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“How does it look?”
Pantalone asked as he straightened the waistcoat over his frame and spun around in place to present himself to Dottore.
They were in one of the many sitting rooms in the Zapolyarny Palace, converted into a dressing room as they were attended by one of the more prominent fashion houses in Snezhnograd, picking out garments for a grand ball the Tsaritsa was hosting in a few days.
It was Pantalone's first grand event ever since taking up the seat as a Harbinger, and therefore new garments were in order. This particular ensemble he tried on in front of a gallery of mirrors was deep purple, lilac, and silver, a fitting color for the season without standing out too much, but the waistcoat fell around Pantalone's torso in an awkward manner.
Without thinking, Dottore stepped closer and tugged on the belt behind the waistcoat, placing a hand on Pantalone’s waist to steady him against the momentary force.
The smallest gasp of surprise alerted Dottore to his actions. He took a step back.
“Pardon,” Dottore said, clearing his throat, meeting Pantalone’s eyes from his reflection in the mirror. “I thought a minor adjustment might remedy the way it fits, but I think it needs to be altered.”
Whatever came over him, Dottore could not quite explain. He was not in the habit of approaching others with such casual touches. He never cultivated any relationship enough for such things, but he supposed he felt a little more comfortable with Pantalone considering he had performed surgery on the man, and periodically conducted his health examinations.
“I suppose it must fit well, even if it must be hidden underneath the suit jacket,” Pantalone said, meeting his gaze from the reflection, smoothing the garment over his torso as if to assess how it fit over him with the adjustment, making no remark about Dottore's lapse. He then turned towards him with a casual, easy smile, one that narrowed his eyes to accommodate the widening curve of his mouth. “But do you think the colors look good?”
Dottore swallowed, suddenly feeling quite self-conscious, and unable to pinpoint why his hands began to feel cold. He wasn’t wearing gloves then. Where were they?
“Yes,” he managed to say without stammering. “It suits you well.”
Pleased, Pantalone tried on the matching suit jacket in deep purple, complementing the lighter colors of the waistcoat. He took another look at himself before he shrugged off the ensemble, stripping off completely until his underwear.
Dottore turned away to give the other man some privacy, even though he seemed not to require it, and felt his face prickle with heat.
The makeshift dressing room, closed off by standing partitions, allowed for such immodest display, though Dottore felt out-of-place and the same self-consciousness rose within him. Pantalone, however, had asked Dottore to help him choose.
A strange request. Between the both of them, it was undeniably Pantalone who excelled in grasping the finer details of the aesthetics of clothing. But Pantalone valued Dottore’s input, and that meant his own aesthetic choices were taken into consideration, and were likely no slouch.
That made him happy, enough that he had forgotten his own embarrassment at beholding Pantalone’s nakedness as it was replaced with another set of clothes which would require Dottore’s opinion.
A sweeping garment that was somewhere between a formal dress and a suit was draped over him now. The upper body was reminiscent of a suit jacket, revealing no skin—as Pantalone preferred it—and swept down into a pencil-thin skirt, loosening around the thighs for a bit of volume. It was deep purple, so deep it was black without the light and it accentuated his slender rectangular frame in a flattering manner—Dottore had come to understand the importance of silhouettes in aesthetics, at the very least.
Pantalone examined himself in the mirror, turning left and right, the fabric swishing along with him.
A vision came to Dottore’s mind, of dancing together with Pantalone in that ballroom, and how handsome the other man would look.
He let the fantasy play in his mind for a moment, before a rather frightening truth surfaced.
You’d have to ask him for a dance first.
“I like this,” Pantalone turned towards Dottore, tilting his head a little to the side in inquiry.
“It s-suits you,” Dottore replied instantly, having to shove away the momentary imagined panic of how he should approach the matter of asking his colleague for a dance. “Very much.”
A soft chortle rumbled in Pantalone’s throat.
“You prefer it more than the other one,” it wasn’t a question, and he looked quite amused. He turned once more to the mirror.
“Both are good choices,” Dottore said. “Though this one communicates your personal aesthetic more, if I may say so myself.”
Another delighted chuckle.
“This one for the ball then,” Pantalone said, undoing the corset around his waist and reaching around to unbutton the back.
Again, Dottore did not quite think and strode forward, muttering a small “let me” before he undid the entire column of hidden buttons behind Pantalone. His bare fingers brushing the skin of Pantalone’s back, over his spine. It was warm and soft, with some bumps over some scarred tissue.
It felt only natural to be like this, and Dottore supposed he should have examined why that was before he listened to such a feeling.
He had never felt like this before.
The garment came apart and Pantalone was undressed, the fabric fell over his shoulders, exposing his back, his arms. Though these days he no longer needed to sleep in the rough, and be subject to the harsh realities of destitution, the evidence of such on the body were not so easily done away with.
Dottore tried not to think too hard on it, tried to ignore the strange emotion that bubbled from his stomach to tighten and harden in his chest, and averted his eyes when Pantalone let the garment slip past his shoulders.
The fabric fell around his waist, where Pantalone gathered the corset and the dress in his arms and tried to maneuver off of the dress. There was, perhaps, a lot of fabric and a lot of things going on that Pantalone somehow lost balance as he tried to slip one leg away from the garment and tipped over to one side, falling.
Dottore lunged forward and encircled Pantalone in his arms, eyes widened in surprise, in fear as he pulled them both back.
