Tenebrism

Everything after that was a fucked-up jumble. I was only on my feet because of adrenaline and nerves, and that somehow got me back out to the living room. I must’ve talked with Rysa, told her Keyd was awake and seemed like he really was gonna be okay. I must have, because I ended up sitting alone on the couch that Keyd’d been using as a bed for the last week, the living room empty and most of the lights turned off.

The silence was heavy and dull and uneasy around me. Down the hall, the door to my room was closed, light running under the door in a yellow blur. I must’ve taken my glasses off, because everything was a blur. If I held my breath and focused over the wsshing of blood in my ears, I could hear Martin’s stupid loud wall clock ticking away inside his room. So his door had to be open, so he had to be gone. Probably at his girlfriend’s. Talk about luck.

I tilted back into the couch cushions, tried to breathe. I wanted to sleep so bad, but there was no fucking way. Even closing my eyes was impossible. Every time I tried for more than a couple seconds, I’d jerk back alert with a hot shock of panic, frantically searching the shadows of the room. Were we actually safe right now? What if Ahieel came back? He’d disappeared for a reason I didn’t understand. He could come back just as suddenly. Right?

But at some point—hell if I knew when and how it happened—I did actually fall asleep. It snuck up on me, grabbed me when I wasn’t paying attention, and sucked me down into a complete and heavy unconsciousness. I didn’t even dream.

And I didn’t wake up until the next fucking afternoon.

All of that was confusing enough on its own; opening my eyes in a room I hadn’t remembered to expect, facing a different way than my bed did, the wrong amount of light from the wrong direction. It almost got me panicking until I felt the annoying velvety corduroy rubbing against my arms and realized—couch. Living room. It took me another minute after that to even remember why. That Keyd and I’d gone out last night, and Ahieel’d shown up, and then….everything that’d happened after that.

And last, I remembered that today was Friday. I was missing class. Or I’d already missed it. Maybe it wasn’t even Friday anymore—it could be next fucking week for all I knew.

I tried to sit up, and fuck. It was like I’d been run over by a truck. Or more like ten trucks. Everything hurt. Muscles screamed and throbbed and my head gave a sick heavy throb. Grey prickles rushed over my vision and left me lightheaded and dizzy. I dropped back to the couch with a barking groan that I hadn’t even meant to make, pressed my hands over my face, and started laughing.

This was so stupid. Two weeks ago I’d pretty much been exhibit A of a regular and average college kid, and my worst problem was what to do with my soon-to-be higher-educated self for the rest of my life. Now I was some kind of weird go-between in a fight between some goddamn magical aliens. And I had some kind of mutated magical powers. And I was pretty sure my life was actually in danger. How had this fucking happened?

The noises coming out of me didn’t sound much like laughter anymore. I shoved a couch cushion over my face until it all wound down. Which only happened mainly because I just didn’t have the energy to keep going. Exhaustion was sunk deep into my bones, settling right next to all the aches and pains, and I couldn’t even hold onto thoughts for very long. So fucking tired.

I didn’t move again for another couple of minutes. Or maybe an hour. It was hard to tell anything that was going on right now; what the hell was even real. Maybe everything I was remembering was a dream. Maybe I was dreaming now.

When I did sit up, I was creaky and sore and felt like I had a dozen extra pounds hanging off each arm and leg. But I could get up, force myself up to my feet, and stay there. My body didn’t like it, but too bad, it had to deal.

The living room and kitchen were both empty. Nobody here. I crept around to the hallway, leaning hard on the back of the couch and then on the wall, heading back to the only other place that made sense for Rysa and Keyd to be. The door to my room was hanging open just a little, and I was pretty sure there was some mumbled talking going on in there. At least the guy was still alive, then, since he’d still looked pretty bad last night even when—

Shit, I’d almost forgotten. The guy’d fucking kissed me last night. Sort of. He’d definitely done something involving both our mouths that wasn’t a usual thing you did with another guy that you didn’t know real well. My stomach churned around just thinking about it, and part of me wondered if it’d even been real. It felt as real as anything else that’d happened, but that wasn’t saying much. I took a deep breath and edged into the room.

Rysa was sitting in the chair I’d left by the bed last night. She had her hands on Keyd’s and they were talking quietly, not in English. Neither of them noticed me as I leaned heavily against the wall with my hands shoved in my pockets. Keyd still looked drained and sweaty and pretty sick. God, I was whining about sore muscles and a couple scrapes, and meanwhile the guy’d nearly died. I should really just shut the hell up.

“Hey,” I said after a half-minute, and both of them turned towards me. I managed to look Keyd in the eyes without freaking the fuck out, and he seemed totally chill. Like nothing weird had happened between us at all. So it was fine, it was okay. It wasn’t really a kiss and the whole thing was fine. Get over it, Alan.

I cleared my throat a little and dragged my nails against the insides of my pockets. “Everything okay in here?”
“Keyd said you helped him, yesterday,” Rysa said, which didn’t really answer my question.

I glanced at him, but he wasn’t looking my way and he didn’t say a word. “Yeah, I—yeah. Seemed like it.”

Rysa held up her fist in a thumbs-up and ticked it backwards at herself, which sort of maybe seemed like ‘come here’. So I did. With a stupid amount of effort. Also hesitantly, just because...Keyd being so quiet was getting me kinda on edge. Not that quiet wasn’t already his default setting, but we’d been having actual real conversations in the past few days. This was…I didn’t like it.

Rysa must’ve noticed the pathetic way I was dragging myself across the room, because suddenly she was up and at my side and curling a strong hand curled around my arm.

“Alan,” she said, pulling me to a stop. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine, it’s all fine,” I muttered. Did we really have to do this right in front of the guy who was actually hurt?

Rysa sighed sharply. “Not you too,” she said, and shot a look over at the bed. I followed her gaze and saw Keyd staring pointedly up at the ceiling, jaw set. Suddenly I felt bad for Rysa, having to look out for the both of us stupid stubborn idiots who didn’t want to own up to being less than completely one hundred percent okay.

“One more time,” she said, and gave me a pointed stare-down. “Are you hurt?”

“Yeah, kinda,” I muttered. “Just, you know, not that bad.”

“Hmm. Right.” She leaned down to peer into my face, caught me by one shoulder and then sort of patted me down with the other hand, looking me over for banged up places.

“Can we—” I jerked my eyes towards the door. Just not do this here?

