Fantasy/Romance short. A delivery man is quite infatuated with the clerk at a magical toy shop.
Sweet and loving M/M romance developing bit by bit here. Rated T, 6k, with teasing and flirtation throughout. Adapted from a TweetFic.
CW for loss of a parent and grief.
Alec took shipments into the same toyshop each week, usually twice or three times between a typical Monday and Friday, and the shop clerk was —
Really something.
It was a toy shop in the centre of Camelot with huge bay windows that showed off a display that changed over every quarter, showing a huge variety of clockwork pieces and other toys. Simply called The Agora, the place was beautiful.
Whenever Alec went in, it was impossible not to be in a good mood — the store smelt sweet and fragrant from the flowers that grew in the windows and rested in vases around each room, and soft music played not from speakers but from a player piano at which was posed a puppet in a tuxedo, wooden fingers poisoned on the keys.
Every time Alec went in, he saw something new — troughs of magical toys from all around the world; puzzles, building bricks, dolls, balls, masks and costumes, more puppets, everything imaginable… And that was just the half of it.
All around the Agora were displays of the store’s custom pieces: tracks that ran trains and cars and even planes, dolls and puppets hand-crafted by the master, and as for the clockwork pieces —
They were like nothing one could imagine.
Whenever Alec went in with a shipment, Levi — the clerk — was nowhere to be seen, was always somewhere in the store, fixing a shelf display, watching some of the clockwork pieces, or demonstrating a toy, chatting with customers, bouncing a young patron on his shoulders or his hip. He loved people, learned every customer by name whether they lived in Camelot or not, and Alec knew that Levi would remember them even if he only met them once and then again six years later.
More than that, he remembered everybody’s favourites, worked happily to tailor every order to the person’s preferences — and he remembered Alec, too.
He was always all smiles when he saw him, adjusted his bowtie and shuffled his feet like he was winding himself up.
“Excuse me!” he’d say theatrically to whatever customers he was with, his green eyes sparkling with bright delight. “I must greet a most esteemed guest — our most beloved messenger!”
He would always fix Alec’s uniform, reach out and pluck off imaginary lint or pull his shirt down by the hem to make it sit straighter, or adjust the set of his cap on his head if he was wearing it, and then he’d frown all theatrically and say, “Hmm… Why not epaulettes, Alec, hm? A nice sash? Or some sandals, at least!”
It always made Alec laugh, when Levi made these criticisms of his unform — Alec told him every time it wasn’t up to him, that if Levi really cared, he should tell it to the company, and Levi would laugh and tap Alec’s nose with the gloved tip of his finger and say, “I just might, you know!”
He always wore gloves on the shop floor, white cloth gloves that kept him from marking any of the toys with smudges when he was handling the ceramics or plastics or the polished woods — but when he came to the register he would take them off theatrically before taking up a pen and signing the docket.
Everything Levi did, he did with a flourish.
Now, he slid them off his fingers with two small, quick movements, and his fountain pen moved smooth and beautiful and easy over the delivery docket’s receiving line. Levi was a large, plump man, round at the middle and narrower at the breast, pear-shaped and with a great affection for shades of pear green; his hands and feet were smaller and tremendously delicate, and when Alec’s gaze lingered on the fountain pen between his fingers, it looked very beautiful there.
“Where do you want it?” asked Alec, and Levi laughed his handsome, bubbly laugh.
“Where do I ever want them, my dearest agent of Hermes? At the bottom of the stairs, if you would!”
Toy shipments were always delivered to the back of the store, where the Agora shared its delivery bay with the carpenter on one side and a pet store on the other — the things that Alec delivered were for the workshop. Cogs and wheels and screws; hair and stuffing and fabric; tools and tool pieces; raw plastic and clay and metal and wood dowelling; dyes and paints…
It seemed to Alec he brought the Agora a dozen parcels each time he came with a delivery, and they all went to the bottom of the stairs. There was a dumbwaiter there — it was too big to be called a dumbwaiter really, but far too small to be called an elevator. It was operated with a crank that worked the pulleys, and whenever the waiter was moving, the crank set off a clockwork duck that quacked convincingly.
“Busy day, Levi?” asked Alec as he unloaded the dolly, and Levi hummed thoughtfully, sitting back on his little spinning stool with his long legs drawn slightly up, delicate heels on the stool’s footrest.
