Guest author - Barry Brennessel
Apr. 1st, 2014 12:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charlie_cochraneIt's a real pleasure to welcome my old mucker Barry Brennessel back again. He's such a good egg.
Q. When you were last here we chatted about watching your first book fledge. What does it feel like with the second and the third?
A. It feels as exciting and scary as the first time around. I would like to say with each successive book the whole process gets easier, less emotional, but really, sending your book out into the world means totally letting it go, and trying your best to realize that it has to fend for itself. There will be joys and scrapes, and only so much you can control. Some people will love it, some won’t even notice, and others may simply want to kick it into the nearest sewer grate. But that’s how it works. And with the books five through five-hundred, the range of emotions—at least for me—will always be the same: excitement, panic, elation, worry.
Q. What do you think you've learned since you were first published?
A. It’s amazing how widely tastes vary. It’s part of everyday life, something we probably don’t really sit down to analyze, but when you write something, and the feedback starts to trickle in, suddenly you’re aware of just what sorts of things appeal to people. Or don’t. You love a particular show or restaurant or album, and your friend/spouse/parent can’t stand them. Of course it’s the same with books. One reader’s love and passion for a story is almost always another reader’s cause for eye-strain and hair pulling.
So, I think the most important lesson I’ve learned is that you’re never ever going to please everyone. If you sit down to write a book and aim for that goal, it’s likely the story is going to end up as a hollow, confusing mess. You have to turn off that inner critic at some point, and let your characters lead you, and delve into the sort of tale that you enjoy, in the hopes that it, too, will reach out and make at least a few people happy.
Q. What do you wish you'd known when you were first published?
A. Probably I’d have mentally prepared myself for the fact that only a handful of authors have explosive success with his or her first book. I thought once the first book was accepted and was made all pretty and then had its big debut, well, heck, that was it! Hollywood would call, I’d be giving readings at the White House and Buckingham Palace, and I’d pick out my own personal color for the V12 FancyMobile. (Ha, not really! Well, maybe a little. Yeah, sure, come on: we’re all thinking about the big payoff to some degree.)
But, yes, it’s a long, slow, bumpy road, and you have to be ready to keep driving down it if writing truly is your passion. And I did learn that; I did realize that after the first book, writing still was a passion for me, so I climbed back on the buggy and kept heading down Bumpy Avenue toward Northeast Shangri-La.
Q. What inspired the latest book?
The long-abandoned, castle-like building that looms over my home town, nestled in the hills just below the old railroad tracks.
The Castle on the Hill, as it’s known to the residents of Dansville, New York, is steeped in as much history as it is eeriness. Ah, well, truth be told, it really isn’t all that eerie, except maybe around Halloween, when someone thinks perhaps a figure has just appeared in one of the now glassless windows.
The Castle on the Hill. Our Home on the Hillside. The Jackson Sanatorium. The Physical Culture Hotel. These are the various names and incarnations the six-story brick structure has taken on over the years.
It first came to prominence under the direction of James Caleb Jackson, a man plagued by ill health. Dr. Jackson took over the facility from Nathaniel Bingham, who’d originally established the health spa/water cure near a wellspring on the village’s East Hill.
Word spread quickly about the resort, and its unique focus on exercise, diet, and the curative properties of water. Our Home on the Hillside attracted a world-wide clientele, perhaps its most famous being one Clara Barton. It was during the time she was a resident of the facility that she founded the first chapter of the American Red Cross, at St. Paul’s United Lutheran Church in Dansville, at 21 Clara Barton Street. The church is still in use today.
The next time you’re enjoying granola, keep in mind that the popular health food had its roots in Dansville. Originally concocted by Dr. Jackson, he called his recipe Granula. When other versions appeared under the same name, Dr. Jackson successfully sued for infringement, and manufacturers substituted an “o” for the “u” in the name.
The popularity of the water cure slowly faded over time, and at the height of the Great War, the facility was converted into a military hospital.
The building shot to prominence again when eccentric health guru Bernarr Macfadden purchased the property. Macfadden was not only a health advocate and body builder, but also a media entrepreneur, having established a magazine publishing empire, still in operation today (Macfadden Business Communications).
