that might be conducted- and then Andrew moved, in the corner of his eye. The displacement of light by Andrew’s shadow knocked all of the thoughts out of Jonathan’s head. He shook the herbs out of his hands and onto the floor- the charm was ruined, anyway, then crossed the room. The space between them had seemed ocean-wide, and Jonathan’s heart was jack-hammering in his ribcage for the eternity-in-miniature that it took him to reach the other boy. Before Andrew could say any of the words that he had planned to say, Jonathan was kissing him. They made such a strange picture, Andrew’s knees slightly bent, his neck inclined and head ducked down so that he could reach Jonathan, Jonathan standing on his toes, but this was lost on the two of them. Neither of them had ever really brought up the obvious, the humor in, the almost-silliness, of their pairing. To the two of them, it made perfect sense that they should be together.

“Did you do it again?” Andrew asked, breathlessly, trying to laugh but managing only short gasps. Jonathan was kissing his neck, allowing him to speak, but making it difficult to do so.

“Do what?” He was trying to be careful, to avoid aggravating the smears of brownish-mauve close to Andrew’s shoulder- souvenirs from their last trip to the beach.

“Did you- oh- did you put another spell on yourself by accident?” Andrew’s eyes rolled back in his head at the flick of Jonathan’s tongue over one of his bruises. They could be healed, fairly easily, Jonathan had said, but Andrew liked them. He liked all of the marks that Jonathan left on him, tangible reminders of their carnality. The dull boom of pain when he moved, the slight discomfort when sitting down- it made him feel as though Jonathan were always with him.

“No, this is all me.” They managed to cross the desert of the room to the wide, red-and-white-sheeted bed. It shuddered as they dropped onto it, creaking angrily. The bed sighed as Jonathan rolled Andrew onto his back; he leaned over him working on shirt-buttons. The slight pressure of Andrew’s hands on his hips, snaking up his waist, lost in his hair was distracting as hell. With Andrew, he always felt… stupid, in a way. Like parts of his brain just shut right off the second they touched. He couldn’t think. For a while, this had frightened him, cos, well, Jonathan was all about thinking- but, the twilight-of-the-mind that came with Andrew’s body pressed against his was good, in its own way.

Finally, the buttons gave up fighting, and were loosed from button- holes. No matter how much time Andrew spent in the sun, he remained pale. He was obsessive about sun screen, terrified of skin cancer- so his skin always tasted and smelled vaguely of coconut, and of the sun itself. When he kissed Andrew’s throat, Jonathan’s lips slid over his skin. That slippery feeling was interesting, exotic, almost. Everything about Andrew, no matter how trifling the detail, still filled him with a kind of delight, made him feel nervous and excited at the same time. A long time ago, it felt like, magick had made Jonathan feel this way, but now only Andrew could do this to him.

Sometimes, often, he wondered what Andrew felt, if it were the same for him. To spite Andrew’s early insistence that Jonathan should ask him, what he was feeling, what he was thinking, Jonathan couldn’t. He thought that he should know, somehow. At every little sound that Andrew made, as they pulled off each other’s clothing, lay naked and twined around each other in the cool shade of the room, Jonathan still wondered, Is this for real? Does he like this? Am I doing it right? Try as he might, Jonathan could never quite get over his impression that there was a third person in bed with them; as over-used as that phrase was, that was exactly what he feared. In the beginning, he had been surer, of himself, of Andrew, of what they had, felt about each other. Over time, though, he had begun to get shocks of electric, white fear; the more he realized that he was really very much in love with Andrew, the more afraid he got. That silly little boy could destroy his world, if he wanted to. Sometimes Jonathan had to physically push the thoughts away, thoughts that questioned Andrew’s fidelity, thoughts that mused that perhaps, sometimes, was Andrew not thinking of another man, one whose hair had been just as dark as Jonathan’s and whose skin had been just as pale?

Warren, who had been just as dark-pale as Jonathan- but the similarity came to an abrupt and crashing end right there. For Warren had been cruel, exacting, wintry in his manner; Warren had been every horrible thing that humans, with their searching, sharp intellect and immense capacity to give and take pain could be. He had hurt Andrew, and by extension, hurt Jonathan. And he continued to hurt, both of them, Jonathan was sure, simply because, at one time, he had existed.

