what if you're making me all that i was meant to be (lessons in intimacy) -- part one
title: what if you’re making me all that i was meant to be (lessons in intimacy)
rating: pg-13 for language
pairing: sean/tom
author: me
disclaimer: this is not real. i do not own these boys.
word count: 23, 500
credit: first half of the title belongs to chris daughtry.
a/n: here comes the litany of thank-yous...
emma: you managed to be exactly what i needed at the time i needed it. i was and am so lucky to have you; our teamwork produced this, which i’m really proud of and happy with.
deb: your enthusiasm is unparalleled. okay, maybe you weren’t able to offer anything constructive aside from “asfhjdkkhdka" this time around, but trust me, that helps too. one of my favourite parts of writing is hearing what you have to say afterward and putting those hearts in your eyes.
erika, sharon, brittany, steph, nancy: thank you guys so much for your help and your input. the story is much better for it.
summary: tom would tell him this later, once the words were no longer dangerous and uncertain, like a grenade thrown with closed eyes. that during that first winter, he’d truly felt that sean could walk into a room on the bleakest, most unhopeful of days, and transform it. forgotten were the angry winds that shook the trees and the windowpanes; simply unthought of was the decision he’d made to stay inside until june, maybe later. he wouldn't be speaking theoretically: sean had done that more than once.
i.
it was that time of year, the essence of change and the smell of the trees' shed skin in the air. tom had taken to sleeping with the windows open to let the autumn breeze drift in, mingling with the stale air of his apartment and raising goose-bumps on his bare arms. he loved it, loved it more than staring squinty-eyed at the relentless july sun; loved it more than gritting his teeth at the touch of winter’s bitter fingers.
maybe tom knew it then, after a chance encounter with sean, whose number he'd lost: that they would make something great. that they would be something great.
it was the season of change, so maybe it had been no coincidence.
tom had just stepped out of the printing place, arms laden with prints, shiny and official in their manilla envelopes. so preoccupied was he with taking stock of his budding business (business was a loose term; he was barely getting by), that he didn't even notice sean until he’d been tapped on the shoulder.
pleasantries (sean's) were spoken, apologies for sucking at keeping in touch (tom's) were given, and complaints about the impending winter ahead were exchanged. tom didn't have any space to fit in room for a hug, so he accepted one from sean, as well as his offer to go get something to eat. they stopped at tom's usually-shitty apartment to leave the prints, and halfway down the stairs, a smoky memory came back to tom.
he'd seen sean play before. before florida, and after college, there had been something. some pseudo-band that to this day tom was unsure whether it had been someone's seemingly good idea or otherwise just a lost bet that they had kept their end of. sean and some friends had played some pub -- what was that band’s name? eating the birds? -- and tom had been dragged to the show by a friend. tom didn't remember much about that night, only that about ten people had been there, and there had been enough alcohol to make the instruments sound tuned. alcohol hadn't been needed to make sean sound good, though: tom could distinctly remember the thought he'd had, that night. he has the kind of voice that rips into your ribcage and does not let go. even during that song about maurice.
tom remembered how sean's eyes danced in the jewel-toned light of the paper lanterns.
tom remembered the familiarity they had fallen into, as if the months they hadn’t talked were transient as vapor.
tom remembered his cheeks pinking, not from the cheap ethnic food -- heavy on the chile sauce -- but from the compliments sean was paying him. saying how good tom was with music, how he had wanted to see tom play after 504 but had never been in town when the academy is... had been.
then tom said something he hadn't expected to:
that he 'd had the time of his life on the nothing rhymes with circus tour. that it had kept him busy, traveling, doing things he loved with people he loved, but he'd felt incomplete. he missed being a part of something. he'd been creating, but not making a difference. he was born to play, that was just it, and he hadn’t been playing.
before tom could believe the words that were coming out of his mouth, he’d said them: he’d asked if sean wanted to be in a band.
and faster than tom could keep track of what was happening, sean had said yes.
ii.
now that sean was on board, it quickly became clear that trying to write songs in two places was simply not going to work out. sean and tom found a place together, where they could work with no distractions. and, as sean had said, they'd know if they could stand being in such close quarters, since the living with each other was half the battle. sean had quit his borders job and had instead taken up working at a cafe’ that was close to them. they moved in on january first.
the winter was rough, the kind that made even the most ardent chicago dwellers seriously consider packing up and moving to the carribean, where everyone seemed to wear bikinis and have a perpetual pleasant buzz. and contrary to the impression they'd had at first, their new place was actually worse than anywhere either of them had lived in the past. the building itself wasn't so awful, it was just lacking a vital ingredient: a working heater.
