November - Z/C, Z/OC (NC-17)
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So here it is. The longest fic I've written during my time on LJ. (12 years this month, if you want to know.) I know 3,500 words may not seem like a lot, but I'm fucking stunned. I kiss my Muse, but I wish he'd let me sleep...
A little warning: you know how my fics go, so don't expect sweetness and light. I mean like, really. And also, there's het leading up to the slash, so keep that in mind. And lastly, to my amazement, this fic reveals a huge amount about the relationship that's been in my C/Z timeline, so keep that in mind as well. It may change the way you see those earlier pieces. This time, it's Zeke who surprised the hell out of me. I had no idea he had all of this in him.
Enjoy...
I'd like to post this at jacked_up, but since that's a slash comm, I'm not sure this falls under their rules. What do you think?
November
By Serai
Zeke’s apartment surprises everyone who walks into it.
He’s not sure how to take that. He’s never cared what anyone thought of him, but it annoys him to think that he doesn’t come off as someone who appreciates art. Is it really so hard to believe he could be into this stuff?
He finishes pouring scotch into a glass, and turns. Leaning one elbow on the bar, he watches the girl - Annie, her name is Annie - as she moves through the room. As always, her eye is drawn first to the photograph above the mantel, a massive black and white print of an image taken in Yosemite from partway up Half Dome that includes the wall of the mountain and a stunning spread of the forests and hills below. She gasps when she sees it, and he smiles and takes a sip of his drink, knowing he's home free. They can never resist the photos.
After gazing at the piece a while, she moves right along the wall, to the collection of images from Central Park. Soft, grey pictures of walkways and trees shrouded in fog, the billowing vapor revealing and concealing unexpected details - the lacework of branches, sharp lines of park benches, here and there a bird or lone human figure silhouetted against the glow of occulted sun or unseen lamps. Then in the corner, the kids. Eight shots of children in a playground, the most eye-catching the one of three laughing tykes tossing a ball in the air while one little boy sits apart, staring sadly at the ground like a lost puppy. That one always gets them. Then on around the room - animals in a zoo interspersed with pictures of lions hunting gazelle on the savannah, a hawk lifting away from the ground with a rabbit in its claws, a dog waiting at a doorway with its head between its paws. A tree trunk amid piles of its own branches. X-ray shots of bones, seashells, a single wilted rose. Three micrographs of snowflakes, along with a shot of a snowfall, the tiny soft spots of white swirling gently above a puff of breath from an unseen face below. The last group is a collection of human figures and faces, brooding, gazing downward or off to the side, a man’s feet pacing over city streets, a woman’s hands working dough, arms lifting in a dance pose, one pair of eyes with lashes decorated in jewel-like tears. All of them in black and white, framed in three-dimensional Lucite box frames and hung so the pictures emerge from or fall back into the wall, seeming alive and in concert with each other. And all of them leading to the one image that matters, the whole point of the room.
Now she stops in front of his bookcase, and the open space in it where the portrait hangs, hidden lighting making it seem to float. “Oh,” she sighs, and he feels the familiar rush. He loves this moment, when something seems to be revealed, when they grasp and hold tight to the carefully crafted illusion. He steps closer, slowly, waiting for it. “It’s beautiful,” she breathes. Oh, yeah.
In truth, the collection isn’t just a trap for attention. He really does like these pictures. They speak to him, each one in its way, but they’re all a kind of camouflage, a means to disguise the importance of just two of the pictures in his place. This is one of them.
“Who took this?” she asks, turning to look up at him. He smiles as he presses close to her, looking down at her open, enchanted face. She has the creamy skin and rosebud mouth he favors, and for a moment he takes it in, the soft lips, the edges of teeth. The kind of mouth that can surprise you. He makes himself look up at the photograph, a moody high-contrast shot of himself as a youth. Against a background of black, his face turns down over one shoulder, his right hand moving to touch his upper arm. He never tires of the picture, of what it says about the person who took it. He turns back to her.
“Someone I knew long ago,” he answers. “You like it?”
She looks at the image again and nods, then back along the trail of pictures. “It’s like the others,” she says thoughtfully. “It’s … sad.”
“Sad?” That surprises him.
