

Vision Quest

By A.F. Henley and Kelly Wyre

Published by JMS Books LLC at Smashwords

Visit jms-books.com for more information.

Copyright 2019 A.F. Henley and Kelly Wyre

ISBN 9781646561384

* * * *

Cover Design: Megan Derr

All rights reserved.

WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author's imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published in the United States of America.

* * * *

From Kelly Wyre: For Henley. For the magic. For what happens when we believe in it. I hear your caw, Raven. And I raise you a Dragon roar.

From AF Henley: For Kelly, of course, as without you this story would have sat as nothing more than a one-shot twined around a poem. Thanks for jumping, for hanging on, and for digging in. You are brilliant—both with what you do, and what you see—and it's been an honour and a pleasure to work with you. Thank you.

And for Volker: buddy, your support is unending, and your friendship incomparable. Thank you.

* * * *

Vision Quest

By A.F. Henley and Kelly Wyre

# Prologue

Arik

"Well, no I didn't make the reservation myself," Arik said to the rather unimpressed desk clerk. "I mean, not personally." He could see the clerk was doing everything in her power not to roll her perfectly painted eyes to the ceiling. Arik smiled, contempt obvious. "But it was made."

The snap of fingernails against plastic told him she was making her third attempt at locating his name. He was responding with his own exasperated tapping on the highly polished laminate of the counter when something in his peripheral caught him. Distracted, and not happy about it, he turned to his left and frowned.

"Sir?" the woman behind the desk urged his focus back towards her. "I'm sorry, sir. But I'm going to need a confirmation number. I've tried your name several ways, and I can't find anything at all."

Arik would have caught his breath, held it to the count of seven like he always did when he was trying to focus on circumstances that needed a little 'extra' consideration—on those things that tugged at his subconscious. Things that, uncannily, moments, hours or days later came up in conversation, found an unexpected requirement in his life, or posed some kind of threat. He'd long since given up trying to figure out why. Now, when called, Arik just did what he had to do. He watched. He reviewed. He recorded. And he waited until the web began to make sense.

"Sir!"

Arik snapped back to the woman who was quickly advancing from bored lack of concern to irritated annoyance. "Yes, yes, right here," Arik mumbled, digging through his briefcase for the copy of the email his assistant had tucked there before he left. "One moment. I have something here somewhere." He located the paper, yanked it from the attaché, dropped it onto the desk, and let his gaze wander again.

Eyes met eyes: Arik's green to a startling blue. A peculiar smile was lifted by mere fractions, and Arik knew he should turn his attentions back to his own business and leave the pretty redhead alone—but damn! A long-sleeved shirt clung so nicely to shoulders and chest and biceps, all most worthy of a moment's pause, and the worn denim over slim legs and righteous ass was oh, so sweet. Fiery hair was cleverly styled, just one side of wild, and long enough that curls were starting to sprout at the nape of the man's neck.

Fascinating, Arik thought. And why that adjective? He had no clue.

"Oh, here you are!" The clerk said, perking up. "Do you have your credit card with you, Mr. Beltrán?"

* * * *

"Hold the elevator, please!" Arik called, cursing as the doors began to slide closed. Yet, just as the two metal halves were about to make one whole, a hand pressed between them and stopped the completion. The doors reopened.

"Thank you!" Arik puffed, dropped his suitcase with exaggerated effort, turned towards his kind-hearted stranger, and stopped—surprised. Now, on a normal day, under normal circumstances, running into the same person in a busy downtown hotel wouldn't seem that bizarre. But Arik knew without a doubt that it had taken a good twenty-five minutes to finish the check-in process. He had, in fact, checked his watch in frustration several times.

He'd followed that fiasco with a dash to the coffee counter, spent eight minutes and fourteen seconds on his cell to his dog-sitter, and picked up a local paper. And the redhead had been long gone from the check-in desk when Arik finally got free. Another indisputable fact, because Arik had looked, just to make sure. So why, why, oh why, would the man be getting on the elevator now?

Fascinating.

"Where you headed?" the man asked politely, fingers hovering above the buttons.

"Oh, uh, eleven. Floor eleven, please."

The man's smile grew by minute degrees. "Good," he glanced over and caught Arik's gaze. "Me too."

Arik leaned against the wall of the elevator and used the time to take another long, hard look at the man standing with his hands clasped lightly behind his back, legs spread just so, chin turned up to eye the advancing numbers. The stance reminded him of all kinds of pretty pictures, ones that usually involved blissed-out, sweating men in leather bindings. The connection instantly made Arik's mouth water like a dog beside an unattended barbeque.

Arik closed his eyes quickly, feigning exhaustion, but that didn't erase the images that his mind started playing. And this particular movie seemed to be one in which his cock showed a great deal of interest.

When the beep sounded and the doors began to slide, Arik could have gasped in relief. He waited for the other man to step out, but, instead, the redhead turned, half-peered over one shoulder with a small smirk, and said, "The name is Blaze. And the room number is 1109."

* * * *

It never mattered how comfortable the bed was, Arik always struggled to sleep in a hotel. The annoying sounds, the stiff blankets, the unfamiliar scents of the bedding...without fail they would have him tossing and turning.

He flipped onto his back and stared at the ceiling, trying desperately to focus on anything but curling red hair and a tight ass, and for all of about one second, it worked. But it made so much more sense just to go with the thoughts and give up trying. Happily defeated, Arik reached for his cock without waiting for his creative mind to stir it into stiffening.

Arik's mind placed a patch of hair, the same fiery tone, trimmed and defined above a rock hard, agitated dick that wept in anticipatory delight. He imagined his mouth on it, his fingers seeking the oddity of velvet softness over steel, his palm against balls tightened and twitching. Vanillin skin, coated in sweat—pink lips parted and pleading. Writhing. Long, slim thighs trembling in need and fingers burying in his hair.

Movement increased, and the rhythmic sound of sheets being brushed by arm and elbow harmonized with breath being forced rushed and jagged from Arik's throat, until sensation seized his belly and every muscle in his body tensed. He felt the heated splashes paint his torso, but his mind saw them on chin and lip, and mesmerized him with images of salacious drips falling from the tips of red curls.

The orgasm should have made Arik sleep. It usually worked. Yet demonic litanies kept encouraging him to rise, to seek out the four digits on the tastefully decorated doorways until he could claim the man he'd never met but, somehow, could not get out of his head.

However, for all the pondering Arik was doing over Blaze's words, he could not see the justification in believing there was any reality to them. After all, Blaze had to have been teasing. Hot men did not just approach Arik for sex. It wasn't that he was unattractive because even Arik knew that wasn't the case. He worked hard at looking good.

Still...

A hotel elevator wasn't a bar. Random young men did not just pause, mid-floor, and offer favors to men they didn't know.

Did they?

With an aggravated sigh, Arik threw off the blankets and rose. He needed a drink. Maybe some scotch, if he could find some ice. After all, if jerking off wasn't going to put his mind at ease, if meditating and quiet thought refused to help, then fine. He'd drink himself unconscious.

Arik didn't bother with slippers. He didn't stop to change out of his Adidas pants. He merely slipped on a zippered hoodie, grabbed the card to his room, and, after a quick poke of head into hallway to ensure the way was clear, he headed down the corridor to find an ice machine.

He almost shrieked when ten seconds later a door to the right opened with a definitive click. A smug smile and hungry eyes met his own deer-in-the-headlights stare. "I almost thought you weren't going to show," Blaze said.

* * * *

"Ridiculous," Arik's mind kept telling him. Un-fucking-believably ridiculous. And yet...so goddamn interesting it wasn't even fathomable. Leaning against the wall of a space so similar to his own, his cock as hard as it had been mere hours ago, and attached at the mouth to a man that tasted better than Arik's imaginings could have ever guessed, the entire event seemed surreal.

Blaze felt good. He felt awesome, in fact. The chest and arms that Arik had stalked through clothing looked infinitely better in moonlight. The lips he'd shot his load on in fantasy tasted so superior in reality that Arik was beginning to question his own ability to visualize. It had been too long. Way, way too long since Arik had held another man against him.

Arik squeezed flesh still encased in denim, used that squeeze to drag Blaze closer and let go of a low moan when two hard cocks pressed between two seeking bodies. Hips rolled, Blaze's or his own, Arik couldn't even say which, and friction caused sparks to fly through Arik's blood like knots exploding in a campfire.

"Bed," Blaze growled. "Now!" And Arik reacted without pause, bending knee, grasping thighs and picked Blaze up from the floor in a swift, easy move. A startled gasp, a misplaced grab on slipping hoodie, and Blaze was deposited gracelessly on the mattress. An arm flew east, a nightstand rocked, a cell phone and clock went spinning like scuttling beetles. A drinking glass tottered, daring to question gravity, before succumbing and shattering on the floor below.

Destruction was lost in the throes of want. Blaze yanked clothing while Arik fumbled to assist. Every new patch of revealed skin taunted, every piece of sloughed clothing chuckled a sigh as it passed through air to find ground, and when Blaze finally lay back, propped on elbows, one knee up and eyes wild with hunger, Arik let his own pants slide to his ankles.

The pleased murmur that Blaze released was enough to blow Arik's mind. "Don't just stand there staring," Blaze demanded. "This isn't a fucking painting. As much as I appreciate the visual approval, I want you to fuck me."

"Jesus," the word tumbled from Arik's throat before he had a chance to stop it. He crawled forward, advancing slowly, not to add to the tension but because of it. Surely you couldn't forget? Surely the act could be akin to, hell, who knew? Riding a bike? A horse? Yet the fear still gripped him, made his hands shake and his throat dry.

Success; it seemed...important somehow. To prove. To satisfy. To be the one to make this pretty man squirm and cry out his name. And the way that Blaze was watching him advance...

"Mmm," Blaze sighed when Arik's hands found Blaze's thighs and began a slow slide towards bared pinnacle.

Hands to tongue and tongue to throat, the sweetest taste that Arik could think of: sex and musk and skin and fluid. But it was the way Blaze was fisting his hair, the way Blaze rolled hips into every swallow and lifted bodily from the bed to meet him, that had Arik dry-humping sheets and mattress, his own cock achingly hard and frantic for friction.

"Ah-Ah-fuck!" Blaze hissed through his teeth. "Fuck, yes! Just like that...please, unh..."

Heavenly chorus could not have been more righteous, certainly not more moving. Arik pulled back, using his tongue to spread still more spit onto the well-coated head of Blaze's cock before sliding tip to end in a slow, measured suck. Holding Blaze inside his throat, Arik hummed his own song of congratulations as Blaze gasped a whole new string of curse-inflected designations into the room.

Blaze had to pull his own body away from Arik's mouth. Arik was lost in performance, intent on task, and could have easily kept mouthing flesh until Blaze came. Wouldn't have cared in the least.

"Nah-no-no," Blaze stuttered as he forced himself away. "Fuck me! Need it. Take me there with your cock, okay?"

Latex, lube, pressed to sweaty palms and subsequently spread and rolled on to skin; breath panted harshly against faces, lips seeking lips, and all the while Arik's thoughts told him none of it could be real. Forget what you see, forget what you taste or feel or smell or touch. There's no way this can be happening to you. And yet, there he was, nudging a hard column of needy flesh against the give of skin that led to bliss, while Blaze moaned encouraging sounds that could have been words had Arik's brain the ability to focus on them.

Slow and easy; increasing the pressure that surrounded Arik's dick in a trembling and agonizingly beautiful way, almost, but not quite, as beautiful as Blaze's face. Unfocussed eyes watched moving parts, gripping fingers worked into Arik's shoulders and neck, and every single time Arik dug himself inside, Blaze's cock jumped in tandem with a moan. Blaze's legs tightened around Arik's torso, Blaze's heels digging so hard into Arik's back that he was sure there would be bruises.

"Need," Blaze was mumbling, Arik finally organizing syllable into function. "Want. Need. Please. Fuck!" With a small whine Blaze reached for his own dick, and in a moment of improv, Arik grabbed Blaze's hand and slammed it back down to the mattress.

"No," Arik growled, catching surprised, wide eyes, and shocking even himself. "With my cock, right?"

Arik held both wrists, probably much too tightly by the looks of the reddening fists above them, but Arik didn't relent as he thrust inside Blaze's body, keeping the man's arms still. Blaze didn't fight it; he lay back and turned half-lidded eyes to the ceiling.

Arik just watched him. Watched him mumble, watched him arch, watched him writhe into every move. Blaze's cock looked ready to explode. His body shook. "Unnn..." Blaze sighed and the sound rang in Arik's ears, joined with the growing desire, and like a virus spreading, began to multiply. "Unnn, pleeasse," every syllable stretched into a hotter version of its former self. "Going to..."

That was the phrase that did Arik in. Doubling, tripling, increasing infinitely...and as the sensations rolled from Arik's guts, he finally let go of slim wrist and lowered his attentions.

One finger over another, finalized by thumb, in a slow teasing grab, and the moment Arik's fist closed and squeezed, Blaze cried out. Arik felt every contracting spew of Blaze's cock along the length of his own expulsing shaft.

Legs dropped. Eyelids fell. Heavy breath pulled oxygen into lungs that couldn't quite seem to get enough. Arik lowered himself from wrist to elbow. His back hurt. His heart pounded like it was about to quit on him altogether.

And he'd never felt better in his life.

They lay side-by-side, backs on the mattress and listened to the sounds of the hotel—the ping of the a/c, the clumps of footsteps down the hallway, the drone of the traffic. They rested without speaking and drank in the aftermath of sex.

* * * *

"I could stay," Arik said, awkwardly dragging fingers through his hair and standing at the doorway of Blaze's room.

Blaze smiled. "Why don't you just tell me your name?"

"Oh!" Arik said, eyes wide. "Jesus! Blaze, I don't...I mean...holy shit! You must think I'm some kind of asshole! Arik, my name is Arik. With an 'A'. I don't know why. My mom...she liked it and there's a story, but..."

"Arik," Blaze parroted. "I like it. Very nice. It suits you."

Arik shook his head and laughed, embarrassed. "Thanks. Blaze your real name?" Blaze nodded, and Arik lifted his hand to tug a red curl at the side of Blaze's neck. "Suits you, too."

"Tell you what," Blaze said, thoughtfully. "If you want to meet me for coffee in the morning, then I'll be in the shop by the lobby around nine. You don't want to, then don't. No worries. No guilt. No regret. Your choice."

"And if I do?"

Blaze smiled. "Then you do."

Hotel hallways always seemed strange to Arik. The lack of outside lighting and the similarity of space seemed labyrinth-like. It was always noon in a hotel hallway. And you were always in the same hall, on the same carpet, looking at the same row of doors.

And for once, it didn't depress him. It occurred to him, yes. He always thought about it, tonight was no different. It just didn't affect him. And that realization made him smile.

It took him a second to dig out the card for his door. He had a moment's panic when he didn't find it right away—visions of the card sitting on Blaze's floor, of the humiliation of knocking on Blaze's door, "I think I might have dropped something..."

He was grinning when he reached for the door handle, card aloft, eyes tired and heavy, and was startled when a charge of static leapt between finger and metal—a visible electric flare.

Fascinating, Arik thought, looking down at his bare feet and noting the cool air-conditioned current in the corridor.

"Infused," his mind whispered, "by flame."

Arik paused for a long minute, staring at his finger and the handle, and then he shook his head and pushed the door open. He needed sleep. It was late. And he had plans for the morning. At least, he was pretty sure he did. He'd see what tomorrow brought.

Yet it was not the bed that called him. Rather, Arik walked to the window and yanked open the heavy drapes. The lights from the street and the hotel illuminated the darkness and cast a radiating glow that seemed to set the night ablaze. He felt...different somehow. Warmer. Brighter. Lit.

"Bed," he told himself with a sigh. He had to shut down his mind before he started thinking like a fool. Besides, the night was moving onward, and the morning wouldn't wait for him. He tossed his weary body to the mattress and rolled to his side, staring at the blaring red numbers of the clock. And he fell asleep thinking of silky red curls, golden eyelashes, and baby-blues.

* * * *

# Chapter 1

Blaze

"That'll be six-fifty," said the curvy, dark-skinned woman behind the hotel coffee shop counter. Blaze smiled, dug out the cash, and slid it to her. Their fingers touched, but there was no spark, no moment of clarity, no vision, and Blaze relaxed. So far, the only target he had was the one he'd acquired last night. Most pleasantly acquired, in fact. It was nice when Blaze's fortune ran to the pleasurable instead of other alternatives. Sometimes Blaze's encounters ended in tears or death or mayhem, not sweat-slick-spent bodies, shy smiles, and bewildered grins.

"Thanks," Blaze said, picking up the coffees and then carrying them to the condiment counter. He kept glancing toward the elevator doors while he added cream to his drink. He was going to leave the other coffee black, but reconsidered, adding a bit of sugar and stirring until the crystals had dissolved and done their sweetening job.

Blaze recapped the coffees and carried them to a glass pane near the coffee shop's open entrance. He balanced the cups in one hand, dropped his black duffle on the ground, and rested a hip against a metal beam, waiting. He didn't need a watch or a clock to tell him it was around eight-fifty-five. Blaze knew time like summer knew sunshine. He held the coffee under his nose, as it was still too hot to drink, and he watched the golden doors.

At five after nine, Arik Beltrán emerged in a tailored suit and shiny shoes. It didn't have the hot and lazy factors that the hoodie and Adidas pants did, but there were all sorts of kind things to say about a man who knew both how to dress down and dress up. The creamy shirt looked good against Arik's dusky skin, and Arik's dark hair wasn't mussed like it had been last night, from sleep and tugging and grasping. Arik had his briefcase, and Blaze realized the man had to be at the hotel for a reason. A conference, maybe, or a business meeting. Blaze chuckled to himself, wondering what Arik would think about Blaze's version of a conference call, and then Arik spotted Blaze, and Arik's entire countenance changed. Worry dissolved into abject wonder, and Blaze's insides warmed. He loved these moments. The, oh-holy-shit-you-are-real moments. When they were sweet, they made life worth living. When they were fearful, they made Blaze wish he had another path.

Arik approached with a purposeful stride. He was taller than Blaze, but then, most men, at least in this country, were. At five-six, Blaze was on the short side of this age's average. It had advantages, though. Last night when Arik had picked Blaze up and thrown him on the bed, Blaze hadn't minded his height in the least.

Through the doorway, around the counter, and to the table near where Blaze leaned, Arik came, and Blaze slowly turned to follow the progression. He held out the coffee when Arik was within range, and Blaze smiled again, this one less for show. "Morning," Blaze said.

"Hi," Arik blurted. He stared at the coffee. "Is this for me?"

"No, it's for the other man I fucked last night."

Arik jerked a look at Blaze, checking for seriousness, and Blaze had to laugh. "Black, little sugar. It's yours."

"Thank you." Arik took the coffee, but set it on the tall table. "Who are you?" he asked, bluntly and like he couldn't quite help himself.

Blaze didn't answer right away. He noted, instead, the drawn tightness around Arik's dark eyes that spoke of weariness. Blaze could relate. He'd not slept at all, waiting for Arik to pass by his room, and when Arik had left after they'd finished and caught their breaths, Blaze had slept, but it'd been to dream more of Arik. Not restful, the Vision sleep.

"Sorry," Arik muttered. "That was rude. I don't know what came over me. I'm sorry."

"I'm Blaze Zaituc," he said.

"Nice to meet..." Arik frowned. "Zaituc?"

"It's Romanian," Blaze said.

"It's unusual."

"I'm unusual."

Arik's lips twitched, and Blaze wanted to kiss them. After the last Vision Quest that had ended so badly, enjoying this one was a gift from the gods. "I can see that," Arik said. He drew closer, and Blaze gazed up at Arik's face, enjoying the scent of aftershave and soap and freshly laundered clothes. "What are you doing here, Blaze?"

Oh, Blaze liked it when they played the part of seducer and not mere victim of fate. A thrill chased a victory down Blaze's spine. "You, mostly," he quipped.

Arik enjoyed that answer. He glanced at Blaze's bag. "Checking out so soon?"

"Only had the room for a night."

"Passing through?"

"No." Blaze slid a hand over the back of Arik's where it rested on the tabletop. Blaze squeezed Arik's wrist. "Told you. Here for you."

Arik's face was more expressive than Blaze bet the man liked. Blaze watched Arik try to sort out if Blaze was flirting, teasing, didn't know when to stop playing the game and start giving real answers, or, possibly worse and possibly better, if Blaze _was_ telling Arik the absolute truth, which raised all kinds of questions. Blaze watched Arik decide that reality was impossible, but answers were needed, but he didn't want to anger Blaze, scare Blaze off, or lose Blaze's interest. Blaze would have liked to tell Arik that it'd be quite impossible to shake Blaze off the Quest now that he was on it, but he'd done this dance far too often to take such a misstep so early in their tango.

"Well, I'm here for a few days," Arik said carefully.

"Then I'll stay," Blaze said, massaging the bone of Arik's wrist with a soft touch. A spark like a tiny electric shock shot through Blaze's fingers. He saw himself, naked and face down in Arik's bed. He saw Arik approaching. He saw a clock on a nightstand, a man with dirty blond hair, a lit cigarette, and Arik's eyes full of tears. The imagery was gone in a blink, and determination steadied Blaze. He tightened his grip, and, as though on autopilot, Arik flipped a palm to grasp Blaze in return.

Despite the physical response, Arik was adorably confused, but still trying not to crack the certain and sure façade. "But how will you stay, without a room?"

Blaze shrugged one shoulder, made a show of reaching for his coffee so he wouldn't stop touching Arik, and took a sip. "If you're busy, I'll find something to do while you're gone. If you want company during the day, you'll have it. And tonight..." Blaze met Arik's eyes, direct and simple. "I'll be where you'd like me to be."

Arik swallowed, and suspicion warred with heat in his lovely brown eyes. "Is that so?"

"I hope it will be," Blaze said, honestly. He caressed Arik one last time and withdrew his touch. "The choice is yours," Blaze said, and that, too, was the truth. Arik could make Blaze's purpose as easy or as difficult as he liked. But Blaze was here for a reason larger than either of them could comprehend, and Blaze had no choice when it came to his life's course.

So he smiled at Arik, letting the man think, and around them, people went about their lives, oblivious to the pivotal moment in their midst.

* * * *

# Chapter 2

Arik

"Told you. Here for you."

The words played through Arik's mind like a song being whispered by unseen, unknown spirits through treetops. And he answered them, albeit it in silence: _well, now, that's probably a whole lot of foolish._

A prick of sweat lifted the hairs on the back of Arik's neck. One...he told himself. Two. Three. But before he was granted the liberty to continue the journey of his mind's eye, Blaze countered with speech.

"You do far too much communicating with yourself than you do out loud. That seems..." Blaze paused, considered, "pointless."

Arik lifted the coffee to his lips in an effort to hide a grin. He tried to tell himself that the brew needed a touch more sugar, and knew it was a lie. It was perfect. As though Blaze had counted the granules, and weighed them with scientific accuracy against the preferences of Arik's tongue.

Fascinating.

"Did you sleep well?" Arik asked, his eyes drifting to the clock that hung on the wall behind the counter.

Senses sharpened to the movement of the arms of the piece, the incessant click, click, click that monitored the passing seconds and turned them into moments. And his head took him to places long gone and instances passed, while his father drew on his cigarette and forced Arik's chin to wherever it needed to be in order to make Arik's eyes follow, _"Are you watching? Arik? Are you really, really watching?"_

"Segue?" Blaze's voice forced Arik's attention back. "Or attempt at distraction?"

He felt a frown crease his forehead and caught Blaze's gaze. "Casual conversation."

"For what purpose?"

Arik's expression softened with a smile, and he caught all other thoughts together, drawing them by the ends of their reins into his fist and tying them to the side. Out of the way. Kept, for future reference and consideration, but contained for the time being. He had a beautiful man in front of him. A man who, apparently, had a skill for tweaking caffeine into the perfect elixir, and an obvious interest in Arik's...something. That's where his focus needed to be. That was, at least, where he was damn well going to put it. Regardless of advancing clocks or possible theories on time and place.

"Let's just say that I want to get to know you." Arik lowered his eyes to the bag on the floor of the coffee shop. "Is that your luggage?"

He registered Blaze's nod, considered the brevity of the gesture, and felt his attention get drawn back to it. "So are you local then?"

As Arik had packed, his expectations had been for three days. One to arrive, one to scope, and one to make good on whatever the hell he'd been led there for. Even with that limited duration, his suitcase was twice the size of Blaze's bag, and had been shoved so full that Arik had to force the clasp.

"No," Blaze shook his head to match movement to word. "I travel light."

While his lips twitched into a grin, Arik reacquired Blaze's eyes with his own. "Damn. Here I thought maybe that bag of yours would be full of the kinds of things a person just felt too self-conscious to leave in his room. Guess it's probably just clothing, then?"

"Would you like it to be?" Blaze asked, the quip of his tone lightening the cryptic nature of his reply.

"Full of clothing?" Arik asked innocently, drawing out the game.

He felt the connection of Blaze's eyes with his skin. Once again long, slim fingers lifted, tripped up the length of Arik's forearm, and God-be-damned and Christ-almighty, but Arik would have sworn he felt a charge leap from digit to limb. Clarity sharpened, like something was tuning the focus in Arik's brain. "What are you doing here, Blaze?"

Blaze paused. Pressure suggested the contemplation of disconnection, but something must have made Blaze reconsider because, instead, Blaze laid his palm flat on Arik's arm and wrapped his fingers around the muscle. His voice was slow and careful when he spoke. "Should I know that answer any more than you do?"

Something creepy and unwelcome slithered down Arik's spine. "I know why I'm here, Blaze. I'm here to soothe a petulant customer and convince him that it's way too late in life to start thinking about modifying his retirement visions."

Blaze tilted his head. "Are you now?" He didn't give Arik a chance to reiterate. "That sounds like something that could be easily done by telephone or web conference."

Arik shook his head. "No. Not this time. This was—"

"Different," Blaze finished for him.

Tension shouldn't have been tightening the otherwise broad expanse between Arik's shoulders. There was no reason whatsoever that his stomach should twist. More than anything, however, there was no justification for the warning that hinted Arik should be very, very careful. Of course, that particular nuance could have had more to do with history than any instinct serving self-preservation.

Arik tried again. "Not so much different. More like, well...I needed—"

"To be here." Blaze nodded, blue eyes trained on Arik's. His expression was intense, direct, and though it spoke of decades, centuries—millennia even—of hard-learned secrets, it was honest. "You needed to be here."

There wasn't anything Arik could think of to say. Instead, he parroted it back. "Yes. I needed to be here."

"Do you know why?"

Arik shook his head. He answered with what he thought was the obvious expectation. "To meet you?"

Blaze leaned back, took a sip of his coffee, and shrugged. "Do you think so?"

"If I could answer that, I wouldn't have phrased my reply in the form of a question." Arik's smile took the edge off his comment. At least, he hoped it did. Because 'fascinating' was quickly turning into 'frustrating.'

"To be honest, I think you might know more than you're saying, Blaze. You caught my eye in the lobby. You spoke to me in the elevator. And you had to have been watching for me in the hallway. Unless you have some kind of mystical way of just knowing..." Arik let his words drift when the corner of Blaze's lips twitched into amused. "Actually, do me a favour and don't answer that."

"I won't," Blaze grinned. "Besides, I have this overwhelming urge to start quoting sayings about kettles and pots and the spoken blackness thereof."

Arik lifted an eyebrow and pursed his lips. "So tell me something, Blaze." He paused until Blaze was driven to raise one hand, palm up, fingers wide, and ask him to continue with sight alone. "Would you care to go for a drive?"

* * * *

# Chapter 3

Blaze

"Sure," Blaze said, finishing the last dregs of his coffee. Arik seemed to be making up his mind whether or not he was happy about Blaze's easy acceptance. Blaze tossed his empty cup into the trash. "Taxi?"

"Rental," Arik said, fishing in his pocket and pulling out a key ring with a plastic tag.

"Cool." Blaze scooped up his bag and slung the strap across his chest. "You drive."

"I was planning on it," Arik mumbled, mostly to himself, Blaze thought, and Blaze followed Arik out of the shop and into the hotel proper. Guests and staff milled about, their strides and stances screaming of self-importance. Arik held the door for Blaze, who smiled his thanks, and Arik pointed to the parking garage next to the hotel.

"Lead on," Blaze said over the sound of horns honking and traffic steadily rolling past the hotel on the busy downtown street. The row of buildings narrowed the sky above to a slim strip of blue. Cloudless, haze-less, a gorgeous day in the making, not too hot and not too cold; perfect early autumn weather.

A group of businessmen split and streamed around Arik and Blaze like a school of fish around a rock, and Blaze instinctively grabbed his long T-shirt sleeves, tucked his hands into them, and put his hands into his pockets. Arik glanced over his shoulder to check that Blaze was there, and then hurried across the street while the light was still flashing. Blaze jogged along, watching the movement of Arik's slacks across Arik's ass, and the way Arik's upper body worked with the swing of Arik's muscular arms, and Blaze cobbled together what he knew.

The first dream had been the city's skyline, moon above and lights below...

The sign read Davenport Conference Center, and it was next to a fountain set in a downtown street sidewalk. A man wearing comfortable clothes walked out of a shadowy parking structure and disappeared into the grand front entrance of the hotel, rolling a carry-on bag behind him.

...the second dream was all Arik...

Hands opened a suitcase, hung a suit in the hotel closet. A razor sliced in careful rows across stubble on cheeks. A fork lifted a bite of food to a well-shaped mouth. A pair of eyes crinkled with laugh lines at the corners. Comb in dark hair, socks on feet, and a full image of irritated exhaustion, a credit card sliding across a counter.

...the third dream left Blaze breathless...

Flush on cheeks, parting lips, gritting teeth, sweat rolling down the center of a wide back...A low moan, a whisper of a name...A turn of a head, out of rhythm and out of time, seeking out Blaze who watched...a whisper...again...Blaze's name...beckoning...inviting. And skin rolled over the top of a hard cock, a flat stomach heaving as release sprinkled a kempt patch of pubic hair and the jut of a hipbone.

...the fourth dream had been on the train coming into the city...

Room numbers 1107 and 1143.

The blond man, the sad eyes, the cigarette, Blaze in bed...A phrase, SINS OF THE FATHER, and the top of a flyer jutting out from a book. The flyer had been from a church, perhaps, the scrawling single word the only color in the black and white dream:

BELIEVE.

And then, just before they left, a cell phone, a steering wheel, and carnival music. Rarely did Blaze have so damned little to work with, but he'd done more with less and managed to pay his dues on time.

Arik lead Blaze to a Chrysler 300 in an icy blue color. "Upgrade," Arik said, almost apologetically. The car chirped at them as though it was agreeing.

"Nice," Blaze said, opening the back door, tossing in his bag, and climbing in to settle in the front seat. "So where we headed?" Blaze fastened his belt.

"I've got a client meeting at half past ten," Arik replied, hooking a hand onto Blaze's seat and reversing out of the space.

"You need backup?" Blaze teased.

Arik snorted. "Maybe. But you'd probably be more comfortable in the lobby of the building. It shouldn't take long."

"And I'm to be your, what, assistant?"

"God, no. I have one of those, and she doesn't travel with me, thank goodness." Arik weaved through the garage toward the ground floor exit.

"Oh, then maybe the call boy who won't leave until you actually pay him?"

"Oh, the people I'm meeting know I'd pay and pay well." Arik grinned slyly. "More like the call boy who won't leave because he can't get enough."

"So I'm Julia Roberts in _Pretty Woman_? If I had a damned dime..."

Arik's laugh was interrupted by the sound of a phone ringing though the car speakers. The dash lit up with INCOMING CALL and the number, and Arik hit a button on the steering wheel.

"Good morning, Maria," Arik said.

"He's rescheduling," said a weary female voice, presumably Maria's.

"He's what?"

"There's a good reason."

"There had damned well better be."

"Faulty gallbladder. He's in the hospital having it removed as we speak."

Arik sighed, swung into an open handicapped space, and thumped his head against the seat. "Where does this put us?"

"Well, Mr. Boss, and if you don't mind me saying so, Mr. Boss, as I know you won't, Mr. Boss—"

"Maria."

"—but there's really nothing on your plate that can't be pushed, and the man does need time to knit flesh, and he wants to reschedule for end of next week, which could allow you fly home, be a work-a-holic, and return, but I was thinking, Mr. Boss, that just maybe, if you wanted, of course, you might use this time to..." Maria paused, and when she spoke again, her stage whisper was deafening, "...take a bloody vacation for once in your sad life."

Arik glanced at Blaze. "Sure," Arik said.

"...What?"

"I said, 'sure.' Clear my calendar. I'll stay until he's out of the hospital and we can—"

"WHAT?"

"—set up the appointment, again. I'll stay where I am for at least a couple more nights. Will phone if I want something more quaint—"

"Who are you and what have you done with—"

"—or anything else, for that matter. Lovely to chat, Maria, good-bye."

"—sick? Near death experience? What the hell is—"

Arik hit the button and burst into laughter. "Oh God, I've wanted to do that for years, but never thought I'd actually get the chance."

Blaze waited until Arik quit giggling, unable to help himself from smiling at seeing Arik so momentarily amused. "So, you know what this means?"

"Other than Maria is going to put salt in my coffee for a month after I get back, no, not really."

"You've got the day free."

Arik sobered and blinked adorably at Blaze. "I do, don't I?"

"Don't worry, I have something we can do."

"Mmm." Arik leaned across the seat and slipped a palm onto the back of Blaze's neck. Sparks flew, and Blaze heard the carnival music, again, but this time he saw...

Blaze was glad Arik kissed with his eyes closed, because Blaze's were open in shocked delight. He got lost in lips and tongue and taste for a few blissful moments, and nosed Arik's cheek when Arik broke the contact. Arik brought a hand up to his mouth, as though it tingled. Blaze wondered if Arik could feel the connection, too, and how interesting would that be, if Arik wasn't immune to the force that had brought them together.

"More of that, definitely," Blaze said. "But if you're still set on the idea of a drive, I think I have someplace we can go."

"We've already got a hotel," Arik pointed out, helpfully.

"What, you only fuck in beds?"

"I..." Arik blinked. "What did you have in mind?"

Blaze sat back in his seat. "Head north on the Interstate, past the exit for the Parkway, and take the one for Manhurst."

"That'll take us out of the city."

"Impressive nav skills you've got there."

"Not going to tell me where we're going?"

Blaze slowly shook his head.

Arik rolled his eyes but dropped the transmission into reverse. "Richard Gere never had to put up with this shit."

"You're right. He just had to eat pussy on a piano."

Arik pulled a face and made gagging noises, and they headed out of the garage, through four lights, across three lanes, and onto the Interstate. Morning traffic had thinned, and the car hummed at ten over the limit.

"The one I miss is Heath Ledger," Blaze was saying, staying on topic of movies and actors for as long as possible.

"Which one's he?" Arik asked, taking the exit with a smooth tilt of the wheel.

"You're kidding."

"No, I've got this. He was Batman, right?"

"I weep for you."

"What, he wasn't?" Arik asked, glancing at Blaze and at the highway and merging onto the latter.

"He was the Joker. The new one. He committed suicide."

"How awful," Arik said, voice softer.

"That one was."

"Aren't all of them?"

Blaze shrugged. "Depends on their reasons."

Arik was skeptical. "Been around a lot of suicides, have we?"

"A few," Blaze said. But what he thought was, _If only you knew_ , and what he asked was, "You?"

Arik didn't answer for a moment. "Just one."

"I'm sorry," Blaze said, matching Arik's tone.

"Thanks." Arik did the increasingly-familiar thing where he sank into himself, gaze going inward, and his lips began to move with unspoken conversation, wherein Arik had to play all the parts and sides of the argument.

Blaze watched Arik from the corner of his eye. "You'll want to turn left at the light."

"What are we doing, Blaze?" Arik asked.

"Driving, Arik. Preferably in the leftward direction."

Arik gave Blaze a dark look, but obeyed. Blaze could tell there were a hundred questions being born and being put to death before they saw the light of day. Relaxing wasn't, evidently, one of Arik's more honed skills.

Blaze let Arik brood, watching the edges of the city devolve into strip malls and gas stations that faded to sparse sub-divisions and finally to the occasional farmhouse, cows, and open land. A mere ten minutes later, and they were close enough. Blaze rolled down the window.

"What are you doing?" Arik asked.

"Listen."

Arik did, and when he was distracted and stripped of worry lines and confusion, Arik was the kind of appealing that Blaze didn't want to let out of sight, mind, or bed. "Is that...?"

Blaze grinned and nodded. "It is."

Arik ducked lower, chin almost on the steering wheel as he scanned the sides of the road. "We're going to the...circus?"

"Better," Blaze said. "Turn here."

Blaze got no argument, and Arik slowed to a stop when he saw the sign. His face cracked into a boyish smile that took ten years off his age.

On either side of the pavement were pillars made to look like badly painted Grecian columns. They supported an enormous sign that showed a fat princess riding a pig, a spoon and a plate holding hands and jumping over a smiling, stoned cow smoking a pipe, a wizard in one corner with whirling red-black eyes, hands aloft and wand at the ready, and, Blaze's favorite, a goat standing on its hind legs, front ones crossed as it leaned against a wall of open air, sprig of wheat between its grinning teeth.

"What...in...the..." Arik began.

