Finding Warmth

"Bodhi?" Xaden called my name. I'd barely been listening to their argument about Violet's injuries. Liam was "dead" and I was still trying to make that sound possible inside my head. Every time I tried to move past that thought and onto something else, my brain just refused to accept the idea and everything else melted away.

"Go! Take her. I'll stay with- with Liam," I managed to get out, and immediately I felt like I'd said too much and I needed to backtrack. "And Soleil, and- to make sure the survivors are safe. Once Violet's okay, you can come back to-"

I didn't say it. I couldn't say it. It didn't matter anyway, they all knew just as well as I did, so why should I have to say it? If I didn't say it, it wasn't real.

Rather than pretend he wasn't going to just do it anyway, Xaden climbed onto Sgaeyl and took off, effectively ending the argument. I wasn't entirely sure why he hadn't just done that in the first place; it wasn't as if anyone was going to succeed at talking him out of it.

Garrick looked back at me just once. "You sure you'll be okay by yourself?"

"Yeah. I'm not alone, Cuir's here."

"We'll be back to take care of him and Soleil as soon as we can get the supplies and get away," Garrick promised, and then he and Chradh were on their way too.

And then I was alone. Well, I wasn't alone, as I'd pointed out to Garrick. Cuir was here. I was just the only living human outside of the mines where the survivors had escaped.

"Do you wish to be alone?" he asked me, concern in his voice. "I don't think you should be completely alone, but we both need to rest."

"Let me just..." I looked around and tried to get my bearings now. Everything looked different on the ground; toppled walls and wyvern corpses looked a lot less overwhelming from the air. I spotted a half-ruined building not too far away, maybe something from the mining operations. It felt wrong to take Liam's- to take Liam away from Deigh, but it felt wrong to leave him exposed, too. I dug through his rucksack, slipping his folded carving knife in my pocket. Everything would be burned anyway. Nobody would notice. There was a first aid kit too, with some fabric for a tourniquet. I could use that to wash him. I shoved it in my other pocket.

His body was so limp when I went to move it. Deadweight.

The word echoed around in my head as I tried again to get past the thought and instead just kept running up to the edge of it and turning away.

"Let me get him under cover so I can start cleaning him up," I finally told Cuir when I realized how intensely my dragon was watching my movements. "You can rest. I promise I will in a little while, okay?"

"If you're certain." Cuir sent care through the bond and assured me he wouldn't be far if I called for him. He took to the air, looking almost eager to get away from Deigh's mangled corpse, and I gently closed the stained-glass window between us. It was unnerving when a dragon sounded unsure. It didn't suit him. But everything was upside-down, everything felt impossible right now. Cuir could be unsure, and Liam could be dead and Navarre could be - what even had happened with that War Games bullshit? Were they working "with" the venin? Nothing made sense.

Nothing made sense, including Liam's death.

There, I'd managed to think it. It still didn't feel real when I looked down at his body in my arms, when I set him down under the stone outcropping. Even though he didn't look asleep at all, I could tell myself he was. I went to the remains of a well that had been half-destroyed by falling debris, managed to pull up a bucket of water, and made my way back to Liam.

Kneeling beside him, I dipped the cloth in the bucket and started to wipe at Liam's face. The dirt from the long flight and the char from the battle came away easily, revealing his lightly tanned skin. I let my fingers trace the lines left by his flight goggles, the hint of pale stubble along his jaw.

It felt so strange the way his jaw hung, his mouth slack and almost frowning. I nearly never saw Liam frown, and certainly not so calmly. I removed his flight jacket, freeing his strong arms. They looked as solid as ever, though they were slack and hanging loose and his hands trailed on the ruined floor of the building.

I folded up his flight jacket and set it under his head, then got fresh water from the bucket and wiped his blonde hair until it was stroked back away from his face. Somehow even his hair was different in death, swept back into a smooth, almost elegant style he'd never worn. His hair should be sticking up at least a little, should have the same life that the rest of his body does.

Did.

Fuck.

I cleaned off his hands and set them on his stomach, trying to decide what to do about his leathers, soaked as they were in mud and gore that was starting to stiffen. I finally decided to remove his boots and pull off the leathers, trying to convince myself that it was just so he could have them off. I soaked them in the remains of the water in the bucket for a minute, wringing out the worst of everything in them and hanging them to dry out, then dumped the mess from the bucket outside the wall.

I looked down at Liam when I came back in, wondering what I should do next.

There was a whole list of things I knew I should have been doing: retrieving Soleil's body if I could move it, checking on the survivors. There was going to be a feast for Malek.

I couldn't shake the thought that I should be able to bargain with him. There were so many other souls lost today, surely this one… but Malek had never listened when I'd asked him for mercy. As far as I knew he didn't listen to anyone. I had a couple of hours before everything about him would be gone.

Why shouldn't I be selfish? Soleil wasn't going to care whether I tried to move her body now or in an hour. Malek would get his in the end regardless.

I lay down on the floor next to Liam the way I'd fantasized about climbing into his bed. I could pretend he was asleep, even though he was still and his body was starting to cool.

