Birthday fics for two very lovely ladies!
Title: we are all going forward; none of us are going back
Pairing: Daniel/Charlotte
Rating: R
Words: 2,021
Disclaimer: Not mine. Title from “Snow and Dirty Rain” by Richard Siken.
Summary: It worked. They just never realized it.
A/N: For mollivanders. Happy Birthday!
She comes to think of the island as a phantom memory, something lurking in her subconscious, a ghost she knows she ought to stop chasing.
But then she finds it, at least the remnants of it---a whole civilization resting at the bottom of the ocean. The papers call it Atlantis and clamor to interview her. They ask how did you find it, in breathy, desperate voices that remind Charlotte of sharks circling chum in the water.
“Just lucky, I guess,” she says as if it was all happenstance, as if she hadn’t spent the better part of her adult life looking for the mythical place of her childhood only to find it rotting away, lost to her forever now. “Could have happened to anyone.”
*
She takes a break from work. The people who fund her explorations don’t take kindly to the news, but she insists she needs to regroup. It feels strange not to be searching anymore, to know that what’s left of the Dharma Initiative has been salvaged from the ruins and displayed in clear cases at the museum for people to ogle as if they’re just another piece of history and not something she lived and breathed.
Charlotte spends her days lounging in her flat wondering why she never bothered to purchase proper furniture. Her sisters come round for tea some afternoons with their pudgy faced children in tow, and Charlotte tries her best to listen as they chat about husbands and shopping.
Her Mum calls only once, her voice hesitant as she apologizes (finally) for years of insisting Charlotte’s imagination was just too vivid for her own good.
“It was just such an odd thing, love. I wanted to forget.”
Charlotte pauses, thinks of green grass under her bare feet and the taste of chocolate bars mingling with the salty breeze that always hung in the air on the island.
“Well Mum, I wanted to remember.”
She hangs up knowing her guilt will get the better of her sooner or later and she’ll call her mother back, tell her everything’s okay. For now she flips on the telly and stares vacantly at a woman on the news. She has dark hair, a dusting of freckles across her nose, and the word murderer written across the screen beneath her scowling face.
Charlotte feels sorry for the woman. She doesn’t know what she did, but she knows that nothing is ever that simple.
*
She buys a ticket to the states on a whim. Tells herself a change of scenery will do her some good. She lands in Los Angeles and catches a cab to her hotel. She’s struck by how bright everything is, the sun, the people, it’s absurd.
Her hotel is posh, she figures she deserves it and she has the money. Finding an entire island at the bottom of the ocean will do that for you. The lobby is vast, full of plush couches and tables made of deep, red wood. Charlotte’s attention is drawn to the piano in the corner, a Grand by the looks of it, and the man sitting behind it, his fingers racing across the keys, head bent in concentration.
The tune is mournful, something classical Charlotte can’t quite place, but it’s so haunting it makes her breath catch.
The woman behind the counter clears her throat, drawing Charlotte’s attention back to the task of checking in.
“He’s wonderful, isn’t he?” the woman asks.
Charlotte nods, feeling dazed suddenly.
“Who is he?”
“He’s one of our guests, a composer. Daniel Faraday. You might have heard of him?”
The name is familiar and Charlotte tries to place it, knows she’s heard it somewhere before.
“I think maybe I have,” Charlotte says as she slips her room key into her purse.
*
She bumps into him in the hallway the next morning.
Seeing him up close is a shock. He’s so slender he looks like a good wind would snap him in two and his eyes are dark, sharp---she’s sure she’s seen him before. She can feel it in the shiver that runs down her spine when their shoulders brush.
“Excuse me…” he stutters, his fingers reaching out to wrap around her elbow.
“It’s alright, no harm done.”
He smiles slightly, his fingers still lingering on her arm.
“Have we met before?” he asks.
She takes it as a line and extends her hand.
“I think I’d remember that, love. I’m Charlotte Lewis,” she says.
“Daniel Faraday.”
*
He joins her for breakfast at a café down the street. Neither of them gets much eating done.
Instead, they talk. An easy, steady stream of words flows between them. He tells her about his music, his hands always moving as if he’s in perpetual motion. He’s working on something new, that’s why he’s at the hotel, he says he thinks better there.
In exchange, she tells him about her discovery and how her brush with fame sent her running across the pond. He laughs, shaking his head.
