fic: luminous beings are we (4/6)
Title: Luminous Beings Are We (chapter four: he will learn patience) (chapter three here) (chapter two here) (chapter one here)
Word Count: 3,069
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: Michael gets to take care of James, and James falls asleep on Michael's sofa. All the h/c fluff.
In the wake of that sunwashed numinous afternoon, Michael felt as if something ought to change. He wasn’t certain what. But something. The world had shifted. Grown closer and larger simultaneously. Himself and James, together.
But that proved…not to be the case, or not exactly. The connection was present. And it was true. He found himself glancing up at the same moments James did, their eyes meeting; he absentmindedly picked up an extra sticky-bun at breakfast and James appeared beside him to collect it from his hand. James turned up outside his door with a brilliant smile and a bottle of Corellian firewhiskey and classic holovid episodes of the adventures of Wraith Squadron, and knew all the trivia about the actors and their characters, and made Michael laugh out loud with his Ewok pilot impersonation.
James also did not get hungover in the slightest, a fact which caused Michael to glare at his apprentice for half the morning. James smiled at him angelically, and then empathically reached over and collected all of Michael’s throbbing headache and replaced it with wonderful mint-scented numbing coolness. Incredible.
The nighttime sessions became, if not constant, more frequent than not. They both liked science-fiction and Old Earth Shakespeare. They both liked cooking, even given the limitations of Academy-quarters personal kitchens, and Michael discovered that James was better with pastries than he was, and demanded a step-by-step demonstration of vanilla-sunberry cream cakes. James obliged, eyes sparkling, in exchange for Michael’s roasted range-squab in golden pear-fruit sauce recipe, and then licked cream off a fingertip, taste-testing.
James let him work on the Lady Charlie’s finicky stabilizers, an act of trust that shocked Michael down to his bones. James glanced at him, smiling enigmatically; said, “Well, I’m pretty certain you don’t want me falling out of hyperspace into a black hole, and anyway your skyhopper says you know what you’re doing,” and Michael wondered momentarily whether his apprentice simply meant the apparent attention to detail or whether James really could talk to everything in every universe. Spaceships and skyhoppers probably would open up to those blue eyes. Just to make them pleased.
James fell into step with him while walking to the hangar bay, and then handed over tools before Michael could ask for them. Four hands, one shared thought, private delight. Easy.
Other parts weren’t so easy. Not at all.
He’d expressly forbidden James from attempting any sort of investigations into secret plans for at least a week. James had regarded this order with a mixture of annoyance, cheerfulness, and surprise, though the last seemed somewhat self-directed.
“Are you sure? Because I’m fine, really, I know what I did, it wasn’t even anything I did wrong, I just didn’t have boundaries set, I can-”
“No.”
“I thought you wanted to know.”
“I do.” Because he could, because he meant it, he added, “But we do it when I say it’s the right time, and when I think you’re feeling up to it, James,” and then was mildly astonished at his own tone of command.
But he did mean it. James was his. His apprentice. His to protect. Not his property, of course not, not in any way; but some primal piece of his heart woke up at the pronoun and the possessiveness, dark and desirous and wanting.
James blinked, eyelashes sweeping lightly down and up. “Yes, sir.”
“Oh fuck-sorry, sorry, you heard-”
“I did.” James blinked again, looking rather startled. “I said it because you were thinking it but-I think I liked it. Or I’m losing boundaries-headache, sorry, sir-but I’m pretty sure that’s not it, because I’m still thinking about it, and I still like it.”
“We’re not doing this now,” Michael said desperately, for both their sakes, “we’re not, James, you’re recovering and I’m responsible for you and-and why’re you even here, you should be in bed, not bringing me morning caffeine, it’s only been a day, at least go sit down.”
James looked at him with rather complicated eyes. Emotions Michael couldn’t even begin to name. Swirls and eddies in ocean-planet tides. “I did tell you I recuperate quickly.”
“You also said headache, just now.”
