Against the Dying of the Light

Author's note:

This story is about moving on after losing a loved one, and carries on from A Committed Boy.

❧ ❧ ❧

Dane had never been to a funeral before. In the movies, it was always raining. People stood around dressed in black, and there was always some hot bird crying into a hanky with a veil over her face.

This funeral didn't have any rain. Or mourners. Or a graveyard. No grieving widow. Just Dane, a pine coffin, and the furnace the coffin was about to roll into.

As he looked down at the coffin, Dane realised this would be Kian's first funeral. His first... and his last.

The boy standing beside him put a hand on Dane's shoulder. His voice was soft as he spoke.

"I wish I'd known him. Both of you, really."

Dane said nothing. Hearing that voice, so like Kian's, but without Kian's... soul... for want of a better word, just hurt.

"Can I touch him?" Kenneth asked.

"If you want," said Dane. It seemed weird to him, but it must be twice as weird for Kenneth to see his clone lying there in a coffin, waiting to be turned to ash.

Kenneth placed a hand on Kian's chest, and Dane could see him process what Dane already knew; that coldness was something he never wanted to feel again.

Kenneth suddenly shuddered. His eyes went wide and he snatched his hand back, his chest heaving as if he'd had a shock.

"Sorry, ah, I feel like a voyeur being here. I'm going to wait outside."

Dane nodded, fighting back the urge to break into the great, ugly sobs he knew were inside him somewhere, waiting for enough privacy to consume him.

While Kenneth walked swiftly for the exit, Dane kept his attention on the coffin as it jerked into motion, watching as the front of the pine box entered the chamber and the base burst into flames.

He'd wanted to say something, but the words wouldn't come. It was so surreal, this scene. Something that didn't happen in real life, because in real life, twenty-three year olds didn't die from failing DNA. Only, they did. The special ones did.

There would never be anyone like Kian in the world again, Dane knew it. And the clone, the fucking,

original

of his lover was still here. Living, breathing. Expecting a nice, long life.

His hand curled into a fist against his thigh. Why had Kian insisted Kenneth be here? They hadn't known each other, any of them. But if Kian had thought he was setting Dane up, he was in for a fucking... post-mortem surprise. Because nothing in the world could make Dane fuck someone who looked so much like his lover.

❧ ❧ ❧

Kenneth was leaning against a pole outside with his back to Dane as Dane walked out into the sunny afternoon. Dane's gaze fixed on the youth's long hair, falling down his back in waves. He clearly looked after it and wore it loose against his shoulders in a shining curtain of black silk.

Kian had worn his hair tied back.

Kian was gone.

Dane tapped him on the shoulder. "What now?"

"You want to a get a pint?" Kenneth asked.

Dane nodded. Why the fuck not?

❧ ❧ ❧

The pub was loud and wrong. The sunshine and the open sky overhead were wrong. The upbeat music was wrong. Kenneth was so

very

fucking wrong.

They sat opposite each other, Kenneth downing his second pint, while Dane nursed his first, a plate of chips between them.

"I don't know what to say," said Kenneth. "Why did you never bring him to see me? I'd have helped you."

Dane shrugged again. It was impossible to explain to the slight youth sitting opposite him how clones worked. How they shared emotions. How afraid Dane was that bringing Kian and Kenneth together would somehow muddy what he shared with Kenneth's clone. How little time they'd known they had.

Neither of them had forgotten that Kian wouldn't live much more than a couple of years, but by fuck, Dane had let himself pretend.

Kenneth chewed slowly on a hot chip, his eyes on Dane's face, and Dane could feel the other boy considering him. Reading him. Kian had been like that—had somehow been able to read his thoughts, just by looking into his eyes.

As his clone's had been, Kenneth's features were soft and feminine. His eyes were a green-blue that Dane found oddly hypnotic, wide, and framed with dark lashes. His lips were soft and kissable. He was on the small side, coming up to Dane's shoulder, and built light.

He kept his hair long, so that from behind, you'd struggle to tell if he was a boy or a girl. Dane guessed he'd been taking hormones or something, because his body was soft. No facial hair. He remembered Kian telling him his original had been in the process of transitioning when he'd been cloned and was curious how far he'd gone with it. It wasn't something he could ask, but nothing could stop him wondering.

He was so... Kian. Just looking at him made Dane depressed, though the expression in his eyes was very different from Kian's. He looked older, worldlier. Less manically sexual. And something else was missing. Dane realised it was knowledge—of him. Love. Devotion. Adoration.