“Always busy, sir, always!” he decreed. He was always in a good mood — Alec had never seen him get frustrated, never seen him angry, never seen him unhappy. He was sad from time to time, a little melancholy when he heard an old customer had died, but there was a warmth and a sweetness to that melancholy. According to Levi, it was a duty to plant seeds of joy in the earth of grief.
Once, after an explosion at the Royal University made the whole of Camelot shudder under their feet, a shelf of dolls had fallen over. Levi had launched across the room with dazzling grace and speed to shield Alec’s body with his, Alec’s eyes against Levi’s chest and Levi’s head bowed to protect them from the flying shards of glass.
When Levi had turned to look at the disarray and destruction, for a moment he had looked utterly dismayed, and then he’d laughed.
Alec had been speechless at the carnage, one bookshelf thrown over, the glass casements all shattered into tiny pieces, dolls strewn in amongst the mess with some of them smashed or crushed, and then to Levi, who was hiding his mouth with his white-clad fingers.
“You okay?” asked Alec.
“I thought the pin was a little loose on the shelf this morning — I was thinking to tighten it up tonight. Left it a bit late, didn’t I?” he said, and giggled, then sighed. “Ah, well, won’t you turn the sign to Closed, Alec, whilst I tidy up this mess?”
He’d rung a bell as he’d pushed the shelf back up — Levi was tall and strong, and moved it easily.
Just as Alec was saying, “Do you want me to stay and help?”, an old man had come down the stairs.
“Mr Silver,” said Levi. “You’re going to be ever so glum!”
“And yet you sound so happy, Levi,” had replied the old man, glancing suspiciously at Alec. “How could I be?” He was exceedingly old, with pronounced jowls and liver spots on his forehead, and he wore overalls, and had delicate fingers.
He’d looked out over the carpet of broken glass and destroyed dolls, his face unreadable, as Levi did his funny little shuffle and rushed over to him, putting one hand on the old man’s back and the other cupping his cheek, “On the bright side, you can make them all again!”
“Is that a bright side?” asked Silver.
“Mr Silver,” had purred Levi, and kissed him on the elderly cheek, and Alec had felt uncomfortable and weird all of a sudden, felt strange, felt… Wrong. “You love to recycle, don’t you? Cannibalise what’s next — make something new!”
That had been months ago.
Now, Levi was filing away the receipt from the delivery docket, and humming a discordant tune to himself.
“Did you always want to work with toys?” asked Alec.
“I like people — I like joy. I suppose toys are part of that, aren’t they?”
“Wouldn’t you ever want to do anything else?”
Levi laughed, playing with his little green bowtie, bouncing his head from side to side. “What else would I want to do?”
“I don’t know. Travel?”
“Travel! Oh, no, no, why should I travel? Everyone comes here — I like it here, Alec. This is my home.”
Levi lived with Mr Silver.
“I never see you out,” said Alec, and when Levi was silent, he looked back at him. Levi was sitting back in his chair, looking at Alec with his perfectly plucked eyebrows knitted together.
“Do you look for me?” he asked softly, his lips smiling. “When you’re out?”
Alec shrugged, and Levi’s chuckle was warm and as handsome as he was as he turned back to his work and started humming again. In between hums, he said, “I don’t much like to go out. All that noise, all that bluster — so uncontrolled, anything can happen! I like it here, inside. Everything runs like clockwork. The only place that compares is the temple.”
“The synagogue services run like clockwork?” asked Alec, and Levi laughed, clapping together his hands.
“Oh, no, never,” he said affectionately. “The rabbi, she’s a tremendously chaotic old coot, and we always get mixed up or distracted. It’s really quite wonderful. But it’s nice — it’s predictable, and calm. Here, though, here it is more like clockwork.”
“It is clockwork,” said Alec, and Levi laughed. When he clapped again, the sound was once more softened by the fabric of his gloves.
“I suppose you’re quite right,” he allowed. “Perhaps were all the world designed and put together by Mr Silver, I might like it better — but it is our obligation to repair the world, hm? Much as it overwhelms me, it is the world we have and that we love.”
“There’s not something to be said for spontaneity?” asked Alec. “It’s either your God’s will or Mr Silver’s?”
“I work with children all day, my dear Alec, and do my best to make their heart’s desire come true. What could be more spontaneous than children?” His smile was more gentle now. “There’s nothing more precious on this earth.”
