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The clang of the chisel against stone is sharp, hard, non-resonant. It’s the same sound the magical shift disk makes when he is angry and exhausted and throwing it as hard as he can, letting it land somewhere within the stands or all the way at the bottom of the field, a sound that’s raw and full of unbridled emotion.
Leona slowly blinks his eyes open.
The first thing he notices is the drying blood of the evening sunset washing over the room. It dapples the floor, sprangles the walls in rivers of golden red light and glitters in Malleus’ eyes like the sun stretching across the vast expanses of the savanna. Malleus must have ripped the curtains open sometime between Leona deciding to skip magical shift practice and him settling down in the sunwarmed strips of light Ruggie and Epel won’t bother to search. The windows too, because a gust of evening wind toys with the midnight blue tips of his hair.
Malleus pushes a hand through it and lets out a frustrated huff.
“Should’ve stuck to ogling gargoyles. Not do-” Leona begins but the picture of Malleus, sat in the same position he was in half an hour ago, head tilted slightly to the side, neck craned at an angle that’s bound to hurt, horns outlined in the dying light is so ridiculous he has trouble finding the right words. He yawns instead and vaguely gestures towards Malleus and the slab of limestone he’s shaped into …
Something.
“Whatever this is supposed to be.”
“Kingscholar,” Malleus greets, his voice lower than Leona’s ever heard it and not paying proper attention to him. Briefly, Leona wonders if despite the open windows the room isn’t ventilated well enough, if the dust from the ancient castle halls and the limestone in front of him has finally gotten to the lizard because Malleus isn’t distracted like that, doesn’t not pay attention to Leona when he comes with sharpened teeth.
Malleus’ grip on the chisel tightens. It’s almost a novel sight – no gloves, fingers slender and lean, thick knuckles, veins raised against the skin. His fingers aren’t blocky, more of an elegant slope that tapers at the end. You could build Malleus’ entire body of sharp lines and pointed angles, then deconstruct it with the setting sun when all his edges bleed into the shadows. Leona doesn’t care for the artistic way Malleus’ fingers wrap and curl around the handle of the chisel, nails pressed into its neck ever so slightly, right where the bevel starts, and absentmindedly tap there.
“Leona,” Malleus corrects after a moment, spinning the chisel in between his fingers. Leona doesn’t care for the way the light catches in lime green irises either, that Malleus looks like carved marble and cut jade and he certainly doesn’t linger on the soft taptaptap of his fingers. He’s too focused on letting out another yawn and pillowing his head on his arms. Not that Malleus notices, completely transfixed on the stone in front of him.
“The gargoyle research club does not merely study gargoyles,” Malleus continues once Leona’s breathing has barely begun to even out, voice passive and just a little absentminded. Leona can hear aggravation in the way Malleus’ tongue clicks against the roof of his mouth, his syllables unnoticeably sharper, jaw taut. His irritation isn’t so much directed at Leona as the stone in front of him and the way his hands aren’t cooperating with whatever Malleus has envisioned in that horned head of his. The shapes aren’t right, the hammer and chisel too heavy in pale hands, and simultaneously too light.
Acid green eyes narrow. Company is a novelty in the gargoyle research club. Malleus doesn’t know how to talk while he carves so he glances at the limestone, spins the chisel in his hand, and says curtly, “We also seek to create them.”
From the corner of his eyes, Leona watches Malleus dig his chisel into a horrendous form, a grotesque beast that will soon have a gutter-mouth filled with sharp teeth, contorted and unapologetically vile in due time. He doesn’t know what it’s supposed to be yet though. It’s rough stone and the beginnings of smooth details. Shapes and allusions to claws, maybe horns or wild strands of hair, but nothing discernable.
As far as Leona is concerned, it’s a slab of stone. Nothing exceptional.
“Doesn’t look like you’re getting anywhere in creating anything.” He says, the sound a half-laugh half-yawn that rings in the space between them, “Least of all a gargoyle.”
Malleus traces the stone with the pads of his fingers. The slant of his neck throws his face into shadow. His brows are set in an annoyingly indifferent line.
The sound of the hammer against the blunt end of the chisel returns. “I know that, Leona.”
“So why bother?” Leona yawns, properly this time, feeling his canines scrape against his bottom lip. He pushes up on his elbows, leans back in his chair, and slides down as far gravity as will allow him. “You could go on a walk like you always do.” His feet get thrown haphazardly onto the table, sandals dragging over the wood and leaving a smear of courtyard dirt. Leona crosses his arms behind his back and inhales a lungful of air. “And I could sleep in peace.”
He doesn’t mention how it’s unsightly for someone of royal blood to pour their heart so blatantly into something like art, let alone the creation of monsters. A future king shouldn’t lower himself to such human indulgences. Malleus’ hands shouldn’t be dirtied, and Malleus should know that better than anyone, probably has been reminded of that exact fact far too many times to count. But they both know that Leona doesn’t care about stirring up a royal affair over something as trivial as gargoyles and grotesques and Malleus’ silhouette in the waning daylight. Too much effort with too little payoff, even if he’d like to see the smug look wiped off the lizard’s face.
It's been a long day of avoiding Crewel though. Right now, he’d rather nap.
Not that Malleus shares the sentiment.
“There are only so many hours in a week that are dedicated to school clubs and masonry is reliant on time, first and foremost,” Malleus explains, not sounding inattentive but like his mind is stuck somewhere just a little to the left and not where Leona wants it to be. “Which is why, I’m afraid, there is nothing I can do to appease you.”
Technically, Leona knows that. He has his own fair share of time management and organization he pushes onto Ruggie, but it’s annoying when usually, at this time of day, Malleus is supposed to be out and about exploring abandoned places – like Ramshackle, or wherever Night Raven’s gargoyles are sat. Anywhere that isn’t right next to Leona.
He also knows that technically, there are a few spots Ruggie hasn’t found yet he could have snuck off to instead. Technically, the school campus is big enough they shouldn’t ever have to so much as speak to one another save for dorm leader meetings and the occasional quick spat before a magical shift game. Technically, Malleus could’ve turned on his heels as soon as he saw Leona sleeping in the gargoyle research club room and technically, Leona could have left as soon as Malleus stepped through the door. There’s a lot of technicalities and things that could or should have happened, but fate seems to find a wicked joy in making his life as miserable as possible so here they are, gravitating towards one another in a cosmic hilarity Leona has yet to find funny.
“So long as you spare me the rant about gargoyles and grotesques and whatever it is that’s stuck in that horned head of yours,” Leona says, too lazy to hide yet another yawn behind the back of his hand. There’s a glint of sharp canines he hopes Malleus takes as the warning it is.
Malleus doesn’t. He never does. Leona drops his head into the crook of his elbow. “I don’t think Vil has recovered from the lecture you gave him on the differences between dragons and longs. I don’t think he ever will.”
“It was a great opportunity for education,” Malleus protests, knowing full well that there is no medicine that could alleviate the unfathomable ache that resides in his bones when it comes to dragons and gargoyles, “And isn’t education what school life is all about?”
Leona rolls his eyes. “School is about finding the best places for naps and seeing how many classes you can skip without Trein chewing your ear off.”
“And the gargoyle research club is one of those places?”
“The sun warms it in the evening,” Leona shrugs, “Plus, it’s far away from the magical shift club but still close enough to the Hall of Mirrors not to be a bother. If it weren’t for a certain someone, this room could almost be nice.”
It also is usually empty and quiet, just discreet enough to remain mostly forgotten by those who don’t actively seek it out and the closest thing to privacy he can get in a school filled with overenergetic cubs. The entrance to the main building is only down one hallway. Any farther and he’d risk running into the light music club which is something Leona actively avoids. Besides, walking the extra few feet seemed like too much of a chore and he deserves the nap. The magical shift club is practicing their spellwork today, and he already told them to focus on the magic inside themselves and how it itches to be let out, to keep their pen steady and mind clear, to feel the sun in between their shoulder blades. To breathe in and to be more than they are. There’s nothing else he could teach them so he has no reason to stick around and watch as they figure out they already have all they need.
He might as well sleep instead.
A not-quite silence stretches between them, only broken by the steady sound of the chisel and Malleus’ frustration condensed in exasperated exhales through his nose. The wind rustles the curtains, but Leona decides the atmosphere is comfortable enough. He’s slept under worse conditions, in places that aren’t quite as comfortable, with people constantly flitting about or fretting over him or nagging him to get up. In comparison this is … tranquil. Peaceful even.
It seems almost impossible. For as much as he enjoys wasting the day away, silence is a fickle thing, has been since Cheka was born. Maybe even before that. The air is heavy when it’s quiet. Part of Leona feels he ought to bear the burden of clearing it, if only to spare himself from the all the thoughts that coil and unfurl and take shape in little drops of ink. But talking feels an awful lot like he needs to justify his anger and sadness down to his very existence one empty conversation at a time and that is one thing he will not, cannot bear. It’s easier to just to just sleep, try not to dream, and repeat the process until he feels numb enough to get through the day.
Malleus frowns, cocks his head to the side, and makes a small, upset noise that’s almost childlike.
