STATIC-STRUCK .

MARTIN    /    cooking together

the tender domestic intimacy... making something that you can share and enjoy together... getting to feed each other at the end... you want a love that is effortless and lasting, one where you are best friends as well as romantic partners. you want someone that understands how you feel before you even say anything. you want someone who can make you believe in soulmates, and where every kiss feels like coming home. sometimes you worry that effortlessness will turn into boredom, and that your romance lacks the passion you often see in others. let this fear go; your devotion is passion, and anyone who appreciates you properly will feel the fire in your connection

TIM   /    sharing looks from across a room

having an evening of flirty side glances... the thrill of the chase and of being chased... getting to sneak around before the grand finale... you want a love that is exciting but fleeting, you want the thrill of being chased and being romanced. you have little care for how long your flings last for, but you want them to be passionate and full of laughter and inside jokes. you want every one of your past lovers to miss you when you leave. although it is impractical to ask for someone to change their nature, it may be a good reminder that some feelings are okay to embrace. there is no need to always run away from others, especially if running back to them makes you feel like the sun.

@eyesolate, martin.      i’d live on the moon probably except i think I’d miss the moonlight.      *

jonathan sims is not in the habit of saying the first thing that appears fully formed in his mind,      and he is suddenly thankful for the thought that comes before his words,      preventing him from saying his first instinct:      i think i’d miss you.      sickening-sweet and utterly embarrassing and      …      not even relevant,      given that they’re discussing absolute impossibilities,      looking at the stars with several feet of space between them like that short distance dissolves the romantic cliche of the moment.

it’s just that they’re so clear here without the light pollution london brings.      and jon had mentioned that he’d known the constellations by heart as a child,      had mused idly on whether or not he still remembered them      —      he could Know them,      he’s sure,      but that ruins the challenge of it,      so instead he’s focusing very hard on locking beholding out and pointing at andromeda and perseus as he spots them.      he tries to tell himself he is not thinking at all of how close martin is      —      how blessedly unlonely this feels,      this intimacy,      despite all between them remaining unspoken.

he takes a moment to lock away all embarrassing thoughts that threaten to spill out before he speaks.            ‘      for a time,      when i was a child,      my biggest dream was to be an astronaut.      a very short time,      mind,      since i was insufferable about changing interests every week or so,      much to the dismay of my grandmother,      but      …      something about seeing the earth from elsewhere seemed impossibly beautiful.      ’            he tears his gaze from the sky for a moment,      looks at martin.      bathed in moonlight martin,      impossibly handsome martin.      his tongue ties itself in knots for a moment,      and when jon speaks again it’s quieter,      voice stuck somewhere in the stars above.            ‘      the moonlight would be a loss,      though.      ’

THERE ARE MORE STARS HERE THAN MARTIN THINKS HE’S EVER SEEN.      there’s poetry,      he thinks,      yearning to unfurl itself on his tongue,       to unwind the jumble of thoughts and emotions stirred by such a vast sky;       how big the moon seems as it gazes back at them,     with perhaps the same reverence as they offer toward it      ---       they,     a new constellation for which only the skies bear witness,       so far now from searching astronomers.                does the moon map them too?      each as anchor points to another.     how many thousand kilometres might the skies translate between their stars,      with hands not inches apart,     and knees sometimes bumping as jon reaches to point to another constellation with concentration and comfort knitted into the crease of his brow.

his gaze turns from the galaxies so far above as jon speaks,       laughter half-caught behind the swell of warmth which seems to leap from his chest and into his throat at the thought of a precocious young jon,      impassioned by the idea of the suns and worlds to discover;     knowledge,     always knowledge to uncover,     even then.

martin is still getting used to the idea of warmth;     there’s a chill which lingers in the tips of his fingers and toes,      an ever-present,      nipping frost that no gloves or socks can keep at bay.  but with jon sitting beside him,    face lit with the reflection of so distant a glow,     martin at once understands how such light,       such heat,       might be mistaken a star.

and his eyes turn,     a shifting as natural as gravities and orbits,      before he can see jon’s drift toward him     ---     wouldn’t know what to do if he met that brightness head-on.                 the warmth,      however,      lingers.

