His lips looked like rose petals. Dying rose petals, rich and full with deep, velvet color, nearly glowing, at their hearts.....fading to black at their edges, curling and tattered. Rose petals the shade of glitter-dusted violets, they were, and Rafael ran his fingers slowly over their warmth, kissed them, felt a soft intake of breath.

         "Shh..." he whispered, and the boy, the pretty girl-boy with his dark doe eyes and soft lashes, relaxed. Fourteen...too old, but too pretty to resist, too sylphen and sweet, this innocent gothic waif in black and smudged kohl. Rafael drew him into his arms, kissed the wild shock of blue-streaked black hair that tickled at his nostrils, still damp from the late-evening rain that they had walked in. "My little rose...."

         The boy--his name was Evan, he had asserted in dulcetly sullen tones when Rafael had helped himself to a seat at his solitary table at a small, no-name coffee shop--Evan trembled and rested his cheek to his shoulder, toyed with the strands of Rafael's own bruise-black hair. "I...I've never done this before...."

         "I know." Long hands on bird-bone-thin shoulders pushed him back gently, enough for Rafael to see those large, liquid eyes turn warm at the sight of his black-mouth smile. "Neither have I." The truth indeed, for Rafael had never touched a boy this old or a man this young, old enough to be willing and curious, vaguely aware rather than infantly oblivious....but young enough to be sweet and smooth and unspoiled. "Not...with someone your age."

         Tension in that wiry form, hostility, walls closing in before Rafael could hurt him by pushing him away--oh, he felt it all through the warmth of contact, and pulled him closer instead, the gentle pressure of callused fingertips muffling a resentful mutter of, "M'not too young...."

         "Of course not." Oh, this poor angel, fallen and torn, desperate for love and yet warding it away with fear of its pain. Give me affection, those starved, needy eyes had begged him from behind a sour, hateful look. Make me feel wanted. He could only imagine what his home life must be like; his mother was probably a middle-aged debutante, more interested in either her fading beauty or a daughter's blossoming than her wayward son....while the father could be a businessman or a laborer, unused to expressing his thoughts or feelings, too busy telling his son to "stop behaving that way" to even ask why. He'd tried to slit his wrists once already, evidenced by the thin and ridged scars on his otherwise flawless flesh, and had been grounded for months for it, parents expressing not a word of concern, or so he defiantly told Rafael when the man had tenderly stroked the slick scar tissue and questioned him softly. Unforgiving, misunderstanding, a selfish household that had birthed this lovely creature of tattered black wings and then ruthlessly plucked his feathers, one by one. An angel that needed an angel of his own, to grant a single desperate wish.

         Such fortune that he should be found by Rafael....

         He heard the soft cries of waking gulls, and kissed the boy again, guiding his thin and small hands away from the crystal goblet of wine that he gripped possessively, unwilling to relinquish the thrilling taboo of alcohol that Rafael had granted him until the strokes of those callused fingers made him forget, grasp relaxing. Deftly Rafael slid the goblet away, laying it aside, and drew the boy from the couch. Slowly, so slowly, guiding every step, from the careful progression away from the living room and grey creepers of encroaching dawn to each light pressure of lips, the boy's uncertain kisses clumsy at first but growing more relaxed with each attempt and with the wine heating his blood, flavoring his tongue as Rafael's own dipped past succulent lips to taste it. He lost the passage of time, but did not care as, within the shielded shadows of the bedroom, he explored Evan's young body, teased soft cries from his throat, felt clutching hands fisting great handfuls of his hair in mindless, passionate desperation.

         By the time that the sun managed to worm its way past the edges of heavy satin curtains, they had exhausted themselves, and the boy lay asleep in Rafael's arms, head cushioned on his shoulder, wild hair stuck to his cheeks by a thin film of drying sweat. Color lingered on lips kissed into an abused fullness, but most had been caressed away by lips, tongue, fingers....Rafael had worshipped that mouth over and over again, and now he ran his fingertips over its pouting, slack bow once more, raising a moan from that slumbering form and bringing a smile to his own lips. A most auspicious start, and he could feel a different passion running in his veins, a fire to replace that which he had spent upon Evan.

         He'd make sure that he ate well when he woke, and knew that he did not have to leave; Rafael always preferred to keep his guests replete and comfortable, and as it would be days before he had finished laying the groundwork for his last painting, he would not need Evan until then. For the next few nights, at least, his bed would be warm, his desires sated, and he gently caressed the dark sweep of Evan's lashes appreciatively, sighing softly at the fleeting beauty of youth. Better that it should be captured now, before time and the ravages of life ruined it; captured, and preserved as the art form that it truly was. He never felt remorse, but at times he felt pity that in order to preserve such blossoms, he must kill them. This was the first time that any had ever so clearly desired it.

