[Closed] [Mature] Dancing After Death

[Tom Cooke]

Riverside in the Three Flowers

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

N
ot my own, Aremu said.

He remembered it vividly. Fire, was what he might’ve compared it to; fire in his skin, inside him, as if it were flowing through his veins. It was why he hadn’t even thought to look in the mirror – or to make sense of the hands he saw clutching at the sheets – for weeks. He hadn’t known to call them ley lines then, or to call what hung round him a porven. Other fields hadn’t been much better, like sandpaper against something inside him. It had been too much, buzzing wild, a maelstrom even inside his mind, parts of which had seemed newly alien to him.

I didn’t sense it before, there was no need to say. I don’t think I could’ve; I don’t think our folk – such as I was – can. The smile was still on Aremu’s face against all odds, like something precious, and he didn’t want to say that. Nor did he want to think what he’d’ve said if Aremu had brought it up in Dentis; he wouldn’t’ve been so sure, then.

Maybe Aremu didn’t feel it now because he’d had it all his life, even as a boch. But that sat ill with him; Aremu had, he said, felt it in others, and he didn’t much like the idea for other reasons he couldn’t’ve put words to.

Like a lodestone, he thought again, maybe only another metal – or another lodestone – could feel it. Could a lodestone feel what’s around it?

He almost wanted to say it, but something about comparing Aremu to a rock aloud didn’t seem wise. It still stretched fragile between them, like spiderweb still being spun. Silk, he thought, could be made from webs, but only if the web survived.

Some seasons, Aremu said.

He glanced down at their hands, feeling Aremu shift. He let him find his way, the soft smile still on his face. He turned Aremu’s hand over; he took it in both of his, stroked his thumb over it, cradled and pressed it. He didn’t think he could risk kissing it here, but he wanted to.

Dentis, then. Aremu had maneuvered round it gracefully; he’d known what it was he was asking, underneath the question, and he’d gone on to answer it. The breeze was cooler, wet with the Turga, and he almost shivered. “It hasn’t been so long, then, dove,” he said finally, looking up as Aremu did, finding that smile tugging tenuously at the other man’s lips again.

“I don’t think I’d know where to start, knowing what to make of it. I don’t know what it must be like, but, uh – I know something of – struggling to make sense of things.” He glanced down, wondering if he presumed. “New things from within, not just without,” he added quietly.

The toe tip of Aremu’s sandals was resting on the stone. His hip wasn’t twinging so badly now; squeezing Aremu’s hand, he eased up from the wall. The way they’d come was as quiet as it had been. He could almost see the office behind the hotel from here.

There was more night ahead by far. It was hard for him to believe they’d got here from tsia’tsia and lamb; he was desperately, achingly grateful. But the moon hovering now just above the tops of the buildings, the sky around it thoroughly black.

Black, he thought, looking down at his long white tunic, chagrined. He felt rather like the moon himself. All this talk of sensing, of feeling, of seeing. My field’s like a trumpet, and I’m dressed in the moon. I feel like a luminous carrot.

He tried to set the worry aside, for now.

The Liar’s Market. He glanced sidelong; he could almost picture Aremu there now. What’s it like, he wondered, going back there? “I’ve never felt another; only yours.” He shook his head. “But I haven’t tried to…” I’ve thought about it most sleeping with you, in the dark. When the only sound is you breathing, nothing grating at me, the only feeling your arms wrapped round me. It’s almost easy, then – almost – when there’s nothing to scatter me.

He shook his head, then leaned it on his shoulder again. “How does it seem to you, when you do feel it?”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Evening, 38 Loshis, 2720
Riverside, Three Flowers

Aremu didn’t know what to say, quite, at the comparison. I appreciate, he wanted to say, the thought, Tom, but I hardly think it compares. Every time he imagined trying to say it aloud, it came out as if the comparison offended him, or he found it distasteful, or he wanted to be clear they weren’t the same. He remembered, with a prickle of shame, how uncomfortable he had found it last Dentis, when Tom had told him of Kzecka, and how it was like the Turtle.

