If You Love Him

by loreleiblossoms

And after all these years – what is he but a living legend?

If You Love Him

And after all these years – what is he but a living legend?

Told from the perspective of an original male character (not Zoro for anybody who might be confused), set after the possible end of the canon series. Although I normally dislike writing relationships – romantic or otherwise - between canon characters and original ones, there are elements of SanjixOC for the sake of the plot. But no worries – Zosan is the pairing that matters, in the end.

1

He is what people call a legend; you hear, in fact, many guests murmur that same phrase when they first step in and sit down at the tables with much wonder and some bemusement: a legend, have you heard, the very owner of this restaurant that we are in, surely you must have heard of his travels (other names are mentioned, but proximity requires focus, and thus they are all focused on a single golden man), that moment when he finally found this sea, this legendary sea. You hear it on a daily basis, in soft hushes before the first patrons of the day order their meals (you wait by the corner, impeccable in your suit, looking for the faintest flick of the hand belonging to a decided mind), or in much gusto when the sun has set and many cradle a glass – wine, rum, whiskey, spirits and spirits glinting against the candles – with their late dinners. A legend, they start, and they tell tales of the Pirate King, his trusty crew. His chef. But now, they seem to say, our chef. As if eating his meals, in that restaurant that he has built and expanded and caressed over the years, next to that mythical sea, allows some inexplicable ownership over him. Perhaps they do, for they create him in their eager and earnest words: the golden man, the valiant fighter, the chivalrous pirate, the finder of the seas – and their ends -, and, after they have taken their first bites of whatever dish before them, truly the best chef in the world. And you listen with delight, and some amusement, but much joy.

For you know him. Unlike the other patrons, you know him, better than they ever will. He does not always come out of the kitchen – for even after training his sous chefs to the utmost detail, the most trivial (he argues, there is nothing trivial about cooking) garnish on every possible dish that you can imagine, he still prefers his own hands to others. Unlike the other chefs in their immaculate uniforms, he often dons whatever he wishes: pristine suits, perhaps with one or two loose buttons on a warmer day, seemingly oblivious to the heat of the kitchen. Many times have you stared at his hands – his hands, his beautiful hands – running over grains and spices with an impossible precision, flicking a knife with an elegant grace. So have the others, even the sous chefs who must be nearly, if not over, his age. (This often results in the man shouting, get back to work, you lazy idiots! Don't you know that the patrons are waiting for their meals? But the men of the kitchen smile, for there is something almost fond in his voice: it is a daily routine. They return to their positions as if waking from a dream. And yet they feel that they dream, still.) He is not a cruel man, even when he seems intent on appearing so, in front of his chefs. He is often foul-mouthed and distracted by some dish or some other blundering chef, but there is kindness in his eye – and his hands often speak against his words. Idiot, he grumbles as he gently pulls away a distracted chef from effectively killing some soup; useless and stupid, he shouts as he urgently pushes aside the dishwasher boy from the course of a falling plate. His hands are always moving, never still - always warm.

The same hands rest on his pursed lips or his jawline, balancing a pen in one, when he sits at the desk of his office in thought. You can only imagine the colours and flavors and textures that must be running over his mind, coming together in a new and always successful dish. This had been the time when you discovered, to your ill-disguised chagrin, that he prefers making tea or coffee on his own – even if he can afford others bringing it to him – and often offers it to anybody nearby. That he prefers, when he is lost in thought, not to be bothered, and that it takes some hesitant calls for him to pay attention. That when creating new recipes, his visible eyebrow strains a little under the concentration, but his eye contains a joy that is impossibly young. That he is truly a great man - perhaps the greatest, and you had almost felt foolish for thinking to bring him something trivial as tea. But he had taken it – the tea that you had made with nearly trembling fingers – with a smile. And so you had first known.

