fic: luminous beings are we (3/5)
Title: Luminous Beings Are We (three: scoundrel? I like that.) (chapter two here) (chapter one here)
Word Count: 6,018
Rating: PG, probably, except Michael and James both use the f-word a few times when surprised.
Summary: Star Wars fusion, more or less, in which Jedi Knight Michael Fassbender gets a new apprentice with extremely distracting beautiful blue eyes…
Notes: the fault of this interview, in which Michael wanted to be Yoda, and James concluded he’d be a “bi-curious Jedi”. Title and chapter titles all courtesy of Star Wars, of course! I haven't read my Expanded Universe novels in years, and even then they're all Timothy Zahn-era, but this is some sort of fusion with our future universe anyway, so we'll just handwave my failures of up-to-date SW knowledge, okay?
In this chapter: James and Michael do some training exercises, and very definitely do NOT have sex.
One week. Two. Three. James adapted astonishingly well, more easily than Michael himself recalled coming to terms with separation from his previous life. James made friends with half a dozen senior-year students, awkward Nick and easy-laughter Jen and tall pale-eyed Benedict, and showed up in the mornings bright-eyed and enthusiastic and occasionally hungover, though never less than articulate and kind.
He brought Michael cups of jet-black morning caf every day. Michael at first tried to say he didn’t have to, then wondered whether James was simply picking up the craving and unconsciously responding. James tilted an eyebrow at him, said, “Very consciously responding, sir,” and took a sip of his own spiced-cream concoction, sweetness and exotic flavors in a cup. Michael stared at the cream where it lingered on luscious lips.
James grinned and licked the cream away with a swipe of tongue, more teasing than inviting. The gesture said: I know and you know and thank you for the compliment and thank you for the other part and we’re in no hurry.
It also added: but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun imagining. Michael sighed, letting the sound be audible, and ordered James to go fit in extra agility training, levitation and backflips and catching objects while distracted. James saluted, textbook-cheeky, and went.
James did make friends quickly. Friends; and more. Michael was all but certain of that. He’d caught James talking softly to fellow trainees in corridors, one hand lifted to gently brush tangled hair out of a Corellian smuggler’s daughter’s amber eyes, or with an arm slipping casually around the waist of a nervous Chiss boy, offering unspoken support. He’d seen James tilt a head back and smile at a proprietary trail of twin sinuous Twi’lek lekku over shoulders. And he’d walked into the dining hall mid-afternoon at the end of the second week to discover his apprentice half-asleep and blissful, being groomed by the cat-tongues and kneading paws of two of the Cathar apprentices, unrelated, a tom and a queen.
At least James had been dressed. He’d registered that much before he’d fled. And then he’d sat, shaking, behind his desk in his empty classroom for a while, no longer hungry.
He didn’t have the right to tell James not to sleep with other people. No rules against it. Hells, James probably needed it, needed the outlet for everyone else’s emotions. Like therapy. For them, for him.
Michael’d told him that sex on Michael’s desk-in Michael’s bed, in James’s bed, onboard James’s ship, in a storage closet, anywhere, everywhere, yes please-wasn’t going to happen. Had been responsible about it. And James had agreed, and they were, clumsily, experimentally, becoming something like friends.
All of that was true.
And Michael nevertheless wanted to scream.
James was his apprentice. His friend. And he wanted more. He wanted so much more. And they both knew it. And he couldn’t.
Professional reasons. No taking advantage of his student. Personal reasons. No taking advantage of his too-generous friend.
Jedi weren’t jealous. Shouldn’t be jealous. Consequences.
His heart physically hurt. He’d never known it could do that.
James had come to find him about twenty minutes after the dining-hall encounter, yawning, hair tugged into improbable fluffy shapes and parallel red claw-scratches visible at the edge of his sleeve. “Sorry, Michael.”
“Don’t apologize to me.”
“I could feel those thoughts the whole way here, y’know.” James had crossed arms. Propped a hip against the desk. Like he was comfortable, like he belonged.
He did. He always would. Michael’d shoved down a surge of irrational anger. James couldn’t help that, being a empath, instinctively reacting to the world’s smiles and frowns, always comfortable because he could fit into whatever shape would ease tensions all around-
“That’s not true,” James had said, “and you know it, and I know you know it, but thanks for not saying it out loud.” And the smile was crooked, wry, self-deprecating: he’d spoken before Michael’d found words.
“I know,” Michael had said back, and ran a hand through his hair. “I know. I’m sorry.” He was. He did know. James making everyone else comfortable was not the same as James being comfortable. Not necessarily comfortable for James at all.
“As it happens, I’ve not had sex with those two. Separately or together, mind you.”
“You haven’t-oh. Oh, you haven’t-I mean you can. Of course. If you want to. I mean I’m not-it’s not my job to tell you what you can do when you’re not training. Um. Or who you can-You don’t have to give that up. Not because of me.”
This had earned a raised eyebrow. “I know. I might listen if you asked for that, but because it’d be you asking, not because I think you have the right to ask. If that made any sense. Too much asking. But either way I’m not sleeping with the fluffballs, as lovely and soft as they are. If you were wanting to know.”
Michael, who’d thought he had known, and consequently was presently being strangled by mortification and relief and shameful thankfulness, unearthed a nod. Probably not enough of a reply. James’s shields were getting better, two weeks into sessions with Patrick’s experienced hands.
“They’re only lonely.” James tried to get a good look at the back of his own shoulder. Couldn’t quite manage it. “They miss having siblings, litter-mates, kits around. I don’t mind being an adopted kitten, though I wish they’d remember I’ve got thinner skin…”
“Please be careful,” Michael’d said, one hand helplessly lifted, a futile tiny gesture. And James’s smile had become marginally more true. A resurfacing sparkle in blue eyes. “I am. I promise.”
Around them, the afternoon shimmered. Woodwork and comprehension and solitude. A space made purely for them.
James’d added contemplatively, “I was sort of enjoying myself. Relaxing. Tired. Patrick forgets I’ve not been doing this for five hundred years. Yesterday he wanted me to simultaneously break up six bar fights in various cantinas and on top of that tell him how the Republic Guardsmen were feeling, on duty over at the Senate Chamber…I think he’s pushing me, but I’m not sure why. The massage felt good until they forgot about the claws. Is that one bleeding?”
“Yes…kind of a lot…can I…put something on it for you?” He’d come around the desk instinctively, pulling up the sleeve in question; James perched on the corner, turned enough for a better angle, and settled trustingly into Michael’s touch. Michael’d swallowed. Dug numbing cream out of the medikit in his desk. Bandages, bacta-infused.
James’s skin felt warm and tempting beneath his hands. Freckle-stars over pale snow. Galaxies in reverse, artistic spangles across a wounded sky.
He’d murmured, hands busy, “You think Patrick’s pushing you…”
“He’s worried. Oh-”
“Did that hurt?”
“No…only cold…feels amazing, though. You have spectacular hands. I don’t think he and Ian know I know. And I’ve not picked up anything specific. Just…mmm, thank you…general sort of…worry. Undefined. I get it in flashes. When they’re focused on trying to see how far I can reach, how clearly I can read people I’ve never met…like they think I’ll be needed. Ah, marvelous, fifty times better, thanks…” James had stretched experimentally, remaining securely in Michael’s space, close enough to wrap arms around. “I used to think being an actor was hard. But projecting emotion’s the easy part, really.”
Michael’d not moved, because James hadn’t moved. So close, enough to feel the puff of breath when James sighed. Enough for James’s hair to tangle on Michael’s collar, with the next head-tip. “I can ask them about it. Why they’re pushing you.”
“You don’t have to. I’m okay. And I’m not sure I’m supposed to know.” But James had leaned back against him, shoulders tiredly cautious of new bandages. Michael put an arm around him, not thinking, not worrying about consequences. James needed to be held.
He said, “You’re my apprentice. My responsibility. So I do sort of have the right to yell at them. If they’re hurting you. I will, for you.”
