#fic babble

The light is grey and pale but it is enough to stab at his optic nerves. His head throbs. He is lying on the ground, half-buried in mud and trampled grass. He closes his eyes, rolls onto his back, turns his face to the sky although the rain cannot wash away the ache. His mouth tastes of vomit and champagne, cigarettes and blood, and something acrid that he could probably identify if he allowed himself to think about it for more than an instant, something he is absolutely not inclined to do. He has dreamed nothing.

Faust looks up at the sky again, rubs at his eyes, opens them to colored flashes, purple and blue and white, like—

—like the will-o'-the-wisps that had led them to—

—to the Brocken—

Faust's eyes snap open again. He is lying in the Brocken Valley. He is lying naked in the Brocken Valley and flashes of images break forth—white tulle and white hands and faces—beautiful faces—shrieks of laughter, intoxicating melodies—

—he sees Mephistopheles, with flames emanating from his eyes—

He needs to find Mephistopheles.

Francesco is sitting in the chapel, fiddling with some beads. The sunlight catches his thick golden hair; his soft pink lips move aimlessly over his prayers. He's always been pious; now, in his grief, he looks oddly saintly, like one of those prissy saints that Raphael paints. Raphael, but not Leonardo—Leonardo had never asked Francesco to sit for him, although he's certainly pretty enough. Perhaps he had simply not wanted to distract Francesco from his various administrative duties, but Salaì had felt a little stab of smug and fairly unbecoming satisfaction that the privilege of immortality in oils, the honor of being the likeness of a saint, had been reserved for Salaì himself.

(Now, Salaì had done some sketches. One of them, a drawing in red chalk in which Francesco's face was obscured but his lovely rounded arse most definitely was not, had caught Leonardo's attention, enough that he remarked aloud on the beauty of the work. If he'd guessed who the model was, he hadn't let on—after all, Francesco hadn't even been wearing a hat, let alone anything else—but Francesco had been in earshot and the ecstatic shade of pink he'd turned could have lit the entire studio.)

"Francesco?" Salaì says.

Francesco looks up at him, his grey eyes wide and strangely vacant, his expression unreadable.

"Giacomo," he replies.

It's been years since anyone in Leonardo's household had addressed Salaì by his baptismal name. Francesco had clung to it for years, out of his aristocratic formality or perhaps just out of jealousy. He's Giacomo again, back in Milan; he hasn't minded it so much, there. He can't imagine being Salaì with his sisters, and Giacomo feels all right when Bianca calls him that. But here—it's a reminder of his own apostasy.