It's a question someone else would have to answer. They are uniquely unqualified, as even the before to the after is still set between them; and there is that line leading here and everything of significance still falls somewhere along it.
(Maybe Mrs Barlow knows something of the answer. But if he doesn't think it while in her company, he certainly doesn't while out of it, and under these circumstances.)
Thomas kisses him, or James kisses him with his hands hot at the back of Thomas' neck and his fingers all grasping in his pale burnished hair. It doesn't really matter which is which, just that it happens. Like all of Thomas's raw breathing pressed into his mouth happens, like his able hands on him and his driving heat in him does. Never mind who knows it or what gets written down. If it's like Isaiah said, - that God formed the earth and he created it to be inhabited, - then this must be what he meant by it.
And at some point, when the combination everything that Thomas is gets too bright to hold, he can pant Easy, easy, let me feel you, into his mouth like its own devotional, so he can recognize his place in the world and all the pleasantly heavy ways Thomas pins him in it before coming undone in it.
Is there something else you feel? is not asked, and it'd be rhetorical, anyway. Thomas gives him everything he asks for, whether he does so with words or the strain in his body where Thomas feels him every-which-way.
"I'm here," he says instead, pointlessly, mindlessly, still so close to him. "We're here."
And it's real.
James in pleasure is the most beautiful thing Thomas has ever seen. Horribly cliche and impossible to rationally believe, as all humans go inelegantly funny in the moment, but he feels it somewhere metaphysical, a bright flame that baptizes for the other side. And an animal satisfaction that's so deep it almost distracts him from his own-- almost. Nobody gets to come at the same time except in drunken tales of debauchery, and that suits him wonderfully, because who'd want to miss watching a lover. Not him. Especially not James, flushed and perfect, in pieces, each of which he knows down to the blood and bone.
Close enough. And good thing, he should probably give James's knee a rest after the angle he's had them tweaked at.
It's all brittle and brilliant, the most pleasant kind of ache unraveling into something more real
(the line of his leg shifting warrants a low, absent noise)
and satisfyingly blunt.
And he laughs - at himself, at Thomas' pale hair forced in uneven angles by the twist of his fingers, at all the small parts of them. "Come here," is not the most absurd thing he's ever said, but as Thomas is present in every sense of the word, it's nearly useles except as a precursor to James kissing him wanton and slow.
As far as nonsense uttered in the heat of the moment goes, they're on the very low end of potentially embarrassing. Surely even in far less appropriate settings - (He's not used to so much, still, and while a note on that list is sleeping in cramped crew hammocks without Gwen's sometimes-suffocating weight, the real kicker is waking in the dark and forgetting where he is. Thomas gets three hours at a time at best, and as a guest on the Walrus, finds himself on the deck playing cards by lamplight with a young man whose first language he can't quite make out. He loses on purpose, talks a little about dark holes. When he leans back on the railing to breathe in cool air, reorient himself, he finds himself observed. Could you tell I wasn't where I should be? Did you wake when I did, pulled by some invisible tide? Do you know what might help me sleep?) - more ridiculous things have been gasped.
Now, he gasps something else, lost in between their mouths, whatever silly affection happily obscured by returning that kiss, befuddled in the aftermath and more than happy to stay right here in this mood for an eternity. The world around them threatens to creep back in, cries of laughter and someone's poor playing on an instrument too abused to be properly identified, but they are things far out of focus, an unfinished watercolor. Everything here, this bed, James beneath him, everything sweat-slick and breathless, is vibrant, broad strokes of an oil painting, saturated to last a thousand years.
Edited (four hours too normal on reflection ) 2020-02-28 01:25 (UTC)
They are Thomas' breathing, how sharp and heavy he is. They are James' fingers curling through his pale hair, blunted nails over a scalp no longer tender from being sunburned. They are two bodies in a bed in a closed room above a crows of people. They are obscure shapes on an island that no one feels compelled to know, but that the sand will remember no matter what anyone else thinks. The room is paid for. Their place in it is secured. Thomas is James' aching knee, and James is Thomas' mouth trying to grin and kiss all at once. Nevermind what is or isn't remembered by anyone else. The point is that it would be absurd to deny any of it. Look at all the things they are on paper, and know that all of then are at best some partial rendition.
He wraps his arm loosely behind Thomas's neck, which he knows to be freckled above the line worn by shirt collars. He says soft, shapeless things into his mouth. Later, despite himself, he will have forgotten the bright pleasure of the impulse and recall only the sharp prickle of irritation and fear; but for minutes here and now, he thinks he would like to leave this bed, this room, and looks at some other person while the marks Thomas has pressed into him are still bright on his skin, because he wants someone else to know.
It is the best of things sliding sideways into them the worst of them, and this is what loving is like: he wants to delight in both versions of those things - this room and the ones outside it - like Thomas can read even the worst book and find some true thing in it.
He presses kisses to Thomas' mouth. He says, I want you, like he doesn't have him even when his cock isn't involved, like he hasn't had him. But he finds no harm in the redundancy.
Is that so, breathed out against him; like they don't always want each other and don't always have each other. They had each other even when they didn't. They had each other before, when they were doing nothing but playing verbal chess, sending biting tests back and forth. They had each other in the dark, when they mourned so blindly.
They have each other - now, sticky and weak and comical, and Thomas doesn't think there's a happier moment in a thousand lifetimes than sweaty post-coital cuddling with someone you love so incandescently. He shifts over, putting them side by side facing each other with limbs still tangled enough to qualify as unnecessarily (vitally) smothering each other.
