The Meteor Shower (3) : It wouldn't be a star festival without a meteor shower! Right on time, a beautiful array of shooting stars graces the night sky. This time of year is unnaturally clear and it's incredibly easy to see the stars. Most meteor fragments appear to be little white or yellow lights streaming across the sky, but if you watch closely enough you may find that some of them seem to be a whole rainbow of colors. The scientists have reported that it's just different components burning up as they enter the atmosphere, but there's something undeniably magical about it.
Dappled lights shone over satin sheets, marble skin. Cold blue, like St. Elmo's fire, trawled its greedy fingers over the swell of his ribs, the dip to his abdomen. Lurid oranges, molten golds and vermilions carded through his wefts of hair, a coruscating spectacle in that tousled nest of night sky. Then, in the spaces between such heady statements, in the dim where only pale, milky street lights peered hesitantly into the room, the boy's remaining silhouette was a mastery of exclusion — like so much negative space blocked out by blackest shadow. He could have drawn it, he supposed, but his hands were busy with more important tasks.
One was draped across the parchment of the boy's form, hand curled loose an inch above his finebone iliac peaks. The other hand — the damaged one, the marked one — caught between them as a victim of simple, thoughtless accident.
Earlier that day, while Malory was still asleep, he cut the stitches from his wrist and jaw with the help of the much-too-cheery chef. She was so skilled with knives, she couldn't do him wrong. And she hadn't; what remained were shedding flakes of dead skin and a red-raw irritation that itched but otherwise seldom bothered him. And, pleasantly, pressure kept the nerves too busy to itch.
But Eles thought it strange. As he blankly took in another meteoric dance across Malory's flawless face, he wondered how that black eye faded so quickly. No trace of it remained. If that chef fed him that ******** well, then Eles should've long healed up by now, too. But he didn't.
And Malory, ever the mischief-maker, liked to remind him of that fact at every turn. Hell, he was even doing it to himself now, the way he'd perched his chin against Malory's knobby (but still somehow ridiculously elegant) acromion process. Still, Eles told himself it was incidental; he rather liked the smell of the boy's shampoo and there was no better way to partake than to get as close to it — and him — as possible.
"Your eye's normal again," he ventured in his yet-rusty speech. Vowels were easier than consonants. Some consonants were harder than others. "You must be devastated."
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Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2025 7:36 pm
"You mean devastating," Malory corrected, dropping his phone on the bed when Eles decided to use his voice, granting the reward of his full attention. He shifted, turning slightly to take in the boy resting on his shoulder. For all he hated the mirrors, it didn't seem like the injuries left him too self conscious. But maybe that was a benefit of a body that didn't feel like his own. Eles was much more self conscious about his voice, which was cute at first, but not when it kept him from using it.
"You've improved," and here he lifted his hand to lightly drum along sharp-soft column of Eles's throat. Had it been injured in his previous body and this was all just...
The graceful signing of thin, blackened hands, their talons forming glinting paths in the dark of the alleyway. A voice, slightly strange in its position and himself not yet daring to look up and observe the source of dissonance.
...just from restricted muscle memory? Another question to ask, another potential identifier. How useful in what would likely be a very long search, as there were just so many possibilities.
Eventually, Malory gave the question a little shrug, just enough to make sure the other didn't get too comfortable. "I heal quickly." And then he lowered his own voice, intimate and teasing as he asked, "Are you jealous?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2025 8:01 pm
Eles shut his eyes to keep from rolling them, though his attention was on Malory once more when he felt fingers at his throat. It was, he realized, far easier to speak when all of his faults at it went unacknowledged. A flush of color in his face and Eles felt it like a seething burn.
Then he sat up with a soft sigh, looked away from the boy who so loved to prod every hurt. Somewhere out there, all the colors in the universe were raining down in the night sky.
"No," he answered, still looking away. Injury didn't bother him. Healing didn't bother him. Sometimes it was useful — not necessarily to garner pity or sympathy or guilt-bound favors, but to draw himself out of his own thoughts. To bring himself back to a world that existed as itself, undeniably, unabashedly, without curiosity or care for who he was before. If there was a before.
When the uninvited heat left his skin, he looked back at Malory. No pigments dripped down him like before; they were in a lull again.
