CHARMING

send 💬 + a rumor and my muse will react to it 

im Wheezing

Fingers trace over dusty tabletops, reverent, heart a tight thing in her chest. How easily everything can grow so old, so lost. Lenore’s eyes are on Malachi. On his shoulders, his face, recalling a man with his son’s hand in his own on a street corner. When she comes to sit down next to him, Lenore’s arm moves to wrap around his back, movements slow. 

This was the building in the picture. There’s magic in that, but Lenore doesn’t say. Grief doesn’t feel like magic.

There’s a pause before she leans forward, enough for Malachi to look at her if he wants, “Then I’ll stay with you.” Her eyes move to the comic book and she slowly reaches forward to trace the black lines with her fingertips. “These are all over the apartment. He liked them, didn’t he?” 

Seeing where someone lives, or lived, is like reading a book to her. (Her own room is a testament to her life and the lives of others.) “Do you know what happened to her? To the woman who lived upstairs?” To her mother—one of the rumors said she bled out in the tub.

Lenore leans over to gently press her lips to his temple, saying against his skin, “I won’t leave you.” A promise. There’s a sad smile in her voice when she says, “I can stop at the market early in the morning, and you can make breakfast.” 

He doesn’t watch her trace her fingers over the furniture, but he thinks he can feel it, thinks he can feel her hands over his arms, back to cupping his cheeks, wipe the dust away from his skin. He almost thinks it looks like her room for a moment, all the things collected - wonders if she’ll take something to keep, to remember, almost wants to guess what, wants to guess what she’d like. Keep it for him. Keep it safe. He leans into her when she’s there next to him. He thinks he sees his son running in the corner of his eye, and for a split moment, he forgets reality.

He doesn’t say it, but perhaps she can see it in his face that he wanted her to stay too. (Perhaps any needs to stay once in a home near where family once slept, even if it no longer feels right, at least when they can’t remember what right would feel like.) He takes a moment to speak, words slow, a bittersweet reveal, “As a kid, the store across the street, I’d steal the Peter Parker ones. These, they’re all bought so he wouldn’t do the same. Knew he thought about it once, could see it in his face, when my brothers told him about us.”

And he turns to her then, to see her eyes, he’s not lying, see that too when she looks into his, bittersweet too, but the latter isn’t due to a mother, “No - if I did, you’d know,” a pause, “But she did die, right above where we are now, one of my brothers found her, he was going to give her her mail. Her things may still be there, or in a closet somewhere.”

If she says nothing, its because she doesn’t feel the need. Instead she watches as his words paint the air; she feels as if yet again, they are falling to that comfortable silence that is found whenever in his presence. If she says nothing, it is only to elongate the time spent in such comfort. And she would continue to revel in the silence if the very act didn’t make her feel impolite; so she finds her words, genuine and airy. “Geteilte freude ist doppelte freude, geteilter schmerz ist halber schmerz; so the hour doesn’t matter then, in company it’s easier to make the rules for it. And while I do agree that we do always make the rules, they don’t bend as easily when you’re left alone with nothing but time.” It’s always the hardest to live in solitude, even surrounded by others; there comes a particular form of seclusion, when parts of you still live in a world so detached from the one in which you are physically present. Her solitude had come with her new identity, never allowing herself to find relief around others, always reading an imaginary script. She can only imagine how he feels without a new reality to lose himself in. If she is still pained even with her demons hidden away, she can’t conceive the emotions that come with those that lay with him to sleep. 

Josephine knows she wont vocalize any of these questions, perceptions and insights. There’s no need for them to feel anything but comfort, and she hopes that her own company will have a similar effect to that of his. Because she has felt so inadequate in this new skin, trying and failing again and again to dull idiosyncrasies and learned vernacular. She has removed an old skin and crafted another, but the edges feel loose, and the feeling reminds her of the hand-me-downs she found at the thrift shop. If she is to tailor this new skin, she’s not sure how; hasn’t found the time to write some faux autobiography because it feels silly, hasn’t felt compelled to go into any detail about this life because her mind can’t wrap itself around the idea of an actual tabula rasa. Normal people don’t even remember the exacts of their own lives. But she remembers how to smile, and it feels natural again. He saves her from having to avoid any questions, of trying to read from her unfinished script, “and far more interesting things, I’m sure.” Her eyes scan the old car, the ruins seeming to imitate life itself, with the insides slowly crumbling; it could be poetic. “The kitchen aspect, I wasn’t aware of…it’s lacking for a kitchen, but then again, it’s enough for someone. Or was, quite a long time ago. We could use it all, and they would be none the wiser.” 

