Fantasy short. A magical musician goes into teaching, and makes an unusual connection.
4.3k, M/M, rated T. Just some light-hearted banter, romance, and fantasy, some music and necromancy. What more could a man want?
Studious King was a quiet, severe man with square shoulders and very square features of approximately forty years old, and he was very attached to that approximately, as he was in actuality forty-three. He had dirty-blond hair, dark browns mingled in with dark golds, and he wore his hair long, ordinarily loose about his shoulders, letting it frame his face; his brow was severe, his eyebrows dark in colour, and he had plump lips that often seemed thinner than they were because of his natural frown.
He had returned home to Medalton, which was a large town east of Camelot, after about eighteen years away — for the majority of that period, he had been a cellist with the His Majesty’s Royal Orchestra.
They didn’t force retirement on him, and nor was his ability to play waning, he had simply tired of traveling, which was part and parcel of his position. In truth, he’d very much enjoyed the work: other members of the orchestra were often quite catty with one another, frequently engaged in gossip or sabotage or minor catastrophes, here and there, but catastrophes tended to have little to do with Studious King (he wouldn’t put up with them), and anyone who attempted to gossip with him soon thought better of it and left him alone.
He was aware of the effect he had on others, the way that others often found him off-putting. He didn’t particularly care — he had never been especially convinced of the virtues of assuring others he was not off-putting.
Some years ago, the Medalton College of Music had penned a dispatch to him offering a position on their teaching staff — his mother had been an instructor there for most of her life, and it was where he had earned his own Bachelor of Music. There was a pleasant cyclical appeal to his return, and what appealed most of all was the fact that he should know where everything was, and what the geography of the buildings were.
He so disliked new places.
“There remains one matter,” he said quietly after he had accepted the post, and was taking a cursory tour of the campus alongside the university’s chancellor, Ella Pristine.
“One matter, Mr King?”
“I signed a legacy contract,” he said, adjusting his sleeves. “The same manner of contract signed by my mother, and before her, her mother and father, and her father’s father, and various uncles and aunts of mine throughout the years.”
Chancellor Pristine was looking at him with her hands clasped tightly in front of her chest, her expression pinched and uncertain. “Mr King?” she prompted again.
“The college is obliged to provide me with suitable lodgings,” said Studious delicately, looking down at his own hands, at the paleness of his palms and the freckles on the backs of his hands. “Stipulated, I believe, is a free-standing, detached house with at least two bedrooms and an outdoor space of no less than seventy square feet.”
Pristine stared at him, her lips parting. Of course, it was not her that had dispatched the invitation to Studious — it had been her predecessor, Lars Cushing, who had lectured Studious himself when he was a student here, and bounced him on his knee when Studious was a little boy. Studious had liked him very much, and had been quietly aggrieved when he’d died.
“I thought perhaps the matter had slipped your mind,” said Studious mildly. “One of the office clerks did mention that your contracts in these times are written and formulated in Welsh or occasionally English, as opposed to older of the fae tongues.”
“I… was aware that the contract was in an older language, but I thought it was to the same stipulations as our other contracts,” admitted Pristine. Her eyes were wide and her expression was slightly distracted, had a distance to it, as she evidently formulated a new awareness of the potential risks in regards to their contractual obligations. “You will understand, I hope, that we can’t…”
She gave Studious what he imagined was intended to be a meaningful look. “Chancellor?” he asked.
“We’re no longer in the habit of offering lodgings for our instructors,” she said. “We don’t for anyone currently on the staff — Chancellor Cushing was originally housed in one such building, but he purchased it from the university in the early noughties, as far as I’m aware.”
“You’d best get back into the habit, Chancellor Pristine,” said Studious in pleasant, placid tones. “The contract to which I put my pen was magically binding, and even were I inclined to forego elements promised to me — which, I can assure you, I am not — my inclinations would be irrelevant.
Pristine opened her mouth, but before she could speak, the bells in the old tower began to toll. It was an extraordinarily loud sound, although the volume was not the only reason the old stone suddenly shook under their feet, and Studious watched with interest as she stumbled on her feet, looking uncertainly over her shoulder.