“       impossibly,       ”        he murmurs in shaky echo,      swallows the urge to weep with the overwhelming notion that he is here;       stars so close and so distant that he could reach out and touch them...       touch him.                  searching for the networks of distant pinprick lights jon had pointed out not moments before.      he could listen to jon talk of stars for hours,         and there’s something that aches in martin to not know their stories too,      those loves and journeys so powerful they became caught in the expanse of the universe,       immortalised in ever-dying light.

       sasha had never been one to spend too much time decorating her old flat, despite living there and only there since she had left home. there were trinkets she had gathered from corners in charity shops where things like them tended to go to die and she always had a fondness for finding a good quilt. but it was different now. she found herself looking forward to little trips where she could look at dish towels or knobs for her dresser drawers. it was a nice distraction from whatever spooky mystery the work day had for them.

        ‘ what do you think about corgi themed throw pillows for the couch? ‘ she glanced back towards tim, holding up a pillow with a very pleased corgi surrounded by flowers. ‘ i mean, i don’t want to give mr. peanut a big head, but these would go really well with the coasters we picked up. ‘

@eyesolate / starter call.

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT WANDERING AISLES OF HOMEWARES THAT SETS TIM SO ABSURDLY AT EASE.        ikea is something of a liminal space,      he thinks,      the closest thing to a modern fae realm you can get to by tube,     while also being just so perfectly inane;       blessed mundanity with just enough uncanny squeezed in to make it never boring.              if there’s ever been a ghostly apparition or fear-based terror at an ikea,      tim decisively doesn’t want to know    ---     the universe,      he thinks fairly,      can give him this one thing. 

admittedly it might be the fact that he’s there with sasha that has him so contented.      a once whole-house outing to decide on decor,      whittled down to just the two of them by jon finally getting some good fuckin sleep in,       and martin deciding he’d rather stay so jon didn’t wake up alone    (    ‘   what  a simp   ’    he’d snorted to sasha,     lacing their fingers without any sense of irony,     to pull her closer as they headed toward tim’s car    ) 

they’ve ended up in the kids’ section of the bedroom wares,     rainbow throw blankets and stuffed animals lining the walls,      different organisers in bright block colours,      toys and penguin-shaped lampshades,      all in pursuit of a dog-inspired range promised on the glossy pages of the catalogue tim had picked up on their way in.      of course,    they’d had to see if there were any satisfactory homages to mr. peanut. 

tim’s changed      —      the blast,      the wreckage,      the aftermath      —      but so has she.      sharper-tongued and static-eyed;      her irises glint in the afternoon light,      that record-button red that stays steady on every disparate model of tape recorder that appears around her.      when she looks at him,      it is not a longing to see the old him,      one unmarred by waxwork and desolation.      she’s all truths and hardly any room for wishes.      she squeezes his fever-warm hand and it is solid and that is all she needs from him      —      just to be there,      after she thought she’d lost him forever.

because nobody could return from such an explosion.      sasha’d been far enough away to avoid the worst of it,      but she’d still been in hospital for a few weeks recovering from shrapnel wounds,      has a nasty scar across her ribcage to show for it.      nobody could return,      but tim did      —      came back for her,      and that means something.      that means everything.

(      sasha’d always thought the idea of another person completing you,      two halves of a whole and etcetera,      was trite at best and insulting at worst,      but with tim she can almost understand the urge to such poetics.      she feels more herself around tim.      he’s the only person who’s seen every mask she wears and whatever lies underneath and stayed.      and now they’ve changed,      but they’ve done it together.      two halves.      )

‘      you don’t have to apologize,      ’            she says.      soft and steady and smiling      —      an anchor,      a tether,      a plea to stay this time,      please,      for me.      there’s a lot that she understands and more that she sees without comprehending:      she thinks she understands what he’d done at the unknowing,      the desperation that had led him there.      she wants to understand.      more,      she wants to be joyful that it didn’t end the way he’d expected      —      and a part of her pushes back at that,      says this must be the opposite of what he had wanted,      but he’s alive and he is back and god,      she could weep for the sheer wealth of emotion that’s boiling in her.

