montgomery lacroix

Supposedly the going away party is meant for both of them, but it's an easy conclusion that the packed Voodoo on a Friday night is a send-off for Emil more than it is Montgomery. It's nothing he minds, not when he takes a certain pleasure getting to see the man receive some pay-off for weeks and months spent hurt and scared, scarred and hidden away in a glass house. Trying to heal from wounds both external and internal, but there is no sign of either now, little prompting needed to put him back behind the bar just for one last chance to show off.

It was hardly casual, beach side reading, or at least that’s what Emil told him when Monty first settled the book on his lap. It was an ancient, fraying thing, written in archaic French that occasionally left him struggling to decipher meaning and intent. An exercise he was sure would’ve been easier if he could leave notes in the margins, but he doubted the Magistrate would approve, suspecting they would already be unhappy enough to know he borrowed one of their books without permission in the first place.

Still, it was a fascinating read, and for all his complaints Emil’s eyes had still lit up with a familiar kind of fascination when Monty had started retelling every detail he’d managed to glean about the history of the Striga coven. For now, he simply accepted his teasing, every insult about how terrible the book had to be if he had to struggle through French to get anything out of it, and occasional attempts to distract him when he declared he needed another layer of sunscreen, because letting his boyfriend burn would certainly put a damper on further exploration of the comfortable and spacious bed in their room, or its shower, or the jacuzzi, or the table that was about the same height as a research table, didn’t he think? Fingers pressing lotion into his shoulders with firm pressure that reminded him of massage oils and late nights, approval offered in his distracted hum.

But it wasn’t until Monty reached for his glass, one that had been filled with something blue and decorated with a tiny umbrella, and currently empty, that he realized Emil was gone and had been for a minute. Something about a refill that registered distantly, and his gaze lifted from the pages of his stolen book, fingers moving his reading glasses to perch on the top of his head instead as his attentions slid across the sands. Only a moment before his gaze settled on his absent boyfriend, off by the tiki bar shaded beneath palm trees. Skin beautiful and bronze, a wealth of it on display when the sands were as warm as the sun shining down on them. Settled with lazy decadence against the bar, fingers playing idly along another glass of blue sitting on the bar next to him, a second held in hand.

But his attention, for the moment, was entirely on the man next to him.

Montgomery took in the details of him with a familiar detachment, tanned skin, dark hair tinged with gold from enough time beneath the sun. Swim shorts that sat obscenely low on his hips, a faintly crooked smile on his lips. Objectively attractive, and a dark, suggestive dip of his lashes as he leaned closer to Emil as he spoke. Whatever he’d said made the man laugh, and Monty felt something wicked and heated curl through him.

Jealousy was nothing new, and he thought it would always be an inescapable aspect of being in love with Emil, but after one painful fight at the beginning of the year, countless conversations later, and a promise he held onto in his worst moments, it had shifted form. Before, it had left him bitter and sick with it, a sensation that had coiled uncomfortably in his stomach, something ugly and resentful rearing up beneath his skin. The kind of feeling that had always summoned a defensiveness, and a familiar, quiet urge to run, as if flinching away from pain could negate it entirely. Now it burned, something fiercely possessive that had settled in its place. Because of course everyone wanted him, he was Dionysus, beautiful and hedonistic, something dark behind his gaze that promised he could be whatever they wanted, everything and anything they’d dreamed of.

And he was Montgomery’s.

Maybe it was the faith he placed in that promise now, fears of losing him finally stripped away, a near religious devotion to each other that had been forged in fire. But it had stripped away that sickening twisting in his gut and left it with heat in his veins instead, a desire to ensure that everyone who ached for the man knew that the two of them only belonged to each other.

He felt certain that Emil had noticed the shift, somewhere between a nightclub in New York and the warm sands beneath their feet, and if he was less certain that it was a game he played on purpose, the idea almost thrilled him. That when he answered the man at the bar with a sly smile and offered something that made him laugh in turn, it was because he knew exactly what he was inspiring in Montgomery. Sometimes he thought he was testing boundaries, to see if this was the moment an offer made in the middle of the bayou stopped being a tentative hypothetical.

Someday, he thought it would, for now, he only wanted one thing. His book carefully set aside before he was rising from his seat, and he swore he saw Emil’s attention flicker briefly to him, swore his smile widened as Montgomery crossed the sands towards the bar. He imagined the glass on the counter behind him was supposed to be for him, he imagined the look Emil gave him was supposed to be innocent, but those things ceased to matter either. Only that heat he was sure was burning in his gaze, a flick of his fingers pulling the glass from Emil’s fingers. “Excuse me,” the only thing he said to the stranger before he was dragging Emil close, a hand hooked around the back of his neck as he yanked him into a harsh kiss. Teeth scraping his lower lip as he pulled back, and a harsh culo murmured against them as his own curved into a smile.

Monty wonders some days, about a promise Emil made him, standing under the lights of a thousand lanterns as the world counted down to the end of the year. Inevitable, he said, and not for the last time, but if it was a word Montgomery protested when it came to the concept of fate, it was one he found himself occasionally considering with the vagueness of idle daydreams.

