Heaven's Ablaze - Chapter 16
Title:: Heaven's Ablaze
Genre:: AU Vam Fanfic
Rating:: R
Summary:: His heaven is ablaze in my eyes
Notes:: This story is based on the album Dark Light. All lyrics are taken from that album, and are copyright of Ville Valo. I do not know or own the characters in this story. The storyline itself is property of me and me alone. This story deals with the themes of religion and a degree of pedophilia. If you have a problem with the themes, dont read it.
Links under cut
Links
Prologue
Chapter 1 - Accident
Chapter 2 - Pot Luck
Chapter 3 - Warmth
Chapter 4 - Joseph on Wheels
Chapter 5 - My First Christmas
Interlude - Bam
Chapter 6 - Beginnings
Chapter 7 - Music
Chapter 8 - Time
Chapter 9 - Unfortunate Meetings of Unfortunate Friends
Interlude - Bam
Chapter 10 - Journies
Chapter 11 - First Crush
Chapter 12 - Contemptible
Interlude - Bam
Chapter 13 - Bath Tubs
Chapter 14 - Labyrinth
Chapter 15 - Pure Mornings
Interlude - Bam
Chapter 16 - Thief
We both lived in two different worlds.
We hide behind the crimson door
There was the one which we woke up to. The one where we had to go to school, I to teach and he to learn, where we had to hide everything we felt and be normal citizens of the United States of America. Where people hated and people bitched. Where people fought and where people killed. A world where you could never escape cruelty, horror, death. A world which threatened and punished and where rewards were rare and few and far between. An ugly world. A harsh world. One which we had to deal with, to get through, before we could disappear, safe and secure into the other world, which we created around our selves.
My apartment became the epicenter of our second world. On rare occasions, we would venture out of the safety of my four walls, but often, we just didn’t feel the need. I brought Bam to my apartment after school rather than dropping him off. He’d do his homework while I marked papers, wrote songs, practiced on the keyboard that his parents had bought me - to my great protestation - for putting up with him all the time. We’d watch TV, we’d talk, we’d play cards, turn on music really loud and dance just for the hell of it. He’d secreted half of their board game collection into my apartment somehow, and he managed to convince me that board games were in fact not the spawn of Satan himself. We watched videos, I taught him how to play guitar, helped him with his drumming, which Jess had started teaching him and gave up on. Sometimes, on Friday nights, we’d get drunk, playing drinking games which got crazier and crazier as the night wore on. Sometimes, Ben or other friends that I’d acquired somehow would come around too. They never questioned why Bam was always at my house. Ben had figured out what was going on in just a few days. I imagine he’d told the people who were coming, just to warn them. I never minded. As long as it didn’t affect Bam, I didn’t care. We would laugh and drink with these people, Bam sitting next to me on the couch, my arm around his shoulder. I was thankful that I could trust my friends never to look twice.
alinve behind the crimson door
Sometimes we would simply lay on my bed, just staring up at the ceiling, hands clasped between us, just being. That was all we needed. It was a safe world. It was a haven. I hated when he had to leave every night, I hated picking him up for school and having to spend the whole day acting like indifferent acquaintances. But I got through those long, long days just thinking about the moment when he’d open up the car door, bounce in, and grab me for a long awaited kiss. The thought of those kisses kept me going.
It scared me. Our relationship scared me. I’d never let myself feel so much for one person since I was his age. And even then, nothing could compare.
I began to finally believe in soul mates. I let him break down my last line of defenses, come charging into my heart. I let him stake his victory banners in, let him set up camp.
True love, some people say, is impossible to find. It doesn’t exist. It is a thing written about in fairy tales and stories of long, long ago, when girls wore long, flowing skirts and had long, billowing hair, and when knights in shining armor could come galloping in on a black stallion, wild as the night, to whisk them off into the quickly setting sun.
Bam was no knight in shining armor. He certainly couldn’t ride a horse if he tried and I was hardly a damsel with flowing skirts and billowing hair. There were no wide open spaces, no burning balls of suns hanging magically over the horizon, scorching everything into black shadows. There were no castles, no evil step-mothers or witches to fight.
