"It is beautiful," Frederic says, looking at the dark cobblestone streets and grey moonlit sky, his face all awash in dusty lamplight and silver-burnished stars. "I've never seen Forte City in the dark."

"It's nice," Jazz agrees, and he can just barely hear the sound of his own voice above the thunder of his heartbeat in his ears. Frederic glides along beside him, floating, almost, a vision of mist and beauty that fades into nothingness at the edge. Jazz's tramping footsteps echo in the close corridors of the city, and next to Frederic he feels too big, too clumsy, too everything to ask for what he's going to ask for next. He hesitates. "Frederic—"

"I am glad you invited me," Frederic says at the same moment, and then laughs a little and looks at Jazz with all the world reflected in his eyes. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. What were you going to say?"

"Nothing." Jazz's throat closes a little and he has to swallow down the sudden taste of his heart in his mouth, biting at his tongue to keep from spoiling the moment, to keep from saying what he really wants to say. "I just… the bridge I wanted to show you is up here."

Frederic follows him out onto an arched bridge made of mosaics of midnight blue rock, walking with a certain kind of reverence beneath the watchful eyes of the gas lamps that guard them on either side. For a moment they listen to the rush of fast water beneath their feet together and then Frederic turns toward him, smiling, tilting his head and for one wonderful, terrible moment Jazz thinks he might be trying to kiss him. But no, he's turning his head up to look out from under the wide brim of his hat, watching the flicker of light and clouds as they played out across the silken night. "This place is so lovely."

"Yeah." Jazz swallows again and watches Frederic face watching the world around them, pale and thin and translucent as the inside of a butterfly's wing, in awe of everything he sees. Jazz thinks if he reaches out to touch him the skin might crumble off on his fingers like bits of broken art. "I..."

Frederic turns to look at him now, eyes silver at the edges with spots of reflected light, and Jazz is rendered speechless for a long moment until Frederic asks a gentle, "Hm?"

"Oh. Um. I just…" Jazz pulls at the hem of his shirt and clenches his fingers in the cloth, trembling a little in the faint wind. He has to say it. He has to spit it out before the words burn through his tongue. "I—actually brought you out here for a reason." Frederic blinks, taken aback, and his lashes are long and gilded in the glow of the lamp and his face is all ivory skin imbricated with the pale filigree pattern of the gas mantle and Jazz does not know how to breathe. "I…"

Those crumbling-art butterflies are suddenly everywhere, everywhere, in his ears, in his throat, in his fingers, in his chest, in the tenebrous pit of his tumbling stomach. He wonders if he hasn't always been made of a nervous bundle of white butterflies, all of them sitting on the hollowed out branches of his bones and quivering in the wind of his lungs, waiting for this exact moment to come alive again.

"Jazz?"

"I was—" He takes a deep breath and swallows again, their fragile ivory wings beating in unison with his trembling heart. "I need to tell you something."

Frederic peers up at him with brown-violet eyes and something like worry flitters across his face, slipping in to hide in the shadows that line the soft underside of his jaw. "Is everything alright?"

"Yeah," Jazz says, because he doesn't know what else to say, "Yeah, no, of course. Everything's fine, I just… I wanted someplace private where we could talk." Where we could be honest, he adds silently, where we could be real. Where I could tell you what I've been wanting to tell you for years.

"You sound anxious," Frederic murmurs, and his coat shimmers gold as he turns toward him, the worry shifting now to circle the fragile skin beneath his eyes. Jazz nods.

"Yeah," he says again. "I am."

Frederic stands there quietly, just waiting, just holding the sky aloft, and Jazz takes another choking breath and opens his mouth again.

"Frederic," he starts, and he clenches his fingers into the palm of his hand to keep his voice from shaking. "Frederic, I… if someone had told me that there was a musician wandering around somewhere who would change my life one day I would have laughed at them. I would have told them they were crazy. I don't, I've never—" He looks up, sees Frederic following the movement of his mouth with uncertain eyes, and he remembers why he's here, why he's dared to face this anguish anew. "I always figured I would never hand my heart out to anyone again," he whispers, and the weight of losing so many people before this gathers like grit on his tongue. "But I didn't. I didn't learn my lesson, Frederic. I went ahead and I fell in love with you."

There is a long beat of silence, and Jazz feels the weight that had fallen off his shoulders settle down into the base of his stomach. Frederic blinks once and then his eyes go wide, blood rushing to bloom beneath his skin in the silver-quiet light as he raises a hand to his mouth. "O-oh."

Jazz has to turn away. He knows what's coming and he can't bear to look it in the face. "I know you don't feel that way about me. And it's, it's okay that you don't, I just… I thought you deserved to know the truth."

Frederic touches his arm with svelte summer hands and Jazz looks up, looks at the softness in the other man's eyes and tries to pick his heart up again. "Jazz…"

"It's okay, Chopin, really. You're—"

"I never realized you thought about me that way," Frederic says, his voice almost tender. Jazz laughs and doesn't feel the laughter anywhere but his chest.

"What do you mean, you never realized? Crescendo's been teasing me about it for months!"

"That I had noticed," Frederic admits. "His—teasing you, I mean. His acting strangely whenever I walked into a room. But you and Crescendo have all kinds of inside jokes that I'm not privy to; I honestly didn't think anything of it."

"For months," Jazz says, and this time his laughter is a little more solid, a little more real. "For months and months and months he's been making those goo goo eyes at me, and winking, and sticking out his tongue. It's driving me crazy."

