The first time they meet, it’s in a quiet town in northern Europe.
Kaecilius is the son of the local leader, a carpenter by trade. It’s a quiet town, with not much excitement beyond the occasional visitor, and Kaecilius wakes up every morning and knows that his life is confined to this land.
Stephen is a traveler who has come in to seek shelter form a storm, or so he claims. The man wears strange clothing, but he speaks their tongue with ease. He accepts their offer of food and drink, and like a moth to a flame, Kaecilius is drawn to the stranger for some reason.
Late at night, Stephen spins tales of faraway lands, of spices, merchants, elephants, Kaecilius can’t help but be transfixed by the blue-eyed stranger seated near the fire. During a particularly outrageous story, he snorts at one of Stephen’s overdramatic pauses, and is surprised when blue eyes snap to his instantly.
Not one to cow under another man’s gaze, Kaecilius holds his look, until a brief smile, smaller and much more genuine than previous smirks, breaks through on Stephen’s face.
They share a moment, as fleeting as it is, and as Kaecilius watches the man finally break his stare to continue with the story, he can’t help but feel as if a significant moment as passed.
The next morning, Stephen has left the village, and there’s a strange knotted feeling beneath Kaecilius’s breastbone, as if he has imagined the stranger to be someone more.
But then it passes, and he tries his best to forget about the man. He tries and fails for the rest of his life.
He can never forget those eyes.
•••
In the next life, Kaecilius is much older. He is the master of a group of slaves, hardened by years of disappointment and battle. Once enslaved himself, he is used to the coarse ways of the fighters, making him a brutally efficient rival, and he does well in train them to fight in the arena for the Romans’ benefit.
Sometimes, when he lies awake at night, he dreams of running a blade through his own master’s throat, buying his freedom in blood even for a few brief moments. But in the morning, he still bows his head when the man walks by, for he knows that he is only destined for a life kept captive.
Stephen is one of the new captures the villa brings in, he is young and he had been on a boat for many months, evidenced by his tanned skin. His name suggests that he is from the northern isles like Kaecilius.
In this life, they’re quicker, colder, more aggressive, and when their eyes meet is over the clash of metal swords.
They don’t ever speak outside of battle. But when they are in the arena together, they are an unstoppable force. They cut down many champions before one of the masters decides that there can only be one true victor of the sand, pitting them against each other, and despite barely knowing Stephen he knows he couldn’t kill him.
As Stephen stabs him in the side, his eyes are expressionless, and his movements are quick and impersonal.
Kaecilius can feel the blood gurgle in his throat, and he falls back, his eyes closing on those piercing eyes, wondering if he will find happiness in the next life. The roaring cheers of the crowds fade away as he takes one last breath.
(What he doesn’t know, is that after Stephen watches Kaecilius die on that sand, he only lives for another few weeks. He meets his end at the hands of a Syrian gladiator, and for some inescapable reason, he sees brown eyes as he dies with his arms outstretched).
•••
In most lives, they don’t recall each other, or don’t know each other long enough for it to matter.
Once, their only encounter is to brush hands in a crowded tavern. Kaecilius doesn’t look to see who he bumped into, but Stephen stares after the ash blonde haired man, can’t help but to feel like he has met that man before. He can swear he’s met him before, perhaps in a dream.
He doesn’t go after him.
•••
One of the most passionate encounters they have, Kaecilius remembers.
They are in Venice at the peak height of the Renaissance. Kaecilius is an artist, much softer than in his other lives. Stephen is british and barely younger than him, making his way through Italy with no money in his pocket.
They meet when one of Kaecilius’s fellow artists invites him to sketch this new male model. As Kaecilius tries to focus on his art, capturing the straight lines of his torso, the bone that juts out at his hip, Stephen turns all of his attention on him.
He decides he likes Kaecilius, despite barely knowing him. When Stephen offers to come back to Kaecilius’s studio for a private session, the man agrees just a tad too hastily to be inconspicuous, and Stephen’s smile spreads slowly over his face, his eyes hooded and nearly obscene as he looks up and down the other man’s body.
They fuck that night, Kaecilius’s hands grasping Stephen’s hips with hands still covered in pigment, Stephen throwing his head back onto the pile of canvas they found themselves on.
Kaecilius mouths at Stephen’s neck, licks his way down to his collarbone, and Stephen gives an even more enthusiastic moan. “It’s like my body knows yours,” he gasps, and Kaecilius can’t help but to kiss him again at that, his hips thrusting up into Stephen’s.
