[Memory] Deep Waters

[Tom Cooke]

Quarter Fords • Old Rose Harbor

Evening on the 8th of Dentis, 2716

Farther away from the stove, it was colder. Tom could feel it through the floorboards against the soles of his feet; it’d been there with the first frost, the chill from boards to rafters that came with the winding-down of the year. He shivered again and took a deep breath as he poured one cup and then the other, the steam gusting up. He smelled mint and sweat and incense and autumn, and that was enough to warm him inside out.

With cursory glances, he watched the cat, kneading the blanket and settling himself in. Aremu was finding the good places, he noticed with a little smile; Tom realized that he’d always known Aremu would, that he’d always known him for the sort of man who could figure out, trial and error, where a cat liked to be touched, and who cared enough to keep at it. He watched him bury his fingertips in Crabapple’s scruff, and he watched Crabapple crane his neck, tilt his head. The cat paused, shifting his weight in Aremu’s lap, to raise one querulous back leg and scratch it impotently in the air.

Once Aremu’d taken his cup, he took his own and settled in on the couch beside him, where the other man’d cleared a space. Even if the imbala had left him more, he’d’ve found a place fair close, where he could wrap his arm around Aremu’s bare shoulders. He’d found the old wool blanket over the back of the couch, but he reckoned they both needed all the warmth they could get; no matter how much warmth you made together, it never seemed to last half long enough.

This, Tom thought, was a more pleasant silence, a more comfortable closeness. It reminded him of the first time, on the dock, when they’d figured out each other’s wants and had been content to just sit. The space between them didn’t scratch his nerves raw; it just was, like it knew the privilege afforded it to sit there between them. Aremu was cupping the mint tea with both hands, and sighing, and a pressure inside Tom eased.

His head had emptied out, but the thoughts that were creeping back into fill it seemed less strained. He studied the imbala’s profile, and it was less foreign than it’d been, but he still wondered — at his shut eyes, at the thoughtful, relaxed line of his mouth. He wondered if Aremu felt the same way, had wondered the same things. He wondered if the imbala’d ever felt the break between them, or if he knew the strangeness, and knew what to name it, and it was only Tom who’d been grasping in the dark.

Aremu leaned to set his cup down. Tom shifted away to give him space; he watched the light glance over his bare shoulders. He heard his voice, soft, with its heavy accent — that Tom’d found hard, at first, with its Mugrobi-soft consonants, despite how well and elegantly he sounded out the words; that Tom found he liked very much. Can I lilted on the air between them, and he turned to regard the other man, a line appearing between his heavy dark brows. A pause hung there, uncertain, until Aremu picked it back up with a sheepish smile. It wasn't so much the smile, after all, that Tom noticed, as the way he leaned to put his tea back on the table, so deliberate and full of care.

Tom grinned.

If his good foot-and-some height on the other man made the operation require a pina planning, that grin never faltered. He looked away, toward the steaming cup on the table. His grin quietened, thoughtful-like.

He didn’t speak. He touched Aremu’s shoulder, fingertips lingering, bare warm skin on bare warm skin. Then, he placed his cup on the table with the pot. The couch creaked underneath him again as he slid off it, shifting his weight to the floor gingerly. He winced, a smiling sort of wince, at the ache through his muscles; he sighed at the chilly, rough wood underneath his hand. But he sank to sit at the imbala’s feet — and if he missed the warmth of him in his arms, the prospect of his fingers working through the mussed tangles of his hair, many of which he’d been responsible for, finding new shapes to weave into them, was even better.

He settled, comfortable, feeling the brush of Aremu’s knee beneath the woolen blanket near his shoulder-blade. At his back, he could hear Crabapple purring, too. He wondered briefly that Aremu knew how to braid hair, and what sorts of braids he knew, and how his hands might go about the task; he wondered whose hair he might’ve braided in the past, and his imagination came up with hazy, half-formed images. He was content to let himself be surprised.

It was awhile before he spoke again; he wouldn’t start ‘til he felt the imbala’s hands in his hair, and then, it was more than a few moments. “D’you still want to?” he asked. Another brief pause. “I meant it, when I said it’d honor me, to share it wi’ you. If it’s somethin’ you can share wi’ me,” he added, even more softly. “Or – we ain’t got to speak of it, or nothin’ at all, but I…”

He fumbled for words; he touched his chest with his fingertips. “The door’s open,” he added simply, embarrassed he couldn’t think of a better way to put it.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 8th Dentis, 2716
Quarter Fords

Tom didn’t answer in words, and Aremu was glad for it; he didn’t think any words could have touched him as that grin did. It settled heavily into his chest, leaving a faint ache behind, and he felt Tom’s hand on his shoulder, the soft stroke of his fingers. And then, without hesitation, he was easing himself off the creaking couch and settling onto the floor. Aremu looked down at him, at the muscular set of shoulders woolc-lad in the dim, light catching on soft dark hair, on his head and below, and he had to catch his breath.

