Feast of Sparks

by Sierra Simone

  Those black briefs.

  St. Sebastian didn’t know why it felt so unspeakably sophisticated, so very adult, to have black briefs instead of the cheap gingham boxers he owned, but it did, and he felt a little intimidated as Auden began striding toward the pool. He was almost too intimidated to notice the flat lines of Auden’s abdomen or the thin stripe of hair leading into his briefs. Almost too polite not to trace the perfect curve of Auden’s arse—

  Almost.

  He was only human after all, and sixteen, and the water was not cold enough to stop his body’s continued response as Auden submerged himself and then floated up on his back, sunning his firm chest and stomach like an otter.

  The water was punishingly clear. Clear enough for St. Sebastian to count the ripples as they moved over Auden’s skin. He looked away in the pretense of wiping smudged eyeliner from under his eyes, but of course Auden swam back into view.

  “So,” the Thornchapel heir said pleasantly, as if it had been the plan all along for them to swim together today, “why haven’t you come to visit?”

  St. Sebastian was dipping his mouth half under the surface, and so he sputtered when he answered. “Fuck off.”

  Auden tutted, closing his eyes against the sun above as he floated. “So rude.”

  “I could ask why you haven’t been to visit me, after all—”

  “Well, I have been to visit,” Auden murmured, eyes still closed. “Even had tea with your mum. Twice. But you were out both times, and she wouldn’t give me your phone number. She’s very protective of your privacy.”

  St. Sebastian froze—sank a little—and then started treading water again. “You went to my house?”

  “It seemed a logical place to start if I wanted to find you.”

  “I don’t—I don’t understand.”

  This finally cracked open Auden’s imperviousness and St. Sebastian found himself fixed with an exasperated expression. “Why is this so hard? I went to your house for the same reason I invited you to visit—I want to see you. I’m tired of this thing that happens every time I come out here; I’m tired of us pretending we don’t know each other.”

  “But we don’t know each other,” St. Sebastian pointed out. “It’s been years.”

  “Then how about we learn?” Auden said, flipping over so quickly that he barely made a splash, and then swimming over to St. Sebastian.

  “Um,” St. Sebastian said, still treading water and looking apprehensively at the boy in front of him, who was staring at him with a serious, imperial stare.

  “Not here,” Auden decided, and then took St. Sebastian’s hand in his own and towed him to the far bank.

  “Um!” St. Sebastian protested, by no means able to get out of the water yet without exposing what Auden’s black-briefed presence did to him, and he managed to wrench himself free just in time, right as his knees bottomed out on the river floor.

  Auden looked back and sighed at St. Sebastian’s reluctance, but stopped moving, turning over and sitting down right where he was. The river was shallow enough here that as Auden drew up a knee and draped a wrist over it, St. Sebastian could see where the bare skin of his knee ended and the brown hair of his thigh started. Where it thinned out into the smooth skin that led up to his groin.

  St. Sebastian sat a little deeper in. He did not allow himself to look at Auden’s thigh again.

  “Okay,” Auden said. “Let’s learn about each other, and then you can stop hiding from me.”

  “I’m not hiding,” St. Sebastian said.

  Auden raised an eyebrow at this, making a point to look at how St. Sebastian had submerged himself up to his ears in the water, and St. Sebastian amended, “It’s not hiding if I don’t care about being found.”

  “Don’t you?” Auden asked curiously.

  And St. Sebastian didn’t know how to answer that, because he did care about being found, and yet being found was also a feeling so good he wouldn’t give it up for the world.

  “Right,” Auden said. “Now, how has your summer been going?”

  “What?”

  “We are,” Auden explained patiently, “learning about each other. This is how it works: I ask, you answer. Then you ask something about me, and I answer.”

  “I know how a conversation works,” St. Sebastian said.

  Auden, as usual, barely reacted to St. Sebastian’s irritation. “Good then. How is your summer?”

  “Fine,” St. Sebastian grated out.

  And when St. Sebastian didn’t offer the question in return, Auden pretended he had. “Mine was awful until we came here and I saw you.”

