Authors: Marguerite Labbe
As soon as they reached the exhibit, Nick headed straight for the third statue. Tonight Galen found himself lingering near the first one. The sight of Dexios and Lykon caught in that passionate embrace never failed to make him smile. That and he didn’t want to experience those urges that hit him whenever he was close to one of those unfinished statues. Even knowing that it was Lykon responding and not really him didn’t make it easier. It was too intimate. With the finished statues it was more like seeing old friends.
“Pictures don’t even do them justice,” Nick said, crouching down next to where Dexios and Lykon stretched out on the floor. “It’s so real, as if you can sense them almost. Maybe it’s because we’re connected, but it’s strong. I wouldn’t be surprised if it translated to your patrons.”
“I know what you mean.” Galen touched Dexios’s shoulder. “They seem happier. It’s weird; I would’ve thought that they’d be more anxious since it seems like we’re so close to actually breaking the curse. Instead it’s like they’re too busy reveling in each other, so engrossed in the moment that there is no worry about what might happen next.”
“I think you’re right.” Nick looked across the bronzed limbs toward Galen. “Maybe we should take a lesson from them.”
“I’ve had similar thoughts along those lines. I could be afraid of loving and losing again, but that would be a mistake.” Galen sighed and dropped his hand from Dexios’s shoulder. “I wish this could be over for the gala. I’d love for this nightmare to end for them and for people to see them as they should be seen, together.”
Galen had given a lot of thought to Nick’s proposal and his knee-jerk reaction to it. Maybe Nick wanted to get married for the wrong reasons, but he believed Galen loved him now. Maybe Galen needed some faith himself, faith that they could work through this somewhat shaky start of theirs, faith that what they felt would win out over their fears. He wanted to give Nick that sign of faith as much if not more than he wanted to break the curse.
“Nick, I’ve been thinking a lot today, actually. You know, maybe I—”
“Wait right there before you say what I think you’re going to say,” Nick interrupted as he rose to his feet. “I’ve been doing some thinking too, and I have both an apology and a confession to make.”
Galen stared at Nick, caught off guard. “What could you possibly have to confess?” A twinge of foreboding hit him when Nick wouldn’t quite meet Galen’s eyes. Surely he was blowing this all out of proportion. Galen couldn’t imagine Nick doing anything to betray his trust.
“Apology first.” Nick took Galen’s hand and led him out to the bench in the hallway. Thoroughly confused now, Galen didn’t say anything as they sat down. How could Nick apologize if Galen didn’t know what for?
“I shouldn’t have asked you to marry me last night. It was wrong of me to try to use you like that. When I do ask you,” Nick paused and gave him a nervous smile, “and I hope to one day get that chance, I want it to be because it’s the right step forward, the right time. I don’t want there to be any regrets later on. I don’t want to ask you for somebody else’s benefit. It should be just between us.”
Nick’s words eased a weight on Galen’s heart and mind that he hadn’t even realized he had been carrying. He didn’t want to wonder later on if that was the only reason why Nick had asked, or if he’d asked as a preemptive strike to keep Galen from leaving and moving onto somebody else.
“Thank you. Bryan proposed, the night of the accident. That’s what we had been arguing about. He didn’t believe in forever, and I wasn’t ready to tie myself to somebody who didn’t. He thought I was being oversensitive and making too much of a situation that wasn’t a really big deal.”
“I guess I doubly fucked up when I asked.” There was genuine remorse in Nick’s expression and an unguarded sincerity that Galen had been waiting to see. “I don’t think it’s being oversensitive to want the real deal. That’s what I want too, that forever kind of commitment.”
Galen studied Nick, his concern growing as Nick seemed even more nervous now. “What’s going on?”
“I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”
Galen went cold inside. He knew they still had issues to work through, but the one thing he’d counted on was them being honest with each other. Now that he looked back at it, he was the one who had made that promise, not Nick. He pulled his hand from Nick’s and tried to ignore the quick slice of hurt that crossed his face.
“Okay, I’m listening.” A thousand possibilities crossed his thoughts, and he shut them all down without considering them. He wanted to hear whatever it was from Nick’s lips.
