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Chamonix, Wednesday, at two in the afternoon. Lucas’ lips are blue. He is at the summit of Aiguille du Midi, and he is all alone in the world.The gray arêtes and horns of the mountains are cloaked with vapor and cloud, spines and shoulders swathed in white, blank and pristine.Even at 3,842 meters—Lucas has read the plaque—even at 3,842 meters, give or take another meter or two, for Lucas standing on his tiptoes with his phone held aloft in one bare hand, there is no signal. He will have to wait until they return to town before he can respond to Le Gang.Sorry, man, sounds rough, Yann said; fuck me, it’s the worst, Lucas will say, eventually.From the gift shop, he buys a few trinkets for the gang: keychains for all, in the interest of fairness, and for Yann, a polar bear toy meant for a small child; its seams are crooked. The incongruity will amuse him: a polar bear here, in Chamonix! And why not, Yann will say, after all, the Arctic is melting. The bears must come south.He returns to his parents inside the café. They are not speaking to one another, not a word since the night before. The ride up in the cable car was excruciating: twenty minutes of thumbing slowly at his phone and pretending to have many interesting things to text and read in the signal-less atmosphere. It was an effort to ignore the town dropping sharply away below. They were climbing into the sky, into the clouds, into heaven. Only a year ago, Lucas would have pressed his face to the glass and exclaimed over the sights; today, he refused to give his father the satisfaction. Suddenly his mother murmured, But, chéri, where are your gloves? Now his father stands at the window and gazes out. His mother nurses a hot chocolate; she says nothing about his hands. Lucas joins their silence.“Chéri,” his mother says to him, “shall we go down?”“I want to go to the skywalk,” Lucas says. “To the Void.” He does not wait to see whether they will follow. The Void is a five-sided glass cage jutting from the terrace like a crystalline overgrowth, a baguette diamond like the one Lucas’ mother wears on her finger. The line is not long. Lucas trades his boots for slippers and edges into the void with clenched teeth.The sun shines upon him. It’s warm in the box. The light glitters on his hands; the snow dazzles his eyes. Whatever shadow he casts falls four thousand meters to the valley floor. He imagines it standing dazed on the cobbles, shielding its eyes, looking up.There is only one other person in the cage with him, a tall body in a navy-blue insulated coat and tawny lion’s mane hood, treading easily over the glass that Lucas knows from his quick and uneasy reading is only twelve millimeters thick. He glances at this brave stranger, shadow-less too, muffled to the eyes with a black scarf. No hat, and hair just as tawny as the fur trim of the hood, standing upright like a crown. For a moment all the wonder of the Alps is lost to him. He forgets even the terror of the void beneath his feet.“Over there, that’s Mont Blanc.” The voice escapes its woolen bundling easily: it is light and clear, the bleb of an icicle in the first warm breath of spring. The eyes that regard him over the edge of the scarf are as blue as the sky. He hears a hidden smile. “Scared?”“No,” he says at once.“And there is the Matterhorn. Switzerland.” The boy points with a woolly black hand, sunlight glancing off the fibers. “Mount Maudit. Tour Ronde. The Giant’s Tooth.” He looks back at Lucas, hesitating near the mouth of the cage. “Come here, look. Really, you aren’t scared?”“Not at all,” Lucas says.“Good,” the boy says. “Come here. Come. Our time in the Void is nearly up.”Lucas sidles closer.The boy resumes his narrative. “Beside the Matterhorn—you see it?—yes, that one there is Täschorn, where Patrick Berhault fell to his death. Through a cornice.”“What? Who?” Lucas says, airily as he can, but he shivers.“You are scared,” the other says.“Putain,” Lucas mutters. “Of course.”“Then why did you come?”“I wanted to see.”The boy pulls his scarf down to smile at Lucas: blinding, an angel’s smile, his blue eyes crinkling up at the corners. What a knockout! What a stunner! The breath evacuates his lungs in a whoosh. He feels gut-punched. He’s suspended; he’s levitating.The boy continues. “A cornice, that’s a ledge of snow that forms on mountains, blown into shape by the wind. It looks solid, but it isn’t. There is nothing beneath it but air. You stand on it, it cracks, and—” he gestures abruptly “—well, that’s it, c’est fini.”“Ah, yes?” Lucas says. He squints above and below the black pointing fingers, looking for these treacherous ledges of snow. “Are you a mountaineer, then? Did you climb here?”The other laughs. “Ah, no,” he says. “I came by the gondola. And you?”Before Lucas can answer, the cage operator calls them out.“A little more time,” the boy pleads, but the operator is unmoved. He shuffles out first, and Lucas follows.“I also came by the gondola,” Lucas says, as they retrieve their shoes. The other boy is wearing gray canvas trainers and black socks that don’t even cover the bony knobs of his ankles. The skin of his ankles is snow-pale, with a few faint blond hairs visible here and there.“Alone?” the boy says.Lucas considers. Then he sees his mother waiting at the other end of the terrace, long-suffering, her lips pursed.“No,” he admits. “With my parents.”“Lucas,” his mother calls. “Let’s go.”“Lucas?” the boy repeats.“Yes, that’s me,” Lucas says. “And you?”“Staying down below? In Chamonix?”“Yes,” Lucas says, and with a feeling like champagne bubbles bursting between his ribs, he says, “Hôtel Mont-Blanc. For a few more days still. The rest of the week, I think.”The boy raises his eyebrows. “A long holiday. If you’re bored—”“Very,” Lucas says, “very.”“Good,” the boy says. “That woman—your mother? Quick, give me your number before she becomes any unhappier. No, my phone is dead. No, don’t bother,” he says, as Lucas fumbles around in his many pockets. The sweat on his palms becomes clammy. “Just tell me now.”Lucas mumbles the digits. The boy writes them down in a little notebook pulled from the back of his jeans.“Great. I’ll text you,” he says.“Tomorrow,” Lucas blurts. “Tomorrow we have nothing planned.” A lie, a little lie, to ease his way.“Lucas Lallemant,” his mother cries.The blue eyes crinkle. “Tomorrow, then, Lucas Lallemant.”“Tomorrow,” Lucas says. “See you.” “Eliott,” the boy says.“What?” Lucas says, half-turning.“Eliott,” the boy repeats. “Me, I’m Eliott.” His mother professes a headache and retires early to bed. Lucas and his father dine at Le Matafan, the hotel restaurant. Lucas is hungry enough to swallow his own fist and eats his gnocchi in clumps; he gulps his dessert, an apple tart, and most of his father’s, a thin slice of cake served with coconut ice cream.“A growth spurt?” his father, who is not particularly tall either, teases.Lucas shrugs.“I’m glad the altitude has not affected your appetite. Your mother, on the other hand—”“Are you done? Can we go?” Lucas says.His father looks briefly pained. Lucas pretends not to see. “In a moment,” his father says. He raises his hand to summon their waiter. Lucas eats one last scrape of ice cream from his father’s plate.“Tomorrow, I don’t want to go to Annecy,” he says, as they step into the elevator. “You and Maman can go, but I want to stay here.”“Lucas…”“I made a friend today on the Needle,” he says. He squares his shoulders and looks at his father, defiant, eye to eye. “His name is Eliott. He’s only here another day.” A lie, a little lie, to bolster his position.“She won’t be happy to leave you,” his father says. “And me neither, to be frank, Lucas. You know how things are between us these days.” He sighs. “Of course, I have no objection. But tell her yourself. I think she won’t take it well from me.”The room is dim and quiet; his mother is reading the Bible by lamplight. His father waits. Lucas clears his throat and repeats his story.“Let’s not go to Annecy,” his mother says, after a frosty silence. “If Lucas doesn’t want to come, what’s the point? We’ll stay in Chamonix.”“Suit yourself,” his father says. “It’s less driving for me.”“I was so looking forward to the chateau,” his mother says. “And the relics of Saint Francis, too. Oh, well. It’s not meant to be.”“Marianne…”“I’ll shower before bed,” Lucas says. He feels chilled by her voice, her wistfulness. Only a day before, it would have been enough to freeze him into inaction: he would have driven with them to Annecy in a stupor. Today, though, he feels heartless. His heart is not his own; it beats elsewhere in Chamonix, caught up in a woolly black fist. “Good night.”The water drowns out the noise of his parents’ argument. By the time he emerges, not bothering to dry his hair, the lights are out: they’re asleep, or pretending to be. Lucas tiptoes to his cot and climbs in.
