Archive of Our Own

After it was over, after Rafe had stopped sweating his grief into the storm-tossed sheets of his bed, he would not look at Paul. They sat in the Toy Store Tavern, eating white marble cake and drinking champagne from glasses shaped like nymphs, and Rafe's eyes went everywhere, but they did not look at Paul.

They came here often now, after Lily. Rafe's fingers drummed beats on the ceramic table, and he licked the heavy icing from his lips. Paul watched him, but when Rafe noticed, he looked away.

There was ash-boy left in his eyes, his eyes which darted around the entire room, resting on the girl in the corner with the golden cat, on the boy by the window sipping his banana caramel milkshake. The waitress came by to bring them another slice of cake, and Rafe stared at her for a long time, seemingly memorizing the rhythm of her dreadlocks. His fingers twitched after her when she left. He was hungry, but he did not know how to say it.

Paul thought of his music, of his songs. He wondered if Rafe would want to hear any of them now. It didn't seem to matter so much, not when Rafe kept on looking at everything else but him.

"Do I have cake on my face?" Paul asked coolly. His throat was clenching.

Rafe finally turned to look at him, his eyes dark dark dark. "No," he said.

"Then you could actually bother to look at me when I'm talking to you," Paul said. "I know I'm not beautiful like you or Dionisio, but you could at least look." His bitterness was like salt water. It poisoned him. It was selfish of him to act this way. Rafe needed him. He didn't need his problems, his overburdening love.

"Paulo," Rafe said, stunned. "What are you talking about? You're gorgeous."

"But you won't look at me."

Rafe dropped his eyes, but then he lifted them back up, courageous to the end. "It's not because I don't want to," he said. "It's that sometimes I think you are too much. I don't now know how to explain it. If I look once, I can't stop looking."

Paul was voiceless. The first time I saw you, I wanted to take off my skin and become something new for you, something wondrous. That was what he wanted to say, but in the guarded menagerie cages of his own heart, what he said was, "It's all right if you look." Which was not the worse thing to say, but not what he wanted either. Rafe had all the bravery between them, and all Paul had were his memories.

He remembered this, kissing Rafe while the light shone between them like wildfire, drugs melting their bodies into pure pleasure. He had held Rafe in the safety of his hands, kissing him gently and tenderly while Rafe had made sounds like he was he was dying, and then being reborn into this beautiful boy wrapping his body around Paul's body, twinning them together like chimeras.

Beauty and the Beast, and yet everything had been beautiful that day, Rafe rolling on top of Paul, his lips tasting like sea salt. Laughing in wonder, and then shuddering as Paul had arched his hips and drove deeper.

He had thought it would be enough, this one sip, holding Rafe as close to him as his own bones. But when the drugs faded and Rafe had looked at him in regret, Paul had known it would never be enough, that some part of him would always long for Rafe. Without Rafe, he was an instrument with no music.

But he remembered this also: the tenderness that Rafe still showed him, even after they never spoke of it again. Rafe's love for Paul was a bright fierce thing, admiration and envy dropped into the elixir, and when he had called Paul his brother, Paul had thought yes but also still I wish.

The first time Rafe had touched him after Beauty and the Beast, Paul had felt like his entire body was being seized in shock. He had thought he would be ill, and that he would have go Under, because there was no space for him left in Elysia, where dark-eyed drummers could take him apart with just one arm slung around his shoulders.

Yet Paul did not die then, and so he would not die now, not when he had already gone into the darkness to fetch Rafe back.

They visited the House of Mirrors together. The walls were like sheets of snow and lace, and when Paul turned in circles on his boot heels, he could see all of his scars. Rafe, sleek and beautiful and looking half near death with the bruises under his eyes, moved through the house slowly.

A thousand versions of us, Paul thought. There was a glimmer in one of the corner mirrors, but then it was gone.

A thousand versions of them, and in how many did he have this same useless yearning?

The music was like a virus in his blood. He saw himself, grotesque, hunched over with sick desire. It made him want to sing things that no one would want to hear. It made him want to write songs that he could gather in his pocket and then throw down Under, like a bomb, just to see if they would light those dark places afire. I want to bring the light back, Paul thought, as Rafe found him in the mirrors again.

