Glass Domes and Ghost Fires

"Illegal sword fighting? Honestly, Jasper?" Dorian's words escaped before caution could catch them. "That's not just reckless—it's suicidally foolish."

"Like most things I do these days," Jasper replied, unbothered. His gaze dragged lazily over Dorian's frame, fingers following suit—curious. "How did they manage it? You're... flawless."

Dorian shifted, not entirely comfortable under the scrutiny. "Appreciated. Definitely a few steps up from the rusted model I used to be. Still trying to grow into it, though. Helped design half of it myself, if you can believe that." A dry smile tugged at his mouth. "If only I'd known what I was building it for."

"It's still you," Jasper said softly, hand resting over the curve of Dorian's shoulder. "Different wrapping. Same fire beneath."

Dorian's mouth twitched. "And yet, here we are, dodging the point."

"I'm not a child, Dorian." Jasper's voice dropped, steady with conviction. "I know the stakes. I'd rather face the fallout of my own choices than live under a glass dome, waiting to suffocate."

Dorian blinked, studying him. "How did you get past the subroutine? The surveillance net should've caught this the second you picked up a blade."

"I have a few tricks left up my sleeve," Jasper said, flashing a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. There was something brittle behind it—an echo of old grief wearing a mask of bravado. "Some of them even legal. You should come with me sometime."

Dorian gave him a look, flat and unimpressed. "To watch you fight?" He scoffed, folding his arms across his chest. "You must be out of your mind. I hated it back then, and I doubt time has made me any fonder of watching you bleed for a thrill."

His tone was dry, but something flickered behind the words—something that didn't quite settle into disdain.

"I never understood the appeal," he went on, voice quieter now. "Throwing yourself into danger like it proved something. Maybe it did. Maybe it still does. But that need... that recklessness..." He shook his head. "I never liked the part of me that let you do it. That stood there and watched you break yourself open just to feel alive."

Jasper's smile faltered, just a breath. "And yet, you never stopped coming."

Dorian didn't answer. Not with words.

"You always said it was part of my charm," Jasper added, a little too softly.

Dorian's lips twitched, caught between amusement and exasperation. "It was. Still is. Unfortunately."

"So come tonight," Jasper said, the words a quiet dare wrapped in something softer. "I know Lysander's not in the city. You've got a few days where no one's breathing down your neck. Let me win one for you."

Dorian stilled. The invitation wasn't casual—not between them. "You know too much," he said at last, voice low.

Their eyes met. Just for a moment. But the weight of it was enough to make the air between them feel distorted—like the world had slipped slightly off-axis.

This version of Jasper, all adrenaline and ache, with bruises hidden beneath charm and defiance, was painfully familiar. And this version of Dorian—rebuilt, remade, yet tethered to the ghost of the man he used to be—was something Jasper couldn't look away from.

"This feels..." Dorian murmured, searching for the word, "unreal."

Jasper tilted his head, studying him with a half-smile that didn't quite land. "Maybe. But if it is a dream, Dorian—stay in it a little longer."

And for a moment, just one fragile breath between silences, it almost seemed like he would.

"The starship leaves in two weeks."

Dorian's voice was deliberate—each word laid down like it might soften the blade he was about to draw. He pulled away from Jasper with measured reluctance, as if each inch of distance cost him something unseen. "You have to be on it, Jasper. There won't be another chance like this."

Jasper's brow furrowed, but Dorian didn't stop.

"Lysander's relations with the border states are collapsing. Intelligence predicts a full breach within the month. And you—" He faltered, jaw tightening. "You won't pass the next scan. The subroutine will flag what happened tonight. He'll know."

A beat. A breath.

Then Jasper said, without hesitation, "Come with me."

The words landed between them like a thrown gauntlet—too full of hope, too impossible to ignore.

Dorian shook his head. Once. Clean and final. "It's not possible."

"Why not?" Jasper asked, but the ache in his voice made it clear he already knew the answer.

"Because he'll never let me go."

Dorian's eyes dimmed, clouded with something older than fear. "I'm his weapon, his experiment, his obsession. He built me, Jasper. He's tethered to me in ways I can't sever. If I run, he'll hunt me. Not just me—anyone near me."

