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Robert was not sure why he had agreed to meet with him this time; he had a good idea of what he was going to ask of him and there was no way that it was going to happen. Infact, he was half wishing he had said no as he went to the kitchen in his boxers to get his morning coffee.
He was still half asleep and soo very tired after a week of late night sessions in the studio. To make matters worse, today he had felt a heaviness in his chest that hadn’t been there in a long, long time. Now, as the warm coffee started to drip into his unsettled tummy, he started to suspect that the feeling had something to do with having agreed to this meeting.
It was just a little past noon and the sky was very cloudy that day in the North Country. Robert felt a chill run down his spine as he rose up to light the arabic lamp on the kitchen table and drape himself in his favorite kashmir. He lighted a cigarette and started blowing smoke rings into the wooden ceiling as he watched a humming bird fly past the windowsill.
Robert had spent the last 15 years making a career for himself as a solo performer, trying to move on from something that not even the rest of the world could manage to fully move on from yet. But Robert couldn't bare to be stagnant. Leaving his cigarette half-way through, he rose up and made his way to the bathroom, stopping by the elaborate sound-system on his living room to select a record to play while he got ready.
He had been listening to a lot of new things lately. He still needed to process and digest them. Right now, he craved something warm, familiar, comforting. Infact, he craved something he hadn’t listened to in a while. After flicking through his extensive collection, he found an old record of Howlin Wolf. He felt inexplicably drawn to it and put it on.
It was a strange choice, he thought as he made his way to the bathroom. He wasn’t really one to dwell on his nostalgic feelings for the past. He needed movement or else, he’d be going crazy by now. He blamed that on his Romani blood. Well, that and his goddamn impossible hair, he thought as he struggled to get a comb through his locks. The years showed themselves on the face that stared back at him from the mirror, but he was ok with that.
Life was going well for him. His daughter had been to visit just last week. He had taken her to a football game and later that night, to a pub for a couple pints of cider. It had been a much appreciated break from the grueling pace at which he had been working to get the last details ready for the release of his latest solo album, The Fate of Nations.
Still, the one use he had for this secret, melancholic streak was when writing lyrics. And lately, they had been pouring out from him like crazy.
Even now, with the record wailing from the living room, half-naked and just half-dry, Robert took out a pen and paper and leaned against his cabinet. The words came to him easily; then he would struggle with a melody for them while randomly strumming his guitar. He knew he needed a lot of help from other musicians but he was happy, because his work was really a reflection of the present. His present.
The record was all the way through when he finally got himself dressed and sparked life back to his signature curls. He had just about enough time to make himself something to eat before heading for the studio where they had agreed to meet.
Finally, he was ready and wide awake. He made his way to his car, bringing with him a copy of some new songs he had been working on and his old harmonica. The drive was not very long, a song or two at most. He remembered that last night he had put on his Joan Baez cassette. He turned the stereo on, and sure enough, there it was.
Well, I'll be damned
Here comes your ghost again
But that's not unusual
It's just that the moon is full
And you happened to call
And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I'd known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall
The weather was so windy; the evergreens just seemed to sigh and sigh against the bleak, background sky. As the song carried on, the heaviness in Robert’s chest increased in this diffuse sort of way that was so hard to pin down.
Now I see you standing
With brown leaves falling all around
And snow in your hair
Now you're smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel
Over Washington Square
Our breath comes out in white clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me
We both could have died then and there
Now you're telling me
You're not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it
You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague
'Cause I need some of that vagueness now
It's all come back too clearly….
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It had been soo long ago when pale skin had laid on golden sand, under the weight of his own hot body. Belly rising and ebbing in sync with the cool foam of the sea, tasting of banana daquiris and smelling pungently of sweat around the neck.
Morocco was full of hot coffee and spice, hookahs and palm trees, red, red skies and early morning sunlight. But most of all, quiet and solitude and freedom. Unbridled, wild-eyed freedom.
