[Closed] To Doubt

[Tom Cooke]

The Vauquelin House • Uptown

Evening on the 6th of Dentis, 2719

U
nderneath his fingertips – through all his bones – he felt the shudder go through Aremu; it could’ve been his own. It was his own.

He bowed his head, buried it in the shadows between them, but he didn’t have it in him to let go. Still, knowing what Aremu felt at his touch, he couldn’t. He wondered if it was weakness or strength, if it was want or if he was frozen in shame and fear, but his own soul was now like a book in a language he didn’t know. It was as if his soul had been replaced, too, to go with the body, and now there was nothing of him to know.

He couldn’t lift his head, not even when he felt Aremu’s lips in his hair. The other man was still trembling. Don’t, he wanted to protest. I won’t, not even if you kiss me again, no matter how badly I want it – not if you –

Aremu shifted out from underneath him, and Tom felt a momentary pulse of relief. He heard the shudder in his breath. But then he settled himself on the edge of the seat, and Tom felt one warm arm wrap round him. He didn’t think rightaway about which side Aremu was on, which arm it was. His eyes were still squeezed shut. Warm breath tickled his face, and he felt Aremu kiss his forehead gently.

A prickle of anger jolted through him – surprisingly sharp, for its brevity – and he wanted to hold up both his hands between his face and the imbala’s eyes, as if that would’ve helped anything. As if that was a man’s action.

I cannot offer you yourself, he said, as if he’d known how to finish the words Tom had started. Still, he couldn’t open his eyes, even as he felt Aremu’s palm warm against his cheek, even as he felt the press of his lips. Even as he offered them, as a mirror. Don’t you know I cover up mirrors? Don’t you know I can’t stand them?

Even when the other man drew away, Tom hung fair still, like he was perched on the edge of a precipice. Until he realized that Aremu had only one hand to cup his face, and the other arm was holding him. He felt the lines of the prosthetic’s harness against his back.

Tom’s eyes fluttered open, slowly. He was right; Aremu’s eyes were on him, on his face. But there were tears on his lashes, and Tom couldn’t bring himself to cover his face or push him away. It would’ve felt wrong. Just to be held, and to hold, Aremu said softly, and Tom nodded, ’cause he couldn’t speak just yet.

He looked down at the stranger’s hands in his lap, folded one on top of the other. He didn’t know what Aremu meant. If you don’t want them, then why – ?

He felt hot tears well up in his own eyes. His breath hitched once, twice, and he was gone, curled into Aremu and sobbing like a boch.

It took him a while to be done. He had needed to be held.

Somewhere in there, he had laid one of his hands on Aremu’s knee. As he ached out the last of his crying, drew in the last shuddering breaths, he squeezed it gently. “I’d like that, too.” He smiled up at Aremu, even with his puffy eyes; it was a brittle smile, but not a thin or a forced one. He studied the other man’s eyes, trying not to be afraid of what he saw in them.

“I’m not a stranger, am I?” he added, barely a whisper, his smile breaking with more tears. “Not really.”

He had to look away, but he disentangled his arm from Aremu and wrapped it round the other man’s back. To hold, he thought, and to be held; I can do that, with what I’ve got. I don’t know what it is I’ve got, but I know I’ve got an arm, same as you, and I can hold you.

It was some time before he spoke again. He wanted to speak, he was restless, but he couldn’t think what to say. Book vendors pushing armoires drifted in and out of his head; he thought of everything Aremu had told him about Thul Ka, about Thul’Amat, he thought of Aremu teaching him the word imbala before he knew anything of Mugrobi or imbali or even words. He thought to say something about any of it, and then realized, in the warm, comfortable silence, that it wasn’t Aremu’s turn anymore.

It hadn’t been for some time.

“My days,” he said softly, finally. “They’re spent in an office in Stainthorpe Hall, mostly, that grey hulk of a building off Kingsway, near the palace. It stays warm in the winter; it’s hot as hell in the summer. But my assistant, he’s set it up so we can order kofi in. From a Mugrobi place, though he won’t tell me where,” he added, smiling. “Don’t think he wants to run into the Incumbent there." He stroked Aremu's arm, then laughed softly, a deep humming rumble. “When my eyes’re too strained, I watch papers blow round the courtyard. My office is on the second floor, so it’s got a fine view of all the little redheads scurrying about the parliamentary buildings.

“Evenings…” He trailed off, wavering, and gestured toward the dark window, rattled with rain. Even now, there were a few books piled up on one side of the broad seat, and the cushions on the other were worn tellingly.

“What d’you make of all this, then?” He looked up at Aremu, and the smile he offered him this time wasn’t so brittle; it had a wry edge, a twist, and there was humor in the lines around his eyes. He quirked an eyebrow. “Won’t cott a kov,” he said softly, but he couldn’t quite say it this time, for bein’ honest. Instead, he reached to stroke Aremu’s cheek with the backs of his fingers, feather-light.

