Lost Children of Atlantis - 7. Chapter 7

It was one of those cold, miserable nights, a thick fog hiding anything more than a dozen steps away. Per mutual decision on both mine and Ty's part, I'd snuck on the BART over to Oakland, hoping that if they noticed my defection, they'd expect me to head home directly, not take some assinine route halfway across the state.

So, with a thick fog drifting across the bay, I stood at the edge of the freeway onramp, waiting for someone to come past... at this point, almost anyone. And at the rate this was going, I was starting to wonder if I should find somewhere else to stand. Quiet might mean safer, but it also meant a hell of a lot slower, with this nonexistant traffic.

As I was about to move, a silver car started to pull past onto the freeway, then braked just past me and backed up. One of those sporty 2-door styles... I never bothered too much with car knowledge, but this was definitely one of those styles designed to impress wealth and style on those who saw it. The car stopped just past me, the passenger-side door quickly swinging open just ahead of me.

"Need a ride?" I heard from the open door.

I walked the couple of steps to the open door, looking in. A guy about my age sat in the driver's seat, grinning at me from under shaggy bangs. "D'you need a ride?" he asked me. I grinned back, immediately feeling both friendly... very friendly, moreso than even for many friends I'd had for forever and then some... and also, at the same time, unguarded. While part of my mind was screaming in alarm at this utter insanity, something about him only put me further and further at ease, forcing the alarm back to an unheard corner of my mind.

I sat in the passenger seat, feeling the warm leather almost absorb me, a light hint of cologne wafting into the air I displaced. "Thank you... my name's Damien," I said, shyly... but nowhere near as shy as that panicking part of my mind said I should be. There was something different about him, and the alarmist part of his mind was getting quieter by the second.

"I'm Ryan," he said, still grinning as he turned to drive. My eyes traced over him... a bit older than I'd first thought, about 19 to my 17, with deep, heartwarming green eyes, generous mouth, slender... almost effeminate... frame. He looked like he was about my height, though sitting as he was, I couldn't quite be certain. He wore a t-shirt and jeans of a deep ocean-blue, which set off the blond highlights in his longish, windblown brown hair.

It was hard to think around him, without thinking [i]about[/i] him, I was quickly finding out. So carefree, so beautiful... it was almost as though some young Greek god had stepped down from Olympus and bought a car just to pick me up...

I groaned inwardly. Gods, how very melodramatic.

"So, where're you headed?" he asked, saving me from wallowing in guilt over that last visual. I opened my mouth to answer... only to shut it again. I couldn't remember! Further, when I tried to picture my AI to ask him for a less-than-subtle reminder... all I could see was Ryan. Confused, but still relaxed without regard for what should have been horrifyingly disturbing, I shrugged. "You don't know?" he continued, clearly amused. "I'm heading to my place... if you've got nowhere special to go, you can come over for a while... if you want, I mean," he finished, blushing slightly. Ye Gods, he was even more beautiful when he blushed. I nodded, not trusting my voice, and he smiled as he continued driving.

A few minutes later, we were pulling off the freeway towards a quieter part of the area... quieter, and generally much more affluent, as my memory of the east bay went. Then again, given the car he was driving, that shouldn't have surprised me very much at all.

While he drove, he told me about himself... left a small fortune by his dying parents, he took some good advice (and quite a bit of luck) and invested most of it in various startup companies which took off exponentially, his wealth doubling almost daily... not that he ever saw much of it, he said, since it was almost all on paper, liquidating enough to survive on as needed. The more I heard about his life, the more I felt... well, I suppose compassion for him, coupled with chagrin that what I considered a rough life so far was nothing in comparison to his. At least I'd had a family... for what it was worth.

Finally, we arrived at a... mansion was FAR too tame a word for the immense building behind the gates! It was, easily, the largest building I'd seen, widthwise if not in height. Standing on the wall at various points, clearly visible, were security guards -- and while their weapons were not clearly visible, that didn't make me doubt they had some weapons at their disposal, nearby if not on them.

He reached over me into the glovebox, pulling out some sort of device that looked more like a remote control than a gate opener. He entered a intricate code quickly into the remote, causing the gate to swing open quickly, then replaced it with a shy smile at me, sitting back upright and driving through the gates and onto the property.

