[FIC] Old Ghosts by Cat Kane -- A Halloween story (M/M, R)
Thanks for reading "Old Ghosts"! Hope you enjoyed! A pdf. file of the story in its entirety should be up in a couple of days.
Old Ghosts
By Cat Kane
Part Five
The apartment was empty. So was the hallway, and the elevators, the stairwell and the lobby.
Impossible. No one disappeared.
Standing on the silent, empty street outside his building, Jake wondered if that was true. He scanned the desolate street, seeing no sign of life besides the highway traffic that sulked and rumbled by at the intersection at the far end of the block.
He used to love the highway lights, once. He used to love the night-time itself, watching the world go by in a haze of light and noise. Now, the traffic a hundred yards away was about a hundred yards too close.
Samuel…
What the hell did he expect, when he’d all but admitted that he didn’t care if Samuel fucked him while thinking about his long lost beloved Ben.
No. Jake ran a frustrated hand through his hair. It felt too impersonal calling it fucking; it was a cold, distant term for the tenderness in Samuel’s eyes, in his kisses.
Tenderness for Ben.
Damn. This jealousy of a dead guy was really a new low.
And even if Samuel came back, Jake had no idea what to say to him.
As the adrenaline and heat of Samuel’s touch faded, the anxiety at being out alone on a dark street resurfaced like the déjà vu echoes of a bad dream. The windows seemed more sunken than usual, the alleyways seemed darker.
Jake shook himself out of it; he wasn’t going to find Samuel if he allowed himself to succumb to these stupid damn fears. Not now.
Samuel made him stronger. As long as he remembered that, he’d be fine. He’d be-
“Hey, mister. Trick or treat?”
Most people got elementary school kids showing up at their doors in messy witch or ghost costumes. Most people had plastic pumpkin shaped buckets shoved under their noses, whiny little voices demanding candy in the way only the entitlement generation could.
Jake, he was beginning to realize, wasn’t most people. Just like he didn’t get an ordinary stalker, he got the bratty high-schoolers whose costume consisted only of a Jason mask and buckets of attitude.
He hoped they didn’t see how badly they’d spooked him.
“I don’t have anything with me. Sorry.”
He tried walking briskly back towards the apartment, but the kids followed him. Out of the glow of the streetlight, they looked far more sinister than Jake knew them to be. His panic didn’t care, revving up the adrenaline and the jitters irrespective of his slender grip on common sense.
“Aww, c’mon, man,” one of the kids said. “You gotta have somethin’.”
Pretending not to hear-not hard, it wasn’t easy to hear them speak past his pounding heartbeat-Jake kept walking. He couldn’t remember how many of them there were in the group, four, maybe five, and he sure as hell wasn’t in any state to be taking on a bunch of teenagers. He might only have been ten years older than them, but he felt fifty years older.
“Hey.” The tone took on a harsher edge, less playful. “Don’t just frickin’ walk away, asshole.”
Jake walked faster, almost breaking into a run. “I said I don’t have anything. Leave me the fuck alone.”
“C’mon, you live here, right?” The menacing tone continued, Jake’s fear making it lisp and drawl, sibilant and dangerous. “We can go with you, if you wanted. Pick up some cash, maybe some beer.”
The others laughed, sharp sounds like the whiz of a bullet shattering glass.
“No.”
“Aw, don’t be like that, man.” A different voice, no less threatening. In Jake’s head, the sweetest endearment would be threatening about now.
It occurred to him that potentially, the reality of things was nothing like he perceived it to be. Maybe the kids were just playing around. Maybe Jake’s stalker really was an undead magician.
Maybe he really was going absolutely crazy.
“I said leave me alone,” he muttered, close enough now to the safe haven of his building that he could taste it. Yeah, they’d threatened to come in, but they couldn’t. Right?
Please, leave me alone…
“And I said, don’t fuckin’ walk away!”
A hand reached out, bone-cold fingers catching his sleeve. Jake’s blood ran like ice, nausea coiling in the pit of his stomach. Every incremental step felt as though he was in a funhouse, tilting left, right, up, down.
He turned sharply, hands flailing blindly to try and shake off his assailant.
“Get the fuck off me!”
The kids said something, but Jake couldn’t make out what it was. He’d turned for the building, stumbling and laboring his way towards the door. Just a little further.
Samuel…I can’t even come and look for you. Was Ben that pathetic, huh? You wouldn’t love someone that hopeless…
He tripped on the curb, landing hard on one knee, palms scraping the concrete sidewalk. The pain didn’t even register, a small price to pay in an attempt to get away.
“Hey!” One of the kids yelled, but even as Jake tried to make the world stop spinning long enough to get to his feet, the yell turned into an abrupt cry of fear.
“Oh shit!” Another of the kids shouted, as Jake heard thudding footsteps running past him. “Get the fuck out of here!”
Jake listened till the footsteps faded, and all that remained was the sound of his breathing, the rustle of his clothes against the cold sidewalk. He tried to push himself up, but the grazes on his palms finally began to sting with the effort.
Shit…
He closed his eyes, too exhausted to do anything else. Whatever had scared the kids off, he’d take his chances with it.
Just before the dizziness roared around him, the world outside sounding like the rushing of a violent storm-swept tide, he thought, just maybe, he heard someone whisper his name.
* * *
He drifted in the dark, swimming and sinking with every breath. Up was down, fighting was drowning. The panic subsided into a low, roiling unease, until a hand reached through the darkness, warmth seeping into him from the gentle touch.
With all the soothing power of a sedative, the warmth infused him with calm and distraction, wrapping around him like a blanket until it was all he could focus on.
“Ben.”
Jake opened his eyes, blearily, as though waking from the deepest dream. Samuel gazed down at him, eyes red-rimmed but his smile remained soft.
He tried to speak, to move, panicking to realize he couldn’t. Samuel didn’t seem to expect it of him, instead reached down again to brush quivering fingertips against his forehead, through his hair, down the side of his face. The touch felt warmer still, Jake thought, losing himself in it till he couldn’t remember what frightened him anymore.
“I’m so sorry, Ben,” Samuel said, little more than a whisper. “I’m so sorry, my love.”
Before Jake could even ask why, the image shifted.
This time, he knew where he was before he even opened his eyes. Only one place smelled like cigars and old books woven through with a thread of cold fog.
At least Samuel looked happier this time, he thought, opening his eyes to take in the drawing room he’d so often caught glimpses of in the past couple of days. Sensory memories, fleeting little ghosts compared to this surround-sound immersion.
“There…” Samuel finished tucking a blanket around his knees, then moved him over to a vast picture window looking out onto an equally impressive garden. Jake was used to a shelf of potted plants, ferns and cacti he regularly replaced after his unerringly black thumb killed them off. He’d never seen gardens like this outside of parks. Just out of his line of sight, he knew-without really knowing why-there was a huge ornamental fountain, horses and chariots spewing cold frothy water into the autumn sky. “Will you be all right while I’m gone?”