They are together for months, longer than previous lives. Kaecilius’s art flourishes, he paints better with Stephen as his muse, and Stephen relishes in posing for him during the day and warming his bed at night.
Sometimes Kaecilius dreams of bloodied sand and smoky rooms. It happens with increasing frequency, as if the more time he spends with Stephen, the more vivid the dreams become.
“Do you think reincarnation is real?” He asks Stephen once, when they are panting and covered in sweat. “What if we have actually met in previous lives?”
Stephen rolls on his side, smirking. “You do not need to charm me with honeyed words, my love,” he says, his voice slightly hoarse from their activities. “What is this sudden philosophy?”
Kaecilius lightly swats him on his hip, turning to face him more as well. “I cannot help but feel as if we are connected in some way, beyond this plane,” he continues in a low voice. “When I look at you, I can’t help but to feel that I have known you for a long time.”
Stephen reaches out to touch the side of his face, and they kiss deeply. Kaecilius soon passes off the dreams as some sort of wild creation his mind makes.
Their relationship, however, is not just gentle voices. When they do argue, it turns vicious and brutal, and one day, Kaecilius hurls a glass at Stephen’s back in his fury, missing him narrowly, and Stephen storms out of the studio to drink his pain away.
In retaliation to that particular incident, Stephen steals one of his paintings, and flees into the night. It was one that Kaecilius painted early in their relationship. On the canvas, Stephen is sprawled out on a heap of dark green cloth, his limbs long and elegant. His face is turned slightly towards the viewer, illuminated by a tall window in the background in rosy hues. His blue eyes shine behind brown curls, and the scattered paintings in the background give the work an intimate feeling. It’s one of Kaecilius’s favorites, and Stephen takes it because he is bitter, his heart broken.
He keeps the painting with him, until he can gather the courage to go back to his lover. That is, until he discovers one rainy August day that Kaecilius has been arrested and executed, his work considered indecent and blasphemous by whatever authority. His paintings have supposedly all been burned, all evidence of the man erased.
In that moment, Stephen becomes a dead man walking. He continues on, but a part of him died along with Kaecilius.
He keeps the painting for many years, until he is very old. He hides it in the rafters of his home, away from the prying gaze of his wife and children, and dies soon after. On his deathbed, he wonders if Kaecilius was right all those years ago, if they truly were reincarnated, and would love each other one day in another life.
•••
Sometimes they meet at very different stages of life, and their relationship is impossible.
In one lifetime, Kaecilius marries Stephen’s sister. They spend little time together, but Stephen remembers Kaecilius and he can’t help but to be drawn to him.
They spend many years darting just outside each other’s grasps, their interactions limited to dinner parties and hunting trips.
Then a wave of illness passes through the estate which Stephen’s family lives in, and both die within days of each other.
•••
One of their happiest lifetimes, they are young boys when they meet. They are in an orphanage, and at night, they distract each other from the gloom with whispered stories and children’s games. Their relationship is innocent, yet no less deep, and both dream of escaping those walls and moving out of the city, perhaps to a farm where they are free men.
It’s also one of their briefer meetings, as they eventually leave the orphanage separately (Kaecilius is older, leaves several years before Stephen is able), and never find each other outside of those walls.
•••
Then they are pirates in the golden age of piracy. Their relationship is torrid and intense, born out of necessity and both good and bad fortune.
Kaecilius is world-weary, his heart broken and shadowed by the time they meet, and Stephen discovers the taste of the power he can hold, and it both thrills and disturbs him how he can use it.
“There may be no one closer to you in the world than I,” Stephen Strange tells Kaecilius Mikkelsen from across a fire, and even as their conversation on the upcoming battle continues well into the night, Kaecilius is struck by those words.
After the battle, as they stare out from across the pond at each other, Kaecilius makes a choice, that if it means his ruin, he take whatever he can get from this life.
They’re together that night for the first time, Stephen’s mouth in his, his body underneath his. When he comes, is thrusting up inside of Stephen’s body, and Kaecilius sees white behind his eyelids, slumping on top of the quartermaster. . Their bodies are foreign to each other, but somehow they remain familiar, like coming home after a long journey. Stephen ends shortly afterwards with a groan that spills from his lips like a desperate prayer
Their relationship goes beyond physical, of course, and when Kaecilius realices that Stephen will indeed be his end, he accepts it as the inevitable conclusion, the consequence to this element he has surrendered his heart to.
