I can't see New York.

[secondhand_stars]

<center>From here no lines are drawn.
From here no lands are owned.
Thirteen thousand and holding;
swallowed in the purring of her engines,
tracking the beacon here:
"Is there a signal there, on the other side."

On the other side?
What do you mean side of what things?

And you said, and you did.
And you said, you could find me here.
And you said you would find me even in death.
And you said, and you said
you'd find me, but --

I can't see New York
as I'm circling down through white cloud.
Falling out, and
I know his lips are warm,
but I can't seem to find my way out.
My way out.

I can't see New York
as I'm circling down through white cloud.
Falling out, and
I know his lips are warm,
but I can't seem to find my way out.
My way out of this hunting ground.

From here,
crystal meth In
metres of millions.
In the end all we have;
soul blueprint.
Did we get lost in it?
Do we conduct a search for this?



"From the other side."
From the other side?
What do they mean side of?
What things?

And you said, and you did.
And you said, you would find me here.
And you said that you would find me even in Death.
And you said, and you said,
You'd find me, but --

I can't see New York,
as I'm circling down through white cloud.
Falling out, and
I know his lips are warm,
But I can't seem to find my way out.
My way out.

I can't see New York,
as I'm circling down through white cloud.
Falling out, and
I know his lips are warm,
But I can't seem to find my way out.
My way out of your hunting ground.

You again.
It's you again.
I can't see.
I can't see New York
from the other side,
from the other side.

I hum from the other side.</center>

[secondhand_stars]

New York City, Central Park; Fall 2005
Harlen is 26, Michael is 27.

An invisible ribbon of wind cut through the brittle branches overhead. The rustle of the fiery colored leaves reminded him of birds taking flight. Peering up, he expected a flood of black wingspan, but got only the innocent descent of a yellow leaf tipped in crimson. It fell down upon the leather binder seated atop legs in dark-rinsed denim. He was the picture of yuppie fatherhood with his expensive haircut and corduroy coat. Around his neck, a thick burgundy colored scarf was knotted beneath chin. School colors: post-bachelor's, a world apart and Columbia's PhD program traded for Harvard Law.

After graduation and first-time passing of the Bar Exam, they had retreated back to Manhattan for a jumbled mess of professional and personal life. In the heart of Central Park, he was seated at one of the benches that skirted a play area. Amongst the loose scatter of children, his own dark-haired son scampered over a plastic castle and fisted handfuls of loose plastic pebbles. Michael watched with a strange blend of pride and confusion. All of the sudden, his life was realized -- a long abandoned plan achieved and stretched out in something perfectly organized and linear -- and he wondered: How did I get here?

He plucked the leaf up from the yellow legal pad held within the binder. Rather than deposit it on the ground, he was struck by whimsy. The leaf was twirled around absently by its stem until revolutions sent it flagging low. In contrast to the man beside him, he was flushed and healthy. A portrait of today's society: the haves, and the have-nots. Michael Donovan was not so shallow though. Instead, careless, he flicked the leaf between them and moved to pick up his pen again until shadows crossed.

Autumn fell in like leaves from trees, and Harlen Prior seemed to identify with anything withered and gnarled. The park called to him, and he found himself settled on one of the benches, a book peeled open in front of him. Eyes ran over the pages, murky and blurry in their periphery, calling for a thick-rimmed pair of glasses to settle over hazel eyes. His camel-haired coat was tucked around skinny limbs, a blue scarf knotted at his chin in the same fashion. Trousers were less fitted and more respectable. Though, despite all of the trappings, he didn't fit any picture of perfection. Instead, his skin was sallow and pale, lacking its usual rosy hue. A face that had once been rounded and cherubic with a perfect upturned nose had hollowed out into caverns and bone. An ugly wine-dark mark stretched along the side of his neck, mostly hidden by the scarf. When he breathed too deeply, it was met with a little rasp that he covered with the rustling turn of a page.

Quickly, casually, he glanced over at the man who sat down next to him -- bench space was hard to come by in these parts, at this time of day, and he leaned in to speak before it hit him. He didn't know this man. He didn't have any idea who he was, and yet he was so drawn to say something. Anything. "I? sorry. I thought you were someone else." He laughed, turning back to his book. The spine read in plain white letters - Whitman. Leaves of Grass.

He eyed the stranger from a sidelong glance that slowly filled in with the turning-in of his chin. He stared long enough for a trigger of emotion to go off, little fireworks of sympathy and misplaced grief. He mourned for someone else. "Oh?" Turning back to his deposition, he reached for pen. The pad of his thumb pressed down on its end and inked end slid out with a crack of sound. "Who did you think I was?" There was no telling. Perhaps the man just wanted conversation. In passing, he gestured towards the book with his pen before notes were jotted down again as fast as mind would allow. "Great American classic."

Well, this was strange and new. Usually, people looked at him, poor, withering Harlen Prior, said their hellos and made brief goodbyes. There were never any questions. Or any notes made to his reading. "I.. some guy I used to know, a long time ago. But.. he's gone now, he's not even in the city anymore, I don't.. sometimes the synapses fire, you know? You move without thinking." Pausing, he peered at the cover of his book and nodded. "Mm. An old favorite. I read it in college, and it sort've.. stuck.. I guess." Speech came slowly, and he took a deep, apologetic breath. Thin, polluted air filtered into lungs and back out again, with the tiniest, watery sound. "I used to hate American literature.." The compulsion to keep talking gnawed at him, to continue whatever this was, a gracious gift of human interaction after going so long in his own apartment, comforted by books and his records and the woman upstairs who sang scales every day at four o'clock. "?but I think now, it's my favorite."

He had learned to live with minimal interruption from the metaphysical threads that tied him too deeply to people and worlds beyond this one. It was his personal form of Tourette?s kept in check by a delicate balance of exercise, sleep, and therapy. Yet moments still came where he felt the violent impulse to allow something to fly against the wall or words beyond his immediate knowing to be spouted out. Pausing, pen rolled against the blue line of his legal pad, but made no mark. "'Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?'" He blurted out, despite himself. The ghost Whitman himself, full of bushy beard and twinkling eye leapt out. Making no excuses for himself, he blinked apologetically and turned back to his notes and then across to the playground where Andrew pumped his knobby-kneed legs furiously to the sky upon a swing. The determination in his murky green eyes was a sort of familiar that was distant, much like the scene and the stranger. He connected to nothing, but floated freely. "It's a good one," he reiterated.

The quote and line of poetry resonated in an all too familiar echo, but Harlen said nothing. Instead, he dragged in another reassuring breath and made sure he could exhale without incident. Eyes slid sidelong, and he poised his body to angle closer. The corners of his eyes were useless. Only now, facing more forward, could he really see the other man in all his angles and chic, modern beauty. There was something breathtaking about it all, something undeniably striking. Following eyes, he glanced out to the boy on the swing, reaching to pull glasses off of his face and close his book, returning it to the bag at his feet. "Is that your son?" He asked quietly, feeling all sorts of intrusive and awkward. Conversation was just too rare these days.