“My mother…she’s obsessed with that story. She’s been clipping articles out of the paper for weeks now.”
“Small world, yeah?”
“Very,” he says.
She’s toying with the idea of taking his hand when someone exclaims, “Son of a bitch!”
They turn to see a tall man with shaggy blond hair falling in his eyes, coffee spreading across
his shirt staining it the copper shade of dried blood.
“What are you looking at, Red?” he sneers.
Charlotte rolls her eyes and closes the gap between herself and Daniel by taking his hand.
“Want to go back to the hotel?”
He squeezes her hand, swallows hard.
“Yes, please.”
*
He doesn’t do this kind of thing often, if ever. She can tell. He’s too nervous, too tense as he tentatively runs a hand through her hair.
“This…is this weird? We’re strangers,” he mutters.
She presses her lips against his mouth, shivers when her tongue meets his. He leans into her and she feels the press of his long, thin frame against hers. Her hands trail down his back, slipping under his crisp, white dress shirt.
Charlotte has done this before, met a man and invited him back to her room. She thinks of it as a hazard of her job. There’s no time for a proper relationship when you’re in a different country every month. But this feels different. Like something else entirely.
Daniel leaves a trail of hesitant kisses down her stomach and his fingers dip below the waistband of her panties causing Charlotte to gasp.
He looks up at her with a sort of reverence.
“Is this okay?” he asks.
Charlotte can only nod.
*
“You could be my muse,” he mutters against her neck.
They’re sprawled on the bed, curled around each other as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“I’d be a dreadful muse, Dan. Trust me.”
He traces invisible music notes across her stomach.
“You’re wrong…I’ve been here for a week and nothing. It was like…my mind was empty. And then I saw you and I can feel it again, the music in my head. I’m writing a song about you.”
Charlotte laughs and stills his hand by threading her fingers through his.
“You’re writing a song now, are you?”
“Do you have any paper? And a pen. I’ll need a pen.”
Charlotte rummages around in the nightstand until she finds some stationary and a pen emblazoned with the hotel’s name. Daniel takes them from her and immediately starts writing.
She watches curiously as he forms the sloping shapes of notes, seemingly pulling them out of thin air.
“That’s all in your head?”
Daniel pauses.
“I can see the patterns. I’ve always been good at…finding order, I guess. My mother thought I’d make a good scientist.”
“My mum wanted me to be lawyer. I would have been miserable cooped up inside all day. They don’t always know what’s best.”
Daniel smiles, his pen already racing across the page again.
*
Later they sit side by side at the piano in the lobby as Daniel plays his new song.
Charlotte closes her eyes and listens. It’s happier than the tune he was playing the night before; full of soft dips and light sounds. It’s lovely.
By the time he reaches the end a small crowd has gathered in the lobby. They clap politely and Daniel blushes. Charlotte leans in so that she can whisper in his ear.
“That was brilliant, what’s it called?”
His blush deepens.
“The Explorer.”
*
They spend a week together doing nothing but learning one another.
They discover they both went to Oxford, and for one year their time overlapped. Charlotte thinks she could have passed him in the hall, sat behind him at the theater.
Neither of them knew their father. Charlotte confesses that hers never made it off the island; Daniel says his mother simply told him his died before he was born.
“There was Richard for awhile, though. He lived with us when I was a little boy, then he just left one day and I never saw him again.”
Charlotte pushes a lock of hair out of Daniel’s eyes.
“Some pair we are, yeah?”
He laughs gently.
“What are you going to do now?” he asks.
“I was thinking of sex, to be honest.”
Daniel shakes his head, missing the joke. He always misses the joke.
“I mean now that you’ve found your island.”
Charlotte sighs. She doesn’t know the answer to that question. If she did, she never would have gotten on that plane to Los Angeles.
“I’ve been looking for that island my entire life. I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to look for now, Dan.”
“Maybe I can be your muse too,” he says softly.
Charlotte sits up, a wicked grin tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“I’m ready to be inspired.”
*
They know it has to end some time.
Charlotte can only ignore calls from the curator and her mum and sisters for so long. Daniel’s phone keeps ringing as well. The real world beyond their hotel room keeps calling them back.
“They’ve found a new site in Mexico,” Charlotte says. “The curator in London wants me to fly down and check it out. He’s sent eleven…make that twelve, emails.”
