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I drafted this fic late at night a couple of days ago, then posted it to AO3 yesterday morning, hours before the site was due to go down for maintenance. I was originally going to post this here tomorrow after the maintenance was complete, but as it happens, the site's back up now, so what better time to post this here then now.
Content Warnings: Unsolicited staring, philosophizing on men's behavior towards women in regards to desire and lust, guilt/self-loathing
AO3 Link
Title from "Looking, Walking, Being" by Denise Levertov.
Content Warnings: Unsolicited staring, philosophizing on men's behavior towards women in regards to desire and lust, guilt/self-loathing
AO3 Link
Title from "Looking, Walking, Being" by Denise Levertov.
To stare is to claim, to hold, yet to hold without consent is tyranny. Women, in the act of being seen, perform a gift and a challenge simultaneously: the giver and the sovereign of the gaze. Lucian had long contemplated this, in idle hours and private silence, but the theory meant little here, where theory and flesh collided. She did not yet acknowledge him; she was just herself, breathing, her chest rising and falling in the cold lunar light, wet fabric pressed against her in a revelation neither solicitous nor coy.
Was it desire that drew his attention or admiration? The two had fused into an indistinguishable ember in his mind. The intellect knew it must restrain, yet the body betrayed it. He recalled her drunken confession earlier that evening during the afterparty: she wished she could live out her life as a heroine in one of the erotic novels she gave to the world, but without coercion, without abduction, without brutality. And here she was, not acting as any of the dozens of characters she'd conjured up within her mind's eye, but simply being herself, and his eye—his damnable, guilty eye—was tracking every contour of her in what he deemed to be coercion. He despised this instinct, yet recognized it as inextricable from the very fact of her existence, a collision of awe and blood.
How often, he thought, did men stare? In galleries, in streets, in private chambers. He remembered the painted nymphs and nereids, the reclining goddesses of marble, the faces of women in markets, in libraries, in candlelight. To see is to confer importance, and yet also to violate. One cannot look without reshaping the subject in one's mind; one cannot admire without laying a shadow of possession upon the soul of the observed. And now, standing at the lip of the pool, he realized the truth of the terror he imposed upon himself: desire was a violence even when silent, a trespass committed within the eye.
Shauntal's foot met the marble with a soft splash, water cascading from her calf. Then her gaze lifted toward his in a fleeting acknowledgment, and Lucian's stomach tightened. He wanted to reach for her, to cradle the water from her hair, but he recoiled, comprehending the impossibility. To touch now would dissolve the myth he had allowed himself to construct; to restrain the gaze would destroy the fire, leaving only cold thought and distance. He watched, helpless, while her chest rose and fell in the pool's reflection, and he hated that he wanted more than that simple acknowledgment. He wanted devotion, worship, acquiescence. But the woman before him was, and would continue to be, a stranger—unowned, sovereign, mythic—until she herself allowed him into her world.
A man can admire a woman, can revere her, can build palaces of thought around her image; he cannot inhabit her experience. He cannot carry her breath into his lungs, cannot merge desire with agency without crossing the line into tyranny. And still, despite this knowledge, he was entranced, his eyes unwilling to wander from the curve of her shoulders, the subtle incline of her collarbones. A glance, innocent in theory, became a confession; attention became a prayer; observation a sin of both humility and lust.
The water reflected the stars in broken fragments. With an unhurried pace, she moved closer, a goddess of submerged realms, half human, half something older and untouchable. Lucian's chest tightened further. His own breath hissed, his thoughts became labyrinthine. Was it love? Was it possession? Was it reverence or merely hunger? Could he honor her fully, as an equal, while feeling the erotic pull that his body demanded?
But philosophy, which would only ever falter in the face of flesh, its logic dissolving into the small and sacred violence of the gaze, offered him no refuge as he turned—slowly, guiltily—so that the pool and Shauntal herself slipped from his sight, and in that turning, with an expression of unsummoned contrition upon his face, Lucian discerned in the encroaching shadows the inevitability that was being a witness, and only a witness, to her.
For in the end, he and Shauntal were still strangers, and she had not yet allowed him into her world.
Was it desire that drew his attention or admiration? The two had fused into an indistinguishable ember in his mind. The intellect knew it must restrain, yet the body betrayed it. He recalled her drunken confession earlier that evening during the afterparty: she wished she could live out her life as a heroine in one of the erotic novels she gave to the world, but without coercion, without abduction, without brutality. And here she was, not acting as any of the dozens of characters she'd conjured up within her mind's eye, but simply being herself, and his eye—his damnable, guilty eye—was tracking every contour of her in what he deemed to be coercion. He despised this instinct, yet recognized it as inextricable from the very fact of her existence, a collision of awe and blood.
How often, he thought, did men stare? In galleries, in streets, in private chambers. He remembered the painted nymphs and nereids, the reclining goddesses of marble, the faces of women in markets, in libraries, in candlelight. To see is to confer importance, and yet also to violate. One cannot look without reshaping the subject in one's mind; one cannot admire without laying a shadow of possession upon the soul of the observed. And now, standing at the lip of the pool, he realized the truth of the terror he imposed upon himself: desire was a violence even when silent, a trespass committed within the eye.
Shauntal's foot met the marble with a soft splash, water cascading from her calf. Then her gaze lifted toward his in a fleeting acknowledgment, and Lucian's stomach tightened. He wanted to reach for her, to cradle the water from her hair, but he recoiled, comprehending the impossibility. To touch now would dissolve the myth he had allowed himself to construct; to restrain the gaze would destroy the fire, leaving only cold thought and distance. He watched, helpless, while her chest rose and fell in the pool's reflection, and he hated that he wanted more than that simple acknowledgment. He wanted devotion, worship, acquiescence. But the woman before him was, and would continue to be, a stranger—unowned, sovereign, mythic—until she herself allowed him into her world.
A man can admire a woman, can revere her, can build palaces of thought around her image; he cannot inhabit her experience. He cannot carry her breath into his lungs, cannot merge desire with agency without crossing the line into tyranny. And still, despite this knowledge, he was entranced, his eyes unwilling to wander from the curve of her shoulders, the subtle incline of her collarbones. A glance, innocent in theory, became a confession; attention became a prayer; observation a sin of both humility and lust.
The water reflected the stars in broken fragments. With an unhurried pace, she moved closer, a goddess of submerged realms, half human, half something older and untouchable. Lucian's chest tightened further. His own breath hissed, his thoughts became labyrinthine. Was it love? Was it possession? Was it reverence or merely hunger? Could he honor her fully, as an equal, while feeling the erotic pull that his body demanded?
But philosophy, which would only ever falter in the face of flesh, its logic dissolving into the small and sacred violence of the gaze, offered him no refuge as he turned—slowly, guiltily—so that the pool and Shauntal herself slipped from his sight, and in that turning, with an expression of unsummoned contrition upon his face, Lucian discerned in the encroaching shadows the inevitability that was being a witness, and only a witness, to her.
For in the end, he and Shauntal were still strangers, and she had not yet allowed him into her world.
