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sakon76First Romances
by K. Stonham
first released 4th March 2022
Douxie and Carter come back upstairs after far too short of a time to have actually done anything and gotten themselves back in order. But nonetheless, there's a hint of a smirk on Carter's face, and a shy, spacey one on Douxie's. Like he's been poleaxed and doesn't quite believe that something he desperately wanted is actually happening.
Jim exchanges a look with Claire and knows they're thinking the same thing: whatever did happen in Douxie's room, these two are definitely now a couple.
Carter stays a while longer, and plays with the baby. Theophania is utterly delighted to have a new playmate. Jim's daughter is a social butterfly, and she clearly got that from her mom and her big brother, because there's no way that trait was inherited from Jim. Carter's at ease with her the way he still isn't with Jim and Claire.
When it's time for Carter to go, Douxie walks out with him to the porch and they stand there talking for long minutes before their hands finally tangle. And Jim is absolutely not using his position from the corner of the couch to peek through the curtains and see Carter rise up on his toes and kiss Douxie. Grinning, Carter waves goodbye, and goes down the steps, and down the street while Douxie watches after him, waving.
Jim's smile tells Claire all she needs to know. She grins back, then returns to trying to teach Theo to build a potato tower with their hands. Mainly Theo's using it as an excuse to smack her fists on top of her mom's.
Douxie comes back inside and closes the door very quietly. Jim's trying to calibrate just how much teasing he'll be able to get away with, when--
--Douxie slams his fist against the door, sobs, and runs downstairs, banging the basement door closed behind himself.
"Douxie?" Jim knocks on the door to his son's room. They have a house rule: if the door's shut, then you knock. And you do not open it without permission.
There's no response, so he knocks again. "Doux, do you want to talk, or do you want me to go away?"
He can just barely hear a sniff from inside, then a low, "Come in."
Jim opens the door. All the lights are off; only the glow of Douxie's lava lamp and the star projection on the ceiling give any relief from the darkness.
He closes the door behind himself, and goes to sit next to the figure huddled up on the ground on the far side of the bed. Jim waits a couple minutes, but Douxie doesn't unbury his head from his arms. "What's wrong?" Jim finally asks. "I thought you liked Carter."
"I do," Douxie whispers harshly back. "I really do, I--" His eyes appear above the crown of his arms. "He's my soulmate," he whispers, and sniffs. "Fuck, it's like with Archie. I didn't even remember how much I missed him, until he kissed me. And now it's like I can't--" His voice trails off. "Fuck," he says, and sniffs, and reburies himself.
Jim sits silent for a minute, trying to make sense of it. Carter is Douxie's soulmate? The boy who'd been just a touch too on edge during dinner, setting off Jim's well-honed social worker alarms? He sets that aside, and focuses on the issue at hand. "I thought finding your soulmate was supposed to be a good thing...?" he finally asks.
Douxie snorts. "You should know, you found yours."
Jim blinks. "Wait. What?" He and Claire are...?
"Shit, sorry." Douxie uncurls, wiping his eyes on his sleeves. "You didn't know, I shouldn't've said."
Now Jim feels poleaxed. "Claire and I are soulmates?"
Douxie just looks at him strangely. "Jim. How could you not be?"
"I don't even really know what soulmates are," Jim says, lamely.
Douxie shrugs. "Your perfect match. Your other half. Or other multiple parts, for some people." His eyes meet Jim's. "The only person you'll ever love again."
Jim takes a breath. "Okay." He'll have to talk this over with Claire, later. And maybe Blinky. "Okay. So Carter being yours is a problem why? Unless you wanted to play the field."
Douxie snorts. "No." He looks away, back toward the wall. "Soulmates... reincarnate with one another," he says eventually. "Once you find each other, every lifetime after that you're approximately the same age. You never reincarnate alone. 'S why Romeo and Juliet makes more sense, that ending, if you read the two of them as being soulmates."
Jim thinks about it, and blinks. "Oh. So if one person dies really early--"
Douxie nods. "Like Guinevere did, for Arthur."
"Oh." Oh. Jim's eyes widen. Suddenly Arthur's absolute hatred of magic beings makes more sense, seen through that lens.