Daniel sighs and slouches on the bed behind her.
“I’m supposed to give a concert in Ontario on Sunday.”
It was inevitable, really. Charlotte knew this, but it doesn’t change the fact that it hurts like hell.
“Do you believe in fate, Daniel?”
“No,” he says flatly.
Charlotte snorts. Of course he doesn’t.
“Neither do I. But it’s odd, isn’t it? That we’d bump into each other in a hotel and have it…not end there. What if I’d just kept walking?”
Charlotte sinks down on the bed next to Daniel and lets her head rest on his shoulder.
“It was a happy accident,” he says before pressing a quick kiss to her temple.
“I suppose so.”
*
They don’t promise to write or call, don’t promise that this isn’t goodbye.
They’re realists if nothing else. Instead Charlotte kisses him at the gate, drinks in the scent of him, files it away so she won’t forget.
“Take care of yourself,” she whispers.
He nods, his eyes serious as he cups her face in both of his hands.
“There’s always something to find,” he says. “Remember that for me, okay?”
She kisses him once more before he disappears into the throng of people crowded in LAX and heads towards his own gate. Charlotte blinks away a tear as she boards the plane.
She settles into her seat and leans her forehead against the cool glass of the window. She realizes almost despite herself that she’s excited about the new expedition. She’s itching to get back to work. For the first time, she actually feels relieved to have the island behind her. She’s ready to move on.
“Excuse me, sister? I think you’re in my seat.”
Charlotte looks up to see a handsome man smiling at her uncertainly.
“Sorry, love. I’ve always been rubbish at reading those bloody signs.”
Title: We Will Be Our Own Myth
Pairing: Jacob/Esau
Rating: R (sex)
Words: 494
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Heaven is not for sinners and Esau knows they’re drowning in sin.
A/N: For toestastegood. Happy Birthday!
If their corner of the world is smaller than everyone else’s, they don’t notice.
They don’t notice anything anymore, but the solid feel of body sliding against body, welcome after years of living half lives as ghosts.
“I missed you,” Jacob mutters over and over.
It’s good to see his earnestness hasn’t been diminished by death.
Esau doesn’t respond, doesn’t say I missed you too. Instead, he kisses his brother greedily, hushing his words.
*
Jacob says they don’t deserve this; Esau has no choice but to agree.
There is a trail of bodies stretching behind them, of lives ruined in the name of a place, in the name of escape.
Heaven is not for sinners and Esau knows they’re drowning in sin.
But still they’re here in this place far, far away from the ocean. And it belongs to them.
“Maybe it’s hell,” Jacob says.
“So what if it is?”
*
Sometimes it reminds Esau too much of before.
And then he remembers Jacob’s fist pounding against his face, the pettiness, the death. Years and years of losing himself bit by bit, becoming a monstrous thing not worthy of being called a man and he knows it was all Jacob’s fault.
On those days Esau leaves his brother and walks to the edge of their world (knows it’s the edge because he can’t imagine going any further) and sulks. He lets the anger wash over him, the rage course through his veins, pours it all into a scream that will make no sound.
Then he goes back.
*
“It’s always just been us,” Jacob says.
They’re sitting by a fire, Esau warming his hands. Jacob looks thoughtful, never a good sign.
“Right from the beginning, this is all we were ever meant to have. Each other.”
“That’s a lovely sentiment, Jacob. A little late though,” Esau snarls. “Maybe you could have realized that before you murdered me.”
Jacob doesn’t apologize.
Never does.
*
They fuck like drowning men looking for something to hold onto.
Desperate and fast, Jacob always comes first, Esau’s name leaving his lips like a prayer.
“Thank you,” he says against Esau’s ear.
*
“Where do you think she went?” Jacob asks.
Esau knows who he means. His hands ball into fists at his sides.
“I hope she’s trapped there.”
“You don’t mean that.”
He doesn’t, but he wishes that he did.
*
They sleep under the stars and Jacob teaches Esau the names of the constellations. He points to a figure in the sky and smiles.
“That’s us,” he says.
Esau squints, traces the shape in the air with the tip of his finger.
“If you say so.”
*
Esau lets Jacob wrap himself around him as he sleeps, even leans into his touch.
He doesn’t know how long they’ve been here, doesn’t know how long they will be, but he suspects it’ll be forever, whatever that means.
