[Memory, PM to Join] Never Close the Door

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 59th Roalis, 2716
The Waterfront

Tom had stiffened, just for a moment; Aremu might not have noticed it at all, but for the way his gaze seemed to linger on the other man, as if now that he was free to look it was hard to look away. There had been other sounds since, the chatter of the gulls and the bright crush of the crowds and the whisper of their feet against the ground, but he could not seem to stop hearing Tom’s soft aye, the way he’d turned Aremu’s question back around.

And then Tom began to move again, as if there’d been no pause at all, and he began to climb, up onto the rope ladder, up towards where only the stars would watch them. Aremu thought they, at least, didn’t bother to judge what didn’t concern them.

He waited, and he watched the graceful way Tom managed his heavy frame. There was no forgetting his size, but there were some men so large who seemed always to be apologizing for it, with the hunching of their shoulders and the flicking of their gaze. Tom did not forget his but he seemed to fit without apology, as if he knew the contours of his own shape too well for anything else.

Aremu watched him, and he could not but admire the sight.

And then Tom had pulled himself over onto the deck, and Aremu untied the bottom of the ladder, and began to climb with it loose behind him. He stopped halfway up to gather the rope behind him, and again at the top, dangling with one hand around the railing, so that when he came over it was with all the steps bundled up with him, and he secured them just inside the railing.

The ship gleamed dark in the moonlight, the hardwood deck polished smooth. They were on the thickest part of it, where it extended out against the sky beyond. It curved back thinner around both sides of the cabin, which rose up - and above it, gleaming in the starlight, the chainmail encased leather balloon, sleek and proud. Aremu never got tired of the lines of the ship’s silhouette; he would have known the Eqe Aqawe from any other, its shape etched onto his heart.

He turned to Tom with a grin, boyish and wild, and found the other man groaning something like a curse beneath his breath, shuddering, his face tight and set. His hands white-knuckled the railing, and his body leaned fully against it.

Aremu came a little closer, surefooted against the faint breeze that skimmed against the ship. It occurred to him, then and only then, that he had never asked how Tom liked heights. He had thought - well - what man would not want to see the Rose from the air?

“Look at me,” Aremu said, gently. He stood between Tom and the rest of the deck, and it wasn’t quite a grin on his face, not anymore. He stepped a little closer, and he reached forward, and he set his hand onto one of Tom’s - skimmed it, at first, because he couldn’t quite help himself, fingers stroking the man’s rough knuckles, feeling the old and new scuffs that patterned his skin. Slowly, he closed his hand over the other man’s; slowly, he eased his fingers back from the railing.

“Hold onto me,” Aremu offered. “Like this.” He found one of the leather straps that ran the railing, and tucked their wrists into it, together, pulling lightly so Tom would feel it catch his wrist.

He eased his hand apart from the other man’s then, and promised himself it would not be for long. “One at a time,” Aremu said, looking up at Tom in the dark. There was no mockery in his dark eyes, nothing that wasn’t soft and maybe a little too tender. There was nothing in him that hadn’t warmed at the thought of it - at the idea that this man wanted him badly enough for this.

If Tom needed him to, Aremu would talk him from handhold to handhold, and would even take him there, hand by hand. He proceeded slowly and carefully, never leaving him alone with the railing. Only when they were at the wall of the cabin, with it solid and heavy against the full length of Tom’s body, would Aremu relax, hoping the other man would find it a bit easier with something to rest against.

”Do you want to look?” Aremu asked. His hand ached with the memory of the other man’s, and - even though they were nearly at the door now - he reached for Tom’s hand again, slowly, and tangled his fingers with him once more, entirely aware that it was not the heights which made his heart pound so.

Aremu would turn, even if Tom did not - the Rose was laid out before them, sprawling along the sweep of the ocean - her piers bustling, the pale sandy beaches glinting in the distant silvery light. There were no people, not from this height, but there was an enormous sense of movement, powerful, as if one could see the Heart of the Vein beating.

