"You recall all of this?"
"Bits and pieces. Dribs and drabs. What the hell are dribs, anyway? Sounds like what's left after frying salmon or something. I remember the mountain cave best. Eating honey and grapes all day. Running in the sunshine. No one bugging me about clothes. Learning all about the vines and how to make wine. Guess we weren't careful enough though, 'cause when I turned thirteen, Stepmom caught up to me."
"Oh dear."
"Yeah. She found me in a grove of olives, and she seemed nice enough. We talked. I couldn't figure out why everyone kept warning me about her. Then she blew this powder or dust or something into my face and wham! Electric Kool-Aid acid-test city. I don't remember tons. Just that the world turned into this giant nightmare of fanged flowers and ultra-bright colors that ran together and exploded, and these horrible, messed-up things in the dark. I think I stopped sleeping. They say I attacked anything that moved. Raving fucking lunatic."
"That sounds perfectly dreadful." Leander's complexion had gone that unhealthy gray again. His hands shook as he straightened his cardigan. "Why would she do such a thing?"
"It sucked pretty bad, yeah. Stepmom had some hellacious anger issues back then. I mean, I kinda see where it came from. Dad had run around on her all those years, and I had the nerve not only to survive but also to be divine. I guess she'd gone a little nuts too. Anyway, Grandma Rhea found me and lifted whatever the spell was, but I was a mess. Went to live with Uncle Hades and Aunt Persephone for a bit, where it was quiet and I couldn't get in any trouble. Much trouble. Uncle Hades, well, he's a very my house, my rules guy—probably the best thing right then—and his kid, Zack, was closer to my age. It was better. I got better."
"But not entirely."
The way Leander said it like it wasn't even a teensy bit of a question bugged him a little but not much. Dio didn't have any illusions about himself. "Yeah, that. I'll never be normal. I don't… see the world like other people. Sometimes my brain darts around like a rabbit on a giant hotplate. I have problems with being, you know, a responsible person." He shrugged. "But I'm good at what I'm good at. And I make it work. Most of the time."
"You've a kind heart," Leander said softly. "And you appreciate the beauty in small things. Both things that many people with straight-thinking brains lack." His hand hovered over Dio's shoulder, settling there like a wary owl. "You blame yourself for her death. Your responsibility, in your eyes. And though you are wrong and should not shoulder blame, it tugs at my heart that you do."
"Does it?" Dio leaned into his touch, warm and dizzy. "I guess that's good. And you owe me lots of questions. That wasn't a fair question game at all."
A sound rumbled in Leander's chest, a miniature earthquake trying not to wake its parents. A laugh. That was a laugh. "I much prefer listening to you talk than me."
Old Fears, New Anxieties
Chapter Nine
How about a choice?" Dio said as they crossed the threshold to Leander's rooms and he plunked down to pull off his boots and socks. "You can either let me get us something together for dinner, or you can let me go say hi to the gardeners, and I'll feed the assistant cuties."
Leander tried to weigh those options, knowing that his divine guest was trying to be helpful. The thought of Dio alone in his kitchen made him shudder, and even the thought of him unsupervised with the gardeners gave him pause.
"You've gotten way better about me being in your space," Dio said with a tired, crooked smile. "But, yeah, if I'm looking for stuff in your kitchen, there's no way I won't make a mess. A Leander-judged mess, anyway. How about this? I'll go see the little mushroom dudes but just to get the bamboo and veggies. No partying with the gardeners. And then maybe me and the pandas can all come back here, and we'll eat together?"
"I… suppose we could." The pandas never ate in the front parlor. But he could put a sheet down for them. It could work. "All right."
He opened the door to the garden, instructing his guest to knock when he returned. The door from the garden to the panda room opened from the inside, though Dio would have to remember to prop it open. Oh, well. If he didn't, one of the assistants could run around to his front door and knock.
The previous evening, Dio had grazed on vegetables from the refrigerator while Leander could only manage an apple. There hadn't been any proper dinner, so tonight he was determined they would have one. But what did one feed a god?
