Orlando only speaks in vowels whenever Dominic touches him.
That first moment of contact, along the ridge of one of his bottom ribs, is slight and elusive and dissipates like the whisper of some unspoken desire. The shiver it sends like tiny shockwaves through Orlando's body reaches his throat and catches on his vocal chords in a tiny, short "ah". It's more breath than speech, but it sounds like a request that urges Dominic's fingers farther. He charts the rises and falls of Orlando's chest like some Old World typographer-series of concentric circles drawn to radiate from each different curve and line and tiny dip.
Orlando's mind speaks in vowels too, racing and saying, despite the trembling stillness of his body -- I want this I want you I want more more always more. When Dominic's fingers travel up along the inside of his thighs, his throat opens more clearly and whispers "oh oh oh" instead, one after the other in tight succession. Orlando pulls at Dominic's shoulders with the full force of both hands and crushes his lips against his own. I want you you you, Dominic, Orlando means to say, but it comes out muddled and mottled and still shapeless.
Amidst all of Orlando's "ah"s and "oh"s and "uh"s, Dominic speaks back only in consonants. He hums into the skin of Orlando's collarbone when he sucks gently, like taking poison from a wound. He draws in a sharp breath -hisses on a short 'sssss'-when Orlando clutches too furtively at his arms. Dominic's mouth is full of mmm's and nnnn's and soft purring rrrr's. The consonants murmured in the deep of Dominic's throat match the short clipped sounds of Orlando's vowels. Somewhere between here and there and now and then, words are formed between the both of them; they cling to their skin, drenched in longing and devotion.
Dominic hears the words and he buries them in the sheets amongst the sweat and the sex. He whispers them to Orlando long after he's fallen asleep. Only he understands their meaning.
