Ashes
And the ones that can know you so well
are the ones that can swallow you whole.
I have a good and I have an evil
I thought the ocean, the ocean thought nothing,
You are the welcoming back from the ocean.—Dar Williams, The Ocean
They are gritty, sticking and clinging to his hand. He did not expect this. He had thought they would be neater, softer like fireplace ashes but this is not the case. They blow around him like the sand that sticks in his nostrils and mouth. He thanks whatever deity is listening for the borrowed sunglasses, not to mention the man who loaned them, or else his eyes would be scratched mess as well. He is still not sure why he is here, included in this ceremony. He is not family. Well, he does not consider himself family, still thinks of himself as an outsider, decades away from his time. The group of women whose opinions will not be overridden, they do not agree and he will not argue. He knows futility when he sees it.
Back in Midgar, well, Edge, he corrects himself, he is a person of some import and reputation. People give him his way if for no other reason than he makes them uncomfortable and they wish to be rid of him. But he is not currently in Edge. He is in Costa del Sol. His rules do not apply here.
One week earlier
It is Nannan's sister's funeral, a woman he has met twice but who was a central figure in his lover's childhood. Costan culture was, is still intensely matriarchal and extended. It is apparently expected he should be here. It is winter in Costa and chilly, in spite of its tropical location. His leather duster is no crimson cloak but it flaps about him in the wind with similar effect, making him look like a broken bird on the ferry pier.
That this is not a thing he would have done in years past…well. The irony does not escape him. He stands apart while Rude is greeted and comforted by a gaggle of tiny brown women who come barely up to his elbow, not sure of where he fits in.
It's not a condition limited to funerals.
Nannan has the tired eyes of someone who is long done weeping and is now exhausted by the tedious details of caring for the dead; she fetches him, introducing him to her surviving sisters as her son's boyfriend without a trace of shame or awkwardness. Rude seems accepted here, as he is; in fact, Vincent would put money on half the male population of the town being gay. Perhaps obnoxiously so. He thinks Nannan is just happy that her son settled down with a grownup. A few women predictably tell him he has pretty hair—it seems to be a thing among straight older women—and he goes off to rescue Rude and find the ubiquitous open bar. Though, not necessarily in that order.
The coastline is different in winter, alien. He takes Rude a drink on the lanai and watches the sand whip into meringue peaks against the sky. All people do here is drink; on his first visit, he wondered how Rude made it to puberty with a functioning liver.
"Thank you for coming with me, Vin. I'd have had no one to talk to."
"Funny, coming from the man everyone thinks, never talks."
He smiles. People don't think Rude does that either. "I talk to you."
"You do." He reaches out and brushes his face. There is sand on his skin already from the wind. They will be washing it from their clothes for months. He slips from his barstool and into Rude's arms.
"Thank you."
"You said that already."
"This is different." Neither says what is different, they just know.
He is in what passes for the town hall, if somewhere like Costa del Sol would admit to having something as stuffy as a town hall. Rude's aunt had been cremated and the ashes cast out to sea hours ago, and typical of native Costans, the attendees had been drinking ever since. He still has bits of ash clinging to his clothing and wonders if there is a reverent way to brush them off.
Death is messy. Less so than life, but it is messy all the same.
He busies himself by reading historical plaques, presumptuous for a place as self-consciously new as Costa, but it beats looking as awkward and adrift as he feels. Suddenly a presence materializes at his elbow, a habit of which others are constantly accusing him.
Her son comes by the talent honestly, as well.
"He went back to the house, he said to tell you. He said something about a headache but I suspect he is simply bored with his relatives."
"Thank you, Nannan."
"It amuses him, you know."
"What does?"
"That all of you call me Nannan. The Turks. Do you know what it means?"
He shakes his head.
"In the old coastal language, if you can call it that, it's a bastardized tongue if there ever was one, it means a woman that takes care of you, but not your mother. Like an aunt, or a godmother. It's a child's word, a nursery word. All of you are big bad killers and kidnappers and such, and you call an old woman who is ninety pounds soaking wet your nannan still."
He laughs. It is funny. "Probably because you could kick all our asses."
"Would you like a mojito to take back to the house?" Gaia forbid he walk half a mile without alcohol. He might sober up.
"Sure."
He gets back to the house to find it mostly dark, except for the kitchen light and a lamp in the great room. Rude sits by the fireplace with a quilt thrown around his shoulders. There really is no heating a beach house; it is a structure designed to take in summer breezes and it will take in the winter wind as well, no matter what one does to prevent it. Vincent slips under the other side of it, curling into his side. "Mojito?"
"Ma send you home with that?"
"Of course. I think she was horrified I'd be sober."
"Yeah, you might be, sometime between now and your morning screwdriver. There's only three gallons of sangria in the fridge from lunch still."
"Any more of those little cheese cubes?"
Rude rolls his eyes, but he returns shortly with a tray of cheese and two beers. "No one would think you ate an hour ago."
It's true, he has been eating all day. People have left an astonishing array of food; it is a funeral custom that baffles him. But then social customs in general baffle him. He picks at the cheese and leans into Rude's warmth. It's nice to have the house to themselves after a day of friend's and relatives' constant presence. In minutes, both are sound asleep beneath the quilt, where Nannan finds them. After a moment's thought, she lets them be.
They wake after midnight when the fire goes out and chill descends on the room. "Fuck, it's cold in here," Rude mutters, grabbing quilt in one hand and lover in the other and making for the stairs.
"Put the pajamas under the quilts with us." Vincent suggests helpfully.
"Instead of putting them on?"
"Instead of putting them on, yes. It will warm them to body temperature." Cold makes Rude a little obtuse, but the sight of a naked Vincent diving under the covers drives the point home.
"….oh." Then, "Aren't you cold?"