Jake couldn’t reply here, either. The briefest of moments brought a look of anxiety to Samuel’s dark eyes, and he rested his hands over Jake’s.
No, over Ben’s.
“I have to go, love. I wish to speak to Clarence tonight, and besides…your doctor told us that the best thing for you is to keep doing as we’ve always done, didn’t he?” Samuel touched his cheek, leaned in to kiss his hair. “If we do this, then perhaps…”
Perhaps things would get back to normal. Samuel didn’t say it, but Jake knew. He had a feeling Ben did too; another fear underlay his own, a tension that spoke of disappointment, disillusionment and despair.
He stilled, giving Samuel the only sign of acquiescence he could, given the circumstances.
“Good.” Samuel smiled, though Jake could see the feather-edges of anxiety tightening his eyes. “I’ll hurry back, I promise.”
The image shifted again.
So distracted by the full control he had over his limbs, Jake stumbled mid-walk, only for someone to catch his elbow.
“Careful,” Samuel laughed, touch lingering along his arm as he let go. “It’ll be hard to explain if we go back with your face all bashed in.”
“Oh, please.” The words weren’t Jake’s, but they came as naturally as breathing, as though he was acting out someone else’s script. “As if anyone would believe you could bash anyone’s face in!”
“Oh that’s how it is, is it?” Samuel grinned, stepping in his path and winding his arms around Jake’s waist before he could pull away. “I see.”
A warm breeze blew, carrying with it the scent of summer flowers. Jake looked around, taking in the overgrown country lane, tree-lined and shaded. In the gaps between the trees, a sun-drenched meadow, busy with a riot of red and yellow flowers, led off towards a small village, where a pale church spire jabbed up into a pristine blue sky.
“This is beautiful,” he murmured without thinking. “So peaceful.”
Samuel held him close, face buried in the crook of Jake’s neck. Jake felt the sigh more than heard it.
“Yes, it is. This is what you’ll leave behind, you know.” Samuel turned his head, lips brushing the side of Jake’s neck. “I’m what you’ll leave behind.”
“Sam…”
It wasn’t quite Ben’s conflicted thoughts Jake felt, and not quite his own, rather a weird overlapping of both. His soul knew that Samuel’s intentions would never be anything less than honest and true, but there was a desperation in the flutter of those lips against his skin that spoke of taking any steps, any measures necessary.
“No.” Samuel shook his head, hair tickling Jake’s jaw and sending flickers of pleasure skidding along his skin. “I know you must go, I stand by any decision you make, you know that, but…”
There wasn’t much Jake could say to that. There hadn’t been much Ben could say, either. Instead he just stroked Samuel’s hair, stared up at the tangled canopy of leaves and branches and sky.
“Jake,” a voice called. “Jake?”
The face hovering over his didn’t look much different from all the times before, but the worry creasing Samuel’s dark eyes made Jake wonder what horrific scene he’d landed in now.
Wait. Samuel just called him Jake.
For the second time in as many days, Jake saw the apartment ceiling from a whole new angle. It could do with a new coat of paint, he thought, trying to fill his head with anything but Samuel and the things he’d just experienced. If he thought too hard about that, he was pretty sure his head might explode. Instead he tried focusing on how he’d gotten from the street to his couch.
Sitting up, he weakly brushed off Samuel’s concern.
“Jake-“
“What happened?”
“Ah, well…” Samuel sat back, smiling wryly, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. “I think perhaps my appearance startled those youngsters…”
Jake paused at the term ‘youngsters’. Samuel barely looked five years older than those kids himself, and neither he nor Jake should have been old enough to call teenagers `youngsters`. Maybe in Samuel and Ben’s day, Jake thought, when today’s high school kids would have been the front line soldiers and factory workers, maybe the difference seemed that much greater.
“I’m not entirely sure how I returned,” Samuel went on, “I only knew you needed me, and…” Another wry smile. “Here I am.”
Closing his eyes, Jake just nodded. “The magic can do that?”
“Probably,” Samuel said. “Foolishly, I never did enquire too much about the potential side-effects…”
Jake listened to the silence for a long moment, breathing in the peace and calm that came from this man’s presence.
Denial was over. Something was going on beyond his scope of imagining, and the only way he’d come to terms with it all would be by embracing it. Believing it.
“You need to tell me everything,” he said. “You need to tell me how you got into that casket. And you really need to tell me how I got you out of it.”
* * *
Ben’s family took the news of his death with remarkable grace. Far more than Samuel, that much was certain.
“Thank you, Samuel.” Ben’s mother, dabbing her eyes with a large kerchief borrowed from Ben’s father, patted his arm as she left. “Thank you for all you did to take care of him.”
All he’d done? Driven Ben to his death, that was the extent of Samuel’s so-called help.
No one questioned it. The doctors suggested at one time or another that it might be a potential outcome-they’d experienced it with others in Ben’s situation. No one blamed Samuel, even though it was all his fault.
Even the knowledge that Ben had hardly lived in his condition, not truly, helped ease any of the guilt. Samuel was the only one who’d seen the deterioration, day in and day out. If he stood back and did nothing…would the outcome be the same?
No one would blame him for pulling out of the show.
No one but Clarence.
Samuel wasn’t sure how Clarence would incriminate him in Ben’s death, not without giving his own secrets away, but he had no doubt the older man would, if Samuel reneged on their deal. But there wasn’t a deal, not anymore. Samuel had nothing to show for it.
“Terribly sorry to hear about your friend,” Clarence said, walking into the theatre dressing room before Samuel had to chance to say anything. “That’s the risk we take sometimes, unfortunately.”
Carefully arranging his neck-tie and cloak, Samuel did his best to keep his hands from trembling. “Well,” he said softly, “I suppose now I can’t possibly owe you payment for something that never happened.”
“Pardon me?” Clarence narrowed his eyes. “I upheld my part of the bargain, lad. What came of it is of no consequence to me.”
“No consequence?” Samuel hissed. “Ben is dead.”
“And it was your choice to involve me, my boy,” Clarence said. “You will pay the piper, Samuel. Balance must be struck.”
Clarence strolled out, cigar smoke trailing behind him, as though they’d shared a conversation about the appalling weather they’d endured lately. Samuel let the tension leave him on a shuddering breath, a brief respite from the admission of his fate.
A price worth paying? How stupid.
“Ten minutes till curtain, Mr. Gilbert.” One of the stagehands, a scruffy boy younger than Ben had been when he left for war, stuck his head around the doorway.
“Yes,” Samuel said. “I know.”
He all but sleepwalked through his show, relying on the by rote instinct that had his illusions and tricks memorized. The crowd either didn’t notice, or didn’t care, and Samuel suspected it was a combination of both. They cheered and gasped at all the right moments, though their awe couldn’t reach him-he didn’t think anything could, not anymore.
