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August twenty-eighth. Classes for the fall semester started today. Scaramouche’s first Bio lecture went over smoothly in a dull hall he got lost trying to find, tucked away in a back building. He’s decided to begin a journal detailing the date and how many words he’s written towards his fifty page (minimum) final paper on aviary biology, of which will take him all semester to complete. That’s almost thirteen thousand scholarly words in just about four months.
He meets his mother in a church pew somewhere off-campus at 5 PM, where she often spends most of her days. The stained glass windows are holographed a deep orange by the setting sun. She hadn’t helped him move in. As he settles into the row next to her, with her head tilted down and hands clasped in prayer, she doesn’t look at him.
“Hey, mom,” he says.
His mother’s lips murmur and whisper incoherently against the skin of her fingertips. Muttering prayer. The church hall smells like burning votives and dust, and off-tune organ music plays somewhere from the back rooms. The pews are empty save for a few stragglers in the autumn Monday afternoon.
“Just passing through. Wanted to stop in.” The train took forty minutes, then a fifteen minute brisk uphill walk. “Just saying hi. I moved in today.”
She murmurs louder. Clasps her hands tighter. Her violet hair is pulled into a thick braid down her right shoulder, partially obscuring her face where Scaramouche looks at her.
“Thanks for paying tuition,” he says, and he hates the way his voice sounds. Too high. Maybe not high enough.
“Study hard,” she says. Scaramouche pauses. “I love you. I love you, musume.”
He pauses. Breathes in. “I know,” he says, pursing his lips. “I know, mom.”
He shuffles his backpack over his shoulder, the big pin that reads he/him clicking against the top zipper. When he turns back towards the church doors he feels as if everyone is staring right at it.
August twenty-eighth. Ten words so far written. His first and last name, and the paper’s overarching title:
Flying While Falling: Aviary Birth, Death, and Everything In Between.
August twenty-ninth. Thirty words on the counter in the bottom left corner of the doc. Half a page so far. A quarter of that just from the header.
Kirara, his dormmate, drags him out of his room to sit on the couch and watch old reruns of Friends over takeout. She toes off her cat slippers to curl up on the couch next to him. “How’d it go with your mom yesterday?” she asks him, stuffing her face with a salmon hand roll. “She taking everything okay?”
He plucks an edamame bean off her plate expertly, deftly wielding his chopsticks from years of practice for a reason that is now entirely moot. She grunts in displeasure. “Yeah. Fantastic.”
“She loves you,” Kirara pushes.
“Not when it matters.”
“I’m sure she does. It’s just… hard. She worries.”
“Well I worry,” he says, then again, a bit louder, “I worry, too.”
Silence stretches between them. The TV booms a big choral laugh track. He says now, a bit softer: “I worry about that, even.”
“Worrying?”
“My mother. About the moments she does love me, and the moments she doesn’t. Does my mother love me when I’m not around? Does my mother love me all the time?” He stabs his chopstick into his last tuna roll. “That’s what I worry about.”
Kirara pokes at her rice. Phoebe on Friends makes the live studio audience cry with laughter.
“Why don’t— Why don’t we just talk about something else. Those birds you like. The colorful ones?”
A ghost of a smile comes to his face. “Carolina parakeets. They’re extinct. Hunted off the face of the earth for their feathers.”
She frowns. “That’s sad. Why couldn’t we just leave them alone? Y’know, I bet: when you graduate you’ll discover a new kind of bird, and they’ll name it after you. D’you think there’s any we haven’t discovered yet, though?”
“I hope so,” he answers. Why couldn’t we just leave them alone? The TV flicks color around the lightless living space, blues and reds over the pale skin of his hands like camouflage. “I hope so.” He chews the skin of his lips till he tastes blood on his sushi. “I hope there’s a bird out there that no one’s ever seen. And I hope no one ever sees it.”
September first. Seventy words. With half-lidded eyes he clicks back and forth between the same three keys, mouth hanging slightly open, two drained cans of Monster by his hand, one of which he grabs absently for every fifteen minutes just to grunt when he realizes it’s empty and place heavily back down. The brainfog is so bad he starts thinking — what the fuck am I even writing about?
When he was young his mother used to take him bird watching; he supposes that’s where the obsession began. They were supposed to go out the morning his aunt died. He had been seven years old and tugging on his mother’s skirt as she collapsed to her knees in the foyer, clutching her phone with trembling hands against her cheek, face aghast. They never went bird watching again, after that. They didn’t do much together at all.
As a child his mother used to say he was heavenly innocent, bawling his eyes out on the kitchen tile begging her to turn off her Japanese opera because it made him too emotional. When he was a newborn he had cried at the slightest noise and cold. His mother used to call him hinadori, baby bird. She used to pray over his bassinet. May nothing bad befall my baby bird. May God treat him well as he does his messenger doves. She’s stopped calling him that, too.
These days he does nothing, too numb to cry, too numb to eat. With everything he thinks about his mother, his stale, messy room, his grades, the birds. He sits at his rickety wooden desk flopped back in his chair, with his hands hanging idly by his sides.
Kirara takes one look at him from his pried-open door and says: “Alright. We’re going out.”
It’s an accident, really, when it all happens.
The only reason he agrees to go is because hasn’t left the dorm in two days, and, despite his encampment, he’s written just about ten words coherent enough to be kept in a final draft, painstakingly hitting each key. Plus, he finds writing much easier with space for rumination. If nothing else, alcohol and weed do this for him.
Sweat drips down the curve of his back. The music of the dimly-lit, oven-hot frat house makes his chest vibrate. He takes one or two hits off a chain joint and starts ranting to anyone who will listen about his thesis, because at times it’s easier to talk about than it is to actually put down. Aviary biology and behaviorism. It’s all he can think about, recently.
Some people listen. Kaedehara Kazuha, a man he met in his freshman year free elective, stares at him open-mouthed in awe and dumb agreeance, though he reeks of marijuana and soon flutters somewhere else. One man with gray hair is drawn to him in conversation, enraptured in his speech and genuinely absorbing his slew of knowledge, yet he too is dragged off by a blonde-haired boy Scaramouche faintly knows as Kaveh. They’re kissing fervently in the hall minutes after that.
Scaramouche bumbles around, looking for Kirara, needing to tell her this — it’s much easier to think about your thesis when you’re a little bit high. Does she know? She has to.
He finds her in the kitchen drinking with her girlfriend, Charlotte, and some of Charlotte’s friends. He knows Navia, briefly Clorinde, but then his eyes slide over and land on — him.
A boy he’s never seen before leans back against the kitchen counter on his elbow, sipping from a red solo cup. His eyes are dark with eyeshadow, figure accentuated by a bodycon black shirt cut out at the shoulders running all the way down his slim arms to his wrists, and then oh, there’s his fingers, and that jacket is just hanging off his shoulder so obscenely, and — thigh highs? Adorned with chunky platform boots, perfectly manicured nails, black rings around every other finger. His gray hair is pulled to the side in a thick braid against his head just behind his ear, tufts brushing his shoulders. His eyes slip to his, and — oh. They’re dark, just barely letting in the slightest sliver of purple from how dilated his pupils are.
Kirara perks up. “Oh! Mouchie.” She beckons him over, one arm around Charlotte’s shoulders. “Come here!”
He steps slowly forward, fingers tensing and loosening on the hold of his cup.
“Navia, you know Scara,” Kirara says. Navia waves and giggles, clearly a bit drunk, hanging on the arm of her raven-haired partner. “And Clorinde.”
“Hello,” Scaramouche says softly, with an awkward half-wave.
“Kirara,” a voice behind him drawls, making the hairs on his neck and arms stand straight. “You’ve been holding out on me.”
Scaramouche turns. The gray-haired boy takes a sip of his drink and stares at him with heavy eyes over the rim of his cup, making Scaramouche’s breath catch in his chest.
“Scara,” Kirara says, “This is Lyney.”
“Lyney,” he echoes.
Scaramouche just stares. He has the sense to at least close his mouth. But he’s a bit buzzed and Lyney is — woah. Lyney is… something. Twinkling brightly in the midst of a crowded room. Everyone else could be looking at him, and he wouldn’t notice.
Navia and Charlotte share a knowing giggle, bringing him from his thoughts. Scaramouche blinks and looks over to them. “Uh— sorry. What?”
“She said, we’re going to dance. Want to join?”
“I’m okay,” he says, lifting his cup a bit to indicate he’s still drinking. They shrug and link arms, Kirara and Clorinde trailing after them to the living room.
Lyney tilts his head contemplatively. “Come here, let me look at you.” Scaramouche feels heat blossom on his face, and he would be saying something irrevocably bitter, but he’s a bit faded and — yeah. He lets Lyney take his hand and spin him in a little circle, smirking to himself as his eyes rake around his hips, up to his collar. “You pretty thing. Where’s Kirara been keeping you?”
“Uh—” he stutters with his words, “Um. Our dorm?”
He laughs, a godsent thing. Scaramouche nearly melts right there. “What year are you?” he asks.
The music begins to pick up a bit from the opposite room, accompanied by yips and cries of cheer. “Junior,” he answers. Lyney takes him gently by the wrist and guides him closer. The music climbs higher.
“Ah, same. And your major?”
“Bio,” he breathes. Lyney tips his head closer to hear him and something in Scaramouche soars. “Bio,” he says louder, into Lyney’s ear. “You?”
Lyney gives him a bit of a lopsided smile. “Acting. You panicking about finals yet?”
Scaramouche heaves a sigh because — yeah. Even though it’s only September. He launches into his info-dump about his thesis and research study and the pages upon pages of words that he’ll inevitably need to rewrite all of, because he hates them, and Lyney just watches him with a small smile and amused eyes, holding warmly to his arm, commenting very insightful things every once in awhile like, “You really love birds, huh.”
