[Closed] [Mature] Dancing After Death

[Tom Cooke]

The Observatory at Es’tsusiqi • Thul’amat

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

T
here was a faint, soft rasp to Aremu’s voice. He’d been quiet for a little while – at least, he thought, since they’d come up the stairs. He looked over and up at him now, and then back to the telescope.

Not so different? he thought. A telescope from a spyglass, or looking up from falling down? It seemed even to him a silly question.

Aremu had seen Phaeta too now, and he sounded as breathless with it as he had. There was a shape of a grin in his words, and a laugh somewhere in them, he thought; he only managed to tear his eyes away from Phaeta, laughing himself, when Aremu kissed their hands. It was strangely easy now to laugh, thinking of all the knots he’d worked himself into on the deck, thinking how he’d – dumberse! – how the first thing he’d ever said to Aremu, nearly, this time around, was poetry. He thought of what Aremu must’ve been feeling, scrambling up that silverfish balloon, speaking of the observatory, of things left unseen. If there was pain to thinking of it, there was relief, too.

He didn’t say anything – didn’t need to, and couldn’t – as Aremu let go, as he went to the telescope and sat. Tom came a little closer, but he didn’t intrude. He watched for now, a softer smile playing out on his lips, one he’d’ve chid himself silly for, if it hadn’t felt so right.

He couldn’t see his face from here. He could see the long fingers of his one hand brushing reverently over pieces he didn’t know the names for; he came a little closer still, just to watch the light gleam off brass and polished wood. He saw Aremu tilt his head to look through the lens, watched him move a piece with his fingers as he looked. Tom watched him for a moment, then looked up into the sky, trying to imagine what he saw.

He couldn’t.

I shouldn’t be here, he had the strangest urge to say. They don’t even let my kind on campus. He swallowed tightly, looking up where full waxing Benea was just gliding into view, pinprick stars visible now out of the circle of her light. I don’t know how that works, he had the urge to say; I’m not supposed to know how that works. I probably couldn’t grasp it even if I tried.

There was something stiff about the set of Aremu’s neck when he drew back. He was still, and when he looked back, Tom could see something gleaming on his lashes. Come, he said then, unfurling that long-fingered hand. It was magnetic: he came closer and took his hand, and something inside him drowned out the thoughts.

Somehow then he was sitting on the stool, his own fingertips brushing hesitantly over the telescope. I’ll smudge it, he wanted to blurt out. I’ll break it, or something.

It’s so big, another, munger part of him wanted to say. Even before, I’d’ve felt small compared to this. And compared to everything up there?

The night breeze was chill, especially up here, but Aremu’s hand and his voice were warm, guiding him to piece that moved, letting him feel the notches. Look here, he’d said. He hesitated only a moment. I’m not supposed to look, he wanted to say, stubborn, even despite all the books he’d read, all the monite he’d spoken, even despite all of it. But he looked, when Aremu’s hand came to rest reassuringly on his thigh.

He looked, blinking his lashes out of the way, squinting and then relaxing. He turned the piece; it went from blurry to blurrier, then –

He let out a funny sort of noise, like a bird’s chirp in his throat.

“There she is.” He felt Aremu’s head settle in his lap; unthinking, he rested his hand in the other man’s hair, stroked his fingers through. “My gods,” he breathed. It can’t be real, he wanted to say. That’s not it; that’s not possible. “It’s so far away,” he whispered instead, trying to fight a prickling heat behind his eyes.

This isn’t magic, is it? he wondered. Neither of us had to cast to see this. Warm, soft colors bled through his field. Anyone, he thought, could see this.

She didn’t look like he’d expected her to; it wasn’t so clear as the ink drawings in the books he’d seen since. It was vague enough, strange enough, to be real. It had to be real, because it wasn’t anything he’d expected it to be.

He wasn’t sure how long he looked. He stroked his thumb over Aremu’s cheek, easing away and glancing back up at the sky. “The first bright star from the horizon,” he murmured suddenly, remembering Aremu’s old words. It was a few moments; he shifted, looking down, cradling his cheek. “Let’s find the hammer,” he said softly.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Night, 38 Loshis, 2720
The Observatory, Thul'Amat

He felt it ripple through Tom, the moment when he must have brought the lens to focus; a noise tore itself from his throat, and all of him tightened, and then relaxed again. Aremu felt the other man’s fingers settle in his hair, stroking lightly through it; he smiled, and he couldn’t have narrowed it down to a why. His hand was resting lightly on Tom’s thigh.

