[co-written Milliways futurefic]
Title: Essential Singularity (Fade Out)
Fandom: Milliways/Song of the Lioness. Ish.
Rating: R
Word count: 8,666
Notes: schiarire summed it up pretty nicely:
FAHYE: You know what you should write about? Thom, in a -- thing -- with a normal, unevil, alive human being.
JI: Alive and human? But that's madness! . . . if you write a drabble, I will turn it into a fic.
FAHYE: Legit.
JI: Or I could coerce you into an 8,666 word epic!
FAHYE: Less legit, but I'll do it, apparently!
It started off as one of those indulgent things we do, and by the end our emails consisted basically of: TOO MUCH CYNICISM. SOUL BEING CRUSHED. MAKE IT END SOON. (YOUR PARAGRAPH.)
Ji wrote more of it than I did. But Thomas is my own invention and I am fond of him; someone has to be!
Essential Singularity (Fade Out)
"So I've never met anyone else who spells our name the way you do," the boy said, sitting down in the seat next to Thom's as though he had every right to do so, and planting his feet on top of the seat in front. For a brief moment Thom considered just ignoring him, but this kind of wrongful assumption had to be nipped in the bud.
"What do you mean, our name? It's my name."
"Well, yeah, but it's short for Thomas, right? That's me, too. Thomas Beech, but usually Tom." He shifted his folder from one arm to the other and extended a hand, which Thom ignored in favour of opening his own textbook pointedly.
"No. It's not short for anything."
"Ah. So I shorten my name with a traditional misspelling of your name, which isn't a shortening at all; ironic, isn't it?" He grinned. It was one of those rare grins that was distinct from a smile and yet didn't look forced in the slightest. Thom hated it immediately.
"Not really," Thom said rudely, and turned a page.
Thomas, unfazed, thumped Thom casually on the shoulder and asked, "So?"
"So?" echoed Thom, pretending not to pay attention.
"So, " said Thomas, "where're you from?"
Thom said to the arrangement of imaginary numbers in front of him, "Here."
"What, Boston?"
"No -- here, America." Grudgingly, he added, "But I moved around a lot."
"Cool," said Thomas. "What do your parents do?"
"I don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know?"
"I don't know. We moved around a lot. They didn't talk to me. Or -- well -- "
Thomas asked, "Well?"
"He didn't."
"Oh," said Thomas, and paused. It was testament to the older boy's charisma, Thom noted with some frustration, that the ensuing silence rang as sympathetic as it did awkward. "I'm sorry."
Thom said, "I'm not. I like being alone."
"I can see that," said Thomas.
"So let me."
Thomas said, "Okay, if that's what you want," and opened a book of his own.
~
After that, Thomas sat next to him in that class every day; attempted conversation. Some days Thom responded, but on others he ignored Thomas, refusing even to meet his eyes. On these days, Thom gnawed the end of a pencil, staring straight ahead, processing at a speed he'd almost forgotten that he was capable of. He sat up. Listened. Learned.
One of those days, when class had ended, Thom realized slowly that Thomas was looking at him, and without thinking about what that mean, left the room.
He compared grades with Thomas, without asking, leaning over and snatching the white paper out of his hands. The first time Thom did this, Thomas said with -- unimpressively, Thom felt -- real surprise, "Hey!" and grabbed his test back. A nail scraped against Thom's hand; the paper's thin corner tore.
Innocently, Thom asked, "What?" and put his finger, wincing, against his lips.
"What are you -- "
"I was wondering," Thom said, "which of us did better. Don't look so pissy, Thomas, it was you."
"It's not a contest," said Thomas, frowning.
Thom reached out and flipped up the tag from inside Thomas' T-shirt collar. He said, "No, it isn't -- it's a war. And you're it."
So it began.
~
Thom kept score, both on paper and in his own mind. Thomas remained persistently ahead, but by a margin just narrow enough to be maddening. The more secure his success appeared, the more he complained that the whole thing was unnecessary, and the more he said that it was ridiculous, the more Thom caught him, grinning to himself, and the more Thomas invited Thom to spend time with him outside of class.
"Do you want to get coffee?" he said, more and more often.
"No," said Thom.
"What," said Thomas, "are you a tea person?"
Thom rolled his eyes, exasperated. "No."
"Then you should come," Thomas said. "Come on. Stina will be there, and Tis. And Roy. And Kevin. And Matt. And Jill. It'll be fun." He flashed that personable smile and added, "Don't worry, we won't pick on you for being a child genius."
"No," said Thom. "I have wo -- "
"So do we."
"Yes," said Thom, "but I'm not a genius. You wouldn't understand. Would you."
Thomas looked confused. "Was that a question?"
Just to be perverse, Thom said again, "No."
"So let's get coffee."
"No."
"Thom -- "
"No."
"If you'd let me fini -- "
"No," said Thom.
"But why won't y -- "
Thom said, "Okay, but just once."
"Awesome. Let's go n -- "
"Tomorrow," Thom corrected, and, satisfied, watched Thomas' composure flicker slightly. "We'll go tomorrow."
Thomas looked as if he were going to argue, but then he sighed and said, "Okay. If that's what you want."
"Not as much as I want you to fall in a ditch."
Thom was surprised when that made Thomas laugh; when Thomas answered, "You say that every day, too. It doesn't scare me now."
~
"Hi," said someone.
"Hi," said someone else.
"Hi," said someone else again.
"So you're the other brilliant Tom," said the only person whose name Thom was fairly certain he actually knew. Matt. Yes.
"Yeah," Thom said to all of them, trying to avoid eye contact, and slumped himself down next to Thomas. He dug an elbow into the older boy's side. "Black coffee. Thanks," he said, gambling idly on his courtesy.
He won; Thomas blinked, but stood up with a bright smile. "Looks like I'm treating. What does everyone else want?"
There was a general polite chorus of no, you can't, and Thom laced his hands neatly in his lap and adopted a distant expression.
"So Thom," said a female someone, as Thomas was placing orders at the counter, "what do you plan to do when you graduate?"
"Let him be, Jill." Matt laughed. "He doesn't have to know yet. Hell, I'm graduating in May and half the time I have no idea."
"Actually, I'm thinking of becoming a criminal mastermind," Thom said brightly. He'd picked that phrase up from a film. He liked it.
The coffee wasn't bad; Thom drank his quickly while it was still on the edge of being uncomfortably hot, and spent at least two minutes listening to each person speak before dismissing them as boring, although more intelligent than usual. What was interesting was the way that Stina -- Kristina, he learned, disapproving, was her real name -- and Jill smiled at each other; a way that nobody who had spent a week in Court would mistake for anything less than poison. The way Kevin looked at Stina, and the way that Thomas glued the conversations together.
Thom yawned behind his hand and enjoyed the apologetic beam of Thomas' attention when it was directed to him.
"Wow, I can see why you were so keen for me to come," Thom told him, unenthused.
Thomas shrugged. "Make an effort, Thom."
"To do what?"
"Engage. I don't know." He sounded frustrated. Thom smiled.
"What are you two whispering about?" Roy called, and Thom immediately reversed his tentative approval of Roy, who had, thus far, done nothing other than sit there stirring his coffee and looking disaffected.
"Our engagement," Thom said, raising his voice, and watched Jill spit latte across the table.
~
Thom had hoped that his behavior at coffee would excuse him from all interaction for at least a week, but Thomas seemed determined to show that there were no hard feelings; that he had a sense of humor, just as much as anyone else, and that he wasn't about to give up on Thom's friendship yet. Thom began to wonder whether the real competition lay in the classroom after all, with its equations and right answers, or in what social niceties and loyalty Thomas expected -- someday -- to be able to extract from him. It was laughable, somehow; he had been at Court with Delia, after all, and in contrast all Thomas' efforts to network seemed childish.
Still.
Thom disliked him for being ahead; disliked him for being gregarious. Disliked him for his facile, cheery responses to antagonism. Disliked him for his habit of being liked, in addition to being bright, which ought to have been enough. Disliked him for his stable, steady, inevitable progress; his easy life, his charm, his goodwill.
Besides these reasons Thom hated him for being dull. And so was born the desire to provoke Thomas: to anger him, threaten him, draw him into unfamiliar territory and -- perhaps -- drown him in his own confusion.
And then rob him of everything useful, like picking a skeleton; move on.
~
He began by, simply put, touching Thomas: a tug at his sleeve, a brush, which seemed involuntary, of their shoulders in the lecture hall; their knees, when Thomas finally coerced him to lunch. He watched as Thomas hardly noticed, and made nothing of it. He knocked at Thomas' door one morning, six A.M., nearly in tears; forced his way into the room, and demanded that Thomas explain an aspect of fission. It was the day of their final: the last day, the last excuse for either to spend time in the other's company.
Thomas rubbed his eyes and grumbled and closed the door gently behind Thom. He had a single, Thom noticed as he dropped his notes on the floor, so that they all flew into the air, and made no move towards Thomas. He looked down, scarlet hair uncombed, falling into his face. "I'm sorry," said Thom, in a delicate, low voice. "Nobody takes me seriously, except you. And I'm so -- " he shook, very slightly, as if he hadn't slept, as if he were driven solely by nerves and caffeine, " -- worried -- "
Abruptly, he tipped his head back and gazed wide-eyed up at Thomas, whose mouth was open, who looked shocked. Who looked, just for once, as if he were unsure of the exact course of action. In response, Thom bit his lip, and said, "Would you help me."
Knowing that Thomas would interpret it as a question; knowing that that was just what it wasn't.
~
After that, Thomas seemed convinced that Thom was -- for all his outwards independence -- likely to break under pressure, and added a layer of protectiveness to his normal friendly manner; a little wariness, as well, as though Thom might at any moment sprout a new set of personality complexes. This suited Thom just fine, and kept the older boy just off balance. They weren't anything like comfortable any more.
"Come over for a second?" said Thom's voice on Thomas' voicemail. Pitched at what he hoped was the right mixture of casualness and instability.
When Thomas knocked, Thom let him in distractedly, walked straight back into his room, pulled a textbook from the shelf and started to mumble something about calculus.
"Are you . . . ?" Thomas kicked Thom's bedroom door shut and leaned against the wall.
"Am I what?" Thom looked up blankly.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," with very wide eyes; but he made sure to leave a pause before speaking, and ran his hands nervously over the cover of the book.
"Did you want to . . . I don't know, did you call me for calculus help, or did you want to talk?" Thomas' mouth set.
Thom replaced the book and went to lean against him, exhaling fatigue and resting his head on the other boy's shoulder. "I don't know. Maybe both."
"What are you doing?" Thomas said, and actually sounded angry, the smoothness gone: "Fuck, Thom, I'm just trying to help, but you're . . . Your signals are so damn mixed, do you know that?"
He swallowed. "You are helping. I didn't mean."
Thomas sighed and sat down, running one hand through his hair. Ragged. It was a good look for him, Thom considered.
He stepped into the other boy's personal space and looked serious. "I'm not trying to confuse you," he lied with a perfectly straight face. "Thomas. What can I explain for you?"