Because he wonders sometimes, about the butterfly effect, how different their lives would’ve looked if they’d made different choices leading up to a loft in New York City.

He wonders what would’ve happened if he’d stayed here the last time he’d come crawling back. If he’d let Cecilia strip away all the heartache and hurt, if he’d let her hollow him out just so he didn’t have to feel the pain of loving Emiliano Pavone. He wonders what would’ve happened after, because he couldn’t imagine that would’ve been the end of it. Maybe it would’ve been weeks or months before Tuesday came around again, but he wonders if it would’ve broken through that magically induced haze. If he truly would’ve been able to maintain any kind of stoic indifference towards him, no matter how much time had passed.

He imagines it like this sometimes: A different version of the Witches’ Ball where he finally returns to Asphodel. He imagines seeing the man, still dressed in gold, though he wonders what he would’ve worn if there wasn’t a Greek myth he was trying to conjure. He imagines them both in masks and both pretending not to recognize the other, playing at strangers even if he thinks they’ve known each other far too intimately since a single night at the bayou.

He still imagines a reunion as romantic as his first profession of love. He imagines confessions and apologies and kissing him by a familiar fountain. Monty imagines he still would’ve broken all his rules for him, the second he saw him.

But then he wonders about the morning after. He wonders just how much Emil would’ve sold by then to get close to the Institute, who he would’ve tied himself to, and how much time had passed, enough to harden his heart, to twist any love he held for Montgomery into a disposable thing. He doesn’t imagine losing him; he imagines a life where he never really had him.

It’s then he lets those hypotheticals go, finding more hurt than comfort in them. Abandoned into the crisp morning air, tugging his sweater tighter around his frame as he gazes out over the New York skyline. Dawn turning the sky from gray to orange, but it brings less warmth than the man he feels come up behind him, arms sliding around his shoulders before stealing the coffee from his fingers. Emil takes a long drink before handing it back, and then he’s joining him on the patio sofa, stealing the heat from his frame as he tucks fingers beneath his sweater and against his ribs.

He tenses against the cold, cursing him fondly before he shifts to pull him closer against his chest. “You’re disgustingly cold," he tells him. "What’s wrong with you?”

“It’s disgustingly early,” he gets in return. “Of course I’m cold. The man who’s supposed to be keeping my bed warm abandoned me to give his best impression of a brooding Victorian antihero.”

“Oh well then, my deepest apologies, Mr. Pavone. It won’t happen again.” There is an implied roll of his eyes, but a fond smile on his lips, shifting legs and resituating himself so they can settle, comfortably entwined. He doesn’t tell him he had a familiar dream that never seems to get any easier, that he dreamt he was so much colder than Emil’s hands, the kind of empty that he can still easily recall. The memory of seeing his mother yesterday still far too close, rendering sleep a torment instead of a refuge. He wonders if he really needs to, when he thinks it’s probably why Emil followed him out here. 

Monty tucks him closer against his chest, offering himself as a warmer blanket than the one he drags off the back of the sofa to cover them both with. Magic making sure Emil’s feet are covered, an idle use of power that he never gets tired of. And he wonders again about that word. Inevitable.

Because he can only guess at what Emil would’ve done if he’d never come back. Maybe he would’ve accepted it as a final rejection, maybe everything would’ve been so much worse. He thinks it’s the most likely way it would’ve all played out, that they both would’ve been lost to the worst versions of themselves, and that no reunion that came after could ever really be a pleasant one. Just a collision of bitterness and hurt, he imagines a very real betrayal, or worse, that he would’ve been rendered unnecessary to any of Emil’s plans or intentions. 

New York Harbor is a far cry from a Louisiana bayou, the city lit up bright and towering along its edges instead of the brief glimpses of flickering campfires. The faint, distant hum of voices replaced with the distant hum of traffic and the rushing of water around them, and on the Summer Solstice there's a display of magic beyond the scope of floating a few soft flowers into Emil's hair. Waters that twist up around them, reshaping into glittering and surreal forms, an orchestra of music and color from the illusionists who create their own performance out across its surface. And there’s a moment, when the powers of the Gifted elite are at their peak, where the boat lifts briefly from the water, sailing through the air and held aloft with outstretched hands. 

Monty lends his power to the moment, but not his attention. Gaze falling on Emil and remembering the last Summer Solstice they spent in each other’s company. Struggling whether to name them friend or enemy, biting back bitterness and frustration that he forgot too easily when he was writing love letters in the sky for him. Even if he didn’t acknowledge it for what it was at the time, even if it took months before he could say I love you in any language but the quiet, secret whisper of fingers brushing together to steal a cigarette.

Now he can love him shamelessly, and sometimes he thinks it shouldn’t count as a victory, just to stop hiding who he is and what he wants. Some days he thinks it’s the only victory that really matters. Adoration shining with the same bright light as the magics glowing around them, taking Emil’s hand and drawing him to the middle of the deck so he can steal a dance. Fingers lacing together, palm settling flat against his lower back just to draw him that much closer. It’s careless and bright at first, the specifics of his steps less important than putting a smile on the man’s lips so he can steal it back off with his own. 