“Surely you must want days off,” said Alec. “This shop is open 7 days a week, almost the whole year — I know you close early on Friday evenings, but that can’t be enough. Don’t you ever just… want to take a Saturday to yourself? Or a Monday, when it’s quiet? Does Mr Silver have to work you so hard?”
“Mr Silver is the workhorse in this establishment, Alec,” said Levi. “All these creations he makes, all to spread a little joy about. He almost never rests — I have to ask him to, tell him to!”
“Don’t you need rest too?”
“Mr Silver is an old man, and set in his ways. I wouldn’t want to put him out, and I like to help him, Alec.”
“You’re good for that.”
“It’s kind of you to say.”
“But he should think abut your needs as well as his.”
For a moment, Levi’s stare was almost sharp, and he asked, “What needs do you think I’m neglecting?” Alec’s breath caught in his throat, but almost immediately Levi returned to his beaming smile. “I’ll wait your next visit, my dear!”
“Hotly anticipate it,” said Alec awkwardly, and went back out to the truck.
* * *
Every week, things changed over. It wasn’t the main display that changed — that changed seasonally — but the smaller window displays and the individual shop displays. Alec loved the days when he arrived early, before nine, before the shop opened, and he could watch Levi make up the displays. He’d move so fast it was like he was on rails, putting everything immediately in place.
He never changed his mind, when he set up a display — he’d think about it in his head, study whatever was available, and then put everything in place, exactly right. He’d step back after, beam at everything available, his hands on his hips.
He moved so fast, so efficiently, and so gracefully too — Levi was impossibly, painfully, joyfully elegant.
“Alec!” he said, and he reached out, cupping Alec’s cheeks with his gloved hands. “So handsome today! It’s all the sun.”
“Sun makes a man handsome?”
“Well, I think it puts something of a highlight on what you already have to work with,” said Levi cheerily, and gently chucked his chin. “Give!”
Alec, smiling, handed over the docket, and got hold of his dolly.
His smile faltered slightly when he realised that Mr Silver was downstairs too.
He was leaning forward on a cushioned bench, and working with a telescopic eyepiece over one eye, carefully putting together a diorama with little figures. It was a diorama of the Agora itself, a foot tall, and when the old man turned the key on the side, it flared to life. The lights in the flat upstairs and in the shop window came to life, and the tiny toys inside, most of them barely as big as a fingernail, began to move around on their tracks or in circles.
Mr Silver was smiling faintly as he looked down at the model, and Levi clapped his hands together, reaching out and squeezing Silver’s shoulders.
“Oh, it looks wonderful, Mr Silver! You’re a marvel!”
Mr Silver chuckled softly, reaching back and squeezing Levi’s hand, and Alec swallowed as he put the parcels next to the dumb waiter, taking them off the dolly.
“Alec, won’t you put those straight into the lift today?” asked Levi, and Alec nodded, pulling open the waiter’s doors. “Alec is always so happy to help,” said Levi, squeezing Mr Silver’s shoulders again before helping the old man to his feet. He struggled a little to come out of the position with his bent knees, and leaned on Levi. Alec almost felt sympathy, but it was…
Ugh.
“It’s very good of him,” said Mr Silver lowly, wincing, and Levi looked at him seriously, his lips slightly pouted.
“Are you very sore today, Mr Silver?”
“Don’t, Levi. It’s nearly nine.”
“The world won’t end if the shop opens an hour late, sir. Let me help you upstairs.”
“Alec,” said Levi, reaching out to touch him as he passed, supporting Mr Silver, “won’t you please send up the dumbwaiter once you’ve packed it?”
“Of course,” said Alec. “Can I help you, um…?”
Mr Silver turned his face away, and after looking melancholy at the old man for a moment, Levi met Alec’s gaze and shook his head.
“No, no, what Mr Silver needs is to be tucked into bed with a hot compress for his ailing joints, and to rest for the day instead of craning over his workbench,” said Levi somewhat emphatically, and as he said it, Silver rolled his eyes.
They were green too, Alec realised — they weren’t quite as brightly green as Levi’s own, but the shade was only a little off. They both had an olive brown covering and although Mr Silver’s hair was white, it might have been dark brown once upon a time. Their delicate hands almost seemed like variations of one another.
He’d never asked Levi’s surname before, and he suddenly wondered if it was Silver too. Shame burned inside him, and he bit his lip.
Levi came downstairs again within ten minutes, just as he was starting to send up the lift, and Levi stared at him.
“You look ever so put down,” he said with gentle warmth. “What’s with the long face?”
