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“Baba,” Sethos lisps, his eyes fixated on something he’s never seen before, “What’s this?”
He’s staring through the door of Baba’s closet, at a wooden thing that reminds him of the music-making things that some of the uncles play in the evenings. It’s different, though, the wood darker and the shape curlier — pretty.
There’s patterns carved into it, and Sethos reaches to touch, his eyes transfixed on the pictures indented in it’s wood—
“Don’t!” Baba’s shout makes Sethos jump, tears welling in his eyes from the shock. Baba approaches him from the back, pulling him away by his stomach and setting him on his lap quickly. “Touch that.”
Sethos’s face crumples, and he feels a sob working its way up his body, but Baba strokes his wild hair and pulls him close. “I did something wrong?”
“No, tesem. It’s just…” Baba sighs, Sethos feeling his chest rise and fall under his cheek. “Some things are quite delicate.”
Baba goes silent for a while, Sethos’s tears soaking his tunic as he hiccups out the rest of his emotions, the hand stroking his hair rhythmic in its ministrations. After a moment, Baba speaks again. “Do you want to see it, Sethos?”
Sethos nods quietly, trying to keep his fingers out of his mouth the way Baba tells him is better for his teeth.
Baba slides him off of his lap and settles him to the side, going to fetch the wooden thing from on top of the old blankets it rests on. When it emerges from the closet, the soft light of the oil lamps makes its home in the crevices of the carving and over the whorled imperfections of the wood under the fading polish.
Sethos reaches for it, but Baba puts him back in his lap first, holding the wooden thing instead.
“Baba,” Sethos repeats, turning to find Baba’s weathered gaze, the crows feet around his tired eyes crinkling with his soft, melancholy smile. “What’s this?”
His lisp hisses the ‘s’ and flattens the ‘t’, so he sounds more like he’s saying “whad-dis,” instead.
Baba pauses again, his eyes studying the lyre with an expression Sethos is too young to decipher. “It’s a lyre.”
“Lyre,” Sethos copies dutifully, his eyes taking in every aspect of the thing in front of him.
“It’s an instrument,” Baba explains. “It makes music when you pluck the strings. This one was your father’s. He made it, carved it, with his own hands.”
“Made it?” Sethos asks, blinking. Like how Auntie Henutsen helps him make his own shawarma wrap sometimes?
Baba hums. “By himself. It was going to be a gift for your mother for a very important day: their fifth anniversary. He—”
Sethos looks up when Baba stops, tearing his eyes from the instrument to study the lines of the older man’s face. His eyes are shiny and his lips are tight — Auntie Beset says that expression is called sadness. “Are you sad, Baba?”
The old man ignores his question, sighing before he continues. “Music is a very important way of preserving information, Sethos. It’s power lies in its memorability — the stories we hear relayed to us in musical form are more likely to stick in our heads. More than that, we are better at processing emotions through the form of art over the written word, which often misses significant nuance.”
Sethos doesn’t know what half of that means, but he nods anyway, distracted by attempting to reach for the strings of the lyre.
He swipes a chubby hand across them, and it trills a beautiful, bright sound that makes him smile. He does it again, and again, and again, and—
“Sethos, gentle. You are too old to play rough.” Baba puts his strict voice on, and Sethos cowers a little. He sighs for the fifth time, adjusting so Sethos is more secure in his lap. A pause stretches on between them, Sethos’s head against Baba’s soft chest. Eventually, he speaks, soft and slow. “Would you… like to learn?”
Sethos lights up, showing off a milk-toothed grin. “Yes, please, Baba!”
“Alright, Sethos,” Baba says with a small smile. “I shall teach you to play the lyre.”
Sethos is four, and Baba plays a melody so soulful, honest and sweet that it makes its home in Sethos’s chest.
With the lyre in his hands and a song on his lips, Baba is everything Sethos wants to be.
His white hair catches in the oil lamps, plays in the wrinkles of his forehead and around his mouth, and the song he plays is called an Ode to the Scarlet King.
Sethos thinks his Baba, just like the music from the lyre, is beautiful.
