Let's not try to figure out everything at once...

[forthedog]

It's better. For the first time, it's better and he's sure it's not just wishful thinking, or adjusting to a situation that's just as shitty as it was before.

He's still not good. The morning he and Neil had spent in bed and curled around each other, he hadn't dreamed, but that night he had, and badly. And the night after. Neil touches him, and he still flinches instinctively away most of the time. The thought of going outside for anything--even the smallest task--feels like an exhausting ordeal. At times even getting up to bathe or eat is difficult.

But a few days later, and he's sure it's still better. As he makes his way up the stairs to he apartment, he's sure he feels less tired. Less battered inside.

Again, he's coming back from therapy, but he's feeling cautiously hopeful in addition to sore and tired. Donna had seemed entirely unsurprised when he had broached the subject--sidling around to it with an awkwardness that made him cringe and yet that he couldn't really stop--nodding and moving over to a desk and scribbling a name and a number down on a scrap of paper.

"There," she had said, tossing her long blond ponytail back over her shoulder and handing the paper to him. "Call that number. They'll take good care of you. Promise."

And he had thought that might actually be all she said about it, but as she pointed him back to the mat and his stretches, she had smiled, and it had been faint and warm. "I'm glad you said something," she said quietly. "'Cause I was about to."

Under the embarrassment, he was--and is--grateful. Because people care. They care without prying, without making themselves a nuisance.

Unless they have to. He thinks of Johnny and doesn't quite smile.

He turns the key in the lock, pushes the door open. Maybe it's better, but he's still tired and everything still hurts, and all he wants to do is curl up on the couch and doze.

Once it would have been with a drink. But now part of him--a louder part--is wondering if that might be the best idea.

Comments

[forthedog]

It seems like good advice. So he follows it. He shuts up and lets the sheer wave of sensation buoy him away from all the complications of talking and thinking about shit over which he has no control at all. He opens his mouth against Neil's skin and moans, giving Neil's dick one long stroke and then another. Every time he moves now, it feels like a step onward and upward, though he still isn't even moving that quickly. It's building. Burning. One or the other.

I love you. He doesn't say it. He lets it press against the back of his throat. Those words have density, weight.

If only they don't have too much of it.

[little_moons]

I let it swallow me up, let myself sink down into it, and it comes on slow and steady and I'm almost positive that it's different than anything else I've ever felt. Which is crazy, maybe, but I'm not used to taking my time with this. Even with him, it always ends up feeling like we're in a rush. Like we don't quite trust we'll have time for anything more.

"Mike," I say with a choked sob, clinging to him wherever I can reach, my other hand grasping at the sheets tangled under us.

[forthedog]

It feels like time's contracting.

The last time he remembers feeling like this, feeling even close to it, was the last time they were together before he went off to get on the plane that would take him to the field where everything changed. He doesn't remember what hotel, what night, what the weather was like or what they ate and drank, what they said to each other. He remembers how it felt, how just for a moment he felt like he could put his hands against the oncoming future and hold it in place.

He can't, of course. He knows that. But he almost believes it again anyway.

"Shh," he breathes, lips against the corner of Neil's mouth and his hand moving faster, though he doesn't really want him to be quiet. Why the fuck would he? Why wouldn't he want to hear more of this? Except it hurts a little. "Oh, God..."

[little_moons]

Huffing out a breathless laugh, I move my hand to cover his where it's wrapped around my dick, grinning against his lips and murmuring, "You really want me to shut up?"

I push back against him, a little harder than before, a sharper moan breaking out from my throat.

[forthedog]

"No," he gasps, his voice almost breaking on the word. Moving like this, he can leverage his weight easily enough that he can forget he's only using one leg. And moving like this, he could probably forget everything else. Everything else is certainly fading into the background, replaced with something bright and hot gathering in his spine.

It's going to be big. He can already tell.

"Don't shut up." It comes out in a rough, breathless mutter. "Don't, don't you--oh, fuck."

[little_moons]

"Not gonna get tired of this," I whisper, gasping and swallowing down another desperate wail of a moan. "There's nobody... Oh fuck, never wanted anybody like this."

I don't know how I managed it, all those months without him. How much time I spent thinking about him, even at the beginning when we were hardly more than strangers. And I guess it's stupid to think that was every anything more than lust, but now, looking back, it felt different. I'd wanted plenty of guys, but he was always different.

