A man muses on the hands of his partner.
Some short slice-of-life and quiet affection. 1.5k, with more of Curt Sangster and Adam Hayden.
These two originally appeared in Sweet Torture:
https://johannestevans.medium.com/sweet-torture-277880fc32d3
In the quiet hours, the ones like these, when the rain outside had reduced to thin trickles that ran soundlessly down the windows, and the glow of the watch lamps from the street outside were beginning to dim as their wicks burnt down, Curt often found his gaze going to Adam’s hands.
It had been a Saturday night, but was now well into a Sunday morning, and Curt knew already that Adam wouldn’t go to church — he went to church on the Sundays where he had been able to sleep the night before, and tonight obviously wasn’t one of them.
Adam was sitting at the piano, his hands braced on the keys as though he were soon to play, and although Curt knew what it would sound like if he pressed down on that collection of black and ivory pieces, he didn’t know what the chords were called, wasn’t even sure of the notes. Curt didn’t know much about the piano, except to hear Adam play it, and he only watched so closely because of Adam’s hands.
Adam’s hands were thin and long-fingered and pale, paler even than his face, and although the skin was like fresh paper, unblemished and without marks or scars, they were strong, although they had a delicacy to them. His knuckles were always pink, showing the colour of the blood under the skin, and the flesh under his nails was very pink as well.
Other parts of Adam’s body were pink. His nipples were pink, and his chest and his cheeks turned pink when he was over-exerted, and when Curt saw his cock under warm light, the head of his cock was pink.
But those pinks, as nice as they were, didn’t compare to the pinkness in Adam’s knuckles, in the same way that the joints of his elbows and knees didn’t compare to his knuckles, and his toes didn’t compare to his fingertips, and that no part of him compared to the strength and gentleness of his palms, that felt strong enough to cup the world between them when they cupped your cheeks.
Adam hadn’t pressed down on the piano keys for quite some time: he was staring into space, past the wooden casement of the piano and well past the sheet music that he never seemed to pay attention to, because he knew all his music by heart.
Curt could have gone to bed hours ago, and hadn’t. He could never tell how much Adam had slept if he went to bed before he did — and Adam would lie, if Curt asked.
Adam didn’t sleep much, Curt knew that. He’d had a hard time sleeping all his life, he’d told Curt before, but part of the reason he stopped being a surgeon and went to teaching instead was when the sleeplessness got worse, and it affected other stuff too — made his hands shake at times, made him flag too early in the day, gave him anxious tremors or fits of temper or moments of uncomfortable confusion.
It wasn’t all the time, wasn’t constant, but it was enough that he didn’t want to be around a table with other doctors, treating a man liable to die regardless of what they did, but liable to perish especially if his surgeon dropped off to sleep in the middle of it.
Adam’s hands twitched on the keys.
“I think, Doctor Hayden,” said Curt, “it might be time for bed.”
“What time is it?” asked Adam.
“Past four,” said Curt.
“How many days left, then, with midnight behind us?” asked Adam, and Curt frowned, his brow furrowing, his lips twisting. “Of you?”
“Nine days more,” said Curt softly, his heart panging in his chest, and he sat up further on the couch, where he’d been reading a book and not much taking it in. Adam’s little rented rooms were modest, more modest than maybe they needed to be, but his furniture was plush and comfortable, at odds with what one would expect of him, with his being so thin and tall and severe.
At almost fifty, Adam Hayden looked almost exactly his age, and yet somehow impossibly older: he had few wrinkles on his face, none around his eyes or around his mouth, and although his forehead had wrinkles, they weren’t pronounced. His age showed not in those wrinkles but in the heavy bags under his eyes and the chapped surface of his lips, and the deadened look he got in his eyes, at times.
Times like this, for instance.
“Don’t go,” he said, turning to look at Curt. “Stay.”
“And do what?” asked Curt. “Neighbours’ll notice if your live-in mistress is a man. If you’re not hanged for sodomy, I’ll be put in a madhouse for being a crossdresser and thinking I’m a man. Either way we do that, one of us loses bad, if not both of us.”
