Work Text:
In the thirties of the last century, relationships with a same-sex person were prosecuted. Central governments strictly punished culprits for publicly or secretly presenting their preferences to their partners. Almost no one has been pardoned in front of the court and community, which would gladly screw maximum humiliation out of them. Mostly everyone from them hadn’t been spiritually strong enough even to bring up this kind of confession at that time because they knew they would have to deal with it. It was an impossible, heroic deed to complete.
However, at that time are portraying the figures of Ian and Bobby. Both men are men of the letter and are in a happy relationship but not flawless. If someone spends some time in their house, they won’t argue with it.
Young copy editor Bobby, constantly looking for a sustainable job in a creative field, met lanky, 23-year-old Ian in the publishing house, well-rated by this former uni pals. Ian was the youngest lad in the collective and worked as a translator from French and he enormously adored this sweet-sounding language. He appeared to be a wholehearted translator. Moreover, he was enthralled with working day and night in a cramped room without daylight, crashing on the bed with exhaustion around midnight, and repeating the same series of events. Bobby was a talented, charming man as much as Ian was, which allowed him to obtain an editor's position and get immediate sympathy from Ian. Ian liked his style of work, they talked about it the whole break time in Bobby’s office and bonded over equivalent stuff, familiar only two of them. Soon enough, Bobby was the only one who invested his time in editing Ian’s discombobulated handwriting. He wondered by himself how this gifted young men could illustrate a brand new message to the audience through loads of foreign letters, especially for him.
He fell in love with Ian suspiciously fast and didn’t need to wait on him: Ian got his bursting-with-desire messages through the looks and school-ish type notes hidden in the middle of the paper piles. They scribbled them in such a manner:
Aye, Silent Giant, let’s go to the library at 5:00 PM, I found a new book about French architecture. Hope you'll like it.
C.
Mary handed me over two tickets to the theatre today. I have a booklet about the play. Come over, and read it.
D.
Shall we go to the pub tonight? Feel free to take your friends with you. I’m paying.
C.
Maybe I want to sit with you. Alone with you.
D.
Two of them were clearly in love, and both admitted it in the way of their own relief when things revealed to be mutual. Bobby and Ian proceeded to work in the same workplace, despite putting heads together several times about significant reputation risk and spies, as they called them «rats» later, jokingly. Unless they don’t try to not to be a differ and fall flat their future life will be guaranteed in catty gossip rotation and flow further in disdain’s stream. Unfortunately for them, that’s just the tip of the legislation’s iceberg. The iceberg’s «heart» consists of the actual sentence in prison and… They were afraid to speak about the second option aloud.
Since that conversation, nobody ever knew about their compelling bond between work and personal life as they had to learn hard to veil their relationship. They invented how to switch between the two regimes. First regime contained a 10-hour workday, hovering cigarette fume all around the room, long discussions on who’s wrong and who’s correct and businesslike remarks. Second was naturally more cheerful. 6-hours and two free days in each week of a dumb reading marathon (none of them ever takes a winner’s place), sex, Bobby’s frequent visits to the local pub, Ian’s criticism related to his stagnant lifestyle, his advice to find him a sport to play with boys, new Ian’s complains about bitchy headache due to overwork, cooking, and at last reparative lovemaking before the bedtime.
As they earlier assumed, activity turned out betwixt: neither Bobby nor Ian was fond of commotion but existing in this system for years, got used to it. They didn’t feel that much terror anymore because they always had each other backs, and nobody would run to help them if they didn’t take care of themselves.
Only occasionally, like today, Bobby was catching himself in the thoughts that Ian took a housewife’s role in their home when he made an apple pie for Friday’s supper and earlier supper roasted seasoned chicken with potatoes and pancakes and omelet and beef roulettes and tomato soup and… Bobby strayed from Ian’s dishes enumeration.
‘You baked the most delectable pie in my life, love. I’m about to start to think you’re not bad as a wife. Few of my friends married very early, unlike me, and they swore me their wife's dishes are the best, but I bet you do better,’ kissing both of Ian’s hands he kept on the table's surface, dreamingly says Bobby. Then he parted an apple pie on his plate with a fork. Pie's piece that Ian gave him was quite generous.