“Less than yesterday,” James said, and Michael opened his mouth to yell at him about his own welfare and people who’d care if he got hurt, and then got interrupted by his morning students showing up in annoyingly prompt cheerful groups of twos and threes, coming through the door.
James grinned at him, smiled at the younglings, and did sit down in the back. For approximately five nanoseconds. And then got up and helped Amee and her partner re-wire a scout-ship navigational panel using only Force-assisted visualization and telekinesis. And then had the temerity to send a tiny mental wave directly into Michael’s brain, via that persistent dwindling never-quite-released lifeline.
Michael glared. Wanted to slap back the happy waving intangible fingers until they stopped exerting themselves. Didn’t. Couldn’t risk more hurt.
He thought he felt James smile, not teasing but strangely wistful, in reply.
The connection faded. Almost non-existent. He’d not done that. James must have. He wondered why. He nearly asked. But James must have reasons. Maybe simply keeping the link in place was too much effort. Maybe James didn’t want to accidentally let the headache spill over. Maybe, maybe.
He didn’t ask why, though he did come over as the students filed out, and put a hand on that shorter shoulder and say, “Are you, y’know, okay?”
James gave him another smile. “Fine.”
“Are…we…okay?”
“Oh,” James said, surprised, almost as surprised as Michael that those words’d come out, “yes, sorry,” and a pulse of soft bonfire heat glowed between them for an instant, hanging in the Force. “Yes. You do hear what I don’t say, don’t you…”
“When you let me. Are you sure? Did I say something that-if I did I’m sorry.”
James shook his head, but with a more genuine smile, lightness coming up behind crumpled seas. “No. Not you. All me, this one. Can we go play with the sculptures today? I’ll let you watch when I set limits, even.”
“I know when you’re trying to reassure me, James.”
“Yes, sir. Is it working?”
Michael sighed, because it was, and they both knew it. “You’re using the biggest one today.” The easiest one to manipulate, to see. “And you stop as soon as I say stop. Clear?”
“Yes. The biggest one, seriously?”
“Whatever joke you’re thinking of,” Michael attempted, “I have to use those as training aids, so don’t say it, please don’t say it-”
“Clearly,” James mused, “size does matter, sir,” and Michael telekinetically threw a hydrospanner at him, not aiming properly out of lingering concern.
James threw it right back, no hesitation at all. And then ducked out the door and made Michael chase him down the hall.
And somewhere in between the laughter and the decidedly adult-rated sand-sculptures that briefly spun into existence in crystal globes-Michael was completely certain this was purely on his behalf, since once James stopped teasing him the sand turned into delicate intricate miniature palaces and famous Civil War landmarks and even an exquisitely detailed copy of Lady Charlie sitting in her hangar bay-Michael found himself, yes, reassured.
This contented state of affairs lasted all of three nights. The fourth morning James appeared not late but later than normal. Moving somewhat gingerly. Standing not ungracefully, but certainly less so than usual. Even-Michael narrowed eyes-limping?
They were already starting class; he reached out wordlessly, inquiring, concerned. James physically jumped. And then blushed. And the wave of emotion, too quick to read, felt like embarrassment and physical stretches and sweet rough satiation and fulfilled desire and-not quite fulfilled desire, what-
Oh fuck I’m sorry! James yelped, and slammed all the mental doors. Michael winced, though the sensation was mostly lost amid the comprehension and mortification and, fuck, jealousy, he knew it was, and it burned-
I’m so sorry, James muttered again, not looking at him. The blush remained visible, though, staining what could be seen of one cheekbone.
Michael flailed for a moment, clutched at responsibility as a lifeline even while his heart ached, and managed, you-it’s none of my business but you-that last-are you-
I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine stop talking about this now!
Michael hesitated. James was clearly lying-that unfulfilled bittersweetness shouted as much, not pain but a kind of unspoken accepted melancholy, heart-wound carried with a smile, love-letter unsent and refolded into creases like so many times before-but James didn’t seem hurt as such, or at least had no regrets about being so.
