[Mature] Just as It Was

[Tom Cooke]

Home • Quarter Fords

Morning on the 28th of Yaris, 2716

H
e didn’t remember much as came before falling asleep.

Don’t look back, he remembered thinking, soupy-tired. He’d led the way, as if he’d never led it before, as if they’d not done many a thing in that same bed in that same room; felt like a different room now, a different house, a different hand wrapped in Aremu’s. Don’t look back, something told him, don’t look back, don’t look back, or he’ll go.

He remembered his hands being almost too tired to take off his trousers, to unbuckle his belt and push them off. He couldn’t remember letting go the imbala’s hand; he remembered the empty-head quiet afterward, when he thought maybe the soft creaking weight on the bed behind him was a dream, when he thought maybe it was a ghost and he was already gone.

He remembered, Yes, echoed through his head, and the hundred scratching little paws it’d woke up. Yes, what? What’d he asked of Aremu? Oes, he’d thought, climbing into bed, stripped of his clothes. Oes, he’d thought, I’m a man – I could, one last, maybe, if…

He’d found a warm body instead with his hands, and curled himself round it like the body of a lover. He’d felt the softness of Aremu’s hair against the prickle of his beard; he’d buried his lips in it, breathed in the scent of him, and shut his eyes.

He remembered dreams.

He couldn’t separate his waking in the night from the dreams; he couldn’t’ve said which was which, or if he’d dreamt, or if he’d ever woke.

Once, he’d snorted so hard he’d woke himself up, and he’d heard the breathing beside him hitch and then smooth out. Once, he’d woke to the numb prickle of one of his arms underneath Aremu, and he’d grunted and shifted and thought he’d heard a noise from the other man, except neither of them spoke, and he found a better way to sleep. Once, he’d woke to the gentle tug of a blanket, and relaxed his fist in the wool where he’d tugged back in his sleep.

Once, he’d woke to the shift of a lover on the mattress, and empty space where there’d been a man. “Aremu,” he’d whispered to the dark, reaching, “Aremu,” and the noise’d melted the emptiness away, and he’d woke to find neither of them’d moved, only he was holding the imbala a little closer.

Once, he’d woke – he thought – to an empty bed, smooth, as if nobody’d lain there at all. He’d woke to a rapping at the window, tap tap tap bang bang, and a familiar voice, and thought, You know where the key is; I took your key back, but we left the spare where it’s always been –

And the rapping had stopped. That was the last time; he’d felt a knot of sadness, but sleep had dragged him back under, or maybe more dreams.

When he woke, it was to the prickle of drying sweat on his shoulders, and the light slanting in. His eyelids felt stuck; when he blinked them open, the light and the ceiling and the drifting motes might’ve rippled and spun, or maybe it was his head, feeling like a cup of water tilted and spilling, slowly.

He shut his eyes. One of his arms was warm, pressed up against bare skin underneath a blanket. His chest was bare, and one leg, and the blanket rumpled where he must’ve kicked it off him.

He shifted, pushing himself up just enough to see the light catch on the muscles of Aremu’s back, traced with a few pale, familiar scars. His eyes came into focus – never so much the shape of him wasn’t blurry, blurrier than the dark doorway to the kitchen behind, or the burnt sticks of incense and the half-empty bottle of whisky on the bedside table. But he came into focus, and Tom could hear the soft deep whoosh of his breath, in and out, and watch him rise and fall with it.

He settled back down, the thick tangle of his hair cushioning his head, and wrapped an arm round the other man.

Only then’d he realized, and something like shame tugged in his stomach. Had Aremu meant to stay ‘til the morning? Had he someplace to be?

“Dove,” he murmured, easing away gentle-like; he ran a hand over his shoulder, and didn’t dare to kiss the back of his neck, for all he wanted to.

[Aremu Ediwo]

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

Aremu slept.

If he dreamt, he did not remember it, or so he told himself. His dreams were color and light, nothing more, if they were even that; they were vague impressions, and he could put them aside, when he woke stiff and strange in the middle of the night, all the muscles of his back tight, and his shoulder, too, where it pressed into the bed. He shifted, then; he turned, and he heard the snuffle of Tom’s breath at his shoulder, and he forgot his dreams, and so he could sleep again.

