OZYMANDIAS.

[vanaglorio]

VANAGLORIA : A STUDY IN HUBRIS.

HECTOR SOLORZANO. full name, HECTOR ALEJANDRO VELASQUEZ SOLORZANO. 27 years old, born on december 28th, 2994 in mexico city. cis man and uses he / they / doesn’t really care about pronouns. sold his soul to his family’s global construction and real estate empire and works as a civil engineering project manager. 

SKELETON.  DYNAMICS.  PINTEREST.  HISTORY & MISC. BELOW.

trigger warning: suicide, drug overdose

IMPETUS.

the concept of making some kind of lasting, indelible mark on the world that wasn’t gilded, silver-spooned and handed to him on a platter. the glory of having his own name mean something, beyond inheritance and privilege and absurd extravagance. creating something with his mind and his own two hands — in and of itself, an impossible feat considering all he’s ever achieved has had his family’s insignia stamped on it. but an ambition he holds fast to like a cardinal point on a compass

plain old kendall roy style retribution and succession drama baby. hector’s never forgiven his father for destroying his brother and despite his father’s best attempts to shape him into the back-up heir, he’s going to fuck this company up before he ever gets to inherit it. 

hubris is his ultimate achilles heel and downfall. yes, irony thy name is hector. thinks he’s somehow smarter, faster, hungrier and more brilliant and than everyone around him. which is obviously not the case. this guy is playing so many games within games with enemies and allies alike, he couldn’t claw his way out of the matrix-style shit storm if he tried. 

HISTORY.

only child, the demon, angle and beloved favourite all in one. originally born as the younger son. the spare, not the heir.

hector’s father is the CEO of the largest civil and engineering construction company in the world. their headquarters is in mexico city but they have subsidiary offices in madrid, london, tokyo and los angeles. hector’s mother is the heiress of the velasquez real estate empire, her family holding company owning substantial parcels of land all across south america, north america and europe.

his older brother, teodoro, was born 7 years before him. the consummate perfect son and heir to the empire — until, of course, he wasn’t. escalating parental pressure, crushing academic expectations, the weight of the world upon his shoulders. teodoro was no atlas. hector was 14 when they found his brother overdosed in a penthouse in saint-tropez while on summer vacation.

the process of priming hector to become the next heir was so swift, so damning, as to be almost surgical. teo’s body was barely cold and laid to rest in the ground before their parents began to talk about hector’s ‘future’.

hector never forgave his parents for what happened to teo. they were to blame, of course they were — they stood by and watched as teo slowly killed himself, until there was nothing left but his body to go. he was dead long before he swallowed his own heart and jumped on a one-way first class flight to the french riviera. 

generally speaking, hector’s academic record was rather unexceptional until teo died and he had no choice but to perform in teo’s stead. and he did it, teeth gritted and eyes slitted murderous, the whole damn show pony circus show. the endless parade of meaningless extracurriculars: everything from debate club to swim team and lacrosse to mathematics decathlons. enough to fill a trophy room with lustrous medals, accolades, first place ribbons, and still not enough. hector could never live up to teo’s looming shadow, nor did he want to. it felt, somehow, like a betrayal, to prove he was better than his brother in any way. to validate his parent’s desire to mould him as the emergency replacement. 

the only subjects hector enjoyed with any genuine passion or fascination that wasn’t feigned were classics and history.

enrolled into verdamme as a staunch fuck you to his parents who had astronomical hopes he’d attend MIT or stanford or ETH and get an engineering degree. (he did end up getting one, postgrad.)

was julian’s so-called right-hand man throughout all the years at verdamme and is also one of the riot club member’s who knew julian the longest. loved julian as much as he hated him and thought he deserved to die. one of the leading proponents of the #kill caesar movement. somehow not the most suspicious potential suspect. 

the irritating bastard in class who barely tried but seemed to ace every single test. in reality he just has an exceptional short-term memory and mind for rote learning — in one ear, out the other, etc. very much the kid that seems to be napping for all of class and then pipes up to give the most bizarre, unexpectedly insightful comment in the middle of discussion.

fucks with people, their lives / hearts / hopes and dreams, as a way to feel something? inside? maybe?? notorious for being one of julian’s worst enablers but was also plenty responsible for his own schemes, manipulations and cruelties.

