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 Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2025 5:49 pm
When Eles came home from work that night, it was to a house even darker than usual. The mirrors he’d spared on the first floor were draped with dark lacey shawls and scarves, no longer reflecting even the moon’s distant glow. But there was a light on in the parlor, particularly warm and shifting. Candles, or, as it proved, a lantern. In that low light, a mourning figure in black veils and dark, billowy skirts lounged on the divan in the room’s center.
The only visible skin was a hand, slender and pale, held out to him. Upon it, a small black box.
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2025 5:50 pm
Eles was preoccupied with an unreasonably strong urge to acquire as many different newspapers as possible that night on his walk home. He hadn't puzzled out the specifics of the project yet, but he liked their smell, the way their ink wasn't anything close to archival, and the texture that he found quite sentimental. He imagined they would smell even worse when burned, but that was just more to like about them. And it was far more enjoyable to think about projects he could do on his downtime than remember how humanity showed its a** at the bar again that night. The night was over, after all, and he was now free to act as uncivil as he pleased.
When he let himself in, he hadn't bothered to take off his mask. He'd had to wear it the whole night — an intricate lattice evocative of trabecular bone with skeletal fingers reaching out to cover his eyes. It was both commanding and almost shy, he thought, but it was the anchor piece to tonight's outfit. The corset was unintentionally helpful for his ribs, with its whalebone exposed and its firm lattice echoing the pattern over his eyes. Satin lacing cinched up the back, then splayed out over more bony support structure before threading through his thigh-high garters. If he wasn't going to be moving his waist, then the thought was he'd make up for that with his limbs.
Eles — Ebon — walked past the first handful of mirrors. Then his gait slowed, then he stopped, then as if something came over him, he whipped around suddenly and found that each of those mirrors had gone dark with all sorts of black material. As he angled the mask up from where it was affixed to his face, he found the hall dark. And not just the hall, but the rest of the house, too.
Well, save for the candles. It was like walking into a dream, and Eles realized that Ebon would feel right at home here. Maybe they could work candles into the next set if it wouldn't piss off all the smoke alarms and set a few guests aflame.
He followed the increasingly intentional path of candles, wondering all the idle while who Malory had put up to this, until he caught sight of a somber shadow dancing across the ground from the warm glow in the parlor. Turning, he headed inside, well aware of how the rubberized coating on the bottoms of his metal heels still thudded against the floors.
He drew to a halt before the couch. Of course Malory was sprawled there like an undiscovered corpse, looking terribly fetching in a remarkable swath of cloth. Hand out as if he'd fainted or expected to be lavished upon. The scene would've made for a perfect value study, and for a moment, he wished he knew how to use his phone well enough to take a photo for later reference. The sharp contrast between pale hand and black box felt particularly noteworthy. Then he decided he'd admired for long enough.
Without a word, he leaned over and slipped his gloved and painted arms under the mourning boy and hoisted him up in a bridal carry. His arms protested the weight, his ribs resented it, but he was sure it wasn't far to the backyard.
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2025 5:50 pm
Under the veil, Malory closed his eyes and listened to the thud of heavy heal against the wood of the hallway. The rug of the parlor. And then he got to listen to his boy breathe and realized the downside of this tableau was in the distance he’d created between them. He’d like to feel the rise and fall of a chest, the thrum of a heart. Or maybe just see them, pick out any tension in the other’s jaw or lightness of his brow.
But of course Eles wouldn’t suffer maintaining any such distance, now would he? Swept up in thin arms, the black veil puffed out with his sigh of contentment at the sudden closeness, the proximity to his boy’s chest and all its lively rhythms. Had it been a long night on the pole? Was the pain of this more searing or simply excessively aching?
And then….they were walking. And not toward the stairs or any particular flat surface. Hand still out and clutching the little box, bouncing a little with every step, he gave a breathy laugh as he felt them shift into the night air. “Are you going to drown me like this?”
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2025 5:50 pm
"You're half-right." With a grunt, Eles realized his lack of planning when he found the outside door shut and locked. "Hey, get the door."