But there were brambles around my heart. And a moat and lots of fierce warriors, parading around, each of them the bearer of some memory, some experience, some ghost of the past, which they would invariably hurl at any intruder until the intruder was beat, worn thread bare, exhausted -until they gave up and left me and my formidable fortress of a heart alone.
But Bam? Bam beat the security system. Cut away the brambles, jumped the moat, dodged the memory-tipped spears. I will never understand how. I’ve spent hours, days, months trying to figure out what it was about him that enabled him to get through to me, but he did, and he took up residence in that castle of mine, and I don’t think he’ll ever leave it.
With the warmth of your arms you saved me
Oh, I’m killing loneliness with you,
I’m killing loneliness that turned my heart into a tomb
I knew him like the back of my own hand, and yet he always managed to surprise me. Vivacious and tenacious and so completely unique. It was a dangerous combination.
There were things I should have thought about and didn’t; and there were thoughts I should never have entertained and which I cherished endlessly nonetheless.
Physically, our relationship was that of two fourteen year olds. When we held hands, it sent shivers up both our spines.
When we hugged, I knew we could both stay in that embrace for hours.
When we kissed, it was always timidly. A timid press of the lips, a soft ghost of a touch, the slightest movement of the lips. It was all that was needed. A slightly bolder kiss would be thrown in from time to time, slightly longer, a little bit more passionate.
I didn’t want to press him into anything. I’d done it all and then some. But for me, taking pleasure out of kissing - deriving joy from just a simple press of lips against lips - was like a miracle. I didn’t need anymore. I didn’t want anymore.
Retrospect has given me the ability to realize that there were several warning signs I should have seen, several clear-cut directions I should have followed. But it’s too late now. All I can do is think about them, wish I’d seen them, play them over and over in my head like a video tape on repeat.
The first one was a kiss. Nothing more, nothing less. But it was a kiss that went too far, a kiss that went too deep, a kiss that sealed our fate.
A simple press of the lips - that was no problem. Ghosts of kisses across cheeks and necks? Nothing wrong. Lips to lips, a few lingering seconds of sweet pressure - it was all okay.
But I should have realized. I should have thought. I should have pushed him away. I did push him away. But I should have held my resolve. Should have kept him back. Kept it to those simple sweet pecks.
Killing ourselves a kiss at a time
We were lying on my bed in the early hours of a Saturday morning. Moonlight fell through my window, throwing shadows across the room and a sliver of bright silver across his face.
What we were talking about, I don’t remember. He’d had some of my wine as we ate, but neither of us were drunk at all. Drunk on each other’s company, maybe. But not on alcohol. I didn’t need alcohol anymore. I loved that freedom.
I was drawing absentminded patterns across his back through his t-shirt, listening to him but not taking in what he was saying, just enjoying the lilt of his accent, the tone of his voice, still not completely broken, still so innocent. I was listening to the music of it. The way it jumped around, the way it went from high to low, the way it flowed - the rhythm created by his words, thrown from his pink lips.
“Ville? You okay?” He asked me, frowning, probably after asking me a question that I didn’t hear, too busy drawing on his back, listening to his voice and staring deep into his eyes, too deep to really see anything but the bluest of blue.
“What? Huh? Yeah, sweetheart, sorry. I’m just tired.” It had been a long day. I remember that. A long, tiring day. The struggle to remain indifferent towards him in class wore me out on a good day; having to help mark homework, tests and research papers until all hours of the day and night didn’t help with the stress and I was tired, so very tired of it all.
“You’re working too hard,” he said, smiling at me. He let his fingers entwine themselves with mine. His hand was small compared to mine, but my hands are disproportionately big for my body.
“No, it just comes in waves, I guess. You’re doing more work than me, anyways.” This was true. With his entrance into his last two years of high school, Bam had been drowned in homework. I didn’t like it any more than he did; I hated to see him stressed, wracked with worry, so busy I thought he might actually spontaneously combust. And he didn’t even do all of his work. It blew my mind, what they expected from him, and, having quit high school when I was younger than he was, I was of no use to him.
