Archive of Our Own

Aaron and Andrew stood in a row, identical in face if not in grief. Both were stiff in black wool, facing the family mausoleum. The marble gleamed, their surname carved in a font far too gentle for what lay beneath. Tilda had always liked softness. She just hadn’t been soft.

The priest mumbled his rites like a man on his last legs. A fly landed on his lip mid-eulogy, and he didn’t swat it, which either meant he was devout or dead inside. Andrew would’ve bet on the latter.

Around them, nobles milled in careful clusters. One by one, they came forward with solemn faces and perfumed condolences. Some shook Aaron’s hand. A few took Andrew’s, though not without hesitation. Their mother had been difficult in life, but now that she was safely entombed, politeness demanded sympathy.

What a tragedy, they said. Such a loss. A pity, truly, that she had fallen down the stairs. And to think—only a few short months after her eldest had returned from Venice. The timing was cruel. Heartbreaking, even. Andrew nodded along in silence, his expression unreadable.

Tilda now ash, now inheritance, now finally dead, had not deserved a ceremony, but she got one anyway. The vault door clicked shut with a damp, meaty sound. Aaron took one step back and gagged quietly into his handkerchief.

“May she rot,” Andrew said under his breath.

They didn’t linger. The carriage ride home passed in silence. The manor they returned to felt too large for just the two of them. Tilda’s belongings were already packed into trunks, as if she had never lived there at all.

The servants, loyal and discreet thanks to generous coin, asked no questions about the blood on the white tile. Andrew had scrubbed it clean himself. Then he painted over the stain with turpentine, matching pigment, and a healthy dose of spite.

Aaron called it self-defense. “She had a knife,” he’d said, again and again, like he could convince the walls if not himself.

“I remember the knife,” Andrew had said. “I also remember choosing the sharper one.”

He left his coat on the entryway chair and walked directly to Tilda’s studio. The scent of oil and dust met him at the threshold. The only room which remained untouched. Dozens of canvases lined the walls and corners, stacked with obsessive neatness.

They were brilliant.

Andrew lit the hearth. He started with the largest pieces. One by one, he tore them from their frames and fed them to the flames. The fire caught quickly. The paint hissed and blistered as it burned. Andrew stared into the flames, the light flickering across his blank expression.

By the time Aaron arrived, half the paintings were gone.

“Stop!” Aaron’s voice cracked like a whip.

He crossed the room in three steps and snatched a smaller canvas from the pile before it reached the hearth.

“It’s still hers,” he said, holding it against his chest.

Andrew looked at him without emotion. “She beat you. She got you hooked on opium. I locked you in the south wing while you screamed through withdrawals. Ringing any bells?”

“I know what she did,” Aaron snapped, eyes rimmed red. “But she was still my mother and now she’s gone.”

They stared at each other through the smoke, two brothers who would never fully understand one another. They bore the same face, yet it felt as though they’d been carved from opposing elements.

What one needed, the other didn’t have. What one gave, the other rejected. They weren’t built to be close. They were built to survive each other. Some days, they didn’t even manage that.

Aaron and Andrew were brothers. That was both the problem and the answer.

Eventually Andrew stepped back without a word. He let the rest burn. When the last canvas turned to ash, he called for the servants. They came with linen cloths and steady hands. Under Andrew’s direction, they covered every surface. By dusk, the studio was sealed and the door was shut. It would never open again.

***

The next morning, Andrew dressed in white. White cuffs, a white waistcoat, gloves so pale they seemed to glow in the morning light. He would wear white for a year. A deliberate contrast to Aaron, who mourned in black.

Andrew walked the length of the hallway in silence. The door to his studio stood open. Once, long ago, the room had been a ballroom. Later, it had been nothing at all. It hadn’t been touched in years, and that was exactly why Andrew had chosen it.

The windows were tall and arched, letting in light without apology. He opened each one, allowing the wind to sweep through the space and tug at the cloth covering the newly delivered supplies. Andrew stood in the center and let it pass through him.

The canvases had arrived just after dawn. A carpenter from the village had built the easels. The paints came from France. So had the brushes and the oils. He had ordered them without thinking. But now, seeing the materials in this room, he felt something shift beneath his ribs. It was small, unfamiliar, and not entirely painful.

Andrew had wanted to paint since he was a boy. He remembered the first time he’d held one of Tilda’s brushes, how the bristles tickled his skin. Venice taught him a silence that drew his voice inward until only his hands could speak, yet it also taught him how to paint.

By midafternoon, he had chosen a large canvas, its surface nearly luminous in the light. He stood before it for a long time. When he was ready, he reached for a brush and imagined taking off his gloves to feel the bristles fan against his fingers. Instead he dipped the brush in mauve and pressed it to the canvas.

And there it was: The beginning.

***

The years slipped by. Andrew didn’t bother counting them. He marked time by the way oils dried differently in summer than in winter. Paint became his hourglass, canvas his measure of days.

It was as if the first brushstroke had released something he hadn’t realized was trapped. Andrew painted until his fingers ached. He slept in a chair when he slept at all. Meals arrived at the door and went back untouched.

Sometimes Aaron paced the hallway just outside, his footsteps more reliable than any clock. Andrew ignored him. It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t anything at all.

The world beyond their manor began to notice. Critics wrote feverish reviews, using words like visionary and inhuman. Andrew found the last one oddly flattering. He never painted for their approval. He painted because if he didn’t, something would decay inside him, and he would tear at his own hands to let it out. There were nights when the compulsion was so strong it made him tremble.

One evening, Aaron stood in the doorway of his studio, holding a cup. The scent drifted through the air, gentle and out of place. Andrew paused mid-stroke and turned.

“You’ll collapse if you keep going like this,” Aaron said. His voice was steady, but his grip on the saucer was not. “Drink this.”

Andrew raised an eyebrow, waiting for his brother to explain himself.

“It’s just tea,” Aaron added quickly. “Chamomile. Valerian root. Not laudanum, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“I wasn’t,” Andrew said.

Aaron stepped further in and set the cup on a cluttered table. “I remember what it looked like when mom got lost in her work,” he started. “When she stopped sleeping. When she started talking to things that weren’t there.”

Andrew frowned. “I’m not her.”.

“No,” Aaron agreed. “You’re not.”

He lingered, breath caught, like he was weighing the cost of speaking. His hands curled into fists at his sides.

“I’m still studying. I’m years from being anything close to a real doctor. But I’ll use everything I know to keep that from happening to you.”

Aaron stared at the floorboards. His hands trembled before he shoved them into his coat pockets.

“I couldn’t stop her,” he said. “But I won’t watch you turn mad the same way. I’ll be damned if I can’t save one person in this house.”

The weight of what he’d said seemed to hit him a moment later. He cleared his throat.

“…Anyway,” Aaron muttered, turning sharply. “Don’t be weird about it.”

He left briskly, letting the door fall shut behind him. Andrew put the brush down. The tea smelled strange, a note of warmth in a space that had grown sterile with focus. He drank it slowly, its taste bitter.

Warmth spread gradually, softening the edges of the room. He flexed his fingers and let them fall slack into his lap. Whatever alchemy Aaron had brewed, it dulled things enough to make his mind feel bearable. Everything started to feel muted, distant.

Andrew didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there, staring at nothing, when muffled laughter drifted in from outside. He rose and drifted to the window. Below, he could see Aaron in the garden, trying to charm the new housemaid. His coat was unbuttoned, hair a little wind-tousled, hands working some invisible spell. The housemaid laughed, cheeks pink, and handed him a basket of yellow blooms. He accepted them like a prince in a fairytale, not like the boy who had once stood over a dead body, hands trembling.

Tilda had left them everything. Her gold. Her manor. Her twisted genius. Aaron had inherited her charisma and none of her talent. Andrew had inherited the talent and the inclination to kill her.

Balance, in the end. And maybe balance was all they were ever going to get.

****

Andrew wasn’t a well man. He knew that. The pills in his pocket proved it. Small, chalky things in glass vials that rattled in his coat pocket with every step.

Aaron measured each with precision. Sedatives to sleep. Stimulants to wake. Something in between to keep him from breaking in either direction. Andrew’s mind was a restless thing, and while Aaron hadn’t found a cure, he kept looking. Hope had a way of making people foolish.

The pills Andrew had taken today made him feel too alive, enough that he threw the windows wide despite the cold. The sky looked ready to lunge through the frames and swallow him whole, eager to munch on bones.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

Andrew painted anyway, red streaking his cheek as the floor became a battlefield of torn paper and smeared footprints. He moved from one canvas to the next without pause, dragging one across the floor and nudging another into place. His hands moved faster than his thoughts could follow, the world pouring out of him even as his body struggled to keep up.

Six unfinished pieces were already leaning against the walls. He had started them all within the last two hours, maybe less. Andrew could no longer remember. Time was sprinting and so was he.

Aaron found him in the aftermath, hours later. Maybe days. The fire had long gone out. The curtains had been drawn shut again. The room was soaked in shadow, heavy as wet wool. Andrew lay on the divan, collar half undone, pipe cold in his hand.

Aaron struck a match and lit it for him.“You going to do this again?”

Andrew drew on the pipe, inhaling slowly. “Probably.”

“You want me to stop you?”

Andrew’s gaze swept the room. Paintings were everywhere, some wet, some ripped, a few smeared past recognition. One hung crooked from a nail Andrew didn’t remember hammering in. He shook his head.

“Suit yourself.” Aaron sighed, picking up a small canvas from the floor. “It’s not even good.”

“Didn’t say it was.”

“Just making sure you’re aware.” He tilted his head, examining the brushwork. “They’re all a bit hopeless.”

Andrew scoffed. “Most things are.”

“You know you’re allowed to paint something warm.”

Andrew's mouth curved without humor. Warmth was something Aaron could only point at from a distance, like a rare animal he’d once read about. The high and mighty.

“And be accused of optimism?” he said. “I’d never recover.”

“Lovely.” Aaron set the painting aside. “I’ll commission a graveyard then.”

“Too cheerful.” Andrew waved the idea off and blew smoke toward him.

Even if he wanted to paint something warm, something that resembled hope, he wouldn’t know where to start. Hope was a shape he’d forgotten. If it had ever lived in him, it had been driven out long ago. Every attempt came out looking like parody.

“What?” Andrew said, noticing his brother’s stare.

“Don’t make this weird,” Aaron said quietly, “but I’m asking if you want dinner. With me.”

Andrew paused, the pipe idle between his fingers.

“I’ll update you on the world,” Aaron went on. “Taxes are going up which has everyone complaining. And Ichirou Moriyama has a new pet.”

Andrew’s eyebrow lifted a fraction, just enough to show he was listening.

“I’ve seen him,” Aaron went on, eyes flicking away. “Pretty. For a guy.” His mouth flattened like he was once again confronting the tragedy of sharing a face with a brother who liked men more than women, and making some slow, reluctant peace with it.

