2019-11-29 - Restlessness

Once Eleanor stows the books back in her floor safe, she and August exchange a few words and a kiss, and he takes Itzhak for a drive to see some trees. She's flying out to see her parents for Thanksgiving, so it'll be just him for a few days. It's going to feel weird. He expects to be doing a lot of texting and to drive everyone up a wall until she comes home. (His phone is going to get obliterated by an aspen tree later tonight, but he doesn't know that yet.)

Since Itzhak wasn't the only one rattled by the book (and they're both acutely aware of why) the drive is reasonably quiet. The maple trees August has been growing for Itzhak's violin are in a specific spot on his lot, a little walk out from the cabin itself. (He has a two acre parcel, long and narrow, with the cabin positioned on the front third.)

It's a brisk day, chill and sharp, with big white clouds dashing through the brilliant blue sky; a rare moment of sun in the Pacific Northwest gloom. A small game trail leads though aspen and fir towards the stand of maples. There's three, all of which August has been working on to give them that proper 'flame' quality to the bark. Their leaves litter the forest floor, a flame red and rusty brown carpet around them.

Itzhak is quiet, too, and it's a little weird. That motormouth of his is shut for once on the ride over. Bundled up in the brilliantly colorful Reinhardt hoodie Bex gave him, he leans his forehead against the glass and watches the world go by.

When they arrive, he swings his long legs out and quietly follows August to the stand of maple trees. When he sees them, though, he smiles, tremulously. His boots crunch in the leaves as he goes to them.

"Hi, girls," he murmurs, rubbing their bark as if they're his pet reptiles. He's given them the names of Jewish queens: Bathsheba, Ataliah, and his secret favorite, Shalom Zion.

August moves between the trees, running a hand along each one, checking where they're at. Bathsheba's the largest of the three, but August suspects it'll be Shalom Zion that provides the wood for the main back of the violin. (Hyacinth has final say, of course; she'll know, in a way August can't, which of the three maples will be the best for each part.)

He lingers next to Ataliah. He's in a heavy black, cable knit cardigan over a dark blue Henley, pale denim jeans, and his hiking boots. He stands there, still and silent as the three maples, for a bit. Listening to them, watching water and nutrient travel within them. The slow, tireless process of forming each ring, moved along by August's will. Sure, he'd been dragged into three Dreams in as many days for his troubles, but he'd go through twice that many if it helped mend up the wound Gohl left in Itzhak even a little bit.

Eventually, he says, "Ataliah's rings might catch up to Shalom Zion's. They're shaping up nice, either way."

Itzhak can't sense the cellular life of the trees, of course, and even less now that his ability to do so at all has shrunk away below the surface of his soul. He rubs a calloused thumb along gray bark. "You know, you don't have to keep going," he ventures, awkwardly, not looking around. "Not if it's too hard."

He doesn't mean too hard for August's power. He means that the Dreams, the feeding, make it hard.

The look August gives Itzhak in response to that is the purest essence of Please. It lasts only a second, easing into something a bit more complicated. Recent, hard-learned lessons about one another flit through his mind.

"I know," he says. He studies the patterns of the leaves at their feet. Decay. Death. The other side of his power; the side he used to only know in a superficial sense.

He shakes his head. "That I don't have to. But I want to." Because he can't undo what Itzhak had to give up to Gohl, and he can't undo what that Dream made them see about one another. But this, at least, is something he can do. Tend a set of maple trees for Hyacinth to use in crafting a violin for Itzhak. Not to make them perfect trees, but the right trees. "So I will."

His hand slides off the tree. "Anyways, like I'm going to let you buy just any old flame maple off Amazon? And do you think Hyacinth Addington is gonna make you a violin out anything less than the right wood?"

Itzhak laughs once, silent, eyebrows quirking. "Okay. Good point." He hangs an arm around Shalom Zion and hugs it. "Look at me. You turned me into a treehugger." But he doesn't stop, not for a few solid minutes.

