Give your heart and soul to charity
'Cause the rest of you, the best of you
Honey, belongs to me
H
e doesn’t want to go. Really, he doesn’t.
When the invitation arrives, it sits on his desk for three or four days. A SOCIAL PARTY GIVEN BY THE IESHANS it says, GOOD MUSIC - REFRESHMENTS SERVED. A dove drops it on his windowsill mid-afternoon, just as the first snow is starting to fall in Viride (though, most flakes are filtered out by the thick canopy): a carefully folded envelope neatly stamped with gold wax, first the big, black, blocky letters, and then–perhaps worse–a note scrawled on the back.
“If you come, you will be my guest. Isn't that only fair? You'll finally meet all of the family.
- Adonai”
He often sees it in the corner of his eye, wax glittering just enough in the cold winter light that it draws the attention. By the time he snatches it off of the desk he’s lost count of how many seconds he’s spent glaring at its place in his room.
Andras doesn’t want to go to the party. He can think of nothing worse than a crowd full of nobles with cheekbones like knives and decadence dripping off every back like they’re bathed in gold.
It’s just that, the more he looks at it, the more he thinks it must be Pilate’s doing, the more he thinks about Pilate– Andras knows he is going to the party.
Andras tries not to see the guards, taking stock of each attendee, exchange glances over his back as he passes, flickering faintly with static. He enters with a small group: two of his people that heard the word party and couldn’t resist, four nobles clad in fine, deep purple silk that waves as it catches the light of the lanterns placed in a row on the front lawn, and him– sparking, glowering down at the path before him as he walks.
It all feels more familiar than he likes as he follows the crowd first through the front door, then the foyer, then the main hall where each noble is introduced before him–Andras Demyan, Dawn Court Warden–then out through the courtyard to the kitchen. Every banister and inset shelf is rimmed with garlands of holly and outside it is just as light as in. From each angle he can hear music, and when one starts to fade there is another musician there to take its place.
He thinks, with a pang of warmth, that he could never dream something like this into being.
Before he is aware it’s happening he’s back in the kitchen, somehow even larger without sunlight streaming in through the open doors. Andras carefully shoulders his way through the crowd–a blend of newcomers claiming their drinks before wandering toward their partners to dance, persons starting their second or third rounds, and more than a few lounging in the heat of the room, watching candlelight sparkle in the shelves of glass bottles and (of course) watching Pilate, too–and takes his place at the bar.
He reads labels. He reads labels on green and blue bottles at the back of the bar. When he hazards a glance in Pilate’s direction he feels like he’s falling, and falling, and falling, except no one else looks and he never does hit the ground. Someone leans over the bar with hooded eyes and coos. There is a girl next to him, short and well dressed, that sees Andras watching her watch Pilate and looks away.
The more Andras watches the more he doesn’t quite care. It isn’t surprising. He can hardly blame them when his head is swimming, swimming, swimming– or drowning.
“Prince Pilate,” he waves, grinning that wolf’s grin, all teeth-- because even if Pilate expects him, Andras knows there is something worse than usual in serving him anything. "Is it a bother to ask what you'd recommend?”
This can go one of two ways, he thinks. Andras wonders which one.
you think you are possessing me but I've got my teeth in you.
I
don’t bother inviting the Warden. I know he will show up anyway. I think of him and I think of something I read in a book once; not a very highbrow book, at that: love is like a rat, in that it has a collapsible skeleton and will find its way into your home through seemingly impossible holes.
Our parties are well-known and well-advertised. He already knows my address. I’ve instructed the guards to let in the black pegasus with the white lip, if he comes, so really—there is nothing stopping him. Andras is like that rat. I am fully confident he will find his way into my home, and it seems likely that it will be through some seemingly impossible hole.
I don’t worry. I’m not a worrier. I stand in the kitchen and actively don’t worry, a back hoof cocked carelessly, my shoulder pressed to the edge of the bar as I lean part of my weight against slab of marble. My chest and stomach feel loose, warm. The two drinks I’ve had already are settling—seeping into my blood, it feels like, and my whole body seems to have risen in temperature by a few degrees. I can feel my cheeks flush, but I don’t think anyone else will be able to tell. My skin is dark, and in here the lights glimmer everywhere like a funhouse, distracting winks of white and gold; and the snakes, which have decided to cooperate today and wind themselves into “braids”, fall on both sides of my face anyway.
