Work Text:
Then shouldst thou be his prisoner, who is thine.
——Hero And Leander
The fire had burned down to glowing embers, yet its warmth lingered on. Kit slipped off his shirt. A pair of leather boots, cast aside, clattered as they rolled into the corner. Garments lay strewn in chaotic disarray all around—linen shirts tangled haphazardly with long hose. A crumpled towel rested on the floor beside an empty jar that had once held dipping sauce. A faint residual whiff of perfume hung in the air, a soft woodsy sweetness, and Will fancied he could see a forest unfurling itself before his eyes. Tainted moonlight filtered through tattered shreds of cloud.
To Will, undressed Kit existed only as a silhouette. His lean,cheetah-slender frame, his skin, dissolved into the darkness, yet he hung as close as the blood coursing through Will’s veins. He caught the faint rustle of falling fabric, Kit’s soft, steady breaths, the dull thud of bare feet against the floorboards. He felt Kit step over the jumble of discarded belongings, felt the thin mattress sink beneath his weight as he crossed to the bed. Kit stretched out and sprawled comfortably across most of its surface. Will had long since grown accustomed to his lover’s need for space.
Their love ran deep and boundless, rising to the surface amid the playwright’s countless midnight edits and rewrites. It was never a sudden flash of inspiration, a flood of lines springing unannounced to the mind. Love was the passages they polished together at a flaking wooden table, drafts they had mapped out long before dawn. Every fragment of Kit that Will knew and cherished he wove into the stories he would write for the rest of his days: Kit’s face ablaze with passion; his sharp, brilliant smile; his half-assenting, ambiguous gestures and tone; the fleeting moment when he yawned; the glittering glass of a wine glass clutched tight between his slender fingers; the way Kit’s quill turned to a dagger, stabbing at scarred, worn manuscript pages. Their quiet, secret intimacies were like two pages pressed tight within a closed book. Through writing, he and Kit became one.
Will and Kit lay on their sides, facing one another. Will’s gaze fixed on the hollow dip at Kit’s throat, like folded wings tucked beneath his skin, while Kit’s chest laid bare to him looked raw as an open wound.
The last embers faded to black. Urgent longing and adoration surged toward the lover drawing near out of the dark—two men ravenous for each other’s flesh, that craving clamping them together like talons, unfurling its pale veil between their bodies.
“I thought—I thought we might have a home in London, a gentle haven where we could rest, a place holding everything we could ever want in life.”
“A three per cent share. There you go again, Will.” Kit laughed, yet the sound shattered into bitter fragments that settled around him. He could not say what had stirred the laugh at all. “You offer promises before I ever utter a request. But I crave to devour the whole world—to seize it, wield it, profane every last thing…”
Kit’s voice carried an arrogant allure, as irresistible as the swelling tides of the River Thames.
The fluid hush of night took shape upon Kit’s lips.
Will trembled as he pressed forth a kiss. Kit received it, then seized his mouth, capturing his tongue, deepening the caress into something tender yet unrelenting, a soft, sweeping invasion.