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Hero and Leander.

——From Ch.8 of Mr. Piastri, a WIP landoscar p&p au

Lando had not asked for the rain.

It had begun half an hour ago as a modest patter, the sort of thing one could ignore—but had since worked itself into a deluge, a slight upon the library windows so insistent he could only take it as personal. Beyond the panes, the gardens had dissolved into a formless blur of greens and greys: Nature, apparently, had grown weary of distinction and chosen instead to indulge in a fit of the picturesque.

Lando stood fixed before the towering shelves, his gaze traversing their heights with a frequency that betrayed less an interest in their contents than a profound reluctance to acknowledge the room’s only other occupant.

“Blast,” he breathed, the utterance escaping him with the faintest hiss. The outward expression of a spirit caught in that most painful of geometries: the acute angle between pride and necessity.

Mr. Piastri had arranged himself with rather conspicuous ease within the recess of the window seat, where the grey light fell upon him in a manner so deliberately painterly that one might have supposed him posed there by an artist with a taste for moral allegory. The brow composed, the jaw defined, the studious tranquillity so entirely self-contained as to provoke, in a breast less guarded than Lando’s own, the most unaccountable sentiment of reluctant admiration. His book lay open in his hands; his eyes were fixed upon its pages with an intensity that might have convinced any ordinary observer of his profound absorption.

Lando, however, had noted—with the particular acuity that mortification often lends—that not a single page had been turned in the space of ten minutes.

Whether this stillness signalled a depth of thought too great for bodily motion, or merely a studied indifference to the gentleman struggling with his own consequence a mere ten feet distant, Lando could not with certainty determine. He had his suspicions.

“The third step of the ladder possesses a slight instability. I mention it only as a precaution, lest its discovery should come at an inopportune moment.”

Lando started—a flinch of the shoulder, quickly mastered, though the colour did rise up his neck.

“I should recommend skipping it altogether,” the speaker continued, so consumed by his volume that he had not so much as raised an eye to deliver his warning. “or, if you must, placing your weight with the most scrupulous caution. A sprained ankle, I fear, would deprive the assembly most cruelly of your thoughts upon agricultural reform this Friday.”

With his hand yet hovering near the aforesaid ladder—paused in the very act of testing its treachery—Lando found himself arrested midway between vexation and a sensation he could scarcely own to himself, though it bore all the troubling warmth of fondness.

“Do you make it a habit, sir,” he returned, “to fuss over the hazards of every household you enter? Or is it only those which might befall me that earn your particular vigilance?”

“Merely an observation,” replied Piastri, at last condescending to look up. “The book you seek is upon the table behind you. I have done with it.”

The Marlowe.

“You read poetry?” Lando asked, and was vexed again, this time at his own tongue, which had betrayed a surprise he ought by rights to have concealed. “I had understood your library to consist of agricultural treatises and account books, and your attention confined to the same.”

A movement of Piastri’s eyebrow—so slight as to be scarcely perceptible, yet invested with the force of a considered set-down.

“Your assumption regarding my habits of reading,” said he, “appears to be as thoroughly researched as your theories on estate management, Mr. Norris.”

Lando retrieved the volume with a hand that strove for composure, his intention being to remove himself to a distant chair; to establish, by such means, a more decorous distance from this strange and charged atmosphere. Yet politeness would not suffer him to quit the scene without acknowledgment.

“…My thanks.” He said stiffly.

“You are entirely welcome,” came the reply, delivered with a gravity that might have passed for sincerity in one less acquainted with Mr. Piastri’s habits. “The ladder, I am sure, joins me in this sentiment.”

Lando turned away, retreating to a window-seat at the far end of the library, where the afternoon light fell in another slanted column. He opened the book with a deliberate casualness— his thoughts were wholly given to poetry, after all; and not at all to the gentleman still seated across the room. He flipped through the pages, anticipating, perhaps, some bland pastoral verse, or moral instruction of the sort that might be safely discussed over tea.

A bookmark of dark green ribbon fluttered to the floor.

He bent to retrieve it, but his eyes were already arrested—held fast by the lines that lay open before him. His hand froze midway to the fallen marker.