In that freedom, Robert had spent nights with his feet buried in the damp sand, his hands on Jimmy’s thighs, his nose on Jimmy’s sea-drenched curls. He had buried himself under Jimmy’s eyes, under Jimmy’s nipples, dimples, ripples. In his every corner. Where he was most raw, juicy, and bitter.
This tomb that he had made for himself had a musky, slightly acid smell that was soo uniquely theirs. Their joy was soo childlike; indeed, they could have died then and there.
Jimmy’s cool reserve had remained far on the other side of the ocean. Here, away from everything and everyone, under the warm sunlight, the patchouli, the thick tapestries and the heavy jewelry, Jimmy let himself express his wet softness in moans and whimpers soo vulnerable, as if he was about to break each Robert coaxed him lovingly into his climax.
Robert’s strong, tanned arms held him as he fell, refraining the bubbling lust that pooled in his underbelly as Jimmy shuddered and gasped, wave after wave of ecstasy riding his spinal cord.
-”That’s it, luv, that’s it honey. Look at you, soo undone”. Robert’s doting encouragement just prolonged Jimmy’s scrunched-eyed agony endlessly.
And only after leaving Jimmy writhing and raw-nerved in the sand, did he allow himself to coat the sea-foam with his own hot, thick cum.
The stars were soo much more visible here than in England. They would just gaze at them in silence, taking deep drags from a shared cigarrette until the aftershocks subsided and all that was left were tiny tingles of oxytocin in their bellies.
Speak to me only with your eyes...
But yet, on stage, it had always been Robert that had been ridden. Ridden to the point of begging. To the point of losing the audience in a blurr that only left space for him and Jimmy. For his hot hardon that became increasingly obvious in his jeans. For his sinewy waistline, his lithe legs and that surge of adrenaline that bursted deep inside his belly. For the wild tossing about of his blonde mane.
In those moments, Robert thanked all the gods for being himself.
Jimmy kept it steady for him. Unrelenting, hard, domineering. The drums led the build up. Full of false climaxes. Unresolved. The longing would grow.
Black velvet dragon suits, bare chest, visible navel. Half-light, half-dark. Cocaine high. Jack Daniels smell dripping from their pores. LSD pupils taking them in from their places in the audience. Half-woke, half-up, half-covered behind the mic stand and the Gibson guitar. Hiding in plain sight. Sending codes through chords and cries.
-” Please, please”
-"Let me in, let me in"
-"Let me blow your horn".
And of course, as the music reached a point of no return, increasingly orgasmic, the blurr inevitably zoomed in on Jimmy's face. Drenched in sweat. Curls frizzy and wet. Lips tightly pursed. Eyes half-lidded or forcefully shut. Hand sliding obscenely up and down the guitar's arm. Rocking back and forth. Labored breathing.
Bring it home. At last. No one could have told when “Jesus” turned into “Jimmy” but all of a sudden, the anguished prayer had turned into this ecstatic cries of:
-"JIIM. JIIM. JIIIMEEH. JIIMEEH. AAAHH. OOWWHH YEAH. Ah! ah, ah, ah, ah, ah….UUUGH".
In my time of dying.
They had died together soo many times; it actually didn’t make any sense that they could be standing here, alive and breathing, when facing each other.
********************************************************************************************
There he was, already waiting by the entrance of the studio, next to the torn-down log of an old chesnut and some over-grown dandelions by the roadside. Dressed in the simplest white tee and blue jeans, black hair cut shorter and as frizzy as always. His back was facing Robert and he was all alone, carrying only his guitar case in one shoulder.
The clothes seemed just a tad too big for him and the way they hung from his long-limbed frame gave him the appearance of a teenager stranded in the middle of the road with nothing but his guitar, waiting to catch a lift.
Upon hearing the car approach, he turned around and, upon seeing that it was Robert that drove it, his face lit up instantly in a grin that could have made time stand still.