“I missed you too,” he says quietly, knowing Jacob won’t hear.
Pairing: Daniel/Charlotte
Rating: R
Words: 2,021
Disclaimer: Not mine. Title from “Snow and Dirty Rain” by Richard Siken.
Summary: It worked. They just never realized it.
A/N: For mollivanders. Happy Birthday!
She comes to think of the island as a phantom memory, something lurking in her subconscious, a ghost she knows she ought to stop chasing.
But then she finds it, at least the remnants of it---a whole civilization resting at the bottom of the ocean. The papers call it Atlantis and clamor to interview her. They ask how did you find it, in breathy, desperate voices that remind Charlotte of sharks circling chum in the water.
“Just lucky, I guess,” she says as if it was all happenstance, as if she hadn’t spent the better part of her adult life looking for the mythical place of her childhood only to find it rotting away, lost to her forever now. “Could have happened to anyone.”
*
She takes a break from work. The people who fund her explorations don’t take kindly to the news, but she insists she needs to regroup. It feels strange not to be searching anymore, to know that what’s left of the Dharma Initiative has been salvaged from the ruins and displayed in clear cases at the museum for people to ogle as if they’re just another piece of history and not something she lived and breathed.
Charlotte spends her days lounging in her flat wondering why she never bothered to purchase proper furniture. Her sisters come round for tea some afternoons with their pudgy faced children in tow, and Charlotte tries her best to listen as they chat about husbands and shopping.
Her Mum calls only once, her voice hesitant as she apologizes (finally) for years of insisting Charlotte’s imagination was just too vivid for her own good.
“It was just such an odd thing, love. I wanted to forget.”
Charlotte pauses, thinks of green grass under her bare feet and the taste of chocolate bars mingling with the salty breeze that always hung in the air on the island.
“Well Mum, I wanted to remember.”
She hangs up knowing her guilt will get the better of her sooner or later and she’ll call her mother back, tell her everything’s okay. For now she flips on the telly and stares vacantly at a woman on the news. She has dark hair, a dusting of freckles across her nose, and the word murderer written across the screen beneath her scowling face.
Charlotte feels sorry for the woman. She doesn’t know what she did, but she knows that nothing is ever that simple.
*
She buys a ticket to the states on a whim. Tells herself a change of scenery will do her some good. She lands in Los Angeles and catches a cab to her hotel. She’s struck by how bright everything is, the sun, the people, it’s absurd.
Her hotel is posh, she figures she deserves it and she has the money. Finding an entire island at the bottom of the ocean will do that for you. The lobby is vast, full of plush couches and tables made of deep, red wood. Charlotte’s attention is drawn to the piano in the corner, a Grand by the looks of it, and the man sitting behind it, his fingers racing across the keys, head bent in concentration.
The tune is mournful, something classical Charlotte can’t quite place, but it’s so haunting it makes her breath catch.
The woman behind the counter clears her throat, drawing Charlotte’s attention back to the task of checking in.
“He’s wonderful, isn’t he?” the woman asks.
Charlotte nods, feeling dazed suddenly.
“Who is he?”
“He’s one of our guests, a composer. Daniel Faraday. You might have heard of him?”
The name is familiar and Charlotte tries to place it, knows she’s heard it somewhere before.
“I think maybe I have,” Charlotte says as she slips her room key into her purse.
*
She bumps into him in the hallway the next morning.
Seeing him up close is a shock. He’s so slender he looks like a good wind would snap him in two and his eyes are dark, sharp---she’s sure she’s seen him before. She can feel it in the shiver that runs down her spine when their shoulders brush.
“Excuse me…” he stutters, his fingers reaching out to wrap around her elbow.
“It’s alright, no harm done.”
He smiles slightly, his fingers still lingering on her arm.
“Have we met before?” he asks.
She takes it as a line and extends her hand.
“I think I’d remember that, love. I’m Charlotte Lewis,” she says.
“Daniel Faraday.”
*
He joins her for breakfast at a café down the street. Neither of them gets much eating done.
Instead, they talk. An easy, steady stream of words flows between them. He tells her about his music, his hands always moving as if he’s in perpetual motion. He’s working on something new, that’s why he’s at the hotel, he says he thinks better there.
In exchange, she tells him about her discovery and how her brush with fame sent her running across the pond. He laughs, shaking his head.
