Lost Beyond the Cellar Door

"You speak of him like he was something out of a story. Legend."

I look down at her as she says this, interrupting my haunted reverie. The glaring, unflattering light of the hospital room comes flooding back, but the bottomless dark of her eyes looking up at me is gentle and careful. She is still curled up on me as we lie in her bed, and her slender weight has become one with my body as she blankets me with her frail warmth. I hardly feel her at all, but she fills my vision completely.

"That's what he made everything seem like... what he made me feel like. Does it seem extravagant?"

She shakes her head at this and lays her head back down on my chest, her fingers absently tracing the hem of my coat with a spider's dance that seems at once too fragile to be possible and far too sweet to not be. Her tears have made her face weary and pale, but the animation in her eyes is vivid and alive as I watch them through the veil of her raven-wing lashes.

"No. It sounds truly amazing."

I have to smile at this, and I tighten my arms around her a little as I nod slowly, absently watching without seeing the snow falling past the window.

"It was."

"Was it love at first sight?"

And again, her child's voice and innocent tones are almost enough to make the question ridiculous and teenage, but I know better as I consider it seriously, feeling her watch me.

"I think..." I say slowly as a slow pain spanning the reaches of infinity begins to tighten in my chest, fighting not to close my eyes as the words rise bitter and heartfelt to my lips. How should it be that I should ever have to speak of him like this? How did I ever come to deserve having to refer to the light of my very soul in the past tense? How did anyone or anything in the universe have the right to bear witness to the hopelessness of speaking these highly intimate and cherished things to a ravaged girl in a hospital room and the emptiness of my heart? The dank, dark rage which had begun to boil the instant I knew there was no way he was ever going to come back began to flash across my head in waves of anguish, and I closed my eyes.

"I think it was more than that. Or less, depending on how you look at it."

"What do you mean?"

Oh, Ashen. My beautiful, perfect love. Yes, what did I mean? Well, what did YOU mean? Of the million uncanny things you could do and the million more things that you had done, why have you chosen this? Why have you left me alone, with only this broken hearted slip of a girl to bear the iron cross of my grief? Why did you let my heart go on beating? The power of all creation was in your fingertips, I was sure of that now. Why did you hold me to the confines of the earth when I fought, screaming and raging, to let go of everything and follow you blindly? Why did you ever let me know the tormented nightmare of having to kiss your bruised and broken lips as they lay cold and empty of life before me? How could you fucking dare to let me feel how, for the very first and only last time, the way it would feel to have them not kiss me back?

Oh, please. Please. Help me breathe.

Or just let me stop.

"It was more than love at first sight because it was already there before either of us could have a chance to initiate it. It was less than love at first sight because it was almost like we had no choice in the matter. Or at least, it seemed like I didn't. I saw him, and it all came back to me, all of it, whether I wanted it or not."

The words are agony to say, but I speak them for her anyway. And her following silence is as quiet but as vast and giving as a sea as I lay there, feeling exhaustion and another, far more inextinguishable thing creep like disease into my limbs. She lies quiet and still on my chest as she assimilates my words, and her softly uttered reply is like a stake through my heart as again, I fight to keep the onslaught of tears from my eyes.

"Soulmates." I nod slowly.

"From a time older than the stars."

The words might have sounded sappy and foolish if I had spoken them to anyone but her, right then, in that room. But I know them to be irrefutable truth as the snow falls languid and timeless beyond the clarity of the window across from us. And even as the anguish rattles inflamed and furious in my chest, I know with a sort of bittersweet satisfaction that even with the barriers of life and death holding us apart, they are temporary at best. He had been my lover since a time beyond all imagining, and he will remain so until whatever end. I had never been so complete as when I had held him in my arms, and never will I hold another so close again. His lips had been the last taste of heaven I would ever grasp, and celibate and torn they will remain until physical matter is no longer a factor and the need to breathe becomes a distant memory. My lover, my brother, my golden angel.

This I promise to thee.

"You'll see him again, Evan," she says softly, her voice almost a whisper as she gathers up the courage to speak those words. And her following hug is both terrified and absolving as she buries her face into my shoulder again, unable to look at me. But the hug remains, fierce and brave, even as her desperate tears again burn hot into my shirt, and I know, with a surging of my heart, that she has taken that first and ultimate step towards shedding the dark of this room and all that it means.

And I can see the melody of his smile and the mystery of his eyes in the snow falling behind the glass, and I realize that his visions and his perceptions were far from only his own. As the ivory flakes fall into the awaiting veil of the street lamps that wait silently to turn their tiny uniqueness into a cacophony of sparkling splendor, I understand that part of his existence was to teach me.

To touch me.

To open my eyes and send me, spiraling and defenseless, into the abyss of the world and wait for me on the other side, eyes glowing with the radiance of the skies and the raging beauty of Life itself.

"I know," I whisper, and there are no tears in my eyes as they instead pour unabated and merciless from the words themselves. I clutch to her tightly as I pick up my tale again, watching always the vision of the snow drifting slow and beautiful beyond the window. Yes, I will see him again. That is the one thing I know without a shred of doubt. But the question was, and the only one in my mind since the day my fairy-tale world ended and gray, silent purgatory began: When?

Oh, dearest, nearest, most cruel and hated God...

When?

I can feel it Coming back again like a rolling thunder chasing the wind forces moving from the center of the earth again I can feel it - live

I had left the dorm early the next morning because the living room had been empty and I had heard no sound of movement behind John's door. My room had been tiny and cramped as I lay in it trying to capture a few moments sleep, and its stifling walls had driven me out after hours of staring them down. I had grabbed my coat from the back of the couch where it had crumpled next to John's (he must have come in later than me), and headed out into the early morning mist and fog. It crowded the campus like oxygen made visible, and I moved through it slowly, my footsteps sounding as though they were landing on rubber as the path revealed itself one hazy foot at a time.

As I walked, I fumbled in my pocket for the cigarettes that weren't there, my fingers roaming uselessly as I ran over the boiling thoughts in my head. The around me seemed to be a perfect counterpart to the confusion in my mind, and I moved through it silently as my feet independently chose their course.

Ashen.

I bit my lip a little as I breathed in deeply, drawing in the fog and cold as much as I could. I tried not to sigh in frustration as visions of his face and the memory of his voice rolled like caramel through my mind, but the frustration grabbed hold of me anyway and for the hundredth time that morning I felt myself sigh. Ramming my hands into submission in the depths of the lint-filled pockets, I held them there grimly as I stared sightlessly down the path.

It had been unexplainable. I knew because I had spent a large part of the night trying to explain it to myself, the walls, the pillows and everything else around me in words that got nowhere and proposals that I knew were idiotic as soon as I spoke them. I had stared into the dark and felt it stare back knowingly as I ran over the memory of his golden voice, the insane perfection of his face, and the impossible incarceration of his eyes.

Those eyes.

They persued me mercilessly as I tried to turn my mind off and sleep, and each time I thought I had managed to evade them and drift off into the silver otherwhere of sleep, they would come pouring back and I would jerk upright with the sound of night-filled woods in my ears.

They had seen right into my soul. That had been the problem. Well, part of the problem, if I wanted to be honest with myself. There were other things too, that I had held in front of me like an unbroken secret in the dark, and while it was perhaps possible to acknowledge their existence in the middle of the shadows, out there in the daylight it was torture. The memory of my hard-on in his bedroom was a white-hot blister in the back of my mind, and the insane feelings of raging desire in the dreams I'd had were things I had barely let myself touch, even in the dark. I longed to be back in the silence of my bedroom with the lights of the candles to hold the complete seclusion at bay, but the twistings of the sheets on the bed carried the knowledge of my sweat and craving. It had crept up on me like a tidal wave I couldn't keep back, and though my fingers had shook as though electric current had been shooting through them, I managed to keep them away from the bedside table.

I let the fingernails dig deep into my palms as I walked, kept my head down against the frozen mist and ignored the hot-cold sweat springing up in pinpricks all over my back. It wasn't even something I was willing to try to figure out, that certain aspect of the whole thing. By all rights I should have been laying out the lines without a second thought, sending them up through my airways and into oblivion. I should have been more than desperate to lose myself to the numbing euphoria, the inescapable ability to just kick it all away. And although I could feel my body begging for it like a lecherous whore, my mind had remained singular and clear. It felt somehow impossible, as I sat there in the dark, thinking endlessly about his eyes and the simple, beautiful things he had said. It had seemed... wrong.

Cocaine as clean as the freshest snow, but yet as dirty as the gutter sludge oozing down the streets when I thought of his face. How could that be? Especially after my reaction to his presence... the things I had let myself see and the way he had moved through my world? He had done something to me. And I had come to the conclusion, in the middle of the night while staring hauntedly at the drawer in front of me, that it was futile beyond belief to pretend like he hadn't. But the shape of the idea in my head seemed to be so much larger than the space I had allowed for anything of its like before.. and it terrified me.

A sudden crunching sound woke me out of my reverie. Blinking, I looked up, shaking the hair out of my eyes. I had wound myself up on a path heading into the woods curving around the western edges of the campus, and the snow on the ground was fresh, deep and untrodden. It was a place I often found myself going when I had nowhere else to be and needed a place to think. It was quiet, fairly deep, and even in summer it seemed to be a place that most of the other students stayed away from. I pulled my coat even tighter around me as I headed in, lost again in my unceasing musing of brightest blue eyes and impossible, radiant smiles. A shaking fear had an unshaking grip on my heart, making it thump erratically, but it was coupled with a burning restlessness in my hands that had known the touch of his pillow and the labyrinth of his fingerprints.

The trees passed me by, white birch and as slender as children's arms. They rose pale and gaunt out of the blanketing snow, and their branches were blackened charcoal against the pink and orange stillness of the sky. My footsteps were soft, crumbling sounds in the silence, and it was only after a long while that I noticed the sudden appearance of another pair of footprints beside mine. Stopping to stare, I watched as they headed down the trail I was walking, narrowing my eyes a little as I saw their imprints stop some meters ahead. And there, kneeling on a fallen, splintering tree trunk was a burgundy-clad figure, bending over a glinting, silver tripod balanced precariously on the slope of the trunk. I came to a complete halt as I watched, knowing without even having to think who it was, and the sudden whirling feeling of alertness made me feel giddy as I watched her.

I stayed silent as she adjusted the lenses of the black camera held aloft on the tripod, her fingers creating minute changes as her eyes narrowed with concentration. Her hair was swept back over one shoulder, and in a sudden, exhilarating second, the slope of her too-large shoulder and the curve of her hair hiding her face made it look as though it was a male kneeling on the tree. I stared helplessly at the rugged unisex-ness of her non-descript blue jeans, remembering the way very similar ones had covered and hugged the tops of sock-covered feet as their owner had leaned gracefully against a wall. Her back was straight, but again with that slight turn towards the masculine that was apparent throughout her whole countenance, and I found myself blushing hotly as the sound of his name flickered through my head.

A sudden, muted click sounded as her finger pressed down on the shutter, and the hand raised to brush aside the slither lengths of copper that had begun to free themselves from the confines of her shoulder to pour down her back. I felt my chest twist for a moment as the sunlight pierced them and made them a blood-red pain, but then she was capping on the lens-cover, and without even seeming to try, was turning to find me. The snap of the cover coincided with the clash of our gazes as she found me instantly, and her face hinged itself into a cheerful grin as she winked at me.

