fic: luminous beings are we (8/8)
And we're done! Finally. :-)
Title: Luminous Beings Are We (chapter eight: with you, always) (chapter seven part two here) (chapter seven part one here) (chapter six here) (chapter five here) (chapter four here) (chapter three here) (chapter two here) (chapter one here)
Word Count: 3,461 for chapter eight
Rating: R, for implied sex
Warnings: for mention of centuries-ago murder of children, and ghosts trying to get James to give up on everything
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: happy endings, and sorting out of some emotions, and hope.
Michael spent the day trying not to think. Trying not to feel.
Not only because emotions hurt. Because he was afraid those emotions would hurt James.
James hadn’t opened up their connection any further, but hadn’t shut it down. Michael could sense him, a feather-light rustle of heartbeat, existence, life. James was here and letting him know that much. He had to be grateful. Couldn’t be anything else.
He tried to hold all his own despair and anguish and loneliness inside. He knew why James needed time. He’d seen those visions, heard those words. He knew that James knew-intellectually, rationally, logically-that the ghosts had been twisting truth, exaggerating pain, making the ordeal exactly that. They both knew.
He also knew that that might not matter. The words had been said. Those words, spoken by a phantom wearing Michael’s face, had sunk home like a blade to the heart. No way around the sword-point.
He knew James wasn’t in the hangar bay-he’d’ve sensed that, if they were close to being in the same space-and he spent several hours tinkering with his own skyhopper, tweaking settings, looking up fuel ratios for improved performance. He couldn’t get too dirty; he’d need to shower, and he might run into James somewhere near their quarters.
Likely a futile hope. James wouldn’t’ve stayed. Not in a living space where every pillow, every dish-towel, every breath must remind him of Michael.
The night before, they’d made love. He’d kissed exotic-spice freckles, nutmeg and cream, and kissed James, and they’d moved together.
He wanted to cry, but didn’t, and he didn’t know why he didn’t.
We’ll be Jedi, James had said in that chamber. Whatever else happens, whether or not he hates me, we’ll be who we are.
James was more of a hero than Michael ever could be. He wasn’t sure he’d’ve had the strength to say the words. Yes, he could live without James. It’d be like living with his heart torn out of his body, and he’d never be the same again, but he would go back to teaching, he’d have a life.
But he didn’t think he could’ve said it out loud. He couldn’t say it even to himself. No. Please no.
James had also said: I know I love you. You love me. I hope it won’t be long.
Hope. Michael polished the hood of his skyhopper for the tenth time. Clung to that idea. The space-worn metal shone tranquilly up at him as if it believed the word.
Mid-afternoon, his stomach-which plainly hadn’t got the end-of-the-world tragic message-announced its emptiness. Reluctantly he wandered in search of the dining hall, and prayed to the Force that it’d be deserted.
The Force, as usual, granted about half a prayer. Certainly the place wasn’t crowded, but several of James’s fellow-apprentice friends were present, chattering in small groups, throwing glances at the door. Michael, edging in, wondered whether they’d been hoping for James; they spotted him immediately and flocked over.
“Congratulations-”
“How is he? Was it awful?”
“Did he really save fifty ghost Jedi?”
“And they’re going to be teachers here? Is that legal?”
“Can he actually talk to the living Force, because no one in the Archives has been able to do that since-”
Very quietly, from young Nick, the boy who’d spent afternoons tutoring James in Order history upon James’s belated Academy arrival: “He’s hurt, isn’t he? How bad was it in there?”
Michael scrubbed a hand through his hair, sat down, put both hands over his face for a few seconds. The apprentices conferred. A mug of steaming caf appeared at his elbow. An roast nerf sandwich. A multitude of expectant but waiting eyes.
He picked up the mug in both hands, staring into black heat. The steam wafted up and tried to reassure his eyebrows. “Not fifty. Well, maybe. I don’t know how many he sent on. Six of them stayed. For him.” To his mild horror, his voice cracked over the last two words.
Nick swung a leg over the chair beside him. “What happened? Master. Sorry.”
“He saved them, and they saved him.” The heat was flowing from the mug into his hands. Thawing them out, nerve by nerve. “He would’ve died. Not because of the ordeal. He was done. He could have walked out. He saw what we couldn’t. That they were people. Children. He couldn’t leave them there.”
One of the tiger-striped Cathar apprentices, curled on the end of the table, asked meekly, “But he was hurt?” and his voice carried a yowl of grief in the question.