“But you forget - the more time you have, the more time you have to learn to manipulate those rules,” something casual about the words, something hollow, something whole (if that’s what we can call people like them at all). “You forget too, company rarely matters on whether or not you live in solitude.” Put him in a crowd of people, among cities, among Paris, and he will live for one boy. He will live a life hidden. Put him in a Menagerie and he will live as a man with more secrets than he even knows of. He will live a life hidden, prefer it so. Think it simpler than any other option, tell himself it is so. So, there’s a candor to his words, meant just for her. A truth he doesn’t give explanation with, doesn’t think he needs to. He doesn’t bring up the German, that he doesn’t understand it. That he doesn’t what it reveals about her history. about her.

“We’re still in a train, we can’t ask for all we want out of a kitchen here. Nor in a train like this, further,” says he wishes for a home, somewhere in it. “If we use it, I’d rather take the drinks,” spoken as he starts moving his way through the area behind the counter, taking up glasses from beneath boxes, protected from dust. Bottles where he can’t read their names, Russian. Doesn’t look at her as he speaks, “If you see something catch your eye, be the first to take it. Not worth it to wonder if someone’s going to miss them if they’re still here now, if they weren’t worth remembering still.” He doesn’t call this place poetic, just ruined. Just a place settled into dust. He can move as if he’s poetic, but you don’t call a dead thing romantic. It’s someone else years later that turn blood-colored things into works of art, not the one walking with them, not the one wearing all shadow. We don’t call the two of them beautiful yet, that will take decades, so they just live where the shadow lies, and don’t bother with what else they could be. At least some days.  “Maybe they’ll consider it tomb raiding,” mostly a joke, but there’s not humor in his voice.

“It would.” Vicente says. Not that he’s opposed but he knows there there night out with Lenore will not be the last series of drinks and he’d like at least one day in the city where he can keep the facts of it straight. “There’s more to life than drinking, Malachi.” He begins walking backwards to see his face properly. It’s not that he doesn’t know where he wants to go, but it is not an easy thing to ask. 

The distance between them has always been comfortable, only speaking of hometowns and the lives they lived there in the vaguest sense, but now that he is actually here Vicente cannot deny that he is intrigued. But what would he say if asked  to show him the streets that he walked, the stores he frequented, and maybe even the home where he had lived? 

If the roles had been reversed Vicente would say no, that there was nothing interesting to learn from filling in the footsteps of his past; nothing exciting to be found in sitting in visiting his favourite music shop or standing in the center of the town square where all he could ever think about was how he had to make it out of there.

But it was possible that Malachai would feel then what Vicente feel now, show it to me anyway.

‘What did you normally do at this time of night?” The street lights reflect the mischievous look in his eyes though he suppress the smile. “We could see a film. I hear your Jazz bars are worth seeing. Or were you already in bed by now. You haven’t been away that long, but has it changed at all? The Paris of your childhood.”

He turns forward walking just a little out of step, moving ahead. “Or if that’s too personal.” He likes to keep his secrets, Vicente can’t fault him for that when he likes keep his own. “I can cave to the touristy things. What’s the name of that bridge, Pont….des Arts? Though we’d have to stop and buy a lock. Or maybe we can see if that graveyard if still open. I plan to kiss the grave before we finish here.”

“That more depends on who you ask, or when we ask each other,” on life being more than drinking. It is. Of course. But, is it? Is like more than a numbing pleasure? More than seeking it? What more is there to do with a life you have no care for, nothing to care for when it’s already dead - when it died in the streets so close? What do you search for in life, when it lives on the impossible possibility of life? Answer: we drink. And call it filling. 

