gildedlife

[gildedlife]

not to say that james is stunned by this revelation of anticlimax, but he is, granting him his drama, a bit heartbroken to hear it. no evidence. what a loss.

while his finger marks the length, his thumb creeps under the collar of control’s shirt. he gives him a sweep across the collarbone.

“they must have fawned over you,” he says. “luscious curls the whole distance?”

"not if i've been thorough. to—" he makes a move to point. then changes his mind. guides james' hand by the knuckles, singling out a finger to brush by the curve where his neck glides out into shoulder. "about here."

[gildedlife]

“did you really,” he asks with a calculated flatness, as though he’d almost gasped his delight into the open and is now fighting to reel it back in: tone adjusted, the inside of his cheek bitten so that he doesn’t grin at him.

“how long?” he singles out a new grey and beams at it. “are there pictures?”

he hears his own hum in his ears: how it reverberates down his spine, fills up the gaps that the tickling feeling left. he doesn't turn to look. let james paw at him like a cat, feel the love from touch alone.

"i grew it out once in college. horrible mistake. it was rock and roll, back then."

[gildedlife]

the nearer his thumb draws to the occiput, the more the path is impressed: curls upturned and stuck that way, shorter hairs pressed down and holding against his head. he kisses behind the ear on his side, more for a close look than anything else.

“by your estimate,” he agrees. but. “i think it becomes you.”

he thinks everything does.

@gildedlife: [ play ] james is the player control is the playee. let him get his hands in that hair

the touch starts at the base of his neck but the feeling takes root in the bottom of his spine, works its way up slowly, climbing his vertabrae like a ladder.

it's a slow reaction, a head-turn that happens about the same time as the goosebumps crawling up his arms.

"i know." it's curling around his ears. "i need a haircut."

[gildedlife]

🫵 i will be coming back shortly. here and on @legioun because @bluedprints is bullying me. hold me to it

[gildedlife]

james & control: bakery verse (NOT YOUR TRADITIONAL)

some jamestrol because it is lovely merrin @gildedlife's birthday. happy birthday!! what a joy it is to know and to create with you. i love our words and worlds. and most of all i love you!!

[gildedlife]

got to spend 10 days with my best friend @bluedprints and now we’re both sick and back in our countries so what is the point i ask.

[gildedlife]

james has extracted, unfolded, and put his glasses on before it occurs to him what’s happened. the reading muscles in his face are relaxed when he lifts it to look for the next missing thing: control.

“you can’t tell me you’ve found better company in there.” wherever ‘there’ is. his eyes are cast aside, unfocused, as he listens for movement. “i will wither without attention.”

without a word, but with the steely efficiency of a teacher handing out coursework—he slides james the case with his reading glasses, on his way from one room into the next.

[gildedlife]

@bluedprints

he’s squinting. playing the trombone, insufferably and obliviously, with the papers from which he is attempting fruitlessly to pluck words without his reading glasses.

[gildedlife]

i haven’t told very many people about this, but i think i’ve covered the most immediate bases, so even if it travels from here i don’t think much should change. just to get it out there, for my own peace of mind:

my dad died unexpectedly. it’s been an unusually difficult experience for me in that—with the exception of the one person here i’ve told directly—it seems to be assumed i’ll have no reaction to it because he walked out on my family 11 years ago. almost like i should be celebrating.

i’m not 30 years old yet. this is the permanent loss of one of two people i was supposed to trust to love me unconditionally for life.

i’ve just found it sort of… cold. when the few individuals i’ve opened up to have responded with “please don’t feel guilty about however you react to this” as if 1. i am going to be happy, and 2. i don’t need someone to say “are you okay?” or “what happened?” or “i’m sorry for your loss” just, you know. once?

(again, excluding my friend here who’s seen me through it. we were together just hours before i found out and it would’ve felt like lying if i hadn’t shared it straight away. also, i trust her. also, i wouldn’t make vague posts like this about anyone actively using the site. i’m not like that.)

grief is grief, and i am. very sad. yes, granted, there are complexities because of my history with him, but none nearly to the extent of nullifying the heartbreak i feel over losing a parent.

i’m not doing so well and no one i need to be checking in on me is checking in, though i have asked for help (which for me is really only: sit down, don’t worry about talking about it, let me show you some television and then i’ll let you go about your life again. help me. please.)

in short, and without the residual thinking of my anger stage: i lost my dad. i am hurting a lot. he was young, i am young, and it should have been different.

[gildedlife]

one day you’re writing middle-aged men haunted by the narrative together, and the next you’re hanging out in london @gildedlife !!!!!!!!

[gildedlife]

happy halloween! you’ll never guess my costume.

[gildedlife]

they’re tucked away in an inside pocket so as not to ruin his silhouette; a slim case instead of a pack and a matchbook instead of a lighter for the same reason. he withdraws both and lights one before flipping it with his thumb and forefinger for control to take, no hands required.

“you draw the eye more than i do. i might be jealous if i weren’t looking, too.” only he is allowed this treat: control lit warmly from below by the ember of the cigarette. an openness to his expression for which he had to fight, from which they both bear scars.