“My mother…she’s obsessed with that story. She’s been clipping articles out of the paper for weeks now.”
“Small world, yeah?”
“Very,” he says.
She’s toying with the idea of taking his hand when someone exclaims, “Son of a bitch!”
They turn to see a tall man with shaggy blond hair falling in his eyes, coffee spreading across
his shirt staining it the copper shade of dried blood.
“What are you looking at, Red?” he sneers.
Charlotte rolls her eyes and closes the gap between herself and Daniel by taking his hand.
“Want to go back to the hotel?”
He squeezes her hand, swallows hard.
“Yes, please.”
*
He doesn’t do this kind of thing often, if ever. She can tell. He’s too nervous, too tense as he tentatively runs a hand through her hair.
“This…is this weird? We’re strangers,” he mutters.
She presses her lips against his mouth, shivers when her tongue meets his. He leans into her and she feels the press of his long, thin frame against hers. Her hands trail down his back, slipping under his crisp, white dress shirt.
Charlotte has done this before, met a man and invited him back to her room. She thinks of it as a hazard of her job. There’s no time for a proper relationship when you’re in a different country every month. But this feels different. Like something else entirely.
Daniel leaves a trail of hesitant kisses down her stomach and his fingers dip below the waistband of her panties causing Charlotte to gasp.
He looks up at her with a sort of reverence.
“Is this okay?” he asks.
Charlotte can only nod.
*
“You could be my muse,” he mutters against her neck.
They’re sprawled on the bed, curled around each other as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“I’d be a dreadful muse, Dan. Trust me.”
He traces invisible music notes across her stomach.
“You’re wrong…I’ve been here for a week and nothing. It was like…my mind was empty. And then I saw you and I can feel it again, the music in my head. I’m writing a song about you.”
Charlotte laughs and stills his hand by threading her fingers through his.
“You’re writing a song now, are you?”
“Do you have any paper? And a pen. I’ll need a pen.”
Charlotte rummages around in the nightstand until she finds some stationary and a pen emblazoned with the hotel’s name. Daniel takes them from her and immediately starts writing.
She watches curiously as he forms the sloping shapes of notes, seemingly pulling them out of thin air.
“That’s all in your head?”
Daniel pauses.
“I can see the patterns. I’ve always been good at…finding order, I guess. My mother thought I’d make a good scientist.”
“My mum wanted me to be lawyer. I would have been miserable cooped up inside all day. They don’t always know what’s best.”
Daniel smiles, his pen already racing across the page again.
*
Later they sit side by side at the piano in the lobby as Daniel plays his new song.
Charlotte closes her eyes and listens. It’s happier than the tune he was playing the night before; full of soft dips and light sounds. It’s lovely.
By the time he reaches the end a small crowd has gathered in the lobby. They clap politely and Daniel blushes. Charlotte leans in so that she can whisper in his ear.
“That was brilliant, what’s it called?”
His blush deepens.
“The Explorer.”
*
They spend a week together doing nothing but learning one another.
They discover they both went to Oxford, and for one year their time overlapped. Charlotte thinks she could have passed him in the hall, sat behind him at the theater.
Neither of them knew their father. Charlotte confesses that hers never made it off the island; Daniel says his mother simply told him his died before he was born.
“There was Richard for awhile, though. He lived with us when I was a little boy, then he just left one day and I never saw him again.”
Charlotte pushes a lock of hair out of Daniel’s eyes.
“Some pair we are, yeah?”
He laughs gently.
“What are you going to do now?” he asks.
“I was thinking of sex, to be honest.”
Daniel shakes his head, missing the joke. He always misses the joke.
“I mean now that you’ve found your island.”
Charlotte sighs. She doesn’t know the answer to that question. If she did, she never would have gotten on that plane to Los Angeles.
“I’ve been looking for that island my entire life. I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to look for now, Dan.”
“Maybe I can be your muse too,” he says softly.
Charlotte sits up, a wicked grin tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“I’m ready to be inspired.”
*
They know it has to end some time.
Charlotte can only ignore calls from the curator and her mum and sisters for so long. Daniel’s phone keeps ringing as well. The real world beyond their hotel room keeps calling them back.
“They’ve found a new site in Mexico,” Charlotte says. “The curator in London wants me to fly down and check it out. He’s sent eleven…make that twelve, emails.”
Daniel sighs and slouches on the bed behind her.
