European Holiday

[Existentially Odd]

The flight and admission through customs all went very smoothly, despite Kerr\'s concern that they wouldn\'t get through in time to reach their hotel and Ben\'s concern over... well, everything really.  He alternated from nervous to excited throughout the takeoff and then travelled pretty much the whole way at excited, until they reached Ireland and landed.  He was then back to apprehensive.  They whizzed through customs and to their hotel - where they would stopover until the following evening, when they\'d travel to Kerr\'s house, in his home town - like rock stars, attracting a few stares because of the rapid way they moved.

Kerr didn\'t care about the looks and whispers about who they might be though, nor did he intend fucking about with his fledgling when they arrived two hours before dawn; he got them to safety as soon as possible.

There were plenty of blood supplies on the plane, so they didn\'t have to feed, but he\'d arranged for them to stay in a hotel in Dublin owned by a vampire.  The exclusive establishment catered specifically to vampires, so they got room service - a red-cheeked Irish lad with dark brown hair and laughing blue eyes - anyway, just for the novelty of it.  Kerr fed from Ben when a second room order (this one female) was called for and that nicely set the tone for their first day spent in Europe.

When the sun set, they checked out and drove the couple of hours it took them to reach their ultimate destination; the house Kerr had been born in four hundred years before.  It had looked different in those days, of course, as only five rooms on the ground floor were original, but it had been built on and changed charmingly through the years.  Although he\'d sold the land around it, Kerr had always hung onto the manor itself and so most of the original furniture had been kept.  He\'d added to it throughout history, leaving only period pieces there.

Ben was zinging with excitement by the time Kerr had shown him to the master bedroom, they\'d unpacked (enough to get warm coats and clothing on, anyway) and then set out into the town.  It had grown a fair bit since the sixteen hundreds, naturally, but he was always amazed by how much of the original infrastructure he always knew was still there.  He was able to take Ben into the church he\'d been Christened in, taken his First Holy Communion and been Confirmed in - not to mention attended faithfully every Sunday - as the beautiful stone structure still stood in the same spot it always had.

After regalling his lover with tales of his misspent youth - well, really, just walking through the town and sharing all his memories with Ben - he walked him out to the site of Angus\' castle.  The vast grounds weren\'t yet transformed into any of the modern housing estates around, the area was basically bare.  Most of the original structure was gone, but there were enough ruins in amongst the tall grasses to give a general idea of what had once stood there, especially with Kerr\'s detailed recounts.  He was true to his promise to Sawyl and he did tell Ben where they\'d killed their sire and how they\'d separated his severed parts, but it was hardly the point of his tale.  He found he was quite enthusiastic about talking about the castle itself and even a little about Angus, with such a rapt audience.

Eventually, he walked Ben up one of the nearby hills that overlooked the little valley town, so that he could summarise his stories.  As they reached the crest of the hill, it began to snow, somewhat obscuring the view they\'d been seeking but Kerr didn\'t mind.  He wrapped his arms around Ben from behind, resting his chin on the shorter man\'s left shoulder as they gazed silently down at the place he\'d begun.  Such a feeling of contenment pervaded his being that it finally left him lost for words, though there was a smile on his face he couldn\'t lose.

Ben hadn\'t said much really, just a question here and there, and Kerr finally prompted him.  "So... how\'s that for my beginning?" he asked with a smile in his voice.  It resided in his heart, too, and he found the sight of the slightly misty (due to the gently falling snow) lights and curling smoke coming from the chimneys below them to be magical and inspiring.  Being there with Ben, having just shared so much of himself... he fairly wanted to dance in the snow, despite the more sensible choice of them finding shelter from the elements occurring to him as well.

[Trillian]

There had been a knot in his stomach throughout the flight to England.  He\'d never considered himself scared of flying, but he couldn\'t properly identify what that knot was.  Fear?  Exhileration?  Kerr had made a few interpretations of his own as Ben shared his feelings in waves simply because he couldn\'t block the strength of them.  He didn\'t think apprehension and excitement were quite on the money, but it was close enough for him not to disagree.