And maybe he would show Vicente lived, when he was more than this, when he was more than drinking, when he was more than caverns. (Or is he more now? Is this the man he was meant to be? Nights tend to forget what was the best.) Doesn’t expect Vicente to ask, doesn’t expect for himself to say anything, but to just end up in those places anyway, if he just walks, if muscle memory takes over. (And maybe he would ask Vicente to show him anyway, show him anyway the town he lived in. Not the greater parts. Homes will do.)

It takes him a moment to think of how to answer him, of how to look at him (because theory is different than application, and it still feels like hands in his chest, digging). The gleam of an eye, that Malachi matches, smiling for him, something coy. 

“You want childhood?” Childhood he can answer. “We would go dancing, or I would ask them to go dancing. A film - you can’t move, only stare. Can get boring, after a while.” And he says it with the same expression, but those fingers are still digging, “Paris won’t change, not for us,” let Vicente take that as he wants. Let him decide what’s full truth, what’s hidden. 

It washes over her like a perpetual shade of grey, some feeling disguised as apathy to add to the imbalance of the room. You can only find uncertainty in knowing. For someone like Josephine who knows how simple it is to create ― while the decision itself is difficult ― uncertainty comes in waves. More so, it brings to question just how wary others can be of her. From the inside looking out, it’s palpable. The attempts at a metamorphosis hold such fervor, but her skin never lets her forget the difference. Her heart wont let her forget the difference. And from the inside looking out she has yet to free herself of her chrysalis; so sure that if she reaches out to anyone, her hand will meet resistance before any human contact. From the outside looking in, she imagines it’s not much different than a terrarium, mystery encased in glass ― intriguing for all the wrong reasons. Even the most curious onlooker will miss what’s right under his nose; the muted colors, constant daze, and some else. Maybe melancholy? The one who looks without pretense, accepts the affectation and feigned pose ― he allows her to chase off the apathy with appreciation. He makes it easier for her vision to feel saturated. And appreciation becomes compassion; if you can only find uncertainty in knowing, she wonders how he found her. Perhaps in the same way she found him.

She finds him in her orbit once more and her thanks is wordless, taking the drink in her hand and almost laughing. He knows her…or at least parts of her. Whoever she is now between heiress and runaway, he seems to know. Josephine nurses the drink between both hands, seeming pensive about the events of the night. “Not necessarily. I think…even if I did, the words might get caught in my throat.” And you?, she wants to ask, knowing how these things amounted inside a person, countless things never said. She hopes a small raise of her brows is enough to pose the question. Her mouth moves, but stops short of voicing anything. She doesn’t even know what difference it would make, to speak to no one or vote in favor of a man more elusive than herself. “First I’d have to find where I fit in any of this. If I do, I assume you’ll be there with my drink in hand,” and it’s no coded meaning, although it’s more hoping than assuming.

He appreciates it, the silence. That more can be said without words. (Meaningless things. He thinks she may understand too. That either of them could say anything, and it would mean nothing, would be nothing more than wind, nothing more than to fill space, to lift a chin. Hands matter so much more, the quirk of the brow. Tell him what you mean, don’t let it be with a voice. Isn’t it here that identity is real, no matter a name, new or old. No matter a skin, new or old.)

(The silence knows them more, than any identity.)

And, no, he doesn’t know, but that’s more choice than anything else. He doesn’t know her, but he can recognize her. He can recognize the look of an eye. Can know a mirror when he sees it. Can know a person running.

There’s a look to them, in the eye, the way they speak. He knows this now. It’s also subconscious to know. (Call it survival.)

There’s a small humor in his gaze, something real, something for a companion, if they can call each other that, at least to themselves, at least as half-felt things. Someone that understands - where do you find it? Do you want to, even if you find your way walking toward it?

Some part of her mind, the part unpreoccupied by survival and fear, registers his mantra, registers his promise, his calming words. Finds that her heartbeat slows with the pace of it, the reassurance of it. Some other part screams rebellion, screams flight, knows that he will break it, or she will have to flee before he can. 

Don’t fall for it. Don’t trust it. Promises only tie you down, only trap you in willing prisons.

