Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Cold and aggressive wind came off the bay, cutting up under his cape and numbing him down to the bone. The wharf itself was gray, as though it had sat abandoned for a hundred years and all the vibrant colors had been washed out by wind and rain and misery. Alone, neglected, unloved.

When he figured he was cold enough, Calvin Fischoeder left the wharf and drove into town. It was abnormally quiet, even for the strip of buildings that included the funeral home.

By all rights, Felix Fischoeder deserved more pomp and circumstance than what the homely “It's Your Funeral” funeral home had to offer, but Calvin was now alone, and something so humble was preferable to consorting with hundreds of people that neither he nor Felix had ever cared for. Calvin did not want consolation; he wanted his brother, alive. And since that was not possible, he wanted to bury him, alone.

Leaving the cart parked along the sidewalk, he entered the funeral home to find it just as dead as the world without. Not that it was unusual, considering there was no ongoing funeral at present. He had to admit, for a small funeral home pressed up right next to a dismal burger restaurant, it was rather classy. The proprietor kept a clean business; furthermore, he paid his rent on time. 

So far, there'd been no trouble between them, although Calvin had been uncharacteristically curt and temperamental at the best of times. He supposed Mort had dealt with just about every form grief could take.

Mort came out from the back and smiled gently upon seeing Calvin. “Good morning, Mr. Fischoeder.”

“Is he ready?”

“Yes, right this way.”

He led Calvin into the parlor, and there, at the end of a long, long walk across freshly vacuumed navy blue carpet, was the coffin and corpse of his little brother. The corner of his mouth slightly twitched. He would not cry. He was the big brother, the inheritor of their father's fortune; he was strong, and he would not cry.

As he observed Felix’s corpse, a sense of admiration came over him. Not for his brother, but for the artistry involved in making him look this way. Joyous, jealous little brother; the corners of his lips were slightly upturned. He did not look as though he were sleeping, or that he'd merely closed his eyes and was now captured in the miniscule act of blinking. No, Felix was dead, and he looked it. It was as though the mortician had not intended, as so many do, to make Felix look alive but dreaming; he had dipped his paintbrush in death, and drawn upon Felix's once-waterlogged corpse the final, peaceful picture of it. 

How nice, he thought, despite his grief. I hope I look like that when I'm lying there and my fortune is being fought over. Blissfully unaware.

Calvin thought he'd say some words, but even if he could remember what he'd thought of last night, why would he bother? Felix could no longer hear him.

“That's all,” he said, closing the casket himself. “Be done with it, then.”

The pallbearers did their work. He rode in the hearse with Mort, their silence devoid of meaning. Calvin watched the cold, soaked world roll by. Funny, that tomorrow the forecast was all sun and clear skies. It would be as though this day had not even happened. But the chill would linger. Despite coming spring and coming summer; the chill would linger.

Felix Fischoeder, beloved brother, was lowered into the ground. How fortunate was he, to not be a victim of human feeling. Despite the wet cold, Calvin could feel himself thawing out.

“Mr. Fischoeder,” said Mort, once they were alone. “Are you religious?”

He blinked and turned to the mortician, “What?”

“Are you religious? Or god-fearing?”

Incredulously, he shook his head. “No.”

“Do you believe in the soul?”

“No.”

Mort nodded slowly. “In this trying time, you should reach out for support from your family and friends.”

Family? Friends? I just buried the only man I could consider either of those. But he only said, “Okay.”

The mortician hovered there for a moment, and Calvin had the notion he was found out. “You are alone,” Mort's eyes were saying. “I can look at you and tell. You are alone.” This readable acknowledgement of Calvin's lifelong curse was not uncommon. People looked at him and knew inherently that there was something queer and alien about him; an otherness that came from his very being, one that he couldn't disguise or cut out.

Mort's look was so slightly different. Accepting… no, not accepting… knowing, understanding?

“But if you ever need someone to talk to…” he took out his wallet and handed Calvin one of his business cards. “I'm used to the grieving process. I'm no licensed therapist, but I would be glad to lend an ear.”

Likely he was only trying to butter up his landlord. Regardless, Calvin took it and slipped it into his pocket. No further words passed between them, even as they left the cemetery and returned to the funeral home.

The rain had subsided to only a light sprinkle upon their return. Calvin wiped the seat of his cart and drove home.

The Fischoeder mansion was really the last place he wanted to be, but there was nowhere else to go. An incredible concept, as there was always somewhere for Calvin Fischoeder to go. But Felix's death had been a headliner, and he was in no mood for condolences or off remarks. The best thing for him was to be alone. And the best thing for being alone was liquor. There was somewhere within the cellar a bottle of damson schnapps with his name on it.

The cellar was cold, too, and he paused, thinking that perhaps the brandy would melt him. But he reasoned that, even if it were so, he would be far too inebriated to care.

He sat down on his sofa. The brandy was fire in his chest, thawing him much too quickly. Hastily, he put the bottle to his lips and drank.

“Are you god-fearing?” Mort's questions echoed in his head. “Do you believe in the soul?”

No, he thought, the agony welling up in his eyes, the brandy spilling over his white suit. But I believe in death. How could I not believe in something so certain?

Felix’s face flooded his vision, in such peaceful, final death. He needed to remember to thank Mort for that. Quite the death artist. That last image of Felix was almost eclipsing how he'd looked when they'd pulled him from the bay.

He remembered… kneeling down in the sand… and scooping him up into his arms…

The warm, sweet damson plum invaded his sinuses, and welled out through his eyes.

“It was an accident,” he put his palm over his eye patch. “I told you,” and he sniffled. “It was an accident.”

Chapter Text

Every inch of his body was ripe with pain, pinching and needling him into consciousness. So much for being numb.

“Inga,” he called out. “I could use a glass of water! Or a pitcher… And two bottles of aspirin!”

But when he turned over - and nearly fell off the sofa in the process - the refreshment was waiting on the coffee table. His whole world nearly toppled as he sat up and tried to make sense of his own living room. His suit was wrinkled and stained; a big crimson splatter right on his chest, consuming his tie and lapels. The pounding in his head was egregious, thumping along as he counted out a handful of white pills.

But before he could wash them down, his head cleared just enough, and he remembered that he was alone.

The bottle of schnapps was empty upon the floor, either from being drunk or overturned into the rug, but there were plenty where that came from and Calvin had the notion of stumbling into the cellar again. Maybe he would trip on the way down and fall and break his neck. Then he wouldn't have to worry about numbing himself against the memory of his dead brother.

Yes, that's what he would do. Maybe he'd just stay down there for the rest of his life. There wouldn't even need to be a funeral if he was already underground, would there? Save them all the trouble of false tears over his corpse.

He stood up, teetered, then fell back onto the sofa, beaten over the head by his hangover.

“Are you just going to drink yourself to death?”

Calvin looked up and saw Inga behind the sofa, standing over him. “That's the idea,” he grumbled. “Providing I can make it to the cellar.”

“And fall down and break your neck,” she snapped.

“That's the other idea.”

Inga rolled her eyes. “Whatever makes you feel better, Calvin. You're being ridiculous.”

“That's the other, other idea. How would you expect me to behave?”

“You weren't this dramatic when your parents died.”

Mother and father were old, he thought. I knew they were going to die, that I'd have to deal with it. But Felix? He was supposed to outlive me. That's what little brothers do.

But he didn't say anything. He was supposed to be clever and witty, and right now all he could manage was holding back tears… and vomit. Inga was right and she didn't mean anything by it; with her it was all tough love. But how was he supposed to behave? How was he supposed to grieve? With their mother and father, he became at peace with it in advance; he had some idea of when it was coming. Felix had been alive at dinner, dead at breakfast.

Peer pressured, Calvin resolved to take the aspirin, washing it down with greedy gulps of water. He'd feel a little better in the head, if not the heart.

He watched some television and ate some very humble saltine crackers. Whatever he was seeing or eating, it all went right through him. Maybe he had died instead of Felix. Maybe Inga hadn't dissuaded him after all and he'd taken a tumble down the cellar stairs. Maybe he was a ghost. He didn't really believe in ghosts, but maybe he was one. Maybe that's what happens when your brother dies; you become a ghost. Part of him was gone, and maybe that was himself. His soul, or whatever.

“Are you god-fearing? Do you believe in the soul?”

He thought he was going to cry again.

I have to do something. I have to go somewhere.

But he couldn't be with people, and he couldn't possibly be alone. But he couldn't possibly be with people, and he certainly couldn't be alone .

Calvin looked down at his soiled suit.

“Well, if I'm going out I can't possibly go looking like this.”

A fresh white suit did not make him feel better , per se, but he felt slightly human again, slightly like Calvin Fischoeder. Calvin Fischoeder was not a drunken bum. And he thought with spite on his idea of breaking his neck earlier. If… rather, when he was going to go, he would go with some form of dignity. Not like Felix, drunk and clumsy, bloated and… 

His last drink would not be brine. There would be a fine wine- ah, in fact, he knew just the one, a strong purple tucked away in the cellar for a special occasion. And death, terrible or no, was a very special occasion.

He thought again of Felix's face. That image would never leave him. He'd have to leave Mort in charge of the burial. Hm, yes, death would look just as good on him as it had on his little brother, if not better. What a shame he'd never be able to see it.

That seems rather final, he thought. What am I supposed to do now?

In the mirror he was elegant and eccentric. He had brushed his hair back into its excessive shape and selected a tie of rather dark violet silk.

This was the time when one ought to “reach out”, as they say, to family and friends for support. Calvin's real family was gone; his friends no more than vultures. What exactly is the point when one has only oneself? When one must hear such phrases as “reach out to your family and friends” and understand that those are the sort of resources the typical person has, that all it would take for the proper closure would be to “reach out”.

Calvin felt he was always reaching, whether that was in or out. In, for some sense of purpose; out, for some sense of companionship. Probably he was insane to hold on to little Felix so, but despite his tendency to lash out cruelly, little Felix was all he had. Until now, of course. Felix had never really understood him either, but they were brothers and that meant something similar, something important.

But… wait a moment…

Calvin reached into his pocket and fished around. No, it wasn't there, it was in the other jacket-

Aha! Stained in the upper left corner by the fragrant damson schnapps, yes, but still legible; Mort's business card.

“It's Your Funeral.”

What was Calvin supposed to do? How was he supposed to behave? Well, the mortician with an artistic eye for death probably had an answer for him.

Chapter Text

“Hellooo, is this Mortimer Kindler speaking?”

“Yes, i-is that you, Mr. Fischoeder?”

“Yes, I was looking to take you up on your offer.”

“My offer?”

“To lend an ear.”

“Lend a- oh! Right, yes. Well, I-I'd be happy to. Would you like to, um, grab coffee, or-or breakfast somewhere?”

“Um…” he pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, um, how about if you- if I come over to your parlor?”

“... the funeral parlor?”

“Unless you have another parlor I'm unaware of, yes, the funeral parlor will do just fine.”

“Alright, certainly. What time are you thinking?”

“Oh, I don't know, I suppose I can make it over there in about twenty minutes. That is, if you aren't busy.”

“No, no, I'm free, you just come on by.”

“Alright, twenty minutes then.”

“Yes, twenty… see you then.”

Calvin hung up, immediately rethinking his decision to go. Not because of anything Mort had said, but merely because he wasn't sure if he really wanted to talk to anyone. Calvin's grief was perhaps best kept to himself. But he had already called Mort. If he canceled, what else would he do?

That's what he was afraid of, what else he might do.

So he took his little cart down to the funeral parlor. Clear skies of bright blue seemed to mock him, but the sun's rays did little to warm the coastal town against the persistent chill coming off the ocean.

He stopped outside of the parlor, but his attention was drawn by the efforts of the Belcher children. All three of them were pasting multicolored tissue paper to the large glass window at the entrance.

“Hello Bunny Belcher and others,” he greeted.

“Hey, Mr. Fisch,” Louise said, not breaking concentration.

“Mind explaining your newest attempt to lower my property value? I'm a bit lost.”

“It’s Sunday, so if you eat here instead of going to church, you get 50% off.”

The eldest Belcher child elaborated, “You have to be in church clothes, but we're accommodating by making an artificial stained glass window.”

Gene said, “It's one free french fry per prayer! And I'm performing hymns!”

“Gene, dad said no.”

“His mouth said no but his heart said yes!”

Calvin chuffed, “What's the daily burger? “Pray the Mayo Away”?”

All three turned to him, “How did you know!?”

“I can still see through the window,” he nodded to the partially papered glass. “But keep up the good work, little hourlies.”

“ Hourlies!? ” Louise roared. “We're not even getting paid!”

As he turned about, a slight smile played on his lips. Would he feel any better if he had children of his own? Probably. But he didn't.

Mort was waiting for him at the base of the stairs when he entered the parlor.

“Good morning, Mr. Fischoeder.”

“Good morning.”

“After we hung up I had the idea that you might feel more comfortable up in my apartment,” he motioned to the stairs. “Care to join me? I made coffee and scones.”

You're really trying to butter me up, aren't you?  

But even Calvin Fischoeder, used to having his ass kissed, could detect an earnestness in Mort, an honest kindliness devoid of manipulation. Maybe he was a little too hopeful; people only ever wanted him around for his money.

“So long as you aren't going to turn me into taxidermy.”

Mort only gave a good natured chuckle, and led him upstairs.

Calvin was pleasantly surprised at the modern-ness of Mort's apartment. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been in the living space of one of his tenants, but he always imagined dingy, rough little places. Mort's place was still humble, but gracefully so.

“What a decent little space you've made for yourself.”

“Thank you! You wouldn't believe the things people just give away, and all because someone died on them.”

“That's pretty funny, do you tell that joke to everyone?”

“I'm serious.”

They stared at each other for a moment, then Calvin laughed and Mort did too.

Calvin took a seat on one of the firm gray sofas, and Mort brought over their coffee and scones on a little tray that he placed on the coffee table.

Though he oughtnt't to have indulged, Calvin put plenty of cream and sugar into his coffee. The triangular little scones were flavored with cinnamon and baked with blueberries in the center, fresh and tasty.

“It's been quiet in town, recently,” Mort said. “But the cold sure bites, doesn't it?”

Calvin glanced out the window. “Yes.”

“Have you been down to the pier recently?”

“Yes.”

“There were humpback whales spouting this morning. Though, you probably see them all the time, you're always down at the wharf.”

“Yes… but it's good to know that other people see them and, um, appreciate them.”

A silence fell between them. Alright, well, enough of that.

“Part of the reason I came here was to thank you,” Fischoeder began. “Not for the funeral, but for Felix's body. You're like an artist with death, aren't you?”

Mort blinked, taken aback by the sudden raw honesty. “Uh…” color rose to his pale cheeks and he took a sip of coffee to remedy his gaping mouth. “Yeah, I guess you could put it that way, although no one ever has.”

“Hm. Why doesn't that surprise me? People take things for granted - God knows I do - until those things are taken from them. Even then…” he shrugged. “When I saw what you did to Felix it made me feel just a bit better, and I can't take that for granted.”

“It's normal to not feel like yourself when someone close to you passes-”

“Just-” Fischoeder raised a hand. “Spare me the makeshift grief counselor bullshit, okay?”

“Sure,” Mort nodded. “Sure.”

“You asked me at my brother's funeral whether or not I'm god-fearing, and whether or not I believe in the soul.”

“Yes?”

“Well, what about you?”

“It's a tough question to answer.”

“It's a yes or no question, it's really not that difficult.”

“Not to me. The answer’s much more complicated than that. I mean, you-you saw your brother's corpse, so… you understand, right?”

Calvin raised the brow of his right eye, the one that could still see. “Tell me.”

Mort sighed, “Isn't it a little soon? I-I wouldn't want to offend you. This is a sensitive time for you; I know that, Mr. Fischoeder, and the last thing I want to do is impose opinions on death you might not agree with.”

“What does it matter whether or not I agree with them?”

“Grieving people can lash out. I wouldn't want to get on your bad side, sir.”

To Calvin it always lingered in the background, this superiority he had over people due to the power he wielded. Their lives were in his hands- or, their livelihoods, anyway. He had to remember that. He was not their equal; of that they were constantly well aware.

Calvin stood up, coffee in hand. “I have the right to know your opinion. I am your customer, your landlord. Tell me, at length, whether or not you are god-fearing, and whether or not you believe in the soul. Tell me.”

Mort looked up at him, taken aback by this display of entitlement. Then he slightly inclined his head, “Alright, Mr. Fischoeder. I suppose it was my fault for asking your opinion, and you gave me yours. I think… I don't think I believe in the soul, so much as I believe in life. And I don't fear any god. You set up funerals for as many different people as I have, and you'll soon find that people believe in any and all sorts of things. Why should any one thing be true? And why must I believe wholly in it to reach any sort of afterlife? Look, I'm rambling, but if you really want my opinion… maybe I just find the idea of nothing very… very, very comforting. And death is nothing, just… nothing. I've always found it quite a comfort, even when I was a kid. It never frightened me.”

Mr. Fischoeder considered him as one might consider a pearl in the oyster they just killed to retrieve it. “I've been inconsolable in this time, totally not myself, and you know what people keep saying to me? Of course you do, you've heard it all before. “Felix wouldn't want this”. As if they even knew him. Even if they did, what does it matter now? Felix is dead. Now it only matters what I want,” he scoffed.

“And what do you want?”

“Felix died in the ocean; you can have that. He fell from the wharf; you can have that, too, if you want it. None of it matters to me anymore. I don't even want anything anymore, except my brother.” He dumped the remainder of his coffee into the carpet. “And no amount of money in the world can get him back for me.”

I'm still on the sofa, drunk off my ass, he thought. Or maybe I fell down the stairs and broke-

But Mort was looking at him. Not at the coffee stain blooming on the floor, but him. And somehow it was a look of fascination, as though he were a specimen of some sort that needed studying.

Is that me, then? Calvin Fischoeder, next in line for the embalming table?

“Mr. Fischoeder,” Mort stood up now. “I can see you need some time and I have a consultation at eleven… there's a nice little place down by the bay that serves damn good lobster - would you have dinner with me there? T-tonight, of course.”

Calvin didn't have to consider it. He set the coffee mug down on the table, making sure it met a coaster. “Sure.”

Chapter Text

The only thing more astonishing than Fischoeder himself was the fact that he'd actually taken Mort up on his offer. He was the last person in the whole town that Mort expected to lean on him. And boy, was he leaning!

There was no doubt that his grieving would be a long process. Mort was fine with that. If he wasn't talking to people about death, he was talking to people about death. And when he wasn't talking to people he was watching baking shows, or reading pulp romance, or listening to music and drinking a decent wine. And when he wasn't doing all that, he was working; tending to the bodies and organizing funeral precedings and whatnot.

Mr. Fischoeder disrupted his calm, quiet life; Mr. Fischoeder was exciting! And maybe that was different and fun, in a somber sort of way since Fischoeder was grieving and trying his damndest to be philosophical about the whole thing. It was even a little frightening because of the whole “landlord” aspect. Mort really wouldn't have it any other way; he'd been completely earnest when he'd given Fischoeder his card.

But was Fischoeder being earnest? He thought so, as much as Fischoeder was presently able, anyway; he , the landlord, thought he was being earnest. Mort wondered if someone like that could ever truly be vulnerable, and with his tenant, no less. 

They had earlier settled that Fischoeder would pick up Mort and spirit the both of them down to the bay. So when Mort came outside, the golf cart was waiting for him. But where was Fischoeder? He spun about, and saw him there, reclined against the building.

Calvin Fischoeder was awash in cigarette smoke; a ghost in the moonlit night, his well-groomed hair glazed with spectral silver and his suit shone like freshly fallen snow.  When his singular blue eye rested upon Mort, he looked far away, as though he'd lived a thousand years to the day and was only too weary to divulge all his boundless knowledge. The look was not foreign; grief did that to a person.

Then he smiled slightly, and was just a human being.

“You look great, Mr. Fischoeder! I guess I should've worn my Sunday best.”

Fischoeder raised a brow, the one over that visible blue eye. “You go to church?”

“Not regularly, no. But church is like a second home - to me and the bodies.”

“Ah, right.”

If he was at all freaking out his landlord with his talk of the dead, Fischoeder wasn't letting on.

The rich and richly dressed man flicked his cigarette onto the sidewalk and snuffed it beneath a polished white leather brogue.

“Come along, then.”

He motioned to the passenger seat of his cart as he took the driver's.

“ The Fischoeder golf cart,” Mort said, taking his seat. “What an honor!”

Fischoeder smiled slightly and they were off into the night. It was chilly, but the breeze from their movement didn't bite as hard as it might.

This is nice, Mort thought. Yes, he'd been the one to invite Fischoeder, but it was an outing nonetheless. He couldn't remember the last time someone had taken him out, and his last date with Samantha seemed like a lifetime ago.

The thought froze him.

Is this a date?

He glanced at Fischoeder, wondering if he was wondering the same, but if that thought were at all in his mind it didn't appear to bother him.

He's probably not thinking that. Anyway, it's not a date, we're just having dinner.

Why would it be a date? Stupid.

“How hungry are you?” Fischoeder suddenly asked. “Because I could settle for cigarettes for dinner.”

Mort laughed at first, before he realized Fischoeder was being serious. Then he cleared his throat, “Well, uh, I am pretty hungry… I could go for a smoke afterwards, though.”

“Hm.”

“I mean, you got all gussied up; it'd be a shame to waste your time like that.”

“All I've got is time.”

“A-and anyway… have you eaten… recently? I mean, you look sort of peckish...”

He wasn't sure Fischoeder hadn't been half-starved when he'd arrived that morning, given how frail and tired he looked in comparison to the eccentricity he was known for.

“Was that scone of mine the only thing you've eaten today?”

“Well, yes …”

“Lobster is good! It'll taste good, it'll be a nice meal. C'monnn, Mr. Fischoeder.”

He shrugged. “Well, if you insist.”

The lobster restaurant was a quaint little place, too expensive for Mort to justify dining at often, but too cheap for someone like Fischoeder to invite his rich friends; decidedly bourgeois.

The lighting was soft, the air fragrant with fresh cooked food. They were seated at a booth for two. To drink, Mr. Fischoeder would have red wine, and Mort would have iced tea.

Mort started to wonder about the coffee stain in his carpet. He had scrubbed it quite thoroughly, but the effort seemed only to secure the stain in the fibers. There was really a sentimentality to it, so that he didn't feel like buying a more heavy duty stain remover. Stupid, yes, but there was passion in that stain; anger and sorrow, pure grief. Maybe he'd just keep it.

“Do you come here often?” Fischoeder asked.

Mort looked up from the menu. “Once in a while.”

“On dates?”

He chuckled, “Yeah, sometimes.”

Fischoeder looked up at him, raising a brow. “A man in your profession, I didn't imagine that you might get around.”

“I don't, really. But I met another mortician online about two years ago and we go out every once in a while.”

“Oh,” Fischoeder lowered the menu and looked directly at him. “You're in a relationship?”

“I wouldn't go so far as to call it that. More like…”

“Friends with benefits?”

“Sure, sounds about right.”

“Does that bother you?”

He shrugged. “Samantha's great, and I respect her, but I've got to look at it from her perspective, you know? Sure we get along swell, but… well, a thirty-eight year old woman can't exactly bring home her fifty-eight year old boyfriend to meet mom and pop.”

“Why not?”

“Mr. Fischoeder, come on, you-you get it, don't you?”

“Look here, if I really loved someone no one would keep me from settling down. Love's a rare enough thing as it is. And it's Calvin, Mort. Why don't you just call me Calvin?”

“If you'd like, sure.”

“... would you say it?”

“Calvin.”

“Thank you.”

Mort smiled slightly and tried to look back at the menu as he continued, “ You can do that.”

“If I can, so can you. Hell, you're four years my junior, you can do it better than I can.”

“Well, Calvin, what I mean is that it's acceptable for you to do it. I mean, it's expected. You've got money; you're loaded! Younger women always go for a guy who's loaded.”

“Yes, but they don't usually marry those women. It's like your situation, friends with benefits or whatever. Except I guess you're not paying Samantha. So if you really love her, and she really loves you, then the two of you should settle down. Who cares about the age gap?”

Mort shrugged. “I don't know. I guess… I like her a lot, I mean she's a swell woman, but… maybe I'm just not cut out for marriage, even if it was with a woman my age. You're right, though, love's a rare enough thing. It's a rare enough thing to find someone who isn't disturbed by my occupation.”

He looked up at Calvin then, meeting his singular blue eye.

“I appreciate that,” Mort continued. “That you really recognize my skills, my vision. It means a lot to a little guy like me, who usually can't even talk about his work. Death makes people uncomfortable, and I can't fault them for that, but… it makes me lonely, too. Ahem- so, I-I appreciate it, is all.”

There was a chill in Fischoeder's eye, the sort that comes with winter, nipping and biting the tips of one's ears and nose, but is softened by companionship.

Calvin sipped his wine. “Guess that makes two of us.”

As the night progressed and they got their dinner, the conversation changed many times, from the intricacies of Mort's job to the future of Wonder Wharf.

“The wharf? I'm going to sell it.”

“Oh, you're really thinking of selling it again?”

“No, I am going to sell it… along with everything else.”

“But why?”

Calvin shrugged and sort of averted his gaze. “I don't know. I'm probably going… away.”

How unlike him! His demeanor, his words sent Mort reeling with worry. “But this is your home.”

“No. Not anymore.”

They picked at their food, having both finished off the rich, buttery lobster with only sautéed vegetables left over.

“It's tainted, I guess,” Calvin said. “When your brother dies in the bay, how could it not be? I can't even smell the brine anymore without smelling his bloated corpse in it.” He emptied his glass of wine and poured more. “Anyway, I already gave you the wharf. I guess it isn't going to matter who has it since Felix can't inherit anything anymore.” He scoffed, “We all knew he'd squander it anyway. Our father left him plenty in order for him to make something of himself, and in the end he blew it on hookers and blow before crawling back to me. But I always knew I'd be taking care of him one way or another. Father assured me, “Oh, boarding school will straighten him out!” but Felix needed… well, he needed to be the firstborn, an only child. Yeah, that's what Felix needed.”

Calvin rubbed his cheek, just under his missing eye. Or was it really missing? Mort never knew, and didn't think it appropriate to ask; that didn't stop him from wondering. Perhaps something remained, not just an empty socket but a scarred mass, mottled and milky as though it were the living dead. He thought something so unique, that held such a strange and painful history, must be quite beautiful.

“I guess,” said Mort. “That most of us are born not getting what we want. And we can either find peace with what we have, or keep fighting, angry and unfulfilled.”

“And some of us have what we want ripped right out of our hands,” he shrugged. “But maybe I never really had it in the first place.”

The bill had been lying on the table for some time. Mort footed it, and they went out into the chilled night.

He was surprised at Calvin's capacity for drink, but he was a big man and honestly he probably drank more in a week than Mort did in a year.

“Do you want to go to…”

What a stupid mistake, starting a sentence like that, especially with no real idea of what to offer.

The pier? No! That was where Felix died. 

The cemetery? Jesus Christ!

Bob's Burgers? He really didn't get out much…

“My place? D-do you want to go back to my place?”

Fischoeder measured him with that fine blue eye. “And do what?”

“Um… sit, t-talk… I have some nice records. A-and liquor.”

Calvin turned away from him, his gaze lingering out on the ocean, far, far away. Somehow Mort felt that keeping the white-suited landlord with him was only prolonging the inevitable, but if anything he did or said made Mr. Fischoeder feel any better, it was worth it.

You are alone now, he thought. And I'm sorry. I wish I could really help you, but I'm just the mortician. All I can offer is a distraction. Inwardly he laughed. But is it even a distraction when my job involves dressing up your brother to be put in the ground? Do I only remind you of that? And of your own… inevitability?

“Mr. Fischoeder?”

World weary all over again, Calvin turned back to him, that blue eye so rugged, the grieving mind behind it so predictable.

“I'd be glad of your company.”

The old landlord smiled slightly. “Alright. But it's Calvin, Mort.”

Chapter Text

Mort helped Calvin up the stairs to his apartment. He wasn't exactly stumbling, but a guiding hand could do no wrong. Calvin hadn't drunk an inordinate amount of wine at dinner, but Mort was under the impression that he hadn't been sober for some time, and that included the funeral.

“Have a seat,” he said, motioning to the sofa.

Fischoeder sat down, fishing around in his pocket. “Cigarette?”

“Sure, um, just a second, let me put on a record and mix us some rum and Coke.”

Calvin laughed in a resigned way, laying his head back and closing his eye. “That sounds… so good.”

Mort smiled slightly and took to his record player. On the way back from the restaurant he'd been wondering what to play, and settled confidently on Hendrix's Are You Experienced . As the notes of Purple Haze filled the air, just loud enough that they could comfortably talk over it, Calvin sighed in reverie.

“I've gotten high to this before.”

That made Mort snort, “Same here! Kind of a shame all we have is cigarettes.”

“Let's make a list of good albums to get high to and next time I'll bring something.”

Mort started to mix them rum and Cokes in the kitchen, smiling to himself.

Next time, he thought. There's already gonna be a next time?

He hadn't had such a friend in a long time.

“I always thought,” said Mortimer. “That the best way to do it is load up a couple cassettes and head out to the drive-in.”

“Oh yeah,” Calvin sighed, lighting up a cigarette. “Damn if that isn't the way to do it.”

“Course, back when I used to do that I'd have to sneak out of my mom's house after she'd gone to bed.”

It felt strange to smoke indoors, Mort hadn't done so in a long time; he'd grown out of smoking in his living spaces in his thirties, mostly because his previous landlords hadn't allowed it, but he came to realize that it just smelled better without the build up. Thankfully he'd managed to slowly wean himself off cigarettes throughout the years, but one here or there wasn't bad. He could enjoy a smoke in his apartment just once, especially if his landlord was initiating it.

“I didn't know you were lonesome,” Fischoeder suddenly said, the smoke slipping past his lips. “All these years of you being my tenant, and it just never occurred to me.”

“Why should it? We don't really know each other.”

“No. And frankly, I didn't consider that anyone else could feel the same way as me.”

“Have you always been lonely?”

He sipped the rum and Coke. “Feels like it. Yes, I suppose I have. But it wasn't nearly so bad with Felix about. They're different sorts of loneliness, the kind between brothers and the kind between partners and the kind between friends. But Felix was the last person I had.”

“There's really no one else?”

“No. Just me.” He finished the drink and plucked up the bottle of rum from the coffee table. “This is decent swill. Anyway, what about you?”

“Me?”

“Well, you've got your friend with benefits, and aren't you always at that weird little burger restaurant next door?”

“Sometimes. But… I dunno. I'm used to keeping to myself. I'll go out and do stuff, sure, but then I come home alone and watch my shows and listen to my music. I'm used to it.”

