XMFC RPF: Cryptozoology for Beginners 2/? (James/Michael, eventual NC-17)
Author: 
significantowl
Pairing: James/Michael
Rating: NC-17 eventually (PG this part)
Word Count: ~3000 this part
Disclaimer: Not true. Fictional characterizations and situations. No invasion of privacy intended.
Summary: When he's not selling souvenirs and fishing bait to visitors to Loch Ness, James is busy helping people who need it via cryptic instructions from the inanimate objects that won't stop talking to him. Then Michael walks into his shop, and things get interesting.
Author's Notes: Written for the
mcfassy Film AU Fest, using the TV series Wonderfalls for world-building inspiration. Many thanks to alba17 for beta, and to capricornucopia and luninosity!
Cryptozoology for Beginners (2/?)
bysignificantowl
[Part 1]
Michael made three more visits to the shop for tea and electricity before raising the subject of James' afternoons off. James found he loved watching Michael put on his little show of being subtle: Michael could spout his excuses so smoothly, with none of the nervous stumbling that James himself would have fallen into, but his smile always gave him away. No matter what words Michael was saying, it was clear that what he was really talking about was seeing James again.
This time, Michael professed to wanting to find a fresh, unique view of the ruins of Urquhart Castle. Did James happen to have a favourite spot he wouldn't mind showing off? And time to do it one afternoon?
As it happened, James did.
The next day they were treated to a rare, perfect early spring afternoon when the sky suddenly seemed to forget that it had been trying to spit ice just that morning. Now it was a fierce, triumphant blue, grey clouds scattered and defeated, and even though the breeze was strong, the sun was warm enough to keep it from cutting too keenly. James led the way as they hiked up a windswept hill. The higher they went, the more difficult conversation became, but James was pleased to see he wasn't puffing any harder than Michael, who with those long legs was probably only doing half as much work.
"There," James said when they reached the top, gesturing broadly with his arm. The castle stood below on a headland at the water's edge. It had been one of Scotland’s largest fortifications, and still was, even in its decay. What remained was a crumbling tower and a handful of ruined walls that refused to be worn away, determined to defend and protect for centuries to come.
“Fantastic," Michael breathed. He didn’t raise his camera, but simply stood looking, eyes narrowed. The wind lifted Michael's hair, playing with the strands as if testing his concentration. It slipped in over the collar of James' jacket, whispering against his skin, making James wonder for a moment just how warm Michael's hands would feel laced together behind James' neck, thumbs heavy on either side of his jaw.
He pushed that line of thought aside. "What I like is how if you angle yourself just right, you can get a view of the castle without the visitors' centre and carpark and all that," James said. He demonstrated, leading Michael into position with a hand to his elbow, and Michael went so easily with him that James cupped the other elbow as well. "Like this," James said, shifting Michael's weight one more inch. The leather of Michael's jacket was soft and slightly sun-warmed under his hands, comfortable to the touch.
"Oh, that's wonderful," Michael said, sounding entranced. "It makes it so easy to imagine how it would have been - watchmen on the ramparts, warriors at the gates."
"Exactly, yeah." James had sketched the history of the castle as he knew it on the hike up, with the disclaimer that he was up from Glasgow himself, and not any sort of native Highland guide. It had turned quickly into a conversation about the film Braveheart - a dissection, really, because they'd already discovered they had a common obsession with film, and more than that, a shared joy in picking apart all the ways they worked and ways they didn't. Now James laughed a little, dropping his hands. It had begun to sink in that Michael would have a much easier time taking photos if James weren't holding his elbows hostage. "You make a brilliant windbreak, by the way, thank you for that."
Michael turned quickly enough to make James rock back on his heels. “You’re cold?”
“Not really, no. I only said that to explain all the handsiness.” And oh, James might be in danger of becoming addicted to the way Michael's eyes squinted up when he smiled like that - as if his mouth was taking over his whole face, and everything else had to get out of the way to make room.
Michael suddenly declared that he was hungry, which made the next order of business choosing a nice sheltered spot to eat their lunch. No coincidence there, James thought, touched by the gesture and amused by the transparency of it. They settled down in the lee of a crumbling boulder, its craggy face softened by a beard of green moss. The view was just as good from here; below them the loch stretched like a long crooked finger, or perhaps the tentacle of something sinuous, something at home in the deep.
