Investigator of the Supernatural, Brewer of Tea (sedulus) wrote in shadowlands_ic, @ 2017-10-12 20:26:00 |
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Entry tags: | bertie eden, dex kessinger |
Who: Dex Kessinger and Bertram Eden
What: A tour of an art collection takes an unexpected turn
When: 11th October, 1888
Where: Dex's home
Rating: PG
Dex didn’t usually ask others to his home to view any artifacts that he kept for himself. In fact, it was really out of the ordinary for him, but Bertie had been so enthusiastic and talkative, that he hadn’t been able to help himself. Plus, the man was quite pleasing to the eyes and he had Dex smiling and even laughing a few times, which was also a bit unusual for him.
Also, out of the ordinary, he had gone out of his way to make sure there was tea and cakes in the room where most of his Greek artifacts were. There were a few others about his home, a couple even in his bedroom, but the majority were here in his overly huge room that housed not only Greek artifacts but others as well.
He was straightening a set of coins on a blue velvet cloth when he heard the footsteps of his butler and the footsteps of Bertie come up the stairs. He turned towards the door, his hands clasped behind his back just as his butler showed Bertie in and announced him.
“Thank you,” he said to his butler who bowed and then exited the room, leaving the two men alone. “Mr. Eden,” he greeted with a wide smile. “Welcome to my collection,” he waved his hand around the room.
Bertie's eyes were already wide and shining, but he tried to keep himself from openly staring around the magnificent room before he'd managed even basic pleasantries. "Mr Kessinger, I can't thank you enough for inviting me into your home. It's beautiful," Bertie blurted out, rather less smoothly. "It's a work of art itself, the house. And you're letting me intrude on your private collection...I really don't know what to say, or how to express my gratitude with enough sincerity. This is wonderful."
Mr Kessinger was standing in a way that only emphasized the fact that he could snap Bertie in two if he were so inclined, which perversely made Bertie feel safe and relaxed in his company, if still bubbling over with nerves and giddy excitement. The man was all muscles and calm, reassuring confidence, and the part of Bertie that responded to Lord Black rose up in him at the sight of Mr Kessinger's posture. He swayed a very little bit as he came forward, aborting the impulse to bare his throat to a superior.
"I don't want to outstay my welcome," Bertie emphasized worriedly. "If you'd ever rather I be gone, please don't think it rude to say so. I would hope to keep your goodwill, after such generosity as you've shown me."
Dex couldn’t help but chuckle at Bertie’s excitement for being in his home. “Thank you,” he said, looking about his room for a moment. “This home, the land, has been in my family for centuries,” he added. “I’ve updated it as the world updates, but I’ve done my best to keep it the same.” It was a monstrous home, huge, as it once homed a full family, a den if one wanted to say, of dragons, but now it was just him and his son. “It’s rare that I come across those so enthusiastic in history as you seemed to be that I just couldn’t help but invite you to see all of this,” he waved a hand around.
He thought, for a moment, he had caught something in Bertie’s eyes when he had stepped toward him, but Dex hadn’t been sure just what it was and let it pass for the moment and thought that it most likely had to do with the excitement of being here.
He then laughed when Bertie seemed worried about his welcome and Dex rose a hand to clap it on the man’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Mr. Eden,” he grinned. “You only have just arrived, don’t start worrying about overstaying your welcome. I did invite you, and I plan on you staying for a little while at least, I even have had tea and cakes brought up,” he nodded to the cart. “And please, feel free to look around just don’t touch.”
Bertie promptly clasped both hands behind his back, as Dex had, to demonstrate his conformity to the rules. He straightened up taller at Dex's touch, which echoed the way Lord Black would show his approval, and made Bertie feel instantly more confident in his welcome, leaning slightly into the clasp of Dex's hand.
"Thank you. Generations, you said, has it really? That's incredible, living history. I'm not the history expert or enthusiast you are, by any means," Bertie assured him, a little regretful at admitting that shortcoming, "but the Classical period fascinates me. Egypt, of course, but also Greece and Rome--what poets they had! Have you read any? Forgive me, what a thoughtless question, of course you have." Bertie flushed a little at the misstep, and hastened to change the subject.
