(no subject)
Soft sounds cover the silence in a gentle blanket of reassuring white noise: the fan of warm air through ducts, the sleet of freezing rain against glass, and the soft rush of measured breath. Bahir draws his hand up Percy's spine with a light rasp of fingers over skin, and then a deeper one as he curls his hand through short, dark hair. Telepathy's touch is light, less a pry than an assurance of presence. The question is held in abeyance. (For now.)
Silver sparks amidst near-black waves as Bahir strokes through Percy's hair, near a sure as sign of change as the comfort taken in the fold of his arms. The mindscape Bahir touches is a troubled one, dark with shadows of the distant past. Percy remembers at this moment not the squirming guilt of years recent, but the thrill and the heat of the hunt from his halcyon days, faces and bodies blurred in a cumulative panoply of skin and sin and sweat. He is forced to confront not his own awareness, internal and largely dealt with, but reality, and it is harsh as icy rain. He noses against Bahir's neck, eyes tight shut behind the skew of his glasses, and curls his arms with a desperate kind of pressure around Bahir's waist as he burrows in.
Thumb sliding up the side of Percy's neck, Bahir gently draws away to reach up with his other hand and lift the glasses away. He folds them and sets them off to the side. He presses his lips to Percy's temple, warm and dry, and then wraps the other man in his arms. There isn't particularly anything to say, and there is very little telepathy can offer than the physical does not already give: comfort in presence, acceptance if not forgiveness (it is not his place, after all), and a solid warmth at the core.
For a few heartbeats, Percy draws strength from their shared stillness until the tremor is gone from his spine, the tension soothed from its strain around his eyes as his dark lashes sweep up. He swallows again, tongue moistening his lips in a brief flicker, and then his mouth shapes words against Bahir's skin, lips tracing long regret and old shame on a soft gust of breath into his neck. "So many," he says, on that bone-weary sigh. "So many of them."
Hand drawing back down Percy's spine in a smooth glide, Bahir rubs at lingering knots with the heel of his hand, as though he can smudge out all the unwelcome, clinging past and replace it with the touch of his hand. "Well." There's a suggestion of the unvoiced woven through the gentle presence of telepathic reassurance: it was in the past, you have changed, you have brought so much that is good, redemption found in good works. (Or perhaps a slightly less Catholic version of the sentiment, and a definition of good works that is expansive enough to include back-room, murderous conspiracies.) The thoughts are shaped in memory and in emotion, nothing so sterile as the crisp definition of voice, with an inevitable contrast in their courtship one of the stronger threads of memory. "Do you want me to finish making the tea?"
Turning his head to press a kiss to Bahir's shoulder, Percy draws a long inhalation, with a faint curl to his mouth at the corner as he says, "Tea might help." He is slow to withdraw from the warmth and shelter of his arms, though as he does so, he retains far more proximity to the glow of Bahir's body heat than necessary in their kitchen. The bar of his arm lingers across Bahir's back, hand curving against his hip. "I /have/ grown up," he says, not quite realization that marks his voice; more a soft assurance. Though regret clings to him as heavy as a cloak, and his old shames are not washed clean, the black and bitter tide of self-loathing has receded from these shores, and the ancient knot of guilt is drawn looser about his throat than once it might have been.
Quiet ease and health breathe from Bahir's skin on the steady beat of his pulse, rising warm with an inescapable, bone-deep affection expressed in a dozen physical tell-tales. It is a familiar breath that Percy's draws. "You've grown up," he agrees, reaching to reclaim the tea and trade in the single-serve for something more suitable for two. "You've changed. You have control enough of your own that you no longer need to take it from those around you."
The next breath that Percy exhales is almost a laugh, full of rue as it puffs past his teeth through the part of his lips. "What a lost little lamb, you were, Percival," he says, his tone splitting the difference between mockery and pity of the vicious, desperate youth he remembers. "To need to rule so very /much/ of what surrounded you."