Some swore he was a maid in man’s attire,

For in his looks were all that men desire,

A pleasant smiling cheek, a speaking eye,

A brow for love to banquet royally;

And such as knew he was a man, would say,

‘Leander, thou art made for amorous play:

Why art thou not in love, and loved of all?

Though thou be fair, yet be not thine own thrall.’

The verse seemed to pulse upon the page, each line a deliberate provocation. Yet it was no fault of the eyes, no common confusion of the letters, that made the words appear so restless—the meaning itself would not sit still. Lando read it once, and then again, as though by repetition he might render it less devastatingly plain.

He took up the ribbon at last, his fingers brushing against the fine silk. In one corner, worked in thread so delicate it might have been spun from air, were two unmistakable initials:

O.P.

His hand trembled slightly as he traced the margin downward to the next stanza, also marked with a faint pencil line, so light it might have been accidental. Yet he knew it was not. Nothing Mr. Oscar Piastri did was without design.

His body was as straight as Circe’s wand;

Jove might have sipped out nectar from his hand.

Even as delicious meat is to the taste,

So was his neck in touching, and surpassed

The white of Pelops’ shoulder...

The volume grew suddenly heavy in his grasp. Or perhaps it was his arm that had lost its strength, his pulse that had grown too loud in his own ears, and in the midst of this confusion of the senses he became acutely aware— of the precise number of paces that separated him from the window seat, of the quality of silence that reigned there.

Of the subtle shift of Mr. Piastri’s position in his chair.

…I could tell ye

How smooth his breast was, and how white his belly,

And whose immortal fingers did imprint

That heavenly path, with many a curious dint,

That runs along his back...

“You were in search of Ovid,” came that voice, measured and low. “Third shelf. Though I suspect you have discovered something rather more… modern.”

Lando did not turn. He could not, for the moment, trust his countenance to any audience.

“Modern?” he echoed, with a creditable attempt at lightness. “I had understood the piece to be of some antiquity.”

“The poem, yes. The passage selected, however,” said Piastri, and there was a calculated pause, “would appear to be of more recent interest.”

Lando turned slowly, as though the movement itself might grant him time to compose himself. He expected to find Piastri defensive. Wearing that familiar mask of cool dismissal, perhaps, with which he was accustomed to parry unwelcome intimacy. Instead, the gentleman sat perfectly still, one delicate finger tracing the spine of his own book in a slow, absent rhythm—the only sign of some internal agitation, though his face betrayed nothing but a kind of watchful patience.

“You marked this passage.” It was not an inquiry.

“I did.” No hesitation. No evasion. The finger continued its idle path along the leather binding, a motion that seemed almost hypnotic in its regularity.

“For my discovery.”

“Indeed.”

And then came the look—intense was not near strong enough a word to describe what passed across Mr. Piastri’s features and settled in those brown eyes, which now fixed upon Lando’s with an expression of terrible calm. He might have been a man awaiting a verdict; or perhaps a man who had already calculated the odds of every possible outcome, and found any of them preferable to continuing the pretense.

“…You have professed to find all such stuff frivolous.”

The words came rougher than Lando wished. Something flickered in the set of Piastri’s mouth, the suppression of a smile or the tightening of a more complicated sentiment.

“I believe I stated a distaste for melodrama,” he corrected, each syllable precise as a cut from a surgeon’s knife. His breath, Lando could not help but observe, was not quite so steady as his voice would suggest—a quickening in the rise and fall of his chest, visible only to one who had, perhaps, spent more time observing such particulars than was strictly prudent.

“This is Marlowe. It is… a classic.”

“This is Leander,” Lando countered, and he lifted the volume slightly. The green ribbon dangled from his fingers, its embroidered initials catching the light in a way that seemed almost deliberate—

“‘Made for amorous play.’”

The silence that followed was of that species which expands to fill every corner of a room, pressing against the walls and the high shelves and the very lungs of the men who stood within it. Mr. Piastri’s finger ceased its tracing. His hand fell still upon the book, and for a long moment, he merely regarded Lando with that same unwavering gaze, as though he were a puzzle whose solution had been known to him from the first, yet whose revelation he was content to postpone.