.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 6 Dentis, 2719
The Vauquelin House, Uptown

Tom had watched him through a veil of tears, had bowed his head down to their laps. He had wept, then; not a gentle tear or two that tracked through a heavy beard or down a sharp-featured face, but hard, wracking sobs that shook him like a storm. Aremu found his balance on the edge of the chair, and held Tom tight with both arms, the hand he had cradling the other man, his lips pressed gently into the other man’s head. He held him, and he waited, unyielding, and if he felt a prickle of moisture on his own face as well, he was not ashamed. There seemed nothing weak to him about this, about sharing a man’s pain, about trying to lessen it.

They were, Aremu thought, the two of them, joined together in the lessening. Mostly, however, he did not think; it seemed to him a time for doing, and not saying. In time, Tom’s breaths shuddered back into stillness, and his hand squeezed Aremu’s knee. There was a smile on his face, and the strength of it pushed more tears from the edges of his eyes, sent them rolling down his cheeks.

“No,” Aremu promised, softly. "No." Tom looked away, but he wrapped his arm around Aremu, and they sat, holding and being held. Aremu could feel the warmth of Tom’s body, curled half in his lap. He knew that Tom must have been able to feel the straps of the prosthetic, against his arm, his shoulder, his chest; he knew, too, that he had not been as careful as he usually was about keeping the wood away. He had waited, perhaps without meaning to, for a prickle of unease to run through him, for discomfort to curl sour in the pit of his stomach. He had waited to feel ashamed, or afraid, or even just uncomfortable. He had not; he could not know more about it than that. Tom’s arm was around him too, and they were tangled together, and Aremu knew they had not shared any moment more intimate than this.

When Tom spoke, Aremu could feel the shift of him, the rumble of words in his chest. The other man’s breath tickled the bare skin of his neck. He smiled; Tom was stroking his arm, gently, and Aremu cupped his head, not rubbing, but just holding him a little closer. He grinned at the mention of kofi, and a low rumble of a chuckle went through his chest with Tom’s, and it was easy.

Evenings, Tom said, and he gestured. Aremu looked around the little study, at the soft coals glowing with the last of their heat, at the books on the broad seat, and the tell-tale wear on the cushion, and then back at the man curled against him. He grinned when Tom smiled, and brushed his thumb over the edges of his wry grin. Tom’s fingers were light on his cheek, the backs of them wandering softly over his cheekbone; he knew it, that gesture, from when they had swayed together on the deck of the Eqe Aqawe, and from other nights too.

“It’s strange,” Aremu said, softly, because he cared for Tom too much to be anything but honest, because he thought the truth of it better than even a well-meant lie. “On Dzum, it was hard to imagine you…” Aremu was quiet, for a moment, tasting the word, and then, gently, he went ahead, “in context.” He stroked Tom’s cheek, tenderly, his eyes searching the other man’s face, waiting for a moment.

“Not the reading,” Aremu said, with a little grin of his own. “And not the poetry,” he promised, softly, pressing his lips to Tom’s hair once more.

“But the…” Aremu was quiet, his thumb stroking gently over Tom’s skin. He was frowning again, softly. “The loneliness of it,” he said, finally. He should have known; he thought he should have realized. He knew something of the cost of lies, of the walls they built, and silences too. He drew Tom a little closer, and settled the other man against his chest, if Tom would let him. Over time, he’d shifted more; there was enough of the chair that he could rest a bit against the high, soft back of it; there was enough of him that Tom could rest, too, if he wanted to it.

It reminded him, Aremu thought, just a little, of the house where he had grown up. Of his father’s study; of the emptiness of busy halls and busy people, and the loneliness that came when luxury stood in the stead of contact. He had learned, since, what it was to be hungry, to be cold, to be afraid; he knew there was much to have been grateful for. But he thought of the small house in Quarter Fords, of Tom stoking the kitchen fire, of the well-worn furniture and the cats wandering through, of the aches and groans of the old wood, and he knew what he would have chosen.

“You said…” Aremu let them sit in silence a little longer, but he drew in breath, in time; he found the smallest edge of a question, like opening a door between them. “A year?” He asked, softly, his fingers gently playing with the soft curls of Tom’s hair.

[Tom Cooke]

The Vauquelin House • Uptown

Evening on the 6th of Dentis, 2719

I
t was still hard.

The weeping couldn’t uproot everything; some things were planted too deep. So even as he smiled up at Aremu, the tears still stinging raw and cold on his cheeks, he felt it. He felt it along the line of Aremu’s arm, even despite the harness, even despite everything Aremu had shown and given him. He felt it in the pad of the thumb on his cheek, and underneath it, in the crooked line that thumb traced around his smile. He felt it shudder through him, through the whole of him – the disgust.

