Graceling AU: as Jameson approaches his thirteenth birthday, Anti spirals dangerously.
This turned out long. I would open it in another tab if I were you. Warnings for alcohol use, some gore, and references to depression, suicidal ideation, and past sexual abuse.
Graceling AU is not the most popular AU but it will always have a grip on me!! Let me know if you enjoy.
.
He dreads the fall, welcomes winter.
When the leaves start to turn in that year, he feels a coldness go down the line of him, like something petting its fingers along the inside of his body. Anti pulls his hood lower over his eyes.
Autumn's been difficult for a while. There was what happened with his uncle. There was what happened with the guildsmaster. There was what happened with his white-eyed Monster, so powerful a pain it used to debilitate him throughout most of September. Groaning for the first person who ever loved him in his whole life to come back, just so he could tell him again he was sorry he failed him.
And then, of course, there was Jameson.
He's so glad his little brother came into the world, make no mistake. But every October, something terrible happens: Jameson gets a little closer to being a man.
Anti sucks in a breath of air, growing crisper by the minute, and he steels himself square up against it: says a “fuck you” to his own petty need to keep him small, to contain his favorite human alive into someone who will always love him perfectly (safely). JJ is not his doll anymore and he knows that that truth is important. It was simpler when he was, in a way, before Anti admitted to the both of them that he loved him completely. When he was a puppet for Anti's revenge, he wouldn't have cared so much if JJ was now tall enough to climb onto White Bird without help.
The thought nearly leaves him breathless, which is stupid. So stupid, the way his stomach turns over, like it will erupt its acid all the way up his throat and come up in a mess of bile.
He has to set his own stupid, selfish desire aside, like he always does, and have a calm, happy birthday for the most important person in the world.
Thirteen. Thirteen. Thirteen.
Somehow, he thinks it's going to be a little harder this year.
.
“Can't I have something other than knives for my birthday this year?” the love of his life asks him, tilting his head at him, smiling just enough that it could be a joke.
Anti blinks at him, straightening up to look at him from across their dining table. “What do you mean?”
“Come on. I know you were at the blacksmith's. Are you getting me more weapons?”
The teasing feels strange. Of course he is. Why would he not be?
“JJ, you need to be able to protect yourself.”
The humor falls off his little brother's face and JJ looks away from him. Did he just roll his eyes? Hell, he really is getting to be a teenager.
The thought is even less funny than the teasing.
“You're just little,” Anti says. “You need – ”
“I'm not that little!” JJ's hands clap together with the words. Anti scoffs, stepping back from him, shaking his head. “Anti, look at me.”
“I'm looking! Fuck's sake, what?”
“I'm not little, I'm going to be thirteen! And I know how to protect myself. It's all you've ever taught me. I don't want any more knives or bows or anything. Can't I have some normal presents this year?”
“You're still little,” says Anti, louder than he means to. “You're just small.”
JJ stares at him. The face of the person he loves most in the world is full of a sort of determination Anti's not used to. When did he become so sure that he wanted anything other than what Anti taught him to want?
“I'm just saying,” JJ begins.
“Yeah, Jameson,” Anti snaps. “I see what you're saying. I'm going to my rendezvous. Dinner will be up for you.”
If JJ replies, he makes it a point not to see it. It's not until he's saddling his mare that the conversation hits him in the chest. Anti sucks in a deep breath, covering his face with his hand for a moment, and White Bird pushes her neck against him.
As he rides away, he glances back at his keep, and sees his heart watching him go from the garden, sitting on a bench he used to have to be lifted up to sit on.
.
“Marry me,” Anja says.
Anti weighs her delivery carefully, adjusting his scale on the stone floor of the abandoned house where he meets her once every two months. He doesn't bother to look up at her. “I beg your unbelievable pardon.”
She laughs, throwing back that untamed dark hair. Wild little killer, she always has been. When she sharpened her canines into points, though, he didn't figure she was in the market for a husband.
“Why so shocked? Wouldn't we be a good match? We both have some land, both run a brutal market or two. I spend half the year out of the country, you wouldn't get sick of me.”
“You've never even seen my face,” Anti points out.
“As if I care. You can't be much uglier than me anymore.”
It's interesting to be propositioned by anyone not aware of what he looks like. Anja's seen his eyes and hands, but not too much else. He's masked and hooded now. Then again, maybe the curves of him are enough. There used to be people who could look at him beneath a cloak and still know, somehow. People always find out. Doesn't matter who they are. Eventually, everyone wants him.
There had been another Monster or two, of course, once upon a time. He remembers the feeling of sitting, surrounded by people, and knowing they wouldn't hurt him, or touch him, or gaze at him with that heaviness that suffocated him so many times. Shit, it was like another life. There had even been someone he thought he loved, before that. He would have married Dark, if he let him. Look how that turned out.
“The amount is correct,” Anja tells him.
Anti blinks, realizing he's still staring at his scale.
“Right,” he says, tucking it away. He gives her her payment. “It'll be a no on the marriage.”
“If it's about the kid, I can be sweet to kids,” Anja says. “Look, I brought him a present like I always do when I'm out of the country.”
Anti had informed several of his contacts that he had an heir. In some ways, it was a risk, but JJ would be his successor eventually. They would need to know. Anja was cleverer than most of the men he worked with: she knew the way to his heart was through Jameson. He turns to see her holding out a very fine carved horse, painted with blue reigns and a white saddle. He takes it tenderly. JJ's favorite.
“He'll be a man soon enough, anyway,” Anja adds. “He could handle it if you took a wife.”
As soon as the feeling of warmth came, it's gone completely. Anti's gaze darkens. He hands the horse back. “I won't be bribed into marrying you, Anja.”
“Oh, just take it for the boy, Anti. If you don't want to marry me, I don't care.”
“No. Maybe next time I'll bring it to him. But not the same day you asked me to marry you.”
She shrugs and laughs at nothing, slugging her pack back over her shoulder. “Offer stands, if you ever change your mind. If it's kids you're concerned with, I could give you a couple. Who cares? I like babies. You could do the rest from there. My hair, your eyes. Maybe we'd be a handsome couple after all.”
He rolls his eyes at her and leaves, leaping back onto White Bird, but the idea strikes him in a weird way, twisting uncomfortably in his stomach – but lighting something up, too. JJ was the cutest five-year-old. Anti missed the earliest years with him, and JJ suffered so much in his absence. What a blessing it would have been to have had him from the day he was born, so nothing ever hurt him.
Would things be different? Would Jameson not be acting the way he started acting months ago? Would he understand more or less?
Does he understand at all, now? There had been what happened with the beautiful blue Monster, the one who LOOKED at Anti. Maybe JJ never forgave him for that. Jameson's face after it happened...
Anti closes his eyes. He wishes he could shut out that image. And then everything else, too.
.
