Chapter Text
“I hate to begin such a lovely night with such a… bureaucratic question, if you will,” Nadir said, grinning coyly as the wine made its way to their table, “but how was therapy?”
Erik helped himself. “Oh, it went about as you’d expect. I swept in, swooned onto his couch, and spent an hour letting all the despair flood out of my mouth from the very pit of my curmudgeonly black heart.”
Nadir laughed aloud. He reached for the wine bottle. “And did he take notes?”
“Of course he did.” Erik raised his glass for a toast. “To a halfway decent night?”
“Oh, for crying out loud, Erik, don’t be so pessimistic.” Nadir accepted the toast anyway. “To a spectacular night.”
“Well, let’s not get our hopes up.”
“Do you really have so little faith in me?”
“It’s not you I don’t have faith in,” Erik purred, before taking a sip. “This wine is nothing short of pure ambrosia. It must be French.”
Nadir’s brow furrowed. A challenge. He swirled the wine in his glass— it glimmered under the dim lights— before drinking deeply from it. “Nonsense. It’s too sweet to be the kind of swill they drink in France. It has to be Persian.”
“You’re damn lucky we left Paris,” Erik said. He leaned back in his seat, drank a little more, allowed it to relax him. “Imagine! Calling their wine swill! Why, they’d have you guillotined in the streets!”
“You say, as if you aren’t one of them.”
“Please. I’m a nomad.” Erik looked up as the smell of fresh sourdough drew closer to him. Hunger gnawed a hole in his stomach. Perhaps it hadn’t been such a good idea to start drinking when he’d had so little to eat all day, but he wasn’t about to stop now. Still distracted, trying to figure out where the scent was coming from, he said, “My only home is with you.”
Nadir looked up, too, to see what had drawn Erik’s attention. “I ought to send your therapist a gift basket.”
From between the rows of tables, the waiter reemerged. He left a basket of intricately-scored bread between Erik and Nadir, then disappeared again without another word. Erik watched him leave.
Nadir shrugged. “Not the talkative type, I suppose.”
“Is it me,” Erik began, “or does he look… angry?”
“Probably just his face.”
Erik hadn’t thought about that. “Probably.”
He and Nadir had both gotten the idea to reach for the bread at the same time. Their fingers touched. Were it not for his mask, Erik thought, the whole restaurant would have noticed by now that he was red from the neck up. Nadir’s eyes darted anxiously from one side of the room to another.
Then he broke into a sheepish smile. “If… if you don’t mind…”
“Would you like half?” Erik asked, with a kind of urgency, as though he were asking Nadir to kiss him once again.
Nadir shook his head. “Oh, no. Half is a bit too much. I’d still like to eat dinner.”
“That leaves plenty for me, then.” Without further ado, Erik tore away a sizable chunk of sourdough and proceeded to cut a slit in it. He buttered it generously, nibbled at the crust, then decided it was passable enough to eat. It was still warm. Underneath the floral scoring, it melted in his mouth. The taste was unremarkable, but it would at least tide him over until his salmon arrived.
(“Salmon?” Nadir had asked him, sounding almost impressed. “Feeling adventurous, are we?”)
Erik wasn’t even halfway through his bread when Nadir admonished him. “Erik.”
“Mm?”
“You’ll spoil your appetite.”
Erik swallowed a mouthful of bread and washed it down with more wine. “No, I won’t.”
“You will.”
“Watch me.”
And with that, Nadir dropped the subject.
But he wasn’t quite done speaking. “So, about therapy…”
“What about it?”
“Tell me more.” Nadir sipped from his glass. Already he was down to a few drops. Conserving them, as it were. “Tell me everything.”
Erik raised an eyebrow.
“Everything you’re comfortable with,” Nadir added.
“That’s more like it.” Erik couldn’t resist the smile tugging at his face. “What is there to say? I tell him my life is miserable. He asks me, ‘And how does that make you feel?’. Repeat, ad nauseam, until six P.M.”
“And it works.”
“And it works,” Erik echoed. He returned to the bread.
“Surely you must have more to say. Haven’t you found any new insights? Any brilliant revelations? Aren’t you proud of yourself?”
