[Closed] And Wished It Kept

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 8 Dentis, 2719
Hotel Pendulum, The Stacks

Aremu didn’t know what he’d expected, but Tom smiled, and something eased inside him. I’ll figure it out, he wanted to say; I don’t know how to apologize, not yet, but I’ll make it up to you. He could scarcely think of the night in Tom’s study without shame; even the tenderness of the other man’s hands rubbing the knots from his back was tinged with it, dyed in it, so that he couldn’t feel the softness without seeing harsh red.

I hurt you, Aremu wanted to say. I didn’t mean to – I didn’t –

He couldn’t think of offering an explanation. He had said more than he should have already; he didn’t think Tom wanted to know all the bitter, aching pieces inside him. He hadn’t meant to put them on the other man; he hadn’t meant to show him the anger and the hurt. He didn’t want to feel it; he didn’t want Tom to think of him like that. But to offer explanations seemed to him fundamentally wrong; it seemed to him as if what was needed was for Aremu to come to Tom, not to ask Tom to come to him.

And yet, in the gap between not-knowing and knowing, he had been afraid he had lost too much. Tom’s smile – his words – they were like a balm, and Aremu smiled a little wider too.

Thinking about it, Tom said, and there was a moment – Aremu’s eyes searched his face, and he felt a thrill of fear – and then Tom laughed, and Aremu grinned too, and felt the other man’s hand against his. “It’s a Foucault pendulum,” Aremu said, a little shyly. Something went crooked about his grin; he felt self-conscious. He tried to sustain it; he searched Tom’s face for something he couldn’t name, and he didn’t know whether he’d found it.

“It’s – not so different from a clock’s pendulum,” Aremu said with a little frown, thinking it over. “Foucault was Anaxi, of course, at Brunnhold,” there was the faintest tightness of breath to his voice at the name of the school, but he kept through it, easily. “He designed the pendulum to demonstrate the rotation of Vita. It’s – it’s actually – ” Aremu’s gaze flickered up to Tom’s face again, and then back down.

“I’ll show you,” Aremu said, abruptly. He let go of Tom’s hand; he rose. He looked about the table, with a little frown; he took one of the oranges from the bowl in the midst of the table, and curled long fingers around it. He glanced at Tom again; the frown lightened, and a little smile replaced it. He came over to the other man’s side of the table; he perched on the edge of Tom’s chair, both legs bracing him gently against the ground.

“Imagine this is Vita,” Aremu said, with a little grin. He held the orange out; he turned it gently in his hand. “We’re here,” he tapped a spot on the side of the orange with one finger, “and we turn, slowly, like a dance, so we face the sun during the day, and we face away at night.” He turned the orange carefully in his fingers, slowly. “Every day is one rotation.”

“It sounds ridiculous, I think,” Aremu said, with a little grin. “Foucault wasn’t the first one to think of it, but he was – he came up with the first experiment to demonstrate it. It’s like this.”

Aremu shifted; he tucked the orange onto his thighs. He reached past Tom, carefully, and took the heavy knife he’d been using to eat. With a shy little smile for the other man, he wiped it clean, and brought it back to his lap.

“This can be our pendulum,” Aremu said. He held the handle between his thumb and forefinger, and dangled it over the top of the orange; he lowered it, carefully, so the tip just brushed the thick skin, and let it dangle back and forth. It followed the same arc, each time, tracing the same white line deeper and deeper into the pith.

“This is what you’d expect if Vita is stationary,” Aremu said. “The pendulum follows the same arc, every time. But,” He hesitated, looking down at his lap. There was a moment when he frowned, when his right arm shifted, stilted and furtive, forgetting.

Aremu set the knife down; he took Tom’s hand in his. He smiled at the other man; he brushed his knuckles with a kiss, and then he settled Tom’s hand around the orange. “Hold it for me?” He asked. Aremu took the knife again; he settled the point against the top of the orange. “Rotate it, slowly,” Aremu smiled at Tom. "Yes," he grinned; it lit him up. "Just like that."