~
it had started on the first below-zero night of the season. it had been so cold, the thermometer had frozen, but it had frozen somewhere between 0 and -10, so at least they had an idea of precisely how much they didn’t want bear the wind and chill outside. tom usually stayed up late, as he didn't have a steady job he needed to be up for; the witching hour and the hours that followed were the time he caught up on movies. sean went to bed around midnight, and when tom found he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer, he would, too.
a steady theme began to emerge despite tom’s irregular schedule. he would sleep for a couple of hours, and then the frigid temperature would jerk him awake. even under two blankets and multiple sweaters, the cold managed to find him, stealing his sleep and rattling his teeth. he tossed around, cocooned, for a while, then wrapped a blanket around him like a cape. it dragged behind him as he walked across the hall to sean's room.
he knocked a few times before turning the knob. it surprised him with its coldness; compared to the comforter, it felt like touching ice. sean was under his own mountain of blankets, the top of his head barely visible until he emerged, hair askew.
"it's freezing, i can't sleep. is it cool if i come in with you?" tom folded the blanket tighter around himself, wondering if he should have brought his pillow. he didn't exactly know the etiquette of these things.
sean mumbled something, either, “shmphgmnff," or, "sure". sean shifted on the mattress to make room for tom, so tom guessed it was the second one.
he clicked the door shut behind him and shuffled toward the bed in the darkness.
sean handed him a pillow, smiled blearily before turning on his side. they weren't touching, but tom felt immediately warmer, even sleepy, with the way heat traveled. facing the other wall, tom slept snugly.
~
winter passed, too slowly. sean had tried to work with a schedule, coming home after work, napping and then trying to write. because he was in a situation that didn’t seem to hold a lot of inspiration, he found himself all too often staring at blank walls instead of lined paper. sean would keep more strictly than necessary to the hour he'd allotted, looking at the clock to be sure he'd filled his pseudo quota, no matter how little headway he'd actually made.
tom was the one who had suggested the schedule, maintaining that even if sean wrote a line a day, that was still something.
"if you force things, all you're going to get is words that show it. or a melody you don't really like. it's better to go slowly. let it be, and don't get too hard on yourself."
tom was full of advice like that.
sometimes sean felt like he was disappointing tom a little bit when he had an unproductive day, but if tom did indeed feel that way, he never showed it.
tom had a job, too, taking pictures for a friend of his. he was home a lot more than sean was, so he took some time as well to think about rhythms and melodies for the music behind it all.
it was hard to seek inspiration when the weather made you want to hide under your bed, fleeing from anything that required any actual effort. daylight shone over the sky less and less each day, and that wound up fueling sean’s writing. you write what you know, don’t you?
maybe that was what sean learned during those months: you can find the muse anywhere.
yes, perhaps he would have preferred a sunny field and a cold drink for peak writing conditions -- but the absence of that... it was just life. life was not always umbrellas under the rain, newly-paved roads and fortune cookies predicting good luck; life was getting drenched, hitting pot-holes and signs that told you calamity was imminent.
sean’s writing turned darker, but he embraced the change, knowing that was part of writing: sometimes letting it guide you. it’s like finding myself, he told tom. sean hadn’t known he’d had all this fire in him, but now that he did, he sure as hell was going to use it.
and sean proved that when he ran into the kitchen, alternating between waving his ragged piece of notebook paper and his acoustic guitar.
“i wrote a song, a whole song, and i’m really happy with it!” he didn’t even ask before sitting down to play it, and tom’s curious look tranformed as a smile bloomed over his face.
it was then that sean saw tom was right: better to wait than to force words out for the hell of it. it was a nice start, tom said. if he would come up with stuff as good as this, they would be golden when it came to making this project real. if it happened, he added.
“what are you going to call it?”
“spit the dark.” sean shrugged; he never felt confident about the titles, usually stuck to simple things, instead of the core of the song, for fear it would complicate matters. this time he was even more sheepish and self-conscious about naming. he was proud of this title, though, and fretted that tom wouldn’t get it.
“that’s good. i like it.” tom smiled a little, then, and in his smile sean read pride and excitement, but most of all, understanding. it was then that he knew things would be different.
