Chimerical Romantics, 2/3

[dira]

Part One

***

By the time Frank is ready to venture out of his bed for more than brief expeditions around the green bedroom, his small stock of clothing has mysteriously multiplied. He is not suddenly possessed of slightly cut down versions of Gerard's wardrobe, though Gerard would have quite cheerfully shared if he did not think it would have been somehow grotesque, dressing Frank up in a gentleman's togs. By now it has begun to seem strange to Gerard that Frank should wear many clothes at all; his skin is adornment enough, especially now that it has returned to a normal color underneath the tattoos and scars.

But Frank must indeed be properly clothed if he is to go about in public, and the clothes that appear in the green bedroom are a sailor's, if a sailor rather less down-at-the-heels than Frank had been even before being put ashore in Mt. Helier. Trousers and short jackets and crisp white shirts and proper land-going boots, so that when Frank--with minimal assistance from Gerard, mostly with the damned boots--is dressed, he looked neither like lord nor servant, but like just what he is: a sailor, though a neat, smart one, perhaps somehow a tame one. His collar and curling hair combined to cover even the tattoos on his neck (and Gerard thinks little of the fact that the sleeves of the jacket are precisely long enough to cover the tattoos on Frank's wrists, though he recognizes his grandmother's fine stitching just as readily as she would have recognized his brushstrokes).

The others have all been letting Frank alone, and letting Gerard alone so long as he is near Frank. Toro and Pelissier both readily identify this as one of Gerard's odd quixotic starts (though Toro, who knew Gerard in the rather permissive atmosphere of the continent, has an idea that Gerard's motives might not be entirely altruistic). Michael, fond of Frankie as a boy might be fond of a puppy who's followed him home, has been willing to let Gerard do the messy, tedious parts. He did visit Frank periodically in his sickbed, entertaining him when Gerard was occupied with business or having one of his talks with their grandmother, but he finds sick people rather alarming. He retreated after an hour or two each time, not to be seen again for days.

When Gerard starts taking Frank for turns about the garden and up and down the lawns, the others approach Frank rather as if Gerard had taken a sudden enduring interest in one of the household dogs, to the point of including it in conversation. They treat Frank kindly, as a bit of a pet, and if Gerard were cruel to him or thoughtless of him, they'd only think it gauche--because it simply is not the thing for a gentleman to ill-treat his beast--and not that Frank had any right to anything better. Michael would be offended on Frank's behalf, of course, but Michael would be offended on the dog's behalf, too. He's soft-hearted that way.

Gerard's grandmother tells Gerard to bring Frank to tea. Gerard puts her off once, and then again, and on the morning of the day he would have put her off for a third time, he steps into Frank's room only to find Frank fully dressed and sitting up at a small table, breakfasting with Gerard's grandmother. The old woman seems more occupied in instructing Frank on his manners and posture than she is in eating anything, sitting ramrod straight in her chair with just a cup of tea in front of her. Frank beams at Gerard when Gerard hesitates in the doorway, and says cheerfully and as though he and Gerard's grandmother are quite the best of friends, "You see? I told you we would need a third chair."

There is indeed a third chair at the small table, and Gerard--who has been getting up rather earlier than was ever before his custom, in order to spend more time sitting by Frank--settles cautiously into it. His grandmother scarcely lets him make a polite good-morning, but immediately begins using his manners as a model for Frank, which only makes Gerard self-conscious and clumsy, for now Frank is watching every movement of his hands, his mouth, the way he slouches in his chair, and all at Gerard's grandmother's behest. Individually, his grandmother and Frank are two of Gerard's favorite people, but in combination they are quite terrifying.

Frank is perfectly undaunted by Madame's constant stream of instructions, seeming to treat it all as though it were a new language to learn or some elaborate game he is being taught to play. Sitting just so and holding his cup thus is less bother than learning to run up and down the yards, or clinging to a mast in a downpour, and Frank is as adept with his whole body as Gerard is with his artist's hands. By the end of an hour Gerard thinks he was wrong, and Frank could contrive to look quite as much at home in Gerard's clothes as Gerard himself does, if not more. Gerard tries to imagine the reverse and comes quickly to the disheartening conclusion that he himself would not last an hour as a common sailor, even if he had an instructor as kind as Frank, though this will not prevent Gerard from mulling over that unlikely scenario--in increasingly vivid detail--later, when he is alone.