☽︎✵☾︎
“Grandfather!” Sethos pants, his smile bright as he bursts into his grandfather’s office, the practice lyre his grandfather gave him in hand.
The old man hums, his eyes not moving from whatever it is he’s working on.
“Grandfather?” Sethos repeats, his lisp catching on the ‘th’ through his growing front teeth. He steps further into the room, clutching the lyre to his narrow chest, the bottom poking slightly into the softness of his stomach.
It’s silent in the room other than the scritch-scritch of his grandfather’s pencil on parchment, and Sethos waits, as quietly as he can as the moments trundle by.
“Sethos,” his grandfather says tiredly, finally looking up from his work. Sethos feels his breath hitch in anticipation of telling him— “Stop that bouncing. It’s unbecoming.”
He deflates.
His grandfather goes back to writing, and Sethos tries his best to keep as still as possible, straightening his back and locking his knees, trying to tense every muscle in his body to the point he even holds his breath.
He can’t do that long though, so eventually it comes out with a puff, and Sethos abandons the entire mission after that, choosing instead to take in every detail of his grandfather’s office.
On all the walls but one, there are friezes of figures — people worshiping a star with an eye in it that he recognizes as King Deshret, Lord Hermanubis with his polearm and a halo, another image of King Deshret just by himself — some of them blocked by shelves that warp under the weight of books and parchment, unruly and chaotic.
The oil lamps paint the room a warm orange, the faded blue paint on the wood of the desk and shelves looking green.
Finally, his grandfather sighs, sitting up and letting tired eyes rest on Sethos’s excited form. “What is it, Sethos?”
All too quickly, Sethos starts to speak, his words falling over themselves to escape his mouth. “I learned a new song! Or well, it’s not a new song, because you know it, but— I mean, it’s new to me. Uh, anyway! I finally learned it! Uncle Imhotep said he’ll teach me to read the sheet music for it, but I figured out all the notes just from my memory! Let me show you— Wait, can I…?”
Sethos trails off, wide, excited eyes on his grandfather as he waits to hear a verdict on whether he can play the song or not. Grandfather just rubs a hand over his eyes, sighing heavily before nodding. “What song is it?”
“An Ode to the Scarlet King!” Sethos grins, bouncing on his heels. “I’ve had a lot of time to figure it out, so—”
There isn’t a lot to do when the other kids don’t want to play with you.
They all pretend to be dragons and fae, and all the other stuff they’ve heard in the stories the adults tell at dinner time, running around with sticks that are everything — swords, wands, fire, you name it — smiling and laughing with each other.
When Sethos asks to play with them, they look at him and then each other, before someone comes to take him back to his room for a private lesson.
So when he has a break, he imagines the sound of an Ode to the Scarlet King in his head and tries to copy the notes, cringing when it sounds wrong. He’ll pluck one string for hours to find the perfect sound, and only then will he move on to the next, carefully locking the positions in his memory.
So far, Uncle Imhotep is the only one that’s heard him play.
But now, he wants his grandfather to hear it.
“Ah,” His grandfather says, an odd expression on his face. “Play, then.”
And Sethos does, carefully finding the notes as he plucks the strings along to the melody that seems to have lived inside his head for years now, humming as he goes.
He only messes up once, and once he’s done — the last note of it thrumming in his soul — he beams proudly, opening his eyes to see…
His grandfather, unmoved.
He clicks his tongue with a shake of his head. “A valiant attempt, but. There were many mistakes — the timing, for a start. There were several points in your rendition where you were too fast, and other points where you were off-beat and slow. Whilst I am proud of you for figuring out the notes, the final product was unfortunately quite sloppy, Sethos. You can do better.”
Sethos, for a moment, deflates. He’s only nine after all, and he was proud of himself.
He isn’t now.
But he swallows, allowing his grandfather’s words to wash over him. “I’ll practice harder.”
I promise, he swears, clutching his lyre to his chest, I promise I’ll be better.
I promise I’ll be good enough.