Me, I’m Eliott.
He thinks of things other than his heart in Eliott’s hand, too, and he thinks of Eliott’s hand under the glove, of what it must look like. He holds his own hand quietly up in the darkness, sees his fingers limned by the faint light coming through a crack in the curtains.He imagines Eliott’s hand is like his, slim-fingered, but larger: large enough to hold him, surround him. Eliott said he was not a mountaineer, but Lucas—shoving his hand into his pants—imagines him as one now, a man with strong callused hands and a good grip, and a body big enough and heavy enough under his insulated coat to hold Lucas down and wring pleasure from him. Clever, artistic hands, too, maybe. There was a fineness to Eliott’s writing as he copied down Lucas’ number. Lucas liked how he formed his sixes.His blankets scratch against his knuckles as he works himself. The flannel sheet beneath his body is warm and nubbly against his other hand, which he pushes between his legs and uses to cup and fondle his balls.He imagines himself and Eliott alone in the snow, vapor rising from their breath and their bodies as they wrestle, a tent in some violently neon color rustling and shivering around them, and himself, Lucas, overwhelmed at last, lying on the frozen ground with his thighs straining, helpless under the relentless movement of Eliott’s big hand. The cot only squeaks a little bit as he comes. In the morning, he finds that his father has made peace; he wakes in his cot amid pale sunshine and the bustle of his parents throwing on their coats and hunting for the keys of the rental car. He pulls his blankets up over his nose and mouth and watches their progress with slitted eyes. A bandit, his mother used to say, faux-fearful, when Lucas was younger. A marauder in our midst. This morning she says nothing at all as she leaves the room.“To Annecy,” his father says, with a rueful smile. He taps the table by Lucas’ head. “Eighty euros for you, and the hotel card, too. Spend wisely. Don’t mind your mother. She’ll thaw out when she sees the canals. And the chateau. And—”“And the finger-bones of Saint Francis,” Lucas says, through the blanket. He feels jubilant.“That’s right.”As soon as the door shuts, he leaps from the cot, ripping the soiled blankets up and heaping them onto the floor so they’ll be taken away by the cleaners. He cleans himself and washes his briefs with soap and water, his phone volume turned up to maximum. Eliott has yet to text him, and every message from Le Gang makes him jump. He dresses carefully, in a dark pullover and jeans, and tousles his hair one way, then the other, as though it won’t be flattened immediately by his knitted cap, and then he stands scrutinizing himself in the bathroom mirror, turning left, turning right.It is now nine-forty in the morning. Arthur has his phone confiscated in chemistry, so Basile texts for them both until he, too, is captured. His last message is a plaintive demand for pictures of all the babes on skis, gender unspecified.At ten-twenty, Lucas begins to feel hungry. He takes his eighty euros and the hotel card and goes downstairs in search of breakfast. At ten-thirty-five, tearing at a croissant, he reasons to himself that Eliott must be sleeping in. At ten-forty, he requests a cappuccino.Just after eleven, he returns to the room, flings himself across his parents’ bed without removing his boots, and lies there, texting back and forth with Yann about nothing in particular. His mother sends a picture of a row of houses painted pink and orange, standing cheerfully beside a shining blue canal.It means nothing, Lucas thinks, getting up to pace; he’s slept until noon some weekends. But noon comes and goes, and at 12:53, Lucas swears and kicks the bedpost.The last thing he wants is for his parents to return, buoyed by the pastel charms of Annecy, and ask him about his empty day. Very well, he thinks, though not without a pang, to hell with Eliott and his crinkling blue eyes and his soft sweet voice and his large hands and well-formed numerals. To hell with him. Lucas has seventy-three euros and a hotel key card. Lucas will have his adventure in Chamonix by himself.Yann is still typing merrily away, unaware of Lucas’ torment. Lucas sighs to himself and slips his phone into his pocket. He hangs his coat over one arm, hat and scarf and gloves bunched up and jammed between his arm and his side.From the window, he looks down into the square. The air is shimmering with frost. His phone chimes again as he reaches the lobby. He juggles his things and tugs it out: twelve more messages from Yann and one from an unknown number. Lucas Lallement, it says. Sent eighteen minutes ago.“Fuck!” Lucas exclaims, drawing a stare from the concierge. “Shit.” He spins away and jabs frantically at the screen.
—Eliott?
What a relief, Eliott says. I thought I had the wrong number. Are you free?His thumbs shake over the keyboard. Yes, he says.
—Excellent. Gare du Montenvers in fifteen minutes. Can you make it?
—Where are we going?
—You’ll see.
Very mysterious, Lucas begins to type, but Eliott interrupts him.
—Hurry!
