tfln open post

[byanyname]

***

either leave a message (or set of muses) for one of my assholes, or request a message from one of them. choose messages from the classic source, from your own skull, or whatever you may please.

Comments

5/5

[onefellswoop]

Fuck off.

[onefellswoop]

I expect I won't last ten minutes alone after that shot.

Wretched distraction.

[ ... ]

My beautiful provocateur.

[honeystuff]

no froot loops, no twix, no sugar in your coffee, not much for fucking

[...]

how do you feel about honey?

[honeystuff]

beautiful distraction, wretched provocateur

feels wretched anyhow

without daddy.

the bed's getting cold.

[...]

9 minutes.

[onefellswoop]

I've been known to accept the occasional sweet roll.

As for honey—

...Did you have something in mind, Puppy?

[ultimatenegative]

[ He knows this man. He knows this man very well, and.

And Darius. Does not get attached to his playthings.

But likewise, he never gets defensive this way about said playthings. He boasts, oh yes, and humiliates them, and parades them for his own entertainment. He doesn't text at three thirty in the morning to amend an earlier outburst about destroying their families.

Or admit -

Anything. Like this.

Senan sits back, an arm draped over the back of the sofa, and stares at the phone. It feels like it should be ominous.

But it's not. It's rather nice to see Darius maybe happy. (He tries not to think of this as closure.)

It's a moment before he replies. ]

You know, I believe that is precisely what I'm going to do. Fuck off for the night. It's late, and

[...]

And you, Darius, are going to go back to your dogg Enri and enjoy your evening.

[...]

Duly noted about the razing. I'll see you when you're back in town.

Goodnight, Dar you absolute cunt.

1/2

[honeystuff]

[...]

ten minutes ago, i'd have offered to lick it off your cock

you can lick it off mine.

2/2

[honeystuff]

[...Oh, right. ]

please, daddy?

[onefellswoop]

My my, Puppy.

Better grab a jar of honey along with that Twix. Something on the mellow side, hm?

I find I'm eager to try the taste of it.

[honeystuff]

that worked???

shit yes

omw

[onefellswoop]

[ That isn't usual.

Sen not persisting. Sen backing off prodding further or offering some snide remark. Sen— Retreating?

It isn't retreating. Darius doesn't want to think about precisely what it is, or how its newness coincides with... With the boy. With what Darius said about (what Darius admitted regarding) Enri.

There's half an urge to snarl, to turn this conversation back into familiar, biting territory. (To back away from this uneasy newness.) And at the same time, Darius very nearly appreciates Sen's (is it truly?) (it seems like) tact.

And, most importantly, there are those texts from Enri. And that photo from Enri. And the thought of a bed turning cold, a young man left alone, the minutes ticking down and Enri waiting, waiting.

Darius is walking back into the suite as he texts. ]

Enjoy your fucking off for the night. Try not to strain anything.

If you need anything

And don't forget to brush your teeth.

Sweet dreams, asshole.

[onefellswoop]

[ Enri's answer arrives after a minute or two: the bedroom door opening, Darius slipping through. Not pausing to take in the sight of Enri in the bed (dimly moonlit through the veiled and shuttered windows) (beautiful against the mess of bedding) (he's never liked the sight of any other in his bed so well) (he's never been pleased by the bare thought of joining anyone in bed, just to linger, just to rest), though he notes each detail, feels his blood hum with the pleasure of the scene. Slipping softly into bed beside the boy, to drift a kiss across Enri's cheek, to wrap his arms around the boy and draw in beside him wholly.

To whisper, pleased and without razor— ]

Daddy's here.

[ And, brushing one hand through Enri's hair, nudging the boy with his forehead— ]

Go to sleep, Puppy. Daddy's here.

[honeystuff]

[ Dreamlike: Darius in a glow of moonlight, haloed like he was in the chapel. Enri, sprawling and barely awake, breathes easier and easier, holds out a hand to him only to find himself readily drawn into an embrace.

For a span of silence after those words, he watches Darius with a drowsy smile, eyes hooded and his body warm (and warm, and warmer, and he could melt.) (This is peaceful. This is how it feels to be peaceful.)

Unthinking, he mirrors the touch offered him, languid fingers traced through Darius's hair, down his cheek. And then Enri nuzzles in under his jaw with a heavy, contented sigh, his arms winding with care, his cheek pressed to Darius's shoulder.

