Particles of Light, Chapter 19: I'm Only Here For This Moment
Title: Chatper 19 - I'm Only Here For This Moment
Rating: M
Disclaimer: I own nothing, I mean no harm, I'm not making any money from this
Spoilers: As always, potential light spoilers from Season One
A/N: I've included a link to the first chapter, if it's been a while since you read it, you might want to revisit it. Not a requirement, but might be fun. Also, just to make it totally clear, this chapter starts in the same scene as Chapter 18, only in Charlie's perspective this time. Originally, I had intended to post these two chapters a day apart which would have made this persepective switch a bit more intuitive. Thanks for reading. Comment like crazy, please.
Read chapter one here: http://15lbpurebunny.livejournal.com/914.html#cutid1
Chapter 19
I’m Only Here For This Moment
The secret intent of this great Earth is known when it forces lovers together, that inside their boundless emotion and physical sensation, when they join all things shudder in joy around them. And, when they are joined, they also are known to each other completely.
-Buddhist Prophecy
His heart is what he feels, first. Racing, beating, moving like a heavy metronome, faster and faster as she walks towards him. She’s going to kiss him. And, he knows it. He just can’t believe it. Is that you?
Her hands are everywhere at once. His brain isn’t accepting she’s really there until it’s too late and when his land and her sea finally meet, her mouth envelopes his, drawing him in, pulling and sucking and pinching. By then it seems too late as he mumbles and struggles, his face being pulled into hers in some kind of odd, ruthless vortex she’s set up for him. He’s giving himself over to whatever it is that is happening between them, moving forward, cutting through doubt, but he’s not letting her get away with using him for something, that’s for certain. He moves into her space, pushing himself against her, letting her know just how much he suspects, just how onto her he is, even if he does want this more than life itself at the moment.
He hasn’t closed his eyes, hasn’t surrendered to her lips, her body. And, when she opens her eyes, looks at him finally, he sees her. Instead of fire and anger and resolve and - well, Reese - she’s fragile, weak and messy. Red, raw seams, up close for the first time. Control coming through the threads like so much errant stuffing.
He sees every tenuous stitch. And, god, if that doesn’t feel like home...
I love you.
His lips whisper it into her mouth and he feels her whole body shudder against him, while she pretends to have not heard.
You heard me. It could mean a thousand things. And, it does.
He moves them into the kitchen for a while, using the granite island to prop her up on when her legs seem to give way a bit. The dark cold stone stands in for a bed while he takes off her shirt, drinking in the caramel hollows and swells. She smells like clementines and twilight and her skin…her skin. He can’t get enough of it, on his fingers, in his palms, his mouth. It’s like a ghost, her skin, her roughest spots like his most tender.
He’s conscious of his shirt and doesn’t let her remove it as she claws at it with short neat nails. He doesn’t want her to see the letters, the knife scars. Not yet. The idea of her seeing his marked body brings a slicing dread, even as he’s swelling against his trousers, her hands on his waist, his ass, drawing him towards her.
He carries her upstairs, undressing her sleepwalking body while he stands behind her, guarding his secrets until the last possible moment. He undresses himself, too, pulling her naked body onto his lap as he sits on the bed, a hand twisting briefly in her hair, pulling her dozy head back towards his mouth where he can nuzzle her jawline, an ear, a cheekbone.
She makes a startled jump in his lap, as if she’s just realized he’s there with her, wriggling against his fingers between her legs, leaning back softly as he grinds himself slowly against her body. She’s soft and warm and weightless in his lap.
I love you.
The words are trapped somewhere between their two bodies, rocking back and forth together, swaying and bending. And, she’s not seen him, yet.
When she turns suddenly with the intention of putting him insider her, locking her legs around his waist, taking what she wants at long last, her own movement breaks a spell. She shifts quickly and he can’t move or hide. She’s on her knees, hands resting on her knees, drifting on the huge island of white sheeted bed, just a few seconds before her licorice eyes adjust in the dark. But, he sees the exact moment her glazed over eyes shift between looking and seeing. Sitting back on her haunches, she stares, mouth opening and closing a bit like a landed fish.
Charlie moves off the bed in one motion, standing in front of her at full height, arms moved slightly away from his body. He wordlessly turns to show her the reverse side. His Life and his Death, and all the scars and lines, some like tanned leather, others angry and red like surfaced blood. He’d forgotten most of them months ago, but as he turns, he feels each one like they just happened. When he turns around to face her, eyes which were dark and angry are silvery and wet and he has only to wait a few seconds to know if she’s going to accept this broken frame. She reaches out, tiny hands tracing the letters, the very beginnings of tears in her eyes that he can see she’s desperate to hold back, some of the Reese having crept back into the room, suddenly.
Apart from the steady rise and fall of their own breath, all they can hear is the shivery sound of forced air heating rattling into existence down the hall. There’s suddenly a vast, interstellar space between their two warm bodies as moments pass quietly.
Small arms pull him back onto the bed, pushing his back up the headboard. She hasn’t taken her eyes off his chest.
A moment later, she’s in his lap again, only this time she faces him, sees him. Her mouth replaces her gaze, gentle lips tracing each letter on his chest, trying to remake each blue green inch into new skin, hoping to erase whatever he doesn’t want to be there. She pulls away to read his yes, to see how this is helping or hurting. Their eyes lock, like sapphires and chocolate.
“It didn’t hurt. Much. It didn’t hurt that much. It hurt a lot. Actually, worst pain ever….”
