Roots and Oxygen

Chapter 41 - Skeleton in the Closet

"And did you enjoy it?" Taro asked, now smiling.

Sage nodded.

Taro leaned a little closer. "You should do more of what you enjoy because one day, you'll genuinely be happy, and one day, you won't give a fuck who you've made miserable for existing because that's their problem, not yours."

"You're right." Sage pursed his lips and looked down, but Taro put a finger under his chin, pulled his head up, and their eyes locked once more. "For someone who's not supposed to exist, you make a lot of sense."

"Because your world is ridiculous," Taro replied with a chuckle. He tilted Sage's head with his fingers and kissed his cheek.

Sage loved the feeling, but he wanted more. He wanted what he had before everything went wrong, that kiss, that feeling that everything had aligned, the reassurance that he could one day live a life that he wanted.

Taro wasn't done kissing him. His lips edged closer to Sage's mouth with each little peck on his skin. Closer and closer and closer, until Taro's lips graced the corner of Sage's mouth. He turned his head so that the next kiss would be their lips pressing together.

Sage's body tingled. His heart skipped beats, his mind jumbled, his blood pulsed hot, his thoughts melted, his heartrate rose, the hairs on his arms shuddered. So much emotion flowed through him, all because of Taro's lips touching his.

I'm kissing him again. Sage had been through a train wreck of emotions that evening. From one extreme to another, he barely had a chance to process any of it.

He wheeled his chair back, separating their lips, and stood to face his desk. But Taro's hands were on him immediately, turning him around and pushing their bodies together. He didn't kiss him like Sage had expected. Instead, Taro stared meaningfully into his eyes and asked, "Do you feel calmer now?"

"I don't feel like I'm about to vomit up my heart," Sage replied, despite his heart thumping from their close contact. "I'm sorry for freaking out on you."

"I didn't expect the photographers to swarm you like that. I panicked too."

Sage leaned against his desk, and Taro slotted himself between his legs, rather innocently. Still, Sage was conscious of every touch, every pressure on his thighs, every pressure on their chests as they leaned together. "I wonder if the party is still going on, or if mum cancelled it."

"Would she really kick out all those guests?"

"Probably not." Sage, for some unseemly reason, felt guilty for being in his room when the biggest event of the year was most likely still going ahead. He felt guilty that Liniana was most likely crying on her way home. He felt guilty that his father was most likely stressing about what the reporters would say tomorrow. He felt guilty that his mother would have to weave her conversations away from what happened to her eldest son. He felt guilty that Oxley was probably in his room, throwing up after being assigned to make cocktails for the big event.

Sage felt the weight of it all on his shoulders. "I should go see my brother." Before he pushed out of Taro's stance, he lifted a cautious hand and let it rest on Taro's shoulder. He squeezed it, watching how Taro's eyes flicked to it with surprise. "My face will be on the front cover tomorrow, but Oxley's vomit will be on the second page."

Sage left his room and walked right, past the corridor that led to the servant's staircase, and turned a bend. His brother's door was on the right at the end of the Prince's quarters. His door was a deep grey matt colour with a modern silver handle.

Sage knocked and immediately heard someone running to the door. A guard answered, not wearing his golden blazer. His dark green waistcoat was partly stained with sick. "Your Royal Highness," he said and bowed, not hiding the troubled look in his eyes.

"Is my brother in here?"

"Yes, Sir."

Sage let out a long and doleful sigh as he rolled his sleeves to his elbows. "I'll take over from here."

The guard couldn't have been more relieved. He pushed past him and Taro and hurried down the corridor. Sage didn't blame him- looking after a drunken spoilt Prince was hard enough but adding vomit to the mix made a very foul potion.

"Are you okay to wait out here?" he asked his personal guard, his valet, his... his...

"Sure." Taro said with a curt nod and eyed the guard who had stopped at the end of the corridor to remove his waistcoat. "Sir."

Sage shivered by how his tone lowered, and the black in his eyes bloomed. "I'll shout you if I need you." He quickly entered Oxley's room and shut the door. Defeated groaning echoed from the bathroom. Sage stepped over clothes and books and boxes of games. He headed for the light and found exactly what he was looking for. Oxley was curled up against the toilet with his face on the lid, and his arms clutching the curve as if he struggled against gravity. He looked up when Sage stopped in the doorway. "Help," he croaked.

This is still better than being at the party, Sage told himself. Silently, he got Oxley some water and sat with him on the bathroom floor. His quarters were a lot less grand than Sage's. Oxley's room was modern and new, messy and lived in. His room had character with posters and pictures. Sage's was a complete copy of a Prince who would have lived in his room a hundred years ago, old and traditional, bare yet busy, cold and untouched.

After a few glasses of water, Oxley fell asleep on the bathroom floor, so Sage rummaged his room for pyjamas. Each drawer was full of jumbled up clothes. Tops were thrown in with trousers, jumpers were mixed with underwear, socks sat with gloves. How does he function like this?

After failing to find anything other than jeans in his drawers, Sage looked in the closet. The coat hangers were empty, so he searched in the small drawers built inside. In the top drawer was a bunch of used up pens, three rulers, a single sock and a belt. In the second drawer was a t-shirt, an empty diary, and a half-eaten packet of mints. In the bottom drawer was a single green post-it note saying, 'Fuck Off'.

Sage scoffed and tried to shut the drawer. The wood jammed, and the bottom of the drawer lifted in one corner. Sage tried to push it back down, but it bounced back up as if something was underneath.

Not wanting Oxley to know he had been rummaging through his things, Sage lifted the wood to fix whatever was jamming the drawer. Below the wood was a bunch of papers of different sizes, all bunched and tied together with an elastic band. The top paper was blank apart from another post-it note. This one said, 'Uncle Patrick'.