I’m really all right, James said, and sighed. Out loud, gently corrected one of the Tatooine farmers’ sons from completing a circuit that would’ve made the whole board erupt in flames with a hasty, “Gavin, that’s red, not green, drop it now, please-”
Gavin did. James said, “Nice levitation, though, you’ve done that without even a gesture, that’s very much impressive, I sometimes still can’t,” and added privately, look, half of that’s from three sparring rounds with Nicholas in one of the training rooms after hours anyway, at least the knee is, and it’s my fault, I tripped over myself, don’t worry, all right?
Half, Michael thought, and grumbled inarticulate words about after-hours training and being careful and wrapping that bruised knee more securely. He let James hear those. Didn’t let James hear the plans he was making to talk to young Nicholas. The boy should know better.
The boy probably did know better. Michael’d be willing to bet his own personal skyhopper on which one of the two had been the instigator, and it wasn’t the one who’d been at the Academy for six years.
I’ll let you help with the knee, James said with surprising meekness, and stopped Gavin from telekinetically attempting to blow up the classroom for the third time that morning. Sorry, Michael.
This time Michael was the one who sighed. And he took the jealousy and smothered it under concern both professional, as a Master with a wayward apprentice, and personal, as one friend to another. And he found that medical kit again, and bandaged James up again, and tried not to hear his heart whimper as his fingers trailed over pale skin and profusions of freckles and sturdy muscles.
He sent James off to work with Patrick. Patrick, five minutes later, shouted into Michael’s brain, Don’t break your apprentice, young man!
I didn’t do it! Michael snarled back, he only half the time listens to me, and the rest of the time he’s either better than me or talking final-year students into extra physical training in a room that’s supposed to be locked for the night!
Shouldn’t you be there?
I would if he’d tell me these things! Or if you would! And what AREN’T you telling us, again!
Not yet, Patrick retorted, patience is an admirable quality, you understand, and went conclusively back to whatever testing-of-limits he’d designed for James that afternoon. Michael stared at the closest student desk until it started to shudder in place, and then stopped venting his myriad frustrations on the hapless furnishings and went off to practice lightsaber forms with a practice remote. He felt like swatting things. Even if the things were only lasers. The outlet helped.
Several hours later, he was sweat-damp, worn-out, breathing hard, and somewhat calmer. To a degree. The sheer physicality of the motion, the focus, the test of his ability to predict and deflect, had lifted some weight, if not all. He was good with a lightsaber, always had been, tall and fast and adaptable. He’d lost himself for a while in the simple drift of action, the split-second tug and quiver of the Force, temporal ripples spreading out before and after each laser-shot. He’d not missed one.
He still didn’t know what he was going to do, about himself and his jealousy, about his apprentice and those unfairly muscular thighs, about Patrick and Ian and whatever secrets might be lurking. But he’d beaten every programmed routine in the remote. That felt good. Like accomplishment, anyway. And tomorrow might be a new day.
He shuffled back to his quarters, and found himself entirely unsurprised to discover his apprentice there, yawning, propped against the door, holding a plate of what Michael’s weary taste buds wanted very much to be a shaak-meat and cheese sandwich. James’s eyes were only about half-open, and he tried to stand up when Michael emerged from the lift but ended up slumped back against the door. Even his hair looked flattened by tiredness.
“Hey,” Michael said, and James yawned again and said, “It is, I mean the food, I could feel you being hungry from my room, let me in before I fall over.” Michael levitated the plate out of his hand and said, “Absolutely yes, no falling over, I’d catch you anyway,” and when he came out of the shower James was asleep on the low sofa under the window, one hand tucked under his cheek, one long leg dangling to the floor.
Michael sat down on the rug near his head, leaning against the sofa-arm. James woke up long enough to crack an eye open and murmur, “Patrick wanted me to reach the Outer Rim worlds, this afternoon…” and one hand made a vague gesture in the direction of a quarter-piece of sandwich. Michael handed it over, and their fingers met. He tipped his head back against the furniture, while James picked at bites.
The Outer Rim. The edge of known space. He was fairly certain Ian and Patrick couldn’t do that. He himself definitely couldn’t do that.
