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The carriage bobbed and weaved along the snow-coated hills. Jonathan’s thin gloves were hardly designed to protect against the cold that penetrated the frosty glass; he crossed his arms tightly across his chest and tucked his hands into the warm crevices under each arm.
His father was opposite of him, watching the last dregs of sunlight disappear through the bare trees. Dio sat on Jonathan’s right, leaning against the wall of the carriage with legs crossed nonchalantly but in a way where his foot bounced and hit Jonathan’s shin lightly each time they went over a bump. He was reading his tattered old copy of Frankenstein; Jonathan would never call the novel a holiday story, but ever since he’d received the book as a Christmas gift from their father some five years ago, Jonathan had caught him reading it every year on this day. Perhaps, Jonathan thought for the first time, Dio had his own sorts of holiday traditions… ones that involved books about monsters.
Their carriage conversations could be fairly lively—political discussions or talks of recent happenings—but nobody seemed in the mood today. What a horrible Christmas, he thought.
“Father,” Jonathan started before the words could fully form in his head, “It’s not too late. We could still head home—I’m sure the servants could make a perfectly lovely Christmas dinner with what’s in the kitchen, and—”
George’s stern gaze fell upon his son. “No. I have said it a hundred times and I will say it again: No. Now stop asking or else you’ll sound like a common beggar.”
Dio feigned innocence as he interrupted his reading to look over his shoulder. “You must accept it, Jojo. We failed Father, but he’s giving us a chance at redemption.”
“Dio is right.”
Jonathan’s blood boiled at those words. How many times had he heard them since Dio came to live with them? Dio is right. He’d grown accustomed to the sound of it. Jonathan just wanted to celebrate Christmas the way he had since he was a child but Dio was right and he was wrong and they’d messed up enough to get themselves here, freezing their asses off on the way to a manor he’d never once visited.
And what had been the crime so heinous as to steal their intimate family Christmas away from them? He and Dio had failed to make a meaningful connection with any of the debutantes they had met during social season. That was it; they both just hadn’t wanted to keep in touch with (or truly liked ) any of the young women presented to them as newly available bachelors.
It was not as if the women were not nice; many were kind and beautiful and Jonathan had treated each with the dignity and gentlemanly respect they deserved. Still, some part of his brain kept him from seeing them as anything more than potential friends instead of brides. He wondered for the thousandth time if the problem was Erina, if the girl he’d liked as a child could really be preventing him from pursuing a wife now. It was probably part of it, but there was another hesitation there that he couldn’t place.
As for Dio’s reasoning for not finding a woman, Jonathan suspected he simply didn’t care. He’d been busy ever since they’d entered university, and Jonathan could never see Dio putting looking for a wife above his studies… or anything else, for that matter. The entire concept of Dio having a wife seemed strange and incongruous in his head. Not that their father thought that way.
So now they were here, heading to a grand Christmas ball being held by a family friend instead of their usual tradition of sitting around the living room’s cozy fire and cracking open hazelnuts as they chatted after dinner. Even George seemed a bit upset by the idea, but out of some deep-rooted fatherly sense of obligation he had gotten them invited so that the two of them could have another chance to converse and dance with a new set of debutantes. How lovely.
The manor with all its shimmering lights slid into view as the last pinks disappeared from the cloudy sky. It sat atop a gentle, sloping hill, the centerpiece among vast fields of caked earth topped by a layer of white icing spread thin. Dio held his book close to his face, trying to catch the errant beams of the lantern that jangled above the coachman’s head.
It was barely fifteen minutes before they stood in the entrance hall of Sir James Grey’s sprawling manor, exchanging pleasantries with the host himself. The hall was coated from top to bottom in almost overly-festive decor: yellow ribbon that seemed to glow, boughs of arbor vitae, and even candles with red wax dripping on the fixtures. It was a large and tall space, like a closed-air market—and it certainly evoked the same feeling, what with all of the arriving guests crowding and shoving to speak to the host as if he were selling a suckling pig.