Tom had been kind and sweet throughout, and Aremu couldn’t bear to repay him with insensitivity, or worse, outright cruelty. Silence seemed easier, though he squeezed Tom’s hand lightly with his in acknowledgement, at least, and nodded. He did understand, at least, what the other man meant.

Not so long, Aremu thought of agreeing. He wasn’t sure how one measured such things. The changes he could think of in his life there had been no time to adjust to; one moment he thought himself whole, and the next he knew he was not. The only time afterwards when he had forgotten even a moment were dreams, and he had hated sleeping for them for years to come; then, they had been worse than nightmares.

Now, of course, he knew what nightmares could really be; he still was not sure what he would have chosen. He didn’t have such dreams often, anymore, not that he remembered. He thought still, perhaps, he would prefer his nightmares.

Tom had come off the low wall, and Aremu followed him, taking his feet and walking alongside the other man, their hands still wrapped together, low now, in the shadow of the amel’iwe. When we come out of the path, Aremu wanted to say – when we start to head back to the hotel – he knew better than to hold Tom’s hand all the way, and yet neither was he ready to let go, nor even to acknowledge how soon they should need to.

The ground was still dry underfoot, for all there had been a little of the Turga’s moisture against them as they sat on the wall; even a few feet further from the river, the breeze was less, and Aremu not so cold. He thought of going back to the room now with nothing like discomfort, with no fear of what they might say alone together, and thought of holding Tom in his arms with a smile even easier than the ones that had come before it.

Aremu breathed in at the question Tom asked, and out again; he glanced up at the sky for a moment, at the faint scattering of clouds and the handful of dim stars visible through the city’s lights.

“Like a…” Aremu shook his head, very slightly and careful of Tom resting against him, trying to think. “A candleflame in the corner of my eye,” he said, thoughtfully, “or an engine through a closed door. A firefly, maybe, in the distance, blinking in and out of sight. A sense of light or heat, distant and just barely perceptible.”

Not like a field, he wanted to say, though he didn’t think he had to, tucked in the middle of Tom’s sage-soft clairvoyant field, which hovered around the two of them and whispered out into the air before and behind. Not like a field, he could have said, thinking of the vivid bright-sharpness of Niccolette’s ramscott, or the sense of motion in Tsofi’s, or the warmth and strength of Uzoji’s field. Not so strong, he might have clarified, and not so – differentiable. He wasn’t sure how to put it any more clearly than that; he wasn’t sure he had felt enough, even, to speak of it.

“I don’t think I had ever noticed them before I was told,” Aremu added, after a moment, thoughtful. “It’s subtle enough for that, I think; if one isn’t looking for it, then… at least, I can’t feel any without focusing.”

[Tom Cooke]

Riverside in the Three Flowers

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

T
hey couldn’t, for much longer; he was fair sure by now that there was no point saying it, because they both knew. But he knew the weight of what they were doing now, too, the risk they were taking even here, and he knew to be grateful for it. Achingly grateful.

He felt Aremu breathe in at his question, and he wondered if he should’ve asked. But he knew that Aremu would answer what he could, and he didn’t second-guess this time.

As they wound back down, he wasn’t sure what Aremu would say. He wasn’t sure if Aremu could answer the question at all, or how many he’d felt. He tried again, in the quiet that followed – he dared to shut his eyes, to breathe in the river breeze and the other man’s scent – to cast himself back, to wonder what he might’ve felt without realizing he’d felt it. He thought of Ahura, moving behind him at the edge of his field while he pestled away at the chutney. He thought of the pale shadows in blue at Brunnhold, the ones that took his laundry without being asked or told, the ones that still gave him a strange creeping chill along his bones.

Rosmilda? He sucked at his tooth. There wasn’t a day went by in Vienda he didn’t see her; he worked with her most days, and had done long enough he felt no discomfort or fear of her.

There was no point trying, though. If he wanted to badly enough, he might’ve imagined it. If he wanted to badly enough to lie, he might’ve imagined feeling Aremu, back then. All he remembered in Ahura’s kitchen was the buzz of his porven against his nerves, and the breeze and the work he tried to distract himself with.

