Whatever You Like // Tags + Icarus [Masquerade]

Only a Libertine could possess the dauntless grace to invite all the crooks and misfits of the city to party.

Which, initially, is all I took the invitation for. Cutting the air like a gilded razor, flickering like a small flame fighting against the wind until I reached and caught it midflight. The Libertines were asking for trouble. Swinging their doors wide open to any homeless drunkard on the street who could put his bottle down long enough to figure out where the pawn shop was. They were beckoning to dance with the most mental District Four had to offer and clink glasses with charmless whores. And I should have torn the damned invitation the minute it landed in my hand.

But the Libertines were asking for trouble, and I had an answer.

And that answer came in the form of a black satin mask and tie. And that answer made small talk with the fellow guests, learning of their names and their hobbies and what they thought of the weather lately and just how much does your family make a year by the way? And that answer danced briefly with girls almost as pretty as the jewels he slipped off their bodies when the music engulfed any chance they had to realize that they had just been robbed. And that answer struggled to swim out of the sea of faceless dolls to find the true reason he came to party.

I strolled into the cellar, greeted by a friend I was far too familiar with: the smell of death. It hung heavy in the air with its usual notes of despair and loss; so sickly sweet the corners of my mouth couldn't help but pull up in glee. A smile I saw distorted, grotesque, and beautiful in the reflection of the silver trinkets and brass keys. I ran the tips of my fingers over their smooth metallic faces, ice cold from the cool night's embrace; begging for a warmth my pockets were only too charitable to provide.

And all at once she came to me. Like a sudden thunderstorm that capsized the unsinkable me right as I saw the lighthouse. Just as I thought the waters couldn't be any more still.

And she made me aware of myself, the skin beneath her touch suddenly alert and awake, tense beneath the layers of clothing and stolen jewelry. Her lips, flowered petals plush with the kind of femininity only youth can possess grazed my ear so lightly I could not help but deafen the world above our heads as she whispered in deadened hum,"Oooooooo."

And I swallowed the anxiety that formed in my throat, turning my head mere fractions of an angle to all but face her; her eyes, so wide you'd swear she forced them that way to take in more of the world, mere eyelashes from mine. Her mouth a half breath from my own.

"Get off me, yeah?"

Her eyes widened, her mouth cradling the ghost of her lost whisper in the shape of a little "o". And we stayed like that for a moment, close enough to feel the warmth of one another's breath on our cheeks, close enough to align the freckles in our eyes.

I knew her no more than thirty seconds and she already drove me mad.

Her eyes held entire oceans, vast as the sea can be and blue as a freshly broken morning but I couldn't read them. They bore holes in me, exposed their doe-like nakedness fearlessly but I couldn't decipher the thoughts behind them. What are you thinking? What was she thinking? In the wide expanses of blue I rummaged for the answers. For a hint of anger or alarm. But I saw no fury nor fear. Just two spheres of blue from behind the slits of a cotton mask. I was stealing her fortune, after all. Technically, she had the right to exercise some form of violence. Fashion some type of empty threat as I walked out the door a chuckling, wealthy man.

Instead she practiced her right to read, running her hands along my shoulders, against my chest like I was a slab of braille and she had questions she wanted to answer herself.

"Depends," she began, the fang of words. Depends. Lets you know the serpent is venomous seconds before you're bitten, infected, and dead.

And her hand nimbly gathered the front of my shirt, as a rustle of stiff fabric and the clink of golden chains sang the answer like a boys' choir. And I shut my eyes tightly, driven mad by a girl I knew for hardly thirty seconds. Every tense muscle instantly slackened as the game was up. The buzzer rang and the flag was raised. How she knew of the night's affairs was completely lost to me, as I didn't care. I already began conjuring excuses --meant more for distraction as I ran out of the room than to actually excuse me from being turned over to authorities-- as she thumbed back the stark white to expose the shining treasure beneath and asked,"What will you give me?"

She was no Libertine.

