Misery

It wasn’t often Chase Young fell into the throes of depression, but here he was.

It wasn’t brought on by…well, anything really. Just…the way things had come together had simply struck him wrong.

Perhaps it was because today was the everlord’s birthday. Yes, he supposed, that ought to do it.

The fact that he was over a thousand years old wasn’t a pleasant one. He was, in fact, closer to two thousand than one thousand at this point considering he was past the ‘thousand and a half’ marker by about seventy years.

Chase was old and he hated it.

Oh, certainly, he didn’t look it, no; he never would look his true age due to the Lao Máng Lóng regimen he subjected himself to, and in times like these, he wondered if it was all worth it, after all.

Yes, he had obtained fame; yes, he had obtained fortune; yes, he had obtained knowledge and skill and culture and everything he had hoped to achieve in choosing his immortal life, but…there were consequences.

He was a monster, for one, a hideous, scaled beast that lived to kill and killed to live. He could hardly consider himself human anymore, which was something he supposed was depressing, as well. The man wasn’t human: he had completely lost that, by now, and he could never get it back.

His years, too, had ruined him in more ways than one. Over a lifespan, beings with higher intelligence become accustomed to longer and longer spans of time. To small children, twenty minutes feels an eternity, but as they age and become adults, it seems no more than a brief period. Immortal life took that process and stretched it to its extreme: for Chase, twenty years was a brief period, these days, and twenty minutes was barely a millisecond.

The everlord could barely claim to have any concrete concept of time, anymore, and without that…he had almost nothing, or rather…no one. With his skewed perception of time, normal, non-immortal peoples’ lives flashed by him, seeming no more than blips on his radar. People were born, and then just as quickly, it seemed, they died!

It was truly terrible: if he could not aptly perceive the lifespans of anyone, he was soundly unable to gauge proper interaction with them so as to make something more of the acquaintance. He could never be friends with someone; never connect with them on a meaningful level; he could never love another person, for they slipped away right through his fingers before he even realized it.

And so, here the great and powerful Chase Young was on the day he’d been born so many centuries ago, a lonely, old man who had no one and despite all his tangible possessions, nothing; standing stone still on the ledge outside of his mountain home as he watched the sun set with a seemingly permanent finality.

Abruptly, a sound caught the dragonlord’s ears and his head automatically turned in the direction from where it came.

Whirling blades, he realized. Spicer.

It didn’t occur to him that he shouldn’t have felt even a little happy at this development; that Spicer with his annoyances and his quirks was not someone he needed around right now.

All he realized was that Spicer was someone, and above all, he was here.

Here, the youth was, indeed, for just as the man thought it, a pair of black boots touched down on the rock-ledge, the whirling blades of his helipack slowing and retracting into the main part of the contraption altogether.

“Chase,” the redhead happily greeted, “it’s good to see you again!”

It was the same voice as Chase had remembered Spicer to have, but it was a certain tone about it that gave the dragonlord pause; something deeper, something confident.

His golden, never-changing eyes raked over his unexpected visitor, and he realized why.

Jack had grown up.

Not by too terribly much. He was still young; younger than Chase seemed to be physically, at least. The boy had grown physically since last the man had seen him, though, and now the two appeared about the same height. The scrawny, gangly build had changed, filling out and becoming something more wiry and slender, and the redhead’s facial features had changed, as well, now truly seeming to fit him.

All told, Jack had grown up fairly handsome, but it caused more annoyance to Chase than anything, for he had once again lost track of time: when he’d last seen Jack, the boy had to have been fourteen, fifteen at the most, and now he was much closer to eighteen or perhaps even nineteen.

“Spicer,” he nonetheless greeted quietly, nodding once to the young man in acknowledgement.

The redhead smiled at him, a warm and open thing that made the everlord part angry, part pleased, and part angry all over again for having the audacity to find pleasure in that smile.

Chase did not deserve pleasure, he was a monster, and deserved only his pain.

“I know I haven’t been by in awhile,” Jack spoke, “but I figured that I might as well considering it’s your birthday, and all.”

The dragonlord blinked. “You know of it?” he inquired.

