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“You can’t just die so stupidly,” he’d hissed. “I need you. You’re mine.”
August had wanted to roll over for him. Wanted to bare his neck. Wanted to give himself up, so ferocious was his gratitude. As Jack’s fingers trailed through his hair and as he wrapped his Pokémon sweatshirt around August’s shoulders, something in August broke. Or changed. He wasn’t sure. But he’d known then that he was important. He was valuable. He was Jack’s.
His name right under the first knob of August’s spine. Small. Perfect. Neat.
It was soft. The moment was soft.
Jack sighed and reached over, gripping the back of August’s neck firmly in his hand. The tension instantly bled from August’s bones and he breathed out softly.
“Well done.” It echoed in his bones like it had been spoken by giants, spoken by gods. Nothing could replace the glory of the Wicker King’s favor—the peace of returning from defending his honor. The phrases that ran through his mind were archaic and ridiculous and urgent and more real than anything he’d ever known.
“You already know I’ll do it,” August said. You already know. You fucking know.
And then, like a living nightmare, his howl roused the other patients to noisemaking. Like a battle cry. It soared above the symphony of their screams of confusion and fear, the banging on the doors and the weeping. Soared above all. A phoenix that burned and fell to ash before it could set alight the room at the very end of the hall where the dreammaker lived, imprisoned by his visions. Unanchored and unnoticed in the dark.
“I don’t care. You’re the most precious thing in the world to me. They’re trying to make you forget that. Don’t let them make you forget it.” August sighed.
Why can’t any of you get it into your fucking heads: He is my only constant. My fixed point.”
“It’s just true,” he said. “It always has been. In this world and the next. They could take everything away and leave us with nothing, and I would still love you.”
Then, with a resolute and terrible sorrow, Jack cradled August’s cheek in his nervously shaking hands and kissed him.
It was the same face that Jack had made on the roof, in the middle of the night, when they rolled in the grass, when he sat back with August’s blood and ink on his hands, when his face was lit orange with flames, when he’d opened the door to Rina’s room, when he stared across the gym at the homecoming dance, when he pulled him from the river and breathed him back to life. Jack had been waiting. He’d been trying. He was scared. There were tears in his eyes and it took August’s breath away.