I looked down at the bundle of cloth and chain in her hand, then to her. And how I hadn't seen it before, I blame it on the pure adrenaline ignited in my blood from robbing such a family as the pawn shop clan and the ornate decoration masquerading half her face. How I hadn't seen it in the spark in the blue, the crazed grin, or the complete and utter disregard for commandments is beyond me. How could I not have seen she was just like me?

I smirked, pulling her hand from my shirt and taking it into my own. I took a few steps back, alike or not, the intimacy of enclosed spaces had never been for me. A lack of oxygen always kills the flame. And I sat on the desk of an old wooden vanity, hooking a finger into the arm of a small teacup. "I think we both know you didn't come here for something to be given to you, Dollface."

And with that, I hopped to my feet and held the cup out, up at her eye level, mere inches from her face, just to be safe. Just to assure myself of what I already knew. Just to confirm we both walked on the same crooked street. Just to make certain we were the same.

"So come and get it."

"Too easy, buster,"

And the golden timepieces leave my hand before the flesh of my fingertips could finish adapting to their mineral cool. The watches clink against each other in concerned soprano as their captor works quickly to intertwine them together by the chains, fashioning an odd necklace and bluntly concealing them under the cover of her dress. Actually, those watches were meant for me. But I held my tongue behind a hardened grin, who was I to interrupt the escapades of wild youth?

"It takes two to play," she accepted the night. She accepted the risks and repercussion and rewards that accompanied the twilight and I with a devious smirk and a flick at my own medals of valor. A small whisper of a ring chimed beneath my clothes and against my chest, prompting my hands to instinctively reach up and try to tuck the obvious proof of theft out of sight before she reached for my mask and paralyzed any fueling flame that burned within me right where I stood. And it was such a curiosity, feeling your heart pulse faster than you knew possible and not all at, at the same time. And it was such a curiosity, being so immersed in a moment of time your body not only loses the ability to breathe, but also the need to. With her fingertips against my cheek, the edge of the mask, my jaw locks to iron constraint, not wanting her to reveal me but having no desire to stop her either. It wasn't until she walked away that I realize I had been holding my breath.

"So, Stranger Danger," she breaks the careful silence, taking a seat unto a coffee table so uninhibitedly you could have sworn she forgot entirely about the occasion. That she forgot entirely about the collection of dancing affair attendees clomping about above our heads and the inhabitants of the house who were losing precious pennies every second we spent in this room. And that she and I and I and she in our small oasis of silver and gold and antique and china were all that were. You could have swore it.

"Got a name?"

Ask half of the girls twirling stupidly oblivious on the ground above, and the answer was an indefinite yes. Several, actually. With every stiff crank of the clock's tired arms and every new shade of rouge on the lips of my metamorphosing dance partners I grew increasingly fatigued of the constant, yeastless conversation. So I became "Eric Darling of the Banking Darlings" and "a fisherman's son, Henry Hoggart". And I painted them pictures of childhood fears that never existed and illustrated heavily detailed lives that never went lived. By myself, however. There must been a fisherman's son somewhere in the district that once fought off a shark with nothing but a ballpoint pen. Made one hell of a story.

But that was then and this is now. And this song was not one for dancing, but for bathing in and immersing worried thoughts and soothing lined brows with its simple melodic resonance. And I had a new partner now. A thunderstorm. A thunderstorm I knew from seconds of speech and rebellion I could not shepherd or lead like those above. Thunderstorms bow to no limitation. But it didn't mean I couldn't be limitless beside her.

"At least tell me a fake one. I've got a lot of friends with fake names." I chuckled at this as she went on to add, "In any case, I've probably got enough friends with fake names to figure out your real one, whether or not you tell me."

I walked up to the coffee table, sitting unto its edge beside her, knuckles curled over its border. I stared out across the room, cluttered with memories pawned off or repossessed to be forgotten by those who forged them with their laughs and tears. And I looked up at the door, no more than a few feet from where we sat but still smugly erect with the reminder that this room was nothing more than a temporary moment in time. That as soon as we crossed over its threshold we were bandits all once more. Constantly on the run and chase, never looking back at the ones who fall behind.