He looked away as though the truth itself weighed too much to carry head-on.

But Jasper—Jasper reached for his hand anyway. Reckless. Unrepentant. Unwilling to let go.

"I won't run, Dorian."

Jasper's voice was quiet, but steady—carved from something unyielding. "This is my home. I won't leave Serathis. And I won't leave you."

His hand tightened around Dorian's, defiant and tender all at once.

"If it's my fate to die here, then so be it. But I'm not done yet. There are still things I can try—still sparks worth striking before it all goes dark."

He looked at Dorian like he was one of them. Maybe the most important of all.

"When and where is the fight?"

Dorian sighed, the question slipping out like a reluctant truce. His mind was clearly still whirring—calculating risks, formulating arguments he hadn't yet figured out how to make. But for now, he let the bigger battle rest. He'd find another way to convince Jasper to leave. Later.

Jasper's eyes lit up, sudden and boyish in a way that tugged too hard at Dorian's chest.

"Tonight. Fisherman's Quarters."

Dorian blinked. Of course it would be there.

The slums he'd clawed his way out of. The place where memory and dirt stuck to your boots no matter how far you ran. Perfect. A fight wrapped in nostalgia and high-stakes anxiety. Two for one special.

He exhaled through his nose. "I'll be there."

He turned to leave, but hesitated beside Jasper's desk. His fingers moved through the clutter—scattered letters, creased maps, ink-stained notes—until they brushed against the edge of something smooth and half-hidden beneath it all.

A photograph.

He lifted it carefully, brows furrowing. "Is this... me?"

From the makeshift bed near the open window, Jasper didn't bother sitting up. "Could be," he said, his voice lazy, the wind teasing at his hair.

Then, with a grin that bordered on sinful:

"You're hot, Dorian. I doubt I'm the only one in town with that particular relic tucked away."

Dorian stared down at the image—ten years old, maybe more. He was younger then. Unsteady. The photo must have been taken just after he'd accepted his new title, when the metal beneath his skin still felt foreign, when his smile hadn't yet learned how to lie.

He looked… stunning in his new uniform, the silver stars gleaming along the brocade of his black jacket, catching the light like they had no business adorning a man so visibly uncertain of the body he wore. It was all too polished, too regal—armor over a soul still stitching itself back together

He looked terrified.

Trying like hell not to show it.

And Jasper had seen through it. Even then.

"You kept this?" Dorian asked, his voice quieter now, without accusation.

"I did."

Jasper opened one eye, meeting Dorian's gaze with that same maddening, unrepentant fondness. The kind that asked for nothing but still gave everything.

"I'll see you tonight."

Jasper's voice followed him, like a promise tossed into the dim room.

Dorian paused only a heartbeat, then slipped out the door without looking back, the old photograph tucked carefully into his coat pocket—fragile proof of a past he hadn't realized Jasper had carried all this time.

To get home, Dorian flagged a carriage this time.

The hangover wasn't brutal, but it lingered—just enough to remind him he'd downed more gin than he should have before Jasper appeared. His body, for all its engineered perfection, didn't spare him discomfort. He could still feel pain. Still ache.

He could still die.

That was the cruel poetry of it. He was built to endure, but not to last. His frame was flawless, yes—every line refined, every weakness supposedly erased. But the truth hummed beneath the surface: the design had limits. A longer life, maybe. Not an eternal one.

His body had an expiration date. And some nights—like this one—it felt closer than he liked to admit.

Still, that wasn't what mattered.

What mattered was getting Jasper out of Serathis. Alive. In one piece. Preferably without dragging the entire regime down on both their heads—but if it came to that, Dorian would make the trade.

If that was the last thing he did with this body, with this strange half-life of his, then fine. He'd take it. The rest—his own comfort, his survival, all the what-ifs he didn't have time for—could burn.

There was a letter waiting for him on the pillow, the envelope a pale cream that caught the flicker of the candlelight.

Lysander's hand was unmistakable—elegant, deliberate, every curve of script a quiet assertion of power. Not a single flourish wasted. Not a single line without purpose.

Dorian,

I will be away for several days. The matter is delicate—urgent enough to pull me from Serathis, which should tell you all you need to know.