Most of the faces that pass through are recognizable. I see a few of my siblings and chastise them for their appearances—Ruth screws her lip up at me like she’s holding in a sneer, and Miriam appears visibly drunk, her hair still wet and eyes punched down by dark circles. Then there is the parade of Hajakhan nobles, including Lady Aghavni, whom I am careful to bow and offer a drink to: it would be rude of me not to acknowledge our own emissary. After her and her cousins come the Sevettas, then the Azhades, both their parties wrapped up in robes of red and purple; and after them the commoners begin to filter in, all of them gaudily over- or under-dressed.
I am doing what I always do. Not-worrying. And for once I am not speaking, either. I only look at all my guests in silence, and judge them with my plasticine smile. An out-of-place hair here—a poorly chosen set of accessories—I swallow them all gratefully. Eagerly. In this house, at this party, I am judge, jury, and executioner.
Just how I like it.
To judge, though, you must pay close attention. So when the Warden steps through the door—I don’t miss it. I am paying close attention. My eyes are sharp, so sharp and intent as they fall on him that they almost burn, but I don’t glance away; I can’t. It’s the addictive pain of looking at the sun.
He hasn’t dressed up. I’m not surprised, really, but I certainly am offended he didn’t bother getting pretty for me, and when I first look at him it might be with a kind of scowl. A warden, I think, disgruntled, and still a peasant. Where are your manners? (But he still looks damn handsome. I’d never say it out loud, but—my throat feels suddenly hot. Then my whole body, overflowing with a blush-warmth. Or maybe it’s alcohol. But he knows. He must know.)
“Warden,” I respond coolly. And then, grinning the littlest bit, I add: “Since when have you cared about whether you’re bothering me?”
But I already know what I will suggest to him, and I already know that he will drink it. So I push the cup toward him. A crystal goblet, cleaned to shining, filled with a carbonated amber-and-red drink that has been poured over spheres of ice. The smell of mint rises up between us.
i am angry.
i have nothing to say about it.
i am not sorry for the cost.
E
verything is suddenly very warm-- the lights, the bodies both crammed together and still at respectful distances from one another, and, when Pilate turns his attention on him, Andras is suddenly very, very warm.
At first, Pilate is scowling, which is one of the least surprising things he's seen, he thinks. At first, there are just the eyebrows pushed together and down, those bright amber eyes a shade or two darker under the lashes, the lips cut in something halfway between a frown and a sneer. Andras watches this, and he watches it smooth itself out as he approaches, and all at once the music, the winking lights, the bodies fade into the blur of the background.
He didn't want to come to the party.
He didn't.
But he watches Pilate learn against the bar in front of him, when he sees the row of snakes braided together and the light glancing off their scales, Andras realizes that he was always going to have come.
Warden, Pilate greets, since when have you cared about whether you're bothering me? and Andras leans forward, still all teeth. "Reconnaissance." he says, with levity, "So that I can bother you efficiently." As he leans back there is that warm thing in him again-- admiration, he thinks.
He is really not the type to drink, only at the suggestion of others and on exceedingly rare, special occasions; when Pilate slides the glass to him from across the bar, Andras looks at it for a moment, tiny bubbles rising and breaking open on the surface. It is an amber color, almost gold in the warm light of the party, with strings of red liquid as if it were a marble, polished to translucence except for the wave in the center.
Andras blinks, once, twice, summoning the courage, then lifts the glass to his lips and tips it back. It tastes cold, the sort of mint that drives into your tongue like the dead of winter. He licks the back of his teeth as he lowers the glass, watching it swirl before it settles back into its strange red-and-gold swirl.
Nothing but his eyes move as he looks up at Pilate, over the rim of his glasses. When the rest of his face does move it is only to crack into a smile. "While I'm already bothering you, I guess," here he pauses, swirls the drink one more time in punctuation, "you should have one, as well."
Andras huffs through his nose. A cut-off laugh. "In honor of our friendship."
you think you are possessing me but I've got my teeth in you.