I grinned at the thought. "Let's go with a fake name then, yeah?" I proposed, turning to smile at her, holding a hand out to her as if I was completely foreign to her touch. "I'm Icarus Falls, and it's an honor to have met you" I introduce myself, the wicked grin carved unto the unmasked portion of my face unwavering as I waited for her own. I've never truly told my real name to anyone who I didn't suspect could get me to far places in life. And I never intend to.

"Tea pot, small painting —" she began, eyes wildly scanning the room, "— or that funny looking desk lamp over there for double points. If anybody asks what the weird lump under your shirt is, I promise to swear on all the honor I've got left that you're a hunchback." I groaned at the site of her dare, a sorry excuse for "craftsmanship" in the shape of a whale and probably weighed just as much. "Lovely prospect, ending the party deformed and contorted, it really is..." I replied dryly, making my way toward a corner of the room where paintings were stacked unto one another against the wall. I fingered through each one, blurs of vibrant carnations and pastel seasides mixing into a kaleidoscopic stream of memoirs. I flicker through each work until I find a particular piece, more naked canvas than paint. Streaks of black dart across the portrait to depict a skeleton, thin and gnarled by the lack of humanity, rowing a boat across a river. On the opposing side of the boat a girl sat, her hands cupping the sea of souls below her. But her smile isn't malicious nor tinged with a single dose of superiority, but sincerity. As if she had no idea she was living in a den of thieves who burglarize lives. Or she was genuinely happy to assist. I slide it from its place in the mess of others and turn it to face my new consort, "But I've always been looking to make my life an art." I gingerly detached the painting from its frame, rolled it into a thin tube and slid it under the waist of my pants against my left hip.

Walking rather awkwardly as to not damage the painting, I limp over to a quartet of old umbrellas and, collecting them all, bluntly drop each of them unto my masked companion's lap. All in all, they couldn't have been worth more than a single train trip around the district but looked hard as hell to steal.

The music blared louder, the reverberations of the feet stomping on the roof above growing harder, and the chorus of laughter signaled the party's climax. The perfect time to leave undetected.

"Seems rather a shame to come to a party and not dance, doesn't it?" Across the dance floor was the my best passage out, its rims saturated with tables of food or pretentious crones with far too much time to analyze each body that came within a six yard radius that might, perhaps, cargo fifteen kilograms of stolen jewelry? "Luckily, I have a proposition for you," and with that, I took her hand in mine to lead her to the door, cracking it ever so narrowly as to let the unfiltered craze of those above leak into the room.

"A single dance," I began, holding a finger up between the two of us. "Across the floor until the entrance is all I ask." I looked from out the door back to her, the light streaming in through the crack in the doorway glazing her blue eyes behind the mask. I looked at the skin virtually untouched by the things that burn and scar, the curling locks that obeyed no conformist direction, just like the girl beneath it all. And it was strange knowing I knew only the surface of the girl beneath the mask. I didn't know what brought her to the party tonight, if she came accompanied or alone. I didn't know her favorite sweet or her favorite song or what made her cry when she was all alone. I barely knew her face. So I raised a hand hesitantly under her chin to lift her face toward my own, letting my finger gingerly brush her jaw and up to her cheekbone to slip my finger beneath the thin cotton of her mask

only to pull back my hand and let it retreat into my pockets. Because if I hadn't seen her before tonight, chances are I'd never see her again. And if the lethal stupidity of my parents, or the seamless success of Bast in his crooked affairs has taught me anything, it was to burn all anchors. So I forced a laugh.

"I'm asking you to be the bandit you are and steal me for a single song. And let me steal you. Just until we're clear across, and once we're there..." I will say goodbye and never see you again. We might see each other one day, we might see each other everyday. But I won't know it, and you either. "Anything. Any one thing of mine is yours." I said, motioning to the clearly stuffed pockets and blemished chest and the abnormality in my leg. "Help me get across and I give you my word: whatever you like. What is mine will be yours."

Taggerty Eames.

Taggerty Eames, in another life can I see you again?

