Wasteland Shadows

There are shadows here. They catch along your smile, hang out. I think I like that. Gnarled hands, crow's feet, wrinkles like rivulets, little valleys, not too many, just ones that hang out when the day is bright, just enough to give you a dusting of age, like a good whiskey.

Yeah, there's space in your skin now for the light to snag on you and I like that. Like that you get that: age.

XxX

You come home.

Three a.m. with a bloody hand and an aching shoulder. You roll it under the fingertips of your opposite hand, pretending not to grimace as you do. Try to shake me back to bed when I get up. You okay, baby?

Kiss you between the shoulder blades. You like that, even if you don't admit it. Your clothes and skin are cold to the touch. I drag my arms down your front, snag in your belt loops and pull you flush to me. Let the cold drip out of your bones and soak into mine.

I'm not… don't, you start to protest. Give up.

I sink my smile into the skin on the back of your neck. Tough night?

You sigh, low and heavy. Makes you drift deeper into me. Like we could melt into one. Yeah, you admit.

I drop you down onto the bed, slip to my knees and pull your boots off. Sticky with old beer and unidentifiable bar muck. Heaven only knows and I sure as hell don't want to know. Roll of your socks and then look up at you.

You're hooded, tired in a way that doesn't say "I just bounced for eight hours," but in a way that says, "I fought the world and this is what my life became."

I pull your hand into mine. A split knuckle. Nothing really. Just a scratch, hardly enough to bleed. Kiss it. You're skin is so cold it's almost blue.

They had you on the door all night? I ask, tracing my fingers down your palm. Love line. My lifeline.

Yeah, you say. Apparently your word of the night. Just scrapped the wall. Didn't punch anyone tonight.

What a shame, I mock, smile up at you.

You smile back, but no crow's feet make an emergence. A liar smile. Placating me. Cup your palm against my face. Finally starting to warm up, at least.

I lay my hands on the inside of your knees for a moment, idly play with the denim then get to my feet and lean down, kiss you once.

You hardly return it.

Right back, baby, I promise.

Go to the bathroom and return with that rub that heats and cools. The good stuff – the kind that doesn't stink to high heaven. I pull you out of your shirt, unbutton your jeans while you sit, limp, watching me, not watching me. I'm not sure.

Press you back into the bed and you go willingly, let me work it into your skin, a promise to always take care of you.

Four a.m., I convince you to sleep in my arms with gentle touches, wrap your weary body down into mine. I know you're safe here. I like that.

If the boys could see you now, they'd never let you live it down.

There are no crow's feet when you smile at them.

XxX

There are shadows here, too. In the house I picked out. The house you bitched out about.

They cling to the banister around the stairs. The one the sixteen-year-old girl banged her head on years ago and consequently became a ghost. We salted and burned her bones two years ago, right when your knees were starting to really go and getting out of graves was becoming a bigger task then it used to be. When everything was getting dark and heavy and oppressive and the lines on your face started to show.

I pulled you up into the master bedroom, while all the furniture was still covered in sheets like an impromptu Halloween party for inanimate objects and you let me fuck you into the hardwood (not before having a giggle over the pun). I waited till you were post-coital bliss to say I wanted to make an offer.

We knew the place wasn't haunted, after all.

XxX

Those same shadows cling to the front room window, where you are always pulling the curtains closed.

Someone could see, you said. Meaning us.

I blanched on the couch with a soggy bowl of marshmallow dotted cereal between my splayed legs, looking out at the green lawn. Our fucking green lawn. Mother fucking yes, you asshole. Let them see.

Which I didn't say. Instead I sputtered out, so? through a mouthful of milk.

So! You hissed, tugged the curtains closed and stormed up the stairs with your black cloud in tow.

XxX

The shadows even cradle your truck. The used Chevy you picked out; big and rattling and tan. Takes up half the road. Makes other drivers accuse you of over compensating, and you aren't. I'd know.

The one I drove to pick you up from the bar at three thirty one morning when some snot nosed 20 something stole the Impala's fucking headlights and there are too many cops on the road at that hour to drive home without getting pulled over.

When I climbed out of that truck, the boys looked up from their long necks in the parking lot and asked why wasn't I bouncing instead of you.

Always good to have a big guy on staff, they said.

The snickers down the beer-hazed line of men did nothing for your ego and I remember scratching the inside of my palm to keep myself from reaching for you. Blowing your cover. Grounding you into me. Saying, "what do those idiots know?"

Not that things that go bump in the night are real.

Not that you died for them more then once.

Not that you are getting kinkier sex then all of them combined on a very frequent basis.

You laughed it off though. Said your little brother hits like a girl.

Didn't stop the sputtering and spit takes. Little brother?

I thought that was your boyfriend, the round one said. He quit a week later with a black eye and a very impassioned desire to not talk about it.

Went back to substitute teaching. Guess intimidating high school kids is easier then dealing with drunks.

Or working alongside you, I guess.

XxX

There are shadows in our bed.

I see you waiver. Always waiver, right there next to it. Like you are a timid diver, trying to decide if the jump is right, if you can land smoothly. Don't make a splash.

I picked out the headboard. You picked out the mattress.

No magic fingers? You joked, startling the bed salesmen behind you.

No magic fingers, I said back, going to pick linen. Debate buying lilac just to piss you off but settle on forest green and midnight blue.

You tease me about the thread count all the way home, but when you sink in beside me that night (after hesitating for only a dozen seconds), you take it all back.

Make it up to me in the best way possible.

The mattress doesn't squeak and the headboard doesn't rattle against the wall, the neighbors can't hear us and the sheets are soft. I rolled you into me once you were spent and kissed your hair and remind you this is ours. Really ours.

You white knuckle the bedspread till you fall asleep.

XxX

There are shadows here, on your face. You stood in the kitchen, with your back to the light and an ad for a new club opening in town looking for doormen.

You don't need to work, I reminded you.

You shrugged. But I get it. Something to do.

A lot of skills are rusting like your arsenal in the trunk. Why let them go to waste?

So you bounce, and I find a gig as a paralegal, and we meet in the middle.

In the wasteland shadows of our bed, where your hands are forgiving and your eyes are sweet.

You smile at me in the morning light, face scrunched up with rivulets, tiny divides of time, crow's feet, delight. Lace your fingers through mine. Love line to love line, my lifeline.

I ask you if you are happy.

You shrug your sore shoulder and say you'd always thought the end would be dark. Or maybe really bright.

Out with a bang.

A big, bloody bang.

There are no whimpers for us.

Though I want to keep you all to myself, Dean Winchester, I have some sort of obligation to share, so I tumble you out of our bed and reassemble your component pieces – jeans, boots, shirts, jackets – and send you back to the bar with a slap on the ass. You stumble away, smile at me. Crow's feet and laughter, a good day's stubble hanging onto you.

And take comfort in this.

Take solace in the shadows. Our shadows.

Cause you're not going out with a bang.

You're not sinking into the dark.

You're staying here with me.

And there are shadows here.

But that's all they are.

Simple shadows.