By the end of an hour Frank is also, however, quite visibly exhausted. Gerard's grandmother excuses herself after inviting Frank, individually, specifically, and directly, to tea--granting him leave as she does so to bring along, "That ill-mannered wretch who calls himself my eldest grandson, if you should see fit."

Frank visibly deflates as soon as the good lady has cleared the room, and Gerard nearly has to carry him back to bed, tugging off his boots and jacket and settling him under the counterpane again. Frank reaches for Gerard as he turns to go, catching not his wrist, but the hem of his coat. Gerard sits down at Frank's weak tug, perching on the edge of the bed. "What is it?"

Frank's eyes are nearly closed, his face nearly as pale as the sheets and the tattoos on his throat standing out starkly in contrast. "You will come to tea, won't you?"

Gerard smiles. "Of course," he says. "There will be biscuits, and little sandwiches." And you.

Frank smiles back even as his eyes fall shut. "Good," he murmurs. "I don't think I could find the sitting room on my own."

***

Frank sleeps straight through tea that day, and is a little distraught over it when Gerard--who stopped by to take him to tea, and then sat beside him for four hours, watching him sleep--finally wakes him for supper. Gerard assures him that the invitation was a general one, for tea on whatever day Frank happens to have no other pressing engagements. Frank seems reassured by this, if still a bit put out at missing the sweets and little sandwiches, and Gerard notices as they eat supper together--from a tray, sickbed-fashion--that Frank watches Gerard's every move with covert intensity.

Gerard, striving for his grandmother's air of easy and unabashed direction, fills up their customary mealtime silence with instructions. Frank promptly resumes his air of learning a new game, unleashing irresistible smiles and an earnest air Gerard finds powerfully intoxicating, particularly now that his grandmother is not observing his every movement.

Gerard knows that his grandmother thinks he has been reluctant to bring Frank to tea because he thinks Frank will embarrass himself or Gerard, but that isn't it at all (though it would pain Gerard, excruciatingly, to see Frank made to feel uncomfortable). It is only that Frank is something precious, secret even though the whole household is aware of him, and Gerard likes keeping Frank to himself (sharing him occasionally and at Michael's whim with Michael, but all of Gerard's most beloved playthings have belonged to him with that caveat).

The next day, however, Gerard dutifully escorts Frank to tea with his grandmother. He is somehow not surprised to see that Toro and Michael and Matthew happen all to be in attendance. Frank acquits himself nicely, and in the presence of the others Gerard's grandmother confines her corrections of Frank's behavior to the occasional speaking glance or covert nod.

Frank, when plied with jam tarts and tea and drawn inexorably into conversation by Madame, turns out to be an expansive and skillful storyteller. He makes quite a different impression when not struggling to stay upright in front of four gentlemen all taller than himself, and Toro is promptly quite enchanted with him, Michael learning the same puppy fondness all over again, redoubled by Gerard's obvious approval and affection. If Matthew continues to regard Frank as an overindulged pet, well, he maintains a well-bred silence, and the others are all too busy listening to Frank to notice such a quiet undercurrent.

Frank, however, is unavoidably conscious that at least one person other than himself is aware of the strangeness of Frank's holiday in the Way house. He mentions it that night to Gerard--hesitantly, like a man bracing himself to plunge his hand into a flame, for once he speaks of it, Gerard is sure to see it. He remarks as casually as he can that he will have to leave soon; perhaps he can get work at the docks in Mt. Helier (which will allow him occasional glimpses both of ships and of Mr. Gerard Way--or might, if Gerard ever goes abroad so far as the town, but Frank allows himself to imagine he will, every now and again).

Gerard, who has been dreading the end of Frank's recovery and his inevitable departure back to the exotic life aboard ship, wrinkles his nose. He has heard Frank speak of the sea and of sailing, and he has an idea that working on the docks would be, for Frank, rather like having the job of washing windows outside a patisserie whose doors were barred to him. An exquisite torture. "Shall you not find a new berth and sail away from us, then?"

Frank hears this rather as a command, and his shoulders hunch against some cold wind only he feels. "Sailors talk. Folk will know I've had the ague, and they'll know I could fall sick again. I won't be wanted on the ships where they know me. I could get work on a North Sea trader, maybe, but better the docks than a whaling ship."

Gerard, who has heard stories of the sea all his life, says, "It does sound dangerous, going looking for monsters."

