THE PLACE OF FEAR

Days pass like feathers on the wind, there and gone in a fleeting weight that leaves the remnant of touch on your cheekbones-- but no evidence it was ever there.  He blinks and the months melt into one another.  There is blood on his hands some days, and on others he can even wash it off.  You live with your trauma, rusted pins in a broken spine that can’t be repaired beyond spit and tape and sheer determination.  Some days it’s easier, it’s FORCED.  Gritted teeth against the world while living, functioning, carrying grief and pretending it isn’t tied around your legs.  

But then there are reminders.  And Christmas, it’s cliche, it’s painful, and it’s hard.  The force of concrete on already brittle bones.

( Reminders of family, of love, of happiness burned into every song every moment and every passing voice. )  Isaac tastes Nicole on the back of his tongue.  Feels memories of living friends and lovers who mourn a fake grave for him itching in the back of his mind.  Quicksand, chains.  No, more like hooks dragging down and buried in flesh with growing strength each time he struggles.  That doesn’t stop him -- makes it more painful, knowing that someone is waiting.  Some things are easier shaken off than others, just as the snow he stomps from his boots before stepping inside.

     “Chris?”

A lock in place.  ( No chance of interruptions tonight, the apartment building nearly empty or full of self absorbed families. )  Isaac tosses his jacket to the side as he moves from hallway to living room with cool breath turning to steam against hot air.  Pausing under the pressure of a blow to the gut when he smells alcohol.

Not surprising.  

Perhaps not even touched to throat and stomach yet.  Chris seems to be staring at it like an unwanted temptation.  

He crosses the room in silence, and settles onto the couch besides him.  Hot to cool, utterly silent.  Every attempted word rises and falls dead upon his tongue.  A living battlefield of well meaning promises and icy reminders that can never make it past the gritted gate of his teeth.  They would be like needles.  Sound like a bitter sort of hate that Isaac can’t stomach on this night, of all nights.

With a soft sound, he raises his hand.  Presses his palm over the top of Chris’s glass, and ignores the twinge of a torn muscle with each twitching motion.  No pressure to lower it, but resistance against attempts to raise it.  

only one body would dare touch him in such a way – capture and pin him until his heart is a thundering mess in his chest.  ( anyone else would be gutted, would be torn, a mess for the crew to clean up while his neck gained another scar )  hot instinct burns a trail through his spine, twists his neck bare for every touch as a sound that edges on a fragmented mewl bursts from the curl of his tongue.  SHAMELESS only here, curved against every edge of an all too familiar body as that too rare heat blossoms in his belly.  

brethren sinner

he remains a carefully constructed seriousness for a moment, perhaps two.  allows himself to smile as he runs his fingers down the delicate back of her neck.  

     “where do you want me to start?  i could grip your hips and pin you – or you could twist my wrists behind my back and make me beg before you even touched me.  those teeth of yours are sharp… they could leave beautiful marks if they pressed just right.  marks are love notes written in skin.  and technology has offered something UNIQUE– i’ve never been against toys of any kind.  they can offer what sometimes we can’t.”

a pause, a press of lips to her jaw, a distant heat in his cheeks like a flickering flame in an dying lighter.

     “but you know some.  how i like when your hands are around my throat.  or the restraints, the fabric over my eyes.”  ( a game of control, of the difference between someone made for leading and someone bruised and beaten into it who treasures moments when choices are taken from his hands. )  “or denial, or pain well watched.”

brethren sinner

brethren sinner

his smile is all TEETH.

brethren sinner

      “oh?”

his smile is a HONEYTRAP, on the edge of far too raw  when he rotates his spine.  curves himself forward until each long, delicate finger is tracing at the very breathless edges of cayde’s legs.  seal them, hold him in with hands, arms, his very body.  until he knows the cool of his breath must be brushing on the arch of cayde’s neck.

brethren sinner

brethren sinner

    “Hey.”