“It sucks,” he said. I nodded, and kissed his forehead.
He seemed to take that as an incentive to inch his body closer to mine, so that I could wrap my arms around him. I appeased him, glad of his warmth. Hugged him close, held him tight, because he liked it and it made us both feel safe.
“You’re doing well though. You’re getting pretty good grades.”
“Yeah but it’s still a lot of work that I don’t want to have to do.”
“True.” I smiled at him, thinking to myself that he knew nothing of work that he didn’t want to do. Brushing that thought aside and trying to burry it, I kissed his forehead again.
“It almost makes me glad I dropped out of school, watching how much you have to work.”
He didn’t say anything to that. I didn’t blame him. He knew why I put the ‘almost’ in that sentence and I knew that he didn’t want to think about my past. Instead, he put his lips to mine in a timid kiss, which I smiled into and ruffled his hair for.
“Quit it,” he said, glaring at me. He never did like it when I treated him like a kid. I just smiled at him and kissed him gently back.
His lips lingered on mine, and I smiled at this, but pulled back from him. There was a glint in his eye that I didn’t really recognize, something reminiscent of times I was trying desperately to forget.
“What time is it?” It was a mundane question. I wanted to kill that glint. I didn’t trust it. I didn’t know what it was or why it was there.
“Three?” Bam squinted at his watch in the dark, lifting our linked hands to do so. “Three seventeen and 39 seconds.” He laughed and put our hands back down between us.
“Thanks. We should sleep.”
“I’m not tired.” He yawned as soon as he said it. I smirked at him.
“Sure. You’re exhausted. Come on. Clothes off. Under the covers. Bed.” I let go of my grip around him and glared until he obeyed, pulling my own pajamas on and crawling next to him.
“Good night.” I closed my eyes, one arm slung around his waist, and anxiously hoped that he would fall asleep.
“Ville…” Apparently, I was having no such luck. I opened my eyes, pushed a lock of hair out of his face, illuminated by the moon still shining through the window.
“Hush now, sleep,” I said, squeezing his cheek a bit, letting my hand rest on his waist again.
The answer was a quick movement, a rapid pulling motion, which propelled his lips quickly onto mine. I was taken by surprise. Couldn’t do anything. Shocked.
He’d never moved that fast to touch me before. He’d never been that bold before. It had always been timid and shy.
Lift your head and let us taste the horror you adore
When the hard press of his lips against mine separated and his tongue probed, I realized what was happening, pushed back on his chest, pulled my lips away.
“Bam… I … what are you doing?”
He looked flushed in the moonlight, but sheepish, and embarrassed.
“I wanted to kiss you,” he said, biting his lip.
“You’ve kissed me before, Bam.” I spoke quietly, gently, not wanting to scare him. But he’d scared me and I couldn’t figure out why he feel the need to do that.
“But not properly.”
“How can you not kiss someone properly?” I smiled, stroked his cheek.
“I dunno. We’ve never… made out or anything.” He looked so nervous and uncomfortable saying it. Like it was some horrible thing that we’d never gone beyond a kiss. Like something was telling him it was wrong. And yet, I knew that somewhere inside, something else was telling him that it was wrong to want to go farther. He kept looking at me during the somewhat long silence, as if he had been trying to do something for me, as if I’d turned down an offer.
“I know we haven’t.” It wasn’t like I didn’t want to kiss him. Of course I did. It was that I didn’t want him rushing into anything. I didn’t want him doing anything he wasn’t comfortable with. And I didn’t think he was comfortable enough with kissing to move farther.
“Does that not bother you?”
“Why should it bother me?”
“I dunno. Don’t people normally do that?”
“Do what, Bam?”
“Make out. I dunno.”
“I don’t know what people do, sweetheart. Why do you mention that?”
“I thought… I thought maybe you might want to.”
“Why?” I was just trying to understand what made him do it. If he was comfortable, then it was fine by me. But I wanted to be sure. I wanted to know what was going on inside his head, what thought processes were going on. What made him so sure that he wanted this.
“Because… I dunno… you’re … used to these things going… faster. I guess.”