“Used to it?”

“I've always been weird, and I've always been conscious that I'm weird. And when you are, you're used to being alone.”

Calvin sat back and drank. “Right.”

“Are you gonna be okay?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You're drinking like an Irishman on St. Patrick's Day.”

“But why do you ask? I mean, what do you care?”

“What…? Why shouldn't I?”

“Because I'm your rich landlord. What do you care what I do? What do you care at all?”

Mort shook his head. “What do I care? You can't possibly drive all the way home if you're gonna be drunk as a skunk.”

“I can do whatever I want. It's my town.”

“Sure, but that won't stop you getting killed on accident.”

“What are you, my mother? Let me have this. Maybe I'll get lucky and something will happen to me.”

“That'd be real unfortunate, Calvin.”

“Yeah? What do you care? What do you care ?”

“Geez, Calvin. What do you mean by that? Of course I care. I feel a little responsible. I am, aren't I? I invited you up here… why don't you just stay here? You wouldn't put me out…”

And really, he'd be glad for the company. Just for someone to exist in the same space as him for a night. He'd sleep on the couch, give Calvin the bed, and feel quite good about the whole thing.

There were tears in Calvin's eye. At least he thought so; they glistened for just a moment before disappearing.

“Calvin?”

The richly dressed landlord looked at him. His hair was all askew, particularly his sideburns were ruffled. There were bags under his eyes, a faint redness to them.

“I didn't know you were lonesome,” he said, again. “Is everyone this lonesome?”

“I don't think so.”

“No, I didn't think so. Alright, well, the way I see it, if it's just you and I, why don't we make the most of it?”

A strange feeling came over Mort then. The most of it? Quite a loaded concept. He didn't have much time to ponder it.

The way it happened was at once slow and swift. Calvin came in. He put his arm about Mort's shoulders, tucking him into his broad side.

“You're quite small, for a mortician.”

Despite the chill of his eye, and the snow white suit he loved so, Calvin was quite warm. It was probably all that liquor, filling him up, making him warm and strange and very, very familiar with his tenant.

And the tenant found himself leaning into him as the wind faintly howled outside, succumbing to his warmth when he remembered the world was growing colder and colder, pressing in on their little honeycomb. Hm, for the air around them was sweet and cloying and… oh, Mort was quite buzzed. He hadn't meant to be, but one thing led to another… and Calvin Fischoeder was a bad influence.

Then he was being grabbed at, his lapel in Calvin's hand, and then his tie, oh… oh, dear…

“Hey,” Mort said, touching the hand that tugged him. “You're a little handsy for such a big guy…”

Of a sudden he was enraptured by Calvin's hand. It had a very blue vein on the back that split and stretched like rivers, running up into his fingers. Plenty of people had veins like that, he'd seen them, but Calvin's were very nice because they were alive; it beat just below his pale flesh, and he felt that he was allowed to touch them. So he did, tracing the slight protrusion over the soft, wrinkled skin.

“Where do you want them?”

Mort looked up into his determined blue eye. “Huh?”

“My hands. Where do you want them? Here?”

Deftly he tugged loose Mort’s dutifully knotted tie. 

“Or… hm…”

That hand of his descended over all the pearly buttons of his white dress shirt to rest at the soft curve of his stomach.

“I fancy this, myself.”

“ Wow …” Mort looked down at himself, sort of disheveled between the drink and the music and the… touching… the fact that Fischoeder's handsome male hand was resting on his belly as though it were a grand prize.

“Tsk, tsk,” Calvin clicked his impatient tongue. “I'm a little antsy, I hope you don't mind, all this liquor… and loneliness…”

A skilled shift of the fingers to Mort's inner thigh really did the trick.

“Calvin?”

He squeezed the little mortician's leg through his trousers.

“My, you're a pudgy fellow, aren't you?”

Heat rose to Mort's cheeks so quickly it felt as though Calvin were putting his cigarettes out on them. Did he… like this? Was he… no, he couldn't be… but was he…?

Calvin's nose brushed his but briefly, then came the upset, the little nuzzling nudge that lifted Mort's head just enough so that Calvin might meet his lips. 

And they were kissing. 

Kissing!

Calvin was very warm, surprisingly gentle, and astoundingly safe; a completely different man than Mort might ever have expected. Paradoxically, the little mortician was scared to death. Different, sure, but Calvin was still a man. In fact, he was very much a man. There was no pretending. He kissed like a man, loved like a man. Mortimer had never known anything like it. How could he? He'd never kissed another man before.

Then Mort was kissing him back, again and again, so that they were locked into a succession of intimate kisses, each tasting the other and reeking of cigarettes and liquor. Until Calvin was taking Mort in his arms, well and truly embracing him there on the couch, cradling him, kissing him, warming him against the threatening howl of outdoor chill.

Oh my God, he thought between kisses and quick breaths. Am I gay? Oh my God. I like this way too much. Way too much!

“Calvin? Hey, you're pretty drunk, huh? C'mon, why don't I- uh, put you to bed?”

Calvin pressed his cheek against Mort's, the stubbly flesh rasping against the mortician's clean-shaven face, pausing in his passion to drunkenly mumble, “I don't need you to…”

“Yeah, you're real tired. And real drunk, right? You don't like me this much. You're just really, really drunk and probably won't remember in the morning because that would be really, really awkward…”

Oh God, but what would Calvin think, waking up in Mort's bed? … well, there was nothing for it. Anyway, Mort would sleep on the couch. Completely normal scenario, nothing homosexual in nature had happened.

“I bet I could,” Calvin mumbled. “Get the old wonder dog up for you.”

“That's quite alright, buddy.”

Mort stumbled his way to the record player and removed the needle. All that buzz was getting to his head; he was afraid what might happen if he let it play. Calvin had really worked him up. The old man was good with his mouth and hands. 

Or maybe they were just too drunk for their own good.

He turned back to Calvin. Like a great polar bear he laid, slumped, on the couch. “Mm,” he grumbled. “Rum’s gone. Got anymore?”

“All out,” Mort lied. 

“Bet if I raided your liquor cabinet I'd find plenty. Why hold out? Let's kill ourselves.”

Mort wanted to laugh off the remark, but his sense of humor turned to stone. “Calvin, I-I think…”

He raised the empty rum bottle. “We await your profound thoughts.”

“I think we should go to bed.”

“Think so?”

“Yeah, um, why don't we?”

He could get Calvin to crash, surely.

The big man held out his hand. “Help me up then. And don't let me crush you, little mortician. If I start falling, make a run for it.”

Mort smiled and came forward, grabbing Fischoeder’s hand. “I'm sure I can manage.”

Getting the big Fisch to his bed was quite simple, for he maintained his footing quite well. But when he tried to gently lay Calvin on his bed, the big fellow kind of flopped over onto the covers.

“Smells like dead people in here,” he remarked. “I'm kidding.”

“Weirdo,” Mort replied.

Suddenly he wasn't sure what to do. Just a couple more kisses from Calvin couldn't hurt but… no, he couldn't want that. Could he? Well, he did want it. But probably he should restrain himself.

Then Calvin managed to sit up on the edge of the bed, right before Mortimer.

“You're a nice little man.”

He started to undo the buttons of the mortician's shirt, beginning from the top and working his way down.

“Even though you haven't got much hair.”

“Calvin,” Mort rested his hands over his landlord's. “Let me use the bathroom real quick.”

“Deliberating, are we? Fine. You'll be back.”

As he had hoped, five minutes in the bathroom spent taking a leak and brushing his teeth was enough to put Calvin to sleep. When he returned to the bedroom, the polar bear of a man was laid back, fast asleep, his arms embracing the empty bottle of rum.

Mort sighed in relief. He could've just said no, but damn, it would've been hard to do. The drink had aroused them both, like a gross love potion for old men.

“Calvin?”

He looked so sad, lying there, a soft nasal whistling filling the empty air.

Mort hoisted his legs up onto the bed, managing to turn him about somewhat so that his head was near the headboard, and situated his heavy head on a pillow. Deeply sleeping, his face was at rest, and a heinous thought shot through Mort's head. Though it were heinous it bore no malicious intent, it was only that he was curious and as a mortician he was used to uncovering people's bodies and viewing the oddities they kept hidden from the public. So it was that he knew he could lift up Calvin's eye patch, if he wanted to.

Do you still have an eye there? I just want to see, that's all.

But he dare not touch even the strap. He knew that even if the intimacy between he and Calvin had been allowed to bloom, the queer landlord would still have kept his eye covered. This was the most private part of him, the most intimate, beyond even his bare flesh, beyond even his genitals.

Still, Mort's hand rested on the stubbly cheek just under the forbidden patch, and he kissed Calvin's visible, intact eye. Just a simple peck upon the heavy eyelid.

“Goodnight. Sleep well.”

Mort walked to the door, but stopped and looked back, just for a moment, savoring a queer thought…

… yeah, he could grow used to the sight of the old white bear in his bed.

Chapter Text

Calvin awoke to a rhythmic pounding in his head. Thank God for the glass of room temperature water and aspirin at his bedside. Inga was taking good care of him.

… or she would be, if this was his house.

There was light beaming against the curtains. And what was that smell? It wasn't any particular smell, but as every person's home smelled different, this place, too, had its own sort of scent, indescribable with how it mingled, but comforting nonetheless. He buried his face in the covers and took a deep breath of it.

I was with that little mortician last night, he remembered, looking down at himself with much confusion. Looks like nothing happened. What a shame. 

A waste of time, really. By the way his tenant had been looking at him he suspected he'd been wanting something or other. Whatever. Maybe he just wasn't an apt judge of character anymore.

Calvin got up and smoothed what little he could of his wrinkled white suit. It was embarrassing, truly; had he lost his touch? Probably he said something heinous, in his drunken states he could get quite rowdy. Clearly he hadn't been kicked out. Or maybe it was his aging body. Well, that had been a concern for some time now. Mort was about the same age, maybe he was the impotent one.

After nursing his hangover the best he could, Calvin got to his feet and went out to the living room. There was the little guy, fast asleep on the sofa, all askew. His tie undone, his shirt half unbuttoned.

Jesus, Calvin, you didn't even get to his belt. No wonder we both just passed out.

Also, why in the world was he sleeping on the sofa? Had he not made it to the guest bedroom? Calvin made his way over to one of the spare rooms and poked his head in. Yes, bed and all, that was certainly a guest bedroom. Why the hell hadn't Mort put him in here?

Unable to answer those questions, he went to stand over Mort, debating whether or not to wake him. He should really just leave. But it was awfully bright outside and his eye couldn't take it right now. Besides, Mort had done a nice thing for him. He didn't know why - probably just to curry favor with his landlord - but it was nice nonetheless. 

If he'd been alone…

Well, he'd be remiss if he didn't say something , and it might be awkward next time Calvin came by for the rent.

He nudged Mort with the empty rum bottle.

“Wake up, little corpse man.”

Mort stirred and blinked at Mr. Fischoeder, then reflexively checked his watch. “Oh, good, it's still early. Ugh,” he rubbed his eyes.

Calvin opened his mouth to announce that he was leaving, but Mort continued.

“Want some coffee?”

“Black?”

“Black.”

“Sure. By the way, why did you sleep on the couch?”

“I-It woulda been rude to leave you on the couch.”

“You have a guest bedroom.”

“... right. I guess I forgot. That's for guests, anyway.”

“ I'm a guest.”

“Well… yeah…” he shrugged. “My bed's bigger.”

“You remembered to leave me water and aspirin but didn't remember you have a guest bedroom?”

Again, Mort just shrugged.

Resigned to the answers, Calvin found himself laxed on the couch again, waiting while the coffee brewed and Mort scrambled a couple of eggs.

It was frighteningly domestic, this little scene. Both of them exhausted, disheveled, having shared the same space for a whole night and eaten together twice now. Calvin having slept in Mort's bed, Mort having received his kisses and caresses. Now struggling for sobriety amidst the scents of brewing coffee and buttery eggs.

Calvin came to stand in the kitchen doorway, watching his tenant work away. Neither of them knew what to say to one another, it would seem. Calvin was displaced by Mort's simultaneous distance and closeness - the fact that he said nothing and yet was making Calvin breakfast. Maybe he was just being polite, Calvin never could tell.

“Would you have lunch with me?” he couldn't believe he was offering when he'd almost left without waking Mort. “At my home.”

“I'd love to,” said Mort, smiling slightly while keeping his eye on the eggs. “But I have a funeral.”

“Mm. Dinner, then?”

“Sure, I'd love that.”

“Are you ashamed?”

Mort looked directly at him then, devoid of amusement. “Um…” he looked back at the eggs, sliding them onto a plate. “Look, Calvin, I- um… we were both drunk last night…” his eyes locked to Calvin's hands. “We were drunk. I-I don't even remember much.”

Mort had felt very nice beneath his hands. Pudgy, soft - his skin was very soft - and he had tasted wondrous, having been warm and liquored up. And willing. Oh, yes, he'd been very willing. It was a wonder they'd not gone further.

“I can help you remember.”

Mort's eyes lit up for a second, then dimmed, shrouded in uncertainty.

“You're not even religious, how can it bother you?”

“I didn't say I'm not religious, I'm just not god-fearing.”

“Are you pagan or something?”

“Jewish.”

“I don't get it.”

“I celebrate the major holidays, though I don't follow kashrut , I just don't…” he shrugged. “Maybe I'm just in too deep with death, you know? I find it hard to firmly believe in that stuff anymore, or to be afraid of it, anyway. But it's still part of me; it nurtured me.” He shook his head, “Being Jewish has little to do with it. Whether you're religious or not, most people get told all their lives that homosexuality is a sin. And like I said, Calvin, we were drunk, anyway.”

Mort poured coffee into two mugs and separated the eggs onto two plates. He took their food to the little table in the kitchen and sat down. Calvin took a seat across from him and started in on the eggs.

“Alright, I'll give you that; we were drunk,” he said, taking a sip of coffee. “This is damn good coffee. Where'd you get it?”

“International market ‘round the block.”

“Hm, I'll have to get some myself, that's seriously gourmet. Anyway, sure, we were drunk last night, but you weren't drunk when you invited me out for dinner, and you sure as hell weren't drunk when you invited me back here.”

“No, I guess not. But we were having a good time and I didn't… want you to go home. I just didn't want you to be alone.”

Calvin scoffed, “That's it, then. You pity me.”

“No. I feel bad for you but it's not the same thing.”

The reality of it lingered between them. Then truly, Mort was the only one who knew what exactly Calvin's problem was, that it wasn't just grief. And maybe that was why Mortimer was being so nice to him.

Calvin could've thrown the coffee in his face and left, leaving himself to his own devices. Wasn't that what he wanted? For the alternating pain and numbness to just go away?

“Look, Mortimer,” he grumbled. “I don't really know what your problem is, whether you actually like me or not. But I'm just dead weight for you.”

“Hey, Calvin, don't say that.”

“Why not?”

“It isn't true. I do like you, I always have.”

“Always? Really?”

“Of course. Hey, c'mon, let's have dinner tonight, okay? We'll really make the evening something special.”

“Alright,” he softly conceded. “At seven?”

“Seven’s perfect. I'll be there.”

“Should I pick you up?”

“No need, I'll drive myself, but thanks for the offer.”

Calvin slowly drank the rest of his coffee and poked at a few crumbs of egg with his fork. Time to go, to leave the little mortician to his day job, to his own life.

“Right, well, I'll be going.”

He stood and tried again to smooth his suit. Then he looked at Mort, expectantly, wanting for a good-bye. 

Mort smiled, “Have a good day, Calvin, it'll be seven before you know it!”

Calvin braced himself and reached for the doorknob.

“A-and by the way,” Mort continued. “I'll bring wine myself, in compensation for the dinner. I've got one real nice vintage I've been saving for a special occasion.”

Calvin swallowed a sardonic chuckle. “Perfect. I'll see you later, then?”

Though sort of visibly perplexed by the request for affirmation, Mort nodded.

Calvin nodded back. “See you later.”

Chapter Text

It was the expectation, the fact that Calvin had been given an objective, that kept him going throughout the preparation for dinner during Mort's funeral. It made him shower and exchange his wrinkled suit for a fresh one. Making himself presentable again made him feel a little better.

As well, he ate lunch. A fine little spread; garlic butter chicken cut into elegant slices, a romaine salad drizzled with Italian dressing, sprinkled with parmesan, and cold gin to wash it down.

Though he started to fidget with the tablecloth; a white lace monstrosity.

“Inga,” he called. “Would you be so kind as to burn this tablecloth? It's irredeemably drab.”

“Shows what you know, Calvin,” she said.

When he strolled back in as six o’ clock rolled around, he noticed the antique mat was gone. Good riddance.

Now they were down to the wire. Calvin paced around the house, assuring that not a fiber was out of place, and snapping to Inga when there was.

“If I didn't know better,” the maid said. “I'd think you were courting someone again.”

“Maybe,” he grumbled. “So don't ruin it for me, alright?” Then he released a pent up sigh. “Sorry, Inga, I'm not trying to be mean, but just make a point not to hang over us tonight. When dinner is done and you've cleaned up, I'd prefer if you left the house.”

She raised a brow. “Are they that insecure?”

“Call it nervous, maybe even uncertain. Just please, keep your distance.”

“Is it that burger man?”

Fischoeder quickly shook his head. “No, but it's still a blue collar fellow. You know how poor people get when the help is about, it makes ‘em nervous. They don't know what to do with themselves, they're always looking to lift a finger.”

In truth it was less that Mort was poor and more the idea that they might be “caught”, so to speak. “Observed” might be a better word, but it wasn't quite right for Calvin. He had no problem being observed. Being caught on the other hand… well, that word harbored a threat, even if it were of a bygone time. To be observed was innocent enough; to be caught implied a crime. It was pure paranoia in this situation, sure, but there could be no harm in having the utmost privacy.

At last, just a few minutes before seven - delightfully punctual - there was a knock on his door.

Calvin fidgeted around in the parlor while Inga welcomed Mort and took his coat. Then he braced himself and stepped into the foyer.

Bereft of his coat, Mortimer stood in the elegant craftsmanship of a finely tailored, if slightly old fashioned, royal purple suit.

“Hey, Calvin,” Mort said, plainly conscious of his dress.

“Well, aren't you stunning.”

“Sorry if it's a bit much, but uh, you know, special occasion and all… I thought I might wear my best suit.”

“It's very nice. Where did you get it?”

“I had a client that couldn't decide on what suit to dress their father in, so they left it up to me and then left me the other suit. ‘Course it had to be taken in.”

“Shortened, I'm sure.”

Mort chuckled, “I'm not that short, you know.”

“You're shorter than me.”

“Plenty of people are shorter than you.”

Calvin absent-mindedly rocked back and forth on his feet, trying to remember his manners, whatever was left of them. “So, how was the funeral?”

“Oh, it was good. Biker gangs have the best funerals.”

Calvin chuckled at that. “Well, I bet you're hungry.”

“Starving! What's for dinner?”

They'd start with a nice veal consommé, then a romaine salad with a raspberry vinaigrette, and lastly a hearty steak, dripping with juices. Not to mention the wine.

Mort had brought along a thirty year vintage, dark red. The aroma itself was enough to buzz Calvin's boozehound brain.

“I cannot tell you how relieved I am that none of this is pork, I should've been more specific when I was telling you about kashrut , it just didn't seem like the right time, and then it didn't occur to me until I was literally on my way here.”

“Oh, so you don't eat pork.” Calvin was still confused about the terminology but he didn't think it prudent to ask questions.

“Absolutely not. It's pretty much the only thing I don't eat. It's gross anyway, why would I bother?”

Mort attacked the dinner like a polite hyena. As Calvin slowly ate the excellent quality of food that he was used to, he watched with his singular eye as the mortician stuffed himself. A smile cracked his lips, and he felt much like that Ghost of Christmas Present must feel; jolly, in the moment, full and very happy. For that singular, fleeting moment of the present that he was continuously a part of, everything was golden, gilded, glowing. Maybe it was just the wine. Truly, this was a very special occasion.

“You know,” Calvin began. “I haven't done this in a long time.”

“What, had someone over?”

“Yeah. It's… nice.” He sat there for a moment, eating the consommé and stewing in the presence of another human being, one who saw him.

“So, you're really gonna sell this place?”

“Hm…”

Calvin's eye traveled over the ceiling, the walls, and down to the floor as he sipped the heady wine. In every fiber was a memory, down to the floorboards which had supported his feet time and time again, and soaked up his blood when Felix had come at him with the knife. Pain hit his old wound with a pang, right in the eye.

“Yes,” he slowly said. Then the notion struck him, “Would you like to hear something morbid?”

“Would I!”

“It happened right there,” he pointed to the particular boards, now covered by a Persian rug. “ That spot was where I lost my eye.”

The amusement in Mort's face had been replaced by wonder, by sympathy, but not horror. He looked at the spot, chewing his last morsel of steak. Calvin figured he was imagining a bright blue eye, and an exact copy of the living one, in a pool of blood on the floor.

Then Mort looked back at him, “Your whole eye? The whole organ, I mean?”

Calvin smiled. “That'd be quite the scene, wouldn't it? I think my mother would've actually fainted. But it wasn't as dramatic as all that, unfortunately. I bled, that's for sure, and was blinded, but that old thing-” he tapped his temple. “It's still in there.”

Mort swallowed hard, apparent by the fluctuation of his throat.

He's curious, Calvin thought. How could he not be?

“I bet you want to see it, don't you?”

“I-If you're offering…”

“Hm,” Calvin looked about the room again, and the amusement deserted him as the memories played. “I guess if I sell this place the eye must be included. It's as much a part of the house as that clock on the mantle, or the pictures on the walls. Hm…”

“Then you shouldn't sell.”

“Why not?”

“It's a part of you. It belongs to you. This place, I mean.”

Calvin shrugged. “People sell their kidneys, willingly or no. But that is the worst of it, I think; that it's a part of me, my own organ.” He rubbed the cheek under the patch. “It was an accident.”

“Of course it was.”

Calvin shook his head. “No, Felix was responsible , of course, but it was an accident.”

“... Felix did that to you?”

“Sure. He was my brother.”

“Wh- um…”

“Are you an only child, Mort?”

“Yes, but-”

“Then you can't understand.”

The mortician fell silent for a moment. “You're right, I guess I can't. You're not even mad at him?”

“No. It was an accident. No one else believes me when I say that, not even Felix did, but it was.”

“I believe you. It's your eye; if you say it was an accident, then it is.”

Calvin regarded him warmly, and felt the sorrow rising up in him. The waves came in over his head, choking him, threatening to drown him. The rich dinner was weighing him down, making him sleepy and susceptible.

“Why don't we retire to the parlor?”

Mort conceded quickly, “Sure.”

The parlor was warm and cozy, a little heady, as though one were stepping into a glass of bourbon, well warmed by the owner's palm. The furniture was somewhat stiff, sort of like Mort's had been; unused to being sat in.

They found residence on the sofa, and Calvin lit two cigars for them from the box on the end table. Encased in smoke and incandescent amber light, they spoke easily, freely, as though the only thing that had ever been between them was a matter of distance.

“It's hard,” Calvin said. “Liking people. Father never told me that it would be, he probably wanted me to learn for myself. But it is hard and… when you like someone it can be even harder to get along with them. Am I making any sense?”

“Sure, I think I get it. Because when you actually like someone you don't want to scare them away.”

“Right.” 

That wasn't really what Calvin was getting at, but he couldn't explain what his actual problem was. Or maybe Mort was right, and he was just being too picky on defining the issue. He didn't know, and maybe if he couldn't put his finger on it it just wasn't worth arguing about. He took a long dreg of the cigar to remedy the pause between them.

“I always feel guilty,” he continued. “Just a little bit. I teased Felix half to death-” he almost choked on his own tongue then. “Ahem, but um… he got jealous very easily. Especially over people, and being respected and whatnot. The only time he ever had girlfriends was when his pockets were full. And you know what? The little chap didn't even like girls. Anyway, he'd get upset whenever I brought someone home, a-and I felt guilty because… I felt… bad for him.”

There was that lump in his throat again. He squeezed his eyes shut tight. Damn it. What's your problem? Can't talk about a dead man without crying your eyes out?

“Anyway, doesn't matter. He's dead. So it doesn't matter anymore.”

“Calvin,” Mort began. “Do you… want to talk about Felix?”

“No.”

“Alright.”

Silence lingered between them, so terrible that Calvin had no choice but to put an end to it.

“He's all I think about.”

“Of course,” Mort softly said. “He was your brother.”

“I have… so many regrets. I never thought I would, but… then again, I'd always imagined dying first. I was supposed to. Then Felix would've been an only child, and he would've had everything he wanted. And I know he would've missed me, but he'd be in less pain then than I am now. Aren't rich people only supposed to have regrets on their own deathbed?”

“Well, that seems to generally be the case. But a lot of rich people don't seem to care about anyone around them. What do you regret?”

“I don't know. Everything, maybe. I don't know.”

“... was Felix happy?”

Calvin looked into the gentle mortician's eyes. “I-I don't know.” Then he shook his head, “Look, I don't want to talk about it, alright? I want to forget, just for a while, and that's what you're here for.”

“I'm here for you .”

“Don't get sentimental now, Mortimer, save it ‘til I start fondling you at least…” he snuffed out the remainder of his cigar in an ashtray and cupped the little mortician's face in one hand. “Now, don't you dare think less of me.”

“For what?”

“For everything. My grief, my tears; however they come, don't think less of me.”

“I couldn't,” he reached over and put out his cigar too. “I'm a mortician for God's sake. But Calvin, what are you doing?”

“Holding onto you, for as long as I can.”

“As long as you can?”

“Until you leave me.”

“I won't-”

“And don't bother lying. I know the truth. One day you'll walk right out that door,” he pointed to the front. “I've seen it, again and again. You'll go back the way you came, everyone always does… and I know it'll be my fault. That's the worst thing; being alone. But I've come to realize that that's what the universe wants for us all… or some of us, anyway.”

Of a sudden Mort had embraced him, hugging him tightly about the shoulders. Calvin let himself be held for a moment only out of surprise, before he pulled back. But he could not escape entirely.

For Mort's eyes had caught his, those that were warm and brown, the saccharinity of molasses in the soft parlor light. Calvin kissed him on the crow's feet, creasing his tender eyes; then on his flushed cheek, hot to the touch; then came his lips, which proved to be as wanting as Calvin’s own.

“Should I stop?” he paused to whisper against the mortician's gentle laugh lines.

Words faltered on Mort's lips as he pressed them into Calvin's.

I didn't think so, he smuggly thought.

Despite his excuses, Mort was easy; easy to kiss, easy to tease, easy to…

… love?

He bit down on Mort's lip, not enough to draw blood but enough to give him a start, and he grabbed him by his lapels so that he could not pull away. Desperation is often mistaken for cruelty, as desperate men are prone to violence. But Mortimer dug into him in kind, sharing his liquors, his passion, clutching at Calvin as though he could not bear the thought of his destiny, that which the old landlord had foretold.

“Stop that,” Calvin said, swatting his hands away.

“I-I wanna touch you…”

“Why?”

“Because…”

“So, you admit it? That you like this? Or are you “just drunk”?”

“Oh, geez, Calvin,” Mort shook his head and tried to turn away. “You don't gotta tease me. Alright! I do. I do like it. Isn't it hard for you, too?”

“Sure. But we're alone, you know. I sent my housemaid home.”

He clung tightly to Mort, but loosened his grip so that his big hands might traverse the smaller man's body. Every inch of him was delectably soft to the touch, so that he was quite certain Mort would melt on his tongue when it came to it. Particularly he enjoyed the fat of Mort's chest and stomach, and those shapely bits on the back he could feel when his hands found their way up under the purple suit jacket. All over, caressing him, warming him…

“Mortimer,” he cupped the mortician's pectorals through the white cotton button-up. “Have you really never been fondled?”

“F-f…?”

“Fondled,” the word rolled from his tongue lackadaisically so that Mort might have time to taste it.

He had to think about it, but he shook his head nonetheless.

Calvin's thumb and forefinger of each hand slowly came together to pinch the little fellow's nipples. He didn't cry out or anything, didn't really even make a sound, and a look of confusion in place of pleasure played on his face.

“So, you were telling the truth,” Calvin said, rolling the clothed flesh between his fingers. “That's too bad. But not for me. Now I get the pleasure of awakening you. I've found that plenty of people don't know how sensitive these little tidbits can be. That is, until an experienced fellow can put them to the test.”

“Really?”

“I wouldn't lie to you. The fact of the matter is that one must be very gentle. Little ecstasies of the body must be nurtured.”

Most of the time Calvin was pretty impatient when it came to intercourse. But now… some sort of tenderness had overcome him. Call it fondness, for he was very warm in every inch of himself; incredibly fond of Mort's soft little body, yet to experience the distinct pleasure of another man. They were both old, and yet Mortimer was new. This didn't surprise Calvin, no. From the moment his palm had graced Mort's warmth - particularly that of his plump thigh, oh, now he was starting to get impatient - he knew that the little mortician had been quite neglected. It was not uncommon. For a man in Mort's profession, Fischoeder thought it must be standard.

Calvin leaned in, catching his soft lips again as one hand cupped his breast and the other undid his tie and unbuttoned his shirt, tugging the white cotton from its snug place about Mort's middle.

“Mm, there we are,” Calvin whispered as his hands explored Mort's girth. “My, my, look at you. So soft and pudgy, like a little penguin.”

In one hand he caught and lightly squeezed a roll of fat, making Mort release a barely audible squeak. He couldn't tell if it were one of pleasure or discomfort.

“Oh, but I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I? Always so damn impatient. Where was I?”

His hands came back up Mort's smooth body, returning to his chest. There he gently and diligently rubbed him, and his kisses began to travel down Mort's neck. Such a tender trail down his soft and softest skin, silken as though richly treated, almost sweetly smelling. To the clavicle he gave a gentle nip, then his lips were over the chest, and finally!

At this point Calvin had leaned him back against the arm of the couch, so that he was at the perfect angle for his attack. His mouth found one of Mort's nipples, and began to thoroughly treat him. It's an easy thing, pleasuring a man's otherwise useless teats; he could viciously suck and bite to his heart's content, for they were not as tender as they appeared. Rather, the more abuse they took, the better they felt.

But Calvin was not so ravenous with his new partner. There was plenty of time to sink his teeth into Mortimer's soft flesh… and plenty of places.

Little sounds of pleasure were beginning to rise from Mort, and he squirmed. “C-Calvin?”

“Mm,” Fischoeder paused to swap mouth with fingers, gently tugging and twisting. “Finally awake now?”

“I-I think…”

Mort's face was beet red, and for good reason. As Calvin was pressed right up against him, he felt something firm prodding his own belly.

“I see,” the big man said with some shred of wonder. “Well, then, we'd better tend to that.”

