Young Writers Society

For Tillychan, and her sandwich.

[050, Lipstick]

When he was small, Adelais' mother had read to him a book about a boy named Leopold, who had blonde hair and freckles and a nasty habit of getting food on his chin. Adelais and Leopold had looked so much alike that she'd crossed his name out of the book and let Adelais write his own name on top of the bars, leaving big black smudges with scraps of vanity atop them.

When Adelais was good, he was very very good; but when Adelais was bad, he was very, very bad.

Adelais wondered sometimes how the real Leopold had ended up. Were they still alike? Skinny and bony, with dead sisters and shiny boots and enough alcohol in their systems to sanitize the Sanatorium?

In one of the stories, Leopold had found a very pretty girl with blue ribbons in her hair that he wanted to dance with, but kept tripping over his own shoes in the pursuit. "Have courage, my dear [s]Leopold[/s] Adelais," his beaming father had said. "And she shall love you for who you are."

Of all the lessons Adelais had learned from his fictional alter-ego, this was the least helpful. He was a trembling mess as he rounded the corner into the grimy alleyway that led to Ivan's rented room—even if he was to pretend to be composed, Ivan was not a pretty girl with blue ribbons. He was a beggar-turned-prostitute who translated love letters into invented French and who held conversations with walls, having never learned to converse like normal people did. He'd never made actual eye contact with Adelais until three days previous in a smoky coffeehouse not far from Smart's apartment, when he had asked about Evangeline—and he had actually listened, eyes wide, chin nodding.

He didn't have blue ribbons, but he had blue eyes, and this made Adelais terribly nervous.

When Adelais arrived in his doorway, he found Ivan lying prostrate on his pile of blankets—supposedly, his bed—with a cloth wrapped round his lips. "Oh, Ivy!"

Ivan didn't move. "Mmm?"

Adelais knelt next to him and watched his eyes flutter open; watched him pull the cloth from his face to reveal his lips fat and swollen, with little red blisters that stained his lips and threatened to break apart. "Darling, what happened to you? Did one of them beat you? If they did, I am going to track him down and castrate him and leave him to bleed--you know I will, Ivy, you know I will…"

Ivan glared at him and pulled the cloth back over his lips. It was spotted with blood where the sores had burst open. "Whore sickness," he said, but only barely.

"And you don't have salve on them or—"

He closed his eyes as he spoke. "Adelais, you are being maternal again."

Adelais sighed. "I'm dreadfully sorry for caring about you, Ivan. For goodness' sake, at least put medicine on them or something? You can't work, either—God! Not like that."

One of the blisters on his mouth broke and bled through the cloth. Ivan winced. "I didn't yesterday."

Adelais stood next to the pile of crates at the corner of the room and dug through shirts that needed cleaning and books with pages falling out and gifts from people that he didn't want to think about. "It pains me to hear you speak like that, Ivan, it really does—let me get you some paper and some oil and—"

"Why are you here?"

Adelais paused. "I wanted to say hello, but clearly you cannot take care of yourself, so I may be here longer than I'd planned. I'm supposed to go to dinner with Upton, you know. The boy hates restaurants because the food is so close together—but we are going, and we are going to figure out how to put him with that Ashti girl before his heart breaks into even smaller pieces."

"Poor thing."

"Him or me?"

"Him."

"You're terribly cheeky, you know that?"

Ivan sighed. "Don't expect me to rebut when I can barely talk."

And that was highly unnerving—Ivan not talking. Adelais was fully aware that he was rambling, but he was rambling to fill the spaces that Ivan left gaping. "Darling, can't you paint houses instead? That doesn't make you sick."

"I do paint houses."

"You clearly don't paint enough of them. If you painted more, you wouldn't be out on the street so often, and you wouldn't have nasties on your mouth. How terrible!" Adelais at last found a small bottle of cooking oil. He sat next to Ivan on his pile of ratted blankets and carefully poured a small stream onto his fingers. "And you are not going out tonight, do you understand?"

Ivan said nothing. Adelais tipped his head and painted small strokes of oil across his lips.