Sometimes he will come out to the patrons, and he will smile and laugh and be courteous with the ladies, a bit roguish – but impossibly charming all the while – with the men. He flirts often, and in these instances his hands are gentle and calm, often set in a courteous bow or softly holding a lady's hand to kiss with the utmost ease. With the male patrons, who often ask him to recount some minute detail of his story – the story (does the Pirate King really eat that much? Could you retell the Soul King's jokes? What colour were the fins of the mermaid princess? They are all details somewhat irrelevant to the story itself, but they are the ones that the man seems to relish the most in telling), his hands are vivacious with life, decorated with often grandiose gestures, dancing, dancing. The patrons' retellings fade away into worn-out nothings in front of the man's source of life. (Yes – Luffy's a real pain, many times he tried – still tries! – to raid the fridge… Hah, perhaps you should ask him in person, he comes around sometimes… I must tell you of the loveliness of the heavenly mermaid princess! Of course, milady, your beauty is also truly divine -) After stories and stories, when he saunters back to the kitchen or slips out back to his rooms, the patrons buzz with the remnants of his legends. They copy his movements, his words – no doubt they retell the stories beyond that night, beyond that restaurant, until they must surely seep into the entire expanse of the world; with their clumsy hands and faded words, they try to recreate that golden shine. But they know, in their hearts, that they will never succeed in truly doing so, and this resignation echoes in their first and final words: a legend.

These words only increase in volume (but never depth – never depth) when the occasional vagrant, vicious but starving and somewhat pathetic, come demanding food in rude tones; then the man is calm, and he goes back to the kitchen and brings out something that he has cooked himself in a matter of minutes. Many times have you seen tears, then, falling from the eyes of such pathetic men (but once you had been one of those pathetic men) – all the while the hands of his folded arms tap out a thought against his forearms, or curl around his cigarette in quiet observation. Only when he resorts to fighting the stupidest men who refuse to leave or eat in peace and instead demand money or the company of some poor woman, his hands hide in his pockets as he kicks with impossible strength and agility. The patrons are frightened at first (you have been frightened at first), but after some time most seem comfortable, even excited to see the man in action. And so the words start once more, trying to recreate, to encompass, to etch into hundreds of other stories in thousands of other voices: did you see that, the grace of his legs, it's just like how they described it in the stories, I thought I would never live to see the day, he truly is the companion and chef of the Pirate King, not that I doubted it for a second (he is a legend).

And you know, as you listen and watch as you take their orders and refill their glasses and deliver the dishes, that he is too – he is too much to be caught, to be captured within their words. For who can truly capture the golden man, the keeper of the seas and all its flavours? The man whose stories will continue beyond generations? So you are content, for you know that you have allies in your frequent bemusement and inexplicable – fear? Love? – before the man.

But you are not merely an ally – no – you are special; you alone can truly account for feeling this love and fear and admiration and wonder; for out of all the other men and women he has chosen you, and you alone know the true warmth of his fingers, the lingering passion of his hands as they graze over or under you while you (dare you say it?) make love. Despite the lack of novelty in the experience, you are always fascinated by the way he comes. (Your own release, while certainly enjoyable – more than enjoyable – is not important to you. Yet he always notices your physical needs, and even in the midst of his own pleasure, he breathily chuckles at your youth. When you are in him, it is an afterthought in the midst of his groans; when he is in you, he is too kind to let it go unnoticed and incomplete.) Never have you imagined that you – you! – would be able to cause such an effect on the man, who always runs over your sweating body his sensuous hands, his beautiful hands.

Before this had started, and you had come to know the feel of his touches, you had only traced those hands with your eyes, always longing, never hoping, for you are nothing but a waiter in this restaurant by the sea. You cannot cook – sometimes you think you might want to, but you are content, basking in the vibrant – yet strangely dreamy – atmosphere of the restaurant. You had been poor. You had never had anyone, not even yourself. But before you died, you had thought you might spend everything on one last meal: one at the restaurant that everybody dreamt and talked of. And if you were lucky, you had thought, you might even see that one man you had always looked up to – the hero. The Pirate King, the Greatest Swordsman in the World, the Keeper of the Lost Years, the Great Doctor, the Brave Sniper King of the Seas, and so on – they are all heroes, yes, but from your childhood you had known that he is the true hero.

Youth and hunger and some dread (hope?) of death had lent you courage – it had been the best meal that you had ever had; yet it had been much more than that, for it had been that evening that you had seen him for the first time. You had not known then, exactly, the implications of that beginning. (It had not been a true beginning; that had been much before, when you had first heard the tales in your childhood. But -)

After every other patron had left, and you had been still sitting at your seat in the corner, still desperately hungry more for the warmth than the food (for you had not wanted to go back, go out into the dark confines of reality and ordinariness and dread), he had come to you with such confident steps. He had looked at you, and your dirty clothes, with that one observant eye – and you had felt ashamed. At first, he had been quiet for a few moments, but then after silently returning with another big serving, had said, There's an empty room in the top floor, go sleep there. I'll give you the uniform tomorrow morning. And to your stricken face, he had smiled – for the first time (this had been another beginning) – to you, to only you, and had placed his hand on your shoulder: we've been short of waiters, actually. Now go sleep, and tell me if you want to eat something else.