"Morning," she called, as she unscrewed the camera from the base and laid it carefully on the wood beside her. "You're up early."

I couldn't help but smile as she said this, and I began walking towards her slowly, maneuvering through the snow.

"So are you."

She grinned again and pointed needlessly at the sky with the folded tripod stand before reaching for a bag I could now see lay on the other side of the trunk. Unzipping it and brushing off errant flakes of snow, she slid the silver stand into it and reached for the camera case beside it. I moved my eyes away as the strap fell like a sapphire, glittering thing into the morning, and concentrated instead on her face which was watching me with a tranquil smile. She looked somehow in perfect synch with the woods surrounding her; the light glinting off her hair and pooling in the smoothness of her coat much in the same way it merged with the gentle waving of the bare tree limbs and the calm quiet of the snow.

"The campus gives good photography in the morning."

I came to a stop beside her as she slipped the camera into the case and zipped it up, putting it into the bag with the tripod and laying it aside. She jumped lithely down from the tree and moved aside, patting the place she had just vacated with her hand, indicating for me to sit.

"Was I interrupting?" I asked, as she sat down next to me and lifted her feet out of the snow.

"Not at all. With sunrises you usually only get a few minutes of the best shots, and I had just grabbed the last one."

I nodded and arranged my coat around me as I made myself comfortable, our breaths rising twinned and fogged on the cold, still air.

"I couldn't sleep," I said suddenly, without knowing why, as her calm blue eyes watched me. "So I came for a walk. This place is one of the nicest on campus."

"You get that happening a lot, where you can't sleep?"

I kept my eyes on the snow below us as I shrugged nonchalantly, aware of her shrewd gaze.

"It happens sometimes," I replied carefully.

"Then you should come over again sometime soon. I'll get my brother to make you some tea."

"Tea?" I echoed in confusion, arching a brow as she said this, ignoring the lurch in my stomach at the mention of her brother, and she laughed helplessly, shaking her head.

"He makes infusions from different kinds of herbs to make teas for various things. He's got a really good one for insomnia. I'll get him to make you a couple bottles."

I was flushing before she even finished the sentence, and my shaking of my head was feeble in the face of her cheerful gaze. Tea? Medicinal teas, no less? Why, of course. It was perfect. How could he not have a healing touch with a presence like that?

"No, no... don't do that. I mean, I'm sure it's wonderful and everything, but he doesn't have to waste his time on me."

And then I was seeing his face again as she deepened her smile, and I was looking away as the flush began to surge up my neck and threaten the exposed flesh of my jaw.

"It's no waste," she says softly, as she pulls her tripod bag onto her lap. "I'm sure he would say the same."

And that proved too much, and my fingers were fidgeting on each other as I racked my head for something else to say, anything to get off this topic and erase the feeling of sapphire from the center of my head. Would he say the same? Would it matter if he didn't?

Would it matter if he did?

I swallowed and lifted my eyes to find hers crazily, desperately, as memories of the night before came careening into my brain and the vision of my shaking fingers spelling betraying, impossible Morse code on the hidden surface of my sheets. The knowledge had been deeper than the dark that had closed in all around me, and I had become a frightened child in the face of it, his name burning on my lips and the tightness of my chest not letting me speak it.

"How are those books going?" I asked, with an edge of desperation creeping into my voice that I knew my tentative smile did nothing to cover.

She looked at strangely me for a moment before nodding slowly, her gaze lifting off mine to find the sky.

"Not bad. I've finished The Hours already."

"What did you think of it?" My voice was rough and uncultured in comparison with her light, easy tones. My hands clenched tighter and I swore inwardly as she glanced quickly at me again. Great. Keep it going, asshole.

"Different," she replied, her fingers playing absently with the zipper on the tripod bag. "Difficult to get used to at first, but I liked it. I can see why he won the Pulitzer for it. Ashen's reading it now; I hope you don't mind. He goes through three books a week, so he won't keep it long."

She glanced over at me again as she said the last part, and I felt the blush deepen imperceptibly as his name hung in the air between us. Did I mind? Involuntarily I thought of his hands, again, holding the books as I watched him that morning. I ran through the memory, for the thousandth time, of how his fingers had looked as they slipped through the pages, and how bright and intent his eyes had been as he asked me about them. I thought of the light lying like rain on the shattering surface of his face, and I squeezed my eyes shut against it desperately and shook my head. No, I couldn't truthfully say that I minded very much. Not in the way that was being asked of me, anyway.

"No, I don't mind," I said. "Tell him to take as long as he needs."

The words were smooth and faultless as I spoke them, and her answering smile was enough to render the flush on my cheeks less potent. But my hands were as tight as wound wire in my pockets, and I could feel them gripping the insides of the coat as though intent on tearing it. The sudden sound of snow being displaced made me look up; Teryl was standing now and shouldering the tripod bag.

"I've got to get back to the lab and develop these before class. Feel like taking a walk with me?"

I nodded and stood, and as she began to head back down the path we had taken, I reached out a hand to wrap around the tripod bag hanging from her back. She came to a halt as my touch held her there and frowned as I began to slip it from her shoulder.

"Let me carry this," I said, and the look in her eyes coupled with the crooked grin touching her lips made me look away again as I managed to disengage the bag from her arm. She stood there unresistingly as I hefted it away from her, and as I shrugged into the straps, she smiled helplessly at me, a faint blush touching her cheeks.

"You didn't have to do that," she said, watching me as we set off again. We walked single-file down the narrow path, me trudging behind her, watching the imprints of her boots pass me by.

"What class do you have next?" I asked, ignoring her last statement and practically feeling her answering grin as I watched the back of her head.

"Digital Photography. Then the rest of my day is empty. I've got to get some more shots in for my portfolio, though, so I guess I'll just be scouting around. Ashen's going to be swinging by for a bit to see the campus, too."

She added that part on without ceremony, but it was as though she had announced the afternoon arrival of Armageddon as I felt my gait slow down and my head snap up to bore burning, probing holes in the back of her head. Ashen? Coming to the campus? My fingers tightened their hold on the straps of the bag on my shoulders as my heart, slowly but surely, began to pick up its pace. Christ, Evan. Jesus fucking Christ. Since when did you decide that taking a stop-off in the middle of the Twilight Zone was going to be a good idea? He's just a guy. Just a guy. A GUY, man. Have you completely lost it? Calm the fuck down and think properly.

"He is?" I heard my voice, pale and useless, but I forced myself to keep going anyway as she stepped out of the edge of the woods and began to hike up the small incline to the paved campus path. "When?"

I winced even as I asked this, but as she fell into step beside me as we headed west on the road, her expression was innocent as she looked over at me. When? Like it would be any of your business to know or ask that. This is ridiculous, Evan, I heard my mind yell, even as the sudden tightness of my throat denied that thought completely and without controversy.

"Some time this morning. He said he had a couple of things to do first."

I was nodding hurriedly before she even finished, feeling like a complete moron for asking in the first place. She was watching me carefully, and as I raised a nervous hand to rake awkwardly through my hair, she spoke again and managed, with admirable accuracy, to send my hand plummeting from the top of my head to dangle uselessly at my side. The air seemed to thin as she said it, and I found myself searching for breath as her words hung in the air like so much damning impossibility.

"He was asking if you were going to be around, actually..."

And then, as her eyes seemed to burn in their intensity and scour me with waves of obliterating knowledge, they were slipping casually off mine to linger on the road. And I couldn't help wonder vaguely at how the asphalt didn't explode with the pressure of her gaze when my own head was left spinning in bewilderment. A hitching, surging feeling began to pulse in my chest as I stared at her, and as it poured down my arms and pooled in my fingers, I stumbled away blindly from it. I knew its name even as my very soul screamed denial against it, and the knowledge of it was the feel of his name on my tongue as I struggled to keep co-ordination in my legs and hold my pace beside her.

"He did?" My fingers dug into the neighboring flesh of the palms, sinking their needle strength into the skin and working their way deeper and deeper. This is impossible.. this should be goddamned impossible..

"Yeah."

And that was all, no explanation given as to why he had asked. It almost seemed as though she was waiting for me to ask why as her eyes remained unwaveringly and maddeningly on the road below us. But even as I considered that dreadful possibility, I knew I was beyond chicken-shit to ask and so the word sank like a stone behind my teeth, unsaid and as red-hot as a smouldering coal.

"Well," I said, my mouth as dry as sand and my cheeks as inflamed as the sun now lifting high and golden into the sky. "I've got class in about half an hour, so... probably not."

Why were those words so hard to say? It had been like spitting out teeth. And why, as I thought of the sudden image of Ashen standing before me on the path with a quiet, radiant smile touching his rosy lips, did it make me feel as though the ground was cracking beneath my feet? I thought of his arms, hanging loose and elegant at his sides as he watched me approach. I thought of his legs, as still and implacable as stone, rooted to the earth as though every place he stood became his unassailable altar. The exploding blueness of his eyes became a cerulean arrow to the heart as I looked through the mist of imagination to find his gaze standing holy and absolute before me. I thought of his hair, glorious and proud as it wound around shoulders too perfectly crafted to be called merely beautiful. And in a burning, shaming moment I knew the blazing radiance of the sun as it offered them to me exultant and naked, bare of cloth and wearing only the shaking, wretched craving of my lips.

"That's a pity," Teryl suddenly said, wrenching me from my thoughts and landing me straight in the midst of self-conscious mortification. Her eyes had been on me the entire time as I had those insane, damning thoughts about her brother, and the blush on my cheeks reached a pitch I knew was beyond impossible to hide. "He was hoping to see you."

Oh, fuck me. And there it was. Huge and impervious, it rose like a mountain out of the careless earth of her words to rip across my sky, and as the lightning poured down and skewered me to the ground, it laughed in my face and dared me to deny it. And through it all, I saw the ever-present visage of her gaze as the silvertine flecks of her irises held and simultaneously shattered the name of the emotion in my heart. Hope.

And it all came crashing together. Through that one single word she eradicated the defenses of refusal set up like barricades in my mind, and the knowledge I had tried to keep at bay last night came screaming in from all sides. Like waves of invisible water, they soaked and trivialized the flames of my denial, held up mirrors to the instruments of the ruin and named them Hope.

"And I was hoping to see him," I heard myself murmur faintly as I stared inwardly, feeling my hands grip themselves even tighter and the tearing rip of the skin as they finally pushed past its toughened barrier to find the blood and muscle within. And it was true. I had been. All that night, all the day after leaving him. Even as I told myself I never wanted to set foot in that house again, my heart had throbbed with only that raging, agonized desire. I had sat in the dark with the candles lit because it was all I had ever done, all I had ever wanted to do. But I had also stared into the flames and had my soul burn thusly even as I craved the shadows, knowing the depths of his eyes had burned so much brighter than the light flickering before me.

"There will be another time," Teryl said softly. And it was softness so strangely pitched that it made me look up and out of my introspection to find her gaze, and when I did, its countenance halted any reply that might have come to my lips. I stared at her eyes as they watched me, nonplussed at how far-reaching the blueness seemed to go this time, as though the very center of her unfathomable, inner mind was watching me. And as she gazed, a sudden flash of the night before flooded through my mind, and the unblinking stare of my eyes into the shadows became known to me as though I had moved out of myself to watch my actions. I saw myself, rigid and still in the middle of my bed, candles flickering into the darkness on either side but becoming minute sparks in the emerald burn of my gaze. I reeled in shock as I saw the bright agony with which they scorched, a blistering green glow literally pouring onto my cheeks. My face was pale and haunted as it stared into the dark, and the tightness of my fingers around my knees trembled the knowledge of his voice as the vision suddenly snapped itself off.