It passed for an effort. Not something Andrew needed, though it had its entertainment value.

Andrew huffed a laugh. “You want his portrait, I’ll book you in.”

“I don’t,” Aaron snapped. “I’m informing you. You should try knowing what happens outside. Or not. Doesn’t matter to me.” He cleared his throat. “Dinner’s at seven. Don’t be late.”

He left before Andrew could respond, the faintest trace of tension still in his shoulders.

***

In the months that followed, at the ripe age of twenty-five, Andrew was established. Patrons sent perfume-scented letters in a desperate attempt to buy a piece of him. Andrew ignored them all. He sold what he wanted, burned what bored him, and said yes only when it amused him.

He could feel Tilda’s legacy in the way people looked at him. The elite tried to own him as if he were a conversation piece, their greedy hands always reaching. Andrew stepped out of reach because he already knew how that story ended.

Somehow, despite everything, he'd become what Tilda once was. That alone almost made him quit. Andrew almost wished she’d been buried in the dirt instead. At least then he could have spat on it.

But the high of his career carried its own inevitable low. High society sank its claws into it, and soon a new favourite rumour was born, drifting from drawing rooms to supper tables. Word spread that Andrew Minyard, genius incarnate, had stopped painting.

The rumours multiplied fast, each more dramatic than the last. By the third retelling, he’d survived a scandalous breakup, a head injury, and a vicious argument with his brother that left him too broken to work.

To his irritation, there was some truth in it. His work hadn't stopped because of heartbreak or injury — those might have been preferable. The truth was far worse.

The truth was: nothing had happened at all.

Andrew, painter of brilliance and reluctant darling of the critics, had moved through his career with ease. And then, without cause or warning, the work abandoned him. The brush hesitated. The canvas stayed blank. His fingers moved only when forced, and even then the lines were lifeless. He couldn’t create, not even the grotesque, half-formed things he once painted just to prove something inside him was still alive.

At first, the absurdity amused him. Andrew Minyard, paralyzed before a canvas? He’d laughed.

He wasn’t laughing anymore.

Andrew was surrounded by work with meaning, reduced to oil and cloth. Once important, now decoration. Weight without substance.

He tried to sketch, but the pencil stuttered. He tried to mix color, but the palette looked unfamiliar. Andrew began pieces and abandoned them midway, unable to remember why he'd started them. Everything felt flat, as if someone had stolen the meaning and never returned it.

Painting became repetition. Blank or covered in color, it was all the same. A clean line didn't make him care. Light and shadow didn't make him whole.

Andrew looked at his own hands and no longer knew what they were for. Resentment might have helped, but resentment required energy, and he'd none left.

Still, he went to the studio. Still, he sat in the chair. Faced the canvas. Watched it watch him. Whatever had once lived in his fingertips was silent. Gone.

That night, Andrew lay stretched on the velvet chaise, one arm flung across his forehead like a corpse. The moon spilled through the stained-glass window, while the canvas loomed in the corner, blank and accusatory. The pills whispered through his blood.

Paint me, paint me, paint—

He closed his eyes.

***

Now that Andrew was, artistically speaking, vacant, he had more time for the finer things in life: lying on cold surfaces, taking strolls, staring into the void. The right pills made him unusually receptive to these activities.

Andrew drifted through the streets, humming something tuneless under his breath. One of Aaron’s newer medications buzzed in his blood. A good little pill. It had lifted Andrew off the ground and forgotten to set him back down. He felt like the top of the world, ready to outrun a racehorse just to prove a point.

Andrew had no errand worth naming. No plans, no appointments, nowhere he needed to be. Still, standing still was eating away at him, and Aaron had been droning for days about some new tincture. Or maybe it was a powder. Andrew hadn’t been listening. But he was in fine spirits today, which made it the perfect time to let his brother feel heard. After all, what better time to visit Aaron than when he was least prepared for the pleasure? Andrew turned toward the butcher’s.

Aaron worked out of the back room most evenings, though never officially. The butcher let him use the space in exchange for keeping his sons patched and upright. In return, Aaron got the organs no one wanted and a door he could shut on the world while he tried to invent medicine. Little cures for the weak, the doomed, and the broken. Andrew among them.

The city dragged its feet. Everything was too slow. Carts, people, sound itself. Even the wind felt like it had nowhere to be. Andrew slipped past it all without effort.

At a stall, he plucked an apple from a crate and tossed a coin onto the counter without slowing. He tucked the fruit into his coat, tipped an imaginary hat to a passing dog, and veered toward the square.

That was when he saw him. A flash of copper hair in the sunlight, bright as a battlefield flag. Barefoot, bleeding from the mouth, and making a scene.

Not the loud kind. The boy was quiet, almost unnervingly so for someone with blood on his face. A fat split marked the corner of his mouth, shiny and wet, but he stood as if it didn’t matter. His back was straight, his shoulders set open like a dare. He was arguing with a baker about stolen bread, although Andrew couldn’t tell who was accusing whom.

Something in Andrew’s chest gave. A crack.

The baker shouted. Someone lunged and missed. The boy bolted.

Andrew followed. He hadn’t planned to. It just happened, like all terrible ideas. Copper hair flashed ahead, easy to track in the chaos. Andrew surged after it, teeth bared in a grin he hadn’t meant to make. The world had finally snapped into motion, fast enough to keep up with him.

The boy slipped into an alley, feet skimming rain-slick stone. Andrew veered left, close on his heels with the sharp joy of a game he hadn’t agreed to but couldn’t quit. He ducked under a tangle of wet linens, skidded past a woman slapping eels onto a wooden slab. She cursed at him. He didn’t stop. His eyes were locked on the flicker of red ahead. His heart pounded. His lungs burned. He felt like he could keep running forever.

Eventually he caught up behind the old monastery, where the boy was perched on a low wall, licking blood from his lip. A fresh gash lit his cheekbone, and there was something reckless in his eyes. Andrew hated him on sight.

“You’re following me,” the boy said, one leg swinging over the ledge. His voice was calm, but alert. Ready to run again any given moment.

Andrew said nothing. He didn’t do words unless he had to. He preferred brush strokes, palettes, and the occasional knife in a rib.

“I’m not a whore, if that’s what this is,” the boy said, flicking damp hair out of his face. “I won’t fuck you.”

Andrew stared at him, dizzy with the thought. He belonged in oil, he decided. Thick, expensive paint. Gold leaf. Velvet shadows.

“I don’t want to fuck you,” Andrew lied.

The boy tipped his head. “Then what? You want to fight me?”

God, he would have loved to. That defiant look in the boy’s eyes practically begged for it. It was the kind that made Andrew want to drive a fist into his gut just to watch the air leave his lungs.

“I want to paint you,” Andrew said instead, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

The wind tugged at the laundry lines above them. A dog barked somewhere in the distance. A bell rang, faint and far away.

The boy blinked, then let out a breathless laugh. The cut on his lip split wider with it. Andrew filed it away in perfect detail: raw sienna mixed with a drop of vermilion.

“Neil,” he said eventually. “My name’s Neil.”

“Andrew.”

Neil smiled with all his teeth. “You’re a shit liar, Andrew.”

Then he turned and jumped the ledge like it was nothing, vanishing before Andrew could think to stop him.

He stared at the empty wall, chest tight and mind buzzing. His legs twitched with leftover energy, aching to chase, but he stayed where he was. Then, with something like reluctance, he turned back toward the square.

By late afternoon, he reached his brother’s butcher cave. It reeked of iron and bitter roots. Flies buzzed in the corners. Aaron was elbow-deep in rabbit intestines and looked absolutely thrilled to be interrupted.

“Don’t say anything,” Aaron said flatly, not bothering to look up.

Andrew hovered in the doorway like a live wire, pupils blown wide. He pulled an apple from his coat and dropped it into the middle of the gore.

“Boo,” he said, mockingly bright.

Aaron paused, rolled his eyes, and went back to work. “Hilarious.”

Andrew watched him reach into the carcass with his usual, unbothered precision. When that got dull, he began to circle the small room, eyes skimming shelves and jars without focus.

“I might have found a muse,” Andrew said at last.

Aaron looked up, eyes dragging over him. The diagnosis stare. Andrew hated the diagnosis stare.

“You’re in a state,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “You skipped the sedative, didn’t you?”

Andrew trailed gloved fingers over glass and steel, touching everything, holding nothing.

“You’re a shit doctor,” he said, without heat.

Aaron wiped his hands on a stained rag. Blood had dried to his wrists, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“After all the shit you gave me when I suggested it,” he said, “you finally found a muse.”

Andrew ignored him. He picked up a scalpel, turned it once, and dropped it back onto the table without care.

“Does he have syphilis,” Aaron asked, “or are you planning to give it to him?”

Andrew stopped in his tracks, considered. “He looks good in blood.”

A kidney hit him in the chest with a wet slap. Andrew hadn’t moved to dodge. It slid to the floor, leaving a faint smear on his shirt. He stared at it, unfazed. That was the shade he’d been looking for.

In his mind, Neil returned in pieces. The slash of his jaw, the shape of his lips, the movement of his throat when he swallowed. All of it in graphite and blood, sketching themselves behind Andrew’s eyes.

A smirk tugged at his mouth again. He pressed a thumb to the corner of his lips and wiped it away.

Aaron exhaled through his nose, sharp and tired. “God help him.”

“Doubt it,” Andrew said.

***

By morning, the fog in Andrew’s head had thinned. He sat upright in bed, still as stone. He was almost certain now the boy hadn’t been real.

The memory of Neil felt like a fever dream. Too clean in its symmetry, too vivid in its palette. Ironically, the boy had been alive in a way that nothing inside or around Andrew ever was. The kind of vision that only rose from chemical powder or a mind strung too tight. The buzzing that had rushed through his limbs while chasing him hadn’t vanished. It had only sunk deeper—tucked beneath the skin, waiting for a reason to unfurl.

Andrew stretched his legs over the side of the bed and cracked his neck. Something unkind twisted in his mouth. If there was a slim chance the boy wasn't a pipe dream, Andrew wanted to find him again, run him to ground, see what would happen when they collided. It wasn't even the desire that surprised him. It was that he decided to act on it.

Andrew dressed in his softest shirt, one that looked almost polite when buttoned. He brushed the dust from his coat, and even gave himself a once-over in the mirror. He looked almost approachable. Practically tame. A lie in fine stitching.

Today, he would mingle. Socialize. Charm. A real social butterfly.

Flap, flap, flap.

Andrew left just before midday and walked straight into the mouth of the city. The market was already in full bloom. Merchants barked prices, dogs chased carts, children darted between stalls. Andrew moved through it all with the kind of grace born of complete disregard.

He made conversation. Or the illusion of it. Asked after the latest gossip, listened for any mention of blood, of bread, of a boy with copper hair and a mouth full of defiance.

