I'M SORRY!!! I forgot to fix the ellipsis on the last chapter and they all became silly greek letter looking capital Es with an accent symbol on top. Super frustrating. So, because I screwed up, here's an extra chapter!! YAY screw ups!!
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33
An Underground Apology and a Hot Tub Heart-to-Heart
I screamed and wept. I'd failed and the world died. Worse, I didn't even live to try. My life ended meaninglessly and all of vibrant, colorful Solum faded to ash. I killed them all, killed Shawn. I killed Shawn. I killed him. I screamed and wept and pounded my fists on my skull. I wished I could crush it, destroy myself for my guilt over destroying so much, over destroying him.
My throat burned, but still I screamed. Strong hands grabbed fistfuls of my shirt and shook me. I flailed at them. They recoiled from my wild swat. An open palm struck the left side of my face hard enough to spin my head around. I gasped a breath and opened my stinging eyes. I was surrounded by darkness, lying prone on sharp gravel. Shawn straddled my middle, his chest heaving, visceral fear pouring from him. Bem stood to my left clutching a glowing coffee mug light. Neb stood behind him, barely visible in the wan glow.
I grabbed Shawn and crushed him against me. "I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY, I'M SORRY!" I wailed. "I FAILED, I KILLED YOU!"
He struggled against my grip and shouted in my ear. "CHURCH, CHURCH, IT'S FINE! EVERYONE IS FINE!" His words fought their way into my mind as he tried to free himself from my grasp.
It took me a second to realize that his voice wasn't dry and dead, his body wasn't ashes, he was warm and solid and real. I loosened my grip but didn't release him. He leaned back, propping his hands against my chest to keep me from crushing him again. "You fell." He explained. "The ground gave way and you fell. We're underground below the quarry. You almost died...again."
`A dream...it was a dream.' I realized.
"Church?" He asked.
I gathered my wits and tried to regain my composure. My pounding heart slowed to normal and I swallowed several times to soothe my raw throat. "I'm OK now. Let me up." I released Shawn. He got off me and let me get up. I stood to look around. The cavern we were in was enormous, bigger and broader than the whole of the hollowed-out quarry above us. It was too dark to see much except the hollow vastness in all directions. I could just make out that the floor of the domed room was made up of a huge pile of broken rock, including my nineteen square slabs that sat pell-mell like the two-hundred-foot child had a tantrum and booted them across the room. I heard water trickling. I quickly reasoned there was subterranean water that undermined the quarry floor and the two-million-pounds of rock I set on it was too much for the thin shell to support.
Above us, some distance off was the jagged hole in the cavern roof that I'd fallen through. It was about fifty feet across and forty plus feet above our heads. A shallow cone of gravel and rock, like a boil on the greater pile that made up the floor of the room, tapered away from the hole to where I finally stopped sliding, about twenty-five feet from the edge. Dark sky and stars shone through the hole. "How long have I been down here?" I asked.
Bem answered, his left hand kneaded his right shoulder like the light he gripped in his right hand was too heavy. "It's almost nine. It took time to get down here. Good thing there was climbing gear left in the van. You were in bad shape when we got to you." He looked to Shawn who took up the tale.
"You were so close to death; your body wasn't making much magic. I had to stabilize you with my own power. It took all I had. I had to wait until your body started producing again so I could use your power to do the rest. I suppressed your consciousness so you wouldn't wake up until I was finished. There was so much damage. You shouldn't be alive."
"My doctor's been telling me that for years." I answered more flippantly than I felt. The information they'd given me was too much for me to process. They said I almost died...again. They said Shawn had to fix me...again. Wrapped up in those statements and my lack of reaction was the wonder of the world of Solum and magic power and Shawn's medical magic and my physical magic that seemingly caused the problem in the first place and the fact that I was in training for a mission to save the world from a fifteen-hundred-year-old evil fucking demon king. The whole thing was so insane, that the fact that I almost died, barely registered.
As an act of self-preservation, I tried to deal with the reality in front of me. I ran my hands up and down my body to check for damage. My clothes were in tatters and matted down with blood and dirt, but I seemed to be all in one piece. I found my Zippo lighter in my pocket and almost struck it to add some fire light to the dim glow of the coffee mug in Bem's hand, but I didn't.
I had a dim memory of a construction site safety class I once attended that dealt with confined spaces like underground vaults and the like. One of the topics of that class was the dangerous, and sometimes flammable gasses that can accumulate in those spaces. I didn't want to strike my lighter and blow us all up. As I searched my pockets some more, my biggest complaint became that my bag of nuts was missing, and I was starved. "Can we get the hell out of here please? I'm hungry."
"Church is right." Neb spoke for the first time. "We've been in this hole long enough."
We walked to the edge of the opening. A rope dangled down from the surface. "What's it tied to?" I asked.