The air isn’t heavy now, filled with the bleeding orange of the setting sun, Malleus’ fingers twitching with the undeniable need to create. It seems almost impossible, after years of being second place, of intrigues in hushed voices and spilled ink on the magical shift field, Leona wouldn’t mind leaving the silence between Malleus and himself forever unbroken if he could.
Maybe that realization should be a little scary, but it doesn’t come so much as a shock as it does as slow understanding coupled with heavy-set denial. In truth, ending up here together is something neither of them can call accidental.
“You’re too loud,” Leona sighs defeatedly. So no sleep this evening. Marvelous.
The hand holding the chisel drops to Malleus’ thigh. Malleus pushes a strand of inky black hair behind his ear, “Apologies, but I doubt I can carve any more quiet than this.” He looks at the stone, at the chisel in his hands and the dusting of limestone on his knuckles. Outside the window, day will fall into night soon. “If it bothers you that much, I’m afraid you will have to leave.”
“Not happening,” Leona says, “I was here first. Which means I’m staying.”
“Suit yourself.” Malleus hums, craning his neck, gaze appraising, “I’ve gotten quite used to incessant yowling during history classes.”
“Want me to show you what else I’m capable of other than yowling?” He asks, pulling his lips back in something between a snarl and a smirk. He flexes his fingers for good measure, feeling familiar magic dance at their tips.
The satisfaction of seeing the anger rise from Malleus’ dragonfire core all the way into his eyes where it swirls in green irises in thick branches of thunder doesn’t come. Malleus doesn’t look up from where his gaze is fixed at the not-quite gargoyle, maybe even a point just beyond. He does extend his hand toward Leona though, palm open, fingers neither twitching nor trembling. Calm.
“Could you hand me the tooth chisel?”
Leona blinks once, twice. By the third time Malleus still hasn’t moved but Leona began doubting his sanity a while ago. It either takes someone as naïve as a baby gazelle or someone as far removed from reality as the prince of the Valley of Thorns to reach out to a lion and expect their hand not to come back in a lump of mangled flesh. Just for good measure, Leona blinks a fourth time. Malleus hasn’t moved.
Leona pushes up from the chair.
The tools are hardly out of his reach, barely three steps in the already crowded room, filled with finished and half-finished gargoyles, lumps of stone that fail to resemble anything at all and the occasional scattered sketch. He steps over rumpled sheets of paper, grabs the tooth chisel, and holds it out for Malleus to take.
The marigold of the afternoon bleeds into mauves and edges of purples. Diluted hues dance on every surface of the room that the light trickling through the windows dares touch. Malleus remains focused on the task in front of him – the suffocating void of nothing that only he can tear and break and shape into more than it actually is. One of his cheekbones is painted in the colors of the sunset. Leona lets his lashes flutter again, slowly this time.
“Because I needed to stretch my legs,” He says, feeling the wooden handle on his palm, the sharp bevel of the metal against his fingers.
As if he could feel the sun staring at him, burning a hole in his profile, Malleus turns his head. Their gazes meet, the lime green of Malleus’ eyes sharp in all the red around them. He nods appreciatively and reaches for the chisel.
It falls to the floor in small trickles of sand.
The metallic sound of the chisel hitting the ground would have been satisfying but this is just as well. He takes comfort in the familiar hum of his magic, the same color as the dying sun outside the window, as he tears some of the space that entirely belongs to Malleus off and claims it as his own. Seeing Malleus’ eyebrows furrow, the line of his mouth turn down, fingers twitching where his hand is still frozen mid-air, scratches a particular itch.
Leona inwardly calls them even for Malleus’ sheer audacity of asking him for a favor, and settles against the table across from Malleus’ something.
“So what’s this supposed to be, then?” Leona asks, leaning back as he lazily examines the stone. “You’ve been glaring daggers at it for the past hour, like it personally locked you up in a tower. Or called itself a grotesque.”
“I have been doing no such thing,” Malleus says, not exactly snappish but the vigor returns to his voice, no longer composed and regal. Leona takes great pride in being able to chip at the dignified façade Malleus puts up with only little effort and have the entire thing come down crumbling. He leans in theatrically to examine the thing more deliberately, turns his nose up at where Malleus’ hand had unintentionally slipped and carved too deep.
It doesn’t take much more than that for Malleus to bite.
“Though admittedly, things haven’t gone quite as smoothly as planned,” Malleus says with all the exhaustion of a man who won’t be able to fall asleep tonight unless he finishes what he started. “It’s rather infuriating.”
If Leona were anyone else, he might take pity. Stone leaves no room for mistakes so Malleus undergoes a meticulous process, one that enraptures him because in the empty shell of the Gargoyle research club nobody scrutinizes his every move the way a Crown Prince ought to be scrutinized. He’s creating for nobody but himself, only the shadows on the walls and the dancing flames of the candles keeping him company as he draws up beasts in all of their glory, giving them personalities, imperfections, flaws – a silent rebellion against all the things he isn't allowed to have as royalty.
The savanna doesn’t know pity though, and seeing how far he can push Malleus until he breaks is a better way to pass his time than listen to the grating sound of the chisel as he fails to fall asleep.
“You’re overthinking things,” Leona shrugs nonchalantly, watching nimble fingers seemingly move without rhyme nor reason, “You have everything you need, don’t you? Just make it work.”
Malleus frowns. “It’s not that easy, Leona.”
“Why not?”
The creases across Malleus’ forehead deepen. “I can’t just make it work,” He says, putting the chisel down to run his hand through his hair, “Gargoyles have always fancied me in different ways. It is time carved into shape, a work of hidden forms and meanings that makes you ponder and seek for what else might lie hidden in stone, makes you seek for more.” His fingers get tangled in strands of darkness. Malleus gives a sharp tug and pulls it free, “I wouldn’t do them justice by not giving it more thought.”
The dying light reflects on the crown of Malleus’ head and paints a halo over ink-black hair. Leona is staring – at all the potential and ugly rough-cuts, shapes that don’t quite sit right. They’re closer now, close enough he could touch Malleus if he were to reach out, thread his fingers into gold-painted hair, and see if he can turn those awful horns to sand. How heavy a slab of limestone really is and how much strength it would take to make it topple off the table – if it would shatter when it hits the ground.
He can practically hear the impact, loud, ear piercing, the sound of violence familiar. Maybe there’d be a moment of catharsis, swiping that golden expression off Malleus’ face giving him a moment of reprise – to show the grand Malleus Draconia how little power he holds over something wild and ferocious.
At least, he hopes there’d be, but hope is almost unendurable. Hope is telling himself he can want less, that he can ignore the empty bowl inside him, raring to be filled.
Malleus moves his head and the golden hue in his hair disappears. It drops onto the floor, and Malleus’ hair returns to its void black, swaying when he rolls his shoulders. Tied up it almost looks boyish. Not charming, Leona reminds himself as he envisions Malleus gathering the nightsky in a fist and haphazardly tying it back, out of his face with little elegance. It’s long too, he realizes as he watches it pool at Malleus’ collarbone where it gets shoved back again in one smooth motion. Long and looking awfully soft in the waning daylight, almost pretty. Even when Malleus has an unsightly smear of stone dust on his cheek.
Leona choses to busy himself with the not-really-gargoyle instead. It’s cool to the touch, cold even against his gloved hand, reminding him of fragments of loneliness of his childhood bedroom, jagged at the edges. There’s a likeliness to something he can’t quite place. It’s features are unmoving, unblinking, unalive, staring at him with a smile that doesn’t reach its rough-cut eyeballs. He traces the uneven outline of what might be a spine, some sort of rachis or maybe a weirdly shaped flower stem. “A dragon?”
It’s nearing twilight now, but not quite. It’s around the time where you can sort of tell it’s going to be dark out within the next few minutes even though the sky seems to only exist in washes of oranges and sunflower yellow. Malleus’ hand moves to the back of his neck, leaving five white lines of powdered stone against equally pale skin. He exhales a heavy sigh.
“A monster.”
Leona actually laughs at that. The look Malleus shoots him is nothing short of affronted. “What’s so funny about that?”
“Nothing,” Leona shrugs, leaning back against the table again in a nonchalant motion, “It’s just masonry is an artform that’s built with emotion and patience. It transcends time so effortlessly, or rather it’s time carved into shape, a work of hidden forms and meanings that makes you ponder and seek for what else might lie hidden in the stone.” Another shrug, a dismissive wave of his hand. Malleus’ eyes narrow. Leona pulls his lips back, showing just a sliver of teeth, “Maybe I was just expecting a bit more.”
“More than a dragon?”
“More than a monster.”
Malleus’ features are outlined in a red so deep it appears purple, the light fading fast, the muffled voices of other students carrying into the room. Malleus makes a quiet sound, too sour to be a laugh, too light to be a huff. “I believe you’ve set your expectations of me too high. That might just be beyond my capabilities.”
“If you’re saying a slab of stone can defeat you when I couldn’t,” Leona begins, roar rumbling in his chest, “I’ll rip your throat out.”
Malleus stays quiet. He’s transfixed again, by the stone, what’s inside, what he’s unable to pull from it, and watching him struggle isn’t as entertaining as Leona thought it to be. His tail begins to sway at his back.