~
mornings were punctuated by muffled thumps breaking tom's sleep, and sean’s mumbling about how it wasn't even light out, why didn't they at least have the decency to wait until he was conscious to summon him into the cafe’. which, while it smelled delicious all the time, was still someplace other than under the blankets at home.
because sean hadn't completely woken up, he kept bumping into furniture, banging his elbows on corners and cursing softly. sean figured tom was still sleeping, but he wasn't, with one eye open enough to glimpse sean messing with his hair and making faces in the mirror. tom chuckled to himself, curled into the warm spot sean had left behind. most people, upon leaving, would have told him to get back to his own bed. sean was not most people; didn't say anything, just that he was leaving and the time he'd be back.
they had continued sharing the bed all throughout the winter; it'd become a necessity as the temperature dropped a little more each day. the cold was merciless, would have turned noses red and lips blue if given the chance. as their relationship began to shift, tom grew more bold, asked sean if he minded an arm around him, a chin hooked around his shoulder.
it wasn't that tom minded asking, and it wasn't that he was unsure if sean would agree; it was that tom didn't want to have to ask. looking at sean in the caliginous, barely-there light, cheek in the crook of his elbow, he could almost pretend that they were each other’s.
then, when february ebbed to reintroduce march, when life sprouted beneath their feet, when the sun shone for longer than the space of a heartbeat, it continued. this time, white lies were given: sean's bed was bigger, more comfortable, it smelled like him.
tom kept that last one to himself.
~
“you’re crazy, seriously,” tom teased as sean craned his neck out the window, attempting to discern shapes from the dirty shadows in the alley below.
it was a lazy saturday, the kind tom usually spent in a state of lethargy broken only to eat, as that was a necessary function.
that wasn’t sean’s way. he rose in the late morning when his body woke him, ate breakfast and took walks to cull the creativity. then he would come home -- usually when tom was eating a late meal -- and let the words loose onto paper. at least, that was the idea. the muse seldom came freely; she usually had to be coaxed out if he wanted to write before evening.
sean had also developed a recent fascination with the alleyway lining their apartment. to tom, it wasn’t of much interest: he just made sure to be out of the area when voices were heard, because they were never pleasant greetings. tom was pretty sure he’d heard gunfire once or twice, too, seen a barrel flash down there in the dark.
sean, however, could not stop talking about it. he would sit by the window come nightfall, and tom was never sure how he’d do it, especially over the noise of the tv...but an hour, or even two hours later, sean’s paper would look like a proper work-in-progress. the wrinkled, once-pristine white pages would be covered in chicken-scratch and cross-outs, completely unmindful of grammar and conventional spelling. sean would hold up the pages proudly, look upon them reverently as if he held the future of their band in his hands, which he did. and that, that tom understood.
the music gave them something to focus their energies into. tom wasn’t working as much as he’d expected to, and having something to construct and shape kept him out of the blue haze winter could have dragged him into. having sean as a backboard to bounce ideas off of , someone who would take him seriously no matter how outlandish the subject -- he couldn’t deny that had helped.
sean, on the other hand, was able to put all of his darkness into the songs -- the darkness he might have used destructively, or self-destructively -- because if all of the shadows went into the songs, all he had was light to give.
tom would tell him this later, once the words were no longer dangerous and uncertain, like a grenade thrown with closed eyes. that during that first winter, he’d truly felt that sean could walk into a room on the bleakest, most unhopeful of days, and transform it. forgotten were the angry winds that shook the trees and the windowpanes; simply unthought of was the decision he’d made to stay inside until june. tom wouldn’t be speaking theoretically: sean had done that more than once.
~
after sean had taken his first sip of mocha hot chocolate, he looked across the small kitchen at tom, who was pouring himself a cup. he leaned back against the counter, trying to stretch his back because he’d slept strangely on it.
“jesus, tom, this is so good, what did you do?” sean gasped, holding out his mug like it held the recipe in its porcelain.
“um, i added the water?" tom answered sheepishly, looking at sean and shrugging.
sean waited until tom had put his mug down before stepping closer to him. possessed by a sudden surge of bravery, a kind of nerve he couldn't name, sean grabbed him and pulled him into a kiss. the instant sean did, he felt fear hit him, sudden and powerful as lightning. bad idea, he thought, stupid stupid stupid. he expected to be shoved away, to have confusion thrust at him. but no.
tom smiled, even smirked under sean's mouth, making enough space between them to get words out.