Thomas was tall; he didn't have to tilt his chin upwards too far to look Thom in the eye. "This," he said, still sounding annoyed. "This," waving his hand vaguely in the space between the two of them.
"You're smarter than that," Thom said softly, and waited.
"I'm not gay," said Thomas, with his hand on Thom's shoulder, hesitant: either to draw him in, or to shove him away.
Thom said, "So what? I'm not an only child."
A pause. And then Thomas burst out laughing, just a little wilder than Thom had ever heard him before, and then he took a deep breath; dug his fingers into Thom's shirt, down the pale flesh of his arm, saying roughly, "You're such -- a weird -- kid." Kissed him.
And you're a liar, thought Thom, kissing back, leaning in, flinging a thin arm around Thomas and smiling between kisses as if it made him happy. But so am I.
But in a way, it did: every touch, every word from Thomas was an admission of failure. To have reached out, Thom thought. To have changed someone. To have won. Even if the battle was unfair.
Seeing no reason to pretend innocence in the matter, Thom pulled away from Thomas and, slowly, carefully, knelt. Later, he knew: there would be questions.
~
After that, Thom found, was the key phrase to their relations. After that, he rather sensed Thomas would have liked to avoid him, but was constitutionally incapable of avoidance; instead, pushed to confront what he did not understand, he spent more time with Thom, doing his best, in his own way, to break down and rearrange Thom into sensible parts. Thom told him about the past he'd invented, offhand, whenever it seemed least appropriate. Some of it was true, he reasoned. It just wasn't the whole truth. For example, he did have a sister, and she was older than he was, but the difference wasn't comprised of years. She didn't really live in London, either. Or rather, she did: but part-time.
Thomas, who was something of a star pupil, took Thom everywhere with him, so that he began to be recognized, up-and-coming for more than his grades (flawless, after that initial semester in a new and impossible world) and his brazen, guileless ambition. Thom told anyone who would listen that he planned to defy the known laws of nature before he was twenty. Which laws, they asked. Ah -- that would be telling, though, wouldn't it?
The company he kept, Thom began to realize, could be important, especially secondhand. What Thomas -- as much as Thom resented it -- had always known, ever since that first day, when he had tried to shake hands and Thom had refused him, was the meaning of human potential, connections. Sometimes Thom wondered if Thomas thought of it as he did. It didn't seem so. What had taken him more than a lifetime to learn, Thomas had always known, instantly. Thomas did it by instinct: he attracted people, as if he were a natural force, and they liked him.
Thom refused to adopt this method, but went on unraveling Thomas instead. Until he could almost hear the questions that Thomas, previously possessed only of professional curiosity, now held back constantly: who are you really, and what do you want, and do you like me, or not, and who fucked you, like that, when I hadn't.
Questions that went unasked, and so unanswered.
~
Thom, who sat at the front of every class, felt on a Friday he was being watched, and so did not turn around. When it let out, he resisted departure: spoke to the professor, earnest and caustic at once, until he grew bored and made his excuses. As Thom drifted up the steps to the distant exit, he looked around the edges of the room until he saw, where before there had been -- or so it had seemed -- only shadow, now Lucifer stood, silent and wholly composed.
He nodded his recognition and approached, flicking the hair out of his eyes with one careless hand. "What's up?" said Thom.
Lucifer looked down at him. "'What's up,'" he repeated, with obvious distaste. "You're learning bad habits."
"That assumes I ever had any other kind."
"Fair enough," said Lucifer. "What are the new ones?"
Thom considered the question intently enough that Lucifer laughed, cuffed him lightly, and said, "I see I should have said 'who.' Let me guess. Are they an axe-murderer?"
"Yes," said Thom.
Lucifer raised an eyebrow, which Thom interpreted as disbelief. He shrugged and said, "No, then. Walk with me. I don't want to talk here."
"You don't want to talk anywhere," said Lucifer, and pushed him out the door.
~
It was still cold enough that Thom shoved his hands deep in his pockets when they left the gasping heat of the building and turned into a lane full of people who seemed even less significant than they had an hour ago. For a long time, Thom followed Lucifer, falling easily into step, without speaking.
Then he said, solemnly, "You might have called."
"Why?" said Lucifer. "When you have an axe-murderer to attend to you."
Thom said, "I told you, I don't have an axe-murderer."
"Ah. Just a commonplace thug, then."
"No -- no one."
"Still?" Lucifer stopped. "I thought you worked faster than that."
Thom reddened. "What does that mean?"
Lucifer looked at him quietly. He said, "Don't fish for compliments, Thomlet. It isn't becoming."
He made a face. "If that's what you consider a compliment -- "
And felt someone take his hand from behind. "Oh," said Thom, awkwardly. "Thomas. Hello."
Sure enough, when he twisted back to see who was there, Thomas was smiling at him, just for a second: and then that high-voltage smile directed itself at Lucifer. Thomas said, friendly, "Hello -- have we met?"
"I don't believe so," Lucifer said, pushing a stray lock of black hair out of his face in a mannerism Thom had never seen before. His hair was longer, starting to show a hint of curl.
"Thomas." Polite nod.
"Thom and Thomas." Lucifer's mouth twitched. "Now isn't that ironic?"
"No, " said Thom.
Thomas laughed. "Sore point, I'm afraid."
"Ah, I see," Lucifer said, and then, "Sam," extending his hand about two microseconds before Thom could open his mouth and say Lucy.
"Pleased to meet you." And there was that about Thomas: he always did look genuinely pleased.
"I was going to take Thom out for an early dinner," said Lucifer smoothly, "but you must come too. If you're free, of course."
"That's very kind of you, Sam."
"It had better," Thom said to Lucifer as they were leaving, all but under his breath, "be a really fucking expensive restaurant."
It was.
"Champagne," said Lucifer, pointing carelessly to something that probably cost the same amount as a decent stereo.
"House white," said Thomas, who was legal to drink.
Grape juice, said Lucifer's voice in Thom's head, trust me on this, and Thom blinked a few times because this wasn't really something they did, but he ordered it anyway, and wasn't particularly surprised when his first tentative sip revealed a chemical change that he knew usually took much longer then thirty seconds. It was very, very good wine; this didn't surprise him either.
Lucifer smiled at him.
Thom had no idea at all what to expect from this evening, so he kept quiet and ordered the most expensive things on the menu and listened to Lucifer and Thomas exchange utterly, exquisitely normal, charming, courteous conversation about nothing in particular, until sometime between the entrée and the main course when Lucifer said, "Excuse me, gentlemen," and wandered in the direction of the bathrooms. Thom glared at his back as subtly as possible.
Thomas cleared his throat. "So that's who -- " he said awkwardly, and then stopped.
"Who what?" asked Thom, who knew what.
"Nothing." But a few mouthfuls later he burst out with, "How old is he? Twenty-eight? Thirty? "
"I don't know," Thom said, frank. "I've never asked. It would be rude," almost chiding, enjoying himself immensely.
"It's," Thomas began, and then set his mouth in the familiar line of self-censure. Thom pretended not to notice and took a long sip of his wine. "I suppose he's very -- " and Thomas cut off; he couldn't quite seem to finish his sentences, somehow.
Thom prompted, "Very?"
"Attractive. Charismatic." It sounded like an accusation.
Thom smiled at him, the shy flash of a smile that ducked onto his face like an accident, and let Thomas interpret that however he wanted. The older boy chewed mulishly at his food, and -- uncharacteristically -- didn't initiate further conversation when Lucifer returned to the table. After a moment, however, he eyed the level of his glass in something resembling surprise, and stood up.
"I didn't think I'd had so much to drink, but . . . you'll have to excuse me, now."
"Nice," Thom said acidly, when Thomas had left, and ate a forkful of mashed potatoes that were obscenely good and probably not actually called mashed potatoes at all, but something French and expensive-sounding.
Lucifer shrugged. "Easiest. What did he have to say?"
"Oh, just the usual." Thom gestured with his fork. "You're too old for me now and you were definitely too old for me at whatever age you presumably stole my virtue."
"Is that all?"
Thom grinned. "Don't fish for compliments, Sam. It's unbecoming."
Lucifer pushed his sleeves past his elbows and laughed in a way that turned heads and made Thom's face flush pink. He sulked and rolled a glass of cold water against his cheeks and refused to say another word until Thomas returned. "So," Thom said then, slightly damp but mercifully pale. "I suppose this makes it my turn."
Lucifer just looked at him and raised a perfect eyebrow in a perfect expression of perfect amusement, and Thom rolled his eyes violently and took the hint. He didn't even think about it, just placed his hand briefly against the bare skin of Lucifer's collarbone as he walked past on his way to the bathroom and dug his nails in a bit -- very funny -- before wondering what it would look like to Thomas. Or to anyone else. But then, he'd never made much of a habit of caring.
Thom's strong, strong urge was to rush back to the table as fast as possible, but he decided that Lucifer would be far too entertained by this, and so he took his time.
~
When he came back, a sort of Cold War had set in around the table, entrenching itself deeper and deeper with every increasingly anodyne word. "Huh," said Thom, and dropped into his seat with the blithe, physical innocence of the painfully unaware. "So -- what'd I miss?"
"Oh," said Lucifer, "Thomas here was just telling me about his plans for the future. Very impressive."
Thomas began to say something modest, but before he got past "It's not really that -- ," Lucifer finished, "But I'm sure you already know everything about them."
"Of course." Thom ticked off ideas on his fingers. "Graduate with extra words in dead languages, go to grad school, drop out of grad school, change the world, live in a room full of thirty-inch monitors . . . have lunch with Bill Gates . . . and become a vegetarian."
Sounding slightly strained, Thomas laughed. "Those sound more like your plans for the future, Thom." He reached across the table and, just for a moment, brushed Thom's knuckles with the back of his hand.
"No," said Thom, serious. "You've forgotten already, I just want to be a criminal mastermind."
"Criminally overeducated, perhaps," Lucifer murmured.
Thom said, "You would know."
"I'm sorry?" asked Thomas.
"Well, I mean," said Thom, watching Thomas' face, "Sam is paying for it."
While Thomas' expression flickered wildly, like a candle in the wind, Lucifer let out a refined tsk; said, "Thomling. Didn't your mother teach you not to talk about money at the table? It's extremely crass."
Brightly, Thom answered, "Nope, she was too busy being dead."
"Of course," said Lucifer. "How could I forget?"
Thom sighed. "Probably because you never think about me . . . anymore."
"Why, Thom," Lucifer drawled. "I'm -- "
"Sorry," said Thomas suddenly. "I'm afraid I don't feel very well. If you'll excuse me . . . ?" He stood up, moved to shake Lucifer's hand and said, with total apparent sincerity, "It was very nice to meet you, sir."
Smiling, Lucifer said, "Likewise, Thomas Beech," and held his hand just a little too long before releasing it in a manner that somehow gave the impression that he, by letting go, had dismissed Thomas: waved him away.
"Are you okay?" asked Thom, violet eyes round, biting his lip.
Thomas said, "Oh, don't worry about me. I just feel a little -- nauseous, somehow. I'll see you tonight."
"Right," said Thom. And as Thomas walked towards the door, before he had quite left the room, Thom leaned over: and kissed Lucifer full on the mouth.