I suppose he doesn't eat much meat, since everything points to him being too fond of animals. Even if he does wear leather. Very puzzling. But this led him to rummaging in his refrigerator for the makings of an elaborate salad with pine nuts and cashews, peppers and oranges. The bowls of salad didn't seem much to offer though, so he added grapes and hummus to the table with some good, chewy bread from his last grocery delivery.
He was just debating whether water would be appreciated when Dio hammered on the garden door to be let in.
A bushel of bamboo stood at the door with pandas perched on what was presumably Dio behind the leaves. "Hi! The cuties are starving, and I'm not doing much better. There were some beautiful strawberries too. Hope you don't mind that I brought some. The little mushroom dudes kinda bullied me into picking them."
Leander stood aside, a soft chuckle creeping out at the thought of the gardeners bullying anyone. Emma and Charlotte raced in to claim spots on the sofa, while Jane trotted across the threshold with more dignity and went directly to the sheet spread in front of the television. She let out an imperious chek, and the rest of the pandas joined her around the edges.
"Ha! Ms. Jane's smarter than me. She's already spotted where I'm supposed to put dinner."
"Not smarter," Leander said as he helped spread out the shoots and leaves. "A different sort of intelligence. Jane understands that the sheet isn't normally here and drew her own conclusions."
"Is she the oldest? I bet she is." Dionysus fished the strawberries out of the bottom of the basket and added them to the plate of grapes. "Are they immortal, too?"
Leander swallowed against a hard obstruction in his throat. Jane was the oldest, and he didn't want her to leave him. "Sadly, no. They do live much longer here than normal pandas, often eighty or ninety years. When a panda dies, Charon comes to collect the body. He brings me back an urn with the ashes, always something beautiful. Then Lady Artemis brings a new cub so there are always seven."
"Huh." Dio turned to the pandas. "You guys like having new cubs?"
Several of the pandas twittered, and Knightley, the youngest, grumbled around his bamboo shoot as Dio's warm, caressing laugh filled the room.
"Yeah, I feel you, Mr. Knightley. Being the youngest kinda sucks." Dio bounded to his rucksack, his head nearly vanishing in its depths before he emerged triumphant with a bottle of wine. "For dinner! Oh, um, do you drink?"
"I have, on occasion. It's been a bit." Leander settled on his end of the sofa as Dio pulled a corkscrew from its protective case and proceeded to open the wine in efficient, practiced movements. "I was the youngest too."
"Were you? How many brothers and sisters?"
"Eight, though my stepfather had children by several mothers, so there were fourteen royal children altogether." Leander accepted the wineglass Dio handed him, the sweet and tart scent tickling his nose. He hadn't spoken of his family in years. But with those dark, inquisitive eyes watching, suddenly it was possible. Dio might have trouble concentrating, but he wouldn't judge or try to explain things away instead of listening.
"Funny. We almost sound like we came from the same family." Dio settled across the table from him on the floor and pulled one of the bowls of salad toward him. "Mmm, this looks yummy. Thank you. Starved. Keep forgetting to eat." He plowed through a few forkfuls before resurfacing. "Did you get to play with the other kids? When you were little?"
"When I was small, the family saw me as a sacred oddity. Child of the Bull of the Sun."
"So your mom really did… I mean, no disrespect to your mom, but she got it on with a bull?"
Leander sipped his wine, trapped between the wild desire to laugh and the sorrow of old memories. "Yes. My mother and stepfather never shared the details. The histories concocted their own version to fill in the gaps. I don't know the whole of it. But she was impregnated by the Bull of the Sun, perhaps thinking she would give birth to a god." He shrugged and took the time to eat a grape, chewing carefully as he considered his words. "I didn't have horns when I was small. I was simply a strange child with some odd physical features. Bull legs, ears, tail. But I grew far more quickly than the other palace children my age. When I was six, my horns began to grow, and the other children became fearful of me. Only Ariadne would still play with me."
Dio looked up from his bowl. "Ari loved you. So much."
"She did. If she and I had… Well, I suppose we were both too young to run away. And where would we have gone? By the time I was eight, my stepfather listened to all the people who were frightened by my size and appearance and he began construction of the Labyrinth. It was… supposed to be a home for me."