Dio seemed in his element among the chaos—he always did. Jonathan watched him swim through the crowd to greet people, always seeming to know which elbow to bend around and which hoop skirt to sidestep. It was a talent Jonathan himself had never picked up; his much larger frame didn’t help at all.
There was another talent Dio had that Jonathan lacked: he always seemed to know when someone was looking at him. Red eyes met his gaze with an air of arrogant levity, as if he was the one controlling the room and throwing the party. The corners of his mouth tilted ever so slightly; it could barely be considered a smirk. The look passed as soon as his eyes disconnected from Jonathan’s and slid back to the woman before him.
The first part of the evening was dedicated to a large feast held in a long dining room with yule strung from every pillar. There was so much food that Jonathan couldn’t even take it all in with his eyes: buttery rolls, mulled wine, cabbage stews, platters of pork and currants, plum pudding, pitchers of ale, bowls of hazelnuts… He grew more ravenous the longer he stared at it. When it finally came time to eat, he could barely stop himself from wolfing down an entire plate. The Christmas pie was especially delicious and he took two whole slices for himself.
His father was seated beside him, and the bone-chilling glare he gave Jonathan made the man nearly cower like a puppy. He’d forgotten his manners again. Dio, of course, was the perfect picture of grace from his spot on the other side of George. Of course. Still, the main attraction of the night was to come, and there, perhaps, Jonathan could redeem himself.
The ball that followed the meal was a party of folly and fervor. Even simply stepping foot into the ballroom gave one a gaudy, almost oppressive sense of holiday cheer. The entire ceiling had been covered in a thick layer of laurel that was tied around the trusses, and the scent that emanated from such a display permeated every inch of the room like a warm blanket of air. Gas lamps lined the walls, with lampshades of red and gold and braided tassels. The wooden floor had been polished so neatly that Jonathan could see the reflection of his shoes in it.
But the main attraction was by far the massive evergreen tree at the back of the room. Its branches were wrapped in silky white ribbon, and round baubles hung off of its boughs. Candles of red and green wax were strung throughout, illuminating the undersides of its needles. The tree was so tall that the top of it soared high and disappeared among the laurel.
A string quartet sat next to the tree and began to play as more guests filed into the huge room. Jonathan hoped they were being paid handsomely for being pulled away from their families on Christmas. A Mozart piece swam through the hot air; people mingled and laughed. George walked with his sons at first, but quickly got pulled away by another friend and his wife for a jaunty conversation. Dio and Jonathan had been left to their own devices.
“...So what do you suppose we do now?” He spoke to Dio through the corner of his mouth as he eyed up the crowd.
“What Father wants us to do, of course.” Dio’s face hardly changed, but Jonathan could hear the hint of snide in his tone. “Go find someone to introduce you to a dance partner instead of chatting with me.”
And then he was gone, weaving in and out of people as he was so apt to doing. Jonathan shook his head; Dio had gotten better over the years, but he supposed he’d always have that mean streak that had defined their childhood.
In the end he was right, though; there were only about ten minutes left until the first dance of the night, and his father surely expected that he’d have a partner. Luckily, there was someone here he could rely on to help him on that front, and Jonathan made straight for him.
Nigel Grey was the son of Sir Grey and a friend of Jonathan’s throughout secondary school. Jonathan hadn’t seen him since the summer as they’d gone to different universities, but as he approached he could see a smile grow on Nigel’s face.
Catching up was nice if not brief. Nigel was studying to go into politics like his father, but supposedly the work was dreadfully boring. He seemed delighted to be home—this ball was his Christmas tradition. Jonathan wished he could find the same joy, but that damned laurel scent shoved its way further down his throat. “...Say, Nigel,” he threw in, not entirely gracefully. “You wouldn’t happen to know any debutantes looking for a dance partner at this ball, would you?”
“Oh, well I sure would!” Nigel grinned like a dog. “Have you ever met my cousin?”
