ּ֯ . ❥ ּ֯ ┆꒰ Pierrot .ᐟ ꒱

The apartment was quiet when you got home.

It was always quiet when you got home. That was the thing about living alone — the silence that met you at the door was the same silence you had left behind that morning, undisturbed, waiting. You had gotten used to it. You had stopped noticing it the way you stopped noticing most things that were simply always there.

You dropped your bag by the door. Kicked off your shoes. The day sat heavy on your shoulders the way a long day always did and all you wanted was your bedroom and your bed and the particular relief of not having to be anywhere or do anything for the next several hours.

You pushed open your bedroom door.

He was there.

He was always there when he decided to be, which was often enough that you had stopped being surprised by it the way you had been the first time. Pierrot stood in the corner of your bedroom the way he always stood in corners — still and tall and taking up more space than the room quite knew what to do with, his silver hair falling loose around the bells of his hat, his golden eyes already on you the moment the door swung open. Like he had known exactly when you would walk through it. Like he had been counting.

He smiled when he saw you.

Not a performance smile. Not the wide sharp grin he wore for the crowd. Something quieter than that — something that only ever appeared when it was just the two of you and he didn't have to be anything in particular. It softened the lines of his white face and made his golden eyes crinkle slightly at the corners and it was, if you were being honest with yourself, one of your favorite things in the world.

You looked at him.

Something shifted.

You weren't sure what it was exactly — the weight of the day, maybe, or the particular warmth of that smile in the low light of your bedroom, or simply the fact of him standing there being exactly what he always was, patient and present and entirely, completely yours in the way that mattered even if neither of you had ever said it in those words. Whatever it was, it made something in you very calm and very decided all at once.

You walked toward him.

He watched you come, golden eyes tracking your movement with that complete and unbroken attention he gave you and only you, and there was a question somewhere in them — curious, warm, waiting — but he didn't move. He never moved first. That was his way. He waited and he watched and he held everything he felt in both hands like something precious and breakable and let you set the pace of things always.

You reached him.

You grabbed him by the arm — his forearm, solid and real beneath your hand even through the fabric of his sleeve — and pulled.

He was much taller than you. The logistics of it required him to bend, to curve downward toward you, which he did without resistance, a slow and accommodating fold of that tall frame that brought his face level with yours. The bells on his hat chimed softly with the movement. His golden eyes were very close now, wide and bright and — for just a moment, just a flash — shaped differently. His pupils curved at the edges. Became unmistakably, helplessly, the shape of hearts before he could do anything about it.

And then you kissed him.

His cheek first. The white skin of it, warm beneath your lips. Then the other cheek. The curve of his jaw. The teardrop marking beneath his left eye, which you had always wanted to do and simply did now without thinking about it too hard. Each one soft and deliberate and unhurried, like you had all the time in the world and intended to use it.

He made a sound.

Very small. Very quiet. Barely anything — just the smallest catch of breath, low in his throat, that he swallowed immediately and probably hoped you hadn't heard. He had gone completely still in a different way than his usual stillness. Not watchful. Not waiting. Just — stopped. Like every system he had had been interrupted simultaneously and was in the process of rebooting.

The blush started at his cheeks.

It spread.

Across the white of his face it moved like something he had absolutely no power over — pink bleeding into red, climbing toward the black markings above his eyes, reaching the tips of his ears where they peeked beneath his silver hair. His hands, still at his sides, had curled into loose fists inside his gloves. Not tense. Just holding on to something.

His pupils were hearts again.

He wasn't doing anything about it this time.

You were still close. Still holding his arm. His face was right there and he was looking at you with those helpless golden heart eyes and that blush that had now thoroughly conquered the entirety of his white face, and he looked — for the first time in as long as you had known him — completely and utterly at a loss. He opened his mouth.

Closed it.

The bells on his hat swayed gently in the silence.