"Um, okay?" Dio poured a second glass of wine for himself, and Leander wondered where the first had gone. "How did your parents figure twisty hole in the ground was a home for one of their kids?"
"It wasn't… the original plans…" Leander's hand shook, so he set his own glass down. "It was to have been a garden. With only the central chambers covered for shelter. A place where I would be safe from unfriendly eyes."
"Sort of like here." Dio scooted around the end of the table and rested his head on Leander's knee. "So what happened?"
These small displays of affection continually stumped him, his body unable to decide between shock and delight. He loathed being touched, and yet he longed for it in a bone-deep, aching way.
"One of Ari's maids… she despised me. Perhaps it was fear. I don't know. I was as large as a grown man but still just a child." Leander heaved a long, shuddering breath. He would have nightmares tonight, dredging up old things, opening up old wounds. Though perhaps they had needed lancing for some time. "She and some of the other servants surrounded me in the kitchen garden. Told me I should live in the stables with the other animals. Beat me with switches. I was so frightened, so desperate to get away. I turned my head… too quickly. One of… of the young men stood too close…"
"Oh man. Yikes." Dio sat up, a hand still on Leander's knee. "Did you… you know? And you don't have to tell this part. It's okay if you have to stop."
Leander squeezed his eyes shut. "I did not. Kill him. But he… because of me… He lost an eye. After that, I was no longer permitted to leave my rooms. There were always guards. And the plans… changed."
Dio clambered onto the couch to snuggle against him. "I'm so sorry. Your garden. They turned it into a damn prison, didn't they?"
"Prison. Yes. I… don't think I was ten yet when they locked me in the dark." He couldn't stop the shaking now, even when Dio's arms snaked around his neck, but he couldn't stop telling the story now, not when he had come so far. "The first few days… those first few days… I screamed my throat raw. Pounded the door. No one… no one came. Just the crushing dark. The deathly silence. I began… began to explore. Carefully. Always counting steps. Always returning to the door. When the door finally opened, I rushed to it. Hoping my mother… or Ari… or someone…"
He had to stop as the walls of his throat tightened and his eyes stung. Forcing himself to breathe deeply, he took a few moments to remove his fogged glasses and wipe them clean. With his head bent and his vision blurred, he didn't see Dio reaching for him until his fingers were gently massaging the base of Leander's right horn.
"Oh… ah, hmm. That feels…" Amazing. Astounding. Arousing. Perhaps other a words which escape me at the moment.
"Should I stop?"
"N-no. No. I… oh." Leander set his glasses on the table and leaned his head into the touch, wanting more, his place in the story entirely lost.
"So was it Ari?"
Oh, yes. That's where I stopped. "No. Guards had come to bring food. They drove me from the door with whips and torches. They could have simply shouted for me to stay back. But I was no longer a prince. I was a beast, to be treated as one. It was… so horrible. Pleading with men I knew as I bled, unable to reconcile my new life with my old. I… I saw it as punishment. For hurting that boy. It was… was my own fault."
"Don't you dare say you deserved it," Dio whispered, stroking his ear. "Don't you dare."
"I don't… don't…" Leander's voice stuck again until Dio helped him drink some wine. "I no longer think that. Though sometimes, late at night… But I did then. They had left the food on the step by the door. This became the pattern. And I learned to keep out of sight when they came. At first, some days Ari would come with a lantern. She hated that she couldn't bring me out, but the guards would let her in. She would sit with me and hold me. And then when she left, the dark was so much worse. Closing in on me. Whispering in my mind."
"It's okay." Dio's arms wrapped around his neck again. More warmth followed as the pandas all climbed onto the sofa and perched around them. "I'm here. We're here."
"Ari's visits finally stopped. I was alone. So long. In the dark. I forgot… forgot everything. How to speak. How to sing. How to be human. Eventually, there were… were… things in the dark with me. Shrieking, screaming, wailing things. They would attack me if I came across them unwittingly, tooth and nail, and I was terrified of them. I would race through the Labyrinth to snatch my food from the door, and race back to the center. The shrieking things didn't seem able to find the center as I could. It seemed… safer there."
"They were people, weren't they?"