Let me bleed you this song of my heart before,
And lead you along this path in the dark
That hit hard. I sighed and closed my eyes for a bit. Of course. He thought I expected it of him. He thought I wanted it from him. That I needed it. He probably thought that if he didn’t let me kiss him ‘properly’ - as he called it - that I’d ditch him. Of course he did. He knew my story. He knew my history. He knew how I used to make my money, how I scraped a living off of people who enjoyed speedy relations. He obviously knew that I’d done most things possible under the sun when it came to the physical. He had figured it out. And somehow that had lead him to believe that I expected him to do something similar.
It hurt.
“Bam… I don’t expect anything from you. I don’t want anything from you besides what you’re willing and ready to give.”
He still looked confused.
“But… remember… before that thing with Jenn, when you said that sex and stuff was a big part of most relationships?”
I sighed. He shouldn’t have taken that to heart. He really shouldn’t have. He knew better. He knew better than that.
“Have you forgotten everything they taught you in that Church of yours, Bammie? I meant that relationships today had mostly been reduced to sex. But that doesn’t mean it’s right. Don’t they preach at you about that?”
He shrugged. We never talked about Church. It was somewhere that we didn’t go, as a general rule.
“I dunno.”
“Want me to tell you something, Bam?”
“What?”
“I’ve had so much sex that I’m sick of it. I’ve had so many meaningless fucks that they all blend together into one huge big blur of horror, and I wouldn’t care if I never had another fuck again.” I spat it out. His eyes widened in shock. I reached up to stroke his hair to show him I wasn’t angry with him. I wasn’t. I was angry at the world, for making this whole thing a problem.
“Bam look. I love you. That alone is enough to keep me happy for ages. But if you feel comfortable enough to take this to another level, of course I won’t mind. You don’t know the difference in a kiss where there is love and a kiss where there is none. But I don’t expect anything from you. Nothing at all. Okay?”
He nodded, buried his head into my chest. I kissed the top of his head tenderly.
“Sorry.” His apology was muffled by the fabric of my shirt, but I could feel it vibrate through my chest. I smiled and pulled his face up by the chin to look at me.
“Don’t apologize.” I tapped his nose and smiled.
“I love you too.”
That time, when he kissed me, I let him. I let his lips open against mine, let his tongue open them. I let him timidly explore, let him caress and probe. It was the kiss of an amateur; the kiss of an innocent, and it was one of the best kisses of my life. He was scared, so scared; I could feel it. But when I began to kiss back, when I started to move my lips against his and let my tongue caress his, when I let the kiss take over, he relaxed a little. He fell farther into it, let it take hold of him. I remember wondering when I’d ever had a kiss like that, when I’d ever felt so much from a simple kiss. I remember sighing, holding him close, teaching him what to do. I remember wondering if he’d ever kissed Jenn like that. I wanted to know if it was his first. I don’t think it was. I at least have that to hold to. I wasn’t the very beginning. Almost. But not quite.
Deranged, we’re tearing away the petals of desire
His breath fell hot on my neck, and I could tell he liked it. He liked what we were doing, no matter how wrong it was, and hell, I liked it too. Amazing what being in love can do. Amazing how much it can make you feel. It’s not just emotional. It changes physical feelings too. It works wonders and miracles and once you’ve experienced true love, you can’t go back.
When his lips started moving faster, when his tongue started to become probing, when he tried to pull himself closer, I stopped. Pulled back, kissed his forehead, held him to my chest.
“Slow down, Bammie, I’m not going anywhere.”
He nodded, happy, I think, and whispered into my shirt that he loved me.
“I know. Sleep now.”
He fell asleep in my arms; I watched him sleep, watch his rib cage rise and fall gently, knowing that something important and just happened and replaying every movement of his lips in my mind. When I finally did fall asleep, it was to the sound of his breathing, and the beat of his heart. I felt safe, somehow. Had I known the implications of it all, I wouldn’t have slept a wink. Had I stopped to think for just 10 seconds, I would have run far away. But as it was, I was blinded by his blue eyes and deafened by the sound of his breath in my ear, and I slept. I had the best nights sleep I’d had in years.