“Yeah,” she answers. “They’re all, I don’t know. Melancholy, I guess. There’s sorrow somewhere in each of them.” Her eyes come back to the portrait. “Even this one. But it isn’t in you. It’s in the eyes looking at you.”
Jesus. She got the picture. Of all the girls who’ve looked at it, none have seen the mind behind it. They’ve all praised its composition or its execution, said it was beautiful, or hot, or sexy. But not one has seen the distance between the photographer and the object.
He laughs a little. “Nobody’s ever said that before.” He leans his face over her, looking into her eyes, and touches her cheek. “Perceptive,” he breathes, and presses his lips to hers, pulling her tight up against him, feeling the lithe limbs, her dancer’s body. She opens her mouth to him and sighs, wrapping her arms around his waist, and then moans a little. He sets his glass on the shelf under the portrait, reaches down and lifts her up, and the picture leaves his thoughts, replaced with the willing heat of the body in his arms.
Annie turns out to be a wild little thing. Once in the bedroom, she steps up and matches him in ferocity. Pulling at each other’s clothes, snapping and yanking cloth, elastic, zippers, mouths and tongues tangling, fingers exploring. He laughs when she pulls his jeans down, then the laugh becomes almost a shout as her mouth engulfs his straining dick. He pushes his fingers into her soft brown curls, pressing that mouth farther down as she runs her lips and tongue over him. After a moment, he pulls back. She lifts her face, her big eyes all smoky with wanting to fuck him. Yeah. He takes her by the waist and lifts her up to stand on the bed. Now he’s looking up at her, at her sharp little nose and that soft neck flushed with roses. He lips her breasts, runs his mouth down her waist and pushes his tongue between her legs. She throws her head up and cries out, and that does it. He pushes her hard so she falls back on the bed gasping, and on hands and knees he crawls up her body, running his mouth over her skin to her neck, as his surging breath becomes growls against her flesh. She pulls his head back by his hair and bites his lip, then licks it. And they’re off.
They fuck and fuck, fast and then slow and then fast again, pushing and pulling each other. She rides him hard, and he rides her just as hard, lifting her legs around him to get deeper. The tips of her fingers dig sharp into his hips, making him wince and then laugh. He’ll have bruises there tomorrow, and that’s fine with him. He changes his angle and plows deeper, giving her long strokes that move hard against the spot where she yells, and she comes loud. Then he knows he’s close, and pulls out of her to turn her around. He grabs her arms and moves them so her hands grasp the headboard, and goes back in for the final round.
Now this is his moment. He takes hold of her hip and claps a hand onto her shoulder, steadying her in place as he speeds up. Sweat runs down his face into his eyes, and he shakes his head. Her back is a pale expanse of silvery skin, narrow hips and strong arms flexing as he moves. Her voice gets deeper as his thrusts slam her, and she turns her head over her shoulder at him, eyes closed, mouth open, stretched. She whines and then begs, “Harder.” That’s when he sees it.
Fuck me. He freezes as the realization hits him, shivering with the force of his orgasm suspended, reeling. Shit, shit, shit, oh shit, he thinks incoherently, then his mind slams back into his body, and he thrusts hard and fast, faster, until the lightning strikes and he falls against her, his hands reaching up to cover hers at the edge of the headboard.
The apartment is dark and quiet, Annie long since gone. Later on, Zeke will regret the way they parted. She didn't deserve his coldness or his anger, but the truth is he just couldn't look at her. It was too much, the sudden blinding light turned on his life. As soon as his body had stopped its shuddering, he'd let go of her hands and turned away onto his side, curling his arms around his head to shut out everything. Everything but what he saw at that moment, what it meant. Casey.
She tried to get him to look at her, asking him what was wrong. He could only shut his eyes tight, begging it to stop. That voice. An octave higher, but still so like... Almost... No. A soft hand touched his shoulder, and he turned fast, enraged. "Don't touch me!" he shouted.
She flinched, her eyes widening as she drew her hand back. He could feel his face set in hard lines, his lips skinning back to reveal his teeth, and knew how he looked to her, this young woman who'd done nothing wrong. But he couldn't stop it. Couldn't stop the pain, the humiliation of it, and he took it out on her, because she was the only one he could inflict it on. "Get out!" he roared.