The finale of the Great Count Mirza’s show, the trick that still gleaned his father some rather menacing letters demanding that he “control his abhorrent heathen of a child”, was named The Relentless Resurrection, and featured the lovely work of art that was his ebony coffin.
Real ones didn’t cost as much, he’d learned. He still wished he didn’t know.
As a prelude to the finale itself, he would close a small animal in the coffin, a mouse or a dove. With the close of the door, a small panel at the bottom of the box would open, closing off the live creature and allowing him access to a dead version, placed there previously. He would invite a member of the audience-usually the gruffest, most reliable looking gentleman he could find within the first two rows-to check on the authenticity of the dead creature, before putting it back. Closing the door once more would reverse the mechanism, revealing, upon opening the door a final time, the creature alive and well, apparently resurrected.
When that was done, he repeated the procedure. With himself.
Slanted mirrors and images of a grotesque corpselike dummy replaced the panels that opened and closed to reveal the dead, then very much alive, creature. He’d choose another member of the audience-this one a theatre worker in on the act-to open and close the door, and to announce fearfully to the audience that the Great Count Mirza was indeed, dead.
Stepping into the coffin never usually troubled him; he’d never been so closely accustomed to death as to fear the implications of his act.
He remembered gazing down at Ben in his coffin, so lovely and peaceful despite it all. The undertaker had indeed done a magnificent job. No one would guess the horrors he’d endured, just by looking.
When the door closed on him, muffling the sounds of the crowd outside, Ben’s face was all he could see.
“Ben…” He whispered, closing his eyes.
He needed to flick the switch for the trick to proceed, but the tears threatened and all he could do was grope blindly along the wall for the concealed button that set things in motion. He’d be granted a moment’s privacy, at least.
The sound of the crowd faded. Samuel frowned, opening his eyes. The reflection of the corpse peered back at him, twisting and changing until it took on Ben’s features, beautiful at first, just as Samuel remembered him, but rapidly decaying, skin peeling, mouth opening in a silent scream.
“Ben!”
“Too late for him, I’m afraid.” Clarence’s voice came from everywhere, came from the dark itself. “As for you…”
“Clarence, please…!”
A sigh, a sound that permeated everything around him. “I truly wish it were too late for you, my boy. It would be much easier on you if it was.”
Even though he couldn’t see, could barely move, Samuel tried to twist around, trying to fathom where the voice came from. “What are you talking about? Clarence, stop this madness this instant! You can’t scare me with your theatrics!”
“You know they are far from theatrics, lad.” Despite it all, Clarence sounded resigned, weary. “I am not to blame for your misfortune. Perhaps you should have made certain your boy wanted to be saved before you went ahead and did so.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Regardless. The due must be paid, Samuel. But in all good conscience I can’t extract the full price for your choices. You’ve already gone some way towards settling your debt, and your intentions were true.”
“I don’t--!”
“It’s a blessing you already own the vessel that will extricate payment,” Clarence said. “It’s a blessing you love this contraption so much. You and it will be well acquainted for some time to come.”
The darkness deepened. Samuel had never dreamed such a thing was possible. Outside, he could just make out the muffled cries and shouts. “He’s gone!” and the crowd’s cheering. The stagehand’s panic must have seeped into their blissful enjoyment, as the cheers became murmurs, became yells.
“What are you doing?”
“When he forgives you, my boy,” Clarence said, which, Samuel noted, wasn’t an answer at all. “When he forgives you your selfish sins, then you’ll have paid the price.”
“I don’t understand!”
“One day he’ll find you. One day you’ll atone.”
“Clarence!”
No answer. The dark swept around him, like swimming in a cold lake at midnight. The noises faded till all he could hear was the rushing of blood in his head and the harshness of his own breathing.
Then nothing at all.
* * *
“And that was it? Till the Halloween store?”
“Not completely. I recall some instances where the coffin was opened, but nothing happened.” Samuel watched him carefully. “Not like you.”
“Because it wasn’t me.” Jake nodded, still a little numb and detached. He stared down at his hands, noticing the grazes had been cleaned off while he’d been out of it. “Because it wasn’t…”
Samuel sighed. “Jake, regardless of what you think, you were the one that woke me from that magic. You. Yes, I might have become confused and-“
“Do I look like him?”
“Yes,” Samuel nodded, “you look a great deal like him. But I’m in no way insinuating that-”
“I was a photographer, before.” Jake got to his feet, feeling a little steadier but by no means stable. “War zones, disasters, places of mass human suffering, you know…” He tried gamely for a depreciating smile. “The stuff that rakes in the money.”
Samuel just watched him. Jake found he couldn’t move too far away from him, as though Samuel himself created a field of something resembling serenity. Something that allowed him to talk.
“For a while I was okay with it, you know. I was making great money, I was traveling the world. People wanted my work. People wanted me, needed me for something. I thought for a while that…” He shook his head. “I don’t know. What I did mattered. Made a difference, somehow. People could see what as going on in places they’d barely even heard of, maybe some of that shit’d get fixed.”
“You felt…compelled to do this.”
It wasn’t a question, but Jake decided to treat it that way. “Yeah. I guess. And I tried pretending it didn’t faze me, wasn’t getting to me more and more every day. I mean, I was just doing my job, right?”
“Jake…” Samuel stood, taking slow, tentative steps towards him.
“I didn’t quit ‘cause I wanted to. I just…people were telling me I was acting strangely, I’d have these…blackouts, memory lapses, whatever. Eventually my doctor told me that if I didn’t quit, I’d end up with serious problems. ‘Course by then, I already had serious problems…”
He didn’t flinch when Samuel wrapped his arms around him, feeling as comforted by the action as he had in the dream, the memory, whatever he’d experienced.
“When I managed to get separated from the rest of the press party somewhere in Israel two years ago, and spent three days hiding in someone’s basement ‘cause I was convinced if I came out I’d be shot, they decided enough was enough. Sent me home, told me I had post-traumatic stress disorder…” He leaned back a little, enough to look up at Samuel. “I guess in your day that would’ve been called shell-shock or something.”
Samuel stared down at him, eyes narrowed. “Do they treat you better in this day and age?”
“Better?” Jake smiled a little. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Good.” Samuel drew him closer again, and Jake closed his eyes, cheek pressed against the soft warmth of Samuel’s shirt.
“Why do I feel so safe when I’m with you?” His lips nuzzled the fabric with every syllable. He felt Samuel draw breath, release it with a soft sound of contentment.
“That, I don’t know. But it doesn’t have to be such a bad thing, does it?”
Jake shook his head, just as Samuel lowered his, their lips meeting in a ghost of a kiss, the contact little more than the movement of warm air.
“I was out there looking for you, you know.” His hands reached up to tangle in Samuel’s hair. “I wanted you to come back, I wanted to explain, to apologize…”
He felt Samuel’s smile in the brush of lips against his forehead, his cheek, his jaw. “You have nothing to apologize for, my love.”