Lucas heaps on his things—coat, hat, scarf tied with a single hasty knot—and runs. He clutches his gloves in one hand and his phone in the other. A long bootlace comes untied; every time it swings around to trip him, he vaults it, an Olympic hurdler in miniature. With this odd skipping run he darts through the afternoon, where the bright colors of ski jackets and ski pants and the brilliant winter sunshine and the smell of salted fried potatoes on the wind bring to mind a happy seaside town. The white mountain towering above is no more than a wall of mist carried in by northern currents.The little red train, Number 26, only three cars long, is already at the station, idling beneath black eaves.Gare du Montenvers is blanketed with snow. Scanning the platform, Lucas sees the ring of fur and the telltale crown of hair in a shining patch of light by the ticket window. Eliott’s body beneath his navy-blue coat is taller than Lucas remembers, though a little stooped, his hands in his pockets.“Eliott!”No scarf today. Eliott’s grin hits him like a plunge into polar waters. He surfaces, gasping, pawing at the hair in his eyes with numb fingers.“Shit, Lucas,” Eliott says. “You ran like the wind. Just in time!” He holds out his fuzzy black hand, and Lucas, smiling, takes it. “Come!” Eliott says, in a voice of pure joy, and he and Lucas run pell-mell for the train.They burst through the door into the middle carriage, startling a group of Japanese tourists. Eliott pulls him into to the last car, where there is only one family gathered at the far end, young, with two children bouncing on the wooden slats of the train seats, and a middle-aged woman, alone, with an enormous black camera hanging from her neck. The train horn blasts twice. They take their seats across from each other, Lucas facing forward, Eliott sliding in front of him, his back to the mountain.“But the tickets,” Lucas says, panting.Eliott retrieves them from his pocket and fans them out like a card dealer at Monte Carlo. “Les voilà!”Lucas takes one. Adult—Mer de Glace—single ride. “But these are ascent-only.”One last horn blast; the train begins to move. Eliott laughs in delight. “We’re off!”“Madman,” Lucas says, laughing with him. His body is singing, his heart beating, his blood rushing, all of him whole and alive and electrified by the same contagious delight. He pulls off his hat and runs his hand through his hair, and he watches Eliott watch him do it. “I thought we were going to stay in Chamonix.”“Of course not,” Eliott exclaims. “Why would we? Why, when the mountain is right here?” He turns to the window. “Look, Lucas! Look at the snow on the trees.” A conductor emerges in an old-fashioned uniform and punches their tickets. As soon as she moves into Lucas’ peripheral vision, she seems to vanish. In fact, they have all vanished, the young family and their excited children, the woman and her camera, even the remaining two train cars: Lucas and Eliott are the only people in this world of snow, connected by the brush of their jeans and the twin pulses racing in the caps of their knees as they lean toward each other, thighs interlocking like the teeth of a zipper.Lucas wants, with a madness bordering on ferality, to erase those last few centimeters of space, to throw himself on Eliott, to push him back against his seat, straddle him, kiss him with ferocity, with the intent to devour. Instead, he restrains himself; he contents himself with a hand placed on the seat by Eliott’s right thigh, all innocence, just resting, as though he fears the train will lurch on the next curve and he will need to brace himself. Eliott tells Lucas about the glacier, and Lucas tells Eliott about his parents, about his father’s withdrawal, the absences, the comfort his mother has found in saints and relics.“One last trip,” Eliott says, of the Lallemant Chamonix holiday. “To save their marriage.”“You think?” Lucas says. One month ago, he fought Arthur over a comment just like this, fought him and broke his glasses, and paid to have them replaced. Today, though, transfixed by Eliott’s smile, he simply nods along. He wonders how he will react if his parents return from Annecy hand in hand, laughing, twenty years fallen away.“But yes,” Eliott says. “Me, I don’t live with my parents, and we’re all happier for it.” He grins. “Your parents, too, sans chaperon, they’ll find love again surrounded by pink stucco. And you and I—”“Yes?” Lucas says, and something does lurch as the train curves up the track, but it is himself, a serac separating from the core of his being. He holds his breath. “Yes, and us?”“We’ll be swimming in the sea of ice.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
By the time they arrive at Mer de Glace, one thousand meters above, Eliott is joggling his leg with impatience. Before the train has fully stopped, he is already on his feet and speeding to the door, hauling Lucas with him. Again, the Japanese tourists startle, like birds in their dark coats, murmuring to themselves.They are first in line for the cable cars that will take them down to the glacier. Eliott paces and paces as their gondola winds toward them on the long black cables, so excited he can’t keep still. It rocks beneath them as they spring inside.Their little red cabin transports them past a spine of rock, at the center of which protrudes the archetype of a mountain, jagged edges tapering to a pronounced and nearly symmetrical peak. Lucas gazes at it. His heart is soaring. He turns to Eliott and sees him pressed against the glass, eyes fixed on the long blue tongue of ice winding its way through the valley.The gondola deposits them neatly at the start of the path. The metal railings and walkways are rimed with hardened snow. Laughing, Lucas and Eliott slip and stagger down toward the glacier.The ice below is a soft, milky blue. The glacier flows gently downhill, a frozen river. Markers along the stairs indicate how much it has shrunk, year by year, retracting from the sides of its trough to reveal a valley floor full of rocky debris. Today, though, the moraine is covered in snow. The day is clear and calm and cold, the sun haloed by light refracting through crystals suspended in thin vapor, hanging across the valley. Awed, speechless, Lucas takes in the scenery. Beside Eliott, beside the towering mountains, he feels smaller than ever. Then he sees, for the first time, a flicker of disappointment crossing Eliott’s face.“What is it?” he asks.“I was just thinking,” Eliott says. “In another universe, the glacier still fills this valley to the brim. Because in that universe, the Ice Age never ended, and humans died out long ago. So there are no humans and no fluorocarbons.”Lucas remembers very little from the unit on fluorocarbons, if indeed that was what they studied last semester; all he knows, from vague recollection, the exasperated lecturing of his seatmate Imane, and the downturned corners of Eliott’s mouth, is that they are bad.“Fucking fluorocarbons,” he says.Eliott’s smile flashes down at him. “Yes,” he says, while Lucas blinks, dazed. “Come on, let’s go inside.” It is nearly six hundred steps down to the ice grotto. In 2002, the year of Lucas’ birth, a plaque informs them, only one hundred and eighteen steps were needed; ten years before that, only twelve. The staircase zigzags down and down and down, a passage into the earth. He glances at Eliott, but the moment of bleakness has passed. Eliott darts ahead, scampering down the steps two at a time.Lucas goes more slowly, though his boots have treads like winter tires: the last thing he wants is to stumble and embarrass himself. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches for glimpses of Eliott’s tawny hair, flapping brightly in the wind and sun.The ice grotto looks like a slice of agate, bluer than the roof of heaven, rippling into translucency near its mouth, deepening into midnight toward its center. The bores and tools they have used to punch into the glacier have left a pattern in the ice like ocean waves. Far away at the end of the royal blue carpet lining the path, a light glows magenta.“This must be what it’s like to fall into a crevasse,” Eliott says. His voice echoes slightly in the tunnel. “Blue ice all around. Do you know how many people have fallen into crevasses in the Alps? The Himalayas?”“I don’t,” Lucas says.“Me neither,” Eliott says. “I wonder if it’s worse than freezing. A crevasse thirty meters deep—bah, at least it’s quick.”Lucas shudders. “Well, I don’t think they have lights like that at the bottom of crevasses, in any part of the world,” he says. They’re approaching something like a bar or concierge’s desk carved out of ice. A black and white portrait hangs behind it, lined with a strand of hot pink lights. Other images line the walls, each wrapped in a different neon color.“It’s fairyland at the bottom of this crevasse,” Eliott says. “When I reach the bottom, they’ll crown me king.”“King of all the fairies?” Lucas says. He smiles. “Me, I think it looks like a club.”“Oh, yes?” Eliott says. He turns sharply into an alcove between two pictures, where the only light comes from a thin blue strip along the ice. “A club playing EDM, with the bass pounding and sticky floors, and specks and spots of questionable substances glowing under the black light, and all the women in stupidly tiny skirts, and you and me—” He lunges, caging Lucas against the ice with his arms.“Fuck,” Lucas exclaims.