24. Piano keys
Once it was done, and they were both satiated, and their breaths had evened and cooled, they talked. As if they'd been apart, not for three days, but three lifetimes.
Beverly spoke of all that Cecil had told her. His promise that all would be well in the end. His warnings and his smiles and his beautiful hands.
"He does have beautiful hands…"
"He'd be a good pianist…"
Peter Lake grinned, and his face was flushed with the remains of the afterglow, and Beverly loved the sight of it.
"Maybe we could play together…"
"Four hands on the piano?"
"Or… six."
They remained entwined upon the bed, and he was half-clothed, underneath her, and his hands were in hers.
"It'd be grand. Like a concert or something."
The breeze was cool upon the muscles on her back. She'd thrown her hair behind her shoulders to let the sun illuminate her skin, and his chest moved under the breached row of buttons of his shirt.
"Oh," he murmured sheepishly. "No… I don't know how to play."
"I can teach you."
"It's not that simple…"
The weak sunlight, bleeding into the curtains of the tent, plastered to his flesh, her pink knuckles, the hair on his chest, the whiteness of her belly, the darkness of his eyes. Grey, silver, drops of orange and yellow…
"We have nothing but time. I can teach you a thousand times over."
Peter Lake smiled again, but there was a heaviness to his features now. A sadness that he'd grown all too familiar with.
"That sounds lovely," he said softly.
He believed her every word, but he didn't believe this.
Nothing but time…
Yet he smiled, anyhow. As if her joy alone were enough reason for him to do so.
And Beverly was no angel now, but a woman, in his arms, and he was looking her in the eyes.
He let her see his doubt, but he also allowed her to comprehend that he was trying to look past it. To seek the peace that she'd so desperately encouraged him to pursue.
You fool…
Suddenly, Beverly felt like a cloud had lifted. That she could now take a peek into a corner of his soul that she had previously been too impatient, or maybe too brusque, to understand.
"Teach me. I want to learn how to play that song you like…"
"Which one? I like many."
"The… Ehm, the one about… It goes like-"
He hummed, then. Hummed.
It squeaks.
She wanted to eat him up with kisses… Her soul trembled with tenderness.
"O Come, O Come, Emmanuel."
"Yes."
"You want to learn that one?"
"Yes…"
This was the man who screamed her name in a crowded street, and reached out for her, and convinced her that she could be powerful. The one who took her upriver and tentatively accepted her offer to stay. The one who walked with her, with his hugs and his kisses and his lists. The one who fixed the furnace and awoke expecting death.
He believed in towns, but he listened to her anyways. Her thoughts about oceans and light and darkness. He didn't believe in god, but he prayed to her regardless.
The same man had cried himself to sleep in a greenhouse, embracing her lifeless body, that life he'd finally grown hopeful enough to believe that he could save…
You don't hate me at all?
The same man put up no resistance when he was dragged to his death. Yes, he'd cursed, and screamed, and insulted those who'd hurt him and who'd hurt her… but he hadn't raised a hand in self-defense. And when Athansor had come to aid him, he'd let Athansor go.
Why can't you hate me?
Clouds had faded and the sky was bright. Beverly saw him.
This man, Peter Lake. Her friend, her lover, her miracle.
"I'd love to teach it to you… It would make me very happy."
"In that case, teach me a thousand times over. As many times as it takes. I'll, heh, I'll be a slow learner, if it brings you any comfort."
She smiled at him. He smiled at her.
"Have you ever taught someone before?"
"I learned to play piano all by myself. It was my pride… My solitary wings, with which I planned to fly away. Into this sky… This water… No, I didn't dare share it with anyone. I was desperate to have something all to myself, for the time I had left. I- This may sound ridiculous…"
"I think we've already discussed this, Beverly." A pause, then: "Keep talking. Please. I won't laugh at you."
He was pessimistic, but not hopeless. He always trembled, but rarely cowered. He ran and flew, but never fled.
"I liked seeing the notes as crickets… Like, they were jailed up by the partiture, the lines of ink. And by touching the keys and making a note a sound, I imagined that I was freeing them…"
His dark eyes, always so frightened, steadied hers easily.
"I think that's beautiful… Honestly, I do. I don't think it's ridiculous."
You remind me that I'm alive.