“Yeah, well — my mom did.”
“She doesn’t anymore?”
“Who knows,” he says quickly, perhaps a bit too quickly, impulsively. “Who knows if she loves anything, anymore. But who cares?”
“Right,” Lyney answers, eyes flicking down to his lips. “Who cares?”
A certain melancholy suddenly overtakes him, through his buzz; a kind of sadness that is unable to be hidden. His eyes drop down to the floor, his lips pursing. Lyney notices, because of course he does.
“Hey.” Scaramouche looks back at him. “What kind of bird would I be?”
“What?” he laughs, surprised. “What kind of stupid question—”
“If you had to assign me one.” He lifts Scaramouche’s hand to his lips and kisses his knuckles, though his eyes never break their gaze. A subtle, alluring thing. It entirely steals his attention. “What would I be?”
“Um.” He blinks, licks his lips. “Probably… a swan.”
Lyney grins amusedly. “A swan? Do elaborate, sweetheart.”
“You’re all—” he makes a noise in his throat, “ pretty. Graceful. And the dark eyes…”
“My dark eyes, hm?”
Scaramouche huffs. “Yeah. Anyway. The male birds in the animal kingdom are more often the showy ones. Did you know that?” Lyney’s arm slips around his waist. Think about the birds, Scaramouche. Come on. “The reds, blues, greens. Parrots. Peacocks. Pigeons. The females are homebodies, so the males must be bright, as a way to assert their dominance and attract mates. We are always puffing ourselves up to look better, having something to prove, or perhaps overcompensate for—”
“Hey,” Lyney finally interrupts, head tilted a bit down, eyes raking over his lips and collarbones from where they protrude from his loose-fitting shirt. He pulls him a bit closer, grip a bit heavier on his waist. He’s an inch or so taller, just enough to tilt his head when he ducks close to Scaramouche’s ear to ask, warm breath fanning his skin: “Can I fuck you?”
Scaramouche freezes. His fingers curl and uncurl in the front of Lyney’s shirt, like a cat kneading its paw.
“Oh,” is all he says. “Oh. Uh. I mean— I’ve never—”
“Don’t worry if not,” Lyney assures. “Just. If you’re gonna keep standing here acting all cute, I can’t lie and say it’s not making me want to fuck your brains out.”
“Oh,” Scaramouche says again. Dear fucking lord above, have mercy. “I-I mean—”
Lyney does not touch him provocatively until he is explicitly saying yes, the word leaving him in a breathless murmur, and then there are hands all over him at once. Lyney’s thumb flies atop his chin, up to his mouth where he traces the seam of his lips and tugs softly on his bottom lip. The grip on his waist tightens, pulling them together.
Scaramouche feels heat pool in his stomach at the mere attention, much less the obscenity of the action itself. The music gets louder, loud enough that Scaramouche feels as if he’s drowning in it, so he grips tightly to Lyney’s shoulders for purchase in the waves. Lyney takes this as a ready invitation and pulls him into a kiss.
Lyney’s lips are soft and taste like cherries. His tongue, which presses its way between his lips greedily like a tendril seeking sunlight, clashes against his for an assertiveness that is very quickly won. Scaramouche makes a small noise like a hng into the other man’s mouth, whose lips he can feel curl into a smirk. A wandering hand makes its way under the back of his shirt and along the curve of his spine, the other holding his chin, three fingers pressed against his throat. It’s certainly not his first kiss, but it might as well be; his knees weaken and little noises are strung from his throat with each nip and bite.
When he pulls back Scaramouche’s brain can barely fire a coherent synapse. “Stop—” Lyney lets out a sort of breathless laugh, covering his mouth with his hand, eyes wide with amusement, “Stop looking at me like that.”
“What?” Scaramouche says dumbly. He doesn’t recognize the way his own eyes are wide, enraptured, as if witnessing something holy. Lyney rubs his hands up and down his arms, laughing softly again.
“Oh, you’re too precious,” he murmurs, dipping his head to take him in another kiss. The small praise makes his conscience lay dead on the floor of his mind, his arousal instead taking the seat of control, jumping up and down in excitement. He likes me! He likes me! More, more! Scaramouche threads his fingers through Lyney’s soft hair and lets himself be taken, devoured.
“ Mm—” the noise escapes him. Lyney bites his lip, chasing more; his hands find their place on his hips and turn him back against the counter. Scaramouche gasps and grips his shoulders. Lyney’s mouth moves to leave a trail of hot, open-mouthed kisses down his neck till he’s sucking on a spot just below his jaw, which makes Scaramouche involuntarily twitch with a ticklish smile, tilting his neck away. “ Oh— Lyney. Ah. We should, uh— my dorm. If you want to, er… do it.”
Lyney pulls away to look at him with a smirk. “You have a way with words, sweetheart.”
He pays for the Uber home, stumbling out of the frat house without half a mind to tell Kirara he’s gone; Lyney’s hand is around his hip the whole way out, and rests on his thigh the whole ride back. The Uber driver asks for his name and Scaramouche has to say “What?” three times, too distracted by the weight of Lyney’s hands on his skin, before he hears him.
It takes him two tries to unlock the door to their dorm. “Where’s your room?” Lyney asks when they’re inside, and Scaramouche blinks before pointing down the hall. They go silently. He’s not quite sure how this works. Any of it, really. Lyney grins knowingly when Scaramouche shuts the door and saddles up in front of him, hands on his hips, walking him backwards against the wall. His hip bumps the doorknob.
Lyney’s lips miss his as he moves in, going straight to his neck. He blinks and swallows as the other man’s hands roam his waist, only a small bit embarrassed about the state of his room, the other half consumed by a fervent desire that leaves little room for all else. Lyney’s hand crawls under his shirt, pinky finger slipping beneath his waistband.
“I—” he chokes out, “Wait, Lyney, I’m— Shit. I should’ve told you— You should know, I—” Lyney makes a noise against his throat like a moan and a hmm. “I don’t want you to be— Down there, I’m- I’m not-”
“ Shh, baby,” Lyney hushes him, lips moving against his skin. “I don’t mind.”
He shuts his mouth. Lyney’s hands move along his back and down his hips before he’s lifted easily in the air with a small hmph. He barely has time to react before Lyney is tossing him onto his own mattress, shirt coming off in one fell swoop to expose his pale chest, lined with a thin coating of muscle. Scaramouche gulps and tentatively raises a hand to trace the flat of his stomach, the curve of his waist. He breathes heavily. Lyney slides his hand over Scaramouche’s, climbing atop him with smug eyes and a sleazy smirk.
“Did— Did you know that courting eagles lock talons and free fall hundreds of feet in the air?” he babbles nervously, the words strewn from somewhere unknown inside him, stirred by the nervous anticipation. Lyney grins and leans in. “It’s called a cartwheel display. They dislodge just seconds before hitting the ground.”
“Scara,” he murmurs provocatively, lips brushing his. “Scara, sweetheart. Be quiet or I’ll make you.”
He tips back with Lyney over him, who bites his bottom lip and slips a hand into his pants. Scaramouche gasps. Lyney grins against his open lips. They say nothing as it all happens, besides their breathless noises, as if testing the waters of each other’s pleasure and response.
He makes a noise he’ll never admit to when he finishes, then lays there atop the covers as Lyney flops down next to him with a satisfied sigh. His mind is racing as he stares at the ceiling, fingers fluttering at his sides. He wrenches back the comforter and stumbles to his feet — his legs do not wobble as he goes, thank you very much — over to his desk, where he collapses into his chair and flips open his laptop.
“What…?” Lyney picks his head up from his pillow tiredly, looking over to him.
“ Shh,” Scaramouche answers. His fingers fly over the keyboard. “The inspiration. It’s come to me.”
“Uh,” Lyney laughs a bit, “Don’t tell me getting fucked is helping you write your thesis?”
The tips of his ears burn. “Shut up.”
Lyney laughs again. “You’re pretty weird.”
“Yeah,” his hands pause momentarily over the keys. “Yeah— I guess.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” Lyney quickly adds, voice laced with sleep. “It’s just— well. I’d rather you be weird than anything else. Like the birds you said, before. The pretty ones?”
“They’re overcompensating.” The words keep coming, and coming, and oh my God, why didn’t he see the ease in this before? His fingers can hardly keep up with his brain.
He makes a pot of coffee while Lyney changes and gets ready to leave. When he shuffles on his shoes in the foyer they exchange numbers. Handing the phone back to Scaramouche, he asks: “At the party, you said I was a swan. What kind of bird are you?”
Scaramouche pauses, hands curled around his cup of coffee. “Uh. I don’t know.”
Lyney leans against the doorway, keyring jingling on his finger. He tilts his head. “A dove, I’d say,” he murmurs, a smile slanting his lips. “See you, dove.” And then he shuts the door.
September first. Six hundred and forty-two words.
Scaramouche doesn’t tell Lyney that it had been his first time. They don’t talk at all after that for a good while. The day after, Scaramouche spends his whole morning in the library typing and typing away at his paper, just for the essence to… fizzle out. He feels the life drain from his fingers as it goes, like a drowned match, until he’s slumping back in his seat with a groan. Back to square one.
He finds himself up at 2 AM weeks later sending a risky text he would’ve never considered at a regular hour.
Hey.
He closes Messages, rolls onto his stomach, and plants his head beneath his pillow with a distressed groan to stave off the embarrassment. He doesn’t move a muscle until, ten minutes later, his phone buzzes.
Hello ;)
He snorts.
What are you doing up?
The three dots jump up and down, then disappear for a good minute.
I could say the same.
Prick.
Can’t sleep. Working on thesis
Ah. Assuming you need some more… inspiration?
Shut up. Idiot
He bites his lip and sends another text:
But if I did?