“You and me,” Eliott continues, pulling him so close, chest to chest, belly to belly, fingers gripping Lucas through his coat, tight on his hips, “dancing like this?”“Fuck, Eliott, there are other people here—”“There are other people in the club, too,” Eliott says. In the darkness, his face looks like a beautiful mask: smooth, waxen, hollow-eyed. The mask smiles. “They mind their own business. They leave us to ours.”“Eliott,” he says, his breath shivering between them, and Eliott’s smile slips, and Lucas inhales, and they collide.Lucas kisses Eliott, and Eliott kisses back, gloves coming up to cup Lucas’ face and stroke at his jaw, his cheek, his ear, drawing him in. In another moment, they will melt into each other, Lucas thinks, melt and disappear. They will be found here, puddled, a pool of dark colors shot through with gold, and what remains of Eliott and what remains of Lucas will be indistinguishable and inseparable. He clings to Eliott and opens his mouth to drink him down. Hand in hand, they wander the frozen corridors, pausing every now and then to kiss. They discover a throne of ice, and Eliott sits in it, legs spread, shoulders broad and relaxed, head held high, lordly beyond all measure. Lucas starts to take a picture, only to discover his phone has died in the cold.“Never mind,” Eliott says, as Lucas starts to ask if Eliott will lend him his, “never mind, don’t bother with that. Come and stand beside me.”“So this is our fairyland,” Lucas says. He looks across the empty hall, down the steps cut from ice, at the sad muddied Persian carpet laid out across the ground and the false neon torches jutting from the walls in eye-searing hues of pink and green and yellow.Eliott inclines his head regally, hands resting on the icy arms of the throne. “My king.”Lucas bows to him. “My king.” The afternoon wears on; the grotto empties out. They find a four-poster bed, every bit of it sculpted from ice, and lie down upon it, laughing at their daring. The chill of the ice radiates throughout Lucas’ body, cooling his flushed cheeks.“Did you sleep last night?” Eliott says. “I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was thinking of you.”Lucas grins and pecks at the cold skin of Eliott’s cheek just above the fur trim of his hood, squashed beneath his head like a pillow. “But you didn’t text me until the afternoon.”“Nerves,” Eliott says. “I went for a walk along the trail. I paced around like a demon. I paced so furiously the snow melted at my feet, I swear, Lucas. Shit, you should have seen how many messages I deleted.”Lucas tucks his forehead against Eliott’s chest, feels the slight squish and sigh of air escaping from his insulated coat. He nudges Eliott’s shin with his boot. “What did they say?”Eliott wraps his arms around Lucas and squeezes. “I asked myself, what would have happened if you had gone to the Needle on another day, or taken an earlier gondola, or a later one, or if the line into the Void had been longer, or shorter, or if your mother had come and called you away before I could even turn around. Or if there had been an avalanche that swept us all away. The universes and possibilities unfold one by one like mirrors. In every one I look for you, but only in some do you look back.”“You wrote this all in a text?”“Oh, no, my texts were simpler,” Eliott says. “I said, Lucas Lallemant, you have beautiful eyes. Lucas Lallemant, your smile makes me feel like the mountain is white with daisies, not snow. Lucas Lallemant, I fell in love with you at first sight.”The words pour over him like honey. He feels golden, preserved; his chest aches with unbearable sweetness.“You’re a poet,” Lucas manages, through the sudden tightness in his throat. Eliott’s gloved thumb, furred, rubs over the tip of his ear, and Lucas smiles and lifts his face to be kissed.But Eliott draws back.“And I wish to be a poet,” he says in English, solemn. “And I wish to be a lover.” “Shall we stay the night?” Eliott says, a little while later.“The night?” Lucas says. Eliott kisses his nose, and he smiles. “There’s a hotel here?”“No, silly,” Eliott says. He pats the ice. “Here. In this bed. Our marriage bed.”Lucas grins. “When did we get married?”“Just now,” Eliott says. “By royal decree.”“And all our subjects rejoiced.”“Of course they did.” Eliott kisses his cheek. “The last train will go soon, anyway. Isn’t our bed comfortable?”“Eliott,” Lucas says, laughing, “we’ll freeze to death.”“We’ll keep each other warm,” Eliott says. “This is our kingdom, our kingdom of ice. We’ll rule it kindly and wisely. They’ll write books about us. King Eliott the Poet and King Lucas the Beautiful. Daisies bloom in his footsteps.”“You’re joking, right?” Lucas says. Eliott only smiles. A cold needle of unease threads through his guts. “What time is the last train?”“Sixteen-thirty,” Eliott says. He stretches lazily.His heart jumps and plummets. He doesn’t know what time it is, but he knows they’ve spent at least an hour in the grotto, and they arrived around 2:40. “Eliott—we have to go,” he says. He pushes Eliott’s arm off his chest and struggles to his feet. His legs are stiff, unresponsive. “Think of all the steps we have to climb. We’ll miss the gondola. We’ll miss the train.”Eliott tries to roll over, but Lucas holds his shoulders and tugs at him. “Come on, Eliott. This is serious. Eliott!” “Okay, okay.” Eliott holds his hands up in surrender. He’s grinning as he sits up, unable, somehow, to sense Lucas’ anxiety. “Come on, then. Let’s go.”Lucas swallows. “To the train?”
Eliott nods. “To the train.” The climb to the gondola station is hard. Eliott pushes tirelessly on, bounding up as though his long legs have springs in them, leaving Lucas to pant and swear after him, thighs tightening and burning. He feels small and panicked and wholly inadequate, his heart swelling in his chest and hammering fit to burst. He thinks of all the Lucases of Eliott’s universes: some sun-kissed, some surfing, most safe at home. He thinks of disasters beyond his control, of the staircase peeling away from the side of the mountain, of the gondola falling from the sky and the train derailing, of his parents’ rented Renault losing traction and skidding off the road: M. and Mme. Lallemant went to Annecy, never to return.At the crest of the staircase he sees the gondolas, red bubbles in a rapidly dimming sky. The sun flames over the mountains, turning the white and gray faces pink.“Cutting it close, aren’t you?” the gondola operator says, as Lucas flags him down. “Planning to stay the night in the ice hotel?” He chuckles at his joke. Eliott laughs too, but Lucas can only swallow and shake his head. “I’ll radio the conductor, let him know you’re coming.”“Thank you,” Lucas gasps. His knees feel weak with a combination of hunger, exhaustion, and gratitude. He pulls Eliott by the elbow into the gondola, and the operator shuts the door behind them. They begin to ascend.As the gondola hums past the magnificent ridge again, with the sharpest point of the mountain standing out like a blade, Eliott laughs and taps on the glass.“Aiguille du Dru,” he says. “Le Dru. Look at that scar. Rocks are falling there all the time. It’s dangerous to climb, but people go anyway, because it looks so beautiful, a perfect triangle, look at it. They climb and climb and climb and climb, until they can’t go a single bit farther, up or down. They trap themselves on the mountain.”When Lucas finds his voice, it is low and a little bit raw. “The way you were about to trap us on the glacier?” he says.Eliott looks at him, startled. “But no, Lucas,” he says, wide-eyed. “We would have been okay.” The little red train is waiting for them at the station, Number 44 this time. At the sight of it, the icy hand around Lucas’ heart unclenches just a bit. He reaches for Eliott’s swinging glove and catches it, and they board together.They, and an older couple equipped with binoculars, are the only ones on this final train. The woman smiles at them as they shuffle past, heading for the third car. Even before they have found their seats, the horn bellows. With a shudder, the train begins to carry them back down the mountain.The conductor comes by to collect their tickets. Lucas apologizes and hands over fifty-five of his remaining euros for the descent fare. Eliott squeezes his hand; Lucas squeezes back. He turns to the window and watches the last molten droplets of sunlight slide down the ridges into dusk.As they drop below the treeline, Eliott’s phone starts to vibrate and chime so ferociously it seems on the verge of explosion. Eliott swears under his breath and frees it from his pocket. But he barely glances at his notifications before he starts to silence them.“Shouldn’t you respond?” Lucas says.“No,” Eliott says. His finger hovers over the volume button. “It’s just Lucille.”“Lucille?”“My girlfriend,” Eliott says, and then, as Lucas stares at him, stricken, he laughs and explains, “my ex-girlfriend, I mean. Sorry. Habit. My ex, Lucas, my ex. I told her not to contact me anymore. She doesn’t listen.”Lucas pulls his hand away.“Lucas…”He shrinks against the window. “You broke up. When?”“A week ago,” Eliott says. “It’s not long, I know. But it doesn’t matter. Lucas, look at me. I’m here with you, aren’t I?”“But she keeps messaging you.”“Yes,” Eliott says. “That’s why I don’t answer. It would only encourage her.” He finishes silencing his phone and holds it out. “See?”A new message flashes across the screen. Lucas reads the preview before he can stop himself.