Both men made wordless, surprised exclamations as both of them tumbled in a heap of fabric and tangled limbs on the floor with a thud. Dottore crashed onto the dull marble of that old sitting room, the side of his head knocking on the floor hard enough for his mask to fall off, and Pantalone mostly cushioned by Dottore.
What a sight they must have made, tangled in each other on the floor, with Pantalone quite naked.
“My lords!” panicked footsteps came from the makeshift door. “Is everything alright? Sh-Shall I send for someone?”
“Quite—Quite alright,” Pantalone immediately chimed as his palms dug into Dottore’s chest, first somewhere near his collarbone, then down near his rib before he finally found purchase on the floor to right himself and get a hold of the tangle of fabric around his legs.
“Sorry—I’m sorry,” Pantalone muttered softly as he untangled himself from the dress as gingerly as he could and he clambered up all over Dottore so their faces could be level. He gazed upon Dottore with a worried look—the most sincere one that was ever directed towards him that he could remember.
His chest tightened again, stealing the breath away from his lungs for a brief, but agonizing moment, and he could swear his face had gone red from the heat he felt on his cheeks.
“You hit your head. I heard it,” Pantalone murmured, leaning further to reach the side of his head and press a hand over where he thought an injury might be. Warm fingers sank into his hair, the base of a very warm palm rested over his ear.
“It’s nothing,” Dottore said, feeling naked without his mask, as now there was nothing to shield his eyes away from Pantalone’s gaze. He must have looked so strange, a wild and heady mix of bewildered, excited and confused, emotions even Dottore could not quite make much sense of.
Pantalone did not believe him and decided further examination was necessary, his hand traveled further up, massaging the side of his skull, tangling his fingers in Dottore’s hair.
If the tailor had walked into this scene, there might have been quite a misunderstanding of what they were up to. Here they were, on the floor, Pantalone on top of him, the lower halves of their body almost aligned, Pantalone’s legs framed by his own.
It was the closest he had ever been with anyone in his life, and he did not know what to do except to be still and try not to focus on the way it was comforting in ways he had never known, had never come to even think of, to have someone’s warmth and weight on top of him.
Pantalone’s fingers dug into his skull, examining the side of his head for any pain, and when Dottore gave no indication of such did he stop, pulling away his hand from his head to Dottore’s cradle the side of his jaw, fingers brushing his warm cheek.
“Thank you for catching me,” Pantalone said with a smile, full of affection and appreciation. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”
Dottore almost did not register those words, he felt his world narrow into the warmth of the skin touching his cheek and the smell of tobacco, leather, and lavender from that hand. He leaned into it, turning his head so that his lips could brush the soft meat of that palm, and he could breathe in fully the scent of Pantalone’s skin.
It took another moment for him to remember himself, and his words.
He opened his eyes—he didn’t even know he had them closed—to meet Pantalone’s gentle gaze.
“It would have been a terrible fall,” Dottore said in a neutral, matter-of-fact tone. “And you would not recover in time for the ball, and what a waste that would be.”
“A waste?” Pantalone made a soft laugh and then regarded Dottore with a wide, sly smile with half-lidded eyes. “Why would it be a waste?”
A slight grimace made its way to his mouth upon the belated realization that he had just been caught in a trap. He opened his mouth for a hasty reply and then closed it, met Pantalone’s expectant, sly, indulgent smile and thought about his next words.
“Because—” he began. “It would have been your first grand event, and surely many would be curious to see the new Harbinger.”
Pantalone hummed in thought, “Mm-hmm,” he drawed the sound out and began to thumb Dottore’s cheek. “Nothing at all to do with how you liked seeing me in the dress?”
“W-Well,” Dottore stammered, embarrassment rose in him but he could not tear his eyes away from Pantalone and the way he looked at Dottore—as if he was wanted—desired.
He could not turn away from this, he could not ruin this chance.
“It suits you,” was all he could say once more, was the only appropriate thing to say given where they were and how they might be heard. As soon as the words left his lips though, he found them wholly inadequate.
“So much that I—”
If he wanted more of this, more of whatever this small, strange and wholly mysterious unknown budding between them, then he would have to gather more where that came from.
“I thought how much I would like to ask for a dance with you, at the ball.”
The smile that lit Pantalone’s features made Dottore’s chest swell, so much that his stomach fluttered. He could only describe it as brighter than the desert sun, and much more dazzling than any oasis in the horizon. So beautiful that again Dottore could not find his breath for a moment.
“That sounds wonderful,” Pantalone said, punctuating the sincerity of his words with an affectionate swipe of his cheek with a thumb before he gingerly rose from the floor. “So we better make sure this dress hasn’t been ruined, and perhaps ask the tailors if they have something to match it.”
Dottore sat up, only noticing then a soreness in his entire body and a slight headache—but nothing that would not be solved in a couple of hours.
“Match?” he managed to ask as he too got on his feet and watched as Pantalone went to dress in a simple pair of trousers and a shirt as he made his way towards the door towards the tailors outside of the makeshift dressing room.
“Yes,” Pantalone turned to look back at him, the smile on his face hadn’t faded at all. “You, matching with me.”
And with those words, Pantalone slipped out, leaving Dottore there for the moment to ponder on what just happened. He understood something had changed between them, something very small, a slight shift, but a change nonetheless.
Dottore brought a hand up to touch his face, the ghost of Pantalone’s touch still lingered.
“You and me,” Dottore murmured into the empty dressing room.