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"Aaron," Nathan says, his voice cracking. "Pallister, damn it. I know you're still in there. You can fight this. Come on. Come back to me."
The tall, slim man before him, with a lined, friendly face that belies everything Nathan at least intellectually knows is looking out from behind his clear blue eyes now, shakes his head. "You're barking up the wrong tree, 'Nate'. My name's William."
A year ago, Nathan had stood on a cliff edge next to the stranger with the weathered face and easy, natural smile. Gazing down after the doomed car, he listened to that pleasant, resonant voice declare drolly, "No worries, it's a rental."
Then the stranger turned around and offered Nathan his hand. He'd almost been too blitzed by his world coming down around his ears to register that the handshake was followed by the show of a badge that outranked Nathan's own authority as local law enforcement.
Aaron. He'd heard the name through the haze. Linked it to that instant reconnection with the world -- the world, his hand, his own body... and the particular touch of that stranger's skin.
Aaron Pallister.
Pallister was in Haven for the day's unlucky corpse, though he'd been anticipating the man alive. They could work together, or at least, Nathan could show Pallister down to the beach below Tuwiuwok Bluff, where the corpse was.
He suspected he was making an ass of himself. Was there anything he could have failed to reveal already, in that handshake? Touch had stripped him naked, and he couldn't think of sane things to say, or even string together normal courtesies. Aaron told him later that he'd just figured him for the regular sort of weird Maine local, but then, it was often difficult to tell how serious Aaron was being.
He had no idea, yet, that that handshake had been the first thing in two or three years that Nathan had felt.
Later, anyway, Pallister must have thought Nathan's reactions a good deal odder. With Marion talked down in good humour, and a bullet wound taped up in Nathan's shoulder but in no way hampering his ardour or determination, when Aaron ferried him home from the hospital... the thoughts started to build up in Nathan's mind that this man, this one person in all the world who for whatever reason Nathan could feel, was going to leave Haven soon, and Nathan would know he was out there and that he had let this chance slip away without doing anything about it. He made himself reach out and speak up. "Do you... want to come back to my place?"
He heard his own voice, hoarse and barely a voice at all, surely not the most promising enticement, and it was with more daring than he thought he'd ever done anything in his life that he slid the fingers of his extended hand over the back of Pallister's neck, targeting the scrap of skin between hair and shirt collar.
But he felt the hair, too. Soft, delicate, a bit bristly. He was almost too undone by that to move further.
The next thing Nathan knew, Pallister was screeching the car to a halt. "My B&B--" He pointed out of the window "--is right there." There was undeniable lust in the white teeth that showed in his smile, and Nathan could hardly believe this was on.
They practically ran across the street. Inside Pallister's room, Nathan let the other man slide a hand up under his shirt, clasp strong fingers wide over his ribs and lean in for a kiss. As Nathan fell apart under his touch, it must have been impossible to mistake those reactions for normal. Nor any of his other reactions as they did everything his shoulder would allow, and Nathan didn't say no to anything... all the while, trying to keep their voices muffled for the sake of Mrs Inskey and her other guests.
Lying together afterwards, Aaron finally leaned up on one elbow and reached out to slide a finger contemplatively over Nathan's lips. Nathan parted them automatically, flicking his tongue out to taste the record of their activities on Aaron's skin, and Aaron concluded slowly, "You say you can't feel anything, but... you can feel me. I wonder why?"
At that stage it was impossible to deny even if Nathan had wanted to. He clung to Aaron's wrist, keeping it where it was, letting his tongue taste the feeling, holding onto it.
"I don't know." But maybe this was some crazy fate, the universe finally throwing him some relief. Release. "Stay here with me. Solve your mysteries about your father, from the newspaper article."
"Small town cop, huh?" Aaron cracked a grin, waggling a mocking finger back over himself.
Nathan surged up, bypassing the finger to kiss him hungrily again, rolling them over, straddling knees either side of Aaron's body. "You'll be perfect for the job," he assured him, and they both consciously muffled their gasps as their cocks stirred, pushed together, forming a pool of heat between them. "Even if you don't care about the mysteries, I'll make it worth your while."
Aaron held Nathan's chin, pulling back slightly from the kiss. "Well, I like this mystery," he said. "I might as well, if I'm staying, take a look at the rest."
***
Officer Aaron Pallister stayed in Haven through the advancing summer as the Troubles grew prominent.
Haven actually absorbed the idea of two gay cops with the town's usual quirky sense of irony and general good humour, though there were ways in which that, too, was a curse. Some of the reactions were more noticeably odd than others.
Eleanor Carr used to regard Aaron, and the two of them together, with a particular strangeness. The Chief expressed a good deal of displeasure about the relationship among his ranks, but that was a predictable note, and one that Nathan strongly suspected had little to do with the fraternization grumbles he cited uppermost. Haven was a small town -- plenty of family working together on the force. The Chief seldom had much approval for anything Nathan did, though, and he even thought Garland had been secretly pleased when Nathan's Trouble came back and he'd stopped dating altogether.
Duke looked surly about Nathan being back in the game at first, but once he'd got used to the idea, he got more friendly, and of course Aaron was friendly. Before long, even Duke and Nathan were actually talking to each other in a non-hostile way again, while any remaining friction between them tended to make Aaron roll his eyes a lot.
Aaron was good at the Troubles, in his peculiar way. Maybe it was related to being immune to them, and maybe that was a Trouble itself, for all they knew. But if so it was a boon in the fashion of no other Trouble Nathan knew of.
Barely a week after they'd first met, Nathan let Aaron fuck him for the first time. They returned to Nathan's own home for the occasion, so they wouldn't have to try to keep the sounds hushed. Nathan couldn't have done it. Feeling Aaron inside him was overwhelming, when he was unused to feeling anything at all. It was all he could do to cling to his sanity, fingers gouging furrows in the mattress, with Aaron moving slow and carefully, so intense, so real. Coming filled with sensation, with sensation encircling him from Aaron's hand on his cock, he was left breathing helpless sobs into the mattress for a good few minutes after, while Aaron held and stroked him and freaked the hell out because he thought he'd done something horribly wrong.
"No, no... I'm a freak," Nathan gulped into the covers, managing to roll over enough to take the other man's face in his hands in a gesture of reassurance. "I'm good. I'm more than good." It had been so good that he barely had words or sense left to express that. He wanted Aaron again right now, but their bodies couldn't do it. He sighed and pressed as much of their skin together as he could, and wriggled to kiss Aaron again, pathetically grateful to be reminded what it was to be alive.
Aaron let him return the favour a few days later after Duke almost died and the witchy woman, Jess, had been coming onto them -- both of them, Nathan had kind of thought -- in the crazy taxidermy case, making a fierce jealousy rise in him because Aaron also liked women. It was almost an act of claiming, in a weird way, with that jealousy so fresh. Nathan had always switched, and Aaron hadn't, really, though more from circumstance and the preference of his past partners than his own rigid preference. Aaron was a game-for-anything-good kind of guy. There was more to think about the other way around, with Aaron new to the experience, but having to guide Nathan where things were hard to judge after his years unfeeling.
