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k_a_webb“Stand still,” Vaughn said, without looking up from where he was busy drawing sigils on the ground.
“This is a bad idea.” Damien did his best not to move, but he wanted to see what Vaughn was doing. “What if you can’t reverse the spell?”
“The theory’s sound. I will be able to change your sexual orientation from hetrosexual to homosexual and then back again.”
Vaughn sounded utterly sure. Damian wanted to believed him, but they were experimenting with fae magic in a way Damian doubted anyone had ever thought of before and wasn’t entirely certain why Vaughn had. He almost always had a reason for what he was doing, which was why Damian had agreed to be his guinea pig, yet Vaughn hadn’t said what it was and Damian was beginning to wonder if maybe Vaughn was just experimenting for the fun of it.
“Why are we doing this?” Damian asked, still doing his best to watch Vaughn without moving.
Sighing, Vaughn looked up at Damian. “Have you ever once wished you could be different in any way?”
Raising an eyebrow, Damian nodded. “I always wished I hadn’t been born with fae magic. If you could rip it out of me somehow I’d be very grateful, but that isn’t possible.”
“However it does make other things possible. Switching from one gender to another has been made relatively easy and if a mistake is made then they haven’t done something they can’t reverse. I want to make switching sexual orientation just as easy, because there are people who would give anything to be hetro.” Vaughn almost smiled. “This should also work on asexual people.”
Damian stared at Vaughn. “Seriously?”
“It’s hard, Damian. There are so many sexual people out there who see me as a freak and I want to be normal.” Vaughn, biting hard on his lip, looked back at the sigils. “Maybe there’s another way, but right now I can’t see one.” A tear almost blotted out one of the blue chalk symbols, missing by less than a millimetre. “I need this to work.”
“Okay.” Damian ran a hand through his hair, trying to tell himself he wasn’t making a huge mistake just because he felt sorry for his friend. “Carry on with what you were doing, then. I don’t want to be standing here all day.”
Vaughn breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Thank you.” He stood, blue chalk in his hand. “I know this isn’t going to be easy for you, but there was no one else I could ask.”
“You’re welcome.”
As Vaughn moved around the room, preparing the spell, Damian tried not to think about what he was doing. If it hadn’t been Vaughn asking Damian would have said no. Fae magic wasn’t something he was comfortable experimenting with, because it had a mind of its own. Even the fae themselves didn’t dare do some of the things that humans with fae magic did, but then they had other problems, and as far as he could tell sexual orientation wasn’t one of them. Neither was gender.
“Are you ready?” Vaughn asked, pulling Damien out of his thoughts.
“As I’ll ever be,” he replied.
Their eyes met. “You don’t have to do this.” Vaughn ran a hand through his hair, leaving a smudge of blue chalk on his forehead. “Damian…”
“Vaughn, I’ve said I’ll do it. This isn’t easy, but if it might help you then I am not backing out. Especially not after all the hard work you’ve done.”
“I…”
“Light the candles.”
Seconds ticked by as Vaughn stared at Damien. Damien did his best to look unconcerned. No matter what his personal feelings were he was going to help Vaughn, because they’d been friends for too long for him not to. Finally, even though Vaughn looked like he’d rather argue more, he started lighting the candles that had been placed around the room.
“Do I need to do anything?” Damien asked.
“Stand still and be quiet.” Vaughn almost managed to smile. “The chant is in one of the fae languages, which is something you never bothered to learn, so you’d probably pronounce half the words wrong.”
In the centre of Vaughn’s chalk circle Damien did his best to stand still as Vaughn walked around him, waving a bunch of burning herbs that filled the room with smoke, and chanted. There were a couple of words Damien recognised, but the chant was mostly gibberish to him. One thing he was going to do after the spell was finished was ask for a translation. He wanted to know what had been done, in part so he had some idea what to do when everything went wrong and he had to work out how to fix what had been done to him.
Scents filled Damien’s nose as Vaughn stood in front of him, looking utterly focused on what he was doing, and Damien felt an unexpected flash of attraction to his childhood friend. If he hadn’t been asked to stand still he would have tried to shake it out of his head, not wanting to believe the spell had worked until it was finished. Vaughn, at that moment, just looked different to how he would do normally, and that changed the way Damien viewed him. At least that was what Damien kept telling himself. He was not going to be attracted to the one person he knew it would do no good to be attracted to.
Finally, with one last flourish, Vaughn put the herbs out in a bucket of water he’d placed near the window. Damien waited until the window was opened to stretch, knowing that meant the spell was over, and did his best not to look at Vaughn, instead focusing on how his muscles felt after standing in the same place for an unknown period of time. Vaughn walked over, the smudge of chalk still on his forehead, forcing Damien to do his best to ignore the urge to gently wipe it away.
