Before he has the instinct to (close your eyes, come here and-) dive into the water completely, a figure reveals itself on the other side. He can barely see it, a gentle light surrounding them like mist, like fog, like the smoke from mouths enlaced in a kiss. Their shoulders curve with the finesse of syrup and their hair beams of oak lit by torch- it takes Milo a single second of meeting his gaze to know Ren has shown up again.
The other man wastes no moment- Ren waves his hands, his beaming smile as illuminating as if a moon has begun peeking through a crumbling crag in the ceiling. Parts of Milo curse, other parts rave; all of him slouches beneath a familiar lust he's beginning to enjoy. "What's up?" Ren calls. "Happy to see me?"
He speaks like a century has withstood us. Not an hour. "Delighted," Milo says, too quiet to even reach halfway across the pool. Vulnerability takes a hold on his body, overexposed like shutters fallen to the floor.
"I'd be happy to see me." Ren's voice flutters like a song, curled feathers around a harp illume. "I bring some heat to this freezing-ass room. Damn."
Milo (at another table, laughs) glances on. Just knowing Ren is a hard feat, an unending challenge in a game already set against him. But to love him is impossible, and Milo has always been one to give up when impossible things show themselves. It's plain and terribly simple: Milo is the least resilient man there is.
And, here, his exposed skin shakes. As Ren's eyes follow each bone and trail of deepened red hair, Milo starts into the water, hissing at the ice and wading until his chest is subaqueous. He hopes the sheer pain and numbness will be enough to rid the world of this hallucination, but all Ren does is wait, grin, and follow Milo in. A game; that's all this is to the both of them.
Neither man says a word as they near. Before- in the lava caves- they'd been clothed and hot and steam was there to hide most of what they saw of each other; now, Ren can see every quiver of Milo's lips, every time his eyes flee from him to something else, and every held breath staying still in his throat. Ren's bare stomach and his; there's a fleece to the picture, delicate as humans at the mercy of snow. They're perfect in water. If only because they are together.
Ren stops mere inches from Milo. Their gaze is the submerging of stones, the dry surface revealing beautiful patterns of ash and flame; it's the outside looking in, the seconds so pure they ascend from themselves and stare on as spectators in wait, hushed in anticipation. Milo wonders- everything about Ren has to do with anticipation. Standing on the edge, eyes closed and hanging down off the cliff. He'll step off, if he must.
He hopes he must.
Finally, Ren intrudes on the silence. It doesn't shatter; it dissipates. "What're you thinking?" he asks softly. Then, as if annoyed with his own delicate nature, he adds, "Better be about me."
Milo avoids Ren's wink. "Nothing," he says.
"Okay, One-Word. Got any sentences tucked away in that beard of yours?" he laughs. Milo momentarily imagines Ren's fingers playing nonchalantly with his facial hair, safe in their home with windows without curtains. Perhaps Milo yearns for a life domestic, or one where he can be free.
"I think-" (take a pause, reach for your glass), "I think you're golden."
When Ren laughs, this time, it soars like the wings of a phoenix, bursting alight from its place in the ashes. "Oh, I'm hardly golden, " he says. "You've got me all wrong."
"I do?" Milo watches a twitch in the corner of Ren's mouth curl up into a slight smirk. Standing beside him is like standing on the shore of an ocean- there lay the sun, and the sands are so warm.
☠Task Two: Entries 1-14☠
Mulai dari awal