She drew herself up quietly, her eyes brimming with tears she refused to shed. "Whatever I did wrong, I'm sorry," she whispered after a long moment, and turned away to gather her clothes. Dressing quickly, she got up and left the room, her breath trembling. He watched her go, his own breath blowing hard through him, his heart racing painfully. Only when he heard his front door close - quietly, she was too classy to slam it - did he fall back onto the pillows, gasping, his own tremors running through him.
Now he lies in the dark, his mind racing, turning in loops over and over. How long? How long has he been doing this? He thinks back, seeing them in his mind one by one. Carla, who could run like the wind until she inevitably tripped. Sarah, with her smart mouth and gapped teeth. Lily, with the puppy dog brows, nails always in her mouth. Back over the years. Ellen, who was never without a camera. Jackie, short and slender with close-cropped, mousy curls. Miranda, who cackled brightly when she laughed. Pippa, who spit fuck fuck fuck when she came, and sneered at him the first time he'd come on to her. On and on. Linda, enormous blue eyes. Rebecca, shy and flinching if he moved too quickly. And, oh God, he'd even married Amanda, and he almost cringes as he recognizes the moment he fell in love with her. He can see her spread naked between his open thighs, caged in the arm he'd wrapped around her shoulders, her head bent back as his fingers brought her off. He'd kissed her as she came, devouring her voice, and a sense of power and ownership and rightness filled him, and his fucking heart ripped open. He just had to have her. He...oh Jesus.
His hands jam into fists he presses into his forehead, and his voice tears out of him in a harsh, barking sob. "Fuck!" How did he not see it? How has it stayed compartmentalized in his memory - the boy I fucked in high school - with nothing more than fitful flashes of skin and heat, of truly being that predator he imagined himself in his youthful arrogance? In all these years, he’s never really thought about Casey himself, who was both a game and an addiction back then. Only in the abstract, as the author of those beautiful photographs.
But it seems something in him has been thinking of Casey. He recalls the mornings when he wakes up from dreams he can't remember, but that make him feel like he's fucked someone when he knows he hasn't. And the women. Clearly he's been choosing them deliberately, even if he didn't know it. He moves violently across the bed to put his feet on the floor, and rocks, his head in his hands, weeping. He has to admit it: for all the women he's had, for all the sex over the years, he's really only been fucking one person. One bruised, ballsy little loser, with the shining skin and the mouth he couldn't stop wanting. He knew every inch of that body, every note of that voice, and it's all pouring back into him. He's feverish and hard, his hands shaking in the darkness, seeing him again. Casey.
Spread out on Zeke's bed, jerking off on command, his eyes glazed as he watches and is watched. Sucking Zeke's dick, that rosebud mouth stretched and slippery. The sound of his voice when Zeke hits the right spot deep inside him, ragged and tortured as he comes. The taste of his mouth between times, hot and bitter, fucking delicious. The way he pulls Zeke's hair, and how his lips are too ripe not to bite into. His thighs. His ass. The span of his legs. The strength of his arms. The tight, hot confines of his body, holding tight, so tight, until he finally lets go and Zeke can plow into him, holding him down by the wrists so he arches high up, head bent back. God, that neck. The taste of his skin, the taste of every inch of him. Curled round each other, sucking each other, Casey's thighs flexing strong at his shoulders. How it felt to fall on him, drained and panting, feeling him equally exhausted, slippery skin slowly drying. The smell of his skin. His soft kitten hair, his sharp feral teeth. The moments when Zeke felt delighted by him, the moments when he felt frightened. Zeke comes then, his fingers' stroking finally bringing him off, as in his mind Casey surges forward and bites him hard on the lip, spits a harsh fuck you, before kissing him deep and hard. He shivers, drained but still tormented, still shamed. Still angry. As his breath slows, he wipes his eyes. Reaching over to turn on the bedside lamp, he looks up at the photograph.
The pictures here in his bedroom are monochrome as well, erotic abstracts chosen for their heat. But like the others, they're camouflage for the image he's looking at now. It hangs next to a set of shelves so that it's only visible from here, from the head of his bed. He gazes at it fixedly, feeling tears riming his eyes again, and gasps a sob. He stands and walks the three steps over to it, looking closely at the lines and forms as he always has, but now feeling it, feeling the memory of when it was made. Why couldn't he feel it before, when he can't feel anything else now?
