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Teddy Bears' Picnic
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Chapter Ten
Today's the day
the Teddy Bears have
their picnic.
Adam surfaced slowly, one sensation at a time. The transition was so smooth, the feelings so incongruous, that it was difficult to know whether he was waking, or only descending deeper into some fabulous dream of his own desiring.He felt the warm sun on his face and the backs of his hand. He felt Duncan at his back. Very slowly he savored every point of contact, the soft pillow of a lip against his neck, the round of a smooth pectoral just medial to his right shoulder blade, a nipple against his ribs, the silken fuzz across his mid-back and the smooth, cool belly against his buttocks. A strong arm draped over his side and a furry, muscled thigh cupped under the back of his own.
Adam pushed back into the shelter of all that warm flesh, sighing softly and waiting for the dream to end.
He felt the arm move suddenly and a grip like steel encircled his forearm. "Easy, Adam," Duncan's voice burred against the back of his neck and the lip returned with its partner to press against him. "You need to hold still so you don't move the lines."
Sure, Adam thought, can't move those lines. Straight as a plumb bob, still as mountain. No problem.
"Adam?"
He really didn't want to wake. That was the only good thing about all these seizures, it was the only time he could be warm in this stupid loft with no heat on. If he awakened, it would only be to wash up in cold water and drag his sore self around, rummaging for whatever food was left and wondering how long before he was mobile enough to make it down to the Little Sisters' soup kitchen for the utterly destitute.
Just a little longer, he thought. I am so tired.
"Adam, are you awake?"
"In a minute," Adam mumbled. For which he was rewarded with a bubbling, happy sound, rumbling up his back and a nose tickling his scalp. "Hey," he complained. "Old Man sleeping here!"
"Oh, Adam," there was more sun in that voice than Adam felt on his face. "How are you feeling?"
A reasonable question, Adam wondered how to answer it. "Warm," he murmured. "And clean," he said, surprised by the absence of the smell he'd almost gotten used to in the past half year of percolating in his own filth. "Nice," he purred, by way of gratitude to whatever power had made this so. "Hey!" he complained suddenly when he tried to move his hands and could not.
"Adam, don't!" The grip on his arm tightened and another arm tunneled under him, another hand held his. "You have to be still!"
Damnation! Adam coiled his knees into his belly and kicked backwards as hard as he was able.
"Oh, come on," Duncan complained behind him. "Wake up, you old fart! I'm not holding you for the next four hours!"
Adam opened his eyes. When they had finally accommodated to the bright sun, he noted, first the bedrail, then the leather and fleece, then his wrists, tied. "What the hell is this?"
"You have to be--" Duncan started.
"Yeah, yeah--still. What is this?" Adam pulled against the leather bands.
"They are soft restraints, Adam. One of those lines is set in an artery. If you move it, you are going to lose a lot of blood and, believe me," the Highlander paused, "that blood was too hard to come by for you to be wasting it."
It was then that Adam noted the large-bore needles set in each forearm and the red lines. A transfusion, they were exchanging his poisoned blood for, for--. "Oh, tell me you didn't let them bleed you out again," he moaned.
"Not quite," Duncan replied. "We still had some units from before. Can I let go of you now?"
"Yes," Adam snorted. "I'll be good." The grip lessened, replaced by soothing fingers, stroking over the places they had bruised. "Maybe you can tell me where in the manual it says the attending nurse takes off her clothes and climbs into bed with the patient."
"There's a perfectly reasonable explanation, Adam."
"Which I would dearly love to hear," Adam blinked his eyes and tried to pull the room into focus.
"I was in the bed behind you," Duncan began, ignoring the jibe. "I was giving blood and they let me rest by you while I recovered."
The stone, the deep window--oh, he was back in his room at the Abbey. It made Adam suddenly a little sad, that all his endeavors should lead him exactly back to where he started.
"I--I had to, to--" Duncan's sudden stammer focused Adam's attention back to the "reasonable explanation."
"I had to touch you. I couldn't make myself take my hand off you," Duncan finished.
"I am sorry I left, Duncan," Adam thought he'd probably do the same thing again, though, given the same circumstances. "I could promise I never will again, but you probably wouldn't believe me."
"So I had them move the bed over so I could reach you, but my arm got tired, and I thought it would just be easier, and I loathe those backless sick gowns, and you looked so comfortable lying there naked, and well--"
"Perfectly reasonable," Adam tried not to sound sarcastic. "Now, can you untie my hands?"