MISCELLANEOUS.

is currently engaged to the heiress of a spanish shipping company in the world’s longest running engagement. almost never wears his ring but mexican and spanish news outlets made quite a big deal out of it when it was first announced over a year ago.

speaks spanish, english, french and italian fluently. due to being your typical classics nerd, also fluent in latin and ancient greek. conversational in german and portugese.

general vibe is aloof, albeit quite disarming once he strikes up a conversation, laidback, chariasmtic, “chill”, able to talk to anyone about anything when he can actually be bothered to. also the guy with zero chill, secretly. we don’t talk about that.

endeavours to avoid personal drama at all costs that hasn’t been purposefully orchestrated for some kind of game but will enjoy the schadenfreude from the sidelines while placing bets on who’ll come out on top. it’s probably a gambling problem.

some kind of deep emotional trauma (re: parental neglect & then overnight obsession with him being the perfect replacement son for the dead brother) (re: aforementioned dead brother who is possibly the only person he’s ever loved) that prevents him from properly connecting to people on a deeper level beyond shallow, casual and purposeless sex

travelling is the one and only perk of his current job. he loves travelling, but in the niche struggling backpacker way that normal twenty-something years olds do, not the private jet lifestyle of a billionaire heir of a global conglomerate

collects obscure roman artefacts, specifically from the late roman republic, and has an antique knife collection. his favourite is a ceremonial gold dagger and sheath from the tomb of tutankhamun.

teo’s girlfriend left his dog, socrates, with him after the funeral, claiming she couldn’t bear to have the memory of him around her. he’s unironically hector’s best friend.

[vanaglorio]

MONDAY, JUNE 28TH, 2016. 1:00PM  —  THE OUTDOOR AREA.  @andlilith​

Picture contrition: the taut bowstring of brow and lips struck parallel, the ever-shifting crosshairs of eyes reluctant to find a target, the restlessness of an inner storm leashed into tranquility. And how about guilt? The vein of unbearable, impossible guilt that cannot bear confession, let alone examination beneath the light of day. It has been so long since Hector last cared to profess culpability for sin or repercussion that the notion strikes him with the sudden, damning breathlessness of drowning. Underwater, his throat tightens, crushing any attempt to suppress or deny.

How does one even begin to explain an apology that was never given, never approached with the sincerity or sentiment it deserved? It feels foolish, senseless, to even try. The shape of a greeting feels hollow in his mouth, cavernous and lacking, as he approaches her on the outside patio. In the end, he tries for something barely encroaching upon insouciant.

“You were always one for dramatic entrances.”  And exits, the thought cuts to the surface, abrupt and gut-wrenching. He languishes in the absence of anything appropriate to say, anything light-hearted or casual enough to conceal the wretchedness of such an endeavour. A pliant smile stretches across his face, his throat burning at the audacity to surrender to instinct, even now. Charismatic, wretched, he forges through the temptation to turn and admit defeat.  “It’s good to see you again. Under other circumstances, it would have been cause for celebration. A welcome party at this moment would have left much to be desired.”

[vanaglorio]

S. MOON.

@vanaglorio  /  ELSEWHERE, A CLIFF FACE; JUNE 2021  ⬩  3:00PM  ⬩  DAY 15

when séverine comes to the open door of hector’s room in the early afternoon, she is still wearing her nightgown. 

“my car has arrived,” she say simply, long slender fingers tucking elegantly into a strand of hair fixed into a foam roller. it’s a defiantly outdated method of curling, and well-suited to the platinum blonde wig affixed to her head, so light in colour it appears white. “we’re going driving.”

her heels click on the marble as she leaves once more, ivory hair like a smudge of fog leftover in the air.

the car, which she had found unexpectedly while strolling with saint last week, was a 1963 ferrari 250 gt caliornia spyder in a delicious green that one wanted to call olive for how well it would fit with a martini, but was probably closer to pine. she had inquired at the seaside café it sat next to whom the owner was, and learned it had been kept and faithfully upkept by the same greying man for forty years. it’s been with me nearly as long as my youngest child, he’d said fondly. not looking to sell, no.

séverine had only smiled. it had the same effect as pulling out a wallet.

it was a terrific waste of money given she would have to have it shipped home,  and particularly because she could have found a comparable car nearby. but there was a chance she would never leave this place anyway, given beautiful women often had habits of dying or disappearing when a ghost lingered nearby (in this case, forced removal from the life one is accustomed to is marked under Death), and so excessive expenditure really meant nothing at all — even less than it normally did. — and anyway, it wouldn’t have been the same to purchase the same model car if it had not been tended to all these years with love. one could just sense these things.

so now it’s séverine moon’s newest car, and that’s why when she and hector reach it’s deep green doors and the grey shadow stretching out beside it, she hands the keys to him. “you’re driving.”