Macfadden called his reincarnation of the facility The Physical Culture Hotel. For many years the robin’s-egg-blue billboard stood just above Route 256 and proclaimed that a stay there would be “The most glorious vacation of your life.”
For many people it may well have been, at least until 1955, when the building closed its doors. Since that time, it’s stood empty (except for a brief re-opening of the first floor in the early 1970s, as a failed bakery). It’s suffered much decay and vandalism over the years. Still, there’s hope one day something might come of it, as the property was awarded a preservation grant from New York State.
Until that time, the Castle on the Hill will remain a reminder of Dansville’s history, a beautifully haunting presence of what once was, and it gives any Dansvillian the opportunity to boast that he or she comes from one of the only villages in Western New York that has a storybook castle high above town.
Q. Did you know where Wellspring was going from the start or did it take an unexpected turn?
A. I think all my stories take unexpected turns. When I start a new project, I have only a germ of an idea, and a couple characters, and a string of dialogue. It builds from there, and many times it seems the whole affair is out of my control, and I’m merely dictating what the characters are telling me.
I honestly had no idea that German espionage and underground water systems would eventually play a part in this story. But my characters had other ideas.
Q. Have you ever been writing and discovered something totally unexpected about one of your characters?
A. Many times. My characters are like close friends who invite me to lunch, and then drop a bombshell. In the fictional world, it’s a blessing. In the real world, it can bring either a big smile or a spilled glass of wine.
Q. Which book do you wish you'd written and why?
A. My absolute favorite story, the closest thing to “perfection” from my standpoint, the tale I can read over and over, and the one I would be happy going to the great beyond after having written it is without question “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens.
I adore the character of Scrooge, and how he came to be, and how he changes. I love how we’re immersed in the gritty reality of all the facets of London society, then how this is fused with the supernatural.
Q. Which book do you wish somebody else would write?
A. Oh, hee hee! Fun. Hm….good one. Let’s see.
I would get a kick out of reading Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon penned instead by Truman Capote. You can bet the pace, the dialogue, and the dalliances would be quite a bit…different. Wink wink.
Or how about David Sedaris’s take on August: Osage County? Just a thought.
Q. Have you got a secret you'd be willing to share?
A. In one of those jaw-dropping “Did this really just happen” moments, I was invited to a television actor’s hotel suite at a fundraiser in Seattle after a jolly cocktail hour. It turned into a forehead-slapping “It was probably for the best but…Gahhhh! What if” moments after I blushed, panicked, and scurried away.
Oh, and I eat horseradish right out of the jar. I don’t know if that’s something that should be kept secret. But, mmm, is that ever good.
BLURB
Aiden Royce’s journey to an isolated New England hillside raises specters from his past. But a chance encounter alters the course of his future. A future he never dreamt possible.
In the span between the Great War and the Great Depression, Aiden Royce loses both family and fortune. He has nothing left but memories and regrets until a series of letters arrive; ramblings written by a familiar hand that nevertheless offer Aiden some important clues. Months later he’s roaming the grounds of the crumbling Cebren Spa, a once posh destination, but now an empty shell of mystery and menace.
One saving grace in this perplexity is the handsome Sebastian Desmond, a descendant of the spa’s founders. He rescues Aiden from a storm, but in doing so opens up a different sort of tempest when secrets unravel and both men’s lives are torn asunder.
Can decades-old questions be answered, onerous mysteries solved, and a burgeoning and venturesome romance prosper in the shadows of a once restorative wellspring?
**************
EXCERPT
“I thought you might enjoy this spot.” Sebastian set down the picnic basket. “A view an artist can’t resist.”
How many times, he wondered, had he read the letters? Not only had he memorized the text but he knew each wayward mark, each blemish on the page. More and more, if indeed Thad had given him a puzzle with so many pieces missing, it was as if this place was scattering those pieces on the table, in fits and starts, allowing him to get ever closer to completing the picture, but in taunting, drawn out, frustrating manner.
And then I saw an endless mist of water and a grand and glorious waterfall near a gorge and the ghost of a railroad bridge—the place is unusual, Aiden. I feel I was pulled here to—I’m not sure—to try to salvage something.