The clock upon the mantel ticked. Once. Twice.

“You have read it, then.”

Lando’s throat had grown unaccountably dry. He swallowed, and the motion seemed to draw Piastri’s gaze to his neck—a glance so fleeting it might have been accidental, had the circumstances permitted any belief in accident.

“I have read it,” Lando replied, and was vexed to hear how breathless he sounded. “Though I confess myself uncertain of the lesson you intended to convey by it. Unless you mean to suggest that agricultural reform is but a poor substitute for the pleasures of the flesh.”

A dangerous light entered Piastri’s eyes. “I should never be so bold as to offer lessons, Mr. Norris,” said he, and now he rose from his chair— all elegant limbs and deliberate motion until he stood at his full height, his gaze now level with Lando’s own. “I merely thought it a passage of some literary merit, which you might appreciate.”

“You thought I might appreciate being compared to Leander.”

“I thought,” said Piastri, taking a single step forward, closing the distance between them to something near impropriety, “that you might appreciate knowing I had thought of you at all.”

The book hung loose in Lando’s fingers. He could feel the warmth of Piastri’s proximity, could see the faint colour that had risen in those usually impassive cheeks, could count the individual lashes that framed those dark, observant eyes. The afternoon light slanted between them, casting long shadows across the library floor.

The clock ticked on.

Lando’s heart, however, had set up a rhythm in his breast that seemed altogether too loud for the quiet of the library; surely Piastri must hear it, must be counting the beats as Lando himself was counting them, each one marking the distance yet remaining.

“Mr. Piastri,” he began, and found he had no notion how the sentence was to end.

“Mr. Norris,” came the reply, soft and low, with just the ghost of a smile, playing at the corners of the thin line that passed for a mouth.

It was at this precarious moment wherein the very air seemed to hold its breath, that the library door swung open with an enthusiasm altogether ungoverned and, one might venture, providentially ill-timed.

“There you are!” exclaimed Mr. Leclerc, whose entrance announces itself not merely through the aperture of a door but through every corner of a room, as though the very atmosphere were obliged to make way for his good-natured, French-accented vigour. “I have been searching the whole of the ground floor, and Mr. Verstappen declared he had seen you both retreating this way an age ago, and I said to him, ‘What possible business can they have in the library when the morning is so fine?’—though of course it is not fine now, but it was then, and—”

He stopped.

“Oh,” said Mr. Leclerc, with rather less conviction. “I say. Am I interrupting?”

The question, posed with such innocent bewilderment, landed in silence of a quality which no amount of cheerful volubility could quite fail to recognise. Mr. Piastri withdrew—not hastily, for nothing Mr. Piastri did was ever hasty, but with a measured step that restored a more decorous distance between himself and Lando. His countenance had settled into its accustomed mask of polite reserve.

“Not at all,” said Piastri. “Mr. Norris was merely acquainting himself with the library’s collection. I was offering my assistance.”

Mr. Leclerc’s burrowed brow cleared at once. “Ah, capital! Then you shall be of assistance to me too— I am told there is a particular volume on engineering that you recommended to Mr. Verstappen some days past, and I am determined to find it before the afternoon is out, though I confess the arrangement of these shelves defeats me entirely. You have a way with these things—you always know exactly where everything is kept.”

He beamed at Piastri with the uncomplicated warmth of a man who had never, in the whole course of his life, found himself in a situation he could not readily interpret. Then a sudden thought seemed to strike him.

“But no— no. I collect it is not upon this floor at all. Arthur mentioned something of his having moved it to the study last Michaelmas. How foolish of me. I shall go up directly.” He turned toward the door, then paused. “You will not abandon the library entirely, I hope? Piastri, you will keep Norris company until I come back?”

“If Mr. Norris has no objection.”

“None whatsoever.”

