Vitali was on the balcony of their home in Hong Kong -- one of their few residences outside Europe -- hanging a few of his more recent "failures" as a sort of mobile, a forest of random bits of string terminating in shining glass ornaments.

"What do you suppose our upstairs neighbours will think of you banging all these nails into the underside of their balcony?" Gabriel glanced up from his book as he spoke, eyeing Vitali's progress. He'd already had to move his chair three times, as Vitali decided that he needed to hang this piece, right there, right now, and Gabriel was blocking his light so if he could just be a dear and move...

"I imagine they'll think I'm a crazy American." Vitali smiled, tapping the most recent addition to the mobile so that it swung, light flashing through it.

"Alas, they'd only be half-right." Gabriel couldn't help but smile, too, at seeing Vitali so active and happy.

"They say swans mate for life." The glittering glass pendulum was, at second glance, indeed a swan. Vitali was being more linear than usual, today, and Gabriel made the easy mental jump from neighbours to the mating habits of water fowl.

"Well, I suppose that swans do mate for life, then. Scientists tend to know more about that sort of thing than we do." His book was set aside, now, Gabriel knowing the signs of a Discussion about to start.

"Do you think that means that no swan has ever flown off and left his mate with three baby swans and a nest she can't possibly afford on her own?" Vitali hopped down from the step-ladder, still watching the string-bound flight of his glass swan.

Gabriel didn't even blink, quite accustomed to such questions by now, between Vitali and Uriel. "I don't know. It probably doesn't happen very often, or they wouldn't say that swans mate for life."

"What about swans who just don't want to mate for life?" Sweeping across the wide balcony, Vitali settled himself at Gabriel's feet, staring up at the shining bits of glass swaying slightly in the wind.

"I'm not sure that's the sort of thing swans spend a lot of time thinking about." He suspected it was a lot more like "food-fly-mate-food," but Gabriel was not about to suggest anything so prosaic as that while Vitali was in a Mood.

"No? You don't think there's a swan out there right now, thinking, 'I don't want to mate for life! I'm young, I'm attractive, I want lots of them sexy swan hos!'?"

Even without catching the shine of laughter in Vitali's eyes, Gabriel would have had to raise an eyebrow at that one. "Now you're just being silly."

"Mm. Maybe."

"They say lobsters mate for life, too." Gabriel caught a lock of red-gold hair between his fingers, frankly more impressed with the way it caught the light than with the way the glass figures did.

"Lobsters are only romantic when cooked and then served by candlelight, though. And besides, they used that bit on Friends." Vitali turned his head, freeing his hair from Gabriel's gentle grip for a moment.

"It appalls me that you know that."

"That was the only episode I saw, promise. And I didn't much like it." Vitali tilted his head back, sticking his tongue out at Gabriel for a moment.

Sighing dramatically, Gabriel reclaimed the lock of Vitali's hair that he had been playing with. "I suppose I can live with that."

"I mate for life, too." Delivered in the same conversational tone as anything else Vitali had said today, this statement actually gave Gabriel pause, and he found himself blinking back... well, something, for a moment.

"So do I, love. So do I." Gabriel let his hand rest atop Vitali's head, and closed his eyes as he felt the slender artist lean back against his legs.