(no subject)
Aug. 11th, 2006 12:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
giftedthomWhen they leave the bar, they don't touch, and this is not like before. Thom suspects Xas is no fonder of him than he is of Xas; wonders why they are even going anywhere together at all.
In Aruba there is one room.
Xas says -- proposes -- that they cut the bullshit, just for a week. This is not something Thom agrees to immediately, but Xas is the Host in this scene, and Thom is . . . charity, really. It means more to him to leave the bar than he would quite like Xas to know.
(Although, of course, if they are going to stop playing games, then in the end there will be nothing that he doesn't know.)
- - -
Honesty.
Thom is at first unsure how to begin. As a policy, he chooses silence -- the absence of lies -- over half-truths, pure lies, or his usual mix thereof. This seems to be the least offensive choice.
It occurs to him, after some hours of this, that he has been editing his capacity to give offense for a very, very long time.
After that Thom is still quiet, but not gently so; he begins to reveal, bit by bit, pieces of information which he has not shared with anyone before, although he isn't entirely sure why. What does it matter, for example, that for the last months of his life, he rarely -- almost never -- ate?
Nothing.
- - -
Xas is not sympathetic, precisely. Not at all. And so it bothers Thom not at all to point out, snide, cool, just how self-involved he finds this preoccupation with God's cruelty. To Thom, everything Xas says, whether about himself or God's treatment of humans, or even about flowers, more or less amounts to the sound of a child squalling and hugging himself in a corner because his father just beat him.
"Six thousand years," Thom says one night, harshly. "Grow up, Xas."
What he means by this is, no one cares.
Xas looks at him. "No," he says. "Only one hundred."
Thom still considers that a damn long time, but it's enough to shut him up for a while, and for the night's remainder they don't speak.
- - -
Sometimes they go to the beach. Xas likes it better than Thom does; the novelty of the ocean is wearing off, and his natural dislike of anything, well, natural is reasserting itself.
So they spend time apart.
- - -
They do touch, sometimes. When Thom gets impossibly sunburned. When Thom flashes Xas a quick look, all promising dark eyes and watch this and it becomes all too obvious that they do have certain techniques (and perhaps even habits) in common.
When, on the very last night, Thom asks if Xas would be interested in his life. Interested to know. Perhaps to understand.
(This is what mortality feels like.)
"Yes," says Xas, and Thom, who was a sorcerer, lets his palm cup Xas' pure face: careful, smooth (it is this simple).
- - -
These are memories:
Looking for Alanna in dark rooms after a nightmare. Servants' voices whisper down long hallways. He passes the door to his father's room; touches the handle, fleeting.
Doesn't linger.
"What happened?"
"He was always so . . . "
"Difficult?"
"Yes. But promising."
"Things change."
Once or twice, not often, Roger kissed him as if he cared. Truly.
"I want to slay demons and walk with the gods -- "
- - -
Xas offers friendship, after.
And Thom leaves.
In Aruba there is one room.
Xas says -- proposes -- that they cut the bullshit, just for a week. This is not something Thom agrees to immediately, but Xas is the Host in this scene, and Thom is . . . charity, really. It means more to him to leave the bar than he would quite like Xas to know.
(Although, of course, if they are going to stop playing games, then in the end there will be nothing that he doesn't know.)
Honesty.
Thom is at first unsure how to begin. As a policy, he chooses silence -- the absence of lies -- over half-truths, pure lies, or his usual mix thereof. This seems to be the least offensive choice.
It occurs to him, after some hours of this, that he has been editing his capacity to give offense for a very, very long time.
After that Thom is still quiet, but not gently so; he begins to reveal, bit by bit, pieces of information which he has not shared with anyone before, although he isn't entirely sure why. What does it matter, for example, that for the last months of his life, he rarely -- almost never -- ate?
Nothing.
Xas is not sympathetic, precisely. Not at all. And so it bothers Thom not at all to point out, snide, cool, just how self-involved he finds this preoccupation with God's cruelty. To Thom, everything Xas says, whether about himself or God's treatment of humans, or even about flowers, more or less amounts to the sound of a child squalling and hugging himself in a corner because his father just beat him.
"Six thousand years," Thom says one night, harshly. "Grow up, Xas."
What he means by this is, no one cares.
Xas looks at him. "No," he says. "Only one hundred."
Thom still considers that a damn long time, but it's enough to shut him up for a while, and for the night's remainder they don't speak.
Sometimes they go to the beach. Xas likes it better than Thom does; the novelty of the ocean is wearing off, and his natural dislike of anything, well, natural is reasserting itself.
So they spend time apart.
They do touch, sometimes. When Thom gets impossibly sunburned. When Thom flashes Xas a quick look, all promising dark eyes and watch this and it becomes all too obvious that they do have certain techniques (and perhaps even habits) in common.
When, on the very last night, Thom asks if Xas would be interested in his life. Interested to know. Perhaps to understand.
(This is what mortality feels like.)
"Yes," says Xas, and Thom, who was a sorcerer, lets his palm cup Xas' pure face: careful, smooth (it is this simple).
These are memories:
Looking for Alanna in dark rooms after a nightmare. Servants' voices whisper down long hallways. He passes the door to his father's room; touches the handle, fleeting.
Doesn't linger.
"What happened?"
"He was always so . . . "
"Difficult?"
"Yes. But promising."
"Things change."
Once or twice, not often, Roger kissed him as if he cared. Truly.
"I want to slay demons and walk with the gods -- "
Xas offers friendship, after.
And Thom leaves.