"well, it's about damn time," tom said, not unkindly.
but secretly, he was glad sean had made the first move. the way things had been going with his endless cycle of doubt and almosts, he never would have had the courage.
surprised, sean dropped his hands from tom’s neck and stepped back.
"what?" he blurted, a blush staining his neck as he realized that tom’s hands had gone to his waist, almost like a reflex.
"i've been in love with you for two months -- you really didn't know?"
"i mean, kind of. i -- i kind of knew."sean looked at the floor, at his and tom’s dirty white socks. he felt sheepish, like he was the only one not in on a joke.
"i thought i was so obvious, trying to win you over." tom laughed a little. " i made you coffee every day after work, even though you could get it for free at the cafe'. i know how cold it gets on the el, and it was an excuse to sit with you and talk. every time i pushed you to write...yeah, of course it's a good habit to write daily, but the reason i push you...it isn’t because of the band. it's because everything you write awes me a little, even the stuff you think is terrible, and because i like knowing what's going on in your head. i told you things i haven't told anyone else, because i trust you, and i know whatever i say stays with you and only you. sean, i slept in your bed. just to be close to you."
sean, in disbelief, met tom’s eyes, needing to see them to affirm that this was actually happening.
“i actually, uh, i actually hardly noticed. i was too busy being in love with you.” sean let that take form between them, like another guest joining their assembly of confessions. his voice had hardly shaken, though he was trembling inside. he couldn’t feel his fingers anymore, so he wasn’t sure if they were steady or not; he couldn’t feel anything except the ghostly marks tom had left on his skin.
“it didn’t take me long to realize. that part was easy. i hated getting up in the morning, not just because it was the winter, but because...what we had going, that was nice, and work was someplace you weren’t. this probably sounds sappy as hell, but the way you are, the way you affected me...i didn’t just feel warmed on the outside, i felt warmed on the inside. things you tell me -- they stick with me for days, if not weeks. i don't think you realize that. whenever there's a spare moment at work, i always think about calling you, just to talk about nothing. i want to talk about nothing with you, tom.”
they stood there for a moment, not wanting to break the gaze as if it was a spell they were under. it was silly, superstitious, but neither tom nor sean gave thought to the unlikelihood. they were incredulous that the words just exchanged had been real, not imagined. that they had just spoken what had been simmering in their heads for what felt like far too long. tom's arm found its way around sean's waist as tom met his lips for a kiss that this time, they were both prepared for.
~
may brought warmer weather and...a dog? a week after getting evicted (they'd missed rent too many months) and two days after finding a new place, they'd somehow been saddled with a chihuahua. bear's owner had gone on a month-long yoga retreat and had decided, oddly, that sean and tom would be good candidates for dogsitters. as sean worked most of the day, tom spent a lot of time with the dog and came to adore it. bear was endearing, in a slightly ratty way, which was maybe why tom liked it so much. bear even had clothing, a hand-knit sweater in miniature, not necessary now that the winter was over, but tom kept it on him anyway.
sean would have been lying if he'd said he wasn't a little jealous of bear and tom's "secret language". bear would only listen to tom, obeying the basic sit, lay down, and come here without hesitation. bear followed tom around, would look at him with big, round eyes as he was eating, and always came back triumphantly with scraps. even ice cream was shared with bear, and sean wouldn’t touch the carton after tom was done with it, convinced it was sticky with dog-slobber. sean let bear even sleep in their bed, because while tom was powerless to bear, he was powerless to tom, and it was kind of hard to withstand two pairs of sad eyes. bear did have his precious moments, sean would admit, like when he wriggled around on the rug or poked his head out from under the table, posing for tom’s camera.
needless to say, tom was sad when bear had to go back to his owner, almost didn’t want to give him up. sean joked to ease the mood that tom would hide bear under his sweater and run off in the night, dogsitter turned fugitive dognapper.
a few mornings after, tom wandered into the kitchen to find a stuffed toy on the counter, red ribbon around its neck. it was a beanie baby, heart-shaped ear tag and all, and tom saw that sean had crossed out its given name and written “bear”. the small brown and black splotched dog -- a caricature of bear -- sat on top of a piece of paper. tom read it, sean’s improvised four lines to replace the poem on the ear tag, and smiled. there was a note scribbled on the bottom
they didn’t sell any sweaters for beanie babies, sorry about that.