He had not said it. He never did say it, in the end: stay. But it had been implicit within his gentle words (you only later realized that such softness was rare to his employees, at least verbally) – but more so within the warmth of his hands, or so you had believed, and so you had stayed.

You had stayed, for you realized that you had something to live for: someone whom you could look at, and vow to yourself that you would do anything, give anything, offer anything that you had.

The opportunity had come some months later: after he had had to kick out some drunk out of the building to close the restaurant for the night, he had been silent. You, intent with helping in however way (hopeless, helpless), had remained, hovering next to the door. He had sat in one of the chairs by the bar (the chair that the drunk man had sat on, you notice such things, such unimportant details) seemingly lost in his own thoughts – there had been a subtle frown on his features – and he had glanced up, and had seen you.

And there had been despair in his eye that you had not known could exist in the man: a great and terrible sadness that you had not known what to do with, except to step closer, closer into that storm, that terrible storm. But he had known when you had not, and so he had leant up and kissed you on your pale lips.

You had closed your eyes – for there was nothing you could have done; for you, it had started a long time ago.

Your memory is in snatches: a storm – a passionate storm, leading you to his rooms; afterwards he had seemed content, and his eyes had been dulled by pleasure and desire and lust. Touching him – your fingers, through his golden hair (affected, yes, by age and time, and yet still so unbelievably golden) – for the first time had been different from the heat of being inside him.

If you could have touched the sun, then this would have been it; this had been your dazed reflection as the smell of cigarette smoke – lazy, satisfied, lethargic – wafted through your nostrils.

You had known, for the second time.

But you are not foolish; you are aware that you are not the only one. You have, in fact, seen it with your own eyes when you had mistaken his signals (usually he smiles at you in a distinct way in the corridors and you know and follow discreetly) and had stood, frozen, in front of the doorway of his rooms, the handle in your numb fingers. You had watched for an impossibly infinite moment his hands as they gently caressed the bare, ample breasts of a particularly beautiful patron who had stopped by for that day's dinner. He had bowed his head and kissed her, passionately, deeply, hungrily, as if he had been starving for something he could only reach out for but never attain. (You had taken the woman to be the fine, regal kind of women – one of those ladies who seem to never indulge in physical exertions. But there she had been – trembling with pleasure, becoming undone, her dress around her ankles at the foot of the bed.) And then he had turned and seen you – his eye had been almost apologetic.

Yet he had turned around, back to the oblivious woman, and you had known that there was no apology that was to be required or given.

There had been a hunger in him that you had almost recognized – but it could not have been.

You could have gone to your own rooms and have thought to yourself, well, it is just a fragment that can be easily sunk in oblivion, some isolated picture, out of some pornographic fantasy, some alternate reality, to be divided apart from your own fantasy with the man. But instead you, after softly closing the room once more to the man and his lover, had stood in the corridor, not too far away from the man's rooms. You had listened, with closed eyes (but never shedding a tear) their quiet moans of pleasure. (There – you could tell – he had come. You had wondered whether he would smoke afterwards, in front of a lady – he often had in front of you. After you.)

For you had needed to know. To confirm. And then you had loved him more, for if he is a great man – if he is a legend – then surely he cannot be satisfied with one lover. There is too much of him. He is too bright. Too golden. He gives and gives and it is only right that he must take. And you are one of those people that can give him something, too.

You had resolved from that moment onwards, that it did not matter, that you would remain. In retrospect, it had been foolish to think that you were the only one. How could you have not noticed the blushing cheeks of the ladies? The too obvious smiles of some of the men? And the all-too-willing vitality, the subtle caresses of his hands, the almost exquisite physicality of the man himself? You can see them now, the little signs and flirtations, the list of potential and all-too-probable lovers. Often it is a woman – often beautiful, but the man does not seem to be too particular. Sometimes it is a man, almost always younger than the man himself, close to your own age.