Like a, he began.

A candleflame in the corner of his eye, he said first; an engine through a closed door; a firefly, blinking in and out of sight, distant. He nodded against Aremu’s shoulder, smiling a little despite himself. For a man who insists he has no eye for poetry, he thought to say, or soul for it… He didn’t speak, opening his eyes and glancing down.

He nodded, reaching to rest his other hand on Aremu’s upper arm, to nestle closer while he could. “Yes,” he said softly.

He could barely feel it now himself – his eyes open, the sound of their footsteps and the Turga in his ears, his mind split between this and the hotel and what was yet to come. And his own field, which might’ve drowned it to his senses, he thought, with something like a mix of frustration and self-consciousness.

It was a few moments before he spoke again, thinking. They drew into the warm oil light of a lantern, swinging gently in the breeze. “In Dentis, casting, I think it felt to me like… I’ve learned since about magnetism,” he said tentatively, “though not enough to make an analogy. I don’t know.”

He thought again abruptly of blood, and the strong sweet smell of – roses; he shook it off, disturbed, the sense tangled up in the nightmares that afternoon had given him for weeks. The fear, too, that the mark on his hand would scar, that…

It had been the mona, too, drawn –

He was afraid of what saying more might do, the weight his words might have, with everything Aremu had told him of honor and truth. He remembered, too, how Ezre's clinical fascination had always made him feel, and his skin crawled at the thought of making Aremu feel that way. This was about Aremu, not his own misgivings or curiosities; what it meant to Aremu meant most.

They passed back into shadow, and he paused, easing away. He could no longer see the hotel, but he could see the alleyway that led to the street. The darkness in the sky was deepening; the shadows were, too. “Are you ready to go back?” he asked softly, turning to look up at him.

In the dark, he could see the curve of his cheekbone. He reached up with his hand, tentative, to cup his cheek. His hand slipped out of Aremu’s; he stood up on his toes and kissed him.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Evening, 38 Loshis, 2720
Riverside, Three Flowers

Magnetism, Tom called it, and something in Aremu shivered. That, he thought, was too far; he didn’t know what to make of it.

A moment later, turning it over, he supposed he did. He had never had a field; he did not know what it was like. He knew something of what belike, although more in theory than in practice – something he had heard used and come to understand through context, rather than ever having been told. If, he thought, if the nexus is, after all, some sort of fragment, some piece of what should have been there, then perhaps…?

It was, he thought, too far. For all they had come in off the river, back down along the worn-smooth stones, Aremu felt a little shiver of leiraflesh ripple through him, and he was grateful for Tom’s warmth at his side, in more ways than one.

They drew apart, in time, as he had known they must, and Aremu could let himself believe that he didn’t mind, though he wasn’t sure, in the end, where to find the boundary between that and not knowing.

“Yes,” Aremu said, softly, when Tom turned to him: a suggestion, he thought, of white gleaming in the darkness, soaking up all the light around. He found himself smiling, for all he didn’t know what they would do in the midst of Thul’Amat, beneath the moonlight. Tom leaned up, and he leaned down, just the little bit required, and kissed him; his hand wrapped around Tom’s back and held him, for just a moment.

“I’d like to hold you,” Aremu said. He hadn’t thought much of it in advance, and he hadn’t known how it would come out; it wasn’t, as he might have hoped, rough and seductive, but he thought, hearing himself, it was very much needful all the same. That was true enough; he didn’t want, really, to be with Tom again in that way, or at least not for its own sake. What he wanted was to be close to the other man, to be lost or else found in the circle of his arms, and to lie there thinking of Tom feeling the faint glimmer of the nexus inside himself, drawn to it, one way or another.

They walked through the dark streets, side-by-side and yet apart, through one pool of blue or yellow light after the next, until in time they came back to the alleyway, back to the door – back up the stairs, both of them steady and even, and Aremu went slowly and did not look at Tom’s hip, or ask if he felt up to climbing another tree tonight, or hopefully two more.

