Two days later, Sören and Mark took another trip, this time to see the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, an entire Mayan city - Sören was particularly impressed by El Castillo, the largest pyramid there. When they returned to the hotel it was golden hour, and as they took Huan for a walk on the beach, Sören felt a wistfulness that the vacation would be over sooner rather than later and he still hadn't had "the talk" with Mark about his feelings and where they might go from here. After they brought Huan back to the suite, instead of suggesting room service or a restaurant, Mark asked, "Want to go back out for a sunset swim?"
That was what they did, wading out and watching the sky turn fiery pinks, oranges, reds and gold. Sören's breath was taken away - there were tears in his eyes at the beauty of the sunset reflecting on the water.
"You OK?" Mark asked.
"Yeah." Sören nodded. "Just... a little choked up. I feel stupid -"
"Well, you are an artist."
"And this is part of why." Sören gestured at the blazing sky. "I could see a sunset every night for ten thousand years and it would never be the exact same one, twice. I could see a sunset every night for ten thousand years across ten thousand universes and it would still be different. I tried to kill myself, years ago, and I'm glad I stayed alive for moments like this. For a chance to see something new and wonderful every day."
"It's beautiful to see through your eyes," Mark said softly, and then he pulled Sören against him and they kissed.
When they pulled apart, breathing harder, Mark stroked Sören's cheek, looking into his eyes, and Sören got choked up again - this time for reasons having nothing to do with the beauty of the sunset. Just before he could blurt out the three little words that he'd been holding back, Mark said, "Sören, this is going to sound ridiculous, but I... love you."
"Oh, thank fuck." Sören hugged him tight and kissed him hard, giggling with relief and delight as the waves rolled. "I was afraid to say something, but I... I feel it too, Mark. I'm falling in love with you."
They nuzzled and kissed again, and then Mark led him out of the water - they reached the shore just as high tide came in, washing over their feet, and turned to look one last time at the sunset, hand in hand, before they walked across the white sands back to the hotel. "We should talk," Mark said as they made their way to their suite.
"We should, yeah."
"First... we should eat something. Food." Mark gave him a look, then a naughty grin, and Sören giggled again.
They decided to keep it simple and eat at the hotel's restaurant - they were in time for the buffet, which meant Sören had a wide variety of different food to choose from and he loaded up his plate. Despite the huge variety and amount of food, Mark didn't get much and pecked at it, like he was nervous about something. Sören didn't want to be rude by saying anything, but he was concerned - he chalked it up to the talk they were about to have - and before they went back to their suite Sören gave him another hug.
Sören and Mark fed Huan and Snúður - Sören realized the catbox needed changing and got to it while Mark sat out on the balcony watching the sunset fade to twilight, drinking a mocktail. When Sören was ready, he joined Mark on the balcony; Mark had poured one for him - a virgin mojito with club soda - and they sat in silence for a few minutes, the first few stars appearing in the sky.
At last Mark took a deep breath. "So."
"So." Sören nodded. "I tried to tell myself this is just a fling and don't get attached, but I'm attached."
"Me too."
Sören turned to Mark. "I still haven't made any plans where I'm going to go, but I need to decide that soon. Maybe... I could start over again in Maine."
"You could."
"I'll need to start looking on Craiglist and wherever to see who needs a roommate -"
Mark put up a hand. "If you are OK with this, I live in a duplex and you could... stay with me. If it turns out to not work out, I can help you find somewhere else."
Sören's mouth opened and then he let out a happy squeak. As much as he knew anyone else would tell him this was too soon, and possibly too good to be true, his gut told him this was the right thing to do.
"But." Mark held up a finger. "There's... something you need to know, before you move in with me, and before we take this further. I normally don't tell people this about me this soon, if at all, but because you're making such a radical life change, I feel ethically obligated."
