Page 9 of Prior Claim
Sevastyan stared. He had that blank look that spoke of well-controlled shock. “Ten years.” He said the words as if it were a justification and a question all at once.
Ellisandre held their chin high and dared him to challenge them.
He swallowed.
Sevastyan was more their lost boy now than he had been at nineteen and twenty. This might be a moment only, a flicker in the story between them, but he had given his safe word. He was still theirs.
Somehow.
Within all the entanglements.
The secrecy.
The prior claims.
His need.
Ellisandre left him in the sitting room and went into the bedroom. From inside the rose-detailed armoire, they pulled out an old trunk and carried it back into the living room. At the couch they knelt and opened the trunk. Fragrant smells of cedar and vanilla billowed out in a cloud. Colored cloth bags lay side by side within.
Sevastyan drifted forward and knelt on Ellisandre’s left. He raised his hand above the contents of the trunk.
“Nine bags.”
“Each year I add one. This year’s is not yet chosen.”
“What are they?”
Ellisandre waved a hand in invitation.
Sevastyan picked up the first bag by the nape, its heft stretching out the shape as he held it. It shimmered, the fabric the color of bleached linen with gold thread shot through the weave. Sevastyan opened the drawstring with careful fingers and emptied out two lengths of rope, both coiled and bound together in the center by their ends, making figure eights.
Sevastyan studied them, his hands tight around the hemp. “Rope. You bought rope.”
Ellisandre gave him the quiet in which to hear his own thoughts.
He looked back at the trunk. “Is it all rope?”
“All.” Ellisandre dragged the back of their fingers across the contents. Each bag matched the rope inside and each year was a different color. The first year had been the shimmery bleached linen, the second year an azure, the third year wine-colored burgundy, then a soft green, a pastel pink that would make Sevastyan look debauched with its pale lengths wrapped around his chest, framing his nipples. The sixth year was lilac with strands of deep purple mixed into the fiber. The seventh year was a natural hemp, almost camel hair in hue. The eighth year was black. One of the hardest years. The year they had most wanted to go find him and drag him out of the dark. Ellisandre fingered the final rope. It was orange, the same shade as the robes of monks in Vietnam. The year the ache had released into surrender.
Sevastyan pressed the fibers between his fingers.
Ellisandre watched. He had strong fingers, knuckles that protruded from the backs of his hands and tendons that visibly moved as his fingers felt along the lengths of hemp. Familiar hands, but different. He’d touched the rope like this before: curious, anxious, earnest. In Berlin, in that natal instance of binding him, neither of the two of them had been children, but adulthood, that nebulous state of social maturity, had yet eluded them. Together, they had been two bare souls clutching at something real, without guidance or harbor. Tying him in that moment had been a prayer, as if binding his limbs together could bind his blood to his body—could seal Ellisandre’s intentions to the future.
Sevastyan’s fingers went to the cuffs of his sleeves. He undid them, one by one, then the buttons at the base of his throat and down the center line. The fabric slid from his shoulders. He let it fall to the rugs. There was a warm layer beneath the button-down. He pulled it off over his head. For a moment he looked down, holding the black cloth in his hands. Then he set it aside, putting both shirts on the couch beside the trunk. He turned on his knees so that he and Ellisandre were face to face.
The scar was still there. It marked the first place Ellisandre had touched Sevastyan, if not with their skin, but by their act. Ellisandre raised their hand. Sevastyan held still as their fingertips touched the purple knot on his shoulder. The bullet had just missed shattering his collarbone. The tissue was softer now than it had been ten years ago. The color had faded. Unlike before, he was caring for it.
Or someone else was.
Ellisandre waved toward his thighs. “Show me.”
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.