Nathan didn't last very long. But he dragged enough focus together to work with his hands and mouth to make up for it and promised practice.
"Lots of practice," gasped Aaron. "Lots, and lots, and-- Okay, oh, God, do that some more."
***
Aaron was immune to the Troubles. It seemed like certain people in town might know more about that than they were letting on. Nathan was certain The Chief and Eleanor and the Teagues did. After Eleanor died, and then... then Garland, who'd been lying to him about even more than he'd thought, and for much, much longer, Nathan started to wonder if they should just tie down one or other Teagues brother and choke the answers out of them before anything happened to them.
The 'real' Aaron left Haven without the memories Aaron still possessed, and from there on in, they both knew this was not like anything they had even imagined.
***
Nathan's face was as red as Chris Brody's was, in the mirrors behind the Gull's bar, when Aaron dragged him off him. Aaron couldn't seem to decide between "Damn it, Nathan!" and "Damn it, Chris!" and Duke was trying not to explode from inappropriate laughter. As soon as Nathan was not looking at Brody, and grasped just what he'd tried to do, he was ready to sock Duke for that. Ready to murder Chris... Maybe it wasn't Brody's fault that he had the most annoying, embarrassing Trouble in the world, but--
"Nathan, we're going home," Aaron said, angrily. "Nathan, don't turn around. Don't look at him again -- oh, fuck--"
***
When they found out about Duke's Trouble, and the countdown, things got even weirder.
They rallied together. They had each other. Nathan was not going to let Aaron be forced to leave. They would find a way around it. Some other solution. They tried to get answers from the Guard in the shape of Jordan, the woman who couldn't touch and an odd counterpart to Nathan, unfeeling. Aaron's seduction of her didn't win them any popularity and in the end, the answers they had been looking for -- that it was Haven on the line, that nobody knew a better answer -- only earned them more enemies and didn't please anyone.
The day before the Barn was due, they sat on the hillside contemplating the empty sky, and Aaron, with his long legs sprawled, ankle hooked over knee, hands curled in his lap and his face terse and fixed and distant, said, "I don't want to go. Will you blame me, for not saving the town, if I don't go? I like the people here -- mostly -- and I want to save them, but... I don't want to die for them."
"Everything about this is wrong," Nathan agreed, and reached into Aaron's lap to curl a hand over one of his. "Let's run tonight."
The idea that they could get away burned as a heavy promise inside him, but Nathan had a cold feeling in his gut, and Aaron's face was sweating, his frame alight with tension in the front passenger seat of the Bronco as they drove. Some part of Nathan might even have been relieved when the Guard jumped them outside town: the resentful Jordan McKee, and the heavies who always seemed to hover like flies around her.
Nathan they tied up and threw in the back of a van. Nathan they had every grievance in the world with: Jordan's particular jealous ones, and then the fact it should have been his responsibility to see the town safely through the transition and instead he was running with Aaron at his side. It was probably just as well, for that journey to the Barn, that he was unable to feel a thing.
Aaron, on the other hand, was their saviour, the promise of an unTroubled world to come -- at the mere cost of his identity. Him they didn't touch, but kept in line by taking it out of Nathan's skin.
On the hillside outside the Barn, Nathan sacrificed broken fingers and a good deal of the skin on his hands to free himself. Howard had been shooting disapproving looks his way since they arrived, but in centuries of the cycle he had to have encountered scenes like this before. He hadn't been surprised. Coercion and sacrifice was the engine the Barn ran upon. Nathan took a bullet in exchange for gaining a gun and a hostage, tackling the nearest of Jordan's men -- Vince's men. Vince, who knew about all of this all along.
The relief he'd felt when the Guard stopped them on the road was buried beneath anger, desperation. Aaron had given in -- he was lifting his hands, calling out, "Nathan, no!" He was seconds away from that last step into the Barn. Nathan had moved just in time.
But they weren't free yet. The Guard were surrounding him. Jordan coldly lined up her shot, then put another bullet in him, shooting past the hostage without warning. She walked toward him, her movements purposeful, doing nothing to defend herself. Aaron was yelling, frantic, backing away toward the Barn again, opening the door.
Jordan was confident that Nathan wouldn't shoot her or his hostage. After all, they were just Haven citizens who wanted the Troubles to go away, same as everyone. The edges of his world started to grey. Aaron was on the verge of entering the Barn again, shouting for them to let Nathan live. Jordan was right -- he couldn't shoot her. But Howard was there, his voice soft but his eyes so mocking, and who knew what he was, really? He could be the one controlling all of this, the agency who'd put the Troubles there in the first place, standing there like he was invulnerable, spouting some smug line. "Now, come along, Chief Wuornos..."
It turned out that Nathan could shoot Howard.
Before the world greyed out altogether, he had enough time to witness the Barn implode, sliced up by vivid light, then sucked in upon itself.
Then the meteors started to fall.
***
They spent almost a month on the run and in hiding before the Guard got over its anger and became ready to admit that they needed both their help more than they needed to kill Nathan for his transgressions.
Things returned, if not quite to normal, then back to a rhythm of sorts, with Dwight in charge and half the town shooting hateful glances at Nathan when he limped by.
But Aaron was still there. With him there, they would solve this, Nathan told himself. They had to solve this. Aaron was at the heart of the Troubles, and maybe, maybe now that Nathan had pulled him out of this cruel and inhuman cycle, they could solve this plague upon the town for good. Maybe after hundreds of years, Aaron could finally live a real life.
Mara came to town wielding a wicked grin and knowledge of the Barn. "I'm here to help you with your Troubles," was the tune she sang, right up til the point they exposed her as intending the exact opposite. The two goons who'd been messing with people's Troubles were her men. Mara claimed to be connected to Aaron, and Nathan could see the pull she had on him, the way she could draw Aaron to her.
***
Mara had never had anything but contempt for Nathan, and for his relationship with Aaron. Mara slapped Nathan, and raked her nails over his face, laughing when he felt it. She had her goons spread-eagle him out before Aaron, offering up the promise of making a new Trouble -- or taking one away. "I bet Nathan would like to feel again, right, Aaron? More than just you."
"No," Nathan growled at the temptation being dangled, and shook his head fiercely for the longing in Aaron's eyes, though he wasn't even sure if the longing was to free Nathan, or just to touch the power Mara was offering at all.
It had been months now since Nathan had destroyed the Barn to save his lover, and how many people had died for that decision, he was ashamed to have lost count. He didn't trust Mara, offering up solutions for the Troubles. Bait for a trap. There had to be a cost.
But Mara led Aaron on like she had hooks under his skin, like she had him under a spell, and Aaron moved closer to Nathan with the palm of his hand black.
