forthedog | Carrying the fire

Fires bring back a lot. There had been plenty of nights where it had been raining, or the territory they were in was too hot with Guard, and there had been no fire. But when there was it was easy to sit there warming your hands, cooking whatever food they had if they were lucky enough to have any, and you could feel like it was the center of the entire world. Heat and light. Life.

When he'd built the hut the firepit had just been a little cleared patch of earth; now he's dug an indentation in the ground, circled it with stones, brought in two stumps for sitting. Behind the hut he has firewood drying under a shelter. Light and life aren't nearly so hard to come by now and heat is pretty much constant but the fire still feels like it matters, like sometimes he should make it the center of things again.

He turns the spitted fowl slowly in the flames, smiling as he watches the skin darken and crackle. He could go back to the kitchen for dinner, sure. But sometimes half-burned bird that he's caught himself tastes better than even Eostre's cooking.

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"Right," I murmur, head ducking, eyes on the fire. On the dog. On my feet. Suddenly anywhere but his face. "'s 'cause he trusts you." The tight, unexpected knot of guilt settles behind my ribs, making it hard to swallow, and in the end Max probably gets more of my food than I do. Before, all I'd thought about is what Eostre'd have done to me. Now, that seems secondary, 'cause that kind of easy, absolute forgiveness Tom seems to dole out so readily is something completely foreign to me.

He doesn't seem to feel weird, not at all, I'm not real sure I deserve it.

"That's part of it, sure," he says, still watching Neil intently, the shadows on his face, the change in his aspect and the way he seems to be looking everywhere else. He feels a twinge somewhere in his chest and for about the hundredth time he wishes he'd done things differently there, and he wishes he didn't want some of the things he can't help wanting.

"Maybe it's because he trusts you, too."

"He hardly knows me," I mutter, just about the same thing I said to him, just a few days earlier. He thinks it was just some one-off thing, 'cause we let him, and I guess it was, but writing it off as a mistake, as an accident, as just something that happened 'cause we were both fucked up... it feels like a lie.

I look up, at his face, catch his eyes, and something dark slithers up from the back of my mind before I can stamp it back down again.

"I know you," he says quietly, and he's not even sure why he says it, except that it's at least partly true. Knowing people and trusting them have always been two separate things for him and they've always taken a while, but for Tom they both seem to come quickly. He'd been trusting Mike long before he should have. Or maybe that was just something he'd told himself at the time, because the idea that Tom might see through him that easily was just too uncomfortable.

He meets Neil's gaze and holds it, sucking the last of the grease from his fingertips, and some instinct stirs but he ignores it. Establishing a line, a place he will not go to, just makes toeing that line all the more attractive.

"Yeah, I guess you do," I agree, just as quietly, and it's not just 'bout knowing details. About sharing secrets. It's more than that. It isn't really about words.

Whatever it felt like watching Tom out there on the water, that completely unguarded kind of happiness on his face that's so fucking rare that most of the time I'm not sure it exists, one thing was for sure... He's good. A good person, too fucking good, washed clean in a way I can't really understand, and a big part of me thinks I don't deserve to be any part of that. Mike, I've always felt, in a lot of ways... is like me.

He holds Neil's gaze for a few seconds more and then looks away again when that line starts to feel just a little too thin. Tonight... the setting could be very similar to a few weeks ago. The fire. Playing with it a little bit, maybe, but that's nothing new.

It hadn't felt right, then. What the hell does it feel like now?

"He's just forgiving like that," he says, a little distantly. "He knows that week was all fucked up."

"Yeah," I agree, huffing out a laugh, looking away almost at the same time he does, sucking distractedly at the grease on my thumb and then wiping my palms across my knees. Things were just too fucked up. If that was my excuse then, what would it be now?

I've been fucking around with just about anybody who'll let me, but this... it's different. Hell, this morning felt different too.

"I, uh... I better get back," I say finally, for no reason at all. I've got nothing to go back for, nothing to go back to, but suddenly I can't get this shit outta my head and I'm afraid I might fuck up. I really don't wanna fuck this up.

It makes him look up again, just a little sharply, and for an instant he feels like apologizing. It's been sort of an unspoken rule that What Happened That Week will remain... well, unspoken, and he's come close to breaking it.

Well, shit. Maybe he's tired of dancing around it anyway.

"If you say so," he says evenly, tossing the last of the bones into the fire.

Nodding, I get to my feet, dusting off my jeans and forcing myself to look at him. It's too hard, here in the dark, by the fire, letting myself dig up things better left buried. Two months ago, practically, and it was so easy just to shrug it off and act like nothing'd changed.

They did change. They're still changing.

Walking around the fire, I rest my hand on his shoulder on my way past, just a faint brush of a touch, and I murmur, "I'll see you later." Maybe tomorrow when I can go back to ignoring everything or whatever it is I need to fucking do.

He watches him move like he doesn't even notice he's doing it, all long, loose strides, and when Neil touches him it makes his breath catch. Just a little, just for a fraction of a fraction of a second, but it's there. Just a touch really shouldn't do that. It's just... this, all this tension bottled up.

He looks up and smiles faintly. "Sure."

Douse the fire and then maybe pay Tom a visit. Not to wake him up, not really to do anything... but he doesn't feel like being alone right now.

And if it takes a little conscious effort to keep him moving towards one hut and not the other, well, that's just the way it is.

Carrying the fire

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