“It’s-,“ Malleus begins, pushes up from the chair to get a better vantage point of his creation, “You’re right. Sculpture does transcend time.” Frustration blooms in his voice when he doesn’t learn anything from the new perspective at all. He takes two steps, tries looking at it from the back. “When years from its creation, someone touches the stone to feel if it’s as cold as stone should be, they don’t merely touch the sculpture. They’re also touching the hands of the creator.” Another step. He’s next to Leona now. When the tip of Leona’s tail brushes against his leg in cramped space, Malleus deflates.
“It’s as though I’m trying to convey something incommunicable,” He admits, falters, rights himself again with a heavy exhale, “Something that only I can feel, something that’s only ever been experienced by myself.”
Leona watches the edge of the sun get swallowed by the ocean. His tail is still swaying back and forth lazily, bored. “You think awfully high of yourself.”
He can see the hypocrisy in his words, but Leona has never pretended not to know his worth, has never pretended not to be arrogant. Malleus doesn’t challenge him either way. The lizard probably knows to drop the sentiment when it’s Leona he’s talking to, blunt, suffocatingly powerful and fueled by sunstained pride.
The next exhale is accompanied by a small puff of smoke. Malleus settles down next to Leona, their knees not quite touching.
“Perhaps so,” he concedes, arms crossed, the furrow in his brow deepening, “But that’s what art ultimately boils down to, isn’t it? Conveying things. Expressing oneself. Telling stories.”
The sun has been cut in half, its reflection bleeding profusely into the ocean. Shadows stretch across the floor, spanning all the way from their feet to where the stone sits. The silence that falls between them feels awfully real, tangible, a comfortable sort of suffocating. Leona leans back on his palms and inhales fresh air.
“You gave them stories?” He asks.
Next to him, Malleus stills.
Lime green eyes shift towards Leona, rendered a hollow gold in the fading daylight. Malleus takes his time regarding him from his peripheral vision, sizing him up like the animal he is. It’s not quite caution that’s reflected in neon irises, not quite hesitation, not quite distrust, but something raw and delicate that Leona refuses to place.
“Don’t laugh,” Malleus ends up saying. His voice is always smooth and calm, but Leona can hear a hint of defensiveness, and a lot of the frustration that’s been building up over the past few hours bleed into its silk softness. “But I did.”
To his credit, Lenoa doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t breathe either.
Malleus’ honesty renders him speechless. He understands what it’s like to live your life with tightly clenched fists, but to hold them open like that seems impossible. His doesn’t remember stopping the back and forth of his tail but it hasn’t moved while he grasps for scraps of memories of the last time he’d been allowed sincerity.
It feels like his fingers are bleeding, nails cracked, their beds stuffed with red-painted sand. He’s entirely too selfish to deny himself indulgences like skipping class and sleeping all hours of the day as if it doesn’t matter if he misses a day or a year or the rest of his life. But to lay himself bare, to be witnessed wanting something, to be witnessed being desperate for it is a thought too ugly to bear.
The silent remnants of winter fill the clubroom, a sort of beauty that comes with stillness and quiet. With Malleus against the setting sun and the warmth of its golden light nestled between his own shoulder blades, Leona thinks they might be able to contentedly exist like this until Night Raven is blanketed in the warmth of spring, an unnamed something between them neither of them cares to put a name to just yet. He swallows a knot in his throat that has the aftertaste of a confession and settles his weight more firmly against the table, his shoulder brushing one of the many half-gargoyles inhabiting the cluttered room.
“Completing this one only took me six days,” Malleus tells him, eyes flicking towards the little creature and turning something akin to fond, “I was still fairy inexperienced back then, but I read that steatite is soft enough to be carved with a knife while I was searching the school library for information.” He leans forward, back facing the barely-there sun, “A good choice for beginners, and at the time for me.”
Leona shifts his weight from the heels of his palms to his elbows. The position is uncomfortable – the edge of the table digging into his thighs, legs bent at an awkward angle to accommodate, and the way he has to crane his neck to see what Malleus is talking about will surely leave his body sore for tomorrow. His pride even longer than that. He makes a disagreeable sound at the back of his throat to let Malleus know as much but it comes out subtler than he wanted to, not exactly gentle but mellow enough to tell Malleus he’s listening.
“Playing around with the features of its face until it looked presentable took the better part of the process. The body came easy afterwards.”
It’s an odd thing, elegant as a flower but its muscles seem to tense in just the right places to show power, it’s face a sweet spot of determination and something much kinder than what Leona is used to. He’s not surprised to find an artist in Malleus, but the feeling of arrogance and conceited haughtiness he thought would drip from pale fingers onto the stone isn't there. Instead, there’s loneliness, anticipation, childlike wonder. A quiet sort of defeat that’s settled into the edges of his mind like a thin layer of dust.
The line between gentleness and hunger is a thin one. Maybe some will find the translucence of its skin romantic, the marble of the stone an allusion to veins and a beating heart. In one corner of the room, piles of scraps lie waiting, sliced off in chunks and pieces. Leona won’t fall for an illusion of tenderness. The powdered stone clinging to Malleus’ lashes isn’t sacred.
Malleus has canines too. It’s jealousy that made him first set the knife against the stone.
Something stirs inside his stomach at seeing Malleus’ unspoken struggle. He can almost envision equal parts of care and exhilaration running through Malleus’ veins, every stroke of his thumb and press of his knives. The end result proves that Malleus can work well with sculpture, but not as well as he can wield his magic. Not enough to hide from Leona.
When Malleus moves it’s to find the chisel again. There’s only so much time left until they have to leave for their respective dorms and he’s determined to make the most of it, shoveling coal into the steam engine that’s his dragonfire core. He loses all performance when he sets the pointed end against the stone, focus lost on shapes that aren’t there and a figure only he can see. For a brief moment, there is no rehearsed farce of politeness and the faux charm of royalty, only Malleus and the soft curve of his arms, concentration in his shoulders and tension in his jaw. This is Malleus’ world now, and Malleus doesn’t need his senseless magic and searing dragonfire here. All he needs are his hands and the vision of a nightmare bold enough it will carry him to the other side of the night.
Leona doesn’t understand the desire for art but when he watches Malleus work with the sort of determination that terrifies he strangely finds himself battling with the thought of going back to Savanaclaw just yet. The sun has almost set. The unspoken threat of curfew looms between them. But somehow, the sky feels particularly fragile today, like it’s not supposed to be disturbed by anything. He runs his tongue across his teeth and tastes a burning sort of violence and passionfruit. His heart suddenly is uneasy. Leaving Malleus shouldn’t take a second thought.
When he looks up Malleus is already staring at him, a wicked sort of glint in his eyes that has Leona on edge. He doesn’t understand the desire for art but of course Malleus is a worthy subject to be immortalized on a canvas or in stone, sculpted out of clay or carefully stitched together by thread. Malleus is a blur in the sharpness of the early dark. Leona wants him to be palpable instead, burnable, his fingers blistering at the tips.
It’s strange how quickly the blue green of twilight brings wildness to his mind. Leona has nothing to say to Malleus. There is no common ground between them, no possible way to see eye to eye, and every time Leona tries to nap in the greenhouse only to have Malleus crawl out of the shadows and pester him about old books and chess games, every time they’re on the magical shift field and Leona feels as fiercely alive as he’s never been before, every time they spit each other’s name and bite at their throats only to gravitate towards one another the next day anyways, Leona has to face the fact that he might’ve been lying to himself all along. After all, he could smell the limestone before he entered and Malleus had kept the door unlocked.
Leona leans towards the window like a sunflower seeking light, releases a breath and tells Malleus about how a lifetime ago, he’d drawn shapes and constellations in the night sky, creating his own art, if you could call it that. He’d design a future of nebulae and stars. It was hard not to see the savanna as art back then. Though he’s always seen himself as more of an architect, a builder.
Malleus listens intently, decides precision never enticed him in sculpture anyways, takes the hammer and rejects the point chisel and meticulous edges. Leona stares at the light as he speaks, then at Malleus as he tells him a story about sun dried laundry, a boy oversaturated with orange, dripping with it down to the core, and a mother with knives for teeth. Malleus hums occasionally so Leona knows he’s paying attention.
“Do you miss being a child?” Malleus asks, expression flickering like candlelight.
Leona considers him, but the question feels awfully sentimental, a little soggy in his mouth even. He shrugs as if Malleus isn’t unearthing all his secrets, carving at him with his bare hands. “That’s like asking if I miss last week,” Leona answers, the sound a low half-laugh, air escaping through his nose.
The last ray of sunlight catches on the bend of Malleus’ horns. “What happened last week?”
Leona remembers bile and the taste of blot, hands that are shaking from anger and something else he doesn’t want to name. He remembers sand and dry air, everything cracking and breaking around him. He lets out a husk of a laugh. “Nothing in particular.”
Malleus pushes back in his chair, letting its legs scrape against the floor as he inadvertently breaches some of the distance between them. “Then what’s to miss about last week?”