She hesitated, then said: "All my life I was promised a rescue, an end to a fever that would never leave me… Until the wait for solutions became the wait for the end. When that happened, at last, I was free to live on, allowed to be calmer. I saw my death as a friend I hadn't met yet… And I just played and played, fiercer every time… For as long as I had left… Imagining myself the hero I could never have the privilege of being."
He always kissed her wordlessly, gently, without fearing her disapproval, because he understood, and most of all, he accepted that he was loved as deeply as he loved.
Why can't you hate me?
"You arrived in my life, and… I suddenly wanted to live again. And that brought back the fear, but it also made me feel more powerful than I'd ever felt before… You did that to me, Peter. You chose to be my friend, my partner, and I'm thankful for you. All that you choose to be and all that you are…"
Heavy, bottomless silence. A pool of water between them. Bridges of words. Caresses. Little kisses. Glances, alone. He went to her willingly.
"On New Year's Eve, when you took off your gloves, and led me to the dance floor… Beverly, do you even know what you did?"
"What did I do?"
"You twirled, and grinned, and the room spun around you until everything had molten into unity… The candlelight, the tables, the walls… The entire universe stopped at your feet, and you kept on moving."
She couldn't understand his guilt, nor would she ever.
She'd looked up at the stars for so long, in her house of glass and unused candles. She'd never tread through a darkness that could ever come close to the ones he'd been dragged into.
Twenty years… All her life, practically.
While her father's fingers bled from papercuts, and American nurses played with her hair, and her mother built her tent, and she freed her crickets and penned down her theories, Peter Lake was alone in a cage of shadow. Relying on no outside force to free him from his own decay into tyranny.
"You were told that your life had been over months ago… Years ago, even… But you were still alive. Not just alive, but living… Your bright smile, your inexhaustible optimism, your warmth, your hope… You stunned me, Beverly. From the moment we met, you have stunned me…"
Beverly had tasted anger. She understood its allure, in the face of doom. How tempting it'd been, too many times, to surrender to it. But she had a baby sister, and a father. And she loved them both. She hadn't screamed only to spare them the pain.
How would she have fared, in Peter's little cage? Parentless, friendless, hopeless. Would she have burned them all? Would she have been satisfied with a simple escape? Peter Lake had been. In spite of it all… he had merely walked away. All by himself.
How could she be greedier than a thief?
My miracle…
"And in death, still, you kept on moving. You immediately came to check on me, to see your family… You traveled throughout the breadth of New York, you ran. And when I fell, you picked me up from the water. You were the second person in my life to ever do so… Every day, afraid of the fall. For years on end. And, at the very last moment, you were there… Catching me before I had a chance to break completely."
You fool…
"Beverly, I didn't save you…"
"Oh, Peter…"
"No… Don't worry… I won't break my promise… But I won't lie to you, either."
"You saved me so many times… In so many different ways…"
"But I didn't save your life. I had no right to do so. I was never your miracle, or anyone's miracle, and that's the truth… I know you love me, and- and I love that you love me, I do… But I'm no miracle. I'm just a man. And that doesn't hurt me, not anymore. What hurts me is that… I was too concerned with the idea that you could be mine, mine to save, when, really… I was yours. All this time."
She looked into his eyes, black and large as water wells.
"You..." he murmured. "You are a miracle. All of you is magical. You lived through death itself, for years. And you saved me. I know I'm dead, and so are you, but… I feel. I feel the light on my face… I see you, now, and I can hold you in my arms, and annoy you with my stupid worries…"
"You don't annoy me…"
She understood…
"You were alone… You've been alone for so long, and I was too. For that, I know you could have sunk, but you didn't… Not only did you fly, but you carried me, as well. You didn't yield to your frozen world. You moved. Moved, tread, ran… You, and your pianos… Your nightgown… Your little basket of boiled eggs…"
And then Peter Lake dipped his head and pressed a kiss between her breasts. The heart that no longer beat. The extinguished fire, ash and soot, remnants of the fever.
He'd done the same thing on New Year's Day. A gesture so specifically tender that Beverly almost broke down in tears.
I love you…
"I'm thankful to be your partner," he told her. "And I'm so, so proud of you."
His journey upriver would never end. He would never stop being afraid. He'd keep hearing Pearly's voice, or her father's voice, or Gabriel's voice.
Magpie. Thief. Orphan. Crook. Liar.
He would never truly believe himself a miracle.
But his words would not become any less gentle, neither would he stop reaching for the light that he'd spent his whole life deprived of. The humanity that she'd always detected in his sad black eyes. An unfathomable humanity…
My miracle.