Michael gave a sniff; fingers lifting to swipe beneath his nose and then, with the corner of his knuckle at his chin. Again, eyes made their rounds from notebook, to the stranger, and back to the swing set. In a daring move, Andrew flailed off the wooden seat as it arched up and plummeted like Icarus down. He started forward with shoulders, but was reined back by the sight of the boy pushing up unsteadily from where knees had ground into pebbled sea. "Oh, ah --" Turning back, a polite smile was cracked open. "Yes. Yes, that's Andrew. He's five, six in October." Faltering a moment, words jumbled in his throat and knotted upon tongue. Staring towards the sickly man, he felt infinitely lost in some time-spiral. Michael wondered if he was real altogether or a simple spirit so human and present that he could pass in flashes. A transparency lingered. "And I'm Michael. Michael Donovan." Introduction made, he offered out a hand for the taking.

A dry tongue fell heavy and silent at the admission. So here was a father and son that seemed to make so much sense and then none, altogether. Nodding, he reached out a skinny, pale hand, decorated in rings, frail and breakable. "Harlen Prior." He offered, his mouth stretching into some hopeful smile. In a flash, there he was, years younger and beaming. A true, blossoming talent, flitting through life carelessly, throwing around his heart and his money and his body to whoever would have them.

"Very nice to meet you," he said in earnest as fingers squeezed down upon the man's. It was a harmless amount of pressure, but something telling. He wasn't afraid of the malignancy that raced through his veins, his outward frailty, or un/familiar quality. Instead, normalcy was established along with threads of friendship. He was a far more simple creature here than ever in any configuration or yarn.

"I.. I'm sorry, are you.. you're busy." He scoffed, leaning back and staring out over the playground. Across the way, a blonde woman stood beside a shorter, darker skinned one, hunching down to help a younger boy stuff his hand back into his mitten.

"I was just writing a deposition for work, but it's -- not anything, terribly time-sensitive. No worries."

"A deposition? A lawyer. I don't know whether to congratulate or apologize. You fellas don't get a very good rap, from what I hear." Another quick grin and he was leaning back against the bench, pushing glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. He tried his hardest to pretend he didn't need them, but it was obvious he did. Unconsciously, he pinched fingers at his scarf and dragged it up higher over his neck, to cover a rather telling, unsightly mark. "Andrew looks like he's having a blast."

"No, we're a terrible bunch. Completely devoid of any and all good moral judgment and conscience." Dry humor remained and he glanced over slyly with the corners of his mouth ticking up. He made no explanations or apologies concerning his career. Instead, green eyes focused back in on the boy who joined a pack of children that scampered over the grounds. "He does, doesn't he? Funny, I don't remember ever being as young as him. Do you have any family, Harlen?"

There was no caution in approaching him that he could notice. He didn't warily watch with wandering eyes, he didn't lean away when Harlen shifted. Taking it as he could, he stretched his mouth into another loose smirk and laugh at Michael's lost joke. The question, however, had the lifted features falling again into something taut and pulled thin. In a moment, he was washed over and exhausted. "No, actually." He grinned again, passing this fact off as absolutely nothing. "I ah.. my parents passed away when I was young and I'm an only child. If I have aunts and uncles, I don't know them. No living grandparents. It was a terribly.. liberated childhood, I guess."

Another loose laugh sprang up and with a few chuckles, turned into a hoarse cough that was wrapped into his own fist. Apologetically, he held up a hand to excuse himself while he let the brief fit subside. "Sorry. It happens.." He inhaled again and let out a slow sigh. "Do you have other children?" Curious, he leaned back again, straightening the lapels of his jacket.

Tragedy spun into a child's dream. He cut through the fairy-tale spun facade to see something not quite Dickensian but hardship laced nonetheless. Harlen's loneliness gripped him by the shoulders for a good shake and he toppled out of his blessed world. "I suppose," he managed with a polite grin. At the fit, his easy expression faltered with concern. Bowing low, a small backpack was lifted up. He zipped open canvas lid and rummaged through the plastic arms of action figures and paper cuts of a coloring book to where juice boxes made up the most of the bag's weight. One was held out to Harlen in a silent offering.

Glancing at the juice box held out, he took it and examined the side contents. "No sugar, no artificial flavoring. How'd you know?" He smirked, his voice quiet and hushed, careful not to overextend. "I can't have sugar, it ... I have a weird reaction to it." Plucking the plastic straw away from the side, it was peeled and uncovered before the sharp end stuck through foil. Childishly, he sipped and felt somewhat calmer.

Amused by the fortunate coincidence, he clucked tongue against teeth before hissing in a sharp breath. "Well," he sighed back out, "a bee put a little buzz in my ear." Words were ripped from a children's novel and scarce made sense at all. The small canvasback was zipped up again and placed next to his briefcase. Leather portfolio was halved and placed inside the latter. "No more children. Well, not at least until I make partner. We had Andrew when we were very young and so I promised it." Teeth cut into the edge of his mouth as it twisted into a sheepish grin.

As Michael's story unfolded, Harlen glanced eyes over again, the corners blurred and cloudy. He got a half-look at Michael's face. "Well, smell you, Nancy Drew. Ambition to boot. Your wife's a lucky woman, isn't she." It was less of a question, more of an assured statement. Oddly enough, under his assurance, there was the slightest tick of something less than happy. It was a small pinprick of jealousy, a green point in an otherwise colorless statement.

"Ambition!" He laughed out weakly, more for the sake of appearance than want. "Her ambition. Not mine. I'm out of state a lot, business trips. Being partner means staying in Manhattan and closer to home which means no night nannies and au pairs." His wife's good fortune wasn't examined, but acknowledged with a neutral but inconclusive bow of his head. Thumb edged below a green eye to wipe away an itch. "You know," he slowly rounded back. "Thinking about it. You do seem familiar. Maybe we met somewhere before. I wish I could remember."

Grinning again, Harlen sipped more and made short work of the tiny juice box. It was no match. Her ambition. He resisted the urge to roll brilliantly dual colored eyes, brown and green in their mesh instead staying planted firmly forward. "Well. If it's what you can live with.." Trailing off, he let the conversation fade until a rekindling of an old subject lifted again. Harlen shamefully shook his head. All apologies, indeed. "I don't think so. I mean.. I don't really know anyone. Everyone I knew is gone. Moved on, flew the coop, or pushing up daisies. I have a whole.. phone book in my bag filled with names and numbers, and not one of the numbers matches the name anymore. No one picks up. No forwarding addresses. It's eerie. You wake up one day and everything is just.." Trailing again, he recovered with a quick grin and shook his head. "Listen to me. Debbie Downer."