A swell of an inhale here as he yawns, and riding his exhale - a humming smile, and- ]

Love you.

[onefellswoop]

[ Worth trying the honey, to witness the boy's excitement. To discover what it might bring to their play. To see how far he can drive the boy toward wild incoherence. ]

Hurry, Enri; Daddy's waiting.

Bring him his Puppy, and he'll bring you to rapture.

[onefellswoop]

[ There's nothing contentious in it. There are no hesitations, and there's no distance at all between them, and there's no space between what Darius wishes and what Enri wants. ('Accord,' that's a word for it. Wonderful and warming.)

It might be a space of dreaming, or some liminal threshold between waking and sleep. Where they are together now can't be touched by any other form or thought or moment. Where they are together now is an evanescent song hummed down a late-night garden.

And he feels as if his heart could stutter out to silence.

'Love you,' the boy says, soft along a yawn, and Darius lets the words wrap sheltering around him.

And Darius shifts to place a kiss on Enri's head, amid that mess of hair.

One more kiss, and then another, lingering beyond a breath. ]

My Enri.

My adoration.

I'll keep you safe, beside me.

[withoutrhetoric]

[ Rin doesn’t believe in fate. Rin doesn’t believe in much beyond what may be effected in the world. What people do, what people plan, and how people play off of one another; how they forge worlds with structures suited to their shared sparks and desires, and how they turn the humdrum into something vibrant (or destructive; or slate-heart oppressive). It isn’t fate that draws them; it’s their ingrown forces singular and shared. It’s a host of earthly, seen and unseen elements at play.

What Rin holds stock in: Taking hold of any chance that comes your way. Listening for places where your voice is at once entertained and echoed back. Watching for the ways people do and don’t receive you.

What Rin knows: Those who resonate your song are rare. And vital. And clear in all their presence. You will know, Rin feels - Rin thinks, Rin knows - the ones who recognize you. The ones who share any portion of your wavelength.

So.

So of course Rin felt Sen’s presence from the start.

So of course Rin believes in Sen, and in their shared, their critical collision.

So this kiss soars elative, and this kiss thrums overdue, and this kiss has been, and this kiss is, and the silent vows offered and exchanged have always been oncoming.

(To think, they might have missed it.

To think, they might have spoken, oh, years ago, and brought this tidal warmth toward its unmasked cresting sooner.

But with or without these silent promises and professions, Sen and Rin have been together, unbreaking.

And now. And now that subtle muffled veils are being brushed aside, this feels like consummation, like relief, like vows renewed and strengthened.)

And when Rin moved, they found Sen there, as well. So perhaps they two moved as one to share their breath. So that now, when Sen pulls closer, Rin’s shifting near as well. So that Rin’s breath nearly mirrors Senan’s rise and fall. So that they two are in every motion harmonious: Sen and Rin, aware always of a current strung between them. Rin and Sen, joined through eternal, ephemeral convergence.

Their hand at his chest sets splayed and deftly pressed. Their breath shudders, and they hum, and twine their hand with Sen’s, a subtle grasp. Again, again and softly, they brush their lips to his (and there has never, oh never been a kiss to match Sen’s), with each shift offering and asking more.

They know the words unspoken, ringing. And their soul sings in time, in tune with Sen, lungs aching with the simple direness of words so long unspoken. Words known without hearing their form; truths known before their shape was granted conclusive outline.

Their own silent promise sings in kind—

Of course.

And.

For years. From the start. Before I knew the words for it. Before I knew I could.

And.

Forgive me my wordlessness, won’t you?

There is no try about it; there is no need for effort or attempt. There is only the certain knowledge: that they love Sen, heart and soul and wholeness. And they always, yes, they always will.

For they have always known Sen, and held Sen. For Rin has always felt half their heart held in his hands, and felt the life of him within their own.

When they draw back just slightly - after a thousand thousand shared breaths, after time has winnowed into nothing, after Sen’s silent voice and Sen’s lips and Sen’s touch and Sen’s pulse have formed the whole world and firmament beyond - it’s to find familiar eyes and watch, and offer in this way a furtherance of vows. Their own eyes wide still, soft now, wonderstruck and eminently pleased.

Then their voice, soft and unmuddled, equally wonderstruck and, at once, toned with simple sensibility— ]

I am your Rin, you know.

For now and always, my Sen.

A Day of Two Later -

[ultimatenegative]

Query.