Then he turns around to August, and signs 'mind' (a tap of his forefinger to his temple) and 'talk with' (sliding one index finger towards August with one hand and himself with the other, twice), making a questioning face.

"It's only a matter of time around me," August says on a wry smile, leaning into Ataliah. "I'll have you all doing it eventually."

He nods at the request, looking a little, maybe not relieved, but glad that Itzhak's asked. August was about to suggest it anyways.

He rests his head against the tree, opens the link like he usually does. And almost immediately pauses, because something's different with Itzhak, and he's not sure what it is.

What is it? It's not that Itzhak's more receptive; he's always been highly receptive to kything and he's learned to surf its tides with skill. It's not that he's figured out how to guide electricity through his body's channels without harm (but knowing him, how far off can that be?). A tough thing to pin down. Maybe it's now that he's no longer just receptive. Now, maybe, he could reach out and inflict.

Maybe. Whatever the case, the intricate origami of his mind blooms open for August. Thousand-layer folds unfold and gather him in, transform into violin music singing through August's forest.

And what's on Itzhak's mind first?

<<I didn't want you should see me like that.>> The music sings with grief and shame.

Itzhak isn't the only one who's different, though August's difference is less about strength, more about circumstance. That far side of the volcano crater is more visible now, not shrouded in the distance like it's always been. The reason it's been shrouded is immediately obvious: this is the side that was destroyed. It's a barren landscape where pyroclastic flow obliterated everything; piles of tree trunks heap around a lake gone entirely dark with mud, bleached and warped bones of a long-dead forest. Hardly anything grows here.

The wind sighs in the aspens. <<I know you didn't. I'm sorry you didn't have a choice. I'd have not looked, if I could have.>> But that had been the whole point, of course: to force Itzhak to be that person, to force August to see it, and to make sure Itzhak knew he had.

Morbid humor makes the river surge. <<Those motherfuckers sure know how to stick it in and break it off, don't they.>>

The link seems to drift a moment as August considers Itzhak with another Gift. Then he's back. The trees shift, soft and a little sad. <<Ah. That's what it is.>>

Itzhak finds himself turning back to Shalom Zion to hug it tight. Who knew hugging a tree could be so comforting? Roen is on to something there. Then he goes to Bathsheba for hugging. He doesn't want her to feel left out.

His music goes daintier, easing through the blasted dead forest, dipping to taste the mud and ash and ruin. <<Yeah. They sure do.>> Of course, he's unsurprised to see this side of August, like August had been unsurprised with him. And, similarly, it still makes him ache to see. <<Oh, Guskha. Look at this place.>> (A Yiddish pet name slips in there.)

It doesn't frighten him off, doesn't make him think August is a hopeless wreck, but...does he think that about August seeing him? Yeah. Yeah he does.

<<I don't wanna be like that no more.>> He rubs his forehead on Bathsheba's bark, even knowing he'll have a smudge now and probably he'll forget to wipe it off. <<I got out of the business so I didn't have to be like that no more. I cleaned up my act. But...>>

But... Itzhak's fractals curl away from 'but' like a sensitive plant. <<What? What is what?>>

It's a little difficult to accept that all of the volcano is visible, even this ugly side of it, but there it is.

A hush falls over the landscape. <<Please don't think I saw that and saw someone who didn't turn away willingly, or someone who can't change. I know you did, and I know you can. I also know that you did what you had to in there so you could survive. For Naomi. For Miriam.>>

He doesn't focus on 'but'. Itzhak retreats from it, so does August. The barren moonscape stretches around them.

<<Easier to show you.>> The sky overhead fills with a complicated web of life and light, a lake which is a galaxy, a forest which is a human heart. At the center, three shapes orbit one another in a complex dance. The largest of the three dwarfs the other two, which are about the same size. The orbit of the three shapes slows, allowing Itzhak to identify the two smaller shapes: one is the song of the mind; the other, the song of matter and energy. They resonate with him innately; he can differentiate them less by how they look than by how they feel, because he knows them well himself.

