You felt it...
     You had to have felt it...
     As tangible as a brush of his hand against your face, the stroke of a thumb to your mouth as you were reading over a letter. In that way, yes in that way when you know he has to see you. He does not call it perhaps what he should, to use the words such as obsession, words that you are familiar with, terms that you understand having had your own with him. You felt it...
     You had to have felt it...
     As surely as you heard the music, turned a page. There it was, real and moving against you. He simply had to see you. To be with you. Intense. Immediate. It came with a swelling of emotion, a bubble that moved against your blood though no words followed. No steps were immediately heard.
     The boy in the painting, William realized, was only a pantomime. A beautiful pantomime, but mime nonetheless. It will be held in a vault or in a study. But it will not be you. To unroll it from its canister...
     It would be the same as undressing you...
     There was stillness after the immediacy of that Love, that Want. It dissipated slightly but lingered in the air. And some time later, you heard the door open and close...
     They will have it on their wall, but they will never have you. They have the painting. I have what inspired the painting. I get to watch you move every night in spaces you can't even imagine, in landscapes in my mind, upon a thousand invisible canvases, pictures that shall never know a wall...
     Keys jingle, landing on the sideboard, and the steps are quiet as he enters the townhouse. The music... you are awake and waiting, perhaps just as he imagined -- such things seem to happen between you. And you feel it again...
     You have to feel it...

     9 Royal Mile. The lights are on again within, and music streams from the updated DVD player. Cole Porter becomes Tommy Dorsey becomes Vera Lynn becomes Glenn Miller. We'll meet again, certainly, in the old familiar places.
     It's not so hard here to fall into the past. It's always so with us. When I'm here, I sit and correspond with the past. Pictures, books, letters. Old and new ones. In the quiet of no servants, no business, no technology, it's easy to focus on the the simple and mundane. Moments missed and now better understood.
     Ian can smile about them now.
     His brows lift as he hears the jingle of keys. Ian half-turns in his seat at his writing desk and smiles as he waits upon the door to open.

     How different these nights...
     Rather than the Plantagenet voice booming to its battlefield best to find you, or playing hide-and-seek with the come hither flirtatious summonings, he simply listens for the scratch of a pen upon paper, the sound of liquid pooling in the glass, or you turning upon your chair already waiting for him.
     He materializes like a wish coming true, there in the doorway, a navy wonder in his jacket, his broadcloth shirt, the trousers all of the same oceanic blue but the textures varied. It is an effect that an artist can appreciate. And those who like art. And artists. William lingers in the doorway for a moment, he sees you at your desk, he studies you there, stares at you there and after a few moments more, pushes off the doorway and comes to you.
     A great hand touches the gold of your hair, spun white-gold, as something of Cole Porter plays in the background. Still he says nothing, nor do words of any and no tongues slip against your blood to sound within or between your ears. Finally, his lips pull and he smiles an Angevin smile.
     You are the best conclusion to business, the only way to both begin and end an evening...
     The greeting kiss is warm. It is a brief brush, a warmth very like that earlier imagined.

     Ian smiles at the kiss, but immediately asks, "Are you alright?" It's warm, that, shared in a small space. "Good evening?" he asks, wondering how it all went. "City's nice tonight..." Ian observes, hand touching your chest.
     He knows he is unlikely to see it.

     "What is it with everyone wondering if I am okay?" he drolls out. "Do I look sick?" he finishes with a laugh. "It went well," William notes quietly, his hand leaving your hair to land on your shoulder. "I did not have to submit to anything uncomfortable or...unmemorable. A simple hand-off. It is strange," he pauses to pour himself a drink, indigo eyes lifting to you. You who can see the violet within the blue so easily, "...how two years of one's life can simply be handed to someone else in a canister. I have a very strange job. But fortunately, with the state of the world, I have job security, ne c'est pas? There is always something falling apart that needs William to fix it."
     He pours himself, of all things, a scotch. With ice, like a proper barbarian.
     "I was sitting there, the canister on the desk, a beautiful woman across from me...who says to say hello, by the way, and that she will write you, she misses you, I think," William tangents as he returns, taking a position beside you, "...and," sips, "... what I wanted most was to be here, staring at you instead." You felt that -- you had to have felt it. "To tell you," William murmurs, "...how much I love you..."

     "You're splendid," Ian grins, blushing slightly. But the scotch is prepared and Ian takes a moment to gleefully lift the glass from your hand. "Thank you, laird," he murmurs, turning it up as his lips with a look that says, What are you going to drink?

     "There's ice in it," William cautions. "You are going to let that sacrilege pass your lips?" Fine, says the look and the smirk of that mouth that goes with it. He is easy to surrender to you these days. He is better at picking his battles, let us say. William crosses over to the collection of bottle again, fingers poised above the tops of decanters in deliberation. Eyebrows raise and he reaches for brandy instead.
     It is likely safer...
     Such as that is...
     Indigo eyes lift again, cross over to you as he takes up the decanter of brandy. He watches the liquid as it pours golden in the bowled glass. Apples. Honey. Normandy. One day he is going to try to make his own, with honey from the heather flowers and clover. A tribute to Scotland. A better tribute to you.
     He says nothing again. The silence is filled by the crowding of the space. He watches you. He pours his glass, lifting it for a sip, and your reflection is in his glass. "It will be a busy summer," William says finally, says quietly, as he takes a seat next to you. "But ... I am very happy that you will be spending it with me. I have been thinking... our conversation?" He looks to you to see whether you recall it. "About... not traveling together, that maybe we needed to learn to do this again. I do not think so," William shakes his head and sips at the brandy. "I do not think I could bear that..."

     The ice tinkles in the glass when it's turned upright again. Ian doesn't appear to be too worried about the poisoning of his drink by water. A pollutant, certainly, but there are worse things.
     "I don't think I could either," Ian smiles, confessing. "I have thought of it, imagined what it would be like, but..." he shrugs, "I know better. I need you near me. I need to be near you, Will. That's all," he says softly, shrugging. "I cannot say even that I can see a time when that would change. After all this..." time, "...that night may never come." It is too late. My self-reliance has slipped away somewhere, unwilling to be found.

     "Well," he exhales, pausing to remove the jacket after a moment later, losing nothing by the shedding of a layer. "I think it is a meaningless challenge." Holding a swallow of brandy on his tongue a moment, William looks from the ceiling and his thoughts back to you. "What does it prove? That I miss you when you are not there? We already know this. What is to be gained?" Great shoulders roll. "Nothing. I want you where I am. I am selfish, I will say that I admit it from the start. I want my way," the smile is brilliant, and he bettered by it. "When I am working on the foundations of Della Salute, I want to know that there is a reason to pull myself out of the marble and muck."
     William sits forward, glass resting balanced in the light grasp of both great hands, dangling between parted thighs in sparkling insinuation. "The world is less to me when you are not with me," he softly admits. "Really, in all this world, I only have two people I can count upon. The most significant being you. I ... don't want to prove anything by spending any time whatsoever out of your company. That is, to be frank, not a theorem I care to prove. So... we should talk when we get to Chinon about my schedule and yours and match up our work calendars..."

     Ian is quiet a moment, staring at his own glass of gold. "I am...not so inclined to leave Chinon for long though, laird. I do not want to spend great amounts of time in Venice. But," he grins, leaning over, "...if it is where you are, then it is where I am." Easily resigned. "It just means that I will spend a lot of money getting over my departure from home."

Posted by rowan at July 23, 2004 05:52 PM