But as the sun shifts its orbit, the boat settling back into place and music fading into something quieter, he does the same. Finding a slower rhythm, timed more by heartbeats than violins, the kind of intimate dance that they’d had to claim hidden away by moonlight before, because he was too terrified to risk it surrounded by friends and colleagues. And this is a far cry from those memories too, miles away from the swamp, hours away from sunset, and no masks left to hide behind. Still, he makes the same promise beneath the sun as he had been exchanging myths about Icarus, the mortal who burned for his Apollo, as though laughing at their own hubris could protect them from it.

— violent.

It’s no secret that Monty wears his suits like armor; it is also a luxury, when any talent for violence was never in getting up close and personal. Distance gives him control; proximity gives him a black eye from Nita David, the ghost of a concussion from a woman named Reyna, and scars on his arm from a hell hound’s teeth. But he doesn’t consider himself a violent person, not inherently, not when he has a choice.

It doesn’t change how much of it has been etched on his skin over the course of thirty-five years, spiraling white lines that curl around his leg that he suspects will never fully fade. Not when they carved so deeply, his hands stained with so much of his own blood he thought he might die from that alone. The thin line across his ribs is steadily fading, and he thinks the mess of fresher cuts scattered across his back and shoulders might too, but he forgets about them frequently when the feel of Emil tracing lines between them like constellations lingers in his memory longer than the collision of glass and broken boards. And he obscures those jagged teeth marks upon his arm with a kaleidoscope of colors; flowers inked into his skin that fracture into mosaic shards. 

For all those things, for every time someone has spilled his blood, for the most part Monty believes he’s returned the favor tenfold. Except perhaps, for Belvedere.

The man was dead, but not at his hands, and it might be one of the reasons the weakness lingers long after his magic comes back, long after the smell of bleach has faded from his house in Asphodel. The kind of trauma he was terrified to look at, let alone try and talk about, slotted into the same dark and hidden corners of his thoughts alongside the truth of just how much his mother tore from him when he was too young and defenseless to make her bleed in turn. He isn’t young anymore, he isn’t defenseless, but there’s an alchemist in New Orleans that reminds him what the second feels like, months after the Institute’s been dismantled. Memories ripped from both Hugo and Cecilia that suggest she’s one of the designers of manufactured magic, the kind of tools that could monitor and control her own kind. 

Diplomacy breaks down swiftly, until he finds himself giving chase through a graveyard in the dark evening hours. He brings back-up this time, not just at Amaya’s insistence, but because he has a boyfriend who has plenty of reasons to worry when he’s traced each and every scar on Monty’s skin. And there’s an oath he made, to always come back, that feels more binding than wedding vows.

The magistrate’s wolf wields crackling electricity on his fingers, the kind of Gift that might take her in with less pain or lethality than a volley of broken glass. Bloody violence that Monty can rarely regret inflicting, but has never really enjoyed either, something beautiful wielded like a scalpel instead. This time the quick flick of his fingers is to avoid the trap she throws back at them both, only it shatters the moment his magic touches it, fragmented metal splintering out, and he draws a sharp breath as he tries to keep the sharpened pieces from tearing into them. He can still hear proof of his failure in the cry Lavi gives out, and the fresh stinging of something sharp and painful embedding itself in his shoulder. He grits his teeth against the feel of metal grinding against bone when he starts to move again, but he doesn’t risk pulling it out now when he doesn’t have time to seal it back up.

It gives her time to duck behind the next row of crypts, enough that when they round the corner she’s already waiting. It shouldn’t catch him by surprise, but it does, expecting she’d be running, not reaching out for him, not slamming metal down against his wrist that doesn’t hurt or bleed or sting. Instead it coils like a serpent around his forearm, a tightening band that he tries to remove with a flick of his fingers.

What greets him is a flash of blue, runes lighting up across the metal, and immediately there’s bile rising up in his throat, suddenly and intensely aware of the taste of metal, and something far too familiar about the blow that lands against the side of his head in his moment of hesitation. The aching of his skull and the crack of his knee off the ground are still little compared to the yawning, hollow chasm that opened up in his chest, and he’s barely aware when the world lights up blue again. This time from the harsh crackle of someone else’s power, the woman crying out and the smell of burnt hair reaching him. Her body hitting the ground next to him, eyes closed and muscles still spasming.

It still isn’t until after he claws the metal from his skin, with a little help and too many desperate pleas of get it off me, get it off- that he can breathe again.

— angry.

His own sense of failure is a heavy, miserable weight, one he doesn't carry well when it comes with stinging wounds and the awful, aching reminder of what it feels like to be powerless. It always summons the same brand of fear, that gut wrenching horror of being hollowed out, and no matter how much fuller his life feels, the sensation is quick to hook claws into him and drag him into deeper waters.

Later he blames that for the pointless argument, because Emil happens to call when he's still in a hotel bathroom, fingers bloodstained and too much of it his own. Small chunks of twisted metal he pulls out with a pair of pliers and let clatter into the sink, running water leaving streaks of pink in their wake. It should be a sweet notion, (and later Monty will admit that it is) that Emil might be on his way out the door and uncertain what time he'll be getting back, but he didn't want to miss saying goodnight. Because it's Tuesday and Monty’s far from home.

