bakerstreet | We'll find each other again and again

We'll find each other again and again

The Reincarnated Lovers Meme

Everyone knows the feeling of when you see someone and you know you've seen them before. Isn't that a part of déjà vu? But what if the connection you have with that person goes beyond the superficial recognition of familiarity? Perhaps you were connected once...in the most intimate of ways. Some religions and philosophies believe in reincarnation of souls, and it's said that souls could be reincarnated together - once again to follow out the same path they did before. Or maybe not. Maybe it could be a second chance for fixing things that went wrong before, like the a tragedy or circumstances keeping you apart. But can you take that chance? Do you even want to? HOW TO PLAY Comment with your character, stating preferences and pertinent information. Tag around to others and roll the RNG to determine what your scenario will be. The first roll determines the parameters of the "past life," the second the parameters of the "present life." The meme is intended to take place in the present, but there's nothing stopping you from playing out flashbacks to the "past." Play out the scene! WARNING: There will probably be triggers here.		A. THE PAST Medieval: The two of you lived in the middle ages or an equal high fantasy setting. Kings, queens, knights, wizards, your doomed love was set among the sword and shield. Feudal Japan: During this time, honor reigned supreme and warriors lived and died by the sword. Perhaps the two of you lived here? War: World War I, World War II, World War...III? Whatever the tension was, the two of you weren't living in happy times. Not Human: You were gods, demons, monsters, angels - or at least one of you was. Sci-Fi: The two of you found love in a world of science and technology...maybe a base on the moon? Taboo: In a past life, the two of you were related, yet still somehow fell in love. Or perhaps there was a big age gap, or different social standings. Whatever it was, your affection was "wrong," somehow. Intended for Someone Else: One of you was engaged, intended, or taken by someone else. Not Allowed: For some reason, you couldn't have your love back then. Tragically Cut Short: Somehow, your love ended in tragedy and one of you died. Living Happily Ever After: The two of you grew old together, had a family, the whole shebang, and died of old age. As a reward, you get to be with your loved one again. WILDCARD or CHOOSE YOUR OWN B. THE PRESENT (Not So) First Meeting: You could swear you've seen this person before...but where? Need to Be Near You: You don't know why, but you have to be close to this person, to protect them, to love them. Memories: You're having memories of your past life and it's freaking you out. The Reveal: Somehow, the truth is revealed to you about who you used to be and what you life was like with this person. But I'm Taken: Unfortunately, you've already moved on to someone else who doesn't fit into the picture of your past. You Have to Be With Me: You're determined to rejoin with your past lover...even if they're not interested. He Doesn't See Me: You're afraid your lover only sees the past "you" and not the you who exists now. Are they in love with a memory? Madness Ensues: It's getting hard for you to tell which life is the "real" one, the one you have now or the one in the past. Perhaps you only see one way of release: becoming reincarnated again. It All Worked Out: The battles are fought, the war is one. You've earned your happy ending in this life and the two of you can live together. WILDCARD or CHOOSE YOUR OWN
Meme inspired by the anime/manga Please Save My Earth. Feel free to repost this as you feel fit.

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He thought maybe talking to Eric would take the edge off his paranoia, but it only seems to have made his nerves more raw. Alejandro is so angry that his grip on things he very much prefers to keep a grip on is swiftly becoming tenuous. A shift - in reality - and the air in the room feels suddenly charged as though something took a breath in and changed, the edges of clothing and wisps of hair floating, electric, and Alejandro looks unreal. Inhuman. Over-saturated and haloed.

And then quicker than it began it's over. Like a brick dropping. What Jon's saying clicks into his head, and whatever terrible thing Alejandro almost allowed himself to be overcome by helps (practically by accident) allowing him unearthly insight.

Good call, knowing what killing Hephaestion would do to him. Alexander is horrified he's done this much. His hand falls and he staggers back and stares at him, stunned and frightened and sorry and too overwhelmed to even say anything.

He moves slow, but there's no hesitation. Just concern, delicacy, and... gentleness. He clears his throat a few times to try and make it less raw and rubs at it a few times with one hand as the other reaches out.

"Forgive me my foolishness?" he says quietly. "I had started to doubt I'd find you and then... there you were. It was all I could to not to reach for you that moment."

Alejandro doesn't move, doesn't say anything. He and Hephaestion never needed to speak. They always just knew. So maybe Jon will be able to intuit, now, that he's feeling too much to process it neatly. This is not a routine for him - he doesn't have a host of past lives to recall, he doesn't remember his existence throughout all time. It's just then and now and what's now has defined him more than anything.

It's clear as day that being without Hephaestion has done him harm. But no longer having any hope is what did the most damage.

