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the-modern-typewriter · 1 year

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The Gallery of Broken Things

“Don’t you get it yet?” Victor’s voice cut cruel with pity. “They are never going to love you, not like I can.”

Adam swallowed against the lump in his throat. He willed himself to say something, anything. It didn’t even have to be snappy and clever, just something. Nothing would come out.

Lightning flashed above them, illuminating Victor’s handsome features in the storm, and their eyes met. Victor’s voice grew softer as the wind howled louder, but Adam heard him all the same. “After all,” he traced a cold fingertip along the scar on Adam’s cheek. “How could they?” Victor clicked his tongue. “Look at you...”

Adam didn’t want to look, he never wanted to look. His shoulders hunched in protectively.

Victor waited too, eyebrow raised, for Adam to say something.

“I—” Adam didn’t finish. He couldn’t pick out the right words from the maelstrom.

Victor’s lip curled, and he dropped his hand. Adam felt colder than ever, and he didn’t think it was the chill of the rain soaking through his clothes.

“Come inside,” Victor said, “and stop being ridiculous. Before someone sees you.”

He turned and walked back into the house.

And, as always, Adam followed him.

***

The first time that Victor left him, Adam wrote out a list of broken things that he thought were beautiful. He’d only ever learned how to love something beautiful, after all, and it was inconceivable to consider himself as whole.

The initial list contained: stars, in all their dying light; mosaics in their fragments; glowsticks that only shone once cracked; kintsugi; and stained glass windows. It was not a perfect list – but it would do, in a pinch.

London, in the year 2094, was a perfect enough sort of place already. A Victor sort of place. Everything was smooth shining lines of glass stripped of any unsavoury edges, and neatly lush gardens for those who wanted to enjoy wildness without the danger of anything too unruly ruining the view. Adam could admit it was lovely, idyllic even.

It had never once felt like home.

The first time that Adam left Victor, he found The Gallery of Broken Things.

A woman, who he later learned was Margaux, had been handing out flyers on a street corner.

She’d been tiny enough that Adam felt like even more of a freak of nature than he usually did around Victor, and Victor was six foot of lean muscle and magnetic presence. It had almost been enough to make Adam apologise (for existing) and shrink back.

People could be threatened by height, by bulk, Adam knew.

He was not the kind of man that anyone wanted to meet in a dark street, or possibly even a well-lit one. Margaux didn’t seem to notice that.

She’d marched up to him with a pretty wicked smile, like they were in on some private joke together, and an air of whirlwind determination. She shoved the flyer in his hand and asked him to come.

She hadn’t flinched at his face once.

The Gallery of Broken Things was not, Adam learned, a traditional art gallery. It was more of a support group for people trying to figure out how to put themselves back together again.

They rented out one of the more ramshackle buildings on London’s outskirts, and met on Tuesday and Thursday evenings to drink copious cups of tea, chat, and make art. The day Adam went, curiosity tugging at him despite his best efforts, they were working on patchwork quilts.

“I know the name is weird,” Margaux said, plonking down onto a chair next to him. “I don’t mean, like, that none of us have anything to fix. Or that we’re something to be gawked at, though people do. Or to, like, you know, romanticise being broken.” She set the sewing kit down on the floor, along with the unwieldly tower of mismatched fabrics she was holding. “I just…” she bit her lip and looked at him, finally going still for the first time since he’d arrived. “I just got so sick of people saying there’s nothing wrong with me. Maybe there is something wrong with me. Maybe I will never be like everyone else, and maybe, just bloody maybe, that’s fine.”

Adam blinked at her, not sure what to say.

Margaux grimaced.

“I’m messing this up. I just mean, if we were broken, would that be so bad? Would that mean we had no value? Other people telling me I wasn’t broken didn’t make me feel less like there was something wrong with me. It just made me want to, I don’t know, love myself anyway. Screw them.” She tried for a smile. “All this to say, really, broken things deserve love and it doesn’t have to be good. Your quilt. Just, uh, try and have some fun making it.”

Adam found himself smiling back, shyly, as he sifted through the odd ends of material. He had never made a quilt before.

Victor always said that crafts were a woman’s hobby; the lowest branch of art when art was already a pursuit only suited for people not serious or clever enough to pursue science instead. Still, as the weeks turned into months with no sign of Victor, Adam learned two things:

Not everything beautiful was worthy of admiration.

He really loved making quilts.

***

“It’s this idea,” Adam said, “that you can take all the bits that nobody else wanted and still make something good.”

Victor looked at the quilt on their bed, and there was something so unbearably sad in his expression. He said nothing.