He looked down at the grounds of the resort. Once more he imagined the structure in its heyday—coaches and perhaps several automobiles rolling up to the entrance on a cold winter night, the glow from the lights indoors fanning out across the snow, music from an orchestra carried with the wind.
As Sebastian unpacked the picnic basket, Aiden noticed from the corner of his eye Sebastian stealing several glances. Was he trying to gauge Aiden’s level of artistic appreciation of the entire scene before them?
“May I ask you something?” Sebastian said, uncovering a plate of ham and placing it on a cloth to his left.
Aiden smiled. “You seem fond of doing that.”
Sebastian looked down to the task at hand, as he pulled out a dish full of grapes. “What, this?”
“No, I mean asking questions.”
“Oh, that.” Sebastian flushed. “I’m sorry. I’m being too forward.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” Aiden said.
“Well, then, in that case…we started chatting about family situations last night. One topic I didn’t get a chance to bring up, regarding your journey is, I guess, well, simply put: since you’ve spent time wandering from home, are you leaving behind a…wife? Children?”
“Ah, no,” Aiden said, “nothing like that. I’m alone.”
“I see.” Sebastian took out an unsliced loaf of bread. “We have that in common, then. I mean, not that I’m alone, as you could plainly see, but that I’ve never…I don’t have any sort of attachments.” He glanced up at Aiden. “So fair’s only fair now. You’re free to ask me a question.”
Aiden smiled. “I see. So that’s how this works.”
“Unless you want to create a different set of rules.”
“I never really liked that word,” Aiden said. “Rules.”
Sebastian nodded. “I grew up around rules. Rules posted all around these grounds. I always imagined some of the guests being put off by some of the signs plastered on just about every wall and tree: No Entry, Do Not Stray From Path, Employees Only, Do Not Drink From Stream.”
“My father,” Aiden said, “didn’t so much dictate rules to us, but made strong suggestions. Along the lines of, ‘If you don’t do X, you’ll end up in a horrible situation doing Y, but it will be all your doing.’”
Sebastian began plating a dish. “My parents were free spirits, really ahead of their time, at least from what I can remember. They were the direct opposite of all these signs. But it was their downfall too, I think, the fact that they tried to do too much outside the mainstream, and really, you can’t run a business without making a profit, so…” He motioned down toward the Cebren Spa. “Operative word: demise.”
The wind shifted, and droplets of water clung to their skin. “So, since it’s my turn,” Aiden said, “I’ll ask you the same question. Have you any attachments, outside the people I’ve met so far?”
“None,” Sebastian said. He handed Aiden a plate.
Their eyes locked for several seconds. Aiden marveled at the crystal blue of Sebastian’s irises.
“Have you visited many museums, Aiden?”
He nodded. “My mother was fanatical about art. One of the reasons I pursued it, though I do honestly have a passion for it.”
“Then have you…have you ever had the experience when you come across the subject of a painting, and you see a face that simply mesmerizes you, in a way that you can’t stop thinking about it, and sometimes you have to turn away from it because on some level it consumes you?”
There was no hesitation on Aiden’s part, which surprised him, as well as gave him a flutter of excitement, for the tone in Sebastian’s voice, and his mannerism, reminded him of a an afternoon many years ago with a classmate from his preparatory school. Was this…was this conversation steering down the same path? “Are you familiar with Ghirlandaio?”
“Is he from around here?” Sebastian asked, but before Aiden could answer, he added, “I’m just joking, of course.”
Laughter bubbled up inside Aiden. He couldn’t help himself from chortling. “All right. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“But I interrupted. Go on. Ghirlandaio.”
“Yes. The Resurrection of the Boy. In the Sassetti Chapel in Florence. It shows St. Francis’s resurrection of a boy, performed after St. Francis’s death. The Sassetti family is depicted, along with Florentine citizens of the day. Most notably is Ghirlandaio himself, on the right, looking at the observer. His gaze, the position of his hand on his hip…there’s something so…” Aiden hesitated. “So alluring about him.” He swallowed, waiting for a reaction from Sebastian. “And the artist has a face not dissimilar to yours.”
