Work Text:
Historians will call them anything but.
“Tommy.”
The voice was soft, rounded corners of the word with a gentle familiarity, yet the harsh reality of the owner struck like lightning to burn his skin dry. “Freddie.” He responded the word with his usual façade, a cautious glimpse of the way his tongue rolled over the first syllable, the second flick of his tongue being tighter by the vowel. His throat felt raw, a rough grasp of chaotic tumble fuelling his emotions like kindle to a flame.
“What are you doing here?” The communist placed the question with a strength of conviction, his private tremble between the twitch of his fingers, a craft of feigning confidence shallow enough that the Shelby noticed it. He lifted his fingers in response, a roll of singed paper hooked between his grip, the smoke stilling in the cold air. “You?” The one word proved to himself he could not trust his own voice, a chill of the wind picking up on his feelings as they were tossed into the open atmosphere of the air, Freddie’s touch alarmingly close. “A walk.”
Tommy listened to the lie with a bitter climb of overlapping flavour on his tongue, a sickening pit in his stomach churning up a conscience. The environment carried the vague sense of sexual interaction and secretive capacity, hooking Tommy’s breath away as the smoke left his lips, terror of grey blobs blurring his eyes. “Beautiful place for a walk, then.” He could not help the sarcastic response, a fall of his lips returning to the natural arena only memory continued playing, reopening a wound that tore across his mind. The wince spread across Freddie’s face proved in the coy of bittersweet nostalgia, a loss of words creasing the scarred string of their relationship, and Tommy flinched in the slightest when he felt Freddie’s hot breath against his skin.
“Very.”
There was a way his eyes shifted to the outline of his lips that shuddered a waterfall of memories, lore in their own history applauded by the curtains of shame, stricken away into restricted nights of fallen cries in battle and reigning feign of violence. For first in the time of which they forget, they both stand together in peace, the silence enough to blow of the dust of unshed time weighing on their chest, as suffocating as the feeling of love normally holds. “For romance, it seems you would do anything. Even lie,” came the murmur from Tommy’s mouth, a recognition in truth as his heart pounded heavier between the caged lines of his flesh and bone, skin trembling slightly under his layers of clothing. Puffs of nature sprouted mist in his face, a thorough consideration of Freddie’s breath, soaking over moisture that stopped the remaining spits of ash from the cigarette in the Shelby’s hold.
“Not romance.” The composure of his statement is thick, vile. “Love.”
Tommy could only twinkle his eyes with acknowledgement, foot skidding from the soft hideout made in the shadows, marks hidden now naked into the sight of a passing eye. The light blinded his features for a moment’s worth, light freckles dusted at his cheekbones showing with minimal compassion under glow, eyes blinking gently in retaliation to the flickering parade of brightness. Freddie watched with tired grip on his expression, the loose mispronunciation in his posture picking at the way the other male had his upright stance meticulously crafted by his own. “What do you know about love?” came the question from the Shelby, the lighter in his fingers fumbling before flicking open, flame blistering heat as it tore away the protection the lack of light offered.
There were no words to be said, for it was written in ink stretched upon the caress of Freddie’s face.
No one, blind, eyes, all-seeing, would mistake that glance for anything that is not love. For which, glimmering in the bright ignition of fire, stripped naked from the armour darkness provided, resistance sketched with fine detail for what fruit bears in forbidden attire, wore such that was not romance. Wore on such that was love.
The lighter swayed in its natural landscape, metal enclosing it with urgency as the darkness consumed them once again.
“No one can see that you look my way like that.” His voice was stern, a firm control of his power held within his hand pressed forcefully against Freddie’s mind, his body warming with the refreshment normally brought with by the physicality of touch. “I know. But do you know how you look at me?”
There was silence again, and the half-lit battlefield of Tommy’s face slipped back under the covers of black light, shed once again the inability to be truth. “Yes.”
“Then tell me.”
His lips were firm against his lips, process of a hesitant hand burning marks against his hip, jaw gripped as fingers cut along lines of his face. They knew it was different, complex in its own.
An emotion so strong it bloomed upon with its forbidden practice.
“You are like a rose,” came the whisper from Tommy’s lips as Freddie scales his side with a hand, heavy weight pressing him against the wall with a muffled creak in volume, “just the same with beauty and a bloody thorn.”
His neck is consumed, again with same repetition of raw intensity, captured the way his lips were as coldness once evaded. Their teeth cracked with accordance, gritted lightly against with no distance left between, friction overlapping in their sensation of their environment. “I hope you don’t bleed, then. I like your beautiful skin.”
It feels sweet when their hands meet as they brush against the wall together, pinned above themselves with a flush of teenage hormones. For they did not entirely grow up, stuck in a swallowed sense of pressure, pining in chasing unlabelled emotions away. Their mouths emptied words, accepted touch, and consumed the lust left between the discrete moments of doing nothing, picking up the passion of their lost time in the minutes ticking by the hands of his watch.
“How do you?”
“With love.”
But history hates lovers.