(Someone else will know. Does know. Money has already changed hands from at least one betting pool. That headache is not for this moment.)
"On your ship," yours, no matter who built it or paid for it or who else has ever been voted in charge of it, "you had blood in your mouth after a fight, and I wondered if you would taste the same, because I always thought something about you had that iron undercurrent. Beneath all the sea-salt I think is just part of your .. cosmic makeup, down throughout the center of your bones. You are the most.. perfectly elemental being and I," am laughing at myself now at this addle-brained rambling, "love you so completely."
It's the breed of supremely absurd thing that Thomas Hamilton- Thomas Barlow - just Thomas, first names and loosened collars and and now the sunburned backs of his ears, can make sound true because he believes it when he says it. In anyone else's mouth, it would be cloyingly sweet, overwrought. No one thinks that's true. But Thomas does, and so James believes it; that he could be all iron tang, the metal and smoke smell of gunpowder not just in his clothes but of his skin. Tell him anything, as long as Thomas is saying it.
"If you wrote that down," James says. His mouth is twitching behind his mustache. "It might almost be worth the paper you put it on."
He laughs then, low and full. In the tangle of their bodies, he kisses Thomas while grinning.
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no subject
(Maybe Mrs Barlow knows something of the answer. But if he doesn't think it while in her company, he certainly doesn't while out of it, and under these circumstances.)
Thomas kisses him, or James kisses him with his hands hot at the back of Thomas' neck and his fingers all grasping in his pale burnished hair. It doesn't really matter which is which, just that it happens. Like all of Thomas's raw breathing pressed into his mouth happens, like his able hands on him and his driving heat in him does. Never mind who knows it or what gets written down. If it's like Isaiah said, - that God formed the earth and he created it to be inhabited, - then this must be what he meant by it.
And at some point, when the combination everything that Thomas is gets too bright to hold, he can pant Easy, easy, let me feel you, into his mouth like its own devotional, so he can recognize his place in the world and all the pleasantly heavy ways Thomas pins him in it before coming undone in it.
no subject
"I'm here," he says instead, pointlessly, mindlessly, still so close to him. "We're here."
And it's real.
James in pleasure is the most beautiful thing Thomas has ever seen. Horribly cliche and impossible to rationally believe, as all humans go inelegantly funny in the moment, but he feels it somewhere metaphysical, a bright flame that baptizes for the other side. And an animal satisfaction that's so deep it almost distracts him from his own-- almost. Nobody gets to come at the same time except in drunken tales of debauchery, and that suits him wonderfully, because who'd want to miss watching a lover. Not him. Especially not James, flushed and perfect, in pieces, each of which he knows down to the blood and bone.
Close enough. And good thing, he should probably give James's knee a rest after the angle he's had them tweaked at.
no subject
(the line of his leg shifting warrants a low, absent noise)
and satisfyingly blunt.
And he laughs - at himself, at Thomas' pale hair forced in uneven angles by the twist of his fingers, at all the small parts of them. "Come here," is not the most absurd thing he's ever said, but as Thomas is present in every sense of the word, it's nearly useles except as a precursor to James kissing him wanton and slow.
no subject
Now, he gasps something else, lost in between their mouths, whatever silly affection happily obscured by returning that kiss, befuddled in the aftermath and more than happy to stay right here in this mood for an eternity. The world around them threatens to creep back in, cries of laughter and someone's poor playing on an instrument too abused to be properly identified, but they are things far out of focus, an unfinished watercolor. Everything here, this bed, James beneath him, everything sweat-slick and breathless, is vibrant, broad strokes of an oil painting, saturated to last a thousand years.
no subject
He wraps his arm loosely behind Thomas's neck, which he knows to be freckled above the line worn by shirt collars. He says soft, shapeless things into his mouth. Later, despite himself, he will have forgotten the bright pleasure of the impulse and recall only the sharp prickle of irritation and fear; but for minutes here and now, he thinks he would like to leave this bed, this room, and looks at some other person while the marks Thomas has pressed into him are still bright on his skin, because he wants someone else to know.
It is the best of things sliding sideways into them the worst of them, and this is what loving is like: he wants to delight in both versions of those things - this room and the ones outside it - like Thomas can read even the worst book and find some true thing in it.
He presses kisses to Thomas' mouth. He says, I want you, like he doesn't have him even when his cock isn't involved, like he hasn't had him. But he finds no harm in the redundancy.
It's good - to be rewarded.
no subject
They have each other - now, sticky and weak and comical, and Thomas doesn't think there's a happier moment in a thousand lifetimes than sweaty post-coital cuddling with someone you love so incandescently. He shifts over, putting them side by side facing each other with limbs still tangled enough to qualify as unnecessarily (vitally) smothering each other.
(Someone else will know. Does know. Money has already changed hands from at least one betting pool. That headache is not for this moment.)
"On your ship," yours, no matter who built it or paid for it or who else has ever been voted in charge of it, "you had blood in your mouth after a fight, and I wondered if you would taste the same, because I always thought something about you had that iron undercurrent. Beneath all the sea-salt I think is just part of your .. cosmic makeup, down throughout the center of your bones. You are the most.. perfectly elemental being and I," am laughing at myself now at this addle-brained rambling, "love you so completely."
no subject
"If you wrote that down," James says. His mouth is twitching behind his mustache. "It might almost be worth the paper you put it on."
He laughs then, low and full. In the tangle of their bodies, he kisses Thomas while grinning.