Chunk the final:
"And your mother?"
"She killed herself when I was born. Couldn't stand having a human child," Connor said, his voice flat. "Really, the only parent I had was my foster father. He taught me to hunt."
Chris whistled, low. "Remind me to remember that next time I complain about my family."
"What are they like?"
"My mom is nice, kind of high-strung. Really distracted by my brother, but okay. And my aunts are great. But my dad. He's been pissed at me ever since –" Chris paused, tried to remember. "Since I was a little kid, I guess, but it's worse now."
"How come?"
"It is such a very long story."
"I'm pretty sure we have the time."
Chris laid back on the furs. The room was spinning. Had it spun in any of the other dimensions he'd spent time in?
"I'm not sure there's even much to tell. He and my mom had this whole doomed forbidden love thing going on, right?"
Connor nodded.
"So they have my brother Wyatt, and everything is perfect. Then I'm born. A couple years later, it turns out Wyatt is evil, getting more evil as he gets older. No one can figure out why. My dad decides it's his fault for breaking the whitelighter rules to marry my mother, my mother decides it's her fault for marrying him, they split up, my dad starts working in Jamaica. Which is, you know, fairly normal, and I have my aunts. But when my dad actually bothered paying attention to me, it always seemed like he thought I shouldn't be there. Like if they'd only had one kid, Wyatt would have been good," Chris said. "But they had two. So it was my fault. And now with the time travel thing, I'm trying to keep Wyatt from turning evil, but of course I can't tell them who I am, so they're always about five minutes from deciding I'm the evil one and vanquishing me or something, and my father is the worst of them because I kind of got him fired. I mean, it's supposed to be temporary, and it's technically a promotion, but …" Chris drummed his fingers on the floor. "It's not like he cares about that."
"I think your old man and my old man should get together and go bowling," Connor said. Seeing Chris' puzzled look, he explained. "Sorry. It's from this movie Cordy made me watch when she was trying to teach me how to be a normal teenager. She wasn't crazy about my Destroyer routine."
"Who's Cordy?"
"A girl," Connor said, his mouth twisting into a scowl. "She works for my father. He has a crush on her even though he's ten times her age. I think she likes me better, though." He propped himself up on an elbow. "What's it like, the future in your world? Is it peaceful there?"
"I wish. It's a big time demonfest. And my brother started trying to destroy the world about ten years back. Hasn't worked yet, but he keeps trying." Chris shrugged. "My father tried that about five years ago. Didn't work for him, either." Connor ran his finger down the edge of his knife. "What else has happened?"
"I can't tell you. Shouldn't even have told you about Wyatt."
"But it might not happen the same way in my world."
"But if we end up both coming back to the same place, I'll get in even more trouble."
"If we both go back to the same place, I hope it's your world, not mine."
"How come?"
"Your family sounds a lot better than my dad."
"Yeah, but did you miss the part where my big brother's going to start trying to kill everyone and everything in a decade or so?"
Connor smiled. "Then I have a decade to get home."
"Dude, you're messed up. I want to come back with you," Chris said, raising himself up. "See, you get to be, like, this tragic hero. Your father is a tragic hero." He flopped back onto the furs. "If I do this job right, no one will even know what I did."
"You'll know."
"And hooray for me," Chris said, his voice muffled by the arm he had flung over his eyes. "I am so … very tired," he yawned. "Think it's safe to sleep here?"
"Don't see an alternative," Connor said, slipping between two furs. He lay down with his head beside Chris's, and found himself thinking what pretty lips the other boy had.
Chris must have had the same thoughts, because he was tracing Connor's chin with an index finger. Delicately, he leaned in and kissed Connor.
This is new, Connor thought, kissing back.
Their bodies frozen, their eyes met. "I'm not gay," Chris said defensively. "I have a fiancée. Bianca. She's-" and then his mouth was silenced with another kiss.
"I know," Connor said, hands roaming down Chris's body. "It's just for a little warmth."
The next morning, they woke up tangled in each other's arms.
Light, Connor thought. I must have forgotten to close my blinds again. And then he opened his eyes more fully and realized he wasn't in the Hyperion, he was in this tiny cabin in this frozen dimension, and he was snuggled up to … someone. Someone who understood him.
Also, there were two sizzling portals, one in the northwest corner of the cabin, one in the southeast. Blue light snapped around them.
"Chris," he said. "Wake up."
"Huh? Portals," he said. "Is this a dream?"
Voices emerged. From the northwest, a man, anxious. "Connor? Son, can you hear me? I don't want to risk this thing closing if I jump through, but I will if you don't answer-"
From the southeast, a woman, annoyed. "Chris, what the hell are you doing? We got the portal re-opened. Get back down here."
"My mother," he said.
"My father," Connor responded. "Want to trade places?"
Chris thought about it for a half-second longer then he would have admitted, then shook his head. "Nah."
They stood up, exchanged a final, bruising kiss, squeezed each other's hands tightly. "Good luck," they said, simultaneously.
And then they jumped back to their real lives
~finis~