And James had glanced at his face, eyes startled and appreciative, the latter shading into gratitude, fondness, and some other emotion, one Michael wanted to name and, breathless, didn’t dare. “Ask me again next week, then. Thank you, sir.”
“Michael. Please.”
“Thank you,” James had said again, and accepted an arm, hopping down from the desk. “Michael.”
That’d been the end of week two. James hadn’t mentioned the tiredness since, whether out of a need to prove that he could handle it or in some determined attempt to protect Michael from efforts to intervene. Michael, however, had looked at weary blue eyes midway through week three, sent James off to meditate for an hour-the argument that’d worked had involved Michael’s own need to catch up on mid-year student evaluations; not a lie-and then sprinted up to Patrick’s office, flung open the door, and proceeded to swear at his Heads in back-alley Coruscant slum argot, followed by a demand that they ease up on James right the fuck then and there and for good measure explain themselves.
They’d glanced at each other. Ian had let a stray thought slip out, directed at Patrick-love, really, do we have to work on YOUR shields-? Patrick put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. Michael’d found himself sitting down with no memory of taking a chair.
“We can’t tell you everything,” Ian’d said. “It’s important. But you’ll have to trust us. Please.”
“What is,” Michael had growled, shaking off the hand, letting emotion snap and sear like lightning through the air.
Ian had promised that they’d tell him. Eventually. Not yet. Not now. No denying the fact that they had been pushing James.
Patrick had apologized. Michael glared, and told them to apologize to James instead. They promptly did that too, which was the only reason Michael had yet to throw one of their desks through the wall.
Part of the problem lay in James’s lack of formal training overall, no sense of solid ground and center, the first structures trainees ever learned. Patrick and Ian needed him to have range, to stretch outward; he couldn’t, not as far as they believed he could, without internal balance and focus. Like skyscrapers on too narrow a base, Ian’d said. James had a decent self-sense, an intuitive grasp of the bits that were his thoughts and no one else’s; but that intuition’d always been enough to get by, and no one’d given him any guidance about foundation.
So, on the afternoon of the first day of the fourth week-Michael’d made that a condition, everyone leaving James alone for at least three days-he took his apprentice to the training room he’d reserved, all floor mats and white walls and shelves of puzzle-balls and throwing-sticks and perches for bouncing to and from, and scooped the largest cool crystal sphere out of its stand with a tug of power.
“Have you played with these, at all?”
“No?”
“Okay, they’re kind of fun. They’re all designed to be manipulated using the Force in various ways. Those little ones over there’re purely mental. Mazes. The big ones with pink sand are for composing shapes-”
“Oh, is that an X-wing, that’s brilliant-”
“-and these are about clarity and precision.” He let the X-wing sculpture dissolve into its component grains, with some satisfied pride. James’d called him brilliant.
James looked better, today. Eyes more alert. Shoulders straighter. The short break’d helped, then. Michael couldn’t not be satisfied, and relieved, about that too.
“I can hear you, you know.”
“You were meant to. At least that one.”
“Should I be irritated that you think I need rescuing, or just shut up and say thank you, then, sir?”
“You should try to focus,” Michael said, and tossed the ball at him. James plucked it out of the air with Force-honed reflexes, and turned it around in curious fingers. “That’s your main problem. Narrowing it all down. Patrick’s going to help you with refinement, persuasion, manipulation, probably conquering the known universe. But you don’t have the basics, sort of. We’re starting with this.”
Blue eyes regarded the crystal sphere dubiously. “Okay…”
“You can see the colors, right? All mixed together?” The sand glinted and glimmered, ochre and emerald and garnet and topaz and sapphire hues. Different weights. Different densities. But at present mingled in a confusing snarl of lights. This particular puzzle-ball was one of the easiest, meant for the youngest students; he was hoping James wouldn’t take it as an insult. This was, after all, part of why they’d been paired. So that he could give James the basics.
Not so that he could kiss James senseless. It’d be a good idea to remember that. Too bad his entire body wasn’t getting the message. James looked so beautiful, so kissable, healthy and unafraid to cheerfully mock his overprotective tendencies, here in the white-walled room with the practice toys.
“Right. You want me to separate them?”
“Exactly.”
“That…doesn’t sound as difficult as I feel like it ought to be. What don’t I know?”
“Nothing, really. It’s not meant to be difficult. It does require you to…shut everything else out. Focus. They’re all little and sort of slippery, the grains. It’s like a meditation aid, kind of.”
“Oh.” James tossed the ball into the air, caught it, spun it around. “So you in fact did mean basics. One simple thing.”
“Here.” He held out a hand; James flicked the puzzle his direction. “Watch me.” As always, the sensation tingled, slow and abrupt at the same time: the arrival of awareness, of recognition, like different layers in a sunwarmed pool, bright on the surface but cooler and deeper in spots, swirls, and eddies. The sand separated itself into tidy rows, clean-cut stripes of gemstone hues. James raised eyebrows. “Quick.”
“I’ve played with these before.” Not for years, but no point in saying so. Anyway, he’d forgotten how much fun they in fact could be, that straightforward uncomplicated rush of accomplishment. “Your turn.”
James looked at the newly re-shaken sand for a while. Nothing happened.
“Can you sort of…they should feel different. The layers.”
“I know. They do.”
“Then…I know you’re decent at telekinesis…”
“It’s not that.” James scowled. The sand gazed back, limpid blended rainbows. “I can’t not…when I try to make myself be quiet I feel everything else. You. Other apprentices, at least eight of whom’re currently having sex, three with each other. Two people panicking about Ian’s obstacle course exam. The Academy chefs being excited about Patrick’s birthday dinner next week. And I keep losing track of me-of this.”
“Do you need an anchor?” He put a hand on the closest sturdy shoulder. It felt slumped in defeat. It also nevertheless felt wonderful, all those muscles, the way James silently leaned into the touch. “I can jump in. Pull you out.”
“No, I’m good at tethers, I know which one I am, I just can’t…if I stop thinking about myself, if I only look outward, it gets too loud. If I don’t look, I can’t see your sand. But if I do, I get distracted and drop them…”
“Can you watch me again? I mean come in while I do it.” This was in fact a bit worrying. He did know James’s strength lay in emotional connection, people drawn to him and him to them. The decent assessment of telekinetic skills had been fair. But even the first-year students could generally manage this one. And, in fact, it wasn’t that James couldn’t. It was a question of getting overwhelmed.
Michael gritted teeth. Made a mental note to shout at Patrick again. This wasn’t fair to either of them. James deserved better. Someone who actually knew how to work with a complicated apprentice. With any apprentice.
“I can try.”
Right. He’d asked whether James wanted to come in. And James was saying yes.
That, unfortunately, was not any kind of euphemism. No sharing of lifts. Only thoughts.
He’d trust James with his thoughts. He’d trust James in his rooms. In his bed.
“What was that?”
“What-nothing! Never mind. Knock first.” Shields. Partitions. Strong ones. What he should’ve done before ever making the offer. Being professional, being a good Master for James-
No. Not that phrasing. Fuck.
“Something about your bed, was it?” Flirtatiously intrigued, but almost more of a reflex, Michael thought, glancing at annoyed blue eyes. The annoyance wasn’t for him; James was glaring at the sand. The seductive tone was somewhat incongruous, given that, though no easier to resist. “And, by the way, I do knock first. Only polite. Of course, you could leave the door unlocked and be ready for me…”
“We are not having sex in my head, James!”
“We’re not having it in your bed, either. All right, not appropriate, I know, but you weren’t the one just emotionally in the middle of a human-Bothan-Twi’lek threesome, either. I’m only a bit frustrated. More than one way. Sorry, sir.”
Michael stared at the puzzle-ball with all his might, and said, “Do you, ah, need a, um, minute?”
“No, I’m used to it. Won’t get any better-well, no, it might for them, seemed to be going rather well-if we wait. I’ll keep it out of your head; Patrick’s been working on projection filters with me.”