Since leaving the airport Ben had a permanently affixed broad smile on his face, so much so that his cheeks ached after a while and only sleep in the hotel room had relaxed him.

Kerr\'s house had been an experience in reverence - not so many smiles and far more awestruck wonder as he moved from room to room, looking at items that seemed like they were as old as his sire.  It drummed into him how long Kerr had been alive - he\'d always known in his head, but now it seemed his whole body realised.

The trip through the town was filled with information and interesting stories.  He was so pleased with Kerr and where he was right now he felt like squeezing his sire so tightly that bones would crush.  It was funny how happiness could actually be so strong it had a physical affect on him.  His stomach strangely felt it the most, it was like he wanted to run and jump around like a little kid - like nothing subtle or calm was good enough to express how he felt.  The smile returned, the only clue behind how Ben felt about everything - though his mental block was dropped only to its haziest strength, which basically meant he wasn\'t broadcasting thoughts, but many strong emotions easily filtered through.  He wanted Kerr to know how good this was.  How absolutely, immensely, wonderful.

The climb up the rolling hills gave him something else to focus on, and the sight that greeted him up top was so postcard that he laughed outright with joy, and wanted to applaud the sight before him but also didn\'t want to let go of Kerr\'s hand.  He spun into him then, pressing himself close to Kerr\'s bulk and staring down at the village that looked like it belonged on a calendar, or on a professional photographer\'s studio wall.

"You won\'t be able to top this," he cried his response, though he was looking forward to the rest of Ireland and the United Kingdom in general.  "But I still want you to try," he grinned, lifting his face so that he could smooch Kerr and feeling so spirited like he was ready to jump up and down in Kerr\'s arms.

[Existentially Odd]

Kerr indulged the constant thrum of happiness vibrating between the two of them and laughed before delivering a lingering kiss.  When it broke (they\'d managed to end up facing each other once more), he whispered his own confession to Ben.  "You make me want to dance through this life," he grinned and, spontaneously, he attempted to at least dance with him on the hilltop.

Of course, Ben wasn\'t used to the type of dancing Kerr was, so his gallant attempt at a graceful spin - which any lady that had once resided in the village below them would have fallen naturally into - ended up being a graceless twirl that left them both weak with laughter.

Still, that sense of surreal magic remained as he insisted on showing his fledgling a few dance moves (as archaic as they were) beneath a curtain of falling snow, high above the place of his birth hundreds of years before.  He felt a sense of completion and belonging such as he\'d never felt before, bringing the one he loved back here and, in moments such as these - when it seemed they were the only two alive on Earth - a contentment he\'d been missing for centuries bubbled in his chest and permeated his very bones.  Despite their unusual beginning and rough relationship thus far, that particular moment convinced Kerr that he and Ben were perfectly right for one another and that they would always work things out.

When they\'d had enough spinning and leaping about like complete idiots - not to mention tumbling and rolling about on the wet ground when laughter stole their equilibriums again - Kerr took Ben home and made love to him in the bed that had once belonged to his parents.

The next night dawned clear and cool again and, when Ben\'s eyes finally opened - they were barely peeping out above the pile of blankets he was nested beneath - Kerr had a few questions for him.  The bed was so old that it bowed in the middle, bringing them naturally together even if they\'d wanted to fight it, so he was curled against his fledgling, skin to skin, leaning up on his right elbow, chin supported by a fist as he watched his lover sleep.  His smile was soft and adoring.

"Evening," he bade huskily.  "Tell me; are you interested in finding out any more about this sleepy little town - do you want to know more about my children, for instance - or would you like to feed, pack up the car and move on?" Kerr asked, brown eyes glistening with happiness and the light of their next adventure unfolding. His left hand, beneath the covers, was sprawled possessively across Ben\'s chest, fingers brushing like he was attempting to imprint the rise and swell of his muscles upon his memory.

[Trillian]

Ben thought it over, for both paths sounded interesting.  He was in a hurry to see the rest of the country, the rest of the world, but he also wanted to savour the information and history that lay in each one.  Decision made, he gave his answer to Kerr after getting his chin over the blankets.