"What the fuck are you doing, man?" Zeke turned his head on the pillow, looking back over his shoulder at Casey, who had taken his wrist and was now bending his arm back over his waist to lay his hand gently on his spine. The camera on its tripod was positioned close to the bed, the remote trigger running from it to the mattress by Casey's side. He'd said he had an idea for a photo that he wanted to try, and Zeke had no objection. Casey photographing him fed his swollen ego almost to bursting, and it always ended the way everything ended with them: hot and wet and fucking great. So naturally he said yes.
Casey touched his hand, ran fingertips around and through his palm, stroked his fingers. Then he ran his hand down Zeke's back, over his ass to his thigh. He pushed his knee up a bit. "Here, lift your hip just a little." Zeke complied, and felt Casey's hand slip between his thighs. He took in a hissing breath as Casey’s long fingers cupped his balls, stroking with his palm as his fingertips pressed into the base of Zeke's hardening dick. He moaned a shallow oh shit, his eyes closing. He felt like a goddamned cat purring at his owner's touch, and he laughed, shoving into the warm hand now gripping him. He started flexing his ass, pushing into that hand. "Yes," Casey said. "Just like that." He pulled his hand away and Zeke groaned, pushing again into the mattress. Suddenly he felt the cool snap of a handcuff on his wrist. "Casey, what the fuck?" he asked, startled but not exactly objecting. Despite his nervousness, the cuff definitely turned the heat up.
"Shh," Casey whispered. He kissed the hand held against Zeke's back, ran his tongue from the cuffed wrist up over the palm, to lick and then suck his fingers. Zeke shivered and thrust again, his mouth falling open. Casey lifted his head and moved to kiss his neck, run his tongue to his ear.
"Trust me," he murmured, and pressed the key into Zeke's other hand. Then he laid his wrist to Zeke's in the opposite direction, and locked the other cuff above his own hand. Zeke watched, fascinated, as the cuffed hand began to stroke his arm gently, fingertips moving lightly over his skin. And just then, while Zeke's breath trembled, his eyes half-lidded, Casey picked up the trigger and snapped the picture.
Like the portrait, it's a high contrast shot, deep blacks and glowing shades of white. Only his mouth and jaw are visible above his shoulder, most of the picture taken up with the two hands, Zeke's lying open like a flower, Casey's curled above his arm, fingertips caught in the movement as he stroked Zeke's oversensitive skin, the glitter of steel joining the two. It's beautiful, intense, erotic. Everything they were together is there, but more: it's Casey's vision of what they were. He locked himself to his lover in this photograph so that some part of them would never be apart. It couldn't be any clearer if Casey had scrawled don't leave me on the picture in red ink.
And yet it was Casey who left to go to college. Zeke's hands come to rest on either side of the frame, and he feels again the desperate hunger of the last weekend they spent together, locked away in his house and fucking like mad, trying to cram into those three days all the sex they both knew they would never have again. He couldn't let go of Casey, who couldn't let go of him, and they only slept when they passed out from exhaustion, twined around each other, their skin sticky from exertion. They fucked in the shower, washing each other clean so they could go back to bed and fuck some more, breaking for food only when they had to, then fucking on the kitchen table. It was overpowering, never-ending, until it ended, until it had to end. Dressed again and clean from their last, long slow shower, Zeke opened the front door and Casey stepped out. He took one look back, and that was Zeke's last memory of him - the sadness in his eyes. He turned away, and Zeke shut the door then, resting his forehead against the cool wood. Goodbye.
His breath comes in ragged hitches now. Tears blur the image of that hand, the only thing he has left of his lover, his willing toy and strange, fierce enigma. He starts to growl, then roar, slamming his hands on the wall on either side of the picture, over and over. Finally, when his palms are bruised and his throat is raw, he stops and shivers, sobbing quietly. He can't look at the photo anymore, so he turns to slide down the wall under the frame, his back against the cool surface, until he's lying on his side, curled around his pain and regret. He wraps his arms around himself, eyes staring into the lost and distant past, and faces the darkness alone.