Mort's eyes widened, big as pies. Calvin thought they might fall out of his skull; then they would have only one eye between them. What a funny couple that would make.

“I d-don’t think…” Mort cleared his throat. “I-I-I mean, is that wise?”

“Well, there's only one solution for it. Don't worry! Haven't I been painfully gentle this whole time?”

Calvin's hand left Mort's nipple, but he gave it a few clinging kisses before his palm was pressing against what had poked him.

“I'm even a little impressed; it's a decent size for a little man.”

“C-Calvin,” Mort straightened up slightly. “Can I ask you something?”

“Is it important? I'm trying to fuck you.”

Mort blurted it out before he could be overcome by bashfulness, “What does this mean for us?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Like what… what are we?”

“We're men,” he grumbled, giving Mort's crotch a squeeze. “I thought that was obvious.”

“Well, yeah, but-”

Calvin silenced him with kisses. 

Shut up, he thought. You're ruining it. For just a few minutes I didn't have to think, and there you go asking stupid questions, fretting over semantics. 

He filled his hands with Mort's body, plush and warm, and tried to forget that there were unsolved intimacies between them. And he was worried, for Mort's question confirmed to him that there was more between them than sentimental talk and some heavy petting. Or was there? Maybe he was taking Mort's open ended question too seriously. Then again, why had he asked it in the first place if he hadn't meant something by it?

“I'm sorry,” Mort said when they parted for air. “I didn't mean anything. You're being really nice to me, I guess I'm just… scared.”

“Of me?”

“No, of course not. It's just a lot, I mean woof …”

Before he could work the mortician into euphoria, he began to wonder what he was doing here.

As in, what was the point? And what would they do when the act was over? He was guilty again, as though he'd let his loins do the thinking and been caught in the act, despite the fact he'd made damn sure they were the only people on the premises.

Then there were the softest hands cupping his face, the smoothest thumbs caressing his cheeks. And maybe there were tears being gingerly wiped away, he didn't care to know, because one of those thumbs came too close and brushed just the brim of his eye patch.

Calvin reared back. “Stop it.”

“What's wrong?”

“ Don't touch me. Is that understood?”

“But you've been touching me this whole time,” he scoffed. “Y-you were about to-”

“Me touching you, that's my business. Me being touched is no one's business. So just keep your little paws to yourself.”

“When's it gonna be my turn?”

Calvin stood up and clapped his hands together. “Um, never. Never ever.”

“I don't get it, Calvin. Not to be rude, but what the hell?”

“I don't want you to touch me.”

“Why not? I'm not that gross. Look, I touch dead bodies but I wash my hands.”

“It's not a “you” problem…”

Now he felt even more guilty, leaving Mort lying there all disheveled. What was that thing people were supposed to do? Take care of each other? Now, that was frightening.

“It's not you,” he mumbled. “I like you, Mort. Maybe I like you too much.”

“How's that?”

“Why have you gotta ask all these stupid questions?”

“Because… I-I'm your mortician.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Look, it is my job, you know. Making interpersonal connections. And I don't mean to brag, but I am good at it. Now, my clients don't usually have sex with me, but this is just about the same thing. Okay? I… I like you, too. Maybe too much, too, because you're not only my client but you're also my landlord, and you own just about everything around here to the point that you could make my life a living hell if you wanted. You don't think that terrifies me? Maybe it just didn't occur to you.”

Fischoeder regarded him gently. “No, it didn't occur to me.”

Mortimer considered him a moment. “You're scared too, huh?”

“I'm not scared.”

“Sure. Why don't you come here?”

Calvin fluttered his hands. “You'll start touching me again.”

“I'll keep them to myself, I promise. Come down, won'tcha?”

Cautiously, Calvin lowered himself back onto the sofa.

“It's because I touched your eye patch. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to.”

“You didn't look, did you? When I was passed out at your place, you didn't-”

“No.”

“I guess I believe you.”

“Please do.”

“Alright, I do.”

He looked back at Mort's soft, pear-shaped body.

Mort patted his belly. “It's all yours, handsy-man. I won't touch.”

Calvin embraced him and laid his head on the softness of Mort's chest. There he could hear the little man's steady heartbeat, warm and red right against his ear. He took up Mort's limp hand, and held it to his lips.

“God,” Calvin groaned. “You're so soft. How are you so soft?”

“I'll, uh, tell you some other time.”

He didn't have the energy to demand an answer, he only kept kissing the soft little fingers and the tender palm and the silky skin on the back of the hand that was loose over the bones and veins.

“I'm really lonely, Mort. That's probably obvious. And I know you'll leave eventually, but… do you think you could stay awhile? If you even just stay the night, I think that would mean the world to me.”

“Of course, Calvin.”

“Mm. That's good. That's good…”

He wanted nothing more than to kiss the mortician long into the night, but his consciousness was drifting despite his desires. Normally he'd have to drink much more than this to even fathom falling asleep. Something about Mort's warmth was like a tranquilizer, and Calvin was quite drugged up.

Chapter Text

The worst thing about having Calvin Fischoeder’s head on his chest was that he couldn't tell anyone. Well, he could , but why bother? Why face the queer looks and snide remarks when this sleepy moment could live unchallenged in his memory for the rest of his life?

Mort knew he was right to be afraid, even if it was unnecessary. He had a feeling the few people in his life would understand, and even be glad of his newfound companionship. His mother loved him, she’d be happy for him. And the Belchers! They'd probably find it weird that Mr. Fischoeder was the man in his life, but he knew Bob and Linda's opinion on that kind of thing.

But Calvin hadn't given him a straight answer. What are they? Every word Mort tried to put to them seemed strange or inappropriate. Partners, boyfriends, companions, lovers -

… was this love?

He rested a hand on Calvin's shoulder. The couch hadn't been the most comfortable place to sleep - Mort was still pretty tired - but he liked being under the big man. Maybe he just liked how much Calvin doted on his little body, on the soft parts that he could never get to go away that people weren't supposed to have if you listened to all those diet and exercise campaigns. If Calvin loved him soft and round, maybe that was alright.

I'm probably just confused, he thought. We like each other, that doesn't mean anything serious.

He couldn't be sure, though, when Calvin's warmth penetrated his body and curled up right inside his heart. He wanted nothing more than to hold the big man close, his arms about the nice white suit, his head on Calvin's shoulder.

Sigh.

He stirred then, shifting his silver head and releasing the smallest groan. Mort removed his hand.

“Calvin?”

“Hm?”

“Did you sleep alright?”

There was a pause, then Calvin lifted his head to look at him. “You're still here?”

“Aha, uh, yeah. Sh-should I not be?”

“Well, probably not, but um…” he scoffed. “How did you manage to fall sleep?”

Mort shrugged.

“Geez,” he sat up, holding his head in one hand. “Ah… that smarts…”

Mort started to button up his shirt and tuck it back in. “Want some water? And an aspirin? If I can find ‘em, that is.”

“Water's fine, I'll take the aspirin later. I didn't even drink that much.”

“No,” Mort said, standing up. “But you've been drunk for weeks.”

“Mm.”

He found the small kitchen off the dining room and got Calvin a glass of water. When he returned to the parlor, the big man was all stretched out on the sofa, having fallen back to sleep with his neck at an awkward angle.

“Took my spot,” Mort mumbled.

He debated on waking him. The heavy rise and fall of his chest was somehow handsome, and he thought of something he'd once heard a mafioso say at a eulogy, describing his friend as “a man with a belly”. In a figurative sense it meant a man able to inspire fear in his fellow men, but to Mortimer it was deeper, and also quite literal.

A sudden fondness overcame him, as the tide comes in and crashes into one repeatedly, thrusting their head underwater again and again, relentless; as the water filled his lungs and dragged him down, he knew - as sure as he knew the finality of death - that he was in love with Calvin Fischoeder.

“Calvin?”

He knelt down next to the great polar bear, and gently poked his shoulder.

Calvin stirred then, lifting his great head and rubbing the back of his neck.

“Hey there,” Mort said, smiling. “I-I didn't wanna leave you like that, looked real uncomfortable. And I guess I shouldn't leave without saying goodbye.”

Calvin took the glass in hand, but didn't drink it. There was something wrong with his singular blue eye.

“Ah, geez, Calvin…”

Mort leaned in. A little peck on the lips, that's all it was. But it turned into a series of pecks.

“Not yet,” Calvin whispered between kisses. “Not just yet.”

Then his kisses were full and warm, still liquor filled, heavy and tragic, as though Mort were already gone and he was kissing a memory.

“ Calvin… ”

He clutched the back of Mort's head, intertwining his fingers with the silky gray hair-

Then he stopped abruptly.

“... are you… wearing a toupée?”

“Ahaha… y-yeah?”

“Why?”

“It, uh, well, it… serves a lot of purposes.” He adjusted it slightly. “Look, let's forget the hairpiece for a second- I'm not leaving you, Calvin. I just- I-I don't live here, is all. It's not my house. I-I gotta go home and do my job.”

“Oh, right, you have one of those.”

“What do you do all day?”

“Nothing, if I can help it.”

“That sounds… fun? You wanna come over tonight? I don't know if you liked my place all that much, but-”

“Yes. I'll come over. I'll, uh, get… food?”

“Take-out?”

“Sure, that sounds poor.”

Mort chuckled, “Sure, we'll alternate between rich night and poor night.”

Calvin suddenly cupped his face in one hand, gently stroking his cheek with his thumb. “I could kiss you all damn day, do you know that?”

“I figured as much.”

“And long into the night,” he drawled, all debauched and dangerous.

“C-Calvin, I-I-I…”

But Mort stopped himself. Somehow he knew that love confessions weren't the sort of things rich people wanted to hear. And though Calvin was transfixed by him, whether that be through flesh or philosophy, it would be dangerous and even cruel to admit such a thing when poor old Mr. Fischoeder was all wrapped up in grief. He didn't have the spare emotions to process such a thing.

“... I really should be going…”

Besides, he was sure Calvin didn't love him back, or even that the old landlord was capable of such feelings.

“You should?”

“Not that I want to…” he sighed. The question was painful, but it must be posed, “Calvin, what are we?”

The big man was oddly still for a second. Mort expected him to groan and grumble something, or at least roll his eyes. But he gave it genuine thought before giving a characteristic huff.

“Why don't we just call it “friends”? And if that isn't quite right for you, “friends with benefits”. Though, we haven't gotten to the benefits yet…”

I love you, he thought, all sick with it. He wanted to kiss him again, to ruffle his pretty silver sideburns and bury his face in his great chest. Such a big, cold, sad man; he wanted to warm him, to feed him, nurse him back to health and promise him that everything would be alright.

Calvin locked eyes with him then, and Mort turned away, his cheeks flushed and his heart all aflutter.

“I won't tell anyone,” Calvin said. “No one has to know.”

Mort wanted to refute him, but he took the false interpretation of his action as an excuse. “That's for the best.”

It probably was, for now, just until they could figure out what they really wanted.

He started to worry about Calvin the moment he stepped outside. The wind bit him hard, digging into his cheeks and numbing the tip of his nose. Thankfully the hearse heated up fast; he needed to dig out his winter coat when he got home. It would snow soon. Winter was a hard enough time for him, let alone someone who'd just lost his brother. But he didn't have as much freedom as Calvin; he had to work, make his own living.

No work and all play gives Calvin plenty of time to do something impulsive. But I invited him to dinner tonight. If I just keep giving him something to look forward to, maybe everything will be okay.

Though he had to admit, it frightened him how sad Calvin would suddenly get. Not unusual for a grieving man, but still worrisome. If there was only something more he could do…

Of a sudden, his cell phone dinged. Still parked along the sidewalk, he looked at the new text message. 

It was from Samantha.

Chapter Text

The first thing Mort tried to do when he returned home was catch a quick nap. Naturally, he couldn't keep his eyes shut. He squirmed with thoughts of Calvin, of his kisses and caresses, of his bigness, and his sonorous encouragement and compliments.

“Little ecstasies of the body must be nurtured.”

Mort slid a hand up to his chest, casually brushing his nipple. It did feel sensitive. It was like Calvin's fingers were still there, gently rubbing and tugging. Even alone, in the dark of his own bedroom, Mort could feel the red burning his cheeks. Particularly he remembered how he had stiffened, his member pressing against Calvin's big belly. And of course, Calvin's offer to tend to him.

He wondered how he would have done it. Mort didn't lack an imagination and he knew a thing or two, even if it were only a thing or two. Maybe he'd seen a handful of gay pornos, so what? That didn't prepare anyone for their own peculiarities and desires. It had hindered him more than anything. A lot of it looked painful, and he was no good at experimenting. Maybe if he'd ever had someone to guide him…

He had the notion that Calvin was willing to try.

But he wanted to do something, not just lie there like a dead fish. Although, that was probably what Calvin wanted, seeing as how he wouldn't be touched. 

If he ever makes an exception, I have to be good. Better than good, I've gotta be the best he's ever had. Can I do that? I don't even know what I'm doing.

Mort made himself get out of bed, leaving all the odd and shameful thoughts under the covers. He didn't know what his problem was; the human body was one of the things in all the world that he understood best, why were the intimacies suddenly so difficult?

He made himself a pot of coffee and drank it steadily throughout the morning while he kept busy with calls and paperwork. After responding to Samantha's request for company, they settled on having lunch together, which he looked forward to. Then tonight he'd have a comfortable dinner with Calvin, and probably they'd get up to something. 

Yeah, it was nice having stuff to look forward to.

Lunchtime rolled around and Mort hopped on over to Bob's Burgers. Not exactly romantic, but it wasn't meant to be.

Bob's mild surprise that Mort had taken a booth rather than a place at the bar amused him.

“Can I just get a cup of coffee for the time being?” Mort asked. “I'm waiting on my date.”

“Oh! Who's your date?”

“Remember Samantha? From our double date at Jimmy Pesto's.”

“Sorta, I was a little drunk toward the end of the night.”

“Anyway we've been seeing each other on and off since then, and I invited her to lunch today.”

“That's sweet,” Bob said, setting two menus on the table. “So you're… dating?”

“Not exactly. More like “friends with benefits”, you know.”

“I-I don't, but I'm sure you guys must have fun, you two really seemed to get along.”

“Yeah, ‘s too bad there's not many single morticians around here. Or maybe it's good for my business, anyway.”

Thankfully there's plenty of single landlords.

Samantha wasn't long in arriving. She smiled when she saw him and slipped into the booth across from him. “Hey, it's been a while!”

“Yeah, sorry about that, I've been pretty busy.”

“Oh, it's not your fault, I've been busy too. Tis the season, huh?”

“ That's for sure.”

Bob took their orders. Two burgers-of-the-day with fries and a soda for Samantha.

“You know, we've never had lunch before,” she said. “Only dinner and then… well…”

“Haha, yeah. Listen, I, uh, gotta… talk to you about that…”

He thought he saw something pass the window, big and white. But he blinked and convinced himself that he was just tired.

“Um…”

“Is something wrong?”

Samantha was really sweet, and they got along so well. He didn't think he'd be breaking her heart or anything, but it was still a tough conversation to have.

“It's kind of complicated, but I think I might've… found someone.”

She smiled slightly and leaned in, elbows on the table. “What's so complicated about that?”

“Well, he's- ahem, he's a-a client, and in mourning, and he's… also my landlord.”

There was a clatter in the kitchen like someone had just dropped some utensils and a softly muttered “dammit”.

“That's that guy who owns the wharf, right?” She asked. “Mr. Fischoeder? He's loaded. ”

“Sure, but he's also sad and kinda nice…” Mort anxiously rubbed the back of his neck.

It wasn't like he and Samantha hadn't been intimate. They'd talked often and knew plenty about one another. Maybe that was what made the conversation harder.

“I like you a lot,” Mort said. “But we've both agreed to be friends. And we still can be, I'd love to be! Just… without the sex. I don't know where it's going with him, but I wouldn't want him to feel like I'm two-timing over here, ya know?”

“No, no, I totally understand!” Samantha said. “I'm happy for you. If you really like him that much you should go for it. But, listen, my only advice - and you already know this but I'm gonna say it anyway - is that people are different while they're grieving. I'm not trying to convince you to stay away from him or anything like that, I just think you should be careful.”

“You're absolutely right.”

While they paused conversation to sip their drinks, Bob brought them their food.

“Here you go, two burgers-of-the-day with fries. Let me know if you need anything else!”

“Where's Linda and the kids?” Mort asked. “You're all by your lonesome.”

“She's picking the kids up from school. All three of them got detention. She should've been back by now, so that's…” he sighed. “Worrisome.”

“Ah, geez. Well, kids'll be kids, I guess.”

“That's for sure. You, uh, enjoy your food, Mort and… Samantha.”

He returned to the kitchen and the two of them ate in comfortable silence.

“The other thing,” Samantha began after swallowing a bite of burger. “Is that you gotta worry about what's gonna happen if something goes wrong. Like, he's your rich landlord, what'll he do?”

“Right, I've… been thinking about that.”

“Say you get into a big argument and he hikes up your rent,” she picked up a ketchup covered fry between her fingers. “ Or just kicks you out. That’s the kind of guy you don't even have to live with for that to happen.”

“Yeah…”

“In his world you're just a little fish. He could totally just-” she crushed the fry in her fist. “Well, that just… made a mess, I don't know why I did that…”

“Very graphic,” Mort chuckled and handed her a napkin. “But yeah, I know, it worries me. Still, we don't even know what we have yet. Everything's moving pretty slow.”

That was a lie; things could hardly be moving faster. But he needed to convince himself that this venture wasn't completely insane. Quite unfortunately he'd already fallen in love; all there was for it was to tread carefully.

Suddenly his phone began to ring. He looked down at the caller ID to see the word “landlord” across the screen. Oh, he should probably change that contact name.

He picked up. “Hello?”

“Little mortician?”

“Yeah, hi, C-Calvin, what's- uh, what's going on?”

“Where are you?”

“Having lunch.”

“Dammit. Okay, where?”

“Whyyyy are you asking?”

“Well I'm at your crematorium and you're not here.”

“O-outside?”

“Yes. Where are you?”

He glanced up at Samantha, then at the door.

“... Mort?”

“I'm… at Bob's.”

“Oh, I should've checked there.”

He hung up before Mort could say anything more. Then Calvin Fischoeder walked right in through the front door, smiled when he spotted him, and came to his booth.

“I guess I'm too late, but I brought you lunch-”

Just then he noticed Samantha. His singular blue eye searched the two of them. Beneath it Mort felt very small, and very, very guilty.

“Say, mortician, who's this?”

“S-Samantha.”

“Samantha,” he said, slowly, deliberately. “Mort's told me about you. A lady mortician, eh? What a time we live in! I thought all morticians were bleak little old men. How's the dead treating you?”

She smiled. “As good as they can! They were nice enough to give me a break so I could come have lunch with Mort.”

“How nice.”

“Calvin,” Mort said. “I, uh, I'm sorry about the… lunch. I had no idea you were coming.”

“Well, it was meant as a surprise,” he shrugged. “Hey, don't let me ruin your time. Mort the mortician keeps a tight schedule, I'll remember that for next time.” He nodded to Samantha, “Female mortician.”

With that, he was off.

“He's a big sexy boy,” Samantha said. “I can see the appeal.”

“Oh my God, he's gonna kill me,” Mort put his head in his hands. “You were right, and he's gonna kick me out and then kill me, ohhhh my God…”

“It'd be more convenient if he killed you first, I mean the morgue is right downstairs.” She laughed, “Really, Mort! You're fine, he seemed fine, he's not gonna kill you. I mean if he has a problem with us having lunch you can just tell him why.”

“Yeah, that's true…”

His panic subsided slightly, but he still wasn't sure how Calvin was going to take it. He tried to finish his lunch, but having lost his appetite he only got about halfway. Samantha was glad to finish his food, leaving only a couple fries in her wake. Mort sipped his coffee, thinking long and hard about Calvin, about Samantha, about all the romantic relationships in his life, if they could be called that.

Largely he'd been single. Fresh out of high school, while he was studying mortuary science, he got into a two year relationship with another student. Much like he and Samantha, they had thoroughly enjoyed one another's company. The relationship itself was the hard part. Lots of arbitrary arguments. And she wanted kids, one of those nuclear family type deals, and that repulsed him, frightened him. It always had. And he didn't really know why . Maybe because that's the kind of thing normal people want, and for whatever reason Mort couldn't find it in himself to settle for it. He was hardly in love, anyway. If he had been, maybe he'd have settled for that sort of set up. Maybe he'd be crammed into that mold of normalcy, never to be himself again.

Hm, yeah, that was what frightened him.

After that he was on and off with some people. One night stands were few and far between, but the typical kind of release Mort had come to expect. And sure, he was lonely, but it was better than deluding oneself.

“I gotta get going,” Samantha said, rummaging in her wallet and putting down her half of the bill and tip. “It was nice talking to you again, Mort, it always is. I'm really glad you didn't just ghost me.”

She got up, put on her coat, and came around to his side of the booth. There she gave his cheek a light peck.

“And if it doesn't work out, you've got my number.”

He caught her hand for just a second and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Thanks, Samantha.”

“Hey, anytime. Good luck with your Fisch, and don't you dare let him bully you! You're better than that.”

Mort tugged out his wallet, and as soon as Samantha was out the door, Bob came around from the back.

“Mort, you're dating Mr. Fischoeder?”

“Well, not technically - hey, you weren't supposed to be listening!”

“You know I eavesdrop, that's like half the fun of having a restaurant. I mean, if you can call it fun, i-it's… mostly stressful. Anyway, is Mr. Fischoeder… okay? After what happened to Felix… he didn't come by for the rent.”

“Why don't you call him?”

“Well, we don't have the rent. It was just unusual and I feel bad for him.”

“It's not my place to say anything. Look, can you at least promise me you won't tell anyone about us? Not even Linda, and especially not the kids, and especially not Teddy.”

“Yeah, of course.”

Mort eyed him sternly. “Bob, I mean it.”

“Yeah, I-I promise, I won't tell anyone. So, uh, how did… that happen?”

“It's complicated. Maybe I'll tell you some other time, depending on how all this turns out. I gotta get back to work.”

“Okay. Have a good rest of your day, Mort.”

“I'll sure try.”

He paid for the meal and left the empty little restaurant. Outside, it had begun to snow, big fluffy flakes light as clouds. 

The warm darkness of his crematorium was a welcome escape. His eyes adjusted to the dark, and a stark white figure sitting on the stairs came into view.

“There you are, Mortimer.”

Chapter Text

“How did you- I locked up when I left.”

Calvin stood up from his place on the stairs. “Mort, I have keys to all my properties.”

“But you can't just…” he took a deep breath. “Mr. Fischoeder, you can't just waltz in here like you own the place, even though you do . It's rude, and it's creepy.”

“Creepy? We're in a crematorium.”

Mort ignored him. “What are you doing, anyway? We were gonna have dinner together, can't you wait?”

“Well, I got bored waiting. So I decided to surprise you with lunch, but then you were already cheating on me.”

He couldn't tell if Calvin was being serious or not, but he didn't appreciate the insinuation regardless. “I-I wasn't- that's not what me having lunch with Samantha was about, okay? You just leave her outta this. I was breaking things off with her.”

“I guess that's what you'd like me to believe.”

Now, that was very dramatic, and Mort could only stand drama when it was in the realm of film and television.

“Look, I'm not trying to be rude, Calvin, but don't turn this into a fucking pulp romance, okay?”

“Geez,” he groaned. “Mort, you're no fun at all. I was teasing . Come on, don't really be sore at me.” 

Calvin walked up to him and looked at him fondly with his singular eye. Mort averted his gaze.

“I was only teasing. Hm?”

“It's not funny,” Mort grumbled. “You shouldn't say things like that. I wouldn't do that.”

“No, no, of course not. You're too sensible, too considerate. And you know, I find that very… sweet.”

Mort finally looked up at him. God, it was hard not to melt under his wanting gaze, even if he was so vexing. How did anyone ever get along with him? Oh, he supposed - seeing as how Fischoeder was alone - that no one did. No one, except his own brother.

Oh.

“Calvin… I'm sorry for being cross.”

“Hm,” he smiled.

“Thank you for trying to get me lunch. What was it, anyway?”

“Just pasta.”

“Well, thank you. Now, I've gotta get back to work.”

“Oh,” Calvin grumbled. “I see what your problem is. All work and no play makes Mort a dull boy.”

“Um, all work and no play makes Mort not homeless. In case you forgot, me working is what gives me money to pay you for my living here. Besides, it's not like I work myself to death; I've got downtime. During that downtime is when you can bother me.”

“But I'd really like to bother you now.”

“Now? Really?”

“Right now.”

He leaned in, cupping Mort's face in his hands. Then he enveloped him in his great white arms, holding him close, his head upon his shoulder as they gently rocked. Fischoeder’s hands clutched him through the suit, filling them with that excessive flesh. Mort held him back as though he were a glass bauble.

“Calvin, I-I have to get back to work-”

“I'll give you one month's rent.”

“I still have clients.”

“Two months?”

“Are you trying to ruin my business?”

He hummed deeply, so that Mort felt it in his bones, and held him desperately close, so that he'd begun to tremble. Feeling guilty, Mort swallowed hard and didn't press further. 

“You're all I have,” Calvin said, the words soft against his neck. “You probably know that by now. So why are you so cruel to me?”

“A few hours is all I need.”

“I know what you want, how can you stay away?”

“Work has nothing to do with what I want. I guess you can't understand that. You've never had to work a day in your life. All you have to do is be weird and charismatic; that's not hard.”

“Sometimes it can be,” he drawled.

“You sound tired, Calvin.”

“I always am. Can't help it.”

“... think you could catch a few winks in my bed?”

They went upstairs together. The weight of Calvin’s exhaustion settled into Mort, as though the big man were completely waterlogged with grief. Somehow he felt guilty. That happened sometimes, being a mortician, dealing with the dead and having to be so empathetic. Now, having loved the old Fisch, it was worse. Far worse. As though they were both tangled in the line, being dragged into cold, killing waters.

But Calvin was still very much alive, writhing and tugging with all those barbed hooks wrenching him this way and that, his warm blood becoming sanguine clouds. It was strange, knowing that he had  a job to do, a life to live, yet simultaneously they were both fighting this metaphorical battle; all within themselves, and all without.

Calvin laid back on his bed like he had that first night, his eye closed. Mortimer had half a mind to join him. Of a sudden he was afraid of what might happen, should he succumb to the weight of his wants. He'd climb in and curl up, all safe and warm next to the big old man. Why had the idea never occurred to him before? It seemed so appealing now, like warm, rich molasses over pancakes.

“Come with me,” Calvin muttered.

“What? Where to?”

“Wherever we go when we sleep.”

Against his better judgment he sat down. His fingers found the buttons of Calvin's suit jacket, delicate, respectful.

“I am… very fond of you, Calvin.”

The fabric beneath his fingers was immaculate, the buttons pearlescent in the winter white light coming in through the window. He had not yet drawn the curtains.

“But…” the word barely escaped him. But? But what? He'd once heard that anything said before the word “but” never really mattered, and his fondness for Calvin was probably the only thing in this room right now that really mattered.

He helped Calvin shrug the jacket from his shoulders. Mort had never seen him without it, so that now seeing Fischoeder's waistcoat was as good as seeing him nude. It was at once the most intimate moment of his life, beyond those of flesh. Somehow this was of the soul, that pulsing beneath the flesh; the beating heart, the rushing blood.

Like a great white beast, Calvin opened his eye. 

“What do you want of me?”

Darling, everything.

“I just want you to be comfortable.”

He knelt down on the floor and took one of Calvin's white brogues in hand. Genuine leather; they were sleek and beautiful. Calvin sat up and watched him undo the laces, then give each brogue a gentle tug so that they rested aside one another on the floor and he could help the big man fold his legs into bed.

“You haven't really slept,” Mort observed. “Not in a long time.”

He could feel it in his bones when his hands gently pressed Calvin's legs. But most of all, he could see it in his eye. So far out to sea, fighting the waves and wind and each current.

Mortimer had to wonder if Calvin had ever really been intimate with anyone. Until now he'd been completely blasé. Now Calvin watched him closely, as though he were suddenly aware that they were no longer strangers, that his kisses and caresses had been taken seriously. And maybe he was afraid. Mort wanted to soothe him, but something prevented him. Maybe, secretly, he was cruel.

He covered the fully clothed man with the blanket, then paced to the window.

“It's snowing. Did you notice?”

Calvin said nothing.

“It's been a long few weeks… I can't blame you.”

Mort knew that if he returned the the bed he'd be a goner; swallowed up by the big Fisch, seeing that he was so much smaller. But he went anyway, only to look down at him for once.

He was very pretty there. Silver and still, still silver even in the darkness.

No one had to know, right? No one had to know. His door was still locked, he'd gotten through plenty of paperwork that morning. What could it hurt? No one had to know.

And he was tired.

Tonight, he kept trying to promise himself. Tonight, tonight. A few hours away. Why did you come to me now?

He wanted to reach out, to touch this man of his who was so desperate for attention.

But he was wiser. There was work to be done, and Calvin would not be touched.

“Sleep well,” he said. “Or close your… eye, at least. That'll help.”

The big man turned his silver head aside and closed his eye. It was very final, the way he did it, and that alarmed Mort more than anything. But it was done.

His hand hovered over the silver. It shimmered slightly in the dimness, like the scales of a thousand shifting fish deep underwater.

The funeral parlor was then very quiet for the remainder of the work day. Within the growing whiteness of that little coastal avenue, there was good work and maybe even a gentle slumber.

Chapter Text

It occured to Calvin Fischoeder quite immediately that something was wrong. Then again, there always had been something wrong, he had simply been ignoring it for a very long time.

Deep and dark and forlorn; it was a cavernous feeling, widening into an abyss. He laid there for quite some time, twisting and turning, comfortable yet unable to sleep. Mort was extraordinarily clean for a single man, one without a housekeeper. His linens were quite fresh, but they still smelled like him. Strange, how such comfort made that feeling inside of him start to ache.

This damned insomnia! It had tortured him all his life. Thank God he didn't have such responsibilities as Mort. He couldn't possibly handle having an occupation. Too impatient, too outspoken, and prone to boredom. He didn't understand how Mort could look at him with those big brown eyes, wanting and wanting and wanting, and simply turn away. Duty calls! Calvin wondered if he really cared about him at all.

He had to get up. He had to go somewhere. He had to do something…

Wasn't the first time. He was never able to sit still. But it was different. It had been ever since he'd pulled Felix’s corpse into his arms.

Calvin put on his shoes and jacket and went downstairs.

Mort was in his office, his pale face brightened further by his computer screen. He looked up when Calvin came in.

“Did you sleep well?”

Calvin knew he probably didn't look it. “I'm going out.”

“Out?”

