Word Count: 855

He should have known better.

Somehow he’d let it all go to his head. He’d thought things would be better, that what he’d had with Chris was actually possible, when all along there’d been that little voice in the background, feeding off of his fear and desperation and need, telling him that it could never work, that he could never be good enough, that Chris could never love him or need him the way Paris loved and needed Chris.

It had been right. That little voice had known all along. It had learned when his mother had walked out on his father that love was pain and loneliness and loss, a futile dream that struggled and struggled and struggled to come true, before finally puttering out—dark, and cold, and dead.

It had told him this. All along it had told him this, warned him, fought to break through the cloud of delusion, but he’d ignored it. He’d wanted to live his fairytale, with his perfect, handsome boyfriend—rich as a prince and chivalrous as a fabled knight—in an apartment that could have been a castle compared to the house Paris had shared with his poor, embattled father, fighting together against the darkness and the evil that threatened to overtake the world.

But this was life. This was reality, and Paris couldn’t afford to give in to fantasies anymore.

There were no wishing wells, no fountains to take his dreams and make them come true, no magic mirrors to show him anything more than his own tired, sad face, lost in a world that had never made much sense. There were no princes, at least not the sort that populated children’s stories. They’d all wanted a princess anyway, and no matter what sort of roles Paris chose to dance, no matter what sort of mean and derogatory slurs people threw at him, he was not a princess. He was just a boy in tights, pretending to be something he could never be.

Maybe there were witches. Certainly there were monsters. There was hate and immorality and wickedness in the world. There was magic, too, and people who fought to use it for good against people who wanted to wreak havoc and do ill.

But that was it. That was all. That was what would forever be.

Paris thought of these things as he unpacked his collection of figurines in one of the guest rooms of the Gallos’ house. It was a big room, with plenty of space for one skinny kid and his kitten and the leftovers of a long dead childhood. He stood by the long dresser, slowly taking figure after figure out of a cardboard box. Carefully he unwrapped them from their beds of newsprint and tissue paper, held them gently in his hands, unwilling to break them even as they taunted him with untruths.

He wondered why he couldn’t, wondered why, no matter how satisfying the sound of breaking glass and porcelain might be, he could not bring himself to take a single figure and smash it against the wall. It would be so easy, and done so quickly, and then they would never be able to mock him again.

Aurora and her prince, dancing happily amongst the clouds, the evil witch now nothing more than a distant memory; Snow White on her bed of roses, with her prince looming above her ready to kiss her free of the spell that claimed her; and Cinderella… poor, poor Cinderella with glass shoes on her feet and a song in her heart, fleeing from it all as the clock struck twelve and the magic began to fade.

It always faded, didn’t it?

And then what was left when it was gone?

Paris set the figurines down one by one, next to Minnie and Mickey and Peter Pan and Tinkerbell and the ballerina music box that played “Dance of the Swans” when wound. Then he stepped back, sat on the edge of his new bed, and stared.

This wasn’t fair.

He deserved more than this.

He wanted more than this.

Why didn’t he get it?

Because he wasn’t a fairytale princess, though he’d been sitting around like one, waiting like one, hoping and dreaming for a better outcome, relying on fairies and magic and circumstance to get him what he wanted instead of fighting for it, making it happen on his own terms.

Isn’t that exactly what his father had told him to do?

Fight, Paris. Fight and never give up.

So why wasn’t he fighting harder?

He wasn’t ready to give up yet. He wasn’t ready for it to end.

Not now.

Not ever.

But as he flopped back onto the bed with a sigh, tired and worn out and wanting nothing more than to be back in Chris’s apartment, he thought about how nice it would be to have a spell that would put him to sleep, where all of this could be washed away and there’d be nothing left but silence and peace.

Then he wouldn’t need to fight.

There’d be nothing left to fight for.

He should have known better.