#pixistic

time folds onto itself until there are four of them-- the ones who meet in the middle with no qualms whatsoever, reaching for the other mouth first. demeanor so ravenous & desperate because they have yet to learn shame… and the ones who stay at a safe distance, as if the miles have lessened the hunger, as if the ever-ticking clock has put an end to the desperation.

there's silence, like a cover above their heads (a memory: they're fifteen again & telling each other scary stories, a flashlight beneath their chin). there's a moment spreading itself thin to leave space for an apology she won't give-- neither for leaving, or kissing him, or doing the latter despite being responsible of the former.

her mouth still tastes like him, as quick as the kiss lasted before he stepped away, and she finds herself licking her lips for the remnants to blossom on her tongue. she wants to do it again, she wants to bite into the time they wasted & swallow it whole. she wants to eat him up & not have to let go. but the ball is in his court. will he play? will he fold?

his thumb hooks in her jeans' loop. not an answer, not a lack of one. tim tugs her closer. she goes without resistance, a step into his space & another to end plastered against him. until there's no distance between them-- only years, that stretch on for miles. she waits, lets her breathing ricochet against his, her rising chest meeting him every time.

"you can work those on demand, huh." his rental jacket itches, shoulder seams squeaking while he rearranges his hands: left over right, disguise the too-wide space between the sleeve cuff and the knob of his wrist.

it's not a big deal from the back row. the mourners are preoccupied with the whole casket lowering, last goodbye situation. tossing dirt. open weeping. someone might be singing, but his hearing's kind of shit. could just as easily be a bird.

"look, it ain't your close-up." quiet exasperation, like this must be an actress thing. he pretends he's not as equally attention-seeking as he's accusing. the goal really is just to blend in. stay quiet, look sad, catch a word with the widow before the rsvp-only luncheon. most especially, come along so dean doesn't look like a freak that crashes these things on the regular. bat those big bambi eyes, monroe. sad old ladies eat that crap up.

her eyes glide down his athletic figure long before words start to gather on her tongue. she thinks of late night outloud dreaming, their teenage bodies entangled on a blanket thrown over hay. his mouth close to the sensitive skin of her neck, nipping while telling her all about the jersey he'd wear the next year, how he'd force her to proudly display his jacket. she remembers the amusement in his voice; the proof that he knew the idea of being branded his would annoy her, make her squirm, and subsequently make her shut him up with a kiss. they were two cogs in a shitty machine, running on nothing but spite & childlike tenderness that all the booze he inhaled could not quite tame yet.

she supposes he no longer owes his fullback duties for the lean figure, though she can't tell what it is that he does now. years have gone by and they are nothing but strangers, meeting for the first time.

"yeah", she says, her eyes finally climbing back up to his face, though the effort appears herculean. he hasn't changed much, and she assumes the same can be said of her; a little more hardened than they were at eighteen.

it's hard to stare; the sight is too familiar & too strange at the same time, like two pictures attempting to overlay perfectly-- yet failing every time. it makes her want to run. take a step back & forget she ever knocked. however she's done that already, years ago. stole mama's truck & never looked back. there's no point in doing it twice.

the lack of memory is less upsetting than the source of the amnesia. ishtar's debauchery rarely entails large amounts of alcohol: she likes to ruin things with a clear mind. but yesterday… oh yesterday must have been horrid. she can smell it in the room: sex and drinks and something heady-- probably the result of a joint passing between spit-slick lips.

panic grows tenfold when an unfamiliar weight is registered on the hand that clutches the covers. a ring. she can see it as it gleams in the blurry mid-afternoon light. "fuck," comes first, soon followed by another heartful "fucking hell", spitted while she tries to get up and finds that her head is swimming in all directions, while her body has yet to move. deciding that sitting might be the only option, she goes back down, and waits a moment, breathing through her nose.

the silence has spread like vines over the facade of a house; through sheer force of will, and the utter absence of human intervention. they are working on a case, or attempting to: it's his last one, a truth that sits heavy against his bones-- it resembles a weight of sort, but he cannot quantify it, therefore he remains ambigously unsure of it. it could be good, or bad. bittersweet, certainly, but it is as if he is unable to reach for it, and determine the parameters of such feeling.

