Writing Prompt: Diane's Corner

Week one: Fall

Autumn was supposed to be the end of the brief but glorious summers in the UK, and Sterling had banked on that notion as he began the arduous task of storing his summer wardrobe and airing out the items meant for cooler climate. Huge and heavy cedar chests that were hand carved and darkened in places by the hands of generations. Each one angled and carefully brought down from his attic to be opened and sorted through. The swap ended with him clearing an entire chest for Falin alone, not that the fencer really had anything that was ‘seasonal’. He existed in dark colors and full sleeves. But it was a gesture Sterling made so that his oft traveling lover knew he could leave bits of himself behind and have them kept safe in their home. Sterling was growing sentimental in his middling years.

And then the next morning dawned and he was sweating. 30 degrees celsius was a cruel joke to play when all he had in his wardrobe was jumpers and the odd button-down shirt. “I must be cursed, that’s the only answer.” He rubbed a clammy arm over his forehead and immediately regretted it, the tacky sensation zero help. Laying in bed wasn’t going to help, not in a house that had never, and would never, host an air conditioner. Instead the now miserable professor practically slid out of bed and regretfully dressed himself. The day was not going to pause for him.

Nor did the weather, heat and humidity rising as the day crawled onwards. Sterling wilted like the plants in his vegetable gardens as he did his tasks. Watering and feeding his few chickens and the pair of sheep he’d acquired in the spring. Half way through the worst of the day he had retreated to his cottage, shirt dumped in the laundry room to be washed with the rest of his sweat-soaked clothing before he tried to sleep. For now… he would try and do his prep for the coming semester. His laptop balanced on his knee as he fanned himself with old, unopened mail.

He should have known this heatwave would not be quelled. The laptop blew roasting hot air onto his lap, the breeze from the wide open windows was non-existent. “I’m going to die,” he intoned, practically throwing the offensive technology and bundling his hair high on top of his head. If it touched his neck again he knew he’d be tempted to cut it all off.

Sterling was so focused on ridding himself of the sensation that he missed the first jingle of his phone alerting him to a message. It wasn’t until the second and third that he peeled himself off of the leather chair and unlocked it, the little red ‘3’ next to Falin’s name making him smile. When he opened them he swore, however. Never before so mad at his handsome and talented partner.

Between words of love and emojis… The beautiful man was posed in what could only be called heaven to Sterling. Conifer trees, high walls of shale and limestone… a waterfall that made a soft misty rainbow behind him. The fact that the man was obviously at a comfortable temperature while Sterling was not. Not often did Sterling feel the need to be petty but on a day like today when every little thing was enough to set his nerves ablaze and he simply could not stop sweating…

Payback.
If later that night, while he knew Falin would be busy with his exhibition and the media circus afterwards the world class fencer got his own series of pictures… ones that showed a very topless and charming man posing just for him…

Sterling would be unkind if he hoped his lover fell for him all over again.

She was sitting on the balcony of her little apartment, a mug of black coffee steaming in one hand and a half-burnt cigarette in the other. Her feet hurt, her back hurt, and her eyes… hurt. But it was her heart that was the most painful, rioting and trembling inside her heavily inked skin. Not the coffee, nor the nicotine were salves for this pain. No, nothing seemed to be working. Why?

“Too old for this heartbreak bullshit.” her voice is rough with the emotion she’s smothering as hard as possible. And as quiet as she’s trying to be its still enough for the only other occupant in her home to rouse. The soft shift of a small body coming through the baby monitor at her feet. The cigarette loses its life to the coffee, and the coffee is left to grow ice cold as she crosses back into the body of her apartment. A cold world, but the small bedroom with it’s single bed and the crib beside it show warmth. Love in her tired black eyes as she picks up the sleepy child waiting for her.

Hard muscle, soft grip. A shock of bleached hair shaved to the scalp along one side, and the soft fuzzy hair of a toddler. She smiles, and it’s warm. Hiding the pain now as little arms touch and little hands pull. When his hands pat her cheeks she can even laugh at it, resting his shape more easily against her own.

“And good morning to you, A leanbh. Mummy’s fine as the dawn no need to fret!” She padded to the kitchen to get him a meal, responding to babble as if she’s a native speaker all her own. A day will come when she talks to him, her little boy. When she’ll share all the lies and love that happened between his parents. Why they no longer speak without anger and tears between them. But until then she can dance in her little space with him. Kiss cheeks still chubby and without despair.

She’s got time yet.

This is not fun because it’s supposed to be hard.

He repeated the mantra over and over in his mind as he grasped the two bars before him, hands trembling with exertion. Learning to walk again is by far the worst task his failure of a body has presented him. The false foot drags unless he focuses on it with each step. His new arm is still giving him trouble despite tinkering with the programming to fine tune it. It’s all him. He knows he’s the reason he hasn’t advanced enough…

But he’s tired. He’s so so tired.

Lissy and her mother help and they push and coax and occasionally pamper him. He has purpose in his job. He enjoys it even, something he hadn’t expected would happen and wouldn’t have if he’d followed his family’s career path for him. But it wasn’t enough some days. The days he just wanted to sleep. The days when all he could do was breathe and wait for the next wave of pain and apathy to pass.

“How do people find joy when the world is so against them?” He rasps his words out between pants of air. Shaking hand grabbing the padded bar. Another step. He can do this.

“Find what you’re missing and then go looking for it?” Lissy is hovering near by in case he stumbles, his assigned physical therapist gone to make a call or just take a break from their most sullen client. He doesn’t really know, all he can do is grab the bar with his false hand, the whirr of machinery quiet while each finger grasps almost independently. Another dragged step closer to the end.

What I’m missing.

He can’t think about the endless list of what he’s missing in his life when all he has in him is the two bars and the floor. He just has to go forwards right now.

Grasp, drag, breath. Grasp, drag, breath.

He’s so tired.