With the utmost care - as though afraid the other man might simply vanish - Alejandro takes his hand. He stares at it, his grip turning almost too firm in his desperation to believe that this isn't a trick. If Jon can see the spiritual connections between people then perhaps he can see how Alejandro has tried to dampen and limit his own over the years, though the only thing he's succeeded in is making it harder for him to recognize the people around him.

Jon can tell. That's always the rub of it, the pieces that match up perfectly again and the pieces that are new. That, in its own way, is his burden, equal and opposite to Alexander. To Alejandro.

He remembers his frustration, the pain of everything feeling pointless, and that damnable empty hole inside. He remembers reaching with every ounce of his ability and pulling, pulling and pulling only to feel nothing. No change. Then the frantic hacking, wishing for one terrible moment to just cut it out. But he was past that, had been for a while. He had settled to that knowledge a little, as best he could.

That's why he just stays there, silent and waiting, patient and faithful, and turns his hand to grip Alejandro in return.

He feels like he's slipped into a dream, or some other dimension. He doesn't quite trust it, but he's incapable of leaving or rejecting it all the same. The knowledge that Hephaestion has been here, just working, just running a company, a few hundred miles north in a country Alejandro simply doesn't like being in. Not trapped somewhere, not being hidden from him. Just here.

What the fuck does he do with that.

"I dreamt once that my daughter, a grown woman, led me to you. We were both old men. I took your hand and the both of us died, but we were happy for a moment."

Are they going to die now. Is that what happens. Alejandro can't conceive of finally having this; he has a wife he loves who isn't crazy and he has a child. Before he had a soulmate. He doesn't know that he believes he's blessed enough to have both without being struck down.

"In my experience," and some of the formality is drawing out of his words as he's becoming less scared of breaking everything, of ruining what he's looked forward to his whole life, as it becomes more real, "dreams tell us what we need to know, not necessarily what is actually going to happen."

Perhaps the dream was preparing him to wait for him. Maybe it was just to give him hope while he waited. Maybe there was some way in which his daughter had, like the butterfly's wing and the tsunami, somehow effected things to bring about their meeting.

He doesn't know, doesn't really care, honestly.

"I'd like to try and be happy for more than just one moment, though."

Alejandro never sounds formal using Macedonian Greek by virtue of it being A) what it is and B) using is so often in this life. Mostly with Eric, which is probably funny as it's not like Achilles spoke Macedonian, Alejandro just kind of steamrolled him into it when they were teenagers. He can still speak every language and every dialect he did when he was of Macedon, and his grasp on modern language is just as broad. He will always be meant for the world.

He's looking at their hands again. After a moment he raises his free one so he can catch the end of his glove between his teeth and pull it off, carelessly letting it drop to the ground as he reaches to take Jon's hand between both of his. The fingers of his bare one slip over his palm, and it may almost be tangible to the other man how, suddenly, sparks of a reciprocal ability light up.

Alejandro laughs. It's watery.

"I've missed you so much."

Jon had grown up almost entirely alone in his knowledge, with no one to speak to in the language but his memories. It isn't just that he hasn't spoken it out loud in ages so much as it's something that was other to his mind, to his life experience. It might be because he has to, with all that knowledge, all those memories, just to keep from being swallowed up in who he used to be. Hard to say, really, but it is what it is.

When Alejandro finally touches him, skin to skin, it's like he's been hit by lightning more than anything. A circuit is finally complete, the energy flowing back and forth as it was supposed to, as they were supposed to. It's like finally slipping into clothes that fit for the first time in his entire life and he almost goes dizzy from it. He isn't sure if it's his talents or just... everything, all at once, but he's not going to try and buffer any of it. Not one drop.

Especially not when he hears Alejandro.

"I've missed you too." A smile, just as watery. "But mostly, I'm just glad we found one another."

Beat.

"And that you didn't actually tell me to kill myself. It would have been a bit awkward when I said 'no'."

Because like hell would he listen to a stupid order like that.

Jon will be unsurprised to learn that Alejandro was an absolute terror growing up, in turns so charming as to be irresistible and so, so bitter and jaded beyond his years. He didn't have a grounding presence and inherently lacks the ability to be his own (one soul, two bodies), and yet he forced himself to adapt. It's surely why he still seems so wounded now, even with Hephaestion against him, alive, skin to skin.

Abruptly--

"I can't believe you let me say all that!" Alejandro throws one arm around Jon's shoulders, bare hand still clutching his while he buries his face against his neck. And ah, yes, there's Philip's crybaby, with a hitch in his breathing and tears.