But it wasn't the real Paul Rafe was touching with his fingers. It was Paul's reflection, a doll-Paul, a Paul that never existed.

Maybe that Paul would never exist. Maybe that Paul was of another world, across the Styx and beyond the boatman, past the candy cane and neon satin streets of Elysia, where he sang his music to insensate ears. Rafe wasn't going to hear him. Rafe had never heard him, not even when Paul sang until his lungs felt like they would tear apart, throbbing hot with the rhythm of his body.

Look at me, Paul thought fiercely, and Rafe's fingers left the mirror-Paul's face, a sticky honey smear of a movement. He turned and looked, and there were entire forests in Rafe's eyes, deep and dark and foreign, places where the uninitiated could wander forever and never find their way out.

Rafe's breath was shaky. "Paul," he said. He glanced back at the Paul in the mirror, and then at real Paul. He looked uncertain, but there was colour high in his cheeks. It looked like --

-- but Paul didn't want to hope. Why hope in Elysia when you could have everything in your youth and know for a certainty that one day you would have to give it up? Paradise was guaranteed, so long as you paid the price. Paul wasn't so sure anymore he wanted to pay this price. He could keep Rafe, untouchable but beloved. Rafe would never look at him, but Rafe would never leave him either.

"Paul," Rafe said again, and his voice was like a running muscle. He took a step forward, and he reached out to stroke Paul's mouth in wonder.

I'm scared, Paulo. This thing burns so wildly inside of me. It shines like a piece of jade on the tongue, against the hollow of my neck where my breath lives. I can't stop thinking about Lily, about the smallness of her wrists and the way she floated above my head, like how smoke will always find a way to travel upwards and out. I miss her so much, but I am starting to forget her voice already. Does this make me a bad person? I don't know what being a good person means in this city, but Paulo, you are here with me, and I don't think I could ever forget the sound of you.

We are the beach, and it is raining. The sky is grey, but it doesn't matter to us because we are surfing. We are riding the waves like animals, pure and feral, and you are smiling. I don't think I ever see you smile like this in the city, but you love the city, I know this. Why don't you smile for the things that you love most?

I touched your mouth because I wanted to, and now I'm confused, because what it does it mean that I wanted to touch your mouth, Paulo? What do these thoughts mean, all jumbled up and mixed frequencies, satyr-thoughts, martyr-thoughts.

It is raining and you are slick from the water. I imagine touching you, and my hands slide right off. I can't stop looking.

More people should come to the water, I say. It's not pure like in the stories, but there is no poison either. We could drink it, and swim in it, and we could go looking for mermaids who would grant us all our wishes.

We are little and weak and mortal, you say.

But all I can see is how strong you look, like a sun god, and I want you to give me some of that strength. Teach me how to be useful. Teach me how to survive. Your songs live in my bones, right in the marrow. Don't you see, Paul? You are already there.

This time when I touch you, my fingers tremble. But you stare at me, wide-eyed, and then you grab my hand and pull me close. I lift my face to you, and you seem to understand that I need you to make this choice, because I don't know how to make it for myself. I turned away from you once, Paulo. I don't want to do it again.

You pull me to the sand, to the water, to the places where we were born.

When they returned from the beach, Paul expected everything to change. He braced himself for it, waiting like Andromeda chained to the rocks. This had happened before, and like all beautiful, terrible things in Elysia, it would never happen again.

Rafe was quiet. When they returned to the loft, they found Calliope and Dionisio sharing raspberries and cream on the black leather couch. "Come here!" Calliope said, urging Rafe to her side. "Try these!"

"As delicious as maidens," Dionisio agreed, smacking his lips, and so Rafe sat with his sister and his sister's lover, eating raspberries and licking cream from his fingers. Calliope must have noticed that Rafe was quieter than usual, because Calliope had a keen sight that saw everything, but she didn't say. Everybody knew Rafe was in a place of confusion after Lily.