Aremu held in the hallway as Tom opened the door, and if he let out a tiny sigh of relief as they crossed the threshold into the room, he hadn’t quite meant to. He slipped off his amel’iwe, and then, unhesitatingly, his shirt; he reached for the straps that held the prosthetic to his body, suddenly, abruptly aware of how much they chafed, and how badly he wanted them gone.

Then, fingers lingering on the first buckle, he turned and looked at Tom, a tiny little smile on his face once more. He wasn’t sure when he’d lost in, in what pool of phosphor or lamplight it had slid away, and left something more solemn. Now, a little trembling, but distinct nonetheless, he felt it come back as if it had never gone, and he drifted a little closer to Tom, wondering if he could ask without asking – wondering if the other man knew how much such tenderness meant to him, because he wasn’t sure he could find the words.

[Tom Cooke]

Riverside in the Three Flowers

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

I
t wasn’t rough or heavy; something about it, still, took his breath right out of him. Not in a wanting way, leastways not that sort. He’d run his hand along the soft cloth of Aremu’s amel’iwe, straightening it, wishing he could kiss him again. There were no words he could say to what he heard in the other man’s voice.

So they went.

The hotel room still smelled of cinnamon and lavender and oil. He went to lit the lamp; by the time he turned, Aremu’s amel’iwe was already a bright yellow fold on the table, and he was pulling off his shirt, one-handed and deft. He stood by the lamp under the high narrow window, feeling the breeze.

He watched Aremu’s long fingers go to the first buckle; he didn’t think to look away, this time, and when Aremu met his eye, he smiled. There was the slightest smile quirking the other man’s lips, too, which had fallen at the corners since they’d left the riverside.

It wasn’t a cruel or strange sort of leaving-off. He wasn’t sure what to read into the silence, his or Aremu’s, back at the Turga’s edge. He felt at once like he’d stepped too far and not far enough.

But maybe that wasn’t so uncomfortable as it could’ve been, as it had been once. He didn’t know; he was comfortable, for once, not knowing.

There was a lot, he supposed, he didn’t understand about Aremu, but there was a lot Aremu didn’t understand about him, and plenty they might never. But he eased round Aremu’s back, where the muscles had stiffened again; his fingertips drifted over them along the straps, then found each buckle and undid it with a gentle matter-of-factness. He came round front to help with the wrist strap, not lingering on it but not looking away, either, and let Aremu set it aside.

There was a tenseness in him he hadn’t known was there, a shiver he hadn’t let go since the river breeze. He drew off his shirt this time with something like relief, instead of shame. He rolled his shoulders, stretched, sighed, drew off his trousers.

“I have to find something else to wear; I’ll stick out like...” he murmured, scratching his head; he hadn’t meant to say it out loud. He cleared his throat.

He was tired, too. I’ll be a liability, he couldn’t quite bring himself to say. I’ll be slower than you, and twice as conspicuous. But what other night do we have?

He turned, then, to pull back the sheets, and saw where they were mussed and rumpled from earlier. How wonderful and strange, he thought with a lump in his throat, to be able to leave the bed unmade where they’d lain together, and come back to it and sleep together more. It felt like a glimpse of something he wasn’t supposed to have.

He couldn’t afford that lump. “Come,” he said, more for softness than for any need of saying it. “Hold me,” he said with a little smile.

He crawled into bed again, easing down gentle on his aching muscles, then turned and held out his hand to Aremu.

“We should talk, too, soon, about…” I don’t know when we’ll next get the chance, he wanted to say. I don’t want to come like the east wind, dove; it’s been wild, what we have, but I want to give you all of me that’s solid and warm to hold. “When I come, in the summer,” he managed finally, thinking of Aremu’s reassurances some weeks ago, thinking of sheets left rumpled.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Evening, 38 Loshis, 2720
A Hotel by the River, Three Flowers

Tom’s hands drew along the straps, found the buckles and eased them apart; Aremu shivered, caught somewhere between relief and tenderness, and finding it strangely comfortable not to know where he stood. He shifted, and his left hand came up to hold the prosthetic as Tom drew open the wrist strap. He stepped away, and set it aside, the straps gently folded beneath the wooden hand.