The human was capable of living against incredible odds. There was a built in mechanism that ensured survival to an incredible point. Daily, the news was filled with reports of elderly women surviving on rainwater for two weeks under a bridge or a man pushing a car off him after a horrific accident. It wasn't about living. Eyes slid over to check on Andrew before twisting back. Harlen Prior had once been undeniably beautiful; a prince, the life of the party. Not even glasses that overwhelmed a frail face or the port wine stain upon his neck could ruin it. Instead, he saw the person that was and would forever be over the current decay. Despite himself, a hand reached out to pat at the crook of a skinny arm bundled up. The texture of his jacket itched against palm as it reluctantly slid away. "Not at all. It happens to everyone."

It was a breaking point for him. That touch, so careless and concerned. It didn't. It didn't happen to everyone. Those who it happened to had lovers and family, and a phone book of numbers to reach out to. Harlen Prior had strangers in the park who would disappear and think nothing of him later. That poor man, they'd think. That poor, sick man with no friends. Easily, everything slid out of place. His face scrunched up and reddened at its sharpest points, and a hand lifted to fold over his mouth and nose. "I'm sorry.." He murmured as saline floods flushed forward and started to stream. "I'm sorry, I'm sick, I.. you're the first person I've talked to in days. I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know how to do this anymore, I'm.." Words gave way to a shuddering breath, his weakened lungs trying their hardest to fill to capacity.

Perspective shifted for a moment. Across the playground, Andrew Donovan looked up from the abandoned sand bucket he had began piling handfuls of pebbles into to where his father sat with a stranger on a bench. It was a harmless scene, but one that would forever mark his opinion. At the tender age of six, he realized how deeply good Michael Donovan was. That inherent, paternal gentleness and calm was not exclusive to his trips into the park or bedtime stories with his father, but to everyone.

Across the way, Michael struggled with the simmering upset inside his belly and stared at Harlen Prior's undoing. "I know," he acknowledged it all as hips scooted across the bench. Pushing himself closer, an arm wrapped around the frail shoulders of the man who was, by all accounts, a relative stranger. It was a warm, companion's pose. "Breathe, Harlen. It's okay. It's alright."

Everything crashed down so magnificently, trailing like a comet, a bright smear in an otherwise calm sky. Harlen Prior deconstructed, his cool, collected calm shattering to reveal him as a sham, a frightened, sick child. With an arm around him, he leaned in, his face pressed against Michael's shoulder, this unknown man who simply swept in and listened. There, he sniffled and gasped for air, pressing tears against the material of his jacket, before sitting up again and pulling glasses off. Hands wiped at eyes, angrily smearing away the tears left over. "This is all I do lately, you know. Cry. I'm a mess. An absolute mess, and you don't need to listen to me complain about it.." Scoffing at his own indiscretion, he swallowed down a rising lump and glanced back over, red-faced and miserable, but with the corners of his mouth pulled up. A fake grin.

There and gone. For a minute, he gripped the other man into his lapel so tightly that he was sure time, itself, would break and they'd be thrust into some forever time capsule. Yet, just as easily as he had folded in, Harlen drew back and arm was left in a slouch across the back of the bench. "What are we supposed to talk about? My deposition? Andrew's loose front tooth?" Forcing his own grin, tongue pocketed itself in his cheek. He shifted, reaching out to smear over a damp, salt-stung cheek. "There, there. I'll let you in on a sad truth: we're all a mess. A big, beautiful, awful mess." You're not alone, he said with a blink, if only because tongue failed him.

These feelings were so powerful and so foreign. They washed over him and crashed down, soaking him to the bone. Of course he was alone, he wanted to shout back. Of course this meant nothing. This was hopeless. "Well.. some of us more than others, maybe.." He sniffed, still struggling for composure that would never really come. "I want so badly to believe that you sat down here for a reason. I have trouble believing in meaning anymore."

Fingers slid off the sharp ledge of jawbone and he twisted away to dive into his briefcase again. Tearing off the edge of his notepad, he grabbed pen with his opposite hand. Using the top of his knee as a desktop, Michael jotted down his name and a number and address that he had never seen before, but claimed a strange ownership to nonetheless. The pen was tossed aside as he held out the scrap of paper towards the other man. "Maybe I sat here for a reason. Maybe I was supposed to so that you could have a number for your book that connects to a person you didn't once know, but now do."

Reaching out for the paper that he was handed off, he glanced down at it and tucked it into the inside pocket of his coat. What was this an offer of? A friendship? A lawyer to call when his insurance company tried to screw him out of medical care? "Maybe.." He breathed. "I.. you will never let me in as far as I want to go, Michael Donovan. Not here. Not in this world." Something elevated, for a moment. They spoke of much more important things. "But thank you for the offer."

" Yes, maybe." He agreed. His messes were small and contained to their boxed-in spheres of manageability. While Harlen wore razor-sharp cheekbones and lesions, Michael wore a tremulous smile and apologies for his strange outbursts whenever they struck. Even now, on the dangerous verge of his latest. More Whitman: "When I give, I give myself... For every atom belonging to me as good as belongs to you." The spell broke as soon as his punctuating breath. Falling back against the bench slants, a hand lifted to cut between them before settling in a lazy fall across the panel of his chest. He stared at the tops of knees loosely folded out in front of him rather than the sickly vision of the prophet.

"Belongs to me?" He asked lamely. In a moment, sadness washed back to confusion and anger. "Don't give me anything, it's useless. I'm on my way out. I don't have anything I can do with it, I.. god, you're beautiful. You know that?" It was by all means inappropriate, but words fell out before he could stop them, and there was no use now. "Your hair should be longer, though. Like it was when you were younger. It looks best when it's in your eyes, and everyone will bark at you to cut it, but they'll all secretly love it like that. Like there's a piece of you that they have to uncover. Oh God.. I recognize you now." He laughed, falling back a moment and looking up at a dreary fall-sky. "You're who I see when I close my eyes at night, and never sleep. You're who keeps me up. I know who you are.."

He treaded dangerously on the banks of remembrance where they would be thrust into a no man's land, being neither awake nor dreaming. Perhaps Michael would seize up the frail wrist of the pianist and, abandoning a son, flee the scene of the crime. Perhaps, he'd wake up. Feeling infinitely trapped at the moment, however, within himself, Michael gave a little gasp. Breath, a short, staccato one, rushed in and sent eyes to go to glass. Hands lifted, gripping close short hair at the roots and violently combing through. Chin buried into the red wool itch of his scarf, as if hiding when the rest of him was being uncovered.

"Who am I?" He asked dumbly as hands fell away to smear at the tears that now filled the spaces between feather bottom lashes. He cried, but for the life of him, couldn't understand why. Instead, a phantom betrayal -- towards Harlen's body, his failing, blotchy body; the impossibility of the situation; the unfair circumstance -- rocked him and loosened some hidden well.

Instinctively, he lifted hands to press at Michael's cheeks. Thumbs swept over cheekbones, smearing away slick tears as he lifted Michael's face towards his. "You're everything. You're everything I want. You're the only person who could really love me. Look at me, please. Please look at me." He begged, softly, his voice threaded and quiet. Hazel eyes searched and struggled to find his gaze. "Before this all slips away, before we get spat somewhere else, before I die, tell me. Could you love me? Even like this, even.. sick and breaking and sleepless, even when I'm delirious and feverish and shaking so much that my nightstand rattles. Could you love me like this?" Helplessly, he treaded on the edge of knowing. He wasn't talking to this Michael, the one with a son, and a wife, and a prestigious job. He was talking to every Michael that could and had and would exist. "Because even like this, I would choose you over another year. I would choose this over better blood."