Douxie sniffs and wipes at his eyes again. "And it absolutely sucks if you're immortal, and your soulmate... isn't."
It takes a second, then the penny drops.
Douxie was immortal, and almost certainly will be again. And if Carter Howard wasn't, in his last lifetime....
"He couldn't come back until you died," Jim says, his heart dropping into his stomach.
Douxie nods. "I could've come back, then," he says. "After the Arcane Order. I had a choice. I remember that, now. And I'd tried my best to make myself forget him, but I just... missed him so much...." He starts crying again, ugly little hitched breaths accompanying his tears.
Jim, without thinking, puts his arms around Douxie and just holds him, heart breaking for the story of pain in his arms. Because he can see it now. Douxie's lost his soulmate before, and, bar a miracle, is inevitably going to lose him again. Two bookends of pain, stretching on to eternity, interrupted only by the brief span of one human lifetime. Because Douxie is a wizard--the last master wizard--and protecting the planet is his responsibility. He doesn't get to just go blithely into the cycle of reincarnation like the rest of them.
It's not fair. But there's nothing Jim can do about it.
Bedtime that night is oddly subdued. Even Claire, also reeling at the fact that she and Jim are apparently actual soulmates, is infected by the tragedy unfolding. Only Theo is happy, kicking when she's laid down in her crib, clambering to her feet, and only reluctantly laying back down when instructed. Jim turns out her light and leaves the door open.
Jim wishes he was surprised when, at slightly before three a.m., the other monitor wakes him with sounds of distress that rapidly transmute to actual screaming.
It feels like it takes forever to get there--too many damn stairs, with baby gates on all of them--but Douxie's still screaming when Jim crashes through the door to his room and goes straight to the teenager in the bed, trying to wake him from the nightmare.
Except it's not a nightmare this time, it's a full-blown flashback, because Douxie's eyes are wide and his hands outstretched, screaming Carter's name.
"Douxie!" Claire's on the other side of the bed. Her arms go around him too.
Eventually, even Douxie's lungs run out of breath to sustain his screaming, and he falls into gasping sobs, trying to get air back. He falls limp in their arms.
Upstairs, Theophania starts wailing.
Jim and Claire look at each other, and she gestures with her chin: you go get her. Jim, closer to the door, nods, and leaves Claire holding Douxie.
He returns a couple minutes later with a sobbing Theo, who, the minute he sits down, climbs from Jim's lap into Douxie's, grabbing onto his shirt, wanting comfort from her big brother.
Douxie, still swallowing sobs of his own, holds on to her, seeking comfort of his own.
Eventually all the crying dies down to sniffles. Theo has her thumb in her mouth, but for once Jim can't bring himself to care, too worried about his children.
"He died on me," Douxie says roughly, not raising his eyes from his blanket. "He went into that fucking warehouse, and--" He sniffs. "Boom," he says mirthlessly.
Claire shifts closer. "What warehouse, Douxie?"
"The Nazis'," Douxie answers, like it was obvious. "We were in the same squadron in World War Two. He called me England. I called him Queens."
"Queens?" Jim asks before he can help himself.
Douxie glances up. "'S where he was from. He had the thickest accent you've ever heard." A snorted laugh, and he looks back down. "Guess he doesn't anymore."
"How long were you together?" asks Claire.
Douxie shrugs, moves the fingers of one hand like he's counting on them. "Three months? Maybe four. No, just shy of it, I think."
"You knew he was your soulmate?" Jim asks.
"After a few days. After the first time he kissed me, certainly."
Jim closes his eyes, imagining losing Claire after just a few months. Knowing he'd never see her again in this lifetime. Knowing she was it for him, the only one.... "I'm sorry, Douxie."
"Yeah, me too." Douxie plays fingers with Theo, captures her hand in his. She frees herself and swats his hand, never taking her other thumb out of her mouth.
"Being a gay couple in the military in World War Two, though. That must have been hard," Claire says.