He let the knife swing again, back and forth; it scored thin, careful lines into the orange, tracing slightly different ones each time, as Tom turned the piece of fruit. Aremu was grinning even wider, now; he set the knife down on the table again, and cupped Tom’s hand in his.

“We don’t live here, really,” Aremu touched the top of the orange with his thumb, the scored part. “We’re more like here,” he traced the pad of his thumb down the side of it, utterly absorbed. “So it – takes longer, actually, than a full day, for the pendulum to come back. It’s – rotate it again?” He asked.

He took the knife; he held the handle, delicately, and he circled it around the orange with Tom, keeping the handle in the same place relative to the orange, at an angle against the upper hemisphere of it. He didn’t let the blade fall freely, this time, but rotated it slowly up and down himself, letting Tom see how – with the handle fixed – the same movement traced different lines against the same spot each time.

“We have one at Thul’Amat,” Aremu murmured, his voice low. “There are calculations that can be done, to determine – based on where you are – how long it will take the pendulum to come back to where it starts. It falls the same way, every time, and we rotate beneath it.”

He stopped, there; he grinned, sheepishly, at Tom, and set the knife down once more. “Ours has a sand pit, underneath,” Aremu said, a little dreamily. “If you sit – if you’re patient – you can watch the heavy point of it trace different lines, each time, slowly. It’s beautiful.” He swallowed, hard; he glanced down at the orange, at the tracery of lines across it, and then up at Tom with another shy smile.

[Tom Cooke]

Pendulum Hotel • The Stacks

Evening on the 8th of Dentis, 2719

I
magine this is Vita –

Tom’s brow furrowed. He hadn’t been sure what Aremu was planning to show him; the rotation of Vita should’ve made sense to him, seeing as he knew all the words that had come out of Aremu’s mouth, but if he was supposed to picture it, his mind was blank. He didn’t know who Foucault was, either. He didn’t think he could’ve spelled that name, if you’d given him a pen and told him to try.

Vita’s not – he opened his mouth to protest, and then shut it gently. His lip twitched at Aremu’s grin; it was infectious, even if he didn’t quite understand it, and he found himself smiling faintly, confusedly. It’s not that it sounds ridiculous, he wanted to protest. Tom didn’t know what was ridiculous about it, except that he still couldn’t picture it. It wasn’t a matter of whether it was ridiculous or not; it was more that he just hadn’t thought –

There wasn’t much time for his mind to catch up. It was pleasant, anyway, with the imbala perched on the edge of his seat. He shifted to make more room for him, and smiled again, uncertain, when Aremu did.

Aremu was reaching past him for a knife, and wiping it off on one of the heavy black napkins; it glinted silver in the low light, in Aremu’s long, deft fingers. He peered down into the imbala’s lap, at the orange. He cleared his throat once. He was strangely conscious of the two of them, peering intently down at an orange resting between Aremu’s thighs.

There was something shy about Aremu’s smile; it reminded him of the look he’d had when they’d first met. Tom watched his face, then watched the knife dangle, back and forth, the edge scoring white into the thick skin of the orange.

Tom had almost forgotten, too, until the but. Aremu’s right hand shifted; Tom’s breath stilled in his chest. But the weight of it must not’ve been too heavy for the imbala to bear, because then he was taking Tom’s hand and kissing it, and closing it round the orange. When he asked, Hold it for me? Tom was more touched than he’d been that night; he nodded once, and when Aremu asked him to turn it – to turn it, how Vita turned; Vita turned, Vita turned –

Tom blinked once, twice, but there was a grin spread across Aremu’s face, brighter than phosphor, brighter than – the sun? The sun on one face of a – one face – a sphere – Tom grinned back and laughed, breathless.

“So we know, now,” he murmured. “We can guess what shape it is, or how it moves, but this thing is proof we're never still, and just like that...”

For a few moments, it was unabashed. It was like the grin he’d given him on the docks, in Sweet Waters, like every grin he’d ever given before he’d been afraid of his own face. We’re more like here, Aremu pointed out, on the skin of the orange.

