Sanders felt aware of the connection before they reached their bedroom doorway. The breathless tension and rush to get up here, two of them in the dark hallway, leaving the party behind.
Even the newness was a link. As he held Tom’s face, kissing him with a tight, painful force, Sanders sensed the change to their relationship—new beginnings, new commitments. He was engaged. He was with his fiancé for the first time in his life.
They had started on one another’s clothes before Tom shoved the door shut with a shoulder. With Tom’s back against the wall, Sanders pulled up his shirt, unbuttoning, unzipping. Then he fully recognised this connection. The same room, same spot inside the door, the same feelings washing over them. As Sanders touched him, Tom kissed his hands when he could, or his mouth when he couldn’t.
They’d had nothing like this since the night the lamp had blown out—what seemed like months ago. Though Sanders was sure the gap had not been all that great, it now felt like a deprivation.
Tom leaned into the wall, standing on one foot at a time to finish ridding himself of jeans, underpants, and socks. Sanders, still fully dressed, held him there, running his hands down Tom’s body. Tom was starting on his clothes as Sanders again pushed him back, holding him to the wall with a hand on his balls and his tongue in Tom’s mouth. He expected Tom to push past his force and drag his shirt anyway, but Tom was relaxed against him. Sanders felt he could step back from pinning Tom against the wall and he would collapse. Though still touching, inviting Sanders into his mouth, opening his fly, there was no power to him. Perhaps as hungry as Sanders, yet so passive Sanders hardly recognised him.
Tom had consumed no more than two glasses of wine over the course of four hours. He must be doing this on purpose.
Or was he?
Sanders pulled him to the bed as Tom unbuttoned his shirt, sure for half a second that he could taste tobacco and mulled wine in Tom’s mouth rather than chocolate.
Or could he taste tobacco and mulled wine?
The vision in the master bathroom mirror, the cat especially susceptible in here, the interference with their sex lives which Tom had not, after all, imagined. Now... But they were gone. Still, Sanders had never smoked a cigarette in his life. He’d never kissed anyone who’d been smoking. And it dawned on him that he shouldn’t be able to taste tobacco and mulled wine even in his imagination.
On the bed, in the dark of only moonlight reflecting off sheer white curtains, Tom sat up against him, helping him remove his shirt, then the rest, still apparently relaxed—though Sanders felt feverish and no closer to relaxation than to levitation. His own clothes off, he followed Tom down onto the bed, moving up from kissing his chest to once more finding his mouth. Tom parted his lips for Sanders to run his tongue between, then back and in again, moving his weight on top of Tom.
There was nothing wrong. There never had been. He was going to be married, become a husband. This man was going to be with him for the rest of this life. And finding that out was the single best thing, besides meeting Tom, that had ever happened to Sanders.
Tom shuddered below him, hands lifted now, both holding each other’s faces. Sanders felt it too: a chill flicker through the air. As if the room itself was remembering a December night before central heating. Like the taste, it was impossible to tell if the sensation was real. Yet Sanders remembered something he had been told many months before, what is real? and didn’t ask. This time, he knew at least that Tom had felt it.
Tom twisted under him, shoving him back to roll away, half on his side, half on his chest. Sanders pulled himself against him and Tom responded by pushing back to meet him, spitting in his hand before reaching around. He guided Sanders while Sanders supported himself with the right arm and pulled Tom’s hips to him with the left.
There was lubricant and more in the bedside drawer, yet Sanders never thought to reach for it, or even thought of that drawer existing. He spat into his own left hand, stroked it over the head of his cock with Tom’s saliva, and pushed against him.
Something happened when he worked inside Tom that was so nonspecific, he did not understand at first that anything happened at all. The rush of pleasure burning through him, demanding more, kept him bound to Tom and this moment as it was, even as the room felt frigid and he saw his breath by silver moonlight on snow. With his hand on Tom’s hip, pulling them together, he was once more aware of how relaxed Tom remained, even being taken too fast and with too little in the way of aids. In this different darkness and sudden cold, the bed also felt stiff and unusual, yet known.
Tom was saying his name and leaning back into him, reaching around, trying to grab his head and draw him in even closer. There was a smell of smoke and spirits in the air that was not the bonfire smoke or their glasses of wine. Sanders bit Tom’s neck, thrusting with all the delicate nuances of a bull. It was as if he’d never done this before, as if they’d just come together, on limited time, and would never have another chance. Madness, how frantic he felt, every sensation new and sharp.
The room was hot with the August evening, freezing on Christmas night. The darkness fluttered with open windows and curtains in moonlight, shivered with iced glass and acres of snow. The man below him tasted of wood smoke and familiar sweat and orange soap, as well as cigarette smoke, nutmeg, and a stranger’s skin.
Tom turned his face, raising up on his elbow, having to force back both their weights. Sanders found his wet mouth, tasting strong tobacco before he had to break the kiss with a stifled cry that was almost a word. Only a groan that he cut off from becoming a name, unsure what name it would have been.
