The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (Watchmaker of Filigree Street, #1)

by Natasha Pulley

Thaniel listened for a while longer, because the silence was so deep and clear that he could hear ghosts of the thirty-six of thirty-seven possible worlds in which Grace had not won at the roulette, and not stepped backward into him. He wished then that he could go back and that the ball had landed on another number. He would be none the wiser and he would be staying at Filigree Street, probably for years, still happy, and he wouldn’t have stolen those years from a lonely man who was too decent to mention that they were missing.

‘Well, good night,’ she said. He smiled. ‘Night.’ She kissed him too lightly, so that it was only a cold brush of damp and the chalk smell of her powder. He flinched and pushed his hand over his mouth before he could stop himself. ‘Sorry

The lights were on at home.

There was a dew of sweat between his collarbones.

gayyyyy

You should have come,’

aka you should have stopped him!!!

‘Mori, wait.’ When he stopped, Thaniel went round the desk to catch him and pressed his cheek against Mori’s darkening hair. His clothes smelled of steam and lemon soap. Through them, he was solid.

gayyyyy

‘It was—’ Thaniel began. ‘Don’t tell me, just intend to. And then I’ll forget, if you change your mind.’ Thaniel nodded once and saw him listen to what he could have said while the filaments of the light bulbs made fireflies of themselves in his eyes.

oh, Mori. you precious bean. just let him love you!!!

The fading orange in the filaments showed clear in his eyes, then disappeared when Thaniel kissed him. His shoulders came forward and Thaniel breathed him in, the lemon soap on his skin, and the water vapour and the charcoal. Though he had shaved that morning, his cheek was rough.

popo

‘Good … that’s good,’ Thaniel said. Whenever he went to see Grace, he imagined that Mori’s clockwork stopped and that he only sat in the workshop, waiting for someone to wind him up again. It was odd to think he kept himself wound up and went off to visit orphans while nobody was watching. He felt left behind, hypocritically.

‘Because you’ve been skittish about the Kensington house for months, and you plainly don’t want to leave Filigree Street, and I think that wherever you are tonight will be where you stay. This is … if you were going to regret things and go back on it all, it was always going to be today.’

‘I want to stay because I’ll hardly ever come back after this. Grace, there’s going to be a child before long. And I’ll love you, and her, and he’ll be left behind, like he always is, but I won’t care, because we will have drifted by then and I’ll have my own family to think about. I want to think of him while I still can.’

‘I’m not clockwork.’

With his back to the wall and his arm across Mori, Thaniel could feel the heat of the fire along the back of his hand and his forearm, and the cooler air behind his shoulder. He hid from the light against the nape of Mori’s neck. He could feel sleep coming; his grip was gone and his thoughts had turned mirrorish. Under his arm, Mori curled forward. If he had been standing, he would have let his head drop.

His ribs hurt with wanting Mori to come and be his ordinary self and explain it was not what he thought, but still there was no grey coat.

Thaniel. ‘It is a pleasure to meet another trustee of the Mori Futures Preparation Society, of course,’ he said, with no pleasure whatever. ‘Although I had hoped I was an alumnus rather than an active member now.’

No one asked him if he wanted anything or if he was all right. It was Mori who asked those things.

yeah because he loves you

‘Be careful with yourself. Please. She will make you much less than you should be, if you aren’t careful. I don’t mean you won’t be happy. But you will be small.’

gayyyyy

A cold hand pushed itself through his hair. ‘Are you asleep?’ He jolted upright. ‘You’re awake. My God, the surgeon more or less told me you’d die from the anaesthetic—’ Mori smiled a little. ‘Don’t exaggerate.’ ‘I’m not!’

‘I don’t care. You’re alive.’ ‘You should care, if I’m putting you in the way of idiots with guns or—’

His eyes were clouded. Watching him try to find the pieces of himself he had forgotten was worse than imagining him on an operating table. Thaniel moved on to the edge of the bed and hoped Mori could feel the future in which he did dare, despite the frowning nurses, to put his arm around him, but he didn’t think he could.

gay magiccccc