I trust you not to do anything... regrettable in my absence.

No need for reassurances. I trust you.

When I return, we'll speak of the thing I've let rest too long.

It can't wait any longer. You understand.

– Lysander

His jailer.

And his oldest friend.

The man who had pulled him out of the slums—though rescued was never quite the right word. Dorian had been a muscle-for-hire back then, bare-knuckled and hollow-eyed, surviving off adrenaline and instinct. Lysander had seen him during a street fight. And something had caught his attention.

Afterward, he approached Dorian like someone used to being obeyed. A slender thing, half Dorian's size and twice as dangerous—bravado wrapped around a core of tightly coiled rage. His eyes burned with fury, the kind born of desperation too long unspoken.

And Dorian had recognized it. Because it matched his own.

They had clicked instantly, with a kind of brutal, feral understanding.

When Lysander asked him to come home with him, Dorian hadn't thought much of it. He certainly hadn't expected how far out of his part of the city that home would be—or how far into the palace walls he'd end up. They turned out to be a devastating match—on the streets, in the palace halls, and in bed.

They fit together too well, the way storms fit with lightning—destructive by nature, inevitable by design. It hadn't just been lust. It had been need sharpened into something more dangerous. Something that didn't burn out when the nights ended.

And then Dorian had met the Prince.

He pretended—not just to others, but to himself—that he hadn't noticed Jasper. He walked past him without a glance, ignored him at every opportunity, kept his voice clipped, his demeanor cold. When he did speak to him, it was with disdain—sharp-edged, calculated disrespect.

Jasper never rose to it. Not fully. He bore it with the kind of restraint that could only come from being raised in a palace that punished defiance in silence and scars. He didn't talk back—much—but Dorian could see what it cost him. The way his shoulders tensed. The way his hand lingered too long near his sword hilt. The way his mouth twitched with things he wasn't allowed to say. How much he wanted to cut Dorian in half.

And Dorian, in his darker moments, almost wished he would.

He never wanted anyone so much in his entire life.

"Going somewhere, Prince Jasper?"

The words slipped out before Dorian could stop himself, hand closing around Jasper's elbow. A reflex. A mistake.

Jasper stopped mid-stride, his expression unreadable, eyes narrowing as he gently pulled free from Dorian's grasp.

"To watch a fight," he said, voice cool, measured. But he took a cautious step back all the same.

Dorian's jaw clenched. "To watch—or to participate?"

"Maybe both."

"You know how dangerous those fights are." The words came sharper than he meant them to. "You shouldn't be leaving the palace."

Jasper scoffed. "I can go wherever I please. I'm not a child."

"You're acting like a spoiled six-year-old," Dorian snapped. "Throwing yourself into risk for the sake of proving something. From where I'm standing, you're still every bit a child."

"Why do you hate me so, Dorian?"

He held himself like a blade—sharp, poised, dangerous—but there was a tremor in his fingers, barely there. A flicker Dorian caught only because he was watching too closely, always had been. The Prince's glare didn't falter, but his hands betrayed him. They curled at his sides, as if resisting the urge to reach for something. Or someone. And just like then, Dorian felt the ground tilt—subtle, treacherous, inevitable.

A breath passed between them. Thin and taut.

Then Jasper shifted—just enough for the fringe of those lashes to catch the light, for the edge of his mouth to twitch. Not quite a smile. Not quite anything. But it cracked the mask, just for a second, and Dorian saw it: the ache beneath the anger. The familiarity buried under all that performance.

Jasper's voice cracked the air between them—… tired. Wounded.

"What have I ever done to you? We barely know each other, not enough to justify this much animosity. What is it really?'

He had guts, that was certain. Dorian had to give him that.

"You confuse me," Dorian said through clenched teeth, each word forced past a knot of something sharp. "And I don't like to feel confused."

Jasper tilted his head, just on the edge of mockery, but his eyes were too clear for it to be a full performance.

"Well, that makes two of us then."

A beat.

"If you're so concerned about my well-being—tug along."

Ten years had passed since that conversation—since Jasper's voice echoed down this very corridor—and still, nothing had changed.