"We\'re in no rush," he said, for didn\'t they have eternity?  "I\'d like to know more about this place, about you."

He was immensely interested in Kerr\'s children, and thought it would be wonderful to trace a family tree.  Ben\'s hobby of research now had a personal flavour to it, and because he had been sired with Kerr\'s blood, it connected him to Kerr\'s mortal family, he felt.

[Existentially Odd]

Kerr had his Bible and laptop with him, intent on picking up where he\'d left off on following his family tree after Sawyl had intervened, but he didn\'t need either, just yet.  He would start at the beginning, for he knew that story well enough without needing the prompt of dates to enrich it, and so he stopped looking down at Ben and snuggled up against him instead, loving the cosiness of being entwined with him in the bed, such as he was.

"Well; it all came about because I was weird, you do  realise that?" he chuckled self-deprecatingly, wondering if Ben could appreciate just how much of an oddity he\'d been considered in his youth.  He loved his fledgling for making disbelieving noises, but it only encouraged him to elaborate.  "It\'s true!  It was unheard of for men to be disinterested in the manly side of life back then - unless they were an acknowledged dandy, o\'course - and I had absolutely no interest in maintaining the farm beyond working the fields.  Any slaughtering and butchering was left up to my da and I hated hunting and fishing, which all the boys did - like their fathers."

Kerr\'s deep voice (an unusually deep tone in its mockery) halted as he paused to kiss Ben because he looked entirely irresistable, then continued with his tale.

"What made it worse was the fact that I was so bloody big.  I was taller than most of the men at twelve, my voice had broken and I was getting hairier by the day, so it was ludicrous for me to continue to hang about with my mam like one of the little children - though other twelve year olds weren\'t expected to go on the hunts they\'d host on the weekends, it was just that I didn\'t look twelve - but I did it anyway.  I hung around having tea parties with the ladies and little children at the manors while the men went off in a group, hunting.... whatever the feck they hunted," he said with a slight frown, realising he couldn\'t remember what the local community had actually hunted - was it wolves that destroyed the livestock?  He was fairly sure it had a reason behind it, it wasn\'t just blood sport for the sake of it, anyway.  He laughed again and gave a dismissive wave with his hand before it returned to squeezing Ben close.

"Of course, I didn\'t love being stuck with the women but my mam insisted I visit if I wasn\'t going to be useful and hunt, so I would hang around eating and drinking myself stupid while I tried to hold off the little kids and ignore the nonsense twitterings of the wives.  There was a group of about ten of them, varying ages but all fairly well off, with plenty of land and livestock behind their husbands, so that they had nothing interesting to listen to, as far as I was concerned.  I filled out nicely on all the goodies and then, eventually, I\'d be able to sneak off and find something else to do in whatever house was hosting that weekend and amuse myself \'til the men came back and we could leave," he finished, his grin turning devious as he leaned up on his elbow to look down at Ben once more.

"By the time I was fourteen, I\'d got quite brazen in my searching; I went through their houses from top to bottom, learning all their dirty secrets - letters from mistresses hidden in secret compartments in desk drawers, pornographic pictures stuffed in with them, whips kept mysteriously in underwear drawers, frilly knickers and dresses big enough to fit a man - I saw it all.  What I didn\'t see, I heard from pressing my ear against the kitchen door and listening to the servants gossip while they worked at preparing the food - we didn\'t have servants but most of the others did," he explained, licking his lips coyly.

"Of course, I visited the dirty pictures, the graphic letters and the frilly knickers often; wanked myself stupid over them.  I began to look forward to the weekend hunts, depending on the hosts, knowing what I\'d be able to play with," he giggled, thrusting playfully against Ben as he recalled that Heavenly flush of pubescent lust that could only reside in the young and virginal.  It never lasted, but the seemingly-constant erections were as heady as they were annoying and he\'d been a willing slave at thirteen, a professional at disposing of them by fourteen.

