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“C’mere.” Andrew speaks softly, imploringly, opening up his arms and beckoning you in. Your single step forward is matched by one of his own, meeting you in the middle and pulling you in with an arm around your back, his other hand coming up to pull your head to his chest.
No words are spoken for a while after that. After days, weeks, months of incessant happenings, the outside world finally gets the hint. Tomorrow, things will pick back up again. Life will continue, and the two of you will be dragged through it just like all other poor living things. Right now, though, cars outside dare not pass. The rain dares not fall nor the wind blow. The clock dares not tick. It holds its breath and leaves you be. Strong is time’s instinct to fight against the absence of itself, but here, it knows better. For Andrew will carve out an hour in between the clicks of the second hand with tooth and nail if he has to. So, time halts. All in the name of giving you a break.
In this time that does not pass, Andrew’s chin rests atop your head, and his movements sway you both like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. If one were here, though, it wouldn’t even entertain the thought of chiming.
Andrew’s heart pulses beneath your ear like a metronome, but even that seems to be skipping beats every now and then, and every time, his arms tighten just slightly. His breath warms your scalp as he presses his lips to your hairline, just resting there.
When you close your eyes, it really does become hard to tell where your own body ends and his begins. Heat shared, bodies entwined, chest-to-chest, you find him inhaling in time with your exhales, as if unwilling to let the constriction of your ribcage draw any space between you. When the world reduces to the mere cumulation of your bodies, every millimetre of space grows to be relatively massive. And that just won’t do.
Like two cogs, you allow his movements to chase your own, and find your own chasing his. Every breath and every shift of limbs feeding back to create a constancy. It’s unclear exactly how long you continue in this way - according to the clock, no time at all - but it feels like many minutes.
Your mind is quiet, but eventually, you feel the urge to say something. Before you get the chance, you find Andrew voicing your thoughts. Or perhaps you’d been about to voice his.
“Bed?” He asks simply and softly.
You nod, although you get the sense that he already knew your answer just as you’d already known his question.
Slowly, the system of your bodies makes its way upstairs and into bed. He pulls you closer once more until you’re lying against his chest, your ear pressed over his heart once more. His left arm wraps around your back, his hand resting over your shoulderblade and stroking back and forth. Up, down. Up, down.
From the nightstand, he retrieves a well-worn poetry book. Loose notecards and colourful tabs stick out in all directions. It’s a wonder he can find anything in that book. In fact, he spends many a minute searching through, huffing occasionally when he opens a page and clearly doesn’t find what he was expecting - or he would do, at least, if any minutes were passing.
Your eyes slip closed once more. The sounds of his breathing and the occasional shuffling of pages become inserted thoughts. The sounds occupy your mind in its entirety, and you find yourself existing in nothing more than this moment. No past, no future, just Andrew beneath you and the book in his hands, a bookmark at the wrong page taunting him.
Eventually, the shuffling stops.
“I think you’ll like this one.” He murmurs, then begins.
“How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.”
He pauses. You feel his body shift beneath you as he stoops his head to press a kiss to your forehead.
“The lines flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.”
His free hand moves to curl around the back of the neck, his thumb drawing little clockwise circles into the skin over your pulse.
“The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.”
The clock on the nightstand ticks. Andrew holds you tighter.
Everything is going to be alright.