It was a struggle, balancing himself between Crabapple in his lap, the faintest brush of Tom’s back against his knee, finding how to lean to leave enough lap for the cat while still reaching all of Tom’s hair. He found it, though, the right angle, and he held it; Aremu had never minded a little discomfort, not for a good cause.

He stroked his hands over Tom’s head, first, finding the places where one or the other of them had tangled it. In some places it was soft and thick; in other places, feathery-light, little strands come off the rest to go their own way, limned by the candlelight. Aremu eased one hand into it, and then the other, and although he couldn’t have said why, he made little circles with his fingertips, his hands spanning most of Tom’s head – thumbs resting in the little place where the skull went in behind the ears, fingertips spread with against his scalp, his palms stretching to make up the space.

And Aremu leaned forward, against the grumbling mutter of Crabapple in his lap, and brushed his lips over the crown of the other man’s head, and closed his eyes, just for a moment. And then he settled back, and disentangled himself, slowly, and settled Crabapple in his lap once more, until he was busily purring and kneading again.

Aremu began to work, then, careful and precise, combing his fingers through Tom’s hair. He met resistance, here and there, and some of it he could ease through, soft and gentle. If it needed more than that, he would ease his fingers out, try to come at it from the side. If it couldn’t be done without force, Aremu would let it be; he did not know how much it would hurt Tom, if he pulled. It hardly seemed worth it, not when even the messes were lovely. Still, mostly, he combed the tangles from the other man’s hair with careful, deliberate strokes, until Tom’s hair lay thick and loose and smoother against his back.

Then, slowly, Aremu set about gathering it up, making three long locks of it, fingers stroking from the scalp down, finding an even balance. It was around then that Tom spoke again, the first time, with Aremu’s hands finding the strands of the braid. He did not stop working, although he did not speak either, at first.

Then – slowly – Aremu leaned forward again; his hand crept down, over Tom’s shoulder, and his fingers stroked the other man’s hand; his fingertips rested lightly on Tom’s chest, and he could feel the steady pulse of his heart through bare skin and wool.

“I want to,” Aremu said, no louder than Tom had spoken.

His hand withdrew, gently, with a lingering brush against Tom’s shoulder, and he went back to his hair. Three strands, he thought, and they came together in a braid – the outside between the others, alternating sides. It was a simple enough pattern. The trick of it was in keeping hold – of pulling tight, but not too tight – of balancing the strands against one another, without losing little bits here and there. Aremu did not rush, but went slow and steady, and wove Tom’s hair together in his hands, and watched it take shape.

There was no space in him for thoughts; he did not dare. With his whole self, whatever there was of him, Aremu lingered in that moment; he wove and he watched and he was. And he took it, that precious act, and he brought it into the core of himself, and tucked it somewhere secret and safe, warm and warded, and he kept it close. No thoughts rushed in to spoil it, no doubts or regrets – there were only his hands, their soft, subtle motions, and the warm, wonderful weight of Tom’s hair.

He laid the end of the thick braid against the other man’s back, his fingertips stroking gently along the wool between his shoulder blades.

“Sit with me first?” Aremu asked, softly, easing back against the couch, letting his hands linger against Tom’s shoulders a moment more, before he found the spot that made Crabapple begin to purr again, before he picked up the cooling cup of mint tea, before he had to weigh himself down once more. “Just a little while.”

[Tom Cooke]

Quarter Fords • Old Rose Harbor

Evening on the 8th of Dentis, 2716

Tom found himself shutting his eyes, leaning his back against the seat of the sofa and Aremu’s knees. He felt the other man’s fingers in the tangles of his hair, first, gentle-like; then he felt the fingertips against his scalp – to his surprise – sweeping little circles. His touch wasn’t cold anymore, and it was delicate, full of care and purpose, feather-light. He wasn’t braiding yet; he wasn’t even disentangling it. This was like an unexpected gift. Tom lost his breath and regained it with a shuddering husk of a sigh.

The thoughts were creeping back in, in the space left for them by the space between them. He’d started wondering, even though it was mung – Aremu’d asked him, like it was a privilege – but he felt the distance between them; he felt the cat shift in his lap, behind; he imagined Aremu stretching to finagle this, imagined the awkward angle of it, and wondered if it was comfortable. He thought about how Aremu looked at his hair, and how the imbala’s hands were never reluctant to find it, to comb through it or muss it or stroke it. The thought sat warm in his chest.

And then he couldn’t think of much. By the time he’d worked his way to the back of his head, Tom’s eyes were shut, and he wasn’t trying to suppress the shiver that crept from his skull down to the base of his spine, making all the hairs on his arms prickle.

The other man bent closer, and his lips brushed his scalp, just where the hair parted. Tom felt a prickling heat in his eyes; he swallowed it no small difficulty.