He has been cold most of his life, but thinks it is beside the point. He has burned since giving his heart and body to this man. He burns now.
"No." Rude's hand comes up to tangle in his hair, brush it back, and opens his mouth on a kiss.
"Beautiful." Rude whispers. He's stopped arguing with the man. He can't now, anyway, he aches with want, knows from the hardness that Rude does too. His movements are hectic and Vincent moves to soothe them with his hand, with his kisses, with soft words. "Gods, Vin. I want…"
"I know." He realizes, belatedly, that pajamas aren't the only thing that he should have been bringing to body temperature as he reaches for the bottle of lubricant. He tries to warm it and his own fingers as he applies it to himself before moving to prepare Rude.
Judging from the yelp, he does not entirely succeed. "Don't stop. Need you." He can get lost in the emotions on Rude's face, ride them like the waves outside the door. Tenderness, desire, grief, love, urgency. He presses slowly into him, the tightness and the heat intoxicating. He withdraws and then pushes back in, soon finding a rhythm to his thrusts that makes them both moan in need. He went without this so long, was alone so long, so absorbed in his self condemnation.
And then Rude.
After years of solitude, it is like learning to see in color when all he knew was black and white..
They hold close to each other in their lovemaking to conserve warmth, bringing a friction that is driving Rude over and past the edge. Vincent can feel it in the uneven movements, see it in the strained passion of his lover's eyes. Rude gasps, time stands still, he feels the warmth rush between them and his own release claims him. Rude claims him. He bows his head until it touches his lover's chest and waits for his heart to stop pounding.
It takes a very long time.
He wakes in early morning, the room empty but still smelling of…them.
The bathroom is still warm, so he showers quickly to take advantage of it. Going downstairs he finds Rude at the table and Nannan cooking breakfast. She puts a mimosa in front of him.
He didn't think he would be allowed to make it to lunch without a buzz.
"Eggs benedict all right with you, babe?" He nods. The house is quiet and cleaned from most of the evidence that there was ever a funeral. He supposes life is returning to normal. "We'll help ma clean up and leave tomorrow." He nods again. He wonders when he became so tongue tied, around Rude of all people. He is saved from his own silence by the arrival of his breakfast.
Later they do dishes together, a rarity in this house as Nannan usually insists on running her own kitchen. This time however, Rude makes the point that she needs rest, the funeral has tired her out, and he is right. They stand side by side at the old fashioned sink, in the cool of morning, touching each time they pass a plate to be rinsed. They take their time.
When they are done, Rude traps him against the dish drainer with a long, easy kiss. "Kinda feel a nap coming on." It isn't even eight and he doubts very much what Rude has in mind is anything approaching a nap, but he allows himself to be pulled upstairs anyway. They have the entire afternoon to clean the house, and Nannan is dozing peacefully on the sofa as they pass.
They wake again, and it is nearly lunch. Rude goes downstairs to call work and reassures Reno that they need nothing but thanks him for his offers to drive down and help. Rude informs him later that his partner had taken on both their workloads for the week so that he wouldn't come home to a backlog, reaffirming his suspicion that the redhead's laziness was half an act and half a matter of convenience. The man is intensely loyal to his friends. Rude chats briefly with Tseng and climbs back upstairs. "You gonna sleep all day?"
"You're one to talk. You have an alternative in mind?" He is still dazed from the morning's lovemaking. He had intended it as comfort but it pushed him past the limits of sanity; he had come so hard, Rude filling him, his hand around him, that he had bit into Rude's shoulder to stifle his cries lest he wake the woman downstairs.
Nannan, he suspects, is not quite that open minded. It's a good thing it is winter, Rude has an excuse to hide the mark that it left.
"Let's go out."
"Even though we have a refrigerator full of food."
"Tell me honestly you want another meal of ham, cheese cubes, and lemon pie."
Not really, no.
They go to a small local pub, one of the few establishments open during the off season. Over pressed pork sandwiches, Rude tells him of the Alligator Point Swamp Monster, a creature with distinctive mating cry, a haunting keening moan that could be heard for miles through the marshlands nearby. The legend has it that his mate was killed when the bridge was built between Costa and the end of the Point, and he cries for his lover in his grief.
"And?"
"And, when someone paid for a paranormal research team to come out and investigate, they found out the sound was coming from delivery trucks going over the metal grates on the bridge. But by then, it was a tourist industry on the Point. There's a bar down there that sells a Gator Monster Sandwich, in fact. It's chicken, though."
Vincent laughs, then is quiet. "I'm sorry about your aunt, I don't think I've actually said that all week."
"No, it's okay. I'll miss her. She was a tough old broad. She was the oldest of them, half raised her younger sisters."
"They are all tough old broads from the looks of it. I'm scared of them, and I know about a hundred ways to torture grown men with drinking straws."
"They know more. You don't know how terrified I was to introduce you to my mother. I was afraid she would scare you off."
"We weren't even lovers then."
"Yeah, well. I may have told her I was in love with you."
"So that's why it felt like a job interview."
Rude squeezes his hand, getting pork grease all over him in the process. "You're hired."
X
"Ma, you call us if you need anything, you hear me?" It escapes neither the mother, nor the lover, the use of the plural pronoun. They are now us. Vincent and his nannan share a smile that is missed entirely by the son. She steps forward to kiss Vincent.
"I will see you soon, no, fiyel?"
"Yes, Nannan. Soon." They board the ferry. "Rude, what is a fiyel?"
"It's, um. Sort of a godson, an adopted son but not legally. I almost shit myself when she said that but I guess it's accurate. Doesn't seem like you're going anywhere. You've attended a funeral, gods, you're family now."
Family. He'll never understand these people as long as he lives, but he can deal with that. He leans into Rude for warmth against the chill of the sea wind as they head for home.