Welcome to Gaia! ::

The tangle of them only grew worse as the water drained away, the tide giving way to reveal elbows, knees, and calves. Leaning heavily, bonelessly against the side of the tub, a shipwrecked survivor trying to survive the rapidly cooling temperatures, Malory considered that audition. That boy who wanted the spotlight but not the stage, not really.

“We have one,” he began, pursedog shiver bringing up his shoulders, bringing him closer to Eles to leech off the other’s warmth. “In the banquet hall.” Had Eles ever explored that piece of the first floor? Malory hadn’t bothered hosting anything, not even his birthday, since the other had started living in the old victorian. At first by happenstance, and later due to a certain reluctance to share with others. It felt more intimate, more sincere and revealing now to let others see into it.

Lifting a hand to delicately trace a bruised hip, he asked, “Are you feeling like showing off?” Wasn’t that already his job? And oh, wasn’t Ebon going to have to paint himself up so prettily to hide all this?

Malory hummed at the answer, and felt it fair enough. And characteristic of Eles, really, to decide to learn for himself rather than simply buying some albums or seeking out live music venues. Leaning even closer now under the security of that arm, his hand slipped further back to find the comfortable ladder of his boy’s spine.

Their feet were now exposed to the not even mildly cold air, and he squirmed and shifted to tuck them underneath him.

“I liked you from the start,” Malory began, almost whiny. “But the vanity…” A gusty burst of warm air hit Eles’s chest. “That was when you started to get…I suppose dangerous. I felt instantly nostalgic for you. Like you were already gone and I was left looking in that mirror, missing you terribly.”

Head tipping up with that slow pull of hair, Malory looked up at Eles with a hooded gaze. The other boy was trading the abuse of his bruised, sunset scenery for ever deeper glimpses at Malory’s many hidden nothings. There were no great surprises or profound philosophies in him. No wonderful or interesting adventures. But even so, Malory decided to let his boy have them, all the fistfulls of nothing much he cared to scoop out.

“They don’t…not really ever,” Malory admitted, and for once there was a soft pull of frustration in his voice. “But it always feels like they’re about to, like they should.” Like that was the way the was built, and how it needed to work. Not even a matter of deserving it or not. “I get tired of waiting for it, and the anticipation makes everything about them all the worse.”

And he wasn’t one to endure an unpleasant situation.

“But you just got better, instead.”

A slow nod. He did resent it. Especially when they didn’t know how to end things well. With a question mark or an exclamation point or three. With a bold and flourished The End. To help him feel that although it was a short story, it had been a good one.

Head tipping back still further, he swallowed, nodded again after a moment, “Maybe. I didn’t need anything from you, and while you were interesting and worth wanting for a bit…” he shrugged. “I didn’t especially want much from you, either. All you had was yourself, afterall.”

And the shivers turned into shudders, in a quiet piece of laugh, “Who the ******** knew that yourself was so devastating?” That it would, in turn, draw out the self that Malory ignored and papered over daily.

“I was practically defenseless,” he complained.

The kiss against his neck carved another soft sliver away, and the warmth breath replaced it once more. Whatever Eles took, he gave back, or simply let stay between them, to be shared until it was simply theirs. Their time, their bodies, their house, their relationship. It felt nice, and as always, held that bit of longing. Like they were already, in some way, over.

The difference wasn’t that he didn’t feel the edge of that cliff, the closer he clung to Eles. He just loved the view too much to care. Knew he’d love the view even as the ground crumbled beneath him.

Moving obediently, Malory enjoyed the manhandling, indulged in being cared for even as Eles went from grabbing fistfuls of whatever was left inside of him, to reaching in, elbow deep. “Attention. I mean, clearly the money, sex, and a beautiful accessory to parade about are all worth wanting. But mostly, they want the attention.” The soft attention of an admirer, a listener. Or the harsher attention of someone demanding, overbearing in their actions and expectations. The praise. The derision. The need. All focused on them, making them the single brightest point on his horizon.

“What do you think they want from me?” The same question turned back, and sneaking a dozen more underneath its belly.

Eyes fluttering shut, Malory lightly leaned into those firm presses of towel, the quiet attention to the details that made up his person. At every turn of slander, he gave a sulky hum, sulking out a little, How mean, when it came to hating him just because he broke someone else’s heart. As if that someone else wouldn’t fall back into making even more mistakes with him at the drop of a text.

The shudder at the hands on his ribs had nothing to do with the room’s temperature. Silently, he decided he wouldn’t let Eles know he knew how to play piano, not even a little. The petty price for this willful exploration.

With a soft snort, Malory lifted the other towel and began to pat and squeeze his hair dry. “I’m not enough to fill all that,” he sighed, “but we can have a good time trying.” And an enjoyably bad time, as well. For everything else…they’d have a beautiful mausoleum to look forward to.

The difference between how he handled Malory and how he handled himself held a very specific sort of charm. Malory watched those bruises, already vivid from the bath, turn brilliant with that rough efficiency. And a little more warmth returned to him in that view. Leaning against the vanity, the one that still held that first gift, that first move of what could be considered the courtship between them, he didn’t bother hiding away the interest or attraction that rose up in his gaze.

“I didn’t,” Malory finally, finally admitted. “And that was the whole point of all the little roles. Other people, other lives. And none of them too much my own.”

Reaching out, he caught the end of that towel, and stated somberly, “So it’s good you like what you’ve found. At least enough to take responsibility for ******** it all up.”