Wheeled forward from his defeated slump, he choked and shoulders rocked forward. Not filled with fluid, but liquefying, he became the weakened and the wearied. The ice cold, bony framework of Harlen's hands kept him upright altogether as he burst into childish tears: angry and lost. Through them, a blurred vision of the prophet came to him. Hands wrapped over wrists before unfurling to slide up forearms and slack biceps. He fumbled clumsily, but ultimately managed to pull the glasses upon diseased, myopic eyes away. They were tossed aside, like responsibilities and the naive eyes of a child. "I -- I, already do?" He managed around a crack in his voice. Speaking for a collective body and vast reproduction of himself through time and space, Michael nodded and pushed himself closer. In a messy crash collision of noses and a hand that gripped around an ear, mouth pressed in for a near-sided kiss. He was damply affectionate; a mess of runoff tears and running nose.

In their world, in their dreams, they existed in their own field. No one turned to stare as Michael crashed forward and Harlen clawed for him, arms wrapping up and mouth pressing. He gripped him tightly, grappling him close and parting his mouth to kiss and tug and intercept. "We are everything.." He mumbled at breaks, between breaths. "You and I. We are everything. We begin and end everything." He promised, dotting tear-streaked cheeks with the press of his lips. "It's okay now.. it's okay.." Hands lifted to smear over cheeks and through hair as he pulled back and dragged in another rasping breath. It fatigued him, all this revelation and knowledge. He was slowly wavering, hissing out another sigh. "It'll be over in a minute. Everything will.. turn right side up again.." A hand pressed to his chest, lungs struggling for another intake of breath.

It was startling how accurately illness was introduced to their balance. While Michael was unblemished by long-ago, never-happened hurt or the blur of nameless-faceless that came after, while his hair was short and body healthy, Harlen was some antebellum house. More monument than shelter; all internal decay and breakdown. He seemed nonetheless bent on finding every evidence -- the poor, unscarred version of himself that now existed like a Siamese twin with a waking one. Tongue swept in and over the chalky ridges of thrush and ulceration that wore thin tongue and cheeks. It lapped and moistened chapped mouth as hands found the knot of Harlen's scarf. "I want to see," he announced muffled and heartbroken.

Clawed at, Harlen protested, his hands lifting up to smooth over shoulders and nudge him away. "No. No, don't.." He fairly begged, whimpering and wincing as Michael pulled away the knot of his scarf. He didn't tell him about the other ones. The one on the inverse of his forearm, the one poised over his heart, the one that dotted his hip, where bitemarks should have pressed instead.

Material was undone, folded back for a premature, wintry breeze to invade. Michael loosened his desperate grip upon a sickly mouth to peer at the ruddy ink stain spread upon pale skin. He was as thin as parchment. Veins filled with diseased blood throbbed and threatened to break through in purple interruptions where fingertips scanned over before mouth dropped down over the splotchy shape. "Oh god. Oh god." He fairly wailed against the lesion. He didn't have to tell him the location and numbers of the rest. Instead, all points thrummed with a life of their own. They begged to be discovered, acknowledged, and nurtured, even if only in the sweep of hand that rolled down arm and the line that ran from heart to hip.

Arms wrapped him and smoothed down his spine, his head tipping to bury a thin nose into black hair. "It's just a body, Michael. It's just.." Who was he trying to kid. Wheezing in another breath, he felt head dizzy and spin, his mouth searching for another word. "It's.. worse, you know.. it's worse than this. Not having you. That's more than body." Lungs filled again and winced out more air. "That's everything. That's where the real hurt happens.?

"It's mine," he whispered against neck. Michael was struck by the irrepressible need to bite in possessively until his mouth was full of that strange collage that would be pale skin, the severed bit of vein and blood that would undoubtedly infect, but never clot. He could almost taste the destruction as chin itched against the scratchy pale of his collar.

?I can't do this. I can't do this anymore.." He crumbled, shoulders slumping. He wanted to wake up. In the waking world, a feverish prophet curled up against the mattress, searching for an escape.

Pulling up, he framed a sharp, exaggeratedly carved out face in his palms. He framed Harlen and smothered in frantic affection broken only by his panicked gasps. "Oh Harlen, my poor prince, my heart. You have me. You always have me. I'm inside you. I'm stitched in, incorporated. Wake up, miel. Wake up for me."

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ July 13, 2005 10:06 PM: Message edited by: godawful champagne ]</font>

[secondhand_stars]

I am not such a complicated person. I am not the impregnable fortress that resists all breaches of security and invasion. At the end of the day, when I am cracked open and my heart is spilling out, I'm just a man. I want what everyone wants: a home, a profession, a spouse, a child. It's just admitting and acquiring that I find myself stalling over.

Last night, I got everything I have ever wanted. I became Michael Donovan, the lawyer who dreamt within a dream of making partner and expanding his holdings, with a wife and a beautiful son. This was the life I was meant to build with Anna. I saw traces of her everywhere: my dark red scarf embroidered with Harvard's seal on one end, my briefcase, the child who wasn't all darkly spun and an airy soprano but instead recklessly carefree. I saw therapy bills to cope with my metaphysical nature. I saw a loft designed in a fashion and colors that I loathed. Ironically, I felt so impossibly alone, but no more alone than the man at the opposite end of the bench who had nothing at all.

A dream can last a split-second or a handful of minutes, but true time is infinite and without notches to determine how long I sat next to Harlen -- No, not Harlen. He wasn't the man that I fell in love with, but instead someone different. He was a remnant, the dying last gasps of a legend in his own right, a crumbling monument. I was, later, shaken by how gaunt and ghostly he looked. He was older than I had ever seen him before with his glasses and sagging cheeks. Raspberry stain lesions decorated his skin and he begged me not to look, but I found each of them. I, with all the delicacy and paternal gentleness that I rarely exhibit in the waking world, held him close until he was the one holding me. When we kissed, I tasted the slippery salt of my tears and my snot and knew that this was, if the world were different and this was our present, the lethal concoction that would have killed him.

We had squandered everything there -- all our bodies and time and feeling -- until we met again as two exquisite corpses. As selfish as it is, I think he was the luckier of us. He had hopped from body to body in search of me, albeit subconsciously. He had taken in tainted bodily fluid in hopes of a grand epiphany. In the end, he found it not in the sweaty backroom of a club or the anonymous spill of bedsheets, but on a Central Park park-bench. But I, I searched for nothing and trusted everything. I never saw past Anna or Andrew (my son, our son) or the ambitions placed upon me. Then, later, he would die in some sterile hospital bed or the privacy of a home that I hadn't gutted to the bare essentials and ourself. Harlen's physical self would become ashes, flecks of bone; no longer a prison. I wouldn't die though. I was young then, healthier and more deeply entrenched in life than I ever had any recollection of being. I would live on, separated from him and haunted by the memory of an afternoon spent in the park. How much longer, I wonder. Fifty years? Sixty? How long does the average human live? How much longer or shorter does the fluke? Harlen was the lucky one. He could escape into death and whatever happens after we die. He could hold to the notion of a thousand different happy endings and reconfigurations of us. I could scarce entertain the notion.