Casey's portrait of Zeke
Chapter 6 of High Contrast
Chapter 7
So here it is. The longest fic I've written during my time on LJ. (12 years this month, if you want to know.) I know 3,500 words may not seem like a lot, but I'm fucking stunned. I kiss my Muse, but I wish he'd let me sleep...
A little warning: you know how my fics go, so don't expect sweetness and light. I mean like, really. And also, there's het leading up to the slash, so keep that in mind. And lastly, to my amazement, this fic reveals a huge amount about the relationship that's been in my C/Z timeline, so keep that in mind as well. It may change the way you see those earlier pieces. This time, it's Zeke who surprised the hell out of me. I had no idea he had all of this in him.
Enjoy...
I'd like to post this at jacked_up, but since that's a slash comm, I'm not sure this falls under their rules. What do you think?
November
By Serai
Zeke’s apartment surprises everyone who walks into it.
He’s not sure how to take that. He’s never cared what anyone thought of him, but it annoys him to think that he doesn’t come off as someone who appreciates art. Is it really so hard to believe he could be into this stuff?
He finishes pouring scotch into a glass, and turns. Leaning one elbow on the bar, he watches the girl - Annie, her name is Annie - as she moves through the room. As always, her eye is drawn first to the photograph above the mantel, a massive black and white print of an image taken in Yosemite from partway up Half Dome that includes the wall of the mountain and a stunning spread of the forests and hills below. She gasps when she sees it, and he smiles and takes a sip of his drink, knowing he's home free. They can never resist the photos.
After gazing at the piece a while, she moves right along the wall, to the collection of images from Central Park. Soft, grey pictures of walkways and trees shrouded in fog, the billowing vapor revealing and concealing unexpected details - the lacework of branches, sharp lines of park benches, here and there a bird or lone human figure silhouetted against the glow of occulted sun or unseen lamps. Then in the corner, the kids. Eight shots of children in a playground, the most eye-catching the one of three laughing tykes tossing a ball in the air while one little boy sits apart, staring sadly at the ground like a lost puppy. That one always gets them. Then on around the room - animals in a zoo interspersed with pictures of lions hunting gazelle on the savannah, a hawk lifting away from the ground with a rabbit in its claws, a dog waiting at a doorway with its head between its paws. A tree trunk amid piles of its own branches. X-ray shots of bones, seashells, a single wilted rose. Three micrographs of snowflakes, along with a shot of a snowfall, the tiny soft spots of white swirling gently above a puff of breath from an unseen face below. The last group is a collection of human figures and faces, brooding, gazing downward or off to the side, a man’s feet pacing over city streets, a woman’s hands working dough, arms lifting in a dance pose, one pair of eyes with lashes decorated in jewel-like tears. All of them in black and white, framed in three-dimensional Lucite box frames and hung so the pictures emerge from or fall back into the wall, seeming alive and in concert with each other. And all of them leading to the one image that matters, the whole point of the room.
Now she stops in front of his bookcase, and the open space in it where the portrait hangs, hidden lighting making it seem to float. “Oh,” she sighs, and he feels the familiar rush. He loves this moment, when something seems to be revealed, when they grasp and hold tight to the carefully crafted illusion. He steps closer, slowly, waiting for it. “It’s beautiful,” she breathes. Oh, yeah.
In truth, the collection isn’t just a trap for attention. He really does like these pictures. They speak to him, each one in its way, but they’re all a kind of camouflage, a means to disguise the importance of just two of the pictures in his place. This is one of them.
“Who took this?” she asks, turning to look up at him. He smiles as he presses close to her, looking down at her open, enchanted face. She has the creamy skin and rosebud mouth he favors, and for a moment he takes it in, the soft lips, the edges of teeth. The kind of mouth that can surprise you. He makes himself look up at the photograph, a moody high-contrast shot of himself as a youth. Against a background of black, his face turns down over one shoulder, his right hand moving to touch his upper arm. He never tires of the picture, of what it says about the person who took it. He turns back to her.
“Someone I knew long ago,” he answers. “You like it?”
She looks at the image again and nods, then back along the trail of pictures. “It’s like the others,” she says thoughtfully. “It’s … sad.”
“Sad?” That surprises him.