There was nothing. The baker had no stories. The guards at the corner spoke only of weather and drink. The fishmonger grumbled about rising taxes and how unfortunate it was that the coup against the King had failed—nothing about missing loaves or fleeing feet. Realizing his mistake, the man shoved a fish into Andrew’s hands and told him to leave. Andrew shoved it at the first person slow enough not to refuse.

Frustrated, he drifted deeper into the city's belly, where alleys knotted like veins and the air tasted of sugar. He passed into the brothel district without hesitation. If Neil was real, he might’ve ended up here. He had the face for it. The feet too, if you liked them enough.

Andrew moved past the whores leaning in doorways, draped in cheap perfume. His gaze skipped over every face like a stone skimming water. He came up empty.

Eventually, Andrew let the streets pull him further. He stopped in front of a narrow shop leaning crooked between a shoemaker and a brothel, its painted sign swinging on a single rusted hinge:

Madame Semyonov’s Remedies, Tonics, & Spiritual Cleaners

Etched beneath it in a jagged hand: No refunds.

Andrew stared at the sign for a long moment before stepping inside. He was bored enough to risk a curse. He might as well admit he was chasing a pipe dream. Maybe, if he was lucky, there was a remedy inside that could turn smoke into flesh.

The shop was as strange as its sign promised. No logic governed what was sold or where. Jars sat beside dolls, herbs beside buttons. Nothing matched.

Andrew wandered deeper into the clutter. In the back corner, he found a stuffed bear with matted fur and one eye missing. One paw was stitched in a permanent half-wave, as if greeting him from a nightmare best left buried.

He flicked its ear, then set it back beside a tin of peppermint tea and a bag of salted peanuts.

Behind the counter, a woman looked up from her newspaper. Her hair was coiled into an elaborate nest and pinned in place with long, glinting silver needles.

“Need help?” she asked, bored. “Looking for love or revenge?”

“Are those my only options?”

When she didn’t answer, Andrew nodded toward a tall, dust-choked mirror leaning against the back wall. “What does that one do?”

She barely glanced. “Haunted.”

Andrew considered it. It was Interesting enough. He’d keep it in mind for Aaron’s birthday.

The shelves farther back were crowded with strange offerings: jars of unmoving frogs, wax-sealed bottles, paper tags scribbled in tight, looping ink:

To Taste a Sugary Kiss
To End the Drought of Your Excalibur
To Grow a Braver Child
To Hear the Voice of the One You Lost

He stopped in front of a slim vial labeled that caught his attention:

To Mend the Broken

Andrew snorted. He always appreciated good satire. At least he wouldn’t be leaving empty-handed. And maybe, if he was lucky, this little miracle would rip the boy out of his head by the roots. He plucked the bottle from the shelf and went over to pay.

On the counter, the woman’s newspaper lay folded to a headline about a man arrested for selling counterfeit prescriptions to the desperate. Aaron would have had an aneurysm just glancing at it. Maybe Andrew had just found the peddler behind all those charming little miracle spells.

“That one’s strong,” the woman said, watching him. “Better drink it all.”

“Oh no,” Andrew replied. “What if I grow a soul?”

She didn’t laugh. Neither did he.

Andrew walked home, uncorked the bottle, and drank it in one swallow. It burned all the way down. He might have laughed, if his face still remembered how. It was just vodka. The broken, predictably, remained broken.

***

By nightfall, he’d traded vodka for wine and the quiet for a room full of strangers. The party was repugnant, which meant it was exquisite. Oil-lamps swung from gilded ceilings. The air was perfumed with sweat, wine, and overripe roses—decay wearing its finest pearls. Andrew stood in the corner, drinking something red and expensive, wearing black down to the gloves. Aaron had insisted they come.

“He’s a patron,” Aaron had said, like it meant something. “Ichirou Moriyama could buy us a whole wing in Florence.”

“I don’t want a wing in Florence,” Andrew had replied, deadpan. “I want a bullet in the head.”

Aaron had rolled his eyes and buttoned his coat. “Try not to spit in the soup, then.”

Now Ichirou lounged on a velvet chaise, gold-tipped cane at his side, surrounded by the usual parasites: hollow-eyed poets and noblemen who mistook collecting art for creating it. Andrew ignored them all—until he saw the copper, bright as a hoised battle flag. He’d seen it once before, in sunlight. His eyes caught and held, hooked and reeled in.

The boy wasn’t at the center of the salon, but the room leaned toward him anyway. It was the second time Andrew had seen it happen.

He watched as Neil leaned in, whispering something close to Ichirou’s ear and Ichirou laughed. Grinned, even. The same man who hadn’t smiled since his second wife threw herself into the canal. The same man who had a guest whipped in this very room.

Andrew’s grip tightened on his glass.

“What,” he asked no one in particular, “the fuck is that?”

“Ah,” said a voice beside him, “that’s Neil Josten.”

Andrew turned. Baroness Allison Reynolds stood in champagne silk and too many diamonds, the picture of self-possession.

“You haven’t seen him before?” she asked, as if Andrew had missed an eclipse. “Ichirou’s newest favorite. Slippery little thing. No title, so he sells his company to patrons but never gives too much. A tease, they say.”

Andrew stared at her.

“What?” She lifted her chin. “Be grateful I’m filling you in.”

Andrew looked back at Neil. His mouth had gone dry, tongue stuck to the roof. The boy turned and glanced up, as if feeling the weight of Andrew’s gaze pressing between his shoulder blades. Perceptive. Andrew filed that away.

When their eyes met, the noise inside Andrew’s head fell away. The room dulled to a hum behind glass. He wasn’t sure where he was standing anymore. Maybe beneath a chandelier with too much light. Maybe in an alley, dogs barking in the distance.

For a moment, the room belonged to them alone. Memory slid neatly over the present: two versions of the boy staring back at him. One barefoot, defiant. The other silk-draped, bored. Both carved from marble, pale as graveyard statues. Something in Andrew’s chest cracked like old varnish.

There was no recognition in Neil’s face, but he held Andrew’s gaze too long to be casual. Then Neil turned and went for the staircase without a word.

Andrew followed. His legs moved before his mind allowed it. Something buzzed under his skin, low and frantic. He felt like a wolf circling a kill. He slipped through the gathering, eyes fixed on the glint of copper. Neil climbed. Andrew climbed too, breath shallow, blood singing in his ears.

At the top, the hallway opened into shadow. Andrew stepped in, and only then noticed Neil was gone. The landing was empty.

Out of nowhere, a hand seized his collar. Weight shifted, and suddenly he was halfway over the railing, back arched into open air. His heart shot into his throat. His palms pressed against carved wood.

“I’ll ask once,” Neil said, low and even. “Who sent you?”

“Is that what you think this is?”

“You followed me. Twice.”

Andrew’s breath caught on the edge of a laugh. His teeth felt too sharp for his own mouth. “And I thought you said you weren’t a whore.”

Neil’s hand didn’t move. Andrew’s pulse roared in his ears, steady and fast. The drop behind him wasn’t far, but the angle made it feel endless.

“I’m not,” Neil said at last.

“You seemed comfortable enough in Moriyama’s lap,” Andrew pointed out. “You enjoy that kind of attention?”

“I’ve had worse.”

Neil’s gaze swept his face. Up close, he looked even less believable. His eyes gleamed a watercolor blue, like someone had cried them into being.

“Are you always this charming with strangers?” Neil asked, voice edged now.

“Why are you asking questions you already know the answers to?”

“Why are you following me?”

“I told you already.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Andrew shook his head. The movement was slow, disappointed, theatrical. “Is your hearing as bad as your ability to stay put?”

Neil’s jaw tightened. The air between them was tight as wire. The height loomed behind Andrew, but the scent of Neil’s skin dragged through his head, thick and slow, turning his thoughts to syrup.

“Go ahead. Let me fall.” Andrew’s gloved hand closed around Neil’s wrist, holding it there. “My brother’s bored and looking for something to yell at.”

Neil’s gaze dropped to Andrew’s hand, then back up. “Jesus Christ. There’s two of you?”

“We Minyards are one of a kind.”

Neil’s mouth twisted. “What’s he look like? I’d hate to miss the chance to avoid both of you.”

Andrew tilted his head, pretending to think. “Hard to say.” He paused. “But generally speaking, a very handsome man.”

A step creaked behind Neil. His head turned, shoulders tensing. He tried to pull back, but Andrew didn’t let go. His grip kept Neil’s wrist exactly where it was. Confusion flickered across Neil’s face, sharp enough to send a shiver down Andrew’s spine. He gave the delicate wrist a brief squeeze before letting go.

A moment later, Ichirou Moriyama appeared. His expression warmed at the sight of Neil, then cooled into polite indifference when it found Andrew.

“I trust you haven’t been giving my dear guest trouble?” Ichirou asked.

Andrew didn’t bother to answer. His attention was on the quiet, undeniable truth he’d already clocked earlier tonight: Neil had managed to collar Ichirou Moriyama.

To Andrew’s utter disgust, he was impressed. He turned, leaving both of them standing there, and took a drag from his pipe, savoring the silhouette of Neil etched into his retinas. He tried to disappear into the crowd, to let the evening carry him past it. And even though he didn’t look back, Andrew still felt Neil’s shape in the room. Eventually, it became unbearable.

Andrew searched for Aaron and found him near the far hearth, seated at the center of a gilded cluster. Three women perched close on the settee, cooing and leaning in as if he’d said something worth hearing. One patted his arm; another brushed imaginary dust from his collar. Aaron soaked in their attention like wine, cheeks flushed, mouth easy with smiles.

Their eyes met across the room. Andrew tilted his head toward the door. A silent question. Aaron lifted his glass and waved him off, casual and dismissive, as if Andrew were a servant interrupting at the wrong time. Lucky for him, Andrew was in a forgiving mood tonight.

He recognized the women. No scandal followed them. No opium rumors behind red lipstick. Aaron could charm them, impress them, bed them, so long as he left them behind like all the others.

Andrew didn’t return to the manor. Instead, he gave the coachman a different name: Eden.

By the time he reached the bar, impatience was eating at him, though he wasn’t sure for what. Eden hummed with money, and people who preferred to be unseen. He ordered something strong and drained it in a single swallow. It scorched all the way down.

He closed his eyes and saw cobalt. Or maybe ultramarine. Would it soften with titanium white?

He ordered another drink. For the first time in a long while, his hand itched. Across the room, Roland caught his glance and understood. No words necessary.

Tonight, he would scratch the itch another way. He’d take Roland in his mouth and let muscle memory drown the rest. Maybe then he’d remember the right shade. Azure? Lapis? Something between.

He swallowed the meds from the glass vial in his pocket, chased them with whisky, and followed Roland into a storage room.

When he returned to the manor, the pills were already climbing through his veins. His blood thrummed louder with each breath, rising like a tide.

True blue. True blue. True blue.

***

When the next morning came, Andrew stormed down the staircase with no clear purpose beyond momentum. His coat was slung off one shoulder, shirt half-buttoned and still damp at the collar.