Genre:: AU Vam Fanfic
Rating:: R
Summary:: His heaven is ablaze in my eyes
Notes:: This story is based on the album Dark Light. All lyrics are taken from that album, and are copyright of Ville Valo. I do not know or own the characters in this story. The storyline itself is property of me and me alone. This story deals with the themes of religion and a degree of pedophilia. If you have a problem with the themes, dont read it.
Links under cut
Links
Prologue
Chapter 1 - Accident
Chapter 2 - Pot Luck
Chapter 3 - Warmth
Chapter 4 - Joseph on Wheels
Chapter 5 - My First Christmas
Interlude - Bam
Chapter 6 - Beginnings
Chapter 7 - Music
Chapter 8 - Time
Chapter 9 - Unfortunate Meetings of Unfortunate Friends
Interlude - Bam
Chapter 10 - Journies
Chapter 11 - First Crush
Chapter 12 - Contemptible
Interlude - Bam
Chapter 13 - Bath Tubs
Chapter 14 - Labyrinth
Chapter 15 - Pure Mornings
Interlude - Bam
Chapter 16 - Thief
We both lived in two different worlds.
We hide behind the crimson door
There was the one which we woke up to. The one where we had to go to school, I to teach and he to learn, where we had to hide everything we felt and be normal citizens of the United States of America. Where people hated and people bitched. Where people fought and where people killed. A world where you could never escape cruelty, horror, death. A world which threatened and punished and where rewards were rare and few and far between. An ugly world. A harsh world. One which we had to deal with, to get through, before we could disappear, safe and secure into the other world, which we created around our selves.
My apartment became the epicenter of our second world. On rare occasions, we would venture out of the safety of my four walls, but often, we just didn’t feel the need. I brought Bam to my apartment after school rather than dropping him off. He’d do his homework while I marked papers, wrote songs, practiced on the keyboard that his parents had bought me - to my great protestation - for putting up with him all the time. We’d watch TV, we’d talk, we’d play cards, turn on music really loud and dance just for the hell of it. He’d secreted half of their board game collection into my apartment somehow, and he managed to convince me that board games were in fact not the spawn of Satan himself. We watched videos, I taught him how to play guitar, helped him with his drumming, which Jess had started teaching him and gave up on. Sometimes, on Friday nights, we’d get drunk, playing drinking games which got crazier and crazier as the night wore on. Sometimes, Ben or other friends that I’d acquired somehow would come around too. They never questioned why Bam was always at my house. Ben had figured out what was going on in just a few days. I imagine he’d told the people who were coming, just to warn them. I never minded. As long as it didn’t affect Bam, I didn’t care. We would laugh and drink with these people, Bam sitting next to me on the couch, my arm around his shoulder. I was thankful that I could trust my friends never to look twice.
alinve behind the crimson door
Sometimes we would simply lay on my bed, just staring up at the ceiling, hands clasped between us, just being. That was all we needed. It was a safe world. It was a haven. I hated when he had to leave every night, I hated picking him up for school and having to spend the whole day acting like indifferent acquaintances. But I got through those long, long days just thinking about the moment when he’d open up the car door, bounce in, and grab me for a long awaited kiss. The thought of those kisses kept me going.
It scared me. Our relationship scared me. I’d never let myself feel so much for one person since I was his age. And even then, nothing could compare.
I began to finally believe in soul mates. I let him break down my last line of defenses, come charging into my heart. I let him stake his victory banners in, let him set up camp.
True love, some people say, is impossible to find. It doesn’t exist. It is a thing written about in fairy tales and stories of long, long ago, when girls wore long, flowing skirts and had long, billowing hair, and when knights in shining armor could come galloping in on a black stallion, wild as the night, to whisk them off into the quickly setting sun.
Bam was no knight in shining armor. He certainly couldn’t ride a horse if he tried and I was hardly a damsel with flowing skirts and billowing hair. There were no wide open spaces, no burning balls of suns hanging magically over the horizon, scorching everything into black shadows. There were no castles, no evil step-mothers or witches to fight.
