Author’s Note:

This one’s interesting. I knew I had this story packed away somewhere, and usually when I have two versions of something it’s just a duplicate or another format, but not this one. I recall writing the first one, less so the second one, and probably because I’m somewhat ambivalent about the multiple-perspectives here. I already have a tendency to over-explain, and there’s a lot of joy in letting the reader interpret, so I wouldn’t want to make a habit of writing the same event from two sides. But I guess this one is interesting.

Seth’s having a normal one. Firmament isn’t. Then again, when are times normal for Firmament?

Naturally he’s going to wake up hideously hungover and forget most of the revelations and the evening and it’ll be all Seth can do to not at least singe him in the morning when he starts being irritating about Ian again…

Also, I should mention I guess that the relationship between Seth and Ian is…. uhhhhhhhhhhh, well, I dunno, I guess I’ll talk about it more if people ask but otherwise talking about seems like asking for trouble, but anyway, life is fucking messy.

-end-

Seth set her keys down on the counter looking into the kitchen. The fridge had a familiar 'raided' look, complete with greasy fingerprints on the stainless steel and something jam-ish hastily and incompletely cleaned away. She slipped out of her coat, a flash in the back of head both the pain of having had a that glass of wine with dinner (Ian bought it for her; he was nervous about even so slight a wrongdoing, while in the midst of much greater one, by most accounts) as well as the self-conscious knowledge that she did it, and tried to do it, like her mother had.

She shook her head and rid the thoughts with an image of burning and fire.

She also popped her heels off in the hall like a kid and padded into the living room. She could hear the radio – it wasn't like she didn't know he was there. She might've guessed one of the other boys (and why were there so many boys around her?), but for some reason she knew it wasn't.

It was four in the morning; there was a Cake song she faintly recognized playing on repeat off the CD player. It was a melancholy and silly song, and she wasn't sure whether he would be laughing or crying but she knew he would be there, expression unexpected.

Firmament was spread on the couch – slumpy and stretched like cheeze whiz on crackers or mustard on late-night hot dogs. A morass of strangely-assembled foodstuffs were on the table, and a hand was propped against his forehead, elbow on the back of the couch.

He was a little drunk, but she wasn't supposed to mention it, and he wouldn't mention the stick of wine to her teeth – or maybe he wouldn't mention that because it wasn't there because something else he wouldn't mention, having to do with Ian.

Suddenly she didn't want to mention Ian either, listening to song queue up again and start lilting over the hardwood floors. She thought to amuse him; she bunched her fists and gathered up and sprinted a few padding steps, stopping so she slid to halt into his view.

He lurched up, then fell back as a snort robbed his stomach muscles of their strength. He wanted to laugh but he couldn't quite breathe. She threw her hands out like jazz hands, jangling her fancy adult earrings, and he found the breath to laugh aloud.

“Oh, God,” he choked, trying to regain his breath. Rolling his eyes up to heaven, he crossed himself for her – for Lamb, not Seth, though the sarcastic tint to his grin was for Seth. She smiled back; she still couldn't quite grin.

“Seth,” he said, then halted himself, raising a hand up to beckon her before he realized he had had it backwards and pushed himself to standing. “Come on, can you waltz?”

“What?” she asked, and surely wasn't grinning then.

But he had stepped up, and with a gesture like a conductor prepping an orchestra, got her to raise her arms. The bag hit his forearm awkwardly, and she leaned to toss it onto a non-sticky-food-covered part of the coffee table. The way she slipped herself back up – he had used it such that she slid into place, consciously or not. He started to nod – it took a second to get himself in time with the music, during which she laughed at him, bobbing his head drunkenly out of time. He chuckled but righted himself, and swayed her torso until she swayed with him, ignoring her mockingly humming along with the song.

