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Basil awoke to a wet kiss right on his mouth. He spluttered, still half-asleep, and then spluttered more as the kisses continued, all over his face and beard and onto his ear and into his sleep-mussed hair. He flailed his hand out, swatting away whoever was assailing him like this, before remembering that he had agreed to let Henry not only take him to bed but spend the night. Again. He groaned, slinging his arm over his face to fend off another onslaught.
"You're quite the grump in the mornings," came Henry's voice at his ear. Basil smelled Henry's signature cigarettes and peeked out from under his arm; Henry had apparently been smoking, because he had a half-finished cigarette in his mouth now.
Basil scowled at him. "There is a reason I do not own a lapdog who will bother me in the morning with wet tongue and atrocious breath." He sat up groggily, scrubbing at his face.
"Basil, I have never met someone who could be so casually cruel as you," Henry said, propping himself up on one arm. "It's a good thing I get off on being called your lapdog, or else I would be really hurt."
Basil groaned. "I didn't mean it. I just— why on earth would you kiss me awake? I have no intention of taking you again this morning."
"A man can hope, can't he?"
"No, you can't. You need to leave soon. I need some black coffee, and then I need to start on the commission that you preventing me from working on last night."
"I prevented you! Oh that's rich, coming from a man who had his tongue down my throat with the slightest provocation. And yet you act so offended about a few little kisses in the morning. Other men might call it romantic."
"You, romantic?"
Henry blew smoke, but Basil noticed he didn't meet his eyes. "Of course not. But other men might call it so."
"I told you I'm not looking for romance."
"And neither am I, obviously." Henry swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. He was still naked from the night before, and his lanky body looked much less appealing in the clear light of morning than it did in the warm lamplight the previous night. Basil looked away. "After all," Henry said, "romance is simple a fantasy created by men who can't bear to know that the world is just a random jumble of chemical reactions…"
Basil immediately tuned him out, gathering his own clothes and preparing for the day. Henry was good at sex, there was no doubt, but in the morning, Basil was ready to forget about it and move on. Fortunately, he knew that Henry felt the same.
* * *
Henry smoked a cigarette and watched Basil by the light of the full moon. Basil was fast asleep in a fetal position, wrapped in the blankets as if it were the middle of winter rather than a balmy summer night with the crickets singing. Henry had cajoled him into staying for more than drinks at the Wotton mansion tonight, and the cavorting that left Henry wound up made Basil sleep like the dead. Henry didn't mind. There was a sort of peaceful loneliness in sitting up by himself, looking at his friend snuggled up in the blankets and watching the slow rise and fall of his breath.
If Henry were a different man, he would think this romantic. Fortunately, he reminded himself, he was not prone to such weak emotions. It was simply an amusing distraction to pay attention to as he got his chemical fix from the opium in his cigarettes.
Still…
Without warning, Basil flipped onto his back, waving one arm as if shooing away a fly. "I won't, I won't!" he cried out in a slurred voice, then immediately grew still again.
Henry sauntered over to the bed and sat down on it, watching Basil through a plume of smoke; he had heard him mumble unintelligibly in his sleep before, but this was the first time he'd heard him make coherent words. The secrets of men asleep were certainly interesting, so he spoke in a normal voice, rather than a whisper. "What won't you do, my dear Basil?"
Basil said no words, but his head lolled from side to side on the pillow, and he raised his hand, his fingers crooked as if holding a pen… no, as if holding a paintbrush. He moved the invisible paintbrush through the air for several seconds, then his hand flopped back to his side. His head lolled about again, and he murmured some unintelligible things.
"Do speak up, Basil, I can't hear a word you're saying."
"My muse…" Basil murmured, and his hands flexed and gripped the covers. "My angel…"
Ah, so that was it. Henry snorted. This was about the new model that Basil had been going on and on about. Henry didn't know his name yet, but he was determined to put his fingerprints all over the young man as soon as he knew where to look. It turned out that Basil was romantic, after all, just not with Henry… and, Henry had concluded, nothing could be more romantic than jealousy and unrequited love. Once Henry met the muse— and he would, make no mistake— Basil would have ample experience of the romance of heartbreak.