“Um. Okay. If you’re sure.” As if James needed to bother. The lust was already there. Sizzling happily away. “Come on, then.”
Almost before he’d finished the invitation, James was. And it felt so right.
This was James’s strength, easy as breathing, effortless as a fall into clouds. James was obviously keeping that promise, maintaining divisions; he curled up like a delighted kitten in the space Michael’d cleared for observation, tucking paws in, watching. No hint of any emotions other than respect, trust, lurking self-directed irritation, and a kind of shy excitement at being allowed in, being trusted in turn.
James was a witch’s grandson. Michael knew he’d slept with any number of sentient beings, had given them his body and his boundless compassion. And he wondered, knowing all of that, how many people had ever trusted James with their minds.
He was still jealous-that one wasn’t going away any time soon, in the face of imaginings about other hands on exuberantly freckled skin, other lips claiming all that kindness-but the jealousy felt more melancholic, all of a sudden. Complicated and wistful. Regret and a tiny bit of hope that made him wince at its presence. James gave other people what they needed, what he hadn’t shared with Michael. But this-
He thought that maybe this was something James had never had, or not too often, at least.
And he was profoundly honored to be there, feeling James’s hesitant pleasure in his mind.
Right. Not the time. If there ever would be a time. Focus. Training. Why they were here.
He pushed those treacherously intense emotions back behind walls, stacked musings about the latest pod-racing engine developments atop them, and reached out for the shimmering sand in the crystal ball in James’s hand.
He ran through the exercise twice, letting James feel it: the physicality shifting, moving, being weighed and sorted. James sent back the mental impression of a nod-got it, okay, yes-and tried.
The world tipped sideways. Emotions cascading in. None of them his. Love and arousal and admiration and the white heat of climax and tears of grief and a yelp of pain; scattering stars from all the minds and feelings in the Temple, all the minds out there in wide-flung eternity, brilliant singing sparks each tuned to a fractionally different key, piloting home or setting out to beat a Kessel Run record or filing paperwork or kissing littermates goodbye or making love to a second-tier pleasure-husband-
Sorry! James yanked everything back-mentally, physically-and then swore out loud, impressively profane. “Ow, fuck, that hurt, sorry, did I hurt you-”
“No…I don’t think so…” Dizzy, shaken by the immensity, but not hurt. Experimentally, he poked the empty space where James’s presence’d just been. Like-nothing he’d ever quite felt, that emptiness. Like he’d never known what piece had fit, and then he had known, and then he’d felt it jerked away. “Is that…you feel that…all the time?”
“Not that strong.” James was panting, eyes screwed shut in pain. “I do have shields. I lost them, though-I was trying to keep it away from you, and still open up enough to get what you were doing, and then reach out and do it myself-I couldn’t balance it all. I’m sorry, are you okay, this is what I meant when I said I might be dangerous, I think I was able to catch most of your headache, you shouldn’t get much backlash, but how bad is it?”
James had done that on purpose. Had kept the presence of mind-and the instinct-to keep Michael safe. Even in that maelstrom.
Michael might’ve been feeling lust before. Attraction, desire, instant longing to bend all those pocket-sized muscles over the nearest item of furniture. He was used to that, by now.
Standing on wobbly feet across from James in the vacant practice room, looking at the lines around closed blue eyes, he felt the moment of tipping-over. Love. Just like that.
Of course it was love. It was James.
His apprentice. His apprentice, whom he’d just allowed to be hurt. Who was apologizing for not taking all of the hurt.
“I’m fine!-are you? Do you need to sit down? Water, perigen tabs, anything?” Most Jedi could pain-block, at least partially so, but James almost certainly couldn’t right now, and there were reasons why the Academy kept perigen and nullicaine and other medical supplies on hand. He could get…something. Whatever James needed.
“No…to everything, I mean. I’m not fine, but it’ll go away.” James opened both eyes, winced, rubbed a temple. “I’ve always been pretty resilient, with backlash. Gran thinks it’s a defense mechanism. Natural physiological compensation. I’d end up with permanent migraines, otherwise; kind of hard to be an actor, to have any job, when you’re flat on your back in bed with a planetful of emotions in your head. ’s partly why I’m okay picking up yours too. It’ll fade.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I know.” A grin, pain-nibbled but mischievous. “I wanted to. Sir. I can try again, if you want. I know you were worried about me not getting this.”
“It’s not…” He stopped. “At least sit down. You look like you’ve been kicked by a bantha.”
“Oh, thanks very much.” James did accept the hand on his shoulder, steering him over to the bench along the wall, however. And then tipped his head back against the wall and sighed. “I don’t know what I’m doing, sometimes. Like this. I can see what you’re doing, I can…I just can’t quite…” One hand made a forlorn plucking-at-air gesture, levitating the colorful sphere. “Maybe I shouldn’t be here.”
“But you should be here,” Michael said, immediate and truthful, truthful in at least two ways, about the Jedi Order, about his own heart and soul. “I think you just proved that.”
“What, by fucking up the easiest thing you’ve asked me to do?”
“Oh,” Michael said, fundamentally shocked. He’d never heard James be lost before. And he remembered the first night they’d met, and uncertainty beneath the exuberance in ocean-wave eyes. “No. Not that. I mean you protected me. Without even thinking about it.”
“Of course I-”
“What are Jedi, James? I know you know. The first sentence in that pompous textbook they make you read in your History class.”
“Um…is this a very strange trick question? Don’t you have your own copy somewhere? ‘The Jedi are protectors of the helpless, guardians of peace and justice and-’”
Michael raised eyebrows. Meaningfully.
James sighed. Wordlessly.
“You do see where I’m going with this.”
“...maybe. Yes. Okay, thank you, yes, sir. I honestly like that book. Pompous, granted, but it’s got personality.”
“Please don’t tell me you’ve read all fifteen volumes.”
“I like reading. Y’know…I think I’ve got an idea.” James tucked a foot under himself on the bench. Caught the spinning ball in one hand. “I can’t do what you do. I can see it, but I can’t copy it. Can I try something?”
“Depends. How’re you feeling?”
“Better. I can’t shut off the emotions. That’s where my connection to the Force is, right? The living elements, not as much the universal material ones? So I think that’s part of the problem. Come be an anchor, this time, in case I’m wrong? I’ll stay out, but I want the safety net.”
“Of course-” Excitement, all at once, along his veins. He had an idea what James was thinking. Would’ve never occurred to him, but he wanted to see it work. He thought maybe it would. He thought James could. “Here, jump back in, I’ll catch you if you need it. Don’t hurt yourself.”
“Yes, Gran.” James flung a slim tendril of power his way, silver-blue and shining. Michael caught it, shouted back, I’m not your grandmother, James! and heard the answering merriment, echoing all down the line. Okay, ready, do what you’re thinking-
James grinned, shut his eyes, and fell into the Force. The world lit up. Starfire and joy. Incorporeal fingers brushing grains of sand, not picking out the physical tangible properties of each but reaching into impressions, memories, generations of Force-sensitive adepts nudging colors into accustomed shapes, sometimes with frustration, sometimes with ease, sometimes with painstaking care. The sand remembered, the way that stone and cathedrals and temple walls and hallowed ground remembered. Every vanished emotion leaving traces behind through time.
Ah, James said, there, and they both watched as every iridescent color straightened itself out and fell into line, rainbows flawlessly accounted for.
For good measure, every other puzzle-ball in the room quivered as well. Shapes rising up in sand-sculpture, metal balls rattling through mazes, keys spinning in Force-locks and flying free.
James turned to look at him, laughing, blazing like a thousand suns throughout infinity, every emotion across time and space summoned to play along; Michael shouted, come back, I’ll catch you, and found himself laughing too, exhilaration too vast to be contained.
James resurfaced trembling slightly, not with pain but with euphoria, eyes radiant as they blinked and returned to the present. “That…I can’t…I don’t even have words for…”
Michael didn’t either. There weren’t words. He wasn’t sure anyone else could’ve done it, ever, the same way. He’d had no idea how powerful James truly was. And he was getting the euphoria also, at secondhand; and was, as a result of all these colliding factors, a bit off-balance, thrilled for them both, and incredibly turned on.
