Welcome to Gaia! ::

Eyes closed, Malory took a sip of mulled wine. Angelica was trying a new recipe this year and the spices were teetering on the edge of an almost dangerous perfection. The atmosphere of the house likely adding an extra sort of encouragement. This year, the holidays had begun to feel extremely personal in ways the Victorian hadn’t seen…well, ever. At least not since the Medrauts had acquired and restored the place. There had been at least one Christmas, where they’d decorated it to magazine-worthy seasonal heights. But it had been for a magazine spread.

Ever since Malory had returned to DC for high school though, the house had been a place for the occasional holiday party, usually stylishly decorated by either a party planner or Miss Vera, the head housekeeper. But this year, much like with the mirrors still covered in tape, Malory found himself feeling fussy and displeased at the idea of others sticking their hands in, leaving their marks and changing what wasn’t just his, but theirs.

As he carefully hung an antique crystal bauble, glinting in candle light, he had to give his gently swinging reflection a little smile and that of the piano behind him a slightly wider one. One would think he’d be more possessive of the boy himself, rather than the spaces they shared. And yet here they were, night by night, slowly unrolling the holiday between them and all across their home.

It didn’t take much encouragement to get Malory next to him on the bench, always ready to be close and bothersome, a cat with his favoured human. Immediately he was leaning in and against Eles, leeching the other boy’s warmth as if the house wasn’t perpetually at a sensible 74, the fireplace wasn’t cracking across the room, and he wasn’t nearly swallowed up in a dark sweater. His eyes skimmed over the sheet music, ignoring the familiar score in favor of the handwritten notes that teased apart and played with the music, its movement and its themes.

“I always thought it was a bit of a threat, you know? Either version, maybe any version.” Resting his chin against Eles’s bony shoulder, Malory went on, “No matter what it promises, the music beneath it tells you it’ll be too much to bear.” More and more and more. He slid a cool hand under the boy’s shirt, reaching for still more and more of his fiancee’s warmth.

“Oh no,” Malory exclaimed mildly, “I’m ruining your potential.” And having sinned thus far, he continued to rub his hand along the other boy’s spine as the music began. Eles did have a certain talent for it, but maybe it was less talent and more the way he approached everything he wanted with that fearless joy of his. Either way, he’d definitely progressed faster than Malory had as a child. But learning at the time had been more a matter of his mother’s aesthetics with little else to recommend it.

Maybe he’d find it more enjoyable now, if he slipped his left hand under Eles’s and took a piece of his music to share in that way. Instead he took another sip of his wine and admired the sight of thin fingers dancing and striking at the keys, distracted only when something moved in the periphery. Turning his head to signal whoever it was to leave them be, Malory found himself staring at a figure that was both alien and nostalgic.

“Given full freedoms and every means to live as thou wilt, and this is all you are,” the voice was sweet and sighing as the robed figure reached toward the recently hung bauble. Slowly, Malory turned his head back to Eles, to take in the other boy’s expression, his own a little haunted. There was some sort of hurt, entirely uncharacteristic and irrational emotion that had begun to vaguely surface.

Despite the touchstone of his fiancee, the spectre persisted, presumably only for himself. Under the slowing tempo of the music, there was the soft swishing of fabric as they began to move about the room, their hands touching and assessing what they found. At a mirror, particularly ornate, they snorted softly. As one of several painted portraits, they laughed, brief and holding something that weighed down further on Malory.

“What a beautiful tower.” It wasn’t a compliment and he found himself wishing this was a more standard sort of home invasion.

The music picked up again, dancing once more throughout the room and the figure moved toward the piano. What little gap was between Malory and Eles disappeared as if he thought he could hide inside the other boy for whatever was coming, hands gripping, knee sliding over thigh. Malory began to turn his head, to try and bury his face in bony shoulder and golden waves, but they were already there and the sight of them reaching toward his face had him freeze.

And then, of all things, lift his chin and lean for that prospective touch and he felt so intensely…hopeful, so strangely hopeful. And then that laugh, again, the hand dropping. The face under the hood was one of stark, plain features. And they held a kindness that was utterly lacking in warmth, at least for him.

“Always wanting. Even now, so caught up in the surface of desire, leaving only emptiness beneath.”

Malory was a chasm, a great gaping emptiness that could only know hunger. Could never stop wanting no matter what was given him, could never be satisfied, no matter who dared to fall in. The figure was gone, and glancing over to the mirror, he half expected a jagged, broken hole where his face should be, a pitch black nothing. But it was simply Malory waiting that frame, as he always was, and a pleasure to look at.

Finally he did turn to press his face into Eles’s shoulder, and with a groan complained, “There was a ghost just now. It was mean.” And boring. Couldn’t it have said something he didn’t already know? The longing, though, for that touch where he should have shied away. The deep sadness at the denial, that had been unsettling.

“Do you love me?”

Eles was warm, and that was a sort of reassurance in itself. He also never hesitated to touch, and rarely withheld or held back for that matter. Malory hadn’t lacked for touch in…years, not really, though some days he got lonely and impatient when their two schedules were too poorly aligned as of late. So he shouldn’t feel as if he’d been starved for it, starved for a lifetime. Maybe several.

“It said I was shallow. Just a series of wants that could never be fulfilled and nothing beyond that,” Malory huffed, the sulk of it shameless and clear. His expression was dramatically put out by it all and not at all serious; but the flex of the hand at Eles’s side gave a certain air of uncertainty.

“Will you love me when all my shallow spills out, and there’s nothing else?” Nothing else to figure out or discover, no treasure at the bottom of the well for hands that were always prying and curious.

If he was a book, it’d surely have a beautiful cover that looked lovely and rare on any shelf. Malory glanced down at the tangle of their fingers and imagined Eles with such a thing, and knew that even if every page was empty, here was one who would fill them. Boldly, rudely, and with a love for beautiful words.

Was he a thinking, feeling thing? He supposed. But he never aspired to exist too deeply, never wanted to be more than a lovely face and a constant litany of shallow, easily indulged wants. Except, there was something to lose, now wasn’t there? Something to fear.

The reassurance was warm and Malory enjoyed it. The fear was lingering like a knife, gently scraping along his spine, and Malory found he enjoyed that too.

Manhandled into agreement, he leaned into their hands, eyes closing with a peace so smug as to feel entirely unearned, and said, “At worst, I suppose it would be like owning a cat.”