“He was…” Michael sighed. Eyed the assembled group, apprentices of all years and backgrounds. They loved James. And he’d been James’s Master. “He’s all right. He’s just…the point of ordeals-which you’ll get, this year, some of you-is to make you confront yourself. What you are. What you could be. But James…the thing is, the rest of us would just sort of face ourselves, in there…he kind of…well, he felt all of them. The children. The ones who died.”
This statement was met with horrified silence. All of the group knew precisely how good James was at feeling.
Nick murmured, shocked and nearly inaudible, “Makes me glad I’m in training as the next Archivist…”
“He said he needs time,” Michael said, half to himself and half to them. One of them-Jen, a girl who’d been in one of his earliest classes-patted him on the shoulder. He wondered how much James had told them about him, and he wondered when they’d learned to get so familiar with one of their Academy Masters, but the contact felt nice, and he didn’t have the energy to protest the attention.
Jen promised, nudging the sandwich his direction, “He loves you. You should’ve heard him talk about you during breaks. We totally asked for details, too, ’cause the two of you together is seriously hot, but he said you were being all noble about it, and he loved that, and he loves you.” The assembled apprentices nodded as one. “If he said he needs time, that’s what he means.”
“I know,” Michael grumbled back, and took a bite of the sandwich so they’d stop pointedly levitating it. Rather to his surprise, the first bite tasted wonderful, and he discovered that maybe he was ravenous, and then he was full, and that felt oddly better. Like the world might be recoverable after all. Hope. Yes. Maybe, yes.
He looked up at them over crumbs, remembered that he was supposed to be the instructor, and demanded, “Don’t you all have class? And…y’know, thank you. From us both.”
“I have a free day,” Nick said, unrepentant.
“I don’t,” Jen said, “but I’ll be listening in, because Ellen-“” A dark-haired pale-skinned Thyferran girl waved their direction. “-is super-awesome with mind-links. Um. Sorry.”
“I think I should be pretending, as a teacher,” Michael said to no one in particular, “that I never heard that.”
Jen patted his arm again. “You’re only, what, a year out of the Academy yourself. Master.”
“You might want to go home,” Nick said, and they all glanced at him. He shrugged. “Just a feeling.”
Home. Where he’d kissed James, where James had kissed him. Where James had fallen asleep on his sofa in the wake of starship-rescuing backlash; where they’d woken up tangled into each other only that morning.
He thought maybe he could go home. Even if James wasn’t there, those memories would be. They were good ones. They felt right.
He became, slowly, aware of the smudge of ship-polish on his left thumb. Quite possibly in his hair as well. Oh, hells.
“Maybe I should shower?”
“Maybe,” Nick agreed. The corners of his mouth were twitching. Michael considered the fact that the boy was very probably the next up in terms of exams and graduation, and closer to his own age than he’d previously realized. Growing up. They all were. And they knew how it felt to care about a friend.
“If anyone asks,” he said, getting up, “I don’t know anything about anyone eavesdropping. When I know something…when anything changes…well, you’ll sort of probably know. Um. You know.”
“Yeah,” put in the other Cathar apprentice, happily, “we were much enjoying last night, did you try the thing with the ice-pops, or-” At this point her friend nipped at her tail, and they devolved into a tumbling ball of feline fur and play-fighting claws.
Michael resolutely did not blush in front of the horde of apprentices. Just gulped down the rest of the welcome caffeine, straightened his shoulders, and said, “Not yet.” Various hands and paws and tentacles applauded.
Not yet. He hoped. Oh, he hoped. Please.
He got into the lift smiling, though the boost to his mood ebbed somewhat during the ride. The food and the optimism had helped, but there was no escaping the fact that the link’d stayed silent, that James wouldn’t be waiting when Michael came through the door.
Every step down the hall felt like a battle. Like a minor victory over hopelessness. He’d come home and he’d give James time and he’d be content with that. For James.
The featureless walls coaxed him on. Out of their blankness and into a space full of cozy blankets and starfruit and James’s ridiculous honey-stick obsession. He caught himself smiling again.
He reached out a hand to the door. It opened.
He stared at it. He’d not done that. Unless he was losing his mind, and his Force control, in the absence of his other half.
He took a step in, tentatively. If he was losing his mind, he was probably better off being tentative about things.
His quarters smelled like baked goods. Like sunberry cream-cakes and vweliu-nut bread. He couldn’t recall whether going insane from emotional grief included olfactory hallucinations, but maybe it did. Why not.
Except there was a why not. Because there was James, wandering out from the bedroom, stretching, hair post-shower rumpled and eyes incredibly blue.
There was James. In his quarters. Wearing, a distant part of Michael’s heart recorded, one of Michael’s spare robes and nothing else. The robe was too big for him. Falling off a shoulder. Showing freckles.
