Page 47

“Are you seriously running away from me now!?” Jesse demanded, his voice cracked and panting as he stared up at Jamie with disbelief lighting his black eyes. “After everything that just happened?!”

“Let go!” Jamie exclaimed, panic surging through him as he realized with a jolt that he wasn’t in his safe form right now. What if, in the strain and the pain of it all, he accidentally hurt Jesse again?!

He squeezed his eyes shut as he tried desperately to lock his powers in again, like he’d done before—but he couldn’t. He didn’t have enough practice to get it done in his current state. “Don’t touch me! I mean it!”

“Stop saying that!” Jesse exclaimed, only gripping Jamie’s wrist all the tighter. “Stop telling me to stay away or not to touch you! I’m just trying to help you, damn it!”

“Let me GO!” Jamie shouted. He tried to yank his arm free of Jesse’s hold, but in his condition, he didn’t have the strength for it—and when he tried once again to suppress his powers, to shove them down deep inside himself and lock them away so he couldn’t use them on accident, a wave of nausea and dizziness stopped him in his tracks.

All he succeeded in doing was losing what little strength he had left, and dropping back down to his knees.

“Will you fucking stop that?!” Jesse exclaimed, finally releasing Jamie’s wrist but taking Jamie’s hands into his own instead.

“You’re trying to lock your powers away again, aren’t you?

It’s only draining you more, Jamie! Please, stop it!

You don’t need to bottle them up! You’re not going to hurt me! ”

What if he did?

What if he was going to hurt everyone he was close to? He just knew it, deep in his heart, even if he couldn’t make sense of it in his head. Shaking off Jesse’s hands, he tried once again to stand, to get away, and to lock up his powers .

But… he couldn’t do it. It was too difficult, he wasn’t strong enough to deny such a strong part of who— what —he was.

He had to give up after only a few moments more, letting his exhaustion overpower him and falling to lie down in the dirt next to Jesse as the tears took over him.

“Damn it, you’re hurt!” Jesse winced beside him, putting a hand on his arm. “What hurts the most? Maybe I can help—”

“ You hurt the most!” Jamie exclaimed, pushing Jesse’s hand away again as a wave of overwhelming shame, guilt, sorrow and anger crashed over him. “Yelling at me like that, and saying there’s something wrong with me, that’s what hurts the most!”

“W-what?” Jesse’s eyes widened. “I didn’t mean—Jamie, I was just upset, I’m sorry!”

“But it’s true, isn’t it?” Jamie sobbed, the crushing weight of his despair making him cry even harder. “There is something wrong with me, Jesse, that’s the problem! And – and no matter how hard I try to fix it, I just can’t!”

“I’m sorry,” Jesse muttered, reaching out and grasping at Jamie’s hand again. “Jamie, I’m so, so sorry! I shouldn’t have yelled at you, I shouldn’t have said what I did, I just—I was so scared! I thought I was going to lose you, and it made me lash out, that’s all!”

Jamie sniffed, wiping at the burning tears that continued to well in his eyes. “L-lose me?”

Jesse nodded, biting his lip hard as he stared at Jamie with haunted eyes.

“I care about you,” he said quietly. “So, so much. And when you do things like this—when you do something dangerous , and risk your life like that, it scares the shit out of me, more than anything has ever scared me before. And it h-hurts, that I can’t do anything to help you…

I’ve been through that hell before, and when you passed out it was like I’m doing it all over again. ”

“…You’ve been through this before?” Jamie repeated quietly. “What do you mean?”

Jesse let out a deep sigh, and then groaned as he rolled back onto his back, releasing his hold of Jamie’s hand to drop his arm over his eyes instead.

“I d-don’t like… thinking about it,” he muttered.

“But, when Austin and I… and Nate… when we got into our accident… It was so bad, Jamie. Really bad. I can’t…

get those memories out of my head, seeing Austin so badly injured.

I had to—it was me that p-pulled him out of the car.

There was fire in the engine and I had to pull him out, and his blood was a-all over me—” He let out a dry sob of his own, pressing his hands more firmly against his eyes as he laid there in the dirt.

“I can’t… go through something like that again, Jamie.

I can’t let you hurt yourself, I can’t just stand by and lose you! ”

The guilt within Jamie grew even stronger.

He hadn’t had any idea that Jesse was feeling like this.

“I wouldn’t be able to cope with it,” Jesse finished, his voice almost in a whisper by now. “I don’t know what I would do, if I got even more images in my head, images of you in trouble, or even worse.”

“…I understand,” Jamie said, finally calm enough to stop crying himself as he moved closer to Jesse, and tenderly put a hand on Jesse’s cheek.