It’s only then does his grandfather smile. It’s barely there, but Sethos receives it as if the old man was beaming, his crows feet crinkling the way he remembers they used to, back when he was young and something to be proud of. The old man nods, holding out a hand for Sethos to take. “That’s what I like to hear.”
Sethos settles his small, slightly chubby hand in his grandfather’s boney, weathered one, smiling when it’s squeezed.
It’s the closest thing he gets to a hug from him.
☽︎✵☾︎
Cyno’s gone.
Sethos is alone, because Cyno’s gone.
His lyre rests in the corner.
He can’t bear to pick it up.
Every song he plays reminds him of a life he once lead, carefree and loved.
Happy songs make him think of black hair and a bony, deep brown back that the sun kissed like a mother to a child, hunched over the bugs they used to watch.
Sad songs make him think of a limp, scrawny body and a shock of white hair, leaving him broken on the floor of a bedroom that isn’t even his.
Sethos hates them.
He hates everything.
Cyno is gone.
His lyre gathers dust.
☽︎✵☾︎
When he’s fourteen, he picks up a lyre again, coming home from his coming-of-age with a freshly ignited fire to be better.
Good isn’t enough.
In between learning every role the Temple has to offer, he practices his lyre with a determination to improve that coalesces over his every thought.
Music doesn’t touch his soul anymore.
The dulcet tones of the lyre’s plucked strings are merely proof of success, their order simply a sequence of notes rather than a song. They thrum under his fingers not as living beings to him, but as an object, no transference of emotions but simply routine — requiems as rigamarole.
It’s not fun, but nothing is.
He plays an Ode to the Scarlet King from sheet music instead of from the melodies that have swirled around his head for years, and practices until he hates the sound of it — each note crisp, and perfect, and torturously ordered.
A part of him itches to create, to close his eyes and feel a song as it thrums in his bones, something new and different and him.
But if he lets the music resonate with him, it stops being a song and becomes a plea.
He knows himself too well.
He plays with his eyes open, keeps creation at a distance, and makes himself perfect.
Of course, it’s never good enough.
He’s never good enough.
Will he ever be good enough?
He knows, even at thirteen years old, that the answer is a resounding, aching no.
☽︎✵☾︎
His heart is broken.
And when he picks up his lyre this time, the lyrics in his head are a cry for help.
He understands, for the barest moment, the fervor of King Deshret’s most zealous worshippers.
He parts his lips, and sings something he made up in his soul, begging to be seen between syllables, that the Wedjat Eye would turn to see him to.
That someone would see him.
He hates the way his singing voice sounds clogged up with tears.
☽︎✵☾︎
“Grandfather?” he whispers into the quiet office, the darkness oppressive aside from the single candle on the old man’s desk.
“Sethos,” he responds, his voice flat. “You should be asleep.”
Sethos sniffs.
It’s true. He should be.
But.
Those moments keep playing through his mind — the beasts in the quicksand, his family tied to him, nothing standing between them and death but the fingers he dug into flat, chalky rock. His heart, beating almost as loud as the wind that howled in his ears, his arms screaming the same way he was.
His fingers still ache, fresh scars on his hands where the skin of was peeled off, his palms redder than his skin is brown.
Auntie Betrest told him they would heal fast, but they still sting to the touch, and every thing he lays his hands on reminds him just how close he almost got to entering the afterlife.
His voice shakes a little when he speaks. “I can’t… I can’t sleep.”
After a moment, his grandfather turns in his chair, laying assessing eyes on Sethos’s form. “Come, Sethos. You may sit by my desk — get a blanket and some cushions from the closet over there.”
Sethos nods, and quietly does as he’s told, going over to the closet and slowly opening the door.
He reaches for his favorite of the blankets in here, a soft, cotton one woven by Auntie Nephi as a gift for his naming ceremony, but on top of it rests something he wasn’t expecting to see.
A lyre.
Mandrakes and lotuses are carved carefully into its box, their heads overlapping as their stems snake up its arms, the ten strings meeting just above where the heads of the plants overlap, the mandrake fruit and the lotus head crossing over each other.