some part of her more beholding than sasha is hesitant to take her eyes off of him      —      as if he’ll disappear or change the moment she isn’t looking directly at his face      —      but she ignores it.      she wants her arms around him and so she goes:      buries her face in his shoulder,      wraps her arms tight around his back.      pours every ounce of feeling into the embrace.

his skin is warm enough that it’ll be uncomfortable fast,      and she’s well aware that they’re still outside her flat:      on her periphery she can sense more than see the pigeons waddling past,      the family across the street side-eyeing her reckless embrace of him,      the sun dipping ever-lower in the sky.      she doesn’t dare move even so.      it’s a giddy joy that consumes her.

‘      you don’t have to apologize,      ’            she repeats,            ‘      but god,      i missed you.      ’            it hasn’t been so long since the unknowing,      but waking up to the news that he had died in the explosions had been      …      indescribable.      worse than a million horrors she has seen and a million more she can only imagine.      that hopeful urge at the back of her mind that perhaps he wasn’t gone was written off as delusion when it should have been a hint,      knowledge,      such precious knowing.      she should know to trust her instincts by now      —      the eye hasn’t led her wrong yet,      just made her more.

muffled against his shirt:            ‘      we should go inside,      i know,      but i      …      i don’t really want to let go of you.      sorry.      ’        (    @anchoir      )

‘       I MISSED YOU TOO.      ’        her arms around him,      cheek pressed to the fever-hot of his chest      ---       it’s almost a surprise to tim that sasha still fits there:       as if there should have been some monumental change,       some residual discordance to mark where their places in the cosmos have shifted.      piecemeal as he is,     wearing the roadmap of his destruction and rebirth     ...      it’s almost a surprise,       in the same way that it’s not,         not at all. 

(        they’d had a conversation about soulmates,         once,         in the way you find things to talk about when spending long hours of office tedium with someone you can actually talk to     ---      mostly tongue-in-cheek,        half an excuse to each wax poetic on their various esoteric knowledges and niche interests without sounding like prats,        another part an excuse to look closer into the lens with which the other viewed the world,         to understand each other on the things that don’t mean anything really,        and the things that mean everything actually when you really look at it.

tim,      in truth,        had really held no strong feelings about the concept,      but dug his heels in on the notion simply because he could,     because he liked the furrow it put on sasha’s brow and the way she smiled quizzically at tim as she tried to work out if he was teasing her.      because he’d wanted to play romantic for the afternoon,      step into martin’s shoes and buy into the notion that love could be so powerful a force in the universe that it might be written into our bones,     sewn into the threads of our very souls.     that there might be someone for everyone out there     ---     not necessarily an other half,      because why would something so erratic as the universe ever deal in something so specific as monogamy     ---      but a person,      people,       to add to the wholeness of ones own heart,      to complement and complete another in their own ways,      for however long they last in the scale of forever.

they’d talked all afternoon,      down in those basements lined with ghost stories,       straying and returning to the idea of soulmates as new thoughts occurred and with them,      new theories and rebuttals.      and tim doesn’t know really when it happened       ---      where among the files the moment might be stacked and archived,      chronicled for future researchers seeking confirmation of the unexplainable and the cosmic,       or simply having the same debate in the same bored office-hours with the same something without yet a name or decisive action to take,       growing      ---        but somewhere tim realised perhaps his theories of having another so in tune with the frequency of ones soul that it became tangible,      had just a little bit of everything to do with the way sasha would snort and break off into laughter before he’d even finished setting up the joke.         )

now,        a hundred years between that conversation and where they stand now,        sasha is holding him like she’s thrown herself on a grenade,      like she can retroactively protect tim from the blast and fallout if only she can keep him close enough.      and despite her urgency,      despite the way it clenches in his chest like he’s holding his breath and she’s his reminder to breathe,       it’s so inexplicably routine      ---      as if they’d never missed a moment,       like months hadn’t passed and they both hadn’t become the monsters they’d read about in dusty old statements into equally archaic tape recorders       ---      when tim’s hand goes instinctively to the pocket of her coat,       reaching around to find the keychain her house key is kept on,      and he walks them with deliberate,       shuffling steps and a chuckle into the fading pink of her hair,      a couple inches closer to the door so he can unlock it over her shoulder and she doesn’t have to let go.