“Yeah,” she answers. “They’re all, I don’t know. Melancholy, I guess. There’s sorrow somewhere in each of them.” Her eyes come back to the portrait. “Even this one. But it isn’t in you. It’s in the eyes looking at you.”
Jesus. She got the picture. Of all the girls who’ve looked at it, none have seen the mind behind it. They’ve all praised its composition or its execution, said it was beautiful, or hot, or sexy. But not one has seen the distance between the photographer and the object.
He laughs a little. “Nobody’s ever said that before.” He leans his face over her, looking into her eyes, and touches her cheek. “Perceptive,” he breathes, and presses his lips to hers, pulling her tight up against him, feeling the lithe limbs, her dancer’s body. She opens her mouth to him and sighs, wrapping her arms around his waist, and then moans a little. He sets his glass on the shelf under the portrait, reaches down and lifts her up, and the picture leaves his thoughts, replaced with the willing heat of the body in his arms.
Annie turns out to be a wild little thing. Once in the bedroom, she steps up and matches him in ferocity. Pulling at each other’s clothes, snapping and yanking cloth, elastic, zippers, mouths and tongues tangling, fingers exploring. He laughs when she pulls his jeans down, then the laugh becomes almost a shout as her mouth engulfs his straining dick. He pushes his fingers into her soft brown curls, pressing that mouth farther down as she runs her lips and tongue over him. After a moment, he pulls back. She lifts her face, her big eyes all smoky with wanting to fuck him. Yeah. He takes her by the waist and lifts her up to stand on the bed. Now he’s looking up at her, at her sharp little nose and that soft neck flushed with roses. He lips her breasts, runs his mouth down her waist and pushes his tongue between her legs. She throws her head up and cries out, and that does it. He pushes her hard so she falls back on the bed gasping, and on hands and knees he crawls up her body, running his mouth over her skin to her neck, as his surging breath becomes growls against her flesh. She pulls his head back by his hair and bites his lip, then licks it. And they’re off.
They fuck and fuck, fast and then slow and then fast again, pushing and pulling each other. She rides him hard, and he rides her just as hard, lifting her legs around him to get deeper. The tips of her fingers dig sharp into his hips, making him wince and then laugh. He’ll have bruises there tomorrow, and that’s fine with him. He changes his angle and plows deeper, giving her long strokes that move hard against the spot where she yells, and she comes loud. Then he knows he’s close, and pulls out of her to turn her around. He grabs her arms and moves them so her hands grasp the headboard, and goes back in for the final round.
Now this is his moment. He takes hold of her hip and claps a hand onto her shoulder, steadying her in place as he speeds up. Sweat runs down his face into his eyes, and he shakes his head. Her back is a pale expanse of silvery skin, narrow hips and strong arms flexing as he moves. Her voice gets deeper as his thrusts slam her, and she turns her head over her shoulder at him, eyes closed, mouth open, stretched. She whines and then begs, “Harder.” That’s when he sees it.
Fuck me. He freezes as the realization hits him, shivering with the force of his orgasm suspended, reeling. Shit, shit, shit, oh shit, he thinks incoherently, then his mind slams back into his body, and he thrusts hard and fast, faster, until the lightning strikes and he falls against her, his hands reaching up to cover hers at the edge of the headboard.
The apartment is dark and quiet, Annie long since gone. Later on, Zeke will regret the way they parted. She didn't deserve his coldness or his anger, but the truth is he just couldn't look at her. It was too much, the sudden blinding light turned on his life. As soon as his body had stopped its shuddering, he'd let go of her hands and turned away onto his side, curling his arms around his head to shut out everything. Everything but what he saw at that moment, what it meant. Casey.
She tried to get him to look at her, asking him what was wrong. He could only shut his eyes tight, begging it to stop. That voice. An octave higher, but still so like... Almost... No. A soft hand touched his shoulder, and he turned fast, enraged. "Don't touch me!" he shouted.
She flinched, her eyes widening as she drew her hand back. He could feel his face set in hard lines, his lips skinning back to reveal his teeth, and knew how he looked to her, this young woman who'd done nothing wrong. But he couldn't stop it. Couldn't stop the pain, the humiliation of it, and he took it out on her, because she was the only one he could inflict it on. "Get out!" he roared.