“All right.” She sounded more than irritated this time. And I really was being a pain in the ass, I’d admit it, but this was just fucking embarrassing.

I couldn’t even look at Keyd as Rysa and I trooped out into the hall together. She pulled the door shut behind us, kind of hard, and then turned to me again.

“Show me where,” she said, all business, and I tried. My whole body was a solid ache, but I managed to pick out the worst parts—my left shoulder and right side of my ribs, a couple lumps on my head, both my knees—for her. She hovered her hands just a couple centimeters away from my skin, and I could feel her energy stirring around in the air, bright and buzzing around her hands. Every place she worked her spells on me turned cool and tingly and kind of numb. Eventually I felt like some kind of walking cough drop. But I didn’t hurt much anymore.

“Thanks,” I said, when she was done, and she just popped one eyebrow up and looked really unimpressed. “Look. Sorry. I just...he almost died. And I didn’t. It’s…” embarrasing.

Her hand settled down on my shoulder. “He lives—we both do—with the constant knowledge that we could die. We’re in a war, and we’ve trained to be so. You haven’t. It makes a difference.”

“Right.”

Rysa definitely picked up on my skepticism. “If you’re hurt, there’s nothing gained in hiding it. It’s not impressive, or noble, or helpful. Keyd...hasn’t learned that.”

“So you think he’s kind of an idiot,” I said.

Rysa actually smiled. “Sometimes. About some things.”

“Well, I’m sorry about being such a dipshit on my end too,” I said, and she only made a sound that could have been a laugh and turned towards my room, to go back to Keyd.

“Hey, hold up.” I snagged her sleeve, took a breath when she actually let that stop her. “I just wanna ask...what happened last night?”

She glanced sharply at me. “You don’t remember.”

“I—” don’t know what was real, “—sort of do. Gets kinda hazy around the...when Ahieel disappeared, I guess. Or whatever happened.”

Her look got even edgier, almost disbelieving. “He retreated, Alan.”

“Retreated?”

“Because he was overpowered and injured. Badly enough that he withdrew.”

“And how did that...happen?”

“Do you really not remember doing this?” Rysa said. “It was you. You attacked him when he was mostly unguarded, and with enough of his own energy that it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d been fully shielded. It would have let everything else you threw at him in, either way.”

I couldn’t remember doing that. I remembered...letting go. Of everything. And...now I was thinking about it, I felt kind of normal. As far as having weird alien energy stored up in me. I was totally emptied out. So I really had done something, but it was hard to believe I’d hurt him that bad.

“Well, whatever worked,” I said, and Rysa snorted softly. “What I really wanna know is how the guy even found us in the first place. How he keeps fucking finding me.”

Rysa made a sound in her throat, and gave me a considering look as she leaned back against the wall. “When he spoke to you that day, the first day you saw him,” she said, slowly, “did he touch you? At all, any sort of contact?”

Hell, none of that day was real clear in my memory. Everything’d happened so fast, seemed so unreal. Some parts were insanely vivid, others were a confused tumbled blur. I’d definitely almost bumped right into Ahieel on the street before he’d started talking to me, and he’d been a little too close for a lot of the conversation, but…

“No, I don’t think he did,” I said.

“Did he give you anything, something you kept?”

“No way.”

Rysa sighed. “I would have assumed he found you through a tracking spell,” she said. “But if he didn’t touch you, or anything of yours, he couldn’t have.”

“A spell like the one Keyd had on me before?” I said, touching my glasses on reflex, and she nodded. “But Ahieel was pretty close to me, you sure he couldn’t have just…snuck it on there anyway?”

“He would have needed to touch you directly, or something on you, or that he handed to you. Also I don’t…” she squinted at me, lifted her hand and moved it around in a vague circle, “…feel anything like that.”

“So just pure dumb luck then,” I said. “Shit. Well. That’s great. And he’s done it twice.”

“Ahieel is likely doing the same thing that we’ve been; searching the area strategically for any signs of us, since our usual methods don’t work here. Finding you the first time may have indeed been luck. After all, you were carrying spells of his own energy, and if he’d happened to get close enough to you, he would have felt them. But this time…” she pursed up her mouth a little, and narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure he never touched you? Even just for a moment.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. What about Keyd, maybe he—“

“Keyd would have felt a spell like that if it was placed on him,” Rysa said. She gave me kind of a sorry look and said, “you might have, if you were trained for it.”

“Right.” I caged my hands together and stared down at them. “About that whole...training thing.”

“Hmm,” Rysa said, real neutral.

“I want you to teach me more of this stuff.” Her expression didn’t really change, so I barrelled on. “I mean, not now, but soon. After yesterday...it was important before, but shit. It’s really important now. I just—” A sudden shameful memory of my own words, I won’t try anything, and of watching Ahieel drag Keyd off into the dark. Guilt burned hard in my stomach, and I swallowed against the strength of it. “I know I’m not gonna be at you guys’ level, pretty much ever, but...I just can’t do that again. I can’t.”

Rysa shifted and pushed herself forward off the wall. “All right, Alan.”

I stared after her. “‘All right’? What’s that mean?”

“It means yes, of course. But there are other things to take care of first.”

Keyd, right. Bigger priority.

Rysa touched her hand to the door of Martin’s bathroom. “I’ll give you some time to speak to him,” she said, and before I could say anything to that, she disappeared inside and shut the door behind her. After a couple seconds, I heard the water turn on in the shower.

Right. She really meant it; she was gonna stay out of the way for a while. So I really should go in and talk to Keyd. Or try and help him recover a little bit faster. Or both. But talking was always kind of a wild card with him; it might go well or it might not.

I caught the door handle, and...stopped. For a second I just listen to the muffled sound of the shower through the wall, my eyes closed, the metal handle warming up under my hand.

So the guy’d kissed me. So what? Was it really that much weirder than the whole naked alien warrior pledge thing? Or that fact that they had magical fucking powers? No, goddamnit, it wasn’t. It was probably the most normal thing out of all of this.

And it obviously wasn’t a big deal to Keyd. And technically, I’d even kissed him first back in the cemetery. Not that I’d known he was a real person at the time, but whatever, that whole situation had been pretty weird. But if it wasn’t a big deal, then it wasn’t a big deal. I was just gonna forget about it. Call it even and forget it.