“Some of them get really intricate.” Adam shifted on his feet, mouth starting to go dry. “And they have a lot of historical value too. They’re sometimes passed down through families, with every generation adding a patch, until they have this massive blanket. It can tell us a lot about values, tradition, community.” He wanted to punch himself in the mouth, because he could hear that ‘desperate, kicked puppy, please love it please love me’ edge creeping in and he hated it. “I like it.” There, he’d said it.

“You would,” Victor replied, and his expression was unreadable once more. “Patchwork for a patchwork person.”

“You don’t have to be a dick about it.”

Victor’s gaze snapped to him. “What did you just say?”

Adam sucked in a sharp breath, fingers tightening around the edge of his quilt.

Margaux had encouraged him to make it as ugly and cheery as he liked, but Adam hadn’t wanted that. He didn’t think he could do that, not yet and maybe not ever.

It was one thing relishing in ugliness when one was already beautiful, and was spitting in the expectation of it all, and another when Adam had never got to be beautiful in his life. At least it felt that way. Was it shallow to want that for a second?

The quilt resting on his and Victor’s bed was small, but Adam had spent hours on it. He’d learned how to embroider, and stitch, and yeah – yeah maybe it was patchwork for a patchwork person. But it was the prettiest damn bit of patchwork Adam could come up with, and maybe he didn’t know how to love himself and maybe Victor was right and no one else ever would after everything, but Adam could love the stupid blanket. Screw Victor.

“I said,” Adam’s teeth gritted, “that you don’t have to be a dick about it. At least I did a better job on these stitches than you ever did on me.”

“I saved your life! You wouldn’t even have a body to whine about if it wasn’t for me.”

Except, well, it was never Adam complaining. The realisation hit him low and sour in the pit of his stomach. He may not have liked what he’d become when he woke up to new life in Victor’s medical wing, but he wasn’t the one who made such a point of it. He tried to remember when Victor had first made a point of it. It hadn’t always been like that, had it?

Adam squared his shoulders.

“I don’t know, Vic. Maybe if you’d spent some more time on arts and crafts you wouldn’t hate your own creations so much.”

Victor stiffened.

“That’s it, right?” Adam pressed.

He watched as Victor’s dark gaze travelled up him, lingering on the places beneath Adam’s clothing where the stitches lay. The pieces of Adam clustered together from everything that the esteemed Doctor Victor Frank had once thought ideal.

“You were supposed to be my perfect thing,” Victor said. He picked the quilt up off the bed, folding it with care. “I know it’s my fault,” he added, with a small bitter sort of smile, “for not stitching you together well enough. But I bloody well tried, alright? You don’t have to be a dick about it.”

“That’s not—” That wasn’t why he’d made the quilt. Did Victor really think Adam had done this to rub it in his face or something? “I didn’t mean—you started—I like the quilt.”

Victor scoffed. “Do you know what you get when you put together things that no one else wants? Something that no one else wants. If they did, you wouldn’t be here, would you?”

The room felt airless.

Adam reached to take the quilt from Victor, because he clearly didn’t think it was worth anything, or at least not worth enough. To Victor, the quilt could only be a broken thing making some lame attempt at pretending otherwise, couldn’t it? He couldn’t see the love of making, of creating, anything anymore.

Adam’s ears were ringing.

Victor shifted the quilt out of reach.

“Would you?” he repeated. “You’d leave me in a heartbeat if you could. Even after everything I’ve done for you.”

“And what about you!?” Everything in Adam wanted to crumple, to retreat, to mutter apologies until he didn’t even know what he was apologising for anymore except for – well, everything. “As if you’d still be here if you hadn’t made me this.”

Victor’s silence smothered every corner of the room.

They’d met before the accident, Adam had seen the pictures and heard stories, but he couldn’t remember any of it.

They’d been together for two years apparently. Then, the accident happened. His body had been in pieces, the shrapnel of a person, when Victor stepped in. It had been an incredible feat to ensure he survived, some miracle of modern science, but…

Adam straightened to his full height and snatched the quilt from Victor’s hands.

It seemed to occur to Victor then, for the first time, that Adam was a head taller than him and much, much stronger. No. It wasn’t the first time, was it? It was something someone at the gallery had mentioned, once: if they actually thought you were small, they wouldn’t spend so much time reminding you of it.

Victor’s eyes narrowed.

The silence stretched, and stretched—

And then Victor laughed, shaking his head. He closed the gap between them, and wrapped an arm around Adam and the quilt.

“You know what?” He pressed a kiss to Adam’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.If you want to spend your life collecting things that nobody else wants, then that’s just fine. It’s even sweet. You’re sweet. I think it’s an admirable hobby.”