“For a drive. Will you come with me?”

“Just a minute-”

“I have to go now. If you don't come with me now…”

Was that a threat forming on his tongue? He wasn't sure.

“... I think… that would be a big mistake.”

Mort shut his laptop. “No harm in stopping a little early. Let me get my coat. It might take a second.”

“My car has heat.”

“Your car?”

“What, you think the only vehicle I own is that dinky golf cart?”

“I guess I've never noticed you drive anything else.”

He gave a half-hearted eye roll. “Come on.”

The snow was still steadily falling, and boy, was it sticking. Soon their little avenue would be a winter wonderland.

The car Calvin had driven that day was a cream colored vintage convertible. When he saw it, Mort stopped dead in his tracks.

“What the hell is that?”

“This?” Calvin casually placed a hand on the spare wheel along the side. “Oh, just a piece from my father's collection. A real Doozy. You're not a car man, are you?”

Mort shook his head, and Calvin took an immense sort of pride in educating him.

“It's a Duesenberg Model J. He got it cheap back in the 40s and it's been outfitted on the interior to be a little more modern. Yep, 265 horsepower, this baby.” He chuckled and patted the framework. “How did you not notice it before?”

“Before…?”

“When you left Bob's.”

“Oh,” he shrugged. “I-I don't know I guess I was focused on the snow.”

Fischoeder side-eyed him slightly. “Are you absent-minded, Mort?”

“Not at all. It's the first snow of the year, you know. It came pretty late.”

“Get in before you freeze to death.”

Before long they had blitzed out into the rural reaches of town, where snow draped fields stretched as far as the eye could see and leafless trees clawed at the sky. The snow continued to fall, and though the roads became slick, Mr. Fischoeder was a very competent motorist, given the high speeds and the old automobile. They could easily get killed in a car like this.

About a half hour of silence had come between them, for the world at long last was still. Calvin knew the winding roads well, but he had no idea where he was going.

“What about your father?” he asked at last.

Mort perked up, “Oh, he died when I was eight.”

Jesus Christ, what did I expect? “I-I, uhm, my condolences.”

“Thanks, but you don't have to worry about it. I mean that I've processed it.”

“Was that what made you want to be a mortician?”

Mort chuckled, “No. When I was a kid I discovered some books on Egyptian mummification at the library; the kind in the 5th and 6th grade section. I guess that's where I got the spark. From there I got kind of fascinated with the human body. I even started planning my funeral back then! Lining up the little Playmobil toys… always the weirdo…” he paused, seeming to wonder whether or not to continue. “When my dad died… that was the most fascinating day of my life. I-I’ve never told anybody this, but… it was beautiful. I guess you never really appreciate how you've impacted the world around you until you see a funeral. There were so many people, so many tears, I mean- the energy . It's somber and heartwarming all at once, so much raw human emotion. Death brings people together in more ways than you can imagine, not just on a physical level, but emotionally. I don't mean to romanticize it, but what choice do I have? At the end of the day, it's a very romantic thing.”

Calvin wondered about that. Really, he'd never given it that much thought. No matter how he died, the disposal of his remains was to be extravagant; he had this whole plan on his ashes being dumped into a volcano - which volcano was still up in the air. He wondered what Mort would think of that, but he didn't want to ask. Just yet, it sounded ridiculous. And Felix was in the ground, so…

But he couldn't help thinking how cold it would be down there. He wanted something hot, something purifying. Why did he leave Felix down in the cold, suffocating dark?

“I hope I didn't freak you out,” Mort said. “I've never told anyone that.”

“Not even your girlfriend?”

“No. I guess we never… got that far.”

Was a landlord really more of his kind than another mortician?

“What about you?” Mort asked. “I mean, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

The road was infinite and pale before him. Calvin tightly gripped the wheel.

“I can't remember wanting to be anything,” he said. “My father had it all planned out. See, he taught me how to handle all his assets once I inherited them.”

Funny. Thinking about it now, his father had been teaching him how to deal with his death.

“I only ever knew my father as an old man. He had me rather late in his life.”

“It sounds like he cared for you immensely.”

“Indeed. But he wasn't exactly a family man. We spent a lot of time together, sure, but the only time we spent together at home was at the dinner table.” He looked over at Mort. “You had your mother, didn't you?”

“Yeah, still do. We spend the holidays together and go out to eat and to the movies sometimes. She's a great lady, I love her very much.”

“Oh. That's good.”

In reality it made Calvin strangely upset. Probably he was just jealous.

“I never got to spend time with her, really,” Calvin cleared his throat. “Ahem, my mother, I mean.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I was basically tied to my father. Then when Felix came along he was a needy little guy. It wasn't like I never saw her, but… I guess…” he sighed. “Maybe that's one of my regrets.”

“I see.”

“One out of a million, I suppose.”

“Mr. Fischoeder, I know it isn't my place to say anything… but I think you'd really regret it if you sold everything.”

“Why's that?”

“Your father worked very hard so you could have it, and you worked very hard so you could keep it. I think you'd feel sorry.”

“Oh, I don't think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because… I'd be dead. I wouldn't be thinking anything because I'd be dead, just like Felix.”

Mort was silent in response.

“Does that scare you? That I want to kill myself?” Calvin asked, sort of half smiling, euphoric in that he'd finally said it. He felt like cackling, howling out the window like a madman, but he remained reasonable. “I can't feel sorry when I'm dead. I can't feel anything when I'm dead. And I know that you're the only person who understands that. Maybe you won't even try to talk me out of it. Maybe you'll come with me, if you're smart enough, brave enough.”

From the corner of his eye he could see that Mort wasn't looking at him. He, too, was watching the endless road flow into them, seamless in the growing stretch of white.

“Calvin…” If he was going to say something further it didn't escape him. Not until they'd been driving for a while, then at last he said, “Calvin, I've said I'm very fond of you. Well, th-the truth is, I, um… I'm in love with you.”

Calvin slammed on the brakes, and the old Duesenberg screeched and slid. So little traction between the speed and the slush that they didn't come to a complete stop for about 20 seconds.

Then Calvin turned to him. “Don't say that.”

“But I am,” Mort said, hugging himself, his hair askew and his eyes wide with fear. “Damn it, Calvin! I am .”

“You don't know what you're talking about.”

“ Yes , I do. Better than you. My head is clear. You think those thoughts are rational? Calvin, you are grieving.”

“I'm alone! ” he slammed his fist against the wheel. “I have only ever been alone.”

Mort took a moment for some deep breaths, trying to calm himself. “I know. I know what it is, to be alone. But you can't just isolate yourself.”

“That wasn't my decision. It wasn't anyone's decision, it just happened; it was an accident!”

“I know it was an accident. Maybe that's the worst thing about it. You can't even blame yourself.”

“I don't know about that. I was his big brother, I should've… I don't know… I should've been watching him. But we were both drunk, we always drink together… how was I supposed to…”

He turned away from Mort entirely, trying to stifle his tears. He'd gotten good at doing that all these years, but now he was faltering like that one time with father. But father had taken him into his arms then, and consoled him the best he could.

“You'll be Mr. Fischoeder when I'm gone. You can't be crying your… eye out over this sort of thing.”

“Calvin.”

As the tears streamed down his face he thought maybe the best course of action would be to make a run for it. Cut and run out into the winter, come back later for the Duesenberg. Or maybe freeze to death and not come back at all.

The steering wheel turned under his hand, straightening back out.

“Are you afraid of me?” he asked the mortician.

“I guess I should be.”

“Then you don't love me.”

“... no, I… I was… hoping to make you feel better…”

“Do you know how cruel that is?”

“... yes, I know.”

He chuckled softly, discreetly wiping the tears away with his jacket sleeve, but they were very apparent on the white fabric. “Now you're lying to me. Good. Two people in love should only lie to each other, it keeps everything uncertain.”

“What's the matter with certainty?”

“The very definition.”

He shifted his hands on the wheel, and one incidentally covered Mortimer's. It was warm, heart-achingly soft. He thought he could die right then and be perfectly at peace, so that Mort wouldn't have to do a thing to dress up his corpse.

“I'm never certain of anything,” Calvin continued, looking directly at the little man. “Whether drunk or sober, asleep or awake. That's the only way men like me can live.”

“Men like you? You're as human as I am.”

“Don't try to contradict me.”

He straightened up and took a deep breath. Was he completely out of his mind? Probably. Most of the time he didn't know what he was saying anymore, or where his thoughts even came from. With Felix's death it seemed someone new and ugly had sprouted within him from all the sorrow and grief, rising up like the living dead just to torment him. He was tired. So, so tired.

The leather seats of the lovely old Duesenberg bridged the gap that would typically be between the driver and passenger seats. Calvin turned to Mort and grabbed him by his upper arm, pulling him over.

“Come here,” he sort of growled, more intense than he'd intended. “Now, don't you pull away from me.”

Mort held onto Calvin’s arms to keep himself from falling into him. He looked up into the big man's eye, and Calvin wasn't certain what he saw there. At once Mortimer was wanting and afraid, but not afraid of Calvin himself, afraid of something just past him, something terrible that lingered just over his shoulder.

“You're the only person alive who understands me,” the landlord said. “So don't fall in love with me. Then you'll be deluded, and I'll have no one again. Do you understand?”

Mort nodded.

He kissed him then, quite hungrily, as though it were the last time they'd ever get the chance. It was the way Mort reciprocated that doomed him, all gentle and sweet, holding onto him like that. Calvin Fischoeder was guilty all over again. Ashamed at having been so reckless, with Mort's love and his life. He did not deserve him, not one bit.

“Please,” he muttered against Mort's laugh lines. “Please don't kiss me like that.”

“I can't help it.”

Calvin softly laughed, “Then I guess I'm cursed.” And he sighed, “Maybe I ought to call you a taxi.”

“All the way out here?”

“Hey, don't insult me like that, I can afford it.”

Mort started kissing him again, so that it became quite warm inside the old car, between the two old men. Calvin's hands traveled all over his body, mystified by his shapes, all the gentle creases and curves. He tugged at Mort's tie, a most violent shade of indigo, so that it came loose and hung about his neck. Then he pulled the little man closer and closer, until they were practically atop one another, all so he could embrace that warm, pudgy little body, and nip all down his pretty soft neck. The heavy pulse in that artery beat against his lips, so he made such tender love to it. The powdered countryside was as good a place as any for this sort of thing.

In time - and a matter of kissing - they were driving home, thoroughly worn out. Calvin knew that the back of the Duesenberg served well for some good old-fashioned heavy petting, but seeing as how the weather was bad, he didn't want to be stranded should the old girl quit on them.

“I gotta be honest,” Mort said as they were coming back into view of the dense housing units. “I'm starved.”

“What are you hungry for?”

“I don't know, something easy. It's a little late… what about Applebees?”

Calvin side-eyed him, unsure if he heard him right. “... what kind of bees?”

“Nevermind. Well, I'm sure there's a pizza or takeout place still open. That's probably better anyway, I don't really want to dine-in.”

“On the contrary, I rather think you do.”

Calvin hung up his suit jacket and found his place on the sofa when they returned to Mort's apartment, slightly reclined with his legs spread. He listened as the mortician ordered Chinese take-out for them, his voice astoundingly normal from the kitchen.

Strange, how one could be on the verge of something drastic and atrocious, yet succumb to such domesticity. Calvin was used to constant conflict and bustle. How strange, indeed, to sit here unperturbed.

“Do you wanna watch a movie?”

Calvin slowly blinked. “Yes.”

He watched the soft little man shift through his binder of DVDs, divining the perfect film for their wondrous meal. In all the world, there was nothing more inviting than his tranquility; he was so tame.

“Come here.”

Mort looked over at him, his brown eyes almost repulsively innocent. Now, how could that be? Surely he knew exactly what Fischoeder wanted.

He came over and sat down next to Calvin, the binder in his lap. Then his eyes were appraising the big man's waistcoat, perhaps how the expert tailoring fit perfectly the girth of his ample stomach. “Would you like to choose?”

“Hmm,” he hummed, taking the deceivingly heavy binder of films and sliding it onto the sofa, placing a hand on Mort's knee. “You know what I really want?” 

He slid his firm hand up the inside of Mort's tender thigh.

“Oh,” the mortician blushed. “R-Really… our food will be here within the hour…”

“Would you rather eat first?”

“I-I don't know if I can wait.”

“Mhm. That's a good fellow. Patience is for the virtuous.”

Mort certainly didn't need any pills - not yet, anyway. He was perfectly ripe beneath Calvin's hand. So he rubbed him through the clothes, watching him shift slightly, stifling his moans.

Calvin leaned in, “Don't you worry your handsome little head about who will hear us, because I want to hear you. Understand?”

Mort nodded.

His fingers were at Mort's belt, masterfully unbuckling him and minding his zipper. Calvin caught his lips on his own just as his hand was delving below.

With their foreheads pressed together he whispered over his lips, “I want your moans in my mouth.” 

“You want me to- mm!”

Calvin firmly squeezed his hardness in hand, kissing him quickly to swallow his moan. “Yes, I want you to moan into me. Not so hard, is it? Well, I suppose this is.”

He worked the smaller man vigorously, kissing his breath away, the pathetic little moans that fueled Calvin with each release. Suddenly, Mort wrapped his arms around Calvin's big white shoulders and held him close, his head on Calvin's shoulder, panting into his ear and moaning into his neck. Supposing that it was presently alright to be held, Calvin allowed it. He passed his hand down Mort's length, and squeezed that sensitive head down below.

Mort cried out, then released into Calvin's hand. The big man kissed him as he lingered on that high, nipping his sweet neck and taking the last little pants from his mouth. His hand came up to the curve of Mort's stomach, curling his fingers under the bottom, that most vulnerable weight.

Calvin Fischoeder wasn't good at this sort of thing. He was used to getting up, washing his hands, grabbing his jacket and leaving. Anyway, he'd made short work of the little mortician, so it would make for an easy escape.

Except for the fact that Mort was still holding onto him, short, soft arms wrapped about his shoulders. And he thought that Mort was smelling him where his head rested upon his shoulder, taking in the lingering scents of cologne and aftershave and the Duesenberg's leather.

What was that thing people were supposed to do? He'd followed the same train of thought once before while tending to Mort… ah, yes. They were supposed to take care of one another. Well…

“Mortimer…”

“Mm?”

Oh, he wanted to! Soft and sweet in his arms, he wanted so badly to take care of Mort. But how could he? He was terrible at this sort of thing…

“I'll, um, pay for the food.”

The mortician released Calvin from his hold and sat up a little straighter.

“Oh, right, I forgot we haven't eaten yet.”

Chapter Text

Morning came, bright and searing through the alley window. Though, it didn't wake Calvin; he'd been up for hours already after managing to catch a few winks on the couch after dinner. Mort had left his bed empty for Calvin, having taken up residence in the guest bedroom.

The mortician had tried to supply Calvin with clothes he kept for guests, but the landlord denied them. He wasn't used to dressing down anyway; what Zs he managed to catch were usually procured by incidental naps sitting upright and fully clothed. He hadn't actually intended on sleeping last night at all, as his first attempt at lying down proved futile. After a few laps around the apartment looking at Mort's possessions, he watched TV for a few hours where he managed to fall in and out of sleep for some time.

They were little sounds, those of Mort milling about in the kitchen, probably making breakfast as though they both had a nine-to-five to run off to.

He tried to imagine them as normal people. Mort still had his funeral business and everything - he did make for a great mortician - and Calvin? Well, maybe he had a desk job of sorts. Maybe he was an accountant, or a lawyer like Grover. Something painfully boring. They'd both come home at the end of the day (or Mort would simply walk upstairs) and they'd kiss at the door, hang up their coats, and have a home cooked meal. Mort would always ask him about his day first, and Calvin would mumble about the one interesting thing that had happened in the last eight hours - “Oh, I got a papercut and had to ask for a Band-Aid from Mr. Some Guy” - and then he would inquire about Mort's. His mind would probably wander as it was wont while Mort spun all his tales about the crematorium, but just hearing him talk, and knowing that later they'd share a bed, would be enough.

There was no Felix in this scenario; you see, Calvin had been an only child because his parents were poor, so he didn't have to worry about little Felix. And also people were allowed to love the same sex as though it had never been a point of contention all throughout history.

Like all fantasies, the reality only made it painful. Mort had a job, a job that he had so that he could pay Calvin to live here and run his business. Calvin was rich and powerful, and his little brother was dead.

Bemoaning the deep ache that had settled in his bones, Calvin went out to the kitchen and stood in the doorway, watching Mort fry a couple of eggs.

“Oh, hey, Calvin,” he said, smiling. “It's almost ready.”

So there was fried eggs, buttered toast and jam, and coffee for breakfast. It was nice. It even felt like home, though Calvin had seldom had such a simple spread. It was home in the way one only imagines; when they have nothing to compare it to save the domestic depictions in a family film. The kind of home that, for Calvin, lived only in fantasy.

“Oh, while I'm thinking about it,” Mort got up and grabbed an envelope from the counter, handing it to Calvin. “Here.”

The landlord looked it over. “What's this?”

“Rent.”

“R-” Calvin paused and looked over at Mort.

There must've been a marked change in his face because Mort tilted his head and asked, “What's wrong?”

“I don't want you to worry about that.”

“Why not?”

“Surely I'm not just your landlord.”

“Of course not, Calvin. But you are my landlord.”

Calvin reluctantly tucked it inside his jacket. “I didn't even realize it was the first of the month.”

“Sure is. Guess that's what you'll be doing today, hm? Collecting the rent.”

“Guess so. It'll keep me out of your hairpiece.”

Mort smiled slightly and sat back down across from him. Calvin gently swirled the coffee in his cup as he might a glass of wine. Speaking of alcohol - he produced a small flask of brandy from the inside of his jacket and poured some into the coffee.

“Are you still talking to that lady mortician?”

“We're still friends, we've been texting on and off. Why?”

“What do you talk about?”

“Well, you , mostly.”

“That a fact?”

“She's curious about how you treat me.”

“Why's that?”

“Well, rightfully she thinks rich and powerful men can be cruel.”

“ Rightfully? Have I been cruel?”

“Calvin, you could've killed me last night.”

“Nonsense! It was just a handjob.”

Mort blushed down to his bones. “N-Not that! The car ride.”

“Oh. Right. I'd forgotten about that.”

It was so distant now, like yesterday's dream. But the cold was still hard in his bones, the blood still hot in his veins. Even now, it was enough to shatter him.

“Did you tell her about that?”

“No.”

“I suppose I don't appreciate it. I thought you were worried about people knowing about us, and yet you're talking to her without a care in the world.”

“It isn't the same thing. We're friends, and we'd been more than that once.”

“More than that? No. She was your friend with benefits.”

“Isn't that what we are? You can hardly say we're not more than just friends.” He sort of smiled, “What's the harm, anyway? It's not like we're having sex. You can hardly stop me from talking to everyone.”

“Hm,” Calvin grumbled. “I could try. Why are you smiling?”

“Well, I just… find it sort of comical! But mostly…” he shrugged.

“What?”

“Well, it's kind of cute , you know, that you should, uh, get jealous.”

“Cute? I don't think that's the word you're looking for. Does it bother you?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then I shall go on doing it.”

They both finished their breakfast with great reluctance, and as Mort straightened his tie and Calvin tried to smooth his slept-in suit, the silence between them came to a head.

“I'll see you later,” the mortician said. “For dinner?”

“My treat. You have any other nice suits? Wear one.”

Mort hesitated just a second before quickly pecking Fischoeder's cheek. “H-Have a good day at… rent collecting.”

“That's a rather overfamiliar way to treat your landlord.”

The world outside the mortuary was covered thickly with snow, the streets wet with slush. Calvin shuddered. And it would figure, the Duesenberg wouldn't start.

Yep, sure was a Doozy.

Well, he could have the old girl towed and call Inga to pick him up. In the meantime, he'd haunt the block. First stop, Bob's Burgers.

He mosied into the quiet little restaurant and was greeted by Bob's panic-stricken face.

“Oh- Mr. Fischoeder! It's still early…” he said, as though making a few extra bucks at lunch would be enough for the rent payment. But then his gaze softened. “I, uh… I-I never got to say… sorry, about Felix.”

Oh. Right. That's all anyone was going to say to him all day. “My condolences” and whatnot. Despite Bob's social ineptitude, he was undoubtedly sincere. But it didn't help the fact that Calvin didn't want to hear it.

As he was lamenting in silence, Bob started writing up a check.

“Look,” he said. “I, uh, can't promise that this isn't gonna bounce, so…”

“You know what? Forget it.”

“What?”

“Well, I've just decided I won't be collecting anyone else's rent today, so why should I trouble you about it?”

“Oh. Well, thanks for the extension? I guess… um, are you alright, Mr. Fischoeder? You look reaaaally tired.”

“I haven't slept properly in the last few weeks so that would be why.”

“Right. I… can't even begin to imagine how hard that must be.”

“I suppose I'll probably never sleep well ever again.”

“P-Probably some day soon…”

“Yeah. Some day, and soon.” He huffed, looking out the window at the Duesenberg, remembering how his hands had clutched the wheel as they slid over the slush. 

“Maybe you'll come with me, if you're smart enough, brave enough.”

“I never slept well when Felix and I were apart.”

“Didn't he live out in the treehouse?”

“Yes, but I mean when he was away. When he was sent away for boarding school, when he got his inheritance and skipped town for a while… but then, he always came back. Now, though-”

“Heeey, Mr. Fisch!”

Linda had just come in through the front door. Calvin turned to her and forced a smile.

“Good morning, Linda.”

The kids filed in behind her. It was Louise who spoke first, “ Woah, Mr. Fischoeder, you look like you've been sleeping on a pile of rocks.”

“I'll take that as a compliment; it's decidedly better than what I've actually been doing.”

“Drinking?”

Gene piped up, “Hard drugs?”

“Stop,” Bob said.

“I thought you were hanging out with Mort,” Louise continued. “We've seen you over there like every day .”

“Louise, Mr. Fischoeder had a funeral to plan-”

“Yeah, had . Wasn't that like a week ago?”

Fischoeder chuckled, “Morticians are good for more than funerals.”

“Aww!” Linda cried. “So it's true! You guys are dating!”

“Not necessarily…”

“I always thought Mort would die alone! All sad and alone in his little crematorium. Who takes care of mortician bodies?”

“Probably just another mortician.”

“No, that doesn't sound right, that's their own species.”

“Oh my God,” Bob grumbled. “Sorry, Mr. Fischoeder, your, uh, bromance? Is that the word? Or-Or whatever with Mort, it's, uh, it's none of our business.”

“They're in a homosexual relationship, Bob,” Linda snapped. “It's not a bromance! There's not even any pretense to heterosexuality.”

“How would you…? You know what, nevermind.”

Gene piped up again, “Dad, did you say men can or can't get pregnant?”

“I said it depends.”

“Mr. Fischoeder, would you or Mort have the baby?”

“Gene-”

Calvin didn't really have to think about it, “That's an odd way of asking who bottoms. Obviously Mort would.”

“Aw,” Linda cooed. “Little mortician babies…”

Bob had had enough, “Okay! Everybody stop talking and start cleaning.”

Fischoeder casually rocked back and forth on his feet. “Well, guess I'll leave you all to your little restaurant duties.”

“You're really not gonna make us pay rent this month?”

“Not unless you really want to.”

“No- I-I mean, we just… wanna be sure.”

“Here's some advice Bob; if someone offers you a rent-free month just take it and don't ask questions. He might reconsider. Children of Bob, that's your first lesson in getting away with stuff.”

“ Way ahead of you,” said Louise.

Calvin smiled slightly and turned about on his heel.

“Mr. Fischoeder-”

He turned back to Bob.

“Um…. take… take care of yourself.”

“Sure, Bob.”

He left the restaurant.

While he called Inga to arrange getting the Duesenberg and fetching him a car better suited for, well, any kind of weather, he took a walk down to the wharf.

It wasn't a good idea. Ever since that day…

When he stepped onto the wooden planks there was a shift in reality, and a distinct nausea came with it. But he kept going, following the discomfort out onto the pier. There weren't any people around, anyway. He could be just as miserable as he wanted there in the quiet cold. But the rush of the waves, the spray of brine - it came up to hit him directly in the face-

And he was there again. Down on the shore, kneeling in the sand, scooping Felix's cold, bloated corpse into his arms, staring into his scaled, clouded eyes.

God, he was so cold .

“It was an accident…”

The smell came back, and he was doubled over the railing, tossing up his lovely breakfast into the ocean.

“Are you religious? Or god-fearing? Do you believe in the soul?”

He shook his head.

“No, no, no, no …”

He'd like to believe that if he tossed himself into the sea right now that he'd sink directly to the bottom and never rise again. But he knew better. His stupid body would fight instinctually, he'd reconsider just long enough to keep himself alive, and then he would only be a fool. He'd say he'd fallen in, but they wouldn't believe him. They'd know. It was like everyone already knew, but it wasn't like they were doing anything about it. They said their piece and left him alone, thinking that maybe a few condolences would keep him from the grave as well. 

Little did they know.

Calvin took the flask of brandy from his pocket and swished some around in his mouth to wash out the taste of vomit. After spitting that out, he drank the rest. It warmed his intestines; the same sort of warmth that pudgy little Mort carried, domestic and comfortable. He thought of going to him now.

Come with me, he thought he'd say. Come live with me. You won't have to worry about that crematorium anymore. You won't have to worry about anything ever again. I'll take care of you.

It was silly, because he didn't know the first thing about caring for a mortician. Maybe he'd just buy all of Mort's favorite foods, buy him new linens and clothing, buy him every single thing that he wanted. So little was beyond Calvin's reach. He thought then that he could take very good care of Mortimer, even if it meant his whole fortune. Even if the lights went out in that wonderful mortuary.

A little later he'd finally had enough of the cold and returned to the crematorium. He'd decided on asking Mort first thing: “Would you come to live with me?” Because he needed him. More than anything, he needed him.

But a decent crowd had accrued at the crematorium. There was a funeral going on. Of course, Calvin wasn't invited, but he didn't think anyone would care if he showed up. Or even just popped his head in to talk to Mort.

The old place really came alive when there were more than two people in it. It was often so quiet, so dead . But the gentle hum of conversation and the yellow incandescence of the lights really brought the place into life, although the reason for it was death. Funny, that perhaps the only time funeral homes come alive are when the dead summon their families.

Amongst the crowd, in the parlor, Mortimer was mingling. And somehow he too was more alive than ever, like he belonged here, beyond the fact that this was his job. It was like he knew these people, like they were family. They had adopted him.

I would take you away from all this, Calvin thought, and knew at once that it'd be cruel. I could make you very happy…

Mortimer looked at him, and smiled.

But Calvin thought of him huddled in the Duesenberg's front seat, scared half to death.

“What's the matter with certainty?”

After a while Mort had made his way over to Calvin. They stood along the wall, watching the mourners.

“Great funeral, isn't it?” Mort said.

“Who died?”

“See those two gals in the veils over there? Their dad.”

“I see.”

The two were speaking to a couple, and though tears glimmered in their eyes, they laughed softly and spoke with vigor.

“They don't seem so sad.”

“Grief takes many different forms,” Mort said. “Often those we least suspect. Or, those you'd least suspect. I've seen probably every kind of grief there is. Nothing surprises me anymore.”

“Not even me?”

“Well… guess I always thought Mr. Fischoeder might be the exception.”

“Do you always imagine how people might mourn?”

“Sometimes. Didn't take you long to collect rent today, by the way.”

“Well… more on that later.”

“Understood. Anyway, the service is about to start.”

“I hope you have something nice to wear to dinner.”

“I think I've got something up my sleeve that could make you happy.”

“I wait with baited breath. Pick you up around seven?”

“Sure thing, Calvin.”

Mort seemed to consider kissing him for a second, but decided against it.

“Try to get some rest, eh, Rockefella?”

Where Mort was new to this kind of intimacy between men, Calvin was an old hand. And speaking of hands, he slipped his up the gentle curve of Mort's back to give his side a gentle squeeze. It was swift, discreet. No one noticed except for Mortimer.

“For you,” Calvin whispered. “Anything.”

Chapter Text

Being with another man was almost entirely different than being with a woman. That might be obvious to most, but to Mort it was quite the surprise. He'd never been fondled with such experience. It wasn't like Samantha was bad at sex, it was just that Calvin was a whole different kind of beast. And he loved that.

After the funeral Mort went upstairs and dug through his closet. He wasn't a very fashionable man, but he had the idea that he could be if he wanted. That was why he collected clothes, though it was partially because he got them so cheap from the families of the deceased. And sure, they could be old-fashioned, but he liked to think he was living in part of another person's past. It was the most excitement he typically got. Until Calvin, at least.

It had been a few years, he was worried the suit would be too snug about the middle, but it fit just about right. It was a lovely teal blue polyester double knit, with wide lapels. Beneath the comely waistcoat he wore a white dress shirt and a wide tie with diagonal blue and gold stripes. A real 70s look; he thought Calvin might appreciate that.

The funniest part about this whole affair with Calvin was that Mort found himself actually yearning for him. Not just touch or affection, but pure attention. He wanted to be looked at, to be appraised like an antique under Calvin's scrupulous blue eye. And he thought that dressing this way, all gussied up and sort of glamoured, would just make the old landlord stop and stare.

Ah, and it would feel quite fine - oh, quite fine, indeed - to have his clothing picked apart. The lapels tugged, the tie undone, the waistcoat unbuttoned, the shirt untucked, the belt unbuckled… quite fine!

But he was getting ahead of himself.

Tucked in the back of his medicine cabinet, a little dusty behind the corpse moisturizers, were a few half-full or half-empty bottles of cologne. It wasn't uncommon for his clients to give him a perfume their dead relative had used to scent the body one last time. Whatever he didn't use they supposed he threw away, and most of it he did. But some of it he kept for himself.

The one he'd been saving for the most special of occasions had come to him from a dead department store clerk. In life he had a taste for the finest of scents. This one was cedar and bourbon, just the sort of thing one might smell on a picnic in the woods, or so Mort imagined. He thought that when Calvin was done looking at him he wouldn't mind smelling him, getting all up in the soft of his neck…

It was exactly 6:58 when he got the text from Calvin:

> here

Mort gave himself a once-over before trotting downstairs and out onto the snow covered avenue.

At once he was astounded by Calvin's new choice of vehicle. Of course, Mort didn't know much about cars, new or old. But he wasn't blind; this one was exquisite. It was a long, low convertible with the top up, colored a pretty pastel pink - exactly the color Calvin chose for his dress shirts - a silver trim and a white top, white-walled tires. Clearly not so old as the Duesenberg, Mort guessed the 50s.

He slipped into the passenger seat, supple white leather. And all the gauges were illuminated a sort of teal color.

“What kind of car is this?”