Consider this supposition: that one has been enamored of another for ohhhhh - any number, arbitrary, but for the sake of having a number upon which we might build a foundation, shall we say: twenty-five years.

That this amorous sentiment was held not guarded, but silent. Often to the derision of other parties currently away on holiday and thus unable to come here and have a drink with me.

Why should they want to have a drink with me, you might ask! This derisive third party surely would wish to know what is being celebrated!

And I'll tell you, of course. Supposition and consequence, and an unveiling of long unsuspected truths. Suppose the second party -

Fuck all.

[...]

Rin loves me.

Did you know? I didn't fucking know.

My god, I'm going to burst at every seam.

[ultimatenegative]

[ He could forgive Rin anything, if there was anything to forgive. For all the years that he didn't have them how he wanted them, he had them in other, no less crucial ways: their friendship. Their support. Their loyalty. Their pragmatism, their kindness. Their fire, like a blazing beacon in the dark.

There's nothing to forgive.

(One might ask what became, in the space of several moments, of Senan's convictions. How is it he could be so easily deterred from his belief that he could never let them know the deepest and fullest measure of his heart for fear they might not reciprocate, or that he might leave them wretched when his days reach their certain and none-too-distant end?)

He asks himself what became of his convictions.

Well. He loves them. He might have been born to that purpose. He might have been - was - born to bloody his knuckles across the teeth of anyone who transgressed against them. To lie beside them in fields at midnight, watching stars and thinking only of the rise and fall of their breathing. To run wild and grinning, hand in hand with Rin, from the wail of sirens. To see the world hued differently with their presence, made softer and clearer and sensible.

And if he wasn't born to it, he lived it nonetheless.

So he answers himself. He, Senan Wilkes, has only one conviction: Rin Renault.

They want him. He'll give them all he has, for as long as he has. It's what he whispers now, answering their simplicity, their beautiful clarity of self and thought, with his own softness. (He, quixotic. He, ever the romantic. Funny, that Rin, living work of art that they are, should be the pragmatist. Funny that Sen, accented a classless chav, the rough-bred scholar - intellectual, true, multilingual and philosophizing, but a thug nevertheless - should be the romantic.) ]

Tous mes jours. Tout mon couer.

[ These words, familiar, engraved into his skin - a declaration made more than a decade ago, when he knew for certain where his heart lay.

As if he didn't know from the moment he saw them.

He, seated with an arm slung over the back of a chair, spread-legged and unkept, a twenty-year old foundling from Yorkshire jabbing his cigarette emphatically to make his point about something ultimately unimportant, to a listener now faded from memory. Someone's (Darius's?) flat, where he'd been invited to talk some scheme or another and now frequented for the conversation. Sen had taken a drag from said cigarette and his eyes had tracked movement at the front door.

And heralded by the curling exhalation of smoke, a surly Rin walked into his life. He remembers them angelic, sexless, wreathed in tendrils of white. (His first thought, without derision, toned wondering: My god, what are you? A thought that echoed through time, through his years, even to this moment. A question direly in need of an answer - that Senan would try hungrily to pursue. What are you and can I know you?

What are you, and can I keep you?)

(The answer is simple, and given here, tonight, in their embrace: I am your Rin. And the rest follows.)

The tattoo came a decade and a burst appendix later. (Rin, fussing over him. Rin had made sure he went to the hospital. Rin had helped him through recovery, fed him, helped change the bandages, smothered him with coddling.) Rin had, by then, broken his heart by announcing they believed neither in romance nor monogamy, that they would never enter in to such a wretched state of affairs as marriage. He had decided, finally, it didn't fucking matter what role they held in his life, so long as they were in it. So long as he could be their Sen, profoundly loyal.

Not that he ever mentioned the tattoo to them, or its meaning when inevitably they did catch sight of it.

But they're certain to comprehend the resonance across decades, the implication, the simple meaning.

All his days, from one smoke-filled room twenty-five years ago, onward. All his heart, for them.

Of course he's their Sen. He always has been.

He's smiling lopsidedly - looking buoyantly daft and starstruck. The smudge of purple lipstick at his mouth doesn't help. (It doesn't matter, either. What shame or hurt can touch him now? What disease? Is he terminal, is death waiting for him in ten months, eight months?

Fuck it. Rin loves him. He'll live whole lifetimes. He's untouchable. He's immortal.)

