“Can and will, such interestingly different verbs.”
Linda huffed. Someone approached to gain her attention. Ellisandre rested her finger against Linda’s arm in farewell and stepped away. Linda touched the back of Ellisandre’s hand as they withdrew, and then she was gone, focused on her work.
Ellisandre left the room. Hal was already in the hall outside, dressed in professionally casual street wear. Ellisandre nodded, signaling the handoff, and Hal nodded back, slipping into the conference room and locking in on Linda.
Nothing left, then. Ellisandre strode to their office and sorted out their bags, leaving their work laptop and wrapping themself up in their brown trench coat. The weather outside in a Chicago January was bitter. If the cold didn’t nip at you, the wind would. They pulled on thin leather gloves and wrapped a chunky infinity scarf around their neck. Leather briefcase in hand, they collected their wool fedora from the coat rack and headed toward the elevators.
I’m coming, Bal.
Ellisandre
Ellisandre let themselves into the Bolthole through the first and second door. Sprawled out on his back over the couch, coat still on, boots off, was their boy, his pale hair wind-raked and hanging loose over the edge of the cushions. He didn’t move, just watched, eyes bruised from the inside.
It was like that, then.
Ellisandre took their time, removing their scarf, gloves, hat, coat, and boots. They unbuttoned the jacket of their pantsuit.
Sevastyan sat up as if his bones were in danger of breaking.
Ellisandre looked him over twice, waiting.
Sevastyan looked away first. “Needed to see you.”
“You always have my attention, Vast. Bal should know that, even if you don’t.”
Sevastyan’s eyes snapped back to Ellisandre and darkened. His hands clenched together in front of him; he started to speak, then cut it off and looked away again.
This was going to take time.
Ellisandre took off their suit jacket and went to the kitchen. There were always the makings of a charcuterie board in the pantry and refrigerator. They opened packages and jars and filled up a chopping board with preserved meats, smoked fish, a block of hard cheese, crackers, pickled vegetables, olives, and pickled garlic. They opened a can of peaches and another of pears. A knife went on the board to cut the cheese and fruit.
Sevastyan was where they had left him when they re-entered the front room. Ellisandre set the tray on the coffee table in front of the couch, then went back to the kitchen. There was a bottle of white wine in the cabinet. They reached for glasses out of habit, then left them, popping the cork out and setting it aside.
Wine bottle and two glass bottles of water from the fridge in hand, they returned to their boy. They set the water and wine on the table and pulled up an ottoman, sitting close but not beside him. His face was going to tell them more than his words.
“Eat.”
Sevastyan looked at the wine and searched the table. Ellisandre wrapped their fingers around the neck of the bottle and brought the rim to their lips, drinking, eyes on his. Slowly, they lowered the wine, swallowing the last of what was in their mouth. They extended their arm, holding the bottle toward Sevastyan.
Sevastyan lifted his hand, accepting. Without breaking eye contact, he drank from the rim. His nerve broke as he finished. He looked away, still gripping the bottle.
Their boy was floundering in fear—fear of them, and in a way he had never feared them before. And yet he was still here. In their place.
Ellisandre rolled an olive over their bottom lip and bit through it. Sevastyan was still looking down. “Eat.”
He flinched, put the wine on the table, and reached for the tray, fingers finding dry crackers.
They should have gotten to him sooner. Shouldn’t have let him leave.
Touching their boy was too much as of yet. They pressed their fingers into the marks he had left on the wine bottle and drank from the place his mouth had just been.
“There are things I should tell you,” Sevastyan whispered. “When you know, you’ll hate me.”
“If you deserve punishment, I will punish you. If you need to be broken, I will break you. If you should be imprisoned, I will be your prison.”
Sevastyan’s eyes flashed toward Ellisandre’s face and fell again. He took a pickled garlic in his fingers, hand trembling. “I’m already breaking. Why would you keep someone who crossed the line?”
Ellisandre lifted the knife and sliced a peach in half and then half again. How little he understood. Perhaps he knew. But knowing was not understanding. They moved to the couch. “Myths—-the old ones —-endure not because of brightness. It’s darkness. The stories might be of gods and heroes, but the gods and heroes are gloriously terrible. They eat their children, slay their lovers, rape the objects of their fascination, abandon their friends, commit patricide, drink rivers of wine, rage until cities run with blood, grieve to the point the earth itself ceases to grow food, and through it all, they are us—writ large. Their crimes larger, their loves deeper, all the better for us to see ourselves inside of them. And yet, there is one crucial difference between the mundane man and a god or hero.”