“Chrysler Imperial.”

He tried to keep his hands to himself; he didn't want to feel up another man's vehicle, but he couldn't help coasting a hand over the dash.

“Wow…”

“Do you like it?”

“It's very nice.”

But all of a sudden this terrible impulse of discomfort overcame him, as though someone might see them, and someone might know.

Calvin could sense it. “Something’s wrong, isn't it?” he asked.

“Not really. I'm just anxious.”

“What have you got to be anxious about?”

Mort shrugged. “That's the thing… it really isn't anything at all. Guess I'm just afraid of what people might think.”

“Think of what?”

“Well, of you and I.”

“Oh, hm. You and I, yes...”

They stared at each other for a moment.

“Well,” Calvin shrugged, shifting gear and pulling away. “I don't have anyone to go home to that'll sniff around for your cologne.”

“Right.”

“Why should you be scared? The population of queers in this town is almost outrageous, and I'm the most powerful one in it.”

“Is that what I am? A queer?”

“There's only shame in it because that's what we've been raised to feel. Come now, Mort, don't get all somber on me. Let's have fun tonight! It's a special occasion.”

“Special occasion? For what?”

“Any night in your presence is a special occasion.”

He smiled warmly, his face flushing. “Likewise.”

Silent night loomed around them, softly illuminated by amber street lamps and lazy evening restaurants. Even seeing other people walking the streets and coming in and out of the local businesses, Mort could imagine that they were the only two people in the world. They were the only two in the car, after all, and this space in the car was all that mattered.

“Where are we going?” Mort asked.

“Home. My home. Is that alright?”

“Of course. I'm sure you have something wonderful planned, you always do.”

“I've always been good at courtship.”

Yeah, Mort thought, sadly. But you're still alone.

Mr. Fischoeder's beautiful Victorian home was already draped in Christmas lights. Mort wondered who put all of them up; obviously Calvin wouldn't. He'd probably just hired someone.

“What do you do for the holidays?”

“Hm,” Calvin replied as he parked the car. “It depends.”

“Depends?”

“Just on how I feel. So, I won't be doing anything this year.”

He wanted to invite Calvin to celebrate with him, but the idea of introducing the old landlord to his mother made him uncomfortable to say the least. It just wasn't quite time yet. But then, he couldn't leave Calvin alone. No, that would be dangerous. Felix sure picked a sensitive season to die in.

When they got out of the car, Calvin took a moment to stare at him now that they had proper lighting.

There it was, that pretty blue eye roaming, roaming all over his body. He almost expected Calvin to make a sardonic remark.

But he took his time, there in the cold, and said, “You look very nice.”

And with a purr to his voice, the kind that revealed that he wanted, then and there, to get under all that was nice.

“You know,” Mort said. “Sometimes I think that you should like to swallow me up.”

“You should think that, because I do.”

He didn't even need a coat. He was warm, all over.

Dinner was veal and lobster covered in savory garlic butter, asparagus sautéed, and a thin but bold vegetable soup. Dessert came, frosty lemon cakes, sticky to touch but like heaven on the tongue. They didn't talk much, then. Mort felt he was very poor company, putting away his food as though he'd never eat again, or at least not something so fine. And it was very fine. It filled him up quite nice, so that he could lean back with just a slightly distended stomach, all warm and soft in the incandescence of the dining room chandelier.

“Thank you,” he said as he watched Calvin pick at the remains of his dinner.

“For what?”

“For feeding me, for taking care of me.”

Calvin blinked as if shocked by his words.

“Well,” he said, slowly. “That's just what people do.”

They retired to the parlor soon after, leaving the scraps for Inga, who Calvin had again banished from the house until the following morning. And how far away that seemed. Mort thought that the night could last forever, he was so comfortable.

From the bar Calvin fetched a fine bourbon, and poured it into delicate crystal glasses as Mort found a place on the sofa that had become just a little softer than the last time he'd sat there. He was surprised when Calvin didn't smoke. But then the big man settled onto the sofa and pressed up against him, and he knew why.

Calvin buried his face in Mort's neck and inhaled deeply, making the silver hairs on his nape come to attention. The hum he exhaled reverberated throughout the mortician's entire body.

“Would you stay the night?”

Mort smiled slightly. “Of course.”

Calvin’s lovely hand came to rest upon the shelf of Mort's belly, the arm which held the bourbon draped about his shoulders. Maybe he had overdressed; maybe the waistcoat was too much. But Calvin's thumb brushed the buttons, and he knew that it was just enough.

“I like the way you blush,” Calvin mused. “Like a schoolboy, all the way down to your cheekbones.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Oh, yes.”

Mort sipped the bourbon. It was wonderfully sweet and tasted of butterscotch, like those hard candies he'd been fond of as a kid.

“You are very romantic, Calvin.”

“Oh, please, I've actually been quite bland. Usually I'm more… audacious.”

“But I like this. I'm not one for grand gestures; all this has been just perfect. And I recognize you, you know? When you're being all nice. The touches and the lingering gazes. You watched me eat more than you ate yourself.”

“I guess death becomes me.”

Mort looked into his eye, and then they kissed. Calvin tasted more of bourbon than the bourbon itself.

He broke to whisper against Mort's lips, “Are you still anxious?”

“No… I didn't mean it, really… it's different here and now. Out in the open I…” he shook his head. “I don't want to think about it. This is so nice. I really love you so much.”

“Well, don't say that.”

“Why not?”

“Because then I'll have to call you a taxi.”

“But really, why not? I'm not asking you to commit to anything, I'm just saying it.”

“... Because I'm no good. No good for you. No good at all.”

Mortimer kissed him again, leaning right in to deepen it. “Will you believe me when I say that isn't true?”

“Not right now. Maybe later. Though, it might be too late then. Go on, say it.”

“It isn't true. You're plenty good for me.”

“Hm. Go on saying it, I like it.”

He kissed the landlord's cheek, once, twice, then whispered into his ear, “I'm very fond of you, Calvin.”

“Mm…”

His lips brushed his ear, and he spoke so softly that he might not have been heard at all if Calvin hadn't been paying the utmost attention to his every atom, “... I am in love with you.”

He stopped breathing just for a moment then. His fingers curled, digging into Mort's stomach.

“It's not true,” he said, knowing the contrary. “You're a liar.”

“It would be easier if it was a lie.”

“Yes. So, I shall have to go on believing that.”

But he got soft again. His hand caressed Mort's paunch, coming down to curl under the bottom.

“You know, Calvin… you're really good with your hands.”

“I know.”

“... a-and your mouth.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I could be good to you, too, you know.”

“You think so? But why should you be?”

“Well, that's obvious.”

“Sure. Because I bought you food and promised a few rent-free months and treated you real nice for a second there.”

Had Calvin really never been treated nicely? Mort couldn't imagine that were so. Or maybe he was just used to paying people to do so. Yes, that was it. Bejeweled bribes and gilded promises. Poor thing.

Mort's eyes came down over Calvin then; obsessed with the quality of his clothing, with the way it flattered his shapes, and of course, Calvin's handsome bigness.

“You know,” Calvin began, so soft that Mort almost didn't hear him past the beating of his own heart. “I'm jealous of you.”

“Me? Why?”

“I think you must be very content. Very happy.”

“I think so.”

“I wish I could be. I wish I wasn't thinking of a thousand different ways to kill myself. You're right, I'm completely irrational, but I can't help it. I could've killed us last night, and I didn't give a damn. I still don't. I just keep wishing I had.”

Mort said nothing.

“Here you are, all comfortable . And I can't tell what you're up to. Maybe I should let you think you love me, and take what I can. But it'll be a helluva kick when you're finished with me.”

“Is that what you're scared of? That I'll hurt you?”

“You already are. I'm just tolerating it because I'm a masochist, because it feels good to… pretend. ”

“Calvin…”

Mort steeled himself, then took the initiative. He reached up and kissed Calvin, full on the lips, put his hand around the back of his neck and held him there, savoring the downy softness of his finely trimmed silver hair. But then, as though guided by insane curiosity, Mort's hand came about to his cheek.

Calvin pulled back.

“You don't even care what's in my pants, do you?” the big man patted his crotch for emphasis. “You just want my ugly old eye. Or socket. What do you think, Mortimer, is it still there?”

“I didn't mean to impose, I'm sorry-”

“Don't be. You want to see it, do you?”

“More than anything.”

“It's disgusting.”

“No, it couldn't be.”

“Don't flatter yourself with boasts of gumption.”

“Please…”

He smirked, “Oh, is it as bad as that? Are you going to beg?”

“I could if you wanted me to.”

With his free hand he took Mort's right hand, guiding it up to his face.

“Do it,” he commanded. “Touch it. It's no delicate thing. Just go ahead. But you have to look at it, you have to promise to look at it. Do you promise?”

“Of course, o-of course I promise…”

He released Mort's wrist, and his hand returned to clutch the mortician's stomach. He seemed to enjoy that, the idea that the mortician belonged to him, just so long as he could hold onto him.

There was an innate professionalism in Mortimer's touch. He did not tremble, not with fear, nor excitement. He did not tremble at all. His thumb brushed the patch as it had before, testing Calvin's protectiveness of this thing that surely meant the world to him. It was a gift, more divine than the Holy Grail itself.

Mortimer gently took the patch between his fingers and slowly lifted it up, that Calvin's coveted eye would not be so suddenly exposed to light and air, as though it were so preciously perfect that not even those simple things could touch it.

As opposed to Calvin's sighted eye, this one was sort of half-lidded. Judging by the scarring, there must be some serious nerve damage. There was so much scar tissue clouding the eye that Mort wondered that it was not dead entirely, that Calvin still had an eye left at all. And for that, for its resilience, its mottled exclusivity; it was very beautiful.

“ Fascinating… ” his breath from the word must have touched Calvin's eye, for his lashes fluttered. “Sorry…”

“Don't be. Kiss it.”

Almost too eager, Mort pressed his lips to the corner of Calvin's closed eye. The skin there was so soft, in the creases of his eyelids and the lovely little crow's feet. His kiss wetted it so slightly, and Calvin moaned.

“I think of it as something preserved,” Calvin said. “Waiting. For true love's kiss, perhaps? Oh, it's silly of me, but… I have a right to that sort of fantasy.”

“It's very beautiful, Calvin.”

The eyelashes gave his lips a butterfly kiss. He trapped them between his lips and slid out his tongue to gently caress the bare eye. Already it was wet with tears, slick and accustomed to Mort's touch.

“Mm,” Calvin moaned, his whisper barely audible. “Oh, God…”

His eye tasted of brine; warm, gentle brine. So he sailed in the calmest waters, warmed by sunshine and kissed by the sea.

“ Mortimer ,” Calvin whispered.

He took Mort's hand and put it to his crotch. There he was incredibly hard for how little they'd gotten up to.

“Kiss me. Kiss me, please,” he pressed Mort's hand flush against his erection. “Please, oh , please…”

Mort shifted so that he was partially overtop Calvin. One hand directly on his member, and the other come to hold his neck, so that he could direct Calvin's head with his thumb to kiss him where he needed.

He didn't know what he was doing at all; he'd never kissed another man besides Calvin, he'd never kissed anyone's eye, and he had certainly never stroked anyone's member before, forgetting his own. But that was the fun part, that this was all so new, and so wonderful. That something he'd done had made this very experienced old man come undone.

Mort couldn't help smirking then. He kissed the lower lid of Calvin's weeping eye, and whispered to his tears, “Oh, is it as bad as that?”

His thumb pressed into the soft of Calvin's neck as he forced his head back so he could get directly at the mottled eye.

“Are you going to beg?”

Calvin’s moan shuddered in his hand, traveling up the length of his arm, right to his heart. Maybe he was being too merciful, but he stopped teasing and started kissing. He shifted, getting one knee between Calvin's legs so that his thigh was right up against his erection. What seemed involuntary, Calvin jerked his hips, grinding himself against Mort.

“There we go, big guy,” he said, kissing the corner of his eye and gliding his hand up and down the bulge in his pants. “Is that comfortable?”

Calvin only moaned, squirming, trying to coax Mort into rubbing him more with the wanting thrust of his pelvis. But the mortician could be patient, though he wasn't the one being absolutely tormented.

Mort took the eye patch and tossed it onto the cushion next to them. Now he was completely in the nude. When Calvin looked at him then, he knew he was special. Just a little mortician, an old man with an average body and average looks, bald, completely ordinary in all regards. He could hardly believe it, but the two of them were more of a kind than most married couples, and as Mort made love to Calvin's mother-of-pearl eye, he knew the landlord knew that.

Mort took his hand from Calvin's neck to cup his cheek, and his other hand continued to stroke him, harder and harder through the white fiber. He was working up quite the sweat - his own suit was stiff and hot - but he couldn't bring himself to care. Calvin's hands came up under the coat and clutched at his sides, holding him steady as he loved him.

All that nerve damage, Calvin struggled to keep his bad eye open. He felt just awful that that should arouse him, but Calvin’s disability was as much a part of him as anything; how could that not be beautiful? It was so sweet, those tears, and the way it glimmered, unseeing. He pressed his lips to the bare organ and kissed it deeply, gliding his tongue again over the slickness as Calvin groaned and bucked his hips against him.

Of a sudden Mort's hands were at the waistcoat as he continued to shower the eye with mouthy affection. He put his hands on Calvin's belly, then he found the pearlescent buttons, cool and smooth in his fingers. He unbuttoned the waistcoat and put his hands on the pink dress shirt. Calvin was so hot as to be feverish, his warmth searing Mort's palms and fingers through the deceivingly sheer material. He felt up the big man's stomach, completely vulnerable in his hands, while Calvin whimpered at the partial loss of contact to his erection. Mort generously gave him an inch and leaned forward a little more so that his thigh pressed harder against the member. Calvin groaned in his ear, panting against the effort he was putting into the upward grinding and grinding of his big hips.

“There you go,” Mort coaxed, trying to ignore how his own hard-on was prodding Calvin's belly. He kissed the bridge of his nose, and his bushy silver brow, giving his eye a breather. “So close, now…”

Soft mortician hands came down to cup his erection as he was kissed all up and down his neck. He rubbed Calvin vigorously through his clothes, so that he still panted and squirmed. But he didn't try to unbuckle his own belt or anything. He let Mort work him. No matter how he clutched at the mortician, he didn't demand anything. Nothing more than an orgasm, at any rate. And Mort got to choose how that happened.

With his lips against Calvin's temple he whispered, “You’re right, death becomes you.” The silver sideburns tickled his nose, he kissed along the crow's feet. “I've never seen anything more beautiful in all my life.”

Calvin's breath hitched in his throat, and he released one big, trembling whimper. It was the most vulnerable sound Mort had ever heard. His hips made one last great thrust up between Mort's hands and thigh, then he went entirely limp.

Mortimer kissed his laugh lines as he caught his breath and came back to the parlor from wherever his pleasured mind had gone sailing. Then he enveloped the mortician in his arms, hugging him to his big, warm body and burying his face in his neck. He took a long, deep sniff, then shoved his nose in Mort's silver hair and took another.

“Are we still playing pretend?” Mort asked.

Then Calvin's hand was coming up to cup the back of his head… oh, no, he was-

Mort grabbed at his toupée. “Hey, you better stop, these things don't stay on too well when you start tugging on ‘em.”

“That's the point. Let go.”

Reluctantly he did, and Calvin removed the hairpiece, tossing it next to his eye patch.

“Hmm,” the landlord hummed. “Now he looks a little older, my soft little mortician.”

“A little balder, maybe.”

It made him feel completely in the nude, more than being nude ever would. But Calvin intertwined his fingers with what silver remained, and caressed his bare head with his thumb. Just as Mort was beginning to feel far too uncomfortable, Calvin pulled him down and kissed the hot, hairless flesh.

“Fascinating.”

Chapter Text

“The way I see it, the night is young.”

Calvin hadn't put his eye patch back on after he'd cleaned up, and neither had Mort secured his toupée. They existed, quiet and comfortable in each other's space, devoid of their cover-ups.

Mort came to stand at the bar as Calvin poured more bourbon. When the landlord came about to hand him his glass, he looked him up and down, then set it on the bar.

“I think you're a little overdressed just now.”

He rounded Mort to stand behind him, and pulled at the shoulders of his sport coat.

“Let's get this off, shall we?”

With a gentle shift of his shoulders, Mort helped Calvin to take his coat. He hung it on the back of one of the bar chairs and trailed a hand down the mortician's arm, rustling the surprisingly fine white dress shirt.

“Very nice,” he drawled.

There he was again, that soft, sweet man, blushing under his compliments.

Calvin meandered over to the piano in the corner. Instinctually he padded a little tune across the keys.

A sensation of immense sickness came up, splashing his face like November sea water. And the smell…

Ever since Felix could walk, he'd dance to Calvin's piano playing. He'd gotten very good at it. In another life the little guy might've been a professional dancer, or choreographer. It was unnatural to play without him.

“I'd sure like if you played me something,” Mort said.

Calvin looked over his shoulder at him. “I don't know. I think I've lost my touch.”

“I'm sure you know more than Chopsticks and Heart and Soul .”

He couldn't help chuckling at that. “Of course. Well, come here, then.”

Calvin sat down on the piano bench and he motioned for Mort to do the same.

He wasn't sure what to play, exactly. He knew plenty of songs and none of them came to mind. Anyway he didn't want to be playing. But Mort had asked him to, and he didn't want to sour the night by begrudging him a simple song.

Calvin was an enjoyer of contemporary music rather than classical, but in his boyhood he'd been forced to play so much Chopin at all of mommy and daddy's parties that it had started coming out of his ears, so that now it was the only thing that came to him in the gray hour.

So the notes of Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 gently flowed from his fingers.

From the corner of his eye he could see that Mort was watching his fingers as they danced over the keys. Ah, he'd been thinking of the wrong profession when he'd conjured that domestic fantasy. Probably he could have been a concert pianist; it was one of his only hobbies. He supposed drinking and gambling didn't count.

But maybe he didn't have to worry about what might have been, who he could have been. Maybe they were both just fine the way they were. Whatever distance was between them could be cured by kisses and caresses, death and music. Under the same roof, in one another's arms, they were warm and alive; what else really mattered?

When the piece came to an end and his hands came to rest upon his lap, he turned slightly to Mort.

“Stay with me.”

Mort met the request with a sort of stunned silence, and he continued as though he hadn't understood exactly what Fischoeder had meant.

“Of course I'll stay the night.”

“Don't make me spell it out for you,” Calvin sort of chuckled, but there was an edge to his voice. “Not just tonight…”

There was another weighty pause from Mort.

“... Calvin…”

“I want you to live here, with me.”

“Calvin, I can't, I have my job-”

“Enough about your job. You wouldn't have to worry about that if you stayed with me. You'd be like a prince here; I could take very good care of you.”

“But you don't get it. I love my job. Sure, sometimes it can be a lot of work, and it can be stressful, but that's good for me. It's what I've always wanted to do all my life; I think I'd go crazy without it. The mortuary, my apartment… it's my life . I'm content.”

Calvin stared down at the keys, the stark contrast of black and white.

“All this time you've been saying “I love you, I'm in love with you”, but I was right, wasn't I? You didn't mean it.”

“Of course I meant it! Calvin,” Mort rested a hand on his arm. “Listen, you can't ask me to leave my livelihood just so I can spend every waking moment with you. I'd go crazy… and you'd end up hating me.”

Calvin took his hand, gripping it hard.

“I could take care of you.”

“Oh, but…” he smiled and placed his free hand over Calvin’s. “I just don't need taken care of. I love you, but look at me; I'm fine.”

“I don't understand you. I'm willing to give you everything . Why won't you take it? I know I've been so strange and miserable but I thought-”

“Calvin,” Mort leaned against him, resting his head on his shoulder. “You haven't even said you love me, and you're already asking me to move in.”

All these emotions, these changing moods; kaleidoscopic, turning him round and round, blinding him with shifting colors. He knew he was completely deranged, he just couldn't help it.

“Have you ever been in love before?” Mort asked. “You must've, if you're so scared of saying it.”

“No. I thought I was a time or two, but…” he sighed. “It wasn't… Mort, I…”

I just don't want to be alone. You are so kind, and so very, very soft…

“I'm really no good for you.”

“Maybe I like that. You're like candy and liquor; I guess those things are pretty good, they make me happy.” He kissed Calvin's neck, “C'mere.”

Calvin turned to him and Mort reached up, kissing the corner of his bad eye in the shelter of his silver brow.

“It's okay. I know you're sad. It's okay to be sad.”

The big man nuzzled his cheek, worrying his way to his mouth and kissing him, holding him there. A little tongue never hurt; he lapped his against Mort's, and wondered that he'd let the little mortician do the same to his eye.

Speaking of the eye, it felt rather nice, as though it had been taken from his skull and lovingly fondled, before being tucked back in under his eyelids and kissed goodnight. Beautiful, Mort had called it. Calvin believed him. Precious pearl, tightly shut away; who knew morticians could open oysters without killing them?

Thinking about it made him all bothered again. One hand came up to cup Mort's breast, the other curled about his back and found a roll of fat to gently squeeze.

“Come to bed with me.”

“T-To bed? With you?”

“That's what I said. You're not afraid, are you?”

“No, it's just that… this is the first time.”

“It is. And I hope that there will be many more.”

But he wasn't counting on them. The clock was ever tick-tick-ticking, and pretty soon Mortimer would find the exit.

They went up to the master bedroom together, where a turned down king size bed awaited them.

“I don’t have anything to wear to bed,” Mort said.

“Actually, you do.”

Calvin went to his wardrobe and produced a pair of poppy red pajamas of unimaginably soft silk.

“They didn't have the color I wanted in your size, but-” he shrugged. “It'll do.”

There was something in Mort's eyes; Calvin didn't understand how anyone could become so emotional over a pair of pajamas. But the little mortician banished the intensity and came forward, taking them in his hands.

“They're so soft.”

“Like you,” said Calvin.

The weight of their world was in his voice when he said, “Thank you.”

“Of course. Now, put them on.”

He led Mort to the lavatory and remained in the bedroom so that they could both change clothes. Calvin hadn't worn his own pajamas in quite some time. They were silken, like Mort’s, of a rich plum color with his initials embroidered in white thread upon the breast pocket.

The overhead light was switched off, leaving the room in the soft amber of the nightstand lamp. And now that he had settled on the bed, he could hear Mort's movement in the lavatory; the gentle shift of his new silks and the pad of his feet on the tile.

After a while he came out, standing there with his clothes draped over one arm, his shoes in hand, silkenly soporiferous in the soft light. He placed his clothes on the nearby arm chair and turned fully to Calvin.

“Cute, huh?” he asked.

“Hmm,” Calvin hummed. “Come here.”

The little mortician obeyed, and stood right before him at his bedside, laying his glasses on the nightstand. Calvin sat up to adjust Mort's collar.

“The first few buttons should be undone, like so…”

He unfastened the first three buttons, exposing Mort's soft, hairless chest. The mortician smiled and started to fiddle with Calvin's.

“You too, then.”

When his chest was bared Mort couldn't help staring. Just the tips of his soft fingers trailed over Calvin’s silver chest hair. Calvin let him without even thinking about it; he'd lost the ability to swat Mort's hands away when he'd made love to his eye.

“Maybe we should get a toupée for your chest,” Calvin said.

The mortician laughed, “Not a chance, because you'd just take it off anyway. Be a waste of money.”

“Sure would.”

He stood up and embraced the mortician, sort of scooped him up and turned about, falling onto the bed so that Calvin was on top. He held Mort close, clutching at the new silks pressed to his body, imbibing his warmth, and caught his mouth in kiss after kiss.

It couldn't happen. It just couldn't happen. Mort couldn't leave him. Not now, not after everything- not in spite of everything. That in a matter of days he had caught Fischoeder in his net, tangling, strangling him with gentle words and gentle touches. He wanted to cry out at the top of his lungs, but he swallowed hard to keep it all down.

Calvin paused in his kissing to rest his cheek on Mort's, huffing into his ear as he fell into a more comfortable position. One hand came down Mort's back and slid under the soft curve of his bottom. Calvin felt him up there, appraising him, then gave him a gentle squeeze and the most gentlest of smacks before rounding his hip and resting upon his crotch. The little fellow was already hard again.

Calvin breathed steadily against him, stirring the close cropped silver sideburns, as he fondled the smaller man. Gently, his fingers finding the length and the inner thigh through the new silk. Such intense heat there, he was sure that nothing in the world could rival it. And he knew that he was melting, melting away.

“I love you,” he whispered into Mort's ear, so that the confession would not leave this room. “ God , I love you.”

Mort embraced him in return, softly moaning into his ear.

“I love you, too.”

All wrapped up in lustrous garment, Calvin found his lips again and started to kiss him. It was as though the fabric were alive, part of the dermis, breathing and feeling as much as the lungs or liver. And the rush of blood beneath was hotter than ever, rising to the surface like such searing lava. He glowed in the lamplight, his poppy pajamas ablaze.

“What color did you want instead?” Mort asked.

Calvin thought for a moment that he could read his mind. He almost wished it were so, that he did not have to breathe life into his words. He pushed his hands into the soft of Mort's waist.

“Green. Emerald green. Or indigo, ultramarine.”

“Like the sea.”

“... yes, like the sea…”

“I'd like that. It sounds perfect. You have excellent taste, Calvin.”

“Excellent taste? In clothes or men?”

Mort kissed along his laugh lines.

“Both.”

The warmth in the room was incredible, catered by their bodies, their lust and caresses. So very soft. Calvin had never known anything so soft. So soft, that it hurt to touch, but hurt far worse to ignore.

“I love you,” he said, burying his face in Mort's neck. “I want you, I love you. Don't leave me.”

“Calvin-”

“ Don't leave me.”

His fingers curled into the red silk. And he thought for just one fleeting moment that if he could hold onto Mort now, he could hold onto him forever. But he'd picked a poor material for that. For as the silk lived and breathed, it too sought its independence, so that no matter how hard his grip tightened, the silk was slipping right through his fingers.

“Ah, Calvin, you're hurting me…”

Not really, he thought. Not yet.

But he released Mort. As the mortician rubbed at his sides, Calvin started rubbing him again, down in that most sensitive spot. His member pressed hard against Calvin's palm as he moaned against his lips.

Calvin took the fourth button, and the fifth, of the red silk, further parting the lapels so he could kiss the soft chest beneath. So pretty, so deceivingly pure; like the snowfields outside, new and soft. It was good to kiss him there. He was so warm, so ripe. Calvin pecked at his nipples, getting little quivers out of him.

“Can I kiss it?” he asked.

Mort looked down at him, giving himself a double-chin. Calvin smiled. He thought he must look like a great predator; perched over Mort's body, apt to bite.

“Kiss… what?”

Calvin gave his member a good hearty squeeze through the red.

“Oh,” Mort quivered again. “Please.”

“There's a good boy.”

Just for this purpose he had fiddled with the pajama bottom buttons for some time, wearing them in. Like butter they slipped from the holes. Mort was ready for him. He pulled the little man forth.

It was the easiest thing in the world to kiss him there, to press his lips just upon the softest, most sensitive flesh of the human body. Again, and again.

“C-Calvin…”

“Am I like the brown fox, Mort? Far too quick?”

“Mm…”

“There now,” he covered Mort back up and buttoned his trousers. “Just a kiss… or two.”

“It makes me nervous.”

“Fucking?”

“Yes.”

“It's different with another man. But I promise to make you feel good when we come around to it. I'm experienced, and I can be very gentle.”

“Thank you. You're drunk, anyway, aren't you?”

“Always, if I can help it,” he came back to lie across Mort's chest. “Speaking of, why don't we have a nightcap of gin?”

“Sounds good. I'm awfully tired.”

“I wish I was.”

“You'll lay with me, won't you? Maybe that'll help.”

“Maybe.”

He cupped Mort's cheek and kissed him just below his eye.

“It's funny. You're the only person who hasn't just stared at my eye. You're looking right at me. At me .”

“Yeah. Because I like you,” he cupped Calvin's cheek and passed a thumb under the eye. “This is just part of you.”

Calvin drew back, taking a bottle of gin and a glass from the nightstand and pouring himself a nightcap. Really he was scared, because he knew what was coming. He could feel it, a desperation coiling at the back of his mind. He knocked back the gin and poured a glass for Mort.

Ah, but his hand was trembling.

“What's the matter?” Mort asked, placing his hand over Calvin’s.

“Just… shakes. You know, sometimes I shake. Getting old and all.”

He watched Mort knock back the gin.

“You're scared,” the mortician said. “That I'm gonna leave you. That right?”

The older man sort of turned away. Mortimer's ability to see right through him was astounding. But maybe it wasn't so hard, when he'd already acted so deranged, when they'd spent the last few days quite intimate in one another's company.

“You don't have to be ashamed.”

“I'm not ashamed,” he countered. “ You're the one who's ashamed, remember?”

“Sure, but I'm not gonna leave you.”

“They all say that. The ones that want what's in my pockets.”

“Well, I want what's in your pants, and behind your patch. Gifts are nice but I'm a made man - I can buy myself whatever I want.”

“You couldn't buy yourself a beach house. Or diamonds. Or sports cars.”

He scoffed, “Why would I?”

“Because that's what people want.”

“Geez. You know what I want?”

“Tell me. Maybe I'll shell out for it before you leave me.”

Mort hesitated for just a second. Then he embraced Calvin, took him back onto the bed. There upon the linens he kissed him, made perfect love to him.

“I want to love you,” he whispered to his unseeing eye. “And I want you to love me. And I want to lay here with you, and be very happy.”

“That a fact?”

“Yes. You gonna shell out for that?”

Above all he knew he was being cold and distant. He just couldn't help himself. That even here and now, absolutely warm and embracing the one man he'd ever loved romantically, he was drowning.

“I'll have to,” he forced himself to say.

Mort looked at him, then buried his face in his chest. He held the mortician in turn.

I'm not getting any better, he thought, looking out the window at the black night. 

He filled his hands with red silk.

Well, winters are cold, but hearses are warm.

Chapter Text

About Forty-Six Years Ago… So long as memory serves…

Hopefully one can understand the grandeur of the Fischoeder mansion’s parlor. It is a beautiful part of the home, well lived in by the family, particularly Calvin and his father. When he was seven years old - it was around the time Felix was born, either before or after - Father hoisted him up onto the leather-seated bar stool and poured his first sip of Kentucky bourbon into a thick crystal glass upon the polished mahogany counter. The back wall of the bar always glittered with hundreds of technicolor bottles; reds, greens, ambers, pinks and blues; the real treasure trove of the household for young Calvin Fischoeder. But Father loved bourbon the best, favoring it over jenever - that is, Dutch gin - the drink of his homeland. Although a proud immigrant, he liked to consider himself as much of an American as Rockefeller himself.