Everything was magnified, when Jonathan breached the confines of Andrew’s body, entered him, began to make love to him. He couldn’t think of it as “fucking”, had never been able to, and he wondered if that made him less, somehow. Andrew arched up and down, moving in tandem with Jonathan, his sublime eyes walled off by his fluttering, silken lids. Behind his eyes, what was he thinking- Did he have to close his eyes in order to get what he wanted out of this? Jonathan shook his head, concentrated on Andrew’s open mouth, on the paper-thin gasps that shivered out of his parted lips. Once, this had been the place where he could know peace, where he could be nothing but what he was at that moment, the man who was loving Andrew, making him moan, making him shake, making him come. Once, the pleasure they gave each other had been enough to shut off the whole world, to shut off all the worlds, to crush every reality but that of their bodies joined together.

Now, Jonathan only knew one moment of silence; flickering like a round, black flame at the exact moment of orgasm, was a tiny piece of oblivion. Jonathan wanted to reach out and grab it, shove it into his mouth and swallow it. At this moment, all there was in the world was him and Andrew, though neither of them really existed as a separate entity anymore. They could pool together, like that, melted by the black flame of oblivion… Small death…

Afterwards, holding Andrew because the sweat drying on his skin by the lazy circulation of the ceiling fan made him shiver, Jonathan was frightened as all hell. Where had this boy come from? What gave him the right to hold him like this, mark him up every day, take him in this bed? What gave him the right to do any of that? It was getting difficult, and he didn’t know why. Even breathing was harder and harder to do; Andrew had stolen his breath from the beginning, but now it was painful. The darling delight, the sweetness he felt, when he so much as looked at him, was edged in bitterness. The sight of Andrew was like liquor being pumped down his throat; his heart was becoming a weeping fist of amber. Bitterness was saturating him, even as he pressed his lips gently to Andrew’s eyelids, his forehead, kissed a smile onto his lips. It was getting hard to live, to live with Andrew. But Jonathan knew, with the certainty that some day he would be dead, that there was no way in the world that he could ever live without him.

The tint was peeling off of Andrew’s sunglasses, so he could see little ellipses of the sun-lit world right up next to the shade-darkened one. The sunglasses were almost as old as his life, their life, in Mexico. Jonathan had bought them for him one of the first days they had been there; Here, I’m tired of seeing you squint all the time, he’d said in his nasal voice, and practically shoved them at Andrew. He always sounds so pissed off, Andrew thought, laughing to himself because he knew it was all a show; his heart felt like how a bird must feel when its wings are flapping. He thought of a line in this song his mom had always played, it went You make me smile with my heart. He wondered if that was what Jonathan was doing, when his heart fluttered like that. Every thought of him made that feeling, gave him the image of two little wings beating. Sometimes, in crowds, he heard somebody speaking English with that same put-out tone; he would turn his head frantically, thinking that maybe Jonathan had followed him. Sometimes he did, followed Andrew for as long as a couple of blocks before finally padding up behind him, poking his ribs gently, and saying Boo!

Today, though, Andrew was pretty sure Jonathan was staying at the hotel room. This was the third hotel room they had had in the year since they’d come to Mexico. This one was the best by far; the television had CNN in English, so when the two of them got homesick for California, they would hide under the red and brown Southwestern print blanket and listen to the American anchorman. They couldn’t ever go back, Andrew knew, because even if Willow had died or forgotten about them or something, there was probably still a warrant out for their arrest. Sometimes Andrew was sad about this, but mostly not, because he had Jonathan. Jonathan, who could sometimes be a jerk, but in a way that didn’t hurt, and made Andrew laugh, Jonathan who was back at the hotel room, making more charm-bags to sell. He had sent Andrew out this morning, to unload the ones that were already made, and to give Jonathan time to work without distraction. I can’t think when you’re around, he’d breathed the words into Andrew’s ear that morning after their bath. Andrew had wanted to stay in bed all day, fool around some more, walk down to the bar at noon and have churros for breakfast with that chocolate that looked like mud but tasted so good… We need money, Jonathan had been gentle, but firm, like he always was. We’ll play when you get back, he’d said once Andrew was dressed, and smacked his bottom. Had anybody else done that, Andrew would have been angry, felt… used, dirty. Everything Jonathan did was just right, though; he never made Andrew feel anything less than… loved. Nobody had ever made him feel that way before, not without lying to him.

