forthedog | Wait for love... you know you will

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hobbes

Wait for love... you know you will

He's making wreaths out of the red blossoms. They're rough and half falling apart, and he's doing it without giving much thought to it, weaving the stems round each other, and the flower petals are crushed between his fingers, leaving red stains on his hands. On either side of the doorway, the little vines are curling tender green lengths cautiously upward. The girls are sleeping in their crib. The sun is lowering into late afternoon.

Somewhere, the leaves are changing and shaking off the branches in a cold autumn rain. Even here the days are getting shorter. It feels appropriate, that it would really begin after she was gone. Soon it'll be winter and she won't be here to watch the girls play in the snow and fill the kitchen with baking smells and roll her eyes at Christmas. She won't be here to warm him.

He has a feeling that he'll be warm anyway. But there's still an ache. Under his breath, he's barely singing something he remembers hearing her sing in her own tuneless voice, some time a long time ago.

She cuts the grain and harvests corn
The kiss of fall surrounds her
The days grow old and winter cold
She draws her cloak around her

It won't ever stop hurting, but he's not bitter. It was more than he ever deserved. And what he has now... It still is.

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Growing up as a military brat and later moving Sophie all over the States had made Tom a good packer. He knew where to find the best boxes, how to crumble up newspaper in just the right way, and how to handle a rented moving truck with all of his wordly belongings rattling around in the back.

Here, it was different. Here, he found his best pack and collected the bits and pieces that a year of solitary living had amassed. Ammo, his clothes, half empty tube of lube and the sunbleached picture of Sophie and their little girl. Into the pack, over his shoulder, and he pulled the flap on the door closed behind him. Glancing at Neil's little hut just visible through the trees, he set off to the World Tree, where Mike was folding vines through his fingers.

"Hey," he called after watching him for a few moments, a smile almost tugging at his lips. "I have, uh," he murmured vaguely, almost nervous, and held out his pack as evidence. "You know. My stuff."

He looks up abruptly, close to startled, though he should have heard Tom's approaching footsteps minutes before. He lets himself get lost in his own head more easily these days.

Getting soft. And maybe that's not entirely a bad thing.

He's got his stuff. Something in Mike's chest uncoils and it's like he can breathe more deeply. "Okay," he says, hazarding a tiny smile of his own and glancing at the items in Tom's arms. "And what're you gonna do with it?"

Tom pursed his lips as if he was really considering it, shifting his weight uneasily.

"Um. Well. I was thinking about putting in this jerk I know's house..."

"Well." He lays down the flowers he's working with and gives Tom a speculative look. It's taking all his self-control to not burst into a huge grin. He's had a feeling that this is how it was going to end up, but he hasn't been sure, hasn't even been sure why it matters so much, only that it does. He can't be alone anymore. That time is over.

"If he's such a jerk, I'm not sure why you'd trust him with your stuff."

"Way I see it," Tom said, watching Mike carefully, a tentitive, hopeful grin pulling at his lips.

"Way I see it, I'll be around to look after it. If that's what he still wants, that is."

He looks up at Tom like he's still thinking about it, like he's not sure about it yet. As if there had ever been any question once the thought occurred to him. Finally he nods at the ground by his feet. "Put it down and come over here." He allows himself a little more of a smile. "No one's gonna steal it."

Tom bent, settling his pack on the thick, green grass, arching hie eyebrows in a silent question at his...at Mike Pinocchio, who would always be too hard to define. Right now, packing his life into one backpack and showing up here, mostly empty handed...that felt like mroe than enough.

"What?" he murmured, stepping into Mike's personal space. "...what?"

He tilts his head back to see Tom better in the afternoon light, falling around him like a halo. It's almost funny, except if he laughs now it'll be for a different reason entirely. He reaches up, takes Tom's hand in his, and the strange thing is that his heart isn't racing at all.

"I wanted you the moment I saw you," he says quietly. "I want to live with you. I want to live with you for as long as I can."

"I...I want this," Tom said, rubbing his fingers over the back of Mike's knuckles. He stole a quick look up at him, chewing his bottom lip.

"I'm sorry....I'm sorry I couldn't when you asked me, I just..." He shrugged helplessly, looking up at the sky. "I can now. That's all that matters."

"It's okay," he says, tugs gently at Tom's hand, wanting him to sit beside him. Wanting him closer. "I mean... I wasn't gonna push you into anything." Especially not something like this. After years of being a bachelor in his own head, no matter how many times he ended up in bed with the same person... this isn't marriage, or if it is, it's a marriage in stages, and this feels like the last.

And that isn't such a scary thought.

"I wanted to," he blurted, still squeezing Mike's hand and blinking something back. "It's just..." He took a deep breath, looking at the World Tree, Mike Pinocchio, and the one bedroom behind him.

"I never thought we'd get here," he said, swallowing. "I just...I never really did."

"I know," he says, looking up into a sea of red flowers. Flowers, blood, dust and pain. It's been a long, strange road. Even this doesn't feel like an ending. "I never did either. Never believed it." He looks back at Tom again, entirely unafraid.

"But here we are. Can't pretend we aren't."

"You're full of surprises, Mike Pinocchio," Tom murmured, spreading his hand on the side of Mike's neck and looking up at him like he wasn't sure he'd ever seen him before. Sometimes, you just kept finding new things, no matter how deep you went down.