Face pale and strained with the desire to carry out Mara's command, Aaron winked and at the last moment, stalled, and Nathan went in for the headbutt.
***
They succeeded after all, sending Mara away through the door to another world that lay in the cavern beneath the lighthouse. But it didn't help them nearly so much as they'd thought it would.
Nathan remembers the last thing he sensed being William's hands around his throat. He'd felt them, as he'd slipped down into unconsciousness. It would be an ironic death, to go like that, smothered in the sensation he'd lived so long without. Oh, he'd known that William hadn't intended to kill him. But he also knew that William wanted him as the base for a monumental Trouble, which made him very much suspect he'd seen his last of anything resembling a life.
He wakes up hurting, with his arms twisted behind his back and his wrists tied -- he thinks with his own belt, but he isn't used to identifying materials by touch. His belt's missing, though. He's lying on the forest floor and grass jabs his skin and hard branches jab through his clothing. William kneels down next to him and touches his face.
"Aaron," Nathan says, hoping against the odds, hoping because it's the only kind of defiance he has left.
"No." William's touch doesn't bring the world to life because it's already alive, nagging at every corner of Nathan's being, heat and cold, pain, itching, all of it together forming a gnawing discomfort worse than pain. "How do you feel?" William asks, and grins.
Nathan presses his lips tightly closed. Mara said they can't take Troubles away, they can only transform them. Who knows what he does now?
William inclines his head and meets Nathan's gaze. His eyes seem softer now than before, but it could be a trick, or an illusion brought on by how much Nathan wants to see Aaron in him. "I need you to walk," he says, the side of his mouth ticking in a more wry variety of the grin. "Unconsciousness was an oversight. Can you stand?"
When he can't support himself using his tied hands, William gets an arm around Nathan's shoulder and one around his hips and hauls him up.
"We never did bondage, did we, huh, 'Nate'?" At his non-response, William punches his arm, a quick attention-seeking jab, and adds, "I didn't gag you because I thought we could chat, but if you intend to be no fun anyway..."
"I thought you wanted to break through the 'thinny'," Nathan rasps. Nathan's Trouble is probably something to do with William's plans for that, now. At least Vicki is gone, took his truck and ran when he told her to. Others will be here when she brings them, which can't be long now, if Nathan's been unconscious.
"I think I was hasty," William says, a shrug in his voice. "I'd rather see a bit more of this world on my own terms, first. You'll keep in reserve, I'm sure. I already expended aether on you, and I don't have much, so I guess that means I have to keep you around." He slaps Nathan's shoulder in a comradely gesture Aaron used a thousand times. "Come on." He curls his fingers in Nathan's jacket sleeve, towing him along through the trees.
William's stolen car is a distance away. Once they reach it, he drives them, without asking, to Garland's old cabin, where they spent that accrued vacation time only a few weeks ago. Aaron -- Nathan spent time with Aaron.
William leads him over to the bed and guides him down there with an insistent push, then goes to poke around the kitchen area while Nathan watches him. Thing is, he -- William -- doesn't seem all that different to Aaron. His smile is broader and more manic, the excitement and mirth with which he approaches the world is... more so, and there's maybe a meaner edge to it. But it's still the same excitement. The same odd mixture of humour and cynicism and delight.
Nathan wonders if William put him on the bed because he intends to try anything. He wonders whether he should let him or fight. Maybe it would stir what's left of Aaron, if Nathan didn't resist. But when William leaves the stove lit and comes back, he doesn't make any sexual moves, just straddles a stool and stares down at Nathan, twiddling his thumbs. Nathan negotiates his way to kneeling on the bed to alleviate the feeling of being stared down on.
"So," William says slowly. "A man. That's... how daringly modern of me."
"Pretty sure people have been gay since people began," Nathan growls. His brain catches up the automatic rejoinder a second later, and he tips his head, squinting. Vernon Stevens had slept with a woman, Cynthia, to father the Colorado Kid, but he'd always assumed that the others-- His hopes sink. If William was never bisexual, and Aaron was, then Nathan's not going to be able to win him around. He may even take their relationship as a point of offence.
"Excuse me," William waves him off with a flick of a hand, "I'm just taking a moment for my sexual orientation crisis... Huh." He looks at Nathan, looks at him like a predator intending to eat him whole, in some or other fashion. Nathan can't decide quite how threatening that look is.
"Aaron," he says, barging through the moment. "Vernon? Larry? Are they still in there?"
William shakes himself out of his trance. "Pieces. Pieces of experience, gone back to being William again." He makes a self-congratulatory flourish. "You were hot. I liked it. That's... that's weird. I remember..." He rubs the pad of his index finger over his closed lips. "I remember doing a lot of things with you, that I confess I really never saw myself doing at all."
Nathan imagines himself trying to seduce William, here and now, and it's like the very idea sucks away any capacity he has for volitional speech or movement. He can't. Aaron... Aaron is pieces, William said.
That does mean that everything he has left of Aaron is now in William.
Right now, though, he feels himself flush furiously as he remembers the ways in which this stranger who regards him so thoroughly has known him.
"Don't," says William, reaching out to touch Nathan's cheek. "Don't be shy. We've known each other intimately, you and I. No need for that."
Nathan thinks for a moment that he's going to do something, and steels himself to resist, but all William does is withdraw the touch and shift from the stool to the bed beside Nathan, setting his hands behind his head, lying back and contemplating Nathan some more.
Nathan shuffles on his knees, bouncing the mattress, heavier now for William's bulk on it. He thinks about tackling William. His hands are tied, but if he moved fast from here, he'd be on top, and another head-butt might do the job. He might be able to get loose from his bonds, given time, if he could put William out.
Eventually he gives in to another temptation and curls down, awkwardly, next to William, staring back.
Minutes pass. "...Are you Aaron?" Nathan asks, breaking the silence, as it seems William has no intention to do so.
"I... don't know," the other man muses. "I remember being Aaron. How much is that the same thing? Of course, now I have other memories, too, a lot of them. I'd say that Aaron is very much uppermost, but I'm still processing it all." He rolls his head. "Then again, you have the question of spirit -- or soul -- which is a different question entirely. A set of memories is more like a shell than a person, surely? In which case, there's never been anyone in here but me." He touches, slowly, the side of his head. "I was simply lacking certain pertinent information and working upon a morass of false assumptions."
He smiles, and returns his fingers to Nathan's face. "Mara, you see, is the love of my long life," and he says it with Aaron's earnest, earnest expression on his face. "You're just something I was forced to dally with. Well... perhaps not forced, but I'd compare it to waking up after a drunk binge, and it looks like you're what I've landed myself in bed with."
He pats his fingers smartly on Nathan's chin, twice, then rolls up off the bed, leaving him mouth agape.