"So your family has been in England for centuries, then? Are you, or they, tied to the Thames in some way? Is that a personal question? I don't mean to be rude, it's just that I saw your magnificent display on the barge, at Lord Ravensworth's gathering, and I thought...well, it seemed your connection was a personal one, that's all. Not a casual acquaintance. If one can have a casual acquaintance with the Thames." Bertie smiled warmly, curiosity and interest overwhelming his brief chagrin.
“Indeed his has,” Dex answered. It was living history, if one wished to call it that. His family had owned this land before humans even had set foot on it, and then, when time came where one had to own land by purchasing it, his family had done so to make sure it and the River Thames stayed in the Kessinger family for as long as the family continued on. That, of course, he did not tell Bertie. If Bertie ever learned what he was, then he may give his history to the man, but for now he kept it as simple as he could. “Yes, I have read some of the great poets,” he nodded. “And their stories, Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, is a favorite of mine.”
“My family has been around a very long time, yes,” he answered. “And we, or rather I and my son now, are deeply connected to the River Thames,” he said. His father was dead, his mother had gone off as well as his siblings. Dragons were a rare breed and were becoming even more rare as life moved on. “I suppose you can say the connection to the river is definitely personal,” he added. There wasn’t any getting around from the display of the water display, if people knew it was him well...most, on that barge would know he was a supernatural of sorts but not much else.
"The Anthologia Palatina," Bertie replied at once, his face lighting up. "There's one...I can't remember it now, but I remember reading it at Cambridge. It had such feeling to it. And such marveling that there could be creations worthy of note, made by barbarian societies outside of Greece and Rome."
Bertie laughed at that, shaking his head. "The Greeks were the first to define hubris," he joked ruefully. "With good reason. Although I fear we follow them too often, here in England. Just look at the treatment of African societies, and the natives in America. Or India," he said, with what might have qualified as a soft sigh. "There is such art and poetry in India."
Bertie was straying, badly, from the topic--he made an effort to return to Dex's remarks. "It must be incredible, to have a strong connection to something like the Thames, so old and full of history, with so many stories to tell." Did the river speak to Dex the way the dead did to Bertie? He couldn't imagine it, quite--deep flowing water seemed too alien for language, but it must speak, in some way, to Dex, surely?
"Would you...that is, if it's not too personal, I beg your forgiveness," Bertie hastened to clarify, before asking with tentative hope, "Would you tell me what it feels like? That connection, that...communion of spirits? What is it like, for you, when you're with the river?"
He thought, though he wouldn't ask, that Dex must be some sort of fae. A water spirit, evidently, one connected to the river as the naiads were according to the Greeks. Bertie hadn't known there were any in England, but then there were entire libraries filled with all he didn't know about the fae.
“That is a good one,” Dex nodded. There were plenty of books and manuscripts on Ancient Greece, and plenty of poets and writers, some good and some not. “I have a few books in my library,” he told Bertie. “I believe I even have that one,” he was almost positive. A book of poems, he was pretty sure he had a copy.
“Men fear what is different or what they do not understand,” he replied. “And of course, when their history does not have us as part of it, it is different, and so they treat the culture and the people badly. It is beneath them, or so they think,” he gave his own quiet sigh. “It take men like you to fight for what is right, to educate, to bring nations together,” he gave a small smile.
He looked away turning towards some daggers that he had on display. “The connection with water feels like...home,” he said after a pause. “It’s familiar and unlike any connection I’ve ever made,” he tried to explain. “It’s difficult to put into words. I know that if I were to lose it that I would be lost. The river...it speaks to me in a way that there are no words. I know if it is ill, per se, as if it were polluted with toxins. It’s like it is my child and I am it’s protector, if that makes sense.”
The simile was so moving that Bertie didn't reply for a moment, and he chose his words carefully when he did. "I don't think I'm much of a fighter," he admitted. "Nor do I champion right as often as I should. I try, through the Night Watch, but I'm not a classical hero." He shared a secret, crooked smile with Dex. "I'm a poet. I suppose we have our own roles to play, in helping men to understand their differences. We fight with pen and ink, though not in any grand treatises."
Bertie wondered if he would overstep here, but the depth of feeling in Dex's voice was so rich that he couldn't turn from it, not even if good manners required it. "Would you consider...letting me try to put that connection into verse? I'm not a great poet," Bertie apologized, "but I am published, and I should not release anything without your permission, and your approval that I've written it correctly. But if you'd tell me more, I should like to try."