W
hen Andras comes to meet me he looks ravenous.
Starved for something, though I know as warden he must be well-fed. Hungry in the way of an unloved dog. I can’t even explain how, but he moves forward teeth-first: their star-white glint is what catches my gaze in the first moment I look at him. (And then I am entranced by his eyes. And then the rise of his cheekbones, and then the soft forward curve of his ears… and then I am disgusted with myself, and I set my jaw and push my gaze up to his, cold and certain.)
My heart is pounding in my chest, and I feel it more than I can feel my blood or my breath or hear any of my own thoughts. And I realize this feeling is—
Something duller than pain but brighter than anger. I feel violated. He violates me. He poisons me from the inside out, and I let it happen; I look at him while he does it, without wearing even a scowl, and I let him.
My body aches. Suddenly I think of—
(No I don’t.)
I swallow so harshly my throat wants to tear. It makes me regret my drinks; my mouth is already a little raw from the heat of the many bitter sips I’ve taken, and my mouth furrows together in a sort of wince as I fight down the feeling of acid. My chest flashes with white-bright irritation. By the time he looks at me—really looks, up from his drink—whatever droll smile I’d worn is already gone, and I am staring at him with an expression that wavers between complete neutrality and suppressed distaste.
So that I can bother you more efficiently, the Warden says. I scowl at him, my brow furrowing, my eyes narrowing; but I don’t have time to think of a response before I watch him throw the drink back like it’s a shot and not an absolutely epicurean, handmade drink. “That’s a cocktail,” I point out, “not outhouse liquor. Good grief, Warden.” I want to say something else. But for once I don’t know what it is, exactly, that I’d like to berate him for; I can’t decide between the multitude of his faults. I successfully bite back the urge to say anything at all, though it hurts me physically.
I watch him. I watch him swallow; I watch him breathe. I watch his snowcapped mouth move as he tells me I should have one as well. And normally I would have the good sense to come up with some snarky remark, or at least refuse his proposition in a well-mannered, endearing way. But I am so woefully distracted by the sight of him—the stormy bluish gray of his eyes, the shine of light on his dark skin, the way he smirks at me like I am some common boy off the street he might lure to bed—I take a large but genteel swallow of the same drink.
“I made this,” I admit. “Actually.”
And I only realize what I’ve done after the bright mint taste of it hits my stomach.
i am angry.
i have nothing to say about it.
i am not sorry for the cost.
A
ndras tries to crack an ice cube between his teeth quietly enough to go unnoticed.
The drink settles into his stomach like cold, sometimes interrupted by the sting of strong liquor. Around him things are a comfortable blur, like everything is just slightly unfocused except for the tingling that begins at the tips of his wings, the glass in his hand, strangely heavy once he remembers he’s holding it, and Pilate, scowling down at him like he's a child, or a particularly headstrong dog, wallowing through the trash.
Andras wants to be angry. He wants to spark and pop and belch smoke and feel anything but the sick warmth in his chest or what feels like a balloon trying to float its way out of his throat. Instead he is almost giddy when Pilate admonishes him; there is something comfortable and strangely familiar about it, like it was never a question what Pilate thought or how he would react. He would love to know without having to guess. The longer he goes the more questions he has, and no time to ask them.
It’s almost predictable. The razor’s edge slit of his pupils in the pit of his fossil-bright eyes is probably Andras’ closest friend. He would worry if he had it in him to care. There is never enough time to care. Andras will say one, two, maybe three sentences and then Pilate will push him away.
He wonders if he will get tired of pulling him back. (He doubts it.)
Let Pilate scowl if he wants. For his part, Andras is smiling. "Outhouse liquor!" he laughs, with his tongue on the back of his teeth, "Is that what you think of me?" It would be so much easier to be angry. It would be so much more comfortable. But still Andras is warm and open and watches Pilate down his own drink, he assumes, as an example: this is how to be .
The warden swallows one half of the ice cube, thinking, and then he next when Pilate speaks. I made this, he says. Andras stares at him.