"Yes. I learned much later that they were the sacrifices from Athens my stepfather demanded for the murder of my oldest brother. I'm not certain if he meant for me to kill them or for them to kill me. They invariably died, since they had no food or water, and I would avoid the corridors that smelled of rot as best I could. I thought the dead were people the shrieking creatures had killed. It was… rather stupid. If we had banded together, perhaps we could have escaped."
"You were just a kid. And you were scared to death without a break. For I don't know how long. How long?"
"I don't… know. I can guess. Extrapolate. Maybe six years? Seven?" He shook his head, since Dio was snuggled down far enough to be safely beneath his horns. Snuggled. Against him. Arms completely around him. When had that happened? "I, ah… there was…"
"It's okay. Sweet winds and rivers. I don't know how you came out sane at all. Saner than me. I'm just in awe of how strong you are." Dio nuzzled a cheek against Leander's chest. "So fucking strong. They couldn't break you, no matter how awful it was. Then I guess that Theseus bastard came and convinced Ari that he was gonna go in and get you out."
"Apparently. Again, I didn't know this until much later. And the reports of Ari having helped him, those hurt me terribly. Yes, he found me with the magic glowing ball of string Ari gave him. We didn't do battle, as he would have people believe. He found a cowering, shivering teenager, ran the child through with his sword, and left him to die. Hardly the act of a hero."
"No freaking kidding." Dio was toying with one of Leander's shirt buttons now, which was even more distracting than the horn stroking. "But Thena came to get you."
"Yes. She must have been watching things unfold. Perhaps my mother had prayed for intervention. Lady Athena brought me out, barely alive, and nursed me back to health and sanity on Olympus. You must think my distress quite silly. All so long ago…"
"Not silly. Not even a salt grain silly. I mean, it's not like you had a therapist all this time, right? Or anyone to talk to about it? It's all just been sitting there in your brain, making these pools of unhappy gunk that bubble and blorp at bad times and make you freak out and probably give you bad dreams.… And I'm kinda, whatchamacallit, projecting I guess, huh? But, damn it, that was awfuler… more awful? The awfulest? Thing I've ever heard."
Leander tried to stop his ears from twitching. Ner
vous tic. But now Dio had the top button undone, his fingers ghosting over Leander's collarbone. Touch so often repulsed him, would send him jerking away. But Dio, in his slow approach and his gentle skirmishes, had Leander's breath quickening, his heart racing in excitement rather than fear. Lower down, a tightening in his belly and groin had him fighting squirms. But what did he do here? Should he do anything?
Carefully, so he didn't dislodge the beautiful god nestled against his chest, Leander lifted an arm and let it settle across Dio's shoulders. That felt right. Comfortable. Comforting.
A loud chek came from the door to the garden. Jane sat there, looking impatient and annoyed. Another twitter scold and a chek brought all the assistants to her by the door. "Hey. Stay put." Dio patted his chest. "Be right back."
He bounded to the garden door and wedged a boot against the frame as he let the pandas out. Leander could hear him chattering and singing to them as he led them across the garden and out to their own room to rest, then his whistling as he returned. His steps more dancing than walking, he bounced back into the parlor, closed the door softly, and snuggled back under Leander's waiting arm.
"Thank you. For listening. I didn't… didn't wish to interrupt your dinner. Or to upset you."
"Oh, hey. I can eat dinner anytime. Sometimes I'm eating dinner for breakfast. Or maybe breakfast for dinner. Not sure where you draw the line at four-in-the-morning meals." Dio undid another button, then a third. "You're amazing. And so brave."
"I'm a craven coward." Leander's voice skipped up the register on the last word as Dio's fingers stroked his chest. "Oh… gods…"
"Leander," Dio murmured with a kiss to his chest. "When I say you're brave, I mean it. I'm not just being nice. You survived when most people would've given up and died. You stayed kind and giving. You worry about other people. Even after all that. Now listen. Really listen. I want you so bad. But I'm not gonna just jump your bones, right? When you say stop, we stop. If you're not sure, or if anything doesn't feel right, we stop. You hear me?"
Brandywine Investigations Page 13