"Welcome," Blaze said. "To Mini-Golf Insanity Land."

* * * *

# Chapter 4

Arik

Arik was only granted a moment to stare before a car, with a far more impatient guest, offered his vehicle an obnoxious honk. He lurched forward, grinning when Blaze slammed a palm against the dash to counter the movement. "Whoops. Sorry."

He rolled through the entrance, past the sign, past the columns, and selected a parking spot away from the other vehicles that seemed to huddle around the medieval arch that had to be the admission gate. "Rental," Arik reminded when Blaze looked over. "This place is probably crawling with vermin of the two-legged, too-young-to-give-a-shit variety. As much as I like kids..."

Blaze shrugged. "I don't mind walking."

The pavement was already leaching heat as they stood atop it, and Arik worked his jacket off and tossed it over the seat of the car. The tie followed, cuffs were released, and the linen rolled in precise three-inch folds until it sat at his elbows. While autumn was doing her best to nudge leaves from their holds with a light breeze, summer still tended to cameo once the sun was high. Arik could only hope that he didn't end up with sweat circles the size of full moons under his arms—hardly sexy. But there were trees and odd structures, wee buildings with a definitive carnival-esque feel to their design, and hell, worse come to worse, he could always buy a T-shirt. Nothing screamed chic like a cheap poly-cotton blend that read, "I survived Mini-Golf Insanity Land."

Arik groaned out loud at the mental image, shook his head, and slammed the car door shut. Blaze, in turn, reached for his bag, settled the strap over his chest, pushed his own door closed, and smiled over at Arik. "All set?"

"You sure you want to take that?" Arik asked. "The car has an alarm?"

Blaze merely smiled. "I'm fine."

They walked in time with one another, their steps seeming to synchronize without forethought, and Arik found himself grinning at the suddenness of it all. Yesterday at this time, he'd been boarding a plane and mentally reciting soothing speeches about mutual benefits and long-term growth versus short-term gains. He'd just finished yet another take-out breakfast, in the midst of yet another sixty-hour work-week, without a single thing to look forward to but for, perhaps, the kind of luck that alcohol helped with in a crowded bar. Arik could, quite literally, say without doubt, that the last time he'd been out on a date—a real date, a date-date—was almost a decade prior. Caution strove forward in his brain to remind him that's not exactly what this moment was; no, this was a twist of fate, a surprise circumstance. But it felt like a date, if one disregarded the lack of planning and the knowledge that they were both thousands of miles away from their individual home-bases, and likely to never see each other again once the trip was over.

Still. It was cool. It was neat. And Arik was going to enjoy it.

They were just approaching the metal bars that partitioned off the area between those who had not paid from those who had when, for the second time that day, the two of them were ensconced by bodies. Instead of polished businessmen however, children by the dozens rushed the gate and split around them in their attempts to make it to the entrance first. Arik lifted his attentions away from the kids, and got a glimpse of a harried, yet surprisingly stoic young woman.

They exchanged a smile, and as she began to round up the hoard, she waved the two of them forward. "You guys go first. You do not want to get stuck behind this."

Arik glanced at Blaze and couldn't hold back the chuckle at the expression he found on Blaze's face: mild contempt, annoyed reproach, barely contained revulsion. He looked like he was contemplating lining each one of the hooting, chattering, cell-phone waving, picture-taking, bumping, milling, disturbing little freaks into military order, and giving them all lectures on appropriate public behaviour. That was, actually, surprisingly refreshing. Arik reached over the browns, the blacks, the blonds, and the reds that made up the various tops of heads and held out his hand. "After you?"

Blaze nod-bowed. "Why, thank you, sir." He cracked a grin of his own. "But surely, we can go together."

Instead of following the lead of Arik's hand, Blaze caught it and held it. "Now," he tugged Arik forward, "let's get in there so I can kick your ass."

"Are you good?" Arik asked, laughing out loud at Blaze's gasp-reply of mock offense.

"How can you even ask that?" Blaze shoulder-checked him lightly. "You should already know I'm fantastic."

Arik pulled out his wallet, waving Blaze away with a frown when Blaze tried to step forward. For all Arik knew, Blaze was a multi-millionaire with more disposable income than Bill Gates, but he doubted it. Arik, on the other hand, could merely write the event off as meeting with a potential client. It was a win-win, for lack of a less cliché term.

"I'll have you know," Arik said, feigning smug as he paid the bored woman, "that I am a golf extraordinaire. I rarely shoot worse than two or three over par. Not bad for a kid that was raised in the city, I'd say."

"Cheating doesn't count," Blaze deadpanned.

Arik's mouth fell open in a comical exaggeration of shocked horror. "That's just rude!"

"Mm hmm." Blaze grabbed the putter he was offered and handed one to Arik. "It's honest. You're in business. All businessmen cheat on the golf course. Besides, this is completely different."

While Blaze explained the concepts of the game, complete with the intricacies of trying to get the ball into what seemed to be impossible-to-manage holes and crevices in order to "activate" the various cool little triggers of each obstacle, Arik did his best to offer clever banter.

The first hole was a simple one—a carnival clown at the end of the fairway with an open mouth that would swallow the ball and spit it back onto the green if one was foolish enough to miss the hole. And Blaze made good on his promise to kick Arik's ass, landing a hole-in-one without batting an eye.

The second, third, and fourth were no better.

The fifth, sixth, and seventh were battled over valiantly. And lost just as brutally.

Arik should not have been as thrilled as he was to beat Blaze's count on the eighth hole. Nor should he have been having as much fun as he was, considering that Blaze was, obviously, impossibly accurate with his stroke. But the carnival atmosphere was bright and relaxing. The breeze and the shade provided by swaying trees was fresh, and just cool enough to keep the overhead sky at bay. The company was brilliant and amusing.

At the ninth hole the two of them stood, side by side, and stared down the painted goat that bore a remarkable resemblance to the one that had posed on the sign at the entrance. It was propped, forelegs posing as arms, its "elbows" on a fence, its back to the player. It appeared to grin over its shoulder, large, square teeth clenching a sprig of wheat, massive cowboy hat seemingly tossed over a post of the fence to its right. The gist of the shot was to get the ball in the small triangular space between the goat's crossed hooves whereby a mechanical (but most likely magical) process would deliver it to either the left, or right, of the display, and spit it back onto the green, where design would ensure it flowed directly into the necessary hole. Apparently, according to the sign, this could be accomplished in one stroke.

Arik eyed the setup. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear that bastard is jeering at me."

Blaze tilted his head and stared at the goat. "I don't know. He seems to be flirting with me." He walked past Arik and up to the board. He tapped the goat's bottom. "Nice ass."

"Oh, great," Arik snorted. "Now he's going to like you best!"

Blaze laughed. Arik responded in kind. And the sun slipped behind a cloud.

"It's okay," Blaze nodded. "Now that we're close personals, I'm sure he'll be kind. You are, after all, a friend of mine."

"It's good to have friends in high places," Arik agreed.

A child ran past with an ice cream. They turned to watch him. A buzz started in Arik's head.

"Tell you what," Blaze stepped forward. "I'll pass on some of the goat-ass-grabbing luck if you want."

"Oh?" Arik huffed. "What do I have to do? Stroke its balls?"

A current of unseen electricity lifted the hair on the back of Arik's neck. The buzz in his brain began to murmur. He shook his head to dispel it. _Not now. No, you don't._

"That would work, I'm sure." Blaze grinned. "This might be better though."

Blaze closed the space between them, reached up and behind Arik's head, and pulled him forward. "The best way to transfer luck is with your lips."

One...

Arik mentally lurched away from the number. Fuck that. No way was he missing this...

Two...

Blaze's breath was warm. An almost imperceptible scent of dark spice and rich wood drifted off Blaze's skin. It was cologne that had been laid with what Arik referred to as an intimate quantity. In other words, one had to get very close and very personal to experience it.

Three...

Arik yanked Blaze toward him so hard that Blaze's eyes widened. For all of a single second. The moment their lips touched, Blaze's eyes narrowed. His forehead creased. And the shove on Arik's subconscious doubled.

Are you watching?

Rather than respond, even mentally, Arik tried to drown his itch in Blaze's mouth. When the _four_ threatened to bubble through, when the insistence to _watch, review, record_ became more of a demand than a suggestion, Arik pushed his tongue between Blaze's lips. A salacious kiss, for such a public venue; far too close of a hold for such a diverse assembly of potential onlookers. But Arik tried to force away thought through sensation; tried to fend off approaching demons by shielding with an angel.

Except it didn't work. It didn't even help. On the contrary, every slip and slide and touch, every extra muscle that Arik pressed against Blaze seemed to compound the advancing crescendo. It wasn't a spiral Arik was falling into, but a lift up and over the barriers of reality, the sensation spreading out and through his entire body...and it felt like it opened everything.

Blaze coughed a sound that could have been a gasp, could have been a rebuke, and Arik wrenched himself away for a purpose that was totally lost of reason. The only thing he knew was that he had to break the contact—sever the connection—before it consumed both of them.

Arik opened his eyes, stared directly into the painted set that shone from the goat's face, and he drew an anxious breath. With cartoon movement, the goat's head lifted from the board and turned to eye Arik directly. The grass fell from lips that appeared to tremble. Or bubble. Or God...what the fuck? It opened its mouth, as if to bray its hilarity, but in a total paradox of Arik's thought, its jaw split at the fulcrum, paint cracking and leeching an oily, thick material. Arik stumbled backwards, everything else forgotten, and as if his body had been tethered to the painting, the movement seemed to pull a disastrous reaction along with it. The eyes of the creature exploded, painted skin pulled and peeled away from the board, and it wasn't the expected splinter of wood fragments that followed, but the wet, nauseating sound of bloated bodies letting loose on heated shorelines.

Decay did not advance so quickly. Blood did not spread so insistently. Skin did not tear so completely, nor did beasts undergoing such a transformation laugh so maniacally. Arik clutched at air to find impossible holds, and would have fallen ass-heavy on to the ground had Blaze not clutched at his shirt to keep him upright.

"What the fuck?" Arik shouted, both hands finding and gripping Blaze's wrists hard enough to hurt his own fingertips. He noted the swivel of half a dozen adult heads towards his outburst and he didn't care in the least. He knew there was panic on his face, he could feel the tentacles of it everywhere—clenching his balls, squeezing his chest, digging through his brain and bowels. He sought out Blaze's eyes, questioning, confirming, begging in silence...and didn't see the confusion or the horror that he was expecting.

Arik's hands dropped down to his sides. He shot a cautious glance at the image of the goat. Nothing but wheat-chewing, grin-spewing, y'all-have-a-good-day cheer shone back at him.

"Well now," Blaze said slowly. "That was interesting."

* * * *

# Chapter 5

Blaze

"Oh, we're going to need another round," Blaze said to the blonde girl buzzing by their table to check on her only customers.

"Coming right up!" The girl beamed at Blaze, cast a slightly worried glance at Arik, who was still seasick pale, and then she skipped away.

"Thanks," Arik said, sipping his beer and moving his fries around in their basket as though he wanted to build a fort out of them, not eat them.

After "the incident," as Arik was calling it, at Mini Golf Insanity Land, Blaze had driven them to the closest place that sold alcohol, which turned out to be a sports bar that had tiny TVs at every table and waitresses in green-checkered plaid shirts and solid black mini shorts. The hardest thing they served was a malt beer, and Blaze had ordered two of them and a couple baskets of fried foods to fend off Arik's shakes. Whenever Blaze had an "incident" that powerful, he usually got a drop in blood sugar that could leave him flattened on the ground. And Blaze was absolutely sure that Arik had experienced an "incident" the likes of which were very familiar to Blaze. The kiss had been fraught with sizzle and spark, and Blaze had been halfway to the moon, high on the rare and cherished connection sensation, when Arik had staggered away, yelled loudly enough to make the wee humans cry, and stared at Blaze in a weird mixture of accusation and fast-dying hope. It'd been like he had expected Blaze to have seen whatever it was Arik had seen or understand whatever it was Arik now knew, or, at the very least, had a glimmer of insight leading toward the knowing.

Unfortunately, the only thing Blaze had experienced was an interlacing of metaphysics that had gotten him hard so fast he had thought the kiss alone might have gotten him off right there on the goat's grinning face. And even more unfortunate than the sudden change of game plan that went from hot to horrible in less than point-oh-oh-six seconds, was that Blaze was having little to no luck getting Arik to talk about what had happened.

"I'm sorry," Arik said again.

"That's eight," Blaze said.

"Eight, what?"

"Times." Blaze sighed. "That you've apologized. Arik, you don't need to say you're sorry."

"Feels like I do," Arik muttered.

Blaze reached across the table and carefully touched Arik's rolled shirtsleeve. "I understand what happened."

"You do?"

The unbridled desperation almost made Blaze hesitate, but he carried on: "Sure. You're used to being on the other side of an ass beating."

Blaze got a weak chuckle for his efforts. "You were doing pretty well."

"Pretty well?"

"Winning. You were winning." Arik drank deeply of his beer, nodded to the girl when she set down another one, and Blaze ignored the girl's judging gaze about men who drank before noon on Thursdays.

"Yeah, until you got a good look at the goat, it was all going my way."

Arik blanched, drank again, and Blaze locked on target. "Did it remind you of something?"

"The goat?" Arik scoffed. "No."

The derision was real enough. Blaze changed tactics. "Did you see something?"

Arik's eyes ticked to Blaze's. "What?"

"See something," Blaze repeated. "Or smell, maybe, or—"

"It's a migraine," Arik said, nostrils flaring and fist forming on the table. "Like I said. I get them, you know? And they're sudden, and—"

"And cured by beer and fried foods?"

"I just said I thought we should leave," Arik said, bordering on angry, now. "You were the one who suggested the food."

"And you didn't argue with me, tell me your treatment plan, or ask to go to the hotel to sleep in the darkness with a cold cloth, medication, and silence."

Arik's mouth opened and closed like a fish, and he frowned. "No, I...No, I didn't."

"Have you ever actually _had_ a migraine?" Blaze asked.

"No, but I'm getting a real pain in my ass right about now." Arik's eyes flashed dangerously, but it was the beer bottle that got the dirty look, not Blaze. "This was a mistake," Arik said softly.

"Arik—"

"Please," Arik said in a perfectly awful placating, tired tone. He waved one hand, shaking off Blaze's touch. "I'll get the drinks, drive you back, and...we'll just forget it ever—"

"My _bunică_ was a _vrăjitoare_ ," Blaze interrupted.

The foreign tongue had its uses. Catching the attention of distraught, pretty men who were the current object of Blaze's Quests was one of them. "Your what was a what?" Arik asked.

"My granmamere, my granny, was a witch. Well, actually, I'm thinking of my great-great granny, but the other female descendants were witches, too."

"You're kidding?" Arik asked, but this time the derision was not only unreal, it was scarce on the ground.

"I am not." Blaze tipped his beer toward Arik, drank, and smacked his lips. It was terrible beer, but strong. "And all of them saw things."

"What kinds of things?"

"The future, the past, ghosts, demons, the devil within..." Blaze shrugged. "All sorts of things. I grew up with a huge family, most of whom could dance in fire, charm snakes, and read cards, and if I could count the number of times I've seen one or more of them react to some horrible shit they could see but nobody else could, it'd be an even bigger figure than the number of times you apologize when it's not your fault. So _gadjo..._ " Blaze nudged Arik's beer closer to its drinker. "What did _you_ see?"

"I..." Arik was white as a sheet, but leaning toward Blaze, not away, and when he bit his lip and started to draw into himself, Blaze made a soft, tender sound and covered Arik's hand with Blaze's own. The spark was instantly there, humming between them, and Arik gasped, arm going stiff.

"It's okay," Blaze murmured, petting Arik's thumb with his own.

"No, not so much. Last time, definitely not so."

"In my experience, _this_ kind of charge has less to do with visions and more to do with one set of esoteric chemistry that really, really likes another set."

"Esoteric..." Arik's frown became a concentration scowl. "You mean you...do _you_ see...?"

"I did just tell you I was related to a bunch of crazy women, didn't I?" Blaze said dryly, which was both an answer and not an answer, but it worked for Blaze right now.

"I'm really not sure what happened," Arik said, steadier but still ashen and fixated on their joined hands. "I...what the fuck?"

_Oh God, not again,_ Blaze thought, but Arik didn't scream or curse. He slapped the controls on the flat screen in their booth. They'd turned it off when they had sat down, and now Arik cranked the volume.

It was a news station, and a woman in a pencil skirt and dour expression stood next to a cold crime scene with tape marking where it had been originally set up near some train tracks, a train service station, and a whole lot of forest. The bold tag across the bottom of the screen said, BODY FOUND.

"...ongoing hunt for their son, Craig Hammersfeld, who was reported missing a month ago by his partner, Christopher Edwards. Elizabeth Sewell is standing on the site where police recovered a mutilated body last week. Elizabeth, has it been confirmed that the body was, in fact, Craig Hammersfeld?"

"Hi Jack, and yes, it has been confirmed with a positive ID just this morning. A mere five days ago, police found a blue, plastic barrel that had been stuffed with a contorted, crushed, and nearly liquidated human body. This monstrous crime horrified the surrounding community, causing a major outcry for a manhunt to find the perpetrators, and police have two suspects in custody who, it is said, have confessed to this atrocity as part of a dare fulfilled while under the influence of a variety of illegal substances. They admit to abducting Craig after he finished his shift at a local mini golf course. He was in his car and had dropped his keys on the gravel, and was forced away from the vehicle and into an unmarked van at gunpoint. Craig sustained many injuries and endured hours of torture before being—"

Blaze shut off the television, unable to take any more, but before he could ask a question or speak a single word, Arik was out of the booth and running toward the men's room. Blaze ripped out his wallet, slammed a bill down between the unfinished beers, and grabbed his bag from under the table. He swung his entire life across his shoulders as he gave chase, worry and dread speeding his heart and his feet.

* * * *

# Chapter 6

Arik

Arik shoved himself into the last stall of the restroom, the announcer's words still circling in his head, and slammed the door with more force than he'd intended. The cheap aluminum barked its disapproval and Arik turned to growl back at it. He lifted a fist, reconsidered, and lowered it back to his side, still clenched, still ready to go in case Arik changed his mind.

Instead, he forced himself to breathe; to lift his left hand, and press his palm over his eye and fingers over his forehead in a soothe so very contrary to its balled-up, furious brother. "Coincidence," Arik murmured. "Heat. I should have been drinking water. Should have eaten breakfast."

The scent of cheap pine cleaner masked, but did not hide, the underlying presence of stale urine. Something ill-fated had started to rot in either corner or behind plaster. The flooring was slick with someone's half-hearted attempt at cleaning; the bleach they'd use somehow magnifying the odour of the mildewing cotton mop instead of making anything fresher. Odd, considering the rest of the sports bar had seemed somewhat clean. But then, really, wasn't that the way these things went—the requisite neon and electronics made everything seem that much brighter and more sparkly? It wasn't until one went digging that one found the filth.

The door to the restroom opened and Arik flinched. He pulled back against the wall and swallowed a whine, even as criticism rose inside his chest to hiss at his reaction.

Recollection mocked him. Memory tried to step in and set up camp. It was as if cigarette-smoking, cold-eyed generals began peeking from around corners, leering. "All right, boys," imagination offered. "Maybe we can finally get this show on the road again. Gentlemen, arm yourselves."

"Arik?" Blaze's voice was low and warm, and cut through the veil of Arik's thoughts like they were no heavier than gauze. He didn't reply, though, and his clenched fist tightened that much further on itself.

Blaze's footsteps were light and slow but he seemed to know exactly where to stop and turn. Dark, oh-so-very-comfy-looking running shoes—long but narrow, aged, but not worn—peeked at Arik from under the divider. "Are you all right? Are you ill?"

Ill...damn straight he was ill...he was dying...he was...angry. Angry. Yes, he was fucking angry. Furious, actually. Righteously, violently, overwhelmingly rabid. He reached for the door, snapped the lock with a vicious click, and pulled it open. The echo of metal slapping metal resounded over surfaces, and Arik stepped forward, one hand already pointing. "That had nothing to do with anything. That was nothing."

An emotion danced through Blaze's eyes, but whether it was confusion, annoyance, or concern, Arik couldn't say. It was checked quickly and easily, and for some reason, that just fuelled Arik's rage more.

"You did this," Arik narrowed his eyes and stepped closer. "You and your damn witch blood did something."

It was an unreasonable argument; Arik knew it was. Blaze had been nowhere near him when the nudges had started. That thought didn't help shut down his mouth in the least.

"Or was it some fucking crap that you spit in my mouth when we kissed? Dropped in my coffee, maybe? What's your game, Blaze? What the fuck are you doing?"

Blaze's jaw tightened. He nodded, though it appeared more to himself than anything else. "Look, Arik, I hear what you're saying. I see what you're feeling. And I know and understand where you are. But let's try and take it easy on the bashing—"

"Fuck you." The words popped out of Arik's mouth before he could stop them.

"Fuck..." Blaze tilted his head. "Me? I doubt that will resolve anything."

Reason snapped in Arik's head. He lunged. "Do you think this is a game—"

Even as his father's words shot off Arik's tongue, even as his clawed fingers sought out the much smaller man in front of him, the horizon shifted, body movement followed a gentle, yet insistent shove, and Arik found himself finishing the sentence to the soap-slicked, water-spattered laminate of the countertop. His cheekbone took the brunt of the fall, his teeth clacked together with a snap that made him grateful his tongue hadn't wandered between them, but it was more surprise than pain that brought the, "Ow."

Feisty for a little guy—Blaze had caught Arik completely unprepared. So much for those tae kwon do lessons.

Arik flexed against the hold Blaze had on his arm; the arm twisted just so across Arik's back. If he stayed still, Arik was fine. If he tried to move either self or limb, that was a totally different story, however.

"Two things," Blaze said. "I will reiterate again that I understand. I feel for you, Arik, I really do. But you will not..." A small tug sent warning streaks of pain up Arik's arm and into his shoulders. "You will _not_ attack me. You want to pick me up and throw me on a bed, I am cool with that. Hell, ninety-eight times out of a hundred I'll like it. You want to hold my hands over my head while we're having sex, and play the part of Mister Tough Guy, that's awesome. I like a little rough play as much as the next guy. But the moment you come after me with actual intent, the way you did just now, I will break you. I don't care what the fuck your reasoning is behind it."

Blaze's grip softened, and he eased the pressure on Arik's arm. "We good?"

Arik nodded, frowning in disgust at the resulting squish of liquid litter under his cheek. He rose when Blaze released him, and reached for the paper towel dispenser. Instead of stepping away however, Blaze put his arms around Arik's waist and just stood there while Arik mumbled and scrubbed his face.

He waited until Arik balled up the paper towel and punched it through the swing top of the wall mount garbage. "Now. Do you want to talk about what happened at mini golf?"

Arik snorted. "Nope."

"How about why you think it did?"

"I think that's pretty obvious." Arik turned to face him, forcing Blaze to take a step back. It was a short-lived moment of space. As soon as Arik settled his ass against the counter, doing his best to ignore the slow seep of water transferring from the surface to his slacks, Blaze moved forward again.

"Look," Blaze reached up and began to fiddle at adjusting Arik's shirt: collar, shoulders, smoothing fabric and fall. "I don't know what's going on any more than you do. I am not responsible for what you've seen, and I can't tell you what to do about it. What I do know, is what I've already told you—I'm here for you. Of course, if you want to tell me to fuck the hell off and get out of your life, I can't stop you. I _won't_ stop you. So you tell me. With the limited information that we have about each other, with this..." Blaze paused, drew his hand up Arik's chest, and rested all five fingertips on the side of Arik's neck.

Instantly a charge lifted the fine hairs on Arik's skin into goose bumps. His eyelids fell. Everything from hips to lips wanted to surge closer to Blaze's body.

"...this attraction," Blaze continued. "Tell me how I can help you. What do you need? Should I just stumble along like a puppy and wave my tail when you look over?"

Arik couldn't stop the grin. "You do have a smoking hot tail."

Blaze smiled. "And then there's that. I mean, if it's just a comfort thing you're looking for, that's fine, too."

Arik stopped resisting the urge to put his arms around Blaze's waist. He lowered his chin and looked at Blaze until he drew Blaze's gaze up. "Nice sentiment. But it makes no fucking sense, Blaze. Why? Under what circumstance would a good-looking guy offer servitude to someone whom he barely knows, for tasks he has no understanding of, for pretty much open-ended, undefined purposes?" Arik shook his head. "Nobody is that nice. What's in it for you?"

He watched something fall in Blaze's expression. But whether it was something as impenetrable as a wall, or as easily brushed aside as a curtain, Arik had the feeling only time would tell. And that was a disconcerting thought. Because if Blaze had demons of his own that he was battling, just exactly how much of Blaze was there left for the man to give?

Arik startled himself with the question. Was that what he wanted? Was that what his head was thinking? Less than twenty-four hours after Arik had met the man, was he really actually asking himself if Blaze was going to be around for the long haul? Arik shook his head and gritted his teeth. No wonder he couldn't get anyone interested in a date. Christ. He might just as well start looking to build his cat collection now. Apparently he was going to be a very lonely, very pathetic old man.

"You're not going to answer that are you?" Arik asked.

Blaze tapped his shoulder. "Trust me, Arik." He stepped away, held out his hand, and Arik took it. "At this point in time that's the last thing you want me to do."

* * * *

# Chapter 7

Blaze

The drive back to the hotel and convention center was taking longer than the drive to the putt-putt course. Or, at least, it seemed that way. The silence in the car was deafening, traffic was heavier, the stereo was off, and neither man had enough interest to hit buttons and find a decent station on satellite radio, too lost were they in their own thoughts.

Hand-in-hand, they'd left the sports bar, and Blaze had secretly flipped off the waitress when she'd appeared horrified at two men showing such affection after walking out of a bathroom together. He'd almost joked to Arik about how the woman had been so worried about their lack of hygiene, but one look at Arik's face silenced Blaze.

"Nobody is that nice."

Dear spirits, save him, Blaze prayed, shifting in the driver's seat. Because the bitch of the matter was that Arik was right. Blaze wasn't that nice. He was definitely here for his health, though, as the consequences of ignoring a Quest were dire, indeed. And he was here for Arik, because that's what Blaze did on Quests. He showed up at the right place, right time, to the right person, and did...Whatever was required. It wasn't always nice. It was never easy. Sometimes what Blaze had to do tried to kill him, one way or the other, but he had no choice in the matter, and he certainly, most assuredly, and tragically...was not with Arik because Blaze had been kind-hearted or loving or...nice.

Blaze took the exit for the hotel, easing into traffic with exaggerated caution. He had no allowance to be driving the rental, for one, and on top of that, he had no license. He'd not brought that up to Arik, just yet. Nor had Blaze thought it was the right time to disclose to Arik that Blaze had no photo ID, no social security number, no Facebook page, and no cell phone. Arik seemed the rule-abiding and giving sort, and Blaze wasn't sure how he'd take the information. Besides, Blaze usually answered, "Despite the odds," or "Barely" or "On the grace of good people" when asked the inevitable, "How the hell do you survive?"

But Blaze worried if Arik asked the question, Blaze would be a tad too truthful: _"I don't know, and I'm tired._ "

When Blaze pulled the car into a spot in the garage and shoved the gearshift into park, the silence ceased to be deafening and became positively oppressive. Blaze turned off the engine, and he slowly slid the key from the ignition. When Arik still didn't say anything after another long moment, Blaze sighed.

"Look, I can—" Blaze began.

"All right, here's what I propose," Arik said, too loudly for the confinement of the car.

"Okay?" Blaze studied Arik. The ashen coloring had retreated, leaving Arik his usual creamy olive tan. His brow was furrowed, his hair messy from wind and stress tugs at its roots, and he was all-over rumpled and damp. He licked his upper lip. Blaze bit his own.

Arik took a breath. "Stay," he said, and the air rushed from his lungs, his words riding the tide. "Come up and just stay. The room's booked on the company dime, so that's covered, and I'd like to at least buy you dinner after what I did in the...Well. Just after what I did."

Blaze wisely chose that moment not to tell Arik that he'd bought Blaze coffee already, today. That might clue Arik in too soon on how Blaze really did survive so off the grid, and Blaze still didn't know how long he was going to be with this particular Quest. "...And?" Blaze asked.

"And?"

"Seemed like you were going to say more, is all."

Arik nodded. "I'll...I'll tell you what happened at the mini golf course, if!" He held up a finger, the condition hanging between them. "Afterward, you tell me more about you and why you're here. For me."

Blaze pretended to mull it over. He knew he had to agree, because it was the way to stay close to Arik, and until he figured out what the devil he was doing with Arik, Blaze would take every chance he got to be as near as possible. It got complicated when the target resisted or didn't give Blaze a clear way into their lives, and Blaze had to hang out in shrubs or tree houses or shadows, trying to find a way into the target's good graces.

But then, Arik didn't know what he was asking. Blaze knew that to be true, even if Arik would argue the point. Despite it being a day and age wherein the supernatural and the strange were practically in every TV show, movie, and book, when confronted with _actual_ strangeness, people panicked. It was less because of the strangeness in question, or so Blaze thought, and more because dancing with the unknown made people realize their reality really was as fragile as they feared it to be. It was hard enough to cope with the daily grind, with jobs and kids; parents who nagged and relationships that didn't work. Interject the weird into any one of those equations, and circumstances grew exponentially more challenging and terrifying. Blaze had seen it time and time...and time...again. People didn't want to meet and to know the real Santa Claus. They just wanted the legend and rational explanations for the presents under the tree.

"Blaze?" Arik asked.

"Yes." Blaze gave Arik a deliberate smile. "Of course I'll stay, and I'll tell you what I can."

Arik's eyes drifted back and forth between each of Blaze's. "Why do I think you're not saying something about wishes and being careful what you ask the genie to give you?"

Blaze snorted. "Because you heard me without me having to waste the breath."

"Point." Arik sighed, let his gaze linger on Blaze for one more moment, and then got out of the car. Blaze followed suit, getting his bag and locking the doors. He dropped the keys into Arik's outstretched palm, and Arik shoved the keys into a pocket. Arik's fingers brushed Blaze's while they waited for the pedestrian light to change, and the sparks flew all over again. Blaze pulled his hand away, jaywalking at a trot. His heart was hammering, his breath coming faster, and you would think he'd been the one who'd had some sort of nightmare vision related to a poor kid getting tortured and shoved into a barrel.

In truth, Blaze hadn't given Craig much thought. There'd been no time. Blaze had been and still was too concerned with Arik. And even on the drive and now, on the walk, Blaze's thoughts didn't drift to the horrors the innocent man had endured. No, they drifted to a time and place and people long ago. To a conversation...to many conversations...

To sitting on a wooden plank next to a fire outside a home that was half tent and half shack. Blaze could still smell the smoke, feel the way the heat fought off the chill of the air, and see how the orange and red and yellow swirled together. Like they were playing, laughing...inviting. Fire had been Blaze's skill since practically birth. His hair had been kissed by it, a thing rarer than rare; held, at least in his family, as a blessing but also a marking. Someone whose destiny was greater than toil and marriage and brats and slow death. The elders never told him to get his hands away from flame. They never chastised him for cradling red-hot stones like little girls would cuddle dolls. Heat didn't hurt him. Fire was his only friend.

And that night, and many nights, it'd been his comfort while his parents howled in the tent behind him. Whatever his mother and his father did with one another that constituted coupling, it must have been utterly magnificent. They both would wail with it, screech and curse in twin tongues of bliss.

Blaze had been scared by it in the beginning, when he'd been too small to comprehend how body parts were complementary to one another. And it'd been his Granmamere who'd sat next to Blaze and the fire, who'd held him and comforted him, and answered him when Blaze had asked why his parents sounded like banshees in the night.

"Two mystics making love feel more than most."

The elevator dinged, and Arik cocked a brow at Blaze, who'd been standing in the lobby, unmoving and forcing Arik to hold the doors.

"Sorry," Blaze said, shaking himself out of the memories. Not a good idea, this mixing his own melancholy with a Quest. The Quest was about the target, not Blaze. Never Blaze. He couldn't think of himself, couldn't focus for an instant on anything but the Quest. He couldn't get involved, invested, committed...Nothing lasted. It wasn't meant to be that way, and Blaze had long given up hope that...

_No. Stop it._ Blaze marched behind Arik, letting Arik go on ahead and key open the hotel room door. Blaze thought of goats, of Arik's terrified cry, of bad beer and arm-breaking holds. He stepped into the air conditioned comfort of the suite, which was far nicer than the one Blaze had bought with some of the last of his stolen cash. He dropped his bag near the door, threw the metal lock and the deadbolt, and barely had the chance to take a step before Arik was on him. Pushing, slamming, and Blaze's back hit the wall, his feet spreading wide for balance, and Arik laced their fingers together, pushing both of Blaze's hands up and next to Blaze's head. Instantly, the current sang, and Blaze arched with it, managing to transform his cry into a grunt. He shut his eyes, and one hand clung to Arik's while the other feebly tried to get out of the grip.

"Did it...did you feel this last night?" Arik whispered, his breath blowing hotly over Blaze's lips.

Of course he had, but the tingles had been smaller, gentler, less insistent. More a novelty than a real distraction; something easily writ off as excitement or an unexplained chill. Though, still, Arik's mouth and Arik's hands and Arik's cock sliding inside him...It'd been better than it had any right to be. It'd been good enough that Blaze had almost come without a stroke to his dick in the gain, but, again, Blaze had thought that to be a sign that he'd been too long without pleasure.

"Did you?" Arik asked again, and his mouth was almost on Blaze's skin, almost kissing Blaze's jawline, nearly teasing Blaze's neck.

"Yeah," Blaze turned his head, bore his throat, and earned the reward: a press of lips, a gentle suck, a long drag of teeth lightly scraping his skin. "Wasn't...it was...I..." Blaze growled at himself. "It wasn't this strong."

"I feel it, too, now, but it's...like prickles when your foot goes to sleep?" Arik spoke quietly, tightened both his hands on Blaze's. He dropped kisses along the tendon of Blaze's neck. "That how you feel?"

Blaze had to open his eyes and look at one of the points where they were joined to make sure they weren't being surrounded by some sort of electrical storm cloud hell bent on making Blaze try out electro-stimulation play by hook or by crook. He was already hard beneath his jeans, trying not to pant, trying to hold still and not give away exactly how much he did, in fact, feel. "Not exactly," Blaze said.

"What, then?" Arik asked. "What do you—oh." He'd pressed closer, gotten a thigh between Blaze's, and he ground it against Blaze's groin.

Blaze gave up on holding it in. He moaned, yanked his hands out from under Arik's, and grappled the man flush. "Fuck yes," Blaze hissed, rutting along Arik's leg and grabbing anything he could reach: Arik's ass, shoulder, waist. " _Nngh..._ " Blaze grunted, and it dissolved into a groan when Arik kissed him, held him, started trying to get clothes off him. Arik tried to do all of it at once, and soon Blaze's shirt hung around his neck, his arms out but head not, because Arik wouldn't let up on the mouth work. Blaze got a hand down to his fly, sucking on Arik's lower lip, and Blaze tried to unfasten his jeans and Arik's slacks simultaneously. It mostly went according to plan, but it wasn't enough, wasn't fast enough, wasn't enough skin let to bare, and Blaze shoved off the wall, starting to walk backward down the short hallway leading to the main room of the suite. He staggered, balance upset and head spinning. He shucked his shirt, his shoes, his socks, but didn't make it to his pants before Arik was on him, again.

Bare chest met bare chest, and the electricity spread over a greater surface area. It lessened the overall effect, but made Blaze more desperate for it. He kissed Arik's neck and shoulder, ran his hands across the smooth planes of Arik's back, and bent to lick a nipple. Fingers laced in Blaze's hair, and Arik made a low sound that didn't quite make it to air but did rumble Arik's chest. Blaze rubbed his face against Arik's body like a cat, the current dancing between them; like it tried to pull them together, wrap them up tight, keep them as one. Blaze's breathing was all over the place, and he sucked a gasp when Arik forced Blaze's head back and face up so their eyes met. Arik looked like his definition of wonder began and ended in Blaze, and Blaze reached up for a slower kiss. He took his time, tasting and teasing Arik's lips with his own and then with his tongue before diving inside. Arik stroked Blaze's arms, neck, back, hair, and Arik got a hand down and palmed Blaze's cock through denim and cotton.

"Oh... _nnnah..."_ Blaze fumbled at Arik's hips, got belt and zipper and fly and finally slacks undone and down. Blaze shoved aside underwear and grasped Arik's cock in returned attention, and no sooner had the tiny arcs of current sizzled from Blaze's heated palm to Arik's thick dick than Blaze met mattress.

"Feel that?" Blaze panted, scrambling out of the rest of his clothes while Arik did the same. By all the gods and all their standards, the man was fucking beautiful.

"Yeah." Arik slid onto the bed and on top of Blaze, and Arik gasped while Blaze groaned.

"Shit," Blaze said against Arik's throat.

"My...God..."

Entwined as they were, tingles, prickles, and sparks were everywhere. Arik shuddered as though freezing from the cold, and Blaze was sweating from being on the edge of the best sensation, orgasm, whatever, but with nowhere to go.

"Stronger..." Arik rasped. "Like this...it's..."

"Uh huh."