"No," Duncan said.
"But what if I have to--" Adam picked another word, almost without pausing, "scratch?"
"Just tell me where," Duncan's voice descended to a deep and sultry tone which made Adam shiver.
"I'll let you know," Adam said, suddenly very uneasy, for no apparent reason. "How long?" he asked.
"The second pass should take another four hours," Duncan replied. "Would you like some ice chips?"
"No," Adam stilled the ever-threatening nausea, brought to the fore by Duncan's offer. "I'm too drunk," he said.
"Dr. Grimes wanted to be sure you didn't have another fit. It's the phenobarb," Duncan explained. "Probably what's making you nauseous."
The hands left Adam and the back pulled away for a moment. Adam craned his neck over his right shoulder. "What are you doing?" he asked.
"Your skin is awfully dry," Duncan started into what seemed for all the world like another "reasonable explanation."
"Yeah, right," Adam settled back down into the pillow. "Not that touchable glow you've come to know and love."
"Well now," the Scot said, mischievously, "Dr. Duncan to the rescue."
Adam felt the cool lotion slide over his shoulder. "Hey!"
"Be a brave little lad, there," Duncan said, going right on oiling and rubbing, moving down Adam's back in broad, firm circles.
"You're just bound and determined to take liberties, seeing I'm tied up and all," Adam joked, but the moment he said it, some essential portion of his marrow turned to ice cold stone.
"I was hoping you'd tell me how you pulled this off," Duncan moved over Adam's shoulder and began working on the bicep.
"I forget," Adam said petulantly. "Don't!" Adam heard himself screech as Duncan's hand moved into his armpit to tickle him.
"Okay, Adam," Duncan said soothingly. "Okay. I swear, I won't tickle you. Take it easy."
Adam couldn't think why he'd over-reacted so violently. "I'll tell you," he tried to steady his voice. "I'll tell you. Just give me a minute to think."
"I'm listening," Duncan warmed more lotion and smoothed it over Adam's right thigh.
Adam focused on his leather-wrapped wrists. Tied as they were directly in front of his face, he could hardly ignore them and the incongruity of the soft fleece lining spoke to some less conscious, more vigilant, portion of his brain. "I slipped away from you and took the cart up to the main Keep, where I snuck into the rectory hall and used the kitchen computer to enter the Watcher Network. While I was--"
Adam was momentarily distracted by the course of Duncan's deep massage into the lateral margin of a tight gluteal. He felt the leg on that side go suddenly slack and numb, a disturbing and exceedingly pleasurable sensation, all at once.
"Um--yes, while I was removing my records from the network, Dr. Grimes walked in and I talked her into helping me with the plan. That's nice," Adam remarked.
"The plan?" Duncan prompted, moving to the knots over Adam's lower back, feathering the occasional stroke over his flanks.
"Yes," Adam brought his focus back to the soft manacles. "She helped me with the buff and shine portion of the project."
"The what?" Duncan asked, lifting his hands up to work on Adam's long neck from shoulders to ears.
"IV fluids, some of your lionheart blood, all the stimulants I could handle, cut with more anti-seizure meds--that sort of thing." Adam ignored the snorting noise the Scot made behind him. The Highlander, for all his relative youth, did tend to be too traditional in his perspectives. "Then I bundled up Ethel's gorilla gun and the tranquilizer darts and your nifty tree saw and the chains they used to haul the stumps out of the orchard, set them all in the cart, and off I went to the bandit door in the outer curtain. I found it looking through some very old plans of the castle grounds.
"I waited for the three who had come to take my head and shot them, one by one, as they got within range--"
"Wait," Duncan's fingers paused, tangled in the Old Man's silver hair. "How is it they didn't feel you waiting there?"
Adam chuckled and rooted into Duncan's fingers. Oh, that did feel good. "The same way you thought I was an old hag and not an old hag Immortal. I'm too sick to buzz, Duncan."
"Anyway," Adam caught up the thread of his story, though his interest in it was fast waning away to dust. "I moved them together in a stack, after I'd changed clothes with the tallest one. I--are you sure you want me to go into details, Boyscout?"
"Go on," Duncan said sternly as his hands moved gradually down Adam's back again.
"All right," Adam pushed back into the strong, broad fingers and palms. "I put a plastic bag around their heads, wound the saw around their necks, staked it in the ground on one end, tied the other to the cart bumper and--"
"Maybe you could skip ahead," Duncan found the imagery all too vivid.