He said, because someone had to, “You’re going to come down hard, from that…”
“Oh, I know…but not yet, I can still feel…” James looked at his hands as if he’d never seen them before. Curled fingers in and out, awed and testing. “Everything. Everyone who ever…that might’ve been overkill…”
“That’s one word for it,” Michael said, and put a hand on his back, unobtrusive support. “You could’ve settled for my memories, come on, I had the worst time with that miniature quartet maze, you could probably hear me swearing at it, in there…”
“Oh, that was you, was it, with that filthy vocabulary, I should’ve known…” James breathed out, slowly. “I didn’t know I could do that. Thank you.”
“You did it,” Michael said, and inched the arm further around his shoulders. “I was just sort of here. And impressed. I’m here and impressed. Tell me when you think you’re going to want to stand up.”
“What, because I’m going to need help? I did tell you I can handle backlash, why-” James’s face went absolutely white. Eyes huge and stunned. “Oh.”
“I did try to warn you.” It wasn’t physical, or not as much so, this time. It was loneliness. The staggering immensity of having touched so many hearts, held so many connections across time and space-and then having to let go.
And James had been drawing on not merely nearby emotions, but whole centuries of passion and determination and irritation and triumph, brought together around drifting colorful sand. So much to lose.
“You did-” James said, and then started crying, shocked and involuntary. Michael put both arms around him and held him, one hand rubbing his back, cheek resting in his hair, and murmured soft soothing sounds that weren’t quite words. Probably inappropriate. He didn’t care.
He did reach out, very carefully, and brush mental invitation across embattled shields, not asking but offering, keeping himself open. Their connection felt raw and tender, in his head, even to the lightest touch; but that was the abrupt isolation of withdrawal, and while James would have to level out eventually, even one quiet link would help for now.
He could let James feel it all. Everything he was, if it’d make a difference. He wasn’t ashamed.
He said, you’re not alone, you can hear me, I’m here. And James wrapped mental fingers around his offering, clinging to the lifeline without tugging hard, and gradually stopped crying.
Better?
Yes. I can let go, if you want. “Thank you.” James ran a hand over his face, dashing away tears, flicking the puzzle-ball back to its shelf with a half-sketched wave. Somewhere in there the afternoon’d transmuted to evening; Michael couldn’t see the cityscape from the windowless room, but he had a fairly good internal chronometer, not to mention the one on the wall. “I think…next time I’ll have limits in place. I know what I’m doing, now.”
“You can stay in as long as you need to. I don’t mind.” He didn’t. “Are you hungry? That’s going to be part of it too, if it’s not already.”
“Starving.” James sat up more, and left a scrap of awareness nestled in the back of Michael’s head: not consciously observing but simply present, a line of bagpipe melody woven into the background and tying disparate songs together. “Not tired exactly…I could try again, later, or tomorrow…Michael?”
“Hmm?” His hand had found its way to the back of James’s neck. Was kneading gently, fingers over soft skin and curling wisps of hair. “If you can make it back to your room, I can bring you food.”
“I’d like that.” James was looking better with every passing second; he’d not been lying, then, about his recuperative powers. Michael’s heart threw celebrations of thanks for that. Parades and confetti and bone-deep tremulous reprieve.
“…that wasn’t what I was going to ask you. Might be personal, though.”
“Anything.”
“You’re a better empath than people think you are, aren’t you?” Ocean-wave eyes looked up at him; not far up, nearly the same height with them both sitting down, but James was still tucked under Michael’s arm. “You teach mechanics and Force manipulation, and you don’t run around solving trade disputes or ending wars, but…you knew how I was going to feel. You’re beyond good with the first-year trainees. And you know me. Better than anyone.”
And Michael, who’d never been much good at outright denials, who wasn’t going to and literally couldn’t and anyway wouldn’t lie to James, said, “Patrick and Ian know. That was partly why me. For you. Um. I’m sorry.”
“Why? That explains a lot, actually. You don’t get the…immediacy of it, the way I do, but…” James waved a hand, an expressive abstract gesture. “You get people. Motivation. The sort of underpinnings. No wonder they don’t advertise you.”
“They don’t advertise me,” Michael said, and sighed, “because it isn’t reliable. I have to have…someone open enough on the other side. To kind of listen to. I can hear the-the words in the spaces, sometimes. But I need someone else to start the conversation.”
James put his head on one side. Grinned. A real grin: conspiratorial, excited, not unthinkingly seductive or impish or actor-practiced. “And I can talk to anyone.”
“Yes…you can…”
“I’m thinking we should eavesdrop on our beloved Heads, aren’t you? If they’re going to have plans for us, I want to know.”
“That’s…sort of unethical…please don’t be evil…I do trust them. So do you.”
“Of course, but I still want to know. And you do, too.” James’s smile lit up the snow-pale room. “Besides, I’m a witch, remember?-come on, you have to expect me to break some rules.”
“Don’t,” Michael said, swift and inadvertent, stepping over the last few words. “You’re not-you don’t have to call yourself that. You know I don’t think that. About you.”
This got a rather surprised expression, smile startled into pensive reflection and then back out. “I know. But I have heard all the jokes. People-”
“Someone said something-?”
“Oh, not at all, no one even knows except you and Patrick and Ian, I think. Which is why I get to hear the jokes. How many Nightsisters does it take to change a holoprojector bulb?”
“James-”
“None. They enslave an engineer to do it and then feed him to a rancor.” James made an I-know-it’s-not-funny-but-if-I-can’t-who-can? face at Michael’s expression. “I heard that one back when I got my first job. Being a glorious martyr in one of those Galactic Civil War epic period holodramas. I didn’t exactly go around shouting my heritage to the ’net, you understand. Look, I know what you’re thinking, and you’re not wrong, but I can’t just…be angry all the time, either. I mean literally. Being me. I can’t.”
“You still shouldn’t have to hear that.” He slid his hand up without conscious thought to cup James’s face, thumb rubbing across rueful freckles. Not strange, somehow, that gesture. Not on either side. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” James said, and Michael stopped, thought, sighed, skimmed a thumb over the arch of his apprentice’s cheekbone, and answered, “No. You know what I mean.”
“We’re already changing things.” Certainty in the New Glasgow hills. One corner of that mobile mouth tugging up. “Ian does want me to announce it, after I successfully graduate. Sort of a symbol. Witches can be Jedi. For that matter, witches can have grandsons. I don’t mind being a symbol if it’ll help, and, hey, some of the jokes are kind of funny, remind me to tell you the one about the two witches and the one broomstick. Which, by the way, still works even if one of the witches happens to be physically male. I should know.”
Michael’d had a retort ready. It was gone. Irrevocably. Just like that.
“You said you can hear the spaces,” James said, very softly, playful and serious as the sea, splashing waves over deep blue fathoms below. “So you know what I mean, too.”
“I think so.” He stroked the hand through James’s hair; tucked the corresponding little sigh of pleasure away carefully into his heart. “Yes. All right. I haven’t actually heard that broomstick one. You can, y’know, tell it to me later if you still want to. Right now you should rest. I’ll go find the kitchens and herbal tea and nerf stew. After you’re in bed.” He was fairly sure, from the revealing sentences, the unusually clumsy admissions, the weary dwindling shared headache, that James wasn’t back to one hundred percent. Better, yes. But not altogether so.
And he was still stroking fingers through dark hair, and James was letting him.
Matchless eyes widened hopefully at him. “Can I bargain for honey-sticks if I don’t argue?”
“Terrible influence, you are.” Testing, teasing; he caught answering laughter among sea-tides. “I’ll see what I can do. And…yes. About your other idea. Not now, not any time soon, but yes. I don’t like being in the dark any more than you do. And it’s about both of us. So if you’re going to try to find out I’m right there with you.”