He catches his lower lip between his teeth and tastes them (and the traces of lipstick); his smile is relieved, grateful, a perfect gleam of happiness. As though to be sure (he's never been more certain of anything in his life as he is of his own conviction - or that Rin, miraculously, perfectly, utterly loves him) he raises his brows questioningly (there's no question, there's nothing to question ever again) and- ]

Yes?

[ The shortest sentence he's ever spoken, containing more in a single syllable than all his meandering, hours-long soliloquys. Yes, us? and Yes, you love me? and Yes, we're a 'we'? and I got this right, didn't I? I didn't mistake or misunderstand, and my god you're the most beautiful thing this universe has ever turned out, so confirm for me, please, that I am in fact the luckiest man in said universe. And, of course. Yes, I'd like to be your Sen as I've always longed to be: completely, and for the rest of my life. Yes, and yes again. ]

[onefellswoop]

[ …The dumbass.

And: It’s about fucking time.

And: Which of the two would have pushed it into speaking?Did Sen finally jump in, or did Rin finally figure the fuck out how to speak?

And: Good for them both. Probably. (Probably definitely.)

(And: This is. A lot of communication with Sen. Is this going to become routine? Sen texting Darius, Darius texting Sen? As if jumping back into conversation (into something like camaraderie) were as simple as this?

Darius finds he doesn’t disdain the idea. It isn’t bad, speaking with Sen again. (It might almost be a little bit agreeable.) ]

’Tous mes jours. Tout mon couer’?

[ ... ]

The difficulty here is that you’ve caught certain parties most comfortably fluent in derision feeling less irate than is their wont. Which leaves them bereft of their usual verbal arsenal.

Add to that the near-shock at hearing concision in the voice of Sen, lifelong peddler of loquacious - some might say ‘tedious’ (ah, there it is! the trusty jab) - bullshit, and what am I to say?

Well. That this confirms you as an ass, for holding so much silence.

That it is [ … ] - or I will grant it seems to be - some cause for celebration.

That after all of your ill-luck, after years of the trials and tribulations of hapless Sen, you’re overdue a shot of fortune.

Congratulations, Sen. You disgusting sap of a romantic.

Better late than never.

(…It ought to go without saying, but don’t you fucking tell Rin I referred to them even tangentially as any kind of fortune. Don’t you fucking dare.)

[ultimatenegative]

Tous mes jours, tout mon couer, and anything else they ask. Everything they'll have of me.

[...]

Point of order, but I've always been fortunate. I could never have asked for finer companions. Finer friends than you and Rin, there never were, nor shall there ever be again.

This isn't fortune. This is miraculous. This is a universe not in the least indifferent. This is the benevolence of all mankind converged.

This is what should be termed 'paradise', but that it is solely my own bliss. (Perhaps theirs, too? I'll strive for it. If they can be happy with me, what suffering is there?)

[...]

Darius!

I do believe I'm going to marry them. I'd like to do that. Fuck, I couldn't do that twenty-five years ago, could I? God bless the twenty-first century. I'm going to marry Rin. How is that for romantic?

I'm going to ask. Suppose they say 'yes'; you'll come, won't you?

[...]

Christ, they're beautiful. They're wearing purple eyeshadow again. It's terribly flattering -


[ And you know what. He's going to snag a picture of them and send it to Darius. ]

Look at them. There was never a more perfect creature. My null. My Rin. (My maybe-spouse!)

[...]

Endure this a while. It's twenty-five years of pent-up exuberance. Delight in measures longed for - mind you, Darius. Mind you I have always been happy. I have always been content with what they have been to me. But this is a different happiness. A different contentment.

I'm afraid it can't be contained. A deluge of zealous fanaticism. I've been telling anyone who'll listen.

My fucking face hurts from smiling.

[...]

Darius, I slept in their bed.

[withoutrhetoric]

[ Of course.

Of course, the ink-inflected, lasting words. Should Rin have known? Did they know? There’s a distance - vast, they’ve always felt - between knowing and suspecting. Knowing and half-guessing, or seeing how pieces could amount, without proof of their connection. With a time marked 7:34, and though Rin can’t place the meaning at first—

Could it have been.

That night. Early evening, dusk coming on, and candles. The first time, most vivid time they’d met beneath the protective warmth of a blanket. When a kiss first felt like heaven, and when it ended far too soon.

The tattoo had appeared not long after that night, hadn’t it? (And hadn’t the time had always strung a distant bell? Inconclusive, but somewhere attempting to amount. If only they’d seen the pieces. If only they’d known the connection.)

