Work Text:
“Is love alive?” - Winter Song, Ingrid Michaelson and Sara Bareilles
***
“I’m dying,” Aiden proclaimed croakily. Outside the window, the sea roared as it met the rocks of the shoreline, ominous, as if in agreement. “I’m fucking dying. Feast your eyes upon my form for the last time, for I will not be here in the morning.”
Harvard looked up, over the pages of his book to the bed, from where he sat on the armchair. Tales of wrathful heroes and haunting monsters still flashed behind his eyelids.
Despite everything - skin pale, nose reddened from constant blowing and wiping, lit by the glow of the fire - Aiden was still beautiful, it had to be admitted. It wasn’t fair. His hair, though tangled by innumerable tosses and turns on a sweat-soaked pillow, was still lovely and lustrous, like strands of burnished gold.
“You’re being dramatic,” he informed Aiden, with an eye-roll in an attempt to be cool and sardonic, but his mouth curved into a traitorous grin. “You’ll be fine within a week. It sucks, though, that you got sick just as we came on vacation.”
“I mean, this is a pretty apt place to be sick. I feel like an ailing Victorian maiden, sent away to convalesce by the sea.” He put on an exaggerated English accent for the latter part of his statement, nodding to the scenery outside the window - grassy fields covered in frost, yielding to a craggy hill atop which a lighthouse sat, and beyond that, the sea. “I just think that bacteria or viruses or, whatever, shouldn’t enter my body without consent, you know?”
Harvard laughed. He recalled a video they’d watched together a while ago, deep into the early hours of the morning at a sleepover, the kind of media consumption that took on a life of its own, metamorphosing into inside jokes and references incomprehensible to anyone else. He and Aiden had a lot of those; having been best friends for so long, they shared a very similar sense of humour, able to riff off of each other’s quips and comments. “Unconscious people don’t want tea, or whatever the British say.”
“And unconscious people don’t want infections either. Especially if it’s viral. Because a bacterium is, like, a little guy. But a virus is a concept, basically. Biologists can’t even agree if they’re alive or not.” Aiden choked the words out in little gasps between coughing. “What do you mean I’m being attacked by a concept?”
Having taken on a feverish glint, his eyes were bright, piercing, and slightly glassy. Peridot green, warmed by the flames in the hearth, they drew Harvard’s in with a magnetic pull. Harvard was used to Aiden being called hot and beautiful and every other complimentary term for physical appearance one could think of, usually in desperate, wistful tones by Kings Row boys. He himself wasn’t immune to this charm - familiarity only reinforced the breathtaking curve of his cheeks - and while he’d learned to master his captivation and maintain functioning most of the time, there were still instances where he simply couldn’t do anything but gape at this beguiling creature that was somehow not only his best friend, but also now his boyfriend. His, as he was Aiden’s.
Harvard laughed again. “Very philosophical.”
“I’m bored,” Aiden pouted. His lips were chapped, peeling, like a snake shedding its skin, Harvard thought, but still a soft, pretty shade of pink. Harvard wondered what they would feel like on his own, at first meeting tenderly, before being engulfed by a hunger deep within his chest making him go back for more, rougher this time, crashing together, not unlike the tide.
You could find out, the slight opening of Aiden’s mouth seemed to say, with a gleam of white teeth.
Like this - ill, dishevelled, frankly a bit gross - Aiden was not only beautiful but otherworldly, striking, commanding an unnatural power. His eyes flashed. “Why are you reading and not paying attention to me?” He had the audacity to ask, and it strangely endeared him to Harvard.
See, Aiden knew his power - he knew full well the effect he had on Harvard, and every other boy at Kings Row at that, but he also knew that such power would be to no avail without admiration, devotion. It brought Harvard a twisted sense of satisfaction to think, that, Aiden might need him as much as he needed Aiden.
“I’m allowed to have hobbies, you know,” Harvard joked, but he edged the chair closer to the bed. “As much as being your boyfriend and madly infatuated with you is a full time job.”
“You should be more obsessed with me,” Aiden proclaimed melodramatically, then blew his nose loudly. “What are you reading about?”
Harvard shut the book with a finger marking the page he’d been on, and spun the cover around to face Aiden. “Greek mythology,” he said. The title was printed in copper foil amidst an illustration of cerulean waves. “Well, it’s talking about the stories in the Odyssey. It’s really good. I’ve just reached a bit after they leave Circe’s island - y’know, the sorceress who turns men into pigs - and they’ve just encountered-”
He caught Aiden staring at him, and stopped. “What?”
Aiden shrugged. “Carry on.”
So he did, launching back into his discussion of Odysseus and his crew and sirens. Aiden’s eyes - those lovely, cat-like things, gleaming in the firelight - remained fixed on him. It was only late afternoon, but the weakened winter sun had already set, and so the firelight drew strange and wonderful shadows across the room.
“And Odysseus wants to know what the sirens would sing to him about, so he makes them tie him to the ship - what, Aiden? Why are you staring at me?”
Aiden’s lips curved into something resembling his usual smirk, but softer. “No, don’t stop, carry on,” he almost crooned. It must’ve defied the laws of physics, how Aiden’s voice was congested and hoarse and scratchy but still sounded so beautiful, low and sultry, alluring. Perhaps, in that sense, Aiden was like a siren. No - in Harvard’s stupid, lovestruck, nerdy eyes, Aiden was a siren, or equivalent anyhow. A string of syllables falling from his lips like pearls could lure Harvard to a wet, drowning death.
“What is it?” Harvard pressed. Aiden’s gaze was intent on him, as though he was looking into Harvard; looking not just to observe, to objectify, but to really perceive, to understand the person in front of him, and to admire and cherish them wholly. It made Harvard feel suddenly shy and nakedly vulnerable, to be laid out like that in front of Aiden’s eyes.
“I like how you look when you get excited about your interests. It’s as if the light, the warmth just radiates off you.” Aiden sniffed, then blew his nose again. “And I’m not only saying that because I’m dying, and this may be my last chance to confess my undying love for you,” he added, and Harvard smiled. He felt the heat rushing to his cheeks.
“Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while,” he quoted, butchering a posh English accent, and was rewarded with a chuckle from Aiden that turned into a cough.
“And I don’t think you’re dying,” Harvard continued. “But if you were, hypothetically, I’d hope that you’d haunt me. I’d hope you’d haunt me forever.”
Suddenly, the two of them and the entire room were bathed in a beam of light illuminating each of them in stark detail. Light pooled on the wooden floorboards, on the metallic headboard, brilliant and potent and blinding. It made Aiden start, and Harvard jump, falling onto the bed, each envisioning some sort of terrible, supernatural intervention before they realised what it was.
They both burst out laughing, not stopping until ribs ached and tears streamed down cheeks. Outside, the lighthouse shone like a precious jewel, a star in the vast expanse where only a blurred line showed the separation between the sea and the sky.
“It’s okay, love,” Aiden said, running a hand down the nape of Harvard’s neck in rhythmic, comforting motions. Harvard blushed harder. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He felt like his chest was about to implode. The light from the lighthouse flashed - once, twice, three times.
“Good,” Harvard said, and he was sure Aiden could hear the smile in his voice. “I love you, and I’m glad you’re here.”