Ian isn’t impressed by his words and looks at him the same way he wants to politely ask him: «Bobby, did you drink alcohol before supper again?»
Bobby begins to think that he has turned wrong. He crossed the fine line. Perhaps it was the only flaw they remained in their life.
‘Bobby, that’s a gallant compliment. Thank you but don’t flatter me or call me a housewife either,’ Ian says after munching sweet pastry mixed with an apple and pear jam flavour. ‘Do you remember we decided not to burden ourselves with family member labels, am I right?’ he tilted his head as he monotonously put the tissue on the table’s corner and turned his head to look at the wall’s clock.
Booby sinks his teeth into the tongue. Darn it! He was aware of how his ludicrous statement affected his dearest person. In some way, he keeps forgetting they’re different from the others in the town and overall in the country. Some people have all the authority to promptly penalise them just because they’re eating together. So he made the best decision in the circumstances like this; instead of keeping silent, he chose to fulfil it with talks about a new book Ian started to translate a week ago.
‘How are you doing with a book recently?’ Bobby asked, preventing Ian from getting up from the table and ending their conversation on a sad note. He’s putting his hands on Ian’s once again.
Ian’s eyes lighten up, and he lifts his curly head to Bobby in excitement. The best part of their relationship is the ability to reconcile. Thank God, through the years it didn’t disappear and works as they keep using it.
‘Currently, I’m on the last pages of your translation of the scandalous French book. Am I the only one who noticed similar details, like in the Salammbo? How bloody he wanted to follow Flaubert's writing style. I hope his pretence could not work out after publishing.’
Ian muffled his guffaw, took a sip from the cup, and still choked on tea. Bobby rushed to help his boyfriend, but Ian cut him.
‘It’s exactly that I was thinking, too!’ finally exclaimed Ian, catching his breath. His fist hit his chest a few times. ‘I cannot believe our publishing house forced me to translate this rubbish, sorry for my language! It sucks, and everybody knows it; they can’t just be honest with themselves. This waste of ink does not need any further admiration,’ he was pissed off, but in a good way. Bobby likes the distraction he created.
‘I suppose the new one is much better?’
‘Definitely.’ Ian laughed. ‘I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself. Harvest is splendid.’
And Bobby has faith in every of his word. They’ll come true, as always. As if he is predicting the weather for the next two days. The sun will shine brightly as their joint work will be paid off by a hundred and a thousand loyal readers.
The owner of the publishing house, a man in his early sixties, without even knowing, hit back then a huge jackpot by putting this lovey-dovey duo in one team, just to see how Ian’s translated and edited by Bobby masterpieces broke down the bookstore's shelf’s from being overweight, due to many copies. Loyal readers cannot stop praising Ian’s talent for a pun and his awareness of nuanced humour. Nevertheless, Bobby had been dragging the public spotlight from his boyfriend to himself once in a while just because he was famous for his excellent grammar acknowledgment.
Eventually, one day, after their bizarre dinner, people stopped going to the bookshops, reading books, and purchasing their work suits. Their legs moved them to the booths, and their hands were all the way to grab a freshly printed newspaper and read the thick inscription at the top of the paper - they were more topical to grab people's attention. The new war is coming… and human fear sprung out.
One day the bluish sky changed its colour to a constant grey one, even if it happened only in the frightened imagination. A sign of something terrible appeared that day: the war's near the corner… and it doesn't intend to go away as fast as people's mouths spoke.
***
Bobby’s standing in front of his apartment, agape. Now it’s unrecognisable; there’s nothing more than lumps of stone and wood ruins. Even Ian’s small greenhouse, his little sanctuary, always hidden under the big shrub leaves, has gone underground. His heart keeps swallowing abnormal pain by staring at it, and he can’t pervert the growth of agony. Through his lips bursted out a lone wail. Eyes keep closing up and closing down and between these stages was stalled their sweet home. Bombed for ever, for God’s sake. Still it’s not the only issue he needs to solve - it’s Ian. He didn’t come back.