It had, yes. And they know now. And Sen is here now, and always has been wholly present.

And look at him: this gleaming smile, this relief. This recognition and acceptance. Belief because of course he must believe; because he’s always, perhaps, felt Rin beside hi, the way Rin has always known Sen at their side. And a question that isn’t a question, really; a word that only pleads for confirmation, certainty at the culmination of so many ambiguous years.

A word Rin is happy to meet. A word that draws Rin’s smile, and an answer spoken without need for preparation. ]

Tous mes jours. Tout mon couer.

[ Thinking as they say it: ’Oh, of course.’

Thinking, planning, to take on a new and overdue tattoo of their own. (What might it look like? How best bespeak Sen, and mirror Sen’s own mark?) ]

Yes.

Of course.

For always, and with everything I am.

Yes, how can I tell you…

[ A slight hiss of air between their teeth as they cock their head, nod to themself, then speak in French, then English— ]

I love you. And I love you.

[ Then a kaleidoscope of their shared languages, all expressing love, speaking variations on a core-deep truth punctuated with kisses drifting and pressured, with caresses, with Rin fixing their eyes on Sen and smiling, nearly daft. Speaking again, again, again that they love Sen, they adore Sen that their love belongs to Sen, that Sen’s heart holds their own. ]

Tous mes jours. Tout mon couer.

My philosopher.

My brilliant, subtle fool.

My Sen, my Senan, my Sen Ben Benice. Of course I love you dearly, with all the not-insubstantial conviction that I own. With every ounce of heart and blood I have. I adore you, I love you, you absolute absurdity and beauty of a man.

[onefellswoop]

Did you send me a

Of course you sent me a picture. Sen. Wilkes. Senan. You’re in deep, aren’t you? …As if you haven’t been for god knows how many years.

…We’re all a bunch of fucking fools, aren’t we?

I might endure. I don’t promise that I’ll refrain from muttering my irritations. Which are and I suspect will be many, if you’re to insist on such effusive sentimentality.

Not to say it doesn’t suit you. Or to brush over your talent for turning even the grossest predilections into not-wholly-noxious lyrical disquisitions. But I swear by the name of all that fucks, if I leave this string of messages feeling the least bit saccharine, my curse - and this abject sin - will be a sin on your head.

You’re stepping perilously close with your ‘friend’ talk, Sen.

Point one: If they’ve professed their love, you should probably expect Rin’s right beside you in bliss. Shit’s sake, when have the pair of you been far removed on any opinions? Two stubborn assholes in one asshole pod.

More precisely: You’re a dick, Wilkes, and a bona fide piece of shit, but they’ve always seemed to like you, and in fact I have it on semi-decent authority that they love you, so maybe start thinking of that - fuck, I can’t believe I’m saying this - paradise as mutual.

…Can’t believe I’m saying this, either, but you might not make the worst husband. And, fuck, what’ve you got to lose by asking? If, if they say no, you’ve only got a year, tops, to carry that rejection around. And if anyone can get a ring on that snarky little shit’s finger, it’s you.

[ … ]

I can’t believe you sent a fucking photo.

[ … ]

All right. They’re looking good. Fine. Lucky you, etc. etc. (Again, no fucking telling them I said as much.)

Double lucky you - double lucky them? the way I hear it, you’ve both got talents to bring to the table not that you showed much that time we you know what never mind - if I’m reading you right about ‘sharing their bed.’ And I assume I’m correct; don’t need clarification. Thanks.

Lucky Sen.

Lucky Rin.

An extra round of drinks when I see you. For celebration's sake.

[ … ]

You do remember I’m a menace at weddings, right? You remember who you’re talking to?

1/2

[ultimatenegative]

Well. I say I slept in their bed. That is precisely what I mean: I think it might be my own bed, now. It turns out I sleep on the left side, and am in fact capable of being both the large and the little spoon.

I've never shared a bed for sleeping, beyond the infrequencies of passing out in yours or theirs. It's novel.

Exciting.

[...]

They do bring talents to the table, by the bye. And if I have no talent to afford them in return, I believe well and truly I've atoned with earnest effort.

They are fucking ethereal unclothed. A work of art.

Ungentlemanly of me to speak of intimacies, but I will draw the line here and not comment further on their endowments for the sake of their privacy. For the sake of their self, and sanctity, and sacredness.