Evenings in the parlor were often the venue of many, many parties. Being a real estate magnate, cementing himself as old money, entailed that the Fischoeders must then be socialites. And they were quite the socialites, though it was generally down to Mother to organize and host the parties; coming from old money herself, she had been well bred for this sort of thing. 

So it was that, begrudgingly, the melody of Chopin’s Nocturne Op.9 No.2 flowed from the piano in the parlor. There was no love imbued in the notes, but it was prim and perfect; that was all she wanted. At least from her eldest child. The one who was to inherit the small empire his father had built so assiduously.

Calvin finally could bear no more. He stopped.

“You'll play it until it's as natural as breathing. Understood?”

“It already is as natural as breathing,” he pointedly looked at his mother so that he wasn't watching his hands, and continued playing as though he were Chopin himself. “See? If you're done nannying me, I have way more important things to worry about than another of your stupid parties.”

“ That is no way to speak to your mother. You'll be hosting these parties one day, Calvin, then you'll understand, and you'll have your own children to make functional members of society.”

He rolled his eyes.

“And don't roll your eyes at me.”

Then he slammed his fists down on the keys. “Why don't you make Felix learn to play? All he knows how to do is throw his weight around.”

“You know Felix doesn't have the attention span, it'd be a waste of tutoring. If you want out of it so badly why don't you teach him?”

Calvin had tried, and that had gone over as well as she suggested. He brushed past the question, “It just seems to me that as the younger child he should be the one entertaining. I should be at Dad's side.”

“You're always at your dad's side. Anyway, fine, if you don't want to play then go wash up.”

“You don't have to tell me that,” he said, pushing back from the piano and standing up. “I'm not a kid anymore.”

Mother gave him a sardonic look, but it was true. At sixteen he was a young man, ready to face the world head-on. And he was tired of these dumb parties. He knew that what Mom and Dad really wanted was to set him up with some girl; he'd already been made to attend a few debutante balls. But what they didn't know was that his world wasn't going to work like that. There was plenty of Calvin Fischoeder to go around; he didn't need to settle down for a long time.

“I know you’re not a kid anymore,” she said, melting as she came into reverie. “Trust me, I know .”

She straightened his tie and looked him over.

“You’re so much like your dad, and that means you have a lot of responsibility-”

“I know that, Mother,” he swatted her hand away.

“- so please, try to impress Charlene Chalet tonight?”

“I’ve gotten the talk already from Dad. I’m just not ready for that sort of thing.”

“I know how you feel, but everyone goes through it. Why don’t you just try to be happy that you’re not a woman?”

“Then Felix would inherit everything. At least he’d be happy.”

She smiled. “Go wash up.”

Women and girls didn't bother Calvin at all, it was the idea of… everything! Courtship, marriage, settling down … not to mention kids . Maybe there was too much pressure. Or maybe it just didn't seem right . Not for him, anyway.

At the top of the stairs he almost ran into Felix. He caught the little guy by his shoulder.

“Hey, what's that on your face? Chocolate?”

“It's my Halloween leftovers; you can't have any!” He wrenched himself out of Calvin's grasp.

“Jesus, I don't want it if your grubby little paws have been on it anyway. Go wash your face and knock it off, you'll spoil your dinner and Dad’ll beat your ass.”

“I don't care what daddy thinks,” but on the contrary, his eyes got wide and he rubbed at his mouth.

Calvin held up his hands, “Whatever. Won't be on my conscience.”

He went to the lavatory off of his room and examined himself in the mirror. Not too bad. He ran a comb through the top of his hair for good measure. Then from the inside of his suit jacket he produced a small flask of brandy.

It wasn't like he was nervous . He was just in a bad mood. One drink couldn't hurt…

… okay, maybe two-

“Calvin?”

He jumped and reflexively tucked the brandy into his jacket. “Jesus, don't sneak up on me like that.”

“I didn't . And mom told you not to take the Lord's name in vain.”

“ Jesus , Felix, get the hell out. I've gotta get dressed for dinner.”

“But I need help-”

Quite dramatically he pointed to the door, “Get out !”

“Calvin! I need help!”

He grabbed Felix by shoulders, spun him around with ease, and kicked him in the rump with the inside of his foot.

“Ow!”

“That didn't hurt.”

The door shook the house when he slammed it shut, quickly locking it just as Felix tried to open it again. That didn't stop him from pounding on the door and going into hysterics. 

Father would hear that. 

Fine! It wasn't his problem. Felix deserved a hard lesson. Mom would be furious, she and dad would argue for days , but…

It wasn't his problem. And he did have his own problems.

He took a long drink of the brandy.

Okay, maybe he could convince himself to charm Charlene Caviar or whatever her name was. They could get married and have two kids who hate each other and argue day and night. Sounded like a lot of fun. The firstborn son could even be Calvin Jr. They’d host a bunch of stupid parties and they'd say all the things people say to you when you're a big normal rich man, because marriage and kids and all that - it made you normal.

He downed the remainder of the brandy.

Jesus, what was he thinking? A man could ruin his life thinking up things like that.

It was some time before Felix quit throwing a fit. He'd dissolved into quiet sobs by then. That was usually how it went. When he left the room, Calvin left the lavatory and crept downstairs.

Father was of the opinion that a young man like Calvin ought to carry a flask of liquor on his person for such occasions as drinking coffee or, well, just plain old drinking. Mother, on the other hand, wasn't. She was of the opinion that Calvin's drinking habits were “unbecoming” and “a one-way ticket to an early grave”. On the occasion he needed a refill, he needed to be sure she wasn't around, lest he never hear the end of it. Father's word was final, even if he and Mother got into arguments spanning months, but it was good to spare himself the headache.

Calvin was making good ground, so that when he wandered into the dining room after filling his flask, he was thoroughly buzzed. He picked up one of the glasses and held it aloft.

“A toast,” he said. “To my lovely liver.”

He drank from the flask.

Of a sudden he had the notion that Felix was found out. Due primarily to the fact that he could hear Father's indecipherable scolding, and Felix's high pitched screaming in retaliation.

Then there was a pause; silence so pure that Calvin became almost deranged from the lack of sound.

Pretty soon a door slammed - he sighed in relief - and little footsteps were pounding down the hall, coming directly to the dining room.

Felix stood there, holding a hand to a bright red mark on his little chocolate stained face. Calvin was even a little surprised, past the liquor. Dad seldom took a hand to either of them. But when Felix started screaming it was difficult to control the impulse.

“See,” Calvin said. “I told you dad would beat your ass.”

Then Felix snapped.

It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. Felix was prone to bouts of intense anger. If he was good at anything, it was lashing out. He was usually chucking toys or food at Calvin’s head.

Unfortunately one of his little toys wasn’t at hand. If it had been, probably things would’ve turned out much different. No. The first thing closest to Felix’s little hand was a knife.

He rushed Calvin, completely losing all concept of control as he threw himself at his older brother in a flurry of little whirling limbs. In his fury he'd garnered a kind of stupid strength, so that he was able to tackle Calvin entirely to the ground.

“ Felix -”

At once the pain was so excruciating that he lost all bearings. He knew there was a knife, he knew that Felix was holding it, that he was driving it into him again and again, but-

“ Stop it! ”

He grabbed his little brother by the shoulders and twisted, flinging him against the China cabinet. It shook, rattled. Something inside fell and shattered.

“Ow, ow, ow,” Calvin muttered. His hand rose instinctively to hold his face as he curled in on himself. Somehow pain and numbness marbled together, shooting into his skull. “Mm…”

“ Felix! ”

They both came to attention at a shout from the hallway. Mother.

“ You two better not be roughhousing in there! Take it outside! ”

Calvin looked for his brother, and it was only then that he realized he couldn't see. Well, he could , but only partially at best. But he was able to recognize Felix, just there, huddled against the cabinet.

The little guy was paler than ever, so that the red mark on his cheek was fluorescent. His eyes were wide, scared. More scared than Calvin had ever seen him.

“Don't worry,” Calvin said. “It was an accident. I pushed you into the cabinet…”

But Felix was verging on hysterics, gazing first at Calvin, then at the bloodied knife in his hand.

Acute nausea overcame him then.

“ Oh… ”

He felt it rise to the back of his throat, followed by a faintness-

“C-Calvin?”

Pain consumed him when he shook his head, as though all of his nerves were being bundled up and crushed. He groaned, trying to keep himself steady.

“Felix, we've gotta get to the doctor…”

“But your eye …”

Oh, that makes sense.

“Yeah, I know, that's why we've gotta go.”

Painstakingly he crawled over to his little brother and jerked the bloodied knife from his hands.

“Ew,” Felix said, flapping his bloody hands. “Ew, ew!”

“Shush, it's okay.”

“I gotta wash my hands!”

“Not right now,” Calvin scolded. “Someone will see. We've gotta go now or someone will see, okay?”

“But what about the bl-bl- blood ? It's all over!”

“Felix,” he grasped him by the shoulder. “You've got to help me up. I can't see.”

He nodded and got to his feet. It took a little effort to get Calvin up, but the worst part was going out the front door. He grabbed a cloth napkin from one of the parlor tables on his way.

“Don't use that!” Felix shrieked. “Mommy will be furious!”

“What's she gonna do?” Calvin hissed. “Poke my eye out?”

It really wasn't a good thing to say. Felix's eyes welled up with tears. Probably because he knew how much trouble he was in - or maybe he had no idea, and that was all the more frightening.

The winter wind bit Calvin's flesh when he stepped outside. Agony split his brow. He'd come to realize that his hand was all wet, and his face - with what, he had a pretty good idea. He clutched Felix's hand.

“Do you remember the way to Doctor Kerstan's house?”

“Yeah, I think…”

“Felix, you've got to guide me there.”

“How come?”

“Because I can't see .”

The family doctor lived just a few blocks down, but it was a hard walk between the ice, the snow, the bleeding and the pain . It was probably the worst pain Calvin had ever felt. Felix had definitely left the knife at home, but it felt like it was still lodged in there somehow, wriggling around and cutting him more with each step he took. Every few feet he wanted to stop and sit down, but he knew if he did that getting up would be that much harder, and thankfully Felix kept relentlessly pulling him along.

“Come on, come on, ” his little brother urged. “You're bleeding to death all over the place.”

“Don't say that.”

“You are .”

“Yeah, well, it's your fault! ”

Calvin wrenched his arm about, tossing Felix into the hard-packed snow.

“Ow!”

“You're such a baby!”

True to the word, Felix laid there, burying his face in his arms and sobbing, kicking his feet.

“We gotta go to the doctor!” Felix cried. “If Daddy finds out he'll kill me!”

“ Oh, ” Calvin started to mock him. “I'm Felix and I poked out my brother's eye and now I'm suffering the consequences!”

“ Stop it , Calvin!”

“Dad's gonna kill both of us anyway.”

He sat down next to Felix, scooping up a handful of snow. To his utter shock, the cloth napkin he'd brought was already completely bloodsoaked. He shuddered and wrapped the snow in it, holding it to his eye. Damn! That hurt worse than just the cloth.

“Nuh uh,” Felix whimpered. “Daddy loves you.”

Calvin didn't want to argue, partially because he knew Felix was right to be afraid, but mostly because his eye was absolutely killing him. He hunched over, pressing the makeshift ice pack hard against his eye.

“Calvin?”

He groaned.

“We've gotta go-”

“Just give me a second,” he snapped.

How they were supposed to explain this when they got home was beyond him. If Dad found out the truth…

He struggled to think about what might happen to Felix. He had a pretty good idea, one that had been at the forefront of Dad's mind for little over a year; boarding school. The big BS. He knew that if Felix got sent there it would ruin him. Dad was of a different mind. Afterall, how many kids from the other families got sent to boarding school and came back as functional members of society? But it just wouldn't work on Felix. The little guy cared too much about what other people thought of him to the point where it completely crippled him socially, not to mention his uncontrollable instances of rage and all his fussy little quirks… It was a weird way to be, and it wasn't something boarding school was going to fix. He got angry just thinking about it. How was Felix supposed to survive all alone in a place like that?

“Come on,” Calvin said, holding out his hand. “Let's go.”

He could conjure a decent lie when he wasn't doubled over.

Felix grabbed him and pulled him along.

When at last they made it to Doctor Kerstan's house, Calvin used his less bloody hand to use the door knocker since Felix couldn't reach.

There came quite a rush, where the housekeeper opened the door and ushered them in - no doubt used to patients coming to the doctor's home. Calvin and Felix were separated.

Doctor Kerstan was around Father's age, gray and balding, speckled with liver spots. He took one look at Calvin and perspiration broke out on his brow. It took some time for the eye to be cleaned, and though Calvin was given draughts of whiskey it was an excruciating process.

Felix, in the meantime, was given a bath and some fresh, if old, clothes that the doctor's children had long outgrown. He whined about the outdated fashion, but his complaints were soothed with tea and cookies; compliments of the doctor's wife, who relayed Felix's comforts to Calvin once he was bandaged and recovering.

Then came the verdict.

“I've called your father…”

Calvin's blood ran cold.

“... and told him to come as quick as he could.”

“You didn't tell him-”

“I said that the two of you were fine, that it was serious, but not that serious. An accident.”

Doctor Kerstan leaned forward, placing a hand on Calvin's knee.

“Son, I'd like you to tell me what happened.”

Calvin sighed, “It was just like you said; an accident.”

“What sort of accident involves multiple stab wounds?”

“...”

“I know Felix had something to do with it.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You were both covered in blood-”

“Because he guided me here.”

“Calvin-”

“Look, doctor, I appreciate the help, but you'll have to leave this between Father and I.”

“What about Felix?”

“What about him? I told you, it was an accident.”

“Siblings fight, sure, but not like this.”

Calvin motioned to his bandaged eye, “Clearly they do.”

Despite everything it still hurt like the devil, but at least it was cleaned and bandaged. Carefully he moved to stand, and found that walking was going to be difficult for a while. Well, he supposed that everything would be difficult for a while.

Doctor Kerstan stood and tried to take his arm, but Calvin refused his help.

“Calvin, you must understand that this is quite serious.”

“Mhm.”

“Please, have a seat.”

“I need to talk to my brother.”

“... son, you're never going to see out of that eye again.”

He looked at the doctor, focused on him with some difficulty. His injured eye screamed in frustration and agony - it hadn't quite understood yet that it was no longer any damn good.

“That much was obvious. Do I get to keep it, anyway?”

“That depends on how bad the scarring is. If there's enough dead tissue, it must be removed.”

“Shame.”

“There are potential surgeries we can look into, but you're going to need to see a specialist-”

“Later, doctor, please. I need to talk to my brother.”

He found Felix in the parlor, still eating cookies, his damp hair sticking out in all directions. His eyes widened when he saw Calvin.

“Did Doctor Kerstan take your eye out?”

“No. Not yet,” he sat down next to Felix and reached for a cookie, but decided against it because he didn't want to jar his eye by chewing. “Dad's on his way.”

Felix gasped, “No!”

“Felix-”

“Why'd you call him!?”

“ I didn't! Doctor Kerstan did. Listen,” he grabbed his brother's hand and squeezed it. “It was an accident, right?”

“I-I-”

“ Felix .”

“Y-yeah, i-it was an accident…”

But the lie wasn't comforting either of them.

“Calvin, what are you gonna do?”

“About what?”

“Your eye.”

“I can't do anything about it. You poked it out.”

Felix said nothing more.

“I'm gonna get the rest of that whiskey. You pack a punch when you're pissed off, you know that? For a little baby, anyway.”

“Not a baby…”

On his way back to the doctor's office there was a heavy knock on the front door that reverberated throughout the house, giving Calvin pause. The housemaid promptly answered.

That great leonine head haloed by stark winter light made him forget everything for just a moment.

“Dad!”

Mr. Fischoeder looked up, and for the first time in his life, Calvin saw shock in his eyes. He held out his arms, and Calvin steadily came forward to be gingerly embraced. He pressed the unwounded side of his face into his father's chest. Of a sudden he was overwhelmed with comfort, where before he'd been numbly wrestling with his shock and pain. Father smelled like home; of cigar smoke and bourbon, and faintly of finely aged ambergris. His legs trembled. He thought he might dissolve into hysterics just then, but he held strong, just how Father had always taught him to.

“It was an accident,” he stated, firm if a bit abrupt.

Father scrutized the bandages, muttering, “ Gott im Himmel … Where's your brother?”

“I told you, it was an accident-”

“ Where is Felix?”

Calvin sighed, “In the parlor.”

Though upon returning to the parlor, the only thing left of Felix was the crumbs of his cookies.

…

It didn't take a genius to know where Felix had run off to, it just took his elder brother. The sun was setting by the time Father had given up the search himself; he'd canceled his party and everything. Mother was swimming in her own tears. Calvin, on the other hand, was just waiting for the right moment to slip away.

Guilt was the worst thing. Worse than sorrow, or anger, or that pain rummaging around in his eye. The problem with guilt was that he was probably right to feel it when his own responsibility had turned on him. And now, having been incapable of lying successfully to dear old Dad, there was no way to make it up. And he knew that Felix could never forgive him. He'd never quite be able to forgive himself. That's the only cure for guilt, you see; forgiveness. Whether it be from oneself, a loved one, or some third party.

The light pollution surrounding the Fischoeder home was insufficient to drown the budding stars. When they thoroughly freckled the sky, Calvin took off in Dad's golf cart. Not the best idea, having that very day been half blinded for life, but at least he wasn't taking a real car. Actually, he'd almost taken the Duesenberg, but if Dad didn't like him driving it when he had two eyes, then… well…

In any case, the best course of action presently was to piss him off the least. There was no chance he'd reconsider sending Felix away, but maybe…

Calvin sighed, his breath visible in the air, “No. He won't. I'm gonna find Felix, and bring him back, and then I'm…”

He clutched at the left side of his face. Crying hurt more than usual. That was fine, he didn't need to cry anyway. He was a big boy.

Seeing as it was the dead of winter, the wharf was relatively deceased itself. There were a few carnies doing routine maintenance. If they saw him they stared longer than they should have, but let him go about his business nonetheless. He was able to slip down to the underpier without being bothered.

Flashlight in hand, he wandered around down there for some time. No need to call out; he'd find Felix when he found him. Besides, the little guy could use all the time he could get.

Aside from the flashlight beam, it was pitch dark. Kind of creepy, but he'd never really been afraid of anything down here. It was just a bunch of old junk, and maybe he liked to think that there were ghosts attached to some of it that lived in the puppy piles of nuts and bolts and rusted metal, immune to tetanus in their weird afterlife. But what could ghosts do to him? They only had a home here because he let them, because this was his wharf. Or would be, someday.

Damn, there it was; guilt, again.

When he reached the edge of the underpier he heard a sniffle. Panning the beam around, he found Felix just about where he expected; curled up next to some defunct carousel horses and old stuffed animals, wrapped in a cloth tarp.

“Felix?”

He glanced over, unsurprised to see him.

“It's too cold for you to be under here.”

“I don't care,” he huffed. “I'm staying. I'm staying… forever and ever, and you can't make me move.”

But it was pretty plain that he was shivering.

“... did you bring me a coat?”

“Geez, you want some hot chocolate, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, tough luck, I didn't bring that. But here-”

He tossed Felix the coat he'd hung over his arm and sat down next to him on the old, cold pier.

“And here! ” He punched him hard in the meat of his arm. The effort jarred his eye, but he tried to ignore it.

“Ow!”

“I get one free punch, you know the rules. But why don't we change them? How about an eye for an eye?”

Felix whimpered.

“I'm kidding!”

Without a word, he shouldered the coat and bundled up.

“Ready to go home?”

He shook his head.

“Didn't think so. Well, me either.”

Together they gazed out at the sea.

“You picked a cold day for all this,” Calvin said, but he didn't really mind. The cold helped numb his eye, and maybe his heart, too.

“Calvin, Dad's gonna send me away, isn't he?”

“Hey, don't worry about it. Eventually you'll get to go to Lawrenceville and then they'll send you someplace stupid like Princeton or Yale, and you can come back and rub all your special certificates in my face and talk about all the hazing you got to do at the Bones and Keys club or whatever the hell. You'll love hazing.”

Felix receded further. Finally, in what was a barely audible whisper, he squeaked, “I don't wanna go.”

“I know. But you'll come back. It won't be forever.”

“It's still for too long.”

“... yeah. I know.”

The sea spray came up to chill them, settling over their clothes like little diamonds. Moon beams illuminated the ocean blue, so that the stars floated in an earthbound space. The breeze that came in on the tide ruffled their hair and made them shiver. But it was good, the cold and the blue, because they were together. In some way that was alright, to be side-by-side in silence despite everything.

“I could run away?”

It was meant as a statement, but about halfway through it morphed into a question.

“Yeah,” Calvin replied. “And do what?”

“Be a… a carny, maybe.”

“You don't have any talents.”

“I can dance.”

“That's true. But lots of people can dance. It'd be tough competition. Anyway, you'd still be going away.”

“Yeah…”

“At least… if you go to boarding school… at least I'll know where you are.”

Felix sniffled.

“What do you say we turn in? You're gonna catch cold.”

“Can I get hot chocolate?”

“At this hour? Sure.”

In a short building with a big front window on Ocean Avenue was a 24 hour coffee shop. There, in the buzzing incandescent lights, Calvin ordered hot chocolate and a black coffee. Aside from the cashier, they were the only two people there. They took a booth near the back.

Calvin produced a flask from his inner jacket pocket and poured some brandy into his coffee.

“What's that?”

He looked up. “You want some? Might make you feel a little better.”

Felix offered his cup, and Calvin poured. He sipped, screwed up his face for a second, then smiled. “It's warm!”

“It's hot chocolate.”

“Yeah, but it's different. It feels like a big warm snake in my chest… is it syrup?”

“Syrup?”

“Like for pancakes.”

“Why do you ask?”

“It tastes like syrup.”

“I guess it might as well be.”

“I wish I had some pancakes.”

“The last thing you need is more sugar.”

Calvin drank his coffee, watching Felix occasionally blow bubbles in his hot chocolate. He forgot that sometimes the world could be still, and he hated it. Everything should always be moving and changing all at once, so that he never had a moment to think seriously.

It took a while to get home, not because Felix was actively fighting or anything. They just drove around for a while, taking in the sights of the town - Father's empire. It all seemed very big; strange, then, that Felix would be leaving. Their whole world was right here; where could he possibly go?

Dad was sitting at the parlor hearth when they returned. Upon seeing them he huffed and stood up, “Boys, if I didn't know better I would've been worried sick.”

Calvin smiled slightly. Felix, on the other hand, stared at his feet.

Father knelt down and cupped his cheek. “You're freezing. Run to Mother; she is actually worried sick.”

He nodded and ran off.

Calvin sat down in the armchair opposite his Father, finding it an exquisite comfort after his night on the town.

“Dad, about Felix…”

Father gave him his full attention, as he always did, and nodded for him to go on.

“You shouldn't send him away. Like I said, it was an accident. If you sent him to boarding school, I really think it would ruin him.”

“Calvin, I understand that you care for him. In fact, I'm very proud of you for it. But you shouldn't lie to cover for him. Just as you, Felix must develop a sense of responsibility.”

“He can do that here.”

“What do you propose?”

“Well… why not let him come with us? It's his home, too.”

“Felix will never own the wharf.”

“But if something happens to me?”

“Nothing is going to happen to you.”

His eye throbbed. “Something did.”

“Even if I did, Felix doesn't know how to pay attention. He's got a lot to learn, and it's out of my hands.” He shook his leonine head in exasperation and lit up a cigar, casting his gaze to the hearthfire.

“Why don't you love him?”

Father looked back at him, his blue eyes intense. “Pardon?”

“Why don't you love him?”

“Calvin,” the hurt was plain in his face. “Of course I love him.”

“... not like you love me.”

Father smiled sadly and said, “You hated the idea of Felix being born; you thought Mother and I would love him more than you, you felt like you were being replaced. Haven't I done everything in my power to assure you that that isn't true?”

“Yes. But I guess… I guess I feel guilty.”

“Guilty?”

“That you don't love him more than me. I think he needs it.” He shrugged, “I think he needs it, but I guess I need it too. I can't stand the thought of you loving him more than me.”

“What if I told you that I love both of you equally?”

“I wouldn't believe you.”

“Whyever not?”

“Because I know it isn't true. Maybe you want to, but… it just isn't possible, is it?”

Dad was woefully quiet as he turned the idea around in his head. “I don't know.”

Calvin wanted him to lie. Maybe it wouldn't change anything, but he needed to hear it, even if it broke the rules of their relationship; Father never lied to him. He thought that just this once a lie would be a great mercy. But it was not forthcoming.

With that, Calvin broke into tears.

“Calvin?” Father stood up. “Oh my, come here.”

Calvin got up and leaned into his outstretched arms. Sobs wracked his body, shooting pain through his skull, and he cried harder. Dad held him close, his big hands rubbing his back.

“There, there, Calvin, come now. You'll be Mr. Fischoeder when I'm gone. You can't be crying your… eye out over this sort of thing.” He sighed, “There, there. Some time apart will do the both of you some good.”

I'll be alone, he thought. Just like always… except really, truly alone.

And Felix? Well… What would become of Felix?

Chapter Text

By some miracle the mortician was still in his arms when he awoke. He didn't snore at all. If not for his warmth, for the gentle rise and fall of his chest, Calvin might've thought him dead; he looked so comfortable.

How can you refuse to live with me? he wondered. The bed is big enough for two. You've your own pajamas, you've slept so perfectly. How can you still want to go back to your little hovel?

It only made him sad, not angry. But a terrible sort of desperation came over him.

Calvin's hand slid about his waist, taking to the curve of that lovely roll of fat that clung to his ribs, following it around and down to the bottom of his belly. Having slept, being disheveled, the overhang of his stomach peeked out from under his shirt. Calvin held the pudge, cool from the exposure, and found the nape of Mort's neck with his lips.

He stirred after a few kisses, turning about somewhat to smile at Calvin.

“Good morning.”

Now, that was fantastic! Good morning!

Calvin pecked his lips and pinched his belly. “Good morning.”

“Isn't it a little early for this?”

“Early?” he grabbed Mort's hip and tugged him back into him. “How do you start your mornings?”

“With a cup of coffee, generally.”

“I mean, what's the absolute first thing you do?”

“Well, if I'm lucky, sit up straight.”

He chuckled, “Nothing straight about this.”

 “You're absurd! I'm not even sure if I can manage in the morning.”

“I suppose we'll find out.”

The pajama bottoms were able to be opened with one hand. He slipped his inside and fondled Mort's budding erection.

“You're not sure if you can manage in the morning?” Calvin mocked.

“You're really putting me to the test. It's a good thing I'm not impotent.”

“You will be some day. But don't worry, if it takes the whole day, I'll still make it happen.”

“That's a lovely thing to say.”

“It's a promise.”

He freed the mortician from his bottoms and worked him, steadily humping him from behind. They were both stale with sleep, but that morning domesticity was impossible to neglect. They'd known each other for years - they'd truly known each other for about a week - but in that simultaneous climax, it was as though they'd been married for decades.

The feeling remained when they had breakfast together. Having dressed and retrieved their most important articles - that being one quite obvious toupée and one quite obvious white eye patch - Mort read the paper as Calvin drank his coffee and brandy, savoring the scene. Inga kept it simple for Mort, cooking up eggs and home fries, buttered toast with orange marmalade, and cutting up strawberries, bananas, and honeydew, offering them with cream alongside blueberries and blackberries.

It was comfortable. It was home. As the wind whistled outside, Calvin Fischoeder had never felt warmer, safer.

It scared him.

When was it all going to come crashing down? Soon, no doubt. It usually happened when he started feeling comfortable. He had to be ready.

“How long will you stay?”

Mort looked up.

Forever. Say it.

“Oh, probably until lunchtime. I'm supposed to have lunch with my mom today.”

“Oh. I see.”

“We can have dinner. In fact, you can come over to my place tonight, I'd like that very much.”

Calvin popped a blackberry into his mouth, crushing it between his teeth. “Yes, alright.”

“Is something wrong?”

He scoffed and rolled his eyes, “I just don't understand.”

“What don't you understand?”

“Why you… hate me.”

“Calvin,” he set down the paper. “I don't hate you.”

“Then why won't you stay?”

“Look, I told you I-”

“You have your job. Whatever. Didn't you once say your job has nothing to do with what you want? I think you're confused. Or maybe you're just contradicting yourself.”

“I'm not sure that's what I meant when I said that.”

“Then what do you want ?”

“I want you. And I want my job and my apartment, my home that I worked hard to get, the livelihood that I work hard to keep. I know you can't understand that, but could you at least try? I love you.”

He scoffed.

“You could at least believe me - that would go a long way.”

“Oh, please,” Calvin growled. “Why should I?”

“Why shouldn't you?”

“Because you won't give everything up for me.”

Mort was completely taken aback. “Why are you asking me to?”

“It isn't as though you've much to lose.”

“What are you even saying? If I don't have much to lose then neither do you, just because you're richer than me. Why don't you give everything up for me ?”

“Because then we'd have nothing. And you want something, don't you? Don't bother denying it. You should just be honest with me. I shouldn't have let you lie in the first place.”

Mort took a deep breath, “You know what I do hate? Arbitrary arguments. Do you want to talk about why you're actually upset?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Despite his frustration, he recognized he was broaching a dangerous subject. “Look, Mr. Fischoeder… I think we both know that you're using your relationship with me to avoid confronting your own grief.”

“Then why are you here, if you're so certain?”

“Because I do actually love you. And I know why you won't believe me. I don't think I can change that - no, I can't make you believe me; that's out of my hands. But I've said it, and I'll keep on saying it: I do love you. Otherwise I would've told you to leave me alone. I'm an honest man; I haven't led you on.”

Calvin shook his head. Mort was getting inside of him, calming him in that tranquilizing way he had. And part of him wanted so badly just to talk to him, but he was afraid. More than anything, he was afraid.

“Listen,” Mortimer leaned forward, placing his hand over Calvin’s. “I do love you. And I want to share my life with you. I can definitely share. But it's only been, what, five days? We both need time. That's all I'll ask of you; time. Do you think you can give me that?”

“I don't know,” Calvin muttered, refusing to look at him. “I-I don't know if I… have time.”

“You have all the time in the world.”

“You know that isn't true. You might let it go unsaid, but I haven't and I won't. I'm just biding my time, letting you make me feel good before I kill myself. And I am going to, it's just a matter of time.”

“You said I ought to go with you, if I was brave enough.”

Calvin's breath hitched in his throat. Oh, yes, in the Doozy. That night he could have killed them both. If he'd been alone…

“Mortimer, I think you should leave.”

“What? Calvin, why?”

That softness in him was now only revolting. He thought that if he touched him just one more time-

“Because I don't know what I'll do.”