Out where? With who? And every question that follows feels more and more like an interrogation, but Monty can't get himself to stop asking, fractured trust in himself that has him demanding truths instead. Words that come out too jealous and possessive when Emil’s earned better than both, one vow he fought to preserve, but another one fracturing in its place, when later he’ll acknowledge it’s a far cry from the faith he promised. 

This time it turns bitter, until they're snapping at each other, and no, of course he doesn't expect him to just wait at home like a trophy husband, but maybe tonight he could, maybe tonight he could just talk to him or make up far more ridiculous stories about the stars for him.

For all the real and very tangible magic Montgomery grew up with, there was never any real sense of wonder around the holidays. That unique brand of Christmas magic portrayed in Hallmark movies that most of the Gifted were not immune to, traditions that were either stolen or reclaimed with shameless joy. A Saturnalia feast that demanded elegance and refinery, though as a child he wasn’t present for the point long after House gifts were exchanged and speeches made, where it descended into drunken revelry. But he could remember the towering fir tree that dominated the common room of Endine HQ every year, the presents exchanged between its wards. Clumsily wrapped packages that Selwyn would press into his fingers every year, even if he was oblivious to why it was an act that so often reddened her cheeks.

Even his own family held to their traditions, one of two nights out of the year where he was not only allowed to stay up late, but encouraged, when grand-mère Lacroix insisted on French traditions, Christmas Eve dinner they held at midnight. For the first fifteen years of his life his aunt and uncle were present for every one of them, before Vivien worked up the nerve to tell her mother that they were going to start alternating the holidays between New York and Boston.

He remembered his shoes left in a neat pile next to his cousins’ by the fireplace, filled with small packages that he always unwrapped with delicate care, a stark contrast to the two who ripped through wrapping paper as if competing to tear it into as many pieces as possible. Braedan screeching in delight at a bouncy ball that would burst into light whenever it struck a solid surface, (and he swiftly decided his sister would serve that purpose better than a coffee table.) But she returned the favor with slap bracelets she aggressively snapped around his wrist.

Monty remembers those small treasures best, because grand-mère made it a point to gift him things less functional or useful than his parents. Puzzles or Legos, Magic cards and later Pokemon, (this is what is popular with your age, oui?) and he remembered her settling on the carpet across from him, pretending either one of them knew how to play. And always some crystal or charm, some little trinket to hang around his neck or his bedpost. Very few that didn’t disappear from one year to the next, no matter how careful he tried to be.

His parents gifts were predictable, his father gifting him books on strategy, biopics on Hannibal and Napoleon, the Book of Five Rings and Machiavelli. From his mother it was usually clothes, and if he was as indifferent to them as he was most things, that was at least consistent with other children his own age.

They were memories he carried with the same sort of ache that came with every recollection of his childhood, aware of what was happening without much emotional attachment to any of it. Moments he’d been present for but still felt like he’d missed, the kind of magic that had slipped by him and he sought out as an adult before fully realizing that there was a reason he fixated so much on creatures that no one could seem to prove existed. A feeling that settled warm and bright in his chest when he walked through the thin coating of snow in an Italian garden of monsters, and felt so much closer the next year.

Because for the first time in years, he was back in New York at the start of the holiday season, dragging his boyfriend with him to every cliché that he hadn’t appreciated when he was still new. Ignoring his complaints about the cold, and he suspected they’d be more sincere if Emil didn’t look so quietly pleased at the way Montgomery’s eyes lit up at every experience he got to see with fresh eyes. Magic he could finally start to see, in the patterns of frost that collected on their bedroom window, in the city lights that stretched out beneath them. A Christmas tree in Rockefeller center, shopping at Holiday Fairs, and torn between anxiety and enjoyment in trying to pick out the perfect gift for Evelina. With some vague, unacknowledged hope that maybe if the woman liked him enough than she would accept more easily that he was in love with her son. Because it was also the first year he wouldn’t be in the states for Saturnalia or Christmas, and it wasn’t the awkwardness of an athiest sitting through Christmas Eve mass that worried him.

There's a list of names Montgomery's been working through, one compiled long before the Magistrate put him on their payroll. A handful of their own agents suspected of corruption, but it's proof he's searching for, enough to hold it in his hands before firing off accusations. But it is what they hired him for, a longer leash than he thinks any of their agents get, and if he’s glad for it most days, there are a few moments, when he's once again asking the wrong people the right questions, that he thinks a shorter one might serve him better.

There is a distant, detached thought that he can't wait to tell Emil about this, excluding the fact that he'll hate hearing it. That his boyfriend remains the same kind of smart idiot that would go to interview a Magistrate Official suspected of corruption all by himself; especially a prime, but threats to his own life aside, it’s still fascinating to see the way a summoner like Adrien Deveraux can simply tear a hole in the world. A circle in the center of his living room that leads into some other plane, or perhaps simply a manifestation of will, Monty's never quite gotten an answer.

From it, almost human arms reach up and tear claws through his carpet, dragging a figure up out of the dark pit in the ground. Horns become visible before the rest of its head is pulled into view, and he feels a strange urge to laugh when he realizes he's seeing an actual goatman in the flesh.