Yet, the moment their eyes met felt so heavy. Had everything started flashing again before them, it would have been less overwhelming than this empty space, this distance.
-”Hello Jim”
-”Hello Robert”.
That was it. That and the sheer grin that remained plastered in the guitarist’s ever so familiar face.
*********************************************************************************************
The hours in the studio went by surprisingly fast. Once they got over the initial awkwardness, and finally got their instruments out of their cases, everything just flowed from one thing to another.
They hadn´t even realized that, before any real talking was done, they were having a full jam session, with Jimmy improvising bluesy harmonies in his acoustic guitar and Robert trailing along with his voice and his harmonica. "So this is were all the Howlin Wolf fits in" Robert thought to himself.
Suddenly, the humor started flowing too.
-”Oh my god, Jim, stop! The old rooster at Bron-Y-Aur could have done a better job than that!” Robert would pitch in after failing to nail a particularly high lick.
-”Do you remember that time we thought we had lost our wallets while getting high by the river bank only to find them later all chewn, by the goat’s pen?” Jimmy would insert, weezing with laughter.
Then they would exchange and Robert would play the guitar while Jimmy sang.
-”Easy there, or we might start to think that the catholic choir-boy is still alive under Mr James Crowley!”
And finally after playing and reminiscing and catching up for more than three hours straight, the dreaded proposal came in a much more casual tone than Robert had expected.
-”I hear there is an eager audience for aging rock stars these days…care to make a go for it?”
-”I don’t know Jim. You know how I feel about this.”
-”Yep, and though to our health we drank a thousand times, its time to ramble on”.
Robert caught the reference immediately and chuckled in spite the rock that was settling deeper in his chest with each passing second.
-”Isn’t it, though, Jim? It's been nearly 15 years. We aren’t 25 anymore...hardly anyone now cares about the 70s.”
-”Well, I just think you are not really looking into this properly, there is soo much that we haven’t done yet. It has always been about keeping things fresh, creative, not about being a mere cover band of ourselves, Rob. I don’t even know why you’re being all pedantic about this.”
-”I simply cannot go back to it, that’s definitive.”
-”And why is that?” Jimmy's patience seemed to be wearing thin.
-”I don’t know, Jim. We were always such a trainwreck together.”
Baby, since I’ve been loving you I’m about to lose my worried mind.
This seemed to stun Jimmy somewhat. Suddenly, his eyes lost their self-assured mask and he smiled sadly while he replied,
-”I wouldn’t have had it any other way”.
-”Me neither, but the fact is precisely that: we’ve had it. That’s it.”
So good, see, baby
It was really, really good
You made me happy every single day
But now, I've got to go away
Jimmy’s eyes glared and his face flushed
-”Come on, Robert! Don’t give me that crap! It is my life’s work and yours too, like it or not! You cannot expect me to just erase everything and start anew. Not everyone finds it soo simple as getting a clean slate every time things get painful!”
-”Painful? Really? Oh, Jim, this may be your life’s work, but this isn’t my life’s work anymore. It stopped being like that long ago and you know precisely why. If you cannot see that, then it was clearly my bad coming here today.”
With that, Robert rose up and started packing his things without even turning to look at Jimmy who was sitting by the window, framed against the bleak, dark sky outside. Everything about this was deeply unsettling and Robert couldn’t wait to get away from it. Just as he was turning to the door, he heard Jimmy sigh deeply and call his name. Against his better judgment, he stopped dead in his tracks. Jimmy calling his name always would make him stop dead in his tracks.
-”Please don’t go, Robert. I’m sorry if I upset you. Just…please stay. We hardly ever see each other anymore.”
Robert sighed too. It was true. They hadn’t seen each other at all in the past year, aside from a sporadic phone call. There was a reason for it, though. This was always harder on both of them than it should be.
-”Aren’t you hungry, Jim?”
-”I could go for something.”
-”Let's go then. I doubt there is any half-decent restaurant open nearby, though".