“i talk well,” he smiles, as in ‘too much.’ even this he won’t keep for long. “that’s what i’ve still got.”

he does. love him.

so it might not be jealousy, but there is something sharp about it—in this sea of people, look at me, i am under these lights, too. but now he's won: out of all of them, and the prize is fresh air, the warmth of a hip pressing against hip.

"you still got it."

who could say no to you?

admiration, and relief: it gets lonely, sometimes, the art of knowing what to say when. the mask drop is significant, and heavy wtih how relatable it is. control pats down the front of james' pockets for him, and this is also an excuse, to touch.

"smoke?"

[gildedlife]

“you love me,” he corrects, intending to balance it with a harmlessly negative accusation of bias before the glee of it overtakes him. and the uncertainty. the trust he’s asking control to hold in his hands like water.

you do, don’t you? with a push back, a laugh, it would be. his expression would sit unevenly. because i do. i do.

“i’d forgotten—” he takes a breath and presses in, close enough to kiss him though he’d rather use him, for now, to block his view of everything else. how paradoxically consuming and unimportant it all is. “i was good at this once.”

nothing left to say, then. just glowing green exit signs over a door on the far side of the room. control pushes his glass into james' hand, like this is part of the escape plan.

"let's get some air."

down a staircase to a balcony, with a heavy door that control props open behind them—he is guiding james by the small of his back the entire way, like he needs some grip on him to ensure he won't drift away under the lights again.

"they love you."

[gildedlife]

it feels like the first breath he’s taken since the last time they met. as though he’s been in a suspension of time and space between kisses, and it’s only when they touch again that james notices, having suddenly had some of the life poured back into him.

one of his arms is still in the air en route to the oranges, but dragging now, hanging heavy against the fingers he’s hooked on the wire shelf.

the overhead light flickers, so he kisses him back.

“i’m innocent,” he says as he rocks backward on his heels, pulls his wrist, and slides out his proof in the form of a box of fruit. he could leave him, just like this, a guilt-ridden traitor on his own turf. “they won’t catch me doing anything but my job.”

@gildedlife: a kiss in secret

in the walk-in, the lights are a sort of muted silver but their breaths become an icy white. somehow that seems, to control, like the element that will give them away, even though the door is closed.

james reaches for the oranges, he reaches for an embroidered shirt pocket to pull close.

the kiss is quick, juvenile. tasting of whatever it is james is sneaking bites of outside.

control can't fight his grin. their mouths close enough together to melt each other's breath before it takes. there are footsteps just outside—whitby, or worse.

"sh-sh-sh."

[gildedlife]

“Is there anything that you need?”

“Sleep.”

[gildedlife]

james’ foot and james’ mouth are well-acquainted, which makes it something of a relief when he witnesses another trying to speak around their own. so long as it’s aimed elsewhere, it is something he’s come to enjoy in diane despite their bandying pettishness.

in fairness to her quick tongue, he does look very different to the last time they met. he is thinner and greyer, mildly cloudy in one eye, and newly reliant on a cane.

it isn’t these details so much as the air around him that’s changed. it’s as though his sense of importance, higher and grander than himself, had begun in those golden years to float up and out of him, and that some force has grabbed it by the too-broad shoulders and grounded it cruelly in a body too small. brought to reality and trapped within, it has diminished greatly in a short span, same as he.

‘ i had hoped no one would. ’ recognize him, that is. it’s why he’d gone west rather than east. still, he offers her a smile, modest but sincere. ‘ it is good to see a face i know, a shock though it may be. ’

@gildedlife

the very first thing diane does is misspeak, "it's the most incredible thing, i almost didn't recognize you."

but her schema for comportment around james is challenged – informed as it has been by ill-fitting conversations, which over time, gradated more comfortably into cursory pleasantries. glib greetings, as one shouldered past.

what she means to say, "it's the textbook example of the – disorientation – a person feels when they happen upon someone outside of their established context for them."

diane's astonishment of such happenstance outshines any impulse to make herself elusive (and, without pretense, his is the first familiar face she's seen in weeks).

[gildedlife]

he wants to say something along the lines of ‘perhaps i’ll bring myself closer to you, doing this’ or ‘you’ll be sick of me within minutes of my return, so cherish the respite’—anything to lighten the mood or provide comfort—yet somehow it feels heavier than any of that. as if, despite the optimism that’s not yet died in him, he can sense the doom.

‘ i promise it isn’t. ’ what i wanted. the nearest he’s come to rejecting it in full. an apology of sorts, for feeling unable to do right by xeno.

‘ but that is— ’ meaning each day is one day closer. he pulls his head back and smiles a little, to sell it more convincingly. ‘ undeniably true. do forgive me if i return wanting extra blankets for a time. ’

if james isn't pulling away, xeno certainly won't. his arms wrap around his friend, clinging on tightly. eyes shut, pretending this moment doesn't need to come to an end. that there isn't a schedule haunting them, a flight due to take off into the unknown.

"i know," his whisper is spoken into james' shoulder. there's no accusation levelled in it, only an aching sorrow. they are helpless against this inevitably. "i know this isn't—what you wanted." it's a bitter pill to swallow. xeno hates john franklin.

"i'm gonna count down each day. cross them out on a calendar. another day over is another day closer to you coming back, right?"