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Sage’s Island nights ran colder than the ones in Sunset Savanna. Rook was used to changes in climate; he had been on hundreds of excursions with his family throughout the entirety of Twisted Wonderland in his years. From freezing snow to dry deserts, he knew the shift of temperature and humidity quite well. But he had never felt the permanence of living—not visiting, but living—without his relatives in a place colder than anticipated.
His walks were always after dark, when it was quiet. The hunt is a silent sport, inconveniencing none but the prey. Rook supposed he had no prey for the moment. Just the quest for beauty behind his eyelids and the smell of damp loam under his feet.
An unexpected sight; a young man on a bench in the courtyard. His hands, manicured and slender even in far-off view, clutched a set of papers, and he seemed absorbed by them. His posture was straight, his hair perfect even in the coastal breeze. Rook smiled to himself, overtaken by the beauty of concentration.
He approached, light on his feet. A good hunter never seeks to scare off his target. But once he drew near, the hunt went out the window.
Vil Schoenheit. Cold, calculating, blond, beautiful. Rook had seen his recent show—scratch that, Rook had seen everything he was in. Granted, most of that was because of Neige LeBlanche; the two always seemed to be paired now. This most recent program, though, was Schoenheit’s best.
“You are Vil Schoenheit, yes?”
The blond looked up from his script, violet eyes settling on Rook in agitation. Rook had disturbed him. His heart thudded in his chest.
Rook wasn’t used to being nervous, to feeling the queasiness of anxiety in his stomach. There was a beauty in it, of course. He would be grateful that Vil might elicit a new kind of feeling in a man like him.
“Yes, I am.” The answer was curt, straight to the point, and exactly what Rook had expected from the actor. He grinned broadly.
“I’ve seen you perform many a time, but you hadn’t really stood out to me before. The way you played the villain this time, though? Sublime!” Vil raised his eyebrow, shaped and drawn in to a perfect angle.
“Oh?”
“Oui! There are precious few actors who could pull off such a cold, tyrannical, tantrum-prone fiend so convincingly! Oh la la!”
Vil grit his teeth, a sound Rook’s ears picked up on instinctively. “Really? What a compliment. I should be so kind as to thank you.”
“It is no compliment, Monsieur Shoenheit! Merely my honest opinion. I would give it no other way!” He pulled the hat off his mop of hair and tipped it gently to the other, catching one last look at such a vessel of beauty, and going off on his way. It was as natural as to help an elderly woman with her grocery bags, or to feel the texture of leather on his skin when in uniform. He had no notion that it might be anything but.
The man was persistent, Vil supposed. Most would be inclined to avoid him, to assume that the standoffish personality of one of his many acting jobs might reflect who he was inside. Vil was not complaining; after all, at the very least he was not bombarded with adoring fans every time he changed classes. He supposed that would be quite the hindrance.
Not that he would know. Most steered clear of a villain, and most had in his life.
Except the Savanaclaw student. He had learned that his name was Rook Hunt, and he was certainly a character. His speech was boisterous and one could gather that he was the kind to begin an oration and become seized with the inability to end it.
He approached Vil, as he had somehow become used to doing. It seemed no matter how underground, how niche, how mainstream a project Vil did, Rook had seen it and would respond to it accordingly.
Would it be a positive or negative remark today?
“Ah, Monsieur Schoenheit! What a gallant performance you did last night! I could see your determination through the screen itself! Tu es une étoile brillante sur la scène! However, I had but one critique, s'il vous plaît,” he gushed, pulling his rather egregious hat off his head and resting it against his chest politely.
“Well, go ahead, Hunt.”
“Your anger, Monsieur Schoenheit, is too heightened. One might suggest a buildup of tension before the explosion of ire! That way you will leave the audience with bated breath even during a villain’s outburst!”
Vil felt his left eye twitch, but he plastered a smile on his face. “Well, Hunt, if you seem to know so much about theater, perhaps you would be interested in explaining to me just how I should have done the scene, hm?”
That was the wrong thing to say.
Vil was lucky he hadn’t inclined to ask that particular question on a day he had classes, for the lecture he listened to after was perhaps a little more than five hours. He had to admire the man; after all, he hadn’t expected anyone to know so much about art and theater as he here at Night Raven. The sincerity of the rant was something deserving of awe in Vil’s learned opinion.
It came complete with dramatic reenactments of the scene, his script verbatim. How had he memorized it in such little time? It was quite a feat, and even Vil could admit he was a very good actor.
When he was finished, he wiped a singular tear from his eye, his breath heavy.
“Is that all?”
“Yes, Monsieur Schoenheit, that is all.”
“Good. I would like to explore your ideas a little more, Hunt. If you would like, I shall meet you at the courtyard this evening. Now, I really must be going; you should as well. Dinner must be served soon, after all.”
The blond seemed to sparkle, ruddy-faced and smiling. “Of course, Monsieur Schoenheit!”
“Oh, and do stop with that. You may call me Vil. I would prefer you call me Vil.”
“Vil,” he repeated, and his lips formed to move the word quietly on his tongue over and over as the person it belonged to took his leave.