"One day, I got caught, though," he confessed, lifting his eyebrows and trying to look humble.  "Oh, it was dreadfully embarrassing.  I was found laying on the master bed in the Maguire residence, face down, grinding myself silly atop a pair of lacy knickers I liked to take from the bottom of one of the lady\'s drawers and rub over myself.  That was precisely when the lady herself walked in.  I froze in position, she did too, looking at me looking back over my shoulder at her, her eyes wide and looking at what I was doing, even if she couldn\'t see all the details.  I wanted to die!" Kerr exclaimed, falling back down on his pillow with a hand over his face as he recalled the shame of that horrific moment - though it made him laugh, too.  When Ben commented, Kerr lifted the hand and grinned broadly at him.

"Well, it worked out better than I expected it would, actually.  She walked up to me - this woman with the lovely breasts I\'d just been imagining kissing, the shocked blue eyes and silky blonde hair I\'d been fantasising about - and she stared at me a little more, noting that my pants were open and probably seeing that I was rubbing my cock on her panties... and she lay down beside me!  I was beginning to get sore from holding myself in that stupid position for so bloody long - the whole thing seemed to take forever to work out and I\'d been expecting her to run and get my mam so I could get up and make myself decent then, but she didn\'t.  She kissed me," he imparted with recalled wonderment.

"I was very confused, especially when she ordered me to lay on my back.  She looked me over and asked me how old I was; she didn\'t look like she believed me when I said I was fourteen.  I s\'pose I don\'t blame her, I was big for my age, and she kept looking at my cock, which had gone limp by that stage.  She touched it and betrayed me, of course, and the next thing I knew she was riding me - I don\'t even remember her taking off unders, I swear - until I blew.  She seemed to enjoy it, quietly of course, then climbed off, cleaned up and walked out.  I lay there for ages before I managed to get myself together.  Would you believe, she was as polite and gracious as if it had never happened when my parents and me left, though she didn\'t look me in the eye."

Kerr\'s eyes widened disbelievingly at Ben as he recalled the utter confusion he\'d felt as a teenager, having lost his virginity without so much as a word and in such unusual circumstances.  His expression grew devious once more as his story continued, though.

"A few days after that, she sent a servant to fetch me, with a story about all the men being out in the fields and needing someone tall to do something at her place.  My mam thought nothing of it and let me go.  We talked when I got there - her name was Tara - and she explained how she was sorry to have done that to me, but she couldn\'t resist.  She was twenty-five and her husband was in his forties and she said he was never interested in bedding her - hence the sexy clothes to try and tempt him - now that they\'d been married seven years and it seemed they weren\'t going to have children out of it.  She was lonely, she was horny and she figured I could keep a secret," he said wryly, eyes twinkling.

"She called me to her place a few times after that and we\'d sneak off on hunt weekends - she taught me that I was rather well endowed and exactly how I should best prepare a woman to take someone of my size, I lapped up every lesson.  I was a bit in love with her, truth be told, awestruck by the intimacy we shared.  When I started making noises about her husband not deserving her, she figured out I was besotted and did what she thought best to fix the situation - she set me up with one of the other women in my mother\'s social circle.  In fact, at the height of it, I was sleeping with five different older married women who wanted someone well trained who could keep a secret.  My mother began to get annoyed by the amount of servants who turned up to ask for my help with things, so we had to get very creative indeed to avoid her suspicion," he chuckled, wondering even now what his mother thought was going on.

"It lasted about six months - I thought I\'d died and gone to Heaven, I was getting sex and all sorts of instruction on a near daily basis.  I barely had time to tend to my own chores, but I didn\'t care.  Then Tara got pregnant and they all got a bit scared," Kerr explained, looking a lot more serious and rueful now.  "It was obviously mine but she loved her husband and wasn\'t about to own up to screwing around with a fourteen year old, so it was touted as God finally blessing the Maguires with a bairn, after so long.  I was not long fifteen when he was born on the twenty-eighth of March; he had his mother\'s looks for the most part, thankfully, plus blonde hair.  Some were surprised he had brown eyes though, when both parents had blue, and Seamus Junior had also somehow escaped his supposed father\'s hereditary red hair... but no-one ever suspected, beyond the circle."