Somehow, he recognizes it, lifting it up and out of the closet as he brushes his fingers over its body, delicately admiring the ebony wood.
“This was my father’s work,” Sethos murmurs quietly, looking at his grandfather in lieu of a question.
“A gift for your mother, yes,” Grandfather sighs, his lips quirking in a small, almost wistful smile. “It’s also what I taught you the basics on.”
Sethos brings the lyre to his chest, the thick fabric of his sleep tunic brushing against the wood.
He doesn’t know how to feel.
He wants to play it, and for once, allow himself to get lost in it.
But at the same time, he wonders.
Did his mother play? What songs?
Did she know the songs of her tribe?
Did she make things up as he does sometimes?
His mind buzzes with questions, but more than that, want.
An ache and a yearning to feel the strings vibrate under the fingers that are now red-raw, to hear the viscous sharpness of the lyre’s sound, it’s music both delicate and robust.
He swallows.
“Get the blankets like I asked, and then,” Grandfather starts, a tired fondness in his tone. “Play me something.”
Sethos blinks, the lyre still clutched in his hands.
Grandfather nods at him, a smile tugging at his weathered mouth.
“Yes, Grandfather,” Sethos says finally, settling the lyre down and setting himself up a nice little spot to the right of his grandfather’s desk, arranging the blankets and cushions in the corner between the desk and one of the bookshelves. Eventually, he takes the lyre once more, settling into his little nook, crossing his legs and letting the lyre rest horizontally along the length of his leg, pressing the butt of it into his abdomen.
He breathes, closes his eyes, and from him music spills forth, like the Snezhnayan geysers he’s read about.
Once again, it’s an Ode to the Scarlet King, recreated from memory rather than dead parchment, his fingers moving over the strings with a reverence only borne from feeling, the song lodged deep in his soul.
He’s never been one for blind piety, but his hands echo the praises of his people in the ancient, a genuine love and joy and care for the king that ruled them. He walked amongst them as an equal, and their belief that he dried their tears and opened their skies is a comfort.
In times such as this, the moments that could have been his last scratch at his psyche like feral, caged beasts, whining and begging to be set free. But now, he plays as if he is throwing King Deshret’s accolades back in his face, a reminder of what he has done for others, so he too can feel the same, so Sethos too can have his tears dried and his hurt assuaged and deliverance granted to him.
The lyrestrings susurrations are a prayer, he surmises, of a visceral, vulnerable kind.
Finally, the song finds its end, and his grandfather hums.
“It’s still a little messy. You’re too free with it,” Grandfather says. Sethos barely deflates, the criticism was expected. “You need to be more focused on preciseness over performing the spectacle of emotionality, Sethos.”
“Yes, grandfather,” Sethos dutifully responds, despite how little his heart is in it.
The old man clicks his tongue. “Play me something else you’ve learned, something you’re better at.”
Sethos nods, his fingers finding the strings to play some nebulous hymn, something in him withering.
He keeps his eyes open this time.
He is fourteen, and a week ago, he had the world on his shoulders.
Now, he has a lyre on his knee, a relic of his own history, playing songs he feels little for merely for the amusement of his grandfather late at night.
The lyre — made by his father to be gifted to his mother — feels at home in his hands, moreso than the Electro Vision that sits on his desk in his bedroom, and it is the only part of this moment he hopes to keep.
☽︎✵☾︎
Its a fun fact he shares with conversation partners sometimes, that he can play the lyre.
They’re often entranced by it, adding to the air of attractive mystique he shrouds himself with — they like artists.
Everyone he’s said it to thinks its some sort of secret he’s letting them in on, that he’s being vulnerable with them.
It stops them from asking other things.
He laughs when they tell him to badger a bard for theirs, taking the opportunity to express the difference between different kinds of lyres to those who insist.
They always think they’ve found out something exclusive about him, that they have an ‘in’ where others don’t, and he takes a little bit of a sick pleasure in telling each person a different song is his favorite any time they ask.
There’s one thing that’ll never, ever happen, though.
They’ll never hear him play.
