CHOICES

Choices

If I’d had any choice in the matter, I suspect I would have chosen differently, we would be in each other’s arms now, and Justin be damned. But the cost of my freedom was your life, and so in the end, there was only one choice.

We had such fleeting moments together, you and I, while I lived again. It hurts just to think those words – while I lived again. What did I do with our time? Saved your life, but that hardly seems enough, not when compared to what we could have done…could have had. We might have made love, or at the least kissed, and kissed again; held each other while we confessed our love – a love and desire that both of us have always known was there. And if we had been able to make love, we wouldn’t have needed to let words get in the way; time was of the essence, and we would simply have acted. But I did not trust Justin to keep his word in anything, either about me or you, and I needed both of you to believe I was working for him. So instead of doing what I longed to do, I shoved you roughly against a wall and immobilized you for Justin. I would not let myself think of what might have been, even as you were reaching out for me with love. I burn with shame, thinking on it now.

The way Justin spoke of you, as if you were only another of his wizarding tools, used up and ready to be discarded like a dead battery, such a disappointment to him – it was very difficult for me to wait, and in the end I could wait no longer. I needed to kill him then, but I had wanted to for almost your entire life, Harry. I don’t know why I never thought to use only a little power, just enough to kill him and perhaps save myself. But he was such a sick bastard that only by exorcising him from us completely, leaving no reserve, could I insure that he would not come back.

As my vision wavered and my knees gave out, I heard you – “Let go, Bob! Let go! Bob!” My heart turned over at the raw fear in your voice. I was sick to be the cause of it, but full of joy that you had survived to fear for me…to fear losing me. Believe me, sweet Harry, I did not want to leave you.

And when you had a chance to touch me, how different it was than my desperate act. You caught me before I hit the floor, cradling me tenderly in your arms, stroking me, trying to comfort me while you despaired. Holding me so that I would not go alone, while you cried at my death. I will always remember the feel of your arms around me, so strong and yet so very gentle and loving. If only I had been so bold as to touch you, there in Justin’s library, so that you understood how much I love you.

But I did not, and you now lie in your bed, curled around my skull and sobbing wretchedly, and I wish I could suffer the pain of my death all over again, to have hurt you so.

Once cursed, always cursed, indeed.

I cannot bear to watch you suffer on my account. The coward in me wants to leave you and endure my torment alone, in the dark place where I belong tonight. Yet you deserve better, Harry love, so I stay to watch over you, and to offer what comfort I might.

I am surprised that you have the strength to grieve so sharply, after all you’ve been through today. If I had miscalculated, you might have died and I would still be bound to a Justin who would certainly have had his vengeance upon me, in ways I do not want to think about. Even in this sad miscarriage of justice, you protected me from suffering Justin’s wrath, just as you tried to do when you were a boy.

What a beguiling child you were, completely unaware of your charms and talents; honest and forthright, gentle and kind, sweet and generous – all things I had known precious little of in my lifetime, corporeal or not. You valued me for who I was rather than what I was, and you are perhaps the only person in six hundred years who has done so. Yet even now, you do not see how unique you are, my Harry. You never value yourself highly enough. I must do everything in my power to counteract that, if our lives ever get back to what passes for normal in this world and we are able to look at each other without the bittersweet agony that weighs heavily on my breast.

Your emotions are so strong tonight that I can feel your hands on my soul. The sensation is beautiful and painful at once, and something I shall treasure always. But it is not I who deserve comfort in this. I deserve nothing but what I have and what I am, once again an empty shell. Perhaps they were right to curse me all those years ago. Perhaps there is no good in me, and never was, except what you have put there with your love, Harry.

Your exhausted weeping has ceased and you sleep now, but it is not a restful sleep. You toss and turn in the grip of bad dreams and nightmares. I wish I could enter your dreams, comfort you, and vanquish all your foes and challenges. I wish I could make love to you, so you could feel the depth of my love. Sometimes, words are not enough…yet they are all I have.

