Work Text:
Now
The loathing was almost tolerable in the beginning. Like brambles clinging to sleeves, stubborn but plucked from fabric and cast aside.
Now Giuseppe’s puppet keeps its distance for the most part, lured into giving him space by the promise, never fulfilled, of pleasing its creator. He has been painting the puppet a map with his words, guiding it from one point to the next, as if the riches of love await it at the end. Always there, never here: to Venigni Works, the opera house. Awash with violence and bloodshed. The puppet doesn’t seem to mind, not yet, but it wasn’t designed to live long enough to ponder its raison d’être too deeply.
Now the sun has fallen, the sky weeps rain, and the puppet sits on the couch in Giuseppe’s study. Gazing into the crackling fireplace as if the flames might have their own story to tell. The puppet is wasting time, precious time, and as the hours trudge onward, Giuseppe hates the creature even more. He hears the steady tick, tick of a clock in his head; much to Antonia’s chagrin, he stripped most of the hotel’s clocks for parts.
Spring strolls in around midnight, curious about the hotel’s latest arrival and, perhaps, the treats Giuseppe keeps in a desk drawer. She hops up on the coffee table, sniffing the puppet’s proffered hand before hissing. Scampering out the door, slinking low. Treats forgotten, or otherwise not worth the effort after smelling the puppet and sensing its odd nothingness.
The cat is honest where Giuseppe cannot afford to be. Not yet.
He sits at his desk, idly shuffling through papers. Rearranging already organized drawers. Sifting through irrelevant books. No matter where he looks, he sees nothing but the puppet: its idleness. Its insistence on staying here, in Giuseppe’s abode, when it should be out there, fighting for Carlo.
The book Giuseppe is holding falls to the floor with a thud, and the puppet’s eyes snap up as if sensing danger. It’s a book on eye colors, theorizing about the pigmentation that makes up the different hues; something he read while working on his puppet. Like with its freckles, he wanted its eyes to be appealing to others. Both doll-like and human enough.
When he thinks of amber-brown eyes now, Giuseppe feels a tightening in his chest. Like something clawing at him, desperate to rip him to shreds. He thinks of love withheld, assuming he had all the time in the world, and the ferocity of Carlo’s glare. Eyes wide, expressing more vitriol than his words ever could.
The same glare that Giuseppe has to repress now as he blinks at his puppet. Look elsewhere, you fool, he thinks, feeling absurd for not sending the creature away. Why not urge it toward its next destination, storm or not? Why not pat its shoulder, ruffle its hair? It seems to like that whenever he tries, energizing the puppet as if it were a real boy receiving genuine affection.
But instead of the solace he craves, Giuseppe’s puppet only brings more pain.
“Father,” it begins, its voice like gears incessantly grinding against one another. “Who is Carlo?”
Giuseppe instructed everyone at the hotel not to say his name. He told them: not a whisper, especially not around the puppet. It would complicate things, he explained. And who knew what sort of ideas it might get, thinking it was Carlo? An adequate replacement? He slumps back in his chair, book abandoned on the floor.
“Where did you hear that name?” Giuseppe’s voice is steady, calm, even as his hands tremble. It brings back memories of his first few days with Carlo’s body: trailing his fingers along his jaw, pressing warm lips to cold, knowing he had to get to work but not now, not in the initial waves of grief that threatened to drown him. If he were a weaker man, he would have collapsed at Carlo’s side. He would have let himself rot alongside his son.
“It was a boy who told me,” says the puppet, perking up at Giuseppe's acknowledgment of him, clutching onto the couch’s armrest as he rises. “The boy who speaks to me in my head. Or is it my heart? He makes my chest feel warm but I hear his voice in my head, like he’s seeing what I think, too.”
The thought that Carlo has been speaking to P is absurd. Giuseppe almost brushes the conversation aside, but the name has to come from somewhere. It was someone at the hotel, he’s sure; mumbling under their breath, sharing secrets that do not belong to them. This is the logical explanation in contrast with the puppet’s utter nonsense.
But perhaps the puppet is mistaking memories for conversation. So soon?