He was beginning to catch up. His own thumb brushed the exact middle of the orange, and he squinted. So what’s – this place called? And what happens when you put one of them –

He felt a faint pulse of shame, and he couldn’t bring himself to ask. It’s a mung question, he thought; I ought to already know, or be able to figure it out just from looking. Aremu went on, about the one he remembered from Thul’Amat, and Tom let the orange drop slowly to his lap. Some of the smile drained from his face, but he managed to look back at Aremu; it turned a little wistful.

He glanced back at the orange when Aremu did. The tracery of lines over it, pith-white, like old scars. He pictured them in sand. He shut his eyes; he felt caught between two feelings that seemed to belong to two very different men.

There’s a plot under this one, already drawn, he wanted to say, aching. I bet it’s along the path of the swing. I bet they correlate; I bet if I got my grimoires, and we went down to look at it again, we could tell each other…

He knew he couldn’t, but it didn’t feel fair. Not a man to me? You were all right, back then, making love to a man who might as well’ve been illiterate. How did you think I felt?

Still holding the orange in his lap, he ran his fingers over the lines and the smooth bumpy skin. “I didn’t, uh – I didn’t know,” he said carefully. “Vita was a sphere. Nobody would’ve explained it to me like this, back then, and I never – we’re not even allowed to read.” He couldn’t help the bitterness that seeped out. He reached for Aremu’s hand with his other, taking it gently, as if to say, It’s not you I’m angry at. It’s not you.

As if to say? “It’s not you,” he said, and he was surprised by the warmth he could say it with. “You make it make sense to me.” He looked back up at Aremu and smiled again. “Would you take me to see it? The one in Thul’Amat?”

.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 8 Dentis, 2719
Hotel Pendulum, The Stacks

There had been a moment, when Aremu felt as if he’d seen his own grin on Tom’s face, when the other man was smiling with him. He had watched, intently, at least, and if Aremu felt a little embarrassed by his own enthusiasm, he was grateful, at least, that Tom had listened – had taken the orange, as asked, and turned it, carefully, through the demonstration.

He didn’t know, quite, when the expression had softened; when something else had joined it. Aremu did not know what, either. He went very still when Tom spoke again; he felt a flush of something like shame through him at the bitterness in the other man’s voice. He wanted, very badly, to rise, to back away.

But Tom’s hand had settled over his again, and there was warmth in the other man’s voice, laying there alongside the bitterness. Aremu felt something shift inside him, felt something unfurl, but he didn’t know how to make sense of it; he didn’t know what it was. He put it aside; he looked away from it.

Tom was smiling up at him, and Aremu smiled too, and nodded. He bent down and kissed Tom’s head, because words seemed difficult, suddenly, and he didn’t know what to say. He wondered, uneasily, about some of the humans he had flown with; he wondered if they had understood the maps, the star charts, the latitude and longitude they used as coordinates. There was nothing in it forbidden to them; it was utterly secular. He would never have thought to explain it –

“I’d be glad to,” Aremu promised, quietly, through the lump in his throat. He felt as if he were standing on shifting sands; he didn’t know what to make of it.

You can ask me, he wanted to say. You can – it sounded unbearably condescending, in his head, put that way. I want to share it with you, he thought, instead, but that didn’t seem much better. Caprese probably couldn’t explain it, he wanted to say, contemptuous and trying to help all at once; he would be able to name it, but no more than – but it didn’t seem as if it would help, somehow.

“It’s not you either,” Aremu whispered. He couldn’t look Tom in the face; he looked down at the orange in the other man’s lap. He held his hand, tightly. Something flickered across his face, tightened all the lines in it; it carved something deep between his brows, into lines around his mouth. There was an echo of it glittering in his dark eyes. He studied the lines he’d traced into the orange flesh, the pale white peeking through, like scars.

“It wasn’t you, I mean,” Aremu said, then, instead, through breath that caught and shuddered in his mouth. He felt raw; his skin prickled beneath the blade of it. He closed his eyes; he could still see it, and he didn’t know how to name it; he didn’t know what the pattern meant.