[star studded]

I did not dream I was dying. I dreamt that I was dead.

In fact, everything was dead. The leaves, the hollowed out roots of trees in the middle of autumn, shedding their leaves to cast a crisp, burnt landscape over the alive ground underneath. The people in the park, they were dead too. Maybe not yet, but in years to come, they would be. I could read it all over them, their remaining years etched into their eyes, and their skin, the legacy of their lives like a big countdown clock that ticked away seconds. Their children were none the wiser. They too had numbers plastered on them, death dates waiting to arrive, some sooner than others. Some much too soon.

I knew mine. Prophecy and disease do not so easily mix, we are not blessed with the ignorance of when our bodies will capsize out from under us and we'll slip into sleep. We know. We count down the seconds. The minutes. The hours and days until finally we sigh out our last breath and submit. It was all I could remember doing as I sat there, reading Whitman's Leaves of Grass, halfway through "Song of Myself" when someone familiarly unfamiliar sat down beside me. My clock still ticked down, ringing in my ears. I knew what Captain Hook was afraid of when the crocodile with the clock in it's stomach came round. It wasn't the jaws of the croc. It was the incessant ticking down of his time, knowing that any moment the ticking could stop and he could hear nothing.

When you sat beside me, my ticking stopped. I did not die, because I was already dead. I had died long ago, in the back room of a Paris club, my body spent and weak, my heart tired and my limbs burning from dancing, my jaw aching from activity and my will to carry on this reckless search exhausted. That is where I died. That is where the ticking down started. And when you sat down beside me, careless and curious and courteous and all those other words that I never thought might apply to you, it stopped. Time seemed irrelevant. We were suspended in a moment, you in your family life and me in my solitary death, together, circling round. An endless loop. Together.

That was what I meant when I said, "We begin and end everything." Together, you and I complete something so much more perfect, even when staring at the other looks like we're staring into a life we never knew possible to live.

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ July 14, 2005 12:34 PM: Message edited by: godawful champagne ]</font>

[secondhand_stars]

New York City, NY / Haverill, NY.
Harlen is twenty-six and five.
Michael is twenty-seven.

With hands tangled, Harlen's thumb skidded over the crest of Michael's knuckles and he tugged him towards the door that held firm at the end of the hallway. "I'm not trying to scare you. And I'm not trying to make you feel sorry. I'm not trying to make you hurt. I just need you to see. I need someone to see.. you understand, don't you? I need someone to know. Someone who isn't me... but is."

Words only served to identify and heighten the jumble of emotions inside him. Michael sucked in a breath, feigned nonchalance, and nodded. Inwardly, he already began to ache for Harlen. This world -- the strange sterile file system appearance of it all with a multitude of locked doors -- was not his own.

Free hand snagged the knob of the door and twisted, pulling it open to reveal a classically barren bedroom. A small bed sat in the corner, the walls covered in pictures of finger paintings and color-by-numbers, an art that was encouraged, but a disturbing sort of creation filled with reds and bruise colors that he barely recognized.


From the hallway behind the closed bedroom door, the thud of footsteps and subtle wailing grew louder. One small voice protested, and one larger, more commanding, feminine voice, shouted nonsense back. A hand pressed against the chest of his companion and he nudged him against the wall. "Stay out of the way." He insisted.

"Where are we?" He hissed, at a loss. Body pressed easily into the wall.


Where were they? Somewhere long ago and not that far away. "Home." He echoed quietly, as if that would reveal everything. Harlen winced noticeably as the door flung open and the small boy was shoved recklessly inside by a pair of pale, feminine arms that seemed stronger than they appeared. A horrible scream of protest from the boy only clashed with the anguished shout of the woman, something incoherent and lifting up from lungs before the door was closed and an outside lock clicked into place.

Home. This wasn't any home he could recognize or remember, but the feeling persisted in some cold, removed way. A palm skittered over the plaster beneath him, but stopped abruptly at the creaking of the door. He froze in the half-light, as if afraid of being found out. Breath held and eyes wide, he had no other choice but to watch the scene unfold. Familiar arms and an even more remembered voice chilled him. Anna Prior. Green eyes darted to the boy and then up to Harlen -- the adult one. Fingers lifted to fan over his forearm. "Harlen," he whispered in a ragged tone. Insides turned into an ocean where organs were little more than pickled bits of shipwreck. In the corners of his eyes, tears burned.

The boy, a slight, princely looking thing, tried his hardest to scurry to his feet, clammoring towards the door to slam tiny fists against it. Usually pale and pretty features were reddened and tear-slicked, and he kicked and screamed against the wood pitifully, his upturned nose (a dead giveaway) wrinkling and sniffling with the effort. "No no no! No, Mama!" Hands went flat and slapped against wood panelling, but there was no answer. Just the echo of his voice against the walls, in a room that lacked the things that usually defined a childhood room: toys. There wasn't a piece of colorful plastic in sight.

He could remember everything. He knew that this was the time he screamed so much that his throat was raw for days and he refused to speak in his raspy, tiny voice. Watching helplessly as the boy abandoned slamming on the door and turned little legs around with the intention of collapsing on his bed, he was instead faced with two men with different faces, and the same suit. Instead of the normal panic that would set in with children and strangers, Harlen had learned to fear those he knew. Those he didn't posed no threat. Sobs diminished into hiccups and sniffles, and the boy wandered over to stand in front of them, staring up at one who looked familiar, and one who simply felt safe. A tiny hand lifted to smear at his eyes and nose and he peeked up, trying to make his voice into something strong enough.

"Are you here to play with me?" He asked hopefully.

"Oh.. Jesus.." Harlen, the older version, felt something crack in remembrance.

He nailed himself to the wall now -- there were no hands, no commands needed. Whether it was for the sake of self-preservation or to keep Anna Prior from bursting in at the sound of voices, Michael kept himself angled away from the little boy. He creeped even further into the plaster upon the child's approach. "Oh.." He gasped at the question. A glance wheeled towards the adult-Harlen. "I'm sorry. I -- " Pushing himself low, he scooped up the lanky body of the boy-prince and smeared a hand over his hair. "Look at you. Principito. Mi amor de bebe." A kiss was pressed into his crown. "Yes. Yes, we can play with you. What do you want to play? Your poor eyes." Thumb smudged beneath the hazel eyes and swiped away extra moisture.


Harlen could do little but stand and watch. It was clear that even as a child, there was some odd, familiarity and comfort that came with Michael. The little boy was easily scooped up, and settled right in, jolting every moment or two with a gasp as his sobs calmed and subsided.