This is not a difficult task for him; even without his name and stories, he is a beautiful man, with his golden hair and his piercing blue eye – sometimes a deeper gray, like the beginnings of a storm – but always encasing some fragment of the ocean. He has started to show the signs of age and time on his features – his golden hair and well-tended beard have some white strands in them, his jawline is sharper than what you imagine they had been – but they only serve to outline his beauty with an easy grace.

So to his rooms the patrons come and go, you know this. You know that you are not the only one. But you are alright, for you love him too, the beautiful man encased in legends.

And after all – and you think this, later that night, after the restaurant has closed and all the others have left (all the others have left), as he gives a final moan and comes under you, and after some numb moments of extreme pleasure you gently pull out of him – you are the only one that remains by his side. Every other lover leaves, sometime or other – at the most, he only indulges in three or four dalliances with the same person; he never asks them to stay. The waiter, the plain man with rather coarse features who cannot cook, you who are poor and had nobody before and now (and now you are content, and you are happy, for he is too) is the only one to stay, after he had asked that night, with his hands. He might be a legend – and so he is, existing in his capricious voice and golden hair and such painfully beautiful hands (but never words, never the clumsy voices of the patrons and all the other people of the world who try to encompass him in themselves) – but he loves you, he certainly loves you. You know this to be true.

You know, for never again he shows that terrible face again, that terrible despair and longing for something you cannot understand, echoed that night when that he had kicked out that drunk (you cannot remember his name, and neither does he ever mention the drunk again, and you are certain that the man is not pining for the drunk – it is not the person, or a person, that he longs for – it is something beyond that evening, something that you cannot quite understand): like rain falling on the ocean.

You know, for when you make love (yes, you will dare to say it), his hands are passionate, and they take, and they give. And so you stay by his side.

2

One day he asks you a question, afterwards, as he smokes on a cigarette, and you lie on the bed next to him. It has been some days since you have last lain like this; there had been two patrons that had caught the man's eye – a buxom musician traveling from the east, and a man with an infectious smile, frequently (and knowingly) towards the chef. He has been busy (you, while drawing the drapes before the break of dawn, had seen the latter lover going out of the building with a smug step in his gait); you had understood, and he has not said anything (as usual) by way of explanation. But, in the end, they are like the others.

"What do I mean to you?"

The question is unexpected. But by now you have come to notice certain traits about him - he bites his bottom lip when he cannot find a cigarette, he grins the brightest when he has successfully concocted up a new recipe (it is then that you notice he has pale crow's feet around his eye), he wears blue shirts with his best suit when there is a particularly fine or big event that requires him to look his best. He also asks strange questions, from time to time: unrelated fragments jarring the normal pace of time, disturbing you with their suddenness. One time he had asked you how much you could drink (not much), another time he had asked whether that day's dessert should be more bitter than sweet (you hadn't known. But, you had provided somewhat unhelpfully, you liked anything that he cooked, as so did the rest of the world). This, then, is one of those times. You sometimes wonder why he asks those questions, how he comes to arrive at certain destinations. (Yet the only thing that matters is that you know him the best, that you know this man of legends to be something more.)

But – as you look back at him – you find that you do not know what to say. Does he want you to say that you love him? You do. But as you look back at his casual gaze – he is unfazed and calm, a rather stark contrast to his passionate desire only some moments before – you do not whether that is the right thing to say. Does he want you to say so?

Does he know the implications of his question? What this question means to you?

You think, you are what I have never dreamt of having. The man whom every person in the world admires and loves and hates with the utmost passion for they know you cannot be had. The golden man, the eternal companion to the Pirate King. The person who discovered a legend and became one himself. The man who has fulfilled all his dreams, all the dreams that a single man can have. The person who had asked me to stay with his hands. The one for whom I stayed, and now belong to, and despite all your other lovers they have no meaning, I know this. The one whom I never dreamt of loving, even as from my childhood I had loved you, for you were great in their stories and so brave – so kind – so beautiful, in my dreams. And so you are. But you already know. So what do you want me to say?

Despite his casual gaze, you know that he waits for something; there is anxiety in his eye, and you happily think for a moment that he may feel the same as yourself.

You say, "I admire you. You are a great man; I love you." The words do not seem completely right. You are hesitant. "Is this enough?"

He stares back and then his blue eye crinkles up a bit; he starts laughing, his cigarette forgotten. You are embarrassed for a moment; it is only when he starts laughing like this (not laughing at you, perhaps, but still laughing, when you do not know the reason) that you remember with sudden clarity that he is nearly twice your age.

