Major editing and some rewriting done. Changed the title to reflect this.
Warnings: Double meanings, vague quotes from songs, and the never-ending references to time, counting and music, which are important (Germany is famed for their composers, while note dynamics are in Italian). Very mild allusions to the Holocaust.
Disclaimer: All hail Himaruya. Inspired by a prompt from sherlockkink. Author unknown, but that was also inspired by Richard Siken.
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1.
Look. There is a man who is sitting in the study. His collar is high and starched, his hair is light blond, and his eyes are ice blue. There is another man, standing behind him in clothes loose and summery. He is shorter than the first, has chestnut hair and warm brown eyes. There is a longing that lies taut like piano wire between them, unwavering, unacknowledged. It inexplicably feels familiar, as if it has been going on for a longer time than they've known each other. Light falls through the windowpanes, through the dust motes dancing in the air to fall over them both like grace made tangible. Three dogs lie sleeping in the corner. One lifts his head and wags his tail. There is a forgotten beginning, here somewhere, and also an ending.
2.
The man sitting in the chair sorts through data, analyses it, stores it away, utilises it with impeccable timing. It's what he does, the meticulous perfection that runs through his blood and defines him as a man, as a nation with ambition. He takes the data and the objectives and twists his life around them, runs his life by them. He says it's 'for the nation' when he justifies it at all.
3.
The man behind him has not smiled in a while. He has a lover's heart, but there are some people that refuse to be loved. The tragedy is that he continues to love, almost breaks himself loving the wilfully unlovable. The clock on the wall unravels the seconds, the passing time that counts the death toll, and the pianissimo breaths that both men are rationing (have you taken too much today?). You know this man. You see him every day behind every mirror.
4.
You try for him, you really do. You follow orders from your boss that makes your stomach turn and you attend training you hate, you walk his dogs and you cook for him and you sleep beside him. You do so because he needs someone to come home to, and you can't not be that person. You don't mind that you don't know war as well as your grandfather and your ancestors did. You find yourself not with a gun or spear in hand but ladles and forks and med kits now, patching up his wounds from every fight, bandaging those cuts, applying salve to those bruises; you are not ashamed to be a lover instead of a fighter, and you know Aeneas and Rome would never think ill of you. You trace the scars on his pale skin like he has the Holy Scripture written upon it, and bow your head in prayer. His heartbeats are steady as a pendulum.
5.
It's two in the morning when you jerk awake, tears still fresh upon your face, wetting your hair, your pillow. The gunshots, the canon fire, the singing blades, the screams still ring in your ears. The world is falling around you.
Breathe. War will not take him away like it has the other men you've loved. Grandpa Rome, Holy Roman Empire. Wishes like these might not mean anything, but they may, and that is what matters. Hope. Breathe.
You hear the faint strains of a pianoforte, the whiskey melody rising and ebbing like the cadence of waves dying upon the shore. You imagine pale fingers flying over those eighty-eight keys of pain, the metronome that keeps time, swinging from side to side like the scythe of a reaper. One (million), two (million), three (million); tick tocks (tragedies and statistics). Close your eyes, and listen. He is still alive. Do you feel guilty for that? Do you?
6.
He is not a man who is easy to love or easy to live with. He is not a man who can be easily fixed, nor does he want to be. But he lets you try all three, with an unreadable look in his eyes and a sad, small smile that you take and put away quietly, leaving your hands empty.
You know you are silly and simple in the ways of the world, but you are not stupid, and though loving him is something most may say to be a lost cause, deep down you know lost causes are always the ones worth fighting for.
7.
Three-thirty in the wee small hours of the morning, and you lie awake and think about him, never think of counting sheep. The notes fade, and in the stillness the silence is very loud like a rude fortissimo, even if you are perfectly deaf to all else, all their kindly-meant warnings about irreversible choices and unwise alliances. Outside the rain begins a gentle staccato that counts the rhythm of the night, beating a strange indecipherable Morse code onto the window glass.
The man in the mirror has dull umber eyes like the desert, desperate and parched for rain, crumbling at the edges. The bittersweet between your teeth tastes of desire and guilt. You swallow both, like glass, and taste the blood. Open the door (what are you afraid of?) and walk through the house (the way a knife loves a heart).
8.