“It's a good thing that I'm not a star,” he quietly sang, in a false country twang, and though she was laughing, but the time the horns kicked in, he had gotten her feet moving with his. A gentle push at each start, a gentle whole-body bob with the beat, and she followed along, laughing too hard to think about how she was stepping. When the break came for the song to restart, she laughed harder still, and he fumbled them both along until it kicked in again and they stumbled them into the beat.

She smelled of sex and perfume, those artificial scents of others, her laughing turned away to hide the barest tint of zitti and wine. She had convinced Ian to take her someplace Italian for once; he lived on fried things, the imported food of his imagined Irish homeland, and she lived on a wealth of reality: they could eat whatever they wanted.

Firmament's hands were sweaty, and the more he tried to keep them from touching her and causing her discomfort the more he fumbled the steps. He gave in more and more, as they started to hum along together, bobbing with the rise-and-fall waltz in that exaggerated musical fashion. He kept his breath turned away, as well as he could, over her shoulder or by her ear, because she would smell the whiskey and she was leader – she would have to do something. In spite of it, he kept her body close, because they were dancing, and it was what was needed.

She abandoned thoughts of Ian, forgot the way Firmament hated them together, and for a moment laid her forehead against his shoulder. It strengthened her frame; they danced better. And Firmament let go his thoughts of Lamb, dead thirty years, and laid lips against Seth's disheveled hair, taking deep breaths of scents he had never smelled.

It was Seth who stumbled on the hem of dress, a bit too long without heels, but Firmament was too lost to save them. They turned and caught each other, laughing nervously.

“Didn't know you liked to dance,” Seth said, out of breath after wine and dance and other things.

“Had to learn it – back in my day it was part of the orphan program, you know.” He shrugged, brushing a hand through his hair as if he were another person in another time. “We had like, one dance lesson a year, to turn us into proper young gentlemen.”

Seth laughed hard. “Didn't know I could dance.”

“It's all about the lead,” he said, “unless it's all about the follow.”

She glanced up at him, completely unaware of the devastating way a true gesture framed in eyeliner and mascara could strike the heart, noticed that Fir was desperate to see her and noticed a bit of sweet relish stuck to his cheek (they only had sweet relish in the fridge – Bosh called any other kind of relish a 'shame and a sin').

He flinched, feeling a dead hand on his cheek.

“Catching up on your musical education?”

“That was the intention,” Fir chuckled. “I got to say, I like the future sometimes.”

At least he had skipped her death – her funeral, her memorial, the saddened mentions of her and her noble sacrifice in the news.

“I wasn't waiting for you,” Fir said, brain catching up with something it had said five minutes ago.

Seth smiled at him. “I know you weren't.”

And she backed away because she had to. While Fir was busy feeling miserable, she thought about the fact that the other boys wouldn't wake for hours, and sore as she was, she wasn't so eager for sleep.

Twisting her feet, she looked up at Fir only briefly.

“So, how do these steps go?”

His chest hurt, every time he breathed in and it was at least mostly the whiskey. That fucking pedophile Ian had bought it and brought it in the fucking place, and hidden it in a locked cabinet in his sometimes-room, that fucking bastard, and Firmament was drowning in it, because Ian was such a fuckin’ puss he wouldn’t say anything about it.

Wow, did he feel sick. He lurched up from the couch so he wouldn’t aspirate and die on his own vomit like every rockstar he hadn’t managed to care about in time. He hadn’t the heart to tell them he had listened to country and western, really – it’s what all the boys had listened to. They had no fucking idea what the radio sounded like – or maybe he didn’t. I mean, he had had base radio, and that means whatever whoever had the radio dial wanted him to listen to.

The song was telling her not to worry. She was dead. She was so fucking dead. And he had probably killed her.

He was laughing a little harder now and it hurt like a son of a bitch but he wasn’t sure how to stop. Thank God most of the others were gone. They had places to go; his places to go had never even been all that his in the first place.

Nothing had been his. Nothing ever had been his.