lady’s car, lady’s rules.

she gives vague instructions as to where she intends them to go, and once thoroughly on their way, séverine closes her eyes and drops her head back against the leather seat. despite the wind caused by the fast pace of the ferrari down the coastline roads, she imagines she can smell the remnants of some other life in the car, cologne and cigar smoke and the faint give of the leather beneath her cranium, as if in the quick and unexpected change of hands it hadn’t had time to mourn and release its previous ownership, and was instead trying to adjust her into it. it makes her wonder what other life she and hector could have, if they were to have one. under which circumstances they might fall in love. she’s certain he has never felt that way about her, and most assuredly her leanings have never tilted that way for him. but they could have, if they’d so chosen. love is like that sometimes; a decision. certainly he’d adore her if she’d decided as much. she touches his arm briefly as she considers this, flexing her fingers, studying affectionately the momentary contrast of her skin on his. diamonds glitter in the sunlight, winking back the woman wearing them. it’s her exceptional sense of self that allows her to drift easily between the handling of these sudden ministrations of imaginary fondness and the sharp cargo of the conversation to come.

when they finally park, she waits with remarkable, casual stillness for her companion to route around the car and open her door. It has some resemblance to scaled predators who lay still on the riverbank, cloaked in mud and high water, before springing suddenly upon their pray. when an arm is extended for her to take, she rises gracefully to it.

“you’d call us dissimilar people, hector, i know that.” she starts, arm looped through his as they tread over sun-warmed stone. “of no shared likeness, for all that we’ve done and all that we have not. there are parts of me you do not wish to be associated with. by others or inwardly.” she rests her cheek against the globular curve of his shoulder, a precious stone set atop the gold band of his skin. her eyes pitch forward to trace the coastline, smiling absently as if finding something amusing. “but it’s not our formation or shape we need compare, darling. it’s the impact. our impact is indistinguishable. without us, there would be nothing. no world at all; only a shapeless land mass. it’s volcanoes and earthquakes that form continents. others might be frightened, but when i feel a rumble in the ground beneath me, i know it’s only you, stretching your handsome limbs out when first you wake up.

so let’s speak openly, you and i, now. i have no interest in imprecision or ambiguity. it’s a disservice to our very natures to do otherwise.”

séverine’s shadow darkens at his door with the sun at half-mast, the swirl of her perfume at the threshold like the first notes of a siren’s cadenza. he notes the unfamiliar silver sheen of blonde pinned into her curls, the afternoon nightgown, and realises it’s going to be one of those interludes. a moment slipped into the space between dialogue and intention, played out in the negative left excised on the cutting room floor.

downstairs, by a car he’s certain she didn’t have when they arrived, she saunters into the delicately sketched mise en scéne to meet him.

“lucky me.”  hector holds his hand out for the keys, once-over skimming across each sleek, polished curve. he opens the car door for her and waits, gentlemanlike, for her to slide her heel into the front seat before closing it behind her. the flash of ankle in the slant of three o’clock sunlight draws a private amusement; the need for fabricated discretion isn’t technically improper. not in isolation. given their history, however, the entire thing is shaded in careless ambiguity. as they drive down the narrow, winding coastline, his mind drifts fleetingly to the men who have been cast in this role before. their faces and distinguishments are inconsequential, blurring in the rear view mirror as they speed past sea and sand. what was in them that compelled her? was the lure one of bait or provocation? the trick to seduction is to persuade the subject that despite all artifice and semblance of design, they are the one, the only, to be granted the exception of reality. the ephemeral, illusory promise of truth: a heart, or soul, or the heated zealousness of a quick fuck.

their destination is a cliffside viewpoint, panoramic and magnificent. a secret vista that only a local would know how to find; he can’t fathom how she could have known of it except from the lips of someone who’d lived and breathed this air all their life. hector extends his hand as he helps her out of the car, her fingers sliding across her palm.