********************************************************************************************
Half an hour later, Robert was actually surprised to see Jimmy digging soo entusiastically into his pizza, slice after slice.
-”God, I’m famished!” Jimmy exclaimed and then returned to his good-natured chatter about the lastest painting exposition he had attended in London.
But, in truth, Robert wasn’t actually listening to the details. He was caught in the trance of watching him eat, suddenly remembering with a twinge in his chest, the countless times Jimmy had gone to bed with nothing but a whiskey shot and a blunt in his belly. He remembered the increasingly tiny waistlines to the velvet trousers, the hours waiting outside locked toilet doors, hearing nothing but dry heaving until a sullen, blown-eyed shadow of the guitarist reemerged, waving his hand dismissively.
Now, Robert took the chance to eye him more closely for the first time. The gray, gaunt face had been replaced by rosy, almost boyish-looking cheeks that flushed with every little chuckle. The once rail-thin frame had filled out around the middle visibly and there was a slight curve to his stomach that had not been there previously. The smile was easily drawn out, causing crows feet to appear around his eyes and then, there was that spontaneous, schoolboy laughter that lit up the night like nothing else.
Robert felt a sudden surge of affection overwhelm him as he stared. Time had drifted by so slowly when he was 22…Yet in the blink of an eye, here he was, sitting with Jimmy Page, middle-aged and softer, having pizza at whatever take-out in the middle of the night, laughing and talking like they had done since the first day; Led Zeppelin a hazy dream of the long lost 70s; like soo many things, soo many people that were no longer here.
…And still, they were here.
-"Hey, Jim, want some desert? Tonight is on me"
-”Chocolate and wine would be nice”
-”Want to go someplace else to get it?”
-”Nah. Maybe just take-out and we’ll have it at the hotel”.
Jimmy hadn’t even bothered to investigate if going to his hotel was something the Robert wanted to do. He just assumed. Robert was not sure why he was agreeing to this and he was sure he would regret it in a moment, but he couldn’t help himself. Even bad ideas, around Jimmy Page, turned into creative genius.
*********************************************************************************************
Jimmy’s hotel was a beautiful, vintage little inn that was surrounded by cypress trees and had a little fireplace by the bed. From the moment they arrived with their bottle of wine and their box of chocolates, Jimmy had been visibly anxious about making sure Robert was comfortable, offering hot tea, lighting the fireplace, letting him sit by the bed and play whatever music he wanted for him.
-"Remember when we used to get excited about these?" Jimmy laughed as he picked up the silk robe that room service had left for him and tossed it playfully into Robert's face.
-"Of course you would always rather be naked" Robert retored with a cheeky, loop-sided grin.
Time slipped away so fast, with hardly any moment’s pause between a subject and another. One’s comment was linked instantly to the other’s reply, sometimes by a giggle and a laugh here and there. Their minds could never manage to be still when they were around each other; they were always bursting at the seams with new ideas.
Conversation had centered mainly around the subject of their new artistic projects, ending with Robert finally playing the recordings of his new songs for Jimmy, sitting together side by side on the bed, the chocolates all finished and the bottle of wine more than half drained by the time the clock marked midnight.
Jimmy had no idea if it was the wine, the laughter, the big meal or what, but suddenly he felt dizzy, sharply aware of how close Robert was sitting. How easy it would be to just lean against his shoulder and how familiar it would be to just let his hand trace the lines of the blonde’s hand!
How easy it would be...yet how impossible. All day Robert seemed soo reluctant to lean back against him once more, after all those years of practice that should have made leaning back the easiest thing in the world. Of course, that had been soo long ago. Long enough to break old habits.
Jimmy was dreading that any touch too heavy or any look too direct would scare Robert off. Yet, he couldnt help himself from wanting to touch. Sitting like this, side by side on the bed, with the record playing and the lights dim, age was a fictional matter to Jimmy. He still felt like a teenager, prodding, pushing, dreading to trespass but yearning to get closer.