But I still couldn’t get myself to actually turn the door handle. I was just standing there in the hall, gripping it in my sweaty hand, being a fucking coward. Keyd hadn’t said a single word to me since last night, not that there’d been much of a chance too. But I just had no fucking clue where we stood right now. What it was gonna be like when I went in there. Was the kiss a thing, was the fact that I’d nearly got him killed a thing, or was—

Jesus, Alan, just go in and talk to the guy. And help him get better. Because that, you can actually fucking do.

The hinges creaked as I eased the door open, so Keyd got a total warning I was coming. And he was looking my way when I walked in, kind of expectantly. He was so tall that his legs were hanging off the end, and he was even kind of bent up in the middle. It was kind of ridiculous, honestly, how scrunched up and awkward he looked. But the couch really wasn’t any better, and at least the bed wasn’t twenty years old.

“Hey,” I said, and made myself drop down in the chair Rysa’d left near the bed. Just play this normal, just be normal.

“Hello,” Keyd said. He sounded wary, but that was all. And he was using words; that was a good start.

“So. When you said I could ask you anything,” I said, sticking my hand out towards him. “I’m hoping that offer’s still on the table.”

Keyd’s eyes went right to my hand, and then back up to my face. I thought I saw one of those smile-babies going on at one side of his mouth.

“It is,” he said, still cautious. He hadn’t taken my hand yet.

“I’ll try not to overwhelm you or anything,” I said. “But as long as I’m gonna sit here for a while, it’s better than us just staring into space like idiots.”

Definitely a smile now. Real tiny and only obvious because I was looking for it, but now I was thinking that was just how it mostly happened with him. Just ‘cause it was subtle didn’t mean it wasn’t there, that he wasn’t involved.

“All right,” he said then, and settled himself back against the pillows.

That sounded like an agreement to me. “Great. So…” I waved my outstretched hand at him, kinda pointedly. It took him another second, but he finally realized what I was doing it for and slid his own hand into mine. His skin was hot and dry—kind of overly dry, actually, and little rough patches scraped against my palm and fingers.

“Now shh,” I said, shutting my eyes. “I gotta concentrate for this.”

It went quicker than last time, except for the part where it was actually harder to find that out-of-place jangly mess of energy in him. It was already smaller, fainter than before. Not by a ton, but enough that it wasn’t like a damn beacon anymore. But it was easier to grab onto once I did pick it out, to sort out the feel of it from Keyd’s regular energy, and tug at. And then it was like twisting open a valve on a hose just a little; as long as part of my concentration was focused on it, it all just streamed out of him in a narrow little flow, right into me. I could sense Keyd doing that same thing from before, holding back on his own energy so I didn’t drag any of that out of him accidentally. Pretty sure he needed that.

“So.” I opened up my eyes again. Keyd was looking right at me. “Seems like that’s working.”

“Hm,” he said, agreeably enough. And then for a couple long long seconds it was quiet, and we were just...watching each other. And holding hands. And nothing else was happening.

Keyd was actually the one who spoke up first. “What did you want to ask?”

I had about a million and a half questions, actual important and relevant ones, but the first thing that came out of my mouth was, “how tall are you?”

The questions only threw him for a second. “Nineteen and a half letghem,” he said, then frowned a little. “Does that…”

I laughed. “Nope. No fucking clue what that means.” Just like the distance thing, frequency couldn’t figure out how to translate height.

“Stand,” Keyd said, ticking his fingers up. It wasn’t an order, just a suggestion, and why not? I got up, stepped back and stood straight as I could without dropping Keyd’s hand, letting him...look at me, or whatever he wanted. And that’s what he did, just looked me up and down for a couple seconds, a thoughtful crease between his eyebrows.

“You are…perhaps, seventeen,” he said. Then, after one more glance over me, “and a half.”

“I’m five-ten in this world,” I told him, dropping back down in the chair. “I think you’re about six-six.”

“Those numbers do make very little sense,” Keyd admitted. “Frequency does have its shortcomings.”

“Yeah, but it’s pretty fucking cool.” It was so easy to forget that I was always hearing him through some kind of magic radio channel. I wondered if it changed the sound of his voice at all. Or what I sounded like to him translated through it. “Hey, can you say something? Like, out of it, I mean. I wanna hear something in...what’s your language called again?”

“Isji,” Keyd said. “Ro apaureja nhru anysejtakindu.”

“So you can just jump in and out of it, whenever you want, just like that?”

He nodded. “You could, as well, if you chose to learn. Dajtumji uhmkaret bahn, khe rohnah jaha mrit.”

“Dude, now you’re just showing off.”

“I’m no—” Keyd stopped, and then—holy shit—smiled. A full, real one. “You’re teasing.”

“Yeah, I do that sometimes.”

That smile was still there, not that corner-mouth thing but a wide and obvious one, and it was distracting. He just looked like a whole different person when he smiled. “I’ve noticed. Or, am noticing. It can be difficult to tell with…” he gestured slightly, back and forth, “...imperfect translations.”

“I—” shit, what had he just said? Fucking focus, Alan, “—bet.”

Keyd shifted, his wrist twisting inside mine. “Are...these the things you wanted to ask me?”

“No, but I figured I’d ease into it, you know?” I hadn’t actually planned it like that, but it sounded good. And it seemed like it was working; Keyd was pretty relaxed and being downright talkative, for him. If I’d jumped into fucking interrogating him about touchy topics he’d’ve probably clamped himself up in that blank shell he had going on most of the time. “So what the hell is this war about, anyway?”

Keyd looked startled for about a half a millisecond. Then, “many things.”

“All right, so, gimme a rundown.”

“I liked it better when you were easing into it,” Keyd said, and that pulled a laugh right out of me. Guy really could joke, it was just surprising when he did. The whole vibe here was way more normal than I’d expected it to be. What was becoming normal for him and me, anyway. And that not-a-kiss was…not a thing, just like I’d figured.

Keyd shifted his shoulders, probably getting himself into a more comfortable position. His hand twisted around a little in mine, and I adjusted my grip on him without breaking contact. “Our races have never...been at peace,” he started, slowly. “We were not always at war, but coexisting was...impossible. The differences between us were too much, the history too bitter. When we learned they had begun to move between worlds and draw energy from them, damaging some beyond repair, we couldn’t stand by and allow it.”

“You felt responsible? What the hell for? Just because they’re from your same planet?” That’s fucking stupid, I didn’t add.

