Chapter Text
Johann’s feet were practiced at dancing over cracking shingles, the incline doing nothing to hinder his playful step. He glided over rooftops like a dolphin cut through waves, or at least how Florian imagined dolphins did. The only sea creatures he had ever seen were the fleshy, sickly spined ones that surfaced at the docks of the Black Moon, begging for fisherman’s scraps. Perhaps those would be a more accurate simile to Johann, who was no beautiful cetacean, but rather a twisted, hungry monster, graceful in its own perverted way.
Florian did his best to imitate Johann’s movements, but his legs were far shorter and his pace far less familiar, and he suspected that Johann was purposefully slowing himself down to allow Florian to feel as though he were keeping up passably. He felt no shame in his lagging. The darkness of Elendhaven’s night was no small obstacle even on the cobbled streets lit with oil tapers, and here, on the crooked rooftops of the city where the light of candles did not reach, whatever Johann might have joked, the light of Florian’s nonexistent smile proved insufficient to illuminate his way. He stumbled after Johann, breathing heavily.
“I don’t suppose you have a destination in mind, to put this wild gallivanting to an end,” Florian huffed, indignant.
Johann chuckled, hands in his pockets as though he found no need for balance. He leaned this way and that, swaying in the light wind like a reed, thin and tall enough to be one of the many metal chimneys they had passed. “Herr Leickenbloom, you asked to see where I had followed you from. There is no destination that Elendhaven’s private highways can provide for you — up here among the stars, all one can do is wander.”
“You fancy yourself a poet?” Florian resisted the urge to point out to Johann that to be among the stars, he would have to leave the boundaries of gravity on the earth. He had discovered long ago that science was lost on his companion.
“I fancy myself a damn good stalker, that’s what.”
Florian tucked his coat tighter around himself, shivering slightly in the nighttime chill. “I will not allow myself to believe that I never saw you, all that time. You mean to have me think that you were mere spans above me and I was never once aware of you?”
“Well, sweetheart, we both know I’m just a touch more unnoticeable than you,” Johann drawled, prancing over the roofing slates to stand in front of Florian, nearly chest to chest. Florian might have backed up if he didn’t fear he would slip. “I could stand in front of a man and be nothing more than a spot in the corner of his eye. Don’t you think so?”
“ I think you are standing entirely too close,” Florian muttered, brushing a strand of his hair from his eyes. “And I think you give yourself too much credit. Whatever hidden magic you may accidentally possess cannot be attributed to you. Your proficiency at stalking is a figment of your imagination, bolstered by circumstances that happened to work in your favor.” He jabbed a finger into Johann’s chest, as if poking the man might in any way punctuate his argument.
“ You are one to speak about favorable circumstances,” Johann reminded him. He brushed his own hand against the one Florian held to his chest, caressing the burn scabs and bruises just beneath his sleeve. “Without your magic, what would you be but a little boy in expensive clothing playing lawyer? Where would your magical plague be then? A fancy bauble in a glass case, I have said, and I still say. Your circumstances are just as favorable as mine.”
Florian scoffed, rolling his eyes, but not snatching his hand back. He let Johann run fingers over his knuckles and pulse points. “So you think without my sorcery I would be unremarkable and frail, is that it?”
“Far from it.”
Florian cocked his head to the side, inhaling slowly. “Are you being obstinate on purpose or is tonight simply a contrarian mood for you?”
“I mean to say that I would love you whether you had all the magic in the world or if you were as dull as a dock mouse. Whether you had money to buy the entire city or whether you couldn’t afford to breathe the air. I would not have you any other way than delicate and dangerous, though, Herr Leickenbloom — I love you for you, not your circumstances. I would have noticed you if you had been a beggar hallankind on the docks, pleading for scraps. Many things you are, I confess, but unremarkable is not a descriptor you can achieve.”
Florian’s lips pursed as he stood paralyzed, rendered speechless by Johann’s sudden sincerity. He tossed the speech over and over in his head, willing himself to remember, willing himself to understand. Love , Johann had said. Love , he had admitted. The last person who had loved Florian had been Flora. Florian did not know love, he would not know it if it speared him through his ribcage, gutted him like a fish. Often, Florian saw himself as Johann’s superior: more educated, refined, reasonable. Still, in the wake of Johann’s words, Florian found himself feeling unworthy of the man before him, falling short of what he abruptly reckoned to be deserving of Johann. He felt guilty that he had not noticed him, on these very rooftops, for all those weeks. He lamented that he had only noticed Johann when he’d had no choice, cornered with a knife to his throat.
“And for you to talk to me of being obstinate,” Johann continued, “Unremarkable may not describe you, but hypocritical is certainly in the running. Obstinate yourself, darling.”
“I’ve no idea your meaning,” Florian whispered, finding himself at a lack of the heart to raise his voice at Johann.
“Of course you do,” Johann said. “You antagonize and scold me, and constantly mock me for my affections, but you do not pull away when I touch you, you do not protest when I praise you. You could have sent me away a hundred times. You never do. You don’t truly need me for your plague, Herr Leickenbloom. You are more than capable of continuing your work alone. Yet you ask me to show you the rooftops, to walk alongside you and tour my old haunts.” Johann winked at him, a spirited smile shaping his lips and showing his teeth. “Even a vacuous gutter rat like me can recognize requital.”
“If you are trying to pry some lovestruck confession out of me, I will save you the time and effort,” Florian said, voice clipped and posture straight. He wrenched his wrist from Johann’s grip, stumbling a bit as he lost his balance on the slanted shingles. He might have fallen to the streets below if Johann did not wrap an arm around him, hauling him back to his feet and tucking him into Johann’s side, swallowed by Johann’s imposing albeit slender figure. Though he had tried to escape the physical contact only a moment before, the rush of adrenaline from nearly falling had him shaken, and the reprieve from the frigid wind was a welcome relief. Florian did not retreat from Johann’s embrace.
“I need no confession from you, love,” Johann said sweetly, leering a smile at him. “I know all I need. Now, do you want to see your precious coffee shop from up here? It’s a short walk, and the view through the windows of your favorite corner table is really the best angle the city can provide…”
Johann droned on, voice swallowed by the silence of midnight, though Florian hung on his every word. They walked over the city wrapped around one another — Hallandrette’s vilest monster and Elendhaven’s truest son.