Frank shakes his head. He's grown perilously comfortable arguing with Gerard, a habit he knows he'll have to break and yet clings to, in the safety of his sickroom, a pocket outside of the world as he otherwise understands it.

"They're great beasts. It's a shame to slaughter them, filthy work. I'm a sailor, not a butcher. I might as well sign on to a slaver." Frank shudders expressively at that and adds, "Some things, an ocean won't wash off."

Gerard thinks of Lady Macbeth, and reaches out impulsively to touch Frank's still-clean hand. "Think no more of it. You're not well yet, you needn't go looking for work now."

He knows, though, that Frank is troubled by his idleness, so--after meeting with the others to discuss it, or rather to announce it and then quell any possible protests, though in the event none are forthcoming--the next night, Gerard brings Frank into the secret society. They spend the entirety of that night's meeting describing their past exploits--which include their rescue of him, of which he has no recollection, and otherwise range from disastrous to humorous to baffling--to Frank over several bottles of wine.

Frank, even in his present weakened state, has as good a head for drink as any of them, if not better. He listens raptly, with an expression on his face that betrays nothing but intent concentration. It is only when the hour has grown quite late and Matthew and Michael are both nodding in their cups, and Gerard has been talking without a pause for ten straight minutes about his grand goals, that Frank finally says, "But you are really terrible at this, you realize."

Gerard and Toro stare, and Michael blinks back to semi-awareness, while Matthew's eyes are gleaming slits.

"I mean," Frank elaborates. "You're not actually helping anyone. You can scarcely even keep from killing each other."

Gerard is briefly inclined to be a little hurt, but then Toro shoves at Frank's shoulder, saying something fast and angry-sounding in Spanish, and Gerard feels instantly protective of Frank's right as a member of the society to tell them that they are terrible. Meanwhile, Frank is answering fearlessly back in the same language, sailor and nobleman arguing like students in a coffeehouse, until finally Toro laughs, nodding. Frank sits back with an air of moderately drunken satisfaction.

"I can help you," Frank says. "You'll do much better with me around."

Gerard believes him without reservation.

***

Gerard has been in love before: at least twice at boarding school, before he'd quite figured out what it was, and then in a mad flurry at university--a different boy each term of his first year, and then the same boy (who was also in love with him, oh bliss) for the first two terms of his second year, until they had a falling-out and Gerard spend all of Trinity term nursing his broken heart. Third year was like first with more drinking and more boys, down to the last one, in the run up to Gerard's Finals, whose name and college (or whether he was in fact at a college and not just the apothecary's boy) Gerard never did know. His second-year requited passion aside, Gerard learned that actually becoming personally acquainted with someone with whom he was in love frequently ruined the whole thing--but he scarcely even remembers his passion for the mysterious blond boy anymore. He was too busy to write very many wretched poems about him, and the inevitable and requisite heartbreak got rather lost during Finals, and then it was on to the continent and his grand tour.

The trip extended in a leisurely fashion beyond the standard year, as Gerard felt no great compulsion to return home--Toro paid for things just often enough to keep Gerard afloat, and Gerard sold the occasional painting (more through the prettiness of his face than his art, he knew, but the end result was that people paid him for his paintings as though he were an actual artist) and it was sufficient to get by.

He fell in and out of love at a slightly more languid pace in Europe, and once again experienced the occasional brief requital. He did also, as he occasionally had in university, go to bed with the sort of woman one went to bed with, but he never fell in love with a woman, whether that kind or a more suitable one. Rutting between the sheets is nothing compared to the briefest touch of hands with one he loves, and the prospect of marriage crosses his mind only as the same sort of dreadful inevitability as death.

Gerard returned to Jersey in the winter of Michael's final year of university, seized with the first truly dark bout of melancholy he had ever suffered. It was a strange affliction disconnected from any loss of love or failure of art, though he was obsessed with both as signs of the dreadful pointlessness of his existence. He felt the occasional frisson of interest in someone during the years that followed, but being in love in Jersey, in the lap of his family, seemed incongruous and dangerous. Gerard never dared even to think about those men too much.

He is not precisely certain whether he has ever consummated any of his grandly passionate loves. Certainly there were kisses with some of them--some followed immediately by blows, some allowed to progress farther. During his second year of university, he and the Classics scholar got all the way to the point of nakedness once or twice, consumed as much with their own daring as with each other. Even without actually disrobing there had been many furtive touches in secret places, a leavening of furiously carnal pleasure in the midst of their otherwise largely poetic passion for one another.

