Episode 201: Arrest (Spence)

Spence’s lips trailed down Ach’s neck while his hand massaged Ach’s body. There was nothing more perfect than a late afternoon spent in bed with Ach. Nothing accept the caress of Ach’s mind. Spence reveled in the way touch came back to him, a boomerang of the pleasure he felt that had been amplified like crystals shaped into a prism.

Ach was perfect. Spence couldn’t keep his hands off of him.

Somehow, the day felt like graduation day. It was strange to think it had only been a week, almost two, since he’d walked across the stage after the second most momentous day of his life. Today was the first, he suspected. It hadn’t felt like his heart was racing toward an explosion, but more like someone had to decided to stretch every inch of his skin just a little bit, to fit a little more life inside of him.

Life he wanted.

He trailed kisses down Ach’s body. Spence was content in the most encompassing way.

Soon, he would have to get up and go to the campaign dinner. Soon wasn’t now.

He began to slide down Ach’s body, his hand pressing Ach’s hips toward the bed to prevent them from arching toward him.

There was a knock.

Spence looked at Ach, whose cheeks had flushed just at the idea of being caught.

“Go away,” Ach yelled.

Spence grinned and began massaging again, not wanting to fully invest himself into Ach until he was sure they were alone again.

“Spence.” A voice boomed through the walls from their balcony. It was deep and scratchy like Jinx’s paws while she kneaded you.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Come on out,” the voice continued. It sounded like Xenos, one of Talise’s private guards.

Spence looked at Ach, but Ach’s mind was just as lost as his own. Spence lifted himself from Ach. “I guess I have to handle this.” He found a plain white shirt he was going to wear beneath his button-up. He pulled it on, followed by boxers and plain black trousers.

Ach pushed his hair out of his eyes and got up too. “This is what you get for fake arresting me.”

“Very funny.”

Ach reached for an argyle shirt.

“We have to get going,” Spence reminded him. He opened the sock drawer and pulled out a new pair of argyle socks he had picked out for Ach, for tonight (or some dressy night, at least) and handed them to him. It wasn’t a sweater, but it was something of Ach that he could take with him while still dressing as he was expected to. It was his mom’s idea more than his own, this time. She thought if they blended in more they’d fit in more. They were gay, so black and white clothes would be something.

Spence leaned in and kissed Ach. “Can you check the kids?”

“Yeah. We can still make it on time, right?”

If they left within an hour, yeah. If whatever Xenos needed took too long, probably not. Balancing the two sides of himself wasn’t going to work, tonight was just one piece of evidence against the idea.

“I hope so,” he replied. He kissed his new husband one more time, pulling their bodies together, then answered the door. Behind it, Xenos stood with Niels. Something had happened.

“What happened?” Spence asked.

Niels stepped forward. “You’re under arrest for intent to incite a war.”

“Very funny.” Spence tried not to roll his eyes. Ach laughed in the background of his mind as he came to the doorway. “We have a dinner to get to.”

Waves of pleasure emanated from Ach to him, engulfing Spence’s intolerance for more jokes when he had a dinner to get to. Spence looked at him and the big grin that had spread across his face. “Can I put the cuffs on?”

Spence’s gut dropped. No, they couldn’t do this right now.

He also wanted to do it, like it was some sort of initiation. Niels, his future king, was there. Xenos, one of the highest in security. Ky, Another of Talise’s guards, stood just down the hall.

We need to make that dinner, Spence thought to Ach.

Ach ignored him while Xenos handed the cuffs over. The dull leather bands that circled metal rings slipped over his wrists. He’d helped design these cuffs, for some dumb reason. They prevented magic.

“Next time,” Ach said, “Remind me to thank my dad more loudly.” Ach drew his finger across Spence’s wrists, just above the bands. Spence felt waves of intrigue and desire. He wanted more time with just Ach.

“We have a room ready for you downstairs,” Ky pointed out. Spence didn’t like Ky that much. He did a good job, and Spence would have hired him if it was his call, but the way he sometimes looked at Talise made him frustrated.

Even if he wasn’t with Talise anymore. That was Niels’s problem.

“You guys,” Spence repeated. “I have a dinner. “I don’t have time to go downstairs.”

Niels looked at him. “You’re not going to the dinner. The king and queen have arrested you.”

Spence’s heart began to beat harder. Even Ach felt more amused through the link, glee filling him. He couldn’t tell this wasn’t just some game?

Was Spence being paranoid?

“What do you mean?” Spence asked. “I didn’t do anything.” His hands felt clammy, not just because they were locked in sweaty leather but because he needed to get out.

The group was moving, down the stairs and down the hall. Each step pounded in Spence’s mind.