"I'm going to get us some food, then we'll rest. I have more straightening out to do up here--" William's hand wafts around his head again, casually careless "--and I'm not going to be able to do that dodging Haven PD and the Guard and whoever else our friend Dwight drags out. Let me look at you..."
Nathan's jaw clamps tight against a cry as William rounds the bed to his side and grabs him, one hand tight in his hair, the other snaking up under his clothes, hand searching then fitting to some imaginary target on Nathan's chest. Now he comes to think of it, that spot tingles oddly, the subtlest of sensations. As quickly again, William lets him go. "You're not going to be triggered tonight, I don't think, although I would suggest you get some rest. We're good for now." He pulls a face. "It would be pretty inconvenient in an enclosed space like this."
***
It's dark by the time William is stupid enough to sleep and Nathan slips the belt. He waits long minutes for feeling and movement to return properly to his arms, trying meanwhile to move them carefully behind him, in readiness. Then he rolls up, slings one leg over William's sleeping form and lunges to straddle him, applying all the weight of his body to keep him down. He pulls William's arms up and uses the belt to pin them to the bed frame.
William wakes, gasping as if from a nightmare, eyes wild. Oddly, they clear and calm when he sees Nathan, and takes in his new situation. "It won't help you, you know," he says, breathing heavily. "Sooner or later, you'll be ready to pop."
"What's my Trouble now?" Nathan demands.
"Uh-uh. Spoilers!" William berates, infuriatingly. "You'll want to free me in the morning, Nate. Don't be such a bore. C'mon, let me out of this and I'll even return the favour, leave you untied. I know you're not going anywhere, after all. Not while you think you might still get back your blue-eyed boy." He widens his blue eyes and blinks them deliberately at Nathan.
"I'm not releasing you. I--" If he calls Dwight, he can get people up here, together they can force William to undo whatever he's done. He searches his clothes, but his phone is gone, dropped in the woods. He discovers that William doesn't seem to have one anymore either, and no matter how he searches, he can't find it. The cabin doesn't have one.
"Relax," William says, bracing himself against his tied wrists to stretch out his long, lean body. "You really, really need to if you're going to last the night. Besides, even if you could call Dwight, you wouldn't really want to. Surrender control of the situation like that? Surrender Aaron to the Guard? I helped make the Troubles, remember? You think what your friends have planned for me is going to be anything nice? Wake up and smell the pitchforks! Hey, it's not even new, huh? We were hiding out together after the Barn. You sure did me a big favour there, Nate." His eyes go distant.
"Shut up!" Nathan groans. He's already speaking, doesn't notice the distance until after it's been chased away. Doesn't matter -- Aaron was never that much of the thoughtful type, so that part must be William. "I didn't do it for you."
"Inadvertently," William says, "you've done so much for me. C'mon." He shakes his tied arms. "Do a little more. It's not going to make a difference in the end. You were mine the moment you brought me that aether."
The aether. "Where is it?" Nathan demands, and searches him again. The body he knows so well shimmies suggestively under his hands, William's eyes laughing even if his mouth is silent. Nathan finds the tube, and takes it, and contemplates the three little blobs that are left. "I should destroy this."
--But they might save someone, if he can figure out which of William's buttons to push, if he can reach inside William to find some part of Aaron. Or is Aaron too much intermingled with William now, so diluted that he'll never detect him in more than whispers? Nathan contemplates the drain and wonders what the black stuff would do if he flushed it. If it powders, it'll disperse. But harmlessly?
"Don't." William's tension levels just shot up, Nathan can both see and feel it through where their bodies touch.
"Why not? What will this stuff do out there? Give me some real information, damn it!"
"I don't care," William snaps, voice high and wild. "But if I change my mind, it -- I won't be able to reset you, Nathan!" He pants for breath, eyes too bright, expression lacking any sort of control or customary mirth.
"Really?" Nathan asks, flat with what he considers a thoroughly reasonable scepticism.
"Really really," William asserts. "Keep one. Don't -- don't be stupid. It's your life."
In the end, Nathan keeps all of them, but that's more because he doesn't know what effect it will have on the soil and the local wildlife.
***
He stays awake through the night, which isn't easy. It's been such a long day already, and all the days since Mara appeared seem to have been long. On the other hand, how could he sleep? Aaron's gone, he's gone, a twist in Nathan's stomach, a sour taste in the back of his throat, and William says that's it, that's forever.
More prosaically, every single tiny sensation he's missed out on for the last few years is making itself felt. Sleep is really not something that's likely to happen.
He watches William sleep, unabashed with his arms locked behind the bar of the head board. Wonders who exactly is in there now. If that man is not Aaron, if he's not any of the others, can he still be the same person he started out as, after all of these years and all of the other people he's been?
***
He remembers the morning, still conscious for the pale grey then golden yellow light filtering through the cabin's windows, but William doesn't wake for it. He just lies on the bed the way Aaron would, but for the arms stretched above his head, and he snores the way Aaron would, long and high and rhythmic, like his snores are laughing at you.
When Nathan next perceives the world, he's on the ground, and -- tasting blood, metal, the sharpness of his own teeth, something powdery and crumbling on his tongue, like a chipped or broken molar. Tasting pain. Everything is tight and sharp and bright and dark, his vision is strobing, he can't see straight, can't keep his eyes open for longer than a blink. His muscles ache and contract and spark off, and he can't stop his limbs flailing.
Someone else is trying to, though. Hands on his collar, on his face, on his chest, and Aaron's voice, high and cracking first in panic. Then--
It all stops. It utterly stops. Like his body drains away, except for the places Aaron is holding him, fingers on his face, palm over his chest. "Hush, hush, hush," Aaron says, and pulls him in closer and rocks him.
Nathan can't really move, and wonders, dimly, if all of that thrashing broke his neck. He wonders where the cabin went.
Aaron pats his face. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he gabbles. Nathan can't put together the reason for all the apologies. "You'd definitely have given that blocked thinny what-for, though, Nate."
--That's not Aaron.
Apparently his neck's not broken, because he manages to struggle strongly enough to spill out of William's arms onto his side and throw up. He lashes out behind him when William tries to touch his back.
Nothing hurts any more. His original Trouble is back. He... he popped, then, just like William promised, and William... fixed him?
The cabin's simply gone, and they're in the middle of the wreckage of it, which is... a few very small pieces. Mostly it's the scored out lines of where it stood on the ground. William's clothes are gone. Nathan's clothes are gone. "I... did this?" he gulps out.
"A veritable supernova," William says, voice bubbling with renewed energy and relief at Nathan's verbal contribution. "Not anymore," he adds, a bit regretfully. "It would have got me through the thinny, no doubt. But it didn't seem like you were going to survive."
It occurs to Nathan to wonder why he cares.
***
The fit he had when the Trouble went off left him with a bad case of lingering shakes and extremely unsteady on his feet, but it seems like Nathan's okay, comparatively. The stolen truck survived, too, albeit with an almost melted area on its bashed side, the side that had been facing the cabin.
