Fic: Cuts Deep (1/1)
Title: Cuts Deep
Rating: R
Pairings: Claire/Jacob/Esau, Jacob/Esau
Word Count: 1,473
Summary: White pervades, and then black. For the Kink Bingo Prompt - Silence, and for flaky_artist, who requested “Lost, Claire (+ or / Jacob), some say illusions were her game // wrap her in velvet, does anyone know her name?” at ineffort’s Lady Fest 2010. General Spoilers Through Season Six.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: Random and fragmented by design. Ish.
Cuts Deep
The flashes churn in her stomach, crawl in her skin, and she stumbles, blind.
White pervades, and then black, and it means nothing.
______________________________
She wakes between the trees, a trickle of blood at her hairline, pain throbbing between her temples as she sits, tries to stand. She uses the trunks for leverage, for balance, volleying between without grace or finesse as colors begin to grasp at permanence, as shapes begin to solidify, take hold.
She sees the house -- a simple cabin -- before she sees the people. She sees the people before she understands what they’re doing. She understands what they’re doing after she hears the broken, tormented gasp come from their entangled forms; but only just.
She holds her breath between the leaves, watches carefully, cautiously, as sandy strands cling against salt-and-pepper -- as hands press, bruise against shoulder-blades between the scratch of nails against the skin; the men are bowed together at the forehead, the darker of them moving the pair in concert, through chaos, writing a symphony that cries out against the silence -- though when all that breaks the masterpiece is a wet, ringing sob as the lighter man breaks apart before her eyes, she realizes it’s not a masterpiece, so much as a miracle.
Her heart is racing as the sun starts to set, as they stay connected, lost against bare skin and bright eyes; she freezes as a gaze travels over her, lingers on the shock of blonde that gives her away among the sea of green -- she braces to run, if she can, but there’s no need: this she feels, and this she trusts, even as they both turn to look in her direction, root her to the spot with the power of their attention, their consideration; their stare.
Hard eyes, sad eyes; and there’s a difference that they embody -- a difference between being threatening and issuing a threat. She stands, takes a step -- unbidden, but the invitation seems implied in the tangible anticipation that vibrates in her blood. Her bare feet press down, sink into the earth with every passing moment, every breath she molds to fit her pace.
They reach for her without warning; she flinches before their grasp meets her wrists, but the resistance dies as soon as they make contact, one at each side, halves of a whole: hands, weathered through the years -- too many years -- clasping at her, taking hold.
She lets herself look into them, see into them; read only a fraction of what the souls beneath wish for her to comprehend. She’d give anything to be good enough, strong enough to understand everything they seem to be telling her: precious things she’ll never get another chance to know.
Don’t speak, he says, they say; we know what you need.
Her knees make pockmarks in the dampness of the ground; she falls, and they don’t catch her, only embrace her in the comedown, the descent.
They take her slowly, simply, write her into their story without effort or haste, weave her thread into their dance as they continue to move, continue to be. Her clothes are gone before she remembers wearing them at all, their hands against her as often, more often than they trail over one another. Across her skin, they paint a history, the struggle and the longing, the fear and the loss, hate and love and the triumph of evil over good despite all efforts, all hope; and they come together like the ending of paradise -- all violence and passion and the thrum of their hearts like the waves on the shore, the beat of her weight against the dirt.
She wants to tell them harder, but something stops her, something like fire and water in them that tempers her every want, her every thought. When she keens, they suck the sound from her lips; when she moans, they catch it, hold it against their tongues -- when she pants, her breasts heaving heavy into the heart of them, the heat of them both atop her, at either side, they suck the air from her lungs and leave her lifeless, spent: defiled and perfected, all at once, as they stroke careful hands against her ribs, trace searing lines along her spine.
She wants to tell them slower, but she can feel the way her heart beats, the way her blood burns: to be beyond time is something she’ll never know, and they don’t have any to spare -- when the sky lights, this will be a memory, a dream; cloud illusions on the open sea. They have to live this until it dies.
She wants to tell them deeper, but she doesn’t think it’s possible; wants to ask them softer, but they’re silk and velvet, shadow -- the prick of a needle against her flesh. She wants to tell them closer, but somehow, their heartbeats are already hers.
She wants to beg, to plead, but the words aren’t hers to know; so she simply reaches for them, presses hard and arcs high and bites her tongue until they taste her blood when she kisses them sloppy, desperate -- sunshine and moonlight and soil and air, all tangled and beautiful, being and becoming and ceasing all at once, lost in the fray.