"You carried me as well, long before I carried you…"
He would always be haunted by the lives he had spared. Death stalked him like it'd stalked her. She'd moved through winds and storms he'd braved ten years in advance. He carried Pearly's accent. But with this voice he spoke to her now.
"I know… But I had no wings of my own, mine were borrowed…"
To this she found herself smiling. Though tears teased her eyes, and her hands were trembling as they sank into his hair.
"I'm very sorry," she murmured, "for yelling at you earlier…"
He shook his head, but she kept talking.
Keep going.
"The truth is, I was frightened…"
Her voice… Her voice was breaking.
"I thought I had lost you forever… That… I had become another of your regrets… Since you're constantly blaming yourself for every goddamn thing that happens…"
You're going to be a real heartbreaker…
Peter Lake spanned her back with both hands.
"You had every right to yell at me for insinuating such a thing. I'm glad you did. I was frightened, too, and you took me out of it."
She held him, smoothing back his hair and resting her cheek upon his head. Reveling in his warmth, his closeness.
Suddenly, he murmured: "I don't regret you…"
"I know…"
A kiss. His forehead, his nose, his mouth.
"I know…"
Closer…
Warmer…
To be drained of all this pain. Her worries and his worries, sweat, bled out of them. Crickets, become sound, freed and fluttering. The remaining devotion, two hearts unshackled, silver scrubbed of its rust, the smell of soap. Bubbles, glimmering in the sun…
I know…
Thickening breaths, interlacing like ribbons. The walls of fabric trembled.
"I don't regret you, Beverly… I'm sorry- That I ever- made you think that I…"
"I know," she kept on breathing, into him, through him, slipping into his lungs like she'd done so many times these last few days. "I know…"
His fingers, lost in her hair. His breath, becoming heavier.
"You're the best choice I have ever made… You're my sunlight…"
He kissed her face.
My miracle… My darling…
His fingers, the taste of them…
"I know…"
His tongue, the taste of him…
"I chose you as well…"
My darling…
The renewed greed, ever-present. The need to have him as soon as possible, and to let him have her.
You're what I choose, of all people in the world…
They were dead. They had nothing but time. No one but each other to cherish, to kiss, to feel. How could impatience still haunt her, up here, so far away? So light… So cold… Her fever was gone…
My love…
Beverly palmed his chest, under the fabric. Flattened her hand to the thick muscles of his belly. He pressed himself to her and a sigh shook his body.
And Beverly craved him.
God…
Not a craving like the one that had led to their last intimacy. There was no sorrow now. No desperation or madness or unspoken want of the human touch. This was simple tenderness. Cleaner, and sweeter.
The desire for closeness, with him and him alone. So that she may look at his face and watch it change. To hear him. To feel him.
God…
He had already given himself to her twice. And yet he still trembled. And his voice would still shake at the murmuring of the words.
"Is it alright…?"
"Is what alright?"
His mouth, moving, reshaping with every word he murmured. Caressing the line of her jaw. The curve of her throat. Descending in tentative kisses along her chest.
Please…
"To want you again…"
Had she maps of her own? What gesture of hers revealed such secret paths?
Please, please, please…
Beverly unmounted him, laying herself back on the bed. She touched him, his arms, his waist.
"Come here," she murmured, as her only reply.
Peter Lake went to her.
Please…
They enjoyed it much more this time around. Moving as leisurely and tenderly as the first time they'd made this decision.
"Don't close your eyes… Please, look at me… See me like I see you…"
Fabric, breaking away. Buttons unclasped. Skins touching, limbs entwined. Sighs, stolen breaths, gentle whimpers of delight.
Were they dead? Were they, truly? What was this? No wind broke through them. They were water, air, oxygen. They converged easily. She was a part of him and he, of her.
In her wildest imaginings, Beverly had never envisioned a bed in her afterlife. Let alone a partner to lay with. A body with which to feel any of these things. She had torn herself to pieces and floated, invisible, along a city of winter, but now... What now?
Was death cruel? Was death lonesome? She'd thought it was, just some hours before...
Was she cruel for her relief at having him here? The joy of being seen, being touched, being able to touch him...
"I love your eyes... I always have..."
They exchanged whispers of sugar, little terms of endearment, slow kisses, wandering hands.
"I'm glad..."
"Of what, darling?"
She'd never called him 'darling' before. Not out loud.