But he seems to understand your mortification and he grins back. "What do you mean, is it enough? How is that – what a stupid thing to say." His eye is kind, however, and so you smile back, a little.

As if making up for your embarrassment, he reaches out for you – and you are once more lost in your (his) passion.

But even after this, even after such lustful caresses of his hands, you still wonder. You still wonder, for you think he is pleased with your answer – and yet – and yet.

Is this enough?

He is a great man.

But this, is this what he wants?

You love him, you think you love him but your love – it disappoints him, somehow.

Are you enough?

But he had asked you to stay. (He had not. But -)

You admire him. You love him. And it should be enough, for you at the very least, and the next day as you straighten your tie once more and trudge down the corridor for the first patrons will be arriving soon, you chance to look at him: he smokes on a cigarette against an open window, the first rays of the day reflected on his hair and draping the rest of him in shadows.

You almost say something. You want to say something, to give voice to the words that had risen in you the night before. That he is something so much more than you, so golden and bright (even in the shadows, even as he looks out the window at the brilliant sea, even then, especially then), that you admire and love and fear him, for he can break you with his being.

But it is not enough. You will become like the other patrons – your greatest fear – if you open your mouth. If you try. If you do. And so you just stand for a moment, and you look, and you look.

And he never looks back, and the only thing you can see are his hands, his beautiful hands set against the windowsill, remembering something, longing for something that you do not know, that you can never hope to know. A something – a someone, perhaps. And even as you turn and walk down the stairs – you wish to call out to him, to ask him to stay (but where? How? You do not understand), but you do not – he is still looking at something beyond, something lost, and his hands are still.

3

You have never seen him like this – agitated, perhaps; surprised, certainly; and somewhat displeased. His expression, for one, does not betray any welcome emotion; his eye has narrowed in the fashion of having seen some revolting man fondling a poor (female) patron. But his hands are the most important, the most truthful in the midst of his puzzling being, and so you look at them, and confirm your initial thoughts. He is, at the moment, pinching between his forefinger and thumb the cigarette that has been forgotten; it bends under the pressure, and you watch the ashes fall to the ground.

But you know there is no reason, on the surface, for him to be unhappy – the man in front of him has done nothing out of the ordinary, as far as you have observed; he had sat down at the bar, muttered something, and had gotten a drink. Granted, he is an odd-looking sort, but all sorts come and go every day and night; this is nothing unusual. He is quiet, as the chef glares at him, sips his drink, and seems to coolly survey the place (the other patrons are frozen in their places, as if pierced by his lethargic gaze) - until he finally sets down his drink and opens his mouth.

"Not bad."

The stranger's voice is quiet, and yet with its depth - thunder, perhaps, you think. Or the depths of the ocean -

The man glares at him for a few more moments – all the while the stranger returns his gaze and quirks one eyebrow at him – and, suddenly, he smirks.

You do not know why you dread this moment – you do not know why you must suddenly be gripped with a sinking horror, as you stand and look, as the other patrons do.

"Got lost on the way, marimo?"

"Funny, for a moment there I thought you had lost the ability to talk with your age."

The man looks furious for a moment (you, somehow always the observer, recollect that you have never seen him like this - never like this), and then barks back, "We're the same age, idiot!"

It seems to be true. The stranger too shows the signs of middle age – no, not middle age, perhaps, for middle age hints at contentment and plenty in life, but more the first marks of old age brought prematurely, like frost upon a quiet forest. He seems much like the man you love – different in appearance and tone and everything else, but they are somehow made of the same thing.

They are both made of legends – you realize this as their words, their voices, bring upon a new torrent of the patrons' excited and bewildered whispers amongst themselves. The Greatest Swordsman in the World, you hear them whisper, and you recollect that you had seen the stranger's visage some time ago – where, you cannot remember. But you are familiar with the name, Roronoa Zoro; it is only now that you realize the implications of the three swords by his side. How could you have not realized sooner?

Everybody knows him to be one of the companions, and yet – you recollect with a sudden jolt – that you have never heard the chef talk about him, truly describe him and recreate him with his hands and words. Whenever asked a question about the swordsman by one of the patrons, he had merely smiled and given a short answer, but never lingering too much on the details. You had believed the swordsman (to your lover, to yourself) to be of no importance: it must be the reason that he has never talked of him.