Neb shook the rope. "I secured it to the back axel of the van. It was the closest anchor point to the hole and we only had this one rope to work with."
"I can't climb this."
Shawn wanted to be helpful. He jumped on the rope, locking it around his feet and hands. "It's easy, see? You just..."
I waved him to silence. "I don't have it in me to learn a new skill. I'll send someone up, that person can honk the van horn. When they do that, I'll put my foot in a loop in the bottom of this rope, and they will drive forward until I can reach the surface."
Neb took command and issued some orders that agreed with the plan I'd suggested. "Bem, you and Shawn go. Bem, you drive the van, Shawn, you watch to make sure Church doesn't come up too fast or get dragged over the edge. I'll keep him company here. He can take me up with him."
I built a platform, and both men stepped on. Shawn seemed reluctant to leave me alone, but as Neb was the team leader, he obeyed her leadership. Neb took the mug light from Bem so we wouldn't have to wait in the dark. I raised the elevator to the surface. Once Bem and Shawn were clear of my magic, I released it and started tying a loop in the rope. Neb stopped my clumsy effort and took the rope from me. She tied a quick, expert knot, but didn't hand the rope back to me. She twisted it between her hands instead. She seemed lost in tense, nervous thought. I assumed the source of her anxiety was my almost death. "How close was it?" I asked.
"It was very close." Neb admitted. "I don't know what we could have done differently. I've been asking myself where the mistake was, but I can't see there was one. It would have taken a geologist to know that quarry floor was hollow underneath. When we got to you, your pulse was so shallow...it was so close. Shawn is an amazing young man and he loves you in a way I didn't know it was possible to love someone. When you fell, he cried out...a terrible, horrible, terrifying sound of grief. I thought he was going to dive in after you. Instead, he just said, `get me down there.' It took us over an hour. He didn't make a wrong step despite the strain he felt."
She paused and tugged at the loop in the rope, much like I play with my watch when I'm stressed. My mind raced in the silence. The dream I'd had, and the horror I'd felt when I thought Shawn was dead, proved to me that I was completely in love with him. I barely even understood what that meant except through the idea that I didn't think I could live the rest of my life without him. It was a terrifying notion for someone like me, who had spent so much time isolated and alone. I thought I was resigned to spending the rest of my life that way. The concept of needing someone wasn't one I was comfortable with, and it scared me.
Hearing Neb talk about Shawn loving me added a layer to my fear. `What ifs' flooded my mind. What if I wasn't good enough for him? What if I screwed up? What if he found someone else? What if I couldn't save the world and everyone died? My imagination started to spin out of control.
Thankfully, Neb went on with her story and effectively stopped me from focusing on my anxiety. "After he stabilized you, he had to stop and rest. He'd used everything he had working on you. He thanked me, us, for getting him to you. He said he felt you slipping away the whole time, bleeding to death internally while we worked to get down here. Another few minutes, there wouldn't have been enough life left to save. I am a soldier and veteran of the police force. I was trained to deal with situations like this, but I don't know if I could have done what he did if someone I loved was down here dying."
The van horn sounded. Shawn called down, "are you ready?"
Neb handed the rope over. I stepped into the loop and held on to brace myself. I built a platform for Neb to ride. "Go slow." I called up. The rope pulled tight and lifted me off the ground. It hauled me up slow and steady. I looked to Neb as we went, her coffee mug lamp lighting the way. "You're a professional, and so is Shawn. He realized how futile it would have been for him to dive in. He relied on his professionalism, and yours, to help him do the job that needed to be done. I say you would have done just what he did. I only hope that when the time comes for me to do whatever it is I'm here to do, I can be half as professional as you and him."
Neb shoved her sleeves up and leaned her back against the side rail of the platform, her elbows behind her, resting on the rail. She smiled a rare smile at me. "You're kind of a neat guy."
"Why do you say that?" I asked.
"I don't know, you have this way about you. You rise to every challenge. Nothing seems to rattle you. You worry about everyone else before you think about yourself. You saved the three of us today while you were falling. That shove pushed us just beyond the cave in. If you had been worried about yourself instead of us, we might all be dead now. It would be easy to say we saved you, but that's not at all what happened. You saved you by saving us. What drives you?"
I shook my head at what I perceived was praise. "I'm just a man in way over his head. I accepted a task and I'm gonna see it through. As for the rest of it, I don't know. I guess I just try to do what seems right at the time."
She shook her head at me. "I think there's much more to it than that, but I accept your answer for now."
The rope stopped pulling. I was at the top of the hole. I sent Neb over the edge onto the surface. She and Shawn helped me scramble onto the ledge. Neb untied the rope from the van axel and drove us back to camp and food.