Paul sat in the snakeskin chair across from the three of them, and he drank sake until his mouth burned. In his head he wrote new songs, precarious songs, songs that dangled off their chords like the last fruit of the summer.

There was a bruise on Rafe's neck, right above his collar.

When Dionisio saw it, he roared in laughter. "What now, Rafe-boy? Have you found a new love already?"

Rafe flushed. Calliope said his name sharply, and Dionisio looked ashamed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean that. I didn't think."

"It doesn't matter," Rafe mumbled, and Paul's fingers closed tight over his knees. But then Rafe looked up at him, and he licked his lips. Paul learned how to breathe again.

"Forget this," Dionisio declared. "How about we make some music?"

At the Toy Store Tavern the next day, Rafe slid into the booth and Paul slid into the seat across from him. Rafe raised his eyebrows, but Paul didn't understand why, so he covered it by looking at the menu and seeing if anything was new. When the waiter came, he ordered a milkshake with cinnamon and bananas. The waiter left, and Paul saw that Rafe was staring at him.

"What?" he asked.

Rafe got up and went around the table. He slid in beside Paul, so that their thighs touched.

"You want this, but you don't even know how to say it?" Paul asked. His voice was sharp, and it was mean. He didn't want it to be, but Rafe made him hurt so much sometimes.

"Isn't this enough?" Rafe asked. "For now?" His mouth was red, and Paul wanted to kiss it, to devour it. "I'm still confused. I don't know what to think. But I think I want this." He squared his shoulders the way he did hunched over his drums. "No, that's not fair to you. I know I want this."

"It's not enough," Paul said.

"You're greedy," Rafe accused.

"This is Elysia," Paul said.

They fucked after a show at Medusa's Horror, where Paul sang until the crowd went mad, and Rafe drummed until his arms were sweaty with holy light. The audience gave them new energy, and Dionisio laughed like he was going mad with it, swinging Calliope round and round after the show was over, kissing her until they seemed like one beast with two heads, CalliopeDionisio, a monster born out of love.

There was another band after them, and what Rafe wanted was to dance. Paul didn't dance, but he watched Rafe, alone on the floor, tossing his head and his body so that everybody who saw him had to stop and look, because there was something about Rafe that was divine tonight. Something about Rafe that had survived death and come back.

Rafe danced until his feet were sore, and then he found Paul in the club and grabbed him, smiling.

"Are you just going to be like a gargoyle all night?" Rafe asked, right up in Paul's face. "Are you just going to watch me?"

"I like watching you," Paul said.

Rafe shook his head. "Dance with me."

"I don't dance."

"Come on, everybody dances," Rafe insisted, and Paul was tempted to ask if he was high tonight, because there was an energy to Rafe that hadn't been there for a long time. But this was their first show after Rafe had gone Under, and music, as Paul knew, was a drug of its own. Rafe looked around to make sure no one was watching them, and then he pushed Paul into a secluded corner and kissed him, standing on his toes to reach Paul's mouth, exploring him leisurely with his tongue.

"Rafe," Paul said.

Rafe kissed his jaw.

"Rafe," Paul said again, and when there was no answer, he took Rafe by the hand and led him out of the Medusa's Horror, into the moonless night of Elysia where the streets were silver with diamond fireflies. He led Rafe towards the abandoned carousel down by where the old circus used to be, and he leaned Rafe up against one of the wooden horses, where the paint was peeling and the saddle had come off. Rafe followed him willingly, even sultrily, and he made a sound that was like a caress when Paul started undoing his belt.

"Spread your legs," Paul said, "just a little more." And Rafe did it, hungry, watching Paul intently while Paul went to his knees.

They fucked there, on the old, abandoned carousel. With all the animals watching them. Paul sucked Rafe off until Rafe's knees went weak, and Paul had to hold him up with one hand, pinning him against the horse. Rafe kept on whimpering, sending an electric streak through Paul's stomach, the sound of it. He sucked Rafe until Rafe came with a wail, not even caring if anybody would walk by and see them. It was dark anyway, and nobody came to this part of the town anymore.

