He stopped, terrified, the individually glazed and fired ceramic bowls Dante had bought him for his birthday the year they’d moved in tumbling from his hands, and closed his eyes as the world disappeared into a whirlpool and his consciousness went black.
HE awoke… nowhere, naked as a newborn, on a carpet of stars underneath a dome of stars with the single spotlight of moonshine on his bare body.
In wonder he rolled to his back and held his hand in front of his eyes to see his skin glowing like a pale jewel under the blinding light of the moon.
“Dante?” he said, fear lacing his voice.
Until Dante said, “Princess?” he’d been unaware that the majority of the fear wasn’t from waking up in infinite space—it was waking up without Dante.
“Don’t call me Princess,” Cully croaked. Dante only called him that when he was being especially demanding.
“Fine,” Dante rasped, and Cully looked behind him to see that Dante was right there, right where he always was, at Cully’s back, protecting him. “I won’t call you Princess. Where the fuck are we, Cully?”
Cully didn’t care. He launched himself at Dante, into his arms, feeling the thud of flesh on flesh and holding him tight. “You’re real,” he whispered, breath coming in pants. “You’re real. How are we here? Where the hell have you been?”
“Easy, easy….” Dante held him without reservation, their bare bodies together feeling as familiar as sunshine and as new and exciting as the dawn. “Oh, baby. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been having the weirdest day!”
“Right?” Cully’s voice broke, and he pushed his face into Dante’s shoulder. “The house is so weird, and it’s so empty, and I don’t know where you are!”
“I can’t find you!” Dante burst out. “And we’re in the same place. Jesus, Cully. Where are you?”
Their voices, impassioned, fractured with fear, rose for a moment, and then Dante pulled back and frowned at him.
“You’re in the house?” he said, sounding confused.
“I am! You’re there?” Cully asked, and he could feel it, the dawning realization in both of them. “We are,” he said in wonder. “We sat together and ate, and I never saw you.”
“Pork fried rice?” Dante asked, like he was making sure.
“One of your best,” Cully reassured him. “I… I heard you through the walls today. I know it was you.”
“Your clothes keep ending up on the couch. I had to clear them off so we could eat.” Dante rubbed a palm across his eyes. “Cully, I don’t under—”
The stars started whirling around them, much as the colors had whirled around Cully, and they stared at each other, stricken, as a force neither of them could control seemed to be pulling them apart. Then there was a blinding flash of light—rainbow light—and Cully felt a comforting, anchoring force around his neck. He held his hand to his throat and realized he was wearing an amulet, and so was Dante.
He reached out to stroke Dante’s amulet—a plain brown disk of wood with a rune carved on it, linked with a pewter pentacle overlaying the disk so the rune in the center, a rune for friendship—showed through the window of the star.
Dante’s was on a red cord, and Cully’s was on a gold cord, but they were the same simple necklace.
Cully frowned, the memory of the two of them making love (we never did that!) passing behind his eyes.
An amulet like this but pure gold, with a gold-linked chain, had nestled in the olive skin of Dante’s throat, hanging over Cully’s chin as Dante thrust inside him.
“This isn’t right,” he murmured. “Your necklace… it was different.”
Dante’s eyes—God, those glorious liquid brown Italian eyes—grew wide, and he put his hands on Cully’s hips and pulled him close so all their skin was touching. Cully shuddered as his cock took notice, but most of him was relieved, as though they should touch like this always and he was naked without Dante’s wide chest and the dusting of black hair that abraded Cully’s smooth Irish pale skin.
“The amulets,” he growled. “Hold tight to them. They’re real, Cully. They’ll help us get out of this, help us get out of the house, help us find each other. Hold on to the necklace. Hold on to what is true.”
Cully’s eyes burned with sudden exhaustion. “But what’s true?” he begged, clutching Dante as close to him as possible and feeling—oh God, really?—Dante’s firm flesh growing lighter and finer, like a dusting of talcum powder on a hot day.
Dante’s eyes blazed as though with sudden resolve. “What’s true is I love you,” he growled. “Hold on to that, Cully. I love you. I always have. Hold on to that thought and never let it go!”
And with that, he kissed Cully for real, his tongue invading, becoming a part of Cully, their mouths fusing together even as his body grew thinner and less substantial in Cully’s arms. A violent wind whirled around them, twisting the moonlight, consuming the stars, and Cully closed his eyes, holding on to the last of Dante’s heat, of his reality, needing every last moment of skin on skin, of the warm smell of him, of the rasp of his body hair, to sustain him.
He kept his eyes closed as Dante’s heat faded and the whirlwind whipped him away.
WHEN he opened his eyes again, he was back at his sewing machine, fully dressed, a man’s puffy pirate shirt skating smoothly under the presser foot of his machine.
He stood up so quickly his chair shot back and hit the wall behind him, and the shirt rucked up as the motor stopped whirring.
He was alone.
“Dante!” he cried, absolutely bereft.
Thinly, as though from far away, he heard Dante’s voice. “I love you, baby. Hold on to what is true.”
Cully closed his eyes and clasped the amulet around his neck. It didn’t feel so simple anymore—no smooth satin cord, wooden disk, and pewter pentacle. He bet if he were to check it in the mirror, he’d find Black Hills gold, with a tiny ruby in the center, because red was Dante’s color when they were practicing magic and this necklace was the key to Dante’s heart.
His panic eased as the amulet pulsed warmly in his hand, and he walked over to right the wheeled ergonomic chair he used when he was sewing. He didn’t sit at the sewing desk, though—no.
Not this time.
“Dante, where are you?” he called.
“In the front room!”
Cully walked into the front room, but he knew what he would find. Their dishes had been washed and sat drying in the rack, the coffee table had been wiped down, and the place mats Cully had sewn to match the décor in the living room had been put back into the drawers of the maple coffee table, which had been the whole selling point of the piece.
“You’re not here,” he whispered.
And then it was like Dante’s breath blew through his soul. Warm, strong, and sustaining, Cully felt him in the wind. Grateful, he sank down onto the couch behind him, clutching his amulet, the tears starting, hot and cleansing, and not letting up. On a sob he curled into a ball on the couch and pulled the quilt Dante had bought him on a thrift-store expedition off the couch and threw it over his shivering body.