He fell quiet momentarily, his thoughts turned to the past.  "She was pretty nice about it, was Tara - she let me visit him now and then when he was little but she made it clear the affair was over and that she didn\'t want me hanging around the baby when he got older, in case he recognised something in me and figured it out.  She was young and scared, I guess, and I admit, I wasn\'t too worried.  I was more concerned with the lack of sex I suddenly had to put up with - I turned my attentions to serving girls after that and had to learn the hard way what to say to convince them that they should give me a chance to prove myself a decent amusement," he said with an indifferent shrug.

"Things settled down and there were a few I met with on a fairly regular basis, but most got starry-eyed that I was going to fall in love with them and they\'d become some fine lady when I asked them to marry me, so I got rid of them pretty quickly.  I grew close to only one girl, by the name of Claire and we saw a lot of each other when I was eighteen - she was seventeen - but she got pregnant as well.  It was odd, though," Kerr admitted with a frown, taking a moment to recall the exact order of events.

"Her mother intervened and sent Claire away.  She told me the baby wasn\'t mine, that Claire was seeing other boys and I was to forget about it - but I knew that wasn\'t the case, because we spent enough time together that she didn\'t have time to work and be with others.  I was mostly relieved - though confused they didn\'t try to extort a wedding out of me - and was quickly distracted by Tara coming back into my life.  She\'d decided she wanted another baby and that she\'d like the same father for them all."

Kerr laughed and shook his head, wondering if Ben was thinking his life sounded like some sort of modern day soap opera.  The term hadn\'t been around then, but it certainly fit...

"It didn\'t take much to convince me.  Funnily enough, Aidan was born to Claire a week before Tara had Brenna, but I didn\'t know that until years later.  I suppose I\'m still not certain that Aidan was mine, but I tracked his line as closely as I have Seamus and Brenna\'s because I believe he was mine.  I know the other two definitely are, anyway," he finsihed, offering Ben a mild shrug.  Now he would need his Bible to refer to, to give the ensuant information.

[Trillian]

He was mostly silent throughout this story, only making an exclamation when he couldn\'t help himself, or when Kerr\'s story had amused him and he\'d paid out at Kerr\'s expense.  The tale was one that intrigued him though - he\'d known that people hadn\'t changed much over history, that scandals were much the same.  Nowadays what happened to Kerr would be called statutory rape, but it hadn\'t affected Kerr adversely.  Even Ben had been younger than the legal age when he\'d permitted his first sexual experience, though older than Kerr.  He\'d not been seduced though, rather it had been a decision prolonged by prior thought.

He didn\'t need the whole ancestral line right away, he just had one question before Kerr showed him what he\'d traced.

"How far did you get?" he asked.  "Where in time did you stop, I mean?"  Was it the late 1800s?  Early 1900s?

[Existentially Odd]

Kerr winced, not wanting to reiterate how Sawyl had slaughtered Brenna\'s descendants but unable to avoid thinking about it completely, when asked such a question.

"Try early eighteen hundreds," he said ruefully, biting his tongue on describing his and Sawyl\'s \'two century itch\' dilemmas that had resulted in such harsh actions towards Kerr.  "Unfortunately, there\'s a huge amount of time I haven\'t covered, so I\'m not sure I\'ll be able to complete the lines accurately - they\'re only going to have got enormous by now," he lamented with an apologetic laugh.

After a moment\'s respectful pause to contemplate the anticipated scope of this task, he snuggled back up against Ben and kissed his shoulder.  "Doesn\'t have to be finished while we\'re here, though.  I don\'t want it to overtake our holiday, it\'s just that if we do happen to need to follow something up in the way of physical research, we\'re in the right place," he finished with a mild shrug.

He appreciated Ben\'s enthusiasm for the project but he didn\'t want them to get bogged down in it, it was true.  He was also loathe to tempt fate a second time and court his love\'s disdain and impatience for his hobby, much as he\'d invoked his sire\'s.