“does that offend you?”  he asks, without intention or any particular shape of intuition. a genuine curiosity. as well as he thinks he understands séverine to a certain extent, the line drawn just beneath the surface of skin and facade, she revels in obscurity.  “one would imagine you rather delight in being inimitable.”  he turns his face as if to catch her gaze, only to be obstructed by the cascade of platinum white hair, the press of her cheek to his shoulder. he fixes his eyes on the ocean, instead, the creep of the horizon spilling into the infinity of the sky.  “inwardly, i harbour no pretences about what i am or what i must be. i don’t take pleasure in it the way you do — hence the need for discretion.”  the instinct for laughter nudges at his throat, a temptation arising from the absurdity of the world she imagines. only, he knows séverine is entirely serious. and maybe, if he were to examine the perimeters of this magna carta they have forged together, he would have to acknowledge she speaks in actuality.

they were children playing god, toying with mortality as if their claim to paradise had earned them impunity. caesar’s death should have taught them better: even gods can fall. smooth, suave, he steps out of her reach as they near the highest point of the cliff’s edge, extricating himself from her so he can measure the flicker and beat of her expression, her movement. they will reveal nothing she does not intend them to, but this is where he diverges from her script.  “if we’re going to speak plainly, then tell me this: why are you here? we both know nothing he had on you could have been fatal enough to kill you. not like the rest of us. you didn’t need to make the descent back into perdition. you chose to. why? did you miss it that fervently? the thrill and depravity? the exhilaration of knowing divinity without ever suffering divine punishment? we are, all of us, in hell, and you’re merely vacationing in it.”

[vanaglorio]

APRIL 18TH, 2016. 8:50PM. DAESCHNER STUDIO, VERDAMME.  /  @demoisellesombre​.

THERE’S A TIME FOR SHOWMANSHIP AND THERE’S A TIME for tactical entreatment. Neither the performer with Dante’s rapscallion charisma, or the chess grandmaster of Nikhil’s legendary reputation, Hector falls somewhere on the spectrum between instinct and truth. There is no approaching this with cold-blooded rationality or hellfire passion alone. To kill someone is an intimate thing. To kill a friend requires a devotion beyond religion. To do what must be done will demand the covenant of heart, mind and alleged soul if such a thing exists. (He knows it does; he knows it as surely as Julian de Cervantes will die at their hands.)

The balcony of Daeschner Studio is a designated refuge for students seeking after-hours privacy for errant exploits. Aside from the sweeping vista of the Alps on the horizon, its traditional French doors safeguard against the presence of vigilant faculty. Hector looks up as Geneviève steps out onto the balcony, smile tucking into his lips like a shared secret. He gestures at the bottle of wine propped on the small table, mosaicked with decades of oil and acrylic paint.

“Châteaux Gruaud-Larose 1982.”  From the Saint-Julien appellation of Bordeaux, because Hector has a sentimental penchant for irony. And a fine bottle of bordeaux is always cause for a little light-heartedness.  “Knicked it from the wine cabinet in the faculty lounge that they think no one knows about.”  With the finesse of a sommelier, he pours two glasses. This part, admittedly, is the performance. A gesture of good faith laying the groundwork for what is to come. The half-swirl of his glass is unconscious, the social graces of one raised to dine on wine and caviar. He lifts it in a toast, playful chagrin tugging at the curve of a dimpled half-smile.  “I know, I know. A little presumptuous toasting before we’ve even celebrated, but I’m an optimist at heart.”

[vanaglorio]

FEBRUARY 9TH, 2016. 2:49AM. BERLIN, GERMANY.  /  @perfidias​.

THE BLOOD BEVELLING THE LINES OF HIS KNUCKLES is cooling fast in the open air. The last exhales of winter wrapped like a fist around the streets and alleyways veined through Kreuzberg. The thing about blood that you never expect until you spill it with your own fists is how warm it is. Blood-warm. Flesh-heated. Lit with the seep of pulse spraying across your hands, your arms. The roaring of adrenaline flooding out all else with racehorse-blinker precision, the once-in-a-lifetime sweepstakes that end with a bullet through the brain. The rest is paralysis — a separation of state and desecration. He’d lost his shirt sometime in between the seventh shot of Patrón and the fourth line, exhilaration a red-slick layer of condensation blocking out the chill shadowing the entirety of East Berlin. His skin and hands are drenched in flame, the incendiary wick of shame knotted into bone and gristle. 

Hector lets out the breath that’s been suffocating the base instinct to find an altar and kneel before it. The prodigal spare honouring his birthright with a baptism of blood and savagery. Your father would be so fucking proud. El hijo de tu padre. Here is a man who had never tasted the warmth of pride or tenderness until he was standing in the grave of his own brother. The dirt of his casket fresh underfoot, and the audacity of guilt choking his lungs. We play the only roles we know, the inheritance whittled down to soul. Something rotten is at the heart of him. Something god-forsaken. 