There was James and Michael couldn’t breathe. Thought he might in fact pass out. Sparkles at the edge of his vision. Relief and disbelief and concern and above all love warring for supremacy.
“Hey,” James said, right in front of him now, hands on Michael’s shoulders, and when had that happened, and how? “Sorry, sorry, you’re fine, we’re fine, just look at me, just breathe, okay? Here, sit down.”
On the sofa. James’s hands in his. James’s eyes intent and affectionate and kind. Link still muted. Michael tried to speak, had no words, tried again, continued to fail. Managed, “You’re here…”
“I’m here.” James looked at their hands. “I said I needed time. Maybe I do. But I want you. I love you. I wanted to be here.”
“I love you,” Michael told him, heart full and overflowing, spilling into words. “I want you, too. I want-whatever you want, James, just tell me what you need.”
“What I need…” James met his gaze. Smiled, coruscatingly bright. Hesitance and hope and courage all at once. “I need you. I know that. My anchor.”
“Always,” Michael got out, “always-” and put a hand out, finding his face, his hair, his cheek. Pale, but washed free of blood, trauma cleansed from the surface; weary, but real. James tipped his head into the caress, eyelashes sweeping down and up. “Feels nice. You, touching me.”
“Always to that too, then…are you…is that a headache?” He wouldn’t ask for James to open up the link. He was anxious. He knew James could handle backlash. “Can I help? If you want.”
“It is, and you are.” James turned his head, pressed a kiss to Michael’s palm. “I spent the first two hours finally learning how other Jedi feel after major Star-Destroyer lifting. I don’t think I like the whole headsplitting migraine part; you can keep it. But it’s getting better. Natural defenses. Bouncing back. Excessively bouncy. I told you.”
“You did.” He squeezed James’s other hand. “I’m glad you’re okay.” I wish I’d been there, I know why you didn’t want me there, I’m sorry, I’ll be here now for the end of it if you’ll let me. Unsaid, but he meant it.
“About that,” James said, looking at their hands again. “I’ll-I can open it up again. Us. I want to. You don’t know how much I fuckin’ want to. But I was thinking, and I want to talk, and-and this is the only way I can be sure. I still can’t be sure, but I’m trying.”
“You think you’re influencing me.”
“They weren’t wrong. The ghost-trainees. About me.” James bit his lip. Hard. “I could be. I think I’m not, but-I might not know. That’s one. Of the things you need to know.”
Michael almost snapped I know everything I need to know, but this was important, this was momentous, this was the difference between James staying in his arms or walking out the door, so he met those solemn eyes and nodded.
This earned a half-smile. The right answer, then. James went on, gaze steady and serious and braced for some expected impact, “Okay, so…also they were right about more. I’ve not slept with anyone at the Academy. I wouldn’t-do that. But someday…there might be someone who needs a-a companion, for a night. And I love you, I’d never want to hurt you, but sometimes if there’s pain, if I can help…it’ll hurt if I don’t. I don’t know if it’ll happen. Might not. But it might. We’ll be on a lot of worlds, as Jedi Ambassadors.”
Michael took a deep breath. Let it out. At least two gut reactions jumped onto his tongue-no, I don’t care, I love you, any way I can have you chased by the burning awareness of his own conceptions about fidelity and possessiveness and protectiveness-but he shoved them down and forced himself to process responses and honesty and reasonable commitments, instead.
He said, working it out, holding James’s hand, “I won’t love seeing you leave to spend a night with someone else. I never will. But…you were right, before. You said we were Jedi. And I made you quote that terrible textbook, once…we help people. We fix what’s broken, what’s hurting in the galaxy. And you know that better than anyone. So…”
“So,” James breathed, watching his face, eyes like the tremulous beginnings of dawn.
“So if you need to…if it’s once in a while, maybe…if I know you’re coming home to me…” He leaned in. Not quite a kiss; close enough to be one, though. “I’d already decided that. After Steve showed up to yell at me for being oblivious. I thought…I just wanted you. And that’s part of you. So yes.”
“Yes,” James repeated, gazing at him like Michael was the rarest treasure in the universe. “I love you. About the first part, though.”
“You influencing me?” He raised an eyebrow, copying one of James’s gestures. “Some of us’re also empaths over here, you know. Not you, but I’m not bad, either. You know that. You said it. Why me, for you.”
And James, who’d evidently forgotten or talked himself out of considering this, sat there surprised.