Douxie shrugs. "Not as much as you'd imagine. Since we weren't coming on to them, most of the others in our squad didn't care about me and Carter making moon eyes at each other. Let alone what we might be doing if we got a scrap of privacy. We all had bigger problems to worry about." His mouth thins. "No idea if they all got out of the war alive or not. I kind of went screaming mad after losing Carter. Blew up the rest of the depot with magic. Arch literally dragged me out of there and flew me to a little island in the Hebrides, no one else around, until I could get my head on straight again. It took months." He's silent for a moment. "Didn't see the end of the war. I knew I couldn't live without Carter, so I made myself forget him, forget all of it, just so I could keep doing my duty. Until I died, and then I just... couldn't, any longer." His voice breaks. "Merlin'd be ashamed of me."
"Douxie, no," Claire says, and folds him in her arms. Jim does too. Theo looks at them and decides since they're hugging Douxie, she should also. Her arms go around his tummy and she burbles "Du, du, du" at him.
Douxie shakes and sniffs and his arms go around them. "I am so fucking glad you're my parents," he says in a hoarse whisper. "And I'm sorry it's always something with me."
Jim squeezes tighter. "I'm so glad you came back to us," he says. "Even if it was just for a cute boy."
That earns him choked laughter.
"So," Claire says, sitting back. "I can see three ways this could go, long-term." Douxie and Jim exchange a look; what other options are there? "One, it goes the same as last time, and you lose him eventually. Two, you don't take the immortality option this time, and live and die a mortal lifespan like most hedgewizards do."
"Claire, I can't," Douxie protests. "I have responsibilities--"
"Or," Claire continues, relentless, "three, you find a way to make him immortal too."
Douxie looks like she's slapped him in the face with a fish.
"Making sure you ask him first," Claire cautions.
"Of course!" Douxie protests automatically. "I wouldn't do that to him." He hesitates. "Do you really think there's a way?"
Claire shrugs. "I don't know. But I'm sure a master wizard and his familiar would be able to come up with something."
"This is why you're the brains of this family," Jim tells her.
Claire grins. "Someone has to be, and since it's clearly neither of you...."
Jim squawks in mock-outrage. Douxie laughs. Claire gathers up Theo and stands. "All right, it's the middle of the night and we should all go back to sleep. Theo and I are saying goodnight." She waves her daughter's hand at them. "Buenas noches, Daddy, buenas noches, Du. Don't stay up too late," she instructs them on Theo's behalf, and summons a shadow portal, presumably to Theo's bedroom, and disappears through it.
Douxie sags as the portal closes, his weight going against Jim, his head going on Jim's shoulder. After a moment, he sighs. "I'm so glad you're my dad, Jim. Thanks."
Jim breathes a laugh and hugs his boy close. "I'm so glad I found you, Doux. Being your father's a privilege. I'm pretty sure even Merlin would have to agree with that."
A quiet laugh. "I'm not sure I'd go that far. And I was a feral little bastard when you took me in."
"You're still a feral little bastard," Jim says, leaning over, his cheek on top of Douxie's hair. "You just hide it better now."
A slow, deep inhale.
"Think you can get back to sleep okay?" Jim asks.
"Maybe." A jaw-cracking yawn splits Douxie's face. "Make that prob'ly."
"Good." Jim stands as Douxie lays down and buries himself under the covers again. He brushes a hand over his son's hair. "Sleep well, Douxie."
"Sleep well, Da," Douxie replies.
Jim's halfway up the stairs before he realizes what Douxie just called him, for the first time ever.
His heart fractures, overflowing.
Smiling, Jim goes back upstairs, to seek his own bed.
The next day at school is... interesting. Carter lights up as soon as he sees Douxie, and Douxie can't deny that there are butterflies free-roaming in his stomach. "Hi," Carter says, coming over to him, and then their fingers are tangled together, rendering Carter incapable of speech.
Is holding hands like kissing for deaf people in that regard, Douxie wildly wonders, and can't help the blush that consumes his face. Because if it is, that means they're kissing right now, which means--
Carter laughs at him and takes his hands away. "I don't have to guess what you're thinking," he accuses.
"I'm not!" Douxie protests. "You're the one with the filthy mind and the filthy mouth!"
Which sets Carter laughing even more, because it's not like it's not true. But that also makes Douxie think that there's a thing or two about his history that he really should talk with his soulmate about, so that it's not some unexplained ticking time bomb in their relationship, just waiting to explode somewhere down the line.