the door swings open with the same groan it always has,      and tim thinks again that she really ought to grease that hinge even though he knows she never will,       and everything is different because he’d spent months waiting for the moment his heart would finally stop,      so he’d stop having to feel so overwhelmed and lost in everything;        because he’d kissed her once and known it would be the last time.             and now he’s standing in her doorway again,     held so surely in her arms that he almost worries sasha will melt into him too,     find her place among the waxwork and be consumed,       completing the patchwork quilt he wears as a body,      as if their soulmate theories could ever be proven by something so fearful as his revenant desolation.

and he’s not sure there’s room enough in his firepit-heart for how it feels like he’s come home.

the kind of sincerity that radiates from tim terrifies jon for no good reason:      as if that sunshine were something that could be broken with one clumsy step or unthinking word from jon,      as if,      even hand in hand as they are,      jon could ruin the moment.      but god      —      it may genuinely kill jon to stop his mind from racing with worries for even a minute,      but he can have this,      can’t he?

(      it’s late.      there’s no one else in the institute,      as far as jon can tell      —      he’d gotten wrapped up in research but he hasn’t heard a single sound from outside this room since tim put his mind to distraction.      tim is,      all things told,      very good at distracting jon,      and jon is growing better at allowing himself to be distracted.      half a bottle of whatever booze tim keeps hidden in his desk drawers later,      jon doesn’t even spare a thought to the open books on his desk.      )

‘      i do know how to dance,      tim,      ’            and his annoyance is halfhearted at most,      smile flickering into place as he does just that:      a hand resting on tim’s shoulder,      light as the flapping of a moth’s wings,      swaying in time.      jon was never the most spectacular dancer,      even when he took a few classes with georgie      —      and that was near a decade ago,      now,      so he’s rusty      —      but      …      this,      he thinks he can manage.      (      knows tim won’t laugh at him even if he does stumble.      it’s      …      it’s odd,      just how sure he is of that,      but comforting nonetheless.      )            ‘      so long as you don’t try to      —      to twirl me,      or anything,      i think i’ll manage without stepping on any toes.      ’

'      OH,    DO YOU NOW   ?     ’      tim has traded in his usual bravado for something softer,       words warm and heady,      soaked in the sweet wine shared on their breath.      the research offices are empty,      no one to catch them in their dalliances now the institute’s watchful eyes have closed for the evening.

still,       jon’s prosaic show of irritation is as much the fulfilment of ritual as the way tim still drapes himself in the doorway of jon’s office,      6-ish most nights,      to disrupt jon’s persistent evening of overtime.        as with any dance,      they step in counterpoint        ---        jon insists there is work to be done,       tim does his best to de-rail it         (      no reason working to pay rent if you’re living at your desk,      boss     )       jon puts up a resistance until tim concedes to help,      and then pretends like he doesn’t notice when tim’s only assistance is getting him to set his pen down and talk about anything other than their latest batch of ghost stories,        until suddenly it’s too late to stay lest they risk showing up the next morning without time enough to have brushed their teeth.

if perhaps they were braver,      they’d drop the pretence and put a name to whatever this is.         because there is a name,       certainly,        for the way tim’s hand rises from jon’s waist,       the way he watches with adoration the barest furrow of concentration in jon’s brow and the flush rising in his cheeks.        how tim brushes a stray wisp of grey-streaked hair back from his dance partner’s eyes,      his fingertips falling to linger at the rough of jon’s jaw,       feeling the warmth of his skin,       their sway keeping time with the steady beat of his pulse. 

but whatever it is,      it’s new;      it’s a baby giraffe walking on too long,     not quite strong enough legs.      tim thinks he knows what he’s doing,     thinks he knows where they’re going,     but doesn’t want to startle jon off his feet and knock them to the ground by doing something so stupid as asking.            it’s hardly the first of tim’s nameless forays or flings,        but it’s     ...      well,        as well-versed in the art of romance as tim stoker is      (      and will proudly proclaim,     with crooked grin and a healthy dose of hubris,       to anyone who might ask       )      whatever jon is to him is       ...      almost uncharted territory. 

what had started as a waltz stance,       has devolved into something more high-school,       the way you slow-dance before you know anything about waltzing except what you’ve seen on movies,       when it’s just an excuse to be close.