They are powerful men, even more so when united in cause, and their relationship, however shadowed, only strengthens their tie.
Some time later, they are lying together in an old house, a refuge from the horrors that are in Nassau right then. It’s rather domestic, not that either would admit it outright, and it is then that Stephen first brings up his dreams. “For some reason, I feel as if we have known each other in previous lives,” he says in a quiet voice.
Kaecilius watches his face, illuminated by the soft candle he lit before they retired to bed. “You mean in metaphor?”
The quartermaster gives a frustrated exhale. “No. The scenes slip away from my mind before I am able to remember them too well in the morning, but I have vivid scenes play out.”
The captain’s mouth quirks. “So I am in your dreams, I see,” he says, teasing, and Stephen gives a snort.
“Right. They’re not always quite us, however. You’re this painter in one, from long ago, and I have to say, it’s not a bad look for you.”
Kaecilius rolls on top of him, then, kissing the base of his neck. “A painter, you say? And what are you, some wanton model,” he said with a grin pressed into the other man’s skin.
Stephen tilted his neck up, giving the captain more flesh to kiss. “Ha- something like that. We fucked in that life too, I think,” he said, rolling his hips up as best as he can, stump cushioned by the blankets tangled at their feet.
The captain’s hands creep up his sides, smoothing over bare flesh. “Is that so,” he breathes out, before he rolls them over, and they forget about the dreams for a while.
But their happiness is not to last. Once the British are chased out of Nassau, they find that with Kaecilius rraw long dead at this point, Kaecilius cannot survive without the turmoil of war. He decides to leave for the Americas, where he could be removed from the legacy he has spent over a decade cultivating.
Stephen Strange, on the other hand, has found that the power he yields, the name that has made the entire New World fear him, to be what he has craved. He has a choice, his happiness or his name.
He doesn’t follow Kaecilius.
Years later, when Stephen discovers that the great Captain Mikkelsen has succumbed to the drink in Savannah, his heart hardens. He finds some comfort in his wife, the life they build together, but it’s never the same as those long nights with him.
Sometimes he dreams of him, not in past lives, but the man he knew and loved.
•••
They meet again and again in countless numbers of lives, each time their circumstances different, the times and places varied.
Slowly, they separately realice that they may be doomed to be constantly searching for each other, and in the life times that they meet for more than a brief interlude, they are always ripped apart.
“Like Orpheus following Eurydice into the underworld,” Kaecilius mused, taking another drag of the cigarette from where he’s propped up on the bed.
It’s 1924, and they’re in New York. Kaecilius is a veteran turned illegal bartender. Stephen found his way to New York, drawn by the promise of a life of wealth from speakeasy money. They both occasionally do some dirty work for the mafia, where they first met in a haze of absinthe and jazz one fateful night.
Stephen knocks his foot against Kaecilius’s from where he’s stretched out, perpendicular to his lover’s body on the bed. “Didn’t she get out? I’m not fresh on my Homer.”
“Ovid,” Kaecilius corrected. “And she didn’t. He looked back, and she was forced to return to the Underworld. He spent the rest of his days lamenting his loss, until Zeus struck him with lightening.”
Stephen winced. “Jesus. Are you saying that I’m the Eurydice to your Orpheus or something?”
Kaecilius studied the plumes of smoke that drifted up towards the ceiling. Below them, he could hear the quiet thrum of the bar, people dancing and talking. “I’m saying it seems that we never seem to know each other for too long before we’re separated.”
Stephen sits up, his muscles shifting under his skin in a way that makes Kaecilius’s mouth go dry for a moment. “So what, we’re doomed to be unhappy? Maybe this time, we’ll end up all right.”
“Maybe,” Kaecilius concedes, but wraps a hand around the back of Stephen’s neck so he can drag him in for a kiss, not wanting to think about death for once.
Stephen smiles against his lips, then bites down on his lower lip. Kaecilius moans into his mouth, and Stephen leans back to take the cigarette from him. He inhales, then leans forward to breathe smoke into Kaecilius’s mouth.
Kaecilius’s hands clutch at his hips, grinding them slowly together, and it’s good, too good.
In that life, Stephen ends up dying first. One night, their bar was raided, and the police are all too trigger-happy. While Kaecilius is being handcuffed, Stephen makes a strange motion, perhaps to grab at the gun, or perhaps just to steady himself, and the sergeant shoots him right there in the bar.
