Summary: Brendan and Sebastian, intermittently asleep and babbling to themselves.

Warnings and Disclaimer: Shounen ai, mild angst. All characters used are copyright of Twig.

Notes: Falls between "The Past Still Burns" and "A Strange Day at the Races" where Brendan has his Guardian Mark but Sebastian doesn't know.

if you gave me nothing
nothing more than this
i would have the memory to keep
let me make this simple wish
as we fall asleep
let me wake with you by my side
always

~october project, "always"

I think you're asleep. Sometimes I can't tell. You wouldn't think that would be a problem now, with this mark on my back and this bond between us...you wouldn't think something invisible could be so strong, but then, I've never been good with things that aren't tangible. Things you can't touch, you know? I like to know what I'm holding.

When I look for your thoughts, they're soft and hazy, sort of like looking through a window when it's raining or trying to walk through fog and not being able to really see the outside world and everything around you. You just get suggestions of things, and when you walk right up to them, you find out that sometimes you're not looking at what you think you are.

But that's outside. That's not where I am, right now.

Well, maybe.

I mean, I still haven't told you. I don't know if I can tell you. God, do you have any idea how hard it is sometimes?

It makes me glad that you're asleep. Or close to it, anyway.

I like to watch you when you're like this. It's easier to think of what I'd like to say to you, what words I'd choose to let you know-to let you know about how I feel, to ask you about how you feel, to let you know anything, everything. I can be truthful here the way I never am in real life. I can... make sense, you know?

But I think anyone could be eloquent, looking at you. It's helpful to look at you and know what I'd like to say; it's not so great that I look at you and know exactly what I'd like to do and like you to do because I know that it'll never happen.

I don't have to think about that though. I can just close my eyes and be glad that if I move my hand just a half-inch to the right, I'll be able to touch your hair since your head is tilted back.

It's nice, having a quiet night like this. It seems like none of our nights are quiet these days or ever were. It makes me wonder though, when did I start thinking of them in terms of 'our' nights? Quiet days, quiet nights--- these are things that practically never happen for Guardians and Mages, especially us. Seems like something is always being blown to hell when we're in the area. I guess we're just lucky that way.

You're lucky, you always seem to know just where to look for things. You looked so happy today when you found that book in the store I didn't want to go into, some little dusty thing that looked out of place in your hands and against the blue silk of your shirt. Today it's a blue like an August sky, dusky-hazy-bright all at the same time. Your eyes go with that color. But, you never wear anything that isn't perfectly matched and coordinated, even if you don't know you're doing it.

You don't need it though, do you know how beautiful you are? I keep running into enough of your old lovers to figure out that everyone sees it but you. Christ, it's getting to the point where I'm afraid to turn around because I know I'll stumble over another one. But you treated the book as though it was something so much more precious than anything you could name, holding it reverently as you handed over enough money to probably buy the damn store, I bet. You said it was haiku, some first edition collection by some dead poet. I would have ended up using it for a doorstop.

I don't know if that was the best part of the day or not, seeing your face shine as you turned the crumbling pages. I think maybe it was more when you started to read them out loud, sitting on the other end of the couch. By then, the sun had gone down and I remember the way it spilled gold across your hands and you were still at the beginning of the book and I couldn't stop looking.

You laughed. You knew that I wouldn't understand a word of them and you couldn't figure out why I asked you to. But it wasn't knowing what the words meant, these valuable things that you were so happy to find; for me it was the sound of your voice wrapping around syllables like pictures. It was like hearing colors behind my closed eyes, or seeing a song or tasting the way words come from your mouth. That's a little stupid, isn't it?

...That's a lot stupid.

It's all right. You read out loud when I closed my eyes and you kept reading, even when I lay down on the couch. I was careful not to touch you. I'm not always stupid. You were the one who waited until you thought I was asleep and you lifted my head up just enough so it would rest against your thigh. I'll bet your legs are asleep right now. You haven't moved them once.

You kept reading out loud until you reached the end of the book. I heard you close it and put it down on the table. I think I was hoping you would touch me--- stroke my hair, touch my forehead, some fool thing like that--- but you didn't. Maybe you realized I wasn't really asleep. We never really sleep. Guardians, I mean. That would make a good bumper sticker slogan.

It's all right. When it's late like this, you're don't have to make sense. If you could see what I was thinking, you'd probably blink and just give me that look. Or maybe just blush. I like it when you do that, too.

Speaking of making sense...

You know, I don't remember everything, but in my high school physics class--- God, not that many years ago but it feels like a damn lifetime--- my teacher was talking about all sorts of weird stuff. It was one of those classes where they finish the material about ten minutes early and they don't want to let you out but there's nothing left to say and everyone's just fidgeting and watching the clock's hands move.