In our next lives, if the sands of time decide to run a bit slower, flow a bit smoother, and save me from watching my mother burn in flames, would you meet her? Would you charm her the way only you know how? Coax embarrassing stories out of her at supper and paint yourself into my childhood of missing baby teeth and regrettable haircuts? Or perhaps she wouldn't like you at all. Perhaps she would loathe every last ligament of your darling self for simply being who you've always been. For being undefinable and indescribable. And who you are wouldn't care, and I'd have enough love to envelope you safe from every last bitter remark either of my parents would have to say. And we could spend endless sleepless nights, etching bruised circles from beneath our fatigued eyes; dark circles we'd hold unto until the jealous sun could chase the ethereal moon from above our heads. Could we spend those nights arguing about just why it seems your fingers fit between my own perfectly? Or why my future is as bright as a waxless candle during the winter's darkest hour turning all my somewheres into nowheres but nowhere feels like somewhere when you're in my arms?

In my next life, if I do it for you, can I see you again? If I was reborn a virgin of sin, never daring to tread near the line between the opportunities for eternity and belonging to the night, could I belong to you? If in another life I swore to never lie again, would you let me lie beside you? If I cheated every day, cheated envious death from the moment the sky flushed pink like the blooming secreted garden you cultivate beneath your skin until the stars severed the dark to guide me to you, would you run away with me? If I stole nothing but your heart, would you let me keep it?

If I promised in my next life to be true? To be lawful and innocent and honest and worthy of you? To be everything that I am not in this life? To be everything but Icarus Falls?

In our next lives, Taggerty Eames?

Can I see you again?

I tried to hold her as delicately as I knew how. Or rather, how I assumed one should handle the rarities they wanted to keep. I myself was novel at the idea of finding anything of value that I didn't instantly see as a pawn to pawn, as a shining token to be sold or traded or used to propel myself toward that fiery beacon that burned constantly at a fingertip's reach that I simply could not close the gap of. I never was one for the business of creation, these hands scourged and singed with white veins of a blazing affliction physical proof of my destiny to destroy. I was birthed to erase and ease others' passages into the lovely abyss of forgotten names and faces. It made life much easier to bear, living to dismantle the very stitches that held together memories of cheated hearts and lonesome lifetimes. These hands knew of nothing but of how to dismember all that you wished to forget.

And here they were, holding the first find he didn't want to let go. His eyes drinking in the first face he was beginning to believe he didn't want to forget.

But as her hands trembled in mine, as her frame quivered shyly against my own I denied any urge I may have had to rewrite her skin's memory with my own lying lips. I lighted the grip of my hand about hers, the hold on her back. I knew all too well the tighter the fist the quicker sand escapes between your fingers. I was to have her hand in mine for a single song, for a single passage across the dance floor. Whether she truly knew I could have made the endeavor alone was lost and unimportant. I had more important affairs on the mind, like wondering if we spun enough times would each melody eventually melt into one another and become an endless concertina of entwined fingers and unwritten goodbyes.

But I really should have left the wishful thinking in my bedroom wardrobe. As the curling strikes of brilliant lightning sewn into the backs of my hands remind me on the constant: each of my tales begin with a goodbye.

And Taggerty fumbles about her words as I bite harshly into the flesh of my lower lip. I had no intention of erasing you. I hoped the sudden severe lack of grace accompanied her on every dance floor and not simply because I was writing our finale with my lack of inhibition.

"Taggerty I--" and as she "Oh, it's fi--" steps unto my feet "No, it's fine, re--" with such careless gracelessness "It's--" I can't help but "Maybe if you just ste--" dismiss the thought of our goodbye as fruitless worry. I exile it from my thoughts with a laugh. The dancing bodies about us, the jeweled and painted burdens of bandits weighing us down, and the inevitable end of the evening were all still hanging about my neck like an ill-fitting choker. Scooping her up beneath the arms to gently lower her unto my feet, I can't help but smirk. A small tide of nostalgia laps at my heels, distant memories of my grandmother teaching me to dance on her feet in our cramp kitchen as the sugar cookies went ablaze in the oven. Obviously, Tags is no child and the only things I can think of teaching her that she might not already know more often than not result in second degree burns and permanent scarring of the skin.

