Ever After

by Riley Hart

He only attended major social events when he was required to, preferring his charity work or smaller gatherings. He favored leaving town altogether, sometimes traveling to a discreet bathhouse, where men could take male lovers for the night. He longed for one of those evenings again, which was long overdue and possibly the reason he was so preoccupied as of late.

“We are both bound, shackled by aspects of our lives that are out of our control.”

“Me? Even if it were possible… I am nothing more than a simple—” “No, Cassius. You are not simple.” Merrick shut his eyes, his lips trembling, his chest loosening in blissful relief as he let the words flow out of him. “You are pure and real and complicated. To someone like me, you might simply be everything.”

“Please, no titles, not when it is just us…” Merrick brushed his wrist over his eyes. “I am just a man who longs to touch your skin and breathe in your scent.”

“Maybe you will write it one day…a story or a poem of a prince who desired his valet like his lungs yearned for air.”

only meant that it was important to remember their place and not profess too much.” Too late for that. Merrick had already professed quite a great deal.

“Can we not pretend one more time? Can we not take this moment, live in it as though it is not our last and the future is not already decided?”

He told a story of two men who were in love. How one courted the other, and their families shared dinners, and magic allowed them to fly. They laughed together, drew together, wrote together, and spent their days having snowball fights with children. They hung the moon together each night and helped the sun rise each morning. And they lived happily ever after, in ways Merrick and Cassius could not.

It felt as if a bucket of water had been thrown on them as they glumly walked down the grand staircase and went their separate ways. But it could not douse the flame that still flickered in Merrick’s chest. He was not certain anything ever would again.

Our story. One I will treasure always.

“We are the same, you and I, Cas. To the marrow of our bones, we are but one.”

My mind is at war because I yearn for more of what will eventually break my heart, shatter it until it is a million flakes of snow instead of a whole.”

“My heart shall be a million snowflakes just as yours will be…and maybe they shall fall together.”

Please keep your eyes on me, Cas. I need your warm gaze, or I might perish on the spot. You have become my oxygen, the very air I breathe.

Once upon a time there was an exquisite prince Who filled my wintry soul with all the colors of spring He became my day, my night, my sun, my moon My heart, my soul, my very bones My Ever After

“If it is large, it is only because of Merrick. I did not know it was possible to belong to another the way I belong to him. I did not know someone could live inside another the way he has taken up residence inside me. He is everything good and pure and kind in this world, Em.”

“I have never wanted another the way I want you. There will never be another I love the way I love you.”