It’s so far away, Tom said, and Aremu nodded, just a little. He felt strange; he didn’t speak, and he couldn’t have said why. He felt as if it was a spell being cast, and should not be interrupted; he felt as if to speak would be profane, not because of who he was as the speaker, but because the moment needed no such adornment.

Tom leaned forward again, and looked a little longer. Aremu felt his joy in the air all around them; there was little else to do but feel it, and it bled into him, and he knew he was smiling too. Tom’s thumb was stroking a soft, even rhythm over his cheek, and Aremu sighed a little, content, and swallowed a yawn that made his jaw crack.

The first bright star, Tom said, and it took Aremu a moment to catch up – to understand. He looked up as Tom looked down, the viewer just at the edge of his vision, the open ceiling above and the stars silhouetting Tom.

You remembered, he wanted to say, absurdly.

He’d thrown that remembrance at Tom, once, Aremu thought, in his own mind at least: there had been a time, not so long ago, when he’d felt Tom had used that knowledge against him, and he’d felt it like a betrayal, like a violation. That anger had long since slipped away, and so, too, had the certainty.

They had crept up on it, on the before. Perhaps, Aremu thought, understanding, he had treated it like he had the freckles, the bright red hair, all the things he had wanted to tell Tom he liked and hadn’t known how; perhaps, Aremu thought, understanding, they had both been afraid to discuss what had been, afraid of the pain that came in looking back at that which could no longer be.

Aremu was smiling, and he nodded, coming to his feet. It had been years since he’d found the hammer in the skies above Thul’Amat, or even Thul Ka; it didn’t much matter. This, he might have wanted to tell Tom, was close enough to where he’d found it to begin with; some part of him thought, then, that he would carry that knowing with him always.

Aremu’s hand settled on Tom’s shoulder. He looked up at the swath of stars overhead, and traced them along, and found the bright star at the head of the handle – traced it out, then back over and down. He smiled a little more; it was too late in the evening for it to be at the horizon, now, but he knew it all the same.

“There,” Aremu said, softly; he squeezed Tom’s shoulder, and showed him as best he could, tracing his finger through the sky. Tom rose, and he sat, and played with the focus and distancing and positioning, until he saw them, clustered together in the viewfinder, and he was breathless with it, for all that he was laughing rather than weeping.

“There,” Aremu said, and let Tom take the seat once more, and looked back up, his thumb stroking lightly against the back of Tom’s neck, beneath the soft red curls of hair. He felt the other man jerk, again, when the stars came into view, and Aremu’s breath caught, just a little. I’ve never shared this, he wanted to say, but he knew, already, that Tom knew that.

“There are others, dzogús,” Aremu said, quietly, looking down at Tom, and then back up at the sky, admiring the stars above, “I can show you.”

[Tom Cooke]

The Observatory at Es’tsusiqi • Thul’amat

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

E
very inch of his skin was gooseflesh. Even Aremu’s thumb, stroking gentle-like on the back of his neck, sent a dozen shivers down his spine.

He’d thought himself a fool at first, maybe, or something like one. He’d been watching Aremu’s face, how it had shifted against his lap and tilted and his eyes had searched the sky for a moment, as if confused; as if – he thought he’d seen understanding then, and something else he couldn’t have named, but knew.

He’d seen the hammer, at last, when Aremu had pointed it out.

Funny, but they must’ve been in plain sight. Once he’d seen them, he couldn’t unsee them. He’d never found it easy; he remembered now lying on the deck of the Uccello di Hurte, looking up and searching for a pattern of stars he couldn’t find, overwhelmed by the vast carpet of them. But there they were, as if suddenly Aremu had told them to shine brighter.

And there they were now, blurring into focus through the lens. He jerked at first, a breathless laugh spilling out of him. Like a candle flame, he wanted to say, strangely delighted by the memory. He felt Aremu’s breath catch beside him, and it was electric. He blinked a tear out of his eye, watching the bright star on the pommel smear and then sharpen into bright focus.

They didn’t look much different than they did in the sky, truth be told. He could see them all, now, though, and speckled around them even fainter pinpricks of light, like dust-motes. Too distant even to stand out, he supposed, and then shivered, trying to imagine it.

Aremu hadn’t known back then just how little he knew of the stars, of Vita, of all of it. He thought he knew now, but there was no room here for shame. Aremu’d told him once he watched the stars when he didn’t want to be alone with himself; he thought he felt them filling him up, filling them up together.

