[Mature] Just as It Was

[Tom Cooke]

Home • Quarter Fords

Morning on the 28th of Yaris, 2716

E
ggs might’ve melted away. So might everything’ve; ‘cause he thought of tossing a die and seeing where it landed, and a broken mirror, too, and he slid back and forth between them, not sure whether it was one or the other or both seemed most right to him.

He wasn’t a man who knew nothing about things like this, but he thought it was so, sometimes, with drink – you got drunk enough and looked in the mirror, it might’ve been cracked. He’d been hit so many times his face was funny and lopsided; he could see different men in every piece of it, a different man looking down at his bare chest, a different man looking down at his hands or at his hands on Aremu’s or at his fingers digging into his thigh. And underneath the pieces?

Is it just us, then? Men like us? Is it the qalqa? Is it the blood on our hands, shatters us, or was we meant to be like this?

Eggs might’ve melted away behind, caught so; ‘cause he couldn’t stop looking at Aremu, his head bowed, for all Tom couldn’t read a damn thing into his face.

Does it trouble you, this talk? he wanted to ask. They was men, they was; there was no asking such questions.

Maybe he should’ve; he’d not felt so, drunk, the night they’d climbed up to the aeroship. Nor’d he felt so standing with him on the platform. He’d scarce known him, then, and now he knew him less. Funny, how you knew somebody less, the longer you knew him. Men especially, seemed like to him.

“Mirror, I reckon,” he said, soft and low, finding himself a step closer to the imbala than he’d been. “Every maw’s another crack, oes?”

He smiled, his eyes fixed on Aremu’s face; his eyes was still fixed there when Aremu’s rose to meet them. He didn’t know what to say or to feel. His mouth half-opened, then shut; the set of his lips was soft, the set of his face slack. Aremu took his hands, gentle, and he didn’t look nowhere but his face.

He didn’t turn it round, didn’t take Aremu’s in his and stroke them, or kiss them, or set them anywhere on him and pull the other man closer. He let Aremu hold his hands; he wasn’t sure why, but he liked it, being held, quiet and still. Felt like a bird in a nest.

Felt like a lot of things.

Didn’t want him to let go. “Glad of it,” he murmured dumbly, knowing not to reach for the hands as they slipped away. He smiled at the brush of lips on his cheek, and hung there ‘til he realized what he’d said.

He could smell the faint edge of burning. “Oh,” he said, “wo chet – shit,” and turned. “Shiiiiit,” he breathed, yanking the pan off the stove.

No bright circles of yolks on top, though he’d known better than to expect that. Only yellow was the broken yolks slurring about one side, leaking in-between. A couple of the eggs stayed fair separate; mostly, they was a flooding pancake of white, crusted black round the edges.

“Epaemo, dove,” he said, setting the pan aside. He scratched his head, loosing a few strands of hair. There was red in his cheeks. “Should leave such things to a man as knows how to cook,” he murmured, scratching in his beard now; he sucked at a tooth. “I reckon – them that’re in the middle…”

Couldn’t bring himself to look at Aremu, not at first. He could still feel the ghosts of those hands on his; if he shut his eyes, he’d think his hands was somebody else’s. One shard of the mirror, that feeling.

He thought of it, and smiled slow-like, and looked at Aremu. “There’s bread an’ cheese, too,” he offered, sheepish, “an’ apples.” You’ll stay? he wanted to ask, but couldn’t bring himself to. “If it was ever my fami's qalqa, it ain't been for some time,” he joked instead, trying on a smile.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Morning, 28 Yaris, 2716
Tom and Jaeli’s House, Quarter Fords

Something about those words, in Tom’s high breathy voice, made Aremu want to shiver. Every maw - year, he knew, though he couldn’t remember how - another crack. For a moment he could see himself gleaming, and each scar seemed to him a place where he had shattered.

More than one per year, he wanted to say.

Was it that way? Was it slow and steady? Did the cracks start as one and spiderweb out, like a windshield hit too hard, a rock embedded in it and the slow steady inexorable pressure of time? Or was it more sudden than that?

Did you shatter all at once, Aremu knew he would never ask. I think maybe I did - or maybe I was born that was, and it wasn’t that I shattered, but that I looked down, for the first time, and knew it. Was I like this, then, or did it grow worse over time? I don’t know; I’ve never wanted to look too closely.

What if you don’t want to see him, the whole man? What if it’s better to be shattered than to be whole? Have they thought of that, Tsusi and your Old Yarrow? That there are men who shouldn’t know themselves? What if the shattering keeps you safe - from yourself?

It was too much; maybe it had always been too much. He knew better than to let holding Tom so comfort him, and yet it did, more than he could say, not least because he thought he saw understanding written on Tom’s face, between his scars, and he was scared to think what Tom read written between the lines of his words, what he understood in the spaces among them, how transparent he was, still, in the clear morning light.

The stars are always there, Aremu knew; it’s just that the sun drowns them out during the day.

