It's the quintessential rave: not the kind thrown in clubs with liquor licenses and ID checks at the door, but a fly-by-night arrangement of sound equipment, lighting, and two guys charging cover fees at the back door of a warehouse. A few hundred rave kids bounce on the floor, pockets of space forming and disappearing as someone with moves shows off for a few minutes before melding back into the crowd. It's a glow sticks and candy and ecstasy dream, fuzzy on the edges and all sound drowned out under the blur of music coming from the speakers.
     In the center of the dance floor, Loki sprawls on his back, watching the whirl of the dance around him. A teenage girl lies beside him, curled up against his side, their hands locked together in a tangle of glow sticks, and she whispers in his ear. Even he can't hear it beneath the music, but that's okay. What she's saying isn't the point of this. She's a pixie-and-fluff image herself, soft blond hair and ethereal hands laying over his.

     Gwilym appears with a grin to himself, dressed the same as he usually is - this time, he is not barefoot, but it is the default of jeans and t-shirt and bomber jacket and Docs. Not, perhaps, quintessentially raver, but club enough to pass almost anywhere. He dodges a giggling pair of candy girls, pulling one's Day-Glo pigtail with a chuckle before he orients himself. This is more like it. You might even get laid in a place like this.
     Orientation done, he looks around for you. He knows you are here somewhere. When he spots you, his grin widens, and he wanders over until he stands over you and the girl. When he speaks, he has no trouble making himself heard, somehow, despite the noise and the music, peering at you judiciously with one visible eye. "Memory or dream?"

     "A little of each." Loki tilts his head back to look up at you, squinting against the flashing lights overhead. "The dream's better when it stays further away from the memory. It's not bad so far, this time. So long as we stay in here, it stays...good." He sits up, cross-legged, his hand still in hers. In this dream he's in jeans and a T-shirt himself, and a thin white scarf with glittering beads woven into the fringe at the end. "I'd introduce you if it weren't all in my head. Chloe Parker. She was always better at finding these places than I was."

     "She looks easy," Gwilym answers without criticism. He drops to a crouch near you, eyeing the scarf. "That was her idea, oes? Tell me it wasn't yours." One trailing end is lifted in the pinch of thumb and forefinger, then dropped again.
     "If now's a bad time," Gwilym adds drolly, "I can come back..."

     "Her idea," Loki says, with a fractional smile. "She liked to play dress-up with other people, but I usually argued her down to accessories before we went anywhere." He looks down at dream-Chloe, still wrapped around him. "It's not a bad time. If I go anywhere with her it just turns into the other version of this dream."

     "I think I can guess." He eyes Chloe critically, looking rather as if he'd like to prod her to see how she'd react. For now, he resists the temptation, looking at you again. "I was thinking we should continue our conversations. If you're so inclined, 'course." Gwilym sits down indian-style, looking perfectly comfortable there. "We have a lot to cover, oes? Before you return to your so-called life."

     "I happen to like portions of my so-called life," Loki says, and leans back on his hands. "But by all means, let's pick up where we left off." The very brief flush covers where leaving off happened, even if that's not quite what he meant.

     Gwilym smirks. "Good." He leans forward to tug you out from under the girl, ignoring her as he settles Loki in his lap. "Better. Now, then. I think we will begin with the topic of magic. Oes? Or do you have questions for me first," he wonders, oh so innocently. A hand settles at your waist, his other hand draping over your thigh. "Let us begin."

     It's still a long way from comfortable acceptance, but after the initial startle Loki does settle back against your chest, legs stretched out in front of him. The dream-girl's fading away into the crowd now that she's not playing a significant part in his dream. "Uh. Magic. And we were talking about that other person you'd stolen before."

     "Romero," Gwilym agrees, amusement evident as his fingers idly play back and forth on your denim-clad thigh. "Do you want to hear about how I came to steal him? It is a sordid tale, but in some ways, an important one. He played a crucial role in my accepting what I am. Let us begin with that, then, unless there is something else you would specifically ask of me."

     Loki draws up a knee, shifting in your lap uneasily. "I'm not exactly working with enough information to argue about the syllabus. I'm ready for the sordid tale."