⋆✦ MONTGOMERY LACROIX || aesthetic (family)

-break in case of emergency was the reasoning Montgomery gave for a house made of glass, but the moment they start looking at penthouses it becomes swiftly apparent that it wasn’t the only reason. because he passes on several that have the same modern flair but smaller windows, like some echo of a boy who sat on a roof so he could look out at city lights like they were stars. and the moment he steps into the bedroom in Manhattan he knows it’s the one he wants. windows that stretch floor to ceiling, double glass doors opening out onto a patio, closed off from any neighbors with walls of exposed brick. 

-the first thing he adds are blackout curtains, well aware that he has a boyfriend who doesn’t believe in waking up with the sun. but the rest of the day they’re drawn open, light spilling into the room and across a king bed, a warm ray of gold Stellina loves to sleep within during the afternoon.

-the furthest wall of the bedroom is the same exposed brick, the entire penthouse some mix of sleek, modern architecture and antique aesthetics. he uses it to hang pictures in a mosaic of colors, snapshots of a life that looks like stained glass when it’s all collected together. images of Florence in December, of a masked dance at the Witches’ ball, pictures of the same cat basking on the end of their bed, and a fresh swath of color offered by an escape to the Caribbean before they traveled so much farther north. for the moment, those are his favorites, because his presence isn’t hidden behind the lens, plenty taken by strangers at Emil’s request, but Monty’s grateful for it now when he can see those memories of the two of them together, photographic evidence of just who holds his heart.

-there are shelves on both sides that mimic his home in Asphodel, his favorite books kept close, broken up by candles and small souvenirs that accumulate over the summer; shells from a beach vacation, small statues from the Metropolitan after a promised visit from Marcella, and random gifts pressed into his hands before he left, in the form of stuffed animals and children’s clay projects. 

It’s a familiar scene, but not from this side of the table.

It’s a strange look for Cecilia, stripped of all her rings and bracelets and gaudy jewels, and if she still carries herself with a straightened spine and little warmth in her gaze, there is something strangely vulnerable about her. (And Monty hopes it’s something terrifying more than thrilling, but he doubts she can really feel either one.)

The room around them is a direct contrast to stark white walls, painted a deep dark gray, and it isn’t Hugo waiting outside the door, but Selwyn sitting next to him. “Tell me about Nathan Lacroix,” he says, as if it isn’t his own father, as if it’s a stranger they’re discussing and a stranger he’s looking at. 

The moment he does, the shadows in the room deepen and darken, a black screen that memories start to play across, in brief flickers of light that startle him with just how bright and crisp they are. Cecilia wears a white dress, smiling back at the man holding both of her hands in his, gray already starting to find its way into his hair and jaw strong and square, but he’s strikingly young, vibrant and alive.

“What would you like to know?” she asks. The image flickers, snapshots play behind her; a stolen dance at a Saturnalia feast, diamonds he places around her neck, Nathan Lacroix, holding his son for the first time. “That I loved him? That he loved me?” And they are beautiful memories, but the images conjured in Cecilia’s head look foreign to him, more and more like strangers, and he wonders if it’s the lens she filters it through or if his own memories are that distorted and dissonant. (He doesn’t know the answer, but either way it hurts.)

“Tell me how he died.” 

The reaction is familiar, her expression grows shuttered and cold, she looks away, staring into the technicolor images Selwyn summons for the three of them. "You know it hurts me to talk about that, Montgomery,” she says. The taste of bile in the back of his throat because it’s an act, it always has been, but she clings to it all the same, even as the images behind her shifts and changes, soaked in red and dark with shadows. She kneels next to the body, he sees a trembling hand as she reaches out to roll him over, but there is so much blood already pooling around his head like a halo, and there are no eyes looking back. Just empty sockets.

If Montgomery is used to death, the image still haunts him, his stomach turning over at the sight. He can feel the way Cecilia worsens and steals from his reactions, grief he rarely feels with such potency that she borrows. Welling up dark and awful in his chest until he has to close his eyes against it. “Did you do it?” he asks. His eyes sliding back open and fixating on her from across the table. “Did you have him killed?”

Her hand goes to her chest, her eyes go wide. “How can you even-”

“Don't.” He cuts her off before she can continue with her favorite stage show, one he doesn’t believe is for him this time, but the woman next to him, for anyone else still watching who might believe her lies. “What’s your relationship with Hugo Hellström?”

The room around them flickers, new memories sliding into place, a young man, not much older than her son, putting on a display at his initiation rites. Of weights he floats in a growing circle, each getting heavier as they form a spiral in front of him. And when the finale comes, it echoes in her head.

"I’m sorry for your loss,” he tells her, a hand on her shoulder and a faint squeeze. She nods her head, as they bury her husband, there is a brief image of Montgomery in the background, but he is at his grandmother’s side, the woman holding tightly to his arm, the smell of wine on her breath as she tells him the truth; that his mother had his father killed. 

There’s a flicker, a slip, a new memory slotting into place behind her, and suddenly Cecilia is sitting up straighter, eyes narrowing. “I don’t have any particularly special relationship with him,” she says, as though she can talk over the memory happening behind her. “Are you sure?” Hugo is asking her. They’re standing in Nathan’s study, there’s something in her hands, and the smile she gives him is cold, calculating.