There were still so many dark corners of him, of them, on which other lenses had yet to be focused. Things stranger than scars or freckles or lines. He was beginning to think you could never be truly bare in front of yourself, not just another man. But there was no one here but them: if the stars knew anything about it, if they knew what the truth was or what a man deserved, if they knew about death or nexi or honor, they were quiet.

Dzogús, Aremu said, and he shivered. He thought for a moment to ask what it meant, but he didn’t. This he wanted to find for himself.

He eased away from the lens, turned to look up at Aremu, his face tilted up and lined with starlight. He reached to brush his chin with his fingertips, a question; if Aremu looked down, he leaned up and kissed him, lingering and unabashed in front of the stars.

“Show me,” he said, looking back up at the sky. “Tell me about them,” he added, smiling. “Is that star…” He pointed, brow furrowing. “Is that a part of anything? That one, that bright silvery one – d’you see? – a few over from Phaeta.”

The constellations in books, even on the wall behind, were laid out so neatly – along the Circle, along the stories of mythic beasts. When he looked at the night sky, he was helpless to find anything. At best, alone, it looked to him like some great ward with the lines yet to be drawn. Sometimes it seemed to him he couldn’t connect anything without connecting everything at once.

But here, with Aremu’s voice soft and full of memories, with his left hand warm on his shoulder and the memory of him still tingling on his lips, he thought he could. He could at least connect two.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Night, 38 Loshis, 2720
The Observatory, Thul'Amat

Aremu felt the gentle stroke of Tom’s fingers against his chin, and they shivered all through him. If, he thought, idly, there were anything in him to touch –

For a moment, he could imagine it: the light of the stars shining down, casting straight through him and catching, gleaming on Tom, glowing in him. It didn’t hurt, just then, the imagining; if he cast a shadow on the other man, it was a thin, pale thing as compared to the light of the stars, not some deep, darkening stain.

He looked down. It was only Tom beneath him, his face caught by the light from above; it sparked in his hair and face. He leaned up, and Aremu tilted his head down, unthinking, and met the other man’s lips, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment.

Show me, Tom said, and Aremu grinned at him. His hand had come up, as if of its own will, cupping Tom’s cheek tenderly; his thumb stroked, softly, over the other man’s skin. Whatever he’d held of the image flickered and faded from his mind. He shifted, looking up with Tom, his hand sliding down to rest on the other man’s shoulder, his arm around him.

Not that one, Aremu could have said. Nearby, or nearby enough, there’s the calypt tree, and then, on its other side, the leira’s tail. He didn’t, but he knew he would, in time; the words were warm and easy, and didn’t catch on any of the sharp edges inside him, but could easily have slipped from his mouth into the air between them.

“Not that one,” Aremu said, smiling, looking up. “Not yet,” he looked back down at Tom, and grinned; his thumb stroked the other man’s shoulder, and he looked up again, thoughtful, breathing in deep.

He did, he thought, know the star Tom meant, vivid and silvery and not so far from Phaeta, by the judging of their gaze. He understood, as he had the first time he’d gazed on the stars, that what looked close to them might really be unfathomable distances apart. There were patterns to them, all the same, when one looked up into the sky.

For a moment, he thought he’d lost the knack of it; he hadn’t tried to find a new constellation in a long time. He couldn’t have said when he’d stopped looking for new ones, when he’d accepted that he had found all that there were to find. It was, oddly, like looking up at the stars again for the first time: seeing all the potential, he thought, unconstrained.

“One could see a burrower wasp,” Aremu said, thoughtfully. “There, see – the silvery star you’ve found is the eye. Above – there and there – the points of the antenna – there, the shape of the body, the narrow waist.” He lifted his hand from Tom’s shoulder and sketched it, carefully, as if he could draw it for the other man overhead.

“What do you see?” Aremu asked, his hand settling back to Tom; he turned his head and brushed the other man’s hair with his lips. Do you think, he wanted to ask, there’s truth, in the stars? Just then, he thought, it didn’t matter. There was truth, such as he was capable of between them; he knew that, even if he hadn’t, always. Maybe it was like trust; maybe there was no deserving it, only the gift of its offering. Beneath the stars, he thought – in their light – he didn’t suppose he could ever feel worthy, but he thought he could forgive himself his unworthiness, this little while.

[Tom Cooke]

The Observatory at Es’tsusiqi • Thul’amat

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

N
ot yet, Aremu said. He smiled up again, up at the sky, wondering. It was a few moments before Aremu spoke again. It seemed to him utterly silent here; if there were any distant sounds of campus, they were muffled, drowned out by the vastness above pressing down and achingly distant all at once. And by the gentle rise and fall of Aremu’s breath behind him, more felt than heard, and by the warm arm wrapped round his shoulder.