The touch was gone, then, but not for so long he felt their absence. Quick enough, the imbala was combing through his hair again.

With hair like his, Tom was no stranger to the pinch of pulled hair. But if he ever started to feel it, Aremu’s fingertips would skim away to some other tangle, deconstructing it, Tom imagined – warmly – like he might take apart an engine. With the same kind of care for each piece. That thought lingered in his head; the image of those long, dextrous fingers, working studiously at some machine or other, or at his hair, was printed on the backs of his eyelids. He wanted to ask Aremu something, suddenly, but he held it inside for now, hoping he’d find the words for it.

His question’d interrupted his work, but he didn’t seem to mind. The touch of his hand was its own sort of unexpected gift; he smiled, though he didn’t open his eyes. I want to, he said. Something sat ill on his heart, but Tom tried to take the words at face value. Somehow, that I want to was even more important than earlier’s please, and Tom felt something funny, something like foreboding, but he made himself forget it.

He had to, because Aremu was working on his braid again. Tom sometimes felt the brush of his fingers or his knuckles against the back of his neck, barely a breath. Just motion. Slowly the loose, thick swath of his hair wove into a plait; slowly he felt the familiar weight of it against his back. He felt Aremu find the shape of it, one overlapping band at a time.

There was something about it. Being taken apart, being put back together by a loving hand. How the taking apart was its own pleasure – oes, Circle knew he knew – but the being put back together almost took more trust. To know someone knew the way of you well enough to put you back together right.

It was mung, he thought, and he wasn't sure if the thought pleased him. And soon enough there was a plait down his back, and Aremu was running his fingers over it like he’d made it from clay. The sound of his soft voice made him smile again, ‘cause he didn’t think there was anything that’d give him more pleasure than sitting with him, just then; he’d missed his warmth. Crabapple started purring again, purring like an engine, and Tom grinned, grunted, rolled his shoulders – pushed himself up off the floor with tender muscles and aching scars and just-fading bruises.

He sat on the couch beside the imbala, took his tea back off the table, then settled into the cushions. He looked over at Aremu and started to say something, but the sight of his face, half-lit from one side – the glitter of candlelight in his eyes – stopped him short, and he found himself just smiling instead, the soft smile of a man who doesn’t know what to do with himself. He did know what to do with himself, though: he nestled in closer, wrapping his arm around Aremu.

It was a fair long time before he spoke again, his head leaned on the imbala’s, his plait over one shoulder between them. He took a sip of mint tea, then settled the cup in his lap. “Was it –” He hesitated, another smile playing out across his face, this one a pina sly. He reached for Crabapple, scratching his scruff and behind his ears.

He glanced up at Aremu. “Are they fair close? Workin’ on an engine an’ braidin’ a man’s hair?” His hand wandered, searching for Aremu's.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 8th Dentis, 2716
Quarter Fords

When it was over, Aremu was sorry. He felt the warm satisfaction of completion, the sense of contentment at having set out to do a thing and having done it. But, too, he felt an odd longing to comb the braid out and begin again, to absorb himself in the braiding once more, to feel Tom shift and sigh beneath his hands. But Tom was easing off the floor already, taking his tea and smiling and settling in close.

His arm wrapped around Aremu, soft scratchy wool against his bare shoulders, as warm as a blanket. Aremu didn’t think; he leaned, and rested his head against Tom’s shoulder with a sigh. He eased out what he could of the scratchy wool and smoothed it over Tom’s lap, so their bare legs brushed beneath. Tom’s were colder, now, where they had rested against the floor, but they warmed together, and Aremu never hesitated to press close.

And Tom settled the braid between them, and Aremu felt the weight of the other man’s head, comfortable and heavy against his own. They were tangled as close as two men sitting together upright could be, and it was blissfully easy, with Crabapple rumbling noisily on his lap, Aremu’s fingers buried occasionally in his scruff, stroking down along his spine.

Aremu sipped at the cooling tea, tasting the fresh sharpness of the mint; there was a little lavender in the air still, lingering, and the smell mingled together with incense and sweat and other strains he couldn’t have named. There was silence, but it was soft and light, a fragile, tender thing, and Aremu was loathe to break it; like a spiderweb glistening with dew, he thought, oddly, and he didn’t know why it ached to imagine it so.

Thoughts swelled and crested and broke inside him, smoothed out again, making a pleasant rhythm all their own. They never lingered long, but washed over his mind and floated away, and whatever movement there was beneath the surface, it didn’t trouble him. Even if he had wanted to, Aremu would not have been able to describe the shape of his thoughts then; he could only have said that they were, and that he was happy.

Tom broke the silence between them soft-voiced, a little smile curling over his lips. Aremu grinned at the question, and couldn’t tell if it was serious. Tom’s hand wandered to Crabapple, finding the spots that made the cat purr all the louder, and then found Aremu’s hand, and tangled with it. Aremu squeezed his hand, gently, and wondered how to purr.

