And just like that
Yep, up all night again. But this time, I'm putting insomnia to some use, purging some post-Exodus fic from my soul before I lose my chance.
Unfashionable Though He May Be: Freud
He didn't wake me. I was ready for him. Awake and waiting, listening. I was rushing on nighttime drugs that cut my breaths in half and erased the knife's edge from too-recent wounds. I stood on the other side of the curtain, peeking out in my mind's eye, knowing if I looked out, it would be just how I imagined it.
I crept through the house like I had something to hide.
I stepped out into the empty morning air, dazed and languid, taking my time committing this sin. Like I could still back away from this if I was just quiet enough, if I just acted like this was normal.
He stood there bold and smiling in leather that matched the stain of three a.m., holding a glossy helmet in his outstretched hand, offering it to me with the smallest of shrugs.
I made him wait, knowing what he meant to give me, knowing any acceptance would be final, that we wouldn't come back from it, not as us. I made him stand there until the cocky-sure smirk died on his lips and his eyes stopped knowing what I would do.
It was too early for anyone except him and I knew it. Too late for anyone but me. Damn being seen. Damn this need to run with him, damn them all for making it worse by denying us.
Sleek and trim, longer than I had remembered, black seat narrow like the hips that I watched as they straddled the bike. And after all this time, mine settled behind his, coming home to a place they had never known and had always known they needed.
I leaned into his back, slid tight against him, curved my thighs along his and let my hand twist in the helmet straps beside my knee. He leaned to the side and turned around, hand firm on my neck, fingers brushing seductively down my cheek. No words, just lips where they belonged, home after millennia away.
Breath stopped as I gulped in the connection, tasting him finally, taking what had always, always belonged to me. It was given insistently, strong lips fast and eager, like he had never wanted to be away, like I had pushed him away and he was demanding I take him back.
He was right, I had. And he was. I welcomed the penance, licked into him and took him until he pulled back and turned away from me.
My heart wrenched with the engine's growl to life and I looked over my shoulder at what I was casting off, the stone foundations I was abandoning. In their widowed silence, they accused and convicted me. I tugged the helmet on and wrapped around him, clutched at solidity, at the strength he'd grown while I was away. He was the only thing I could be sure was real anymore, and I let him have me, closed my eyes.
The engine sliced off, the rumbling purr echoing through the trees and burning panic in my chest. I sat there, holding on until my hands were peeled away and the bike lifted with the loss of his weight.
"You're afraid."
I blinked, dumbstruck. Afraid.
"Scoot up. You drive."
My helmet muffled his words and I strained to hear through the padded walls. He pushed me forward and I moved, automatically shifting roles.
I knew how to do this. Clutch, gas, my hands lost under his. They moved away, so strong on my thighs, so adult they somehow surpassed my own in maturity now.
We popped off with a jump, a squeal of thin tires and left a mark that I knew would remind me for weeks, for months if the rain stayed away.
The misty fog chilled every inch of exposed flesh. My wrists ached with the vibrations.
We both knew he didn't need to hold on, but his hands slid up my legs, curving securely, low on my hips.
My helmet meant rare anonymity, but recognition was a moot point soon. The roads where people knew us blurred by and we flew alongside a lazy V of geese that floated over the corn.
He pointed and I edged us to a stop under an oak tree on a lane I'd never noticed. He wouldn't know what I was thinking, wouldn't know that I never wanted the sun to rise or the day to start. That I'd had enough sun to last a lifetime.
The engine died slowly, melting into the soft sounds of pre-dawn. Before I could move, he reached around and unfastened my chin strap, lifting the helmet off, setting it gently on the dust beside us.
His hand, work-rough on my anxious skin, turned me and I met a need I wasn't ready for. He kept my mouth while scrambling to guide me, to move me.
This new version, this commanding, sure side was something I understood. With him like this, I jelled and went, I would have gone wherever he wanted me.
Night lifting too fast away from us, there wasn't time for pride or resistance. I sat backwards on the seat, facing him, the warmth of the cooling engine dissipating against the insides of my legs.
He didn't let go, didn't stop, didn't ask permission. He knew, somehow. Knew I'd let him do this, knew he could use me and knew how, too.