The day before mobilisation, they made a promise to each other to come back when the war will be over, here, opposite the front door. At that time, he was scared about Ian more than himself. His beloved had a brave heart because he could forget about his work in the hectic wartime, in one hand tea with milk, in another pen, black ink smeared all over his flat palm. Contrary to his braveness revealed frail stamina and extreme sensitivity. He was feeling gripping anxiety, failing in work, or not washing dishes at the right time, so he wasn’t ahead of the schedule he made up in his head. Sometimes Bobby was a nervous type of person, too. Still, he couldn’t take care of everyone, similar to Ian.
He pondered on Ian’s changes during his participation in the national forces. Bobby was fully convinced in his and his beloved one efforts in the combats. They were obliged to push aside for the motherland’s defence body trembling and consciousness, not fearing to die for the same side. Everything was at stake: pride, freedom, and perhaps their secret life in the country's north.
Only one thing caused weakness in his knees - Ian went missing. War ended three months ago and he didn’t find his way home. In the cycle of terrible thoughts, he’s falling on the mud, there is supposed to be a pretty cobblestone path, and hot tears rolled down from his tired eyes. There was an empty tries of preventing them.
His division’s mates spread over the town as soon as the military truck bought them into the hometown, simultaneously scared and relieved.
They, greeted by youth soldiers, sacrificed themselves for the country’s glory, facing death, hearing shots above their heads, probably from the same death - tyranny. They suffocated between people's corpses in the trenches as the storm of stun blasts but got through it in the end. At least alive. Nobody breathes a fine word about well-being.
Anyways, it was such a legible reason to smile all over the face - to be alive but Bobby lost this feeling the moment he cried his eyes out around pitiful house leftovers.
***
Bobby decided to settle in the nearest village in the first place. His body and soul demanded rest and long, long sleep. If he had a chance to fall asleep and leave behind the experience on his skin, he would agree to sleep forever. Sleep, dream, and forget the pain he had for Ian.
Before he left the town, taking a small backpack full of the scotch flask in his wounded hand, he sluggishly walked near the table where were sitting four men. Their faces are encompassed in stiffness, and their postures seem unnaturally warped by Bobby's point of view. Bobby might pass by them, not bothering about their chattering or cursing, whatever it is, but once he heard Ian’s name, he stopped on the empty street. When he perked his ears up to hear Ian’s name again, it became clear as day; men were discussing his Ian.
‘One young gentleman, I think his name was Ian Davies, saved my children on October 1942.’
‘Really?’
‘Is he from here?’
‘I don’t know, James. He had a very familiar accent when I was talking to him. Oddly enough, I remember his kind blue eyes the most. I thought he never was in the combats in his life before and wasn’t fitting in them. I’m sure he’s a very artistic person in normal life. The way he made my daughter laugh was brilliant.’
Bobby doesn’t know who coerced him to open his mouth and pulled his tongue out of it when he turned around, stood in a trance, and scrutinised at men for a while. He was deciding on casting his voice or not.
‘Good day, sir.’
‘Day,’ the old man greeted him in a droning voice. His friends kept talking, even more louder.
Bobby felt like a bad penny for interrupting their talk.
‘I’m sorry, but do you know where Ian Davies is right now? I’m his… work’s colleague. Unfortunately, we lost our contacts since the beginning of the war. I…’ his voice is ready to go broke at any second.
‘My bad, but I ain’t aware where he is now. If you meet him someday, tell him thanks from me. My name is Lawrence, all right?’
‘Sure, sir,’ Bobby’s elated that his voice didn’t lose from all the shock he recently had.
‘By the way, how old are you? You look young, boy.’
‘I’m 32 years old, sir,’ answered he, almost in a whisper. His voice didn’t stand this pressure and broke.
‘Too young,’ he carefully examined Bobby’s slim frame with his gaze. No one, except his closest combat collages knows how much strength and survivability he kept in his body to stay alive and talk to those old gentlemen, equally devastated. But without Ian, his side, Bobby’s existence comes out incomplete, relatively meaningless.
‘No one at this young age deserves to see war’s horror. Sadly, it still happens, and it’s eerie,’ man said, looking straight at him and then at his buddies with dead eyes.
Bobby didn’t answer him. Without saying goodbye, he limply stepped away to make his way to the town’s gate. That day he dried with his lips all the scotch and shed other tears.
It might be his routine from now on.