“Yes,” he said, thoughtfully, because however Tom had meant it, he could not take it lightly, “and no.”

Aremu took another sip of his tea, and set the cup back down. “I could describe them alike,” he said. “But I think it would describe many things - maybe most things. But yes, one finds the pattern, and follows it, the best one can.”

“And yes, because even with the pattern, the knack is in the doing,” Aremu’s thumb found Tom’s palm and stroked, sliding gently back and forth; not to rouse him, not again, but simply for the pleasure of it, because there was still more than a small part of him which was so pleased that the other man would let him.

“And no,” Aremu said, softly, and he brought their intertwined hands up, slowly. He kissed Tom’s knuckles, and settled them back down. “Because no engine is so lovely to touch,” or so dangerous. An ache blossomed in his chest, eased through him, and faded again, and he kept quiet, then, taking another sip of mint tea against a suddenly dry throat.

No, he thought, there were some words best kept inside. It was enough to feel the long warm line of Tom against him, shifting faintly with each deep breath; the heavy purring weight of Crabapple, claws pricking at him; the tangle of Tom’s fingers against his, and the purposeless, joyful, lingering thrill of it; and the knowledge that however teasingly the other man had meant the question, he would listen to the words Aremu had offered and weigh them well. It was enough; he could not have asked for more.

[Tom Cooke]

Quarter Fords • Old Rose Harbor

Evening on the 8th of Dentis, 2716

Tom smiled as Aremu pulled the cover over his lap too — leastways, much as he could, without displacing Crabapple. There was something satisfying about Aremu choosing him, something in the little cat’s grunts and imperious looks as the imbala worked out the rumpled wool.

So Aremu leaned his head over on his shoulder, and though he tried, Tom couldn’t keep himself from thinking about it. He wasn’t a thinking man, except when he was. The brush of their legs under the cover wasn’t electric anymore; it was easy and comfortable, and he liked the warmth that was seeping through him, but he couldn’t keep from thinking. He was fair sober, and it was like an itch at the back of his mind, even now; nothing was easy as it could be, nothing half as comfortable.

It was strange how two men could be so close, tangled up in each other, and not know a whit of what the other was thinking. With his cheek rested against Aremu’s head, he couldn’t even see the look on his face. Maybe, Tom thought, the closer you got, the less you could tell, and the more you had to wonder, and —

Aremu thought, and then answered him in a low voice, as soft and gentle as the way he ran his thumb over his palm. Tom sighed against him. He didn’t know himself if he’d meant the question seriously; a joke was something a man could hide behind, when he wanted to — but couldn’t — say what was in his heart. An in-between place you could stay. It still scared Tom, that the imbala treated him like his words had meaning, even in an accent that must’ve, he thought, been difficult for him. But it was a thrill more precious than anything physical, the strange, dangerous thought he wasn’t half as mung as he thought he was — not to Aremu Ediwo, anyway.

And the answer! Tom lifted his head to watch Aremu take a contemplative sip of tea. He wasn’t smiling, watching him and listening; he had an intent glitter in his eye.

The way he talked, Tom thought that might’ve been the first time he’d braided hair like his. The thought pleased him; it didn’t surprise him, but it pleased him a fair manna. Maybe most things, he’d said, and Tom thought, oes, most things. They’d been together plenty of nights, now, and he didn’t need any more proof than that Aremu was good at working out a pattern as he went, and following it faithfully and lovingly.

But hearing him say it out loud was like a sort of music, and it filled even Tom’s aching, sober head not with images, but with patterns. He felt like he could fit his life, maybe both their lives, into the weave of a braid, and make it make at least a little sense. Tom was no engineer, but he knew a different sort of pattern: he knew the drift and wind of conversations and how to slip into them; he knew how to put a word in here, a look in there, and what to pay attention to, so that you could figure out the pattern of a kov and start weaving.

So did Aremu, he thought, for all his reserve. A smile spilled across his lips as he kissed his knuckles, aching with the cold and old cuts and scuffs. The moment was artful; there was just enough space in the pause to keep Tom breathless. And when he spoke again, it didn’t give him the breath he lost.

He was a man to whom tears came easy, and he couldn’t keep them back anymore. He felt a prickling in his eyes, and then a wetness on one cheek. He didn’t turn his face away from Aremu; instead, he bent it, leaving a lingering kiss on his scalp, then a scratchier one on his cheek. These weren’t the breathless, heavy, impatient kisses of earlier that evening. “Then it’s a fine thing,” he murmured, “to be a man, an’ not an engine.”