Jake tilted his face up to claim Samuel’s mouth again, the kiss no less gentle for its intensity. His arms wound around Samuel’s shoulders, arching up against him as Samuel’s embrace tightened.
“Sam…” Jake breathed.
Samuel froze, hands on Jake’s shoulder, pushing him back till their eyes met.
“What did you just call me?”
Jake had to track back through his thoughts for a second, everything too jumbled by that odd cocktail of contentment and want.
“Sam,” he said again.
Samuel’s eyes darkened a shade deeper than their usual impossible depths, lips parting on a silent breath. When he spoke, his voice was rough with need, and hearing desire in that proper, precise accent made Jake’s knees weak.
“Again.”
“Sam.” Jake let Samuel yank him closer, crushingly tight. “Sam…”
With a near inhuman growl, Samuel kissed him, deep and demanding, tongue tracing the seam of Jake’s lips before yielding to the temptation and plunging between them.
He’d never been kissed like that before. Never been so overwhelmed by someone else’s need, someone else’s hunger. He should tell Samuel about the memories, he thought, but that could wait while they made some new ones.
There was no resistance this time when he unbuttoned Samuel’s shirt, eager to feel the real, solid warmth of his lover’s chest beneath his hands.
This was his. Somehow, in ways Jake couldn’t explain. And equally, a part of his soul he’d always known searched, longed for something, belonged squarely to Samuel. He wouldn’t be so foolish as to let him go twice.
No. Make that three times.
“Do you have…?” Samuel began, speaking against Jake’s lips in between kisses, dark gaze darting around the room. “Should we, ah…?”
Simple to decipher the code, as if he’d been interpreting Samuel’s words forever. Never quite letting go, never losing that warmth and contact, he led Samuel the short distance across the room towards his bedroom.
He managed a sheepish “Sorry,” as Samuel drew him close again, dismissing his worry with a smile and a kiss. If he’d known he’d have company, he’d have tidied up. As it was, he kept the mess around to antagonize Carrie.
Carrie. Jake vowed that, first thing in the morning, he’d call her up, explain things as best he could. He was already convinced she’d happily snag the attentions of a dozen guys if she went out dressed in that skimpy pixie costume. Besides, she’d known, she’d realized long before he had that Jake’s mind and heart were elsewhere.
He’d felt many things with Carrie, but that strangely sweet shyness wasn’t one of them. Perhaps he’d been Samuel’s lover decades ago, and perhaps his soul even remembered that, but his body felt every inch the new lover, anxious and anticipating all at once.
For someone who’d waited for this for ninety years, Samuel had the patience of a saint. The shaky rise and fall of his chest was all that betrayed his need as Jake pushed the shirt off Samuel’s shoulders, hands mapping the smooth, pale expanse of shoulders, arms, chest. Relearning something he already knew.
Samuel backed up against the edge of the bed, sitting down, arms wrapping around Jake’s waist as his lips nuzzled the thin cotton of Jake’s t-shirt. Funny how he’d never noticed the cold earlier, as though Samuel was still close by, wrapping him in warmth.
“I’m sorry…” Samuel whispered, but Jake knew it had nothing to do with any regret about the embrace.
It still didn’t feel like his place, but either way, he’d felt what Ben felt, knew the conflict that tore up his thoughts when it came to Samuel and the choices Ben made. Leaning down, lips against Samuel’s hair, he breathed, “I forgive you.”
Samuel’s arms tightened, lips pressing open-mouthed kisses through the fabric. Hands skimming up Jake’s back, he pushed up the fabric enough that lips brushed skin, sending sparks of sensation crackling through Jake’s blood.
“Jake.” The word was a vibrating purr, as Samuel’s lips moved toward the jut of Jake’s hipbone, teeth faintly scoring skin, kisses and licks soothing any imagined hurt. One hand clumsily unfastening Jake’s jeans, letting them shush down his legs to pool at his ankles, Samuel muttered something about garments in this day and age, and Jake laughed.
Pausing in his task, Samuel looked up at him, smiling softly, happily, and even as his body thrummed, fever hot, taut as a guitar string stuck in a fireplace, Jake’s thoughts tumbled back, latching onto another time he’d seen Samuel smile that way.
He recognized the field of flowers, red and gold dancing around him on a sweet summer breeze. There was a blanket beneath him, but he could still feel the thick lush movement of the grass through it as Samuel moved above him, all pale, sun-warmed skin and insistent kisses.
Ben. Jake. It didn’t matter. He was one and the same, and in that moment, wherever it was lost in time, he was Samuel’s world.
“Sam,” he murmured, then and now, hands tightening in his lover’s hair as Samuel’s kissed tracked down his body, lavishing attention to every inch of skin he could reach. Kisses to the inside of his elbows, his wrists, the jut of a hip, the vulnerable soft skin of his inner thigh.
The sun beat down, warm and bright enough that Jake had to close his eyes, but Samuel’s mouth was hotter as it closed around his arousal, wet and tight and perfect and so achingly familiar that Jake cried out, and his thoughts spiraled again.
In his apartment, Samuel pressed him back into familiar sheets, but in Jake’s head, there was an oak tester bed, rich dark red damask sheets, and a roaring fireplace. Firelight danced across Samuel’s bare skin, making the sheen of sweat sparkle like lamplight on snow. His hair was in his eyes, darkness shadowing an even darker gaze, but Jake knew what he’d see there if the glow of the fire banked light into Samuel’s face. Passion. Tenderness. Love. Jake’s legs parted around Samuel’s hips, ankles crossed to lock them together, and the hard heat that pressed against him, pressed into him, was sweeter than meadow flowers, hotter than the raging fire.
Safe, but intense in its thrill. Like coming home, but like the first tentative exploration of an unknown land.
This, this was what he’d waited for. This was what he’d searched for, and with every kiss, every touch, every thrust, the fear melted away like ice in the face of a blazing sun, a roaring fireplace.
Now, and then, he clung to Samuel, arching up to meet every erratic shift of his lover’s hips, any trace of resistance or hesitation faded to nothing. Just the need. Just the desperation to bridge a gap that at once seemed impossible, and seemed to disappear with every second, like a bumpy country road beneath thin, speeding tires.
It would never be enough, and there’d never be enough time to make up for what they’d lost, but when Samuel’s hips stilled, thrust driving deeper into Jake than he’d ever known, something shattered inside his soul that made the time apart irrelevant.
They had forever. In flower fields, in dark fire-lit rooms, in the familiar detritus of Jake’s apartment, where the headlights from the highway cast striped shadows on the ceiling, and his body tensed beneath Samuel’s as the climax hit with the tenderness of petals, the ferocity of flames, and the sweet lick of magic.
And, as they lay in each other’s arms, silent save for their heartbeats, the push and pull of breathing, inhale and exhale, the digital clock on the nightstand beeped midnight.
