marlowemuses | A cruel reality when you've had too much to dream

On most days, Adam thought he knew all there was to know about himself. He had studied his skin and the capabilities of his muscles. He had interrogated every thought inside his own mind. He knew the depth of his capacity for exhaustion, and how much he could do on how little sleep.

He did not know, on the afternoon of the prince's eighteenth birthday, that over the course of the day things had been learned about him, through spell and revelation, that he did not know about himself.

Adam knew that there were celebrations throughout the kingdom for the prince, but Adam had no time for them. He had the day off of work at the shipyards, but that only meant that he had time to catch up on his chores at home, which would allow him some time to catch up on his studies. He knew that the royal family was magic. A fairy king and his family, and the middle son, the magic son, who would inherit everything. He knew, esoterically, that the fairy-dreamer kings of their realm took magic consorts who aided and increased their power.

Adam had no interest in any of it. This was mostly due to self-preservation for his pride and his heart. He knew he was not magic and did not belong in that world. Nothing he could do would ever produce an aptitude for that kind of magic. So he forbade himself from wanting it.

And if, in the months since his own birthday, he'd found lost things easier and broken things were more swiftly fixed by his hands, he attributed it only to his own intelligence and aptitude. If the weather suited itself to his mood and the flowers grew around his parents' house in a riotous profusion that he'd never seen before, Adam thought little of any of it. All these things had logical explanations, or they were mere coincidences.

He did not know that the king had cast a spell for his son, and his face had appeared in a basin of water, and a map had glowed to mark his home and the back field where Adam was hard at work repairing a broken fence.

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Fascinated, Adam focused on the energy. Without the stress and distraction of dealing with the demon, he could feel it much more acutely. It was warm in a way. Radiant.

Curling his fingers around the little bubble of light, Adam let himself trust his instincts. It felt like stretching a muscle that he hadn't known that he possessed. He could feel the energy, and it seemed to shift in his hands. Focusing on that, Adam played with it gently, manipulating it, seeing how he could stretch and shift it.

He lost focus and it popped out of existence, startling him. But even with that failure, the success of moments before was heady. He stared at Ronan, eyes alight with interest. He really could do magic. Ronan hadn't been wrong about him.

"Again, please," Adam asked, scooting a little closer so that their knees touched.

Now that Ronan had warmed up, it was easier. After a few seconds, the magical energy crackled to life. He let it rest in his palm for a while, feeling it. After a while, he tested it out by running it up and down his fingers.

Time to try something new.

"Catch," Ronan said. Instead of moving his hands closer to Adam. It didn't go as far as he'd wanted but he hadn't tried to push it much to begin with. Part of that failure might have been from moving his legs closer to Adam, mirroring his previous movement. The rest of Ronan's body seemed to want to follow.

The little ball of light bobbed away from Ronan but then stuttered, as if Adam should have done more to catch it. He pulled it toward him with a thought, drawing it into his hands and trying again. He shaped it this time, guiding it into a cylinder, then a cube, testing his control through a range of geometric shapes until he pushed too hard and it popped again. He paused, panting, and let his hands drop.

His hands fell onto their touching knees, fingers laying against Ronan’s calf. They were so close, and he wanted to be closer. He felt powerful when Ronan was near him.

His mind strayed toward the images in the book and his cheeks flushed. There was a certain tradition between the heirs and their magicians, even if Ronan and the king had insisted that he wouldn’t be forced. It was tempting, somehow. He liked the idea that Ronan might find him attractive. It would be so easy to kiss Ronan, close as they were.

Was this just the influence of the magic bond between them? Adam balked at the idea, but he wasn’t able to deny it. He hadn’t been attracted to boys before. Envied them, especially handsome, confident ones, watched them with his heart thudding and his chest aching with want to be them. Same as he felt around Ronan.

Maybe not just. Maybe not ever just. None of them had ever looked back at him with any hint of interest. Not the way Ronan looked at him, like Adam was the only interesting thing in the world.

He caught Ronan’s hands and wove their fingers together, facing the palms inward so that they were linked and ready for another ball of energy. “Again,” Adam said.

Whatever energy danced between their fingers now, it wasn't the kind of magic from before. This made him feel weaker and stronger all at once. It made his breath catch in his throat. All he was doing was holding Adam's hands and it could do this to him? Adam could do this to him.

This was almost too intense, even for Ronan, and yet he couldn't look away from Adam. Couldn't move his eyes, not even to close them. Something inside felt right in a way it never had and he wasn't sure if he could blame this on Adam being a magician.

All he had to do was think and the magic was there between them, glowing brightly, charging his and Adam's hands and then their entire bodies.

Ronan swallowed. He wanted to say something but his tongue proved as difficult to control as his eyes.

Adam felt incredibly powerful, skilled, special, in ways that he never had before, and it surged through him. He learned fast, pressing the boundaries of what he could control, trying for more and more complicated nuance with the shapes formed from the little bubble until pop. "Again."

And again, and again, utterly consumed by the moment and the power flowing between them, eyes only on the glow of magic.

A servant interrupted them with lunch, knocking politely and setting a tray on a nearby table for minimal disruption.

Adam was startled nonetheless, surprised to realize that time had passed. He was half in Ronan's lap, knees against Ronan's knees, calves aligned, as close as they could get, and anything outside the two of them seemed wrong. Unreal. His hands--still holding Ronan's--sank into their shared lap, and he stared after the servant even once they were gone, puzzled to find that he still existed in this world.

"You were right," Adam said at last, returning his eyes to Ronan's. They were so close, and he thought again that it would be easy to kiss him. "I'm your magician."

A cruel reality when you've had too much to dream

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