Blaze wrapped around Arik, legs and knees and arms and hands, and he kissed the man like it was a drowning man's last breath of life. Arik moaned, responding in kind, and Blaze liked to die from the tenderness in Arik's touches along his spine, the gentleness in the squeeze of Blaze's hair, and the unarguable vise-like strength that was absolutely, without question, not letting Blaze out of Arik's arms. No way, no how, not ever, and Blaze had a second to think that he was getting used to the connection sensation. He had a flash moment to wonder if maybe the longer they were together, the more in tune with one another they got, and the more aware Arik was of Arik's obvious gifts, the stronger this would be. There was an opportunity to think how awful it'd be if Blaze was wrong, a glimmer that made Blaze want to laugh at himself for being such an idiot and plunging so fast off the cliff of togetherness when it wasn't allowed or even welcome...

...and then thought was blown all to hell by a Vision.

Pounding, slapping, striving...Blaze watched himself getting ploughed into the mattress, Arik behind him and holding Blaze's hands at the small of Blaze's back. View of Arik's face from below, view of cock sliding into Blaze's body, view of Blaze's fingers white-knuckle holding Arik's...The feel of pleasure just a heartbeat away, the sensation of covers over Blaze's face, the helpless thrill in letting go, of being slack-limbed loose in somebody else's arms...The sound of Arik's grunts, of Arik coming, of Arik yelling...yelling...

Blaze was ripped out of the imagery by Arik's teeth nipping Blaze's nipple, Arik's fist steadily and too-slowly working Blaze's cock, and by his own dry mouth, devoid of moisture from continual cries. Blaze choked, swallowed, hissed, and yanked Arik up Blaze's body. The kiss was ferocious, but Blaze turned his lower body to dislodge Arik's grip. Arik hugged Blaze, and Blaze rolled, knocking them onto their sides and then sprawling across Arik.

"What...what happened?" Arik murmured, breathless.

Blaze knew Arik had to mean why did Blaze make Arik stop, when, Blaze was sure, it'd been really fucking obvious Blaze had been enjoying himself. "Not yet," Blaze answered, meaning both the physical and as a way to reassure himself that now was not the time to speak of Visions.

"Mmm..." Arik hummed, arms and hands dragging across Blaze's body. He burrowed against Blaze, and they rocked into one another, gaining friction: rubbing and sliding and kissing and caressing. "God...you're beautiful, Blaze..."

Chuckling, Blaze kissed Arik with his eyes open. They stared at one another, and Arik's eyes were hazy, blown darker with want, and it occurred to Blaze that if the sparks from palm to cock had driven Arik to the brink, then mouth to cock might drive Arik over it.

Blaze flew down Arik's body, pausing only to lick at a hipbone and reposition himself. He rolled his eyes northward when his tongue met the underside of Arik's dick, and Arik's expression was the world's greatest display of shock, awe, and need that Blaze had ever seen. Blaze's tongue tingled, he swirled it around the head, and Arik's hands slammed onto the bed, wrenching at the covers. Blaze sucked where crown met shaft, teased it with the tip of his tongue, and then quit fooling around. He spread his lips around Arik in a tight ring, sucked, and sank slow-slow-slowly down Arik's length.

"Jesus... _Christ!"_ Arik called between clenched teeth, his jaw flexing and his head turning side to side. Spittle flew with the bursts of his breathing, and his thigh muscles jumped and tensed. Blaze came up to catch a little air, whole face aflame with numbing buzzing. He bobbed a steady up-down, and Arik's hand flailed toward Blaze. His mouth had fallen open in a soundless curse-wail, and Blaze shifted. He got his weight across Arik's lower body, and Blaze caught Arik by reaching around Arik's bent leg. Arik groaned when their hands linked, and he shuddered from head to toe. Gooseflesh rippled across his skin, and Blaze kept at him. All the way down...hold... _hold..._ Fight the panic, come up with care and not speed, lick and tease with tongue...Come off all the way only to push lips over the reddened head, barely allowing give enough for the dick to slip within, and descending, sucking in deep drags...

_"Mmph..._ " Arik almost whimpered, his voice high and lost and spellbound. "Blaze...oh...oh God...oh fuck..." Arik gasped faster, tensioned and shook, and Blaze drew it out. He loosened his mouth, sliding along flesh slickened with spit, and Blaze came completely off Arik after every downward glide. Over and over...take and retreat...And Blaze was hard to aching, his lower half rutting for relief, and Arik was cursing, slurring words and moans into a mess that all added up to _please._

Blaze had mercy. He added his hand to the action, circling the base and stroking. He sped up, swallowing Arik whole and doing it faster, hand meeting mouth, and tongue pressing all the while. He got a quick glance at Arik, head back and skin flushed and eyes squeezed shut. The sight of him shoved a fist of greedy want into Blaze's torso, and Blaze groaned, trembling. Arik's jaw went slack, his upper body pressed into the bed with force, and his hips rose-rocked to meet Blaze in a broken rhythm that faltered fast.

"Oh," Arik whispered. "Oh... _oh...oh-oh...nnh!_ " With a sharp inhale and hold, it was done, and Arik came in Blaze's throat, the steel-like skin between Blaze's lips pulsing and throbbing as Arik spent himself dry. Blaze milked Arik with his tongue and a few lesser pulls of lips and suction. Arik gasped, his free fingers skimming up Blaze's neck and tightening in Blaze's hair. This time, the hold was not gentle, but directive and forceful, and Blaze bowed to it. He crawled up Arik's body and met Arik's mouth for a lingering kiss.

Arik hugged Blaze close, and Blaze whined. The room was spinning, his head was stuffed with cotton, and the only thing he heard was his own frantic sounds and Arik's come-drunk voice: "Sit up."

Blaze obeyed without thought, though he had to slap holds on Arik's bent knees to keep from falling over. Blaze's legs were to either side of Arik's torso, his cock jutting out from his body.

"Higher," Arik ordered, but kindly, almost lovingly, and Blaze, shaking all over and with his vision tunneling, rose up over Arik.

"Yeah...good. Damn. Like that." Arik rubbed Blaze's thighs, the touch so hot and full of contact spark that Blaze threw his head back and sobbed a cry, and when Arik's hand wrapped around Blaze's dick, Blaze began to beg in time to the strokes.

"Please... _shit..._ please...can't... _oh fu—I'm...mmph, mmng..._ oh...fuck...close...so goddamned..."

"Look at me."

Blaze tucked his chin to his chest, meeting an approximation of Arik's face. He couldn't focus, couldn't do anything but _feel_ and _crave_ and _long_. Blaze's vision was spotted and blurred. Sweat ran into one of his eyes, burning it, and he knew he had to be hanging on to Arik tightly enough to bruise. He blinked, desperately trying to get Arik's hand to go faster or the current to ignite more intensely, or something to, dear spirit and all things holy, let him come. Make him do it. Make him. _Make...him..._

A finger pressed between Blaze's cheeks. He froze, it nudged, and it slid inside with the perfect push of insistence. Blaze's mouth opened in a wounded animal cry that was at once startled and also grateful, and he jerked rough and halting back-and-forths between Arik fucking him and Arik stroking him. Faster, now—

"Oh God, yeah!"

Plunge, slide, _twist—_

_"Fuck! Fuck!_ "

One finger became two, the growl below him was feral and full of ownership, and Blaze's brain fritzed. Showed him pictures of getting fucked while being fucked, and Blaze had no idea when he started to come, but he knew he didn't think he was going to live through it. He called down the gods, old and new, hissed and sobbed and felt actual wetness in his eyes from sheer, unadulterated overload, and when, at last, it was over, and the climax let Blaze loose of its clutches, Blaze fumble-tumbled onto Arik.

And Blaze was caught and held, almost too tightly, like he was someone precious, not something accursed, and the electricity sang sweetly between their bodies, which curled around each other like they'd always known exactly how they could and would fit together.

* * * *

# Chapter 8

Arik

The air conditioner inside the suite pinged as it settled, the sudden lack of background noise somehow louder than the steady rattle. Arik opened his eyes, waited for focus and for reason, to make sense of the all too pleasing weight over top of him. From somewhere within the cobwebs of the subconscious mind—where thought still clung to the serenity of dream worlds—Arik saw blurry images of naked bodies, and a scene that did not quite seem to be from his own perspective. Pounding. Grinding. Sweat-slicked skin being stroked by smooth palms. He chased the vignette, trying to prolong the sense of peace and connection it gave him, but found the consistency watery, and the edges slippery. As if the mental images weren't his to follow.

Arik shifted under Blaze's weight, had to draw his eyelids back up, unsure of when they'd fallen again. He smiled. His skin was warm and pleasantly numb, as though overstimulated but entirely accustomed to the sensation. Blaze's hip rested on the mattress beside him but Blaze's leg was wedged between his, Blaze's arm still wrapped around his chest, and Arik had never felt so blissfully burdened in his life. He reached up, ran his fingers over Blaze's scalp, and traced patterns through Blaze's hair. But it wasn't until Arik dragged fingertips down Blaze's neck that Blaze pulled a long, low sigh and the butterfly-wing-brush of Blaze's eyelashes fluttered on Arik's chest.

"Hiya," Arik murmured. He didn't look down. On the contrary, he closed his eyes with the words and felt Blaze wake up against him. He registered the slight stiffening of muscles as brain questioned body to remind itself of whys and whats. His lips twitched with a smile as whatever answered brought with it the security of Blaze relaxing into Arik again. Blaze's palm slipped into a stroke over Arik's pectoral; Blaze's heel caught into the nook in which it rested in order to shift the two of them that much closer together, and they sighed in tandem.

Waking up with someone...what a nice fucking concept.

A low whine of rumbly greed from Arik's midsection protested his lack of schedule, and Arik's free hand flew to his belly with a chuckle.

"Was that you or me?" Blaze teased.

"Me. Sorry." Arik slid his hip, nudging Blaze to the side and grimaced at the spent release between them, now dried and doing its best to take on the property of glue. "Guess we should have showered." He sat up in bed, yawned and blinked through the window of the hotel room, the lack of drawn drapery offering a beautiful view of both the advancing evening, and the approaching cloud cover. No wonder the a/c had flicked off. If the room was any indication of the weather, temperatures had dropped, and be it a result of that, or just the encroach of evening, the once bright sky had given way to greys and purples.

"It's late?" Arik said, more question that statement. He set his heel on the floor and brushed at his chest.

Blaze answered without checking. "Just after six."

"Oh!" Arik turned back with a grin. He locked up their gazes, let himself get lost in azure blue so as not to wonder why he'd yet failed to try and count the tiny freckles that sunlight had warmed out of Blaze's skin. "Let me take you for dinner. Somewhere nice. With crystal glasses and desserts that neither of us can pronounce." He smiled and reached for Blaze's cheek, seeking out that fan-fucking-tastic spark of soul. "I have a jacket. Well...it probably won't fit you worth a fuck. But we could ask the concierge for something. Or, you know, to hell with the jacket. You can borrow a button-up and roll the sleeves."

Suddenly grinning, Arik slid out of bed. "After all, isn't this the scene where I get to woo you with escargot and sherberts?" He wiggled his eyebrows at Blaze's expression. "Show you just how awesomely cool I am at ordering wine? Maybe even—"

"We should talk."

Arik nodded. "A nice quiet table then. There's a restaurant just a few blocks from here. It's probably late for reservations but if the hotel can pull some strings—"

"I'm sure the hotel has room service."

Blaze's voice was quiet and calm, but it had a backbone of insistence in it that told Arik it was only being presented as a suggestion. Arik's arms fell to his sides. "No, I know. It's just...I thought..." He paused while anxiety shut down his tongue.

For thirty years of his life, Arik had fought away the madness. And that's what it was—fucking madness. Imaginary creepings of pseudo-religion-inspired hallucinations, and fears granted entry into consciousness. If Arik paused too long to listen, if he let them get a finger hold, before sanity would understand what was happening, Arik would tumble headlong into the same terrifying pit that had consumed his father. He'd be the one mumbling fanatical bullshit masked as prayers, or pontificating with strangers over worlds that did not exist and abilities outside the realm of normalcy.

Arik was a businessman. He had savings and an investment portfolio. He had furniture from Italy and a car from Germany. He was normal and whole and it was really, really, really fucking _important_ that he stay that way.

Wasn't it?

Blaze unfolded himself from the bed, lean legs so perfectly shaped to his body that they had an illusion of length even with his small frame. Then Blaze stood, ignored clothing, or sheets, or anything at all that might have offered a sense of propriety to his naked form. Not that Arik's current state of undress was any more modest. They stood, face to face, stripped bare and filthy.

"You shower. I'll order," Blaze said quietly. "Then I'll shower, and you'll pay." Blaze's touch was light and warm when he put his open palm on Arik's chest. "I even promise to ask for crystal glasses."

* * * *

The heat from the shower still leeched off Arik's skin. That should have been enough to stop the constant shivers of chill from rifling across his shoulders. It wasn't. The hoodie didn't help either, nor did the pyjama pants, or the socks. Arik would have sold damn near everything he owned to have been graced with a suite that had a fireplace at that moment. Even the fake logs and the gas-enhanced flames of the usual variety found in that kind of hotel would have sufficed.

Instead, Arik crossed his arms over his chest, closed his eyes, and leaned back against the wall, listening to Blaze's quiet voice sing an unknown song in a thick, foreign accent. Even though the tone was gentle and the volume low, there was an underlying darkness that spoke of sadness and loss, pain and grief. It made Arik want to climb under the covers, bury his face in the sex-spattered sheets, and weep.

There had been very little exchange between Arik and the suited porter when the man had arrived, uncorked the bottle, flourished the napkins, and then stood smiling patiently while Arik had signed for the delivery. Blaze had ordered more food than any two men could possibly eat: salad and soup, appetizers and bread. A peek under the steam-capturing lids over the entrees had revealed both steak and chicken, pasta and potatoes. Between it all, a bottle of Bordeaux sat breathing. An odd choice, considering the meal, but somehow fitting for the mood.

A curtain of steam followed Blaze out of the bathroom. A towel was wrapped around his waist and tucked with the requisite fold to keep it in place. It was the flush of pink that covered Blaze's skin and the smiled he offered Arik before he shook his hair that drew Arik's attention, though. As if the man had semi-boiled himself in the water. And enjoyed every moment of it.

"Ah," Blaze sighed. "Awesome. The food's here. Just give me a minute to put on some—"

"The goat came to life," Arik blurted. And once the words started, Arik couldn't stop the spew. "I mean, not really, of course. It's not like it found its feet and ran off to join the circus. But I saw it animate. I saw...abuse. I saw skin being torn and things being broken and...God, Blaze...the sounds." He caught Blaze's eyes, expected disbelief and fear, and saw none of it. Arik's teeth caught the inside of his cheek, and he chewed.

"But that's not the weird thing. That kind of moment is easily written that off to bad coffee or too much sun, you know what I mean?" Arik paused, doubting his ability to make the words sound like his head wanted them to. "I think that what I saw at the course was part of what we saw on the television at the bar. The breaking and the distorting, and the wet—" Arik cut himself off, scrubbed at the side of his face with one hand, and yanked the bottle of wine out of the holder with the other. Then he started pacing beside the table—back and forth, back and forth—with the bottle of wine gripped in his fist. "I mean, I know it probably sounds stupid."

Arik stopped, stared again; unblinking and begging with his eyes. "They're related. I don't know why or how, but I know they are. I know it." He nodded. Repeated the words. "I know it."

Blaze stepped forward. "I believe you."

"Why?" Arik huffed the word as though Blaze's belief was more ludicrous than the vision.

"Because I do," Blaze smiled. "Because I've seen all kinds of things over the years, and I know that—"

Arik cut him off with a snort. "Oh, the drama you must have seen in the, what, twenty-five or so years you've been alive?" He tilted his head and made a duck face of annoyance. "Seriously. Not to get off topic or anything but..."

Blaze spread his fingers towards the cart that held their dinner and scooped both wine glasses off it. He held them up, cradling both bowls in his palm, stems dangling, and nodded at the bottle of wine before answering, "I'm older than I look."

"Oh? Do tell," Arik prompted. He poured a couple of inches in each glass with all the care due of a Bordeaux over a carpet somebody else owned.

"Yep, when you're done talking." Blaze grinned at the look Arik shot him over the glasses. "Have you seen these kinds of things before?"

"Not with that kind of intensity, no," Arik admitted.

Blaze sat down on the arm of the couch, adjusting the towel to fall between his legs. "With what kind of intensity, then?"

Arik shrugged and sat across from Blaze, on the coffee table that spanned the front of the couch. He reversed Blaze's previous movements and readjusted Blaze's towel to allow for a far more daring view, grinning at Blaze's chuckle. "Mostly just...well," Arik took a small sip of wine before setting the glass aside. He began to trace light circles along the inside of Blaze's bare thigh. The sharp intake of breath Blaze gave him for the effort made Arik's gut clench with delight. Whether it was Blaze's attention that spurred the bravery for Arik to continue, or just the need to finally spit it out, Arik wasn't sure. "I call it my 'watch, review, record' mode. I see things that I know will have importance later, and I make a note of how and why in my head. Then I store it up and set it aside so I can recall it when I need it."

"For example?"

Arik's lips twitched. "Little things. Weird things. Things that end up relating to one another. Like, yesterday morning, before I met you, it was everything red. The week before my father jumped, it was things with wings."

Blaze frowned. "Jumped?"

"Off a bridge," Arik explained with an eye roll. "God was calling, you see."

"So foretelling, more or less—"

Arik cut him off before Blaze could finish, frowning. "Tell that to our young mini-golf guide, Craig. That was obviously not foretelling. If it was anything at all, it was a taunt." Arik dropped his voice to a creepy, snarling parody of himself. "You can see it, dumbass, but you can't do a damn thing about it. Enjoy the view."

"Or it was," Blaze suggested. "Maybe it was the start of something huge. Maybe that really was the warning. Have you thought about digging into it, rolling with it, trying to figure out if there's some kind of indicator, or path, or—"

Arik snorted. "No. See, the thing is? I don't really pursue it. I'm more inclined to shut it down when I feel it creeping up on me."

Blaze laid a palm over Arik's fingers, holding them in place, and it was only then that Arik realised his previously light touches had become more of a dig. "Can I ask you why?"

"Long story." Arik stood; started pacing.

"I have time," Blaze prompted.

"My father—" Arik caught a breath and stopped. He swallowed a couple of times to force down the sudden rise of bile. "He was maniacal about things that were beyond the normal realm of consciousness. Books. Pamphlets. Scrolls." He turned and lifted an eyebrow at Blaze. "Yes, scrolls even. Where most religious freaks fear the metaphysical, Dad considered them gifts. But not gifts for one's own use, Blaze. God, no. They were tools. To right wrongs and vanquish evil. To manipulate thought and correct the things he saw as shortcomings in other people. Godlessness. Homosexuality. Whorish behaviour. Fuck, I don't even know. I wasn't that old when he finally flung himself into his deities' arms the hard way. But I do know this—he terrified me. It was easier to deny that there was anything there, than to get stuck being part of any of it. He'd tell me to watch, and I'd tell him that I didn't see anything."

"Did you?"

Arik's reply was a whisper. "Yes."

"Like?"

"Awful things," Arik admitted. "Let's just say that the goat has cousins everywhere."

Blaze nodded. "Things little boys shouldn't see."

Arik parroted the head bob, and Blaze reached for, then handed him back his wine. "Okay. Good to know. Whatever it means, at least now we both have an idea of it." He leaned his own glass forward and tapped it against the side of Arik's. The bright sound of crystal checking crystal pinged through the room—a cymbal, a bell, as though announcing the call to game.

On your mark...get set...

Blaze smiled. "Ready to eat?"

"Not quite." Arik took a sip to seal the toast, and set the glass down yet again. He waited for Blaze to sample the wine as well, then followed suit with Blaze's glass. Arik rose, dropped down into the couch beside Blaze and with a circling of arms and a tug, he pulled Blaze onto his lap.

Arik levelled their gazes. "Your turn."

* * * *

# Chapter 9

Blaze

Blaze settled with his legs spread to either side of Arik's. The pajama pants' fabric was soft against Blaze's bare skin, and Arik's hoodie was delicious to squeeze; plush cushion over the hard body beneath it.

Meeting Arik's eyes, Blaze grasped both of Arik's hands and put them on his legs on the outside of the towel. The skin-to-skin buzzing was too much of a distraction if Blaze was going to tell his story with a lick of cohesion and remember to leave out the parts that might be too much for Arik to handle at this phase of the game. Arik was learning more than most, and he was processing faster than many who'd had longer to do so, but the truth was both Blaze's weapon and biggest bargaining chip. He had to use it wisely in either capacity.

"Okay," Arik whispered, squeezing Blaze's hips.

Blaze wasn't sure if that was permission to start, encouragement to get to it, or in response to Blaze not wanting Arik's hands on him. Blaze unhooked the towel, exposing cock and balls, and he smiled with Arik's soft intake of breath. Two could play the distraction card, after all.

"Want to know more about me, hmm?" Blaze asked.

"That was the deal," Arik answered.

Blaze nodded. He fiddled with the toggles that could tighten Arik's hood. "I was born in a village in România. Romania. I'm not sure I could tell you where it was, exactly, even if I had a map. I know it was a long three-day walk to Bucharest, and I know I only made that journey once, and it was after I'd grown into this body, not the body I had when I was a boy."

"You don't have a hint of an accent," Arik said. "Except when you actually, you know, want to. I guess?"

"I've spent a lot of time outside my country. So much time that it's not really 'my' country anymore."

"I really don't see how that's...You must be one of those men who looks, what, ten years younger than they are?"

Blaze just smiled, tilted his pelvis, and Arik glanced south. He licked his lips. "Are you a citizen, here, then?" Arik asked.

Blaze cocked a brow. "This isn't twenty questions, Arik, unless you want me to answer you only in yes or no."

"Sorry." Arik seemed sheepish. "I'm sorry. Go on."

"Okay. Let's see. I had a big family. Lots of brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles." Blaze read the question Arik wanted to ask, and he gave the real answer: "They're all dead."

"I'm sorry," Arik said, clearly stunned.

Blaze shrugged. "It happens to all of us. But when I was little and everyone lived outside the graveyards, my family taught me things. Animal magic. Curses. Hexes. Potions." Blaze laughed. "I don't remember most of it, truth be told. And most of it wasn't magic at all. It was legend, and it was the shit we used to make money from the people who didn't know what was real and what was fake.

"Though, sometimes..." Blaze closed his eyes. "There was a girl, once, who was possessed. Laugh if you want, but I saw her do things no mortal could do on her own. Things no mortal would _want_ to do on her own. And there was a man, another time, who had been stricken with a love curse. He would only care for those who would break his heart the worst, and it would be love that would kill him, in the end."

"Jesus," Arik muttered. "No wonder he wanted rid of that."

Blaze gave a little laugh and studied Arik's chin. It was a strong chin. "He didn't come to us to remove the curse," Blaze said quietly. "He came to us to speed it along. He was tired of living under it, and he wanted to find the lover who would kill him."

"...oh."

"Mmhm." Blaze regarded Arik, trying to ascertain the man's mood and comfort level. Blaze suspected that as long as he stayed in the past and in the theoretical and kept the current and the all-too-real to a minimum, his information wouldn't overload Arik beyond the breaking point. "It was my granmamere doing most of the teaching, and my mother and aunts, too, some. I saw them have visions, like I told you at the bar, and seeing them fall prey to their own helped me when I started to see things, too."

"Did it start when you were little?" Arik asked in a murmuring rush, and his eyes were full of the intense longing to find a fellow soldier in the war against madness.

"No. They came upon me...more suddenly and later in life."

Arik frowned. "So, you were born in Romania, grew up, had to walk to Bucharest. Don't they have cars? Trains? Why did you...Could you not afford...And they're _all_ dead? How? And you had to get here. And that would be...How _did_ you get here?"

Blaze clucked his tongue. "You really don't listen to instructions, do you?"

"Sorry, but..."

Blaze laughed, finding Arik a little too adorable in his earnestness. Blaze lifted one of Arik's palms, touched it to Blaze's chest, and shuddered when the tingling sparked. He kissed the ends of Arik's fingers and put Arik's hand down on his leg again. "Funny you should ask, actually, how I got here. See, when I began to see things, visions, I began to get clues and direction for how my...How my life was supposed to go. Where I was supposed to be and who I was supposed to meet. That sort of thing. People who needed my help in some way, large or small. And so...I would dream, which is normally how I have my visions, though some of them happen upon touch. Especially if I'm touching the person I've been dreaming about."

"So you just...go where the dreams tell you to go?" Arik asked, more than slightly horrified.

"Yeah. I do."

"But...so...Do you pick and choose? I mean...What if your dreams tell you to go to...God, I don't know...Russia? Or something. And you're in Montana? How do you get there?"

Blaze ticked the answers on his fingers. "I don't pick or choose. I obey every one of the visions. If I'm in Montana and have to get to Russia, I figure out a way. Though, to date, that particular combination hasn't happened. London to here, however. That I've done. Recently, even."

Realization dawned across Arik's expressive face. "You were in _London_ before you came here?"

"I was."

"How did you get here?"

"Cargo boat. Less paperwork than planes, these days, and usually I can earn my way."

Arik was the picture of distraught. "You crossed the Atlantic on a boat?"

"Wasn't the first time."

"That must have taken weeks!"

"It took a while, it's true."

"But how do you know...I mean, how did you get the right timing? Isn't that...but..."

Blaze laughed, leaned forward, and kissed Arik's bewildered lips. "Hush," he said, gently, and Arik swallowed. "The visions give me time to begin the Quest. They tell me useful things. They've come to be my friends, over the years, as opposed to my...enemy. And yes, all the time I was sailing across the cold sea, I dreamed of you. Working, sleeping...crying, once. But also jerking off. That was really nice."

"You're kidding?" Arik spluttered.

"Nope." Blaze grinned. "Knew I'd like your cock long before I got to see it in person."

Arik blushed, and it was cute enough to slay demons. Blaze got lost in the kissing, holding, grinding for a long moment, but Arik pushed him away. "Wait, wait." Arik caught his breath, and Blaze obeyed the plea. For the moment, anyway.

"I can believe that you've had a lot of life in your...thirty...five...years?" Arik's voice was high with disbelief in his own words.

"I've been busy, it's true," Blaze agreed.

Arik squinted at Blaze but seemed satisfied for the moment. "But I still don't get the Quests. _Why_ do you follow these visions? Don't they scare you? Don't you...sometimes, don't you despise them? How can you let them just...rule you without going out of your mind?"

Again, Blaze answered in order. "I do them because if I don't, there are consequences."

"Like what?"

"Like feeling as though I'm dying." Blaze shuddered, suddenly cold. He remembered the first time he'd been defiant. It hadn't entirely cured him of his misguided willpower, but it had put a dink in it the size of a giant's fist. "It's pain...a lot of pain. Everywhere. And then the blood starts."

"Blood?"

"Ears. Nose. Lungs." Blaze sighed. "Guts. Cock. You name it. I sort of...start to break down on the inside. Or, well, that's how it feels."

Arik hugged Blaze around the waist, protectively, and Blaze adored the man for the sentiment. "What do the doctors say?"

Blaze had to work to school his expression out of a smile. Because of course, Arik would speak of doctors. That's what people in this day and time did when they were ill. They sought the nearest medical facility. It'd been a shaman who had confirmed the affliction Blaze already knew he had, and the same man had told him that Blaze had best be obedient to the Visions, else they suffer him slow over years and years and make Blaze wish he could die fast.

"There's nothing wrong with me," Blaze answered. "And there's nothing to be done for a disease that doesn't exist."

Arik was quiet for a short while, thinking. "So you have to follow the visions, then?"

"I do," Blaze confirmed. He inched closer, tucking a strand of hair behind Arik's ear. "And they do scare me. Used to piss me off. I used to be drunk or high or half dead most of the time, trying to get away from them, but..." Blaze shrugged. "Didn't matter in the end. They found me. And I figured out the way to stay sane is to savor the good Quests."

A flutter of a smile danced across Arik's mouth. "Am I one of the good ones?"

"I hope so," Blaze replied.

Arik hummed and deliberately placed his hands on Blaze's bare knees. The sizzle and pop-crackle rose between the points of contact. "Does that...mark me as good?" Arik asked.

"Rare," Blaze answered, leaning forward as Arik's hands traveled higher. "Marks you as rare."

"So this isn't between you and all the Quest people? This...spark connection thing?"

Blaze shook his head, forearms resting on Arik's shoulders and fingers digging into the couch cushion.

"Has it happened before? This..." Arik rubbed Blaze's hipbones with his thumbs, fingers tickling the sides of Blaze's ass, and the current frizzled.

Blaze did it because he didn't want to explain. He did it because he wanted Arik to keep asking questions about the two of them, here and now, that had answers that would help Arik out and not to ask things that would lead them backward along the shady path of Blaze's longer-than-normal history. Blaze didn't want to tell Arik precisely why the Visions came upon him. How he knew. Why he'd been more than merely angry. Why his family was all dead. Blaze didn't want Arik to start to think about what happened when the Quests were done. How long the Quests took. What would become of them when it was over.

But more than any of that, Blaze did it because he'd not had the chance to think about the only other time he'd felt this kind of electricity between himself and another. He'd not had a spare moment to put it all together, and he didn't want to slow down and get the chance. He lived every day not thinking about how it all began. That was the real truth behind staying sane. Bury the past deep and ignore it when it came to the surface, even if it arose in a new lover's touch. In a soft caress. In a warm kiss. In the simple link of two peoples' hands.

He'd done it a thousand times before, make the target feel as though they were a lone reed in the waters of Blaze's life. And he did it again because, for once, he really didn't want Arik or this Quest to hurry up, to finish, or to stop. "No," Blaze lied, the word taking shape even as Blaze rationalized that it was, at least, a partial truth. "Never been...exactly...like this." He bent his neck to kiss the shell of Arik's ear.

"What has it been like?" Arik murmured, stroking the planes of Blaze's naked back. "What do you do on the Quests?"

Blaze kissed Arik's throat. "I do...whatever's required...and some, I guess...of what I want. When I'm lucky."

Heated hands guided Blaze to raise himself higher, and a slick, wet mouth kissed his collar bone, chest, nipple. Blaze rubbed his cheek against Arik's hair. "What do you want, now?" Arik asked, hot breath blowing across damp skin.

"Mm..." Blaze caught Arik's chin, tipped it up, and he kissed Arik, only once and chastely. "To eat the food before it gets cold."

Blaze squirmed off Arik's lap before Arik could get hold of him again, and Blaze laughed when Arik threw a pillow at him. "Don't worry," Blaze said, grinning and uncovering the food. "I'm too hungry to bother putting on clothes first."

Arik wrapped arms around Blaze from behind, growling in Blaze's ear. "Damn right you won't." Arik squeezed Blaze's ass. "Lucky I don't let it get cold and make a meal out of you."

Blaze reached for a small dish cover, removed it, and swiped his finger through a dollop of whipped cream adorning a piece of pie. He swiped the cream across his bottom lip and down the top of his dick. "Who says I can't have my pie and have you eat me, too?"

The laughter transformed Arik's face. The worry lines vanished, the frustration melted, and his eyes were infused with shining, playful desire. "Oh. Now you're talking." Arik licked the cream off of Blaze's mouth.

"Nice start," Blaze mumbled. "What else you got?"

"Mmhm." Arik pulled Blaze flush against him, and Blaze sighed into the kiss that most certainly did satisfy some of his hunger...of another sort.

* * * *

# Chapter 10

Arik

"What else you got?"

They weren't the only words that were ringing through Arik's mind as he descended to his knees, but they were the ones he clung to. He'd had no intention of chasing orgasmic bliss already, had been, in fact, starving. Yet as much as Hollywood made whipped cream enhanced flesh seem so very every day, Arik could count on one hand how many times he'd actually been offered the opportunity. He could count twice, even. Three times. Because zero multiplied by zero always remained the big old obnoxious 'oh' that it was.

It was not a chance he was going to let slip past him.

Besides, as conscience was refusing to allow Arik to forget, it hadn't really sounded like Blaze got a lot of payback from his world. It was time to change that, even if it would be, apparently, short-lived and non-committal. If asked, Arik wouldn't have admitted how much that thought burned at his guts. But he wasn't insisting on forever if all he could have was now. That was life. It sucked and it hardly seemed fair, but when was life ever truly fair anyhow?

The carpet was hard—a fine layer of cushion over the concrete or whatever it was that builders used to keep the moans and groans of guests from permeating other rooms—and it didn't matter in the least. Blaze's cock seemed to understand the potential of Arik's kowtow immediately. It rose in time to Arik's slide down Blaze's body, the whipped cream already softening into an entirely too pleasant visual aid.

Breath was the adjutant that completed the liquidation of cream and forced it to succumb to gravity. It dripped lewdly down Blaze's responding length, drawing Arik's oral attention as if it had demanded him. Blaze's skin smelled like cheap, floral soap, no doubt the scent of the small slabs provided by the hotel, and Arik grinned at imagined images of Blaze's duffel packed full of complimentary toiletries. Then he chased those thoughts away with concentrated effort, flattening his tongue and dragging it balls to tip along the underside of Blaze's dick. Pings of charge nipped at Arik's tongue, both thrilling and insistent, and Arik fell into the sensation, letting instinct and connection spur him forward.

He swallowed the head of Blaze's cock, no more, and sucked in a long, deep draw that pulled a startled gasp out of Blaze, and a hot pulse of reaction from Blaze's cock. Arik's tongue worked the perfect point of hard body even as the rest of his mouth kept the suction, and Arik had to force himself not to grin in pride when Blaze's hands flew to the edge of the cart in a useless grasp. White-knuckled, thigh muscles bunched tight, Blaze rolled his hips forward, requesting depth he was not granted. Instead, finger by finger, using what Arik could only hope was the same mind-melting spark he felt whenever Blaze touched him, Arik slowly wrapped his fist around the rest of Blaze's cock. Arik squeezed, Blake hissed, and the cart behind Blaze tilted threateningly as Blaze's knees buckled. With a curse, Blaze centered and firmed his posture. The wheels of the cart dropped back onto the carpeting, and both china and silver sang sharp octaves as they shuddered back into place.

A nicer man, Arik mused, would allow Blaze to find someplace more comfortable to lean. It was, however, too much of a thrill to watch Blaze force himself to remain cognizant to space and footing. It gave Arik a ridiculous surge of power to know he was making a puddle out of an otherwise powerful, seemingly perfectly-balanced human being. Even if that skill was esoterically boosted.

_So what_ , something from the ugly depths of memory rose inside Arik to ask. _Now you suddenly believe? Now it's not madness but games of passion? Trickery_ , it whispered. _And you're a fool to follow it._

Arik squeezed his eyes shut, and brought his head back to the man in front of him. This was not the time to let the prattling of imagined scolders rule his head. Instead, Arik slid his fist and matched lip movement to offset the drag of skin, so that Arik was kissing the webbing of his own hand with every glide. It was only when Blaze shifted his stance, spreading his legs so that his balls fell free and granting Blaze a better angle, that Arik's musing began to suggest better ideas. For surely, it told Arik, if a tongue against hard dick could make a mind stutter and a body flail, it only made sense that the more sensitive the skin...

Arik drew away, releasing Blaze's body with both hand and mouth; a wet smack of lips the preface to Arik's command: "Bed."

Blaze caught Arik's gaze with his own, his expression bewildered and wide-eyed, as though Blaze had somehow forgotten translation. Arik rose, slid one arm around Blaze's hip, and leaned to press his lips against Blaze's ear. "Go. To. The bed."

The delight Arik got from watching Blaze's eyes dart around the room in confusion was self-serving and cruel, so he turned it off. Fine line, he told himself. Don't cross it.

With a nudge of his chin, Arik directed Blaze's line of sight towards the tousled sheets and misplaced pillows that covered the bed. Then Arik tightened the hold he had on Blaze's midsection and pulled Blaze away from the cart. He walked backwards, drawing Blaze along with him, their bodies so close that they had to shorten their steps to make it work. Not that Arik minded one bit. Blaze's cock danced between them, smearing wet, clinging fluid on Arik's hoodie—fluid that seemed to insist that even if they had to be apart, it was going to string them together in one way or another. It was reasoning that made Arik's own hard body throb inside his pyjama pants.

Arik stopped when his calves met the bed frame. Arik turned, a slow dance of repositioning, foot over foot, Blaze's arms around Arik's shoulders, Blaze's fingers digging into muscle, and Arik couldn't keep his lips from searching out Blaze's in a long kiss. It was a kiss that Blaze followed, with his mouth still moving and his breath still panting, when Arik drew away from it.

"On the bed," Arik murmured.

"Don't go," Blaze said suddenly, his fingers clamping and his expression hardening. As if, somehow, for some reason, letting go meant parting. As if, somehow, for some reason, the fall onto the mattress would mean disappearing altogether. Like it waited to swallow him away. Like that moment had been the one written in as the pinnacle of their rendezvous. Like it was already over.

"Not even one step," Arik promised.

Blaze sat, and Arik smiled. "Not like that." Arik lowered his hand to Blaze's shoulder, directing him with a light touch. "Lay on the mattress, face down."

"Lube..." Blaze suggested, starting to rise.