And then her eyes were back before me, their sharp shrewdness still untamed and omnipotent, but they were falling from mine more quickly than I could keep up with and in the next moment she was looking up and away at something over my head.

"We're here."

I dumbly turned to follow her gaze, and saw that we had indeed come to a stop in front of one of the lecture buildings. And as she glanced quickly back at me and offered me a faint, almost forced smile, she moved to the door and held it open for me quietly. I moved passed her wordlessly and we moved into the gleaming, dimly-lit hallway silently, she leading the way a few steps in front.

I stared at the back of her head again as I followed her, my mind a mess of confusion and questions. What the fuck had that been? It had felt, in that moment of impossible vulnerability, that as I was dealing with the facts that had just been presented to me, she had reached right into the middle of my head and plucked out a memory. It was almost as though I had literally felt fingers sinking deep into the yielding jelly of my brain to find and grab hold of what they wanted, as her pale blue eyes had held mine. And it wasn't the first time. I had toyed with the idea before that she perhaps was in control of an ability far beyond mine or anyone else I had ever met, for that matter. It had been presented to me before, with the breaking of the pencil, that moment on her couch, and the odd way she had of seeming to speak the words in my head. But they had been dusted edges on a reality too slippery and weird for me to hold and I dismissed them hesitantly. However, that, right then, had been an exercise in the undeniable.

"This is the lab," she said suddenly as we came to a stop in front of a heavy white door, labeled `Photography'. I looked over at her as she pushed the door open, and followed her in as she smiled. Her eyes were back to normal and I would have sworn disillusionment to my previous thoughts if my head wasn't aching and her cheeks hadn't gone pale.

The door closed with a vacuum-sounding thunk, and I looked around as she began to move through the large, eclectic room. The floor was identical to that of the hallway; glittering white tile that put me more in mind of a medical setting than camera work. It stretched long and gleaming across the room, a haphazard path in between the dozens of curtained displays that lounged against the walls. Huge lights with their silver, umbrella-like shades were pointed at various objects that were set up on stools and chairs in the middle of the displays. Handfuls of tripods littered each cubicle, and bolts of fabric and cloth filled the corners and tumbled out into the main walkways.

"This is where we do most of our still work," Teryl said as she raised her arms to encompass the cubicles with a wide sweeping gesture. "You ever been here before?"

I shook my head, and she grinned.

"I should show it to you when its in full swing – its crazy. You think a stock market situation looks insane, you should see a bunch of preppy photography students trying to get perfect lighting and not get their props stolen. I swear it can get nastier than a prison exercise court in here."

I grinned in spite of myself at that image as she winked at me, and the colour was back in her cheeks and the calm cheerfulness of her eyes became prevalent again as though the whirlwind in my head was imaginary and the thudding of my heart mistaken.

"Sounds like in Lit class when Richler isn't there – the fashion idiots bring out their latest projects and show them to each other. I've never heard such polite maliciousness."

She laughed as we picked our way around some silk brocade that shimmered like a pool around one of the displays, its golden-brown tints looking as though a spill of liquid chocolate was left on the floor.

"There's nothing polite about this place, believe me," she said ruefully, as she pointed laughingly to the last cubicle. The walls were draped with what looked to be a pale mauve satin, and in the middle of the spotlights situated on the stool in the middle of the floor, sat an empty tripod.

"This one's mine. I was supposed to be taking shots of the camera that is no longer there. It took me all day to get the lighting right, and I had to change the backdrop a zillion times because the guy next to me kept using fluorescent lighting and it was turning everything washed-out. And now, the camera I was using is gone. Someone probably needed it for framework."

She shook her head sadly as she stared at the remains of her work, and I couldn't help but grin at the consternation mixed with long-standing acceptance in her face. It reminded me of the way John looked at me sometimes: sighing perplexity coupled with patience acquired after long years of dealing with my stubbornness. I could almost see his sardonic smile in the grin she flashed my way, and my smile was helpless in kind as she shrugged her shoulders.

"You should pack some heat," I observed dryly as I looked at the empty top of the tripod stand, and her giggle was strident and echoing as it bounced off the gymnasium-type walls.

"I should. But most of them don't mess with me until after I'm gone, so I hardly ever catch anyone in the act."

I watched as she walked over to a large black door situated in the wall next to her display, her fingers reaching out to flick a switch next to the handle.

"Well, if you do, let me know, and I'll convince them never to do it again," I said with a light grin, and I saw her duck her head and smile blushingly as she surveyed me with twinkling blue eyes.

"I don't think beating the shit out of a poor, helpless photography student is entirely the method you should choose to go about convincing someone."

I laughed and shrugged my shoulders, running my hands through my hair as I watched her, grinning.

"It's all up to you, of course. But I can be very convincing."

"I'm sure you can," she said softly, too softly, and then her eyes became more than her laughter as she watched me closely. And again, for the second time that morning, I felt as though I was in the presence of an entity not altogether of the human limits of perception as she gazed into my eyes. But again, it was gone before I could process it, and I was left hanging there wordlessly as she transferred her line of sight from my eyes to the door beside her.

"This is the dark room. The fumes can get a little strange in here, so I don't advise you come inside. But you can look around a little more if you like."

I glanced up to the clock hanging above the door, next to the shielded, red light bulb next to it, and jumped as I registered the time. Shit! Ten minutes? How did the time go by so quickly? I should be getting used to it, by now, though..

"I'd love to, but my class starts in about ten minutes. I should really get going, it's on the other side of campus."

She looked up as well, and then pulled a face, nodding at me in apology as she began to open the door.

"Sorry to have kept you, I didn't realize. But I've got to get going too, these need to be developed before I have to get to class."

And then she was smiling at me and I caught a glimpse of dark, redly tinted room behind her as she began to slip inside.

"See you in Lit!" she called, and with a wave, moved behind the door. It closed with another sealing-sound, and I saw her grin as she waved again from the window. I waved stupidly back, and fighting to erase the helpless, tugging smile on my lips, turned on my heel and began to run out of the room.

People surged all around me as I pushed open the door and began to fly down the hallway, dodging their heavy camera equipment and irritated stares as I headed for the front doors. I was always getting attention like that: the black clothes and the hint of kohl around my eyes seemed to sink into people's eyes and grab them, wrenching them along with me as I moved. It was kind of satisfying, in a weird way. They almost seemed hypnotized around me, which allowed me a lot of license to be a complete asshole. There weren't too many other goth freaks on campus, so I stuck out like a sore thumb. Speaking of sore thumbs, I thought, as my head reeled from another stab of pain. The sudden memory of her eyes watching me as I remembered the night before tapped me on the shoulder and I began to sprint. Never mind about Teryl, I thought to myself sternly as thoughts of the previous conversation loomed like storm clouds in my head. Just get to class. But even as I ran, the memory of Ashen's name was ringing like the sound of silver trumpets in my head, and the clutching of my chest was making my head feel dizzy as I remembered her words.

`He was hoping...'

I increased my speed as I slipped in and out of the crowd, pushing my way through the doors and out into the brilliant sunshine. It exploded all around me in colours of white and palest gold, momentarily washing away my confusion. I stood there, blinking into the light as it streamed like weightless ocean around me, tinting all it touched with a burgeoning of flame and ethereal phantasm.

`To see you...'

There weren't even coherent thoughts at that moment as those words sank from the center of my head down into the awaiting, shadow-filled depths of my chest. I felt them move, as though they were physical things lodged in some strange pathway of my body, and they burned like liquid fire as they slipped down the hidden curve of my ribs to land heavy and painful on my heart. And I kept running, moving down the path and in between the oncoming tide of people as the air removed itself from my lungs and I gasped for it, for anything, as I thought of his eyes following me in the truck that day. My coat billowed behind me on the wind and it its snapping, fluttering sound I could hear the sound of my mind slowly cracking apart. And as I rounded the corner in the main intersection of the campus, the stinging cold of the breeze in my eyes wasn't something I could entirely attribute to the helpless feeling of moisture snaking across my vision.

The Sciences buildings came into view as I ran even faster, my lungs burning with the cold air that I was gulping in but not feeling. This was stupid. Insane. Why would it matter if he were hoping to see me? Why would I think, much less say, that I shared the sentiment? Why did it seem that whenever I was around her, I always said things that sounded like lies upon first utterance but then after walking away and dealing with my burning cheeks, it became more than truth? This would have to stop. I didn't know what kind of control she had over me, but it was downright unnerving and surreal. And the worst part of it was that while it was happening, I was powerless to stop it, much less mind.

`He was hoping...'

Stop it. Just stop it.

Chill the fuck out.

Can you hear yourself? You sound like some sort of lovesick teenager.

I sped up again at that appalling thought and I was almost at the front steps when something made me stop. It was a feeling more than anything that I saw at first, and I came to a halt as my gaze began to search the crowd of its own volition. It was a strange sensation; as though the entire world was put on pause as my eyes searched for the thing they somehow knew was there, and everything around me turned standstill. It was the sudden, strange tugging feeling on my heart that kept my feet stopped in their tracks, and the trembling tingling of my fingers made it feel as though the air around me had turned into electricity. A hyperawareness shot through me like a drug administered directly to my jugular, and I could feel my pupils begin to dilate crazily as the light of the day began to pour in. The sounds of the voices all around me seemed to fade into nothingness as I searched, and were replaced instead with the feeling of the grass living beneath my feet, and the intentions of the air as it moved through its unending patterns. I could hear the sounds of the leaves shivering and rustling against each other on the trees that lined the path, and the resonance of the sunlight materializing through the silver softness of the clouds was actually made known to me as it fell like gold upon my shoulders.

`To see you...'

I shuddered as my eyes sifted through the torrent of laughing, talking, silent and introspective people milling around me, and then, ever so slowly, ever so breathtakingly, I found him. My gaze seemed to slip off of one person after the other like water over an oiled surface, going faster and faster until they reached their final destination. And when they did, my heart gave one great lurch into silence, the feeling slamming through my arms and legs to make my fingers clench as his face was made known to me once more in the silver-laced light of the morning. He was walking down through the crowd slowly, taking one step at a time towards me, his eyes locked on mine as if they had never done anything but, and the smile on his lips was a confession of the most boundless beauty I had yet seen. I looked up at him wordlessly as he descended the stairs, not paying any heed to the pushings of the people moving around me, only swaying a little as their bodies swept past mine.

Gone was his orange jacket in place of a snow-white sweater, and the brilliance of his hair was like a centralized aurora borealis of glittering reds and golds as it lay upon the milky wool. It cascaded down from his head in waterfall intensity, and the aristocratic perfection of his face was a glowing, impossible frieze caught within. He moved down the stairs with a slowness that was almost agonizing, and I stared thirstily as I watched him move, savouring without even thinking that I shouldn't the way he seemed to move without touching the ground. He had one hand on the dull metal of the handrail bisecting the stairs, and it flowed down its concave surface like rain falling off of the back of a newly-born leaf. His pants were darkest blue denim that fell loose and graceful from the slender taper of his hips, and his booted feet left no trail that I could see on the snow-dusted surface of the steps. I felt my breath come back in one surging rush as I bore witness to the intensity of his eyes, like two perfectly crafted pieces of sky stolen from the horizon of a older, more powerful world not known to any but the sainted dead and highest of seraphim.