From his bag Michael produced a square of plastic, then a sturdy army blanket to spread on top of that. James supposed these were standard parts of Michael’s gear. It was easy to picture Michael lying on them in one place for hours, waiting for the right moment, the right lighting, the perfect shot; he carried himself with a sort of contained grace that spoke of a deep well of patience. James found the idea of that patience, and most certainly the way Michael embodied it, as attractive as it was foreign. He couldn't see it in himself, or recognise it in his own instincts.
Maybe the universe had known what it was doing when it chose him for its dogsbody. James had always felt at his best when he was in motion, and sitting around his grandparents' house with a degree that he didn't know how to use, he'd been listless, becalmed. Now that quiet was rare in his life, he could appreciate it as something to be savoured, rather than endured.
"I've got ham, turkey, cheese, and egg," James said, rummaging around in his rucksack. The sandwiches had come from the refrigerated case at Killian's, and before that, off a lorry that came down from Inverness twice a week. He'd brought apples from the shop as well, and bottles of water. "What do you like?"
"Whatever you don't." James raised an eyebrow, attempting to convey chivalrous, but unhelpful with his expression. “All right, except for the egg,” Michael said. "Whenever I have to eat one of those I feel like it's some sort of punishment from God."
James snorted. "You get a lot of egg mayonnaise sandwiches forced on you?"
Michael teetered a hand back and forth. "It happens. Bridal showers, christenings... special occasion photography pays the bills, but the catering isn't always to my taste."
"It can be worse when people carry in food. Chocolate courgette cake at a wake - now there's a punishment from God."
Michael looked properly appalled. "Why would anyone do that to mourners? Why would anyone do that to chocolate?"
"Those were precisely my questions," James said grimly. Living with elderly people meant attending a steady stream of friends' and acquaintances' funerals, and thus, quite a few church hall horrors. He put the egg sandwich aside and gestured to the remaining three. "Now go on, pick."
Eventually Michael went for the ham sandwich, but only after making doubly certain James didn't want it. With their backs to the boulder, and the brush of Michael's shoulder competing with the scenery for James' attention, they tucked into the food. A comfortable silence fell, punctuated by the whip of the wind and the high, cheerful call of kestrels soaring over the water.
And those were real, living birds, the sort that would never say a word to him. James and Michael were more alone than they had ever been, just two people in a world of hills and sky, no plush toys, no ceramics, no gallery of onlookers. James had ripped the labels off the water bottles before they'd set out - no illustrated stag to raise its head from its river and offer opinions - and he'd long ago given up wearing shirts depicting anything with a face. When your clothes started talking to you, there was no getting away without tearing them off, and the situations in which that was appropriate were regrettably limited.
If it so happened that his fingers itched to tear at Michael's shirt - a marine blue waffle-weave jersey, soft-looking and blessedly plain - the motive would be something different.
Of course, they weren't completely alone, because James had money in his pocket and he assumed the same was true of Michael. But the queen hadn’t deigned to speak to him from the front of a pound coin yet, nor a Lion Rampant or Welsh Dragon from the back; James imagined he would hear from his currency in the case of a severe emergency, but only then. If there were imminent danger to Michael today, James believed he would know it, but he was optimistic that there wouldn't be. Take the high road, the Nessie had said, and they had. They were on top of the world.
“You’re a slow eater,” Michael said. Startled out of his thoughts, James glanced over and saw Michael polishing an apple on his shirt. The ham sandwich had been reduced to a few crumbs on the scrubby grass.
“What of it?” James said, mock-aggressive. He took another bite and swallowed, cheddar sharp on his tongue.
Michael shrugged. “Just an observation. A detail. I like details,” he said, rolling the apple in his palm. “They make a picture complete. Turn reality into art, and art into reality.”
"And my eating is which?" James was teasing until it fully hit him that Michael wasn't, and that whichever Michael had meant was more compliment than he'd been prepared for. He felt himself flush, and wondered how obvious it was; perhaps it could pass for the wind colouring his cheeks. “Or do you need to wait and see how I do with the apple, first?”
“Hmm, maybe I should,” Michael said, eyes twinkling, then took a crisp bite of his own. James stared, mildly fascinated, as nearly a third of the fruit disappeared into his mouth.
Talking to Michael was like watching a summer thunderstorm from an enclosed porch: comfortable, perpetually fascinating, and shot through with moments of electricity that sang along James' spine. Sometimes it was the voice, sometimes it was a flash of that smile, and sometimes, like now, as Michael ate, it was the quiet charge in those eyes. Michael wasn't speaking, but there was no such thing as silence when he looked like that; words didn't need voice to hum in the air, thrilling with promise.