She drew herself up quietly, her eyes brimming with tears she refused to shed. "Whatever I did wrong, I'm sorry," she whispered after a long moment, and turned away to gather her clothes. Dressing quickly, she got up and left the room, her breath trembling. He watched her go, his own breath blowing hard through him, his heart racing painfully. Only when he heard his front door close - quietly, she was too classy to slam it - did he fall back onto the pillows, gasping, his own tremors running through him.
Now he lies in the dark, his mind racing, turning in loops over and over. How long? How long has he been doing this? He thinks back, seeing them in his mind one by one. Carla, who could run like the wind until she inevitably tripped. Sarah, with her smart mouth and gapped teeth. Lily, with the puppy dog brows, nails always in her mouth. Back over the years. Ellen, who was never without a camera. Jackie, short and slender with close-cropped, mousy curls. Miranda, who cackled brightly when she laughed. Pippa, who spit fuck fuck fuck when she came, and sneered at him the first time he'd come on to her. On and on. Linda, enormous blue eyes. Rebecca, shy and flinching if he moved too quickly. And, oh God, he'd even married Amanda, and he almost cringes as he recognizes the moment he fell in love with her. He can see her spread naked between his open thighs, caged in the arm he'd wrapped around her shoulders, her head bent back as his fingers brought her off. He'd kissed her as she came, devouring her voice, and a sense of power and ownership and rightness filled him, and his fucking heart ripped open. He just had to have her. He...oh Jesus.
His hands jam into fists he presses into his forehead, and his voice tears out of him in a harsh, barking sob. "Fuck!" How did he not see it? How has it stayed compartmentalized in his memory - the boy I fucked in high school - with nothing more than fitful flashes of skin and heat, of truly being that predator he imagined himself in his youthful arrogance? In all these years, he’s never really thought about Casey himself, who was both a game and an addiction back then. Only in the abstract, as the author of those beautiful photographs.
But it seems something in him has been thinking of Casey. He recalls the mornings when he wakes up from dreams he can't remember, but that make him feel like he's fucked someone when he knows he hasn't. And the women. Clearly he's been choosing them deliberately, even if he didn't know it. He moves violently across the bed to put his feet on the floor, and rocks, his head in his hands, weeping. He has to admit it: for all the women he's had, for all the sex over the years, he's really only been fucking one person. One bruised, ballsy little loser, with the shining skin and the mouth he couldn't stop wanting. He knew every inch of that body, every note of that voice, and it's all pouring back into him. He's feverish and hard, his hands shaking in the darkness, seeing him again. Casey.
Spread out on Zeke's bed, jerking off on command, his eyes glazed as he watches and is watched. Sucking Zeke's dick, that rosebud mouth stretched and slippery. The sound of his voice when Zeke hits the right spot deep inside him, ragged and tortured as he comes. The taste of his mouth between times, hot and bitter, fucking delicious. The way he pulls Zeke's hair, and how his lips are too ripe not to bite into. His thighs. His ass. The span of his legs. The strength of his arms. The tight, hot confines of his body, holding tight, so tight, until he finally lets go and Zeke can plow into him, holding him down by the wrists so he arches high up, head bent back. God, that neck. The taste of his skin, the taste of every inch of him. Curled round each other, sucking each other, Casey's thighs flexing strong at his shoulders. How it felt to fall on him, drained and panting, feeling him equally exhausted, slippery skin slowly drying. The smell of his skin. His soft kitten hair, his sharp feral teeth. The moments when Zeke felt delighted by him, the moments when he felt frightened. Zeke comes then, his fingers' stroking finally bringing him off, as in his mind Casey surges forward and bites him hard on the lip, spits a harsh fuck you, before kissing him deep and hard. He shivers, drained but still tormented, still shamed. Still angry. As his breath slows, he wipes his eyes. Reaching over to turn on the bedside lamp, he looks up at the photograph.
The pictures here in his bedroom are monochrome as well, erotic abstracts chosen for their heat. But like the others, they're camouflage for the image he's looking at now. It hangs next to a set of shelves so that it's only visible from here, from the head of his bed. He gazes at it fixedly, feeling tears riming his eyes again, and gasps a sob. He stands and walks the three steps over to it, looking closely at the lines and forms as he always has, but now feeling it, feeling the memory of when it was made. Why couldn't he feel it before, when he can't feel anything else now?