he cannot even understand it. it is, simply, there. for him to feel weighed down by, and lost in, and uncertain that the decision taken is what he should be doing with his life. the words on the files keep blurring, and every few seconds he looks up to jj's figure, which hasn't moved since he told her he was planning on leaving.

spencer does not know why he blurted it out, like the words hadn't been picked apart and heavily considered long before the conversation became reality. it all came tumbling down, out of his mouth and into the space between them, wrecking whatever peace they had. now jj looks-- he isn't sure, exactly. he doesn't know if he remembers how to read her.

that is, until she speaks . in another life, she says, and he sees it as if it was a realm that could be reached through sheer force of will: like vines, down & down the facade of time. a place where they do not hunt deeply flawed people for all the pain they have wrought. a time where most concerns are to be found in the day to day mundanity of life: a stain on a well-pressed shirt, a skipped meal, an anniversary to plan that you forgot all about. he can see it as clearly as he can see most things he has witnessed: which is to say the desire for it is so strong it mimics his absolute memory.

"that," he starts, eyes on the juncture of her neck with her shoulder, where he imagines a man that could have been him pressing a kiss, in thanks or goodbye or simply for the excuse of lips caressing skin. there are so many things to hunger for, and none that will happen in this life. "that would have been… nice." he isn't sure words ever elude him, but they do now.

at midnight she stands on the front stoop, glowing supernal in the stark halogen of his porchlight. can i borrow your car? hot summer wind blows, a gust gentle enough to stir the hair on the nape of her neck but leave the hem of her dress unruffled. despite the dropping temperature, it's the same one dove put on this afternoon. she's not ready to let go of the day yet.

he's leaned up against the door, forearm braced against the frame. from her perspective he looks load-baring to the structure around him. this house she knows he built. something the matter? no. simple. more importantly, true. i just feel like going for a drive. a jangle of metal. y'want company?

sure, she says, without thinking much about it. already turning. handing the keys back to him as if that's what she came here for to begin with. that'd be nice.

it might've been. she isn't entirely sure. the size of her wants is so great these days, so wide and wild, that it's hard to find her bearings within them since the fences of her old life were pulled up. or no, not quite — now that she's jumped them.

so they drive, dove's gaze occasionally drifting to @pixistic's bare knee and the shin below it, the otherwise inconsequential length of leg that exposes something about him: the bone almost obtrusive through the skin, pushing up through taut ropes of ligament, the arc of his calf hard to the point of knotty. lean, hard-won musculature. the features of an athlete or of a tradesman, of someone whose worked toward something rather than worked at the body itself. she turns her chin away.

[ ... ]

we could swim.

they're sitting thigh to thigh on the bank when it's posed, the ground cool under her bare feet. the conversation is warmer. her eyes are turned out over the lake — or what she presumes to be a lake, even though she read somewhere that most of the bodies of water in texas are man-made reservoirs. in the dark she can't tell the difference. she assumes it's no different by light, or at least she holds fast to what she knows to be true, what she'd learned the hard way over the last decade: a thing reveals more of its truth in the night than during the day.

she thinks about it a moment. the water that looks cooler and purer than the marsh by the house ever did.

dove stands up, reaching under the flare of her sundress to pull down the underwear beneath. panties first, the way she's used to. undressing for a purpose. three drawers of designer hosiery in her bedside drawer and half of the underwear bares stretchmarks on the sidings, creased from where they've been pulled to the knees but never taken off. offering clay access to what he couldn't, wouldn't, wait for. she thinks about that as she moves now — slower, unhurried. his head is at the level of her mid-thigh, almost parallel with the place hem inevitably catches on wrist as her hands slide upward, bunching up to expose what she knows will be a brief flash of a flaring upper hip, the bone rounded like a giant pearl. white silk, prismatic in the moonlight, falls to the ground underneath her. the opalescent innards shucked from an oyster.

she's good at this. it feels good to be.

dove steps out of the panties and then steps further, moving forward toward the water, her arms pulled behind her to undo the zipper there. for a moment, as dove turns her chin downward to meet tim's eyes, she looks like she has her wrists tied.

like the lake, she can see him better in the dark.