"I don't know. I don't have.. have any games. I have.. paints. And some crayons.." Sniffling, he lifted a hand and wiped fingers at his eye, lashes wet and glinting, framing pretty eyes. "My Mama went to take a nap.." He defended, his chest caving with another hiccup and gasp of breath. "She'll come get me when she wakes up. Who are you.." A finger pointed at himself, but older, a stretched out, mirroring reflection.

"Oh.." Harlen answered awkwardly. "My name is Harlen. Like yours."

"That was my Daddy's name. You look like him, are you him?"

"I.. here, let me get the paint." Turning on heel, he wandered over to a shelf where the paper and little cans of paint were stashed, plucking them up and carrying them back. "What do you want to draw?"

"God, you're little," Michael mumbled quietly as the little boy was shifted and arranged upon the bowed out angle of his hip. A hand moved to straighten out the twist of his t-shirt before tickling beneath a bare foot. "You Priors and your lack of shoes."

The tickling feeling at his foot had toes wriggling. It was mild affection he wasn't used to, so he didn't laugh, and he didn't coyly duck into a shoulder. He just tipped his head at Michael and then pointed towards the table. "I don't know. Something nice for the fridge. A card for my Mama?"

Harlen just nodded, a hand sweeping over his younger mess of hair. "Okay. We can do that."

Squinting playfully over to little Harlen and then, to his older result, Michael stepped deeper into the room to where a small table broke up the monotony of the room. Inwardly, he felt an angry spark crack. He bristled at the notion of making Anna Prior a card -- more over an apologetic one. "How about we make something fun to go over your bed instead? A bunch of dinosaurs or... Oh, I don't know, a ship in outerspace with you as an astronaut amongst the stars. That'd be fun, right?" He attempted to redirect. Rather than let Harlen go, he kept the boy crushed possessively close in a familiar pose.


He tried to redirect, to erase the idea of being apologetic towards his mother out of his mind, but the older Harlen knew that was futile. He could distract, but everything would wind back to feeling sorry. Everything would come back as a small failure he had caused her. Every last action was a disappointment to his mother.

Settling at the small table, where paints and paper were distributed, Harlen watched as Michael kept a grip on the boy, who strung arms around his neck. "Okay. Um.. I don't want to be an astronaut. How about.. some animals from the zoo, I like the zoo."

He eased down slowly with legs bending and a hand loosening from it's sprawl across Harlen's back to give him better balance. Sagging down into a chair, the little boy was twisted around to settle atop knees. "There we are," he sighed as fingers flicked back the longer pieces of hair that covered little, finely-painted on eyebrows. A heartbroken look was sent across the table to Harlen. "He looks exactly like her."

He looks exactly like her. It was the most that Harlen had ever heard Michael speak about the girl, even though she lacked names, or more than much of a vague reference. "I know. It's the nose." He smirked across the table as they settled in. Pretty hands uncapped each little pot of paint and scooted them towards the younger boy, who immediately dove in for brown.

Angling sharply to catch glimpse of the child's regal profile, he nodded. Fingers itched to roll down the bridge and pinch the tip of his tiny nose, but resisted for the sake of Harlen's concentration on his drawing. Rather than watch childish scrawl take up the page, he peered between the pair. Offering the little prince a smile, his chin tucked into collar."There we are," he sighed as fingers flicked back the longer pieces of hair that covered little, finely-painted on eyebrows.

"The zoo it is. We can draw all sorts of animals: zebras, monkeys, kangaroos, giraffes. You'll have to help me though. It looks like you're the artist around here." A hand gestured to all the child's drawings.

"Monkeys first." He explained, scribbling out little stick figure animals with long tails and hanging arms that stretched from the top of the paper, hanging off trees that were somewhere out of sight. "They go up top. And then birds.. ew.." Another piece of paper was used to wipe the brown away before he found the blue and green and pink in order to make oddly shaped tropical birds stretch across in classic V shapes.

With the boy occupied, Harlen glanced across the table at Michael, his lungs inflating. "This used to happen a lot. Sometimes it was here, or the closet, over there. But that's for later.. it's.. I just wanted him to see you.. I think. So he'd know. So .. I wanted him just to know that everything would be okay. Eventually."

Fingers crooked to rake over the boy's back in a light, comforting gesture. He smoothed out all residual panic and tears. "Harlen knows. Don't you, mi principito? You know everything is going to be okay. It's already okay. Can't you feel it. Things feel better." He wanted desperately to stay and to latch onto the boy. He wanted to fight away Anna Prior and remained locked into the years as some safe guardian for the little princely Harlen. The notion of leaving him to the inevitable crippled legs and spine.

With the comforting scratch of fingers at his back, Harlen's jaw unhooked in a little yawn. His fingers were sticky with paint that had created alligators and tigers, all orange and black striped, a vague gray elephant and green dots of trees. "I feel better. A little sleepy.. I need to wipe my hands off.. " Hands held out, a mish-mash of camoflauge color towards Michael.

Unable to resist the stretch of tiny palms, his own larger hands lifted to press against them. Paint, chilled and sticky, nestled against skin and left behind small hand-prints in a swirl of animal-print color.

"You should come back and play with me. This is where I live, do you know how to get here? Did the other Harlen drive you?" With eyes wide, the boy leaned towards the man and tipped his head. "Will you tell him how to get here so he can come back? You can come back too, if you want."

"I --" He choked suddenly, eyes welling and darting towards the adult Harlen. "Of course, sweetheart. Of course, I'll come back. I know where to find you. I'll never forget."

Hands flattened to white paper and smeared off the design in a streaky handprint. "I need to get into my jammies." He yawned again. Instead of a child who defied and wanted to stay up late, by five, Harlen had learned that sleep was necessary in order to stay functioning the next day. He could put himself to bed without much fuss. He knew how to tuck himself in.

He eased the child reluctantly off his lap at the mention of pajamas. "Yes. Go put on your pajamas and hop into bed. We'll tuck you in and stay until you fall asleep. Right?" He glanced towards the older for confirmation as body angled up from the squat child's chair.


The smaller boy toddled towards his dresser and pulled the bottom drawer open, fishing through for a pajama set spotted in trucks and trains and planes. A little shirt was easily unbuttoned and his head was poked through the pajama top, arms threading through, all on his own.

"I used to hate this.." He breathed out, watching as his younger self tugged on pajama pants and hoisted them up. Bare feet padded around a moment and he let out another tiny yawn.

A paint-smeared hand gently rolled over the adult's shoulder and he bowed in. "I'm sorry, miel," he murmured against jaw as kisses were etched along it's seam. This stark lack-of made every brooch, every beautifully tailored suit, and every trinket within their apartment understandable.

Breaking away, he moved back towards the little boy. "All ready?" Voice chirped needlessly cheerful as hands hooked under arms and dragged the smaller body close again. Sitting him back upon hip, free hand lifted to comb back hair. "You're such a good boy, mielito. Getting dressed all by yourself." Lips puckered against forehead for a squeaky, silly smack. Michael reluctantly stepped to where the twin bed lay with its neatly drawn back sheets and pillow.

