[Milliways]: First Gestures

[smallgayjew]

Posner can't believe that it's actually here. He can't believe he's finally leaving home (with Dakin) and moving out (with Dakin) and starting at Oxford (with Dakin). He's got all his essentials packed into a trunk and a suitcase, and it feels like too little to encompass his life so far, but it also feels appropriate to be starting a new life without any of the encumbrances of the old.

On the platform, he kisses his mum and hugs his dad and shakes his uncle's hand, and he tries not to look at the tears his mum is holding back, and he tries not to let his own fall. It isn't sad, not really. It's only...a bit frightening.

So he kisses his mum once more, and he lets her fix his hair, and he hugs his dad again, and then he takes a deep breath and lugs his trunk and his suitcase and his whole life onto the train and moves to find a seat by the window so he can wave them off they can wave him off.

And he doesn't sing Gracie Fields this time, but he wants to.

Comments

[smallgayjew]

David shakes his head. "It's by Lord Alfred Douglas. About how loving another man may be a shameful thing, but it is so very, very sweet. Sweet enough to turn shame to a virtue. To a goddess."

[pushtheboatout]

"I'm just wondering what your message is to me."

[smallgayjew]

David frowns in thought a moment.

When he answers, he's a bit hesitant, still working it out. "That even when I stop you from touching me, even when I don't want others to see, even that part of all this," he gestures between them, "whatever this is, even that is sweet. Sacred."

ooc: Pause for the night? would like to write

[pushtheboatout]

"Oh," Stuart says quietly. "That's all right, then."

He's quiet a moment. "'Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.'"

*nodnod* Good luck!

[smallgayjew]

David smiles, daring to let his fingers casually tangle with Stuart's.

"How should I know? The enormous wheels of will
Drove me cold-eyed on tired and sleepless feet.
Night was void arms and you a phantom still,
And day your far light swaying down the street.
As never fool for love, I starved for you;
My throat was dry and my eyes hot to see.
Your mouth so lying was most heaven in view,
And your remembered smell most agony.

Love wakens love! I felt your hot wrist shiver
And suddenly the mad victory I planned
Flashed real, in your burning bending head...
My conqueror’s blood was cool as a deep river
In shadow; and my heart beneath your hand
Quieter than a dead man on a bed. "

[pushtheboatout]

Dakin swallows hard.

"My mind's a map. A mad sea-captain drew it
Under a flowing moon until he knew it;
Winds with brass trumpets, puffy-cheeked as jugs,
And states bright-patterned like Arabian rugs.
"Here there be tygers."Here we buried Jim."
Here is the strait where eyeless fishes swim
About their buried idol, drowned so cold
He weeps away his eyes in salt and gold.
A country like the dark side of the moon,
A cider-apple country, harsh and boon,
A country savage as a chestnut-rind,
A land of hungry sorcerers.
Your mind?

Your mind is water through an April night,
A cherry-branch, plume-feathery with its white,
A lavender as fragrant as your words,
A room where Peace and Honor talk like birds,
Sewing bright coins upon the tragic cloth
Of heavy Fate, and Mockery, like a moth,
Flutters and beats about those lovely things.
You are the soul, enchanted with its wings,
The single voice that raises up the dead
To shake the pride of angels.
I have said."

[smallgayjew]

"Now who's putting people on pedestals?" David asks softly.

[pushtheboatout]

"It's not a pedestal if it's true," Dakin says, softly too.

[smallgayjew]

David shakes his head. "It isn't, though. I'm not like that."

[pushtheboatout]

"I love your mind," says Dakin. Perhaps a bit stubbornly.

[smallgayjew]

"And I yours, love, but I don't think you can raise the dead."

[pushtheboatout]

"It's just a poem."

[smallgayjew]

"Yes, but it's a poem I can never live up to."

[pushtheboatout]

"The person Benet wrote about probably didn't either. You want honest poetry, look at sonnet 130."

[smallgayjew]

"I like sonnet 130," David says thoughtfully.

[pushtheboatout]

"So do I, because she's not idealized."

[smallgayjew]

"No, she isn't. But she's loved."

[pushtheboatout]

"Exactly," says Stuart and touches David's hand. "My point, exactly."

[smallgayjew]

David smiles and leans his shoulder against Stuart's briefly.

"It's such a long way to Oxford..."

[pushtheboatout]

"Good there there's plenty of poetry."

[smallgayjew]

"The poetry's half the problem."

[pushtheboatout]

Stuart smirks out the window. "Not working as a distraction for me, either. I keep thinking of love poems.

"Never really liked them before."

[smallgayjew]

"Nor did I," David admits, fidgeting in his seat a bit. "I suppose they have to be grown into."

[pushtheboatout]

"Like when you need them so you no longer feel alone."

[smallgayjew]

David tilts his head. "How do you mean?"