Keyd had closed his eyes, and sunk back a little in the pillow. “You haven’t seen what happens to a world that they...take.”

A chill licked up my back and prickled in my shoulders. “What happens?”

“The life is drawn out of the world. The sun disappears, plants cannot grow, the lands become near uninhabitable. It begins slowly, so slowly that it goes unnoticed. Until it’s too late. Worlds like that...they must be abandoned.”

Those goosebumps in my shoulders were only getting worse. “So...if they’re here...really here, and it’s not just Ahieel taking a detour to fuck with you guys…”

Keyd opened his eyes again, and the sharp pale blue of them bored right into mine. New prickles slammed up from my stomach. “That will happen here. It might take years, but your world would become unlivable. You...your people..would be forced to leave, or die with it.”

A bark of laughter burst out of me. “Even if we could leave, where the fuck would we go? There’s like six billion people here, I mean, what kind of place could support that?”

“Six—” Keyd’s eyes snapped open, and his wrist suddenly turned around in my grip and he grabbed on to me. “How many?”

“Like six billion, probably more, there’s a lot of fucking people here, dude.”

“There certainly are,” Keyd said softly. He said something else, but it wasn’t even loud enough to be a whisper, and of course reading his lips was pointless. His grip on my hand eased up, which I was kinda glad about because he was fucking strong. My fingers were all crushed together, sweaty and warm.

“How many of you guys are there, then?” I said. Because there was no way I could think about what he’d just told me. That was too much, too goddamn terrifying.

And Keyd rolled with the minor subject change. “Far less than that.”

“What, like a couple million? Couple thousand?”

“I don’t know the number. But nowhere near as many as here. And far fewer than the clarbach.”

“...is that because of the war?”

“Somewhat. But there were never that many of us to begin with, and the clarbach had always outnumbered us.”

“Always?”

Keyd nodded slightly. “Since...well. Since it was relevant.”

Okay, that must’ve been a botched translation or something; I had no idea what that meant. So, onto the next question.

“So, what is this shit with you guys and Ahieel anyway? Why does he hate you—” but mostly Rysa, “—so much?”

Keyd made an airy sound that managed to sound wry. “I’d thought that would be the first thing you asked.”

“Yeah, well, easing into it,” I said, and got a tiny laugh. Wasn’t much more than a longer broken-up hum in his throat, but it was nice to hear.

Also nice that bringing up Ahieel didn’t get him all clammed up again. I didn’t even want to talk about the fucking guy. But curiosity was winning out, and...this was important. It had to be.

“There’s a history, between us all,” Keyd started then, pretty carefully. “Long and ugly, and...perhaps unending.”

“Unending,” I echoed.

“I suppose it will stop when we, or he, or perhaps all of us, are dead.”

From what I’d seen of Ahieel, and how hell-bent he was on being a crazy motherfucker, I believed it. He was gonna kill one of them, probably Keyd, if they didn’t stop him first. And stopping him probably meant killing him.

I realized I’d been leaning way forward in my chair, braced over my knees and gripping Keyd’s hand. I made myself ease back, adjust my hold, let a breath out. “And what’s he want?”

“What he perceives to be justice,” Keyd said. And before I could ask, he went on, “to explain the details of that would be...complicated. But the result is that he believes Rysa needs to suffer a punishment, one he believes she has escaped for a long time.”

“And is the—” I made a motion across my ribs, where I’d seen that nasty scar on Rysa, “on her, that’s from him?”

Keyd made a kinda uncomfortable face. “That’s not something I should speak about.”

“You said you’d answer anything.”

“I did.” He probably regretted making that offer by now, but he did answer. “It happened a long time ago, and it was Ahieel who did it. Perhaps...it was at the beginning of all of this.”

“How’s th—”

I stopped, because Keyd’s gaze had snapped up past my shoulder. I twisted around in the chair without letting go of his hand, looking towards the doorway. Rysa stood there, her hair wet from the shower and the shirt she’d borrowed from me damp around the collar.

Oh come on, bad timing. Keyd and I were getting this talking thing down pretty good, had a real conversation going again, and he was actually telling me shit. Why’d she have to pick now to come in? I thought the shower thing was an excuse, like she was gonna give us a long time in here and not come in until we were done. Keyd just seemed more reserved when Rysa was around, like he thought he had to be some kind of super strong and stoic soldier for her. Maybe I could get her to go away again if I sent enough pointed eyebrow messages.

But she wasn’t looking at me, and missed them. Her attention was on Keyd. Which was fair; after all, he was the one in bad shape.

“How is everything?” she said, which definitely meant is healing him still working.
“Yeah, we’re doing good here,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Keyd glance at me. Probably shouldn’t’ve spoken for him. So I added, “right?”

“It is...better,” Keyd said, and I might have imagined the way his fingers tightened around mine. But maybe I hadn't. I was actually doing some good here, something useful, and maybe—despite how it was my fucking fault in the first place—he was trying to thank me for it.

And Rysa's smile was definitely nice to see. It wasn't just aimed at Keyd, either. Shit, I was gonna have to work a lot harder to actually earn all this gratitude and trust from them, 'cause I sure didn't feel like I deserved it now.

#

I stayed in there for about another hour with the both of them, until I started to get weirdly light-headed and woozy. Rysa made me break the connection with Keyd the second I mentioned it, and then fed me a little of her own energy to ‘balance me out’. And I did feel better after that, even though that carbonated blood feeling came back. And Keyd looked a hell of a lot better too—more color back in his face and way more alert and restless than before. Which was probably a good sign.

And by that point, it was already dark, and I was seriously ready for sleep. Didn’t care that I’d slept nearly the whole damn day already, my whole body was threatening to give out if I didn’t let it rest. I was happy enough to give in. I took the couch again, which I was starting to feel bad about making Keyd and Rysa sleep on for so long. They kind of sucked.

So did trying to get any decent sleep. I had fast anxious dreams all night, ones that I couldn’t remember once I woke up, but they had me jolting awake every half hour with a churning pointless dread in my stomach and cold sweat prickling down my sides. The couch wasn’t helping, even more uncomfortable for the second night in a row, and a couple of times I nearly rolled myself off of it when I woke up too aggressively. Rysa was on the other couch, sleeping perfectly fine, and at least none of my flopping around and half-nightmares ever disturbed her.

