Chapter Text
I am one of the most honest people I know. Most others, at least that I’ve grown up around, lie and cheat their way to the top, or whatever else they want. I don’t. Albeit, I do tend to stand to the side, to avoid the light and watch others trip and fall over plans and traps they’ve set themselves, but I can at least say I reserve my judgement and remain honest, because not everyone has had the advantages that I have.
I held that sentiment when I’d moved to New York, ever reminded of it when my best choice of housing was a small cottage on the grounds of a larger mansion on the westward of two Long Island ‘eggs.’ The restlessness in me that had prompted me to move only grew when the view from my cottage, besides the sound, was my neighbor’s grand mansion through the trees—such grand architecture left a certain sour taste in my mouth, as well as the fact that I, too, could fall into the category of not having the advantages others have. Things could be true for multiple people, after all.
But, other than that, the cottage was quite nice. It was comfortable enough for one man to live in, and an affordable rent for someone making his living off of bond sale. That, and I lived just across the bay from an old friend; Cherie, a man I’d known since we were both just boys, as well as his husband that I knew little about besides his wealth. And it just so happened, one cool summer afternoon, that I found myself in a car with the less familiar of the two as he drove me to his own mansion across the water. I can’t say we made much conversation on the way there, the redheaded man beside me, Chohan, driving with cool indifference that seemed impenetrable, so I admit didn’t even try until he broke the silence himself.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” His voice was low and smooth, his deep golden eyes shifting to me with a hint of expectation as we crossed into what I assumed to be his land.
It was a pleasant property, green and creamy white and gold—the architecture something French, maybe—with the glittering water just nearby that reflected in the pristine glass windows of the house we were approaching. I took it in for a while before slowly nodding.
“It is.” I said, sharing a glance with the man beside me.
He sighed, though his expression remained cool, “Bought it nearly a decade ago now, from a frenchman. Money well spent, no?”
“Hm.” I hummed, nodding again, and he seemed satisfied by that response.
The car let out a soft, high-pitched squeak as we pulled into the front of the house, slowing to a stop before the entrance. A valet exchanged a look with the redheaded driver of the vehicle before the latter and I stepped out onto the pavement. The car was driven away as an arm slung around my shoulder, holding me firmly in place and at the mercy of whatever body it was attached to. A charming smile met me when I looked to my left, and I found myself being pulled forward not long after.
“We’ll go in now.”
The inside of the mansion was just as intricately designed as the outside was, flora in vases keeping it similarly green as I was led through the foyer and into a lounge separated by large glass doors. I was given a vague verbal tour during the short journey, only leaving me to my imagination and recollection of my brief look around on the way there to picture the countless other rooms mentioned—all unique, all expensive.
Inside the lounge were two more figures. Two men, a blond and a brunet, sat leisurely on a plush couch with one looking far more relaxed than the other, a glass of white wine rested in his hand. Both pairs of eyes switched from each other to me the moment the doors closed behind myself and my host, one gaze familiar while the other was curiously foreign, and the blond man’s chatter fell into silence.
“Mashiro,” the brunet spoke first, the dusty violet of his irises seeming to regain a little more color when he rose to approach me, “it’s been a while, hasn’t it? How’s the west? Chicago?”
Chohan retreated back into his own personal space to take out and light a cigarette as his husband gave me a firm handshake—I’d traded one for the other.
“It’s alright,” I said, “nothing catastrophic in your absence, surprisingly.”
That earned me a cackle from the blond still on the couch, and Cherie glanced over his shoulder with a soft, disapproving sigh before he turned back to me.
“That’s good,” he said, and his eyes shifted to the large french windows that seemed to swallow the far wall. I followed his gaze.
The scene those windows revealed was the Manhasset Bay, the shoreline of the less glamorous West Egg, and with it the homes of myself and my neighbor. Cherie inhaled to speak again, but was interrupted.
“Why don’t you sit? Have a glass—Rothschild,” a glass of wine suddenly appeared in front of me, held by a red-beaded wrist and accompanied by a sly smile.
I couldn’t help but accept the glass before my face, a soft ‘thank you’ escaping my lips before I found that I couldn’t sit—my eyes shifted to the man laid fully across the couch now that the space Cherie had taken had been freed for a moment. He seemed to be tall, with a head of bright blond hair pushed out of his eyes that were reminiscent of marigolds—he was well built, too, his pale sweater tailored to hug him perfectly. He scrutinized me back with a little smirk, those marigold eyes burning into me long enough I turned my own away.
“What do you do now, anyway, Mashiro?” Chohan asked, and Cherie moved silently to a chair I hadn’t noticed until it had been taken.
I stayed standing as I responded, “I’m a bond man.”
“Where?”
I told him, and his scarlet brows furrowed for a moment before he spoke again.
“Never heard of it. Perhaps I will, in time.”
I only sighed through my nose and took a small sip of the wine sitting idly in my hand. I felt bad letting it go completely to waste.
“You’re finding yourself well, here?” Cherie made himself known again, and I turned to look at him, his glass held up to his lips as he spoke into it, “I heard you’d moved into a cottage—the one across the bay?”