“What did he want you to try to do?”
“Oh, not try.” James, even half-asleep, displayed a cheeky grin. “I did. We found the final lost Outbound Flight ship from last century. They say hello.”
Michael twisted around to stare at him, a maneuver which, through the muscle exhaustion and shock, meant that he almost went sprawling. Thank the Force he was already sitting on his floor.
“You…what?” No one’d been able to track that last exploratory ship. They’d lost communications over two hundred years ago. Beyond known space. Beyond any transmissions.
Until now.
“You what,” he said again. James made a sound someplace between a pained wince and a huff of amusement. “They weren’t that hard to pick out, it was just keeping the link up…those emotions have a very particular shape, that many people having the same general…” A handwave, forgotten sandwich adding emphasis to exuberant fingers.
“They thought they’d been forgotten, they were resigned, but they didn’t regret it, either…a whole ship full of explorers, and the grandchildren of explorers…lovely, really…I’m awfully tired, though, felt like I was shouting the whole time just to get the faintest impressions through. And I couldn’t pick up proper coordinates. I tried to triangulate. Wherever I could feel life around them. Patrick seemed very excited; at least, someone went running off to the Senate chamber, I saw that before I passed out…”
“You what!” His entire vocabulary, down to two words. He was up on both knees, fingers catching James’s face, lifting that chin, resting over the fluttering pulse in one temple. James burrowed into his hand, with a sigh. “That feels marvelous…sorry, I don’t mean I ended up flat on my back in sickbay, I just got dizzy for a minute. Kind of blurry. All the edges of things. I’m okay.”
“What the fuck,” Michael said, and got up and found juice and honey-sticks, a bit helplessly. Sugar would help. Had to.
The honey-sticks were left over from two nights ago. When James had been sitting on his sofa, laughing, companionably shouting at holographic podraces with him.
His hand shook very slightly, bringing them over.
“You didn’t tell me.” He’d’ve been there. He’d’ve wanted to be. Demanded to be. He suspected that was why he’d not been told.
He was going to have words with his Academy Heads. Physical ones if need be. But not now. Tomorrow.
James needed him now.
“Oh, perfect, thank you-well, I didn’t exactly expect it. I didn’t expect to be able to reach that far at all, but I could, and then I didn’t want to let go…I really am okay. I told you. Extraordinary recuperative powers. Also Ian and Patrick made me sit down and eat chocolate and get a med-scanner waved over my head.” One more yawn. “I might need to stay here and not move. On your sofa. Sorry, sir…”
“Hey,” Michael said, and held a piece of sandwich to bright lips-James needed protein as well as quick energy-until they quirked upwards and nibbled bread and meat out of his fingers. “Didn’t I ask you to use my name? And yes. Take the bed, if you want.” Take anything you want, he thought. From me.
He was in love, after all. Head over heels, irrevocably, unbelievably, in love.
James was a miracle. Found lost children on the other side of the galaxy. And then felt Michael’s weary frustration and showed up at his door with a sandwich.
And was inelegantly and very ordinarily flopped across Michael’s sofa, a tiny bit of blood and bone and heart and inconceivable power.
“This is fine,” James mumbled, eyes half-closed, drowsy contentment nestling like a drowsy owl into Michael’s mind and heart. Michael fed him a bit of crystallized honey next. And James smiled.
He plucked the top blanket off his bed with a thought. Draped it over his apprentice. After a moment’s thought, grabbed the second one for himself. And sat there on the floor, alternately feeding James and himself, concern and love and longing tangled up inside him so profoundly that he wondered whether James could feel it spilling out with every gesture, every whisper of tongue and lips against his thumb and fingertips.
James, nearly gone, murmured back not a word but ripple of acceptance, a serene wash of rainbowed yes and this and feels good; Michael’s breath snagged in his lungs, invisible tenterhooks of hope and desire.
James fell asleep between the inhale and exhale. Michael sat beside him, honey on his fingertips and the second blanket coiled around his shoulders, and found himself grinning at the last bite of the sandwich. It grinned back triumphantly. They’d fed James.