And thus he ended up on the dance floor with Felicity Webb. She seemed startled, even shocked at his request to dance. But perhaps that was to be expected; bright-eyed Felicity would barely even look at him, look at much of anything besides her hands folded neatly against her green skirt.
Those same hands shook in Jonathan’s grip as he led her onto the floor, the quartet playing a jaunty number from the contemporary Tchaikovsky. He tried to catch her eye, to give her a reassuring glance, and yet her gaze was still directed towards the space between their bodies that led to the floor.
Felicity did not offer much besides one-word answers to every question Jonathan asked. She lifted her clammy hands in such a way that they barely made contact with his. Her entire body seemed closed off, shut down. He tried his best to be gentlemanly, courteous, but at the end of the day… Jonathan wasn’t the most graceful dancer either. His broad shoulders brushed with other couples as his feet barely managed to stay untangled from one another, all while trying to manage a dance partner that seemed to want nothing more than to escape this room and never look back. Naturally, as Felicity did not offer much in the way of engaging activity, his eyes wandered to the other dancers and their twirling partners.
And that was when he saw them.
Glowing at the center of the floor were two blonde dancers, golden in the steady light. The man was graceful and light on his feet; a cat, a ballet dancer. He led his partner along as if she were a wisp, manipulating her like a cloud of smoke around a magician. Her body spun and twirled in the breeze; her eyes seemed utterly captivated by his. And then he dipped her low, low, and looked at her with eyes half shut, with a smile that curled just the corners of his mouth.
And the man was Dio and his partner was a woman Jonathan had never seen and everything was wrong.
Something deep and angry plucked in him. Something about this interaction, this instance of Dio being perfect and charming and better than him was the last straw. His blood boiled. His grip on poor Felicity’s hand tightened and she yelped a bit in shock. The noise made him blink, come back to reality. He apologized to his partner.
The end of the dance was shaky; they both must’ve known that they wouldn’t ever speak again. The back of Jonathan’s neck was still a hot ring of anger, and the smell of laurel nearly drove him insane. The second the music stopped, he thanked Felicity for her time politely and then restrained himself from sprinting to leave the room.
The washroom was down a couple turns of the hall but he found it eventually. The cool metal taps of the sink looked more inviting than any part of the house’s Christmas decor. He turned on the cold water and bent down to rub his face vigorously.
Dear Lord, what was wrong with him? Even his reflection in the mirror above the sink looked distorted, beads of water dripping off his chin. Something was not right. He shouldn’t have gotten this upset over some failed dance, over one showcase of Dio’s social prowess over his. What was it that had made him so angry? He didn’t care about finding a wife right now… right?
There was a level of jealousy at play, that much was for certain. The problem was that he couldn’t tell exactly what he was jealous of. Was it Dio’s suaveness, his ability to charm such a woman? Was it his partner, a blonde beauty he’d never seen before? It wasn’t to say that Felicity wasn’t beautiful herself, but… Dio’s partner looked more like how Jonathan dreamed Erina would look today.
That must’ve been it, then. It must’ve been that such a partner reminded him of Erina, and that was why he was so mad.
…So then why was it the half-lidded smile on Dio’s face that made him the most upset?
Jonathan dried off his own face quickly and made to go back to the ballroom. Dio would surely have found another partner by now, some other dance surely spinning the room. His father would surely have been expecting him to return, to find another, to spin and dance and smell the laurel. And he would.
But his attention was caught first by a dimly lit room off the side of one hall that he hadn’t initially noticed in his haste to reach the washroom.
It was a smaller room stuffed with chairs, perhaps a sitting room or a parlor. Compared to the rest of the house, the Christmas decoration was minimal, though he couldn’t see much of the room anyway in the small spots of light thrown by the tree in the back.
And there was the centerpiece: the tree. It was smaller, much smaller than the one in the ballroom. The decorations were sparser, less extravagant: strips of red paper had been wrapped lovingly through the branches, with a few white candles barely illuminating the walls of the room. Jonathan had subconsciously stepped to the center of the space to study it closer. This sort of tree was what Christmas meant to him, after all.