Still holding the imbala close, he let his eyes flutter shut. He sat there and breathed in the wafting mint of the cooling tea; he thought about pouring more for both of them, but he’d’ve had to lean away, and he wanted nothing less than that. He stroked Aremu’s shoulder with his thumb instead, settled his cheek atop the other man’s head, and hummed contentment.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 8th Dentis, 2716
Quarter Fords

Tom had never looked away from him, and Aremu did not look away either. He watched Tom’s face through the smile, through the slow sliding of a tear down one cheek into the thickness of his beard – as the other man leaned forward to kiss him, once, twice, and to whisper to him. Aremu’s breath had caught, somewhere, in his chest, and he had to close his eyes, because there was a heat behind them, and a tightness rising to close his throat.

Tom held him close, and hummed, some rhythm that was a heartbeat more than any song, that ran through Aremu’s skin and bones and settled in his chest. He kept his eyes closed, and breathed, slowly, in and out; every time he breathed in, he felt the edges of Tom pressed against him, and in the spaces between the breaths he found himself longing for that tiny fraction of closeness.

Tears pricked at his eyes again, more insistently. Aremu caught his breath, swallowed a faint, helpless sound in his throat, and clenched his eyes a little tighter shut. He could not think of the last time he’d cried; he could not remember it. It would be, he thought, easy – there was a part of him that wanted to do it, to let go and lean his face against the scratchy wool of Tom’s sweater, and exhale the tears out. There was moisture beading behind his eyelids, and every breath ached a little more.

It would be easy. It scared him to think Tom might understand; it scared him to think of Tom doing nothing but kissing his head, and holding him close, and knowing.

And so Aremu shuddered, just a little, his fingers tight against Tom’s, and found other things to think about. He let his mind drift away; he went back, away from the feeling of Tom’s thumb slowly stroking bare skin – away from the ache of the other man’s tear – away from the scratchy, tender kiss on his cheek – and he let himself think of work, of the engine of the Eqe Aqawe, of the repairs they needed before the next flight.

The engine and the propeller both, Aremu thought. One of the fans had been rattling, just a little; he’d need to try tightening it first, set it spinning and see if that did the trick. It might be nothing more than a loose connection, but it could be a warping in the metal of the blades. Any work on the propeller would need to be done harnessed, unless he wanted to bring the ship all the way down; he didn’t think it’d call for it, not when there wasn’t a storm on the horizon.

That, Aremu thought, would be the first thing to tackle; better to at least know if he’d need to fit in a replacement. Everything the engine needed could be done slow, fit into the larger propeller repairs if need be. They wouldn’t be on the ground long, he thought, not unless he needed extra time. Best to get started in the morning, so that he’d be able to tell Uzoji how long things would take –

Better, Aremu thought, slowly, not to linger.

Tom’s arm was still wrapped around him, and Aremu was still curled close; as close as two men could be. He had one hand buried in Crabapple’s ruff, and the other buried in Tom’s hand, and there was a rumbling all through him. But when Aremu opened his eyes again, his vision was clear and easy. He turned his head a little, and kissed Tom’s neck, soft and tender. And he sighed a little, and inhaled, deeply, and felt the press of his body against the other man’s, and exhaled, long and slow, and settled in closer.

And Aremu closed his eyes again, breathing slow and even and steady, and let his thoughts wander back to the engine once more. A fine thing, he thought idly, to be a man and not an engine. A fine thing. He was warm, curled between Tom and the blanket and the cat and the couch, covered on all sides, and his hands were full. It was as much as he could ever want; it would have to be.

[Tom Cooke]

Quarter Fords • Old Rose Harbor

Evening on the 8th of Dentis, 2716

He kept stroking the imbala’s shoulder, resting his bristly cheek on his head, until he heard his breath catch. Some noise in the back of his throat, seemed like came from somewhere underneath his heart – some noise like something trapped.

He could feel the rise and fall of his breath, and he thought it felt pained. His own heart quickened; his chest ached as it’d ached plenty that night. He didn’t know whether to hold Aremu closer or to shift away. The scattered pieces of his mind were all telling him something different. He still felt the track of a tear down one cheek, now stinging him with the cold like a fresh cut.

Did I hurt you? he wanted to ask, knowing he never could. Underneath it, the question as seemed to him more important, and all the more forbidden: Why? He was starting to think it was a question that couldn’t be answered; he was starting to think that maybe if he had to ask, he’d never understand. Tom thought he might’ve understood a part of it, though he had no remedy.

Sex was a sort of balm; so was holding a man close, so was giving him words and tears from your heart. Easier to be close in one way and not another. Harder to figure out which, and when. A part of him told him to shore up – to pull the imbala nearer – to hold him, to ask him what he could do; he didn’t know, but he didn’t think Aremu’d’ve thanked him for that. Another part of him told him to draw away, because something about his love had given him pain, and holding a flame to another man’s flesh wasn’t the thing you did if you claimed to want the best for him. But Aremu’s fingers were still tightly entwined with his.