"I used the latency--"
"The what?"
"The time between decolation and Quickening," Adam explained. "About fifteen seconds, usually. I placed the saw in the tall man's hand, grabbed the bag and used the energy I had left to get back inside the wall and crawl up the stone ladder into the elevated tunnel. I injected myself with a killing dose of barbs as soon as I got down the tunnel and started to feel the energy rush by the opening. I was far enough into the wall that I got almost none of the Quickening," Adam's breath caught as Duncan's hands moved down to his buttocks and began to knead and press them open. He felt the caring ministrations edge with a growing desperation as the Scot's breathing became more deliberate and the wide cord of his erection pressed against Adam's back.
"Duncan?"
"I'm listening, Adam," he replied steadily. "Go on--you got none of the Quickening--"
"Duncan," Adam felt his whole body tense, from his scalp to his toes, and his biceps tightened, rock-hard, as he pulled back against the restraints. "I can't do this," he tried to say this as a simple fact devoid of any particular emotion.
"Sure you can," Duncan's hand moved around to his belly and then moved up to his chest, rubbing firmly across the bony ribs and what was left of his pectoral muscles. "After you awakened--" he prompted.
"I climbed down the ladder after everyone was gone and made my way down to the road where I--Ouch!" Adam pushed back against the Scot as he felt a pinch near his right nipple. "Hey!"
"Oh, settle, Adam!" Duncan barked. "Just settle down, Old Man. So, you are thinking about running away again?" he asked.
"What makes you say that?" Adam asked, worrying the leathers at his wrists.
"You are thinking I don't know how you got out," Duncan answered, "and you are not going to tell me about the connection of the third 'door' to the tunnel that runs all the way down to the river, just in case you want to use that to escape again."
Adam felt in that instant as if he were restrained more completely than just by the leather. If they knew about the tunnel, then he and Duncan were truly trapped in this ancient abbey. Their days were numbered at last. Aloud, he said, "If you know the rest, then I won't bore you, Darling."
"Oh, Meefos," Duncan sighed. "You are never boring." He moved his hand down Adam's hollow belly and stroked gently over his flaccid cock, playing with the soft fur beyond. "You did say something about an itch?"
"Stop it!" Adam hissed.
Duncan drew back. "What is the matter with you?"
Adam buried his face in the pillow and let his breath out slowly, mumbling something the Highlander could not hear. "I said," he repeated, "I cannot do this now, Duncan."
"I don't expect anything, Adam. I just thought--"
"I've never had sex with you before!" Adam blurted out.
"Oh," Duncan thought about this a moment. "Well then," he said finally. "We'll just take this a little slower--"
"We won't take this anywhere!" Adam was surprised at his own adamant certainty, his sudden resolve. "I don't want to have sex with you now. Is that clear?"
"You mean does it make sense, Adam? No."
"It doesn't have to make sense, damn it! I said, 'No!'." Adam hunched his shoulders over and closed his eyes.
"Well, let's see," Duncan's hand never moved away from Adam's crotch. "If you have lost the entire year we were together, then--hmmm? Yes--the last thing you would remember is howling your head off in the alley behind the dojo--" Duncan let the thought float in the sunny air before he continued, "What was that you said about my brains?"
"I hate you," Adam hissed, entirely divorced from his quick wit and tongue by the terror which held him, frozen, in the arms of the man he loved most in all of creation.
"No," Duncan teased, "I don't think that's what you said."
"It was different!" Adam hissed.
"Because--?"
"I thought you were dead," Adam tried to remember, "and I was very drunk, and--"
Duncan cradled Adam's scrotum and traced a finger into the sensitive area behind. "And--?"
Adam's legs relaxed open and he moaned, partly in pleasure, mostly in frustration. "Please," he cried out incoherently. "Just because I said I wanted to--God! I can't do this, Duncan. Please stop," he begged. "Please." Then the Eldest Immortal broke down into whimpering sobs that racked his entire frame.
Duncan's hand moved away and the Scot's arms circled his chest and held him in a close hug.
Which would have been comforting except that the press of proud flesh against his back made Adam want to scream, he was so mindlessly afraid. He tried to steady his voice, to command the intellect which was his finest weapon, his keenest edge. "I am just too ill, Duncan. We can wait a little while until I am well," he suggested, trying to prick the excessive conscience of his young friend.