The one in black comes before her, nuzzles the taut, tense flesh, the stain around her nipple; and she can smell sulfur, aloe as he drags teeth down into the crease of her cleavage, along her sternum, down to her navel, lets his tongue play at her, as the other lays hands upon her, presses fingertips against her muscles and elevates her, brings her somewhere new. She arches back at the shoulders, forward at the hips, aching for the touch as she catches her lip between her teeth -- because silence is better, now; to say anything would be to sully it, to make it unclean.
She realizes, belatedly, that she feels safe with them, feels loved when they slip inside of her, drive her forward toward a ledge she won’t survive and teach her how to weather the fall unscathed, if not unaltered; as they show her the rhythm of the universe in both of them, and give her secrets she’s never meant to know.
The cool of night settles, but she’s never felt warmer, nestled tight between the pair; hands clasped together, around her, and whatever feeling sparks between them lingers, passes through her in the interim, as if she belongs to it, too. She can feel their pulses -- chest at her chest and chest at her back -- light thumping harder than the dark; she reaches, untangles their hands and places her own in the middle. For a moment, she fears the audacity, the motion, but it’s short-lived; she draws the touch of three to the center of the chest against her own, presses her bare body against the sandy hair that sprinkles that skin, and closes her eyes, focused on the beat.
Boundaries blur in that moment, and she’s lost and found and split apart in an instant, every jolt and every pause sending her rushing, reeling.
She doesn’t know who she is anymore, what she wants; except for it never to stop.
When it’s over, though, when it’s done, she thinks she gets it; watching them in the starlight as they sleep -- silent now, so much like her, as she inhales their exhalations, and transcends the point where she’d need to steal a part of them for her own: she is in them, now, and them in her, and some things, she knows, go beyond beginnings and ends.
She thinks, perhaps -- the last thought she’s given -- that she understands, now, what a human life is made for.
She was born to breathe infinity; to know the wonder of forever.
______________________________
They fade in the night, like a dream -- she can’t tell if she moves on, or if they do; it doesn’t matter, though: nothing remains.
Things begin to spiral, once the world stands still, and she loses parts of herself, pieces, bit by bit, until she’s a fraying, falling patchwork of what she was and what she is, the seams stitched loose, unhinged. She strokes the wood of the crib until there are splinters in her palms -- smooth like light, and rough like dark. She doesn’t speak anymore -- not that there’s a use -- because silence, now, is what makes her feel safe.
Day after day, night after night: white pervades, and then black, and somehow, some way, it still means nothing.
Only it used to mean everything; and the nothing, now, cuts deep.
Rating: R
Pairings: Claire/Jacob/Esau, Jacob/Esau
Word Count: 1,473
Summary: White pervades, and then black. For the Kink Bingo Prompt - Silence, and for flaky_artist, who requested “Lost, Claire (+ or / Jacob), some say illusions were her game // wrap her in velvet, does anyone know her name?” at ineffort’s Lady Fest 2010. General Spoilers Through Season Six.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: Random and fragmented by design. Ish.
Cuts Deep
The flashes churn in her stomach, crawl in her skin, and she stumbles, blind.
White pervades, and then black, and it means nothing.
______________________________
She wakes between the trees, a trickle of blood at her hairline, pain throbbing between her temples as she sits, tries to stand. She uses the trunks for leverage, for balance, volleying between without grace or finesse as colors begin to grasp at permanence, as shapes begin to solidify, take hold.
She sees the house -- a simple cabin -- before she sees the people. She sees the people before she understands what they’re doing. She understands what they’re doing after she hears the broken, tormented gasp come from their entangled forms; but only just.
She holds her breath between the leaves, watches carefully, cautiously, as sandy strands cling against salt-and-pepper -- as hands press, bruise against shoulder-blades between the scratch of nails against the skin; the men are bowed together at the forehead, the darker of them moving the pair in concert, through chaos, writing a symphony that cries out against the silence -- though when all that breaks the masterpiece is a wet, ringing sob as the lighter man breaks apart before her eyes, she realizes it’s not a masterpiece, so much as a miracle.
Her heart is racing as the sun starts to set, as they stay connected, lost against bare skin and bright eyes; she freezes as a gaze travels over her, lingers on the shock of blonde that gives her away among the sea of green -- she braces to run, if she can, but there’s no need: this she feels, and this she trusts, even as they both turn to look in her direction, root her to the spot with the power of their attention, their consideration; their stare.
Hard eyes, sad eyes; and there’s a difference that they embody -- a difference between being threatening and issuing a threat. She stands, takes a step -- unbidden, but the invitation seems implied in the tangible anticipation that vibrates in her blood. Her bare feet press down, sink into the earth with every passing moment, every breath she molds to fit her pace.
They reach for her without warning; she flinches before their grasp meets her wrists, but the resistance dies as soon as they make contact, one at each side, halves of a whole: hands, weathered through the years -- too many years -- clasping at her, taking hold.
