#3 - I'll Tell You a Story, for fairielore
Title: "I’ll Tell you a Story" or "On Pins"
Recipient: fairielore
Author: twilightthief
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Cobb/Robert
Word count: 2,833
Warnings: Sex, some mild scenes of injury
Author’s notes: This fic also includes a song which I think compliments it very well and served as inspiration. The song is downloadable here. The song is called: "Dance with Night Wind" by Akira Yamoaka from the Silent Hill 3 soundtrack. I thought it would be nice to include the song as well as they go hand in hand. :)
Snow falls slowly, cutting diagonally against the black velvet sky. It falls steadily like to a rhythm of a slow drum. The moon is just visible through snarly, bare branches of trees, crooked and rough, swaying slightly in the breeze. Robert cranes his neck impossibly upward, eyes closed, arms partially outstretched. Snow claims every surface of him, staining his black coat and matching gloves. He opens his mouth, hot breath expelling out and some freezing flakes stick on his tongue dissolving seconds later. They stick to his eyelashes, the white world warbling and dancing in front of him.
His body is strangely not numb. It’s anything but. He feels a pinprick of heat starting in his chest spreading through him and growing bigger like a fire. He hadn’t enjoyed snow since he was very young. He stands on the snowy ridge overlooking the frozen lake-thin, bare and brittle trees the only barrier, standing sentries to the snowy world. The snow winks and glistens under the moonlight.
He chances moving. The snow is soft and moves easily under him. He makes caves and valleys with his foot falls. He feels he’s staining the pure, innocent world around him. It’s quiet and dark and he feels he’s at home. The wind against the snow is like a touch on his heart.
He works down the ridge; the momentum of the decline throws him a bit off balance as his soles slip on the frozen ground underneath the powdery snow. He pushes through the thin line of trees, rough bark catching at his coat. It’s a sight. He breathes and lets that be the only sound in the hushed, dark, frozen wood. The silent vacuum seems to suck it up as he lightly crunches over fresh snow to the frozen lake. The water is dark, fissures and cracks in the razor thin ice encrusting it and snow dusted over the top like a final layer. He stares at the obsidian mirror, testing a foot to the surface of the slippery abyss.
There’s a touch on his shoulder almost as light and airy as the gently falling snow. He follows the slight pressure to the man standing beside him. The other man is craning his head upwards, a faint smile on his snow dusted lips, watching snow fall from an otherworldly place. He meets Robert’s gaze after a moment, his gloved fingers trail upwards slowly to Robert’s neck resting there like they’ve always belonged there. He feels the warm leather massage and new warmth spreads through Robert’s body. Robert takes in the other man’s slightly buried appearance-the snow dusted over his dark peacoat and in his light hair, the moonlight reflected in his big eyes now looking black. Fingers ghost over the sensitive area where neck trails down to meet spine and Robert closes his eyes again feeling like he’s already taken one step into the frozen chasm, iced over and sealed up in time.
* * *
He’s pressed in right next to him, arm around Robert as they watch snow obscure and dissolve everything, black turning into white, caught in an hour glass of snow. Robert shifts against him slightly only to toe the frozen expanse before them.
“You’ll fall,” he warns gently, his voice swallowed up from the quiet and dense things that have blanketed their world.
Robert breaks away looking over his shoulder at the other man with a slow smile.
“So I’ll fall.”
Robert takes one hesitant step over the obscured black lake wondering how deep it goes when the snow is long melted, water running over everything-when the braches in the thin trees are full of vibrant green leaves and when the grass is springy and begging to be touched. He wonders how long something would take to sink. Inching across it is like a secret or a deviance. It’s something that only can be done when the world decides it’s too tired and things need to die. Lakes aren’t meant for this but Robert gets to know how it feels to walk on top of it. He slips and his legs scissor like a toddler. He feels his presence behind him and his solid weight as his arm is around Robert’s back once more. Robert feels righted, his center of gravity found with his arm around him, steadying him. Robert meets his gaze, flakes dissolving on the tip of the other man’s nose, heavy on his long eye lashes.