But there was something, now, about how it sat between them. It had been hard to pull out – like wrangling a tsuter ghost from an unsuspecting body, like burning it out with a ward. And it wasn’t gone, because nothing ever was. But it might’ve been curled on the carpet like a cat, the low warm light of the study lapping over its bristly fur and jagged fangs, and it might’ve been falling asleep.

Strange, Aremu said, careful but honest. He let the other man’s eyes search his face; he didn’t think what he might have been finding there. He smiled again, his brow furrowed and more tears budding at the edges of his eyes, as Aremu kissed his hair again.

You never talked down to me, he wanted to say, the beast’s belly rumbling: why? What the hell did you think you saw? He hadn’t thought you could ever draw a connection between the tallyboy that’d lived in Quarter Fords and all these flooding books. He’d long thought himself unrecognizable. The thought that he wasn’t, that all of it had been there even back then, made him feel something he couldn’t describe; he was almost afraid to feel it.

What Aremu did say, in the end, surprised him more. “Yes,” he said thickly – hesitantly. He looked down and away, palming away the last of his tears.

The imbala was shifting back in the seat, and it was easy to let himself be drawn into his arms. Tom thought he felt the brush of cool wood through his sleeve on one side.

He was curious, though he knew he oughtn’t’ve been; he didn’t know if Aremu would let him look closer, and he didn’t think it was a good idea to ask. For all he’d felt the first time he’d seen that wooden hand – he didn’t want to think of it; in hindsight, he was almost ashamed – he found himself wanting to run his hands over it, now, to get a feel for it.

But he didn’t look, and he didn’t acknowledge it. He laid his head on the other man’s chest, so he could feel the rumble of his voice between his breaths. If some part of him, if most of him, liked it, this new way of fitting into Aremu’s space, he didn’t ask too much of himself. He focused on the words, and just as he’d let himself weep, he let himself be touched by them.

His eyes wandered round the study, hung with shadows. The loneliness of it. It shouldn’t’ve surprised him, Aremu putting his finger right on the mark.

“A year,” he said, finally, shifting to blink up at Aremu and then resting his head back. With a sigh, he laid one thin hand on his chest, right over his heart; he could feel it, if he focused, through the thin cloth.

He traced the line of the muscle with his fingertips idly. “A lonely year, yes. It’s strange, and lonely, being in a different body. If you ever wanted to know. I don’t know if I could do it any justice, trying to describe it.” His voice wavered; he got it back, steady, but not before he felt a familiar heat behind his eyes. “Not always bad. Interesting, sometimes.”

He smiled, briefly, thinking of the beach on Isla Dzum. It was only a brief smile; he had to shut his eyes, then. “It wasn’t so lonely, at first,” he went on, “too fearful to be lonely. Fear and hope go hand in hand, and all that. I was still me, then. I tried to go back to living the kind of life I knew, but I figured – quick enough – I learned the hard way, nobody’d recognize me. People see what they want to see.” I think you know something of that, he thought and didn’t say.

Aremu’s fingers threaded through a curl of his hair. He wondered if it was red or grey; he wondered what Aremu thought of it.

“I don’t know if it got easier or harder. Lonelier, oes. I learned something of what I was.” He hesitated, frowning. He thought of the cliffs, then, vivid and sharp, Aremu scrambling back to the edge to get away from him. The two days that had followed.

I don’t blame you if you’re still disgusted, he wanted to say, if you don’t want to know more. But Aremu was holding him in his porven, playing with his hair; those days felt so strange and distant.

“Raen,” he offered, as carefully as Aremu had once offered him the word imbala. “The Deftung word is raen.”

.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 6 Dentis, 2719
The Vauquelin House, Uptown

Tom eased into the space Aremu had left for him, and cuddled his cheek into Aremu’s chest. Aremu could feel the warm, comfortable weight of him, settling into place again with each breath.

Aremu thought of Crabapple, the little cat with the crooked tail he had known so many years ago. He thought of Crabapple settling on the ground of Tom’s kitchen a few feet away, deliberately making Aremu come to him; he thought of Crabapple settling himself into Aremu’s lap, claws pricking at the bare skin of his thighs through a thick woolen blanket. He was never confident, when it came to petting a cat; he tried to proceed carefully, to find the spot which made the cat stretch and purr. It always seemed to him uncertain whether the cat would like his attentions, and sometimes purring became a stiffening back and sharp grabbing claws.

Aremu had thought to ease his right arm away from Tom’s back, once he settled. He had thought to rest it away from himself, somewhere distant. He did not. It was easy to set the discomfort aside, somehow; it was as if there was no space left for it, with Tom cradled against his chest. Even when he pulled away, and eased back into place again, it didn’t seep in to fill the gaps. Aremu smiled at the brush of Tom’s fingers tracing the lines of him beneath the shirt, shifting to press his lips against the other man’s hair once more. His hand had wandered down, and settled in the curls at the back of Tom’s head, winding them softly around his fingers.