~
Lucifer raised an eyebrow. "You've lost subtlety."
"Subtlety wouldn't do it, with Thomas." Thom looked down at the small cup being slid in front of him. "You ordered coffee?"
"Two macchiatos," the waitress said, redundantly, and Thom noted: two, and had to smile.
They drank without saying anything more until Lucifer set his cup back into its saucer with a tiny clink and asked, "What are you doing with him?"
"Well," Thom said, "I don't see how that's any of your -- "
But Lucifer held up a hand, cutting him off. "You know better," he said quietly.
Thom realized his mistake but wasn't about to apologize for it; okay, yes, he'd dropped into laziness, grown accustomed to needing no more than words and the bare minimum of body language to read most people. As ever, there'd never been anything to Lucifer's question but curiosity. "Autopilot," he said instead.
"Do I need to repeat the question?"
Thom bit his lip and slowly released it. "I haven't decided yet," he said. "But he's more interesting than he was before he met me."
"Public service, then." Lucifer smiled.
"I do my bit." Thom stood up. "If nothing else, he'll be someone to know. In the future."
"If you don't antagonize him to the point of enmity first." Lucifer put a cheque on the table for what was, no doubt, exactly the right amount. Thom didn't look at it, just headed for the door. It was an interesting point, Thom conceded; he wasn't sure to what extent the game was for his own benefit, and to what extent it merely satisfied a ferocious, inherent desire to destroy what was attractive and worthwhile.
"In which case," he said coolly, "I shall make do with my own talents."
It wasn't a warm night; Thom could feel himself starting to shiver, but Lucifer wandered along with his bare forearms and open collar and received resentful glances from other pedestrians. After a few minutes, Thom said, "You know, you can be a real -- "
"Yes?" said Lucifer, in magnificent tones of indifference.
Teeth digging anxiously into his lower lip, Thom didn't finish. Then, "If you only wanted to come and bitch, and act aloof, like a spoiled child, then why visit me at all?" He stopped in his tracks and waited, eyes fixed on Lucifer's distant, immutable face.
Lucifer said, very low, almost sneering, "Spoiled. " He turned and seized Thom by the shoulders: pushed him roughly, with a flick of fine wrists, back against the red, crumbling brick of the wall alongside. "Think carefully, Thom of Trebond. Is that -- " his fingers tightened " -- really what you want to say to me?"
"If it'll get a reaction," said Thom, and attempted to shrug, shifting slightly under (into) Lucifer's nails.
The devil laughed. "If you weren't working so hard to earn it," he said, "I would slap you."
"If I stopped trying," asked Thom, looking up at him, serious, "would you?" And the curve at the corner of his lips, the delicate, half-begun smile, teased: No one abuses me anymore.
Lucifer tangled his fingers in Thom's hair and yanked back, bent to murmur against the pale flesh of Thom's throat, the smooth blue vein: "Not tonight, Thom." Thom rolled his eyes, which meant Fuck you, which meant tonight, and kicked Lucifer hard in the shin.
~
After that, Thom stood outside Thomas' door and gave it a few casual pounds, to no answer. He turned and leaned back against it; called Thomas, and smiled, unsurprised, when there was no answer. "Hey," said Thom after the beep, closing his eyes, pitching his light voice to be heard. "I guess you're out. I just wanted to let you know -- "
The door wrenched open, and Thom fell through backwards, straight into Thomas, who said, "So -- you're back," and pushed him upright. "How was it?"
Turning to face him, Thom said, "Uh, it was fine. I haven't seen Sam in a long time."
"Good," said Thomas. "How did. How did the two of you meet?"
Thom said, "Oh, that was years ago," and watched Thomas struggle not to react. "We met in Gallipoli. On the twenty-fifth of April, if you can believe it. That's coincidence, huh."
"What?"
"I told you," said Thom. He scowled. Pouted, really. "I traveled a lot, and there was never anybody to -- "
Thomas interrupted, sounding pained, "I know. I know. You have told me, I'm sorry."
"Whatever." Thom took a step forward and delicately put his arms around Thomas; buried his face in the older boy's shoulder, and breathed in.
Thomas, without moving, asked in neutral tones, "Is that -- a hickey?"
"Yes," said Thom.
"And . . . you're not even going to lie about it."
Thom blinked and pulled back. "Why? Is it a problem?"
"Is it a problem? " asked Thomas. "Is it a -- are you serious? My God, Thom, haven't you ever gone out with anyone before? Is that what he taught you?"
Reasonably, Thom said, "I don't see why it matters. We aren't in love. We aren't even friends."
A violent, fleeting, struck expression passed over Thomas' face. He said, "What do you call it, then?"
"Nothing," said Thom. "Should I?"
Thomas said, "I just," and slid a finger the length of Thom's throat, fiercely possessive. He hooked it in the hollow of Thom's collarbone; spread his hand flat, save for that finger, over the rough cotton of Thom's T-shirt, over his chest. "I guess we never talked about this. I never thought that we needed to."
"We never needed to talk about what?" demanded Thom, and shoved his hand away.
"Fuck, Thom," said Thomas. "You're my boyfriend. Or why do we -- "
Thom, looking as stunned as he sounded, only slightly more stunned than he actually felt, protested, "I am not. "
"Why the hell not? How do you figure?"
"This isn't science, Thomas." Thom sucked in air, furious. "You can't start trying to disprove something as a way of validating the theory."
"Meaning what?" Thomas snapped.
"Meaning, fuck," and Thom wished this was Lucifer who would know what he meant, or Alanna who would get loud and angry so that he wouldn't have to, or Roger who wouldn't care at all, and instantly he hated Thomas with a pulse of sickening nausea for making him think about Roger. After so long. "Meaning I don't have to tell you why not until you tell me why I am. Your -- whatever."
"Boyfriend," said Thomas, white, obviously holding himself very still. "Which is not a word I've ever had to use before, you know that, so I'd appreciate it if you stopped acting like a little shit and -- "
"I told you. I'm not in love with you," Thom said very clearly. "Not even a little bit."
"I never thought you were," Thomas said, a localized explosion of irritation. "And I'm not -- I mean, not -- we don't have to be. To be dating. Surely you realize that."
"We're not dating."
Thomas' control was disintegrating again, his hands touching the back of his own head, the tops of his legs, each other; indecisive bursts of motion that never quite reached Thom. "But you feel . . . I mean, you care about me in some way -- "
Thom laughed. "No," he said, injecting far too many years' worth of cynicism and acquired danger into the single word, not caring about the anachronism of his mockery, not really caring about anything: so it came as a complete shock when one of Thomas' hands finally broke into his personal orbit and caught him on the side of the head.
It wasn't even a hard blow; Thom gasped more out of surprise than anything else.
"Oh God." Thomas looked aghast. "Thom. I didn't mean to -- I'm so sorry. I should go. Or you should. I don't want -- it was an accident -- I'm sorry. "
Thom didn't doubt it had been mostly an accident, but he was a scientist now and mostly wasn't quite good enough anymore; there was a margin of error there that contained deliberation; contained something very interesting indeed. Enough so that just before he left he ducked forward and kissed Thomas, just once, his mouth open and approving against the other's boy's unmoving lips.
"Well done," Thom whispered, and turned his back on Thomas' shattered expression.
~
Thomas confronted him the next morning, excessively earnest and wanting, Thom knew, to talk. He said: "We need to talk," and confirmed it, hovering at a conscious, safe distance from Thom. To protect him, Thom supposed.
He nodded, "All right," and let him in.
"Thanks," said Thomas. He wouldn't sit down. Thom watched, amused, as Thomas ran a distracted hand through his own hair, and tried to remember if Thomas had been possessed of that particular habit before. "Can I -- Thom. Can I ask you a question?"
Thom said, blankly, "Yes."
"Thom," said Thomas again, as if by naming him, he might explain him. "Does -- that man. Sam. Does Sam," and he swallowed, "abuse you?"
The way that Thomas emphasized the word, hesitant, made Thom start to laugh, and when he saw the confusion on Thomas' face he could not stop. He doubled over, fingers pressed to his lips, giggling into his hands. He slid down with his back to the door and laughed until it hurt: the absurdity of it, the ignorance of this boy with his efforts to own and protect, the fact that he would never know what abuse was, or neglect, or what it was to hear the artificial heartbeat of a traitor one's sister had killed for the good of all thunder faster than one's own heart, and still want. Thomas wanted to have him -- why? And to protect him -- from what?
As the smallness of his new life closed in around him, Thom drew his knees up to his chest, slowly lapsing into silence, until Thomas came forward at last to fold Thom in his arms, saying over and over again, with threadbare horror, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
Thom said, "You don't understand. Sam never did anything to me that I didn't want."
"You don't have to tell me that," said Thomas. "You don't have to -- "
"I'm not looking out for him," Thom said, and frowned for the first time at Thomas without prettiness. "I mean it. It isn't worth lying about this."
Thomas said, "You're right, I don't understand."
"Hasn't that happened to you before?" asked Thom. "Try not to faint."
"God damn it, Thom," said Thomas. "I'm on your side, I'm trying to -- "
Thom said, "To what? To help? I don't need it."
"Don't you?" Thomas moved as if to shove him, but stopped, hissed instead, "You were always coming around here before, begging for it, all, Thomas, obviously I can't do this on my own, would you -- "
Irritated more by the note-perfect reproduction of his own intonation than by anything else, Thom did shove Thomas, shouting, "Shut up, maybe I've grown out of that!"
"You're seventeen, Thom," said Thomas. "You have a lot of fucking growing to -- "
Thom interrupted him, laying one hand on either side of Thomas' face, moving a thumb over Thomas' cheekbone; he leant forward, so that their foreheads touched, and said, "Thomas. I'm not going to beg you for anything ever again. I'm not even going to ask. So," he smiled, vicious, free of pretense: radiant. "Don't worry."
"That isn't what I meant," began Thomas, but Thom released him then, stood up, and pulled Thomas up after him.
"I'm going to beat you this semester," said Thom, "and it's going to be the best fucking ride of your life. See you in class."
~
By the turn of the quarter, Thom was able to correct some of Thomas' work, and made sure that he knew it. Thomas gave him that look which had become so familiar: the thin, tight set of his lips, and the weakening horror. However, after a week or so of something that was dangerously close to sulking, Thomas threw himself into the competition with a ruthlessness that delighted Thom. It would have been boring to win it without a fight.
Thom taught Thomas, with the greatest cheerfulness, about sabotage. Left alone in Thomas' room, he deleted files from Thomas' computer: renamed others. He checked books that Thomas needed out of the library, read them himself, and then hid them. He followed Thomas to class and, from his seat next to Thomas, asked foolish questions, or else feigned sleep, his head resting on Thomas' shoulder. Projects went missing. Grades fluctuated wildly with Thom's mood -- and his ability to bypass the system.
But then one day Thomas wrote a virus that wiped Thom's computer entirely and left it restarting itself continuously, stuck on a loop, like a kind of monstrous electronic jack-in-the-box. Thom laughed, called Thomas to congratulate him and, while they were on the phone, slowly, laboriously, with one hand, he started to write one back.