But she doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to escape the embrace of his arms, the touch of his hand as he rubs gentle circles, like her mother used to do when she was ill. 

(Freedom is a choice, right? Then she chooses this, for now. She chooses warmth and comfort and security.)

(This is a form of freedom, right?)

Then he responds to her question, with such frankness that it throws her off, brings her away from the haze of a memory of a mother dying, or a burning building, brings her to the fact of the matter. Away from personal, to the distance of a thought experiment. 

We burn, just by living.

Is she the water of her home, slow and gentle, or is she the fire that lingers underneath, that consumes whatever in her path to experience? Does it matter?

Ata reaches up to push away her tears, takes a breath, gives Malachi a shaky smile. “Thank you.” The reason goes unsaid. It covers too many things. 

Then she wonders what being alive means to someone like Malachi, wonders what burning means for him. “More than as the doctor?”

And man that has always planned too far into the future, when he was a man free of the Menagerie, when today was more than he could live for, the moment was never his worry, and it was is only worry. And a part of it still stays here, can’t make promises for what will happen, if he will leave, if she would first. But and while we’ll plan, we’ll worry about something before it’s a closing threat, when it’s closer.

Don’t trust it, trust it enough to stay. He doesn’t know his min either Ata; and knows it better than he will know any other part of the world besides his son. And he doesn’t know him anymore either. But does he hold her the same? Is the touch the same? (Does he understand her the same?)

And if he knew how she felt, he’d tell her to be both the fire and the water, why is life one thing? Be the man and the vampire. Be the woman and the flames and the wind and the sea, all drowned feathers. One thing is a hindrance - and boring. 

There’s a quiet smile, turned to the distance, half-hidden, but born from her wiping tears like he knew she would, thanks him for something, he never asks for it. “Why would you thank me for telling you what you already know too?” Not accusatory, matches the same tone as before. 

It’s a place he knew, somewhere deep within him, as a place he’d never return, not even in dreams, beyond here in person. And never so with Lenore - even with the promises he planned to keep. They never strayed as far as the old apartment left, somehow, uncleared of everything.

The kitchen still as he left it, though food had to be cleared out and he told Lenore not to go near the fridge (not staying here long enough to clean it - and that too is a thought strange to him). The living room still full of the mess Elias left behind him, comic books laid open, on the last page his son read, two pages until the end. Malachi dog-ears the page, and closes it, wants to put it in his back pocket, wants to never see it again. 

It’s the same apartment building as in the photo Lenore once showed him, quiet in the way he speaks in the darkened rooms, not looking at her, but at the comic book, in his hands, Miles Morales swinging through New York. Leaving room on the couch for to sit. “The room, I’ve heard about, she lived a few floors up,” and then, “I’m not sure who lives there now anymore.” Because he doesn’t know how long he’s truly been away from the world. 

And he's too close to his old apartment again, still not yet cleared out. Familiar now, but not home. He doesn't call his sleeper car in the train home for the same reason he does Paris, take out that it's run by Metzger at a circus. There's an emptiness to the world, and a cloud overhead until all that's left to feel is the electricity in the air before something bursts open - call it Malachi himself. 

Another time, another place he'd decide to only think of the electricity is something made, and one for the man beside him now, darkened streets and dinner paid for already, now just the two of them walking against cobblestones. 

Lenore doesn’t know what to expect when Malachi makes the shift. Only, that her mind suddenly goes blank—everything is underwater-muffled. She melts into his hands, finds herself somewhere far away for a few moments before it’s his lips replacing teeth, drawing her back into the world again. 

She touches her fingers along the outer edge of the hickey, catches a glimpse of it in the mirror on her closet. “I like it,” Lenore tells him, a small laugh in her voice. (Her way of saying: it didn’t hurt.)

There’s still something tired about him, about the way he carries his shoulders. Her hands move to rest along the length of his neck. He looks more like himself, but not quite. Her eyebrows furrow. 

“You should drink more,” She tells him, and even though her voice is soft, there’s stubbornness in her eyes. “You still don’t look like yourself.” A pause, and she leans closer to him, hands on either side of his face. This intimacy sends goosebumps down her arms—it’s something she’s never known with anyone. “We don’t know what’s going to happen next; you need to have your strength.” 