It's been bad lately. Hurts to admit. He was doing so good for a while. He was past all that shit. He was working too much to think, and spent the rest of his time with his Jameson. Everything was under control, under his control, the way things need to be. He was... he was safe, felt safe, felt... loved, even, in a way he never has before. He never went to bed without a hug from his little brother, like a hot water bottle pressed against his chest, and when he woke up, they would eat breakfast together, and JJ would lean against his side sometimes, and chew his food loudly to annoy him if they started to argue over anything at all. Anti felt good.
He doesn't know where the pain was able to slip back in, black smoke filling up cavities in his brain and liver. He doesn't know where the old thoughts found the roots to grow back up. Maybe it's his fault. He can't tell anymore.
It's been bad lately, though. Sometimes, when JJ hugs him before bed, Anti wonders if he hates the love of his life. He wonders what it would be like to leave him in this castle forever and never come home.
Thirteen, oh, fuck. Thirteen. He doesn't know why he's throwing up at midnight on a perfectly harmless night, but for the first time since JJ insisted on moving out of his room ten months ago, he's glad his baby brother isn't here to hear him.
It's bad again. Really bad. He doesn't know what to do.
.
The reach the end of September in a slide of heat-shimmering sunsets and hot cider served alongside their dinners. Anti lets Jameson go to the fall festival in the southern village every year, and though he has no energy for it, he knows he can't get out of bringing him. Protesting or complaining will only make JJ look at him in that borderline disgusted way he's been doing lately, like his big brother is such a burden to him. Anti laughs humorlessly, pulling his cloak around him.
“I could go on my own this year,” Jameson points out, stepping in front of him so he can see.
“Yeah, fucking right,” Anti flings back, and JJ all but scowls and ties up his little boots. Anti watches with some satisfaction. No matter what he says, he really is an under-sized kid. Anti swoops down and kisses the side of his head, surprising him.
“Come on, cheer up,” he tells them both, ruffling up JJ's hair. “We'll go get you something sugary and a new knucklebones set.”
He lets JJ run around the festival grounds while he watches from a good spot on the hill with some shade (shadows to hide in) from a groaning oak tree he knows well. He prefers to be set apart from others, for more reasons than one. Would be bad to be recognized as a Monster, of course, but it might be almost as bad to be recognized as an assassin with a business so poisonous he could be arrested for carrying a quarter of his daily merchandise. Luckily, if anyone ever does catch him or become too suspicious, it only takes some gentle Persuasion to disperse their doubts.
Still, when he sees Jameson squaring up with some huge man trying to tell him he's too young to sign up for the archery competition, Anti wishes he could be beside him. He starts laughing hard. They're not far down the hill and he can see the determination on Jameson's face.
The city folk... well, most of them know by now there's a kid with no voice who lives in the strange, private keep near the forest. Even Anti didn't feel it right to keep Jameson away from making friends, so he's let him interact with local children enough that now, it's not so unheard of for a little boy to be unable to speak. He doesn't like it, though. Any extra eyes on JJ are eyes that could identify him too, even if there's only a sliver of a chance.
Or decide that he's a vulnerable young boy. Pretty too. Small and harmless. If someone wanted to harm him, they could just – Anti hisses and strikes himself in the side of the head, trying to cut the thought off before it goes any further. No. He can see him. He knows where he is. And right now, he's sternly insisting, with nothing but gestures, that he plans to shoot in the competition.
They don't end up letting JJ do it – they're shooting bows too big for him anyway – but they do give in and let him take a little hunting bow and show off. A couple boys he hangs out with every now and then watch with disinterest – and then shock – and then delight, whooping and hollering, as Jameson sinks four arrows so close into his target they must chip each other's heads.
“Yeah, thatta boy,” chuckles Anti. “One thing I gave you worth having, I guess.”
He sure hasn't taught Jameson to be a good person. In truth, he has no idea where he got that from. Would it be better, if Jameson had the same sort of ferocity he had as a kid? If he didn't always smile so sweetly at every stranger he passed and swear to Anti that he would keep him safe with his first knife?
No. There's nothing that would ever be worth Jameson being the sort of scared and alone that turned Anti into the person he is.
Someone runs past him, a kid with soft green hair. Anti stares at him as he stumbles and falls to his knees, turning to look back at Anti with huge mismatched eyes, so bright they seem to shine with color. It's not fear there, though. Just the pure, feral need to survive. A cornered animal. Anti does not speak.
Absalom scrambles up and keeps running. He won't get away, though. There wasn't anywhere to go.
Anti realizes he's striking his head again. He clenches his hand into a fist and does it once more, to make the thought stop, to make his skull ring. In the grass below, Jamie is jumping around with his friends and laughing so brightly Anti feels the need to turn away.
Where was he when he was thirteen? No longer running. Staring numbly at the ceiling and waiting to die.
.
He knows that his client told him the target's name. Adam? Aaron? Anthony?
Something. Son of something, did something for work. Doesn't really matter now. They won't identify him by an introduction.
At this point, they might not identify him at all.
Anti cackles and brings his blade down again, letting it find soft liver and a fresh spray of hot sweet blood. He gets so bored, locked away in his tower. The trade keeps him busy most of the time, sure, but busy is different from this, this, this. Not sure how many times he's stabbed him. Something, something, something. He should have counted to thirteen just to make it poetic. A chunk of something wet and slimy flies into his eye and he flicks it out, sitting back for a second.
He finds himself panting, struggling to breathe through the wetness of his mask. He pulls it down his chin, sucking in autumn air and the copper dessert of his kill, hands tight around his knife.
A kid stares at him from his place at the head of the dead man. His knees are tucked under him, a streak of freckles cut across one side of his face, a flash of blood hiding the other side. In the darkness, his green hair looks dark, one strand falling tenderly into his brilliant eyes.
“Go on, then,” Anti pants, letting his knife thud against the earth beside the boy. “Have your turn at him.”
Absalom stares at him, eyes alight with some burden of intent Anti cannot recall without pulling a thousand memories up too, like blood beneath a thorn in his hand.
“The first time you do it, it will be such a relief,” Anti whispers. “The helplessness evaporates like water on the red-hot tool the blacksmith forges. You suck in a breath and your chest is clear. You stab him again.”
Anti pulls out a second blade and buries it in the stomach of the corpse. “And when you do, you feel better. What a shock to the system: the impossible truth that he will never, never touch you again.”
He throws his head back and laughs again, high and wild. Never, never, never again. Absalom doesn't move.
“Go on, then,” says Anti, louder now, howling. “You stupid runt. Have your go at him!”
Absalom's long white fingers touch the unfamiliar handle of the blade.
“For once in your fucking life, just fight!” Anti screams.
He's alone in the darkness. Even the moon has left him without a friend, and the spirit of the man beneath him is long gone from his cooling body.
“Absalom,” Anti hears himself whispering, gripping at his emerald hair. “How could they?”
Blood stains his arms and face.
.
Not doing well. Not doing well.
JJ will be thirteen in a week, and he can't know.
But he does.