     "Very well, then," Gwilym answers cheerfully, settling himself comfortably and trailing his fingers along your side. "Hm. Let me see, where do I begin. I suppose with my role as Holly King. It is the role I was born to; I had no choice. But for a very long time I fought it, and I resisted it. I resented it, y'see. I wanted no part of it, of the work and the responsibility, or even the powers that go with it. While I have always had some of the power that is inherent in being of my family, I did not wish to ascend. And for a very long time, I fought it, tooth and nail, and I ran from it. It was how I solved most of my problems, in fact. By running."

     "What does--" Loki thinks better of interrupting with questions this early on, and hushes. He can't quite decide between resting back against you or perching on the edge of your lap, which translates into constant nervous shifting about.

     "Ask questions." Gwilym grins. "I don't mind answering, or if I do, I'll just start taking your clothes off as a penalty." Idly, he tugs the side of your shirt up, slipping fingers into the space there to caress your skin. He is very good at such thieving ways. "In any case, one thing y' might have trouble believing is, I was straight, once."

     "I was going to ask what being the Holly King means," Loki says, with a shiver at the touch beneath his shirt. No pulling away, so far. "I think that's too big a question to try to cover for this part of the story." He looks back over his shoulder at you. "Straight. Seriously? I thought you came from some place that was all wild about sex all over the place. Or is that only for the het kind?"

     "That is a big question," Gwilym agrees, grinning slightly, "and it delves into many other questions as well. Better to take it slower." His fingers spread against your belly, settling in a warm, secure hold that keeps you against him. "As for sex, it is as so many other things, in so many places. It depends. I was the son of the High King. My father has - had - some issues with the notion of his sons being into other men, and there was the potential issue of heirs, and so forth. It was much harder for my twin brother, Iowerth." His name trips lightly over the foreign syllables. "He, after all, was to be High King after our father stepped down, being some milliseconds faster than me." He laughs. "One of the very few times he has ever been thus."

     "You have a lot of family." Which is not exactly a question, there. Loki rests his head on your shoulder, watching the blinking colored lights up above. "It must be nice. Sometimes."

     "My parents are very fertile." Gwilym grins and shudders. "No child likes to think of their parents goin' at it. I have scars from the times I wandered in on them, let me tell y'. But oes, I am one of five so far. Me, my brother Iowerth, Bran and Aeron - you've met Aeron, at least. Bran and Aeron are my ravens. They are twins as well, but identical where Io and I are fraternal. And Peter." He falls silent for a moment.
     Eventually, he resumes. "Io ... knew he liked men first, and he did not tell me. For a long time, he held it as secret from all, including me. This is bigger than you might think; we were inseparable in so many ways, y'see. There was no one with whom I was closer than Io. And eventually, he told me. After he had met and fallen in love with a young man from a far-off kingdom known to be in the shadow of a ... for lack of a better way of putting it, an evil queen."
     His voice is quieter, now, and it holds a heaviness for recalled pangs. "We fought, a bit. And I began running, oes? Because if my brother was into men - my twin, my Other Self - then what did it say about me? It scared me shiteless. But I did what I had to do, I investigated his new lover, and did my best to ensure that he was not being used, that he was in no wise a threat to my family."

     The music of the room has grown distant over the story, a dim memory now instead of a force in the dream. "Was he?" Loki asks. "A threat."
     Evil queens and far off kingdoms. No wonder Aeron thinks so little of me. When I suspect a threat to my family, I call my dad's lawyer.

     "Oes and no," Gwilym answers, his hand making idle circles of his palm against your stomach. "He was, but not by his knowledge or consent. His mother - his foster mother, rather, the evil queen - had worked wicked sorceries and dug hooks deep in him over a span of centuries without his awareness, to turn him into her puppet should she ever feel the need. We discovered it in time, and my mother, bless her, removed the hooks, leaving him wan and spent. She then slew his foster mother while I went with her armies into the queen's lands to put her followers to the sword. And therein hangs another tale; we are getting ahead of ourselves."
     He chuckles, brushing an idle kiss against the nape of your neck. "Before then, I watched him - in London, as it happens, with my twin. Even ended up stuck under the bed while they went at it for eight bloody hours." He groans. "It ... led me to realize, though - not consciously, but dimly, that I ... wanted something I was not getting. I ended up going to the home of my brother's first male lover for stupid reasons."