They’re closer like this, Malleus leaning ever so slightly towards him, close enough Leona can frown down at his shoes. And Leona –
Leona misses last week’s midnight in the infirmary, the moon clinging to the walls and the air tasting like burnt sugar. The night has a way of making people talk. Ruggie’s voice cracked in the bed next to his. Leona wanted to be alone but also not really. There is no comfort to find in a hyena that’s only interested in him for his position and the money that comes with it but they weren’t so much hyena and lion as they simply existed as two wounded beasts, licking their wounds in shared silence.
He misses last month, when Jack looked at him like he was still ambitious and dripping in hues of orange and citrussy yellows, blissfully unaware of the bleak reality that’s Leona and his future.
He misses ten years ago when Farena’s mane was a bird’s nest of tangled hair and fantastically red leaves and their laughter caught in the coarse grass. He still remembers how it felt to have his fingers itch out of sheer energy and ambition, so much vigor in his veins he didn’t know what to do with. Perhaps he understood the desire for art back then.
Malleus’ expression shifts from a soft little smile until it’s painstakingly replaced with a stare. He looks like he wants something from Leona but is struggling to articulate it. All performance has gone out the window long ago. It’s just Malleus now, with all his inability to act like a functional human being. He looks like whatever topic he’s trying to breach, he wants to tread lightly, but fingers that drift like the moon turn clumsy and the point chisel he set to the set side earlier drops to the floor.
The sound it makes when it hits the floor is sharp, hard, non-resonant. It’s the same sound the magical shift disk makes when Leona is angry and exhausted and throwing it as hard as he can, letting it turn to sand somewhere between the stands and the finish line. For the hundredth time today, or maybe the first time, Leona is reminded that this is Malleus, and they have nothing to offer one anther except maybe envy and some resentment here and there.
And still, a craving for an end stirs inside Leona that’s unlike anything he’s used to. It’s not quite longing but it piles up in his chest, starts with an avid curiosity of what this is supposed to be and what they’re even doing here, about what it’s like to take what’s given. About gargoyles and the embodiment of timelessness and if Malleus likes them because they’re permanent and unlike him, not vulnerable.
“I’ll miss this next week,” Malleus says when the sun has bled dry and the purple hues of twilight streak across the sky. For a moment, Leona feels like all his edges are painted gold. Malleus stares at the dark streak crossing over his left eye, then down to his shoulders, as if examining him. He stays still, watches the creeping moonlight outline of Leona’s face, and Leona is silently grateful for that. He doesn’t know what would happen if he could hear Malleus’ voice now, doesn’t dare measure the height and depth of the courage clawing at his ribcage. Something tells him if he lets Malleus utter his name in that velvet timbre he’d be beyond what can be recovered from. It tells him to stay quiet, that the feeling will pass soon. It screams at him to move.
The air is cracking with anticipation when Leona’s fingers flex. He pushes up on his hands again, lets the wood underneath his palms ground him. The entire atmosphere shifts. The world tilts to the right, and with the sun now well and truly behind the faintly glowing line of the horizon, the funeral march towards curfew has officially begun. They have thirty minutes at best before they risk being on the receiving end of Crewel’s whip.
Leona’s stomach growls.
Malleus blinks. “Did Bucchi not feed you?”
The phrasing is wrong, not a satisfying conclusion to their dramatic build-up, even if Malleus’ voice has caused nothing but devastation for him. Leona lets out a groan and drags a hand over his face.
“Ruggie does not feed me,” He snaps, but it’s difficult to sustain anger with an empty stomach and something warm swirling in his veins, lighting him up from the inside. He doesn’t have enough energy to grow claws right now, and a petty fight is no eulogy for the sun anyways. “The magical shift club’s been practicing their spellwork from lunch ‘til sundown,” He explains, exhaustion settled deep in his bones. He drops onto his elbows again. “Dinner was the only exception. Had to leave early not to get caught up and be dragged along.”
Malleus nods curtly, brows settling in a line of understanding, if albeit a bit strained.
“I believe Diamond brought a shepherd’s pie to light music club practice the other day. Courtesy of Clover, of course. Since Lilia much prefers sweets, he brought his share back to our dorm for the others to take,” He says, vaguely waving a hand through the air until it settles at his chin, index pressing into his jawline, “I could get you some, if you’d like.”
The last streaks of light paint the ocean the color of plums and wine. The clock drags its feet. Twenty-seven minutes to curfew, the conclusion to the day, the evening dwindling down to the end of its stick. Objectively, there is barely enough time to gather their belongings and make their way to the Hall of Mirrors in time.
But Leona isn’t stupid enough to refuse food.
“Malleus,” he says, letting his name dissolve at the tip of his tongue as if their time isn’t running out, as if the dead of night is not fast approaching, as if he doesn’t want to know what Malleus looks like in the soft glow of the moon, “I’m not asking for anything.” Which is a nice way of saying he doesn’t make requests, only gives out orders. It’s all the same to Malleus though, especially when Leona nudges his foot, his sandals leaving a thin streak of dirt against the polished leather.
Sparks of magic illuminate the room, a flurry of green light that lacks the viciousness of lightning and the loudness of thunder but is no less electric. Just like that, Leona is left alone in a graveyard of shortcomings, surrounded by finished and half-finished and barely-even-started gargoyles.
Spring has just begun but he can still smell the lingering dread of winter in the air. Mornings have started to thaw, but the creeping night is still and quiet, void of the uneven melodies of dying cicadas that usually accompany nighttime in Savanaclaw’s summers. Leona doesn’t mind all that much. He rather likes winter with its silence and eerie bareness. It feels appropriate for someone like him, who feels empty most of the time, to favor that particular time of the year even when a primal part of his heart longs for the warmth of summer.
There are no more faint voices carrying from the courtyard through the windows. With no one around to watch, Leona can take a closer look at every carefully crafted piece in the room.
Navigating the gargoyle research club is not unlike finding his way through the jungles at the edges of the savanna. One wrong step and he’d trip over tree roots of stone tails and steatite limbs, the fluffy end of his tail brushing against lush ferns and the petals of passionfruit flowers or horns made of marble and limestone. He makes his way through weeds of broken off chunks and finely rasped powder that have been piling up alongside Malleus’ frustration.
Up close, gargoyles are almost jarring. It’s not a moment of enlightenment, and neither is it catharsis. There are nightmares crowding the space, stuffed in every corner of the room like the shadows creeping through the cracked-open window. They’re the extreme edge of what’s acceptable, ready to spit water and drain the thunderstorm of its violence against their home.
Leona allows himself to grow only mildly frustrated that he feels like he can’t understand Malleus at all. Especially recently, when he keeps his eyes on him longer, more often, his heart beating an erratic rhythm. When he finds Malleus staring back for just as long, just as intently. Malleus has an intense stare, his eyes almost completely black in color at certain angles, but when it’s directed at him they appear a hollow gold, speckles of twilight and Leona’s reflection dancing in their lime green.
The matter of Malleus is always a tricky one to breach, one he can’t talk about with anyone. That’d feel too raw, too honest. He can’t admit he has turned his face to the shadows and seen how they accept and allow and devour, how much it enthralls him. He can’t admit twilight is staring to become his favorite time of day.
He also decidedly does not want to know what Ruggie would have to say on the matter, what sort of sly comments he’d make and how he’d tease him for every word and treacherous heartbeat. His pride wouldn’t allow it.
For the first time in what feels like forever, Leona is unsure of what to do with himself.
The air cracks. Malleus appears next to him with a fork and a slice of steaming shepherd’s pie. Leona should probably be startled but the atmosphere quietly hums with Malleus’ night-smooth magic, its remnants dancing around him in wisps and little clusters of fireflies. It takes a lot more than a nightmare to scare Leona, especially when he can smell tender meat, cooked to perfection. He prefers it raw, but accepts the plate with minimal complaint.
His tail starts swaying again, appreciatively this time, though Malleus doesn’t need to know that.
Malleus sits down beside him, only a hands width of space between the tips of his fingers and Leona’s thigh. With the new proximity, there’s no way to avoid Malleus’ gaze but Leona has never been scared to meet his eyes anyways. It’s that strange, golden gaze, the one that seems to look only at him.
Leona’s ears twitch. He swallows a mouthful of pie.
The void in his stomach is a gaping hole, hunger and appetite eating him alive, chewing him from the inside out. His tail grazes over the bones of a gargoyle, wedged between the space at their feet and the wall, too big for any of the desks. The world around them is not enough to satiate someone who likes to play too rough like him. He dives back in and takes another bite.
“What’s this guys’ story?”
Malleus raises an eyebrow, looks at the gargoyle just beyond the toe cap of his shoes, confused, disbelieving.
Leona feasts at the carcass of the sun, tears at it with his canines, imagines the meat ooze with the blood that once coursed through its veins to distract himself from Malleus’ silhouette shrouded in the hues of twilight. It’s a gruesome palette, enjoyed with rosemary and thyme and a desperate need for something Leona refuses to put a name to.
“You said you gave them stories,” He repeats, busying his hands by separating the vegetables from the lamb, the sound of him picking at his plate the closest thing to a burial song the deceased evening will get. “Entertain me while I eat.”