Arik shook his head. "Don't need it." He waited for Blaze's head tilt to pass, for Blaze to resettle as directed, and then guided one of Blaze's legs into a crook on the mattress. Blaze's other leg was off the bed, foot on the floor, so that he seemed to crouch over the end of it. Arik placed both hands on Blaze's ass, and massaged the two muscles to expose the heated hole between them. "I'm not done tasting you yet."

A low groan sounded from Blaze's throat, and Blaze buried his face into the mess of tangled cotton underneath him. Blaze's hips tilted, his fingers found pointless holds, and even his balls twitched and tightened under Arik's visual adoration.

_And I haven't even touched him yet._ Another thought that had Arik's cock dancing for consideration. All the gods in heaven could not have held Arik back any longer, he was sure of it. Arik dropped to his knees, fell forward, and swiped his tongue over Blaze's asshole. Blaze's breathy verbalizations didn't need to be recognizable as they were huffed through the sheets. Inflection and tone were enough to identify them as praise. Arik teased with feathery flicks of his tongue; wetting, coating, enticing. When Blaze began to whimper, Arik began to run his tongue up and down Blaze's cleft, Arik's right hand massaging slow circles into Blaze's lower back. Such a beautiful physique. Perfect structure. Awesome taste.

"Arik..." Blaze's spine seemed fluid; Blaze's body a slither of form into mattress. He jerked his head to the left, looked over his shoulder and groaned. "Please..."

If Blaze had any more of an idea what he was asking for than Arik did, Blaze wasn't saying. So Arik took his direction from imagination, located Blaze's tight hole with his tongue again, and began to wriggle the muscle into Blaze's body. The sound Blaze made wasn't human. But it was fucking beautiful to hear. Almost as gorgeous as the way that Blaze's hips began to hump the mattress, his back muscles tensing and trembling. Blaze's other leg slipped to find a way to hold himself open wider. If the sensation coursing through Blaze's blood was even a fraction of what Arik felt when Blaze touched him...the man had to be losing his mind.

Arik watched it all, drinking in Blaze's reactions, piercing Blaze's asshole with his tongue in a drive that was too deep for Arik's jaw to maintain comfortably. Discomfort was not, however, any reason for Arik to stop. Not this time. Hell no. The only thing that mattered was the giving—making the pleasure stream off Blaze's body.

This was Blaze's turn, a moment of unadulterated satisfaction without duty or function. Because try as he might, Arik couldn't shake the idea of Blaze's quests, be they truth or fiction of mind, as some kind of purgatorial existence. For the few, the thousands (God could only know the true numbers), Arik hadn't gotten the impression there'd been a lot of enjoyment sent Blaze's way. "If it's just a comfort thing, that's fine too," Blaze had told him, the nonchalance behind the words suggesting familiarity with the concept. So what then? Go where I tell you, do what I want you to do, offer yourself up wherever, whenever, however you are directed. The Universe's Whore. A puppet on strings. Obey or pay.

What a crock of bullshit. Worse if it was true. Not that Arik had ever had to find another reason to hate the mystical.

Arik's grip tightened on Blaze's ass, and he sought for deeper drive and sweeter sensitivity. He searched out every dangling tendril of those spark-infused, manipulative, bastard strings, collected them up in his head, and used them as a whole to stroke Blaze's mental and physical everything.

Blaze whispered, whimpered, and begged while his body squirmed, contorted, and fucked the bed. Arik gave up on holding flesh apart and let his left hand seek out the path his right was already on, finding and caressing the rolling muscles of Blaze's back.

"That..." Blaze panted. "You...make...Ah, fuck!" Blaze's knee finally caught a hold on the edge of the bed and the center of his being split wide and willing. Arik leaned closer still, worked Blaze's spit-soaked hole furiously, and groaned at the way Blaze's walls tried to both grip and pull his tongue deeper. Sparks danced between fingertips and torso, Arik's mouth felt alive with electricity, and he had no choice but to drop his right hand to his pants, release his own cock and start stroking it mercilessly—lest he lose his mind.

"Make me..." Blaze's voice dropped to a mewl of need. "You're going to make me..."

Arik trailed his fingertips down Blaze's spine, shoulder to lower back, and down the slick path his tongue had worked up. Then it was both tongue and finger. Both tongue and a couple of fingers. It was sputtered curses and ragged breaths. It was fucking _and_ kissing, of the most erotic nature possible, and it was the hottest damn moment of Arik's life. Twice he had to still the hand on his own cock, twice he was forced to swallow back the waves of orgasm that threatened him, and when everything began to culminate in a greedy, heady fuck-everything-else-I-need-to-come-NOW rush, Arik finally gave up the scintillating penetration his fingers kept insisting on, to shove his hand underneath Blaze's hips and squeeze Blaze's cock.

That was all it took. One squeeze. Blaze hollered, screwed his eyes closed, and thrust into the grip. Blaze's body shuddered from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, and warm fluid pumped over Arik's fingers, soaking the sheets.

Without even bothering to remove his grip, Arik kissed the small of Blaze's back, straightened his spine, and shot his own load over the spread core of Blaze's ass. It was more than a mere release of pressure—the spatters that painted Blaze's body were nothing less than bliss liquefied into a tangible mess of body fluid. It seemed as if it was Arik's core, sputtering out of the end of his cock, to mark Blaze as his own. If only for that moment.

Arik rested his heaving chest and sweat-slicked forehead on Blaze's back, bit back the words of endearment his tongue tried to voice, and instead, Arik chuckled. "The chambermaids are going to hate us."

"My, God," Blaze gasped under Arik's weight. "If we keep up this pace, _I'm_ going to hate us."

Arik shook his head, "Not I. Not for a single moment. That was fan-fucking-tastic."

"It was," Blaze murmured. "But can we eat for real now?"

"Ayup," Arik laughed. "We certainly can."

* * * *

# Chapter 11

Blaze

Blaze woke up, and for a moment, he forgot who he was. Gone was history. Vanished were hurts, trials, miseries, deaths...His name eluded him. His location didn't matter. The day of the week was a petty detail.

There was only the sheer drapes fluttering over the silent air conditioner. Sunlight peeked through the crack in the heavy curtains, highlighting expensive wall paper and paintings of peaceful pastoral scenery. He could smell soap, food, and sleep-warmed sheets. He was sprawled on his side, naked, comfortable, warm, and lazy; more satisfied than he was sure he'd ever been.

A sigh, a rustle of covers, and a body pressed against Blaze from shoulders to ass. Electricity sparked between them, and Blaze sleepily moaned without bothering to check the noise. It was Arik behind him. Arik around him. Arik tracing his arm, rubbing his chest, stroking his belly, wrapping a hand around his..."Oh," Blaze breathily whispered.

"Morning." Arik kissed behind Blaze's ear.

Blaze heard his own whimper, and he was at a loss to control the pump of his hips into Arik's hold on Blaze's hardening cock. He could barely keep his eyes open, so unwilling was he to come up from under the sea of tranquility. He gasped for the man sharing his bed. He arched. He clutched at the pillow, at a hip, on a thigh.

"Payback," Arik murmured. "I owe you. For earlier..."

"Mm?" Blaze couldn't remember, and Jesus-spirit-God-all, the sizzling esoteric tingles on his flesh felt too good to think. He tried, anyway, wanting to know what he'd done to earn this so he could do it over and over, and then it came back to him...

...four a.m., a sleeping Arik...beautiful...serene...and Blaze had gotten water, watched Arik on his back, the rise and fall of his chest...and couldn't resist climbing into bed and sliding down Arik's body. Couldn't stop himself from taking Arik into his mouth. And Arik had been entirely silent, holding Blaze. Arik had tossed, writhed, jerked, clenched, and hissed breath...He'd come, hard and fast. He'd rolled over. He'd tucked himself against Blaze, and they had gone back to sleep...

Two days. For two days, it'd been them in the hotel room. After the initial chat about Quests and Visions and Arik's potential gifts, they'd not spoken of any of it again. They'd eaten off room service trays. They'd left their sanctuary only to allow the maid to change the bedding and the towels. They'd gone to the indoor pool on the ground level and had swum in heated waters. They'd rented movies, charged them to the room, and to date, they'd not seen the ending of a single one of the films. They'd gotten lost in making out, in trying out ways to intensify the buzzing that crackled between them. They'd showered together, fallen asleep wrapped around one another...resting, recovering...existing.

"Ahn...ah..." Blaze gasped, rippling in Arik's hold.

"Can you?" Arik asked, because at some point after the millionth orgasm, it'd stopped being about performance and started being about pleasure. Arik seemed obsessed with it, actually: making Blaze feel good. Paying Blaze back, for whatever the hell it was he thought Blaze had done. Blaze didn't argue. Couldn't, in fact, argue most of the time, as his mouth was occupied in some way, shape, or form. And Arik was so damned hot and weirdly gentle, yet ferocious, and what man in his right mind would say no to that kind of affection?

Blaze nodded, because he could feel the burn building. His lower back, his ass, and his groin were already tightening. But it was...almost peaceful. Undemanding. Like the sensation was going to happen, was destined, and Blaze could simply ride it out and enjoy.

"Good," Arik whispered, and he licked Blaze's ear in precisely the way that made Blaze shiver. "I love seeing you get off."

Blaze bit his lip, snaked a hand back and up and into Arik's hair. He rocked, he called out, softly but audible, and soon it was cresting, rising—inevitable—and then spilling, overflowing...And Blaze opened his eyes, trying to catch his breath and eagerly sucking his own cum off Arik's hand when Arik held it up for Blaze to taste.

For an instant, Blaze felt safe, and he hugged Arik's arm to his chest, willing the moment to last.

"I have a surprise for you," Arik announced, nuzzling Blaze's neck and planting little kisses along the tendon.

Blaze arched an eyebrow over his shoulder at Arik. "I know it may not seem like it, but my dick does have limits."

Arik laughed and kissed Blaze. He tasted like sex-flavored toothpaste. "I'll believe it when I run into them."

"Mmhm."

"But I actually had something else in mind." Arik slid off the bed, snagging a pair of pants out of a chair, and Blaze sat up. The room was clean, Arik's bag was packed, and Arik was putting on clothes almost as fast as he could take them off, when properly motivated.

"We going somewhere?" Blaze asked, rubbing his eyes and stumbling out of bed.

"We are!" Arik grinned, so proud of himself that he was bursting at the seams.

Blaze snorted. "Okay, okay," he muttered, good-naturedly. He went to the bathroom, hurried through his business, and snagged all the tiny bottles of shampoo, mouthwash, lotion, and conditioner that were left. He got the body wash and the bars of soap, too, and was prepared to explain to Arik that, yes, he was a mooch, but at least he was a clean mooch.

When Blaze came out of the bathroom, however, Arik was dumping an entire basket of freebies into his own bag. "Oh." A blush rose on Arik's cheeks when he was caught in the act. "I, ah, had them bring up some extra? In case you...I just thought I'd..." The blush darkened.

"Cool. Thanks." Blaze hurried to his own bag, unzipping it and shoving his prizes inside. His blood felt thick in his veins, and too warm, like he might burst out of his own skin. He was in a dream he couldn't shake. And such a small gesture shouldn't have meant so much, but it did. Arik was sweet. Entirely too sweet for the likes of—

"You okay?"

Blaze paused in the act of pulling out a rolled T-shirt and similarly packed pair of shorts. "Yeah," he said. "Fine. Why?"

Arik hesitated. "Nothing I just—good God." He peered into Blaze's bag. "Are those _clothes?_ How did you pack that much into...You really do know magic."

Blaze chuckled. His bag was divided into compartments, his clothing rolled into tight knots and flat layers and the rest of his possessions stowed away in the most economical way possible. "Well, it's sort of my house, I guess. I keep it in order."

"It's your what?"

"It's all I own. This is everything, so..." Blaze trailed off, fighting anxiety and melancholy tooth and nail. He thought how pitiful it must seem to Arik, his existence. How fleeting. And Blaze wanted to tell Arik that his life had been anything but short. Old habits stilled the words, killed them in his throat, because it was too soon to tell Arik that kind of truth. And Blaze had to slay the desire to stay in this hotel, wrapped up in Arik. He needed to destroy that kind of sentiment, because it'd be too damned easy for the happiness to remind Arik of all he'd lost and all he craved and how amazing it'd be if Blaze could mend and have even a portion of peace with Arik.

Ridiculous. Stupid. Impossible.

Irresponsible. Silly.

Dangerous.

Quit it.

"Hey..." Arik rubbed Blaze's arm.

Blaze shook himself and, subsequently, Arik's hold. "Where we headed?" he asked.

"Just another place to stay that might be a little quieter. Always wanted to go there, but never had the chance or...Someone to take with me, so. Yeah."

Blaze nodded, yanked on his shorts, shirt, and shoes, and zipped up his bag. "Okay, then. Lead on."

Arik lingered, studying Blaze with intensity that Blaze answered with an easy, practiced smile, and Arik lead them out of the room, muttering to himself. At least the man was learning not to keep every thought in his own head.

Checkout and the walk to the car were a blur. The weather was bright, tranquil, and pleasantly warm, the leather seat of the car was perfectly cushioned, and Blaze turned on the heater under his ass. Before they'd even made it onto the Interstate, Blaze was dozing, and when he woke up, Arik was humming along to the Rolling Stones on satellite radio. They were out of the city, well out of it, by the looks of the sandy, scrubby surroundings.

"We're headed to the water," Blaze said, sitting up and trying to stretch kinks out of his spine.

"We are." Arik's grin was irritatingly smug.

"How long have I been out?"

"Couple hours."

Blaze rubbed his face. He was starting to wonder if all those times he thought he'd been getting good rest were all a sham. He couldn't remember being this tired or this relaxed, and that worried him for a multitude of reasons. It never paid to get comfortable. "Why are we changing locales?"

"Because I wanted to treat you. And me, I guess."

Arik's profile was smooth and easy. There was no pinch of features, no circles under his eyes, no worry lines drawing down his mouth. "Okay," Blaze said, seizing the element of surprise. "Did you have a Vision?"

"No," Arik said, frowning at Blaze.

"Have you had one since the goat incident?"

"No." Arik's hands flexed on the wheel. "Why are we talking about—"

"What are we doing, Arik?"

"We're going to a resort, Blaze," Arik answered, mimicking Blaze's tone. Blaze hoped to hell he didn't sound that annoying, but he probably did. "It's a nice place that I've known about for years. Always wanted to go, never had the chance, figured I'd take this one. We've got to get to a ferry, park in a long-term lot, cross the water, and get to Alana Island. A car'll pick us up there and take us to the hotel. It's on an underdeveloped part of the shoreline, surrounded by oaks and wild horses, and what is up with you today?"

"What?"

"You heard me." Arik kept glancing Blaze's way, and he turned off the radio. "Did _you_ have a Vision?"

"No." Blaze crossed his arms. "Not had one since..."

"Since?"

"Since I envisioned you fucking me right before I blew you that day we went to play mini golf."

Arik hummed, hands slipping around the steering wheel until his wrists rested on his knees. "Were you bent over in front of me? Letting me hold your arms behind you?"

Blaze's cock had no business stirring, but it did, and a jolt of warmth zinged down his spine, the echoes rippling through him. "Yeah. How did you know?"

"Had the same one. Or, well, for me it was more like a dream."

"You seem awfully calm about sharing dreams for a guy who hates the mystical."

"Oh, I hate the mystical, all right."

"...but?"

Arik shrugged. "Right now, it just supports my theory, which is nice, for a change."

"Theory?" Panic sprang up and rattled Blaze's heart. He couldn't have said why. "What theory?"

"Of why we're together and what this 'Quest' of yours is all about."

"Oh, think you've got it figured, do you?" Blaze's palms were sweating.

"Ayup."

"Let's hear it."

"Well, you were the one who said it first, really. The whole, 'here for you' bit?"

"It's a line I've used a lot, Arik," Blaze said. Normally Blaze would never remind a target that there had been others before him and would be more after him. Blaze didn't know why he was trying to scramble for emotional ground and distance, useless as it was inside the confines of a Quest, but scrambling he was, and he had to fight the urge to jump out of the car.

"I'm sure you have," Arik said, and he was sympathetic, not territorial, which was a little creepy. "You've had to do all kinds of things for the fucking Universe, and maybe it's time somebody else used that line on _you."_

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"I think I'm here for you, Blaze. You're here to help me not panic over my mystical shit, resolve it or whatever, but I'm here to use what I've got for or with or on..." Arik laughed. "I don't know, whatever. You. I'm here for you."

"Arik, that doesn't make any sense."

"Sure it does."

"How do you figure?"

Arik gave Blaze a scathing look. "I didn't get to where I am in this world by being lazy, Blaze. Give me a little credit for thinking our situation over and figuring out a direction, would you?"

"Okay," Blaze said, slowly. "Tell me what you've been thinking."

"I think you were born to a poor, weird family with weirder powers. I think somewhere around puberty, your gift kicked in, and it sent you all over the world on a bunch of wild goose chases that helped out everybody but you. I still don't know how you've done so much so young, but I figure you've been doing nothing but these Quest things since you were a teenager. And I think it's utter shit that you get hurt if you don't fulfill these Visions of yours, and whether that's psychosomatic due to your familial training, I'm not sure, but I believe you when you say it happens. Mostly because that's what _my_ Visions have been about."

"How so?" Blaze asked. He was dizzy. Arik was hitting too close to home on too many points entirely too casually. Blaze hooked a hand onto the oh-shit handle over the car window.

"Before I met you, I was seeing red everywhere. And then the goat melting. And even that poor kid in the oil barrel. They all melted or liquidated or...And you said that when you don't do your thing, that's what happens, right?"

"I start to bleed out, Arik, I'm not sure—"

"That's okay. You don't have to be sure. I am."

Blaze didn't know what was worse. Arik being so wrong or Blaze dying for him to be right. "Okay, benefit of the doubt, then," Blaze said. "How do you see this going? What's the endgame?"

Arik's smile was sad, and he stared at the road ahead. "Don't worry," he said softly. "I get how these things go, and I'm not entertaining fantasies that we'll be together forever or anything so juvenile." Arik's chuckle seemed a bit forced. "I guess I'll be happy to have you for as long as it takes to get you rested up and recovered. And who knows? Maybe we're supposed to be friends, right? I'm the guy you come to in between journeys or something. For some R and R?"

"Arik—"

"It's all right. It's not like my life is really conducive to a relationship, Blaze. I work all the time. I've got a life. Sort of." Arik laughed, and again, it was strained. "It's just...sometimes that life might involve, you know..." Arik glanced at Blaze and licked his lips. "You."

Blaze sat in dumbfounded shock for a solid minute. "Arik, that's sweet."

"I know."

"And I love that you're...That you're the kind of person who would believe...or who would want..."

"Blaze?"

"What?"

"Spare me, all right?" Arik put the car into park, and Blaze glanced around, startled to find them in a lot near a pier. There was a ferry at the dock. Blaze squinted and saw it was named, _Good Fortune._ Blaze wanted to weep, and he'd not wept in too many years to contemplate.

"We're here." Arik yanked Blaze into a quick peck on the lips. "Get your bag, and let's go."

Numbly, Blaze got out of the car and followed Arik through the steps that would get them onto the ferry headed for Alana Island. It was cooler near the water, and Blaze shivered, trying not to let Arik see him do it.

Arik. What the hell was Blaze going to do about the guy? He loved that Arik was so sure-footed with purpose. Arik oozed confidence as he confirmed their passage, handed over luggage, and explained that Blaze would carry the bag strapped across Blaze's back. He could even see the logic, spotty due to partial information and too much hope as it was. Some of what Arik said did make sense. Blaze did melt when he didn't obey, but it had to be more complicated than that. It had to be for a cause more centered on Arik than Blaze, because this wretched life was Blaze's to live so long as...Well. So long as the Universe saw fit to punish him. So long as there were still people who would remember what Blaze had done.

Blaze found a solitary spot on the ferry's railing to lean, to set down his bag, and to watch the land slide away behind them, and Arik trotted off to buy them some snacks. There was only one other couple aboard, an elderly man and woman who smiled kindly at Blaze, the poor fools. Blaze ran his hands through his hair, tugging at the roots, still thinking of what he could do about his situation. He knew from experience that when this much Vision information was exchanged between himself and his target this fast, then the Quest was likely to be whirlwind. And Blaze had to keep up the pace. He had to get to the heart of the matter, and fast, else he start to cough up blood and get nosebleeds and worse as the Universe tapped its foot and mashed up his insides in the process. He had to get Arik on track and thinking about how the Visions concerned Arik, not Blaze.

Blaze bent over and put his chin on the icy railing. Well, what about the connection thing? The spark? Arik likely thought that was more proof of their joined destinies, and Blaze had lied when Arik had asked if it had ever been so strong between Blaze and someone else. And Blaze had lied because he knew what had happened to the last person with whom Blaze had felt such a pull.

The man had died horribly, slowly, and while begging for his mother, right in front of Blaze, who'd been powerless to stop it. Blaze shook off that nightmare, happy, for once, that it was so old and stale that the hurt was rusty and easy to bury, because it was used to getting shoved into a box, and it couldn't put up much of a fight.

And, then again, maybe Arik did have a point. The spark had definitely linked Blaze's destiny with the dead man, forevermore. Maybe there was something more there to explore with Arik.

Because, really, what kind of man met someone with Blaze's tales to tell, had horrific Visions, and still came out on the other side, not even a week later, thinking that all of it had to mean he, Arik, the man in question, was destined to help the crazy guy who had so disrupted his life?

Blaze stood up. A man who'd been hurt would think that way. A man who'd been taught that he had to serve the insanity in his life, not rise above it, get over it, move beyond it. And one time wouldn't be enough, wouldn't be a pattern. Blaze already hated Arik's father, knew there was definitely more in that deep, dark well to excavate, but there had to be someone else.

Blaze's contemplation was cut short by Arik wrapping around him from behind. That earned them disapproving looks from the other people on the boat, but Arik didn't seem to notice in the least.

"Where's the snack, man?" Blaze asked.

"Didn't get that far." Arik buried his nose in Blaze's hair, holding on a little too tightly.

"Hey." Blaze rubbed Arik's wrist. "What's up?"

"Nothing." Arik took a shaky breath. "Something."

"Yeah?"

"Saw it again."

"Which?"

"The melting thing."

"Shit." Blaze tried to turn, but Arik wouldn't let him. "Where? Who?" Blaze asked.

"The vendor guy. Same story. Eyeballs fell out, everything melted to a gore puddle." Arik shuddered. "And he reached for me."

"Shit," Blaze repeated, but gently. He crossed his arms over Arik's.

"Yeah."

"Arik, it's going to be—"

"I know."

"But I think—"

Arik's sigh was a gush of hot air. "Just shut up and let me hold you, okay?" Arik swallowed. "No talking. No questions. Just holding." Quieter: "Please?"

Blaze fell silent, and he closed his eyes when Arik's lips brushed his pulse. It was comfort, not enticement, but Blaze's blood didn't seem to know that. The wind and the cold spray of the sea helped, and Blaze started to shiver, again.

"Man, I want a fire," Blaze said after long, long moments of the two of them entwined at the railing.

"This place has fireplaces. Real wood burning ones and the works."

"Nice."

"I think you'll like it."

Blaze waited until the initial panic and need had subsided enough that Arik stood straight and tall behind Blaze, still hugging him. "Arik?"

"Mm?"

"Who was the last guy?"

"What do you mean?"

"Boyfriend, you know? There's had to be somebody. You're too _you_ for there not to have been."

Arik chuckled, and it almost hid the tension Blaze felt in Arik's body. Almost. "There was someone. Long time ago."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Well?"

"Well what?" Arik asked, deliberately obtuse.

Blaze elbowed him. "What happened?"

"I don't know," Arik said, and Blaze could hear Arik working not to be the kind of defensive he got when asked about himself. "We were together. It didn't work out. It ended badly. That's it."

"That's it?" Blaze repeated, but made it a question.

Arik grumbled, inarticulate. "Yeah."

"Oh come on."

"What about you?" Arik asked, defiant, now.

Blaze smiled at the lapping water and the approaching land. Sandy dunes spotted with tall grass crested in gently rolling hills beyond the dock. He could see a limo awaiting their arrival, along with a few other cars. There were trees and a seaside road, twisting along the water's edge heading toward a distant cluster of civilization.

"There was a boy," Blaze said, barely louder than the wind. "We were together. It didn't work out. It ended very badly. I wish that was it."

"Blaze..."

The ferry's horn sounded, and made them both jump. The engine chugged to a stop, and the boat rocked as it maneuvered into place against the dock. Silently, Arik and Blaze held onto one another until the passenger gangplank was in position. They were invited to disembark, and Arik lead the way. He picked up his bag, took Blaze's hand, and together they walked up damp stairs to the gravel lot where the limo waited. It was a long, dull grey thing, but the driver was young, tall, and blond. He smiled at them.

"Welcome to Alana Island, gentleman," the driver said, graciously sweeping a bow and bending to get Arik's bag. "Home of the best upscale shopping experiences, finest dining, most exuberant nightlife, and, of course, our destination," he smiled, and it felt like someone stamped the seal of Blaze's fate.

"The Fireward Hotel and Resort."

* * * *

# Chapter 12

Arik

There was a tension in Blaze's tone and stance that annoyed Arik to no end. This was supposed to be enjoyable—something cool and new, exciting and adventurous. And that kind of cool didn't come cheap; not that Arik didn't have more than his fair share of expendable income. But he hadn't amassed those funds by throwing them into the wind on a whim. So as much as the thought was, if not outright smug, then at least ignorant, Arik had expected some kind of appreciation. A flicker of interest would have been nice. He most certainly hadn't been expecting Blaze to tighten up into a ball of nerves, or to be frowning at the driver as though the man had just said: "Please step inside. Satan's waiting."

Right. It's the money that's bothering you.

Maybe Blaze was just nervous over the loss of control? Perhaps Blaze was offended by the fact that Arik had jumped at something without negotiation or warning? Maybe Blaze was just letting himself get wound up over what he believed was going to happen if he didn't "get on the case," so to speak?

Or...Arik caught Blaze's gaze and smiled, attempting to mask the way his heart lurched with his next thought. Maybe Blaze was caught up in musing over a certain lost boy and a "very badly" ended relationship. A relationship that Blaze wished had gone better. Did he still? When Blaze closed his eyes and groaned over contact, was he seeing somebody else's smile?

Arik's fists clenched. His jaw hardened. He told himself the emotion wasn't jealousy. He insisted it was anger. One couldn't be jealous of what had been. One had no right even to consider jealousy when the concepts had been explained, and the outcome already decided. So it had to be outrage—vengeful, spiteful, fury.

Sure, Arik...it's Blaze that's got you upset.

Arik took a breath, nodded at nothing, and stepped toward the door being held open by the driver. He was offered a bright smile and a flash from the driver's intense green eyes. Pretty. Like spring grass. The kind of sweet grass one would expect to see being ground between the yellowed, square teeth of livestock...Arik tore his gaze away, and forced himself to climb into the back of the limo.

"You coming?" Arik peered through the opening, not tucking back to the right side of the seat until Blaze moved toward the car. Blaze was granted the same stunning smile from the driver that Arik had been, gave an uncomfortable grin back, and slid in beside Arik.

"He's cute," Blaze whispered, nudging Arik's side with a light elbow dig.

Arik cleared his throat, and trailed his line of sight over the driver again, avoiding the man's eyes. "He's all right. Not nearly as cute as you are."

Flash images of a sweaty, panting threesome threatened Arik's focus for a moment, and he turned his eyes away in disgust. Not a vision. Definitely hadn't felt like one, anyway. Not even a shared moment of recollection. It had just been his own head's attempt at making him miserable—at fueling the green-eyed witch setting up camp in his soul. Which was stupid. After all, he'd just stood there, right there, on that ferry, and told Blaze that he'd be willing to be "that" guy. The one who was "there." Who'd wait around. Let Blaze come stumbling back into town. Whenever. If ever.

So now we're telling ourselves that it's your love life, are we, Arik?

Arik closed his eyes, and dropped his head back on the seat, willing the voice pinging inside his skull into silence. Nothing was going to wreck this. This was going to be fun. They were going to—

"Another vision?"

Blaze's expression was warm, sincere, concerned. His voice was quiet and respectful. But the question made Arik want to growl.

"No. Headache."

A frown played across Blaze's forehead. He turned to reach for the silver toggle that would activate the divider between them and the driver. "Excuse me," Blaze smiled into the front seat. "This needs to be private."

The driver's, "Of course, sir," was lost to the ascent of glass. A light in the back seat brightened to automatically adjust for the loss of daylight, and Blaze fiddled with the other controls until he found that one that would turn it off.

"Okay." Blaze turned to look at Arik and rested a palm on Arik's knee. The now-familiar buzz of desire and need, of connection and stimulation, began to flow between them, and Arik couldn't stop himself. He reached out, snagged Blaze's hand, and gripped it hard enough to make Blaze startle. Blaze didn't pull away, though. Instead, Blaze lifted both their fists and kissed Arik's knuckles with the same ferocity that Arik gripped.

"Now," Blaze started again. "We should talk about what you saw on the ferry. The snack vendor—"

"He died, didn't he?" The words tumbled out of Arik's mouth before he even realized he was going to ask them.

"Wait—" Blaze tilted his head, confused. "He _died_?"

"Your lover," Arik frowned.

"My..." Understanding dawned on Blaze's face. "Oh. My..." Blaze huffed a short sigh and rolled his neck. "So your vision? On the boat?"

"Your lover," Arik prompted again.

Blaze sat back and caught a breath. "This is not the time to discuss my past. There are more important things that we need to talk about right now—"

"Did you love him?"

A different voice, far less mocking, yet insistently firm, jumped in with its warning: _Shut up, Arik. Don't do this._

Yet even as the words rolled through Arik's head, he ignored them to repeat the question when Blaze didn't respond. "Did you love him?"

"Yes. Madly."

The tone of Blaze's reply seemed to break something vital inside Arik's chest. It wasn't clipped or hard like Blaze's responses had been in the hotel or on the ferry. It was sad. Tired. It was a tone that said, " _Please don't._ "

"And you?" Blaze asked. "Did you love your Mr. Long Time Ago?"

"I thought I did." Arik shrugged. "But afterwards, you know, well, it's kind of hard to keep saying that you were in love with someone who you find out was so terribly _not_ in love with you. But I think I did. I missed him when he was gone."

"So are you saying that you think the vision has something to do with—?"

"Jesus." Arik pulled his hand away and turned toward the window.

Blaze paused. Though Arik couldn't see his face, he could almost hear the gears of Blaze's mind grinding to try and work with that comment. "You think the vision had something to do with Jesus?"

Arik snarled at his own reflection in the tinted window; the attempt at humor lost on him. "It was short for Jesus Fucking Christ, Blaze! Enough of the vision questions. Let it go."

Seconds turned to minutes while silence crawled through the limo. Arik had no idea what Blaze was doing beside him; he couldn't turn to check. He was too busy keeping emotion from crowding into the corner of his eyes.

Not sadness. Not even the previously considered jealousy or anger. The tension, the aches, even the nudges of conscience had not a damn thing to do with the lie Arik had told himself about wasted cash. Or wounded pride over the lack of kudos. It wasn't about lost chances, or memories of other lovers. It wasn't even the dismal mental images of future nights sitting alone and forgotten.

A chill spread through Arik's body like winter frost growing on glass.

Spending one's life sifting through universal suggestion was one thing. Having an eye for the differences between coincidence and meaningful potential wasn't that much of a "thing." Any financial advisor or stock investor that was worth their salt could attest to that.

This was different. This was getting different, anyway. These images weren't flashes of red or blue or yellow out of the corner of his eye. It wasn't the sound of bells, or the recurring placement of a rose. What Arik had been seeing, the games his eyes or mind or heart or, fuck, every piece of him in tandem, had been playing...they were nightmares.

And Arik was scared.

Not scared of what he was seeing or if the images had any power of harming him. He was scared of stepping too close to the edge. Terrified that he was going to end up chasing invisible monsters. Worried to all fuck that once it started, he might never be able to reel himself back.

Just like his father.

Are you losing it, Arik? Now that you've started to maybe, kinda, sorta, possibly believe some of this crap might be real...are you slipping?

And how could a voice in his own head sound so very much like the man it mused of? As if it spoke of itself in third person?

Scenery rolled past the windows at an uncomfortably slow rate. Not that Arik was watching.

That's right, Arik. Keep staring at the wall. Don't focus on any one thing for too long. Keep your mind clear. That's how this works, right? Just tell him that you don't see anything. That you didn't see anything. That you never see anything.

Whatever you do...

Don't tell him...

The problem was that Blaze was right. There _was_ a connection—from vision to vision—and it wasn't simple or pretty.

The vendor, just a harmless snack guy, a deep-chuckling dude with a wee-pudge belly yet crazily skinny arms, had made it all make sense. Arik was sure the guy hadn't meant to; the man probably hadn't even realized that his sleeve had slipped past the tattoo on his lower forearm. After all, the skin had been pale, much lighter than the revealed portions of hands and neck and face. It was skin, the color difference advised, that was usually covered, even in moments of relaxation and holiday. Poor choice of design? Bad decisions? Regret?

Or, more likely, something, somewhere, had decided that Arik needed to see, for the sole purpose of exposing Arik to the hidden trigger—the tattoo that Arik hadn't told Blaze about.

It had been a pentagram, and spooky enough in itself, what with its upside-down design and its devilish undertone, but it was what sat over that design that brought the liquefying flesh, and rivers of blood, to Arik's eyes. That one symbol that seemed to be the pentagram's life partner in every tattoo shop, horror novel, or poster design—a goat's head.

Which made not only the _cause_ of the vision a pattern, but the resulting _effect_ a pattern as well. It was a very particular, neatly-printed out formula: Arik + Blaze + Goat = Vision of Melting Flesh and Runnells of Blood.

And that made it all real.

That meant that Blaze really was there for reasons beyond Arik's understanding, and not just because fate had decided to twine two lovers out of casual strangers. While that didn't mean their story couldn't end as a happily-ever-after, it did, however, mean there was a good fucking chance that it wouldn't. So be it heredity, seeing the visions themselves, or dwelling on the concept that it was all going to be for nothing, insanity was all but guaranteed.

The limo rolled to a slow, smooth stop outside the massive three-story Plantation-style mansion that Arik had admired from the resort's website for the last several years running. The landscape surrounding the building was meticulously maintained. Pillared porches wrapped the entire structure on both main and second level. A couple of dozen concrete stairs led to the grand, double-doors wherewith a uniformed doorman waited. Century-old trees clung valiantly to leaves weakened by advancing color. Pumpkins and baskets of bright fall mums added splashes of cheerful orange and gold, burgundy and red, to almost every available nook and corner. It was beautiful and prestigious; set up like a scene in a romance novel from ages past. Arik almost expected to hear the rustle of hoopskirts and the click of walking sticks.

Good enough place as any to lose one's mind, Arik figured.

The driver's voice, deep but cheerful, rolled into the back seat from the speaker system of the limo. "We're here, gentlemen. Allow me to be the first to welcome you to The Fireward Hotel and Resort."

Arik didn't wait for the driver to step out of the vehicle. He snapped the handle, fumbled for the lock when it didn't give way the first time, and would have pushed his way through the door had Blaze not stopped him with a palm on his shoulder.

"You know," Blaze smiled when Arik turned with a lifted eyebrow and a question on his face. "These conversations would go a hell of a lot easier if you had them out loud."

Arik snorted, extended his hand to catch Blaze's, and all but dragged Blaze out of the vehicle behind him. "Now, where would the fun be in easy, hmm?"

* * * *

# Chapter 13

Blaze

Blaze let Arik lead them up the wide, sweeping front steps of the Victorian-modeled hotel. The doorman tipped his cap, staff swept away their bags, except for Blaze's, which Blaze refused to relinquish, and the welcome-wagon hurricane landed them in front of an intricately paneled, solid-wood reception desk. Arik made nice with the receptionist, and Blaze took in the faux-candle chandeliers, the oriental carpets, the late nineteenth-century antiques, and the lofted ceilings, which had been such a necessary luxury when the building had been originally constructed. There were some inaccuracies in the architecture where modern builders had repaired molding and fixtures, but Blaze liked the old-world atmosphere of the place immediately.

"Ah, you have the Master Suite!" The receptionist handed a real iron key to a brown-skinned man with friendly eyes, brilliant white teeth, and a name plate that said, _Jakob—Guest Coordinator._

"Jakob will see you to your rooms, gentlemen, and explain all our amenities on the way. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to call any time, day or night, and all the details are outlined in your guest welcome book." She handed Arik an honest-to-God book with a leather cover and gold embossed lettering. "Enjoy yourselves."

"Thank you," Arik said, politely. And tightly. And as though there was a pole up his shapely, narrow ass. A pole that did not belong to Blaze, personally, but might have Blaze's name on it, so to speak.

"First time at the Fireward?" Jakob asked, making small talk as they headed for an old-fashioned elevator with golden grating.

"It is, yes." Arik's smile was civil but dismissive. Jakob didn't take the hint.

"Well, you've made a fantastic choice, sir. Let's see." Jakob shoved aside the grating, and the three of them stepped into the elevator car. There were mirrors on all sides, gold trim, and a lever that set the floor destination, as opposed to buttons. Jakob set the lever to floor three, the topmost floor. "There are two restaurants on-site, and both deliver to the room, free of charge, so long as you order within operating hours. Breakfast is served in the ground-floor dining room every morning at eight, sharp. Great spread. Fresh everything, but especially the seafood. Town is within easy walking distance, about six blocks, but there are horse-drawn carriages, too, that can take you. It'll cost a little, but you can't beat the ambiance, and it's faster than walking. There are also Smart cars to rent if you'd rather drive around. Top speed on those things is thirty-five miles an hour." Jakob chuckled as though this were amusing. Arik's smile could have given Blaze's mother a run for the Evil Eye.