"Of being able to be with you... Just like this... Even now, when all else is gone... I can still give you this..."
"I am, too..."
Peter's lips, meandering her face, piece by piece. He would never know how much she loved him. No matter how many times she told him, aloud, in passing whispers, in crisp shouts. Beverly's hands coursed in rivers up his back, cupping his shoulders, his head.
See me like I see you…
She whispered: "You know... I first wanted you when you told me you would never laugh at me… At the staircase, that first night. Remember?"
His sweet face, blushing, a smile dawning sheepishly upon it.
"The first night? So soon?"
"Your voice got all low and sultry..."
"No, it didn't..." That laugh... So quiet, so secret...
I love you.
"Yes, it did... I was about to run down into your arms. I thought about it. I wanted to…"
A shake of the head. A bump of the noses. He smelled of salt and clouds.
He whispered, then: "Do you want to know when I first wanted you?"
"Yes. Yes."
"That purple dress…"
She giggled. "I knew it…"
"I had wanted you beforehand… but not this way. I had longed for your conversation, your company, your presence alone. Now I longed for even more than that. I… I…"
The sound of him… His breathing, his sighs, so in-tune with her own…
You're beautiful…
"I wanted to kiss you in that hallway, when you got on your tiptoes… When you said we saw eye to eye…"
A kiss. Brief and sweet and fleeting. Another breath.
"I wanted to take you away, into a bedroom, or a study, any room, behind the curtains… Or maybe outside… Where you would be safest…"
"You should have done so…"
"Heh… But I didn't… I'm glad I didn't, to be honest… I wanted to wait for you. I figured, if you wanted me, you would come to me yourself… I didn't want to risk scaring you away…"
"Hold me closer… Don't fear me…"
"I don't fear you. I adore you."
There were no more harbored sadnesses flooding these pleasures. No grief to poison the delight. He loved her and she loved him and that existed…
Please…
And in a little while, they were satiated once more. Swathed in bedsheets, in each other.
Please…
The sunlight, now tepid and yellow, bathed them in color. A midday haze. Peter Lake, his skin, his hair, his clothes, fully discarded at this point. Hers, as well. Black, white, green. Scattered along the paleness of the bedsheets.
The coolness of the mattress. His warm, ashy face, clashing with the white of her chest. Her hands, running through his hair.
Peter had fallen asleep in the early afterglow, as soon as their breathing had evened. She hadn't seen him sleep in four days and this filled her with relief.
His eyelashes rested upon the flush of his cheeks, an arm underneath her, another lain across her tummy. She kissed his face.
"I'm proud of you too, Peter…"
She was as weightless and elegant as a snowdrop at this instant. Transparent and silken. The tip of a flame, cooler than its heart, white-gold, star-bright.
"Miracle or no miracle…"
Gloves or no gloves.
"You're a treasure…"
Author's Note: To anyone who is here today, thank you for reading, as always.
Wow! I took way longer than I thought, with this one. And now looking at it, I'm happy I did. One of my proudest chapters to date.
I had this entire chapter practically written when I published Ch. 23, but then I rewrote it all because I made the conversation all about, you guessed it, Peter and his guilt. And the more I looked at what I'd written for Ch. 24, the more I disliked it. So I started it over again. And then over again XD
So, this is version 4 or 3 of Chapter 24, and it's also the best version because, rather than making this conversation about Peter and his guilt, I made this an equalized and emotional chat between Peter and Beverly, where they both acknowledge their own insecurities, their own flaws, but also, their own qualities and desires (like Beverly's confession with the crickets, which makes Peter realize that Beverly is his actual hero, his miracle - I'm very proud of this transition :3), as well as why they matter so much to each other.
For instance; I made Beverly acknowledge that Peter got out of Pearly's shadow all on his own, and pushed himself forward all on his own, whereas she had the help of her family and the emotional bridges she kept with them are big reasons why she never snapped. I think that this is a proper way to show both of these characters as three-dimensional, flawed, and even more admirable because of their flaws, and the ways they go about overcoming them, through sheer kindness, empathy, and resilience.
Peter talks more than Beverly in this chapter, but I wanted to make his dialogue all about Beverly, instead of what I'd initially written, which was all about his OWN guilt, his OWN lack of self-esteem, and she tries to comfort him. He instead expresses why he finds her admirable, why she is the hero that she has always believed herself incapable of becoming. And, on the other hand, I make her do the same for him. I wanted to empower both Peter and Beverly here, through their dialogue.