He's hovering around his door all the time, bringing books in and asking him to read to him like he used to when Jameson was littler, before he decided he didn't need to lie on his shoulder and put his little arm around his stomach for a few warm moments every night.
Anti stops coming downstairs for dinner and has his food left outside his door so he can eat in his room. Writes his business partners and lackeys and reroutes distribution for a few weeks, pretending he's out at sea. There will be a cut in his profits, but money stopped mattering so long ago anyway. Why did he even bother to become so profitable? For the guildsmaster? He was less than trash to Dark. He's less than trash to everyone old enough to lust after him. Maybe it's just time to accept that he can't make himself worth anything no matter what he tries.
He can't believe he's in this place again, this darkness. It's so much work to get out. He doesn't know if he has the strength. Again and again and again. How many times in his life does he have to do this? What is he even holding on to anymore?
“Anti?”
Jameson's in his doorway again, and Anti looks up from a scab he's been picking at, making his face calm. “Yes.”
Jamie hovers, twisting his shirt in his hands for a moment before he releases and raises them. “Wondered if you wanted to go for a ride?”
Hell, could Jameson have asked him anything that would require more energy? Anti could melt, really, he thinks to himself. Right here in this bed. If he laid down long enough, he might just melt into a slug of a man. He wouldn't sleep, no, but he would lie here as goop for hours on end. Not thinking is such a relief.
“Sure, darling,” he says, trying not to croak. “Be down in a few.”
He puts himself together for him, and it's easier than he expected, in a way, because his body just seems to drag itself through doing what needs to be done. He's coming out of his room, fixing his mask over his mouth, when JJ makes a gesture at him from the hallway.
“Do you really need that?” he asks earnestly. “We'll just go out over the quiet side of the hills. No one will bother us. You can let your hands and face free, right?”
Anti stares at him.
JJ expounds. “I just thought it might be more comfortable for you.”
“It wouldn't be,” Anti tells him shortly. “You've never asked me something like that before.”
JJ twists up his mouth and doesn't press.
He's had the foresight to tack White Horse himself, which Anti appreciates more than he tells him. He didn't know if he had it in him to get through all that. “Okay, where's Bertrand?”
“Can I ride with you on White Bird?”
Another surprise. Jameson loves his own pony, always has. There's no reason for them to ride together. But Anti nods, offering him a hand, and Jameson swings up onto Anti's horse.
That's... close. Which is – it's normal, to be close to his little brother. Why is there an alarm bell trembling in the back of his head, ready to ring?
This is my Jameson, he tells himself coolly, closing his eyes for a second. My brother. There is no one safer in the world.
He'll be thirteen in a week, whispers back another part of him. You had a sister once too. And you remember when she became old enough to forget you were her blood.
Anti clears his throat, touching his heel to White Bird's side. They ride out along the hills, the grass beginning to brown and the trees flourishing with red and orange, and he tries to stay focused, feeling far away from himself. The warmth of JJ in front of him is supposed to be a comfort, and his little brother doesn't make him talk, sitting contentedly against his chest and sometimes patting Bird's neck.
“Let's stop here,” JJ says, pointing to a grove where they used to come have lunch and practice their sign language sometimes, after his voice was taken. Jameson caught onto it so fast, faster than Anti.
They sit beneath a familiar tree and JJ puts his head against his shoulder. Anti touches his head and gazes at him for a second.
Jameson catches him watching and sits up a little, sucking in a deep breath before raising his hands. “Anti?”
“Yeah, kid.” “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“Listen,” Jameson picks at his sleeve for a second. “I'm worried about you.”
Anti lets his head thunk back against the tree, biting back a sigh. He really is the shittiest big brother. “You don't have to be, Jameson,” he says tensely. “I'm fine. You're a kid, just worry about kid stuff, okay?”
“Half the time I'm just a kid, and the other half, you need me to be ready for everything,” JJ says. “What I'm saying is, I'm old enough to know you're not yourself.”
“I'm not, am I?” Anti asks, irritable now.
“Anti, are you really going to make me confront you with everything I've noticed?”
“You can spare us both the conversation by stopping it right now.”
Jameson stands and Anti misses his heat. His little brother paces around the grove for a second, and it really does remind him of a little man somehow, with the way he scowls and holds his hands clenched.
“Look, Anti,” Jameson says, turning back to him. “You can't go on like this. And you don't have to!”
Anti groans, rubbing at his face.
“I mean it! You just – you make yourself a prisoner in that keep! You don't speak with anyone but me and the freaks you work with! Of course you're miserable.”
“You say that like I have a choice over this,” Anti snarls. “If you can recall, I'm the freak, Jameson. I'm trying not to get – to get – to get hurt.”
“I know, Anti, but it doesn't have to be like this. What kind of a life is this for you? You need to make – just, even one friend, and I'd be happy!”
Anti laughs with no humor at all. “Right. I can't believe that after all these years, you still don't get it at all. No, you know what, that's not fair of me. You're a kid, you're not supposed to get these things. But you can't tell me what to do about my own deformity, Jameson.”
“People with deformities get to have friends and family, Anti, even if some people will always be cruel. But you don't have to tolerate anyone who's cruel. You have Persuasion, and you're so fierce! You could handle anyone who tried to hurt you, couldn't you? Why do you hide away when you've proven a thousand times you're deadlier than anyone else out there?”
Anti's starting to get this cramp in his stomach that's... not unfamiliar, but old. Been a long time since he had that particular anxiety. He closes his eyes. But no, he swore to JJ he'd never block out his signing just because he could.
“You have to come out with me more, you have to meet some people. You will never talk to me about what makes you so scared – ”
“I'm not fucking scared.”
“But you have to talk to someone.”
“JJ.” Anti clasps his hands together and takes in a deep breath. “Jameson. Look. I get this, okay? You're worried about me. Would it help if I admit that – that I – I have been a little under the weather?”
Jameson scrutinizes him, standing in front of him with his hands at his side.
“But it happens,” Anti continues, more steadily. “I know it's unpleasant. I'm sorry I can't get better right away. But I will. I've been through this before and it always clears up soon enough.”
“Yes, and then it comes back again.”
Anti stops short, staring at him. “What do you mean?”
“You were like this a couple times when I was littler, too,” Jameson plows on. He just says it like he's not ripping Anti's belief in himself apart in front of his eyes. “When I got my growth and you couldn't fix it, you stopped eating the same way I did, I still remember. And you looked so pale all the time, and you would slap your head like you've started doing again. Then when I was eight – ”
“JJ,” Anti croaks.
“No, I promised myself we would talk about this!” JJ insists. “I'm not a little boy anymore, I want to help look after you! When I was eight you were coming home in blood every night and then lying in bed all day, and after Marvin – ”
Anti grits his teeth together. “Don't talk about that.”
“You were leagues away from me even when I touched you,” JJ says, and his big eyes are welling up now. “You're leagues away from me now!”