If he dreamt again they went away, drifted into nothing, not even the memory of stars shining in the sky outside, reaching silver-striped fingers down into the room and cupping his cheek, breathing whispered words into his ear. He woke, but not so often, and always he slept again, even when the faintest blue tinge of morning light replaced the starlight drifting in through the window, with Tom’s warmth at his back, and one of the other man’s arms draped over his side, a soft, heavy, weight. Sometimes he was numb, beneath it; sometimes he shifted, and sometimes he didn’t.

Dove, murmured, filtered through hazy lavender light, washing over him and wrapping all around, gleaming through him; he could see it, filtered through his skin, shining on the bed beneath.

Aremu snorted, his eyes coming open. He jerked, once, his hands tightening on the blanket, and he let go, shifting, feeling the lingering warmth of Tom’s hand on his shoulder. He shifted, easing up and back against familiar pillows, rubbing his eyes with his hands, blinking something of the sleep from them.

He looked at Tom; he shifted, a little, just barely more than half upright, whatever was left of the blanket tangled in his lap, one leg wrapped up in the wool and the other bare down to mid-thigh, his torso almost entirely uncovered.

Aremu hesitated; he ran his tongue over his lips, wondering – feeling oddly self-conscious, wondering if his breath smelled, if Tom hadn’t expected him to stay this long, if he’d thought he’d wake up along – if he’d wanted to wake up alone, after all, and not with him. I can go now, he thought to offer, his eyes glancing down to skim over the pile of clothing on the floor, and he scarcely remembered removing it.

“Morning,” Aremu said, instead, softly; his voice was hoarse in his throat, and he cleared it, shifting a little more. He hesitated; he wasn’t sure.

He didn’t know; he couldn’t remember when he’d last woke in a bed like this. Most nights he slept on the ship; in Mugroba, he might sleep in some other room, and in the island, he had his own. He rarely slept outside the ship in Anaxas, not even in the house Uzoji and Niccolette kept here; he liked the Eqe Aqawe just as well, and didn’t wish to be in the midst of his friends’ marriage more often than necessary. Their house wasn’t his; he thought if he ever lost that understanding, they would all be worse off for it.

Carefully, his hand reached for Tom’s, still gauze-wrapped; his skin was sticky, still, with the residue of oil, but he moved in it easily enough, not as sore as he’d thought he might be. His other hand found Tom’s cheek, tender, remembering the bruise on his jaw and going the other way.

Tenderly – almost shyly – Aremu leaned in and brushed his lips over Tom’s. There was no wanting, no urgency, still, for all that he didn’t feel the soreness and the emptiness of the night before. He kissed him, anyway, like a greeting rather than a grabbing, and if he asked a question, it was only whether he was still welcome, here, in the gray morning light.

[Tom Cooke]

Home • Quarter Fords

Morning on the 28th of Yaris, 2716

E
ased himself up a pina after Aremu did, ‘cause he felt the swarming bleariness in his eyes and the dizziness in his head. He pushed a hand through his hair, cradling his forehead; when he opened his eyes and looked over, it was to see the other man looking at him, and he couldn’t read the expression on his face. He saw him lick his lips.

He remembered – sunk through him, burrowed itself deep – the snort, the way Aremu’s whole body’d jerked under his mant hand.

There was a mung sort of smile on his own face; he wasn’t sure where to put his lips or his eyes or any of the muscles around them, grateful as ever for the thick dark beard as covered half his face.

He thought he should look embarrassed, like any reasonable man; thought he should lower his head, say something about how he ought to get to work, which today meant find himself a bar.

Thought it must’ve been a hell of a thing to wake up next to the lumbering lump of a natt’d insisted on slathering junia all over him the night before. The memory of wrapping his arm round the imbala in his sleep brushed his mind, this time like the brush of seaweed or a fish against his ankles knee-deep in opaque water. Oes, natt, he thought, not too bright, rough sometimes and big and dumb and gentle others. What the hell’d this one think he was playing at, making eyes at him so?

Morning, Aremu said. Smile’d faltered in his beard; it twitched back to life, just like that. For all that it’d never left his eyes, so much’d he just like looking at what sleep’d done to Aremu’s eyes. And the tired cling of it about his lips, and the thoughtful lines of his forehead, and the fact there was always something a little off-balance about the way a kov looked in the morning, and he’d never thought to see him like that.