Though, it did give him an idea.
"What do you think of people?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2025 8:43 pm
Ah, there it was. Shy. Eles wore his discomfort so sweetly tonight, maybe they should...
"Well, of course I love them," Malory huffed out, all played up outrage and offense. As if the question was more an accusation to the contrary. "How can I be admired without anyone around to look? How can I act if there's no one to watch?" Fake papering over real until all depth and meaning was lost.
"People are so, super important to me," Malory kept on it, rolling around onto his stomach. He gazed up at Eles, his back now to the window and features caught in shadow. "I mean a world without people..."
A sudden, halting silence.
"It would be terrible," Malory finally finished, voice hollow and certain. And then he was laughing, pretense lightening, shifting ."No book is as good as a person, you know?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2025 8:57 pm
"You have dogs," Eles shot back succinctly. "They adore you."
He fidgeted with a measure of impatience for Malory's dramatic display of an answer. Stretching his feet out, he glanced at his toes. As he bent and straightened them, he thought, they don't look like his toes.
And Malory would preach until the sun came up about how he wanted to be worshipped, loved, honored, devoured. But he was also so full of s**t that it was a wonder they —
He'd seen it at the parties. People were sources of energy. Commodities. A renewable currency to be gathered up and spent on some pseudo-living space that couldn't ever decide what it wanted to be. To Eles's recollection, Malory never talked about anyone else. Never expressed any interest in or gave any weight to someone else's opinion. The way he lied to the nurse — that was for his own benefit, it was his own self-indulgent play.
And then there was the Dark Star. That looming, foreboding thing branded indelibly into their minds. Hybris seemed enraptured by it. Was that a lie, too? Another play?
That jab about books earned a healthy dose of side-eye. "Disagree," he stated flatly. Then he scooted to the edge of the bed, where he felt around the shadow-swathed furs with his foot. After a minute of searching, a toe brushed across the exact piece of cold surface he wanted and he leaned down to grab it. When he shifted his way back, he had a brush-tip marker in his hand.
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Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2025 9:56 pm
"But I'd hate to see any of them get hurt or upset," Malory teased. Not to mention the lack of other, extremely necessary activities. Watching the other boy's restless stretching, he wondered where the question came from. Were people in general turning into a concern? Malory was very normal about people, so it couldn't be that something about him was off.
"You just have met many of them, or been around any long enough." Save for Malory, which might be the source of the firm disagree. He'd be the first to admit that the only sort of book he was better than, would be one mostly made up of pictures. "You'll see," he insisted, a little absently as he watched the stretch and flex of hip and thigh as Eles searched around the floor with his foot.
Then the lean arc of back, the lines of muscle that emerged as reached down and...
When Eles righted himself, he'd find two dark eyes watching him with bright expectation, not unlike the aforementioned dogs.
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Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2025 10:09 pm
This time, Eles didn't restrain his eyeroll. Sometimes he wondered if Malory just liked a little social friction. Maybe got bored when conversations moved smoothly and the spaces between people remained too constant. Like it panicked or bored him, so he had to manufacture some nonsense to be contrary.
Grunting his deadpanned understanding, Eles pressed his free hand between Malory's shoulder blades — an unspoken hold still. "Keep going," he urged. "Mansplain it to me."
Then he uncapped the marker using his teeth and the heel of his right hand began testing the surface of the boy's back, crossing ligaments and musculature, traveling over vertebra and rib. Drawing and redrawing invisible lines as Eles searched for something he liked. Something that worked. Ideally, something that anchored this conversation and made sense of it. Granted some truth where Malory had already sculpted his mountain of contradicting evidence.
"What do people mean to you?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2025 10:38 pm
After an intial little shudder at mansplain, Malory obediently stilled and stayed that way, even when gliding hand brushed this and that sensitive spot. There were a couple small scars like stars low on his back and a**. Arrows he'd explained, sulky and not offering any further explanation.
The persistence of the question had Malory humming in thought. "People are...they're all a little different, and changing. There's always some extra little secrets to be found, and new buttons to figure out how to press. Unpredictable, but not outside of prediction, which makes it fun. To get in their head, and figure out what comes next."