It wasn't that Gerard didn't know boys could do other things to and with each other; it was just that all the truly definitive acts he'd heard of sounded like things that happened to you if you were unlucky in your choice of bullies at school. Gerard had been lucky, but some of his friends hadn't, and it all sounded quite terrifying and was evidently painful and injurious. He wanted no part of any of that, certainly not in relation to any boy he'd ever loved. Perhaps he did think about what it would have been like to be less lucky, once in a while, and perhaps those thoughts were quite engrossing when certain moods were upon him, but they were only thoughts and he knew it wouldn't be like that, truly.

And now the point is moot, because Gerard has fallen in love again, for the first time in years, as heart-poundingly intense as that first schoolboy infatuation. Gerard is in love with Frank.

***

Frank was buggered for the first time the same year as his first flogging. They weren't all that different in his mind: something he'd seen happen to others ever since he'd come aboard ships, something he'd been waiting years to have happen to him. More terrifying than painful--though painful enough--and never as bad again after the first time.

As far as Frank is concerned, rape is something that happens to maidens, uniformly beautiful and innocent, frequently possessed of vengeful fathers and brothers and sweethearts, though also prone to flinging themselves off high things and haunting the one who wronged them. What happened to him was just buggery; it just happens. He didn't agree to it, but he didn't agree to be flogged, either, nor put on short rations when half the supplies spoiled, nor to be caught in an ice storm, nor to have the wind fail them three days out of port. It's just what happens.

The first one was the ship's mate. He took an interest in Frank, taught him his letters, then kissed him one day, and longer the next, before he finally worked up to what he actually wanted. Lessons and kisses both disappeared after that, though the buggering continued past the point where Frank grew used to it. The mate liked the skin of Frank's back, smooth and perfect, and after Frank was flogged for the first time he made him keep his shirt on. It wasn't until years later that Frank had a grinning skull tattooed on his back, cutting across half a dozen old scars, but after that, whether his shirt is on or off, when he's buggered he thinks of it there, laughing at them.

The secret truth is that Frank didn't mind it all that much. Of course, there were the ones who wanted the hurt more than anything, and that was wretched. Frank learned to avoid those men, and how to defend himself (but if it came to the point of putting a knife in, he was already worse than fucked--there was never any real escape aboard ship, and Frank had no interest in being hanged) or to make it hurt less than they thought it did. But there were the ones who just wanted to get between someone's legs, anyone's, who thought Frank might be a good target (curly hair, quick smile, small enough to overpower, or to plausibly pretend to have been overpowered), and them... Frank didn't truly mind.

Sometimes, somewhere he can't admit, sometimes it was more than not minding. Sometimes, this awful vile thing that he put up with because it couldn't be avoided--sometimes, it felt good. He'd made sort of trades, even, once or twice with a hand his own age, and they would alternate from some obscure sense of fairness. The first time he did it, Frank concluded that if buggering always felt that good from the other side, he couldn't hold it so very much against anyone who'd ever done it to him, because oh.

But it was terrible and wrong and filthy, of course. Frank went to confession when he could find a church near to port, and made vague, mumbled admissions which nonetheless earned him hours of Aves and Paters from priests who've heard plenty of sailors' sins. They never failed to grant him the ego te absolve, despite their sternness and his reticence, and so Frank always went back, seeking forgiveness for something he didn't entirely understand, no matter what price they demanded in prayer and penance. He finally had the beads tattooed onto his wrist, so he could count them out across his skin, silent during a night watch, even as he waited for the next time he was cornered somewhere with no escape.

It was just something that happened.

***

Frank has never been in love.

Love--like rape--seems to be something that inescapably involves beautiful maidens. There is always either a great deal of suffering and death, or marriage and babies, or, to hear some of the sailors who leave wives in port talk of it, all four in no particular order. Frank has never found the prospect particularly appealing.

He went--was taken--to a brothel once, at the ripe age of fourteen or so (Frank is very clear on the fact that he was born on the night before All Saints', knows the story--even if he's not sure who told him--of his first cry ringing out, and then the matins bell for All Saints Day, like an echo, so his birthday is the eve--but he gets a bit foggy on how many years have elapsed). What he remembers about it, mainly, is that he felt dizzy and sick as soon as he stepped into the warm front room, and though he'd never been there before everything seemed for a moment strangely familiar--and then disturbingly strange, when nothing matched up to the way it ought to be, though Frank could not say how he'd come by such definite ideas about brothels.