But there were brambles around my heart. And a moat and lots of fierce warriors, parading around, each of them the bearer of some memory, some experience, some ghost of the past, which they would invariably hurl at any intruder until the intruder was beat, worn thread bare, exhausted -until they gave up and left me and my formidable fortress of a heart alone.
But Bam? Bam beat the security system. Cut away the brambles, jumped the moat, dodged the memory-tipped spears. I will never understand how. I’ve spent hours, days, months trying to figure out what it was about him that enabled him to get through to me, but he did, and he took up residence in that castle of mine, and I don’t think he’ll ever leave it.
With the warmth of your arms you saved me
Oh, I’m killing loneliness with you,
I’m killing loneliness that turned my heart into a tomb
I knew him like the back of my own hand, and yet he always managed to surprise me. Vivacious and tenacious and so completely unique. It was a dangerous combination.
There were things I should have thought about and didn’t; and there were thoughts I should never have entertained and which I cherished endlessly nonetheless.
Physically, our relationship was that of two fourteen year olds. When we held hands, it sent shivers up both our spines.
When we hugged, I knew we could both stay in that embrace for hours.
When we kissed, it was always timidly. A timid press of the lips, a soft ghost of a touch, the slightest movement of the lips. It was all that was needed. A slightly bolder kiss would be thrown in from time to time, slightly longer, a little bit more passionate.
I didn’t want to press him into anything. I’d done it all and then some. But for me, taking pleasure out of kissing - deriving joy from just a simple press of lips against lips - was like a miracle. I didn’t need anymore. I didn’t want anymore.
Retrospect has given me the ability to realize that there were several warning signs I should have seen, several clear-cut directions I should have followed. But it’s too late now. All I can do is think about them, wish I’d seen them, play them over and over in my head like a video tape on repeat.
The first one was a kiss. Nothing more, nothing less. But it was a kiss that went too far, a kiss that went too deep, a kiss that sealed our fate.
A simple press of the lips - that was no problem. Ghosts of kisses across cheeks and necks? Nothing wrong. Lips to lips, a few lingering seconds of sweet pressure - it was all okay.
But I should have realized. I should have thought. I should have pushed him away. I did push him away. But I should have held my resolve. Should have kept him back. Kept it to those simple sweet pecks.
Killing ourselves a kiss at a time
We were lying on my bed in the early hours of a Saturday morning. Moonlight fell through my window, throwing shadows across the room and a sliver of bright silver across his face.
What we were talking about, I don’t remember. He’d had some of my wine as we ate, but neither of us were drunk at all. Drunk on each other’s company, maybe. But not on alcohol. I didn’t need alcohol anymore. I loved that freedom.
I was drawing absentminded patterns across his back through his t-shirt, listening to him but not taking in what he was saying, just enjoying the lilt of his accent, the tone of his voice, still not completely broken, still so innocent. I was listening to the music of it. The way it jumped around, the way it went from high to low, the way it flowed - the rhythm created by his words, thrown from his pink lips.
“Ville? You okay?” He asked me, frowning, probably after asking me a question that I didn’t hear, too busy drawing on his back, listening to his voice and staring deep into his eyes, too deep to really see anything but the bluest of blue.
“What? Huh? Yeah, sweetheart, sorry. I’m just tired.” It had been a long day. I remember that. A long, tiring day. The struggle to remain indifferent towards him in class wore me out on a good day; having to help mark homework, tests and research papers until all hours of the day and night didn’t help with the stress and I was tired, so very tired of it all.
“You’re working too hard,” he said, smiling at me. He let his fingers entwine themselves with mine. His hand was small compared to mine, but my hands are disproportionately big for my body.
“No, it just comes in waves, I guess. You’re doing more work than me, anyways.” This was true. With his entrance into his last two years of high school, Bam had been drowned in homework. I didn’t like it any more than he did; I hated to see him stressed, wracked with worry, so busy I thought he might actually spontaneously combust. And he didn’t even do all of his work. It blew my mind, what they expected from him, and, having quit high school when I was younger than he was, I was of no use to him.
“It sucks,” he said. I nodded, and kissed his forehead.