Around three in the morning I almost got up and went outside, until I realized Keyd wouldn’t be there to commiserate with. There was a stupid minute where I actually thought about going back to my room to see if he was awake, but I talked myself out of that pretty fast. I managed another couple stretches of shallow nervous sleep, but at around six I gave up completely.

I didn’t hurt as bad as yesterday, and I had some idea that Rysa’s healing trick was still working a little. But I was definitely kind of slow and halting and uncomfortable as I dragged myself up and scrounged around for something to eat in the cold barely-light of the morning. There was nearly nothing left on my side of the fridge or in my cabinets. Hadn’t I just gone to the fucking store? Or..how long ago had that actually been? Shit. I was losing my mind here.

I found some old cereal that was getting stale and some milk that was getting almost worryingly past the use-by date, and ate a sad little breakfast. I’d have to get to the grocery store at some point. Maybe when the thought of leaving my apartment didn’t kind of freak me out. I seriously wished I knew how the hell Ahieel kept tracking me down, because I didn’t even know if I was safe here. So far he’d only shown up in other places, so I had to assume he didn’t know where I lived. I fucking hoped he didn’t.

A couple of my school notebooks and binders were sitting in a slanting heap on the other side of the kitchen table. I honestly couldn’t remember putting that stuff there, why I’d left it there, or how long ago it’d been. Friday? I guess Friday. I’d probably done a quick switch-around of all the stuff in my backpack. I could see my tattered photography notebook poking out from the middle of the pile, and once I’d dumped the soggy leftovers of my breakfast in the sink, I grabbed it and took it over to the couches.

They were both empty—Rysa must’ve woken up and slipped past me at some point. I sat down on the one that was usually hers, and started flipping uselessly through my messy notes. There was a pen clipped into the spiral-bound wire, and took it out and stuck it in my mouth to hold onto it. This fucking darkroom project. Due next week, and I hadn’t even...I couldn’t even care about it. I was only looking at this shit right now because I needed something to focus on other than goddamn aliens.

I hadn’t even been to class in like...what, a couple days? A week? I couldn’t even remember, and that was a bad sign. The only thing I was sure of was that this project was due in a week. And it was for a major class, so...it was important. Supposedly. But it wasn’t even all this weird alien shit that was the problem with this project...I’d known about it for a long time and never had an idea for it.

I was doodling useless little shapes in the margins around my equally useless brainstorming notes, solid spiky blocks that fit into each other in patterns, when I sensed somebody leaning over my shoulder. Rysa had perched herself on the couch arm above me, her hands folded together on her thigh.

“Hey,” I said, slapping the notebook shut. Screw it, seriously.

“Good morning,” she said. I was getting some kind of vibe from her, like she wanted something, and it had to do with me.

“You know, when I said soon about the training...” I started, “I kind of meant...later.”

She chuckled. “I wasn’t thinking about that,” she said. “It’s too soon, you’re right. You’ve just done so much for us, and Keyd and I were wondering if there was some way we can return the favor.”

Other than just keep me alive, nothing came to mind. No idea what else they could possibly offer me, or anything I even wanted. At least, not from them. They couldn’t exactly give me a life direction or validation about my major. But they could protect me, and I couldn’t really ask for a lot more than that.

But Rysa was clearly waiting for some kind of response. She lifted one hand and tapped her fingers down one by one against the back of the other, and my attention focused on all those splintery dark patterns covering her skin. And yeah, maybe I did have an idea. Something that’d answer two things at once.

“...actually,” I said. “Yeah. I think there’s something you could help me out with.” She tilted her head, and I tossed the notebook aside and got up. “Give me a sec, okay?”

Without really waiting for an answer, I skirted around her and headed right back to my room. Keyd was a bundled up lump in my bed still, probably sleeping. I rooted my camera bag out from under the bed as quietly as possible, and trucked back out to the living room with it. I plopped it on the kitchen table and unzipped the main pouch, took out the camera body. The whole time Rysa was just standing near the couch, watching me.

“This might sound really weird,” I said to her. “But could I take some pictures of you? Your hands, really, mostly—I mean, the marks on them.” I held up my camera and shook it a little, like that would help how creepy this sounded out loud. “I just have this school thing, and…” this is my only half-assed idea.

“All right,” Rysa said, and it didn’t seem like she knew exactly what she was agreeing to. “But what is…” she made a curious gesture at the entire camera. “What does that do?”

#

About a half an hour later, Rysa had a basic idea of what photography was and I had a makeshift studio set up in the living room. Sheets pinned up to the wall and covering the floor, lampshades tilted back off the bulbs and Martin’s desk lamp commandeered as a key light. I wanted a real plain background, and I’d do these in black and white.

This didn’t need to be real complex or anything, not for a last minute idea I’d thrown together at seven thirty in the morning. At first I just had her hold up one hand, move it around into poses, did close-ups from her wrist down to her fingertips. With the white background and her relatively light skin, the marks on her skin jumped out and the shape of her hand turned into something faint and almost ghostly. Through the lens, at least. Have to see what they looked like developed.

Rysa seemed like she was having fun, even if she obviously had no idea what was going on or why I was pointing a noisy black box at her. She was pretty good at twisting her hands into interesting shapes, too. There was a quick second where I wondered if the energy itself would show up in a photograph, before I decided it’d be better if she didn’t do any magic right in the living room.

“That’s...great, yeah,” I said, when I’d basically run out of ideas. It was better than having nothing, and maybe I could do something interesting with putting them in sets or collaging them all together or something. I’d seen people do less interesting things than pictures of hands.

“Anything else?” Rysa said, and before I could even answer she’d stripped out of her shirt. But she still had that smaller tighter one on underneath, and her back was to me. She touched the edge of one of the black marks on her shoulder. “These?”

I hadn’t wanted to ask about anything else because of thinking things like no and rude and don’t ask girls to take their clothes off for you on camera, it’s fucking creepy. But then she’d just gone ahead and done it. I hadn’t even said anything!

“Unless,” she added, glancing over her shoulder, “it would bother you.”

If it’d bother me. Nothing about her, if it’d make her uncomfortable to get half-naked in front of some guy. Because it obviously wouldn’t.

“No, actually, yeah, I’d actually kinda love to see those,” I said in a big stupid rush. “The ones on your back, I mean, yeah.” I could see a little of them now, but most of it was under that shirt—just little flares of black peeking out on her shoulders. I’d only really seen them when she was actually using them.