If you ever wanted to know, Tom offered. Aremu kissed his head again, softly. Do you need me to, he wanted to ask, but he thought the silence did it for him; he thought the silence gentler than words could be. If you needed me to, he wanted to say, I would try. I don’t know what I can bear, but I would try.

It hurt, Tom had said. He didn’t think it hurt for most men; he hoped it didn’t. It had hurt for him. Aremu steered his mind gently away from the painful places they wished to go, and brought it back to the warmth against his chest.

Are they yours? Aremu wanted to ask. He imagined Tom going every day by carriage to a squat gray building, settling himself at a desk and reading until his head ached, drinking coffee his assistant brought him. He thought of Tom knowing what the building was like in winter as well as summer. He thought of the wedding ring on Tom’s left hand, and of watching him fumble at it with shaky fingers amidst the mangroves - of Tom not wanting to die with it on. He didn’t know how to put the pieces together.

He could not imagine what it would be like, to wake in another man’s skin. He knew enough of what it was to find yourself in another man’s mind; he knew enough of wrenching it was, to be bent into someone else and made to fit. It wracked him, every time; it bent him into something else, and he had to struggle back into himself. At least he could look in the mirror and see the shape he knew; Aremu had never thought to be grateful for that before.

He tried to imagine the slender galdor’s body curled against him living Tom’s life; he couldn’t even begin to try. What did it mean to you, Aremu wanted to ask, to live the kind of life you knew?

Are they yours? He wanted to ask. The responsibilities the man you wear left behind; do you inhabit them as well as him? It’s me in here, Tom had promised. I still just feel like Tom. Nobody’d recognize me, Tom said now. Aremu felt his breath catch somewhere, and he could not put his finger on why. Yes, he thought, swallowing. People see what they want to see. He buried another soft kiss in red curls.

He wanted to come to the questions, but they were not urgent; they did not burn. There was time, Aremu thought; there was time. He was content to have nudged open the door; he was content not to know too much, for now.

”Raen,” Aremu repeated the unfamiliar word, slowly, turning it over with his tongue, tasting it on his lips. He was quiet, though his fingers still played with Tom’s hair. He thought of the two of them, sitting on the wharf, watching for lightning. “Are there many?” He asked softly. Then, with a crooked little smile, “why Deftung?”

[Tom Cooke]

The Vauquelin House • Uptown

Evening on the 6th of Dentis, 2719

N
ot many.” Tom answered the easier question first, soft, heaving a deep sigh against Aremu. “Fewer, even, than…” Than of you, he couldn’t say.

Though there were more imbali, he reminded himself, than passives anywhere else. He didn’t want to wonder why that was; he felt a familiar prickle of self consciousness, like Aremu might know what he was wondering about.

But he didn’t know what it’d be like in Kzecka. He couldn’t rightly say how many there were. They said maybe one in every hundred golly was born passive, but just about every servant inside Brunnhold’s red-brick walls was a crimp. So few of them, but so many in one place. When you rounded up that hundredth, thinking how many gollies there were in Anaxas, the number wasn’t anything to sneeze at. But of raen, Tom thought even Kzecka would only have...

He didn’t know, not rightly. He’d never asked how many raen were in Kzecka. Not a hundred. Not even fifty. Tom pictured fifteen, twenty, maybe. He wondered what happened when one lived to its last, when it was too feeble to take even a willing Vessel. He supposed there was one less raen in Kzecka, until another one happened to wander in. How long did it take? Why did they all go there?

That place of temples and incense and poetry high up in the mountains was as inscrutable as ever. “I don’t know,” he admitted, finally. He shrugged minutely, nestling himself closer against Aremu, so his head rested underneath his chin. “Being honest, I wonder how many I’ve met, sometimes, not even knowing it.”

He felt sheepish, suddenly, with his porven tingling against his skin. Not all of them are so obvious, he wanted to say. He worried for a moment if he’d said something frightening, something wrong. We’re everywhere, he might as well’ve said. It scares me, he hadn’t said; he hoped Aremu couldn’t guess how much his own kind disturbed him. He thought, either way, that Aremu knew something of that.

He tried to ground himself with the sound of the word on Aremu’s lips. He’d liked it fair much; he smiled now to think of it, with those same lips brushing through his hair. With the left hand combing through the curls, winding them round its fingers; with the faintest ghost of a right hand, precious there as if it were cut from a tree in Roannah, just brushing his hip.

“Deftung’s all consonants, usually,” he murmured. “I like the way you say it.” I’ve always liked the way you talk. He couldn’t think of a less hamfisted way to say it. There was a way that Mugrobi accent suggested certain sounds without shaping them outright, the soft roll of an R, the lips that didn’t quite touch.

Deftung. Tom brought himself back. Aremu’d asked him another question, one a pina more difficult. He didn’t see there was any harm in speaking of it to a man like Aremu.

Well, Ezre, he thought wryly, you’ve got me now. Spilling my own secrets to a Bad Brother, when I tore you a new one for risking them to a schoolgirl.

