Requiem for Chryse

She wanted to be the perfect boy. She had a nice boyish personality when she let it out of the back corners of her mind, but he was geeky at best, and terribly clumsy. Where she was eloquent, he stuttered; where she was graceful, he walked into doorframes. But, gazing at the bishounen across the table, she felt the boy in her mind rise up in a glorious panic. With this one, she would have to remain in control; he expected her to be a girl. She carefully blended the boy that wanted out with the girl who wanted a smooth evening, and came away a geeky, clumsy, self-effacing girl with oddly smooth and erotic undertones. Yes; now she was prepared.

"What's wrong?" he asked. She had looked perplexed for several minutes, and he had become concerned that he'd done something wrong. He was as bad as the boy in her head.

She smiled. "Don't worry about it, Chryse. Just logistics of some totally unrelated things. I need to relax and stop thinking about work." It was a lie, yes, but far easier than trying to explain.

He shrugged, puzzled, and went back to the plate of Capellini a'la Romana she had made for him. It was a modest meal -- Italian food and some rolls, but she'd made it herself, and was fairly proud of it. There was nothing she wanted more than to have this be the perfect evening. Unfortunately, she had no idea what the perfect evening would look like, and so, she made it up as she went along, hoping he wouldn't notice. He hadn't, so far.

She looked across the table at Chryse, watching the look in his eyes change as his mind wandered. He regaled her with ribald stories from the years they'd been apart, and she slowly drowned in his wide gold eyes. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him. Hundreds of words slid in and around her distracted mind: murderous roommates, pushy boys, punk rock girls, and the boy whose innocent eyes took in and recorded these sights without ever dulling in their wonderstruck shine.

"You look like you're going to say something," he said, offering her an outlet for her thoughts.

"Huh?" She blinked, surprised, "Ah, no, nothing at all...just...wandering." She sure as hell wasn't going to tell him that in her mind she'd been wrapped in his arms, lost in his lips.

Chryse grinned, and his eyes sparkled in the candlelight. She sighed, dazzled by his halo of innocence. Here was a boy unmarred by the degeneracy around him, a pure soul in a city composed almost exclusively of the dregs of humanity. He was a prize, and she knew it.

They finished dinner together, with Chryse telling wild stories, and Primavera mostly silent, but for the occasional laugh. The talk turned to music, after the two had eaten, and they sang pop songs from the 1980s -- the music they'd grown up with. He talked about his band, she expounded upon her efforts in the field of fractal music, and soon they wandered upstairs to her studio.

"It's not much," she apologised, "but, this is where I work."

While she loaded her latest remix of Skinny Puppy's 'Smothered Hope', he gawked at the wall of blinking LEDs where her server rack stood.

"I know you've heard Iteration Zero," she said, "That's the original piece. Here's iterations zero through three layered. If you listen, you can hear the curve..."

Chryse looked amused, and explained that he wasn't even sure what the fractal curve looked like on paper, never mind in music. She began to draw on the desk, while explaining in detail the theory behind the Koch curve and applied fractals in music. Fascinated, he leaned over her shoulder, and she could feel his breath on the nape of her neck. It excited her to feel him so close, and the more excited she became, the more technical the description got. Finally, the piece ended, and she stopped to take a breath.

"Wow," he said, slowly, "I could see that being the base for some dance-y techno."

She smiled, and began showing off more of her recent work. Kyrie Etherial, a trance mix of Faure's Requiem caught his attention, and she changed the music to early Gary Numan, as the conversation drifted toward the use of synthesizers in classical music.

She held his hand while she compiled a playlist of music he hadn't heard in years. While his eyes were on the screen, examining her music collection, her eyes studied his face. Yes, bishounen is the word she'd use to describe him. In the soft monitor glow, he looked almost feminine. Chryse's wide gold eyes sparkled delightedly, and every now and again, his thin lips would twitch into a smile. She traced the pale lines of his cheeks with her eyes, following down to his thin, square chin. His lank, coppery hair hung in broad swaths where it had slipped out of the elastic with which he futilely tried to contain it.

As she started the music, she turned and stroked his face. "I have a wild and crazy idea," she said, "Feel free to laugh hysterically if you hate it."

He nodded and offered her an inquisitive look.

"Well, ah, what if I give you a backrub? I mean, it's silly, but…" She faded out into blushing silence.

He grinned. "Wow, that would be great! Should I go lay down?"

She breathed a sigh of relief and led him into her bedroom, kissed his hands, and began unbuttoning his shirt.

"All those years ago," he began, shaking his head.

"Yeah," she chuckled, "Who'd have thunk it, eh?"

She slipped the shirt off his thin frame, and laid him down on her tiny bed. She warmed a small amount of massage oil in her hands as she stretched herself across him, and began kneading his warm flesh. Chryse purred and stretched contentedly at her touch, and for the next hour, he made soft sounds of pleasure as her fingers sought the tension in him and melted it away.

After a time, when she had heard nothing but his soft breathing for several minutes, she leaned closer to him, and saw that he had fallen asleep under her gentle ministrations. Smiling to herself, she lay down next to him and pulled up the blankets. She wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him softly. As she drifted off to sleep, she was faintly aware of the muted strains of the Velvet Underground emanating from the other room: "Oh, it's such a perfect day / I'm glad I spent it with you…"