Work Text:
“‘I’m here.”
“Stay. Don’t go.”
“...Of course.”
—
“Having trouble sleeping, Mr. Campbell?”
Orpheus’ soullessly polite voice rang out through the living room, interrupting Norton from where he previously relaxed near the fireplace.
“Christ.” He jolted, clutching onto the arms of the chair. He attempted to regain his breath in fast heaves, which eventually led into a coughing fit. “Don’t sneak up on a man like that.” He managed, his words choked, before properly righting himself with a couple harsh pats to his chest. “Hell, this place is creepy enough without you stalking through the shadows.”
Orpheus lingered near the piano, the roaring fireplace highlighting only the peaks of his face, while the rest of his figure was obscured in darkness. He chuckled, but it seemed forced, almost… hesitant. His hand uselessly reached out in a jerk response to the coughs, but eventually fell back to his side.
“My apologies, it wasn’t my intent to frighten you.” He reassured softly, approaching slower this time, now behind the chair directly across from the one Norton occupied. “Stalking through the shadows? My, that almost sounds like a line from one of my novels.” His tone reverted to the one he typically wore—neutral, charismatic, with a higher lilt marking the end of each sentence.
“Cut the bullshit,” Norton scoffed, “what do you want, really? You don’t come here at this hour of the night to talk about your damn novels.”
Orpheus’ smile wavered, a split second falter, before returning at a drastically lesser degree.
Good, Norton couldn’t help but think, rich, pompous snobs like him need to learn the whole world isn’t going to entertain his empty banter.
The novelist rounded the chair, sitting without invitation, even making a point to flip the back of his coat so he wouldn’t sit on it. Typical.
“This isn’t business.” Orpheus began, however immediately backtracked, uncharacteristically stumbling over his words for someone whose entire career revolved around them. What could have the distinguished novelist speechless? “We-Well, not necessarily.” His gaze wandered, before returning to Norton. “You appear… distracted, and it’s far from the first time I’ve seen you here at this hour.”
Norton shifted, his shoulders tightening, a foreign sense of self-consciousness rushing over him. It couldn’t be embarrassment, no, he could give less of a damn what anyone thought of him. It was that he felt… open, exposed. Vulnerable. Like Orpheus was slowly peeling back parts never met to be seen by another, lowering tightly wound defenses with a gentle disposition.
Even worse? He did it with his own share of vulnerability, too. Norton couldn’t name the last time he heard his coldhearted employer stutter, hell, let alone allow lulls of silence within a conversation.
So what does one do when their walls are being brought down?
Norton furrowed his eyebrows, “What’s it to you what I do in my free time?”
Build them up higher.
“I like it here, that answer enough for you?”
While not necessarily a lie, the truth lingered somewhere deeper than Norton would ever bother to share, let alone to the likes of Orpheus.
Though Norton hadn’t returned to his duties as a prospector since the accident, it was hard to shake the twenty plus years of routine hammered into his very being. Despite the exhaustion that weighed on his bones, the decades worth of rest he ought to be catching up on, his mind remained in survival mode. The endless amounts of leisure time the manor provided was foreign to a man that’s only known hard labor since childhood.
That in combination to his aversion to dark, enclosed spaces—and the faint moonlight being hardly enough to subside it—left his designated dorm an unpleasant space to be in.
It led him there, in the manor’s living room, nearly every night. Sometimes he’d fall asleep, other times he’d stare into the fireplace when his body tenses. He’s suddenly transported back to the mines. The memories replay and all he can do is watch, frozen, like he’s living through it all again.
Despite the outcome, he always ended up in his bed come next morning, tucked in safely with the warmth only a lover could have. He couldn't for the life of him remember if he dragged himself back in a sleep-filled haze, or if he had been troubling the servants all this time.
He could only pray it was the former.
Norton feared the filth of the mines would stay on him forever regardless of how tirelessly he scrubbed. Death, grief, and loss would follow him, snubbing out any glimmer of light and boy, did he know that well.
“It certainly doesn’t answer why you cannot enjoy it at a decent hour.” Orpheus, too, had a crease in his brow. His tone raised, meeting Norton’s defensiveness with his own.
It was the same song and dance they always did: Orpheus would approach, Norton would provoke, and it’d descend from there. They were terrible together; fire and water, a match and fuse, a moth to a flame.
Why Orpheus continued to let himself get burned, Norton couldn’t tell you.
“I’ll get the job done.” Norton retorted, shutting down the topic entirely, “Trust me, I’m no more eager to drag this out than you are. Sooner I get it done, the sooner you never have to see me again, I get it.”
Orpheus paused and restarted again, abandoning the defensive tone and the formalities. “Norton, I-”
This time around, he sounded… defeated.
“I’m not here to mindlessly bicker.” Norton opened his mouth to speak, but Orpheus continued before he could get a word out, “I don’t care for the job, or your timeliness, nor I possess any… urgency to usher you out of my life.”