He waited, wondering. Aremu was still looking at it; searching for its shape, he thought. There was something lovely about that silence, lovely about the thought of Aremu working it out right there beside him. I’ve always wanted to see you name one, he thought.

He wasn’t sure he should search himself, or what he should look for. Looking for something, that he could do; that he’d spent his whole life doing. But searching with no object in mind? He thought if you’d asked him to make of these stars a rose, he could find a way to put them together into a rose; if you asked him to see a snake, to see a bird, to see a hand, it might shift shapes.

The truth was, it did put him in mind of something, but it wasn’t anything like that. He chid himself for silliness, and he was happy when he heard Aremu’s voice go on softly behind him.

He saw the wasp when Aremu pointed it out. He didn’t at first; it took him a little more than halfway through the other man’s quiet explanation.

It was when he followed Aremu’s finger down to the two stars that clinched the waist, flaring out in a scattering to make up the abdomen, that it dawned on him. “And there’s the stinger, right?” he finished softly, pointing himself to the last star at the end. He grinned over. “And the leg.”

Aremu’s hand settled back on his shoulder. What do you see? the other man asked; it shouldn’t’ve been unexpected, but it was. He glanced back up hesitantly, feeling Aremu press a kiss to his scalp.

The truth was he’d never’ve seen a hama koketa, looking up at this scattering of stars. He hadn’t grown up with them; he hadn’t known what one was ‘til he’d come to Mugroba, just about. And now the stars had seemed to settle into that shape, comfortable enough in their skin for now.

“I still see the burrower wasp,” he said after a moment, running his hand along his jaw. “It could be a two-pronged fork at the top, or – if you tilt your head this way…”

What do you see? he’d asked. Not, what do you think a man might see, or, what do you think I want you to say you see?

Being honest, he thought. “I see, too – there’s a letter in monite,” he went on softly, “especially the way tekaa carve it. Those two prongs that were the antennae, and then a line down, and another line there between those two.” His hand hesitated in the air. “I don’t know if that’s, uh – if that’s right – it’s certainly not in the astronomy books.” It certainly, he thought wryly, reveals my preoccupations.

Are the stars like a mirror, too? he wondered.

His hand almost dropped to his lap, but he settled it on Aremu’s instead, leaning his cheek against his arm. “I’m not very good at… I mostly just see stars. Letters and numbers, if I don’t. Shapes. But I see more, when I’m with you.” He looked over, smiling, a little sheepish.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Night, 38 Loshis, 2720
The Observatory, Thul'Amat

Aremu grinned, chin tilted back, following Tom’s finger tracing through the sky. He nodded. The feeling of it was almost overwhelming, a sharing of something he had never known could be shared, that he had never thought to share. He hadn’t imagined this, when he thought of coming to the observatory; he hadn’t imagined, he thought, even taking the time to look for the patterns he’d made of the stars.

If he thought too much on it, it threatened to tighten in his chest, though it didn’t quite hurt. He didn’t know what to make of all of it, other than that some of what seemed to swamp him was gratitude. It wasn’t, he knew, nearly as straightforward as thinking of this as a second chance for them; being glad that Tom was here, he knew, wasn’t the same as being glad that this had happened to the other man.

All the same, he thought of the conversation they’d had months ago – sitting on the log opposite the mangroves covered in dzum’ulusa blooms, Tom teary-eyed as he spoke of wanting to live, of loving life. He put those thoughts away, then, because they seemed oddly foreign to this soft, tender moment, to Tom looking up next to him, studying the stars with a frown carved into the lines of his forehead.

A two-pronged fork, Tom suggested, and Aremu inclined his head. A prod, he might have said – he thought he could have named it mechanical. There had been a point, in his mid-teens, when most of what he’d seen in the sky was mechanical: a wheel, a nail, a coil, a valve.

A letter in monite, Tom said. Aremu felt abruptly aware of the two of them, standing there – of the fluttering softness of Tom’s field around him. He looked up, again, although he didn’t know enough to try to find the shape. Tom described it enough that he could nearly imagine, to come close enough that, he supposed, it was profane.

He didn’t know what he’d expected to happen; the stars didn’t change overhead, and no one of the Circle leaned down to swamp them in floods, or strike them with lightning. No swarm of clouds covered the sky, and hid the stars from sight; no one leapt out from a closet, nearby, to accuse them of blasphemy. He hadn’t expected any of those things – he had been a pirate long enough to understand Vita did not work so – and yet the lack of them surprised him, still.