***
The village where he had lived the past month was nice and the flat appeared strangely pleasant to him. This place didn’t insure that immense damage like his town. Perhaps one or two old buildings and one smokestack. He found his non-permanent house in the apartment building on the village’s edge.
Bobby did not have the opportunity to return to his hometown yet and live like a deaf and blind man, reminiscing about the old days. His financial situation, particularly his psyche, isn’t ready to face the harsh reality of demolished past, so he thinks he should stay in this place.
Just one thing this month made him sincerely smile. He didn’t have a reason for it to come to light until he found out some members of his publishing house crew stayed alive. His supervisor, who held a meeting with him, told him that the office building is shattered and may not be renewed. That’s why they can’t wait to find new office rooms and would be glad to see him as the publishing house leading copy editor once again. He kept bragging about the topic of the new material to work with. This time is not the easiest one for everyone, and nonetheless, people should gain a bigger interest in literature, in order to distract from the war and its consequences. He didn’t detail them. Bobby knew it from his rough personal experience.
Bobby temporarily rejected his proposal; he didn’t think twice. Albeit he starved without his trusted companion, typewriter, and literature's world, he'd covered himself since he uttered his first words, he promised to revive his labor once he is on his feet, securely. Although who knows how long nowadays people will keep this kind of promises?
Weeks and days are overloaded with flat reorganisation (he wanted it to look like their previous home) and with working shifts in a big factory, engaged in tool making. They were tiresome, daily torture for Bobby's mindset, which was always ought to increase practice to its highest, but does someone from his neighbourhood has a choice now?
His background’s pain and trauma are steady but fading away at a slow pace. Sure, this vanishing procedure will take all his lifetime, but he felt himself making big steps forward despite that.
Today he tries to recreate an apple-like pie, copying the recipe from Ian’s words. When he takes it out from the oven, it’s lightly burned, and the middle isn’t properly baked. Instead, he gets a wobbly mass of semi-sweet pastry. Bobby blames the oven for his failure and starts to eat. Tea on the other side of the table is patiently waiting to be drunk.
The scream that erupted outside was too perching for his poor ears. Bobby’s tightly closing it with both of his hands. Identical to this noise was head-splitting people's voices.
His mind gets stuck in the memory roller coaster, accompanied by all sorts of civilians screaming and crying just before the instant execution. Right ahead of him.
He’s fighting with his demons to get up or not to check the fuss.
Encouraging himself, Bobby leaves the table and stands by the window, pushing the curtains aside.
There’s Ian out the window. He’s lying on his left side, panting like a badly injured dog. In worn-out clothes, his face in bruises, his hair overgrown and greasy, and his backpack torn apart. It’s obvious from there is lost half of the necessary stuff during the road. He doesn’t look healthy. He gives the impression of being totally unhealthy. Neighbour’s boy is shaking with his little arm Ian’s soften shoulder and trying to wake him up from irresistible slumber and help him.
Bobby’s standing the same way as the antic statue would be built. He had a ripple of shock, and his head couldn’t process what he saw. Only realising Ian’s presence, Bobby gaped with a mouth for some air. It hit him as a downpour, and he raced down to the front door. It’s a miracle he didn’t smash both his legs because of this feverish run. Starting from the moment he opened the door for his anguished beloved, who crawled back to him, he did not know how it would impact their future.
***
In ‘their’ shared apartment together for the first time hangs a rock-heavy atmosphere.
Bobby took a day off to properly heal Ian’s injuries and health problems he could handle to do. He warned the landlady about the new tenant in his place. She was told that Ian was his long-distance acquaintance, who has perpetual high-temperature sessions and should spend the nights somewhere. Surprisingly, she didn’t mind, and Bobby silently thanked God for it. Trying to glue people on a new had proven to be for Bobby not as simple as he believed before. He did it, though.
Ian was getting better day-to-day. Bobby helped him to lay down on the couch with a blanket on, and Ian tilted his head over the pliable seat to catch with watchful eyes every Bobby’s movement. His green orbs focused every time Bobby approached him and gave him his daily porridge and soup meal.
They didn’t talk too much. On the first night of loosely hugging Bobby, Ian still in his torn uniform violently screamed his soul into Bobby’s chest on the bed.
