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Basil Hallward was growing increasingly worried as the minutes went by. The grandfather clock at the corner of the studio mocked him with each tick of its hands, pendulum swaying in challenging defiance. The decorative lines of gold glittered like stubborn eyes, urging him to act upon what he knew was impulsive, borne from the mad, drunken worships he let himself indulge in with Dorian Gray.
Dorian Gray! His heart filled to the brim with bitter remorse — he should never have introduced Lord Henry Wotton to someone so important, so essential to himself. He should’ve known there was nothing more amusing and satisfying to the lord than ruining lamb-like innocence thoroughly and completely, a white handkerchief splattered with sin and sorrow, marred by the brown stain of dried blood. It had been what he tried with Basil, though he failed to accomplish anything of substance; it was what he would do, or, Basil thought with a choking, gnawing surge of dread, what he was already doing, to his Dorian.
Yet on the artist’s stool he sat, debating with himself whether making a sudden appearance would scare Dorian further away from him, or whether he’d smile that enthralling smile of his, and hop back in place arm in arm with Basil as he hummed an upbeat tune that would eventually play in Hallward’s dreams like a siren song. By the end of his anguish, he found his feet had dragged him to the backdoor, his hand grazing the knob he knew that, with a single twist and push of, would let in all the noise that Harry must’ve been making at poor, good Dorian.
“I am mad,” Basil muttered to himself, useless chastise, shutting his eyes and heaving a sigh before the door swung open.
“— Mr. Gray,” came the distinct sound of Henry’s voice, “the peonies and petunias will be just as pleasing come next summer. But humans, oh, what a pitiful existence mankind leads! You are the muse of Greek gods, dear boy, who drink in the ocean-blue of your eyes and feast on the cherry-red of your lips like the finest of ambrosias. Women will fawn and fall at your very feet and become your minions upon your sweet, golden order. I presume they are inclined to already, the simple-minded creatures they are, though it is probable you don’t believe me because you have not been privy enough to the knowledge to try your hand at your fate-given power. But how fleeting this prowess will be! In but a few years, you’ll lose your most essential trait, Mr. Gray, your beauty. Without beauty, butterflies are as pesky and annoying as roaches, flowers, soft pebbles that hinder the step, men, unnecessary, useless and a waste. I don’t mean to scare you, Dorian, all my intent is to educate a potentially great mind. The passing moment that is life means the only thing that should be prioritised is man’s honesty to himself and his wants, his own happiness, his own pleasure —”
“Stop! Harry, stop! I don’t wish to hear any more of it. You frighten me. You frighten me and spoil my joy. I have no words to refute you, but I know I don’t believe you. That is all.”
“Dorian, dear, there is nothing to be afraid of in my rhetoric. I shall prove that to you soon. What English society needs is a modern spin on Hedonism.”
An anger searing, scorching, and all-enveloping would devour his guts with mite-like bites at the plea. Dorian Gray, falling victim to Harry’s poisonous tongue and fatal philosophy, becoming the man the lord claimed to be but wasn’t — cold, ruthless apathy betrayed only by a slight, permanent sneer that would mar his golden countenance more than any scar? His lovely boy, with eyes, irises like the surface of a sun-kissed and sparkling pond, bright and blue in all their glory that made the summer sky green with envy, that would widen with an awe only the purest of curiosity could pray to warrant, made cruel and cut from soft angles to harsh, dagger-like edges? Dorian, his dearest, closest companion, the one whose personality devoured Basil’s soul every waking hour from the first glimpse of orange rays till the clouds bled red and the stars blinked open their tired eyes, toyed with, destroyed, corrupted?
Basil Hallward would allow no such thing, if it cost him his life.
“Harry,” he called upon stepping out to the garden and as he began to walk closer to the pair, an uncharacteristic coldness clashing with cordiality, “I think you and I would both agree that you’ve overstayed your welcome. Seeing as it won’t be too long until the portrait is finished, I don’t see how a few minutes of silence will bore my boy too terribly. Please, do not offend Mr. Charrington through the means of my studio any longer. I do not wish to come between the two of you.”
Henry Wotton, ever quick on his feet, only quirked an eyebrow before his appearance before settling back to that languidly entertained air as he spoke. Basil willed himself not to look at whatever expression was on Dorian’s face. He feared that, if he took even the slightest peek, he’d find there a great disappointment inscribed on those lovely features, and feared even more to see betrayal. Only God would know how, in but a mere instance, Basil Hallward would extinguish the sun if it shone too brightly for Dorian’s eyes or was too harsh in its burns on his supple skin.