Jesus, maybe Wes could kill him. Maybe Wes would kill him, if he asked. If he looked too crazy. He bet he looked crazy now (or just drunk, shamefully drunk, which was worth dying for anyway). Wes was the one that would take care of it. Or Seth.

He trusted Wes slightly more, or wanted to, because Wes would probably shoot him or something practical like that, and Seth would burn him to fucking death. He was afraid of that. Better or worse than being crushed to death? There was probably a fire afterward – broken gas lines.

Oh, shit – he was going to cry. Or he was going to spray more fucking cheese into his mouth, because living in America was a capitalist wonderland.

He coughed and laid back on the couch, and tried not to laugh too hard until he got it down. Lamb would laugh, in that wounding way she could, about him choking on fucking cheese whiz. Disgusting and American, in that way he could be, and be funny. She only laughed that way once she knew – knew she could trust him – and he was the one the she trusted last, because he was a child, and an American, and in the wide world of experience, those were the same thing to her.

It was hours later when he heard the door pop, but time got funny when he wasn’t looking at it. The song had been going on a loop, and he had just been thinking – or not thinking, or sleeping, or mad, just bugfuck with no idea where his mind went when he couldn’t find it.

He had stayed up for Seth. He was worried about her. The existential crisis was extra but now he remembered she had been out with That Fuck, and he had been worried. Indistinctly worried. Not worried about her, not really; Seth could handle herself. He didn’t know what he was worried about. He worried that way about Lamb and Bela, and it was useless in the same way it had been useless then and at least twice as unnecessary, but at least then he knew why he worried. Only now it came with a dose of the undead.

She was going to notice he was drunk and chew him a new asshole.

She disappeared from where her coat shoulder had peeked around the wall, and there came the hollow, womanly sound of high heeled shoes hitting the ground, carelessly discarded. He swallowed, and felt every second of it. She skidded into view, hair dragging in a self-made wind, hands cast out in little balled fists of concentration.

He laughed and almost herniated. Her hands spread out like starfish when he looked up, and she shook her head, causing a little tinkling applause from her long earrings. He was going to fucking die of Seth, and not because she set him on fire.

“Oh, God,” he wheezed, and for a minute it was like she was there – Lamb – but only because Seth obliterated her.

He crossed himself, impulsively – this is what she looks like, he thought, your girl of the future, and holy fucking shit.

“Seth!” he cried – the song had started again, while he hadn’t been listening.

It was almost perfect. He was gesturing her down, but that wasn’t right, he needed to get up. So he did, and standing felt like a new fucking very-wobbly world.

“What?” she asked, her smile falling, sticking on red-wine tinted teeth, because that bloody mick was probably cheap (he probably didn’t know good wine any better than Fir did, both being sheltered, in their way – but Fir rejected that thought immediately: it was no fun).

He remembered the form like it was beaten into him, which it mostly was, but thankfully he also remembered it was pretty natural, once you got used to it. Maybe that didn’t make sense. Her bag smacked him in the kidney and she tossed it aside, hopefully missing his drink(s? How many glasses did he get out?). He had to catch the song – catch the beat – or he would miss his chance – and she wasn’t dead, wasn’t long dead, not yet. They had a minute. He got her to rest her arm on his, held hers other hand out, and she was a natural leader – that is, she pushed back, held her form, like she had been dancing her all her life.

She had, she had.

She laughed as a verse and half passed with him trying to figure out three-four like it was calculus, but he loved it. She helped him – she hummed, they bobbed together, and he stepped and she stepped, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

He didn’t know what he was thinking then. It took so long to get his mind on the beat, to track what his body had started doing without him, that everything else had fled for a minute, but it wasn’t like the dead time, the gone time, when he was missing.

He did well enough, without thinking, that she laid her forehead on his shoulder, and for a minute it all blended uncomfortably with what had, in his past, only been fantasy. He had thought, once or twice, what it would be like to be this close to Lamb – what she would smell like, how she would feel, what he would do, in that infinitely more suave body he had in his dreams. Instead he was drunk, and his mouth tasted of bile and liquor, and he smelled gasoline, oil, garlic, and wine in Seth’s hair, as he leaned close, their dancing strengthened by the way closeness supported their frames.