Kaecilius screams, the sound anguished and caught in his chest, and only is silenced when the same sergeant smashes the butt of his gun in the back of his head.
In his cell that night, Kaecilius purposefully picks a fight with one of the nastier-looking criminals. It’s all too easy, and as hands wrap around his neck, he hopes that the next lifetime will be luckier.
•••
But they were never lucky, were they?
•••
The next life, they’re both fighting in the trenches between France and Germany, part of the British invasion to reclaim the land.
“Fire!” Lieutenant Mikkelsen orders, keeping a calm exterior as he watches his men die. He’s screaming on the inside, has been since the beginning of this goddamn war.
After the shots fade away, when night has fallen, they’re all pressed into the cold earth. It’s too dangerous to light any fires, so they sit in pitch black darkness, waiting for either reinforcements or for the Germans to bomb them.
They’re too wired to sleep, and he is faintly surprised that they are still alive by the time dawn comes. The pale light filters into the trenches, and as they have no current orders to move on the enemy lines, Kaecilius allows the men to rest for the next few hours.
He watches them, too alert himself to sleep. Before he realices what he’s doing, he stares at one of his soldiers for a long time. Stephen Strange, if he can recall the name correctly, meets his eye, face equally grim.
Then his face slackens with surprise. “Kaecilius?” the man breathes out. The men around him pay him no mind, but Kaecilius jerks his head away, not even minding the insubordination.
A shadow falls across him, and he looks up again, just in time to see Stephen slide down next to him. The man looks at him, determined, and there’s something in his eyes that gives Kaecilius pause.
“Pardon me, but we know each other,” Stephen says, his eyes not entirely different than the color of the dawn sky. “I wasn’t sure of it before, but just now, I remember.”
Kaecilius scoffs, suddenly feeling far too tired to chastise him for the address. “I’ve never met you before in my life. Get back to your station.”
“But you have met me before,” the man presses on. “Thrace? New York? Or even Nassau?”
The words stir something in him, but Kaecilius turns angry eyes on him. “Get back to your station, soldier.”
Stephen relents, but Kaecilius can feel the weight of his gaze on him for the rest of the day.
That evening, the orders come through to move into the no man’s zone, and Kaecilius knows that it will be a massacre.
They do surprisingly well considering their lack of ammunition, even managing to destroy one of the German tanks. Shooting one of the operators, Kaecilius turns his head just in time to see the Germans use one of their machine guns on their dwindling numbers.
He hurries back into the fray, just in time to see Stephen’s knees buckle ten yards ahead of him. Something comes loose in Kaecilius’s chest, and he crawls forward, the sound of bullets flying over his head fading into background noise.
He remembers then.
No no no no no-
Stephen’s mouth is bloody, and he gives a grimace. Kaecilius puts a heavy hand on his chest, trying to stop the bleeding, but it’s no use.
“You- you-” Stephen tries to choke out, but the lieutenant dips his head close to his.
“I remember you,” he says softly, anguished, and Stephen’s lips curl up into a smile before his eyes half-close, his gaze turning cloudy.
“Until next time,” Kaecilius tells him, tears welling at the corners of his eyes, as Stephen’s chest stops moving.
•••
The next lifetime, they meet each other while they are still young, but it’s not for long. It’s 1981, and they meet in an airport in Los Angeles.
Kaecilius is on a business trip, connecting between Japan and England, and Strange is an exchange student from Cambridge heading to UCLA for a semester. They meet in the airport bar, flirt outrageously, and Stephen follows Kaecilius to his hotel room.
They separate after their encounter, both bearing dark bruises that will make both of them remember their encounter fondly.
In the next few years, Kaecilius is killed in a car accident, leaving behind no one in this life.
In Los Angeles, Stephen gets sick, and dies in a hospital, alone.
•••
But perhaps they don’t need luck to be happy.
•••
It’s 2016, and Kaecilius is late for a meeting with a buyer.
He hurries into the elevator as soon as the doors open, trying to comb his hair back into something slightly less hasty-looking. He’s been working for weeks to get this sale through, with both the seller and buyer being incredibly difficult to work with.
The painting that they’re exchanging, however, is what has hooked Kaecilius. He’s never fully seen it, due to the paranoid seller believing that someone will try to forge it if its image is made public. Before law school, he had majored in art history, and always had a fondness for Venetian art, however.