There was a soothing, almost hypnotic quality to the motions behind him. "And it's nice to put them inside..." my head, Malory nearly admitted. Instead he shifted suggestively, 'Wherever they can fit." A truth, of all sorts, sizes, and receptacles.
"So what do people mean to you? With what you've seen so far."
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Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2025 10:51 pm
So he'd gone on. Eles listened. Gave him grace, patience. Gave him so many leagues of rope as he let Malory flesh out his answer. Add some drop shadows here, a secondary light source there. But, by the end of it all, the question was turned back to him.
Eles flatted his forearm on the other side of the boy and leaned over him, having discovered that human canvas is much more difficult to work around than a simple sketchpad. It wasn't much of a problem anymore, though. Malory's answer decided the subject for him. A tragic fact, because he seemed so tantalizingly close to telling the truth. Voicing that quiet part that's been implied through so many of their misbegotten adventures.
Oh well. He'd earned what he earned.
"Mmm…" He hummed in thought as he started penning strokes onto the boy's back. "Most don't mean much. Some of them don't mean anything at all." He let the silence yawn wide for a time, decorated only by the guttering streaks of color that flashed through the window. Whatever fell out there, it was nearly over.
"Most don't know what they want. The ones who think they know what they want don't know that they don't want it. Some are skittish and stupid. And all of them are so wrapped in social mores that they don't even know themselves.
"At least books are honest. They're finite. You can choose when you put them down or pick them up again. You can draw in them. Try that on a person and they'll whinge about it."
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Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2025 11:07 pm
The cool glide of ink was a sensation he could immerse himself in, leaving him a more than willing canvas even if there was a chance that Eles was drawing a huge, overly ornate d**k across his lovely back.
"You like control," Malory stated. To pick and put down at will, to alter on a whim, to choose to interpret as truthful with no further reveals to undermine that conclusion. "People aren't so different from all that, at least when you're the one in control."
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Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2025 11:17 pm
"I like candor," he corrected.
Most of his impulsive endeavor was spent going over and thickening the letters, but the crux of it was already done. The dim light of nightfall was enough that he could see what he was doing with the unintentional benefit of being unable to see and obsess over any imperfections. Not that it should matter much — the point of contention, for him, was the perfection inherent in the blank canvas.
But the canvas wasn't blank. He knew this. He saw those scars on the boy's a**.
"Control just means I get what I want."
Looking up, Eles tensed upon setting eyes on himself. His attention redirected nigh immediately, settling on the languid stretch of boy that so loved to piss around and dodge his questions. Written across the back of him, in letters bold and self-assured, for the mirror's gaze alone, was the word COWARD.
Eles nodded, satisfied. Then he recapped the pen, chucked it over the side of the bed, and laid face-down in one of the askew pillows.
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Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2025 11:56 pm
Candor.
Well, Malory wouldn't argue. It wasn't his job to break open the boy and see what dreadful, sticky little things crept out to touch the world around him. He just wanted to watch, and maybe touch those things in turn. Vaguely, he wondered if Eles hated him a little, and the thought brought a little thrill. Then a big one as certain potential concerns tried to reinsert themselves into the moment.
No. Sleepy. Go away.
As Eles flopped down, finished and satisfied with his efforts, Malory sat up and turned to the mirror to take them in. it certainly was a statement piece. Tilting his head and shifting his spine, he decided it wasn't bad for the moment. Eles had a good understanding and appreciation for the shapes of him, even if just for a bit of slanderous text.
He'd wear something backless tomorrow.
Laying backdown beside the other boy, Malory shifted until he was comfortable, taking special care to obnoxiously pin down Eles's calf with his own ice cold foot.
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Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2025 2:03 pm
No commentary on his little act of defiance. Disappointing. Much as he thought he hid his feelings well, his face was as opaque as a window.
But, even if Malory had nothing more to say, he had a foot to contribute to the conversation. At first he jerked at the chilly shock, then quickly decided it was quite refreshing. Then, perhaps feeling a touch greedy, he decided he would have two.
Those ankles were fine enough that he could wrap his fingers about them and touch the tips together. Besides, Malory hated effort.
Eles shifted, crawling in the dark like a sidewinder, until they paired with each other as a Taijitu, until those chilly feet were against warm thighs, and summer's stagnant heat could be forgotten long enough for sleep to take them.