He came back to Tom stretching, bare freckled chest gleaming slightly in the drift of light through the window. Once – the day before, Aremu thought – he would have looked away, and he watched instead, and found his smile widening. Tom slid his trousers off as well, and only then did Aremu reached for his own, easing them down over his hips and leaving them in a pile on the floor.

“We’ll make it work,” Aremu said, softly. He didn’t look at the puddle of white cloth; he didn’t know what to say or think about the sheepishness in Tom’s voice, the trailing off, and he found he was more tired than he’d expected. It was a strange, bone-deep sort of tiredness, anchored somewhere deep along his marrow, and it ran all through him.

Aremu came, when Tom called, and he took the other man’s hand, and drew him into his arms – both of them, for all he was careful with his right, and never let the wrist touch him. He pressed his lips to the soft tangles of Tom’s hair, and closed his eyes, settling his cheek against the cool pillow and finding it strange and strangely comfortable to search for the faint impression he’d left not hours ago.

Talk soon, Tom said, and Aremu’s eyes fluttered open; he stifled a yawn, shifting, and looking down at the other man. When I come, he said, finally.

Oh, Aremu wanted to say, and then: of course.

Oh, Aremu wanted to say, and then: when?

When I come? He wanted to ask. He thought of all the times he had thought of asking – of begging – in the moments since he’d first mentioned it; he couldn’t remember, now, what Tom had said all those weeks ago, but he remembered that he had thought it a no, or at the very least a maybe, and certainly not a yes.

With a little flush of shame, he thought of Tom earlier that day, asking why – how – Aremu could have thought he’d make an appointment with anyone else that night. He swallowed through the lump in his throat, and curled tighter around the other man, and didn’t want to put voice to his own uncertainty, or to admit that he had doubted, after all. His rationalizations – his excuses – seemed strange and tenuous, now, to look back on; even to admit to them felt as if it could only hurt.

All the same, his arms tightened a little around Tom, and he pressed his lips to the other man’s forehead. “Yes,” Aremu said, and despite it all he was smiling; it washed through him, and something he’d held tight and clenched, just now, seemed to loosen all through him.

“I thought I’d ask Ahura to take most of the visit off,” Aremu said, quietly. “I can tell her you’d like privacy,” his hand came up; he ran his fingers through Tom’s hair again, gentle and soft. “I can cook for us,” he said, smiling a little more.

He held Tom a little closer, closing his eyes once more, feeling the other man’s field washing over his skin, and imagining Tom feeling the faint, magnetic tug of his nexus. “We can go look at the oldest tsug trees,” Aremu went on, soft and even, “and even climb them. We can swim,” his throat moved in a tight swallow, “and I can show you the stars at night, off the edge of the cliff. I can take you back to Laus Oma, properly this time. Anything you want, Tom.”

[Tom Cooke]

Riverside in the Three Flowers

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

F
or a moment, he wondered if he’d remembered right; he wondered if something might’ve happened, since. You mung, he thought, it’s a damned qalqa, the running of the estate, and your toffin erse doesn’t need to be squarely in the middle of it for a week or more. He didn’t think Aremu had spoken lightly, though; he never did.

A yawn broke up the even rhythm of Aremu’s breath, and he smiled then. Aremu was quiet for a few moments more. Maybe he hadn’t heard after all, he thought.

He couldn’t quite picture it, anyway. Well, he could, and maybe that was the problem.

He thought first, What if I take trouble with you to your island, to your home, like I did last time? Will you get caught on the knife’s edge? Will Ahura? But Aremu had knives of his own to get caught on; it was patronizing to pretend otherwise.

That wasn’t it, not really. That wasn’t what he could picture.

Who would I be? he wondered.

He let it wash through him, his head rested against one of Aremu’s biceps. He was close enough to sleep that it seemed like the edge of a cliff in a dream, the empty air gentle and thick like honey.

Who am I, there?

Would it be pretend? he got the strangest urge to ask. Would it be a lie, in the way you see lies? Is it a lie, a mask – a picture of me without a bloody knife in my hand?