They’ll never have their eyes on his face as he plays, they’ll never understand the sweat and tears that goes into every moment he spends strumming it’s strings, they won’t ever understand why the callouses on his hands sit the way they do — that is, if they even get close enough to feel them.
Most don’t.
It’s one of many of his true secrets, a relic of the Sethos that’s under the thick, impenetrable veneer, the one he’s built out of layers and layers of what he knows people really want.
That Sethos only exists to quiet nights and dark rooms, to nobody but Al-Ahmar, the stars above and the sand below.
☽︎✵☾︎
Sethos clicks his tongue as the last notes of an Ode to the Scarlet King ring out, echoing off the walls of the crypt, deep underground.
Tesem, he almost hears his grandfather say, play me something you’re actually good at.
He swallows, leaning his head against the great sarcophagus before him, the marble cold against his forehead.
“I got it perfect this time, Grandfather,” Sethos whispers, his voice thick. “Like you. Are you proud of me?”
Baba, Sethos thinks, as young and as scared as he always has been, wrapping his arms around his lyre and closing his eyes, his breath loud in the somber, heavy silence. Please be proud of me.
A tear drops onto the arm of the lyre and rolls down its curves, seeping into the wood.
☽︎✵☾︎
It’s quiet in the Temple today.
The scouts are out making diplomatic contact with the tribes people, the hunters are away, the Protectorate are doing their patrols, and nothing major has happened.
A day like today is rare.
He has little to do, and usually, he’d use this spare time to make his own rounds of the Temple, checking in on the kitchen staff, the archives, the weavers, and the library, just to make sure everything’s running smoothly.
But… he finds himself aching for something else.
He doesn’t know the last time it saw the light of day, but his fingers ache to brush along strings, to tease music from from wood and fine-spun silk.
Sethos pulls his lyre out from where its been sitting with his old blankets, humming a tune to himself as he gets situated on his bed. He knows, the moment his hands touch the strings, the song he’ll play.
He does a couple quick warm-ups to get himself used to playing again, just a scale or two, and then his mind settles back into that quiet little space, where there is nothing in him but music, nothing in him but the melodies and harmonics that flow from his body into the atmosphere.
It’s interesting, playing a song of worship to a king that’s dead.
There’s a melancholy to the joy of the song, as if the emotion itself is stale with age, nostalgic for its own certainty.
And yet, he still finds himself comforted by just how sure they were.
They didn’t ask whether Al-Ahmar hung the stars, they knew.
They didn’t ask whether he fought for the oppressed and offered his hands to those who couldn’t walk alone, he did.
They knew, when this song was written, that from the day they emerged from the womb, until the day they joined their ancestors, that King Deshret would reign, as unchanging as marble.
And despite his temples being ruins, and his palace sunk below the sands, that surety lingers.
By the time he finds his way back to the beginning, he’s gone from humming the song to softly singing the lyrics, his eyes fluttering open for a brief moment.
The song takes him elsewhere, back down down down below the sands, down to the crypt, where his grandfather lay with his 98 predecessors, and he wonders, not for the first time, and surely not for the last, whether his grandfather’s constant criticism was proof of love.
That he wanted the song to be played perfectly, only because he loved it too much to hear it wrong.
Sethos never got to ask him why it was his favorite.
For the barest, tiniest second, Sethos sees his grandfather in his mind’s eye, his gaze soft but assessing, the wrinkles by his eyes crinkled in what Sethos learned to recognize as strained resignation, an expression only reserved for Sethos.
He can’t imagine him smiling, patting him on the shoulder with a firm hand, telling him he did well without bracketing it with some advice on how he could do better.
Sethos swallows, gritting his teeth at the fat, ugly wad of grief that seems to lodge itself in his throat.
He misses his grandfather.
The final notes of an Ode to the Scarlet King thrum from the strings, and Sethos breathes them in, reemerging into the silence of his room. He exhales, steadying himself as—
“That was nice,” someone says from the doorway, and Sethos nearly jumps out of his skin at the sight of his lover, leaned against the wall his hat’s leaned against. “I wasn’t aware you could play the lyre.”