She lets herself look into them, see into them; read only a fraction of what the souls beneath wish for her to comprehend. She’d give anything to be good enough, strong enough to understand everything they seem to be telling her: precious things she’ll never get another chance to know.
Don’t speak, he says, they say; we know what you need.
Her knees make pockmarks in the dampness of the ground; she falls, and they don’t catch her, only embrace her in the comedown, the descent.
They take her slowly, simply, write her into their story without effort or haste, weave her thread into their dance as they continue to move, continue to be. Her clothes are gone before she remembers wearing them at all, their hands against her as often, more often than they trail over one another. Across her skin, they paint a history, the struggle and the longing, the fear and the loss, hate and love and the triumph of evil over good despite all efforts, all hope; and they come together like the ending of paradise -- all violence and passion and the thrum of their hearts like the waves on the shore, the beat of her weight against the dirt.
She wants to tell them harder, but something stops her, something like fire and water in them that tempers her every want, her every thought. When she keens, they suck the sound from her lips; when she moans, they catch it, hold it against their tongues -- when she pants, her breasts heaving heavy into the heart of them, the heat of them both atop her, at either side, they suck the air from her lungs and leave her lifeless, spent: defiled and perfected, all at once, as they stroke careful hands against her ribs, trace searing lines along her spine.
She wants to tell them slower, but she can feel the way her heart beats, the way her blood burns: to be beyond time is something she’ll never know, and they don’t have any to spare -- when the sky lights, this will be a memory, a dream; cloud illusions on the open sea. They have to live this until it dies.
She wants to tell them deeper, but she doesn’t think it’s possible; wants to ask them softer, but they’re silk and velvet, shadow -- the prick of a needle against her flesh. She wants to tell them closer, but somehow, their heartbeats are already hers.
She wants to beg, to plead, but the words aren’t hers to know; so she simply reaches for them, presses hard and arcs high and bites her tongue until they taste her blood when she kisses them sloppy, desperate -- sunshine and moonlight and soil and air, all tangled and beautiful, being and becoming and ceasing all at once, lost in the fray.
The one in black comes before her, nuzzles the taut, tense flesh, the stain around her nipple; and she can smell sulfur, aloe as he drags teeth down into the crease of her cleavage, along her sternum, down to her navel, lets his tongue play at her, as the other lays hands upon her, presses fingertips against her muscles and elevates her, brings her somewhere new. She arches back at the shoulders, forward at the hips, aching for the touch as she catches her lip between her teeth -- because silence is better, now; to say anything would be to sully it, to make it unclean.
She realizes, belatedly, that she feels safe with them, feels loved when they slip inside of her, drive her forward toward a ledge she won’t survive and teach her how to weather the fall unscathed, if not unaltered; as they show her the rhythm of the universe in both of them, and give her secrets she’s never meant to know.
The cool of night settles, but she’s never felt warmer, nestled tight between the pair; hands clasped together, around her, and whatever feeling sparks between them lingers, passes through her in the interim, as if she belongs to it, too. She can feel their pulses -- chest at her chest and chest at her back -- light thumping harder than the dark; she reaches, untangles their hands and places her own in the middle. For a moment, she fears the audacity, the motion, but it’s short-lived; she draws the touch of three to the center of the chest against her own, presses her bare body against the sandy hair that sprinkles that skin, and closes her eyes, focused on the beat.
Boundaries blur in that moment, and she’s lost and found and split apart in an instant, every jolt and every pause sending her rushing, reeling.
She doesn’t know who she is anymore, what she wants; except for it never to stop.
When it’s over, though, when it’s done, she thinks she gets it; watching them in the starlight as they sleep -- silent now, so much like her, as she inhales their exhalations, and transcends the point where she’d need to steal a part of them for her own: she is in them, now, and them in her, and some things, she knows, go beyond beginnings and ends.
She thinks, perhaps -- the last thought she’s given -- that she understands, now, what a human life is made for.
She was born to breathe infinity; to know the wonder of forever.
______________________________
They fade in the night, like a dream -- she can’t tell if she moves on, or if they do; it doesn’t matter, though: nothing remains.
Things begin to spiral, once the world stands still, and she loses parts of herself, pieces, bit by bit, until she’s a fraying, falling patchwork of what she was and what she is, the seams stitched loose, unhinged. She strokes the wood of the crib until there are splinters in her palms -- smooth like light, and rough like dark. She doesn’t speak anymore -- not that there’s a use -- because silence, now, is what makes her feel safe.
Day after day, night after night: white pervades, and then black, and somehow, some way, it still means nothing.
Only it used to mean everything; and the nothing, now, cuts deep.