The obvious next step: friendly fire.
~
"Well. You look -- "
"Sensational," Thom said, twisting in front of the mirror. "I'm going to knock them dead. Et cetera."
Thomas laughed at him; definitely at him, not with him, something that hadn't happened in a while, but Thom looked at the way the trousers fell and decided that he really didn't care.
"Who'd have known," Thomas said, grinning. "Our Thom, a dandy."
Thom didn't even bother to refute that, but grabbed another five ties in varying lurid colors. Thomas winced.
"Purple, Thom," he said firmly. "Not yellow."
"Whatever," said Thom, already moving on to the next rack. It had been so long since he had worn silk: the feel of the ties, more than their color, ran through his white hands with hardly a ripple. The one he wore now, drawn as tightly as he could bear, the knot settled in the base of his throat, reminded him obscurely of Delia, even as paper tags scraped against his skin, inside his sleeves, reminding him that this clothing was not his. Not yet, he thought, and caught Thomas by the hem of his shirt; pulled him into a changing booth and looked at the pair of them reflected in tall mirrors. He said, seriously, "Why purple?"
Thomas straightened his suit jacket, deft fingers slipping down around Thom's waist. "It's less distracting," he said. "Baudelaire used to be very fond of -- well, he usually couldn't afford it, but when he could, he was fond of wearing just black and white, you know, like suits now. Only he would do it with some colorful accent. A flower, or -- he had a pair of pink gloves that he really liked."
"I don't know who that is," Thom said.
"A French poet. Anyway," said Thomas. "My point was that you don't need that, you accent yourself so well already. If you throw in a bunch of colors like yellow and this -- what is this -- chartreuse -- then it spoils the effect. It's just confusing."
Thom suggested, "Chaotic. Awkward."
"Exactly. You want to emphasize yourself. Highlight. Not obscure."
To himself, Thom thought, Or do I? and walked out for more.
~
"It's odd," Thomas said, later, watching Thom juggle and holding his hands out to take the bags of clothes. "You could stand out so easily, if you wanted to. But normally you seem to go out of your way to appear . . . I don't know, harmless. Unremarkable."
"Really?" Thom drawled.
Thomas looked away, some of the familiar irritation and wariness starting to appear again. "I have a good eye. And I know better. But don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about."
"Maybe I'm biding my time." Thom signed the receipt with his completely illegible scrawl and thought about looking one's best; about knocking people dead, and raising them up.
~
By the end of the semester, Thom had secured a minor, slavish summer position in a laboratory of subdued importance, along with a full roster of summer classes. He went to the airport with Thomas and made a point of not helping with any of Thomas' bags. Then he took money for a taxi out of Thomas' wallet while Thomas checked in and, without kissing him goodbye, just left, letting the automatic doors squeak enormously shut behind him.
Having learned to try out personalities as one might test drive a car, in the lab Thom signaled that he was: respectful, original, brilliant, and driven without being grasping or unsporting; focused. He cultivated those who seemed as if they might be persuaded to cultivate him. He arrived early and left late.
It was too easy.
~
That August, when the humidity had plastered frail strands of scarlet hair darkly against Thom's fair face, and he had discovered that the necessary amount of clothing in summer was significantly less than it had been in Tortall, he let Lucifer -- untouched, as always, by the vagaries of weather -- take him for drinks in the city.
"I never offer to pay, you know," he said when he was quite drunk, "in case you actually accept."
"You don't have any money of your own, Thom," Lucifer pointed out, seeming amused. "It would be even more meaningless than it already is."
"A little game you play, then," said Thom. He attempted the subtle theft of Lucifer's cigarette, but to no avail: sulked. Petulantly, he asked, "Can I have one, too? Please?"
Lucifer arched a dubious eyebrow and repeated, without enthusiasm, "'Please,' is it?" He handed Thom the cigarette that he had been affecting to smoke and produced for himself, from thin air, a new one; although it looked quite as steadily begun as the last.
"I've been told it's a free country." Smoothly, with the grace of remembrance, Thom fitted the cigarette between his lips, closed his eyes, and inhaled. It tasted terrible, but so familiar that he enjoyed it immensely. "Of course, I've also been told that it's illegal to smoke in bars," he said, taking another pull.
"That expression of yours," observed Lucifer, "is what ought to be illegal," idly running his nails the length of Thom's exposed forearm. Thom choked and blushed, coughing on smoke. Lucifer laughed. "You haven't changed so much, after all."
"No," said Thom weakly. "Just my surroundings."
Lucifer said, "I wondered if you had noticed."
"It is different," insisted Thom. "Tremendously so. It's been giving me difficulty -- "
"What, being away from everyone and everything that you've ever known? How," and Lucifer paused, apparently searching for the right damning adjective. "Trite, Thomlet. I would have thought that you'd be accustomed to that by now."
Thom gave Lucifer his best I am not impressed face, which, as he had learned it from Lucifer, did not impress. "No. I meant, Tortall was so -- " he waved a hand, drawing grey wisps through the air. " -- volatile. If you were only in the right place at the right time, and if you had a little skill, you could just -- reach out and touch it, and the world would move. It was," he said, "totally possible to rewrite the fabric of history in a very short time. It was so simple."
"And this world," said Lucifer, not missing a beat.
He laughed. "I rather feel as if I could know the secret of life and still not be able to make the slightest difference."
Emotionlessly, Lucifer took a drink; said, "So you're giving up."
"Not at all," said Thom. He stubbed out the cigarette and, turning, grasped Lucifer's collar with both hands; tugged gently, so that Lucifer would look at him. "After all, as you said, I've not changed so much -- I know how to make sure I'm noticed, and what's more, remembered." He started to smile, and then, because he was drunk, glowing, grinned instead, promise written extravagantly through every line of his being. "I'm going to change the world," said Thom. "I'm going to change it completely. Once I've started, I won't even have to lift a finger -- I'll just stand in the middle of everything, and change will go out from me."
Lucifer pulled Thom's hands down and returned them to him, casual: "It may be a blessing for some," he said, "that you've no interest in politics."
Thom shook his head, undaunted. "The physical facts are more dangerous, aren't they?"
"That depends entirely," said Lucifer, "on who's behind them."
"God?" asked Thom. "It won't be, you know -- it'll be me -- me, me."
~
When Thomas came back, Thom was surprised to find that he had changed: he was harder, somehow; whatever the past few months had done, Thom neither knew nor wanted to know, but felt sure he approved. Once Thomas had done moving in, he came to see Thom without calling, without even knocking. He opened the unlocked door and said calmly, coldly, "I'm going to win this year, you know." Then he crossed the room to Thom in two long, efficient strides: seized him by the shoulders.
Thom said, "So you did miss me, after all," and it began again, worse than before.
It was the year that Thomas graduated, his future job already secure, and after the ceremony (which Thom didn't attend) Thom sat up all night with him, pouring screwdrivers and reminding Thomas, "You're only done a semester ahead of me."
"A semester and a summer," said Thomas. "I still won."
Thom said, "Fuck you, you started out two years ahead. And I'm not taking classes this summer."
"Fuck you," said Thomas, and gave the same genuine smile he had never lost. "According to your rules, I won, fair and square."
"I like losing, I guess."
"It sure seems like it, sometimes."
"Okay," said Thom, and held up his hands. "What do you want, mister?"
Thomas said, "What I always wanted." He pulled the bottle of vodka out of Thom's protesting hands and dropped it in the trash. "When you're someone to know, remember that I -- I -- found you first, Thom." Easily, he turned Thom's wrist up to the fluorescent lights; kissed the skin. Bit down. "You've got my fingerprints all over you."
"But you didn't invent me," said Thom, and allowed it.
~
That summer, during which he refused to answer even a single one of Thomas' calls, Thom lived, day and night, in a laboratory of semi-realized importance, and he pushed, from behind the scenes, from the ground up, for that eventual realization. On those occasions when he did stumble home, he slept, showered, and took to buying new clothes instead of wasting time to wash anything. He was always rushing, always disheveled, and at an inverse pace he was losing control of his façade: he was able, at least, to keep his grip on politeness, but he had already passed away from mere focus and into ambition, so that those who had known him for months stopped and looked twice. Life on his feet was like falling down stairs, at the bottom of which was only his own venomous, insatiable personality, fueled by his voracious intellect.
Fueled by contempt.
The trick to success without kindness: those abilities which you claim, possess wholly: prove yourself: take hold. That summer, Thom, at the elbows and backs of his superiors, began to reveal himself. That summer, hot enough to break records, he seduced a scientist between shifts, as simply as he might have solved an equation, all white coats and dark, cool, geometric glasses. And together, in that lab, that summer, they made a breakthrough in the development of clean, safe, affordable energy. A small part of this discovery, the scientist said in the heedless glory of it, belonged to Thom: forever, to keep, to know and to use.
After that, before he had quite finished school, doors began opening.
~
'Thomas,' in this world, he learned, meant 'twins.' If Thom was short for Thomas, then perhaps what he found himself doing, too, was shorter, somehow incomplete, dysfunctional. He found that those who were exposed to him long enough begin to resemble him. As if he were making copies of himself, Thom watched as people became affectatious, distracted, and -- in Thomas' case -- very rarely, very slightly crueler. As if he were an infectious disease.
He thought, having become recently aware of this trivia, of the tendency of Oppenheimer's students to imitate him, and of the difference between this conscious decision and the phenomenon which follows him. The physical gestures. The rolled, rude "Obviously," thrown back in his face.
Like J. Robert Oppenheimer, Thom A. Trebond harbored a secret initial. Unlike the former, he held it close, reminded himself of someone he loved and of someone who had never, in fact, existed. Of someone who might have been a unity, the result of the original pair. Whenever he was asked, like Oppenheimer, what this initial stood for, he said, Absolutely nothing.
And so kept her to his heart. Possessing in secrecy.
~
When he had graduated, and when he had gone into the desert, he called Thomas back, finally. Even after their separation Thomas answered on the first ring. Warily, down the line, the familiar: "Yes? Are you all right? "
Thom said, "Where are you now?"
"I'm abroad," said Thomas, "I -- "
"Whatever. You know what you should do?"
Thomas said, after a pause, "No, Thom. What do you think I should do?"
"I'm in New Mexico," said Thom. "Los Alamos. Come and see."
Despite his inflection, the steadiness of his voice, it was a question: and Thomas, he suspected, knew; he waited for, and was rewarded by, Thomas' audible smile.
"Thom," said Thomas, "I can't, I'm in Russia."
"For research?" asked Thom, and cut him off. "I don't care. Listen, we'll find you a job -- I have one, and I know some people, it'll work out. Come on, it'll be just like college. We can -- "
Thomas said, "Get drunk, and fall into a cactus, I suppose."
"Correction. We can get drunk, and I can push you into a cactus."
"Not unless you're a lot stronger than you used to be, Thom," said Thomas, and Thom started to laugh.
"Just come," said Thom, sensing the shape of the future, its inexorable lightness, the exchange between them, and wished that Thomas could see his face. "Come and see me.
"We'll make it work."