He seemed to take that as an incentive to inch his body closer to mine, so that I could wrap my arms around him. I appeased him, glad of his warmth. Hugged him close, held him tight, because he liked it and it made us both feel safe.
“You’re doing well though. You’re getting pretty good grades.”
“Yeah but it’s still a lot of work that I don’t want to have to do.”
“True.” I smiled at him, thinking to myself that he knew nothing of work that he didn’t want to do. Brushing that thought aside and trying to burry it, I kissed his forehead again.
“It almost makes me glad I dropped out of school, watching how much you have to work.”
He didn’t say anything to that. I didn’t blame him. He knew why I put the ‘almost’ in that sentence and I knew that he didn’t want to think about my past. Instead, he put his lips to mine in a timid kiss, which I smiled into and ruffled his hair for.
“Quit it,” he said, glaring at me. He never did like it when I treated him like a kid. I just smiled at him and kissed him gently back.
His lips lingered on mine, and I smiled at this, but pulled back from him. There was a glint in his eye that I didn’t really recognize, something reminiscent of times I was trying desperately to forget.
“What time is it?” It was a mundane question. I wanted to kill that glint. I didn’t trust it. I didn’t know what it was or why it was there.
“Three?” Bam squinted at his watch in the dark, lifting our linked hands to do so. “Three seventeen and 39 seconds.” He laughed and put our hands back down between us.
“Thanks. We should sleep.”
“I’m not tired.” He yawned as soon as he said it. I smirked at him.
“Sure. You’re exhausted. Come on. Clothes off. Under the covers. Bed.” I let go of my grip around him and glared until he obeyed, pulling my own pajamas on and crawling next to him.
“Good night.” I closed my eyes, one arm slung around his waist, and anxiously hoped that he would fall asleep.
“Ville…” Apparently, I was having no such luck. I opened my eyes, pushed a lock of hair out of his face, illuminated by the moon still shining through the window.
“Hush now, sleep,” I said, squeezing his cheek a bit, letting my hand rest on his waist again.
The answer was a quick movement, a rapid pulling motion, which propelled his lips quickly onto mine. I was taken by surprise. Couldn’t do anything. Shocked.
He’d never moved that fast to touch me before. He’d never been that bold before. It had always been timid and shy.
Lift your head and let us taste the horror you adore
When the hard press of his lips against mine separated and his tongue probed, I realized what was happening, pushed back on his chest, pulled my lips away.
“Bam… I … what are you doing?”
He looked flushed in the moonlight, but sheepish, and embarrassed.
“I wanted to kiss you,” he said, biting his lip.
“You’ve kissed me before, Bam.” I spoke quietly, gently, not wanting to scare him. But he’d scared me and I couldn’t figure out why he feel the need to do that.
“But not properly.”
“How can you not kiss someone properly?” I smiled, stroked his cheek.
“I dunno. We’ve never… made out or anything.” He looked so nervous and uncomfortable saying it. Like it was some horrible thing that we’d never gone beyond a kiss. Like something was telling him it was wrong. And yet, I knew that somewhere inside, something else was telling him that it was wrong to want to go farther. He kept looking at me during the somewhat long silence, as if he had been trying to do something for me, as if I’d turned down an offer.
“I know we haven’t.” It wasn’t like I didn’t want to kiss him. Of course I did. It was that I didn’t want him rushing into anything. I didn’t want him doing anything he wasn’t comfortable with. And I didn’t think he was comfortable enough with kissing to move farther.
“Does that not bother you?”
“Why should it bother me?”
“I dunno. Don’t people normally do that?”
“Do what, Bam?”
“Make out. I dunno.”
“I don’t know what people do, sweetheart. Why do you mention that?”
“I thought… I thought maybe you might want to.”
“Why?” I was just trying to understand what made him do it. If he was comfortable, then it was fine by me. But I wanted to be sure. I wanted to know what was going on inside his head, what thought processes were going on. What made him so sure that he wanted this.
“Because… I dunno… you’re … used to these things going… faster. I guess.”