Naked, they stagger around marvelling at the destruction and edging around what they're each going to do about the other.
It's not quite on equal terms -- Nathan's weakened and tired -- but neither of them is tied up. There's nothing left to tie anyone up with.
"We need clothes," William says. "Perhaps it's just as well I had that change of heart. It's seldom a good idea to leap into a new world with nothing but a birthday suit. Even with a few trinkets to help."
Definitely not equal terms -- those three black blobs are free-floating now, released from the glass tube. Surviving, as William did, when everything else in the vicinity was blasted apart. One of the three is notably smaller.
"What's wrong with that one?" Nathan asks, "and shouldn't you only have two?"
"Always wise to conserve resources," William says. "And on a subject who's already absorbed aether, that's possible to do. You just need the, you know, the connection under the skin to reach in and have a good rummage around." He waggles his hand. "Sorry about your old Trouble, by the way. It was the safest thing I could think of to do in the heat of the moment. Had to channel the aether somehow."
Nathan gives him an openly sceptical look.
"No, no, I'd free you if I could," William says. "After all, your body's made me feel very good."
Nathan reluctantly accepts that he means it, aided by how William seems to keep checking him out as they regroup and finally climb into the beat-up truck.
He doesn't fight William for the wheel, although maybe he should have, because the driving is worse than Aaron's worst days. "Where are we going?" he eventually scrapes up enough energy to ask.
"I thought we'd go back to the Gull," William says, easily. "After all, it's above a bar and next to the water. People will think far less of seeing two naked men streak across the lot, there. Whereas your nosy neighbours will call the police. That'd be embarrassing, I'd imagine, particularly for you."
"Dick," Nathan grunts, letting the word out with a whuff of breath. Only a few seconds afterwards does it occur to him that he just spoke to William exactly as if he were Aaron.
William sees his posture stiffen and his intently questioning and confused regard, and he answers the questions Nathan didn't ask. "Nobody will be looking for us there. It's the ultimate confusion tactic." And a few seconds later, "It's comfortable," and then, "I want to go home."
Nathan draws in a shaky breath. He reaches across a hand -- equally shaky -- to tag William's wrist as it's working the gear shift, leaves it there until William's on a simple enough stretch of road to turn around.
"Are you Aaron?" Nathan asks, more intently than he has yet, searching the depths of blue eyes for an answer that is... still contradictory.
Both visually and in William's muted, tight words: "I don't know."
***
Nathan dreams about it, lying on Aaron's bed, or maybe he just thinks about it, on a loop in his uneasy semi-consciousness.
You've been overwritten, for hundreds of years, by at least a dozen other memories, other lives, maybe even call them personalities. For all that time, you do things those other people wearing your skin choose to do. Then, suddenly, self returns. After hundreds of years, self is probably unfamiliar. Whether those other memories, those people, were you probably depends a lot on the choice of whether to embrace and accept or to reject them, along with all that was done while other thought patterns were at the wheel.
It was all against Aaron's -- William's will, after all.
The fact this journey landed him in a physical relationship with another man should probably have been a prime reason for rejection. But William hasn't rejected Nathan... seems to be trying to make his mind up, but in the meantime even saved Nathan's life... And William hasn't rejected Aaron. Yet.
Nathan wakes uneasily thinking that.
He's still naked, just dropped on the bed as he was when he came in, too worn out, too hurt, too worn down to make a fight of it. He can hear William moving around behind the black folding bamboo screen that partitions off the bed from the rest of the room. There's music -- Queen's Greatest Hits Vol II, Aaron's favourite -- and he's singing along in occasional torturous bursts. Which is probably why Nathan's awake. Looking at the clock, it's only been a few hours, but he feels better, in as much as feeling gets a look-in. He's not shaking anymore, anyway.
He gets up and pulls on Aaron's Batman T-shirt and an old pair of jeans which have been left out for him, then rounds the screen.
William is re-decorating.
Rearranging furniture.
Painting the walls.
The wall that was dark green is now pale, warm orange and the room smells strongly of the paint. All the furniture is in different places.
"I've spent hours on this, but I don't like it this way, either," William pouts, scraping a chest of drawers over the floorboards as he moves it single-handed. "I can't -- can't get it right, Nathan! Maybe I should emulate Duke and go live on a boat. There are a very limited number of decorating options on a boat."
He has paint on his nose and his hair is sticking out in all directions. Nathan stares at him and has the feeling that what he says or does next could be important.
He goes to William and reaches up to rub the paint from his nose with his sleeve, and murmurs, softly, "There you are," before he leans in closer still.
"Mf!" But William starts struggling beneath his hands and lips, and breaks free. "I--" His eyes are wide and wild. "A man can't just come up and kiss me. I'm not used to that, you know."
His voice falters. His gesticulating hands flail and he sits down on the chest he was trying to move. He uplifts a palm and the three black blobs roll onto it, seemingly from out of nowhere. "I don't know who I am any more," he says. "Or rather, I don't know who I want to be."
Nathan sits -- leans -- next to him and doesn't say anything. He's never been very good with words. Maybe he's better off remaining a silent presence, offering what comfort he can that way. This isn't -- quite -- Aaron, but it isn't not Aaron. Pieces, flying around trying to figure out where they belong. Maybe he can hope that the soul was always the same.
William curls his fingers over the aether. "What do you want to do, Nathan? If you could have a super power, what would it be?" He prods him in the Batman logo with his fingertip.
"Batman doesn't actually have any powers," Nathan points out.
William pouts. "You think I don't remember Batman?" But the way he keeps pouting, Nathan knows it's not about Batman.
"I think I'm better off not feeling anything, for the moment. It's what I'm used to."
William pouts some more.
Nathan realises that in his weird way, William wants to give him a gift. What he's asking... to take away the old Trouble, he has to make a new Trouble.
He nudges Aaron -- William -- with his shoulder. All the remnants of his affection creep into the gesture like thieves. "Save it up until we can think of a good one."
William sighs. "Maybe that's best." He slips an arm around Nathan's waist, thumb tickling under the hem of his T-shirt in that same way Aaron always had of making sure Nathan knew the touch was there. As they lean there, he tips his head back and looks around the room again. "I don't like orange," he says suddenly. "We need to go out and buy some blue paint."
***
Nathan makes William pause and let him call Dwight from the Gull before heading out into the population of the town. Because he's still thinking that people might have a thing or two to say about the being who made the Troubles in the first place blithely walking around among them. Even if he's been walking among them for a year already, purporting to save them. That last part may even earn him more resentment than points.
"I don't know how to explain it," he chokes into the phone, keeping his voice muted. William is in the bar and Nathan can see him through a screen door, flirting with a tourist who's wearing a tight, low-cut dress over buxom cleavage Nathan definitely can't compete with if that's what William really wants. "But I'm not sure he's dangerous."