  There was no amount of river water that could soothe the sharp, giddy knot in St. Sebastian’s chest at that answer. He didn’t know what to say, how to feel, he only knew that Auden’s brand of arrogant honesty sliced neatly through every layer of sarcasm or mischief or indifference he put between himself and the world. He wanted to hate Auden for that, and maybe he did a little, but when he met Auden’s eyes over the water, he saw that the watch-wearing prince wasn’t as composed as his voice made him sound. Vulnerability lurked in those hazel eyes—all the more apparent when Auden was the first to break their gaze and look down the stream—and when he did, St. Sebastian could see the pulse thrumming hard in Auden’s throat. He could see the careful flex and close of Auden’s fist, slow enough to pass for casual, but deliberate enough to bely the truth; he could see, rising like a designer-label island between his thighs, proof that Auden noticed St. Sebastian’s body as much as St. Sebastian noticed his.

  Auden was horny and nervous and uncertain—and one was only uncertain about things one wanted.

  Auden Guest wanted St. Sebastian—and that giddy knot inside St. Sebastian’s chest pulled even tighter, pulling tight enough that it cut through everything else like floss.

  “My summer got better too,” St. Sebastian said hoarsely. “After I saw you.”

  St. Sebastian’s small surrender had a huge effect. Auden’s whole body seemed to slacken with relief and then tense with renewed purpose—only his erection remained as it was, covered in wet fabric, the water parting around it, and St. Sebastian was not proud of how intently he was studying the Isle of Erection when Auden turned his head back to him.

  If Auden noticed, he didn’t say anything. But he did part his thighs ever so slightly more, as if to say go ahead, look. As if to say, I’ll indulge you in this.

  Under the water, St. Sebastian shuddered.

  “How were your exams?” Auden asked, his voice quiet now too, as if he realized that they’d started on a new path now, a path that could take them much further than bickering ever could, and he didn’t want to jeopardize a single step of it.

  St. Sebastian felt the same way. “They went well,” he said cautiously. He didn’t know how to talk about his grades, because he found that people simply did not expect him to earn the grades that he did—and when they learned he was at the top of his class, or that he’d scooped up enough A*s to make even the strictest parent beam with pride, they usually couldn’t hide their disbelief. To his family back in Dallas, it was a given that Jennifer’s boy should be smart and special, and if he sometimes got into scrapes, that was normal and right, because what boy didn’t? It was nothing a few good meals and a girlfriend couldn’t cure, at least according to his abuela.

  But to the people of Thorncombe, every fuckup of St. Sebastian’s was an indictment, a reminder that he didn’t belong and neither did his cheerful, friendly, tired mother, who tried and tried and tried to fit in, and who was rebuffed all the harder for it.

  So then for the poor, sullen boy to also get the best marks—

  Well, no one liked it. Not even St. Sebastian, because any perverse pleasure he might have taken in it was drowned out by the oblique, subtle little cruelties that then came his mother’s way because of his success. That was Thorncombe for you—if you behaved as they expected you to, you were reviled, and if you somehow exonerated yourself of their stupid stereotypes, you were res

ented.

  Winning was never something St. Sebastian could hope for. Not here.

  But Auden wasn’t Thorncombe. He tilted his head and waited for St. Sebastian to say exactly how well he’d done and in what subjects, and then when St. Sebastian told him, with a nonchalance that sounded fake even to his own ears, Auden gave him a devastating grin. A grin that hitched ever so slightly on one side of his upper lip, a grin that St. Sebastian had to look away from or he didn’t even know what. Just that something would happen, something would crack open in him and there’d be no putting it back together.

  “Well done, you,” Auden said, and there was nothing surprised or condescending in it, just a genuine compliment, and St. Sebastian flushed. He flushed everywhere. He could fight off Auden’s arrogance and hauteur, but he couldn’t fight off his respect, and he didn’t know what else he’d give up if he stayed here right now. He’d already given up his pride, his silence, and his solitude—he couldn’t give up anything else today. He wouldn’t.

  “I should go,” he said, standing up in the water, hoping his boxers would hide the worst of things.

  He was wrong.