"You're staring at me," said Kenneth, and Dane jerked out of his reverie.

"Sorry. You just... you don't look like him."

Kenneth snorted and snagged another chip. "I don't look like my clone?"

"It's your eyes. He was... he was himself, you know."

Kenneth sighed. "I hear you, I do." He dipped a chip into a small bowl of tomato sauce. "You know, if I hadn't seen him in that coffin, I wouldn't have believed a word of it. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it."

"I wasn't sure if I should tell you at all," said Dane. "But it seemed like something you should know. That someone else should know."

"And you looked after him all this time?"

"It was just easier. My own dead clone was proof enough to jail Blent, and he wasn't admitting to making a second one if I didn't bring it up. I got a job to support us. My parents... fuck." He swallowed hard. They'd been unexpectedly kind. "It was enough."

Kenneth nodded towards the final chip left on the plate. "It's crispy. Sure you don't want it?"

Dane shook his head.

Kenneth snagged it and crunched it thoughtfully. "So, what will you do now?"

"Get on with it, I guess," said Dane. Although what that looked like, he had no idea.

An awkward silence grew between them.

Kenneth cleared his throat. "I've got to take a piss." He got up and headed for the gents, and Dane watched him go. After a moment's deliberation, he got up and followed him. He wasn't sure what was in his mind until he got there, and then it crystallised. If Kian wanted him to hook up with his original, then fuck him, Dane would hook

the fuck

up.

As Kenneth shook himself off, Dane entered the bathroom. He didn't pause, just shoved the long-haired youth against the tiled wall and kissed him.

For a moment Kenneth's eyes went wide, and then his hands went to Dane's belt, tearing the other boy's jeans open as he walked the taller youth into the bathroom's single stall, fumbling the door closed behind them with one hand.

Dane shoved him back against the toilet door, his eyes hard with primal need, and Kenneth seemed lost in lust. It was enough. There was enough of Kian in there for Dane to do what he needed to do. Fuck Kian right back from the afterlife.

He pulled off the other boy's shirt and then pushed him to his knees. Kenneth's slim hands wrapped around him, his long hair tickling Dane's thigh as the youth's hot mouth closed around him.

Dane gripped fistfuls of Kenneth's hair, urging him on, then pulled him to his feet and spun him around, pressing him against the door. Without ceremony, Dane pressed Kenneth's slim frame against the door and pushed into him, knowing damn well it was wrong. The other boy let out a gasp, half pain, half hunger, as Dane pushed inside him, but didn't protest.

The door rattled in its frame in time with Dane's brutal thrusts, and as quickly as it began, it was over. Kenneth let out a soft gasp as he came, while Dane emptied himself inside the other boy with a sob wrenched from his gut.

As he came back to himself and slid out, he felt Kenneth shivering under his hands. The youth's forehead rested against the door, his hair falling halfway down his pale back, and for a moment... for a moment...

No. No, fuck, what had he done?

Without a word, Dane did up his jeans and manoeuvred around the other boy, leaving him inside the stall. Kenneth still hadn't come out of the bathroom by the time he'd finished paying, so Dane caught a cab and left, his thoughts a chaos of dark noise.

❧ ❧ ❧

A week later, Dane was lying on his bed, re-reading the same page of a novel until it felt his eyes would start to bleed, when his phone beeped. It was a message request.

He put the phone face down and went back to his reading. The phone beeped again.

He picked up the phone and looked at the picture. Christ, Kenneth looked like Kian. He would never get used to it. In his photo, Kenneth was sitting cross-legged on a couch, his hair falling over his shoulders. It made Dane ache.

He accepted the message request and then paused, unsure what to say.

'Hi.'

Well, what else was there?

'Hey. I know you're grieving, but... I've got so many questions. I had a clone... a brother... and now he's dead. I need to know more. It's doing my head in.'

Dane swallowed hard. That was fair. He'd have felt the same if someone had called him out of the blue, told him he had a clone, and that it'd died.

He tapped the 'call' icon on his phone and a moment later, Kenneth's face came up on his screen. Through the phone's camera, he looked much younger than twenty-one—late teens at best. His hair fell loose around his face, and the shine in his eyes told Dane he was drunk, or blazed, or both.

"Heeeey." He gave Dane a pouty smile.

Dane blinked back tears. Fuck.

Fuck.

This was so hard.

"Don't flirt with me," he said. "Please."

Kenneth frowned. "Sorry, just feeling friendly... and a bit confused and a bit off my tits."

"Yeah, okay. What did you want to know?"