Erik’s smile turned into more of a wince. What was everyone else seeing that he wasn’t? “Should I be?”
“Shouldn’t you?”
“Well…” Erik thought for a while. “I’ve made some decent changes. I don’t lose my temper as easily, for one.”
“Which is excellent,” Nadir said.
“And… I’m…” Erik stroked the stem of his glass with one finger. He lowered his voice. “I’m still sad most of the time. But would I call myself miserable? Not really. Not right now. It’s a low-grade sort of sadness. A kind of emotional arthritis, if you will. Certainly not ideal, but I’ll take it over—“
“Erik, could you speak up? I can’t hear you very well over all the ambience.”
“I said I’m not miserable anymore,” Erik told him, and left it at that.
Nadir smiled and reached across the table for Erik’s hand. It twitched instinctively, but settled when Nadir gave it a gentle caress with his thumb. “I’m tremendously happy to hear that.”
Erik could only nod. What else was there to say? He was a fraud. He was lying to himself, to everyone. He hadn’t changed anywhere near as much as they thought he had. He laughed and smiled now, yes, and without the malice he might once have had, but he would never be fixed. He would never be consistently, effortlessly happy.
Then again, was anyone?
He wasn’t about to subject Nadir to all his melodrama. Not on a night like this, not on the kind of night this was supposed to be. Maybe never again. He was stronger than that now. Not by much, but he was at least supposed to be. Nevermind the fear that still plagued him, fear that he could never be the angel Nadir ought to have been with. He could only be the man Nadir wanted to be with, and Erik was more than flattered, make no mistake, and he reciprocated the feeling in all the ways he knew how… but that wasn’t quite good enough for him. He hadn’t improved enough.
And no matter what Dr. Frankenstein said about potential not having a due date, the things Americans said about old dogs and new tricks stuck with Erik more.
“You’re doing your fidgeting thing again,” Nadir observed.
“So I am.”
Nadir poured himself another glass. “What’s on your mind?”
“Uh…” Erik followed suit. “You?”
Nadir almost choked on a mouthful of bread.
Then he coughed. “I hate it when you do that.”
“Do what?”
“All this sarcasm. I try to talk to you about anything serious, and you—“
“There is no sarcasm. I’m thinking about you,” Erik said. “About us. I just don’t want to bother you with it.”
“You can always bother me.”
Erik grinned as though he’d just solved a puzzle. “But you admit it’s a bother.”
“You are insufferable,” Nadir said, smiling warmly back at him.
“But you suffer me.”
“I’m only punishing you for all your crimes. Your sentence is being handcuffed to me. Forever!” The light in Nadir’s eyes turned mischievous.
Erik erupted into laughter. “Oh, no! Chained forever to this horrible, horrible man! However will I live? Oh, someone, save me!”
“That’s right!” Nadir snorted. His own shoulders shook with mirth. Erik wanted to listen to that sound for the rest of his life. “This is what you get! You wrought this upon yourself, Erik!”
“Th—“ Erik had to stop laughing first. When he finally managed to control himself, he sighed with relief. Tears were welling up in his eyes, birthed from a thousand different emotions. “All jokes aside, there’s really no one I’d rather be with. I’m tremendously lucky. I only wish I could say the same for you.”
“You absolutely can.”
Erik raised his glass. “To us.”
“To us.”
Erik poked hesitantly at the slab of salmon before him with the very tips of his fork. “Is it… cooked? At all?”
“I don’t think it’s supposed to be,” Nadir said. He’d already finished half of his second glass. “Just try it.”
“Alright. I may as well.” Erik separated a sliver of fish from the rest of it. He hardly even needed a knife. “We are paying for it, after all.”
“‘We?’”
Erik stuttered. “I can, if you’d rather not.”
“No, it’s not that at all. I was only under the impression that this was my treat.”
“…Is it?”
“Do you want it to be?”
Erik’s first instinct was to tense as the unmistakable taste of fish found its way into his mouth. He relaxed upon realizing that it had been smoked and, to his delight, glazed with honey. Alright. This wasn’t so bad. This wasn’t bad at all. At the very least, he wouldn’t be getting worms anytime soon. He’d heard horror stories. Certainly nothing to think about while eating. A single sprig of rosemary had left its mark on the salmon, as well. Erik dutifully swallowed one piece, then went back for another.
