“So what are your plans once we get home?” Kevin asked as he got more comfortable on the hard deck. “You two just going to visit a bit before disappearing for a while?”
AJ smiled at the question, knowing what Kevin was asking him. “Don’t worry, we won’t just disappear.” He said dryly. One hand lazily stroked at Brian’s hair, enjoying the feel of it between his fingers. Though they were ok now, AJ had never forgotten the feeling of thinking he would never be able to do this again. Every moment that he now had with Brian, he treasured. “But I figured we’ll take care of some of our affairs. Some money and things like that. I’ve got some stuff I need to get out of storage, some things to sell.”
“You getting rid of your house and such, then?”
For a moment AJ stopped to think about that. “I probably should. If I do come visit, I can stay with you guys. I don’t need a home set up here. Not anymore.” Absently he bent down and pressed a kiss to Brian’s forehead. His lover’s mind was surprisingly silent. The only emotion that AJ felt from him was contentment. Happy with that, he didn’t intrude on it, simply continued to stroke his hair. “I’ve got to take care of some of Howi’s things as well. Put his affairs in order.” The pain in that still hit him, but not like it had before. Though Brian moved not a whisker, love flowed over the bond in response to AJ’s pain.
A flash of pain went into both Kevin and Nick’s eyes. “I still can’t believe he’s gone.” Nick whispered.
“He died with honor.” AJ whispered. “He died to save so many others.”
They all stayed silent, thinking their own thoughts of the man they’d all called friend. After a period of silence, with only the crashing waves for noise, Nick finally spoke. “Do you think you could tell us a little about him? I mean, like what his life was like. A few memories you might have.” Nick paused, looking down at his lap. “Can you tell us a little about him, like, before you guys met us? Happy things?”
That brought AJ’s smile back full bloom. He should have thought of that himself. Here these men were mourning a lost friend and yet there was so much about him they didn’t know. AJ had that knowledge in his mind, the only custodian of certain memories now. It struck him, suddenly, that he was now the oldest living ‘immortal’. The elves were older than him, but their lives consisted more of their world, their lifestyle. Certain mortal events, AJ was now the sole witness of. Before he had always had Howi to share that knowledge with. When those memories overcame him, AJ had had someone he could go to. Now, that person was gone.
The impact of that hit him like a fist in the face. How many people he’d lost in his life, well, he’d lost count of. But this was so different. All these memories that he had, there would now be no one who would remember them like he would. No one else had been there with him that was still alive.
Clearing his throat, AJ knew he still sounded hoarse when he said “What kind of things would you like to know? Any particular time period, country, anything like that?”
In response to the pain in AJ’s voice, Kevin was quiet as he asked “What’s one memory that makes you smile?”
Just one? AJ let his mind drift over the years, sifting through all the memories he held. They had done so much together. Without him realizing it, a smile creased his face. “There’s so many of those.” He said with a chuckle. “I remember when we walked through the Sistine Chapel as Michelangelo was painting. Howi and I looked up at it and I said something about how beautiful it was. He scoffed at me, I remember that. Said he gave it a hundred years before people forgot about it and replaced it. I’ve always liked to tease him about that.”
Humor lit the faces of his friends and lover. “I bet you’ve been to some amazing places!” Nick exclaimed softly.
AJ looked out over the water with a smile. “You can say that. I’ve seen some wonderful, some horrible, and some beautiful moments. Every end of the spectrum. I’ve traveled to so many different places and lived so many different lifestyles.”
Something went across Kevin’s face before he leaned forward and leveled AJ with his ‘father’ look. “Wait a second. How many languages do you speak, AJ?” he asked. Confused by the serious look on Kevin’s face, AJ shrugged. “Um, all languages? Or just ones that are still used? You have to be more specific, Kev. Mortal languages? Magical languages?”
“Let’s stick with mortal, for now.”
“Let’s see.” AJ let his mind drift, trying to tally up all the mortal languages he knew. In the back of his mind he felt amusement from Brian, but his gentle probes were pushed away. Brian knew why Kevin was so serious but he wasn’t sharing. The shit. “Ok, so it’s probably not an accurate number. I mean, that’s a lot to add up. But, mortal languages, ones that are still spoken, I’d say probably close to six thousand. Last I heard there’s like sixty six hundred plus languages alive in the world today. I mean, I might know more, some I might catch on to. Some are just the same language, but the fancy version and the common version are considered different.”
The serious look on Kevin’s face turned to annoyed. “You little shit.”
“Excuse me?” AJ asked in surprise.