(The patrons buzz with their clumsy hands – you wonder, as you look at your lover, and the patrons, and your lover again; but you shake your head – he is too much. He is different from them. He certainly is.)

Like your lover, the stranger, the swordsman, is too a legend, something that will dissolve into stories and tales by the fireside when he at last closes his eyes (for that is the way of legends: they do not age, but fade away into death). You realize, however, why you had not been able to place him sooner with the faint visage of your mind: the man of the faded picture (you remember, in your confusion, that it had been in the chef's room that you had seen his face – but then again, he keeps the picture of every companion in the drawer by his bedside – you had seen it for a fleeting moment, when frantically looking for lotion of some sort or another; after he had fallen asleep, you had, in curiosity, gotten it out and studied it for a few moments before forgetting) had been different. A proud man, you remember, not much a man than some legendary beast – a magnificent beast. A grim visage, perhaps, but not unkind, never too cruel: this had been your thought, and whispers had told you that he is the right hand man of the Pirate King, and (as some whisper) the most loyal of them all.

The stranger that sits in front of you (the stranger who looks upon your lover with a strange mixture of amusement and hostility and – and, there is something you cannot place) is the same man, and yet he is not the same man. At first you think it is the age, for there are crow's feet around the swordsman's eyes that have eased some of the burden that they used to carry; they create an odd pattern with the scar on his left eye. His hair – once strikingly green (this you remember)– has too paled into a greyer, a paler green. But there is something different about this man, something that is not the result of age, and you wonder if your lover knows exactly what that difference may be.

"Ah, well. I take care of myself. Whereas you…" The swordsman gives the man a look, and your lover grits his teeth, and balances his legs into what you realize is a position ready for a fight.

"I can still kick your ass, you do know that, idiot swordsman?"

"Your eyebrow is still curly as ever, you do know that, ero-cook?"

"I can see you're itching for a fight. Getting cocky with the title, eh?"

"Not as much as you're getting senile with all that cooking and no training at all."

They pause. And then –

The stranger smiles – it is a small smile, but it is enough to contort his stern features into something brighter, something gentler. But it is not the stranger you look at in wonder and bemusement and, for some incomprehensible reason, fear.

The man, your golden lover, is smiling. That is nothing out of the ordinary, but – but.

You find that you cannot describe his smile, much like the patrons who cannot describe him.

(This is the moment – this is what you think, much later. You tell yourself that you should have known. It had been, in retrospect, so obvious, at least to you who had known your lover so well, so much better than the rest of them.)

And perhaps the swordsman sees it too, for he stays.

It is not a strange occurrence for the Pirate King's companions – or the Pirate King himself – to visit the restaurant. They are all close to one another; their closeness is renowned as much as their own legends. Even if separated and busy with their own lives, their own roles in the world, their own stories and continuations of their legends in branches, they still find each other, in the end. The captain, the Pirate King, visits often, clamoring for food (Sanji! You still make the best food, and I've been around a lot but you still do!), and most of the times the navigator – the mapper of every sea; you have read about her once in some book, and have seen her name in many maps – is by his side. (At first you had been rather alarmed and bemused at the chef's utter devotion towards the latter – but then, you notice, there is scarcely any desire for real romance in it – there is no real flirtation, but much love.) Sometimes a tall, beautiful woman with a very large, almost flamboyant-looking man; sometimes a skeleton who plays some of the best music you have ever heard – melodies that remain in your ear long after he leaves; sometimes a long-nosed man with much valiance and deserved bravado; sometimes a little raccoon in a hat who tells everybody he is a reindeer. Every person for whom your lover smiles in a different way from his grins at the patrons – every person you know, from a book or a tale or some piece of hushed gossip. You never do quite believe that they are real. But they come and go, frequently, and so you and the other men of the kitchen become used to their presence, as if becoming accustomed to a strange and magnificent dream.

So at first you think the swordsman is like the rest of the chef's companions, who come and go and raise big parties (or what blows into parties, those simple dinners; you never sleep with him during such nights, but you are content to see the excitement of the legends collected around the table); the other companions may return, but they never stay. You sometimes watch your lover's back as he waves them off, and you expect that the swordsman too will leave.