“Well, I would prefer,” Erik said, between forkfuls, “if I could contribute at least something. But if you insist—“
“Oh, I insist. You contribute more than enough simply by being here.”
Erik could feel his face reddening again.
He drank some more wine. “Very well, then. How’s your lamb?”
“Not bad. I only wish these people would season their food. And your salmon? You seem to be enjoying it,” Nadir mused.
“I am!” That reminded Erik to take another bite. The blend of sweet and savory was impeccable. “I’m sorry your meal isn’t what you expected. If you’d like, I can order you something else, and I can—“
Nadir shook his head. “No, no, no. Please don’t. I’m halfway done with this. I’m not sending it back. It’s not even that bad.”
Is that what you told yourself when you brought me to New York?
“Suit yourself,” Erik said.
“I’ve always admired your fondness for higher pleasures,” Nadir said, and rested one arm lackadaisically atop his chair. The two were on their third glasses now. “You know. Music. Art. Performance. That sort of thing. Meanwhile, all I seem to care about are food and sleep.”
“That’s not true.” Erik scraped together the last remnants of salmon and honey on his plate. “You clearly enjoy wine, too.”
“That I do.”
“And… other things, if I’m not mistaken. Things a gentleman shouldn’t bring up in public.”
Nadir laughed when Erik winked at him. “Certainly. But the point is, most of them are distinctly earthly. Don’t you ever wish I was more… I don’t know… cultured?”
“Hm.” Erik considered the question. He never wished Nadir was anything other than himself. Thus Erik shrugged. “Just because you’re not passionate about music the way I am doesn’t mean you aren’t cultured.”
“You really think so?”
“Of course. I don’t think you give yourself the credit you deserve. Everyone has things that move them. If yours happen to be food and wine, then so be it. Are those not forms of art in their own right?”
Nadir shifted in his seat. “I suppose they are, but…”
“‘But’ nothing! Besides, I know those aren’t the only things that move you. You love paintings, you love lithographs, you love exhibitions. Every weekend, you want to go to some kind of museum. You can stand in front of one work for hours, just lost in that world, before you decide to move on. I know this. I’ve seen you. You’re always mesmerized by holy sites. It doesn’t seem to matter whose. You can’t get enough of stories. Not any specific kind. Just stories in general. You’re fond of history. Especially your own— I don’t blame you, it’s fascinating— but you’ve always been the first to ask questions about others’. And you love people. Don’t those things make you feel impassioned?”
“Well… yes,” Nadir said, “but I want to feel things the way you feel them. I don’t have anything that stirs my heart the way music stirs yours.”
Erik scoffed. “Trust me, you don’t want to feel anything the way I do.”
“And, for the record, when I stand in place, staring at a painting, I’m looking for little flaws in the artist’s technique. There’s a part of me that still holds on to the young, foolish hope that I could learn how to paint. And seeing a clump of oil paint or a little scratch in the canvas makes me feel as if, were I to teach myself, I could—“
Nadir hiccuped.
“…Oh, goodness.” He patted his chest. The embarrassment on his face did not escape Erik’s notice. “Excuse me. It seems the wine is getting to me a little more than I expected it to.”
“No worries. Between you and me, I’m starting to feel it, too.”
It was true. The lights all around Erik were turning hazy, the world was beginning to slow down, and everything else within it blurred into the background until he and Nadir were the only people who existed. Erik couldn’t keep a contented, lazy smile off his face. He wanted to do this more often. He wanted to stay here forever, in fact, full of good food and warmth and joy, across from the man he loved. And Erik wanted more. To hold Nadir’s hand with impunity, to kiss him over and over and over again, far away from prying eyes, to lay atop him like a snake on a rock just to feel his warmth, to feel him breathe.
Nadir continued. “As I was saying, the flaws in paintings make me feel as though it would be alright for me to make mistakes in my work. Hypothetically, of course. If the greats can’t attain perfection, why should I be expected to?”
“That’s what I admire about you,” Erik said. “Suppose I took up painting. If I saw flaws in the work of, say, van Gogh or Whittredge, I would strive to do better. If the greats cannot attain perfection, then by God, I will.”