‘I shot people! I killed fricking people! I did it with my own hands, Bobby! Believe me! I didn’t want them to die and suffer! Fuck-ahhh!
His body rocked back and forth, back and forth, until Bobby caught him and laid head on Ian’s shoulder.
To permanently stop his tearing, Bobby said under his ear:
‘Oh, you got that big red scratch on your pretty neck! And nose too!’ then he turned his head enthusiastically, blatantly.
At first Ian couldn’t even comprehend a message flowing around these kind of words, showing a face, like a lost in disorientation; just a bit later cracked lips beautified with a faint smile. Bobby thought Ian did it, with no ability to notice.
After years of separation, they shared a long-awaited kiss, feeling their lips and bodies returning slipped with time attachment. Bobby couldn’t recall in his mind since then he was kissing Ian’s lips and neck with that wild passion, caressing his face and hair. His touches followed Ian to feel unwelcome queasiness, and he collapsed back on the sheets with a soft whimpering. Bobby came to the realisation it was the first time he was out of control with Ian in a sexually arousal way. This accident caused him somewhat dizziness for the rest of the night and sensation of deep regret.
Ian’s ill health was like a masterful trickster. It made an ideal strike from the back when they least expected it. Bobby checked him nearly per minute, afraid of upcoming complications. While being his personal doctor and caring partner, he showed Ian multiple letters he was willing to send to him but subconsciously knew they would go nowhere. In that span of years, Bobby wasn’t aware if Ian even was alive. Therefore he carried a whole pack he wrote in his jacket’s inner pocket and reread it when things in the combats and barracks got lousy for him.
‘Do you write it for your girlfriend? Or wife?’
‘I do. For my girlfriend.
‘What’s her name?’
‘I-Ivy.’
'Is she nice?’
‘She is more than nice. She lit my whole world with kindness and intel-
‘Oh, I know how «nice» and «innocent» this type of girl is. As soon as you get one down on her knees and give her a command to suck, she’s becoming the sluttiest one and truly skilled in a good bang, but I suppose you know it without me, don’t you, Cox?’
‘Go to hell, Wheeler.’
What a vulgar animal.
‘It’s my elegy to you,’ Bobby named it like that. Ian read and caressed each given letter thoroughly, except he replaced words with a pencil he thought would saturate the text better. Alongside he was convinced he put his business in solitude when actually Bobby was watching him from another room and tried not to burst out too loud. Old habits die hard for professionals. What truly melted his heart was a sweet act of Ian where he collected his letters, locked them in the embrace, and fell asleep with a delighted visage. His hands didn’t let them go down up to the first misty rays of morning’s light when he was awakened by the urge to go to the lavatory.
According to Ian, he stayed and participated in the combats within the country’s boundaries for one-and-a-half-year after that he was sent to France and went missing. It wasn’t the same romantic French land from the postcards and magazines. It was non-fictional France. With all its pretty side and meat.
‘It’s the second trip to the country of my dreams. I was fascinated by the first trip. Second one…. I loathe it so much that I want to erase it from my memory at any price, completely dismiss it,’ he whispered, lying with Bobby and embracing him.
Only by a miracle his life was saved by some fellow countrymen who were on a scouting mission in those lowlands, and he figured out Bobby's current location with a bit of help.
He mentioned that he saw their somewhen lovely home and couldn’t believe his eyes. He always loved it with all his heart, this cold but comforting house at the end of the oldest town street. Bobby could say the same, he does that too, and in Ian’s beautiful eyes one more time, prickles tear droplets.
His beloved changed, collecting a lot of unwanted changes as Bobby observed and analysed him throughout the next weeks. As usual, peeking from the side while reading some book. He hopes time and his help, a combination of two, will mend Ian’s scarred personality as his own.
March was chilly. Low air temperature, dampness, and wind wafting aspire to crack through the thin walls and get in the way by freezing them to the bone. Bobby should be careful not to get him and Ian accidentally chilblained.
Bobby hands Ian a warm tea with honey and briefly memorises the song he heard at the lunch break in his twenties. Song’s lyrics tell listeners about people's lives and challenging relationships that condemned one of them to suffer. It's still quite amusing that fact he became the leading copy editor at 26 before he applied there at 24. All he did was mischievously grin back at his coworkers, presenting him with jealous stares after this announcement. He’d just loved to irritate everyone in those days, unlike from now.