Knowing all along what the answer would be.
Fandom: Milliways/Song of the Lioness. Ish.
Rating: R
Word count: 8,666
Notes: schiarire summed it up pretty nicely:
FAHYE: You know what you should write about? Thom, in a -- thing -- with a normal, unevil, alive human being.
JI: Alive and human? But that's madness! . . . if you write a drabble, I will turn it into a fic.
FAHYE: Legit.
JI: Or I could coerce you into an 8,666 word epic!
FAHYE: Less legit, but I'll do it, apparently!
It started off as one of those indulgent things we do, and by the end our emails consisted basically of: TOO MUCH CYNICISM. SOUL BEING CRUSHED. MAKE IT END SOON. (YOUR PARAGRAPH.)
Ji wrote more of it than I did. But Thomas is my own invention and I am fond of him; someone has to be!
Essential Singularity (Fade Out)
"So I've never met anyone else who spells our name the way you do," the boy said, sitting down in the seat next to Thom's as though he had every right to do so, and planting his feet on top of the seat in front. For a brief moment Thom considered just ignoring him, but this kind of wrongful assumption had to be nipped in the bud.
"What do you mean, our name? It's my name."
"Well, yeah, but it's short for Thomas, right? That's me, too. Thomas Beech, but usually Tom." He shifted his folder from one arm to the other and extended a hand, which Thom ignored in favour of opening his own textbook pointedly.
"No. It's not short for anything."
"Ah. So I shorten my name with a traditional misspelling of your name, which isn't a shortening at all; ironic, isn't it?" He grinned. It was one of those rare grins that was distinct from a smile and yet didn't look forced in the slightest. Thom hated it immediately.
"Not really," Thom said rudely, and turned a page.
Thomas, unfazed, thumped Thom casually on the shoulder and asked, "So?"
"So?" echoed Thom, pretending not to pay attention.
"So, " said Thomas, "where're you from?"
Thom said to the arrangement of imaginary numbers in front of him, "Here."
"What, Boston?"
"No -- here, America." Grudgingly, he added, "But I moved around a lot."
"Cool," said Thomas. "What do your parents do?"
"I don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know?"
"I don't know. We moved around a lot. They didn't talk to me. Or -- well -- "
Thomas asked, "Well?"
"He didn't."
"Oh," said Thomas, and paused. It was testament to the older boy's charisma, Thom noted with some frustration, that the ensuing silence rang as sympathetic as it did awkward. "I'm sorry."
Thom said, "I'm not. I like being alone."
"I can see that," said Thomas.
"So let me."
Thomas said, "Okay, if that's what you want," and opened a book of his own.
~
After that, Thomas sat next to him in that class every day; attempted conversation. Some days Thom responded, but on others he ignored Thomas, refusing even to meet his eyes. On these days, Thom gnawed the end of a pencil, staring straight ahead, processing at a speed he'd almost forgotten that he was capable of. He sat up. Listened. Learned.
One of those days, when class had ended, Thom realized slowly that Thomas was looking at him, and without thinking about what that mean, left the room.
He compared grades with Thomas, without asking, leaning over and snatching the white paper out of his hands. The first time Thom did this, Thomas said with -- unimpressively, Thom felt -- real surprise, "Hey!" and grabbed his test back. A nail scraped against Thom's hand; the paper's thin corner tore.
Innocently, Thom asked, "What?" and put his finger, wincing, against his lips.
"What are you -- "
"I was wondering," Thom said, "which of us did better. Don't look so pissy, Thomas, it was you."
"It's not a contest," said Thomas, frowning.
Thom reached out and flipped up the tag from inside Thomas' T-shirt collar. He said, "No, it isn't -- it's a war. And you're it."
So it began.
~
Thom kept score, both on paper and in his own mind. Thomas remained persistently ahead, but by a margin just narrow enough to be maddening. The more secure his success appeared, the more he complained that the whole thing was unnecessary, and the more he said that it was ridiculous, the more Thom caught him, grinning to himself, and the more Thomas invited Thom to spend time with him outside of class.
"Do you want to get coffee?" he said, more and more often.
"No," said Thom.
"What," said Thomas, "are you a tea person?"
Thom rolled his eyes, exasperated. "No."
"Then you should come," Thomas said. "Come on. Stina will be there, and Tis. And Roy. And Kevin. And Matt. And Jill. It'll be fun." He flashed that personable smile and added, "Don't worry, we won't pick on you for being a child genius."
"No," said Thom. "I have wo -- "
"So do we."
"Yes," said Thom, "but I'm not a genius. You wouldn't understand. Would you."
Thomas looked confused. "Was that a question?"
Just to be perverse, Thom said again, "No."
"So let's get coffee."
"No."
"Thom -- "
"No."
"If you'd let me fini -- "
"No," said Thom.
"But why won't y -- "
Thom said, "Okay, but just once."
"Awesome. Let's go n -- "
"Tomorrow," Thom corrected, and, satisfied, watched Thomas' composure flicker slightly. "We'll go tomorrow."
Thomas looked as if he were going to argue, but then he sighed and said, "Okay. If that's what you want."
"Not as much as I want you to fall in a ditch."
Thom was surprised when that made Thomas laugh; when Thomas answered, "You say that every day, too. It doesn't scare me now."
~
"Hi," said someone.
"Hi," said someone else.
"Hi," said someone else again.
"So you're the other brilliant Tom," said the only person whose name Thom was fairly certain he actually knew. Matt. Yes.
"Yeah," Thom said to all of them, trying to avoid eye contact, and slumped himself down next to Thomas. He dug an elbow into the older boy's side. "Black coffee. Thanks," he said, gambling idly on his courtesy.
He won; Thomas blinked, but stood up with a bright smile. "Looks like I'm treating. What does everyone else want?"
There was a general polite chorus of no, you can't, and Thom laced his hands neatly in his lap and adopted a distant expression.
"So Thom," said a female someone, as Thomas was placing orders at the counter, "what do you plan to do when you graduate?"
"Let him be, Jill." Matt laughed. "He doesn't have to know yet. Hell, I'm graduating in May and half the time I have no idea."
"Actually, I'm thinking of becoming a criminal mastermind," Thom said brightly. He'd picked that phrase up from a film. He liked it.
The coffee wasn't bad; Thom drank his quickly while it was still on the edge of being uncomfortably hot, and spent at least two minutes listening to each person speak before dismissing them as boring, although more intelligent than usual. What was interesting was the way that Stina -- Kristina, he learned, disapproving, was her real name -- and Jill smiled at each other; a way that nobody who had spent a week in Court would mistake for anything less than poison. The way Kevin looked at Stina, and the way that Thomas glued the conversations together.
Thom yawned behind his hand and enjoyed the apologetic beam of Thomas' attention when it was directed to him.
"Wow, I can see why you were so keen for me to come," Thom told him, unenthused.
Thomas shrugged. "Make an effort, Thom."
"To do what?"
"Engage. I don't know." He sounded frustrated. Thom smiled.
"What are you two whispering about?" Roy called, and Thom immediately reversed his tentative approval of Roy, who had, thus far, done nothing other than sit there stirring his coffee and looking disaffected.
"Our engagement," Thom said, raising his voice, and watched Jill spit latte across the table.
~
Thom had hoped that his behavior at coffee would excuse him from all interaction for at least a week, but Thomas seemed determined to show that there were no hard feelings; that he had a sense of humor, just as much as anyone else, and that he wasn't about to give up on Thom's friendship yet. Thom began to wonder whether the real competition lay in the classroom after all, with its equations and right answers, or in what social niceties and loyalty Thomas expected -- someday -- to be able to extract from him. It was laughable, somehow; he had been at Court with Delia, after all, and in contrast all Thomas' efforts to network seemed childish.
Still.
Thom disliked him for being ahead; disliked him for being gregarious. Disliked him for his facile, cheery responses to antagonism. Disliked him for his habit of being liked, in addition to being bright, which ought to have been enough. Disliked him for his stable, steady, inevitable progress; his easy life, his charm, his goodwill.
Besides these reasons Thom hated him for being dull. And so was born the desire to provoke Thomas: to anger him, threaten him, draw him into unfamiliar territory and -- perhaps -- drown him in his own confusion.
And then rob him of everything useful, like picking a skeleton; move on.
~
He began by, simply put, touching Thomas: a tug at his sleeve, a brush, which seemed involuntary, of their shoulders in the lecture hall; their knees, when Thomas finally coerced him to lunch. He watched as Thomas hardly noticed, and made nothing of it. He knocked at Thomas' door one morning, six A.M., nearly in tears; forced his way into the room, and demanded that Thomas explain an aspect of fission. It was the day of their final: the last day, the last excuse for either to spend time in the other's company.
Thomas rubbed his eyes and grumbled and closed the door gently behind Thom. He had a single, Thom noticed as he dropped his notes on the floor, so that they all flew into the air, and made no move towards Thomas. He looked down, scarlet hair uncombed, falling into his face. "I'm sorry," said Thom, in a delicate, low voice. "Nobody takes me seriously, except you. And I'm so -- " he shook, very slightly, as if he hadn't slept, as if he were driven solely by nerves and caffeine, " -- worried -- "
Abruptly, he tipped his head back and gazed wide-eyed up at Thomas, whose mouth was open, who looked shocked. Who looked, just for once, as if he were unsure of the exact course of action. In response, Thom bit his lip, and said, "Would you help me."
Knowing that Thomas would interpret it as a question; knowing that that was just what it wasn't.
~
After that, Thomas seemed convinced that Thom was -- for all his outwards independence -- likely to break under pressure, and added a layer of protectiveness to his normal friendly manner; a little wariness, as well, as though Thom might at any moment sprout a new set of personality complexes. This suited Thom just fine, and kept the older boy just off balance. They weren't anything like comfortable any more.
"Come over for a second?" said Thom's voice on Thomas' voicemail. Pitched at what he hoped was the right mixture of casualness and instability.
When Thomas knocked, Thom let him in distractedly, walked straight back into his room, pulled a textbook from the shelf and started to mumble something about calculus.
"Are you . . . ?" Thomas kicked Thom's bedroom door shut and leaned against the wall.
"Am I what?" Thom looked up blankly.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," with very wide eyes; but he made sure to leave a pause before speaking, and ran his hands nervously over the cover of the book.
"Did you want to . . . I don't know, did you call me for calculus help, or did you want to talk?" Thomas' mouth set.
Thom replaced the book and went to lean against him, exhaling fatigue and resting his head on the other boy's shoulder. "I don't know. Maybe both."
"What are you doing?" Thomas said, and actually sounded angry, the smoothness gone: "Fuck, Thom, I'm just trying to help, but you're . . . Your signals are so damn mixed, do you know that?"
He swallowed. "You are helping. I didn't mean."
Thomas sighed and sat down, running one hand through his hair. Ragged. It was a good look for him, Thom considered.
He stepped into the other boy's personal space and looked serious. "I'm not trying to confuse you," he lied with a perfectly straight face. "Thomas. What can I explain for you?"
Thomas was tall; he didn't have to tilt his chin upwards too far to look Thom in the eye. "This," he said, still sounding annoyed. "This," waving his hand vaguely in the space between the two of them.