“How are you feeling?” Vaughn asked, sounding excited.
“Like I could do with some fresh air.” Damien didn’t know how, but he managed to summon a real smile from somewhere, even though he was terrified that he might be attracted to Vaughn. Asexual Vaughn. “I won’t know until I see someone whether I’m hetro or homosexual, will I?”
Vaughn’s cheeks flushed. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He ran his hand through his hair again, leaving another smudge of chalk on his forehead. “The room needs to air out before we can do the reversal spell, so why don’t we head out and see if it worked.”
“You were certain it would earlier,” Damien teased as they walked towards the door, trying to act normal. “What’s changed?”
“Theory and practice are two entirely different things, Damien. We both know that. I was certain that the theory was sound, I was certain that the spell would work, but now I’ve used it on an imperfect human there’s every chance something might have gone wrong.”
“Which is something you couldn’t have mentioned before.”
“I…” Vaughn sighed. “I’m sorry. You looked terrified and I didn’t want you to run away.”
“I was never going to run away, Vaughn.” Stopping, Damien turned to look at him. “I wanted to help you and maybe agreeing to have my sexual orientation changed with a spell wasn’t the most sensible thing I’ve ever done, but you’re one of my best friends. You’ve been dealing with being asexual since we both worked out what sex was and if this will do any good at all for you then I’m glad I let you do the spell on me.”
“It was selfish.”
“Occasionally you’re allowed to be selfish.” Damien shook his head. “The thing is the spell, if it works, might help other people and that makes it less selfish than it would have been if you were doing something purely for your own benefit.”
“You’re being kinder that I deserve.”
“You’re being harder on yourself than you should be.”
Their eyes met and Damien pushed away the second spark of attraction. Vaughn needed a friend, not someone who wanted to jump him, so that was what Damien was determined to be, no matter how hard it was. He still wanted to brush the chalk off Vaughn’s forehead, but that would give away how he was feeling. Normal hetrosexual Damien would never have stroked his friend’s forehead. Not even to remove chalk.
“Do you think the spell worked?” Vaughn asked, obviously changing the subject to something a little less problematic.
“So far I’ve seen you and that doesn’t tell me if the spell worked or not.”
“No crush on me?”
“I realised a long time ago that someone like you was well out of my league, Vaughn, and you’re asexual. Even if I did suddenly have a crush on you, and I’m not saying that I do, it wouldn’t work.” Damien started walking again, wanting to get away from Vaughn and find out if the spell had worked at the same time. “Plus that wouldn’t tell me anything. You might have just put a love spell on me.”
“Out of your league?” Vaughn caught up to Damien. “What are you talking about?”
“You created a spell to change someone’s sexual orientation using one of the fae languages. I’m nowhere near as smart as you or as determined or even have anywhere near the same level of magic.” Damien shook his head. “I can’t even do a simple glamour without screwing up.”
“Glamours aren’t that easy and none of that matters. Not to me, at least.”
“It does to me.” They stepped out of the door into the quad and Damien hoped, as he looked around at the mix of people, that he would find someone else who sparked the same attraction that Vaughn had. “There have been times when I’ve felt like dropping out, because I shouldn’t be here. I’m only here because I happened to step through the wards with you. My magic isn’t strong enough, I don’t care enough about learning to be fae, and the one reason I stayed was so you wouldn’t be alone.”
A long silence followed what Damien had said, which wasn’t a surprise. Venting to anyone about how he felt had been almost impossible, because he felt like he should be glad he was at the school and had managed to get through the first three years, so he’d kept all his feelings bottled up. Every one of the other humans he’d met during his time there had seemed so happy to be at the school, when all he wanted to do was go back to the life he’d left behind. He wasn’t fae. The magic he did have was useless. Being there was a waste of everyone’s time, but Vaughn did have the power to be at the school. Vaughn had the will to learn how to be fae. Vaughn was everything Damien wasn’t.
“Why haven’t you mentioned this before?” Vaughn asked, emotionlessly.
“There was no reason to before.” Damien forced himself to look at Vaughn. “Now…” He glanced around the quad one last time, hoping to see someone, but no one caused the same spark. “Did you cast a love spell? I have no way of knowing.”
Vaughn shook his head. “I can show you the English translation of the chant I did. I made sure to have one, so you would understand what I’d done.”
Damien nodded. “That would be good.”
“What’s the real problem?”
“I never expected it to be you. I never wanted it to be you. The best thing we can do right now is go back to the room, reverse the spell, and then deal with what I’ve just said.”