Jake smiled, burrowing into Samuel’s arms.
Maybe those old ghosts would rest easy tonight.
Old Ghosts
By Cat Kane
Part Five
The apartment was empty. So was the hallway, and the elevators, the stairwell and the lobby.
Impossible. No one disappeared.
Standing on the silent, empty street outside his building, Jake wondered if that was true. He scanned the desolate street, seeing no sign of life besides the highway traffic that sulked and rumbled by at the intersection at the far end of the block.
He used to love the highway lights, once. He used to love the night-time itself, watching the world go by in a haze of light and noise. Now, the traffic a hundred yards away was about a hundred yards too close.
Samuel…
What the hell did he expect, when he’d all but admitted that he didn’t care if Samuel fucked him while thinking about his long lost beloved Ben.
No. Jake ran a frustrated hand through his hair. It felt too impersonal calling it fucking; it was a cold, distant term for the tenderness in Samuel’s eyes, in his kisses.
Tenderness for Ben.
Damn. This jealousy of a dead guy was really a new low.
And even if Samuel came back, Jake had no idea what to say to him.
As the adrenaline and heat of Samuel’s touch faded, the anxiety at being out alone on a dark street resurfaced like the déjà vu echoes of a bad dream. The windows seemed more sunken than usual, the alleyways seemed darker.
Jake shook himself out of it; he wasn’t going to find Samuel if he allowed himself to succumb to these stupid damn fears. Not now.
Samuel made him stronger. As long as he remembered that, he’d be fine. He’d be-
“Hey, mister. Trick or treat?”
Most people got elementary school kids showing up at their doors in messy witch or ghost costumes. Most people had plastic pumpkin shaped buckets shoved under their noses, whiny little voices demanding candy in the way only the entitlement generation could.
Jake, he was beginning to realize, wasn’t most people. Just like he didn’t get an ordinary stalker, he got the bratty high-schoolers whose costume consisted only of a Jason mask and buckets of attitude.
He hoped they didn’t see how badly they’d spooked him.
“I don’t have anything with me. Sorry.”
He tried walking briskly back towards the apartment, but the kids followed him. Out of the glow of the streetlight, they looked far more sinister than Jake knew them to be. His panic didn’t care, revving up the adrenaline and the jitters irrespective of his slender grip on common sense.
“Aww, c’mon, man,” one of the kids said. “You gotta have somethin’.”
Pretending not to hear-not hard, it wasn’t easy to hear them speak past his pounding heartbeat-Jake kept walking. He couldn’t remember how many of them there were in the group, four, maybe five, and he sure as hell wasn’t in any state to be taking on a bunch of teenagers. He might only have been ten years older than them, but he felt fifty years older.
“Hey.” The tone took on a harsher edge, less playful. “Don’t just frickin’ walk away, asshole.”
Jake walked faster, almost breaking into a run. “I said I don’t have anything. Leave me the fuck alone.”
“C’mon, you live here, right?” The menacing tone continued, Jake’s fear making it lisp and drawl, sibilant and dangerous. “We can go with you, if you wanted. Pick up some cash, maybe some beer.”
The others laughed, sharp sounds like the whiz of a bullet shattering glass.
“No.”
“Aw, don’t be like that, man.” A different voice, no less threatening. In Jake’s head, the sweetest endearment would be threatening about now.
It occurred to him that potentially, the reality of things was nothing like he perceived it to be. Maybe the kids were just playing around. Maybe Jake’s stalker really was an undead magician.
Maybe he really was going absolutely crazy.
“I said leave me alone,” he muttered, close enough now to the safe haven of his building that he could taste it. Yeah, they’d threatened to come in, but they couldn’t. Right?
Please, leave me alone…
“And I said, don’t fuckin’ walk away!”
A hand reached out, bone-cold fingers catching his sleeve. Jake’s blood ran like ice, nausea coiling in the pit of his stomach. Every incremental step felt as though he was in a funhouse, tilting left, right, up, down.
He turned sharply, hands flailing blindly to try and shake off his assailant.
“Get the fuck off me!”
The kids said something, but Jake couldn’t make out what it was. He’d turned for the building, stumbling and laboring his way towards the door. Just a little further.
Samuel…I can’t even come and look for you. Was Ben that pathetic, huh? You wouldn’t love someone that hopeless…
He tripped on the curb, landing hard on one knee, palms scraping the concrete sidewalk. The pain didn’t even register, a small price to pay in an attempt to get away.
“Hey!” One of the kids yelled, but even as Jake tried to make the world stop spinning long enough to get to his feet, the yell turned into an abrupt cry of fear.
“Oh shit!” Another of the kids shouted, as Jake heard thudding footsteps running past him. “Get the fuck out of here!”
Jake listened till the footsteps faded, and all that remained was the sound of his breathing, the rustle of his clothes against the cold sidewalk. He tried to push himself up, but the grazes on his palms finally began to sting with the effort.
Shit…
He closed his eyes, too exhausted to do anything else. Whatever had scared the kids off, he’d take his chances with it.
Just before the dizziness roared around him, the world outside sounding like the rushing of a violent storm-swept tide, he thought, just maybe, he heard someone whisper his name.
* * *
He drifted in the dark, swimming and sinking with every breath. Up was down, fighting was drowning. The panic subsided into a low, roiling unease, until a hand reached through the darkness, warmth seeping into him from the gentle touch.
With all the soothing power of a sedative, the warmth infused him with calm and distraction, wrapping around him like a blanket until it was all he could focus on.
“Ben.”
Jake opened his eyes, blearily, as though waking from the deepest dream. Samuel gazed down at him, eyes red-rimmed but his smile remained soft.
He tried to speak, to move, panicking to realize he couldn’t. Samuel didn’t seem to expect it of him, instead reached down again to brush quivering fingertips against his forehead, through his hair, down the side of his face. The touch felt warmer still, Jake thought, losing himself in it till he couldn’t remember what frightened him anymore.
“I’m so sorry, Ben,” Samuel said, little more than a whisper. “I’m so sorry, my love.”
Before Jake could even ask why, the image shifted.
This time, he knew where he was before he even opened his eyes. Only one place smelled like cigars and old books woven through with a thread of cold fog.
At least Samuel looked happier this time, he thought, opening his eyes to take in the drawing room he’d so often caught glimpses of in the past couple of days. Sensory memories, fleeting little ghosts compared to this surround-sound immersion.
“There…” Samuel finished tucking a blanket around his knees, then moved him over to a vast picture window looking out onto an equally impressive garden. Jake was used to a shelf of potted plants, ferns and cacti he regularly replaced after his unerringly black thumb killed them off. He’d never seen gardens like this outside of parks. Just out of his line of sight, he knew-without really knowing why-there was a huge ornamental fountain, horses and chariots spewing cold frothy water into the autumn sky. “Will you be all right while I’m gone?”