- svv
rating: pg-13 for language
pairing: sean/tom
author: me
disclaimer: this is not real. i do not own these boys.
word count: 23, 500
credit: first half of the title belongs to chris daughtry.
a/n: here comes the litany of thank-yous...
emma: you managed to be exactly what i needed at the time i needed it. i was and am so lucky to have you; our teamwork produced this, which i’m really proud of and happy with.
deb: your enthusiasm is unparalleled. okay, maybe you weren’t able to offer anything constructive aside from “asfhjdkkhdka" this time around, but trust me, that helps too. one of my favourite parts of writing is hearing what you have to say afterward and putting those hearts in your eyes.
erika, sharon, brittany, steph, nancy: thank you guys so much for your help and your input. the story is much better for it.
summary: tom would tell him this later, once the words were no longer dangerous and uncertain, like a grenade thrown with closed eyes. that during that first winter, he’d truly felt that sean could walk into a room on the bleakest, most unhopeful of days, and transform it. forgotten were the angry winds that shook the trees and the windowpanes; simply unthought of was the decision he’d made to stay inside until june, maybe later. he wouldn't be speaking theoretically: sean had done that more than once.
i.
it was that time of year, the essence of change and the smell of the trees' shed skin in the air. tom had taken to sleeping with the windows open to let the autumn breeze drift in, mingling with the stale air of his apartment and raising goose-bumps on his bare arms. he loved it, loved it more than staring squinty-eyed at the relentless july sun; loved it more than gritting his teeth at the touch of winter’s bitter fingers.
maybe tom knew it then, after a chance encounter with sean, whose number he'd lost: that they would make something great. that they would be something great.
it was the season of change, so maybe it had been no coincidence.
tom had just stepped out of the printing place, arms laden with prints, shiny and official in their manilla envelopes. so preoccupied was he with taking stock of his budding business (business was a loose term; he was barely getting by), that he didn't even notice sean until he’d been tapped on the shoulder.
pleasantries (sean's) were spoken, apologies for sucking at keeping in touch (tom's) were given, and complaints about the impending winter ahead were exchanged. tom didn't have any space to fit in room for a hug, so he accepted one from sean, as well as his offer to go get something to eat. they stopped at tom's usually-shitty apartment to leave the prints, and halfway down the stairs, a smoky memory came back to tom.
he'd seen sean play before. before florida, and after college, there had been something. some pseudo-band that to this day tom was unsure whether it had been someone's seemingly good idea or otherwise just a lost bet that they had kept their end of. sean and some friends had played some pub -- what was that band’s name? eating the birds? -- and tom had been dragged to the show by a friend. tom didn't remember much about that night, only that about ten people had been there, and there had been enough alcohol to make the instruments sound tuned. alcohol hadn't been needed to make sean sound good, though: tom could distinctly remember the thought he'd had, that night. he has the kind of voice that rips into your ribcage and does not let go. even during that song about maurice.
tom remembered how sean's eyes danced in the jewel-toned light of the paper lanterns.
tom remembered the familiarity they had fallen into, as if the months they hadn’t talked were transient as vapor.
tom remembered his cheeks pinking, not from the cheap ethnic food -- heavy on the chile sauce -- but from the compliments sean was paying him. saying how good tom was with music, how he had wanted to see tom play after 504 but had never been in town when the academy is... had been.
then tom said something he hadn't expected to:
that he 'd had the time of his life on the nothing rhymes with circus tour. that it had kept him busy, traveling, doing things he loved with people he loved, but he'd felt incomplete. he missed being a part of something. he'd been creating, but not making a difference. he was born to play, that was just it, and he hadn’t been playing.
before tom could believe the words that were coming out of his mouth, he’d said them: he’d asked if sean wanted to be in a band.
and faster than tom could keep track of what was happening, sean had said yes.
ii.
now that sean was on board, it quickly became clear that trying to write songs in two places was simply not going to work out. sean and tom found a place together, where they could work with no distractions. and, as sean had said, they'd know if they could stand being in such close quarters, since the living with each other was half the battle. sean had quit his borders job and had instead taken up working at a cafe’ that was close to them. they moved in on january first.
the winter was rough, the kind that made even the most ardent chicago dwellers seriously consider packing up and moving to the carribean, where everyone seemed to wear bikinis and have a perpetual pleasant buzz. and contrary to the impression they'd had at first, their new place was actually worse than anywhere either of them had lived in the past. the building itself wasn't so awful, it was just lacking a vital ingredient: a working heater.