(They hadn’t known about what would happen in Shanghai, or the Starlight Carnival. If something similar happens at their next destination, what would become of Malachi then?)

Lenny makes sure to look him in the eyes when she says this, head tilting, hair skimming over the purple bruise on her neck, “Mal, I want you to.”  

(He’s not an animal, no blood dripping across his chin, his mouth. He’s not an animal, he won’t feed like one. Knows the neck well enough to know where it won’t hurt - knows where it would too, but such thoughts depend on the person he’s nearing, care about the amount of blood on a mouth then too. Count a body.)

(We call giving blood worship. That real gods require blood. Somehow he always takes it as a the opposite - hold himself like a god, and drink like he’s taking the blood from another greater, used to such things, began to enjoy it. It’s different here, not a sacrifice, but does he look at her the same? Even as he laughs because she’s laughing? Even if that’s new for the moment.)

“Not yet,” he gives, his own buried stubbornness, he could walk away now, could go find someone else in the streets, could ask someone else here what they have in a fridge. (And he’s not used to real care, not from a partner. Has ever known someone to hold his face like this. Nothing that lingers like this. Doesn’t think more blood will ruin it, but he wants such things maybe more slow too.)

It's been one year since he's been home. One year of not knowing if his son was still breathing. One year of this heart in his chest, an unfamiliar organ, even as it fits him so well, even as he wears it when a canted neck, think small gods are built in the marrow of rib cages. So many times he's lived different lives, when his son was born, when he drew blood. He entered a different universe before the Menagerie, when blood soils palms. And this isn't a return, more of a new dimension altogether, to hear his son's name again from someone else's lips, more possibly alive than before.

So, we call this place chaos – in more ways than simple noise, in more ways than the effect of flashing lights. We call this place chaos – if you have something to hide. More importantly, for the moment, your own face, your own body, a history and past, all laid out bare, feeling like peeled skin on his chest, laid out in his hands – not pretty. Crumbled. Stained. (Call it something begging. Call it him not feeling the pain at all, but knowing it’s there.) And it's more than any can separate (reliving not the blood, but the giving away; the will to run away; the questions if he should call himself a father at all; is his mother still alive?; call it wondering if he still cares, if he can call his thoughts care; if he wants to. Call it a hungry rib bone digging away at flesh. Something important being carved out. He says he likes the openness of the cavern in his chest.) He almost thinks she knows what it would mean, a silent knowing, a silent recognition, what's it felt like is more of a tug, to be near those left as a reflection. (Silent looks during the television crews passed by. Silent looks during a meeting, eyebrows raised at each other both instances – if they were hearing these words too.)

There’s a darkness here, one that you wear on the skin, one you breathe. Wear your shadows as the back of a jacket, wear it in your lungs. Wear it as a suit, no need to wonder how well it fits – how the two of them together walk through the tunnels, light as only steams when they can reach them, light as something rare. They’re here for Raafe, for them, but not think there won’t be blood too, don’t think he’s not walking like graves were made for him; hands as coffin-makers, not one to lie in them. It’s rotten here, but they’ve been in fresher places, it doesn’t change how he walks.

“This place is yours, shouldn’t you tell me where you’ve decided to go?” He slows, waiting for Rafa to notice, a gloved hand grazing over a skull, fingers just above the browbone, before sliding into one of the eyes, wondering silently, barely a thought at all, but felt, if he could break it. A quirked eyebrow and something cool within him, something that you’d think he’d be walking across ballrooms, crowds parting for the both of them, something regal, if we’re here to call them divine in Paris. (If we’re here to remember the grounds above are places killed, grounds above full of red, grounds above of things uncounted for. Why would he count?) Something waiting, something knowing, something almost always amused by Rafa’s nature, the curve of their lip. He’s here to witness before anything else.