“There’s a community of my kind in Hox. Civilized,” he insisted, almost fumbling over the word, “not — not…” Not monsters. He felt guilty for the defensiveness he heard in his voice, and stroked Aremu’s chest. “Not many,” he said instead. “There’s an order that takes care of us and keeps us secret, and doesn’t care that we’re... We have families and work like anybody else, and they value our — unique perspective. I’ve never been there.”

Chewing the inside of his lip, he thought more about it. He couldn’t think how it must have sounded to Aremu; either a world away from such as the Turtle or a mockery. Dead things playing at —

Not the poetry, Aremu had insisted, kissing him. Tom trusted him. Tom hadn’t realized he’d tensed; he relaxed, slowly. He reached and undid his cravat, working the silk out from around his throat and then laying it over the side of the chair. He rubbed his neck, as if it’d had a noose round it.

“I met one of them at Brunnhold,” he began, fair careful. “A transfer student. He didn’t understand why I was afraid.” He hesitated. “He taught me to ward,” he said, even more careful. He was still against Aremu, then.

He couldn’t do it, he didn’t say, what you could do. Reach me. The mona went wild when he tried. But when you did it, when you touched me, for a moment, they were still, just like in the East Garden —

I’m clairvoyant, he didn’t say, though it was lodged in his throat like it might choke him. The absence of the cravat didn’t help; even curled in Aremu’s arms, he felt vulnerable, suddenly. Surely the other man had seen the grimoires —

He tried to speak, but he couldn’t. He was fair tense again in Aremu’s arms, and breathless.

.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 6 Dentis, 2719
The Vauquelin House, Uptown

Fewer, Tom said, and left the comparison alone. Aremu nodded faintly, understanding enough. He wondered why Tom had left it there; he wondered if Tom found the comparison offensive himself. He wondered which of them Tom thought would find it so – which group he thought lowered by comparison. He set those thoughts aside, again, because Tom had never, never made Aremu feel less.

It was not hard to think of the first time they had discussed it. I want to respect you, Tom had said, before they had ever gone to bed together; before Aremu had made the decision, fully, that Tom was someone he wanted to take to his bed. Is there a word…? He’d said it, carefully, imbala, and Aremu had not wanted to tell him what it meant, not in full. I like the way you say it, Tom said, now, of raen.

Aremu smiled. I liked the way you said imbala, then, he didn’t say, but he brushed his lips against Tom’s hair. He didn’t know what he thought of the idea that Tom thought there might be secret raen – here, or in the Rose, hiding. Men, wearing the skin of other men’s, smiling behind their faces. Afraid and alone. The thought of it disturbed Aremu, and saddened him, somehow; he couldn’t have said why.

It was impossible to ignore the parallels, as Tom kept on. Tom must have known that, Aremu thought. He didn’t know what to say. A moment ago, he himself had thought that Tom knew something of being apart, of what it had been like for him to be raised as one thing, to have become another, to never – quite – but now something in him recoiled from the comparison. We’re alive, he wanted to say, sharply. I am a liar, but it’s my own face I hide behind. He wanted to draw that line between them, and he didn’t know why.

Aremu was bringing himself back to the conversation; his fingers were even more gentle in Tom’s hair, smoothing the red curls. It was hard for the other man, Aremu knew, to talk to. He understood, then, that the parallels were Tom wanting him to understand, were Tom’s fear that too much understanding would make him grotesque. Aremu knew that, and he softened against the knowing. He had never stopped listening, because there was a part of him which had always treasured each word – which understood, no matter how much they disturbed him, that they were precious, a gift from Tom, an act of trust. He was burying his lips in Tom’s hair again, gently, like an apology for the thoughts that had wanted to divide them.

He taught me to ward, Tom said. Not casually; he did not try to sneak it across, or ease it in as if Aremu might not hear. He said it carefully, but deliberately, in all the preciseness of the Uptown Viendan accent he had made his. Aremu could feel the tension in Tom, the way he went utterly still against his chest.

Aremu couldn’t blame him; he shifted back, slowly, feeling his breath stir soft hair, and then he was still as well. His right arm eased away; it settled, somewhere distant, and he felt the arm of the sofa resting against his forearm. For a few moments, oddly, he felt as if he had forgotten how to breathe. The weight of Tom against his chest seemed to be crushing him, squeezing all the air from his lungs, suddenly much too heavy to bear. He was sharply aware of the other man’s porven in the air around them, scratching with a vicious sharpness at all of his nerve endings. A reminder, Aremu thought.

“Of course,” he said, quietly, after a few moments. His eyes closed; he could not look at Tom. There was little enough light from the coals, tucked in this quiet corner, and nothing tried to seep through his eyelids. He swallowed, and found he had no more words to offer. I didn’t realize, he’d meant to say, but the words had stuck somewhere in his throat. His fingers eased away from Tom’s hair; he’d frozen with red curls wrapped around dark fingers. He settled the hand he still had against his own leg, shy of Tom’s, and swallowed.

