Re: The Priest's Hole: Jules & Ford
Jules had come to terms with himself years ago. Young and thin and waif, and trying to determine what pronoun felt best upon his tongue, and he'd decided it was enough to simply be. He or she, labels and acronyms, and he'd eschewed them to the last. It was defiance, and it had cost him cheekbones that shattered like delicate china beneath bullish hands. He'd mended, knit together, and he'd tried to play a game that was not his. Pronouns on his tongue, and pretense in the lavatory. Runways and all the beautiful people in the apple of New York's eye, and he'd left that behind as well. Forgotten, and his ribbon was his own, and he fit not, and he liked it that way.
The boy on the floor - for this was clearly a boy - was pretty in the way of youth and innocence. Jules knew tarnish, and this boy was not, for all the pink wet of his lips. Earnest and the cosmos in his eyes, and Jules thought it divinity.
He crouched as the boy rolled off his backpack perch. Long legs and elbows braced upon his knees. The spread of Jules' thighs was masculine, but the long and delicate fingers that dangled from hand and wrist were not. He watched the motion of hands that supplanted words, and he smiled as the heel of that work boot was tugged as the boy sat. Crooked teeth that had never been fixed gleamed white at the intoxicated youth.
Jules looked, leisure and lazy, at the glowing device. "Yes. That would be me. Ford, is it?" He knew. He wanted to see if the boy would speak. "You've promised me apples." He smiled once more, and one of his arms stretched willows toward Ford, fingers out and may I? in an offer to help the wasted child to his feet.