Lyney sends an address. A twelve minute Uber. He doesn’t think twice before he’s calling it, stumbling out of his Hello Kitty pajama pants and into sweats, toeing on his sneakers and stumbling through the kitchen with his laptop bag out to the curbside.
Lyney meets him at the door to his apartment.
It’s off-campus and a bit more spacious than his dorm, yet definitely older, with crumbling brick walls and creaky hardwood floors. He walks past a closed bedroom door and asks, “You have roommates?”
“My sister,” Lyney answers. Scaramouche pauses.
“Oh. Should we not—?”
“She’s not here,” he reassures. Scaramouche clears his throat.
“Right.”
“So. Thesis not going well?”
Scaramouche groans, hands coming to massage his temples. “You have no fucking idea.”
When they finish he pants heavily and lays still just gripping the bedsheets beneath him for a good ten minutes, drifting in and out of reality. Lyney gets him a glass of water and tosses him a damp rag. He sits at the edge of the bed while Scaramouche cleans the come off his thigh.
“Hey. If we’re gonna do this often, let’s make some ground rules, yeah?”
Scaramouche’s eyes flit up to look at him. “Yeah. Sure.”
“Just one request, if we can both agree. No strings attached. I don’t really like being tied down. It’s too much of a hassle to worry about things like that, especially when you’ve got so much going on in your personal life, etcetera. So I propose something casual. Whenever we’re free to blow off some steam, yeah? Just: no strings.”
“No strings,” Scaramouche echoes. He twists the rag in his hand awkwardly. “Yeah. I like that.”
And so it begins. No strings. It’s funny — that was supposed to be the easy part.
September fifteenth. One thousand, two hundred and fifteen words.
Inevitably, that inspiration tank drops back to zero. The words stop coming. He stares dumbly at his laptop screen and spends most of his days idling on his phone, switching between the same three apps and wishing he were better at this. At everything. He’s very carefully scrolling through old pictures on Lyney’s Instagram profile at just past ten when a text message startles him into almost liking a five-year-old post. He breathes a relieved huff and checks it.
It’s from his mother. He hesitates before he opens their chat.
What he sees makes him freeze in place. It’s a picture of him as a toddler and her, much younger then, with her hair pulled into a thick braid down her shoulder. In the picture she’s smiling widely, much wider than she ever has since. There’s a message below the image, typed in Japanese:
Eternity with you. Always my beautiful daughter.
It’s an awkward, sudden sentiment, feeling almost misplaced. Their last text conversation had been two months ago, lingering just above this one, still visible as he stares at the picture attached; in those messages he had been begging her to call him “he”. She had neither refused nor agreed. She had said nothing at all.
He stares at the picture more; his younger self in a little purple dress with yellow clips in his bangs, hair reaching his shoulders, a brilliant grin on his face. At times like this he feels like a fucking murderer — like that little girl was alive and fine only for him to come along and kill her in cold blood, burying her in the shallow grave of his childhood.
Then he remembers being thirteen and wanting to crawl out of his own skin, binding his chest with duct tape so hard he bruised his rib. He had blamed the injury on a cycling incident. Kirara, who had then lived just next door, was the only person who knew differently. His bicycle had been collecting dust in the backyard shed for six years. His mother knew this. Even then, she said nothing.
A kind of fluttering feeling blooms in his throat and makes his vision blurry with — what? Tears? Anger grows at his own foolishness. He regrets teaching his mother how to work Messenger. Sometimes speaking with her is harder than being wholly ignored.
Scaramouche doesn’t answer her text. He clicks out of the message and directly into the one beneath it, whose contact is labeled as a single emoji of a swan rather than a name.
You up? He shoots.
Lyney’s answer comes within fifteen seconds. Meet you in ten.
Scaramouche kisses him the second he opens the door. Lyney grins and goes to say something witty but Scaramouche kisses him again, bringing Lyney’s hands to his hips and wrapping his arms around his neck. Lyney very eagerly agrees to this change of pace and sudden lack of dignity compared to the shy nature of their past two encounters. They stumble into his room, onto his bed.
Scaramouche shoves him down against the mattress and touches him boldly, fervently, shucking off his jeans as he straddles him. Lyney watches with wide, excited eyes. With his hands splayed on Lyney’s flat chest he grinds open-mouthed atop his lap, brows furrowed, hips lifting and falling back down against him ardently. Lyney groans and tips back his head. Scaramouche kisses him hotly, passionately, with a quick ferocity and tensed, coiled body that has Lyney’s hands confusedly running along the tightly wound muscles of his arms and back, pausing as he realizes the distress.
“Hey—” Lyney says through kisses, “Hey, Scaramouche—”
He keeps kissing him. Keeps kissing and kissing and kissing him, shucking off his shirt till he’s bare in just his boxers and binder, still pushing him back onto the mattress. Lyney takes each kiss welcomingly, nipping at his bottom lip, groaning slightly, yet his hands are fretful as they settle gently on his waist. Scaramouche furiously shoves down his briefs and grips so tightly to Lyney’s shoulders that the other man hisses lowly, half in arousal, half in shock.
“Scara— hey. Scara.”
Scaramouche doesn’t listen; he can barely hear over the pounding of blood in his ears. It’s an exhilarating, incinerating feeling, tearing him up inside like a Saw trap; he needs to be filled, used, in a way that is validating. He needs to know this. That he is wanted, even when his worst parts are there on display.
“Scara. Scara, dove, look at me.”
Scaramouche hates the way he calls him that; dove. Because it’s only a letter off from love, because each time he says it Scaramouche’s heart leaps and stutters with the same ferocity of their fucking (its a vulgar sentiment but lacking reprise, because he cannot say lovemaking — he could not make love), the same passion of their kissing and biting. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until he can’t breathe.
He clutches at his clothed chest and tips backwards onto the opposite side of the bed, crawling against the headboard, breaths like wheezes trapped in his lungs.
“What— What’s going on?” Lyney asks, sweat dripping down the crook of his collarbone, eyes wide with concern. “Are you alright? What happened?”
“I—” Scaramouche tries to choke out, but he can’t form words around his breathlessness. He pounds at his chest beneath his binder. Lyney shuffles towards him, fingers reaching at the edge of the fabric.
“Should I take it off? You can’t breathe—”
“ No,” Scaramouche wheezes, because that one thing he sure as hell can convey no matter the circumstance. Lyney’s hands quickly retreat, held palm-up in front of him placatingly.
“Alright. Alright, just—” He takes an over-exaggerated breath in, then out. Scaramouche copies him intuitively, watching the flare of his nostrils, the rise of his bare chest. He has been mimicking male mannerisms all his life. This is second nature.
Yet it works, despite himself. He feels his lungs flood with air, his head stop pounding. Lyney touches his bare knee to look him in the eye worriedly. “Are you okay? Did I do something? You… You scared me.”
“I don’t think I can—” and he can’t even say it. He licks his lips. “I think you should go.”
Lyney looks at him. If his eyes say he wants something to the contrary, Scaramouche will never know. He cannot meet his gaze.
Lyney goes, inevitably. Scaramouche has come to learn since he was thirteen years old and killing that little girl in a purple dress, this is the part people start leaving at. He falls asleep clutching the picture of him and his mother to his bound chest, breathing irregularly, face wet with tears.
October first. One thousand, five hundred and nine words.
It’s not like he can text Lyney so plainly after their last interaction and just ask to meet again.
He stays at the same word count, give or take a single digit difference, for nearly three weeks. They don’t speak. When Scaramouche isn’t thinking about birds or his mother, he’s thinking about Lyney.
He attends the obligatory Halloween frat party after Kirara pesters him about it for several days. Though he’s agreed to come he absolutely refuses to dress up in any sort of inane costume. Begrudgingly he allows Kirara to put a pair of black cat ears on his head and draw eyeliner whiskers across his cheeks to match hers.
“Cats are supposed to be cute,” she tells him. He keeps glaring. “Don’t look at me like that…”
Charlotte laughs so hard she cries when she sees him in the foyer of the frat house. To mask the humiliation, he gets shitfaced. There’s little else to do at a Halloween party, anyway.
He’s seven shots and three beers into the night when he bumps into Navia in the kitchen. Quite literally bumps into her. She giggles and grabs his shoulders to right him.
“Woah — Scaramouche.” She’s dressed in some sort of steampunk idol garb.
“Who the fuck are you supposed to be?” he asks.
Someone behind him laughs. He swivels and — oh. Lyney smiles at him. He’s wearing a magician’s hat and outfit, with garters and combat boots and a leather corset. Scaramouche says nothing as he looks at him, struck dumb.
“Hi, kitty,” Lyney smirks.
Scaramouche babbles something incoherent. He lurches forward to grab Lyney’s hand and stumbles away into the hallway bathroom. Lyney laughs a bit and Scaramouche presses him against the door, kissing him desperately, lips landing on the corner of his mouth from his drunkenness. He murmurs into the kiss, surprised by his own fervor, and slips a hand under Lyney’s shirt.
“Oh— you don’t have to,” Lyney says, sounding guilty. Scaramouche doesn’t know why. If anything, he should be on his knees begging for forgiveness.
That’s a fine idea. He drops to his knees on the dirty tile floor. Lyney looks down at him pitifully, combing back his bangs over his forehead, fixing his cat ears. “Hey. Scara. Come on, get up.” Scaramouche scratches at the seam of Lyney’s pants, hands too uncoordinated to get the zipper down. He pouts.
“Scara. You don’t look well.”
Scaramouche whines. “Don’t you want me to blow you?”
“Well— yes. But not like this. Not if you’re…”
He stops listening after yes. He has to make up for it. For what, exactly, he can’t narrow down. He just knows he has to make up for it.
Lyney pulls him back by his jaw and looks at him worriedly, and the fight drains out of him almost instantaneously. He sighs and sits back on his calves.