Michael, for good measure, added, “I might not be able to contain you if you decide to turn completely evil, which you won’t, but I will notice if I’m having feelings that aren’t mine, and trust me, I’ve had a lot of feelings for you all along.”
“Oh,” James said, with the tone of someone rediscovering a key that’d been in plain sight all along, and putting it into the lock on the door.
“I love you. Was that it?” He ran fingers through James’s hair, loving the softness, feeling the metaphorical key turn. “Still here.”
“One more.” James nibbled at that lip again. Beneath their shared weight, sofa cushions fluffed up temptingly. Optimistic. “About me, about what we’re doing…Ian and Patrick want me to be open about, well, me. Where I come from. And I do have great-aunts who killed people and rode rancors and were every fuckin’ nightmare you can think of when you think of the witches of Dathomir. And people will say…what people say…when we show up as Jedi Ambassadors. I can handle it; that’s part of it, changing the definition of Jedi and witch, together…”
“You can handle anything.”
“Thank you for believing that. I meant, whatever they say about me, they’ll say worse about you. For loving me.” Those words tolled leaden bells in the air, dour and incontrovertible and heavy. They both heard the weight.
James’s eyes found his, but left and slid away, down to a couch-arm, a pillow-corner.
“Well,” Michael said, quiet and calm and resolute, and ran a thumb over James’s cheekbone, finding new freckles, “let them.”
James looked up, startled. The fate of the universe hung suspended in the balance.
And joy flooded through the space between them. Crescendos of love and astonishment and yes yes yes this, blue flame and shimmering elation and limitless cascading possibility. Wide-open doors.
Michael found himself laughing with exhilaration, with James’s amazed sudden euphoria, with the ludicrous stupendous incandescent beauty of the future and the feeling of freckled skin beneath his hands.
“Let them,” James said, laughing along, too much exultation to contain. “Seriously, sir…holodrama heroics, perfect bad lines, and I love it, I love you-”
Michael yanked him closer, James tumbled into his lap, touching everywhere now, robe coming loose and puddling on the floor. James tried to sit up and kiss him and shake off the last clinging sleeve; Michael tried to help, hands and limbs going everywhere.
“I love you,” James said again, and thought it for emphasis, lying sprawled out under him on their sofa in their quarters. So fucking much. If I didn’t say.
“You and your fucking mouth,” Michael said between kisses, “and cream-cakes and nut-bread…”
“I needed to keep my hands busy while I was sorting myself out.” James wrapped a leg around his waist. “Knew you wouldn’t mind. I can feed you in bed, later.”
“I might like feeding you.” That image, and the accompanying wave of tenderness, made James blush ferociously. Michael kissed his nose-they’d have to work on that, his ex-apprentice and fellow Jedi Knight and unmatchable healer-empath accepting the idea of being taken care of without attempts to reciprocate, but not right now, right now was about new sunrises and the exultant spin of galaxies in motion-and inquired, stray thought kicking the back of his mind, “James?”
“That’d better be a question about putting fingers certain places, sir-sorry! Habit! But you like it.”
“So do you. And yes, but…you said you weren’t sleeping with anyone here…but…” He fished that memory up into clearer light: James turning up for class with a limp and exhaustion and that bewildering twinge of satisfaction-dissatisfaction, sated but unfulfilled.
James laughed again. Not ashamed or embarrassed, not about this, evidently. The pocket of Michael’s heart that’d been holding on to weeks of apprehension shuddered toward reprieve at last.
“About that,” James said, putting hands on his shoulders, drawing him down into a luxurious leisurely kiss, I do get frustrated sometimes. Feeling other people having all the sex from a distance-not listening in! but that can get loud, if I’m tired and my shields aren’t-and NOT having sex over here, because I’m behaving, you know, being good…
“Very good,” Michael concurred, with a nip of teeth and a wordless murmur of pure praise and pride. James moaned softly, hips lifting into his.
What I’m trying to say is…do that again!…I’ve got quite a lot of toys. They weren’t you, but they did help. “Might prefer your help, though, from now on, if you’re willing.”
And those images spilled into Michael’s thoughts like kaleidoscopic debauchery, wanton and slick and sensual: James naked in his own bed, James dizzy and drunk on lust and longing, James sliding fingers and buzzing toys up inside himself while gripping his flushed cock, James coming and coming over and over again, mouth a lovely wide oh! of desire and back arched off the sheets, James thinking of Michael’s hands and eyes and smile, imagining…
“James,” Michael said, breathless, wanting, having, now, and in love.
“Mmm…yes, sir?”
“I want you,” Michael told him, “forever, saving the universe and adopting five hundred Jedi ghost-babies if you want, I love you, and also I want you to show me all of your toys.”
