paradisalogs | It has made me better loving you

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It has made me better loving you

Who: Felix and Gideon
What: Felix stops by with some books and a confession
When: This evening
Where: Gideon's room
Rating: Pg-13

The two books had sat largely undisturbed on his mantle for the last two years. Ashura knew they were there, and until now they were nothing but a distant reminder of the past. It did not seem fair to his current lover now, to have those haunt his vision, just as it did not seem fair that they did not rest with their true owner. Felix tucked them under an arm and swept out of his apartment before Ashura could arrive and question him as to his destination, though he assured himself he was only returning some books. Though not to the library.

The past few months had been a surreal blur filled with pain and sorrow but also the occasional bright spots of elation, like the sun coming out from behind patchy clouds. They were few, but always welcomed when they came. Seeing and then losing his brother again was a bittersweet ache of it's own, and the absence of the obligation d‘âme was again a noticeable derth somewhere deep in his soul. The impermanence of his life here in the castle was never quite a clear as when he felt that loss anew. It threw into starker light that which he still had. But what he did have was a tenuous thing - Ashura and Gideon - both subject to the same possible fate of disappearing at any moment. He knew now that while he could care for them both, the tension that still warred between the two of them would never get better. Neither was likely to be as pragmatic as he when it came to the wages of desire.

And he still desired Gideon, which was not all that surprising, but it wasn't until he'd almost died that he realized how much. Moreover, Gideon was not aware of why, if he was even aware of that fact at all. It did not seem fair to hide that now. Even if he ended up with nothing, he had to confess those feelings or he would sink under the weight of them before allowing the guilt of his silence to kill him. Handing over the books was just one way to free himself from that, though in what way remained to be seen.

Felix affected a smile and knocked on the door.

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Gideon waves his hand dismissively--he doesn't mind the intrusion so much, particularly not when it's Felix. And then he takes the books and looks at them.

For a moment, he's unaware of Felix's presence entirely, his thoughts going to a place and time impossibly far from them. He goes to sit at the table, setting the books before him, and opens their covers. Sure enough, the endpapers bear his mark, a monogram of his initials twining together like ivy in black ink. These are his, from his life in the Mirador. With a curious, questioning frown, he looks up at Felix.

He waits patiently for Gideon to take this information in - sees the recognition wash over the man's face - and answers the frown with a strained smile.

"Every winter, during the holiday known as Christmas, the castle has a penchant for gifting people with items from home which we normally would not be able to ask for. Things which we greatly value. And, for me, the last two years, I have been given these books. Your books."

They were never his, even when he took them on his own. They were a burden and reminder, even back when he left Mélusine. It seemed poetic that they'd followed him into this exile as well. But the meaning behind them had changed.

Gideon nods, taking the time to process the information. He's read of Christmas, and the castle's gift-giving tendency makes a perverted sort of sense. That it should give Felix his books, though...that's something that leaves him feeling oddly still inside as he looks up at Felix.

He gestures at Felix to sit in the chair opposite him, disliking the way the man is currently towering over him. And then he takes up his tablet. They look as I recall.

He takes the offered seat, back straight and dignified and more collected than he feels on the inside. Gideon has a way of tying him in knots like nobody else has ever managed.

Felix swallows and nods. "I took those and others into exile with me. I decided it was fitting. To remind me of what I had lost."

Gideon watches as dispassionately as he can, but Felix has always drawn his eye. At the moment, it's with a mix of uncertainty, fondness, and perhaps just a little annoyance--not an uncommon sensation for Gideon where Felix Harrowgate is concerned.

After a long pause, considering Felix and just what he means by remind me of what I had lost, he answers, I hope you enjoyed them.

"It's not about the books," Felix nearly shouts, very nearly instantly appalled at himself. The frustration is evident on his face. Not so much because Gideon doesn't seem to get it, but because it forces him to have to say it directly without the helpful varnish of metaphor and implication.

He presses fingers to the bridge of his nose and sighs before trying again. "I didn't have time to. I arrived here shortly thereafter. They would have had me executed, you know, unless it weren't for Mildmay. And, without him, I would gladly have let them. I think, in a way, a part of me did. I made mistakes. I grant you that. But that it took your death to clarify exactly how abysmally stupid I had been is perhaps the greatest mistake of all. I have been trying since I came here to make up for that."