"Yes, of course, I'm terrible," and now that Alejandro is slung around him, that his face is in Jon's shoulder, he can get his hand in those soft curls and just stroke. Touch. Soak in Alejandro as he starts to enjoy this new Alexander, this new life that they're going to get to share with each other.

But more seriously-

"No harm done. Honestly," he dips down, lets his lips rest against the side of Alejandro's forehead, "I'm glad we got it done with so quickly. It never goes smoothly. It can't."

Not when there's something this big, this life-changing.

His hair is pretty incredible this go 'round.

'It never goes smoothly, it can't'-- Alejandro doesn't know what any of that's supposed to mean but he doesn't give a shit right now. All he gives a shit about is clinging to Jon and trying to process this, and he's not doing to great at the latter. He's got the first thing on lock, though. Even if he is crying.

"I could have hurt you. I could have left. They've tried to use you against me so many times I'd given up believing."

"I didn't let you hurt me," and it's true, he hadn't. Even if he'd bargained from a place of weakness, he'd still stopped harm from coming to himself.

"And I wouldn't have let you leave. Not entirely."

His breath sucks in in a rush, and there's a faint hint of irritation. No, more than just a hint. Jon's relationship with the gods is a troubled one, and it wasn't as if he hadn't known the touch of exactly who had been involved earlier.

"They might have used the idea of me against you, but I won't ever let them use me that way."

Alejandro is still clutching his hand, reveling in the undeniable feeling of rightness. His stupid, wonky ability, grafted onto him as a way to try and keep him loyal and obedient without actually showing their hand-- years of promises about finding his love, all the while knowing they were incapable. Lying to him. And then once faking it entirely after he'd pulled Eric away. Divine heroes are not demigods or scions. They just plain aren't under the Circle's purview. But they were more than happy to hide the truth and convince Alexander the Great otherwise to keep him in their stable.

This is just. A lot. His reality has been tipped over, and in a much more permanent way than the influence of his father reaching through him to the mortal plane like earlier. He knows it's much the same for Jon, but he also knows Hephaestion has just always been better at handling his shit.

"What the fuck," he laughs, exasperated at this whole situation (but most of all himself), still teary-- and this time he says it in Spanish, oops.

He doesn't know exactly what's been said, but he can tell enough from the tone. And the laugh, the tears... all of it makes him squeeze Alejandro's hand and breath out with something very much like relief.

"You're going to have to teach me Spanish," he points out in Macedonian. He'd learned Persian and German for Miranda. But Spanish? He knew only as much as he'd learned from television.

"It's learnable."

What a bad, old joke.

Alejandro shifts his stance, but only so he can pull his other glove off and reach up to touch Jon's face, thumb sliding over his cheekbone and holding him. "I want to know everything about you. We've missed too much. My love..." he leans in and rests their foreheads together, his gaze unfocused and blurry. He's probably going to start crying again (look, he's just a very passionate person, alright). "My life..."

Finally, finally, he kisses him.

Jon would be very very worried if he wasn't crying. Honestly, Jon would be crying it if it wasn't... if he didn't have to be the together one, the rock. The tears are just under the surface, and they will probably slip out sometime later, when Alejanro's feeling a little more settled. He's happy, he's... deliriously happy. He's still trying to figure out how to exist in a world where it's finally happened as opposed to being something he has to plan. The day and time has arrived and he's a little at ends.

Shock is how most people would put it. Jon would say that he's having a brief tactical pause in his emotional processing.

But then he's hearing those words, they're echoing really, until the first moment that Alejandro's lips meet his own because at that moment, there's nothing else. Just the kiss, simple and perfect as it is, and he's never wanted more of something so passionately in his entire life.

He's just going to nudge in for a little more if that's all right, Alejandro? Yes? Let's hope so. He's missed you.

Jon doesn't have to be anything, not with Alejandro. And they'll get to that place soon enough-- right now it's still surreal and overwhelming, being the closest of companions but strangers at the same time. There's so much to work out: obviously they must be together and Jon's right, he has to learn Spanish because like fuck is Alejandro staying in America, but does Jon have a family? What's his endgame for his company? Is he going to be comfortable with Alejandro's wife? Their relationship is open, sure, and while they've never been each other's primary lover and she's fully cognizant of who her husband truly is, he won't shove her aside. He has his daughter to think of, after all, and they do want more children.

He remembers-- marrying sisters, intending on marrying their children together, so that their bloodline would be one. A horrifying feat of incest and eugenics by modern standards, but something sensible and romantic at the time. This shift is so strange now that it's tangible beneath his hands. Does Jon even like kids?

Who cares? Right now, who cares. It doesn't matter. Only they do.

Yes, that's all right, that's more than all right. Alejandro deepens their kiss in a sudden surge of passion and when he pulls back: "What are you waiting for, Hephaestion?"