“We’ll both fall,” he blinks snow out of his eyes, a slight laugh in his voice as he draws Robert closer to him.
They work the dead lake, snow and ice slipping under their feet but they hold on just like winter itself. Heavy streams of hot breath engulf them, the silent wind is in their frozen hair, arms around each other’s backs and they slide.
* * *
He leads Robert, takes his gloved hand in his and they climb. The snow is tapering off, clouds parting; the moon showing itself like it has something to prove. The wood is thick enough to confuse without the help of a guide. Hand in hand they crunch over fallen leaves, snap twigs and hidden fallen branches, shoes buried deep in powdery flakes. They pass over a creek, stepping over it almost silently, kicking up fresh snow. He squeezes Robert’s hand almost like in reassurance and they continue to climb.
Dark turns to light as Robert spies a cottage just up ahead in the horizon, thin smoke curling out of a brick chimney. The earth has leveled out and they walk side by side, hands clasped together as they draw closer to the refuge. The sky and air are clear suddenly. Dom leads them both inside. They slip in.
* * *
He undresses him slowly; his tongue and mouth claiming his icy skin, awakening it with his warmth. Robert’s left shivering, naked and damp, skin impossibly white in his flush callused hands pressed against his damp clothes. “Dom,” he breathes, winding his fingers into his wet hair plastered to his face. He finds Dom’s mouth through his closed eyes and tastes the snow and winter air on his tongue.
Dom’s hands make their way to the sensitive area between his thighs and Robert cracks his eyes open, sees lazily falling flakes through the snow caked window and feels Dom’s stubble on his sensitive throat. He’s forgetting who he is.
“This is ours,” Dom whispers. “It’s just us,” he unbuttons his damp coat, slipping it off his broad shoulders, letting it drop to the floor. He reclaims Robert, pressing him against the wall, his rough thumbs over Robert’s ribcage. Their bodies intertwine-Robert’s porcelain skin and Dom’s dark, damp clothes. Dom explores Robert’s body like it’s an open field and Robert’s eyes are on the window to this world where it’s just them.
This is ours.
Dom lowers him on the small bed pressed against the wall. The quilt is rough and scratchy on Robert’s bare bottom, his skin flushed and sensitive from Dom’s touch but begging for more. Dom hovers him, still fully clothed, eyes warm but greedy. Dom takes him in his mouth, his lips and mouth forming around his already hard erection, molding around him, forming him. Robert thrusts his hips up to meet him, a gentle rhythm started as he fills his fingers with Dom’s light hair. Robert’s eyes turn to the small window, to a snowy woodpile, a gentle breeze shaking the pine trees and Dom is taking him deeper. Robert’s breath is caught in his chest like winter air.
Dom stops, pre come and saliva glistening on his sweet face like snow and he sheds his damp clothes that cling to his muscular frame. Dom lays on top of him, lets him get used to his naked body intertwined with his on the rough spun quilt, legs and arms everywhere, their erections pressed together tightly and Robert can’t breathe so Dom does it for him. He fills his mouth with air and tongue. Robert wraps his ankles around Dom’s back and Dom pushes in impossibly closer, both of them sighing into each other’s mouths, faces flushed. Dom slicks up his fingers from their pre come and enters him, loosens him, stretches him with his fingers, their eyes never breaking. Robert only lives for the fingers that are deep inside, touching muscle and nerves, hitting his prostate. He can only breathe when Dom pushes in further and further.
Slow snow cuts diagonally across the window and Dom removes his fingers and enters him, pushes inside, moving in and out of his heat just as slowly as the snow falling. Both of them move in a slow, steady rhythm, faces close together, mouths catching until they come and then there’s no sound as the wind and snow absorb their voices, their bodies melted together like ice and pushed together as close as they can be and they’re encased just like the frozen lake.
They break apart but only just enough, their noses brushing; fingers skating over miles of exposed, milky white skin under the worn blanket watching snow collect and drift outside the window. Dom’s eye lashes flutter against his cheek and sleep is tugging at Robert too.