James swallowed. "You'd better get started on your photos, hadn't you? No telling how much longer the weather'll hold out."
"You’re right, of course." With his apple already down to the core, Michael raised his camera, then lowered it, a look of unaccountable shiftiness stealing over his expression. "Would you mind - you can say no. Would you mind if I took some of you?" James felt something crossing his face - shock, he supposed, because for all Michael had let his interest ring clear as a bell, for all it had to make sense that he, as a photographer, would express it like this, James still hadn’t expected the question. His expression must have alarmed Michael, because Michael rushed to add, "Truly, you can say no, I simply -"
"It's fine." James wiped his mouth, did a sweep of his teeth with his tongue. "Go for it."
"Really?"
"Yeah, sure," James said, and when Michael hesitated, gestured for him to lift the camera. As Michael did, James instinctively shifted his gaze to its lens. "I mean, people take pictures of us every day, don't they? In their minds. And they can keep them as long as they like, and their minds can alter them however they like, and we have no control over it. So something being on film doesn't bother me. It's almost a gift, because I can look at it too, if I want, and see what the world sees.... What?"
Because Michael had begun clicking while James was talking, but now his finger stuttered on the button. "Nothing," he said. "I was about to say, you've given it a lot of thought, but then I remembered the philosophy degree."
James laughed while Michael's camera clicked and clicked. "It's more than a piece of paper, it's a way of life."
That was the truth. James had spent a lot of time thinking about the way the world worked, trying to make sense of it, understand it. First as a boy at Catholic school, later as an eighteen year old at uni, reading religion and thinking seriously about seminary. There'd been a shift by nineteen, after a boyfriend or two, but while the coursework had moved towards philosophy, the questioning had remained.
Then James had come to Loch Ness, inanimate objects had started talking to him, and he'd been forced to accept that there were things in the world he'd never understand, or go mad trying.
Michael's camera had a complicated telescopic lens, and James watched him at work, fingers twisting delicately, with the precision of expertise. With grace, he thought, back to that word again, grace so natural that even as James dwelled on the span of those fingers, he thought of nothing so man-made as cathedral arches, but of slim, strong branches, weaving a path to sunlight.
There was a little choked noise. "Jesus, your smile," Michael said, still from behind the camera. "I know they say ‘penny for your thoughts,’ but I'd pay far more than a penny just now."
"Laughing at myself, that's all." And at just how fanciful he could be when properly inspired. James ducked his head, rubbing at the back of his neck. He’d meant what he said, the camera didn't bother him at all, but those sorts of direct compliments were a different story.
"If you think you look silly," Michael said quietly, "you are very, very wrong. Here." He pressed a button, and handed the camera to James set on playback mode, James' face filling the screen. The focus was on his mouth; he'd been caught in the act of smiling, lips curving carelessly, quirking a little higher on one side than the other. His eyes were dancing above, almost out of shot. It was a picture of a person lost in a moment, living and breathing amusement, attraction, and the simple pleasure of being in a beautiful place on a beautiful day.
It was like looking at a stranger.
Gently, as if afraid James might spook, Michael slipped an arm under James' to tap a button on the camera. More photos flashed by, variations on a theme: himself talking, laughing, smiling, abandoned to it all. The person in his mirror never looked like that. In its absence, James could recognise his usual wariness for what it was, a lingering tightness beneath every expression, as part of him forever waited for the next voice to pipe up, the next shoe to drop.
"You're so natural," Michael murmured. "Just look at you."
"I am looking," James said, equally soft. As well as feeling the breeze ruffling his hair, the sun on his face, and the warmth of Michael's shoulder pressed to his own. Perfect things, fleeting things - sooner or later, a Highland storm would come along; sooner or later, Michael would pack up his tent and go - he could worry, or he could enjoy them just as they were.
James turned, taking in Michael's sharp inhalation, his hurried move to set the camera aside, the widening of his eyes as James lifted a hand to his cheek. More fleeting, perfect things, just like the first scratch of stubble under James' fingers, then the brush of softness as he slid his hand into Michael's hair, pulling him down.
He learned Michael's smile the way it begged to be known, feeling his way along the contours, mapping every inch by touch and taste. Michael was an equally eager learner, drawing kisses from one corner of James' mouth to the other, his palms cradling James' face, the weight of his hands every bit as warm as James had imagined.