“You have a field,” Aremu said, when he could speak again. He opened his eyes, slowly, but he looked away. There was no escaping the soft red curls, not really, the faint sounds of breathing against him. You have a soul, he didn’t say, although he felt it in the air between them, filling all the little dark spaces between his body and Tom’s, seeping in through the cracks, pressing down on him and pushing Tom away. He was aware of an absurd desire to cry; he closed his eyes again, and carefully pulled it down, away, and when it was gone enough, he opened them again. There was no moisture on his lashes, not this time; his voice was even, when he spoke, and still quiet. “It makes sense.”

[Tom Cooke]

The Vauquelin House • Uptown

Evening on the 6th of Dentis, 2719

T
om felt Aremu shift underneath him. He was thankful there were no cliffs, there was no sheer drop. Just the back of the chair, soft and solid. He should’ve moved, he knew – the tightness in his chest was like a bell, getting louder and louder – but Aremu’s hand was still in his hair, his fingers still wrapped in his curls. It had become like the hand of a statue, and the warmth of it was more confusing than comforting.

Of course. Of course–?

It’s not of course, he wanted to insist. I don’t know what it is to you, but it’s not of course; I’m no flooding fool. Godsdamn – but anger wasn’t a pillar that would hold him up, not this time.

He felt Aremu’s right arm ease away. He thought he would’ve disentangled himself then, as he should’ve all along – why had he let himself be compromised? – he was a man, not a threadbare little cat, to crawl into the lap of the first kov as showed it kindness.

If he had opened his eyes and looked, it seemed to him, strange enough, that he might have seen Ava Weaver sitting in the chair opposite them. Straight-backed. In his mind, she had two faces, too, one umber with shadows and limned with low orange light, the other soft-lit from the phosphor lamps; he couldn’t read either of them. He imagined her hands in her lap, resting on wrinkleless silk. He imagined her watching him, like this.

He thought he should’ve disentangled himself all along; he didn’t have a cravat on anymore, and all the hairs on the back of his neck were prickling, and Aremu’s lovely hand was so close – silk couldn’t protect you from a knife, but he felt vulnerable anyway, because a man’s hand on your neck could do more than kill, could do things more gentle and more frightening than kill.

The fingers slipped out of his curls, and he didn’t feel Aremu’s hand anywhere. Still he couldn’t move, and he didn’t know why. This was not lying comfortably on his lover’s chest; this was lying frozen like a fallen deer. His eyes didn’t know to make tears. When he swallowed, it was as loud in his ears as a gunshot.

You have a field, Aremu offered, even and low and infuriatingly calm. It makes sense.

Tom knew to move, then; it was embarrassment he felt, now, in the wake of the fear. Aremu wasn’t touching him, and hadn’t been for long enough to send the signal clear. He opened his eyes, and there was nothing but the rise and fall of Aremu’s chest and another empty chair. Carefully, he eased himself up, but not quite out of the chair.

He couldn’t look at Aremu’s face. “It’s not...” The word stuck in his throat; he cleared it, shoved away the tears like a man – for the first time this night, he thought wryly – and found more words. “It’s not for me.” He shifted on the edge of the seat, on the left side. “It’s not me, taking something that isn’t mine, just because I want to. I want you to know what it is to me.”

He could still feel Aremu’s warmth; he shivered. He could see another arm on the arm opposite, another hand – not Aremu’s, not how he remembered it – resting there. He didn’t look at it. “It’s my responsibility,” he said carefully. “To learn. To try –”

He cleared his throat and looked down at the floor. Something about the light flickering over the patterned carpet was dizzying, but he didn’t want to shut his eyes.

Now, all of him prickling with the chill, he heard Aremu’s words again. You have a field. He’d thought of it as empty words; he’d thought of it as giving up, given voice. You have a, Tom thought, and he felt the ghost of Aremu’s hand clasped in his, and heard, I think it’s in you. Tom couldn’t look at him, then, though he knew he deserved it, but he couldn’t shut his eyes, either. Not much of a man, after all.

“It doesn’t make sense to me, no, dove,” he breathed, and there was hurt in his voice. To push away the tears, he’d’ve had to move, or else shut his eyes; he stared fixedly at the floor, and his face felt brittle as a mask. “None of it makes sense, least of all that part. But what can a man do, except look it in the eye?”

.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 6 Dentis, 2719
The Vauquelin House, Uptown

Tom eased himself away, then, far enough to put space between them. To call the coals smoldering was generous, now; the cherry glow had faded, Aremu realized, long since. The chill drifting through the study’s thick-paned glass windows parted the thin fabric of Aremu’s shirt like a knife. He missed the jacket lying on the ground, the warm presence of the cravat at his throat. If he could have, he would have tied the cravat again; the collar wasn’t enough, anymore.