I’ll be a bluebird,
You’ll be a spoon,
Dig in the honey
So I can stick to you
He doesn’t remember literal lines, except from those as he eyes Ian’s Adam apple bobbing down a warm liquid.
‘You better?’ asks Bobby.
‘Better,’ Ian mutters in an acutely low voice. ‘Just take out this spoon.’
‘Why so?’ Bobby does as he pleases and places it on the plate. ‘Maybe you want me to make you tea with milk? It used to be your favourite drink while you were getting wallowed in your tedious paperwork, wasn’t it?’ Bobby jokes a bit.
‘It reminds me of a bone’s tip with fresh human meat that I spotted in France.’
Bobby doesn’t move. He did not expect Ian to raise some blood frightening topic. He wasn’t keen on today to continue the conversation, including miserable war flashbacks and anything related to them, so he interrupted him with random nonsense.
‘It’s not the best analogy you might share, Ian, knowing your imagination. When I looked at this spoon, you see, I thought of the novel I edited years and years ago….’
‘God in heaven, about that stupid analogy are you taking there? Are you mocking me or what?’ Ian asked angrily. He isn’t fooling around there. Bobby gets lost in his words. Ian's no longer drinking his tea.
‘No,’ he truthfully admires. He feared Ian would take his jokes at face value after his arrival. His fear proved true.
‘Then shut your trap. I’m on the point of losing my patience with you,’ Ian mumbles to his nose, and the drink’s gone in one gulp. Bobby hears it and his feelings get a little hurt by Ian’s tone.
One minute passed, and Bobby recalled the scene in the town where he felt like a bad penny to the strangers. Does this mean he's identical to Ian now? Or Ian pulled this petty, childish spectacle of his just to prove that at the moment he’s a pain in the ass, making bear this trash on no one’s back but Bobby’s? He catches a glimpse of Ian’s blue eyes and notices the immediate regret covert down there. It’s time he regained reassurance about Ian’s state.
‘Did you finally calm down?’
‘Do you trust me?’ When Ian frowns in his style, he looks preciously adorable. It’s non-negotiable.
‘Okay, never mind my gibberish.'
‘Come here.’
Bobby can’t but reach his hand and pat Ian's freshly washed hair from the bucket. He may not fit more enjoyment in himself at the moment when Ian stays still, letting Bobby pull for a bear hug.
He feels so miniature under Bobby’s arms despite his height. He starved days all along in the field; he wished to endure hunger, cancel parching in this throat, and obtain affection, undeniably. Bobby knows it, holding him like that.
‘Sure I do,’ he answers. ‘I wish only happiness to you, for us. As long as we’re together, I want to start all over again. Just two of us, our old home, publishing house, some bottles of ale in the living room bar, probably… some pet, if you want one, and surely your garden, with a new greenhouse. When the world becomes safer and more tolerant than nowadays, we must take a long vacation and travel. Charge with different emotions, take a look and explore each world’s corner because you know why?’ Bobby asks, excited, waiting for Ian’s answer.
Not even a hint of reaction. Ian lost the zest in his eyes for such a long time.
The sullen expression on his face makes Bobby doubt every single thing he knew about him before the war, but it lasts just one or two seconds. Honestly, Bobby, you need to consider Ian’s exhaustion and another’s side effects and stop hoping for more like a complete idiot. However, nobody's going to suppress him from daydreaming.
‘Because we deserve it, reward,’ he continued, laying between Ian and the cough backseat under one blanket.
‘How you’re not affected by everything that happened?’ with a little smile asks Ian, trying to cover up his vigourless mood from Bobby.
Nothing related to Ian can stay out of Bobby’s concerned sight, and his attempts to pretend nonchalant as well. As much as he wants to comfort him now, he realizes it’ll lead to Ian's memories of his twitching fingers, holding a bloody firearm, and then his mutilated combat mates, women mourning over husband's deaths, small children's graves and houses that became as their own. Oh, much, much worse. There have been dead people. Even in this state of affairs, he pulls out his most potent weapon: jokes and unserious reproaches.
