Chapter Text
Ophelia’s daisies had withered and were drooping atop her head, and the sun had tumbled out of the sky. Every sign prophesied storm.
The elder Frump sister had suffered much a let-down in her romantic life, but it always hit hard, no matter how heroically she tried to hold herself up. And she had been certain, one hundred per cent certain, that with Marcus, it would be forever… then, of course, he suddenly had business on the other side of the globe, and she…
She had been left behind once more.
Life wasn’t fair.
After a short time (about two hours), however, Ophelia’s good friend Katherine had decided she would have none of this, not anymore, and this Marcus guy had been a slob either way, so Ophelia would pack up and wipe those tears off her face this very instant, get her make-up back on track and accompany her to a work outing.
Katherine, an animated and energetic girl right from when she and Ophelia had met in school, had taken up work as a fashion journalist. Her articles were known to be appreciative and constructive, but also quite unsparing and not without an inkling of sly wit. She herself had never really dressed in anything much more stylish than jeans, a preppy skirt and various shapes and colours of t-shirts, but she claimed this was part of the reason why she could cast such an unrelenting look onto the loud, shrill, occasionally overdramatic fashion circus: she was only in it with one half leg, the other one being firmly planted on even ground, and she was fully aware of all the weird and occasionally concerning stuff that went on in this particular chicken coop.
So she claimed, anyway.
“But fashion shows are loud, colourful and fast-paced, they’re full of oddballs, and that’s just the thing you need to get some colour back into those cheeks,” she had told her friend, carefully preening the daisies in her hair into some sort of form. “Besides, there’ll be alcohol.”
Glass in hand and press-ID dangling around her neck, Ophelia had to admit that Katherine hadn’t been entirely wrong. The champagne that was bubbling in her glass was marvellous, and although Ophelia’s actions were mostly restricted to keeping her quiet and smiling while Katherine debated and laughed and joked with her acquaintances in the field, or smiling and curtseying when Katherine thought it fit to introduce her companion, she didn’t feel left out. How could she, being right in the middle of matters? There was so much to be seen. It was a maelstrom of colour and sound, the music vibrating in her eardrums, the chattering and fluttering of a million photographs being taken at the same time, the flashes and shouts, the voices a near incomprehensible drone, and all these people…
Ophelia merely wished she had brought her flowers. She felt a little sullen and empty without them in her arm.
The show ended in a triumph; here, however, Kate claimed, her work would only begin as she would have to conduct the one or the other interview. She and Ophelia slowly made their way toward the back door as the crowd sluggishly dissipated, and Kate offered her friend a choice: either she could choose to say goodbye right now and Kate would do the boring part by herself, or she could follow her backstage, under the caveat of course that she would have to stay quietly in the shadows. Although Katherine claimed the interview proceedings and niceties would most likely bore her, Ophelia, feeling a little better than before and not quite wanting to go home to her old sadness again, chose to stay, and Katherine, smiling, hooked her arm into hers to lead her to the dressing rooms.
On the way there, however, the most magnificent, most enchanting shouting rang through one of the doors. Ophelia could not tell what was riling the shouter up so greatly, could not make out a single word, but his fury was inescapable, and the storminess of his voice and diction were downright enchanting. And this voice! So hoarse! So enraged! So powerful!
“My, my,” Ophelia breathed, marvelling at the strength of lung and voice that the shouter displayed, “what prowess. That is one decisive-sounding man.”
Katherine blinked, hardly slowing her brisk walk, and visibly mystified. “Um… yeah. I guess. That’s… look, Phee, if I’m not mistaken that’s Gabriel. He was on the runway before, do you remember? I must have pointed him out, he’s some kind of a… a big shadow presence in this business.”
Ophelia didn’t reply. She only felt her mouth and tongue going progressively drier.
Katherine sighed, trying to pull her friend further while she kept slowing down her gait – whether it was to listen or to gather confidence to approach the man, who should know? “Look, this model – this Gabriel guy – no-one even knows his last name, he’s a bit of a… a ghost, one might say. He arrives, does his modelling, then leaves, and no-one’s any the wiser. He does no promotion, he does no interviews. Even the organizers are close-mouthed about him.” Katherine cleared her throat; Ophelia, in the meantime, thought she had made out the door behind which this Gabriel person was rampaging, and she couldn’t help but stare at it and marvel at how surmountable an obstacle this insignificant thin door blade might be. “It’s impossible to get a hold of the guy, just because of his own drawn-backness, and then there’s this black storm cloud mostly gravitating about him and making sure he’s not getting comfortable and settling down anywhere. His manager, some say. I say they’re most likely some sort of bodyguard. They call them Beatrix, though… who can know whether anything about them is real?” She shrugged and tried to press on, to haul Ophelia past the door, but she wouldn’t have it.