“You have time to find something,” said Studious, taking his watch out of his pocket and examining the date. “It’s still July, Chancellor. You’ve until September.”
Chancellor Pristine set her jaw, and clenched her hands together. Studious put his watch back in his pocket and once more commenced to walk down the corridor, looking up at the displays on the walls, old paintings, old portraits of various alumni.
“I can assure you, Chancellor, you’ve doubtless various property on the books,” he said, looking back at her when she didn’t begin to walk after him. “The university couldn’t sell a lot of it if they tried.”
* * *
It was an old house, about two hundred years old, and was on top of the hill, the outcrop of it leading up into the mountains. The house was on the very outer edge of a stable cliff, overlooking town, and because of the magic in the air and the particular way it was placed, when you stood in the yard and looked outward, you could see the changes in colour and dimension on the air, see windows through to other realms, other places.
Apart from where, here and there, were shining bits of refracted light in various colours, much like the sort you saw reflected in soap bubbles, you could see places where the fields were purple or red instead of their more earthly green or yellow; to the east he saw a tall spire crafted of red crystal that was located in the Queen’s City, deep in one of the fae realms, and that was not the only fae building he saw.
Through one thin window, off to the west, he even saw through to a realm that was neither a fae one nor a human magical one: shining black rock was licked on all sides by sulphuric flame. It was a window through to Avernus, what his grandparents might have called Hell, although it was frowned upon to call it that, these days — demons protested the negative connotations and the stigma it came with, which he could hardly fault them for.
He had been dropped off outside with his suitcase and a key by a rather irate accountant who, by all accounts, had spent the last three weeks digging through deeds and paperwork, attempting to find appropriate fare for him.
It was a pleasant surprise, once he actually stepped inside.
The hall was a simple, stone-floored room with glass walls and a glass roof, and there were several shelves and trays apparently in the process of being planted. There were a few stone plates of dry seeds resting on the side, some mulch, some tools with seedlings in place, and Studious hung up his coat on the rack before he moved into the house proper.
It was a big house.
Studious left his suitcase by the door and moved through it, examining the furnishings in the hall, the lounge, the dining room. There was a lot of furniture in place, and as he moved through the house, he pulled the white sheets covering all of it up aside, folding each sheet into a neat square and leaving them piled in corridor, stacked atop each other.
There was an astonishing lack of dust.
As he went from room to room, throwing open the curtains and letting the wan morning sun stream in, he didn’t so much as see the sparkles of bare motes on the air, even in the big lounge where there was carpeting and plush furniture. The house smelt pleasant, smelt faintly of wood polish and walnut oil, felt fresh and new despite evidently not having been lived in for quite some time.
It had been left empty for nearly a century, according to the frustrated accountant — it had been the family home of a once celebrated flautist, who had left his estate to the university once he’d died, having no family of his own.
When Studious came to the top of the stairs, there was an abrupt scent not of wood or oil, but of potpourri, accompanied by the sound of the bowl it was in shattering on the floor. Studious examined the shards with interest as they slid across the floor toward him, one of the blue shards of china almost hitting his feet.
He raised his head, looking at the man in front of him.
He was about Studious’ own age, a bearded man with dark hair that was beginning to thin on the top of his head, and he wore a loose shirt that had once been white and had turned a yellow colour with age, braces keeping up his trousers.
“Hello,” said Studious.
The man stared at him. He had large, blue eyes that looked tremendously sad, tragedy written in them — or perhaps that was just the watery quality they had, so that they always slightly shone.
“My name is Studious King — I’ll be teaching at the College. The house is in remarkably good condition, and I had no idea it would be furnished, nor so impeccably clean. You’re the caretaker, I take it?”
The man swallowed, and then nodded his head.
“Your name?”
“Just.”
“Just what?”
“Just,” he said again. “And.”
“And?” repeated Studious. “Andy, Anderson?”
“And,” said the caretaker. “And Just.”
“Just And?”
“No, my… Mr Just is my name. And Just.”
“You make me feel right at home, Mr Just,” said Studious.
“Do I?”
“Studious King is the name I’m billed under, as a musician,” he said, feeling a smile pull at his lips despite himself. “My legal name, in its entirety, is Studiously Reising-King.”
Mr Just stared at him.