        (         heaven,        i'm in heaven      ...      and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak when we're out together dancing,        cheek to cheek    ...      )

each word is a punch to the gut,      and jon thinks it may be easier if that were literal,      if he were left bleeding at the edges of the institute in any way but metaphorical.      he’s certainly earned it by now.      what does it say about jon that he’s grown so accustomed to violence he’d prefer it over an honest heart-to-heart?      is it better or worse if he cannot tell whether this is a new development,      or if he has always been so incapable of such vulnerability?

it isn’t as if he can leave.      so each syllable lands its blow and he stares firmly at the ground and breathes shaky smoke and lends no assistance to beholding.      this isn’t meant for the eye.

(      he looks up,      sharply,      only once.      my jon.      it’s as much a comfort as it is a wound:      the implied past-tense,      that tim’s jon no longer exists and never will again.

it aches more than he’d expected it to,      and he cannot meet tim’s eyes for more than a moment.      he catches the very start of tim’s achingly false smile and his gaze drops.      )

suddenly,      tim is silent,      and the void his words leave as they hang in the air is unfathomably vast,      waiting for jon to fall in and never resurface.      there’d be no coming back from that.      but there’s already no going back,      isn’t there:      he can no more erase the wrongs he’s done than move forward with them unaddressed,      and he’s stuck tightroping over this canyon between sentences,      equally fearful of speaking and staying silent.

he does speak.      he has to.      his full weight leans against the brick behind him;      his unoccupied hand presses at his eyes,      as if it alone could quell the emotion threatening to flood out of him.      not now,      he begs it.      

‘      i know,      ’            he says,      because he’s apologized too many times and the words i’m sorry mean very little by now.            ‘      i’ll admit i’ve      …      i’ve had the same thoughts,      about one of us being replaced.      whether i would know.      whether i did know,      with her,      with sasha      —      i look back and i think perhaps that’s why i was so damn paranoid,      that maybe i knew something was wrong and couldn’t place what until i found the tapes of her voice.      ’

he shakes his head,      the wryest of unhappy laughs escaping smokefilled into the air.            ‘      i know that’s just      …      hindsight,      wishful thinking,      what have you.      wanting to give some reasonable cause to the way i acted,      rather than it being      —      what it was.      unreasonable,      unwarranted,      unfair.      to      —      to you,      especially,      i know.      ’

his cigarette’s nearly burnt out already.      have they really been talking for so long?      he stamps it out on the wall behind him,      drops the end on the ground;      of all his sins,      littering is fairly low on the list of importance,      by now.            ‘      i was      …      i was afraid.      i still am      —      god,      i’m terrified all the time,      but i should’ve seen that you were,      too.      ’            his words are trembling in time with his hands.      at least he can shove one shaking piece of him into his coatpockets,      hide them from view.

‘      i know it might be easier if i’d been replaced as well.      something simple to blame,      at least.      but      …      i’m still here,      tim.      christ,      i’m still      …      ‘your jon;’      if you’d let me be,      of course.      the      —      the good thing,      about me not being replaced by some eldritch thing,      is that      …      i’d like to think i’m still capable of change?      of being better      —      at the very least,      someone you can stomach being around.      i know that’s an incredibly low bar,      but      …      it’s a start,      isn’t it?      ’      god,      it has to be.      he needs it to be something.