"Wait?" Duncan mused. "Until you're better? Or until you can run away again?"
Adam collapsed in on himself. "Actually," he grumbled, "We're trapped here. Other Immortals will come. I was sort of hoping we'd both be dead before the issue came up again."
Duncan couldn't help laughing. "You're just nervous, Adam," he began caressing a nipple, gently tugging and pressing. The Scot was relieved to feel the Old Man's body respond to him, even if his brain were worrying on some complicated objection. "Trust me, you just relax and you will not be sorry."
Adam cursed his own flesh for being so demonstrative. He felt the pulse and ache begin between his legs, but it only made him more afraid. Well, then, you stupid Scot, if it's war, then it is war, and to hell with the consequences. "Trust you!" he roared. "That's a laugh!" Behind him, Adam could feel the Highlander hesitate and go still. He wondered if he should pursue this, but when the hands returned, lower and lower, he decided not to care about Duncan's feelings any more. "Get your lousy hands off of me, you sadist!"
"What?"
"You heard me," Adam felt his will returning, if only in a feeble shadow of its usual iron. "I don't know how I possibly worked past this before. You cannot imagine how amazed I was to discover we had been lovers," Adam paused and let the words settle in his mind. "I can't imagine what convoluted set of circumstances made me even let you touch me again after what you did." Maybe that would be enough to back this Gaelic satyr off.
"I know what I did," Duncan said softly. "Ethel told me. I am more sorry than I can say, Adam, but as you so often reminded me, that has nothing to do with us now."
So much for his strongest offensive maneuver. Adam checked to see what his revelation had done to his friend. "So you understand why I cannot--?"
"I understand," Duncan snugged up closer to Adam's back, "that we should 'get past this,' as you put it, as soon as possible. Now, in fact." His hand returned to Adam's now erect member.
Adam felt the tremors proceed straight to his soul. So much for his attempt to cool the Highlander's ardor. He gasped loudly as the fingers of the other hand pressed between and pushed inward against the ring. "You aren't going to rape me?" he asked in a voice so artless he sounded like a frightened child.
"You can choose your own perspective, Adam," Duncan nuzzled into Adam's neck. "But if we walk off this field, we will never join this battle again. You know that, as surely as I do."
War? Adam mused. Well, then--war it is. "Which doesn't mean we necessarily have to dash, pell-mell, into the fray, Boyscout." The Old Man couldn't help that Duncan's words had called up his own battle instincts. They were all warriors, he thought. They were born to be the mercenaries of their own exigencies. It was a nasty habit, a congenital aspect that generalized to everything they did in one way or another, from the way they slept, to the way they dressed and ate, to the way they met with one another, even when it was not to slay or to steal, pillage or plunder.
The Highlander was right, damn it. Whatever inborn battle wisdom they shared, this thick-pated progeny of the Gauls spoke rightly. There was only victory and defeat. The rest was of no consequence at all.
Adam had to admit that his latest attempt to become a warrior of Duncan's stature--for surely, that must have been his intention--was such a miserable failure that it only served to prove his essential unfitness for the life to which he had been bred. Adam's continued survival owed so much less to his ability as a noble knight and so much more to his talents as an unprincipled ally of those who were truly talented in the arts of war. Duncan was right to call him a whore. That was the sum total of his worth, the training of his childhood. The most he could claim to virtue was that he was the best damned whore who ever trod the planet.
I may be a bloody camp follower, Adam thought, but I am the one standing when smoke clears.
"Your secret is safe," Duncan said.
Adam returned from his ruminations to find the Scot standing before the window, looking at the sun, a magnificent shadow of sculptured perfection. If I had it in me to love you, I surely would, he thought. If I did not want you so badly, need you so much, we might meet upon this field of yours as equals. I might be worth the effort, Adam thought, if that were so.
"Only the Abbot and Joe and Ethel know you are here, or even alive," Duncan continued in a distant, emotionless reportage. "The story is: I finally cracked and assaulted an old lady at the Little Sister's Feast, and they brought me here for an extended retreat. If they come for me, I will simply escape, as you did, down the tunnel to the river."
"Oh," Adam said, studying the incurve of the perfect waist, framed between the more immediate reference of the Old Man's leather-wrapped hands. He stifled the ready apology which sprung to his lips. He wasn't really sorry after all. He was only weary of apologizing for being what he was.