~
it had started on the first below-zero night of the season. it had been so cold, the thermometer had frozen, but it had frozen somewhere between 0 and -10, so at least they had an idea of precisely how much they didn’t want bear the wind and chill outside. tom usually stayed up late, as he didn't have a steady job he needed to be up for; the witching hour and the hours that followed were the time he caught up on movies. sean went to bed around midnight, and when tom found he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer, he would, too.
a steady theme began to emerge despite tom’s irregular schedule. he would sleep for a couple of hours, and then the frigid temperature would jerk him awake. even under two blankets and multiple sweaters, the cold managed to find him, stealing his sleep and rattling his teeth. he tossed around, cocooned, for a while, then wrapped a blanket around him like a cape. it dragged behind him as he walked across the hall to sean's room.
he knocked a few times before turning the knob. it surprised him with its coldness; compared to the comforter, it felt like touching ice. sean was under his own mountain of blankets, the top of his head barely visible until he emerged, hair askew.
"it's freezing, i can't sleep. is it cool if i come in with you?" tom folded the blanket tighter around himself, wondering if he should have brought his pillow. he didn't exactly know the etiquette of these things.
sean mumbled something, either, “shmphgmnff," or, "sure". sean shifted on the mattress to make room for tom, so tom guessed it was the second one.
he clicked the door shut behind him and shuffled toward the bed in the darkness.
sean handed him a pillow, smiled blearily before turning on his side. they weren't touching, but tom felt immediately warmer, even sleepy, with the way heat traveled. facing the other wall, tom slept snugly.
~
winter passed, too slowly. sean had tried to work with a schedule, coming home after work, napping and then trying to write. because he was in a situation that didn’t seem to hold a lot of inspiration, he found himself all too often staring at blank walls instead of lined paper. sean would keep more strictly than necessary to the hour he'd allotted, looking at the clock to be sure he'd filled his pseudo quota, no matter how little headway he'd actually made.
tom was the one who had suggested the schedule, maintaining that even if sean wrote a line a day, that was still something.
"if you force things, all you're going to get is words that show it. or a melody you don't really like. it's better to go slowly. let it be, and don't get too hard on yourself."
tom was full of advice like that.
sometimes sean felt like he was disappointing tom a little bit when he had an unproductive day, but if tom did indeed feel that way, he never showed it.
tom had a job, too, taking pictures for a friend of his. he was home a lot more than sean was, so he took some time as well to think about rhythms and melodies for the music behind it all.
it was hard to seek inspiration when the weather made you want to hide under your bed, fleeing from anything that required any actual effort. daylight shone over the sky less and less each day, and that wound up fueling sean’s writing. you write what you know, don’t you?
maybe that was what sean learned during those months: you can find the muse anywhere.
yes, perhaps he would have preferred a sunny field and a cold drink for peak writing conditions -- but the absence of that... it was just life. life was not always umbrellas under the rain, newly-paved roads and fortune cookies predicting good luck; life was getting drenched, hitting pot-holes and signs that told you calamity was imminent.
sean’s writing turned darker, but he embraced the change, knowing that was part of writing: sometimes letting it guide you. it’s like finding myself, he told tom. sean hadn’t known he’d had all this fire in him, but now that he did, he sure as hell was going to use it.
and sean proved that when he ran into the kitchen, alternating between waving his ragged piece of notebook paper and his acoustic guitar.
“i wrote a song, a whole song, and i’m really happy with it!” he didn’t even ask before sitting down to play it, and tom’s curious look tranformed as a smile bloomed over his face.
it was then that sean saw tom was right: better to wait than to force words out for the hell of it. it was a nice start, tom said. if he would come up with stuff as good as this, they would be golden when it came to making this project real. if it happened, he added.
“what are you going to call it?”
“spit the dark.” sean shrugged; he never felt confident about the titles, usually stuck to simple things, instead of the core of the song, for fear it would complicate matters. this time he was even more sheepish and self-conscious about naming. he was proud of this title, though, and fretted that tom wouldn’t get it.
“that’s good. i like it.” tom smiled a little, then, and in his smile sean read pride and excitement, but most of all, understanding. it was then that he knew things would be different.