“Oh, Basil, please! You always wound me with such passion, such surprise. What made you so sudden in changing your mind? I don’t suppose it’s because you mind my speaking to your boy, or is it, dear friend? If my relations are what truly concerns you, which I am sorry to seriously doubt, I’m happy to risk whatever business or familial connections old Charrington may bestow me for one more minute with the spectacular Mr. Dorian Gray.”
“Lord Wotton, if I have not made myself quite clear, I will have Parker escort you out.”
For once, Henry is stunned into silence. His eyes narrow for a moment, scrutinising for a movement in Basil’s face that would give away a fault in his demeanour. Finding none, his lips pursed into a questioning line.
“Basil, what are you doing?” came the accusatory cry instead, and five words from Dorian’s petulant tantrum dug deeper than a thousand lucrative philosophies from Henry’s could dream of.
“What must be done. Come, Dorian. Be a good boy for me. I won’t have you sit when you come in, we shall talk for as long as you want.”
“Truly?” Dorian prodded, and at once the whining tilt of his voice was gone alongside the heart-wrenching shine that glossed over his doe-eyes. “You’ll talk with me? Not just hums, Basil, humming and nodding don’t count! You so often lie and say you’ll speak when you paint, and then you barely understand anything I’m saying!”
“Yes, my dearest, words. I won’t be painting until you are drawn to the idea.”
It was perhaps even more shocking to Harry, when Dorian bolted to Basil’s side, looping his arm around his.
“Then let us go now!”
“I presume…” he said, after a slight, uncomfortable pause, eyes shifting between Basil and Dorian and back to Basil again, “I shall take Mr. Charrington up to that invitation, after all. Good day to both of you, gentlemen.”
It was then that Basil Hallward let out a sigh at last.
Upon going back inside the studio, Dorian flung himself onto the divan, a spring in his step as he did so.
“Dearest, I could not help but hear what it was that Harry said to you,” Basil began, tone tender and heart clinging to his throat, as if he were dealing with a fragile stray animal that was easily spooked.
“None of that, Basil, I beg you! I don’t want any of it. I don’t want to think about it.”
Basil sat down next to him, a hand placing itself on his shoulder. Reassuring, he hoped.
“You must. Some of it is true; his philosophy is not. Please allow me to explain.”
“Some of it? True? I shall leave and… and never speak to you again if you say any more, Basil! I like your friend, but his beliefs… I don’t suppose I hate them. They’re too harsh. They’re too horrible. But they’re intoxicating, and that’s the worst of it.”
“I know, Dorian, and that’s why I need you to hear other reasoning before that incredible and curious mind of yours is twisted without a second opinion. Allow me to explain, I insist, and you can ask any questions at all about the validity of what I say. Harry rarely lets his audience squeeze a question in, doesn’t he?”
The boy worried on his lower lip for a moment, but seemed to determine on a compromise.
“Fine,” he agreed, simply, “go on, if you really must.”
“I will begin where Harry was right, Dorian, dear boy. It is irrefutable that you are beautiful. I fancy I’ve told you enough times to fill a library of impressive wealth, and I will reiterate that your likeness is irrevocable and irresistible. But, in life, as fleeting as I’m sure Harry has warned you about, much more meaningful than your golden hair and diamond eyes is the human soul.”
“Is that so?” Dorian asked, bitterly, refusing to meet Basil’s eye. “But, pray tell then, Basil, why is it that you only ever praise my looks? Because none of the rest matters to anyone, and you won’t even pretend to be the exception, isn’t that right? I am no-one but the beautiful boy at the party, or the handsome lad passing by the park, or the pretty play-thing that the aunties tease and poke at! That’s all there is to me. A body that pleases the eye. Of course Harry is right: you wouldn’t like me if I were ugly. I like you Basil — in fact, I daresay that I have come to love you — and nothing wounds me more than to know that my closest friend only sticks by because he likes my face or worships my figure. When I’m no longer good enough to be your muse, you’ll discard me and find a prettier Adonis to praise and paint. You don’t like me at all. You like my husk. I know it.”