Halfway down, he vaulted onto the railing. A maid carrying a tray startled, nearly dropping a teacup as she pressed against the wall. Andrew slid past, coat flaring like a cloak, and landed hard on the marble below. He pushed through the doors to the dining room, using his shoulder even though the handle was right there. The force shook the hinges. The gesture was wholly unnecessary, but immensely satisfying.

Aaron was already seated, pale from lack of sleep, hair sticking out on one side like he’d abandoned grooming halfway through.

“Good morning,” Andrew said, dropping into the chair across from him.

Aaron didn’t look up. “Is it?”

Andrew grabbed a roll from the bread basket and ripped it open, gloves sticky with jam before anyone could stop him. “Was the wine too much for your poor, delicate nerves? How many glasses was it before your dignity gave out this time?”

“I hate you,” Aaron muttered. “I genuinely do.”

The words came out quiet, tired, and without weight. It was not a declaration. It was a morning ritual. Andrew heeded it no mind. Instead he leaned back in his chair, tipping onto the rear legs just enough to tempt fate, and stared at the chandelier above them. He followed the shifting light patterns on the ceiling, watching them flicker like reflections on water.

“I’m going to the docks later,” Aaron said. “A medical paper out of Warsaw claims a certain fish reduces nerve tremors. I want to run tests.”

Andrew’s chair hit the floor with a thud. “I’ll come with you.”

Aaron frowned. “Why?”

“Maybe I’ll become a pirate.”

Aaron stared at him, tired and unfocused, the picture of a man deeply regretting last night’s wine. Andrew thought about tormenting him. It would have been easy. But restraint was noble, wasn’t it? And today, he was feeling generous.

Aaron’s jaw tightened. He looked like a man calculating risk, as if blinking too slowly might end with Andrew vanishing into the sea, armed with a sword and a manic grin. Andrew really didn’t get enough credit for the sheer discipline it took not to be worse.

“What are you talking about?” Aaron asked eventually.

“There’s a blue I can’t get right.” Andrew leaned forward. “I’ve tried cobalt. I’ve mixed ash into ochre. I’ve beaten it into the canvas until the brush snapped. Still wrong. The hue isn’t right.”

If Andrew were a liar, he would have said he imagined it. But it had burrowed deep behind his eyes and pulsed there, like a second heartbeat. Somewhere, the colour existed and it was calling for him.

“What if that shade doesn’t exist on land?” He licked jam from his thumb, the sweetness suddenly unbearable. “What if the only way to paint it right is to drown looking?”

Andrew was certain. The sea had answers, or at least a palette, and he needed that shade.

Aaron frowned. “I’m not pulling you out of the bay if you throw yourself in.”

“Then I’d better find the color before I go under.”

Aaron picked up his spoon and stirred his tea like it might grant him patience. Andrew reached for another roll, spreading it thick with jam. His gaze flicked to the window. Somewhere beyond it, the sea waited. All he needed was a ship to carry him across.

***

Andrew never boarded a ship. He never even made it to the docks. Instead, Aaron pressed two sedatives into his palm, and Andrew swallowed them without protest. They pinned him to the divan in the drawing room, the upholstery wrapping around him like a blanket.

When he woke hours later, stiff-necked and blank-eyed, the world had returned to its usual shades of gray. Andrew still wanted to paint Neil. That much hadn’t changed. But the ecstasy had drained away, taking with it the urge to swing from ship ropes. What he needed now was strategy. A plan. A reason for Neil to stay still long enough for Andrew to drag that face out of his skull and trap it on paper.

He briefly considered approaching him directly. Then discarded the idea. Neil didn’t seem like the type to respond well to direct approach. If anything, he’d take it as a threat. Or worse, as interest.

Aaron, naturally, offered no help.

“You might try asking like a civilized person,” he said, eyes never leaving his book. “It’s been known to work.”

Andrew replied with a single, gloved middle finger.

He mulled it over longer than he cared to admit, almost resigned to the idea of asking. But as if summoned by the gods of irony themselves, a letter arrived. Thick cream stock, the Moriyama emblem pressed deep into the red wax.

Andrew turned it over twice before breaking it open. The message was brief: a commission to paint one of the estate’s favored guests.

Andrew read it twice. Then once more, just for the pleasure of it, the corners of his mouth threatening to curl.

Neil was scheduled to appear in five days, and Andrew’s sentence in artistic prison was finally about to end.

He spent the time lounging, sleeping fitfully in between. He read half a book and abandoned it. In the late afternoons, he walked the gardens and watched the clouds shift.

The studio was immaculate by the end of the first day. By the second, every brush had been cleaned twice and arranged by how likely he was to actually use it.

On the third night, he woke gasping in the dark. He wiped his forehead with the back of his glove, swung his legs over the bed. Andrew sat there for a moment before crossing the room to retrieve the knife. His favorite, the one he had always reached for.

Venice had taught him to speak with his hands, and with his hands he answered. There, he'd used the blade on his own arms when the noise grew too loud.

Years later, he'd used the same blade to end Tilda’s life. So, not its first act of service, but by far the most satisfying.

These days, it sharpened pencils. He sat at his desk, shaving ribbons of wood from graphite. The blade moved smoothly, warm from his grip. In a way, it was his most reliable companion.

Andrew kept at it until his thoughts dulled and his body stilled. Only then did he return to bed.

He didn't know it then, but in two days he would meet Neil Josten in a burst of light and glass. Everything after that would go very, very wrong.

***

The day of glory had come. The afternoon was thick with heat and expectation. That morning, Andrew had chosen to forgo his medication. He sat in the studio, still and braced. His tools were already in perfect order. There was nothing left to rearrange. He'd run out of distractions hours ago.

He’d expected a servant to knock. Maybe even Aaron, reluctantly sent to deliver the guest himself while the staff hid behind their trembling boots. Instead, what he got was the sound of the window latch.

Andrew turned his head. The frame creaked open with stubborn resistance. A leg slipped over the sill, followed by a body dressed in expensive clothes. The shirt hung loose on one shoulder as if it had been put on in a hurry. Neil moved like he belonged to no one, least of all to the fabric on his back. He stepped down from the ledge with ease, landing soft against the floorboards.

“You’re early,” Andrew said, flat.

Neil shrugged, running a hand through his hair, copper curls catching the light. He looked like he’d stepped down from the Sistine Chapel, left to wander in silk.

“No one stopped me,” Neil replied. “Thought I’d save us the trouble.”

His gaze swept the room with practiced ease, corner to corner, until it found Andrew. Something in Andrew’s chest tightened without permission. He considered biting his tongue off just to break the spell. Instead, he reached for a pencil.

“Sit,” Andrew said.

“I thought I was here for a portrait, not a sketch.”

“Sit,” Andrew repeated. He wanted to start small. Graphite didn’t mock him the way his brush did.

Neil obeyed, or close enough. Instead of the chair by the easel, he crossed to the divan. His body sank into the cushions, limbs draped with effortless grace. He lounged like someone who had never had to earn the space he occupied.

Andrew started with Neil’s hair, the soft curls brushing against the clean curve of his face. His pencil traced the slope of Neil’s nose, paused at the mouth, then drifted to the shadows beneath his lashes.

Neil stirred. A shift of weight. One leg drawn up. Fingers curling, then loosening. With each movement, the silk slipped further, sliding down his shoulder as if gravity had more claim on him than modesty.

Andrew stopped mid-line. “Do you sit still for anything?”

“I’m trying,” Neil sighed. “Sitting still isn’t exactly my strength.”

“Why the change of heart about being painted, then?”

“I was bored. Figured it might make you stop chasing me.”

“Bored?” Andrew scoffed. “Is that why you were raiding alleys barefoot, dressed like a beggar?”

Neil frowned, meeting his gaze head-on. “That was a misunderstanding. I intend to pay. You look like you haunt the orphanage you set on fire. What’s your excuse?”

Andrew leaned back, faintly amused. “Do you ever shut up?”

Neil considered it. “I don’t think so.”

Andrew reached for a new sheet. His pencil moved faster now, tracing the tension in Neil’s wrist, the curve of his hip where the trousers had slipped low. He forced himself to focus. But Neil wouldn’t stay still long enough to finish any sketch. The lines blurred; he flipped the page and began again.

By the end of the hour, eight half-finished sketches littered the table. Not one complete.

“You done yet?” Neil asked.

Andrew studied him for a long moment. Then he set the pencil down. His fingers were cramping. His neck ached.

“No,” he said. “Not even close.”

Neil stretched, sinking deeper into the divan. His gaze drifted around the studio before sliding back to Andrew. “Why the gloves?” he asked suddenly.

Andrew’s gaze dropped to his own hands. The question landed heavier than it should have. He barely took the gloves off anymore. Not since—

Well. Since.

“I’ll tell you,” he said after a moment, “if you tell me the real reason you agreed to be painted.”

Andrew didn’t bother adding by me. The silence filled it in for him.

“A truth for a truth,” Neil murmured. “Alright.”

He weighed his words, then delivered them plain. “I don’t like being touched.”

Simple. Like truth often is. The gloves muted the world enough to make it bearable.

Neil nodded slowly, like he understood. Which was a pity. Andrew might have liked him better if he didn’t.

“Your turn,” he said.

“Ichirou asked for a portrait, and I owed him one.”

“Interesting,” Andrew said. “You seemed to hate the idea, considering you nearly tossed me over a railing for it.”

Neil’s smirk came slow and crooked. “I hate owing people more.”

Andrew froze, the answer sliding into place with infuriating clarity. Neil’s silence was a lure, daring him to see how deep it went.

“So you chose the one painter who couldn’t paint,” he said.

Clever enough to tempt. Dangerous enough to be interesting. The alarm bells in Andrew’s head whispered: swallow him whole before he swallows you.

“There wasn’t a better artist for the job,” Neil said, all false innocence. “It had to be someone who’d never get around to finishing it.”

Andrew’s jaw clenched. The copper taste of blood bloomed on his tongue.

“You’ve been digging then,” he said. “Must have made for a fun little investigation.”

“Ichirou mentioned a few things.” Neil shrugged, unbothered. “How you spent your childhood in Venice under the Spears. A staircase your mother didn’t survive. And now here you are, following her path.”

Andrew scoffed. “Her path led straight to the bottom of the stairs. There wasn’t anything to follow.”

He didn’t mention sliding the knife into Tilda’s ribs before letting her fall. Or Aaron bursting in at the noise, dropping to his knees beside her. Andrew had stayed at the top of the stairs, apart. Aaron, at the bottom, left to grieve what Andrew had done. Fury against indifference across a staircase that suddenly felt endless.

Whatever Neil had expected, it wasn’t that. His smile vanished. The shine in his gaze went hard, pinning Andrew in place with unflinching intensity. If Andrew were a lesser man, he might have squirmed.

Instead, he reached for another pencil.