He'd been brought to have a man made of him, his arse still a little sore and one hip still bruised from two nights before when they were still at sea. At last one of the whores took some sort of pity on him and led him away from his friends. She had a bed, a real one--narrow and not clean, but not a hammock, which was a novelty for Frank. He let her believe him very drunk, begged her not to tell his friends, and she laughed a bit and let him curl up on her mattress and sleep a little; when he woke she tugged his trousers down and spit into the palm of her hand, brought him off promptly and sent him back downstairs with a wink.

She was near his own age, Frank thought, apropos of nothing. Scarcely old enough to be anyone's mother at all.

***

Frank doesn't have words, in any language he speaks, for Gerard--what he is, what he means. He has no language for the way he feels when he wakes and Gerard is sitting there, for the way he feels when Gerard walks into the room, what it means when Gerard walks beside him, matching his stride to Frank's shaky legs.

He has a memory, though.

It was his second year as a powder monkey, still aboard his first ship, the Nora Jane. Winter, December--Christmas Eve, in fact, and though Frank's English was not yet as good as it would be, it was good enough. The day would have meant no more to him if someone had bothered to wish him Buon Natale instead of Happy Christmas. He'd contrived that day to make two of the other monkeys angry with him, so though they'd all huddled together into one hammock to keep warm, it was the two of them at one end and him at the other. He was warmed enough by their nearness to keep from freezing, but not enough to keep from shivering--and with three in the hammock their position was precarious. Any too-great shove by one would send all three tumbling into the cold again.

Frank scarcely slept all night, and when the bells finally summoned them to breakfast he was first up the ladder, grateful for the movement, the rising of the sun. He'd get warm again one way or another, and it was another day. Chrissmuss day, as all the men kept repeating.

But the monkeys were all stopped short of their breakfast, summoned to the captain's cabin by his particular orders. Frank glanced back at the other two, and their squabble was forgotten in their mutual dread. They'd never been summoned to the captain's cabin before.

The first thing Frank was aware of, stepping inside, was warmth, and he thought he could endure anything else for that; the cabin was bright and cozy, and his hands and feet tingled in the sudden luxurious heat. There was a strange smell in the air, too, sweet and rich and magical. Frank stared wide-eyed up at the godlike figure of the captain in his own private domain, hardly aware of the other boys beside him.

The captain laughed. "There you are, lads! Happy Christmas! Here, a drink for breakfast." And he--with his own hands, his own hands--gave each of them a mug to drink from. Frank expected grog, but the mug was warm in his hands, driving heat into his fingers, and the sweet unfamiliar smell rose from the opaque liquid inside.

"Go on!" the captain boomed cheerfully. His cheeks were rosy; Frank thought he might have begun drinking early today. "Happy Christmas!"

Frank obediently raised the mug to his lips and tipped it up, and that was his first taste of chocolate. Sweet and strange and indescribably fine on his tongue, warm in his belly. He drank it slowly, to make it last, and though there was a bitter bite at the end of the cup, he would never forget the first touch of it to his tongue, so unexpectedly fine it made his eyes prickle hot, like his skin had done in the first shock of the cabin's warmth.

That is Gerard, to Frank: kindness unimaginable, sweetness indescribable, that first shocking instant of perfection prolonged across weeks.

He is still waiting for the bitter taste of the dregs (the Christmas after that Frank ate with the men, unremarked, unremarkable except for the tiny foolish hope of another Christmas miracle, hope which froze and died and hurt so badly as it did that he nearly, nearly wished it had never happened at all) but no matter how slowly he sips, his belly is warmed, and Frank stores up the warmth and the memory of all Gerard has given him. He'll face the storm again when he must, but for this moment he is sheltered, blessed.

***

Being in love with Frank is not like being in love with anyone else; for all the practice Gerard has had at it, he feels like a bewildered schoolboy all over again every time he thinks of his feelings for Frank. He writes poems about Frank which are uniformly mad, or terrible, or mad and terrible at once. He cannot show them to anyone, but keeps them locked away, as precious as they are painful; every fortnight or so, wine-sodden and melancholy, he burns a handful of them, and the next morning finds him frantically trying to recreate them while his head pounds, his fingers still pink with scorching.