A hand simply chased after him, smearing down his arm. He didn't harp and try and care for the boy, mostly because he knew that somewhere, the boy recognized Michael as the caretaker, the comfort, the soft place to fall. Plucked up, he strung arms around and intercepted the kiss to his forehead with a little blink and tick of his mouth into a quick, fleeting smile.

"Here --" Lowering the younger Harlen back to the floor, Michael angled to draw back covers. A palm patted at the mattress. "Hop in. You're in luck tonight, Mister Prior. You've got a famous singer in your room and a writer. Would you rather have Harlen sing you a song or for me to tell you a story before you fall asleep?"

Scrambling into bed, he reached for the blankets and pulled them up around himself, in a very common, familiar pose. "I want a story." He yawned out, two little hands reaching out for Michael's hand and pulling it close, settling it on his head in a needy pull. "Here, like this.." Another set of instructions, even when Michael knew exactly what it was the boy wanted.

Over at the table, Harlen curled knees up and stared at the drawing laid out before him, blowing on it to dry before he carefully folded it up into fourths.

He hovered over the bed and adjusted the blankets more tightly around a little body. Fingerpoints tucked sheets in around shoulders and legs before his own lanky frame folded down upon the bed. The twin frame creaked beneath his weight. "A story. Hm, okay..." Trailing off, he nearly snickered as hands guided his own into the mess of his sandy-dark hair. Fingers rolled over the strands and kneaded into scalp gently. It was a familiar gesture, something that weighed down with meaning now, here, at the relative beginning.

Clearing his throat, Michael began again with the only story that seemed to matter here. The one that guaranteed a happy ending despite tragedy. "When the earth was still flat and the clouds made of fire, the mountains stretched up to the sky sometimes higher. People roamed the earth like big rolling kegs. They had two sets of arms, two sets of legs. They had two faces peering out of one giant head. And they could watch all around them and they talked while they read..." Green eyes flickered over to where Harlen sat apart. "And there were three sexes then: One that looked like two men glued back to back called the children of the sun. And similiar in shape and girth were the children of the earth. They looked like two girls rolled up in one. And the children of the moon were like a fork shoved on a spoon. They were part sun, part earth, part daughter, part son. Now the gods grew quite scared of our strength and defiance..."

Settling in bed, with a hand in his hair and a comforting, oddly familiar voice telling a story, the smaller boy's sniffles had died off and twisted back into something calm and tired. Classically sleepy-eyed, lashes drooped and he pulled blankets up to his chin, struggling to peek over them as Michael continued on. It didn't take long for the overwhelming sense of something safe and predictable to set in and wash sleep over him. A curled up, lanky boy, his head lolled into Michael's hand and he was out like a proverbial light.

"--Said I'll split them right down the middle, gonna rip them right in half. And then the storm clouds gathered above into great balls of fire. And then fire shot down from the sky in bolts like shiny blades of life and it ripped right through the flesh of the children of the sun and the moon and the earth. And some Indian god sewed the wound up into a hole pulled it around to our bellies to remind us of the price we pay. And Osirius and the gods of the Nile gathered up a big storm to blow a hurricane and scatter us away." It was not your standard fairy-tale purified from the darkest roots of the Brothers Grimm. Instead, marked with violence and reunion, it was a bloody myth hardly appropriate at all for such a young audience. He missed the more subtle features of Harlen's descent into sleep. When eyes rolled back, the little boy was heavy against his palm. Bowing in, lips swept over a curved cheek.

Across the room, the older Harlen stood and wandered over to slip a hand onto his shoulder. "We have to go now. While we can." He explained. It would be easiest to slip out while one was sleeping, and while Anna Prior was still tucked away doing whatever it was she did when she locked the door to her son's bedroom. "C'mon.. it's time to go."

"No. No, I want to wait. I want to make sure..."

Left speechless, Harlen didn't know what to do. He hesitated to let Michael stay, to make sure. Make sure of what? "He's asleep. He is. He'll be fine. I'll be fine, I'm here, aren't I? Well enough to loop back around and show you... Michael, please. You can't stay. We can't." He insisted, his hand left grasping at air when a shoulder canted away. Instead, it lifted and smeared over hair.

As spine straightened, he continued to smooth over and adjust the blankets around the tiny body. Head shook gently and shoulder ticked away from the adult Harlen who served as his tour guide. Voice wavered when he spoke again. "Don't make me leave you."

"You aren't leaving me. You'll come back. You know what happens.. oh God, please, please don't ... don't be upset. You .." A breath left lungs, his voice still a careful whisper. "You can come back. Okay? I'll let you come back. Just.. please leave now. When he wakes up, he'll think he imagined it all. Here.. you can take this with you.." The square of a painting was held out, tucked against Michael's lapel.

Harlen provided a convincing argument, but he couldn't help but fold in deeper and more insistently. Possessive arms lifted to creep around the tiny body of the pianist-as-a-boy and he blanketed him. "Yes, but you know what happened to you. Oh god. I -- I don't know what to do." Mind stretched, aching with impossible notions as heart tore itself into two. Shuddering out a breath, he blinked back a sudden burn in his eyes.

"I -- Oh god. I could --" This was not a conversation for young ears, sleeping or not. Pecking a small kiss to the boy's temple, he stalked away from the bed and fled to the door in an angry stream of motion. "I could kill her. I could fucking strangle her. Look at this goddamn room. Not a single toy. What the hell! You were so little. You were too little." A hand smeared roughly upon his face and broke away his frustrated hiss. "Fine. I'll be back. I have -- I have to. Let's go now though. Come on..."

"You just have to see. That's all you're supposed to do. Let me show you." He explained, hands unfolding, until Michael's heartbreak turned into an unexpected burst of anger towards the legendary Anna Prior. Despite how much Harlen struggled with loyalty to her, with a complicated love that he couldn't crush, with missing her and hating her and all of that, words still dug in. Someone was talking about killing his mother. He didn't care who. "You don't have to strangle her. In ten months, she'll put a bag over her head and duct tape it around her neck and asphyxiate herself. She'll do the work for you, save you the legal fees and paperwork." He snapped back, and hand lifting in some flitting dismissal.

"Don't tell me to look at the room, I lived in it. I know it. I know. Don't ... act so fucking slighted." Yanking the door open, he pulled and traipsed back towards the hallway that stretched out in the distance.

It was impossible for Michael not to invade every aspect of the prophet's being. Greedily and with all the rapid-pace and stubborness of kudzu, he grew into each small corner and unearthed part. Built up upon an offense that wasn't his own, lack of perception led to an insensitivity. Quickly, he deflated at words and felt himself shrink back. Head ducked. "I'm sorry miel. I -- It's just a lot. It's -- I'm sorry."

Glancing backwards to where small boy sprawled out in sleep, he sighed and reluctantly crossed back over. The door was shut back into its frame. Fingers curled over its panel for a brief moment before he turned around. Meekly, he stepped closer to Harlen. "I apologize. I got -- That was out of line. You were the most wonderful child." Thumb rolled over the smeary boy-sized palm-prints upon his own.