[Tom Cooke]

Eqe Aqawe • A Shipyard

Evening on the 59th of Roalis, 2716

Aremu was near silent, and so Tom didn’t see him ’til he felt him: the warm, solid presence of him, closer than he’d been on the dock. This closeness allowed his soft voice to cut through the wind. Tom felt the brush of calloused fingertips on the tight, aching knuckles of his hand. Look at me, and he dared to open his eyes; and Aremu was close enough that looking down at him was almost like looking at a compass. If everything around him was moving, at least he wasn’t.

He let his hand relax, one muscle at a time, under the imbala’s graceful fingers. He didn’t know what he’d expected. Even in the grip of panic, even with the whirl in his stomach, he felt the pricklings of embarrassment. He hadn’t wanted to look at Aremu’s face – he’d wanted to look anywhere but – but the gentleness in his voice had struck Tom like an arrow, and there wasn’t a hint of a joke in his serious, dark eyes. So he let him take his hand from the railing, let him loop his wrist through the leather.

One at a time; one after the other. One at a time. For all his slightness, Aremu was unyielding, like a sapling rooted to the ground; Tom imagined him climbing, and he knew there was nobody he would’ve trusted more with something like this.

After a few heartbeats with his back against the solid cabin wall, he managed to exhale. Somewhere between the ladder and the cabin wall, a change had taken place in him; he could feel the muscles in his legs, in his back, all over his body, making the tiniest adjustments with the shifting of the deck. Because he could move with it, it felt more solid underneath him.

The world around Aremu’s glinting dark eyes seemed to shift less, and the heaving in his stomach settled just a little. Still, he looked at the imbala wide-eyed and dazed, and didn’t half know what to say. No, he thought, right off; he thought Aremu’d understand. The Rose wasn’t the sight he’d come up here for, after all, despite what he’d said, and he reckoned they both knew that. And he didn’t think it’d set the mood, him heaving over the railing and then staggering inside, green-gilled and shaky.

He felt another hand entwine with his, and watched Aremu turn to look. He’d wanted to know what it was like to hold that hand all night. Like a dream of being free, he thought, and without saying anything, he turned his head to look out over the city.

At first, he didn’t know what he was looking at. Little clusters of moving lights, it seemed to him, wrapped round like a sleeping snake made out of stars – like a constellation, he thought, but moving, breathing. How far away was it? His eyes traveled to its outer edge, where the lights thinned out, and – he felt a laoso tug in his stomach, down, down, and his head spun.

Aremu’s hand was solid and strong, and so was the leather strap on the railing. He drew in a cold breath and swallowed ice-cold spittle, his throat suddenly dry. He skimmed the harbor a second time, found where the shape of it wrapped round the bay and out of sight. He choked out a laugh; he felt tears prickling at his eyes.

“‘S’my entire life,” he rasped, his grip loosening on the railing. “Just about everywhere I ever been.” His eyes were still glued to the Rose.

If it hadn’t been for Aremu, he’d’ve felt detached, like he was floating outside himself. It’s not often a man’s reminded how small he is, how short the paths he winds his way down every day, how petty the trouble he starts and finishes, Tom thought – for a moment, up here, he wasn’t sure if he was Tom Cooke or somebody else, something else, and he felt something inside him expand with it. Something that ached.

He found Castle Hill easily with his eyes, with its dazzling thicket of lights and its rivulets of shadow. He wondered if, right now, somewhere, without even knowing it, he was seeing – if it was possible for something like this to lift you up out of yourself, to become more, to watch over – he felt something wet travel down his left cheek.

When he turned back to look at Aremu, he didn’t make to wipe his face. Let him challenge it, if he wanted to. Somehow, he didn’t think he would. Tom was conscious, suddenly, of the good foot-and-some in height he had on the imbala – and looking down at him, that old crooked-toothed grin crept back to his face.

