January 10th, 2005

Security: Time: 09:04 pm

Somewhere in Italy, Hob opens a door. It is an ordinary door: water-warped and battered by time, smelling faintly of salt and the Tiber's green breeze. He knows with a odd off-kilter foresight what he will find in the darkness beyond the doorway, and wants it in a way that English doesn't have a word for: a fixed and nameless yearning, a striving towards home. The marble angels of the archway watch with stone amusement in their eyes as he steps over the threshold, and into another world.

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November 17th, 2004

Security: Time: 11:22 pm

It's late, the shadows of the dim bar lamps falling eerily through ghost-like tendrils of cigarette smoke. Hob is drinking wine: Chardonnay, pale in the bottle, the glass cold to the touch. His eyes are tired, dark; he looks brittle and pensive.

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September 28th, 2004

Security: Time: 10:09 am

The empty bottle of whiskey he broke is scattered across the floor in jagged pieces. He's huddled in the corner of the room, knees curled against his chest. Misery rises in a bleak column inside of him that cuts off all breath. There was a name for it in the days when they understood pain. The Peine Forte et Dure. Piece by piece they'd press you to death. Slowly. He'll stay silent before this tribunal, even when all he can see are subtle dark eyes and a smile. He tries not to remember: waking with him, and vague whispered dreams of red wings. The way his skin had tasted of night and the desert and time, when Hob pressed his mouth against the sweat-damp hollows and breathed. The night comes on cold and silent, stifling all sound. He can't remember it being so quiet before. His heart stutters in his chest as though unsure if it's being told to stop or stay beating. He'd give anything to be gone, to be severed from this, to be stone. Time wears stone down but can't destroy it with the echoed sense of desire and pain; can't shatter it with words in a language long dead, spoken like a promise and casually betrayed. He can feel it under his skin like heated iron. It rips through him: a brutal and affectionless knife, and the whole room smells like sex and blood. Somewhere in this building, Lucifer is laughing.

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September 18th, 2004

Security: Time: 01:27 am

*It's late. Hob is sitting alone in a far corner of the bar, flipping a bottlecap absently from finger to finger. On the table in front of him is a half-empty glass of whiskey.*

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September 8th, 2004

Security: Time: 09:45 pm

Hob dreams. He's back on the ship; the ship is a fixture of his dreams, and he almost recognizes it, he can almost give it a name, except that he can't quite, but the wind is rising and the sails are billowing out, arched and white and full of clean sea air, and he has to set a course or he'll be drifting. He knows, somehow he knows, that the latitude doesn't matter-- it's the longitude he's got to take, and there's no fixed point to measure it from; there's no way... He remembers the dim clamour of voices calling out chartings of the noonday sun, but he doesn't have a sextant, or a backstaff even, and he can't find the sun. Somehow it's terribly important that he find it. He could measure by the moon (th'inconstant moon) but it's capricious. Changeable. He can't trust it. "I'm lost," he says out loud. There's a low laugh behind him, and he turns to see Billy standing just behind him. "Nawh, you're not lost," Billy tells him. "You can measure by me." And he's close, so inescapably close, his breath hot beside Hob's ear as he wraps his arms around him, comfortable and desiring and sure. Hob closes his eyes and sighs. "This isn't real," he says softly. "You're not real; you're just a figment of my dream." "Yeah." He can feel Billy's smile curving against him. "But it's a pretty good fuckin' dream." Hob turns in Billy's arms to bury his face in his chest, smelling the clean smoky bright scent of him. "I missed you." "I know." Somewhere far up a seagull calls, and it's such a lonely sound. Hob closes his hands hard on Billy's back, clutching fistfuls of soft shirt. He knows what comes next. "Don't leave," he says. Billy kisses his forehead, lightly. "I got no choice. You know that." "I want you to stay. I can't get the measurements. I'm drifting. I'm afraid." Billy shakes his head and grins gently. "To take a latitude, sun, or starres, are fitliest view'd at their brightest..." "You're quoting Donne at me. This has to be a dream." His eyes are blurry with tears. Billy continues inexorably. "But to conclude of longitudes, what other way have we, but to marke when, and where the darke eclipses be?" "I love you," Hob says. "That hasn't changed." Billy's expression is tender. "Mark it as your fixed point," he says. "Figure out how far you've drifted from where you're supposed to be." "I don't know where that is," he confesses, helplessly. "Then it's about time you found out, dontcha think?" Billy brushes a strand of dark hair away from Hob's face. "I'll be here." "I'm scared." "Don't be." He's already fading, dissolving into the air. "It's just celestial navigation. It's simple. You've always known." Hob watches him disappear. "Please," he whispers. "Please don't leave."

