Work Text:
The wood creaks.
The windows are fogged with the exhalations of a sleeping body - two sleeping bodies.
Liss’ eyes start to unblur as they wake up, feeling the gentle rock of the bow beneath them.
Their glasses are on the side table; they know that. Reach an arm out (two arms stuck fast under Kit). Useless.
More things enter their mind now, as they wake up.
This is their bedroom; for 4 months of the year, that is. May, June, July, August. Four blissful months of summer and overwhelming, all-consuming devotion.
This is their bedroom, the floors harsh and woven, the curtains hemmed by hand, the photographs on the wall: tiny pieces of their little life on the water. The guitar in the corner, with a strap the same colour as their bedsheets. When Liss likes something, they love it. A colour, a style, a life, a person.
Immaculate taste with a splattering of inescapable devotion.
Kit’s family are probably already on their way, the early-risers that they are.
Kit and Liss have had enough early Sundays for a lifetime, and one too many sleepless nights lately. Liss would like to drift off and sleep some more, but the curtains are hard pushed to keep the hot August sun at bay and the ducks make no habit of confining their chatter to waking hours. They wonder what Kit’s family would think if they saw Kit like this - saw them like this. Two bodies intertwined; domestic. Still bound by the lingering haze of sleep, surrounded by the graceful reckonings of bliss.
Liss feels at home. They exist in this world - they’ve never been more sure.
With all the bruises on their legs, the sheen of sweat on their skin, the hair on their head. All the things they hear, see, touch, smell; they’re sure. They’re distinctly alive, curled in this tinted matchbox room.
This is better than any dream. They can smell the coal stored in the engine room, the toothpaste still lingering around the corners of their mouth. They can see the dust dancing unreservedly in the strips of sunlight creeping up the walls. The smell of sleep.
The smell of Kit. Home.
And Liss would like to keep things like this.