Sebastian looked up at him. They smiled shyly at one another. Like schoolboys. Just like his experience with Mason Granger those many years ago.
“The artist lacks the color of your eyes, though,” Aiden said.
Sebastian turned away. “There’s a wall painting—a fresco—in one of the suites of the Cebren Spa. A scene from one of the Greek myths. I was never sure which one. There’s a figure that used to captivate me…it still does…and when I saw you on the hillside that first time I thought, foolish as it sounds, that a Greek god had come to life.”
It happened in an instant, and was an echo of his time with Mason Granger; as though Aiden had drifted into a different plane, he brushed the top of Sebastian’s hand, his thumb moving gently along the soft skin, tracing the length of his fingers.
“This seems like something astral,” Sebastian whispered. “Something that’s been stuck in my dreams.” He paused. “I felt I was the only one on Earth, then I saw your eyes in that shelter, and it was…so strong…so tell-tale.”
Aiden nodded, studying the contours of Sebastian’s profile, the wavy locks of hair, the light stubble. He moved his hand to cover Sebastian’s, and their fingers intertwined. Sebastian sighed. Aiden could feel his trembling, and realized that he was trembling himself. It was borne of both trepidation and elation.
Sebastian closed his eyes. His breathing slowed. Aiden inched closer to him. He reached up with his free hand and with the tip of his finger traced Sebastian’s cheek.
If Sebastian had on his mind either guilt, terror, fear of castigation—it must have all dissipated as it had for Aiden as they leaned in to one another. Their lips met. Aiden reveled in the warm wetness of Sebastian’s lips; the breath falling gently on his skin, the pleasing blend of muskiness and wood smoke and soap and rosewater.
They kissed until a branch snapped off to their right. The pulled away from another, both laughing when they saw a squirrel jump to another tree.
Their eyes met again. Both their faces took on a rosy glow. Sebastian leaned in toward Aiden again, but this time the interruption was not from wildlife.
“Sebastian!” A voice from below called to them.
MacGregor hurried along the pathway.
Sebastian inched from Aiden. “Gilbert? We’re over here. Near the waterfall.”
Q. When you were last here we chatted about watching your first book fledge. What does it feel like with the second and the third?
A. It feels as exciting and scary as the first time around. I would like to say with each successive book the whole process gets easier, less emotional, but really, sending your book out into the world means totally letting it go, and trying your best to realize that it has to fend for itself. There will be joys and scrapes, and only so much you can control. Some people will love it, some won’t even notice, and others may simply want to kick it into the nearest sewer grate. But that’s how it works. And with the books five through five-hundred, the range of emotions—at least for me—will always be the same: excitement, panic, elation, worry.
Q. What do you think you've learned since you were first published?
A. It’s amazing how widely tastes vary. It’s part of everyday life, something we probably don’t really sit down to analyze, but when you write something, and the feedback starts to trickle in, suddenly you’re aware of just what sorts of things appeal to people. Or don’t. You love a particular show or restaurant or album, and your friend/spouse/parent can’t stand them. Of course it’s the same with books. One reader’s love and passion for a story is almost always another reader’s cause for eye-strain and hair pulling.
So, I think the most important lesson I’ve learned is that you’re never ever going to please everyone. If you sit down to write a book and aim for that goal, it’s likely the story is going to end up as a hollow, confusing mess. You have to turn off that inner critic at some point, and let your characters lead you, and delve into the sort of tale that you enjoy, in the hopes that it, too, will reach out and make at least a few people happy.
Q. What do you wish you'd known when you were first published?
A. Probably I’d have mentally prepared myself for the fact that only a handful of authors have explosive success with his or her first book. I thought once the first book was accepted and was made all pretty and then had its big debut, well, heck, that was it! Hollywood would call, I’d be giving readings at the White House and Buckingham Palace, and I’d pick out my own personal color for the V12 FancyMobile. (Ha, not really! Well, maybe a little. Yeah, sure, come on: we’re all thinking about the big payoff to some degree.)
