for Rat

[silenttrainbaby]

It isn't as if Grey has found a sense of peace in the two days since he's seen Rat. He hasn't found the solution, an answer to his existential crisis. But he remembers where Rat lives. And, carrying the cat once again, he finds his way to the building and to the door and he taps his fingers against it. There were flowers on the side of the walk as he'd come here and he plucked them and they are already starting to wilt, even as the cat tries to eat them. Silly cat.

Comments

[plaguedrat]

"Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this. For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss."

Through the door, it sounds as if a woman is speaking and Rat almost doesn't hear the quiet tapping, wrapped up in his reading Romeo & Juliet out loud. It takes Cravat's attention to make him notice, the golden mouse leaping onto his shoulder.

Peering through the sight, he recognizes Grey and opens the door.

"Hello?"

[silenttrainbaby]

Hello. Grey wiggles the fingers he'd used to knock and would admit to staring at the little thing on Rat's shoulder. He offers the wilting flowers. He's sorry ... for whatever he needs to be sorry for. There might be any number of things. But Rat is his only true new friend here and finds he's afraid to lose him.

[plaguedrat]

Rat blinks down at the flowers. Ragged though they are, he knows the meaning of the gesture and wonders what he's done that Grey wants to give them to him.

Cravat, however, runs down his arm to take a look.

"It's a mouse. And too curious for its own good."

[silenttrainbaby]

Holding out his casted hand, Grey reaches out to the small creature.

The cat, too, pops his head out of the sling, only not to say hi, but to hiss.

[plaguedrat]

Seeing the cat, Cravat scurries all the way back up Rat's arm, hiding in his collar and disappearing almost entirely.

"Did you need something?"

[silenttrainbaby]

What?! Where did the mouse go? Rat can see the cat's whispers working, his eyes, too. If he were to find that mouse ...

Grey shakes his head to the question, going back to watching Rat's face. He came to bring the flowers, to say hi. To see him, he supposes.

[plaguedrat]

Rat glares at the cat, as defensive as the creature whose name he bears. Don't eat his mouse.

When Grey doesn't present any immediate answer, Rat nods and leans forward to close the door behind him. "You want water or something?"

[silenttrainbaby]

Never to turn down water, Grey nods, coming in and looking around, touching things that he might recognize, things he doesn't. That he shouldn't touch doesn't occur to him.

[plaguedrat]

Aside from the quickly expanding stack of books, there's very little he's done to personalize his apartment. It speaks of his reluctance to accept that he might be here for a long time. As it is, there are barely any cups to drink from and only a few changes of clothes in his closet.

"Here." He passes over a glass of water.

[silenttrainbaby]

Taking the cup, Grey cocks his head to read book titles. Against his chest, the cat's nose is in the air, taking in new smells.

[plaguedrat]

Most of them are classics. The Divine Comedy, The Decameron, the collected poems of Sylvia Plath, Pablo Neruda. They're neatly ordered except for Shakespeare's plays, moved off the shelf and the volume labeled Tragedies open across the arm of his couch.

"You okay?" He doesn't know what else to ask, to say.

[silenttrainbaby]

He's okay. Grey nods, holding the now-empty cup in his casted hand. Moving to the open book, he peers at the open pages, at the heading on top. Was this what he heard when he was at the door?

[plaguedrat]

"Romeo and Juliet," he explains. "A tragedy of young love doomed by the stars. Or by teenage idiocy. It really depends on how you want to read it."

[silenttrainbaby]

Looking down at the page, Grey finds the words he heard, then reads on, his finger following the words on the page:


ROMEO
101 Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

JULIET
102 Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.

ROMEO
103 O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
104 They pray — grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

The words seem nearly foreign.

[plaguedrat]

Rat takes in a deep breath, seeming to shift into another person, wilting and feminine in a way that's natural, not farcical.

"Ay me! O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name. Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet." His voice is soft, heavy with the ache of love and conflicted emotion.

"'Tis but thy name that is my enemy."

[silenttrainbaby]

Oh.

Grey shifts easier, settling on the chair to watch. He shifts the cat against his chest, urging claws to be put away.

Love. Is it that strong?

[plaguedrat]

Still acting as a lovelorn Juliet, he disappears, convincingly female as Rat flows away, replaced by his stage persona of Eve.

"Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man. O, be some other name!" he pleads as Juliet.

"What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet. So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name, and for that name, which is no part of thee take all myself."

[silenttrainbaby]

Without thinking of it, Grey touches the word over his heart, the one covered by the bandage.

Coming together, anew ... is that what this means?

[plaguedrat]

The look on Grey's face gives him pause and Rat forgets to read the next few lines. It's a look for that faraway Gilliam, he thinks, and Rat feels as though he should turn away. It's as if he's witnessing something utterly private.

[silenttrainbaby]

That is the only love Grey has known. It is his only experience. Is this, in this book - he holds it now - is this love, too? A kind of love like that?

A different kind? He raises his head to Rat. Please keep going.

[plaguedrat]

" I take thee at thy word. Call me but love, and I’ll be new baptized. Henceforth I never will be Romeo."

Playing Romeo, the male role, is somehow odder for him. The only men's parts he's taken are Mercutio, Puck, and Ariel and often then he plays them from a place between genders.

"What man art thou that, thus bescreened in night, so stumblest on my counsel?" he skips Romeo's next lines, continuing as the lady. "My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words of that tongue’s uttering, yet I know the sound. Art thou not Romeo, and a Montague?"

[silenttrainbaby]

Call me but love, and I'll be new baptized.

Hope. Love, connected to hope. Oh, Grey feels something lurch in his chest. He's leaning forward now. Love can make someone know what they are. Who they are.

[plaguedrat]

Again, that quelling look. Rat pauses, startling back into himself under Grey' gaze.

"What?"

[silenttrainbaby]

Fingers tap to the page and Grey looks questingly at Rat. Is that what love is? This? As described here? Is that love?

[plaguedrat]

To Rat's mind, it's madness and infatuation, very different indeed from real love. Real love doesn't end with six people dead.

"I don't always know that I believe they're in love, not really...When I'm Juliet onstage, I play it that way..."