Shit, Tom said, when he turned away, and Aremu grinned, even though the half-note of panic wasn’t really funny, even though the look on Tom’s face wasn’t really funny. Except that it was, by comparison, after the deep-set ache he had never known how to brush away, the one which echoed all through him. He wondered - if he had ever been whole, would it have been so easy to crack?

And by comparison burned eggs seemed like nothing, seemed funny, even though Tom’s dark cheeks were blushing red, beneath the scars and the beard.

Aremu wrapped his arms around Tom, then, and squeezed lightly, and kissed the other man’s cheek once more. “I’ll eat them all, if you want me to,” he said, smiling, his chin just barely tucked onto Tom’s shoulder, his body just pressing into the side of the other man’s. “And bread and cheese too, and apples.”

It felt easy, then; through the doubt and the uncertainty and all the not knowing, through the thick Tek accent which he did not have to focus quite so hard to understand anymore, through all the things Tom didn’t understand and the ones he didn’t know he didn’t. Looking down over Tom’s shoulders at the eggs - not as bad, he almost said, as what some of Niccolette cooked, when she first started out - none of the rest seemed to matter. They were here; Tom had burned the eggs, and he felt badly for it; maybe this, at least, was something he could fix.

The stove was off, now, and Aremu thought that getting cold wouldn’t help the eggs, but he doubted that it would make them much worse, really. He lowered his lips to Tom’s neck, this time, kissing softly; he made his way around the bruise, slow and careful, and his hands crept forward, searching out scars like cracks, avoiding the bruises still sticky with traces of tenderness from the night before. He wandered, very slowly; it was not purposeless, but it was wandering all the same.

This, he wanted to tell Tom, this; this is how I feel. He wanted to share it with the other man; he wanted to take the blush away from him, as much as he liked the sight of it. He had two hands, and his lips, and he thought - just maybe - maybe they might be enough.

[Tom Cooke]

Home • Quarter Fords

Morning on the 28th of Yaris, 2716

D
idn’t know what kind of look he expected Aremu to have, when he looked over. Wasn’t a grin he’d thought he’d see, and the sight of it made him grin a little, too; his face felt sloppy, like all them bits of glass was reflecting wrong, like there was an eye over here and a cheek over there and none of ‘em could figure out what to do together.

Maybe it was ‘cause for a few minutes, there’d been nothing but the eggs with their glistening black outsides, and a feeling like flying run to falling.

Wasn’t there, that piece of glass – he thought he could find it someplace, the one you could see him in, standing at the stove, cracking eggs into a skillet, doing it careful and precise like he might kill or make love. Showing Aremu all that shit wasn’t all he was, maybe, if the other man even cared; and he thought he did – he thought without knowing why, like in a dream – thought maybe it’d mean something to Aremu, the sight of him cooking him eggs.

He could laugh it off, he thought, like a man. He kept running his fingers through his beard, scratching, sucking at his tooth. He laughed a soft husk in his chest, almost but not all the way a laugh.

Aremu’s arms slipped round his shoulders, all sun-warmed skin. He felt the brush of lips at his cheek, and the chin resting soft on his shoulder. He turned his head, just enough so he could rest his forehead against Aremu’s.

“Oh, dove,” he laughed, soft, his eyes shut, “they’re fuckin’ laoso.” He cupped Aremu’s cheek with his hand; he kissed his forehead, then his lips, firmer, still smiling.

It was a crooked sort of smile. Don’t want you to eat ‘em, he wanted to say, or some part of him did. Some cracked, smudged-up piece of him. Don’t want you to eat ‘em, if they ain’t the kind of eggs you want. Want to’ve made ‘em right; want to’ve been the kind of man as could.

He wasn’t sure if he heard Aremu laugh back, or if it was just him, feeling heavy and buoyant all at once. Something frayed about the laughter.

For me? he wanted to ask. You’d eat ‘em for me? Why d’you want to do that? Why d’you think I want you to do that?

For this? ‘Cause you want me?

Or for – me?

He was already feeling the other man’s fingers wind round his side, another hand in the small of his back. Fingertips brushed near the waist of his trousers, and he couldn’t help it. His head emptied all out, and the warmth dropped through him, setting everything on fire. Aremu was pressed up against him; he’d’ve been able to feel it, he knew well enough.

He’d stumbled a little, back against the counter. He was kissing him harder now, and his own hands were wandering, too.

Another reflection in another piece, maybe. All that talk was getting messed up in his head, muddled like kofi and spices. You wanted to stay, didn’t you, he ached to say, if there’d been room amid the warm breath and the gasping, the struggle to wrestle off his trousers. Last night – ne for this – you wanted to stay, you wanted to sleep in my bed, you…

Why?

Too late now to draw back, to ask; wasn’t sure he could’ve, or how he could’ve, and he didn’t want to. It was funny, doing this with the eggs cooling on the stove, with the metal kofi cups rattling on the counter. Maybe it was like the cinnamon and the cloves, maybe he couldn’t separate what he wanted from what he wanted.

He wanted this, leastways, and so did Aremu, and the other wants didn’t need to make so much sense, just now.