The poems are all too transparently about Frank, and Frank cannot be compared to any normal poetical things--he isn't like any kind of plant at all, flower nor nettle, nor any beautiful weather--nor like stormy weather either, with his sweet quick smile.

Gerard digs up all his old poetry about his assorted past loves; there's plenty, as none of it has ever been worth burning except from boredom, or embarrassment at his early efforts. He tries to remember how he used to write poetry about them. None of it makes sense anymore--he wrote half the poems as if his love were a woman, and yet he remembers that they felt true, at the time. He cannot imagine carrying out such subterfuge with Frank, whose maleness is so essential to everything he is, everything Gerard loves.

Even in those poems where he wrote of his love for a boy as such, all the boys run together, and the names he never dared to record in ink no longer spring to mind. He cannot see how he will ever forget Frank, or confuse him with anyone else, named or unnamed. He knows Frank as he never knew any boy he loved, even the Classics scholar of second year. His love for Frank is a specific thing, unpoetic and particular--and yet he cannot stop attempting to fit it into lines.

He has some small measure of success comparing Frank to a particular clear, powerful liquor which he first encountered on the continent under the innocuous name of vodka--which after all meant water, but clearly referred only to appearances. Frank, after all, seems only like a man of the water on his spectacularly scarred and tattooed surface, and yet there is more underneath--not something different underneath, not a hidden center that is not true to his appearance, any more than the transparent drink conceals its truly intoxicating nature. It's only that it can't be appreciated at a glance, but has to be drunk down in one fiery gulp to be understood. He's drunk it since, not infrequently, at house parties held by McCracken, the only man who saves Gerard from being the most notorious bachelor on the island--for while Gerard is certainly eccentric, he is most notable for keeping to himself, and his eccentricities are largely speculated (and not even that, in the earshot of his grandmother or the formidable matrons who are her intimates).

McCracken holds parties. And he employs a man--something between a servant and an artist in residence--to procure, and in certain cases to produce, his stock of potables. Bryar calls the clear liquor, which he distills himself to specifications he and McCracken have devised, goryashchee vino: burning wine. Gerard finds this much truer to its nature, to Frank's nature. He thinks often of the stylized black flame--not unlike artistic representations of the Pentecost, the gift of tongues--tattooed above Frank's heart.

He does not go to many of McCracken's parties after Frank comes into the house, preoccupied as he is. When he does go, however, he finds it necessary to drink a great deal of the burning wine, searching for understanding or distraction. Night after night, he finds neither.

***

Frank is accustomed to waking and finding Gerard somewhere nearby, and he opens his eyes even as his heart leaps. He jerks backward in the next second, because Gerard is leaning over him, Gerard's hand is on his bare shoulder, Gerard's face an inch from his, and Gerard is stinking drunk.

Then Frank forces himself to be still, go limp, let whatever will happen happen. At the same time his heart is racing, something wordless pounding in his veins. A moment he didn't know he was waiting for has arrived, and he is more than ready to face it.

But Gerard sits up suddenly, swaying, and Frank has to sit up as well and catch him before he tumbles off the bed. Gerard gives him a sweet smile, and Frank remembers that Gerard left before supper for McCracken's with Pelissier and Michael. This is just another of Gerard's late-night visits to Frank's room, coming home after a party and checking on him--but never on the bed before, never his hand on Frank's skin that way, his face so close. Frank is acutely conscious of his own hand on Gerard's side. He should let go, but Gerard is leaning into his grip. He'll fall if Frank lets go.

"Gerard?"

"I was speaking to Bryar tonight," Gerard murmurs, frowning a little. He is not meeting Frank's eyes but staring intently at his chest, as though he can see the wild pounding of Frank's heart. He even reaches out, and Frank flinches a little, because the moment has not come, of course not, of course Gerard would not, Gerard is not that kind, this is not the sea--and he cannot let Gerard know what he imagined in that first moment. What he imagined and was ready for.

Gerard frowns harder, flicking a glance at Frank's face, and then touches just the tip of his finger to Frank's chest, just above his heart. Frank grits his teeth, trying not to shudder at the touch, not to push into it or pull away, and then Gerard's fingertip traces a line, light and careful. Frank finally recognizes what he's doing, tracing the curve of the flame tattooed there. Frank lets himself laugh a little, then, and pulls away as though it tickles. Gerard's face breaks into a sudden grin, and he leans closer to Frank again, steadying himself. Frank doesn't drop his hand, just in case.