So she went ahead and stripped out of that shirt. She kept her back to me, but it was still my first response to look away and fiddle with the settings on my camera. Nude photography was seriously not in my future if I couldn’t even pull it together for this. She only had half her clothes off.

But Rysa was so casual about it, like it just wasn’t any kind of big deal, so I could probably try not to act like a teenager here. It wasn’t like I’d never seen a naked woman before. It’d just...been a while. Not counting the time a while ago with Rysa herself.

So I made myself look up. I’d really forgotten how athletic she was, how good of shape she was in. All those muscles under her skin that stood out and flexed as she moved, and a real obvious strength in her shoulders and arms. The half-assed light set up in here was making it all stand out with interesting shadows. And then there were the marks themselves.

They still reminded me of crystal, or maybe like frost; all these long spiky patterns that seemed to grow out of each other and splinter apart. They spread over her skin from the bottom of her shoulder blades up. Some of the the longer tips even flared across her shoulders and a few inches down her arms. They were really nothing like tattoos at all. Too deeply black, too clean and crisp. And something about them felt powerful; charged and alive. I’d only called them tattoos before ‘cause I didn’t have a better word. Oen was the real word.

“That’s really...pretty,” I said, and winced at how creepy and awkward it sounded out loud.

At least her warm laugh was reassuring. “Thank you.”

“Do you pick what they look like?”

“There are trends in families, similarities in patterns, but…individually, no,” she said, over her shoulder. “They choose their own form, as they do with our bejji.”

“Shit, almost sounds like they’re alive or something.”

“They are,” Rysa said, glancing at me like I should have known that already.

“How—what’s that mean?” I said. She couldn’t actually mean…alive.

“It means exactly that,” she said. “They are living; aware. Separate from us in their own sentience.”

What. “Can they talk to you, or—

“In a way,” Rysa said, and a big creepy shiver rolled up my spine. “We do communicate with them, and they with us.”

“What do they tell you?”

She just laughed, which didn’t reassure me at fucking all.

“It’s not exactly like that,” said a sudden quiet voice from the couch.

I just about threw my camera across the room in surprise. Jesus fucking Christ how long had Keyd been sitting back there?

“What?” I sputtered. To anybody on this planet I had to look like a total creeper, but Keyd was acting like he’d shown up in the middle of us having a fully clothed conversation.

“They don’t speak. But they communicate, more in...senses and feelings,” Rysa said. She was looking at Keyd, maybe wondering where they hell he’d come from too. Wasn’t the guy supposed to be resting? He did look a hell of a lot better, but it seemed like he could fake that kind of thing pretty well. At least, he could push through a lot more pain than somebody really should.

“Hantdra, kair daval kahle?” Rysa said, and that didn’t even need to be in English for me to know what she’d said. Basically the same thing I’d just been thinking.

“Sudje hasn mrij,” Keyd muttered, and Rysa tilted her head back and laughed.

“Jinnhe,” she said, and sounded so ridiculously fond of him that a worm of jealousy wriggled through me. I didn’t even know who I was jealous of. “Kritjava cha. Hehru…kasuhmdyat hauj.”

Keyd didn’t go anywhere, so Rysa must’ve okayed him hanging around out here. Which broke my concentration pretty bad as I adjusted settings on the camera. He was this weird prickly presence at my back, even when I couldn’t see him. I could just feel that he was there, and it got me on edge. I kept glancing over at him—I couldn’t help it—and every time he was still sitting there, just watching.

“I’m bothering you,” he finally said, around the tenth time he caught me doing it.

“No, you’re fine,” I lied. “You’re good. It’s fine.”

“Iya, akalan kujkanava,” Rysa said to him. “Jinnhe dejj.”

Whatever she’d said, it got Keyd up off the couch. He came over to the makeshift studio, crouched down at the edge of the white sheet. He pinched at the corner of it lightly with his fingertips, then said a few quiet words to Rysa. She tilted her head in my direction, lifting an eyebrow as if saying, go on.

“I—“ Keyd said, and twisted the sheet into a pinched little spike. “Would you—can I help?”

“Uh. Sure?” I said, then cleared my throat and tried to sound less like an idiot. “Yeah, if you want.”

Rysa was already shifting over on the sheet, making some room for him. And actually...yeah, I liked this idea. Something to change up the composition and get some balance in there. He’d have to get semi-naked too, but that was less awkward than Rysa doing it.

“Go ahead and take your shirt off,” I said, heading for one of the lights to adjust it. I was getting some ideas already, framing and blocking and angles popping into my head, and man it was nice to have some of this focus back. It’s been too long since I’d cared this much about my own damn topic of study; even way before these two had even shown up. I was actually excited about this project right now; maybe it’d actually turn out good.

In my side vision I saw Keyd grab the hem of his shirt and strip it right off in one move. Rysa said something to him, he shook his head, and she chuckled and nudged his shoulder. They were so damn comfortable with each other, even when they were half-naked, and that jealousy flared back up in me. How did people get like this with each other, I just didn’t...fuck, whatever. Not the time for that shit.

I don’t know how I’d forgotten about that mark in the middle of Keyd’s chest, but somehow I had. When I turned around and saw it again, it caught my breath a little. These marks, both on him and Rysa, were just...they were otherworldly, and beautiful. All of Rysa’s marks were symmetrical, none of Keyd’s were. His kind of looked like it, but only the general shapes actually were, and all the little pieces that fit into making them up were different and mismatched. Rysa’d said they had no control over how the patterns looked, but they seriously seemed kind of fitting. Rysa was organized and practical and straight-forward, and Keyd was...complicated and misleading and took a lot of looking at to figure out.

“So, guys,” I said, and both of them turned their attention right to me. Shit, that was startling. “Wow, okay. Uh, Rysa’s been doing pretty good at this, so you can follow her lead if you want, but mostly just listen to me and do the best you can. It’s art—” pft, sort of, “—so you can’t really mess up that bad. Actually, I’m just gonna...”

I knee-walked over to them, since it’d be way easier to just stick them in a basic set up that I could move them around from later on. Still trying not to look too close at Rysa, even though she still had her back to me.

“Tell me if, you know, anything makes you uncomfortable,” I said, because they were naked. Almost.

“You won’t, don’t worry,” Rysa said with something that was almost a laugh.