By the end of his declaration, the young lad was biting back tears that clung to his gold-lined lashes like droplets of morning dew. Basil’s heart sank, a heavy weight against the pit of his stomach as guilt stabbed him like the cold of a blade struck to the neck. He’d failed to see the obvious hurt that he had caused, the insult and confirmation of Harry’s words by omission, because Basil was too afraid at the thought of giving himself away to elevate any more than what was appropriate for an artist to compliment. He needed to confess. Perhaps not all of it, for it’d risk his most sacred friendship, but all that was necessary to refute the horrible, vain and self-absorbed seed that Henry had planted in this impressionable Angel.
“Oh, Dorian,” he said, the heartbreak tearing at his throat as the boy flinched away from his offered touch and his hand fell back stiffly onto his lap, “I am sorry now that I never told you what it was about you that consumed me. Thoroughly, violently. Absurdly. It wasn’t the way your lashes cast a shadow over your cheeks when you close your eyes in pensive thought or restful sleep; nor the way your scarlet lips are parted petals when you gape or when you laugh. Of course, those details are utterly lovely, it’d be sacrilegious to claim otherwise, and only serve to justify my… devotion to you. But that’s not why I care for you so much, my dearest boy, it could never be, and nobody whose only standard for a man is his face is worthy of you.
“I cherish you, Dorian, your passion for piano, your vivid, song-like poetry, your perseverance despite the faults of those around you, the way conversation with you flows like the rare but adored warm breeze in the chill of winter days, or like the trickling of a river for a man starved of water, wilting like a faded flower. You are so much more than your beauty, Dorian, and it pains me to see you believe that it’s all there is to you, when the reason why I’m so… charmed by you is because I admire your soul. The trust you place in people, the altruism in your judgement, the purity in your morals, and the rose-white innocence of your boyhood, as Harry put it, once, but something I’d rather call the early wisdom of benevolence and compassion.”
Finally allowing tears to freely fall from his red-tinted cheeks, Dorian wept, and, embarrassed, silently burrowed his face into the soft of the divan, just before Basil’s thigh like a particularly touch-starved kitten. “Don’t lie to me!” he sobbed, voice so utterly broken that Basil felt an irrepressible urge to cradle him in his arms, “you give me hope, so much hope because you know what to say, only to watch it stomped out under someone’s feet. I’d rather understand a rotten reality than be fed a lulling lie, what Harry says has been proven to me already!”
Hallward sighed, though less than exasperated it was loving, and stroked the tremulous head beneath him with a careful hand and gently-scratching nails. “I’d never lie to you, Dorian, and the only times when I regret the things I’ve said to you are when I’ve spoken too much of the truth. I fancy I’ll think back to this and wince at myself, but, ah… it will be of no matter as long as you’re in good spirits. When I paint you, Dorian, do you know what I spend most hours scrutinising the canvas for? I presume you think I take the most time on the gorgeous cut of your jaw or the volume in your curls, but I am, albeit imperfectly, a practised artist, and such superficial beauty I could sketch in my sleep.
“My dearest, I use perhaps nine of every ten hours on perfecting the gentle yet blinding enthusiasm that brightens your eyes like the beams of the sun caress a calm tide, the carefree yet kind curve of your lips that reek of goodness, of being blissfully blameless. I see you as beautiful, more and more everyday, because after each of our conversations I have one more thing to love. I know everybody around you is enchanted by your character, Dorian, as much as it twists my guts like an envy-woven hand. They only fail to praise your soul because, well, it is far more intimate than describing physicality. So please, don’t neglect this part of you — I beg — and don’t ever think it useless. I love it fervently, with all there is to me. Dorian, truly, I love it more than I’ve loved anything else before.”
Dorian sniffled, abruptly raising his head, and tear-glazed, azure eyes rose to lock with his. A pause that felt like a fraction of a second and eternity all at once, with Basil attempting to convey all the tenderness he held for him in his gaze and praying it was not fruitless, passed like a feather drifting from its flock. “You’re being honest,” Dorian decided at last; a statement, not a question. Assured. Confident. That both who he was and who he would one day become was absolutely and intensely loved, just like the boy should be. Basil’s body melted into divan as his tense lips relaxed and drew into a smile, but soft, hopeful words still escaped from the lad: “but… but I’ll still age, and then you’ll think my personality spoilt by the repulsion you have for its host. What then?”