Sethos tries to get his heart to calm down before he speaks, dragging in a couple of breaths, but even with the adrenaline gone, a different sort of fear remains.
Its an old thing, slow with age — the creeping fear of vulnerability.
But he beats it to the punch, manually lowers his walls, forcing himself to relax in the presence of one of the two people in the entire world he feels safest with.
“A little,” he says finally, allowing himself a self-depricating laugh. He switches topic out of habit. “How long have you been there?!”
“Long enough to know that that’s a lot more than ‘a little’, Bee,” Hat Guy says softly, coming over to settle next to Sethos on the bed. He slides in close, his eyes going from Sethos’s hands on his mother’s lyre up to his eyes, bringing a hand up to tuck a strand of curly hair behind his ear. “It was… emotional. Heavy.”
“It was my grandfather’s favorite,” Sethos responds, his voice quiet and unsure. “I’ve spent my life trying to get it right for him.”
His lover hums, and Sethos lets his head rest on the proffered shoulder, biting on the inside of his cheeks as he wills his hands not to shake and tears not to well. “If that old man didn’t think what I just heard was perfect, he’s an idiot.”
“Don’t call my grandfather an idiot, Shoshen,” Sethos admonishes, a smile on his face nonetheless as he tries to stop the heat that rushes to his cheeks.
The conviction in his Lotus’s voice makes his chest warm, and he settles in even closer, dropping a small kiss to his lover’s shoulder in thanks.
“Stop surprising me with all these talents, Bee,” his Lotus says, not even a hint of a laugh in his voice. “It’s getting tiring to keep up with everything you’re skilled at.”
Sethos chuckles softly, feeling his face get hotter. “I wouldn’t call it a talent. I haven’t picked this thing up in, like, a year. It’s casual, you know?”
Internally, he scoffs at himself. The thousands of hours his teenage self worked to get to where he’s at now is far from casual.
But he knows he’s not nearly good enough to be called talented either.
“I don’t say things I don’t mean, Sethos.”
Sethos grits his teeth a little, before relaxing. “I know, I know, I know. You’ve lived for centuries, yadda yadda yadda.”
His lover just snorts, shaking his head. “Do you know any other songs?”
Sethos hums, his eyes decisively studying the wood of the lyre. “...A few.”
It’s a lie.
He knows psalms and requiems and ballads, dozens of hymns.
His Lotus shifts them, Sethos watching the soft, vulnerable look in his pretty eyes. “Could I hear one?”
Sethos blinks, struck silent. “...Any of them?”
“Your favorite,” his Lotus says decisively. “I want to hear your favorite.”
“...My favorite?”
He’s… never considered having his own favorite song before.
He’s messed around on his lyre and wrote things of his own, but the song his fingers always gravitate towards is an Ode to the Scarlet King, his grandfather’s favorite.
Sethos swallows, repositioning himself so he’s in proper playing positon, looking into his lover’s eyes for that extra burst of confidence he finds in the surety of his gaze.
And then, his fingers brush along the strings, and a thrill runs down his back.
Sethos takes the leap.
He closes his eyes, and lets his body take the lead, sinking into something both familiar and foreign, a tune he hasn’t played for years and years, suppressed below everything he was ever taught.
It ebbs and flows, rises and falls, never allows itself to rest in the stillness of a moment.
Passionate, with an underlying sober melancholy, like it’s anchored to the ground no matter how high it wishes to fly.
It swirls around like sand in the wind, floats along the surface of an oasis pool, and settles on the marble floors of Sethos’s home, a malfeasance to its jovial tone.
Underneath it all, it is disquieted, a dissonance to the harmony only trained ears can catch.
He lets the final note ring into the silence, and opens his eyes.
His lover’s pretty lips, parted as if stunned. Quiet rests between them, until finally, his Lotus speaks. “Was that an original?”
Sethos swallows.
It’s his turn to be stunned.
“How— How did you know?” Sethos asks softly, feeling the tremor of his hands.