I do not know if I can bear this. Sweating, you toss against the pillows, dry sobs escaping from your lips, pulling roughly at your sex in the vain hope of release. You dream of me, of us, and what we both want but cannot have. If I wake you, will you be grateful or hate me? Just now there are a great many things I find I do not know – but I must try.

“Harry,” I call softly, concentrating on waking him. “Wake up, Harry.” He does not want to hear me. He continues, on the verge of injuring himself. “Harry!” I call sharply, in the voice I used when I wanted young Harry to pay attention to his lessons. His hand stills, and his eyes blink open.

“Bob?” He sounds frightened, and wounded.

“You were having a bad dream.”

“Yeah, I guess it was pretty bad”, he sighs. “Not what it should have been…could have been,” he whispers, biting his lip against tears.

“I don’t know what I can say to you,” I tell him, my own voice breaking.

He looks up at me then, eyes full of unshed tears. “Talk to me. Tell me…tell me what you would have told me, if things had…turned out differently,” he sighs. “Please.”

“I will tell you,” I smile at him sadly, gathering my energy to ‘lie’ beside him on the bed, “everything.”

“I might start by saying ‘you know how much I love you’, but you don’t know, I suspect. I love you, Harry Dresden, more than I have ever loved anyone. Period,” I tell him. His eyes widen.

“More than - ?”

“Yes, more than Winifride, or anyone else before her or since,” I assure him. Our shoulders would be touching, if I were alive. Inhaling the acrid smell of his sweat, I can hardly bear the pain of my longing. “And it is because I love you so that I had to be sure that Justin would not come back to haunt you, ever again. I pulled out all the stops, Harry, never thinking of holding anything back for…us. I’m sorry, but I don’t know if I would do it differently, even now. I had to be sure you were free of him.” I don’t think Harry knew, even now, how dangerously, utterly cruel his uncle was.

“It’s just…it hurts, so bad,” Harry grimaced. “That you were here, alive, and you gave it up for me. And now, we can never…be together. I’ve had enough of dreaming about it, I want it,” he growled, punching the mattress beside me.

“No more than I, sweetheart,” I tell him. “No more than I.”

“And right now, I feel like I would give up my own soul to have…if we could be together, for real.”

“No!” I am stunned. “Never, ever let me hear you say that, even in anger or despair,” I tell him sharply. “One soul is enough! Please promise me you will never say that, or think it, again. Please, Harry,” I beg him. I long to shake sense into him, and fear of the very thought.

“If you make love to me, now, I promise I’ll never think it again,” he sulks, not at all ready to agree. The terrifying thought that Harry might be tempted to the Black because of me shocked me into to grasping at something I was afraid I wasn’t strong enough to accomplish tonight, yet it seemed I had no choice. And if I could manage it, perhaps we could do it again. But if I could not, what would my failure do to Harry? To me?

“I’ll try,” I promise him. “I’ll try.”

His eyes meet mine, suddenly hopeful.

“Yes, please,” he whispers, reaching down to stroke my skull.

“I can feel you,” I tell him, smiling at the pleasure of his touch. “Whenever you touch me, or hold me, I can feel you. Your love is very powerful. It has always warmed me when I am cold and alone, despairing. Your voice and your hands call me back from the dark places I might otherwise be left in…places your uncle was quite happy to have me inhabit. He felt it kept me in my place.”

“Uncle Justin was a dick,” he growls, tracing my eye sockets with a gentle fingertip. “I’ve never known because you’ve never said, but I hoped you could…feel something. I wanted it so much. Even when I was a kid, I wanted you to know that somebody cared about you.”

“Which is why I came to love you, Harry Dresden, in all the ways it is possible for two people to love each other, except…well, I am going to try and remedy that now, if I can.”

I am, as the expression goes, flying blind.

I give the appearance of standing, beside the bed, and slowly begin to remove the many layers of my clothing. Harry sits up to stare at me, mesmerized. He has never seen me naked because I hadn’t known if I could bear my own wanting of him, and I hadn’t wanted to torture myself any more than Harry. Tonight, the stakes are very much higher, and I can make no more errors in judgment.