"Everything can be set up through me or through the front desk," Jakob said, with plenty of perk.

"Excellent," Arik said.

Jakob beamed, pushed aside the grating, and led them onto the third floor. The carpet was so thick beneath Blaze's shoes that it swayed with his weight. "That way is the Marsh Rooms and the North End Rooms. They share the bath at the end of the hallway, just there." Jakob flourished the iron key. "You gentlemen, however, are in the Master Suite, which has its own sitting room, covered balcony, private bath, and bedroom." He turned the key in the lock and pushed open a wide door. Blaze and Arik stood just inside the sitting area, watching Jakob flit about, opening sliding doors and revealing views of the beach by rolling up hanging shades. "Your bedroom is through there," he pointed to the sliding oak double doors, through which Blaze could see a massive, King-sized, four-poster bed, a dresser, and a sliding glass door with a screen leading onto a balcony. Arik's luggage was at the foot of the bed, neatly stacked on an antique bench.

"The sheets are Egyptian cotton, though other linens are available upon request. The bathroom is off the bedroom, and is fully stocked with towels, robes, and toiletries. Your balcony has a view of the private beach, which is open to guests. There's a fridge behind this panel, here." Jakob demonstrated by opening a wooden door that was set in a series of built-in bookshelves in the sitting room. "And the wine, cheese, and finger foods are compliments of the hotel." Jakob finally paused, clasping his hands. He seemed to hesitate, but smiled through his deliberation. "The hotel has an excellent spa package that takes couples downtown for massage and other treatments, if you'd like to indulge. And on-site we have a barber who does an old-fashioned straight-razor shave and warm toweling that I've not been able to live without since I went the first time."

"Sounds nice," Blaze ventured when Arik seemed lost in his own thoughts, again.

"Good." Jakob beamed. "And if I may say, and forgive me for imposing, but you two make a lovely couple."

Blaze laughed, mostly because he couldn't tell if it was a dig for a better tip or not, but if it was, it was a good one. Arik's eyes had gone wide as saucers, and his tongue was still tied. Blaze slipped his arm around Arik's middle. "Thank you," Blaze said.

"Of course, sirs." Jakob winked and started to leave.

"Thank you for your help," Arik said, catching the kid and tipping generously.

"If there's anything I can do to make your stay more pleasant..." Jakob glanced first at Blaze, shot a quick glance at Blaze's crotch, and smiled winningly at Arik. "Do let me know."

Jakob left with a gentle click of the door, and Arik stood with his back to Blaze. Arik's shoulders shook, and his fists clenched. "Well, they're certainly friendly on this island," Blaze said, unslinging his bag and setting it next to a sofa. "Must not get out much."

"Evidently." Arik shoved his wallet into his pocket and stalked toward the bedroom. Blaze followed, admiring the furnishings along the way. Their rooms were done in rich, mahogany with creamy cushions and fabrics. The rugs over hardwood were plush and patterned in trumpeting cherubs and elegant _fleur-de-lis_. The heavy curtains were rose and cream striped, the shades were deep brown, and the smell of lemon polish, soap, and ocean was in the air. Through the open bathroom door, Blaze could see a claw tub elevated on a corner platform, which had been mosaic-tiled by a master-craftsman. There was also a modern corner shower with a glass door, pedestal sink, and hidden commode.

"It's a beautiful hotel," Blaze said.

"It is," Arik agreed.

Blaze sighed. Arik violently unzipped his suitcase and began stuffing clothing into dresser drawers one item at a time, and, while Blaze watched, Blaze concluded a few things. First, he had to remember this was the man's first vacation in years. Quest-driven or not, the guy deserved to enjoy it. He had obviously paid out the nose for it, and he was trying to do something nice for Blaze, while he was at it. Blaze wanted nothing more than to wallow around in such consideration like the starving dog in need of affection that he was, but he resisted. It didn't pay to get used to such luxuries. The next Quest might find Blaze homeless with an asshole who was trying to kill him.

And speaking of Quests, Blaze's current strategy of Beat Him Over the Head Until He Cracks and Talks was not working. Not even a little bit. Blaze wanted to kick himself over fumbling that pass, but, honestly, he'd been so caught up in the idea of hemorrhaging, thanks to Arik's particular brand of Visions, that he'd gotten too goal-oriented. Quests never worked if Blaze focused on his own fears, desires, or wants. He knew this. He was there for the other guy not—

"Maybe I'm here for you."

Blaze shivered. He put aside his own urges to wrap around Arik and just not let go until Kingdom Come, and he thought of what had worked to get Arik to open up, to relax, to talk, and to trust Blaze. The exchange of information and intimacy worked. Honesty worked with Arik, which was a rare and wonderful thing. And if the man was absolutely convinced that it was his purpose to be there for Blaze, for once, then denying the man the right wasn't going to get Blaze anywhere but uphill without a paddle or a creek in which to row the damned canoe.

"The last guy killed himself." Blaze put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the doorframe. Arik froze in the act of refolding socks, though he didn't say anything.

"I was in London, and my target, as I call them, was this kid in the fashion industry. Big name, at least in the UK." As Blaze spoke, Arik turned around, sat on the bench next to his suitcase, and toyed with a zipper, listening. "Despite having what had to be millions, the kid lived in a shitty room over a wine and spirits. He ate out of tins. He shot up heroin between his toes. He liked to scream himself to sleep." Blaze swallowed, pushing away that particular memory. Kip's nightmares had put even Blaze's to shame.

"God," Arik whispered.

"I thought I was there to help him. He didn't seem suicidal, just lost. I helped him get his finances in order. I helped him get away from his ex-boyfriend. I stood by him while he spoke to his parents for the first time in years, came out to his friends who didn't know, got out of the hotel and into a respectable flat, as he renegotiated his contract with a new manager and agent, got a better deal, more money...Hope. There was a lot of that, near the end." Blaze rubbed his face. "We weren't lovers. It usually does go that way, I'm not going to lie, but not that time. He liked that I slept on the couch and never asked to touch him. He told me so on the last day he was alive." Arik closed his eyes, but Blaze carried on: "He said it again in his suicide note. He credited me with helping him get all his affairs in order so he could die well. And that must have been what it was all about, that Quest, because any time I wasn't helping him get organized, I was staunching nosebleeds. I remember this one time I suggested we go for a walk. This was early on, when he wouldn't leave the room. He agreed, which shocked the hell out of me, and we went into the sunshine. He took my hand, and he smiled at me, and then blood shot out of my nose and mouth, all over his shirt, and sort of ruined the mood." Blaze chuckled, but Arik covered his mouth with one hand.

"Anyway," Blaze said. "The last one...was hard. And this one isn't. You...aren't. And it'd be so easy to get used to that. To all of this. To want it. More than I already do. And that scares me. A lot. And the thing is, I never know what the point of the Quests is, and it is rarely ever what I want. It doesn't go down like I think it should or like I wish it could. Last time affection cost me. This time, I spent days doing nothing but rolling in bed, and I'm intact. So..." Blaze shrugged. "I don't know what this is all about, and I need your help." Arik got up and started for the bathroom, though he came to a jerky halt when Blaze pushed away from the wall to give chase.

"And you may be right, for the record," Blaze said, hurriedly. "It could be exactly as you said. That you're the guy who finally gets to be with me, even a little, and—"

"I'm not going to fucking kill myself," Arik snarled, with volume and venom. He was facing away from Blaze, shoulders set in a rigid line.

"I don't think you will, either," Blaze said carefully, studying and inching closer to the vibrating man. Every word about Kip had been true. Blaze hadn't wanted to say a damned thing after hearing about Arik's father, but now Blaze hoped he'd chosen wisely and not made a critical error.

"I am not crazy."

"You're right. You're not. You might be the sanest man I know." Blaze resisted the temptation to touch Arik's arm.

"I will not _go_ crazy."

"I believe you."

Arik didn't seem to hear Blaze. "I don't have to do this. I'm not going to end up on a...on a...I am not my fucking—" Arik cut himself off, growled in his throat, and started for the bathroom.

This time Blaze did reach out and catch Arik's arm. Arik jerked away, and Blaze wrestled to regain a hold. "Hey," Blaze said, tussling with Arik like a couple of school boys fighting over a toy. "Hey," Blaze said again, but without frustration, this time, because he could feel Arik shaking all over.

"I'm not going to jump off a..." Arik panted, shaking his head, refusing to turn or look at Blaze, and all but gasping. "I'm not going to be like...I'm not going to do...Fuck him. Fuck you. Fuck that. I'm not..."

Blaze got an arm around Arik's waist, hugging him. Arik leaned forward and thunked his head against the wall, and Blaze pressed himself flush against Arik's back. "It's not going to go that way," Arik insisted through clenched teeth. "I didn't bring you here to watch me die well."

"I never thought you did, Arik."

Arik rocked his head side to side. "Supposed to be nice. Supposed to be peaceful. Trying to be the good guy." Arik was heaving for breath, wheezing mumbled words in between. "You're not here to have to...I'm not going to let that...it won't..."

Blaze shushed Arik, rubbing his shoulders, his neck, and sliding fingers into Arik's hair. "You call the shots, here, Arik. It'll go like you want it to go."

"Goddammit," Arik hissed. He breathed. Blaze waited. Minutes ticked by. The quality of light through the windows changed as clouds rolled across the sky. Arik gasped, gulped, and finally spoke. "You don't...You really don't think—?"

"No," Blaze said. "I don't think you're insane at all. I don't think you're anything like your father. I don't think I'm here to help you harm yourself. I think I'm here to help you see that what you've always been able to do is a kind of beautiful, not a kind of curse."

Arik sucked a breath. It was watery, but Arik's voice was level. "Like it is for you?" He laughed, low and mean and dripping irony. "It's really fucking beautiful for you."

The words stung, and the real truth was on the tip of Blaze's tongue, and he nearly bit it off to keep from confessing his entire life's story.

Him. This is about him.

Blaze got it together. "Well, maybe we're here for each other, just like you said. Me here to help you deal with the strangeness without going nuts, and you here to break the...pattern. My pattern."

Arik tensed so tight that Blaze thought he'd break. "Maybe," he said, and then, with more confidence: "Yeah. Okay. Maybe." Arik shoved away from the wall, and shook off Blaze. "Going to shower."

Arik walked into the bathroom and shut the door without a glance at Blaze. A moment later, the water came on, and Blaze stood there, feeling torn and numb and ridiculous for being so helpless. Should he follow? Should he let Arik lead? Blaze wasn't sure. He yelled at himself about getting so close and so affected and blinded, and then he shut those thoughts down. He couldn't do a damned thing about the way he felt, right now, and feeling so much and so strongly for this man seemed to be the only thing keeping them on track and keeping the bleeding at bay. Blaze absently swiped a finger under his nose, and it came away clean. Something in Arik's philosophy had to be correct. They needed to be this version of together, needed to be here, on this island, and needed to carry on to the next step, whatever that might be.

Blaze stared at the bathroom door. For being so on track, he couldn't help but notice that there was still a wall between them.

The water continued to run, and Blaze paced. He did a lap around the bedroom and the sitting room. He was thinking everything at once, all muddled and confused, like Arik was his first Quest. First time around the block. First...first man in a long time whom Blaze actually...First man since...

"Did you love him?"

Blaze paused to stand in a beam of sunlight. It was warm and pleasant against his skin. Clouds danced across the sun, hotel guests played in the gentle waves below, and distantly, Blaze heard laughter that sounded a lot like hope. Real, honest, tangible hope that was in reach for the first time in...Well. The first time since...

Doru. Since Doru.

Rubbing his chest, Blaze broke his pacing pattern and drifted into the bedroom. He had the bathroom door open in the next instant, and steam smacked him in the face. He shut the door behind him, stepping out of shoes and stripping out of clothing. Arik was huddled, crouched in the shower, arms around his knees, back against the clear glass door, and head hunched forward. He looked so small for a man so large in Blaze's mind. Something cracked inside Blaze's chest, and for a second, Blaze was worried he might be bleeding. He checked the mirror and found no blood, only fear and worry and...

"Did you love him?"

Crossing to the shower, Blaze pulled the handle, and Arik startled, showing Blaze tears and the anger that came from being interrupted in private grief. Arik flew to his feet. "What are you—"

Blaze put a hand over Arik's mouth. Arik's eyes strafed back and forth, searching Blaze's, and Blaze stroked the stubble along Arik's jawline. "It's just me," Blaze said, as the spark came to life, and Blaze would swear it was more potent now than it had ever been before. Arik made a quiet sound of shock, and Blaze's next exhale was sharper. "Just me...Here...With you..." Blaze slid his hand from Arik's cheek to Arik's nape. The current sizzled and jumped between them, even before Blaze pressed them flush. Arik's eyelids fluttered, and Blaze kissed Arik's chin, tasting salt in the water. "Let me? Please...Arik...let me."

Arik's arms encircled Blaze, slowly at first and then like Arik wouldn't be pried away from Blaze by anything known to mankind. They clung to one another. The spray struck Blaze's lower back and legs, scalding skin, but Blaze didn't dare move. And after long, silent moments, the perseverance paid off.

"I fucking hate him," Arik said, the words spilling in that way they did for Arik when he finally started talking. "He...I'm...He made me hate...Made me see, more than I wanted, and so fast...Too fast. And then he...he left me. And I hate him, and it, and being so damned...and I really...I really..."

"I know." Blaze rested his head on Arik's shoulder, urging Arik closer, still. He was so warm, so solid. So real.

Arik hung his head. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"Blaze..."

"Arik, please shut up," Blaze whispered, nosing Arik's throat and stroking Arik's hair. "And let me hold you."

"You...you..." Arik's chest hitched, and Blaze held on until Arik stopped fighting the emotion and let it go. Blaze held on when they slid to the tile, held on while they rearranged, and kept holding on while Arik's storm raged and echoed in the small room.

And as they sat there, wrapped around one another, two people trying to deal with the strangest things life could put in their paths, Blaze knew without a doubt that he would keep holding on to Arik long after he had to let go.

* * * *

# Chapter 14

Arik

Arik had considered reaching out sexually. Tasting. Stroking. Fucking. That was how moments like these were supposed to play out. At least, that's what his head told him. The rest of him, including his cock, told Arik that no greater intimacy was possible than what the two of them were sharing through simple touch. It felt right. It felt good. Perfect, in fact. And when the anger burned itself out, when the moisture leaking out of his eyes dried up, Arik felt more sated, more exhausted, than he would have if they'd spent the last six hours banging like rabbits. He gorged on that feeling—defying the water to cool, and clinging to Blaze without care or concern over wasting water or time or to cramping limbs. He sat under the shower, and he thought of a pretty boy with a bright future and a brilliant smile. He considered a life so hard to live that a self-inflicted death was the only possible peace. He thought of the man he held against him, of a belief so strong that it caused blood cells to rupture. Then he mused destiny. Fate. Decisions and consequences.

There was a joke his father used to tell, a proverb, so to speak, of a man whose boat had sunk in the middle of the ocean. As the man clung to a buoy, fighting waves, and watching the fins of sea life appear above the surface of the water, the man prayed for his god to rescue him. A fishing boat appeared, offered the man assistance, and the man waved them away. "God will save me."

The night got darker, the water got colder. Another boat appeared, and the man turned them away, telling the people onboard that his god would save him.

A storm rolled in. His fingers got too tired to hold, but his tongue never gave up his prayers. And when a cruise ship came by, tossing out a lifesaver, and begging the man to grab it, once again they were turned away. "God will save me. I believe."

When, finally, the fragility of the human body was proved, and the man sunk beneath the waves, the man was angry. He stood in front of his god and demanded to know why he hadn't been saved. All those years, all that faith—how could he have been so carelessly disregarded?

And God had looked down upon him, lifted an empiric eyebrow up his forehead, and said..."I sent you _three fucking boats_!"

Arik remembered his father speaking the words, recalled the round of laughter that had always followed it. Why that story stuck with him, Arik couldn't really say. It might have only been the ludicrous paradox of his father speaking words of turning away assistance that was being begged for. This wasn't about his father, though; Arik had to understand that. Blaze was right. Arik wasn't his father. He wasn't going to be the man bobbing on the ocean and turning a blind eye to the assistance being offered by divine intervention. At the same time, though, he damn well wasn't going to be one of the ships that sailed away.

If this worked, if _they_ worked, something beautiful could happen. At the same time, if Blaze believed there was an ulterior motive as to why they were there, then there was a good chance Blaze was going to turn into a spewing fountain of the most macabre kind.

_I will not be my father_ , Arik repeated in his head. _I will not succumb to madness, because I do not believe that the 'gifts' I have, if in fact that is what they are, are gifts that I continually have to earn. I did not ask for this right. I do not want it. However, if some otherworldly something has deemed it fit to grant it to me, then it is_ mine _to use._

He caught the imagined tendril of insanity, and he envisioned himself fisting it. He snagged the rein of woe-is-me relationships and added it to his palm. If he stood around and let the stallions stampede, as stallions were wont to do, then that's when the hooves would get him. It was time to force his control over the beasts that hoped to crush him.

Arik pushed away the mental image of a goat—a much smaller, comedic-yet-ornery counter-cousin image to his stallions—and he added that tendril of a concept to his fist along with the rest of them. It was time to face this horseshit. Yes, it was galloping way past his comfort zone. And sure, he'd probably needed to get the fear out of his system. But if he sat around wallowing, that's what was going to drive him crazy. If he did nothing but cower and whine, those were the leads that would end up dragging him over a cliff.

The sigh that echoed from behind Arik's closed lips had Blaze lifting his head and smiling somewhat confusedly. "Mood swing?"

_Life path reorientation_ , Arik's mind offered up. His tongue, however, replied with, "We're about to use every drop of the hotel's hot water supply. I can only imagine what they'll want to charge us for that."

He reached for the toggle that would redirect the water, but was stopped by Blaze's hand on his shoulder. "Are you okay, Arik? I mean—" Blaze stopped himself, caught his lip and frowned, and for another rare moment Arik thought how nice it was to see the man behind the mask. To see something other than piety. Disturbed was almost more of a windfall than lust. Because it was _real_. Something lit in the back of Arik's head.

Let's see what boat we're waiting for, shall we?

"I mean, I know you're not okay," Blaze said. "I know you're dealing with a lot of things you don't get, or know how to manage—"

"I'm okay," Arik cut him off with slow words and an even slower smile. "My life isn't going to be resolved in an afternoon, any more than yours will. You're not here to help me get over my daddy issues." He paused, waited for Blaze's frown to deepen. And he pushed again. "I don't want you to help me get over my hate for my father. Every once in a while, he gets in my head. He whispers stupid shit in my ear from whichever beast's shoulder he's now perched on. He probably always will."

Arik banged the toggle and the cooling water dropped from above to below, the sound intensifying from gentle rain to rushing river.

"Okay, but..." Blaze's words trailed.

"Nope," Arik said firmly. "No more daddy talk. No more trying to dig into my childhood, and I, in turn," he lifted his eyes and caught Blaze's gaze, "will not bring it up either."

He leaned over the taps, turned the knobs to shut off the flow, keeping Blaze's face in his peripheral. One reaction, that's all he would need.

Show me your disease, so I can find a cure.

That's all it had taken, if Blaze's word could be trusted. One shift, one step off the path and towards a different direction. " _He took my hand_ ," Blaze had said, " _and he smiled at me, and..._ " Then the blood had come. Then the quest had taken over. Or the bits of Blaze's mind that told him he needed to see reaction in order to force himself back into the moment had, anyway.

Nothing colored Blaze's face. Not a single drip of anything but clear, fresh water over glowing skin. Blaze didn't believe, in that hidden part of him that convinced body to revolt, that he was there to help Arik get over his father.

"I want to go out," Arik said, nodding. "You need a jacket and a tie."

_I'm going to buy you things,_ Arik thought, watching Blaze's face as if it held the secrets of the universe, and Arik merely had to figure out how to read it. _I'm going to make you feel important._

There was no reaction.

"Something nice, so you fit in," Arik continued. "There's a dress code in both dining facilities. Apparently these people play hardball with their expectations." He loosened his expression into a smirk. "So, _Vivianne_ , let's skip the scene where everyone makes fun of you, and get right to the one where I get to watch you prance for me in some cool fashion."

Arik snagged a towel off the rack, went to hand it to Blaze, then reconsidered and draped it over Blaze himself. Through terrycloth, Arik worked his fingers over Blaze's wet hair. For a long minute he lost reality in the way Blaze's eyelids fell to half-mast, and the feel of Blaze's fingers when Blaze reached up and gripped Arik's forearms, as if for support. But the towel stayed white. Blaze's face didn't spout with unexpected hemorrhage.

He's not going to beat himself up over me showing him attention. Leaving the hotel and perusing the town isn't going to wound him.

"And then," Arik slipped the towel off Blaze's head, and curls sprung wildly, free of both product and brush. Years slipped off Blaze's face; he could have been a teenager standing there, soaked and innocent, and something in Arik's chest constricted so tightly that Arik wasn't sure it was ever going to release again. He rested the towel over Blaze's shoulders, and used it as a harness to draw Blaze closer. "I'm going to wine you, and dine you, like the prince you are, Blaze. I'm going to get you tipsy, and I'm going to make you laugh, and we're going to have an awesome time."

He caught Blaze's hand so that Blaze could do the same. He grinned at the darkening concern falling over Blaze's face. "And when we're done, I'm going to bring you back up to the room..." He ran his fingers over Blaze's chest, barely-there touches that inspired goose flesh and hardened Blaze's nipple. "...and I'm going to light up sparks all over you skin. I'm going to lay you down on Egyptian cotton, and spread you open in every way, and with every appendage on my body that I can think of."

Blaze huffed a sound, although which emotion it was that backed it, Arik couldn't identify. Arik pressed a kiss to Blaze's forehead, thrilling at the feel of Blaze leaning into the gesture.

"Then maybe?" Arik followed words with kisses: eyebrow, cheekbone, and jaw. "I might even..." He parted his lips and inhaled the scent of clean, clear, shower-fresh skin. "Tell you..."

Warm breath. White skin. Freckles. "How much..."

The thud of Blaze's heart from inside Blaze's chest. The way Blaze's grip dug into Arik's muscles. The slow rise of both of their bodies. "I think I'm..."

Blaze caught a breath. Arik's eyelids fell, and he kept away Blaze's impending speech with a light kiss. He pulled back, only enough to let his words tickle Blaze's lips, "...falling in love with you."

"Arik. No."

A flash of brilliance slashed across the inside of Arik's eyelids. Blaze choked. The spark of sensation between their touches snapped into a sizzle that stung skin; an elastic band sharpness that was so intense it hurt. Arik opened his eyes with a start. Blaze pulled back and away. They stared at each other in stunned silence.

A single drop of onyx liquid slipped from Blaze's left nostril.

The sound Arik made surprised him—like the mewl of a child getting candy yanked away. With a slow hand Blaze reached up, dragged his fingertips along his upper lip, and drew them back again to stare at the smear that stained them. Blaze lifted his gaze, caught Arik's eyes with his own, and there was more pain than could possibly be associated with physical agony in Blaze's expression.

"Aw, Arik." Blaze's voice was so tired. So defeated. "God damn it."

* * * *

# Chapter 15

Blaze

Blaze rushed for the sink, praying in a silent chant of, _No, no no,_ that the drops wouldn't become a deluge.

"Holy shit," Arik panted behind him in the tone of the thoroughly stunned stupid. "You're bleeding."

"What did you think would happen, exactly?" Blaze muttered, more to himself than Arik.

"But it's...black?"

_Because it's old._ "So I've noticed."

"Holy shit," Arik repeated, in awed horror.

Turning on the tap and shutting his eyes, Blaze splashed water on his face. He wanted to be angry at Arik for that little psychology Quest experiment, but he was too tired. And even this bit of theatre was old news; a bad magic trick. It wasn't the first time someone pushed the boundaries just to see what would happen or if Blaze was lying. One of the many reasons Blaze kept information to himself was the damnable temptation some men had that involved testing the edges of razors to see if they would still slice.

"Are you...is it stopping?" Arik asked, hovering, now, and flapping his wings. Blaze snatched a wad of toilet paper off the roll and shoved it up to and into his nose. It came out mostly clean, if damp, and Blaze and Arik breathed a sigh of simultaneous relief.

"Well," Arik said, after a moment of silence punctuated by dripping sink water. "I guess there are worse ways."

Blaze reminded himself that he had sworn long ago only to use his powers for good or for what the Universe required, but his look still made Arik flinch. "Worse ways, what?"

"To find out that one's boyfriend loves...one?"

"Boyfriend," Blaze said dully.

"You have a better word for it?"

_Inmate. Stalker. Bitch. Punchline in the Universe's Eternal Bad Joke._ "Maybe." Blaze's head ached, and there was simply too much shit to comprehend. He thought about renouncing his Visions and the Quests right then and there, just to die and get it over with, already. "What the fuck, Arik?"

"Hear me out," Arik said, quickly.

"Do I have any choice?"

"Not really?"

Blaze rolled his eyes, snatched up a towel off the floor, and brusquely dried off while gathering up his clothes. Arik followed him out of the bathroom. "Everything was fine until you said, 'No.'"

"It usually is," Blaze retorted, tossing aside the towel and starting to get dressed.

"No, listen, please, I think we can..." Arik paused. "You going somewhere?"

Blaze realized he'd been reaching for his shoes. He realized he'd been about to run out the door and not stop running until he was a pile of shining, stinking, stale goo to be scraped off a sidewalk by some poor fool with a shovel and a gas mask. And he realized that there was exactly no point. Where the hell would he go? How far did he think he could get before he dissolved? One pace? Ten? And what about Arik? What about holding him in the shower and being the one whom Arik trusted? Talked to? Cared for? What about feeling the strength in his arms, the heat of his skin? What about the fire poker of desire that had speared Blaze when Arik had promised dinner, dancing, and then to make a blissful ruin of Blaze's body? The Vision came back—of Blaze with his arms held and their joined cries to heaven. That one, and a dozen more that may be Visions or might be simple daydreams, of bedrooms and the interior of cars and shaving together and holding hands and seeing where Arik lived and worked and what color he'd painted his home's walls and where he stored the pans in his kitchen, if he _had_ pans in his kitchen, and...

"Does it...do you hurt?" Arik stood directly next to Blaze, his dark eyes wide and full of concern. It was real, that affection, and Blaze knew it. He started to reply only to discover he'd been making soft sounds of distress. He clapped a hand over his mouth.

"Blaze?"

Blaze shook his head. "Not in the way you think."

Arik rested a hand on Blaze's back, and Blaze wanted to tear off the shirt he'd just put on so that he could feel the spark between skin-on-skin.

"What I meant was that you haven't bled the entire time we've been together until you said, 'Arik, no' when I told you that I'm falling for you."

Knees weak, Blaze sank onto a convenient sofa. "And?"

"And..." Arik knelt in front of Blaze. "I think you know what it means."

Arik was wrong. Blaze didn't have a clue. Or, if he did, it was buried beneath too many years and too many deaths. He stared intently at anything that wasn't Arik. "I think I'd rather hear your version."

"You're going to make me say this, aren't you?" Arik complained.

"It's your damned theory. Speak it."

Arik took a moment to gather wit and balls. "Okay. You believe—no. _I_ believe that we're together for a reason. I believe in the Visions, that you have them, and I have my own version, too. I believe that not all of my father's crazy was...actually crazy, though what he did with it and how it drove him made him an asshole. I believe the seeing-shit thing is hereditary, just like you seem to think, but I have more control over what I see and how I use it than you think you do."

"Know," Blaze corrected. "I know you have more control over it than I do, and that's a good thing, Arik."

"I agree, and I can see how you or...whatever happened to..." Arik took a breath. "There've been too many coincidences that aren't, actually coincidence that have happened since we've met for me to think anything other than we're supposed to be doing something together. Fixing something, solving something. And I believe you when you say you think it's your fate to wander the earth helping people out by using your gifts."

"By going where the curse takes me, yes," Blaze said, and he flinched when he realized he'd used the word 'curse.'

"What is it?" Arik asked, hushed and glancing around.

Blaze touched beneath his nose and put the other hand to his throat, feeling the steady thud of his pulse. "Oh, nothing, just dodging lightning. Go on."

"Yeah. Okay." Arik swallowed and didn't, in fact, continue.

Blaze glanced at his current lover, who was managing to look pale and ashen beneath a dark flush brought on by half an hour of hot water and by embarrassment amassing by the second. "Arik?"

"Your belief in what you do is so strong that when you believe you deviate from the course, it presents as a physical ailment," Arik said in a half-yelled rush. "And since this Quest is about you being able to love someone again after you got hurt so badly by whatever or whomever it was that made you like you are now, when you said you didn't, in fact, love me or denied it or whatever you started to—"

There was a metaphoric axe in Blaze's torso, its blade hovering over the pounding wad of muscle that was his withered heart. " _What?_ " he asked, and Arik flinched, staring up at Blaze as Blaze got off the sofa. " _What are you saying, this love that hurt me? What do you know of it? Of Doru? Have you seen Doru?"_

"Blaze—"

"Answer me, damn it!"

Arik sprawled on the rug in the sitting room, towel loose, eyes huge, and legs akimbo. "Blaze? I don't speak...Is that Romanian?"

Blaze's lips smacked shut so hard and so fast that his jaw popped. He'd been speaking the homogenized Romanian that was his native tongue and hadn't even realized he'd been doing it. He was scaring the shit out of Arik, and it was only going to get worse from here. There'd been a corner, somewhere, that they'd rounded; a line, at some point, that they'd crossed, and from here on out, there'd be nothing but pain and anguish and suffering. Misery, decay, blood...loss. Death. Grieving. Weeping.

Blaze took a step toward the main door, reconsidered, and spun, taking strides to the balcony. When he heard Arik hot on his heels, Blaze rounded on the other man. "Do not follow me, _Ves'tacha._ Not now. Not like this. A moment, give me. A moment."

Arik's face was so full of wonder and shock that it hurt Blaze to see it, and he spun away from that handsome face, those tender hands, that young and vibrant and unmarred body. He yanked open the door and stepped onto the balcony off the bedroom. By all rights, it should be well into nighttime, but it was not even twilight. The sun shone, the clouds rolled, but the stretch of private beach was nearly deserted. The roof overhead offered Blaze's fair skin some shade, and he sank into a wicker chair made plush with striped cushions.

He'd thought he'd come out here to think and organize his overtaxed brain, but Blaze's mind was blank and quiet. For long moments of endless lapping waves, he wondered if he was in a kind of shock or denial, but realized, at last, that he was resigned.

Arik was right. About everything. Blaze had known it the first time Arik made his crazy proposal about being there for Blaze, and Blaze had been fighting the truth tooth and nail, fang, and claw. And now that the panic had passed, Blaze understood that Arik didn't have to know about Doru to understand Blaze had been hurt by love, though the details were not exactly accurate. Arik was even surer of Blaze's feelings than Blaze, himself. Arik was braver than Blaze had been. And truer to self.

With a heavy sigh, Blaze glanced over his shoulder. Arik was not in the bedroom, nor in Blaze's line of sight, which was fortunate. Blaze didn't want Arik to see what Blaze had to do to prove to himself what Arik already knew. Blaze pulled off his shirt, wadding it up and already mourning its loss. He stared at the worn fabric and hunched over it. He took several deep, cleansing breaths.

"I, Blaze, of the Zaituc _Vitsa,_ son of Oraj, _Rom Baro_ of our tribe, long dead...do not..." Blaze buried his face in his shirt. "I do not love one Arik Bel—"

Blaze didn't get to finish. A horrible chill stole through his insides, hollowing him out, and he gagged, heaving up a mass of black blood bile that he caught with his shirt. For a horrible second, he didn't think he'd get the chance to breathe, but after the next spasm that left him coughing and hacking, Blaze managed to gasp, "I love him...I love him, gods and ancestors help me..." The chill was dissipating, the pain vanishing as though it'd been a bad dream. "I love him with heart and soul, as I have loved none other since Doru Machwaya, son of Tritin, brother of Meerna, my...long-dead betrothed."

The blood dried. When he could, Blaze sat up, and he wadded his befouled shirt into a ball. He wiped his mouth with a sleeve, dropped the ruined mess onto the boards below his feet, and collapsed back into the chair. He let himself wallow in the unfairness and the insanity of it all. He said all the things to himself that he thought he should say—how unfair this was to Arik, how Arik deserved better and more, how much of a bitch the Universe was for afflicting them both with a fate that had been Blaze's to earn and Blaze's to suffer without having to share it with a good, sweet man.

And when Blaze was done uselessly denouncing the Universe on both his and Arik's behalf, he stood. It was evening, now, and cooler, and it was a relief to feel the relative warmth of the hotel room after he slipped inside. Arik was in the sitting room at the table with a laptop, clothed now in a robe instead of a towel, and he leapt to his feet when he saw Blaze. Arik touched his own chin, frowning at Blaze, and Blaze diverted into the bathroom. Blaze washed the dried muck off his face, swished with mouthwash, and, after thinking it over, stripped and grabbed his own robe. He put it on and was tying the sash on the way out when Arik met him in the bedroom.

"Hey," Arik said.

"Hi." Blaze tried a smile. "Where'd the laptop come from?"

"Jakob. He brought whiskey, too."

Blaze took, squeezed, and kissed Arik's hand. "Good." Blaze headed for the table, passing by the computer and seeing the sealed bottle of imported Scotch. "What were you doing?"

"Trying to learn Romanian. Or, well, Roma, I guess, right?"

Blaze didn't answer, fetching a pocket knife out of his bag and going for the bottle. He cut the seal and poured two glasses.

"Because it's like...a dialect? Slang, sort of, I found a few words." Arik blushed and fidgeted with the back rung of the dining chair.

"It's a lot of things now that it wasn't, then," Blaze said, handing Arik a drink. "To me, it's just my mother's tongue. My father's. My people's."

"Where are your people?" Arik asked.

"Dead." Blaze drank deeply. "They're all dead."

"How?"

"Let's sit."

Blaze checked the lock on the main door and sat on the couch next to Arik, facing him. Like mirrors, they put their arms on the rear of the sofa, and their fingers touched briefly. Sparks flew, and Blaze inched away. He wouldn't be able to concentrate on what he had to say if they were connected like that. "You're a sweet man," Blaze began, "for thinking that my urge to avoid love is a simple one."

"I never said it was simple," Arik protested.

"No, but you think it's for a hurt done _to_ me," Blaze said, and Arik's lips twitched. "What?" Blaze asked.

"Nothing. It's just that I've never heard you speak with an accent, before."

"I can stop. I learned to stop a long time ago."

"No, I like it, though it makes you sound..."

"Older?" Blaze asked, amused.

"Sadder."

"That, too." Blaze sipped his drink. "I'll tell you what happened, and then we'll see."

"See what?"

Blaze shrugged. "What happens next. What you believe."

"If you tell me, I'll believe it. You wouldn't lie to me."

"Only once. I've lied to you only once."

Arik's lips parted, pressed, and he licked them. "I'm listening?"

"Okay. Well." Blaze got up, fetched the bottle, and poured himself another. "Once upon a time..." He paused for Arik's soft chuckle. "There was a boy with auburn hair and fair skin born into a Roma clan who believed such things were the markers of great power. They called me _Stea_ or _Bobot_ , which means 'star' or 'flame' or..."

"Blaze," Arik filled in.

"Exactly." Blaze settled onto the couch. "My clan or _Vitsa_ was Zaituc, and the gifts were strong in our blood, as I've told you. We were a medium-sized clan who tended to stand apart, as our power was that of Fire Vision, which was both revered and feared. Many of my people could see things to come in the flames, and because I had red hair and I was a boy, it was thought I would one day be a strong leader, taking after my father.

"My father was _Rom Baro_ , or head man, of my clan. He was chosen for that position by our _Phuri_ , or elders, and my grandmamere was the _Phuri Dae,_ or wise woman, who advised him most directly. She was very old—well over two hundred—and—"

"Wait, what?"

Blaze smiled. "And thought to have gained much wisdom in that time. It was to her that I was given to be trained in our art. It was said that being so close to flames and the pictures in them burned out impurities within the soul seeking knowledge."

"Impurities." Arik had the sorting-it-out face. "You mean diseases?"

"And other things, but yes. Hence her age and the longevity of my people."

"And this is why you look younger than you are?" Arik asked, half teasing and half terrified of the truth.

"I'll get to that." Blaze gestured for Arik to take a drink, which he did. "Anyway," Blaze continued. "I had the gift, I had my training, and when I was twelve, my father and our elders made a pact with a _Natsia_ , or nation, of Roma. It goes family, clan, _Kumpania_ or tribe, and then _Natsia._ The Machwaya were gaining in power and influence, and an alliance with them would have been very beneficial to our much smaller and unallied clan. The _Rom Baro_ of the head family of the Machwaya nation had a son and a daughter, and I was betrothed to the daughter, Meerna. She was only eight, and even then, girls were not wed before they bled, so I had to wait until she was of age. Our circuit that year took us through Budapest and near the Machwaya lands, and I became friendly with Meerna's older brother...Doru."