He took my hands and slid them inside his jacket, put them on his waist, closed them into fists on the hem of his thin white shirt.
I lifted, breeching cotton for the first time, touching greedily underneath. Soft, smooth skin, like it was brand new and this was its test-run. Muscles flexed under my fingertips, ones I'd never felt on anyone, not even myself. His shirt felt cool and damp stretched against the backs of my hands, but his skin was dry warmth, whispering electric sighs as I memorized it. Braille to my sense-starved nerves.
He shifted under my hands, and I knew he couldn't stop, could never, ever stop now. From now on, anything less than this, than us like this, would kill him. I understood every thought in his head. I'd been a long time dead from that brand of self-denial.
A tractor sputtered awake somewhere across the field behind me, and I froze for an instant, but he didn't. He was driven, desperate and taking and sure, hands everywhere and nowhere long enough. Clothes open and so much skin exposed, our breath forced and hitching. His fingers dug into my thighs, pulling at them, then hands curved under me and I was on his lap, straddling him straddling the bike, slacks impossibly tight from the spread. Control lost, given without hesitation, lifted and moved like I was nothing, like he was everything. Him beneath me, pressed against me, making it worse, making it better.
We couldn't go anywhere, the shortness of our time keeping us from going too far, from getting far enough away that I wouldn't remember. Reality wound in between us, tangled in pants that wouldn't come off like this. No time to finish and no way to let go and give up.
We slowed and stilled and gasped against each other, our half-clothed chests clinging together, weight so heavy now that his thighs shook underneath mine. I didn't know how to move, couldn't will myself back into control.
He closed his arms in a full circle around me, his unsteady hands spreading wide on my aching ribs. Face tucked into my neck like a child, young and scared like he used to be, before we'd gone too far alone and had to turn back to each other.
Power slipped from him quickly, it always had. I held on, one hand brushing through his hair, my fingers tingling with the touch I'd imagined a thousand times. His mouth slid hot on my neck and that fast, he was someone else, someone more precious to me than I could ever accept.
Not pure or moral or right. Just an answer to my short-comings. A receptacle for my excesses. An equal. Someone who needed me. Someone I could need.
Like this, he was attainable. He was mine like this.
My lips spilled whispered promises, promises I'd screamed during the fevered dreams and lost hope of my isolation, words that I'd screamed until the meanings were lost and my voice rasped them on and on, until they were just a mantra to keep me sane. Heart-swollen vows that choked me now, spoken to flesh and blood, the real thing this time. I meant every one of them, all over again.
The sun burned through my tight-shut lids, searing hot and merciless.
I opened my eyes to the burning red digits of the clock.
Aching from the slap of honesty the dream had delivered, I shivered against the cold sweat and climbed from my empty bed. Empty because she was lost, dead, gone. The why and how of her absence mattered only to my pride.
The rest was potential now. Rooms full of no one were everywhere. Comfort and safety and draperies thick enough to pretend night wouldn't end so soon.
If dreams were wishes fulfilled, I was past due for the waking reality of them. He and I had somewhere to go now. He could fill every room here, every void that echoed with everyday silence.
I drove fast and recklessly, ignoring his disapproving voice in my head, my focus narrowed so closely that the sides of the road blackened and melted away. I slid on his gravel, stopped short of his gate. The morning mist prismed his porchlight, making it an unnecessary beacon in familiar waters.
From the shadows on his lawn, I could see that his bedroom light was on and I knew he was there, awake, as always. Maybe waiting. Lonely. Wondering why I hadn't gone to him yet, why I'd left him in the first place.
Or something else: why he hadn't been driven to find me, dead or alive.
I knew the answers. I could tell him.
No reason not to do this tonight. No one where I'd come from now, holding me back. But this close, this obvious, I hesitated and was caught. The ghosts of guilt and fear slipped up my spine.
His form silhouetted the window and I moved back to the road, to my car.
He had a second chance, but I knew. It wasn't the same as my own.
Dawn slid up over the fields and the sunburnt stalks leaned away from me, bowing as I drove by.