And, yes, I do make Peter point out that he didn't save Beverly, but instead of making this all about his pain, I made him mention this in order to leeway into the fact that he doesn't mind not being Beverly's miracle anymore, rather he is ashamed to have not realized that Beverly was his savior all along, instead he was always worrying about whether he would save her - I think this is a proper way to showcase that Peter hasn't, nor will ever recuperate from his guilt, as Beverly also acknowledges in her POV in this chapter, out of dialogue (I am extremely happy with how I wrote Beverly's POV in this chapter, and how I made her reach these conclusions on "Peter's ride upriver"). He will always be afraid, he will always have to push down his self-consciousness and the demons of his past, but he will never stop moving forward or trying to be a good man, to be worthy of happiness. It was tricky to write this chapter but I am very proud of the result.
I recognized that I was making Peter suffer just a little too much, and that not only was my obsession with making him suffer for the actions he's done in the past (like the fence, which I will talk about in due time, but not in this moment) making his character feel incredibly repetitive in my latest chapters, but was also becoming lowkey offensive, which I of course didn't mean for it to happen, but... simplifying a character like Peter Lake to just be a guilt-ridden sad boy, and simplifying Beverly to be practically his handkerchief in every one of their recent interactions, felt very wrong to both of these characters that I really love, characters I take so much care into writing well, because I want to give them justice by adding onto what I was already given. I always take good care of all that I write, as you know, but sometimes, yeah, I can mess up, because I can focus too much on one side of the character's grief, rather than how that grief branches out into qualities and flaws alike.
So, for that reason, I edited Chapter 21 and 22 to cut some of Peter's guilt short, or to make his mindset a bit more nuanced than "I don't think I deserve this but at least Beverly is happy" - I think making him rightfully question why he cares so much about killing a man who would have killed him, when he should instead be caring about the fact that his bursts of self-loathing are hurting the woman he loves, and distracting him from actually being a good person in the present, since he is so concerned with the bad moments he's left in the past, are good ways to show the layers of his humanity and how much he secretly hates to feel like he doesn't deserve to be with Beverly in the afterlife. Because... yes, he does want to be with her. It's what makes Peter Lake such a lovely character in the first place, that he does everything in his power to maintain his humanity, even when he's raised in the pits of depravity. Because of this, when the fog lifts, he does acknowledge that he is overestimating his own flaws, and underestimating the fact that he is focusing so much on his pain that he is overlooking the pain that Beverly feels when he talks to her like that in Chapter 21, the whole "Why can't you hate me?" line.
Basically: I made Peter have a burst of guilt in Chapter 21, which I think is necessary and justified, but I slowly made it milder as the chapters went on, rather than lingering on it. He properly looks at his own feelings and treats them with maturity and fairness, in the edits I made to Chapter 22. And in Chapter 23, he focuses everything on Beverly (again, she's on top, she's the one who leads and the one he lets take control), and in this chapter, he properly talks about the fact that he is not Beverly's miracle, not as a way to feed his guilt and turn the conversation toward himself, but as a way to let her know that she is a hero, and that she saved him. That he will never get over his fears of not being enough, but that the important thing is that he's trying to be the best man he can be. So when Beverly apologizes for yelling at him, he tells her not to feel sorry about it. That he needed a reminder that her grief matters too, not just his own, and that she chose him to be her lover for a reason.
Whew. Okay. That was a lot, but it shows how much I cared about not just Chapter 24, but the continuity of the story in general. Call me a perfectionist but, I do care about what I write a lot :3 This is why I am very very happy with this chapter, as well as the edits I made to 21 and 22. I had a bunch of final projects to turn in this week so that's a big reason why I was also slower than usual, writing this extremely complicated chapter XD I'm sorry. But at the same time, I'm happy I took the time to care for every detail. That I didn't rush this.
Oh, one last thing: the chapter name, "Piano keys." Because Beverly and Peter communicate here, they speak maturely and respectfully and reach a wonderful conclusion (you're welcome for that final love scene, I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself :3), and that communication... Crickets freed? Piano keys? Yup. I am VERY happy.
Anyways. See you again soon. Here is your hug, *hug, and my eternal thanks for being here and for reading my work, since I put a lot of love and thought into making what I make. Goodnight! Take care.
March 7 2023: I made some edits to the end of the chapter, just because.