Yeah, well, speak for youself, I thought, and accidentally caught Keyd’s eyes as I touched Rysa’s shoulder lightly to turn her. “Scoot a little closer to her, okay?” I said to him, and he obligingly did that, which brought him way too close to me, since I was in the spot I basically wanted him in. Didn’t think that though. I eased back.

“Can you—if you’re okay with—just put your hand on her, here,” I said, and held my own hand about three inches away from the small of Rysa’s back. Keyd went right ahead and mimicked me, and I pulled my hand out of the way kinda quick. I wanted the marks on his arm and wrist to line right up against her spine, like they were leading up to the ones on her shoulders. But Keyd still wasn’t close enough to her and his arm was at the wrong angle.

“Yeah, no, actually move it—“ I just went ahead and caught his arm, halfway to his elbow, “—just up like this, bend it so, uh…”

His skin was really warm, tight and smooth over all the muscle underneath. The oen marks were so dark on his skin, humming lightly whenever I touched one. Shit. They were living things, fused into his body. It was real different, knowing that. I pressed my thumb a little harder against pattern on his wrist, and got an answering buzz and a tingle deep into my skin. Keyd’s arm turned slightly in my grip, and the whole back of his wrist slid solidly into the center of my palm. A new and stronger hum shot up through my arm, nearly to my shoulder, and a little sound got startled out of me.

“Wow,” I said. My voice sounded all weird and low, kinda far-away. “That’s—“ And then I glanced at him, and he was looking right back at me. We were a little closer together than I’d realized—shit, I was practically right on top of the guy. Suddenly I had nothing to say; every word I’d had lined up in my head was gone. Prickles washed down my spine and tightened in my gut and I was kinda aware that all I was doing was staring at him, a hand somehow on the bare skin of his back and another around his wrist like we were gonna do a weird backwards waltz. His side swelled under my hand as he breathed in, and when he let it out again I could feel him shuddering against me, hear the unsteady shake of air in his throat.

Shit, what.

I pulled my hands off him as fast as I could while still trying to be casual. My heart was hammering and every part of me was intensely awake. For one second—just the fast fucking moment—Keyd’s eyes were wide and he looked just as startled. Then it was gone.

Fuck, what’d that been about?

` “Okay,” I said, almost impressed when my voice came out pretty steady and normal. “So just...hold right there.”

And I knee-walked as fast as possible back across the sheet, heart pounding.

#

I still managed to get a pretty good shoot. I just didn’t personally go over and move them around again. That was just...a bad idea.

Generally I didn’t really do people as subjects. But I think this’d gone pretty okay. The ones I was most looking forward to developing were a handful I’d done at the end, where the poses had stopped feeling so posed and everything had just been working. I didn’t wanna get too excited about them, since this was film and there was really no telling how any of these would actually come out. I’d have to use the darkroom on campus to get them done—that was part of our grade in the class, after all—so I’d have to get over there at some point.

But getting that headway on the project really kickstarted some motivation back into me, and I spent a lot of the rest of the day trying to get all my shit back in some kind of order. I emailed professors with bullshit excuses about why I’d been missing so much class, asked for extensions on assignments, tried to figure out what I’d missed and what I needed to do. I bugged a couple of people I had in-class acquaintances with, like Chelsea and this guy Eric in my darkroom class, to ask them about what’d be going on in classes next week, so I could get prepared in case I actually made it back there.

Didn’t bother to ask Law about what was going on in calc. No way.

It felt pretty good to get a handle on this kind of stuff again, and it kept me busy and distracted all day. It got dark without me realizing it, and then I chewed up a couple of Pop-Tarts for dinner because they were just about the last things I had. Really needed to go shopping, especially with alien visitors to feed. At least they didn’t eat that much, though I was pretty sure they were snacking on Martin’s food. He ate healthier than I did, anyway.

I honestly wasn’t sure what Rysa and Keyd had been up to all day—I thought maybe Keyd had sacked back out in my room again, but I wasn’t sure. Maybe Rysa’d been with him or not. I’d pulled my laptop out to the living room and had mostly been doing shit from there, so I really had no idea. Right now I was sitting on the couch and finishing up some of the reading Chelsea had let me know we’d be going over next week. And somewhere in the distance, the muffled booms and cracks of the nightly Disneyland show started up. Must be around nine-thirty.

“Those sounds,” said a voice. I jerked alert, flailing up and looking wildly around. Keyd was standing near the arm of the couch, looking down at me. This sneaky thing of his was not cool. The guy needed a fucking bell.

And Keyd seemed to notice that he’d startled the shit out of me, because when he moved around to sit down on the other couch, he seemed almost shy about it. He was holding an apple with a couple bites taken out of it—that was not mine, so I probably owed Martin for that. “We were wondering...what they are.”

“It’s just Disneyland,” I said, flopping back into the cushions and dropping the textbook into my lap. Now my whole body was bitter and prickly from stupid unnecessary adrenaline. Thank you, Keyd. “Fireworks. Every night.”

No answer. I cracked an eye open. Keyd was watching me, the apple halfway to his mouth. “That make sense to you?”

“Enough,” he said. But then, “what is being celebrated every single night?”

I laughed. “Nothing really. It’s just...what they do. Big show, lots of colorful flashy things for kids. It’s a theme park.”

He shook his head slightly. “That one didn’t make sense.”

“S’okay. Not important.”

So no amusement parks in alien world. What would Keyd and Rysa even think of a place like Disneyland, if they ever saw it? Or even some of the wilder stuff that was out there, like Vegas or something? Rysa’d been startled by automatic doors, after all. I think these guys sort of knew about technology on a general level, but it wasn’t something they expected. Not on any kind of daily basis.

An extra loud string of fireworks popped off in the distance, and I startled. I’d been zoning out on Keyd, just staring right through the guy, probably for a couple minutes. Shaking my head, I pulled myself together and got up to my feet.

“Okay, I gotta go hit the hay,” I said. It wasn’t even ten, but I was just done. It’d hit me real hard and real sudden, but I had been up since a really gross early hour and had barely slept. My eyes ached from holding them open and everything was going weird and unfocused. “Look, is it okay if I have my bed back for just like, one night?”

Okay, yeah, Keyd probably needed a real bed more than I did, but it couldn’t hurt to ask. And Keyd nodded, leaning back on the couch he was sitting on like it was just fine with him.

