Disclaimer: Again, I don’t profit from this. I wish I owned them, but I don’t. Alas.

I... erm... never really manage to write ficlets. ^^; I'm way too wordy. But this hit me upside the head last night, and I ended up dreaming about the damn thing, so here it is.

Once it was written, I spent a little while trying to figure out who the hell they are, until I realised it doesn't matter. All that matters is that they are, if that makes any sense whatsoever. I wouldn't bother asking who they be, 'cuz I don't know who they be. Aside from the fact that I'm pretty sure it's GW, since that's what was in my head at the time. Heh. Tentative title.


Hush
by Blue Soaring


The first sound is always a sigh. The whisper of bare skin across sheets, warm breath over parted lips. A pause for the enjoyment of the cotton and blankets cradling us. Moments later his feet touch the carpet, warmed by the dawn's light, and he pads quietly through the room. I think he knows that I'm awake.

I can feel the sun, and open sleepy eyes to watch the dust motes drift lazily through its light. Beyond the stream, the air is soft and clear. There's a hush in the early morning, a feeling of waiting; I can hear the water running, the brush of oversized towel against damp skin in the silence following.

The sound of his footsteps changes as he moves from bathroom to bedroom again. I can't see him yet, but I know he's at the closet. I can hear him shifting through the line of clothing, lifting out one laden hanger, then another. There's a soft puff of displaced air as he sets them on the foot of the bed, just beside my hidden feet.

The towel pools on the floor with a sound that can only ever be cloth settling on carpet. I want to turn and watch him. Instead, I listen, and wait. I hear him set one foot down, a pause, and then the second. The slow glide of slacks over legs reaches my ears, the shifting of his familiar hands over the fabric as he straightens them.

The blankets shift as he reaches for another hanger, pulls the material from it and finally steps into my line of vision. He stands near the window, the sun giving his skin a deeper, richer, golden sheen. He slides his arms into the plain white shirt while he gazes out at the silence of the morning. Small wisps of hair that had dried slip forward to brush his cheek, and in the dawn light, they seem as fine and light as spider's thread. My hands know the true warmth and thickness of it. Shrugging his shoulders to settle the cloth against his skin, leaving it still unbuttoned, he turns and the material flows.

His steps grow fainter, and I know he's in the kitchen. The muffled pouring of steaming coffee into a ceramic mug reaches through the apartment to me. Maybe, though, the sound is so familiar to me that I imagine I hear it, even while it happens.

The scent curls in the air as he returns, and there's another pause before the mug is set on the high dresser. He steps to the mirror now, and I hear the shifting and straightening of fabric before the long, slow slither of a tie over his palms. He doesn't need the mirror, and I'm deprived of the sight of him again. The slide of silk over his hands continues, the rhythm familiar and strange to me at the same time as he wraps the material, tucks it through and into the four-in-hand knot that he insists on tying. I'd been taught a different way.

He enters my line of vision again as his hand smoothes down the length of the tie. I sit up with another brush of skin on cotton, let the blankets pool in my lap; his destination isn't the window now, but me. He presses the still half-full mug of warm coffee into my hands, finally touches his lips to mine. Slow, sweet, his morning kisses are as languid as I feel. He is the first taste of the coffee in my grasp.

He draws away, his palm warm on my thigh. His lips are curved in a little half-smile, something as deliberate and lethargic as his kiss. I watch him, bring the mug to my lips and sip the liquid gold, let the perfect taste of him and it mix on my tongue. His smile widens almost imperceptibly. I was watching for it, and find it reflected on my lips without thought.

Later, after he's left, I sit there, mug empty in my hand. Even now, the room echoes with his presence. The feeling of him remains in the room, rests on my lips and on my skin.

The dawn has waned, but the air is still and quiet yet.

owari

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