In the meantime, Basil's sleeping face was in rapture, and Henry idly wondered if he would be witnessing a wet dream. How he would hold that over Basil's head! But then Basil slipped back into a deep sleep, and said no more.
Henry watched him for a while longer, then took one last drag on his cigarette before putting it out. He fought for a corner of the blanket and slipped in beside Basil, feeling the warmth of his bare skin pressed against him.
It was a good thing he wasn't a romantic, or he would feel guilty about what he intended to do.
* * *
Dorian had fallen asleep on the sofa. Basil had been so focused on cleaning up his paints after their long sitting session that he hadn't noticed Dorian nod off, though it was no surprise. He had asked much of his muse today, begging him to sit for hours as inspiration coursed through his veins and nothing in the world seemed real except for the glide of his brush along the canvas and his eyes caressing Dorian's sublime form. But even the most inspiring session always came to an end, and Basil's arms ached from working all day. Dorian, it seemed, was equally exhausted.
Basil should wake Dorian and make him call his coach, but he was sleeping so peacefully that it seemed a crime to do so. He had curled up on the sofa, his feet tucked up, hugging a pillow and leaning his head on the armrest, and now he snoozed gently in the fading light. Basil knelt beside him, intending to wake him up, but he felt captivated by the sight of him asleep: the soft sigh of his breath, the golden curls tumbling into disarray, the quiver of his blond eyelashes, the rosy curve of his lips. A desire welled up in him to reach out and touch— to caress his cheek and brush the stray curls from his face— but to do so would be to defile an angel with the touch of a mere mortal.
"Oh, Dorian," he whispered. Dorian didn't stir, sleeping on as if Hypnos himself had touched him. "Where would I be without you? How could I go on without your light shining on me?" He almost blushed to say the words aloud, but Dorian was asleep, and it was only in sleep that he could confess so much. "Without you, I am lost. You are a lighthouse in the dark sea— only you can guide me home." He felt tears welling in his eyes. "I have never known love, Dorian, until I knew you."
In his sleep, Dorian shifted and sighed. Basil felt his throat grow tight with embarrassment and anxiety. He got to his feet again and resumed tidying his brushes and paints, only allowing himself momentary glimpses of him.
Dorian must never know just how deeply Basil cared for him.
* * *
"You have some nerve, asking to share my bed after what you've done to me," Basil had said. But he had given in. He always gave in. It was a fascinating effect, really: the way his stated principles crumbled like dust the moment Henry got his hands on him.
"I have done nothing," Henry insisted. "Your precious muse is corrupting himself, and I am only showing him he need not dally away his life in innocence."
He'd thought Basil was going to strike him for that. Instead, they had had a very fiery round of sex. Basil as usual had fallen asleep immediately afterward, and Henry smoked, though he ended up putting out his cigarette after just a few drags. He climbed into bed beside Basil and propped himself up on one arm, just looking at him. Even in sleep, he looked far too serious and careworn for a man of his young age. That was the price of living life in earnest, Henry supposed. He himself would never know the toll that being sincere took on a man.
Slowly so as not to wake him, he scooted closer and wrapped his arm around Basil, resting his head on his breast. His heartbeat thudded against Henry's ear, and Henry listened intently, as if trying to hear the sound of Basil's love for Dorian in the steady thrum of his blood. Basil lived and died by Dorian, even now that Dorian had fallen from his innocency in the garden of youth and passed by the fiery angel into the world of forbidden pleasures. Yes, Basil would always cling to this infatuation. Every Dante must have his Beatrice, even as he kept an ordinary wife at home to fulfill his baser desires.
Henry smirked at himself. What, was he growing attached? Surely not. Bitterness did not suit him; it was the sincere cousin of cynicism, and he would stay far away from it.
It was a good thing he was not a romantic man, or else he might be very, very jealous.
Lulled by Basil's heartbeat, he fell asleep.