Celestial Fire-A Caskett One-Shot Set August 2013
Title: Celestial Fire
WC: ~4000
Rating: M
Summary: "There's no goal but out and away. The miles disappear beneath them and the world grows darker and darker. That's the point. It's the whole point and the only one. The only one since he knocked and she answered like it wasn't the most unlikely thing in the world."
A/N: In the northern hemisphere, at least, the Perseid meteor shower reaches its peak over the next few days. In New York, as her in Chicago, it's hard to see much of anything because of the light pollution.
So . . . Brain decided that Caskett would drive into the dark to watch the sky burn. I guess this is the angsty, miserable yang to the yin of "This Tornado Loves You"?
It's like being in a mirror. Everything reversed. Everything.
It's unsettling.
It's exciting.
She's burning with it. Her tongue runs on and on until she's sure she sounds nervous.
She's not.
There's a rightness to this she never expected. Not in the first place. Not with how things have always been between them.
Not after all this time. All these days and weeks and months. Not quite the whole summer of nothing between them. Impossible nothing.
But there's a rightness to this.
To one of his hands on the gearshift and the other at the top of the wheel. To him, quiet in profile. To the radio low on a single station. Static and music and static again.
Neither one of them reaches for it.
It's not an agreement. None of this is, exactly.
It's not a detente or a compromise.
It's a journey, but they're not going anywhere.
There's no end point. There's no goal but out and away.
The miles disappear beneath them and the world grows darker and darker.
That's the point. It's the whole point and the only one. The only one since he knocked and she answered like it wasn't the most unlikely thing in the world.
Him asking something so simple.
Her answering.
Yes.
Closing the door with nothing but her keys in her hand and not another word between them.
Him leading, her following.
A mirror and a kind of rightness to it.
He answers when she asks. Whatever she asks. Straightforward. No hesitation, but no elaboration, either.
He gives her names and reasons. Prom dates and favorite things. Desires and sorrows that time has yet to dull. Regrets and secrets and things he's proud of, but would never say.
He answers everything she can think to ask, and there are rules neither of them knows. Neither of them has the faintest idea, but they play by them anyway.
It's dark now. True dark and utterly unfamiliar to them both, children of the city that they are.
Her tongue slows. Harder questions now, but they come just a few words at a time. Simple phrases and things that seem impossible to answer, but he tries. He owns the silence in between and he tries.
He busies his tongue in response, uncompromising and honest, even as the work of the journey grows harder. As the road signs grow smaller and farther between and it's like the world around them has heard of people, but never seen one for itself. Like humanity is a rumor.
He eases them to the right. The steady tick of the turn signal measures out the silence as they leave the highway for good. It counts out the delay between call and response.
He turns sharply on to something that hardly seems like a road at all.
Still she asks, and still he answers. Curt and just as truthful. More now, maybe. As if concentration hones his words to a razor's edge as they bump along.
The silence is hers again.
They turn once more. She doesn't see anywhere to go, but his hands are sure on the wheel and his eyes are sharp on the road ahead, picking out things that don't exist for her until they're on top of them.
The way is smoother here. Tamped down wheel tracks she can see through the windshield, just a little bit at a time in the headlights. The future in three-second increments and beyond that, nothing at all.
Maybe that's how it is. Maybe that's how it's been all along.
What comes next is darker still. Darker than she thinks she ever imagined. Her eyes close and her tongue stills. She travels back in time. Lets the terror of childhood invade. It slips through her, cell to cell to cell, and she knows the world has never been as dark as this.
The radio fuzzes out again. It plucks her nerves this time. She jerks forward. She reaches out and clicks it off.
She looks up at him. Over her shoulder and defensive. She feels like she's lost somehow. A technicality. A rule broken at last and that hardly seems fair when there's nothing. When this feels like the chaos before time and she wonders if things like day and night exist any more.
She's suddenly ready to fight, but his expression is mild. Not kind. They're far from that, but there's something of himself here. The man she knows in the real world. The man she knew. That world is gone. It seems to be gone.
"Not long now," he says. His hand leaves the gearshift.
It strays to her side of the darkness for the first time in all these hours. In all these days and weeks and months. Since the earth listed toward the sun and tilted away again, taking daylight with it.
His hand strays to her side of the darkness and his fingers are like strangers. Explorers striking up and out and over the unknown terrain of her knee.
Her tongue stills. A traitor when she needs it most. When she needs it, alive and sharp and working on this side of the mirror. Practical questions gather and her tongue is still. Questions like where and how did this happen and why now crowd into her mind. When they beat against her skull and her stubborn tongue does nothing more than repeat a silent No.
She lays her fingers over his and he startles.