Rafe was sweaty and languid after his orgasm. He said to Paul, "What about you?"

Paul never sang one song when he could sing two, or three. That night, he showed Rafe what was possible between two men, sliding his fingers inside Rafe until Rafe jerked around like a marionette, overwhelmed. He buried his face in Paul's shoulder, muffling his moans, but Paul wanted to hear them. Those sounds might be all he ever had. So he yanked Rafe back, a little too roughly, at the same time he started moving his fingers inside Rafe. Rafe shuddered, and then his breath went jagged and needy.

"It feels amazing," he said, surprised, but Paul chased the voice out of him soon enough.

Callie has the truth-dreams, not me, but I dream about this. And I hope it comes true.

In my dream there is a gingerbread house, and inside the gingerbread house there is a man and a woman. They have the most beautiful daughter in the world, a girl who can make the roses bloom. There are tables inside the house, feasts every week, tumblers made of glass as thin as cotton candy, lychees the size of jewelled eggs. The man and the woman invite their friends, and I see the Old Clown there, I see all the members of the circus: the One-Eyed Knife Thrower, the Fat Woman, the Duchess of Snakes when she was still young, her green hair like tiles on a roof. They come to the gingerbread house, and they drink from the tumblers and eat the lychee eggs, and afterwards the daughter performs for all of them. She dances like a waif, stepping between the empty plates, a bright beacon for them until they all applaud.

Her name is Lily, and these are her parents. These are her friends.

Maybe this is a different world that I'm dreaming of. Maybe in this world Lily is a little girl who dances for her parents' guests. Maybe in this world Lily will grow up and grow old. Or maybe this is another Under. The Under that is beneath the Under. The real Under, where we go to be with the people we love.

I see my mother there, and her skin is like the beach. I want to lie down in it and remember.

There is a desert outside Elysia. There is an ocean. There are trees and moons and there are hardships. I know this. In the desert, you have only what you make with your own hands. There are no glittering bridges or libraries with seraphs. In this desert, you can go thirsty. You can fall down and prick your hands on needles. You can wander into the night, and there won't be any luminescent street lamp or spinning wheel lighthouse to bring you back.

But I see this too, Paulo: I see us happy. I see all of us together, in the green oasis. You and me, and Callie and Dionisio, and their daughter too. I see their daughter, who will dance for us like Lily for her parents, and we will love her with everything that we have, with all of our songs. We will weave flowers for her hair, and we will teach her how to hunt and where to gather, and she will teach us how to forgive ourselves for the things we haven't even done yet.

I see you, Paulo, as tall as the road is long.

I hear you, Paulo. You are singing to me. Or maybe I am singing to you. I can't tell. All I know is that there is a river between us, and a garden where our ribs should be, and I can remember Lily's voice again. We lay her to rest, you and I, and I know the name of this place now.

It's home.

"You've got to get out of this city," Paul said, and Rafe turned the colour of ash.

"I'm not going to leave you," Rafe replied.

But Paul knew that he had to, because Rafe didn't belong in Elysia anymore, where the signposts leading to Under called to him, their wayward Orpheus. The Doctor loved Rafe. The maenads loved him too. As long as Rafe stayed in Elysia, he would never be safe from them, from the temptation that would take Rafe and strip him of everything that he was. Elysia was joy and youth and lust, and it would prey on Rafe until he was a ghost.

Paul had seen him like a ghost once before. He wouldn't let it happen again.

"We could all go to the desert," Rafe said, eager, and this hurt more than anything. We are all so weak, Paul thought, but Rafe had to become strong. He had to become stronger than any of them, because Rafe was the only one who could do this, who could leave the lights and carnivals of Elysia behind. Paul wasn't ready.

I'm too old, Paul thought. It was both true and untrue. He wasn't one of the old ones yet, descending to Under after he had had all his fun aboveground. But he was older than Rafe, older than Calliope, older than Dionisio. He had eaten more of Elysia than any of them. He had played his music in its clubs. He had sung into its darkness, and had heard it sing back.

"I'm the addict," Rafe said, but Paul shook his head.

"We're the addicts. You can be free."