  The boxers were thin, so very thin, and now sodden with river water, and so they rode dangerously low on St. Sebastian’s hips at the same time that they clung embarrassingly everywhere else. And now his wet, gingham erection was eye-level with Auden, and there was nothing to be done about it, those hazel eyes were already seeing, already searing, that oh-so-beautifully imperfect mouth was already parting in surprise and realization.

  The secret was out. Auden could now surmise what only Jennifer Martinez and Jared Kress knew for sure about him.

  But St. Sebastian had underestimated Auden’s reserve yet again, because Auden didn’t look away in defensive discomfort, he didn’t tease or say anything cruel. Instead he stood up and put his hand on St. Sebastian’s water-dotted shoulder.

  It wasn’t a brotherly clap, it wasn’t even a friendly reassurance. Auden’s grip was firm, demanding; the points of his fingertips dug into St. Sebastian’s lean muscles, and his eyes burned into St. Sebastian’s.

  “Come back to Thornchapel with me,” Auden said. “Have dinner.”

  “I can’t,” St. Sebastian answered. It was the truth, even if he didn’t know why it was the truth. He just knew he couldn’t, he couldn’t bear to, not yet.

  Auden frowned. “Then I want to see you tomorrow.”

  St. Sebastian swallowed. Agreeing would expose something much more personal than his hard-on, and what if it was some kind of trick? What if St. Sebastian said yes and then Auden went home and laughed and laughed because the poor kid really thought Auden wanted to spend time with him?

  Then Auden’s eyes dipped to St. Sebastian’s mouth, and with his other hand, he reached up and traced the bowed curve of St. Sebastian’s bottom lip. “I couldn’t draw a better lip,” Auden said, so quietly it was almost to himself. “Not even if I tried.” And then his finger stopped right in the middle, testing the firm crescent with an ownership that did nothing to help St. Sebastian’s erection. “And I’ve tried so many times.”

  This confession was too much. St. Sebastian couldn’t hold onto his dignity any longer. “You’ve tried drawing me? Since Sunday?”

  Auden looked back to St. Sebastian’s eyes, looking a little shy. “For a long time, St. Sebastian. I’ve been trying to draw you for a very long time.”

  “But we haven’t—I mean, you haven’t seen me in so long—”

  Auden smiled then, a smile St. Sebastian would never forget for as long as he lived.

  “I told you before,” Auden said softly. “I always see you.”

  Chapter 9

  Proserpina

  Present Day

  * * *

  I wake to rain.

  I wake without either of the two men I fell asleep with, but plus a big, sleepy dog curled against me. I wake with my back stinging, cunt sore, eyes swollen; I wake with a mind jumbled with fragments of dreams that feel unlike any dreams I’ve ever had before, and yet it’s the rain I wake to above all else.

  A silver cerement to wrap up the world, sheets and veils of cloistering, pattering wet. As if Thornchapel is sealed off from the rest of space and time. As if the six of us are alone with the house’s secrets and sins.

  If only it could stay that way, I think. If only the six of us were the entire world.

  The next thing I notice is the strange lightness in my body—or maybe it’s a heaviness? The kind of heavy you feel when you’re pushing through cool, clean water. Or it’s the kind of light you feel when you take off a pair of roller skates and your feet feel like they’re going to float right off the ground, but instead of my feet, it’s all over my body.

  I feel . . . tilled. Like soil. Loose and turned up. Broken, but not withered or stale.

  New?

  Is this feeling newness?

  Or just numbness?

  I fall back asleep, Sir James having woken not at all, and when I wake up for the final time, the day has lightened from dark iron to dove-gray smoke, and I can make out the yellow blur of police coats moving through the trees. Sir James stretches and yawns and finally oozes off the bed with a dozy plop and then sits down by the door while I do the same.

  But I don’t get ready just yet, because getting ready means facing the day. I stand by the window for a long time, just watching the rain-coated officers bobbing to and fro, nothing more than fluorescent daubs in the rain, like a strange Impressionist painting brought to life. Then I look around Auden’s room to see where someone’s set out a painkiller and a glass of water. A neatly folded shirt is there, along with a pair of my own pajama pants that I sewed out of an old Care Bears sheet.