Niels kept talking, words about luck magic and wars. Aadya, in labor, had decided this.

“Wait.” Ach stopped moving. “You’re really arresting him?”

Xenos looked toward Ach. “You really arrested him.”

Ach’s stomach twisted in knots, which made Spence feel queasy. “No I didn’t!” Ach exclaimed.

“It’s fine, Ach,” Niels tried to promise. It was useless. “One night, to make sure nothing goes wrong in Sylem.”

The queen was in labor! How was her luck magic a reasonable possible anything. It wasn’t. Where was Meldrick?

“What was going to happen at that dinner?” Spence asked, his voice as level as possible. He needed to understand the situation before reacting to the conclusions he had already jumped to (Aadya was being hormonal and stupid). Is Sylem okay? Is Rhyss okay?”

He’d just found his brother. He didn’t want Rhyss at the dinner if he couldn’t be there, if there was any risk.

Not that Rhyss wasn’t capable, but Spence was capable and not allowed to go.

Niels shrugged. “No idea, to any of that. Meldrick asked me to arrest you, said it mattered, so I did.”

Meldrick asked.

“I need to get to Sylem. Now.” Spence yanked himself free and ran.

It was stupid. He knew it was stupid. He knew it was the worst time to try and escape, with the hallway straight and no places to hide, with the cuffs. He knew it was stupid, but he did it because he needed to try.

No one ran after him. Instead, he smelled something peppery with a hint of lemons and lavender and something like old socks. His head felt cloudy in an instant. He was walking on air, nothingness, floating through crisp fall leaves and falling deep into the depths of murky black water. Nothing made sense. Everything was so beautiful, like a painting he had been working on in his mind for years and every layer was just transparent enough to see the next, every detail just crisp enough to know what it was, every fold another component to the desire to throw up on what he hoped was the floor and not a huge pool of Talise’s blood, her body flayed open at the heart of it. It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense. Everything was grey and smoky, like the painting he had made with his mom the other day.

Everything was flat.

There was so much blood. He tried to push it aside, but ended up slipping in it.

He closed his eyes. No he needed to be awake. But where was awake? He needed to find it. He got up.

Arms were holding him up.

Arms were dragging him somewhere, trailing his shoes through the blood. He tried to reach out for Talise, but all he felt was Ach, no longer sick but just holding one of his sides.

The lemons were back. Or were they old shoes? He couldn’t remember. He tried to look back at Talise, but she was gone. Everything was gone except the hallway which was back.

He swallowed and watched the sky.

#

“Hey, Spence.”

Spence tried to find the voice. It was everywhere, encompassing and echoing and loud. He tried to open his eyes but they were open. He blinked, because open wasn’t enough to see.

There, he could see Corban now, sitting in front of him, his arm folded across the top of a chair he was sitting in backwards. Spence blinked more; they were in a jail cell.

“Hey. Why are you in my bedroom?” Words felt sticky in his mouth. That wasn’t what he meant. He tried to unstick them by running his tongue across his teeth and swallowing and hoping he could make more saliva.

Water magic.

Cuffs that prevented magic.

He swallowed, but his mouth was dry. His head was dry. In pain. His arm hurt too. He must have hit it on something. He cleared his throat, his mind, and focused on one thing: The jail cell had seven bars. The seven bars were spaced four and a half inches apart. He jail cell front spanned under four feet. 46.625 inches. It was a small cell. It was a cell. All the cells were small.

“This room. this isn’t a bedroom. It has a bed. Not my bedroom.” Facts. Facts helped. This was a jail cell. He was arrested because he was going to dinner. No, that wasn’t right. Something was wrong. He tried to draw his sword. It was missing. “Is everyone okay?”

“You confused him?” Corban asked him. Not him, he wasn’t looking at him. Corban asked…. Spence followed his eyes. Ky? He asked Ky. Maybe Ky was angry.

Ky looked amused.

Ach looked scared. Why was Ach there? Weren’t they going to dinner.

“You’ll feel better if you drink this,” Corban insisted.

“I have a great speech you know!” Spence shouted at Ky and Xenos and Niels as they left. “This is an overreaction!”

He looked at the drink. It didn’t talk to him or try to eat him, so he drank it.

Only because Corban asked and Corban’s fake person would never remember to forget to brush the outside of his eyebrown down, so real Corban’s stood up like he had just itched it.

Eyebrow. Why weren’t they brown? His hair was brown.

“Have a seat,” Corban said.

Ach started crying, and more than the drink that made something snap in Spence.

Maybe it was the drink, but it wasn’t cool ti think he needed the spell broken for him. He went over to hug Ach, but Corban shook his head.