     Loki hunches forward. Not away from the kiss, exactly, but as if it's a distraction from the listening just now. "Eight hours?" But that is amusement. "That must have been...interesting."

     "It was torture," Gwilym grumbles, albeit with some amusement. "They even ate in bed. I had no way out - I couldn't step between as easily then as I do now, so I couldn't even escape that way. Duw! Thankfully, I made my way out, but ... it disturbed me a great deal." He sighs. "I wish that were a good enough excuse for what I did next. Y'see, my brother's first lover - first male lover - was also our tutor, when we were young. The General - an elf, older than dirt but looking no older than thirty, if that. He was handsome. No - beautiful. And very, very respected."

     Loki shifts across your lap, tension building in his shoulders as he hunches forward. "So what happened to him? Because that's an ominous buildup you have going there."

     "I ended up making a fool of myself, and he took pity on me and seduced me, more or less," Gwilym admits cheerfully. His hand tightens slightly on your thigh for a moment, though nowhere near enough to be painful. "I ended up demanding to know why he'd slept with my brother and not with me. And we ended up being lovers, for a time. Until I left and ran away. Again."

     "And what happened to him?" Loki tilts a look backward, around his shoulder and not reaching as far as your face. "After both of you had left him."

     "With my brother, it was a mutual parting of the ways. With me ... I do not know," Gwilym admits. "I have not heard that he left my mother's kingdom, so I imagine that he is still there. I was busy running, Loki. I did not look back to him. But having discovered that I enjoyed sex with men, I ... did not come to terms with it immediately. And I was not suicidal, but I was self-destructive. I ended up involved with an Old Fear - not as old as the one you met, but old enough, still, far older than you or I, or even the two of us combined. I allowed him to feed off me."

     Loki tries to do the math on that, and quickly gives it up as a lost cause. "What do they--no, I'm getting off the main point again. I'm getting that this is one of those things that's a bad idea for pretty much anyone to do."

     "It is a very bad idea," Gwilym agrees, "and the moreso because beings of power, such as myself, taste particularly good to them. I was taking my life into my hands. I did not care." He shrugs idly, settling back a bit and keeping you with him. "I ran from him as well, although with more justification, perhaps. And I ended up with Pros." He sighs, closing his eyes.
     "There was absolutely nothing wrong with Prospero. He was a prince as well - a younger son - and he was pursuing trade interests. I ended up drunk and in his bed, and with little memory of it later. He found me..." Gwilym mulls over his words. "And reminded me. And we became lovers, though I was still keeping that secret from all save Io. Only with Io could I be my true self, openly myself. I will not tell all there is to tell of it, but my twin and I were always very close, and I trusted him as few others. And for some years, Pros and I were companions. And I continued to try to outrun the mantle of the Holly King."

     "Nothing wrong. But?" A glow stick has rolled away from some dream raver to a place on the floor nearby, and Loki picks it up to roll between his fingers, watching the green light dimming inside.

     "But as much as I cared for him, he could not give me what I needed, and I could not outrun the Holly King's mantle forever. Romero was - is - Prospero's cousin. He desired me," Gwilym states, without arrogance. It is truth, and there is no reason for him to pretend otherwise. "For some time, I ... ignored it, as best I could, though I could not do so forever. Eventually, we were alone together, and the Holly King's energy rose in me, and I could not resist it. In taking him, I donned that mantle."
     He grins slightly, squeezing you to him. "Aren't you glad I am using euphemisms?" Gwilym teases. "Instead of telling y' how I shagged him relentlessly up against a wall, then dragged him to my bed to screw him until he passed out, me not far behind. And he had been in training to be a priest, believe it or not. I was not the god that his mama had had in mind."

     "How many gods are there?" Loki asks, possibly because it's an easier question to focus on than some others that have sprung to mind. He's doing some of that unsettled shifting about again. "Or--how many that matter here. I don't even know what defines a god, exactly."