It wasn’t just the man who picked up those pipes that drew you, back then; it wasn’t the man who bruised you in Ipadi’s kint at all. Who was it, then? Who is it you love?

What had he yet to learn about himself, what corners had he yet to uncover? About them? This – running, knives, dread, secrets – this was all he had ever known.

He shut his eyes in Aremu’s sleepy silence against a prickle of warmth behind them. He imagined coming down the stairs still thick with sleep, a slim dark silhouette in the kitchen framed with sunlight and shivering kofi leaves, the smell of batter and spices. He imagined standing on his toes and sliding his arms round his shoulders, kissing the back of his neck…

He imagined it seeping out of him, then, tar-stained tongue and black under his nails, smearing stains on the lovely white drapes, on Aremu’s crisp tan clothes; a monster, playing house –

Yes, Aremu said softly, pressing his lips to his hair.

He shivered, feeling his arms tighten, always careful with the right; he let himself feel cradled. I like it this way, he wanted to say, no matter how wrong it is, all the awful things this soul has had to do to get here, all the awful things it may do yet.

“Ah,” he breathed, “I can finally try your cooking.” He traced his hand along the planes of his chest, smooth and warm, broken up by the line where the harness had rested. “Maybe I’ll try, myself,” he laughed softly, and didn’t add the threat, If you don’t beat me to the kitchen.

Aremu’s long fingers were winding their way through his hair. His brow furrowed; he heard the tightening in his throat, and he thought of the waves rolling and crashing against the rocks, thought of the cliffside. He stroked his thumb over Aremu’s chest, directionlessly worried.

Whatever you want, Aremu said.

The stars, he wanted to say; he could picture them and their names, a great swath where the edge dropped off.

I’d like to see ada’na Ahura again, he wanted suddenly to say; he wasn’t sure why. Aremu had said most, and he couldn’t put his finger on why he wanted to insist. I want –

Will people talk? he wondered. Us, alone?

We’ll make it work, he echoed, strangely adrift. He tried to tether himself to the soft brush of Aremu’s breath in his hair. Whatever you want.

“I want to be with you,” he said, “watching the stars, or cooking, or in Laus Oma, or sharing eyo’pili… or just – there, with you, regardless of what we do.” He reached up to cradle the other man’s cheek, smiling and shifting against him. “I want to be with you.”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Evening, 38 Loshis, 2720
A Hotel by the River, Three Flowers

Aremu nodded, as well, his throat tight; he pressed his lips to Tom’s hair. I didn’t know, he wanted to say; I didn’t realize. I’ve been a fool, Tom, and he wanted to tell him only so that he could tell him he wasn’t a fool anymore.

Tom was curled against him, warm in the circle of his arms, the both of them warm together beneath the covers, in the sheets still rumpled with the joy they’d sought together earlier that evening. He was full, or at least as close as he ever seemed to be, with the memory of spices still lingering on his tongue, with Tom’s field wrapped sage-soft around him, and the knowledge of what the other man felt inside him mingled somewhere amidst all the rest.

Aremu found himself whispering to the other man, not of regrets and repentance, but of joys to come: of eyo’pili on the beach, of the sand beneath their toes and the waves crashing against the shore and the rocks, of the house quiet at night and nothing to do but to hold each other, of the trails through the fields and the woods, and the shed of his processing plant, and all the little pieces of himself he had scattered throughout the plantation.

He didn’t know when Tom fell asleep; he didn’t know when he did either. He dreamt of it, of sitting on the rooftop with Tom beside him, lying on his back and looking up at the stars. In his dream Tom was there, though indistinct; a fluttering white shape, and if he couldn’t make out the other man’s features, he could feel his love. He was there, and warm, even though the cool ocean breeze washed over them from the shore.

Aremu looked at him, indistinct and glowing white, and then up at the stars, and watched them; they shone down, and he felt the brush of light over his skin, sinking in to him, shining through him and reflecting his shape on the roof below. The stars leaned down, and whispered to him –

Aremu woke shaking, his arms still wrapped around Tom; he shifted, his mouth dry and unpleasant, and turned his face against the cool pillow. His right arm was half-numb, and he eased it away from Tom, uncertainly; for a moment, he could have sworn the hand he didn’t have was numb too, a strange and deeply unpleasant feeling. He rose, feet silent on the floorboards, and went to the covered pitcher of water, pouring himself a glass and drinking it, the faint, lingering taste of dinner now unpleasant in his mouth.