Title: Luminous Beings Are We (chapter eight: with you, always) (chapter seven part two here) (chapter seven part one here) (chapter six here) (chapter five here) (chapter four here) (chapter three here) (chapter two here) (chapter one here)
Word Count: 3,461 for chapter eight
Rating: R, for implied sex
Warnings: for mention of centuries-ago murder of children, and ghosts trying to get James to give up on everything
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: happy endings, and sorting out of some emotions, and hope.
Michael spent the day trying not to think. Trying not to feel.
Not only because emotions hurt. Because he was afraid those emotions would hurt James.
James hadn’t opened up their connection any further, but hadn’t shut it down. Michael could sense him, a feather-light rustle of heartbeat, existence, life. James was here and letting him know that much. He had to be grateful. Couldn’t be anything else.
He tried to hold all his own despair and anguish and loneliness inside. He knew why James needed time. He’d seen those visions, heard those words. He knew that James knew-intellectually, rationally, logically-that the ghosts had been twisting truth, exaggerating pain, making the ordeal exactly that. They both knew.
He also knew that that might not matter. The words had been said. Those words, spoken by a phantom wearing Michael’s face, had sunk home like a blade to the heart. No way around the sword-point.
He knew James wasn’t in the hangar bay-he’d’ve sensed that, if they were close to being in the same space-and he spent several hours tinkering with his own skyhopper, tweaking settings, looking up fuel ratios for improved performance. He couldn’t get too dirty; he’d need to shower, and he might run into James somewhere near their quarters.
Likely a futile hope. James wouldn’t’ve stayed. Not in a living space where every pillow, every dish-towel, every breath must remind him of Michael.
The night before, they’d made love. He’d kissed exotic-spice freckles, nutmeg and cream, and kissed James, and they’d moved together.
He wanted to cry, but didn’t, and he didn’t know why he didn’t.
We’ll be Jedi, James had said in that chamber. Whatever else happens, whether or not he hates me, we’ll be who we are.
James was more of a hero than Michael ever could be. He wasn’t sure he’d’ve had the strength to say the words. Yes, he could live without James. It’d be like living with his heart torn out of his body, and he’d never be the same again, but he would go back to teaching, he’d have a life.
But he didn’t think he could’ve said it out loud. He couldn’t say it even to himself. No. Please no.
James had also said: I know I love you. You love me. I hope it won’t be long.
Hope. Michael polished the hood of his skyhopper for the tenth time. Clung to that idea. The space-worn metal shone tranquilly up at him as if it believed the word.
Mid-afternoon, his stomach-which plainly hadn’t got the end-of-the-world tragic message-announced its emptiness. Reluctantly he wandered in search of the dining hall, and prayed to the Force that it’d be deserted.
The Force, as usual, granted about half a prayer. Certainly the place wasn’t crowded, but several of James’s fellow-apprentice friends were present, chattering in small groups, throwing glances at the door. Michael, edging in, wondered whether they’d been hoping for James; they spotted him immediately and flocked over.
“Congratulations-”
“How is he? Was it awful?”
“Did he really save fifty ghost Jedi?”
“And they’re going to be teachers here? Is that legal?”
“Can he actually talk to the living Force, because no one in the Archives has been able to do that since-”
Very quietly, from young Nick, the boy who’d spent afternoons tutoring James in Order history upon James’s belated Academy arrival: “He’s hurt, isn’t he? How bad was it in there?”
Michael scrubbed a hand through his hair, sat down, put both hands over his face for a few seconds. The apprentices conferred. A mug of steaming caf appeared at his elbow. An roast nerf sandwich. A multitude of expectant but waiting eyes.
He picked up the mug in both hands, staring into black heat. The steam wafted up and tried to reassure his eyebrows. “Not fifty. Well, maybe. I don’t know how many he sent on. Six of them stayed. For him.” To his mild horror, his voice cracked over the last two words.
Nick swung a leg over the chair beside him. “What happened? Master. Sorry.”
“He saved them, and they saved him.” The heat was flowing from the mug into his hands. Thawing them out, nerve by nerve. “He would’ve died. Not because of the ordeal. He was done. He could have walked out. He saw what we couldn’t. That they were people. Children. He couldn’t leave them there.”
One of the tiger-striped Cathar apprentices, curled on the end of the table, asked meekly, “But he was hurt?” and his voice carried a yowl of grief in the question.