He feels it. He feels like he's a league above him, watching all this happen. Like someone other than him is finding out that he has failed to hide his hard times from Jameson on repeat, for years. He never wanted Jameson to have to worry about this.
“Anti,” JJ says, and Anti thinks that if he could say it out loud, it might come out as a whimper. “Please, you have to do something different. You can't live like this anymore.”
He comes towards him and tries to get him to reach out and hug him, but Anti finds himself staring right through him, registering his motions belatedly. Even when he does, he can't hug him.
“Anti,” Jameson repeats, and he crouches down to touch his beard with his nails, his other hand cupping Anti's cheek. When did his hands start to grow? He used to put his tiny nails along his cheek and scratch Anti like he was a cat. It was so cute. He was so tiny and so affectionate.
“I love you, I can't watch you keep doing this. My friend Peter, the other boys say his mom got so sad she died from it. I don't want you to die from being sad, Anti. I'm sad too, okay? We spend all day in our keep, and even with the other kids, I know I'm an outcast. We don't have to live like this. Marvin said – ”
But Anti can't bear to hear one more time about the blue Monster and his magical family that loves him despite everything, in his little kingdom where no one hurts him. It's a myth he told Jameson to comfort him, to make him believe that a Monster like them could ever have a happy life. He should never have let Jameson grow close to him. He doesn't understand.
“We do have to live like this,” Anti hears himself say, voice completely flat.
“I can't live like this, Anti,” Jameson signs, and after that, Anti doesn't even remember how they get home, or if he tries anything at all to make Jameson stop crying so hard his shoulders shake.
.
It's the sick part of him, he thinks, that finds it so easy to shut Jameson out completely. His little brother tries to talk to him a couple more times, but Anti can't seem to remember anything he says, not in detail. Just that he's unhappy. That he doesn't want to keep going like this.
He's old enough now. He's realized that Anti can't give him a normal life. Probably not even a happy one. He wants something else, and isn't that his right?
It's the day before Jameson's birthday that Anti finds himself in the empty kitchen, grasping at a bottle of alcohol he knows the cook put there, so long untouched that his fingerprints show in the places where they clear dust. He hasn't had anything but wine since... since when? Sometimes, he would drink with Dark, practically sitting at his feet. And once or twice, Wil brought home strong stuff to drink, and he loved how the twins would get louder and more excited when they drank, but he doesn't think he touched any of it with them.
The burn of the drink is foreign to him. He probably shouldn't have started by throwing back a long swig of it, kneeling by the cupboards while Jameson sits with his tutor two rooms over, but it doesn't matter. Once he starts drinking, he doesn't stop. He goes to his study and paces for hours, half-heartedly pulling out some work, but soon he's too drunk to even pretend he's doing anything other than talking to ghosts.
“Maybe he'd be happy if you were here,” he tells Robbie, slumping to the floor beside a memory of him, consumed with a sudden need to help him brush his hair and get dressed for bed again. “Even when you were unwell, didn't we have each other? Then he wouldn't say I have no friends. We were always friends.”
He would kiss his face if he could, kiss it a thousand times.
“But I'm the one who let them kill you,” he croaks. “Everything's already ruined for me. If he goes too, what will be the point to being alive? If I can't make him happy, why am I doing any of this? Does it even matter if I get what's mine, or if my mother suffers?”
Even as he says it, the weight of his hatred for her rears up and strikes him in the chest, and he groans around it, teeth clenching.
“No wonder JJ doesn't want me. What a complete misery to be around I am.”
He laughs and lets his head fall to the side as it swims. He's drinking again, cold in the place where Robbie should be beside him, when he hears the door swing open.
Somewhere, there's a distant rush of panic - he's not supposed to see this – but it's as numb as most everything else.
"Go back to bed," he manages, trying to stand up, though he can't quite get there. "It's late by now. You're supposed to be sleeping."
JJ just looks at him. What? What's that gaze for? Anti scoffs and sits back down, shaking his head at him.
"You just wanted something else to be annoyed with me about, huh? Go back to bed! How did you even know I was down here?"
"I could feel you from all the way in my room," JJ signs back coolly.
Anti doesn't know what the fuck that means, and he doesn't care.
"Why are you doing this?" Jameson asks. In his sleepshirt, he looks bigger than usual. Anti realizes he hasn't bought him new sleeping clothes in... how long, he wonders? Did he start growing the day he moved out of Anti's room, and now his little brother is just on the other side of the castle, becoming a stranger to him? Anti groans as a wave of something almost physical lances through his chest, gripping at the floor, and JJ flinches too.
"I can't stay a baby forever, Anti," his little brother tells him anyway. Anti cackles, shaking his head, half slumped over himself at the table.
"Why not?" he asks.
Jameson just shakes his head at him, and Anti laughs again. The little light of his life, so disappointed in him.
"You think I'm holding you back from something," he says, rubbing at his forehead. "Like being an adult is some privilege I won't give you. All kids think that way, I suppose. So they tell me. I never wanted to - to be an adult. I wished so badly for one day where anybody in my life would just treat me like a child."
If JJ answers, he can't see; his vision is blurring and doubling over.
"Why wasn't I like other kids?" Anti asks himself, squeezing the lukewarm bottle of his vodka. "What was so wrong with me? I didn't ask to be a freak. But maybe it was my fault. I never fought back, you know? Not until I was old enough to kill. And then I never stopped killing. You think I don't know - you think I don't know what a monster I am?"
He catches a smell of vanilla soap through the sharp empty vodka smell, and he looks up hazily to find Jameson close to him, blinking those big, mismatched eyes. Anti reaches up and holds his cheeks between his hands.
"There you are, darling," he says. "Nobody will ever hurt you. You can just be a kid. You can sleep and no one will come in your room. If they did, you could tell me, and I would make it stop. I would make it stop..."
"Anti." He makes out his name on his brother's hands. "I'm here."
"It's okay, Absalom," he whimpers. "I'll make it stop."
There's a pause from his brother. "How?" he signs finally, and Anti chokes on a sob.
"I don't know," he says. "It never does stop. It never does. I kill it and then it lives again. I can't make it go away. I'm always going to be... broken."
He cups JJ's face again frantically. "But you're not supposed to know that. Don't tell."
JJ nods faintly and reaches up to touch his face in return. Anti flinches back hard, and Jameson stills. It takes a long moment, but his hand returns: he sets his nails tenderly against Anti's chin and scratches at his beard. Anti gazes at him, feeling something wet on his face.
"I'll sleep in your room if you'll come rest," JJ says.
Anti blinks, trying to focus. He's not sure he can get upstairs. But JJ's hand wraps around his own, tugging at him. He staggers up, and when JJ pulls him, he follows.
He has some blurry memory of falling into bed. JJ's gone and he jolts up, head swimming hard as he looks for him. But he's back a moment later, slipping into the room and pressing a cold skin of water into his hands.
"Don't need that."
"Drink some, Anti."
"Sign language is so hard when you're drunk."
"Well, here." He pushes the water into his face and Anti laughs.
