The Quiet Man

Shameless

The watery dawn light filters through the curtains. It’s grey: it’s raining, and it taps at the window in a reassuring way. The sun rises, the rain falls: the things we do, our decisions and desires, the things we trigger and the things we let alone, won’t change that. It’s going to be a damp, cool, grey sort of day. That’s all right.

It’s early. Nothing’s blown up in the night, as far as I can tell. Maybe the failsafe doesn’t work anymore; it was years ago, after all. Maybe it died an ignoble death in the boiler. It could be all over, you might have finished all of this in the night, for all I know. While I was senseless and asleep, still warm and buzzing from your mouth and your fingers. Maybe you’ll tell me casually over breakfast later on this morning, as if it’s nothing. We’ll sit in the kitchen surrounded by phones and laptops: By the way, John, Moran visited in the night, I shot him between the eyes. Bit of a mess in the foyer, I’m afraid. More tea? I wouldn’t put it past you.

It’s quiet, it’s early, and you’re still sleeping. Well, I think you are. You’re not moving, anyway, and your breathing is slow and even. You’ve made my chest into your pillow for the second time. Your fingers are curled around my hip. It’s a delicate and acrobatic balance between physically awkward and dangerously suffocating, but you’ve managed to find the one point where it’s actually quite comfortable. I suppose the night makes it that. A bit of practice. Yeah, this is fine. Just fine. Terrific, actually.

Maybe this is how mornings are going to be from now on. You’ll cling to me in your sleep, you’ll hold on to me like you’re afraid I might drift away. But it’s not me who left, Sherlock. It was you. You had your reasons. But it was you, not me. I’ve always been the one to stay put. Mine are the feet anchored to the ground; yours have always been the ones that can push off at a moment’s notice. You’re the one who can hover over the rest of us if you want to, unseen. And you do. So often, that’s just what you do.

Light on his feet, they say. Well. I didn’t mean it like that.

Though I suppose that’s also true.

You never said.

I never asked.

It didn’t matter, and in the end I don’t think I wanted to know for sure. I liked the ambiguity of you, the open possibility that I might be able to kiss you one day and get away with it. You never confirmed or denied it, and I just assumed.

You didn’t prove me right or wrong until now.

But this doesn’t prove anything, does it. Not really.

It can’t prove anything about you if it doesn’t prove anything about me.

Of the two general categories of human being, yes, as a rule I prefer the female variety when it comes to sex and relationships. That’s true. That’s still true; I haven’t developed a general interest in blokes, or anything. No: if you turned away from me, if you left me, I wouldn’t seek out another man, I don’t think. Barring some sort of extraordinary circumstance, I don’t think so. Well: who knows. But between those two categories, men, women, yes: I’d say I prefer women. As a rule. But I prefer you above everyone else, in every capacity.

Does that make any sense? I suppose it doesn’t.

It’s strange.

I want you. Just like this. Soft and quiet and still; hard and fast and loud, too. Careless and thoughtless and clever, miles ahead of everyone else. Scared and lost, vicious and cunning, confused, scornful, oblivious. Amazing, brilliant, hopelessly rude to strangers. I prefer women, yes. There’s nothing feminine about you. But I prefer you above all of them. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but there it is.