But, yes, it’s a long, slow, bumpy road, and you have to be ready to keep driving down it if writing truly is your passion. And I did learn that; I did realize that after the first book, writing still was a passion for me, so I climbed back on the buggy and kept heading down Bumpy Avenue toward Northeast Shangri-La.
Q. What inspired the latest book?
The long-abandoned, castle-like building that looms over my home town, nestled in the hills just below the old railroad tracks.
The Castle on the Hill, as it’s known to the residents of Dansville, New York, is steeped in as much history as it is eeriness. Ah, well, truth be told, it really isn’t all that eerie, except maybe around Halloween, when someone thinks perhaps a figure has just appeared in one of the now glassless windows.
The Castle on the Hill. Our Home on the Hillside. The Jackson Sanatorium. The Physical Culture Hotel. These are the various names and incarnations the six-story brick structure has taken on over the years.
It first came to prominence under the direction of James Caleb Jackson, a man plagued by ill health. Dr. Jackson took over the facility from Nathaniel Bingham, who’d originally established the health spa/water cure near a wellspring on the village’s East Hill.
Word spread quickly about the resort, and its unique focus on exercise, diet, and the curative properties of water. Our Home on the Hillside attracted a world-wide clientele, perhaps its most famous being one Clara Barton. It was during the time she was a resident of the facility that she founded the first chapter of the American Red Cross, at St. Paul’s United Lutheran Church in Dansville, at 21 Clara Barton Street. The church is still in use today.
The next time you’re enjoying granola, keep in mind that the popular health food had its roots in Dansville. Originally concocted by Dr. Jackson, he called his recipe Granula. When other versions appeared under the same name, Dr. Jackson successfully sued for infringement, and manufacturers substituted an “o” for the “u” in the name.
The popularity of the water cure slowly faded over time, and at the height of the Great War, the facility was converted into a military hospital.
The building shot to prominence again when eccentric health guru Bernarr Macfadden purchased the property. Macfadden was not only a health advocate and body builder, but also a media entrepreneur, having established a magazine publishing empire, still in operation today (Macfadden Business Communications).
Macfadden called his reincarnation of the facility The Physical Culture Hotel. For many years the robin’s-egg-blue billboard stood just above Route 256 and proclaimed that a stay there would be “The most glorious vacation of your life.”
For many people it may well have been, at least until 1955, when the building closed its doors. Since that time, it’s stood empty (except for a brief re-opening of the first floor in the early 1970s, as a failed bakery). It’s suffered much decay and vandalism over the years. Still, there’s hope one day something might come of it, as the property was awarded a preservation grant from New York State.
Until that time, the Castle on the Hill will remain a reminder of Dansville’s history, a beautifully haunting presence of what once was, and it gives any Dansvillian the opportunity to boast that he or she comes from one of the only villages in Western New York that has a storybook castle high above town.
Q. Did you know where Wellspring was going from the start or did it take an unexpected turn?
A. I think all my stories take unexpected turns. When I start a new project, I have only a germ of an idea, and a couple characters, and a string of dialogue. It builds from there, and many times it seems the whole affair is out of my control, and I’m merely dictating what the characters are telling me.
I honestly had no idea that German espionage and underground water systems would eventually play a part in this story. But my characters had other ideas.
Q. Have you ever been writing and discovered something totally unexpected about one of your characters?
A. Many times. My characters are like close friends who invite me to lunch, and then drop a bombshell. In the fictional world, it’s a blessing. In the real world, it can bring either a big smile or a spilled glass of wine.
Q. Which book do you wish you'd written and why?
A. My absolute favorite story, the closest thing to “perfection” from my standpoint, the tale I can read over and over, and the one I would be happy going to the great beyond after having written it is without question “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens.
I adore the character of Scrooge, and how he came to be, and how he changes. I love how we’re immersed in the gritty reality of all the facets of London society, then how this is fused with the supernatural.
Q. Which book do you wish somebody else would write?
A. Oh, hee hee! Fun. Hm….good one. Let’s see.
I would get a kick out of reading Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon penned instead by Truman Capote. You can bet the pace, the dialogue, and the dalliances would be quite a bit…different. Wink wink.
Or how about David Sedaris’s take on August: Osage County? Just a thought.
