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TITLE: The Forever Dreamer
AUTHOR: Relala
BETA: lady of scarlet
FANDOM STATUS: Fanon
SHIP: Lucas Cortez / Sean Nast
WARNING: This story contains Slash. Male/Male relationship.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:This story is greatly based after the poem called "The Forever Dreamer" which was written by ShadedRogue on Fictionpress. The italics are direct lines from the poem itself while other lines which have been changed a little and are within the story without being quoted. Please go read the poem.
i. You and all your mortal beauty, mortal flaws
THIS IS THE END
Sean is on a date with some human girl who his cousin has assured him is easier than adding two plus two, trying harder than ever before to force the truth to the back of his mind, when he sees it. An ancient wonder, just rusting away on the sidewalk. It happens to belong to her twin brother who (mercifully) isn't around for the weekend to hear that his sister wants to take his prize possession "for a test-drive" with her so-called date.
"Do ya know what kinda bike this is, man?" she asks, sauntering over to him with a lazy sway of her hips as he stares in amazement at the motorcycle. She wraps her needle-marked arms around his neck and presses her mouth to his face, leaving lipstick smears across his cheekbones and the tips of his shirt collar.
"Of course," Sean replies, lips having moved without thinking. He doesn't need the use of his mind to know what type of bike this is. It's a 1929 Indian Scout.
If asked, Sean could probably have even told her the exact date the model was released, its speed limit and other various facts she would doubtlessly not have cared about. He could have told her that Lucas Cortez has had a picture of this bike in his room at the Cortez household since he was no more than a boy of ten, hung up high on the ceiling right above his bed. Told her that Lucas who had once said to him, as a thirteen-year-old, that when he fell asleep looking at the beauty of "poetry in motion" he would dream wonderful dreams of driving it across a road of cloud. It's a 1929 Indian Scout. It's Lucas Cortez's dream ride.
The name is like a drumbeat inside his head: Lucas. Lucas. Lucas. Oh, how it brought back so many old memories. So many nighttime fantasies of lightning quick fingers tracing along sharp cheekbones with soft touches; lingering touches. Lucas. Lucas. Lucas.
The young Mexican man working on some bike in the schoolyard for the other kids who didn't have the money to fix up their own bikes, his black hair slicked back with grease as he jerked it back from his face with his blackened fingertips, the lenses of his glasses covered in the same slippery oil as he pushes them back onto the bridge of his nose. His brown eyes full of mischief as he looks up and catches Sean's twinkling blue eyes looking back at him.
Lucas whose lips had always been so tender in their demands, whose breath had always come in harsh warm pants against Sean's ears, whose skin had eternally tasted of damp sweat after a long day of working on his motorcycle underneath the torturing blaze of the Miami sun. Lucas who had always smelt overpoweringly of sweat and grease when Sean burrowed himself into the bend of his neck and inhaled sharply, his tongue lapping up the warmth of his heartbeat.
Lucas Cortez who was now nothing more than remembrances of better times.
ii. Moments like these, so marked and poignant, so fleeting
There had once been a time in Sean's life when merely thinking about Lucas would have comforted him, soothed the ache which fluttered within his chest like the caged wings of a bird struggling to free itself from underneath a wave of water as it drowns. Striving, desperately, to reach the surface. Each droplet upon the creatures wings like a thousand ton weight pinning it down; each memory which he recalled another flower growing within the savage land of pain which had long ago bloomed within his heart.
In fact, there had been a time when he - a Nast, of all people - had been happy to agree with his beloved's dreams of peace and well-wishes for all. Content. Able to see eye to eye in all things with his lover and old childhood friend. A time of peace when they had both dreamed, as a couple, of love and understanding for themselves and others.
It seemed like forever ago.
A vision of a world which lived in harmony with all prejudice and hatred forgotten in the rubble of history. Something which, given his hidden desires, he should have known was just a blissful hallucination. Another lie told by another mouth.
It doesn't matter, because I love you, Lucas had told him so many times with his sparkling brown eyes and his gestures and his beautiful voice, slipping his fingers into his hand and pulling him closer.