—Call me, Eliott, I’m really worried about you.
Eliott swipes his thumb across the screen and opens up his settings. As Lucas watches, perplexed, Eliott removes his password and fingerprint locks. “There,” he flings out, like a challenge. “No secrets from you, Lucas. Look any time.”
—At least tell me where you are!
Lucas pushes the phone away. “Stop it. I don’t need that. Stop. It’s fine. I believe you.”Eliott’s tone is cajoling. “Lucas. You’re angry.”“I’m not,” Lucas says. “Really, I’m not. I’m just—tired and hungry.”“Poor one,” Eliott says. Something in his voice, a bright silvery thread, makes Lucas look at him sharply. Eliott’s eyes are gleaming. “Poor little one. Let me apologize to you.”“I said it’s fine,” Lucas begins, and then he jolts and grabs at Eliott as he drops to his knees onto the train floor, wedging his body firmly between Lucas’ thighs. “Eliott! Shit—what—”“It’s what you do for kings, isn’t it?” Eliott says. He pushes Lucas’ coat up around his waist. He pulls his gloves off, one after the other, with his teeth, throwing them to the side with a little toss of his head. He’s beginning to breathe heavily, and Lucas is too, torn between shame and arousal. Eliott starts in eagerly on the fly of Lucas' jeans, and Lucas tilts helplessly toward him, lifting his hips so that Eliott can pull his pants down. Eliott grins. “You swear oaths to them,” he says. “You swear on your knees.”His voice comes out in a rasp. “Eliott—the conductor will come.”“He won’t. He came already.” Eliott winks. “And if he comes again, I’ll throw myself under the seat and hide.”“You can’t hide this,” Lucas mutters, with an abortive, embarrassed gesture at his prick, hard already and straining against his briefs.“Just pull your coat down, problem solved,” Eliott murmurs, and he jerks Lucas’ briefs out of the way and fastens his mouth around the head of Lucas’ cock.“Putain!”The inside of Eliot’s mouth is searing hot around him, so wet and slippery he almost loses his mind. And the noises Eliott makes, moaning and slurping as though Lucas’ prick is the best thing he’s ever tasted—Lucas swears and shudders, his tired calf muscles strained to the point of cramping, and then he yelps a bit as Eliott grabs his ass, tugging him toward the edge of his seat so that he can cram even more of Lucas into his mouth. He digs the fingernails of one hand into Lucas’ hipbone. With his other hand, he grips Lucas’ prick around the base and begins to jerk it. He looks up at Lucas, his gaze unwavering, his cheeks hollowing as he sucks. His hold is firm, merciless; his hand is so big. Lucas groans.“Eliott, Eliott, no, please,” he gasps. He kicks at Eliott’s back with the heel of his boot. “Eliott, I’ll come. Eliott, ease off. Eliott—”His words dissolve; he shuts his eyes tight and cries out as his body seems to fly apart, disintegrating into particles that shoot off in a million different directions at the speed of light. Dimly, he feels Eliott’s hands on his thighs, kneading them while his body trembles through the aftershocks. He feels Eliott’s mouth tightening around him as Eliott swallows deeply and then pulls away.He opens his eyes, stupefied, and shivers as Eliott give the head of his prick one last, lingering lick. Eliott's lips are swollen, shining. He swipes at them with the back of one hand, and then he looks up at Lucas and grins.“Am I forgiven, my liege?” he asks, a little hoarsely.Lucas catches his breath. He bends forward and cups Eliott’s face in his hands; Eliott sighs and nuzzles against his palm. The flutter of Eliott’s eyelashes against his skin, brief and insubstantial, makes him almost dizzy with tenderness. He blinks his eyes to hold back tears.“Eliott, putain, you’re crazy.”Eliott smiles blissfully. “So what if I am?”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The town below the mountain is already in shadow, windows glowing warm and yellow in the deepening night. Strings of golden lights hang over terraces; people gather around outdoor fire pits.Like a real married couple, grown and elite, Lucas and Eliott dine elegantly by candlelight at Panier des 4 Saisons. The illusion lasts until they pick up their menus. Then, giggling like children, they order a half dozen plates: fois gras and venison, ravioli and scallops, risotto and raclette. For dessert: a chocolate soufflé and a soft cheese served with cream and sugar.Eliott eats carelessly, a bite here and there. He feeds Lucas morsels from his fork and later his fingers, pressing in until Lucas, flushed and snickering, has no choice but to open his mouth. His gaze is unwavering; his fingertips linger. Every so often, beneath the table, he taps his sneaker against Lucas’ booted ankle, smiling like an angel all the while. Lucas, grinning, taps back. They pay for their feast with Eliott’s debit card, slapped down at the end of the meal under the eye of a disdainful waiter, and run laughing and shouting from the restaurant as though they haven’t paid at all.A cold wind blows down from Mont Blanc. With ten of his last eighteen euros, Lucas buys himself and Eliott hot chocolates. Eliott thanks him with a kiss, before the eyes of the hot chocolate seller and the public and God, and then he does it again, smiling; his mouth tastes like sugar and cocoa. They sip their chocolates, wiping the moustaches from their lips, and stroll arm-in-arm through the square.“And tomorrow?” Lucas asks. “Tomorrow, what do you want to do?” He feels light, transported, swimming in happiness. He wants to ask this question of Eliott again and again. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and all the days after that. Eliott, forever.“Today isn’t finished,” Eliott says. “Why talk about tomorrow?”He’s taken aback, but he nods, stroking his chocolate moustache in what he hopes is a worldly-wise way. “The night is young,” he agrees. They wander the square, popping in and out of stores, trying on hats, ducking into side streets, taking turns pressing each other against the walls and kissing until their mouths feel swollen. A blister is forming on the heel of Lucas’ right foot, but he limps gamely along, squeezing Eliott’s gloved hand in his own, bringing it to his mouth every so often to kiss the furry black knuckles. They follow the river, roaming Chamonix until the lights in the windows start to go out.Not far from Hôtel Mont-Blanc, a landmark catches Eliott’s eye: a monument of two men standing atop a boulder. Lucas has passed the statues many times already during his stay in Chamonix and found them unremarkable, but tonight, through Eliott’s eyes, they seem to be enchanted. One figure, in an eighteenth-century wig and breeches, clutches a telescope to his chest, his other hand frozen in a gesture of astonishment; the other, wearing a flat-brimmed hat, extends his arm in a taut green arc, pointing into the darkness at the night-cloaked bulk of the mountain. Their sightless eyes stare upward.Lucas pulls forward to read the inscription. Horace-Bénédict de Saussures and Jacques Balmat: inventors, explorers, alpinists.Lovers, he thinks wistfully, picturing himself and Eliott in their place, anchored to each other in bronze, but no—he squints—they were barely even contemporaries.“Great men, terrible fashion sense,” Eliott says.Lucas snorts. “You don’t think the wig is a good look?”“It’s the hat that offends me. Look at it, bah, like a squashed paper bag.” He kicks at the base of the statue. “But you, Lucas, you’d look good in it. You’d look good in anything and nothing at all.”Then, dodging Lucas’ restraining hands, Eliott clambers onto the boulder, places his hand upon the shoulder of the man with the telescope, and screams out into the night.