But the sight must've been rather odd, if not amusing by the way the occasional head would turn and gawk at the two grown adolescents waltzing in such awkward stiffness. I grinned, at both the idea of it all and the thrill of having the very attendees I robbed ogle at their valuables sauntering away in an uncoordinated samba.

"See I've made a mistake in choosing my partner in crime here," I whispered through a grin at our new prospectors, "Far too beautiful. They can't seem to take their eyes off you."

"That's definitely it," she agrees dryly, shooting me a glance like a blameless bullet tearing flesh and cocky facades away to leave me naked and painstakingly babbling raw truths my tongue was too eager to spit for me to refine. "It was a terrible decision on your part, not to realize how devastatingly attractive allllllll this is." And as she waved her hands about to further her point and I laughed sores to ache the cores of my bones I suddenly found it easy to be seventeen and not give a damn about alibis. The dulled pains spread from the curvatures of my ribs to my chest and heart and throat as I kept laughing like a bastard with a narcotic addiction. But with her hand in mine we kept swaying to the greatest melody I have ever heard I was sure I would forget the moment it stopped.

"I mean, it's bad enough that people can't focus on their dancing with me around, but how are you ever going to make an escape when I'm here to distract you?" I shrugged, tightening the edges of my mouth into a taut line, "'s beyond me, really. Usually my plans are a bit more elaborate." Which, although a joke, carried heavy tones of truth encased in its gossamer costume of impassivity. The initial goal of the night was to get in, grab as much as my hands could bear, and get out. I really had no intention of belonging to the night or Taggerty Eames, for that matter. "If you were mortal instead of mythical, Icarus, I'd be a little worried for you." I smirked at the thought, Tags being worried for me. As if we weren't a pair of crooks trying to sail the same sinking ship into the shore.

And I opened my mouth only to be muted by the threat of capsizing unto the dance floor, the sum of the two of us threatening to bombard the ground. My hand instinctively raised to cup the back of Taggerty's head and keep it shielded from possible concussion. But once more she struck me in awe, proving herself more than capable of protecting the two of us from an almost certain outing. She never ceased to amaze me yet, how she could be her own damsel and savior at once.

"Don't worry —" she whispered, fixing the front of my jacket and dusting some imagined filth off my shoulder. And I silently thanked any of my "mythical brothers" that might've been watching from above or below for the blaring music that deafened all the attendees' ears as if it weren't for the great roar of bass and soprano flooding the air I swear each and every dancer in attendance would be able to hear the gears turning in motion beneath that wild flare of curls. In our short time together, I had yet to decide whether Tags' scheming was reason for celebration or evacuation. "— I got this."

As the more masculine of the two, I was almost completely sure I was the one to lead the dance, and Tags to follow. But she didn't seem like one for shepherding, and I knew a fire when I saw one. I knew how to identify the piercing light in shrouded darkness, giving off warmth and comfort in the most unfamiliar of places, never bowing to uniformity in the most beautiful of ebbing dances only to ask for one thing in exchange: freedom to run and burn. And in any other case, with any other partner I would shake my head to decline such a gaudy samba and walk away to find another who did not mind the numbing bore of a taciturn tango, but it wasn't another case. And I was completely over pretending Tags was just another pretty face and soft pair of hands. So I sauntered alongside her every shameless step as best I could, becoming a mess of melodramatically tossed hands and legs, completely aware that after the morning broke I could never pretend Taggerty Eames was just another

"Love," I said once we were far off enough to cast the rest of the dancing crowd as extras and the swelling waltz as a supporting role. I looked down at the onyx dress shoes dusted with the small footprints of a public danger across their tops and laughed. "So Love, we really put on a performance tonight." Quite convincing. For a moment there, I thought your tongue would give me the grace of saying my name for more than a single night. I thought that perhaps, for once, a "goodbye" wouldn't taint the taste of our last words. And I wanted to say it, but couldn't bring myself to. Couldn't collect gratitude and my promise to her to form a slightly articulate sentence to instigate what was to come. "You were great," I said, taking her hand in mine and smiling softly, not daring to bring my eyes to hers.

The goodbye was hardly a lethal wound, but listening to her steps as she'd walk away.

In the end, everyone always walks away.