“But you don’t have to worry. I can handle myself, Jesse.

As my powers grow, I am learning to master them.

I wasn’t in any danger of drowning; when I fell through the ice, I just asked the water to take us back to shore. ”

“After you woke up from passing out, maybe,” Jesse huffed. “But what would have happened if you didn’t? Would the water still take you back to shore if you weren’t awake enough to ask it to?”

Jamie pursed his lips, not having thought of this. “I… don’t know.”

Jesse rolled back over to face Jamie with tears in his eyes, and put his hand on top of Jamie’s as he gently caressed Jesse’s hand.

“I know you think you’ve got everything handled on your own,” he whispered, “But this was very dangerous. What would have happened, if it turned out to be too much for you and nobody was around to help you? You could have drowned. And then where would I be tomorrow? Waking up alone, with no idea what had happened. It’s…

more than I can bear.” Carefully, he grasped at Jamie’s hand an d moved it from his cheek to his lips, pressing a lingering kiss to it.

“…I’m sorry,” Jamie breathed. “I didn’t think of it that way. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“…And I’m sorry for yelling at you,” Jesse whispered. “I really am. But… when you hide things from me, or do something that could be really dangerous and I can’t help you, that’s what hurts me —and scares me—the most. I need you to let me in, Jamie, okay?”

“I will… try,” Jamie said, though everything in him told him it was a bad idea.

Still, maybe he should be a little more honest. Slowly, Jamie pushed himself up to sit, taking a deep breath.

“I’m… not doing these things to get myself into danger, Jesse.

I’m doing it to… practice. Just like I’m doing it for dancing.

It’s—I keep… getting ideas, in my dreams. Like flashes of things I should be able to do.

” Jamie lowered his head and looked at his hand in Jesse’s, and then continued, “Some of them are still… blurry, like I can almost remember, but something’s still blocking it.

But other things are clearer, and when I wake up, it’s like I know exactly what I can do, if I only find something to practice on. ”

“But the end result would still be the same,” Jesse said, sitting up himself. “You’re passing out, or falling through thin ice, or waking up in the middle of the street with soot on your clothes and blood on your hands and no memory of anything but your first name.”

For some moments, Jamie could only stare at Jesse, unable to say anything.

“If you would at least talk to me,” Jesse continued, “and tell me when you’re about to do something that could get out of hand, I can be around and be there just in case it goes wrong, I would just— I’d feel so much better.”

“I’ll… try,” Jamie said again—though, once again, he felt like it was the wrong thing to do. These were his burdens to bear, it was his weight to carry. It felt wrong to him, to put it on Jesse’s shoulders as well .

“Good,” Jesse let out a deep sigh of relief. “God, look at us. Sitting cold and soaking in the dirt in the middle of the night. We should get back to the motel.”

Jamie gave a small nod and tried to get up, but found that he still couldn’t quite manage. His muscles were still too sore, and his body was too weak to support itself. He really had overdone it, he admitted to himself.

Jesse seemed to notice his plight, the worry etching deeper into his face as he bent and slipped an arm under Jamie’s, lifting him carefully to his feet. “I wish I could at least take you to a doctor or something to make sure you’re alright,” he said quietly.

“But you can’t,” Jamie sighed out as they began the slow walk back to the motel. “Because… I’m different .” Now that he’d said it out loud, tears stung in his eyes once more.

“Jamie—”

“No, I am. It’s just a fact, Jesse. My powers, my dreams, the memories I don’t have—these things all make me different.” He swallowed, finally putting to words the doubt that had been nagging in the back of his mind for weeks. “I don’t… even belong here.”

It was impossible to hold back the tears any longer.

“Hey, it’s alright,” Jesse told him decisively. “I’m sure it’ll all be easier once you have your memories back.”

Jamie rubbed at his eyes with his free hand as they walked, a cacophony of emotions coursing through him. A part of him was sincerely happy to hear these words, and deeply relieved to have Jesse here with him, through it all, like always.

But… another part of him only felt even worse.

It was like the feeling you got when you heard a beautiful lie. Something so precious, so important, that you needed it to be true—but you knew deep down that it wasn’t. Jamie couldn’t explain why he felt that way, but… he did.

And it hurt.

“…No it won’t,” Jamie decided, once again feeling a sense of cold certainty wash over him that he couldn’t understand, as another na gging doubt suddenly pushed itself to the forefront, loud and clear. “I don’t want to get my memories back. Not ever.”

“What?” Jesse turned to him in surprise. “Why not?”

“Because,” Jamie said lowly. “Once I remember where I’m from…” He swallowed, tightening his hold on Jesse. “I’ll have no choice but to go back.”