“I love Lucas Lallemant!”Lucas bursts out laughing. “Eliott, you’re crazy!”“I love him to death,” Eliott yells to the empty square. A few lights turn on in the windows above. “I’m crazy about him!”Still chuckling, Lucas reaches for him. “Eliott, get down.”“No,” Eliott declares. “Lucas, come up!”He seizes Lucas’ arms and hoists him onto the monument as though he weighs nothing. Lucas turns to him, startled. His legs are stiff from the day’s adventure; they may even be sore tomorrow. But Eliott seems unaffected, as energetic as he was when he grabbed Lucas’ hand that morning and hauled him onto the train.“Aren’t you tired?”Eliott shakes his head. “I feel like I could conquer all of Chamonix.”Across the river, Lucas can see the windows of Hôtel Mont-Blanc, where a few silhouettes move, faceless black figures looking down at the water, the streets. Perhaps his parents are among them, awaiting his return. Where next, he wants to ask, but the words stick. All at once, he feels hollow and cold.Just then, Eliott grips his shoulder with one hand and squeezes hard. “Look, Lucas—our friend in the shitty hat is guiding us!”“What do you mean?”“He’s pointing the way,” Eliott says. He throws his arm out, mirroring the statue’s pose. His eyes crinkle with pleasure. “You see? It’s a sign. Let’s go, Lucas. Let’s go now to the summit.”Lucas stares. “What? Now? The gondola isn’t running.”“We don’t need the gondola. We’ll walk on the trail.”Lucas follows the line of Eliott and the statue’s pointing fingers in consternation. The square of Chamonix is awash in soft golden light, but beyond its limits lies an endless sea of darkness and a mountain full of dangers: cornices and crevasses and the void, the real void, uncontained by glass walls.He tries to laugh it off. “Eliott, don’t joke. It isn’t safe.”“We’ll be fine,” Eliott says.“Don’t be stupid,” Lucas says, louder.“Don’t be frightened,” Eliott replies evenly, and then, before Lucas can react, he launches himself from the boulder and takes off running. “Come on!”“Eliott, wait!”Lucas lands badly and trips on the cobbles. By the time he picks himself up, Eliott has disappeared into the shadows. Part of Lucas’ heart flies off into the darkness with him.“Eliott!”He pulls his phone from his pocket and stares at its dead black screen. He tries to remember the way to the trail, but he only knows the streets in daylight. The town spreads out before him like a maze. He looks back at the square, at the monument. Eliott’s absence is palpable and wrong, a hole in his reality. Just a moment ago, he was posing boldly there beside the statues, the center of Lucas’ whole world.When he swings around to the street, he sees Eliott standing just in front of him. His eyes gleam, fever-bright.Lucas jumps and swears. “Eliott—fuck!”“Lucas, you’re slow,” Eliott complains.Lucas shoves him. Eliott stumbles.“What’s wrong with you?” Lucas shouts. “Are you trying to scare me?” His voice cracks. “Well, it’s worked. Fuck. Fuck!”He can feel his face beginning to collapse, his mouth quivering. He doesn’t understand why. All he knows is that he doesn’t want the night to end. He doesn’t want to feel the absence of Eliott, doesn’t want to return to his parents’ hotel room with a hand that feels empty.His eyes are stinging. He turns from Eliott and tries to take a step away, to take a moment to compose himself, but Eliott pulls at him and spins him around and traps him, hands cupping his face, gaze searching.Eliott speaks quickly. “Lucas, it was a joke. It was a joke, I swear. I took it too far. I’m sorry. Lucas, look at me. Forgive me, Lucas. Don’t go.”Lucas’ chest feels like it’s full of broken glass. He hates how small he feels then, weak and pathetic. He tries to turn his head before it’s too late, but Eliott won’t let him. A tear rolls down his cheek. Eliott brushes it away.“What’s wrong with you?” Lucas repeats. “Fuck, Eliott.”Eliott bends and presses his lips to Lucas’ brow, to his fluttering eyelids, the skin just below his eyes, his cheek, his nostril.“Don’t go,” he repeats. He traces Lucas’ lower lip with his thumb and follows it with his mouth, and Lucas slumps against him and lets himself be kissed until he can’t breathe. When Eliott begins to pull away, Lucas grabs the front of his coat in his fists and drags him back. Eliott moans, and Lucas pulls him closer and runs his fingers through his hair.He holds Eliott to him, forehead to forehead.“I don’t want to go,” he admits, in a mumble. “Eliott—”Eliott takes his hand. “Come,” he says, and Lucas nods, and they move together, slipping into the dark. Eliott’s hotel is farther north along the river, a ski chalet called La Folie Douce. Like Hôtel Mont-Blanc, its interiors are modern, all the wood paneling stripped; unlike Hôtel Mont-Blanc, its corridors smell strongly of marijuana. Eliott’s room is on the second floor, number 207. He unlocks the door on his third try with a worn-looking key card and lopes inside, turning on all the lights as he goes.Lucas hesitates in the corridor, feeling awkward. He’s certain his desires are broadcasting themselves, loud and unabashed, into the atmosphere. The back of his neck burns as he takes off his coat. There’s still time, he thinks, to retreat. Then Eliott calls to him, and he crosses the threshold.“Sorry there’s no bearskin rug,” Eliott says. “I was disappointed, too, when I arrived and saw there was no fireplace and no animal heads on the walls.”“An oversight,” Lucas says. He pulls off his boot and sock and examines the back of his foot. The blister is bubbled and red. “And no mulled wine to offer me, either.”“We’ll have to use our imaginations,” Eliott says. He kicks off his shoes and throws his coat to the side. It’s only the second time Lucas has seen him without his coat, and the first time, at Panier, it was almost too dark to see. He looks at Eliott hungrily now, taking in the long lines of his body, his slim hips, the arches of his feet in their low socks, the fine bones of his hands: a dream.Eliott meets his eyes and smiles, angelic and wicked all at once. He guides Lucas to the bed and sits him down. “Imagine, then, Lucas, a cabin of logs and a roaring fire.”“Ah, yes?” Lucas says. He takes off his other boot and bowls it toward the door. “How cozy it is.”“We escaped from the palace of ice,” Eliott says. “You stole me away. The snow queen tried to call me back, again and again, but she did not succeed. And so, you and I stagger into our cabin, our noses and cheeks red, our fingers numb. The fire is warm, and the bearskin is soft. There’s a deer on the wall, too, a stag with magnificent antlers.”“Poor bear,” Lucas says. “Poor stag!”Eliott laughs. “Kind Lucas,” he says. “It’s important for the ambience.” He goes to the mini fridge and pulls out a bottle of water. “How about some mulled wine?” he says, grinning. “I made this myself. I used a pinot noir of a fabulous vintage. I simmered it for many hours, with many rare spices.”“Delicious,” Lucas says. He cracks the lid of the bottle and drinks. The icy water sends a tingle all the way down to his toes. “Yes, I think I taste something interesting. What rare spices did you use?”“Fennel,” Eliott says, “and cinnamon. And star anise. And saffron, of course, many strands of saffron.”“Putain de Dieu,” Lucas says, snorting. “Didn’t you learn anything from our Michelin-ranked chef tonight?”Eliott scoffs. “If anything, they should have learned from me.” He takes the water bottle from Lucas, swigs, and then stoops to kiss him, his mouth cold and wet. Lucas sighs against his lips. “If we had a bearskin rug,” Eliott whispers, “I’d take you on it.”Lucas jerks back in surprise. “Eliott!”“The fire is so warm,” Eliott continues. “Before we know it, we’ve taken off all our clothes. We lie down on the rug. You’re sleepy, Lucas, but I won’t let you sleep.”