“What do you mean?” he tried to reach out but Calvin pulled away. “Calvin, what do you mean by that?”

“Go.”

He tugged the keys to the Chrysler from his jacket pocket and slid them across the table.

“Take it and go.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing. Just go. I can't have you here, not right now.”

Plainly he wished to argue, but he stood and straightened his suit. “Alright. But you're coming to dinner tonight, right?”

“Yes. I'll see you tonight.”

“Are you certain?”

He held his breath. When it was apparent that Mort wasn't leaving without an answer, he looked him directly in the eye…

“Yes.”

… and lied.

But it worked. Mort smiled slightly, “I love you.”

I love you too, he thought. More than anything. Do you know how deadly that is? I wish I could tell you. I wish I could tell you everything but I just… can't.

Calvin sighed and turned away, “Please go.”

The air was thick with hurt, and it lingered even when Mort left. He wanted to retreat from it, but there was nowhere to go, so he fermented. Once he might've gone out to Felix’s treehouse and discussed it over liquor. Before long they'd be laughing about the whole thing. Now he was just sitting here, letting it kill him.

Maybe his relationship with Felix had killed all his romantic endeavors. Felix had always been weird and particularly jealous; as the second son, it was in his nature.

Or maybe the only thing Calvin had ever been good at was killing the things he loved.

Chapter Text

Mort had never been in this kind of situation before, so he wasn't certain whether it was right to leave Calvin or not, but he'd been told to give him space. Calvin definitely needed help, just maybe not right at the moment. Sometimes forced help only made things worse.

Anyway, there was the promise of dinner later. Calvin would show up and everything would be fine.

No, he thought. It won't be. Even if Calvin's over it by dinnertime, it'll only be temporary. I have to talk to him.

It would be difficult, but he could do it. There was plenty of time to dwell on that.

Driving the big pretty Chrysler sure felt funny, like he wasn't supposed to be here - probably because it didn't belong to him. It was certainly a Calvin kind of car, what with the same color scheme and the way it handled.

Funny, that he could think about Calvin like that with such ease. He was such a confident person… it was awful to see him suffer. In fact, the state of suffering was so unlike him that Mort couldn't even be angry. Grief did that to people, but this was more than skin-deep.

With plenty of time to kill before lunch, he returned home and changed into fresh clothes. The coffee stain on the carpet was still there.

“... and no amount of money in the world can get him back for me.”

Mort sighed.

It came to him that perhaps the worst kind of pain a man can know is heartbreak. Well, that was plenty dramatic - there are all sorts of pain in the world, each different and drastic from the last - but heartbreak is a particular sort, a poignant sort. Like the body is cracking from the inside, flooding and drowning him in sorrow. Mortimer was not an impulsive man, but he wanted then to go to Mr. Fischoeder as suddenly and immediately as this heartbreak had struck him.

He knew he couldn't.

Men were really a different beast altogether. He could sense, as one senses rain or the change in seasons, that Calvin would have a violent reaction to him turning up before their given time. Not one of physical violence, of course, because Calvin was violent only in spirit. That was the funny thing about their relationship - everything was instinctual, absolutely innate in their biology. They knew each other by the tremors of flesh, by the beat of their hearts, and the gentle whistles of breath. To be in love with him was at once a risk and comfort; just as it is to love the sea.

Once he'd washed up and changed his clothes, he sat down on the sofa to text Samantha back. She had asked about their date last night.

This morning he'd answered:

M > He asked me to move in with him

Her response while he'd been driving home said:

S > and!?!?

He texted her back now, and the conversation continued:

M > Of course I said no

S > he moves fast, was he mad??

M > Upset, sure. He said he wants to take care of me

S > that's so sweet tho, and you still said no?

M > Yeah, but one thing still led to another!

S > 🫣

Mort smiled at the response. It was nice to be able to remain friends, after all they'd gotten along so well.

After a short nap he set out for lunch. His mother's house was just ten minutes away. Seeing little choice in the matter - although, maybe he just wanted to take advantage of the opulence - he drove the Chrysler.

His mom's eyes practically popped out of her skull when she saw the sleek pink car.

“Where did you get this ?”

“A, uh, friend of mine let me borrow it for the day.”

“A treat for little old me?”

“Yeah.”

She cast her hand over the white leather interior. “Morty! This is too nice, we've gotta be careful with this thing.”

He chuckled, “Don't worry, Ma, we won't be eating in it or anything.”

“Too bad it's not summer, none of the drive-ins are open. Now, that would be classy.”

Instead they went to a place called Darin's Dairy Bar. Mort ordered turkey on pumpernickel with a side of applesauce with cinnamon, and his mom ordered shredded chicken with a side of macaroni salad. With some coffee and a chocolate milkshake to share, it was a nice, simple meal, and Mort talked a lot about his job in between his mom telling him about what she and her lady friends had been up to (which mostly involved ogling men).

At last he thought he'd broach the subject, “Ma, I've got something to tell you.”

“Well, this sounds serious.”

He sort of smiled, “I guess so. More like awkward, maybe. Um, I met this man… and… quite frankly, we've become more than friends.”

She smiled as she stuck her fork in macaroni salad. “See, I knew you'd find someone eventually.”

“You're not upset?”

“Of course not, why would I be? Actually, maybe I'm just a little upset that you'd thought I'd be upset.”

“It's not that I don't know you, I just… I'm not sure how people are going to react to the things I say. Sometimes I do, sometimes I know the exact right thing to say, but only when I'm working. Out in the actual world I'm… uncertain. And that's probably what's always made finding someone difficult. I'm just not sure how to be, outside of being myself, and people don't find that normal.”

“Oh, honey,” she laid a hand on his. “It's fine if people don't get you, but there'll always be someone who will. Like this man you found. Who is he?”

“Well, uh… h-he's my age, just a few years older. He's a successful businessman.”

“What's his name, silly?”

“... Calvin...”

“That's cute, Mortimer and Calvin.”

“C-Calvin Fischoeder , Ma. My landlord.”

She looked up at him, eyes wide. “How on earth did that happen?”

“It's a long story.”

“You probably shouldn't date clients. Or your landlord. Or the most powerful man in town…” she seemed to be reconsidering her stance.

“I guess we're not technically dating.”

“The man loaned you his car for goodness sake. His very rich and handsome car!”

“It's complicated, Ma.”

“What's so complicated about it? Besides the landlord part… Do you love him?”

“Yes,” he felt himself blushing. “Very much.”

“Then what's the problem? Be boyfriends.”

“Well, Ma, you just said so yourself - he's my landlord. Our landlord. It's just not as simple as that. This morning he pushed me away and- he-he wants me to live with him, see, and I just can't.”

“Why not? He has a really nice property.”

“I can't just leave everything behind. I love my job, I love my apartment. And you know, part of the problem is that I've never been very good at sharing space with anyone.”

“That's why I should've had a brother for you, but with my luck he would've been absolutely insane, where you were so easy.”

Mort shrugged with a kind of half smile. He'd always been glad to be an only child, and with how Calvin was dealing with Felix's death, well, he was more glad than ever.

They'd always been a lonesome pair, Mort and his mother, with an ordinary love between one another; what Mort liked to consider a perfect relationship. He knew he would lose her one day - that was as natural as the snowfall outside. And he knew he would grieve. Probably it was the one thing in his life that he was still consistently afraid of, even knowing how to grieve, even having lost a parent before. But then he had been young. Where his father's death had been a formative experience, he knew mom’s wouldn't be. It wouldn't kill him, but it would take a long time to heal. Thankfully she was a healthy lady, so that she expected to live a completely full life. How many people could say that? Although they were lonesome and few, the Kindlers were a fortunate people.

“Ma, can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“If you love someone, you oughta be prepared to give up everything for them, right?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I mean… if I love Mr. Fischoeder - and I do, I really do - why don't I feel like giving up everything for him?”

“What do you mean by everything?”

“Like, my livelihood. My business and my apartment. Mr. Fischoeder could take very good care of me.”

“Morty, why would you have to?”

“I don't know. I guess that's just what people do for each other, isn't it? Give up everything.”

“Maybe some people stop chasing dreams. Like me, I gave up studying to be a nurse so I could marry your father and raise you.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Mortimer!” she scolded. “How could I regret that? It was just an example, and it doesn't matter. You're old! You're not a twenty-something blushing bride - you're an old man, and a damn good mortician.”

“Ma-”

“Why in the world would you give up something you love if you didn't have to?”

“I'm just worried that I'd have to choose between two things I love; Mr. Fischoeder and my life. Why can't I just have both?”

“He wants too much from you, I think.”

“I think he just wants to be loved.”

“He should get a grip.”

“Well, that much is true, even if it's not that easy…”

“What do you love about him so much that you're willing to give up your life?”

“I'm not willing . He asked me to come live with him and I told him no.”

“Well, what do you love about him so much?”

“He's… see, he's very handsome. And he's eccentric and fun, completely blasé at the best of times. And he's… he's very good at things… and he's… safe. I guess I don't feel like I really have anything to worry about when he's around.”

Which was incredible to say considering that time in the Duesenberg and Calvin's promises of suicide. Those were exceptions. He was grieving. Even so, those apparent cons made Mort love him all the more. Maybe it was in part the power he wielded. He was as bad as they say, and yet nothing made Mort happier.

“Ma, I don't think he's any good for me. But I love him. I've never loved anyone before, not like this. It's… consuming me. But I don't think I could live with him, not like he wants. Isn't that strange?”

“You just like your personal space, Morty. I guess the both of you will just have to compromise.”

“You're right.”

“While you're at it, ask him if he has a nice car I could borrow while.”

“You're really hung up on that car.”

“It's hot! Geez, I always wanted a guy who'd get me a real slick car. I guess I'll have to leech off your boyfriend.”

“We're not even dating yet, Ma.”

“Hurry up and figure it out!”

He couldn't look to his mom for a real answer on what to do, but the conversation did make him feel better about the whole thing. So much so that they even ordered banana pudding for dessert, topped with the special, extraordinarily tasty whipped cream that the Dairy Bar used for their homemade pies.

His mom always lifted his spirits, but on the drive home and during the trip to the grocery store he couldn't help sinking back into a kind of despair. It didn't happen often, but when it did it was hard to get out of, like getting trapped in a sinkhole.

Another nap would serve him well, but he couldn't keep his eyes shut. All he could think about was Calvin Fischoeder. And he felt guilty, for being incapable of helping him, for leaving him.

With nothing else to do, he started cooking dinner early. It was a beef pot roast, a recipe his mother's side of the family had long cherished. He texted Calvin.

> You can come over around 5, dinner will probably be ready by then because I started early.

He took a pause and sent another:

> I really need to see you.

He almost started typing an apology for earlier, but he stopped himself. He'd been rightfully upset and he wasn't going to apologize now for the sake of making him feel better only to take it back with the conversation they needed to have tonight.

“Felix,” he said to himself, trying the name on his tongue as cut carrots into the crockpot. “Felix, your brother. Just tell me how it happened, how you found him.”

That was the part that was bothering him the most, he was sure.

“I know how hard it is to be alone…”

No, he shouldn't say that.

“It's hard being alone.” 

Cold facts. Calvin needed to be cold before he could feel the catharsis of warming up.

“We'll figure it out.”

Dinner preparation dragged on, and there was no response from Calvin. It was hard not to worry.

How could he just leave him like that? In the middle of his desperation, fighting to stay afloat; Mort had just left him.

He told me to. I didn't have a choice, he told me to.

And he thought that Calvin had a right to a choice, a right that he'd trusted Mort with upholding. Besides, he had said he was certain that he'd see Mort tonight, and Calvin was never certain about anything.

Mort cooked and watched television intermittently, pacing and pacing about his apartment.

Five o’clock came and there was no sign of Calvin, not even a text or a missed phone call. Mort tried to call him several times, feeling desperate and needy, but every call went to voicemail.

Maybe he's driving…

But as six o'clock rolled around….

> Please answer me I just need to know you're ok

… and six-thirty, and seven…

His calls and texts still went unanswered.

Dinner was perpetually waiting, kept warm in the crockpot.

It had been a while since he'd been called to retrieve a body. The only thing that had ever bothered him about it was the heavy lifting, other than that he'd gotten used to it quite quickly. But this was far different, and Mort the mortician was for the first time in his life uncertain if he could stomach it.

Of a sudden he was rushing for the door. He grabbed his coat and car keys, almost tripped running down the stairs, and on top of that, nearly ran smack into the mortuary door as it opened.

Mort stood there, mouth agape, and stared at the tall white figure on his threshold.

“Well, where do you think you're going?”

He rushed in and embraced him, pressing his face into his shoulder, drawing in scents of bourbon and something just past it that was sweet and delicately musky.

“Calvin-” whatever else he'd intended to say was broken up by sobs.

Chapter Text

Calvin slipped his hands under the open coat and suit jacket, filling them with the soft cotton of Mort's dress shirt and the warmth of his little body.

“There, there,” he soothed, pressing his cheek to Mort's head. “Come now, it's alright.”

Mort lifted his head, and he stole the mortician's mouth, getting drunk early on his liquors. Ah, he was so sweet. How could he have thought, even for just a few hours, of leaving him entirely?

“That's it,” Calvin said, breaking off, lifting a hand to dry his tears. “It's alright, I'm here.”

“Why didn't you text me? Or call me? Why didn't you say something? I should never have left-”

“No, you were right to. I told you to. I'm glad you listened to me.”

“I was so worried… when you didn't show up I…” he closed his eyes. “I thought I was going to find you dead. You're terrible to me, do you know that?”

“But you still love me, don't you?”

“Of course I do,” he pressed his face into Calvin's chest, muffling himself. “Of course I do.”

“Shh, it's alright… why don't you let me in? It's cold out here.”

Mort sniffled, “Yeah, sure.”

They went up to the apartment together. Wrapped in world weariness, Calvin flopped down on the sofa. Mortimer looked down at him.

“I'm guilty,” the old landlord said. “Aren't I?”

“Of what?”

“Oh, of terrorizing you.”

Mort came forward and straddled his lap, pressing his lips to Calvin's and making love to him then and there, as though those few hours apart had been weeks and he was skin and bone, starved for affection. Frankly he was being smothered, but he pulled Mort closer and held him there, so that he could paint his landlord in love. He knew then that they would never be apart; they had bonded to one another, marbling their souls at an alarming rate. It almost made him laugh, that this absurd, abrupt love had him believing in the soul.

“Did you think I was done for?”

Mort pulled back to look at him, his hands filled with silver hair. “I started to.”

Calvin smiled slightly, “And now you're all bothered. Coincidence?”

“I'm just happy to see you.”

“Oh, I can feel that quite plainly.”

Red rose to Mort's cheeks. Like clockwork.

“Just now, though,” Calvin continued. “I'm starved, and whatever you've made smells wonderful. Shall we?”

“Absolutely.”

Dinner was simple, homely; for that, it was excellent. Shortly Calvin had put away one hearty helping; even between the two of them there would be plenty leftover.

Of a sudden Mort was asking, “Why didn't you answer my texts? Or call me back?”

“Hm,” Calvin hummed, being mid-meal and disinclined to conversation. “I just couldn't.”

“... I see.”

He was entirely unconvinced, but Calvin hadn't lied - in this, he hadn't the ability to lie, not anymore.

“I thought…”

Oh, he hadn't meant to continue talking.

“It's just that I thought… if I had…” he shrugged. “I just needed to be completely alone for a while.”

As it was he felt guilty enough, but if he'd been made to feel guilty then, well, it would have been the end of him. Of that he was quite certain.

“I understand,” Mort said. “But you don't have to fight me off, you can just tell me.”

“... I'll keep that in mind.”

“Calvin…”

He reached out and caressed his landlord's hand, gently tracing the blue veins that ran in rivers along the back, trailing aside those prominent bones.

“What are these bones called?” he asked, taking Mort's hand and settling his fingertips over them.

“The - ah - the metacarpals.”

“Ah, yes.”

There came a tension between them. As though he were preparing to speak, Mort took back his hand and fiddled with his lapels.

“I brought something,” Calvin intercepted.

“O-oh?”

“For the two of us.”

He slipped a hand into his inner jacket pocket. There it was, just next to his flask; a small prescription bottle, inside of which were two tablets.

“What's that?” Mort asked. “Viagra?”

Calvin chuckled, “Oh, neither of us need that just yet. Have you ever done acid before?”

“It's been a loooong time.”

“Will you do it with me?”

Mort hesitated.

Calvin's gaze softened. “What is it?”

“It's just that… I-I have something to talk to you about.”

“We'll have all night for that.”

“It should really be a sober conversation.”

“Well,” he smiled. “We'll have plenty of time altogether for that. Let's have some fun, Mortimer, we deserve it.”

“I suppose,” he held out his hand and smiled in turn. “You're right.”

“That's the spirit. Put on your records.”

They took the tablets together, and Mort put on what Calvin quickly recognized as the Grateful Dead.

Perfect.

As the world dissolved he began to regret. What he regretted he couldn't say, but while the lucidity set he only began to regret.

Soon he had a feeling that, between the music and the incandescent lights, the room was filled with blood. Because of a sudden it was very hot, and the lights came down with a kind of sanguinity that he'd only seen once before. The pain, decades old now, resounded in his eye, shifting and stabbing as though a piece of the knife that had blinded it still remained. He knew it wasn't true, he'd gotten numerous x-rays; there was nothing there but scar tissue.

But the red room, it was not so bad. There was a comfort to it, a familiarity. Nostalgia. It took him back to a time when liquor endlessly flowed and- ah, well, when wasn't the liquor flowing? It was all within and without, as though he were back in the womb, warm and red and ripe for the world, and yet just here, warm and red and loving.

There. His blood sizzled and spit, like those little packets of popping candy. It cracked and pinched inside of his veins, giving him jolts of euphoria.

Lovely, he thought, looking at how Mort was just drenched in it. It's all red and white, perfect, from me to you.

“Come,” he commanded, and the little mortician sunk into position, pressed right up against his broad side.

“Mm,” Mort moaned into his suit, what was blinding in the sultry fever. “I love you, I love you so much, Mr. Fischoeder.”

 “Love is a pretty favor. Pretty and pink, but it can be violent and red, shocking and white, somnolent and black.”

“What kind is ours?”

He lifted Mort's head and kissed him, taking control of his mouth with lips and teeth and tongue. Fully embraced, he leaned the mortician back on the sofa, coming over him to love him deeply into the cushions. Until Calvin ceased, placing a hand on Mort's belly.

“I think it can be all things.”

For all that he'd said, it was all in Mortimer, living there, capable of being held and caressed, of being kissed. He did all that, knowing his body better than he knew his own.

Mort pressed his fingers into Calvin's silver hair. “Look at all the fish.”

“The fish?”

“The little silver fish, coming out of your ears.”

“You're funny.”

“ You are. You're so silver.”

“Silver,” he kissed the little man's temple. “I know someone who's silver. Like a keepsake, a pretty ring. I should put you in a glass case, so everyone can see you, forever, for all time. I love you, Mortimer.”

“I love you, too. I think I'd like that. But would you still take me out? And wear me? And kiss me?”

“Naturally, but only at the best of times. I have to be careful, you see. There is only one of you. Like if I were to drop you into the sea-” Calvin's breath hitched as sharp, cold water came up to hit him. He jerked back.

“Calvin? What is it?”

He covered his face with one hand. “Water.”

He was trudging down to the shore again, bereft of belief. They hadn't pulled Felix from the water, they just couldn't have - he'd seen Felix last night, alive. They'd grown up on the wharf, they both knew perfectly well how to swim.

And then there he was; cold, colder than he'd ever been, than he had any right to be. His eyes, scaled. Little Fisch.

But I saw you. How? How? 

Had he just… sunk?

Calvin looked to Motimer, who was in a world all his own, fascinated by love and fish.

“I have to protect you.”

“Oh,” Mort said. “You're a big man, I know you can.”

“I can spirit you away.”

“Where?”

“Someplace…”

“Like a castle. You have one of those, don't you? That's usually where fish live.”

“Yes, I do. Should I take you there?”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“Mmmaybe…” Mort gave it some thought. “Not just now.”

“Why not?”

“I'm so comfortable.”

Calvin rolled his eyes, “Alright, fine. You stay here, and stay comfortable. I'm going to the bathroom.”

He elected to use the one in Mort's bedroom. When he began to wonder why it suddenly became quite clear to him.

At the bottom of Mort's closet, tucked all the way in the back as though it hadn't been used in ten years, was a suitcase. It was no bigger than a carry-on case, but it would serve. Besides, Calvin could always buy him clothes. As he shifted through outfits, he shuddered and figured he'd buy him a whole new wardrobe for the sake of replacing this waste of textiles. Well, just for now he'd have to take a few things. Two of Mortimer's decent suits, some casual clothes, two pairs of shoes, a handful of socks and underwear. That would be alright.

He packed them away in the suitcase, then he did go into the bathroom where he relieved himself. After washing his hands, he took a look in the medicine cabinet. For a moment he wasn't certain what he was looking at; the bottles were queer, perhaps a sort of blue-collar ointment he'd never heard of? Then he saw the finer print, which read “corpse moisturizer”.

Oh. So that was why he was so soft.

Calvin picked up one of the bottles, and saw that behind it were more bottles. These ones were quite obvious; cologne. Some expensive ones, too. They were all half empty or half full. How many dates had the little mortician been on? Was he lying about his promiscuity? It was doubtful that he wore these sorts of scents to his funerals.

The one he smelled he recognized instantly, for he had smelled it last night; cedar and bourbon. Much like a pheromone it awakened something primal in him. He left the contents of the cabinet and rushed for the living room-

But wait!

The suitcase was still there on the bed. He chucked the cologne inside, zipped it up and went to the window. The fire escape was in the way. He had to open the window all the way to climb out onto the rickety metal. Assuring the alley was clear, he dropped the luggage from the third story. It landed without a hitch, bouncing a few feet away from the impact.

Then he returned to the living room.

There he found Mortimer on the floor. He rushed over to him, but he was fine, just playing with his hands.

“What are you doing?”

“Itsy-bitsy spider.”

Calvin came down over him and put his hand over his. “Are you ready to go?”

“Go?”

“To my castle.”

“Mm… but I'm so comfortable.”

The big man grumbled, “Alright, I suppose we'll just lie here on the floor like kids. Unlike kids, we'll probably never get up again.”

He laid down opposite Mort, his head next to his, and stared at the ceiling. It twisted and writhed, still red, sort of like intestines if he had to guess. He wasn't sure what to make of that.

Mort turned onto his side to look at him. “You're laying on the coffee stain.”

“The what?”

“The first time you came here - I mean, right when all this started - you poured coffee on the floor.”

“I guess I should pay to have that cleaned.”

“No, I like it.”

“You like stains on your carpet?”

“Just yours.”

“Hm. I see.”

Mort smiled, “Look at all those fish.”

“I wish I could see them. For me, everything is red.”

“Red?”

“Yes. The room is awash in it. But I don't mind.”

In what was essentially an upside down kiss, Mort pressed his lips to Calvin's.

“Do I taste like red?”

“No.”

“What do I taste like?”

“Like ultramarine. It suits you.”

“Like the sea?”

There was a rushing, cold and haunting, as though the ocean were just outside the door. Calvin turned over, propped himself up, and kissed Mort. His chin bumped the mortician's nose; that made him feel very clumsy, very domestic. He buried his face in Mort's neck and took a big whiff of him.

Immediately he was soused. Their world was spinning and he thought that, for just a moment, he could see the fish Mort was talking about. They blitzed by, at once surrounding and bypassing them, they who were drowning in bourbon and some semblance of ambergris, however rich, however faint. He laid his head on Mort's shoulder.

“Come with me,” he begged.

“To your castle?”

“Mhm.”

“Are there other fish there?”

“No, not anymore. Just me. Is that alright?”

“Of course. Can the little fish come?”

“... sure.”

They got up with some difficulty. There were alarms going off in Calvin's head, making the red room pulse. It was giving him a headache.

“My record-”

“Leave it,” Calvin spat.

Mort looked at him with curious, hurt eyes.

“I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap like that. Go ahead, take it off, just be quick, I'm getting a headache.”

While he tended to his record Calvin's world spun ‘round again, and there were the little silver fish - he was sure of them this time. They'd come from Mort's blue sea to feed in his red one. Oh, but they weren't very small after all upon close inspection in one's own hallucination. They were about as long as his arm - cutlassfish - and he could see, too, their fangs.

“Calvin?”

He turned and said, “Mortimer, have you ever been with a predator before?”

“Hm? A predator? I-I don't think so.”

“Then you wouldn't know. Alright, where's the keys? I'm gonna go start the car.”

“Here,” he produced them from his jacket pocket and tossed them to Calvin.

Not only was it a bad toss, but Calvin hadn't been good at catching things in a long time. They hit his hand and fell to the floor.

“Oops. Sorry, I wasn't thinking.”

Calvin stooped to pick them up. “No worries. I'll be right back.”

The funeral home below the apartment wasn't red at all, it was still the same blue that it had ever been. A part of him thought it was trying to cling to him, so cool and calm, comforting in the way love can be. Stay, it whispered. Stay. But he refused to heed it.

After getting the car started, he walked around to the back of the mortuary. There was the suitcase; a little dinged up. He grabbed it and returned to the car, tossing it in the trunk before heading back upstairs.

Mort was still there, doing his “itsy-bitsy spider” thing. “How far is it?” he asked.

“Not far. About fifteen-twenty minutes.”

“That's so far.”

“It isn't, really. It'll seem like no time at all.”

Steady on the stairs, Calvin led him down to the Chrysler, arm in arm, and tucked his little mortician into the backseat. He did not require a cursory glance; he knew that they were alone, that no one had seen him take the mortician. They would just disappear into the night; he'd called a cab in order to get to the mortuary, and so there would be no vehicles left behind except Mort's own.

“Why am I in the back?” Mort asked.

“Because you're a very important person.”

“Oh, VIP. You're my chauffeur, then?”

“Right.”

“And I'm, like, having an affair with you.”

“Yes.”

He liked that fantasy, although it would've meant Mort was upper class. There was something in the reversal, as there had been in the way that Mort had come over him and taken to his eye, sort of controlling, domineering. And he realized that, in actuality, they had a kind of control over one another; even if in the end Calvin would always come out on top. It was nice to fantasize otherwise.

Having been defrosted, the ice that had accumulated on the windshield was wipered away. Then they got moving.

Calvin adjusted the rearview mirror so that he could keep an eye on his mortician, who laid down across the white leather seats, respectfully keeping his shoes off them. He wondered how it would be to fondle him back there. Probably too cramped, but that was part of the charm.

“I love you, Calvin.”

As in all things, Calvin repressed his tears.

Unlike that night in the Duesenberg, he was incredibly careful, and as a result it did take some time to reach their destination. Having been enraptured by the calm of a car ride, Mort didn't complain. He remained sprawled across the backseat, watching as the amber streetlights passed over him, bathing him in honey for a moment before draping him in blue velvet once more.

“Are you warm enough?” Calvin asked.

“Yes, I'm very comfortable.”

“Good. Won't be long now.”

“We're really going to a castle?”

“Of a sort. It's… in the sky, so to speak.”

“Oh, like that movie.”

“Yeah, yeah, The Dark Crystal .”

“No.”

“ Labyrinth ?”

“No, Castle in the Sky .”

“I don't know that one.”

“It's a cartoon.”

“Hm. No, I don't know that one. But I guess it's probably like that. Sort of.”

The Fischoeder home was resplendent in white Christmas lights, a sort of intricate gingerbread house. Very pretty in the holiday night, but it was no castle in the sky.

The castle, in fact, had not been touched by order of Mr. Fischoeder. It was presently a time capsule for mid-November, in which rested the majority of Felix Fischoeder's belongings, gathering dust.

Calvin stepped out of the Chrysler with uncharacteristic timidity. All of those fish were swimming over to the castle, but something was tugging at him. He could pay it no mind, for it did not belong to him. As for now he was completely confident.

He opened the door for Mortimer and offered his hand, “Come now. We have to walk the rest of the way.”

Mort's hand was of the finest silk in his, so soft, so smooth. He kissed the little man on the mouth, and oh, he was ambrosial!

“Right this way…”

The snow that had fallen was crisp and windblown, and Fischoeder was Mortimer's rock, so they crossed it with little trouble. The real trouble was the ladder. The fish could get in easily; the air was their water. It wasn't so for the two lucid old men.

“You go first,” Calvin urged, placing his hand on the ladder. “I'll be right behind you.”

“I've got it,” Mort said with identical confidence to his big Fisch. “Up and in. Easy as cake.”

“Pie. Easy as pie.”

“More of a cake fan, myself.”

He ascended carefully with Calvin right at his backside, arms on either side of him. At the top they stood off, and Calvin unlocked the castle door.

Unfathomable darkness met them, so deep that even the silver fish were swallowed. Until Calvin turned on a light, and the darkness was chased into the corners. To his dismay, the fish remained hidden, probably under and behind the furniture. Silly fish.

Felix's dollhouse was just as he'd left it, set up with little Sylvanian Family figures, a whole lot of them. A big family, or maybe his original family was just having a party. It looked that way, with the array of ribbons strewn to look like streamers.

“Calvin?” Mort took him from his reverie. “What are we doing here?”

“This is your home now.”

Mort blinked. “My home? But what about my apartment?”

“Don't worry about that, it's a nice building, I'm sure it'll be rented out in no time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean what I'm saying, it's quite plain. I had what I guess poets call an epiphany back there. You can live here, and I won't have to worry about a damn thing.”

Mort looked around, probably looking for an escape route and realizing that he was in some castle in the sky. “I think I want to go home.”

Calvin shut and locked the door. “What makes you think you have a choice?”

Chapter Text

Mort had been dimly aware of the gun at Calvin's waist since he'd pressed against him on the sofa back at his apartment. It had played no part in his willingness to go out at Calvin's behest, but now he was considering it with great poignancy.

Because he was certain that it wasn't meant for him.

Mr. Fischoeder did not pull a gun on him. In fact, if it were not for his great size, he hardly seemed threatening at all. All this time there'd been a deep sadness set in his features, and damn Mortimer for thinking that taking acid would do anything to relieve that. 

“Have some fun,” Calvin had said. At least it had been fun for a while there.

Calvin proceeded to guide Mort further, up a narrow spiral staircase to a sitting room that was surprisingly not cramped for its small size. Mort sat in one of the arm chairs; truly the ascent had winded him. All around him the treehouse was draped deeply in the velvet night, blue and serene despite his own kidnapping. Outside the balcony doors, snow fell in a light, slow shower. The world just went right on by. 

“What's wrong, Calvin?”

“Nothing.”

“Can't you just talk to me?”

The big man shook his head.

“I don't blame you, you know. We're both high. You're not gonna sell my home, or keep me locked up here. You're just scared.”