“Damn, you’re pissed and shutting me out,” Nick muttered, dragging a hand through his hair. “Please, don’t shut me out, not now.”
“Just talk to me. I’m not shutting you out; I’m trying not to jump to any conclusions. Tell me what’s bugging you.”
“You already know that you’re the reincarnation of Lykon, and you know that my family owns the Collection, but it runs a little deeper than that. I know more about the statues than I let on.” The words came out in a rush, and Nick grabbed Galen’s hand again. “I can read those journals that I showed you, the ones in Greek.”
Galen frowned as his thoughts whirled in a confusing dance. “I don’t get it. Why try to hide that you knew?”
“It’s complicated. First off, though my family technically owns the Collection now, they originally belonged to your family. Lykon was given the charge to watch over Dexios, and he passed that on to his brother’s children. Sometime a couple hundred years ago my ancestor got pissed at your ancestor and took them away. We’ve been in control ever since. I don’t think my people trusted your people to care for them.”
“Wait a freaking minute….” Galen scrubbed a hand through his hair. He didn’t know why he hadn’t picked up on it before. He’d been so preoccupied with Lykon’s journey that he hadn’t even considered Dexios’s. But it all came together in a flash of insight. “So what you’re trying to tell me is that you’re a reincarnation of Dexios. How the fuck does that work if he’s stuck as a statue?”
Nick shrugged with a perplexed expression and lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. “I don’t know. They both died. They both had families that carried their blood. And they both have spirits that linger; Lykon’s in you and Dexios’s with the statue. We’ve said it before, and they’ve said it too: though we’re supposed to be their reincarnations, we’re not them. Our experiences, our lives have made us different. I don’t know if solving the curse ends the reincarnations or if it just reunites Dexios and Lykon. I don’t know how it works, it just does.”
Galen stared down at their linked hands and tried to make sense of it all. The romantic inside of him liked the thought of Nick being the one for him throughout all their different lives. Nick would probably argue that they’d managed to screw it up for a couple dozen generations, which raised the question: how much could that be blamed on the curse, on the weight of all those broken dreams? He hated how the curse seemed to dictate so much of his new relationship with Nick. He could imagine previous incarnations crumbling, as the pressure to fix it eroded what they were trying to build. It was a different situation. It needed to remain separate. He believed that wholeheartedly.
“Every generation or so Dexios is reborn as someone in my family,” Nick continued. “The last time was during World War II, my great-uncle who I was named after. I used to love the stories my dad told me about him, and he gave me the journals when I was a teenager. Even though I used to study the journals, I never suspected that I could be one of those men until you called me about the statues.”
Galen was silent as he recalled Nick’s intensity that first morning after seeing him again. He’d been too nervous to read too much into it, too happy on seeing Nick again. He felt… used, and he tried telling himself that Nick would’ve called anyway. He’d said so. Galen didn’t like this feeling of manipulation, and it wasn’t just Nick. It was as though everything in their relationship had been instigated and influenced by those damn statues. He wanted a reboot, to go back to that phone call and start over again without Dexios and Lykon imprinting themselves on the situation.
“For God’s sake, say something,” Nick snapped, running an agitated hand through his hair.
“I’m just trying to figure out what’s real and what’s them.” Galen touched a hand to his chest where Lykon waited and Nick paled.
“Don’t say that.” Nick cupped Galen’s face. “I fell in love with you long before the statues were found. It’s real. I fucked up, okay?”
Galen closed his eyes and nodded, fighting back his fears. That was true, and he’d started to feel for Nick back then too, when he knew nothing of Lykon and the curse. There had been no other man inside of him, tugging him toward Nick. Suzane had been right when they’d found the statues in the storeroom. They had brought so much trouble and so many questions. Yet Galen knew he couldn’t bring himself to part with them. “You’re right, you did. I did. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I knew too much. I was afraid. Take your pick. All those journals of men in my family who’d failed and had their heart broken. I just knew it would happen to me next. I was waiting for it.” Nick gestured toward the exhibit room and the statues that waited inside. “I couldn’t see my part in it, my responsibility. I just kept waiting for the ax to fall and wishing I could stop it.”