“And how’s that philosophy working for you?”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Erik’s fingertip traced over the engravings in his fork. “It’s not. Why do you think I spent years of my life writing, only to produce one opera? What I admire is your capacity to be content with your own work. For that alone, you’d be a better painter than I. You’d work more often. You’d improve a hell of a lot faster. Meanwhile, I would likely waste my career painting one fresco on a chapel wall— only to burn the whole building down because I decided it wasn’t good enough.”
“I think you should write Marthe et la Tarasque,” Nadir said. He’d almost finished his glass. “You know. Sit down one day and just write. Don’t mind any mistakes, don’t stop until you’re finished, don’t worry about what people will think. Don’t even think about revising or rereading or doing any of that. Save all the editing for later.”
“Easier said than done.”
“But you can!” Nadir’s eyes brightened with enthusiasm. “It might even be relaxing, just allowing your thoughts to flow uninterrupted.”
He was probably right. Not that Erik would ever say so. Instead, Erik emptied his glass, put it down decisively, and said, “I’ll start writing if you start painting.”
“Deal,” Nadir told him, and reached across the table for a handshake.
Their hands intertwined for longer than they should have.
“I told you to wear a damn coat!”
Nadir steered Erik along a busy Manhattan sidewalk, still cold in the midst of April and growing chillier as the moon rose. It had rained while they’d been inside, lucky enough to miss it, so absorbed in one another’s worlds that nothing else could possibly have existed elsewhere. Erik had meant to be a gentleman when he’d held the door open. He certainly hadn’t expected to let in a gust of frigid air that made the hairs on the back of Nadir’s neck stand up. Huge, dirty puddles had amassed in hoof-beaten depressions in the cobblestone; light rippled across the pavement; Erik and Nadir had spent a considerable amount of time bickering over who would shield who from the unforgiving street, until Nadir had heard Erik’s teeth chattering fiercely and taken it upon himself to link their arms. Partly so they didn’t separate in the crowd. Partly so that neither of them stumbled— the wine was still taking hold, and Nadir came dangerously close to tripping once or twice. Mostly— though he couldn’t say it aloud, of course— they did it because they wanted to be close. Nadir vaguely remembered hearing something, or reading something in a book, about how sea otters clung to one another so that even the might of the ocean herself could not wedge them apart.
Erik shivered against Nadir like a drenched Pomeranian. Yet he still found the energy to protest. He rolled his eyes. “It’s not that cold. I’ll be fine. If I could survive Russia, I can survive New York.”
“I refuse to let you catch your death out here,” Nadir retorted. “If I do, I’ll never hear the end of it. You sneeze once, and not only are you convinced you’re dying, but you become hell-bent on convincing everyone else, too.”
“I do not,” Erik grumbled.
Then, when the two stopped at a congested crossroads to wait for an opening, Erik looked up. His brow furrowed as his gaze moved from one side of the street to another. “Where are you taking me, again?”
“You’ll see.”
Erik began to fidget, but relaxed somewhat when Nadir’s hand discreetly brushed against his own.
“Trust me.” Nadir smiled. “I think you’ll enjoy it.”
Finally. The traffic let up. Erik pulled himself closer to Nadir as they crossed the street, right behind a horse-drawn carriage. Their eyes returned to the ground. They’d evidently had the same idea to check for horse manure before it was too late.
“I hope you’re right,” Erik said.
Nadir had gotten them tickets to a show called A Gaiety Girl, and Erik was now finding himself pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t quite as insipid as the title had led him to expect. Perhaps, of course, it was the fourth and fifth glasses of wine he’d drunk— oh, yes, they served it here, too— but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so tremendously entertained.
For the nth time since the show had started, Erik leaned toward Nadir and whispered in his ear. “She’s not very good, is she?”
“Who?” Nadir asked, in a brief moment of relief from what was now a fully-fledged hiccuping fit.
“Her.” Erik tried to gesture to the performer as discreetly as possible. “The chorus girl on the right. Whatever-her-name-is. She’s completely lost. Her voice is passable, but she can’t seem to dance worth half a damn. I can tell when she’s improvising. She does it at least once every scene she’s in. There’s bringing a unique spirit to a character, and then there’s… whatever this is.”
