When he looks up, he sees stars; millions and millions of stars,
spread thickly across a sky blacker than a cancerous lung.
This is how he knows it's a dream.
He knows it's one of those dreams because, when he glances
reflexively at his left arm, it is not there. Three months of living
with only one arm have not been enough to remove it from his
subconscious. If this were an ordinary dream, what he sometimes
thinks of as a "true" dream, he would be whole.
For a moment he considers rebuilding himself—for he can do that
here; in the Dreaming, there are few limits to his powers. He could
grow himself a new left arm, or just imagine the old one back. The
thought makes him smile. Why stop there? Why not give himself wings,
or a tail, or a horn in the middle of his forehead?
No. He comes here to be himself, and much as he hates to think about
it, his incompleteness is a part of who he is now.
A figure approaches him through the trees. Trench coat. Cigarettes.
He tenses briefly, then relaxes. That bastard can't touch him here.
Even if he still dreams—which Alex doubts; you have to have a
soul to able to dream—he certainly doesn't know the territory
anything like as well as Alex does.
So whoever it turns out to be is... well, not necessarily a friend,
but not someone he can automatically consider an enemy.
He tips his head back and stares at the stars. They are unnaturally
bright and clear, as if he had left Earth—which, in a way, he has.
"'An' as it blowed an' blowed,'" says the voice of the man walking
towards him, "'I often looked up at the sky an' assed meself the
question—'"
"'What is the stars? What is the stars?'" says Alex with a grin.
"John. Good to see you."
John sits down next to him on the bench and lights up a cigarette.
"Same to you, sunshine. Been a long time."
"Too long." Alex is still looking at the stars. "Do you know the
answer yet?"
John snorts. "I haven't been looking at the stars much lately."
"No. No, you were always much more terrestrial."
"What about you? Been stargazing?"
"In a way." He shifts his head slightly so that he can keep one
eye on the stars and one on John's face. "Are you really here?
Or am I dreaming you?"
"Does it matter?"
"I might have known you'd say that. Yes, it matters. I have some
questions for you. I don't want the answers I'd give myself; that
would be pointless."
John shrugs, puffs on his cigarette. "If you think you can tell the
difference, go ahead and test me. I don't mind. I've got nothing
better to do."
"I find that hard to believe. Don't you have a world to save from
demons or something?"
"I don't even have a date for Friday night, thank you very much."
Somehow, John's right hand has sneaked along the back of the bench
to rest on Alex's shoulder. Alex ponders this. The John he knew was
his lover—of a sort—but he was never this subtle about it. He'd
usualy lean forward, light Alex's cigarette and, in the conspiratorial
tone he reserved for deep occult secrets, say, "So, fancy a shag, then?"
Cigarettes. God, it's been too long. Alex quit when he turned
twenty-one, and he regrets it now more than he's regretted it since...
since Mulder found those butts in the car and he couldn't claim
they were his. The smell of John's Silk Cut Purples, the way the smoke
billows and ripples... he grits his teeth and thinks of cancer, of the
(now ex) Boss, the way he stinks, his rotten yellow teeth, his grey
skin...
He leans back into John's arm and inhales as much smoke as he can.
Damn, but some addictions are hard to break. Like nicotine. Like the
Dreaming. Like John.
"How long's it been, d'you reckon?" says John softly, a tone Alex
doesn't remember him using. "Seven years? More?"
"Too long," says Alex, looking John in the eye. It's John all right;
too much about him is different. Even his eyes are different, softer
somehow, not quite so haunted as they once were. "But you don't look
older. Younger, if anything."
John smiles lopsidedly and strokes the back of Alex's neck. "Healthy
living," he says, deadpan, which makes Alex laugh; John's idea of
healthy living is putting two sugars in his tea instead of four. The
laugh feels strange, and Alex thinks (with a shock which is almost
enough to cut through the drowsy pleasure John is calling up with his
fingers) that it has been a long time since he has laughed for
pleasure. For bitterness; for contempt; for a certain wry amusement at
the ironies of life; but not for pleasure.
He turns to look at John again, leans in a little closer. "What's
going on? You trying to soften me up? I don't have anything you want.
At least, I sincerely doubt that I could provide anything you couldn't
get more easily elsewhere."
"What makes you think I want anything?"
"You always want something."
"Would it be too cliched for me to say 'that was then, this is now'?"
He hasn't stopped that slow, soft stroking of Alex's neck, which makes
it very hard to concentrate.
"If that was then and this is now, what's the difference? What's
changed?"
At that John stops the stroking and takes a long drag on his
cigarette, staring thoughtfully at the stars. "I've changed. Don't
laugh, it's true. I got rid of something I'd been carrying for a long,
boring time—it saved my life more than once, but it wasn't worth
it. Of course, there's good news and bad news."
"When is there not?"
"The good news is, part of me is in Hell." Alex frowns and twists to
look directly at John, who grins a sly lopsided grin and says, "Yes,
actually, that is good news. If part of me is in Hell, then all of me
isn't. If you get my meaning."
"I think I do. And the bad news?"
"In some ways, what I got rid of was keeping me alive. Not that I'm
going to be pushing up the daisies any time soon, but I can't handle
the drink nearly as well, and there's probably going to be a hospital
stay or two in my immediate future."
"Nasty."
"Could be worse. I could be in America. At least England has the NHS."