"You're not--" Dwight's voice is flat and out of patience and almost... dismissive of anything Nathan has to say on the subject, at this point. "Mara said that William was always the clever one, Nathan."
"William is... Aaron," Nathan whispers. "Or... or not, I don't know, but he might be. He's not hurt anyone yet, has he? Not really hurt?"
Dwight grunts and acknowledges that so far, everyone William's encountered has lived, though a few weren't sure if they were going to. "Said he seemed to be weighing his options really hard. The guy whose clothes he stole thought he was dead for sure, too, when he looked in his eyes."
"But that was then. He'd only just come back to himself. I think... I think something is happening. All these people he's been, all the people who helped Haven, Aaron, I think they're... integrating."
He imagines he can hear Dwight grinding his teeth. "And what are you going to do? What do you want us to do?" he growls through the phone line.
"Give us space," Nathan says. "I don't know what he'll do if he perceives a threat, but right now he's fine."
"What's he doing, right now?" Dwight asks.
"He's... flirting with tourists and he wants to re-paint the apartment above the Gull. Blue."
"What?" Dwight chokes.
"I don't know! He's trying to figure out who he is! If he starts out by repainting the walls... at least with paint and not... not blood, I figure that's a good sign!" Nathan rails. He doesn't mean to shout at Dwight. It's just that William licked the salt for his tequila off the tourist's chest and Nathan has no idea where he belongs in William's idea of his new life. Maybe he's green paint, or orange paint.
"Okay," Dwight says, surprising him. "I'll keep the Guard out of your way. But I'm going to set a few HPD guys to watch from a distance and report back. Don't you leave me out of the loop, Nathan, either way. And, Nathan--"
"What?"
"If you're able to get him on-side... Duke could really use some help. Sooner would be better." Dwight rings off grimly.
Nathan groans and shuts his eyes and pushes the phone receiver into his forehead, which can't feel it.
William bounds through the door, smelling of alcohol, lipstick on his chin, and asks, "Are you done?"
Nathan can't really believe that Dwight let it go so easily. The smear of red on William's face pins his eyes. He thinks of being tied up by this man, turned into a tool to break through into another world, wonders why he cares, and thinks that William isn't gay and isn't going to choose him. Thinks of Aaron, again. He licks his thumb and then uses it to wipe the lipstick away as he turns, not looking up to meet William's eyes. "Dwight says we're good. We can go to the store."
William catches his trailing wrist, dabbing wryly at his pink thumb. "Wait, wait. Come here."
He pulls Nathan in close, and kisses him.
"What are you doing?" Nathan mumbles against his lips.
"I need to know." William backs off and frowns, and pokes and prods Nathan's face, fingers moving hard against his cheeks, his chin and the bridge of his nose, the ridges of his eyebrows. It's like a weird massage. "I know... I did all these things before. I know this face better than my own. I--"
"You?" Nathan catches.
"Aaron Pallister." William hisses the name like it's simultaneously a bad word and a magical one. "And this is only the surface -- the non-threatening surface of, of everything. I, I need to figure out who I've been. It's very confusing. I did terrible things, once. They were enormously fun. I probably shouldn't tell you that. But Aaron... he, now, he was a very helpful man. I am," he glowers down and his throat jumps "...fairly sure I can't do that."
"We were selfish as hell," Nathan corrects. "Ran away, or would have. When the Guard made us go back, we destroyed the Barn."
"Yes." William looks happier. "Come here again." He cradles Nathan's face in both hands as he kisses him this time, and Nathan gets more chance to absorb and engage with the kiss. William tastes of tequila and lipstick, but he kisses the same way Aaron did, and this time Nathan sinks into it, thinking it will be the last.
"This is going to sound strange," William says, as he starts to pull back, "but I think I might want to try being gay with you. Although not right now, because we're going to buy paint."
Nathan stands and gawps after him, and it takes a few seconds before he remembers to move his legs to follow. "I'm driving!" he yelps, voice coming out hoarse and cracking. "You've been drinking!"
***
They buy paint, and a bunch of other things besides, and it's a horribly domestic afternoon shopping with the hundreds of years old trickster who used to be Nathan's partner. By evening much of Aaron's belongings are in boxes out on the walkway overlooking the ocean. William has tired of the vintage music he picked up in the thrift shop on Main Street -- from classical to Jazz era to 1950s to the terrible sounds of the 80s, and Nathan's not sure which he likes least -- and has returned to Greatest Hits Vol II. He has a beer in his hand and a paintbrush in the other, and bouncing along to One Vision, he looks... happy.
He looks like Aaron.
Nathan puts his paintbrush down and sits on the couch, which is covered with new black cushions, and he wishes he could relax and drink, too, but he feels like he's on a knife edge. Trying to tame the beast. Trying to tease back the remnants of his lover, who will help them, while the original William personality, from everything he has heard, almost certainly won't.
"We should get some food brought up from the Gull," William says. "I'm a super villain with incredible godlike powers again, I'm not cooking."
Nathan bought a new phone in town, and uses it to call down to the bar. He's not risking leaving William alone even for so short a trip. While William goes to clean up in preparation for the arrival of food, Nathan shuts himself in the bathroom and calls Duke.
"I hear you're being held captive by William and his fearsome crusade against the apartment's decor," Duke's voice jokes shakily, and he doesn't sound good, but he doesn't sound like he's at death's door. Less than twenty four hours ago, he sewed Nathan's eyes, mouth, nose and ears shut before he let go of Jennifer and beat that Trouble. Right before Nathan went to William. Nathan wonders how fast the accumulated Crocker Troubles surface.
"It's... okay, it's sort of like that. How are you holding up?"
There's enough of a pause before he replies, "I'm okay," to tell Nathan everything he needs to know.
"We'll come over in the morning. You're back on the Rouge now?"
"For now," Duke hazards, with a kind of hitch in his voice, and Nathan just bets Dwight and Gloria wanted him in the hospital.
"We'll be there early, okay? You hang in there."
"Yes, mom."
Nathan shakes his head as he switches off the phone. He's pushing open the door of the bathroom, and suddenly William is in front of him, an almost angered expression on his face, and his hand goes to the phone in Nathan's grasp, which Nathan quickly pulls away from him. "Duke," Nathan explains. "Duke's sick." He heaves in a breath and looks at William, but there's something different in William's eyes from what's been there through the last several hours, after Nathan almost died this morning, and it doesn't feel like it's the time to ask.
"I've been trusting you a lot," William says. "You wouldn't play false with me, would you?"
"No," Nathan says quickly, automatically. Which is a mistake because it sounds guilty and William senses that. He moves to grab for Nathan's wrists again, but Nathan's recovered, now, stronger, and it turns into a tussle. William's back slams against a wall and a moment later Nathan almost goes flying over a chair he doesn't feel himself stumble backwards into. William grabs his arm -- maybe to stop him falling, but the contact re-invigorates the struggle.