~
mornings were punctuated by muffled thumps breaking tom's sleep, and sean’s mumbling about how it wasn't even light out, why didn't they at least have the decency to wait until he was conscious to summon him into the cafe’. which, while it smelled delicious all the time, was still someplace other than under the blankets at home.
because sean hadn't completely woken up, he kept bumping into furniture, banging his elbows on corners and cursing softly. sean figured tom was still sleeping, but he wasn't, with one eye open enough to glimpse sean messing with his hair and making faces in the mirror. tom chuckled to himself, curled into the warm spot sean had left behind. most people, upon leaving, would have told him to get back to his own bed. sean was not most people; didn't say anything, just that he was leaving and the time he'd be back.
they had continued sharing the bed all throughout the winter; it'd become a necessity as the temperature dropped a little more each day. the cold was merciless, would have turned noses red and lips blue if given the chance. as their relationship began to shift, tom grew more bold, asked sean if he minded an arm around him, a chin hooked around his shoulder.
it wasn't that tom minded asking, and it wasn't that he was unsure if sean would agree; it was that tom didn't want to have to ask. looking at sean in the caliginous, barely-there light, cheek in the crook of his elbow, he could almost pretend that they were each other’s.
then, when february ebbed to reintroduce march, when life sprouted beneath their feet, when the sun shone for longer than the space of a heartbeat, it continued. this time, white lies were given: sean's bed was bigger, more comfortable, it smelled like him.
tom kept that last one to himself.
~
“you’re crazy, seriously,” tom teased as sean craned his neck out the window, attempting to discern shapes from the dirty shadows in the alley below.
it was a lazy saturday, the kind tom usually spent in a state of lethargy broken only to eat, as that was a necessary function.
that wasn’t sean’s way. he rose in the late morning when his body woke him, ate breakfast and took walks to cull the creativity. then he would come home -- usually when tom was eating a late meal -- and let the words loose onto paper. at least, that was the idea. the muse seldom came freely; she usually had to be coaxed out if he wanted to write before evening.
sean had also developed a recent fascination with the alleyway lining their apartment. to tom, it wasn’t of much interest: he just made sure to be out of the area when voices were heard, because they were never pleasant greetings. tom was pretty sure he’d heard gunfire once or twice, too, seen a barrel flash down there in the dark.
sean, however, could not stop talking about it. he would sit by the window come nightfall, and tom was never sure how he’d do it, especially over the noise of the tv...but an hour, or even two hours later, sean’s paper would look like a proper work-in-progress. the wrinkled, once-pristine white pages would be covered in chicken-scratch and cross-outs, completely unmindful of grammar and conventional spelling. sean would hold up the pages proudly, look upon them reverently as if he held the future of their band in his hands, which he did. and that, that tom understood.
the music gave them something to focus their energies into. tom wasn’t working as much as he’d expected to, and having something to construct and shape kept him out of the blue haze winter could have dragged him into. having sean as a backboard to bounce ideas off of , someone who would take him seriously no matter how outlandish the subject -- he couldn’t deny that had helped.
sean, on the other hand, was able to put all of his darkness into the songs -- the darkness he might have used destructively, or self-destructively -- because if all of the shadows went into the songs, all he had was light to give.
tom would tell him this later, once the words were no longer dangerous and uncertain, like a grenade thrown with closed eyes. that during that first winter, he’d truly felt that sean could walk into a room on the bleakest, most unhopeful of days, and transform it. forgotten were the angry winds that shook the trees and the windowpanes; simply unthought of was the decision he’d made to stay inside until june. tom wouldn’t be speaking theoretically: sean had done that more than once.
~
after sean had taken his first sip of mocha hot chocolate, he looked across the small kitchen at tom, who was pouring himself a cup. he leaned back against the counter, trying to stretch his back because he’d slept strangely on it.
“jesus, tom, this is so good, what did you do?” sean gasped, holding out his mug like it held the recipe in its porcelain.
“um, i added the water?" tom answered sheepishly, looking at sean and shrugging.
sean waited until tom had put his mug down before stepping closer to him. possessed by a sudden surge of bravery, a kind of nerve he couldn't name, sean grabbed him and pulled him into a kiss. the instant sean did, he felt fear hit him, sudden and powerful as lightning. bad idea, he thought, stupid stupid stupid. he expected to be shoved away, to have confusion thrust at him. but no.
tom smiled, even smirked under sean's mouth, making enough space between them to get words out.