And the third, though it's obvious what it must be via deduction--the song of shaping, of life and death, joining and severing--has no echo in him. Not anymore. It sings in a voice he can't easily track, its notes elude his ability to play. The three strands weave intricately, a trio written specially for them, three plants that have been growing together for decades. There's even a hint of more to come, and yet following the melody is hard for Itzhak with such a large part of it so foreign.

Now August shows Itzhak a different lake, a different forest--one fractal shaped, and still with a heart: a single, rather large shape, in a complicated dance with a smaller one. These two move with furious energy, their music always coming back around to the same point despite their wild paths. A duet, like he'd played with Rachel, easily as complex as the trio in August, yet wholly different in scope and shape. There's a hitch here and there as a beat goes missing, but they're few and far between. They're re-settling without the third strain.

All of the volcano is visible, and Itzhak just loves August more for it. The taste of scarred earth where nothing will grow, and so much of it, inspires a tender ferocity in him; the urge of a defender to stand guard over what is most precious and vulnerable. (The unicorn of the Dream, rearing over the fallen elk, refusing to give a single handspan of ground.)

His music quiets, dipping and running along like a singing brook, as August spins the image for him. <<...Yeah. Okay. That part in me went away. But the other part got bigger.>> The fractal forest spikes with his 'voice', like a music visualizer, iterating and then deiterating. <<That part you can do, I can't feel it anymore.>>

While Itzhak might love it, August doesn't. This is the other side of the coin, the part he'd convinced himself wasn't really here despite knowing, deep down, it was. How could it not be? And that was what They'd done; taught him a brutal lesson about himself. So it went.

But if Itzhak loves him all the more for it, August feels the same about knowing what happened in that prison. Itzhak might never have wanted August to see that (and August was entirely willing to grant him that), but it's nothing August judges him for, or thinks less of him for. He knows, because he was in a war, and prison was war too. Surviving war was ugly, but it was that, or die, and leave everyone outside behind. And of the many things either or both of them would have been willing to do, abandonning their loved ones was never on the list. Which, of course, is why he loves him; the unicorn stubbornly refusing to give way in the face of an ancient huntress who could cut him down as easily as speak to him.

He sighs, soft and sad, for the loss of the shaping song. <<I'm sorry.>> Even if it had always been small, a sprout never destined to make it very far, it was still sad to know a part of Itzhak was gone. <<Maybe this is just how it is. They come and go. Wax and wane.>>

<<Maybe. It ain't important.>> Itzhak is lying, of course. Of course it's important. <<Maybe it'll come back. Isabella told me hers came back some.>> He sinks down Bathsheba's trunk to plop on his butt, leaning against the tree. <<I just...I just wish you didn't have to get dragged in with me. You don't deserve it.

<<But.>> Itzhak lifts his eyes to August, eyebrows tilted. <<With you backing me, they couldn't stop me.>>

August moves to sit next to Itzhak, a companionable few feet away, his knees drawn up and his long arms wrapped around them. It is, indeed, important, since it means Itzhak is being shaped in ways fundamental to the Art, to the Song. Arguably it's very important. But August is content to not focus on it. <<It might,>> he agrees, and leave it at that.

He closes his eyes. The image of Itzhak's songs fades back to the landscape and the sky full of fractals. <<//Not that I don't appreciate the thought, but, it's not about me not deserving it. You didn't deserve that place either. And you've gone into our personal hells for us.> A brief, after-image of the mental hospital which had been more prison than hospital. The Blight, destroying everything around it. <<The least I or anyone else can do is the same.//>>

The wind rattles in the aspens, stirs the volcanic mud and dust on the barren side. It's not a sad sound; it's almost smug. <<Yeah. They sure couldn't. Which is how I intend to keep it.>>

Itzhak pulls his knees to his chest, folds his arms over their tops, and buries his face there. His music trembles with shame and self-loathing, quavering and scraping the strings. <<You're different. All of you are different from me. You don't deserve it. I do.>>

The wound the Dream opened in him is a bloody chasm, fed by that something else he still won't show to August. He held it off this long, but now it's gaping, raw and wet and hungry.