“Is he your dad?” asked Alec. “Mr Silver?”
Levi’s face crumpled somewhat, and for a second, but only a second, he looked tremendously sad, but then a little smile showed through again. The smile was sad too, but not extremely so.
“He’s getting older and older as the days go by,” said Levi quietly, and reached out, patting Alec’s chest. He moved to the desk then, hips swinging, and wrote a little not for the window, saying they’d be opening an hour late. “Human bodies aren’t like clockwork, Alec.”
“No,” Alec agreed. “But even watches wear out.”
Levi sighed, signing off the note with his usual handsome flourish. His hands were very like his father’s, delicate and beautifully poised and with very fine control, just lacking the scattering of liver spots and wrinkled skin.
“You aren’t wrong,” said Levi. “But clockwork doesn’t come to ache so.”
* * *
Alec saw Levi the next day.
Levi always wore striped shirts in bright pastel colours and pastel trousers in similar shades that were normally matched to his bowtie, especially if he could get shades like fruit — it was his uniform for the chop, just like his coiffed hair and his neat, shining earrings.
Levi’s hair was mussed, looking thicker than usual, not combed down into place, and his jaw was scattered with stubble. It had never occurred to Alec that Levi might grow a beard before — he was always so perfectly groomed.
He was coming out of the pharmacy with a paper bag just as Alec walked to the chippy, and he said, “Levi.”
Levi turned to look at him, his green eyes dull with fatigue.
“You look tired,” said Alec. “Is Mr Silver okay?”
Levi’s smile was tired, but warm. “He’ll be better,” he said, “the darling old man just needs a little rest and recuperation, I’m afraid, but he so hates to take even a minute. Arthritis, muscle fatigue — old age, long and short. It’s really very sweet of you to ask.”
“When I said you needed a day off, this wasn’t exactly what I meant,” said Alec, and Levi exhaled, eyes looking into the middle distance for a moment, an then he reached out, adjusting the apparently skewed edge of Alec’s collar.
“You’re very sweet,” he said again.
Alec caught his hand, and Levi looked at him in surprise, his eyes looking greener as they widened, his lips parting.
“I’m sorry if I implied anything before, about your… your dad. I just assumed, because you call him Mr Silver, and I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable.”
“Have I given the appearance of being uncomfortable?” asked Levi softly. “You’re hoping I’d be more so? Less, perhaps?”
“I just… You’re just. Sorry. I bet you get guys interested in you all the time.”
“Oh,” said Levi, and squeezed his hand. “I am sorry, Alec.”
“You don’t have anything to apologise for.”
“Evidently, you’ve been given the wrong idea, and I’m sorry for that,” he said. “But I’m just… not available. I’m too invested in my work — and looking after my father.”
Alec nodded.
Levi opened his mouth as if he was going to say something else, and then he closed it, delicately shaking his head. He squeezed Alec’s hand again — for all their delicacy and elegance, his hands were tremendously strong — and then pulled away. He was wearing a thick jumper today — it was pastel pink, made of thick angora wool, and it was soft where it brushed Alec’s skin.
“See you tomorrow,” said Alec.
“Quite,” said Levi, and walked away, hips swinging, gait smooth and graceful as ever.
Alec watched him go, chest giving a pang, and wondered if he should have said something different.
* * *
The next day, Alec arrived to the Agora to find that Levi was behind the desk. It was early in the morning, the shop not open yet, and he was bent over the counter and wearing a lens over his eye like his father had worn, just setting his tweezers aside.
“That should run fine for now,” he said.
“You’re sure?” asked his customer, an old woman, and Levi smiled his indulgent smile, eyes glittering, and nodded his head.
“It looks as though it were just that glob of sand that affected the running — I can do a full service for you if you like, but it would take me a few days to get to it.”
“I’ll bring it in after we’re back,” she said.
“We shall be delighted to receive you, my darling Mrs Biggs — and please, if you must take your watch to the beach, try to keep it out of the sand.”
She chuckled, but she put her wristwatch back on — she was a witch from the university, Alec thought, because she was wearing robes and a few old-fashioned amulets around her neck — as she left.
“I didn’t know you repaired watches,” said Alec as he rolled in the dolly, and passed over the docket, which Levi took with a beautiful flourish of his hand and elbow, and moved to sign.
“We do,” he said. “I do — Mr Silver finds them boring, I’m afraid, but I like clocks very much.”