He couldn't see worth half a s**t between the mask and all the candle flames reflecting off the door; hard to say if any of the dramatic decor made its way to the poolside. It was already one hell of a surprise to come home to all this ambience after working; what was to say the boy didn't whole ideal evening planned?
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2025 5:50 pm
Malory was much more curious about what the other was than any potential drowning, and so flipped the latch with his pinky finger. There were candles and lanterns outside, thankfully out of the path of low hanging veils. There was the soft flutter of feathers followed by several soft calls of uowooo. There was a table that held a bottle normally locked in the basement safe, several glasses and an elaborate charcuterie board. Nearby was a large black cage with several birds inside, their white chests splashed with vivid red.
He’d even had another fainting couch hauled out here, its velvet and polished wood gleaming softly in the candlelight. “You’ve gotten a lot stronger,” Malory commented. “I bet you could throw me into the pool twice.”
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2025 5:51 pm
Negotiating his way outside with a boy in his arms was something of a learning curve, but they were out again, met by moonlight and the cooled midnight air. A rare breeze soughed through Malory's layered veils, teased them up from the ground.
Eles paused briefly when he spotted the other piece of furniture that didn't normally live outside, and he had to ask himself whether he wanted to dump them both into the pool first or lay the boy on this chaise and unwrap him like a fine gift before they made known what was in that black box on the other side of the dark, placid reflection.
With a sigh, he decided he should at least see what's in that box before christened that ritual in the drowning pool. So he forced himself to walk the extra paces along the side of the pool until they were at a different, but just as ostentatious divan. On it, he laid the boy down with as much grace as fatigued muscles could manage before sitting on the ground next to the furniture.
Suddenly, he felt much more at ease knowing he wouldn't be burning to death inside of that house.
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2025 5:51 pm
Set down much more nicely than he’d been expecting, Malory immediately once again took on that lounging posture. Excluding a solemn stillness even as he moved, stretching out a hand, offering the box to the boy he’d been waiting for. Only this time he reached a bit too far, the back of his fingers brushing against the edge of…a mask? Then the shelf of an ear. And then hair, still stiff with the sweat of of his night’s exertions. Bringing the hand back slowly, he made sure to take a moment to trace the line of Ele’s jaw before dropping his hand lower, the box ever more intimately on offer.
“Don’t you want it?” Malory softly teased, as if a no might make it disappear.
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2025 5:51 pm
Eles waited patiently while Malory blindly molested his face with that box laden hand. It felt so terribly familiar, that lilting little tease, but no matter how he reached or tracked it, the feeling never coalesced into a discernible memory. It was simply there, then not.
"Obviously," Eles replied with a paradoxically warm sharpness to his voice. Then his gloved hands took up that pale wrist as if it may break under its own weight with that of the box, and soon one of those hands departed to trace the length of Malory's arm up to his elbow, then beyond, finding the pathway and curvature of skin until he could find the face under the veil.
"But whatever's in there will always be second to you. It can wait its turn."
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2025 5:51 pm
Ah. Again, the doing away of distance, barriers, and masks that tried to hide what he wanted. Once more, Malory’s eyes fluttered close as gloved fingers slid up his arm and sought a face that was clearly smiling as it leaned into that touch. “Well, I can hardly argue with your priorities.”
And then leaned back to angle his head just so, then moved to delicately bite around one of those fingers, the talon scratching lightly against his tongue. And then he tugged, just enough to pull the glove in a fussy little demand.
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2025 5:52 pm
The latex gloves were loath to ungrip his skin, but Eles interpreted the sentiment. After a minute of hesitating touch, Eles drew his hand back to begin the arduous process of stripping away the latex. The patience of pulling a second skin that had engulfed his arms for so many hours, nearly cemented in place and unwilling to vacate its new throne. The skin revealed smelled of trapped sweat and familiar lube. His arms shone with it, as if just birthed. The pool, he supposed, would have been kinder.
But Malory wanted this. He would suffer it, too.
Then that hand was back — hot, but cooling; slimy in its touch, as if desperate to shed its amniotic fluid on the boy that coaxed it out of the womb. Strings of its mixed filth clung to the underside of the veil. How much easier it was to touch his boy this way, it was worth every scrap of suffering.
