flesh is the first literature

Hand on your head. She touches your hair, your cheek, your jaw where your teeth still ache. She touches your hair, restless, ceaseless, hand to your lips wet and smearing.

You bite. Never learned not to. Never could tell the hand that feeds from the hand that hurts, never could make yourself care about the difference when even the feed tastes of ozone and metal (and salt and skin), but first press of your teeth earns a gasp and first taste of your tongue flexes her hand, a new shape in the dark corners of your mouth.

Clever trick, little wolf. What others do you know?

This: you dip your head (saliva smears your cheek, cooling-cold on your scars) and lick, and her thigh trembles lightning-hot static-sharp against your cheek and her moan hits your ears staccato like a sob.

You know your tricks well. Soon enough, your skin is fire, walls and bedsheets and soft bare skin washed foxglove, and there are chasms of ice down your arms, your lips, the frozen ridge of your spine. She touches your neck and says your name, and obedience wraps its jaws around your throat and grips you tight.

“Fenris—”

“Jasper.”

More a growl than a word. Rasping against the soft dark inside of your throat, the last warm place in your body.

“Here—” she’s breathless, wordless, pulls you up and wraps her arms around the searing cage of your ribs, presses herself to your mouth, length of her body eclipsing yours as the pain washes through you. In the dark corners of her world, her bedroom, her mouth, it takes on a shape like ecstasy. “Are you okay?”

Fingers against the crack in the world that should be your spine. You didn’t howl for him, but you could for her. Could for her, if only you could.

“I have to go.”

“Fenris—” frowning, now, fingernails against your ribs as she pushes on her elbows, tries to smile. To meet your eyes. “Was it that bad?”

“It was fine.” You don’t let her. Pull back, cast about for your clothes, so hastily discarded. Metal glistening firelight-umber on her rich warm carpet. It weighs on your shoulders like shame, like anger, knits your body tight in on itself with every buckle. “It– that– no.”

How do you tell her you’re hurting me? What do you have, little wolf, but tooth and jaw and the will to use them? You pull your vambrace too tight, feel the tips of your fingers start to numb. Jasper sits up, head to one side, bleach-bone hair pooling at her collarbone. No shame, nothing to be shy about, she watches you with the same gentle worry she watches all of you, her pack of misfits. The bruise on her ribs is lurid purple, and, ungenerous and possessive, you wonder if she’ll have her mage wipe it from her skin.

So there it is: like a stray snapping over scraps, your teeth ache at the thought. Fiddling with a buckle, you look into the fire.

“Did I hurt you?”

Her voice is soft, pre-laden with guilt. Your Jasper (your Jasper, already, since the day you met–), always taking on others’ burdens. In the face of her offering, brittle bones and brittle smiles, what can you do but lie?

“No. It– it was better than I could have dreamed.” A sideways look; she blinks, eyes firebright. A soft landing for your words. “I started to– remember. Flashes.” Dressed, now, metal and sharp edges against her bared skin. “My life before. I– I can’t do this.”