There’s shuffling, the sound of clothes rustling as Malleus shifts to look at Leona closely. There’s no confusion in his eyes, no affronted look at his audacity to ask a future king to play the court jester.
Malleus looks at him with sheer extasy, maybe a bit of disbelief but green eyes sparkle in a way Leona hasn’t seen them before.
Leona stuffs a bite of lamb into his mouth and hopes it will be a sufficient substitute for a heart.
“I did,” Malleus says, giddy, the low timbre of his voice now light as a birdsong, “They’re not finished though, much like the sculptures, but they’re not pure ornament either.” He says, excitement carrying from his voice to his hands. His fingers find the cuff of his shirt, rolled up to his elbow, and play with the delicate fabric there. Leona is internally grateful for that. There’s not enough room for wild gestures.
“They’re gargoyles,” Malleus says, eyes sparkling, “They serve a purpose.”
Leona laughs, the sound sticking to his teeth like the stray rosemary leaf clinging to his canines. “They’re glorified gutters.”
“They’re hardly glorified, Leona,” Malleus huffs, face turning into a perfect caricature of repulsion and childlike petulance, “If anything, they’re undervalued. Dying out and forgotten.” A sigh escapes him as he gathers himself, hands moving to grip the edge of the table instead, “That’s not the point right now, though. They’re waterspouts. They protect. And they tell stories.”
A sound that’s stuck somewhere between a scoff and a laugh erupts from Leona’s lungs. “Who needs to be protected from a bit of water?”
“Mortar, masonry, sandstone, limestone,” Malleus lists, not wasting so much as a second before he starts counting each at the tip of his fingers, “Churches, cathedrals. Most importantly, people. They protect what they guard and scare away what causes harm.”
The sunset clouds fade, blending subtly into the sky to make space for the moon. Malleus gathers the final light in his iris and moves like he’s dancing.
“Sleep has always been a fickle thing,” He says, feet barely touching the ground as he glides through the shadows, silhouette blooming in the dark, “One that’s barely of any importance now, but when I was younger, I’d check the castle for signs of anyone being awake once darkness had settled into the corners of my room. Nobody had been, of course, so when I’d confirmed I was the only one, I would roam the hallways.”
Bony fingers outstretched, Malleus is a vignette of ephemeral beauty against the steady nightfall, the piercing green of his eyes a stark contrast to all the darkness wrapping itself around him, seeping all the way into his bones. Leona watches his dusk-cascaded form move, orbiting around the room like a shooting star, just shy of colliding with carved stone, desks haphazardly pushed aside, Leona barely out of reach.
“I’d wander the castle the same way I do Diasomnia and the campus of Night Raven. I’d breathe, walk, linger and assess the way the space molds itself around me.” The moon takes over the night sky, speckles it with shades of silvery blue and faint gold.
Malleus turns, towards the gargoyle at Leona’s feet, towards the cut steatite, brutalized by his own hands.
“It was one of those nights I first saw it. From the corner of my eyes, I hadn’t seen a glimmer or a shine but a spot so black it looked like the deepest void. No light, no hope, just a horrendous form, a grotesque beast with a gutter-mouth, horned and contorted and unapologetically vile.”
Twilight is a spark. It lights a fire within Malleus, carves at the darkness and makes space for glittering stars and frosted nebulae. He halts, lets his gaze settle on the stone – soft, familiar like an old friend.
“I looked into my own eyes that night.”
Obscured by the twilight fog, the thought doesn’t seem all that outrageous, Malleus wandering the halls like a ghost would – soundlessly, leaving no trace of him ever having been there. As though he never existed, as though these halls weren’t his home. The thing in Leona’s ribcage stirs again, familiar with feeling like an outsider in what ought to be familiar walls. It’s a hollow sort of emptiness, echoing in the back of his mind, making him wonder if he’ll be stuck there forever, if there’s a place he’ll ever feel like he belongs.
“Back then, I hadn’t known what it was I was looking at,” Malleus laughs, fond and saturnine, “I wasn’t even sure it belonged there, but it demanded to be looked at in all its ugliness. It demanded to be seen. How could something so alive not have a story?”
The fabric of his pants rustles as he crouches down, rests his open palm against the smooth stone.
“The flower prince was born in the brightest meadow of the land, with the most fragrant blooms,” Malleus tells him, pressing this thumb against a vein in the steatite, “He appeared out of the center of a commelina, a halo of pollen stuck to his hair.”
Leona lets his eyes flick towards Malleus, memorizes the shape of his fingers by sight alone.
The gargoyle is actually just a head, the neck and a little bit of the shoulders, broad but sloped down gently. Eyes closed, the curve of its face soft, its lithified flesh carved too deep ever so slightly, as if its features were meant to be overgrown by fauna and covered in moss. Malleus runs his thumb over the edge where its lashes turn into smooth flower petals.
“He was built from devotion and hope. If you asked him about violence, he’d tell you of love and courage and everything the rainstorm can’t take. To him, love was big and loud. Vibrant. It didn’t always have to hurt, and if it did, it left tenderness in its wake. He’s been that way since he was found. It’s always spring in his heart.”
The moon is bright tonight, barely risen but visible through the fog trying to obscure its face. Leona can see its reflection in the black of Malleus’ eyes.
“Found?”
“Yes, found,” Malleus nods and collects his hands in his lap, “Children born from flowers don’t have blood to call their own. Don’t have fathers and mothers to cradle them and sing them to sleep. They don’t bleed the same way we do. Only he’s an exception, special in every which way, as is expected of the first bloom. And so, the flower prince was found by-” Malleus moves his hand, then his entire body, until he’s facing a sickly-looking creature, skin stretched taught over its bones, its face split in half, showing off a set of razorblade teeth.
“By this one right here,” He says, a gentle sort of pride creeping its way into his voice, as he gestures towards the gargoyles’ cramped and contorted body, fit into the narrow space Malleus allotted for it to occupy, taking it all up, barging into every unaccounted for centimeter of the atmosphere.
“The crimson warrior was quiet and in pain, limping through the thornbushes when he stumbled upon the meadow. In all his years wandering the earth he’d never seen a child born from a flower. With blood smudging down his neck and dirt caking his hands, he wasn’t pretty or grand or delicate. But in the child’s eyes, he was enchanting, for it could see he was good and pure despite the deeds his kingdom had commanded of him.”
Outside the window, the fog forms into clouds and hides them from the rising moon.
“The crimson warrior promised himself then he’d patch his wounds and help the child live a peaceful life like the one he’d never known. And so, sheltered away in the meadow, they lived in the security of the forest. Nobody knew the child was a prince, so the crimson warrior raised him the only way he knew how to. He passed on the same gifts he received, good and bad, and hoped the flower prince would not unpack and utilize everything he’d been graced with – at least not the way the crimson warrior did. Though that choice was not his to make.”
Malleus shifts, stands up, finds his balance in the moonlight.
“As the child grew older it also grew stronger, and soon enough, it was revered as the protector of the land. One day, he went to the river and found a fork in its bend. The choice didn’t matter. All waters run downstream, and he found himself stood in front of the ocean. That’s where he met a lightning strike of a boy, bold and hotheaded, with a dedication like no other. If the flower prince was built from devotion and hope, then this one was built from ivory and determination. He was green all over, from the tips of his fingers all the way behind his ears.” Malleus smiles a quarter moon smile, eyes lit up like stars as he crosses an ocean of gargoyles for a sturdy thing, bulky and unyielding. Made of sharp lines and rough in all its edges, it fluffs itself up to more than it is, makes itself big in the dim light filtering through the windows.
Malleus touches it delicately. “Despite a demeanor that most shied away from, he was the second person the flower prince could see was good and pure. In due time, they became not quite friends and not quite strangers, not quite lovers and not quite enemies, but they were happy. Just like that, one protector became two.”
The sky is a dull grey-azure now, the last remnants of color fading fast. Malleus takes a step back, stares at the moon with narrowed eyes. Leona swallows the last bite of meat without chewing.
“But the flower prince was not allowed a peaceful life,” Malleus says, softer, quiet. “Not when the land around them was burning to the ground. There was fire on all sides, and one monster at the center of the flames. It didn’t take long for the people to grow anxious, then scared, terrified.” Something not unlike sorrow stains the velvet of his voice. Malleus turns his back towards Leona, stares out the window instead. “The lightning strike of a boy wasn’t made of fire but he always wanted to burn in his own way. Now that the flame he used to love so much had stared raging against him, he didn’t know what to do.
It was the flower prince who told him to gather the people and take them to the mountains, all too aware they couldn’t settle in the high altitudes for long, not when they were made of dandelions and daisy chains. But he knew it was safest there until he’d brought back the peace his father fought for. With the taste of ash invading his lungs, he took up his sword and ventured into the center of the flames, just as fearless as the crimson warrior had taught him to be.”
Light crawls in through the curtains, stains the floor in shades of silver and celestial blue. It pools at Malleus’ feet in thick rivers of liquid stars and constellations. Malleus crosses his arms behind his back.