He saw the understanding in Rafe, the barely realized desire. Rafe wanted this. Rafe knew he wanted this. A part of Paul wanted to rage at him for it. It didn't make sense, but it was there anyway. Now you want to leave me, to leave us? Paul was too selfish to do this without bitterness, but he could be good enough to let Rafe go. All Rafe had to do was drive out of the city. Drive out of the city, past the water, and to the garden where there would be flowers blooming this time of the year, and people to welcome Rafe, and people to teach him how to live without sugar-trips and empty sacrifice.

Rafe wrapped his arms around Paul, and then he kissed him with a cool mint mouth. They looked out the window at the Ferris wheel together.

"I'm still scared," he confessed. "Why am I always so scared?"

Paul touched his hair, as black as onyx tigers. "It's good. It's when you stop being scared that means you stop being alive."

Calliope was angry. Dionisio was confused.

"Why would you tell him to leave?" Dionisio demanded, waving the empty bottle by its neck. "Why would he leave without us?"

"Can you really tell me that you'd go with him? That you'd leave Elysia behind?" Paul asked.

Dionisio fell silent.

"He's my brother," Calliope said tightly. "You should have come to me first." She turned away from him, and Paul ached to see it, but if anybody would understand, it would be Callie. It was just a matter of time.

Time was currency in Elysia. Time was counted in years and wrinkles and grey hairs. After Rafe left, they stopped playing music together. What was the point? Rafe was their rhythm, he was their heartbeat. Calliope and Dionisio put way their instruments. They would sit in front of the windows of their loft, staring out at the sky, heads bowed together, murmuring in their own secret language.

She forgave Paul, after the first month, coming up to him barefoot and putting her arms around his shoulders. She smelled like Rafe did. It was earthy rain scent. "I hope he finds a new life, a better life," she said against Paul's ear, and Paul closed his eyes and hoped for that too.

There was another way to count time in Elysia: by the swelling of Calliope's belly, by the growing of her baby girl.

"She'll be a musician, like us," Dionisio said.

"She'll be anything she wants to be," Calliope replied. Dionisio was lying on her lap, and she was feeding him chocolate wafers piece by piece. They were his favourite.

It was silly to think of Rafe then. Paul had never fed Rafe wafers, nor could he imagine himself doing so. They were not Callie and Dionisio. They were their own selves, and yet when Paul looked at his friends, he felt the loss of Rafe settle heavy under his collarbone. What are you doing right now? he would wonder, and he sang about open fields and a poet boy with nimble hands and strong forearms.

He kept these songs for himself, scribbled into his mind. He would sing them one day, if he ever saw Rafe again. And if he didn't, he would sing them when he was Under, to all the old ones. He would sit with them and remember loving that poet boy until it destroyed him.

Elysia: bright, beautiful, an addict's dream. Elysia of the ice cream and the magic tricks. Elysia of the silken masks and the taffeta gowns. Elysia candyland. Elysia the conjurer. Elysia where you could have your every desire so long as your skin stayed smooth and your back stayed straight. All the toffee and cake and rich sweet wine that you could ever want. Elysia where Paul had kissed Rafe.

He smoked, so he wouldn't have to think. He bought ginger cigars from the girl with leopard eyes, and he smoked them on the rooftop, until they burnt his fingers with ginger ash. He smoked until his throat was sore and until his eyes watered. "You'll ruin your voice," Calliope said when she saw him, but Paul shrugged, because what did his voice matter anymore? No music, no voice.

I wanted to go with you, he thought to imaginary Rafe, the Rafe that he had sent away. I wanted to go, but I'm afraid, too.

The nights led him to the doors marked Under. He stood in front of them and felt their cool chill. On most nights he would stay there for an hour, or two hours, restless like a specter. Then he would turn around and go home, but always the next night, he would return, his fingers tapping beats into the pockets of his leather coat.

I could have anything, he thought. I could have Orpheus. I could have Beauty and the Beast. I could have Candy Animal, Tattoo Orgasm, Venus Trap. The Doctor was still there, and he was waiting.

