#like its a safe and comforting feeling... away from the terrors of the commonwealth right?

[corragain]

“Please stay. I’d like some company.”

Platonic Requests for Affection (Accepting) 

For a moment, they weren’t here. For a moment, he was tucked away some place at some dimly lit pub, the leather seats all ripping, the tables keyed and tallied, and the walls stained yellow, peeling, from cigarette smoke. There was chatter, too. No words, though. Just smears of whispers. And across from him, Keaton looming with his sandy hair and eyes hazel, dark as a funeral rite. Please stay, he’d say, the words like a secret on the tip of his tongue. I’d like some company. Corrigan would inhale dust and mold, then, taste barley, and in his head, a blurry thought: He could not picture this man capable of wanting anything but solitude and a shadow to call home.

He would stay, anyway, across the man with the burn on his cheek.

And here, not in Ship Anson’s, but anchored in Massachusetts Bay and bathed under the moonlight, he did.

“We are both,“ he rasped softly, “in dire need of companionship.” His smile was small like he wasn’t used to it. The cool air nipped his nose pink, and he exhaled, quiet, against the gunwale. "Though you’ve the pitiable half of this arrangement --- as you well know.”

From his coat, the captain brought out a matchbox. He lit Keaton’s cigarette, and if they were in that pub again, Keaton half-obscured by smoke, the image was safe and locked away in his head.