[Introduction] All boundaries are conventions

[waiting4_6smith]

[Spoiler (click to open)]Made it to limbo. Blew my brains out in the bathtub with Ayr's handgun. Only felt the slightest pinch. Much greater pain seeing Sixsmith catching him at the last minute. Worlds of regret, but it's only a matter of waiting

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[alcuin_delaunay]

Alcuin follows the music into the ballroom, enchanted by it. He pauses in the doorway, seeing a young man at the piano: someone he recognizes. Frobisher, though he thought that was only a dream. The dream stayed with him, though, and he'd spent a few days melancholy that it was nothing but a dream. The music is beautiful and he doesn't want to interrupt.

Smiling happily, he returns to the kitchen and prepares a tray with a pot of English tea, some watercress sandwiches, and a couple of little creme brulees with fresh raspberries that he just finished making. He brings it to the ballroom, setting it down on a small table at the edge of Frobisher's sight as an offering, and then curls up on a sofa on the edge of the ballroom, admiring the music and waiting to be noticed.

[alcuin_delaunay]

Alcuin listens reverently as he plays, impressed by the composition and by Frobisher's skill at rendering it. "It's exquisite," he says, when the piece is done and the last few notes have faded. He gazes down at Frobisher's hands on the keys without really seeing them, his mind still entranced by the music. "I understand what you mean now, about his dissonance. I did not know it could be beautiful, like that."

Frobisher compared the melody to Alcuin's lips, and the metaphor is apt. Alcuin so often has an edge of sadness to his smile, remembering all the people lost and dead, and all the emotional pain of his two lives, but the smile is no less beautiful for its sadness.

[waiting4_6smith]

Shifted a hand to place it over his - any excuse is good to touch him. "Noise is music if you know how to listen."

A murmured secret. Told Sixsmith, too - so why not him? So very taken with Alcuin. Even his name is music.

"Here, let me show you."

Guided his fingers on the keys, gently - like a lover's on his body. Took his sweet time doing it - everything he does with Alcuin is a blessing.

[alcuin_delaunay]

Alcuin's eyes widen--afraid that he'll do it wrong, that he'll fail and disappoint Frobisher--but his obedience runs deep, and the hesitation only shows in his expression, not his hand. He does want to learn, to understand this part of Frobisher's world, and why he loves it so very much. His hands are soft and elegant, like every part of him, and he smiles at the feeling of Frobisher's hand on his own. He follows Frobisher's lead on his hands as though it is a dance, and Alcuin is quick to pick up the cues.

[waiting4_6smith]

Fairly simple chords. A few measures of , the Atlas March. Playing very slowly, an excuse for contact.

Going along with the other hand, and might pause half-way through the piece, just looking at Alcuin, a high-pitched F still floating on the wings of the piano's vibrations.

Not a word. Suspension.

Meeting, over and over, in different circumstances.

A feeling of truth, almost disturbing.

[alcuin_delaunay]

Pleased with the music occurring beneath his hands, even if not by his own power, Alcuin looks up at the pause, meeting Frobisher's eyes with a smile and leaning up to steal a kiss. He's content with their little romance, happily infatuated and reveling in Frobisher's sweetness toward him.

[waiting4_6smith]

Comes too easy, as if they were never apart. One soul to another, across the world.

Too early for Bertand Russell. Frobisher hasn't read a word of him. Still, his words come to the composer's lips, easy and awed.

"My consciousness is no longer shivering."

[alcuin_delaunay]

"I'm glad." Alcuin smiles, reaching up to cup Frobisher's cheek. It means the world to him that he's been able to offer Frobisher some measure of comfort. "You're home now."

Flustering after a moment, shy and sheepish from the raw emotion, he giggles and shakes his head. "I should actually show you around. You'll be needing a room of your own."

[waiting4_6smith]

"And here I was, hoping to rest at the foot of your bed like a good watchdog." Soft quip, like the nip to his lips.

Good idea, though - and probably should make it not too close - thought of sharing him isn't pleasurable, and there is inelegance in indiscretion.

Decides not to ask. Not now.

Maybe not ever.

[alcuin_delaunay]

"I'd rather have you in my bed," Alcuin replies, soft and low, keeping his lips near Frobisher's after the nip. "But I won't have you scattering pages of music and ink stains around my room." The reprimand is playfully teasing, although it's also true. They'd both be miserable without a room of their own.

"Come on. We'll find you a room, and then I'll show you mine." He chooses the order intentionally, suspecting that he's not going to get Frobisher back out of his room very quickly once they're in it.

[waiting4_6smith]

His nearness is intoxicating. Absolutely aware of every single living cell in his body. If he can help it, Frobisher might keep Alcuin for a while.

Wants to mutter something to the effect that he can do without. Throat as dry as Carcassonne in summer. Hands moist like London summer. You’d think his heart was St-Pancras station at rush hour. Too much desire to breathe properly, and hands are just wanting to be all over him.

Forget the fecking piano.

Don’t forget fucking, though. Couldn’t if he tried.

“Go on, then.”

[alcuin_delaunay]

"Eat something first, will you?" Alcuin presses, sweetly stern. Frobisher's assertion that he hasn't felt hunger in ages worries him, along with the sense he gets that Frobisher isn't sure he isn't still in limbo. However they both got here, Alcuin is certain that they're both real and alive now, for as long as they're in the mansion, and that means that Frobisher needs to eat. Besides, he also just has a compulsion to feed people and fuss over them. "I'll worry about you if you don't."

[waiting4_6smith]

Too sweet for his own good - and all Frobisher can think about is how disheartening the thought of eating is, when he could feast on his lover.

(His lover? A new and intriguing notion - but was he not told in Limbo that there are no penalties for buggery, in some places?)

"You need never worry about me." An arm around him, as if to shield his mind. "I am done making a fop of myself."

Another kiss, another kiss.

As if eternity had built everything up to here, and now, and this.

[alcuin_delaunay]

"All right!" Alcuin giggles, surrendering between kisses. "You are terrible," he scolds, fondly. "Very well. A room for you."

Pulling away after one last sweet, lingering kiss, he picks up the plate of sandwiches and tucks the two creme brulees alongside them, because he is stubborn (and because he is proud of how nicely the creme brulees came out, they are so tricky to get perfect, and it would be a tragedy for them to go to waste).

Linking his fingers through Frobisher's, he leads him upstairs, finding a room two hallways over from his own--close enough to find his way in the middle of the night, but far enough to afford them both a degree of privacy. "No name on this one," he says, looking to Frobisher to turn the knob.

[waiting4_6smith]

Note how he balances it all out - the laughter and the lust, the food and the sex, my need for him and his need to see me safe, Frobisher thinks to himself.

Too good to be true, but also: too good to be ignored. Besides, flesh calls to flesh, and his hand is warm.

Carpet on the floor and some chandeliers - you'd think yourself back at Zedelghem, but there's something a little too odd about him. Mary Shelley would have liked it. Not lit enough for Scott and Zelda, though.

A large enough room - the bed has posts. Lines of bookshelves to explore.

Plush carpets, brocade on the bed and satin sheets. All it misses is Alcuin, disheveled and ravished.

“It's perfect.”

[alcuin_delaunay]

Alcuin smiles contentedly, leaning against the wall by the door as he watches Frobisher inspect his new room. "The house has a way of doing that. There's always a room for everyone, usually made up just for you. Sometimes this place is generous."

It has been generous to him lately. A new lover, clever and charming, full of flattery. Alcuin's happy, happier than he remembers being in a long time.