“Excellent!” Mr. Leclerc beamed again, apparently satisfied that all was in perfect order. “I shall not be above a quarter of an hour. Mr. Verstappen has noted the return of that excellent seed-cake—he was quite insistent that we wait for the full party, the thoughtful creature, and I cannot bring myself to disappoint him…”

And with that, he was gone—the door swinging shut behind him with a soft click.

The ribbon slipped from between the pages and fluttered to the floor once more, settling at their feet as if a challenge neither of them seemed willing to take up.

Mr. Piastri was the first to break—a distinction, perhaps, which he bore with little satisfaction, for though it was he who moved, it was with the air of a man compelled rather than willing. Crossing to the window, he placed himself before the streaming glass with his back half-turned.

"The weather appears to be clearing."

It did nothing of the sort. The rain continued its melancholy descent with the same steady determination it had maintained all afternoon; the clouds hung as low and as grey as ever; and the light, if anything, had dimmed to the shade of pewter which precedes a heavier fall.

"Piastri—"

"You would do well, sir, to rejoin the company." He did not turn from the window, and for a moment, his reflection in the glass—watchful, suspended between the gathering dusk and the warm-lit room behind—offered a vision all but spectral. "Lest our mutual absence grow ripe for remark."

But Lando, whose eyes of late had become so painfully attuned to every shade of Mr. Piastri’s bearing, had already perceived the faint tremor in the fingers that curled against the polished wood. The rigid line of his back, where the elegant fall of his coat could not quite conceal the tension that held him upright.

“The poem.”he murmured. “Hero and Leander. It speaks of—”

“I am perfectly acquainted with the subject.” The interruption came swift, near fierce, cutting through the quiet with a precision that spoke of a matter weighed, considered, and set aside many times before. Piastri’s dark eyes would not meet Lando’s own. “Forbidden desire. A love that dares not breathe its name. The swimmer who drowned in seeking what lay beyond his reach.”

"A rather pessimistic choice," Lando managed, though his throat had grown curiously constricted.

"Realistic." came the reply, almost inaudible beneath the patter of rain against the glass. Then, softer still— so soft that had Lando not been standing so near, it might have escaped him entirely, in a voice that seemed to cost its owner no small effort:

"But you will note I marked the passage concerning Leander's beauty, and not his demise."

The admission fell like a stone dropped from a great height. Lando felt the impact of it through his whole frame, his pulse set racing and his thoughts scattering like startled birds.

"Is he," he asked, and his voice was scarcely his own, so stripped was it of all artifice—"what you desire?"

Mr. Piastri’s laugh was but a breath, and one in which no mirth resided. His reflection stood still within the glass, and very beautiful, in the grey light.

“What I desire has never been of consequence.”

Lando took up the ribbon. He set the book again upon the table, with that gentleness one reserves for objects both precious and perilous—such as might sear the fingers if held overlong, or vanish beyond recovery if once laid down.

He turned his gaze upon the gentleman before him: a man whose austere profile he had observed, time and again, in drawing-room and dining-room, at assembly and upon the street; who now stood at the window with his eyes fixed upon some middle distance that might have been the garden, or might have been the past, or might have been any one of a thousand futures that would never come to pass.

He crossed the final distance until his own reflection swam beside Mr. Piastri's in the darkened glass; and he could mark, with a clarity that pain itself could not have exceeded, how the shoulders had drawn up towards the ears, how the fingers had tightened upon the ledge until the knuckles stood pale as marble.

"And if I were to tell you that your desires are of the greatest consequence to him?"

Mr. Piastri did not move. He did not speak. Lando was seized by the singular fancy that the gentleman had altogether ceased to draw breath.

“Oscar,” he said, and watched the other man’s eyelids flutter shut.

The rain traced its rivulets down the pane. Somewhere in the depths of the house, the clock struck the quarter-hour, with that particular melancholy resonance which clocks assume when they are heard in moments of high sentiment.

Then Mr. Piastri turned.

And when his eyes opened fully, there was such a look of startled hope as one might behold in a traveller— who, having abandoned all expectation of shelter, finds a light burning in the window nonetheless. A thing he had forgotten he might be given, a thing he scarcely knew how to receive. For the first time, Lando could not help but think him remarkably young.

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