“Sorry last time sucked,” he mutters. Lyney purses his lips like he’s keeping himself from saying more that he means to. His thumb strokes over Scaramouche’s cheekbone.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m more concerned about you.”
The guilt and incessant loathing that he is composed of gnaws at his bones beneath his skin like a bad dog. I am sorry that I yip and snap when you get too close. “You don’t have to feel bad about disliking me,” he says. His mouth starts to slicken with spit, nausea seizing him. “You wouldn’t be the first.”
Then, he very promptly tips over and wretches into the toilet. Lyney sighs and leans down to rub his back, murmuring something that Scaramouche doesn’t quite catch. He holds back his hair and, when he’s done, wets a washcloth for him and wipes his face.
“Come on. Let’s get you back to Kirara.”
“No,” Scaramouche groans, tipping his head back against the wall, wanting anything other than to go back into that pounding hot-box of a room. “No, God. Please.”
Lyney pauses and lets his hand slip from the doorknob, then slides down against the opposite wall and looks at him. Scaramouche notices, suddenly made startlingly sober by expelling all the alcohol in his stomach at once, how conflicted he seems.
“Sorry,” he croaks. At the end of the day everything seems to be his fault.
Lyney holds his gaze. “What for?”
He gulps and shrugs. “Everything. God. I’m sorry.”
Lyney hesitates. “You’re not going to throw up again, are you?”
He giggles. Perhaps he’s still a bit buzzed. “No. M’fine.”
Lyney exhales a heavy breath, then opens his arms slowly. “Come here.”
Scaramouche doesn’t need to be told twice. He crawls forward on his hands and knees till he’s seated between Lyney’s spread legs, resting his head on Lyney’s collar.
“Tell me a bird fact,” Lyney asks, arms encircling him.
“Bird fact,” Scaramouche echoes, mumbling his words into Lyney’s neck. “Bird fact. You’re beautiful.”
Lyney’s arms curl around him tighter, nose buried in his hair. He says nothing, staring at the wall, seemingly fighting a war within himself.
Scaramouche remembers none of this in the morning.
Lyney texts him first. This time there’s a bit of a preamble. Scaramouche is making udon at their small kitchenette stove at just past midnight when Lyney texts him:
I can’t stop thinking about you.
Scaramouche reads it ten times. The water boils over and he rushes to turn down the heat, cursing softly.
Yeah?
It seems unreal after how badly he’d embarrassed himself before.
Yeah.
He abandons the udon in a bowl on the counter and bites his lip as he responds.
What are you thinking?
Scaramouche texts him in the Uber on his way there. Filthy things he would never utter aloud. When Lyney opens the door, he licks his lips awkwardly and steps inside.
“Hi,” he says weakly.
Lyney smiles. “Hey.”
They walk down the hallway and Scaramouche peers into the other bedroom whose door is cracked open, though unoccupied. He furrows his brows.
“I thought you lived with your sister?”
“I do,” he says quickly, perhaps too quickly, “I do. She’s just… out.”
Again? He never sees her. Where does she sleep? He starts doubting if she’s even real.
He doesn’t think about it for long. Lyney’s hands slip around his waist from behind, voice low in his ear: “What was it you were saying on the phone…?”
Scaramouche’s face flushes red hot. “I forget. Remind me?”
Lips attach to the skin of his shoulder, moving up his neck. “ Gladly.”
They spend the night entangled in one another, accompanied by the slick sounds of skin against skin and lips locking, tongues meeting, desperate whimpers and moans. When he finishes for the third time that night he falls onto his back with a huff, panting heavily, hypersensitive to each subtle scuff of the blanket against his damp skin or gust of cool air from the overhead fan.
Lyney fiddles with something on his dresser across the room. Scaramouche lets his eyes flutter shut, breaths calming.
“Can I sleep here?” he asks, voice laced with exhaustion. Lyney pauses, saying nothing. In the silence he justifies his asking. “I only meant— it’s late. Charlotte’s over, anyway…”
Lyney laughs. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. Y’know — we French are known for our hospitality.”
Scaramouche snorts. “What a joke.”
“I’m serious. Dead serious.” He flashes a cheeky grin. “What, you don’t believe me?”
They fall asleep facing opposite walls, not touching. No strings. Scaramouche should’ve anticipated this before it happened. In the dark of night he wakes from another restless nightmare — these days he has more than he could possibly escape from — kicking and screaming, tears flowing down his cheeks. Lyney is looking at him with big, worried eyes, a bit entranced, brushing the hair from over his forehead.
“You were screaming,” he whispers. Scaramouche pants and feels the sweat on his brow. “In your dream. You were screaming.”
“Sorry,” he croaks. Lyney’s fingers card through the tresses of his dark hair. He resists the urge to let his eyes flutter shut once more, to lean back into the feeling. He stares into Lyney’s lilac eyes, creased with an unrecognizable fondness. “Did I hurt you?”
“You couldn’t hurt me, dove,” he says.
Scaramouche chokes on words that bubble in his throat. “Until I do,” he murmurs. He rolls over against the wall.
“Is that— is that a common thing?” Lyney presses. “You, not sleeping well?”
Yes, but this is information far too intimate to be divulging with his one night (three, now) stand. He pulls the duvet up to his chin and breathes. His stomach still feels loose and uncoiled. His lips are chapped. His skin tastes salty with sweat and something more.
“I don’t sleep well most nights,” he whispers. “Most every night.”
“You can sleep with me,” Lyney says, soft. “Not like that— well, yes, like that, I can totally dick you down again—”
“Lyney.”
“—but just. If you have trouble sleeping. You can come here.”
He stares at the wall. “I can come here.”
Lyney snorts. “Yeah. In any way you want, I guess.”
“Okay,” he says, soft. Then he adds: “Don’t be fucking other people here. Not that I care what you do. Just not here, if I’m sleeping on this side.”
“Okay,” Lyney says back, and Scaramouche can hear the grin in his voice. “Okay. You’ve got a spot on the right side of my bed, then.”
Scaramouche doesn’t have the words to respond to that. He swallows, his throat dry. “I’m afraid I always will be restless, crawling into your bed. Don’t know if you want that.”
Lyney grunts a bit as he turns over, and suddenly Scaramouche’s back is encased in a supple warmth, the skin-heat of Lyney’s bare chest against his clothed spine. Lyney settles his chin over his shoulder and nestles there, breathing contentedly, making each hair on his nape spring up in surprise, in eagerness, as if reaching for him blindly, in the dark. Scaramouche’s breath hitches, air stolen from his lungs and given right to Lyney, who breathes peacefully against the shell of his ear.
“Sleep, dove,” he murmurs. Scaramouche’s fingers travel mindlessly towards his stomach, tracing over the gentle knuckles of Lyney’s interlocked hands which rest there. He feels Lyney’s lips against his ear, the breath on his neck, hands keeping him steady. He sinks back into the warmth like a baby bird seeking the shelter of its nest: I do not want to fly just yet, he thinks. Lyney pulls him tighter to him by his forearm, and Scaramouche can feel the thump of his heart against his ribs. I do not want to fly just yet. I want to be cared for, and beak-fed; I want to be preened and looked after. Do not push me from this nest. I want to be held like this until my wingspan presses against the bark within my tree hollow, and the world is telling me begone; I want to stay here, in safety, in peace. I want…
Lyney traces circles and letters against the skin of his stomach where his binder does not cover and God, this is all he can think about. I want to be held.
November fifth. Two thousand, six hundred and eighty-five words.
On good days, Scaramouche’s body feels awkward and not quite fitting, like a too-small shirt. On bad days, he can hardly stand to look at himself.
“Can we—” he asks tentatively between kisses. Lyney had come over on short notice after a bad audition. “Can we turn off the light?”
Lyney wordlessly listens, arm slipping past his hip to flick the lamp switch. The room floods with darkness. In the inky black Scaramouche imagines himself as someone more desirable, yet Lyney hungers for him all the same.
The light stays off even when they finish, when they collapse back on Scaramouche’s bed and let their breaths return to normal. It’s been an hour since and they’re both very obviously wide awake, staring at the ceiling. Lyney’s voice comes quietly in the dark.
“Do you ever think about dying?”
Scaramouche hadn’t expected him to speak, much less the words he does. He pauses, then answers truthfully. Perhaps a bit too truthfully. “Yes. Quite often.”
Lyney’s head tilts on his pillow to look at him. “Like—? Like you want to…?”
“No, just. Generally.” A pause. “What do you think dying is like?”
“I don’t know,” Lyney answers earnestly, his voice a bit heavy. “I don’t know. Hopefully it’s better. I like to think it’s peaceful.”
“Peaceful,” he echoes. “How so?”
“Like— you wake up just the same the next day, except things that were gone are there again, and you get to relive them. Your childhood best friend is sitting at the end of your bed, and he tells you his mom said he could sleep over. And you say yes. And you shut your bedroom door.”
“And that’s it?” Because surely there’s more. Surely for him. Some sort of hell, or purgatory. Something that makes sense as a divine retribution for everything he’s done.
“And that’s it.”
Scaramouche can’t help it. His face contorts into a deep frown, brows creasing, and the tears come; he swipes them from his cheeks as they rush down to his ears against the pillow with the palms of his hands.
“I’m sorry, I-I’m just—”
“I get it,” he says softly. “I get it.”
Later that night he wakes quietly, eyes blinking open, to the dark of his bedroom. The lights are still off yet the curtains are drawn, letting in the glow of the moon. In the darkness he can make out the figure of Lyney sitting on the hardwood floor. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realizes the cans of Monster are gone from his desk, or the onigiri convenience store wrappers have been collected from his bedside table. Lyney’s back is turned but Scaramouche watches his hands move, folding his laundry into piles on the floor. The basket had been sitting there for three weeks — washed, yet he could never find the energy to get around to it.