Just before the prospector could be stunned by the uncharacteristic bluntness, Orpheus drops what Norton suspected he had been circling around the entire interaction:
“I’ve been bringing you to your room nearly every night at this hour.”
And with it, Norton’s heart fell to his stomach, his eyebrows raising and mouth parting. It was…Orpheus? This entire time?
No, that didn’t make sense. What business did he have wandering around late enough to find him? Sure, he waltzed around like he owned the place, but even a guy like him should have the base level understanding not to violate curfew.
Orpheus was drawing close, so close his body warmth was nearly tangible, overshadowing that of the fire by a long shot.
“...I don’t know what the hell you’re blabbering about.”
A horribly weak defense, perhaps the worst of Norton’s life. It was so bad that not even Orpheus, in all his faux-kindness, entertained it.
His head fell, shaking once, twice, before standing. He took a step forward, his legs in between Norton’s spread ones, looming over him.
In all respects, it should be intimidating. His smile was gone and half his body blended into the darkness. Norton should push him, tell him to back off. What business did they have lingering after hours together anyway?
However, all sense of self preservation cracked and faded away like an ember at that moment. How could it not? Orpheus’ face, beautifully alight with the afterglow of the fire, dancing on the rim of his monocle like a streak of paint. Norton’s hands twitched on the rests, but this time, not with the urge to hurt and destroy like all he’d known. They ached to hold, yearned for the feeling of skin like he’s been starved of it his whole life.
From this angle, even the displeased expression, Orpheus looked nothing short of God. And Norton, his sole worshipper.
“Is that true?”
Orpheus finally spoke, pulling Norton from where his mind had wandered. He swallowed hard. Apprehension, conflict, hurt. All emotions flashing on the novelist’s face before he seemed to decide to stick it through.
“When I first came across you here, you seemed rather… troubled.” The word sounded forced out of him, like it physically hurt to recollect. “You were falling in and out of sleep, thrashing around, with a posture that was sure to leave you aching come morning.”
Norton was still. His hands moved of their own accord, like they were disattached from him entirely, just barely ghosting Orpheus’ waist. He was growing tired, so very tired, of pretending it was out of desire to push him away.
“I called for you, yet there was no response. I-” Orpheus looked away from where once stared blankly ahead, instead feigning incredible interest in the chair’s armrest. He paused, as if there was more to it, before instead continuing at a different part, “I guided you back to your quarters. You were hardly awake, only understanding basic instructions like when I requested your key. That’s why…”
He half sighed, half chuckled, bitter.
“That’s why I hardly believed when you asked me to join you.”
Norton pursed his lips, casting his head down, the realization dawning on him being that he did remember.
Granted, it wasn’t nearly a complete story as it was in Orpheus’ recollection. Rather, it took form as a collection of hazy fragments, teetering the line between reality and hallucination.
“I admit, I misunderstood your intentions initially…” Orpheus was quick to clarify, “I refused, of course. I scolded you for your irresponsibility. But it was then you looked at me,”
Don’t say it, Norton grit his teeth, God, don’t let it be true.
“You asked me to stay, to let you hold me.”
“It was a mistake.” Norton finally spoke, lifting his head to meet Orpheus’ eye.
—
“I don’t need anything more than this.”
“Norton, you’re exhausted, please sit on the bed.”
“Please, let me hold you.”
—
“I thought so, too.” Orpheus agreed, soft. “Until it happened again the next night.”
Truthfully, Norton could admit, he first thought it all as a dream. A pleasant respite away from the ones typically plaguing his slumber; recollecting bloodshed, tragedy, and loss. His mind supplied the person in his arms, the warmth on his chest, as a beautiful woman. Long, flowing hair of some color, a face he couldn’t recognize, but it was something, he was something. Loved.
It was on the next night, however, that he realized his dream woman… wasn’t a woman after all. Well, that was fine. A bit odd, sure, but it was all the same to Norton. The guys back at the mines weren’t exactly straight as a board, and there wasn’t much else to do to pass what rare freetime they did have. Norton wasn’t obtuse when it came to same-sex attraction.
The real shocker, however, was that it was Orpheus. Real, all flesh and bone, and not a figment. Orpheus, who he held close all these nights, who he pleaded for so desperately on the cusp of consciousness. Yearned for, even when he couldn’t remember.
Every night, Norton wound up here, in this very living room, as if lured by a siren’s song. Despite the roaring fire being a persistent reminder of all he’s lost, dragging him back there and leaving him paralyzed in fear, he endured it.
“The look you gave me, Campbell, God, that look.” Orpheus shook his head, a soft smile on his features. Norton preferred it. “So desperately I tried to scrub it from my mind.”
For him, he endured it.
“I let you hold me that night. The next, too.” Orpheus admitted, his shame explicit within his words. “And I came here hoping you would hold me again.”
Norton dragged himself through the same hell time and time again.
“I’m a selfish man, Norton.”
To feel that embrace by night’s end.
“ ’s alright.” Norton allowed his forehead to rest on Orpheus’ stomach, his arms finally circling Orpheus’ waist, drawing him impossibly closer. “That makes two of us.”