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FIC: The Steps (Arkham Horror Files, João/Calvin Wright)
I actually wrote this one back in January, but I never ended up posting it. Correcting that now to corral all my 2024 stories together.
Title: The Steps
Fandom: Arkham Horror Files
Relationship: João/Calvin Wright
Rating: General
Word Count: 400
Content Info: n/a
Summary: An evening in Buenos Aires, and a first dance.
Notes: Also available on AO3.
Perhaps they’d go out for dinner tonight, João thought, his sensible plan of sandwiches at home already half seduced away by the sounds of the evening city waking up in the street below.
A típica was tuning up in the plaza. Brass, strings, and a mated pair of clarinets. There was almost certainly a drum in reserve, but for now their percussion was the clank and cursing of Villalba’s grill being assembled on the corner for the after-work crowd.
Here in the apartment, Calvin had hunted down every paintbrush cup and charcoal-dusted saucer in the place and was currently washing them in the kitchen basin. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, calling for a full-page study of forearms that only the fading light and the distraction of the típica's budding serenade averted. Some of the tune’s finer points had snagged on the cobblestones or drifted away on the sea breeze, but what slipped in through the window was enough to set João’s toes tapping.
He glided forward, although not too quietly—never too quietly when it came to approaching his travelling man from behind—and wrapped an arm around Calvin’s waist. Swayed from his hips.
“Dance with me?”
Calvin tensed. “I don’t dance.”
In another life, in another tongue, João might have replied without thinking. Something witty for wit’s sake. Something airy to show that no rejection was capable of bruising him. It should have been an inconvenience, having to meet in the middle of a shared second language. An impediment to the sort of romance that involved dishes and dinnertime conversation, not just the body-talk of a stolen tryst.
But on evenings like these, the hesitation felt like a gift. A moment in which to listen, and to test his words before he spoke them.
“Would you like to?” he asked.
Calvin eased. His handsome shoulders rose and fell in the smallest of shrugs. He wiped his hands off on the dish towel and turned slowly, seeming to take care not to dislodge João’s arm from around him.
João reached up and smoothed the crease between Calvin’s eyebrows, trying to banish the shadow of whatever place had discouraged a man like this from learning to dance. Then he took his hand tenderly and guided him forward and back.
“Just follow me,” he murmured as Calvin melted into him, warm and trusting.
Perhaps, he amended, they might go out for dessert.
Title: The Steps
Fandom: Arkham Horror Files
Relationship: João/Calvin Wright
Rating: General
Word Count: 400
Content Info: n/a
Summary: An evening in Buenos Aires, and a first dance.
Notes: Also available on AO3.
Perhaps they’d go out for dinner tonight, João thought, his sensible plan of sandwiches at home already half seduced away by the sounds of the evening city waking up in the street below.
A típica was tuning up in the plaza. Brass, strings, and a mated pair of clarinets. There was almost certainly a drum in reserve, but for now their percussion was the clank and cursing of Villalba’s grill being assembled on the corner for the after-work crowd.
Here in the apartment, Calvin had hunted down every paintbrush cup and charcoal-dusted saucer in the place and was currently washing them in the kitchen basin. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, calling for a full-page study of forearms that only the fading light and the distraction of the típica's budding serenade averted. Some of the tune’s finer points had snagged on the cobblestones or drifted away on the sea breeze, but what slipped in through the window was enough to set João’s toes tapping.
He glided forward, although not too quietly—never too quietly when it came to approaching his travelling man from behind—and wrapped an arm around Calvin’s waist. Swayed from his hips.
“Dance with me?”
Calvin tensed. “I don’t dance.”
In another life, in another tongue, João might have replied without thinking. Something witty for wit’s sake. Something airy to show that no rejection was capable of bruising him. It should have been an inconvenience, having to meet in the middle of a shared second language. An impediment to the sort of romance that involved dishes and dinnertime conversation, not just the body-talk of a stolen tryst.
But on evenings like these, the hesitation felt like a gift. A moment in which to listen, and to test his words before he spoke them.
“Would you like to?” he asked.
Calvin eased. His handsome shoulders rose and fell in the smallest of shrugs. He wiped his hands off on the dish towel and turned slowly, seeming to take care not to dislodge João’s arm from around him.
João reached up and smoothed the crease between Calvin’s eyebrows, trying to banish the shadow of whatever place had discouraged a man like this from learning to dance. Then he took his hand tenderly and guided him forward and back.
“Just follow me,” he murmured as Calvin melted into him, warm and trusting.
Perhaps, he amended, they might go out for dessert.