  The shirt is Auden’s—a soft, loose T-shirt that smells like him. Like Thornchapel, like wet trees and crushed flowers. With a singe of peppery orange at the end like the merry bite of winter.

  I bury my face in it for several long inhales, wishing it were him. Wishing I’d woken up in his arms, wishing I’d woken up to anything but the rain and the bleeding, tilting reminder that my mother is dead and her bones are in the thorn chapel and that today I have to talk to my father. Today, I’ll have to start a new life as a new Proserpina. One who’s motherless, one who knows that not everything is possible.

  At that thought, I press my hands on Auden’s plush bed and duck my head, tears stinging, and the ache in my back and thighs and belly is enough to push the tears all the way out. The pain is permission, lingering all the way from last night, hugging me, holding me. It’s as if Auden and Rebecca and Saint are still here, their arms still wrapped tight around my body. The memory of them made manifest with marks and welts and bruises, and that memory whispers you are loved, you are cared for.

  The memory whispers, you can cry and we will be here to kiss your tears away.

  Pain is love today.

  Which fits, since today is the day after I’ve seen my mother’s bones, and that means today love is pain.

  The tilled feeling returns, like I’ve become loose and loamy and quiet, but there’s something else with it now. I don’t have the words for it, I can’t even imagine what one calls it when they’re cut down to the bone and knows they can’t be cut any deeper.

  I cry for a long time, and when I finish, I skip the painkiller because I’m not ready to be without it, both the memory of my friends’ love and the counter-pressure it applies to the pain inside me. But I do go to find the source of the woody, floral smell I’m currently wrapped in. I do go to find St. Sebastian’s shuttered brown eyes that unshutter only for me.

  And as if he’s appointed himself my protector in his owner’s absence, Sir James Frazer follows me down the stairs and across the hall to the library, claws clicking on the flags as he goes.

  Normally I’d be embarrassed to be waking up so late, but it’s as if the day has been smashed open like a clock, and there’s nothing but glass and springs and cogs everywhere, and time is meaningless. Because when I get to the library, everyone but Rebecca and Saint are still in pajamas, and there’s still the scattered remains of a breakfast on the low table between the old sofas, but there’s also a bottle of scotch, a mostly empty bottle of gin, and a bowl full of lime wedges.

  Rebecca—hair coiled in a tight basket on top of her head and draped in a high-necked silk blouse—is typing on a laptop at one of the long library tables, the only one working it seems. Delphine is sprawled on a sofa in a Cambridge sweatshirt and shorts, legs dangling listlessly over the sofa arm, one fuzzy-slippered foot bobbing arrhythmically in the air. Becket is wearing what seem to be borrowed pajamas—drawstring pants and a v-neck cotton shirt that showcase the strong, elegant line of his collarbone—and he’s currently paging through a thick tome that I think is a Bible, but I can’t be sure.

  Saint’s in borrowed clothes too, and they’re certainly Auden’s—the trousers pull tight around St. Sebastian’s muscled ass and thighs, but are rolled up once on the bottom like a youth’s, as Saint is a few inches shorter. He’s in one of Auden’s sweaters too, and even with his hair damp and tousled as if he’s just come from a shower, and even with his bare feet and silver barbell studding his lip, in these clothes he looks like a spoiled prince as much as Auden. He’s wandering around the shelves like a restless ghost, fingertips brushing along the spines of the books, his mouth pulled into its customary pretty sulk.

  And Auden is in his favorite place, leaning with one hand braced on the mantel, staring into the fire, which cracks and pops as if it’s ten in the evening and not barely afternoon. A half-drunk glass of whisky is on the mantel next to his hand, and he’s also in a pair of linen drawstring pants and a long-sleeved v-neck shirt—both draping and pulling over the curves and flats of his long, tight body. He’s wearing his glasses, and his feet are bare, so distractingly bare, and I never got to kiss them last night. Somehow the idea of cuddling them, rubbing my cheeks against the hair-dusted tops, is magnetic. Soothing. I want to bathe his feet with my tears, blanket them with kisses, just like the sinful woman in the Gospels did for Jesus.

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