“We traveled all over the world, working our asses off to get translators at places, getting lost because none of us knew the language to get directions to the hotels or the venues or even to places to eat. An the whole time you could speak the language?” Kevin snapped. Oh, shit. It took everything he had for AJ not to let his amusement show as Kevin ranted. “I mean, what about that time in Germany when we got lost for four hours because we got separated from our translator and couldn’t get directions back to the hotel? We used a book and tried to do it! Four hours, AJ!”
Ok, so maybe he wouldn’t be able to hide all his amusement. “Well, it would have blown my cover if ‘AJ Mclean’, a little punk from Florida, knew how to speak German fluently and flawlessly.” He said with a shrug. “Plus, it was fun. You have to admit that.”
Before Kevin could rant any more, Nick and Brian started to laugh. Unapologetically, AJ grinned. “Sorry, Kev. I was trying to blend in, remember? It wouldn’t have worked very well if you guys had found out I could speak, like, Yiddish, or Hindi. If I’d just started speaking perfect German then, you’d all have wondered and it could have made things awkward. I might have had to leave.”
The logic of that had them all sitting back for a moment. Brian still lay where he was, quiet and peaceful. After a short time of listening to the waves, Nick turned to look at him again. “How do you remember all the languages? Don’t they ever get mixed up in your head?” he asked.
In a gesture that they had seen a thousand times, AJ shrugged and grinned. “Sometimes I get a little rusty. Takes me a little to get back into it. But if I take a moment and think about it, I can usually get the words. The accent takes me a little more to kick in.”
“Accent?”
“Well, yeah. You can’t say the right word without the right accent. Plus, when you’re trying to blend in, to convince people you’re a native or such, you’ve got to sound authentic.” AJ paused, racking his brain for a second. Then he smiled. “’Tis God’s own truth, lad, if you’re wanting ta be taken serious, it’s authenticity you’d be after. Fooling people ye canna be if ye dinna play the part.” He said, with a perfect rolling Scottish brogue.
For the first time since they started talking, Brian opened his eyes and looked up at AJ. “That was hot.” He said teasingly. “I like the sound of accents and such.”
AJ couldn’t keep his own grin from growing. He looked down at his lover. Stroking one hand over Brian’s cheek, AJ said something to him in the musical sounds of Gaelic. With the bond so strong between them, the translation for the words managed to come across it, so Brian knew what it was that he said. In response to it, Brian shivered. “Don’t you start.” He warned AJ.
Feeling Brian’s reaction, AJ almost shivered himself. ‘You’re probably right. I don’t think the guys would like it if I started something like that right here in front of them.’ He apologized. Brian winked up at him.
To try and distract himself, AJ gave his head a soft shake and tried to shift the topic a little. “There are some accents I have a hard time with. I’m not very good at the Turkish accent, or the Russian. Howi always seemed to get those better.”
A sudden memory struck AJ. He sat back, laughing a little. “I remember one time, we were at the Μάχη τοῦ Μαραθῶνος.” When they gave him funny looks, he stopped for a second and realized what he said. “Oh! Sorry. The battle of Marathon. We were out on the field and Howi got separated from me. I looked around, and he was off to the side spear to spear with this Persian bastard. Now, Howi was a damn good fighter, but somehow this guy seemed to be slipping around him like a snake. I got close enough to realize why. The guy was Immortal, just like us.”
The memories swamped AJ. Half his attention he kept focused on the ship and his air currents, but the other half of him was steeped in remembering. “He had some control over magic, but not enough. He was running his mouth, saying things to Howi to try and piss him off. In battle, Howi had a tendency to let his emotions get a little too much control. So, the guy pissed him off, and Howi swung his spear while yelling. When he did that, his emotions ruled his magic, so he had no control over it. The whole spear burst into flame as he caught the guy. Man, Howi’s face was a picture!”
AJ laughed, not noticing that no one else was finding that as funny as him. He was too lost in the memory to notice. “Next thing we know the battle’s done and we went those guys running. Our, well, I guess you’d call him our commanding officer, he came over and they had Howi in shackles in an instant. They were going to execute him for witchcraft, basically. That dumb fool looked at them and grinned and told them how brave they were.
“When they asked him what he meant, I remember he said ‘Well, if I’m this great witch that you’re so scared of having free because of my magic, then shackling me and telling me you’ll kill me is pretty brave. I mean, aren’t you scared I’ll just burn you all to ash?’ They were dumbfounded. They hadn’t thought that far ahead. Still as sweet as pie, Howi kept taunting them. ‘If I were you and I was confronted with a witch who had just burned a man to ash, I wouldn’t be putting him in shackles. If I was scared of him I’d be running for the hills.’”