"You're smarter than that," Thom said softly, and waited.
"I'm not gay," said Thomas, with his hand on Thom's shoulder, hesitant: either to draw him in, or to shove him away.
Thom said, "So what? I'm not an only child."
A pause. And then Thomas burst out laughing, just a little wilder than Thom had ever heard him before, and then he took a deep breath; dug his fingers into Thom's shirt, down the pale flesh of his arm, saying roughly, "You're such -- a weird -- kid." Kissed him.
And you're a liar, thought Thom, kissing back, leaning in, flinging a thin arm around Thomas and smiling between kisses as if it made him happy. But so am I.
But in a way, it did: every touch, every word from Thomas was an admission of failure. To have reached out, Thom thought. To have changed someone. To have won. Even if the battle was unfair.
Seeing no reason to pretend innocence in the matter, Thom pulled away from Thomas and, slowly, carefully, knelt. Later, he knew: there would be questions.
~
After that, Thom found, was the key phrase to their relations. After that, he rather sensed Thomas would have liked to avoid him, but was constitutionally incapable of avoidance; instead, pushed to confront what he did not understand, he spent more time with Thom, doing his best, in his own way, to break down and rearrange Thom into sensible parts. Thom told him about the past he'd invented, offhand, whenever it seemed least appropriate. Some of it was true, he reasoned. It just wasn't the whole truth. For example, he did have a sister, and she was older than he was, but the difference wasn't comprised of years. She didn't really live in London, either. Or rather, she did: but part-time.
Thomas, who was something of a star pupil, took Thom everywhere with him, so that he began to be recognized, up-and-coming for more than his grades (flawless, after that initial semester in a new and impossible world) and his brazen, guileless ambition. Thom told anyone who would listen that he planned to defy the known laws of nature before he was twenty. Which laws, they asked. Ah -- that would be telling, though, wouldn't it?
The company he kept, Thom began to realize, could be important, especially secondhand. What Thomas -- as much as Thom resented it -- had always known, ever since that first day, when he had tried to shake hands and Thom had refused him, was the meaning of human potential, connections. Sometimes Thom wondered if Thomas thought of it as he did. It didn't seem so. What had taken him more than a lifetime to learn, Thomas had always known, instantly. Thomas did it by instinct: he attracted people, as if he were a natural force, and they liked him.
Thom refused to adopt this method, but went on unraveling Thomas instead. Until he could almost hear the questions that Thomas, previously possessed only of professional curiosity, now held back constantly: who are you really, and what do you want, and do you like me, or not, and who fucked you, like that, when I hadn't.
Questions that went unasked, and so unanswered.
~
Thom, who sat at the front of every class, felt on a Friday he was being watched, and so did not turn around. When it let out, he resisted departure: spoke to the professor, earnest and caustic at once, until he grew bored and made his excuses. As Thom drifted up the steps to the distant exit, he looked around the edges of the room until he saw, where before there had been -- or so it had seemed -- only shadow, now Lucifer stood, silent and wholly composed.
He nodded his recognition and approached, flicking the hair out of his eyes with one careless hand. "What's up?" said Thom.
Lucifer looked down at him. "'What's up,'" he repeated, with obvious distaste. "You're learning bad habits."
"That assumes I ever had any other kind."
"Fair enough," said Lucifer. "What are the new ones?"
Thom considered the question intently enough that Lucifer laughed, cuffed him lightly, and said, "I see I should have said 'who.' Let me guess. Are they an axe-murderer?"
"Yes," said Thom.
Lucifer raised an eyebrow, which Thom interpreted as disbelief. He shrugged and said, "No, then. Walk with me. I don't want to talk here."
"You don't want to talk anywhere," said Lucifer, and pushed him out the door.
~
It was still cold enough that Thom shoved his hands deep in his pockets when they left the gasping heat of the building and turned into a lane full of people who seemed even less significant than they had an hour ago. For a long time, Thom followed Lucifer, falling easily into step, without speaking.
Then he said, solemnly, "You might have called."
"Why?" said Lucifer. "When you have an axe-murderer to attend to you."
Thom said, "I told you, I don't have an axe-murderer."
"Ah. Just a commonplace thug, then."
"No -- no one."
"Still?" Lucifer stopped. "I thought you worked faster than that."
Thom reddened. "What does that mean?"
Lucifer looked at him quietly. He said, "Don't fish for compliments, Thomlet. It isn't becoming."
He made a face. "If that's what you consider a compliment -- "
And felt someone take his hand from behind. "Oh," said Thom, awkwardly. "Thomas. Hello."
Sure enough, when he twisted back to see who was there, Thomas was smiling at him, just for a second: and then that high-voltage smile directed itself at Lucifer. Thomas said, friendly, "Hello -- have we met?"
"I don't believe so," Lucifer said, pushing a stray lock of black hair out of his face in a mannerism Thom had never seen before. His hair was longer, starting to show a hint of curl.
"Thomas." Polite nod.
"Thom and Thomas." Lucifer's mouth twitched. "Now isn't that ironic?"
"No, " said Thom.
Thomas laughed. "Sore point, I'm afraid."
"Ah, I see," Lucifer said, and then, "Sam," extending his hand about two microseconds before Thom could open his mouth and say Lucy.
"Pleased to meet you." And there was that about Thomas: he always did look genuinely pleased.
"I was going to take Thom out for an early dinner," said Lucifer smoothly, "but you must come too. If you're free, of course."
"That's very kind of you, Sam."
"It had better," Thom said to Lucifer as they were leaving, all but under his breath, "be a really fucking expensive restaurant."
It was.
"Champagne," said Lucifer, pointing carelessly to something that probably cost the same amount as a decent stereo.
"House white," said Thomas, who was legal to drink.
Grape juice, said Lucifer's voice in Thom's head, trust me on this, and Thom blinked a few times because this wasn't really something they did, but he ordered it anyway, and wasn't particularly surprised when his first tentative sip revealed a chemical change that he knew usually took much longer then thirty seconds. It was very, very good wine; this didn't surprise him either.
Lucifer smiled at him.
Thom had no idea at all what to expect from this evening, so he kept quiet and ordered the most expensive things on the menu and listened to Lucifer and Thomas exchange utterly, exquisitely normal, charming, courteous conversation about nothing in particular, until sometime between the entrée and the main course when Lucifer said, "Excuse me, gentlemen," and wandered in the direction of the bathrooms. Thom glared at his back as subtly as possible.
Thomas cleared his throat. "So that's who -- " he said awkwardly, and then stopped.
"Who what?" asked Thom, who knew what.
"Nothing." But a few mouthfuls later he burst out with, "How old is he? Twenty-eight? Thirty? "
"I don't know," Thom said, frank. "I've never asked. It would be rude," almost chiding, enjoying himself immensely.
"It's," Thomas began, and then set his mouth in the familiar line of self-censure. Thom pretended not to notice and took a long sip of his wine. "I suppose he's very -- " and Thomas cut off; he couldn't quite seem to finish his sentences, somehow.
Thom prompted, "Very?"
"Attractive. Charismatic." It sounded like an accusation.
Thom smiled at him, the shy flash of a smile that ducked onto his face like an accident, and let Thomas interpret that however he wanted. The older boy chewed mulishly at his food, and -- uncharacteristically -- didn't initiate further conversation when Lucifer returned to the table. After a moment, however, he eyed the level of his glass in something resembling surprise, and stood up.
"I didn't think I'd had so much to drink, but . . . you'll have to excuse me, now."
"Nice," Thom said acidly, when Thomas had left, and ate a forkful of mashed potatoes that were obscenely good and probably not actually called mashed potatoes at all, but something French and expensive-sounding.
Lucifer shrugged. "Easiest. What did he have to say?"
"Oh, just the usual." Thom gestured with his fork. "You're too old for me now and you were definitely too old for me at whatever age you presumably stole my virtue."
"Is that all?"
Thom grinned. "Don't fish for compliments, Sam. It's unbecoming."
Lucifer pushed his sleeves past his elbows and laughed in a way that turned heads and made Thom's face flush pink. He sulked and rolled a glass of cold water against his cheeks and refused to say another word until Thomas returned. "So," Thom said then, slightly damp but mercifully pale. "I suppose this makes it my turn."
Lucifer just looked at him and raised a perfect eyebrow in a perfect expression of perfect amusement, and Thom rolled his eyes violently and took the hint. He didn't even think about it, just placed his hand briefly against the bare skin of Lucifer's collarbone as he walked past on his way to the bathroom and dug his nails in a bit -- very funny -- before wondering what it would look like to Thomas. Or to anyone else. But then, he'd never made much of a habit of caring.
Thom's strong, strong urge was to rush back to the table as fast as possible, but he decided that Lucifer would be far too entertained by this, and so he took his time.
~
When he came back, a sort of Cold War had set in around the table, entrenching itself deeper and deeper with every increasingly anodyne word. "Huh," said Thom, and dropped into his seat with the blithe, physical innocence of the painfully unaware. "So -- what'd I miss?"
"Oh," said Lucifer, "Thomas here was just telling me about his plans for the future. Very impressive."
Thomas began to say something modest, but before he got past "It's not really that -- ," Lucifer finished, "But I'm sure you already know everything about them."
"Of course." Thom ticked off ideas on his fingers. "Graduate with extra words in dead languages, go to grad school, drop out of grad school, change the world, live in a room full of thirty-inch monitors . . . have lunch with Bill Gates . . . and become a vegetarian."
Sounding slightly strained, Thomas laughed. "Those sound more like your plans for the future, Thom." He reached across the table and, just for a moment, brushed Thom's knuckles with the back of his hand.
"No," said Thom, serious. "You've forgotten already, I just want to be a criminal mastermind."
"Criminally overeducated, perhaps," Lucifer murmured.
Thom said, "You would know."
"I'm sorry?" asked Thomas.
"Well, I mean," said Thom, watching Thomas' face, "Sam is paying for it."
While Thomas' expression flickered wildly, like a candle in the wind, Lucifer let out a refined tsk; said, "Thomling. Didn't your mother teach you not to talk about money at the table? It's extremely crass."
Brightly, Thom answered, "Nope, she was too busy being dead."
"Of course," said Lucifer. "How could I forget?"
Thom sighed. "Probably because you never think about me . . . anymore."
"Why, Thom," Lucifer drawled. "I'm -- "
"Sorry," said Thomas suddenly. "I'm afraid I don't feel very well. If you'll excuse me . . . ?" He stood up, moved to shake Lucifer's hand and said, with total apparent sincerity, "It was very nice to meet you, sir."
Smiling, Lucifer said, "Likewise, Thomas Beech," and held his hand just a little too long before releasing it in a manner that somehow gave the impression that he, by letting go, had dismissed Thomas: waved him away.
"Are you okay?" asked Thom, violet eyes round, biting his lip.
Thomas said, "Oh, don't worry about me. I just feel a little -- nauseous, somehow. I'll see you tonight."
"Right," said Thom. And as Thomas walked towards the door, before he had quite left the room, Thom leaned over: and kissed Lucifer full on the mouth.
