AN: I believe my thoughts are quite jumbled over this, so please leave some feedback.

annie/britta

.

You do not resemble my other lovers. It is more than your blue eyes, soft pale skin and curves and too bright smile. It's a feeling you evoke inside me; a gentle caress around my chest that creates a nonsensical warmth. You shouldn't be able to touch me like that; you should be running in the opposite direction because you are young and innocent in a way I'm not sure the world could ever fuck up. You still believe in the magic of friendship and that some time, some place, somewhere—everything will all work out for the best; a childish dream I gave up years ago. There are no logical reasons why I love you; no signs that point to one trait, a common interest, a perfect moment we once shared that explain this. You are you, innocent and beautiful with eyes that pierce into me faster than a speeding train. You are you and I am me and there is no formula for what we are doing. You are you and should have fallen for a stern head with a heart of gold, a shy smile and curious gaze, or a proud smile and kiss in the fading light. You are you and shouldn't have to put up with me because I am one of the forgotten; I am an in-between person, a leftover.

I wonder if you see a different person where I stand. I blink and you see an angel blink, I run and you see the devil, I hold you and you feel God's arms. It's the only way I can imagine it; imagine you wanting me because I am washed out like I've been left in the sea too long, my hair washed light by salt and sun and my eyes barely existing while yours burn through me. You are not human here, not of the flesh and blood that I am. You can't be, for I feel magic inside you thrumming where I touch, I hear noises no animal could make with your mouth parted for mine.

Don't you think it's funny? That you, who are made of the stars and the oceans and of everything people tell you they want to see all over the world, end up staying with me. I am not someone a star loves nor someone the ocean reaches for in agony. No, I am someone who swallows loneliness like whiskey and imagines what would happen if every street light blew up. I am Chaos, The Void, and legend has predicted the only things I can accomplish. I touch you and Desire springs like weeds, I kiss you and feel your body part like the Earth. You think that I am good because of that but Night and Darkness and the Abyss wait perched on my shoulder, ready to rip you from my grasp and it's something I don't know how to control. What is someone who is only built for the darkness, supposed to do with the light?

I had told you part of my concerns one night; just a narrow hint but you had known, like you have always known me. You walked over in the orange light and the way I remember it, it was like you danced. You don't walk anywhere in my memories, but skip and float and smile through a dance. You had tried to hold my arm or my hand like I might run away, like I could be stopped. I can't be stopped by you, no one can stop me from doing anything and no one has yet realised that it is because no object at rest can be stopped. I breathe because your fingers against my arm and eyes still blue in the fading light burn my chest; you make me forget what normal feels like.

I know there is a way to fix this; it's my hand on your upper arms, gripping until I feel indents in your skin. It's your name uttered under my breath sternly, a barely penetrable shake of the head. It would have stopped you back then, back when your confidence moved in and out like the tide. I know I can fix this, I know I can set you free but my brain is a liar and a whore. It wants you, only you, and it tells me there is no way I can send you away. Instead it commits everything you say to memory, mapping your words like countries on the inside of my brain.

You read to me lots; Tolstoy because you believe in his words, Bronte, Kipling, Woolf, Nabokov, because you believe in their passion. It's passion you love the most, you must see more in my washed out ice eyes than I can though because I've watched you read countless passages only to look at me and catch your breath.

We were fantastically and divinely alone; I watched her, rosy, gold-dusted, beyond the veil of my controlled delight, unaware of it, alien to it, and the sun was on her lips-

You had read me those words and then turning to me, kissed me full on my sandy lips, book falling closed as it fell off your lap. I almost stopped you, told you to pick it up and continue reading until a chapter end, my need for order and patterns and normalcy nearly overriding you you you. You, who could bring desire in me from the lightest touch, the barest look, the finest quiver in your angel's body, nearly vanished by a half finished passage. I kissed you back though, I did, and I tasted your lipstick as it slowly stained my lips. My hands were running through cool water or your hair, the difference intangible in the dark dark room, and your own pale digits were threaded through my washed out corn hair, tangling in knots and being forced closer by the betraying strands.

I had read to you before but it never evoked that kind of passion. When I read to you it's industrial or biological or chemical. It is words that serve a higher purpose, words that should be educating you to leave me alone, to abandon darkness and abyss. You obviously don't listen hard enough though, hard enough to hear my disguised yelling, because you are still here with me, kissing me and letting your fingers run down my skin until you're inside me, desire becoming more than just a creation—an embodiment. I arch my back and you're still kissing me and the dark is surrounding us and making what we are doing less and less tragic.

I imagine mascara running down your angel face sometimes—your wide wide eyes the seas from which you must have come from. In these visions you always leave, slamming the door on your way out. I cannot tell if these are anxieties or fantasies and they bring up both emotions equally; my heart in these is torn in two, the Blackness and the Night escaping to consume me, but you would be safe and the other part of me feels lighter like all my responsibility left with you. Perhaps it would.

You take your clothes off in front of me now; white shirt a stain on the floor, a blur in my vision. You are an apparition wearing only a slowly spreading smile. A part of me wants to be scared of you, of the kind of control you seem to have over me, of your brilliance, of your innocence.

Love me, Britta you say harshly, not to punish but to pull me from my own head. At your words I take one hesitant step closer and then you meet me there. You are the ocean, the sky from the other side, the moon with its annihilating light and I have to hold my breath while I touch your cheek. It is dipped into the shade and suddenly I want my mark of darkness all over you. I press you to the bed and cover your face with my fingers, my lips. I move down your body until I'm in the tiny divot of your hip bone. I want to ask you if you love me but I don't want to hear your answer. It will be yes; it will be yes because we have two atoms inside us that can't be torn apart. It will be yes because you are still young and innocent enough to follow your heart on every whim. I am seasoned and bitter and I don't know how to let my heart want without a reason but tonight, the seas in your eyes are on fire and I know I have to make a decision. I kiss your skin once, twice, then move lower and listen to your animal sounds as they darken the night.

My hands don't feel like flesh and bone when they are making you feel these things; they feel like the magic I'm sure you are made of. They feel like the ocean on a calm day, wind in a torrent, the moon barely keeping her eyes open, and a never-ending galaxy of dying stars. You had told me once that we can only see the stars that have had enough time to reach our young world, and that if we could stay alive for a few more billion years then the night would be day, and I would be you.

Outside the world continues on its round-about existence and you make love to me like the temptation of sin is going out of fashion. Outside, two people meet on the street below our window. It's December, and you smile at me.