He watches Saint’s hands shake as he draws a cigarette packet from his pocket. The passive observation of his waif-slenderness and height has never made him seem so slight. The animal thing in his ribs gasps out a shuddering, abyssal laugh — that’s the first thing monsters do. Seek out weakness. Scent fear and alarm. Hector clenches his jaw into something resembling humanity. He staggers down by Saint’s side, too soundless to be conscious his very presence is a cruelty. A violation.

“Need a light?”

The quicksilver click of his vintage lighter illuminates the darkened alleyway. It spits and dances in the cold, a hollow, flickering feint at expiation.

[senzarimproveri]

PURGATORIO INCORRECT QUOTES (1/?): SUCCESSION EDITION.

[tapedeck-archive]

another last day, alex lemon // hadestown, anaïs mitchell // plainwater, anne carson // abbey, mitski // sonnet with pride, sherman alexie

[scheharazade]

hunger, florence welch

[scheharazade]

incarnadine, mary szybist

[classically-lit-memes4u]

RIP to everyone killed by the gods for their hubris but im different. and better. maybe even better than the gods

[jbt7493]

“Before You Embark On A Journey Of Revenge, Dig Two Graves”. what a stupid fucking quote. I’m killing way more than two people idiot

[vanaglorio]

HECTOR OF TROY; DIOS, MEGAS, PHAIDIMOS, ANDROPHANOS.

❝ μὴ μὰν ἀσπουδί γε καὶ ἀκλειῶς ἀπολοίμην, ἀλλὰ μέγα ῥέξας τι καὶ ἐσσομένοισι πυθέσθαι. my doom has come upon me; let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter. ❞ — Homer, Iliad, II. 22.304-5.

emblazoned in the gold of the house of versace and dolce and gabbana’s alta satoria 2019, as well as pieces of ancient greek antiquity dating to the 4th century bc, hector comes as his eponymous namesake: HECTOR OF TROY. the gilded mask obscuring his eyes is fashioned of laurel wreaths stained in crimson and viscera. blood spills from his throat from the killing blow that sealed his fate in the greatest battle in human history, forever immortalised in song and epic. and what a feat it is, to be made a thing of myth by blood. to be remembered equally in death as in life.

REF.  δῖος, dios - godlike. μέγας, megas - mighty. φαίδιμος, phaidimos - glorious. ἀνδρόφανος, androphanos - manslaying. 

[vanaglorio]

🗳️sev, nikhil, sutton

vote for: sutton, probably as her darksided chief of staff or campaign manager

vote against: sev in a position of POWER??? terrifying. the world would not be able to handle it.

run against: nikhil bc the sexy enemies / political rivals to lovers dynamic

[vanaglorio]

B. SAINT-FORTIER.

𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐢. 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 𝐢. 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐄𝐍𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐄. 𝚓𝚞𝚗𝚎 𝟷𝟺𝚝𝚑, 𝟸𝟶𝟸𝟷. with @vanaglorio

                                          𝗪𝗛𝗘𝗡 𝗔𝗨𝗧𝗨𝗠𝗡 𝗠𝗔𝗞𝗘𝗦 𝗪𝗔𝗬 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗪𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗥.

After the dinner, not one word would be heard from Bellamy. The extravagance of the earlier event was reminiscent of the early days with Julian, and out of the array of emotions it could have evoked from their mind, what Bellamy thought they felt was nostalgia. Years ago, they had sat there among the opulent glittering chandeliers and Mediterranean wall art, among the very same people they willingly shared their world with. It had felt exactly the same at this dinner, 5 years A.D.

But of course it couldn’t have lasted. Even in death, Julian’s malevolence began to poison the air. The dreamlike atmosphere was shattered by the first scream of the night, and everything gradually disintegrated into chaos.  Bellamy spaced out during most of it. Until finally, they just left.  The greenhouse became their reprieve the first time they were invited to the Castilo, and it still is. Standing among the various flora, that false sense of nostalgia pulses over them in waves yet again, but every time they think about the events leading up to Julian’s death, it gave them pause. Bellamy had to remember to breathe again when they start to remember. They are so absorbed, they never even notice the presence of anyone else near them.  In one fluid motion, they pull out a cigarette from a rose-gold case they received as a present three years ago, and they begin to notice how cold they feel (though whether it was from the air itself, or from the thought of Julian, they did not know). Their graceful fingers expertly place the stick between their lips, but their other hand, frantically patting their pockets in search of a lighter, came up empty. Sucking air in between their teeth, they look around for the first time, finally noticing Hector.  It could be the present situation wherein Bellamy is in need of something and here was someone they could ask for help, or it could be the simple fact that Hector’s presence always had a calming, grounding effect on them — but the relief was apparent in their face. “Hector,” they call out, voice soft as usual, a little cracked from hours of disuse, “Do you have a light?” They bite the inside of their cheek. “I need a smoke.” A beat. “Please.”  Bellamy thought they wouldn’t even question why Hector was there. They were simply glad that if anyone had to be there, it was him. 