"I think I see where this is going," Arik said, quietly.

"Probably. Doru was older than me, seventeen, and being groomed to carry on in his father's footsteps. Doru was...beautiful. Charismatic. He laughed all the time. He loved what I could do with fire, and, as it turned out, what I could do with my mouth." Blaze rubbed his eyes. They were dry, as though full of smoke.

"You must understand, in my culture, women were thought of as unclean. Men only married and mated for children. Women were powerful, but not to be trusted, and some clans and families almost celebrated homosexuality." Blaze had to laugh. "They were, of course, systematically destroyed by the ones who thought of pretty much any sex as an unclean act. But my family..." Blaze shrugged. "It wasn't the biggest crime or sin. That was denying power or using it for ill. So fucking a boy? Less an issue than cursing said boy.

"Unless, of course, you were the redheaded, powerful son of the family leader who was engaged to the daughter of a powerful family in a massive nation."

"What happened?" Arik whispered.

Blaze closed his eyes. "I saw it in the flames. I was nineteen. Doru and I had been lovers for six years, and finally Meerna, was ready to be my bride. Two nights before our wedding day, I was seeking wisdom in a campfire, and I saw...Well, what I saw sent me running. When I crossed into Doru's family camp, I was taken, hooded, and beaten. I don't know for how long. I remember the smell of the sack over my head, potatoes. I remember thinking they'd kill me with their boots and their fists, and I remember telling them that my father and my family would avenge me. They laughed at me, tied me, and dragged me by the ankles through leaves and brush. When they took the hood off my head, I was surrounded by the Machwaya elders and sons. Meerna..." Blaze drank, finished his glass, and had to put it aside, else he drink the entire bottle.

"Meerna had been killed for her association with me, the unclean, unlucky son of fire. And Doru had been treated much the same way as me. He was tied and on his knees in front of me. They'd cut out his eyes. And while I was made to watch..."

"Oh God, Blaze..."

"While I watched, they stripped him, raped him, cut off his penis, and finally slit his throat."

Arik dropped his empty glass and tried to reach for Blaze, but Blaze pulled away. He'd never finish if Arik touched him. "The lie I told you was when you asked if I'd ever felt the _punct luminos_ , the spark...the connection with anyone else other than you. I told you no, but...with Doru, I had it. With us, it's gentler, actually, at least for now. It is only when we touch skin, but with Doru, it was all the time. When he was closer, it sang louder. When we touched, it screamed for joy...and when he died, I watched him fade and...I _felt_ it, too."

The silence lingered until finally Arik let go of a shaky sigh. "Jesus Christ." He sniffed and wiped tears off his cheeks. "The police? The authorities? What...were they caught? Did your family fight them?"

"No. That night, while I watched Doru's blood dry on the ground, a woman who was the wise woman of one of the other Machwaya families, came forward. Her family had power, too, but it was darker. A blood-fed power. She sent everyone away, and I was alone with her and the corpses of my lover and my bride-to-be. She told me that her family had to destroy my family, else we see what she and her sisters were planning for the nation. It had been the plan to poison us all at the wedding, but my transgressions had given her another way. A faster, bloodier way that would feed her abilities all the more. She apologized to me, for what I had come to represent and for all I would suffer. She was evil and crazed, but like all truly mad people, she had her version of compassion."

Arik made a quiet noise of pain, and Blaze pressed on. "That night and over the next three days, my entire _Vitsa_ was slaughtered. I was kept in that clearing with the rotting bodies, without food or water, and the wise woman worked a curse. She used pieces of Doru and Meerna, bits of herself, and a lot of my blood. She made me drink. She cut me. She bled on me. She did all sorts of unspeakable things. I remember most of it as though I was watching it, not living it, and I have to think I was near dead because of that."

"And this is _compassion?_ " Arik blurted.

"No, the curse was. Instead of killing me, she enhanced my gifts, though she took away my ability to see what I wished to see. Instead, I would receive Visions of those men who were like myself, who needed my help on their paths in their lives. She could not give me back Doru, but she could give me countless men who would want me as Doru had wanted me, even if it was only for a time. She could not give me back my family, but I would carry on my family's creed to use our skills to benefit others, and I would do it for far longer than any of them naturally could have done, even my grandmamere. And she could not undo her magics or her need to destroy us and me and Doru, but she could ensure that my curse would end when the last of her blood dried from this earth."

"The last of her...Well, how long is that?"

Blaze smiled, ruefully. "Well, it's been three-hundred-seventy-one years, and I'm still here. So who knows, really."

"Three...hundred...and..." Arik blinked. Arik sat up straight. Arik squinted at Blaze. Then he laughed. "Are you trying to tell me that you're..."

"Yep."

"And that you _died_ when you were..."

"Cursed," Blaze corrected, one finger held aloft in the air. "I was cursed when I was nineteen. I'm still pretty lively."

Arik got up, unconsciously moving away from Blaze, who couldn't blame the man. "And pretty, for that matter," Arik said.

"I know. I'm well-preserved."

"Which means you, what, can't die?"

"Nope. I've tried it. In between Quests, I mean."

Arik was backing away slowly. "Wha...What are you saying?"

Blaze studied Arik, sighed, and got up. He circled wide, making sure Arik knew he wasn't giving chase. "Ever seen _Groundhog Day?_ Bill Murray? It's like that. I've tried drowning, guns, knives, jumping out of a plane and not opening the chute, and pretty much any other peaceful or horrible way you can think to die. Doesn't work. I black out, wake up somewhere else, and am fully whole. The Universe doesn't seem to mind those little side jaunts. It's only when I buck against the curse's plan for me that I start to melt from the inside out, and then I get to feel like I'm dying. Or wish I was."

"But that's impossible," Arik said stubbornly. And adorably. "All of this is, really. I mean, I might buy that this nightmare with your families happened, but...I mean..." He raked his fingers through his hair.

"I'd say I could prove it to you," Blaze said. "Thanks to the Internet and the constant data stream, there are scanned pictures of me that date back to the thirties. There's a tiny cult based in Germany who thinks I might be Jesus. Even the Zaituc clan has a Wiki page. But..." Blaze shrugged. "If you're like the last guy who tried to comprehend all this, you'd just tell me that—"

"The evidence can be doctored," Arik said. "Photoshop. It's all...It could all be altered. There's no way...Oh God." Arik ran into the doorframe leading into the bedroom. He wrung his hands. "There's no way. You can't be crazy. You just can't be, Blaze. What fucking God would put us together after all that shit went down with my..." His eyes flew wide. "Am I supposed to make sure _you_ don't jump off a...do you need a...Do I even _know_ a shrink? My therapist is good, but she's not _that_ good. Christ..."

"Arik."

"Yeah?"

"Do you love me?"

Arik's entire countenance softened, and he crept closer. "I do. I was lying when I said I was falling. I've already—"

Blaze chose his words carefully. "Are you watching?"

Arik stiffened, freezing in his tracks. "What?"

"Are you?"

Blaze could see Arik trembling from where he stood, and it killed him, but Blaze waited until Arik nodded and said, "Yeah. Blaze, I'm...I'm watching. What are you—"

"Then watch this."

Blaze picked up the knife he'd used to open the Scotch, slammed his left hand down onto the table, and sawed his index finger off in a few, brutal hacks of the honed blade.

* * * *

# Chapter 16

Arik

"Do you need to sit down?"

Blaze's voice was remarkably calm, and Arik caught his gaze and held it. Arik opened his mouth, tried to force his tongue into motion, and succeeded, mostly, with a choked, "No."

Whether Blaze winced at the pitch of Arik's voice or at the expression on Arik's face, Arik didn't care to take a guess.

Just a game, right? Just a trick of his mind, wasn't it? Psychosomatic, if I recall—

"Maybe you should sit down."

Blaze stepped forward, reached out, and Arik couldn't stop his body from flinching away from the touch. The look that darkened Blaze's face twisted through Arik's guts as if it was a tangible thing—a snake. With hooked fangs. On fire.

"I'm fine." Arik tried not to speak through his teeth. He attempted a smile in order to loosen the clamp of his jaw. Both failed miserably if Blaze's unspoken, but obviously wounded response was any indication.

You wanted to see the disease. You wanted to know. You, and you alone, opened Pandora's Box. You do not get the option of losing your mind when you finally get to see what's hiding inside.

They should have been on their way to an E.R. They should have been staunching the flow of blood— _black blood_ —with towels and shirts, trying desperately to keep track of a digit in dire need of reattachment. Except...there'd been no need. There'd been no gore. Instead...

Arik pulled a breath far shakier than the previous one and snapped his eyelids wide when they tried to fall. Vertigo was so much easier to fight with one's eyes open.

Instead there'd been the slow creep of a finger that should have been lying dead towards a hand that should have been spouting blood, and a nauseating squelch and shuffle while skin found skin and merged. Reattaching. Becoming whole. The process literally unfolding, refolding, and Lord-God-Almighty-tentacling in some space-oddity, science-would-love-to-study-this-shit amazement right in front of Arik's eyes.

Arik had been stunned. Blaze had just looked sad.

"M-maybe water..." Arik stammered.

"Fuck water." Blaze sighed. He snagged the bottle of whiskey and handed it to Arik, foregoing the offer of a glass. "Drink."

Arik stared hard and long at the hand wrapped around the bottle. Perfectly normal. Beautiful, even. Still with the long, slim fingers and the pale, unmarked skin. That hand had been around his cock, those fingers in his hole. They'd twined, palm to palm, each digit wound as they'd lain in bed, letting the connective sparks that existed between their skin shine. But that had been when a hand was a hand, and a person was a person, and mortality wasn't a joke.

"You're frightened."

It was a statement, not a question, and even as his heart leapt towards the empathy, Arik shook his head. "I'm fine."

The argument made no sense. Of course he was afraid. He was _very_ fucking afraid. In a heartbeat, everything Arik had known about reality had been proven a lie. Fuck science. Fuck religion. They were just playground talk; bullshit drilled into ears to appease and pacify. Oh no...Arik shook his head and laughed hollowly at the carpet. The shit that was out there made it more than apparent that the Brothers Grimm should have been the ones writing text books, and that every parent that had ever scoffed at their child for whimpering over an open closet door was an _asshole_.

"If you say so—"

"Did it hurt?" Arik cut Blaze off, still staring at Blaze's hand. And though his fingers trembled as they made their way towards Blaze's offering, Arik didn't let the fear stop him. However, it wasn't to the bottle that they ended up moving. Arik's fingertips danced over Blaze's knuckles and stroked the delicate design of bones underneath skin. Blaze still felt the same. He looked the same. Blood pumped, ripples suggested muscle movement, and tendons being twinged to life; fine hair rose in response to connection. Spark ignited.

He lifted his attention to Blaze's eyes, leveled their gazes, and repeated the question in the echo of Blaze's silence. "Did it hurt?"

Blaze swallowed loudly enough for Arik to hear. He nodded.

"On a scale of one to—"

"A lot." Blaze nudged the whiskey against Arik's hand. "Almost as much as telling you the story did."

Arik took the bottle and set it back on the desk. Drinking would be good. Just not yet. At the moment his head was screaming for him to focus. "I'm so sorry. I'm just...I don't even know what to say about that. I have no words that can come close to telling you how much I hurt for you right now."

Blaze shrugged; a movement too casual to convey anything other than a pain so heavy, that the only way to deal with it was to disregard it. "One gets used to pain when one is forced to face it for so long."

"How did you..." Arik's words drifted off, and he squeezed Blaze's finger to inspire direction that his words didn't want to provide. "...You know, figure out that you could do that?"

"There have been many opportunities." Blaze held his hands in front of him, fingers spread and flipping them palm to back, back to palm, as though assessing them as well. "Experiences. Issues."

Arik licked dry lips with a sandpaper tongue. He would have sworn he could hear the sound of it scraping. "I'm going to jump at assumptions and take a guess that it's not just your hand, right? Or that one magical finger?"

Blaze nodded stiffly. "You could assume that safely, yes."

Arik frowned and pursed his lips. "I think we can drop the cryptic half-answers now, gorgeous. Besides, if we don't keep talking then my head is going to start drifting back into review mode and to be completely honest, I'm not quite ready to spend the next few hours recalling a collection of atrocities that were rendered on a couple of men—" Arik held up a hand, as if stopping himself, "No, fucking _boys_ —who didn't do a damn thing wrong except fall in love."

"Love is not always enough." Blaze smiled and reacquired the whiskey. He held it up, tilted it towards Arik in a salute, and took a shot directly from the bottle. He sucked through his teeth to dispel the burn, and then released a long breath. "Rarely is, in fact."

Arik shook his head, and crossed his arms over his chest. "I don't believe that. If you'd been left to your love, everything would have been fine. Love wasn't the issue; it was the assholes at the other end of your ropes. Love would have been more than enough if—"

"If, if, if." Blaze chuckled a low, unpleasant sound, the likes of which could have never been mistaken for mirth. "Maybe, someday, except, and but." He brought the bottle with him and flopped down on the couch. "Hate those words. They seem so fucking pointless."

"I don't know." Arik softened his expression and stepped closer to the couch. "I kind of like butt."

Blaze lifted an eyebrow. "Really?"

"And..." Arik pointed, ignoring the I-can't-believe-you-just-said-that look on Blaze's face, "'If' isn't just for looking back, you know. 'If I had done this,' bites a lot harder than, 'If I do this now.' It's not just for berating yourself over what's been, but also for offering yourself solutions and suggestions for what could be."

He rested a hand on each of Blaze's shoulders. " _If_ I had never loved him, then he would still be alive. Harsh thought. Now _that_ is a fucking pointless if. But _if_ I let myself love again, then it won't all have been for nothing. That's a good if, see? There is nothing pointless about that little two-lettered baby, at all."

The right-side corner of Blaze's lips twitched. "Look at you being all conversational and wise."

Arik leaned forward, using his weight to force Blaze back against the cushions of the couch. "Oh, I can be wise. I can be so fucking wise that...uh..." He twisted his lips in a feigned ponder, "So wise that wise-men come see me for wisely-spoken...uh...wise words."

Blaze's hands fell on Arik's wrists; Blaze looked up, and shook his head. "Wow. That was brutally unintelligible."

"Don't you use your multi-syllabic words on me when I'm trying to sound wise." Arik straddled Blaze's lap and grinned at the brow-lift he was offered for his efforts.

"And don't you try to seduce me when I'm trying to tell you that I'm next best thing to Frankenstein's monster."

Arik brushed his lips over Blaze's forehead, ear, and jaw, before resting them against Blaze's mouth. "You just travelled way, _way_ too far back in history to come up with a bad reference, love. I'd say you're so much more like the Walking Dead."

"Because..."

Arik growled and nipped at Blaze's lip. "Zombie!"

"You realize Frankenstein's monster was a zombie, right?"

"So not." Arik shook his head. "That is so not true."

"Dead person brought to life—"

"Reanimated," Arik insisted. "Not the same as not being able to die."

"Except, completely the same..."

"Are we actually going to argue about this now?" Arik pulled back and stared at Blaze in mock-disdain. "I'm just saying, I have friends on the Zombie Squad. So...you know...I can totally get a professional to call this complete lack of judgment and common-sense on your part if I need to." He grinned. "Or we could chase down distraction and do something much cooler."

"Why are you not running?" Blaze tightened his grip on Arik's forearms. "Why are you not horrified?"

"I am," Arik admitted. "But I'm not leaving you. No fucking way. This feels too strongly like it's going to be something. That it means something. I've waited too long for it to turn my back. Besides," he leaned closer and rested his chin against Blaze's forehead. "I'm sick to fuck of the idea of you hurting."

"This will probably not be healthy for either of us," Blaze warned, starting to stroke Arik's arms instead of merely holding them in place.

Arik snorted. "I'm pretty sure we just proved that you being with me is probably the most healthy thing you can do right now."

Blaze stopped rubbing to grip again. "And you can't be with me because you think you have to in order to protect me from myself."

The rod that seemed to jam itself up Arik's spine snapped him upright. He pinched Blaze's chin and yanked until Blaze's eyes were in line with his own. "Don't you say that. That's not what this is about."

"I know," Blaze said quietly. "I just really need to know that what you're feeling isn't some kind of protection thing. Or some weird ass attempt at trying to fix something you couldn't repair in your father. When I hear you say that you love me..." Blaze shook his head. "It doesn't make any sense. Why would you want to be with someone like me? Think about it, Arik." He stopped Arik when Arik huffed and tried to pull away. "No. _Think_ about it. You will get old. Have you stopped to wonder what you're going to tell people when you're sixty-five and I still look nineteen? Will we move from place to place? Chasing Visions? Spending your money? What do we do when it runs out? What do I do when you die? What—"

Arik stopped Blaze's questions with a kiss. He let his lips linger for a long moment, barely touching. He tasted Blaze's breath, felt the heat coming off of Blaze's body, and knew, without doubt, that none of what Blaze was saying mattered. "You don't choose who you fall in love with, Blaze. So it's too late to worry over the where and the what of tomorrow. All we can deal with is the how of today."

Blaze hummed, wrapped both arms around Arik's waist, and in a move that took Arik by surprise, chucked his hip, half stood, and flipped Arik on to the couch, face up.

"How do you fucking do that?" Arik sputtered.

"Zombie power," Blaze deadpanned.

Arik laughed, stretched out his arms to grab and then pull Blaze against him. "You know, this could have been way worse than it is." He waited for Blaze to look at him and frown in confusion. "I mean, you could have told me that you sparkle."

Blaze gasped dramatically. "Hell, no! There are just some things a man shouldn't have to live with."

"Mm hmm." Arik nodded. He met Blaze's lips with a light kiss, palms sliding down Blaze's back to cup Blaze's ass. "And this isn't one of them."

* * * *

Hours.

Probably not.

Seemed like hours. Bodies and sweat, lips and touch. Then there'd been whiskey. Lots of silence and internal musing. But it had been nice. Strangely exhausting, though.

Hence the sleeping.

Not sleeping. Or was he? He might be. That was good. Sleeping was good.

Hey, Arik...

Quiet. Sleeping time.

Are you watching?

A shock raced up Arik's spine that made his whole body tremble. No. Not during dreaming. That wasn't fair. That's not how it worked.

Fucker's spot on with the prompts, isn't he? "Are you watching," indeed. Did you watch, Arik? Did you?

Had to. Blaze.

In his head, a voice that had to be Blaze's began to chatter along with his father's, a volley of description, met with calculation; a Round Robin of pain.

They cut out his eyes—Removed his sight, and such a clever concept, wasn't it, Arik? They took his Vision from him, see?—They stripped him—Bared his body to the elements and the eyes of his accusers—Raped him—Forced him to relive his sins in the most vile form of them—Cut off his...

"My God," Arik whispered, sucking the words back as quickly as he'd released him. As if he could pull them back to his tongue and deny their presence. After all, there was no point in calling to a god that didn't exist. God was dead. No. God had never existed in the first place. On that suspicion, Arik had been right all along. There was only the bastards. The heathens. The worst kind of sinners—those who took pleasure in reveling in the very sins they rebuked. Hypocrites. Monsters.

Are you ready?

He swore, loudly in his head, though nothing more than a whimper against his pillow. He chased away visions of horrifying substance: skin and blood, tearing and sawing, the past blending with the present, human shapes melting into braying livestock; clocks revolving, and counters adding up numbers that culminated at three-hundred and seventy-one. Tears. Loneliness.

"No," Arik mumbled. No more thinking. No more angst. The last thing he wanted to do was spend the rest of his life revisiting this world in his dreams. It was bad enough that the memories walked in Blaze's head. Those fuckers didn't get to do this to them. This was where it stopped. He was there to help Blaze, to make Blaze forget. He refused to spend the next forty years, or however long the universe decided to let him continue breathing, with all this review—

Arik cut off his own thoughts when his mind offered up the word. A light bulb went off in the deep, dark recesses of consciousness, and within seconds that one spot of light had become a billboard of blinking, revolving, flashing brilliance. Reviewing. Of course he was reviewing. Of fucking course he was! That's how this shit played out. Watch, review, record. Watch to see the issue, review to find out where the ends of the tethers were, and then record it all, bunch those tethers up in his fist and set them aside, so that they would be available when he _needed them_. To _resolve_ something. To _fix_ something. To _benefit_ from something.

His mind went into the mode _because something was about to happen,_ and he was going to need the information _to deal with it_.

The realization had Arik's breath picking up speeds that were not comfortable, and his heart pounded in time to that discomfort. But the flush drawing itself on to Arik's face was brought there by an emotion that put panic to shame—hope. There was a way out. There was a goddamn and halle-freaking-lujah way to fix this mess. He just needed to get his head in order, put the pieces together, and figure out what the fuck it all meant.

You can do this, Arik. I know you can.

He sat up in bed so quickly and with such a loud gasp that Blaze almost fell out of bed trying to react to the movement.

"Jesus Christ on a cracker," Blaze hissed. "What's wrong?"

Arik didn't even try to stop his words. His body shook so hard that his teeth rattled. "We can get out."

"Of here? Like now?" Blaze rubbed his forehead and stared at Arik as if the previous hours just might have stolen sanity. "Why?"

"There's a way out," Arik said, rephrasing in a desperate attempt for clarity. "There's a way out of the curse. There's a way to save you."

* * * *

# Chapter 17

Blaze

The phone had started vibrating on the nightstand when Blaze and Arik had been on the bed, and the thing was still buzzing up a storm now that they were on the floor. The sound was getting on Blaze's nerves, though, thank the small gods, it seemed Arik had yet to hear it.

"Oooh fuck...Blaze..." Arik buried his face in a discarded pillow, reaching back and slapping a hand on Blaze's sweaty thigh.

"Like that?" Blaze, behind Arik and inside him, grabbed Arik's hips and slammed home at tempo. Arik wailed into the pillow, stroking himself with a free hand, and the damned phone would not _stop._

Growling and determined to keep Arik out of his mind and reality, Blaze kept the rhythm until Arik's body was curling in, tensing up, ready to explode. Blaze pulled out, knelt, and buried his tongue in Arik's hole.

"Ooohchristshitfuck!" Arik's hands splayed on the rug, and he shoved himself against Blaze. "Oh God, suck me...Blaze...please su—ooooh..."

Blaze licked a line up the underside of Arik's cock, bent, as it was, backward between Arik's legs and toward Blaze. He rubbed the pad of a slippery thumb just beneath the head and sank three fingers into Arik's rolling body. Arik covered his head with his hands, pulling at his hair while his breath ricocheted off the hotel room walls, and he grunt-groan-intoned with every exhale.

When Arik was whimpering and the phone was in danger of falling off the table, Blaze rolled Arik onto his back. With the kiss, they each tried to devour the other, and Blaze sank again into Arik's willing body. Arik's eyelashes fluttered, and he bit-kissed Blaze's shoulder, clinging to Blaze all the while.

_"Iubire,_ " Blaze whispered, and Arik's moan was full-throated.

"More," Arik gasped. "More...oh...God..."

Blaze knew Arik didn't solely mean Blaze's steady drive into his body. " _Te iubesc mai mult decât luna iubește stelele."_ Blaze meant to keep going, but Arik stole the words with a claiming kiss, and Blaze shifted weight so he could stroke Arik outside and within.

Arik's fingers carved canals into Blaze's arm and back, his eyes screwed shut, and his jaw tightened. "Fuck...God...oh God..." A tremor shook him from head to toe.

"Yes... _Iubire..._ love..."

Arik keened a cry behind pressed lips, and his back arched. His hand covered Blaze's, sped up the pace Blaze had on Arik's cock, and Blaze used every ounce of concentration to maintain that beat inside of Arik. "C...C...Ohmyfucking..."

"Yes," Blaze hissed. "Come on, baby. Come for me."

Arik's eyes flew wide open, and Blaze, at that precise instant, made sure their bare skin touched at every conceivable point. The spark pulsed, rose, and crackled across both their bodies, its energy screeching as Arik began to spill over Blaze's fist and across Arik's belly, and Blaze dove into the sensation like a diver into deep waters.

"Inside me," Arik whispered from somewhere, next to him, under him, around him, Arik was everywhere, and Blaze was part of Arik part of Blaze. "C'mon...inside me..."

The drunk-sleepy-soft insistence and willful clamp of Arik's body brought Blaze's orgasm to the fore, and he cried out against Arik's throat and then lips, as Arik turned to kiss Blaze through his climax. He spent himself into latex, not Arik, directly, but the spark that spun around the base of Blaze's cock was more than enough tingling to do Blaze. When he thought of fucking Arik bare, his spine shook in a serpentine shiver.

Arik sighed, contentedly, and he used Blaze's shoulder for leverage to sit up, grab the phone, and chuck it in the general direction of the living area.

"That's an expensive afterglow habit, you have there," Blaze murmured, holding Arik when Arik pressed close.

"I aimed for a rug." Arik raked fingers through Blaze's wet curls. "What did you say this time?"

"I love you more than a fat kid loves cake."

Arik punched Blaze's chest. "You did not!"

"Ow."

"Tell me you didn't."

"I'll tell you anything you like," Blaze said, laughing and wrestling Arik's arms to the floor. He was softening but still inside Arik, and he forced a gasp from Arik's lips when he lunged forward with his hips.

"You didn't," Arik whispered. "I heard 'moon.'"

"You're getting good."

"In just a week. Imagine what I'll be like in a year."

Blaze hummed and hugged his lover. "I'll never have a secret again. Intolerable. "The landline in the room began to trill. "And speaking of," Blaze grumbled, rolling when Arik shoved Blaze off him.

"Hello?" Arik answered, his gaze following Blaze as Blaze stood and headed for the bathroom. Blaze disposed of the condom—an amazing invention, latex—and turned on the sink. Blaze splashed his face, wiped it with a towel, and stared at his reflection. Forever young. Unchanging.

"There's a way to save you."

They didn't talk about it, much, after the finger-whiskey-love-discovery fest. If Blaze brought it up, in the middle of the night when he knew Arik was only dozing and he, himself, was far from sleep, then Arik would only say they'd figure it out. They'd solve this riddle, this eternal age difference, and it would be all right. Arik's insistence that they'd be fine so long as they had one another had become Blaze's reality. If it was good enough for Arik to trust, then it was more than enough for Blaze.

But still...Blaze scratched at his stubble. He pulled down an eyelid. He bit his lip. How could he be so real and yet so counter to nature? And how in the hell was he ever going to be the right man for—

Arik materialized behind Blaze and wrapped Blaze in his arms. "That was Maria."

"Who?"

"My assistant."

"Ah. Explains the persistence."

"She can be royally annoying when she wants." Arik sighed and nosed Blaze's hair. "The meeting, the one I was originally here for? It's been moved up."

"Oh." It suddenly seemed that Blaze was underwater. "When is it?"

"This afternoon. Two o'clock."

"What time is it, now?"

"Ten." Arik chuckled. "We start early."

"Or finish late, depending on perspective." Blaze turned, and he'd taken a breath to ask Arik about a shower, about food, about one last visit to the beach, but Arik put a hand over Blaze's mouth.

"I'll do the meeting. We'll finish out these last few days, and we," Arik's eyebrows went up for emphasis, "will both go home."

Blaze smelled campfire and cedars and cooking meat. The bone clasp his grandmamere used in the twist of her long, silver hair had been shaped like a fish. He clasped Arik's wrist and kissed the inside of it, over the pulse. "I've not had a home in a long time."

"I know." Arik hesitated. "Did you ever get to stay with one of your...?"

"A few times. No longer than a year, at most." And Blaze didn't tell Arik that one of those times had been spent in a twisted man's cellar in a cage. Another had been as a butler for a household with children, all of whom were now dead. And another had seen him a pet boy, of sorts, for a woman who was possibly even more lost and lonely than Blaze, and her son, destined for a life of great wealth, was determined for the family to sail on the maiden voyage of a ship called the _Titanic._

It was very cold at the bottom of the ocean.

"Blaze?"

"Hm?"

"You're shivering."

"I am?" Blaze glanced down at himself, but Arik cupped the back of his head. Blaze's instinct was to tense and resist, but he fought it. He let Arik hold him, cradle him to a warm, breathing, intensely alive chest. Blaze drank Arik's scent, ran his hands over Arik's back and ass, and kissed Arik's throat. The pulse there was ticking with more force. "I'll thaw out in the shower. Get it started?"

"Sure." And Arik didn't ask if Blaze was okay, because he just didn't do that. Arik let Blaze brood and mull, and Blaze let Arik have entire conversations alone inside Arik's head. At least until the chats seemed about to tear Arik asunder, in which case, Blaze intervened.

And, Blaze supposed as he walked out of the bathroom to fetch the glass of water on the nightstand, Arik would interrupt Blaze when Arik thought Blaze had been wandering the highways of his past for too long. They would go swimming, again. They'd watch another movie. They'd go for another round of shopping, suit buying, decadent spending. Go out drinking and to dinner and maybe dancing. Blaze loved to dance. He loved to _move._ And Arik, as it turned out, did too. One night they'd found a music channel on the TV in their room, and they'd acted like fools, spinning and waltzing and grinding. They'd climbed over chairs and sofas. They'd fussed over who got to lead, and they'd tumbled into a heap, sipping on rum and eating cheese off a silver tray.

A dream...Arik was a sweet, waking dream, and Blaze was daring to think he might not have to wake. He paused on the far side of the trashed bed, and he could see Arik standing barefoot on the bathroom tile. Arik was facing away, had his arms crossed over his chest, and he was swaying just slightly while the water warmed and steam began to roll. Blaze made a fist, his palms itching for a pencil to sketch the sweeping line of Arik's torso, the muscular meat of Arik's ass, the swell of defined thighs, and the shape of Arik's knees. He'd not drawn in some years, not with any intent, but now he could. Now he had a subject. Now he might dare have funds by proxy to buy supplies, sit in sunlight, and sketch page upon page of Arik.

Blaze turned to the table, brushing aside empty wrappers and tissues, and he found a pad with the Fireward logo and a pen to match. The top sheet was full of Arik's careful handwriting; notes, no doubt from the phone call he'd taken about the meeting he'd have. Blaze could hardly take his eyes off Arik, who was leaning to test the water, but a single word among many slowed the ticking of the antique clock by the bedside. Cotton filled Blaze's ears and encased his tongue and throat. He burned hot and froze solid, and he dropped the pen.

Above the word were others...

Recovering from surgery. Liquidating assets. Antiques. Meet at two, private estate. Countryside. Off exit 243B—NEED ADDRESS.

And below the word were more...

Auction. Antiques. Mostly BOOKS? Largest priv. collection of East. Euro History in region. Inherited from sis. Memories. Doesn't want...why not?

Blaze's heart grew two sizes too big reading Arik's commentary, and, evermore miraculously, it continued to beat while Blaze slowly paced around the footboard, stepped across the bathroom threshold, and came to a standstill on the rug in front of the glass shower.

Arik turned, and his smile vanished. He threw open the glass shower door. "What's wrong?" he asked, dripping and shoving his hair out of his eyes.

Blaze turned the paper around and pointed in the middle of the page. "What is this?" he asked, and he even remembered to do it in English, though the accent rocked Arik's shoulders in a shiver. Or maybe something else chilled the man. Destiny. Fate.

The Vision Quest.

"That's the last name of the man I'm meeting today. I can never remember it, and I had it wrong first, see there? And then I asked Maria to spell it for me."

Blaze flipped the paper to see where Arik had written, S-A-P-U and had scribbled over it. "Say it for me?"

"I'm not sure I—"

"Arik."

"What?" Arik rubbed his arms over the fresh crop of goosebumps. "I can't pronounce it right! It's like Sa...pew...Sapull?"

_"Ţapul._ "

"Yeah! That's..." Arik swallowed. "Blaze?" he whispered. "What...why do I feel..." He put a hand to his head. "Dizzy. Fuck I'm dizzy."

"Me, too." Blaze fought a bout of nausea, and he sat down right where he was, ass meeting rug and legs folding.

"Blaze you are freaking me the hell—"

"Goat."

Rings of white appeared around the color of Arik's eyes. "What?"

_"Ţapul..._ Arik...it means goat. In..."

"Romanian." Arik sank down next to Blaze.

The water hissed, moments passed, and when Blaze shut his eyes, he saw the goat from the Mini Gold Insanity board, straw between its teeth, hat askew, and lips curling into a smirk. " _Hey there, studs,_ " it said. " _You ain't never seen the last 'a me."_

Suddenly Blaze began to laugh. It bubbled up and out of nowhere, and, after a moment, Arik joined in with tentative chuckles that turned into manic giggles.

"Oh...Oh God..." Blaze gasped. "And _history?_ "

"I know! European fucking...Oh my God." Arik wheezed, and Blaze put an arm around him. They caught hold of one another, hanging on for dear life.

"Well, good thing we bought you those suits, I guess." Arik wiped his eyes, and they were shining when he looked at Blaze.

"Yeah?" Blaze asked, already knowing what Arik would say but wanting him to say it anyway.

"Yeah. 'Cause if you think for a second that I'm going to meet Mr. Goat without a cursed Romanian witch in my pocket, you are out of your three-century-year-old mind."

"Three-and a _half._ " For the life of him, Blaze could not wipe the stupid grin off his face. "You know, I know a guy who fits that description."

"Yeah? Is he hot?"

"Flaming."

"Is he available?"

"Only for a very private party."

"Well then." Arik got up and dragged Blaze with him and into the shower after him. "You better properly introduce me. We've got a date with a book-loving goat man."

"Mm. Can do."

Blaze tossed the notepad onto the counter, slammed the shower door, and set about the business of reigniting intimate acquaintance.

* * * *

# Chapter 18

Arik

It had only taken the concierge thirty minutes to arrange for the speedboat that they'd been promised would get Arik and Blaze back to the mainland in half the time as the ferry. They'd even been classy enough not to use the phrase "for the low-low price of."

The weather had taken a turn to the ugly. Not stormy—Arik offered up a silent thanks to whichever cranky little fucker ruled the sea and the sky—but dark. Like the sun had just given up and decided to call it a day.

The sea reflected the sky above: gloomy, dark, grumpy. They felt the waves more than they saw them, but they'd been warned of that in advance. One didn't take to crossing the water with a speedboat if one was looking for a comfortable ride. But if they were going to make the meeting at two...

The boat lurched, spent what felt like way too long suspended in the air, then slammed back on to the surface of the water. Arik's stomach jolted in time to the movement.

He'd almost suggested that they cancel. When he'd seen the look flicker through Blaze's eyes—the one that suggested fear that Blaze wouldn't speak of, pain Blaze didn't want Arik to dwell on, and the weight of things too heavy being resettled on Blaze's shoulders—Arik had wanted to say forget it. But it had only taken that single thought for Arik to know it would be wrong.

One didn't need a flashing sign to understand that there was a direction to their story. Short of someone coming up to them on the streets and swinging a live goat directly at their heads, the Universe couldn't make it much more obvious. Today, anyway. Yesterday, Arik hadn't been able to make heads or tails over the liquefying farm animals in his visions. Funny, really, how it had taken so long. But there had been paths to follow and forks in the road to make decisions on, Arik guessed. Perhaps, he was just not a quick man.

Blaze lifted his gaze from where he'd been studying the waves, and caught Arik watching him. He smiled. And Arik's chest bloomed with emotion that was sweeter than candy, and warmer than summer sunlight. They'd made the right choices: no blood, no vomiting. Blaze was whole and perfect, and though Blaze's line of sight had found the dark water yet again, Blaze appeared to be more pensive than upset.

What do you see, Arik wanted to ask, when you study the depths of the water? What memories does the sea dredge up for you? He kept his tongue still, though. It wasn't the time to drag out those kinds of stories. One day when it was all over, he'd ask Blaze to tell him some of it. Not all of it. But some. Maybe.

Focus.

The command came on the breeze, a whisper for Arik's mind alone, but it didn't come with the shudder that came with the demand to watch. Fear was gone. Purpose was Arik's new master.

In all his life, Arik had done few things he could say he was proud of. He'd been pleased when he'd graduated. He'd been satisfied the day he'd signed the papers to disperse the mortgage on his property and claim it truly and completely as his own. Those kinds of emotions weren't pride, however. Saving Blaze, and Arik no longer had any doubts as to that being his goal, was going to be the most fulfilling moment of his life. And even if the payment for cleansing Blaze's soul was Arik's own short walk off a tall bridge, Arik was going to do it. Three and half centuries of pain were going to end, no matter what the cost.

He watched Blaze move, breathe, shiver against the cooler air...as long as it didn't cost him Blaze. That was the only reparation Arik wasn't willing to offer.

He sent out a prayer—not up, that ridiculous insistence he'd been force-fed that something existed above them had been vanquished, and replaced with the knowledge of a very tangible, very real presence all around them—and he promised, and he swore, and he begged in silence. Because they did listen, those unnamable thems. Something, somewhere, had brought Arik and Blaze together, and somehow, someway, it had led them to this moment.

_I was exhausted..._ Arik closed his eyes and tilted his chin to the sky. _Back in the city, that first time we met. The hotel room had been reserved for weeks. There was no reason for the hotel clerk not to find my name in the file._ Time had moved so slowly, he'd been frustrated by the wait. Blaze had been standing at his own check-in point—gorgeous, confident, smiling. It had taken Arik a while to notice him.