I’m with you no matter what, he didn’t say. He thought maybe James heard it anyway, from the smile.
Word Count: 6,018
Rating: PG, probably, except Michael and James both use the f-word a few times when surprised.
Summary: Star Wars fusion, more or less, in which Jedi Knight Michael Fassbender gets a new apprentice with extremely distracting beautiful blue eyes…
Notes: the fault of this interview, in which Michael wanted to be Yoda, and James concluded he’d be a “bi-curious Jedi”. Title and chapter titles all courtesy of Star Wars, of course! I haven't read my Expanded Universe novels in years, and even then they're all Timothy Zahn-era, but this is some sort of fusion with our future universe anyway, so we'll just handwave my failures of up-to-date SW knowledge, okay?
In this chapter: James and Michael do some training exercises, and very definitely do NOT have sex.
One week. Two. Three. James adapted astonishingly well, more easily than Michael himself recalled coming to terms with separation from his previous life. James made friends with half a dozen senior-year students, awkward Nick and easy-laughter Jen and tall pale-eyed Benedict, and showed up in the mornings bright-eyed and enthusiastic and occasionally hungover, though never less than articulate and kind.
He brought Michael cups of jet-black morning caf every day. Michael at first tried to say he didn’t have to, then wondered whether James was simply picking up the craving and unconsciously responding. James tilted an eyebrow at him, said, “Very consciously responding, sir,” and took a sip of his own spiced-cream concoction, sweetness and exotic flavors in a cup. Michael stared at the cream where it lingered on luscious lips.
James grinned and licked the cream away with a swipe of tongue, more teasing than inviting. The gesture said: I know and you know and thank you for the compliment and thank you for the other part and we’re in no hurry.
It also added: but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun imagining. Michael sighed, letting the sound be audible, and ordered James to go fit in extra agility training, levitation and backflips and catching objects while distracted. James saluted, textbook-cheeky, and went.
James did make friends quickly. Friends; and more. Michael was all but certain of that. He’d caught James talking softly to fellow trainees in corridors, one hand lifted to gently brush tangled hair out of a Corellian smuggler’s daughter’s amber eyes, or with an arm slipping casually around the waist of a nervous Chiss boy, offering unspoken support. He’d seen James tilt a head back and smile at a proprietary trail of twin sinuous Twi’lek lekku over shoulders. And he’d walked into the dining hall mid-afternoon at the end of the second week to discover his apprentice half-asleep and blissful, being groomed by the cat-tongues and kneading paws of two of the Cathar apprentices, unrelated, a tom and a queen.
At least James had been dressed. He’d registered that much before he’d fled. And then he’d sat, shaking, behind his desk in his empty classroom for a while, no longer hungry.
He didn’t have the right to tell James not to sleep with other people. No rules against it. Hells, James probably needed it, needed the outlet for everyone else’s emotions. Like therapy. For them, for him.
Michael’d told him that sex on Michael’s desk-in Michael’s bed, in James’s bed, onboard James’s ship, in a storage closet, anywhere, everywhere, yes please-wasn’t going to happen. Had been responsible about it. And James had agreed, and they were, clumsily, experimentally, becoming something like friends.
All of that was true.
And Michael nevertheless wanted to scream.
James was his apprentice. His friend. And he wanted more. He wanted so much more. And they both knew it. And he couldn’t.
Professional reasons. No taking advantage of his student. Personal reasons. No taking advantage of his too-generous friend.
Jedi weren’t jealous. Shouldn’t be jealous. Consequences.
His heart physically hurt. He’d never known it could do that.
James had come to find him about twenty minutes after the dining-hall encounter, yawning, hair tugged into improbable fluffy shapes and parallel red claw-scratches visible at the edge of his sleeve. “Sorry, Michael.”
“Don’t apologize to me.”
“I could feel those thoughts the whole way here, y’know.” James had crossed arms. Propped a hip against the desk. Like he was comfortable, like he belonged.
He did. He always would. Michael’d shoved down a surge of irrational anger. James couldn’t help that, being a empath, instinctively reacting to the world’s smiles and frowns, always comfortable because he could fit into whatever shape would ease tensions all around-
“That’s not true,” James had said, “and you know it, and I know you know it, but thanks for not saying it out loud.” And the smile was crooked, wry, self-deprecating: he’d spoken before Michael’d found words.
“I know,” Michael had said back, and ran a hand through his hair. “I know. I’m sorry.” He was. He did know. James making everyone else comfortable was not the same as James being comfortable. Not necessarily comfortable for James at all.
“As it happens, I’ve not had sex with those two. Separately or together, mind you.”
“You haven’t-oh. Oh, you haven’t-I mean you can. Of course. If you want to. I mean I’m not-it’s not my job to tell you what you can do when you’re not training. Um. Or who you can-You don’t have to give that up. Not because of me.”
This had earned a raised eyebrow. “I know. I might listen if you asked for that, but because it’d be you asking, not because I think you have the right to ask. If that made any sense. Too much asking. But either way I’m not sleeping with the fluffballs, as lovely and soft as they are. If you were wanting to know.”
Michael, who’d thought he had known, and consequently was presently being strangled by mortification and relief and shameful thankfulness, unearthed a nod. Probably not enough of a reply. James’s shields were getting better, two weeks into sessions with Patrick’s experienced hands.
“They’re only lonely.” James tried to get a good look at the back of his own shoulder. Couldn’t quite manage it. “They miss having siblings, litter-mates, kits around. I don’t mind being an adopted kitten, though I wish they’d remember I’ve got thinner skin…”
“Please be careful,” Michael’d said, one hand helplessly lifted, a futile tiny gesture. And James’s smile had become marginally more true. A resurfacing sparkle in blue eyes. “I am. I promise.”
Around them, the afternoon shimmered. Woodwork and comprehension and solitude. A space made purely for them.
James’d added contemplatively, “I was sort of enjoying myself. Relaxing. Tired. Patrick forgets I’ve not been doing this for five hundred years. Yesterday he wanted me to simultaneously break up six bar fights in various cantinas and on top of that tell him how the Republic Guardsmen were feeling, on duty over at the Senate Chamber…I think he’s pushing me, but I’m not sure why. The massage felt good until they forgot about the claws. Is that one bleeding?”
“Yes…kind of a lot…can I…put something on it for you?” He’d come around the desk instinctively, pulling up the sleeve in question; James perched on the corner, turned enough for a better angle, and settled trustingly into Michael’s touch. Michael’d swallowed. Dug numbing cream out of the medikit in his desk. Bandages, bacta-infused.
James’s skin felt warm and tempting beneath his hands. Freckle-stars over pale snow. Galaxies in reverse, artistic spangles across a wounded sky.
He’d murmured, hands busy, “You think Patrick’s pushing you…”
“He’s worried. Oh-”
“Did that hurt?”
“No…only cold…feels amazing, though. You have spectacular hands. I don’t think he and Ian know I know. And I’ve not picked up anything specific. Just…mmm, thank you…general sort of…worry. Undefined. I get it in flashes. When they’re focused on trying to see how far I can reach, how clearly I can read people I’ve never met…like they think I’ll be needed. Ah, marvelous, fifty times better, thanks…” James had stretched experimentally, remaining securely in Michael’s space, close enough to wrap arms around. “I used to think being an actor was hard. But projecting emotion’s the easy part, really.”
Michael’d not moved, because James hadn’t moved. So close, enough to feel the puff of breath when James sighed. Enough for James’s hair to tangle on Michael’s collar, with the next head-tip. “I can ask them about it. Why they’re pushing you.”
“You don’t have to. I’m okay. And I’m not sure I’m supposed to know.” But James had leaned back against him, shoulders tiredly cautious of new bandages. Michael put an arm around him, not thinking, not worrying about consequences. James needed to be held.
He said, “You’re my apprentice. My responsibility. So I do sort of have the right to yell at them. If they’re hurting you. I will, for you.”