"I know you loved Aaron," William grunts. "But that was Aaron. Maybe you think I'm not enough like him."
It's not easy but Nathan finally manages to think through it all enough to gasp out, "Stop. William! Stop."
Maybe it wouldn't have worked except that the food arrives then, a knock on the door leaving them both staring at the other like deer in headlights. "I'm here for you," Nathan rasps. "Duke is sick. I called Dwight to keep the Guard off our backs, and they haven't been here, have they?"
William shakes his head. "No, but Pinky and Perky have been out in the parking lot half the day." He jerks his thumb at the window.
Nathan shrugs. "You know Dwight."
William's finger jabs into his face. "I'm getting the food. You... set up the table. Stick a candle in the middle of it, or something."
Setting up the table is literal. It's standing on its narrowed edge with the pile of furniture in the centre of the room, where it was shoved during the painting. Nathan rights it and finds some chairs.
Apparently William meant it about the candle, because when he comes back with the trays and finds there isn't one, he stamps over to dig one out of a box where he tossed all the mantelpiece stuff, earlier.
It's an odd meal. Nathan supposes that William's bout of paranoia was inevitable. They've both loved and lost, and they're still navigating around the changes that brought that loss about to figure out what's left in there.
He can see that William has enough left of Aaron in him to want it. At least to examine the philosophical position of wanting it.
He hunches at the table with the candle between himself and William, in the apartment that smells strongly of paint, with the lights dimmed to the point he almost can't see what he's eating. William somewhat imperiously reaches a hand out across the table, a gesture filled with expectation, and Nathan dutifully lays his own hand down and lets William play with his fingers throughout the rest of the meal. Today the small sensations breaking through the blankness make him ache inside.
After eating, they go to bed. Nathan's exhausted. William's eyes are hungry and full of trepidation, but it's still a surprise when he doesn't push it.
They lie down on clearly distinct zones either side of the bed. Nathan's practically asleep by the time he hears William shuffle and feels William's hand steal out and gently, cautiously, curl over his ribs.
***
The morning arrives too bright. William didn't like the drapes, yet didn't find any more he liked in the shop, so he just hauled them down. Nathan wakes up with the sun in his eyes and William poking him in different parts of his anatomy. So far as he can tell, just to make him squirm in his sleep while William grins wider and wider at the reactions.
"Get off!" Nathan swats his hand without thinking, with Aaron's face above him and Aaron's touch tormenting his cursed skin, without considering that Aaron has become someone it's dangerous to offend.
William backs off with a hurt look and then, as Nathan's eyes widen with realisation, returns, "Well, at least that was honest."
"I thought you were Aaron," Nathan says hastily.
William gives him a long study and then lowers his body, pressing it very close to Nathan's, and weaves their legs together so that Nathan's thigh is pushing between his own thighs. Since he's wearing boxers, Nathan can't feel the pressure of William's hip against his groin, just a blank where sensation disappears with the loss of skin to skin contact. William isn't wearing any underwear, though, and Nathan can feel him getting hotter and trying to harden, squashed under his own body's weight. "Pretend that I'm Aaron," William says, voice high and tight and strange.
Nathan coils an arm around his waist, but that's not what he means -- William shakes his head. Although when Nathan tries to move his arm, a hand lands hard on his shoulder and stops him.
William snuggles. He shifts his lower body, groaning, and Nathan feels his hardness slip free of the restraint of weight, brushing against Nathan's thigh and leaving a damp trail there.
"Do something for me, the way you'd do it for Aaron."
Nathan is not hard, no Pavlovian reaction for Aaron's body when he knows it's William in his bed. He bares his teeth back into William's smug face. He's so sure of getting his request granted; that Nathan's going to roll over and take William in his hand, or on his knees, or in his mouth. "No."
William blinks.
Nathan amends it to, "Not yet."
Because later, if he has to, he admits that he'll do it. Suck William's cock to try and win him to the cause of protecting Haven, to woo his cooperation against the Troubles. But right now doesn't feel like that crisis point and he doesn't want to and he thinks that he can get away with, "No."
Then his muzzy morning brain remembers what he was planning on asking today, this morning, and he wishes he hadn't been so forceful.
"William--" But William's already rolling over, setting his back to Nathan as he sits on the edge of the bed and brusquely starts to take matters into his own hands.
Nathan can stretch to letting him have a hand. He crawls over until his chest is pressed against William's shoulders, and kneeling, reaches around to take the other man into his fist.
"No." William swipes his arm back, shrugs him off. "You made your call, I can respect that. Jeeze, I guess it's just as well I chickened out of trying to fuck you last night."
"William." Nathan tries again and this time gets bodily shoved away. He sighs and gets up off the bed and dresses himself in some of his own clothes dug from Aaron's jumbled closet while William finishes.
When William's done, he stands up with angry eyes and says to Nathan, "You wanted something?"
"I'll do whatever you want," Nathan says, sucking it up, though he looks down at William's spent cock and has to add, "Later."
William rolls his eyes. "What do you want, Nathan? Or -- what does Dwight want? I'm not stupid."
"It's me," Nathan growls. "I want it. My 'gift'... I don't want my Trouble fixed. Fix Duke's instead."
"Oh, how pathetically self-sacrificing." William scrubs a hand over his forehead and looks a lot of different varieties of annoyed, all chasing kaleidoscope-like across his face one after the other. "Fine, fine. This is what you were planning on the phone last night. Take me to Duke."
"You need pants," Nathan reminds him. He can hear his own heartbeat and there's a sheen of sweat on his skin. He just gave away everything in one move.
He drives them both to the Cape Rouge, and hammers on the hatch until Duke opens it. Duke knows what he's come here for, but his eyes still widen when he spots William standing behind Nathan, arms folded and fingers dancing in an agitated pattern against his elbows.
"You look awful," Nathan observes in distraction. Jennifer died and he's working his way through every Trouble the Crocker Curse ever took, so it's not surprising that he should look awful.
"No, no," Duke says wearily. "I'm good." He waves them in, managing to avoid looking too hostilely, or much at all, at William. Duke liked Aaron, too. "Come in, I'll make some coffee..."
"We don't need coffee," William says, a scowl becoming ever more prominent on his face. "Really, there's no need to extend this visit unnecessarily when you clearly don't want to be civil. What I have to do shouldn't take more than thirty seconds and then, well, we'll just take ourselves off back to the Gull. Things to do. Nathan made me a whole bunch of promises..."
It's scathing, mocking and derisive, and William just laid out the price of this to Duke.
"Oh, hell, no," Duke says, backing off. They're in a narrow corridor, and William, with that particular expression on his face, seems to have grown a lot bigger than he actually is, to be filling the space. "Nathan, you do not have to do that. I'm -- okay, I'm not okay. But I don't want to be fixed for some deal like that!"
