Please C&C to Gerald Tarrant at lordofmerentha@yahoo.com

Atlantis

He awoke to the off-white ceiling beating dark spots into his vision, and he froze, tense, before he realized the dark spots were just shadows from candlelight glancing off the rough paint-spots on the ceiling tiles. Stupid ceiling tiles.

He lay back, blinking his eyes to remove the sleep from them, wondering what time it was and then remembered he hated clocks. It was the ticking that did it, the ticking that got under his skin, made his spine crawl and his heart speed up and make him think that creepy things were watching him. It was rather an absurd fear, given what he was, but he was afraid all the same, and he'd refused to have a clock in his room. Sho had told him to get a digital one, and Son had offered even to go buy said digital clock for him, but a digital clock just wouldn't go with the décor in his bedroom. He was very particular about that.

If he could, he would have pulled the heavy curtains back from the window and looked out. He was sure it was a beautiful day.

The fishtank next to the couch bubbled and he looked over at it, sighed, sat up in bed and ran his hands through his hair. There was something – the remnants of a bad dream, maybe – that still lingered in the back of his mind, but he couldn't remember it. No point in dredging it up if it had been a nightmare. His feet were cold because he had forgotten to wear socks to bed last night. He wiggled his toes.

Time to get up.

The house was quiet, and even his sharp hearing couldn't detect any living thing within its walls other than himself and the fish, and no sound but the oxygen in the tank and the almost-silent melting of the wax on the tea-lights on the table by his bed. Sho had probably gone out to take care of some business or maybe to shop for food. At least he wasn't a burden on the other man in that way – Sho only had to food shop for one.

He swung his legs off the bed, onto the cool wooden floor, and toddled unsteadily over to the round fishtank, squatting down and running one finger down the glass front. Goldfish flickered in and out of the bubbles, unconcerned with the slight, disheveled man peering in at them. They seemed to be doing well. Fish were odd creatures. He wasn't sure if he would like being a fish. The idea of being submerged in water for one's entire life did not sound too appealing to him, and if he was a fish, he would probably be too afraid of drowning.

Were fish afraid of drowning?

He pondered that deep question for a few seconds, eyes following the orange-gold whispers of air as they darted in every direction, then decided it wasn't worth the brain power, stood up and regarded himself in the mirror on the other side of the room. Except his hair, which looked like he'd glued a patch of hay to his scalp in a drunken stupor, he looked like he hadn't slept at all in days. He reached up a hand to rub his forehead. He had a headache. He blamed the nightmare.

There was someone coming up the stairs.

He felt so old, but he looked so young, and there was just something very wrong about that. His fingers moved down to his cheek, towards his nose, feeling the skin that was still young and elastic as any young man's, wondering what exactly the nature of this curse was that left him static, unusable, in a world of vibrant and changing beings. He was a relic.

"Hi."

The single word was a whizzing arrow of bright sound, released with a twang from the suddenly open door, rushing by in a blur, just missing his nose, and burying itself somewhere in the wall next to the oil painting hanging by the bed. He jerked backwards, nearly fell over, turning in startled bewilderment to the tousled blond head grinning at him from the doorway, wondering why he didn't hear Sho come in.

Suddenly, he needed to go back to bed.

"You ok?" The door opened fully and the other man was now more than just a face and hair and worried blue eyes, emerging into the room and glancing at everything in it before turning back to him. He wasn't grinning now.

He ignored the question. Went back to the bed and collapsed on it. The paint blobs on the ceiling were still there.

"Had a bad dream?" Sho continued, discovering the mirror. He discovered it every time he came into the bedroom, seemingly fascinated by the piece of flimsy glass. He really should remove that mirror, and he had a nagging suspicion that he only kept it because Sho seemed so happy to see it every day, as if he were meeting an old friend he hadn't seen in a long time.

The mirror was his own enemy, telling him every time that he looked into it that he was an anomaly, a creature that should by all rights have never existed, a man that did not deserve to call himself a man. But to Sho, the mirror was only a mirror. Sho wasn't exactly vain, but he did have his moments.

Sometimes he wished he could be Sho.

The man in question decided finally he'd had enough of the mirror, tearing his eyes away to shoot him an odd glance but saying nothing. He wondered how long they could keep ignoring each other, and Sho apparently decided that he was going to play the game too, dropping his hand and turning around, avoiding looking at him. The fishtank bubbles were loud in the silence. Sho crossed the room, crouching down next to the tea-lights and reaching for the box of cigarettes.

Don't touch those, he almost said, but held his tongue. Sho was pulling one out now, putting it to his lips, bending to the candle and trying to light it. He almost smiled.

"Sho?" he said tentatively.

If the other was surprised by him finally breaking his silence, he didn't show it. In fact, there was no acknowledgement on Sho's face at all. He was still trying to light the damn cigarette.

Fine. He folded his hands over his stomach, dug his cold feet into the comforter, trying to warm them. The candlelight danced over the paint daubs. "Maybe it's better that we're mismatched like this." A slight twitch of the eyebrow. The cigarette finally caught. "Me being what I am and you being human...."

Sho gave an almost inaudible sigh, but his sharper-than-human ears caught it. "What are you talking about?" he said, taking a drag of the cigarette and expelling the smoke into the still air. The updraft created by the melting wax and burning wick of the tea-lights caught it, swirling it up into the shadows of the ceiling. He waited.

The click of boots crossing the floor again, but towards the window this time, and he watched curiously as Sho leaned against the far wall, smoking.

With a flick of the wrist almost too quick for even him to catch, Sho twitched the curtain of the window open. Bright sunlight streamed in and he gasped, flung himself to the side of the bed, wrenching one arm up to ward off the light before he realized that Sho had opened the curtain just far enough that no direct light was falling on the bed. Breathed a heavy sigh, letting his arm flop back down on the bed. He glared.

"Idiot."

Sho simply smiled in response, letting go of the curtain and crossing the small room once more, settling himself with a graceless flop on the floor by the foot of the bed. He gazed at the blond head for a moment, trying to figure out the mind of this man who had decided to bind his life to that of someone who the rest of the world shunned, and then gave up, deciding that it was better just to let Sho be what Sho wanted to be.

There were not many men in the world like Sho. He was almost willing to bet, even, that there were none.

The cigarette smoke was warm in the cool darkness there in the protective cocoon of the room, sheltered from the reach of the busy morning, warm like the tiny flames of the tea-lights on the table, warm like the presence and the voice of the man who had always been so near.

"We'll always be together," the voice said. He could hear the smile there, a smile that was not precious just because it was an unspoken apology and forgiveness for every wrong that had been committed until now, but also because it was something true.

Because every word spoken here was meant with something deeper even than the soul, and nothing could ever break that apart.

"Always."

1 Oct 2003