“Mornin’,” he rasped, fair still.

He felt a hand on his, crisp gauze rough on his palm; he stroked the knuckles with his thumb, automatic, and found himself unsurprised when the hand touched his cheek everywhere but the bruising. Gentle-like sort of kiss, what Aremu laid on his lips.

He kissed him back, just as gentle-like but deeper, for all his lips felt a pina cracked and his mouth was dry. He laid a hand flat on Aremu’s chest, the smooth skin warm under his fingers.

He grinned a little as he drew away, for all he knew his mouth full of crooked teeth. Never usually troubled him; what men wanted from him, was – what men wanted from him, and this, he didn’t know what to think of this.

The blanket was rumpled in Aremu’s lap, else tangled between them; he lay naked, and slow-like he drew his legs up to sit cross-legged straight beside him. He half burned up at night, and the cool air was benny now, for all the light was heating the day up: still, he shut his eyes, in spite of the pounding starting in his head, and breathed in deep, and then smiled again.

His heart thumped. “Have you…” Just kiss him again, Tom thought, just do what you know how to do; he thought he could, now, could kindle it up in himself easy enough, with help. Was easier than trying to guess what that kiss’d meant.

“Have you got someplace to be, Aremu?” His voice sounded rough to him, as if he’d not used it in a long time. “Or – d’you fancy…”

Flooding ridiculous, this was. The night itself’d been a gift; to receive and ask for more brought a bad Ever.

“Fancy stayin’ awhile?” he asked anyway. “You – you hungry?” he added, fair quiet, grin faltering. Hesitant-like.

[Aremu Ediwo]

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

Tom’s hand came up to his chest, slow, resting flat against him. Aremu wondered how well he could feel his heart pounding, a little faster than it should have been, maybe, for all that he didn’t remember the dreams he’d had before waking, but calming, slowly. Tom kissed him back, leaning into it enough to send a warm sort of thrill through Aremu, and he could feel himself waking, further, finding his way into the kiss.

This, he thought, this made sense; he understood what Tom wanted, here.

Tom drew away, and Aremu smiled at him as he sat upright; he wasn’t sure if he’d ever quite stopped smiling, even as they’d kissed, for all that maybe he should have. He liked the look of Tom’s hair in the morning; his fingers came up, brushing through the thick, tangled locks – just skimming the surface of them, really, because he wasn’t quite sure how to go deeper without pain.

Some place to be, Tom had asked. Aremu grinned at him, starting to shake his head; the other man went on, and caught him flat-footed, and Aremu blinked, sitting there, aware of the fact that his smile hadn’t faded in the least. He wasn’t sure he could’ve stopped smiling if he tried – Tom, sitting cross-legged with his bare furred chest, scars beneath the thickness of it, his hair a tousled mess and his eyes dragged heavy with sleep, smiling at him.

Aremu smiled wider; he couldn’t help it. He came closer, not so much crawling over the bed as just shifting, closing the space that hadn’t been there for more than a few minutes. He didn’t push the blanket off, but most of it fell away when he brought his legs up to sit as Tom had; one hand rested, comfortable and undemanding, on the other man’s knee.

“I don’t have to go,” Aremu said, quietly. If you want me to stay? He wanted to ask outright, but there was invitation enough in Tom’s words, the crooked little smile on his lips, the smiling light in his eyes, and Aremu didn’t think he wanted to press too hard; maybe, he thought, if he asked, Tom would take back the question he’d already asked. “Not till afternoon, really.” His thumb stroked, carefully, tentatively, over the side of Tom’s knee; his hand didn’t move inward.

He wouldn’t have asked, Aremu thought, if he didn’t want him to stay – if he didn’t want to eat something, maybe. His head was throbbing; he was glad they’d eaten the night before, but he still felt the eza rattling around somewhere inside his skull, reminding him that he didn’t drink spirits very often, these days.

Tom was hungry, he told himself; that was all. He knew where he fit in, still; he didn't want to let himself believe this changed anything. He knew too well how painful it'd be to be proven wrong.

“I’m always hungry, I think,” Aremu said, a little sheepish, his grin crooked at the edges too. “At least, I always seem to be able to eat.”