They enveloped me as he came to the final step, and he came to a full stop in front of me as the sunlight pierced their harrowing depths and threw itself back out again, joyous and reborn in the splendor of deepest sapphire and holiest silver-gold. His smile was wide and sparkling, a rosy tint on the delicacy of his cheeks as he inclined his head slightly.

"Hello again," Ashen said quietly, his voice as clear as a bell ringing over a silent meadow. A deep, amber resonance flooded the simple words with the most gentle beauty I had ever heard, and I was put in mind of rays of dying sunlight flooding over fields of golden wheat as I searched clumsily for my voice.

"Hello," I echoed in a half-whisper as I felt my lips surrendering to a smile that seemed to fall from the trappings of my eyes to land on my mouth. I could practically feel my eyes glowing as I stared at him, and my hands were limp at my sides as we gazed at one another for a time too long to be called understandable and too short to be anything remotely satisfying. My consciousness fell into his without a second thought, and his very breath and the pulse jumping soft and unending in his throat became my entire world as his smile deepened into a slow, languid grin.

"How are you?" he asked then, and I shook myself inwardly as I tried vainly to look away from the azure calm of his eyes. Get your eyes off his face, Evan... it's not going to do you any good and you might just end up completely weirding the guy out. But I was caught by the sensual softness of his lips as I wrenched my gaze downwards, and the tremor in my fingers spoke tellingly of the alternating slow-dance of terror and rapture in my heart as I stared.

"Pretty good," I replied more calmly than I thought I could, and looked back up into his eyes dazedly as I continued. "Yourself?"

Pretty good? Wow. Stimulating conversation-builder, there, asshole. So not only are you a demented freak who can't take your eyes off the guy, you're also in possession of a moronic, slow-witted brain. This has the makings of a great relationship.

"Hectic," he said with a laugh that seemed to encompass the air, ground, trees and sky as he shook his head. "I know Teryl's class is supposed to start any minute, and I was supposed to find her beforehand. But I forgot to ask which building. Have you seen her around, by chance?"

The Irish inflection in his voice was as smooth as deepest green paint as I nodded stupidly, pointing over my shoulder jerkily.

"She's at the Photography Lab. Keep going down here until you reach a junction and then turn right. It will be at the end of that path. You won't miss it."

"Thanks," he said with another flash of that incredible, effortless smile, and I was without words again as silence fell between us. The beauty of his face was like flame in the cold gray around me, and my heart began to thud again as I stared. I could feel myself getting lightheaded as I breathed in, searching without realizing at first for the scent that had haunted my memories for the past day and night. And when I found it, soft and maddeningly subtle, it floated past me like the gossamer tendrils of a ghost and I found myself staring at the smoothness of his throat as it rose out of the soft neck of his sweater.

Pine and cedar and autumn silence.. a bed of leaves in a clearing of our own making.. a whispering cry on the edge of hearing that seemed to inject a thread of fire into my veins..

And it was only when I felt my gaze lowering like some sort of lecherous, sinful rain past the hem of the neck to fall aching and hungry on the supple smoothness of his chest that I ripped my gaze fully away. The knowledge of his shoulders, lean and strong and simple before me was somehow an infusion too heady for me to bear, and I felt my cheeks begin to burn with masochistic shame.

Get the hell out of there, Evan..

"Did you manage to get to your class on time yesterday?"

I nodded and managed to dredge up a pathetic smile as my fingers began to fidget.

"Yeah. With two minutes to spare. That sister of yours drives like a demon."

He grinned and shook his head deliberately, sighing.

"And that's why I've got to take the thing in for repairs every two months when she's here for any amount of time. At least she's managed not to kill any of our passengers yet."

I lifted a hand to rake through my hair nervously as sweat began to break out on my palms, and I left it there as I shrugged, winking a little.

"Here's to hoping that you won't be in the seat when she does."

His laughter was soft and yielding as it poured into the air, and his eyes deepened in their sparkle as he nodded his head.

"I usually don't let myself get caught in a vehicle with her behind the wheel. I've learned that the very hard and stressful way."

"Do I even want to know?"

And then it was his turn to wink; a slow, hellishly sensual lowering of an alabaster eyelid over one glowing sapphire eye, the eyelashes colliding and meshing in a heart-twisting symphony of the piercingly erotic.

"You'll find out for your own soon enough, if you haven't already. Hopefully the next time the situation calls for any driving to be done, I'll be around to claim older sibling rights to the wheel. If I'm not, though, you should ask her to let you drive."

I tried to ignore the lump rising in my throat at the sight of the wink as I shook my head, grinning a little. Did he mean what I thought he did? Did he intend to be around us enough to intercede on any potential driving that might need to be done? Would there be a next time, anyway? The friendliness of the two of them was almost overwhelming to me, after years of doling out cold aloofness and receiving the same in return. I had known of Teryl all of two weeks before she had me staying over at her house for a night, and they were both already talking as though it was beyond natural for me to be intertwined with their daily lives. Without a second or even first thought, it seemed. And the funny thing was, it seemed perfectly all right to me, too.

"I don't drive. I have my license, but I haven't driven anything for a couple of years. So I might wreck your truck."

His answering grin was philosophical and wry as he arched a slender eyebrow. Damn, I thought to myself hazily. How was it possible for someone to look so good even by doing the simplest, most ordinary things? He made the most casual smile into a ground-breaking event, and just by breathing the air managed to throw my senses into override.

"It IS wrecked. I think any damage you could inflict would be pittance in comparison to the abuse the poor thing has to put up with daily."

"I dunno about that. My brother once told me that riding in a car with me was like having an aneurysm on a vehicular level. So take that how you will."

His burst of laughter and the way the light was drawn into his eyes at the beckoning of the sound dredged up a helpless, idiotic grin onto my face and I stood there smiling moronically as he nodded his head emphatically.

"Ouch. That's pretty good though – I'll have to remember that. It sums up Teryl very well, too. I guess I'll just have to drive, then."

My smile was getting retarded, and I struggled to wipe it off my face as I looked down.

"Sounds good. Save us from ourselves."

Sitting in a car with him? Watching him drive?

No, don't think about it. Don't think about it at all.

"Always," he said lightly, softly, and then I was looking back up into his eyes again. Always? Could you say anything more perfect and damning to me? I was at a loss of what to say next as that gently spoken word rung loudly in my ears, and the light in his eyes became nails of bluest tourmaline slamming into the back of my head as I cleared my throat and spoke nervously again.

"So.. um.. if you can't find your way to the lab, just go into Student Services a little up the road from here, on the right. They'll get someone to show you."

He nodded and pushed his hands into his pockets, and I watched, entranced, as his hair glittered on his shoulders as they moved with his arms.

"Perfect. Thanks."

"I'd take you there, except I have a class.."

His answering smile was luminous and damning in its innocence, and my longing to simultaneously leave and run my hands through the auburn silk of his hair became acute and terrifying as he watched me.

"I'm sure I'll find it. But thank you."

Go, go, go, go. What the hell are you doing? Just get out and don't look back..

But I couldn't move. And he just kept watching me. The serene blueness of his eyes became tempered with a soft, yielding purple as he held me still, and in a moment of gut-wrenching mortification I found myself thinking of his room and the midnight confession of my dreams. A flush bigger than my ability to hide began to infiltrate my cheeks as the memory of my wretched hard-on while standing in the center of his room sank like fire into the pit of my stomach. The sound of his name as I had run through the trees in my dreams forced the fire even deeper, even lower, and the longing I had known in the dream-state became frighteningly real as I stared into his eyes.

And it was hope. Hope wrenched itself down my each and every one of my bones as I lost myself to the sapphire magnetism of his eyes, and the terror building in my chest seemed to touch and intertwine with the desire burning its way past my stomach. It was more than hope, I realized deliriously as he held me in thrall, his silence louder than any of my screamed, desperate words. More than hope. More than want, if want was even something that I could admit to myself, even then. It was need. In a sudden, agonized stretching away and aside from self-involvement, I realized the true nature of the darkness the previous night and all the nights that had stretched endless and alone before it. In the impossible shattering beauty of the one who stood before me, were all the things I knew I had ever thought godly. The undeniable eroticism of his face and eyes were like a torch in my mind, and though I had felt myself deny them last night, I knew then that I had only managed to sink them deeper, let them more completely and irreversibly inside me.

And as my hands began to shake, the hope and the terror and the awful, incredible other thing of their creation reached its final destination and I fought to keep a whimper from my lips. He stood there before me like the Word of God made flesh, eyes watching me questioningly, and I knew only a burning, obscene response to that which beheld me. I could feel the heat of their passing like scorch marks on my flesh and against all feverish attempts to dissuade and refuse, the stirring of my groin began to throb and shift against the confines of my jeans. A desperate, ugly, urge rose in me to reach out and touch a hand to his cheek, to let my aching fingers run through the cool silk of his hair. My eyes burned crazily with the need to see his eyes close helpless against my touch, I needed beyond belief and ability to deny to watch the auburn grace of his eyelashes lower against my fingertips as I whispered his name. And then somehow, impossibly, and in a world not hinged in the here and now.. my fingers might follow the lengths of his hair down, to graze upon the impossible cream satin of his throat, to touch upon his pulse. I would feel the heat of his skin under my pale and ghostly fingers; I would feel it burn through me like fire unending. I would hold each beat and call them only mine as my fingers would tremble desperate and urgent on his skin, tattooing the unspoken enormity of my desire into the very essence of his flesh.

No.

"Evan?"

I blinked. Wrenching my eyes off his neck, I looked up once more into the questioning blueness of his eyes, a burning flush on my cheeks and my eyes threatening to overflow. His eyes were deep and questing as they watched me, and the sudden expression on his face was more than I could attempt to understand as it slowly suffused his features. Its beauty was marred by a stare that threw me completely as my brain began to spin. He looked almost apprehensive as he stared, the wideness of his eyes betraying an emotion too weird to read. It was as if the shock I had just experienced had been completely laid bare to his unfathomable gaze, and.. no. What the hell was wrong with me?! No. No. No fucking way. There is no way this is real. That's not who I am, what just happened is not what I want, so get the hell out of my head before I explode...

"I'm late for class," I stammered suddenly, harshly, as my muscles seized and I began to move past him, the colliding shock on his face only really registering as I caught him in my peripheral vision. And even though my heart was clawing itself to pieces as I took the steps two at a time, I closed my eyes against the horrifying feeling of him watching me and pushed open the door.

"Thanks for your help," I heard him call after me in a voice made quiet and small with confusion, and I flinched as it sunk into my brain. I pretended not to hear as I ran full-tilt into the building, finding my way blindly to the lecture room. And as I entered the room amid the disapproving stares of the students and the professor writing something on the overhead projector pointed to the front of the room, my vision was lost to a blinding wave of pain. I found my seat clumsily, and as I crashed into it, I looked without wanting to out of the windows facing the front of the building. I stared desperately out to the staircase as my heart screamed a punishing pace against my chest, my throat dry and incapable of swallowing. And I watched, throughout the course of the class, how, time and time again, the silent emptiness of the staircase made it seem as though he had never even been there at all.

i fell in love with a balladeer i saw your tongue, it licked my heart they called you queer

they called you queer

hero psycho dreamer.