“Thanks, man,” I said. “I mean it. See you around, ‘kay?”

I was pretty much out of the room when Keyd said, “good night,” after me, kind of in a rush. I almost didn’t hear it, and for a second I thought I’d maybe imagined it. Startled, I leaned back around the wall, and caught his eyes from across the room.

“G’night,” I offered back. And Keyd gave me a nod, like he was satisfied by that little exchange. I waited, just for a couple seconds, to see if he had anything else to say. But he didn’t, so...so that was done. Yep.

Still, I had a stupid smile on my face as I went back to my room. So maybe Keyd and I weren’t exactly buddies yet, but...we were something. Getting along. And it was pretty cool. How many people could say they got along with aliens? Obviously, nobody. I was alone with my cool accomplishment that I couldn’t even tell anybody about.

I stripped out of my clothes and tried not to look down at myself as I changed into pajamas, at all the bruises and scrapes I knew had to be all over me. If I looked at them, they’d start hurting again, and there was no way I was bugging Rysa or Keyd about it. But I was seriously looking forward to at least one night not on that shitty couch.

When I finally crawled into bed, I was asleep just about the second I shut my eyes.

#

Keyd was leaning over my bed, looking down at me, just like he’d been on that first morning we’d met. But it was different; I wasn’t panicked and I wasn’t hung over and confused. It was comfortable; safe. He was supposed to be here, just like this. We were safe here together. There was gentle yellowy light everywhere and his eyes looked even paler and bluer and brighter. Gold highlights shone in his dark hair, making everything hazy and soft.

“Hi,” I said, and lifted a hand to his face. He was warm, and his skin was soft and nice. I slid my fingers into his hair and he breathed out against my wrist.

“Alan,” he said, a low warm murmur that went straight to my dick. I groaned through my teeth, and the mattress dipped as Keyd got a leg up on it and climbed over me, settling his knees on either side of my hips. My skin prickled and burned and blood rushed everywhere and fuck, all that mattered was getting him closer to me, right now. That’s why we were here, that’s what we were doing.

I made a stupid desperate noise as I reached for him, caught at his shirt—my shirt, the one I’d loaned to Rysa, how’d he get it—slid my hands up his back under it, his skin hot against my palms. He made a low noise in his throat, a contented hum, pushed into the touch. “Come here,” I said, dragging at him. “Fuck, come here.”

He lowered himself onto me and all his clothes were gone suddenly I didn’t have any either and oh god this was good. He was hot and firm against me and yes, Jesus, this was exactly what I wanted. I shifted my legs so he fell firmly between them, and when he rolled his hips against me that was almost the end right there. I made more stupid helpless noises and didn’t fucking care because it was so damn good.

His shoulder dipped down near me and I buried my face into it, huffing hot breaths out between my teeth and over his skin. My cheek pressed hotly against his neck, slick with sweat. When his thigh wedged up between mine and pressed, I sucked in a breath and bit down on his shoulder and heard him gasp, then dragged my mouth up his neck and over his jaw and then we were kissing, rough and sloppy and wet. He was everywhere around me, touching every part of my body, every inch of my skin and it was like electricity between us. His hands gripped my hips and we were moving together, I didn’t even know how this was working but it was, fuck, amazing.

“Don’t stop, don’t go,” I said, when he lifted away from me, begging and not caring because it’d be the worst thing in the world if he stopped. But he came back, his solid weight settling down all against me and pushing me down, bringing all that heat with him and drowning me in it. I bucked up towards him, needing...touch, pressure, anything, god, just more of this. Every touch sent off a new burning rush over my skin, which’d gone all raw and sensitive and prickly.

“Alan, look at me.” His voice was soft and promising and nothing like it’d ever sounded before. But looking at him’d be too much, I couldn’t handle it. Then his warm hand ran gently down my side, the other cupped my face, and he said, “please.”

Fuck, that was it, I was done. The rush started down low and deep and boiling, surged up and out, roared all the way out to the tips of my fingers and toes. A noise tumbled out of me, some kind of broken breathy cry. Keyd’s arms curled around me and dragged me into a haze of heat and sweat and held me tight as I rode it out, seeing nothing but golden blobs in blackness and a warm musky smell everywhere.

And then I was left weak and stupid and shaky, out of breath and everything in me pounding along with the wild pulse of my heart. I kept my eyes closed, staying safe in the dark, slowly...slowly...relaxing out.

“Alan.” He’d been saying my name for a while. But now he sounded further away, fainter. “Alan. Alan.”

“Mm-hm, whaddya want,” I panted, and tried to sag down against him. But I couldn’t...feel him, somehow, there was all softness and empty space where he’d been firm and solid before, and I clutched around to try and touch him, opened my eyes to see where he’d gone and—

—and really opened my eyes.

I was really in my bed, but it was dark and I was alone. Drenched in sweat and tangled in my sheets and strangling my pillow, heart hammering like crazy and kind of sticky and uncomfortable and completely fucking stunned. My room was quiet and still and the red numbers on my alarm clock read 3:21 AM.

“Oh what the fuck.” I threw the blankets off, dumping them to the floor, and flopped over onto my back. “Be cool,” I told myself, and ran a hand through my damp hair. “Just be cool, shit, just calm down.”

Yelling at myself actually sort of worked. So did taking deep breaths, holding them, and letting them out slow and steady through my teeth. Sweat cooled down my sides and itched as it dried my hair into little spikey clumps against my forehead. I scrubbed my hands up and down my face, raking fingers through my hair and still seeing Keyd leaning over me, naked and sweaty and glowing with gold light, every damn time I closed my eyes.

I dropped my hands onto my face and pushed down, digging the heels of my palms into my cheekbones until it actually kinda hurt. It’d just been a long damn time since I’d been with anyone. So this didn’t mean anything more than that I really, really needed to get laid. And Keyd was kinda on my mind all of the time so of course it’d be him; he’d just crawled on into my head and made an obnoxious little nest there and wouldn’t leave, so...now he was getting in my dreams. Sure. That was fucking logical.

At least it hadn’t been another nightmare about Ahieel. Or a sex dream about Ahieel. That’d be way fucking worse.

But this’d been like an A+ wet dream, too. Like, really good.

“Shit,” I groaned, and dragged a pillow over my head.

The worst part was I had no fucking idea how I was gonna look Keyd in the face tomorrow.