Word Count: 3,069
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: Michael gets to take care of James, and James falls asleep on Michael's sofa. All the h/c fluff.
In the wake of that sunwashed numinous afternoon, Michael felt as if something ought to change. He wasn’t certain what. But something. The world had shifted. Grown closer and larger simultaneously. Himself and James, together.
But that proved…not to be the case, or not exactly. The connection was present. And it was true. He found himself glancing up at the same moments James did, their eyes meeting; he absentmindedly picked up an extra sticky-bun at breakfast and James appeared beside him to collect it from his hand. James turned up outside his door with a brilliant smile and a bottle of Corellian firewhiskey and classic holovid episodes of the adventures of Wraith Squadron, and knew all the trivia about the actors and their characters, and made Michael laugh out loud with his Ewok pilot impersonation.
James also did not get hungover in the slightest, a fact which caused Michael to glare at his apprentice for half the morning. James smiled at him angelically, and then empathically reached over and collected all of Michael’s throbbing headache and replaced it with wonderful mint-scented numbing coolness. Incredible.
The nighttime sessions became, if not constant, more frequent than not. They both liked science-fiction and Old Earth Shakespeare. They both liked cooking, even given the limitations of Academy-quarters personal kitchens, and Michael discovered that James was better with pastries than he was, and demanded a step-by-step demonstration of vanilla-sunberry cream cakes. James obliged, eyes sparkling, in exchange for Michael’s roasted range-squab in golden pear-fruit sauce recipe, and then licked cream off a fingertip, taste-testing.
James let him work on the Lady Charlie’s finicky stabilizers, an act of trust that shocked Michael down to his bones. James glanced at him, smiling enigmatically; said, “Well, I’m pretty certain you don’t want me falling out of hyperspace into a black hole, and anyway your skyhopper says you know what you’re doing,” and Michael wondered momentarily whether his apprentice simply meant the apparent attention to detail or whether James really could talk to everything in every universe. Spaceships and skyhoppers probably would open up to those blue eyes. Just to make them pleased.
James fell into step with him while walking to the hangar bay, and then handed over tools before Michael could ask for them. Four hands, one shared thought, private delight. Easy.
Other parts weren’t so easy. Not at all.
He’d expressly forbidden James from attempting any sort of investigations into secret plans for at least a week. James had regarded this order with a mixture of annoyance, cheerfulness, and surprise, though the last seemed somewhat self-directed.
“Are you sure? Because I’m fine, really, I know what I did, it wasn’t even anything I did wrong, I just didn’t have boundaries set, I can-”
“No.”
“I thought you wanted to know.”
“I do.” Because he could, because he meant it, he added, “But we do it when I say it’s the right time, and when I think you’re feeling up to it, James,” and then was mildly astonished at his own tone of command.
But he did mean it. James was his. His apprentice. His to protect. Not his property, of course not, not in any way; but some primal piece of his heart woke up at the pronoun and the possessiveness, dark and desirous and wanting.
James blinked, eyelashes sweeping lightly down and up. “Yes, sir.”
“Oh fuck-sorry, sorry, you heard-”
“I did.” James blinked again, looking rather startled. “I said it because you were thinking it but-I think I liked it. Or I’m losing boundaries-headache, sorry, sir-but I’m pretty sure that’s not it, because I’m still thinking about it, and I still like it.”
“We’re not doing this now,” Michael said desperately, for both their sakes, “we’re not, James, you’re recovering and I’m responsible for you and-and why’re you even here, you should be in bed, not bringing me morning caffeine, it’s only been a day, at least go sit down.”
James looked at him with rather complicated eyes. Emotions Michael couldn’t even begin to name. Swirls and eddies in ocean-planet tides. “I did tell you I recuperate quickly.”
“You also said headache, just now.”
“Less than yesterday,” James said, and Michael opened his mouth to yell at him about his own welfare and people who’d care if he got hurt, and then got interrupted by his morning students showing up in annoyingly prompt cheerful groups of twos and threes, coming through the door.