"I don't like your laugh like that," he thinks JJ signs, but it's hard to tell. "Scoot over, okay?"
Anti's brow furrows as he feels him coming to sit beside him on the bed. "What? I thought you'd sleep in your little bed."
It's still in the corner. He can't move it out of his room. The headboard is decorated with carved ponies.
"Don't you prefer me here?"
Didn't he used to? Every now and then, when JJ would have nightmares or got sick, he would crawl into Anti's bed and wrap his tiny arms around his neck. After his surgery, Jamie slept in his bed for seven months straight. Anti used to wake up four times a night to make sure he was still breathing. Maybe he did prefer that. That warm little body breathing in the bed beside him. He always knew he was so perfectly safe.
But this isn't a little boy anymore. He feels the tears rise up, and he shakes his head hard, laughing again, lower.
“Go back to your own room,” he says hollowly. “You can't sleep in here with a Monster, and I can't sleep in here with you. Bad boundaries. There you go, I'm healing, aren't I?”
He cackles and hears the noise like a stranger's laugh. Yeah, maybe he gets why JJ doesn't like that.
“If I can't sleep here, I'll sit here,” says Jameson, Anti's eyes flickering over to him. He watches dazedly as JJ pulls over a chair from the table and sits himself down in it firmly. “You might be sick otherwise. You drank too much.”
“No, no. You don't need to know about – about this. Go back to bed.”
“You go to bed. I'm not little. I will watch over you.”
And he remembers, vaguely, the first time his little brother offered to help protect him. He was so little – just five, Anti thinks. When he could still speak. When he opened his mouth and out came love and loyalty.
Anti's head spins hard. He wants to wrap his hand around the throat of his vodka and choke himself with it. He's got a little brother, though. Not little for long. Still little to him.
A soft hand settles on his forehead. He feels a thumb rubbing gently against his cheek before he falls asleep.
.
He understands more than Anti thinks he does.
That's what he tells himself as he watches over his brother that night, wetting a cool cloth to put to his head. It's not really for hangovers so much as for a fever, but that's what Anti always does for him when he's sick, so he does it too.
Yeah, he knows about alcohol. He knows that was the stuff that made his dad so mad, and he knows it makes you sick if you have too much. He knows that Anti hasn't touched it in years because the smell brings back bad memories for both of them. Besides, his brother doesn't like to be out of control. No, Anti likes to have control over... everything.
He feels safer that way.
Jameson pulls the covers closely over Anti, reaching up to scratch his beard.
Yes, he knows about Anti trying to feel safe. He knows about the disguises, the Persuasion, the killing, the blindfolded servants and the triple-locked doors. He knows the way that fear ebbs and flows. He knows that when Anti first gave him a knife at six years old, that was him trying to make JJ feel safe too.
Still, it doesn't change the fact that Jameson needs a change. He'll never be normal, he knows about that. Knows about how, even when he does make friends, they don't make much effort to understand him, and consider it a privilege to let him follow them around and do his best to participate. But it's not just the way he feels cut off from the world, with only Anti and one or two tutors to hear him at all.
It's the killing. It's the misery. It seems to radiate through him. And this – while Anti tries to keep secrets of his own – this is his great secret.
He knows how Anti feels all the time. He can close his eyes and he always knows. Sometimes, he feels it in his chest, like he's the one who's scared or angry or numb to everything around him. Sometimes it wakes him at night. He always knows how Anti feels.
He can't bear to feel his pain anymore.
He can't tell him either, of course. If Anti realized that Jameson's Grace was, of all things, Empathy, how long would it take him to realize that Jameson would never in his life become the killer Anti wanted him to be?
“I can't do this,” he signs to his sleeping brother. “I don't want the life you've laid out for me. I want you to stop killing and selling your sickness. This can't go on.”
He's thirteen now, he realizes, looking out at the moon. That has to be old enough to make things change.
It has to be.
.
“My lord?”
Jameson jerks awake on the side of the bed, nearly falling off it as he rises.
The knock on the door sounds again. “My lord? I'm sorry to disturb you, but the little master isn't in his room, and we have his breakfast ready.”
Anti doesn't shift in his bed, breathing thickly against the pillows. Jameson can't believe he fell asleep so easily. He should have stayed up to make sure Anti didn't throw up and choke.
He lets himself flop out of bed, shivering as his bare feet hit the cold stone of the room they used to share, and pads over to the heavy door. He realizes he forgot to lock it last night. Anti keeps the keys around his throat, and Jameson hadn't thought about it.
Jameson pulls the door open, blinking up at the serving girl, who had jumped back in alarm. No doubt she's only ever spoken with Anti through the door. He can feel her momentary panic, and then the soft wave of her pleasure to see him.
“Oh, hullo there, little master,” she says in relief. “We didn't realize you were up here. We put together your birthday breakfast, darling, and it's getting late.”
Right. It's his birthday. He glances back at Anti, all but passed out on his mattress.
“It's ready whenever you want to come down, dear,” she says. “Happy birthday.”
He nods at her and manages a smile, and she bustles away. Jameson chews at his fingernail for a moment.
Anti's safe up here. And he is terribly hungry... and rather curious about the special breakfast they've made for him. Might be a good chance of sweet buns.
He'll just go check it out real quick.
Jameson puts on socks and traipses down the stairs of their cold tower, back into the less gloomy halls that the servants have decorated just for him. Everything is cleanly swept and there are autumn leaf decorations and carved gourds with leering faces put out for the Samhain celebration. Anti always tells him he was born close to ghosts, and maybe that's why he can always understand things that aren't said out loud.
It's ironic now, when Jameson can feel so much. The servants seem to be in good moods, a warm sensation that seems to curl around his body as he walks into the dining hall, even though there's no one inside. But if he turns his attention back upstairs, he can feel the heavy, heavy pressure of Anti's grief and shame and fear. It's a dark red force that hangs over him and turns Anti into a ghost, so all his loveliness and color turns into something pallid and dragging.
Jameson forces the thought away. He's going to make his brother get better. Why else would he have this power, if not to save his Monster?
His Monster always takes care of him, after all. The dining table is ridiculously full, not just with breakfast, but with sweets to last him all day – all week, really. Candied apples, sugar buns, caramels, fancy lollies shipped in from Corbin. Cider and his favorite cordial. For breakfast, there's a plate crammed with a powdered strawberry sweet bun, thick red strips of bacon, and two white eggs with melted cheese and green onions on top. His mouth waters as he looks over everything. Anti must have asked for all this to be made just for him.
“Jamie?” his brother croaks, and Jameson nearly jumps, turning to see him looking positively harrowed in the entryway of the dining hall.
“Anti.” He runs back to his brother and hugs him around his stomach, feeling Anti set his hand against his head.
“Happy birthday,” Anti says, voice thick, and Jameson wonders if he's still drunk, or just sick from how much he had. “I'm sorry, I meant to take you for a ride at dawn like you like.”