“You have a real talent for tracking me down, you know.” A voice cut through the inky darkness; Jonathan swirled around to face the corner that it had come from. “You always have.”
In the deepest grays of the edges of candlelight Jonathan could just barely make out Dio’s form, a shape he’d recognize anywhere. “What? Why are you here?”
“Why are you here?” Dio readjusted in his seat. “We’re both supposed to be somewhere else, aren’t we?”
“Of course, but—” But after a dance like that Dio was hiding out here? “Well, you just seemed the man of the hour earlier. I figured you’d… I don’t know, have plenty more eager partners dying to be introduced to you.”
“You flatter me, Jojo.” The whites of his eyes flashes as he rolled them. “...You think I’d want to keep spinning around like a fool all night?”
“But!” Jonathan threw his arms out wide, his voice raising. “But you seemed so eager to do what Father had said earlier, to find a nice girl!”
“Dear Lord, this is why you can never please him. You understand that, right?”
“Understand what, exactly?” His collar was getting hot again, but more out of frustration than anything else. He stepped a few paces closer to Dio so he could see better.
“You truly are hopeless.” He folded his arms. “I did exactly what Father expected of me. I was introduced to the most beautiful girl in the room and spun her silly. She’ll remember my name and Father will be pleased. What else do I need to do? Now I can simply pass the night here until the end of the ball, conveniently reappear, and all will be well. You, on the other hand, are terribly inefficient.”
“I am not!” His voice continued to climb in octave. “Father wanted us to meet plenty of different debutantes and socialize the most with the one we wanted to pursue! You can’t just—”
“Yes I can, actually. He wants us to find a good woman, not our favorite. If you look interested in the most advantageous one to marry, he won’t much care about the rest.” He explained all of this as if it was perfectly natural and obvious.
Jonathan’s eyes went wide; there was a lump in his throat. “‘If you look interested?!’ But Dio, you… the way you looked at that girl…” He could still see those eyes, that smile, as clear as if it was passing on Dio’s face right now.
“And you think that was real? You think I genuinely care about that woman?” He rolled his eyes again. “Now keep your voice down or else you’ll give away my position.”
“No! No, I won’t!” In fact, his voice strayed louder . “You just pretended to look at a woman that way? How ungentlemanly, how rude! How disrespectful to a partner that gave you her valuable time! I cannot believe you would act in such a manner!”
“Oh, rude this, disrespectful that.” He waved a hand dismissively then leaned forward, elbow resting on one knee. “Your real problem, Jojo, is that you don’t know how to properly get a woman to become entranced by you. You dance like an elephant in a circus. You don’t consider the dance from the woman’s perspective.”
“What?” What could he even mean by that?! “From the woman’s perspective? But I consider her feelings, of course! In fact, I put them before my own!”
“Her feelings do not matter if you cannot understand what it is like to be seduced.” Dio stood up, brushed the creases out of his slacks. “You need to understand what a dance looks like from the perspective of a woman. Luckily, I’m willing to teach you.”
“Teach me what? I already know how to dance!”
“Do you? I’ve seen you nearly knock another couple out with a swipe of the shoulder. I’ve seen you almost tumble onto your face and drag your partner with you. Come here.” He took a step towards Jonathan but expected him to make up the difference.
He hesitated. The lump in his throat grew thicker. What exactly was this going to entail?
And yet, the candles flickered then, and he could see the faintest hint of that same look in Dio’s eyes, and he stepped forward as if drawn by a string.
The played a short game between their hands then. Jonathan was unsure what exactly was happening until Dio’s hand landed on his waist, the other forcefully grasping for his. The touch on his waist made him shudder, almost gasp. He’d never been… nobody had ever… “W-what? I can’t dance like this!”
“I told you that you had to understand what it felt like from the perspective of a woman, did I not?” Dio looked almost disgusted for a moment, as if Jonathan’s ignorance caused him pain. “What did you think would happen?”