"Okay," he said at last, as his hand trailed down the boy's rise-fall chest. "I'll look inside your little black box."
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2025 5:52 pm
Eles had indulged and savoured in covering Malory in all sorts sticky messes these past few months, what was more? And this time Malory had even insisted, so he leaned into the slimy hand, not bothering to restrain his neediness for it or act out the drama of disgust. He kissed that palm before it left and then lounged back.
The weight of the hand held his heart in place, and his hidden smile widened. The hand, supported and gently cherished by another, gave an impatient little waggle.
“It’s magic,” he both enticed and cautioned. “But I don’t know, yet.”
Inside the little black box, cushioned in velvet, were a pair of rings. The bands a warm black metal and peppered with bright, tiny glints in the candlelight. And in their midst was a round black stone with a subtle, striking sparkle in its depths. Twin black suns, surrounded by stars.
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2025 5:53 pm
Eles quirked brows at the response, as if to say, how could you not know? Then he remembered that half his face was tucked behind a mask.
His slime-ridden hand was withdrawn and both palms were wiped across his own thighs, as if friction alone would banish the mess of lube and sweat and whatever bacteria flourished on the inside of a latex hellhole. Then he pushed the mask up over his eyes and left it sitting atop his head, and the world seemed altogether bright now that he was free of it. After a couple gold-dusted blinks, Eles peered down at the box unfettered.
When he saw it the first time, he thought it an unremarkable black box. Having shed his blinders, something about this box felt incorrect in a manner he couldn't place — like an AI-generated drawing, it had all the makings of a box but lacked the intrinsic understanding of a box as it existed in its environment. Like it was a box lacking context in a world that didn't exist without context.
So he took it up off Malory's delicate hand. "Where'd you get it?" He asked the veiled pile of boy.
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2025 5:53 pm
“The Mirror gave it to us, as a little gift.” He hummed and rested his chin on his free hand, as if a faceless pile of lace and silks had every reason to act so lofty. “I think it approves. It knows and feels so much and so strangely. But it always likes to make us happy where it can.”
He was obviously very pleased, even relieved at this sign. Morseo than any video call he’d had with his parents since his little declaration. Their approval was convenience, money, and whatever little not-quite-lies he could get away with regarding Eles. The Mirror. Well, Malory’s faith belonged to two beings, and one still had smears of lube on his hand at the moment.
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2025 5:53 pm
Eles's delight dampened and his expectations tampered when he heard that The Mirror gave it to him. Hopefully it was an improvement over Mirrorspace? Eles winced as he imagined opening the box to find cheap knockoff costume jewelry that broke after five minutes of wear, or simply disappeared if they didn't feed them microtransactions of energy to continue existing. He could set aside his doubts for once, though. After all, the Mirrorscape was a vast improvement, and their Prince was quite charming.
It gave him that convenient little fragment that let him tear a wound in the world and escape Borax's bad-faith deal, too. Maybe he'd been too hard on the burgeoning eldritch architect's nightmare. He'd let the gift itself decide for him.
So he opened the not-quite-box, and inside were those little velvet rolls that held rings cleverly in place, and a pair of matching rings made their homes in those alcoves. They were smaller than the kind Malory would have gotten them, surely. It saved him the unnecessary stress and expense of trying to find a ring at a jeweler's that suited his midnight boy, too. He decided, then, that he forgave the Mirror for suckering his boy into a lifetime of unassuming microtransactions to support an indecisive floorplan with shitty AI generation.
He might even uncover a couple mirrors in that hallway. But only a couple.
With an untarnished smile, he took up Malory's outstretched hand, though he hesitated before threading one of those rings onto his finger. "Out here or in there?" He inquired with a tip of his head toward the water.
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Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2025 5:54 pm
The silence said a great deal, and Malory sat, smug and satisfied. And the question was asked and he was brought down on high, because he knew his fate, he loved his fate, and he embraced the mess of it. But it would, of course, be a mess.
“In there.”
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