‘Shame on you, Silent Giant! How dare you ask it?! Do you want me to send you to the publishing house and load you with assignments? Remember, I told you our crew is still with us!’
‘Thankfully,’ Ian remarks.
‘Yeah. So what do you think about it?’
Please, don’t say you’d drop it.
‘Um… No, thank you. I still want to stay on recharge, and yes, I think….’ Ian stumbled in the middle of his sentence. ‘We deserve it more than others.’
'Aww, look who’s talking there!’ Bobby’s moving in this wholesome synergy, like a crazy child in the long summer grass in the granny’s home backyard. Out of the blue, Ian kisses him right on the lips, and Bobby eagerly answers back. Both of them tighten their grip on each other’s torso. It’s so cozy under one blanket, in body heath with a loved one, that Bobby can’t resist closing his eyes and purring into the kiss.
‘Sweet as cherry,’ Ian murmured, he suddenly recalled that one song he and Bobby together could listen to without fighting about who will be first to reach the radio's radiogram and rotate a button to find the song he liked the most. In literature, they always had severe agreement points. On the other hand, their taste was verified as awfully different in music.
'The lips of my beloved,’ Bobby ends the last chorus. ‘Although yours are coated in honey,’ he giggled. He was astonished; his mouth dimply remembered a genuine giggle sound.
‘Bobby,’ calls him Ian.
‘Hmm?’
‘Bobby, I’m sorry.’ Ian says on Bobby’s shoulder.
‘For that?’
‘For my harshness towards you. I should improve my self-preservation since I’m with you. I didn’t intend to distress you. It’s my bad, my temper and I’m ashamed of it. I'll get better for you, I promise,’ Ian raised his left wrist, kissing it, and Bobby balled his eyes.
‘Hon… that’s all right. I already forgot about it. You’re the only one I am worried about, not that. Remember it,’ he returned his favour by kissing Ian’s right wrist. This gesture moved melancholic Ian in such long puzzlement, down to his unintentional sobbing. He would cry for real if Bobby didn’t start to laugh, throwing his head back, and Ian’s eyes opened at how ridiculously he reacted. It’s absurd. Bobby’s bright laughter seems contagious indeed. His laugh captures Ian and makes him laugh through moistness like a drain for a few minutes.
‘Bob… Bobby, stop laughing that funny, you brat. My lungs hurt. Mhm… could you make me tea with milk? Pretty please? Once you bring it up, my stomach constantly craves for it,’ Ian lifts his body from Bobby’s and sits up. His needy stare tells Bobby, who keeps breathing heavily, that he longs for it to satisfy his nature.
‘Anything for you, hon. I’ll be back soon,’ Bobby quickly lends a loving kiss on Ian’s cheek and runs with a pronounced limp to the kitchenette to avoid making Ian wait too long.
‘Oh, I didn’t note your limpness. Since then?’
‘Since last year.’
When Ian wanted to add something more, Bobby said, what it’s better to hobble than miss one leg or one another extremity for life.
‘Sure thing. It cannot be changed, but you’re still handsome for me.’
‘Thank you, hon.’
As he places the kettle on the stove, he takes a bottle of milk from the fridge. During this plan of action, he felt like he’d lift his legs and skyrocket with the power of love. With his fluttering body, he couldn’t take off a divine smile that flourished on his face.
We’ll get back on track. Eventually. Ian wants to drink tea with milk. It’s a good sign already. Bobby, it’s good. Everything's fine.
Kettle’s sharp whistle reminds him to come down to earth. Bobby poured boiled water into the new cup. When Ian called him out, he was spilling milk drops into the tea and jangling it with a teaspoon.
‘I’m looking forward to a cup of pure black tea, Bob. Nothing but black tea!’
‘Of course, your Majesty!’ Bobby answers back in an obedient servant tone, done with mixing. ‘I’m coming!’ he returned to the room.
Deeply in his heart, Bobby is frantically praying for one more likewise split second in the future as he gazes upon his beloved and his delighted face, relishing a toothsome drink. It’s pitch-perfect, and his prayer stops to cast for now.
Life has many twists and turns, but this one is not the worst yet. Life is beautiful. Yeah.