A/N: Happy Birthday to my dear friend mattsloved1 – she is an angel and a truly wonderful friend! No foolin'!
Don't own – if I did, I might lend to Ml1:)
In a Name
It was the way he said my name.
John.
There were so many inflections and tones and emotions wrapped up in a simple, plain and ordinary name. A name whose origins they say, mean 'God is gracious' or perhaps 'God is generous'. When he says my name, it is with grace and poured out of the vessel that is his generous and full mouth, the way it rolls off of his tongue, in its rich, velvet tones. I will accept the meaning as long as he says it. A simple name made so much more by the call to the altar of the celebrant who worships my name with his mouth.
He's said it with annoyance. The maddeningly, endearing way he has when I am slow or don't catch the lightening brought down by his intellect.
John, he's getting away!
He said it with the excitement of discovery, as the last part of the puzzle turns up or he wishes to share his genius with me.
John, look!
Or perhaps I have accidently said the one thing that illuminates the way for him to find things hidden in the dark.
John! You are brilliant!
It has been said in fear and anguish during the times I have been in danger or perhaps jumped in front to save him. I would do it again and again, times without number. The world would be less vivid if he were not in it, whereas, really, he is the only one who would miss me. When he says it then, I can hear the fear and the anger of the pronouncement of his other name for me, saved for those times he believes I have been particularly dense.
John! You idiot! Never do that again!
But, as I said, I would.
And at other similar times, pronounced with relief.
John! Are you all right?
He said it wearied with overtones of sullenness, that changed the sound of my name into something that didn't even sound like a real name.
Jaaawwn! Where's your gun?
But it is at night, embraced in each other's arms, shutting out the world and the city and the night, locking it out with taste and essence of lust and love, with touches and gasps. It is in bringing him into the fervor and thrust of passion, of taking him to the edge and holding back, of allowing him to finally go over the threshold, holding each other on the way down into oblivion and serenity, holding with breaths and sighs, it is then, when he says my name, then that is my favourite sound in the whole world.
John