“Do you feel terrible, Anti?”
“Don't worry about me,” Anti rasps. His eyes dart away, and Jameson feels the weight of his guilt come down on his neck like a chain. “I should never have done that, I'm... I'm sorry, I shouldn't have... it's your birthday, you're thirteen.”
“Anti, it's okay. You've not been well. It's not your fault.”
“You're thirteen,” Anti repeats blankly, and Jameson feels his mind drifting darkly. He takes his brother's hands in his own and pulls him towards the table, setting him down in the same place he always sits.
“Don't dwell on it. Have something to eat and you will feel better.”
Anti turns away, nauseated. “No, I think you better have some on your own.”
“Anti.”
Anti can hardly meet his eyes. He's so ashamed Jameson realizes he could ask him for almost anything and get it just now, but he's not sure it would matter come tomorrow.
“Please eat,” he tries.
Anti swallows and pulls a plate towards himself. Jameson sees his hands shaking. “You eat and open some of your presents, then, and I'll try some.”
Jameson glances over at the piles of wrapped gifts on the other side of the table. He pulls a couple towards him as they pick at breakfast together. It's hard to enjoy the taste when Anti's emotions dust everything he eats in ash. Jameson unwraps a present instead.
His hands come up in surprise and satisfaction, and Anti watches him carefully. “That's what you wanted, right?”
It's not knives or a bow or anything made for hurting. It's a pretty set of books bound up in red leather. Storybooks! Jameson pulls open the first one to a picture of a girl and a boy holding hands under a full moon. His fingers run over the words of the pages. “Yes, I love nice storybooks.”
“You're not too old for it?”
“No, I like it. Will you read them to me sometime?”
He sees Anti's eyes flicker nervously down to that boy and girl in love. “Um, sure.”
“You used to tell me stories to put me to sleep.”
“Yes,” says Anti, voice small. “Come on, open another.”
There's a beautiful carved horse inside, painted in fine detail, and Jameson admires the weight of it in his hands. Anti's mouth quirks when he hears him laughing over how much he likes it. Clothes follow, and good boots, a small wall hanging with a rabbit for his room, and a belt with some pouches, because he always likes to gather things like acorns and flowers. It's strange – they're more childish gifts than Anti has ever bought him before, and yet they make him feel more like a man.
“You got me real presents like I wanted,” Jameson says.
Anti's eyes are a little watery. “Don't be a little sap. You asked, so I got it for you. Spoiled brat.”
Jameson smiles at him. Anti looks away, pulling in a shaky breath. Jameson gestures and pulls his attention back.
“Anti?”
“Hm.”
“I want you to tell me what's so scary about being thirteen.”
Anti shakes his head quickly, wiping at his face. “Nothing, James. Not for you. You are as safe as you've ever been.”
Jameson plays with his hands for a moment, sighing. “Then what was so scary for you?”
“I'm not afraid anymore,” Anti says, voice hard. “I handled what hurt me.”
It's so strange to grow up and learn about how the adults around you are lying all the time, without even meaning to. Jameson frowns at him for a long moment. “You must tell me or tell someone. You have to.”
“It's in the past, Jameson.”
“No, it isn't, you still think of it all the time.”
Anti sneers at the wall as if there's an enemy standing there, pulling absent-mindedly at his hair.
“You must tell me or someone. I can't take seeing you like this anymore.”
Anti stares into nothing for a long time. Jameson dares to approach him, his hand reaching tentatively out. He sets it on Anti's arm.
“I can't take this, Anti,” he signs. “I love you so much, I can't see you suffering.”
“Don't know where you got that from,” Anti says, apropos of nothing.
“What? Got what from?”
Anti pulls in a breath and turns to him, a hand against his head, which must be pounding. “You will never need to know what happened to me when I was your age. I am not yours to worry about in that way. You take too much care of me already, and now I've let you down again.”
“You didn't, Anti! I love all my presents and treats. It's a nice birthday. Don't be guilty, please.”
Anti ignores him. “If the choices are telling you or telling someone, then I'll find someone.”
Jameson stares up at him with what Anti calls his puppy eyes. It doesn't feel like a victory, but he'll take it. “Okay.”
Anti leans over, and, in a rare display, kisses him carefully in his hair. Jameson reaches out to hold his wrists as he cups his face. “I'm very sorry I got drunk and ruined this,” he says. “It will not happen again. Ever.”
“But just because you hide it from me,” Jameson signs sadly, pulling his hands back.
“Finish your breakfast. I'll take you riding after I've had some medicine for my head.”
“You can rest, Anti, it's okay.”
“No, no. I'll take you riding. I will.”
“Anti?”
His brother's gotten up to leave. “What?”
Jameson avoids his eye. “You don't have to tell me everything. But I'm old enough now. You must at least tell me what my mother did.”
Anti's gone very still above him, staring through his face.
“You always tell me about what my father's done wrong,” Jameson presses on. “But you don't talk about our mom at all. But you hate her. You have to tell me.”
Anti's still for a long moment. His hands drift over Jameson's storybook. He pulls at the pages and finds one of a child digging in the sand, the ocean lapping near his feet.
“Once upon a time,” Anti says. “There was a little boy who was very sad. And lots of people hurt him lots of times. And his mum and dad were supposed to love him and not let him get hurt. But they didn't.”
Anti turns away from the storybook, looking at nothing. “She told me once that when I was grown, I would understand that things are complicated. She told me I would understand the things she and my father allowed to happen. But the worst part, Jameson, is that here you are, thirteen, and here I am, grown, a monster in every sense of the word: and I still can't even begin to imagine putting you through the things they put me through.”
Jameson stares up at his brother. Anti stares through him.
“The little boy realized he wasn't worth saving,” Anti whispers. “The end.”
Anti tries to walk away from him then, but Jameson won't let him go. He grabs Anti's pants and tugs him back. He wraps his arms very tightly around his brother's waist and he clings to him. It's not a hug: it's not for comfort. He just knows, with something deep in his chest, that he can't let Anti out of his sight in this moment. He's scared of what his brother will do.
“Sorry, Jamie,” he hears Anti croak out, as he begins to come back to himself. “If you knew how sorry I am. I'm so sorry, my heart. I love you. Forgive me.”
.
“What's got you even more mopey than usual?” Anja asks, picking up her pace to come ride beside him, her horse snuffling in White Bird's direction.
Anti doesn't turn to look over at her.
“Seriously, this man I'm taking you to, he's powerful, Anti. You should try to be a salesman for ten minutes. Put on some false cheer and – ”
“Enough,” Anti snarls. He reaches up to touch his head. Three days since he humiliated himself in front of his little brother, and he still has a headache like a hangover.
Worse than the humiliation, of course, is the knowledge that he frightened Jameson, who's always tried too hard to look after him anyways. It rises up in his throat almost like it could make him cry, as if he ever cries. He's been a terrible caregiver to him. Is he even any better than his own parents?