The shop was just where Jonathan had said, and he was right, it was really just a hole in a wall. Well, more accurately, it was a slit, tall enough and wide enough for a person to walk through, two people if they overlapped a little, but a slit all the same. The entrance was carved, it looked like, out of the middle of an ancient white-washed wall; Andrew hadn’t even known that there was anything behind the wall, not space, not enough space to make a shop. He shrugged and walked through the crevice into the thick, herb-scented darkness.

“Hello?” he said, his voice quavering a little. He still got nervous in new places, especially when Jonathan wasn’t around. It wasn’t like he was dependent on him, just, nothing looked scary when Jonathan was there. This place was kinda scary- kinda really scary. There wasn’t really any light source to speak of, but somehow Andrew could see well enough. The place was still in a slight state of disarray, the proprietor having just moved in the week before. Jonathan had been amazed that the guy had known who he was, what he did, and that he had managed to get their phone number at the hotel. Magic people are like that, though, sometimes, Jonathan had shrugged. There were partially unpacked boxes on the floor, as he wandered about aimlessly, looking for the owner, Andrew kept almost-tripping over them. He didn’t know why, but he wasn’t feeling very well; everything was sort of blurred, his muscles were tensed to the point of trembling, he got a taste of the kind of inescapable nausea he experienced when he drank too much. “Hello?” Andrew said again, startled by the sound of his own voice ringing out in the empty shop. He wanted to leave, but he couldn’t, they needed their money. If he left now, the guy might screw them out of it. If he left now, Jonathan would be upset, and though he wasn’t really mean when he was upset, Andrew didn’t like to disappoint him. Something about Jonathan made him want to do things right.

He was about to say Screw it all and run out of the place while he still had the legs to carry him. He was about to bolt, jump back into the street with its natural, good sunlight, when he heard something moving from the other side of this beaded curtain that was behind the cash register. Before he had time to get really scared, somebody came out into the shop. Andrew tried not to gasp-

Oh. It was just some guy, not scary-looking at all. Andrew tilted his head to the side, He looks normal, he thought, feeling a bit disappointed now that he didn’t think he was in danger anymore. The man was carrying some boxes, and obviously had not seen or heard Andrew at all. He was just a normal guy, a little sharp-dressed to be hauling crap around, but sometimes magic people were a little vain, Jonathan had told him. This guy was wearing a shirt the color of blood, black pants, black shoes with a liquid shine. Even though he had been moving dusty boxes, he didn’t appear to have a speck of dust on him. Looking at the man, Andrew felt a little shabby. “Hello?” he said for the third time, his voice sounded strained.

The man turned around. He had the kind of face that you knew had once been ravishingly beautiful, but had become too sharp with age to be as such any more. His hair had faded from whatever color it might have been when he was young- auburn, Andrew imagined. Even though his clothes were obviously expensive, they didn’t fit him as well as they could; he was thin, like he’d been sick for a long time a while ago and was just now recovering. Still, Andrew thought there was something about him, something that made him look better than he knew he did, something shimmering that defied things like age and health. Oh, that’s power.

“Yes?” the man asked, raising his steeple-arched eyebrows.

“Um,” Andrew looked down, “I have, um, I brought you these charm- bags.”

“How sweet of you,” the man said and came closer. He took the box of them from Andrew, who gave it over listlessly. “I suppose you’d like to be paid.”

“Um, yeah.” Andrew was having a hard time remembering anything, what he was doing here. Money, Jonathan, he kept on whispering to himself. Although he hadn’t been there five minutes, ever since the shop’s owner had shown up, time had seemed to stretch like taffy. It felt like he’d been standing in that same spot for two years, or something like that.

