Rating: R (sex, violence, incest)
Fandom: Terry Moore's "Strangers in Paradise"
Summary: This is the night of the worst day of Katchoo's life. Disclaimer: The characters belong to Terry Moore. They are used without permission. I'm only borrowing them for a little while, and sending them back. Please Mr. Moore, don't be like Anne Rice and sic lawyers on me.
Spoilers: 'Child of Rage' trade/'Strangers in Paradise' #38.

I shouldn't be so happy.

Francie's getting married.

I could stop her, but she doesn't want me to.

David's hands talk to me. In the darkness, they talk to me. My eyes are open and maybe sometimes, his are too. I already love him-- oh, Francine, I love him. I hold onto him with everything in me, everything I've got and he gasps.

I kiss, 'sorry'. His mouth curls under my lips, my fingers. His hands slide around me. His perceptive artist's hands delve beyond the surface of things, they swoop over my back and around ribs, swirl into my soul. He smells so good. He smells like--

- Francine smells like baby powder -

There's this sound. It's tidal. Sheets skimming over his legs, my hands catching on the breadth of his shoulders, his slide into me.

- I love you David -

I do. It's been so long since I've been with a man-- I should be stretched out to Ankor Wat by now but it's been a while, but I surge up to meet him and he trembles.

He says my name. I'm glad. Then he says, "Darcy." The cold sliding under the thin, motel room door freezes me and he hurts he's too big. He's too small - he's too fucking deep for me to take and I scramble. My ankle hooks under his knee as I lurch away and I go sliding off the mattress and David catches me, he catches me. He encircles me in his arms. He lies back and his kiss on my neck, his finger tips against my cheeks... He breathes into me. We share breath. There's no up or down. There's this calming kiss, like waves closing over my head. They seal over me and I can breathe.

Straddle. There's a washboard stomach between my legs, sweet pectorals under my palms, under my tongue.

Is that me telling him I love him? Is that me taking my clean hands to his face-- he is the sweetest man. With dark brown eyes, big, exotic eyes, that gleam at me at me in the dark.

- Francine's eyes hold the meaning of life -

"I saw the meaning of life dancing in Francine's eyes."

He's so very quiet. His words are black letters on a soft white space. "I saw hope-- oh god--" he hisses long and slow, like I'm kissing him. The skin under mine grows hotter by degrees. "f-for mine the first time I saw you."

"My eyes were like an ocean."

"Like the sea," he affirms. "Glassy and deep."

I was bombed off my ass. But he saw me.

He hisses long and slow. His pelvis rocks against mine gentle, rhythmic. I've never seen him dance but feeling him against me, under me now, I know he's a wonderful dancer.

"Let's go dancing," I say.

He laughs out loud. "You," he croons. "Katchoo... "

Hoarser than usual, I manage to sing, "Happy birthday, dear David--"

The human body is amazing. I could never paint the chill freezing him.

I pry up David's fingers from the sheet, I tell my Yousaka he's the only man I could ever love. He shouldn't be able to breathe, his stomach is so tight. There's a muscle jumping in his otherwise rigid thigh.

That evil woman. The bitch is dead. Darcy's dead but the scars remain. His sister, my savior, my lover, my pimp, is dead. His fingers trace a tattooed lily he can't see in the dark. He smoothes over the petals, the stem.

I swallow. Not the nipples, no, she wouldn't put it there. Not on his slim, runner's legs, not where anyone could see. He was her most precious thing, never to be shared, only to be displayed, and played.

He's the one Darcy didn't want to share. My hands creep under cover of darkness, over his perfect hairless legs and chest and arms.

"Here," he whispers, taking my hand and drawing it past his throbbing erection. "Here," he whispers, threading my fingers through strands coarser than that growing on his head. His swallow sounds like buckshot shame. He gulps again, "Under my hair so no one would ever see."

My fingers clench around his. "How old were you?"

"It's over."