“What did he find there?” Leona finds himself asking, cutting through the quiet that falls over the clubroom in a thin layer of dust. The question feels oddly intimate, stuffing his mouth with cotton.
Malleus’ silhouette is an approximation of long limbs and horns, head tilted slightly left, eyes half-closed. The streaky bits of hair that have come loose from his ponytail blend with the background in the burnt-out light, Malleus a black void in the middle of the room.
“A monster.” Malleus says. The answer is simple, clean. Expected. But it feels wrong when he says it like that, with the sort of tenderness lacing his words that gets confused for softness when in reality, it’s ashen remnants of rubbed-raw anger.
His hand drops to his side where it hangs limp and heavy. Malleus exhales a lungful of smoke. “It was born a boy, soft and moldable. Not quite wanted. Not quite loved. Through a great violence done upon him, he was shaped into a monster. I could tell you about his teeth, how the people whispered about him as he passed by.”
A myriad of blues overlay one another, the clouds like scabs atop bruised skin. Malleus’ footsteps are mirroring his heartbeat, slow, steady, somber. Leona can feel the weight of an unblinking stare on the gargoyle next to him, heavy on his own bones.
Malleus inhales the chill of twilight. “I'll tell you about his love instead. He loved like a fire, turning everything he touched to shores of ash, never-ending expanses of dust and soot-stained debris. He didn't mean to set the kingdom on fire. That doesn't mean it didn't burn.”
The world falls quiet. Memories of ink and the rancid smell of blot flood Leona’s mind. He doesn’t remember what it felt like, the moments in between his pen turning black and sitting in the sand of the magical shift field, liquid nightmares drying underneath his fingernails, hands trembling. He didn’t think things he can’t remember could haunt him, but the sun has disappeared, has been hunted by twilight and the black that follows. Leona has changed but not into something better. He’s still bleeding under the sunset.
“And the flower prince-,” Leona finds himself saying, words oddly tentative but not shy. He’s still a ravenous beast, craving power, revenge, anything that will satiate this insatiable hunger of his. “Is there a happy ending?”
He senses rather than sees the way Malleus is anchored in place, feet heavy as lead and mouth revolting to give a satisfying answer. His eyes shimmer in the darkness, an array of complex emotion reflecting in them.
“I’m not sure yet,” Malleus admits eventually, which is a nice of way of saying he isn’t ready to face what haunts the corners of his dreams. The air seems to swell around them, guides Malleus’ body back to the not-quite gargoyle and his discarded tools. The world is bathed in husky washes of blue and purple that border on black. Malleus closes his eyes and leans his head towards the window.
Leona doesn’t know why the picture of Malleus bleeding into the fraying evening leaves him at a loss for words but his tongue lies limply in his mouth and his words scatter at the back of his throat. The thing in his ribcage does a strange sort of twist. When Malleus suddenly opens his eyes and looks at him, Leona can only hold his gaze like it’s a challenge.
His face glows like an aggressive homecoming, and he’s everything Leona never though he’d want, but so much more and for a moment, he forgets he hates Malleus. His fingers itch to paint him, his horns and the elegant slope of his body and the annoyingly attractive flick of his lashes when he’s concentrated and not paying attention to anything that’s right in front of his eyes. He can feel the sun screaming beneath his fingernails. They could be ugly to the point of being beautiful, and if Malleus ever realized that, he’d probably laugh or try to touch him or ask to play chess after dinner.
He swallows the lump in his throat down to the hungry thing stirring inside him. “Let me know if you ever figure it out.”
Malleus’ eyes crinkle at the corners. Whatever has been coiling in their neon green gets drowned out by delight and anticipation at the notion of not spending another evening holed up alone with only the setting sun outside the window. He doesn’t know Malleus to be cheerful. It’s enticing in its own way, burning Leona all the way to the core.
“I – yes,” Malleus says, voice light, airy, on this side of disbelieving, “If you come back in a few of weeks, I’ll tell you the full story of the flower prince.”
Leona nods, to no one in particular, but the notion clears his mind a little, gives him something to do. Silence settles between them again. He should be getting used to how comfortable silence with Malleus has gotten over the past hours but his treacherous heart reminds him of the unfathomable ache that resides in his bones, slithering in between his ribs, chewing his insides, raw and terrifying.
The year feels too warm this evening, the hum of the ocean audible all the way up the classroom, reminding them that the day is drawing to a close. The light in the hallways goes out on them.
“You have a pretty face,” Malleus says as though he wasn’t setting his foot into dangerous waters, fingers dipping into a puddle at the back of Leona’s heart. He moves with the sea, lets the rhythm of the water pull his feet into a watery dance until he’s stood in front of Leona, eyes bright despite the increasing darkness. “I wonder how well you’d translate into stone.”
Malles is staring. The sun has been swallowed by the ocean. Leona can feel the ripples and surges of the waves against the pads of his fingers.
“Though I doubt one could do you justice.” Malleus doesn’t fight the current, lets the moon pull the tides gently, lets the water rise. Night settles against his features, makes the velvet of his voice all that more tantalizing. “There’s sunlight that I don’t know how it got inside of you. It’s like wind creeping in through closed windows, like vines climbing up the walls. Like an old sort of hunger that cannot be sated.”
They’re in the deep end now, the shallows long behind them. Malleus breaches what little distance remains between them until Leona’s knee brushes the fabric of his thigh. “Looking at you feels the same as staring directly at the sun. Its light might stab my eyes, but in the end, you’re not that different from gargoyles.”
Under the ocean moon, everything appears the midnight blue of Malleus’ soul.
“They’ve always fancied me in different ways. My eyes simply refuse to look away.”
The ocean is raging, and Malleus is staring at Leona like it’s an ordinary Thursday evening. If Leona weren’t a lion, if he had a fight or flight instinct to rely on and not his ruthless pride commanding him to stand tall, he would have wanted to look away. The thing thrashing in his ribcage tells him he’d regret it if he did so he doesn’t.
“You’re pretty, Leona,” Malleus breathes, almost to himself.
Then he turns around, picks up the hammer and chisel and starts cleaning them of the dust they’ve been collecting as if he hadn’t just handed Leona a piece of his soul.
For a brief moment, Leona considers turning the room to sand, maybe even the entire west wing of this terrible school just so Malleus would have no light to sculpt under. When he’d drop the chisel to reach for his own pen Leona could turn that too into nothing more than a handful of sand and the gargoyle would go tragically unfinished. Leona would leave the island for the savanna and endless expanses of grass, live his life on top of grand stone structures and lush greenery and skeletons, and never have to think about Malleus again.
He laughs instead, loud and boisterous, just shy of a roar. “You’d have to sculpt me the way I am, not your imagination. But you’re right. I’m entirely too much for you to handle, even in your wildest dreams.” It’s a lie, or more like a half-truth. Leona doesn’t need the bitter aftertaste in the back of his throat to know that much.
“That might be true.” Malleus agrees, voice suddenly quiet, as if he’s sharing a secret with the growing shadows on the floor. The clouds move away to let the moonlight carry through the windows. Something about the imminent end of the day always makes things more tender, bleeds them dry to make space for a different kind of ache like bruised knees or the wisteria-colored death of the sun. Malleus stretches, rolls out his shoulder blades and locks the night chill outside with a flick of his wrist.
When he meets Leona’s eyes again he gently gestures towards the not-quite gargoyle in the shape of a monster. “Would you mind telling me what you think of it so far?”
It takes effort not to scoff, or to roll his eyes. There’s a laugh bubbling in his chest again, a roar stuck in his throat. Leona doesn’t fight it but dusk takes the steam out of him, leaves his bones tired and burnt. He ends up with something of a deadpan stare, expression blank.
“When has feedback ever-,” He begins, actually scoffs this time, “No, when has my feedback ever mattered to the great Malleus Draconia?”
He spits Malleus’ name with venom he didn’t know he carried underneath his tongue, but Malleus has heard it uttered in all the different shades of the night sky. This is hardly different. But to think anyone would dare criticize something handcrafted by the crown prince of the Valley of Thorns with honest conviction is just ludicrous, to ask someone who values the wild far more than etiquette to do just that even more so.
“It does,” Malleus says as if it’s a matter of fact, the black glittering universe moving at his back when he turns his head towards Leona, “Simply because I haven’t asked for it directly doesn’t mean your opinion is of no importance.”
Leona, for a moment, doesn’t know how to respond. It’s the sort of nonsensical answer he should have come to expect from Malleus who’s constantly stuck in the dreamscape of his mind. But the way Malleus keeps looking at him is honest, eyes full of conviction and a gentle thing Leona doesn’t dare name.
He settles his weight onto his palms and lets out a low breath. “What could you possibly need it for?”
“I’ll find something.”
Malleus’ answers come too quick, too easy. Leona doesn’t buckle under the weight of his words, neither does he know if they’re leaving him infuriated or frustrated or validated or everything all at once. Something terribly soft stirs inside his ribcage. In the faint moonlight, Malleus looks so open, so vulnerable. It’s terrifying.
He should have just toughed one afternoon of magical shift practice out rather than come here.