And Jon... blinks.

What does he mean? What could he mean? He's not waiting at all. He's kissing. He's kissing his Alexander as he's been aching to do since he first knew what a kiss was.

Of course, in actuality, Jon is very much getting in Hephaestion's way, tripping over himself with a need to make everything perfect when have you met them? But this is the reality, not of Hephaestion, but of Jon, the dedicant finally chosen for ecstacy who has always had trouble just letting things happen.

His answer is to dive forward to take another kiss.

This. He wants this. He's not waiting. He wants this! He's always wanted this. It's almost frantic.

Don't doubt me now!

Alejandro doesn't doubt him. But he wants him to let go-- don't stand on self-control for his benefit; if there's a time where it's worth it to have both of them unraveling, it's now. He wants to feel all of him, every raw ragged edge of emotion. He knows Hephaestion is as passionate as Alexander, eve if the taller man has always been so much better at being regal and presentable and orderly. Fuck that.

Show me all of you.

His smile is tangible against that frantic kiss. There you are.

"Mi vida," he sighs, repeating my life, this time in Spanish. Because it sounds lovely in Spanish, and because it's just ... natural, now, with who he is. Alejandro runs his hands over Jon's hair and holds him tenderly.

There is something to that gesture, something to the way Alejandro holds him, which strikes a cord, cuts a cord that had been wrapped around his heart, the one that told him 'not yet, not yet' in a voice as fervent as it was implacable.

All of him? There is so much of Hephaestion, of Lancelot, of Enkidu and a thousand other names, lost to history, wrapped up inside of him and he has made so much room for them, enough room to leave Jon pushed to a corner. But Alejandro is here, Alexander is here, asking, begging him and he can but go. Come. Give him what he wants.

He'd dove but now he grabs, hands strong and intent around Alejandro's arm, looped to hold him closer, and Jon doesn't quite know what he's doing, but for the first time in his entire life, he doesn't actually care. Because for once, for once, and maybe forever after this, things are actually okay. Things are good. Not later, not once he's done his duty. Right now, they're good, and he has what he wants and he's going to take it.

Alejandro sighs a laugh, still teary-eyed and emotional, and repeats his endearments again and again in between kisses. 'So much' doesn't matter; Alejandro can take it, could take it even in 330BC. His intensity is not diluted by the memories of a hundred lives - he is who he is, son of Mexico and Macedon, deep enough for even gods to drown in.

He's alive and vibrant and happy in Jon's arms, the both of them finally where they belong. He smooths one hand down the other man's chest, tucking it beneath his shirt to splay his palm over his warm skin. Is he scarred? Does he have tattoos? Alejandro imagined him a thousand ways, different ages, other genders. He's beautiful no matter what, but of course he's this classic, clean-cut Hollywood gorgeous to contrast against Alejandro's untamed curls and deliberately-in-between beard.

"I better not be dreaming."

That earns him a nip to the jaw from Jon with a glance up at past a set of pale, almost invisible lashes.

"You're not," he says firmly, on somewhat more solid ground. The hand against chest will find no scars, no marks; he only has the one and the mark from it is harder to find.

He starts to dip in for another kiss, something to soften the nip, before glancing around the room.

"...I want to go somewhere other than my board room but I don't... want to change anything quite yet."

What, hey, don't pause. Alejandro pulls him the rest of the way in to claim that aborted kiss (possessive, unashamedly so) before he responds. "Dinner's getting cold, it's probably my fault," for almost choking Jon out in a fit of divine anger instead of smoothing the situation over and sitting down like a sane person? Yeah. Well. His English has a more pronounced accent now, not really in the right mindset for it - he feels dreamy and at home and at home does not involve a language he didn't learn until high school. It's fine, though.

"I can move us, if you want. I'll just need to know where I'm going."

"Dinner is the last thing I'm thinking about," and he's grinning, almost in spite of himself. And almost in spite of himself, there's a bit of a wicked slant to it. Which, in turn, makes him laugh, just a little.

"Anywhere. Everywhere. Wherever you want to go." He gestures to the door. "I've got no where more important to be. I don't think I ever will."

Alejandro can't help but kiss that smile. This doesn't feel real still-- but it doesn't feel fake, either, hell, he doesn't know what the hell it feels like. He'd so thoroughly given up, having needed to crush hope within himself to be able to survive at all, and he almost doesn't know how to reconcile this. But gods, he's happy.

"No I mean--" and he's laughing, too, "I need exact coordinates or, show me on google maps. I can't go too far away or I'll just pass out, though. Where do you live?" He keeps one arm around Jon and pull his phone out with his other hand, opening up the GPS.

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