Always have been, he wanted to say; when I was a boy I’d eat every bite put before me at every meal, and sit there staring longingly at the rest until I had permission to take more. There was a year as a teenager that I spent every spare coin I had on meals, at least what I didn’t spend on qinnab or alcohol. I lived in a boarding house, then, and they fed us, but double rations for boys cost extra, and I never asked – didn’t have quite enough, either, to pay for it at the beginning of the month, when it was due, so I just ate, all the time, whatever I could afford – whatever was cheapest, although it made me sick, more than once.

And in between – Aremu’s imagination faltered there. For all that saying any of it was an idle fantasy that, in particular, he knew not to come near. He wondered, not quite for the first time, what Tom imagined of his childhood, if he imagined anything at all; he wondered what to make of Tom’s, and he didn’t imagine, either, asking.

“We call it having a hollow back, in Mugroba,” Aremu said instead, the smile over his lips soft, still. His fingers found Tom’s, and tangled up with them, and he held on a little longer, grateful for the straining.

[Tom Cooke]

Home • Quarter Fords

Morning on the 28th of Yaris, 2716

T
hat’s benny,” Tom said, barely a breath, still smiling with something like disbelief. “Fair benny.”

Don’t got to go ‘til afternoon. Must’ve been the drink; Tom felt his head was full of swimming fish, and trying to hold onto thoughts was grabbing hold of one and feeling its slick scales slither through his fingers. Aremu was smiling back at him, brighter than the soft grey light.

His hand was cool on his knee, fingertips still soft with the infusion. His thumb stroked back and forth on the inside, slow and easy.

Oes, he could’ve. Aremu’s hand didn’t make to move an inch, and still he could feel something building; some part of him, nagging alongside his hunger, wanted the hand to move up the inside of his thigh, to slip those dexterous fingers… It didn’t; it stayed where it was, stroking gentle-like. Tom felt something like the breaking and calming of a wave as he looked back at Aremu’s smile, though there was still a scatter of gooseflesh at the back of his neck.

Always hungry. A flash of white teeth, a funny crooked tilt to his lips at the edges. Tom grinned, too.

Seem to be, hey? Wasn’t sure which kind of hungry he was talking about, at first; he almost said something, then stopped, ‘cause – he remembered, hazy-blue and through a thick bleary lens, the sight of Aremu working at his mant plate the night before.

He tilted his head. “Havin’ a hollow back,” he repeated slowly, though he thought it sounded mant different from what Aremu’d said.

What hollowed a man out, to make room for all that hunger?

Eat like a banderwolf when I can, but don’t feel it so well myself, he thought to say. Big man like me, you wouldn’t know, would you? Josie and all them’re always on about my big appetite, and I reckon if they hadn’t got started feeding me whenever I swung by as a lad, I’d not be half what I am.

Like a chimneysweep, he’d thought then, watching him mop at his rice and lamb and flatbread. Ten, he thought, unbidden. Ten.

Funny, he couldn’t think when Aremu’s hand’d left his knee; he’d not been paying attention. When it found his hand, he held tight, and grinned.

He had to let go once he’d eased himself off the bed, bending to pick up his trousers. Didn’t bother with the shirt; it’d start heating up soon, this dizzy parched Yaris day.

“Heard it called a barrel wi’ no bottom, here,” he said, smiling across. His eyes softened; he reached out with his hand to take the other man’s again. “Reckon I like hollow back better. Seems t’ me more…” His smile faltered.

Wasn’t sure why he stopped. He thought he was going to say something he oughtn’t’ve, or maybe ask a question as cut too deep, and meeting Aremu’s dark eyes stopped him. Tom’d not opened his mouth again, but he smiled, soft on his lips, and he stood there fair still holding Aremu’s hand.

If the other man let him, he’d guide him into the kitchen, where the smell of junia still hung pale and sweet in the breezy air. The light as came through the open kitchen window was turning; it caught gold on the stretch of a spiderweb, though its master was elsewhere.

Stove was still burning, to stave off the night chill. Was down to murmuring coals, though. He went to stoke it, first.

“You take kofi, Aremu?” Once it was out, something about saying it embarrassed him.

If Jaeli was here, they’d be roasting the beans and grinding them up; Tom thought of the sad, battered tin on the counter, the grounds of a few days ago.

