(no subject)
A really very random teeny bit of birdwatching au-ness that sort of precedes this:
It's the spotting scope that gets him. Or, really, it's the way that Rodney bends over the scope, making tiny adjustments for ten minutes, ten long minutes when, instead of keeping an eye on the waders across the cove, John's mapping the topography of Rodney's neck, memorizing the curves and dips of it, the fine, fine pale hairs that glint in the sunlight, the shadow behind his ear, the knobs and bumps of vertebrae, the movement of his throat as he swallows, and the sheen of sweat on it, the way he hums low while he works and the way John imagines he can feel the vibrations reverberating through him. He touches his own throat, catalogs Rodney's long fingers as they tweak and calibrate-there's the long scrape along the side of his left index finger from when they'd run into a blackberry bush earlier; there's a bruised knuckle; there's a torn cuticle on his ring finger; there's the dusting of hair over the backs of both hands, bleached almost white, and John wants to run his own finger over it the wrong way, feel the catch of it on his own skin.
And when Rodney straightens up and claps his hands together and says, "Okay! I think I've got it all figured out now," John startles like a bird flushed from a bush, and he thinks, yeah, yeah, me too.
It's the spotting scope that gets him. Or, really, it's the way that Rodney bends over the scope, making tiny adjustments for ten minutes, ten long minutes when, instead of keeping an eye on the waders across the cove, John's mapping the topography of Rodney's neck, memorizing the curves and dips of it, the fine, fine pale hairs that glint in the sunlight, the shadow behind his ear, the knobs and bumps of vertebrae, the movement of his throat as he swallows, and the sheen of sweat on it, the way he hums low while he works and the way John imagines he can feel the vibrations reverberating through him. He touches his own throat, catalogs Rodney's long fingers as they tweak and calibrate-there's the long scrape along the side of his left index finger from when they'd run into a blackberry bush earlier; there's a bruised knuckle; there's a torn cuticle on his ring finger; there's the dusting of hair over the backs of both hands, bleached almost white, and John wants to run his own finger over it the wrong way, feel the catch of it on his own skin.
And when Rodney straightens up and claps his hands together and says, "Okay! I think I've got it all figured out now," John startles like a bird flushed from a bush, and he thinks, yeah, yeah, me too.