Gabriel, now. Wasn’t that a name that rang lovely in the ears?
She had, in the meantime, caught a few words and phrases of what was yelled in there. Something about light, how it had made the shouter look ‘pasty’ and ‘sallow’ and how this other person imagined he do his work with such incompetent side staff – and Ophelia was suddenly seized by a bout of compassion for him. Oh, poor dear! He must be so torn by his worries, tension must rack his body like…
These moments, Ophelia knew she just had to meet him. He appeared to be under such stress, the poor little rabbit, and perhaps all he needed was to meet one person who wouldn’t be cowed by him, who’d smile at him and take his hand, caress it and tell him it was okay, it was all going to be okay, and they would do everything that it took to help him.
Even if he initially perhaps wouldn’t like it was much.
“Phee?” Katherine sounded concerned.
“I think someone should just approach him,” Ophelia asserted, more confident than she felt herself to be, nodding along with her own words. “Talk to him, and make him let go of his worries just for a moment or two. That should loosen him up fine enough. In fact, I think I know just the thing he needs…”
Ophelia made a decisive step toward the dressing room door. So unassuming, so unremarkable, and yet…
Katherine's face fell, and she blanched. “Phee, what do you think you’re…”
But it was too late. Ophelia had already knocked.
Katherine gasped. “Phee! This is unheard-of, he’s… we’ll be evicted, I’ll lose my goodwill here!”
However, in the very moment the door flew open, Katherine and everything else beyond this door frame and who stared at her from its other side vanished to the very fringes, the margins of everything that existed. Oh, he was so dreamy, from his forehead wrinkled in distaste down to his spotless shoes, tapping his irritation on the floor. Ophelia could almost feel how the daisies on her head filled with power and life at the very sight of this extraordinary man.
He was so dreamy. A regular fairy tale prince. A heavenly apparition. He, after all, might be who she had always been looking, and hoping, and praying for.
The resplendent man in front of her filled the door frame almost exclusively – about seven feet of pure rage, so very forceful. Almost inescapable, one would say. There was a coldness to him, a superior, haughty coldness, but there were also sparks flying from his very anger. There was the most endearing frown of a threat of violence on his colourless lips, and his pure violet eyes were akin to spears, piercing right below Ophelia’s skin. It was intensely hard to find her voice in front of him. How should one address the image from the sweetest dream one before never even had thought of dreaming?
“Yes?” the man snapped, his voice not half as angelic as Ophelia would have expected it to be, but it would do. “What do you want, girl? We ordered nothing, and we’re buying nothing, so if you don’t have anything to say or do, scurry already.”
And a charmer, too…
Focus, Ophelia told herself. Do not let yourself get bedraggled by his charm.
“You sound very tensed up,” she ventured, already devising where and how she would flip him onto his back to relieve the pressure. “Look it, too. I think, good Sir, I might have just the thing you need.” With which she held out her hand to Gabriel, smiled and nodded at him to take it.
Her opposite first said nothing, letting his glance wander from her face to her hand and back again. “If that is some sort of jest,” he grumbled, “it is a decidedly bad one. Not even Raphael made such a heaven-damned fool of himself in the name of… that, and he considered himself quite the humourist.”
“Not a joke at all,” Ophelia assured him, making a motion to grab his hand in both of hers, which he avoided. “I know what I’m talking about, I have been doing this for years.”
Finally she had gotten hold on one of the model’s hands (broad and tender in a way that told Ophelia that he most likely didn’t operate heavy machinery in his free time), made a decisive step backwards and pulled at his arm as if to flip him over her head, but Gabriel… didn’t move.
He arched his brow, but apart from that, he didn’t budge. She hadn’t even got a stumble out of him!