"I have thought a great deal about this," Duncan was saying. "I do not pretend to remember the time after I was shot, but I have read the transcripts of the regressions, Adam. I know you do not remember, but what do you know about that time?"
Oh, you are too crafty by half, Adam thought. What are you up to, Boyscout? "I know we were both shot. Head wounds, yours first. I know this resulted in our regressing to infancy, or childhood. I was your parent and then you were mine--something like that. At some point in time, we had sex," Adam shrugged. "It all happened in the year I can't remember," he added, seeing his answer was so incomplete that it made the Duncan-shadow at the window slump its wide shoulders.
"You remember nothing?" Duncan commented, more than asked.
"Not really, except--."
"Yes?" Duncan's question was so eager, Adam regretted having said anything.
"Duncan, I have been very ill. I am sure I had a fever, or a--."
"Tell me," the Scot ordered.
"There is this baby," Adam began. "No, more a toddler, or a little older, a boy child. He is pink and round and his eyes are the color of the old leaves when they have finally become the dark loam that beds the ancient forests, all warmth and promise and shelter," the Old Man surprised himself with the unexpected poetry of his recollection. "He isn't really a boy. I think he must be older than I am, but he is also younger than you are. He has these--," Adam's long fingers fluttered in the restraints, trying to demonstrate. "Wings. Well, more lights, feathered beacons--? I'm sorry, Duncan," Adam wished he hadn't started this. It sounded so dotty. "He calls me that name you do, when you're making fun of me. What is it? Meefos. He calls me Meefos.
"When he isn't calling me Snake," Adam chuckled.
"And you call him--?" Duncan turned his head in full profile over his left shoulder and the juxtaposition of strength and grace that formed the sun-ray silhouette, stunned the Eldest Immortal for a moment.
"Angel," Adam whispered, though the answer came from some repository still hidden to his waking self.
"Yes." Duncan's body turned towards him and closed the distance from the window so quickly that Adam drew back to the limits of his restraints. "You have remembered the only thing you need to, Old Man. You have remembered The Love. We can do this. We don't have to walk away from each other out of cowardice."
Adam only understood that he regretted his answer already. The terror returned more strongly and his wrists began to writhe in their bonds. He heard Duncan walk around the bed and behind him there was a rustle of linen. Then the Scot was slipping in behind Adam again, molding his warm strength against the Old Man's angular flesh.
"What are you doing?" Adam complained.
"I thought maybe props," Duncan said merrily. "Sex toys."
Adam gagged, but it was a false alarm.
"Here," Duncan said and reached over Adam's shoulder, setting the Teddy Bear between Adam's bound arms.
"I am not amused," Adam sneered, but there was a definite measure of relief in his commentary.
"Now--," Duncan snuggled in closer and wrapped an arm around Adam's spare waist.
Adam felt a warm cheek lay lightly between his shoulder blades and, despite his anxious worryings, he began to relax. "Now what," he sighed sleepily.
"Now--a bedtime story," the Highlander answered.
"You mean, 'Once Upon A Time'? That doesn't sound like much of a battle, Lord MacLeod."
"Oh, it is," Duncan replied brightly. "Our very lives are at stake here. Now, be quiet, Meefos."
When Adam remained still, the Highlander continued...
"Once upon a time..."
"Oh, Damn, Damn, Damn!" Adam cursed. "Yes, Meefos?" Angel fluttered his wings forward over Adam's furrowed brow.
"I fell asleep again," he didn't really ask it. There was no other explanation.
"No, Meefos."
Well, maybe there was another explanation. "Then what?" Adam asked.
"Pay cloze 'tention," the little boy said solemnly, mimicking Adam's patronistic tendencies.
Adam sighed. Yes, there beyond this realm, he could just feel the touch of Duncan's tender hands, just hear the drone of the Highlander's "Once Upon A Time..."
"But I am more here than there," Adam complained.
"You need to be here," the boy giggled lovingly. "You are such a funny, funny Old Snake.""Why, Angel?" Adam reached again for the bed, the restraints, the feel of the Scot against his back. Evidently, he couldn't pay cloze enough attention. All he felt now was a deep emptiness at his back and a blinding light at his front. It wasn't even clear if he were lying down or standing...or floating on his belly, gazing down into an ocean on fire.
"Meefos?"
He always calls me so sweetly, Adam thought. Never a demand, never any expectations. "Yes, Angel Dear."