God, he didn’t care – he breathed in – Lamb was dead, so long dead – and Seth was here, and real, and frankly, more real than Lamb had ever been to him alive.

Lamb had never loved him. It was all one-sided. He knew. He knew then, but wouldn’t let him know; he knew now, and still wouldn’t let himself know. It was all a dream – all it had even been, ever would be, ever was. She was too kind to disabuse him. He was too scared to say anything. Weak. Weak and childish. Too childish for her.

And that was why he was so mad about Ian and Seth. He never for a moment thought Seth was at a disadvantage, never mind how old Ian was. Ian was a child compared to her; they only played, and she knew they played. Ian could never be more, and she could never be less.

Fir had been a child compared to Lamb. She had humored him, too kind to crush him, and he should have been crushed, would have been, but she had died first. It was all he would ever get, the dream of her, and if all was right she would have torn his heart out and stomped the dream out of it, but now that could never be, so he kept the dream. And Seth would never have abided such foolishness.

Seth’s foot caught on her dress and the top of her head slammed Fir’s lip into his teeth. To be honest, neither of them felt it, but they felt they should.

“Didn't know you liked to dance,” Seth said, breath reeking of wine more than garlic.

“Had to learn it – back in my day it was part of the orphan program, you know.”

That wasn’t quite true, but he didn’t feel like talking about the past just now.

He shrugged, brushing a hand through his hair. “We had like, one dance lesson a year, to turn us into proper young gentlemen.”

Seth laughed hard and he drew towards it like a drowning man towards air. “Didn't know I could dance.”

“It's all about the lead,” he said, mimicking the officer who had taught him, one idle afternoon, surprising him with humanity, “unless it's all about the follow.”

She looked at him, and he fucking died. Why didn’t they know? Didn’t they know they shouldn’t look like that, unless they wanted someone dead? Like a goddamn canon. And she brushed something from his cheek – hopefully not vomit – and it was like Lamb came back from the dead. He was still a child – an unworthy child – who failed to really see her humanity like she saw his. He would never be worthy, and she would always be dead, and it would fuck him up forever.

“Catching up on your musical education?” Seth asked.

“That was the intention,” Fir said – the song was from 1973. A year after he had gone under. He had gotten stuck, gotten stuck like a motherfucker in quicksand. Dragged down by the dead. But this recording was new, and it had soft trumpets, and he liked soft trumpets like he liked chocolate fucking cake. Hardly a better thing in the world.

“I got to say, I like the future sometimes.”

She had been buried in 1973. They buried… whatever. That’s what happened, when Firmament really let go – shit just wasn’t shit anymore. Whatever he grabbed into and of it, it became something else once he did. At least he had missed that shit show. Not that anyone who knew her would be there. He had killed most of them, too, or been gone and now they were dead and that was the same thing.

“I wasn't waiting for you,” Fir said, because things were going places they couldn’t be followed, and if he didn’t say something he would probably puke and pass out.

He should pass out trying to tell her that he understood – that’s why he wasn’t being a dick now, when he was always a dick about Ian, and the shit they got up to. He knew. He just couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help that it still wasn’t right.

Seth smiled at him, pulling back from the closeness of dancing, as if she knew he thought he might puke.

“I know you weren't.”

Maybe she believed his lies. Maybe she, like Lamb, realized that she could crush him, and chose not to. But somehow, he didn’t think that was very like Seth. She wouldn’t take that shit. She wouldn’t play that game.

Anyway, he wasn’t hers to crush. Neither of them had, or would be, his. And he wasn’t the weak child who had let Lamb down, anymore. He wouldn’t be. Not for her. Not again.

“So,” Seth asked, “how do these steps go?”