When All is Null and Void

Chapter Thirty-Five

With a sledgehammer heart racing in his chest, Titus leapt into his bed and pulled the covers up above his ears.

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The Gala was the twentieth of August, and the subsequent days following were the tensest of Titus' life. Alaric's response the next morning was a sanitized, professional: Wonderful! I will arrive at the Estate at noon on the Twenty-Third of August. Thank you! This had done nothing to quell the rising tide of panic in Titus' gut. How could he have been stupid enough to interpret Alaric's touch as anything more than friendly?

Titus sat through his private lessons with as much concentration as his nervous energy allowed. He struggled through physics, blasted through two essays, and waited. The night before the interview Titus stared at his ceiling for hours attempting to discern if he was doing something wrong in granting an interview without his mom's consent. She made it clear that Titus shouldn't be in the spotlight. Was he breaching her rules? Yes. Did he care? Kinda?

Tossing and turning, Titus attempted to answer possible interview questions. What if Alaric asked ones of the more personal variety? Idiot, he called himself again and again. When the thought of Alaric's tan skin and freckled cheeks began to warm a pit in his gut, Titus threw back the covers.

After throwing on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, Titus grabbed the Stradivarius violin from his closet and went downstairs. Playing would give him peace, and he could play for Natalee. He hadn't been to see her in so long guilt played on his conscience: but he doubted she'd missed him. She didn't even know him.

The lab was dark and empty at three in the morning. The lights flickered to life in short, stuttering bursts. Natalee's peaceful slumber made him smile. Titus activated the intercom and, after sitting on the table overlooking her room, lifted the instrument to his shoulder and tested a few notes. The A string was flat and Titus' eyebrows shot toward his hairline as he attempted to bring all the strings into tune.

The song Titus played shook with an awkward messiness for the first few bars until his arm remembered a graceful bow pattern. The strings screeched at first but soon Titus was able to avoid the jarring sounds altogether. Only when his out of shape fingertips ached and burned against the strings did he halt his playing. "I got the violin for you. I know it was sort of stealing but..." he shrugged. "What does it matter, really? You're not even awake." Shutting the lights off was easy now that he wasn't so jittery.

Though 7:20 was entirely too early, Titus and his mom ate breakfast together like always. She took small, distracted bites and set her toast down almost as soon as picking it up. Without so much as a word of explanation, she was off, the rest of her meal hardly touched.

"Bye," Titus called as her jacket rounded the corner behind her. No reply came.

The morning slid by in a soup of frenzied anxiety. Had he been dropped in some vat of cosmic molasses? Titus swore twenty minutes would pass, but when he glanced at his wrist Holo, only three had. Twice Titus nearly called off the whole affair, but as noon approached, he held off. Impatience stoked in Titus' gut as the time came, and he had to remind himself that Alaric wasn't a Timewalker with the luxury of popping in at any moment.

Eventually, there came a knock on the front door--not that he was waiting by it--and Titus forced himself to wait for Alaric to knock once more. One of the maids seemed particularly scandalized when Titus hissed for her to leave. She slunk off into the house to wipe down a mirror or something, and Titus plastered a winning smile on his face and pulled the heavy oak in.

Heart already palpating in cut time, the sight of Alaric in a dark blue button-down with a shower of tiny, pink elephants over the surface and khaki pants with polished brown shoes turned the fake smile on Titus' face until it was nothing more than a grimace. A camera bag hung over Alaric's shoulder and slid down his arm as he went to shake Titus' sweaty hand. "Good to see you!" he said, face glowing in the daylight.