Aremu took a breath, and set the empty glass back down. He went to the window, feeling the brush of cool air against his skin; he looked out, up at the sky and down at the ground below, and then went to find a pocketwatch, and check the time. Late, he thought, his eyes fluttering shut a moment, and not yet early.

He went back to the bed, then, and sat beside Tom; he brushed his fingers through the other man’s hair, gently. He thought of not waking him, of laying back down and letting them both sleep through the night, of pretending he hadn’t woken up, and there was nothing he could have done. It was risky, he thought, this plan of theirs, in more than one way.

The dream receded from the edges of his thoughts; the chill on his skin went, and he knew he wanted to see the stars with Tom more than he feared the risks of it. He lay down again, and wrapped his left arm around the other man. “Dzogús,” Aremu murmured, soft, into Tom’s ear. “It’s time to wake, if you want to see the stars.”

[Tom Cooke]

Riverside in the Three Flowers

Evening on the 38th of Loshis, 2720

T
he soft whisper of Aremu’s voice blurred into dreams. The winding path to the mill, the creaking of cane, names he knew and names he didn’t; words he knew and words he didn’t. “Centrifugation,” he offered once, half-asleep, to a soft breath of laughter and brush of lips. He drifted, remembering the books he’d snuck glimpses of in that corner of Uzoji’s library.

Diffusion, he remembered; clarification…

The soft voice went on in his head, and he tried to burrow himself deeper into it, fingers curled against warm skin.

Then wide open space, full of light so bright he couldn’t see. Aremu’s voice was swallowed up by the rasp of linen flapping wildly in the breeze, and the creak of the floorboards underneath his feet. The smell of tsug and kofi was overpowering, mingling.

He was looking for a tree; there was nothing but sound and wind. If he found the tree, he thought he could find a pair of hands – one skin-warm and long-fingered, the other stiff but grown of tsug branches and flowing vibrant with sap – to pull him up into it.

But he went down, because that was where the whispering voice led him.

He’d no feet to feel the floorboards; something told him he was losing his shape, spilling the borders of himself. He was strangely unconcerned. It was uncomfortable, he registered, spreading out through the air more like smoke than a man. It felt like being undressed; he might’ve been embarrassed, only he didn’t think the man he was looking for would mind, even if he had to catch him in a bottle or a teapot. He was an engineer, he reminded himself: he’d figure something out.

It was dark as he went down, and the voice was the hum of an engine muffled by a door. It was warmer the closer he got. There was light leaking in, just a tiny sliver of it, but when he tried to look at it, it winked out.

He was sleeping hard, but a gentle shifting brought him out of it a little. He thought the rhythm of the breathing had broken up; he felt an arm shaking around him, then easing away. He was cold, so he thought to wrap both his arms around the arm and pull it back, but the thought soon slipped his mind. He had to find it, whatever it was. He burrowed himself deeper into the sheets and tried to set himself back about the dream, but strangely, he couldn’t hear the engine anymore.

He was a little more wakeful then. A pair of warm arms slid around him again, the mattress creaking, and he thought: Aremu.

He ached in a way he hadn’t in his dreams. He was stiff brittle wood; he could’ve lain there forever.

Dzogus, rasped warm breath against the curve of his ear. Leiraflesh raised up all along his neck and he shivered.

Passion, he thought first, throwing his mind back to poems he’d read in Mugrobi; then, no… He twisted round in Aremu’s arms, blinking his eyes open. The other man’s face was smeared with sleep, the moonlit stroke of a cheekbone.

His lips parted; he smiled, curiosity and tenderness washing through him. He slid his hand behind Aremu’s head and leaned up to kiss him, deep and lingering, still thick-headed with dreams.

He couldn’t place it, though it tickled something familiar at the edges of his mind. A poem by Dzotuq, maybe, or Azuq pezre Eqar, something about the ocean.