He sat down and hugged Ach inside his own mind. Ach’s tears slowed and he sat down too. The world was coming into focus finally.

“What’s going on?” Spence asked.

Corban had a more nasally voice. Not in an annoying way, just in the way words formed as they left him. It made it easy to distinguish him. Easy to focus on too. His mind was still trying to find balance, and it had Ach’s to cling onto in a confusing way. Ach was too many layers of wanting and worried and anxious and happy.

I’m okay, he promised Ach. We can sort this out.

Corban let them have their talk, which apparently he noticed. Then he spoke himself. “Aadya and Meldrick think that if you go to the dinner tonight, it will start a war. And, there’s a chance that if there’s a war going on when the attack happens, there are no survivors.”

“And you didn’t think you could just ask me not to go?” Spence wondered.

“When we told you what was going on, you tried to run.”

Ach laughed in the background and sent him an image of him running down the hall.

Spence wasn’t proud of that, and had no spell to blame.

Ach was still shaken by the arrest, but he seemed to be calming. Spence relaxed against him, their arms entwined around one another as they sat on the bed.

“Okay,” Spence conceded. “Someone needs to warn Rhyss. And Xander.”

He hadn’t run because he wanted to run; he knew it was a bad idea. He had run because he had a moment of protective instincts toward Rhyss.

They hadn’t been protective instincts toward Sylem, as a whole.

He could feel Ach tracing his thoughts like circles on his back, engraving the moment into his mind. Spence didn’t love Sylem, not like he needed to. He was running for governor to prove a point, to force a point.

Sylem needed passion, not another agenda thrust onto them.

Spence nodded, more to his own mind than to anything else. He felt Ach tracing the thought again, solidifying it not only in himself but between them. Elesara was home.

“Someone is,” Corban assured him. “Look, you have tv, comic books, a bed…”

Spence wanted paint. He wanted a large easel and paints. He called to his mom by dragon.

“Are the cameras off?” Spence asked.

Ach’s hand sank lower along his back and traced the line of his pants while Corban laughed. “Would you turn them off?”

Spence angled his head away from Corban, so one eye could see him most clearly. “Yes.”

Corban’s eyebrows raised and he shook his head.

Worth a try? Corban had trained under Konrad for years too. Sometimes Spence wondered if he was looking to Sylem because he knew Corban was a good, better in some ways, choice for Elesara. He was better with swords, he had grown up in the realm, and he had earned his rank.

Spence was just Ach’s boyfriend, decent with swords, better with small weapons and spells, and insanely, idiotically, protective apparently. He would need to work on that more, but Niels was the last person he had expected to arrest him.

Ach, but Ach liked cuffs. Often on himself, but still.

Corban stood and moved to the door. “Need anything before I go?”

“A key?” Spence joked.

He didn’t want a key though. It was his wedding night but he wanted to paint, more than anything. He wanted all of the scenes still fresh in his mind on paper, especially the greyed out landscape of a city flattened with the stark contrast of blood. Maybe in the painting he would make it flowers, a five by two area of growth instead of death.

“That’s not how this works,” Corban explained as he undid Spence’s cuffs. He was good at making things clear without being condescending. “Are you staying or leaving?” he asked Ach.

“I can stay for a little, but….” Ach’s eyes met Spence’s.

Spence took his hand and searched Ach for what he wanted to do. It had to do with the dinner, and making sure things in Sylem were okay.

Spence thanked Ach in his mind.

“You should go,” Spence urged, for the sake of Corban hearing it. “Be with the kids.”

Ach was amazing with the kids. Watching him… Spence loved Ach more than he could ever express, and he loved how accepting of Spence’s make sure I’m gay experiment he was.

And then there was Delaney, and it turned out he was just fixated on blonde pale bookworms, plus Ach’s twin.

“No staying for a little. I’m not opening this door again until morning,” Corban stated. He stepped out of the room to make a point.

Ach stood. “Will you be able to forgive me?”

If Ach was doing what he thought he was doing, definitely. It was their wedding night, but they’d had a wedding evening and their entire life was going to be a honeymoon. One night, the sleeping hours of a night, didn’t make a big difference.

And Spence was going to make it up on their anniversary. Something spectacular.

Ach’s eyes lit up at the thought.

Spence grinned. Surprising Ach would be a mental challenge and worth the effort.

Ach hugged him and then stepped into the hall. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Bright and early,” Spence said, more for Corban than anything.

“Knock if you need anything,” Corban said.

He shut the door. Apparently the cell didn’t have bars after all.

Spence sat back down on the bed and turned the tv on. Whatever they’d done to him, he needed to practice thinking through. That, the painting, and enjoying every moment of Ach’s night through their shared minds.

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