“I’m supposed to give a concert in Ontario on Sunday.”
It was inevitable, really. Charlotte knew this, but it doesn’t change the fact that it hurts like hell.
“Do you believe in fate, Daniel?”
“No,” he says flatly.
Charlotte snorts. Of course he doesn’t.
“Neither do I. But it’s odd, isn’t it? That we’d bump into each other in a hotel and have it…not end there. What if I’d just kept walking?”
Charlotte sinks down on the bed next to Daniel and lets her head rest on his shoulder.
“It was a happy accident,” he says before pressing a quick kiss to her temple.
“I suppose so.”
*
They don’t promise to write or call, don’t promise that this isn’t goodbye.
They’re realists if nothing else. Instead Charlotte kisses him at the gate, drinks in the scent of him, files it away so she won’t forget.
“Take care of yourself,” she whispers.
He nods, his eyes serious as he cups her face in both of his hands.
“There’s always something to find,” he says. “Remember that for me, okay?”
She kisses him once more before he disappears into the throng of people crowded in LAX and heads towards his own gate. Charlotte blinks away a tear as she boards the plane.
She settles into her seat and leans her forehead against the cool glass of the window. She realizes almost despite herself that she’s excited about the new expedition. She’s itching to get back to work. For the first time, she actually feels relieved to have the island behind her. She’s ready to move on.
“Excuse me, sister? I think you’re in my seat.”
Charlotte looks up to see a handsome man smiling at her uncertainly.
“Sorry, love. I’ve always been rubbish at reading those bloody signs.”
Title: We Will Be Our Own Myth
Pairing: Jacob/Esau
Rating: R (sex)
Words: 494
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Heaven is not for sinners and Esau knows they’re drowning in sin.
A/N: For toestastegood. Happy Birthday!
If their corner of the world is smaller than everyone else’s, they don’t notice.
They don’t notice anything anymore, but the solid feel of body sliding against body, welcome after years of living half lives as ghosts.
“I missed you,” Jacob mutters over and over.
It’s good to see his earnestness hasn’t been diminished by death.
Esau doesn’t respond, doesn’t say I missed you too. Instead, he kisses his brother greedily, hushing his words.
*
Jacob says they don’t deserve this; Esau has no choice but to agree.
There is a trail of bodies stretching behind them, of lives ruined in the name of a place, in the name of escape.
Heaven is not for sinners and Esau knows they’re drowning in sin.
But still they’re here in this place far, far away from the ocean. And it belongs to them.
“Maybe it’s hell,” Jacob says.
“So what if it is?”
*
Sometimes it reminds Esau too much of before.
And then he remembers Jacob’s fist pounding against his face, the pettiness, the death. Years and years of losing himself bit by bit, becoming a monstrous thing not worthy of being called a man and he knows it was all Jacob’s fault.
On those days Esau leaves his brother and walks to the edge of their world (knows it’s the edge because he can’t imagine going any further) and sulks. He lets the anger wash over him, the rage course through his veins, pours it all into a scream that will make no sound.
Then he goes back.
*
“It’s always just been us,” Jacob says.
They’re sitting by a fire, Esau warming his hands. Jacob looks thoughtful, never a good sign.
“Right from the beginning, this is all we were ever meant to have. Each other.”
“That’s a lovely sentiment, Jacob. A little late though,” Esau snarls. “Maybe you could have realized that before you murdered me.”
Jacob doesn’t apologize.
Never does.
*
They fuck like drowning men looking for something to hold onto.
Desperate and fast, Jacob always comes first, Esau’s name leaving his lips like a prayer.
“Thank you,” he says against Esau’s ear.
*
“Where do you think she went?” Jacob asks.
Esau knows who he means. His hands ball into fists at his sides.
“I hope she’s trapped there.”
“You don’t mean that.”
He doesn’t, but he wishes that he did.
*
They sleep under the stars and Jacob teaches Esau the names of the constellations. He points to a figure in the sky and smiles.
“That’s us,” he says.
Esau squints, traces the shape in the air with the tip of his finger.
“If you say so.”
*
Esau lets Jacob wrap himself around him as he sleeps, even leans into his touch.
He doesn’t know how long they’ve been here, doesn’t know how long they will be, but he suspects it’ll be forever, whatever that means.
“I missed you too,” he says quietly, knowing Jacob won’t hear.