James grinned at him, smiled at the younglings, and did sit down in the back. For approximately five nanoseconds. And then got up and helped Amee and her partner re-wire a scout-ship navigational panel using only Force-assisted visualization and telekinesis. And then had the temerity to send a tiny mental wave directly into Michael’s brain, via that persistent dwindling never-quite-released lifeline.
Michael glared. Wanted to slap back the happy waving intangible fingers until they stopped exerting themselves. Didn’t. Couldn’t risk more hurt.
He thought he felt James smile, not teasing but strangely wistful, in reply.
The connection faded. Almost non-existent. He’d not done that. James must have. He wondered why. He nearly asked. But James must have reasons. Maybe simply keeping the link in place was too much effort. Maybe James didn’t want to accidentally let the headache spill over. Maybe, maybe.
He didn’t ask why, though he did come over as the students filed out, and put a hand on that shorter shoulder and say, “Are you, y’know, okay?”
James gave him another smile. “Fine.”
“Are…we…okay?”
“Oh,” James said, surprised, almost as surprised as Michael that those words’d come out, “yes, sorry,” and a pulse of soft bonfire heat glowed between them for an instant, hanging in the Force. “Yes. You do hear what I don’t say, don’t you…”
“When you let me. Are you sure? Did I say something that-if I did I’m sorry.”
James shook his head, but with a more genuine smile, lightness coming up behind crumpled seas. “No. Not you. All me, this one. Can we go play with the sculptures today? I’ll let you watch when I set limits, even.”
“I know when you’re trying to reassure me, James.”
“Yes, sir. Is it working?”
Michael sighed, because it was, and they both knew it. “You’re using the biggest one today.” The easiest one to manipulate, to see. “And you stop as soon as I say stop. Clear?”
“Yes. The biggest one, seriously?”
“Whatever joke you’re thinking of,” Michael attempted, “I have to use those as training aids, so don’t say it, please don’t say it-”
“Clearly,” James mused, “size does matter, sir,” and Michael telekinetically threw a hydrospanner at him, not aiming properly out of lingering concern.
James threw it right back, no hesitation at all. And then ducked out the door and made Michael chase him down the hall.
And somewhere in between the laughter and the decidedly adult-rated sand-sculptures that briefly spun into existence in crystal globes-Michael was completely certain this was purely on his behalf, since once James stopped teasing him the sand turned into delicate intricate miniature palaces and famous Civil War landmarks and even an exquisitely detailed copy of Lady Charlie sitting in her hangar bay-Michael found himself, yes, reassured.
This contented state of affairs lasted all of three nights. The fourth morning James appeared not late but later than normal. Moving somewhat gingerly. Standing not ungracefully, but certainly less so than usual. Even-Michael narrowed eyes-limping?
They were already starting class; he reached out wordlessly, inquiring, concerned. James physically jumped. And then blushed. And the wave of emotion, too quick to read, felt like embarrassment and physical stretches and sweet rough satiation and fulfilled desire and-not quite fulfilled desire, what-
Oh fuck I’m sorry! James yelped, and slammed all the mental doors. Michael winced, though the sensation was mostly lost amid the comprehension and mortification and, fuck, jealousy, he knew it was, and it burned-
I’m so sorry, James muttered again, not looking at him. The blush remained visible, though, staining what could be seen of one cheekbone.
Michael flailed for a moment, clutched at responsibility as a lifeline even while his heart ached, and managed, you-it’s none of my business but you-that last-are you-
I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine stop talking about this now!
Michael hesitated. James was clearly lying-that unfulfilled bittersweetness shouted as much, not pain but a kind of unspoken accepted melancholy, heart-wound carried with a smile, love-letter unsent and refolded into creases like so many times before-but James didn’t seem hurt as such, or at least had no regrets about being so.
