A/N: I'm trying out posting a couple of my stories here. I have a lot more over on AO3, including my more explicit work, but I wanted to try out this site again, since it's been awhile since I posted here. :)
This was written as a companion piece to "As Mirrors Are Lonely" and presumes a similar concept for Cecil and Kevin. However, it's not necessarily the same world or part of the same story. I just wanted to do something thematically similar for Kevin.
Like that work, the title is stolen mercilessly from Miranda's part of WH Auden's "The Sea and the Mirror", which is amazing and everyone should read, but which is only tangentially related to this fic.
Like his "brother", they had caught him and, like his brother, he was bound. Bound to flesh, to bones, to blood. To mortality. To choose, again and again, someone young and alive and mortal, someone to fuse rotting immortality to, over and over and over again.
Like his brother, he learned to love them; like his brother, he never could quite hate them to begin with. Their greed was beautiful, their pettiness, their way of swearing that the light would hold back the darkness. To venerate the sun in the middle of the desert seemed foolish to him, and their foolishness fascinated him, drew him in.
It made him smile.
Unlike his brother, however, he did not let them forget. Not wholly, anyway. Perhaps they didn't know the full truth of him, for the full truth often left insanity in it's wake and they were more interesting sane. But they walked with their heads high in Desert Bluffs, understanding, in their hearts, what they were capable of. They had chained and bound a god. They had defiled that which was sacred. They were men, proud and unstoppable and terrible. They should be proud, they should be horrible. They were horrible, and he loved them. He loved them when they cowered in terror from him and when they brought him gifts of supplication.
And he never loved them more than the night they brought him the new boy.
The rotting husk of flesh he'd inhabited for the last several decades was left, mercifully, behind him. He could have kept it longer, but he hadn't been overly fond of it. In an age of awakening sexuality and rebellion, they had had some difficulty finding a pure child that also made a suitable offering to be dragged before him, kicking and screaming. He understood, of course, had only killed a paltry number of the City Council, hadn't complained, but he also hadn't kept the shell long before he had used it up and it had always merely been that—a shell, a vehicle he'd ridden around in until he had no further use for it. Already this one, this child, seemed to be different.
He'd heard him howling the night before, tearing at his captors with a violence that had only abated after there had been ambulances and at least one hearse leaving the police station where they were keeping him. Even so, the boy was silent, now, as they led him up to the altar deep beneath one of the municipal buildings. He had two burly men as escorts, one on either side, who were to drag him into place before the True Form of Desert Bluffs, but the escort was an uncomfortable one, as the boy walked there under his own power, silent as the grave. He stepped up past his escort, even, past the point where they could go no further, had to shield their own eyes or go insane at the sight of the very creature they were bringing him to, in full manifestation. Normally, the creature would have taken delight in their terror, wound pale tendrils around them, just to feel their fragile little minds break under the pressure and then their bodies as well, devoured, savored, it was what they were there for, after all, and they knew it.
But the boy saved them. There was something sweeter to pay attention to, to savor, to delight in. The boy wasn't running. The boy wasn't screaming. The boy was just standing there, staring at him, with hollow, dead eyes, head tilted to the side like a forgotten marionette. For a moment he thought that whatever violence had happened last night, or whatever drugs they had given him in its wake, had broken the boy entirely. Perhaps they thought to present him with a more easily assimilated shell, as though that would please him. But then, something flickered down in the depths of those eyes, and the boy took another bold step forward, lips peeling back into a grin.
Was that a grin?
He reached out a tendril, coiling it around the boy's slender neck, and there was still no fear, nothing but a low, pulsing feeling of excitement, pride. And he knew, somehow, before the City Council told him, voices low and trembling, not daring to look, where they had gotten the boy. There was a symmetry to this, a power and though it meant lending power, also, to Night Vale, he found that he couldn't begrudge him that.
After all, they were family, weren't they?