Jake couldn’t reply here, either. The briefest of moments brought a look of anxiety to Samuel’s dark eyes, and he rested his hands over Jake’s.
No, over Ben’s.
“I have to go, love. I wish to speak to Clarence tonight, and besides…your doctor told us that the best thing for you is to keep doing as we’ve always done, didn’t he?” Samuel touched his cheek, leaned in to kiss his hair. “If we do this, then perhaps…”
Perhaps things would get back to normal. Samuel didn’t say it, but Jake knew. He had a feeling Ben did too; another fear underlay his own, a tension that spoke of disappointment, disillusionment and despair.
He stilled, giving Samuel the only sign of acquiescence he could, given the circumstances.
“Good.” Samuel smiled, though Jake could see the feather-edges of anxiety tightening his eyes. “I’ll hurry back, I promise.”
The image shifted again.
So distracted by the full control he had over his limbs, Jake stumbled mid-walk, only for someone to catch his elbow.
“Careful,” Samuel laughed, touch lingering along his arm as he let go. “It’ll be hard to explain if we go back with your face all bashed in.”
“Oh, please.” The words weren’t Jake’s, but they came as naturally as breathing, as though he was acting out someone else’s script. “As if anyone would believe you could bash anyone’s face in!”
“Oh that’s how it is, is it?” Samuel grinned, stepping in his path and winding his arms around Jake’s waist before he could pull away. “I see.”
A warm breeze blew, carrying with it the scent of summer flowers. Jake looked around, taking in the overgrown country lane, tree-lined and shaded. In the gaps between the trees, a sun-drenched meadow, busy with a riot of red and yellow flowers, led off towards a small village, where a pale church spire jabbed up into a pristine blue sky.
“This is beautiful,” he murmured without thinking. “So peaceful.”
Samuel held him close, face buried in the crook of Jake’s neck. Jake felt the sigh more than heard it.
“Yes, it is. This is what you’ll leave behind, you know.” Samuel turned his head, lips brushing the side of Jake’s neck. “I’m what you’ll leave behind.”
“Sam…”
It wasn’t quite Ben’s conflicted thoughts Jake felt, and not quite his own, rather a weird overlapping of both. His soul knew that Samuel’s intentions would never be anything less than honest and true, but there was a desperation in the flutter of those lips against his skin that spoke of taking any steps, any measures necessary.
“No.” Samuel shook his head, hair tickling Jake’s jaw and sending flickers of pleasure skidding along his skin. “I know you must go, I stand by any decision you make, you know that, but…”
There wasn’t much Jake could say to that. There hadn’t been much Ben could say, either. Instead he just stroked Samuel’s hair, stared up at the tangled canopy of leaves and branches and sky.
“Jake,” a voice called. “Jake?”
The face hovering over his didn’t look much different from all the times before, but the worry creasing Samuel’s dark eyes made Jake wonder what horrific scene he’d landed in now.
Wait. Samuel just called him Jake.
For the second time in as many days, Jake saw the apartment ceiling from a whole new angle. It could do with a new coat of paint, he thought, trying to fill his head with anything but Samuel and the things he’d just experienced. If he thought too hard about that, he was pretty sure his head might explode. Instead he tried focusing on how he’d gotten from the street to his couch.
Sitting up, he weakly brushed off Samuel’s concern.
“Jake-“
“What happened?”
“Ah, well…” Samuel sat back, smiling wryly, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. “I think perhaps my appearance startled those youngsters…”
Jake paused at the term ‘youngsters’. Samuel barely looked five years older than those kids himself, and neither he nor Jake should have been old enough to call teenagers `youngsters`. Maybe in Samuel and Ben’s day, Jake thought, when today’s high school kids would have been the front line soldiers and factory workers, maybe the difference seemed that much greater.
“I’m not entirely sure how I returned,” Samuel went on, “I only knew you needed me, and…” Another wry smile. “Here I am.”
Closing his eyes, Jake just nodded. “The magic can do that?”
“Probably,” Samuel said. “Foolishly, I never did enquire too much about the potential side-effects…”
Jake listened to the silence for a long moment, breathing in the peace and calm that came from this man’s presence.
Denial was over. Something was going on beyond his scope of imagining, and the only way he’d come to terms with it all would be by embracing it. Believing it.
“You need to tell me everything,” he said. “You need to tell me how you got into that casket. And you really need to tell me how I got you out of it.”
* * *
Ben’s family took the news of his death with remarkable grace. Far more than Samuel, that much was certain.
“Thank you, Samuel.” Ben’s mother, dabbing her eyes with a large kerchief borrowed from Ben’s father, patted his arm as she left. “Thank you for all you did to take care of him.”
All he’d done? Driven Ben to his death, that was the extent of Samuel’s so-called help.
No one questioned it. The doctors suggested at one time or another that it might be a potential outcome-they’d experienced it with others in Ben’s situation. No one blamed Samuel, even though it was all his fault.
Even the knowledge that Ben had hardly lived in his condition, not truly, helped ease any of the guilt. Samuel was the only one who’d seen the deterioration, day in and day out. If he stood back and did nothing…would the outcome be the same?
No one would blame him for pulling out of the show.
No one but Clarence.
Samuel wasn’t sure how Clarence would incriminate him in Ben’s death, not without giving his own secrets away, but he had no doubt the older man would, if Samuel reneged on their deal. But there wasn’t a deal, not anymore. Samuel had nothing to show for it.
“Terribly sorry to hear about your friend,” Clarence said, walking into the theatre dressing room before Samuel had to chance to say anything. “That’s the risk we take sometimes, unfortunately.”
Carefully arranging his neck-tie and cloak, Samuel did his best to keep his hands from trembling. “Well,” he said softly, “I suppose now I can’t possibly owe you payment for something that never happened.”
“Pardon me?” Clarence narrowed his eyes. “I upheld my part of the bargain, lad. What came of it is of no consequence to me.”
“No consequence?” Samuel hissed. “Ben is dead.”
“And it was your choice to involve me, my boy,” Clarence said. “You will pay the piper, Samuel. Balance must be struck.”
Clarence strolled out, cigar smoke trailing behind him, as though they’d shared a conversation about the appalling weather they’d endured lately. Samuel let the tension leave him on a shuddering breath, a brief respite from the admission of his fate.
A price worth paying? How stupid.
“Ten minutes till curtain, Mr. Gilbert.” One of the stagehands, a scruffy boy younger than Ben had been when he left for war, stuck his head around the doorway.
“Yes,” Samuel said. “I know.”
He all but sleepwalked through his show, relying on the by rote instinct that had his illusions and tricks memorized. The crowd either didn’t notice, or didn’t care, and Samuel suspected it was a combination of both. They cheered and gasped at all the right moments, though their awe couldn’t reach him-he didn’t think anything could, not anymore.