He cleared his throat as he rose, rolling his shoulders. “Always – reminds me,” he added softer, running a hand along his jaw, “I’m hungry, when I need the remindin’.” He turned, and looked at Aremu maybe the first time since the bedroom; somehow, it still felt like a dream. “Wouldn’t’ve said I was, but – smell that, the Fords in the mornin’.” He smiled again, tentative, breathing in deep.

[Aremu Ediwo]

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

A barrel with no bottom, Aremu thought to say, the same way Tom had repeated hollow back a moment ago. He’d pulled his pants on as well, thinking to do as the other man had, and was just standing there in the midst of the other man’s room, not so far from Tom.

Tom’s hand had found his, and he was gazing down at him, soft but intent, as if he was trying to find something there, too. Aremu’s fingers curled through his; he didn’t know what was on his face, or what words Tom had been planning to find, but they drained away.

He didn’t repeat it, either. He had a vague memory of light shining through his emptiness, and he brushed it aside. He didn’t remember his dreams; what would be the point?

Tom’s hand was soft in his; they went back into the kitchen, together. It seemed to Aremu the same as how they had left it the night before; he couldn’t have said why it felt different.

Tom went to busy himself at the stove. Aremu went to the table; he took the battered tin of arnica oil, secured the yellow twine around it, and put it back where he’d found it the day before. Only then did he sit, not as carefully as he had, in the same seat from the night before.

“Yes, thanks,” Aremu said.

All Mugrobi take kofi, or nearly all, he didn’t say. There wasn’t any point, he thought, and something about it felt cruel. Tom was smiling a little tentatively, crouching over by the stove, the stirring up of the fire done; he turned back to look at him, smiling, with something uncertain in his eyes, a bit soft.

I don’t want to impose, Aremu wanted to say. He remembered the whisper of benny on Tom’s breath, so soft he’d felt it as much as heard it. Fair benny, Tom had said, and it hadn’t needed much translation.

Can I help? Aremu could have asked. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t. He knew how to roast and grind the beans, the amount that two men would need for kofi between them, the use of the eschana on the stove; there didn’t seem to be any difference between what Tom did here and what he would have done on the Eqe Aqawe.

Aremu breathed in deep; he smelled it, then, drifting through the window with the gold light. He grinned; something in his shoulders eased.

“Spices, too, I think,” Aremu said, a little wistful. His gaze wandered to the window, and then back to Tom. “It smells almost like home,” he said, a little more quietly, smiling very softly.

It cuts through the headache, I think, Aremu thought to say, glancing over at Tom again. He couldn’t find the words. His tongue felt oddly fuzzy; he’d been much more aware of the throbbing in his head once he’d actually gotten up. He smiled; he thought to come out of the chair, but he didn’t, somehow, instead.

“Whatever the night before, there’s always kofi in the morning,” Aremu offered, instead. He grinned, tentatively, not sure how it’d be received. It was good, he wanted to say, last night; I’m glad you asked me to sleep here. I liked it, he wanted to say, sleeping with you. I didn’t think I’d sleep, but I did, and it wasn’t half bad, better then I have most nights.

Good or bad, he wanted to say. I feel it on the Eqe Aqawe, after the sort of long nights when only the memory of all my years had me conceived the dawn will come again, and when even then I doubt, because the darkness seems unbearably endless.

We used to say such things at Thul’Amat, trying not to laugh too loudly at breakfast on the days when the matron had a headache too, comparing notes and telling stories of jumps we’d missed or made, of girls - or boys - or alcohol or other, stranger things. I never knew what was a truth or a lie; there was a knack to the telling that they shared, that I missed.

But I was at the table still, and that was enough. Aremu glanced down at the scarred, battered wood beneath his fingertips, and he smiled.

[Tom Cooke]

Home • Quarter Fords

Morning on the 28th of Yaris, 2716

C
ould imagine it, this. Cutting up some the bread they’d left, the cheese and the apples fresh from the market. Shitty Anaxi kofi, such as he could make it. ‘Til the afternoon, he’d said, but Tom thought he knew better; the imbala’s smile seemed like a bitter memory, like something he’d thought he’d seen, a puzzle he’d put together wrong and had to put together again. Aremu knew what he was, leastways, and what he wasn’t.