Well, yes, but still. This isn't healthy for a new teenager. Anti is the adult. He has to fix himself. Has to do better. But he's been trying for so many years to do anything he could to make it stop hurting, and it never does. What if he just can't do this? Does he have to send Jamie away? Where? Who could he ever trust with him? There's no one in all the world. His head spins slightly and he clutches White Bird's reigns tightly.
“Anti,” Anja repeats, frowning at him now. “Get it together.”
“It's together,” he spits back, in his gravel voice, devoid of either Persuasion or allure. “I agreed to come meet with him because you guaranteed he would want contracts. I don't care about making a new partner.”
“That's your loss,” Anja tells him. “Kumiho's as much a businessman as he is a killer.”
Anti touches his heels to White Bird's side, and she moves ahead of Anja again as the campsite comes into view. It's easy to find the tent of the master of the place, of course, the biggest one, with animal furs laid out at the entrance and along the floor. Something bitter curls in Anti's gut as he dismounts White Bird and steps onto the furs. Dark used to lay furs out like that too. Jackass.
It's been years and he still remembers what it was like to sit at Dark's feet. He remembers, all the more clearly, the moment Dark saw his face for the first time, and the only life he had ever cared about ended. Dark was everything, and the nothing. Anti remembers crashing into that emptiness with nothing to tether him.
The strange thing is, it's not just his imagination when he hears Dark's voice call out to him in a purr: “It is you. I knew it.”
Anti freezes in the open flap of the tent.
The furs lead to a large wooden chair, one he has sat at the foot of many times. In it, there's a man dressed in white and black, with a drink at one hand and a longsword at the other. He's beautiful. He was always beautiful. Even now, aged into streaks of silver hair and lines around his endlessly brown eyes, he's beautiful.
“Dark,” Anti whispers.
Anja presses into the tent beside him, glancing warily between the two of them as Anti's posture shifts into something dangerous. “Anti, this is Kumiho. He runs an assassin's trade in the west.”
Anti's heart is pulsing like it wants to get out of his chest and start firing arrows. His right hand clutches tightly to one of the knives at his hip.
“He runs as assassin's guild in the west,” Anti corrects her sharply. “They call him Darkness out there. Kumiho?”
Dark's mouth curls. “An old name. You wouldn't have come if you knew it was me.”
“I would have come in the night. You would have woken to my blade in your gut.”
Anja's not oblivious to the hatred in the room. “You bastard,” she hisses. “You set us up.”
Dark raises his hands peacefully. “Of course not. You are in no danger here, and I do have contracts that need fulfilled. Especially after our worthwhile assassin killed one of my men not two weeks past.”
Anti chuckles darkly, something hot pounding through his head. “You were mad about that? As if you have any right to be angry with me.”
“Angry? He deserved to die if he was caught doing what I paid him to do. When the men told me how he was killed, I knew it was you. I had to see you again. I have looked for you for years, my snake.”
Something confused trips through the white hot fury and fear collecting in his chair. Anti stares blankly at Dark, shaking his head.
“Anja,” Dark says, rising to his feet. “Leave us be. You'll have your pay.”
Anja glances at Anti, eyes narrow. In his field of work, that's almost a kindness.
“Go,” he tells her. “Can handle my fucking self.”
As she leaves, the silence enters the tent to replace her. It feels dark to Anti now, as though hours have passed, and evening has come to hang over this tent, heavy on their shoulders. He looks at Dark. Dark straightens, steps forward, looks back.
Anti leaps at him with his knife.
Dark catches him like they're dancing and tears his wrist out of the way of his body. When Anti drops a second blade from the sleeve of his other arm, Dark grabs that too, shoving him bodily into the chair, pinning his arms above his head.
“Bastard!” Anti screams, his foot raising to kick at him. Dark angles him away and holds him. “You're a traitor and a pig! Now you come to haunt me? I'll kill you!”
“If you wanted me dead, all you would have to do was command me off of you,” Dark reminds him, smiling at him with a grin like a jackal. “Right, your grace?”
Anti snaps his teeth at him. Dark was always good at resisting his Persuasion. “Fuck you.”
“In fact, I think that if you wanted me dead, you wouldn't have missed just now with that knife,” Dark continues.
Anti bites at Dark's arms, squirming in his grip. “You threw me out like trash!” he screams. “When you knew I trusted you!”
“Trusted me? Not with the truth of what you were.”
“And you only proved me right not to do so,” Anti shouts. “Do you know – do you have any idea how – how – ”
His voice cracks and he shakes his head furiously, and the humor vanishes from Dark's face. He turns his head at him tenderly. “Tell me.”
“I don't owe you anything!” Anti yells. “Go fuck yourself! I don't owe you the story of the days I spent running! Of how you gave me my first taste of what it might be like to be safe, to have a future, and then you ripped that away from me because you wanted to fuck me! Like everyone wants to! Well, fuck you! Fuck you! I hate you, I'll kill you!”
Dark takes his wrists into one large hand and reaches down with the other to touch his chin. Anti snaps at his hands as he speaks to him. “Anti. Anti.”
“You traitor,” Anti snarls again, his whole face so flushed with heat he feels dizzy. “Perfidy! Perfidy.”
Dark grabs his chin. Anti thinks he could whimper, on the verge of collapsing into that chair. He tried so hard not to think of him for years. He never believed he would see him again. The fact that a man like Dark has even lived this long is a chance thing. “It was perfidy,” Dark whispers to him. “I came to tell you I'm sorry, Anti.”
Anti sucks in a breath and then throws it back out again. “You're full of shit. As if a man like you apologizes. What the hell do you want from me?”
“I have made a trade out of death,” Dark says to him, and he stands over him like a tower. “Proudly. I've killed good people and bad ones. Traded blood for coin. But I have never stooped so low as to find myself on the verge of the kind of depravity I did the day I saw what you were.”
Anti's eyes water now, although he thinks they're more for fury than the need to hear these words for him. Still, Dark presses on.
“Anti,” he says again. “I'm sorry. You were loyal to me, and I had told you many times you were too young for me to touch. I should have controlled myself better.”
“Controlled yourself better?” Anti hisses. “You shouldn't have thrown me out! It would have been better to be with you if you just – if – ”
His words fall off. Dark frowns down at him now, brow heavy.
“Don't give me that look,” Anti snaps. “I been just fucking fine without you, as you can see.”
“Really?”
“Shut your mouth. I'm going to stab you.”
But Dark's releasing his wrists. Slowly, he steps back, straightening his sleeves. “Very well then.”
Anti stares at him for a long moment, reaching half-heartedly for one of the many blades on his person. Dark cocks an eyebrow at him. Anti scowls.
“You always did have a soft spot for me,” Dark says.
Anti steps up and stabs Dark in the arm.
Dark bites down hard on his mouth, and for a second the only sound between them is Anti's breathing, heavy and unsure.
“Thanks for that,” Dark says. “Are we even?”