The owner came over with a fistful of Mexican pesos. Andrew shook himself and put out his hand for the money. He shoved it in his pocket and swayed to the side, toward the entrance to the shop, knowing he should be out on the street, not knowing why he wasn’t halfway down the block already.

“My name’s Ethan, Ethan Rayne,” the man said, finally. This startled Andrew, brought him out of whatever he’d been sinking into. The air had seemed to be swallowing him, it felt as though invisible hands were pulling him down, yanking at his clothes, touching him… Though he knew these were the first words the man, Ethan, had spoken in a while, Andrew felt like he had been whispering to him this whole time, words he couldn’t understand.

“Um, uh, Andrew Wells,” Andrew murmured, surprised he could remember his own name. He couldn’t remember much of anything, couldn’t remember what he was doing here, how he had gotten here. Ethan took his hand, to shake it and Andrew started. Jonathan!, a voice inside his head shouted; it sounded like it was calling from far away. When Ethan’s fingers touched his, though, the voice fell away, dropped like dust.

“You’re very pretty, Andrew Wells,” said this Ethan Rayne. “Pretty,” Andrew repeated. Somebody had called him that, once, but he couldn’t remember who. Ethan’s face was close to his own, and the feeling of being very, very thirsty began to creep up on him, as no more than a vague suggestion at first, and then as an overwhelming need. “Do you have… water?” he managed to join the words together briefly.

Ethan nodded, his lips bent into a little smile. Still holding him by the hand, he pulled Andrew into the back room. Some of the beads from the curtain hit him in the face, but he didn’t feel it. All he could feel was the place where Ethan’s hand was wrapped around his own, like a red light in the dark.

This space was well-lit, almost empty, a relieving contrast to the dark clutter of the shop. “You live here,” Andrew said softly, observing the bare mattress underneath a window, which was really no more than a square-shaped hole punched through the wall. Ethan finished filling a glass with water for him and said, Yes.

“It’s, um, nice,” Andrew said, unable to speak too much. The thirst was unbearable, it seemed to be killing him, but as soon as the water Ethan had given him flooded over his lips, he no longer felt even a touch of it. Ethan took the glass from him, placed it on the counter that jutted out of the wall. “Not the nicest place I’ve lived in, but not the worst, either. Not by a long-shot.” Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Ethan kissed him. Or, rather, Andrew suddenly felt Ethan kissing him, as though he had been in a deep sleep and just woken up to it. He knew that he should be fighting him off, screaming, doing something, but every kiss made it harder to identify this inclination. It was lost, in a kind of mire; Andrew was losing himself, all he could sense around him was Ethan. He wasn’t even sure if he was still standing, if he was still breathing.

Something pulled him under, and when he came back up, back into light and air, he was sure that he wasn’t wearing clothing anymore. Right up against his skin, he could feel the ribbed surface of the mattress. Ethan was on top of him, having suddenly lost his clothes as well. He was kissing him, holding his arms over his head, pushing against him. Andrew tried to think if any of this was bothering him, he couldn’t decide if it was or if it wasn’t- it kind of hurt to even try. It was easier to just like it, and really it wasn’t bad at all. Ethan’s mouth was soft, warm on his skin, the kisses were gentle, but had enough of an edge to them to keep Andrew interested. Everything Ethan did was like that, it was as though he had instinctively guessed what Andrew liked, or as though he had been tailor-made to give Andrew pleasure.

Andrew blacked out anew. When he could see again, Ethan’s head was between his legs, and his own fingers were buried in hair that he knew had once been auburn. In the white sunlight coming in through the window, it looked auburn again, like time had worked in reverse for just a moment. Just as he was about to come, Andrew lost it again, slipped into the black satin grip of unconsciousness.

