Work Text:
Sunbathing was different from merely being in the sun. Those golden rays, filtered through glass panes and billowing curtains, settled on your skin and seeped down to soak your soul. It was color transcending warmth, because far more heartrending than the heat on the tiny hairs of your arms, the back of your neck, pooling in the hollows of your collarbone, was how translucent the beams of the sun shone, so very delicate and immaterial it could surely reach a place inside you not even you, yourself, had been to or known about, and cast light upon it.
Perhaps that was why books were such effective vessels of knowledge, steeped in a pot of golden illumination day in and day out, that pot being the library.
It was where Tang Mo worked, and had been working for years now, the intermissions between souls seeking for something they couldn’t find in their own lives flipping through pages broken only by the sound of his fingers on a keyboard or his breath.
Quiet. Calm. Serene. Those were the words he liked to frame his waking moments with. But then, if that was so, why was he a librarian? Why did he work among books and with books and for books, what was he seeking, what was it that was missing from his life?
Or who?
The name came unbidden to his mind: Victor.
Would that name soon be on his lips?
Tang Mo glanced at the corner of his computer screen, at the minute series of digits which told him the time, and, most importantly today, how many hours there were left before their first meeting. How many hours more he had to wait.
A feeling that wasn’t quite nervousness and wasn’t quite excitement made the usually stable click-clacks of his keys unsteady. Tang Mo smiled wryly at himself. It wasn’t easy to stir ripples in his heart, and when they were stirred, it sure wasn’t easy for him to see his heart clearly. What was he feeling? If not nervousness or excitement, then joy?
If only the answer came as easily to him as that name.
Most bemusing of all, however, was that not having the key to his own heart didn’t cause him to feel uneasy or displeasure- Tang Mo, who abided by organization and cold, rational thinking!
It must be because he had handed over the key long ago, blindly, as hopefully and desperately trusting as anyone who falls in love, to a hand he had never once held but dreamed countless times of doing so. Well, the chance to do just that was almost here. One more hour. Six o’ clock was the window of opportunity, the door to branching possibilities, and if Tang Mo heeded caution even as he anticipated a happy ending, that was because he was after all foremost himself.
If Victor wanted Tang Mo’s heart, he could not give any less in return.
The doors to the library closed behind him. Was this the so-called, as one door closes another opens? Tang Mo fixed the cashmere scarf draped around his shoulders idly, checked that he hadn’t left anything behind, and smoothly flagged down a taxi and recited the address.
The address: a quaint little coffee shop on a temperate street, just enough people milling about to seem lively but not hectic. As the taxi wended its way to their meeting place -Tang Mo had suggested it and Victor freely agreed- he watched the pale yellow blossoms of the Chinese scholar trees skitter like playful children along the mild, indulgent breeze, so without abandon did they tumble and frolic through the air, as if the thought of being let down did not remotely exist within the realm of possibility. Tang Mo couldn’t help but laugh.
Was he not even as brave as these petals? He had already given up the key to his heart, there was no point in preparing a retreat now. The car wound to a halt, and after completing the transaction and stepping out from yet another door… Tang Mo stopped.
Ah, that was Victor.
The man, bathed in gentle afternoon sunlight, had his hands in his pockets and one leg crossed over the other as he leaned against the wall. When his eyes met Tang Mo’s, his lips creased into a smile.
It read: I know you know that it’s me as you know that I know that it’s you.
Tang Mo finally figured out what he was feeling; he was returning to himself.