Now, he did. He pulled out a black pen, and tapped the sealed end against the desk for a moment, thinking. Reconsidering his start, he set the pen down; got up; towel-dried his hair for the fifth time and draped the towel on its hook by the door; found a white, clean tanktop and pulled it on; and finally, he grabbed some boxer-briefs and his jeans and put them both on in the correct order.
He was clean, he was comfortable, and his hair was mostly not dripping. On his way back the couple of steps to the desk, he stopped and reached under his pillow to produce a box with a ring in it. The ring he’d picked up on his first trip back home, the ring he’d acquired while Alistaire waited. His secret.
Harland had never been the kind of person to make shallow bonds. He was an all or nothing kind of guy: when he bothered to care for someone, it was permanent. When he fell in love, it scored a mark in his bones that could never be erased. Needless to say, that was incredibly rare.
And yet, on the island, he had initially thought it would be Ian who scored him. In the end, it was his brother, in a strange twist of fate. The devil and his heart: Ian and Alistaire. He’d had no idea of what would become of them at all.
Harland set the open ring box in front of him as he sat down to write the letter.
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A Alistaire chaoin,
I thought it would be good to write you a letter. It’s true, I suppose, that I could send you a text, but what good is it to have so much ink at my disposal if I never use any? When you read this, I wonder, is it in my voice? Come to think of it, it’s been ages since I’ve written a letter just because. Sometimes I would write my family, in those days where I never saw them. The thing about letters is we have no way of knowing they’ve been read, or even received, so it’s as if we write them into the void.
If I was writing this letter into the void, and I knew you would never read it, who knows what it might say? For example, it might confess that the moments in which I’m caught staring at your sharp face with its clever and clear gaze I’m thinking of what I’d give to stay with you always. It might equally confess I’m often thinking only that I wish I could kiss you.
The letter might confess, if I was feeling particularly bold, that when I sleep my body naturally wants to fit against yours, to hold on to you and make sure that nothing harms you in those hours where all the calculations must stop and you look to be your gentlest.
There is so much that a letter given to the void might tell you, mo chroi. There is so much it cannot say, in light of the fact I have no intention of throwing this letter away or letting it get lost. I will, in fact, be walking it to your door shortly after writing it. I hope the ink has dried; I am often over-eager. You seem to forgive me that flaw.
Alistaire, I am a better man because of the time we have spent together. I would be patient until my bones were dust, if it meant one more kiss, even in shadow and in secret. In fact, I’m not sure I’m the kind of man to be dissatisfied with that altogether. I am yours, mo chroi, and the idea of anyone else being present for those moments seems somehow to infect them in a way.
I suppose, in a way, this might have once been called a love letter, back when people wrote such things. Fair warning: if you take exception to that, I will make fun of you incessantly. In any case, Alistaire, I fear I’m going to ramble with no point again, and it’s about time I walk to the cafeteria for breakfast.
Is mise.
Harland sealed the letter in an envelope, and dropped it off at Alistaire’s door before he snuck away to breakfast. He hadn't signed it, no; perhaps that was his version of the void: the ambiguity of having left his name off the letter, even if it was obvious who had written it.
kuroopu
letter 4 u