He says nothing, in the dark. He shuts his eyes. When he wakes again in the warm morning Lyney is gone, but his bedroom is clean.
At five past ten Kirara swings into his room, holding onto the doorframe. A bit of shock comes over her face as she pauses. “Oh. Your room is clean.”
He swallows and croaks: “Yeah.”
She smiles. “I’m proud of you. I know it gets hard.”
“Yeah.”
“Anyway, I just wanted to ask. There’s four toothbrushes in the bathroom.” Scaramouche stills. Two are obviously theirs, the third for Kirara’s girlfriend, Charlotte, and the fourth…
“Lyney’s,” he says off-handedly, blanket pulled up to his chin as he stares at the wall.
“Huh.” Kirara huffs. “So you’re…?”
“Nothing serious.”
She hums knowingly, patting the doorframe before carrying on. Because it’s that simple. Isn’t it?
Autumn wilts into winter, which brings the cold. He doesn’t see the birds in the top bowl of the courtyard fountain when he walks to his afternoon Bio lecture, anymore.
November fifteenth. Eight thousand, two-hundred and thirteen words.
Something Scaramouche doesn’t notice about Lyney’s apartment until he’s slept there innumerous times is that, on the bookshelf by his bedroom window, he keeps a large collection of philosophical Russian novels, by the likes of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. After they fuck (for lack of better term) they fall into a routine of laying awake to discuss matters like death and love and existentialism. It’s done by candlelight, of course, because Lyney’s apartment has a very poignant academia aesthetic to it, what with its rustic brick walls and neutral colors, the large windows leading out to fire escapes where he sits on the odd occasion to read his poetry and smoke his cigarettes.
This time Scaramouche has a sheet pulled over his naked skin, curled into the armchair at the end of Lyney’s bed. Lyney rests bare in the opposite one, tossing him a stack of stapled papers opened to a bookmarked page as he sits.
This afternoon they had embarked on a particularly adventurous sexcapade, one that was entirely unplanned. Lyney had pulled his hair while Scaramouche sat between his knees and something in him had awakened irrefutably. He can still taste Lyney’s thumb on his tongue.
“Help me, will you?” Lyney settles into his chair, hands behind his head, bare from head to toe and entirely unbothered by it. “From the top of the page. I’m Pylades.”
The packet is a script, ticketed with post-its and highlighter marks. He supposes this must be Lyney’s next project. He knows the tragedy well. Euripides. Orestes has murdered his mother and is tormented by the Gods and Furies for the sin of matricide. If Lyney is Pylades, here Scaramouche is Orestes. He imagines his mother slain upon a golden spear, sitting in the pews at a Greek chapel praying for him.
He scans the lines for his queue. “There is only one obstacle in my way.”
“What fresh objection now?”
His voice is a bit more wooden than Lyney’s, which flows like golden honey. Stiff, recitative rather than artful. His eyes flick from the script up to Lyney, who leans in on his chair, lilac eyes gleaming. “I am afraid the Goddesses will prevent me by madness.”
Pylades. “But I will take care of you.”
His mouth is very suddenly dry, tongue slipping over his bottom lip. He forces his eyes to latch onto the words which seem to swim off the page away from him. “It’s rotten work.”
“Not to me,” Lyney says, his voice thick with promise. Scaramouche’s eyes flick to his, lilac clashing against baby blue — and Lyney is a damn good actor, because Scaramouche believes him. “Not if it’s you.”
His throat feels tight. Because that’s what it is — that’s what it’s always been. Acting. No strings. His hands, slick with sweat, crease the page.
He stands abruptly. “I— I have to go.”
“You’re going?” Lyney’s brow shoots up. “Why so soon?”
He bumbles around the room, hastily grabbing his things and shoving them into his tattered backpack, pulling on his clothes. “I just— I remembered something. Have to help Kirara. I shouldn’t do this. Shouldn’t overstay my welcome.”
“It’s only common courtesy,” Lyney justifies. “I’m not going to kick you out after—”
“I have to go. Really.” He slings his backpack over his shoulder, slipping on his sneakers so quickly the backs don’t reach over his heels. “Bye.”
The door shuts behind him. He makes it down the corridor before he’s stumbling against the wall, hands gripping his hair, breathing shakily.
November twentieth. Nine thousand, six hundred words.
He finds himself in a bakery.
It’s Thanksgiving day. Lyney had told him off-handedly the last time they slept together that he had no family besides his sister to go home to, to celebrate with. Scaramouche had told him he and his mother don’t gather for holidays, either. They said nothing else after that.
He orders a vanilla cake with little pumpkins piped on the top in buttercream frosting. A bright young woman with indigo hair tied in buns, whose small name tag reads Xiangling, gets it out for him behind the glass display case.
This is something separate from sex, but that’s not crossing a boundary. Right? He’s a decent human being with common manners. He’s spent more than a few nights at Lyney’s apartment in the past several months, and Lyney at his, so it’s only amicable of him to gift the other man some sort of holiday well-wish.
“What would you like me to write on it?” Xiangling asks, piping bag poised above the cake top.
Scaramouche thinks. Happy Thanksgiving? But that suddenly feels too impersonal. He considers his options: I’m glad I met you. Thanks for the sex. I’m sorry I came into your life; I feel like I ruined things. I want you around. Sorry about what I said. I think I’m—
“Sir?”
He blinks, looking up at her. She waits expectantly. “Oh, sorry.” He licks his lips. “Just— Just happy Thanksgiving, is all.”
She smiles. “Sure thing.”
Back on campus, he gets lost twice trying to find the performing arts building. When he makes it inside it’s empty save for a few straggling students on stage and the program director, a tall woman with black-streaked white hair, lingering in the auditorium aisle.
“Ms. Arlecchino?” Scaramouche asks her tentatively. The woman looks at him curiously, holding a clipboard. “Hi, I’m—” the words die awkwardly in his throat. She stares at him. “Is— Is Lyney here?”
“Lyney Snezhevich?” She puckers her lips to the side in thought. “He dropped this class. He’s switching majors, you know.”
“Oh,” Scaramouche echoes. “Oh. I didn’t know.”
She narrows her eyes. “I thought you were friends?”
He pauses. His fingers curl around the cake box. “I…” he begins, but he cannot finish. She raises her brow.
On his way out, he dumps the box in the trash.
November twenty-third. Nine thousand, six hundred and ten words.
He searches Lyney’s Instagram daily as if scouring for clues, yet finds nothing. He wants so badly to call him and ask why he’d dropped, but he’s not sure how to do so without revealing that he’d been out looking for him. In an average situation that’s most definitely abnormal. Think about the strings.
So he waits. He waits until they’re laying breathless side-by-side after a particularly fervent fuck and subsequent orgasm, his cheeks flushed a sweet red, Lyney’s bangs thin and sticking to his forehead from the sweat. His hips hurt. They’ll definitely bruise. He doesn’t know whether or not to ask about all that pent up frustration.
They lay on their sides and look at each other, Scaramouche with his hands under his cheek, Lyney leaning on his arm. Scaramouche whispers into the dark. “Why’d you switch your major?”
Lyney raises a brow. “Stalking me, are you?” When Scaramouche says nothing, he takes a heavy breath in, then blows a long breath out. “You could say I had a reality check.”
“What’d you switch to?”
“Marketing.”
He makes a noise of disgust. Lyney laughs. “You hate math. And business.”
“Yes, but I’m good at it. If you want money, you should play to your strengths.”
“So that’s what it’s about. Money?” Lyney says nothing. “Acting has money in it, too. Eventually.” He feels this anger bubble in him for reasons unknown. “You love acting,” he says. Almost a plea.
Lyney’s voice comes carefully, controlled. “It isn’t about me.”
“Isn’t it? You’re giving up because of variables. Because you’re scared.”
“I’m changing course,” Lyney emphasizes, “because I do not know if I am good enough to justify wanting it so badly.” He licks his lips. “Sometimes wanting just isn’t enough.”
They fall asleep facing opposite walls.
In the middle of the night he wakes to the other man sitting on the edge of the bed, bare in his entirety, holding his phone to his cheek and crying noiseless sobs.
The first thing he thinks of is his mother on the floor of their foyer, him at a mere seven years old tugging confusedly at her skirt, wanting to go bird watching in the morning cool.
The phone falls to the floor. Lyney buries his head in his hands, shoulders shaking.
Lyney’s sister is sick. It’d hurt less if she were not his twin. He gasps for breath, gripping at the hair of his bangs as he explains it all. Scaramouche’s fingers creep along the clothed skin of his thigh. He doesn’t know what other ways to help him.
“Let me,” he murmurs, and Lyney takes him gently by his wrist.
“Just let me hold you,” he chokes out, “Just hold me, please.”
So Scaramouche does. He takes the other man in his arms, sitting on his legs at the edge of the bed; Lyney buries his tear-stained face in his neck, trembling like a lost child, clutching tightly to him.
Swans are monogamous animals in their courting, known for being perceptively humanlike. Once courtship is successful, the two swans will stay together in monogamy until death. Until death, of which they have conceptualized. Sometimes the grief will be so encompassing they simply stop looking.
Swans mourn, too. Did you know that?
“She’s not getting better,” Lyney cries, voice pitching and shattering. Scaramouche holds him, rubbing his back, fingers sliding tentatively into his hair.
Sex isn’t like this. Scaramouche doesn’t know what this is.
Lyney doesn’t text him. Scaramouche sends him a message one Thursday afternoon at 8 PM and is left on delivered. Lyney most often answers him within minutes. Since the night in his apartment, Scaramouche can only characterize his behavior as… avoidant. As if he’s ashamed of crying on his shoulder, afraid to show his face after being so vulnerable. Scaramouche doesn’t understand. He’s embarrassed himself in front of Lyney much worse before.