“He was…” Michael sighed. Eyed the assembled group, apprentices of all years and backgrounds. They loved James. And he’d been James’s Master. “He’s all right. He’s just…the point of ordeals-which you’ll get, this year, some of you-is to make you confront yourself. What you are. What you could be. But James…the thing is, the rest of us would just sort of face ourselves, in there…he kind of…well, he felt all of them. The children. The ones who died.”
This statement was met with horrified silence. All of the group knew precisely how good James was at feeling.
Nick murmured, shocked and nearly inaudible, “Makes me glad I’m in training as the next Archivist…”
“He said he needs time,” Michael said, half to himself and half to them. One of them-Jen, a girl who’d been in one of his earliest classes-patted him on the shoulder. He wondered how much James had told them about him, and he wondered when they’d learned to get so familiar with one of their Academy Masters, but the contact felt nice, and he didn’t have the energy to protest the attention.
Jen promised, nudging the sandwich his direction, “He loves you. You should’ve heard him talk about you during breaks. We totally asked for details, too, ’cause the two of you together is seriously hot, but he said you were being all noble about it, and he loved that, and he loves you.” The assembled apprentices nodded as one. “If he said he needs time, that’s what he means.”
“I know,” Michael grumbled back, and took a bite of the sandwich so they’d stop pointedly levitating it. Rather to his surprise, the first bite tasted wonderful, and he discovered that maybe he was ravenous, and then he was full, and that felt oddly better. Like the world might be recoverable after all. Hope. Yes. Maybe, yes.
He looked up at them over crumbs, remembered that he was supposed to be the instructor, and demanded, “Don’t you all have class? And…y’know, thank you. From us both.”
“I have a free day,” Nick said, unrepentant.
“I don’t,” Jen said, “but I’ll be listening in, because Ellen-“” A dark-haired pale-skinned Thyferran girl waved their direction. “-is super-awesome with mind-links. Um. Sorry.”
“I think I should be pretending, as a teacher,” Michael said to no one in particular, “that I never heard that.”
Jen patted his arm again. “You’re only, what, a year out of the Academy yourself. Master.”
“You might want to go home,” Nick said, and they all glanced at him. He shrugged. “Just a feeling.”
Home. Where he’d kissed James, where James had kissed him. Where James had fallen asleep on his sofa in the wake of starship-rescuing backlash; where they’d woken up tangled into each other only that morning.
He thought maybe he could go home. Even if James wasn’t there, those memories would be. They were good ones. They felt right.
He became, slowly, aware of the smudge of ship-polish on his left thumb. Quite possibly in his hair as well. Oh, hells.
“Maybe I should shower?”
“Maybe,” Nick agreed. The corners of his mouth were twitching. Michael considered the fact that the boy was very probably the next up in terms of exams and graduation, and closer to his own age than he’d previously realized. Growing up. They all were. And they knew how it felt to care about a friend.
“If anyone asks,” he said, getting up, “I don’t know anything about anyone eavesdropping. When I know something…when anything changes…well, you’ll sort of probably know. Um. You know.”
“Yeah,” put in the other Cathar apprentice, happily, “we were much enjoying last night, did you try the thing with the ice-pops, or-” At this point her friend nipped at her tail, and they devolved into a tumbling ball of feline fur and play-fighting claws.
Michael resolutely did not blush in front of the horde of apprentices. Just gulped down the rest of the welcome caffeine, straightened his shoulders, and said, “Not yet.” Various hands and paws and tentacles applauded.
Not yet. He hoped. Oh, he hoped. Please.
He got into the lift smiling, though the boost to his mood ebbed somewhat during the ride. The food and the optimism had helped, but there was no escaping the fact that the link’d stayed silent, that James wouldn’t be waiting when Michael came through the door.
Every step down the hall felt like a battle. Like a minor victory over hopelessness. He’d come home and he’d give James time and he’d be content with that. For James.
The featureless walls coaxed him on. Out of their blankness and into a space full of cozy blankets and starfruit and James’s ridiculous honey-stick obsession. He caught himself smiling again.
He reached out a hand to the door. It opened.
He stared at it. He’d not done that. Unless he was losing his mind, and his Force control, in the absence of his other half.
He took a step in, tentatively. If he was losing his mind, he was probably better off being tentative about things.
His quarters smelled like baked goods. Like sunberry cream-cakes and vweliu-nut bread. He couldn’t recall whether going insane from emotional grief included olfactory hallucinations, but maybe it did. Why not.
Except there was a why not. Because there was James, wandering out from the bedroom, stretching, hair post-shower rumpled and eyes incredibly blue.
There was James. In his quarters. Wearing, a distant part of Michael’s heart recorded, one of Michael’s spare robes and nothing else. The robe was too big for him. Falling off a shoulder. Showing freckles.