And there’s no way we talk about this simply - for all the half-felt ignored things, felt still; for all the ways we call his life something that has began and ended so many times, and they all began or ended here, let them be in blood, somehow - from Elias’ mother’s womb, from the blood of their own teeth, too many times. And there’s more things than we know how to say. (Does he search for him, somehow, someway, is that why he’s still walking? Do we truly call vampires the living dead? Do we call this a melting? Or a turning to stone?)

He doesn’t assume he was followed, doesn’t assume she was here to find him at all, no, when Lee Xue Er enters the world - what he thinks of is that he recognizes her light footsteps even on cobblestone, even among cities. What he does, is that he stops his walking, but doesn’t turn around to greet her, doesn’t look at her until she’s beside him and starts walking again, slower for her pace, something natural. Words all teasing, but the old charm of his features is lost to wind, call it trust for it to be, “Isn’t it a bit late for you? Midnight’s past.” Act like they were always here together, does it feel natural too? “I can walk you, if you want it, wherever your going, if it’s not the train.” 

llenore‌: 

DATE & TIME: February 20th, 11:45PM LOCATION: A Bar in Paris TAG: @vicente-deleon , @malachileclair

Lenore is five shots in. “I’m not drunk,” she’ll say if someone were to ask, “I’m having fun.” And it’s true. It takes much more to get her properly drunk—as of right now, she’s tipsy enough to be comfortably dizzy, tipsy enough to be smiling. Her eyes are brighter. It’s from the alcohol. All the same, this is a welcome distraction.

She has one arm wrapped around Malachi’s waist, and one hand laced through Vicente’s. “I’d like another drink,” She says, looking from her left to her right, pausing to touch Malachi’s shoulder with the side of her head. 

“We should each have another drink, no?” Looking to Vicente, she lifts her foot slyly and taps him on the ass, “You’re two shots behind, Vicente. Tienes que beber.” 

Eyebrows lifting at Vicente, Lenore levels him with a look that says, drink. Half-fun, half-challenge. “Or are you a lightweight, hm?”

Her grin is charming in the way it’s almost wolfish, the dark of her eyes gleaming. She leans back on Malachi and tilts her head up to look at him, asks, “Can you order me a drink, please?” 

When Vicente had told them that after St. Petersburg he wanted to be so drunk that he couldn’t remember anything the next day he had mostly meant it as a joke, but three shots in he thinks that with the way their night is going he just might get there. Which will either put a giant hole in his plan to get someone’s number tonight so he’ll have somewhere to go when Malachi and Lenore decide they want to do something benign and vaguely domestic or prove his earlier point that he is in fact just as charming as he thinks he is.

He’s about to suggest that maybe that they should head out, would have even offered to pick up the tab from the bartender, when she cuts him off with an insistence that she’d like another drink. And though Vicente runs his thumb over the back of her hand in confirmation that he is listening, can feel her looking back and forth, he looks at Malachi. Because for a man insistent on his independence, wherever they go, Vicente will go. And where they go next comes to do if he’ll cave. 

But for good measure Lenore seems to push his buttons as well. 

“You can’t bait me, Leonor.” Vicente isn’t a lightweight, he just knows his limits. Tipsy him is loose limbed and fun; he’s attentive and laughs at all your jokes, and he’s the right amount of talkative where he can keep track of he’s saying while he’s saying it. Still, he turns to to Malachi and says, “Yeah, order her another drink.I’ll take three shots.” He lifts his eyebrows at her as if to say, now who’s the lightweight.

@llenore​

He's not drunk, but he doesn't share what's in the dark glass on the table, the only alcohol as some sip from Lenore's drink when he was carrying it to her. (He'll have to walk them home; he'd know these streets drunk in the dark, but he doesn't figure they do.) 

And he's something silent here, something watching, but he can be a presence too in silence, in the he holds himself here, never slouched, always something tall, quirked eyebrows with Lenny's question toward Vicente, something all daring in his, but doesn’t let it speaks, let it be all felt. Lenore is felt, all angles; Vicente is all that’s in his level line of sight when he looks forward.

And he doesn't mind how he takes space, Lenny's space, as much as she takes of his. He speaks low, tilting a head down as if it'll help her to hear, as if speaking secrets, "You'll have to move for that," teasing, when her head is hear his shoulder, but legs almost ready to stand.