Yet as the days pass, the swordsman still remains. He does not do much – he drinks – he eats – he argues – he trains often, sleeps often, seldom helps out (your lover seems to be much against him coming in the kitchen, a fact that the swordsman seems oblivious to). Sometimes challengers, often young swordsmen and fighters, come demanding his time; then the swordsman quietly steps out of your lover's beloved restaurant and returns shortly after. Before and after such fights, the patrons talk of him, as they talk of the golden man, the owner of the restaurant, your lover. You can see their eyes comparing the two unlikely figures, imagining their days of youth together on a ship, their companions by their side. You can see that they think of the two men to be the same, two characters of the same legend.

But you – you alone can see the differences; whereas your lover's hands are always moving, always fleeting, the swordsman's hands are always slow in their movements, lethargic, like some big cat, like the depth of a forest in some country far away. Sometimes they scratch at his face in a sleepy daze, sometimes they scrunch in a fight against your lover; but usually they rest against his swords or his chest, and are still. He stays in an empty room, much akin to how you had come and stayed in an empty room; you think, then, that perhaps he is the same. He and your lover are always fighting or arguing, sometimes sparring, never doing much.

Your lover's hands never reach out to touch him, even in fights, and you think, they do not love each other. And so you are inexplicably relieved.

But then – but then.

One night you see your lover's face; the swordsman has gone somewhere (sleeping? Drinking? Sometimes he goes down to the town, sometimes he sits by the sea), and so have the other men of the kitchen; the man is smoking and sitting at the empty bar. You are quiet in your movements as you walk to him (always, always such a strange thing – you wish to run away, and yet at the same time you are always drawn to him).

And he turns – and there is that terrible face, that piercing – grief? Loneliness? You do not know, you do not understand – and his hands fidget with jerky movements, never still. Yet you are relieved, for you know what to do, this time – this is something you have experienced before, that night with the drunk whose name has been forgotten – and so you kiss him. You offer yourself to him. That night he takes you, hungrily, and he kisses you and takes you again and again (by the wall, in the bed, everywhere, a dream) and you are content; you are happy.

But his eye still holds some part of that storm. He has that terrible expression on him – you see that he is in pain (for you too have been in pain) and there is nothing you can do.

Yet he always returns in the morning, the golden man returning with the sun accompanied by his busy hands and charming smile; there is no hint of whatever anguish he cradles in his heart during the day. You simply watch him. At first you are uneasy, and puzzled; but night after night you offer yourself to him and he to you (and – you can guess – other patrons too), and he always returns – so you are content.

So content you are as one night, some weeks after the arrival of the swordsman, you go out into the chilly night air to take a walk (sleepless, for your thoughts always revolve around your lover); this is the night when you hear it, and you pause, and the world stops for an impossible minute.

You can hear shouts from the man through the open window on the first floor and some responses in the swordsman's low voice. It is one of those nights when the swordsman drinks alone, even after they close and you and the other men of the kitchen retreat into the comforts of the night. It is one of those nights when your lover never joins you, when he leaves you, even when he seems so tired and lost and – (and you listen,)

I hate you, I loathe you, this is what your lover's voice is saying to the swordsman, I detest you and I wish you would just stop with whatever this is. (The swordsman does not respond.) I hate you so much even after so many years, you always think of me as something – something expendable, am I even one of your companions anymore, everyone else came to visit but you never did and getting lost or being the greatest swordsman in the world are hardly reasons for all these years, how could you, how dare you, I thought I understood you and even after all these years – what the fuck do I mean to you, I wish you would get the fuck out, I wish, I wish that, I hate you, I wish you would –

For some reason, questions scurry across your mind, echoed within your memory: Is this enough? Am I enough? What do I mean to you? What do you think of me?

And from your lover's mouth there is born a word, in a piercing whisper wrangled into a near-shout, a desperate little thing. His voice is nothing like his usual suave tone, nothing like his sweet lilt when he faces the beautiful patrons, nothing like his impassioned moans when he took you and you took him. It is only a single word, told in a clumsy voice and almost pathetic (how could he be pathetic?) grimace. It is almost enough to think that he will fail in its delivery – like the patrons who come and go by each day – and yet for some reason it is nothing like the patrons' voices, nothing like your own fumbling to encompass the man you love, nothing like them.

Stay.

The swordsman looks at him, and it is enough. And from his quiet gaze and your lover's resolve you know that this is the question you were never asked – that you thought you had been asked – but this is the only word that matters, in the end.

Your lover's hands clench and unfurl and fidget,

and the swordsman reaches out for them.