”What’s in it?” he says, almost too softly. The tingling in the tips of his wings has spread now to his ankles. Andras finally sets his mostly-empty glass on the counter and sighs. Around him the music has gone quiet, and even the cold skin of strangers, as they brush against his ribs or the backs of his wings of his hocks in passing, don't draw his attention.
A part of him wishes it was like this all the time, his world reduced to one point of focus: the prince, and his one little piece of the bar, and his Warden, staring at him like he's the last breathtaking thing on earth.
”Are you this hard to figure on purpose?" Andras asks. "Or is it just how you are?"
you think you are possessing me but I've got my teeth in you.
I
had thought I was already drunk. I realize I was wrong.
This particular drink hits me strong and hard and fast, a kick to the head that makes my skull feel like it’s about to split. Suddenly my body is not my own; I feel it shudder, aggressively and unwillingly. I grow violently hot, all over, as if Solis has thrown down a blanket of wicked sunlight on just me. I stare at Andras, my eyes blown wide, their color darkened and feverish; my mouth goes dry, and I have to remind myself to swallow before I cough; in the bottom of my stomach, something venomous and rock-heavy twists and turns until I wonder if there is really something inside me, some parasite, some demon, that I must ask Ruth to extract.
I realize it’s nervousness. I hate it. I want to die.
Whatever concerto the band is playing outside has picked up speed and volume, almost drowning out Andras’ voice. My mouth is still coated with the thick, cold, waxy taste of mint. I wrinkle my nose and try to wash it out with a sip of water. But that only sets the rest of my sinuses to tingling, and finally I resign myself to waiting out the sensation, trying—and failing a little, I think—to focus entirely on Andras: his drunk gray eyes, his smiling white mouth. His laugh—as if we are friends, and not two men in a competition to kill each other the slowest and most torturous way possible.
I make sure to phrase my answer as another question; it wouldn’t be any good to admit my secrets under duress like this. Carefully, I respond: “Does it matter?” And then I smirk, the same shit-eating grin he likes to give me when he’s avoiding my questions. It spreads so wide my cheeks start to hurt, and I think I can my eyes glitter out from the dark of my face. I hope he knows I’m making fun of him. I think he must.
His cup clatters gently down onto the surface of the bar. I watch it obsessively: the light refracting through the glass, the few drops of liquid still clinging to its edges, the rainbow prisms that go skittering over the table. My mouth tightens.
Are you this hard to figure on purpose? the warden asks me, or is it just how you are?
I wish I hadn’t had that drink. I can feel regret rising up in me already, and I know it’s only going to get worse. For maybe the first time in my life, I feel like prey—panicked, backed into a corner, desperate to lash out, even though I know it won’t help.
“If I wasn’t hard to figure out,” I say softly, “you wouldn’t want me.”
There is a reason I’m not known for telling the truth.
i am angry.
i have nothing to say about it.
i am not sorry for the cost.
A
ndras coughs.
Does it matter, Pilate asks, and his face splits into a grin, all teeth, like looking into a mirror. Andras laughs through his nose, just a breath or two, but doesn't respond-- his teeth are snapped too tightly together, digging into the answer that beats at the back of his tongue. It doesn't hold. Of course it doesn't hold. The drink sloshes around in his belly like it's laughing and it pushes his heart straight out of his mouth.
"No," he says, without meaning to, "I would have drained it anyway." Andras says as regret digs its hands into his chest and twists it around. As soon as he says it he knows it is too much, another tick on the fast-running clock of his desperate joy. Sometimes he thinks the only thing Pilate likes less than being honest himself is when Andras is. He looks down at his glass to bide time, fishing for one more second, two, three if he's greedy, to bask in the light cast off the sharp knife of his presence.
--and Pilate has the entire audacity to think Andras would do anything other than flay himself alive for Pilate's attention, if that's what it took, if he was given the choice.
Nervously, Andras turns the glass on the counter, its faces catching the glance of each hanging light until it looks like a handful of fireflies crushed into the surface, all different, dancing colors. There is some soft, slow-moving fear that winds around his ankles and the spaces between his wings and his ribs, first stealing all of his warmth then burning it back in and repeating the cycle until Andras is dizzy. The music is louder, now, and faster. More bodies, more fabric that touches his skin for just a moment, more voices, a dull roar in the distance-- all this, but Andras is looking at Pilate.