So, we were all kind of talking about some movie that had been on last night, something about giant bugs stomping over some poor city. Somewhere in Japan, I bet. Your stomping grounds. Tokyo always gets it in the shorts when it comes to horrible explosions and invasions, doesn't it?

So, the teacher decided to step in and say that even if an insect could be made to grow to enormous size, it wouldn't be able to support its own weight enough to even move, something to do with strength being a cross-section and mass is three-dimensional, so strength increases by powers of two where mass increases by powers of three... I don't remember, but I do remember the part about the giant ants being too heavy for their own muscles.

Hell. He's never run into a construct, obviously. But then, science and magic don't always play well together, do they?

I don't know why I'm telling you all this. You're asleep. Or you look like it. I guess it doesn't matter if I'm not saying it out loud.

So, after ruining everyone's favorite sci-fi movie, he started to apply it to other things. I don't remember all of that either, but I do remember him waving chalk around and saying that by that theory and with added factors of gravity and weight and God knows what else- torque maybe, it's one of those physics terms that no one really understands--- all sorts of things wouldn't be able to fly. Horses, angels, dragons....

What does he know about dragons? Of course they could fly.

I used to think wings would be incredible. I had them for a little while, back with Rheme. I- we, me and her-- we flew through the black and saw only the stars until the very end. I think it was maybe better that way. When I lost them, I fell from the sky and I hit hard, as hard as you can, I guess. Pretty damn hard, anyway.

Someone told me a story about a boy who had wings but they weren't strong enough and he fell from the sky and into the sea; or maybe it was a story about an angel who flew too close to the sun and wanted to be it so much that he had to fall, and he had to become a demon because there was nothing else for him to be...

I used to think I knew who I was and what I'd become. But I didn't. I had certainty once, but that changed. When I held her body close after it was all over, the world was full of driving rain and ruined feathers, mine but not his, bloody, drifting, aimless. And everything I knew was a lie and all the confidence over who I was and what I did was gone.

But I'm your Guardian now. Yours. This is something we both know.

We go through our weird little routines where I'll grin and you'll be flustered or you'll smile and I'll scuff my feet and sometimes there's a touch on the shoulder after that and sometimes there's discussion of a magic spell. It's okay, it's not what really happens that's important. It's the ritual.

A lot of people go on about how there's no magic without the ritual. I guess a ritual requires you to repeat it, over and over. So, anything you do often enough could be a ritual. So, couldn't an action like smiling be magic if you do it often enough?

I'm your Guardian, awake and asleep, until I die. This used to just be a job and now it's something else but I don't know what it is.

Rheme is dead. And wings are just something you dream about at night when you've eaten the wrong things or read a strange book before falling asleep. Wings are just--- unreal things. Angel things.

I've seen angels fly. I've seen angels do a lot of things. This is something I also know.

You're not an angel.

You're beautiful enough for it and no, I'm not going to stop saying that because it's true. But you care, you're warm, you're real in a way that they're not and never will be. You get the most horrible shadows under your eyes when you stay up too late and they show up more because you have such pale skin, purple-blue smears that age you until I can almost shake my belief that you're the younger one. You can bring corporations to their knees with a word but you can't order a decent pizza on the phone to save your life. You have to work the tangles out of your hair when you have a restless night and it clogs up the shower drain, when you actually shower instead of taking a bath. Each day, the first thing you do is smile when you tell me "Good morning."

I was gone after Rheme died. I thought nothing was worth coming back for. Tarcye always held a hand out but I hugged my solitude close and defined my life and existence with what weapon my hands could hold and swing and by what target my eyes could see. I stayed alive solely to make another dead. Life is narrow when the only way you can shoot is to kill.

...I don't even know what I'm talking about half the time.

But, somehow, despite all screw-ups, here I am with my head on your thigh and my hand almost touching your hair and a dragon on my back, able to fly but willing to wait and guard what he has because some things are just worth it. Taking a fall will teach you that kind of thing. I don't know how you got inside me and I don't think I can tear you out anymore--- you fill some hole in me and did you know that if you remove a knife lodged in the muscle, you'll bleed to death?

You're asleep. I hope you're dreaming of something good; your mouth is almost smiling. None of this is useful, none of it has a point, there is just you, and I am with you, here in the dark and the quiet.

I would be willing to carry you to bed and grin and call you a dork and rumple your hair but I think I'd rather stay here a little longer.

We don't ever really sleep. But sometimes we get some rest.

***

If I look at you too hard or too long, I think you'll wake up.

You don't, though. Your eyes are closed and I can't even see a hint of gold behind your lids. When I first met you, your eyes were brown. I thought you were a lion, all amber-glowing roar in your house with your sword drawn and hurting more than anyone I'd ever seen in my life. Your pain broke through my walls and all the shields I keep up and I wouldn't have had it any other way.

