harrowgate | for Alcuin

Felix arrived perhaps slightly less-than-promptly at Alcuin's flat for their scheduled date to have dinner and peruse Alcuin's library. He had told Shannon simply that he was going out that evening, and had suggested one of Shannon's other friends -- with whom Felix did not get along well -- phone him for amusement that same night. That left Felix quite free to enjoy this time alone with his sweet friend.

He dressed very casually, but even his denim jeans were washed in a dark sand color and imprinted with faint swirling designs, and his shirt with the sleeves rolled up was beautifully patterned in emerald and rust. Felix simply did not do casual very well.

Ready with a smile when Alcuin answered his knock, Felix proffered a bottle of wine he'd procured on the recommendation of a sommelier who supplied Cabal soirees. "Good evening, darling. I know I'm late; you'll forgive me, won't you?"

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Alcuin did agree about the good taste.

Though at the question, he let out a startled little laugh. "Oh my, no. I do paint a little, but I'm not very good. He sat for that portrait, oh, ten years ago now, I think." Though he didn't look much different than the day he'd died. Annabel had aged so very well.

He hesitated, but then, wine in hand, he walked around the desk and opened a drawer, rifled around in some papers, and then pulled out a photograph and handed it to Felix.

It was a printed picture of a photo snapped with a cellphone camera - Anafiel and Alcuin standing on a bridge in the park. They'd asked a passing jogger to snap a picture of them, and the impatient jogger hadn't quite waited for them to get into place. As a result, it was a moment frozen in time - Anafiel laughing as he just finished settling an arm protectively around Alcuin's waist, and Alcuin looking at him rather than at the camera, adoration painted on his face.

"We weren't together as lovers for very long before..." Alcuin's voice trailed off. "This is the only photo I have, from after." He'd never even shown it to Hannibal.

Felix accepted the photo with care, swapping his wine to the hand lately holding bruschetta so he wouldn't risk any fingerprints on something very precious to Alcuin.

Something about the expression on Alcuin's face in the photo seemed so familiar, pulling strangely at Felix's heart. Then he remembered where he had seen such a look before, and his own sharp-featured face softened somewhat. "You loved him very much."

"Yes." Alcuin sounded almost grateful for that acknowledgment, and he smiled at Felix before taking the photograph back and replacing it in the desk.

"Well, then. I apologize, I didn't mean for that to get quite so maudlin." He held up his wine glass to clink to Felix's. "Cheers. To letting memories have their place."

In response, Felix touched his glass to Alcuin's, and surrendered the past with a small smile. "And not being ruled by them," he agreed before he drank. It was quite good wine.

"Come now, let's peruse. Why don't you... hm. Why don't you read a favorite poem for me?" Felix suggested, touching Alcuin very lightly at the shoulder to guide him back toward books.

For a fleeting moment, Alcuin thought of reciting one of Anafiel's poems. But no, he was trying to move on from that line of conversation. Someday, perhaps.

"Do you understand French?" he asked, humming a little as he ran a finger over the spines of a row of books.

"Essentially, I suppose," Felix answered, pausing to take up one of the cooled bread rolls Alcuin had taken from the oven earlier. "I wouldn't do well holding an extended conversation in it, but for poetry, perhaps. If you speak accommodatingly slow," he added with a teasing half-smile.

Alcuin quickly finished off a bruschetta, and then walked to a shelf and pulled out a thin volume.

"Victor Hugo," he said, showing the spine. "Why don't I read you the translation first, and then the French so you can hear the poetry of it? This one... it's called More Strong Than Time."

Since I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet,
Since I my pallid face between your hands have laid,
Since I have known your soul, and all the bloom of it,
And all the perfume rare, now buried in the shade;

Since it was given to me to hear one happy while,
The words wherein your heart spoke all its mysteries,
Since I have seen you weep, and since I have seen you smile,
Your lips upon my lips, and your gaze upon my eyes;

Since I have known upon my forehead glance and gleam,
A ray, a single ray, of your star, veiled always,
Since I have felt the fall upon my lifetime's stream,
Of one rose-petal plucked from the roses of your days;

I now am bold to say to the swift-changing hours,
Pass—pass upon your way, for I grow never old.
Flee to the dark abysm with all your fading flowers,
One rose that none may pluck, within my heart I hold.

Your flying wings may smite, but they can never spill
The cup fulfilled of love, from which my lips are wet.
My heart has far more fire than you have frost to chill,
My soul more love than you can make my love forget.

Puisque j'ai mis ma lèvre à ta coupe encor pleine ;
Puisque j'ai dans tes mains posé mon front pâli ;
Puisque j'ai respiré parfois la douce haleine
De ton âme, parfum dans l'ombre enseveli ;

Puisqu'il me fut donné de t'entendre me dire
Les mots où se répand le coeur mystérieux ;
Puisque j'ai vu pleurer, puisque j'ai vu sourire
Ta bouche sur ma bouche et tes yeux sur mes yeux ;

Puisque j'ai vu briller sur ma tête ravie
Un rayon de ton astre, hélas ! voilé toujours ;
Puisque j'ai vu tomber dans l'onde de ma vie
Une feuille de rose arrachée à tes jours ;

Je puis maintenant dire aux rapides années :
- Passez ! passez toujours ! je n'ai plus à vieillir !
Allez-vous-en avec vos fleurs toutes fanées ;
J'ai dans l'âme une fleur que nul ne peut cueillir !