Sören's heart sank. Oh. It is too good to be true. Fuck. Then he looked at the burn scar on Mark's hand, and remembered the little bit of trauma Mark had disclosed to him. "Is this... about your family? Are you in the Witness Protection Program or something?"
"Yes and no," Mark said. He put down his virgin mojito, got up, and made a "follow me" gesture. "This will work better inside." Once they stepped back into the suite, Mark hit the lights. "With the lights off."
Sören was confused, and he couldn't resist cracking a joke to offset his anxiety, the sense of impending doom. His voice dropped an octave. "Oh, baby." He began to sing the opening notes to "Let's Get It On" by Marvin Gaye. "Bow-bow-bow, bow, BOW..."
Then he stopped laughing once he saw Mark - suddenly Mark's hair was down from the middle of his back to below his waist. Sören realized he was seeing Mark's ears for the first time - the tips were pointy. And Mark's eyes seemed to glow, and they were iridescent, reminding him of labradorite with gold and blue flashes in the silver. Mark, himself, was glowing faintly. Sören fell over and pinched himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming, wasn't hallucinating.
"What the actual fuck." Then Sören's English failed him altogether. "Þú ert einn af huldufólkinu. Er ég brjálaður?"
"Nei. Þú sérð hlutina nákvæmlega eins og þeir eru. Ég held raunverulegu útliti mínu huldu með töfrum."
Usually when non-Icelanders spoke Icelandic, their pronunciation was slightly off, but Mark spoke Icelandic like a native, and that intensified Sören's awe - a mixture of terror and wonder. Sören tried to reply to that, but he couldn't make words at all now, not in Icelandic or any other language.
Mark helped him up - Mark's hand was tingly - and they got on the bed together.
Mark let him sit and take it in for a few moments, and then he said, simply, "I'm an elf." In English.
Sören switched back to English, even though he knew Mark could speak Icelandic, and quite well. "I believe you - I mean, my people have those legends for a reason, I guess - but..."
"There are several reasons why I told you," Mark said. "The first is that, if you and I are going to be together, you needed to know at some point just because it's the right thing to do. And if we're going to live together, better you find out now than my illusion magic - glamour, I call it - slips around you and you find out that way."
"Fair," Sören said.
"But there's... more, and this is where it gets complicated."
"OK."
"You asked if I was in the Witness Protection Program. I'm not, but the CIA does know about me - they found out during the 1960s, when I was involved in civil rights activism..."
This made Sören love him even more - he was so proud of Mark for having fought for equality, back in the day - even as his stomach was turning to ice, bracing himself for what was about to follow.
"And my freedom - living outside a facility, continuing to hide in plain sight among mortals - is contingent on following a few rules. One of which is, as I mentioned, I travel a lot. It's not just to see the world, it's because I don't age, and there's a finite amount of time I can stay in one place before locals get suspicious. In these times, where people are getting work done and senior citizens can look decades younger, my 'shelf life' is a bit longer. But eventually, I will have to move on from Maine, and start a new life again somewhere else - with a new identity. And whoever I bring with me has to do the same, so I can't be traced, so I'm not found out."
That didn't sound terrible to Sören, considering he'd moved from Iceland to the States and now he was moving to another state and actually looking forward to it, but he told himself the novelty would probably wear off if he had to do it as much as Mark had done.
"What you told me about your family..." Sören said, recalling Mark saying they had made dangerous enemies, wondering if that was a cover story, even though Sören could see the pain in Mark's eyes and hear the pain in his voice when he sang and didn't think that could all be a fabrication.
"Is true," Mark said. "This is probably the craziest, hardest-to-swallow part of what I'm telling you, Sören, but here goes. Have you ever read a book by Tolkien called The Silmarillion?"
"No. I read The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, but not... that."
"OK. I'd wondered about it when you painted for me the other day, because you basically illustrated a scene from it - where some of the Noldor, my people, are crossing the Helcaraxë on foot. But that you haven't tells me you have what people called the Sight, in the old days. I already got a hint of that looking at your other artwork, and I felt like I had to tighten my glamour up around you."
