mici's campfire

annevbonny:

“I missed you,” Flint sighs into the curve of Silver’s jaw, and it’s like a secret being told, like a weight being lifted, a ten year burden being put down.   

It isn’t a question. It doesn’t demand any response, though Silver can feel the moment stretch, honey gold and comfortable. That alone is astounding. The silence.   

It hadn’t been easy, showing up at Flint’s doorstep unannounced. They’d fought, of course. Flint had yelled. Silver had barely dodged a lampshade hurled at his head, distracted by the fact that Captain Flint owned the thing in the first place. Thomas had watched, carefully. Then he had made tea.  

After that they talked. It felt like slicing open a poorly healed wound with an instrument too blunt to be safely used. It felt like bleeding, all over again. Like staining the freshly swept floor red. 

Somewhere along the way, Flint had asked Silver to stay. 

Now they lay breathing together in the dawn light, Flint’s pale leg thrown over Silver’s good knee. And try as he might to contain it, Silver feels himself shiver when Flint’s thumb begins to graze the side of his neck, up, down, and up again. He listens to Flint breathe. In and out and in again. 

I missed you, he considers saying. 

That’s what people say, right? That’s how he should respond. Somebody leaves and you miss them, and when they return you tell them, and that’s that. Easy. Simple. 

The problem was: Silver had agreed not to lie anymore. It had been the first of many stipulations. Honesty. Truth. They were strange, fickle things, Silver knew. Because if he were to say I missed you he knew it would be true, but it would also be a lie; as though Flint was just somebody who was there and then wasn’t; who existed one moment and was gone the next; as though he was something Silver had just removed, as easily as Howell had removed his leg.  

It had been equally bloody, sure. But it hadn’t been easy. And it hadn’t been simple. 

I dreamt about you, Silver considers saying. Even that is a lie. Insofar as hauntings are dreams; insofar as opening his eyes in the middle of the night and seeing Flint in every dark corner of his house had anything in common with the word. As if standing on the deck of a ship and looking out at sea and feeling Flint look back at him hadn’t been a nightmare and a lifeline all the same. 

They shift a little on the bed. Silver watches Flint settle in and rest his cheek over his heart, Flint’s ear pressed warm to his skin. He’s grown his hair out again, long and red, smattered with grey. Silver threads his fingers through it. Thinks: I love you. I loved you and I love you. 

That’s the truth. Though it takes a little longer to say it. 

annevbonny:

“Dear Mrs Woolf (That appears to be the suitable formula.)
I regret that you have been in bed, though not with me—(a less suitable formula.)”

— Vita Sackville-West in a letter to Virginia Woolf, 18 August 1933 (via blancheparish)