Oh dear. Oh dear, these must be some heavy muscle tension…
Ophelia put all her weight and heightened strength in trying to get this model off his feet and onto his back, but he didn’t give an inch. Before she could redouble her efforts again, however, or before Katherine could remind everyone in attendance that she was, in fact, still there, mortified, and would quite like to be on her way now, thank you very much, another person came into view: a short individual of indiscriminate gender with a shock of black, messy, thick hair, and the face and eyes of a bird of prey. The way they dressed (all black, a little tatty, certainly without any sense of style) reminded Ophelia shockingly of her sister Morticia, might they be with Gomez? If Ophelia had learnt one thing in her existence as Addams extended family, it was that there was an Addams on every bloody corner in this world.
“Ey, girl,” the newcomer made themselves known, “are you the mazzseur I ordered for Gabriel?”
Even before Ophelia had had the possibility to think of an answer, Gabriel had fought himself free with a defeated moan. “You vermin,” he grumbled, turning toward his attendant, “you will never stop tormenting me, will you? How many times must I tell you that I abhor being touched, and certainly will not…”
“But a massage will certainly do you good,” Ophelia chipped in, trying her best to go with the flow. “It relaxes the muscles, is a relief on the organs, and lets energy flow free again…”
“There you hear it, from the profezzsional.” The diminutive one smirked – only now did Ophelia recall that Kate had said something about a ‘black storm cloud’ called Beatrix who was always hovering around Gabriel without anyone knowing for certain what their job was. Might this be her? She certainly acted more like a manager than a bodyguard… “It might even do you good, Gabriel. And would it not be rude to the exzztreme to zzsend her home now that she’zz made this long way here just becauzzse you…”
“Hold your tongue, Sariel,” the model grumbled, and the adressee, Sariel, fell silent in dark resentment while her charge gestured for Ophelia to come in. “I will do as you say, but only so I can prove once more that you’re wrong. These humans know nothing, and neither do you, sister.”
His sister, then… how thrilling.
“And you…” Gabriel turned toward Ophelia who met him with a beaming smile. “No oils. No greases. No… artificial fragrances. You will touch my back and nothing more. As soon as I feel your fingers anywhere that is off-limits, or you make any off-colour remarks, you’ll be right out this door, and I might put a curse on you and your family for good measure. Are we in accord?”
Ophelia finally entered the dressing room, and the door slammed close, cutting Katherine as well as her attempted protest off like she had never even really existed.
“Oh, I think my sister would quite enjoy a nice curse, thank you.” The daisies on Ophelia’s head almost danced now as she waggled her head and gave the model an encouraging smile which went thoroughly unnoticed. She slapped her palms together and cracked her knuckles in order to warm and exercise her fingers. “Now, might I ask you to take off that shirt and find a comfortable space to lie down, I must admit I forgot my stretcher at the last appointment…”
“That won’t be a problem.” Sariel, radiating dark, sultry glee, pointed toward a door at the opposite side of the room. “You’ll find we’re well equipped ourzzselves.”
Gabriel glared at her and muttered something about ‘incompetence’ and ‘unprofessionalism’ before he started undoing the buttons on his shirt while proceeding through the indicated door. He turned her his back before dropping the garment, but even that was a sight to behold. Ophelia had to take a deep breath to steady herself before she allowed herself to follow the patient.
Indeed, a massage bed was waiting for them in the back room, ready to use; Ophelia wondered whether they kept it ready all the time, just in case. Or perhaps Sariel had readied it in preparation after having made the call?
Anyway, Ophelia approached with butterflies in her stomach as soon as her patient, having settled down and rested his cheek on the back of one hand, gave a lazy, two-fingered gesture.
“I might blind you for what you’ve already seen,” the model grumbled. His head was turned in a way that he could always keep at least one eye on his masseur, and through all her fascination, she was slightly taken aback by that. How by everything that was fine and good did the plan on relaxing if he always kept this jealous watch?
“I’m sure of it… but now, relax and let me do my job,” Ophelia answered, already deep in thought while putting her hands onto the patient’s back to search the centres of tension and hardening. Gabriel grumbled in distaste; she could feel how he tried to evade her touch, how feeling and warmth surreptitiously, but constantly, shifted away from the areas she was testing. It wasn’t as if she strictly had any training in this field… but the one or the other thing, she reckoned, one just picked up as one walked through life.