Still, smiling at his thanks, Tom’d half-turned to get hama’s eschana from under the counter, to reach for the tin, when he heard Aremu’s voice again, soft behind him. He rose up with it, setting it on the counter, then paused.

Breeze whisked in more smells from the window. Tom shut his eyes and breathed them.

The kofi was rich and strong enough it was one of the few things he could smell, but he couldn’t split the smell up. He almost said something about the smell of the spices when he heard that sad tilt of a smile even in the shape of Aremu’s words. Almost like home; almost.

The light caught on the soft clay swell of the eschana, traced with old wika patterns he didn’t know. Its spout cast a swan’s-neck shadow across the scarred countertop.

He found the pan hanging by the stove instead, first, and the fresh pale beans in a jar tucked underneath the shelf of spices. He set the pan to heating, feeling the prickle of eyes on the back of his neck. He measured out what he thought was enough beans, careful-like; he leaned on the counter, listening to the old wood creak, and looked back at Aremu.

Whatever the night before, he was saying, grinning. He grinned back, tentative, though he couldn’t keep the flicker of uncertainty off his face.

Didn’t feel you toss too bad, he wanted to say. You sleep well? He remembered the way he’d jerked under his hand, the soft snort caught in his throat. He barely remembered Aremu’s warm breath on his neck, his arms wrapped round him. More nightmares? He could’ve softened the question with a kiss, maybe, bending close. Like he wasn’t him and Aremu wasn’t Aremu; like they was the sort of men who did that sort of thing. Sorry, he remembered.

What does he dream of? Tom wondered. What does any man with blood on his hands dream of?

There’s always kofi in the morning, he thought instead, and looked at the pan and the beans he’d measured out.

Burnt kofi, maybe. “I, uh,” he said, grin a little embarrassed, scratching at his beard. “Bein’ honest, my smeller ain’t too good, since –” He gestured at his busted-up nose and laughed; laugh took some of the edge off. “Usually I ain’t the one who roasts ‘em an’ all that fair macha shit, but I…”

Already said too much. Shit, he wanted to repeat, like it was some kind of way out of talking. He remembered last time, Jaeli sweeping in at what Tom reckoned was a laoso smell; he’d not noticed the smoke ‘til he’d stepped out of it.

Wasn’t sure why he kept it up now. Almost like home, he kept thinking. The tense muscles of Aremu’s back in the soft blue phosphor light. The way all of ‘em jerked tense again, waking up next to a big ugly natt.

The beans he shuffled into the pan, then, to whatever Ever they was bound, and found the whisk.

Something calming about the shuffling sound; the breeze picked up, whisked the thin old drapes, and something about it eased his nerves. He caught sight of the arnica oil where Aremu’d left it, and remembered how gentle-like the other man’d brushed past behind him, when he was stoking the stove.

“What d’you…” He wet his lips, lowering his head. “What spices d’you smell?” he asked, softer. He glanced over, flashing a brief shy smile; he lowered his head and let a tangle of hair fall between them. He fixed his eyes on the beans.

[Aremu Ediwo]

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

Aremu wasn’t exactly sure what to say. Smelling’s not so important, he wanted to offer, but it didn’t seem right with the hoarseness in Tom’s voice, the edge of the grin that Aremu didn’t know how to read. Tom laughed at it himself, and Aremu’s face twitched at a smile, but he didn’t quite know what to make of it.

There’s always a price, he wanted, too, to say; he thought of looking down at the scars on his hands and arms, at the bandage wound around him, at the bruise like a thumbprint creeping up out of the edge of his waistband. Can you begrudge it, if you’re a man who made his choices, or a woman who made hers? Once you know it, once you’ve paid, what’s the point in going back and arguing, in telling yourself you wouldn’t have, if only you’d known?

Does it creep up on you? Did it come slowly, the smells fading a bit with each break, or was it all at once, that one day before a fight you could smell, and the next day, after, you couldn’t? Aremu didn’t know if he wanted the answer; he didn’t know what he thought would be worse, the slow, steady reckoning with the price, or the sudden closing of it down. He thought he’d prefer the second; he wondered if it was selfish.

The time had passed, and he hadn’t said anything, and he knew he couldn’t, now, after letting it go so long.

