Please crit?
A project with three parts, the first being an objective third person, the second being one of the characters involved and the third being more of an introspection. Warning: Slash
Twilight rain painted the world in jewel tones, turning the sky into a stormy haven of through, the heavy black and gray clouds swinging low over the air, washing it clean. Protected from the furies in the rain, two young men laid side by side, looking down at the sapphire painted blankets. The ruby end of a cigarette was lit and pearl pale skin gleamed in the half light of a dim lamp.
Turned to turquoise their jeans covered them and one of them raised the cigarette hanging limply off of his fingers. The air held heavy over them, as if the rain cloud had broken down on them, holding pain of the past between them. He lifted off of the bed, pacing slowly.
“I can’t stand the rain,” he told the other, cracking the silence, but the heavy air grew heavier still. “It’s always fucking raining when things go wrong. You notice that? When it rains, it means someone’s cryin’. Would it just stop raining!”
Both beautiful, both sharp featured with stubbornness and pain. Not everybody could pull it off that well, not everybody got the chance to earn, fighting and kicking and screaming, the maturity that they tried to hide behind their eyes.
Aurele sighed and fell into a plush chair, the soft almost velveteen fabric brushing his back gently and he sighed. Rain pattered against the window like a steady drum and he snarled, “Would it just fucking stop raining?”
Callisto rose and set his hand against Aurele’s arm, “It’s okay, really.”
“It’s not,” he snarled at him and covered his eyes, “It’s raining and I’m remembering and remembering fuckin’ hurts.” Callisto hugged him and felt the skinny body go limp, tears threatening to leak out.
“I know,” he whispered and hugged him again, “I know.”
Aurele stumbled away, his eyes avoiding Callisto’s, “I’m going out.” He removed the cigarette from soft pink lips and set it on the bed stand. “Don’t wait up for me.”
“Be safe,” Callisto whispered and picked up the cigarette, inhaling the toxins as if they held Heaven inside.
“I always am,” Aurele smiled back at him, morbid and heavy. No sign of weakness or tears on that figure. He managed to hide it under stubborn sensuality and something akin to bravado.
“If that’s what you call it,” Callisto laughed softly and leaned back on the bed. He remembered.
He remembered home, and every one. He remembered leaving and the whispered “Take care of him” that he’d gotten from so many people. Of course he would, if Aurele would let him.
Aurele leaned against the bar, a cigarette lit between his lips. The glow of the wood behind him softened against his pale skin. People watched and wanted, but no one touched. No one who knew better anyways.
Raimie knew better than all of them. He knew Aurele. “Hey,” he murmured and watched the play of light in the pale green eyes.
“Hey,” Aurele turned around and twisted a cigarette between his fingers. The end was unlit and gray, but he looked tempted to change that status. A lighter appeared from one of his many admirers, turning the end red. Aurele caught the wrist with his slim fingers, “May I?”
The man blushed and nodded quickly as he watched the hand guide the lighter up to the cigarette held between the soft lips.
“Thanks,” Aurele dropped his wrist quickly and turned to Raimie. “You workin’ or just having fun?”
“Both,” he laughed softly, the sound bubbling out with the hint of sour irony like rotted milk.
“Celestin know you’re still around?” Aurele had a soda in front of him, his finger dancing across the rim.
“He can’t just get rid of me,” he told him, “No matter how hard he tries.”
Aurele laughed and leaned back, “Brother darling hates to admit that he’s not going to have everything be the perfect, happy little family he wants.”
“Of course not. You were both raised to be whores,” Raimie inhaled the toxic fumes and exhaled with a sigh. “If you two are still talking, tell him to call me.” He wandered off as a tall teenager wandered out into the dance floor. “I have to go now.”
“We’re not,” he told the smoke as it fumed up in wraiths. It curled around the dancers, flavored bitter and freed by the cigarette.