It’s impossible to step foot anywhere in this place and not think of him. The Morningstar and the devil poised on their shoulder, sin forever winding serpentine around their throats. It’s as if the very air is infused with echoes of him, traces of his cologne, the glimpse of a white-gold flicker in the periphery. As a habit, Hector does not indulge the concept of ghosts. His figments of spectral imagination are reserved solely for gothic horror novellas and obscure art house films.

But, here’s a thought experiment: if they all covertly suspect Julian to be alive, isn’t he? Is he Schrodinger’s anti-christ? Or merely an invention of mass hysteria?

It shouldn’t feel so humiliating slipping back into their old, familiar patterns. The well-worn grooves of the roles they once played so well. Five years on, and he’s still a lieutenant without a king to serve. A conspirator starving for the thrill of regicide. Julian never did get to see his plans for his father’s empire come to fruition. Hector can’t help wonder if it would made him proud, or disgusted, to see that vicious gleam of approval cutting across Julian’s features, illuminating him like lightning through pitch dark. 

He wanders for a while, aimlessly, without cardinal point or purpose. Escaping into the gardens and beyond the fringes of the villa seem like the most rational means of compartmentalisation. Ending up in the greenhouse and discovering he’s not alone here is an act of sheer coincidence. Bellamy stands huddled beneath an overgrown tropical plant, pale as moonlight and looking more like a haunting than anything Hector’s seen, living or dead, in Castilo de Cervantes. He slips his hand into his pocket, drawing out an old-fashioned lighter. Gold-plated, heavy and engraved with intricate pattern work. His father’s. The irony of carrying it with him wherever he went — a demolition with his father’s name on it — felt symbolic. 

“You look shaken, Bell.”  Hector comments, dry and undiplomatic. It was never him they came to for tenderness. He flicks his thumb, a flame sparking to life at the tip of the lighter, tips it towards Bellamy.  “One would think we’d seen enough macabre spectacle to last us a lifetime.” The lighter snaps close with a metallic click. 

“Do you think it’s history, or misfortune, that likes to repeat itself?”  Hector cants his head at Bellamy, apropos of nothing yet with an underlying vein of scrutiny.  “What would your poets and your playwrights say?”

[vanaglorio]

V.  KANG-GERHARDT.

“Amusement.” Words fall flat in between them, the simplicity just another characteristic that makes them unique. Why else would someone pull such and act, and why else would them all oblige - if not out of fear and amusement, walking hand in hand as they’ve always been? “Why wouldn’t any of us delve into the absurd out of pure beguilement? It just happened to be you.”

It’s a hound-like stride, but he was no prey. With intent interest, Verity watches his every reaction looking for a fault, for a crack in his canvas to which she could easily claim a forgery out of art. Stained digits come to rest against her own lips, parting them, tongue prodding out to savor the remains. Calculated, of course. Verity did pounce on the carcass, it wasn’t of her nature. She’d rather wait.

His smile was like a riddle, and her fuse was too short for those - yet, she watches it spread - and not, - with utter fascination. He was so much more. “Hector, Hector. You always keep me wondering.”  Candlelight dance in frenzy in the reflection of their eyes, and she feels as feverish - alight. “What are you, five years and a death later; his eternally loyal lackey, or just another tortured soul by his own hand?” 

The time for shame has long since come and gone — slaughtered on the altar of hedonistic ambition, abdicated in the name of sin without reproach. She isn’t wrong, and aye, there’s the rub. Were they monsters before Verdamme coaxed their worst instincts into the light, or did their obsessive compulsion with life free of consequence or retribution make them monsters? On any other evening, this stunt would’ve been a master stroke of grandiloquent flair and aplomb worthy of a standing ovation. His mouth curls, an afterthought bearing trace amounts of accusation.  “I thought you knew me better than that, Veri. You should I know don’t deal in half-measures.”  If it was mere absurdity on trial, they wouldn’t be having this conversation at a dining table where a dead man used to sit at the head.