Some of the shine went out of the other boy's eyes.

"If you don't want to do this—"

"Yes, just fucking... ask me," said Dane.

Kenneth seemed to shrink into himself. His shoulders fell, and all the flirt dropped away.

"I can't get him out of my head," he said. He lifted a glass of what looked like bourbon to his lips and took a deep swallow. "Lying there, in that coffin. He looked like me. It was like looking at my own death. I dream about it. That it's me, that I'm going into that fire." He paused, his eyes fixed on a spot past his phone's camera. "He... he looked like wax."

Dane had been spared seeing his own clone's corpse after it'd been killed trying to protect him and Kian, but he could imagine well enough how it must feel for Kenneth to see his for the first time, and to see him still and silent and gone.

It would be one thing to grow up with a brother who looked just like you—quite another for your first introduction to him to be to his corpse.

"Did you set that up to fuck with me?" Kenneth asked. "No. No, that's mental." He dropped his voice. "I don't feel real anymore."

Dane snorted. "Yeah, well, I know what you mean, mate. Fuck. When I met my clone, what happened next blew my fucking mind."

"Can we meet up?" said Kenneth. "I don't want to do this over the phone."

Dane thought about their hasty fucking in the filthy pub toilet. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea."

"Come ooon," Kenneth teased him, and that was

almost

Kian too. The flip in mood. The flirt. Shamelessly giving Dane the full force of his clear blue-green eyes to get his way.

Kian, his smooth body under Dane's hands, his back arching, his face contorted with pleasure as Dane fucked him. His tongue in all Dane's most intimate places. His skilled mouth. His soft lips. Never more than two feet away, if he could help it. Always touching. A finger crossing Dane's. A toe nudging Dane's foot. His head on Dane's shoulder. Sitting in Dane's fucking lap if Dane let him.

He wiped at his eyes. "Hey, look, I'm tired. Let's catch up on the weekend."

"Okay." Kenneth's voice was soft. "And when you do see me, ah, I don't call myself Kenneth anymore. It's just Ken."

Something about the way he said it caught Dane's attention. "Ken?"

"Well..." the other boy suddenly looked nervous. "Some of my friends call me 'K'. I stopped... I mean, I don't really care, just, Kenneth was too..."

"I get it," Dane interrupted him. "I'll message you."

He killed the call and sat with his eyes closed for a long time.

❧ ❧ ❧

This time it was a café. Ken arrived a couple of minutes after the hour, and Dane waved him over. The other boy had pulled his hair back in a loose ponytail and was dressed in jeans, a fitting top and a cropped jacket.

Dane had to admit, he was an attractive guy... if... confusing.

He dropped down in the chair opposite Dane and sprawled his legs wide as he dropped a satchel beside the table.

"Hey."

The flirt was back. Maybe it was in their DNA, Dane thought, Kenneth's and Kian's. No matter how serious the conversation, sex had never been far from Kian's mind. And then... Dane

had

fucked the guy the first time he'd met him. He laughed to himself.

"What?" Ken asked.

"Oh, just... you're the second guy I've ever fucked, and you're a clone of the guy I lost my virginity to."

"Uh,

not

the clone thanks," said Ken. He seemed vaguely offended.

"Sorry. Original."

Ken leaned forward and put a hand over Dane's. "Sorry. You've lost someone you cared about. For me, this is all just..." He trailed off under Dane's hard gaze.

Dane stared at him until he took his hand back. "Sorry."

Dane shook his head. "Don't mind me. You want coffee?"

Ken picked up the menu. "Do they do beer?"

"Yeah, if you like."

A waiter came to their table and Dane ordered them both beers. Kenneth drank his from the bottle, considering Dane as he took the first swallow.

"So. Are we here because the toilets are cleaner than at the pub?"

Dane couldn't help the bark of laughter that broke out of him. "Maybe," he admitted, his eyes on the table.

"Aw, you're so cute when you're busted," Ken teased him. He grinned. "Cute anyway, if you don't mind me saying. I'm not usually into overly muscled types, but for a jock, you don't seem too full of yourself."

"A jock?" Dane snorted. "Cheers for that rousing endorsement." He gulped down a third of his beer. Anything he could do to force himself to relax. "So, ask away."

"I saw the court case on TV, so I know the basics. You were in Highfield, and you found out Blent was creating clones to use as sex slaves. But how did you meet my clone? What was he like? Why did he die?"

Dane had done his best to prepare short answers for these types of questions. Anything so he didn't have to feel it all over again.