The river's voice rushes in the distance, gentle and more than a little sad. <<That's not true.>> The unicorn standing over the elk, Itzhak defending Ruiz from the shadow-bird, Itzhak standing next to Finch in that mental institution which had been little more than a prison itself. Warm water to wash the wound out, ointment to keep it clean.

And still, he doesn't ask about that thing. <<I'm sure you've made mistakes. Bad ones. But something to deserve facing that hell alone? No. I paid a price to help you in there. I won't lie to you, it sucked. But I'll do it again.>>

Itzhak does calm under the images of healing and of how August sees him. The construct of his self-image is razors and hooks and cruel, warping mirrors; to know that August genuinely sees him like that helps on its own. He rubs his eyes on his forearms and lifts his head, staring at the ranks of trees in the nearby greenbelt.

<<It sure did suck,>> he murmurs, and then snorts in bitter amusement. <<Yeah. I've made some pretty fucking bad mistakes.>> Then, unbidden, Isolde rises to the top of the kythe. Isolde. Bex. Alexander. Finch. Ignacio. A glissando of names, finishing in Javier.

They aren't mistakes.

Well, maybe de la Vega is. The thought makes him hurt again.

August adds to the list: Ignacio, with his recent troubles, through which Itzhak has stood by him; August, half-dead at the hands of his own grief in the form of the blighted aspen, and Itzhak holding him. Sutures, careful ones. <<What you deserve, is a chance to be the best version of yourself. And you keep choosing to try to be that. Again and again. They want you to forget that. They want to make you think that any time you remember how the uglier things felt, it's all you are and can ever be. They want to convince you that your mistakes, the things you hate most about yourself, are the only truth. But I'll tell you the same thing you told Hyacinth and de la Vega: that's a lie.>>

He watches the names with approval, though at the last one, amusement makes the link ripple. It's fond, lacking the edges of something meant to tease or taunt. <<Even if being with him is a mistake, it's definitely not one bad enough to deserve that.>> His mood sobers some. <<Why do you think he might be a mistake.>>

Itzhak sighs long and soft through that enormous nose, drops his forehead back on his arms. <<I...shit. I'm tryin'.>> The violin is plaintive, high, with the melancholy sweetness of the Yiddish tradition. Music to weep to.

The leaves are cold and slick under his butt; the fall sunshine warm where it falls on him through Bathsheba's partly-nude branches. He sniffles, closing his eyes. <<It's not that I think he's a mistake...mostly,>> he murmurs, referring to de la Vega. <<It's that, ugh, he went and fucked Easton Marshall and I'm pretty fuckin' upset about that, and I don't even know why. I know perfectly goddamn well he'll never be monogamous, and I don't WANT him to be, so, what is wrong with me?>>

<<You're trying. And you're doing good. Saved this old idiot's life a couple of times. Don't think I'll ever miss a chance to help you when you need it. And please don't ever think you can't come to me for help. I'm...>> A moment of silence. The trees shudder. Ruefully, August admits, <<Okay, it's a lie to say I won't be hurt if you don't. But that's not your problem. Just don't think you can't ask me for help. I'm not going to be disappointed in your mistakes, or anything like that.>>

August thinks on that for a time, on Itzhak's reaction to it. <<Sounds like you're in a bit deeper than 'just fucking', and you're worried he's not.>> He pauses, adds, <<But he is. Thing is he also strikes me as a guy who's perfected the art of lying to himself.>> He sighs; in the link, the river murmurs. <<And that sets aside the part where Easton and Bennie weren't open, and I don't expect Ruiz bothered to double-check that just so he wouldn't wind up mired in that particular mudpit. But he's the kind of guy who's never met a problem his dick can't make worse.>>

<<Don't call yourself an idiot,>> Itzhak grumbles, irritating flaring in the kythe. <<You're not. You're not anything LIKE an idiot.>> He quiets, listening, experiencing this moment of connection with August amid the maples that will one day be a violin.