Tom was shuffling the beans about in the pan; there were the soft beginnings of crackles and pops, and the faintest smell of kofi beginning to rise from the stove. Aremu relaxed into the sound and smell of it, easing back against the chair. He didn’t know which kitchen in brought him to; the ship, he thought, most of all, because there were no windows, and scarcely any ventilation, and so the whole of the small space would fill with the smell.

When Tom spoke, it caught him by surprise. He glanced up; he saw a flash of a smile, and then a thick curtain of Tom’s hair, dark and tangled over his cheek, no more than a hint of beard and tanned skin below, Yaris-dark, by Anaxi standards. He ached to – he kept his hands on the table and in his lap, and he didn’t rise.

“I uh,” Aremu glanced up at the window. “I’m not too good at picking them out either,” he said, quietly. “But it’s not any one of them, for me; we don’t eat them separate, much, anyway. There’s a mixing of spices and flavors, in Thul Ka especially. In kofi you might put cinnamon, black pepper, ginger, nutmeg, cardamom, clove, but even two who use the same combination might favor different amounts.” He'd learned the names mostly for Niccolette's sake; she liked to know exactly how much of everything was in every dish, and menda had been no exception.

He fell quiet; both of his hands were in his lap, now, curled together. He looked back at Tom; all he could see, still, was the thick fall of black hair between them, and he felt a prickling unease. Just a few minutes ago, Tom’d seemed to want him to stay; maybe it would have been better to ask, Aremu thought with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He would have known what to do with the no; it was the yes that he couldn’t seem to sort out.

“I wouldn’t know what to think of them separate,” Aremu said; his voice was a little quieter, now, his gaze lowered. “I suppose I only know them tangled,” he glanced up at Tom, at his thick dark hair and the faint gleam of an eye that showed when he shifted, and then back down. “It’s good though, mixed together. I like it.” He was quiet; for all that it would be a warm day, the morning breeze was swift and cold, and Aremu shivered in the midst of it, goosebumps pricking against his skin.

It wouldn’t’ve been so bad to hold each other, he wanted to say, a little longer. Would it?

[Tom Cooke]

Home • Quarter Fords

Morning on the 28th of Yaris, 2716

C
ouldn’t see Aremu. Better that way, he reckoned; he couldn’t see the look on his face, the set of his shoulders, couldn’t see what his hands were doing against the old scarred wood of his table. Couldn’t see if there was pity or disinterest or surprise, or that look a man gets on his face when he’s been asked a question so flooding mung he’s got no damn clue what to say.

I uh. Tom shut his eyes; wasn’t more than a hitch of his stirring. The pop and crackle made him open them again, and swallow whatever he’d felt. There was dark spots on the beans, and some of them’d taken on a soft light brown.

Aremu wound on, softspoken and even. The shame made it hard to listen, at first, but the careful words with their familiar lilt won his ear in the end, whatever he thought of himself.

He found himself smiling, slow-like. He glanced over his shoulder again, caught a glimpse of Aremu sitting at the table with his hands in his lap, one marked white with the bandage. The imbala’d just looked away, down, and what he took from that glance was only the shadows of lashes on his cheek, the set of his lips he couldn’t read. He looked back down at the kofi beans, watching them roast careful-like.

There was a long silence, he couldn’t’ve said how long. He’d’ve said he was a quiet man; he’d never had the knack for silences, neither, ‘less they portended the spilling of sap. Never had the knack for silences with a lover, when there was no hands nor lips to fill them.

The hiss and crackle and pop was louder now, and Aremu’s voice was a soft rushing underneath it. He smiled again, soft and sad, and nodded slowly.

“I do too,” he said.

He’d thought he was sure to burn them. Some was darker than others, but none was fair dark – none dark enough to bitter and sour – and it looked not too much unlike hama’s, in the end, when he took the pan away from the stove.

“Reckon –” His voice shook, almost broke. He cleared his throat. “Reckon the ginger, it – changes the cinnamon, an’ the cardamom an’ all,” he said. “None of ‘em’re what they was alone.”

He’d to have his back to the other man, to grind the beans. His muscles ached as he set about it. Something about the sight of his hand tight on the pestle made him feel strange; something about the motion, rhythmic, driving. Was a soft sound, clack, clack, clack, but he felt the beans crushing underneath, cracking and dissolving.