Giuseppe waves the puppet away, hoping it’s far enough not to see the way his hands shake. It will have to hear about Carlo in time, but now? It’s too soon, too raw, but still the creature clenches at the couch, likely digging its claws into cushioning, leaving its mark where a good boy would never dare.
“He told me,” continues the puppet, excitement rising in its voice, “that he forgives you for the night of his birthday. He said you’ll know what that means.”
If Giuseppe were a less sensible man, he would think that the puppet could hear the thunder of his heartbeat, thudding in his chest. No one could know of that night — no one alive, anyway. Unless Carlo told someone. Mischievous, Giuseppe thinks, his breaths labored. A liar.
You know what they’ll do if anyone finds out, Giuseppe said on that night so long ago, cupping Carlo’s cheek as the lamp on the nightstand flickered. It had turned itself off mere minutes before. Unreliable, he thought, but wealth had its perks: they were one of the first households in Krat to have electricity. And wasn’t Carlo grateful for these things? On the rare occasions he came home to visit, didn’t he relish such luxuries?
Carlo wept, eyes twitching as he stared up at the ceiling, willing his voice to remain steady. He was stronger than he knew, for he was Giuseppe’s son.
They’ll take you away from me, Carlo said, refusing to meet his father’s eyes. As if sending him away to boarding school hadn’t been enough, he would never see his father again. They would always be a threat: the nameless boogeymen who would sweep in and steal his father away if he so much as breathed a word of what happened.
Giuseppe didn’t believe it, not for an instant. With his influence, who would believe Carlo over him? The rebellious, scorned son or Krat’s beloved father of puppets?
But Giuseppe wouldn’t have the events of that night enter local gossip, even now. Even at what sometimes feels like the end of the world, some manner of decorum must be maintained.
On the cusp of a new world, he has to remind himself. We are on the cusp.
The puppet has no idea what it’s saying. No idea how close its odd words have come to the truth, for Giuseppe still denies the thought that Carlo has spoken to him directly. It might have struck some memories in the mine of its heart, at the core of Carlo’s ergo, but communication? The need to pass on forgiveness, as if Giuseppe has even earned such a thing?
He doesn’t realize tears are coursing down his cheeks until the puppet rushes to him, kneeling beside his chair. Gathering his withered, tired hand in its own: the one covered in artificial flesh. Feigning humanity even now, clutching onto its creator’s pain as if it were a balm. Like a young child who doesn’t know the answer to a simple puzzle — how could it, without a father’s guiding hand? — and so it offers everything it can think of in response. Wanting so desperately to be seen, eyes wide with wonder.
“Papa,” he says. Voice dissimilar to Carlo’s — it was one thing Giuseppe wasn’t able to replicate precisely — and yet pained all the same. Especially with the word that comes next, ripped straight out of Carlo’s boyish mouth: “Daddy.”
Through the blurred veil of his tears, Giuseppe almost thinks he sees Carlo. He knows it’s not true and yet, for the briefest of moments, he gives himself over to grief’s folly, to the thought that his son could be speaking to him through the wonders of ergo pressed into a metal heart. Like a zoetrope spinning, breathing life and motion into pictures.
He brought such a trinket home for Carlo once. Standing over his son as he sprawled out on the carpet, hands clasping the zoetrope. Watching the images spin: a bird flapping its wings, forever seeking freedom and yet never truly grasping it.
How does it work, Daddy?
A father kneeling down. Hand atop his son’s head as he explained. Was he patient then? Did he love?
“What else?” Giuseppe’s voice is barely a whisper as he squeezes the puppet’s hand, so warm and soft that he can pretend it’s real for now. “What else did he say?”
Blue-gray eyes, as cold as ice, watch him carefully. If Giuseppe didn’t know better, he might think the puppet were trying to gauge if he could withstand such pain. If it were worth imparting Carlo’s alleged correspondence at all.
There is love in those eyes, Giuseppe lets himself think. Dream.
“Carlo said” — the puppet’s eyes twitch as if anguished, just like his son’s on the night of horrors — “that he wants you to let him go.”
A gentle squeeze of manmade hands — synthesized skin, stretched over metal bones — comforting their creator. His creator.
A plea: “Let him go, Papa. Let him go.”
Then
It began with a lie.