“Malleus,” He starts, eyes drifting towards the gargoyle. It’s nothing more than a slab of stone with lumpy edges and barely roughed in shapes but Malleus’ muscles brace, and Leona can see what will be the outline of sinuous forms carved in obsessive detail. One of its eyes is slightly larger than the other, and the slant of its nose-snout-hybrid is a bit crooked. There’s a part that might be horns or hair that sticks up too straight and is too bulky for its body. It’s not really ugly, not unapologetically vile, but neither was the monster in Malleus’ story. It’s only a nightmare carved from stone, but there’s a certain likeliness Leona can’t deny.
Leona tells him as much.
“It’s not as harrowing and difficult to look at as I thought,” He says, leaning forward until he can rest his elbows on his knees, “It sustains tension though.” Then, even though it pains him to compliment Malleus’ work: “I like it.”
Malleus stands tall and regal next to him but Leona can feel the air being punched out of his lungs, the want to deflate like a balloon and collapse into his chair. It’s almost endearing.
“Good,” Malleus says, that one word taking tremendous effort. He scratches the back of his neck, letting out a small huff that might as well be a laugh. When he pulls his hand away, he leaves two distinct lines of stone pigment right where his jawline ends. Leona briefly entertains the thought of running his teeth over them, then his lips. “I- Thank you, Leona.”
The day has been awfully long but nightfall comes quick. The room is dark save for the stray lanterns glowing a sickly yellow and the moonlight trickling in through the curtains. Time moves forward with no change in velocity, but dusk is always the shortest. Leona trails his eyes towards the clock hung above the door.
“Five more minutes until curfew begins,” Leona says, not desperate to change the topic, but his fingers twitch, and he has to focus on something that’s not Malleus’ neck or his hands or the subtle way his lips curve upwards.
Malleus hums. He looks reluctant to let the day go just yet, has the look of a madman trying to fight time itself, but everyone does when time is running out. The end always comes with a force nobody is prepared for.
Four minutes and forty-five seconds left.
The pale, sharp glow from the lanterns hung in the courtyard burns into the room, brushing over dark hair and soft skin. Something about the greenish lamplight feels punishing, as if it wants to remind them of how little they can delay the inevitable. Leona expected it to be cruel. The light has never graced what he desires with satisfaction. It’s always been the unforgiving type.
This time, it refuses to cast shadows, and they’re blanketed in the night’s void. Everything feels tangible, like Leona could reach out and peel through the darkness, tear it down with his fingers and relive the funeral of the sun. Wrapped in inky black, Malleus smiles, a green flame caught in the corner of his iris, simultaneously conforming and rebellious in the midst of the end.
The air tastes like death. Leona is bathed in silver moonlight and its thistle incandescence. The neon green of Malleus’ blazer is even more radioactive in the dark, brighter. He smells like ice cream and smoke.
It’s another funeral but Leona has not learnt how to respectfully part with anything.
“I rather enjoyed myself.” Malleus says, robbing Leona of his need to tear the quiet to shreds to make room for something terrible and scary and tender. The words scatter at the tip of his tongue. Silence descends over them, the type that lingers in the air pleasantly and is soft around the edges. It feels gentle. Private. Vaguely, Leona is aware he must be staring, his gaze piercing the side of Malleus’ cheek, memorizing where the light does not touch.
Malleus’ face is serene, free of any creases and emotion as he puts the hammer and chisel in their designated spaces and wipes his hands with a cloth. Leona feels like he shouldn’t be looking. This is too intimate, the mere sight of Malleus’ lilting ponytail and the way he moves his long limbs making him see a boy separate from the feared crown prince and the powerful mage, no longer the person Leona wanted to stampede just to see if they both bled red. The realization comes slow like nightfall, but no less violent. Through it all, Malleus was only a boy.
Perhaps he should be surprised but the recognition doesn’t change anything about his situation. Leona always finds himself in the same dilemma. He doesn’t know if his hunger is bigger than his anger. His eyes would be eager to find the boy made of shadows but he’d have a hard time looking away again. It’s not worth the risk, not when he can feel time running through the gaps in between his fingers like sand.
Leona averts his eyes.
Three minutes and twenty-six seconds. It’s too late for anything anyways and if Leona can hold out that little bit longer he can go back to sleep, feigning ignorance while suffocating the soft thing in his stomach with his bare hands. He doesn’t remember looking up again but Malleus’ eyes are tinted a faint shade of blue in the soft glow of the night light coming in from the window. Leona can see how bright they are even in the darkness, an unwavering shade of green. Within the confines of the room, he has a better view of Malleus’ face overall. The curve of his mouth, open ever so slightly, the way his eyebrows furrow delicately as he struggles to scrape the dirt from underneath his fingernails.
Leona doesn’t know how he looks. He’s taken a nap earlier but his hair is always this side of disheveled, his own eyes glowing just as brightly in the dark. He might be staring again, but it’s nighttime anyways, no one there to witness what’s happening between them in the quiet room.
“Thank you for today,” Malleus says to Leona and the darkness around them. To no one in particular at all. Leona is grateful for the night surrounding them. It grants them both reprieve, and maybe even shreds of courage.
“It’s not a big deal, Malleus,” Leona shrugs, jaw set as he tries to sound nonchalant. He doesn’t question why Malleus’ name on his tongue feels awfully right, or why he wants to seal the silence between them with a breathy laugh against their joined mouths.
Malleus smiles. “I’ll decide that for myself.”
The minutes tick by. In the scant candlelight, Leona can see nothing but Malleus and the shadowy figures of the gargoyles. It doesn’t make him uneasy. Nothing about this is scary, and Leona prides himself on always being prepared should the worst happen, like Malleus turning on his heels and walking out the door. It wouldn’t be unexpected. Someone has to leave first, and they don’t have much time left anyways.
Malleus’ hand reaches about halfway up to his hair to pull the elastic from it but Leona gets there first. His fingers settle into soft voidlike black, then his palm. Nothing about Leona is gentle enough to be considered tender but he runs his hand through the strands until his fingers catch on the hairband. It turns to sand without much thought. Malleus is looking at him stiffly, eyes fixed on Leona who’s suddenly so close he can feel the dragonfire heat radiating off Malleus.
The gargoyle research club turns into a battlefield. Leona might be lazy but more than that he’s ambitious. He’s already committed to this horrifying thing between them, even if he doesn’t remember making that decision. His entire body is moving on instincts.
So maybe he’s not as prepared as he claims to be, at least not right now, but he can’t really bring himself to care.
“Lilia dyed it for me the other day,” Malleus says abruptly, eyes big and unblinking. This, Leona realizes, is what people mean when they say someone looks like a deer caught in the headlights. Malleus is poised to run, or maybe throw himself out a window. Leona probably doesn’t look that far off himself. “I- He said the blue in my tips is fading, and he likes to experiment with color. Not just on his own hair.”
“Malleus,” Leona hears himself almost as if his voice is far away. His heartbeat is ringing in his ears, blocking out everything but Malleus and his apparently not naturally blue hair and how exasperatingly endearing he looks with the moonlight reflecting in his irises.
“Yes?”
“You’re so weird.” And then Leona laughs. Malleus is not the deer, he’s the omnipresent gaze of the headlights. That must be why so many people are afraid of him, how he radiates so much energy, such pure, simple emotion if one knows where to look for it. “I guess it really is true. Artists are a strange bunch, huh?”
It’s only partially meant as an insult – the greater part but only a part nonetheless. It sounds like one too, but Malleus is still looking at him with his soft, firelit eyes. His hand moves up to pull Leona’s out of his hair. Suddenly long fingers are around Leona’s, thumb rubbing gently at his knuckles.
“You really are an arrogant cat.” That too is probably an insult but it lacks malice, smoothed over by the edges of the night and the velvet of his voice. Malleus is still looking at him with his soft, headlight eyes. Leona can feel his thumb pressing against his pulse point and himself reconciling with intent on barreling towards willful destruction.
“Yeah, but you like me.” It’s not so much a challenge as it is simply fact. Malleus freezes. It’s almost comical to watch the feared Malleus Draconia go perfectly still, hand tightening against Leona’s as if it’s the only thing stopping him from slipping through the floorboards. He might not be breathing. Leona should probably check on him so he squeezes their hands, eases Malleus’ vice grip around his fingers.
In reality, Leona just screwed himself over. Not because he doesn’t want this but because he didn’t want Malleus to know he wants this, didn’t even want Malleus to think about it.
With one minute and seven seconds left, Leona focuses on plain walls, slabs of stone, the diminishing candlelight. The pause between seconds shimmers like the feverish moon on the ocean’s surface. Malleus is staring at him like he wants something. They’re running out of time fast. Fifty-five seconds. Thirty-two. Nineteen.
Malleus presses his thumb into the back of Leona’s hand. Six seconds until the final curtain call.
“I do,” Malleus breathes, barely audible. He’s not scared but something worse, looking at Leona as if he’s going to immortalize them both in stone.
“Leona,” he continues. His voice has deepened and darkened and developed into something devastating. The reality of what’s happening startles him. He visibly swallows, breath coming just a little ragged, eyes fixed on Leona, dead-on, a reference point in a sea of gargoyles. His knees nudge Leona’s, slipping slowly between them. “If you want this, close your eyes.”