“I love you,” Sanders said into his ear instead. Then repeatedly even as the mouth forming the words was not his own, or the voice, or the body. “I love you” without a name so he couldn’t get it wrong. Another and he felt the pressure giving way to his release. He absorbed the first rush holding onto Tom, speaking into his ear. With the next seconds he was on the other bed with the other darkness, different smells and tastes, different world, and the same. Also exactly the same. In that moment he understood something—so fast these thoughts were nothing but part of the orgasm itself, as if the thinking was the physical experience. Or perhaps that was an illusion of receiving an epiphany at the point that he was more intensely consumed by his own physicality than at any other.
Tom was scarcely behind him, Sanders aware of his climax only as his own faded. Then it was all breaking over him: the feelings, sights, understanding, and all that had struck him seconds before, and Sanders was shaking—breathless with it as much as with sex.
“Tom,” he gasped into the back of Tom’s neck, voice almost breaking.
“I know,” Tom said. “I got it too.”
“It wasn’t them. It wasn’t like anything else.” Though he could hardly speak, this seemed important—life and death.
“No,” Tom panted. “It was us.”
“Do you remember the first time you met Lee and what he said about defining reality? Is something real if it is no longer happening?”
“No, but I’ll take your word for it. He said so many things that seemed out there at the time. Now ... Lee was nothing.”
“When Sue went into the room and saw Deane—”
“I know,” Tom repeated, voice stronger. He reached up again, around to Sanders, twisting his fingers into hair and pulling his head down until Sanders was breathing against Tom’s jaw. “Everything’s all right, Sanders.”
Sanders gritted his teeth and couldn’t speak or he would be sobbing.
“It’s okay.” The same words several times, soothing, Tom getting his breath back and speaking quietly. “It wasn’t them. It was us,” he repeated. “Maybe only a matter of time before something happened. All this going on? Then tonight, the energy or ... power ... I don’t know. And already knowing the story, plus here and now in the exact place. We should have been surprised if nothing happened.”
“But we couldn’t at the same time—” Again, he had to stop.
“Shh...” Tom gently pulled away from him and rolled to face Sanders, taking his face in both hands. “You’ve been so solid about this whole thing. Don’t panic on me now when it’s all over, okay? I’m not panicking this time. I’m sure you can do at least as well as that.” He kissed Sanders between the eyes and pressed their foreheads together. “Do you want to talk to Sue about it?”
“No.”
“But she would say what I’m saying, right? That this should have been more of an inevitability than a shocker.”
Sanders nodded marginally against Tom’s head.
Yes, if they took their story to Sue, she would be intrigued, but Sanders doubted she would be surprised. And Sanders had seen her work enough and describe what she felt to understand that she would tell them what they had both already figured out.
They breathed deeply for a minute before trying to speak again.
“Are you okay?” Tom asked at last, withdrawing to look at him.
Sanders kept his eyes shut, only listening and feeling Tom move. “I don’t know.”
“Can I tease you, or is that too much right now?”
“Go ahead,” Sanders said.
“For a man who pursued past life regression to heal a medical problem, you’re really not handling your first psychic vision well. Not to mention a man who told me that I needed to take a deep breath when I said I saw a ghost.”
“That was a long time ago.”
Tom, still holding his face, kissed him again. “Yeah ... it was.”
“We’re not going to keep it up, right?” Sanders asked.
“You mean, does one psychic vision mean we’re suddenly ‘psychic’? I’m going to say no. These were really, really special circumstances, Sanders. In so many ways.”
“You’re taking this well.”
“No, I’m not.”
Sanders finally opened his eyes to see Tom looking back from a few inches away.
“I’m just extra motivated right now to act like I am,” Tom finished.
Sanders felt his throat tighten again and eased forward to wrap his arm around Tom’s back. Tom returned the partial embrace and Sanders could feel that he was trembling, his own breaths still shaky.
“Tom, I am so—”
“So grateful—”
“To have you—
“In my life—”
“Thank you—”
“For being part of me—”
“I don’t know what I would do—”
“Or who I would be—”
“Without you—”
“Because you’re—”
“My life—”
“Everything.”
They kissed and said at the same time, “I know.”
* * *
This time, Tom woke in gray hours of morning, aware of waking, yet tied to sleep, ready to drift back off as he could tell the sun had yet to crest the mountains. But, for some reason, he opened his eyes to look toward the doorway.
A man sat on the foot of their bed. A vague man of edgeless softness, in khaki uniform with a neat mustache and dark hair, who Tom recognized from a mirror, yet could not be sure he saw at all.
It was not like the visions he’d had last night, of himself seeing through the eyes of another man, feeling what he felt, looking into a portal to a world in the past. It was like waking to see a soft light at the crack of a door. Was there a light left on in the hall? Was it moonlight? Was it only part of his dreams? He could not tell and he decided, as a burst of gratitude and solace and peace overwhelmed him like a warm blanket, that he would not try, would not question, would not even bother to ask.
He blinked and there was a second man stepping up to the first. In matching uniform, but young and pale and slighter, even less discernible. He reached a hand out to the first figure, who took it and stood. They looked at Tom, nodding once, then had eyes only for each other as they walked away, every step not taking them across any distance, but blurring them more until there was nothing but a soft patch of light which settled and faded over the room into visual silence.
Tom shut his eyes on tears and turned into Sanders, arm around him. When he later woke to true morning, he could scarcely remember the images, only the feelings—which would be part of him forever.