***

The session ended sooner than Andrew would’ve liked. Neil left with his eyes still bright from whatever half-argument they hadn’t finished. It wasn’t until Andrew began tidying the studio that he realized Neil had found his own way to the front door. No one had led him, yet he’d moved through the house like someone who already mapped it.

The realization left him dizzy, his stomach swooping with something warm. He reached for a fresh sheet and began tracing the arc of Neil’s neck as it might bend beneath imagined hands. He sketched the slender line of tendon, the subtle rise of his Adam’s apple. Then came the place Andrew had wanted to touch most. Just beneath the ear, where the skin was soft and warm and alive with blood.

Somewhere between sketch eight and twelve, his breath had gone shallow. He was hard, uncomfortably so, pressed tight against his trousers.

The last drawing was the cleanest. Neil’s head tilted back, lips slightly parted, throat long and bare—offered.

Andrew exhaled, slow and shaking. He stripped off his right glove, fingertips stiff as they traced the neck on the page. The charcoal blurred under his touch, sticky with sweat. His hand slid lower to the faint outline of Neil’s chest. If he focused, he could almost feel it breath beneath his palm.

The other glove came off. His bare hand went to his belt, pausing for a breath before undoing the buckle. He was already wet at the tip, the base twitching with every pulse of blood.

Andrew rubbed slowly at first, letting the friction ease the ache, letting Neil’s sketched throat blur with want. His tongue found the familiar spot inside his cheek, the place he bit to avoid kissing every time Neil tilted his head or yawned. He imagined that sound breaking, catching, turning to moans.

Andrew’s hand moved in slick, steady strokes, faster now. His breath came ragged, eyes locked on the sketch. He wanted his teeth on that throat. His name in Neil’s mouth. His mark stamped over every inch Neil dared to bare. He imagined him gasping beneath him, breathless and wanting, saying Andrew like it was the only word he knew.

The edge came sharp. His movements turned rough, almost punishing, like he hated himself for wanting it. His other hand flattened across the page, thumb dragging along the faint charcoal vein.

“Fuck,” he hissed between clenched teeth.

The pressure coiled up his spine, clenched in his gut, flared through his hips. He bit back another curse, and when release came it was violent—shuddering, hot, spilling across Neil’s throat and collarbones in thick white streaks.

Andrew stayed bent over the desk, trembling, fingers still resting on the ruined paper.

By morning, Aaron would find him ink-smudged and feverish, surrounded by a dozen renditions of a boy he barely knew. Andrew would claim it was for the commission. And Aaron, ever the brother, would pretend to believe him.

***

There was a rhythm to their sessions now. Neil sat, sprawled, or leaned, depending on how contrary he felt that day. Andrew painted in silence, pausing only to switch pencils or nudge a limb into place.

Sometimes Neil talked, and Andrew let him. It was always mundane things. A stray cat he fed, a book he liked, the color of sunrise over the roof tiles. It was as if collecting the most ordinary things granted him some new kind of thrill.

That day, Andrew stood in the studio with his coat already on, one glove half-pulled into place, jaw tight. Neil was late. Not fashionably but late in a way that bent Andrew’s mood into something brittle. He'd waited for nearly two hours, trying not to look at the door every time the wind sweeped through the corridor or a servant’s step echoed past. He pulled the second glove tight and turned toward the door.

Andrew walked down the corridor until he heard voices, faint at first, then clearer as he approached.

The dining room doors stood slightly ajar. Aaron was planted at the head of the table, arms crossed, spine drawn taut with disdain. Across from him, Neil sat sideways in a chair, lazily biting into a pear. Juice slid down his wrist, soaking the lace at his cuff, the sort of thing that would have sparked a scandal in a better household.

“I was saving that pear,” Aaron said, voice flat with the effort of staying civil.

“You left it out on the table,” Neil pointed out.

“It was the last one.”

“That’s not my fault.”

Neil took another slow bite, watching Aaron as if this were far more entertaining than whatever had brought him here in the first place.

“I was going to eat it after I finished reviewing patient notes.”

Neil glanced at the fruit, then shrugged. “Consider this a reminder to live in the moment.”

Aaron’s stare sharpened. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

A floorboard creaked as Andrew stepped in.

“There you are,” Aaron said, relief quickly hardening into annoyance. “Your guest stole my pear. I think he might be a thief.”

“I’m not a thief. The door was open.”

“Was not.”

“Well,” Neil said mildly, “it is now.”

Andrew looked at him evenly. “You’re late.”

Neil swallowed and absently licked the edge of his thumb, a careless little gesture that made Andrew’s mouth go dry.

“Got distracted,” Neil said.

Andrew tilted his head toward the door. “Come on.”

Neil rose and followed without protest. The sound of him keeping pace was unexpectedly satisfying. It was enough to leave Andrew a little drunk on the novelty of it.

At the door, Neil paused to glance back. “The pear wasn’t even that good,” he offered, as if that helped.

Andrew caught his wrist and pulled him forward. Even he didn’t feel like facing Aaron’s fury head-on.

***

On his free day, Andrew made the trip to Eden. The carriage rattled over wet stone. Rain slapped the windows in crooked streaks, blurring the city into something formless. Behind the slats, the coachman whistled.

Bored enough to start a fight, Andrew joined in, deliberately off-key and slow enough to warp the rhythm. He hoped something violent might happen, just enough to fill a couple of minutes. But instead of taking offense, the coachman began to harmonize, as if they were suddenly in on something together.

Andrew considered throwing himself out the door just to end it. Before he could act on the impulse, he caught a shadow in the corner of his eye against the rain-smeared glass. A figure with narrow shoulders and a gait he recognized moved past. The shadow turned a corner and slipped between buildings, gone in an instant.

“Out past his curfew.” Andrew clicked his tongue. “Didn’t anyone tell him that’s when the monsters come out?”

He knocked on the roof. The carriage slowed, but Andrew was already stepping off. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a coin, and flicked it toward the coachman without bothering to look. The man caught it in midair, his reflexes sharper than Andrew expected from someone half-asleep behind the slats.

The man barked a laugh and shouted, “Let’s do this again sometime!”

Andrew answered with a whistle, aiming for something that roughly translated to fuck off.

The alleys were quiet at this hour, lit only by the spill of gas lamps reflected in the shine of puddles. Andrew followed with a focus that shut out everything else, turning corner after corner. He knew he was getting closer when a familiar sweetness reached him, the scent that seemed to belong to Neil alone. It filled his lungs and settled at the back of his throat until his mouth began to water.

Eventually Andrew found Neil crouched behind a stack of broken crates, his spine curled in and his head lowered. Andrew stepped closer until his shadow swallowed Neil whole.

“One of these days,” he said, amused, “you should stop making me chase you.”

The only answer he got was the tremor in Neil’s shoulders. When Andrew crouched in front of him, he saw the bruising grip Neil had on his own arms. His breathing was uneven, as if his lungs couldn’t decide whether to keep trying.

Andrew placed a firm hand against the side of his neck. “Breathe.”

Neil dragged in a ragged breath. Then another. His eyes lifted, glassy and unfocused.

“Stop it already,” Andrew said, pressing his gloved fingers harder into his skin.

The panic ebbed by degrees. At some point Neil loosened enough to lean back against the wall, his gaze slowly finding focus again. Andrew let go and rose to his feet, his joints cracking.

“Go home. Good little boys should be under their blankets by now.”

Neil’s voice was rough. “Where are you going?”

Andrew lit his pipe, filling his lungs with smoke until Neil’s scent slipped from his senses. “Go home.”

Neil rose, wiped his palms on his trousers, and fell into step beside him without invitation or apology.

Andrew let him. A rabbit wandering straight into the wolf’s jaws, all trust and no sense. He could hardly refuse, not with his teeth itching for the first bite. Maybe tonight he would swallow him whole.

They walked in silence, their footsteps the only sound echoing through the wet streets. The rain had stopped by the time they reached Eden. They pushed through the door, leaving the damp behind and stepping into a room thick with smoke and the low murmur of voices. Lamps spilled honeyed light across dark wood and velvet. Somewhere behind a partition, a piano played something slow, each note drifting lazily through the haze.

Roland looked up from rinsing a glass, sleeves rolled high. He smiled “Welcome. Didn’t expect to see you again so soon. I could sneak away in fifteen minutes if you're willing to wait.”

“Just drinks,” Andrew waved him off.

Roland smirked, reaching for the gin. “That’s what they always say.”

He set down two glasses, his attention shifting to Neil. His grin sharpened, a flash of appetite behind it.

Andrew knocked on the bar. “Careful, Roland.”

Roland ignored him. “Tell me,” he said to Neil, voice just loud enough to carry, “does Andrew tie you up like the rest of us, or does that sweet face earn you special treatment?”

Neil frowned, confusion breaking his composure. Andrew picked up both glasses and shoved one into Neil’s hand. He hooked a finger into Neil’s waistband and pulled. Without sparing Roland a glance, he steered them through the press of bodies toward an empty table in a quieter corner.

Andrew sat across from him. “I can hear you think.”

“What did Rola—”

“You’re a long way from home,” Andrew interrupted. He leaned back in his seat. “Ichirou must be beside himself. Does he keep you on a leash, or does he just expect you to heel?”

Neil’s expression hardened. “I stay with Ichirou because he likes the company.”

Andrew turned the glass in his hand, liquor catching the lamplight. “Company,” he repeated. “How generous of you.”

“It’s not like that.”

Andrew took a slow sip. “Isn’t it?”

“He’s never touched me.”

Andrew’s eyebrow lifted, irritation prickling under his skin. “Not even a finger on that silk-soft skin? Not a single taste? Hard to believe.”

“Never,” Neil said, voice sharp. “I’m not interested. I just needed a place to stay.”

Andrew let the silence stretch for a moment. Then he drained his drink in one swallow and reached for Neil’s untouched one. “Why?”

Neil’s jaw tightened. “My father’s a viscount with old money and a cruel streak. He wanted an obedient son. The third time he threatened to carve that role into me, I ran. Now I’m a runaway with nothing to my name.”

“And Ichirou took you in.” Andrew concluded. “Saint that he is.”

“I tried to pickpocket him,” Neil explained, a challenge in his tone. “He caught me and told me if I wanted something, I should ask for it. Then he brought me home.”

“So he’s the one dressing you in lace and pearls.”

Neil shrugged. “It makes him happy.”

Andrew’s mouth curved with cruelty. “And what does it make you?”

“Warm.”

“So you’re bought.”

“I’m kept,” Neil corrected, leaning forward until his forearms rested on the table. “But enough about me. You asked for a truth. I’ve given you plenty tonight. Now it’s my turn.”

Andrew’s eyes narrowed.

“What did Roland mean when he said you’d tie me up?”

Neil held his gaze and waited. Andrew reached across the table, his fingers catching Neil’s chin before settling his thumb against the center of Neil’s lips

“Don’t ask questions you can’t afford the answers to,” Andrew said, his voice low.