Then--he snorts and starts laughing with an edge of hysteria into his arms. He laughs and laughs until he's tearing up. <<That's--the most--accurate thing anybody has ever said about him.>> He rubs his eyes, looking exhausted. <<Oy gevalt. You think he's ...in deeper, too?>> Itzhak tries not to let a hopeful trill happen in his music, but it happens. He can't stop it. <<How'dya know?>>

August shares in the laughter. That burst of humor from Itzhak is like a brilliant sunrise after a damp, cold night. Itzhak, who so often finds himself mired in pains not unlike August himself. The laughter pushes all of them back: the self-hatred, the inadequacies, the anxiety, the fear, the anger.

<<How'd I know? Come on--how many times have you worn that hoodie of his? And he visited you in the hospital, brought you a book. That's not just fucking. It was never, just fucking.>> He grows a little more earnest. <<//Maybe you both want it to be, thinking it'll hurt less if everything goes sideways. But that's not how this works. You should talk about it. And believe me, I may not know the man much, but I'm sure I can say talking isn't one of his strong suits, so you'll have to put in a lot of groundwork to make that conversation happen.//>>

He lends some context to why he thinks this: memories. He's about 15 to 20 years younger in these; in college, a little old for the classes due to his time in the Army and then recovering. He's heftier than his current self, hair and beard solid black brown, dressed in a classically grunge rocker 90s style. And dear Lord, what a mess he was.

<<It took me years to deal with Bosnia. And I was all over the place in the mean time.>> Screaming arguments from third story apartment balconies, complete with things being flung at one another. Amazingly awkward morning-afters because someone wasn't clear on the dating situation (or too drunk to ask, pick one). Most of this with guys, though there are more than a few mishaps with women as well.

And, himself, thinking it's just fucking when it's not. A few times. (And also thinking it's not, when it is. More than a little of that too.)

That dark-haired, furious young man gives way to the quieter, leaner one sitting near Itzhak. <<You're both a lot alike. No doubt part of why you're into each other. Also probably why you'd both rather pretend you're just fucking. If you're not just fucking, then what?>>

August has no answer for 'then what', because his solution was to freak out about his Art resurfacing and go hide in the mountains for 10 years, only having sex when he was particularly inclined.

Itzhak's ears turn red; he keeps his face crammed down, like it'll help (it doesn't). <<He made out like he was visiting me to get his hoodie back, but he didn't even ask for it. Then he gave me that book.>> Le Petite Prince. A memory of Itzhak needing to find a translation online (gaming keyboard clicking loudly under his fingertips), and then reading obsessively until he was tearing up over the end, thinking, what did it mean? What did it mean that Ruiz gave him that book, an older copy, one loved by other hands before it was in his?

And trying to convince himself it didn't mean anything, and failing. Trying to convince himself he's not that into de la Vega, and failing. Trying to dig his heels in as a massive weight of emotion dragged him over an internal cliff, and failing to stop.

August's 'then what' finds resonance in Itzhak. Then what, indeed. He's in free fall now, and he's frightened of what might lie at the bottom.

He pauses to look over this image of younger-August, with some care. <<Well, Christ, no wonder you were banging like a screen door in a hurricane,>> he murmurs, amused a little. <<Been a solid 10 all your life, apparently.>>

Then...ugh. He may as well fess up. <<It ain't exactly that he fucked Easton that I'm mad about,>> he sends, cautiously picking his way through his words. <<It's...that he let Easton top.>>

August sympathizes with that emotional tether latching on to Itzhak and hauling him wherever it will. His internal imagery of it is different: it's not dragging Itzhak down. No metaphor of darkness or drowning (or being buried--ah, that'd be why). Instead, he's a guy on a horse, one boot stuck in a stirrup, dangling helplessly from the saddle as the horse charges across the open desert, heading for a cliff. The hot sun, the sweat sucked off his skin by the wind whistling past as they barrel to an unknown fate.