Giuseppe told himself that, after a mere glass of wine, he was drunk. For good measure, he assured himself that he missed his wife. Giuseppe did mourn her, always — he missed her amber eyes and the way she would second-guess him, something he never tolerated from anyone else — but that wasn’t what drew him to Carlo’s room that night.
Earlier that day, they’d fought. Carlo surprised him with a visit home; for his birthday, of course. Eighteen. Couldn’t a son come see his father on his own birthday? Couldn’t he shirk his responsibilities at school so that he might sneak home, running through the rain, foregoing a stagecoach because his father had forgotten to forward him any sort of allowance?
“If only you’d let me know ahead of time,” Giuseppe had said, standing in the foyer, hat in hand. Shrugging out of his rain-drenched coat as Carlo sat in the parlor, nails clawing at the armrests of Giuseppe’s favorite chair by the fire. White shirt damp with rain, nearly translucent.
“Of course, Dad,” said Carlo, knowing it embarrassed him to be called such. But there was no one around, so Giuseppe swallowed the heavy shame his son made him feel.
Such a lewd boy, he thought, eyeing Carlo’s shirt with disgust as he leaned toward the end table beside him. Giuseppe could see the way his wet shirt clung to hardened nipples as he grabbed a heap of papers from the table. Correspondence, Giuseppe realized, that he’d left unattended to.
The pile of letters was so thick that Carlo had to hold it with both hands before he brought it to his lap, some drifting from his grip, flitting to the floor like refuse.
“‘Dear Father,’” Carlo read mockingly after tearing open the first letter. “‘I hope you’ve been well. I worry about you. If it wouldn’t be too much of an inconvenience for you, as I know your work is important to you above all else, I’d like to come home for my birthday.’”
Carlo tossed the first letter into the fire, letting the flames lap up the proof of his efforts. His love. It was almost a relief: one less letter that Giuseppe was expected to acknowledge. But there were more. Many more.
A sharp inhale of breath, trembling, then Carlo continued reading: “‘I’d like to see you.’”
Another letter torn open. Another.
“‘Dad. Please. Write to me. Say something. Anything.’” Tears openly spilling now, falling down blemished cheeks, although neither father nor son acknowledged them. “‘The only reason I know you’re not dead is because there’s been no news. The whole city would be mourning if you’d passed. And if I died — what then? Would you ever get news of it? Would you ever mourn?’”
Carlo had stormed up to his room afterward, barely a few letters deep into the stack before he’d become overcome with emotion. Once Giuseppe had made it clear there would be no apologies beyond blaming his forgetfulness, there was nothing left to say. I’ve just been so busy, son. What he didn’t say was that, oftentimes, he forgot Carlo even existed. But that didn’t mean his love had ceased. It wasn’t as if Carlo thought of his father every hour of the day. He didn’t think of Giuseppe during his classes, while he studied, or as he lay down to sleep. And yet Giuseppe was supposed to bend, to contort himself, to meet the needs of a boy whom he had given everything.
Everything.
Now, as the deepest part of night fell across the Geppetto estate and Giuseppe climbed the staircase, the light of his lamp cast elongated shadows against the walls. He felt no eagerness, not until he was finally upstairs, pushing open Carlo’s door; seeing his son in bed, one leg bare, smooth, peeking out from beneath the covers. Bathed in an orange glow. Giuseppe set his lamp on the bedside table before he sat down, gloves pulled off and tucked in his pockets.
He told himself, even then, that he came because he was lonely. After Carlo stomped upstairs, Giuseppe had uncorked a bottle of wine, downed a single glass, and stared into the fire. He didn’t often tell Carlo of what life was like before Krat came to rely on puppets. Before the boom of industry. In retrospect, he thought he perhaps should have. Would he be more grateful now, to know what the world was like before? Would he say, “Thanks, Dad. I appreciate all the sacrifices you’ve made now”?
No. Carlo would never thank him, would never understand, and so Giuseppe felt emboldened to touch his ankle. Trailing fingers up the softness of his calf, over his knee. Pushing aside the blankets, letting them fall to the floor as he cupped between his son’s legs for the first time. Giuseppe felt something then; he couldn’t deny that. The heat of need as he reminded himself that this was his: Carlo. His body. His life.