"I spoke to Bryar," he repeats. "He says you can make it from anything. It could come from anywhere, it scarcely matters where it comes from--I mean, of course it matters, what it is to begin with, where it starts from, but--it goes through so much, so much fire, it is distilled and purified until it is perfect, you see--until it is perfectly what it is, nothing else. With fire, tried by fire, whether it starts as rye or molasses or--or potatoes or anything, from anywhere. And then, and then the water, the water is what makes the difference, and you can add honey or add capsicum, make it sweet or bitter or anything, it can be anything at all but always the burn of it, do you see? And it's always strong--Frankie, it's always strong, whatever else it is."

Gerard's hand flattens over Frank's tattoo, and Frank knows Gerard must be talking about something he drank tonight--Bryar is something at McCracken's house, something to do with the drinks, that’s what he does, how he earns his keep. But Frank has no idea what Gerard is talking about, or why he's talking so intently about it, as though it were something that mattered. Other times, when he's come back from McCracken's parties, he's told Frank stories of the people there, the wild men and scandalous women. He's always been drunk, but always slumping in a chair, his heels resting on the bed beside Frank, his voice low and broken with laughter, his eyelids drooping. He's never been like this, leaning close and still frowning a little, forehead wrinkling.

Frank shifts uncomfortably, uncertain, and something strange passes over Gerard's face, and then he's pressing against Frank's chest. "You should be resting," he murmurs, dropping his gaze. "You should--I shouldn't have woken you, I'm sorry, I don't--"

Frank lets himself be pushed back, lets his back rest against the linen where there's no chance Gerard will see it again. Frank still feels a little queasy when he remembers the way Gerard flinched from him. He does have to rest, he's still not--not strong, and Gerard has been pronouncing that word with peculiar emphasis. Frank can't help feeling his own lack. Still, Gerard's hand hasn't left him, and Gerard looks upset with himself for some reason, still not meeting Frank's gaze. Frank just wants to close his eyes, open them again and see Gerard beside him, amiably drunk and talkative in the middle of the night, in this room that is a place apart from everywhere else in the world.

"Tell me," Frank whispers, closing his eyes against his own audacity, to ask for anything. "Tell me about the party."

Gerard is still and silent for a moment, and Frank waits for Gerard's inexplicable displeasure to spill over onto him, but then Gerard's hand pats against his skin and withdraws as Gerard says in a lighter voice, "There was this woman there, in this dress, you should have seen her..."

Frank opens his eyes to see Gerard sitting beside his feet, knees drawn up to his chest with his arms looped around his legs, looking like any little boy sitting up late. Gerard keeps talking and Frank lets his eyes slip shut. He's not strong. He has to rest.

***

Gerard resists letting on about his feelings for Frank for a good long while. It's only a matter of several weeks, by the calendar, but they are weeks in close quarters, weeks spent at Frank's bedside or in company with him, drinking with him and sharing the Chimerical Romantics with him as he gets well.

Frank seems to take him at his word about the Romantics being a serious endeavor, not a mere boys' lark, however much of their time is spent in aimless pursuits. Frank joins with Gerard and Toro in many of their more serious discussions about project they might undertake, and though Frank has scarcely been two months on the island, he seems to have more ideas than all the rest of them put together about what troubles they might be able to remedy, and how. The projects sound a bit more tedious and difficult than roaming the streets of Mt. Helier at night, looking for mischief to intervene in, but Frank's ideas are serious, and real, and Gerard adores all of them and can scarcely choose among them.

In the meantime, Gerard begins teaching Frank to ride, or at least to not be petrified in the presence of horses, which will be essential to Frank's actually accompanying them on any of their wild rides (they may not be productive, but they are undeniably fun). Having Frank ride double behind him is a perfectly sensible first step. Gerard certainly, in the mists of earliest memory, had his first experiences astride a horse on those magical instances when he'd been pulled up into the saddle with his father.

Frank is just a babe in arms when it comes to horses--he does not even remember his first time riding with Gerard, on the way from the town to the house. Before then he had only seen horses tied up at hitching posts, or threatening to run down those afoot in the streets. It makes perfect sense to take him riding pillion to help accustom him to horses, and they are neither of them such strapping fellows as to overburden Gerard's mount unduly on a short, sedate ride.