Another lie, told by a mouth he had loved so. Another lie told by a man who had been just as desperate as Sean had been in his need to be loved and to feel safe in the arms of someone who would not harm just because he was who he was. As the cliché went, everyone just needed to be loved. But it had all been a lie, an elaborate foolish dream of two children who had been hoping to play hero in a world of villains.
And the only thing which had made him dream that dream for all those years, in the end, had been Lucas. The loser crusader who longed to save mankind and would have that dream recognized by anyone he could possibly convince. Lucas, who had surely known all along of what Sean had wanted during those long nights, of the desire that burnt in his veins.
Lucas who had told him so passionately that the Cabal needed to be taken down like vermin, that the supernatural world would be better off without them. Lucas, who had left him behind when he went off to "save the world" just because he didn't agree.
Lucas who, he's told, is now engaged to a witch.
Sean cannot quite keep his composure. He isn't able to understand how this all happened, how Lucas can pass him by when they meet and not even react with more than a simple "hello, Sean" in a detached voice. Where did all the memories go, all the emotion? What happened to all the secrets they had shared with each other, all the love that had once been their entire lives? It's moments like these, so marked and poignant, so fleeting, that make him wish life where lived backwards so that you'd be cold and bitter at birth and end in bliss.
Another cliché to think about, why do all good things come to an end?
iii. The scorching heat of the moment, the pleasure
It's Lucas, surprisingly, that makes the first move.
Lucas that leans in close to Sean one night while they are outside, lounging lazily on the cool grass of the Cortez lawn, watching the nighttime sky. Lucas whose face becomes a looming shape of tanned flesh and eyes which sparkle with a giddy and hesitant glow. Lucas whose breath smells of crisp autumn leaves when he exhales nervously into Sean's face. Lucas whose lips are soft even though they barely touch against his, whose body rises overtop him and takes over the place where the glittering light of the stars and city lights had been, only mere seconds before.
The kiss is gentle, a caress of feather light flesh. Slow and sweet. Yet for Sean it coats his insides down with something that burns more pleasantly than alcohol, sending a radiating warmth down from the roots of his hair to the tips of his toes. Engulfing him.
His passion like a thunder storm, flashes of electricity running through his veins to quicken his breath to gasps and his heartbeat as loud as thunder in his ears as it thuds against the confines of his chest. This desire, this longing for lips upon lips, which created a pleasure more exquisite than he had ever dreamed of at night within his bed, his thoughts so shameful he had hidden them away from his inquisitive friend.
This moment was made of scorching heat, pleasure running through every fibre. It was magnetic. Something that pulled him closer with every second.
Reaching out with a tentative hand, his movements delicate and birdlike, he caressed the face of his beloved Cortez softly, fingertips dancing over the smooth cheekbones and the tender lips. Delighted when Lucas did not pull away from him. Did not turn his nose up at what Cabal society obviously regarded as wrong. All this time Sean had felt as if he were dying slowly from the inside, pining for the touch and love of another boy when he was sure he would never be able to receive such things. He was infected, really, by a rather incurable disease which was called love.
"I'll be your knight in shining armour," Lucas says, voice breathy. "Your fairytale turned reality. A sun to light your nights of loneliness; a nice thought to chase the dark ones into the shadows of your mind. These arms here to comfort you whenever you need."
This again. These sentences which always whisper the same merry-go-round assurances into his eager ears, worded different every time yet always containing the same message. These are reassurances that the love they have will last forever, that this will never end. That love makes whole that which had been merely broken before.
Love. At sixteen, Lucas Cortez and Sean Nast are still young enough to be dazzled by it, still childish enough to believe it is eternal and unconditional, foolish enough to believe that it cures all that ails. They are together and they are in love.
For the moment, that is all that matters.
iv. An immortal sun rising, like a phoenix, to live another day
Sean dreams of the daybreak, when his wounds will heal at the touch of sunlight. The soft tendrils of chilly yellow light which seep through the white lace curtains to dance gently across his bed, chasing away all his nightmares and vague dreams.