“But— I—” His protests were halfhearted at best, and Dio moved him further towards the center of the room where they had more space to move. His hand fluttered slowly, slowly down to the square of Dio’s sharp shoulder. Something jumped in his stomach. The hand on his waist was so warm he thought it might burn right through him.
There was a small, contented smirk on Dio’s mouth. He was as sure of himself as ever. “You acquiesce easier than I thought possible, Jojo. Are you starting to understand, then?”
“I—” His neck was still red-hot, and he was afraid it was starting to bleed onto his cheeks as well. Dio began a simple waltz, a three stepped-journey across the plush carpet of the parlor. “W-what am I supposed to be understanding, exactly?”
“The position of the woman.” He flashed a trademarked grin that almost glowed in the low candlelight, and then he spun Jonathan around with one arm held high above his head. Jonathan stumbled through the turn, and yet Dio caught him in his claws once more as if it was nothing. His heart beat even faster. “How to become entranced.”
Jonathan willed his hands to stop sweating so much, and yet his eyes went wide. “Entranced?! Don’t be ridiculous, Dio, why would such a thing ever happen between us?”
And yet the dance continued. “Truly? Then why are you sweating so much if you’re not nervous?”
“W-well being nervous is not necessarily the same thing as being entranced. I’ve never danced the part of a woman, so of course I’m nervous—”
“Oh.” Dio stopped the dance abruptly, his feet locking in place as Jonathan stumbled back, then forwards and nearly into him. His eyes were tilted up to the ceiling above them. “Well, would you look at that.”
“Look at…” Jonathan’s entire body went into shock slowly, then all at once as he followed Dio’s gaze.
It was a kissing bough.
Every muscle in his neck tensed as he came back to earth and saw the look on Dio’s face, the glint of mischief that the candles cast. This… this could not be happening. This must have been a twisted dream of some sort, a terrible fantasy that his mind conjured as if out of thin air. He could not think of Dio in that way, could not do something like that with him when he’d never even done it with…
“You know,” Dio said, his voice breaking Jonathan out of any idea he had that this was a dream, “It’s rude for a lady to reject a kiss underneath a kissing bough.”
“I’m not a lady! Dio—” He tried weakly to push away.
“Yes, but you’re playing the part of one.” His grip on Jonathan’s waist grew tighter in response to his rebuttals.
“This is ridiculous! Let me go, I don’t—!”
“How rude! Where did all your talks of manners go, hmm? I’m trying to teach you something out of my own good will!” Still, his face held almost no anger. Instead, there was daring, moxie, as if this was simply another challenge to overcome.
“Dio, we—” He was running out of excuses. “What if someone sees us?” His voice was a harsh whisper.
“The longer we stand here embracing, the greater of a chance there is of that happening. Now…” He straightened his back then, pushing himself up slowly to whisper into the space at the edge of Jonathan’s collar. “Kiss me, Jojo.”
The shiver down his spine was all it took to push him towards Dio’s mouth.
Though it was Jonathan that started the kiss, it was Dio that controlled it. He grasped for Jonathan’s chin to pull him closer in, his lips pressing and roaming against Jonathan’s clumsily propped-open mouth. It was exactly the kind of kiss he’d imagined that Dio would give— had he imagined the way that Dio would kiss before?— and yet it felt… like something to complete him.
They parted after seconds too long. Dio’s face shared that same expression that had made Jonathan so angry to see him give to that woman earlier; those half-lidded eyes, that curl of a smile. And he knew then that he’d been entirely and wholeheartedly entranced.
Dio had stolen Erina’s first kiss and now he’d stolen Jonathan’s, but the latter could not quite bring himself to be upset by it. If this was the art of entrancement, then Dio was its lord and arbiter and he’d conquered Jonathan’s heart in one sole Christmas night. He wasn’t sure if that made this a Christmas miracle or the machinations of Dr. Frankenstein, but something was finished then that had been on the verge of happening for a long, long time.