Angel laughed and laughed. "Silly, silly," he chortled lightly as he began to dance, round and round, wings and face and tiny baby hands, strobing before Adam's eyes in opalescent display. "Not a deer, Meefos."
Round and round.
"Not a ch'rub, Meefos."
Round and round.
"Not a boy, Meefos."
Adam pulled away, pressing harder against the empty place at his back. "Duncan!"
" 'Xactly!" Duncan's warm tones said cheerily. "And who else would I be?" The tall Scot floated towards Adam, out of the light, and caught him fast.
Adam closed his eyes.
"Silly, silly," Angel sang, brushing Adam's long nose, side-to-side, with his own tiny version.
"Angel?" Adam opened his eyes to find the little winged boy in his arms. The wings fluttered out behind the boy, shading Adam's face from the furious light beyond.
"And--?" Angel's baby smile plumped his cheeks and squinted his soft brown eyes.
"And Duncan," Adam agreed. "Oh," he exhaled at the rush of imagery that his acceptance had set free. The terror after Duncan's injury, the long days of learning, their great fun together, Father and Son. He remembered the time on the bay island, their time of Brother and Brother.
"Yes," Duncan breathed against Adam's temple.
Adam bent over double and went rushing backwards, end-over-end, into the darkness, the empty, endless void.And in that aching blackness, he found the memories of Duncan's rape and his own, woven together in a dizzying complexity of agony and guilt and forgiveness. He might have stayed here forever, but Angel flew effortlessly into the web, gathered him up in Duncan's strong arms and sped him away, back to the light...
...back to the cabin and the time of Lover and Lover.
"And that's where I first met you," Adam exhaled slowly, savoring an after-ecstasy that still sparkled and tingled over his entire being. "Angel and Duncan," he emphasized, so that Angel would know he had not only been enjoying himself, but had been learning as well."
"And--?" Angel asked again.
Adam's thoughts spun and he called out the answer, "Rapture," even as Angel dissolved into the mote rayed windowlight of the abbey room.
In breath-taking simultaneity, Adam was aware of heat and sweat--his own and Duncan's--plastering them together a in musky radiance that danced across his perceptions with other sensations: the fullness at his rectum, the pulsing dazzle behind his prostate, the tender throbbing, falling sensation, braced against Duncan's broad palm across his swollen cock. Above these heady feelings, though, Adam felt most of all the desperate, almost sad, weight of Duncan's face, the cheek and temple pressed against his own, asking, taking, wanting, wondering--all in little wordless exhalations that sang in mewling gasps.
So many things Adam wanted to say. He wanted to tell the Scot that he remembered their time together, that Angel had showed him the truth about Duncan and Angel and how they were...
"Oh, God--" Adam heard himself saying, far from his intentions, but exactly at his point of departure, dead center of ground zero.
Damn, Oh, Damn, Oh, Damn....
"Meefos?" Angel smiled.
Asleep again. What is wrong with me? "What now?" he asked the cherub.
"Angel and Duncan and--" Angel stared at him. A small, chubby thumb popped between the petal lips as he waited for the answer.
"And The Love," Adam answered, wishing he had some metaphysical remote to change the channels back to Duncan's arms again.
Angel's thumb pulled out of his mouth and the lower lip pushed forward.
Obviously not the right answer, Adam thought. Just guessing wasn't going to make the boy any happier. Adam would have to know more before he answered.
"I don't know, Angel," Adam thought it best not to lie."Sorry, Meefos," Angel's face saddened and a knife appeared in his hand--a letter opener, actually-- the one Duncan had used on him the night before the Scot had been healed in the sacred pool.
"I know, Angel." All Adam could think was how hard this must be for the child, like the day they'd had the mishap with the sword practice on the isle. "You don't have to be afraid. I will be all right. Really, all--."
Then he could say nothing. The knife plunged down like fire and Adam felt the empty black void at his back spill out through the rent in his chest, bleeding its ichor straight up into the angel's face.
Angel drew back from Adam, the mire still dripping from his shining frame, the knife still flashing in his tiny fist. "You don' haf to be afraid, Meefos," he said, which made sense. Then the boy said, "Know this," which made no sense at all and which was spoken in Duncan's voice.
It rang past Adam's ears like a knell of dire importance. "Know."
As Adam watched, a terrible and wonderful thing happened and he became very afraid indeed.