“My mother was Innocent King,” he said. “My father was Unquestionably Reising.”
“Oh,” said Mr Just. He looked down at the floor, and said, “So — So you’re the new master of the house.”
“I hope I won’t get too much underfoot, Mr Just,” said Studious. “I expect I will primarily occupy the bedroom, the lounge, and the music room. I have no family and no intention to acquire one, and no friends, either.”
Mr Just didn’t look as if he knew what to do with that. After a few moments of desperately awkward silence, he said, “I’ll… I’ll clean this up, Mr King. Er — Have you luggage, sir? That I ought bring in?”
“Oh, no,” said Studious. “I’ve a van coming tomorrow with the furniture from my old flat in Camelot, but there’s not much of it — the bulk, as you might expect, is in my instruments.”
Mr Just nodded, and then turned away and walked very quickly away. Studious watched him go, distantly interested, and then continued his exploration of the house, picking out not the master bedroom — he didn’t like its balcony, nor the audacity of its wood mouldings — but what had once been one of the guest rooms, and took it for his own.
Lying in bed that night, he woke once or twice to sounds of the house settling, to quiet creaks and movements of its eaves and supports, to soft whistles of through draughts, the quiet music of it breathing around him, as was only natural when a house, unlived in, was suddenly occupied again.
Each time it served as a lullaby to soothe him back to sleep.
* * *
Upon his death and the donation of his assets to the Medalton College of Music, the majority of Roderick Keaton’s instruments were put into the conservatory’s own library, but there were a few still in the house — a beautiful old harpsichord that must have been too much work to transport, one or two flutes, a concertina, and even a contrabass that played beautifully once he’d attended the strings and given it some love and attention.
“Do you — ” asked a voice from the doorway, and Studious looked up from where he had been at his standing desk (he disliked to sit often, even when he was playing music), his pen in his hand. “Sorry, sir. I — Do you mind If I… ask?”
“I don’t mind,” said Studious. “What is it, Mr Just?”
“Do you play all of these?”
Studious looked from Mr Just to the room at large. It was late August, and the university’s first term would start in just a few days, with the last week of the month serving to welcome in the freshers before everything began in earnest in September. He had spent much of the past few weeks in this room, particularly, and it was filled to the brim with all manner of instruments, both from his own collection and the few from the Keaton estate.
“Oh, yes,” said Studious. “Not all at once, of course, but I am able to play them all. The cello is my first love, Mr Just, but I’m well-renowned as an indiscriminate whore.”
Mr Just stared at him.
“Musically speaking, of course,” added Studious. “I don’t really fuck people. I tend to inspire discomfort more than I do arousal.”
Mr Just had gone a tremendously bright, plum-pink colour, and apart from the shine in his eyes, there was also a good deal of shine on his face, because he was sweating profusely.
“Erm,” he grunted. “I, I’m sure that’s, that that’s none of my business, Mr King. Just, erm, you know, Mr Keaton played a lot of instruments too, you see. Anything he could put a reed in, actually — there’s a few old sketches, but he used to put reeds from his flutes in fruit or bits of wax or anything he could find, you know, and whittled his own instruments out of wood or reed. He said anything could be an instrument, if you let yourself play it.”
Studious smiled at that. “This is a family position, I take it? Your predecessors told you anecdotes?”
“Oh,” said Just, and shook his head. “No. There’s just diaries and that, you know.”
He disappeared from the doorway as if he’d never been there, and Studious smiled to himself, looking back to his work.
Over the past few weeks, he’d settled comfortably into his new home, installing the heavy blankets he liked best on the bed and over the furniture he used most.
The house had very little electrical wiring to speak of outside of the lights, and Mr Just had looked on in uncertainty and concern, perhaps the slightest bit of admiration, as Studious had laid out wire himself from a portable generator as he waited for someone to come out and wire up the house as undestructively as possible. In any case, he didn’t have that many electronics to speak of — he didn’t utilise social media, didn’t particularly use the computer, didn’t watch television, and had a mobile telephone that he liked to ignore.
Apart from his lack of ability with electricity or wiring, however, Mr Just was quite skilled in every single area — he cleaned, he maintained the plumbing, the fixtures and fittings, the carpentry, the guttering, the garden, and everything else.
