"Jack."

"Daniel."

Jack can win every argument before it's unpacked from its box, pieces set out on the board, because of the way he says Daniel's name.

Daniel mouths it to himself at night, hands languidly touching, mind straying. It feels strange on his lips as he copies Jack's inflexions, that knowing drawl and drag, but even the dry echo is sometimes all it takes.

Jack fills the flexible syllables with so much unsaid, understood and Daniel wonders sometimes if he's forgotten a time when it was said aloud, at length.

No one ever invented shorthand before speech, after all.


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