"I'll ignore that, in the interests of Anglo-American cooperation."
"Do what you like, mate." He starts stroking Alex's neck again. "Do
whatever you like."
A question forms in Alex's mind, and he watches it fade into
nothingness before reaching his mouth.
"Yes," says John, whispering in his ear, making the hairs on his neck
stand up. "I'd like that a lot."
Damn. He'd forgotten John could do that to him; could cut through all
the lies he'd wrapped his mind in and stab cleanly at his heart. It
isn't telepathy, not properly anyway; Alex has met telepaths, and
John isn't one of them. No, John just knows him too well to be taken
in by his lies—and it's no surprise, really; after all, John taught
him everything he knows.
He arches his neck and looks up at the stars again. They're beautiful,
which is just... wrong. Nothing that beautiful should harbour the
menace the stars harboured. Nothing that menacing should be that
beautiful.
"They aren't the real stars, you know," says John, still whispering.
"It's all right to think they look nice."
Alex sighs deeply and stares his fill. Of course they're not the
real stars. They're the Dreaming's stars: bright and shining and
many-coloured, and not menacing, not homes to the black creeping
things that still people his nightmares.
A quick turn of Alex's head and they're pressed against each other,
mouth to mouth; not kissing, not kissing, for a moment that stretches
into eternity: then kissing, lip to lip and tongue to tongue and a
sweet, aching taste that Alex knows is nothing to do with tobacco.
He draws back as soon as his nerve endings can stand it, and stares at
John again. Yes, it's there in his face as well: a softness, a
humanness that was never there before; or maybe it was, but always
overlain with something harsh that all but blotted it out.
"Demon blood," he blurts out, before he knows what he's thinking. "You
had demon blood in your veins."
John nods, his eyes serious. "You might say it was a gift."
"But it's gone now."
John nods again. "Like I said—not worth it. Now, can we get back
to what we were doing? I was enjoying that."
Alex laughs and dives forward to catch John's mouth with his own.
Sweet. John tastes... sweet. Alex dimly remembers hearing somewhere
that semen is mostly composed of glucose and is on the point of
sharing this fact with John when he remembers that it was John who
told him in the first place, although he still doesn't recall what the
context was, and anyway, it's all a lot less interesting than the
texture of John's palate and the way the bench has just melted away
beneath them without letting either of them fall—very considerate
of it—and the patterns John is tracing down his spine with his
fingernails.
Wait. They're naked. How did that happen?
He looks a question at John as he's tracing a line of kisses down his
chest and belly, and John just grins, the way he always used to when
Alex was making something more complicated than it had to be. Just for
that, he licks a long, tortuous detour around John's nipples without
ever actually touching them; but he makes the mistake of sneaking a
glance at John's face to see what effect he's having, and realises
that John knows what he's doing, and is enjoying every minute of it.
So he lets go of pretences and games, and simply meanders along John's
body, refamiliarising himself with its particular planes and angles,
the shallow bowl of John's hip, the fine golden hairs on his calves,
the coarse pads of his fingertips... ah, yes, and John's not exactly
passive either, though he seems content to lie underneath Alex; he's
exploring too, drawing circles and spirals and mystic squiggles on
Alex's skin, so that every inch of him is alive and tingling with the
joy of it all.
They stay like that for several eternities, loosely bound together in
mutual exploration, not going anywhere in a hurry and willing to enjoy
the journey to wherever it is they are going. Alex likes it all,
being with John, the faintly tangy smell of the grass, the light from
the dream-stars, the heat that builds up inside him and recedes, again
and again and again, an endless new beginning that never dies away.
Never dies away... but there comes a spiralling of heat at last that he
knows he can't ignore or spread throughout his body as he has been
doing; his movements quicken, and John's body, so lithe and soft-hard
beneath him, quickens too, and all the thousand points of pleasure
traced by tongue and fingers join together in one pulse of brilliant
light.
Then it's over, and Alex is lying on his back on the grass, watching
the stars again. Something is out of joint, and it takes him a moment
to realise that his arm has grown back. He frowns at it and it
disappears.
John chuckles wryly, lighting up yet another cigarette. "Alex, my son,
you're one of a kind. Other people come here to get their wishes
granted, but you... "
"Who's to say this wasn't one of my wishes?" says Alex. And certainly
he feels better for their little roll in the grass. He hasn't learned
any of the things he'd meant to ask John about, but it really doesn't
matter any more; he feels comfortable in his own skin for the first
time in ages, and he has John to thank for that. Somehow it never
occurred to him that John would shy away from him because of the arm.
Perhaps it's something to do with having looked at Hell without
flinching. A stump of an arm would be nothing after that... or maybe
it's just because it's John, John who taught him all about lies,
and truth, and magic, who knows him inside-out and thinks no less of
him for it.
Strange how attractive a person can be when they think you're not the
scum of the earth.
Suddenly Alex is dressed again, and he can see the starlight fading. "I
think I'm waking up," he says. He turns to John and touches his cheek;
a gentle touch, a farewell. "Take care of yourself."
"Don't be daft," says John, "I wouldn't bother even if I did know how."
The glint in his eyes is pure laughter, and it stays with Alex when he
wakes up.
end
Smoke and Mirrors
by Katherine F
Alex is sitting on a park bench. Somewhere in a city; he can hear
the rumble of traffic in the distance. 