...The whole reincarnation and soulmates thing, not to mention the thing about how Douxie's going to turn immortal again in probably a couple years... yeah, those are bad enough. But also not conversations to have right off the bat, not when he's only even kissed Carter twice.
In this lifetime.
Looking at Carter now, in the sunshine, Douxie can see the slight differences between this incarnation and his last. He's not quite as tall as he was. (But then, neither's Douxie yet.) His hair is a little lighter, sunbleached, and a little longer. The freckles across his nose are new. In the forties, he'd done construction work before enlisting in the army; now he's a high school student, so he isn't as muscular. And his eyes are lighter than they were, no longer the intense dark chocolate that had taken Douxie apart, but instead flecked with gold streaks in the middle of the brown. "You're really pretty," Douxie says without thinking.
Carter grins and taps him on the nose. "Pot, kettle," he says, and takes Douxie's hand in his, leading him to homeroom.
At lunch, things reverse and Douxie leads Carter behind the school, into the shade beneath one of the oak trees bordering the athletic fields. Students are technically allowed to eat lunch here, but almost no one does, because the staff monitors hate coming out here to keep an eye on things, and they usually make it not worth the students' while to deviate from the norm. But Douxie casts a shield spell around the tree, to keep others away, and sits down.
Carter has a sack lunch today, which looks like a pathetic PBJ, a bag of chips, and some grapes. Douxie takes pity on him and trades halves with his own lunch. "So why are we out here?" Carter asks, his mouth full but his hands empty. Which is handy, though Douxie guesses there are some advantages to being able to talk when your hands are full too.
Douxie takes a deep breath. "If we're going out together, there's some things you should probably know first."
Carter pops a grape into his mouth. "Okay. What?"
"I see a therapist every Tuesday," Douxie starts. "I have practically since Jim... since my dad brought me home. It's because of some of the stuff that happened to me on the streets."
Carter looks carefully neutral, like he's waiting for a bomb to drop. Well, he's not wrong.
"I turned tricks," Douxie says bluntly. "Not often, but enough that it matters."
Carter looks like he's not sure he's understanding just what Douxie means by that. "What did you do?"
Douxie breathes against the memories. They're faded now, tattered by time, but they're still there. He can objectively analyze them, the way Meredith's taught him, and he knows he did what he had to, to survive. But he still feels shame, and anger, and pain. "For the price of a solid meal and twenty bucks," he says levelly, "I sucked off some guys in the back seats of cars, or let them fuck me in cheap motel rooms. Sometimes I did it just to get a few miles farther down the road." Heading toward Arcadia Oaks, and safety, and home, he likes to think, though he hadn't known that then. Back then he'd just thought he was trying to get as far from Atlanta, and his birth family, as possible.
Carter's face is unreadable. After a long minute of silence, he asks "How old were you?"
"Thirteen. And younger," Douxie admits, his stomach tied up in knots.
Anger overtakes Carter's expression. "I will fucking kill them all."
"You can't-- I don't even know who any of them were," Douxie protests. "It was years ago, they were all over the country--"
"I will kill every single one of them for hurting you," Carter continues.
Douxie rolls his eyes. "Carter, you're a high school student and a hundred and twenty pounds dripping wet. What exactly are you going to do?"
He does not expect Carter to pull an actual switch knife out from inside his shoe. "I could stab them in the kidney...?" he offers, brows furrowed like the actual path of violence is something he's considering and planning out.
"Carter, what the fuck?" Douxie demands, staring.
"What?" Carter asks, like he doesn't have an actual weapon in his hand on a high school campus.
"How did you get that past security?" Douxie demands, grabbing Carter's wrist. "There's metal detectors!"
"Oh." Carter looks at the knife in his hand, then shrugs and tucks it back away into the side of his hightop. Looking, Douxie can't even make it its outline. "I don't go unarmed anymore. My last school was utter shit."
Douxie stares at him, starting to wonder for the first time what his soulmate might have gone through to get to this point. "What the fuck, Carter."
Baja and Waja sidle up to them after lunch, on the way to Physics. "Soooo..." Baja starts.
Douxie glares at him out of habit.