The breath, the everything, deflated out of Adam.

“Thanks,” he said, though he wasn’t sure that was entirely what he wanted to say. He didn’t think Victor meant that as a compliment.

“But maybe let’s not keep it on the bed where people will see it, yeah?” Victor took the quilt once more and moved over to the wardrobe, cramming it into the storage space at the top. “We’ve got that dinner later this week, remember? It’s an important opportunity for me. A chance to get everything back on track. You know how judgy people can be.” The wardrobe door closed. “It can stay in here, just until after that.”

“Right.”

“Don’t be mad, I like it! I do. It’s just - it has to be perfect, you know?” Victor stopped in front of him again, cupping Adam’s face in his palms. “I have to be perfect.”

But we’re not perfect. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation if we were perfect.

Adam didn’t say that though, because the viciousness had sucked out of Victor and left only pleading.

Victor could already see the hurt, the unsaid things and broken edges, couldn’t he? Then Victor looked away, as if scalded by the reminder, and busied himself smoothing out the bed sheets again. Without the quilt it looked like it was still straight out a home catalogue, pristine and colourless.

“It’s just a hobby, Adam,” he said. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m doing this for us.”

Adam said “right” again, even when the word tasted like blood in his mouth.

It was a hobby. Of course, it was only a hobby, so it didn’t matter. Not as much as Victor’s job at any rate. If things got back on track again, then maybe…

***

When Adam told Margaux that he wanted to make the gallery a, well, gallery, Victor had just left him for the fifth time.

It seemed to be their pattern, weaving in and out of each other’s lives. Victor left, and Adam trailed after him. Adam left, and eventually Victor hunted.

Margaux had lit up at the idea, though there were considerations to bear in mind. Space and time and what could be called the law against hideous things. London 2097 was perfect. It stayed that way by excising anything that didn’t fit. A Gallery of Broken Things was not the kind of exhibition that city council would approve of. Still.

The gallery space they managed to grab was a small, cluttered room which they all filled with an assortment of different objects and artworks.

There were patchwork quilts along one wall, of course. Some of them told stories, others were simply pleasing in colour and texture. Then there were other pieces too - a list full of ‘broken things’.

There were the shattered pieces of pottery glued back together in new forms, only more lovely for the fracture. In the corner, by the window, a shadowy ghoul made of garbage bags haunted the breeze.

Adam drifted around the space, adjusting lights, only to put them back. It had taken several months to get everything ready but they would be opening the gallery to the public tomorrow. Everything was set. There was nothing left for him to do.

He didn’t know if anyone would come. He didn’t know if anyone else would find value in broken things, or maybe they’d come but they wouldn’t get it. He wasn’t sure which was worse.

“You okay?”

Adam turned to find Margaux standing in the threshold of the exhibit, grey rain clouds blustering behind her before the front door swung shut.

It was late, and everyone else had long since gone home. He’d thought she had too, though it didn’t exactly surprise him that she hadn’t. She’d clocked in as many hours and pieces to the gallery as he had, if not more.

Margaux’s main installation was a whole bunch of glowsticks painstakingly tied together into the shape of a human skeleton. The body glowed poison green and bloody red. Margaux had liked the thought of a chemical reaction being the base of her piece, even if it was different to where she had started out.

Adam shrugged, because, well. “Getting there.”

Margaux moved to stand next to him, overlooking their work. She buried her hands deep into the pockets of her trench coat and swayed a little with the same restless energy that Adam could feel twitching in his own bones.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, next. “You did a good job.”

“You hate beautiful.”

“I hate that we live in a world that sometimes priorities beauty over kindness, that’s not the same thing.”

Adam laughed under his breath at that, shaking his head. Even though she undoubtedly meant it. They exchanged a glance; Adam’s smile a little less shy now than it had been when they first met.

“Come on.” Margaux held out a hand, waggling her fingers in offering. “Let’s go for a drink. We’ve been much too busy. I’m now terribly deprived of chocolate biscuits.”

“You don’t have to be at group to have chocolate biscuits.”

“It’s not the same on my own.”

He hesitated, but took her hand.

Outside it was drizzling, a noncommittal grey that slicked the streets and left the world hazy. The forecasts said that by tomorrow it would be storming. Adam couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad omen – his new life had started with a storm, or so Victor had always told him. Would there be a time when everything didn’t make him think about Victor?

Margaux squeezed his hand, bringing him back to himself.

She wasn’t looking at him so he didn’t know how she knew. She always seemed to, though. Not just with him, but with everyone who had come to her gallery. Maybe she knew what to look for or maybe she simply paid attention. Maybe both. They’d talked a lot in the years they knew each other, sometimes about the big things but mostly about the little. It was nice.