The smell was sap-loud now, as he did, and he breathed it in, whatever of it he could. He looked over at the pina jars on the spice shelf, the cardamom pods dark and wrinkled, the delicate anise.

Are men so? You see a man in one place, with blood on his hands, he’s one man; you see a man in the bed with a lover, he’s another man. You never see the man alone, just what’s around him. All too mixed together to split apart.

Pestle clacked the mortar, ground the beans, and he grunted at an ache in his shoulder.

When he eased away from the grounds, he looked over his shoulder at Aremu; he rested his arms a moment, looking back out the window with his hands braced against the counter. He breathed in the Yaris breeze again. Cold, for all the sun promised heat.

Tangled, he thought – thought of legs and arms, fingers tangled in hair, teeth.

I’ve to go and fill the eschana, he thought to say. Don’t look back, he thought – don’t look…

“Like a garden, I reckon,” he said. “Can’t tell the sage from the lavender, always, but they’re all there. I like ‘em together.” He found it in him to turn, somehow, to look at Aremu sitting at the table, lit by the dawning sun. He padded closer, quiet-like; he wasn’t smiling, but he bent to brush his lips over the other man’s scalp, searched for a hand with his own.

[Aremu Ediwo]

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

Aremu thought that however the words had come out, it wasn’t how he’d meant them; it wasn’t how he’d thought to say them. He didn’t know himself, anymore, if it was only spices he meant, for all that he thought he wanted it to be, or that he should have wanted it to be. That, too, Aremu thought, with his heart like a stone sinking in his chest, was all mixed up.

But there was a smile in Tom’s voice when he answered; Aremu was startled to realize he knew the sound, even with the other man’s face covered. He found that he didn’t need to see it to smile, too, and something eased in the tight knot of him.

“No,” Aremu agreed, quietly, with Tom’s careful words, always so thoughtfully given, taking what he had offered and making sense of it, as easily as if it had made sense all along. “And there’s no taking them apart, then, once it’s done.” His throat moved in a swallow.

The beans smelled well, still, when Tom took them from the heat; there was no black smoke, nothing like the smell of burning. The sound of the mortar and pestle filled the air, heavy and rhythmic and even, and Tom grunted underneath it, softer but no less heavy.

The smell filled the kitchen now, small, and Aremu let out a tiny little sigh. It had only drifted in, before, but it made itself at home now, and he couldn’t have stopped smelling it even if he’d wanted to.

Tom came over to him, speaking of the garden. Like you and Jaeli, Aremu thought to say, and jealousy was bitter on his tongue. He couldn’t have explained it; he knew this place wasn’t his, either, no more than Uzoji and Niccolette’s, no more than the table at Thul’Amat a lifetime ago. “Growing together,” he agreed.

If there was a place that was his, Aremu thought, it was the engine room of the Eqe Aqawe, because he’d built and rebuilt it time and again; there was a bond there that had nothing to do with ownership. Perhaps the thought of it should have been sad; he found it comforting, instead.

Tom’s lips brushed his head; Aremu’s fingers wove through his, and he lifted their hands, interlocked, to his lips, and brushed them over Tom’s knuckles, and maybe, whether he meant to or not, over his own as well.

They didn’t speak of it, but they neither of them let go, and when Tom moved away Aremu rose and followed him, out to the water pump with the eschana in Tom’s hand. He let go only when he had to, and leaned back beneath the first rays of sunlight, closing his eyes and letting them wash over him.

For a moment he could have thought himself somewhere else entirely, on a rooftop or tangled up in chainmail rigging far away, windswept and too cold to feel, cold enough that he felt even the first touch of sun.

He opened his eyes when Tom drew near; the other man’s steps were always soft but Aremu knew him by the pump’s silence. He smiled, when he saw him, however much he knew better, and however much it might have hurt him.

“Did you sleep well?” Aremu asked, and couldn’t remember why he hadn’t before. He reached for Tom’s hand, tangled their fingers together once more, as easy as if they had never been apart, or at least with the facsimile of it. He let Tom lead him back inside, or maybe he led the other man, and he didn’t go back to the table, this time, but leaned against the counter, watching Tom’s hands, his chest, his face, and smiling still.