Galen was supremely grateful now that they hadn’t gotten engaged. Thank God Nick had stopped him, because Galen couldn’t handle this without trust. He could work on his relationship with Nick, but he wasn’t about to take that step into that level of commitment if Nick didn’t trust him in return. Galen wasn’t sure if he entirely trusted Nick anymore either, not unless he made honesty a policy as well.
“Is there anything else you haven’t told me?” Galen asked, looking into Nick’s eyes. “I don’t want more swerves.”
“No. No more surprises. I just thought you should know that agreeing to marry me wouldn’t work, because breaking the curse is going to take both of us and it involves how we feel about each other, not what we’re trying to do for Dexios’s and Lykon’s benefit.”
“I came to that conclusion myself. I tried telling you, but I guess you weren’t listening.” A stricken expression crossed Nick’s face, and Galen turned away. He didn’t know what to think. He wanted some time to himself, a night alone to work through everything that was spinning in his mind. But he knew that if he suggested staying here and sleeping on the couch tonight it would go very badly. Nick would take it as confirmation that Galen wanted to run. Galen knew that was a knee-jerk reaction of his: shut down, tune out, put some space up until he got his thoughts and feelings back under control. And that wouldn’t work with Nick.
“I don’t know if this will make you feel better, but I decided to come clean before I had my epiphany about the statues and about how you felt about me. It came before, not after.”
Galen shook his head, and Nick fell silent as Galen tried to work through what he felt about all of this. “I don’t care right now. I just don’t. I don’t want to hear about them. I don’t want to talk about them. Let’s just go.”
T
HE
silence in the apartment dug under Nick’s skin like a maddening itch that he couldn’t quite get to. It didn’t matter that he had the radio on for Amy and Rory, or that they let out their occasional flurry of chirps and twitters. No, it was Galen’s silence that ate at him.
Galen sat at the other end of the couch, reading through some papers in a file folder with a thoughtful frown. He didn’t completely ignore Nick and pretend he didn’t exist, which was something, at least. Galen answered when Nick asked him a question, but then he buried himself back in his work with a single-mindedness that was driving Nick batshit. Now that he knew Galen with the walls down, he didn’t want to go back to the protective distance that Galen had maintained the first time they were together.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Nick knew he was irked over their conversation, and maybe a little bit hurt, he wouldn’t think anything of it. But he did know, and dammit, he just wanted to find some way to make it right. Nick couldn’t fix anything if Galen continued to refuse to talk about it.
Honesty was important to Galen. What if he decided that Nick wasn’t worth the effort?
Nick picked up his cell phone before he gave into the urge to poke at Galen again and ask something stupid like “Are you okay.” He’d been getting better about keeping in touch with his dad and Jason, and he’d even worked up the guts to give Damian and Stefan a call, though they hadn’t returned it yet. It was crazy that he still got nervous when he picked up the phone. So far none of the fears he’d built up in his head had played out.
That’s what he needed to do with Galen, stop letting his fears rule him. That’s what he’d tried doing tonight when he came clean with him. He wanted to show him that he was trying to change too, to let go of the past and give this a real chance.
His dad answered on the third ring, and the sound of his gruff voice was very welcome. “Hey, Dad.”
“Nick.” Warmth suffused his dad’s voice, and some of the conflicted jangle of emotions in him died down. “How’re you doing?”
Nick flicked a glance at Galen, who was scribbling a note on one of the papers. “Good, it’s been a whirlwind here lately. How are things going with you?”
Galen’s pen paused and what might’ve been a smile touched his lips, though Nick wasn’t sure. He was tempted to reach out to him, even if it was just nudging Galen’s foot with his own, but he didn’t. He didn’t want the rebuff. He listened to his dad talk about the shop and the nursery he was working on with Jason for the baby.
“Are you still dating that young man you were talking about? Galen?”
A whisper of unease touched him as Nick looked at Galen again. He didn’t want to lose him. He didn’t want to go through what his Uncle Stavros had, or Dexios, or any of those other luckless men who’d lost their soul mate. “Yeah, we’re still together, though I think there are times when I make him nuts.”
Galen’s head lifted, his gaze questioning, and Nick couldn’t take his eyes off of him.