Frederic beams at him like he's said something funny, his face all paleness and warmth and Jazz's throat goes tight.

"May I ask how Crescendo came to know all this before me?"

"It… he…" Jazz fumbles for words, tries to force them out of his suddenly-dry mouth. "We've been friends for long time, way back from when we were just kids, and when I started getting… flustered… around you, he demanded to know why." Frederic is still smiling so Jazz goes on, heat creeping up his neck and into his cheeks because he never expected to get this far. "He… Crescendo was so upset I wouldn't tell him, and eventually he just walked right up to me and looked me in the face and said, 'Jazz, I have known you for sixteen years, and if you don't tell me what is going on right this second you're not going to live to see sixteen more.' So I did."

"You get flustered around me?"

"Yeah," Jazz says, and needs something to do with his hands so he scratches at the back of his neck where the heat is still sliding across his skin. "Yeah, I mean… not always, just, just sometimes. When you're too close or I'm already nervous or I know I'm going to make a fool out of myself." He pauses and adds, quietly, "Like right now."

Frederic takes a half step toward him, so subtle Jazz can't be sure he isn't just shifting his weight. "You aren't making a fool of yourself, Jazz," he says, voice low and rich and Jazz almost shivers at the sound of it alone. "You don't need to be flustered."

"Really? Because I think I might have just confessed my undying love for you."

Frederic looks at him and a slow smile slips across his face, his eyes a little dark, a little lidded. "And did you mean it?" he asks, the words just a breath between them. "Do you love me?"

Jazz doesn't know what to say, how to answer that, how to heave his fumbling heart into words. I love you, he wants to say, I am deeply, madly in love with you. When you touch me I forget how to breathe, I forget that I am a jagged mess of mirror shards being held together with gun metal and saliva and a misguided sense or morality. You brush your arm against me and I forget that I was broken, I am broken, I forget that I have ever been anything but whole.

Instead he hefts a heavy gasp of air and dares a single whisper. "Yes."

Frederic turns toward him, his hair and coat and skin all turned a gentle copper orange where the distant lamplight caresses him with long-fingered hands. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"What?" Jazz manages, his voice quavering as he watches the way Frederic's eyes are filled with apricot softness and mahogany heat.

"Why have you never told me before?"

Jazz doesn't have it in him to lie again, not now, not now that he's touched the face of heaven and come back unscathed. "Because you're beautiful," he says, and it feels like he's drowning, like there's no enough room in his heart for all this truth. He turns his face up to the starlight, his shoulders trembling, his voice unsteady. "You're so beautiful, Frederic, and I—I'm afraid of how my world would look without you."

When there is no answer he looks down and tries to swallow the clawing fear the is working its way up his throat, the fear that tastes like black vinegar and mulled wine. "I don't want to lose you," he says, whispers, confesses. "I don't want you to leave."

"Leave?" Frederic takes a step forward until the light falls slanted across his cheekbones and then another and another, his mouth soft, his hands reaching. "Do you think I would do that?"

"You don't understand. I'm… I'm not like that. I'm not like you. You're beautiful and patient and kind and I—"

"Jazz…"

He shakes his head and feels warm air against his jaw, against his throat. "I am none of those things, Frederic. How could I ask you—" Frederic leans in, leans up until Jazz can smell the sweet mint of his skin and the soft dustiness of his coat and he has has to close his eyes to keep from falling. "How…" he starts again, and feels a slender hand slip into his own, squeezes his eyes shut tighter. "How could I ask you to love me?"

There is the sound of movement, fabric rustling and someone sighing and the whole world stops, slows down, becomes suspended in the tender bend of a raindrop for just a moment as Frederic shifts closer to kiss the careful question off his tongue. He can feel Frederic's breath, his heat, his heartbeat, and Jazz raises a stuttering hand to touch his shoulder, certain that he's dreaming, certain that he never wants to wake up again.

It is everything and nothing like he imagined, and Jazz can't even breathe for fear of breaking it.

After a moment and an eternity all at once Frederic draws away from him, one hand brushing the bones of Jazz's ribcage like he isn't sure he should be allowed such an intimate transgression. "I—" His ears go pink in the half light and Jazz feels his heart tip sideways, feels the warmness of it spreading through his chest. "I'm sorry. I should have asked."

I would give you anything you asked, Jazz thinks, squeezing albescent fingers with his own. Anything, everything I have I would give you. Everything and more. But he can't find the words in the soft black velvet of his brain so he raises his hand slowly, moving it from Frederic's shoulder to his throat to the fragile narrowness of his nape, petting the dark curls he finds there. "You…"

Frederic blinks up at him, his eyes all brimming with moonlight and bright stars, and Jazz feels his mouth go dry, the breath faltering in his chest just a little as he twines his fingers through silky strands of hair. "Did… you mean to kiss me?"

A slow smile breaks across Frederic's face and the light in his eyes changes, shifts a little, falls across the crinkles in the corners of his eyes. "Yes, actually. I did."

"Can I—" He doesn't know how to ask for it, how to put into words what he wants because he's still certain that he's dreaming, certain that at any moment he'll push too far and wake up panting into the darkness of his own bedroom, alone. But Frederic is still standing in the circle of his arms and watching him with a wary kind of awe, like he's afraid, too, and Jazz pulls him a fraction closer and takes a deep breath. "Would you let me kiss you back?"

Frederic's lips turn up in a silk-petal smile and he reaches one hand out, puts it with an aching tenderness across the place where Jazz's heart is supposed to be. "Yes," he says, and then, softly, "please."