When he trapped mice, he didn’t kill them, but released them over the stream at the bottom of the hill; if one of the local cats came and sat in his lap, he went extraordinarily still and concentrated on it very deeply, not daring to move unless it got up of its own accord; he was frightened of birds, and when a pigeon came in through the open doors of the lounge balcony, he had screamed and let it back him into a corner.
When Studious had come inside and plucked it out of the air, cupping it by the chest the same way one held ducks or chickens before he tossed it outside again, Mr Just had stared at him with a sort of frightened awe.
“Are you a good teacher, Mr King?” asked Mr Just.
“For some students,” said Studious mildly. “The ones that don’t care about their tutor having a personality.”
“I think you have a lot of personality,” said Mr Just loyally. Studious was at the counter frying bacon and eggs, and Mr Just was sitting at the kitchen table, shining a pair of Studious’ boots, which he had never before bothered to shine, given that he only wore them out of doors.
“I do,” Studious agreed. “Too much personality, in fact, such that people find me intimidating and difficult to like.”
“But you’re not intimidating at all,” said Mr Just.
“Perhaps you’d change your mind if I started teaching you to play an instrument,” said Studious. “But of course, I’m fairly certain your mind is made in the direction I indicated anyway.”
“It’s not,” said Mr Just.
“Mr Just, in the time we’ve known one another, how many times have you looked into a room and seen me playing, seen the expression of focus on my face, and immediately commenced to hurry away?”
“… Not because I’m intimidated.”
“No?” Studious asked, and then turned around from the frying pan, not bothering to hold his expression in a state of relaxation. He let it fall to its natural resting position, his lips scowling, his brow furrowed, his gaze blank and severe. He didn’t ordinarily put in the effort to smooth it away — it was easy to do with his sisters or, it turned out, Mr Just, but that was only because, as the house he’d grown up in had been, this house was also very quiet, and not overstimulating at all.
Mr Just swallowed.
“Well,” he mumbled, and looked back to Studious’ boots. “I know you’re not as intimidating as you look.”
“I’m a very fine soloist,” said Studious, turning back to the bacon and eggs, “but no one can concentrate on the quality of a performance if the performer is too severe. My mother used to despair the pit dug out in me, such that I not only lack charisma of my own but sap it from other people. Whenever she arranged an orchestra that included me, she’d make sure I was as close to the back as possible, easily heard but not easily seen.”
“That’s horrible,” said Mr Just, and Studious shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t care,” he said.
“Don’t you?”
“No,” said Studious. “Crowds of people find me off-putting and unlikable, which is all well and good, because I feel the same way about crowds of people.”
“There used to be crowds of people in this house all the time, you know,” said Mr Just quietly. “It was a house full up with parties and music, always. There are sketches, you know, and so many paintings, and written down in one diary or another are the most lavish descriptions of balls and soirées, and apart from that, so much music, so much coming together of such differing musicians, to the invention of such diversity of sound.” His voice was distant and solemn, heavy with a sort of deep-set yearning.
“I wish I could have heard it,” said Studious.
“Yes,” said Just. “Yes, so do I.”
* * *
It was several months later, in mid-November, that Studious was arranging with the accountant the electricians who would be fixing up the house over December, arranging proper wiring for the mains while also going over the old lighting fixtures and making sure they were up to code.
“You’ll be out, of course, teaching.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Studious. “The caretaker will let them in.”
“Caretaker?” repeated Mr Guard. “What caretaker? You hired a caretaker?”
“He came with the house,” said Studious.
“What, he was living there?” asked Guard, looking abruptly horrified.
“On the property, yes, not in the house proper,” said Studious. “His name is And.”
Guard blinked at him. “And Just?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“It’s not right,” said Guard. “And Just is dead.”
“Oh,” said Studious.
“Oh?” repeated Guard.
“He has that quality about him,” Studious admitted. “I never gave it much thought.”
This infuriated Guard no end, and Studious tuned out a lot of the ensuing lecture that came about such fanciful and unrealistic things as stolen identities and squatting and all that, which Studious had no particular faith in.