Stars, Aremu had said, and he remembered. He almost shivered; he could feel the breeze from the window, and the thought of going back out into the night –

When he drew away, he felt sharper. He was already shaking off sleep, whether he liked it or not. He eased up, mattress creaking, a first test of his tired muscles.

He wasn’t sure if they passed it. He tried not to groan; he didn’t want Aremu to think him too tired, not with the spark of excitement still in his belly, the dreams draining steadily away. “I do,” he murmured, “ah, I do,” and kissed him again.

Aremu’s silhouette was sharper now. He laid his hand on the other man’s chest. “We probably shouldn’t go together,” he said with a slight frown, “and I need to get a few tools from my hotel room.” The smile twitched at his lip again. And a change of clothing, he thought but didn’t say. “Where should we meet?”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Late Evening, 38 Loshis, 2720
A Fountain by the Ese Stop, Dejai

Tom squirmed against him, soft bare skin still with the lingering warmth of the space beneath the blankets; he had, Aremu thought, been up for only a few moments, but he was conscious of Tom’s warmth against the cool planes of his chest, the light pressure of the other man against him. Never mind, he wanted to say, suddenly, thinking of other ways they could occupy themselves in the middle of the night – never mind about the stars, Tom –

I do, Tom said, in the midst of a breathless exchange, easing up against him. Aremu’s fingers twined through the other man’s hair, holding on; Tom’s hand was soft against his chest, and he drew away to hear the other man say they should go separately.

Aremu knew Tom was right; his head inclined in the faintest of nods, and he hoped his disappointment didn’t show on his face. “Of course,” he said, instead, shifting away and easing himself out of the bed. He went to find his clothing, pulling his pants on over his hips, and beginning to settle the harness into place, laying it back against the skin; there were no tracks left by now to guide the way, other than a little chafing at his wrist, but he knew it too well by now to need them.

“Off campus, I think,” Aremu said, looking back at Tom; he settled the prosthetic in place, pulling the strap tight against his skin, and found his shirt, doing the buttons up one by one over his chest. “The fountain by the Ese stop.” Better, he might have said, not to go to the heart of Dejai this late; it will be busy, on an eight, even at this hour. Students, he might have said, don’t sleep. He didn’t; he trailed off, instead, a little sleep dampened still, or so he told himself.

The ghost of the smile lingered and clung to his lips.

I don’t want, Aremu wanted to say, to be apart from you tonight. Flood the stars; the time in your arms is more precious by far. And yet the thought of saying it churned in his stomach; it felt like cowardice, like ingratitude, and to pit it against the excitement in Tom’s voice as he’d made his suggestion, and worse, the sheepishness when Aremu had brought it up again, was more than he could bear.

Make your choice, Aremu told himself, and don’t look back.

There was another kiss, before they parted, soft and tender; Aremu walked Tom back to the stop, and walked himself along the cableways line, hand and wrist in the pocket of his tan pants, clinging to the shadows and the edges of the darkness. He boarded the next train there, changed once, and again, and climbed down at Ese into the quiet darkness of the evening.

The trains ran all day and night, now; it hadn’t always been so. They were mostly empty, though not as empty as he’d expected; people flowed on and off, on the main lines, a strange mix of drunk and sober, all of it with the faint air of some other Ever he had stumbled in to by mischance. Aremu did his best not to think of being alone, not to think of what he would do in a thousand ifs, and instead think only about the next step, and the one to come.

There was time, he thought, still. A group of students were perched on the edge of a fountain, laughing too loudly for their hushed voices; Aremu went to a stand drifting smoke out from braziers into the night, and drank a cup of too-thick black kofi in warm clay. He lingered, in the edge of a pool of blue phosphor light at the edge of the pond, gaze on the edge of the tumbling water. The students got up, laughing; two boys had their arms over each other’s shoulders, one carrying a half-empty bottle, and they stumbled off together, singing in a drunk, uneven chorus; Aremu felt the brush of their fields, only just, as they passed. He shifted aside before their friends followed, just out of the way enough – just out of the light.