There is a man sitting in the study. His collar is loose, his shirt is rumpled. He has stern aqua eyes like the desert sky, endlessly blue and achingly empty, eyes you could drown in. There is a man at the door with a lover's heart. Nothing between them but a simple door, the moonlight and starlight that stream through the windows and dashes their shadows to the ground, sharp and fuzzy-jagged, and the words unspoken, the quivering of that last note in the air, the metronome and clock keeping time together, separately. This is what it always comes down to – two men and their shadows on the floor.
9.
Imagine two men, brothers, who stand before you. They have light blond hair, pale scarred skin. One has eyes like sea glass, weathered and worn, while the other has eyes like chipped ice. One kissed you and left you, took you in and broke you apart. The other one keeps you together, protects you and saves you, kills you softly with a shuttered expression and a heart methodical as clockwork.
It's one or the other, you know this. Love one of them. Choose.
10.
Stare at the door; stare at the doorknob reflecting the man with a lover's heart and desperate sepia eyes. You could walk through this door. You could cross that grand room struck by desiccated light, your strides measured by that metronome, and come to see the man you're falling in love with. Or you could stay in this hallway illuminated by the stars and stay shackled to a memory. The bittersweet sticks in the back of your throat, like a knife in the chest and you can't pull it out or you'll bleed to death. Pull it out anyway.
The metronome stops.
11.
It was a lie, by the way. The two are not brothers; they are the same man but not in the ways that matter. You have known this since the day he found you, since his hand, rough and callused, touched your hand and no amount of time lessens the love of a man with a lover's heart. You know this like you know him, like you love them both.
This is a story that began in the 900s, but this is not the end, it cannot be. Time and history owes you more than that. The two are not brothers, they are the same man. Choose, even if it was never a choice to begin with. Pull out the knife and hold it up to the light. Hold it up to the light and open the door.
12.
Open the door. Cross that room struck by moonlight. Take his face between your hands and trace your fingertips across those faint crow's feet, there because he fought and warred and died too young. Listen, you whisper to the man sitting in the chair. This has been between us every day of our lives. Every minute, and I just want to acknowledge it for once. So here it is: I love you, and I am so afraid, but I'm not sorry.
13.
The man in the chair turns his head aside, face twisting, eyes darkening. You gently turn his face around again, because you never feel wholly visible unless his eyes are on you. You say to him, No one is perfect, and you are not any less of a man for it because that's a truth of the world. You have all your ambition and you weigh all the consequences, but you cannot accept that some things are priceless, that some things have costs too high to pay, and sometimes the means never justifies the end. It's destroying me, and you, and us, and even the world, but I cannot leave you.
And you must understand that – that you cannot be rid of me either, or be undeserving of me, that life can be simple without schemes or calculations. Because you've protected me, saved me, fed me and slept beside me, and that makes me yours. And even if you're not perfect I am going to mend your wounds and sleep in your bed and cook your food and follow you into the dark because I love you and all of this will ruin us but I'm not sorry. I'm not.
14.
You made your choice. It may be a mistake, and it may not, but look. Time moves on, and the world is still standing. You feel vulnerable in the tranquil dark, but you do not run away, because a lover's heart does not run from love.
You swallow the bittersweet like a jagged pill, feel the burn in your stomach and you know that there is no ending here, either. There will eventually come the pain, the tears, the silences, the apologies, but that will be later on. Not now, and that is where you are. So swallow your desire and your guilt and forget about the what-ifs and the tomorrows. Lean closer, the distance measured by your heartbeats; one-two-three, like a bird taking flight. Kiss him.
15.
Five-thirty in the morning and the world is fast asleep, the piano mute and forgotten. The last of the moonlight and the tender beginnings of dawn sweep over the room, tracing the angles and illuminating every speck of dust. The man with light blond hair and eyes like the deepest spring lies still and quiet beside the man with chestnut hair and amber eyes. Their hearts are in harmony, steady as pendulums and clocks, keeping time separately.
-:-
Some things alluded to:
In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning – Carly Simon
What Sarah Said – Death Cab for Cutie
Jesus of Suburbia – Green Day
Piano in the Dark – Sweetbox
Rhythm of the Night - DeBarge
Young Blood – The Naked and Famous
709 - A Softer World (E. Horne and J. Comeau)
Magnolia – The Hush Sound
Killing Me Softly – Roberta Flack
Cold, Cold Heart – Nora Jones
I Will Follow You into the Dark – Death Cab for Cutie