Now you're Brendan, asleep on the couch with your mouth hanging open a little. You could probably still wake up in half a heartbeat and rip any threat apart before the second half of the heartbeat was over. Part of your hair is going to be sticking out tomorrow because you're sleeping on it funny. I wouldn't tell you that I think it's endearing. I value being alive.

Of course, you would never hurt me.

You think you will. You don't talk very much about whatever hurt you before but you carry it with you wherever you go. I can see it in every step you take, sometimes. I had the oddest feeling once, when I turned a corner and you were there, that you expected to see someone else step out.

It stung a little. I can't say otherwise. But then you smiled and you punched my shoulder and told me if I kept sneaking up on you like that, you'd be ashamed to call yourself a decent Guardian. And everything was all right again.

Except it wasn't, really. I wish you didn't have to live by your sword's edge. But, if I wished that, I might as well wish you out of your very core of being, out of being a Guardian. My Guardian. It would be like trying to wish that you could speak Japanese, that you could fly, that you could make yourself taller or shorter or change your eyes or face...

Not that I'm not sure you can't do some of those things. Your eyes are golden now. You have very long lashes, improbably dark for your coloring, full and fine and you'd give me a funny look if I told you what they did to other people and to me. Especially sitting here, watching them tremble when I breathe on you. I was afraid it would wake you up.

I thought about a lot of things when I read the poetry out loud. After a while, it isn't hard to do that, just holding the words in your mouth and the thoughts in your mind and it doesn't matter if the two don't touch. I thought about you because you were here. I thought about Ophelia and the way she used to twine her hair around one finger when my mother read out loud to both of us. She was always quiet then and her face would go soft and far away. She seemed less angry then.

The Japanese believe in fate, did you know? You can't change everything, if anything.

If I looked up, I'd be able to see the moon through the window. I didn't think to close the drapes earlier this evening, I didn't know I would be awake this long. There were several haiku about the moon, but of course, you didn't know that when I read them. You wouldn't think that, would you? That people would write so much about the moon when you think about what it really is? Everyone says the moon is cold and dead when you get close to it, all marked and pocked and uninviting. But I suppose from down from here, it looks so cool and lovely and remote that I can understand why so many poets put their brushes to the paper to try and capture just a little bit of it in their words.

You, now. You're not the moon. You're the sun, if anything, bright and gold and glorious. You'd laugh, you think you're so ordinary. That's not true. But you're not like the moon in another way. The closer I get to you--- looking, hearing, touching--- the closer I want to be and the more wonderful you are. And when I walk right up and look into your eyes--- no jokes, please, about having to look up into your eyes but you're asleep and you can't hear me, so it's all right--- well, there you are.

Where are we going next? You seem to have a good idea. I can already see the adrenaline boiling in your blood; are you dreaming of fighting?

I hope we get there, wherever we're going. So much happens in between the first step we take and where we actually end up. I never thought we'd end up here. You can't ever be sure of your destination except to know that you'll end up somewhere, somehow...

I'm sure of you. Your head is heavier than I thought it would be and your hair tickles my leg, even through the material of my pants. I don't know if I can wiggle my toes or not. I don't really feel like trying.

The wall is colored blue tonight, moon-blue and the moonlight runs down the wall like paint stroked onto a canvas. I don't want the shadows to fall on your face. But I don't want to move, either. I suppose you can't have everything. Maybe it will rain tonight. If it does, one of us should make sure all the windows are closed.

You're asleep. I don't usually stay up this late unless it's a meeting since they don't seem to understand time-zones. Or a party. But I never really liked Silvio's parties. They were... too much, you couldn't walk around without dragging smears of things with you, falling in and out of soft pockets of conversation and bragging. The wineglasses and bottles used to reflect and make prism shades in the tinted lights, everything glowing, and it made me dizzy. I was always walking but I never knew where I was going, back then.

Well, here you are. Here we are. And wherever we go, there we are. Watching you sleep is a little like prayer. There are a lot of steps between here and there, aren't there? It almost makes me smile. I like walking and running with you.

I don't think we need to worry too much. It seems like time just stopped for tonight. I don't know how much of this sacred hour is left but I'm grateful for it and when you get a gift like this, you probably shouldn't examine its origin too long.

There are too many steps to my bedroom tonight. Sometimes I'm happy just staying where I am and looking ahead. We don't need to move right away. It's good to go to sleep like this, warm weight on my leg, the cadence of your breath, and night-birds calling outside.

Settle and ease and lying back just right... When I close my eyes, there is peace and the quiet caress of the dark against the back of my eyes. Presently you understand the words from my mouth, even in a language you never knew until now.

End notes:

Twig, you rock my world. Thank you for letting me play in your universe.