“Absolutely.” And then Hugo is lifting his hand, his fingers brushing her temple, and the memory darkens, it blurs and fades, she is a foot away from him still, waving her hand dismissively, and it’s empty. “I’m sure Montgomery will be back whenever he’s gotten this rebellious phase out of his system. And I do appreciate you offering to take him under your wing when he does.”

“Not a problem at all.”

“Is that when you started working with the Institute?” he asks her. 

“I never worked with the Institute,” she tells him firmly. Reaching across the table then to try and squeeze his hand, but he pulls it back sharply. A knife finds the space between her fingers, Selwyn spinning it idly in her own. 

The smile she offers Cecilia is as cold as the metal. “No touching.” 

Cecilia sits back, pulling her hands back across the table, fixing him firmly in her gaze. “Montgomery, please,” she says, and if it leaves him bitter just to hear her say his name, it feels muted, dulled. “You have to believe me. I was trying to learn about them, the same as you. When you came to visit me, it scared me, I was scared for you.”

“You met with Emiliano.” And he hates it, he hates even directing her thoughts towards him, he hates that even is name is in the same room as Cecilia Lacroix. “You didn’t seem scared for me then.”

“I was,” she offers slowly. “For different reasons.” 

Behind her, the image changes, and he can’t help the way his gaze flicks towards it. A table in a tavern he doesn’t recognize, fried onions and Moscato set between them. “We both know there’s plenty you can gain from him and very little, if anything, he can gain from you,” she’s telling him, but the image fractures and blurs like before, words getting lost even as her mouth still moves. (Her head tips to the side in a nearly imperceptible motion.)

“If everyone gets what they want, who’s going to care that the trade isn’t equal? Or more precisely, who’s going to notice?” (There’s a smile on his lips that Montgomery knows, he’s seen before, on the edge of a bayou before they took those first steps into a game of twenty questions, and one he hasn’t seen in months.) It’s a game he already knows, doubt she tries to plant in him like poison.

“I was worried he was going to hurt you. I still am. I mean look where you are, turning on your own mother-”

“You tried to have me killed.”

“I didn’t-” Behind her, she’s answering Emil the same. “Oh, Emiliano, darling, no. Never. I never wanted my son dead.”

“You put me in a cage.” He cuts her off again, the anger rising without any aid from her, the kind he’d always thought belonged more to his father than himself, but it had been there, burning in his chest when he’d sat in that cell.

Her eyes widen, but behind her, her own voice answers, the memory pulled loose by the sharp words and Selwyn’s gift, damning and cold.

"You have to be quiet," Monty says. A barely veiled amusement in the smile he presses against Emil's lips next before the rest of his warning follows, even if he doesn’t believe the man really cares about voyeurs. "You'll get us caught."

Because the thin walls of a confessional are a poor excuse for privacy, but it doesn't stop the palm he presses firm against his chest, heat radiating through the finely pressed fabric of Emil's Sunday best. The fabric wrinkling beneath the weight of his touch and the curve of his fingers, something far too appealing about his deconstruction. Watching him fall from grace when it's so often the other way around, but a sly joke about what it would take to get a heathen on his knees is too much of an invitation to pass up.

So he replaces his tongue with the weight of his hand, fingers curving along his jaw before his thumb presses between Emil's lips. His other hand urging him back into the bench before Monty does fall to his knees, the promise of a different kind of worship in the breath he draws through parted lips, eyes dark and lashes falling slow and heavy with want.

His belt jingles as Monty pulls at the buckle, the drag of his thumb between Emil's lips mimicking his own intent. Zipper undone and fabric parting beneath his hands, but he has to stifle a moan of his own when he feels fingers sliding into his hair and tugging at the strands. Heat that radiates through his skin as Emil's palm settles at the base of his neck, and he catches his gaze for a single moment before Monty ducks his head, lips parting around him.

There's a quiet thud as Emil's head hits the back of the confessional, a muffled prayer escaping him around the weight of the fingers pressed between his lips, his own tightening in Monty's hair. Cradling him close as he kneels between his legs in a cramped confessional. And for all Monty's warnings about keeping quiet, he revels in the way the man comes apart under his hands and the wet heat of his mouth, lips parted in offering and dragging friction up the length of him with his tongue. 

Monty doesn't know if his father's ghost still lingers in the walls of his childhood home. (His grandmother wanted to find out, Cecilia refused, and he can still remember the ugly legal battle that followed because his mother kept calling him at school to try and drag him into it.) Still, spirits or not, there is a shadow of him left behind, memories that haunt him the second he steps back through the doors, worse than the last time because this time Cecilia isn't home. She's in the Magistrate's custody, and tomorrow he'll sit across the table from her and ask her why she betrayed her only child.

Tonight, he leads Emil through the echoes of his past, and few of them are warm and kind like the memory of a mother proudly checking off marks on a sloped ceiling. He doesn't have an old toybox to show him, just his father's study that looks painfully unchanged except for the accumulating dust. He doesn't know why Cecilia didn't gut it, understanding of his own flesh and blood escaping him, but it's clear she had little use for it. Maybe it was haunted, too much of the man in a single room to erase even if she tore the wallpaper down or replaced all the furniture.

