Work Text:
He ran the tips of fingers of his right hand over the shirt cuff wrapping his other wrist smoothing nonexistent wrinkles, then stiffly cleared his throat, then consciously blinked, twice. Eyes never leaving the frame of the street-facing window he stood in front of but his gaze was blind, not seeing the pedestrian traffic one floor below, not seeing the passing delivery truck, not aware of the falling snow slowly starting to catch on the window's ledge. There, another soft exhale from the other man. He blinked again, then closed his eyes. All his attention was focused on the small sounds inhabiting the rooms behind him - the scrape of a tea cup against the kitchen table, the shuffle of two socked feet across the linoleum floor, that torturous soft exhale.
It had been only a few weeks but the other man had quickly and surely taken over the flat, taken over its formerly cold and quiet stillness with stiff morning steps down the staircase, with a rustling of newspaper pages, with the tea kettle boiling and snapping off, with a staccato of fingers stumbling over a keyboard, and then, then there were the soft exhales. It was as if all the dust particles that have been settling for years past over carpets, chairs, books and various ephemera had slowly started to drift upwards filling the rooms with a dense and electrified dispersion. He felt unsettled in a way he had never experienced before, goosebumps coating wide expanses of his skin with no warning and, inexplicably, his speech stuttering on one or two occasions. All in the past few weeks.
He'd tried to dismiss it as simple acclimatization to sharing his living quarters with another, something he hadn't done since his university days. Had it been like this before and he'd somehow forgotten or suppressed these memories? No. Not at university, not in his stifling childhood home, not while working and having, as it often was the case, others frustratingly underfoot, not ever had he felt this disquieted and simply aware of another. He rubbed the forefinger and thumb of his left hand against each other slowly. The skin was dry, he felt the ridges of his own fingerprints catching against each other. Just then there was the unmistakable whisper of two corduroy-shrouded thighs sliding against each other. He shivered. How appropriate, how at once comforting and unnerving. He pressed his fingertips together tightly.
The most common activities left him agitated. Dropping down onto the sofa dislodged a wool jumper from its armrest. Out of nowhere a wool jumper and an immediate spike of disquietude. As if nothing of the everyday had stayed just that, as if he was transversing a minefield of sharply arising emotions in a deceptively domestic environment. With trepidation he had reached for the wool jumper, and as his hand sunk into the itchy yarn he found his knees hitting the floorboards, his fist closing, his own heavy exhale. He had heard a groan, his own.
He'd never needed much sleep preferring to spend most night hours reading or sifting through information filed away for further consideration. Work was a constant companion and solid purpose in his solitude. But now contemplation in the dark was frequently intruded upon by a creak of floor boards in the upstairs bedroom, the soft, barely-audible rustling of a man plagued by frequent nightmares and subsequent bathroom visits. His own sheets were a rumpled mess, bed strewn with papers, night table a stack of empty cups and glasses, a single rotting apple core on the floor just at arm's reach. And yet his was the still body, one hand gripping a pencil, the other rubbing at his temple in minute circles. While the one above shook with disturbing dreams, breath labored, sighs broken, the occasional stifled cry, then the inevitable setting of two feet on the wooden floor. One particularly disquieting night, his thoughts caught up in a case he could not bring to reason, the soft thud of those two feet above him startled him and he looked up from his supine position in the pitch dark, imagining for a moment the ceiling sinking softly down and upon him, this membrane enveloping him, melting onto his bare skin, the two feet settling onto his very body, sinking gently into his flesh. His breathing picked up. It seemed that in the distance a pencil rolled onto the floor. He felt pressed into, felt the individual digits prod slightly, the blunt of one heel, the weight of the other man. He gasped with unmistakable and painful arousal and the illusion dispersed into the night.
That first of several oneiric events left him on edge. Evenings that followed felt leaden with something unidentified, something that he could not neatly file away for later. Days went as usual. Mostly work. Some empty, some misused, some invested in acquiring new knowledge, scratching at the edges of life, crime, death. Yet, after the early winter sundowns he more often than not found himself pacing, prodding the fireplace, taking down and putting back books without opening them, at once restless and weary. So he chose to still this body, this body that now carried an unease, a fresh and unceasing hollow ache, by the window. The chill of the cold panes was refreshing as it seemed the rooms behind him tingled with warmth and his own body with a strange need. Not boredom, not nerves. He felt unanchored in his own home. Waiting for that soft exhale.
"How do you feel about ordering in tonight?"
He opened his eyes and turned towards John.