The finale of the Great Count Mirza’s show, the trick that still gleaned his father some rather menacing letters demanding that he “control his abhorrent heathen of a child”, was named The Relentless Resurrection, and featured the lovely work of art that was his ebony coffin.
Real ones didn’t cost as much, he’d learned. He still wished he didn’t know.
As a prelude to the finale itself, he would close a small animal in the coffin, a mouse or a dove. With the close of the door, a small panel at the bottom of the box would open, closing off the live creature and allowing him access to a dead version, placed there previously. He would invite a member of the audience-usually the gruffest, most reliable looking gentleman he could find within the first two rows-to check on the authenticity of the dead creature, before putting it back. Closing the door once more would reverse the mechanism, revealing, upon opening the door a final time, the creature alive and well, apparently resurrected.
When that was done, he repeated the procedure. With himself.
Slanted mirrors and images of a grotesque corpselike dummy replaced the panels that opened and closed to reveal the dead, then very much alive, creature. He’d choose another member of the audience-this one a theatre worker in on the act-to open and close the door, and to announce fearfully to the audience that the Great Count Mirza was indeed, dead.
Stepping into the coffin never usually troubled him; he’d never been so closely accustomed to death as to fear the implications of his act.
He remembered gazing down at Ben in his coffin, so lovely and peaceful despite it all. The undertaker had indeed done a magnificent job. No one would guess the horrors he’d endured, just by looking.
When the door closed on him, muffling the sounds of the crowd outside, Ben’s face was all he could see.
“Ben…” He whispered, closing his eyes.
He needed to flick the switch for the trick to proceed, but the tears threatened and all he could do was grope blindly along the wall for the concealed button that set things in motion. He’d be granted a moment’s privacy, at least.
The sound of the crowd faded. Samuel frowned, opening his eyes. The reflection of the corpse peered back at him, twisting and changing until it took on Ben’s features, beautiful at first, just as Samuel remembered him, but rapidly decaying, skin peeling, mouth opening in a silent scream.
“Ben!”
“Too late for him, I’m afraid.” Clarence’s voice came from everywhere, came from the dark itself. “As for you…”
“Clarence, please…!”
A sigh, a sound that permeated everything around him. “I truly wish it were too late for you, my boy. It would be much easier on you if it was.”
Even though he couldn’t see, could barely move, Samuel tried to twist around, trying to fathom where the voice came from. “What are you talking about? Clarence, stop this madness this instant! You can’t scare me with your theatrics!”
“You know they are far from theatrics, lad.” Despite it all, Clarence sounded resigned, weary. “I am not to blame for your misfortune. Perhaps you should have made certain your boy wanted to be saved before you went ahead and did so.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Regardless. The due must be paid, Samuel. But in all good conscience I can’t extract the full price for your choices. You’ve already gone some way towards settling your debt, and your intentions were true.”
“I don’t--!”
“It’s a blessing you already own the vessel that will extricate payment,” Clarence said. “It’s a blessing you love this contraption so much. You and it will be well acquainted for some time to come.”
The darkness deepened. Samuel had never dreamed such a thing was possible. Outside, he could just make out the muffled cries and shouts. “He’s gone!” and the crowd’s cheering. The stagehand’s panic must have seeped into their blissful enjoyment, as the cheers became murmurs, became yells.
“What are you doing?”
“When he forgives you, my boy,” Clarence said, which, Samuel noted, wasn’t an answer at all. “When he forgives you your selfish sins, then you’ll have paid the price.”
“I don’t understand!”
“One day he’ll find you. One day you’ll atone.”
“Clarence!”
No answer. The dark swept around him, like swimming in a cold lake at midnight. The noises faded till all he could hear was the rushing of blood in his head and the harshness of his own breathing.
Then nothing at all.
* * *
“And that was it? Till the Halloween store?”
“Not completely. I recall some instances where the coffin was opened, but nothing happened.” Samuel watched him carefully. “Not like you.”
“Because it wasn’t me.” Jake nodded, still a little numb and detached. He stared down at his hands, noticing the grazes had been cleaned off while he’d been out of it. “Because it wasn’t…”
Samuel sighed. “Jake, regardless of what you think, you were the one that woke me from that magic. You. Yes, I might have become confused and-“
“Do I look like him?”
“Yes,” Samuel nodded, “you look a great deal like him. But I’m in no way insinuating that-”
“I was a photographer, before.” Jake got to his feet, feeling a little steadier but by no means stable. “War zones, disasters, places of mass human suffering, you know…” He tried gamely for a depreciating smile. “The stuff that rakes in the money.”
Samuel just watched him. Jake found he couldn’t move too far away from him, as though Samuel himself created a field of something resembling serenity. Something that allowed him to talk.
“For a while I was okay with it, you know. I was making great money, I was traveling the world. People wanted my work. People wanted me, needed me for something. I thought for a while that…” He shook his head. “I don’t know. What I did mattered. Made a difference, somehow. People could see what as going on in places they’d barely even heard of, maybe some of that shit’d get fixed.”
“You felt…compelled to do this.”
It wasn’t a question, but Jake decided to treat it that way. “Yeah. I guess. And I tried pretending it didn’t faze me, wasn’t getting to me more and more every day. I mean, I was just doing my job, right?”
“Jake…” Samuel stood, taking slow, tentative steps towards him.
“I didn’t quit ‘cause I wanted to. I just…people were telling me I was acting strangely, I’d have these…blackouts, memory lapses, whatever. Eventually my doctor told me that if I didn’t quit, I’d end up with serious problems. ‘Course by then, I already had serious problems…”
He didn’t flinch when Samuel wrapped his arms around him, feeling as comforted by the action as he had in the dream, the memory, whatever he’d experienced.
“When I managed to get separated from the rest of the press party somewhere in Israel two years ago, and spent three days hiding in someone’s basement ‘cause I was convinced if I came out I’d be shot, they decided enough was enough. Sent me home, told me I had post-traumatic stress disorder…” He leaned back a little, enough to look up at Samuel. “I guess in your day that would’ve been called shell-shock or something.”
Samuel stared down at him, eyes narrowed. “Do they treat you better in this day and age?”
“Better?” Jake smiled a little. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Good.” Samuel drew him closer again, and Jake closed his eyes, cheek pressed against the soft warmth of Samuel’s shirt.
“Why do I feel so safe when I’m with you?” His lips nuzzled the fabric with every syllable. He felt Samuel draw breath, release it with a soft sound of contentment.
“That, I don’t know. But it doesn’t have to be such a bad thing, does it?”
Jake shook his head, just as Samuel lowered his, their lips meeting in a ghost of a kiss, the contact little more than the movement of warm air.
“I was out there looking for you, you know.” His hands reached up to tangle in Samuel’s hair. “I wanted you to come back, I wanted to explain, to apologize…”
He felt Samuel’s smile in the brush of lips against his forehead, his cheek, his jaw. “You have nothing to apologize for, my love.”