There on the hillside, alone but for the birds wheeling above, it wasn't as if that weight were tying James down to earth; instead, it was as if he and Michael were tethered together, free to fly if they chose.
significantowlPairing: James/Michael
Rating: NC-17 eventually (PG this part)
Word Count: ~3000 this part
Disclaimer: Not true. Fictional characterizations and situations. No invasion of privacy intended.
Summary: When he's not selling souvenirs and fishing bait to visitors to Loch Ness, James is busy helping people who need it via cryptic instructions from the inanimate objects that won't stop talking to him. Then Michael walks into his shop, and things get interesting.
Author's Notes: Written for the
mcfassy Film AU Fest, using the TV series Wonderfalls for world-building inspiration. Many thanks to alba17 for beta, and to capricornucopia and luninosity!Cryptozoology for Beginners (2/?)
by
significantowl[Part 1]
Michael made three more visits to the shop for tea and electricity before raising the subject of James' afternoons off. James found he loved watching Michael put on his little show of being subtle: Michael could spout his excuses so smoothly, with none of the nervous stumbling that James himself would have fallen into, but his smile always gave him away. No matter what words Michael was saying, it was clear that what he was really talking about was seeing James again.
This time, Michael professed to wanting to find a fresh, unique view of the ruins of Urquhart Castle. Did James happen to have a favourite spot he wouldn't mind showing off? And time to do it one afternoon?
As it happened, James did.
The next day they were treated to a rare, perfect early spring afternoon when the sky suddenly seemed to forget that it had been trying to spit ice just that morning. Now it was a fierce, triumphant blue, grey clouds scattered and defeated, and even though the breeze was strong, the sun was warm enough to keep it from cutting too keenly. James led the way as they hiked up a windswept hill. The higher they went, the more difficult conversation became, but James was pleased to see he wasn't puffing any harder than Michael, who with those long legs was probably only doing half as much work.
"There," James said when they reached the top, gesturing broadly with his arm. The castle stood below on a headland at the water's edge. It had been one of Scotland’s largest fortifications, and still was, even in its decay. What remained was a crumbling tower and a handful of ruined walls that refused to be worn away, determined to defend and protect for centuries to come.
“Fantastic," Michael breathed. He didn’t raise his camera, but simply stood looking, eyes narrowed. The wind lifted Michael's hair, playing with the strands as if testing his concentration. It slipped in over the collar of James' jacket, whispering against his skin, making James wonder for a moment just how warm Michael's hands would feel laced together behind James' neck, thumbs heavy on either side of his jaw.
He pushed that line of thought aside. "What I like is how if you angle yourself just right, you can get a view of the castle without the visitors' centre and carpark and all that," James said. He demonstrated, leading Michael into position with a hand to his elbow, and Michael went so easily with him that James cupped the other elbow as well. "Like this," James said, shifting Michael's weight one more inch. The leather of Michael's jacket was soft and slightly sun-warmed under his hands, comfortable to the touch.
"Oh, that's wonderful," Michael said, sounding entranced. "It makes it so easy to imagine how it would have been - watchmen on the ramparts, warriors at the gates."
"Exactly, yeah." James had sketched the history of the castle as he knew it on the hike up, with the disclaimer that he was up from Glasgow himself, and not any sort of native Highland guide. It had turned quickly into a conversation about the film Braveheart - a dissection, really, because they'd already discovered they had a common obsession with film, and more than that, a shared joy in picking apart all the ways they worked and ways they didn't. Now James laughed a little, dropping his hands. It had begun to sink in that Michael would have a much easier time taking photos if James weren't holding his elbows hostage. "You make a brilliant windbreak, by the way, thank you for that."
Michael turned quickly enough to make James rock back on his heels. “You’re cold?”
“Not really, no. I only said that to explain all the handsiness.” And oh, James might be in danger of becoming addicted to the way Michael's eyes squinted up when he smiled like that - as if his mouth was taking over his whole face, and everything else had to get out of the way to make room.
Michael suddenly declared that he was hungry, which made the next order of business choosing a nice sheltered spot to eat their lunch. No coincidence there, James thought, touched by the gesture and amused by the transparency of it. They settled down in the lee of a crumbling boulder, its craggy face softened by a beard of green moss. The view was just as good from here; below them the loch stretched like a long crooked finger, or perhaps the tentacle of something sinuous, something at home in the deep.