Aremu could hear the ache in Tom’s voice, the way he cleared it through something in his throat. He didn’t look at the other man. My responsibility, Tom called it, serious and thoughtful. How like a galdor, Aremu thought, with a sudden surge of bile. He tasted it on his tongue, an unfamiliar anger, sour and bitter all at once. It shuddered through him and went away, and left him feeling worse than before, even more drained and empty. Of course, Aremu thought. Of course.

His face was smooth and even; he did not want to let it crack. He felt so much; he could not keep track of it. It made him think of a puppet; Tom, with strings dangling from broad, scarred hands, a frown in his heavy beard as he made the slender galdor’s body dance, as he opened its mouth and called through it to the mona with a borrowed voice.

And then, swamping it, an even worse taste, and a familiar one: shame. Hadn’t he set this aside? He knew he had not caused this, that what he lacked was not his fault. There was nothing he could do; he had not chosen to be born like this. But he had been. All he could control, Aremu thought, aching, was how he dealt with it. All he could do was to take what he still had, and to make the best of it.

“Yes,” Aremu agreed, quietly, when Tom spoke again. Dove; he’d liked it, before, when Tom had called him that. There was a brush of the Rose in it, and even if it was strange in Vauquelin’s voice – Tom’s borrowed, puppet voice – he had known it had meaning to Tom, and so it had had meaning to him. He could not keep his voice flat; there was a tense ache in it, beneath the surface, a roaring current under still waters. “Looking away changes nothing.”

He still could not bring himself to look at Tom. You let me sit there and wonder if you had a soul, Aremu thought, hot anger prickling through him. You let me make a fool of myself in shame, when you knew – you knew all along – he did not care, suddenly, that the anger was unfair. He did not care that it would have been hard for Tom to tell him; he did not care that it would have hurt, then, too, and all the worse because the reasons for the hurting embarrassed him so.

Aremu eased out of the chair, careful; there was not much space for two men in it, not nearly enough, but he did not brush Tom, not even with the edge of his shirt cuff. He stepped away, then, one, two, three steps, and closed his eyes. It left him in the middle of the room, standing; he clasped his right wrist in his left hand, feeling the heavy wood of the prosthetic against his chest, his shoulders trembling. His breath came a little easier, there, although tears pricked at the corners of his eyes.

This was a mistake, he wanted to say, suddenly. I shouldn’t have come – I shouldn’t have – I have a responsibility, and I came only – only to – Aremu closed his eyes. He didn’t want to lie to Tom. He was angry, but to name that anger was to begin to tame it. I am angry, Aremu told himself, because Tom has something which I lacked. I knew it, already; I knew it. But to hear it aloud, unexpected, hurt. He had it before, already, so why now? Why now?

Aremu turned, back, slowly, looking at the half-shadowed figure of a man, cast into two shades by the light, a line drawn down his face between the lamplight and the coals. He was quiet, gathering himself; he stayed away, just far enough. It was easier there.

When he spoke, Aremu’s voice was a rasp; clearing his throat did nothing for it, and within a syllable he had slid back into aching. “What is it to you, then?” He asked, staring at Tom across the darkened room. “Just your responsibility? Tell me,” Aremu’s voice cracked, and he pushed through, his chest moving up and down with each breath, his jaw tight. He was falling, bouncing, tumbling over rapids; he was hurled through the air, from side to side, and all he could do was cling to a strap, any strap, whatever he could hold. “You want me to know, so tell me.”

[Tom Cooke]

The Vauquelin House • Uptown

Evening on the 6th of Dentis, 2719

L
ooking away changes nothing, Tom thought, after the fact. He sat still as Aremu rose and moved back out into the room. The back of his neck prickled; a little shiver ran through him, and he wondered why he hadn’t felt the chill this keen before. He reckoned he had, before Aremu had come to him. It was too painful to think of, so he didn’t think of it at all. He just thought he’d have to stoke the hearth, once the imbala was gone.

He stayed still, staring down at the floor. In the corner of his eye, he could see the rest of the study, a wash of warm light. He could see the vague shape of another man’s back, picked out in the soft white of his shirt. He was out of field range; from here, it could’ve been a galdor.

The question cut him like a paring knife. He could think of only once when Aremu had demanded an answer of him like this; he’d always been careful, gentle, with his questions, when Tom had been a man to him. His voice broke over it, tell me, and Tom felt his own breath hitch.

No, he wanted to say. I chose to share this with you, and I chose to trust you when you told me you saw me, and you wouldn’t look up one day and see a monster. And if you don’t have the heart to shun me, now that you’ve had me, then take your I know who you are and leave –

“It’s my qalqa,” rasped Tom.

He sniffed sharply, hating himself for it. But he’d already wept in the imbala’s arms like a boch; he reckoned there was no lower a man could sink. He shut his eyes and drew in a deep, shaky breath, collecting himself, and then pushed himself up out of the seat on the left arm.