He imagined what it would feel like to press his bare thumb into the heat of Neil’s mouth—the soft give of his tongue, the slow slick of spit gathering against the pad of his thumb. Would Neil close his lips and explore the skin, or hold perfectly still and let Andrew set the pace?

“My head’s full of pills,” Andrew murmured. “Ask me another time.”

He let his thumb linger a moment longer before letting go

“Why do you take them anyway?” Neil asked. “I never know which version of you I’m going to get.”

“Neil, Neil, Neil.” Andrew shook his head, disappointed. “You’re missing the bigger picture.”

“And what would that be?”

“Who knows.” Andrew shrugged. “Ask Aaron. I just take the pills.”

“You really don’t care what they do to you?”

“Not especially. It keeps things interesting.”

“For who?”

“For me.”

Neil exhaled sharply. “You’re impossible.”

Andrew leaned back in his chair, accepting the compliment. Neil watched him as if weighing something.

“At least you have a family,” he murmured.

Andrew almost laughed. “Family? Who gives a fuck about that.”

“Easy for you to say. I just want a place I can go back to.”

“Then by all means,” Andrew said, “consider yourself family if it makes you happy.”

Neil looked up, something unguarded flickering across his face. “Huh?”

“If it means I get to keep painting you, then sure. Part of the family.”

Neil’s mouth twitched toward a smile, the slightest color in his cheeks. “Weird family.”

“The weirdest,” Andrew agreed, standing. He tilted his head toward the bar. “Come on, kit. First duty of the youngest is warm milk before bed.”

To Andrew’s amusement, Neil followed, expression unreadable except for the faintest trace of that damn flush.

***

The days blurred, and the sessions blurred with them. When Neil felt like talking, he filled the room with a steady stream of words; when he didn’t, he slept or read from a book he never explained. Andrew absorbed his presence without question.

Each time a session ended, Andrew reached into his pocket for a pill and dry-swallowed it before the floor could lurch up to meet him. It kept him aloft just enough, hovering above the drop.

The downside was the jitter. Today, he lay in the grass as if bracing for the earth to tip, watching clouds blur past like startled white rabbits.

Gravel crunched behind him. Aaron came to stand over him, hands behind his back, shoulders set in that narrow place between confrontation and conversation. They stayed like that for a while.

Eventually, Aaron spoke, the words sour. “You know your stray thinks I should stop.”

Andrew glanced at him. His stray. He liked the sound of it. The pills hummed in his blood, eager to correct him:

Ours. Ours. Ours.

“With the meds,” Aaron clarified.

“And suddenly Neil’s a physician.”

Aaron ignored the jab. "I was thinking about it anyway. Might be doing more harm than good."

Aaron was quiet before reluctantly adding, “He might be right.”

The words sounded like they had cost him.

“Tragic.”

“I’m serious.”

“I noticed.” Andrew waved him off. “Do whatever you want.”

Aaron extended a hand. Andrew took it and let himself be pulled into a sitting position, the world threatening to tilt.

“The weather,” Aaron said. “What’s your prediction?”

Andrew considered. History had rarely delivered anything pleasant.

“Rain,” he said, a flicker of amusement at his mouth. “Enough to flood the house. The town. Probably the world.”

“Mm. Biblical.” Aaron nodded solemnly. “Good thing I bought this, then.”

He pulled something from behind his back and, without ceremony, dropped it onto Andrew’s head.

A pirate hat. Cheap. Possibly stolen. It flopped over Andrew’s left eye.

Aaron cleared his throat. “Arr,” he said, painfully serious.

Andrew sat still, the hat askew, the ground askew, his mind askew.

“Hilarious,” he said flatly.

Aaron shrugged. “I try.”

Andrew reached for Aaron’s hand again and used it to pull himself fully to his feet, staggering toward the manor.

“Alright,” he said, mock-serious. “From now on, no more calling him stray. He’s family.”

Aaron looked appalled. “You’re not serious.”

“Deadly,” Andrew said. “Nice voices, friendly words. Can’t have family killing each other. Bad for morale.”

He ignored Aaron’s aggravated protests, tipped the hat into place, and walked into the manor.

***

As soon as the happy little pills faded, Andrew remembered why he took them at all. There was a threshold. Past a certain depth of exhaustion, his body forgot how to stay solid. His shoulders sagged. His arms hung heavy. Thought disconnected from thought. He unraveled quietly, hands pressed to his face like they could stop him from slipping out of himself.

Maybe if Andrew let go, he could turn to liquid. Spill down his chest. Splash across the floor like a dropped bucket of water. Soak into the cracks, slip through the boards, vanish before anyone thought to call his name.

The air in his studio grew too heavy to breathe. The window resisted, but not enough to matter. He forced it open and climbed through.

Ivy clung to the outer wall, thick and tangled from years of growth. Andrew’s hands found the vines. His feet pressed to the narrow ledge. The stone crumbled under pressure, but he didn’t slow. If it gave way, it gave way.

He reached the roof. Flat, weather-stained, littered with old leaves. He crossed it without hesitation and sat at the edge, legs dangling over the drop.

His fingers shook lighting the pipe. The flame caught on the second try. Andrew had never liked heights, but the feeling they gave him kept drawing him back. His body felt numb. Only his heart kept moving, thudding hard like it hadn’t noticed the rest of him had already given up.

It was beating so hard he half-wondered if leaning forward might shake it loose. That it might burst out of his ribs and splatter on the stone below like an overripe fruit. The image entertained him so much it almost felt worth trying.

He stayed there for hours, watching the sky cycle through its palette of greys. The rustle of leaves behind him didn’t startle him, though it caught him off guard. Neil appeared, stepped to his side, and lowered himself onto the roof without a word.

“How did you find me?”

Neil shrugged. “I saw the smoke. Figured it was worth checking.”

They let silence stretch between them, comfortable and easy.

“What did Roland mean when he said you’d tie me up?” Neil asked, tone casual, but his eyes tracking every flicker of Andrew’s expression. “I thought you just wanted to paint me.”

Andrew wondered how long Neil had stayed awake gnawing on that question. What a pitiful sight. He almost felt like needling him, but maybe he was getting soft.

“I do,” Andrew said. “Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t blow you.”

Neil blinked. His mouth made a perfect, stunned oh.“You like me.”

Andrew scoffed. “I’d bury you six feet under just to never see you again. I’d dig the grave with a knife if I had to. You mean nothing to me.”

The answer seemed to settle something in Neil, as if it made more sense than anything else ever had. Andrew despised that the boy made no sense in return.

Neil ignored the sour mood, scooting closer and reaching for Andrew’s hands.

“Can I?” he asked, voice low now. Intentional.

“Can you?” Andrew echoed.

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”

Answers like that made Andrew want to wrap his hands around Neil’s delicate neck and squeeze until the breath left his body. To make good on every threat. To bury him so deep his name would rot before anyone remembered it. Instead, Andrew just nodded once.

Neil took Andrew’s right hand with quiet care. He turned it over and slid his thumb inside the cuff, brushing the bare skin of Andrew’s palm. The touch was feather light but it sent an electric shiver straight through Andrew's spine.

He worked the glove down slowly, inch by inch, never rushing. By the time it slipped free, Andrew’s breath was shallow, his skin buzzing, every nerve awake and waiting.

Neil lingered, then moved to the other hand. When both gloves were off, he cradled them, tracing the bones with feather-light strokes.

“I don’t know what it means,” Neil murmured, “to like someone properly. But I think with you I could find out.”

Andrew scoffed, pipe slipping from his mouth as smoke curled between them. His fingers tangled in Neil’s curls, gripping like a claim.

“Yes or no,” Andrew said, low.

The second yes left Neil’s mouth, Andrew’s tongue slipped in. The kiss was filthy, unrestrained. He didn’t ease in. Tongue immediately tasting, taking, dragging against Neil’s until their mouths were a slick mess of spit and breath.

Maybe it was the only chance Andrew would get to taste him, and he made it count. His thumb pressed hard against the pulse in Neil’s throat, not choking, but close. Just enough to remind them both what kind of tension sat between want and war.

It felt like only seconds before Andrew pulled back, breath ragged, a strand of spit still connecting their mouths. Neil’s eyes were glassy, chest heaving. And still, that smug, slow smirk curled like a challenge.

Andrew took the pipe between his teeth, struck another match with unsteady fingers, and breathed the flame to life.

***

After that night, they found their way back to the rooftop more often. Sometimes they watched the stars. Sometimes they kissed each other senseless but never went any further. And sometimes, when their guard slipped at the same time, they tucked their secrets under each other’s tongues.

On nights like these, Neil whispered about his mother’s heavy hands and the way they struck without warning, and Andrew told him in return the blood-soaked truths that lived at the tip of his knife.

Slowly, they mapped each other without needing their hands. And one night, Andrew told him how Drake carved the boy out of him one inch at a time—small, rehearsed invasions, hands where they didn’t belong, ulterior motives dressed as care. How Drake bent him at the joints and sanded down whatever resisted. Bit by bit, until the boy who had stepped off the train in Venice was gone.

The words spilled faster than he could catch them. Truth hit the air and splattered like water, pooling at his feet until he was knee-deep in it.

He told Neil how Drake used to cover his mouth, trapping the protests and curses, pushing every plea back down his throat until they lodged there like shards of glass.

Andrew told him about the letters, too. Stupid, hopeful things he wrote to Tilda, asking to come home. Each was shorter than the one before it, and each was met with the same silence.

The water kept rising with every sentence, cold and pressing against his ribs until it was hard to breathe.

And on the worst nights, because there were always worst nights, Andrew could still hear them in his head. Drake and Tilda, overlapping in that perfect little harmony:

Children should be seen, not heard.

Curt. Final. A lullaby for the well-behaved.

Andrew expected to see pity on Neil’s face. Horror, maybe. Something fragile he could hold against him later, but there was none of that.

Neil looked furious. His mouth was a hard line, shoulders wound tight. There was no room for pity in him.

“What happened to him?” Neil asked, low through his teeth.

Andrew gave him an unimpressed stare. “He came back a few months later. Said he wanted to see the twins.” Andrew paused, just long enough to sound thoughtful. “Aaron found him trying his usual shit. We let the fish eat what was left.”

Turned out he and Aaron weren’t so different after all. Their hands were stained the same shade, only by different people.

“Good,” Neil spat. The word cracked in his throat. “I would’ve crossed the goddamn sea and strangled him myself.”

And just like that, the water broke. The words, the weight, the pressure was gone. Evaporated in the heat of Neil’s rage. Andrew could feel air fill his lungs again. Just someone angry for him, not because of him.

It startled something deep in his chest. Neil was staring at him like he might actually make good on the threat, so Andrew flicked his forehead.

“Worry about yourself,” he said dryly.

Whatever cracked inside Andrew, he chose to believe it was a rib. Those mended themselves eventually.

***

After countless confessions, they drifted into lazier pursuits, letting the hazy summer sun carry them through the days.

