August 15, 2001
wrote this a few days ago. revised today. contains mentions of rape and sex. violently out of character. stupid.
2x1, Angst, NCS
* bianca
Sometimes I think that I know you, Heero Yuy, and then, one day, the hottest day of an indian summer, the wettest day of a tropical storm with winds that can cut down trees and snap power lines, you spring a big, hot desert sandstorm on me.
We have been almost-lovers for nearly a month. Sometimes, usually when I'm brushing my hair in front of the mirror, I see the reflection of you, whispering to yourself, humming nonsensical syllables, transforming them into a private symphony.
Yesterday was Saturday, and I took off your clothes and laid you on the couch. I knelt beside you and ate fresh cherries from your body.
I tasted salt and sweetness, the hardness of the red fruit, and then had to restrain myself from biting into your flesh and feeling _real_ red juice around my teeth and against my gums.
I placed cherries down your middle like gumdrops down a gingerbread man's belly.
You shivered when I wrapped my lips around the one resting at the soft patch of hair between your legs.
This morning, I woke to your fingertips stroking down my spine, stroking the bump of bone just before my entrance. I don't know what I did to give myself away, but you suddenly stopped and rolled away, tugging the sheets up to your bare waist.
You whispered, "Duo..."
"What?" I whispered back.
"When I was eleven, they started locking me in a closet for fun. The closet was always pitch black. It was a game. They did it to see how long they could go before Dr. J noticed."
"Who's they?" I asked, but you had already gotten up. Your bare back, your broad shoulders and slender waist, made me love you even more than before. I thought that you were trying to tempt me. I stood up, shaking the sleep from jellied muscles, and followed you into the shower.
You looked at me with blue eyes that seemed even larger without your hair obscuring the view.
"If I ran away from them," you said, staring at the unexpected pattern of my fingers on your hips, "they raped me before they put me in the closet."
I withdrew my hand, then wished that I hadn't. "I'm sorry," I said. "I would never do that to you."
You didn't say a word, but I fancied that walls were tumbling and ice was melting.
We went for a walk in the park, and there was an ice cream stand with a cloud of children swarming around it. I asked you what kind of flavor you wanted, and you said chocolate. I was pretty sure that you had never had ice cream before. I wondered if you had seen it in movies.
We ate in an unofficial race. I finished first and watched your tongue lick a cavity through the mound of ice cream. I wanted to kiss the stickiness from your mouth.
Later, on the porch of our small summer home, you grabbed my hand, quite suddenly, and pressed it to the skin hiding your beating heart. It was dark all around us, except for the porch light where mosquitoes circled viciously. I didn't know what you wanted me to do, so I hoped it was an invitation and pressed my hips against you.
I needed you so much. I wanted you to feel desire, but even that was an empty promise. I would take you without it, I would take you bald and half-blind, stumbling naked through the woods. I rubbed furiously against your thigh, but it wasn't enough, would never be enough.
I opened your shorts and let them fall to the floorboards. You were wearing white cotton briefs, the kind that takes your slender frame and plays havoc with outward perception. Fingers frantic, I shoved my clothes down and moved between your legs, holding you still in my arms until I came, groaning.
I drew back to examine you, to search for signs of arousal or disgust.
Your face was perfectly blank as you said, "After a while, I liked it when they did it to me."
I tried to hold you in my arms, but you pushed me away, delicately stepping out of your shorts, and went inside. I could smell a hurricane coming. The skies had been pink as the sun set, and according to the fishwives' tale, that spelled rain.
That was today, but when I'm with you, breathing your exhaled breath, constantly thinking of what lies beneath your clothes, the days tend to blur. Tomorrow is Thursday, and I pinned your resistant arms with one hand and tickled you with the other.
You laughed and laughed until you were suddenly crying.
We crumpled into a heap and sobbed until our noses were red and our eyes weren't focusing correctly. Then I tickled you some more, making sure to dig my fingers into your ribs, until we were both exhausted.
I told you that I was in love with you, with your ghosts, your nightmares and sweating spells, the way you brushed your teeth, and especially your eyes, your rare smile and loud tears.
"I'm glad," you said. I wondered if you meant it the way it sounded, if you knew how it sounded at all.
"What about you?" I said.
"I don't think I can," you said. I didn't try to contradict you, because I wasn't sure if you could either. I think that sometimes when things happen, there are pieces carved out of your soul that you can't ever get back.
At least, I thought, at least you didn't try to pretend that you did, or that you could.
At least, I thought, you weren't going to leave. I thought you would let me love you.
Yesterday was March and today is April. I wanted to buy you flowers for Easter, but all the bouquets I saw were for weddings and funerals. There was no in between. It made me wonder if flowers were a stupid gift.
I ended up buying you a spider plant. You hung it inside next to the kitchen window and pursed your lips as you hung it straight, to the nearest centimeter. I knew that you were pleased.
You didn't buy me anything, and you didn't apologize, which made me feel a lot better about buying you a spider plant instead of roses. I thought, This is our way. We came together and kissed under the spider plant, our Christmas come 9 months early.
As we laid in bed that night, you stretched out your hand and touched the cap muscle of my shoulder, kneading it gently under your fingerpads. You didn't seem to want to. It made me feel twisted and achy inside, that such a nice day had come to that end.
I woke the next day to see you straddling me, riding me with such smoothness and fervor that I wondered about your claims to rape. I wondered if you really remembered the ones who did it, could still feel them hurting you, or if violation was a mere fact for you, a memorized thing, like a name. You never discover your name. Someone tells you that you are named Duo, you are Heero. You learn it and you know it, but it never happens to you.
I came and slipped from your body gently. My semen was sticky between your cheeks, sticky like the chocolate ice cream I wanted to kiss from your lips. It seemed like congealed blood from a secret exit wound.
I kissed you fiercely and ate from your mouth. You lapped at my lips like a river to the marginal shores.
"I love you," you said, staring into outerspace. I hated that I doubted you.
I don't touch you for a week. I wonder if it is possible for the days to go backwards, for the entire universe to work in concert, to work for a higher cause, and turn time on its face.
You move out after the seventh day. I let you.
Months pass, and I see you with someone else in a grocery store. He does not care about your feelings, or what happened to you in the past. In that way, he is almost lucky in his brutish disregard. I don't know if you see me, but he does. His eyes are tiny drills down through bone and tissue to my lungs, puncturing them like overinflated balloons.
Maybe I'm wrong about him, or I'm wrong about you, because you show up at my door the next day. I pretend for one moment that you're frightened, and then suddenly you _are_ scared, you are beautifully human. You do not breathe. I do not speak.
"Heero," I say, and I hear you inhale. You are trying to make my voice into oxygen. I wonder how you ever managed to keep the emptiness inside so long.
I take your hand and pull you inside, and we climb the stairs quietly and make love silently. When I come, you slip a finger inside me. I fall asleep buried in your warmth.
I love you too much, and it all overflows and fills the cracks and holes in me, pooling there, manifesting itself as shadow. Some of it you take, and it makes you seem solemn and unsmiling. I know that I will have to fill your empty spaces and patch the carved ends with my own body.
We devour each other with our righteous hunger. I take the plump ends of your fingers and press them hard to my lips, resisting the urge to bite them off. You remain sleeping, dreaming, tossing in the finned waves, lost in the sea, lost to the world.
end.
Bianca
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