Oh, where to start with this one? Every strain of muscle, every littlest nerve or sinew seemed ready to burst. The frustrations this one must have encountered! The… the let-downs, poor rabbit. Ophelia tried to visualize a knot right between his shoulder blade, a red, pulsing thing, akin to a second heart, to aid herself; this knot, she would need to gently pry apart. Paradoxically, his skin appeared a bit too cold to be healthy… but then, what did she know? She was no doctor.
Cautiously, she shifted her weight onto the patient’s flesh. It depressed, but Gabriel gave no sign he had noticed anything. He didn’t shift, he didn’t make a sound, and he certainly didn’t take his censorious look off her.
If she could just bring her herb garden in here, make the atmosphere a little more relaxed… she was certain he’d feel right at home between rosemary and thyme and chives. In the absence of this, she had to use other techniques – her charm, mostly – to get him to wind down a little.
“My name is Ophelia, by the way,” she introduced herself with a smile. “Ophelia Frump. So very glad to meet you.”
“Obviously,” was all that Gabriel offered in reply, dry and matter-of-fact.
Ophelia smiled through it. “Are you a very successful model, then?”
“What does this look like to you?” He scoffed. “I have my own quarters and dressing rooms, to myself. Managers and organizers bend over backwards to please me. I have branched out into acting once and again, not that it matters. Those were minimal side-exploits. I consider fashion to be my vocation… that is, lending every garment, or piece of jewellery, just the flair that it needs to make its best impression.”
“You certainly do,” she encouraged him to go on – which he didn’t.
Ophelia had, by that time, established a kind of roadmap of Gabriel’s back muscles. She had an idea of where the strains intertwined, where they were attached to the bone, where the spine stabilized everything, where ribs spread out and where the shoulder blades peaked out of the flesh. She could draw a broad line where the back and chest musculature gave way to the tissue of stomach and buttocks, and she had an idea about the webbing of his nerve cells. Now she was to…
But she couldn’t. No amount of pressure she applied to Gabriel’s back succeeded in even making him flinch away. Whether she combed over his skin with her fingertips, pressed into the valleys of tissue with the flat hands, the heels or edges of her hands or used the nails, he gave no sign he even noticed a slight change.
The knot pulsed and radiated invariably, as if intent on mocking Ophelia.
Perhaps she would need to use more force.
“Kate – Katherine, my friend who was outside just now, who happens to work in your industry as a journalist – told me you didn’t do any interviews,” she went on, chipper. The edges of her hand swiftly slapped onto Gabriel’s back as she talked, and he shifted a little now, but the beats didn’t leave any reddening, and the tension remained as if defiant. Now let’s see whether I’ll not get rid of you…
Do you feel that at all, Gabriel, love?
The knot was as tight as ever before.
Gabriel wasn’t an inch out of his depth. Not even his breathing was stunted! “I’m not around here to answer questions,” he stated pompously. “You want to know something, go to a university or look it up in a lexicon. Also, the kind of moronic questions I would inevitably get asked…”
By the time he had finished, Ophelia rhythmically pounded his back with her fists, and he still gave no sign of discomfort. His masseur, however, gradually started breaking a sweat.
“Not that you’d have any reason to be that shy,” she ventured.
“I’m not shy,” he immediately shot back. “My time is precious, is – well, well, whoa there. What do you think you’re doing?” He made as if to rise, but Ophelia had already clambered up on the massage table and hiked her dress up so she could place her legs outside his hipbones, straddling him. “Settle down, silly rabbit!” she cried, putting a hand onto the nape of his neck to force his chest back down on the padding, hardly able to bridle her amusement, “Trust me, and relax! I’m trying to massage you here.”
Ophelia stifled a laugh; Gabriel, however, slumped face-down back down on the padded massage bench, though his hands and clenched fingers, searching fruitlessly for a handhold, spoke of vigorous attempts of pushing himself up. Ophelia ignored the model’s struggle; she proceeded to cover every inch of his back musculature with her fists, in calculated, rhythmic, well-spread-out thuds, using the knuckles as well as the edges as well as the protruding thumbs. She knew she wouldn’t let him rise again until she had kneaded and beat and teased all the hardening out of his muscles so they would be supple and flexible again, and he feel as good as new-born.