“Sometimes magic doesn’t work the way you expect it to.” Vaughn looked down at the ground, but Damien had already seen the hurt filling his eyes. “Come on then.”
“Vaughn…” Damien reached out and grabbed hold of Vaughn’s arm as he began walking away. “I’m not upset because I don’t want to like you. You created the spell because of how hard you find it being asexual and I feel like I’m adding to that problem. Being attracted to you isn’t a problem for me.” He shook his head. “Well, it is and it isn’t. I’ve never been homosexual before and it’s a little strange looking at you, knowing what’s in your trousers, and wanting you all the same.”
“That’s a lovely way of putting things.” Vaughn looked at Damien. “You’re not adding to the problem, Damien. If you’d tried to jump me you would have been. What is a problem is knowing that you’re only at the school because of me. You’ve made friends here. You’ve seemed happy. All that time you’ve been lying to me and I don’t know who you are any more.”
“Sometimes I don’t know who I am any more. The only reason I never told you was because…” Damien shook his head. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
“You didn’t tell me because you didn’t care enough to tell me. We’ve been friends for over a decade and you couldn’t be bothered to tell me how you felt.”
“It’s not because I don’t care.” Breathing deeply Damien did his best to push the anger he was feeling away so he wouldn’t cause a scene in the quad. “If it’s for any reason it’s because I care too much. I didn’t want to hurt you by telling you how I felt, I didn’t want to make you feel guilty because we happened to be together when you found a way through the wards, and I didn’t want to make everything harder for you by walking away. Friends are easy for me to make, but you’re different. You talk to me. Leaving will mean you have no one.”
“Keeping things from me isn’t the way to stop them from hurting me.” Vaughn pulled his arm out of Damien’s hand. “Instead you end up hurting me more by doing things like this, when you should have told me years ago instead of pretending that everything was fine.”
“I am sorry.” Damien ran his tongue over his dry lips. “I should have told you, but there were times when I didn’t even want to admit to myself how I was feeling. It was too easy to keep pretending.” Sighing, he reached out a hand and rubbed the blue chalk off Vaughn’s forehead. “I wanted to be good at magic. I wanted to care about being part fae. Then I look around myself, at all the fae who look down on me because I’m not like them, and I wonder why we bother. None of them will ever accept us.”
“River does.”
“Is it acceptance or does he just put up with us because he has to?”
“He helped me to craft the spell.” Vaughn shrugged. “He listened to me when I told him about what I wanted to do and did his best to guide me to the books that would give me the most help, even though he didn’t understand why I needed the spell.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Maybe the problem isn’t the fae, Damien. Maybe it’s you. Maybe you expect them to look down on you because of what you are, so that’s exactly what you see. Have you ever tried making friends with any of them?”
“I have human friends.”
“Exactly. I don’t talk to the other humans here because I’ve made friends with the fae The reason you never see me talking to them is because you all do your best to keep separate from them and that’s a part of the problem.”
Damien shrugged. “I said I didn’t care enough about learning to be fae.”
“Do me one favour, if I ever meant anything to you.” Damien opened his mouth to speak and then shut it again when Vaughn glared at him. “When I reverse the spell spend some time with the fae. Try to see if you can turn the last three years you wasted into something, because you have more power than you think you do. Being bad at glamours doesn’t mean that you don’t have much magic. It just means you’re utterly useless at glamours.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s true. The place you need to start is River. Ask him to help you.” Vaughn smiled. “River’s a good person, Damien, and he’s given me a lot of help over the years because he truly believes that mixed bloods have as much as place in fae society as pure bloods.”
“Vaughn…” Damien heard the tremor in his voice and did his best to steady it. “I don’t want you to reverse the spell.”
“What?”
“It probably isn’t the spell, but I’ve been more honest with you in the time I’ve been homosexual than I ever was when I was hetro.” He felt himself smile, even though he hadn’t expected to. “Changes are good for people and I think this one is going to be good for me.”
For the first time ever Vaughn looked truly speechless. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it, closed it, shook his head, and stared at Damien with an expression of total disbelief. “Are you serious?” Vaughn asked finally, the same disbelief filling his voice.
“Yes.”
Vaughn sighed. “That totally screws up my experiment then.”
From somewhere Damien summoned the courage to gently touch Vaughn’s shoulder. “The spell worked. I doubt there’s anyone who would really want to go back to being something they weren’t comfortable with in the first place, but if they do they you’ve already crafted the reversal spell. It exists and I’m certain that if the first one worked then the second one will.”