     "You may's well ask how many stars in the sky. I don't know," Gwilym admits freely. "I don't claim to have power over all existence - if there is any one god with that kind of power, he or she stays very quiet. I can't really define a god, either, except that I know that the Holly King - and the Oak King - are gods, or near enough to it as makes little difference. My father held both mantles, and yet was not a god." He grins. "Confused yet? If not, you should be. But some of it is just ... there is work to be done, and my father was not able to complete it. So it's on us."

     "I've been confused since I first met you," Loki says, and slouches back against your chest. "It's like that Buddhism class all over again, except with fewer informative texts to study. What about Romero? Or is that the end of the story with him?"

     "He became my high priest in the other place," Gwilym explains, rubbing his palm over your belly and then up under your shirt to your chest. A fingertip circles your nipple idly, rather as if he is not consciously thinking about it. "By communing with him, I can regain lost energies. I pour much of myself out, into my work, into the universe; it is why I was born, what I was born to do, as the Holly King. But it takes a toll, and Romero helps to offset that. And, of course, he helps with our work in that place."

     The glow stick drops back to the floor. Loki's knees draw up towards his chest, and he says carefully, "But that's not the sort of job you're trying to get me to do, is it? How else does he help with your work there? Whatever your work there is."

     "It isn't." Gwilym chuckles, ruffling your hair. "We've been over this, oes? Romero is not you, you are not Romero. With Romero, I had no choice. I could no more resist him than I could voluntarily stop breathing. You, now, you are very sweet," he grins, "and tempting, but I am not compelled to take you here and now, no matter what. You are desirable, but the force of the universe has not got its shoulder to the wheel."
     "He helps in a number of ways. Including overseeing the administration of my army and my governments in the lands I conquered in the High King's name. He is my seneschal as well as my priest, and he, along with Bran and Aeron, do a great deal."

     "I am not sweet," Loki says, in ruffled dignity. The indignation is somewhat spoiled by the way he's leaning against you. "I wish I could get a better grasp on what I'm supposed to be doing, here. Administration, I can understand. Even if the whole parallel universe fairyland aspect of what he's administrating is still weird. And even if I don't get how the, uh, sex aspect of that works, the mechanics make enough sense."

     "This world's magic has been blocked by and large for a long time." Gwilym idly scrapes the back of a fingernail in a light trail down your chest to below your navel. "And the darkness is very dark. There is hope - but Hope can always use all the help she can get, oes? We do this by building links between the ethereal and the material. Between, if you wish, the realm of spirit and the realm of flesh. You will, if you succeed, become one of those links, Loki. And what you do then will build more."

     Loki shivers again under your touch. "I, uh, wish I could say I understood any of that. How was the magic blocked?"

     "As to that, I don't know. The most common answer is that with the rise of science and other more 'dependable' means, people turned away from magic. But the exodus of the fey races and other such long predates the rise of science," Gwilym answers slowly. "In the end, it comes down to which came first, the chicken or the egg. There is no one answer that I believe to be true. If I would have to guess, I would say that it was because the world was out of balance; and in an attempt to right the balance, it overcorrected, and more harm than good's come of it."

     "All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?" Loki sounds amused, if only briefly, shrugging against you. "Maybe it would be better with magic than science. I'm a fan of reliable, testable results, but it's not as if I have much experience with the other options. Aside from what you've...given me." That's not exactly the verb he was originally going to use.

     He laughs, and pinches your hip. "And have y'? Tested it." Gwilym's amusement is plain. "Or have you run from it, and neglected its use save when you couldn't do otherwise?"

     "I don't like the idea of different rules for different people," Loki says, twitching at the pinch. "It's--it doesn't feel right." He's curling up over his knees again. Away from you. "I can just imagine what people would think if they knew. What they would feel, knowing I could hear what's private."
     He swallows, and says bitterly, "I might as well find a way to use it for something good, because as it is I'm violating the privacy rights of every fucking person I walk by. And I know that it makes me a coward that I'd rather not think about that, most days."