Andrew sat on the swing, one foot dug into the dirt to keep it moving. His collar hung loose against his neck. The sun touched everything but him. He stayed in the stretch of shade cast by the tree, where Neil leaned with an apple in his hand and too much ease in his spine. Over the summer, he’d gone sun-kissed, his skin the kind of tan that seemed like it would taste warm if Andrew ever bit it.

Neil spun the apple between his fingers and lifted it to his mouth, lips brushing the skin. His teeth were a breath from closing when the apple vanished.

Aaron appeared out of nowhere, his steps silent on the grass. That it even caught Andrew off guard said enough. He plucked the fruit without effort and walked a few paces before stopping to take a bite.

The crunch cut through the garden. Aaron glanced back, smug and flushed, like he’d just rolled out of someone’s bed. His shirt was rumpled, one button undone, and a faint pink mark lingered on his jaw that definitely wasn’t from the sun. He chewed like a man very pleased with himself.

“You don’t even like apples,” Andrew said, unimpressed.

Aaron shrugged. “Don’t care. Call it payback.”

He strolled toward the hedges, back straight, pace deliberately lazy. Just before the leaves swallowed him, he called, “Careful. Any cozier and I might get the wrong idea.”

Andrew’s gaze stayed flat. “I’m not you.”

“Then prove it, brother,” Aaron shot back, before vanishing into the green.

Neil’s frown lingered. “What was that about?”

“How would I know what rattles around in that overcomplicated head of his?” Andrew sighed.

He patted his thigh, and Neil settled his head there without hesitation. Andrew’s bare fingers drifted into his curls, twirling one gently before letting it spring back. Neil sighed, warm against him, and heat stirred low in Andrew’s body.

“I could stay like this,” Neil murmured, sun-soft, his lips brushing against the fabric of Andrew’s pants.

Neil wasn’t making it easy for him. Andrew reined himself in, his hands finding Neil’s curls to keep from thinking about everything else his body wanted to do. He twirled them, releasing each in slow, idle loops. Before long, Neil was asleep.

***

Andrew had set the easel and sharpened the charcoal. He’d adjusted the stool three times before Neil finally stepped out from behind the screen, unhurried and bare-legged.

Neil pulled his tunic over his head, the fabric dragging against his skin before sliding free. He let it drop without looking at Andrew. The light slid over him and caught on the scars carved across his chest and ribs. They should have made him look fragile. Instead, they turned him into something Andrew couldn’t look away from.

The charcoal slipped from Andrew’s fingers and hit the floor.

“Can I,” he asked.

Neil’s mouth curved slightly. “Yes.”

Andrew stepped in, tugging his gloves off. His fingertips rested on Neil’s shoulder and drifted down, tracing scars like he was learning a map. The contact sent a shudder down Andrew’s spine. He flattened his palm against smooth skin, sliding lower over the slope of a rib, the jut of a hipbone, until his fingertips found the silk-smooth skin just above the bare line of Neil’s thigh. Heat seeped into his palm, making his head spin. Neil’s breath caught, loud in the stillness.

Andrew bent his head and pressed his mouth to a scar beneath Neil’s collarbone. His tongue traced the uneven line, tasting salt and skin. Neil’s hand slid to the back of his neck, fingers curling in his hair. Andrew looked up, searching for hesitation, and found none.

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he murmured.

“I will. But I don’t.”

The canvas could wait. The whole fucking world could wait. Andrew dropped to his knees. The floor was cold through his trousers, but Neil’s body was warm everywhere. He gripped Neil’s thighs, marveling at how they felt in his hands, and looked up at him. Neil’s lips parted, his eyes fixed on Andrew’s.

“Yes,” Neil whispered.

Andrew took him into his mouth, savoring every inch, tongue flattening to taste him fully. He kept the pace lazy at first, letting Neil feel each swirl of his tongue, each wet drag. When Neil’s hips twitched, Andrew went deeper, lips sealing tighter, chasing every stuttered breath, every sound Neil couldn’t hold back. Andrew held onto every bit of it, tucking the moment somewhere he knew he’d come back to.

Andrew had never bowed to anything in his life. But he could stay here forever, on his knees, chasing every moan until it lived against his tongue. Then Neil said his name in a way that made Andrew’s own cock harden instantly, the sound hitting him like a fist to the gut.

Neil’s thighs trembled under his palms. When he came, Andrew swallowed, sucking him through each shudder until his legs gave out. Neil slid down the wall, breath ragged.

Andrew followed, pressing a hand gently over Neil’s eyes while the other went to his own trousers. He stroked himself rough and fast, teeth closing over the pulse in Neil’s neck. He licked and sucked there in time with the movement of his hand, every sense filled with Neil — his taste, his scent, his warmth, the low voice urging him on.

It pushed Andrew over the edge. His hips jerked, spilling hot over his own hand and across Neil’s stomach. Andrew pulled his hand back and kissed Neil hard. The kiss was messy and open, tasting like everything they’d just shared and everything else waiting for them in the hush of the night.

***

The morning left Andrew calm and content. He sat at the kitchen table, hair mussed in every direction, traces of sleep still on his face. A cup of cocoa steamed by his elbow. His plate was stacked high with toast, most of it serving only as a vehicle for the thick layer of jam he spread with careless devotion.

Aaron would have called it jam with toast, but Aaron wasn't here, and that made it taste even better.

The quiet shattered as the kitchen door slammed open. Aaron barreled in like a summoned devil, a newspaper clenched in his fist.

“You,” he barked, “are not going to believe this.”

Andrew calmly reached for another slice of toast as Aaron slapped the paper onto the table, nearly knocking over the cocoa.

“Page three,” he hissed.

Andrew turned it with sticky fingers, chewing slowly. The headline read:

FAILED COUP AT THE RO YAL PALACE. CROWN PRINCE STILL MISSING
A palace aide confirms the king’s son disappeared prior to the insurrection attempt…

Beneath the headline was a sketch. The lines weren’t perfect, but the face was unmistakable. Andrew would recognize it anywhere.

A chair scraped beside him. Neil had entered without a sound, a trick Andrew still hadn’t figured out. He sat like it was any other morning and reached for the toast.

Aaron stared at him; Andrew kept his eyes on the paper.

Mid-bite, Neil glanced between them. “What?”

Aaron’s voice was ice. “Oh, I don’t know. Your Highness Nathaniel Abram Wesninski. How generous of you to join the commoners.”

Neil froze with the toast halfway to his mouth. His gaze dropped to the newspaper. The color drained from his face so fast it was almost impressive.

“Oh,” he said.

Aaron scoffed. “Oh? That’s all you’ve got? You’re the missing prince, and all you have to say for yourself is oh? Were you planning on telling us before or after we all got hanged for treason?”

Neil didn’t respond. He set down the toast, stood, and walked out, bare feet echoing down the hall.

Aaron turned on Andrew, seething. “Throw him out. Or hell—let's turn him in and be done with it.”

Andrew stood, finally. He wiped his fingers on a napkin and looked at Aaron. “We’re not doing any of that,” he said.

“What do you mean we—” Aaron stopped short. His eyes widened. “Oh my god. Are you fucking him?”

Andrew clicked his tongue. “I’m not.”

“Bullshit. He’s going to drag us down with him. This was supposed to be our life. You and me. Not him. You made the damn rules.”

“If we’re keeping score,” Andrew said, “how about the maid sneaking out of your bed before sunrise? I warned you. You’re not half as subtle as you think.”

Aaron’s mouth opened to protest, but Andrew slid a gloved finger under his jaw and pushed it shut. “Children should be seen, not heard. He’s family. Your little side piece isn’t.”

They stared at each other. They always ended up like that. Words made them clash. Silence widened the gap. There was no winning.

Andrew turned first. But before he reached the door, Aaron’s voice followed, quiet and bitter.

“He’s not family. Not the way you look at him. I hope he drags you down with him.”

Andrew left him simmering and went after Neil, his footsteps echoing Neil’s until he found him.

Not well hidden. Not hidden at all.
A blanket was pulled over his head on the narrow bed, the kind of half-assed cover that could be moping or a child’s idea of disappearing.

Andrew shut the door. “That’s pathetic.”

“Get out.”

“A viscount, huh?”

The blanket shifted, uncovering one eye. Neil’s hair was flat on one side, sticking up on the other. His mouth was a hard line.

“That part was a lie. The rest was true.”

Andrew stared at him, blank-faced. “You tried to kill your own father. How touching.”

Neil bit his lip, weighing his words. “He’s a cruel man. Never meant to be a father, least of all wear a crown. I tried to stop him, but—” his fists clenched “—Nathaniel died that day. I did everything I could, and I still failed.”

He looked up, eyes blazing. “I hate my blood. If I could drain every drop, I would. I spent years locked in those palace halls, and for once, I want to live. I’d do anything for it.”

Light caught in his eyes. He looked braced for war. Andrew pushed off the door, stepping close enough that Neil had to tilt his head back.

“You’re shit at hiding,” Andrew said.

“Maybe.” Neil’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Or maybe I wanted you to find me.”

That was the thing about Neil — he said the kind of things that caught you off guard, left you stumbling over your own feet.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

Neil’s eyes were bright and burning, the blue molten from within. Andrew was a simple man; no one stood against the weapon of Neil Josten’s gaze, least of all him.

“Like what?” Neil asked, genuinely puzzled.

Andrew didn’t bother explaining. He sighed and dropped onto the bed beside him. His stomach was full of jam and the morning had been more turbulent than he liked. A nap seemed reasonable. He pulled the blanket-wrapped bundle closer. Neil’s scent tickled his nose, tugging his eyelids down.

“I’ll have to leave,” Neil murmured under the blanket. “The city, maybe the country.”

“Don’t.”

“Not really my choice.” Neil said bitter. “It's in the newspaper.”

“I have a manor in France,” Andrew said. His words were slow, lazy. “You can hide there.”

Neil was quiet long enough for Andrew to drift close to sleep. “You will get killed on your own,” Andrew added, already halfway under.

Neil made a noise that might’ve been acknowledgment, might’ve been nothing at all.

“Thank you.” he whispered. “For all of it. You were incredible.”

When Andrew woke, the thin light of late afternoon slipped through the curtains. In Neil’s place, there was only a letter.

***

Andrew moved through the corridors like a shadow in the afternoon light. He didn’t know why he was pacing, only that standing still felt unbearable. Aaron watched him from a safe distance.

The house was full of Neil’s almost-presence: a teacup half-drained, a book left open with a dried petal pressed between the pages, a smudge of mud from his boot on the stair.

Andrew sat beside it. He lit his pipe with steady fingers and stared. “You couldn’t even wipe your boots off. Thoughtless idiot. What were you even thinking?”

The dirt said nothing. Andrew glared anyway. “Of course. You never think.”

Aaron lingered in the doorway, a cup in his hand, eyes flicking from Andrew to the smudge. He took a slow sip, like he could vanish behind the rim.