Instead of doing any of those things, he just held still, his fingertips lingering on Aremu’s shoulder – holding him just as close as he’d held him that night, but no closer. Slowly, the tightness in his back muscles eased against Tom’s arm, and the rhythm of his breathing leveled out. Tom respected him too much to look at his face; if there was anything Aremu’d wanted him to see, he’d’ve shown him.

Crabapple, who’d fallen asleep, must’ve sensed a change. A soft purring started up. With a pina, quavering sigh, he stretched out his paws; then he rolled languidly to one side and stretched out his legs, toes spreading out.

Despite himself, Tom smiled. He felt the other man shift, and twist a little, and sigh; he felt the brush of his lips on his neck. He shifted, too, and he held Aremu as close as he’d held him that night, and no closer. And it was warm and comfortable, and intimate in its way; and quick enough, Crabapple was dozing off again, and Tom found his eyes fluttering shut, and he found the hum starting up in his chest again, almost too quiet for anyone but Aremu to hear.

And quick enough, even that sound gave way to warm silence.

Tom couldn’t’ve counted out the seconds, or the minutes. He felt the rise and fall of Aremu’s breath against him, and, slower, his own. He might’ve drifted in and out, lulled by the muffled crackle of the woodstove. He didn’t know; he liked that he didn’t know, that the line between awake and sleep was soft and murky as the dying light. Once, he thought he might’ve dreamt of Aremu’s fingers in his hair, unwinding the braid he’d bound – or braiding it back – he didn’t know.

The candles were burning fair low when Tom finally stirred against the imbala. Crabapple snorted, resettled his head on Aremu’s knee, and slid back into sleep. His eyes adjusted to a world of long, shifting shadows, indistinct shapes picked out in warm wavery glow. He smelled the tang of cold mint tea; the metal cup nestled in his lap was cold through the scratchy wool blanket. The air was cold, he suddenly knew, stinging at his cheeks and his hand and the space between his collar and his hair, where he’d tucked it over one shoulder; and drifting in underneath the blanket Aremu’d spread over his lap, like breath made of ice.

Slow but sure, bit by bit, his mind woke up and stretched its sluggish limbs. It was picking up a couple of stray threads and crossing them over one another. He smiled despite himself, kissed Aremu again at his hairline. I’ve to go tend to the stove, he thought to say, and thought to move the blanket off his lap. But one of his hands was tangled up in the imbala’s, and the imbala was settled against him, and he didn’t want to move just yet.

So he sat and thought, his mind wandering to braids and patterns. He remembered the way Aremu had turned over his question, fair serious, and he felt a warm flush of gratefulness, one that made him bend his head and kiss the other man again. “D’you think,” he murmured into Aremu’s hair, fair soft, “d’you ever think – everythin’s a thread in some mant weave, somethin’ bigger than any man can see?”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 8th Dentis, 2716
Quarter Fords

The world was all warmth and silence, there in the drifting in-between. Aremu wanted to feel weightless; it was as if weightlessness kept trying to creep up on him – as if he would begin to lift off of the couch, to ascend slowly into the air, filled to the brim with artevium – only to feel the shift of Crabapple in his lap, the scratch of the blanket against his skin, a faint rasp of the breath through Tom’s nose – and come back down, sometimes slow and sometimes fast.

Sometimes he ached, or itched; sometimes he wanted to throw Tom off, and go stand at the window in the cold, and look out at the garden beyond. Ishma’s garden, he thought; beautiful for all the love that had gone into it. He understood, now, why it was Tom’s dream; he understood, now, why it was Tom’s home.

Sometimes he wanted to draw the other man closer – wanted to be tangled up in him, as if they could become so close that the borders which held them apart dissolved – not messily, not painfully, not torn off, but a gentle, easy melding, skin to skin.

Aremu hadn’t known he slept, but he knew when he woke that it had been only a dream; Tom’s lips brushed his head, a gentle waking that jarred him nonetheless. He shifted, breath catching in his throat, and blinked the sleepiness from his eyes. Tom’s voice was a whisper, nothing more, and for a moment Aremu thought the question a dream as well.

And then it settled onto him, slowly – eased into the depths of him, and he shivered, feeling the cold prickle of air against his bare chest, all the parts not warmed by the blanket or the arm of the man curled against him suddenly aware of the frigid air.

He thought of Tom, and the little house, and Ishma, woven together – Crabapple, spread out and purring on his lap – the soft notes of Ishma’s oud drifting through the summer air – the slow fading of the trees and plants outside, their descent into fall’s slumber, not a death but a renewing – he thought of the scars that traced a path over the other man’s body, alongside bruises and unexpectedly thick swathes of hair, sometimes over places that were hardened beneath, sometimes over places that were soft –

For a moment, Aremu felt terribly adrift. If he were a thread, he thought, it was a broken one. He had been stitched into a tapestry at birth – woven in – and then plucked out, and flicked away – as casual as a seamstress might deal with an extra bit sticking from a seam. Or perhaps he had never truly belonged, but had only lain upon the surface of it a little while, and never known the difference.