It’s just us.
* * *
Sunlight bathes the white expanse lighting it up like millions of diamonds, like a mirror. Robert reaches a gloved hand towards the graying clouds, to the low hung sky. It fractures at his touch-long, spindle like fissures and cracks appearing, stretching and growing. He hears it crackle and imagines he’s opening an abyss just like the dark lake as the cracks become trenches and deep gaps and then its shattering-glass, sky and snow raining down on him, biting at his face.
There are holes and not just in the sky. Fingers graze absence of skin and come back shiny and wet. Blood. Warm hands are on Robert then but they are sliced and ragged too from the raining shards of glass and heaven that fell to earth. Their blood mingles and stains the innocent snow leaving behind a dark trail as they leave behind the cottage, the endless fields of barren white all around. He doesn’t know who’s supporting who as they stumble and slip on ice, their clothes ripped, skin gaped open and the sky is like an exposed back of a mirror after it is broken-a empty void, something that should never be revealed. Shards of sky still cling to it desperately, practically dangling and Robert’s breath is heavy and labored as he struggles to keep blood in.
The icy ground slips and shifts under their boots and huge icicles push up from under the ground like push pins and form mountains, erupting all around them. There are growing mountains on either side of them like they’re blazing a trail in the chasm that’s been created, hidden in shadow and snow. They fall, like gravity decided it wasn’t obeying the rules, a deep hole with dissolving snow swallows them up. The ground is hard and wet and he can’t see anything. His body is millions of pin pricks that swim around and invade him but Dom’s at his side again flicking a lighter to life, illuminating the gloom.
They’re in a frozen cave-all shiny walls and slick ground, water dripping from the ceiling slowly and ice impacted so tight like they’re under the dark lake and Robert thinks it’s fitting. It’s harder to move like the holes in him are steaming open and raw, totally exposed to the frozen air. The air singes his lungs, every fiber bristling at attention but Dom’s arm is around him and they move but it’s slow and stupid like children and he doesn’t know where they’re going. He follows the small spark, the light in the dark until water is underneath their boots making the shivers he didn’t know he had erupt all over him, racking his body.
Stalactites and stalagmites riddle the space and Robert can’t help but think it looks like some strange torture device-so dangerously close and sharp all around just like the pin pricks and holes in his body and like dangling shards of broken sky. They tread water and red swirls all around. Robert feels dizzy as blood slowly moves out him. He feels pressure on his hand and he’s tugged along, water up to his torso but it’s too slow.
Everything becomes smaller and smaller until he’s no longer dragged but crawling. He crawls out the dark pool on his belly as hard ice pierces his soft skin, his organs beneath and he knows they’ll die down here or up above, wherever they are as everything is all mixed up.
A door appears, shooting impossibly upwards from ice and dangling sharp points bathing them in golden light as it pours out from the gap at the bottom of the door. Somehow Robert is leading now and he crawls. His body is useless and frozen and he reaches with an ice encrusted glove to the door knob. It hurts too much, such a mundane gesture but it seems to take every last ounce of his strength. He grapples with it and it swings open slowly. The golden light blinds him and something feels familiar like he’s done this before. He was in a frozen world once opening doors and not liking what was behind them. They fall.
Blood is leaking in his eyes and crusting over but all he can see is Dom lying next to him inches away on frozen ground and it could be the lake or hell itself. Dom’s intense eyes are open, clinging to life and there’s an apology but also warmth and contentment on his broken face.
“I found the door to your heart. It’s just us now,” his breath wheezes out the words like he’s pushing them around things that aren’t working because they aren’t. Blood gurgles and drips out of Dom’s lips. It’s like Robert is watching everything happen in slow motion as Dom’s gloved hand rests on his face after a time, slick with blood.
His form is reflected back in Dom’s eyes-shallow, twisted up, barely holding on and he knows they’re dying. They’ll rest in the frozen world forever with snowflakes staining their eye lids, burying their bodies slowly. He closes his eyes but instead of sleeping he wakes up.