When I have removed all my ‘clothing’ to his sight, he reaches out for me, helplessly. I stretch out beside him on the bed, our bodies very close. If my hope is to work, it will need our combined wills, feeding off each other.

“You tell me I’m beautiful,” he croaks hoarsely, his throat dry, “but you are…everything I could have imagined, and more,” he tells me. “I have to touch you. I have to.”

“Put all your desire into your thoughts, Harry, from your brain all the way to your fingertips. Will it to happen. Believe it will happen,” I tell him, doing the same, concentrating every bit of energy I possess. His fingertips meet my chest. While they do not connect with anything exactly solid, neither do they pass entirely through me into air, as they usually would.

His eyes widen in shock. “I feel something! I feel…you. I do,” he marvels, stroking me.

“Keep wanting, Harry. The more you want and the more I want, we strengthen each other’s desire, and in strength there is power,” I tell him. “Perhaps the power to make love, after a fashion.” Now that he has seen the result of a small corner of his longing, I can see that he believes, and is ready to try anything.

“Do what you will,” I tell him gently. I feel those soft fingertips exploring my body, careful and exquisitely slow. I concentrate on each faint brush, each tickle, each titillation, trying to bounce my energy back onto Harry so that we get into a rhythm of enough power to carry this off, so that he will feel it and understand what he must do.

He leans forward and I know he means to kiss me. I open my mouth to him at the first touch of his lips on mine, drawing him inside me in my mind. I am Hrothbert of Bainbridge. I can do this. I can pleasure my love. I can, and I will.

He groans, his hands cupping my face, biting my lips, kissing me deeply. I don’t know if it’s possible, or if it’s actually happening, but I know we both feel whatever it is we have wrought, and I am happy – for myself, and for Harry.

Emboldened, I lean forward and take a nipple in my mouth, sucking hard. Harry gasps. “Oh…do that again,” he whispers, and I indulge him. But so entranced is he that he has loosed his grasp on me, and I am aware of my own strength waning.

“Harry – as much as I wish it could be otherwise, we don’t have the luxury of taking as much time as we would both like. Our energy – our magic, depends on…reciprocal give and take. We cannot tarry, and we must feed each other,” I tell him gently.

“Yeah. Sorry. It’s not like I don’t want to do that,” he smiles at me. My cock is immediately encompassed by his warm, damp hand. He strokes me firmly. I’m not sure how it feels to him, but I’m in my own private heaven with each caress.

“I’ve dreamed about doing this to you, so many nights,” he tells me.

“I wish we could have been doing it, so many nights.” I know that my smile is tinged with sadness. I know my strength is slipping away, and with a mighty effort I move against him, lifting my leg slightly so that we are belly to belly, cock to cock, drinking in each other’s heat. Weaker now, I can only rock against him.

“I need you, Harry,” I tell him. “I need your love, your strength and your will. Please help me.” I have no shame, only desire to complete this act, now, for Harry.

“I love you,” he whispers in my ear, holding me against him. I indulge in the wetness from both of us, sliding between each other’s thighs, thundering towards completion. I feel his cock rubbing against mine, hot and slick. Judging by his half-sobs and gasps, he has found me as well. “I love you,” he whispers again, as his seed warms my belly. As quickly as he is able, he moves down between my legs, and I swear that I actually sense his mouth on me, sucking me to an ecstasy I thought never to feel again. I gladly give myself up to him, filled with joy. Harry gives me the first orgasm I’ve had in six hundred years. I do, actually, almost see stars.

He pulls me into his arms, trying hard to keep the energy flowing. My head rests briefly on his chest, and I can hear the wild beating of his heart as I feel myself losing the ability to control my essence. I am so tired. Too tired to hold on any longer.

Harry will be able to sleep now, and wake to a new day. I can rest, and plan. We achieved this marvelous thing between us when by rights neither of us should have had the strength or the power; our wills overcame that lack. What can we accomplish when we are both rested and strong, restored by our happiness? If I could sleep in Harry’s arms all night and wake there in the morning, just once, I could believe that I was still cursed, but perhaps not entirely damned.