Jake tilted his face up to claim Samuel’s mouth again, the kiss no less gentle for its intensity. His arms wound around Samuel’s shoulders, arching up against him as Samuel’s embrace tightened.
“Sam…” Jake breathed.
Samuel froze, hands on Jake’s shoulder, pushing him back till their eyes met.
“What did you just call me?”
Jake had to track back through his thoughts for a second, everything too jumbled by that odd cocktail of contentment and want.
“Sam,” he said again.
Samuel’s eyes darkened a shade deeper than their usual impossible depths, lips parting on a silent breath. When he spoke, his voice was rough with need, and hearing desire in that proper, precise accent made Jake’s knees weak.
“Again.”
“Sam.” Jake let Samuel yank him closer, crushingly tight. “Sam…”
With a near inhuman growl, Samuel kissed him, deep and demanding, tongue tracing the seam of Jake’s lips before yielding to the temptation and plunging between them.
He’d never been kissed like that before. Never been so overwhelmed by someone else’s need, someone else’s hunger. He should tell Samuel about the memories, he thought, but that could wait while they made some new ones.
There was no resistance this time when he unbuttoned Samuel’s shirt, eager to feel the real, solid warmth of his lover’s chest beneath his hands.
This was his. Somehow, in ways Jake couldn’t explain. And equally, a part of his soul he’d always known searched, longed for something, belonged squarely to Samuel. He wouldn’t be so foolish as to let him go twice.
No. Make that three times.
“Do you have…?” Samuel began, speaking against Jake’s lips in between kisses, dark gaze darting around the room. “Should we, ah…?”
Simple to decipher the code, as if he’d been interpreting Samuel’s words forever. Never quite letting go, never losing that warmth and contact, he led Samuel the short distance across the room towards his bedroom.
He managed a sheepish “Sorry,” as Samuel drew him close again, dismissing his worry with a smile and a kiss. If he’d known he’d have company, he’d have tidied up. As it was, he kept the mess around to antagonize Carrie.
Carrie. Jake vowed that, first thing in the morning, he’d call her up, explain things as best he could. He was already convinced she’d happily snag the attentions of a dozen guys if she went out dressed in that skimpy pixie costume. Besides, she’d known, she’d realized long before he had that Jake’s mind and heart were elsewhere.
He’d felt many things with Carrie, but that strangely sweet shyness wasn’t one of them. Perhaps he’d been Samuel’s lover decades ago, and perhaps his soul even remembered that, but his body felt every inch the new lover, anxious and anticipating all at once.
For someone who’d waited for this for ninety years, Samuel had the patience of a saint. The shaky rise and fall of his chest was all that betrayed his need as Jake pushed the shirt off Samuel’s shoulders, hands mapping the smooth, pale expanse of shoulders, arms, chest. Relearning something he already knew.
Samuel backed up against the edge of the bed, sitting down, arms wrapping around Jake’s waist as his lips nuzzled the thin cotton of Jake’s t-shirt. Funny how he’d never noticed the cold earlier, as though Samuel was still close by, wrapping him in warmth.
“I’m sorry…” Samuel whispered, but Jake knew it had nothing to do with any regret about the embrace.
It still didn’t feel like his place, but either way, he’d felt what Ben felt, knew the conflict that tore up his thoughts when it came to Samuel and the choices Ben made. Leaning down, lips against Samuel’s hair, he breathed, “I forgive you.”
Samuel’s arms tightened, lips pressing open-mouthed kisses through the fabric. Hands skimming up Jake’s back, he pushed up the fabric enough that lips brushed skin, sending sparks of sensation crackling through Jake’s blood.
“Jake.” The word was a vibrating purr, as Samuel’s lips moved toward the jut of Jake’s hipbone, teeth faintly scoring skin, kisses and licks soothing any imagined hurt. One hand clumsily unfastening Jake’s jeans, letting them shush down his legs to pool at his ankles, Samuel muttered something about garments in this day and age, and Jake laughed.
Pausing in his task, Samuel looked up at him, smiling softly, happily, and even as his body thrummed, fever hot, taut as a guitar string stuck in a fireplace, Jake’s thoughts tumbled back, latching onto another time he’d seen Samuel smile that way.
He recognized the field of flowers, red and gold dancing around him on a sweet summer breeze. There was a blanket beneath him, but he could still feel the thick lush movement of the grass through it as Samuel moved above him, all pale, sun-warmed skin and insistent kisses.
Ben. Jake. It didn’t matter. He was one and the same, and in that moment, wherever it was lost in time, he was Samuel’s world.
“Sam,” he murmured, then and now, hands tightening in his lover’s hair as Samuel’s kissed tracked down his body, lavishing attention to every inch of skin he could reach. Kisses to the inside of his elbows, his wrists, the jut of a hip, the vulnerable soft skin of his inner thigh.
The sun beat down, warm and bright enough that Jake had to close his eyes, but Samuel’s mouth was hotter as it closed around his arousal, wet and tight and perfect and so achingly familiar that Jake cried out, and his thoughts spiraled again.
In his apartment, Samuel pressed him back into familiar sheets, but in Jake’s head, there was an oak tester bed, rich dark red damask sheets, and a roaring fireplace. Firelight danced across Samuel’s bare skin, making the sheen of sweat sparkle like lamplight on snow. His hair was in his eyes, darkness shadowing an even darker gaze, but Jake knew what he’d see there if the glow of the fire banked light into Samuel’s face. Passion. Tenderness. Love. Jake’s legs parted around Samuel’s hips, ankles crossed to lock them together, and the hard heat that pressed against him, pressed into him, was sweeter than meadow flowers, hotter than the raging fire.
Safe, but intense in its thrill. Like coming home, but like the first tentative exploration of an unknown land.
This, this was what he’d waited for. This was what he’d searched for, and with every kiss, every touch, every thrust, the fear melted away like ice in the face of a blazing sun, a roaring fireplace.
Now, and then, he clung to Samuel, arching up to meet every erratic shift of his lover’s hips, any trace of resistance or hesitation faded to nothing. Just the need. Just the desperation to bridge a gap that at once seemed impossible, and seemed to disappear with every second, like a bumpy country road beneath thin, speeding tires.
It would never be enough, and there’d never be enough time to make up for what they’d lost, but when Samuel’s hips stilled, thrust driving deeper into Jake than he’d ever known, something shattered inside his soul that made the time apart irrelevant.
They had forever. In flower fields, in dark fire-lit rooms, in the familiar detritus of Jake’s apartment, where the headlights from the highway cast striped shadows on the ceiling, and his body tensed beneath Samuel’s as the climax hit with the tenderness of petals, the ferocity of flames, and the sweet lick of magic.
And, as they lay in each other’s arms, silent save for their heartbeats, the push and pull of breathing, inhale and exhale, the digital clock on the nightstand beeped midnight.
Jake smiled, burrowing into Samuel’s arms.
Maybe those old ghosts would rest easy tonight.