"You, uh," he said, grinning just a little. "You gonna carry me over the threshold or is that my job?"

He rolls his eyes and gets slowly to his feet, reaching down to tug Tom up with him. "Not unless you want a fireman's carry. C'mon." He grins, wide and open and happy. "We walk over it together. And I'll get the stuff you're trusting me with."

"All of it?" Tom said, half joking and walking backwards to the house as Mike doubled back to pick up his things. He had his hands shoved in his pockets, fingernails digging into his palms.

"All of it," he says, straightening up with it in his arms. It's not actually even that heavy. There isn't much. Just like in the old days, when all they took with them from place to place is what they could carry on their backs. "I'll be your fucking bellboy." He grins. "You just better tip me good."

"I guess," Tom said, stepping back over the doorstep with a quick grin, already untucking his shirt. "It's a lot that I'm trusting you with, you know. Deserve a reward for keeping whole and unharmed."

"You've trusted me with more." He bends and puts Tom's belongings down just inside the doorway. They can sort them all out later. Right now the girls are asleep, he has a little peace, and he wants to take advantage.

Of a lot of things.

He steps forward, finding Tom's hips with his hands and tugging them gently together. "You trusted me a lot sooner than you should've."

Tom laced his fingers over Mike's fingers, looking up at him with a slow, spreading smile.

"What can I say?" he said, arching his eyebrows. "I'm a sucker for blue eyes and a twenty-two pressed into my throat."

"I could tell you were one of those boys," he murmurs, pressing them closer, slowly swaying, almost like they're dancing, and he remembers the wedding and how bizarrely right that had felt.

He leans in, ghosts his lips over Tom's cheekbone. "Fuck, I missed you."

"I never went anywhere," Tom murmured, feeling every one of the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, arching into the touch without lifting a hand to touch Mike. "Been right here the whole time, Mike."

"I went somewhere," he says quietly, lips brushing the corner of Tom's mouth, backing them slowly towards the bedroom. He's thinking about long nights with Tom and Neil next to hum, lying close but a different kind of close than he's gotten used to. A part of him simply closed off, wounded and needing to heal.

"Not going anywhere again."

"Promises, promises," Tom murmured, letting himself be tugged along, bobbing in Mike's wake. "We've got real estate now, Pinocchio. Kids. A dog."

He grinned, pausing long enough to strip out of his shirt.

"Want me to go ahead and start working on a white picket fence?"

"It can go around my garden." He helps Tom tug off the shirt and tosses just inside the bedroom doorway, reaching down to pulls off his own and letting it fall too. When he presses back in, their tags clink together and he smiles.

"Gotta be quiet. The girls are sleeping."

"We've done quiet before," Tom said, grinning a little, pressing into the sure, certain warmth of Mike Pinocchio. He slid a hand behind Mike's neck, stealing a slow, deep kiss.

"Guess we're gonna have to get good at that, huh?" he added, smiling when he pulled back.

"That, or sneaking off," he breathes, moving back again until the bed hits the back of his legs. They've got plenty of people to hand them off to, too, if it comes to that.

"Whatever." He rolls his hips gently forward and reaches between them,starting to work at Tom's fly. "Just wanna fuck you."

"I needed this," Tom said, stealing a series of quick, distracted kisses, trying to get his hands into Mike's pants. "It was like...it was like going numb, without you. Remembering just wasn't enough."

"Me too." He loses his balance and sits down a little hard, managing a quick, breathless laugh as he tugs Tom to stand between his legs, looking up at him with lips slightly parted. "Doesn't matter now. It's over."

Tom's fly was sagging open and he pressed his fingers through Mike's hair, closer and easier than he'd been in a long time. "Feels like it's just gotten started," he murmured, fingers curled around the back of Mike's neck.

"Fucking semantics," he laughs quietly, almost purring at the feeling of fingers in his hair. He reaches out with one hand, traces his fingertips over the lines of Tom's hips, his lower belly, teasing his way downwards.

"Don't give a fuck what you wanna call it. Just kiss me."

Tom's hips jerked under the light touch, bottom lip catching in his teeth. He leaned down, catching Mike's mouth in a slow kiss, both of his hands cradling the back of his neck. The angle was awkward but he couldn't make himself step back, unhinge.

"Then what?" he got out, breath ghosting across Mike's cheek and neck.

"Then... I dunno." He leans in further, barely brushing a nipple with his lips, framing it briefly. His hand moves lower, one fingertip tracing a small patch of silky, exposed skin before he cups him, kneading gently. Christ, he's missed this. But it's so familiar it's like he never stopped.

"Think we can think of something... we put our heads together."

"Naked helps me thing," Tom got out, sentence structure lost completly but, god, so much aching need. He pressed forward and in the next moment was across Mike's lap, settled in his lap and kissing him slowly, fingers digging into Mike's shoulder and back.

"Halfway there," he laughs, arching his back and pressing them chest to chest, hands traveling slowly up Tom's bare back and kissing him, taking his time. They've been like this together so many times.

Only now they're both home.

"Rest of the way can't be too hard." He slips his fingers into Tom's fly, gently tugging him free and stroking slowly. "I'll even help."

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Wait for love... you know you will

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