If Tom was woven into the tapestry of this place, this home – then he was not adrift, Aremu thought. He felt the racing pulse of his heart slow, and he sighed a little, thinking it over. He had a home; he had a dream of being free. He had friends who knew him – knew all of him – and trusted him despite it, or perhaps for it. He had never asked; he could not bear to know.

And how did they intersect? Aremu wished he had not opened his eyes; it had been easy, with them closed, to imagine him and Tom woven together.

“I don’t know,” Aremu said, softly, his voice scratching in his throat. The cold, he thought; the tea was tucked somewhere against him, propped against the blankets, out of the reach of Crabapple’s stretching, spreading toes, and the wicked claws that peeped out between them.

Do you want it to be? He wanted to ask, but the question stuck – not in his throat, but lower, in his chest.

Aremu eased away, slowly – cleared his throat, and untangled his hand from Tom’s and reached for the cup. He found it, and he straightened himself, and he took a sip; it was cold, but still fragrant, and it eased some of the ache. Carefully, he leaned forward, and let the cold wash over the arm and side that Tom had kept so tenderly warm. He set the cup down next to the table, and sat back, both hands resting on his own lap. He wished that he could find a joke to make; he had never had the knack of that, of turning a heavy subject into something light.

“I think…” Aremu was quiet, a little longer, even though he knew he had been quiet too long. He looked at Tom, studied him in the not-so-quiet dark, and he wished he didn’t know what it was he saw. A man, in his place; a man, who knew where he belonged. Two men, he thought, slowly – with space between them.

“Sometimes when I look at the stars,” Aremu said, softly, “they seem to be a blanket draped over the world – with holes in the weave, pricked in somehow, waiting for us to find the patterns in them. I don’t know if the patterns I find are the ones intended, if even there is intent. Maybe if the stars could look down at us, they would see us the same way.”

“Maybe not,” Aremu said, after a moment, and he looked down at away, watching as one of the candle flames flickered above a sloping heap of wax, wavering in the wind. He shrugged, softly, and shivered, cold, and didn’t try to bury himself deeper beneath the blanket.

[Tom Cooke]

Quarter Fords • Old Rose Harbor

Evening on the 8th of Dentis, 2716

It was a while before Aremu spoke. After he did, he disentangled himself from Tom, and Tom eased away, too. He shifted in his seat, rolling his shoulders; the couch creaked and popped underneath him. In the haze of the candles, and so close at hand, the imbala was a hazy shape, hard angles blurred: he leaned forward to set his cup back on the table, an arc of soft light, the long muscles in his arm and his shoulders picked out as they worked. Velvety shadows drifted underneath his brows and the hollows of his cheeks; his eyelashes cast them long. It was hard to read his face, again.

Tom sat and waited, and he didn’t mind the pause. He tucked one leg underneath him, under the blanket, and let the other slip off the cushion. Aremu turned to look at him, and he met his eye.

When it came, it wasn’t the response Tom expected; he felt a strange disappointment, like an itch he couldn’t scratch, but he felt guilty for feeling it. Like a man who’d prodded a bandage to see what was underneath. But the disappointment passed, quick enough, and Tom was grateful. Aremu’s response’d been thoughtful, and graceful, and once again — as he had many times before — he didn’t once take him for a mung, or talk to him like he wouldn’t understand. He was left with the desire to hang onto each word, more precious because they were the ones Aremu’d chosen to give him. He'd respond on the note Aremu had left.

He found himself shutting his eyes, almost involuntarily. Aremu’s low voice drifted out between them, with its quiet-soft, lilting consonants. Tom’s brow furrowed; a troubled line tugged at the jagged scar a rapier’d made there maw ago. Even as he trailed off, even as he offered, Maybe not, like the guttering of a candle, the image was imprinted against the backs of his eyelids.

For a moment, the night sky in his mind’s eye flipped; the dark was solid, the stars pinprick holes. There was something sad about his expression. He imagined flooding the silhouetted blanket of the sky with light, and wondered what you’d see.

As he thought, he idly ran his fingers along the thick length of braid over his shoulder.

“That night,” he rasped, looking askance at a low-burning candleflame, “it looked so. You’d’ve thought the world was upside down, if you didn’t see the stars overhead, wi’ all the lights of the harbor — bits an’ pieces of the city, you could pick ’em out like constellations. Except they was movin’.”

His fingertips reached the bottom of his braid, and he held the little tuft of hair for a moment. He thought how easy it’d be to disentangle it, spread the hair back out loose; there was no tie to hold it in place. Instead, he found his fingers wandering back up. It felt precious. How close he’d come to unbraiding it scared him, though it’d only been an idle urge.