"Kate." It's nothing more than her name, but it's a rebuke.
He retreats. Fingers, wrist, elbow, shoulder and all. All of him retreats. Both hands on the wheel now. Well inside the boundary. Far enough to his side of the darkness that she wonders if she imagined it.
She's angry. It's the easiest thing to be. The least complicated. It's her knee, after all, and she'd like the fault to be his. All this time, she's wanted nothing more than to blame him.
She's regretful after that. Not quite as easy but the next thing to it. She'd settle for it if he'd blame her. She'd open her arms to the fault if that could bring it into being. Right there and wrong here. She'd drink that down.
Days and weeks and months and now she'd play the guilty party if only it meant there weren't this impossible nothing between them.
He stops the car.
It feels sudden.
They're nowhere. It's not a metaphor.
It's open space. It's the only reason she can see for stopping now.
It's unexpected, to be sure. After miles of branches reaching for the windows. Thick sleeves of green ending in skeletal fingers. Erratic percussion all along something not quite a road.
It's unexpected open space, dark when he turns the key and the headlights cut out. Dark and violently loud.
"Where are we?"
She asks against her will. She closes her eyes and balls her fists in frustration. She feels like she's lost again and she'd scream if her tongue would let her.
She feels like she's lost, but it hardly matters.
He doesn't hear. He's out of the car by the time the words leave her. By the time the traitors march down her tongue, his seatbelt has long since zipped back home. His door has opened and closed and she hears the trunk release.
She leans her head on the dashboard. She tells herself she needs a minute, but what's a minute here and now?
She's waiting for something she knows won't come. Courage or answers of her own. She'd settle, even, for more questions. But nothing comes. Nothing will come. She's empty.
She clicks the latch on her own seatbelt. She throws open the door and falls back against it.
He's busy and efficient at the front of the car now. She wonders how he does it when her eyes won't work yet. When they're still missing the thin wash of the headlights.
She hears him moving. The sound of air catching fabric. Something snapping taut like sheets on a line in bright sun. It's out of place. Entirely out of place in the darkness and she's almost afraid.
"There," he says.
It's satisfied. It has the air of finality and she has no idea what he means. She has no information at all. She can't see.
"Kate." He's right beside her.
It startles her. Badly. It's sudden and she didn't hear him approach at all. There's no warning. He's there all at once.
Her hands come up between them, blindly hitting out. They land on his chest, and the heat of his body is almost unbearable. More warmth than she's felt in almost a season.
She jerks back.
"Sorry," she mutters. Another rule broken. Another loss. "Sorry."
"No," he says. His fingers close around her wrists. She feels his forehead come to rest against hers. "I don't want . . ."
He stops. His heart is pounding under her palm and the world is loud around them. An insistent, intrusive din like she's never known.
She wants to say something. Anything so he won't let go. So he won't step back and let the dark open up between them again. She wants to say something, but she doesn't know how he'd hear her. Over all this, she doesn't know what she could say that he'd hear.
Her shoulders hitch. A breath catches on her ribs. A barbed thing that hurts.
It ends things.
He drops her hands. Not all at once. Finger by finger like he has to make himself do it.
"The car's right here." He pats it. The roof, probably. He steps away, but his voice is gentle like it will help. As if anything can help. "Come on."
She can see a little now. The outline of him and the sound of his voice are enough for where she's going. It's not far at all.
She trails her fingers along the car. Metal still warm from the road, then something coarse. A blanket he must have spread.
She hears him. The weight of him settling on the hood and the whisper of fabric on fabric as he swings his legs up.
She follows suit. She tries. She boosts her hips on to the edge and it's like the life goes out of her.
"Kate?" He turns toward her. She hears it. The shift of sound from up to sideways. He turns toward her and nothing more.
"Yeah," she says. "Yeah."
She makes her body work. Concentrates on the straightness of her arms and the sideways curve of her thighs until her spine is angling against the windshield. Until the heels of her hands find the point where glass meets metal under the blanket.
Her head lands. Solid and sooner than she'd intended. It sounds worse than it is, but her eyes close out of habit.
She feels him turn toward her again. The blanket twitches and she thinks he must have reached for her this time. She thinks he must have and thought better of it.
"I'm fine," she says and wants to take it back.
She meant now. That she isn't hurt.
It's a lie, though.
She's not fine.
Not now. Not at all.
She hurts. She hurts.
Anything she might say is a lie. She says nothing at all.
"Look." His voice comes from his side of the darkness. He's talking to the sky. Talking over a thousand voices. "Open your eyes."
She does.
She opens her eyes and the sky is on fire.
Gold and amber and silver bursting on a black canvas. Points of light that come into furious being one after the other. That streak the sky and disappear, burning themselves out with the chase.