"well, it's about damn time," tom said, not unkindly.
but secretly, he was glad sean had made the first move. the way things had been going with his endless cycle of doubt and almosts, he never would have had the courage.
surprised, sean dropped his hands from tom’s neck and stepped back.
"what?" he blurted, a blush staining his neck as he realized that tom’s hands had gone to his waist, almost like a reflex.
"i've been in love with you for two months -- you really didn't know?"
"i mean, kind of. i -- i kind of knew."sean looked at the floor, at his and tom’s dirty white socks. he felt sheepish, like he was the only one not in on a joke.
"i thought i was so obvious, trying to win you over." tom laughed a little. " i made you coffee every day after work, even though you could get it for free at the cafe'. i know how cold it gets on the el, and it was an excuse to sit with you and talk. every time i pushed you to write...yeah, of course it's a good habit to write daily, but the reason i push you...it isn’t because of the band. it's because everything you write awes me a little, even the stuff you think is terrible, and because i like knowing what's going on in your head. i told you things i haven't told anyone else, because i trust you, and i know whatever i say stays with you and only you. sean, i slept in your bed. just to be close to you."
sean, in disbelief, met tom’s eyes, needing to see them to affirm that this was actually happening.
“i actually, uh, i actually hardly noticed. i was too busy being in love with you.” sean let that take form between them, like another guest joining their assembly of confessions. his voice had hardly shaken, though he was trembling inside. he couldn’t feel his fingers anymore, so he wasn’t sure if they were steady or not; he couldn’t feel anything except the ghostly marks tom had left on his skin.
“it didn’t take me long to realize. that part was easy. i hated getting up in the morning, not just because it was the winter, but because...what we had going, that was nice, and work was someplace you weren’t. this probably sounds sappy as hell, but the way you are, the way you affected me...i didn’t just feel warmed on the outside, i felt warmed on the inside. things you tell me -- they stick with me for days, if not weeks. i don't think you realize that. whenever there's a spare moment at work, i always think about calling you, just to talk about nothing. i want to talk about nothing with you, tom.”
they stood there for a moment, not wanting to break the gaze as if it was a spell they were under. it was silly, superstitious, but neither tom nor sean gave thought to the unlikelihood. they were incredulous that the words just exchanged had been real, not imagined. that they had just spoken what had been simmering in their heads for what felt like far too long. tom's arm found its way around sean's waist as tom met his lips for a kiss that this time, they were both prepared for.
~
may brought warmer weather and...a dog? a week after getting evicted (they'd missed rent too many months) and two days after finding a new place, they'd somehow been saddled with a chihuahua. bear's owner had gone on a month-long yoga retreat and had decided, oddly, that sean and tom would be good candidates for dogsitters. as sean worked most of the day, tom spent a lot of time with the dog and came to adore it. bear was endearing, in a slightly ratty way, which was maybe why tom liked it so much. bear even had clothing, a hand-knit sweater in miniature, not necessary now that the winter was over, but tom kept it on him anyway.
sean would have been lying if he'd said he wasn't a little jealous of bear and tom's "secret language". bear would only listen to tom, obeying the basic sit, lay down, and come here without hesitation. bear followed tom around, would look at him with big, round eyes as he was eating, and always came back triumphantly with scraps. even ice cream was shared with bear, and sean wouldn’t touch the carton after tom was done with it, convinced it was sticky with dog-slobber. sean let bear even sleep in their bed, because while tom was powerless to bear, he was powerless to tom, and it was kind of hard to withstand two pairs of sad eyes. bear did have his precious moments, sean would admit, like when he wriggled around on the rug or poked his head out from under the table, posing for tom’s camera.
needless to say, tom was sad when bear had to go back to his owner, almost didn’t want to give him up. sean joked to ease the mood that tom would hide bear under his sweater and run off in the night, dogsitter turned fugitive dognapper.
a few mornings after, tom wandered into the kitchen to find a stuffed toy on the counter, red ribbon around its neck. it was a beanie baby, heart-shaped ear tag and all, and tom saw that sean had crossed out its given name and written “bear”. the small brown and black splotched dog -- a caricature of bear -- sat on top of a piece of paper. tom read it, sean’s improvised four lines to replace the poem on the ear tag, and smiled. there was a note scribbled on the bottom
they didn’t sell any sweaters for beanie babies, sorry about that.
- svv