"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.
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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.