And James had glanced at his face, eyes startled and appreciative, the latter shading into gratitude, fondness, and some other emotion, one Michael wanted to name and, breathless, didn’t dare. “Ask me again next week, then. Thank you, sir.”
“Michael. Please.”
“Thank you,” James had said again, and accepted an arm, hopping down from the desk. “Michael.”
That’d been the end of week two. James hadn’t mentioned the tiredness since, whether out of a need to prove that he could handle it or in some determined attempt to protect Michael from efforts to intervene. Michael, however, had looked at weary blue eyes midway through week three, sent James off to meditate for an hour-the argument that’d worked had involved Michael’s own need to catch up on mid-year student evaluations; not a lie-and then sprinted up to Patrick’s office, flung open the door, and proceeded to swear at his Heads in back-alley Coruscant slum argot, followed by a demand that they ease up on James right the fuck then and there and for good measure explain themselves.
They’d glanced at each other. Ian had let a stray thought slip out, directed at Patrick-love, really, do we have to work on YOUR shields-? Patrick put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. Michael’d found himself sitting down with no memory of taking a chair.
“We can’t tell you everything,” Ian’d said. “It’s important. But you’ll have to trust us. Please.”
“What is,” Michael had growled, shaking off the hand, letting emotion snap and sear like lightning through the air.
Ian had promised that they’d tell him. Eventually. Not yet. Not now. No denying the fact that they had been pushing James.
Patrick had apologized. Michael glared, and told them to apologize to James instead. They promptly did that too, which was the only reason Michael had yet to throw one of their desks through the wall.
Part of the problem lay in James’s lack of formal training overall, no sense of solid ground and center, the first structures trainees ever learned. Patrick and Ian needed him to have range, to stretch outward; he couldn’t, not as far as they believed he could, without internal balance and focus. Like skyscrapers on too narrow a base, Ian’d said. James had a decent self-sense, an intuitive grasp of the bits that were his thoughts and no one else’s; but that intuition’d always been enough to get by, and no one’d given him any guidance about foundation.
So, on the afternoon of the first day of the fourth week-Michael’d made that a condition, everyone leaving James alone for at least three days-he took his apprentice to the training room he’d reserved, all floor mats and white walls and shelves of puzzle-balls and throwing-sticks and perches for bouncing to and from, and scooped the largest cool crystal sphere out of its stand with a tug of power.
“Have you played with these, at all?”
“No?”
“Okay, they’re kind of fun. They’re all designed to be manipulated using the Force in various ways. Those little ones over there’re purely mental. Mazes. The big ones with pink sand are for composing shapes-”
“Oh, is that an X-wing, that’s brilliant-”
“-and these are about clarity and precision.” He let the X-wing sculpture dissolve into its component grains, with some satisfied pride. James’d called him brilliant.
James looked better, today. Eyes more alert. Shoulders straighter. The short break’d helped, then. Michael couldn’t not be satisfied, and relieved, about that too.
“I can hear you, you know.”
“You were meant to. At least that one.”
“Should I be irritated that you think I need rescuing, or just shut up and say thank you, then, sir?”
“You should try to focus,” Michael said, and tossed the ball at him. James plucked it out of the air with Force-honed reflexes, and turned it around in curious fingers. “That’s your main problem. Narrowing it all down. Patrick’s going to help you with refinement, persuasion, manipulation, probably conquering the known universe. But you don’t have the basics, sort of. We’re starting with this.”
Blue eyes regarded the crystal sphere dubiously. “Okay…”
“You can see the colors, right? All mixed together?” The sand glinted and glimmered, ochre and emerald and garnet and topaz and sapphire hues. Different weights. Different densities. But at present mingled in a confusing snarl of lights. This particular puzzle-ball was one of the easiest, meant for the youngest students; he was hoping James wouldn’t take it as an insult. This was, after all, part of why they’d been paired. So that he could give James the basics.
Not so that he could kiss James senseless. It’d be a good idea to remember that. Too bad his entire body wasn’t getting the message. James looked so beautiful, so kissable, healthy and unafraid to cheerfully mock his overprotective tendencies, here in the white-walled room with the practice toys.
“Right. You want me to separate them?”
“Exactly.”
“That…doesn’t sound as difficult as I feel like it ought to be. What don’t I know?”
“Nothing, really. It’s not meant to be difficult. It does require you to…shut everything else out. Focus. They’re all little and sort of slippery, the grains. It’s like a meditation aid, kind of.”
“Oh.” James tossed the ball into the air, caught it, spun it around. “So you in fact did mean basics. One simple thing.”
“Here.” He held out a hand; James flicked the puzzle his direction. “Watch me.” As always, the sensation tingled, slow and abrupt at the same time: the arrival of awareness, of recognition, like different layers in a sunwarmed pool, bright on the surface but cooler and deeper in spots, swirls, and eddies. The sand separated itself into tidy rows, clean-cut stripes of gemstone hues. James raised eyebrows. “Quick.”
“I’ve played with these before.” Not for years, but no point in saying so. Anyway, he’d forgotten how much fun they in fact could be, that straightforward uncomplicated rush of accomplishment. “Your turn.”
James looked at the newly re-shaken sand for a while. Nothing happened.
“Can you sort of…they should feel different. The layers.”
“I know. They do.”
“Then…I know you’re decent at telekinesis…”
“It’s not that.” James scowled. The sand gazed back, limpid blended rainbows. “I can’t not…when I try to make myself be quiet I feel everything else. You. Other apprentices, at least eight of whom’re currently having sex, three with each other. Two people panicking about Ian’s obstacle course exam. The Academy chefs being excited about Patrick’s birthday dinner next week. And I keep losing track of me-of this.”
“Do you need an anchor?” He put a hand on the closest sturdy shoulder. It felt slumped in defeat. It also nevertheless felt wonderful, all those muscles, the way James silently leaned into the touch. “I can jump in. Pull you out.”
“No, I’m good at tethers, I know which one I am, I just can’t…if I stop thinking about myself, if I only look outward, it gets too loud. If I don’t look, I can’t see your sand. But if I do, I get distracted and drop them…”
“Can you watch me again? I mean come in while I do it.” This was in fact a bit worrying. He did know James’s strength lay in emotional connection, people drawn to him and him to them. The decent assessment of telekinetic skills had been fair. But even the first-year students could generally manage this one. And, in fact, it wasn’t that James couldn’t. It was a question of getting overwhelmed.
Michael gritted teeth. Made a mental note to shout at Patrick again. This wasn’t fair to either of them. James deserved better. Someone who actually knew how to work with a complicated apprentice. With any apprentice.
“I can try.”
Right. He’d asked whether James wanted to come in. And James was saying yes.
That, unfortunately, was not any kind of euphemism. No sharing of lifts. Only thoughts.
He’d trust James with his thoughts. He’d trust James in his rooms. In his bed.
“What was that?”
“What-nothing! Never mind. Knock first.” Shields. Partitions. Strong ones. What he should’ve done before ever making the offer. Being professional, being a good Master for James-
No. Not that phrasing. Fuck.
“Something about your bed, was it?” Flirtatiously intrigued, but almost more of a reflex, Michael thought, glancing at annoyed blue eyes. The annoyance wasn’t for him; James was glaring at the sand. The seductive tone was somewhat incongruous, given that, though no easier to resist. “And, by the way, I do knock first. Only polite. Of course, you could leave the door unlocked and be ready for me…”
“We are not having sex in my head, James!”
“We’re not having it in your bed, either. All right, not appropriate, I know, but you weren’t the one just emotionally in the middle of a human-Bothan-Twi’lek threesome, either. I’m only a bit frustrated. More than one way. Sorry, sir.”
Michael stared at the puzzle-ball with all his might, and said, “Do you, ah, need a, um, minute?”
“No, I’m used to it. Won’t get any better-well, no, it might for them, seemed to be going rather well-if we wait. I’ll keep it out of your head; Patrick’s been working on projection filters with me.”
“Um. Okay. If you’re sure.” As if James needed to bother. The lust was already there. Sizzling happily away. “Come on, then.”