They don’t reach one.
Leona decides the end has come early. He pushes into Malleus’ space, up on his feet and closer than they were before. He can feel Malleus’ thumbprints like hot charcoal against his skin, running from Leona’s wrist up his arms until they settle on his cheeks and pull him into a world-shattering kiss.
Their time runs out. The funeral march explodes in the ringing sound of a bell signaling the begin of curfew in chimes and clangs and tolls. Leona melts into the painted softness of Malleus’ lips against his own, into the sound of the ocean outside the window, into the boy who’s more than a monster, who’s kissing him in earnest.
A laugh escapes him, clattering against Malleus’ teeth. Rudeness comes as second nature to the wild thing inside him. Malleus doesn’t call him out on being impolite, only pulls him back in and tastes sunlight and the sharpness of Leona’s teeth. Uneven breaths turn into shaking fingertips, clutching onto the fabric of each other’s uniforms.
Leona breathes erratically into Malleus’ mouth, kisses him full again, and opens his eyes briefly to see how red the boy wrapped in midnight colors has become, tracing down all the way to his shoulders. Malleus is all wide-eyed innocence and badly dyed hair melting into the shadows. Leona wants to love him, wants to love the boy who’s also a monster. When he asks Malleus what scares him the most, he wants to hear his own name as answer.
“Leona,” Malleus starts and pauses again when Leona’s thumb ghosts across his cheekbone. His hands are shaking but so are Malleus’, both of their bodies betraying them at such a critical time. Leona is breathless at the sheer emotion Malleus is pouring into him, laying himself bare, entirely unafraid.
Then Malleus has him pressed up against crumbling paster, and Leona is running his tongue over Malleus’ lower lip. Leona is dizzy with it – with this room and this boy and the nightmares he calls his sculptures. He can feel Malleus’ chest rise and fall, his breathing becoming irregular and echoing unsteadily against the wall. The room is too small. Leona knows he deserves better than this but he only presses closer and lets Malleus rest his hands tentatively on his hips.
He wraps his own arms around Malleus’ neck and finally kisses the streaks of powdered stone underneath Malleus’ jaw. This, he decides, was definitively worth skipping magical shift practice for.
“I think about you constantly,” Malleus admits, pressing the words against the corner of Leona’s mouth, his jawline, the raised tissue of his scar. “During history classes, after magical shift games, at night. All the time.”
Malleus is spilling secrets like sunlight, like he’s not uncontrollable, like he’s promising Leona sunset-perfect evenings for the rest of his life.
“Yeah,” Leona finds himself saying, his mouth not really belong to himself anymore, “Me too.” He can’t promise Malleus the sun. He doesn’t shine that bright, even when Malleus is convinced of the opposite, but at least it’s something.
Everything appears soft in the moonlight. There are no edges, no curves, no angles, no lines. Neither knows where one ends and the other begins, but they manage to capture every space the sun didn’t touch.
The thing inside Leona’s chest takes shape.
Leona reaches for Malleus again, hands cupping his cheeks and gently tilting his head upwards so their gazes meet. Malleus stays still, looking at Leona for what feels like an eternity. One of them is dragging ragged breaths into his lungs, the other holding his breath. Leona can’t tell who does which. Not that it matters much.
His thumbs itch to wander, to gently touch every bit of skin of Malleus’ face and trace each delicate feature, to commit the slope of his horns to memory until he can sculpt him in the dark.
“Did you really like the gargoyle?”
Leona is torn between barking out another laugh and kneeing Malleus in the stomach. He ends up smearing what bit of dust he collected on his fingers across Malleus’ nose instead. “Is that why you kissed me?”
Malleus frowns. “Of course not,” He says, determined, his voice coming out stronger than Leona anticipated, just a bit breathless, “I wasn’t dishonest with you when I told you I value your opinion.” To his credit, Malleus doesn’t step away. Not that he really could with Leona’ palms pressed against his face and his tail wrapped around his thigh. He doesn’t want to either, which is something Leona takes great pride in. “Perhaps, one day, I’d like to try my hand at sculpting you.” He admits eventually, leaning his head to the side slightly, “You look different when you’re not concentrating hard on being an insolent kitten. It’s a nice change. I’m glad I got to see it.”
The urge to bite Malleus rises again but Leona dutifully swallows it down and stores it for later, when he doesn’t feel as lightheaded and his knees have stopped wobbling. “Oh,” is what he ends up saying. This is uncharted territory for the both of them. He’s never been at the edge of twilight before, never reached out for another sky like this. A small part of his brain reminds him that affection is weakness but the thing in his ribcage stirs again, claws its way all the way up to his throat.
“I mean it,” Malleus adds, reaching out to take Leona’s hand into his own like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “I’m glad you decided to stop by today.”
He dips his head, watches Leona’s expression carefully. It wouldn’t take much to lean up and press a kiss to the corner of Malleus’ mouth. Words are stuck in his throat but Leona doesn’t try to untangle them. He can make sense of everything tomorrow, find the right thing to do next week, tell Malleus the enormity of his emotions when they’re familiar and raw with each other. It doesn’t take much at all, no time and no effort.
So he gives in.
He kisses Malleus, once, then repeats the gesture over and over again until he starts to memorize the way Malleus kisses him, like Leona is made of sunlight and hope and despair. It feels good, really good. Leona should have done this a long time ago. He moves his hand to Malleus’ neck, presses on it slightly, and Malleus pulls him closer. Their chests almost touch. It’s gentle and warm and tender, and then-
“Hey Malleus,” Leona says, voice hoarse and panting slightly, “I might come back next week.”
Malleus stares, blinks, smiles at him like Leona is the only thing in the world that can bring him joy, “Of course. You’re welcome any time.”
“You better bring food,” Leona continues, but Malleus is already pressing their mouths together, nodding against Leona’s lips.
“Meat. And not the cheap stuff either,” Leona tries, one word at a time whispered against pale skin in between kisses. Malleus laughs, like it’s a joke rather than the demand it is.
Leona elbows him in the stomach as softly as he can manage. His hand still buzzes with Malleus’ touch. His entire arm. Maybe even his whole body. “I’m dead serious.”
Malleus’ lips part and Leona annoyingly thinks about how badly he wants to feel them pressed against his own again. His tongue is trapped between his teeth. Malleus reaches up to rub at his cheek, right where the streaks of pigment dirty his skin.
“Naturally.” Malleus is grinning, moonlight catching at the tips of his hair and painting them blue. “Anything you want.”
“That’s a dangerous thing to say,” Leona says, “I’m quite demanding.”
“I’m well aware.”
The clock strikes. They both know this is the end of their venture, even if they’re reluctant to let go. Splitting apart sounds like too much of a bother, and neither of them knows what will happen next. But Leona knows the death of one day only brings the rebirth of another.
The end of the world isn’t nearly as terrifying as he’d been told with Malleus by his side.
It ends like every story does. One of them has to leave first. Malleus pulls away, slowly, gently. He doesn’t go straight for the door. Instead, he’s taking his time looking around the gargoyle research club, checking on every sculpture and making sure he put his tools in the right places. He examines every detail, only a few feet away from Leona.
Leona takes great pleasure in the idea that Malleus is stalling for time, not wanting for this to be over with yet.
The truth of the matter is that they can’t prolong the inevitable that much longer, and Malleus is running out of things to busy himself with while he’s stealing glances at Leona. Leona yawns, stretches. It’s been a long day, and it’s time to leave now.
He makes his way towards the door and lets his hand lie heavy at its brass knob. “Are you coming or not?”
Malleus moves with the shadows, barely perceptible but Leona can see well enough in the dark. He slides next to him, puts one hand on the small of Leona’s back and pushes the door open with the other. “After you.”
Leona doesn’t put up a fight. He’s too tired for that. The curtain has fallen. No unnecessary light falls through the windows and the open hallways. It’s just them and the night steadily falling around them. He leans against Malleus as they make their way towards the Hall of Mirrors instead.
“You know, about that ending,” Malleus begins, voice strangely determined, hopeful, ambitious even, “I believe I might have-“
The sound of a whip against cool stone is sharp, hard, non-resonant. It’s the same sound the magical shift disk makes when Leona is angry and exhausted and throwing it as hard as he can, letting it land somewhere within the stands or all the way at the bottom of the field. A sour sound that’s raw and full of unbridled emotion.
Everything turns to a halt.
The moon shines a harsh light blue onto the never-ending hallway, miles of thick inky darkness in front of them, an ocean of desolate black at their backs. It’s simultaneously too light and too dark. Lenoa’s ears flick. He can feel the night chill creep up his spine, into his fingers and intestines where it freezes into a lump of cold, unrelenting despair.
In the distance, he can hear a beast fletch its teeth, followed by a low growl.
The lanterns start to flicker.
“Malleus,” Leona whispers, careful not to disturb the night any further than they already did. They shouldn’t have overstayed their welcome. The night turns everything soft and tender, but it also devours.
The world is ending, not with the dying sun and the night swallowing them up whole. It ends with the twisted sound of Crewel’s laugh.
“Run.”