You have never thought to take your lover's hands in your own. But the swordsman has, and he does, and his coarse fingers – scarred with many years and so much violence – give in to your lover's hands, and hold them. He does not say anything, but he holds your lover's hands, and it is enough of an answer to you – it is an answer to him, to them.

You have never seen your lover's hands so still. You have never thought that he could be like this –

And before your eyes, legend clashes into legend and surprisingly, so painfully, and yet so simply – so very simply – they become a simple story, simple men who are doing nothing, who do not dare to move lest one of them shatters, who are quiet for they do not need any words at the moment (they already know whatever they need to know), who have somehow forgotten everything, and yet remember at the same time all the days of their youths, and know of their days to come. They are two simple men, and you are disappointed, almost, for what you see is not encased in splendor and beauty but only the most ordinary of oddities and some regret – and it does not become the man you love. They are now nothing but men of the most ordinary story, one that even you have heard a thousand times before, and their grandness fades away into something almost bittersweet.

As you look at them, at that scene held still in their ordinariness, something rises up painful and hard in your chest and into your eyes, for you know, somehow, as the man hesitantly – carefully – finally leans into the swordsman's embrace.

The swordsman's one grey eye is so gentle as he leans his forehead against that of the other man, who has closed his eye, and is breathing in deeply: out, in, and out again, his chest rising and falling against the swordsman's chest, as if he is drowning in the depths of something you cannot see – until he is nearly sobbing. The swordsman's hands are still in their quietness, locking your lover into some moment of eternity that you know will never be quite erased from your mind, that will last longer than any detail of the legends, any story you have heard about your golden lover.

He had known, all those days before – perhaps, all those years before, before you came and seen his hands and fell in love. And now you too know – you know for the last time.

You know, as you look at this picture, this slice of the window of a restaurant by the sea, this scene of a sobbing man who you once loved and another who holds your lover so gently, that by the next morning he will be back. For the man you know, the golden man with his stories and legends and beautiful hands (for nothing will ever affect his cooking, his manners to the patrons, his past) will always live, somehow: through words, through voices, even if that man is now dulled and faded and (you think so – you fear so – you know so -) lost to you. Perhaps the transition, you think, is temporary; there are words that legends always go back to, always repeat themselves, always seek to encompass what life couldn't hold in its hands. What you couldn't hold in your hands.

Yet you know. You know that something has changed: you do not know exactly what, you cannot say in your insufficient words and voice and – now – your clumsy hands. But there is something in the man that has shifted – or perhaps deepened in colour and feeling, or perhaps completed what had been started a long time ago, in an unforgotten past. You do not know what it is, who he is, not anymore. The transition is not temporary at all – it is something eternal, something you cannot change.

They never say anything, in the end, even when you – in regret, perhaps, or that desire to know and confirm like that night so long ago – look at them for a few more moments, and then close your eyes. But you know that your existence by the window is not a result of your decision: you canot turn – you cannot leave, for the pain of awareness catches you and keeps you still.

You admire him. You love him.

And yet.

The stillness of his hands breaks you, in the end. The night taunts you with the hint of rain.

What do you think of me? That had been his question. And yet he had been disappointed by everything, all the love and devotion and fear and admiration you could have – had – offered, had given him.

You love him. But you cannot help him. You do not know him. You cannot hold him.

For the first time since the man – that man, that beautiful man with his beautiful hands, his brilliant, golden hands – kissed you that night (and you understand, you finally understand), you cry. For you know. There is nothing you can do – he is still too much, a force of nature – he is forever to you a legend, a storm that broke you in the end, an ocean that you cannot hope to find. Men like yourself can only look as the tide draws out, and in, and out again. You can only look as stories fade away into the most ordinary of things. Only look as you once fell in love with him, and you stayed; only look as things go, and leave, but must always return, in the end. As you think, I admired you, I loved you, you are a great man, this I know, and you will be, but, but.

As you think, but you always looked towards the sea. You never turned back, and I didn't understand. I thought you had everything, I could have offered you everything, and yet you always looked towards the sea, even when I loved you, you were always searching for something, and now. And now I know.

You look as your lover finally breaks under the swordsman's impossible gentleness, into a million pieces that the swordsman catches and cradles close to his heart with his coarse fingers; as their hands are still in their sorrow and longing and -

As rain falls on the ocean, gently, so very gently. You look, and you look. As they breathe.

Fin.