"You were twelve. Oh, god, you couldn't have been thirteen. She showed me a picture of you in your first suit."

"Armani."

"You couldn't have been older than -"

"Twelve. I was twelve."

I hug him fierce. He hugs me hard. I try not to scream. We rock one another, scars and all.

It's not until he sniffles that I realize that he's been crying.

"Darcy always said I was just like her. That you were just like her. But I looked into your eyes and I saw that you wanted out. And I knew that if I just held on, I could make it. That we both could." Then he says my name, "Oh, Katchoo..."

David doesn't tell me that Darcy could make him come with an implication, with just the right glance of her sharp, deep eyes. That look used to work for me- on me. Even in the end, when I had to get away from her because of the things she wouldn't say- and the things she would say. Things about the only boy she could ever love while tracing the characters of his name on my naked ass with long black feather. Even then, when I was sick with hating myself and looking for softness in her crackling eyes- even then it worked. Even when she told me that when the only man she could ever love was eleven, his come was as clear as the dew shining on the red red rose she'd cut for me just that very morning, from her very own garden, with her own two hands.

If Darcy was angry enough, she'd mash your jaw between her thumb and fingers and make you take whatever was available. A cell-phone. A garden spade. A severed hand. Especially if I'd cut it off myself.

"But that was my other life,"

"Yes," David says.

"The one I'd left behind."

"The one we've left behind."

We're the same, he and I.

We kiss. Calm closes over my head as our lips part and his tongue strokes inside of me. We've gotta breathe sometime, and he holds me close. Holds me close and I think to count his ribs.

"Quit it," he says.

"But you're so thin!" I tease. He's so thin. So much skinnier than the last time I saw him-- his bulk coming from bandages, and tubes, and tubes and bandages. I almost lost him. Shit, enough with the crying! Roll and tuck. His legs are splayed open, like mine, and my hand-- like his-- learns the most intimate parts of him. His breath, by my ear speeds up and slows, hitches and huffs at my command. I can do anything with my hands. Fuck. Kill. Maim. Steal. The way he says my name, maybe my hands can even heal.

"How come Francie's not afraid of you?" I ask.

His lips catch my ear. His tongue twirls around it. My heart starts to race and I trace the bud of his anus-- he doesn't flinch. Catch his sac in my hands. Slick him up with myself. He holds me, around the hips and waist and sides. He lifts my hair with his hands, ruffles it with his fingertips, all the while he's gasping, short of breath.

"Katchoo, let me see you."

"She knows about me. What I am, what I've done. She's afraid of me."

He grasps my hands, kisses my fingers, my palms, my wrists. "You don't look like her."

"Everybody says so."

"I don't say so."

He kisses my ring finger, my trigger finger, my thumb.

"Don't."

My finger pushes past his pursed lips and into his hot, tender mouth. He licks it. Nibbles the tip. Says, "Marry me."

"There's blood on my hands, David."

Sucking sounds on my fingers. I'm sitting on top of him and his legs bend up behind me. He's worshipping my hand. He's going to kiss it until I die.

"David."

"Katchoo."

In the darkness, with his lips on my hand. With my mouth moving over his. As I sway on his flexing legs and he eases into me like Francine's hair swirling in a Hawaiian breeze, it's hard to tell who says it, but it's there.

"I love you." Hoarse. Broken. Sad. True.

Was that him?

"Lord, Katchoo, I love you, too."

His hand leaves my breast. I kiss him senseless before he can turn on the light.

There's no after. There's a cooling hand-towel drawn along our bodies that gets lost when we make love again. David's so young, he's only twenty-four. He'd be an ancient twenty-four, but he's born-again. He comes like a nineteen year old virgin: hard, hot, strong, but his mouth is tender. His words are tender. He mixes up my name with God. I shouldn't be so happy. When he sleeps, I put my fist in my mouth, find the tissues he probably put on the bedstead for me before I could even think about facing him and I sob for Francine.

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