Gerard takes them out into the estate a little way, keeping up an easy stream of chatter about the trees and land around them so that he will not let himself become too distracted by Frank's arms wrapped securely about his middle, and Frank's breath on the back of his neck. In a sheltered spot, Gerard stops and helps Frank practice mounting and dismounting, safely away from the eyes of skeptical grooms and servants and Romantics and Gerard's grandmother and Lord knew who else might contrive to happen by.

It isn't that Gerard hasn't thought about making some advance to Frank. He's thought about it. He's thought about a great deal more than that, most of it very wildly improbable.

He's even decided upon the most likely result of letting Frank know how he feels: he would make an advance, and Frank would leave. Gerard would nurse a broken heart for months, perhaps years, perhaps his blackest melancholy yet (perhaps his last, some little voice whispers, the thread of darkness that always lingers, the unspeakable danger he always courts just a little--the last fall, the lingering death, the place to rest in the churchyard). There would be beauty in this suffering, because it would prove that his love for Frank has not been some perverse, random attachment to an utterly unsuitable object. It would prove that his love for Frank is real as no requital has ever proven any past love of his, and Gerard, almost more than he desires Frank himself, craves the knowledge that what he feels is real.

There is, in fact, an even more deliciously agonizing scenario, one Gerard has contemplated in loving detail: Frank, having joined the Chimerical Romantics in their quest, having adopted it as his own and being devoted to it, would feel some obligation to stay. He would reject Gerard's advance--perhaps a little fearfully as well as angrily, defying Gerard's inherent authority over him with some trepidation--and he would beg Gerard never to repeat his unspeakable action.

Gerard would, on his honor, swear never to importune Frank again--for it is (as Gerard is periodically reminded, on the odd Sunday when he and Michael and Pelissier think to attend services) a terrible, unnatural thing that Gerard feels (though one approved by any number of Greeks and Latins, so Gerard cannot feel too terribly badly about it; Hell is just another artistic image, another opportunity for exquisite suffering).

So Gerard would swear never to trouble Frank again, and Frank would be wary of him at first--but Gerard will faithfully conceal all he feels, only writing about Frank in secret, burning the pages each night so there can be no danger of Frank discovering him. And Frank will stay, and work with them, and help to make Gerard's nebulous dreams into wonderfully tangible realities, to help people, to matter. All the while Gerard will be tormented with Frank's nearness and the impossibility of requital--and yet Gerard will be happy, because Frank will be a part of his world, safe and happy and occupied. And that will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Gerard truly loves Frank, and his suffering and joy will be mingled like the intoxicating fire of burning wine.

So the kiss Gerard presses to Frank's mouth is not precisely unconsidered, and yet at the same time it is wholly impulsive; Frank looks so pleased, so beautiful, the first time he succeeds in dismounting properly, and he laughs in that infectious way of his. Gerard's hand is already on his arm, steadying him. In that instant Gerard does not think this out at all, does not plan it, has not prefaced it with all the many, many words he imagined would be required. He leans in and kisses Frank with his eyes closed.

And when Frank does not back away or strike him or cry out, Gerard kisses him again. When Frank's lips part under his, Gerard dares to kiss him once more, his heart thundering and his cock stirring and his tongue pressing inside. Then the horse shies a bit and Frank pulls away, and Gerard is breathing a little hard.

Frank is, unfathomably, still smiling, and, yet more unfathomably, he says, "Yes, all right," as though Gerard had asked him some specific and answerable question with the kiss.

Then Frank glances around and says, "Now? Here?"

Gerard shakes his head faintly, dazed, having no idea what Frank might mean by that--unless he means more kisses now and here, which Gerard thinks might be good--except that Frank pulled back from the kiss, and is not returning to Gerard's embrace. That also would have entailed stepping closer to the horse again, however, and Gerard can understand that being a deterrent.

But then there is the sound of hoofbeats, and Michael appears, sitting his horse with his usual lazily perfect posture. Frank smiles and leans closer to Gerard, gripping the saddle as though to swing up, and murmurs, "Later, then."

Gerard flushes all over, nodding dumbly, hoping Michael will not expect him to make any kind of coherent conversation. Though he still has no idea what later might consist of, Frank does not seem to be running away, nor to be demanding Gerard never speak to him of this again, and beyond that, Gerard can scarcely think.

***

Part Three