When Ivan was still, it was easy to forget that he was rubbing grease into the oozing remnants of venereal disease. Like Leopold, Adelais was good with make-believe—but where Leopold had transformed curtains into terrifying monsters, Adelais made a pretty boy who was only barely putting up with him into a pretty boy who was lying next to him with intent for the fingers on his lips to travel all over his chest, his legs, his—

"Addy?" He jumped. "Adelais, that stings."

Adelais attempted to clear his head by shaking it. It only made it hurt worse. "I'm terribly sorry."

"Careful." Ivan frowned. "If you in any way endanger the healing process of my mouth, I am going to shave yours from your face, mark my words…"

But Ivan didn't ask to do it himself. Adelais saw that as a step in the right direction. "Shh," he said. "You're making them bleed more."

"I'll shut up." Ivan closed his eyes. He brushed the hair that was plastered to his forehead to the side and pulled Ivan's head into his lap and continued to make circles with the tips of his fingers. Ivan made a sound that was probably supposed to be "ow" but that Adelais, in his unnamed dream-world, interpreted as a groan. Adelais almost died. He shifted in his terrible limbo between being frightened out of his mind and wanting the back of Ivan's head to move slightly to the left. "Why are you so nice to me, Adelais?" he asked, through drowsy, shiny lips.

"You're my friend, darling, and this is what friends do."

Ivan frowned. "Rub each others' lips?

"Well. Friends of our particular persuasion."

Ivan laughed softly, with his lips parted not more than a half-inch. "And we are entirely platonic."

Adelais' stomach fell. He touched Ivan's cheek, leaving a small streak of oil. "Yes. We are entirely platonic."

Ivan pushed his hand away. "You whore."

"That is a terrible comment, coming from you."

"Really, you are. You should have my job."

Adelais poured more onto his finger. It didn't matter if Ivan's mouth was entirely saturated—this was the only opportunity for touching, besides clasping his arm in the hopes of not losing him in crowded alleyways. "Oh, Ivan."

"Don't 'Oh, Ivan' me."

"I really wish you weren't. It makes me so sick—to think that you of all people—"

"It's not like I don't occasionally enjoy it."

"You shouldn't enjoy it."

"You're such a hypocrite." Ivan moved his head into the crook of Adelais' hip and played with the buttons on his waistcoat. He was no better than a cat, really—an extremely attractive, humanoid cat. His voice was quieter, subdued through the small chasm between his lips. "I'm certain you have pretty little rich boys catering to your every whim."

"I…I don't have pretty rich boys." Adelais swallowed. "I wouldn't want them if I did."

"Who would you want, then? That awful surgeon? Or that boy at the party—you were staring at his ass the entire time." Adelais grimaced. "You know you were. But then he took you to the corner of the room, and you wanted him, naturally, but then you met his fiancée. Wasn't that awful?"

"I wouldn't want him."

"Wasn't it awful?" Ivan shifted again. Adelais died what felt like a thousand deaths. "I bet you hated that, Adelais, I bet you—"

"Shut up."

"You're blushing."

"I'm blushing because you're an idiot and my cock is practically in your ear, darling—that is why I'm blushing."

Ivan nestled the side of his head between Adelais' legs. "Well, that's awkward, isn't it?"

He grinned up at Adelais with his ghoulish, swollen lips. Another sore broke in half.

"Don't do that, Ivy, you know I don’t like it when you do that and—"

"I was simply testing to see how you would react to me doing something vastly inappropriate."

"—and then you refuse to kiss me, or hold me, or do anything civilized."

Ivan looked at him. "You want to kiss me?"

Adelais made a sound in the back of his throat that sounded like a stray cat the day the driver had run over one with the carriage. "Well."

Ivan sat up and turned round, kneeling in front of Adelais "If you really loved me, you would kiss me on my filthy, disgusting, bleeding whore lips—"

If you really loved me you would let me touch you, Addy. I suppose you don't. That's why you don’t let me. You don't love me, do you? You don't love me…

Adelais felt sick.

"I…" He gently took Ivan's hand from his leg and pressed his lips to the spidercracks in his palm. "I do really love you," he said quietly, and pulled away. "But I also really do not like seeing you sick, Ivy. I wish you would stop."

Ivan said nothing. A small trickle of blood ran down the corner of his mouth. He wiped at it with the abandoned cloth—leaving in its wake a neat little lip-print; a little red snake that looked something like lipstick.