I’m really all right, James said, and sighed. Out loud, gently corrected one of the Tatooine farmers’ sons from completing a circuit that would’ve made the whole board erupt in flames with a hasty, “Gavin, that’s red, not green, drop it now, please-”
Gavin did. James said, “Nice levitation, though, you’ve done that without even a gesture, that’s very much impressive, I sometimes still can’t,” and added privately, look, half of that’s from three sparring rounds with Nicholas in one of the training rooms after hours anyway, at least the knee is, and it’s my fault, I tripped over myself, don’t worry, all right?
Half, Michael thought, and grumbled inarticulate words about after-hours training and being careful and wrapping that bruised knee more securely. He let James hear those. Didn’t let James hear the plans he was making to talk to young Nicholas. The boy should know better.
The boy probably did know better. Michael’d be willing to bet his own personal skyhopper on which one of the two had been the instigator, and it wasn’t the one who’d been at the Academy for six years.
I’ll let you help with the knee, James said with surprising meekness, and stopped Gavin from telekinetically attempting to blow up the classroom for the third time that morning. Sorry, Michael.
This time Michael was the one who sighed. And he took the jealousy and smothered it under concern both professional, as a Master with a wayward apprentice, and personal, as one friend to another. And he found that medical kit again, and bandaged James up again, and tried not to hear his heart whimper as his fingers trailed over pale skin and profusions of freckles and sturdy muscles.
He sent James off to work with Patrick. Patrick, five minutes later, shouted into Michael’s brain, Don’t break your apprentice, young man!
I didn’t do it! Michael snarled back, he only half the time listens to me, and the rest of the time he’s either better than me or talking final-year students into extra physical training in a room that’s supposed to be locked for the night!
Shouldn’t you be there?
I would if he’d tell me these things! Or if you would! And what AREN’T you telling us, again!
Not yet, Patrick retorted, patience is an admirable quality, you understand, and went conclusively back to whatever testing-of-limits he’d designed for James that afternoon. Michael stared at the closest student desk until it started to shudder in place, and then stopped venting his myriad frustrations on the hapless furnishings and went off to practice lightsaber forms with a practice remote. He felt like swatting things. Even if the things were only lasers. The outlet helped.
Several hours later, he was sweat-damp, worn-out, breathing hard, and somewhat calmer. To a degree. The sheer physicality of the motion, the focus, the test of his ability to predict and deflect, had lifted some weight, if not all. He was good with a lightsaber, always had been, tall and fast and adaptable. He’d lost himself for a while in the simple drift of action, the split-second tug and quiver of the Force, temporal ripples spreading out before and after each laser-shot. He’d not missed one.
He still didn’t know what he was going to do, about himself and his jealousy, about his apprentice and those unfairly muscular thighs, about Patrick and Ian and whatever secrets might be lurking. But he’d beaten every programmed routine in the remote. That felt good. Like accomplishment, anyway. And tomorrow might be a new day.
He shuffled back to his quarters, and found himself entirely unsurprised to discover his apprentice there, yawning, propped against the door, holding a plate of what Michael’s weary taste buds wanted very much to be a shaak-meat and cheese sandwich. James’s eyes were only about half-open, and he tried to stand up when Michael emerged from the lift but ended up slumped back against the door. Even his hair looked flattened by tiredness.
“Hey,” Michael said, and James yawned again and said, “It is, I mean the food, I could feel you being hungry from my room, let me in before I fall over.” Michael levitated the plate out of his hand and said, “Absolutely yes, no falling over, I’d catch you anyway,” and when he came out of the shower James was asleep on the low sofa under the window, one hand tucked under his cheek, one long leg dangling to the floor.
Michael sat down on the rug near his head, leaning against the sofa-arm. James woke up long enough to crack an eye open and murmur, “Patrick wanted me to reach the Outer Rim worlds, this afternoon…” and one hand made a vague gesture in the direction of a quarter-piece of sandwich. Michael handed it over, and their fingers met. He tipped his head back against the furniture, while James picked at bites.
The Outer Rim. The edge of known space. He was fairly certain Ian and Patrick couldn’t do that. He himself definitely couldn’t do that.
“What did he want you to try to do?”