~end~
Pairing: Clex
Rating: PG-ish
Disclaimer: Their owners were never this sappy. Plus, written in the wee hours when just about anything makes sense. Oh, and unbetaed, too.
xoxoxoxoxo
Unfashionable Though He May Be: Freud
He didn't wake me. I was ready for him. Awake and waiting, listening. I was rushing on nighttime drugs that cut my breaths in half and erased the knife's edge from too-recent wounds. I stood on the other side of the curtain, peeking out in my mind's eye, knowing if I looked out, it would be just how I imagined it.
I crept through the house like I had something to hide.
I stepped out into the empty morning air, dazed and languid, taking my time committing this sin. Like I could still back away from this if I was just quiet enough, if I just acted like this was normal.
He stood there bold and smiling in leather that matched the stain of three a.m., holding a glossy helmet in his outstretched hand, offering it to me with the smallest of shrugs.
I made him wait, knowing what he meant to give me, knowing any acceptance would be final, that we wouldn't come back from it, not as us. I made him stand there until the cocky-sure smirk died on his lips and his eyes stopped knowing what I would do.
It was too early for anyone except him and I knew it. Too late for anyone but me. Damn being seen. Damn this need to run with him, damn them all for making it worse by denying us.
Sleek and trim, longer than I had remembered, black seat narrow like the hips that I watched as they straddled the bike. And after all this time, mine settled behind his, coming home to a place they had never known and had always known they needed.
I leaned into his back, slid tight against him, curved my thighs along his and let my hand twist in the helmet straps beside my knee. He leaned to the side and turned around, hand firm on my neck, fingers brushing seductively down my cheek. No words, just lips where they belonged, home after millennia away.
Breath stopped as I gulped in the connection, tasting him finally, taking what had always, always belonged to me. It was given insistently, strong lips fast and eager, like he had never wanted to be away, like I had pushed him away and he was demanding I take him back.
He was right, I had. And he was. I welcomed the penance, licked into him and took him until he pulled back and turned away from me.
My heart wrenched with the engine's growl to life and I looked over my shoulder at what I was casting off, the stone foundations I was abandoning. In their widowed silence, they accused and convicted me. I tugged the helmet on and wrapped around him, clutched at solidity, at the strength he'd grown while I was away. He was the only thing I could be sure was real anymore, and I let him have me, closed my eyes.
The engine sliced off, the rumbling purr echoing through the trees and burning panic in my chest. I sat there, holding on until my hands were peeled away and the bike lifted with the loss of his weight.
"You're afraid."
I blinked, dumbstruck. Afraid.
"Scoot up. You drive."
My helmet muffled his words and I strained to hear through the padded walls. He pushed me forward and I moved, automatically shifting roles.
I knew how to do this. Clutch, gas, my hands lost under his. They moved away, so strong on my thighs, so adult they somehow surpassed my own in maturity now.
We popped off with a jump, a squeal of thin tires and left a mark that I knew would remind me for weeks, for months if the rain stayed away.
The misty fog chilled every inch of exposed flesh. My wrists ached with the vibrations.
We both knew he didn't need to hold on, but his hands slid up my legs, curving securely, low on my hips.
My helmet meant rare anonymity, but recognition was a moot point soon. The roads where people knew us blurred by and we flew alongside a lazy V of geese that floated over the corn.
He pointed and I edged us to a stop under an oak tree on a lane I'd never noticed. He wouldn't know what I was thinking, wouldn't know that I never wanted the sun to rise or the day to start. That I'd had enough sun to last a lifetime.
The engine died slowly, melting into the soft sounds of pre-dawn. Before I could move, he reached around and unfastened my chin strap, lifting the helmet off, setting it gently on the dust beside us.
His hand, work-rough on my anxious skin, turned me and I met a need I wasn't ready for. He kept my mouth while scrambling to guide me, to move me.
This new version, this commanding, sure side was something I understood. With him like this, I jelled and went, I would have gone wherever he wanted me.
Night lifting too fast away from us, there wasn't time for pride or resistance. I sat backwards on the seat, facing him, the warmth of the cooling engine dissipating against the insides of my legs.
He didn't let go, didn't stop, didn't ask permission. He knew, somehow. Knew I'd let him do this, knew he could use me and knew how, too.
He took my hands and slid them inside his jacket, put them on his waist, closed them into fists on the hem of his thin white shirt.