He could smell Robert, spicy cologne and freshly minted. A stark contrast with his memory of nicotine-stained hands, and early morning sweat, mingling with the stale left-overs of last night's sex. But that too was so long ago.
-"Not a day has gone by when I don't…."
-"Shhh Pagey" Robert chuckled gently but his eyes were teary when he dragged his thumb across Jimmy's mouth to quieten him before he could finish his sentence. Now, he'll never know…When I don't… what? Regret? Remember? It doesn't matter. Its all the same.
Jimmy wasn't expecting to hear his old nickname like this. He turned, surprise growing at Robert's bleary look. Suddenly, it was all too much to keep holding back. He wanted to weep but also something else. To bury himself back deep inside of him instead of being catapulted into this new reality of being a has been.
-"Its not too late" Jimmy pleade.
Robert seemed to think otherwise but he didn't argue. He just smiled and nodded as the tears started running silently through his cheeks. Now it was Jimmy's turn to shush him and sooth him. The love that dripped from that gingerly touch hit Robert hard and the silent tears increased until suddenly, an unexpected sob that sounded as if he had been holding it in for ages, surged up from deep inside his chest and he crumbled into Jimmy's arms.
Now, he was sobbing wetly. For John. For his son. For his two marriages. For Led Zeppelin. For his youth. For himself and Jimmy. For the silence. For the love that was still alive under layers of adult complications, like baby sprouts under the crumbling winter ice. Piercing and reborn.
His whole chest hollowed and heaved. The pain was just too much.
Jimmy just held him and rocked him, crying loudly himself, overwhelmed by the bittersweetness of it all that could only be eloquent when expressed by the body.
After holding each other patiently through that long, long breakdown, Jimmy looked at Robert and he could tell that Robert was finally opening again.
The weeping had just subsided, and Jimmy rubbed tender circles into Robert's chest; this time, the blonde responded with the faintest sigh. Jimmy knew that face front and backwards. He kew how pleasure looked in him and he recognized the almost feminine flutter of the eyes. The slightest butterfly, gone in one second. And everything in him suddenly wanted to provoke it back again.
When their lips met it was not hurried nor crashing. It was like pouring into each other; the warmth and taste of their mouths and throats.
The clothes felt stifling all of a sudden after that first kiss. The shirts were buttoned down and thrown on the floor. The belts were unbuckled clumsily and they paused to chuckle, to drink in the glint of laughter in each other's eyes. Now, they both felt like teenagers again.
Finally, they looked at each other naked for the first time in 15 years. Their bodies had all this new lines and they needed to get re-acquainted with each other's shape, but they had all night for that.
So for now, Robert traced Jimmy's torso with his mouth, delighting in the creases and irregularities. His biography written in his flesh. He spared no part of Jimmy from his attention, parting skin where necessary in order to delve deeper.
Jimmy quivered a little. Specially as Robert passed the slight slope of his stomach and neared his sex.
Then, Robert put the tip of Jimmy's cock against his lips. After bracing himself, he made entrance for it, knowing that blowing Jimmy always made him feel dizzy and intoxicated. His knees hit the cold ground. Jimmy groaned. The room was spinning. His tongue twirled and sucked and he couldn't stop. He could feel himself growing and growing and growing and straining. There was no putting and end to this now. Oh God. What was he doing?! There was no time to think of that right now. He would pay the price for this later, in many sleepless nights.
The air was hot, stifling. Sweat beads formed in their hairlines. Robert sucked until Jimmy was panting, hanging almost limp from the edge of the bed. Robert got on his feet again. Jimmy rose from the bed to meet him eye to eye. Robert could see the surrender, the want. Hell, he could see the sheer need.
-"Look at you, soo pink and gorgeous" Jimmy hissed into the singer, squeezing hard at his balls.
-"I've always been kinda cute" Robert smirked.
Jimmy gave him a harder squeeze.