This next time when he came to, Ethan was on top of him, fucking him. Andrew had a sudden vision of himself, as Ethan must be seeing him at that moment. His legs were pushed all the way back, his toes pointed right at the ceiling. Ethan had burned his kiss onto his throat, his shoulder, his chest- all over him were leech-shaped crimson marks. You really are very pretty, he heard the words, but he wasn’t sure whose voice was making them. He saw his eyelids pull back a little to show the bluish, marble-like whites of his eyes. He was about to come, he knew. This time, he didn’t go under, he didn’t go anywhere, he stayed right where he was. Suddenly, the veil that had been thrown over everything burned up, and his senses were enhanced. Everything was hard and bright, pain and pleasure had become one thing. He heard himself screaming, as though he were listening to another person, distanced from the rest of the world by the intensity of the orgasm Ethan was pounding into him, brutally forcing them both over the edge. For an instant, Andrew felt weightless, lifted, like a piece of paper held aloft by a breeze; there was no sound, and the white light coming in through the window was blinding.

And then he fell, right back down into the reality of the moment. He was lying on a mattress dotted with what looked like tea stains, but something told him were really old blood-spillings. Ethan’s skinny body was stretched out next to him; he was smoking a cigarette, looking like nothing had happened. For a moment, Ethan looked at him, regarded him with something like curiosity, but then he turned his head toward the window. Andrew couldn’t think of a single word to say, so he got dressed as quickly as he could and ran out into the street. Something had happened to the time- it was the wrong time. When he had left, it had been morning, but now it wasn’t anymore. The sun had already made the majority of its journey into the west, and was just sinking down, letting itself drop into darkness. Andrew felt sick. Running home, the only thing he could think the whole way was Jonathan’s name.

As soon as he made it through the door, his legs about to give way under him, Andrew was embraced. Jonathan pulled him close, and they both shook.

“Where were you?” Jonathan said, he sounded frightened in a way Andrew had never heard before and would be happy to go his whole life without ever hearing again. Andrew couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but bite his lip to keep from screaming. Tears were crashing against some imaginary floodgates behind his eyes.

To look at him, Jonathan pulled away a little. At first, his face was sweet with concern; his sweetness hit Andrew like a punch in the gut. Then, Jonathan saw something, or somehow knew something, because he pulled away more and more until he had backed into the bed. He was shaking his head, saying words Andrew couldn’t quite hear. Finally, he caught, “No, you didn’t.

“Tell me you didn’t, Andrew.” Jonathan sounded hysterical as he said his name.

“I didn’t mean to,” Andrew half-moaned, half-whispered.

“What do you mean you didn’t mean to?” Andrew didn’t know what word he would have used to describe what Jonathan sounded like, but he knew he didn’t like it.

“I, I don’t remember… what happened. I was there, and, and I couldn’t leave. And then I was thirsty… He gave me water and I, I think I passed out. When I woke up, I, we were-”

“Don’t say anything else, I don’t want to hear it.” Somehow, it was a relief, though a guilty one, to Andrew that Jonathan sounded more horrified than angry.

“I, I’m sorry,” Andrew croaked, the words got washed away on the twin floods from his eyes.

“Don’t, don’t say anything,” Jonathan’s voice was unsteady, “I, I’ll kill him. I’ll fucking murder him.” Jonathan looked seasick as he moved toward the door.

“No,” Andrew wailed.

Jonathan came to him, too quickly for him to notice his actual movements. “No, don’t kill him? Why, Andrew, so you can go back tomorrow and get fucked by him again?”

All Andrew could do was shut his eyes tight, in case Jonathan decided to hit him. He couldn’t look at him just then, anyway, it was like staring directly at the sun. “No,” he sobbed, “I just, don’t, don’t leave me now. Don’t go anywhere, please!” His knees gave out just then and he toppled to the floor. It should have hurt, falling like that, but Andrew couldn’t feel anything, it was like every nerve in his body had been sucked right out of him. I don’t want to feel anymore, he cried to himself. He felt, he didn’t think there was a world to describe it, but wretched came close. “I don’t want to feel anymore,” he hadn’t noticed that he was speaking out loud. “I want to die-”

But then Jonathan sighed, and got him to his feet. “No you don’t,” Jonathan said to him in that hard voice. “No you don’t,” he said again, very softly, almost inaudibly. “Where would I be without you?” He pushed Andrew’s hair off of his forehead, brushed the tears away from the corners of his eyes.