"It's a bit overmuch," he admitted ruefully, "but it's part of the legacy my parents left me." He grinned impishly at me. "Besides, you never know when you'll have unexpected company over and need a room for them, right?" I grinned in response to this sally, turning to watch as the gate swung quickly and quietly closed, keeping unwanted company firmly out.

We pulled to a stop among an impressive row of cars, in almost every color and style fashionable (as far as I knew... after all, like I said, I knew nothing about cars), and he practically leapt from the car and was around to my door before I could react, opening the door for me with a flourish and that same impish grin.

He led me up a polished marble path to the front door, which seemed impossibly small in comparison to the building itself, where a butler... of sorts... awaited our arrival. He was probably slightly older than Ryan, I realized, and also very attractive (and quite dignified) in a full charcoal-black suit with opal cufflinks, his short blond hair spiked with almost mathematical precision, a small silver and opal earring in his left ear, his suit tailored so perfectly to his slight frame as to appear almost more like a second skin.

"I understand we have a houseguest, master Vanar?" he asked softly, the butler asked... more like a statement, really... quietly. His voice, his mannerisms, had a eerie, hollow quality to them, as though he affected an air of an age long past. This didn't seem to bother Ryan, who merely nodded as the butler turned to me and gestured to follow. With another nod from Ryan, this time to me, I followed the butler wordlessly, with several glances behind me at him, while he stood at the front door watching my progress. The butler led me down a long series of staircases and hallways, until I was certain never to escape the labyrinth of this mansion, coming to an eventual stop before a silver-inlaid oak door.

He opened the door and gestured me inside a... a room about the size of my old house put together, painted and decorated in blues varying from a light sky-blue sofa to a writing desk of the truest, deepest indigo I'd ever seen outside of a box of crayons. The walls were royal blue, with silver edging... which actually, amazingly, appeared to BE silver, not merely painted. With a wave of his hand to indicate the room, the butler left, closing the door and leaving me to my own devices.

As the door closed, for the first time since I'd seen the car, reality flooded back in... I was a fugitive Guardian or whatever, and needed to get back to Ukiah to be with Tyler... why? I could've slapped myself. I loved Tyler, right? Wasn't that reason enough?

[i]::I show similar emotional reactions towards both Tyler and Ryan, with stronger reactions towards Ryan of late,::[/i] Ty said, his voice sounding... well, different, I supposed, to my mental 'ears'. [i]::Based on information I now have access to, since you no longer seek to ignore or deny emotion, it would appear that your attraction to Tyler was based primarily on infatuation and mutual need, whereas there seems to be stronger romantic overtones in regards Ryan.::[/i]

I closed my eyes to the outside world, 'opening' my eyes to that odd room which I thought of as Ty's. Odd, indeed. The room was no longer an eyemelting aquamarine uniformly, with patches of every hue of blue covering the room, anywhere from midnight blue to a blue so light as to appear silver. And odder still, "Ty" was taller, his hair shorter and darker, his eyes partly obscured by shaggy sunstreaked brown bangs...

[i]::This merely serves as further proof, you realize,::[/i] Ty... no, not Ty, RY said. [i]::I take the form you choose, nothing less or more. My initial form... Ty, as you referred to it... was based on your infatuation with him. However, this change proves unequivically that your emotions for him are weaker, less important perhaps, than for Ryan.::[/i] He smirked.

I was floored. What I had thought so strong, so very vital... strong enough, certainly, that my body triedto shut itself down permanently to avoid being without him. Was it really just lust and need, nothing more?

I opened my eyes to see Ryan sitting in an ebony chair I hadn't noticed before, watching me, his fingers tracing the silver inlaid in the arms, a slight smile playing across his lips as he watched me return to reality. So to speak.

[i]::So, now that you've gotten settled in, shall we talk?::[/i] I heard, with the definite tone of it being Ryan, and no one else. As I felt my eyes widen in shock, he chuckled aloud. [i]::What, so surprised? Apparently, your mentor forgot to mention there's a big world out there. And you just entered a different part of it... welcome, wandering one.::[/i]