     "You aren't violating their privacy, as such," Gwilym answers patiently, giving you a squeeze again. "You can't read their minds; it isn't telepathy. You can sense what they're feeling, what's at the forefront of their emotions - it's sommat some people can do entirely without magic, if they're good enough or just born that way. And it is possible to learn to ignore it. But t' do so - you need to get good enough at using it. It is, in some ways, the most basic of defenses I've given y'. I'm guessing, then, y'haven't practiced enough to be able to use the other thing I gave you."

     He's not so easily convinced as that, but it's enough to stop the spiral into guilt. "I don't know. You never told me what it was. So I guess not." Loki rests his head on his knees. "I've been trying to get better at picking apart the information. Filtering through the feedback so that I can figure out who's feeling what, instead of that wash of noise. It's easier with people I already know. Maybe just because when they're feeling something, I have a better idea of why already."

     "You can also tell if someone is a threat, if you use it. If they are going to try to seduce you, or attack you, or eat you." Gwilym counsels you patiently. "You can assess their intentions, and when you get good enough at it, figure out how to help them, if you wish to, or how best to avoid them, if you prefer that. That is the basis of it. The other gift I gave you is the ability to project, Loki."
     His hand slides away from your belly at last, leaving cool air to rush in where his warmth has been, and he rests both hands on your shoulders. To make yourself seem small and uninteresting, that they will look elsewhere. To calm an angry person, or a distressed one. To soothe fears and anxieties, or if no other alternative is there, instill those fears in someone you need to drive away, Gwilym tells you where only you can hear. These are the building blocks I have given you. How you choose to use them is up to you, but allowing guilt and fear to drive you into inaction serves no purpose at all, least of all a moral or ethical one.

     Loki lets out a small breath, staring at the floor. "If I'd been using both of these--abilities to their full potential," and he still can't quite call them gifts, "could I have identified the danger in that invitation at the art gallery? And gotten myself out of it, without needing to be rescued? Or was that particular danger too big for me to handle on my own regardless?"

     "Hard to say for sure," Gwilym answers slowly. "Perhaps. Probably not, though - there are human dangers and then there are those which are anything but. An Old Fear... I would not wish to put it to the test." He pats your shoulder. "I prefer to be safe."

     Loki looks back over his shoulder at you. "What are the limits? On the projecting. I can sort of figure how far out the reading goes, just by people walking in and out of range. If--when I start trying to use this other thing, how far does it go? And is it one person at a time, or more?"

     "That depends on how good you get at it." Gwilym grins at you, the devil's own smile. "For now? If you've never done it, you'll be hard-pressed to do more than a person at a time, if that. It is like a muscle which you have never used. You need to work at it to build up strength and dexterity..."

     "So no radiating at entire crowds at shows next week," Loki says, with a hint of a smile of his own. "I don't really know how I'm going to find excuses to practice that one, but... I'll figure something out." He shrugs, turning away again.

     "Eventually, you might be able to." Gwilym grins, then leans in to whisper, close to your ear. "An excuse to practice? Easily done, oes? The next time you're with Pres, use it to ... heighten the experience..."
     He chuckles, and then he is lifting you to your feet, rising to his own. "Or just use it in shops to get faster service, or to put people in a more pleasant frame of mind. People want to be happy. Helping them achieve that isn't a bad thing, Loki."

     Standing up is a good excuse for Loki to back up a step, caught between embarrassment and consideration. "Maybe not." He's dubious as usual. "I wouldn't want anyone else forcing cheer on me. I prefer to handle that myself, the good old-fashioned way, with artificial stimulants."

     "I suppose it depends on whether you knew it was being done to you," Gwilym retorts with an amused expression. "In any case, it is food for thought. We will speak again tomorrow night, and I will decide then whether or not to give you an additional gift. Good night to you, Loki, no man's son."
     And as quickly as that and as suddenly, he is gone, as if he has been edited out of the scene. His presence is not felt nor sensed, and you are again devoid of company other than the ravers around you.

     Loki stands there in the gap in the crowd, and...does not expect you back tonight. Those goodbyes generally mean what they say.
     He turns, and the girl is there, smiling at him. "Hey, Chloe," he says, halfway to a smile by the time she's whispering in his ear again. So it's only a dream. At least it's a good one.

Posted by rowan at April 12, 2009 06:10 PM