A sigh. A breath that Andras didn't know he was holding until he tried to gasp and there was no air to draw. He watches Pilate's eyes drop, his mouth move; even when Pilate says honest things they are lies.
He says it almost too quietly to hear, also, quietly enough that the warden has to lean in to listen, and when it comes out he is too close to hide (as if that were an option). You wouldn't want me. It's like watching him fall, a body plummeting out of the sky. It's like watching him drown and not having long enough arms to pull him back up. One wing lifts off his back-- for perhaps the first time in his life, Andras is struck with the desire, the absolute need, to gather someone close and protect them. He doesn't. He can't. Andras tucks his wing back into place. Gods, he wants to.
"That's-- no." he argues. "Absolutely wrong. The only thing I've ever wanted for myself, the only thing, is you. I want to know who you are." Andras clenches his teeth, and sets the glass aside, thunking louder this time. An almost aggressive sound, rife with the force of his need, his affection, the thing begging him to wrap his wings around Pilate and keep him safe, at all costs.
He groans without knowing he's groaning. For one bright, lucid moment, Andras remembers the party, the bodies, the strangers packed into the kitchen alongside him and his prince. He almost asks Pilate if they need to leave. His face says it for him.
Then, quietly: "I need another drink."
you think you are possessing me but I've got my teeth in you.
P
ossibly for the first time in my life I think about someone else’s feelings.
That is: with the cold, spice-tingly taste of mint still burning its way across my panic-dry mouth, I think about everyone else I passed this glass of liquid amber to, and I wonder whether they’re feeling the same breadth of anxiety.
Are they, too, drowning under the rush of blood in their ears? Do they feel every frantic heartbeat more loudly than the last? Does their skin buzz, every square inch, with the cold electric impulse of panic? I wonder where they are. What corners of my home they stand and shake in. Out of the corner of my eye, I find myself glancing at my guests sidelong, hoping with a desperate impatience to see one of them falling apart the way I am.
Or—even worse—perhaps none of them feel any of this at all. Perhaps I am the only one who panics at the thought of being forced to tell the truth, because I am the only one afraid of who I really am and what I’ve really done.
Everything hurts. I am solid pain, all the way through, aching with the force I have to use to keep myself from falling apart.
The world is gone now; we live in our own little bubble, pressed up against the cold marble of the bar and under the sparkle of so many twinkling white lights. He is so handsome, I think—unbearably handsome. Every time I meet him I think I notice more of him. Tonight, I am entranced in particular by the gray glow of his eyes under their round glasses: the little changes in color from atom to atom; the thick swoop of his lashes; the way I can’t quite tell whether the look in his eyes is confusion or indignation.
I know him. At least, I would like to think I know him. To look at him, this boy I wish I could love—it hurts and it heals, and no matter how much I think I might break apart, I cannot look anywhere else.
My throat is unbearably dry, I realize suddenly. I turn my eyes down; I swallow. But my gaze flashes back up just as quick when I catch movement out of the corner of my eye, and I see with a disbelieving start the cheetah-fast rise and fall of one of Andras’ wings. Like—like he was reaching for me.
Absolutely wrong. The only thing I've ever wanted for myself, the only thing, is you.
I want to know who you are.
I can’t believe. I can’t believe it. He can’t be serious. But I think I do—believe it—at least, some part of me. I swallow again; I bite my lip until the taste of mint is overtaken by the faint tang of blood.
i am angry.
i have nothing to say about it.
i am not sorry for the cost.
A
ndras imagines it: reaching across the bar so gently that it falls away beneath him with little more than a sigh, dragging Pilate into the cocoon of his wings and resting the white of his chin on Pilate’s forehead. He imagines it warm, gentle, slow-- everything Andras does not quite know how to be. Everything he had not even considered until Pilate’s eyes dropped from his, all lids and lashes and panicked, hair-thin pupils.
Now he cannot think of anything else.
”Should we go?” The voice is thin, tinny, and it sounds like it’s coming from the other side of a thick wall, barely there among the wordless voices of guests and the energetic keening of a violin somewhere behind him. Andras only hears it because he is listening. He is only listening because for the last year he has been haunted by yellow eyes and the hissing of snakes and this well of affection that seems to have no bottom.