Q. Have you got a secret you'd be willing to share?
A. In one of those jaw-dropping “Did this really just happen” moments, I was invited to a television actor’s hotel suite at a fundraiser in Seattle after a jolly cocktail hour. It turned into a forehead-slapping “It was probably for the best but…Gahhhh! What if” moments after I blushed, panicked, and scurried away.
Oh, and I eat horseradish right out of the jar. I don’t know if that’s something that should be kept secret. But, mmm, is that ever good.
BLURB
Aiden Royce’s journey to an isolated New England hillside raises specters from his past. But a chance encounter alters the course of his future. A future he never dreamt possible.
In the span between the Great War and the Great Depression, Aiden Royce loses both family and fortune. He has nothing left but memories and regrets until a series of letters arrive; ramblings written by a familiar hand that nevertheless offer Aiden some important clues. Months later he’s roaming the grounds of the crumbling Cebren Spa, a once posh destination, but now an empty shell of mystery and menace.
One saving grace in this perplexity is the handsome Sebastian Desmond, a descendant of the spa’s founders. He rescues Aiden from a storm, but in doing so opens up a different sort of tempest when secrets unravel and both men’s lives are torn asunder.
Can decades-old questions be answered, onerous mysteries solved, and a burgeoning and venturesome romance prosper in the shadows of a once restorative wellspring?
**************
EXCERPT
“I thought you might enjoy this spot.” Sebastian set down the picnic basket. “A view an artist can’t resist.”
How many times, he wondered, had he read the letters? Not only had he memorized the text but he knew each wayward mark, each blemish on the page. More and more, if indeed Thad had given him a puzzle with so many pieces missing, it was as if this place was scattering those pieces on the table, in fits and starts, allowing him to get ever closer to completing the picture, but in taunting, drawn out, frustrating manner.
And then I saw an endless mist of water and a grand and glorious waterfall near a gorge and the ghost of a railroad bridge—the place is unusual, Aiden. I feel I was pulled here to—I’m not sure—to try to salvage something.
He looked down at the grounds of the resort. Once more he imagined the structure in its heyday—coaches and perhaps several automobiles rolling up to the entrance on a cold winter night, the glow from the lights indoors fanning out across the snow, music from an orchestra carried with the wind.
As Sebastian unpacked the picnic basket, Aiden noticed from the corner of his eye Sebastian stealing several glances. Was he trying to gauge Aiden’s level of artistic appreciation of the entire scene before them?
“May I ask you something?” Sebastian said, uncovering a plate of ham and placing it on a cloth to his left.
Aiden smiled. “You seem fond of doing that.”
Sebastian looked down to the task at hand, as he pulled out a dish full of grapes. “What, this?”
“No, I mean asking questions.”
“Oh, that.” Sebastian flushed. “I’m sorry. I’m being too forward.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” Aiden said.
“Well, then, in that case…we started chatting about family situations last night. One topic I didn’t get a chance to bring up, regarding your journey is, I guess, well, simply put: since you’ve spent time wandering from home, are you leaving behind a…wife? Children?”
“Ah, no,” Aiden said, “nothing like that. I’m alone.”
“I see.” Sebastian took out an unsliced loaf of bread. “We have that in common, then. I mean, not that I’m alone, as you could plainly see, but that I’ve never…I don’t have any sort of attachments.” He glanced up at Aiden. “So fair’s only fair now. You’re free to ask me a question.”
Aiden smiled. “I see. So that’s how this works.”
“Unless you want to create a different set of rules.”
“I never really liked that word,” Aiden said. “Rules.”
Sebastian nodded. “I grew up around rules. Rules posted all around these grounds. I always imagined some of the guests being put off by some of the signs plastered on just about every wall and tree: No Entry, Do Not Stray From Path, Employees Only, Do Not Drink From Stream.”
“My father,” Aiden said, “didn’t so much dictate rules to us, but made strong suggestions. Along the lines of, ‘If you don’t do X, you’ll end up in a horrible situation doing Y, but it will be all your doing.’”