Here, where he sat with his father and played chess across a small table. “He hated to lose, but he was always disappointed when I did. There was no winning with him.” It's said idly, thoughtfully, to the man he brought here with him, Monty’s fingers skimming over the pieces before he tips over the king in some painful metaphor he doesn't stop to analyze.

Here, and he kneels down, opening a small cabinet to pull out an aging bottle of cognac, still sealed, when he thought his father was saving it for a special occasion. Maybe it would've been in celebration when he heard Montgomery was made Head Significant, maybe it would've been to dull a deep, unforgiving disappointment when he found out his son was gay. He doesn't know the answer, when he thinks now that his father died before he could ever know him as anything but an unforgiving statue.

(The pictures he finds on his father’s desk only add to his uncertainty when they feel strangely sentimental; an image from the wedding of Nathan and Cecilia, gaze bright and adoring as he looks at his new bride in her white dress. Manufactured or manipulated or even sincere, Monty doesn’t doubt that it was real to him, when he never saw his father look at anyone else the same way. But next to it is a framed portrait from his graduation, another tucked in the corner from a beach trip with Aunt Vivian and her two young children, and something clenches painfully in his heart when he sees the distant look on his own face.) 

Here, the old armchair where a smaller version of Montgomery sat and read and studied every book his father set next to him. (They still sit on the shelf, and he thinks about taking some of them, notes he hid in the margin and a sudden uncertainty why the man never got angry at him for it.)

Instead he takes the bottle of cognac, stalling out briefly as the tour of memories continues past his mother’s sitting room. Because it didn’t used to be, it used to be the room his father took him to train his gift; nicks he finds still etched in the wall from daggers he threw with a thought alone. (He could trace an echo of them on his own skin if he wanted to, harder lessons to hone instincts that saved both his life and Emil’s enough times to make it worth it, but he doesn’t go searching for them when he’s happier covering up those scars with ink and bright flowers.) Now the room is littered with plush furniture and flowing drapes and forced mystique, the smell of incense and tea lingering even without her presence.

He doesn’t linger long, leading Emil up the stairs to his old room, one that feels entirely devoid of personality. Shelves of books, but most far more academic than the kind he reads now. Some children’s tale written in French that he pulls from the shelf, skimming through it with a distant smile before he leaves it on the bed. (A hag stone still hangs from the corner; he thinks he’ll take that with him too when he goes.)

“Come on,” he says. Opening the window onto a balcony that barely counts as one, a small ledge and wrought iron gating around it. One that requires careful footing, but he remembers it with instinct more than memory, one foot against the railing as he climbs up onto the corner of the roof, a hand extended to help his boyfriend up with a muted smile. One that grows wider when he finds the old pack of cigarettes, rotten and crumbling, still hidden beneath the eaves from one of the few times he came back to visit after leaving for school.

The graveyard's quiet. The sky's so gray it's almost black, and Monty can feel the wind's cold fingers, dragging along his jaw. At his right is his grandmother, his aunt and uncle, two children trailing behind her. At his left are his parent's, Cecilia holding a black parasol, her face covered in a lace veil.

The grave ahead is a black, empty, hole in the world. Monty can't see who's inside, not yet, but there is a growing sense of dread crawling up from his stomach and into his throat. He has the urge to reach for his father's hand, but Nathan has little patience for children's fear. He looks to his mother next, but somehow the thought of reaching out to her only makes the anxious twisting in his stomach worse, his skin even colder. He looks over at his grandmother, but she feels distant, statuesque and unapproachable, and in the end he keeps his hands to himself.

But the closer to the grave they get, the colder he feels, until he's shivering, arms wrapped tightly around himself. He doesn't want to look, because he knows, he knows, he already knows, but his parents reach the edge and he's next. Stumbling steps finally bringing him to the side.

He looks down into darkness, into a mahogany box with white lining, into the glassy, open eyes of his own corpse. He stumbles back wailing, but when the cold eyes of his family turn towards him they're black pits, faces stripped of all expression, devoid of pity or warmth, and he can feel it, right down to his bones. All except Cecilia, who is still shrouded in her black lace. He cries out to them again, terror resonating in his voice when hands start to rise from the earth, spectral and terrible as they wrap around his legs and start to drag him down into the dirt where he belongs, even as he cries out desperately for help-

-and he wakes up with the scream still in his throat, bolting upright in bed, sweat running down his spine and skin ice cold. He's unaware that his bed is floating off the ground until the door slams open, his gaze snapping to his father's, and it's strange to see surprise written there, before something like triumph, like pride, while tears still run down Montgomery's cheeks.

Then the bed hits the ground, shadows slipping back beneath it.

The graveyard's quiet. The sky's so gray it's almost black, and Monty can feel the wind sharp against his cheek. He knows, distantly, somewhere in the back of his mind, that this is a dream, a nightmare that stalked his childhood until his father started teaching him how to wield power and his grandmère hung a hag stone around the post of his bed. In his dream, she is still standing at his right, but she is older now, as is everyone else, his aunt and uncle, his cousins. And Cecilia, who walks alone at his left, face still covered.