         Sighing, he eased his shoulder from beneath the light weight of Evan's head, slipping a pillow into its place before the absence could rouse him and then slowly, carefully enfolding him in the cool, smooth linen of the coverlet. The studio awaited, but first he must shower, purify and cleanse himself of one passion so that he might be free to drown in another.

         As he departed the chamber, Evan stirred, turned over, and then snuggled contentedly into the pillows, oblivious.

         Caught in traffic and driving rain making his windshield nearly opaque despite the ineffective attempts of the wipers, Lucien cursed viciously. The light summer squall had blown in from the lake without warning, as they were wont to do; because of it, he'd driven Charlie home rather than letting him walk, and now he was caught in a bitch of a traffic jam as all of the drunken fools wandering the French Quarter on a Saturday night, chased off by the rain, made their way to dryer haunts to drink and engage in whatever hedonistic activities suited them.

         "God damn it, " he snarled, and then let out a grating blast from his horn that matched the building rise of his temper as, without warning, red taillights emerged from the rippling gray haze and cut him off. People always seemed to drive more stupidly in the rain, when safety was most important, and even Lucien--who preferred to drive hell-for-leather and speeding tickets be damned--put on the brakes in blinding rainfall on roads slick with oil floating on sheeted water.

         When he saw an opening in the streams of cars packed as closely as hump-backed cattle, he wrenched the wheel, wincing at the protesting squeal of his tires, and cut across traffic to just barely make a turn onto a nearly-empty side street amidst the blaring of horns. "Sorry, " he muttered, smirking grimly and feeling not the slightest bit chagrined as he relaxed on the open stretch of narrow road; fair was fair, especially as the car that he had veered in front of had been the one that had cut him off not a minute earlier. More the pity.

         He picked up speed as he meandered along back streets, making his way towards the Garden District and the illusory seclusion of his townhouse, half-hidden by deliberately overgrown hedges that gave him a false sense of privacy from his close-hovering neighbors. It was a nice neighborhood, but he didn't fit in there; despite the naturally elegant cut of his figure, he was too rough and unrefined for the snobbery of the wall-street yuppies living on the expensive properties, and too rakish and ill-cut, irresponsible--or so they assumed from his relaxed appearance--for the wholesome prudishness of the elderly that had retreated there to retire. It always amused him to see Mrs. Dunlith's pinched, shrewish nose poking over the top of the hedge as she eyed his comings and goings disapprovingly, as well as his unkempt yard.

         No doubt the old bat's asleep by now, he thought idly as he turned his Nissan Altima onto a street running behind one of Canal's bars, the thin avenue unnamed and lined with dumpsters and back doors, dim and golden with only the light thrown back from the larger street's lamps to reflect in the slick asphalt surface left behind by the quickly-abating shower....and so it was that when the twin glares of headlights appeared before him, he reflexively raised a hand to shield his eyes from the unexpected flare, painful on his retinas. ....irises and retinas and all that crap....They'd been cut out, nothing left but the whites....He pushed Charlie's voice out of his mind and dimmed his brights, hoping the other driver would recognize the request for courtesy and do the same. He or she did, and Lucien blinked rapidly to clear the afterimages left on his vision, flashing negative-color lights like drunken, laughing hallucinations.

         Because of the width of the street, it would be a narrow pass, even if the other car--dark, he couldn't quite tell its make, though he guessed Toyota from the lines--was smaller than his, and he kept a close eye on it as the two vehicles glided calmly towards each other, mammoth beasts breasting a black and shining sea. Then he looked away as they drew closer, keeping his eye on the road to keep the path straight as they eased past each other. A glimpse out of the corner of his eye made him turn his head fully, and for a moment he found his attention arrested by the faint hints of dark, lustrous hair sweeping into pale features, of a knowing, mocking gaze whose color he could not determine in the darkness....but whose depths seemed to know him with a sick familiarity as the drivers' eyes locked for the merest moment....and then the stranger's caught the light, reflected it, and flashed colorless, milky and smooth. A painted mouth smiled--was it a man or a woman? The white blur of the face was too narrow but too strong to tell--and then Lucien was forced to jerk his eyes away, slamming on the brakes far too hard and making them yowl in unison with the alley cat that he had nearly hit in its mad dash from one dumpster to another.

         By the time that he looked back, the car was past. Sepia tones of reflected light caught its silhouette, keeping him from seeing anything in his habitual check for plates, though he could see the faint outline of another figure in the passenger seat; he felt like Sherlock Holmes suddenly recognizing Moriarty through the window of a horse-drawn carriage amidst London's damp and muck, and for some odd reason he felt chilled.

         It was a long minute before he shook the feeling off as irrational and hit the gas once more, staring blankly at the road before him as he made his way home. What Charlie had said must have gotten to him more than he thought, if a moment's trick of the light could leave him so shaken, but he still could not drive the repeating phrase from his mind.

         ....nothing left but the whites.