The poisonous liquid that had spilled forth began to coalesce in ropes of inky, oily substance, writhing and curling and winding round the cherub's ankles.
"Angel!" Adam cried out, but his voice echoed no farther than his own skull and he could only wait and watch.
Angel was already transforming in an apotheosis of light and fire, rising from the coils of the Snake, the Hurt, just as the Serpent had risen from Adam's own heart.
Adam had only his memory of Duncan, of Angel, running to him eagerly with the book that showed Hercules as a baby strangling the snakes. Angel had pointed to that lithograph as proof that, "The Love will always win over The Hurt."
Adam had not been so sure then. He was less sure now, as Duncan, winged, twisted in agony and the deadly grip of the relentless Hurt. "Me," Adam thought, helpless and hopeless and miserable as he had ever been. "I am killing him. There is so much venom in me, so much hurt, that even The Love cannot prevail against me."
"Not even love," he said to the ghastly scene before him. "I know, Angel. I understand."
It was a difficult truth to know, but Adam took it into the gaping wound where his heart had been and tried to give it a peaceful, if rueful, residence. When he at last looked up again, Adam beheld such a truth as he might never want to know another ever more.
Before Adam, stood the Beaste of a Different Order, part Angel and Duncan, himself and The Hurt-- all of them together in Blake's "fearful symmetry."
And all he said was, "Oh."
But, really--how had he not known this? How could he have passed down a million nights, a million days, and not discovered this long before now? What was the emblem on his armor so long ago? What was the symbol of the Emperor, almost ancient as Time Itself? What grinned from the Duncan's favorite sword? What indeed, but the dark and terrible, shining and wondrous, Ancient of Ancients, the Elder Race which preceded them all into the temporal plane and proceeded them all into the darkest nights, the wildest fears.
The symbol of perfection, Adam thought, the wedding of the Phoenix and the Serpent.
"Good day, Master Dragon," Adam said joyously. "Where the hell have you been, that I did not know you before now, when I have seen you everywhere all my long life?"
Adam concentrated on the great beaste's belly scales, shaded from silver to gold, throwing his image back at him a thousand times a thousand in all the many facets there. He knew better than to look up into its eyes though he could feel the heavy, sulfurous breath blowing down upon him in waves of almost unbearable heat. When the time passed and, with it, any hope of an answer, Adam made one for himself. "I was incomplete," he said. "I could not see my own worth, because it was only half of you. I could only long for the other half and find my own self lacking."
The Beaste seemed entirely uninterested in Adam's hard won revelations, his painful epiphanies. It began to weave and to sink lower with each pass until it was rested on its belly scales before the Eldest Immortal.
The moment presented itself as if it were an insignificant apposition of circumstance, but Adam was not fooled. He had lived long enough to know this for what it was: a decision, an invitation, a transformation so extreme as to be just short of dying...
...or not so short of, after all.
But Adam did not hesitate. He had taken Angel's admonition to be not afraid and to know, though to do them both together was a difficult task indeed.
"All right then, Master Drake," Adam said with a bravado that surprised even him. "I'll take your offer." He threw his naked leg over the smooth, cool back and settled in ahead of the great leathern wings. The metallic, slick shoulder began to writhe between his thighs as the Beaste gathered in upon Itself.
Adam was aware of the cool, undulant surface, the rising heat of the furnace at Its heart, as It launched into the heavens. Adam grasped the graceful, gilded neck and held on for dear life. He rolled with each wing thrust, gripped tightly with each stomach churning dive. He felt the friction at his crotch like molten sex--both the object and the act.
I can do this, he thought.
I can be this, he thought.
I can have this magnificence as my own.
The Love.
The Hurt.
This Fabulous Beaste, this perfect union.
Adam woke into Duncan's arms and hands and his own body-wracking orgasm, wave upon wave of unbelievable joy and pleasure. Poor Duncan, Adam giggled mindlessly, a gentle roll with an invalid and it turns into a ride on a dragon. Not that he heard the Scot complaining behind him.
"Oh, Sweet Bridgette!" the Highlander gasped his first understandable words in the river of delightful gibberish and moanings that had accompanied Adam's return from Angel's revelations.
"I'm feeling much better now," Adam remarked.
"Good--thing--," Duncan still hadn't caught his breath. " 'Cause--I think I'm dead."
"Le petit mort," Adam agreed.