"You can be yourself around me," Sören said, then quickly added, "though I imagine it wouldn't be safe to do it in public."
"No, not at all. I was studied in a government facility and in medieval times, people tried to kill me, if I was found out. Again, my freedom is contingent on not making a public spectacle. That's why I can't have a music career. It's not just that I don't want the pressures of fame, knowing what it's done to too many gifted people. It's that with the paparazzi being the way it is, sooner or later there would be talk. My music is important to me, but so is being able to just live my life and not be locked in a cage."
"I understand." Then Sören finally reacted to what Mark had mentioned just before their tangent. "Wait. Wait. Hold the fuck up. You... you called... you're telling me Tolkien is fucking real?"
"To a point." Mark gave a wry smile. "Tolkien wrote from a past life he remembered, as a human named Beren - he saw one of my brothers as romantic competition for his girlfriend, and painted our entire family in a villainous light. But yes. It is mostly a fictionalized account of what happened. I am Maglor, though I prefer the Quenya version of my name, Macalaurë."
"Macalaurë." Sören said it slowly. "That's a pretty name."
"It means Gold-Cleaver, because even as a child I sang and my mother said my voice was like liquid gold. You can keep calling me Mark, that's easier." Mark chuckled. "I go by Mark Lauer, these days - all my aliases have been a play on my original name, so I don't slip up."
Sören took Mark's hand, and ran his thumb over the burn scar. "What happened?"
"A lot." Mark exhaled. "If you mean how I got the scar - it was what I mentioned, my father's favorite work of art that he wouldn't sell or give away. The Silmarils weren't just pretty jewels, they had powerful magical properties that would have been dangerous in the wrong hands. They did, in fact, fall into the wrong hands - they were stolen, my grandfather was killed in the theft - and my brothers and I swore an oath to get it back by any means necessary, and... its power decided we had gone too far in doing so. I was not a good person, back then, and I've tried to live the rest of my life atoning for that."
"You're really old, já? You've probably had a lot more years of good behavior than... whatever it was you did." Sören guessed it involved killing people, and even though any sane, normal person would run away if they found their lover was in fact a murderer, he knew in his heart that wasn't who Mark really was, now.
"Only G-d knows," Mark said.
There was another long silence, and Sören said, "I accept you." He turned Mark's face to his, looked into those ethereal eyes, and whispered, "I love you. As you are."
Mark kissed him. One kiss became another, and another. With Mark still unglamoured, they undressed, and then Sören lavished love on every inch of his body, worshiping the perfect musculature with every kiss, lick and caress. Mark did the same to Sören, exploring him - he'd learned in such a short time exactly where Sören was most sensitive, and how to drive him wild with a teasing touch. After more breathless kisses, Sören pulled Mark atop him and they rubbed against each other slowly, clit loving clit, pussy lips kissing, their bodies moving like the push and pull of the tides, Mark's glow like the moonlight over the ocean. It wasn't just about pleasure, and getting off, but connection - fitting the most intimate parts of their bodies together, feeling each other, the physical expression of their souls entwined. And when they climaxed together, it was a truly spiritual experience, colors exploding across Sören's mind's eye like a sunset, like an aurora, like nebulas revealing other galaxies, other universes, the song of the cosmos.
They held each other, and Mark tenderly pet Sören's curls, rubbed his back. "You sure you want to do this?" Mark asked.
"I'm sure." Sören kissed his brow. "More sure of anything, except my transition itself."
"It's a lonely life," Mark said. "It's not a life I could ask of others, in good conscience. You never really put down roots somewhere deep enough, or long enough, for it to feel like home."
Sören looked him in the eye. "I understand loneliness better than you know. And I'm a long way from home. I can never go home again, really. So home isn't a place for me." He put Mark's burned hand on his heart. "Home is you."
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