Gideon lived with Felix's outbursts for years. They no longer have quite the impact they once did--not after he found the strength to leave them behind. He watches as Felix does his best to get hold of himself, waiting for what the man wants to say.

As it turns out, it's something that kindles that mild irritation into the beginnings of real anger. He knows what Felix is trying to tell him--or he thinks he does, anyway--but the way he says it leaves his throat burning with invective he can't voice. It took his death, took his being out of Felix's life entirely, for Felix to understand anything. Just in time for him to become a devoted lover to someone else. Someone unearthly beautiful and powerful, willing to put on courtly manners and probably social at parties. Someone with a tongue, no doubt someone without any qualms about Felix's preferences in bed.

All those years, he'd been willing to give Felix nearly anything to help him. And the only thing that worked was giving up his life--so that he could make up for his behavior to someone else.

He looks at Felix, hard, before scratching out a reply. It's a pity I didn't think of dying sooner. You might have avoided the trouble of exile.

The remark has a wilting effect on the other man, the control of his posture slumping inward and throat working painfully. There is truth in those words, though obviously tinged with a great deal of bias, he cannot entirely deny that the upheaval of his life had been as much of an upset as the loss of Gideon himself. The desire to lash back for that barb is there, but he knows this could very well be his only chance to convey his meaning.

Fingers curl against the surface of the table and dig into his palms to keep himself in at least some semblance of calm. "You have every right to be angry with me. You deserved - deserve - more than I have ever been able to give you. I was too afraid of being cruel to you that I did it entirely a different way. But you are wrong if you think only that loss made me know what it was I had. Only how much it hurt to miss it. You were kind when you could have cruel or indifferent. You listened and provided insight where I would have mired forever in the same tired viewpoint. You challenged and, yes, frustrated me endlessly, but with it I was better. I was better for you in my life than out of it. You are also wrong if you think I consider my exile a mere inconvenience. I nearly killed a man for what he did to you, and I do not regret it. I don't regret an exile I deserve either. I regret that I lost you far before that, as much as I regret that I never got to tell you how I felt."

Time seemed to hang suspended for a moment while the next words formed on his lips. To speak them was sure to invite disaster, but not to say them was to let Gideon go forever without the truth, and without any real chance at what he desired. "I love you. I said that to you in a dream once, but I wanted you to hear it for yourself. And...I would either be given the opportunity to show you that - to make it up to you rather than to someone else - or have nothing at all."

Part of Gideon has longed to hear these words for years; part of him wishes that Felix would stop already. Stop telling him things he's already known, and worse, telling him things he's hoped but never known for sure.

He sets his forehead in his hand for a moment, staring down at the smooth wax of his tablet, rippled in places where he's written and erased especially often. He'll have to sit down to evening it out one of these days. He'll certainly have plenty of thoughts to occupy him while he does.

Felix, he starts, hardly daring look up--not for what might be in Felix's face, but for what is undoubtedly written on his. Of all people, Felix Harrowgate. Of all people, this pig-headed peacock of a man, beautiful and clever and capable of bringing Gideon to the breaking point of fury...but never quite capable of destroying the love Gideon has for him. The affection can be trampled out, certainly, but never the love. I can't --

No, he thinks, starting over. That's not what it is. He flips the stylus in his hand and smudges wax over the last two words, letting Felix watch him begin and rethink his words. I'll be no one's Isaac Garamond. No matter what he thinks of Ashura, he won't do that to him.

Waiting for the answer is sheer torture. Part of him wonders, his throat working and muscles tensing, if Gideon is doing it on purpose. It certainly would not have been beyond him, and it also certainly would not have been entirely undeserved. He'd walk over knives for Gideon, and perhaps the man himself knows that now. The question is if he cares.

For a few long moments he's sure he'll be forced to beg. The fact that they are in many ways incompatible means nothing to him. Gideon is more than the sum of his relatively unassuming parts. He taken that largely for granted in the past. Had not been able to give him the trust required to expose all that he needed and feared. Whether it would be different now is hard to say, but things are different now. He is different now, perhaps.

The reproach comes as a surprise, even then, like a physical blow. The hurt flashes on his face, and he feels rather suddenly desperate - weightless and lost and spinning wildly like a stone dropped from a very high tower.