Would’ve liked to think he was answering for himself, or something like that. He didn’t think so, not really; he wasn’t that much of a clocking mung. “It’s what I am,” he grated, moving round the chair, pushing the footstool he’d dragged so close to it out of his way. He traced the arm and the back of the chair with shaky fingers. He left his cravat where it was; the last thing he wanted was to humiliate himself by fumbling with it in front of Aremu.

He looked up. He hadn’t meant to look at Aremu, only he was in the middle of his study, and there was nowhere else to look. He hadn’t meant to see the moisture glistening in the other man’s eyes.

He hadn’t wanted to. He looked into his face, his eyes darting from one eye to the other, his own brittle mask falling to pieces. The grim set of his lips twitched, quivered. He blinked once, twice, but it didn’t help.

“Something wrong's happening,” he breathed, “and it’s not just about me. I went in thinking I could plead with the mona to make things right; I thought I was the cause of what’d happened to me. But now, I’m not so sure. And I can’t sit by when everything I am could be a warning sign for –”

His own voice broke over it. He searched Aremu’s face with his eyes, and again, the other man was like a map he couldn’t read.

What the hell is it, then? he wanted to demand, watching the imbala’s chest rise and fall underneath his shirt. If that was it, if that was enough to push you over the cliffs, then why are you still looking at me like that, like I’m a man? And what the hell is wrong with me, that I thought I was safe, that I thought it was safe to love?

His breath hitched again.

I do owe it to you, he thought. Any man owes any man he loves honesty, regardless of whether he’s loved back. “It’s not just a responsibility, no,” he said softly, taking a step back. “There’s something between me and them. I don’t know what it is. It doesn’t feel monstrous to me. But if – by this – if you feel I’ve profaned something, I understand. I don’t ask anyone to be around it.”

.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 6 Dentis, 2719
The Vauquelin House, Uptown

Aremu tried to place the word qalqa in the midst of the study, in the low, deep voice of Anatole Vauquelin, made aching and sore in his throat; he tried to place it in Uptown Vienda, in this galdor’s home, between the servants and the books. He watched the back of the heavy armchair, and the slight figure curled against it still, sniffling, and the way the firelight glinted in his hair, and he thought: qalqa.

It’s what I am, Tom said, standing against the chair. Aremu found it, then; he found it, and he knew where it belonged, with a sinking ache in his gut. He found it in the way a galdor would speak to an imbala, a kind one, one who meant well. You can’t understand, Aremu had heard, at Thul’Amat, in Thul Ka, in the Eqe Aqawe, in the Islands, words like drumbeats, inexorable, beating a rhythm into him. You can’t understand what it’s like.

He hadn’t thought to hear it from Tom; he hadn’t known Tom had it in him. Aremu thought he might be sick; he thought he could bend forward and leave behind whatever of the Anaxi stew he had choked down earlier in the day, scatter strange chunks of meat and root vegetables across the carpet of Tom’s study. He thought of the beach in Dzum, of what had felt like synchronicity beneath the light of the stars; he thought of carrying Tom back in his arms, and the little laugh Tom had let out when he awoke, and he hurt in a place deeper than he had words to name.

I knew better, Aremu thought, when he could think at all. I knew, and I – it was all tangled up inside him, grief and longing and sorrow and want, and the worst part was that he still wanted; that some part of him, even now, wanted to fold Tom in his arms again. It seemed impossible that minutes earlier he had curled Tom into his chest, had held him with both arms, that minutes earlier, he had offered to take Tom to Thul’Amat, and thought the other man glad to accept. He couldn’t understand it, now; looking back, he didn’t see how it could have been real.

Tom looked at him across the room. Something wrong, he said; greater purpose. Aremu’s head spun. He had known the answer already, he thought; he did not know why he had asked, not really. He knew better. He clenched his jaw tighter, teeth grinding together, a headache lancing up through his jaw into his skull, throbbing painfully.

Aremu had thought to swallow his words; he had thought to swallow all of it, to push it down and away. What good would it do, to let it out? He could change nothing; there was nothing to be done. Better to accept it; better not to look away. Tom kept going, and Aremu shuddered, and let out a sharp gasp with an edge of bitter laughter.

Profaned, he thought; profaned. As if he could be the judge of such. He was squeezing his right arm with his left hand. Pain throbbed through the scar, and he let go, and tucked the prosthetic away. His left hand, too, found his pocket, and his fingers dug tight into the fabric, pulling his pants taut against his hips. I have not been in a temple in eighteen years, Aremu wanted to say; what priest would have me? He knew there was moisture prickling in his eyes.

“You would do better to ask a galdor,” Aremu said. He didn’t know how to name what was in his voice; he didn’t want to. There was a bitter taste creeping into the back of his throat, settling there. His hand balled into a fist, the fabric of his pants knotted in the middle of it. He was shaking now. “I am denied the sacred,” he said, staring at Tom across the room, through the tears clouding his eyes, so that the other man was little more than a smear of light and color. “What can I know of the profane?”