"No," is easy to offer up in answer. "Come to bed."
Because what John needs is the act itself, the close alignment of their bodies in this now-shared space. His things are only a few steps away. It can be managed later, if it turns out there is some overlooked thing he should have attended to.
He is alive. No one has died. John knows these things are true, but they come into clearer focus through contact. The familiar quality of Flint's hands, the cool stone beneath his foot. They are here. This is real. All other parts of the past day can be reconciled around this and what they have hashed out together.
Come to bed, John says. So he does in parts and pieces, dredging his hands from off the other man's shoulders and shifting free of those about his own face. He has his own boots to work off, and his belt knife and spyglass and the contents of his trouser pockets, and the belt itself to dispense with. There is the salt of sweat and grit too from the day on the back of his neck and face, those these are as common to him as his own skin and he doesn't bother with scrubbing them away.
Presumably with time these things—stripping free of the day in the company of another person—will become ordinary. But tonight there is some prickling quality to the air yet, and it is more like a demonstration than not.
"Let me put out the light," he says, and means the small light left on the mantel. He isn't leaving, only crossing the room.
There is a strangeness to this too, this newness. Knowing that it could not truly be new, because they've had weeks to settle into it.
Sat on the edge of the mattress, John is left with only the few remaining articles of clothing to shuck off. Easily managed, and done by the time the light on the mantel is extinguished. It leaves him folding tunic and trousers across one bare thigh in the soft glow of the bedside lamp, stretching to set both on the chest at the foot of the bed. The rest can be managed come morning.
It's an easy enough thing to answer: he sets his thumb there in the palm of John's hand, wraps his fingers round his knuckles. A touch to the wrist has an urging quality, and "Go," he says, nodding toward the headboard. John should find his place in the bed, and Flint will follow after him.
Which he does, after shedding his shirt and stripping down to his drawers. The thin mattress gives under his weight. The heavy bed's frame whines softly from it. And here the rasping of light summer sheet and coverlet, and the finicky arrangement of pillows. Though he has eventually clambered in under the bedclothes, he remains sitting upright against the headboard for a moment as if resistant to the concept of lying down. Or hesitating over the arrangement until John has first found a place for himself, freckled skin turned ruddy under the lamplight as he waits to fold himself in down around him.
"Come here," is quiet encouragement, underscored by the rustle of bedclothes, the catch of fingers along the inside of Flint's wrist.
It's not enough, John finds.
Yes, the past weeks are an absence. But the recollection of his passing isn't. With all larger uncertainties more or less settled for the night, it leaves space for that thing he had felt in the moments before his death: thinking of Flint, and the inescapable reality of leaving him.
They have been held at arm's length for most of the evening. John's tolerance for even this minor distance is dwindling into impatience.
Quiet though it be, this is encouragement enough for Flint to reach over and cap the lamp. It plunges the room into darkness, the moonlight through narrow leaded windows so thin as to be difficult to parse in those pitch moments directly in the lamplight's wake. The eye will adjust to it. Given time, edges of furniture and the shape of the room would reveal themselves were someone to look.
He isn't looking. Instead, he shifts down in under the light summer bedclothes and settles in warm against the shape of John alongside him in the dark. It would be easy to lay like that, shoulder to shoulder. Instead, he twists over. Insinuates his arm in under the pillow and the shape of the other man's shoulders. Cinches himself in tighter and closer.
It is not easy to press his face in near to John's. Doing it hooks at something in the ribs. Aches like a strained muscle. The sensation of a cut being stitched. It hurts—pleasantly so.
It is not close enough. It is better, but it is not enough. It rattles loose the thing held carefully in check: the sharp grief of that last moment, laid out in the dirt, feeling life slipping away and having so little sense of what he'd last said, the last time they'd touched each other. John hadn't marked it. The leaving had felt unremarkable; a few days' journey, hardly the longest leave he'd taken of Kirkwall. There had been no particular ceremony in their parting, and when the life had been pouring out of him, John had clung on to the disjointed flurry of memory, unable to recall the exact details of their parting.
He breathes out, a ragged punch of an exhale against Flint's temple before John lays a soft kiss to his skin. His fingers sweep across Flint's shoulders, down his back, up again to lay heavy over the nape of his neck.
Closer, says the lay of his fingers, directionless, formless urging. Says instead, "Stay with me."
Cinched in against his body, because tonight even the opposite side of the mattress is too far to go. Present in this space, this room. Their room, an identifier John is turning over and over like a gold piece.
Stay, John had murmured to him on a stretch of a stony beach. It might have sounded similar, nearly the same, if less frayed at the edges, less urgent for the feeling caught behind it now.
