The Waterfront
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.