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.