“Eliott, fuck—”Eliott yanks off his sweater and tosses it aside. Lucas, panting, helps him remove his jeans and then his briefs, and he sits there admiring the sight of Eliott’s nipples, small and hard, the slight dip of his breastbone, the smooth white skin of his chest and belly and groin, and the flushed pink tip of his cock with a single bead of moisture that turns into a string of translucence as Eliott reaches down and strokes himself, hissing.“Lucas,” he whispers, “I want you.”Lucas strips eagerly. He’s barely nudged his clothes off the bed before Eliott is in his arms, surging against him.The heat of Eliott's body, the weight of it, makes Lucas dizzy. Eliott kisses him as though he’s trying to crawl inside Lucas through the mouth. His hands are everywhere, gripping and spreading Lucas’ thighs, teasing his nipples, pressing against the flat of his stomach. Lucas tries to match him, spreading his legs wider for Eliott to settle between, squeezing and massaging Eliott’s ass, slipping over the backs of his thighs. Every bit of him is as hot and delicious as Lucas could have hoped.As though reading his mind, Eliott pulls back and laughs at him. “Did you think I would feel like the snow?” he says.Lucas, dazed, can only shake his head. Eliott grabs his hand and guides it down.“I’m flesh, as you can see,” he says. “Touch me. Touch me here.”His cock is as hot as a brand. Lucas pants, stroking him as the sweat gathers between their bodies.Eliott trembles above him. “Ah, Lucas, it’s good, it’s good—”Abruptly, he shoves Lucas back and yanks his legs up so they are braced against Eliott’s chest, his ankles against Eliott’s shoulders. The position is absurd, and Lucas feels exposed, vulnerable, his prick red and twitching against his belly. He runs his hands over the sheets, over his own chest, unsure where to place them.Eliott kneels against him, pushing his hips flush against Lucas’ ass. He grips himself and glides the hot wet head of his prick between Lucas’ buttocks, pressing it against his hole, slopping himself up against Lucas’ balls, again and again while Lucas moans, his feet bobbing in the air.“Eliot, oh, Eliott—”“I would take you like this on the bearskin,” Eliott says, rocking slowly, grinding against Lucas’ ass, the light shining on the wetness between their bodies, the bed creaking beneath them, “push my cock into you so slowly and fill you right up.”Lucas grabs at him, sliding his fingers helplessly against Eliott’s thighs.“Eliott, shit—”“—take you until you’re begging, until you can’t think, until you are wholly and completely mine—”“Please,” Lucas says, almost whining, “please, Eliott, yes.”Eliott shudders all over. He releases Lucas’ legs and folds forward, falling into Lucas’ waiting arms. “Until you are mine,” he repeats, in a gasp, “and I am yours.”“Yes,” Lucas moans, “yes, Eliott, yes—”He fumbles between their tangled legs and takes hold of Eliott’s cock, the angle awkward, pulling at it as best as he can. It’s velvet in his hand, slick and hot against his skin. Eliott groans and bucks into his fingers. He drags his mouth over every part of Lucas that he can reach, Lucas’ throat and shoulder and chest, crying out as he thrusts into Lucas’ fist, “I love—I love—Lu—”Then his voice seems to die, and he comes with a weak little moan, dribbling over Lucas’ fingers, while Lucas kisses him and squeezes him and breathes in the scent of his hair.“I love you,” Eliott says when he can breathe again, and he takes Lucas in hand and pumps him until Lucas is keening, until Lucas throws back his head, slamming it against the mattress, and comes so hard he feels eviscerated.Eliott collapses across Lucas, knocking the breath out of him a second time. Lucas swears and laughs. He rubs his toes along Eliott’s bare shins, reveling in the warmth of him, in the slight stick and catch of their sweat-damp skin.Eliott’s hand squeezes the inside of his thigh and slips lazily upward.“I love you,” he repeats.Lucas smiles, eyes already glued shut. He reaches up blindly to clasp the back of Eliott’s head and kiss his mouth. But Eliott keeps kissing him, rutting against his leg, and then he crouches over Lucas and sucks him into his mouth, licking him clean, trying to get him hard again. Lucas pushes him off, wincing, and Eliott turns him over and slides between his thighs.“Eliott, enough,” Lucas gasps. Every short, sharp thrust of Eliott against his spent balls sends sparks flying behind his eyelids. The pillow is going to suffocate him. He moans into it in ragged amazement, saliva puddling beneath his chin. “Eliott—God—”Eliott’s cock pulses between his legs, sticky and warm.Exhausted, he falls asleep with Eliott murmuring into his ear, Eliott’s hand warm on his back. He dreams.He and Eliott lie face to face in the snow and ice at the top of Mont Blanc, so close to one another that Lucas can feel the flutter of Eliott’s eyelashes against his cheek, the slow curl of his smile. Below them, the slopes roar with avalanches. The bodies of French climbers hurtle past: Berhault, Edlinger, Revol. The snow is made of diamonds crushed into powder.Eliott cradles his face. In his eyes, Lucas sees the light glittering on the blue ice of the glacier. He tastes the bitter salt of himself on Eliott’s lips. The cold fire of the stars burns in Eliott’s hands.“Where will we meet again? On the Needle? At the glacier? Here, on Mont Blanc?”Eliott smiles. “No. None of these places.”“Then where?” Lucas opens his eyes. For a moment, the iridescent dust of the mountain glitters and twinkles and obscures his vision; then, blearily, he notices Eliott’s cell phone face-up on the bedside table, sending out a series of eerie blue flashes. Eliott is standing by the door, the fur of his hood a halo in the strobing light. His legs are pale and ghostly and bare. He’s putting on his shoes.“Eliott?”Eliott looks at him and smiles. “Ah, my love,” he says, gentle. “Did I wake you? I’m sorry.”He rubs his eyes. “Where are you going?”“For a walk. Go back to sleep.”“Eliott, it’s so late…”“It will be morning soon enough. Go back to sleep, my love, and look for me when you wake up. I’ll be waving to you from the top.”“The top of what?” Awareness begins to trickle in, a drip of ice water down his spine, then another, pooling darkly between his shoulder blades. He sits up. “Don’t go.”“The mountain is calling me.”“I’m calling you,” Lucas says, in a voice gone thin with fear. “Me, Lucas. Eliott, please. Promise me you’ll wait until the morning. We can go together.”“You mean it?”Eliott’s eyes are shining. It hurts to hold his gaze, but Lucas forces himself to do it, a child daring himself to stare at the pale winter sun until his eyes smart with tears.“Yes,” he whispers.A lie, a little lie, to save Eliott from the mountain.One by one, Eliott drops his shoes. The noise they make, bouncing on the floor, seems to reverberate between Lucas’ ribs. Then, slowly, Eliott sheds his coat; it falls with a soft shiver of sound. The faint light shines on his chest and cock and eyes as he crosses the room and climbs into the bed. He curls his naked body around Lucas and whispers about the mountain, low and exultant, about the paths they will take, the rockfalls they will dodge, the celebrations they will hold when they reach the summit. He laughs; he trembles. Lucas locks his arms around Eliott and holds him until the trembling subsides. Chamonix, Friday, at four in the morning. Eliott wakes. He straddles Lucas and clasps Lucas’ face tenderly between his palms.“In the morning,” he says. “We’ll go together.”Lucas swallows back the lump in his throat. He has not slept. He has read the texts from Lucille.