From his bag Michael produced a square of plastic, then a sturdy army blanket to spread on top of that. James supposed these were standard parts of Michael’s gear. It was easy to picture Michael lying on them in one place for hours, waiting for the right moment, the right lighting, the perfect shot; he carried himself with a sort of contained grace that spoke of a deep well of patience. James found the idea of that patience, and most certainly the way Michael embodied it, as attractive as it was foreign. He couldn't see it in himself, or recognise it in his own instincts.
Maybe the universe had known what it was doing when it chose him for its dogsbody. James had always felt at his best when he was in motion, and sitting around his grandparents' house with a degree that he didn't know how to use, he'd been listless, becalmed. Now that quiet was rare in his life, he could appreciate it as something to be savoured, rather than endured.
"I've got ham, turkey, cheese, and egg," James said, rummaging around in his rucksack. The sandwiches had come from the refrigerated case at Killian's, and before that, off a lorry that came down from Inverness twice a week. He'd brought apples from the shop as well, and bottles of water. "What do you like?"
"Whatever you don't." James raised an eyebrow, attempting to convey chivalrous, but unhelpful with his expression. “All right, except for the egg,” Michael said. "Whenever I have to eat one of those I feel like it's some sort of punishment from God."
James snorted. "You get a lot of egg mayonnaise sandwiches forced on you?"
Michael teetered a hand back and forth. "It happens. Bridal showers, christenings... special occasion photography pays the bills, but the catering isn't always to my taste."
"It can be worse when people carry in food. Chocolate courgette cake at a wake - now there's a punishment from God."
Michael looked properly appalled. "Why would anyone do that to mourners? Why would anyone do that to chocolate?"
"Those were precisely my questions," James said grimly. Living with elderly people meant attending a steady stream of friends' and acquaintances' funerals, and thus, quite a few church hall horrors. He put the egg sandwich aside and gestured to the remaining three. "Now go on, pick."
Eventually Michael went for the ham sandwich, but only after making doubly certain James didn't want it. With their backs to the boulder, and the brush of Michael's shoulder competing with the scenery for James' attention, they tucked into the food. A comfortable silence fell, punctuated by the whip of the wind and the high, cheerful call of kestrels soaring over the water.
And those were real, living birds, the sort that would never say a word to him. James and Michael were more alone than they had ever been, just two people in a world of hills and sky, no plush toys, no ceramics, no gallery of onlookers. James had ripped the labels off the water bottles before they'd set out - no illustrated stag to raise its head from its river and offer opinions - and he'd long ago given up wearing shirts depicting anything with a face. When your clothes started talking to you, there was no getting away without tearing them off, and the situations in which that was appropriate were regrettably limited.
If it so happened that his fingers itched to tear at Michael's shirt - a marine blue waffle-weave jersey, soft-looking and blessedly plain - the motive would be something different.
Of course, they weren't completely alone, because James had money in his pocket and he assumed the same was true of Michael. But the queen hadn’t deigned to speak to him from the front of a pound coin yet, nor a Lion Rampant or Welsh Dragon from the back; James imagined he would hear from his currency in the case of a severe emergency, but only then. If there were imminent danger to Michael today, James believed he would know it, but he was optimistic that there wouldn't be. Take the high road, the Nessie had said, and they had. They were on top of the world.
“You’re a slow eater,” Michael said. Startled out of his thoughts, James glanced over and saw Michael polishing an apple on his shirt. The ham sandwich had been reduced to a few crumbs on the scrubby grass.
“What of it?” James said, mock-aggressive. He took another bite and swallowed, cheddar sharp on his tongue.
Michael shrugged. “Just an observation. A detail. I like details,” he said, rolling the apple in his palm. “They make a picture complete. Turn reality into art, and art into reality.”
"And my eating is which?" James was teasing until it fully hit him that Michael wasn't, and that whichever Michael had meant was more compliment than he'd been prepared for. He felt himself flush, and wondered how obvious it was; perhaps it could pass for the wind colouring his cheeks. “Or do you need to wait and see how I do with the apple, first?”
“Hmm, maybe I should,” Michael said, eyes twinkling, then took a crisp bite of his own. James stared, mildly fascinated, as nearly a third of the fruit disappeared into his mouth.
Talking to Michael was like watching a summer thunderstorm from an enclosed porch: comfortable, perpetually fascinating, and shot through with moments of electricity that sang along James' spine. Sometimes it was the voice, sometimes it was a flash of that smile, and sometimes, like now, as Michael ate, it was the quiet charge in those eyes. Michael wasn't speaking, but there was no such thing as silence when he looked like that; words didn't need voice to hum in the air, thrilling with promise.