• edward kowalcyzk

I spent the rest of the day in a frightened daze. After my initial class, I took to the multitude of pathways crossing the campus, too confused and restless to find a place to sit down, too edgy and terrified to trust myself back at the dorm. The fog of the early morning had dissipated, giving way to a gentle mist that still clung like spider webs on the edges of the trees walling in the grounds. The light of the sun was muted and gentle, and it glistened off the snow that lay in powdered diamond resplendence on the ground, but I was blind to all of it as I concentrated solely on placing one foot in front of the other.

I stayed completely away from the side of the campus I knew Teryl was likely to be in, perhaps in company with her brother as well. It was that last fear alone that drove me as far away as possible from the building that housed my shame. Even though I didn't have to look anymore at the staircase where he had stood, its image was burned red, white, and inescapable on the back of my eyelids. I walked swift and aimless, my head bowed against the light of the day and my rigid fingers lying as taut and still as coffins in my pockets. It was above crazy, what had happened there on those steps. It was sacrilege, it was obscene. It went beyond any sort of limits I could ever have prescribed to ANYONE, much less a male, and much more less one like THAT. It was inexcusable. And the worst part of it was, even as I thought those humiliated, furious accusations, my heart wouldn't quit its incessant, dizzying pounding at the image of him burned like acid and shame on the whorls of my brain. Even as the taste of bile rose in my mouth as I thought of the disgusting, shocking reaction I had to his overwhelming beauty, my blood surged at the memory of his eyes watching me, pulling me in.

I snarled under my breath as I walked, impervious to the people coinciding with and then having to move from my path. I stalked through their midst like a storm cloud, and although I heard mutterings of indignation as I shouldered through couples and groups alike, all of them moved for me with a speed that betrayed their apprehension at the scowl on my face and the knowledge of who I was.

Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Damn HIM. But even that fervent curse was as ashes on my tongue before I even had time to shape it in my head, and I knew it. Where had this come from? Why was it here? He kept rising like a ghost in the middle of my head as I walked, and I slammed my eyes shut against it desperately.

Okay, fine. Yes. He was beautiful. I knew it, everyone else knew it, I was sure without even thinking that he knew it too. The world knew it. Fuck, I bet even the ground under his feet knew it. The birds flying over his perfect head knew it. The air going in and out of his lungs certainly without a doubt knew it. But why had it thrown me for such a debilitating loop? I had seen beautiful things and people before. Even men, yes. I knew, when I had looked at their faces on the streets or on the subways, that there was no other word to be prescribed to their perfection other than beauty. But even the most intoxicating masculine face that had managed to turn every face in its vicinity, male and female, young and old alike, to stare hungry and yearning at its construction, I had never ever felt that same pull. I saw, I witnessed, yes. I understood. But it held no allure for me.

Until now.

Did it make me feel any better that his beauty could be called, fairly and justly, laden with the effeminate? He was the female counterpart to his sister, I knew that now. Where she had a face that was no less striking than his, it was just too awkwardly proportioned to be called beautiful. She had stolen the angular lines that should have chiseled his face, and he had taken the elegant delicacy that should have softened hers. Her jaw was strong and hard where his was slender and refined, her lips were slender and unceremonious where his were supple and firm. The frankness of her eyes was honest, simple, and masculine, whereas his eyes had stolen all that creation had ever known to be sensual, erotic, and deep. Her hair was long and beautiful, yes, but she had, sadly, nothing on her brother. Hers was straight and simple, and his was tousled and glorious on his shoulders. Hers the colour of simple copper, his the taste of blood and reddest sunrise. And it would still be a mistake to call him feminine, even in the presence of all that, for his smile was radiantly male and the sound of his voice was more strident and clear than any other male's I had heard. But he certainly wasn't the typical rugged dude that I knew and associated with the generic guy.

So did it make me feel any better? Any more justified? Was I able to convincingly hide in those specifications, explain away the thumping in my heart and the throbbing inside my boxers through those ALMOST heterosexual conditions? I tried it on for size and found myself reeling in disgust as I thought again of the effortless sexuality of his wink, the burning vista of his lips and the endless infinity of his eyes. This was getting seriously stupid. What the hell was wrong with me? Haphazardly, I began filing through possible reasons in my head even as my soul shrank away in dismissal, my lower lip becoming the clamped captive of my teeth as I walked.

When was the last time I had eaten? I had felt dizzy as I had watched him descend the stairs towards him, a definite light-headedness that perhaps could be attributed to lack of food. The spaghetti I had eaten last night had been my last meal, so maybe that was it. But unwillingly, my mind replayed that glorious, beautiful approach for me again and I watched as his eyes came forward to sear mine, sending my head and heart flying upwards into the proverbial clouds.

"Fuck," I hissed furiously. Nice try.

I hadn't slept, either. Not just last night, but most nights. I couldn't say for certain when it was that I actually got more than three hours sleep, excepting that night at his house. That might account for the almost dream-like state that I had plunged into the moment I had seen him on his doorstep, it might give reason for the strange and surreal way the world seemed to jump into vivid relief around him. But it didn't really hold up to the answers I asked for when I thought of the way his hand had felt on my shoulder, and the fact that I could still, even today, feel the imprint of his touch as though it had been burned there.

I kicked an errant empty can of Pepsi lying forlornly in the middle of the path. It spiraled off it and onto the grass with a ricocheting snap that was sort of sullenly satisfying, and I ignored adamantly the ghostly residue of his energy still lying gentle and complete on my arm.

The damn drugs. That was an excuse and a half, if I'd ever heard one. Six excuses, even. Cocaine was the ultimate and final illusionist, that much was undisputed. And how much had I forced into my system over the path six months? I didn't even like to think. It was very possible that its clouding effects had taken a lasting effect on my brain, making the weird hallucinations and visions almost expected and understood. But even that didn't really quell the nagging insistence of my mind that those had only started when I saw Teryl in the parking lot that day. It also didn't convincingly explain away the way that Ashen's scent had seemed to hitch permanent residence inside my lungs and I breathed it in hungrily everywhere I went. Visions of crosses quartering circles? Whiffs of incense and dreams of forests I had never been before in reality but knew more intimately than the trappings of my own mind? Feelings of desire and lust more intense than anything I could ever think could be possible while running down a midnight path in my dreams calling his name?

"FUCK," I spat again, and was about to throw my hands up in derision and violent disgust, when a sudden touch on my arm made me jump and whirl around in fury.

"Get the fu—" But the snarled warning died on my lips as I came face to face with a slender, calculating face, the bespectacled gaze regarding me with a mixture of exasperation and affection that rendered me silent.

"Having another good day, I see."

John's voice was quiet but light-hearted, and I scowled at him darkly, but more out of habit then anything as he watched me with his usual irritating, penetrating smile.

"Absolutely bloody fantastic," I exhaled in annoyance as I began walking again without waiting or watching for him to catch up. It was awful of me, I knew, but it was the way it had always been and he was a good and patient enough person to know it wasn't going to change. But I did slow my step to match his limited gait once he fell into pace with me and his careful gaze on the pavement below us bore witness to that knowledge as we walked.

"Where are you headed now?"

I pushed aside the sleeve of my coat to find my watch in answer to his query and gestured with my head to the campus buildings rising in the distance.

"English Lit in about fifteen minutes. You?"

"Back to the dorm. Just got out of Composition."

I nodded and kept my eyes on the road as we walked, watching through the scope of my peripheral vision the rustling movement of his battered brown jacket beside me. It shouldn't have felt so strange to see him appear out of nowhere like that, and I shouldn't have been staring so wretchedly at the once-familiar terrain of his jacket. I shouldn't have been thinking so hauntedly of the day I had first given it to him as a careless hand-me-down, and I certainly shouldn't have felt the stab of pain through my heart as I watched his too-frail frame wear it like a long-prized shroud. He had worn it ceaselessly since that day when we were seventeen, and had staunchly refused my bewildered offerings to buy him a new one. I trained my gaze fully on him for a moment as I sought to find his eyes in the profile of his face, and then as their quick blueness connected I felt mine dropping away like wax from a flame. It wasn't turning out to be a very reasonable sort of day.

"How'd it go?"

"Alright, I guess. The prof didn't seem to enjoy my rendition of a Handel-inspired piece too much. We had to hand in our compositions to her for her to play each one right in front of us all. She completely messed up the tempo and the sotto, and made the thing sound like a kid wrote it."

I shook my head and tried to hide my helpless, asshole-ish smile as he delivered an indignant, scorching glance my way. I dropped my gaze again hurriedly, but it was too late because the sigh on his lips at my expression dragged the grin into full force and he glowered at me mildly even as his eyes twinkled.

"Yeah, well, she's a stupid bitch anyway," I offered reflectively as he nodded in gloomy acquiescence, shaking his head. "I told you that you should have let me cut all the strings in that monstrous piano of hers."

"And have you get kicked out of university if they found out it was you? I don't think so. Stupid bitch she may be, but certainly not enough to ruin a future over."

I laughed softly.

"Future? What future? A pouring coffee with an English degree kinda future? She can ruin that all she likes. I'd even ruin it for her if she found herself incapable."

John rolled his eyes at that and snorted sharply, his eyebrows becoming a single furrowed line of disapproval as he looked over again.

"Once again, your unfailing optimism manages to astound me."

"Good to know I keep you in cheerful spirits," I said amicably as the frown twitched and the helpless tuggings of a smile surfaced on his lips again.

"You do. God knows how, but you do."

My eyes flashed quickly over to his face as he said this, and the swift but serious return glance of his steady blue gaze made my step falter. It was quick enough to be almost not there, and it was subtle enough that it gave me the completely undeserved –but selflessly offered-- option of ignoring it. And I probably would have if his words hadn't been like daggers through my heart, his soft voice amplifying them a thousands times over in the confines of my head. I ran my hands through my hair in an unconscious nervous gesture as I disciplined myself to fall back in step with him, and when I spoke again, my voice was low and tough with the strain of trying to be anything but.

"I don't know why you put up with me."

And that was as close I could come, at that moment anyway, to remotely attempting to voice the apologies and hurt that had taken vicious lodgings in my heart since the day it all started to fall apart. It was desperate, it was clumsy, and it was far from what he surely deserved as he took it in quietly, accepting the harshness of voice as though it was the broken whisper that it truly was. My eyes were burning embers as they scoured the road, and the sudden tightness of my fingers tensed even further as he shrugged a little and moved closer beside me. I don't deserve this, I screamed soundlessly to the calmness of his shadow below me. I don't deserve this goodness. How can you be so forgiving of every disgusting thing that I do? Truly, I'm going to go to hell for all of this one day. If I don't, it'll only be because God or whoever it is up there acts on a request of yours for mercy. That'll be the only damn way.

One day I'll fix all this, I swear to you. I promise. Just give me time.

"You're my best friend," he murmured bluntly and factually, and the pillar-like flame of his eyes held mine in a burning lock for a long moment as I stared wordlessly at him. This was indeed the face of goodness. I was actually looking at the patron saint of forgiveness. And it was in the shape of a diminutive, solemn-faced guy who knew no ends of selflessness and struggle; in the shape of my oldest and most admired friend. And as the seconds ticked by as I dwelt on this, long and slowly plunging towards the awkward and unfixable, the soft tenderness of his eyes flickered instantly into an insolent smile and he winked at me.