~
Lucifer raised an eyebrow. "You've lost subtlety."
"Subtlety wouldn't do it, with Thomas." Thom looked down at the small cup being slid in front of him. "You ordered coffee?"
"Two macchiatos," the waitress said, redundantly, and Thom noted: two, and had to smile.
They drank without saying anything more until Lucifer set his cup back into its saucer with a tiny clink and asked, "What are you doing with him?"
"Well," Thom said, "I don't see how that's any of your -- "
But Lucifer held up a hand, cutting him off. "You know better," he said quietly.
Thom realized his mistake but wasn't about to apologize for it; okay, yes, he'd dropped into laziness, grown accustomed to needing no more than words and the bare minimum of body language to read most people. As ever, there'd never been anything to Lucifer's question but curiosity. "Autopilot," he said instead.
"Do I need to repeat the question?"
Thom bit his lip and slowly released it. "I haven't decided yet," he said. "But he's more interesting than he was before he met me."
"Public service, then." Lucifer smiled.
"I do my bit." Thom stood up. "If nothing else, he'll be someone to know. In the future."
"If you don't antagonize him to the point of enmity first." Lucifer put a cheque on the table for what was, no doubt, exactly the right amount. Thom didn't look at it, just headed for the door. It was an interesting point, Thom conceded; he wasn't sure to what extent the game was for his own benefit, and to what extent it merely satisfied a ferocious, inherent desire to destroy what was attractive and worthwhile.
"In which case," he said coolly, "I shall make do with my own talents."
It wasn't a warm night; Thom could feel himself starting to shiver, but Lucifer wandered along with his bare forearms and open collar and received resentful glances from other pedestrians. After a few minutes, Thom said, "You know, you can be a real -- "
"Yes?" said Lucifer, in magnificent tones of indifference.
Teeth digging anxiously into his lower lip, Thom didn't finish. Then, "If you only wanted to come and bitch, and act aloof, like a spoiled child, then why visit me at all?" He stopped in his tracks and waited, eyes fixed on Lucifer's distant, immutable face.
Lucifer said, very low, almost sneering, "Spoiled. " He turned and seized Thom by the shoulders: pushed him roughly, with a flick of fine wrists, back against the red, crumbling brick of the wall alongside. "Think carefully, Thom of Trebond. Is that -- " his fingers tightened " -- really what you want to say to me?"
"If it'll get a reaction," said Thom, and attempted to shrug, shifting slightly under (into) Lucifer's nails.
The devil laughed. "If you weren't working so hard to earn it," he said, "I would slap you."
"If I stopped trying," asked Thom, looking up at him, serious, "would you?" And the curve at the corner of his lips, the delicate, half-begun smile, teased: No one abuses me anymore.
Lucifer tangled his fingers in Thom's hair and yanked back, bent to murmur against the pale flesh of Thom's throat, the smooth blue vein: "Not tonight, Thom." Thom rolled his eyes, which meant Fuck you, which meant tonight, and kicked Lucifer hard in the shin.
~
After that, Thom stood outside Thomas' door and gave it a few casual pounds, to no answer. He turned and leaned back against it; called Thomas, and smiled, unsurprised, when there was no answer. "Hey," said Thom after the beep, closing his eyes, pitching his light voice to be heard. "I guess you're out. I just wanted to let you know -- "
The door wrenched open, and Thom fell through backwards, straight into Thomas, who said, "So -- you're back," and pushed him upright. "How was it?"
Turning to face him, Thom said, "Uh, it was fine. I haven't seen Sam in a long time."
"Good," said Thomas. "How did. How did the two of you meet?"
Thom said, "Oh, that was years ago," and watched Thomas struggle not to react. "We met in Gallipoli. On the twenty-fifth of April, if you can believe it. That's coincidence, huh."
"What?"
"I told you," said Thom. He scowled. Pouted, really. "I traveled a lot, and there was never anybody to -- "
Thomas interrupted, sounding pained, "I know. I know. You have told me, I'm sorry."
"Whatever." Thom took a step forward and delicately put his arms around Thomas; buried his face in the older boy's shoulder, and breathed in.
Thomas, without moving, asked in neutral tones, "Is that -- a hickey?"
"Yes," said Thom.
"And . . . you're not even going to lie about it."
Thom blinked and pulled back. "Why? Is it a problem?"
"Is it a problem? " asked Thomas. "Is it a -- are you serious? My God, Thom, haven't you ever gone out with anyone before? Is that what he taught you?"
Reasonably, Thom said, "I don't see why it matters. We aren't in love. We aren't even friends."
A violent, fleeting, struck expression passed over Thomas' face. He said, "What do you call it, then?"
"Nothing," said Thom. "Should I?"
Thomas said, "I just," and slid a finger the length of Thom's throat, fiercely possessive. He hooked it in the hollow of Thom's collarbone; spread his hand flat, save for that finger, over the rough cotton of Thom's T-shirt, over his chest. "I guess we never talked about this. I never thought that we needed to."
"We never needed to talk about what?" demanded Thom, and shoved his hand away.
"Fuck, Thom," said Thomas. "You're my boyfriend. Or why do we -- "
Thom, looking as stunned as he sounded, only slightly more stunned than he actually felt, protested, "I am not. "
"Why the hell not? How do you figure?"
"This isn't science, Thomas." Thom sucked in air, furious. "You can't start trying to disprove something as a way of validating the theory."
"Meaning what?" Thomas snapped.
"Meaning, fuck," and Thom wished this was Lucifer who would know what he meant, or Alanna who would get loud and angry so that he wouldn't have to, or Roger who wouldn't care at all, and instantly he hated Thomas with a pulse of sickening nausea for making him think about Roger. After so long. "Meaning I don't have to tell you why not until you tell me why I am. Your -- whatever."
"Boyfriend," said Thomas, white, obviously holding himself very still. "Which is not a word I've ever had to use before, you know that, so I'd appreciate it if you stopped acting like a little shit and -- "
"I told you. I'm not in love with you," Thom said very clearly. "Not even a little bit."
"I never thought you were," Thomas said, a localized explosion of irritation. "And I'm not -- I mean, not -- we don't have to be. To be dating. Surely you realize that."
"We're not dating."
Thomas' control was disintegrating again, his hands touching the back of his own head, the tops of his legs, each other; indecisive bursts of motion that never quite reached Thom. "But you feel . . . I mean, you care about me in some way -- "
Thom laughed. "No," he said, injecting far too many years' worth of cynicism and acquired danger into the single word, not caring about the anachronism of his mockery, not really caring about anything: so it came as a complete shock when one of Thomas' hands finally broke into his personal orbit and caught him on the side of the head.
It wasn't even a hard blow; Thom gasped more out of surprise than anything else.
"Oh God." Thomas looked aghast. "Thom. I didn't mean to -- I'm so sorry. I should go. Or you should. I don't want -- it was an accident -- I'm sorry. "
Thom didn't doubt it had been mostly an accident, but he was a scientist now and mostly wasn't quite good enough anymore; there was a margin of error there that contained deliberation; contained something very interesting indeed. Enough so that just before he left he ducked forward and kissed Thomas, just once, his mouth open and approving against the other's boy's unmoving lips.
"Well done," Thom whispered, and turned his back on Thomas' shattered expression.
~
Thomas confronted him the next morning, excessively earnest and wanting, Thom knew, to talk. He said: "We need to talk," and confirmed it, hovering at a conscious, safe distance from Thom. To protect him, Thom supposed.
He nodded, "All right," and let him in.
"Thanks," said Thomas. He wouldn't sit down. Thom watched, amused, as Thomas ran a distracted hand through his own hair, and tried to remember if Thomas had been possessed of that particular habit before. "Can I -- Thom. Can I ask you a question?"
Thom said, blankly, "Yes."
"Thom," said Thomas again, as if by naming him, he might explain him. "Does -- that man. Sam. Does Sam," and he swallowed, "abuse you?"
The way that Thomas emphasized the word, hesitant, made Thom start to laugh, and when he saw the confusion on Thomas' face he could not stop. He doubled over, fingers pressed to his lips, giggling into his hands. He slid down with his back to the door and laughed until it hurt: the absurdity of it, the ignorance of this boy with his efforts to own and protect, the fact that he would never know what abuse was, or neglect, or what it was to hear the artificial heartbeat of a traitor one's sister had killed for the good of all thunder faster than one's own heart, and still want. Thomas wanted to have him -- why? And to protect him -- from what?
As the smallness of his new life closed in around him, Thom drew his knees up to his chest, slowly lapsing into silence, until Thomas came forward at last to fold Thom in his arms, saying over and over again, with threadbare horror, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
Thom said, "You don't understand. Sam never did anything to me that I didn't want."
"You don't have to tell me that," said Thomas. "You don't have to -- "
"I'm not looking out for him," Thom said, and frowned for the first time at Thomas without prettiness. "I mean it. It isn't worth lying about this."
Thomas said, "You're right, I don't understand."
"Hasn't that happened to you before?" asked Thom. "Try not to faint."
"God damn it, Thom," said Thomas. "I'm on your side, I'm trying to -- "
Thom said, "To what? To help? I don't need it."
"Don't you?" Thomas moved as if to shove him, but stopped, hissed instead, "You were always coming around here before, begging for it, all, Thomas, obviously I can't do this on my own, would you -- "
Irritated more by the note-perfect reproduction of his own intonation than by anything else, Thom did shove Thomas, shouting, "Shut up, maybe I've grown out of that!"
"You're seventeen, Thom," said Thomas. "You have a lot of fucking growing to -- "
Thom interrupted him, laying one hand on either side of Thomas' face, moving a thumb over Thomas' cheekbone; he leant forward, so that their foreheads touched, and said, "Thomas. I'm not going to beg you for anything ever again. I'm not even going to ask. So," he smiled, vicious, free of pretense: radiant. "Don't worry."
"That isn't what I meant," began Thomas, but Thom released him then, stood up, and pulled Thomas up after him.
"I'm going to beat you this semester," said Thom, "and it's going to be the best fucking ride of your life. See you in class."
~
By the turn of the quarter, Thom was able to correct some of Thomas' work, and made sure that he knew it. Thomas gave him that look which had become so familiar: the thin, tight set of his lips, and the weakening horror. However, after a week or so of something that was dangerously close to sulking, Thomas threw himself into the competition with a ruthlessness that delighted Thom. It would have been boring to win it without a fight.
Thom taught Thomas, with the greatest cheerfulness, about sabotage. Left alone in Thomas' room, he deleted files from Thomas' computer: renamed others. He checked books that Thomas needed out of the library, read them himself, and then hid them. He followed Thomas to class and, from his seat next to Thomas, asked foolish questions, or else feigned sleep, his head resting on Thomas' shoulder. Projects went missing. Grades fluctuated wildly with Thom's mood -- and his ability to bypass the system.
But then one day Thomas wrote a virus that wiped Thom's computer entirely and left it restarting itself continuously, stuck on a loop, like a kind of monstrous electronic jack-in-the-box. Thom laughed, called Thomas to congratulate him and, while they were on the phone, slowly, laboriously, with one hand, he started to write one back.