Their nightly talks were what Rook looked most forward to now. They spoke of everything, their conversations weaving through modern art, poetry, music, theater, even their own lives. Vil tiptoed around insecurities unspoken of, as though he knew how much it intrigued the other. Rook wanted to climb inside the blond’s skin and poke at the rot to see how beautiful it would be when it was exhibited for him and only him.
A couple LeBlanche posters went down. Several Vil posters went up. Rook had decided days ago that the sound of Vil’s voice was bested by nothing, but he liked it best when it was the way it was on the bench; quiet with the late night and soft with comfortability.
“You have acquired tickets to your favorite actors performance? This is a great excuse to dress up.” Vil smiled, clapping his hands lightly together in appreciation. “What shall you wear?”
Rook looked down at his uniform, his hand hovering lightly over frizzy, unkept hair. “I suppose I shall go this way, Vil.”
The blond frowned slightly, leaning in to peer at Rook perceptively. “Really? You would not like to do anything? I suppose that’s fine, it is your decision after all, but I would be happy to help you dress. I would likely wash your hair, of course, and you could borrow an outfit from me.”
“I must admit I had not thought of doing so. It is not really in my nature, after all.”
“Nonsense. It is in everyone’s nature. You simply have not introduced yourself to it. If you would like to, I would be happy to help you make its acquaintance. But only if you would like.”
It was likely the eagerness, the soft, infinitesimal way Vil’s eyes had lit up at the thought of helping Rook with this. It was almost a shade change, bright violet to darkened lavender. It was beautiful. His light blond hair, tinged purple at the ends, slipped off his shoulders to hang closer to his face, as if it too longed to be nearer nearer nearer to the boy. His scent, unique to him in a way that felt planned, twirled its way through the air, cutting off oxygen. Rook would gladly choke on it if he could.
(let me die now with the notion that my heart is yours; solely, completely, forever)
He sniffed, the remnants of a cold brought to fruition by this very bench. How many nights had they stayed talking until as far as they could stretch curfew, until shivers knocked their knees together, until they parted with sneezes from the brisk winter snow? Rook supposed he would not have it any other way.
“I cannot deny a suggestion when it comes from you, Vil,” he said, chin dipping lightly in respect and the quiet that comes with a deep companionship. The blond smiled, once, and softly at that, but it did not fail to make Rook’s ribcage explode. He supposed he could deal with a bit of dressing up. After all, he was
(le chasseur de l’amour)
Rook Hunt, and he would treat every new experience as an adventure waiting to happen.
His hair was a mess, worse than Vil had realized. He thanked the Seven for the shape of Pomefiore’s washbasins, making it easy to dip someone’s head back. Perhaps that was on purpose. After all, there was much fretting over appearance in the dorm.
His manicured fingers felt through the tangled strands of Rook’s hair, trying not to be awkward as the blond watched him with observant green eyes. There was a part of Rook that Vil enjoyed more than his knowledge of the arts. It was the part that could look at you and seem to know the indents of your very soul. Sometimes that scared Vil. Sometimes it excited him.
“I will not do it now, but perhaps at a later date I will cut your hair as well. For now, I will blow dry and straighten it.
“Your hair is dry and frizzy. I’m using a keratin treatment shampoo, and a leave-in conditioner to help your roots and your ends. Then, I am going to put a heat activated cream on it, and we will blow dry after.”
Rook tilted his head back, a barely noticeable action, though Vil noticed it. He always noticed Rook. The notion came to him suddenly, and without consent. But it clung to the recesses of his mind. His fingers ran over the other’s scalp, sudsing the shampoo in his hair. It wasn’t bad—Vil could tell from where he was standing that the hair was fixable, capable of improvement.
He rinsed, pouring water over Rook’s hair like waterfalls lapping at smoothed rocks. The boy hummed in response, an unintentional thing, but high praise nonetheless. Vil sat him up and rubbed at the sopping tendrils with a towel.
The blow dryer was to loud to converse over, though Rook did try his best to. He must’ve been speaking about just who he was seeing, which beloved actor he had gotten the front-row tickets to see. Vil was content to let him prattle on, the low vibration of his voice under the whir of the dryer more comforting than a warm blanket.
When he was finished, he pulled Rook to a mirror, letting the boy settle his bright green eyes onto himself. They widened, just slightly, but enough to let Vil know he had completed a job well done.
“Well? How do you like it? Aren’t you beautiful?” Vil leaned over the man, over his shoulder, their cheeks almost touching. He did not notice Rook’s eyes flick to him, as they always did. He did not notice how his expression softened, how he almost hesitated over the next words. How they returned to his own face with reluctance, and yet smiled as if the feeling of his new skin itself was a reminder of the beauty beside him.
“Beauté,” he whispered, more to himself than to anyone else. It was sacred, silent, sweetened with something he did not yet admit to himself.
“I’ll get your outfit,” Vil responded, walking to his closet and leaving Rook to stare at his own face, dumbstruck by something blooming through his veins like summer cherry blossoms.
They say cherry wood is a symbol of eternal love.