It would not be an exaggeration by any stretch of the imagination to say that, of them all, Verity was the first to hate him most. She’d seen the black-hearted rot in him before they could even bare to open their eyes to the truth. From the very beginning, despite her lauded status as one of the few that had known Julian pre-Verdamme, ante-Paradise, she had never taken to him the way they had. There was always an inkling of gasoline, a streak of something nuclear, about the air between them. As if a single stray spark would set them both ablaze. 

If the casual slander bites at his heels, the old, familiar scars of deference, his placid expression betrays nothing. They’re alike, in the sense that he's never been one to lean away from the heat of a fire. Smoke coils through his smile, a serpentine flicker of shadow darkening his gaze.  “I wonder about many things, too. Little curiosities and loose ends here and there. One of them being the fact that it was common knowledge you loathed him more than any of us. And you’ve never let anything as insignificant as loyalty or morality stand in the way of your warpath.”  

He leans in, the flames singeing a little brighter, a touch sharper.  “You had the most compelling motive of us all. The longest history of animosity and resentment. Of wanting him dead more than you preferred him alive.”

[vanaglorio]

H.  VILLIERS.

“For fucks sake,” Hadrian muttered. Hector with the broom stick stuck firmly up his arsehole hadn’t changed a bit. “I was here trying to get some air away from whatever the hell dinner was.” He hadn’t searched for anyone in the past five years and he wasn’t about to now. Certainly not when it came to him. Hadrian met Hector’s gaze with his own, one filled with a mixture of aggravation and expectance. The tin man had about five emotions and the 90% bar was always filled at the ‘too cool to give two shits’ bar. Many a times Hadrian had though roughly dreamed of pummeling him in the face, both fists straight on. But he was too enveloped in his own smoke at the moment to lift a finger to pick a physical fight. 

“I didn’t find any coke or shrooms around yet if that’s what you’re implying.” Hadrian didn’t bother to even bat an eye. 

“What? You could’ve too if you weren’t such a bitch.” He parted his lips to let the smoke escape between his lips, puffing out. “Shame, it tasted pretty fucking good, I’d order it again.” The additional inclusion of reactions was another pretty bonus to it all. 

He cocks his head, considering. Eyeing Hadrian as if he’s sizing him up — for sport or dissection, he hasn’t quite made his mind up yet. Hadrian was always ever so determined to play the wildcard, the element of unadulterated chaos in an already volatile arena.  “You seemed to be rather enjoying yourself.”  The purse of his lips is neither smirk nor smile, just barely somewhere in between, if surgical curiosity could pass for humour.  “Isn’t this the kind of thing you live for? Macabre displays of violence and spectacle. The thrill of watching everyone scramble for some semblance of rationality when there’s none to be found.”  Hadrian, old friend. Your greeting looks like a punch waiting to be thrown. Would you do it, if he dared you to?

Hector lets out a low, musical laugh. Abrupt as blunt force head trauma, this one.  “More’s the pity. Even back then, that was the singular talent you used to pride yourself on.”  They’d devoted many a boundless night to such reckless adventures, pure hedonism augmented by a truly impressive panoply of hallucinogenics and amphetamines.  “A bitch that very much wants to stay alive. Don’t you know how these stories go? Be careful what you eat, lest you want to wind up choking on your own tongue.”  He blows out a plume of smoke as if to illustrate his point of exactly what Hadrian wouldn’t be capable of doing in the event of an untimely poisoning. Silence blankets them with an elusive tension, a sense of dissonance that Hector isn’t willing to unravel just yet.

The cigarette pinched between his fingers is burning down to embers. He flicks at it idly, and turns to look Hadrian dead-centre. No persiflage or banter concealing the truth slicing through the underbelly of his words:  “Quite convenient isn’t it, that this reunion is happening now, during the same solstice when he died.”

[antigonick]

“And HECTOR died like everyone else […] a spear found out the little patch of white Between his collarbone and his throat Just exactly where a man’s soul sits Waiting for the mouth to open”

— Alice Oswald, excerpt of “Memorial”

[vanaglorio]

𝐀𝐂𝐓 𝐈,  𝐒𝐂𝐄𝐍𝐄 𝐈.   EXT.  THE OUTDOOR AREA  —  LATE EVENING, THURSDAY, 16 JUNE 2021.

After the sound and fury of the opening feast, the dinners are curtailed to a looser, more less ceremonious affair. Hosted in the alfresco dining area in the villa’s expansive courtyard, the evenings are ripe with nostalgia and baited reminiscence. For the first time since they have arrived back at Castilo de Cervantes, 𝐇𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐎𝐑 and 𝐃𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄 find themselves alone together. 