“You invited him,” Margaux said. “Victor.”

“How did you—”

“It’s what I would have done, once.”

Adam quietened at that. He stroked his thumb along the backs of Margaux’s knuckles, and it was her turn to snap back to the present. They shared another smile.

“Yeah.” Adam turned towards one of the pubs they sometimes went to, eager to escape the rain before it got worse. “I wanted him to see. To – I don’t know. Maybe he won’t show.”

“You don’t have to prove anything to him.”

“I know.” Adam did know that, now, at least in theory. In his guts was always a different matter, but it was a start. “I still want to feel…to feel like he did right by saving me. He lost his job over it, you know? Lost everything. It wasn’t ethical what he did. But I lived, probably when I shouldn’t have done. I guess I want him to know it was worth it. That I was…”

“Doctors don’t only save people who go onto do amazing things. It’s not their place to call that.”

Adam grimaced at her.

She snorted, sitting down in one of the more shadowy booths in the corner, for his comfort. She studied him from beneath a fiery fringe, drumming her fingers against the table, before she seemed to make an effort to stop.

“Besides.” Her voice was deliberately casual, in a way that from Victor might mean an oncoming barb and from her meant – not that. “You’ve done amazing things, if that’s what you’re worried about. You’re…amazing.”

Adam swallowed hard, and resisted the urge to clear his throat. She cleared hers, scrambling to pick up the menu. Heat rushed to both of their faces.

“Yeah,” he said. “You are too.” It seemed like a dumb, too pale thing to say, because she was so much more than amazing.

Their eyes met.

The rain outside began to pour.

“So,” she said. “Fancy splitting some nachos?”

***

“Adam.”

Somehow, Adam really hadn’t been prepared for the possibility that Victor would come. He thought he’d look at the invite, not bother to show, and then either way Adam would have done his part. He turned to face the other man, standing alone by the entrance of the exhibit.

Victor looked as impeccable as he ever did; more impeccable if that was even possible, as if even the swelling storm didn’t dare to touch him.

“Victor.”

Adam’s heart hammered in his chest, ever a reminder of what Victor had done, what Adam owed him, the blood that tied them both.

He watched as Victor pivoted on the spot to examine his surroundings.

They hadn’t officially opened yet. Margaux was in the backroom somewhere and the others would be on their way.

Victor paused by the wall of quilts, one hand rising as if to touch but stopping halfway. Dropping. Victor stuffed his hand into the pockets of his expensive coat.

“A gallery of broken things.” Victor hummed, swinging to face Adam once more. “You could do better.”

“Maybe,” Adam said, softly. “Maybe not. But I don’t want to.”

Victor’s brow furrowed at that, his head tilting to the side.

“You’re early,” Adam said. “We’re not opening until 11. I said that, right?”

“Are you really going to invite people to come and look at…this.” Victor stepped closer. “At you. Shouldn’t you at least be in the backroom or something? I’m just worried,” Victor added, quickly, taking his hand. “People can be cruel.”

“Yeah.” Adam looked down at his hand, huge and patchworked in bits of skin and sinew, strong but hideous in comparison to Victor’s. “People can.”

“So don’t do this.” Victor squeezed his fingers. “Come with me. That’s why you invited me, right? You mess up, I fix things.” He took a step back, as if to tug Adam out of the door.

Adam didn’t move. Victor may as well have tried to tug stone.

“I invited you because this is something I’m proud of.”

Victor stopped tugging.

Adam let go of Victor’s hand.

Maybe, it clicked, it finally clicked, that there was never going to be a point where he was good enough for Victor.

Because it was him.

Because if Adam did something for himself, then he wasn’t doing it for Victor.

Because he wasn’t some controlled experiment, eternally grateful for what he’d been given, but something – someone – alive. Victor had admitted himself, once, that when he saved Adam he’d wanted to know that he could do it. It had been scientific, not heroic. And when it worked too well…

Well, Adam was alive. Living people were not perfect, they messed up all the time.

Victor talked about their past relationship like it had been something wonderful, like they’d been the happiest people on the planet, like they’d had been perfect.

Once upon a time, Adam had believed it. He didn’t anymore.

Victor stared at him.

“That’s what people do, Vic.” Adam’s voice cracked. “Don’t you get it? When they want someone in their life, they invite them to the important things. They support each other. They say they’re proud, even if they think the art’s a bit rubbish.”

Maybe Adam had reasons, other reasons, which all seemed stupid now. Had he really thought Victor would approve? That he might have changed? Maybe he’d hoped.