He didn’t know what to say to it, all the same, but he was glad Tom had told him; he was glad, he thought, that Tom wanted to share this, too, with him, even though he wasn’t sure he was meant to see it. The worst of it was that he wanted to – like the meditation, he thought, uncertainly. He wanted to see it, Aremu knew, if it was Tom’s.

Tom smiled at him, and Aremu smiled back, tender and soft, hiding nothing. He leaned over and kissed the other man’s lips, softly. “I just like patterns,” he said, quietly; his hand had lifted up to Tom’s cheek, and his thumb stroked, teasing, over a spray of freckles along the edge of it, lingering on the other man’s earlobe.

Aremu shifted, a little, so he was perched on the edge of the stool with Tom, his hip pressed along the line of the other man’s, sharing their warmth against the cool of the night. “What about there?” He asked, his arm wrapped around Tom, lifting his hand to point at another corner of the night sky. “On the other side of Phaeta. There’s that cluster of two together – see them? And the third like a triangle below. Or a cat's head, perhaps,” he grinned, settling into Tom a little more; his hand came back down to the other man’s shoulder, and he held him close.

"Seeking together," Aremu added, softly, a moment later, "is what I really like."

[Tom Cooke]

The Observatory at Es’tsusiqi • Thul’amat

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

A
remu didn’t speak, at first; he let him finish, in his winding, stumbling way, looking up at the stars and drawing lines between them that must’ve been profane. But when he met his eye, finally, Aremu smiled back. He bent to kiss him, and he leaned up into it, deepened it, gave into it. The relief that washed through him was almost painful: it was like the loosening of a muscle that’d been held stiff for days.

It was very nearly like comfort.

Could it be? He hadn’t searched for fear in Aremu’s eyes, but he didn’t think he’d’ve found it; he hadn’t searched for ridicule because he had never seen it. Shame and panic he’d seen, and – almost worse – rebuke. But there had been nothing of any of those, before Tom’s eyes had fluttered shut.

There was nothing of those in them now as he drew away.

His field was sprawled out comfortably around them. There was no shame in it, no suppression; he wasn’t trying terribly hard to keep it indectal, either, not anymore. Aremu’s hand wandered up to the edge of his jaw, the line of his cheekbone, following the curve up to his ear – like a man who knew a cat well enough to know where it liked to be pet. The thought sent a little shiver through him, and a little shiver of gold through his field. He didn’t try to hide it, either; he let it curl out, warm, and for once he let himself feel every bit of pleasure and attraction he wanted to feel.

“Just?” His smile widened. He reached up to cup the other man’s face. There’s no just about it, he wanted to say, but stroked the fine bone of his cheek instead. There was plenty more he wanted to say: you’re damned good at finding them, especially mine; more sweet nothings, when mostly, he just wanted to say, I love you.

Aremu eased onto the stool beside him. There wasn’t much room, but Aremu was warm against him, arm around him and hand pointing up again. For a moment, he sat with him like that, following his finger. He saw the two stars at first, then the third – like a V, he might’ve said, or a…

A cat’s head, perhaps, Aremu said, and he grinned back.

There wasn’t much room, but that was well enough. He thought about wrapping his arm round Aremu to balance him, but then – he eased over a little more, shifting to sit in Aremu’s lap on the stool. He nuzzled closer, slipping his hand over the other man’s.

“I like it, too,” he murmured, glancing back up with a smile, “especially with you.”

He looked back at the sky, then, spread out in front of them. Like a blanket full of pinprick holes, he thought, smiling. He found the triangle again with ease; he looked at it a moment longer. His brow furrowed, and then he smiled again.

Aremu had started it, and somehow, that made it easier to see the rest. “Look at the – those three – four, that little one’s hard to see – that could be the body,” he said, “and look at the tail there. It’s crooked. I wonder what happened to it. What do you think?”

He was grinning now, coy but soft. He thought he could feel it just now, just an edge of a feeling – wishful thinking, maybe, but he wanted to wish and not to think. His head was settled against Aremu’s chest.

“... and that one?”

He’d never imagined, not as a boy, not as a man, not as a different man now, that the sky was full of fish and lizards and trees. Not just those: bits and pieces of engines he’d never heard of, pieces he listened while Aremu explained. Tools, structures. Parts of men, like eyes, like hands, like hearts. Like lovers. The lines between them were invisible, but tonight, they seemed so strong he couldn’t imagine them any other way.