He had an intensity, a reckless grace that rolled like the waves away fro his body. A figure offered him a joint. He dropped it to the floor and extinguished it with the toe of his shoe. Even they, they couldn’t be angry with him. They just laughed and tried to give him a smoke flavored kiss, made awkward with the pot and alcohol they’d imbibed. He wouldn’t have any of it.
He danced in quick, frenetic movements, by himself in heartbreaking loneliness, or with a partner in catlike sensuality.
When the rain stopped, he came home as the slow, abandoned drops plinked against a metal gutter, then down into the secret depths of a city.
He always smelled like smoke and sweat, like music condensed like rainwater, sliding slick against his skin. He never smelled like sex, never had the taste of someone else on his tongue.
He walked through the black and white daguerreotype of city life, colored sepia by yellow street lights and a flash of green from the spoiled lawns, giving mud that gripped at his shoes like children.
He went home, into the warmth and comfort of knowing someone waited for you.
When he managed to make it into the bed, tiredly dropping his shoes against the wooden floor before attempting the trek to bed.
“I wish,” he whispered, drunk and tired and sad, “That every night I came home, I didn’t wish that you were somebody else.”
Callisto grasped him close, his arms tight around Aurele. Sometimes, he didn't even pretend to be asleep.
~ ~
The rain thunders against the windows, echoing over us. His skin glows like a pearl in the twilight deep of color. Our blankets, usually so tatty, so blue, are turned to a radiant sapphire. He lies beside me, his hair still coppery. It’s a bitter color, mature and angry and stubborn.
“I can’t stand the rain,” he tells me and rolls off of the bed. A cigarette flares to life, the ruby end winking at me with false cheer.
Aurele looks at me, “It’s always fucking raining when things go wrong. You notice that? When it rains, it means somebody’s cryin’”
He’s beautiful. He’s like this force of nature, colored in with something akin to human. He’s like fire and storm and something else, all thrown into one. He’s a temper and passion and looking for comfort. He used to find it in… the other. Sometimes, it hurts to remember the other, because every night, when Aurele returns to me, he always wants the other one. The one that isn’t me.
The air holds heavy between us, taut with the words we don’t want to say. Rain patters against the window like a heartbeat, like a drum. It emphasizes our silence. We should try to fill it.
He sits down; his jeans pull low on his pale stomach. The soft plush of the chair swallows him up, the dark color melting into the paleness of his skin.
His face twists up with something akin to anger, “Won’t it just stop raining?”
“It’s okay,” I whisper and rise from my bed. “Really.”
“No it’s not!” he screams at me and rises. His hands shake. “It’s raining and I’m remembering and remembering hurts.”
He falls into my arms, crashing as if his strings had been cut. Crashing like a lifeless puppet.
It rained when Rois died. And it rained when Anna left. It rained when the other… Well, with the other, it usually felt like it was raining.
“I’m going out,” he tells me suddenly, rising from the chair. I can hear him rifling through the closet. It’s all black in there. Not the black of Goths, playing pretend at pain, with their morose music and their fake tears. It’s the black of mourning. It’s the black of being unable to find it in you to wear colors. It’s the black of pain and vanity. It’s black like getting lost. It’s black like broken hearts. It’s all black.
He comes out, looking smooth and seductive. Like sex and sin. His red hair hits the top of the turtle necked collar. The black of the skirt embraces him. It looks good.
I don’t say anything. I just roll over, onto my back and stare at the ceiling. He wants me to say something. He wants me to whisper reassurances. I can’t.
He turns to leave. “Don’t wait up for me.” The words trace across my skin, like the fire of a brand. He knows I will. I always do.
When he’s gone, I know what happens.
He finds a bar, where the smoke lays heavy across the air. Where people dance themselves away, rub the wounds into calluses on their souls. He might dance, later. But first, Raimie always finds him. They’re beautiful, standing next to each other, leaning against the bar, elbows against the soft glowing wood that gives them something like color. They’ll talk about Celestin. They’ll talk about brothers and brotherhood. Something binds them together. Something from their past. Something I know but don’t want to remember.