_Hence the delay..._ Arik breathed deep: sea life, brine, fresh air. Her birth sign had been Aries, that annoying twit of a hotel clerk. The Ram. She'd worn a silver pendant around her neck and when she'd leaned forward to tap the keys, the ram had swung freely.

See me, Arik. Let's get to know each other.

Then coffee: black, hot, perfectly sweetened coffee. _Y'all come back now..._ If Arik had been forced to draw the events at the mini golf course, he'd have put those words in a balloon over the perfectly-repositioned, suddenly-whole, grinning-bastard goat's head. Horrified, mortified, putrefied, and liquefied. Then just as quickly, grinning and gloating, and all put back together again.

Have you noticed me yet? Are you catching on, Arik?

The newscast of barreled, tortured bodies left to rot in their own juices, the tattoo, and the disintegration of a seemingly normal man into a puddle of gore that no one else had noticed washing over their pristine deck shoes and battered sneakers. What else, maybe? How many other little bits of information had slipped past him along the way? While he'd been telling himself to avert his eyes?

Arik breathed a long, slow sigh, attempting to still the clench of panic that squeezed his guts. He hadn't missed anything. He couldn't have. The Universe wouldn't let him. He opened his eyes and watched the shore transform from suggestion to clarity.

* * * *

The cab was warm, unseen vents huffing heated air, no doubt the benefit of the experienced eye of the driver who'd caught both their shivers as Arik and Blaze sat in the back. Neither man spoke, but Arik didn't blame either of them for that. They were both focused on their own worlds at that moment—the awareness that was sparked in his own head seemed like a visible energy. He almost hated to blink, lest that portion of a second be the one he needed, and the process forced him to miss whatever was being led his way.

Blaze's thoughts were undefinable, unspoken as they were. Was there fear? As Blaze stood at the brink and peeked over the edge? Fear of what was about to take place? Perhaps, even, fear for what lay ahead. For three hundred plus years Blaze had known immortality. Was it terrifying to think that it might be gone? Even with the pain of living it? Change was, after all, still change. Or was Blaze, instead, more terrified of giving in to the hope? Of having to live with the potential of it all being a fool's calling. Got you, Blaze...just kidding...but you should have known better than to believe there was a way out...

Arik's eyes caught the Starbucks sign, and he fought the surge that made him want to tap the driver's shoulder and pull over. There was no time. Best not to leave waiting the man who might be instrumental to their quest.

But damn. He sure could go for a coffee. Just the thought of pulling off the plastic lid and staring into the comforting dark liquid was almost enough to make Arik reconsider. Arik shivered, smiled at the concerned flash of Blaze's gaze, and shifted in his seat. Stupid, really. He'd never had much of a craving for coffee before. It must have been the water—all that dark, swirling water they'd stared at while they crossed the channel. It must have triggered some ridiculous craving. Not even for the taste of the beverage, really. Just to see it. To stare at it. Feel the heat of it on his face.

Probably just a comfort thing.

The radio was low, playing more for the driver than for either him or Blaze. They preferred a stronger beat, be it the lively strings that Blaze insisted were the basis of "real" music, or the rock that Arik liked to move to. Bad eighties hair bands, Blaze would say. And Arik never had the heart to tell him most of it was from the nineties. Time was fluid.

_All you have are the memories you'll change..._ the singer's voice was soft, haunting... _In the dark. In the dark._

Arik closed his eyes and drifted. Blaze's hand was warm and heavy in his own. Small hand. Perfect fit. _Maybe you were always drowning..._ and still the singer droned... _And you just now realized that you were_.

"Gentlemen?" The driver's voice startled Arik's eyes open. It was only then that he realised he'd been sinking into sleep. The thought made him unreasonably angry.

"I believe this is the spot? But I'm not sure..."

Arik's head swivelled toward the home that both the driver and Blaze were already staring at.

"Duh duh duh dun," Arik sang under his breath, and Blaze answered with the requisite two finger snaps. Blaze turned to grin and Arik offered one back.

The house wasn't set as far back off the road as Arik would expect of such a large structure. It made a person wonder if the house had existed before the road itself had. It did, however, have the rod iron gates, butted up against mausoleum-esque pillars that continued absolutely nowhere—a concept Arik never could figure out. He'd often wanted to ask the owners of such things if they were aware that people could merely walk around them, if they understood that the only things they were actually keeping out were cars.

The house was huge, raw, jagged flagstone, with a left-wing arch that had to lead to parking, a right-wing with half a dozen grid-style windows, and a mid-section, most likely the main living area of the house, with nothing more than a double-wide door set directly center. Each wing had its own roof line, simple triangles, and each seemed, from Arik's current vantage point, to be as tall as cathedrals. He scanned the front of the property, seeking out the nesting ravens, crouching spider-beasts, or were-dogs that had to be guarding it.

"You know," Arik tilted his head and turned the smile at the driver. "For some reason? I'm pretty damn sure this is the right place."

He dug out his phone to check the time, tsk'ing at the device when it lit. He held it up when Blaze frowned at him. "Cracked the fucking screen."

"That tends to happen when you launch electronics across hotel rooms," Blaze said, lifting an eyebrow.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Arik held out a hand, directing Blaze to the door of the cab. "Consequences are a bitch, aren't they?"

* * * *

_I love you_ , Arik mouthed at Blaze, as the double-wide oak doors found center, and cut the two of them off from one another. They'd both been led toward the back of the house, through a grand, albeit dusty hallway. But when their guide had lifted a fist to rap on the door of what Arik had coined as "the Library" the moment he saw it—a title he heard spoken in a dark, creepy tone, complete with ominous background music—the man had directed Blaze to a chair that looked far too ancient to be comfortable, and said, "Your assistant may wait out here."

It had been a statement that had prompted a round of trying to communicate with each other through eye-speak, Blaze's expression one of comfort over concern, and Arik doing his best to exude confidence.

For a single second Arik closed his eyes, still facing the doors, and took a breath. _This is what we're here for. This is the right path. I've got this._

He lifted his chin, opened his eyes, and turned to face the room. A fire had been set in the hearth, but it did nothing to dispel the dampness of the room. A man stood beside a desk that appeared heavy enough to require an entire moving team to budge it; Mr. Ţapul, Arik had to assume. He'd been expecting ancient, dried-up, and frail, imagination adding inches-long whiskers to further the goat persona. Instead, Arik found himself mildly surprised by the attractive, dark-haired, olive-skinned, somewhere-on-either-side-of-fifty man who waited for him.

Arik stepped forward, years of experience settling the mandatory statements and questions of his trade in place, opened his mouth to speak, and startled both of them with, "Who are you?"

"I'm..." Ţapul frowned, cocked his head to one side. "I am the man you are here to try and talk me out of my request to liquidate my investments into cash, I believe."

Silence settled in the wake of the man's reply. Arik's gaze trailed over the room: books, by the thousands, lining shelves and piled on corners, resting under glass, spread open and begging to be read.

"And you," Ţapul said when the silence got too heavy, "are the man that once his speech is exhausted and he realises the futility of his attempts, will give me the papers I need to sign and start the process to—"

Arik snorted, and lifted his eyes to catch and hold Ţapul's questioning gaze. "I could care fuck about your request. You want your money, you can have it. For that matter, you tell me what I need to know and I'll fly back to the office and FedEx you the goddamn check myself."

"I'm not sure I understand?" Ţapul leaned back against his desk and crossed his arms over his chest in a decidedly defensive gesture.

He probably thinks I'm insane.

"You are," something seemed to whisper back.

"Ţapul," Arik prompted. "Romanian, yes? Means goat, if I've been advised correctly." He paused, chuckling dryly. "And I have been."

The age in Ţapul's face became more apparent as his frown deepened. "And?"

"Also a historian, European to be specific. I would have to assume that means you know quite a bit about the Roma."

Distaste darkened Ţapul's eyes and twisted his lips. "Are you asking me if I'm familiar with Gypsy fairy-tales, young man? Because I have a Romanian background? Should I ask you if can fill me in on the mating dance of the Big Foot? As you are so very obviously American. Perhaps even which rifle would be the best to use. And why you'll still be holding said rifle in your cold, clenched fingers after your death? Have a conversation on hamburgers and super-sized sodas? Or should we drop the stereotyping and get back to busi—"

Arik held up his right hand, palm out. "Look, I get the 'we don't talk about this shit' shit. And if that's what your game is, this whole 'you're an outsider and I'm going to pretend I don't know what you're talking about,' then just let me reassure you on something right now: I have fucking need. And I know you're the person who can help me with this need. So, please, if I can just give you some background, I'm sure you'll—"

"Get yourself into some trouble with a gypsy did you?" The sarcasm that dripped off Ţapul's tongue would have been potent enough to poison an entire family at one sitting. "Fancy yourself to be cursed, do you?"

"No." Arik made his voice as cold as his stare. "I do not."

"Writing a novel, then? Do you figure—"

"I have seen a disembodied limb find its source and reattach," Arik said, his bold tone belying the clenching in his belly. He stepped forward yet again. "I have watched dead blood, black blood, drip from the holes of a vital young man. My heart has broken while I've watched him writhe with internal turmoil that no being should ever know."

A flicker of interest sparked in Ţapul's eyes. It was an ember that fueled Arik's bravery. "And if you're asking yourself 'Why me?' then let me fill you in on a little secret. I've known your name since before I knew what it meant. I've seen your face in my dreams." An exaggeration, a lie, really. Arik didn't care. Ţapul hadn't stopped him from talking. That meant something. If nothing else, it meant Arik could continue. "What I'm telling you is that I'm supposed to be here, and you're supposed to help me, and lest you end up on the wrong side of your own damn horror-story ending, you're going to damn well help me for no other reason than something out there is insisting that you must."

Arik paused, gauging reaction. "I don't need to tell you what kind of consequences you might end up facing if you piss off these forces."

Ţapul smiled the tiniest of smiles and lifted an eyebrow. "Did you just threaten to curse me?"

Arik lowered his eyes and shook his head. "No, sir." He shrugged. "I won't have to."

Ţapul laughed out loud, and shifted his weight to perch on the corner of the desk. "You're adorable." He lifted a hand, twirled it. "Crazy. But adorable."

"And you're gorgeous." Arik smiled. "Frustrating. But gorgeous. And not the only Romanian I've thought those words about. Must be a cultural thing."

"And this is the woman who is causing you grief?"

Arik snorted. "Man. But he causes me no grief. That emotion is all for him, unfortunately."

"I see."

"You don't." Arik turned back to the door. "But you will."

He tugged the doors apart, and Blaze all but tumbled into the room. Arik laughed, Blaze grinned, and Arik heard Ţapul rise from his spot on the desk.

"Mr. Ţapul," Arik caught Blaze's hand, and pulled him closer. "This is Blaze. Blaze, meet our Goat Man."

* * * *

# Chapter 19

Blaze

"And then we got the phone call and came here," Arik finished. He sat in an overstuffed armchair covered in gold fabric and red peonies. One leg was crossed over the other at the knee, and one foot was bouncing to a manic beat. "That's it. That's the entire story."

Mister Ţapul—Lucas, please call him Lucas, he'd said—sat in a chair that matched Arik's at another corner of their triangular seating arrangement. His dark grey slacks were impeccably pressed, his shirt had been starched within an inch of its life, but his shirttails were out, and the cardigan he wore was well-loved and patched at the elbows. Blaze liked him. Blaze liked anybody who approached chaos with an air of curiosity and fearlessness. It was rare and beautiful and damned handy.

After Blaze had fallen into the room, Lucas had suggested they sit and perhaps crack open a bottle of bourbon he'd found squirreled away in his sister's special liquor cabinet. Marjorie Ţapul had always been an eccentric, and it was in her house, cluttered as it was with scrolls and knick knacks that ranged from stuffed bears to figurines of Saints to grotesque and politically-incorrect statues of lewd acts and the judgements of them, in which they sat. Lucas lived nearby in a townhome, or so he'd told them as they had gotten comfortable and had waited on Lucas' man to bring the drinks, and he was considering opening up Marjorie's house as a museum.

"An ode to the obscure," Lucas had said, laughing and thanking the handsome man who brought the bourbon. "She was a strange one, my sister. Was obsessed with religions, among other things, and the rituals that went along with them. But, I suppose, we're all afflicted with peculiarities. Some of us just have brands that are easier to hide."

"True," Arik had agreed. He'd been fidgeting and glancing at Blaze every time he thought Blaze wouldn't notice. Eventually Blaze had reached over and squeezed Arik's hand. Lucas had watched, a shadow darkening his face, though Blaze was almost positive it had nothing to do with homophobia and everything to do with regret.

"So," Lucas had prompted. "Tell me everything."

Blaze had been about to jump in and offer up an intricate lie that was composed of enough truth to make it believable. He had some skill in that area, after all, but Arik had shocked the hell out of Blaze and gone for broke. Arik had started with his father jumping off a bridge and had ended with their journey from the Fireward to the estate. Blaze had sank further and further into one half of a plush loveseat with gilded edging and dandelions dancing on the cushions, and he'd listened to Arik's frank, calm, but impassioned recounting of their lives together so far. Hearing it all put Blaze into a kind of fugue state. His lips went a little numb, and his extremities tingled like he was touching Arik when he wasn't. Blaze didn't mind; the reminder of their connection, real or not, was pleasant. It made him wonder if it'd be possible one day to have with Arik what he'd had with Doru; a constant link. To wake and walk and work knowing what your other half was doing, feeling, almost thinking...Blaze couldn't contemplate the possibility too long. He would start to cry, here in this grieving man's inherited home, and he might not stop for a full cycle of the earth around the sun.

Arik had told their story with a financier's account of detail, and he'd addressed the floor and the fireplace, mostly, but Blaze had watched Lucas. The Goat Man's eyes had widened once or twice, and he'd drained his glass dry by the end, but there was never once a glimmer of derision or damnation. Just interest.

Blaze approved, both of Lucas and of Arik's choice to spill all their guts, and a painful burbling began again in Blaze's insides. It had started in the shower, after they'd finished and were washing up. At first, Blaze thought he was getting sick or ill and was about to start bleeding out, but nothing like that had happened.

In the car, when the twisting, turning, knotty sensation had happened again, Blaze had huddled closer to Arik, breathed, and thought the feeling was...vaguely familiar. Distant, like one might remember old, old physical pain. With agony, Blaze knew, you remembered the sight of the knife piercing your skin. You remembered the well of blood, the horror that you really were so much meat and fragile bone, and the knowledge that such vulnerability would, most certainly, kill you. The pain itself was a sidelined ghost. It had happened, but its particulars were lost in the nightmare of your life draining out of your body long before it was time.

And now, with the silence looming in the library and the fire crackling and the wind blowing branches to rat-tat-tat against the tall windows, Blaze felt the churning in his guts a third time. Or maybe it was the fourth. Or maybe...it'd been there ever since he'd seen a man with dark hair and kind eyes in his Vision dreams.

Hope. Blaze was pretty sure what he was experiencing was desire for things to get better and the hope that maybe, just maybe, they could. Hope was a badger trying to chew its way out of Blaze's innards, and Blaze was happy to let the little fucker do what it wished.

"Huh." Lucas went to take a drink, discovered only melting ice, and reached for the decanter the servant had left behind. "So you think I can solve your riddle and you're telling me that you," Lucas looked at Blaze over the rim of his glass. "Are over three-hundred-and-fifty years old?"

"We don't really expect you to believe it," Blaze said.

"Fuck that," Arik said. "I _do_ expect him to. He needs to."

"No, actually, I don't."

Both Arik and Blaze turned to Lucas. "I don't," Lucas repeated. "I don't need to believe it at all in order to think about it. That's like saying I have to believe in Santa Claus to research Saint Nicolaus. Or that I have to shake hands with Satan to study Dante's seven rings." Lucas shook his head. "It's a hell of a story, gentlemen, and for what my opinion is worth, I think it's as real as anything can be to the two of you."

"Want to see him cut his finger off?" Arik asked. "It's inspiring on the belief front."

"No, no," Lucas said. "I think I can do without that. Though I have seen a man brought back from the dead."

"Excuse me?" Arik asked.

Lucas nodded. "Mmhm, I was in a god-awful little shack two hours outside of Saint Petersburg. I was interviewing a woman who was, as best as my research could tell, the last of a line of witches descended from a cult that was one of the earliest records of groups that worshipped Lilith. Or, well, their version of that figure. Anyway, a man had died and his wife and son brought his body to the woman's house while I was there. She let me stay, saying that I wouldn't believe what my eyes would see, anyway, so there was no harm. She took the end bones of the wife's fingers and the pinky toes of the little boy and mixed them into some sort of vat. She poured the substance down the dead man's throat, and just after midnight, he sat straight up, wheezed, and asked for a dram of vodka."

"Sweet Jesus." Arik put his hands on either side of his head, as though worried his brains might explode out of his ears. Blaze drank.

"No, sweet witchcraft." Lucas looked at Blaze. "That woman sound like the sort who cursed you?"

"Similar."

"Could it have been the same woman?" Arik asked, and Blaze loved the man's ability to tie final straws together at their frayed ends.

"No," Blaze said.

"How do you know? You've survived all this time. Why not her?"

Blaze studied the amber color of the bourbon. "I know because she's dead."

"How do you—"

"You killed her, didn't you?" Lucas asked.

Arik's eyes went round and though he paled to the color of snow on the sides of city streets, he swallowed and waited for Blaze to answer.

"I never said I was a good man." Blaze couldn't make himself speak louder than a mumble.

"Tell me," Arik said.

Blaze watched the fire dance in the darkness of Arik's eyes. He died and was reborn and died again in the desire to manipulate fire as he'd been born to do. There'd been a time, so long ago, now, that Blaze could hardly remember it and never thought of it, because it was more painful a loss than even Doru, damned as he was by such a prideful admission, that he could have gazed at the flames' reflection in Arik's irises and seen their secrets. He would have known the way and could have led them both on the right path. He would have solved this riddle, this personal Quest, long ago. Which was, of course, why the witch had taken such a gift from him.

"My curse was that so long as her blood was upon this earth, so was I doomed to wander it." Iron bands wrapped around Blaze's chest, making it hard to breathe and harder to speak. "I would never do what she had done. I couldn't fathom it. But I kept tabs on the family lines. I could tell you the dates when each of them died out. None exist today.

"And when I learned that she still lived, some hundred years after I'd woken in a clearing soaked with the blood of my family, my lover, and my own veins, I...I had to see. She'd made it to the New World, and she'd carved a niche for herself by becoming the incarnation of evil spirits. I found a trail of terrifying stories. I found a camp of Natives. I found a path into the darkest part of the forest nearby, and I found her lair." Blaze paused to drink and to smile at the silent, flickering fire; his stolen best friend. "Everyone sleeps," he said. "Even a sorceress. Especially an underfed, old sorceress. And cold steel solves a great many problems."

For a while, only the wind spoke in scratches on the panes, but finally Arik said, "Good." He stood, he bent, he kissed Blaze's hair, and he said, "Good," again, before shakily turning toward Lucas. "Bathroom?"

"Out those doors, first hall on the left, first door on the right."

"Thank you." Arik kissed Blaze again and left.

"He's a good man," Lucas said, after a moment.

"He is." Blaze wondered if dying would be like this: an ache for what and who you loved, a rush like you were about to dive off a cliff with a parachute that may or may not open, and a deep, abiding melancholy that was finally awake and stirring in your bones because somewhere, somehow, you knew the end was nigh.

"Soft, maybe. But good," Lucas commented.

"Not soft." Blaze tore his gaze off the doorway. "Not like you mean. He's seen plenty. He just still feels it all."

"I see," Lucas said, though Blaze knew he really didn't. "So the family lines are all gone?"

"Yes."

"And yet..."

"I'm still cursed. I had noticed."

Lucas gave a startled, small laugh. "I'm sure. Have they ever found any evidence of strangeness in you? Of this curse?"

"They who?"

"Doctors and the ilk."

"Ah. No. There've been tests run. I've not always been able to avoid it. I bleed, some good Samaritan takes me somewhere, and they find nothing. My blood is normal. My organs function just fine." _It's my soul that's the problem; it's cursed._

"So you're stuck, then? In time but not place?"

"Forever young. Forever wandering."

"I'm sorry," Lucas said, quietly and horrified.

"Thank you."

"I think you know I can't help you."

"Oh?" Blaze said, because it was the most vague thing he could say.

Lucas waved his hands. "I could tell you a hundred stories of strange things I've seen. But if what you say is true, none of them would be a surprise to the likes of a person with your experience. I know history. There are dozens of books, here, that my sister had and that you could read, all about people and religions. I've got thousands more tomes at my home and access to even more online. But it's all...struggle and horror. And it's other peoples' struggles. Other peoples' horrors. It's not personal to you and what you're going through, any more than anything else is. History is nothing more than a series of right turns that take us straight back to the sins of our forefathers. I don't know if we ever...overcome them."

A flash tore through Blaze's mind—

SINS OF THE FATHER

—and he hissed, one hand flying to his temple. It was a Vision of sorts, though it was very, very rare for such imagery to hurt.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Blaze lied. "You were saying?"

Lucas's look was wary, but he sipped his drink and continued. "I love that you two came here, today. It's the first time I've felt alive in years. When your boyfriend marched in here, demanding answers..." Lucas chuckled. "It was like seeing myself from the outside in. But I don't think I can help you. I don't have any insight. I've had none of your kind of Vision while I've sat here, listening to your macabre and incredible story. I'm just an old man." He paused. "An old queen. Who went searching for answers in books because I couldn't figure out the greatest riddle of my life."

"Which was?"

The fire flickered low. "I didn't know why my parents chose to take out their disappointment in me on my sister. She was younger, beautiful and smart, but not as beautiful or as smart as the eldest gay son. For all the girls I didn't kiss, for the women I didn't marry, for the babies I didn't have, she got the punishment. She was fat. She was ugly. She was lazy. She wasn't going to amount to anything. Lucas was out exploring the world with Granddaddy's money, and what had she done to impress them, lately? She'd not see a cent of any of the family fortune unless she stopped smoking. Stopped drinking. Lost weight, got her nose fixed, and became the model citizen who finished college and got married and got knocked up like a good little girl.

"She left home when she was twenty, and she never looked back. She made a living out of collecting things. She found items that other people would treasure, and she charged a fee for her service. She had adventures that my parents' couldn't fathom, much less appreciate, and she was the only one who ever accepted me as I was. Now she's dead. And I'm alive. And what have I found? What have I learned? What do I know?" Lucas shook his head, maudlin in his cups. "Only that I'll need all my resources to pick up her journey where she left off. To keep finding things for people; to keep searching for answers.

"And, I suppose, I know one more thing. And it's why I know I don't think I can help you." Lucas leaned forward, forearms on his knees. He had eyes to match the bourbon.

"I've only seen fifty-nine years. It doesn't hold a candle to your supposed multitudes, but this much I know to be true, and it seems to be something you've forgotten or never learned: when you search for answers," Lucas said, with gravitas that made Blaze's ears ring, "you rarely, if ever, find them outside yourself."

A click resounded in Blaze's mind, as though the tumblers had turned on a combination lock that would open a safe. Blaze's breath froze, and a zing of current went through him—

Pain. He's in pain.

—and from somewhere in the bowels of the house, Arik started to scream.

Blaze was on his feet before he registered leaving his seat. He was running before he remembered how to untangle legs from feet from gait. He was tearing through hallways, past pictures and mirrors and sconces, before he understood that he was heading for the sound of his lover's terror like a bloodhound on the hunt. His breath rushed in his ears. His heart pounded in his chest. His blood flowed hot in his veins. And he knew without doubt that he would tear anything or anyone in half for Arik. He would stand between Arik and any foe, be it animal, metal, or human. With his immortality, he'd see Arik never harmed, never hurt, and always saved. If Blaze was torn into pieces, he would will consciousness into each of them, and he'd find a way to cover and to protect Arik. He'd save Arik from anything, boredom to bullets, and when he found the closed door through which Blaze could feel the thrum of Arik's fear, Blaze barreled into it. When it didn't give, he kicked it in, and the old door gave beneath the force.

The bathroom was large, with wide, dark crown moulding and matching cabinets. There was a claw tub set on a dais, and a glass shower that could fit six. A double vanity ran along the wall to Blaze's left, and there was an archway that lead into an adjoining chamber where, Blaze assumed, the toilet was. The floor was stone and marble with grey throw rugs, and huddled on one that had been scooted to the corner made by the end of the vanity and the wall, was Arik. He had his arms around his knees, his head bowed, and his fingers were locked together, hands shaking.

"Arik?" Blaze asked, but it did not inspire the reaction Blaze wanted. Arik put his hands to his ears and screamed again.

"Should I get some help?" Lucas asked, and Blaze took a second to see that both Lucas and the serving man were crowded into the hallway behind Blaze.

Blaze held up a hand, patting the air in a Don't Know, Please Hold, gesture, and Blaze crept closer to Arik.

Pain...so much pain...

_"Dragul meu..."_ Blaze tried, and Arik whimpered. Arik didn't look up, didn't stop shaking, and Blaze gave up caution. He walked over to Arik, sat down, and touched one of Arik's icy hands.

The bathroom drained of color and shimmered like a road meeting a line of torrential rain. Frost crackled across the floor, crept up the wood trim, and snaked across the windows. The light dimmed to a dull haze. Blaze's ears popped, and then they were filled with a continuous pulse, which Blaze quickly realized was a heartbeat. Arik's or his or the devil's, Blaze couldn't know.

"Arik?" Blaze asked, voice hushed. But when Arik looked up from his knees, Blaze saw it wasn't Arik at all. An old man with pure white eyes, who might be Arik if Arik had been in his seventies, gaped at Blaze.

_"Mul_!" Blaze gasped. "Spirit!"

The _mul's_ mouth moved, and from the direction of the door, Blaze heard a voice. It was a whisper, but spoken as though the person saying the words was bellowing, and the tones were diminished by injury and distance.

"WATCH."

Something smacked the side of the tub. Water gurgled. And while Blaze was fixated on the marble dais, a half-man-half-goat stepped through the toilet room archway. Blaze startled with a grunt, and he fell on his ass. He held on to the man who may or may not be Arik, refusing to let go, and Blaze watched the goatman step on cloven hooves into the main part of the bathroom. In one hand he held a Bible. In the other hand, he held a sickle, like the ones used to cut the wheat grass that protruded from the goat's too-wide mouth. Red eyes burned, caught fire, and melted down the goat's cheeks. Its sloping head went up in smoke, and the animal man began to thrash as though it held on to an electric fence. Words appeared in its white hide, above its nose: _păcatele phuri._

"Sins of the elders," Blaze whispered, and the goat bleated in an echoing roar before taking off at a dead run for the opposite wall. Its feet carved divots out of the stone and left trails of smoke behind, but when it reached the wall, it wasn't a wall any longer; it was a meadow. And at the edge of the meadow was a forest. And that forest was on fire. And in that inferno, Blaze knew the goat would be slaughtered.

When the voice spoke next, it came from above, angry and terrible: " _REVIEW."_

Something banged in the tub and the whole thing shook. The marble tile around it began to crack and crumble, bits of it flying at Blaze. Blaze put himself between the shrapnel and the huddled man, and from behind them, in the direction Blaze could not see, a woman said, "Hello, _Stea._ "

Blaze felt a dampness spreading between his thighs and understood, in the clinical detached way of someone not in their own body, not really, that he'd wet himself. He turned, though he was screaming at himself from across the room not to look, not to do it, oh God, please, _fuck all the gods...Mama, please...don't let them hurt me...no..._

The Machwaya wise woman witch was headless, just as Blaze had left her in that miserable den of bone and blood. She held her own head by the filthy hair and her other arm was wrapped around the naked, mutilated body of what had once been a boy with dark curls and a winning smile.

The witch's eyes gleamed. "I always loved your father."

Blaze's bowels were liquid, but he spat and cursed in the old tongue. The witch just laughed. "I always loved him, and he sold you like chattel to the highest bidder. Do no harm, you say. Only for the good, you say. You swore. _He broke your sacred oath!"_

The witch's roar sent a wave of nausea through Blaze and another trickle of wet warmth down his leg. He pitched forward and dry heaved onto the cold rock. Doru tried to break free, to come to him, but the witch pushed her hand between his ribs, and Doru jangled in death knells.

"You were the most powerful," said the witch. "The most beautiful. The strongest of will. Your father offered you to better his land, his people, and his pride. And I took you, and I'll take you again. Every day of eternity. I'm still with you, _Stea._ I always will be. But he..." She pinched Doru's nipple, and when he began to cry, the slash in his throat began to bleed. "Will never be yours to see...to feel...to taste..." The witch's tongue slithered out from between her lips, and as a never-ending rope, it wove through the air to lap at the blood at Doru's throat. She moaned, eyes rolling. "So sweet."

Blaze's mouth was full of sand, his mind full of ceaseless screaming, and when the voice came again, it was right at his left ear.

"RECORD."

It came from everywhere, and the water was brackish, murky, and so cold it stole life from all it touched. Its stench was retch-making, open sewer and death, and the water dripped from the high corners of the room. It began to pool from the spaces between the stones on the floor. It oozed from the walls, making the wood bulge and buckle, and it sloshed over the side of the tub.

Blaze was suddenly in the middle of the room. He was alone. Arik was gone. The man-thing that might have been Arik had left. Lucas and the house faded away as though they had never been. Darkness engulfed Blaze, left him naked and small and weeping.

"Grandmamere..." Blaze whimpered, hugging himself. "Where are you? Don't leave me, Grandma—"

The witch's head appeared next to his own, and he could not flinch away. He could not run. Her blades were at his throat, his belly, and his balls. They sliced, and he cried out, and the witch bit his neck.

"Go and see," the witch said, around a mouthful of skin and blood. "Go and see, pretty _Stea._ Go and see."

A light flickered to life over the tub of dark water, and Blaze didn't want to look. He didn't want to see. He cried and he cried, but his feet carried him forward. Each step sliced a piece off his body. First his toes. Then his fingers. Then the tip of his nose. He tried to stop each time something cut him. He tried to run. But there was only forward unless he wanted to return to the maws of the witch woman.

Blaze had to climb the steps to reach the tub, and they were endless. Up and up and up he went, and he kept saying a name—

"Arik! ARIK!"

—screaming it like he called to a particular god, but he didn't know this Arik, and Arik didn't know him. Didn't answer, didn't come, didn't stop it. There was only Doru, who appeared in parts and chunks and halves as Blaze climbed. There was only his father, dead and bleeding, his mother, fallen in a heap, his grandmamere, open-eyed and bloated, and even though it hurt, Blaze started to run—to flee up the stairs. If the only way out was to climb and head higher, then he would fly toward the blackened sky. He would scamper on nubs. He would crawl.

And so he did.

The side of the tub was hot, not cold, and when Blaze found it, he huddled against it. His skin smoked and burned, but that was all right. The silence ate at him in a way the witch's teeth and the blades and the cold could not, and Blaze longed for the cuts and the pain. He longed to feel, to be held, to hold. He needed to disappear, he needed not to be here, so he wadded what was left of himself into as tiny a ball as possible, and perhaps he slept. Perhaps he dreamed. Blaze wasn't sure; when he was aware of himself, he couldn't remember a thing.

But something drip...drip...dripped onto his spine, and that was real and that was awful. He ignored it, eyes squeezed shut, but finally he couldn't help it anymore. Blaze opened his eyes and saw he knelt in water that wasn't water at all, but blood. Black, congealed blood that had no right to roil like it did. The dais around the tub was coated, runnels dribbling over the edges, and Blaze called out. He didn't want to touch the stuff. He didn't want it near him. Around him. In him.

"...out. Let him get it out!"

"It's killing him!"

Blaze wiped his face and stood, his bare ass on the edge of a warm structure, and he'd forgotten again. He didn't remember getting here, or why he was here in the first place. But when he brushed the carved, stone well behind him, he remembered Doru's kisses like a jolt down his spine. He remembered the witch, death, pain, and a walk that had taken three centuries and more to finish. Blaze shied away, not wanting to know, but his flesh had burned and stuck to the lip of the well. He couldn't get free. He opened his eyes and he looked at it, really _saw_ it, and gazed upon a shallow, round pool encircled in stone that had been cut with runes. Symbols like Grandmamere had shown him, made him carve into the rocks that ringed their cooking fires. Symbols that would keep him safe.

There was something in the pool, something that kicked at the sides.

And there was something more than just this starless night, this endless black, this pool, and the runes and himself...Some _one_ else, someone important...

_"Stea_ ," the witch whispered.

_"Are you watching?"_ a ghost asked.

_"BLAZE!"_ Arik screamed.

Arik. That name again. And when Blaze turned, he looked down, and when he looked down, he saw a man under clear, clean, shining water. The man was sleeping with a smile on his face. He was curled up on his side, a hand under his chin, and it took a moment for Blaze to recognize himself.

Someone was sobbing and saying his name, over and over, and with that chant ringing in his ears, Blaze reached into the water with his free hand. It was boiling hot, as though it was—

Pure fire.

—and before Blaze could touch his own arm, the sleeping Blaze's eyes opened. The Blaze in the tub looked up at the shattered, fractured, bleeding Blaze looking down, and in each other's eyes they saw a screaming witch growing smaller and smaller, retreating into a forest with a goat, and everything was on fire.

"I forgive you," Broken Blaze and Sleeping Blaze said at the same time.

"And I, you," they said together.

_"And I, you,"_ said the ghost.

_"And I you,_ " said the witch from far, far away.

Just as she had right before Blaze had cut her throat and taken her head.

When Blaze woke up, he was in Arik's arms, soaking wet and aching from head to toe. He was in a room with tall windows, rich rugs, and it smelled like life and death at the same time.

And Blaze smiled.

* * * *

# Chapter 20

Arik

Arik choked on the stream of words that tried to tumble out of him. He gripped Blaze's body hard enough to snap a weaker man's spine, and hugged Blaze to his chest. The floor beneath them was slick with blood, and every time Arik shifted, his ass slipped over the mess in an odd, disconnected slide—like neither of them were really quite bonded to the ground. "You're alive," Arik whispered, and then, in a sudden moment of panic, "You are alive, right? Tell me you're alive."

"I'm..." Blaze paused, tried to move his legs beneath him, and groaned a note of pain. "I hurt. Everywhere." He grimaced another smile. "What...happened?"

Arik lifted an eyebrow. "You don't remember?"

"Some," Blaze admitted. "I ran. To you. There was screaming..."

The water felt good on Arik's face; refreshing, cool. The library hadn't seemed that hot when he'd first entered, but over the course of their conversation, a feeling of unease had settled over him and brought such an intense flush with it that Arik had considered peeling off his clothing. The nausea had hit when...Arik shuddered, drew a breath, and splashed his face yet again with the water he'd pooled into the sink...when Blaze had said he'd killed the witch.

"Murder," something whispered, rising from the dark depths of Arik's mind. "Murder most foul."

"No," Arik shook his head. "Okay, maybe. But he'd only been trying to lift the curse. Some acts of retribution are deserved."

He opened his eyes to seek out his reflection. It was easier to argue when one could stare at what one was fighting with. His eyes widened. His mouth fell open. But only until the liquid cooling on his face dared to slip past his lips. Arik choked and reached blindly for a towel.

The "water" wasn't water in the least. It was as black as ink. It was blood—Blaze's blood.

"You came, yes." Arik smiled, because of course Blaze had come—spitfire Blaze with his eyes flashing and his jaw set, ready to battle anyone or anything; his knight, his lover.

"You were in the corner?" Blaze's statement was a question. As though he wasn't quite sure it was truth.

The blood stole Arik's ability to speak. He wheezed soundless gasps at the mirror. A vision, surely. For a moment Arik thought he was going to be the next one to start melting away, and suddenly all the dark water thoughts on the way to Lucas's had become a pattern. Dark water, black blood. Everywhere. How had he missed it? More so, what did it mean?

A click of a sharp step to his right had Arik searching out reflections in the mirror. He almost laughed—hysteria-driven, high-pitched, manic chuckles that Arik heard in his head while he readied them for sound. But as he stared at the likeness of the mini-golf goat, somehow alive, walking, and holding Arik's gaze in the mirror, the creature beat him to breaking the silence of the bathroom.

"Hello," it said, a comedic grin painted on its wooden face. "Great to see you again, Arik."

Documents shuffled, light wind on tissue-fine, gold-edged papers; a sound that Arik knew, would always know, without seeing it. Both Arik and the goat turned their eyes to the left. And the moment Arik registered who he was seeing, his father's image began to preach.

He used the same matter-of-fact voice he'd always used to start a lesson; the same power stance. The same righteous expression. "There you shall offer him up as a sacrifice on a height that I will point you."

The goat snorted, Arik flinched, and his father continued, fading in and out, as though the image fought for existence. "God himself will provide the means for the sacrifice."

Abraham's story. One of his father's favorites. Blessed were those, after all, who offered up their everythings.

His father stopped, and locked their gazes in the glass, "And I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars..." Arik would have laughed if he could have maintained his breath. As if there was any reward great enough for something so heinous.

"You getting any of this, Arik," the goat broke Arik's eye contact with his father by sliding that much closer. "You starting to catch on? Sins of the father, my friend. Sins. Of. The Father."

"You were hurt." Blaze made another try to lift himself up, already patting down Arik's chest and arms as though, somehow, the blood around them could have possibly been Arik's.

Arik caught Blaze's wandering hand with his own, and rested it over his chest. "Only here."