The obvious next step: friendly fire.
~
"Well. You look -- "
"Sensational," Thom said, twisting in front of the mirror. "I'm going to knock them dead. Et cetera."
Thomas laughed at him; definitely at him, not with him, something that hadn't happened in a while, but Thom looked at the way the trousers fell and decided that he really didn't care.
"Who'd have known," Thomas said, grinning. "Our Thom, a dandy."
Thom didn't even bother to refute that, but grabbed another five ties in varying lurid colors. Thomas winced.
"Purple, Thom," he said firmly. "Not yellow."
"Whatever," said Thom, already moving on to the next rack. It had been so long since he had worn silk: the feel of the ties, more than their color, ran through his white hands with hardly a ripple. The one he wore now, drawn as tightly as he could bear, the knot settled in the base of his throat, reminded him obscurely of Delia, even as paper tags scraped against his skin, inside his sleeves, reminding him that this clothing was not his. Not yet, he thought, and caught Thomas by the hem of his shirt; pulled him into a changing booth and looked at the pair of them reflected in tall mirrors. He said, seriously, "Why purple?"
Thomas straightened his suit jacket, deft fingers slipping down around Thom's waist. "It's less distracting," he said. "Baudelaire used to be very fond of -- well, he usually couldn't afford it, but when he could, he was fond of wearing just black and white, you know, like suits now. Only he would do it with some colorful accent. A flower, or -- he had a pair of pink gloves that he really liked."
"I don't know who that is," Thom said.
"A French poet. Anyway," said Thomas. "My point was that you don't need that, you accent yourself so well already. If you throw in a bunch of colors like yellow and this -- what is this -- chartreuse -- then it spoils the effect. It's just confusing."
Thom suggested, "Chaotic. Awkward."
"Exactly. You want to emphasize yourself. Highlight. Not obscure."
To himself, Thom thought, Or do I? and walked out for more.
~
"It's odd," Thomas said, later, watching Thom juggle and holding his hands out to take the bags of clothes. "You could stand out so easily, if you wanted to. But normally you seem to go out of your way to appear . . . I don't know, harmless. Unremarkable."
"Really?" Thom drawled.
Thomas looked away, some of the familiar irritation and wariness starting to appear again. "I have a good eye. And I know better. But don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about."
"Maybe I'm biding my time." Thom signed the receipt with his completely illegible scrawl and thought about looking one's best; about knocking people dead, and raising them up.
~
By the end of the semester, Thom had secured a minor, slavish summer position in a laboratory of subdued importance, along with a full roster of summer classes. He went to the airport with Thomas and made a point of not helping with any of Thomas' bags. Then he took money for a taxi out of Thomas' wallet while Thomas checked in and, without kissing him goodbye, just left, letting the automatic doors squeak enormously shut behind him.
Having learned to try out personalities as one might test drive a car, in the lab Thom signaled that he was: respectful, original, brilliant, and driven without being grasping or unsporting; focused. He cultivated those who seemed as if they might be persuaded to cultivate him. He arrived early and left late.
It was too easy.
~
That August, when the humidity had plastered frail strands of scarlet hair darkly against Thom's fair face, and he had discovered that the necessary amount of clothing in summer was significantly less than it had been in Tortall, he let Lucifer -- untouched, as always, by the vagaries of weather -- take him for drinks in the city.
"I never offer to pay, you know," he said when he was quite drunk, "in case you actually accept."
"You don't have any money of your own, Thom," Lucifer pointed out, seeming amused. "It would be even more meaningless than it already is."
"A little game you play, then," said Thom. He attempted the subtle theft of Lucifer's cigarette, but to no avail: sulked. Petulantly, he asked, "Can I have one, too? Please?"
Lucifer arched a dubious eyebrow and repeated, without enthusiasm, "'Please,' is it?" He handed Thom the cigarette that he had been affecting to smoke and produced for himself, from thin air, a new one; although it looked quite as steadily begun as the last.
"I've been told it's a free country." Smoothly, with the grace of remembrance, Thom fitted the cigarette between his lips, closed his eyes, and inhaled. It tasted terrible, but so familiar that he enjoyed it immensely. "Of course, I've also been told that it's illegal to smoke in bars," he said, taking another pull.
"That expression of yours," observed Lucifer, "is what ought to be illegal," idly running his nails the length of Thom's exposed forearm. Thom choked and blushed, coughing on smoke. Lucifer laughed. "You haven't changed so much, after all."
"No," said Thom weakly. "Just my surroundings."
Lucifer said, "I wondered if you had noticed."
"It is different," insisted Thom. "Tremendously so. It's been giving me difficulty -- "
"What, being away from everyone and everything that you've ever known? How," and Lucifer paused, apparently searching for the right damning adjective. "Trite, Thomlet. I would have thought that you'd be accustomed to that by now."
Thom gave Lucifer his best I am not impressed face, which, as he had learned it from Lucifer, did not impress. "No. I meant, Tortall was so -- " he waved a hand, drawing grey wisps through the air. " -- volatile. If you were only in the right place at the right time, and if you had a little skill, you could just -- reach out and touch it, and the world would move. It was," he said, "totally possible to rewrite the fabric of history in a very short time. It was so simple."
"And this world," said Lucifer, not missing a beat.
He laughed. "I rather feel as if I could know the secret of life and still not be able to make the slightest difference."
Emotionlessly, Lucifer took a drink; said, "So you're giving up."
"Not at all," said Thom. He stubbed out the cigarette and, turning, grasped Lucifer's collar with both hands; tugged gently, so that Lucifer would look at him. "After all, as you said, I've not changed so much -- I know how to make sure I'm noticed, and what's more, remembered." He started to smile, and then, because he was drunk, glowing, grinned instead, promise written extravagantly through every line of his being. "I'm going to change the world," said Thom. "I'm going to change it completely. Once I've started, I won't even have to lift a finger -- I'll just stand in the middle of everything, and change will go out from me."
Lucifer pulled Thom's hands down and returned them to him, casual: "It may be a blessing for some," he said, "that you've no interest in politics."
Thom shook his head, undaunted. "The physical facts are more dangerous, aren't they?"
"That depends entirely," said Lucifer, "on who's behind them."
"God?" asked Thom. "It won't be, you know -- it'll be me -- me, me."
~
When Thomas came back, Thom was surprised to find that he had changed: he was harder, somehow; whatever the past few months had done, Thom neither knew nor wanted to know, but felt sure he approved. Once Thomas had done moving in, he came to see Thom without calling, without even knocking. He opened the unlocked door and said calmly, coldly, "I'm going to win this year, you know." Then he crossed the room to Thom in two long, efficient strides: seized him by the shoulders.
Thom said, "So you did miss me, after all," and it began again, worse than before.
It was the year that Thomas graduated, his future job already secure, and after the ceremony (which Thom didn't attend) Thom sat up all night with him, pouring screwdrivers and reminding Thomas, "You're only done a semester ahead of me."
"A semester and a summer," said Thomas. "I still won."
Thom said, "Fuck you, you started out two years ahead. And I'm not taking classes this summer."
"Fuck you," said Thomas, and gave the same genuine smile he had never lost. "According to your rules, I won, fair and square."
"I like losing, I guess."
"It sure seems like it, sometimes."
"Okay," said Thom, and held up his hands. "What do you want, mister?"
Thomas said, "What I always wanted." He pulled the bottle of vodka out of Thom's protesting hands and dropped it in the trash. "When you're someone to know, remember that I -- I -- found you first, Thom." Easily, he turned Thom's wrist up to the fluorescent lights; kissed the skin. Bit down. "You've got my fingerprints all over you."
"But you didn't invent me," said Thom, and allowed it.
~
That summer, during which he refused to answer even a single one of Thomas' calls, Thom lived, day and night, in a laboratory of semi-realized importance, and he pushed, from behind the scenes, from the ground up, for that eventual realization. On those occasions when he did stumble home, he slept, showered, and took to buying new clothes instead of wasting time to wash anything. He was always rushing, always disheveled, and at an inverse pace he was losing control of his façade: he was able, at least, to keep his grip on politeness, but he had already passed away from mere focus and into ambition, so that those who had known him for months stopped and looked twice. Life on his feet was like falling down stairs, at the bottom of which was only his own venomous, insatiable personality, fueled by his voracious intellect.
Fueled by contempt.
The trick to success without kindness: those abilities which you claim, possess wholly: prove yourself: take hold. That summer, Thom, at the elbows and backs of his superiors, began to reveal himself. That summer, hot enough to break records, he seduced a scientist between shifts, as simply as he might have solved an equation, all white coats and dark, cool, geometric glasses. And together, in that lab, that summer, they made a breakthrough in the development of clean, safe, affordable energy. A small part of this discovery, the scientist said in the heedless glory of it, belonged to Thom: forever, to keep, to know and to use.
After that, before he had quite finished school, doors began opening.
~
'Thomas,' in this world, he learned, meant 'twins.' If Thom was short for Thomas, then perhaps what he found himself doing, too, was shorter, somehow incomplete, dysfunctional. He found that those who were exposed to him long enough begin to resemble him. As if he were making copies of himself, Thom watched as people became affectatious, distracted, and -- in Thomas' case -- very rarely, very slightly crueler. As if he were an infectious disease.
He thought, having become recently aware of this trivia, of the tendency of Oppenheimer's students to imitate him, and of the difference between this conscious decision and the phenomenon which follows him. The physical gestures. The rolled, rude "Obviously," thrown back in his face.
Like J. Robert Oppenheimer, Thom A. Trebond harbored a secret initial. Unlike the former, he held it close, reminded himself of someone he loved and of someone who had never, in fact, existed. Of someone who might have been a unity, the result of the original pair. Whenever he was asked, like Oppenheimer, what this initial stood for, he said, Absolutely nothing.
And so kept her to his heart. Possessing in secrecy.
~
When he had graduated, and when he had gone into the desert, he called Thomas back, finally. Even after their separation Thomas answered on the first ring. Warily, down the line, the familiar: "Yes? Are you all right? "
Thom said, "Where are you now?"
"I'm abroad," said Thomas, "I -- "
"Whatever. You know what you should do?"
Thomas said, after a pause, "No, Thom. What do you think I should do?"
"I'm in New Mexico," said Thom. "Los Alamos. Come and see."
Despite his inflection, the steadiness of his voice, it was a question: and Thomas, he suspected, knew; he waited for, and was rewarded by, Thomas' audible smile.
"Thom," said Thomas, "I can't, I'm in Russia."
"For research?" asked Thom, and cut him off. "I don't care. Listen, we'll find you a job -- I have one, and I know some people, it'll work out. Come on, it'll be just like college. We can -- "
Thomas said, "Get drunk, and fall into a cactus, I suppose."
"Correction. We can get drunk, and I can push you into a cactus."
"Not unless you're a lot stronger than you used to be, Thom," said Thomas, and Thom started to laugh.
"Just come," said Thom, sensing the shape of the future, its inexorable lightness, the exchange between them, and wished that Thomas could see his face. "Come and see me.
"We'll make it work."
Knowing all along what the answer would be.