“Never, Dorian, for as long as I live, will I be repulsed by you, no matter what it is you look like. The death of youth is inevitable, as defined by Nature’s unfortunate order, but when one’s soul is refined and good, unmarred by the ugly scars of sin, it won’t go unnoticed on the flesh. You are a flower now, Dorian, and when you grow old, so long as you never stray from sunlight, you’ll be beautiful all the same; only differently coloured and with lines of passion, love and joy visible on your skin. You say you like romance; everyone who knows Harry learns to. Isn’t that romantic? A light mark that reminds you of past glories, every time you’ve been happy?”
“Basil!” Dorian cried followed by a sweet sob of relief, and for once his smile was wide and unrestrained like the spread of a butterfly’s wings, “Basil!” the boy repeated again and again, laughter colouring the tilt of his voice, as if it was the only word he remembered.
As quickly as he had gone down, he flung himself up, and threw himself into Basil’s arms with a tangible excitement. Heart thudding madly against his chest, the artist’s arms were hesitant to wrap themselves around the lad, but grew reassured when Dorian squeezed in response, hands snaking around his back. The tip of Dorian’s nose tickled his nape as he buried his head on his shoulder. He didn’t dare breathe.
Basil Hallward didn’t know what he’d done to have God indulge him so much that day.
“Basil,” Dorian murmured against him, “you spoke so much of the beauty of my soul, but do you know what I fancy?”
“Tell me, my dear boy,” he managed, drunken with a dream-like daze.
“I fancy,” he said, shifting his position on Basil’s lap until his deft pianist’s hands are placed on his cheeks and their foreheads are but a golden wisp away from touching, “I fancy that yours must be the loveliest of them all.”
And with the finality of the sentence, with all the passionate whims of youth, Dorian Gray presses his lips against Basil’s, brief and shy like a swallow teasing the ripples of water with its wings. Then, perhaps after a glaze over the frozen shock that must’ve been written on his face, the boy kissed him again, following the rampant determination that had sprouted. This time, Basil’s hands wrapped themselves around the back of his neck, and urgently — for this might have been but an illusion his depraved mind had conjured, he thought — reciprocated, and their lips clashed with the harsh and satisfying release of a repressed desperation.
Dorian, having been the first to initiate, was also the first to pull away. The artist felt a strangling anxiety around his chest that forced itself to be spoken aloud despite the beautiful boyish grin that had, albeit bashfully, written itself across Dorian’s face.
“Dorian—”
“I love you,” the boy said, at the same time, and chuckled contentedly as he watched Basil’s face and languidly played with his hair. “You know, Basil, you look so utterly charming when you’re astonished, like you don’t know how easy it is to adore you. Is it truly so hard to believe, when you’re so wonderful? Basil, of all that Harry said to me, I want to listen to one thing: I’ll be honest with what I want, because life is but a few hundred rings of the church bell, or one yawn from an Angel’s lips. So I’ll tell you. When you paint and I complain of your silence, it is because the angle you’re tilting at blocks you from view. I long to see you submerged in your craft so thoroughly your eyes become the sharp talons of eagles and your brows knit together with all their rugged handsomeness. I grow horrendously jealous of your portraits, because I know you look at them even after I’ve left your studio. I love you with all the past romances of gentle Romeo, of brave Bassanio, of loving Lysander!”
“My own dear boy, surely you mean to say then that I am your Benvolio, Antonio or Demetrius? Good God, Dorian, have you any idea what it’s like to be praised by the figure of Anchises, someone as noble and kind and beautiful throughout, in spirit and in standing? I cannot dream of ever being someone of such merit, such value, to elicit wondrous words from the very Aphrodite’s darling’s lips.”
“You are Juliet, silly,” Dorian giggled inoffensively, but then, after a slight pause, a look of realisation dawned on his features. “I am Juliet,” he seemed to have decided, a gape of awe on his lip. “And Portia, and Hermia! Don’t you think I’d look the part, Basil? Don’t you?”
Hallward would mourn his sanity, he truly would, if he’d found he could care for anything other than the very pressing case of Dorian Gray on top of him, deeming himself the equivalent of a female lover.
“You’d be a thousand times more stunning,” Basil confessed, and prayed that the weakness of his voice, that had cracked in between, would not offend Dorian, whose existence in itself deserved the most flowery of compliments.
“And I’d love you a thousand times more,” Dorian declared, bent his head so his golden locks fell like strands of waterfalls over his cheeks which tickled the sides of Basil’s, and kissed him once again. “Let’s dine together, to-night.”