Sebastian began plating a dish. “My parents were free spirits, really ahead of their time, at least from what I can remember. They were the direct opposite of all these signs. But it was their downfall too, I think, the fact that they tried to do too much outside the mainstream, and really, you can’t run a business without making a profit, so…” He motioned down toward the Cebren Spa. “Operative word: demise.”
The wind shifted, and droplets of water clung to their skin. “So, since it’s my turn,” Aiden said, “I’ll ask you the same question. Have you any attachments, outside the people I’ve met so far?”
“None,” Sebastian said. He handed Aiden a plate.
Their eyes locked for several seconds. Aiden marveled at the crystal blue of Sebastian’s irises.
“Have you visited many museums, Aiden?”
He nodded. “My mother was fanatical about art. One of the reasons I pursued it, though I do honestly have a passion for it.”
“Then have you…have you ever had the experience when you come across the subject of a painting, and you see a face that simply mesmerizes you, in a way that you can’t stop thinking about it, and sometimes you have to turn away from it because on some level it consumes you?”
There was no hesitation on Aiden’s part, which surprised him, as well as gave him a flutter of excitement, for the tone in Sebastian’s voice, and his mannerism, reminded him of a an afternoon many years ago with a classmate from his preparatory school. Was this…was this conversation steering down the same path? “Are you familiar with Ghirlandaio?”
“Is he from around here?” Sebastian asked, but before Aiden could answer, he added, “I’m just joking, of course.”
Laughter bubbled up inside Aiden. He couldn’t help himself from chortling. “All right. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“But I interrupted. Go on. Ghirlandaio.”
“Yes. The Resurrection of the Boy. In the Sassetti Chapel in Florence. It shows St. Francis’s resurrection of a boy, performed after St. Francis’s death. The Sassetti family is depicted, along with Florentine citizens of the day. Most notably is Ghirlandaio himself, on the right, looking at the observer. His gaze, the position of his hand on his hip…there’s something so…” Aiden hesitated. “So alluring about him.” He swallowed, waiting for a reaction from Sebastian. “And the artist has a face not dissimilar to yours.”
Sebastian looked up at him. They smiled shyly at one another. Like schoolboys. Just like his experience with Mason Granger those many years ago.
“The artist lacks the color of your eyes, though,” Aiden said.
Sebastian turned away. “There’s a wall painting—a fresco—in one of the suites of the Cebren Spa. A scene from one of the Greek myths. I was never sure which one. There’s a figure that used to captivate me…it still does…and when I saw you on the hillside that first time I thought, foolish as it sounds, that a Greek god had come to life.”
It happened in an instant, and was an echo of his time with Mason Granger; as though Aiden had drifted into a different plane, he brushed the top of Sebastian’s hand, his thumb moving gently along the soft skin, tracing the length of his fingers.
“This seems like something astral,” Sebastian whispered. “Something that’s been stuck in my dreams.” He paused. “I felt I was the only one on Earth, then I saw your eyes in that shelter, and it was…so strong…so tell-tale.”
Aiden nodded, studying the contours of Sebastian’s profile, the wavy locks of hair, the light stubble. He moved his hand to cover Sebastian’s, and their fingers intertwined. Sebastian sighed. Aiden could feel his trembling, and realized that he was trembling himself. It was borne of both trepidation and elation.
Sebastian closed his eyes. His breathing slowed. Aiden inched closer to him. He reached up with his free hand and with the tip of his finger traced Sebastian’s cheek.
If Sebastian had on his mind either guilt, terror, fear of castigation—it must have all dissipated as it had for Aiden as they leaned in to one another. Their lips met. Aiden reveled in the warm wetness of Sebastian’s lips; the breath falling gently on his skin, the pleasing blend of muskiness and wood smoke and soap and rosewater.
They kissed until a branch snapped off to their right. The pulled away from another, both laughing when they saw a squirrel jump to another tree.
Their eyes met again. Both their faces took on a rosy glow. Sebastian leaned in toward Aiden again, but this time the interruption was not from wildlife.
“Sebastian!” A voice from below called to them.
MacGregor hurried along the pathway.
Sebastian inched from Aiden. “Gilbert? We’re over here. Near the waterfall.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2014-04-02 06:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-04-02 11:17 am (UTC)