Bold and Bright
By Kay
Author's Notes: Continued from the last, with Christopher's POV and cursed future.
Christopher finds pleasure where he can take it.
It's a lesson he learns early in life; tucked under the pipes of the sink in his parent's half-empty glass bottles, with fancy names that are just another way to label a trap he walks into willingly. Women, girls, brightly painted lipstick and a certain swish to their walk that speaks his language. And later, Etain, and oh how he'll never forget her, couldn't when he sees her every week for the rest of his life walking the stairs of a jagged castle that has become their prison. He watches her, still soft and pale and beautiful like the moon, even while his laughter grows deeper and his hair a shaggy, bold and bright mess of sunlight splayed over skin. He grows as many lines of sorrow as happiness around his mouth; they deepen with each day.
They meet on the stairs. In the stables. Over dinner. Small talk, little sips of wine, and Christopher finds all the things he wants but can't have in these agonizing spreads of time over the table. But he finds his pleasure where he can take it, in kissing the ridge of her knuckles, in smiling with secrets.
He still makes jokes. Things aren't as funny anymore, but Etain still laughs like yesterday and the day before that, and Christopher still fools himself into believing this is not another trap he has walked into willingly.
End