I was in the bath behind the waterfall with Shawn sitting between my legs, his back to my front. I had my arms draped around him, wrapping as much of myself around him as I could. I had my palms spread over his chest, pulling him against me. I felt his breath and his heartbeat. Even though the bath was hot, I felt his heat, a separate warmth that was just his, that he shared with me. Sweat bloomed between our bodies and slicked the skin that was pressed together. His musky, masculine scent rose from his body and filled my nose as I breathed him in, drawing his essence into my being. I never wanted to let him go.
For just a moment, I considered asking Shawn how badly damaged I was when he found me under the quarry. I just as quickly decided I didn't want to know and it really didn't matter. I stilled my mind and tried to enjoy just being with him. We sat together like that for a while, being together, until Shawn broke the silence. "I thought I was going to lose you today." He breathed.
"You're too good a doctor and I'm too stubborn." I kissed my way from Shawn's right shoulder to the back of his neck and licked the smooth skin that stretched over the top of his spine. I tasted his salty and oily flavor, letting it spread over my tongue and into my throat. I licked some more, dragging my lips and tongue over his throat and under his jaw. I tasted and scented him. I moved my hands on his chest, feeling the regularly spaced hardness of his ribs and the solid muscle that flexed under the skin. Shawn shuddered and gasped until our mouths met and I plunged my tongue into him. His tongue invaded my mouth and we kissed and savored each other.
He pulled back just enough to speak into my mouth. "Wh-hhhyyy were you screaming?" He asked my lips and my teeth and my tongue.
The image of Shawn from my dream, of him dissolving to ashes, flashed in my mind like a poltergeist and sent a chill up my spine. "I had a dream. You and I were alone on a dead Solum. You blamed me, then you died. It was so real. That's why I grabbed you."
"Sounds like we both lost each other today." He took my hand from his chest and raised it to his mouth. He kissed the back of it and blew on my fingers.
His mouth sent little erotic ripples through me. I had an impulse to give into the building lust, but I needed answers about the day. The `what ifs' had continued to rule my thoughts since we'd left the quarry and I needed to settle them down, one way or the other. "How did you feel when you thought you'd lose me?" I asked.
The sensuality Shawn had been feeling curdled to apprehension. "Do we have to talk about this, now?"
I took my hand back from him and used it and its partner to rub his shoulders. They were full of tension. He rolled his head back as I worked on the muscles. "Please, Shawn," I persisted, "we don't have a lot of time and I'd like to know." I'd been thinking about Neb's explanation of Shawn's actions since we left the quarry. Her reasoning was built on the idea that Shawn loved me. I knew he cared for me, but despite what we'd told each other, the brand of love that Neb described seemed too much.
Shawn raised his guard against my question and his muscles tried to tighten back up. I dug the heels of my hands into them and massaged the knots down. "What about you?" He asked me. "You said you watched me die today. How did you feel? What do I mean to you?"
Shit. He turned it around. Now what?' I sighed in my mind. Now we tell him the whole truth.' I folded my arms around Shawn, between his chest and shoulders and pulled him to me. I leaned my head even with his, my chin on his right shoulder, as I tried to organize my thoughts into something that would make sense. The things I'd been feeling; I was forced to acknowledge that something that was so much more than just lust or desire had been building inside me every day that we spent together. The dream I'd had, the intensity of it, and the consuming despair I felt when I thought I'd lost Shawn, proved to me that I felt a love for him that I didn't think it was possible to feel. I hoped when I admitted that to him, it wouldn't chase him away.
I tried to approach the topic gently, to ease into it. "For the first time in my life, I want to live another day if I get to spend it with you. For the first time, I don't regret all the misery I endured, if it led me to this moment here with you. The dream I had...being with you has been like getting a peak into heaven, watching you die plunged me into torment. Like my soul was drowning in acid."
I stopped talking. I released him and leaned away from him. I'd said more than I meant to and was worried about how he'd react. "Does that mean you love me?" He asked.
I rested my forehead against the back of his neck, my eyes shrouded in a curtain of his thick, wet hair. "It means I'm afraid of what I feel for you."
Shawn pulled away with a lunge and turned to face me. He held my face, forcing me look at him. "Tell me what you're afraid of."
I took a breath and got ready to plunge into the deep end of my emotions. I took Shawn's right hand from my cheek and pressed his palm to the center of my chest. "You feel that?" I asked. He nodded. "That's the heart that you rebuilt, in the chest that you fixed, pumping the blood that you made, through the lungs you gave me, and the body you saved. That heart belongs to you. If you ever decide you don't want it, I hope you'll stop it instead of leaving it to be lonely. That's how I feel and that's why I'm afraid."
Shawn slid away from me, across the pool, clutching the hand that had been on my chest. He was scared. "That's a lot, Church. It's a lot to take in. Do you mean that?"