He looked over at Aremu, a smile tugging at his lips. “If it’s us lookin’ up at the stars, and the stars lookin’ down at us, maybe we ain’t the threads; maybe we’re the spaces in-between ’em, too. Or maybe we’re the light underneath the weave, shinin’ out of the holes.” His hand left the braid and wandered down to Crabapple, flopped on his side like a landed fish. He gave the cat a little scratch behind the ears, then laughed softly. “Maybe not,” he repeated, a playful note in his voice, and turned away.

He shifted the blanket off his legs, uncrossing them and stretching the sore muscles. Crabapple, whose erse’d wiggled itself onto his thigh, grunted protest at being displaced. Tom set one foot and then the other on the cold hardwood, gingerly, feeling the cold press the bruised, calloused soles of his feet and ache up his ankles. The couch creaked as he set himself on its edge, and he paused. He saw the imbala shiver, but he didn’t move to warm him.

“I’ve to go tend the stove,” he said softly. He sat there, one hand on the edge of the cushion, close enough to brush Aremu’s thigh but not quite touching. He looked at Aremu, even and calm, but with a question in his dark eyes.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 8th Dentis, 2716
Quarter Fords

Aremu smiled, looking back at Tom, at his description of seeing the Rose from the air. There was a feeling of anticipation in his arm – a feeling as if he’d lifted up and reached to touch the other man – but he didn’t follow it through, and held instead, still beneath the blanket, watching Tom play with the end of the braid.

The silhouette of the city, Aremu thought, pricked out in light. He knew – he understood now – that Tom would not like to fly. All the same, something in his heart stirred, and he wished he could explain to him the beauty the world below when you flew – the tapestry of it, stitched together, islands rising out of nowhere in the midst of the sea – towns creeping out between dunes in the desert, the long winding snakes of Hulali’s waters – farms and fields, like strange tapestries stitched together by hard-working hands – and above it all, the sky, clouds during the day and stars at night –

Aremu smiled a little more when Tom smiled, and a little more again when he laughed; he liked what the other man had done with what he’d offered. Woven, he thought idly; taken the threads of it, and woven it into something lovelier. He stroked Crabapple on Aremu’s lap, and eased himself out from under the blankets. Aremu had never been shy about admiring him, and he was not now; he watched Tom shift his feet to the floor – shift himself to the edge of the couch –

Tom turned and looked back at him. Aremu held still on the cushions a long moment, cold breath rasping in and out of his lungs. It had grown cold, he thought; yes. He could see Tom’s hand on the cushion, just shy of his leg. He could see Tom, waiting.

You’d like it, Aremu wanted to tell him. You’d like it – flying – if you got used to it. If you weren’t already so tied to the ground, so woven in. The constellations above and below – the storms – the freedom of it. The Rose doesn’t have to be the only place – doesn’t have to – I could –

“I’ll come,” Aremu said, softly. He didn’t know why. He thought it would be easier to leave Crabapple on the blanket and wriggle himself out, but when he slid the wool down to where he’d been, the cat got up anyway, hopped off onto the floor, and wandered away with a sulky lash of tail.

Aremu eased himself off the couch, and shivered a little more, goosebumps pricking over his bare flesh. The floor was cold against his feet, painfully so, and something about the touch of the air made him want to sneeze. He followed Tom into the kitchen, out of the wavering candlelight, through the dark; it was still warmer there, even if the stove needed tending.

Aremu found the pants and sweater he’d discarded, and eased them back on, and he watched Tom stoke the fire. He crossed his arms over his chest, tucking his hands both beneath them, trapped against his sides, and shivered.

“I think…” Aremu turned the words over in his mind, slow and careful; tried to taste them, first, as if he could know how it would feel to give them shape. Sometimes they drifted out into the air differently than he’d intended; sometimes they seemed to settle on whomever they were offered to in an entirely different form.

“Some of the stars move,” Aremu threw the words he’d planned away and began again. He wasn’t sure why, but he couldn’t look at Tom; he drifted, to the frosted over windowpane, and studied it, as if he could see anything outside in the night. “Others don’t. I’ve always – ” He bit the words off as if he could take them back, and swallowed them down.

“Maybe they’d see us like that too,” Aremu tried instead, and he still didn’t look at Tom; he still didn’t move closer to the warmth of the stove. His eyes fluttered shut for a moment, and he wanted to –

The imbala let out a little sigh, clouding the glass even further; he could see the spray of breath as he exhaled, but then it was gone, melded into what was already there.

“I do want to try the chan,” Aremu said, softly. He tried to remember the words Tom had offered him about how it would be; he couldn’t, not quite. He thought he knew the gist of them, though, and he went with that instead. “Especially – especially if it’d let me – us… let us see more of the pattern.” He looked back at Tom, then, slowly, and came a little closer, back towards the heat, and shivered a little more.