* * *
Harsh white light hits his eyes and everything is too new that his body has a hard time comprehending what he’s seeing. He blinks rapidly, his mind slowly de-thawing as he takes in his body and the room. There’s an IV plunged deep in his already hooked up arm. He’s clothed in a flimsy hospital gown. His body feels small and weak-not taking up enough space on the small bed. He feels bandages wrapped around his body and things burn and ache as he shifts ever so slightly. His left leg is slightly elevated on a pillow encased in a strange metal casing like a cast, circling the lower part of his leg. Metal rods and pins are sticking into his delicate flesh, keeping him together and Robert’s stomach flips. He feels slightly light headed and nauseated seeing the metal intrusions in his skin, something so unnatural. The room is hushed and cold and he breaks out in goose pimples.
His eyes follow the IV to the side of the bed and Dom is sitting in a chair next to him, blinking away sleep. He also has an IV dangling off his vein and he reaches to remove it not aware of Robert’s eyes yet. His eyes meet his after a moment and they stare at each other unblinking. Snow is lazily falling outside the solitary window and there’s a dull ache throughout Robert’s body. A ghost of a smile creeps slowly over Dom’s face as he gently reaches over and removes the IV from Robert’s arm. He bends over, out of sight and fiddles with something but comes back to Robert a moment later. He smiles a little wider, sadness touching his eyes and brushes hair out of Robert’s face. He kisses his forehead-as cold as winter’s breath and takes his hand.
“I found the door to your heart,” Dom’s voice is the only sound in the room besides the soft beep of machinery and Robert’s slow breathing.
Dom’s eyes roam all over Robert’s frail form like he’s still under a frozen lake or trapped in an underground cave of ice and fallen sky.
“You always had it.”
Dom smiles and buries his face in the crook of Robert’s neck, inhaling deeply and still gently squeezing his hand. The room dissolves becoming a blurred vision of white as he feels Dom’s eye lashes fluttering against his skin-the sign of approaching sleep. His own eyelids droop, blink slow and long and there are no sounds.
It’s just us.
Robert rests his head against Dom’s feeling he’s slipping under.
This is ours.
Recipient: fairielore
Author: twilightthief
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Cobb/Robert
Word count: 2,833
Warnings: Sex, some mild scenes of injury
Author’s notes: This fic also includes a song which I think compliments it very well and served as inspiration. The song is downloadable here. The song is called: "Dance with Night Wind" by Akira Yamoaka from the Silent Hill 3 soundtrack. I thought it would be nice to include the song as well as they go hand in hand. :)
Snow falls slowly, cutting diagonally against the black velvet sky. It falls steadily like to a rhythm of a slow drum. The moon is just visible through snarly, bare branches of trees, crooked and rough, swaying slightly in the breeze. Robert cranes his neck impossibly upward, eyes closed, arms partially outstretched. Snow claims every surface of him, staining his black coat and matching gloves. He opens his mouth, hot breath expelling out and some freezing flakes stick on his tongue dissolving seconds later. They stick to his eyelashes, the white world warbling and dancing in front of him.
His body is strangely not numb. It’s anything but. He feels a pinprick of heat starting in his chest spreading through him and growing bigger like a fire. He hadn’t enjoyed snow since he was very young. He stands on the snowy ridge overlooking the frozen lake-thin, bare and brittle trees the only barrier, standing sentries to the snowy world. The snow winks and glistens under the moonlight.
He chances moving. The snow is soft and moves easily under him. He makes caves and valleys with his foot falls. He feels he’s staining the pure, innocent world around him. It’s quiet and dark and he feels he’s at home. The wind against the snow is like a touch on his heart.
He works down the ridge; the momentum of the decline throws him a bit off balance as his soles slip on the frozen ground underneath the powdery snow. He pushes through the thin line of trees, rough bark catching at his coat. It’s a sight. He breathes and lets that be the only sound in the hushed, dark, frozen wood. The silent vacuum seems to suck it up as he lightly crunches over fresh snow to the frozen lake. The water is dark, fissures and cracks in the razor thin ice encrusting it and snow dusted over the top like a final layer. He stares at the obsidian mirror, testing a foot to the surface of the slippery abyss.