"'Sides. The chicks all call me a goggle-wearing mouse. All I've got is you."

"I'll break their faces," I replied after a minute in a low growl as the moment passed us by, elusive and golden, but not forgotten. Never forgotten.

His smile was a rare and blossoming thing on his lips as he ducked his head a little, avoiding my gaze.

"Most of them are actually quite terrified of you, you know."

I nodded in grim satisfaction.

"Good."

"It IS good. For me, at any rate. Can't assume it gets you many girls, though."

I kept silent at that remark as sudden, unbidden visions of Ashen come exploding like a door holding out a wall of water into my head. I flinched and swallowed the beginnings of a sickened lump in my throat, and covered it up with a frown as John glanced questioningly at me. Girls? No, couldn't say that it did. Not that I had felt any real interest in any of them for the past couple of years anyway, remaining celibate unofficially out of choice and officially out of lack of opportunity. It was, however, interesting and just a little bit fucked how after so long my interest had been spiked beyond my capability to ever bring it back down.. and that it chanced to be over someone with the attainability of the Holy Grail... and also just so happened to be male.

"Whatever," I said out loud to him and myself at the same time. Think about that later. Much, much later. Hopefully never. "I get along fine without them."

"So it would seem," he murmured oddly, and the strange pitch of it rang an alarm bell in my head as I glanced, startled, over at him.

He had his eyes lowered introspectively to the ground, and as he lifted them to find mine watching him, he did a strange thing that bugged and perplexed me for weeks afterwards. He held my gaze unfalteringly for a half moment, and in that span of seconds I saw a hint of shadow there that I had never seen before. It crouched heavy and disturbing in the backs of his irises, and the sudden tightening of his facial muscles seemed to strain with all their might to keep the darkness tethered and flush with his control. And as his eyes began to slip from mine, I belatedly realized the shape of the emotion that had been laid bare before me for those few, precious seconds. He had pressed a question into that darkness as he had looked up searchingly at me, and it was only after it was gone that I understood it for what it was but nothing more. I stared at him in confusion and wonder as he lowered his head again, and my bewilderment doubled threefold as I caught the incredible bruising of a blush rising inflamed and awkward on his cheeks.

"Speaking of girls, how was your night with Teryl? You must have been back pretty late."

His voice was jumbled and high-pitched, and I stared. Was everyone around me in possession of bizarre, eerie powers now? That reply he had given me was weird. Almost... knowing. More like a question instead of an answer. And now this one... It sounded too close to the highly personal and uncomfortable ones ringing around in my own head.. much too close. Had I said something else that he had heard? I didn't think so, but I couldn't be absolutely sure.

"It was alright," I replied slowly, carefully. Could a day where I met someone who, for all appearances could honestly be mistaken for some sort of celestial being, truthfully be called simply alright'? Yeah, it could, I guessed, if you threw unnatural' or `unsettling' into it somewhere... "The snowstorm hit us pretty hard, and I ended up having to stay the night there, actually."

... or `incredible'...

Get a grip.

John's face was the picture of surprise and instant levering into the lasciviously shrewd. His eyebrows began to rise slowly as I shook my head in irritation, not wanting to but being able to stop the ridiculous grin at the morbid delight in his eyes.

"Dude," I started to say warningly, raising my hand in mock admonishment, my frown rendered completely pointless by the interrupting snigger falling from his lips.

"You're sleeping at her place on the first date? Man, there really IS a whole evil side to you I never knew about. I think it's time you spilled the beans, buddy."

I cast my eyes heavenward and delivered a scorching glare to the clouds before transferring it to the wide, conceited grin of the one beside me. He didn't even have the decency to flinch, merely cracked his smile open even further, his nodding head an affirmation to my long-held theory that maybe I wasn't the biggest asshole in this relationship.

"It wasn't a date, you prick. We had stuff we had to do."

And even before those last words are out of my mouth, I'm kicking myself for thinking they could sound as dismissing as they had seemed in my head. Because, as predicted, he nodded his head even faster and I quickened my step in annoyance.

"Yeah. That's right. Stuff."

"Blow me," I muttered, hating myself for the smile still dancing on my lips. The English buildings were about half a block away, and I set my sights on them grimly as he giggled.

"There's no need to be crude," he said blithely. "It's not my fault you have strange and perverted needs."

I groaned. "Homework, while admittedly being strange and perverted, is not something I would call a need of mine. You're the only one I know of who gets off at the sight of textbooks and term papers."

"I'm talking about your deviant ability to get a girl to let you stay at her place on the first night. Does she live alone? You might get your ass kicked if you're not careful. Make sure you stay real quiet."

I tried to not pay any heed to the instant reaction of a blush beginning to rise like a haze to my cheeks. Yeah, that much was true. I might get my ass kicked. But certainly not for anything to with Teryl, that was for sure.

"No, she doesn't live alone. Her brother lives there too."

`He was hoping...'

Brightest, deepest eyes of cerulean, speaking my every secret, my every pain. Calling them out for me one at a time, holding them like broken, jagged things, cutting his fingers on them and naming them beautiful even as they tore him. And in the blood that fell like rain to my lips ran the untamed genetics of my longing and his ravaging beauty; each one the bearer and reason of the other as I drank it all down desperately, wretchedly.

Ashen...

"He does? Well, good. He can save his sister from your plundering wiles."

I nodded slowly, arduously. But who was going to save me from them? I sighed imperceptibly as the front steps of the main English building rose up out of the pavement in front of me.

That hard-on had been no joke. There wasn't any way I could explain it away. Not even due to lack of physical contact for two years. I had my opportunities to get who and what I wanted. Even though the girls on campus shied away from me, I could see that if ever any of them had happened to catch me on a good day where I wasn't a complete ruthless bastard, they would follow me around for weeks. It was kind of awful, in a wearying, sad way. I ended up feeling bad for each and every one of them, but that only made it worse and resulted in me stepping further and further away. But I really couldn't say what the attraction was. I knew that I was considered something of a demi-god because of the looks handed to me by my father, but surely that wasn't enough to keep them coming. Pretty boy though I was, unfeeling coldness was all I ever cared enough to hand anyone. One of them, with infuriated, embarrassed tears in her eyes following my flat refusal for a one-night stand, told me that I was an evil incubus with severe pathological problems. She asked me if I had a penchant for small boys, and I told her yeah, chopped up and in my freezer. I never heard from her again. I wished I could have felt bad, but there was a certain kind of satisfaction about turning down one of the most lusted-after girls on campus, and it made her stupid, aggravating friends leave me alone for a while.

"Sure," I replied. "I'll leave you to your juvenile fantasies. And when you're in the shower, jacking off to the thought of me having my way with some girl, try to remember to clean the stuff off the wall so I don't have to see it."

"I would if you'd quit leaving your boxers all over the washroom. I can't help it."

I grinned at him and began walking backwards up the steps, leaving him watching me owlishly at the bottom.

"So THAT'S how they get so dirty. I wondered. At least have the decency to throw them in the laundry after you use them like that."

And as I snapped off a mock salute and stabbed my middle finger in his direction, he shook his head deliberately and giggled snidely.

"There's no need to be crude!" he called after me as I turned around and headed into the building. And as I pushed my way through the door, I caught sight of a long deep red trenchcoat and a pale, wickedly grinning face appearing out of nowhere to step around John, following me up the steps. I blanched in alarm as Teryl strode up the stairs, her camera strap flashing vibrant blues at me as it jostled around her neck. I transferred my eyes to John, who had come to a stop and was watching her and me with wide, shocked eyes, waves of hilarity already shaking his slender frame as he covered his mouth with his hands.

"Uh.." I croaked stupidly as she sailed past me with a passing wink in John's direction. She kept walking into the building and I hurried to follow her, but not before mouthing a furious `FUCK YOU' to John's insane laughter as he waggled his fingers at me in purely selfish delight. I darted in and out of the people separating us, keeping my eyes trained on the auburn halo of her bobbing head as I sidestepped and parried the obstructions.

"He's right, you know. There really is no need to be crude," she remarked jovially, as I caught up to her. Her ice blue eyes were wells of mirth as they took in my wide, protesting eyes and my furious blush.

"How.. um.. how much did you.. uh.."

"How much did I hear?" she finished for me, her grin a crack of sadistic enjoyment as I writhed in mortification, telling me exactly how much she heard. That asshole. Oh, that complete DICK.

"Yeah," I muttered in humiliation as she shrugged noncommittally.

"Not so much. But I must say – you really seem to command his admiration when it comes to overpowering helpless, dimwitted girls."

I raked my hands through my hair in consternation, vowing to find him after class and shove his head in the toilet.

"He's a little weird," I said with a nervous grin as she winked teasingly at me. "I really seriously think he might have some problems. Don't pay attention to anything he says."

She laughed and came to a stop in front of our classroom door, pushing it open for me as we moved inside. Following me up the steps to our seats, she sat down in the one next to me without hesitation, flinging her camera case and the bag on her back to the floor. Even in the middle of my preoccupation of trying to explain my way out of the chauvinistic conversation she overheard, I was acutely, almost proudly, aware of the stares following in our wake.

"Well, at least I've been warned, if it's true. I'll take care never to let you in my house while I'm alone ever again."

She shrugged out of her coat and let the thing drape over the back of her chair as she looked up at me, grinning. She was wearing a slender white turtleneck that looked uncomfortably similar to the woolen sweater that I had seen her brother wear that morning. I tried not to stare at the simplicity of her hair as it lay, as hauntingly as the memory I had of Ashen's hair doing the exact same thing, on the snowy material. Her pants were a tight confection of what looked to be brown suede, and their bottoms flared out crisp and clean over the tops of her mukluk foot-coverings. And even though her face and frame might have betrayed overtones of telling masculinity, her legs and chest certainly didn't. I found myself having to actively try not to stare; not out of any sexual attraction that I was aware of, but more out of admiration for the undeniable beauty of her slender curves.

"I don't think you'd have anything to worry about," I murmured contritely as I slouched into the seat next to her. One, I knew I'd never think of her like that. For another, if she wasn't alone in the house, it would mean that I probably wouldn't be prescribing those thoughts to ANY girl. The memory of Ashen's bedroom came flying back to me and I flinched inwardly, forcing myself to find something else to say to eradicate the building pull of cedar and violin cases in my mind.

"You're not helpless, and you're certainly not dimwitted. But seriously, I'm sorry for what you heard. He's really an intelligent guy, in spite of what you've seen."

Her laughter trilled pleasantly as she listened to me, and then reached down into her bag to pull out her notebooks. Placing them one after the other on the scratched surface of the desk, she turned to me with a dazzling grin.

"Thanks for the compliments. And I don't think you'd hang around with anyone who wasn't, so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt."

I flushed slightly at those words and looked down again, but not before offering her a quick smile. Pulling my bag onto my lap, I flung my own book on the desk in front of me. It was weird. She was kind to a degree that would have been uncomfortable if there hadn't been such complete honesty in her eyes. She spoke compliments as though they were truth, and the sincerity of her smile that followed them made it so that any inclination to feel uncomfortable or obligation was unnecessary. It was a little strange to actually not detest another human presence, but also something I could see myself getting used to if allowed.