“I’m a whore,” Andrew whispered.

“No, you’re not.” Together, they made it to the edge of the bed. When he sat down, pain shot like a flair up the line of his spine, and he flinched. “Do you, do you hurt?” Jonathan asked him. Andrew nodded weakly. Jonathan sighed, touched Andrew’s face gently. “Do you want a bath?”

“Only if you get in with me.” Andrew turned his face upward, still unable to meet Jonathan’s eyes with his own.

“All right,” Jonathan said, “All right.”

They went into the bathroom. Jonathan put down the toilet seat so that Andrew wouldn’t have to stand. As he unbuttoned his shirt, Andrew laid his cheek against Jonathan’s hand. Something stabbed clean through Jonathan- he had never felt so, he supposed this was anger. He could understand now why “mad” meant both angry and insane. It took all the strength he had, some of it he never would have imagined existed, to stay in this spot, to be with Andrew when he needed him- instead of running out into the black blood of night to destroy the body that had done this to Andrew, in any way that he could. It was like he was being ripped apart, every second, slowly torn to pieces. As he removed Andrew’s shirt, laying bare his devastated body, Jonathan thought suddenly of Warren. He could understand how Warren had felt, for the however many seconds he had lived after Willow had flayed him. As soon as he got a look at all those red stains on Andrew’s skin, spreading like continents on a map, he knew how it felt to be skinned alive. He looked at the ceiling with its buzzing light fixture- it was all he could to stop himself from breaking down in Andrew’s arms. Andrew made a little sound in the back of his throat.

“Did I, did I hurt you?” Jonathan asked, in his steadiest voice.

“No, just,” the hybrid of a sob and a sigh passed through his lips, “Just, please, Jonathan, look at me. I can’t stand it- having your eyes away from me, like you can un-make this, like I, like I… disgust you.”

Jonathan crouched down so that they were face to face; he wrung Andrew’s shirt in his hands. “I just, I can’t believe he did this to you,” Jonathan thought he was going to lose it, but he took a deep breath and held himself together, “I, I can’t believe any of this. I don’t understand it.”

“I’ll tell you what happened, what I can remember,” Andrew offered, as he took Jonathan’s hand in his own.

Jonathan shook his head. “No, I know what happened, I knew it as soon as you walked in the door. He used magick on you, I can tell. And he dosed you, gave you some kind of drug.”

“I’m sorry.”

Again, Jonathan thought that he would break down, but he didn’t let himself. He couldn’t. If he was going to do anything for Andrew, he had to be calm, he had to be strong. “It is not. your. fault. You didn’t ask for this, and what he did to you, it, like, brain-washed you, or put you to sleep.”

“I forgot your name, I forgot who you were. I li-li-liked it…” Andrew covered his mouth with his hand. Jonathan put his hand on the back of his head and pulled him forward, let Andrew hide his face in his shoulder. When he stopped crying, Jonathan helped him to stand, so that he could get the rest of his clothes off. Naked, Andrew usually looked especially fragile, Jonathan had gotten used to that, feeling like he could break something, but now, it was unbearable how vulnerable he was. Involuntarily, Jonathan hissed in a breath every time he looked at the marks all over Andrew’s once-creamy skin. They were nothing like the little, fingerprint-like bruises Jonathan left on him; he never bit Andrew so hard that it resulted in trickles of blood. He kept telling himself this as he undressed, his eyes held purposely close to the floor. I am not like him, I am not like him, he said, under his breath; he knew that he was beginning to sound frantic.

Jonathan got into the bath, held his arms out so that he could help Andrew lower himself into the water. In close up, he beheld the fist-sized masses of black and blue on Andrew’s hips. How could anybody- No, I won’t think about it. Andrew needs me. I can’t think about this now… Slowly, he let Andrew fall into his arms, fall against him. His hands wet, he slicked back Andrew’s hair, caressed away the tracks of his tears, washed him clean.

