Game of Hearts - Gabriel and Elias
He wants to run.
Everything in this place is seeped in misery and sin, all the worse for the atmosphere of luxury that it tries to exude, like perfume sprinkled over rotting flesh. He can taste the scent of it in his mouth and it chokes him, his whole body taut as a bowstring, hands shoved in his pockets. He does not look as though he has money, but there is something about him that draws the eye, something graceful, for he is tall, thin, and elegant, even in worn clothes and scuffed shoes. The patches in his clothing are neat, meticulous, and clean, and there is no dirt beneath his fingernails. He had tried to look presentable for this kind of gamble, but he is trembling inwardly, a fawn in a den of wolves. He does not understand, for he was not yet taught, but he must learn quickly if he is going to free the city.
Flesh is placed judiciously on display, concealed, but all the more overt for its concealment. A young girl smiles at him with white teeth and suffering eyes, a young Adonis casts him a slow, predatory gaze. There is a vagueness to him, as though he was attempting to remember what precisely it was that people do here, to ape at desire that was utterly lacking, not in this mockery of affection, of love. He will not come here and be unsatisfied. The duty in their hands would burn him, and he would take no pleasure in it. Perhaps, if there was someone that he loved, if it was given freely, his thought upon it might have been different, but for now, sex was a diversion. It ensnared the senses and fogged the mind. It was another one of those things that he could not afford.
There is sadness in his dark eyes, that he cannot hide, not even with the slight dampening of his Grace. They are almost black in the dim lighting, and they are eternal, fields of darkness which not even starlight can penetrate, soft as velvet covering steel, eased as skin covering bone. They shine in the shadows, bright, exhausted, eyes, full of intelligence, yes, but also softness, also kindness. He speaks to some of the milling employees, the ones who drift about the main room as conversation pieces, but also as advertisements, and his speech is soft, and warm. He knows that they are wondering what kind of lover he would be, if only for an hour. If he would be rough, if his gentleness was covering the power of that whipcord body and the obvious strength in his callused hands, if he would be gentle, wanting to pretend at a love that would not come for the revolutionary.
He wants none of that. His admiration is quiet, and chaste. He will not contribute to the inequality that forces men and women to sell their bodies for bread, and he is not interested in those bodies, beautiful as they are. He can see their souls like fireflies flickering between two points of oblivion and he wants to catch them in his hands. He wants them to be able to make their own choices, free from the oppression that weighs them. If they will continue to do this out of pleasure, then so be it, but if they wish a way out, a moment of respite from being wanted only as a form, a piece, a yielding body, then he will give it to them. All he desires back is information, information as to how this place works, as to what desire is, as to what causes men and women to sell and to buy. He needs to understand the need first, for his purity is genuine. Perhaps they will tell him.
The liberator will come not with guns and with violence, but with a soft step and softer words. Now, he is fragile, and he is careful, but one day, he will tear the infrastructure of a city down with his bare hands, and his voice will well in his throat like the warning rumble of a static storm. He is patient, despite what his brothers think, and he is angry, that perhaps most of all. The rage in him is a high tide mark, continuously growing higher. He will be choking on it soon, if he is not careful, not cautious. His soft eyes drift away from the burning gaze of strangers, and he pays up front with carefully folded bills, many wrinkled as though he has meticulously tried to straighten them. He is asked what he desires. His eyes are afire.
Freedom.
Light.
Life.
The words snag in his throat, slicing into him like glass. He does not voice them. He needs someone, anyone, who is knowledgable, but instinctively, he tells them---“A boy.” He does not know why he says that. Perhaps it is a foreshadowing of something that he might want, long past the falling of this city. For now, he is as chill as ice and as pure as fire. He has no mistress, no master, his lips, generous as they are, are made for burning propaganda, and not for kisses. Love cannot be bought. Neither, for him, pleasure, although the desire for such things is in him, though yet unknown, and drives at him with endless sorrow that he does not comprehend. Like other beings, he does not want to be alone. Like other beings, he needs contact, needs touch, needs the simplicity of it, needs to be tethered to a reality he is always a half step from leaving. He does not belong here. He stands. He waits.
He will dismantle the hearts of men, and sunder nations.
But he is not that yet.