[Trillian]

Ben grinned.  "You know what I\'m like with research," he said, tapping Kerr\'s nose, although Kerr likely didn\'t, but surely he would understand for all of those years Ben had spent studying vampires and their respective roots and mythologies before coming across Risk that fateful night.  "I promise I won\'t let it overtake the holiday," he said, but every now and then he would lead Kerr into an old library that they were passing, and look up ancestral tomes.

He snuggled with Kerr now, their holiday before them in all its glory.  "We should get up and start sightseeing," he said, but beneath the covers he caressed and wriggled.

[Existentially Odd]

Kerr moaned instinctively, eyelids drooping and his tongue snaking out to wet his lips as Ben\'s touch sent tingles rampaging through him.  When it had passed, he opened his eyes and smiled sensually at his squirming lover. "Get up, hmm?  Sounds like a fantastic idea," he chuckled huskily, seduced willingly by the gentle touches he was receiving beneath the covers.

It was a pattern that was repeated every evening after that.  For the next two nights there was some concentrated focus on getting reacquainted with Kerr\'s bloodline and sorting out exactly where they needed to pick up from, but there was always plenty of time for the two of them.  Sex, feeding, researching, touring and the most contended settling down to sleep Kerr had ever known - perhaps either of them had ever known?

After they\'d seen all the sights of Kerr\'s home village and knew exactly what sort of information they wanted for the family tree, they travelled onward through Ireland, by car.  The next stop was the Blarney Stone - which they dutifully kissed - followed by countless Irish pubs that housed drunkards with accents so rich they could barely be understood - as per Ben\'s instructions.  They each drank from one and spent a lovely hour stumbling about, giggling and groping each other until the effect wore off.

From Ireland, they left the unknown factor of motels behind and headed for the castle Kerr had bought and restored himself.  It was worthy of opening up as a tourist attraction (and he\'d certainly had offers) but it remained his private pride and joy and the place where he stored his most important antiques.  They looked fabulous in the place and the period bed he had set up to be his in one of the towers had never been so appreciated as it was once he and Ben arrived.

It took them two nights to explore the castle properly and then their tour of the Scottish Highlands commenced.  They walked through misty moors, checked out wild heaths and Loch Ness, then headed for civilisation.  After staying a couple of nights each in Glasgow and Edinburgh, they made their way into England.  A quick peek into Wales added still more nights onto their journey, then they headed farther south to Stonehenge.

There wasn\'t much moon to speak of the night they visited it - and what moon there was, was hidden behind scudding clouds - but that didn\'t stop the two vampires approaching in the early hours of the morning and gazing at the mysterious stones in awe.  Their vision was superb and their gall unmatched; Ben climbed over all the barriers set up around them and walked up to touch the stones, so Kerr followed suit.

He\'d seen them before but only a couple of times, hundreds of years before, and there\'d been practising druids chanting around them then (it had been some sort of significant night or other) - which had been a fascinating thing to watch, indeed.  Kerr was in the middle of describing that previous spectacle to Ben when a security guard ran up to them, shouting.  Kerr looked at him, calmly put him to sleep and then continued with his story, causing Ben to giggle very charmingly.

Once they\'d had their fill of Stonehenge, they travelled north-east and into London the next night.  They spent a great deal of time here, poking about all the usual tourist attractions as well as visiting the state library, museum and art gallery.  They applied to the office of births, deaths and marriages for the final clues in the family tree they\'d managed to put together through their weeks of travel, and even snuck into Buckingham Palace.

Eventually, though, it began to wear on them.  Kerr noticed Ben was waking up later each evening and he got the feeling that perhaps they\'d overdone it; his fledgling seemed tired, too.  It had been three weeks of non-stop sightseeing, exploring, researching and intimacy, after all.  At first it had been a relief to not think at all about what was going on back home but, after that length of time, Kerr was feeling slightly guilty (especially since he was so still easily able to push it all from his mind).