"I'd say more grande than petit, Adam," Duncan pulled carefully out and hissed as his more sensitive portion slipped from the tightening ring. "Oh, dear," he said. "You've more than christened poor Ted there."
Adam knew that sperm was good for teeth. It was the reason prostitutes had so few cavities. He doubted the same could be said for stuffed bears. Teddy's new suede soles looked to be permanently stained. I'll make you some new ones Ted.
Duncan lifted the bear out from between Adam's arms. "Teddy and I need a wash. Yourself?"
Adam banged his bound wrists against the bed rails. "Now does it look like I'm in any position to go for a wash?"
"Don't you just hate it when Meefos wakes up too fast from a nap?" Duncan confided to the bear.
"I'm not grumpy!" Adam howled after them as Teddy and the Highlander disappeared beyond the door to the bathroom. "I'm thoroughly sopped. I'm tied down like a madman. But I am not grumpy, God Damn It!"
I am just going to wait here quietly that's all. Not my fault at all that I get to be the Serpent part and you get to be the Wings.
And just as soon as I get this slime off my belly scales, I'll be even less not grumpy.
After Duncan set the Teddy Bear up on the window sill, he turned to making Adam more presentable, explaining, "If I take the restraints off now, Dr. Grimes won't trust me to stay here with you alone."
"Right," Adam agreed, in as least grumpy a fashion as he could manage. Duncan's warm bed bath was a more than adequate recompense for remaining bound. "And you keep that up," Adam warned and the bath will be all for naught."
"Sorry," Duncan said, and moved to a less inciteful portion of Adam's anatomy. "I guess it's just all those silver hairs. They're fascinating."
"Well I hope you don't get attached to them," Adam lifted his chin and never even considered what a trusting gesture this was. "Because as soon as the roots grow out long enough, the grey goes."
"But you are an old man, Old Man." Duncan washed the long neck, appreciating the abject trusting way Adam let himself be tended.
When the bath was done, the Highlander removed the restraints and carefully shut down and removed the lines.
"But I thought--?" Adam held tight pressure over the arterial site.
"I lied," Duncan smiled, throwing a bundle of clothes on the bed. "I just wanted to," was all the explanation he gave.
Adam checked the site, no bleeding. He undid the bundle and began dressing. "Are we going somewhere?"
"As a matter of fact," Duncan zipped up his jeans and pulled on a T-shirt. "Yes."
"And might I ask, where?"
"You'll see, Adam."
When they were both dressed and shod, Duncan gathered two small packs and moved to an inset portion of the wall behind the beds. His palm slid over the stones, stopped suddenly, and then pushed.
Adam watched as the wall creaked open to reveal a narrow, round tunnel, descending into darkness. The irony cracked Adam up and he slumped back on the bed, rolling with glee. "Oh, I couldn't possibly, Boyscout."
"Adam?"
"Oh, pullease," Adam pushed up to sitting. "A long, dark tunnel. You can't be serious."
"You're afraid of the dark?" the Scot asked, slipping his arms into the loops on one of the packs and picking up both their swords.
"Can't you see the metaphor?" Adam explained. "I've been born once already this lifetime."
"Oh," Duncan chewed his lower lip. "Not with me, you haven't."
Which only set Adam off again, hunching over and choking.
Duncan pulled him off the bed, hit him in the middle with the second pack, and shoved him towards the tunnel door. "It hooks up with the wall tunnel and then to the river and into the woods."
Adam stumbled forward and started down the dark stairs, laughing all the way, Duncan at his heels.
The stone door swung shut and settled seamlessly beside its brother stones. The room was as empty as a tomb.
With only a small blue Teddy Bear drying in the sunny window to show that anyone had been here this day.
The evening darkened the tiny room and plunged it into an even lonelier silence, as all about the rest of the Abbey, voices and scurryings, shouts and patrols, thundered the stones, announcing their loss.
When the wave of noise moved away, a tiny counterpoint, hardly more than a squeak, began at the hidden doorway. The shadows deepened along the jamb and a thin figure slipped out, moving soundlessly across the empty room towards the window.
Sensitive, long fingers wrapp'd round Teddy's waist and pulled him down and under the warm mantle of an old navy coat.
Then the sinuous shadow was lost in the deeper darkness of the secret passage.
A murmur, or susurration, floated back, a trick of the evening air...
...or it might have been someone whispering a song.
"Because at six o'clock, their Mummies and Daddies will take them home to bed..."