It’s a particular form of damnation to be so close to the verge of sin and yet incapable of crossing the threshold. It has always been this, them, the prevailing Rubicon stretched between here and the indefinable beyond. They could be in Cabo, or St Tropez, or shipwrecked on the very shores of Acheron, and Hector would still be here, balanced on this precipice, one ankle dipped precariously in liminality. They could be anywhere within the world or without, and mind, thought—skin and limb and sensation—would arc towards him. Heliotropic, a perennial unfurling towards the sun, light bending into event horizon.

The night is nothing extraordinary, memory drip-fed in some passing sacrifice to nostalgia. They, the players of a motley pasquinade, brutally conscious of the crucible they have thrust themselves into the heart of once more. In vanity, his lifelong devotion to the literature and philosophy that still claws at him with obsession has made him barely more than a self-aware shadow chained to the cave. In violence, he is a thing without purpose or anchor, led by wave and whim on a godless odyssey. He looks at Dante, not even because he wants to - not because he could ever bear it - but because he is the only real thing in a sea of hollow dark.

He drinks him in, slowly, a finer sedative than anything aged for a century in a wineyard or distillery and downed in half a breath. Here in the shadowed remnants of their dinner, their friends and fellow hellions scattered across the pavilion and moon-soaked gardens, he lets himself. To see the way his eyes cut him out, the shape of him patchworked in little stars, would be the end of it. No ruse or justification could argue his defence.

Hector's arm dangles over the edge of his chair, not quite a throne but near enough to be distinctly noticeable. He had slipped into the part of kingmaker with innate ease, to the overt recognition of the very few serpents and wolves amongst them. Dante has managed to acquire a seat a few places closer than he'd held before, and deliberate or not, it narrows the entire world. Hector reaches for his wine glass, peering into the half-full depths of bordeaux like he's only just noticed it dwindling to the dregs. Liberating the capsized bottle of Chateaux Ausone from the ice bucket and upending it into his glass, he speaks.

"If you keep looking at me like that, we're not going to get very far in our endeavours to keep this under lock and key.” He sets the bottle down, gaze fixed on the glass as he lifts it to his lips. At the point where the rim alights upon his mouth, his eyes shift, something electric in the elision of eyes against lips against stained glass. "You still look hungry. Did dinner not satisfy your appetite?" Something to wet the palate. A tender prick of insinuation.

@senzarimproveri​.​

[vanaglorio]

𝐀𝐂𝐓 𝐈,  𝐒𝐂𝐄𝐍𝐄 𝐈.   EXT.  THE POOL  —  MIDDAY ON TUESDAY, 15 JUNE 2021.

The sun is a languid halo, blue sky bleeding into water tinged with chlorine and sunbeam. A snapshot of summer unspooling from day to night in a blur of serene, boneless freedom:  𝐇𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐎𝐑,  at the centre of the pool sprawled in repose on a floating lounge, a negroni growing warm in the loose grip of his fingers. 

From their scant distance to the ocean, the air of the Spanish Riviera is liquid gold and champagne fizz. You could stick out your tongue and taste sea and salt spray. Even if you preferred the cinematic, lotus-eating thrills of Cote d'Azur and Monte Carlo, you couldn’t deny that the Riviera looked, felt and tasted as close as man would ever come to Eden on Earth. For a moment, drifting aimlessly in the pool, Hector could almost imagine he was anywhere in the world.

The Castilo fades into backdrop, detached from the outdoor arena of pool and gardens and acres of trees blooming with the scent of citrus and pomegranates. One could be forgiven for sinking their teeth into the fruit for a glimpse of fleeting paradise. My kingdom for a long-awaited, much-delayed fucking holiday. Perhaps he'd burn a fruit basket for Julian in gratitude, a picnic hecatomb of seasonal offerings. The only silver lining of venturing back into this unholy hellmouth. 

— Was it a symptom of time, or merely succumbing to the anaesthesia of age and adulthood, that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so at peace?

Prada sunglasses obscuring the blinding sun, his head lolls against the lush, cushioned lounge at the sound of a trespasser. An inverted line of sight sketches out the distabt form of August. Loathe as he is to relinquish tranquility incarnate, a smirk flickers into sharp relief on his face as he realises who it is.  “If you had any plans to swim laps, I regret to inform you I’m not getting out. Not even for a once- almost-Olympian.”  Once. Almost. A slight without teeth, fondness in the shape of a harmless tease.  “Highly recommend floating on the surface doing absolutely nothing though.”

@lcvesque.​