Les Noyades

15: A Clasp of Hands

For the next three evenings this process was continued. Each time Rumi would become more and more impatient, whilst Yves would cease to show any sign at all that he was going to progress any further; for the first time in his life, Rumi found that he could argue with somebody. He was not afraid of Yves anymore. It was on the fourth night that the frustration jumped out.

He was lying with Yves in the van, the pair of them nervous at the cold and Rumi particularly fraught with high blood. Their hands were playing together across their coldbumped skin, eliciting more chills than the cold weather ever could— and it was colder by the day, even after curving against each other like the moon waning and waxing again. Yves' hand left Rumi's and strayed further down to pull against his thigh and hike it up. Rumi sighed as his inner thigh was laid to rest against Yves' stomach.

"Our hearts are prisoners as we touch,' Yves mumbled sleepily, 'two flower-soft fists."

"Who's that?" Rumi was becoming accustomed to Yves' barrage of quotes.

"Swinburne."

"It's nice."

Yves placed a sweet kiss on Rumi's shoulder and sat up. His skin was stretched across soft muscle and Rumi stared openly at him as he rolled his shoulders back before leaning over to his jacket and taking out a cigarette case. He capped it open and slid one out to slot in his lips, to which he rested a lighter and set it up aflame. He sucked in sweet smoke and expelled it in long gasps that had Rumi all kinds of curious— nobody he knew smoked. He didn't think he liked it, but then he also could think that he liked anything Yves did— except for delay things. He sat up and pressed his chest against Yves' back, head over his shoulder, listening to the miniaturised crackle of a tiny flame eating away at the flesh of the long brown strip.

"Here, baby," Yves breathed, his words tumbling out amongst a miasma of grey atrophy. "Try it."

Rumi shook his head. He waited until Yves took another drag before he sealed their lips together. He inhaled what Yves blew back at him, the foul and acrid ash torrenting in a heap of wet heat down his throat. He retched and gagged as he pulled his head away, spluttering out soft blasphemies. Yves laughed at him a little unkindly.

"Don't like it?" he teased. "Culshawe taught me to smoke, you know."

Rumi felt his expression crease and he snatched the cigarette up in irritation. He curled his lips around it and sucked achingly on it until it burned his throat raw and every concurrent breath made him heave with nausea. Yves went on laughing until Rumi turned the cigarette the other way and leaned his lips towards the smouldering end.

"Don't be an idiot," Yves told him steadily. "I can't kiss you if you do that. You'll burn half your mouth off."

"I'll do it," Rumi replied. "I will do it."

"What, are you jealous because I mentioned Culshawe? Because you think I let him fuck me?"

Rumi pursed his lips and brought the glow closer.

"You're always trying to upset me," he accused.

"No I'm not."

"You are! Every time you do anything nice you have to go and undo it by saying such horrible things."

"Don't you like it when I talk about Culshawe?"

"No! I hate it. I hate it, and I hate you," Rumi snapped with that frowning frustration he had nurtured for days. "I hate you."

"Oh, baby. Come here." Yves reached out his arms but Rumi scowled at him before driving the cigarette against the velvet crook of his own left elbow.

He lurched violently as his skin was festered at by blister-forming heat, and Yves snatched the thing away from him before he could cause any more harm to himself, cursing like a sailor and shoving Rumi furiously back as if that would help.

"Why?" he demanded, putting the thing out against the cold metal wall and throwing the stub at Rumi. "What's wrong with you?"

Rumi began to whimper in pain. His arm was agonisingly hot still and yet his temper had run curiously cold; he did not want an argument, he wanted Yves to be quiet and stroke his skin again.

"You need to ice it," Yves told him. "Get dressed and we'll go in."

Rumi seized up as Yves tossed over his clothes and began to dress.

"Now it won't hurt so much," he said slowly, cradling his arm with the other. "Nothing can hurt so much as this."

"Mon dieu, but you are fucking crazy."

Rumi grinned suddenly with teeth clenched in pain and tongue pressed hard against the roof of his mouth.

"Crazy fucking kid," Yves repeated in shock.

§§§§§

Declan and Sédar were surprised to hear of Rumi's accident. Neither of them knew a jot about cars and were instantly taken in by Yves' explanation of a backfired stone from the exhaust.

Although initially in with the surprise, Declan did not follow it with concern— it was Sédar who graciously took Rumi through to the ramshackle kitchen and sat him down on the wooden counter into which was built a clunky metal sink. Sédar set the water running and filled a kettle which he placed on the trinket gas stove. He did not say anything as they waited for it to boil. Rumi got the impression that Yves might have mentioned something; Sédar's silence was one that waited to be filled, waited to hear an explanation, but was not altogether that curious.

Sédar knelt down on the floor and pulled a small metal tin from which he retrieved a white cloth and several medical cartons.

"Hold your arm out," he said gently. "This will hurt."

Rumi held his arm close to his chest, afraid of the pain— it still raced up his arm even when he didn't move it.

"Arm, Rumi."

He thrust it forwards and looked away as Sédar daubed at the wound with a cloth dipped in iodine. The sting made him flinch. He wanted Yves to do it, but Yves had disappeared up to his room soon after they returned to the house, and had not been seen since. Besides, he didn't know if Yves might be angry at him. He hadn't meant to upset him— but really he had. He had relished that expression of furious confusion on Yves' face— how he had lurched forwards, and then looked so full of care and hurt and disgust.

"It hurts a lot, hmm?" Sédar soothed as he applied a bandage. "There, all done. Now you run off and don't touch any more of those cigarettes, alright?"