Then someone will go on the dance floor. Pretty, but not as beautiful as Aurele. But nobody’s as beautiful as Aurele. He used to love me because I was pretty. But that’s not something I want to think about. I grew plain. He grew gorgeous. It’s a reminder of the times we’ve seen, but he hasn’t left yet. Because if you don’t have your memories, what are you?
He’ll find a pretty body that dances well. Maybe not even pretty. Maybe, they can’t dance. But they hurt, and they keep hoping that if you revel in the pain enough, then it’ll stop hurting. That they won’t notice. But it doesn’t stop. They just keep going, keep hurting.
Someone always lights his cigarette, with his face lit up like that, he looks like an angel of vengeance. He looks beautiful. I envy him. He’ll grip their wrist in his hand and give them a look that burns. He’ll make them want him. He’ll make their face flush with blood. Then, he’ll turn. Then, he’ll leave. The smoke will fume like a wraith behind him, slowly rising to the occasion. He’d never admit it, but he likes to know when other people want him. He likes to know that other people are watching him as he walks away, beautiful and untouchable.
In the fog, because the early mornings this time of year, it’s always foggy, he’ll come home. He’ll walk through the black and white daguerreotype of the world, turned sepia by the yellow of the street lights. He’ll look drunk, staggering and jilting. He’ll smell like alcohol, thick and bitter, biting into my nose.
He’ll come home and crawl into my bed. He can never sleep alone.
Then, as he does every night, he’ll lean over and whisper in my ear, “I wish, that every night I came home, I didn’t wish that you were somebody else.” He thinks I’m asleep. He acts like I can’t hear him. But I do. Because he says it every night, when he comes back, smelling like alcohol, looking like Hell. He says that he doesn’t want me any more.
We’re only twenty two, but we’ve spent this much time together. Might as well find the rest of it. Maybe, we’ll find each other again in thirty years, after we’ve cried ourselves to sleep. Maybe.
I cover my face with a pillow and scream until I go hoarse. I scream until I can’t hear myself crying. I just scream.
~ ~
It’s humor flavored with irony. The person who loves me the most is the one person I wish wouldn’t.
Sometimes, I could hate him for it. Almost, because to wish otherwise would be to wish that I was dead and cold, but most of all alone. No thank you, I’ve had quite enough of sleeping alone.
A part of me loves the way he loves me, quiet but dramatic. All honesty, only someone like him could put up with someone like me.
They just don’t make people like him anymore. He’s too sweet, the way movie characters used to be, back before cynicism was the flavor of the day.
He loves those black and white movies, with the damsel in distress and a dashing hero who can save the day with just a glance and a flash of those disgustingly white teeth.
I think it’s because he sees himself in the lovely heroines, sweet and innocent, and ready to fall into the arms of a handsome savior.
I guess that’s about where my appreciation ends, though. I never touch his movies, no matter what I say or do to him, I leave him the black and white altar with the cinematic gods of Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart and Ava Gardner. I never bring my blood and horror movies out unless I’m angry with him. I turn them on to make him cry and shudder with horror.
A part of me, I confess (I’d confess it at the top of my lungs), likes to make him cringe and cry. It’s a part of me not far from the surface. I like knowing that when I leave, he’s at home sulking and screaming.
The rain brings one dialog that always ends up with me leaving. Every time, we say the same damn things and we do the same damn things. Everything would change if I would stay at home when it rains. If I could talk about the memories that are driving me crazy, it would all be better.
When I leave, I’m getting soaked and I love it. The feeling of water runs down my back and traces over my spine.
The smoke follows after me like a ghost clinging to any appearance of life. I can hear him sighing it in, as if the gates of heaven would open just for him through the smoke. He lights another one, when he’s finished with the first one, or just before. It burns out, alone and untouched, in the dirty stone ashtray.
He puts on a movie and the black and white will play over his features, dramatizing the soft face. Not beautiful, but he could have found anybody else.
Sometimes, I wish that I could be the one who saves him, that I could be the one that makes him happy.