I lifted, breeching cotton for the first time, touching greedily underneath. Soft, smooth skin, like it was brand new and this was its test-run. Muscles flexed under my fingertips, ones I'd never felt on anyone, not even myself. His shirt felt cool and damp stretched against the backs of my hands, but his skin was dry warmth, whispering electric sighs as I memorized it. Braille to my sense-starved nerves.
He shifted under my hands, and I knew he couldn't stop, could never, ever stop now. From now on, anything less than this, than us like this, would kill him. I understood every thought in his head. I'd been a long time dead from that brand of self-denial.
A tractor sputtered awake somewhere across the field behind me, and I froze for an instant, but he didn't. He was driven, desperate and taking and sure, hands everywhere and nowhere long enough. Clothes open and so much skin exposed, our breath forced and hitching. His fingers dug into my thighs, pulling at them, then hands curved under me and I was on his lap, straddling him straddling the bike, slacks impossibly tight from the spread. Control lost, given without hesitation, lifted and moved like I was nothing, like he was everything. Him beneath me, pressed against me, making it worse, making it better.
We couldn't go anywhere, the shortness of our time keeping us from going too far, from getting far enough away that I wouldn't remember. Reality wound in between us, tangled in pants that wouldn't come off like this. No time to finish and no way to let go and give up.
We slowed and stilled and gasped against each other, our half-clothed chests clinging together, weight so heavy now that his thighs shook underneath mine. I didn't know how to move, couldn't will myself back into control.
He closed his arms in a full circle around me, his unsteady hands spreading wide on my aching ribs. Face tucked into my neck like a child, young and scared like he used to be, before we'd gone too far alone and had to turn back to each other.
Power slipped from him quickly, it always had. I held on, one hand brushing through his hair, my fingers tingling with the touch I'd imagined a thousand times. His mouth slid hot on my neck and that fast, he was someone else, someone more precious to me than I could ever accept.
Not pure or moral or right. Just an answer to my short-comings. A receptacle for my excesses. An equal. Someone who needed me. Someone I could need.
Like this, he was attainable. He was mine like this.
My lips spilled whispered promises, promises I'd screamed during the fevered dreams and lost hope of my isolation, words that I'd screamed until the meanings were lost and my voice rasped them on and on, until they were just a mantra to keep me sane. Heart-swollen vows that choked me now, spoken to flesh and blood, the real thing this time. I meant every one of them, all over again.
The sun burned through my tight-shut lids, searing hot and merciless.
I opened my eyes to the burning red digits of the clock.
Aching from the slap of honesty the dream had delivered, I shivered against the cold sweat and climbed from my empty bed. Empty because she was lost, dead, gone. The why and how of her absence mattered only to my pride.
The rest was potential now. Rooms full of no one were everywhere. Comfort and safety and draperies thick enough to pretend night wouldn't end so soon.
If dreams were wishes fulfilled, I was past due for the waking reality of them. He and I had somewhere to go now. He could fill every room here, every void that echoed with everyday silence.
I drove fast and recklessly, ignoring his disapproving voice in my head, my focus narrowed so closely that the sides of the road blackened and melted away. I slid on his gravel, stopped short of his gate. The morning mist prismed his porchlight, making it an unnecessary beacon in familiar waters.
From the shadows on his lawn, I could see that his bedroom light was on and I knew he was there, awake, as always. Maybe waiting. Lonely. Wondering why I hadn't gone to him yet, why I'd left him in the first place.
Or something else: why he hadn't been driven to find me, dead or alive.
I knew the answers. I could tell him.
No reason not to do this tonight. No one where I'd come from now, holding me back. But this close, this obvious, I hesitated and was caught. The ghosts of guilt and fear slipped up my spine.
His form silhouetted the window and I moved back to the road, to my car.
He had a second chance, but I knew. It wasn't the same as my own.
Dawn slid up over the fields and the sunburnt stalks leaned away from me, bowing as I drove by.
~end~
Pairing: Clex
Rating: PG-ish
Disclaimer: Their owners were never this sappy. Plus, written in the wee hours when just about anything makes sense. Oh, and unbetaed, too.
xoxoxoxoxo