Frustrated both sexually and emotionally, he agrees without a bemoaning remark (much to her surprise) to accompany Kirara to a frat party somewhere off-campus on a Friday night.
It’s fine for the better part of the evening. Scaramouche drinks two beers and drifts about like a ghost. When he makes his way into the living room, where couples kiss and grind to booming music, he finds Kaedehara Kazuha once again lingering at the edges. He smiles at him softly. “Hello.”
Scaramouche nods in greeting. “Hey.”
They tip into casual conversation; it’s a bit awkward to speak with him after only having held a couple of short, amicable conversations in the years before, but he doesn’t mind. Kazuha is clearly a bit high, as he’s known for, leaning against the wall dazedly with a carefree smile on his face.
“You look lonely,” Kazuha says, phrased like a proposition.
He’s about to reject the casual, pleasurable offer on a gut instinct of prior commitment when his eyes flick across the room and see, in the midst of a cluster of close-pressed people, Lyney.
He’s chest to chest with a girl Scaramouche has never seen before. The sight takes the air from his lungs with a feeling of betrayal, and then a subsequent feeling of shame. Lyney’s fingers brush through the girl’s hair as he kisses her, one hand on her waist. He’s wearing black jeans and a white button-up creased with wrinkles, an unusually unkempt thing, his hair messily atop his shoulders and without a braid. He aches and doesn’t understand why he’s aching. It hurts all the same.
Kazuha follows his gaze. “Oh,” is all he says. Scaramouche can’t breathe. “Bad breakup?”
He says nothing. He swallows and pulls Kazuha in by his collar for a fervent kiss, bringing him into the crowd.
Here’s the thing: Kazuha is the type of man that could treat him well, as despite his carefree habit of kissing anyone once he gets a little faded, in his devotion he is kind and comely, the type of boy you bring home to your mother. Yet at the same time he’s unsure his mother would be happy no matter the type of boy he brought back with him.
He stares at Lyney across the room, who moves his hands along the girl’s back. Kazuha kisses down from the corner of his mouth to his neck and holds him, yet all he can think is — is he going to fuck her? Is he going to think of me while he does?
It shouldn’t hurt at all to watch. Yet it aches to be ignored by him, even when he receives attention all the same from someone else. His conscience screams out to Lyney in the space that separates them, lights flickering, sweat-slicked bodies moving: Look at me. Look at me.
As if on cue, Lyney’s gaze flicks up towards him, meeting his waiting stare. Though the music and chatter is too loud to convey anything, a million words are said just from this glance. Lyney’s eyes are dark as his hands slip around the woman’s waist, swaying them together. Breathing shakily, Scaramouche holds his gaze and imagines his lips as Kazuha’s.
I am Schrödinger’s cat, he thinks. I only exist when you look at me.
December first. Ten thousand, three hundred and six words.
“Can I tell you something weird?”
He’s laying on his back atop Lyney’s bed four days after the party. It’s 5 PM and rush hour traffic honks loudly outside. They haven’t talked about it. They don’t need to. No strings attached.
Lyney pauses. “Yeah, sure.” He’s sitting in a rickety wooden chair pulled at the bedside, legs crossed, smoking a cigarette out the open window, which every so often lets in flurries of snow.
“I keep having this dream.” It’s a stupid fucking thing to admit. Scaramouche should’ve just kept it to himself. But alas, he is a stupid fucking man. “It’s my wedding day in this beautiful chapel and all my family and friends are there, yet I’m alone at the altar. I’m just… standing there, holding flowers and staring at the door. My mom — she’s in the front pew, wishing I’d worn a dress. And my fiancé, whoever he is, just doesn’t… show up.”
Lyney takes a tentative, thoughtful drag of his cigarette. “I see.”
Scaramouche looks at him and wishes he would look back. “Think it means anything?”
“Do you want it to mean something?”
He pauses. “I don’t know. I don’t know, really. It’s fucked up.” The December wind howls through the open window on a particularly vengeful gust, sending some snowflakes to them. “But the worst part is, sometimes, in the dream, as I’m waiting for him to show up —” He licks his lips and regrets the words before he even admits them. “I want it to be you.”
Lyney says nothing for a good while. He smokes his cigarette down to his fingertips, staring blankly at the white-covered streets. They watch an old woman and her dog tiptoe across a thin sheet of snow, a man walking his bicycle down the icy bike lane. Scaramouche wholeheartedly expects Lyney to call him out, to mention the strings, or perhaps worse — say nothing at all. Yet instead, on a wisp of a smoky exhale, he asks gently: “What if it were me?”
Scaramouche’s breath catches. He takes a drag of his own cigarette to mask it, though he hates the burn of menthol. “Then I would understand you, finally, in your hesitancy,” he answers softly. “I wouldn’t marry me, either.”
Lyney’s brows furrow, but he says nothing. They sit like that. Scaramouche doesn’t expect him to fight such a sentiment; no strings. That was the deal.
Scaramouche sighs, shuffling out of bed to put out his cigarette in the snow on the windowsill, then rises to grab a mismatched shot glass and bottle of whiskey from atop the fridge. He pours one, tips it back. Lyney speaks now. “Hey—” He pours another one. “Hey, it’s pretty early to be—”
He pours another, taking it to his lips, when a warm hand suddenly settles on the cusp of his elbow. He stutters, despite having been touched there by those same hands plenty of times before, in much more obscene ways and positions, and drops the empty shot glass. It shatters into several chunks atop the cheap counter.
His hands shake. “Sorry,” he breathes. “Sorry—”
“I’ve got it,” Lyney says gently. “I’ve got it. Let me.”
Scaramouche steps back. Lyney takes a rag and sweeps the glass into the under-counter trash can. He stares at the other man’s bare back with loose pajama pants hanging off his hips, each individual tendon and muscle flexing as he cleans the counter.
His brain is a silent passenger as his cold arms snake around Lyney’s waist, cheek against his shoulder. Lyney pats his hands. He can hear his breath catch, yet deflate in relief. They say nothing, both trying to ignore the repercussions of such a thing whilst enjoying it as it happens. He presses his cheek against Lyney’s shoulder blade and squeezes his eyes shut.
December fifth. Eleven thousand, two hundred and twelve words.
Love is a peculiar thing in the animal kingdom. Love is not needed to procreate.
With winter break upcoming and the fall semester nearing its close, Scaramouche should objectively be most concerned with his Bio final paper. Yet, he finds he worries less these days about his thesis and more about the strings.
Thinking about spending Christmas with his mother makes him sickly, even though he’s done it all his life; having to go home to face his mother for several weeks sequestered someplace inescapable suddenly feels overpoweringly impossible, ever since his coming out. He doesn’t know how to be someone’s daughter. He dreads it. The inevitability makes him nauseous.
Lyney comes over on a Monday night. For the first time when they fuck they look into each other’s eyes. Though Lyney’s hips stutter with every thrust and a heated passion engulfs them below, his eyes, though half-lidded and lustful, are undeniably soft. They search his face which he knows must reveal his hesitations and melancholy, and holds reassuringly to his hip and collarbone.
All Scaramouche can think about are baby birds falling from their nests. How do they know when they’re ready? How do they know they’ve reached a point in their maturation capable of flight? How do they know? How does anybody?
Lyney’s hips slow until they’ve stopped completely against him. Scaramouche’s arms wrap tightly around his neck, bringing their chests together, chin over his shoulder, clutching to him as if the bed below him would disappear.
“I don’t want you to go,” he chokes out, tears streaming down his face, “I-I don’t want you to go, Lyney, please.”
Lyney holds him, pressing a heatless kiss to his shoulder. “I’m here,” he says softly. “I’m here, dove.”
Scaramouche sobs and grips tightly to him. When he stops, tears drying on his cheeks, they lay bare beneath the covers beside one another and think nothing of it. He falls into a dreamless sleep. When he wakes, Lyney is gone.
Scaramouche is alone in his apartment typing slowly towards his thesis when Lyney appears unannounced.
“Oh,” he says when he opens the door. “Hey.”
“Hi,” Lyney says. “Can I come in?”
Scaramouche lets him. He’s forgotten his sweater, easily scooping it up from Scaramouche’s desk chair before coming back to the kitchen. He stops a bit in front of him and stares into his eyes. They’ve both been a bit busy lately. Scaramouche grapples with the idea that the sweater, which has been sitting there continuously forgotten for several weeks, means nothing to him. Maybe it’s an excuse.
“Well,” Scaramouche says, walking around him towards his bedroom. “I should get back—”
Lyney grabs his wrist and pulls him in. He stumbles a bit before stopping, staring up into the other man’s lavender eyes which burn ardently with a passion that surprises him.
It’s a heatless action, despite what they’re known for. The brush of Lyney’s fingers over the cool skin of his wrist should send shockwaves of lust up through his veins and tip him into overdrive, yet instead the weight of his grip is calming and careful; he has no desire to heaten the moment, to capture him in a kiss, to capture him at all. Lyney tugs him into a hug.
Scaramouche breathes in the sweet scent of his cologne against his neck, resting his head contentedly there, slipping his hands up Lyney’s back to grasp onto him. Lyney turns his chin, hesitates, then brushes the bangs from Scaramouche’s forehead with his thumb and presses his lips to the cool skin.
“Scara,” he murmurs. “Scara. Dove. I need to tell you something.”
The subtle tick of his heartbeat increases against his chest and time seems to slow as if caught in a vat of molasses. Scaramouche knows what he’s about to say before he says it.
“I’m—”
He pulls back. Hands jittering. Molasses. He can’t move fast enough. Can’t get away fast enough. His hands retreat from the warmth of Lyney’s back. He steps away.