--Which brings us back to the white hot panic, and the question, and the corner of Andras’ mouth that are pulled into tight, straight lines. When he turns his head, just a little, the lights bouncing off the face of his glasses shield his eyes.
He’s never been afraid of himself. He doesn’t know what it’s like. As he grew, so did his endless anger, the tight ache in his joints from burying it behind his teeth. It has always been so easy to be exactly who he is: standoffish, vengeful, blunt, tired, lonely. He has always known he is equal parts fear and rage, but that fear has never been pointed back at him.
If he is afraid of anything it is Emersyn, or Isra. He is afraid of blood in the snow, red against the gray and white of the woods, frozen to the trunks of trees. He is afraid of Pilate, and for Pilate, and that is what’s hidden behind his glasses, what pulls him in and pushes him away like an indecisive tide. He would say so if he weren’t so incredibly sure Pilate would construe it as pity.
He tries for silence, since he cannot lie. It works as long as it works.
Should they go? Somewhere? Andras wonders.
He looks back at Pilate, then down into his empty glass, a star-freckled bowl against the swirling marble of the bar’s surface. It is almost too bright to bear. All of it-- the light, the people, the music, the drink, the affection, the constant undercurrent of rage-- is too bright to bear. He nods without raising his head.
Pilate wishes he could love Andras.
Andras watches the blood blooming on his lip as he speaks, a thin sort of red against the black of his mouth and the white of his teeth, and he starts to realize that he, himself, already does.
”Whatever you want,” he answers, and pushes himself back from the bar, setting his empty glass with the others waiting to be cleaned as he does. His heart is racing now that hbe’s moving, now that he’s unceremoniously carving his way through the crowd toward the opening at the side of the bar, chewing the inside of his lip to keep from saying the only thing he wants to. The only thing that matters.
you think you are possessing me
but I've got my teeth in you.
H
ow long must we stare at each other? Or maybe the better question is how long can we stare at each other—and I don’t know what the answer is, except that it’s already longer than I would have ever imagined on my own. The weight of his gaze, cold and dove-gray under the glaringly white film of his glasses, is inescapable. I feel it all over—prickling like little shards of ice over my own eyes; the curve of my neck; all the way down my shoulders, to the patch of greenish scales over my hips.
I feel drunk on it; like I’m standing off-kilter. Though I stay firmly rooted to the ground. I can’t help feeling that my balance is shot. I feel my heart in only one side of my chest. My blood runs cold all over, yet it only freezes to the left. Perhaps I am dying, or perhaps some spell has been cast upon my body.
But I know it’s at least partly the drink’s fault. I try to convince myself it’s more than partly. I try to convince myself I am only drunk: only drunk and not teetering on the edge of foolishness; only drunk instead of slipping under the influence of my own damn truth serum.
But if there is anything I cannot do right now, it is lie. Not even to myself. I know I am in trouble.
I listen to myself breathe, a level whoosh both in and out. I am careful that they remain even; I look at him but see nothing, because I am focusing so hard on breathing in, then out, in and out, in and out, enough to keep my body going without ever being enough to thrive on. My chest burns. I can’t hear anything above the sound of those breaths, so carefully measured as to be mechanical, and the ebb and flow of blood in my ears, its tide-sound overtaking what used to be a brain full of real thoughts.
Whatever you want.
And isn’t that the problem. I don’t know what I want and I never have. I thought I wanted to kill Adonai, but I could never make myself go through with it. I thought I wanted to run away but I can never pack my bags quite right. I thought I wanted this—love, the real and intense and inarguable kind—but when it comes to me I am afraid. Too afraid to function; too afraid to acknowledge what I feel, much less do anything real with it; too afraid to look him in the eyes and say whatever it is that I am thinking, which is—
My heart clenches.
“Go,” I say softly. And I don’t know if I’m telling him to go as in lead the way, go as in you should leave, or if I mean anything at all or if it’s the only word I can think to say.
But I push my way out of the bar, toward the gardens, and I don’t look to see if he follows.