I realized I could do something about that. I pulled a thin strand of Cuir's power and traced the rune for warmth, the first one my mother had taught me as a child. I knew it well enough to shape the string of power without needing to move my hand away from where it rested over Liam's, and a moment later his body warmed against mine.

It wasn't the same when we'd bunked together as kids, or when I shared space with other people. The heat didn't radiate from inside him, and Liam had always been a human sun of a person. He gave off heat and light, and he could burn you if you pushed him to it.

This was none of that. At best he was warm the way a rock was warm after the sun went down. I knew it was an imitation of what I wanted.

But it was the best I'd get and more than I deserved, so I didn't get up.

Thinking about my fantasies of crawling into bed with Liam was enough to remind me that I was decidedly not dead. That this was the closest I'd gotten to Liam since we were kids, and it was the closest I'd ever get and there was nobody here to say anything about it if I could feel my cock twitch in my pants at the nearness of his body.

I let my hand slip down his body and up under his shirt, finally tracing his abs with my fingers. I'd wanted to do this for so fucking long, it wasn't fair.

Nothing about this was fair, though, was it? So I let my hand roam almost of its own accord, up to trace one of his nipples, the broad chest I loved to see during challenges. I scooted over, laying my head on it. The blood rushing in my ears was so loud that I couldn't really notice the missing heartbeat; I could pretend our hearts beat in sync.

My hand moved back down, crossing the strong plain of his abs and catching the top of the trail of hair that disappeared down into the waistband of his boxers. Could I really…?

In my fantasies he was usually half-awake by now, his body responding to my touch even if he wasn't yet aware that he wasn't dreaming. I could imagine the little groans I'd always wanted to make him give me, and that was enough that I hardly noticed as my hand slipped into his underwear.

Touching Liam's cock for the first time was what made me truly hard, even as I lamented the way it stayed soft in my hand. This wasn't right, wasn't how it was meant to play out. I tugged some of the lesser magics into play, hardening and warding his cock into place. The sight of it tenting his underwear made me swallow hard and reach for the laces of my own leathers.

My eyes never left Liam's body. I pushed down my leathers and my own underwear just far enough to let my cock spring free into my hand. Smearing the drop of precum there with my fingers, I stroked myself three times, four. I was breathing heavy, distant enough from what I was doing that I could almost imagine the noises I was making were Liam's.

It felt wrong, though, not to be touching him. I shifted as close as I could to him, pressing my weight onto his hip and reaching over to tug his boxers down past his hard cock. I didn't let my eyes linger on it, not wanting to think too much about how pale his skin was even as he should have been flushed. Instead I pushed myself up further with one elbow, until I was close enough for my dick to touch his.

Knowing that was his skin against my cock made me somehow even harder, more desperate for whatever I could get from Liam. I shifted my weight again, rubbing against him and then wrapping my hand around both of our dicks. I imagined it was his hand, took the warmth of his body next to mine, and it was only another minute before I gasped and came harder than I could remember doing in my life.

I snuggled up against Liam, releasing the magic holding him erect so it felt more like a real afterglow might. I don't know for certain how long I stayed there. I dozed with Liam in my arms until the warmth rune faded and his body cooled again.

Eventually I had to sit up, wiping myself off with the last clean corner of the tourniquet and pulling up my leathers against the oncoming chill of a winter evening. I tucked Liam back into his own boxers and wrestled him into his cleaner leathers, putting his boots on only loosely.

The town's survivors began making their way out under the cover of darkness, and I went to speak to them. There would be so much cleanup, and most of them looked exhausted. I told them what I could- that the threat was gone, that there would be dragons returning to light a pyre in the morning.

So many of them thanked me.

"It was my friends, my dragon, not me," I told them. "This is Liam."

"Liam," one of the women said with a nod. "We'll remember. And the young woman? She saved my life, I wouldn't have made it to the mine without her."

"Soleil. Her name is Soleil."

I ended up helping them build a fire- not a pyre, not yet, but a smaller one for warmth at the opening of the mine. A little lesser magic made sure the heat radiated inward where the injured and the children slept.

A few of the survivors and I kept the vigil. I told them stories about Liam and about Soleil, trying to ensure I didn't somehow give away my feelings about Liam. In turn they talked about some of the people they'd lost today, offering memories to each other.

Eventually someone shooed me away from the fire, telling me to sleep, and I managed it somehow. When the sun woke me, I carried Liam back to Deigh. Some of the villagers helped me move Soleil and Fuil as gently as we could. They weighed almost nothing, even Fuil, but they seemed fragile and awkward. We brought them to Deigh's side as others began to bring the bodies of the villagers who'd been killed.

"You were right," I told Cuir when I felt his wakefulness through our bond. "I'm better off when I'm not alone."

It helped distract me from my own grief, to put in the hard physical labor of helping start building the pye with Deigh's corpse in the center. With my stiff and sore muscles working loose, I stood back to stretch, looking up at the sky.

The sun was still climbing, and it promised to be a warm winter day. In distant silhouette I saw wings moving. Cuir's voice carried anticipation down the bond.

"Our riot returns."