Yes, he was pleased with this selection, pleased with the boy and all he implied and the Council was pleased that he liked the selection well enough to not immediately kill off half of them, like last time. And the boy? The boy was pleased, too, grinning widely even as Desert Bluffs forced its way into his mouth, down his throat, choking him, then inside, into bones and skin and soul…
Kevin opened his eyes and stood, shakily, on legs that felt oddly rubbery, new. He looked around at the Council, who had come in the middle of the day and dragged him from his home, away from his family, and saw how they were cowering away from him, now. Everyone was. He looked down at his own hands like he'd never seen them before, turned them back to front a few times, flexed the fingers of them like they were someone else's fingers. Were they now someone else's fingers? He wasn't sure. And for some reason, that made him smile. The Council had chosen well and for the next span of years, he would be benevolent, merciful, in the way only the truly bloody, ancient gods could be. They pleased him and, in return, he would make sure they were happy. Everyone was happy, and it was good.
And then there was StrexCorp.
The first few forays into Desert Bluffs were met with blood— mostly StrexCorp's. There was no subversion. There were no revolutionaries, waiting in the shadows for the right moment to strike. There was only an invader and bloody, horrible vengeance, writ with knives and guns and, on more than one occasion, teeth. But they kept coming no matter how many of them the mayor, under Kevin's gentle, smiling suggestion, had staked out around the town as a warning to any who would follow after.
Did they know? It was the question that haunted Kevin, in those first few months. They were so persistent, so dogged in their pursuit of the town. Nothing seemed aimed at him, directly, but he could think of no strategic or profitable reason to capture, so violently and at such a loss, a sleepy little town in the middle of the desert. It had to be him, didn't it? It had to be that someone had figured out what these two towns had that other towns did not. But did they know what he was? Did they know what the price of his capture would be, the price that the town had already paid, centuries ago, and then again and again and again, to keep him, to sate him.
Either way, if they sought to fight a god, they would need far better weapons.
They found one.
All of the others had come before him as warriors, dressed in black with their orange insignia or like timid moths, fluttering too close to the source of light, armed with religion, science, weak tools of a weak people. And then, somewhere, in board rooms several states away, someone had muttered something like if you want something done right… and there had been protests over the sounds of airfare being booked and suits being ordered cleaned and pressed, and then, one day, he had walked into the studio.
The broadcast was over, the On Air sign had just gone dim, and Kevin was re-reading the little missive that said StrexCorp had bought the station, as though that meant anything, either him or to StrexCorp, when the most attractive man he had ever seen walked into the studio and started talking with Daniel, the current intern. Kevin couldn't hear what they were saying through the soundproofing, but whatever it was, Daniel paled a little, and backed away, gesturing towards Kevin's booth, and bolting the moment the man turned his back. Good survival instincts on that one, Kevin thought, fondly, maybe he was actually going places. He had just enough time to set his bloodstained coffee mug down on the table and start to stand to greet his guest properly, an indulgently sweet smile spreading on his face, before the door opened—
Before the door opened and the man walked right in, completely heedless of how the blood layered on the floor stained his leather shoes and dyed the bottom of his suit deep crimson. Kevin's mouth fell slightly agape. No one just walked into his booth like this. No one was allowed, and everyone was too afraid to, besides. But this man did, and before Kevin could even draw a breath to speak, there was a hand around his neck and his back was slamming against the gore-streaked wall, hard enough to half drive the breath from his lungs.