<<Here's the thing. What matters most, is that others don't get hurt. Isolde, Rebecca.>> Reluctantly, he adds, <<Finch. If it's just you you're putting through the ringer, obviously that's not great but it's only you you're accountable to. But if Rebecca gets hurt? Isolde? That's another story. And that's why you need to talk to de la Vega. Square where you're at. Get on the same page. And decide what you want to do if he refuses to come to an understanding.>>

No suggestion of what that should be. It's for Itzhak to decide if he tries to turn the horse from the cliff, or yanks his foot from the stirrup and cuts his losses.

August laughs at the compliment, sunlight glinting off the river flowing over algae-covered rocks. <<Flatterer. Like you can talk.>>

He's puzzled, though, by this bit about Easton and Ruiz. Not Itzhak's reaction, but the reality of it. <<But he won't let you?>>

<<I know. I know. I'm tryin' not to be a shit boyfriend, but it comes so natural.>> Itzhak abandons this whole sitting-upright thing, flops over on the ground. He tucks his hands behind his curly dark head and stares up at the bowl of the sky, decorated by bright billowing clouds, edged around with the long bare fingers of trees. He's going to be covered in moss and leaf bits and he doesn't care. <<He won't let me. He's...he actually don't know too much about bein' queer. I'd think he goes through guys at the same rate as girls, turns out nope.>> A swath of frustration, like a high wave dashing on the end of a pier. <<He don't wanna date, I can't make him, what the fuck am I supposed to do, Roen?>>

<<//It comes natural to all of us. All of society gives us leave to be shitty to our lovers. Especially men to women. Only thing we can do is fight back. Slap other guys upside the head when we catch them doing it. Which, believe me, Alexander and I will be happy to do.//>> August is teasing a little about that. A little, but, not entirely.

He turns over the bit about de la Vega not being particularly versed in being queer in his head for a bit. Well, maybe he shouldn't be surprised. Ruiz went in during DADT and the HIV epidemic, and he'd been married, had a kid...

<<//Honestly, that could be it. You're experienced. Really experienced. He's not. There's a power gradient there that maybe makes him nervous.>> A long pause, like August is weighing if he should say what he's thinking next. <<Sort of like him being a cop and you being an ex-con.//>>

He turns his musings to Easton. <<//If the thing with Easton really was a one-off, that probably frees him up to not be worried about the hierarchy involved. ...another way I know it's not just fucking, incidentally. Why would it matter if one guy he's 'just fucking' rides him but not another? Trick question: it only matters if he's not 'just fucking' one of you.//>>

August rolls his head against the maple, watching Itzhak there on the forest floor. <<You have to decide if you think you can deal with not getting what you really want or need from him. If you think it won't cause you to hurt anyone else. Some people can cope with that. Maybe you can.>> His attention turns to the woods around them. <<I never could. Took me a lot of fucking up to accept that, and be willing to walk away when I knew we weren't agreeing on where things needed to be.>>

<<I trust Sandushka to protect Izeleh if he's gotta. But I don't wanna make him gotta.>> Plaintive, still, again. <<I don't wanna hurt her none. Bex neither. I...>>

Love them. He doesn't form words, but the pain of his wounded heart struggling against its scars comes across easy and clear. It hurts in there. Hurts a lot. Even love hurts, because of those scars. Itzhak had loved fiercely enough to carry him through prison, but he paid for it in these wounds, parts of him scoured away in the acid of trauma.

He snorts at the idea that de la Vega is made nervous by him in any way, but he nods, closing his eyes to let the sunlight burn red through his lids. <<Ugh, don't logic me, Roen,>> he mutters, because he knows August is right. <<God. Quit being right all the time, it really gets old.>>

A long silence, while Itzhak lies in the warm, brief autumn sunlight on the colder ground.

