senri
in
bedlam_mix
Animorphs - Untitled
Genre: Angst/Romance
Warnings: PG-13
Fandom: Animorphs
Notes: For PolyesterRage, a very late baby. A request for Tobias/Rachel, prompt "as time goes by".
He started forgetting. It was a hawk thing to do.
......
Forgetting was what saved him, in that maelstrom of grief - the hawk coming forward, cloaking him in hunger and ferocity, a familiar friend and ally against what could not be countenanced. The hawk drew him onwards, fed, flew, keened fiercely into the wind, with no recollection of nor interest in what troubled the weaker consciousness that shared head-space with it.
But oh, God, what else could he have done? Remembering, always, it would have killed him. If he had to think ceaselessly of her (the way she was keen, and sweat-sweetened on his tongue) he would have gone permanently into the churning morass that was the remainder of his reason. It would have killed him, or struck him with lightning's cold tragedy, and left him deaf, and blind, and dumb.
The hawk forgot. The hawk saved him.
......
But oh, God, the blue sin of her eyes, her luminescent skin.
(She led him into the woods one day, maybe two weeks before the end. A green jacket zipped up under her chin, ragged dusty jeans, her nails somehow smooth ovals still, and clean underneath. Her hand in his, light as a bird, but still, unstruggling.
They walked for a long way, back into the woods until he couldn't hear the Hork-Bajir calling to each other anymore, into where the sun painted the forest floor pinto and dapple. He swallowed, feeling - a hollow kind of expectancy well up, underneath his belly. Cassie and Jake had walked into the woods together too.
“Where are we going?” he said.
“I found a spot,” she told him, not glancing back, confident he'd follow her lead. She's planned this, he realized. We're going to a good spot and we're going to. And. He stopped thinking there because she'd stopped too.
“X marks the spot,” she told him, turning around and favoring him with a direct view of her smirk and her challenge. There really was an x, carved into one tree's trunk. The clearing was small, and leafy, very still.
He tipped his chin up when her fingers went to the waist of his bike shorts. He wasn't really dressed and felt shockingly naked compared to her, with her layers and layers between her skin and the world. He just had spandex. But he was tingling with wanting, and ready for her.
“Let's do it,” she said, and she was laughing a little, and a little sad. The old never-innocent all-purpose catch phrase, she'd attack this too, take it head on, make it hers. “Let's go.”
He could never refuse her anything.)
......
He kept on flying, because if it didn't offer the solace of her it was the way, his way, of occlusion. Hurling himself into the blue distance and soaring up alone, looking at nothing, thoughts white noise, a hawk's simple craving for the freedom of the air.
Not looking for a copper-and-white shadow to his plunges and sallies. Not expecting, never expecting to wheel and dip his wings and find a bulky companion rolling under him.
......
(They had a small forever, together on that grass, rolling together, tasting touching feeling together for that first and only time. She was lightning, penumbra, tawny summer acolyte, Amazon queen, resting her hands loosely on his chest and rocking in a slow delicious primeval way on him. That day, he could have stayed forever, his hands tight on her hips, crawled into the blue milk-shadow pooled beneath one breast and taken shelter forever.
What a selfish desire, in retrospect. What a foolish, self-serving dream. Maybe if he had been the one willing to shield her, to be the strong one, he could have taken the fatal blow for her; because it would have been worth it. The world loved girls like Rachel. The world fed them, watered them, on a diet of steady adoration. She could have loved again, dazzled everyone else the way he'd been dazzled, always, from that first moment... the world didn't need him. Quiet Tobias, not really excelling at anything. Except perhaps at loving her, at which he was king.
What was he supposed to do without her? What was he supposed to be? He didn't know. There was no draw, no goal, no lodestone. Only the sun crowning the horizon and the empty sky, which had once been filled.)
......
He started forgetting. It was a human thing to do.
END
Warnings: PG-13
Fandom: Animorphs
Notes: For PolyesterRage, a very late baby. A request for Tobias/Rachel, prompt "as time goes by".
He started forgetting. It was a hawk thing to do.
......
Forgetting was what saved him, in that maelstrom of grief - the hawk coming forward, cloaking him in hunger and ferocity, a familiar friend and ally against what could not be countenanced. The hawk drew him onwards, fed, flew, keened fiercely into the wind, with no recollection of nor interest in what troubled the weaker consciousness that shared head-space with it.
But oh, God, what else could he have done? Remembering, always, it would have killed him. If he had to think ceaselessly of her (the way she was keen, and sweat-sweetened on his tongue) he would have gone permanently into the churning morass that was the remainder of his reason. It would have killed him, or struck him with lightning's cold tragedy, and left him deaf, and blind, and dumb.
The hawk forgot. The hawk saved him.
......
But oh, God, the blue sin of her eyes, her luminescent skin.
(She led him into the woods one day, maybe two weeks before the end. A green jacket zipped up under her chin, ragged dusty jeans, her nails somehow smooth ovals still, and clean underneath. Her hand in his, light as a bird, but still, unstruggling.
They walked for a long way, back into the woods until he couldn't hear the Hork-Bajir calling to each other anymore, into where the sun painted the forest floor pinto and dapple. He swallowed, feeling - a hollow kind of expectancy well up, underneath his belly. Cassie and Jake had walked into the woods together too.
“Where are we going?” he said.
“I found a spot,” she told him, not glancing back, confident he'd follow her lead. She's planned this, he realized. We're going to a good spot and we're going to. And. He stopped thinking there because she'd stopped too.
“X marks the spot,” she told him, turning around and favoring him with a direct view of her smirk and her challenge. There really was an x, carved into one tree's trunk. The clearing was small, and leafy, very still.
He tipped his chin up when her fingers went to the waist of his bike shorts. He wasn't really dressed and felt shockingly naked compared to her, with her layers and layers between her skin and the world. He just had spandex. But he was tingling with wanting, and ready for her.
“Let's do it,” she said, and she was laughing a little, and a little sad. The old never-innocent all-purpose catch phrase, she'd attack this too, take it head on, make it hers. “Let's go.”
He could never refuse her anything.)
......
He kept on flying, because if it didn't offer the solace of her it was the way, his way, of occlusion. Hurling himself into the blue distance and soaring up alone, looking at nothing, thoughts white noise, a hawk's simple craving for the freedom of the air.
Not looking for a copper-and-white shadow to his plunges and sallies. Not expecting, never expecting to wheel and dip his wings and find a bulky companion rolling under him.
......
(They had a small forever, together on that grass, rolling together, tasting touching feeling together for that first and only time. She was lightning, penumbra, tawny summer acolyte, Amazon queen, resting her hands loosely on his chest and rocking in a slow delicious primeval way on him. That day, he could have stayed forever, his hands tight on her hips, crawled into the blue milk-shadow pooled beneath one breast and taken shelter forever.
What a selfish desire, in retrospect. What a foolish, self-serving dream. Maybe if he had been the one willing to shield her, to be the strong one, he could have taken the fatal blow for her; because it would have been worth it. The world loved girls like Rachel. The world fed them, watered them, on a diet of steady adoration. She could have loved again, dazzled everyone else the way he'd been dazzled, always, from that first moment... the world didn't need him. Quiet Tobias, not really excelling at anything. Except perhaps at loving her, at which he was king.
What was he supposed to do without her? What was he supposed to be? He didn't know. There was no draw, no goal, no lodestone. Only the sun crowning the horizon and the empty sky, which had once been filled.)
......
He started forgetting. It was a human thing to do.
END