"What the fuck are you doing, man?" Zeke turned his head on the pillow, looking back over his shoulder at Casey, who had taken his wrist and was now bending his arm back over his waist to lay his hand gently on his spine. The camera on its tripod was positioned close to the bed, the remote trigger running from it to the mattress by Casey's side. He'd said he had an idea for a photo that he wanted to try, and Zeke had no objection. Casey photographing him fed his swollen ego almost to bursting, and it always ended the way everything ended with them: hot and wet and fucking great. So naturally he said yes.
Casey touched his hand, ran fingertips around and through his palm, stroked his fingers. Then he ran his hand down Zeke's back, over his ass to his thigh. He pushed his knee up a bit. "Here, lift your hip just a little." Zeke complied, and felt Casey's hand slip between his thighs. He took in a hissing breath as Casey’s long fingers cupped his balls, stroking with his palm as his fingertips pressed into the base of Zeke's hardening dick. He moaned a shallow oh shit, his eyes closing. He felt like a goddamned cat purring at his owner's touch, and he laughed, shoving into the warm hand now gripping him. He started flexing his ass, pushing into that hand. "Yes," Casey said. "Just like that." He pulled his hand away and Zeke groaned, pushing again into the mattress. Suddenly he felt the cool snap of a handcuff on his wrist. "Casey, what the fuck?" he asked, startled but not exactly objecting. Despite his nervousness, the cuff definitely turned the heat up.
"Shh," Casey whispered. He kissed the hand held against Zeke's back, ran his tongue from the cuffed wrist up over the palm, to lick and then suck his fingers. Zeke shivered and thrust again, his mouth falling open. Casey lifted his head and moved to kiss his neck, run his tongue to his ear.
"Trust me," he murmured, and pressed the key into Zeke's other hand. Then he laid his wrist to Zeke's in the opposite direction, and locked the other cuff above his own hand. Zeke watched, fascinated, as the cuffed hand began to stroke his arm gently, fingertips moving lightly over his skin. And just then, while Zeke's breath trembled, his eyes half-lidded, Casey picked up the trigger and snapped the picture.
Like the portrait, it's a high contrast shot, deep blacks and glowing shades of white. Only his mouth and jaw are visible above his shoulder, most of the picture taken up with the two hands, Zeke's lying open like a flower, Casey's curled above his arm, fingertips caught in the movement as he stroked Zeke's oversensitive skin, the glitter of steel joining the two. It's beautiful, intense, erotic. Everything they were together is there, but more: it's Casey's vision of what they were. He locked himself to his lover in this photograph so that some part of them would never be apart. It couldn't be any clearer if Casey had scrawled don't leave me on the picture in red ink.
And yet it was Casey who left to go to college. Zeke's hands come to rest on either side of the frame, and he feels again the desperate hunger of the last weekend they spent together, locked away in his house and fucking like mad, trying to cram into those three days all the sex they both knew they would never have again. He couldn't let go of Casey, who couldn't let go of him, and they only slept when they passed out from exhaustion, twined around each other, their skin sticky from exertion. They fucked in the shower, washing each other clean so they could go back to bed and fuck some more, breaking for food only when they had to, then fucking on the kitchen table. It was overpowering, never-ending, until it ended, until it had to end. Dressed again and clean from their last, long slow shower, Zeke opened the front door and Casey stepped out. He took one look back, and that was Zeke's last memory of him - the sadness in his eyes. He turned away, and Zeke shut the door then, resting his forehead against the cool wood. Goodbye.
His breath comes in ragged hitches now. Tears blur the image of that hand, the only thing he has left of his lover, his willing toy and strange, fierce enigma. He starts to growl, then roar, slamming his hands on the wall on either side of the picture, over and over. Finally, when his palms are bruised and his throat is raw, he stops and shivers, sobbing quietly. He can't look at the photo anymore, so he turns to slide down the wall under the frame, his back against the cool surface, until he's lying on his side, curled around his pain and regret. He wraps his arms around himself, eyes staring into the lost and distant past, and faces the darkness alone.
Casey's portrait of Zeke
Chapter 6 of High Contrast
Chapter 7