It was impossible to keep the quiet hope from Bertie's voice, or his eyes as he gazed with new appreciation at Dex Kessinger, Father of the Thames. "If men fear what is different," he offered softly, "let me write your story into our history."
“Ah, but as you said, you do try,” Dex said, an eyebrow going up to hear that Bertie was with the Night Watch. “And with the Night Watch no less,” he gave a small smile. “Regardless, you protect as best as you can and in that way you do help,” he added. “And, with your pen to your paper, you educate. You do your part, which is more than most can say.”
He turned to Bertie and looked down at him, surprised that the man was offering to tell his story, to add it to history. “I’m not sure my story is that...great,” he said. “And it might be one that might not be understood. I’m...there are reasons that those like me have lived in the dark for as long as we have.” Some people believed in certain things like fairies, even vampires and werewolves, but to believe in a dragon that could take on human form, that could control an element, he wasn’t sure. “In any case, they most likely wouldn’t believe.”
Bertie couldn't help the urgency in his tone at the thought of losing such a moving sentiment. "Mr Kessinger," he said earnestly. "You have moved me with a few words past what many do in a year of conversations. I won't ask for your secrets, only your experience, your feelings for the Thames, as you've just described them. Your words and emotions, put into my verse. Not everyone will understand it, but it's poetry--it will speak to some, and in different ways. I won't tell anyone it came from you, just that I was honored enough to hear someone speak whose story was worth telling."
It was perhaps too impassioned a speech, but Bertie had felt the poetry in Dex's words even without words to frame them, and he already knew it would be better than anything he had written this year, with such imagery and metaphor. Another smile broke free, this one more impish in nature. "They don't have to believe all they read. They only have to be moved by it." Bertie's smile grew until he had to duck his head to keep from laughing. "And thus are the battles of the pen won, by educating hearts rather than minds."
Dex was taken aback. To be told he had moved someone in conversation in as short time as he had was untold of. He rarely made a great deal of conversation, keeping his words to himself most of the time. Even in meetings he was quiet unless there was something that just needed to be said.
“I’m normally not the best conversationalist, and my son will tell you I’m not the best at storytelling either,” he gave a small chuckle. “But,” he paused and gave a small shake of his head, unbelieving that he was agreeing to do this. “If you wish to hear my story, and maybe the stories of those past, I can try.”
"I wish to hear any stories you would tell," Bertie promised, his smile now unfettered and beyond hiding with a duck of his head. "I don't mean to put you on the spot, though...you invited me over to see your collection, and here I've thrown myself at you begging for poetry. Shall I look around, since you've been so gracious to have me? Are there any naiads in your collection? I'd be curious to hear your opinion of them."
That there was no offense intended was clear by the grin Bertie couldn't keep off his face. "While we're on Greece...I would be grateful to see anything that might have trappings of Orpheus. Not for a lofty goal, I'm afraid," Bertie admitted, sheepish again but still grinning. "I've been invited to a masquerade with a classical theme. It's good timing for a visit to see you, and your artifacts. I thought I might actually put in some study. At Cambridge we used to dress up in togas and read Roman poetry of a very particular sort, but..." Bertie laughed, turning slightly pink at the memory of some of those poems. "We weren't much for verisimilitude at those gatherings."
“Then I will try to think of stories to tell you,” Dex replied. There were many, plenty, not just his but his families as well and maybe they would give Bertie what he needed to write his verses. “Right...my collection,” he chuckled and looked around for a moment. “Naiads?” He chuckled. “They can be pesky little things, especially when they want to take over a part of water that isn’t theirs to take,” he smiled. “But I do my best to share,” he gave a small wink.
“I do have some of Orpheus,” Dex nodded. Reaching out, he touched Bertie on the shoulder to turn him towards a vase sitting on a pedestal and hanging on the wall beside it was what was said to be the instrument that belonged to Orpheus. “Of course, that isn’t his lyre, just a replica, but I thought it tied the collection up nicely,” he smiled. “Then I have a tapestry over there,” he pointed.” He paused then and thought of Bertie wearing a toga. “I find the idea of you wearing a toga rather fetching,” he chuckled.
Bertie's lips parted, surprised and knocked back by an unexpected wave of hope. It would have been foolish to deny his attraction, with the shiver of warmth still running down his spine from Dex's guiding hand on his shoulder, but he hadn't thought to imagine that feeling might be returned. It was too dangerous to act on, or even to openly show desire, but that didn't stop Bertie's stomach from flipping at Dex's laugh and his words, which Bertie could too easily choose to interpret.