“We should stop.” Breathless. “We should stop. Shouldn’t we?”
Lyney blinks at him. “I—”
“Don’t,” Scaramouche says sharply. He takes another step back.
Lyney narrows his eyes. “I don’t get you. You say things like you want me to stay, you want me around, that you dream of marrying me, and then the second I step closer you lurch back.”
He grits his teeth. “I don’t.”
“You do, though. You do. And I want to be with you. Why is that so terrible? I want to spend time with you. I want to go places, I want— I want you.”
“Well you can’t have me.” He steps back again. The anxiety lights into a defensive anger. “What if I told you that? Surprise! I hate sex. What now, Lyney? Go find another fucking hookup.”
“I wouldn’t care,” Lyney presses, a bit of irritation grating his voice, “I wouldn’t care about that. I would miss it, but it wouldn’t matter if I could never touch you. Is that all you think you are to me?”
“No strings, Lyney, that was the fucking deal.”
“That was before I knew you—”
“You don’t know me. And right now— right now you think you do, and you think it’s great, and that’s awesome. So please. Before you delve even an inch fucking deeper and realize I’m not this fantastic person, hardly even a good one, get the fuck out. Please.”
“I don’t understand,” his voice is haggard, hands splayed pleading in front of him. “You have this idea that you’re some kind of inhuman, unlovable… puppet. Scara. Dove.”
“ Don’t fucking call me that.”
“I love you.”
A thick silence. Scaramouche can’t breathe. “Please,” he says softly, eyes squeezed shut, “please. Don’t say that.”
“Why?” Lyney’s voice is tattered.
“Because you’re better than that,” he croaks. “You were supposed to know better than that.”
Lyney presses his lips into a thin frown, brows drawn. “Scara. Dove. There is nothing wrong with you.”
He must grip the edge of the kitchen counter at that, taking a deep, steadying inhale. He looks back at Lyney with a deep, loathful yearning. He wants him so badly he can’t breathe.
“No strings,” he says finally, his voice a bit strained. “That was the deal.”
“Scara. Please. Don’t push me—”
“I think you should leave.”
Lyney blinks and stares at him, chest rising and falling, eyes stricken. He scratches the denim of his jeans with nail-bitten fingers. And, like snow blowing in through an open window, he goes.
December fifteenth. Twelve thousand, eight hundred and fifty-five words.
They don’t speak for the rest of the semester.
He’s walking back with Kirara from his last lecture when she pauses to rush over to the gaggle of Charlotte and her friends meandering by the campus café. Navia and Clorinde share a pair of gloves. Charlotte waves excitedly to her. Lyney is much different — his gaze averted with a stony look somewhere far off. Kirara greets them all and promises to see them soon. Scaramouche lingers up the hill as Kirara kisses her girlfriend goodbye, waving kindly to the others, before trotting over to him. She flashes him a brief smile. He doesn’t return it.
Glancing back between him and Lyney, she asks, “Not hooking up anymore?”
“It’s for the better,” he says softly, into the wool of his scarf.
Charlotte tugs Lyney and the others away. Navia slings her arm over their shoulders. It’s cold now. He rations that by spring the hickeys will have faded and he'll have forgotten the sound of Lyney’s voice.
“You sure?” Kirara asks gently. “You guys seemed pretty happy with your… arrangement.”
His voice is tight. They disappear around the corner, yet he keeps his eyes there as if Lyney will come back. “It’s for the better.”
“Just seems a bit weird to end it so formally. What if you feel like hooking up again next semester?”
“It’s for the better.”
“Yeah, you said that.” She looks over. Her eyes widen. “Oh,” she says, her boots crunching in the slush as she turns to him. “Oh, Scara.” She brushes the snow from his bangs.
Scaramouche says nothing. Hot tears drip down his face incessantly, though he wishes more than anything they wouldn’t. He chews his lip and lets his breaths come in little hiccups, feeling small beneath his puffy coat and knit hat. Sobs suddenly escape him with such untameable ferocity that they slip past his lips and into the wintry air; he cannot grasp onto them, cannot take them back, cannot reign them in.
Kirara frowns. She rubs her kitten-mitted hand along his back. “You liked him, didn’t you.” It’s not a question.
He answers in an unsteady, pitching breath: “It’s for the better.”
He is broken into a childlike fit of tears repeating that same mantra over and over to himself like a keen, and then aloud. He’s stuck on a loop: I know it is. I know it’s for the better. I know it’s for the better. I know it’s for the better. Until the words stop making sense. Until Kirara wraps her arms around him in the street and he’s heaving big, breathless sobs, and hugs her back. Somewhere across campus he can imagine Lyney at a Christmas Eve frat party with his fingers tangled in the hair of someone else, kissing them passionately, contentedly.
I know it’s for the better.
Kirara holds him in the street and says she’ll take him home when he stops crying. He doesn’t know how to tell her. The crying doesn’t ever stop.
December nineteenth. Last day of term. At 11:59 PM he submits his paper as a PDF file with tears dripping down his face like a faucet. Thirteen thousand words. He hates every single one of them.
The train ride back home is silent. He forgot to charge his headphones the night before, so he stares out the window the whole time and thinks about nothing.
His mother picks him up from the train station, though he hadn’t told her what time he’d be getting in. She greets him with a warm smile and he very narrowly avoids an awkward hug.
The car ride back is silent as well, save for a brief thank-you and conversation about the weather.
Dinner is silent, too. He eats his sashimi and is hyper-aware of how he handles his chopsticks. His mother asks him:
“ Musume. Pass the teapot, please.”
He grits his teeth yet passes her the kettle carefully. She pours it and drinks in silence.
“Did you have a good semester?”
He hasn’t seen her since the church pew. He wants to tell her about the dream of his wedding, about Lyney, and Lyney’s sick sister, or Orestes and his sins of matricide.
“Yeah,” he says.
Five minutes later she asks again.
“Pass the soy sauce, please, musume.”
He had picked up the bottle before she called him that. He places it down with more force than he means to. “Could you not—?” he starts, voice pleading rather than angry, “Could you not call me that? Mom?”
She purses her lips and looks at her plate. “Sorry. Sorry. I just— you’re never here. I miss having you. I miss being girls with you.”
He puts down his chopsticks. “I-I don’t know what to say to that.”
Her English is a little broken when she speaks, words slipping in to Japanese here and there, but she tries around those English words, and that is enough for him. That she is trying. “My— My child. I want things to be easy. You are such a sensitive child, and I cannot be with you. I do not know what will happen. Do they treat you kindly at school?”
“Yes,” Scaramouche chokes, his voice thick, “Yes, they do.”
“It’s scary, it’s a scary thing.” She wets her lip and knits her brows with concern. “I am sorry. I don’t want to be angry.” She slips back into Japanese to finish the rest, words flowing at a pace she cannot translate: “I am not angry with you. I worry indefinitely each time you leave home. You have always been so sweet and kind, and now — now you make these decisions that put big targets on your back, and have people looking down unto you. Treating you harshly. Why would you make things so hard for yourself?”
“I don’t mean to, mom,” he croaks. “I can’t help it. Really. I swear I can’t.”
They linger in the silence of the dining room, Scaramouche fiddling with his fingers under the table, pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth so he won’t cry. She frowns at him. “Look at me, please.” He tilts his head to look up at her guiltily, like a bad dog. In English: “I love you.” He heaves a sharp, pained breath at the words. In Japanese: “You are my baby bird.”
With that, the floodgates open. He cannot stop the tears that come, that have never ceased coming. He lurches forward up from his chair on unsteady legs and she welcomes him wholly, with outstretched arms, as he collapses into his mother’s embrace. She wraps her arms around him and holds him tightly to her side.
“I’m sorry,” he sobs. “I’m sorry, mom. I don’t want you to worry. I don’t want us to fight. I want to be close, like we used to. I just—” He chokes on a breath, “I just can’t—”
She rubs his back and kisses his head. “It’s okay. It’s okay, hinadori. It’s just who you are.”
He lets his mom hold him and rub his back. When he stops crying he pulls away and she wipes his tears with her sleeve, muttering about his eyeliner leaving stains on her blouse, and he laughs wetly.
“Maybe—” she begins, “Maybe we can go bird watching sometime. While you’re home.”
He nods. “Yeah. Yeah, mom. I'd like that.”
She kisses his head again and taps her fingers along his back. “What is the new name?”
“Scaramouche,” he answers.
She furrows her brows. “Like the song?”
He laughs. He laughs. He laughs. His mom loves him. Maybe all the time.
He goes back in January. His mother gifts him a bonsai tree to bring with him; Kirara cries when she sees it and hugs him so hard his ribs hurt.
He has no thesis paper due this semester. Strangely enough, though it’d been grueling to write, he feels oddly purposeless. He finds himself standing at the edge of the campus courtyard, blearily empty and lined with a thickening of pale snow.
Lyney is there.
He’s looking out at the café stand on the opposite side of the quad, sipping from a steaming to-go cup. Scaramouche follows his gaze and finds it lands on a girl with long, gray hair pulled into a loose ponytail down her back, bundled tightly in a thick snow jacket and scarf, waiting on a short line for coffee. Lyney taps his foot idly as he stands.
Scaramouche’s boots pause on the edge of the square, crunching in the thin snow. Lyney turns to him.
“Hey,” he says, a bit breathless.
Lyney stares at him wordlessly for several seconds. “Hey.”
Scaramouche nods towards the café. “Is that your sister?”
He hums in response, taking a sip of his coffee. They linger in the silence.
“How was your break?”
“Good,” Lyney answers, clipped. “You submit your thesis?”
“Yeah. Ninety-one.”
He nods approvingly. “Hm. Congrats.”
Lyney’s sister shuffles with her change over the high truck counter and takes down a steaming cup from the barista. She turns and shuffles with her mittens to grasp it in her hand and Scaramouche knows it’s now or never.