Then, <<I don't know what I need,>> he sends, soft and graceful as dandelion fluffs lifting off from the stem. <<Don't know anything.>>

The sounds of the forest rise up around those scars; so does the harsh wind over the barrens on the far side of the crater, the light shifting off the flickering aspen leaves, the ripples of water where the river spills into a pond. Not an encouragement to stretch them more than they can, but a reassurance that he shouldn't force them. August understands, suspects Rebecca and Isolde do as well. After all, hadn't they both been through brutal things too? Pain that had torn parts out of them, left them reassembling themselves, puzzles with pieces missing?

As Itzhak would never ask them to give him more than they can, neither will they. <<Give those time. How long did it take me to find someone and let them in? You're already doing better than me.>> He closes his eyes, and brief memories of fear and anxiety flicker past. He can't talk to anyone about what happened in Bosnia, not really. He can't explain the Art to people without it. So he doesn't, and it never works. There is a crater inside him he can't describe, but like anything so large and landscape altering, they know it's there, know there are things he's not telling them, and sooner or later, the resentment comes.

He shakes all that off. <<Be patient with yourself. That kind of thing that you went through, it'll be a while. Great news though--you have all of us. We'll be happy to drag you through it kicking and screaming.>> A private little laugh gleams in the link. <<Especially de Santos.>>

Silence as he contemplates the question of what Itzhak needs. <<I think you might have an idea, really. It's when the things you want or need aren't there that we get unhappy. It's just hard to describe and explain. We're guys, were not taught to do that.>> He picks over his own thoughts, assembling a possibility. <<Maybe it's about trust. You want him to trust you enough to be vulnerable with you. In general, not just once like he was with Easton. You have to trust that, as a cop, he won't use being an ex-con against you. He has to trust, as the less experienced guy, that you won't use what you know against him. And if he won't let you top, he's indicating he doesn't actually trust you with that.>> He stops there, link still with him wondering if Itzhak thinks that fits, or not.

He's listening, eyes closed, his inner melody playing in the kythe, harmonizing with the song of the river. Little notes of agreement or not-so-agreement flick and flash like minnows. Until August says that he suspects Itzhak might actually have an idea of what he wants.

<<No! I don't!>> he insists, with a sudden screech of strings. <<I don't know, I don't know anything. You know as well as I do it ain't about where my dick goes. Plenty of guys don't take it in the ass. It's--it's about--I DON'T KNOW!>>

This is often the time when, struggling to ride the turbulent chaos of his emotions, he goes from zero to a hundred and twenty physically. But today, right now, he does not. Today he drapes one arm over his eyes and fights tears.

<<I don't know,>> he sings to the forest, miserably.

The landscape weathers that storm of sound like reeds bending in the wind off a hurricane. Dust stirs in the wasteland, leaves fall from the aspens. It's seen worse. August winces, though, to feel Itzhak's distress.

Silence creeps into the landscape; August, making space for Itzhak's music, so he can express what he needs to. Even if it is, in fact, a confused cacophony. <<It's okay to not know. It's better to know, and you'll want to work on finding out. That might take some time. But not knowing, it's not some failing. It just means you're dealing with something new. Something you don't understand. That's scary, when it's something like this.>> Something intense. Something punching all the right buttons. Something that fits a little too well.

Isolde: feral sweetness, sorrow gilded by childlike happiness, a love of frogs like Itzhak's love of snakes, an unexpected partner in adventure. Rebecca: perfect cool snowflakes, smart and sharp, gaming buddy, who surprised both herself and Itzhak with the intensity of their reaction to each other. Now Javier, and just when Itzhak thought he was doing okayish understanding his girls, here comes de la Vega with his brooding ferocity and his refusal to be reasonable in any way, ever.