Turning back toward Percy, Bahir places a hand on his arm to gentle any sharpness in the mockery. Sympathy and regret mingle in his gaze, voice soft as he says, "Sometimes, the past should stay in the past." He leans forward, kiss gentle, but firm.
Curling his fingers into Bahir's hair where he curves his hand at the back of his neck, Percy answers the firmness of Bahir's kiss with a quiet earnest, need simpler as well as gentler than pressing demand or searing heat. Then he breaks it, with the curve of a slow smile as he tips his forehead against Bahir's, mingling their breathing in the closeness. Smile pulled a little wider by his absent notice taken of the kitchen, he scrapes his thumb over the curve and angle of Bahir's hipbone. "Sometimes the past finds your bloody telephone number," he says.
Laughter low in his throat, Bahir rests his head against Percy's with unbound hair falling forward to obscure peripheral vision. "Maybe you should change your phone number," he teases.
"I am sure that would help," Percy answer, a tremor shot through his murmur as he winds his arm around Bahir's waist. His voice lifts, crisping with a brighter note of exasperation after the puff of breath of a low snort. "Only the Oxford best linguists for Carpenter's little team, apparently. I wonder if we will have any /more/ repeats, when my countless other conquests join up and discover the file."
"Oh, dear." Bahir lifts a hand to brush the backs of his knuckles down the side of Percy's face, tucking his hand beneath his chin. "If only you weren't such a skank." HE LOVES YOU, PERCY.
Percy turns his head into the brush of Bahir's fingers, mouth curving as his long lashes fall in a dark veil over the gleam of amber. "If only," he agrees. Gaze upswept again to catch Bahir's eyes, his crook of his lips shading towards a grimace. "Do you suppose he is better off, knowing the truth?" he asks, his inner musing cut with an edge. << /He/ certainly didn't seem to think so. >>
To that, Bahir has no clever reply. His lips twist in a bare grimace as he lifts his chin to press a kiss to Percy's forehead. He draws back to shut up a kettle that has started to shriek, pouring hot water into a waiting pot. "I would rather know," he finally says. "Always, I will pick knowledge over ignorance, honesty over bliss."
"Always," Percy murmurs. He turns at an angle to trail his fingertips up Bahir's spine, resting the curve of his palm across the breadth of his scarred back. << Never the easy road, not for you. >> It is a depth of affection that says so, vague possessive pride in the touch of Percy's hand. << Well. It didn't do me very much good either, lying to myself, now, did it? >> Another crooked smile touches his mouth. Nooooo. "Well. I do not think I will print out a form letter to tell all the others," he says, voice velveted with humor and low in his throat. "Truth for Alden because he asked for it, but really, I don't know all their names, and it would be a fortune in stamps."
Turning to catch Percy's fingers in his off hand, Bahir brings them to his lips. He looks over, expression wry. << Lying never did either of us any good, >> he says with a quick (very quick!) brush over history and a squeeze of the captured hand. "He'll find his peace with truth. People always do."
Percy turns his hand in Bahir's clasp to twine their fingers together, tipping his head with the fall of his lashes. There is no disagreeing with either sentiment, the truth of the unspoken borne out a hundred times over without any need to dwell overlong on unpleasanter memory. "Eventually," he says. With a low laugh buried in his throat, Percy shakes his head and adds dryly, with a philanthropist's charity, "I wish him better luck than I had with it."
"He's a big boy." Whoever he is. Bahir turns to loop an arm around Percy's waist and smile at him, wryness fading beneath affection. He holds him close, bare skin warm where they press together. "He'll manage."
Percy leans into Bahir in a long drape of naked skin, claiming all that desert lean heat in the curve of his arms. He hums a long, low "Hmmmm" noise of agreement, and cants his head to press a kiss against Bahir's jaw. "Thank you for making me tea," he says, lips and breath ghosting words against his skin. The gratitude for all the rest will remain unspoken and thus without flippancy, in the warmth, and calm, and acceptance that Percy has drawn about himself like a cloak to brush off the chill fingers of history.
Chasing off the shadows.