When he came home that day, he found Mr Just gluing back together the frame of an old painting, frowning down over the surface of a table. For the first time, he approached him, reached out, and gripped the top of his forearm — it sent a horrible shudder through him, making his skin ripple with a kind of cold freeze, and he inhaled sharply, then tugged his hand away, shaking the pins and needles out of it.
“Mr Just,” said Studious, “are you dead?”
“No, sir,” said Mr Just anxiously. “Well, I’m standing here, aren’t I?”
“Are you alive?”
“Well, er. Maybe not,” Mr Just admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “But that’s not the same as being dead, is it?”
“You served Mr Rochester yourself.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You were his caretaker.”
“I was, sir. I was the under-butler, sir, ‘cept I was never as tamed as the butler wanted me to be.”
“All those sketches and diaries you keep talking about?”
“Those exist, sir.”
“Are they by your own hand, Mr Just?”
“Not all.”
“Not all,” repeated Studious wryly, and shifted on his feet, then went to hang up his coat.
“Is that it?” asked Mr Just.
“Did you want me to say something else?” asked Studious, pulling off his scarf and hanging that up too.
“It doesn’t bother you that your caretaker is a ghost?”
“You’re not a ghost, Mr Just — a ghost is an echo or imprint of excess life-force, often carrying out specific motions on a loop, and even given some echo of sentience by a spirit, they have none of your emotional depth or complexity, let alone the corporeality necessary to maintain a manor house. Or blush.”
“What am I then?”
“I don’t know, I’m no expert. Is that the body you always had?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know you’re dead?” Studious reached out, and Mr Just jumped and shivered but didn’t pull away at the touch of two of Studious’ fingers to the side of his neck — he was warm, but there was no pulse. “You died and got back up again?”
“Mm,” said Mr Just. “I think.”
“Were you the last member of staff?” asked Studious.
“Uh, yes. Everyone else’d gone by then.”
“I expect it’s written into your old employment contract, a necromancer’s protocol. Could well be that as soon as I hire on new staff, you’ll drop.”
“Oh.”
“I shouldn’t worry about that, Mr Just, I’ve no intention of doing such a thing,” said Studious, and drew back his hand. “I’ll have a look about for you, make sure we have the contract to hand, yes?”
“Yes,” Mr Just said. “I, um, I know where all the old papers are, I can… I can fetch them out. I can’t read ’em, they’re in an old fae tongue.”
“That’s alright, I’ve a few of those under my belt.”
Studious turned away, and Mr Just caught hold of his hand, making Studious look back at him. Mr Just stared at him, his lips parted, and then his lips brushed the back of Studious’ knuckles, making him blink, his lips parting.
“Oh,” he said.
“Is that alright, sir?”
“If you dispense with the sir, Mr Just, yes, it’s quite alright.”
“I’ll dispense with the sir if you call me And.”
“Best call me Studious, then.”
Mr Just leaned in, a sort of sudden swoop, his lips brushing Studious’ — his lips tasted of lavender, some sort of wonderful lip balm, and Studious laughed softly as he leaned back.
“Is that — Is that alright?”
“Quite alright,” said Studious softly. “I’ve no objections.”
“You are, you know.”
“I am?”
“Intimidating.”
“Oh, well,” said Studious, patting his chest. “I’m sure you’ll get over that. What can I do to you — kill you?”
“You can do whatever you like to me,” said Mr Just, and Studious chuckled, his voice dry, and he played his thumb over the back of his fingers.
“Perhaps later,” he said briskly, and pulled to go up the stairs. “I’ve lesson plans to go over. You still eat, don’t you? And you blush wonderfully. Does your cock still work, And?”
“Yes, sir. Studious.”
“Very good,” he said, and glanced back down at him once he got to the landing, smiling to himself at the way he was standing there, his cheeks as red as roses. “Those whatevers I like — would you like for me to do a few of them to your cock?”
“Yes, please,” he said, laughing and blushing all the darker. “That’d suit me down to the ground.”
“Come find me at nine or so then, and we’ll make some music together.”
“You said you’re a good soloist,” called And up the stairs. “How are you at duets?”
“I suppose you’ll find out,” he called back, and chuckled to himself before setting back to work for a few hours.
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