Sometimes Dominic misses his language. Not the one that he speaks now in the movies and with his best mates, but the one that he did speak once upon a time, as a child growing up in Germany. He misses his language and the way that it would sit on his tongue -- round and fat like a dark summer cherry. Nowadays, the syntax feels like boyhood nostalgia filling up his mouth whenever he tries to string together sentences -- carefully picking his way through clauses and conjunctions and subject-verb agreement. English feels too curt and too brash for Dominic's tastes. The vowels are too clipped and the consonants are premature and it is too easy -- far too easy -- to trip over one's self and one's tongue and tumble face-flat into muttering.
It bothers Dominic sometimes to hear himself speak it.
:::
Dominic tells Viggo all this one evening over beer and cards, muttered sideways into conversation after someone else brings up Doris Day and Gladys Knight and the Pips. Viggo fails to see the connection, but he allows Dominic to talk anyway in long sentences smeared with too much alcohol that double back upon themselves. Viggo think it's beautiful when Dominic rambles like this -- half inane babble and half insightful clarity -- and when Dominic's voice finally trails off, Viggo kisses him once on the corner of the mouth.
The touch is so slight and so fleeting that Dominic thinks that the sensation is merely his language trying to return to him, and not Viggo's lips brushing up against his skin. He momentarily imagines the German crawling back into his mouth like some sulking night animal back into its hole, and in Dominic's ear there is the faint scritch of Viggo's stubble scraping against his own. He goes to speak, but Viggo is suddenly gone - off to the kitchen to find another beer, and Dominic is left alone to his own devices. He can hear the bottles rattle against themselves in the refrigerator door as Viggo tugs it open in the next room. Dominic rubs his tongue against the ridged roof of his mouth.
He feels the words begin to stir.
:::
The next morning, it rains so hard, the water seems to seep through the windows -- collecting on the glass on the inside in heavy gray drops. When Viggo wanders into the living room, Dominic is there speaking to himself quietly, pressing his fingertip to one window then the next then the next. Dominic writes the words to his language backwards and frontwards on the fogged glass in large, streaking, dripping letters that spill into one another. Vowels become consonants become word upon word.
grau . beruhrung . wieder . oder . lieber . ich . muttersprache . regnet . deine . werden . warte
The words mean close to nothing when strung together, but Dominic doesn't mind; he likes the sound of his finger as it squeaks against the glass, the tiny tremble of friction in his fingertip and the condensation that collects in the ridges of his fingerprints. Viggo cannot understand any of the scrawl upon the windows, but he collects each word meticulously with his eyes and buries them in the back of his mind. He thinks one day that they will make something blossom beneath his fingertips -- something beautiful and red with streaks of gray and lavender in it. A photograph a poem and Dominic's mother tongue buried beneath thick paint and varnish.
He pads over to Dominic who repeats each word as he scribbles it onto the glass, savouring the way his lips form each tiny noise. He doesn't have to think very hard, they come on their own now without hesitation, and Dominic smiles broadly when he hears the familiar slap of Viggo's bare feet upon the hardwood floors.
"I remember now, Viggo," he says without turning to look over his shoulder. "Last night...last night it came to me. All of it." Viggo moves quietly behind him and raises his hand up towards the window, retracing some of Dominic's words slowly, as if the act would make him suddenly understand their meaning. He tries to piece the words together with his own mouth, but his lips do not recognize the shapes or the sounds, and Dominic laughs inaudibly. When he turns around to speak, Viggo's mouth is there, covering his own, and for a moment Dominic is afraid that Viggo will swallow his newly-returned language whole.
The rain throws itself against the windows with large smacking sounds. Dominic listens and lets his eyes slide shut as Viggo eats the words slowly from his mouth, like white grapes straight from the vine.