“How do you find the time, working between the shop all day and repairs too?” asked Alec, and Levi laughed his handsome laugh.
“I’m a clockmaker, darling. We always find the time.”
He reached up, adjusting his bowtie.
His feet didn’t shuffle.
* * *
It went back to normal, after that — Levi always announced Alec very loudly to his customers when he arrived, shuffled his feet and adjusted his bowtie whenever he saw him before he made his way over.
Called him handsome.
Laid his glittering eyes on him, so that Alec felt warm and tingling under his gaze.
“Do you think you could ever like me?” asked Alec one day.
“You’re my favourite messenger of all, our very own Hermod! I like you rather a lot already.”
“No, I mean,” started Alec, turning to look at him, and Levi looked back at him, his head tilting. “I mean… really like me.”
“Really like you?”
“Go to dinner. Or — or drinks. On a date, I mean.”
Levi opened his mouth, closed it. He leaned forward on his stool, looking at Alec very intently, and then he reached up to fiddle with his bowtie, his feet tapping on the footrest as he did so.
“I know you stopped for a while, but then you started flirting again,” said Alec, “or maybe you’re just being nice, and it’s a customer service thing, and I’m not trying to be pushy, or, or disrespectful — I’m sorry, I won’t ever ask again if you don’t want to — ”
“No, no,” said Levi softly. “I told you before I couldn’t, didn’t I? But then I changed my tune again. It’s not your fault I’m so inconsistent.”
“I don’t mean now,” Alec said. “Not with your dad, I’m not trying to… I just mean, one day, you know, if you ever had time. Or wanted to. We don’t have to go out anywhere — I could help, you know, if — ”
“I don’t know the future, Alec,” said Levi softly, almost hesitantly. “I couldn’t tell you. It’s very good of you to offer, but it’s… It’s really about time. Not anything else.”
“Shame you’re so good with time otherwise, but not with this,” joked Alec weakly. Levi looked at him in what seemed like genuine confusion, and Alec said, “Uh, you know. With the watches.”
The confusion lingered another second or two before Levi suddenly laughed. It was loud and beautiful as ever, but somehow off, as he said, “Oh, yes, of course, absolutely. Certainly. Well, I… I really don’t know.”
He turned back to his desk.
Alec stared at his back a second, and then kept unloading.
A month later, he came to bring a delivery to the Agora, and for the first time he’d ever seen, the shop’s front curtains were closed, and there was a notice in the window in Levi’s looping, handsome handwriting.
TEMPORARY CLOSURE, it read. DUE TO BEREAVEMENT.
Alec hadn’t finished reading it when the door opened, and Levi Silver, his hair uncoiffed but his cheeks shaved, looked down at him. His eyes were dark with lack of sleep, and rimmed red.
“I’m so sorry,” said Alec softly, and Levi glanced back behind him.
“I think you’d best bring all that in,” he said softly, stepping back, and Alec pushed the dolly over the threshold…
And saw Levi, his hair picture perfect, his skin beautiful as ever, his eyes closed, slumped in the stool behind the desk.
He stared in horror, and the Levi on his feet said, “Hush, hush, no need to panic. Don’t… don’t have a fuss. Just a little bit of an incident with some glitter, that’s all — I’ve already cleaned his cogs out. It’s uncomfortable for him to be awake when I’m doing it — I’m just about to wind him up again.”
Alec stared at him.
Going to the Levi who was unconscious, he led the way and Alec followed feeling almost hypnotised, peering over at the clockwork Levi’s head. It was neatly open at the back, pushing up his hair, showing the soft glow of an enchantment stone and hundreds of tiny cogs and gears.
“I’m a master enchanter and horologist,” said the real Levi quietly. “So is my father, of course, but he stopped working on timepieces way back in the eighties, after I was born. He built a toyshop instead.” He gestured around, looking powerlessly at Alec. “I hate to leave him alone. Hated…”
“So you made a clockwork clone?” asked Alec, feeling bile rise in his throat, and Levi carefully pushed the back flap on his copy’s head closed, gently and delicately smoothing out his hair so that it didn’t catch in the door’s seam. It made a quiet, mechanical click before his skin folded back into place, and it all seemed smooth, so that you couldn’t even see where it had opened before.
Levi’s pained expression made him feel unfathomably guilty, and Levi’s heart panged at the same time his stomach lurched.
