The States

I know the world's a broken bone (but melt your headaches, call it home)

(see end for trigger warnings)

i.

The first time James thinks about kissing Julian is in the fall of 1949, and coincidentally, it's also the year he decides that whoever decided brown eyes were boring is so, so wrong.

Because it is late afternoon and Julian is curled around James's old guitar with his fingers on the strings, laughing at the worst joke James has ever told because Julian has a godawful sense of humor and the light hits the flecks of gold and green and copper in his eyes just right.

And James suddenly can't stop looking, can't help but notice that even though he'd thought that Julian had plain dark brown hair, it's got a dark auburn tinge to it, the slightest touch of red that's only visible in the right light.

And really, all of the states are pretty, are attractive in their own rights. James has spent his entire life around beautiful people. He shouldn't be so awestruck by Julian.

Yet here they are, Julian strumming the guitar, wrapped in sunlight, and James suddenly wants to press his mouth to that sunshine smile.

The moment passes and James is left wondering where that thought came from. 

ii.

Julian's thing about colors isn't a secret. He'd still been a territory when he'd told Cam that his voice was the same purple that's in a sunrise and learned that most people didn't think in colors.

He doesn't tell people often, mostly because he doesn't need to. His family knows, and even the states and territories that came later eventually figured it out when he inevitably called a voice blue or green, etc. Julian likes that other states know better than to harass him about the colors of things. (Technically, he tells his governers the day they officially take office and he sits down across from them and hand them his file, but he's pretty sure half of them don't read it. It takes months sometimes to convince them he's their state.)

It's not bad. He has perfect pitch because he can see the differences in keys and he hears better than most. It's just that sometimes things get overwhelming. Julian hasn't sat in on a congress meeting in years and he's flat out left a state of the union meeting before when the others started arguing.

He doesn't mind the meetings when they aren't arguing. He likes the colors of their voices, likes how they blend together during discussions.

They are arguing today, over the budget, and it's bad enough that they all have to hear it but Julian has to see it too-

Julian stands so fast that his chair almost tips over and he steadies it before he leaves, ignoring Marisol and Eli's looks of concern.

・・・・・・・・・・

James finds Julian in the stairwell, sitting on the stairs with his head in his hands. He sits down beside him, gently bumping his knee against Julian's.

"Are you okay?" He keeps his voice soft, just in case.

Julian lifts his head up. "Yeah. It was- it was just a lot." He leans against James, and James just wraps an arm around his shoulders.

"Sera's voice is cherry blossom pink." Julian says after a few beats. "You know how marble is? The pattern?"

"Marbling?"

"Yeah, well, it's like that. It's pink with all these cracks- marbling- and those are bronze, like statues are. When she gets mad the pink goes a little bronzy too."