There’s a touch on his shoulder almost as light and airy as the gently falling snow. He follows the slight pressure to the man standing beside him. The other man is craning his head upwards, a faint smile on his snow dusted lips, watching snow fall from an otherworldly place. He meets Robert’s gaze after a moment, his gloved fingers trail upwards slowly to Robert’s neck resting there like they’ve always belonged there. He feels the warm leather massage and new warmth spreads through Robert’s body. Robert takes in the other man’s slightly buried appearance-the snow dusted over his dark peacoat and in his light hair, the moonlight reflected in his big eyes now looking black. Fingers ghost over the sensitive area where neck trails down to meet spine and Robert closes his eyes again feeling like he’s already taken one step into the frozen chasm, iced over and sealed up in time.
* * *
He’s pressed in right next to him, arm around Robert as they watch snow obscure and dissolve everything, black turning into white, caught in an hour glass of snow. Robert shifts against him slightly only to toe the frozen expanse before them.
“You’ll fall,” he warns gently, his voice swallowed up from the quiet and dense things that have blanketed their world.
Robert breaks away looking over his shoulder at the other man with a slow smile.
“So I’ll fall.”
Robert takes one hesitant step over the obscured black lake wondering how deep it goes when the snow is long melted, water running over everything-when the braches in the thin trees are full of vibrant green leaves and when the grass is springy and begging to be touched. He wonders how long something would take to sink. Inching across it is like a secret or a deviance. It’s something that only can be done when the world decides it’s too tired and things need to die. Lakes aren’t meant for this but Robert gets to know how it feels to walk on top of it. He slips and his legs scissor like a toddler. He feels his presence behind him and his solid weight as his arm is around Robert’s back once more. Robert feels righted, his center of gravity found with his arm around him, steadying him. Robert meets his gaze, flakes dissolving on the tip of the other man’s nose, heavy on his long eye lashes.
“We’ll both fall,” he blinks snow out of his eyes, a slight laugh in his voice as he draws Robert closer to him.
They work the dead lake, snow and ice slipping under their feet but they hold on just like winter itself. Heavy streams of hot breath engulf them, the silent wind is in their frozen hair, arms around each other’s backs and they slide.
* * *
He leads Robert, takes his gloved hand in his and they climb. The snow is tapering off, clouds parting; the moon showing itself like it has something to prove. The wood is thick enough to confuse without the help of a guide. Hand in hand they crunch over fallen leaves, snap twigs and hidden fallen branches, shoes buried deep in powdery flakes. They pass over a creek, stepping over it almost silently, kicking up fresh snow. He squeezes Robert’s hand almost like in reassurance and they continue to climb.
Dark turns to light as Robert spies a cottage just up ahead in the horizon, thin smoke curling out of a brick chimney. The earth has leveled out and they walk side by side, hands clasped together as they draw closer to the refuge. The sky and air are clear suddenly. Dom leads them both inside. They slip in.
* * *
He undresses him slowly; his tongue and mouth claiming his icy skin, awakening it with his warmth. Robert’s left shivering, naked and damp, skin impossibly white in his flush callused hands pressed against his damp clothes. “Dom,” he breathes, winding his fingers into his wet hair plastered to his face. He finds Dom’s mouth through his closed eyes and tastes the snow and winter air on his tongue.
Dom’s hands make their way to the sensitive area between his thighs and Robert cracks his eyes open, sees lazily falling flakes through the snow caked window and feels Dom’s stubble on his sensitive throat. He’s forgetting who he is.
“This is ours,” Dom whispers. “It’s just us,” he unbuttons his damp coat, slipping it off his broad shoulders, letting it drop to the floor. He reclaims Robert, pressing him against the wall, his rough thumbs over Robert’s ribcage. Their bodies intertwine-Robert’s porcelain skin and Dom’s dark, damp clothes. Dom explores Robert’s body like it’s an open field and Robert’s eyes are on the window to this world where it’s just them.