“I try to work from here, as much as I can,” said Levi, “but I travel a lot, work on towers, restoring antiques. Architectural enchantment, aged mechanisms, even magic needs maintenance. Enchantment and horology are both such complex disciplines, and difficult indeed to approach in combination — my skills are in strong demand, and I… It’s not about money, it was never about money. The preservation and restoration work I do, it’s like this toyshop was for…”
Levi’s voice trailed off, and Alec didn’t say anything, until Levi went on, “My father needed a carer, and someone to run the shop. He doesn’t like…” He reached up, rubbing at one eye. “He didn’t like strangers, people. He used to. It used to be that he loved people more than anything, but it changed as he got older. It got harder. He wanted me to be here, of course, he missed me when I was gone and I missed him, but how could he ask? He didn’t want me to give up my work for him — after all, he’d never done so for me. So, I did what came naturally. My counterpart made more time for both of us.”
Levi’s eyes were shining with wetness, but the tears didn’t roll down his cheeks, and he sniffed as he turned away. He took a key with a handle from the table beside his tools, slotting it neatly into the front of the clockwork figure’s neck.
He turned it not like a normal key, around and round, but like a lever, back and forth.
Levi’s feet jolted as he was wound.
“Is your name actually Levi too?” asked Alec.
“It is,” said the clockmaker. “But perhaps it might be easier if you think of me as Silver Junior.”
Levi’s eyes opened, and he moved very slowly, moving his shoulders, tilting his neck, and then beamed.
“Oh, top notch, Mr Silver, I’m fit as a fiddle, now,” he said brightly. He was moving his shoulders experimentally, rolling them and shifting in his place, and it made the biological Levi smile softly, squeezing his counterpart’s shoulder. “All that glitter did me an awful mischief.”
Levi never cursed or swore — the closest he came was the occasional expulsion of a word like “Fiddlesticks!” or, in times of extreme stress, a very quiet, “Oy vey.”
He saw Alec looking, and his face softened.
Mr Silver looked between Levi and Alec, and Alec didn’t know what to make of his expression, of his face.
“Would you bring everything straight upstairs?” he asked quietly. “We’ll, um, we’ll get to it later, I expect, sort everything out between us, but for the time being, put all to one side in a happy little pyramid.”
“Of course, Mr Silver,” said Levi softly, and squeezed his hand, still resting on Levi’s back. They looked like twins.
Mr Silver left them be.
“What happens now?” asked Alec.
“I sign your docket with a beautiful flourish and you find me very charming, and then you put everything in the dumb waiter for me,” said Levi. “Isn’t that our usual routine?”
Alec was so surprised he laughed.
Levi said softly, “But that’s not quite what you meant.”
“No.”
“Mr Silver is a very good enchanter. Better than his father, even — and they were matched, for horology, I think. I am very…” He cleared his throat. “He can’t just shut me down, you know, leave me to rot. I’m a registered… I’ve rights.”
Alec blinked at him, and Levi hurried to go on, “Not that he ever would try to, I’d never mean to… He’s quite the darling man, truly, but what I’m trying to tell you, Alec, is that I’m a construct, mechanical in nature, but I’m an autonomous automaton. I have thoughts of my own, feelings of my own, an identity of my own — I’m not just one of these clockwork toys you see on the shelf.”
“Like a golem?” asked Alec, and Levi nodded, smiling gently.
“A little, but also, no, not really. All the same, were it not for Mr Silver’s fascination with golems as a child, and all the tales his parents told him of them, I doubt he would have gone on to the work he’s done with me, or the restoration he’s done on other magical constructs and automata. And without that, I wouldn’t be so… me. So full of thought and feeling.”
“So you do like me, then,” said Alec, and when Levi laughed, clapping his gloved hands together, Alec crumpled. “Sorry. I’m making this about me, I don’t mean to, I’m just surprised and I didn’t expect it, but you’re grieving, and that’s — ”
“No, no,” said Levi softly, reaching to squeeze his shoulder. His hand was warm. “I am grieving. And I’m glad you’re here.”
They moved to put everything in the dumb waiter, and Alec realised Levi had a tear in his shirt collar, reached out to touch it, feeling the fabric where it was frayed. “You tore it when you broke down?” he asked.
“No, you darling thing,” said Levi softly, with a quiet laugh. “It means we’re grieving, that’s all. Mr Silver tore it for me — I didn’t presume to. Mr Silver Senior wasn’t really my father, after all, I was just… But they’ve always treated me with such love and affection. I always felt so at home.” He reached up, touching the fray where his lapel was torn, gloved fingertip grazing the fabric strands. He didn’t cry. Alec didn’t know if he could. But he looked very, very sad.