"Oh, quit that," William jeers, and pins him to the wall with one hand. Nathan grabs at his other, but he was reaching into his pocket, and the aether flies free anyway. "You're going to die if someone doesn't do something. Nathan's a better judge of what's a necessary exchange." Realising what he's going to do, Nathan backs off and lets him, though Duke's shouting, raging, the whole way through. He breathes harshly and curses them both as William withdraws his palm from his chest.
"You should stop bleeding Troubles, now," William says, and turns to Nathan and asks, "Good enough?"
Nathan nods mutely. Duke glares at him over William's shoulder and says, "I'm calling Dwight."
Nathan musters words. "This is none of your business or Dwight's. There's enough for Haven to contend with, without you releasing extra Troubles every other day. I didn't do it for you."
"Damn, you two are cute," William comments. "C'mon, Nathan, we'll -- well. Breakfast, first, I think. Then reimbursement."
They stop at the coffee shop, where Nathan gets a stubbornly unadorned black coffee and William gets the most floofy, over the top, cream and syrup covered concoction he's ever seen, plus a bag of pastries. Nathan just drives; doesn't feel like eating, tries to ignore William stuffing his face in the passenger seat. "You don't want to pick drapes while we're out?" he asks, since they're driving past the store.
"Nathan," William berates.
Nathan drives them back to the Gull.
He's stripping as they walk up the wooden stairs to the door: at least, jacket off over one arm, and starting on the buttons of his shirt. The shirt goes over the counter in the kitchen and he starts unfastening his pants as he heads for the bed. Might as well get it over with. He pulls down his jeans and underwear together and bends, no point hiding or protecting anything, to unfasten and kick off his shoes. He draws his socks clear against the floor as he straightens up.
"What the fuck do you think I am?" demands William, close behind him, making him jump.
William hasn't removed a single scrap of clothing and looks very cross.
***
It's exactly the kind of thing Aaron would have done, pushing it to see just how far Nathan was willing to go.
They sit on the floor. The couch is too thoroughly buried to bother extracting it from the rest. Nathan has his jeans back on and sits cross-legged, staring at the floorboards between his knees.
William strokes a hand over his collarbone, neck and shoulder, rubbing circles that are meant to be comforting, that are the only thing Nathan feels and too intense by far for comfort. "You loved Aaron," William says, "so how about me?"
Nathan's miles away from being able to unravel this, his feelings, William's... feelings, and how all of it works yet. "I loved Aaron. I still don't know who you are."
"That makes two of us," William allows. "So I guess that's fair."
He takes his hand back, looks at the palm. "I can fix you both, and I will, when I think of something. It didn't have to be exclusive. I always liked Duke, you know."
"I don't want to think about my Trouble, right now," Nathan says. That little black ball is bound to come in more useful someday in stopping Haven from exploding. "It's fine as it is."
"There's a lot more aether in Duke," William says, either ignoring him or too focused on his own plans and fascinations. "I could use that. It... might be dangerous for Duke. But if I could extract it, if I could get more aether..."
"For what?" Nathan asks. "Make more Troubles?"
"I... don't know. Maybe to fix them." William sighs as Nathan gapes. "I haven't decided yet! I liked being Aaron! I liked being... loved. Six hundred years, Nate. All those different experiences of the world. Things that I, the original me, never had. But I'm not Aaron, not really. This is... difficult. Very, very difficult. You're not helping."
"I-- How?" Nathan grits. "How should I be helping? Tell me what to do!"
"Stop doing that, for a start!" William plaintively wails. "Stop asking, stop trying! Stop being so different! We've been lovers for over a year. I need--"
"But you're not Aaron! You just said, you -- you don't even like men!"
"How do I know until I try?" William demands. "And I really, really want to try! But you're not letting me try, which I -- I understand. Nathan, I don't want that against your will. But it's -- it's freaking awkward! Really, really freaking awkward." And now he sounds like Aaron again, reaching for Nathan's hand. "I need to know, but not by coercion. Why the fuck would you think I'd do that? Your 'bargain'--!" He makes wacky little airquotes with his fingers, and that's Aaron, that's Aaron's eyes looking out, judging him, and Nathan -- well, Nathan pretty much jumps him, surging forward, pressing his mouth down over William's, breathing him in, tasting the remnant of his caramellatte coffee freakshow as he slides in his tongue, and there are hands he can't feel on his ass, adjusting his position, pulling him in, and then he can feel them as they slip down inside his jeans.
William breaks the kiss to ask things like, "Nathan, is it okay?" "Nathan, can I touch?" "Nathan, can you touch me?"
At a certain point Nathan pulls back and just says, "Bed," and somehow they manage to have lost all their clothes by the time they get there.
William falls across it on his back and Nathan climbs on top. "Nathan -- can you -- please -- touch my cock?" William gasps, his tone making the request all kinds of hilarious, because he's taking the careful affirmation of consent down the route of a running joke, at this point.
Nathan goes one better, sliding down to rest his head on William's thigh and taking him into his mouth, slowly at first, popping his lips around the head before he angles his neck and widens his jaw and throat and then engulfs him in one practised surge. This was difficult at first, suddenly feeling the inside of his throat at all, let alone doing anything with it. But he's had practice, and he knows what the body underneath him likes.
William whimpers and drags hands through his hair. "You don't have to... Damn it, you don't have to..." The hands are trying to pull him off. Nathan takes that as a challenge to prove how much he means this, and clamps his hands on William's hips, squaring his posture on his knees to make himself an immovable object, and sets about making sure William has the blow job of his centuries long life.
William whimpers and stops pulling at him. He's trying to hold himself back, but still his hips jerk in short thrusts, and finally he groans and loses his rhythm into shakes as he spills, helplessly, into Nathan's mouth. Nathan rises up for air, gasping, and William lurches forward, still unsteady, and clutches him by the arms, dragging him up so they're face-to-face. "If that was just some--" he starts, remnant traces of anxiety and anger starting to build again.
But he can see it wasn't, and he changes his focus on a dime, lunging for Nathan's lips, kissing his own juices from them, and he wraps his arms around Nathan's waist, holding him close.
"You, you, you..." he chants, nuzzling his face into Nathan's neck, biting and sucking and Nathan isn't actually entirely sure what. "You broke that God damned Barn, you wonderful, beautiful, selfish man. I can be happy here. I know I can. Doesn't matter if the parts are different. Hey, did I tell you about Vincent? He liked men... didn't do anything with 'em while he was in Haven, so I guess that still makes you my official first time. Those other memories were never mine any more than the real Aaron Pallister's. None of it was real until I got here." He brings his lips back to Nathan's mouth.
Nathan gives it a few more moments before he eases back. The kiss feels the same, but he wants to look into Aaron's eyes, wants to see...
He touches William's chin and tips it for a better view. "There you are..."
He stops. Reconsiders.
He says, "There you were all along."
William blinks at him and nods, with increasing eagerness, as the grin spreads across his face in pure delight.
They pull each other back down into the sheets.
END