There was James and Michael couldn’t breathe. Thought he might in fact pass out. Sparkles at the edge of his vision. Relief and disbelief and concern and above all love warring for supremacy.
“Hey,” James said, right in front of him now, hands on Michael’s shoulders, and when had that happened, and how? “Sorry, sorry, you’re fine, we’re fine, just look at me, just breathe, okay? Here, sit down.”
On the sofa. James’s hands in his. James’s eyes intent and affectionate and kind. Link still muted. Michael tried to speak, had no words, tried again, continued to fail. Managed, “You’re here…”
“I’m here.” James looked at their hands. “I said I needed time. Maybe I do. But I want you. I love you. I wanted to be here.”
“I love you,” Michael told him, heart full and overflowing, spilling into words. “I want you, too. I want-whatever you want, James, just tell me what you need.”
“What I need…” James met his gaze. Smiled, coruscatingly bright. Hesitance and hope and courage all at once. “I need you. I know that. My anchor.”
“Always,” Michael got out, “always-” and put a hand out, finding his face, his hair, his cheek. Pale, but washed free of blood, trauma cleansed from the surface; weary, but real. James tipped his head into the caress, eyelashes sweeping down and up. “Feels nice. You, touching me.”
“Always to that too, then…are you…is that a headache?” He wouldn’t ask for James to open up the link. He was anxious. He knew James could handle backlash. “Can I help? If you want.”
“It is, and you are.” James turned his head, pressed a kiss to Michael’s palm. “I spent the first two hours finally learning how other Jedi feel after major Star-Destroyer lifting. I don’t think I like the whole headsplitting migraine part; you can keep it. But it’s getting better. Natural defenses. Bouncing back. Excessively bouncy. I told you.”
“You did.” He squeezed James’s other hand. “I’m glad you’re okay.” I wish I’d been there, I know why you didn’t want me there, I’m sorry, I’ll be here now for the end of it if you’ll let me. Unsaid, but he meant it.
“About that,” James said, looking at their hands again. “I’ll-I can open it up again. Us. I want to. You don’t know how much I fuckin’ want to. But I was thinking, and I want to talk, and-and this is the only way I can be sure. I still can’t be sure, but I’m trying.”
“You think you’re influencing me.”
“They weren’t wrong. The ghost-trainees. About me.” James bit his lip. Hard. “I could be. I think I’m not, but-I might not know. That’s one. Of the things you need to know.”
Michael almost snapped I know everything I need to know, but this was important, this was momentous, this was the difference between James staying in his arms or walking out the door, so he met those solemn eyes and nodded.
This earned a half-smile. The right answer, then. James went on, gaze steady and serious and braced for some expected impact, “Okay, so…also they were right about more. I’ve not slept with anyone at the Academy. I wouldn’t-do that. But someday…there might be someone who needs a-a companion, for a night. And I love you, I’d never want to hurt you, but sometimes if there’s pain, if I can help…it’ll hurt if I don’t. I don’t know if it’ll happen. Might not. But it might. We’ll be on a lot of worlds, as Jedi Ambassadors.”
Michael took a deep breath. Let it out. At least two gut reactions jumped onto his tongue-no, I don’t care, I love you, any way I can have you chased by the burning awareness of his own conceptions about fidelity and possessiveness and protectiveness-but he shoved them down and forced himself to process responses and honesty and reasonable commitments, instead.
He said, working it out, holding James’s hand, “I won’t love seeing you leave to spend a night with someone else. I never will. But…you were right, before. You said we were Jedi. And I made you quote that terrible textbook, once…we help people. We fix what’s broken, what’s hurting in the galaxy. And you know that better than anyone. So…”
“So,” James breathed, watching his face, eyes like the tremulous beginnings of dawn.
“So if you need to…if it’s once in a while, maybe…if I know you’re coming home to me…” He leaned in. Not quite a kiss; close enough to be one, though. “I’d already decided that. After Steve showed up to yell at me for being oblivious. I thought…I just wanted you. And that’s part of you. So yes.”
“Yes,” James repeated, gazing at him like Michael was the rarest treasure in the universe. “I love you. About the first part, though.”
“You influencing me?” He raised an eyebrow, copying one of James’s gestures. “Some of us’re also empaths over here, you know. Not you, but I’m not bad, either. You know that. You said it. Why me, for you.”
And James, who’d evidently forgotten or talked himself out of considering this, sat there surprised.
Michael, for good measure, added, “I might not be able to contain you if you decide to turn completely evil, which you won’t, but I will notice if I’m having feelings that aren’t mine, and trust me, I’ve had a lot of feelings for you all along.”