“I know I’ve been hard to deal with,” he blurts, drawing back Lyney’s attention. Schrödinger’s cat. When his eyes land on him, he’s alive again. “I’m sorry. I know— I know we were both going through something, even if I didn’t carry it as well. I just wanted you to know. I spoke with my mother.”
Lyney stares at him. Snow falling. Clock ticking.
“I know it’s not fair of me to just… show up, after what I said. But I’m trying. I’m really trying. I’m going to be better, to fix everything.”
“Scaramouche,” Lyney says softly. His breath makes a cloud, shoe scuffing the slush.
“I fucked up, I pushed you away, I know. A-And—”
“Scaramouche.”
“I’m just trying to be good.”
He blinks his lilac eyes. “You are.” Scaramouche can still remember the day they met, in the shadows of a compressed frat house, swimming blindly at the bottom of the ocean without rhyme or destination. Looking for nothing as there was nothing to be seen. “You always were, dove.”
His sister appears next to him. She regards Scaramouche curiously, yet says nothing. They turn wordlessly to go.
“Hey, Lyney—”
Lyney pauses, turning back halfway. Scaramouche wants to say a thousand things, confess a million apologies, yet even that does not seem like enough.
“I’m sorry about the way we ended things.”
His sister holds onto his arm, looking up at him inquisitively.
“Yeah,” he answers. “Yeah. Me too.”
And then he is gone.
Two weeks pass into the new semester. Eventually he starts seeing posters for their college’s theatrical production of Euripides’s Orestes. Despite Lyney’s changing major his name is still on the program and posters, so Scaramouche stops in to see it the night it premieres. He feels obligated. He’d seen into the script, after all.
The auditorium is bustling with students and family alike. In the dimly lit hall Scaramouche weaves around siblings and parents and wives to find a seat. The last time he was here he dumped a cake in the outdoor trash can. This time he promises to be less of a coward.
He finds a familiar face in the orchestral section, drowned in a wooly shawl. He shuffles into the row and stands next to her.
“Hello,” he greets, somewhat awkwardly. She blinks at him. “Are you— Are you Lyney’s sister?”
“Oh,” she says. She shuffles with her bag to make space in the seat next to her. “Oh, yes, I am. Sit. I don’t mind.” He does. The auditorium bustles and the overhead lights flicker. She still appears a bit sickly, yet in a growthful way rather than a pitiful one. “You must be…”
“Scaramouche.” He holds out his hand. “Hello. I— I’ve heard a bit about you.”
“Yes,” she nods, taking it. “As have I.”
“You—” he pauses, “Sorry, what?”
She laughs softly. “He talked about you quite often, at my bedside. He promised when I got better he would take me to meet you. That he would tell you how he felt and the two of you would… fly away. He always said that.” Scaramouche feels his cheeks flame. “Then one day he just… stopped.”
“Oh.” He licks his lips. “Oh. That— That was probably my fault.”
“I assumed. You didn’t like him?”
“I—” He pauses, debating just how much he should say, before the constraints pop like a taut guitar string. “I think I’m in love with him, actually.”
Lynette smiles, though she tries to hide it. “Ah. I think you better tell him that.”
“No, I—” he heaves a breath. “I couldn’t. It’s been a month. He doesn’t talk about me anymore. Even you said.”
“It matters very little how much he talks, Scaramouche, compared to the things he says.”
He huffs, looking at his lap. “How would you know that?”
“Because he is my brother. What else would I know if not this?”
He pauses, scratches the fabric of his shorts. “I’m afraid I’m going to hurt him. Bad. That I’ll taint him, or scare him, or bring him hardship he otherwise wouldn’t have to endure.”
“It’s going to hurt anyway,” she says, and maybe it's because of the thickness of her shawl, or her sunken cheekbones, or the thinness of her drawn-back hair, but Scaramouche believes her. “Do you think it matters how?”
“I don’t want him to waste the prime years of his life doting after someone who can most days hardly claw himself out of bed—”
“Scaramouche,” she interrupts. He meets her violet eyes. “Do you think my brother’s love has ever lessened because of suffering?”
He blinks and looks at her, really considering it. She has been hospitalized for the better part of a year, forcing her doting brother to all but abandon his dream career just to find a steady enough job to pay for those dues. She has left him alone, intentionally or not, in a crumbling city apartment for nearly five months. Lyney’s life has already been an arduous one. No aspect of the things that mattered have ever been wholly glamorous. He supposes, maybe, that’s what love is all about — witnessing the ugly things and choosing to stay anyway.
With a weak voice: “I don’t know much about family. I’m only just starting to learn.”
Lynette holds out her hand. Her veins are cool blue and stark on her wrist. Scaramouche hesitates only briefly before taking it. When he looks back at her, the lights dim and Orestes takes center stage.
He squeezes Lynette’s hand involuntarily when Lyney’s Pylades appears in front of the crowd for the first time. He watches Lyney’s eyes search for Lynette in the crowded room, yet land on his instead; he is only momentarily caught off-guard, gaze slipping down to their interlocked hands, before he is launching into his next line:
“But I will take care of you.”
The man playing Orestes clutches his heart. “It’s rotten work.” Lyney is looking straight at him and Lynette when he speaks.
“Not to me. Not if it’s you.”
When the play is finished they receive a standing ovation.
“You should speak with him,” Lynette says, clapping softly next to him. Scaramouche doesn’t argue.
He meets Lyney in the empty backstage green room while the rest of the cast greets their family and loved ones by the center seats.
“Hey,” he says, leaning back against the closed door.
Lyney smiles at him gently in the mirror. “Hey.”
He’s in a band tee now, having shed his costume. The snow outside has turned to rain and patters softly against the curtained windows. The room smells of perfume and cheap material plastic, the kind that reminds him of old Halloween costumes.
“Um. Your sister told me you’d be back here.”
Lyney raises a brow as he drags a makeup wipe over the curve of his chin. “I see you two have met.”
“Yes. She’s— she’s rather keen. Kind, also. She looks just like you.” Lyney smiles to himself, looking down. Scaramouche clears his throat. “That was great, by the way. You were great.”
Lyney’s grin cracks his composure. “A rare sincere flattery.”
Scaramouche feels his cheeks flame. “Yeah.” No use in denying.
“To what do I owe—”
“I miss you.” The words shoot out of him like a gun, a bit breathless. “God. I really fucking miss you.”
Lyney pauses. He puts down the makeup wipe. “Scara—”
“I know that’s probably really shitty of me to say. I know you probably don’t love me anymore. And I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ve ever really been a good person, in truth. But fuck. I’m really fucking trying.”
Lyney turns in his seat to face him. In the month they’ve been apart he looks tired, like he hasn’t rested since.
“Come here,” he gestures him forward. Scaramouche comes as if pulled on a lead. When he’s a few feet in front of him Lyney holds up a little spool of red twine from the tabletop sewing kit. His voice comes softly. “What about the strings?”
“My mom— this Christmas. She told me something about that.” He reaches forward and takes it, gently unrolling it. Tentatively he reaches and takes Lyney’s hand in his; his cold fingers slide against Lyney’s warm palm. He wraps the end around his pinky finger and tugs it until it snaps, then wraps the other end loosely around Lyney’s.
“In my culture, human relations are predestined by Gods who tie mortals together by a red string. The string gets tangled, stretched, contracted, but it never breaks. Never.”
Lyney’s pinky reaches slowly and interlocks with his. His opposite hand dances over his elbow and down his forearm till it wraps around his wrist. Then he rises, like the moon, a surefire thing, coming slowly and pressed lightly against his front. Though only an inch or so taller than him it gives Lyney leverage to look down into his eyes, their bangs brushing together, breath on his cheek. He threads their hands together.
Scaramouche remembers thinking in the throes of winter at the core of his abandonments, clawing for reason, that he would one day forget the scent of the other man’s skin, or the lavender of his eyes; it is spring now, and he remembers the pale freckle below his right brow, the thin white scar below his bottom lip, just as well as the day he discovered them. He has not forgotten. He would know this blind. Navigationary, as the birds chart their migrations by sun-compasses and the north star. Always leading somewhere warm.
Scaramouche’s hands settle tentatively on his hips, knotting in the fabric of his tee. They let their foreheads fall against one another, Lyney shifting to look at him properly, one hand tracing the curve of his jaw.
“Dove,” he murmurs, less of a call for him and more of a fond reassurance of his name, his preciousness. His thumb brushes along his cheekbone.
“I-I know what you’re going to say, and it’s killing me. I know I’m too late, I know I shut you down, I know I’m selfish for coming back and asking you for anything. So just—”
“Dove.”
“Would you just—? Call me out, say I’m crazy, tell me to go to hell. Something. Anything. I don’t—” his voice chokes up, “I don’t want to lose you, though I already have.”
“Dove.”
“I love you,” he breathes. “Fuck. I really fucking love you.”
They meander in the silence of that statement. Lyney looks warm and content as he mulls over those words, a small smile quirking up the corner of his lips, eyes half-lidded. “Dove,” he says again. Scaramouche looks up at him. “I have loved you since October. That will never change.”
And — oh. Oh.
He has to stand on his tippy-toes to lean forward into the hug, arms wrapping fiercely around the other man’s neck, nose buried in the crook of his shoulder. Strangely, no tears come despite the enrapturing emotion that seizes him from all else. He figures he’s done crying about people who love him.
They don’t kiss. They don’t need to. Lyney holds him, one arm across his back and the other encircling his hips, keeping them flush together till their heartbeats meet ceremoniously between bone and sinew, though they have been closer and unclothed many times before, this is different. He doesn’t worry. Lyney loves him all the time.
Scaramouche has been falling, perhaps in more ways than one. This time, he soars.