Unfortunately, that would involve changing and, well, I’m not so good at that. I still like knowing that what I say hurts him. It means he cares.
Twilight rain painted the world in jewel tones, turning the sky into a stormy haven of through, the heavy black and gray clouds swinging low over the air, washing it clean. Protected from the furies in the rain, two young men laid side by side, looking down at the sapphire painted blankets. The ruby end of a cigarette was lit and pearl pale skin gleamed in the half light of a dim lamp.
Turned to turquoise their jeans covered them and one of them raised the cigarette hanging limply off of his fingers. The air held heavy over them, as if the rain cloud had broken down on them, holding pain of the past between them. He lifted off of the bed, pacing slowly.
“I can’t stand the rain,” he told the other, cracking the silence, but the heavy air grew heavier still. “It’s always fucking raining when things go wrong. You notice that? When it rains, it means someone’s cryin’. Would it just stop raining!”
Both beautiful, both sharp featured with stubbornness and pain. Not everybody could pull it off that well, not everybody got the chance to earn, fighting and kicking and screaming, the maturity that they tried to hide behind their eyes.
Aurele sighed and fell into a plush chair, the soft almost velveteen fabric brushing his back gently and he sighed. Rain pattered against the window like a steady drum and he snarled, “Would it just fucking stop raining?”
Callisto rose and set his hand against Aurele’s arm, “It’s okay, really.”
“It’s not,” he snarled at him and covered his eyes, “It’s raining and I’m remembering and remembering fuckin’ hurts.” Callisto hugged him and felt the skinny body go limp, tears threatening to leak out.
“I know,” he whispered and hugged him again, “I know.”
Aurele stumbled away, his eyes avoiding Callisto’s, “I’m going out.” He removed the cigarette from soft pink lips and set it on the bed stand. “Don’t wait up for me.”
“Be safe,” Callisto whispered and picked up the cigarette, inhaling the toxins as if they held Heaven inside.
“I always am,” Aurele smiled back at him, morbid and heavy. No sign of weakness or tears on that figure. He managed to hide it under stubborn sensuality and something akin to bravado.
“If that’s what you call it,” Callisto laughed softly and leaned back on the bed. He remembered.
He remembered home, and every one. He remembered leaving and the whispered “Take care of him” that he’d gotten from so many people. Of course he would, if Aurele would let him.
Aurele leaned against the bar, a cigarette lit between his lips. The glow of the wood behind him softened against his pale skin. People watched and wanted, but no one touched. No one who knew better anyways.
Raimie knew better than all of them. He knew Aurele. “Hey,” he murmured and watched the play of light in the pale green eyes.
“Hey,” Aurele turned around and twisted a cigarette between his fingers. The end was unlit and gray, but he looked tempted to change that status. A lighter appeared from one of his many admirers, turning the end red. Aurele caught the wrist with his slim fingers, “May I?”
The man blushed and nodded quickly as he watched the hand guide the lighter up to the cigarette held between the soft lips.
“Thanks,” Aurele dropped his wrist quickly and turned to Raimie. “You workin’ or just having fun?”
“Both,” he laughed softly, the sound bubbling out with the hint of sour irony like rotted milk.
“Celestin know you’re still around?” Aurele had a soda in front of him, his finger dancing across the rim.
“He can’t just get rid of me,” he told him, “No matter how hard he tries.”
Aurele laughed and leaned back, “Brother darling hates to admit that he’s not going to have everything be the perfect, happy little family he wants.”
“Of course not. You were both raised to be whores,” Raimie inhaled the toxic fumes and exhaled with a sigh. “If you two are still talking, tell him to call me.” He wandered off as a tall teenager wandered out into the dance floor. “I have to go now.”
“We’re not,” he told the smoke as it fumed up in wraiths. It curled around the dancers, flavored bitter and freed by the cigarette.
He had an intensity, a reckless grace that rolled like the waves away fro his body. A figure offered him a joint. He dropped it to the floor and extinguished it with the toe of his shoe. Even they, they couldn’t be angry with him. They just laughed and tried to give him a smoke flavored kiss, made awkward with the pot and alcohol they’d imbibed. He wouldn’t have any of it.