Almost before he’d finished the invitation, James was. And it felt so right.
This was James’s strength, easy as breathing, effortless as a fall into clouds. James was obviously keeping that promise, maintaining divisions; he curled up like a delighted kitten in the space Michael’d cleared for observation, tucking paws in, watching. No hint of any emotions other than respect, trust, lurking self-directed irritation, and a kind of shy excitement at being allowed in, being trusted in turn.
James was a witch’s grandson. Michael knew he’d slept with any number of sentient beings, had given them his body and his boundless compassion. And he wondered, knowing all of that, how many people had ever trusted James with their minds.
He was still jealous-that one wasn’t going away any time soon, in the face of imaginings about other hands on exuberantly freckled skin, other lips claiming all that kindness-but the jealousy felt more melancholic, all of a sudden. Complicated and wistful. Regret and a tiny bit of hope that made him wince at its presence. James gave other people what they needed, what he hadn’t shared with Michael. But this-
He thought that maybe this was something James had never had, or not too often, at least.
And he was profoundly honored to be there, feeling James’s hesitant pleasure in his mind.
Right. Not the time. If there ever would be a time. Focus. Training. Why they were here.
He pushed those treacherously intense emotions back behind walls, stacked musings about the latest pod-racing engine developments atop them, and reached out for the shimmering sand in the crystal ball in James’s hand.
He ran through the exercise twice, letting James feel it: the physicality shifting, moving, being weighed and sorted. James sent back the mental impression of a nod-got it, okay, yes-and tried.
The world tipped sideways. Emotions cascading in. None of them his. Love and arousal and admiration and the white heat of climax and tears of grief and a yelp of pain; scattering stars from all the minds and feelings in the Temple, all the minds out there in wide-flung eternity, brilliant singing sparks each tuned to a fractionally different key, piloting home or setting out to beat a Kessel Run record or filing paperwork or kissing littermates goodbye or making love to a second-tier pleasure-husband-
Sorry! James yanked everything back-mentally, physically-and then swore out loud, impressively profane. “Ow, fuck, that hurt, sorry, did I hurt you-”
“No…I don’t think so…” Dizzy, shaken by the immensity, but not hurt. Experimentally, he poked the empty space where James’s presence’d just been. Like-nothing he’d ever quite felt, that emptiness. Like he’d never known what piece had fit, and then he had known, and then he’d felt it jerked away. “Is that…you feel that…all the time?”
“Not that strong.” James was panting, eyes screwed shut in pain. “I do have shields. I lost them, though-I was trying to keep it away from you, and still open up enough to get what you were doing, and then reach out and do it myself-I couldn’t balance it all. I’m sorry, are you okay, this is what I meant when I said I might be dangerous, I think I was able to catch most of your headache, you shouldn’t get much backlash, but how bad is it?”
James had done that on purpose. Had kept the presence of mind-and the instinct-to keep Michael safe. Even in that maelstrom.
Michael might’ve been feeling lust before. Attraction, desire, instant longing to bend all those pocket-sized muscles over the nearest item of furniture. He was used to that, by now.
Standing on wobbly feet across from James in the vacant practice room, looking at the lines around closed blue eyes, he felt the moment of tipping-over. Love. Just like that.
Of course it was love. It was James.
His apprentice. His apprentice, whom he’d just allowed to be hurt. Who was apologizing for not taking all of the hurt.
“I’m fine!-are you? Do you need to sit down? Water, perigen tabs, anything?” Most Jedi could pain-block, at least partially so, but James almost certainly couldn’t right now, and there were reasons why the Academy kept perigen and nullicaine and other medical supplies on hand. He could get…something. Whatever James needed.
“No…to everything, I mean. I’m not fine, but it’ll go away.” James opened both eyes, winced, rubbed a temple. “I’ve always been pretty resilient, with backlash. Gran thinks it’s a defense mechanism. Natural physiological compensation. I’d end up with permanent migraines, otherwise; kind of hard to be an actor, to have any job, when you’re flat on your back in bed with a planetful of emotions in your head. ’s partly why I’m okay picking up yours too. It’ll fade.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I know.” A grin, pain-nibbled but mischievous. “I wanted to. Sir. I can try again, if you want. I know you were worried about me not getting this.”
“It’s not…” He stopped. “At least sit down. You look like you’ve been kicked by a bantha.”
“Oh, thanks very much.” James did accept the hand on his shoulder, steering him over to the bench along the wall, however. And then tipped his head back against the wall and sighed. “I don’t know what I’m doing, sometimes. Like this. I can see what you’re doing, I can…I just can’t quite…” One hand made a forlorn plucking-at-air gesture, levitating the colorful sphere. “Maybe I shouldn’t be here.”
“But you should be here,” Michael said, immediate and truthful, truthful in at least two ways, about the Jedi Order, about his own heart and soul. “I think you just proved that.”
“What, by fucking up the easiest thing you’ve asked me to do?”
“Oh,” Michael said, fundamentally shocked. He’d never heard James be lost before. And he remembered the first night they’d met, and uncertainty beneath the exuberance in ocean-wave eyes. “No. Not that. I mean you protected me. Without even thinking about it.”
“Of course I-”
“What are Jedi, James? I know you know. The first sentence in that pompous textbook they make you read in your History class.”
“Um…is this a very strange trick question? Don’t you have your own copy somewhere? ‘The Jedi are protectors of the helpless, guardians of peace and justice and-’”
Michael raised eyebrows. Meaningfully.
James sighed. Wordlessly.
“You do see where I’m going with this.”
“...maybe. Yes. Okay, thank you, yes, sir. I honestly like that book. Pompous, granted, but it’s got personality.”
“Please don’t tell me you’ve read all fifteen volumes.”
“I like reading. Y’know…I think I’ve got an idea.” James tucked a foot under himself on the bench. Caught the spinning ball in one hand. “I can’t do what you do. I can see it, but I can’t copy it. Can I try something?”
“Depends. How’re you feeling?”
“Better. I can’t shut off the emotions. That’s where my connection to the Force is, right? The living elements, not as much the universal material ones? So I think that’s part of the problem. Come be an anchor, this time, in case I’m wrong? I’ll stay out, but I want the safety net.”
“Of course-” Excitement, all at once, along his veins. He had an idea what James was thinking. Would’ve never occurred to him, but he wanted to see it work. He thought maybe it would. He thought James could. “Here, jump back in, I’ll catch you if you need it. Don’t hurt yourself.”
“Yes, Gran.” James flung a slim tendril of power his way, silver-blue and shining. Michael caught it, shouted back, I’m not your grandmother, James! and heard the answering merriment, echoing all down the line. Okay, ready, do what you’re thinking-
James grinned, shut his eyes, and fell into the Force. The world lit up. Starfire and joy. Incorporeal fingers brushing grains of sand, not picking out the physical tangible properties of each but reaching into impressions, memories, generations of Force-sensitive adepts nudging colors into accustomed shapes, sometimes with frustration, sometimes with ease, sometimes with painstaking care. The sand remembered, the way that stone and cathedrals and temple walls and hallowed ground remembered. Every vanished emotion leaving traces behind through time.
Ah, James said, there, and they both watched as every iridescent color straightened itself out and fell into line, rainbows flawlessly accounted for.
For good measure, every other puzzle-ball in the room quivered as well. Shapes rising up in sand-sculpture, metal balls rattling through mazes, keys spinning in Force-locks and flying free.
James turned to look at him, laughing, blazing like a thousand suns throughout infinity, every emotion across time and space summoned to play along; Michael shouted, come back, I’ll catch you, and found himself laughing too, exhilaration too vast to be contained.
James resurfaced trembling slightly, not with pain but with euphoria, eyes radiant as they blinked and returned to the present. “That…I can’t…I don’t even have words for…”
Michael didn’t either. There weren’t words. He wasn’t sure anyone else could’ve done it, ever, the same way. He’d had no idea how powerful James truly was. And he was getting the euphoria also, at secondhand; and was, as a result of all these colliding factors, a bit off-balance, thrilled for them both, and incredibly turned on.