“Dad?” Roused at last by his father’s curious prodding, Carlo reached for the electric light beside his bed, adding its flickering glow to that of the oil lamp.
“Shh,” Giuseppe whispered, content to rub at the front of Carlo’s pants with his thumb, feeling softness harden. His arousal was peeking out of the waistband of his drawers before Giuseppe had even unbuttoned and unlaced them, tugging them down enough to free his cock, laying against his stomach now.
Carlo’s struggling was feeble. If Giuseppe cared to ponder such weakness, he might have felt bad, as if Carlo were letting him win. So he thought only of the strain in his own pants, belt unbuckled and pushed down. Hands sweeping beneath Carlo’s hips as he pulled him close.
“What are you doing?” A whisper rising frantically once Giuseppe had his cock pressed against him, hips angled up, the tip of his arousal brushing his son’s hole.
Too tight, he thought, almost angrily. Why couldn’t Carlo do even this right? Why couldn’t he let himself be taken by the one person who owned him, every part of him?
“I don’t want this,” said Carlo, hands scrabbling against his father’s waistcoat. If he wanted to stop him, he could have. Wasn’t that part of his education at the charity house — learning to fight? What did it say about him that he didn’t fight back now? “You don’t want this. You think you do, but you don’t. Dad, please. You’re drunk. You’re confused. Lonely.”
Taking stabs in the dark, each correct in their own way, as if finding the right answer might have made Giuseppe stop. As if he might have recoiled, seeing the horrors he was inflicting, and felt guilt. He did not: there was only the satisfying tightness around the head of his cock once he finally pushed inside. The hitched breaths from both of them; the way Carlo raised his hips; how his cock twitched against his stomach, betraying him.
In his haze, somehow Giuseppe remembered the name he’d planned to whisper: “Camille.” She was his reason, his excuse, and Carlo stilled beneath the weight of her name. Giuseppe rocked his hips, burying himself inside him, relishing his son’s soft whimpers: a good boy at last.
Sweat rolled down his neck, pooling at the collar of his shirt. He preferred their union like this: Carlo’s drawers pulled down, fabric tearing as he tossed them to the floor. Nightshirt pushed up, revealing those lascivious nipples of his, already peaked before Giuseppe leaned over him, beard scratching against his chest as he licked. Sucking his nipples between his lips, lavishing them with his tongue. First one, then the other, all while Carlo writhed beneath him. No longer fighting but pushing his hips back, meeting each thrust awkwardly as soft gasps spilled from his mouth.
When Giuseppe pulled back, Carlo’s face was turned from him. One hand covered his eyes while the other clutched the sheets, but he could see tears gleaming on his cheeks in the dim light; could hear the moans he tried to suppress, the soft hiccups as he wept. He whispered affirmations into Carlo’s neck, his hair, his lips: You are mine. You have always been mine. There was a brief thought, a flash of jealousy, as he remembered letters mentioning a friend. Romeo. Carlo had brought him home at least once. Blond hair, flaxen like dried corn husks. Had they kissed in the darkness of their dorm room, inexperienced lips pressing together? Had they entangled themselves like this, with Romeo slipping between Carlo’s soft thighs, whispering words of love or whatever he thought necessary for Carlo to spread his legs wider, moan his name louder?
Giuseppe shivered. Arousal coursed through him, spiraling, building at the base of his cock as he thought: No. Carlo is much too shy. And now, how could he let another touch him? The realization was almost enough to send Giuseppe over the edge. At last he’d made a good boy out of Carlo. At last. His hips snapped forward and Carlo whimpered, one hand braced against the headboard as his body was rocked toward it. He glanced down in the darkness, seeing where their bodies met: just the tip of his cock inside Carlo, enveloped by his tightness, then more as he sank back inside. Carlo’s feet slid across the sheets as he took all of his father, again and again until there was nowhere higher to go but release. He slammed his cock inside Carlo without a care, whimpers only enflaming his arousal, as he filled him. Their hips were pressed together as he came, one rough, jerky thrust after the other. Giuseppe knew, too, that he would be the only one to come inside him. The only one to know his son so carnally.