I watched as the music-major guy who occupied the seat behind me began to climb the stairs towards us. He took the stairs two at a time, his dreadlocks bouncing dun-coloured and flamboyant on his shoulders. And I saw, predictably, his movement practically come to a full stop as he caught sight of Teryl beside me. I watched as his stubble-covered face plunged into a gawk, and I saw, with a sudden flash of white-hot dislike, his eyes drop unmistakably to the rounded, unallowed region between her throat and the top of the desk obscuring her middle. They hovered there as though transfixed, and I heard Teryl sigh a little as she drew back and pulled her arms over her chest.

Unallowed?

But there was no time to think on that strange thought as I felt myself sit up swiftly, eyes narrowing, threatening and feral, as they trained on his wandering gaze. Gripping the sides of the desk, I found myself leaning forward over it a little and to the left in front of Teryl, intentionally obscuring his vision of her.

"You want something?" I heard myself demand quiet but clearly as he transferred his attention to me with a snap. Instantly heads began to turn as my question rode through the room, ricocheting angrily off the walls. Even I felt a little surprised. An anger that was not altogether clear had grip of my hands and the stiffness of my back, and yet I was sort of able to watch this from the outside as he stared at me, face paling. My voice was something I had not heard it modulate itself into since my high-school days with John and his countless reject tormentors. I had perfected the art of motionless intimidation back then, using the anger deep down inside of me as a buffer for the dangerously one-sided situations. And it would work. One word from me would be all it would take (after several displays of physical dominance in the beginning, it was true) and they would end up backing off, empty threats on their lips and enraged, defeated fire in their eyes. By the end, it would only take my irate appearance to scare them away from their attempts to bully my friend, but the method of speech was something that I never forgot. It was low and dangerous, angry and possessive, and I felt all of it culminate as I arched a slender eyebrow in frozen warding, feeling my irises seeming to splinter.

"No? Then keep your eyes where they belong."

Damned if I didn't sound like a suspicious, jealous boyfriend as I said that, and I could see that thought flickering through his eyes in alarm as he quickly lowered them, wordless and embarrassed as he slipped past me. But it didn't matter to me what he or anyone else thought as long as he kept his eyes in their proper place. I swiveled my head to watch him unblinkingly as he aptly took his seat a few rows higher than usual, and when his eyes lowered one last time to find me as he sat, they flew off again as though they were water flung on hot stones. I slowly resettled myself in my seat as I faced forward again, conscious but not caring of the dozens of curious and wary glances still trained in our direction. I stared each of them down as I felt their eyes on me, and one by one they began to drop until the whole room was silent and intent on not being caught in my glare.

"You didn't have to do that," I heard, and I turned to find Teryl watching me, a flushed but reluctantly pleased smile on her lips. Her eyes regarded me with somewhat of a surprised expression, and I quickly found myself looking back at the front of the room, watching Professor Richler enter and head to his desk.

"And he didn't have to be a pig. But he was, so I did."

Professor Richler began to head to the projector at the front of the room, a sheaf of transparencies in his hand. He glanced up at back of the room where doubtless any sound we were making was pittance to the murmured giggling of the idiots in the front row, and delivered us a stern look. I kept my face bland as he watched us calculatingly, and after a moment he turned again and flipped on the projector. Sliding one of the transparencies onto the flattened, luminous surface, I watched as his cramped, nearly illegible writing became larger than life on the white screen at the front. I couldn't help but groan as I saw the all too familiar beginning stanzas of Homer's Odyssey, and Teryl's matching sigh made us turn as one to grin at each other.

"For the fifth time this term," I mouthed at her as I motioned towards the words with the back of my pencil, shaking my head. The thing might have been a masterpiece, but tying it into every damn subject? Making his poor, brainless students labor with the endless task of conforming their minds to a dying dialogue was a extension of the truly morbid. And I might have appreciated it intensely if I hadn't been on the receiving end so many times.

She giggled softly and shrugged her shoulders, looking down quickly as the telltale sound of Richler's clearing the throat shot across the classroom accusingly.

"Mr. Frost."

I looked down to him slowly, taking my time. When I finally looked him full in the face, I saw no trace of amusement in the lined, sharp features. I listened with grating nerves to the swell of tittered laughter at the front of the room, wondering how the hell I always managed to be the center of attention, deserved or not. I hadn't even said anything, and already the guy was picking me apart. Never mind those chimpanzees at the front of the room, of course. Give the guy who wears black and eyeliner – not to mention who is also the best academic in the class -- all the aggravation. Of course. I would.

"While doubtlessly your social interaction is much more pressing than anything that your parents pay dearly for you to learn, I will thank you not to disgrace my classroom with it while you are enrolled here."

I arched an icy eyebrow in response, my face placid and unflinching as definite sniggers rolled around the room. Prick. Two insults in one. And even as the irritation rose in itchy waves across my skin, I couldn't help but feeling grudging admiration as he stared me down. Not many people were willing to hold their own in a staring contest with me, even the older and more venerable professors or other authority figures. I had even managed to stare my way out of speeding tickets when I still had my brother's car. But Richler had no problem with it, and I swore his insults got increasingly more creative as time wore on. He probably thought he was teaching me a lesson. With any luck, he was.

"I apologize," I said completely insincerely, and he drew a sharp intake of disgusted breath as he lowered his gaze back to the projector. I sat there silently as he began to speak, staring without sight at the words creating themselves from the shadow of his felt-tip marker on the screen.

Well, that had been strange. Even as I remembered it, the flash of the music-major's eyes lingering on her chest made a jolt of anger lick through me. But it wasn't a jealous or irrational anger, which had been the odd thing. I generally didn't stare at girls on principal, but to see other guys do it never posed a problem before. I had watched some of the more disgusting and blatant interactions of males towards females, and while it had given me mild entertainment to watch the females freak out and deliver hell, I had never found myself sympathetic of their plight. But to watch his eyes fall lecherously to her breasts had been like electricity shot through the steel wire surrounding my core. A protective instinct had reared its rare head, and I had reacted before I could have stopped myself.

"Evan."

I blinked and turned to see Teryl slipping me a piece of paper with a smile. Taking it wonderingly, I quickly glanced to see Richler's downcast visage, and then opened it slowly. Flattening it on my desk, I read the single word that was penned there in dark pencil, and couldn't help but grin furtively.

`Thanks.'

Tucking it into my pocket, I chanced a quick glance at her. She was sitting still, copying down the words on the wall, but even as my gaze slipped away, I managed to catch the quick movement of her lips as they settled into a smile aware of my attention. I let my fingers rest on the pocket holding the note for a while, feeling the shape of it against the denim of my pants as though it were a precious, many-jeweled thing. And I couldn't say why it felt so important, as it sat there in my pocket, but the smile was continuous on my lips as I followed the words on the screen. She hadn't asked why I had reacted so violently, she didn't incriminate me with wondering stares. She simply took it for what it was and thanked me, which was more than I could say I had been doing lately.

As the lesson wore on, my attention grew correspondingly unfocused. She hadn't said anything about her brother yet, which I couldn't tell was good or bad. Maybe he hadn't found her, after all. Or perhaps he had just taken my weird behavior as par for the course and forgotten all about it. But the memory of the look in his eyes after I had let myself fall way too far into them shouted something different and I tried desperately not to listen. What did I think I was doing out there, on the steps? I must have been in possession of a grip of reality far worse than I thought I had, if I was able to stare like a fourteen year-old girl into the face of someone who certainly didn't deserve my unhinged gawk.

I stared out of the window at the parking lot musingly, watching with my mind's eye the falling rain of that strange initial day. She had appeared with a thunderclap, and had managed to keep the shock of that moment arriving time and time again every time I found myself around her. She had come forth out of the onslaught like a messenger, bringing tidings of an end to the rain.

... she had come wearing the ghost of her brother, and in everything she did was the ceaseless echo of his movements...

I felt my mind plummet at that thought, winding its way somewhere in between my stomach and my liver before finding itself comfortable. My heart began nervous palpitations as the words rocketed around my head and I thought again of that night at their house, when it had seemed as though I had seen another face in the place of hers as we sat on the couch. And even though I had realized that when I came face to face with true owner of that visage, the enormity of it didn't hit me until just then. And then I saw the remaining pieces of the puzzle. It was in everything! From the moment I had seen her, everything about her had set me off. Her hair was the first thing that had unbalanced me, and it was only because of the nagging feeling in my heart as I stared at it. I had not been transfixed because of the physical evidence of it, but because of a deeper, more unfathomable connection that bordered on the psychic. Was it possible? How could that be true? It sounded like something out of a goddamn Silvia Brown book, and I tried to falsify it desperately. Her voice had messed me up, and it was the visions of a beautiful otherwhere that it invoked that only became more potent in his presence. That wretched camera strap had been identical twin to the painting above their mantle, and it was the exact damning colour of his eyes that was getting me truly fucked.

"This is ridiculous," I whispered to myself dazedly as I stared fixedly at the sky, wanting nothing more than to close my eyes against the raging turmoil within. But it was denied me as a sudden voice cut through my thoughts and I whipped my head around.

"So it might be, but it's over now."

I blinked as I stared uncomprehendingly into Teryl's face, which was standing over me with a smile. It's over now? It was a curiously close answer to my whisper, and I wondered in a moment of panic if I had been speaking other, more incriminating things aloud for her to hear. Had she read my mind? The thought didn't seem so impossible to me as she watched me with the ice mystery of her eyes, and I shuddered imperceptibly.

"What's over?" I dared myself to ask as she arched an inquisitive brow.

"Class?"

And then I noticed the droves of people filing down towards the door and the appearance of her coat over her shoulders. Time became quicksilver whenever I got to thinking about Ashen, it seemed.

"Oh!"

I jumped up and grabbed my coat and bag and began to follow her amused expression down the stairs. Jesus, Evan. Maybe you should just stay in your dorm for good. You can't weird out your walls, at least. I passed the music major on the way down, and his eyes were staring fixedly at the steps as if they held the answers to the universe in their worn treads. I brushed past him just to further drive in my point, and in the graze of my arm against his I felt a flinch that was appropriately sharp in its recoil. Good. At least someone was acting like they were supposed to..

Teryl held the door again as we passed through, and it was only when we stepped into the daylight that she spoke again, fitting her camera case around her neck with a nonchalance that seemed to defy the enigmatic workings of her voice.

"Thanks for showing Ashen where to go, by the way."

With a determination that made me proud, I kept my eyes on the ground firmly.

"So he found you okay, then?"

"Yeah. I guess he wandered all over campus initially. Good thing you came along to save the day or he might have left."

I don't know about that, I thought to myself flatly as I remembered with burning cheeks the way I had devastated the encounter with my signature aplomb. It would probably have been better if he just left. At least I wouldn't have managed to sink myself into stupidity without any hope of extrication. But oh, how he had looked, as he took the steps one at a time to stand before me... eyes as blue as my dreams and face like perfection made flesh...

Maybe it had been worth it, just to see that.

"Is he still here?"

She shook her head, and I tried not to feel the swirling disappointment as I nodded slowly. Didn't think so...

"No, he left after my first class. He's got a big test coming up in the next couple of days that he has to study for."