“You could be my new assistant,” said Adam.
“’Cause every doctor hires an able-bodied seaman for that.”
“I’ll get you work elsewhere,” said Adam quickly. “In the blacksmith’s, perhaps, or… somewhere.”
“Do that in seven days,” said Curt, “so’s I can give ’em notice, and maybe I’ll take the job.”
Adam faltered, turning to look at Curt as he got to his feet, and Curt watched the wrinkles smooth out of his forehead as his brows relaxed, not furrowing together any longer. Curt stood behind him, sliding his hands onto Adam’s shoulders and squeezing on each side before he let his palms slide down his upper arms, even as he rested his chin on the top of Adam’s thatch of thinning hair.
Adam put one of his beautiful hands on top of Curt’s, squeezing slightly, and he leaned his head back into Curt’s chest.
The first time they’d gone together, the first time Curt and Adam had ended up kissing one another in the darkened alleyway behind an alehouse dead into the night, and Adam had pulled his hair and bitten his lips and turned him around, the better to fuck him as hard and cruel as he could, he’d never imagined that the old man could be like this.
Hard as he was, cold as he could be, what Doctor Adam Hayden was, was lonely.
“I love being here with you, Adam, for the time I can,” said Curt softly, “but I can’t abide not working, and I like to sail. I’m good at it. I want to sail until I can’t any longer.”
“Until it kills you? Until you don’t come home again?” was the quiet reply, and Curt squeezed his shoulder again with one hand, and with the other interlinked his fingers with Adam’s, running his thumb over one of his pink knuckles.
“Funny that you think of this place as home for me,” said Curt. “I do that these days as well. Bedtime, old man. You haven’t played a note for hours.”
Adam pulled the lid of the piano shut and pushed back the bench, standing to his feet. He kept hold of Curt’s hand, and let Curt lead him through to the other room. Curt undressed him.
It was different like this, than when they were playing the games they did, when Adam was the doctor in command and Curt his humble servant: there was a service in this, too, and it was no less loving, but Curt’s skin didn’t thrum with the same anticipation of a hard fuck soon to come.
“Fold it neatly,” said Adam crisply when Curt stepped aside with his shirt, and Curt obeyed, putting the shirt into a little square, setting it aside. He folded Adam’s trousers neatly too, and laid up his braces, his vest, and carefully set his socks aside.
“I like obeying orders,” said Curt, “if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be a sailor.”
“Funny you say that,” said Adam, echoing Curt’s turns of phrase with knowledge and irony, which he liked to do. “Before I met you, I don’t know that I ever met a sailor who liked to take orders.”
Curt didn’t kiss him: he leaned in a little close, and didn’t close the gap, so that Adam kissed him, which he did. Adam’s lips were chapped but no less warm and no less soft, and Curt pulled off his own shirt, setting it aside.
Adam didn’t reach, as he would usually, for Curt’s chest or pull on his nipples or reach between his legs. He let Curt tip him back onto the bed and then he rolled them over, laying his head on Curt’s chest. Adam laid between Curt’s thighs, his arms loosely wrapped around Curt’s waist.
“Sleep,” said Curt. “We can talk about it tomorrow.”
“Four hours ’til I have to get up for church,” mumbled Adam, and Curt frowned, curling his hands through Adam’s hair.
“You don’t have to go to church,” said Curt.
“Certainly I do,” said Adam, voice thick and slurred with sleep. “How else am I to find you a job?”
“I hope you don’t think I’m coming.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” said Adam. “You’ll be easier to advertise, sight unseen.”
Adam put his hand up on Curt’s arm, and Curt looked down at it, the gentle curve of his fingers, the contrast between pink and white, felt the weight of his hand against Curt’s skin.
The rain started up heavier again outside, making the room darker by virtue of the thick gloom between the window glass and the street lamps, and Curt closed his eyes and slept.
Leave a Reply