THEY’RE THE AFTERMATH OF A BATTLEGROUND,      A BOMBSITE;      all ruins piled high and ashes still smouldering,     bloody and riddled with shrapnel.       for all the steps they’re finally taking,    pulling themselves ragged but breathing to the surface,     they’re still half-crushed beneath rubble and despite how he wants to,      tim doesn’t know how to begin digging their way out without bringing it down around them both.

where once there’d been a cruel,      stomachsick satisfaction  to every blow his cold words and brutal disregard could land against jon’s attempts at defence or apology,       the tremor in jon’s words now leaves tim queasy.      stubborn as jonathan sims can be,     there’s no fight left in him here.         jon takes every hit,     flinches but doesn’t move from the crosshairs     ---     scarred and burned,      exhausted and scared,     any instinct of self-preservation has been beaten from his bones,      and it makes tim ache to see him recoil,     only to keep reaching out anyway.

how did they get here    ?       even so clearly as tim can map each slight,     each breakdown in communication,      all the fear and all the paranoia that has left them standing here at ceasefire with a minefield between them    ...    he can’t make it fit any better than the feeble notion that perhaps jon was never himself.       all of it just desperate fabrication,      to say he doesn’t recognise jon anymore,     to say their pieces are too shattered,     too broken to put back together.             they’re all jagged edges now,     with so long spent sharpening themselves into weapons,      corkscrews to try and dig the other out from so deep under their skin    ---     what possible difference could slicing their fingers on the glass trying to rebuild even make to hurt them now,      with hands as bloody as they are   ?

(      it’s deceptively simple a thought when it clarifies in his mind,     as if it’d always been there,    waiting for the smoke and dust to clear,      for the haze of fear and senseless anger adrenaline to fade:    why on earth should he keep fighting this   ?      how,     in any battle on hell or earth,     could jon ever be his enemy   ?      )

so tim finally says,     ‘      i miss you,   too.      ’     and offers another of the thousand things he swore he’d never let himself say,      lets the atlas-weight of it from his shoulders,      and pulls his hands from his coat pockets,      breathing the last lingering tendrils of cigarette smoke warming the chilled air between them.               if the world were kinder,      neater,      more satisfying in how it ties up loose ends and lends itself to conclusions,     the admission might be accompanied with tears,     with a kiss or a scream.      there would be catharsis and the aches would fade,     and the pieces would slot back into place    ...

but things are rarely so easy;       his words stay quiet,     the night air stays cold,     and the distance stays between them,     jon’s back to the wall and tim standing in the dim yellow-orange of the streetlight.      it’s a painful reality that as surely as the knife hurt going in,     there is equally no gentle way to pull it out     ---     but,      still,    it has to come out.

HER VOICE STARTS DISTANT ,    whisper caught on a creeping breeze,    somewhere out from beneath the ever-elusive roil of languid shorelines.    martin vaguely knows why his little slice of the forsaken is a beach,     knows in the passive way one remembers anything of themselves this deep in the forsaken.    his memories are a fistful of sand,    spilling through the cracks in his fingers    ---    only the lonely-touched grains of stone and salt stay stuck to his skin.

if he were more himself he’d remember,    he’s sure,     why the salt-air weighs so heavy as it sits on his skin,   why it shrouds him like the world’s most depressing weighted blanket and tells him he’s home,    you’ve always been here,   don’t you remember   ?

(    it had been their way out,    once.    the forsaken isn’t exactly conductive to introductions,    robbed of anything of yourself but the knowledge you are alone now.    so they’d put a name to the person they were,   any name would do;   to give the intermittent reminders of a lost life something tangible enough to can grab hold of,   before they fade back into the fog.   )

‘ we invent each other-- ’    she’s familiar,   almost warm against the chill of isolation,   though tinged with the same grey that martin can taste lacing his every breath...    she makes him think of music,   this familiar stranger’s grey words tinged with red,   unmissable in the monochrome of his mind.     he tries to hold onto it.      his tongue feels too thick in his mouth as he tries to speak,   words heavy,   like they’ll sink into the soggy footprints behind him,    and fade away with the next incoming wave. 

‘   a long time ago   ...    how long have i--    sorry,   i just can’t--    remember---   ’

the gaze he hadn’t noticed straying from her form,   drifting back into distant grey mist,   adjusts,    and martin tries to make her out with more clarity.    to recognise the face in front of him.    the idea of music seems to grow louder,   without ever making a sound.