Aremu shook his head, then; he opened his eyes, and he looked away. He wanted more than anything to get up; he held Tom’s hand tighter, instead. He settled it against his chest; he could feel his heart pounding against both of their hands, faster than it should have been. He had followed the other man's path, not knowing where it led; he had gone off the edge of something he couldn't name.

Come to bed with me, he wanted to say. I don’t know how – not with words – let me show you. Please. I want you to know what it means to me, when I – when we –

He couldn’t ask; he was afraid to ask. He didn’t know what the question meant to Tom, not anymore. Perhaps he’d never known, Aremu realized, if he’d thought it only desire between them. There was so much else, now; he was glad Tom had told him, and afraid, too, because the words seemed as distant as the stars. He didn’t ask; not with words, and not with gestures either, because he understood that now for cowardice.

“I’m ashamed,” Aremu said, quietly. He let go of Tom’s hand with his; he did not wish to force him to hold on. He pressed his face to his hand, for a moment; he lowered it down to his lap. He eased himself off of the arm of Tom’s chair, but he didn’t know where to go, and so it left him standing there, trembling. He looked down, and away, frowning slightly. Hadn’t he told himself he wouldn’t do this? He felt unutterably selfish, worse than he had before, and still he didn’t seem to be able to stop. He had worn these thoughts down in his mind, traced them around and around; he knew silence was better, but he couldn't find the strength.

“I don’t – know how to make it right,” Aremu said; his hand opened and closed, useless, and he smiled at Tom, but it was afraid as much as glad, and he was trembling. “I’m sorry.”

[Tom Cooke]

Pendulum Hotel • The Stacks

Evening on the 8th of Dentis, 2719

T
om felt laoso selfish. Aremu’s smile was only as reassuring as his must’ve been; he didn’t feel fair worthy of the kiss on his brow, or the promise. When he opened his eyes, the imbala was looking down instead of at him, at the orange in his lap. He half expected him to get up and move away, but he only held tighter to his hand, held it to his chest, and Tom wasn’t sure what it meant. Aremu’s breath was coming fast and shallow.

The wind picked up, rattled gently at the balcony doors. Over Aremu’s shoulder, Tom could see the room reflected dark and half shrouded – the empty, made-up bed, the still leaves of the plant, the table spread out with the bones of a warm and strangely happy meal. The two men huddled together in a chair at one end, the indistinct half of a face peering over the tense set of Aremu’s shoulders.

Tom’s eyes moved back up to the imbala’s face.

It was full of troubled lines, and that was the opposite of anything, of everything, Tom had wanted for him tonight. He’d known it was unavoidable, oes, in this place, but he’d meant to ease it; he hadn’t meant to be the cause of more. He was asking himself how much it’d meant to him to say it out loud, to draw yet another line between them when there was so much at stake.

But he didn’t say anything, not even as Aremu looked away across the floor. Not even as his hand slipped out of his, though those two words – I’m ashamed – caught in Tom’s chest, and he nearly gave them right back to Aremu, for all he felt them.

Tom rose from his seat, setting the orange on the table. His fingers lingered on it; he made sure it didn’t roll. When Aremu smiled at him, he smiled back, a confused, tired sort of smile; he opened his mouth to reply and then shut it. The imbala stood, and he stood. Their ghosts stood in the glass doors across the bedroom, across the great empty bed.

The smile didn’t last; it wasn’t a lasting sort of smile.

He moved to Aremu and reached up to lay a hand on his cheek – one, and then the other, if he didn’t move away. “Look at me, dove.” His voice was quiet. “Really look.” He stepped up closer and looked Aremu in the eye, still cupping his cheeks gently. “You’ve nothing to be ashamed of. Whatever you were feeling, I don’t want you to be ashamed of feeling it. You have a right to that anger,” he promised, stroking the other man’s cheek with his thumb.

