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No one ever talked about the silence until it became deafening.
If anyone knew Stacey Holmes—not that many did—they would know that he was used to silence in his life. Right up until he'd trekked through the woods one winter and found an unattended campfire in the forests of Maine that he stopped relying on silence so much. Xavier Wise was anything but silence.
A series of endless questions.
Never-ending moments of wonder.
The brightness of blooming joy in the cold, winter air.
The freshness of snowfall when it first blanketed the earth in a layer of undisturbed comfort.
Xavier Wise at age 10, was everything Stacey needed to pull him out of his silence, of his funk. He tended to Stacey like a fire in a hearth. He honed Stacey like a blade he wanted to keep sharp, clean and rust-free. He loved Stacey like one was supposed to love, with no conditions at all and too much of it in his heart.
There were often times, as Stacey sat in the grass, where he stared at soft, pale, mid-tone blues and wondered if he remained the sunflower-yellow centre surrounded by Xavier's presence. Forget-me-nots grew everywhere, underfoot, snaking through bushes. Clusters of white, pinks, blues and purples lingered within the greenery that filled Stacey's ears with something other than silence.
Had this been over a decade ago, Xavier would've been next to him, chatting away about some kind of lesson that Mister Wise would've been trying to teach him, nevermind that Xavier never had the patience or time that Mister Wise often cared for. Time changed a lot of people, time changed the world around them. The one thing time did not change… was silence.
Xavier was so much more like his father now than he would've liked to admit. Stacey never considered before, he never needed to. Up until '68, he'd always known Xavier like the back of his hand, or at least he thought he did.
The silence up on the hill was comforting.
Just a couple of feet down, beneath the log he'd rested his feet on and the shrubbery and greens, interrupted by their clusters of colour, he could see Xavier picking through the trail. His sharp, red flannel was harsh against the otherwise cool-toned environment, but it meant that Stacey could see him from afar. In his own brown furred jacket and brown trousers, he wasn't sure if Xavier had spotted him yet.
He wasn't hiding.
No matter what Xavier said.
He wasn't.
He was simply enjoying the new life that spring brought to the rest of the trees, the leaves. Something he needed to stop and appreciate otherwise he might've driven himself mad in the silence of the cabin.
He plucked a flower from it's stem.
"He loves me?" He picked a petal and let it float down back to the cool earth. Petrichor filled his nostrils, along with pine and the faint scent from the forget me not dwarfed in his hand.
"He loves me not."
"That's a kid's game." Xavier's voice said over his shoulder. Stacey didn't look up at him.
He plucked the next petal off as he felt Xavier's warmth settle down into the soft earth next to him, overlooking the old cabin and the rest of the trees.
He loves me. He continued silently, not wanting to worry the younger man, but he looked over and shot Xavier a wide smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"S'just a game Hound Dog." He muttered, voice uncharacteristically soft. He wanted to take care, to not startle the birds in the trees, or any life that existed within the forest that surrounded him. He came out here so that the silence was a little sweeter, he didn't want to ruin it. "Ain't nothin' by it."
Xavier frowned, so much like his father. Those brown eyes—narrowed with doubt, gave away more than Xavier could ever realize—darted down to the flower in his hand.
Mister Wise taught him the meaning about flowers, in a brief, quiet manner… then took Stacey to the library once when he curiously asked to learn about more. That book, Stacey was certain, never actually got returned to the library, filled with dried presses that likely were dust ridden and long forgotten. Back then Xavier had rattled out questions about why Stacey was so interested, why he liked it so much.
He didn't have an answer then… he wasn't sure he had one now either.
Maybe it was gone, he wasn't sure.
He just assumed that his belongings never truly stayed in one place.
He loves me not. His fingerprint sat in the second last petal like some kind of scar, marking it with the roughness that only ever seemed to be contained by band-aids and masks. He felt Xavier lean into him. A warm hand landed on his thigh, just below his knee and sat there unmoving. A head rested on his shoulder, he felt the brush of Xavier's hair against his jaw.
He loves me.
The last petal began it's slow fall to the ground when a gentle breeze stole it away from the space between his knees. It tumbled across the greenry, down the hill towards the cabin. Stacey snorted.
He dropped the short stem and covered Xavier's hand with his own, larger palm, threading their fingers together. He gazed at the rest of the flowers, leaning his cheek against the crown of Xavier's skull to feel the warmth from his hair.
"You know what them pretty flowers mean, don't'cha?" He spoke again, a little louder.
"Course I do, Loon." Xavier's voice was raw, perhaps a little ragged.
It'd been a tough few days adjusting to the rest of the world now that their war was no longer in it. To know the things that they knew. To see the things that they had seen and then to return to the waking world—to home, in Maine… to the cabin—and pretend that everything was normal. Wasn't the first time Stacey had to carve out something new for himself, but it was the first time he had someone else to do it with.
"How could I ever forget you?"
One warm hand cupped Stacey's cheek, brushing the cheekbone beneath one milky eye. His face was turned towards Xavier, cheeks warm with adoration, eyes trained firmly on Stacey like the rest of the woods simply did not exist. Maybe the world didn't exist around them, because he could see them in Xavier's eyes.
"Seem stupid now." He muttered back. "But after everything-"
After the valley had tested the years between them, their mettle, Stacey's strength and Xavier's mind, he didn't think that they would come back from it.
"I won't." Their foreheads knocked together, Xavier's nose bumped against his and his lips ghosted against Stacey's with the briefest hint of hesitation. "Will you?"
"I could never forget you, Hound Dog." Stacey admitted, question cutting deeper than the King's scar on his arm. "Never."
When Xavier kissed him, he swore he saw the same cluster of whites, pinks, blues and purples behind his eyes, squeezing them shut. Xavier threaded their fingers together, his other hand cupped Stacey's cheek like he thought he would disappear despite being right in front of him. His other hand clutched tightly onto the back of Xavier's flannel, gripping him like the final lifeline in a flooding valley.
Everything went blissfully quiet.
Stacey knew silence.
They may have grown.
They may have changed.
But the silence had grown with them.