“You still, I mean, you still want me, right?” The crack that Jonathan hadn’t heard in Andrew’s voice for so long had come back, turned into a giant fissure. Now, Andrew sounded broken. In the time he had known him, Andrew had sounded bad to Jonathan, but this time-

“Yes, I do,” he said fiercely, “Nothing you could do could stop me from feeling the way that I feel about you. And you didn’t do anything- it was. not. your. fault.” He cupped his hand against Andrew’s cheek. Things were coming back to him, breaking through the curtain of his near-hysteria, things that filled him with bitterness, the black liquor of shame, remorse- How at first he had been angry at Andrew, blamed him- when he came into the room after sunset, stinking of cardamon and another man’s magick and sweat- the thing he’d said, when Andrew had asked him not to go out and murder Ethan- Oh my God… “Andrew, you know I didn’t mean it, right?”

“Mean what?” Andrew turned his head a little, then shut his eyes in pain and faced forward again.

“When you asked me to not go out and murder Ethan and I said,” he swallowed, “And I said, why, so you could go back and fuck him again tomorrow?” As Andrew tensed against him, Jonathan closed his eyes. Feeling safer in the dark, he continued, “You know I only said that because I was angry, not at you, but at him. You know that, right?”

Andrew’s breath rattled out of him. He was crying again, but trying not to let it show. Finally, he couldn’t hide it any more and began to sob, his entire body almost convulsing with the force of his grief. All Jonathan could do was hold him, feeling helpless and guilty at once. Why did I bring that up, I’m such a stupid- I only wanted to reassure him, make him feel better- I wanted to apologize- God, I hurt him, just as badly as that fucking son of a- Will he ever be better?- Can I even do anything, anything at all to help?- I’m so sorry and I can’t even tell him-

Once the water had grown cold, Jonathan gently roused Andrew. Sometimes, he fell asleep in the bathtub; Jonathan was always concerned that Andrew would catch cold. He was far too thin, too breakable- Don’t think words like “breakable”, he warned himself. The word made his eyes sting, made the room go blurry, like he had been shot full of poison-

“Huh?” Andrew started and wiped his face on the back of his hand.

“The water’s cold,” Jonathan said softly, “Let’s go to bed.”

“Mm, oh, okay.”

They got out together, as Andrew was still weak in the knees. Jonathan dried him off and then helped him into his pajamas. Usually, neither of them bothered to get dressed for bed- clothes were a hindrance, and really rather pointless- but this night, Jonathan couldn’t bear to have to look at those horrible bruises. Andrew had a tee shirt with the silhouettes of the boys from A Clockwork Orange on it, with the words Droogs Don’t Run. It was cheery and yellow and had made them both laugh from the first time they’d seen it, so Jonathan used it to cover up the rosy garden of wounds on Andrew.

“I can heal them,” he said, “The bruises. If you want me to.” They were sitting up in bed, with the lights still on, all the way under the red and brown blanket. Jonathan was afraid to put his arms around Andrew, to touch him at all, terrified that he would do the wrong thing, hurt him some more in a clumsy way. It was difficult enough to speak.

“Would you?” Andrew fixed his eyes on Jonathan’s, held his gaze.

“Yeah, I can do it tomorrow. You should sleep now.”

“I can’t sleep.” Andrew stared straight ahead, at the mirror behind the television.

A long time ago, when Andrew had said that same thing, Jonathan had put a spell on him; just then, with a shock, he remembered that he had done that. It seemed obscene now, to put a spell on Andrew, even if it was to let him get some rest. Healing him was one thing, but making him unconscious- Jonathan was disgusted, nauseated with himself for even considering it. “Do you want me to put on the TV?” he asked instead.

“Yeah.”

Jonathan got up and put on the television. “What channel do you want?”

“CNN,” Andrew said weakly.

Standing a little away from the TV, Jonathan was briefly entranced by the pictures, by the blue glow. “Hey, look, the President’s here in Mexico,” he commented, genuinely interested, but then snapped out of it. Andrew was still and tense alone in the big bed, looking more lost than usual. Recently, though he had begun to look found. How could I have ever doubted him?

Jonathan got back into bed. “Lights on or off?”

“Off.”

