“ You want to ask, so ask. ”
The fuchsia of the setting sun, melting sherbet beneath the trees. Haze of heat, a flutter of curtains by the horizon.
And Orion’s mouth is red, sleeves missing his wrist, rolled to his forearm. Revealing the skin. The atoms, the bones.
Hector smiles, fleeting and brief. “I don’t want to know.”
In the slow taper of Spring into Summer, Hector begins to notice.
Slivers of things. The light catching on Orion’s eyelashes, the way it lingers, trapped and glittering in his eyes. The timbre of his voice, the differences between the shades of emotion. Moments glimpsed in the dark of evening, all things carelessly given, all the quiet moments he catches before they are gone.
He is building a collection of them, in his head. The cobbled memories, the vivid colour.
There are strange inclinations rising where he can barely reach. Stranger instincts. Wanting to touch, wanting to learn. More. Everything. The impulse of it, the urge.
In the beginning is the hesitation, the falter of fingers tracing the line of Orion’s pulse, following from his fingertips to his wrist. Atoms between them. Entire worlds. Mouth pressed to the veins below his hand.
Moments in the after, the before, the in-between. All the falsities layered in the curl of fingers in his hair, the low laugh of a mouth against his own. Hazy illusions in the half-light of morning. The slow ache of worship.
Softness. And the impulse of it, the urge-
There must have been a before and an after. Somewhere this began.
On his tongue, the question. The curiousity. The want. Everything he would ever ask, in the air, slipping back into his throat, his stomach.
Lying there cold. Balmy in the Italian heat.
He wakes with his eyelashes weighed heavy, his vision blurred by sleep. For a moment the world seems still, outside this room the city lying silent.
The light is weightless on his pillow, the air damp from rain in the night. And outside the window he watches the horizon turn blue. White at the edges, in the spots where the clouds fade into sky.
He spends a moment looking. Just breathing. Even and quiet in the silence. Gaze fallen on the light in Orion’s hair. The sun in patterns on his skin. And the want, the sleep-worn desire, wavering as he reaches out. Knuckles brushing across the curve of Orion’s face, his cheek. The edge of his mouth. Fingertips lingering. A moment, and a moment more.
Unsteady feeling in him, something ill-defined, not yet settled. Stillness. A lull of calm.
There must have been a before and an after. Some undefined point this shifted, is shifting. And in the fragility of this moment, this transgression, he cannot remember if there was ever a before.