The three of them are like the three aspects August showed in the vision (although they're all strong in the song of the mind--in fact it seems like everyone Itzhak has a thing for is a mental glimmerer). Three vastly different people each make the tonewood of his soul resonate in a unique way.

People sometimes ask him how he can love more than one person at once. How can he not?

<<Yeah.>> He wipes tears from his eyes on the sleeve of his hoodie. <<It's scary as hell. I hardly know how to work on it.>>

August smiles at each of them, reminded through Itzhak of one of the nicer parts of being open in relationships. (Though of course, this very conversation was effectively why he wasn't anymore, but that was neither here nor there.) He wishes, vaguely, that he still had the emotional energy for it, but that was one of the things life eroded from him. Realizing that had been a bittersweet moment.

He's quiet a time, thinking about what to say to that. <<Honestly, the best thing might be to just...think about how you feel, when you're with him. What's good about it. What's not. I don't mean right this second, just start doing that. Catalogue it, the good and the bad. That should point you in a direction. Play your violin, think about him in comparison to Isolde and Rebecca.>>

The landscape stirs as something occurs to him. <<Here's the thing, though. If he doesn't want to give you boyfriend privileges? You should think twice about giving them to him. That's a hard line I highly recommend drawing in the sand. Letting him have any kind of pull in your life when he won't give it to you in return isn't a good idea. I'll tell you right now, that's going to suck, if it comes to that. It won't be a pretty conversation. But if you don't have it, you're bound to get hurt. Setting expectations like that is important when you're dealing with something like this.>> He doesn't seem to expect Itzhak to say anything about that, just leaves it for him to ponder. He's also not sure Itzhak can really do that kind of thing; he's very all-or-nothing in his relationships, after all. But really, August just wants him thinking about it; the notion of having a right to expectations of his own, if any are being placed on him.

Itzhak sits up, shedding bits of forest floor, and sniffs. He sits there quietly while August offers him badly-needed suggestions for how to cope with this situation he's found himself in. <<...Boyfriend privileges,>> he echoes, his strings soft and low. There's some moss in his hair, suspended in black curls. <<Okay.>>

His mind is brimful, bordering on overwhelmed, so he withdraws from the kythe. "Thanks," he mutters, not looking at August; eye contact is not something he can handle right now. "Got a lot to think about."

August sighs, sad and fond, reaches up to brush the moss from Itzhak's hair. <<You do. Remember, don't make decisions when you're upset, if you can avoid it. And...you have a right, to be happy. You deserve it.>> He looks Itzhak directly in the eyes. <<Do me a favor. Think about this too: what I did in there,>> in the prison, <<was not your fault.>> The blasted, barren wasteland that they could now see, wasn't his fault. It had always been there; August had just been unwilling, or unable, to look at it. <<Okay? I was...this close to doing it at the wedding. When those guys attacked Eleanor.>> He laughs, ducks his head. <<De la Vega and Alexander checked up on me, you know.>> A small, tired smile. <<Ellie told me, it's a war. That I have to remember, they're going to do everything they can. So sometimes...so am I. Even that. But that's not your fault--it's Theirs.>>

Itzhak's face flinches a little when August tells him it wasn't his fault. Oh, but it was, says that flinch. His fault that he went to prison at all. His fault that August wound up in the Dream with him. His fault that August killed in that Dream. His fault, his fault, his fault.

But it is a war. A war waged on the turf of their most vulnerable selves.

He sighs, nods, and hugs August tight. No words; they're in a broken jumble at the bottom of his brainpan. When he pulls back, he signs 'home', fingertips swiping along his cheek, with a questioning face.

<<I'm going to keep telling you that until you believe me. Like a scratched CD. Strap in.>> August's tone is light and matter of fact; a brilliant fall sunset. He grips Itzhak tight, looks up at the cold blue sky through the empty maple branches. Winter was close. He could feel it, in more ways than one.

Home, he signs back, and climbs to his feet, wincing as he does so.

Somewhere, under a mountain of mud and ash inside him, a seed splits open.