“I know what I mean to do,” he said, all false conviction. “And this is precisely it. If you had just come to live with me it wouldn't have to happen this way, but you forced my hand. Call me selfish if you want, I know I am, but I have to protect you.”

“From what?”

“From everything. Everything. Every single accident that could possibly happen, other people, and… myself.”

“... yourself?”

“I don't know what I'd do. I'm restless. You're all I think about, day and night, even when I'm thinking about Felix, or all the different ways to kill myself, you're right there. I'm doing this now to save us trouble later. I just don't know what I'd do.”

Fidgeting there, his sentences running together, he was kind of stupid; completely uncertain of everything, driven by senses of want and guilt and exhaustion.

“Calvin, would you please sit down with me?”

He glanced at the stairs in passing, then conceded and sat down in the chair opposite Mort.

“What's all this really about?”

“I told you. I don't want to talk about it.”

“Let's talk about us,” Mort smiled slightly. “All this crazy stuff, isn't it unbelievable that it only began a week ago? I'm flattered that you think so much of me, to bother bringing me here.”

Calvin glanced furtively around the room as though he were watching something flit about. All of Mort's fish were hiding under the furniture, peeking out from under the rugs and hovering inside of the dollhouse. Was it the fish, or was Calvin afraid someone was coming for him? This wasn't all that well thought out, so Mort knew that it had been purely impulsive. In a few days someone would do a wellness check on him - probably the Belchers - and once the police were notified of his disappearance they would have little trouble discovering where he'd been spirited away to, and by whom. Most of the buildings on Ocean Avenue, including his own, were equipped with security cameras. As well, who would they think to question first? They didn't have to flit through hours of camera footage to know that Mr. Calvin Fischoeder had been his bosom companion for the week preceding his disappearance - they need only question the Belchers, who would probably volunteer the information.

Thinking about it brought him a smile. They'd done a wellness check on him once before; that one time a few years ago when he'd taken a week off, and had done nothing but stay at home, eat junk food, and watch his sappy old films. After that he'd made certain that they knew when he'd be indisposed, but it had warmed his heart that they cared so much… that they cared at all, really.

 “I think this began a long time ago,” Calvin slowly said. “Back when you first started renting here. Back when… when my father was still alive… and Felix, of course.”

“How so?”

“I don't know. Sometimes you look at someone and it occurs to you that you might like to know them.”

“But you never really spoke to me until after the funeral.”

“I suppose I didn't have a reason to.”

“Isn't wanting to know me reason enough?”

He shrugged.

Was this why he was lonesome? Just an inability to know people for the sake of knowing people, even wanting to.

“You know,” he continued. “My father loved me. He loved me more than anything; more than Felix, more than my mother. Probably because I was his firstborn son, because from the moment I was conceived in my mother's womb I was responsible for inheriting the wharf and all of Father's vast properties. Regardless, I couldn't stand the thought of my father loving anyone more than me. I suppose, my whole life I was worried he might “find out” about me. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, I understand.”

“I thought that if he ever caught me in the arms of another man that he might not love me anymore. So, I was good… for the most part. I never went after tenants, anyway.”

“... did you ever tell him?”

“No. I'll never know what he might've thought. Better to have lived my life loved and rich than to have risked it all over a simple preference.”

“But is it all for the sake of sex? Why not know someone for the sake of knowing them?”

Again, he shrugged, “What else do I have to offer, besides my riches?”

Mort couldn't even say anything to that; he was silenced by a pang in his heart. Oh, Calvin, but there's so much.

“At least I wasn't lonely then. Not in the way I am now.”

Mort cleared his throat, “No?”

“No. You know, loneliness… it's like… being in a cemetery. You'd probably find that beautiful, or peaceful. For me… it kills me. And I don't know why. You know I don't believe in any of that sort of thing; ghosts and spirits, whatnot. I don't understand the point of graveyards, except to be sad.”

“Being sad is one of the best feelings in life.”

“How can you say that? It's so painful.”

“Because it's raw. It's like treating a wound; don't you feel better after it's been cleaned and bandaged? That's what grieving does for the soul.”

“So you're a believer now, too?”

“In what?”

“The soul.”

He smiled, “Well, I don't know if I meant it in an overtly spiritual way, but… I suppose, yes.”

“You know though, sometimes wounds can never fully be cleaned. Sometimes there's scars; the kind you can see, and the kind you can't. Those are the worst ones, the ones that exist only in your mind. You can't possibly do anything about those.”

“Scars have stories, and people love to tell stories.”

“Only good ones.”

“Not at all. Some of the best stories ever written are tragedies.”

“Well, that's certainly what this is.”

But he said no more.

A great calm came over Mort, as the waves rush over rocks and wear them down to sand.

“Can I come sit by you?”

“Sure.”

Mort got up and pulled his arm chair over so that he was directly across from Calvin. He leaned forward and took up his hands. Truly there was something of the sea in Calvin; in his blue, blue eye, and the dead one, that mottled mother-of-pearl; in his shock of silver hair, so pale it was almost white; in the way he moved and breathed; in the way he lived, shameless, reckless. He could not possibly imagine a time when Calvin Fischoeder would have pretended to find his fancy only in women. And if it were not happening to him in the present, he could not imagine a time when grief would drive him completely mad.

“Calvin, what you need is some good grieving.”

“Don't start on that. I can't.”

“Sure you can. It might not be easy, but anyone can do it.”

“You don't understand. I can't .”

“What's stopping you?”

Incredulously he shook his head, the line in his forehead deepened, and he was suddenly somewhere in the past, wind whipped and salt-stained. A faint rushing came to Mort's ears, and he thought fondly that it was the sea, come to meet him.

“I'm supposed to be responsible ,” Calvin croaked. “But all I ever am is guilty .”

Mort tightened his hold and smoothed his thumb over the back of Fischoeder's hand.

“It's my fault,” his voice was very small, so small that it couldn't belong to a big man like Calvin Fischoeder. But he was weak, his features drawn in agony, his shoulders slumped from the weight of all that responsibility.

Mort cupped Calvin's face in one hand, smoothed back his ruffled hair. “It was an accident.”

Calvin grabbed his hand and clutched it tight. “I pushed him.”

The mortician wasn't sure if he'd heard him correctly - actually, he definitely had, there was no mistaking the confession. He only wanted to be certain, but as the breathless “What?” formed on his lips he pursed them and swallowed it.

Instead, he asked, “Why?”

“We were roughhousing,” Calvin took a deep breath. “Because we'd gotten to arguing about father again. It was stupid. We were both fucking sloshed and Felix had gotten into one of his dour moods again, so I just… started shoving him. Because he was little and he was pissing me off . He started pushing back and we really got into it. Next thing I know, he's gone over the railing and he's in the water.”

Tears ran in rivulets down his face, but his voice remained unbroken by sobs.

“I looked for him, and I saw his little head above the water. I saw him alive. That's the damndest thing. Because I-I shouted down at him, mocking him, and I forgot about it. I guess I figured he'd swim to shore and get out, but he must've… he must've got caught in the waves, I… we've both known how to swim since we were kids. What was I supposed to think? No, I know what I was supposed to think; he's my little brother and I should've been worried for him. But I just wasn't. I forgot about him, and I passed out soon after. I didn't even think to look for him the next morning, and they didn't find him until midday. He was drowning for far longer than it took him to die. Far longer.”

“No,” Mort said. They both leaned into one another, and he guided Calvin's head to rest upon his shoulder. In what might be called sadistic, he enjoyed this. But from the moment they'd become intimate, he enjoyed taking Calvin into his hands just as much as the big man enjoyed taking him into his. “He had you.”

“I'm the reason he's dead .”

There was no denying that.

“You're his brother, Calvin, it was an accident. People make terrible mistakes all the time, you've just got to live with it.”

“I can't,” he sobbed. “I can't . I don't want to think about it anymore. I don't want to see his face anymore. I just can't do it. I've been the responsible one for so long, I just can't do it anymore.”

Mort held the back of his head while his right hand unbuttoned his suit jacket and found the strap of his gun holster. “It's hard,” he soothed. “But I'm here for you.”

“You'd be better off without me. That's what I've been trying to arrange this entire time. But I can't even do that. I'm weak, I'm a coward.”

“So what? Strong or weak, you're still here, that's all that matters.”

Calvin said no more.

Maybe it was the acid, but Mort felt that he was completely in his element. Even with his fingertips brushing the grip of a gun.

“It's all red again,” the big man finally said. “Washing over me. I can't see, it's so red.”

“You can still feel me, can't you? I'm right here.”

“Yes. And I know what you have on your mind.”

“What's that?”

Just as Mort's hand closed over the grip, Calvin suddenly reached around and clasped his hand over his. 

Both men held on for dear life.

Calvin's breath was hot on his neck.

At once he was imagining the sort of mess this would make - they were in quite the mess already. Mortimer had a vivid imagination even when he wasn't high, and it was in times like these that he wished he didn't. Of course, there had never been another time like this ; he'd meant a time of turmoil, like those body retrievals that were tragic and gruesome. Nothing like this.

That was the great problem with Calvin's beautiful suit. It made a monarch out of him, no doubt, but every single sorrow shone upon it, stark against the white. And blood, oh, blood would be the most vibrant of all.

Oh dear, he was thinking about retrieving Calvin's body again. For the sake of convenience, and convenience alone, he was already here. What a terrible way to go. But to be under his lover's hands for one last time on the slab… it could have passed for Shakespeare.

“Do you know where the heart is?”

“Calvin-”

“Of course you do, you're a mortician. Oh, thank God you're a mortician.”

Mort had never handled a gun before. He wished he had, because he didn't know where the safety was, what it felt like. He only knew that there was one, and that with the deficiency in his knowledge he was powerless to make use of it.

Their hands still joined, Calvin pulled the gun from the holster and pressed it into his own ribs.

“Find my heart,” he commanded. “And don't miss.”

The heart! Oh, but he'd found it days ago; just there, under all his layers of white and pink and red. He had felt his pulse in his throat, and the heat of the blood that circulates through that vessel. He could feel it beating now, hard and fast, reverberating through the gun's metal and into Mort's hand, up through his veins, to his own. The heart? But of course he knew where it was.

“I won't do it.”

“Why not? After everything, why not?”

“After everything, why?”

Mort heard his teeth clench, and he pressed the muzzle harder into himself as he demanded, “Why not ?”

“Because I love you.”

“That's a lie.”

“You know it's not. You wouldn't be asking me to do this if it was.”

“Stop it. Just do it… or I'll do it myself.”

“You've had plenty of opportunities. You need me to stop you.”

He pulled back slightly, enough that he could press his lips to Calvin's tear-stained cheek.

“ Stop it, ” the big man squeaked. “I told you not to kiss me like that.”

Immemorial was that night in the Duesenberg, the thrill of slipping on the snow-laden road. And their kisses, in the leather scented warmth of the old automobile. Tender and terrifying - just as this; as all of their sudden trysts and tiffs.

“Calvin,” he whispered over his flesh. “Let go.”

“I can't.”

“I know it's hard. I'll help you.”

Tenderly, he guided the gun over Calvin's ribs, back into the holster. His hold slackened. Calvin's hand trembled as they released together. In fact, his whole body had begun to tremble, weak from the tension he'd been holding all that time, from the promise of death, the smiting bullet.

“You should’ve done it,” Calvin said.

“I couldn't.”

“Why not?”

“Because I love you.”

“If you loved me-”

“Then I'd forgive you. And I do.”

“... what?”

“I forgive you.”

He paused there, his breath catching in his throat, his trembling coming to a standstill.

In a crescendo came his sobs; huge, deep, filling his throat and lungs with all the salt-stained agony that had been fermenting inside of him for immemorial days, or immemorial years. Mort held him tight, digging creases into his elegant suit. In that sacred space, the only sound his lover's sobs, he inwardly vowed that he would never allow Calvin to feel lonesome again. The fish supported his decision; they came out from their hiding places and surrounded the two of them, burying themselves back in Calvin's hair, where they had come from.

Pretty soon Calvin pulled back and leaned over the arm of his chair, vomiting onto the fine rug beneath them.

Ill humors, Mort thought, as though he were some medieval apothecary.

The big man wiped his mouth on his jacket and returned to Mort's embrace. He had smelled worse.

“Help me,” Calvin breathlessly demanded. “ Help me.”

“I will, I promise.”

Sobbing, shuddering mess; he buried his face in Mort's shoulder.

“ Oh, God, ” he cried, muffled. “ Oh, God! ”

…

Daylight touched the balcony door panes when Calvin's sobs at last subsided. He pulled back from Mort; a complete, decayed mess, every hair out of place and all the weariness in the world bogging his features. Mort the mortician had seen a thousand mourners, it was simply part of his occupation. Why, then, did Calvin appear so beautiful in his tender, tired eyes?

The landlord took a flask from the inside of his jacket pocket, took a swig, and rinsed his mouth. He spit the liquid onto the floor.

“What a mess,” he grumbled, and Mort was uncertain whether he spoke of the spit and vomit, or himself. Probably both.

“Maybe next time,” Mort said. “We should just smoke weed.”

Calvin smiled slightly and leaned back in the armchair. His jacket fell open, baring the revolver at his waist.

Mort looked at it pointedly. “Would you teach me how to shoot a gun someday?”

“Oh, was that the problem? It's easy enough. Haven't you seen the movies? You just pull the trigger. Want to try again?”

“Uh, haha, no… no thank you.”

Beyond all that sorrow, all that agony- no, it was not beyond it at all.

Marbled gently with all of his vices, all of his grief, was a fondness most gentle. It came from the soul, that figment deep down inside of him that neither of them had believed in until recently; they'd found a kind of religion in one another, in their mutual fondness.

Oh, God help them both.

“Would you like a drink?” Calvin offered his flask.

“What is it?”

“Pure maple syrup.”

“Oh… no thank you. What about water?”

Calvin sighed, laid his head back, and closed his eyes. “That sounds wonderful.”

Chapter Text

A number of years ago, after that whole affair about the condos…

“ Feeelix! I get one free punch! Come here, you know the rules!”

The little guy didn't acknowledge him, not when he sat down next to him in the back of the ambulance, nor when he punched him hard in the meat of his arm. No response. Funny, at least for the punch he'd usually whine.

But then he lifted his head, and looked out at the sea. It was barely visible from where they sat, but through the entrance to Wonder Wharf and the concessions and rides, one could just see a pixel of it. He could have been looking at anything, really, but Calvin knew he was looking at the sea. How queer, that behind everything happening on the wharf this very moment, the waves were rushing on and on, lapping at the pier, ignorant that they had almost swallowed him.

“Ahem,” Calvin cleared his throat. “So, what's that saying? “Bros before hoes”?”

Like he suddenly realized Calvin was there, Felix looked at him, and without a second thought… embraced him.

“I wanna go home.”

Calvin recoiled, or tried to; Felix had quite the hold on him. “Hey, what's your problem? We'll go home soon, we've just got to wrap up the police protocol here since someone became evil for a day.”

He pried himself from Felix's grasp and fished around in the inner pocket of his suit jacket, producing a waterlogged pack of cigarettes.

“Right,” he sighed. “Can we do something less wet next time?”

Next he produced his flask and took a swig, then passed it to Felix.

“Calvin?”

“Hm?”

“... you're not mad?”

Mad? He didn't think he could be, not in the way people generally got mad. That sort of emotion had left him the day Felix poked his eye out. 

He chuckled, “You're so dramatic.”

They sat there for a while, and were intermittently asked questions by the paramedics and police interchangeably. Something was supposed to pass between them, and maybe something did, but it wasn't in the form of words. Actual, real conversation, the kind that fixed people, that patched their relationships, was absolutely foreign to the Fischoeders. They lived together in a kind of bubble, within which emotions came and went; blows were exchanged, but never words. They knew one another as intimately as anyone who had inhabited the same womb; so in a way, words were useless. They had one another, and that was all that mattered.

After a while, Felix drank the brandy.

“I forgive you.”

He swallowed wrong and had a coughing fit for a second before looking directly at Calvin, his mouth agape, probably more afraid of him than he'd ever been.

Calvin rolled his eye. “Yes, you heard me. Just this once, I forgive you.”

“Why?”

For just one imperceivable second, all amusement drained from Calvin's features. And he wanted to say, “Because you're my kid brother, and I'm not letting anyone take you away ever again.” Needless to say, he just couldn't. It wasn't the kind of thing one said to their brother; it wasn't the kind of thing Mr. Fischoeder would say. So the amusement promptly returned, and he swiped the flask from Felix, stealing the last drink.

“Why does anyone do anything?”

“... you never forgave me for your eye.”

“Of course not,” he blithely responded. “I'd rather let that rot your conscience.”

Felix bundled up tighter in his blanket. “It's cold.”

“Well, you soaked my cigarettes and drank my brandy, so unless you have wood for a fire, I'm out of ideas.”

Felix fell silent again. Then he said, “Do you wanna get some hot chocolate?”

“Sure.”

They set off at once, walking down Ocean Avenue side-by-side.

“So,” said Calvin. “The whole tying-someone-up-and-waiting-for-the-tide thing; did you learn that at boarding school or did you get it off the back of a magazine?”

“Boarding school.”

“Well, at least they taught you something useful.”

Chapter Text

“Why don't I feel better?” was the question asked repeatedly over the next two weeks.

“It takes time,” was always the answer.

“I don't like to wait,” was always the response.

Sometimes he cried on Mort's couch, sometimes he cried in Mort's bed, but most of the time he cried on Mort's shoulder. Needless to say, during that period of time he didn't leave Mort's apartment, and the mortician left him only when absolutely necessary.

It was strange, though not entirely surprising, that they had become as bosom companions; completely wrapped up in one another, immune to the displeasure of an overstayed welcome. Mort, who had promised to help him, would often come close and take him in his arms, or curl up against him, beckoning Calvin's embrace. If they were together, warm and comfortable as they ever were, then nothing could possibly happen.

A miasma had settled over Calvin, and it endured for the entire first week. So that when he asked Mort to go buy himself a new pair of pajamas, the mortician was worried.

“Should I be worried?” he asked.

The big, bedraggled man replied, “Not at all. I just thought it might be nice.” He handed Mort one of his credit cards, “Get yourself whatever you want, more than the pajamas. It's on me.”

The earnest pleasantry in his voice convinced Mort that it was alright to go. On one condition.

“I'm gonna text you intermittently and if you don't respond within five minutes I'm dropping everything and rushing home, got it?”

“ Jawohl , Herr General.” 

Calvin had thrown away the old pair of pajamas while he was packing, for they were much too red. And all that time spent wearing the bottom buttons in… Anyway, he had wanted a different color in the first place, and it didn't seem right that Mort should be without a pair that matched his own in quality.

The mortician returned with a pair of perfectly ultramarine pajamas.

“I thought I'd get kicked out of that shop,” Mort said, displaying the pajamas. “It was so nice. But the clerk was very kind to me, I didn't have to do Pretty Woman… even though it would've been fun.”

“You didn't get yourself anything else?”

“Well, I didn't want to go crazy, but I got a tie.”

He produced it from the shopping bag; a pretty, silken tie of emerald green.

“Pretty,” Calvin drawled. “But where are you going to wear it?”

“To a fancy restaurant, someday. Or a fancy party.”

“A party?”

“Mhm. Rich people throw parties all the time, right?”

“Some rich people.”

“Maybe you should.”

“Why?”

Mort shrugged, “I think that… maybe a celebration of life ceremony would do you some good.”

“Hm,” Calvin hummed. They had talked non-stop about Felix between Calvin's sobbing; he was beginning to grow tired of the subject, despite the fact that he teared up right then. “Maybe not just now.”

“No. In time.”

He sighed and leaned back on the couch, then shifted slightly as something occurred to him. “Are you going anywhere else tonight?”

“No.”

“Get in your pajamas then.”

Mort smiled and went to change.

When he returned he was all comfortable in ultramarine, completely blue in all the ways a man can possibly be blue.

“Come here.”

He would have gone to Mort himself, he simply did not have the strength.

The little mortician nestled into his broad side, and Calvin draped an arm over him. Silky smooth, and warm besides. He cupped Mort's chin in his hand.

“Thank you.”

He smiled, “Anything for you, big guy.”

Then he began to unbutton Calvin's pajama top, all the way down to the middle so that he could part the fabric and lay his head on Calvin's chest of coarse silver hair. He buried his face in it and took a big whiff of him.

“What are you doing?” Calvin asked.

“Smelling you. You smell me all the time.”

He started to take the rest of the buttons, but Calvin grabbed his hands.

“I don't know about that.”

“Why not?”

Why not?

Mort's fingers were warm against his flesh, his bespectacled brown eyes big and curious, wanting.

Well, why not?

Calvin released him, and his hands slipped under the silk, clutching his generous stomach.

“There he is,” Mort smiled. “There's my big man.”

“Hm,” he hummed in satisfaction. “Maybe it's alright to be fondled, as long as you're the one doing it.”

“I'm honored,” he fully filled his hands with Calvin's silver-haired warmth. “I get it now, this whole fascination with fat.”

“Do you now?”

“Well, I guess you're just nice to hold, and I can see how you'd feel the same way about me. A man has the right to go a little crazy when there's so much to get his hands on.”

He squeezed and pinched Calvin's belly, and then he took his pectorals in hand, his fingers gently twisting and tugging his nipples. Calvin moaned softly, and Mort came up to kiss the breath from his lips.

“Mortimer…”

“Hm?”

“... I need you to know… I don't… I don't like being naked.”

“Is this too much?”

“No, this is just fine, but any further… I might get strange about it.”

“I get it. You spend so much time all dressed up, it feels weird to be without clothes.”

“It isn't just that,” he brought his hands up to hold Mort's ultramarine waist. “You see that? The way the fabric fits you, how it shifts and warms underhand when I hold you?”

“I see it.”

“That's the kind of thing I like. It isn't a hatred of the body, only a finer appreciation of it. Do you understand?”

“Certainly.”

Mort leaned in and pressed his lips to one of Calvin's nipples, drawing a long moan from him as he took it between his teeth and suckled it. Calvin's fingers dug into his waist as he slightly arched his back. Oh, he was starving, in the flesh, in the nerves; every inch of him desperate and wanting.

“Listen,” Mort pulled back. “I need to ask something of you.”

“Oh,” Calvin laughed. “So that's what this is all about! I might've known.”

“I have to butter you up.”

“I'm already wound completely around your finger. What'll it be; beach house or sports car?”

Mort poked his belly, “At least you're silly about it this time, but don't be like that.”

“Alright, genuinely; what is it?”

“Just… be honest with me. You've been doing great since the treehouse, and I don't want you to stop. I know it won't be that easy, I know you'll want to clam up on me from time to time, and I'll give you your space, but I need you to try to stay open; it's the only way you'll get better, and stay better. And I don't mean that I need to drag every single intimate secret from you; I just want you to trust me.”

“I think I can manage that… as long as you keep touching and kissing me.”

He smiled, “Why would I ever stop?”

He rubbed the stiffened nipples with his thumbs and kissed all up and down Calvin's neck.

“But I'm serious,” he said against the big man's throat. “I want to take care of you, but you have to help me do that.”

“ You take care of me ?”

“That's right.”

“Well, I suppose one of us ought to be the adult in this… exchange.”

He laughed and nuzzled into him, “We'll take turns.”

Naturally not all moments were so peaceful, so lovely. It was a busy season for morticians; Mort couldn't just stop doing his job. Often he was away. There was even one night - oh, late into the night, around 1:00 AM - when things were getting quite heated between them, and just as Calvin had gotten to his waistband, Mort's work phone rang. He was long away, fetching his late-night corpse, and Calvin was ever dogged by insomnia. So much so that he learned to make coffee himself (turns out instructions are available online). It was cold by the time Mort returned home, but he appreciated it nonetheless.

Home. Funny, to be using that word. It wasn't the apartment, or Ocean Avenue itself; it was Mort, and all his domesticity.

“How did it go?”

Mort looked up from his coffee, and it was only then that Calvin realized he seemed kind of listless. “Hm? Oh, it went fine.”

“What was the cause of death? If you don't mind me asking.”

“Suicide.”

“Oh.”

“Tis the season.”

Calvin gazed deep into his coffee. How absurd. How absurd the whole thing was.

“I'm sorry.”

“I didn't mind you asking.”

“No, I mean… I'm sorry.”

He thought Mort might brush it off - “it's alright, no big deal” and whatnot - but he remained silent and looked at him encouragingly.

“I'm sorry for putting you through all that… for the Duesenberg and… for making you hold a gun to me,” he shook his head. “I feel terrible about it. Worst of all, though, I feel stupid.”

“It's not unusual to feel that way. You're not stupid, Calvin. People go to extreme lengths when they feel threatened, or guilty, backed into some kind of metaphorical corner. Why should you be an exception?”

“Because I was… violent. Uncharacteristically, terribly violent.”

Strangely, Mort smiled, “What you did wasn't out of cruelty. Stuff like that, it never is. You were just desperate. Anyway, I accept your apology.”

Calvin scoffed, “I don't understand you. Anyone else would've called the police, or demanded hush money, or at least come to hate me.”

“Anyone else? Sure, I guess they would. Then it's a good thing you love me .”

He smiled and shook his head, “Anyway, thank you.”

“I should be thanking you.”

“For what?”

“For apologizing.”

“You're a strange little man, Mortimer.”

“I've been called worse.”

Despite that, it came to Calvin more than once that he was still guilty and always would be, which sent him into episodes of such intense depression it was a wonder he didn't rot away. But he didn't feel like killing himself, not in the active way he had prior to the treehouse episode. It was a lazy sort of “God, I wish I was dead”; an ache deep down in his organs, a pulse in his head. He thought about it, but his body was locked to the bed, or the sofa. There were no further attempts, no further vows of killing himself; only a quiet depression, save for his frequent sobbing.

But as it happened, the sun shone differently one day. It set its beams over Seymour's Bay just right, so that the light came in through the bedroom window and touched him. He stirred with a kind of fervor, so that Mort woke beside him.

“What is it?” the mortician asked. “Something wrong?”

“I've got to get up, I've got to get out of here.”

He yawned and went for a big stretch, “Alright, but you should shower first. Not that I don't like your musk.”

Having been coerced to shower, Calvin once more remembered how good it was to be fresh and clean. He scrubbed himself thoroughly with his own washes that Mort had packed for him, and for quite some time fiddled with the shape of his hair. It wasn't all that obvious for how he groomed, but like Father had he was starting to bald just a bit; his hairline was receding from either side of his forehead, and there was a spot at the back of his head, which could luckily be covered by the rest of his hair. He'd always thought it was stupid that hairy men such as he and his father should even be capable of going bald. With Mort it made sense - he was bare as a newborn baby, he deserved to be bald.

At any rate, he needed a haircut; he hadn't been to the barber in almost a month. And a shave, but he took care of that on his own. There was something to be said for Mort's taste; it was humble but fine, second-rate but not third. The little man worked with what money he had. The almost full bottle of aftershave in the medicine cabinet was acceptable.

When he was finished he examined himself in the mirror, and found with a terrible shock that he looked… old. Older, anyway. It was there, in the lines of his face; deeper than they had been. And there, in his mane of silver; paler than before. He thought fleetingly of calling it a tragedy, but he supposed that's just the way of it. No one ever got any younger. 

He dressed in those same colors that in Seymour's Bay belonged to he alone; white, pink, lavender. Mort helped him with his tie, his hands delicate at Calvin's neck. After he shouldered his suit jacket, he lowered his head so that Mort could slip the eye patch into place. Then Calvin grabbed him about the waist and kissed him fully on the lips.

“Come with me.”

“Where are we going?” Mort asked.

“To the pier.”

The mortician smiled slightly and inclined his head. Calvin's heart swelled with warmth, that someone was willing to come with him; someone he'd once kidnapped, no less. But in the seat of sobriety, they knew one another, and trusted that loneliness could never again come between them. It would exist without; on the border of their relationship.

Relationship!

He kissed the little man again, before his want could become words. A little afraid, still, of being serious. It was better in the bedroom, where words became actions and mouths formed moans. It was easier to live between sheets and clothes and flesh, rather than stand upright in the genteel world.

They walked down to the pier. The break in the snow flurries was welcome and the wind had died down, leaving them in a still, bitter cold, illuminated by the distant setting sun. The pier creaked underfoot, stiff with cold, slick here and there with ice.

And the sea, of course; the sea was always there. Constant, rushing and whispering.

Calvin closed his eyes, his hands on the railing.

Once the waves had been a comfort. Maybe as time wore on comforts waned one by one, until there were none left, and thus, nothing left to live for.

When he was a child he used to dig trenches in the sand - small ones, the kind for sandcastle moats - and he loved to watch the waves swallow them, smooth their edges, and fill them again with sand. Against his rationale he became angry with the sea, because it couldn't do the same to his heart. And maybe he also held a grudge with it, for assisting him in the killing of his brother. Now there would always be a gaping, bottomless hole there; not enough sand in the world to fill it.

Calvin curled his hand into a fist and brought it down against the railing.

“Calvin?”

He winced, “I'm sorry you had to see this. I'm sorry you have to be here.”

“Don't be,” he laid a hand on the older man's arm. “I'm sorry it has to be this way... but I chose to be here.”

Far and away, as men often are, Calvin found that he was looking back at himself. Old and pale, still proud, living on bourbon as the walk of eternity beckoned. And Mortimer, just beside him, awaiting the day he be put to rest.

He wondered, that someone would grieve for him. Twice now his life had been held in the balance because of an inheritance he'd been born unto, never asked for. Was he responsible, too, for his own assassination attempts?

Against his better judgment, in knowing how money and power corrupted, he would give everything to Mort. Maybe he was the one person in this world, and thereby a saint, whose soul could never be blackened by it. Or maybe it would take him, too, and they would only be miserable together.

All that! Completely absurd. All Mortimer wanted was a life, and a funeral… and to be loved. Indeed, they were more alike than most married couples.

He turned to the mortician.

“I love you.”

Mort smiled up at him, “I love you too.”

“No, I love you. I want to be with you… and I want to be more than whatever we've been.”

“Friends with benefits?”

Calvin scoffed. “I have been gauche. Can you forgive me?”

“Of course I forgive you.”

He embraced the little man, holding his head to his shoulder. His scent; soft and gentle, faintly of coffee and the warmth of the mortuary; it marbled with the brine, and washed away the clawing stench of death. In a way, so specific to this little mortician, it was a kinder kind of death; an inevitability, free and clean, becoming. He could love him with perfect impunity, as the cold turned bitter the air around them, and the waves crashed violently against the pier.

 “I want to be with you.”

“What are we, Mr. Fischoeder?”

The word had been on his mind since that first night, buried in fear and guilt. Now it was shorn of all, bare in the budding moonlight.

“Lovers, Mortimer. I suppose we are lovers.”