Page 82 of Icarus

Icarus tore his eyes away from the painting that had taken his mother’s life, to apologize and help, but found himself looking back at his own face.

“What the fuck?” Helios mumbled.

Instead of picking up the drawings, Helios spread them out wider to look at them. “It’s you.”

“It’s my father,” Icarus whispered. “Your mom was drawing him.”

Burn

“What the fuck . . .” Helios breathed. “What the fuck.”

He muttered it over and over as they pulled out more and more pictures of Angus. Pictures of him painting, pictures of him laughing. Pictures of him by the water or reclining on the same sofa that sat downstairs. Pictures of only his eyes, only his mouth, only his hands.

It was worship, Icarus knew. But he didn’t say it out loud.

Helios’s mom had drawn Angus Gallagher with such longing, it was obvious and embarrassing.

Drawn the wrinkles next to his eyes like she wanted to run her fingers over them. Drawn his tired bruised gaze like she wanted it to look back at her forever. Icarus’s own features romanticized, his Roman nose, his crooked grin, the way his ears stuck out too much. He remembered the dance, the lift from the other day and wondered—violently—if this beautiful creature was what Helios saw when he looked at him.

“Was she stalking him?” Helios pushed the notebook to the side with disgust and no small amount of fear. “This is so creepy.”

“I think . . . she was in love with him.” Icarus picked up a picture where his dad looked mischievous. An expression he had never seen on his dad’s face in his entire life.

“She was in love with him, quietly, I think,” Icarus continued. “Because there is no art of your mother in my house, but there are a thousand paintings of mine.”

Icarus looked behind him at the half-dissolved painting and then at the stool next to it.

He let the drawing fall from his hand and pulled the stool to the center of the canvas and sat in it. The painting loomed above him, impossible, like a thousand-yard stretch. Angus must have cried to see so many inches before him.

“What would you do, if I was sitting here every day?” Icarus asked.

Helios was still on his knees.

“You couldn’t touch me; you couldn’t even look at me too hard. And I was in love and I was in pain and I was working fast, frantic, and you loved me. And it wasn’t appropriate to.”

Icarus turned to pick up another drawing. A different one of his father’s face half turned, arm outstretched, his jaw and back and wrists, strong and delicate as he knew his own were.

“This is fucked up, Helios, but you should try to be kind to her about it,” he finished.

Helios climbed to his feet and flew down upon Icarus with terrible purpose. Kissing him hard, and fast, harder than Icarus would have liked to allow. But the ringing in his ears and the jangle of his nerves left him too helpless from the onslaught to protest.

“Be kind?” Helios said, between bites. “Fuck, Icarus. She probably named me for you, and you’re worried about me being kind?”

Helios shoved a hand under Icarus’s shirt, scrambling to get closer. Winding his arm behind Icarus’s back and pulling him, shoving him, pushing a thigh between his, like he had the right to do it.

“I was made for you; I was born for you, and you’re still standing before me acting like you’re not worthy,” Helios hissed, ignoring Icarus’s whimpers. “Questioning your looks like it would ever matter. Even if you were ugly I wouldn’t care, I wouldn’t care.”

He bit Icarus’s throat, licked a hot line up to Icarus’s ear, sucked his earlobe into his mouth and Icarus couldn’t make a sound. He was blind, from this. A raw nerve echoing with each scrape against it. He couldn’t even breathe.

“Climbing into my house, into my bed, touching everything except for me. I was yours before we even met and I’ll be yours until we die,” Helios continued against the curve of Icarus’s neck and Icarus was helpless, lost in the sharp fantasy of such a thing.

Helios sounded like he was a second from tears, but his hands were broad against Icarus’s back. He’d lost the fight against discipline and was picking Icarus up off the floor, wrapping his legs around his waist.

“If you’re such a good thief, then why haven’t you stolen me yet?” The words tore themselves from him and Icarus didn’t know.

He wanted to tell him, wanted to cry out that if Helios was made for him, then Icarus had learned to steal just for this. The years of agony and loneliness were worth it, just for this. But he couldn’t make a sound.

Icarus’s eyes rolled back in his head and he scrambled for something to hold on to. An anchor. He grasped the side of the shelf nearest to them and a bottle dropped to the floor.