Flashfic: Late Night Request
A bit of flash fiction to satisfy my longing for the fandom before I am back to studying woes tomorrow. I have begun taking writing prompts, and the ones at staringout are simply wonderful for those brief strikes of inspiration that I cannot do without. This piece literally wrote itself from this prompt.
Title: Late Night Request
Rating: PG
Pairing: Will/Jake
Summary: Will is stunned by an unexpected reply when he urges Jake to reveal his troubles.
Disclaimer: Again, I don't own anything except my ideas.
He watches his brother out from a corner of his eye from morning till dusk. He sees him writing but knows he is distracted; occasionally he replacing his quill without a word on an empty page. He knows that he is thinking of something else when his gaze flicks to the corners of the room and back to the page, only to wander off someplace else again, not landing on any of the shapely girls. Any continuity in thought is broken again and again by these glances that seem to lead nowhere except, he hazards a guess, for a distraction. At nightfall before they turn in he manages to coax the troubles out of him, and it is with a hushed voice that he speaks.
"You aren't serious, are you?" In his mind’s eye he sees his own composure falter a little. He insists he truly is, with a firmness that cancels out the emerging protest that his brother is full of wine and therefore not of clear thought. He asserts vehemently he has given more than enough thought about it, and he knows exactly what he wants.
They sit by the bed but he finds the silence so overwhelming that he stands up and paces the length of the room to think it over, just so to hear the sound of his bare feet on the floorboards.
"Wait, I don't know about this..." He lets the rest of the sentence remain unsaid as it is of little importance. He sees the slight slump of his shoulders and how his brother’s earnest expression creases a little as if he had crushed his hopes completely but he was trying not to show. He says slowly, in a whisper weighed down with disappointment that he understands. How...difficult and unexpected this might seem. His words seem pained and icy, as if every syllable cuts his tongue. He says he would wait.
He watches him as he speaks each word deliberately and concisely like volumes of thought had gone before it. Only a slight nervous tremor permeates those words like cracks on old, water-thirsty roads. His brother has practiced smoothness, he realises, and probably for long stretches, but still not enough for an expert like him to overlook the flaws. No longer stumbling and aimless, his brother picks out the depressions in the ground of speech and almost makes it look easy when he sidesteps them.
Now his brother has eyes only for his lap. He thinks this is over, but now the problem lies with him. What does he not know about, exactly? He has known everything, right down to this. He knows he is afraid this might be a lie, but why so? It seems almost like a dream, yet this request is the only thing not dreamy about. He couldn't help thinking: they are still not romping about the mattresses and sandwiched between soft sheets, but stuck in a waiting game that will seem to go on perpetually. Still, dreams and the undreamed are far from his specialty.
It is a strange gesture to want something so badly yet when it presents itself to him he rejects it fervently. On the basis of it 'not being right'. What then, is right? He finds himself reflecting, his conscience seated across him in an imaginary interrogation room and there is nowhere to hide.
He is certain his sense of ethics is skewed and his conscience numbed, when he has been through so many wrongs with so many women and it does not so much as assert its control until...this.
Many. Women.
This issue undeniably departs from the norm but what difference would the smallest differences make? And between them both, who else would know?
"You're sure this is what you want?"
Almost imperceptibly he hesitates, and then he nods.
There and then he decides he does not give a damn about a conscience.
Kiss me.
A sense of liberation floods the chambers of his heart as he accedes.