Episode 1 #6
He stood and undid his pants. There were two layers again. One did not live in Russia long without learning to dress in layers. He set his clothes aside, leaving only tight black boxers and black socks.
Ellisandre dragged their fingers over the second scar, this one on his leg.
Prior claim. If there had been no prior claim, this mark might not have been necessary.
The memory of pulling the trigger was still an isolated moment encased in glass with colors sharper than that point in time had borne.
Leaving him in the train car, wounded and alone, had been a dark door through which to travel.
Sevastyan waited in silence. Ellisandre tapped his knee and he knelt.
Like his face, his frame was no longer soft.
The lengths of his limbs had filled out.
His chest was broad and covered in muscle in the way that only came with age and discipline.
Fine, light hair covered the plains on either side of his sternum in a way that had only been a whisper of a possibility when he was nineteen and twenty.
Ellisandre took one of the first ropes and loosed the knot holding it coiled.
They held out their palm. Sevastyan laid his wrist within it, the smooth, vein-filled side up.
It would be soothing to bind him and never let go.
He was giving them the opportunity. Each time he’d come to them, he had given them the power to take his freedom forever.
They never had, and never would. Sevastyan was a golden eagle. To clip his wings would be to shred his beauty and make a mockery of his trust. And yet he continued to give them the choice, even now.
Ten years. He couldn’t know, truly know, who they were.
This wasn’t trust.
Ellisandre absorbed the knowledge, guided it through their body, breathed in the pain of the knowing and passed it out their belly, through their chest, down their arms and out into their hands, releasing it from their palms.
This was desperation.
Memory.
Heartbreak.
Ellisandre stood and moved behind Sevastyan, still holding the wrist he had offered. Sevastyan’s breath caught and then his head fell forward.
Tying his arms behind his back was simple.
Ellisandre doubled the rope, working with dual strands to protect the nerves and tendons, creating wide lines of flat pressure.
Rope should be an embrace, an extension of their hands on Sevastyan’s body.
Single strands could turn into knifelike lines cutting into the skin.
There were knives for that, if necessary.
Knives were controlled. A blade would deliver exactly the punishment wanted.
A single strand rope tie could break skin, damage nerves, and strain tendons, all without art or conscious intent.
There was no room for such carelessness now. Not with their lost boy.
Ellisandre worked the ropes flat, laying down second wraps of the hemp around his wrists and upper arms, checking the tension with their fingers as they went.
It was meditation. Hours they had spent, alone, working through knots and patterns.
It had been their solitary practice over the last decade.
Wrapping the rope around a warm, breathing body was transcendent.
A dance. Each shift, each breath, the flex of hands as muscle and bone bent, gave, or pushed back.
Ellisandre drew the bonds with firmness.
The art was in the freedom of the restriction.
To create passage for breath while cutting off motion, to allow blood to flow while denying limbs the freedom turn.
He was theirs. He was held. He was here.
Sevastyan’s body relaxed into their control. With each twist and wrap, Ellisandre took a choice from him and his breath grew deeper. His head bent forward, absorbing the shift in his weight, accepting the posture into which he was being clasped by the pattern of the hemp.
Ellisandre checked their boy’s fingers for circulation.
He was as flexible now as he had been before.
Behind his back, his hands easily cupped the opposite elbow on each side, his forearms pressed against each other perpendicular to his spine.
It left his front bare and vulnerable. A choice. One he would recognize.
Ellisandre caressed the double column tie keeping his forearms pressed together. Double strands of rope threaded through the vertical columns of his upper arms taking the stress off his shoulders by pulling them together behind his back.
This will be long. Ellisandre took their time.
His skin was a world of its own beneath their fingers.
His body felt different now. Stronger. Older.
There were small scars and a few larger.
Spots where the sun had marked his fair skin.
The freckle behind his right shoulder remained.
Reading the depth of this history was not for the present.
Ellisandre kept their fingers to the task and the task alone.
Sevastyan could relax into the rope now without keeping his shoulders pulled back. Safe from the need to struggle, his wrists guarded safe from strain.
Ellisandre tied a harness over his shoulders and around his chest, one that pulled his arms upward, spreading out the weight of holding them in place around his shoulders and chest. He couldn’t lower his arms, couldn’t pull his elbows forward, but neither would the weight of his immobile limbs rest on any one point.
Ellisandre stepped back. The parchment rope shot through with gold thread looked beautiful against Sevastyan’s skin.
The effect was beyond what they had anticipated.
Ellisandre spread their hands over his shoulders, feeling the state of his muscles, listening to his breath.
The skin between two points of the rope begged for a kiss.