James swallowed. "You'd better get started on your photos, hadn't you? No telling how much longer the weather'll hold out."
"You’re right, of course." With his apple already down to the core, Michael raised his camera, then lowered it, a look of unaccountable shiftiness stealing over his expression. "Would you mind - you can say no. Would you mind if I took some of you?" James felt something crossing his face - shock, he supposed, because for all Michael had let his interest ring clear as a bell, for all it had to make sense that he, as a photographer, would express it like this, James still hadn’t expected the question. His expression must have alarmed Michael, because Michael rushed to add, "Truly, you can say no, I simply -"
"It's fine." James wiped his mouth, did a sweep of his teeth with his tongue. "Go for it."
"Really?"
"Yeah, sure," James said, and when Michael hesitated, gestured for him to lift the camera. As Michael did, James instinctively shifted his gaze to its lens. "I mean, people take pictures of us every day, don't they? In their minds. And they can keep them as long as they like, and their minds can alter them however they like, and we have no control over it. So something being on film doesn't bother me. It's almost a gift, because I can look at it too, if I want, and see what the world sees.... What?"
Because Michael had begun clicking while James was talking, but now his finger stuttered on the button. "Nothing," he said. "I was about to say, you've given it a lot of thought, but then I remembered the philosophy degree."
James laughed while Michael's camera clicked and clicked. "It's more than a piece of paper, it's a way of life."
That was the truth. James had spent a lot of time thinking about the way the world worked, trying to make sense of it, understand it. First as a boy at Catholic school, later as an eighteen year old at uni, reading religion and thinking seriously about seminary. There'd been a shift by nineteen, after a boyfriend or two, but while the coursework had moved towards philosophy, the questioning had remained.
Then James had come to Loch Ness, inanimate objects had started talking to him, and he'd been forced to accept that there were things in the world he'd never understand, or go mad trying.
Michael's camera had a complicated telescopic lens, and James watched him at work, fingers twisting delicately, with the precision of expertise. With grace, he thought, back to that word again, grace so natural that even as James dwelled on the span of those fingers, he thought of nothing so man-made as cathedral arches, but of slim, strong branches, weaving a path to sunlight.
There was a little choked noise. "Jesus, your smile," Michael said, still from behind the camera. "I know they say ‘penny for your thoughts,’ but I'd pay far more than a penny just now."
"Laughing at myself, that's all." And at just how fanciful he could be when properly inspired. James ducked his head, rubbing at the back of his neck. He’d meant what he said, the camera didn't bother him at all, but those sorts of direct compliments were a different story.
"If you think you look silly," Michael said quietly, "you are very, very wrong. Here." He pressed a button, and handed the camera to James set on playback mode, James' face filling the screen. The focus was on his mouth; he'd been caught in the act of smiling, lips curving carelessly, quirking a little higher on one side than the other. His eyes were dancing above, almost out of shot. It was a picture of a person lost in a moment, living and breathing amusement, attraction, and the simple pleasure of being in a beautiful place on a beautiful day.
It was like looking at a stranger.
Gently, as if afraid James might spook, Michael slipped an arm under James' to tap a button on the camera. More photos flashed by, variations on a theme: himself talking, laughing, smiling, abandoned to it all. The person in his mirror never looked like that. In its absence, James could recognise his usual wariness for what it was, a lingering tightness beneath every expression, as part of him forever waited for the next voice to pipe up, the next shoe to drop.
"You're so natural," Michael murmured. "Just look at you."
"I am looking," James said, equally soft. As well as feeling the breeze ruffling his hair, the sun on his face, and the warmth of Michael's shoulder pressed to his own. Perfect things, fleeting things - sooner or later, a Highland storm would come along; sooner or later, Michael would pack up his tent and go - he could worry, or he could enjoy them just as they were.
James turned, taking in Michael's sharp inhalation, his hurried move to set the camera aside, the widening of his eyes as James lifted a hand to his cheek. More fleeting, perfect things, just like the first scratch of stubble under James' fingers, then the brush of softness as he slid his hand into Michael's hair, pulling him down.
He learned Michael's smile the way it begged to be known, feeling his way along the contours, mapping every inch by touch and taste. Michael was an equally eager learner, drawing kisses from one corner of James' mouth to the other, his palms cradling James' face, the weight of his hands every bit as warm as James had imagined.
There on the hillside, alone but for the birds wheeling above, it wasn't as if that weight were tying James down to earth; instead, it was as if he and Michael were tethered together, free to fly if they chose.