Clear as day, AJ could still see Howi kneeling on that field, his head thrown back, a grin on his face. “They told him they weren’t scared. There was only one of him and so many of them. He couldn’t kill them all before one of them killed him. ‘It’s us against you. You are one and we are many.’ They taunted him. Now, I’d stayed quiet then, cause I knew Howi wanted to handle it. But I could see they meant to kill him so I grinned and walked up right then. ‘Not alone.’ I told them.
“Howi glared at me but I didn’t really care. I held my spear like a staff, the end ground into the dirt, and looked around them all. Before I could say anything else, Howi let out this huge sigh and used magic to break his shackles. Before he could take a step, someone ran him through with the spear. Naturally, that started things going. I stepped in, using air and pushing them all back. But I was shielding against them, not their weapons, which was stupid. As I gathered up Howi and ran with him, they threw their spears at us. I caught one in the leg and one through my shoulder. But I got him out of there.”
Pulling himself back out of the memory, AJ looked down at Brian’s face and smiled, loving the small smile Brian wore. He chuckled as he looked back up at his other two friends. “When we were safe, we stopped and pulled the spears out. I checked his wound, which was already working on healing. You know what that jerk did to me?”
“What?” Brian asked with amusement.
“He grabbed one of the damn spears and stabbed my foot. Told me if I ever interfered with his business again he’d make it something a little more vital next time. He was pissed! Pissed that I interrupted his ‘fun’, as he called it!”
Brian and AJ laughed. The memory was a good one for AJ and lightened the grief on his heart a little. It too him a moment to stop laughing, and a moment longer to realize that neither Kevin or Nick were laughing. They were actually looking at him with both surprise and confusion. Stifling his chuckles, AJ asked “What?”
“How on earth is that funny?” Nick asked him. “You guys were stabbed, then he stabs you, and you’re acting like it’s hilarious.” There was honest confusion on Nick’s face.
Surprised by that, AJ looked down at Brian, hoping he’d be able to help explain things. The shrug Brian gave said he, too, didn’t understand why they were confused. AJ looked back up at them. “I guess you had to be there.” He said with a shrug of his own. ‘Ok, so now this is a little awkward.’ He sent to Brian.
Brian’s amusement floated back to him. ‘Maybe it’s something to do with the war part of things. The fighting and stabbing and such. That’s an area they aren’t familiar with, so maybe they can’t get past that to the humor of it.’
‘Well, you got it! You’ve never been in those kinds of places.’
‘Yeah, but this war here gave me an insight into what war is like. My mind is more open to that stuff and I’ve had to learn firsthand how to balance the fear and the hardships with the humor in life. I had to learn that you can’t become so wrapped in war that you lose sight of the joy in life. So I can see how you found the humor there. Plus, to add on to it, I think they’re still not used to your easy healing, so they don’t understand how an injury can be funny because their brains automatically focus on the pain of it.’
“Oh!” AJ exclaimed. He hadn’t thought of that. His eyebrows drew together. “Really? But that’s part of the whole point!”
“Hell, honey. Sometimes I still have to remind myself of that fact, and I live it!”
“Huh.” Maybe it was just because he was so used to it anymore. But he’d never had a problem remembering that fact when he’d been playing any of the roles he’d played as a mortal. “I’ve been out of the mortal world too long, I guess. I forget these things.” He looked back up at Kevin and Nick. “Sorry, guys. I’m out of practice at human things. I forget you’re not really used to our healing, or some of the things I’ve lived through. I apologize if I made you uncomfortable.”
He would have said more, but his senses were suddenly engaged as he felt land coming up on the horizon. Automatically AJ started to move, Brian already climbing up off his lap. To dock safely, AJ needed to see what he was doing. “Come on, guys.” He called to his friends. With one fluid jump, AJ stood on the railings at the very tip of the bow, his arms spread wide to the wind. “There’s someplace I want to show you before we go home.”
Brian recognized it almost instantly. ‘You’re bringing us here?’ he asked AJ gently. Images of what had happened the last itme they were here played between the two of them.
‘I need to see how the people fared. I need to see if any are left alive. If there is, I need to help them.’
With a wide grin on his face, AJ watched as the islands came in to view. The very islands where he and Howi had first taken Brian when they’d run away. Amazing how much had changed since the last time they were there. Despite the fears in AJ’s heart, he couldn’t help but feel glad to see this small slice of the world. These islands had always represented peace to him.
“Welcome to one of my homes, guys.” AJ said with a grand gesture toward the two islands.