Andrew glanced at the clock. Thinking hadn’t gotten him far. Maybe it was time to stop trying. He stood, the pipe slipping from his fingers and hitting the floor with a muted clatter.

Aaron flinched. Andrew didn’t bother with gloves or fastening his coat. He just walked out the door—then ran.

Aaron’s voice trailed after him, fading into the drizzle outside. By the time he was halfway through town, the rain had turned heavier, pattering hard against his coat. His hair clung to his forehead in wet strands, and his breathing grew rough. He hated how fast his feet were moving and hated even more that he could not stop them.

At the far end of the platform, under the shelter of a sea-colored umbrella, Neil stood waiting.

The umbrella’s color cut through the gray of the station, the gray of the rain, the gray of Andrew’s vision. He stopped a couple of paces away, water pooling at his boots. Neil looked at him, surprised, cheeks flushed pink from the cold. Andrew clenched his fists.

“Stay,” he croaked.

The word barely rose above the sound of rain. It scraped out of him like a shard of glass. Neil smiled sadly, so at odds with his usual, charming tilt of a smile.

“I can’t,” Neil said. His hand tightened on the umbrella handle until his knuckles went pale. “There are guards in town now. They’re asking after names. I shouldn’t have come this far.”

Andrew stepped closer, soaked to the bone, coat heavy with water. “I can protect you.”

If he was good at anything, it was this. His hands were all he’d ever had, and he’d give them to Neil if it meant keeping him.

Neil shook his head. “Not from them.”

A shiver passed through him that had nothing to do with the wind. Somewhere down the line, a bell rang, marking the last minute before boarding.

“Aaron was right. You’ll end up in the gallows,” Neil said. “Just like my mother did.”

Andrew didn’t flinch. “Then that's my choice.”

Neil stayed silent, his expression shuttered, giving Andrew nothing to work with. The train hissed its final warning.

“Stop running like a coward,” Andrew spat. “Just once. Grow a spine and stand your ground.”

Andrew had more to say, but Neil moved first. He stepped forward, pressed the umbrella into Andrew’s hand, and kissed his cheek. The kiss was soft and chaste, its warmth lingering against Andrew’s rain-chilled skin.

Andrew’s breath caught. Something cracked deep inside him. When Neil stepped back, the space between them felt different.

Andrew stood still, numb, the umbrella useless in his hand, and watched that ridiculous tangle of curls disappear. First behind glass, then steam, then distance. Like a buoy coming loose and drifting out of reach. Andrew didn’t move until the last of the light was gone.

He returned home hours later, leaving a trail of rainwater through the hall. In the studio, he swallowed the last of Aaron’s pills and let them drag him upward. Eventually, he reached for a brush.

***

Andrew sat on the floor with his back against the wall. He no longer slept. He no longer ate. The last painting remained on the easel, half-finished and bleeding blue. He couldn't bring himself to touch it, couldn’t bear to look at it, yet he couldn’t throw it away either.

The room was full of paintings now—completed canvases stacked and leaning against one another like silent witnesses. They surrounded him on all sides. Each one seemed to seal the space a little tighter. Every painting was a brick. Every sketch was a nail. Andrew hadn’t meant to trap himself here, but now he didn’t know how to leave the room at all.

The exits had disappeared days ago, swallowed by the sheer number of pieces. The silence pressed in around him like dirt before the coffin lid has even closed. Noise would have been no better. Even the thought of it made his skin crawl.

There was nowhere left in the world where Andrew could breathe. He wasn’t built to last, not with a mind like his, not with all the hands that had shaped and twisted him into something unrecognizable. Whatever shelf life he’d had felt long expired. Stories like his rarely ended peacefully.

Andrew’s mouth felt dry. His fingers were stained. He wanted his gloves. His body hadn’t moved in hours, possibly longer. Time no longer made sense. It had dissolved into a long, unbroken stretch of lightless hours.

Somewhere between the second coat and the final varnish, he’d started to drown. The paint had closed over his head like water and taken him under. The studio had turned into his tomb, and he was its last occupant.

Andrew Minyard sat perfectly still in a room he had sealed with his own hands. The door was shut behind him. It would never open again.

***

Except it didn’t stay shut.

The latch caught for a moment, then slipped loose with a sound far too soft to justify the finality Andrew had intended for it.

A string of muffled curses followed, then the unmistakable sound of someone tripping over a stool and a box of supplies.

“Goddammit,” Aaron muttered. “Who leaves all this in the middle of the damn floor?”

The door swung open fully a moment later, its hinges letting out a low groan. Light spilled through the gap like it had been waiting at the threshold.

Aaron stepped inside, one hand rubbing his shin. He squinted into the gloom. “Not saying sorry. I wasn’t the only asshole,” he muttered.

Behind him came the sound of someone jogging the last few steps down the hall. Then something small and round arced through the air with more force than necessary. A plum struck Andrew in the chest, soft but deliberate.

"That one’s stolen," Neil said, already halfway into the room. "Sort of. The fence was low, and the tree didn’t look like it belonged to anyone in particular. Blurry lines.”

Andrew blinked. He looked down at the fruit, sticky pulp smearing across his shirt. Neil moved past Aaron, trailing the scent of wind and road and a coat pocket full of orchard theft.

Aaron crossed to the nearest window and grunted as he pulled at the curtain. It resisted, stiff from disuse.

“Where did you even find a plum tree?” he asked, shaking dust from his sleeve.

“North wall of the Gordon Viscount’s estate,” Neil replied. “He should really invest in sturdier fences.”

“Viscount Gordon?” Aaron blinked. “That’s three towns over.”

Neil shrugged. “So were the plums.”

They kept going, volleying barbs and bickering, as if the room were not a mausoleum cracked open by accident. They moved through the space with thoughtless ease, pulling back the curtains one by one, letting light pour in from every angle. The studio came alive with it. Shadows fled. Paintings gleamed. The smell of dust lifted, diluted by sun and sound and fruit. Suddenly the walls Andrew had built didn't feel quite as solid.

Aaron swore again as another curtain rod came loose in his hand. Neil hummed from where he’d settled by the open window, shoulders golden with sun.

“I thought you left,” Andrew said, voice low.

“I did.” Neil turned to him, his gaze warm with apology. “But you were right. I’ve been a coward… and maybe I don’t want to be anymore. If I forget how to be brave, will you be there to pull me back?”

Andrew looked down at the plum. The skin had split where it landed, a thin line of juice soaking into his tunic. He turned it in his hand, thumb brushing over the bruise. Then he brought it to his mouth and bit through the flesh. It clung to his teeth. Neil’s smile was quiet, but it reached his eyes. He understood.

And slowly, unbearably, the tomb began to unseal.

***

The trunks waited by the door, clasps shut, leather worn smooth from years of travel. Neil shifted the last one into place before stepping outside to speak with the coachman.

Andrew stood outside on the stone steps, black coat on, gloves in one pocket. Aaron leaned in the doorway, the gentle morning light falling between them.

“You’ll miss the boat,” Aaron chided. “Try not to embarrass the country.”

“Try not to drown in laudanum,” Andrew said.

Aaron’s mouth twitched. “I’m sure Katelyn will keep me afloat.”

The coachman called from outside. For a moment they just stared at each other, unsure what to do. Then Aaron stepped forward and pulled him into an awkward hug that eased a bit when Andrew didn’t pull away.

It took Andrew a moment to return it, but when he finally did, he held on. When Aaron started to pull away, Andrew didn’t—letting go only when he was ready.

“If you ever want out,” Andrew said, “write to me. I’ll come get you.”

Aaron’s eyes warmed, the set of his shoulders loosening. “Alright.”

They were brothers after all. The pull between them didn’t vanish. It only stretched.

Neil waited by the carriage, looking between them as though he’d caught the tail end of something rare. Andrew climbed in without explanation.

Aaron stayed in the doorway, white sleeves bright in the morning light, waving until the carriage disappeared down the path.

Neil leaned back against the seat, studying him. “You’re really okay with this?”

“Yes, that manor was never a home. It was time to leave.”

Neil hummed. “France. What kind of house is it?”

“I don’t know.” Andrew shrugged, already settling in to nap for the journey. “A duke left it to me.”

Neil raised a brow. “Out of the goodness of his heart?”

“He was a devoted supporter before he drank himself to death,” Andrew explained. “Last of the Day bloodline. Now it’s mine—old stone manor in the woods of France.”

The road ran straight to the sea, the sky opening wider with every turn of the wheels. Somewhere beyond it waited a house of old stone, hidden beneath the trees. The air drifting through the open window felt different now, lighter, and Andrew’s pulse moved in step with the carriage.

***

That evening, Andrew set up his easel again. Gold light poured softly across the room, the air inside the manor warm and unhurried. It carried the sweetness of France—a blend of ripe fruit and sun-warmed woods.

Neil lounged on the divan beneath the window, just behind Andrew. It was the sunniest spot in the room and the place Neil loved to nap. Andrew liked to draw or paint there as well, so they were never far apart. Neil had one leg folded beneath the other, a book resting open in his lap. King was stretched along his stomach, his chest rising in the slow rhythm of sleep. Sir wandered the floor, stopping now and then to toy with the cuff of Andrew’s trousers.

Andrew, already used to Sir’s antics, focused on the task at hand. He didn’t reach for his finest brush. He took the first his fingers found, the bristles frayed and crooked, and left them as they were. He sat before the canvas, and for the first time in longer than he could remember, he felt no urge to tear it apart. Today, that was enough.

Even when the blue leaned green or the white flattened too quickly. Even when the first stroke skipped, the second dragged, and the third dried almost before it landed. He corrected none of it. The lines were imperfect, but they held. And for the first time in a long while, so did he.

Neil turned a page and glanced up, squinting at the canvas. “It’s not very good,” he said around a mouthful of fruit. They had plenty at home—an orchard only a few steps from the mansion and never safe from Neil.

Andrew didn’t look over. “Your favorite color is grey. You’re not qualified to have an opinion.”

Neil only laughed, unbothered, as though he assumed Andrew was joking.

“It looks strange,” Neil said. “All the art in the palace was perfect to the point of boredom. I like this one. Can we keep it?”

Andrew nodded, and Neil returned to his book, content while King stirred against him and let out a faint snore.

The days of being called a genius who painted without rest had passed, but Andrew didn’t mind. He wanted to see what his hands might create when they didn’t tremble. He still couldn’t capture the true blue of Neil’s eyes (every mix fell short) but he knew the color existed on land, and he didn’t have to drown to find it.

Later, he would paint this evening from memory: the gold slipping along Neil’s body, catching at the curve of his waist, revealing the gentle, delicate places one might forget he carried when they first met him. He would mix color after color, searching for the one that felt like Neil. Then he would name the painting Spes.

For now, Andrew just watched, and let himself feel what he never dared to say out loud. That maybe, in some impossible way, he had been granted a miracle. And its name was Neil — impossible, infuriating, and every shade of blue Andrew would spend the rest of his life trying to paint.