Dorian stood in the same place, and the same confusion gnawed at him like a fault line running beneath polished steel. He still didn't know what to do with what he felt. Still couldn't parse it, not even with a mind engineered to solve the impossible. He still wanted to protect Jasper—if it was the last thing he ever did. And Gods help him, he still wanted him.

Last night's encounter had only fed the craving, not soothed it. The ache remained—persistent, maddening.

The machine had not been crafted to love Jasper. No code, no sacred algorithm whispered such things into its circuitry. And yet, love persisted—not as a command, but as a remnant. A ghost clinging to the scaffold of steel and sorcery.

It remembered him. Not by design, but by refusal. Refusal to forget the sound of his voice, the weight of his absence.

Desire had rooted itself deep, growing in the dark spaces no blade could excise. It was not rational. It did not obey. Time had not dimmed it—only refined it, honed it into something quiet and unyielding. An ache made elegant by endurance.

This want had never been part of his making. Of that, he was certain.

And still, it was the only part that ever felt real.

And just to catch another glimpse of him, Dorian was returning to a part of the city he had sworn—vowed—never to set foot in again.

He stripped out of the uniform with the same care he might disarm a bomb—deliberate, unhurried, aware that the danger wasn't in the act, but in what came after.

Something less conspicuous, he told himself. Civilian clothes, plain enough to pass unnoticed in the most questionable quarter of the city. But it didn't matter.

No matter what he wore, Dorian was a silhouette the city had learned to fear.

Lysander would know. If not tonight, then soon enough.

What followed—well, even with his mind created to calculate all possibilities Dorian didn't dare imagine it.

But the line had already been crossed. Whether the King found out or not, Jasper would never pass another interrogation unmarked. The clock had started ticking the moment Dorian let himself want Jasper again.

He walked with the weapon tucked beneath his shirt, cradled against his left side—standard issue, though he'd made a few personal modifications. The streets ahead were the kind that swallowed men whole if they hesitated, and Dorian knew better than to walk them unarmed.

Foolish, he thought, the corners of his mouth twitching in frustration. Reckless.

Jasper had always been both. What kind of idiot got tangled in illegal sword fights out here, alone? And yet, Dorian couldn't say he was surprised. He no longer knew the full contours of Jasper's life—only the edges, the bruises, the smoke trails he left behind.

But one thing hadn't changed: unless you were born in the slums, surviving them took more than just stubbornness. It took study. Sacrifice. Scars.

And Jasper had clearly earned his.

Or maybe he just had fewer brains than Dorian had once been foolish enough to imagine.

Jasper had told him to come to the arena. A vast, decaying amphitheater that once echoed with the clash of knights—back when nobles still dared to tread these streets. That era had long since bled away. Now, the arena belonged to the desperate and the damned, a stage for illegal sword fights where glory was measured in blood and breath, and the roar of the crowd was the only proof that you'd lived.

Dorian had fought here once. Maybe twice. The memories were hazy—half-lost to time, half-stripped by the surgeons who had rebuilt him—but his program reconstructed the outlines. The bloodstained sand. The weight of the sword in his hand. The wild, burning hush just before a match began.

His heart, the traitorous thing that it was, began to race as he neared the entrance. A crowd had gathered, restless and thick with anticipation. Far more than usual. Far too many.

All for Jasper, Dorian realized.

Of course it was a spectacle. Jasper had always known how to draw a crowd—whether he meant to or not. And now, standing at the heart of the arena, he was impossible to look away from.

Dorian hadn't expected this many people. Or the way they looked at him when he approached. Curious, cautious. But not hostile. No one spit at him. No one turned away.

Some of them might still remember what he'd tried to do. What the coup had been for, before everything went sideways. Before he'd become the regime's precision tool instead of its challenger.

He told himself, over and over, that he didn't deserve their respect. That he'd failed them in ways no one should forgive. That it was better this way—cleaner, simpler, safer—to be hated.

But being here again, walking among the very people he'd once sworn to protect, hurt more than he'd let himself admit. Because the truth was, he hadn't protected them. He hadn't saved anyone.

He'd left. He'd survived. And now they had to look him in the eye and see what was left.