His eyes flicked out the window again, and I nodded. However, when I moved to speak, the blond that had been otherwise nonverbal until that point decided to speak up.
“Across the bay? West Egg?” He sat up, head cocked as his smirk remained ever present. “Surely you know your neighbors, then.”
I hesitated, brows furrowing as I tried momentarily to recall anyone I’d met, “I don’t think I’ve-”
“I know someone there,” he almost seemed a little proud of himself as he leaned back against the couch, “you have to know that Fraise fellow—or,” he paused to think, then shook his head, “Crush, I think,”
I began to doubt how much he actually knew my supposed neighbor, though Cherie seemed to focus particularly on the blond at the mention. The blond man, however, was either unbothered or unaware. Either way, he continued on.
“Whatever—Who he is doesn’t really matter,” he waved his free hand about before bringing his glass to his lips, “The little parties he throws, though, that’s worth talking about, for sure.”
Chohan scoffed as he moved to stand behind his husband, resting one pale hand on his shoulder before he was almost immediately rejected as Cherie shrugged him away and rose from his seat. Wordlessly, the brunet left the room, his glass set on a nearby table as we just as wordlessly watched him leave. Chohan exhaled a vaguely irritated plume of smoke while the blond man on the couch remained cool. In fact, he seemed more interested in the cigarette held between the redhead’s fingers than the state Cherie was in.
“You got one of those for me, Chohan?” he asked, then finished off his glass of wine with a jerk of his head.
Tension remained high without Cherie there to balance it out, and I remained mostly silent while the blond—who I eventually had identified as Kang—and Chohan made occasional conversation that was really nothing more than politics or irrelevant small talk. Cherie did return, however, when dinner was announced, though his presence did little to ease the tension in the room. It was still silent, but I noticed how Chohan’s eyes seemed fixed specifically on Cherie throughout the meal—which consisted of nothing in particular I care to name, though it was probably high end enough to be worth something significant. And while dinner passed without a single word uttered, the silence was broken, anyways, by the shrill ringing of the telephone in the other room, and Chohan’s eyes were pulled from Cherie at last. A butler swiftly entered the room, leaning down to whisper something inaudible from my end of the table into the redheaded man’s ear that caused him to frown, then excuse himself from the table shortly after.
A bit of weight, somehow, seemed to lift from Cherie’s shoulders once Chohan had gone back inside, and he let out a soft, almost relieved breath. He looked up to me.
“I’m glad you could come, Mashiro,” He said, though his eyes shifted anxiously from me to the doors inside, “really, I am.”
But before I could respond, Cherie sighed and pushed himself up from the table to follow wherever his husband had gone. I watched him leave until I lost sight of him inside. I glanced over at Kang, whose eyes were also trained on the glass doors both Cherie and Chohan had left from.
“This… Crush you speak of-” I began, until a large hand suddenly waved my words away.
Marigold eyes shifted to me momentarily, and Kang leaned a little closer with a soft shush.
“I want to hear what happens!” he said in a whisper, a childish grin spread across his face as he leaned back towards the door.
“What happens- Is something happening?” I inquired, softer now, and my brow furrowed just slightly as I, too, leaned towards the house to listen unconsciously.
“What, you don’t know?” Kang’s gaze turned to me again, a combination of humor and surprise as he raised his brows, “I thought everyone knew, by now—”
His eyes shifted around, as if he expected someone to be listening in, and he leaned close.
“Chohan’s got someone in New York—some boy in the city,” he grinned, as if there were nothing more interesting in the world, “he leaves with him all the time, poor Cherie, but,”
My incredulity didn’t seem relevant to him as he leaned back again, looking leisurely over at the door.
“You’d think he’d be decent enough not to call during dinner, huh?”
But before I could inquire further, Chohan and Cherie emerged again from the mansion, and I could share nothing more than a small glance with the blond beside me.
Chohan returned me home a few hours later, the ride no less tense than the first, and we shared polite good-byes before he drove away into the peaceful night. I was left with nothing but the moon and the sound of the bay’s waves crashing upon the beach, then, and in the few minutes I took to watch the pale glisten of moonlight along the water, I noticed a tall, fair-haired figure of a man standing by it just beyond the trees of my property. His posture alone suggested he was my neighbor, the Crush that Kang had mentioned, and I had half the mind to introduce myself despite my desire to speak to others quickly dwindling—it wouldn’t have hurt, otherwise. My voice, however, died in my throat when I went to call to him, as one slow, nearly trembling movement inadvertently signaled that the man on the bay wanted nothing more than solitude.
His hand had lifted from his pocket, outstretched to something across the water as if he was reaching to cradle something precious in his palm that was just out of reach. I couldn’t help but turn my eyes seaward, towards whatever needed to be handled so gently, and found nothing but a slowly blinking green glow, small but apparent across the dark sea. I watched it, too, for a moment, noticing how it also glinted off the water alongside the moon, and when I turned back to the bay, the figure had gone.