And her voice was as easy as the rest of the words she had spoken. I could read no trace of hidden thoughts in the melodic tones, and her glance was gentle. So maybe I was safe. Either way, neither of them knew me too well yet, so I could always blame it on lack of sleep or not ever mention it at all.

"Tell him good luck," I said quietly, and my smile was more than my nervous heart as she inclined her head. He went to the Conservatory of Music, that I knew. The test was probably something along the lines of what John had to do, playing his instrument for a class or watchful professor. And I tried not to think of him playing the violin as she gazed at me, failing spectacularly in a whirlwind of blushing weakness.

Those damningly sensual fingers.. touching and sliding along strings made of wire and song... the curve of his cheek, as flawless as cream, resting resplendent on the depression of the wood... the arch of his elegant and firm shoulder as it moved with the raising of the bow... the aching carnality of his eyes as they drifted closed under the seduction of the music already sliding like an invisible lover under the smoothness of his skin... the feminine but oh so unfairly beautiful cascade of his hair as it shrouded the androgynous beauty within...

I couldn't even try to imagine the music he would be capable of making... it would sound like the light of the stars put into harmony... it would hold the meaning of night summer wind as it blew wild and secret across fields of sweetgrass... it would unmake and renew me with each annihilating note, and it would be the soundtrack of my desire as I trembled to touch him... just to touch him and earn the right to the silence that would follow after...

Stop thinking.

"I will. You got class next?"

"No. You?"

"No, but I've got to go back to the lab and develop the pictures I took in class today. So I guess I'll see you in Lit again?"

I nodded and then we came to a stop on the path that led right towards her destination, and left towards mine. And as I looked to her with a half-smile, she grinned widely and pulled me into an impulsive hug. I started a little as her arms came wrapping around me, but the embrace was gentle enough that, even though a blush was again taking lodgings on my cheeks, I found myself raising my hands to hold her close. Her face pressed lightly against mine as a torrent of copper hair fell into my eyes, and the scent of it was sweet and startling as it clouded my vision.

"Try and get some sleep tonight, okay?"

The soft concern in her voice was like a bell on the edge of hearing, and I felt my eyes drift closed as I breathed in the scent, the realness of her. It was nothing close to Ashen's, but it was close enough, and I breathed it in desperately, helplessly. Her hands tightened a little as she pressed herself further into the hug, and in a moment that was fragile in its making but effortless in its execution, I found myself holding her closer than I intended. My arms wrapped around her waist in a graceful move, and my hands lay against the sturdiness of her spine as I gathered her close. I felt my coat shiver and move with my arms, and as they came to a rest around her, so did the curtain of my coat. We stood together, in the warm cocoon of my coat, and even as I realized it wasn't what I meant to do, it wasn't an entirely objectionable outcome. And again, it occurred to me that maybe with another girl it might have been construed as sexual, but with her it was a natural, simple act. And her deepening of the gesture told me that she knew it too, and the feeling of her cheek pressing into mine as she smiled was wonderful in its liberation.

It was a hug, and it was incredible. It felt like I hadn't had one in years, and maybe it wasn't so exaggerated to say that I hadn't. I had forgotten the joy of holding someone close just for the pure reason of it, and I tried to thank her with my next words, clumsiness and pride keeping their true nature hidden even though I knew she would see right through them.

"I will. Come get me if anyone messes with your stuff in the lab."

She laughed softly and squeezed me tightly for a moment more before taking a step back. Her eyes were gentle and shimmering as they locked upon mine, and in their depths I read her clairvoyant acceptance of my thanks. I let go of her as she moved, but her continued touch on my arm kept my hand on her waist.

"I promise. And if you really find that you can't sleep, you know where we live. Take a bus or give us a call, no matter what the time. Ashen would be more than happy to make you some of that infusion, I know it."

I smiled helplessly at her confidant, overbearing grin, and shook my head slowly.

"Thanks," I said simply as she winked at me. No point in arguing the fact that I would never dare.

And then with a wave, she disengaged herself from my arm and began to run down the path. I gazed after her for a while as she flew, marveling at the auburn beauty of her hair as it flowed after her like a veil, and the stupid, moronic grin on my face. She looked over her shoulder once as she ran, and her smile was dazzling and bright even from that distance as she waved again. I began walking back towards my dorm, the feeling of her hug still clinging to me like a sort of strange perfume as I eventually found myself walking down the hall of the residence.

My head was still in the clouds as I kicked open the unlocked door of the dorm, and as I dropped my bag by the door, I saw John stretched out on his stomach on the couch, a sheaf of papers practically under his nose as he pushed a pen across the surface. Closing the door loud enough to grab his attention, I grinned as his pen flew out of his fingers and sailed across the room.

"You'd better get that back," he said discontentedly as a scowl grimaced at me from across the room. He rolled over onto his side and rested his cheek on his hand as I went to retrieve the pen. I maneuvered my way out of my coat as I moved, and I threw both of them at him as I straightened up. The coat hit him square in the face and the pen bounced under the couch, and I laughed as he swore and clawed it off his face.

"You're a dick. This thing stinks like horse piss."

I shrugged as I headed towards the kitchen, grabbing myself a glass from the cabinet above the sink.

"Something's got to get your nose out of those books."

"You lost my pen, Evan. You should move the couch and get it."

Shouldering open the fridge, I stared into its empty fluorescence for a moment before gloomily closing it again and turning on the cold water tap.

"Please. You've got at least six more in your pockets," I said as I stuck the glass under the lukewarm stream and let it fill.

"True enough," he replied with a grin, and I watched as he withdrew another pen from the depths of his baggy pockets. And as he turned on his stomach again and I raised the glass to me lips, he looked over at me with a recollecting glance, pointing to the other end of the kitchen counter.

"Oh, by the way. Someone dropped that off for you this morning. I found it outside the door when I got in after Composition."

I turned to follow his finger as he gestured, and my gaze fell on a unmarked brown paper bag sitting on the counter. I frowned and moved towards it, a questioning light filling my eyes as I looked over at him.

"How do you know it's for me?"

"There's a note inside."

Picking it up, I blinked at the surprising weight of it as it rested in my hands. It contained something rectangular and cold; I could feel the temperature seeping through the paper. Opening the folded edge, I looked down into it and promptly almost dropped it.

There was a note lying on what I could then see was a plastic container that I knew without taking a second glance contained the thick viscosity of tantalizing spaghetti sauce. The thing trembled in my hands as I read the note, and my heart began to lurch sickeningly as I read and re-read the flowing, elegantly-formed script.

`Evan,

You said you liked this stuff so I made you a little extra because it always tastes better fresh.

Hope you enjoy,

Ashen'

Ashen.

Oh, God above. I stared at the stark blackness of the letters against the smooth white of the paper, and their almost Victorian grace as they lay vivid and beautiful unhinged me. It too, was almost female writing; too neat and graceful to be male but deeper pressed into the page than I had ever seen any girl do. I stared unblinkingly as my head reeled. I could almost see him, bending over the page, his hair hanging crimson and fire in the air as his hand moved swift and sure over the paper. My fingers twitched as they reached inside to take it as though in a dream, and the soft thickness of the cooled material was like a balm against their sweating skin. I held it in my hand as I withdrew it, and I clutched the paper bag to my chest as I read it again.

He made this for me? For me alone? No. He probably made a bunch of it and gave me the leftovers. Yeah. That was it. But either way... damn. Why? The kindness of the two of them was unbelievable. I wouldn't have done any of it for me, that was for sure. And how did I repay him? By staring and gawking and losing my head in favour of another, way more unforgiving one? Great. Just great.

"You alright?"

I jerked and looked up to find John watching me worriedly. Nodding, I slipped the note into my pocket alongside the other one and turned to the fridge, cheeks burning. Pulling open the door and sliding the paper bag and its contents inside, I closed the door after glancing at it one more time, my chest fluttering and my fingers weak.

"It is bad?"

I shook my head quickly and began to head towards my room, my fingers already aching to and in terror of holding the note again.

"No, it's fine," I heard myself croak as I moved past him into the open door of my room. "Thanks."

And with that, I stepped inside and closed the door, acutely aware of his confused, bewildered expression. Moving to the bed, I sat down and tried to collect myself, rubbing my hands over my face in confusion.

"It's just spaghetti sauce. You look like you haven't eaten anything in weeks. He's a nice guy. A really fucking nice guy. Get a fucking grip, Evan... this is going too far..." I whispered to myself in broken despair as my hands trembled and burned. But even as I said it, I felt the overwhelming tears of frustration war across my eyes and triumph, and I moaned as they spilled over and down my cheeks.

"Oh, God.. please help me... I think there's something really wrong this time..." I gasped as the tears rolled acid and fire down my face, and a clutching terror howled through my chest. And the darkness was silent and devoid of comfort as I struggled to keep my grief silent, the knowledge of the cocaine in the drawer beside me becoming a cold, iron thing in the middle of my head as I choked on the tears. It was just too much. Way too much to bear. I couldn't understand a single fucking thing that had happened to me in the past three weeks, no matter what I thought at the time of their occurrence. It was impossible, it was INSANE, and I wanted it to stop like a roller coaster that had held me in its prison overlong.

"I can't want this," I whimpered as I stared into the dark, seeing only his face and his impossible, holy eyes. "I can't."

And it wasn't even the lust that pinned me, even then, to its ruthless altar. I felt it overcome me like fire as it began to sink through my limbs, and even in the middle of denying it outright, I felt it take impervious control of my groin. But even that was as nothing in the face of the truth in front of me, holding the shadow of the shapeless dark, giving only that which I let myself see. And all I could see was him, as bright and blazing as the sun, standing like a torch in the dark to shed a light only I could witness. And I knew, as I felt his eyes reach out to me and pull me in, that the yearning of my body wasn't the terror that so fully shook me.

It was the maddened longing of my heart to admit itself to love; it was the final confession of fallibility in the face of an angel.

The Angel.

"I can't," I whispered, broken-hearted, to the apparition of his ghostly beauty. "I'm not supposed to want this. I can't... want you..."

It was craziness. It was too soon. I had just met the guy. It was infatuation. It was a chemical imbalance. It was... it was... it was. It was a million things and more as I let those words fall cracked and broken from my lips, and I let them fall again as their terrible, trembling sound filled the dark and lifted it into light.

"I... can't... want... you..."

And then it was anguish turning into rage turning into confusion turning into want turning into rage again as I slipped to the floor in front of my bed. And the note was crumpled and tear-stained in my hand as I whispered the next words that followed, screaming and howling into the air. But even those I couldn't let myself hear as the tears dripped slowly into ceasing, and for the rest of the afternoon I sat there, too frightened to move lest I stir up the seething thoughts in my head. At one point I heard John knock on my door, but I didn't trust myself to open it. So I listened, with splintering heart, to the sound of his frail, hesitant fist on my door, once, twice. The urge to beckon him inside to sit next to me was overwhelming, but I couldn't bear to have him witness me in the state I was. So I remained silent, and so did he, and after a time, I saw the slow ripple of his shadow leave the ray of light piercing under the door.

The note containing Ashen's handwriting and the leaden cinders of my heart remained in my hands, and I stared at it unseeingly as the hours fell past. I must have fallen asleep, because when I woke again, I found the note pressed to my lips, my hands holding it there as if in prayer.

[Thank you to those who have e-mailed me with their kind compliments regarding my story. The next chapter should be posted soon... I hope you will enjoy it. You are all wonderful.]