He was still marveling in delight over Dex's amused, casual remarks on naiads, as something not only known but inconvenient, interfering with him and his river. The enormity of that was already enough to knock Bertie over, even before Dex winked at him as if sharing a confidence. As if Bertie was worthy of his confidences. Oh, this was terrible, and he couldn't look away.
He should, though. He should look at the art that Dex was showing him, because he did want to see it, and Dex had a replica of Orpheus' lyre, which was so incredible Bertie couldn't quite manage to believe it, and it was indeed beautiful, but not, to Bertie's eye, the greatest work of art in the room.
"I couldn't do it justice," he said without thinking. "You could be a sculpture of a Greek god. You are already," he babbled on, because he was apparently incapable of stopping himself, and felt his ears go hot as soon as he'd said the words.
He looked away hastily, blindly toward the lyre, and said over the rush of blood in his ears, "I should study it, and make a copy, of wood and string. Would you let me sketch it, before I go? To get the dimensions right, and the shape of it?" And now he was thinking of dimensions and shapes of an entirely different subject, and too aware of Dex's steady presence beside him, and the large, finely-formed hand at his side that had touched Bertie's shoulder. Bertie hadn't lied--Dex could be a living sculpture, carved from marble by the perfectionist Greeks. Every visible part of him was chiseled with a master hand.
Bertie didn't even know what he was thinking anymore. His mind seemed to have taken a vacation from poetry and lapsed into waxing rhapsodic. “I do greatly admire the Greeks,” he said inanely, thinking of their open admiration for the male form and its intimacies, only he was somehow looking at Dex again, and not the lyre or the vase.
“I bet you would do just fine,” Dex commented back. He chuckled as Bertie said he could be a sculpture of a Greek god. “And which god do you think I’d be?” He asked. “Aegaeon? Or perhaps Poseidon?” He rose an eyebrow. “I am sure I could find a trident,” he nodded thoughtfully.
“You can sketch it, yes,” he said of the lyre. His eyes shifted from the lyre to Bertie and a small smile touched his lips to see the man talking of the Greeks but looking at him instead of the Greek paraphernalia surrounding him. “The Greeks did have their ways,” he said gently. “Their clothing style was easy to get around, and their way of taking what they wanted when they wanted was great. Nothing like today when we have all these etiquette rules and what is decent and what is not.”
That was outright blatant, and for a moment, Bertie thought wildly of following the impulse, seizing Dex and throwing caution to the wind. His heart was hammering painfully in his chest, and the air suddenly seemed too warm and thick to breathe. Dex seemed near to bursting from his suit like a god in truth, larger than life, and Bertie could too easily picture him with a trident, draped artfully in nothing save a fishing net.
It was too dangerous. Dex's comment, which seemed openly flirtatious, could also be taken as a warning. There were rules of decency, and Dex was an MP in the House of Shadows. If Bertie made a wrong move, he could go to prison for years of hard labor, returning broken to a society that would only shun him for his crime.
It hadn't become any easier to breathe. Bertie looked down and away, only belatedly recognizing the posture as the deference he offered Lord Black, the side of his throat visible to Dex above his collar. Bertie swallowed and forced himself to turn away, blindly searching for something in the room to fix on. He opened his mouth to make some vapid remark on a piece of pottery, and instead found himself saying softly, "I wish I were that brave."
Bertie cleared his throat. "They were a great people," he went on, just to have something more to say. "Do you have a favourite piece of theirs, in your collection?"
Aegaeon, Bertie thought, the god of storms, and unbidden a fragment of Callimachus’ Hymn Four to Delos sprang to his mind, clear where the Palatine had eluded him. In poetry he was safe--in poetry, he could hide feelings within the words and sentiments of others, and they would still be true.
“The mount of Aetna smoulders with fire, and all its secret depths are shaken as the Gigantos under the earth, even Aigaios shifts to his other shoulder, and with the tongs of Hephaistos roar furnaces and handiwork withal; and firewrought basins and tripods ring terribly as they fall one upon the other.”
Dex was being more open than usual, which seemed to be the theme for today; doing everything out of the ordinary. But he was in his home and with a guest that he quite admired, who was intelligent and seemed to get Dex in a way that most didn’t. They had common ground, in any way.