Votre aile en le heurtant ne fera rien répandre
Du vase où je m'abreuve et que j'ai bien rempli.
Mon âme a plus de feu que vous n'avez de cendre !
Mon coeur a plus d'amour que vous n'avez d'oubli !

Settled in one of the armchairs, Felix listened attentively, watching Alcuin's eyes and lips as he read as much as he listened to the words themselves. His recitation was captivating in English, and absolutely spell-binding in French, when Felix could stop thinking about the metaphors and images and listen only to the music of the language.

"You are enchanting," Felix sighed when Alcuin had finished, softly and nearly to himself. The poetry had been meant to spark conversation, not distract Felix with Alcuin's beauty. He took a breath, and commented, "His beloved doesn't sound very kind to him, I'm afraid."

Alcuin smiled at the compliment, before carefully closing the volume. And then, "Perhaps you're right. But it's so beautiful, isn't it? My heart has far more fire than you have frost to chill..." He sighed. "And the pain that comes with unrequited love, there's something very special about it."

"Unrequited?" Felix took a thoughtful sip of his wine. "I hadn't heard it that way. Do you suppose his beloved was tempting him? Giving him a taste of what love might be like, and then snatching it away?"

His words drifted quieter as he spoke, something about it all sounding terribly familiar.

"Perhaps," said Alcuin with a little smile. "Sometimes love can be cruel."

Alcuin picked up the bottle of wine, and refilled his own glass, and then Felix's.

"Would you like to hear another poem? Or perhaps you know something?"

"Poetry was not part of my education," Felix chuckled, his gaze on Alcuin as the other man drew nearer to him, relaxed and comfortable in his chosen armchair. "I know the first two lines of 'To His Coy Mistress' and 'Because I Could Not Stop for Death.' Does that count?"

"Ah..." Alcuin's mouth stretched into a broad smile. "Had we but world enough, and time, this coyness, Lady, were no crime..."

He perched himself on the arm of the chair where Felix sat, with perhaps an inch keeping him from tumbling into his lap.

"I rather like the last verse of that one.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life..."

Felix leaned closer to him, sipping a mouthful of wine as he listened to Alcuin recite from memory. He could not recall the end of the poem, having only a passing familiarity with it, but he did not remember a response to the speaker's proposition.

"All our strength and all our sweetness," he echoed, words soft like a caress though he did no reach to touch Alcuin yet. "Withholding neither one nor the other. All our passion, and all our affection, unrestrained."

Alcuin's lips curled into a slow smile, and he slipped a little closer to Felix, now just barely still on the arm of the chair.

"You do realize that poetry is essentially foreplay, yes?"

"Only if it works," Felix teased, though his voice had slunk low into a lazy purr. He shifted, unsubtly, so his lap was open and welcoming. "But you don't need to seduce me, darling. You only need snap your fingers, and... I'm yours."

With a grace that perhaps was not surprising from Alcuin, he slid off of the chair arm and into Felix's lap, one leg still slung up over the arm so that his body was open and reclined. A half full wine glass still dangling from the fingers of one hand, he lifted the other so that his fingertips just barely grazed Felix's lips... and snapped.

Felix caught Alcuin in one arm when he slid into his lap, gaze arrested by the sight of such an exquisite man folding into him willingly. His gaze hung on Alcuin's every movement, every elegant turn of his wrist and bare of his throat, breathless.

When Alcuin's fingers beckoned, Felix nipped at his fingertips without a second thought, catching one in his teeth gently and then closing his lips softly around it for a lingering, lascivious kiss. His eyes lifted to catch and hold Alcuin's, silently promising as he tongued at Alcuin's index finger with absolute devotion.

It was Felix's expression as much as the touch that sent a brief shudder through Alcuin. That promise in his eyes... it made Alcuin's breath catch.

He did not move his hand away from Felix's mouth.

He wet his lips. "The last time we were together... I've thought about it since. It was wonderful."

Again?

Oh yes.

Felix traced the tip of his tongue along the tenderest skin between fingers before firmly, but gently, biting the next. Then he slid one hand along Alcuin's arm, and folded it around his, warm and enveloping.

"Have you thought about surrendering to me again?"

Alcuin felt his breath catch. "Yes," he admitted. "It isn't that I want or need that... always... but I have thought about it. I've thought about you."

"You can want something simply because you want it," Felix assured him, voice low. The faintest tremble in his pink lips, the breathless pause between words were sweeter than he could say. "If you want to give me permission to be rough with you, then I extend the same. Surrender as you like... or struggle if you'd rather. I promise to please you, either way."

"Be rough with me," Alcuin said breathlessly, the words tumbling out. "Please." He hadn't decided yet whether he would surrender entirely. He supposed he could decide in the moment.

Felix shifted his grip to encircle Alcuin's wrist with his long fingers, and allowed a slow smile to curve his lips. "Finish your wine, darling," he instructed in a low purr, watching Alcuin with avid thirst. "It's very good. I want to taste it on your tongue."

Alcuin wet his lips absently as he watched Felix and tugged just barely at the grip on his wrist. And then, without losing that eye contact, he lifted the wine glass to his lips and drank, before tipping his head back.

He let the cup dangle again, and licked a drop of wine from his tongue, eyes locking again on Felix.