"You don't have to be. I can leave..." he says, pulling the large emerald ring from his right ring finger - the only one in attendance on his hands these days - and placing it firmly on the table. Ashura had given that to him after he'd delivered one of his own along with the promise of his attempt at fidelity, and the gaudy stone shone rather accusingly up at him now. But that promise had been made as a result of the lessons he had learned from this man, and it no longer seemed possible to fulfill that with Gideon himself around. And along with the loss of it's weight came a feeling of finality. He hadn't been sure that was what he need to do until now, but it's now the only choice he has.

"I will," he adds more firmly, "whether or not you say yes."

Gideon stares at him and, were they a few years younger, his mouth might have dropped open. While the full symbolism of that particular ring isn't known to him, he can guess what--or rather, who--it implies.

For a moment, his only thought is, incongruously, I am too old for this. It's an absurd thought, and he knows it, considering that he's not only old, he's rather conspicuously dead. A dead man of forty-five receiving the sort of raving gesture that belongs to Felix's relative youth and vitality, entirely uncertain what he should do with it.

This is everything he's ever wanted of Felix, everything he's wanted to hear. But it leaves him feeling unsettled and apprehensive. After years, can he really suppose Felix means it? Won't things settle into the same affairs the moment he steps back over the threshold of the man's rooms? Mildmay won't be there, but it might as well be the same otherwise. And then comes the bickering, the screaming, and this time, the utter inability to scream back, even in thought.

It won't be the same. It might well be worse.

Felix, he writes out again, writing the name with all the care he might, I would like to believe you. But I can't return to the Mirador. And I won't remake it here. I would need - He pauses. Time. And proof.

He doesn't know if it would be any better. Nor does he completely care. He would rather try and fail a second time than not know. Maybe the time apart has glossed over all the pain. He knows it was there, but with distance all he can focus on is the good. The gentleness of his touch and generosity of his spirit was what he missed. If losing Ashura as a lover was what it took to have that again, even platonically, he would do it. For now there is only contempt and anger simmering between all three of them, and he can't bear that much longer.

Felix focuses on the shape of his name. It's easier to process than the rest of it. Part of him feels he's waited long enough, and that any longer would be unbearable, but the part of him that is still sanguine remembers that he'd granted his patience to Ashura once, and would rightly have to give it Gideon as well.

"What proof would you need?" he asked, his voice unsteady.

Gideon tries to recall that last night in the Mirador, those hopeful plans he'd made on his way to see Felix. They could try again, he'd thought, his footsteps the only noise in the corridors. Gideon would not live with him--not yet--and would not accept any situation in which Felix insisted upon it. That's the only one he can recall at the moment, though he suspects there were others.

'Proof,' he writes, feeling mildly foolish at having to correct his phrasing already, is perhaps not the ideal word. Does Ashura know you've decided this?

He thinks he understands what Gideon had meant to say. Assurances. That he could in fact act differently than he had in the past. That perhaps he'd grown enough in the interim to give both of them a real chance.

"No," he answers, staring forlornly again at the ring. He longed to pick it back up and pocket it - hide it away where it could cause him less guilt by its very existence - but he didn't. It was his to bear, and a move like that could too easily do more harm than good, with Gideon's eyes on him. "I was not entirely certain of it myself, until just now.

Gideon nods, quiet. That makes things both easier and more difficult. It will have to happen before anything else does. From there...he's not sure. It would be in good taste to wait some time before they do anything more, but he's not especially interested in sparing Ashura's feelings--not after what happened to his first tablet.

After you've told him - after that. After that, Gideon will give him another chance. He reaches out for Felix's hand, wanting to know the weight of it, lessened slightly by the removal of what is (in his not unbiased opinion) a rather hideous ring.

It's startling how they've come nearly full circle - the scene almost a copy of how their relationship started. But this time Gideon isn't pulling away. He isn't the touch-starved and lovesick man he's been before. More apt to push back than yield to Felix's desires. All of which is just as well. It was different this time because it had to be. Because he had no wish to repeat the past, but mend the wounds that stemmed from it. His own emotions are turbulent and bittersweet, but he can't deny how gratifying it is to feel it. How right.

Felix turns his hand to meet the warmth of Gideon's fingers - the ones he remembers so well - and clasps his own lightly around them. He licks his lips to get out the next words, his mouth suddenly having gone dry at the answer which was - at the moment - the closest he was going to get to assent.

"Very well. After. Soon," he said, knowing it was useless to lie. He would not be able to walk directly back to his suite and deliver the news of his decision. It was not that easy.

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