Baja cackles. "Called it. Lovebirds!" he says, and holds his hand out to his brother.
Grumbling, Waja pulls his wallet out and slaps a fiver into his brother's waiting palm.
"You may be smart, but I know people," Baja says, making the money disappear.
Douxie pinches the bridge of his nose. "I love you both, but I also can't wait for you to go back to your home planet."
Carter blinks, his expression puzzled.
Baja cackles. Waja smirks.
"What," Douxie says, wary.
Baja drapes himself over Douxie's shoulder. "Since we've all enjoyed your stellar company so much, oh wizard boy," he begins, and Douxie gets a sinking feeling.
"Our brothers will be joining us for senior year," Waja concludes. "In order to graduate from our father's alma mater."
Douxie has stopped cold in the middle of the hallway, his mind suddenly presenting him with an image of all seven Palchuk-Tarrons descending on the school.
It will be madness, he knows. Utter madness. The gray streaks in Ms. Janeth's hair will widen, and by the end of the school year at least three teachers will have tendered their resignations. He whimpers. "Krel approved this mad plan?"
Baja cackles again. "Uncle Krel may be king-in-waiting, but Mama is queen of Akiridion-5. What she says, goes."
Carter is looking back and forth between the three of them. "Wait. What?"
"What, that our mother is the queen?" Waja asks him.
"No. You're... you're from another planet?!" Carter demands, his eyes like saucers.
The brothers exchange a glance. "Yeah?" Baja signs.
"You're dating a wizard, and you think people from another planet are weird?" asks Waja.
Speechless, Carter just nods.
Douxie pinches the bridge of his nose. "Just drop your transductions and let him see," he instructs. Since it isn't actually any kind of secret at the school what the constant influx of royal Akiridions are.
Waja and Baja look at each other and shrug, then do as requested.
Carter stares at their glowing blue four-armed forms. "What the fuck," he signs weakly.
Baja laughs and slings one arm over Carter's shoulders. "Wait until you meet our brothers."
Then the class bell rings; they're all tardy.
Strickler is in charge of detention after school, as he usually is. (Douxie knows this well, much to his regret; as today, most of his detention hours can be laid at the feet of Palchuk-Tarrons. He's excused from it if the infraction happens on a Tuesday, because Principal Uhl is firmly of the opinion that therapy sessions trump detention sessions, but he always has to make it up later in the week.)
Waja starts in on his homework, as does Carter. Baja, with many theatrical sighs, follows suit, all of their phones having been confiscated.
Douxie, though, looks at Carter, then stands and walks toward Strickler, who is reading a historical novel and once in a while snickering and highlighting an offending passage.
He raises an eye ridge as Douxie approaches. "May I help you, Mister Lake?"
Douxie takes a breath. "How would I find out what happened to the members of an American army squadron in World War Two?"
Strickler's other eye ridge raises to join the first and his chair tilts back upright as he puts down his book. "I can possibly help you with that." He fishes a tablet out of his bag and taps at it a few times. The transparent screen comes to life. "Squadron number?" Strickler asks.
Douxie glances at Carter, then rattles it off.
Strickler taps at the screen for a few minutes, then hands the tablet to Douxie, who takes it and looks at it. "It would seem most members survived the war," Strickler says as Douxie looks at a photograph of men he knew a lifetime ago. Most are smiling with the bravado of men who know they will be the ones to end the war. On the left side of the photograph, two faces he knows too well are grinning, one's arm slung around the other's neck. There's a blur at their feet that may or may not be a black cat. "The only casualties, in fact, seem to be two of the younger members, killed in an otherwise successful mission to destroy a Nazi armaments depot."
Douxie breathes against the unique pain of old memories, against the ache of losing and losing and losing people, century after century. "That's good," he says softly, touching the photo. "I wasn't sure...."
"Not sure of what?" inquires Strickler.
"Whether or not I'd killed them all when I lost control after Freddy died." His fingertip brushes over the grinning blond man, his shining hair rendered greyscale in the black-and-white photograph.
"Freddy?" Strickler asks.
Douxie smiles. "Lieutenant Freddy Carter," he murmurs, and hands the tablet back. "My soulmate," he says, and goes back to his desk.