But even so that he was in his home and he got a distinct vibe from Bertie, a feeling that the man was subtly flirting with him in some ways, he knew they both had to be careful. Still, he hadn’t expected Bertie to turn away from him, nor did he expect the words that came. “You can be that brave,” he murmured and turned to look at what Bertie was looking at and locking his hands behind his back. “I’ve said something wrong?” He questioned, glancing down at the young man.
The bit of poetry that then came was another unexpected surprise in which he blinked and then smiled down at him. “I don’t think anyone has ever quoted poetry or verse or anything of the sort to me like that,” he said. “I like it.”
Bertie's lips parted again in surprise and he turned back, eyes wide. "No, no of course not," he assured Dex at once. "Not at all. I'm sorry if...if I'm the one who's given offense."
It was maddening, both of them circling one another so carefully, unable to speak openly, careful even when they risked it. Bertie couldn't imagine how he and Gabriel had managed so simply. He suspected that was Gabriel's doing, with ease of long practice. Gabriel had a way of making everything seem easy. And Gabriel, unlike Bertie, was brave.
Bertie found himself licking his lips, nervous, and he spun words from air and memory, fitting them together into a poor first draft.
"Had I known that in giving you life
I should find myself hidden in your depths
I would have done it sooner
There was no home for me before you
Became my anchor and my compass point
Guiding me to safer rest
I was not myself before your birth
And now I draw each breath to shelter you
For without you I am lost."
He opened his mouth for a final stanza, but the words faltered, and he closed it again, embarrassed. "B.F. Eden, extemporaneous," he joked of himself, trying to play off the passion of a moment before. "A final version wouldn't be so poor. I used to extemporize more often, at Cambridge. It was a sort of tradition, at the toga parties. We would write and recite terribly bawdy poetry, all done up in bedsheets."
His heart was pounding again. Bertie forced out, as casually as he dared, light as if this were a joke to be laughed off, "I could show you, sometime. If..." He had to take a breath before he became light-headed. "If you wished to see a performance of such uncultured work."
“You haven’t offended, not at all,” Dex replied, relieved he hadn’t offended Bertie. They were simply lightly pecking at each other as if to find some way to give to the other, to wade through muddy waters and navigate a minefield. It was exhausting and yet invigorating in the same way.
He wondered what would happen if he just crossed the line, took what he wanted, what he thought they both wanted. Would Bertie be insulted then? Would it be the wrong move to make? There was a reason that Dex generally took to Gabriel’s brothel, or had men or women sent to him in privacy. He didn’t do it often, but there were times he had needs that needed to be tended to and right now he did have a need.
Then Bertie was speaking poetry once more, one that Dex hadn’t heard before. He took in a breath and let it out slowly as the words flowed over him and he wondered what it was Bertie was just trying to say. He tried to think of a poem himself, not to outdo Bertie, as there was no such thing, but to share and possibly hide behind the words in a manner of speaking.
“To hear your voice is pomegranate wine to me:
I draw life from hearing it.
Could I see you with every glance,
It would be better for me
Than to eat or to drink.
I don’t remember the whole poem,” he apologized. “I would love to see a performance by you,” he then spoke gently. “Would I see you in a toga?” He then asked with a wicked smile.
"Yes," Bertie answered, a softer smile growing in response to Dex's. Brave, he thought, be brave, and somehow managed to stammer out, "If you were willing to let me in your bedsheets."
His breath caught then, waiting for whatever verdict might reach him, disgust or innocent laughter or a deepened curve to the wickedness of Dex's smile. He had a way out, still, a plausible excuse for the language he'd used that would save him from court and prison, but he was also entirely exposed to Dex himself, who would always know what Bertie had offered. And Bertie forced himself not to flinch from offering it, eyes bright and holding Dex's gaze with every bit of the intensity he felt on display for Dex to see.
And there it was. Bertie had taken the brave step Dex had wanted him to take and that wicked smile of his deepened even more while his arms came out, hands grasping at Bertie to pull him closer. The line had been crossed and Dex would take everything now without having to be careful. “I’m definitely willing to let you in my bed,” his head lowered. “Now, later, whenever you are willing,” he said right before pulling Bertie into a kiss.
[OOC: Continued here, please read warnings.]