"Oh," she breathes. "Oh."
Her hands knot together on her stomach. Just under her ribs. She presses down hard. The world falls away and she wants to be sure of something. The rise and fall of her ribs if nothing else.
The sky is on fire. More of it now. Silver streaks like burning rain Voracious and constant and she wonders how there's any air left.
Her fists press down hard. A single point and the only thing she's sure of.
She's imagining the rest. She must be imagining it. Her name. Over and over again, her name and his hands on her face.
"Kate, please don't."
His thumbs sweeping across her cheekbones. A scalding trail that she must be imagining.
She can't see the sky anymore. She wonders if it's still burning. She wants to ask, but there's no air left.
"Kate, please stop." His mouth is on hers. He's pleading and devouring and she must be imagining it. "Please stop crying."
Crying.
It breaks something in her. There's air then. All the air in the world roaring out of her. Peeling her spine up and snaking through her body. All the air in the world leaving her on a sob like the crack of a whip. A howl louder than the thousand voices around them.
"Kate." He says it over and over. He's curled around her, his limbs tangled and twined with hers. His head is bowed against her neck, her name a constant whisper.
Her eyes are open. Staring, though she's pressed against him. Clinging to him and all she can see is a glimpse of burning sky.
The sob ends. The air is gone, for her at least, but the tears still come, fast and heavy. Searing trails that end somewhere against his shoulder.
She wishes she could stop. She wants to.
It's undoing him. Forcing that one broken syllable out of him over and over and she'd give anything to stop.
She'd give anything to put him back together again even if it means that he'll go.
She'd give anything to stop.
"Why?"
She thinks it's him at first. She thinks it must be. That all the air is gone and any words must be his.
But he jerks back from her. His fingers are tangled in her hair and he's staring at her. Gasping and broken and staring at her.
"Why?" she says again, because it must be her. "Why now?"
It ends, then. The litany of her name. It ends and his face goes hard. Cold, desperate fury.
The sky is burning.
"Why?" His fist tightens in her hair. He tugs and her chin goes up. He presses and turns and she's under him. There's no sky any more, just his body above hers. "Because it doesn't end."
His mouth comes down on hers. It's hard. Fierce and crushing and angry. She opens to him. Her tongue touches his and all she can taste is sorrow. He pulls away. A sharp bite to her lower lip as he goes.
"Why now?" His hands find the collar of her shirt. He yanks it aside, baring her shoulder. "Because I miss you. Because it's been months and I want you. Every second, I want you. And it doesn't end."
His teeth are relentless now. She writhes under him. She tears at his shirt. Sinks her nails into his ribs and drags.
He hisses. Arches up and back. Away from her and she's sorry. She's sorry the weight of him is gone. The solid certainty. She's sorry for the way everything good in the world falls away because his body is there and hers is here and it's wrong.
She sits up. She gives chase and presses herself against him. Skates her palms up the broad plane of his back and sobs into his skin. "It doesn't. It doesn't end."
His fingers fall to her waist. Desperate fists close around the hem of her shirt. He tugs it high with one careless hand. The other surrounds her breast, pinching and rough and she sees stars. She burns after all this time.
She falls back. She presses herself to the windshield behind her and her arms splay wide. His mouth closes over her other breast, wet and hot and perfect, even through the cotton of her bra.
She wants to be everywhere at once. She wants her hands on him and all of herself bare to him. She struggles the rest of the way out of her shirt. His fingers hook through one bra strap. He pulls at it. One savage motion and something gives.
The fabric falls away and he's pinning her. Holding her shoulders down with hot, heavy palms as his tongue laps and circles and his teeth mark. As his mouth works over her and over her until she's out of her mind. Until her eyes fly open and she howls.
He climbs her body again. His mouth finds hers and she raises up against him. She rakes her hands up his sides, pulling his shirt as she goes. He breaks away to duck out of the collar and she's moving. Searching with fingers and lips and tongue and teeth. He groans and whispers and curses as she marks him in turn. As she twists her hips hard and plants a hand on his shoulder and he falls to one side of her.
She follows. She turns with him and presses into him. Her eyes roll back as her breasts drag over his bare chest and she threads a leg in between his.
"Kate." He groans as she pulls herself flush against him.
He works a clumsy hand between them. He peels her hips away from his and slides a heavy palm down from the waistband of her jeans, tight over her fly and straight between her legs.
She bucks against it, helpless, furious and angry. Suddenly she's so angry at the way she needs him. At the way she burns.
She yanks at his wrist. Both hands around one of his. She pulls it free. Out from between them and up her body. She hisses at the exquisite roughness of his palm as it grazes her breast. She drags his fingertips to her mouth. She presses her lips to each one. She kisses his palm and trails the flat of her teeth over the heel of his hand.