—Eliott, you’re not well.
—I’m not angry anymore. Just very worried. Your mother and father, too.
—Where are you? I’ll come get you.
—Call me, please, baby.
—Let me bring you home.
“Together,” he echoes, and Eliott sighs happily and lies back down, nestling close. Lucas strokes his tangled hair until Eliott’s breathing slows and steadies and his hands soften and go limp.The Lucas of another universe is lying awake, too, but it is dawn, it is summer, there are birds burbling in the trees, the body of the man he loves is asleep beside him, he is utterly carefree and his heart sings with the chaffinches. When the sun rises, they’ll have breakfast. In another moment he’ll roll over, kiss his man on the forehead, and rejoin him in sleep.Alone in the darkness, Lucas wipes his eyes and sends Lucille the address.
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I realized pretty quickly that I was writing an anti-summer-romance. (You know—boy meets boy on a beautiful holiday, they fall in love, and maybe the romance ends with summer, or maybe it continues long-distance.) I was planning a pretty sappy, happy ending for these two, but I was also writing this while E8 unfolded, and that tipped the scales pretty quickly toward ambiguity. We hate and love to see Lucas Larmemant cry. (You can all thank @FLWhite for talking me off the ledge of putting Eliott on a ledge.)Do things work out for the Lucas and Eliott of this universe? I hope so. This AU’s Eliott is experiencing one of his first manic episodes, and once he is back with Lucille and his parents, he will be diagnosed and start treatment. It feels like a cop-out to explain these ideas in notes rather than in the story itself, but I plan to revisit them in a sequel. I dream of a future where he and Lucas meet again as adults, all is explained, and love blooms once more.-This story came about because I am an extremely morbid person and have spent the last two years reading everything I can find about the deaths of alpinists and mountaineers on Himalayan peaks. The bodies on Everest, I have learned, are often simply left there, as it is too dangerous to attempt rescue or recovery. Some of them become route markers.Earlier this month, Daniele Nardi and Tom Ballard were lost on Nanga Parbat, “Killer Mountain.” (Just a year before, French climber Elisabeth Revol was rescued from this peak. Her climbing partner, Tomasz “Tomek” Mackiewicz, died on the mountain.)While reading about the search and rescue—and later, search and recovery—efforts for Nardi and Ballard, I came across an essay from The Alpinist about fictional depictions of mountaineers in these high frozen worlds:
When I was a little girl, my mother used to tell the fairytale of the Snow Queen. I no longer remember her words, merely pictures that blend with imagination: a broken mirror in a white sky; a whirling cloud of glass, ice and snow; a shard that fell into a child's eye that made everyday life seem like a grey fog. Far northern hills that shone with an irresistible blue light. The high walls of a frozen palace. A captive boy who struggled to piece together fragments of ice to spell the word Eternity.
The essay, “The Ice Mirror,” is about depictions of women mountaineers specifically, but its beautiful descriptions inspired me to try to write my own.Also, winter is finally ending where I live, and as much as I complained about it while it was happening, as I sit here in my living room looking out at a warmer blue sky, I'm already feeling some nostalgia for vapor rising and filtering silently off a muted, monochromatic, snow- and icebound landscape.-La Folie Douce is a real hotel in Chamonix. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the name on Google Maps. It was too perfect. (But I think the real Folie Douce is much nicer than the one I described in this fic, though the lingering smell of marijuana has been a source of complaints in online reviews.) All of the places I have described in this fic are real and are based on trip reviews, YouTube videos, travel blog posts and articles about, and the actual tourism websites of, Chamonix, Aiguille du Midi, Mer de Glace, and Annecy. They really do sell polar bear toys on the Needle and make you wear slippers into the Void. The ticket and hot chocolate prices are accurate, and I even used The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to see what the previous seasonal menu would have been for Le Matafan! (Hélàs, that trick didn’t work for Panier des 4 Saisons.)Two inaccuracies, one glaring:
The train from Gare du Montenvers to Mer de Glace only takes around twenty minutes. I stretched it to thirty minutes for the sake of that first blowjob.
The story is set in the second or third week of January 2019. Where are the other tourists? There is no way in hell Chamonix would be so deserted in ski season. Oh, well. Let’s pretend Lucas neither noticed nor cared about the crowds because he was too busy being dazzled by Eliott.
Probably the most heartbreaking thing about writing this story (Eliott and Lucas aside) was learning that the glacier at Mer de Glace has been shrinking at an incredible rate. I found an article discussing the changes (“Want to See Climate Change? Come With Me to the Mont Blanc Glacier,” Bloomberg News, Sep. 24, 2015). In 1988, only three steps were required to reach the glacier. By 2000, 118 steps. By 2015, the year the article was published, around 370. I reasoned that in three or four years, the ice would have continued to recede, so I increased the number of steps to 500. But later, as I was Googling trip reviews for the Mer de Glace ice grotto, I saw that as of late February 2019, the actual number of steps was closer to 600. This time next year, I'm sure the number of steps needed will have jumped again.Fucking fluorocarbons.-One final note. The story of Patrick Edlinger and Patrick Berhault is incredibly poignant (and, I think, a little rainbow-tinged). You can read about them here: “Lone Wolf: The Tragedy of Patrick Edlinger” (Rock and Ice, July 2014).