With the door safely closed behind, and the elevator music ringing in his ears, Harlen lifted arms and folded them carefully across his chest. In a moment, he had dragged the five year old with him, the boy who was confused and searching and constantly left by himself. Wavering, his breath inflated lungs and he leaned closer, his head settled against Michael's shoulder. He didn't have many words. He didn't know what to say. "I know. And what happened. I turned into a terror. An insufferable brat. I
want to be sweet like that again. Polite, and.. I don't know. I don't know. I want to wake up. I want.. it has to be one of these doors here.."

A reassuring hum began to rumble in his throat. He was a reliable vehicle for comfort. Shifting, he gathered the lanky man into his arms and began to smooth palms down the line of his back. "You are sweet. Sweet and polite. Mi prinicipito." Kiss nudged against temple and he dropped away arms. It was fine, words echoed from beneath the door they had left moments ago. It was okay. Things were already better.

In an angry rush of movement, Harlen wound down the hallway and pushed open doors, only to slam them closed again when they weren't what he wanted to see. Some scenes were familiar, some he didn't recognize, but would, eventually, in time. Each one was met with a groan of dissatisfaction.

He watched Harlen wheel away sadly and begin to rifle through doors. Sounds and flashes of light accompanied each along with the sound of discontent, but he made no more to join in the efforts. Instead, holding an unintentional vigil outside a childhood door, Michael folded arms over his chest and watched.


He couldn't find it. Maybe it just wasn't there. Maybe, in a strange bout of jealousy over himself as a child, he wanted to rip Michael away from the boy that Harlen felt so connected with and separated from. "I need your help, Michael.." He begged, a few paces away, his eyes wide and his hands motioning to the doors. "I need you. I need you to help me.." He pleaded, marching back over and stringing arms up and around Michael's neck.

He bowed to the tugging arms with his spine curving and shoulders slanting out. Yet feet couldn't lift from where they were planted. "Wait. Please --" He begged as hands folded over ribs and began to tug Harlen in. "We need to stay. We -- What if you start crying again? He'll need us to come back and smooth out his hair." Pleading with the prophet, he felt himself briefly disconnect from logic and reason. Harlen was right here: fully grown, more or less intact. It was fine, but another part was convinced of a real, living-breathing child in the next room.

He had wriggled into memory, or out of memory and into reality, he had materialized himself in two places at once, and now was faced with what he wanted more. To be comforted then or comforted now. Of course he'd cry again. Of course Anna would come in and crawl into his bed and terrify him with her attempt at apology and heartfelt expression. But there was nothing he could do. Michael couldn't be there every time.

A head buried into his shoulder and he dragged him to angle away from the door, fingers threading through the back of his neck, twisting through hair. "Please.. please, I want to wake up. I thought I could show you more, but not tonight, I'll freak out, I'll wake up screaming, I don't want to. I just want to wake up and be okay.." Mouth mumbled words against the stretch of his neck, and he was now less dream-guide and more the prince in reality, pleading for something he wanted that Michael could provide.

Heart thrumming violently, he gasped and struggled to breathe against the clinging press of arms. Something cracked internally and released him from his pose. Michael stumbled forward. "Okay. We're fine. You're okay. We're going to wake up. Just -- Open your eyes." Thumb rolled along a knob of bone upon his back as instructions were coaxed from ragged vocal folds.

At instructions, he tipped his head up, eyes clenched closed, and with a simple motion pried them open. For a moment, he was blind, everything black and screaming loudly until he found that eyes were closed again. Pushing up confusedly from the mattress, he sat, the dream world fallen away, and eyes pried open again to stare around a blurry, dark, but familiar bedroom, filled with the things he had stuffed into it. He was in a much bigger bed. There were no paints here.


No paint, but a painting. Michael slept upon his back with hands folded over his chest in a corpse's pose. Pinned between forearms and ribcage was the child's fingerpainting. He was actively aware of that scratch of construction paper and the sour smell of paint long before the sterile hallway became their bedroom again. Relatively calm and composed as he surfaced into a reluctant waking, Michael stared at the ceiling wordlessly for a moment. The lump in his throat was forcefully swallowed back again.

"We -- We're home now," he croaked out as spine slowly lifted off the mattress. Hands lifted to knot into the mess of his hair. In process, the painting fell from his chest, its easel. In partial awe and a stunned sort of wonder, Michael felt his mouth twist into a glazed-over grin. "No fucking way," he drawled as the painting was gingerly lifted and unfolded.

Home now. It barely occurred to him that they had been anywhere else. Fingers lifted to rake through dark hair he was stubbornly growing out, and peeled it back from his forehead. "It happens sometimes." He croaked dryly. "I have a box. Of things." That he had sucked inadvertently from the dream world, snatches of fabric, a pencil, a fistful of sand. "You just have to want it enough."

Staring out at the doorway to the bathroom, spine hunched over and he settled elbows on knees, the sheets dragged around him in something haphazard and uneven. Easily, he turned back into the five year old, so easily comforted by hands and stories and a voice without a name. It was just a presence that he found comfort in. "Oh... fuck.." He wailed as lungs lurched with air and he coughed out a misplaced sob.

The notion and all its possibilities struck him as curious. Wanting something enough here was enough to bring it from a strange sort of oblivion. The picture was spread out across the top of his legs and smoothed over with a palm. Paint still soft in its drying stage stuck against the edge of his finger. Michael moved to announce that they should go back, snatch the child Harlen from his sheets and bring him back. The want was there. It was just the mechanics of transport that failed them. He was on the verge of speech when Harlen's sob shattered his decision. Scooting over, arms strung across shoulders. He pulled him in. "Come here. Come here, miel."

"I wish you were there! I wish it had been you, all the time. I wish... it's all.. so fucked up, oh God, it's like.. I can't separate you. Why can't I separate you, I want you to be everything, and you can't, because how.. wrong is that!?"


Fingers rolled over the sleep-tangled mess of his hair. "You can't separate because I was there or because I'll keep going back. I want to be that, but you're right. I can't. I -- I don't know if this is good either. I don't know -- It felt so real, Harlen. I swore I was sitting in your room with you on my lap. The picture feels real."

Pulled in easily, Harlen's face dug into the stretch of a bronzed shoulder, his own arms slinking across ribs. "I just wish you had been everywhere.. everyone. I wish I lived in some world where you were always.. I don't know. I want a pretend world again. I want dreams where none of that happened. I want to erase it. I want it gone. Make me a new one. Make me a new past again, please?" He asked miserably, his head lifting so that he could wrap arms around a neck and peck at cheeks. "You did it before, can you fix it all again? Can we dream more about it? Where you were always there, and you always loved me, and you took me away from anything awful. I don't know. I don't know, maybe you were, just.. fix it, okay? Just go back and make everything fixed." He instructed, as if Michael had somehow stumbled on an easy way to heal everything over.