“Oh,” James said, with the tone of someone rediscovering a key that’d been in plain sight all along, and putting it into the lock on the door.
“I love you. Was that it?” He ran fingers through James’s hair, loving the softness, feeling the metaphorical key turn. “Still here.”
“One more.” James nibbled at that lip again. Beneath their shared weight, sofa cushions fluffed up temptingly. Optimistic. “About me, about what we’re doing…Ian and Patrick want me to be open about, well, me. Where I come from. And I do have great-aunts who killed people and rode rancors and were every fuckin’ nightmare you can think of when you think of the witches of Dathomir. And people will say…what people say…when we show up as Jedi Ambassadors. I can handle it; that’s part of it, changing the definition of Jedi and witch, together…”
“You can handle anything.”
“Thank you for believing that. I meant, whatever they say about me, they’ll say worse about you. For loving me.” Those words tolled leaden bells in the air, dour and incontrovertible and heavy. They both heard the weight.
James’s eyes found his, but left and slid away, down to a couch-arm, a pillow-corner.
“Well,” Michael said, quiet and calm and resolute, and ran a thumb over James’s cheekbone, finding new freckles, “let them.”
James looked up, startled. The fate of the universe hung suspended in the balance.
And joy flooded through the space between them. Crescendos of love and astonishment and yes yes yes this, blue flame and shimmering elation and limitless cascading possibility. Wide-open doors.
Michael found himself laughing with exhilaration, with James’s amazed sudden euphoria, with the ludicrous stupendous incandescent beauty of the future and the feeling of freckled skin beneath his hands.
“Let them,” James said, laughing along, too much exultation to contain. “Seriously, sir…holodrama heroics, perfect bad lines, and I love it, I love you-”
Michael yanked him closer, James tumbled into his lap, touching everywhere now, robe coming loose and puddling on the floor. James tried to sit up and kiss him and shake off the last clinging sleeve; Michael tried to help, hands and limbs going everywhere.
“I love you,” James said again, and thought it for emphasis, lying sprawled out under him on their sofa in their quarters. So fucking much. If I didn’t say.
“You and your fucking mouth,” Michael said between kisses, “and cream-cakes and nut-bread…”
“I needed to keep my hands busy while I was sorting myself out.” James wrapped a leg around his waist. “Knew you wouldn’t mind. I can feed you in bed, later.”
“I might like feeding you.” That image, and the accompanying wave of tenderness, made James blush ferociously. Michael kissed his nose-they’d have to work on that, his ex-apprentice and fellow Jedi Knight and unmatchable healer-empath accepting the idea of being taken care of without attempts to reciprocate, but not right now, right now was about new sunrises and the exultant spin of galaxies in motion-and inquired, stray thought kicking the back of his mind, “James?”
“That’d better be a question about putting fingers certain places, sir-sorry! Habit! But you like it.”
“So do you. And yes, but…you said you weren’t sleeping with anyone here…but…” He fished that memory up into clearer light: James turning up for class with a limp and exhaustion and that bewildering twinge of satisfaction-dissatisfaction, sated but unfulfilled.
James laughed again. Not ashamed or embarrassed, not about this, evidently. The pocket of Michael’s heart that’d been holding on to weeks of apprehension shuddered toward reprieve at last.
“About that,” James said, putting hands on his shoulders, drawing him down into a luxurious leisurely kiss, I do get frustrated sometimes. Feeling other people having all the sex from a distance-not listening in! but that can get loud, if I’m tired and my shields aren’t-and NOT having sex over here, because I’m behaving, you know, being good…
“Very good,” Michael concurred, with a nip of teeth and a wordless murmur of pure praise and pride. James moaned softly, hips lifting into his.
What I’m trying to say is…do that again!…I’ve got quite a lot of toys. They weren’t you, but they did help. “Might prefer your help, though, from now on, if you’re willing.”
And those images spilled into Michael’s thoughts like kaleidoscopic debauchery, wanton and slick and sensual: James naked in his own bed, James dizzy and drunk on lust and longing, James sliding fingers and buzzing toys up inside himself while gripping his flushed cock, James coming and coming over and over again, mouth a lovely wide oh! of desire and back arched off the sheets, James thinking of Michael’s hands and eyes and smile, imagining…
“James,” Michael said, breathless, wanting, having, now, and in love.
“Mmm…yes, sir?”
“I want you,” Michael told him, “forever, saving the universe and adopting five hundred Jedi ghost-babies if you want, I love you, and also I want you to show me all of your toys.”