Four Years Earlier…
August 2008
Some time after midnight, Keith looked up at the window of the motel room. The engines of the cars on the highway were muffled to soft breaths of sound as they passed. Their lights were disembodied points of red and white floating across the glass, flickering between the vertical blinds. Any other image from the darkness outside was obliterated by the reflection of the room, carved in ivory by the light of the table lamp.
Keith could look into the window like a mirror and see himself sitting on the couch with a book on his lap. He was too tired and distracted to read it; he kept trying the same page and every time found himself halfway down it having absorbed nothing. But he couldn't sleep, either, and now he just stared at the reflection in the glass, trying to read his own face.
He wasn't having much more luck with it than he was with the book. Were those dark rings under his eyes, or just shadows? Was he really so unreadable, or was he just unable to see it, that what he was thinking was actually written across his face?
What was he thinking?
This cannot end well.
Burn snored and tossed in the room's lone bed, and the sound of shifting softness cut sharply through the still lamplight.
No, Keith knew that this could not end well.
Not with the way it had started.
He flinched from his own reflection at the memory — the men in black suits and sunglasses standing like invaders in the Griffiths' living room, the family dog lying dead on the floor and then… Time seemed to slow to a crawl. The first man's eyes were still hidden behind sunglasses but his mouth twisted in terror at the mass of ice that had blossomed around his hands, around his pistol, and in the silence before the scream Keith could hear a tiny hissing sound and realized that it was the bullet, caught in the ice, still spinning. When the second man reached for a weapon, Keith lashed out in panic. That time, the ice caught the man's head, and he crumpled, writhing sickeningly as he struggled for air.
After that, all Keith could think of was to make it stop. Make it end —
It was never going to end. At least not well.
Time had quickened again into a blur. The next thing he could remember was Burn pushing him into the passenger seat of the pickup truck and driving away.
But there was nowhere to drive to.
They'd called home, and somehow, so far, Burn's parents had escaped blame for the two corpses from whatever government agency they sent after rogue Psychiccers — or had they? Was it just a false sense of safety? A trap? Whatever it was, Keith couldn't go back.
He couldn't go forward, either, because there was nowhere to go. And in the meantime, the men in black wouldn't just let him escape. They were somewhere close behind, searching. They could burst in at any moment and take him — and worse, take Burn too, because of him. Already they'd caught up more than once and Keith had lashed out again with his power, with whatever it took to get free of them.
More screams, more twisting bodies, cracks in the ice filling with fine crimson veils of blood…
It had started to feel good.
No, not good exactly; he could tell himself he wasn't that horrible, not yet, but it had started to feel like something, like hope or power.
Not enough of it, though. Not enough to make this end well.
Trying to reason with Burn was no use.
If Keith tried to say, What are we going to do?, Burn just told him that it would be all right. He never explained how that could possibly happen, but somehow, before long, Keith found himself believing it, or at least not thinking about it.
Keith didn't even try to say, What have I done? The closest they'd come to that was at a fast-food place when he had ordered the smallest hamburger possible. Burn had leaned over to him with serious eyes and asked, What, don't you think you deserve to eat? He'd tried to argue. It was enough calories, he'd looked it up; he'd flatly refused any more food — and Burn had promptly bent the rule with a cup of hot chocolate. And somehow, before long…
Then as soon as he was alone — and he was always alone at night, because ever since that awful scene in the living room he could never fall asleep — it all came back, and his mind ran in tightening circles until books became unreadable and he couldn't face himself in a pane of glass…
If he was going to do anything, talking to Burn about it wouldn't do any good. It would be the same as talking himself out of it, and then they'd just be going on the same doomed way.
Keith thought he could sneak out of the room. He could go out to the highway and see if one of those cars would pick him up. Stories that started that way tended not to end well either, but did that matter, really? If it was only him…
He turned his back on the reflection in the window and stared at the door instead. He could read himself better in its wood grain and fire exit map, and he willed himself to get up and walk through it. That would be enough. If he did that, then in another narrative thread Burn would go home — he'd be frantic, he'd search, but in the end he'd have to go home — and maybe…
Burn didn't know his own power. He knew that he was a Psychiccer, that he and Keith could talk to each other's minds — Burn only knew how to do it if they were directly touching each other, skin-to-skin — but he didn't know what Keith felt when they touched that way, the blazing fire… Burn didn't know how close it had come to bursting forth, coming closer at every brush with danger.
Keith had tried to make sure that he didn't know. Maybe he never would know. Maybe no one would ever know, and there would be no reason for anyone to come after him, if the two of them weren't together.
And all Keith had to do was walk out the door. With tremendous effort he unfolded one leg, lowered it over the side of the couch, placed one foot on the floor…
The other wouldn't move. He pushed himself as hard as he could, but instead of getting him onto his feet, it doubled him over with his face in his hands.
The book fell on the floor. Each page rang out in the silence like rippling sheet metal.
When he leaned over to pick it up, he heard the hiss of the bedsheets.
"You're still up?" Burn asked.
"Yeah," Keith admitted, obviously.
"Nngh, what time is it, anyway?" Burn stretched himself out from the nest of bed coverings, grabbed the clock on the nightstand and grumbled.
"I just… I can't sleep."
Burn scrubbed his face with one hand, his red-streaked forelock sagging sideways at a charmingly awkward angle. Finally he let out his breath in a decisive sigh and hauled himself out of bed. "Well. Only one thing to do."
Keith dropped his book on the couch as Burn took his arm, dragged him back to the bed and half-pushed him into it.
"You don't have to. I mean, it won't…" Keith argued half-heartedly, knowing it wouldn't do any good.
Indeed, Burn took no notice and pulled the covers up around him. "Scooch over."
Keith should have known what that meant, but somehow it didn't occur to him. He just shuffled himself across the mattress without thinking and was completely taken by surprise when Burn flopped down beside him and threw his arms around his neck.
"I'll just have to snuggle you."
Keith's mind went perfectly white, blank of anything to think or say as he lay there in Burn's arms, suddenly very warm but utterly frozen. "Um," he finally managed, "isn't this kind of…?"
"Shut up. Go to sleep," Burn cut him off with abrupt kindness.
He still didn't know what to think. He couldn't think — his cheek was laying on the muscle of Burn's arm, skin against skin. Anything he thought, Burn would hear, and he couldn't tell him… He just lay there blinking.
"Well, close your eyes already." Burn's own eyes were closed. He wasn't looking, he just knew.
"Oh! Right." Keith was taken by surprise again, and there was nothing to do but comply.
And then there was nothing. He couldn't think. All that was in his mind was what his senses poured into the emptiness, and now with his eyes closed…
Behind his eyelids it wasn't exactly dark, but there was nothing to see except the light of the still-burning lamp filtering through in a gentle glow of red and shifting colors, fleeting and meaningless. The only things he could hear were the tiny unfamiliar clicks and hums of the room that sounded so unlike a home — and Burn. With his ear resting on Burn's arm, Keith could hear the muscles twitch; he could hear Burn's breath gradually slowing and taking on a shade of a snore. He barely even felt the blankets, he was so caught up in the closeness as he lay there and Burn fell asleep, arms still around him.
It went past the point of being comforting or even comfortable, but just as he couldn't think, he couldn't move. He could only lay there amid that enveloping warmth, that gentle red glow.
It took a long time.
He didn't know when it happened.
But just like that…
He fell asleep.
END