But.

Lucky Sen, indeed.

[...]

All right. TMI. But I must tell someone or I'll start shouting it to the rafters; I would tell Rin, themself, but they're busy.

And I did tell them. At length. In eight languages. Do you know what it's like to hear someone shout their pleasure in eight different languages?

No one lets me talk mid-coitus. You didn't let me talk.

Christ, I think we spoke as much as we went about the business of it, Rin and I.

[...]

Darius, they have the most unparalleled ankles. Consummately flawless.

And I love them. I love every inch of them, with every thought I possess - so many more than ever may reach speaking, so there you have a measure of my adoration for Rin!

Fucking hell, they looked this way, and the light caught just so on their smile. I love them with every piece of my wretched heart.

I'll die happy, Darius. I swear it.

[...]

You're a menace at Waverly's wedding. I doubt we'll have a flower girl that you can besmirch.

I want you there. They'll want you there, no matter this mysterious animosity you two are propagating. They may not like you just now, but we both love you. You know that.

Cunt.

[...]

Assuming there is a marriage. I haven't asked yet. It has to be romantically grand or grandly romantic or, at the outset, memorable. The proposal.

Or I'll race up to them and start begging. Begging is equally acceptable, I feel, when the one you want to wed is possessed of such incomparable transcendence, and you yourself are a bona fide piece of shit, a dick, and a stubborn asshole.

(The things you say to an ailing man. You're going to hell.)

2/2

[ultimatenegative]

Joking aside.

It strikes me, Darius, that it may not merely be my own deliriously happy hue cast upon the world as I observe it: you seem damnably affable. As a matter of fact, I would hazard my health, wellbeing, and sanity, and suggest you've been overtly friendly.

What's gotten in to you, I wonder.

Lucky Sen, lucky Rin. Lucky Darius, as well?

More directly:

May one attribute your sudden conviviality to the company you've been keeping?

[ultimatenegative]

[ Stricken, Sen stares at them, his lips faintly parted and faintly smiling, rampant disbelief clear in his eyes. (His heart is gone. His soul expired, passing from his body. He died a moment ago, he thinks, and this is eternity. This is what heavens are meant to be, when people speak of them. Revelation, enlightenment, a comprehension of life's meaning and one's purpose within its weave.)

Rin echoed his words back. Rin spoke the words forever marked in his skin (for them) (always, for them) and meant them for him. All their days, all their heart, his own now.

He would speak, but they're speaking, and he never has liked to interrupt them. He would let his expression contort with agonized bliss, shed tears, swear profusely at the momentousness, the blessed shower of mercy the universe has afforded him with the resounding return of his own vow. But Rin is not a hopeless romantic, and they don't linger in the same moments as Sen.

He thinks.

He's wrong.

Because what follows is more. Oh, it's so much more. It's his own words, preceded by love, and preceding love, and there are kisses garnering stunned movements from Sen, his hand trembling at their cheek, the lights in his vision flaring and blurring around Rin (also blurring) (a fate-on-view so transcendent, it hazes wet and stings with salt.)

They said.

They said.

He closes his eyes and whispers their name, devastated. He opens his eyes and Rin is still there, and Rin still loves him.

And.

And suddenly sharp in motion, he jerks his shoulder back and slaps his hand on the sofa, searching without tearing his eyes from them. His expression slowly lapses between bemused smiles and that same shattered disbelief.

This is what it is to be undone, they've fucking undone him, and because he's loquacious, because he speaks at length about nothing and everything, and speaking is like breathing, as his hand goes about its scrabbling business, he says softly -]

Fucking undone, me.

[ His hand meets solidity and he grasps his phone.

He needs to know. It's the only sensical thing his mind can produce in this moment: what time is it.

He needs to know the time. The date. The day.

His brows have knit helpless, and he has to drag his gaze from their face to look. (And laughs. He laughs, a choked sob of a sound, a noise issued at the end of the world when its curtain falls and all is revealed to be a joke of the highest order.) (A noise which, from Sen, is appreciative. Of course. Of course. Of course.)

Tilting the phone so they can see the backlit screen, Sen - wet-eyed and gleaming with joy, dazed and a little daft with it, with faint purple along his mouth (and cheeks, and anywhere else their lips met his skin) - murmurs a broken, baffled (happy): ]

Seven thirty-four.

[ And his smile returns, adoring and transfixed. ]

The best moment of my life.