Start & Sonnets

Sorrel was well past being a starry-eyed youth who believed in the words of poets and strove to emulate them. When he thought about the gawking, bumbling, love-struck idiot he had once been, he winced. All for best, really, that the stars had been pulled from his eyes. His poetry had never been very good, anyway.

Did he still have those old things, somewhere? Surely he had burned them. If not, then he would. Those had been the days–days of delusion, and he wondered how much of it had been self-induced. Even now, he could not say. He’d believed himself madly, passionately, truly in love–with a man who had only lied to him from the start, and who saw nothing wrong with that.

With the stars stripped away, he had seen clearly for the first time–that the real world was not love and loyalty and all that claptrap. It was vowing one thing, and doing another. Slipping a ring on a wife’s finger, then going to fuck someone else. It was all talk, and cheap action. The words of the poets he had foolishly adored as a boy had revealed themselves to be trite, naive, and ignorant. His own well of soppy words had dried up, then, and the world had been spared his sonnets ever since.

Until a new star had appeared.

Beautiful, burning, like words upon a page. So simple at a glance, but once read, powerful enough to set the reader aflame.

Eve if he was also arrogant, stubborn, nosy, and the most maddening person to ever exist.

Sorrel had not thought about his poetry for years, not since the man he’d loved had loudly declared that he loved his wife, his new Queen–then quietly suggested to Sorrel that they continue their affair.

Joss, though…Joss had made him think of sonnets again. Silly, amusing things at first–how to build a traditional sonnet around the beauty of my fingers around your throat. But Sorrel had never thought to have old ideals throw in his face after so long. Dry, dusty, ancient and forgotten things, those words, until Joss threw them in his face. Friendship. Fidelity. Forever. Passion. Romance. Then they had been new words, bright and sharp as a razor, cutting through things Sorrel had thought he’d made impervious.

Then the sonnets had changed.

He’d tried so hard to ignore them, the damnable words. The urge to try his hand at something he associated with star-bright eyes, the fool he had been and was no longer, was stronger than he liked. If only to quell them, to make the words go silent and halt the way his fingers twitched for pen and paper, he had taken a risk. He’d confronted Joss, braced for the cold reality of rejection that would silence the words in his head, the itch in his hands.

Instead, he lay in the cool dark of his bedroom, still warm from recent passion, surrounded by the scents of warm skin, sweat and sex, mingling with hints of the sandalwood soap Joss used in his hair.

They had not pulled the blankets up, more than warm enough from their exertions. Joss had drifted off to sleep, draped half on top of him, one arm stretched out over him. Soft snores blew warm puffs of air against Sorrel’s shoulder. Given that he never lingered with his lovers after the deed was done, and never brought any of them to his own bed, it should have been awkward at the very least to be sharing space now.

He did not dwell on the way it simply felt nice, only sighed softly and pressed a whisper soft kiss to the top of Joss’ head.

It was not possible to restore the stars that eventually fell from every man’s eyes. What fell, fell, and could not be put back up again. Somehow, though, he had caught a fallen star and managed to hold on to it.

He had not thought he even remembered how to write a sonnet. It would seem he did, though, as the words arranged themselves in his head, like a skill long neglected but never truly forgotten. Hopefully, he hadn’t regressed so far into his foolish state that he would actually write any of them down.

Joss stirred against him, shifting and stretching, all warm, pliant skin and soft hair, a soft touch that turned into a bruising grip in climax. Poetry in motion, as the saying went. Sorrel pushed Joss onto his back, moved to press him into the mattress, and kissed him deeply, able to taste it when Joss moved from mostly asleep to more or less awake.

His name was whispered in a thick, husky voice, more eloquent than the most carefully penned ballads.

Sorrel kissed him again, swallowing every sound, absorbing every touch, extracting a symphony of needy pleas and pushy demands before sliding in to eager, willing warmth. He lost himself to the dark and the heat, to hot skin and greedy hands, greedier mouths, until they collapsed again to the sweat-damp bedsheets, their panting a perfect closing stanza to a poem mere words would never adequately capture.

Though, he would probably try anyway. Joss made him feel forgotten things, lost things. If he was willing to try stars again, to try love again, he may as well resume the poetry.