His lover smiles, something small and fond. “It sounded just like you.”
He doesn’t know how to feel about that other than exposed.
“...Did you like it?”
“It was beautiful.”
Sethos places his lyre down, laughing awkwardly to hide the probably obvious flush on his cheeks, his hands balling on his thighs. “I… I didn’t really know what to play, so I just picked something random, you know? It wasn’t really anything, just something silly I messed around with when I was younger—”
“And you chose to show me?” his lover blinks, eyes wide with an admiration Sethos doesn’t want to acknowledge.
“I,” Sethos starts, ready to conjure a million excuses. But in the quietude of his childhood bedroom, oil lamps bright and flickering dances across his walls, he allows himself a small liberty. “I did, yeah. You’re a good audience.”
“...Thank you,” his Lotus says quietly, his voice heavy.
Sethos shakes his head, his face hot. “It’s… it’s nothing, genuinely. I’m not even that good, you know? I have a lot to work on.”
His chuckle is nervous, his smile shaky, and his lover doesn’t react beyond staring sure eyes into Sethos’s soul. Sethos shrinks in on himself a little as the silence stretches on between them.
“Don’t be an idiot, Bee.” his Lotus says finally, putting a soft, cool hand over Sethos’s closed fist, patiently working the tension from his fingers. He holds Sethos’s hand gently in his own, and Sethos finds his eyes drawn to the differences between them — the brown of his skin dotted with the scars that mar his fingers and knuckles, compared to the unbroken, pale expanse of his lover’s artificial skin. “You’re good. If it sounded like dissonant caterwauling, I’d tell you.”
Sethos chuckles lowly. “Yup, yup, yup. You would. You definitely would.”
“But… even if you were the worst I’d ever heard,” his Lotus murmurs, his eyes finding Sethos’s. “I wouldn’t care. I don’t care if it’s good. I care that it’s you.”
Sethos breaks eye contact, his heart racing. He swallows, his laugh thick. “Even if it sounded like dissonant caterwauling?”
“It doesn’t, though.”
“But what if it did?”
His lover just shakes his head. “That first song… you said it wasn’t your favorite, but you play it like you love it.”
Sethos hums, settling his head back on his Lotus’s shoulder. “I think I’ve grown to love it.”
“Play it like something you love, then.”
“...Like I play you?”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“I promise I’m gentle…” Sethos says with a teasing smirk, brushing his hands over his lover’s chest like he’s strumming lyrestrings.
His Lotus just rolls his pretty eyes. “You’re ridiculous, and you’re stalling.”
Sethos laughs, pretending like he doesn’t see the color blooming across his lover’s face so prettily. “...Maybe I am.”
But he leans over his lyre once more and plucks the opening notes of an Ode to the Scarlet King, a smile on his face as he plays the song for someone who loves who he is and not what he does.
Someone who smiles at the little extra flairs he puts in certain areas, someone who hums along when he gets to a familiar section.
Someone who actually enjoys it.
Maybe he should play the lyre more.
☽︎✵☾︎
Later, when they’re cuddled up in Sethos’s childhood bed, his lover’s chest resonates under his ear with a melody Sethos recognizes.
An Ode to the Scarlet King, hummed lowly in his Lotus’s throat, his cold hands carding through Sethos’s hair.
He closes his eyes and for the first time since the day he heard it, enjoys the melody without the sting of his fingers on the lyre.
☽︎✵☾︎
Lord of light, creator of splendour,
The gods ascribe to him praises.
He giveth his hand to him that loveth him.
The flame destroyeth his enemies.
His eye overthroweth the [...] devil.
It casteth forth its spear, which pierceth the sky[...]
Homage to thee, [...], Lord of Truth.
Hidden is the shrine of the Lord of the gods.[...]
He heareth the cry of him that is oppressed.
He is gracious of heart to him that appealeth to him.
He delivereth the timid man from the man of violence.
He regardeth the poor man and considereth [his] misery.[...]
King, One among the gods.[...]
He riseth in the eastern horizon, he setteth in the western horizon.
- An Ode to the Scarlet King