He let one hand fall and looked down, away. On the table, among the empty bowls of soup, the fowl picked clean, the crumbs and flakes and drizzles of apple pie, he saw Vita and a pendulum, and the smudged napkin Aremu had used to wipe the pendulum clean of camembert. The sight of the bowl of oranges nearby struck him funny; his lip twitched in a wry smile.

The smile fell away again. His brow furrowed. “I’ve been thinking about it, the last two days. It’s on me, too.” He looked back up at Aremu; he didn’t want to look the other man in the eye, but he had to, else everything he said would be meaningless. “Without meaning to, I told you a lie,” he said, inclining his head, intent. “I said I still felt just like Tom. I wanted to believe that. But the truth is, there’s a lot about me that isn’t much like Tom at all, and I – just – threw that at you, when you were already –”

He broke off; his breath caught, and the rhythm of it shivered, uneven, lost its pace. It was hard to look at Aremu. He swallowed thickly. “I’m sorry,” he said, and knew without a single doubt he spoke the truth.

“I still don’t understand what happened that night.” The pad of his thumb traced Aremu’s cheek gently, rhythmically; it matched the rhythm of his breath, and his breath matched its rhythm, and Tom followed the line and breathed. “I want to, but you don’t have to – just, you can tell me, when you’re ready, if you ever are. You don’t have to be ashamed.”

.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Evening, 8 Dentis, 2719
Hotel Pendulum, The Stacks

Aremu felt it as much as saw it, when Tom rose. He hadn’t been able to look at him long, in the end; he had wanted to, but he didn’t know what he saw. There were too many things to see; he couldn’t make sense of them. It felt as if every time he looked, every time the angle changed, what he saw was a little different. It felt as if Tom had splintered and fractured before his eyes.

He couldn’t help it; his eyes fluttered shut at the touch of Tom’s hand on his cheek. One, first, and then the other, and the warm kiss of breath pleasantly fragrant from the meal. Aremu’s eyes opened, slowly; he looked.

Tom was gazing into his eyes; warm gray eyes looked ever so slightly up into his. Aremu didn’t know how to name what he saw in them, but he felt it in his chest, and he breathed it deep.

You have a right to that anger, Tom said. Aremu’s gaze jumped; it skidded, down and away. He would have shaken his head, but both his cheeks were still cupped, tenderly between Tom’s hands. Even when one fell, and it was only the other, Aremu didn’t want to pull away.

I don’t, he wanted to say. You mean to be kind, Tom, I think, and I am glad of it. I’m glad of your kindness; I am grateful that you care to be kind. But you don’t understand. Perhaps you can’t - or, he thought, slowly, perhaps you can, and you don’t wish to. What good does it do -

But he couldn’t formulate the thoughts, not even to himself. He was tired; they slipped like water through clenched fingers, and left him dry.

All the same, when Tom looked up again Aremu met his gaze. He listened, then, quiet and intent; he knew it was the least that was owed between them, to listen and to try to understand. He thought - it settled inside him, as Tom continued, that when he was ready, Tom would listen too. He didn’t know quite what that readiness would entail, but that was part of what he lacked, he supposed. He could bear it, if Tom could.

I don’t know if it’s a lie, Aremu wanted to say. You felt it, when you told it to me; now you feel differently. Or was it that you only wanted to feel it? He set the worries aside, the tangle. Not for the first time, he wondered how a man could do it, to prize honor so. He thought perhaps his lack of understanding was the fault in him, a symptom, and not a cause. It would be easy, if he had been born whole - wouldn’t it?

Aremu nodded, slowly; he accepted the gift that Tom had offered him, and as uncritically as he could. “Thank you,” Aremu whispered. His hand settled atop the other man’s; his head turned, and his lips brushed gently across Tom’s palm. He took a deep breath; he eased, just a little, and found a smile that he could sustain.

There was shame, still; Aremu thought that there would always be shame. But Tom’s gift meant to put it aside for a little while longer; in the accepting, Aremu thought, he had made a promise to do so. He did not wish to devalue what Tom had offered; he would try, at least.

