Page 6 of The Light Within

The motes became visible only when he focussed on connecting with them. Clusters of tiny specks of light, fairy dust almost, they drifted this way and that, awaiting direction.

A tingling sensation began in his fingertips and spread throughout his every limb—a gentle warmth akin to sunlight finally breaking through dark clouds.

He drifted above himself. He became the light, the air, and the space in between.

He’d thought this part of himself was forever lost.

Now, a revival. A resurgence. A reawakening inside him.

His fog had lifted, leaving laser-like clarity in its place as each of his five senses sharpened. Energy softly buzzed in every place that connected him to Cinn’s body.

He drew upon the lumenmotes awaiting his call, drawing them away from the lamp, and manipulated them, binding hundreds of them together to form a tiny bright floating ball of light.

Encouraged by Cinn’s gasp, Julien pulled out even more—relishing the euphoric feeling of finally,finallyallowing himself to do the thing he’d craved every day for years—to create another sphere, then another.Cinn reached up to flick off the lamp, which had dimmed somewhat. Soon they were immersed in a shower of drifting luminescence, flickering like stars. Their own private universe.

“So beautiful,” Cinn murmured, reaching out to trace the path of one with his fingers.

“Almost as beautiful as you.”

Cinn made a sound somewhere between a scoff and a retch, but the smile Julien felt against his chest filled him with starlight.

Julien drifted off to sleep with Cinn still entwined in his arms. One final thought fluttered through him: he’d do anything in his power to make this tentative happiness his new reality.

two

Cinn

Julien was snoring when Cinn awoke, the exhalation of his breath tickling his ear. During the night, his head had shuffled off Julien’s chest onto a cushion they’d shared. His aching muscles protested that two men sharing a sofa when a king-sized bed was a mere handful of steps away wasn’t the best idea, but Cinn had no regrets.

He pulled his head back slightly to study Julien’s face: the sharpness of his cheekbones that was softened by the morning light; a tiny, tiny scar on his forehead, unnoticed until now; the shiny blond waves that had annoyed him the night they met. He’d yanked on them, hard. But Julien had seemed to enjoy that, hadn’t he?

Cinn couldn’t help but smile to himself, resisting the temptation to run his fingers through Julien’s hair, feel the silky locks that were as soft as they looked. In such a short time, the arrogant, cocky princeling he’d immediately disliked had become…hisprinceling.

It had been difficult to watch Julien last night, falling apart—falling apartagain—because of him. Almost as difficult as the two weeks of staying away from him had been.

Undeniably, Cinn had been angry at first. Pissed off. Fuming. Tyler was in the hospital with broken ribs, and the man semi-responsible for setting off the chain of events was the same one Cinn had just started imagining giving his heart to. Fury at Julien warred with fury at Tyler and fury at himself for letting it all unfold that way.

Then he’d read the letter. The letter, the one in the yellow envelope that was waiting on his floor the day after he’d broken his own heart by leaving Julien crying on the floor of his apartment. The letter that had contained so, so many words. So many words, Cinn didn’t know what to do with them. The letter, the one that he’d gotten out and read again and again, to the point it became dog-eared, Julien’s outlandishly over-the-top inked signature smudged where he’d run his fingers over it so many times.

After its arrival, Cinn waited for Julien to show up on his doorstep, or to surprise him by appearing alongside Darcy for lunch one day. After all, it wasn’t like Julien to respect personal boundaries. When he didn’t make an appearance, and the space between them began to stretch longer and longer, Cinn began to question everything, including whether Julien had gotten bored with him and moved on.

Now, here he was, waking up next to him.

Cinn untangled himself from their web of limbs as gently as possible, to pad around Julien’s apartment barefoot with mouse-like steps.

He needn’t have worried—even the noise of the kettle boiling and Cinn preparing the coffee beans using Julien’s ridiculously high-effort hand-grinder didn’t wake him.

While the cafétière steeped the coffee, Cinn found himself wandering around Julien’s living room, picking up several curious-looking objects—motetech?—for further examination. A wooden ladder shelf housed plants that felt real and alive to the touch but were rooted in tiny tree stumps rather than soil. On the top shelf, a photo of four people standing in a row, arms around each other, on a sunny beach, waited for his prying fingers to grab it down. Julien and Béatrice wedged in the middle of Elliot and Darcy, the four of them looking windswept and slightly sunburnt. As Cinn tilted the photo, the sea in the background appeared to move just a fraction, as did the hair of the four smiling friends. He set it back down.

Cinn meandered over to sit at Julien’s red-velvet piano stool. Smooth curves and sharp angles melded seamlessly to create an impressive grand piano, its black shine winking at Cinn, begging to be played. For all his love of listening to music, he’d never actually played an instrument outside of the few music lessons he’d bothered to attend in secondary school. In his defence, sheet music was even harder to read than words.

Cinn lifted the piano’s fallboard to reveal a mesmerising expanse of glossy ebony keys. He ran a single finger over their smooth surface without pressing down.

“Do you have a secret talent you haven’t yet revealed?”

Jumping out of his skin, Cinn lurched backwards on the stool. The seat tipped, sending him flying into Julien’s laughing arms.

Cinn scowled at Julien’s upside down smirking face, his dimples on full display. “You could have said good morning.”

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