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Neilson

Prometheus chain smokes. His side still hurts. Burns. "Small price," he mutters to himself. Fire belongs to everyone, now. But his side will always hurt.

"Can I have one of those?" Prometheus turns. She's beautiful, the way a woman who asks you for something is always beautiful. But he wants to say no. He wants you to say do you know what I've already given you.

Still, he holds out the pack.

"Got a light?" she asks.

We all do, he wants to say. And you always will, thanks to me. But he flicks the flame into being like it's nothing, like it was always there. She lights her cigarette.

"Is that it?" she asks.

"I'm sorry?"

"No how's your evening, no do I know you?"

He shakes his head. "None of that."

She makes a graceful motion that, on anyone else, would be a shrug. She takes a long drag, looking at him through the eternal inhale. "Thanks for the fire," she says.

"No problem."

His scar is monstrous. His side will always hurt. This wound will open again and again and again. He watches her leave, whoever she is, and wishes he was someone who could be healed by beauty, by attention, by a momentary thrill.

"Prometheus, hey." Is it his fault he's not camouflaged? They can light the darkness now. He'd been so used to solitude – that's why he liked them so much, why he stole for them in the first place. Anyone who observes human beings could fall in love with them. Things get more complicated when they notice you, as he'd already found out. He saluted the stranger, whose voice sounded impossibly shaded with smoke. He did not ask Prometheus for a cigarette. He lit his own.

"What you did," he said. "Is it even possible to say thanks?"

"I didn't do it for thanks," Prometheus said, looking down.

"I know, I thought…how're you feeling?"

"Feeling?"

"I figure you've got a nasty scar."

"It's just a scar."

The man nodded. "You probably don't want to talk about it."

"Probably not."

"Listen, I—"

Prometheus looked up. The man's voice faulted. It was his eyes, Prometheus knew, but no man would risk saying that. "Yeah?"

"Nothing."

Prometheus smiled, slightly. "All right."

"What areyou?"

Prometheus laughed. When was the last time he'd laughed? "I don't know what you mean."

"You gave us fire. Who are you?"

"I stole the fire. I'd be a lot more powerful if it actually belonged to me."

"Is it a secret?"

"What?"

"Your name."

"Prometheus."

"I'd really like to do something for you. To show you how much…"

Prometheus looked at him, this time consciously aware of his own eyes. "You wouldn't survive me," he said.

The man swallowed, but stood up straight, looked right at him. No human being had ever looked right at him. "I'd like to make sure of that," he said.

"Yeah?"

Giving into his rage, weariness, and, somewhere beneath the pain of his roaring side, flickers of sexual excitement, Prometheus grabbed him, turned him around, thrust his hips against the stranger's ass.

"That what you want?" he growled.

"Not quite," that smoky voice replied. "Here."

The man turned around, so they were facing each other, and Prometheus didn't move. No one had ever kissed him. He imagined that this sudden move, even as it was going slowly now, was something like what humans were feeling now that fire was theirs.

He'd been watching human mouths for as long as he had been smoking, but that was entirely different from feeling lips hot on his neck, now, and warm on his chest, and, with a simple lift of fabric, on his stomach, too.

Now, the man knelt, and Promethus was so hard he'd forgotten the eternal burn in his side.

He'd had no idea that human mouths could do this.

He closed his eyes. The pain was gone. It would come back, again and again, and maybe worse, but what did that matter now?

Now, inconceivable release. Now, impossible relief. Now, something like love. It may flicker out the way a flame does, but what did that matter?

When Prometheus woke in chains, he looked up at the sky, but not, this time, in dread.

"It was worth it," he called out to every god who would listen. "It was worth it. They're worth it. It's a pleasure to do it all again."

He'd be tested on this until time itself crumbled. And he would never change his mind.

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