It was certainly not the grip on his neck that held him there, however, nor even the sudden, cold kiss of the gun barrel up underneath the soft part of his jaw, but shock. Shock that the man would touch him, that he would dare, that he would treat him with such disrespect and violence, as though he were of no importance at all, as though he were just another person to be tossed about. Shock held him there, staring, eyes going round as he stared at this perfect man, with his face so close to his own, close enough to see just the slightest hint of grey at his temples. His eyes dropped to his mouth when he spoke, watching his lips move, mesmerized,
"StrexCorp bought the station. Which means you belong to us now. Do you understand," Kevin managed a sort of a nod, looking back up into the man's eyes. They narrowed, "Some of my… associates seem to think that you're dangerous or a threat. I think they're just fearful men, weak, soft," he sneered slightly at the words as they fell from his perfect mouth, unworthy to be there anymore, "You and your little freakshow town don't impress me. You don't scare me. And I think you're going to find that, whether you want to or not, you're going to be brought into line. Do I make myself clear?" his fingers tightened carefully, an amount precisely calculated to make breathing a struggle, but leave enough air to answer. When Kevin gaped like a fish, instead, the man pressed the gun harder underneath his jaw, and Kevin swore he could feel a bruise forming there, so very close to his vocal cords. He fought down a moan at the sensation, swallowed once, hard, in what he was sure the man would think was fear, until he spoke,
"You own me," he was somewhat gratified to see the man's eyes widen just slightly at the words, at the breathless, fascinated tone, at the way he didn't look away when he said it. The man clearly hadn't expected him to agree, expected him to protest, or breathe the typical meaningless obsequities with a tone of resignation, or fear, or the kind of hatred that festers when you know you cannot do anything, the sort the powerless always have to the powerful. But Kevin knew he was not powerless. He could kill this man, as he had killed all the others. The town could fight for a long time yet, they could turn this into a war of attrition, they could keep the enemy from their gates. Instead, he just stared, enthralled, at this man who slogged through blood like it was nothing at all and who was not afraid of him. Perhaps there was something better, even, to be loyal to than the humans of this town, the greed and terror of the City Council. Something more interesting "You have paid the price for me, and now I am yours."
Something shifted in the air, a ripple felt across the town, subtle and unnoticed by most, but the man clearly felt something, and he at least had the decency to look slightly uncomfortable at the words, though whether it was the ease of them, or the phrasing itself, or the tone, was unknown. Perhaps his human brain was sensing a hint of the inhumanity of Kevin, something beyond the bloodstained walls of the studio themselves, deeper, darker.
And then something shifted in the man's eyes in return, something also deeper, darker, under the surface of him, and for one, blinding, perfect, second, Kevin thought he was either going to pull the trigger or order him to his knees to prove his new loyalty, with the door standing open and Daniel somewhere just down the hall. He wanted it. He welcomed it. For a long moment, they just stood there, and it wasn't a battle of wills so much as a war already won, the spoils already decided upon. This would end with them naked and blood-soaked and tangled together and both of them counting themselves the victor.
But not now. Tomorrow maybe. Or the next day. Eventually, inevitably. Kevin licked his lips, unconsciously, and felt them curl into a not-grin. The man's lips slid upwards into a smile in return, perfect and beautifully normal, teeth straight and bone white in the tomb of his mouth. The gun was put away efficiently and the man stepped back, the moment broken, but lingering in the air like perfume, just enough to let both of them know that they hadn't imagined it, to keep both of their mouths curved into delicate scythes.
"Good. So you won't cause any more trouble for us, then?" though it was spoken as a question, he spoke with absolute certainty.
"No. No more trouble," did he look dazed? He felt dazed, like everything was happening in a dream, a hand coming up to finger the forming bruises on his neck the way girls in period dramas always touched their hands to their lips after being kissed for the first time.
"Good." He seemed more than satisfied, almost purring. Did he know? The question still pounded in Kevin's head. Did he know what he was, did he know what had happened, did he know what had just bound itself to him, did he know, did he know, did he know/i?
"You should wait outside for me next time, though," he couldn't help but say, test, "You've probably ruined your suit." The man scoffed at that, quietly, and his lip curled into a deeper smirk, and he knew, Masters, he knew,
"Hm. What a pathetically small price to pay, to get my hands on you." He turned and left.
And Kevin fell in love, instantly.