“Oh, not try.” James, even half-asleep, displayed a cheeky grin. “I did. We found the final lost Outbound Flight ship from last century. They say hello.”
Michael twisted around to stare at him, a maneuver which, through the muscle exhaustion and shock, meant that he almost went sprawling. Thank the Force he was already sitting on his floor.
“You…what?” No one’d been able to track that last exploratory ship. They’d lost communications over two hundred years ago. Beyond known space. Beyond any transmissions.
Until now.
“You what,” he said again. James made a sound someplace between a pained wince and a huff of amusement. “They weren’t that hard to pick out, it was just keeping the link up…those emotions have a very particular shape, that many people having the same general…” A handwave, forgotten sandwich adding emphasis to exuberant fingers.
“They thought they’d been forgotten, they were resigned, but they didn’t regret it, either…a whole ship full of explorers, and the grandchildren of explorers…lovely, really…I’m awfully tired, though, felt like I was shouting the whole time just to get the faintest impressions through. And I couldn’t pick up proper coordinates. I tried to triangulate. Wherever I could feel life around them. Patrick seemed very excited; at least, someone went running off to the Senate chamber, I saw that before I passed out…”
“You what!” His entire vocabulary, down to two words. He was up on both knees, fingers catching James’s face, lifting that chin, resting over the fluttering pulse in one temple. James burrowed into his hand, with a sigh. “That feels marvelous…sorry, I don’t mean I ended up flat on my back in sickbay, I just got dizzy for a minute. Kind of blurry. All the edges of things. I’m okay.”
“What the fuck,” Michael said, and got up and found juice and honey-sticks, a bit helplessly. Sugar would help. Had to.
The honey-sticks were left over from two nights ago. When James had been sitting on his sofa, laughing, companionably shouting at holographic podraces with him.
His hand shook very slightly, bringing them over.
“You didn’t tell me.” He’d’ve been there. He’d’ve wanted to be. Demanded to be. He suspected that was why he’d not been told.
He was going to have words with his Academy Heads. Physical ones if need be. But not now. Tomorrow.
James needed him now.
“Oh, perfect, thank you-well, I didn’t exactly expect it. I didn’t expect to be able to reach that far at all, but I could, and then I didn’t want to let go…I really am okay. I told you. Extraordinary recuperative powers. Also Ian and Patrick made me sit down and eat chocolate and get a med-scanner waved over my head.” One more yawn. “I might need to stay here and not move. On your sofa. Sorry, sir…”
“Hey,” Michael said, and held a piece of sandwich to bright lips-James needed protein as well as quick energy-until they quirked upwards and nibbled bread and meat out of his fingers. “Didn’t I ask you to use my name? And yes. Take the bed, if you want.” Take anything you want, he thought. From me.
He was in love, after all. Head over heels, irrevocably, unbelievably, in love.
James was a miracle. Found lost children on the other side of the galaxy. And then felt Michael’s weary frustration and showed up at his door with a sandwich.
And was inelegantly and very ordinarily flopped across Michael’s sofa, a tiny bit of blood and bone and heart and inconceivable power.
“This is fine,” James mumbled, eyes half-closed, drowsy contentment nestling like a drowsy owl into Michael’s mind and heart. Michael fed him a bit of crystallized honey next. And James smiled.
He plucked the top blanket off his bed with a thought. Draped it over his apprentice. After a moment’s thought, grabbed the second one for himself. And sat there on the floor, alternately feeding James and himself, concern and love and longing tangled up inside him so profoundly that he wondered whether James could feel it spilling out with every gesture, every whisper of tongue and lips against his thumb and fingertips.
James, nearly gone, murmured back not a word but ripple of acceptance, a serene wash of rainbowed yes and this and feels good; Michael’s breath snagged in his lungs, invisible tenterhooks of hope and desire.
James fell asleep between the inhale and exhale. Michael sat beside him, honey on his fingertips and the second blanket coiled around his shoulders, and found himself grinning at the last bite of the sandwich. It grinned back triumphantly. They’d fed James.