-"You are mine, you'll never stop being mine, you have been mine from the start". It was a harsh and urgent grunt that betrayed all of Jimmy's bitter lust.
Robert let himself be led into the bed. He felt his pulse and his breath quicken. Jimmy felt him too and he reassured him lovingly:
-"Shh, baby, I'll take care of you".
He parted Robert's creamy thighs and gave a lick there where no one else was ever allowed. Robert's entrance was one of those places where nothing had changed. Jimmy wanted to fuck him soo bad. To hit his sweet spot and hear him moan his name once more.
Ohh Jimmeehh.
But he had all night for that and he was planning to take his time with this. Who knows how many years would pass before they came together again in such a way.
Jimmy tried to take in as much as he could; the smell, the little hairs on the intimate places, the throbbing veins on that stone-hard cock, the skin where it sagged a little, the flesh that swelled slightly in places that had been previously taut. That dimpled chin that always remained so gorgeous to look at.
Jimmy wanted to etch every little detail in his memory forever. Hell, he had been wanting this for the longest time possible. Not a day went by when his blonde lover wasn’t on his mind.
He took his time to fill Robert with lube nicely, to get him all warm and slippery. His mouth watered at the sight of his ass and cock, all pink and ash-brown, ready for him. Jimmy dropped between the singer’s spread legs and licked lusciously at his hot, fat cock while sliding a finger inside of him.
In the grave-like silence of the room, the smacking sounds of sucking, saliva and lube seemed to stand out more. Robert was dead-quiet, but Jimmy could see him start to belly-breathe visibly, so he drew a spare hand to rub soothing circles on the fuzzy hair below his navel.
After eating his fill, Jimmy got to his knees, wiped his dripping chin lavishly, and hovered over a wild-eyed Robert, awaiting for any gesture to signal permission to penetrate him.
It came in the form of a violent thrust of hips that seemed just desperate to meet Jimmy’s own. And so, Jimmy lined himself carefully against Robert’s hole, plunging in soo slowly and drawing out gasps and grimaces from the singer.
-”You take me soo well, baby” Jimmy encouraged, leaning in to ease the sting with a french kiss so juicy and wet that their pulses quickened savagely. For a moment, they panted, breathless, into each other with the obscene sound of the kiss still ringing in their ears.
When the stinging subsided and the high waned a little, their bodies knew each other’s rhythm instantly. They were soaring together once again. The perfect counterpoint to each other. Their bodies jamming in perfect sync. Jazzy, bluesy, breezy. Loose and easy. Soo rock n roll.
-"We could take the stage by the storm together".
Hearing Robert admit it out-load was all Jimmy needed to keep going. He yanked his blonde god by the hair and pounded into him, elated by how powerful he felt with Robert at his side. They were like two old kings joining kingdoms. Sharing a crown once again.
They took the time to build up their climax. Neither of them really wanted the moment to end. So they just took turns leading the pace, always focusing on each other's face and the little giveaways that signaled pleasure.
A desperate lick at parched lips.
Mouth parted like a delicious fruit.
Eyes rolling back, now closed, now open, now staring, now digging.
The little "don't stop" or "that's it, luv".
Eventually, they started shedding layers and unveiling.The broken sentences got increasingly dirty, the little groans were no longer little. The whimpers came involuntarily at first, causing them to blush and hide their face from each other until Jimmy confessed between breathless gasps,
-"God, I love hearing you, luv".
Robert nearly came undone upon catching a glimpse of Jimmy's flushed chest. The blood surged below the coarse, little black hairs and ran its course up the lithe neck until it reached its peak at the cheeks. The eyelids were shut, run over by tiny purple veins.
A delicate orchid, a bittersweet nightshade. Robert remebered having called Jimmy that once, long ago, in Morrocco.
-”Kiss me” he begged, not knowing what came over him. Jimmy’s eyes fluttered open, but a glance at Robert’s saucy stare was enough. He leaned in and their lips grazed at each other while their hips moved in sync, slow and sensual. Their mouths parted and the tip of Jimmy’s tounge toured the circumference of Robert’s lips, eliciting a deep, visceral moan from him that took them both by surprise.