He watches her, wary and panting. Angry, too. The dark hasn't changed that. The sky on fire and a thousand voices haven't done a thing for that.
She slides her hand over the back of his. Laces her fingers through the gaps and drags it back down to her breast. She lets go. He stays willingly. He squeezes and pinches and rolls. Roughs a thumb over each nipple and the breadth of his palm along the valley between her breasts. He watches her face and she watches his.
Her hand makes its way over his shoulder. She's kinder with her nails now, though not by a lot. His lips part and a breath drags in, louder and longer than he'd probably like. She takes her time. She roams over his back and down his side until she reaches his waist. Her calf tangles tighter around his and she anchors herself. She presses into him.
His mouth opens again on her name, but she steals it. She kisses him, mouth open and hot as she circles her hips. She winds him higher and higher. Both of them. it's hardly any effort at all.
He's breathless by the time she pulls back. His head bows and his shoulders curve toward her when her hand slips from his hip to his belt buckle.
He's resigned and it's all wrong.
She kisses him again. Soft this time and he sighs. She drops her lips to his chin. His eyes flick open in surprise. She kisses him once just there. She heads lower. She forces his eyes up. She waits until he's watching. Until he meets her eyes and doesn't look away.
"I love you," she says.
He stiffens. Jerks back as though she's hit him.
She follows. She kisses him again. Soft, even though he's fighting. He's trying to turn away. She kisses him. "I love you."
"Kate." Her name drags out. A long plea, but his lips move under hers. With them. He kisses her even as he begs her to stop.
"I can't." She pulls the tongue of his belt free of the buckle. She rests her palm beneath his ribs. She feels the air go in and out. "I love you and it doesn't end."
His hands are on her face again. His thumbs sweep over her cheeks like he's searching for tears, but his mouth moves with hers. Under and over and with. He sweeps his tongue between her lips and he tastes like anguish.
Her hands move faster now. Swift and sure, parting leather from metal and fabric from skin. Sliding down over the twitching muscles of hip and stomach to find him.
"I love you," she says as her fingers close around him. "I miss you and I want you every second."
He shudders. Something gives. His hands fall away from her face and he rolls her underneath him. He half kneels over her. His hands are busy at her waist. At her hips and thighs and knees, but his mouth is never far from hers as he works her jeans open. As he peels them down her legs. It's never far from hers as he tugs at the laces of her flat shoes. He surges up to kiss her hip, her belly, her breasts as he uncovers all of her.
He's clumsy with his own clothes. Careless and eager with his hands until finally he's above her again. His hand drags up the inside of her leg and he settles between her thighs. He stretches himself over her, forearms framing her face.
He lowers his mouth to hers.
"I love you," he breathes the words against her lips, over and over as he pushes into her, inch by agonizing inch. "I love you."
Her head falls back. Her hips arch up, demanding. It draws a groan from him. A satisfying, urgent press. An emphatic, possessive counterpoint and she has all of him at last. Her eyes go wide.
She curses. He curses back.
They're a mess, then. Sloppy, frantic hands and mouths. Jerking hips and tangling limbs. It's hard and fast and the sky is burning.
She's screaming under him. He hisses in her ear. That he loves her. That the taste of her has been in his mouth for months. That she's tight and wet and his. That it never ends.
"Never," he says between his teeth.
He thrusts and it breaks her. Sensation and fierce declaration. The sky burns and she doesn't know if her eyes are open or closed.
She writhes and thrashes and he comes. He spills into her, silent and open mouthed. His breath is gone and he collapses on her, shivering and heavy.
She reaches out, one hand, then the other. She pulls the edges of the blanket in. Around them. He kisses her shoulder in wordless gratitude.
He rolls on to an elbow. He eases to the side and pulls her with him. They lie face to face and the world grows loud again with a thousand voices and quiet between them.
"I didn't . . ." He starts and stops. He starts again. "I didn't plan this."
She doesn't say anything. Her eyes slip closed and she breathes. She wonders for a moment if she'll cry again. If she ever stopped in the first place. What she's imagining and what she's not.
Her thighs twinge in answer. She draws her shoulder blades toward her spine and feels the marks on her skin. Her fingers fall to his ribs. She traces the marks on his.
Her eyes open again. His head is bowed. His face is all over sorrow.
"I miss you," he says. "Every second, Kate. I just miss you. I didn't plan this."
She kisses him. She dips her head and pulls the blanket tighter around them. She kisses him. Tilts her chin up and nudges his along with it.
"Look," she breathes. "Open your eyes."
He does. So does she.
The sky is burning.