This is ours.
Dom lowers him on the small bed pressed against the wall. The quilt is rough and scratchy on Robert’s bare bottom, his skin flushed and sensitive from Dom’s touch but begging for more. Dom hovers him, still fully clothed, eyes warm but greedy. Dom takes him in his mouth, his lips and mouth forming around his already hard erection, molding around him, forming him. Robert thrusts his hips up to meet him, a gentle rhythm started as he fills his fingers with Dom’s light hair. Robert’s eyes turn to the small window, to a snowy woodpile, a gentle breeze shaking the pine trees and Dom is taking him deeper. Robert’s breath is caught in his chest like winter air.
Dom stops, pre come and saliva glistening on his sweet face like snow and he sheds his damp clothes that cling to his muscular frame. Dom lays on top of him, lets him get used to his naked body intertwined with his on the rough spun quilt, legs and arms everywhere, their erections pressed together tightly and Robert can’t breathe so Dom does it for him. He fills his mouth with air and tongue. Robert wraps his ankles around Dom’s back and Dom pushes in impossibly closer, both of them sighing into each other’s mouths, faces flushed. Dom slicks up his fingers from their pre come and enters him, loosens him, stretches him with his fingers, their eyes never breaking. Robert only lives for the fingers that are deep inside, touching muscle and nerves, hitting his prostate. He can only breathe when Dom pushes in further and further.
Slow snow cuts diagonally across the window and Dom removes his fingers and enters him, pushes inside, moving in and out of his heat just as slowly as the snow falling. Both of them move in a slow, steady rhythm, faces close together, mouths catching until they come and then there’s no sound as the wind and snow absorb their voices, their bodies melted together like ice and pushed together as close as they can be and they’re encased just like the frozen lake.
They break apart but only just enough, their noses brushing; fingers skating over miles of exposed, milky white skin under the worn blanket watching snow collect and drift outside the window. Dom’s eye lashes flutter against his cheek and sleep is tugging at Robert too.
It’s just us.
* * *
Sunlight bathes the white expanse lighting it up like millions of diamonds, like a mirror. Robert reaches a gloved hand towards the graying clouds, to the low hung sky. It fractures at his touch-long, spindle like fissures and cracks appearing, stretching and growing. He hears it crackle and imagines he’s opening an abyss just like the dark lake as the cracks become trenches and deep gaps and then its shattering-glass, sky and snow raining down on him, biting at his face.
There are holes and not just in the sky. Fingers graze absence of skin and come back shiny and wet. Blood. Warm hands are on Robert then but they are sliced and ragged too from the raining shards of glass and heaven that fell to earth. Their blood mingles and stains the innocent snow leaving behind a dark trail as they leave behind the cottage, the endless fields of barren white all around. He doesn’t know who’s supporting who as they stumble and slip on ice, their clothes ripped, skin gaped open and the sky is like an exposed back of a mirror after it is broken-a empty void, something that should never be revealed. Shards of sky still cling to it desperately, practically dangling and Robert’s breath is heavy and labored as he struggles to keep blood in.
The icy ground slips and shifts under their boots and huge icicles push up from under the ground like push pins and form mountains, erupting all around them. There are growing mountains on either side of them like they’re blazing a trail in the chasm that’s been created, hidden in shadow and snow. They fall, like gravity decided it wasn’t obeying the rules, a deep hole with dissolving snow swallows them up. The ground is hard and wet and he can’t see anything. His body is millions of pin pricks that swim around and invade him but Dom’s at his side again flicking a lighter to life, illuminating the gloom.
They’re in a frozen cave-all shiny walls and slick ground, water dripping from the ceiling slowly and ice impacted so tight like they’re under the dark lake and Robert thinks it’s fitting. It’s harder to move like the holes in him are steaming open and raw, totally exposed to the frozen air. The air singes his lungs, every fiber bristling at attention but Dom’s arm is around him and they move but it’s slow and stupid like children and he doesn’t know where they’re going. He follows the small spark, the light in the dark until water is underneath their boots making the shivers he didn’t know he had erupt all over him, racking his body.