He danced in quick, frenetic movements, by himself in heartbreaking loneliness, or with a partner in catlike sensuality.
When the rain stopped, he came home as the slow, abandoned drops plinked against a metal gutter, then down into the secret depths of a city.
He always smelled like smoke and sweat, like music condensed like rainwater, sliding slick against his skin. He never smelled like sex, never had the taste of someone else on his tongue.
He walked through the black and white daguerreotype of city life, colored sepia by yellow street lights and a flash of green from the spoiled lawns, giving mud that gripped at his shoes like children.
He went home, into the warmth and comfort of knowing someone waited for you.
When he managed to make it into the bed, tiredly dropping his shoes against the wooden floor before attempting the trek to bed.
“I wish,” he whispered, drunk and tired and sad, “That every night I came home, I didn’t wish that you were somebody else.”
Callisto grasped him close, his arms tight around Aurele. Sometimes, he didn't even pretend to be asleep.
~ ~
The rain thunders against the windows, echoing over us. His skin glows like a pearl in the twilight deep of color. Our blankets, usually so tatty, so blue, are turned to a radiant sapphire. He lies beside me, his hair still coppery. It’s a bitter color, mature and angry and stubborn.
“I can’t stand the rain,” he tells me and rolls off of the bed. A cigarette flares to life, the ruby end winking at me with false cheer.
Aurele looks at me, “It’s always fucking raining when things go wrong. You notice that? When it rains, it means somebody’s cryin’”
He’s beautiful. He’s like this force of nature, colored in with something akin to human. He’s like fire and storm and something else, all thrown into one. He’s a temper and passion and looking for comfort. He used to find it in… the other. Sometimes, it hurts to remember the other, because every night, when Aurele returns to me, he always wants the other one. The one that isn’t me.
The air holds heavy between us, taut with the words we don’t want to say. Rain patters against the window like a heartbeat, like a drum. It emphasizes our silence. We should try to fill it.
He sits down; his jeans pull low on his pale stomach. The soft plush of the chair swallows him up, the dark color melting into the paleness of his skin.
His face twists up with something akin to anger, “Won’t it just stop raining?”
“It’s okay,” I whisper and rise from my bed. “Really.”
“No it’s not!” he screams at me and rises. His hands shake. “It’s raining and I’m remembering and remembering hurts.”
He falls into my arms, crashing as if his strings had been cut. Crashing like a lifeless puppet.
It rained when Rois died. And it rained when Anna left. It rained when the other… Well, with the other, it usually felt like it was raining.
“I’m going out,” he tells me suddenly, rising from the chair. I can hear him rifling through the closet. It’s all black in there. Not the black of Goths, playing pretend at pain, with their morose music and their fake tears. It’s the black of mourning. It’s the black of being unable to find it in you to wear colors. It’s the black of pain and vanity. It’s black like getting lost. It’s black like broken hearts. It’s all black.
He comes out, looking smooth and seductive. Like sex and sin. His red hair hits the top of the turtle necked collar. The black of the skirt embraces him. It looks good.
I don’t say anything. I just roll over, onto my back and stare at the ceiling. He wants me to say something. He wants me to whisper reassurances. I can’t.
He turns to leave. “Don’t wait up for me.” The words trace across my skin, like the fire of a brand. He knows I will. I always do.
When he’s gone, I know what happens.
He finds a bar, where the smoke lays heavy across the air. Where people dance themselves away, rub the wounds into calluses on their souls. He might dance, later. But first, Raimie always finds him. They’re beautiful, standing next to each other, leaning against the bar, elbows against the soft glowing wood that gives them something like color. They’ll talk about Celestin. They’ll talk about brothers and brotherhood. Something binds them together. Something from their past. Something I know but don’t want to remember.