Every night he lays within the warm cocoon of his bed - suffocating inside its shelter and breaking under the weight of his thoughts - with scalding teardrops on his face and a pile of forbidden fantasies which dance in front of his eyes like flames. Even the whisky bottles he keeps hidden under the headboard unbeknownst to anyone but himself won't fix him on these desolate nights. In the shades of grey which mean the earliest of dawns everything is solitary, joyless, and without hope. Only the immortal sun rising, like a phoenix, can make him stand to live another moment longer.
And for that Sean must wait, panic-stricken and anxious in the darkness, reaching out for the thoughts which cause him so much agony. Thoughts which he, puzzlingly, cannot truly comprehend. When he forces himself to reflect on them he comes away with the sense that what he is thinking is wrong without a reason why. Like flipping through the television stations and ending up on a screen full of angry black and grey dots when he knows that a TV show should be on. No more pictures. No more spoken words. Just a vast, empty, space without movement or sound.
Sean just doesn't get it. Within him there is a sense that something is wrong. That he isn't acting the way he should anymore. That he isn't normal.
But ....why?
He tilts his head towards the small window as wintry light begins to press against the glass panes, moving against the dark brown walls, across the faded floorboards, jumping across the awakening face of Lucas Cortez who is visiting for summer vacation and is sleeping in the neighbouring bed. Soft light surfacing above a stormy horizon, chasing back the monsters like a knight riding into battle.
Sean chokes back a sob, relieved.
"Sean!" Lucas hisses, jamming his glasses on with fumbling fingers. "Sean, what's wrong? What's the matter?"
That hypnotic voice of an angel, so clear and so vivid. It's almost as if Lucas's voice is the sound of reason, as clear and as brilliant as the sun. The light which was forever reborn until its last light sputtered and expanded; a knight who rode on a horse made of human hopes and dreams to chase away the darkness that human beings inflicted upon themselves.
"Sean!" A sharp demand, a voice bordering on panic. Lucas is growing much too familiar to these morning weeping sessions from his best friend. He doesn't know how to help anymore.
"Hhmmm, I didn't mean to wake you." Sean drawls, his eyelids dropping, his thoughts slipping away as he feels the other boy crawling under the covers and wrapping his arms around him, their awkward twelve-year-old limbs entwining together.
v. Away from cities of rust, air of poison
It starts with the demanding hands of a child - grabbing at Lucas's chequered vest, twining accidentally in his thick black hair, clutching him roughly around his slender stomach and pushing him backwards as another body rides his down to the ground.
Hands; to create a desperate childhood violence and a deep rooted passion. That was all it took to form an inseparable bond between the two young Cabal sons. A simple moment of desperate need, one soul reaching out blindly to another, shared between two young boys in the backrooms where their family members could not see them. To anyone else it would have meant absolutely nothing, to them it cemented something akin to iron chains.
"Nast," Lucas whispers softly, stroking the slender back of the other boy in what he sincerely hopes is a comforting gesture. His lips seem to take the name like a car rolling over sharp curves, tasting the pain even the name evokes. It's hard to believe, really, that this angel of a boy is being torn to pieces from the inside out simply because one of his barely related cousins has died ...but the evidence is right here in front of him. "Oh, Nast."
Sean's stick thin arms wrap around Lucas' chest in a death grip, his hands grasping at the soft fabric of the other boys formal suit, their faces touching. And Lucas can feel every teardrop trail down his own cheek after it escapes from Sean's swimming blue eyes; see every individual eyelash tremble with the weight of the salty water. His heart stumbles, aching with the loneliness which radiates like heat off the second Nast youngster.
"I'm here for you, Nast. Let it go. Forget the pain, come away from the cities of rust and the air of poison which pollute your mind and inflict so much pain upon you. You're here now, here with me in a place of beauty and peace. Let it go now, my friend. Be with me."
"Be with you, Lucas?" Sean chokes, the words hot and as brilliant as the sun as they scorch his thoughts and squeeze their way out of his throat. Here, without his brother, he can forget the dreadful formalities. Forget that they are only playmates, because their parents are the big sharks that need to test the waters, always searching for blood. His question is tentative, as if he cannot quite believe that anyone would want his companionship.
"Be my friend," Lucas replies, a sparkle in brown eyes which gleam behind his glasses.
THIS IS THE BEGINNING
THE END