“I don’t think she’s that bad.”
“Oh, yes. Your optometrist appointment is next Tuesday. Thank you for reminding me.”
Nadir covered his mouth and shook with laughter. His hiccups didn’t seem to help at all. At last, unable to restrain himself anymore, he lowered his hand and wheezed. Erik was dimly aware that he and Nadir were the two most obnoxious people in this theater. They were both too drunk to give a damn. Erik put a hand on Nadir’s shoulder to steady himself as he laughed, then remembered a bit too late that they couldn’t touch each other however they pleased here. People were already staring. Not that Erik felt the least bit ashamed— the wine had, for once, turned off the part of his brain that told him that everything he did was repulsive— but there was an instinctual sort of fear that crossed his mind now. Fear of being caught, as though he’d committed a crime, as though he had contraband on him. Erik lowered his hand.
Then Nadir took a breath. “I must admit, the burlesque isn’t very impressive.”
Erik swatted Nadir’s thigh and said, in as quiet a voice as he could muster despite the mirth overtaking him, “That’s because you like men!”
They spent the remainder of the show in a sort of cycle. They’d calm down and promise themselves they wouldn’t become giddy again; Nadir would start giggling, or Erik would whisper something; the more they tried to restrain their laughter, the more it crescendoed into utter hysterics. It was to the point where Nadir had to bite his own hand and Erik had to dig his nails into his own thigh so that they didn’t guffaw openly. So that they didn’t succumb to the impulse to hold each other in their fits. Not here. Not now. Soon. But not now.
While the rest of the audience gave a standing ovation, Erik and Nadir were too busy wiping the tears from their eyes.
Were it possible to walk passionately intertwined without collapsing into an inconvenient heap in the middle of a dirty, wet, crowded Manhattan street, Nadir knew what he and Erik would have done on their way home. But they weren’t out of the woods quite yet. Almost. Almost, almost, almost. They linked their arms once again and proceeded to drift through the city, two maple leaves fallen from the same tree, blown about by the wind. It was as though they’d inhaled a quart of laughing gas. Now that they were up, there was no coming back down, not for a long, long time. The cold mattered not at all. They kept each other warm. Even Erik was radiant. Side by side, they staggered; they swayed; they veered to one side and careened to another, until they were almost dancing in their efforts to stay upright.
But it was unbearable. Drunk though they were, they both knew it. They couldn’t hold hands; they couldn’t embrace, or fall into one another’s arms, or talk as freely as though there were nothing and no one else in the world; they certainly couldn’t kiss. The risk was far too great. Out here, they were friends. Very good friends, irreplaceably dear friends, but nothing else, no, officer, no subtext here, come back with a warrant. Everything changed when they reached the apartment at last. Changed for the better.
The door closed behind them, and they could be husbands again.
“Oh, thank God,” Erik said breathlessly, as the lock clicked into place.
And without further ado, he kissed Nadir, right there, up against the door, as fervent and wanting as if he hadn’t done it in a thousand years when in fact he did it every chance he got.
Making up for lost time, as it were.
They lay in bed. The same bed. Just for a few weeks, Nadir had said the first time, just to see how it felt. Maybe they would enjoy it. Maybe they wouldn’t. It wasn’t an issue either way, so long as they were both comfortable; and anything that made Erik comfortable— within reason, of course— made Nadir feel the same way.
‘A few weeks’ had turned into three months.
And Erik had been upset, at first. Not at sharing a bed in itself— quite the opposite, in fact— but at the suggestion that either of them might not take a liking to it. What do you mean by maybe, he’d demanded. We’re supposed to like it. This is what people like us are supposed to do. Nadir would remind him that he himself hadn’t slept beside anyone in years, and that Erik had never done it at all. Erik would simply scoff and repeat himself. This is what we’re supposed to do. Nadir would ask him who put that idea into his head. Erik wouldn’t answer. It was only when Nadir posited that there were shockingly few people ‘like them,’ and that those few who existed were private to an extent where no one could really say whether they shared beds or not, and for good reason, that Erik came close to accepting his position.
Erik relented at last after a brief quarrel about it one evening, when Nadir had asked him a question.