Without the lights on, the room seemed bigger, like a big black sea that was only bearable because of the light house of the television. Jonathan could practically hear the roaring of waves. They lay separated for a while, neither of them quite knowing what to do. Finally, a little bit at a time, they moved closer together. “Do you want me to, um, hold you? Cos if you don’t want me to, that’s, that’s fine.”

Andrew managed a little laugh. “Jonathan, just because of what happened to me doesn’t mean I don’t want you to touch me anymore. I’m sad and I’m scared and I hurt, but I’m still the same person. This didn’t change the way I feel about you- I know you said what you said before because you were angry. I know you’re not angry at me, not now and not before. Please, just treat me like you always do.”

Jonathan pulled Andrew into his arms, held him close like he were Jonathan’s entire world. Which, in a way, he was. Where would I be without you?- he had said that to him not two hours earlier, but it seemed like so long ago. It felt to him as though he’d been saying it for ages, screaming it, hitting his head against a wall trying to let Andrew know how much- But he already knew, he had always known. I’ve been… blind, I’ve been trying so hard to look into his eyes, to see Warren there, to catch him- But it was always me.

Without noticing it, he had begun to weep, his tears quickly soaking the shoulder of Andrew’s tee shirt. Wordlessly, Andrew put his hand in his hair, the other one was limply spread on his back. “It’s all right,” Andrew whispered after a while.

“I should be comforting you,” Jonathan said in a rusty little voice.

“It’s okay. I’m all right, I’ll heal- you’ll help me. I’m not broken, not in any ways we can’t fix.”

Remembering the ways in which Andrew had been broken, Jonathan let out a voluptuous sob. He closed his eyes tightly, trying to drive off the thoughts, the images.

They had made a promise to each other, a long time ago- not so much a promise, more like an agreement. Andrew had a problem with what he simply referred to as “the l-word”, a hold-over from his lying-days with Warren. Never had they said it to each other, nevermind how they actually felt. It hurt Jonathan sometimes, to have no access to a little word simply because of something somebody had said to Andrew in a time when Jonathan didn’t even think of them as having really known each other. To keep one rule, he had broken another one to pieces- the one that stated that they wouldn’t lie to each other. Because, the truth was, he loved Andrew, loved him so much it sometimes seemed like he was going to spontaneously combust from it. More times a day than he could count, Jonathan wanted to shout it, Andrew Wells, I love you, I love you so much it hurts! He never did, though, and the moments passed, leaving him vaguely anguished.

He ran his hands through Andrew’s hair, getting him to look up. “Andrew,” he said, “I have to tell you something, and maybe it’s not exactly what you want to hear, but I have to say it.” He swallowed.

“What?” Andrew trembled against him.

“Andrew, I, I love you. I know you hate that word, because of shit that happened a long time ago, but I am serious. I love you.” He closed his eyes.

“I know,” Andrew said, his voice sweeter than it had sounded in, in, ever. Pressure bloomed in the corners of Jonathan’s eyes, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “And, I, I love you, Jonathan.”

“I didn’t want to say that word, cos you said a long time ago that it made you sick,” he was rambling and he knew it, but couldn’t bring himself to care, “But I do, I love you so much, and I don’t want you ever to be hurt again. I’ll do anything you want, I’ll do anything to make you better.” He was laying himself bare, and it was the scariest feeling in the world. It was like having no skin- there was nothing between him and Andrew now, nothing to stop Andrew from ripping out his heart if he wanted to-

“I’m not good at words,” Andrew said softly, “But I mean, I want you to know, that, that, you’re all I have in this world, and you’re all I wanna have. I don’t ever want anybody else, I don’t want anybody else’s hands on me,” here he shivered, “I-”

“It’s all right, Andrew. It’ll all be all right.”

Many times in his life with Andrew, Jonathan had said those same words, felt so sure that this would be the time, the beginning of their happy ending. Now, though, he didn’t care, because he wasn’t worried, not in the least. In the past, he had clung to the now-everything-will-be-all- right feeling, because that was all he felt that he had to hang onto. Now, though, now he knew what Andrew had always known, that he had him, that they had each other.