"You..." Arik fought to keep his voice steady. "Whatever it is you think you can make me do..."

_"Oh, for God's sake!" His father slammed the Bible shut one handed, gripping the spine. "I'm not_ here _, Arik. That thing beside you isn't here. We're in your head!" He reached forward and tapped Blaze's skull with a sharp knuckle-rap. "You're preaching to your damn self. You always have been. So if you want me to go away, if you want_ this _to go away," he swept an arm around the bathroom, "then figure out what the hell it is you're trying to tell yourself."_

The goat's grin widened. It stepped back. "Yeah, Arik. Before it gets worse."

Cued, it seemed, the water in the sink began to rise. Black, fetid, slippery—it rose with a fury, easily filling the few inches that Arik had left empty, and the water spilled onto the floor.

Arik's father put a hand on his shoulder, and where the years in the gym should have made the touch all but unnoticeable, instead Arik felt the weight of an adult's hand on a very small boy. "The time for questioning ourselves is over. The sacrifice must be offered for the greater good."

Arik saw red. He lifted his fist and slammed it into the mirror as hard as he could in an attempt to shatter away the sight of both visitors. The mirror responded to his lash with the same level of fury—no simple shatter or crack followed his punch. The mirror exploded into jagged shards of glass that spun, danced, and took all but forever to give in to gravity. When they did fall, they cut the air with a note that was almost musical. When they landed, the music grew into chimes and cymbals. But they didn't smash; they didn't dissolve into bits on the hard tile. They fell into the black water, and in a turn that made Arik gasp, the glass simply reversed itself, flew back to the mirror, and reassembled broken into whole.

It took a full minute for Arik to realize that the whine he heard belonged to him. Then it was Blaze's voice that Arik was hearing as though from a million miles away. "My curse was that so long as her blood was upon this earth, so was I doomed to wander it."

Arik's father began to repeat the words. "So long as her blood was..."

"He killed her," Arik hissed, his voice shaking.

"Her blood remains."

"No!" Arik jabbed the reflection of his father so hard Arik thought he'd have to witness the entire display of magic glass again. "Not a single member of that family remains. Not one."

"Oooh," the goat lifted a finger, silencing the both of them. "I've got this one. One minute, please."

It cocked its head, and the whirring of machinery madly rewinding filled the room. It was Blaze's voice that responded, coming from the goat's wide mouth as though the demonic animal had become a recorder, and was playing the words back for them. "She used pieces of Doru and Meerna, bits of herself, and a lot of my blood. She made me drink. She cut me. She bled on me."

His father lifted a single eyebrow. "And just how do you imagine that blood can be cleaned from the Earth, Arik?"

Again, Blaze's voice, "It's my soul that's the problem..."

The goat chuckled low in its throat, exchanging Blaze's soft rumble for its own grating, maniacal speech, "Make him bleed; set him free."

Arik screamed.

"We should probably get him showered," Lucas said; stepping closer, yet doing his best not to soil his shoes. His face was twisted with barely-contained disgust, but his eyes shone with interest. "And give my butler some room to clean this up."

The butler's "tsk" in the background went unacknowledged.

Arik eyed Blaze carefully: pale, shaking, exhausted, but Blaze's fists were clenched on Arik's shirt, and Blaze's jaw was set as firmly as if it had been wired together. "Can you stand? Are you broken?"

Blaze paused and made what Arik could only assume to be a mental assessment of body and skeleton. "I think I can get up? If you help me?"

It wasn't nearly the struggle Arik had assumed it would be. He hoped that was a good sign. Arik felt Blaze's tremble at the edge of the tub, and caught the question of "What's wrong?" before Arik spoke it. There would be time for questions. Now, Arik had to get Blaze clean and on his feet. While he would have loved to simply scoop Blaze up and carry Blaze away, Arik was more than sure that even with a million dollars in his fist, there wasn't a cab this side of New York that would take them the way Blaze looked.

"Why now?" Arik shouted. "Why here?"

_His father's eyes held sympathy, but impatience. "It was never about the where or the when, Arik. It was about you coming to the realization that it needed to_ be _. The goat was just your mind's way of providing a metaphor for the sacrifice that needed to be made. You finding your 'Goat Man' was just a way to put it together. You chose the when by finally understanding."_

Arik dropped to the floor, put both hands over his ears and screwed his eyelids shut. "I will not listen. I will not listen. I will not listen."

The door to the bathroom flew open, as though the gods themselves had torn through the lock.

"Don't come in!" Arik screamed. It was only when he heard Blaze advance that he knew he hadn't said the words aloud. Blaze kneeled, Lucas spoke, and Arik opened his eyes. He saw Blaze reach for his face, and felt his heart fall into his guts, knowing even before they touched, that the two of them connecting during Arik's full-blown vision might not be a great idea. "Blaze, don't..."

Connection snapped like electrical wires crossing in windstorms. A knife of heat flared from Blaze's fingertips and into Arik's skin. Tremors raced down Arik's spine worse than any shock he'd experienced, even the time he'd been dumb enough to let his screwdriver slip when he'd been putting a faceplate on a plug. "They don't tell you to disconnect this shit for nothing," the electrician had told him the next day.

Arik shook his head, dragged himself back to the moment, and shouted another "No!"

It was too late. "Mul!" Blaze gasped, and his eyes hazed over like frost creeping across a window.

"Does that feel okay?" Arik squeezed the cloth over top of Blaze's shoulder, washing Blaze through his clothing. Blaze's expression was soft and relaxed, like a child seconds away from falling asleep.

Blaze nodded, fumbled for Arik, and when he found nothing else within reach, he gripped Arik's arm. He squeezed through the weave of the jacket and the cotton of Arik's shirt. "Thank you."

"Get him out," Arik hissed at Lucas, doing everything in his power to force his own senses back to reality. "I need to get him out of here."

Lucas rushed both of them, dropping to his knees. "What's happening?"

"Nothing good," Arik mumbled. "They're trying to bleed him out."

"They—?" Lucas stopped, bit his lip, and even Arik could tell Lucas was reconsidering his question. Perhaps, some things didn't need to be known. "Why?"

Arik's hands fisted in Blaze's shirt. He dragged Blaze closer. "Does it look like I have the time to explain this to you? Look at him...watch!"

Blaze's body buckled in a grotesque pantomime of some poor soul being served an alarming dose of electro-shock therapy.

Arik swore, and Lucas gasped.

"I can call a priest...or...someone..." Lucas looked up, his eyes desperate.

"You're joking with me right now?" Arik didn't have to be told the glare he gave Lucas was sour enough to curdle milk. "Tell me you're joking."

Lucas barked a frightened half-laugh. "I just...I mean...How do you know this is what 'they're,'" he finger-quoted the word, "trying to do?"

Arik stopped holding Blaze's trembling body still. He slid Blaze to the ground and sat back against the wall. "Because I told them."

Arik shuddered with the memory of his statement. The clarity that had flashed through his mind the moment he'd uttered the words had been staggering. All those instances of watching visions melt, _bleed_ away, had suddenly made so much sense. Of course Blaze had to rid himself of the foul blood to break the curse—it was the very thing that the curse had convinced Blaze he should not do. The very thing that had happened anytime Blaze tried to wander off the path. Any time Blaze had dared to counter his gift.

"I can't lose him," Arik said, turning his eyes to Lucas, watching Lucas's face through his tears. "I love him. I need him. Maybe if we can get him out of here...maybe if we try and break him out of the trance...I-I don't even care if the curse gets broken. I'm more than happy to take him as he is. Please, Lucas. If you know anything that could help..."

"And Blaze?" Lucas asked. "Does Blaze want to remain the way he is?"

Arik didn't need to voice the "no."

"Then, perhaps," Lucas lifted himself from his knees and leaned against the counter, "this is a lesson for both of you." He silenced Arik's attempt at a reply with a lifted finger and a frown that made Arik want to snap said finger and rip off Lucas's face. "Selfish love is no love at all. There is no greater sacrifice than one made for the sake of a loved one. I think that your Blaze could attest to that truth, no?"

Arik rinsed filth from the sides of the bath, then grabbed a towel from the rack. He wrapped it around Blaze and lifted Blaze from the tub. "A couch?" he asked over his shoulder, in the general direction he believed Lucas was standing.

"A bed would be better, maybe, hmm?"

A couple of weeks of connection was all they'd had, but they'd been the best weeks of Arik's life. He'd said himself that the pain had to end. No more puppet, he'd insisted. No more whoring for the Universe. Blaze deserved freedom. Lucas was right.

He touched Blaze's cheeks, eyebrows, and jaw. He fisted Blaze's hair, and trailed his fingers down Blaze's neck. Then he leaned as close to Blaze as he could, felt the gathering tears fall from his eyes, and rested his lips against Blaze's ear. "I love you," he whispered. "And it's time. Renounce the curse's hold on you. Walk away, Blaze. And don't stop until you're free."

Arik hesitated, weighing his words on his tongue before letting himself say them. "I believe in you."

The bedroom had been lit with a small fire, and a dressing coat draped over the end of the bed. Arik's mother would have gushed over the dark, thick drapery and the velvet, claw-footed furniture. The four posts on the bed, at any other time, would have inspired playful games of binding and teasing. At that moment however, all Arik wanted to do was leave. Drag Blaze off to somewhere safe, and spend the next several days clinging to Blaze as if their lives depended on it.

Instead, he stripped Blaze out of the wet clothes—just for an hour Lucas had said, just until they'd dried—then wrapped Blaze in the dressing coat, and tucked Blaze under down and wool.

The first stream of blood came from Blaze's ear. Within seconds it was too hard to identify the source of any of it. The pain that streamed off Blaze's body was intense enough to numb Arik's heart and mind to any further thoughts of loss. "Keep going," he chanted in silence. "Keep going."

"Arik?" Blaze's voice forced Arik's eyelids up and he blinked for several seconds at the unfamiliar room. "Arik, are you awake?"

"Yeah," Arik mumbled, his garbled words belying the reply. "Everything okay?"

"I remember some of it."

There was so much sadness in Blaze's statement that Arik's heart wept for it. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Yes." Blaze paused. "No. I don't know." He turned in Arik's arms to face Arik. "I loved him, Arik."

Arik nodded, bracing himself at the lance of hurt the statement brought him. "I know."

"He forgives me." Blaze reached up, but his fingers only hovered over Arik's cheek. "And I forgive myself. For doing that to him."

"You didn't—"

"Hush," Blaze said firmly. "And I forgive myself for the terrible things I've done."

"You've done more good than—"

"Hush," Blaze repeated, louder, firmer still. "More than anything, I forgive myself for loving you instead of him. Because I do, you know. Love you. Thank you for listening to devils you didn't want to hear, for watching horrors you didn't want to see, and helping me find peace inside the chaos."

Arik snorted. "You're not the only one who has thanks to say or regrets to forgive. We have time to do that later. Rest now."

With a smile Blaze let his fingers fall on Arik's face. A soft buzz of connection lighted between both of them, and it made Arik's heart skip a beat. For all of about two seconds. Then everything inside of him seemed to fall with disappointment. He gripped Blaze's arm in a rush of panic. "It's still there. Fuck, Blaze, it's still there!"

He sat up, dragging Blaze with him. "It's supposed to be gone! That's why you suffered! That's what all this was for! Why the fuck is it not gone?"

"It's gone," Blaze said, quietly. He caught Arik's hand, pushed aside the robe, and rested it on his chest. Arik's eyes closed, memories of a heated night in a boring hotel bloomed in Arik's mind, and ended with the thought of a single charge being snapped between his fingertip and a door handle. _Infused_ , he recalled his thought, _by Blaze_.

Maybe a person never got rid of the charge of true love. Maybe real connection came with surprise wonders that the worldly mind didn't understand.

"And maybe," Blaze murmured, "they left us a gift."

* * * *

# Chapter 21

Blaze

"What do you mean?" Arik asked, but Blaze was lost in Arik's eyes. Distracted by the shade of Arik's skin. Entranced by Arik's bare chest and the dark curls around his navel that disappeared beneath the belt and slacks that he still wore.

"Blaze?" Arik murmured, the initial panic gone, but the impatient curiosity apparent. Blaze shook his head, and he lifted Arik's hand from his chest to his face. Blaze nuzzled Arik's palm, kissed it, and he caught sight of the fire in the stone hearth across the room. Blaze watched the dancing flames, and an old, old ache welled up inside him. Arik caressed his cheek, the _punct luminos_ tingling and arcing, and Arik inched closer to Blaze.

"I feel as though I lived in a bubble," Blaze said softly, and Arik squeezed Blaze's knee with his other hand. "No," Blaze corrected with a small laugh, "I lived in liquid fire. Heat so hot it was molten. I retreated there, when the witch's blood infused me. When she cursed me, making herself immortal within me and ensuring I'd be rendered near dead with agony should I dare force her true death." Blaze shook his head. "My fire, the last of what was left of my family and our magic, it protected me; kept me safe within where no harm could reach the real me. And now the last of the witch's blood is truly gone, burned out from where it lurked so long in its last, cursed vessel. It's gone, and I am free and I...am alive. And here. With you. And I feel..."

"You feel?" Arik whispered, and he bit his lip.

Blaze looked at Arik, whose eyes widened at whatever they saw in Blaze's. "Aware," Blaze said. "Awake. As though from a long dream. I can remember every moment of every one of my too-long years. I can remember the way Doru smelled. All the faces and smiles and sadness in every man I helped. But I can also remember..." Blaze brushed Arik's lower lip with his thumb. "The first time you kissed me."

"I remember it, too," Arik said, quietly, as though afraid to disturb the peaceful spell that had overtaken the old room in the older house lit only with their own little fire.

Blaze inclined his head in a single nod. "I know the precise moments my life changed. When I fell in love, when I fell to the curse, and when I first saw you in my dreams. And I was there for them all. I was...That was me. But now...It's as though I'm _all_ of my former self. And for the first time, all of me is in this moment with all of you." Blaze traced the line of Arik's jaw, felt the rasp of stubble and the heat of skin, and a pink flush began to creep across Arik's nose. His chest rose and fell in a faster rhythm, and Arik's eyelashes fluttered when Arik dropped his gaze to stare at Blaze's mouth and then lifted it again to meet Blaze's eyes. " _Dragul meu,"_ Blaze said. "My beloved. My lover. My... _Arik_." Blaze rolled the word off his tongue with his native syllabic emphasis, and Arik's breathing skipped. "Who saw me, understood what afflicted me and how, and then had the courage to...save me."

"It was mutual," Arik muttered. "The saving." He kissed Blaze, though briefly and chastely. The spark ignited with enough force to make them both gasp, and Blaze held Arik's face in his hands. "So the gift is that you remember it all?" Arik asked, and he made their foreheads meet. "Survived with sanity intact and you're both who you were and who you are, now?"

"I think so. Which means that this..." Blaze traced his fingertips across Arik's shoulder until the man shuddered. "Is still ours. Because once, it was mine and mine to share with those whom I love. The legacy of my family and of my people. And..." Blaze swallowed and stared again at the fire across the room.

Seconds passed, maybe minutes, and Arik scooted closer until one of his knees was bent and behind Blaze and the other leg rested across Blaze's lap. Arik kissed Blaze's shoulder, slowly and gently, and crept along a line to Blaze's neck. Arik may have had a thousand questions, but the man didn't ask a single one. Blaze was grateful. There would be time to tell Arik everything—the good, bad, ugly, and beautiful—and Blaze would. Blaze wanted to. He couldn't remember feeling so alive and whole, and he wanted to share everything and every second he had left with Arik.

And he wanted...he needed...he had to know...

"Arik?"

"Mm?"

"I think...I need to show you something." Blaze swallowed, fear rumbling low in his body. Real fear that he'd not experienced in possibly centuries.

"What is it?" Arik asked.

"I...I have to try something."

"Blaze, what's...you're shaking."

"I know. I'm scared."

Arik enveloped Blaze in an embrace that tugged a soft moan from Blaze. "What are you afraid of, baby?" he murmured.

Blaze grinned and turned his head to kiss Arik. "I like you calling me that."

Amused affection flickered across Arik's features. "Okay,. Baby."

Blaze chuckled and pulled away. He got up, stripped off the robe, and tossed it onto a chair. He circled to the foot of the bed, and Arik crawled to the end of it, watching intently. Blaze paused and faced the fireplace, and for a horrible moment, he couldn't remember how the magic worked. What had once been as natural as breathing was now lost to him, and in that instant, he mourned enough for three hundred years. The weight of loneliness that he'd felt without his God-given gift bore down upon his shoulders, and Blaze sucked a sob.

"Blaze?" Arik asked, worried.

Blaze waved a hand to show he was okay. He took a watery breath, letting the tears flow. At one time, such things were offerings and parts of spells. Maybe, here and now in this age of Internet and space travel and marvels, they could work the same way as they had in the time of wagons, simplicity, and magic.

And he knew, too, that if this didn't work, it'd be more than okay. Blaze was a free man, and he had Arik. The miracle of figuring out the curse and it being broken paled in comparison to Blaze having a man to love who loved him. Next to that, any loss suffered was minor. If Blaze couldn't speak to or wield his Fire, he would nonetheless be a man gifted with a partner with whom he could grow, share, live, and die. Maybe the time he had left to walk the earth would be enough to convey to Arik what that meant; how impossible such an existence had once seemed, and how it made the entire universe balance to be given the chance to have it.

Tears of grief slowly changed to tears of gratitude. Blaze knelt. He bowed his head. _Please_ , he entreated to anything on the side of good that might be listening. _Please grant unto me one last kindness. Allow me to have, hold, and use the gifts that were once bestowed upon many and that were stolen away into darkness. I am but one man with one pair of hands and one soul, but give me your grace, and I will touch as many as I can with the light. And I will start with the man who saved me._

There was nothing but silence punctuated by Arik's breathing, and Blaze slumped, opening his eyes. The fire crackled, popped, and flung a tiny ember onto the rug near Blaze's knee. Without thinking, Blaze picked it up. The glowing mote sat cradled in Blaze's palm, and it winked as though it giggled.

And then Blaze was no longer in the goat man's bedroom.

He was in a million homes in a million fires over a million years.

_"Every fire that was still is,"_ said Blaze's grandmamere, the voice fluttering the very fabric of the universe. " _And every coal that burned is part of what you hold, and every ember that you touch knows its past and its present and something of its future."_

Blaze was warm, so warm...and connected...and...giddy. One with the fire, which was hungry. Eating. Consuming. Eager. Blaze was lit from within and burning hotter the closer he was to the ground. He could touch the night; be with the treetops and the wind and be part of the stars. And every heart he warmed, every soul who came near him, he could glimpse. He could know them, if only for an instant.

And Fire...in turn...

"Knows me," Blaze whispered, and somehow he had moved from the rug to the flagstones in front of the cheerful baby blaze. And Arik—

Oh, LIKE him! Like him...save him...warm him...like him! Keep him warm! Old man, he'll be. Live long. Happy. See? See?

—was there, speaking urgently in warning, but Blaze reached into the dancing red-gold-orange, cupped his palm as though gathering water, and brought out a bit of Fire who wanted to play.

"Holy shit," Arik muttered, and together they stared at Blaze holding naked fire flickering in his hand.

"It likes you," Blaze said, cheeks sore from smiling.

"It...what?"

Fire whispered, babbling a mile a minute, so happy to find someone who could hear. "And it missed me," Blaze said. "And says we'll be old men together, someday, holding hands on—"

Big wet ick thing. Next to. Ew. Ew.

"—the beach." Blaze laughed. "This one's very young."

Arik looked from the fire to Blaze and back again. "I really, really want to understand, here, Blaze."

Drawing away from the elemental awareness in his grasp, Blaze focused on Arik. He oriented himself to the present with skill that he'd not, in fact, forgotten, and he took three deep breaths. "Fire is alive, but not like you and me. Or maybe it is, and it's closer to our understanding of an Oversoul or even a god. It's connected to every time it's ever been lit. And some Fire is connected to what _will_ be. And it...talks to me. Shows me things. It's sort of words, it's sort of pictures, but it's..." Blaze swallowed and realized he couldn't continue because he was weeping.

Arik put an arm around Blaze's waist. "This is what the witch took from you?"

"It's what was buried beneath her blood inside me."

"Because if she hadn't..."

Blaze nodded. "It's why she destroyed my family, like I said. We would have _seen_ her. And when she chose to let me live, she had to stop the same sight and power."

"So...this is what you used to do?"

Blaze nodded, and when the little guy in his hands got too demanding, he lifted it to his face. Arik grunted, clearly unsure about this, but Blaze calmly let the fire kiss away the tears. They vanished in tiny puffs of steam.

"So you listen to it? Hear the future?" Arik asked.

"Sometimes. Usually, we ask it to cleanse. Or, well. We did."

"Cleanse?"

"Disease. Sadness." Blaze paused. "Evil."

"You can...heal with it?"

"I could. I can." Blaze sighed, remembering his prayer and his promise. "I think I will again. But it also..."

An avalanche of memory thundered through Blaze. Doru, beneath him. Doru, above him. Doru laughing. Crying. Calling to heaven in pleasure. The fire in Blaze's hands got the idea and flickered brighter.

Yes! Yes-yes. Oh yes. Can we?

The fire painted a hundred pictures for Blaze in a heartbeat, and Blaze shivered, cock filling. He scooped out more fire, had a fast discussion about what it couldn't do or burn or hurt, and Blaze put the fireball on the floor.

"Are you sure that's a good—" Arik began, but didn't get to finish. Blaze pulled Arik to him while around them, the fire formed a ring.

"Yes, _dragul meu,_ I am very sure."

The kiss was similar to the hundreds that had come before it, but different, too. Because when Arik's lips pressed to his, Blaze felt the pressure and the spark with every inch of his restored being. And when Arik's mouth opened and tongue slid against his, Blaze moaned for the sheer slip-slick-touch sensation of it. The safe place he'd stayed within his own body had been protection but also a dampener; a cell. Unleashed from his prison, everything was richer and more vibrant, and when Arik pulled away to cry out a broken groan, Blaze suspected he wasn't the only one who felt the difference, the closeness, the intensity.

"The...oh God, the..." Arik panted, and Blaze kissed Arik's throat, collarbone, and chest. He sucked a nipple between his teeth, and Arik arched. Arik's fingers dug into Blaze's hair, and Blaze hastily undid Arik's belt and fly, dying for full-body contact. The fire skipped backward when Arik had to lie down to yank off his pants and socks, and the curtain of flame parted when Blaze tossed the clothing beyond the ring.

"Is that going to...set off smoke alarms or..." Arik gulped.

Blaze chuckled throatily, wrapping himself around Arik. "No," he said, burying his face against Arik's neck and suckling at the skin. Arik caressed Blaze's back, ass, and thigh, and Blaze shoved against the floor, rolling. Blaze hovered over Arik and grinned. "Trust me?"

"Entirely," Arik said, so seriously that Blaze kissed his nose to make him laugh.

"Good." Blaze beckoned to the fire, more to warn Arik than out of communicative necessity, and the ring crept across the floor. He scooped a handful of flame, murmured his intentions, and slowly lowered his hand toward Arik. Breathing faster, Arik watched the descent, and his grip on Blaze's hip tightened. Blaze tipped his hand, carefully spilling the fire so it brushed Arik, and when it did, Arik gasped.

"Holy—!"

"I know."

Arik's eyes were wide open. His lips parted in a silent, _Oh._ And it took a second, but the concentrated _punct luminos_ traveled through the flame and into Blaze's hand. It tingled like his hand was the embodiment of pleasure on the cusp of release. Blaze gritted his teeth and slid the fire down the center of Arik's chest and stomach.

"Oh my God...oh my...fucking..." Arik's lower body lifted off the floor in a controlled thrash. "God! How...why?"

"I don't know," Blaze said. He had mercy and took the fire away, though it complained about it. Arik blinked up at Blaze, dazed. "Going theory is that since my magic is fire-based, and it is the magic that makes the spark between myself and others, that adding the raw element to the mix intensifies it tenfold."

"Tenfold?" Arik wheezed. "Try a hundred. Fold. God."

"So you like it?" Blaze asked.

"Yeah."

"Want more?"

Arik's eyelids lowered to half-mast. "...yeah."

"Good." Blaze popped the fire into his mouth, shifted so he was between Arik's legs, and planted a Fire-fueled kiss to Arik's hipbone. Arik wrapped his arms around Blaze's head, breath held and body taut. After a few seconds, he grew accustomed to the heat-tingle in the kiss, loosening his grip, and Blaze licked a line to the base of Arik's cock.

"Oh God...oh fuck...oh God," Arik mumbled. Blaze nosed the thick curls in warning, and he rolled his eyes to watch Arik's face as he began to mouth Arik's shaft. Arik's head tipped side to side, and he got a death grip in Blaze's hair and on Blaze's shoulder. Around them, the fire snuck closer, wanting nothing more than to keep this man warm and safe and happy. Blaze shuddered with dual consciousness, and, when he took the head of Arik's dick into his mouth, he went slow and gentle. The sizzle-burn would do the work, and it took some getting used to, if Blaze remembered right.

Above Blaze, Arik whimpered and trapped the sounds behind pressed lips. His skin was feverish to the touch, sweaty beneath Blaze's palms, and Blaze so-so-carefully swallowed Arik's length and rose so-so-slowly back up. Arik's foot planted itself on the floor with a slam. His heel dug into the rug. His pelvis rocked toward Blaze, but after the third trip down, Arik wrenched Blaze off of him. Arik pulled Blaze up until they were nose to nose, and Blaze saw the split second of fearless decisiveness that allowed Arik to kiss Blaze with a mouthful of fire.

"God," Arik whispered.

"Arik..."

"So..."

"Good. _Oh._ "

They held one another, touching, gripping, kissing, finding friction anywhere they could. Blaze blew the fire off his tongue, and Arik relaxed beneath and against him when their lips met again. Soon the body tease was too much for either to take, and at the same time, they made room, each grasping the other's cock and stroking it. They swallowed and tasted each other's moans, sucked on lips, nibbled on ears, and Blaze willed himself to occupy the same space as Arik; to be the same.

Arik rolled them. Blaze braced an arm across Arik's shoulders, and he pushed the fingers of his spare hand between Arik's ass cheeks. Arik sucked a gasp against the shell of Blaze's ear. "Fire," Arik said, aroused and urgent and hushed. "Use it there, Blaze, please...use it..."

Blaze found Arik's mouth. He kissed Arik senseless, urging Arik to keep rolling against him. He knew the fire had found his hand when the warmth and spark ignited his skin, and he nudged Arik's asshole with a flaming touch.

_"Shit!"_ Arik sank his teeth into Blaze's ear, moaning. Blaze lifted his hand to his mouth, coated his fingers with spit, and returned fingers and fire to flexing hole. He pushed inside, and Arik cried out, full-throated. Arik's body sucked Blaze deeper, and Arik, as though reading Blaze's wishes, propped himself up and above Blaze. Arik locked his elbows, and Blaze used one hand to fuck Arik and the other to stroke him. Arik's eyes rolled beneath their lids, and groans spilled on every one of his breathy exhales.

_"Frumuseţ,_ " Blaze said in awe of the gorgeous sight of Arik lost and wanting.

_"Te..._ " Arik swallowed and got his eyes open and down on Blaze. " _Te iubesc."_

"I love you, too," Blaze said, and he guided Arik with both hands higher until Arik straddled Blaze's face. He engulfed Arik's cock with a soft sigh, and he groaned when Arik fell forward. Arik caught himself with a hand and forearm, and Blaze fucked Arik's ass with two fingers, pushing Arik deeper into Blaze's mouth with every slide home. Arik rolled and bucked, entire body tensing and flexing. His noises were deafening, and Blaze relaxed, ready to welcome Arik's cum with a few heartfelt, greedy swallows.

Instead, however, Arik stood. On shaky legs he stumbled a handful of steps, and he fell to his knees before Blaze really understood what had just happened. Arik manhandled Blaze over so Blaze was on his belly, and Arik caught Blaze between the legs by the cock at the same time Arik's tongue lapped across Blaze's entrance.

Blaze slurred in Romanian about events and their unfairness, but the words dissolved into low cries of need. Arik licked, teased, and plunged.

"Dracu...'Îmi place...oooh...fuck yes..."

"Like that?" Arik asked, kissing square over Blaze's ring so the hint of suction would make Blaze tremble.

"Yeah..." Blaze gulped on a dry throat. "Faster, _Iubire..._ Please...Please..."

Arik moaned, and the vibration made Blaze answer in kind. Arik tugged on Blaze's cock, twisting his fist and smearing precum until he finally smacked Blaze smartly on the ass. "Your fire," Arik said, with a rich, wicked husk. "I want to fuck you with it. Can I?"

"Y-yeah," Blaze stammered. "Yes. I can..." He turned his head and knocked it against the floor to regain some sense. It didn't work. "Oh God."

"Will it burn through latex?" Arik asked.

"I..." It took more effort than usual to speak through confusion and arousal. "I can ask it not to?" The statement came out as a question.

"Don't move." Arik got up, one hand stroking himself. He hesitated, but the fire ring broke and lit his way like a runway for an airplane to where Arik's briefcase rested against the wall. Arik opened the case with a snarl when the clasp didn't work fast enough, and he retrieved a condom and a clear travel bottle full of oily lube.

Blaze started to laugh. "You...brought...?"

"I didn't know what was going to happen," Arik said, playfully defensive. He returned to the fire ring, watching it close behind him. "For all I knew, would have to fuck the curse out of you." He jumped when a particularly eager burst of flame tried to kiss his knee. "Goddamn, but that fire is..."

"Affectionate," Blaze supplied.

"About to get more so." Arik bent and kissed Blaze's back and ass. Blaze tucked both his knees under himself and spread them. He rested his head on his arm while Arik worked condom and lube behind him, and he had a fast chat with the fire that portrayed in pictures what he thought Arik had in mind and what Blaze wanted.

"Is this going to work?" Arik asked, sounding more nervous and clearheaded than before.

Blaze chuckled, eyes open enough to see the fire dance across the floor in skipping lines over to Blaze. It tickled up his legs and heated his backside. "Dunno," Blaze said around an anticipatory gasp.

"I want it inside you," Arik whispered, and he petted Blaze's flanks with both hands.

Blaze grunted. "I know." He could feel the flames lick-kissing his over sensitized entrance. They were teasing him. And enjoying it immensely.

"Want them around me as I take you." More kisses spread along Blaze's spine, and he wasn't sure if that was the fire or Arik.

"I...It...It knows what we want," Blaze managed.

Arik hummed. "Can you have it go slow?"

Blaze whimpered. "Oh God, Arik. I...I can... _aahn!_ "

The fire sank into Blaze, slowly, just as Arik had asked it to do. But even slow, or, perhaps _especially_ slow, it was overload. Blaze lost himself, had no idea what he did or said or the sounds he made. Vaguely he registered Arik's hands on him, firmly holding him steady and close.

"That's it, baby," Arik said. "Oh God, yeah, just like that..."

Blaze roared and whined and cried notes he didn't know he could make, and he couldn't distinguish the sting-burn-fill of Arik's dick from the fire's tingle-spark. Arik was moaning and cussing, and Blaze was pitched headlong into the fleshy confines of his body in the throes of stunned bliss. Disconnected and disoriented, all Blaze knew was his insides were speared with pure magic and heat and it was too much, too crazy, too fucking good, and then...

The heat started to move.

"Oooh yeah..." Arik gasped.

The heat _thrusted_ in time to Arik's drive forward and down. Arik bottomed out in Blaze's ass, began to withdraw, and all the while, the heat _burned_ and _sparked_ and _crackled_ across Blaze's tender flesh and against his hyper-sensitive prostate. Over...and over...and over...with a steady slap of hips to ass and skin-on-skin, Arik and Fire relentlessly demanded Blaze to surrender, to accept, and to take. Blaze scrambled for handholds and dragged his blunt nails across the floor. He made fists and covered his head with his hands and arched into Arik. Eventually Blaze went loose and pliant, shivering in something approaching pure ecstasy when Arik's hands roved over every inch of Blaze, touching and loving and urging him toward endgame.

When Arik whispered affection to him and grabbed his arms, Blaze let it happen. When Arik pinned Blaze's wrists at the small of Blaze's back, Blaze started to confuse his languages. He just hoped Arik understood that he was begging...pleading...More. Harder. Faster. Do it. Take him. _Fucking break him._

"God!" Arik bellowed, slamming deep on a too-perfect angle.

"Shit!" Blaze cried, voice high.

"Fuck. Blaze. _Nnngh!"_

The fire spread impossibly deeper, claiming crevices and inches of Blaze that he didn't know could be filled. He wailed loudly enough that he hurt his own ears, startled himself out of the reverie, and it was at that precise moment, without a hand even near his dick, that orgasm erupted within him.

"Oh...my...fucking... _shhhhh_ —!" Blaze's shocked cry cut off in a choked gasp, and he was coming and coming and screeching he couldn't take anymore, but Arik didn't stop. Pound. _Slam_. Rock. _Dive._ And Blaze didn't know if it was one orgasm or two or three hundred, but he drowned in it. His vision went dark, speckled only by bright motes of red-orange, and next he knew, he was on his back, face-to-face with a sweating, kissing, panting Arik.

"Again," Arik demanded, and Blaze wanted to tell Arik that another was impossible. The pleasure was too much and too rich. It'd been wrung out of him, leaving him high and dry, but the fire enclosed around them. Covered them. Enveloped them. The connection spark was everywhere all at once, and Blaze was Arik was Blaze, and together they yelled and cried to their gods. Together they came, and together they clung to the other, so entangled and enmeshed that their erratic breathing synced and, soon enough, began to slow at the same rate.

Around them, the fire flickered low. Blaze kept his legs locked around Arik, and they rested, cheek-to-cheek. The fire combined itself into one ball of flame, and it skittered over to Blaze.

Happy...happy...long time...love...love...

"What's it saying?" Arik sleepily asked.

"That it was good for Goat Man, too."

Arik pulled away, but Blaze laughed and wrestled Arik back down. "Jerk," Arik huffed.

"Please don't. I think we're stuck like this."

Arik rolled his eyes but he kissed Blaze, light and loving. "Not so bad, being stuck with you for eternity. Though, please tell me the fire was the last surprise?"

Blaze grinned, waggling eyebrows, and had to laugh when Arik looked stricken. "I can promise you this, _Iubire: Vom vreme fericire și greutăți, dragoste și pierderi, de viață și de moarte în flacăra inimii celuilalt."_

"What does it mean?" Arik asked softly, eyes shining.

"It's a vow." Blaze tucked Arik's hair behind one ear. "That we will be together, united by fire, come what may."

Arik smiled. " _Te iubesc,_ Blaze."

_"Te iubesc_ , my Arik. For always."

THE END

* * * *

# Blaze by AF Henley

The poem that started it all.

An ember lit, by chance or plight,

A coil of smoke into the night,

Mere seed of light, but promise born,

In patient pause—a wink—no more,

Will mourn in solitary heat,

A smoulder amidst the grass and leaf.

And seek, by sky, that fated sigh,

Anemoi breath of proffered life.

One puff on light, one single flame,

"Arise now, phoenix, conquer grave."

And one to same, then two to few,

Few to many and many to slew;

Where icy blues had forced their reign,

Hold is lost to growing flame.

Branch, twig, lain, ill-found too close,

Fodder to the encroaching host;

Consumed. And both, to one become

The fuel, the flame; two chords, one song.

Twitch ear of fawn, and eye of owl,

Flight urged to leg and wing of fowl.

To air, the howl—sky-reaching rage,

Once weak, now strong, once bound, uncaged,

Disastrous glaze, to bright the night,

Hell fury masked as candlelight.

Sparked delight, and siren's song,

Do press Aiolos' mounts along,

To bring on atmospheric charge,

And tease the roil: entice, enlarge!

So flare! In brilliance! Final peak...

Falter, extinguish. Spent and weak.

In silence blackened fields will lie,

Laid bare and breathless, eye to sky,

Ravaged, mined. But rains will roam,

On ashen litter and darkened loam.

The birds will loom and drop their seeds,

Waiting earth will devour the feed.

Souls breed. And nest. And dig and drone,

Claim new holes and furrows home.

And from the turmoil, new transpires;

The gift, a promise, cleansed by fire.

* * * *

ABOUT A.F. HENLEY

A.F. Henley is a Canadian author specializing in romance, universal intervention, and spiritual connection, who gets most of their ideas while jumping from site to site on the Internet. Comments, kudos, and special requests are all happily received at their website.

For more information, please visit afhenley.com.

* * * *

ABOUT KELLY WYRE

A professional chaos manager and proud geek, Kelly Wyre enjoys reading and writing all manner of fiction, ranging from horror to romance, and believes she's here to tell stories and to connect people with them. Kelly relishes the soft and cuddly and the sharp and bloody with equal amounts of enthusiasm. She loves movies, stuffed animals, the smell of books, thunderstorms, naps, the ocean, gaming, psychology, studying the occult, kink, and all the colors of a bruise. In her free time, she strives to be the meditative star in the darkness. Or at least attempts to relax. Kelly resides in the southeastern United States.

For more information, please visit kellywyre.com.

* * * *

ABOUT JMS BOOKS LLC

JMS Books LLC is a small queer press with competitive royalty rates publishing LGBT romance, erotic romance, and young adult fiction. Visit jms-books.com for our latest releases and submission guidelines!