My lips smudging against his, the kiss clumsy and off-center, I know that I'm still talking. Whispered endearments and broken thoughts, and I guess I'd be embarrassed by it all if I weren't so far gone. Against his lips, I murmur, "You're mine," like I'm telling him, like I've just figured it out myself, like I'm making some kind of fucking claim on him now, as if he weren't already completely fuckin' aware.

[forthedog]

It's possible, he thinks as something wrenches in him, that he didn't know what he was getting into when he told Neil to not shut up. Because this is almost too much. It might, in fact, be too much. The twisting in his middle is almost pain, but it spirals up and mixes with the pleasure, and he thinks of two chemical compounds, mixing into something unstable. Something that might explode.

You're mine.

And everything in him screams back yes.

His movements turn almost fierce, close to angry, thrusting in sharp movements of his hips, hand tight on Neil's dick. And you're mine, he thinks but can't quite say, even though he knows Neil would agree, baring his teeth and biting down on Neil's bottom lip.

[little_moons]

"Fuck," I sob, and I'm almost disappointed when it ramps up, almost, but this is good, too, for completely different reasons. Like being branded, by his hands and his teeth and his cock, swallowed up until there's no part of me that doesn't feel like it's a part of him, too.

When I come, it shouldn't be a shock, but somehow, it is. I wasn't ready for it, didn't know it was coming so soon, and I let out another broken sob, the sound of it pained as much as anything else. But that? That's good, too.

[forthedog]

He lets out a harsh sound as he feels Neil spilling over his fingers, hot and sticky against his wrist--he's not there himself but he can feel it coming, building like a steady upward spiral as he drags Neil through it. The scars don't matter. The leg doesn't matter. His body is incidental; it's a means to an end, and the end is convulsing in his arms even as he crests it.

Another harsh sound as he slides down into the slow, shaking explosion of his own orgasm, rougher and lower than the last and somehow more desperate. If it's an end, it's also ending, and he's still afraid of what might be waiting tomorrow.

But Neil had said mine. And Mike still believes him.

[little_moons]

It's a long time before I can really breathe. A long time before the rest of the world swims back into focus. I just lay there, pressed against his chest, feeling the last aftershocks shake their way through him, his cock still deep in me and his grip loosening around my dick.

I shift, swallowing down a whine when his dick slips out, every goddamn nerve ending still on overload, and I turn over to face him, my mouth nudging against his, lazy and full of too much goddamn affection for my own good.

[forthedog]

He feels beaten inside, tired and bruised, but it's not unpleasant. It's the kind of tired he used to get after hard PT, back before those letters stood for something harder and much more painful, the kind of tired that allows for deep sleep. And he will sleep, he thinks.

Eventually.

He palms Neil's hip, parting his lips into something that isn't quite a kiss. He can feel his brain cycling up again and he tries to find the brake for it. God, just once, he wants to be left alone with this gorgeous boy who, for some reason, feels like he wants to stake some kind of claim here.

His fingers are still sticky. He's kind of sticky everywhere. He couldn't possibly care any less. "You're incredible," he breathes, and he means it in every sense of the word.

[little_moons]

"Shut up," I murmur, my lips still brushing against his, and I wanna tell him I think he's incredible, too, but I know he'd be even less likely to accept it.

"No, I'm not." It comes across teasing, but it's not something that's easy to hear. I've heard it enough times from people that didn't mean it, people who didn't know me, that it's instinct to hear the words and think they're bullshit. Even from him.

[forthedog]

"Too tired to fucking argue," he mutters. The hand at Neil's hip is moving, sliding around to his back, pulling them clumsily together. Normally he'd shy away at the feel of all that smooth skin pressed against all his scars, but now he can barely feel it.

It feels normal.

He turns his head slightly, mouth moving up over Neil's cheekbone. "Do one thing for me."

[little_moons]

"Yeah, what?" I murmur, my arms wrapping around him, tangled up with him on top of the sheets, and it feels normal, the way not much has lately.

[forthedog]

He takes a breath. This feels like inviting trouble, like taking this wonderful thing that he can feel fading around him and bringing in a nice acidic dose of real world shit to make it fade faster.

But while he feels like he can, he has to say it. He has to remember that he decided to fight for this.