“Are you trying to convince me, or are you trying to reassure yourself?”
It had been the latter. They’d both needed time to acclimate. The first few nights, Erik had tossed and turned until Nadir dreaded going to bed with him. Even during those brief windows when Erik was still, Nadir would wake up without rhyme or reason, look out the window to see that it was still pitch-dark outside, then go right back to sleep until the inevitable. Neither of them rested very well that week. They were skittish; they were irritable; they argued once or twice, or maybe more than that. Nadir couldn’t exactly remember. He’d been too exhausted for their spats to leave a distinct impression on him.
And then they’d gotten the idea to talk.
At first, they would climb into bed, exchange goodnights, turn the lights off, and lay staring at the ceiling in the hopes that sleep claimed at least one of them. It hadn’t even occurred to them that their room was a place of refuge. But the change, like many, like all of them, in fact, started small. A ‘How was your day?’ or ‘What did you think of our client?’ or ‘I’m sorry for getting testy with you’ or ‘Would you like to go to the beach this Saturday?’. It grew from there. They would lay flush against each other, Nadir’s head on Erik’s chest or his arm around Erik’s shoulder. One of them would read in bed; the other would sneak glances wherever he could, ask to go back a page whenever he needed. They would still dread the sleeping part of the equation, but it wasn’t long before they dreaded it solely because they couldn’t talk anymore. Erik’s tossing and turning became little more than an occasional twitch of his muscles. They would exchange dreams. Nadir would soothe Erik after nightmares and wish he had the courage to tell Erik about his own. Only the torments in their own minds made them doubtful; but otherwise they knew that, in this room, in this bed, they were safe and warm, quiet and comfortable, clean and clothed and well-fed.
Tonight was no exception. Erik had assumed his favorite position: curled up against Nadir like a cat in sunlight, or like a millipede under leaf litter, his head right over Nadir’s heart. As it always did when they lay like this, Nadir’s hand found its way to Erik’s back. Nadir hummed a half-remembered lullaby from his youth. For once, he didn’t care about the quality of his voice: the places where it cracked or fell into oblivion, the way its timbre buzzed under the weight of a bottle’s worth of wine. He closed his eyes. They both let the world outside slow to a halt.
They would never have a wedding. There would be no ceremony, no officiant, no groomsmen or altar or grand, swirling party in a fabulous house they didn’t have the money to rent. The suits they did own were getting frayed at the cuffs and smoky from years of ironing, and why, they both agreed, would they waste their life’s work getting new ones they’d only wear once? If Nadir turned out to be anything other than a footnote in the history books, the readers of the future would never know. He and Erik would be remembered as two more unmarried men, their amorous notes lost to time, their words and gestures mere ghosts, trees fallen in the forest. Nevermind that their bones would probably lay interlocked, ribs so thoroughly meshed that the archeologists would never know who was who. Nevermind that, in the next life, if there was one— Nadir didn’t believe in that sort of thing, but sometimes he wondered— maybe then they would be free, two swans flying north, two dandelions growing stubbornly in a garden, two boys who would finally meet when they were supposed to, when their hearts were whole or at least as whole as they’d ever be. Within their embraces, the rest of the world did not exist; and to the rest of the world, their embraces would never exist.
But they could have rings. Erik had gotten rid of the one he’d given to Christine, the one with the polished garnet. He’d replaced it with a smaller one last month, less elaborate, set with lapis lazuli. He’d waited. Then, wordlessly, his hands shaking, he’d slipped it off his finger and placed it onto Nadir’s. They’d both cried that day. They could have cake. There was a bakery just down the street from their apartment. It was quaint, but it always welcomed them. It was struggling, but perhaps their patronage could change that. They could have music. They could always have music. And they could dance on their own. They could waltz in the kitchen, trip over each other, apologize through their laughter. They could have friends. They could have flowers. In the dark they exchanged vows that no one else would ever hear. It didn’t matter. No one else needed to.
As his mind sank further into darkness and Erik began to snore, it dawned upon Nadir that he had never seen Erik laugh and smile so sincerely as he had tonight.
Maybe someday, hopefully soon, he wouldn’t need to be drunk to see it again.