Snuggled in yet another of the beds he owned - this time in his London house - waiting for Ben to awaken yet again, Kerr decided it was probably time to talk about what they would do next.  When the blonde stirred, licking his lips as he did endearingly every time he awoke, Kerr grinned and rubbed his body against him as he squeezed him in a hug and kissed his cheek.  "Evening," he bade warmly, starting off fairly low-key.  "Did you sleep well?"

[Trillian]

The question posed to him wasn\'t usually one that would set him off on a grand smile, but Ben smiled anyway.  During the holiday he\'d found himself to be an easy smiler, as well as rather playful and enthusiastic with everything he\'d faced.  At first he\'d thought that he wouldn\'t sleep properly in a bed that he wasn\'t used to, but he\'d found that he was so exhausted by the time dawn rolled around that he\'d go straight to sleep - and being a fledgling helped, for he could feel his body surrendering to the weight of daytime.

"I slept and I dreamt," he announced blearily, tucking himself against Kerr and folding himself up into the hug, "but I can\'t remember what about."  Then he giggled.

[Existentially Odd]

Kerr chuckled too, kissing Ben\'s temple.  "That\'s good.  I rarely remember my dreams these days, either," the sire murmured, finding there wasn\'t a lot of reason to delay raising the true topic of their conversation.  "Well... we seem to have pretty much covered everything in the United Kingdom, I\'m not sure where you wanted to go tonight?" he asked leadingly, his voice airy.

[Trillian]

"We can stay in bed," Ben proposed, smiling up at Kerr innocently - it was a smile that didn\'t betray the flashes of sexual play behind his thoughts, though no doubt Kerr could guess.  "Sightseeing\'s making me tired, we can take a break from it," he proposed, dancing merrily close to the real problem at hand.

Ben was homesick, but not so much that he was craving returning home because of the lighthearted way he felt when he was overseas - not yet anyway, but the eternal teenager was soon going to feel pangs of reminiscence for his homeground.  It would surprise him when it came, but there was evidence of it already, which Kerr (a well-travelled man) could see.

[Existentially Odd]

Kerr laughed outright at that, his heart swelling at the convincing innocence Ben could pull off when he wanted to.  They both knew that them staying in bed wouldn\'t alleviate tiredness in the slightest.

"We could," he agreed with a nod, pulling back slightly so that he was able to look his love in the eye when he spoke to him.  "Or we could say goodbye to living out of suitcases and head home," he proposed softly, his smile gentle and encouraging.

He wasn\'t sure that Ben would be ready to admit that he wanted to go home because they\'d been having a fabulous time and there was a gnawing desire even in Kerr to make it last forever, to stretch it so that this beautiful whirlwind of fun and togetherness never came to an end, they could just slide sideways and into France, and then...  But he knew better.  They\'d done enough travelling for the time being, there needed to be time to appreciate it now.

[Trillian]

Ben\'s initial reaction was to stare blankly at Kerr as though he didn\'t understand what was being said, but as his gaze sharpened Kerr would be able to see that the fledgling was turning over the idea in his mind, of going home, of revisiting their apartment and going back to their settled life, and having a real rest before taking off somewhere else.

It was this last thing that convinced Ben that going home might be a good idea, though the pang in his chest when Kerr suggested they return to Ben\'s mother country couldn\'t be ignored - he missed it and he wanted to go home.  The lightness of the holiday made the problems back home seem insignificant and manageable.  When Ben eventually thought of the secret he kept about Ichabod, he thought to himself that it was a secret that could age and be buried - he didn\'t have to see the other youth again, he didn\'t have to go visit him just because he\'d said so, and he certainly didn\'t have to drink from him again.  It was a habit Ben could break, and Kerr need not ever know the initial struggle he\'d had.  It was all very easy in Ben\'s mind.

"Going home sounds... nice," he supplied, seeking a better word but \'nice\' seemed to fit best.  "Take a break, go back to normal, then visit somewhere else," he said, hinting that he would like to continue travelling and Kerr wasn\'t off the hook in the slightest.

[Existentially Odd]

"Yes," Kerr agreed with an approving smile and rolled sideways to pick up the handset of the phone beside the bed; the call was brief and the pilot also agreeable.  They would leave that night.