"Make me call that number tomorrow."

[little_moons]

"Yeah, okay. I can do that," I murmur, and I can tell he thinks it's a big thing to ask, but it's an easy promise to make.

I'd already planned to make sure, whether he wanted me to or not.

[forthedog]

"Okay." And he feels something that had been clenching relax slightly. It's tomorrow. He can deal with it tomorrow.

Now he can just... be.

"I love you," he adds, even softer, and breathes out a laugh that's entirely directed at himself. "Just... still getting used to that."

[little_moons]

"Yeah, me too," I admit with a soft huff of laughter, and I'd tell him that it's nice to hear, no matter how many times he says it, but I figure he already knows.

"We don't use rubbers anymore," I blurt, like it's just now dawned on me, like it suddenly feels more important than before. And maybe it's not something I should bring up right now, but I almost want to know if he's noticed. If it means anything at all, 'cause me? I dunno if I'd know the difference. It was never important to me in the first place, which is probably pretty fucked up.

[forthedog]

He almost winces. He manages to catch it at the last minute. There it is again, regardless: the big, mean, nasty, ugly world crashing in through the ceiling like a fucking bomb.

Not tomorrow, then. Now.

"I know." He turns a little away, sinking into the mattress in a way that he now recognizes; he's trying to hide, trying to defend himself from a blast that never stops.

"I don't--" He shakes his head fiercely, honesty coming out like vomit. "I've been trying not to think about it."

It's not like there's anything much to be done now, anyway, if there's been yet another mine waiting under the ground.

[little_moons]

"Oh," I murmur, a faint line of confusion settling between my brows and a heaviness settling in the pit of my stomach.

"I just... You stopped askin' for 'em, I just thought..." I don't know what I thought. But it wasn't a sign of trust, 'cause he had no reason to trust that I was clean, and I realize, just now, that it probably had nothing at all to do with me. It wasn't a promise not to be with anyone else. It wasn't anything stupid and fucking romantic like that.

He was just fucked up. He just didn't care, anymore. The same way I never did.

[forthedog]

"I figured it didn't matter," he says, hollowly, bloodless. Abruptly he rolls away, onto his back and slightly toward the wall. Everything's tensing as all his careful avoidance mechanisms break down one by one and he imagines white cells broken open and disintegrating. He thought he hadn't cared. Now he's terrified. But in that terror he sees something that might lead the way out of it, and he grabs for it. I don't want to die.

I don't want you to, either.

"I just. I don't." He makes a sound, a harsh moan of frustration, and looks back at Neil again. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, it's fucked up."

[little_moons]

"I can get tested or whatever," I offer, trying to shake the feeling guilt looming over me, tight in the pit of my stomach, this feeling like I've done something wrong. Because it was me, I'm the dirty one, I'm the one that could've caught something from any number of strangers I've been with, because I've never been careful. I've always been fuckin' stupid. And for the first time, I get that maybe I've been putting him at risk.

I'm not the only one I have to worry about, anymore.

"I mean, it's not a big deal."

[forthedog]

"Yeah," he says, and scrubs a hand down his face, smooth skin with a hint of stubble and twisted, wrinkled stuff that won't ever be stubbled again. He doesn't know what the fuck to say to this. He's not even sure what the fuck he thinks, what the name is for the feeling that's wringing his guts out like an old towel. Except fear.

But fear is such a constant now. It's almost background.

"I kinda... dunno if I even wanna know," he mutters, knowing how stupid--how suicidally stupid it is once it's out. But if he doesn't know what to say, the truth seems like at least a place to start from. And that much is true.

[little_moons]

"Okay," I murmur, lifting one shoulder in a shrug and fuckin' kicking myself for bringing it up. I didn't really know what he'd say, but this? I don't really know what to do with it.

So, I turn over onto my back, breathing out a sigh and looking up at the little flaws in the ceiling. Hairline cracks and bubbles in the plaster and a tiny, ancient watermark in the corner.

[forthedog]

He waits for a long moment, hand over his eye. His eyes--one well and whole and the other frozen and pale and dead. But they're both there. They're both his. He didn't make it out in one piece but he made it out alive.

And he's already decided that he wants to try to stay that way.

"We should know," he whispers, letting his hand fall away. "We should both know."