“My architect constructed me, but he sees me as… Hm. Not a son. But a brother, I think. That’s how I see him, in many ways — Mr Silver understands that to construct automata is not so different as constructing one’s children, if they are to be constructed with feeling and autonomy, and Mr Silver Senior understood the same. Love is what makes a brother and brother, a father and son — whether I was Mr Silver Senior’s son in my own right or merely an extension of the son he had, he treated me as such. Mr Silver Junior insisted I ought rend my clothing.”
Alec kept staring, not really sure whether it was right, and sounding almost tearful though his eyes didn’t leak, Levi laughed again. He reached out and cupped the sides of Alec’s neck, thumbs sliding against the undersides of his jaw on either side.
“It’s a Jewish thing,” he said. “We cut Kriah, Alec. Mr Silver’s loss is a rend in our hearts: it’s echoed in the tear at my breast.”
“Right,” said Alec. “Right, that’s, I’m sorry, I didn’t know — ”
“Don’t be sorry,” whispered Levi. His smile was small and full of a gentle warmth as he squeezed Alec’s cheeks, and Alec was careful about reaching to touch him back, not wanting to make him uncomfortable, to touch him too much. Levi stepped closer when Alec’s hands rested on his waist.
“Will the shop stay open?”
“I hope so,” said Levi. “I’m going to talk to Mr Silver about it — the logistics of it. I’m no clockmaker, but the custom pieces are far from the whole of our trade — and even if they were, Mr Silver could never be convinced to rest, as you saw. He loved his work too much: we have so many pieces still waiting to find new homes. He could never stay still.”
Alec nodded.
He was careful about it, going to hug Levi, but Levi squeezed him very tightly, radiated warmth and was soft and strong, and Alec felt bad for enjoying the hug so much, when it was Levi that really needed it.
It was a little while later, as Alec closed the dumb waiter’s doors and went to turn the crank, that the duck noise from the crank made him jump, and then laugh.
“Mr Silver Junior is in the employ of so many important people,” said Levi softly, indulgently. “He enjoys it here, from time to time, but this little toy shop is so much duller for him, than the work he truly adores — but me, I love it here. It makes me so happy. He’ll do his best to ensure I can keep working — it might be we need to hire an assistant to help, particularly with the paperwork and such forth, but that won’t be a tremendous hardship, I don’t think.”
“And your evenings?” asked Alec. “What will you do, without…? You spent all your time together, right?”
“Not all,” said Levi, with a tiny smile on his face. It was genuine, and even more so was the way he reached out to squeeze Alec’s hand. “Mr Silver liked his space, his peace and quiet. But yes, we spent our time together — played games, watched quiz shows, prayed together, sang, worked, sometimes. Oh, I feel torn open, Alec, and perhaps it’s fitting that my clockwork heart is rended as it is — what hurts most is the idea of all that empty time to fill, all that time alone.”
“You don’t have to be alone,” said Alec. “There’s Mr Silver Junior. There’s me. There’s… There’s your, the, um, the other people at… temple?”
He didn’t feel comfortable with the word, didn’t know if he was saying it right or if the phrasing was wrong, but Levi’s smile was even warmer, and he held Alec’s hand between two of his, now.
“I really couldn’t say what I’ll do with all my time,” he said quietly. “For a long while, be sad. Grieve. Get everything in order.”
Alec slid his thumb against the gloved palm of one of Levi’s hands. The skin was warm under the glove, and the flesh yielded as a human’s would, and his hands were no heavier than Alec’s were.
“But we must make laughter out of grief, you know,” said Levi. “We must repair what is broken when find it, and make joy out of melancholy, and love out of pain.”
Alec nodded, and very carefully, he brought Levi’s hands up to his mouth, and pressed a kiss first to the back of his knuckles on one hand, and then on the other.
“I’ll help,” he decided. “I’m not good, like you are, at making people laugh, or, or fixing things, but — ”
“Oh, but you could make joy out of anybody’s melancholy,” said Levi in a way that made Alec shiver and burn with embarrassment, want to say that it wasn’t true, that he wasn’t anything, but he knew from experience that there was no arguing with Levi and winning.
A few months later, on a snowy evening, Alec went for his first date with Levi.
It went, of course, like clockwork.
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