And yet too much was still unsaid.
Too many things were unknown.
The two of them no longer knew if their myths aligned.
Was Bal still a living piece of Sevastyan’s soul? Had Sevastyan killed the light of Asgard in their beloved, leaving only Vast? Who else had been born with the death of his god and goddess? What piece of him had been forced into being as he heard the bombs fall and Ragnor?k end?
Did Ellisandre themselves care?
No, because they loved all the parts of their lost boy—be he man or boy. And yes, because they wished to know one so precious.
Ellisandre moved to stand in front of Sevastyan. He was still kneeling. Impressively.
“Goddess,” he whispered.
Ellisandre almost corrected him. They touched the crown of his bent head with the tips of all four fingers and the thumb of their right hand. A breath, and a pause. A moment of communion. They dragged their fingers down the side of his head and across his jaw.
He pressed a kiss to their hand. “God.”
Ellisandre had woven the rope, but Sevastyan was weaving a spell. They studied him, aware of the dreamlike frisson running over their skin, the sense of the world existing at a far distance in every point except those where the two of them touched.
They’d chosen long ago, in their remade life, to be neither man nor woman.
Gender had defined them, first by what one party wanted, then by another.
Chromosomes and genitalia had been battlegrounds for one side or the other to own.
Blood tests and arguments. Sonograms and diagrams. And even when a modicum of freedom had been reached—no, earned—at the end of a gun, gender had been merely a face to wear, a guise with which to slip through the world as an unknown, merely a servant to a cause greater than themselves.
They’d survived. Just them. Not a blood relation or a lover remaining. In that emptiness there had been no reason to continue the battle of being a man or a woman. They were neither singularity. They were merely Ellisandre. Spinning in the center, claiming neither had felt like peace.
Now it felt like depriving Sevastyan of his worship, even as he reached for the terms they had taught him.
Ellisandre had practiced the knots. They had set aside provisions for his return with care.
His name had already been in their security system.
All that had been required were his biometrics to complete his profile.
There were clothes in his size in their closet.
A perfect double of his favorite handgun with matching ammo was laid down in their armory.
There was a bulletproof vest in his measurements.
A plurality of details considered and attended to.
Details he didn’t know. Details he was not yet ready to comprehend.
In all that care and planning, they had not considered this.
They were both foundering. Was Sevastyan Bal? Was he Vast? Was Ellisandre Goddess? Were they God? Time unmade mortals and remade them. It was up to the mortals to find themselves, again and again. From incarnation to incarnation and mirror to mirror.
Ellisandre threaded their fingers through his hair. It was long now. Cared for. Not dry like it had once been. “You condition.”
His breath hitched, yet he did not speak.
Ellisandre knelt on one knee, dragging their fingers from Sevastyan’s pectorals to his abdomen. The muscles rippled under their touch.
“Tell me, Vast, if there is an oath that keeps my hand from going lower.”
“None.”
And yet there was something. Not an oath, then, but a layer of meaning not covered in that single syllable response.
They traced their fingers down to the V of his groin, dragged their fingernails across his belly, ran their thumb over the band of his boxer briefs. An American brand, to match his passport.
“I’m going to take your sight.” Ellisandre stood and retrieved a large bandana and another case of implements from the bedroom.
Sevastyan kept his eyes on the floor. He tilted his head this way and that, accepting the bandana over his eyes without protest.
There had been a time when he would have been asking questions or panting with desire by now. The only indication in the present that this was what he wanted, what he needed, was the way his body was slowly starting to sag.
How long had it been since he had had true rest?
Their lost boy was running on the raw edge of exhaustion.
Sevastyan
It was an illusion, this moment of peace.
The ropes wrapped around Sevastyan’s ribs and crossed over his shoulders were comforting and familiar.
Their clasp and hold destabilized time, making it shimmer and slip back on itself, folding in layers that erased years.
Ellisandre’s touch, the smell of the hemp, the act of kneeling brought back the moments from ten and eleven years previous, making them more immediate than the events of linear time.
His breath deepened as the blindfold settled, locking his vision to the images inside his mind.
He dropped his head toward his chest, sagging in the ropes just to feel them. If he truly wanted to escape the bonds, he could. It would take effort, but it was not impossible. What he would not be able to escape in this state was Ellisandre.
He didn’t want to.
And that was the madness of it all.
He’d knelt for them without question, offered up his wrists to be restrained, left his cell phones across the room.
All for indulgence? A memory?
He pressed his eyes closed behind the blindfold, pushing against the accusations coming from within.
“You wouldn’t touch me, if you knew what I’ve done,” he whispered.