“I support you,” Victor protested. “I’m supporting you now, even if you’re too—”

“No.”

“…what do you mean no?”

“I really hope you know what no means.”

Victor folded his arms. “I’m trying to help you. If I’d known this was what you’d been up to, I would have come sooner.”

Adam shook his head. He almost wanted to laugh, except it wasn’t really funny. Maybe it hadn’t been funny for a long while. “You’re trying to help you, like you always do, because you think what I do reflects on you.”

“Oh, come on!” Victor sighed, like Adam was being ridiculous. “So, what, you invited me here to lie to you? I don’t lie to you. Tell me one time that I’ve ever lied to you.”

“You said this was only a hobby. It’s more than that to me.”

Victor rolled his eyes.

Adam released a shaky breath, and part of him still wanted to wilt. He forced it down. “This was clearly a mistake.”

“This is a mistake, yes.” Victor’s expression grew colder, and he seemed to regroup himself. “They are going to hate it. They are going to hate you, and then you’re going to break, and then I’ll have to derail my life to put you back together again because that’s what I do.”

“No, you won’t.”

“What, because this time is magically different to all of the times before when you thought you could survive without me?”

Adam’s mind flashed back to Margaux, to the group, to nachos and – if not peace, then belonging.

People who wanted him around, who liked him, who didn’t act like if he got hurt it was his own fault for not being careful enough. People who didn’t say ‘the world is cruel’ as just another excuse for cruelty.

“Yeah.”

Victor outright snorted.

“So,” Adam said, “I think you should go. For good.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Deadly.”

Victor blinked at him, like he couldn’t comprehend what exactly was happening, like he didn’t recognise Adam anymore.

“Adam,” he began.

“Is there a problem here?”

The two of them both turned, to find Margaux had appeared from the back office. Her eyes were cold in a way that Adam hadn’t seen before, murderous even, as they fixed on Victor.

“We were just leaving,” Victor said.

“No,” Adam said. “We weren’t.”

“Is this gallery yours?” Victor held a hand out to Margaux, charming smile pinned back on his lips. “I’m Victor, Victor Frank. I’m Adam’s—”

Margaux ignored Victor, coming to stand by Adam’s side, studying him. “Are you okay?”

Adam managed a nod.

Victor’s dangling hand curled into a fist. He looked between them, at the way they stood close and comfortable with each other, as if he expected Margaux to be shrieking and reaching for a pitchfork.

“Is there a particular reason,” Victor’s voice was much too light, “that he would not be okay with me? Because, you know, this was a private conversation. I care about Adam a lot, and if you’re encouraging him to—”

It was Adam’s turn to take Margaux’s hand gently in his own.

Victor faltered for only a second.

“I can’t believe this.” His gaze flicked down, scalpel sharp, and then back up. “I really can’t believe this. Are you bloody well kidding me, Adam?”

“I’m sorry,” Adam said. “that you think everything has to be perfect, because you’re never going to be. And I’m sorry you think the world is full of people like you, because it’s not.” He squeezed Margaux’s hand and Margaux squeezed back. “I’m not sorry for leaving you.”

Victor’s mouth clicked shut. He opened it again, but didn’t speak. For once, he really seemed to have nothing to say at all. Then he walked out.

Adam felt like he could finally breathe.

It was time to break the cycle.

***

The opening of The Gallery of Broken Things was not a stupendous success, but as far as Adam was concerned it was a moderate one.

There was a steady stream of traffic and conversation throughout their opening hours, and while some people were less than complimentary about what real art was supposed to look like, others were…different. Maybe lots of people felt a little broken, sometimes, even if they didn’t appear that way.

The lot of them celebrated after hours, with cups of tea and chocolate biscuits. Eventually, again, it was only Adam and Margaux left.

They sat together on the floor, between the installations, the glow of Margaux’s skeleton beginning to fade. She’d have to remake it every so often to keep up the look.

It had been a busy day, so there hadn’t been too much time to talk if talking was even required. Still, he’d felt her eyes on him every so often.

“Thanks,” Adam said, eventually. “For, you know. Helping out with him.”

“I didn’t do much.”

“You did enough.” More than enough, even if Adam still didn’t quite know how to wrap his tongue around all the words.

Beyond the gallery doors, the storm had finally broken.

Because, maybe Victor was right about thing, maybe no one would love Adam like he did.

They would do it better.

#The Gallery of Broken Things #frankenstein #retelling #writing #fiction #some of you will have seen this before #I live in fear of my computer finally breaking on me so this is going here for now I guess #my writing #story #creative writing #frankenstein retelling

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