Then someone will go on the dance floor. Pretty, but not as beautiful as Aurele. But nobody’s as beautiful as Aurele. He used to love me because I was pretty. But that’s not something I want to think about. I grew plain. He grew gorgeous. It’s a reminder of the times we’ve seen, but he hasn’t left yet. Because if you don’t have your memories, what are you?
He’ll find a pretty body that dances well. Maybe not even pretty. Maybe, they can’t dance. But they hurt, and they keep hoping that if you revel in the pain enough, then it’ll stop hurting. That they won’t notice. But it doesn’t stop. They just keep going, keep hurting.
Someone always lights his cigarette, with his face lit up like that, he looks like an angel of vengeance. He looks beautiful. I envy him. He’ll grip their wrist in his hand and give them a look that burns. He’ll make them want him. He’ll make their face flush with blood. Then, he’ll turn. Then, he’ll leave. The smoke will fume like a wraith behind him, slowly rising to the occasion. He’d never admit it, but he likes to know when other people want him. He likes to know that other people are watching him as he walks away, beautiful and untouchable.
In the fog, because the early mornings this time of year, it’s always foggy, he’ll come home. He’ll walk through the black and white daguerreotype of the world, turned sepia by the yellow of the street lights. He’ll look drunk, staggering and jilting. He’ll smell like alcohol, thick and bitter, biting into my nose.
He’ll come home and crawl into my bed. He can never sleep alone.
Then, as he does every night, he’ll lean over and whisper in my ear, “I wish, that every night I came home, I didn’t wish that you were somebody else.” He thinks I’m asleep. He acts like I can’t hear him. But I do. Because he says it every night, when he comes back, smelling like alcohol, looking like Hell. He says that he doesn’t want me any more.
We’re only twenty two, but we’ve spent this much time together. Might as well find the rest of it. Maybe, we’ll find each other again in thirty years, after we’ve cried ourselves to sleep. Maybe.
I cover my face with a pillow and scream until I go hoarse. I scream until I can’t hear myself crying. I just scream.
~ ~
It’s humor flavored with irony. The person who loves me the most is the one person I wish wouldn’t.
Sometimes, I could hate him for it. Almost, because to wish otherwise would be to wish that I was dead and cold, but most of all alone. No thank you, I’ve had quite enough of sleeping alone.
A part of me loves the way he loves me, quiet but dramatic. All honesty, only someone like him could put up with someone like me.
They just don’t make people like him anymore. He’s too sweet, the way movie characters used to be, back before cynicism was the flavor of the day.
He loves those black and white movies, with the damsel in distress and a dashing hero who can save the day with just a glance and a flash of those disgustingly white teeth.
I think it’s because he sees himself in the lovely heroines, sweet and innocent, and ready to fall into the arms of a handsome savior.
I guess that’s about where my appreciation ends, though. I never touch his movies, no matter what I say or do to him, I leave him the black and white altar with the cinematic gods of Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart and Ava Gardner. I never bring my blood and horror movies out unless I’m angry with him. I turn them on to make him cry and shudder with horror.
A part of me, I confess (I’d confess it at the top of my lungs), likes to make him cringe and cry. It’s a part of me not far from the surface. I like knowing that when I leave, he’s at home sulking and screaming.
The rain brings one dialog that always ends up with me leaving. Every time, we say the same damn things and we do the same damn things. Everything would change if I would stay at home when it rains. If I could talk about the memories that are driving me crazy, it would all be better.
When I leave, I’m getting soaked and I love it. The feeling of water runs down my back and traces over my spine.
The smoke follows after me like a ghost clinging to any appearance of life. I can hear him sighing it in, as if the gates of heaven would open just for him through the smoke. He lights another one, when he’s finished with the first one, or just before. It burns out, alone and untouched, in the dirty stone ashtray.
He puts on a movie and the black and white will play over his features, dramatizing the soft face. Not beautiful, but he could have found anybody else.
Sometimes, I wish that I could be the one who saves him, that I could be the one that makes him happy.
Unfortunately, that would involve changing and, well, I’m not so good at that. I still like knowing that what I say hurts him. It means he cares.