If he doesn’t feel this, either, she thought to herself, feeling a bubbly sensation rise in her stomach at the thought, I’ll have to stand up and use my feet, just for good measure. Walk on his back a little. Make the ribs crack. Push the heels into the softer areas. He’ll enjoy that.
Or she just might use electric shocks... weren't those also known to have a relaxing effects on musculature?
And wouldn’t that be just a terrific thing?
The knot finally responded; something tugged and picked at it, gently, but constantly, and it gave way oh so slightly. Ophelia understood in these moments that this knot wanted to be undone, that it had just waited for the right person to grow loose and unravel… the thought that she, Ophelia Frump, would be that one person, made her blush in a mixture of pride and girly elation.
She had worked this way for a couple of minutes (Gabriel had kept squirming, not bad, just in a way that let Ophelia know he actually had some sense of what she was doing) before she decided to change her strategy once more. In one final attempt to do away with the muscle hardening, she would…
As her fists came down upon his ribs this time, she let her lower arms follow, pushed them against his flesh wrist to elbow.
Gabriel groaned; his shoulders slumped, his arms finally lay still, his neck elongated a little as his head fell forward.
One thread was pulled loose from the knot; and everyone who knew anything about knots could tell that the rest would automatically follow.
For everything that was fine and good, Gabriel stretched…
Ophelia grinned as she let her arms slide down Gabriel’s sides until they rested on the massage table. (It was hard to not press a kiss between his shoulder blades, onto the nape of his neck, somewhere along his spine, and deeply inhale his body odour. It was only then and there that she realized that even though she felt a little worn-out already, there was not a bead of sweat on his skin.) The knot, she knew, was broken, she wouldn’t need the elbow or her whole body weight anymore; but loose tension threads were still to be found in his body, and they, Ophelia would have to excise with care and exactness. Was it just her, or did he really breathe easier these very moments?
She still exercised more force than she would with any other patient, frequently using her fists and knuckles, pushing and pressing with the heels of her hands, but still: Ophelia could feel in her fingertips, in her palms, the way that Gabriel now helped her massaging hands in pushing the hardening out of the musculature just by shifting and stretching every which way she suggested, and how the uneasiness bled out of every single cell. Her nerves and fancy, of course, made her feel as if she could sense it up to her wrist, and tenderly up her arms to her chest cavity and brain, a tingle quite as if she had put her fingers into a haphazardly isolated electric outlet.
There was a grain of truth to this, she decided; there was something quite like electric current about the nervous, but affectionate flurry Gabriel made her experience.
“Wasn’t that hard after all, was it,” she crooned. “Now you’re feeling so much better, I can just tell.”
Gabriel didn’t reply. He only started to speak as Ophelia finally descended from the massage table, dusting off and righting first her dress and then the daisies on her head; as she lifted her glance again to find the patient, he was sitting upright, all put together and pristine, out of nowhere a shirt on his back, and stared at her with stern eyes. How handsome he was… how strongly built, and how wonderfully rugged, though she also would say he appeared calmer, rested, more peaceful now that the traces of all that stress had been wiped off his bearing. And yet he was massive, so very imposing; his arms appeared made to envelop, and safeguard the whole world, and everything that lived and breathed in it. How might it feel, Ophelia caught herself in wondering, if he were to hold and squeeze her? How bad would her heart hammer?
“I will admit that you have succeeded in something I considered impossible,” Gabriel ventured, his features still severe and unyielding, though they had gained a touch of tenderness to them. He appeared uncertain, finicky in what he was doing, a notion that made Ophelia want to pat his cheek like a petulant child’s. “It seems as if you just pushed the strain of centuries out of my muscles. For that, I guess I have to thank you.”
Ophelia shrugged and smiled coyly. Now the smell of flowers in her nose, and everything would be perfect…
“I think you will understand that I’m not prepared to let that talent go to waste.”
“Oh darling, stop,” Ophelia deflected that, smiling to herself, recognizing a compliment when she heard one. “I was only doing my job, and it was my pleasure.”
He finally slid off the table and offered his hand to her; a hand so big that Ophelia’s seemed dainty and filigree in it though they were quite sturdy, in themselves, owing to her gardening habit. “Let us share some of your favourite… material beverage, or foodstuff,” he suggested. “I am interested in getting to know you better.”
So was she… she couldn’t overstate how much.