Stalactites and stalagmites riddle the space and Robert can’t help but think it looks like some strange torture device-so dangerously close and sharp all around just like the pin pricks and holes in his body and like dangling shards of broken sky. They tread water and red swirls all around. Robert feels dizzy as blood slowly moves out him. He feels pressure on his hand and he’s tugged along, water up to his torso but it’s too slow.
Everything becomes smaller and smaller until he’s no longer dragged but crawling. He crawls out the dark pool on his belly as hard ice pierces his soft skin, his organs beneath and he knows they’ll die down here or up above, wherever they are as everything is all mixed up.
A door appears, shooting impossibly upwards from ice and dangling sharp points bathing them in golden light as it pours out from the gap at the bottom of the door. Somehow Robert is leading now and he crawls. His body is useless and frozen and he reaches with an ice encrusted glove to the door knob. It hurts too much, such a mundane gesture but it seems to take every last ounce of his strength. He grapples with it and it swings open slowly. The golden light blinds him and something feels familiar like he’s done this before. He was in a frozen world once opening doors and not liking what was behind them. They fall.
Blood is leaking in his eyes and crusting over but all he can see is Dom lying next to him inches away on frozen ground and it could be the lake or hell itself. Dom’s intense eyes are open, clinging to life and there’s an apology but also warmth and contentment on his broken face.
“I found the door to your heart. It’s just us now,” his breath wheezes out the words like he’s pushing them around things that aren’t working because they aren’t. Blood gurgles and drips out of Dom’s lips. It’s like Robert is watching everything happen in slow motion as Dom’s gloved hand rests on his face after a time, slick with blood.
His form is reflected back in Dom’s eyes-shallow, twisted up, barely holding on and he knows they’re dying. They’ll rest in the frozen world forever with snowflakes staining their eye lids, burying their bodies slowly. He closes his eyes but instead of sleeping he wakes up.
* * *
Harsh white light hits his eyes and everything is too new that his body has a hard time comprehending what he’s seeing. He blinks rapidly, his mind slowly de-thawing as he takes in his body and the room. There’s an IV plunged deep in his already hooked up arm. He’s clothed in a flimsy hospital gown. His body feels small and weak-not taking up enough space on the small bed. He feels bandages wrapped around his body and things burn and ache as he shifts ever so slightly. His left leg is slightly elevated on a pillow encased in a strange metal casing like a cast, circling the lower part of his leg. Metal rods and pins are sticking into his delicate flesh, keeping him together and Robert’s stomach flips. He feels slightly light headed and nauseated seeing the metal intrusions in his skin, something so unnatural. The room is hushed and cold and he breaks out in goose pimples.
His eyes follow the IV to the side of the bed and Dom is sitting in a chair next to him, blinking away sleep. He also has an IV dangling off his vein and he reaches to remove it not aware of Robert’s eyes yet. His eyes meet his after a moment and they stare at each other unblinking. Snow is lazily falling outside the solitary window and there’s a dull ache throughout Robert’s body. A ghost of a smile creeps slowly over Dom’s face as he gently reaches over and removes the IV from Robert’s arm. He bends over, out of sight and fiddles with something but comes back to Robert a moment later. He smiles a little wider, sadness touching his eyes and brushes hair out of Robert’s face. He kisses his forehead-as cold as winter’s breath and takes his hand.
“I found the door to your heart,” Dom’s voice is the only sound in the room besides the soft beep of machinery and Robert’s slow breathing.
Dom’s eyes roam all over Robert’s frail form like he’s still under a frozen lake or trapped in an underground cave of ice and fallen sky.
“You always had it.”
Dom smiles and buries his face in the crook of Robert’s neck, inhaling deeply and still gently squeezing his hand. The room dissolves becoming a blurred vision of white as he feels Dom’s eye lashes fluttering against his skin-the sign of approaching sleep. His own eyelids droop, blink slow and long and there are no sounds.
It’s just us.
Robert rests his head against Dom’s feeling he’s slipping under.
This is ours.