Robert’s tounge met his and the kiss suddenly deepened at vertiginous speed, matching the quickened breaths and movement from the hips.
Finally, they were deep inside each other in every possible hole, end and way. Tounges entwined, teeth enclosing rhythmically their swollen bottom lips, panting and moaning shamelessly into each others’ mouth, unable to stop kissing, kissing with their eyes wide open, heightened senses to the sights, the smells, the sounds…
…and, oh god, the sounds.
The moans got increasingly guttural.
Lewd. Loud. Long. Longing.
They didn't even care what their neighbors thought. They just relished each other’s bodies until they couldn't take it anymore and their bellies were flip-flopping and their hearts were racing.
Jimmy’s pace got erratic first. Robert knew the tale-tell signs by heart and upon seeing the climax approach, he started calling out his name in the drawn-out way in which he used to do.
-”Ohhh, Jiimeehh. Fuck! JIIIMMEEEHHH”
It seemed to fuel him. He pounded into Robert, frothing and weezing. Robert felt the familiar heat climb up from his belly, ready to spill over at the next meeting of their eyes.
Then it happened.
Jimmy turned to look, dripping salty sweat drops into his lover’s open mouth. Those green, full-blown, eyes pierced Robert’s every bone and a lengthy shudder rose from deep inside him and shook him mercilessly. Before he knew it, he was coating Jimmy’s stomach with spurt after spurt of cum. It seemed like it would never end and he could only alternate between crying for mercy and calling out his lover's name.
The guitarist's fingernails dug painfully into his hips and time seemed to change into slow-motion for him to catch every detail of Jimmy’s orgasm. The shameless, wanton moaning. The contorted mouth. The arching back. The curled toes. The blood flushing his face. The warmth spurting inside his walls.
You shook me so hard baby
Baby, baby, please come home
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Robert looked at the moon across that little crack left in Jimmy's window. The cypress outside waved at him as wind suddenly wooshed a fresh breath into the sickly-sweet atmosphere that always lingered in the room after touching each other for soo long.
Jimmy lay on his back, eyelids pulled like a soft blanket over his green eyes, breathing in a steady wind-down.
I felt the coldness of my winter
I never thought it would ever go
I cursed the gloom that set upon us,
But I know that I love you so
…The pang was both sharp and dull, like a cold blade that has been worn out by time, still sticking through his chest.
No matter in which direction he turned, sooner or later he would have to learn. That everything just led the way back to him; that every single road, if walked for long enough, reached the same endplace. The warm, cozy endplace were he lay now. It was almost greek, homeric.
Achilles last stand.
Stand. One last. At last. It didn’t make sense anymore. But it didn’t matter.
-"Jimmy?"
Jimmy hummed an inarticulate "hhhmm" upon being roused.
-"I'll do it. I'll tour with you".
Stunned silence. Then, the faintest reply:
-"We'll do it your way this time".
-"There's no need. Let's have it your way. This is you life's work anyway".
-"There is every need." A long pause. Then Jimmy's voice dropped into a near-whisper and continued:
-"It should also have been your way long ago".
Robert understood suddenly that Jimmy was talking now about soo much more than just music. He was talking of all those things and complaints that they would only ever imply. And suddenly, there was no need to delve deeper. The ocean was suddenly a puddle; that's how far they had come, how much they had moved on. Soo he just said
-"I think we should start our tour in Morocco. “
Jimmy said nothing. But Robert noticed a slight stiffness wash over his body. Then, a shuddering sigh. Then, the back of his hand covered his eyes and he broke into a half-sobbing, half-giggling grin.
They embraced, brimming over completely.
-"Morocco it is", Robert repeated when words came back to him. Then he rubbed Jimmy in the back until they both slept, overwhelmed, overspent, overjoyed.