I went too far.' I thought. He pulled away. That's right, it is still me after all. I am an idiot.' I heaped abuse on myself. A cold hand squeezed my heart, shutting down the emotion, and returning it to the lifeless stone that it was before I'd met him. "It's OK." I lied, forcing myself to sound like I meant what I said. "It doesn't matter. I'm sorry I sounded needy. Doesn't change anything. I'll still do my best to save this world for you. You should have your life. Find someone to be happy with."
I stood up, called my towel to me, and started drying off. "I guess I'll go to bed. Busy day today. Would you put me to sleep as soon as you can? Suddenly I want a drink. I haven't wanted a drink this bad since the first night."
Shawn's worry got even more intense. I wondered why but didn't ask. I suspected he doubted my resolve. "Why are you giving up so easily?" He asked.
I shrugged and let my shoulders sag with the towel draped over them. "Why should I fight? I understand. You don't want me. It's sweet of you to have done all you did, but you don't have to keep it up."
Shawn hugged himself and leaned over like he had a stomach cramp. "You're hurting me...your emotions...so sour. Please, Church, you don't understand."
I sat on the edge of the pool with my head in my hands and felt wretched. "Make me understand, then."
Shawn's temper flared. I didn't know what he had to be angry about. If anyone should be angry, I thought it should be me. "I LOVE YOU!" He snarled. "Stop projecting your self-loathing on me. I love you as much as you love me...maybe more. Don't you understand? THAT'S WHY I'M AFRAID!"
I pushed my head up to look at him and rested my chin in my palm. "Yeah, what do you have to be afraid of?" I challenged his words. "You could have anyone."
"BUT I DON'T WANT THEM! I WANT YOU!" Tears slid down his face. He was hurt and angry and sad and scared. "Roeb said he loved me. He lied. My friends said they cared for me. They lied. I felt myself falling for you. Today, when you dropped out of sight, it was like my life ended. I feel more for you than I ever felt for him, and it scares me because I know how crushed I was when he did what he did. I think if you ever left me, I'd die. That's what scares me."
He cried, without any masculine shame at exposing emotion. I felt like a bastard for misreading his feelings and forgetting that I'm not the only person who'd ever been hurt. I took my towel off and slipped back into the water. I moved around the pool to sit next to him. "I'm sorry."
He flared at me again and shouted his anger. "You'd better be sorry! Don't you ever put me in the same category as those people who hurt you. I love you!"
"I'm sorry." I said again.
"Well," he wiped his eyes, "don't just sit there saying you're sorry. Make it up to me."
I leaned over and kissed him. He kissed me back. Lust was quickly squelching out his anger and sadness. I liked the direction things were going. "What will you have?" I asked.
"I want a real apology." He huffed.
"Why don't you take the apology?"
"Can I?" He asked as his greedy desire caught fire and poured into me.
"As much as you want, as hard as you want, anything you want."
He dove into me.
We neared camp, clean and very tired. Neb and Bem sat around a banked-down fire. We stopped to say our goodnights. Neb kept her eyes on a tablet. Bem had an alarmingly wide grin on his face. He spoke to Neb, but looked at me. "Neb, have you ever noticed the acoustic qualities of a box canyon?"
Neb set her tablet in her lap and looked at Shawn and me instead of at Bem. "Do you mean the remarkable way that sound carries?" She asked.
"Yes, Neb. It's amazing that even the sticky slap of wet skin on wet skin can be heard just as clearly in camp as if we were sharing the bath with the slapping skin." Bem's grin stretched his face even further. I felt the embarrassment rise inside me and the heat pouring from my skin as I colored to the roots of my hair.
Neb picked her tablet back up and tried to find her place in whatever she'd been reading. In disinterested monotone she said, "yes, yes, oh, yes...slap-my-ass...hit-me-again, harder, harder...oh god yes."
The reference to God, and the sting of my right ass cheek, told me that I was the one she was mocking. After I'd given Shawn permission to take the apology that he thought I owed him, his aggression went through the roof. He fell upon me like a wild animal taking down its prey. Instead of tender lovemaking, Shawn fucked the hell out of me, and I enjoyed every second at the top of my voice. It was the most intense session we'd had.
Since Bem and I had reached an understanding the previous night, the barrier over the bath seemed unnecessary. It didn't occur to me that our cries of pleasure, or I guess, my cries, would carry all the way across the clearing. I suddenly wished the earth would open to swallow me again.
Bem's face was so full of malicious pleasure, it wouldn't have surprised me if devil horns sprouted from his blond head. Shawn came to my rescue, like he always did. "Don't mind them, Church. They're just jealous. Let's go to bed and leave them to their envy."
Shawn took my hand and led me toward the tent, but we weren't fast enough. Bem's leering shout overtook our progress. "You bet Church's red ass I'm jealous!"
Once we got into the tent, I undressed and laid down as quickly as I could. Shawn took pity on my earthling mortification. He knocked me out as soon as my head hit the pillow.