“Of course I do,” the handsome young man grinned at him, a teasing note in his voice. “I’m a genius and I practically stalked you for three years; you think I wouldn’t at least figure out what day you were born?”

Despite himself, the elder man chuckled, though there was very little mirth in it. “I suppose I ought to have expected you to know such a thing,” he conceded.

Jack frowned lightly; Chase was acting a little weird… “Well,” the redhead said aloud, “I figured that, y’know, it’d suck to celebrate your birthday alone, so I decided I should come by to wish you a happy one.” The warlord watched as a look of recollection flashed across a pale, white face and the genius went digging through his pockets with the chirp of, “Oh, yeah, I got you something, too!”

The immortal took the small velvet box that was handed to him and blankly opened it, only to stare dumbly at what he found inside.

It was a necklace, a white-gold one with an intricate little pendant on the end. It was small, yes, and it wasn’t even gold as the rest of the bit of jewelry was, but it was lovely. 'It' was a little porcelain rose of a soft and pale peach color; simple, beautiful.

It was the knowledge Chase had accumulated over the years that had him particularly struck by the thing: the rose, after all, was a symbol of passion and love, and peach indicative of immortality.

This little trinket…was a gesture of love, a very sincere and well-thought out one, at that.

“I know it’s not much,” Jack suddenly chimed in, “but…it kinda means something to me, and besides…I just thought you might want to know that even seriously bad dudes deserve a little love on their birthday.”

Chase was far more touched by the gesture than he wanted to be. For one, it was Spicer, the youth that had annoyed the Hells out of him many years ago. Secondly, he was a dragon, a horrid, disgusting beast: no one could love him. And besides, this wouldn’t last; none of it could. Like everything else, this ‘love’ and ‘kindness’ being offered him would grow old and die, just like the one offering it.

And then…the man thought about it.

It was not the same Spicer, he realized, and wasn’t the one that’d annoyed him in the past. This Spicer had clearly done some maturing since then.

Too, Jack could not possibly be unaware of what he was, for he had seen the warlord change into his true form many times; even been on the receiving end of its wrath on a few occasions. Whatever decisions he had made about his feelings towards the elder man, they were made knowing precisely what sort of monster he was.

It didn’t have to end, either, Chase acknowledged. It…was not too late for Spicer: he was young, yet…could easily be frozen at precisely the age he was and kept around for whatever the warlord wished, whether that be sex, or love, or simply for the purpose of being there, the way no one else in the entire world could ever be for him…

But he was getting ahead of himself.

“Spicer,” Chase spoke slowly, “thank you for your gift. I appreciate it.”

Red eyes brightened instantly with that pleasantly familiar glee at receiving acknowledgment; something it was doubtful Jack had ever truly gotten. “Really?” he smiled. “Great! I’m…glad you like it!”

“I do,” the older man said before averting his gaze from the youth, staring resolutely at the setting sun. “Come here, Jack,” he gently ordered. “Watch the sunset with me.”

The genius blinked at him, obviously confused, but in a display of devotion that only one like Spicer could provide, he walked closer to his childhood idol obediently.

The moment he drew close enough, Chase looped a powerful arm around slim, black-cloaked shoulders, hugging the rest of the youth’s slender body to him. Again, though the redhead offered a confused and startled ‘meep’ in response, he quite soundly proved his deference and loyalty to the warlord by not struggling or attempting to pull away; simply letting himself be held close and holding his own tongue against anything he might’ve thought to say.

Chase decided that he enjoyed the feel of Spicer so close to him and reveled in it for a few moments. How nicely their bodies fit, even side to side like this!

The sky before the two of them was painted a myriad of bright colors, reds and yellows and pinks, fading to a deepening violet at the edges.

“Beautiful,” the young man beside the everlord murmured, eyes fixed upon the sky.

Chase’s eyes wandered from the colors of the setting sun to the goth’s face. The pale, unmarred skin was lovely, as were those captivating and captivated ruby eyes that were so focused on the sunset.

“Beautiful,” he agreed without a second thought.

The great and powerful Chase Young turned away from his companion, feeling much younger and much less lonely than he had before as he stood outside of his home holding a warm body against his while he watched the setting of the sun; certain that a new day would be on the horizon soon.