I saw you, Aremu thought, and he kept the words to himself, this time. I saw true. You are Tom, but... perhaps it has taken me time to realize how much more you are. I don’t think it was a lie, when I said I knew you. I know it wasn’t, when I said I wanted you.

Aremu shivered a little. “Raen,” he said, instead, quietly. He smiled a little. “I don’t see how it can be all consonants,” he said, shyly, lifting his gaze to peek at Tom. “I do want to understand,” he said, quietly. “If you can be patient with me.”

Aremu felt a bone deep weariness; he felt it all through him. He was full, and warm, although he hadn’t known it until now. He was held; he thought, perhaps, he could rest. “May I kiss you?” He asked Tom, softly. Only a kiss, he wanted to promise, but he knew it for a lie. Perhaps there had never been only kisses between them; without a doubt, there was nothing only about them now. He wished to be true in both word and intent, with Tom; he wished to try.

[Tom Cooke]

Pendulum Hotel • The Stacks

Evening on the 8th of Dentis, 2719

I
t’s not,” he replied with a soft laugh, with a grin that was just as touched as it was confused. “It’s one of the only words in Deftung that isn’t,” he added, because he couldn’t quite help it. “I don’t know why.” His voice got fair soft.

You remembered, he didn’t say. It wasn’t exactly what he felt; he wasn’t surprised, exactly, that Aremu had remembered what his people were called. You held that word close to you – that was what he meant, what he felt. He didn’t quite know what to make of it, raen and consonants and vowels; he couldn’t even begin to guess what Aremu had done with the word, in the time that’d passed since he’d learned it.

He couldn’t even begin to guess what it had come to mean to the other man. He couldn’t guess what it meant here, in the wake of that soft thank you, of that smile, of Aremu’s lips brushing his palm with warm breath.

It had come to mean something, though. Tom’s hand flickered away from Aremu’s cheek. The backs of his fingers just grazed it, feather light, before he laid his palm against Aremu’s chest. I have a lot of time to be patient, he thought, wistful. He could feel the soft scratchy wool of his sweater; underneath that, a rumple of shirt, the hard shape of a button.

Underneath that, tense muscle, rising and falling with the subtle motions of breath. Less tense than before; more even. Underneath that, if he focused hard enough, the soundless thrum of a heart. “Thank you,” he said, looking at Aremu intently.

He wasn’t sure if Aremu was thanking him for the time, or the space, or the touch, or the confession of his oldest lie – or thanking him, in advance, for the patience he’d need. For the patience they’d both need.

The question, when it came, was so soft and so patient.

The imbala had already been fair patient with him. He ached to think how such a man could think so little of himself, the sort of man who’d take you gentle by the hand and guide you along the railing of an airship until you were ready to open your eyes. The sort of man who’d let you guide his hand, gentle; the sort of man who wouldn’t look until you were ready, no matter if he wanted.

You deserve every bit of my patience, Tom thought, and more. The wind picked up and rattled the glass again, and Tom was conscious of the space between them. Aremu was warm under his hand, but when he drew in breath, it was cutting chill in his lungs, despite the hearth. He wasn’t sure what he’d been frightened of in the night ahead, but he was glad not to go to it alone. He was even more glad he’d wake up, in the morning, in the arms of a patient man.

A flicker of a smile. There was something sad in it, for a moment, but it melted away under the warmth Tom felt. “Yes.” His voice was quiet, but firm. “Please. Kiss me.”

He smoothed the thick wool of Aremu’s sweater, resting his hand against his chest one last time. Oes, he could feel it; if he’d closed his eyes, he thought he could’ve felt it through him, too, through both of them. Then, he pulled himself closer to Aremu, unabashed of himself, and wrapped an arm around him, resting his hand on his lower back.

He slid his other hand behind Aremu’s head, running his fingers through his short hair. He didn’t have to speak much above a whisper, now; there wasn’t room for anything between them but breath. There was a mischievous curl to his smile. “Maybe,” he murmured, tilting his head and shutting his eyes, “maybe you can teach me more about Vita’s movements, too, sometime.”

.