They lay in silence but for their labored breaths and Carlo’s quiet sobs. He’d done so well to hold back his tears, to let his body be taken at last. Giuseppe felt something akin to pride as he kissed his son’s forehead, wiping away waves of hair heavy with sweat, before he pulled away. Wiping his hands off on Carlo’s sheets before tucking himself away.
“I love you, Carlo. I hope you know that.” The words tasted stale in his mouth. When was the last time he’d said them? Had he ever? But he meant them all the same.
The oil lamp sputtered out, leaving them with only the electric light, still flickering. It cast Giuseppe’s shadow monstrously tall, rising above Carlo on the headboard, on the wall. As if the light, too, knew who he belonged to.
“Sit up, please,” Giuseppe said, and when Carlo didn’t immediately comply, he squeezed his calf roughly. Like a good boy, he jolted right up: tears staining his cheeks, waves of dark hair tousled. His eyes were dark, shadowed: without his usual glare. Instead, there was nothing.
Good.
“Tend to yourself,” Giuseppe commanded, gesturing to his son’s arousal, half-ebbed. When Carlo tried to pull his nightshirt down for a modicum of modesty, he grabbed his wrist. Clucking his tongue before he said, “No, we’ll be having none of that.”
“Dad, please. Haven’t you — haven’t we — done enough?” His voice was quiet, strained, as if he’d spent the last half hour screaming instead of moaning.
But no, they hadn’t done enough. Not by a long shot.
“Shall I help you, then?” As Giuseppe reached for him, Carlo shrank back. Sucking in a breath before he reached for himself, fist around the head of his cock. Lazily stroking as he meekly stared down at the bed. Whatever he was imagining in his mind’s eye worked: before long he was rocking his hips into his hand. Giuseppe wondered what it was he thought of, but it didn’t matter. If he asked, he didn’t think he’d get the truth, and in this instance, a lie might have been preferable.
It was about control. Giuseppe had no intention of touching Carlo again, not tonight — would he ever? — although he was tempted. His son had disappointed him enough that he wasn’t sure the lesson would stick. Once he left in the morning, back to the charity house where he belonged, perhaps Giuseppe would at last remember to send him letters. Gentle reminders about how he so enjoyed spending time with Carlo on his birthday, how he couldn’t wait for his next visit. How he hoped for such excitement on his own birthday.
As Carlo stroked himself, fingers trailing along the length of his cock, he couldn’t stop the way his pre-cum made his jerking sound lewd. Faster, louder, eyes squeezed shut now as he moaned, hips rising up off the bed as he came, catching his release in his fist. A shame, Giuseppe thought. He would have liked to scold Carlo for that, too. But no, Carlo was being a good boy for once. Such a good boy.
As they lay back upon the bed, Giuseppe felt between Carlo’s thighs: slick with spend. It was a good thing they had puppets to do the washing. Maybe in time Carlo would come to appreciate this, too, as he would come to understand why their relationship was distant. He was no longer a child to be coddled — or so Giuseppe hoped to remind him.
Before long he would slip away for a bath, leaving his son to sleep or ponder: whichever the night held for him. It was no matter. But when Carlo wrapped his arms around his waist, head nuzzling against his chest, Giuseppe stiffened. Nothing about tonight had been peaceful, but a slate had been swept clean, hadn’t it? He felt raw, new.
Before he even had to coax his son into staying quiet about their encounter — not that anyone wouldn’t believe Giuseppe’s version of events — Carlo mumbled into his chest. As the lamp flickered its last, sending them into moonlit darkness, Carlo tilted his head. Wanting his father to hear the words he didn’t deserve.
“I missed you.” A choked whisper. Would he ever stop crying? “I missed you so much.”
Giuseppe patted his head, fingers sifting through soft whorls.
“I know, son.”
Carlo didn’t mention the slip-up, not then nor afterward: Weren’t you thinking of me as Mom? Wasn’t I her replacement?
He was, if nothing else, a clever boy.
Carlo Geppetto: 1879 - 1899
Beloved son, embalmed.
His temporary casket: a trunk, ornamented with gold.
Carlo Geppetto: 1900 -
Beloved son, reborn.
Letum non omnia finit: death does not end all.