He said, because someone had to, “You’re going to come down hard, from that…”
“Oh, I know…but not yet, I can still feel…” James looked at his hands as if he’d never seen them before. Curled fingers in and out, awed and testing. “Everything. Everyone who ever…that might’ve been overkill…”
“That’s one word for it,” Michael said, and put a hand on his back, unobtrusive support. “You could’ve settled for my memories, come on, I had the worst time with that miniature quartet maze, you could probably hear me swearing at it, in there…”
“Oh, that was you, was it, with that filthy vocabulary, I should’ve known…” James breathed out, slowly. “I didn’t know I could do that. Thank you.”
“You did it,” Michael said, and inched the arm further around his shoulders. “I was just sort of here. And impressed. I’m here and impressed. Tell me when you think you’re going to want to stand up.”
“What, because I’m going to need help? I did tell you I can handle backlash, why-” James’s face went absolutely white. Eyes huge and stunned. “Oh.”
“I did try to warn you.” It wasn’t physical, or not as much so, this time. It was loneliness. The staggering immensity of having touched so many hearts, held so many connections across time and space-and then having to let go.
And James had been drawing on not merely nearby emotions, but whole centuries of passion and determination and irritation and triumph, brought together around drifting colorful sand. So much to lose.
“You did-” James said, and then started crying, shocked and involuntary. Michael put both arms around him and held him, one hand rubbing his back, cheek resting in his hair, and murmured soft soothing sounds that weren’t quite words. Probably inappropriate. He didn’t care.
He did reach out, very carefully, and brush mental invitation across embattled shields, not asking but offering, keeping himself open. Their connection felt raw and tender, in his head, even to the lightest touch; but that was the abrupt isolation of withdrawal, and while James would have to level out eventually, even one quiet link would help for now.
He could let James feel it all. Everything he was, if it’d make a difference. He wasn’t ashamed.
He said, you’re not alone, you can hear me, I’m here. And James wrapped mental fingers around his offering, clinging to the lifeline without tugging hard, and gradually stopped crying.
Better?
Yes. I can let go, if you want. “Thank you.” James ran a hand over his face, dashing away tears, flicking the puzzle-ball back to its shelf with a half-sketched wave. Somewhere in there the afternoon’d transmuted to evening; Michael couldn’t see the cityscape from the windowless room, but he had a fairly good internal chronometer, not to mention the one on the wall. “I think…next time I’ll have limits in place. I know what I’m doing, now.”
“You can stay in as long as you need to. I don’t mind.” He didn’t. “Are you hungry? That’s going to be part of it too, if it’s not already.”
“Starving.” James sat up more, and left a scrap of awareness nestled in the back of Michael’s head: not consciously observing but simply present, a line of bagpipe melody woven into the background and tying disparate songs together. “Not tired exactly…I could try again, later, or tomorrow…Michael?”
“Hmm?” His hand had found its way to the back of James’s neck. Was kneading gently, fingers over soft skin and curling wisps of hair. “If you can make it back to your room, I can bring you food.”
“I’d like that.” James was looking better with every passing second; he’d not been lying, then, about his recuperative powers. Michael’s heart threw celebrations of thanks for that. Parades and confetti and bone-deep tremulous reprieve.
“…that wasn’t what I was going to ask you. Might be personal, though.”
“Anything.”
“You’re a better empath than people think you are, aren’t you?” Ocean-wave eyes looked up at him; not far up, nearly the same height with them both sitting down, but James was still tucked under Michael’s arm. “You teach mechanics and Force manipulation, and you don’t run around solving trade disputes or ending wars, but…you knew how I was going to feel. You’re beyond good with the first-year trainees. And you know me. Better than anyone.”
And Michael, who’d never been much good at outright denials, who wasn’t going to and literally couldn’t and anyway wouldn’t lie to James, said, “Patrick and Ian know. That was partly why me. For you. Um. I’m sorry.”
“Why? That explains a lot, actually. You don’t get the…immediacy of it, the way I do, but…” James waved a hand, an expressive abstract gesture. “You get people. Motivation. The sort of underpinnings. No wonder they don’t advertise you.”
“They don’t advertise me,” Michael said, and sighed, “because it isn’t reliable. I have to have…someone open enough on the other side. To kind of listen to. I can hear the-the words in the spaces, sometimes. But I need someone else to start the conversation.”
James put his head on one side. Grinned. A real grin: conspiratorial, excited, not unthinkingly seductive or impish or actor-practiced. “And I can talk to anyone.”
“Yes…you can…”
“I’m thinking we should eavesdrop on our beloved Heads, aren’t you? If they’re going to have plans for us, I want to know.”
“That’s…sort of unethical…please don’t be evil…I do trust them. So do you.”
“Of course, but I still want to know. And you do, too.” James’s smile lit up the snow-pale room. “Besides, I’m a witch, remember?-come on, you have to expect me to break some rules.”
“Don’t,” Michael said, swift and inadvertent, stepping over the last few words. “You’re not-you don’t have to call yourself that. You know I don’t think that. About you.”
This got a rather surprised expression, smile startled into pensive reflection and then back out. “I know. But I have heard all the jokes. People-”
“Someone said something-?”
“Oh, not at all, no one even knows except you and Patrick and Ian, I think. Which is why I get to hear the jokes. How many Nightsisters does it take to change a holoprojector bulb?”
“James-”
“None. They enslave an engineer to do it and then feed him to a rancor.” James made an I-know-it’s-not-funny-but-if-I-can’t-who-can? face at Michael’s expression. “I heard that one back when I got my first job. Being a glorious martyr in one of those Galactic Civil War epic period holodramas. I didn’t exactly go around shouting my heritage to the ’net, you understand. Look, I know what you’re thinking, and you’re not wrong, but I can’t just…be angry all the time, either. I mean literally. Being me. I can’t.”
“You still shouldn’t have to hear that.” He slid his hand up without conscious thought to cup James’s face, thumb rubbing across rueful freckles. Not strange, somehow, that gesture. Not on either side. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” James said, and Michael stopped, thought, sighed, skimmed a thumb over the arch of his apprentice’s cheekbone, and answered, “No. You know what I mean.”
“We’re already changing things.” Certainty in the New Glasgow hills. One corner of that mobile mouth tugging up. “Ian does want me to announce it, after I successfully graduate. Sort of a symbol. Witches can be Jedi. For that matter, witches can have grandsons. I don’t mind being a symbol if it’ll help, and, hey, some of the jokes are kind of funny, remind me to tell you the one about the two witches and the one broomstick. Which, by the way, still works even if one of the witches happens to be physically male. I should know.”
Michael’d had a retort ready. It was gone. Irrevocably. Just like that.
“You said you can hear the spaces,” James said, very softly, playful and serious as the sea, splashing waves over deep blue fathoms below. “So you know what I mean, too.”
“I think so.” He stroked the hand through James’s hair; tucked the corresponding little sigh of pleasure away carefully into his heart. “Yes. All right. I haven’t actually heard that broomstick one. You can, y’know, tell it to me later if you still want to. Right now you should rest. I’ll go find the kitchens and herbal tea and nerf stew. After you’re in bed.” He was fairly sure, from the revealing sentences, the unusually clumsy admissions, the weary dwindling shared headache, that James wasn’t back to one hundred percent. Better, yes. But not altogether so.
And he was still stroking fingers through dark hair, and James was letting him.
Matchless eyes widened hopefully at him. “Can I bargain for honey-sticks if I don’t argue?”
“Terrible influence, you are.” Testing, teasing; he caught answering laughter among sea-tides. “I’ll see what I can do. And…yes. About your other idea. Not now, not any time soon, but yes. I don’t like being in the dark any more than you do. And it’s about both of us. So if you’re going to try to find out I’m right there with you.”
I’m with you no matter what, he didn’t say. He thought maybe James heard it anyway, from the smile.