He wouldn't be surprised to see Paul again, probably. Paul could imagine the rough scrape of his laughter. Oh Beast, have you lost your Beauty? You had him and then you lost him! How careless of you!

Boys and girls passed him on their way to the nightclubs. The girls wore kimonos with dragons that breathed sapphires. The boys wore high heels and had hair in spikes. One of the girls stopped when she saw Paul. She tilted her head and blinked her violet-studded eyes. "Aren't you the lead singer of Ecstasia?" she asked him. "I saw you at the Forgotten Promise last year. You were amazing."

Paul said nothing.

She shrugged. "Never mind then." She went off, and he could hear her laughter all the way down the street. She sounded young and fearless.

Paul opened the door to Under, and went down.

The first twenty steps, and he was angry, furious, hating everyone and everything for making him feel as helpless as this. The next twenty steps, and he was lost, blinking against the stuttered lights that strung the stone walls. Twenty steps more, and he had to stop, to fumble inside his jacket for his cigarettes, but when he lit one and sucked it in, it didn't taste like anything to him anymore. He tossed it aside in disgust.

I am worse than an ash-boy, he thought. I'm empty.

But then he thought of Rafe, and it was like the wound in his chest started filling with water, and in that water orchids would take root. They would grow in him, all these flowers, in the rocky land that was Paul's heart. Rafe, I miss you, he thought, and he remembered the first time he had heard Rafe play the drums, how transformed he had been then, staring in shocked wonder at this black-haired boy with the olive skin, who had smiled like an asteroid streaking across the sky. The first time Paul had heard Rafe, and he had known then, the lengths he was willing to go for a taste of that boy's songs.

Paul had never cared before. He would drink champagne and lick the filling out of cream puffs, and the boys and girls who adored him would flaunt their bodies shamelessly, crawling through the curtains and onto his bed. Paul had slept with some of them, but he always left in the morning, leaving behind a wreck of blankets and a disappointed frown. He knew he was scarred and ugly, but it hadn't mattered much, because it was his voice they were after, his voice as it rasped above them, moving all around them.

The first time he saw Rafe play, it unmade him. I want you to see me like you do this city, like I'm perfect.

But Rafe had left Elysia. He could have had the circuses and the strobelights, but he chose the outside instead. So Paul turned around and made his way back to the surface, his thoughts of Rafe guiding him from the lands of death back into the living.

I see you now, my family. The rain falls down on us and wets our eyelashes. I see you there, in the garden. I am standing on the other side of the river, watching you, and at first I don't know what to do or say. You are mirages, I think. I must be going mad. I miss the taste of taffy, and I miss the smooth slide of chocolate rum down my throat. I miss the carousel in the middle of the night, and spiced cakes in the morning. I think about it, all the time, but I know that Paul was right. I can't go back, because none of that was real. I have callouses on my fingers now, and my back aches from working on the land, but the pain is good. This kind of pain I never feel the urge to forget.

But I see the four of you. Callie, my sister, and Dionisio who loves you. Your daughter, the girl who floats, is incandescent. She has your eyes, Callie, and Dionisio, she has your laughter.

And Paul, Paulo, for you, I had no words. Paulo, with your golden mane and your strong hands strumming the strings of your guitar. I remember when you used to touch me that way. When you slid into me that night, lying on the carousel as it rocked slowly in the wind. You crawled into my body. You made a space for yourself there. Then you made me leave you, and I was thirsty still. Paulo, Paulo, I see you in the garden, and your mouth is like pomegranates.

I can say it now. I can learn the words. I can drum them.

I remember that when I was in the dark afraid, it was you who led me out.

So I will go to you now. I will put my feet in the river, and I will pay no boatman, because this in the desert is free. The garden is growing all around you, and the sunlight is topaz, a dream made real. You do not notice me yet, but I am wading across the river. I am stumbling, laughing, crying. I am making my way towards you, and when I am close enough, you will lift your head and see me. You will drop your guitar and come running, and we will crash into each other in the middle of the water, sinking down, our limbs tangled in knots. We will never let each other go.

We will make new music here.