Let me bleed you this song of my heart before,
And lead you along this path in the dark
That hit hard. I sighed and closed my eyes for a bit. Of course. He thought I expected it of him. He thought I wanted it from him. That I needed it. He probably thought that if he didn’t let me kiss him ‘properly’ - as he called it - that I’d ditch him. Of course he did. He knew my story. He knew my history. He knew how I used to make my money, how I scraped a living off of people who enjoyed speedy relations. He obviously knew that I’d done most things possible under the sun when it came to the physical. He had figured it out. And somehow that had lead him to believe that I expected him to do something similar.
It hurt.
“Bam… I don’t expect anything from you. I don’t want anything from you besides what you’re willing and ready to give.”
He still looked confused.
“But… remember… before that thing with Jenn, when you said that sex and stuff was a big part of most relationships?”
I sighed. He shouldn’t have taken that to heart. He really shouldn’t have. He knew better. He knew better than that.
“Have you forgotten everything they taught you in that Church of yours, Bammie? I meant that relationships today had mostly been reduced to sex. But that doesn’t mean it’s right. Don’t they preach at you about that?”
He shrugged. We never talked about Church. It was somewhere that we didn’t go, as a general rule.
“I dunno.”
“Want me to tell you something, Bam?”
“What?”
“I’ve had so much sex that I’m sick of it. I’ve had so many meaningless fucks that they all blend together into one huge big blur of horror, and I wouldn’t care if I never had another fuck again.” I spat it out. His eyes widened in shock. I reached up to stroke his hair to show him I wasn’t angry with him. I wasn’t. I was angry at the world, for making this whole thing a problem.
“Bam look. I love you. That alone is enough to keep me happy for ages. But if you feel comfortable enough to take this to another level, of course I won’t mind. You don’t know the difference in a kiss where there is love and a kiss where there is none. But I don’t expect anything from you. Nothing at all. Okay?”
He nodded, buried his head into my chest. I kissed the top of his head tenderly.
“Sorry.” His apology was muffled by the fabric of my shirt, but I could feel it vibrate through my chest. I smiled and pulled his face up by the chin to look at me.
“Don’t apologize.” I tapped his nose and smiled.
“I love you too.”
That time, when he kissed me, I let him. I let his lips open against mine, let his tongue open them. I let him timidly explore, let him caress and probe. It was the kiss of an amateur; the kiss of an innocent, and it was one of the best kisses of my life. He was scared, so scared; I could feel it. But when I began to kiss back, when I started to move my lips against his and let my tongue caress his, when I let the kiss take over, he relaxed a little. He fell farther into it, let it take hold of him. I remember wondering when I’d ever had a kiss like that, when I’d ever felt so much from a simple kiss. I remember sighing, holding him close, teaching him what to do. I remember wondering if he’d ever kissed Jenn like that. I wanted to know if it was his first. I don’t think it was. I at least have that to hold to. I wasn’t the very beginning. Almost. But not quite.
Deranged, we’re tearing away the petals of desire
His breath fell hot on my neck, and I could tell he liked it. He liked what we were doing, no matter how wrong it was, and hell, I liked it too. Amazing what being in love can do. Amazing how much it can make you feel. It’s not just emotional. It changes physical feelings too. It works wonders and miracles and once you’ve experienced true love, you can’t go back.
When his lips started moving faster, when his tongue started to become probing, when he tried to pull himself closer, I stopped. Pulled back, kissed his forehead, held him to my chest.
“Slow down, Bammie, I’m not going anywhere.”
He nodded, happy, I think, and whispered into my shirt that he loved me.
“I know. Sleep now.”
He fell asleep in my arms; I watched him sleep, watch his rib cage rise and fall gently, knowing that something important and just happened and replaying every movement of his lips in my mind. When I finally did fall asleep, it was to the sound of his breathing, and the beat of his heart. I felt safe, somehow. Had I known the implications of it all, I wouldn’t have slept a wink. Had I stopped to think for just 10 seconds, I would have run far away. But as it was, I was blinded by his blue eyes and deafened by the sound of his breath in my ear, and I slept. I had the best nights sleep I’d had in years.