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September 6th, 2004

Security: Time: 06:29 pm

The night had been hard and dark like the blade of a knife that cuts and cuts and never leaves even the apology of a scar. He'll remember hurting, remember feeling raw and broken, burned by the fire of Lucifer's beautiful, remorseless hands. But more: remember that mouth at his ear in the moment of greatest darkness, murmuring something reassuring, something tender, something true. He meant it, or he didn't. He said it all the same. Hob takes that with him into dreams, where it blossoms into blue fire, becomes something fierce and bewitching and strange, and he sees his life like a series of stained glass windows: piece on brilliant piece, just pieces, just so many jewel-like fragments fitted into a bright and fragile whole. In the dream a hurricane shatters the windows one by one, and in the dark of the nave of this existence strong hands are gathering the remnants, but whose hands, whose hands can he trust to put him back together again? He's afraid, and he can taste the name on his lips, and then he wakes. Morning light is lying on the floorboards. Lucifer is watching him, chin propped on one hand, eyes unreadable. His body is a warm length beside Hob in the narrow bed. "You stayed," Hob says. His voice sounds rusty. Lucifer looks amused. "I keep my word." "I wasn't sure." "You should have been." He reaches out an idle hand to smooth Hob's hair, careful, condescending, the way one would soothe a child. Hob resists the urge to curl against him and breathe in the cinnamon scent of his skin. "Thank you," he whispers. Lucifer's hand goes still against his face. "It's a bargain. Not a gift." "Yes." Hob closes his hand hard on the line of pain there. His breath catches. It hurts. "I know it doesn't mean anything," he says, his voice low and desperate, "but for what it's worth, I'm yours." Lucifer smiles darkly, as though at some secret joke. "I know." He brings his hand consideringly down the side of Hob's cheek, sketching the line of his jaw and ignoring the shiver this provokes. One finger trails down Hob's neck and lower, to where that single lopsided scar stands out bright against the skin. He smiles again. It is not a pleasant smile. He lays his hand over Hob's heart. Hob is watching him with troubled eyes, and his heartbeat is like a whisper at the back of his mind, a warning. Hold still, it says, and he feels like he's been hearing it, uncomprehending, for days. Hold still. Hold still. This is going to hurt.

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September 5th, 2004

Security: Time: 08:37 pm

His dreams are confusing things, bright and bewildering and full of fear. He's running through the woods under a curtain of faint silver snow, frost climbing up the branches in frail patterns, his breath quick and white in the frozen air. The cold sends him tumbling out of the dream with a shiver, and he makes a sleepy plaintive noise and curls against the warm body beside him. He feels a comforting hand on his back, soothing him, and a voice says something that might be Slepe, and so he does, slipping back to where leaves stir in the white and dark motion of the sudden fall of snow. When he wakes for the second time, Lucifer is not there. He sits up, wincing, pulling the comforter around him for warmth. He feels tender and raw and somehow new, huddled there sleepy and rumpled, blinking in the morning light. There are bruises all down the high arch of his hipbone, blue shadows where hands have been. Later he'll find a curved scar at the hollow of his collarbone and not remember its source. It hurts. He touches the tangled sheets on the bed. I'm going to hurt you. (Eyes dark and amused, but strangely sad) (And breathless and fearful and eager, answering) Yes. Yes, I know. Yes, please. He traces the scar on his chest, half-healed, and so close to his heart. "This wasn't what I meant," he whispers. There is no one around to hear.

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September 4th, 2004

Security: Time: 01:01 am

*Hob is sitting by the window, smoking. Their small upstairs room is cold, nights and mornings, and he's wearing a frayed black jumper with holes worn through. He looks tired. The early morning light casts odd shadows on his face as he watches Billy and Joe sleep.*

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September 1st, 2004

Security: Time: 12:30 am

Take heed of loving mee, At least remember, I forbade it thee He leans against the window, his breath casting pale shadows against the glass. This is the window that faces away from the garden. Onto what it faces, he doesn't know; only that it changes, day by day, and it makes him afraid, and he can't look away. While Billy sleeps these early mornings, and Joe, and sometimes Lucifer, too, he goes to the window and watches. Early morning stillness and a white sun. There's snow on the ground. It's England. Pigeons burble content in the eaves above the window, and he knows that beyond this thin pane of glass is the smell of pine, of winter, of woodsmoke. Of fourteen hundred and something and three, a year when they still tolled the bell for saint's masses, or of two thousand and four, where somewhere in London his books collect dust on a sagging shelf. He can't go back. He can't go back, as long as-- He looks away. If thou love mee, take heed of loving mee Fire flickers out in the forest, an echo even of its dream-self. Blue down at the roots, where the blaze begins, rising into white and gold apotheosy where the flame-tips reach the sky. He can't touch it, though he could, were it worth the risk, bury his face in Sam's cinnamon-scented shoulder, and when did that name start to come familiar to his tongue? A diminutive, teasing and faint, because he cannot bring himself to admit any measure of the truth-- that Lucifer is his morning star: a light to lead him through the darkness and safe home again. Billy found him in the forest, it's true. But Lucifer was the one who set him free. Hate mee, because thy love is too great for mee He sees an ocean without even the lonesome ship of his dreams. And God, how he misses the ocean, but you need a ship to sail, and he hasn't got one anymore. He had a fleet once. Now he's just another castaway. He's trying to save Billy from drowning, but they're pushing each other under in their haste: gasping for breath, fumbling for purchase, both of them so desperate to share what little air is left in their lungs that they'll die here in the dark water unless one of them can break free. He's seen the look in Billy's eyes. He knows which one of them it's going to be. Lest thou thy love and hate and mee undoe, To let mee live, Oh love and hate mee too. There aren't any answers out there, in the grey. He learns that the morning the window shows nothing beyond the shadowed reflection of his face. He reaches out a curious finger and traces the line of one cheekbone on the glass. He's not beautiful, whatever they might think; he looks tired and muted and sad. Mortal. Mostly that. He's learned to recognize the air of it, the way he can smell storms coming out of a clear starboard sky. He's not a vessel for some perfect human passion, and he isn't made to hurt, either. They've piled their love and pathos on him till he can barely see himself straight, but when all the dreams have vanished he's just... ...Hob. Just Hob. He leans his head against the window, and closes his eyes. [italics: john donne]

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August 26th, 2004

Security: Time: 10:52 pm

*The light in the room is dim and dusty, filtering in through the window in shallow beams. It falls across the three men sleeping on the floor. Hob, where he's curled up beside the doorway, stirs faintly, moving a hand restlessly across the floor as though in search of something.* ...need... *He opens his eyes, frowning, and blinks against the sudden light after so much darkness.*

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