The elevator stops, and a brown-haired man walks onto the elevator. “76, please,” he says in a casual tone, glancing at Kaecilius. “Ah, I see you’re headed there already.” He’s British, and although Kaecilius tries not to notice, he’s attractive.
Kaecilius keeps his eyes straightforward as he makes a sound of assent. He had no time for flirting. The man rocks back on his heels, and even starts to obnoxiously whistle.
The remaining floors pass quickly (and too slowly, to Kaecilius’s impatience) and Kaecilius walks out first.
He hears the man follow him, and he turns the corner towards the office. To his surprise and annoyance, the man continues to follow him right up to the meeting room.
“Well then,” the man drawls, and Kaecilius turns to face him fully. “You must be the lawyer. Stephen Strange,” he says with almost a leer, his eyes dropping down and back up again.
Kaecilius nearly flushes, but remembers to be professional. “Kaecilius Mikkelsen,” he bites out, “And you’re late, even if you are the buyer.”
“Still a pleasure to meet you, though,” the man replies, to which Kaecilius has absolutely no answer to, choosing to open the door instead.
The seller is already in the room, a weaselly-looking man, and he glances between the two of them.
The painting is on the table, covered in a black cloth. Kaecilius’s hands itch to uncover it, an irrational urge to satisfy his curiosity, but he resists.
The final paperwork is quick, and as Kaecilius hands each of them their copies, Stephen Strange and the man shake hands. Stephen then rises to go over the painting. “Let’s take a look, shall we,” he murmurs, and uncovers the painting.
There’s a beat of silence, and Kaecilius has to look up, seeing the painting for the first time.
The painting is uncharacteristically simple for Venetian art, but by no means any less breathtaking. It’s a nude of a young man sprawled out on green felt, his eyes hooded. Some of Kaecilius’s formal arts training filters through his mind, as he takes in the expert chiaroscuro, the detailing of the young man’s hair catching light from the background. He looks comfortable among the folds of the fabric- not posed, but instead almost vulnerable, as if he was well used to being in that setting.
Kaecilius knows exactly how much Stephen Strange has paid for this painting, but in seeing that painting, it is priceless.
Then the memories come filtering through, oil paint on his palms, blood, gunpowder, bits of cigarette ash-
And Kaecilius reels.
He didn’t realice Stephen had stepped so close to him, but then he suddenly saw blue eyes, just like the ones in the painting behind him.
“Kaecilius,” the word falls from Stephen’s mouth, and it’s both too little and too much. He can only stare back at Stephen, at the man’s equally astonished, pale face.
“You know each other?” The seller asks, but when they pay him no attention, he huffs and leaves the room. Kaecilius can’t bring himself to care in the least.
“I’ve seen you die so many times,” Kaecilius whispers, as if his words will shatter this moment. “I don’t know if I can go through it again.”
“Maybe-” and Stephen’s hand finds his, somehow, and Kaecilius’s whole world has tilted on its axis- “this is our lucky time. This feels different.”
His words are true, as Kaecilius cannot recall a time that one of their previous lives had ever materialized in front of them like this painting. But a dark part of him remembered a night when they had both acknowledged that they may just be the ends of each other, forever dying and searching.
But maybe not.
Kaecilius steps forward, and they meet in the middle naturally, their mouths desperate. Kaecilius can taste tears on Stephen’s lips, doesn’t know if they’re his or Stephen’s, but he clutches at his face, losing himself in that moment.
That night, they undress each other carefully in Stephen’s apartment. Stephen’s hands spread over his chest, as if marveling at the smooth, scar-free skin there, and Kaecilius’s own hands wrap around his waist, his shoulders, his head, as if he could keep him whole in this moment.
They both each hope that this time, they have found each other, and that this life will be the one they can live out together, not cut short by tragedy or choice.
The next morning, Kaecilius makes them thick coffee, and they drink it together in bed, legs touching. The painting lies across the room, not yet mounted on the wall.
Later that day, Kaecilius moves all of his possessions into that apartment. Stephen shows him the empty spaces on the bookshelves, that somehow he knew to keep empty all this time, and Stephen begins to stack books on it.
His hands brush over a copy of Metamorphoses, and he puts it in the corner, next to Meditations.
Stephen is smoking outside on the balcony, watching the sun set in the distance, the sky mottled violet and pink.
Kaecilius slides open the door to join him, and he smiles, stubbing his cigarette out on the painted railing.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Stephen tells him.
•••