Having stared it down, he found he could set aside the plummeting fall over the railing. What remained of it, the breathtaking view he could still see in the corner of his eye, just made his heart skip and his whole body tingle, just made him feel like the air he was breathing was full of charge. He slipped his hand out of Aremu’s, and it wandered up to his face – and finally, he let the backs of his fingers follow the line of his cheekbone down to his chin, tracing near to those full, fine, expressive lips. He shifted closer, ’til the space between them was darkness and breath and the giddy, buffeting breeze.

“Aye,” he replied in a low, rough voice, “I want to look.” If he thought of what folk said about passives and what they were capable of, he didn’t hesitate; he didn’t let it stop his hand from wandering down – scuffed knuckles brushing the imbala’s throat, his collarbones – to the already-unbuttoned collar of his shirt.

But – how mung! “Floods, I said that,” he snorted suddenly, fair quiet, and found himself laughing. The air was lighter up here; it was like breathing expectations. It was all benny and beautiful and dangerous, and he felt dangerously transparent.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 59th Roalis, 2716
The Eqe Aqawe, Above the Rose

Aremu looked, himself, and left Tom to make his own choices. He would not ask again; he knew the sort of terror that gripped men and women both on a pitching, rolling deck. If ever he had had such fears, he did not remember them any longer; they belonged to a time very long ago.

But he hoped; he hoped, because it was beautiful, down below. It was the best part of the Rose, to Aremu, the view from the air - drifting smoke from the south, sails crackling on the sea, streets and beach winding through its veins, all twisting and pumping with movement beneath them.

He’d seen some of the tension go out of Tom against the wall, and his grip on Aremu’s hand was softer, now - not holding on hard, as he had for some of the steps across the deck, but still tangled against him. He heard something behind him, like a whisper of breath, and he thought he could feel Tom shift to look. A moment of silence, and Tom laughed, a new hoarseness to his voice, and spoke, and Aremu thought he could hear wonder and fear and joy and sadness all tangled up in his voice.

Aremu‘s first flight had not been complicated; it had been unmitigated sweetness then, with nothing to sour it. The boy he had been then had seen a very different path for this life; the boy he had been then could never have imagined this. But there was still something in him that felt that joy; there was something in him that eased at the sight of the Rose spilling out beneath them. And he was glad, then, that he had not given up - that he had found, as best as he could, a meeting place between the dreams he had held and the man he had become.

Tom turned back to him, then, and there was a new silvery line soft down his cheek, a faint glimmer alongside the twist of his scars. Aremu did not look away from the sight, but he did not linger either. If his hand tightened on Tom’s, very slightly, it was only for a moment.

And Tom grinned again, and Aremu was aware of him once more, aware of the warmth of him, of how close they had become. He grinned too, and Tom lifted a hand to trail gently over his cheek, the backs of his fingers brushing the little patch of scarred skin at the edge of his cheekbone, where some red-hot bit of flying metal had once also touched.

And Tom eased in closer, and his hand traced over Aremu’s neck, a thousand times softer than the brush of the silk cravat. Aremu could scarcely have imagined a more welcome pressure than this. Tom’s thumb brushed his collarbone, and he whispered to Aremu again. And then he laughed, and Aremu grinned with the sheer joy of it, feeling the last of some tension he hadn’t known he held draining out of him, and then he was laughing too, and he could not have said why.

Neither could he have said which of them moved and which of them followed; it was another moment of harmony reflected between them. And then there was no breath left, not even for laughter, and no space between them, not even for starlight.

Aremu’s hands rose and wandered. With his fingertips he found the end of Tom’s braid, where the wind had loosened it as he climbed. He teased the heavy strands apart, slowly and steadily, until it was all free and wild, until he could bury his fingers in the other man’s thick, soft hair.

There was urgency, pumping through him, but he did not yield to it; he lingered there, the wind whispering through him, and let himself feel every precious moment. He lingered there, because he knew what it was they surged towards, and that it was no sweeter for the rushing.