His answering huff of breath is warm in that close pressed space, and the bristle of whiskers prickles against bare skin. Somewhere, under the shape of the pillow and the weight of John's body, his arm twists. The lay of his fingers at John's opposite shoulder is soft by necessity, but not in spirit. It's not that he has been keeping himself from this—the impulse to latch on to him and dredge them close together—, only it is particularly easy to do in the dark.
"Go to sleep," he tells him, the shape of his voice abruptly rough from having missed him. It will all still be present come the morning.
But the deep, unsettling ache of displacement and overlapping recollections is dispelled under the warmth of Flint's body, his hands, the low intimacy of his voice laying bare something they have not quite named.
It takes time. They are quiet, breathing in time. John's fingers maintain their clasp at the nape of his neck while his off hand trails across Flint's shoulders. All is as he left it (this morning, weeks ago) though he reassures himself with the tracing of the muscle in Flint's shoulders and back, the attention paid to the rise and fall of his breath.
There is nothing to say, here in the dark, while they are linked so close together. John carries that comfort down into sleep, somewhere in the dark hours before the sky begins its slow shift towards dawn.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Because what John needs is the act itself, the close alignment of their bodies in this now-shared space. His things are only a few steps away. It can be managed later, if it turns out there is some overlooked thing he should have attended to.
He is alive. No one has died. John knows these things are true, but they come into clearer focus through contact. The familiar quality of Flint's hands, the cool stone beneath his foot. They are here. This is real. All other parts of the past day can be reconciled around this and what they have hashed out together.
no subject
Presumably with time these things—stripping free of the day in the company of another person—will become ordinary. But tonight there is some prickling quality to the air yet, and it is more like a demonstration than not.
"Let me put out the light," he says, and means the small light left on the mantel. He isn't leaving, only crossing the room.
no subject
Sat on the edge of the mattress, John is left with only the few remaining articles of clothing to shuck off. Easily managed, and done by the time the light on the mantel is extinguished. It leaves him folding tunic and trousers across one bare thigh in the soft glow of the bedside lamp, stretching to set both on the chest at the foot of the bed. The rest can be managed come morning.
Looks up to Flint, extends a hand out to him.
no subject
Which he does, after shedding his shirt and stripping down to his drawers. The thin mattress gives under his weight. The heavy bed's frame whines softly from it. And here the rasping of light summer sheet and coverlet, and the finicky arrangement of pillows. Though he has eventually clambered in under the bedclothes, he remains sitting upright against the headboard for a moment as if resistant to the concept of lying down. Or hesitating over the arrangement until John has first found a place for himself, freckled skin turned ruddy under the lamplight as he waits to fold himself in down around him.
no subject
It's not enough, John finds.
Yes, the past weeks are an absence. But the recollection of his passing isn't. With all larger uncertainties more or less settled for the night, it leaves space for that thing he had felt in the moments before his death: thinking of Flint, and the inescapable reality of leaving him.
They have been held at arm's length for most of the evening. John's tolerance for even this minor distance is dwindling into impatience.
no subject
He isn't looking. Instead, he shifts down in under the light summer bedclothes and settles in warm against the shape of John alongside him in the dark. It would be easy to lay like that, shoulder to shoulder. Instead, he twists over. Insinuates his arm in under the pillow and the shape of the other man's shoulders. Cinches himself in tighter and closer.
It is not easy to press his face in near to John's. Doing it hooks at something in the ribs. Aches like a strained muscle. The sensation of a cut being stitched. It hurts—pleasantly so.
no subject
He breathes out, a ragged punch of an exhale against Flint's temple before John lays a soft kiss to his skin. His fingers sweep across Flint's shoulders, down his back, up again to lay heavy over the nape of his neck.
Closer, says the lay of his fingers, directionless, formless urging. Says instead, "Stay with me."
Cinched in against his body, because tonight even the opposite side of the mattress is too far to go. Present in this space, this room. Their room, an identifier John is turning over and over like a gold piece.
Stay, John had murmured to him on a stretch of a stony beach. It might have sounded similar, nearly the same, if less frayed at the edges, less urgent for the feeling caught behind it now.
no subject
"Go to sleep," he tells him, the shape of his voice abruptly rough from having missed him. It will all still be present come the morning.
the pack is sealed.
But the deep, unsettling ache of displacement and overlapping recollections is dispelled under the warmth of Flint's body, his hands, the low intimacy of his voice laying bare something they have not quite named.
It takes time. They are quiet, breathing in time. John's fingers maintain their clasp at the nape of his neck while his off hand trails across Flint's shoulders. All is as he left it (this morning, weeks ago) though he reassures himself with the tracing of the muscle in Flint's shoulders and back, the attention paid to the rise and fall of his breath.
There is nothing to say, here in the dark, while they are linked so close together. John carries that comfort down into sleep, somewhere in the dark hours before the sky begins its slow shift towards dawn.