Her voice is small, fragile but oddly composed, only wavering a slight bit. He’s terrified of what she’s going to say.
“Did someone…..did you choose that? Or did someone….”
Charlie’s smile is pure relief and warmth and love. “No, no.” His hands cup her small head, fingers sunken into thick tresses. “This? This, I did to myself.”
“Good.” It’s just a whisper.
Her face is serious, hard, but he tilts it up towards his own, drawing her towards him, kissing her this time instead of the other way around, tongue and lips tasting every inch of her mouth. He thinks they must both be in some sort of dream because he notices she’s still not squirming or slapping or kicking, or any of the other things he half expects her to do.
She pulls her mouth away to go back to the scars, the ink, like soft kissing and lapping might just erase it all. Making her way back up his chest to his neck, tracing vein and muscle up to his jawline, up to warm temples and soft closed eyelid and smooth forehead, her small hands start to urgently push flatly at his hips.
If he’s been nervous or unsure, his erection hasn’t noticed. His eyes open to see her looking at him intently. He’s so hard that when he picks her up and sets her down higher on his lap, he slips inside her so easily it doesn’t even feel real at first. He doesn’t want to move, it’s so perfect just being inside her. And, the look in her eyes is part lust, part surprise, like she’s just discovered some huge conspiracy she never even thought of. When he finally starts to move, his hands cradling the curve of her hips, he can feel her pulse all around his cock. He’s alive. And, free. Free to be inside this woman. To love this woman.
You heard me.
So afraid to hear him, all her concentration is in movement, making her muscles clench and bearing down on him while she leans forward a bit to watch as pale eyelids close, glistening pearly lilac in the moonlight.
She knows what this is doing to him, her body wrapped tightly around his. She knows this feeling well, has grown to be able to gage a man’s progress by his breathing, the shuddering of his stomach muscles or the clench of a jaw. She keeps her eyes open; there’s a lot to see. She can see he’s been trying to keep his eyes open, to match her gaze and to pry into her cloudy head, but it’s a struggle for him. She thinks he seems like he’s floating on some limitless, bottomless ocean with every stroke, but he’s restless and agitated, which is not familiar. Hands are in her hair, gripping her face on each side as he pushes her off him, onto her back on the soft sheets.
He has to be deeper, and he pushes himself as far as he can possibly go, holding himself there while he searches her eyes for whatever haunted mysteries she harbors. All he gets from her eyes is a dare.
When he starts moving, it’s fast and hard which she has been waiting for. This, she knows. This, she can lose herself in. Hips against hers, his mouth fused to one breast, large hand palming the other.
Not losing pace or rhythm, he straightens up and eases back a bit, almost sitting on his heels. Reaching down between their bodies, bracing his fingers on the inside of her thigh, he begins softly rubbing her with his thumb. But, what’s supposed to be leveling - what’s meant to be equaling - is distracting to her in its softness. He feels her wedge a small hand under his and take over.
They don’t understand how much we can take. If they only knew how much we can take, things would be so different.
When she looks up at his face, he’s looking down at where their bodies are joined. If there’s a sea in his eyes, the opaque darkness of a stormy tide is on the surface. And, depth beyond comprehension inside.
Focused intent grows in his movement, and even in the darkened hollow of the large room, she can see his chest and neck have reddened and he’s begun to sweat.
A shadow across his face, his eyes looking straight into hers, fixed under slightly pleading lids.
No voice, he’s making hardly any noise at all, save for panting and an occasional low growl of pleasure escaping parted lips.
This, this is that moment. The one she wants to live in forever. Where body and mind are about to be imploded away, where that thing, that soul, breaks away like burnished bits of featherweight gold leaf. In this moment, everything she has and everything she is gets broken down, given up and fades away into ether. And, the freedom of that moment is unimaginable outside of it. She’s giving it all to him, all her power, all her control, every lost, mourned and bitter moment. Looking into his eyes, she feels it all leave her and float up, up through the ceiling to the stars, to the moon.
And, she can tell by his eyes that he sees it, too. He sees her. He finally sees her. Knows her. If she tries to get away now, to ask him to stop moving inside her, to stop looking at her, she knows he won’t. She’s trapped. Between life and death, between night and day, right and wrong, between herself and someone else, what is and what might be. And, when that huge wave of pleasure crashes down on her, washing away traces of thought, burden and identity, she’s remade. She’s new. She’s GOOD.
When she’s aware of her body again, she can see he’s right behind her, just a few more strokes and he’s following her. She’s trying to make a conscious effort not to look at his face. Not because she’s not transfixed by him. Not because of the half closed lids, the parted lips pulled back over teeth slightly like a cross between intense, furious pleasure and unbearable torture. Not because she can see a distant echo of memory and pain sharpen over his brow bone.
Not because of the tears that are dripping off his chin onto her throat as he comes inside her, desperate to give her everything. To give and give and give as he realizes he’s free, he’s alive, and he loves. Just how much he loves again. For the very first time.
But, because she hears her own voice, soft and weak and warm, floating like wayward stars over the bed.
I love you, Charlie. I love you.
*************************************************************************************
Later, as she felt the fragmented parts of those indefinable things start folding back onto themselves to form something solid again, she reached over to Charlie and grabbed his hand in the dark blue room. It felt warm, huge, and open to her touch. Her fingers circled around his long thumb, holding on like she was waiting to be led somewhere.
Still slightly breathless, he sensed she was about to say something and propped himself up on one shoulder to face her in the darkness.
Her quiet, steady voice filled the room.
“So……you’re a REAL redhead, huh?”