[ His head burns with fever, and his eyes track Rin's, where, for Senan Wilkes, all the world and all of time converge. 7:34 means nothing at all, save that it was the page number where the passage could be found: Rin kissed me back.
And now, Rin said they love me.
It doesn't mean anything.
It means everything.
It indexes where the memory can be summoned again. It holds the symbology of a crucifix: the item itself is not what matters. What matters is that it represents a turning point in the history of Senan's own humanity. Here, at 7:34, is a crux of existence. Here is an axis. Here is a lynchpin. A watershed moment. And what occurred?
Rin loves him.
Rin fucking loves him, and he feels the boundaries of his skin perilously insubstantial. He feels his heart thrumming itself to death in joyful pulse.
7:34 does spell a beautiful eternity, but it's only a handful of letters. It doesn't compose the entirety of the sentence, because thousands of 7:34s have lived and died without rising remarkable.
Rin said.
And Sen hasn't waited to hear those words, but he's longed for them in dark and lonely hours. He hasn't watched Rin with yearning, wishing for them to be anything but what they granted the world, but in dreams - oh, in dreams, Rin looked at him just as they do now. (Is he dreaming?) (Is he dead? Did he fucking die?) Rin smiles like the first time, and love follows, and it could be 7:34 or lunchtime or 5:52 in the morning, what the fuck does time matter if they love him?
It's a moment burned in memory.
7:34 is the torch he carries for Rin Renault.
At 7:34, Rin said they love him - and damn it all if he didn't say it back. But he can't speak. (Novel, to be incapable of speech. To find himself awed to silence.) He doesn't have to - he doesn't have to speak, or cohere, or wonder anymore. Rin is kissing him because it's 7:34 and Rin loves him, and if he doesn't kiss back, he might sob.
So he does: he gathers them close and gives all he has to them. Sen, with nothing to prove and no one to impress, offers only what he's held reserved from anyone but them. If Rin wants him, then they deserve the rawness of himself, the undoctored glimpses of soul, the slow and shuddering passage of his lips over theirs. They deserve the honesty of himself, and how much he loves-
Oh. Oh, he didn't -
Fuck.
He cups their cheeks in both hands and draws back with a sharp breath, a swimmer surfacing for air (a dead man resurrected.) He has to say - he needs them to hear.
The first time, with their beautiful face framed by his just all right hands. Their lipstick miraculously unsmudged, their eyes depthless and familiar. He looks hungrily. He looks like a man who has discovered the Holy Grail, the Fountain of Youth - all the lost treasures together in a single form.
His Rin.
And softly, slowly, ensuring every word holds its own traction and sinks its weight into Rin's awareness, he speaks. ]
I love you. I have loved you all my life, at times so much I could hardly breathe. Always so much that my heart beats unsteady in your presence. I love you purely, and without demand. I haven't longed for more than you ever gave, but my god, I loved you utterly from the moment I first saw you. Not from the first kiss, and not from this moment. My comprehension of 'forever' has been spun from the night when Rin Renault walked into a flat and brought me to my knees.
I love you - not some moment, indifferent and fleeting. I like the coincidence of it, the unlikelihood, the seeming predestination. It suits my more fanciful moods.
But I love you. Inevitable, wonderful, undefinable Rin - a mystery and an answer to chase for all my days.
You, Rin, are my beautiful eternity.
[ He lowers his chin and raises his brows as his thumb sweeps a slow arc, as if to ask, Okay? and Do you understand? Sen watches them, searching their eyes - and for all that, looks like a man close to sundered, and well beyond undone. A man who can't bring himself to disbelieve the paradise laid before him. ]
I meant it, when I said I have been happy. Do you know lucky I've been, to have been welcomed so near, and always, to the deepest pleasure of my soul? Twenty-three years, I've been at the gates of my own heaven, and I have been happy.
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And now, Rin said they love me.
It doesn't mean anything.
It means everything.
It indexes where the memory can be summoned again. It holds the symbology of a crucifix: the item itself is not what matters. What matters is that it represents a turning point in the history of Senan's own humanity. Here, at 7:34, is a crux of existence. Here is an axis. Here is a lynchpin. A watershed moment. And what occurred?
Rin loves him.
Rin fucking loves him, and he feels the boundaries of his skin perilously insubstantial. He feels his heart thrumming itself to death in joyful pulse.
7:34 does spell a beautiful eternity, but it's only a handful of letters. It doesn't compose the entirety of the sentence, because thousands of 7:34s have lived and died without rising remarkable.
Rin said.
And Sen hasn't waited to hear those words, but he's longed for them in dark and lonely hours. He hasn't watched Rin with yearning, wishing for them to be anything but what they granted the world, but in dreams - oh, in dreams, Rin looked at him just as they do now. (Is he dreaming?) (Is he dead? Did he fucking die?) Rin smiles like the first time, and love follows, and it could be 7:34 or lunchtime or 5:52 in the morning, what the fuck does time matter if they love him?
It's a moment burned in memory.
7:34 is the torch he carries for Rin Renault.
At 7:34, Rin said they love him - and damn it all if he didn't say it back. But he can't speak. (Novel, to be incapable of speech. To find himself awed to silence.) He doesn't have to - he doesn't have to speak, or cohere, or wonder anymore. Rin is kissing him because it's 7:34 and Rin loves him, and if he doesn't kiss back, he might sob.
So he does: he gathers them close and gives all he has to them. Sen, with nothing to prove and no one to impress, offers only what he's held reserved from anyone but them. If Rin wants him, then they deserve the rawness of himself, the undoctored glimpses of soul, the slow and shuddering passage of his lips over theirs. They deserve the honesty of himself, and how much he loves-
Oh. Oh, he didn't -
Fuck.
He cups their cheeks in both hands and draws back with a sharp breath, a swimmer surfacing for air (a dead man resurrected.) He has to say - he needs them to hear.
The first time, with their beautiful face framed by his just all right hands. Their lipstick miraculously unsmudged, their eyes depthless and familiar. He looks hungrily. He looks like a man who has discovered the Holy Grail, the Fountain of Youth - all the lost treasures together in a single form.
His Rin.
And softly, slowly, ensuring every word holds its own traction and sinks its weight into Rin's awareness, he speaks. ]
I love you. I have loved you all my life, at times so much I could hardly breathe. Always so much that my heart beats unsteady in your presence. I love you purely, and without demand. I haven't longed for more than you ever gave, but my god, I loved you utterly from the moment I first saw you. Not from the first kiss, and not from this moment. My comprehension of 'forever' has been spun from the night when Rin Renault walked into a flat and brought me to my knees.
I love you - not some moment, indifferent and fleeting. I like the coincidence of it, the unlikelihood, the seeming predestination. It suits my more fanciful moods.
But I love you. Inevitable, wonderful, undefinable Rin - a mystery and an answer to chase for all my days.
You, Rin, are my beautiful eternity.
[ He lowers his chin and raises his brows as his thumb sweeps a slow arc, as if to ask, Okay? and Do you understand? Sen watches them, searching their eyes - and for all that, looks like a man close to sundered, and well beyond undone. A man who can't bring himself to disbelieve the paradise laid before him. ]
I meant it, when I said I have been happy. Do you know lucky I've been, to have been welcomed so near, and always, to the deepest pleasure of my soul? Twenty-three years, I've been at the gates of my own heaven, and I have been happy.