"Well, when I got to the hospital, the first thing I saw was him on his knees, sucking off my doctor. After a bit, he attached himself to me; I guess he liked me. And then I got to like him too, even though Blent had me convinced he was a hallucination at first. Aaah, what was he like?" He looked up at the ceiling. "Smart. Trouble. A lot of trouble. Definitely had a unique way of seeing things." He chuckled. "And my

God

could he fuck."

Ken looked amused. "Did I hear you right... you were a virgin when you met him?"

Dane made a face of acknowledgement and took a swallow of beer.

"As to how he died, well, that fuck Blent programmed his DNA to fail. I guess he just got more fragile over time. He was haemophiliac anyway. We were out on a cliff walk; his idea, not mine, and he tripped. Banged his knee. It wasn't bad, but there was a bruise. I couldn't get factor for him, because he didn't officially exist, so we were just ultra-careful. But on our way back, he started to get light headed. And then he collapsed. Said he couldn't see."

Dane took another swallow of beer. His voice was matter-of-fact.

"Said his head hurt. We knew. We both knew. So, I just held him. And he died."

Ken was silent, and Dane could see him processing this. He finished his beer and ordered them both another.

"How did you—"

"I carried him," said Dane. "He weighed fuck all." He ran a hand across his stubble. "I took him back to the car. Organised his funeral through friends of my dad's. A few people knew about him, not many, but enough to take care of the necessaries."

"You really cared about him, didn't you?" said Ken softly.

Dane nodded and took another swallow of beer.

There was a glaze of sadness in Ken's eyes as he looked down at his hands. "Sounds like he was loved."

Dane drained his bottle and then said, "Oh, fuck yes. He was loved."

Ken looked up, and his gaze was distant. "That's nice." His voice was so quiet, it was almost a whisper.

Dane resisted the urge to reach out and touch his hand. He wasn't Kian, never would be. Kian, constantly needy for physical touch, drinking in every precious moment he had with Dane. Kian lying in a coffin, his energy silenced.

Ken checked his phone and got to his feet, scraping his chair back so fast it nearly unbalanced. "I've got to go." He tossed a tenner on the table. "Thanks for the chat. Appreciate it."

As he left, Dane frowned after him, certain he'd seen tears snaking down the other boy's face.

❧ ❧ ❧

Sunday night. Drunk, Dane stumbled out of the bar. He swayed and leaned against the wall to steady himself.

"Fuck."

"You alright, mate?" asked a guy, pausing to put a hand on his back.

"Yeah, fine, my cloned boyfriend just died."

"Rrrriiiiight. Well. Take care of yourself, eh?"

The guy walked on, and Dane heard him mutter to his girlfriend, 'On drugs," by way of explanation.

Dane pulled his phone from his pocket and stared at it. He opened his contacts and looked at the list.

His mum.

His dad.

Kian.

He hovered his finger over the last in that list, and after a moment, pressed the 'call' icon.

The phone rang three times before the message kicked in.

"Hey baby, if you're hearing this message, we both know I'm not around anymore."

It was true. Kian hadn't once failed to answer his phone in the time he and Dane had been together.

"Baby, I know you must be grieving, but we both knew this day was coming. I'll be honest, I've felt it for a while now. Running down. Things inside me getting worn out. 'The sun's gettin' real low'..."

There was a chuckle that made Dane's heart ache. Kian, teasing him about behaving like The Hulk when he thought Kian was being threatened.

"This is my last goodbye. You can let this phone go now. You know I love you, and I'll see you again on the other side. Not too soon though—you need to find Kenneth first. Live your life. Bring lots of stories with you, I don't want to be bored in gay-clone heaven."

Dane gave a wet, choking sob of laughter, as tears ran down his face.

There was a pause, and a sharp intake of breath. Christ, had Kian been in pain? Had it been that bad? If so, he'd never let on to Dane.

"Okay, baby, time to bring this to a close. Do what I tell you and make this the only time you listen to this message. It's time to move on. Until we meet again... I love you so much. Now get out there and fuck someone who isn't me!"

There was another chuckle, a loud smooching sound, and then the call ended.

Dane stood in stunned, miserable silence. The urge to listen to the message again was overwhelming. He wanted to memorise every single word. Every inflection in Kian's voice.

At least, now he understood why Kian had insisted he be cremated with the phone Dane had given him.

His thumb hovered above the 'call' icon. He couldn't. It would be disrespectful to Kian to ignore his final request. And, it was only temporary, wasn't it? They'd see each other again, one day. Dane just had to keep going until his day came.