“Absolutely not,” Anti says back, voice barely there.
Dark reaches up and pulls the knife out of his bicep. Blood pours out over his sleeve. “This is practically a letter opener. You could have done worse.”
His fury gone out of him with the blood, Anti stands numbly in front of him, watching his face. Dark tosses the knife onto a side table and yanks up his sleeve, wetting a cloth and pressing it there before he comes back to Anti, standing in front of him and breathing out.
“Anti. I'm sorry.”
“For kicking me out?”
“I told you to leave to protect you,” Dark says softly. “That was in your best interests. I was weak, and the other men had seen you.”
Anti shakes his head at him blankly. “I'm just to believe that you've changed, now?”
“As soon as the shock of the reveal wore off, I was sorry for the way I scared you,” Dark murmurs. “When I realized you were still alive, and nearby, I came to find you.”
“Well. You found me.” Anti stares through his face, trying to figure out what his body's feeling as he looks at him. “Bye.”
Dark grabs his wrist again, and Anti tenses. “You still kill so exquisitely. You can work for me again.”
“I don't want to work for you.”
“I will make up for what I did in your favorite commodities.”
“I don't want anymore blood or gold,” Anti says.
It's strange to admit it out loud. For years, what else has he pursued? But he knows he tired of the money a long time ago. He kills for nothing and pours coins into feeding troughs and rivers for peasant children to find when he feels like it.
Dark is quiet for a second. “I... can understand that.”
“Can you?” Anti's not sure he cares about the answer.
“Why do you think I left the west, where I was all but a king? I'm tired of the trade, Anti. It's become too easy. Everything has.”
“What do you want instead?”
“I'm sure I have no idea.”
Anti laughs bitterly, turning away from him. He's so tired, suddenly, that he thinks he could cry. He wants another drink. Dark comes to his back and touches his side, just gently. Anti breathes through the panic that this touch would otherwise bring.
Fuck, he loved him so much as a boy. He loved nothing but Dark as a boy. And he remembers the pure joy of being able to fantasize about anyone for the first time in his life. Even to imagine that he and Dark would share years of their life together was life-sustaining. He loved being his apprentice. He loved being his.
“Tell me what you want, then,” Dark says. “I will fetch it for you.”
It's a shaking, garbled mess of feeling and hatred and need that comes out of Anti's mouth. He almost wishes he could take it back as he says it, and yet, there he is, turning around and reaching out to cling to Dark's shirt. To cling to him like he won't let him go again.
“I want to be loved,” he croaks out, gripping tight, tight to the fabric.
“Oh, darling,” says Dark.
“Don't 'oh, darling' me. I'm sick of my own mind being my worst enemy.”
Dark clucks his chin gently, and Anti feels like a teenager again, hungry for his attention, dreaming anxiously about his touch, his hands. “I'm not the one for you, my Monster. You were too young for me all those years ago, and now, I am too old for you.”
“I'll decide for myself if I want you or not.” Anti steps into his space, instantly scared of the closeness of his body heat, but he doesn't pull back. “Listen to me.”
Dark runs his eyes over his face, but his gaze does not fix on his mouth or flicker down to his hips. He doesn't wet his mouth hungrily or reach out to touch Anti's side. Anti tilts his head, watching Dark watch him, and all he does is looking steadily back at him, waiting.
Self-control. Anti's not familiar with seeing it in the face of other adults. But Dark always felt so different to him. Maybe it was the only thing that made him attractive in a way that no one else has been before or sense. Anti breathes out shakily.
“I have the Prince of the Grey Isles,” he says, and Dark, for all his usual calm, is instantly astonished. “He is almost old enough to take his father's throne. I'll kill the King and install my child. Then I'll rule from behind his throne, and he and I will both have what we deserve, at long last.”
“Power?” Dark asks.
“Safety,” Anti says, “which is the same thing.”
Dark regards him carefully. “Why do you tell me this?”
“You're bored,” Anti says, and then he hooks his hand into Dark's shirt and holds him. “And I can't do this alone anymore. Come with me. Love me, care for me. Protect me and the boy. You made me your apprentice all those years ago, but I have grown to your stature. Now make me your right hand. I'll give you a kingdom.”
He pulls back his hood, as he wanted to do in front of Dark more than a decade past, when his love for him was swooning and naive. Now he craves equality beside him, and strong hands to lock his doors, and the thrum of Dark's voice in his ear when he's scared. He reaches out to hold Dark's neck between his hands. “To love me will be no chore,” he says, without the distortion of his false voice, with his face on display in a way no one but Jameson has seen it for years. His eyes are very blue, very green, against long dark lashes. “Will it?”
“You will tire of an old man like me,” Dark says to him, but his hands come forward, squeeze Anti's wrists.
“I will make your body forget that it has aged,” says Anti, and he pushes forward to kiss him.
For a moment, after all this time, Dark's his. His large hands come to his hips as if to push him back, but he doesn't. He kisses him too. His mouth is warm. When Anti breathes, he feels his air move over Dark's lip. He's shivering; Dark holds his body.
“You're scaring yourself,” Dark warns him.
“Shut the fuck up and don't condescend to me,” Anti snarls. He tries to kiss him again, but Dark pulls away. His endless eyes bore into him.
“We will discuss all of this further. I would like to be reacquainted with you and newly acquainted with your plan for regicide. But there isn't time now.”
“What could be more important?”
“Anti, listen to me. This isn't the first I've heard of the missing prince.”
Anti draws back immediately, all softness gone. “What?”
“They know he's in this country. I had no idea he was with you. Someone spotted him at the harbor of Tora, on a ship heading here.”
Anti hears his own breathing picking up like a horse set to the whip. “Jameson.”
“The Queen approached me about a finder's fee. I told her that wasn't the kind of business I run, but the money she offered - ”
Anti's already shoving his way out of the tent, nearly stumbling in his rush to get back to White Bird, who doesn't protest as he hauls himself over her side.
“Anti, be calm,” Dark calls, following him out, and Anti realizes, with a shock, that he's unmasked and unhooded in full view of the rest of his camp. “If they haven't found him now, they won't have found him in the hour you've been gone. I'll come back with you – ”
“Meet me if you want,” Anti breathes. “But I'm not waiting for you to ready a horse.”
“So eager just a moment before,” Dark says. “This princeling must mean – ”
“More to me than even my favorite fantasy of you? Yes.” Anti turns White Bird his way just for a moment. Somewhere in his periphery he's aware of Anja gaping at him. “You betrayed and nearly destroyed me. Protect this child and I will consider forgiving someone completely for the first time in my life.”
He takes off without waiting to see the way it makes Dark smile. The trees rush past as White Bird begins her bursting rhythm of movement, and Anti becomes a part of that rhythm, his body curved to hers. Dark can follow if he wants. Dark can love him or no one can, it doesn't matter. But no one will take Jameson from him.
“Not over my corpse,” he says. “Not for anything.”
He puts his heels to her side, and White Bird flies.
