Work Text:
The first time, they argued.
"We approach our meaning by metaphors," said Guildenstern. "We grasp the truth, counter an argument, wrestle and reach for whatever in life is worth reaching -- but we never make that point of contact. Metaphor is not reality. Reality, contrary to popular conception, is not solid, but a shadow of itself and so sickly-thin as to be transparent: a pale, anemic weakling."
Rosencrantz sat solid behind him, a warm (and naked -- Guildenstern couldn't forget) weight at his back, a pair of arms looped over his stomach. "I don't understand," he whined, "what you're so cross for. Is it something I did? Something I said?"
"Rosencrantz."
"What?"
"You said Rosencrantz."
"... Oh." Rosencrantz smiled where he couldn't see, but he could feel the lips forming it into his neck. (He shivered at the contact.) "That's not you, then?"
"No."
"Oh."
-
The first time, Guildenstern had wrestled Rosencrantz to the ground like a metaphor for the truth. One moment they were sealed mouth to mouth, tongue caressing tongue, teeth clattering teeth, and the next he pulled back, panting. "What do you want?" he demanded.
"I don't know."
"You don't know," Guildenstern repeated. "Well, if there's nothing you want of me, then all this has been to no purpose -- I'll stop, then, shall I?"
"No -- no, don't stop." Rosencrantz licked his lips, swollen from their kisses -- "It's not that I don't want. I know that I do. But I don't know what I do. Do you?"
"What's the word for being on the edge of something inexpressible? Terror?" Guildenstern's eyes were heavy and dark, his breath shallow as though from a flight. "At least at the end of a syllogism, you know where you've arrived. What does a kiss conclude? For what does it begin, does it end?"
"When, you mean?"
"No -- what. Wherefore."
"I thought --" (Rosencrantz's eyes were blue, so blue) "-- I thought it would make you happy."
"Hedonism. Is that all you have to offer?"
"It made me happy, too," he said. "Shall I kiss you again? I think I want to kiss you."
So Guildenstern let Rosencrantz kiss him, and when he said, "I think I want to touch you," he let Rosencrantz slide a hand up his chest. He let Rosencrantz nuzzle his jawline, and twitched when it tickled, and gasped when it didn't. Each sound was a discovery.
"Yes, that's right," Rosencrantz continued. "I want to kiss you here --" He mapped the space first with his fingers, sounding for shivers. "And here --"
And Guildenstern could not say where it began, where it ended.
-
The first time, Guildenstern yanked away whenever Rosencrantz touched him, as though shocked. "Do you not like it?" Rosencrantz asked. "If you don't like it, then I won't do it."
"It's instinct, base instinct, that's all," Guildenstern said. "The act of intimacy is an act of trust -- we approach our meaning by metaphors, shirking from bare contact -- but I do trust you. It's only ... Let's try this." He slipped his hands to Rosencrantz's wrists, held them to his sides with the hint of pressure. "Let me touch you."
"I never said you couldn't."
"Let me touch you only."
"Only what?"
Guildenstern kissed his throat, a kiss that held the threat of teeth. "Only this," he said.
"Oh?" Rosencrantz tried to raise his arms again, but again came the hint of pressure -- and with it, a deeper kiss. Guildenstern seemed intent on encompassing all Rosencrantz's flesh between his two lips -- warm, and wet, and -- "Oh."
-
The first time never happened. In their narrow bed, they lay not in each other's arms, but back to back, like each other's guards. The blankets wound around Guildenstern, but Rosencrantz, Rosencrantz was warm as a summer's day -- though the room was bitter cold. He held heat like the sun had lighted on his palm. Guildenstern wondered whether, if he reached for it, he could keep it.
So he turned. There was an arm wedged between him and the bed that he didn't know what to do with, and the blankets wound into a tangle -- but he turned. They were close enough to touch, close enough that they did touch, Rosencrantz's body flush against his own. The other man stirred and stretched, murmuring something senseless in his half-sleep, curling closer to the body behind him. Tentative, Guildenstern brushed back a strand of his hair.
"What is it?" Rosencrantz asked.
Guildenstern opened his mouth, but whatever he said was a whisper, and it was drowned out by a banging on the shutters. "Rosencrantz!" someone called. "Guildenstern!"
And who was who, no one could say.
-
Truth be told, each time was the first time -- they had no time, no memory, no reality. An asymptote, they came closer and closer, approaching without ever touching. Guildenstern proposed the theory while they lay in each other's arms, and everything was touch in the tangle of their limbs. If he knew it sounded ridiculous, with Rosencrantz all around him, he didn't show it.
"Well, then," Rosencrantz said with a smile holding sunlight (so warm, so close to a kiss), "we've as many first times as it takes to get it right."