Fun story about this one: it’s actually a fic concept I’ve been trying to get off the ground for two fandoms now. Gothic mansions and haunted masquerades and queered-up vengeful hero/heroine and altered states of mind/reality, etc.
I think Malevolent is its rightful home. (I know, I could write it as original fic, but…meh.) That said, this feels like a really sketchy, rough draft and there’s a lot about it I don’t feel is There yet. For one thing, the Red Death suited the previous fandom I tried it in, but John is…well. You know. The wrong color. But I still like the vibe of him being an omen of vengeance and disaster. Should he be the Stranger, maybe? Something else entirely?
But it’s a work in progress and sometimes it’s fun to show off the early stages of the process, for hopefully an eventual “Where I started/Where I ended up” kind of comparison. It’s tough as writers, I think, because we’re surrounded by a society full of finished products, but when we’re writing we have to live with all the gnarly early-stage stuff and it can feel very demoralizing when all we have to compare it against is professional finished products that got polished up by a whole team of editors and agents, etc.. So sometimes showing off the messy early versions can be a way of pushing back against that, I think.
***
The ball room was engorged with luxuriant pageantry. Wealth, pettiness and excess dripped from every surface, every person. Light flashed from fabrics and jewels in a thousand colors. People glittered in costumes both oversized and overly-revealing, men and women alike discarding every social norm in their clothing and behavior. As he worked through the crowd, Arthur saw men in sweeping ball gowns and women dressed as pirate kings and fairy princes. Expensive colognes wound together with the rich fragrances of delicacies rising from the banquet tables, and with pungent sweat. Even the rich still smelled human, Arthur thought with nasty satisfaction. Here and there, he smelled the smoke of marijuana and opium. On a dais on the far wall, a chamber orchestra played, adding to the noise.
Read more: Malevoween Day 17: Masks & MasqueradesAmid the decadence of the masquerade, Arthur, gowned in his own costume with a mask that hid his face behind white filigree, tried to push through the sensory chaos to find what he was looking for. He didn’t belong here, amidst these herds of wealth and finery, but a very important task had led him to this place. He felt sure he would recognize Larson, even in a mask. Surely he would recognize the man he’d come to kill.
The air was perfumed with incense. It drifted in hazy clouds from the candles in the chandeliers, turning the air thick with spicy-sweetness. It was laced with something, he suspected, from the way new arrivals quickly lost inhibitions after they entered the room. And from the way it made his own head spin.
He’d just come back in from clearing his head in the garden, but he felt tipsy when he met the eyes of a man on the other side of the room.
He stood a head taller than almost everyone else in the room, dressed as the Red Death in half-mask and a rich outfit of red and gold. The costume fitted him beautifully through the shoulders and waist, and made Arthur laugh with unsteady delight. He liked that: the Red Death, at a party whose host Arthur meant to murder.
Maybe that was why the man fascinated him. He had the dizzy notion that the stranger was staring straight at him, eyes glowing when they caught the light.
Arthur was scarcely aware of his own movements. The whirl of the crowd seemed to draw them together, until he found himself only feet away. Beneath the mask, the stranger smiled at him. His eyes seemed to be molten gold. Looking into them made Arthur forget to breathe.
“You’re looking for someone,” the Red Death said. His voice was beautifully low and resonant. His hand wrapped around the small of Arthur’s back as they stepped closer, tugging him into a dance.
Arthur found himself following, almost automatically. “I’m looking for Larson.”
“The man of the hour.” The stranger tilted his head down, alongside Arthur’s head. The intimacy of it shivered over Arthur’s skin. “This is his house. His celebration.”
Warmth radiated from the man’s hand against Arthur’s back, even through his corset. Where they brushed as they danced, his heat felt almost inhuman. He swallowed and fought the impulse to press closer.
The man’s hands tightened on him, as if he knew. Body to body, Arthur couldn’t resist; he found himself melting against his dance partner, pleasure and desire at the shape of him against Arthur spreading from his core out through his limbs.
“You want to kill him,” the man murmured in his ear, and jerked Arthur forward into the next step when he missed it.
“I—” How could he know? Arthur had the horrible sense that he must be wearing his intention on his face.
Quieter yet, whispered to him and him alone: “I can help you with that.” They fell still in the middle of the dance floor, the man dropping Arthur’s hand to catch his chin and tilt his face up.
“I—” Arthur said again, short of useful comebacks. “Why would you think—”
Teeth flashed in a wolfish grin, and then that wide mouth closed over his in a kiss that threatened to devour him. His fingers tightened in the man’s gold brocade waistcoat, pulling him tighter against him, and he rose up onto the balls of his feet to push into it. The room seemed to fall silent around them. Or maybe Arthur simply forgot about it for a moment. When the room tilted, he didn’t even question it, senses so off-balance that he only realized he’d been dipped when he stopped moving, cradled in the man’s arms.
“Come with me,” he murmured against Arthur’s lips, “and I’ll help you.”
The way he moved his body against Arthur’s, rolling their hips together, clarified what coming with him would entail.
Arthur held onto him breathlessly. He’d come here intent on murdering someone. One dance, and the thought of separating his body from this man’s was so unbearable that it nearly shoved that goal out of his head.
Arthur let the Red Death take his hand and lead him from the dance floor.