Biting hard on his lip Vaughn looked at the spot Damien had touched and then at Damien. “I know I wouldn’t want to go back to being asexual, but there’s no way I can be sure that other people would feel the same way.” He sighed. “I guess I can always find someone else to experiment on if you’re certain that you don’t want me to cast the reversal spell.”
“I am.” Damien looked down. “Have I totally destroyed our friendship?”
“No,” Vaughn replied, sounding almost amused. “I’m not going to pretend I’m happy with you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to throw away our friendship just because you made one stupid mistake.” As Damien looked up again their eyes met. “Just don’t jump me and we’ll be fine.”
“I promise I won’t jump you. Do you want help cleaning up the spell room?”
“That would be nice.” Vaughn smiled at Damien. “You will talk to River?”
Damien nodded as they stepped back into the building they left. “You were right. I have been wasting my time here, because I’ve believed for a long time that I should never have found the school, but as I’m here I really should make the most of it.” He shrugged. “It’s almost too easy to believe that we shouldn’t be here.”
“I guess I got lucky. I chose to take River’s night class on fae history and that introduced me to a different side of him. You chose not to, instead spending the time with your humans friends, who all seem to believe we have no right to be here.” Vaughn sighed. “We do, even though there are those who attempted to stop us. Whether it’s the fae elders, who view all mixed bloods as lesser creatures, or the humans who come here and let that view colour their time, you need to ignore them and remember it was getting through the wards that was a sign of your magical strength.”
“All I can do is say I’ll try. My first three years here really have been wasted by my own idiocy.” Damien knew every failure had been because he didn’t believe he was meant to be at the school, which was something River had told them would affect their magic. “I guess it was easier to follow the herd than it was to do my own thing.” He smiled. “Like you did.”
“Coming to the school gave me a chance to be someone else. Everyone from our human life knew me as the frigid freak, but here I could begin again, and I did. You were the one clinging to the past. I never thought you’d stop.”
“I probably wouldn’t have done, if it wasn’t for the spell.”
“Why do you think it’s the spell that changed you?”
“It’s not so much that it changed me, but that it made me realise that I hadn’t changed, hadn’t made the most of the opportunities I’d been given, and I was making excuses to keep acting the same way. I looked at you and felt a spark, which is something I should have expected, because I’ve always admired you. A part of me wanted to be you. Ever since we stepped through those wards you’ve been fae. Instead of really dealing with my problems I told myself I was staying here with you. That you needed me. When really it was me needing you.” Damien shook his head. “Being attracted to you forced me to look at you differently and you in turn forced me to look at myself in a different way.”
“I was harsher than I should have been. I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you.”
“I deserved it. Vaughn, I’m a moron.” He smiled. “You should have told me sooner than I needed to get my head out of the sand and start dealing with things.”
“Until today I didn’t realise how bad things were.” Vaughn opened the door to the spell room and a wave of scent washed over them. “Even though you were clinging to the past you seemed happy and I didn’t want to rock the boat.”
“Next time I promise I’ll talk to you.”
“Good.” Vaughn smiled at Damien as they stepped into the room. “It really would help if you didn’t bottle up your feelings.”
As Vaughn crouched down, getting the cleaning materials out of the cupboard, Damien stared at him. The spark wasn’t going away and Damien knew he should be honest about what that meant for him. Being friends was one thing. If that was what Vaughn wanted Damien would simply have to accept that. Damien knew that he needed to find out one way or another before he did decide to bottle up what he was feeling.
“Vaughn, will you go on a date with me?”
Holding two bottles of cleaning solution Vaughn turned to Damien, looking unsure. “What do you expect from me?”
“Nothing more than you’re willing to give.” Damien smiled. “To be honest I’m not ready for anything more than a little handholding, because you’re still male and I was hetrosexual less than an hour ago.”
There was a long silence. Damien prepared himself for the no that was going to follow it. Why would Vaughn go on a date with him? They’d been snarling at each other and Damien had almost destroyed their friendship, so asking Vaughn out on a date had probably been the most stupid thing he could have done.
“Okay, I’ll go on a date with you, but I expect it to be good.” A duster hit Damien in the chest. “Now clean.”
Smiling, Damien knelt down and began rubbing away the chalk sigils. Maybe choosing not to reverse the spell was going to turn out to be a mistake in the long run but right at the moment he felt like his life was going better than it ever had done before. He was going on a date with his best friend, he was making a start on being more honest with himself as well as the people around him, and he was going to make a real effort to learn how to be fae. It felt like he was finally doing the right thing.
Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.
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0_o
Date: 2013-06-27 03:02 am (UTC)>> when I was hetro.” <<
That should say "hetero" above.