September, 2015
There came the inevitable relapse.
The forced jail-break releasing Whisper and his superior had given Mesteno temporary purpose, and the aftermath could only ever be ugly as the hours stretched emptily, no matter how he tried to fill them.
His thoughts were full of Evander, and the traitorous muscle pounding in his chest kept up an incessant, dull ache, never once giving reprieve. Better he be made of engine parts, his heart as metal as the scaffolding pinning his brittle bones together. Better his mind be puppet-pulled by the strings of logic. Love he would claw out of himself, snapping ribs like dry twigs. Pull free misery?s pulp with stained, trembling fingers and cast it into the fiery tongues of the incinerator in his basement. Let it be ash. Let it mingle with the dry dust of the corpses he threw there, trash amongst trash. What need had he of such a thing?
He languished quietly, loathed himself for the choice he?d made, and relived the hallucinations of the Wastes with wrenching clarity. He neglected to care for himself, could not brave the public eye, and slept only when the drink delivered him to temporary oblivion.
Once, he almost went to hunt his old lover down. Only once.
I was wrong. So wrong. Forget everything I said, it doesn?t matter.
He let himself imagine the way it played out, deliverance from the hole he?d dug for his heart, but it would have been a lie to say those words, and only a matter of time until he regretted the weakness.
Grey mornings with the threat of autumn?s harrowing on the horizon, he?d wake hungover and hard, bitten by the rhythms his body had adopted after three years of sharing the sagging mattress slung haphazard on his bedroom floor. Then his responses were never sluggish, and disgusted though he was for shamelessly dredging the filth of his memory for inspiration, it was the quickest means to an end. Better that, than to be hounded by the urge all day, caught off guard by phantom memory. In the aftermath, nauseated by the shame of it, he conjured the faces of old lovers, one night stands, the friends with benefits who?d let their standards slip for just long enough to imagine there might be something more. It was an exercise in futility. Nothing but a nobly Roman nosed face with lazuline eyes, stubborn jaw abrasive with the soot black of stubble, had any capacity to stir him.
When at last the chains broke, and the slovenly, abhorrent nature of his seclusion sickened him too much to remain, he sought out the Alfar. They tolerated the bitter stain of his moods despite the sensitivity of their empathy, put him to work through harvest until his calloused hands were cracked and raw, and sent him home with a bone deep weariness that let him sleep without the aid of the gut rot he?d been depending on.
He knew, but didn?t ask his friends there to confirm, that Evander yet lived in the vicinity. Knew too that the dark man would keep his distance even though the territory was home turf. Guiltily, he wished it were otherwise.
A bottle of Stolichnaya appeared one day upon his porch of his cabin. Beside it, the bright edge of a blade en pointe, pinning a note to the ivy strangled decking.
?If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all of my life.? - Oscar Wilde
A line had been struck through the first sentence. It was not Evander?s way to turn to literature, and Mesteno didn?t doubt the fragment had been something he?d begged from Bjorn when his own words hadn?t conveyed what he wished. Mesteno?s fingers pinched at the edges of the paper hard enough to crease it, and his eyes had searched the treeline, the silvery pillars of the trunks for the incongruous shape of what he knew he was foolish to hope might be there.
He sent no reply to the note, though it felt like nothing more than masochism to refrain. The pain grew far worse before it calmed, leaving him, finally, comfortably numb.
There came the inevitable relapse.
The forced jail-break releasing Whisper and his superior had given Mesteno temporary purpose, and the aftermath could only ever be ugly as the hours stretched emptily, no matter how he tried to fill them.
His thoughts were full of Evander, and the traitorous muscle pounding in his chest kept up an incessant, dull ache, never once giving reprieve. Better he be made of engine parts, his heart as metal as the scaffolding pinning his brittle bones together. Better his mind be puppet-pulled by the strings of logic. Love he would claw out of himself, snapping ribs like dry twigs. Pull free misery?s pulp with stained, trembling fingers and cast it into the fiery tongues of the incinerator in his basement. Let it be ash. Let it mingle with the dry dust of the corpses he threw there, trash amongst trash. What need had he of such a thing?
He languished quietly, loathed himself for the choice he?d made, and relived the hallucinations of the Wastes with wrenching clarity. He neglected to care for himself, could not brave the public eye, and slept only when the drink delivered him to temporary oblivion.
Once, he almost went to hunt his old lover down. Only once.
I was wrong. So wrong. Forget everything I said, it doesn?t matter.
He let himself imagine the way it played out, deliverance from the hole he?d dug for his heart, but it would have been a lie to say those words, and only a matter of time until he regretted the weakness.
Grey mornings with the threat of autumn?s harrowing on the horizon, he?d wake hungover and hard, bitten by the rhythms his body had adopted after three years of sharing the sagging mattress slung haphazard on his bedroom floor. Then his responses were never sluggish, and disgusted though he was for shamelessly dredging the filth of his memory for inspiration, it was the quickest means to an end. Better that, than to be hounded by the urge all day, caught off guard by phantom memory. In the aftermath, nauseated by the shame of it, he conjured the faces of old lovers, one night stands, the friends with benefits who?d let their standards slip for just long enough to imagine there might be something more. It was an exercise in futility. Nothing but a nobly Roman nosed face with lazuline eyes, stubborn jaw abrasive with the soot black of stubble, had any capacity to stir him.
When at last the chains broke, and the slovenly, abhorrent nature of his seclusion sickened him too much to remain, he sought out the Alfar. They tolerated the bitter stain of his moods despite the sensitivity of their empathy, put him to work through harvest until his calloused hands were cracked and raw, and sent him home with a bone deep weariness that let him sleep without the aid of the gut rot he?d been depending on.
He knew, but didn?t ask his friends there to confirm, that Evander yet lived in the vicinity. Knew too that the dark man would keep his distance even though the territory was home turf. Guiltily, he wished it were otherwise.
A bottle of Stolichnaya appeared one day upon his porch of his cabin. Beside it, the bright edge of a blade en pointe, pinning a note to the ivy strangled decking.
?If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all of my life.? - Oscar Wilde
A line had been struck through the first sentence. It was not Evander?s way to turn to literature, and Mesteno didn?t doubt the fragment had been something he?d begged from Bjorn when his own words hadn?t conveyed what he wished. Mesteno?s fingers pinched at the edges of the paper hard enough to crease it, and his eyes had searched the treeline, the silvery pillars of the trunks for the incongruous shape of what he knew he was foolish to hope might be there.
He sent no reply to the note, though it felt like nothing more than masochism to refrain. The pain grew far worse before it calmed, leaving him, finally, comfortably numb.