The grave ahead is a black empty hole, and he feels the same aching dread, the same rising horror, that there will only be his own corpse looking back at him. So he tries to run this time, he turns away from it all, and the second he does he finds himself face to face with his father.

He is barely recognizable, gaping bullet holes in place of eyes, sockets with ragged edges of flesh and shattered bone. His hand snaps out, cold and painful as his fingers curl around his throat. "Look," he says, "you have to look." His grip tightening as he forces him back towards the grave, hand unyielding as Monty starts to claw at it with rising panic. "You're already dead, son," and it sounds like there are a thousand ghosts trapped in his throat with him-

-and he wakes abruptly, sitting up in bed and sucking in a ragged breath like if he can get enough air back in his lungs he'll feel something other than this cold horror. Shaking hands run over his eyes and then back through his hair, and it's a long moment until he realizes there is someone in the bed next to him.

The man's still asleep, sprawled on his stomach and tangled in plaid sheets. For a moment Monty thinks about waking him, stealing comfort from the warmth of his body, but he can't remember his name, and after a moment he dresses quietly and slips out into the predawn light.

This time, in his dream, he is waking up.

His eyes slide open, and he finds himself staring up at a stark white ceiling. He already knows the walls are the same shade, he can smell the fading scent of bleach and chemicals, the taste of copper in the back of his throat. He reaches for his power then, with a swiftly mounting despair, and he feels something break when instead there is just a flash of blue across the ceiling. Because it's wrong, it's all wrong, he escaped didn't he?

The doors open before he can sort it out. Familiar guards grasping at his arms, and this time he fights back, he tries to yank himself free from their grip, but it just ends with his back against the wall, "no, no, no," quietly repeated at the ceiling as he feels the sharp sting of a needle in his veins-

-and he wakes again in confusion, blinking up at his ceiling, and in the dark he can't tell what color it is, fear and panic waiting eagerly in the wings. Then he hears a quiet inhale, the shift of a body next to him, drawing his gaze to Emil's face. Soft and warm at his side, shifting beneath the sheets as his arm wraps a little tighter around Monty's chest. Burrowing a little closer, lips against his neck, and he lets out a quiet sigh of his own. Arm pulling him tighter to his side before he lets his eyes slip close again.

This time, it isn't really a dream.

It's a memory, and he can feel it all again in every detail, the feel of broken glass beneath his hands, digging sharp into his palm. The warm, wet sensation of blood running down the back of his neck, head pounding and heart racing, but none of it hurts quite as badly as the hand that grasps his arm, tearing the magic from his flesh. His mouth opens but his throat feels locked shut, even as a scream tries to tear its way free. The sound of a wounded animal clawing from his lips instead, pained and desperate.

He feels a piece of himself get ripped away, and this time when it ends, when his head falls, he can see the bloody, jagged wound in his chest where something was torn out. Shaking hands lifting to the ugly, bloodied edges, but he can't get himself to touch them, simply staring at the empty hole carved out of him, and he can't tell if it's blood or tears drawing tracks across his cheek-

-but he wakes to the gentle brush of a thumb wiping them away. He blinks in the darkness, focusing slowly on Emil as he looks back, brow furrowed in concern. Propped up on one elbow over him, his expression turning so much softer when he realizes he’s awake. “Hey you,” he says quietly. Palm settling against the side of Monty’s face, the idle drag of his thumb still tracing a soothing line across his cheekbone. And Monty closes his eyes at the sensation, drawing in a steadying breath as his heart settles back into place beneath Emil’s hands.

“Hey,” he gives back. Palm covering the one against his face, holding his hand where it is, fingers gliding over his knuckles and down to his wrist. When he speaks again the words are quiet, like a confession. “I had a bad dream.” 

There’s no answer at first, just the brush of lips over his eyelids and a quiet sigh escaping his own when it’s always tenderness that hits him the hardest. Gentle motions almost following the path of his tears before lips press against his, and he returns the soft kiss with an unspoken gratitude. Eyes sliding back open when he eventually pulls away. “Do you want to tell me about it?” 

Monty hesitates, that memory of Belvedere tearing a piece from him still lingering in the shadows outside his bed, and little desire to draw it closer. Not when he craves comfort instead, the same kind he reached for then, a desperate aching desire to let someone else hold the pieces of him together when he’s exhausted from watching them get ripped from his fingers, again and again. So he shakes his head before he turns to press himself closer to Emil, arm slipping around his waist as he tucks his head in close against his. “Just need you.” 

[ osun → monty ] You do know you're both ridiculous, yes? [ osun → monty ] Do you know what normal couples get each other? Flowers. Birthday cake. Crockpots. [ osun → monty ] Oh or a fondue pot. Did you even consider that? [ osun → monty ] Anyway I love you both but if you don't invite me to come visit this fancy beach house I swear I'm never speaking to either of you again.

[ amaya → monty ] There's a decent amount of travel, but primarily New York. [ amaya → monty ] Meeting is 8am Monday. We can talk logistics then.