Heavenly Bodies
My fingers follow the lines of your body and you glance away and blush, like you always do.
Is it alright to do this? Is it alright to be like this? I feel the raise of soft hair against your arms before I press down and feel the flesh, see the line where the light meets it and feel that sensation cancelled out in my mind. Between touch and thought, there are no straight lines. And I look up at you and want you to look at me, and I watch you watching something else and wonder why. I always thought it was because you were embarrassed; maybe you are, maybe that's still why, but I know that can't be everything. That's not everything, Makoto. You can't be embarrassed by mere touch when I know you've done worse, so much worse--
The smooth of your shoulder, the curve of your neck. Your skin feels cooler beneath my fingertips, but it warms. I lean up beside you, lean against you, lean against you and the pillows supporting you. My body cancels out the light and I miss out on the detail, the skin that lies smooth but marked. The kind of thing you were told, never forget. And you won't. And I won't, either. So long as I look at you, so long as I touch you, that will always be there. But you're not looking to where my fingers are touching and I'm watching you as you do so, so neither of us have to see. We won't forget, but that doesn't mean that we have to spend every moment remembering, either.
I move over and close my eyes as I shift to lean over you, my legs either side of yours, hands against the edge of the headboard. I stare at you. I know you know I'm staring. I wait until you pick up the signal, take the cue, dare to look back at me. And you do look back at me, look back at me with that wide-eyed expression I could never resist. You manage to look so vulnerable every time, if that's how you're feeling. I can't help the heaviness of my gaze, I can't help that I can't look at you like that and think the same things anymore. I remember a time when we didn't have time to stop and stare, back when every touch was nervous and new and unexpected, when we were clumsy in the darkness and we had to get used to the reactions we had to each other by ourselves, at first. How could you describe a feeling when it was over so soon, only to be replaced by something stronger? We were both present, but we didn't connect. And at the same time, I think we were closer then than ever we were or have been since. Both discovering, together. Innocently selfish. A time that seems only nostalgic.
Here, now, it's different. You still look at me with those eyes, but I know we're a long, long way from what we were back then. I lie beside you, I lean above you, I'll be inside you and I've seen it all before. There's nothing innocent, because we're too broken for that. Everybody's broken, aren't they? In some way, shape, or form. Your insecurities were what broke you, weren't they? Those insecurities you should have trusted me with but I can't blame you for, because still I can't blame you. I blame him, though. Blame him so much. But it was my fault, wasn't it? That you went to him, wanting confidence away from me... and I'm broken by association, because I took your feelings and understood them, felt I knew them and cherished them and then him, there was him, an unknown factor that didn't make any sense.
He's the reason I can't look at you the same anymore. It's still too soon.
I never really thought about it, not before you. What sorts of things are 'beautiful'? There were girls that were cute at school. I saw they were cute and could say they were cute, but what sort of person was really beautiful? Ask any of those girls what they thought, and they'd probably say something about the Student Council. But they were too distant, weren't they? We saw the girls around us blush and fluster because of those five, and we never got involved. As boys who weren't princes, what did we have to offer? I remember you smiling, that's the problem with the stars of the school... get too close, and you'll be burnt. You certainly were, weren't you? Makoto? Yet you got closer than those girls ever did.
No, but things that were beautiful. Not them. Not those five. Not those five, offering some shallow impression of beauty on whoever wished to grant them attention. I saw it more in the small things, in you. Tiny things. Not the way you acted, not the way you behaved, not the things you did (though those were all elements too), but you. Just you, Makoto. You worried that you telling me of your feelings was like coercing me, persuading me to something I didn't really feel. I never felt like that. You telling me of your feelings only seemed to open my eyes to what you were. What we had. It was something different and something special, wasn't it? Suddenly realising that we had the breadth of everything to share between us. All the new discoveries to be made for entering that state of co-existence. Because we loved each other, we could love wholeheartedly. Right? Wasn't that how it was?
I still stare at you with hard eyes. Wasn't that how it was, Makoto? Wasn't it? Do you remember? I kiss you, but it's not gentle. I feel you shifting and yielding against me. Not minding. Reaching to my shoulders to pull me down and closer. Wanting it like this. And I want you like this, Makoto. I want to see you begging and desperate.
I'm still too angry.
You surrender too easily, Makoto. I run my hand down your other shoulder, pick the line between arm and chest and work inbetween, wrapping you in a half-hold and feeling you arch up against my body as I run the tips of fingers down the middle of your back. Like an animal, aren't you? Someone's pet, responding so easily to touch. Trained well, weren't you? Kept and pampered, in that horrible sort of way. You didn't have to worry about anything with him, did you? You didn't even have to think. Even worse than an animal. Life became reduced to two things; stimuli that brought pleasure and stimuli that brought pain. You craved both. You could hide that part of you, though. That part you saw as shameful, the part that felt it needed more than wanted and could only exist with him. I wasn't anything to do with that, was I? I was the cause. The root problem. If I knew, it broke the balance. In being punished brought a comfort, didn't it? A twisted justification for what you were feeling. And the comfort deserved punishment, brought comfort, needed punishment, and on and on and on. You trapped yourself in a vicious circle and you loved it. Maybe not even something so complicated as 'love'. You craved it, needed it. You actually needed it. Nothing I could do could stop or save that.
You're completely vulnerable beneath me and you'll let me do anything. I feel the wrap of your legs around me, an ineffectual attempt at trapping me; you'd never make so bold a move. Your head falls back against the pillow and your neck is bared, showing the tilt of your chin as breath passes your lips, as your chest rises and falls and catches with an unexpected move.
This is as far as we can go.
Where did he touch you, Makoto? How did he? What implements did he use? Other than the whip, I know about the whip. What terrible things came under this heading of 'punishment', underlined title that justified everything? I look at you and remember those small things I noticed, feel protective of them and possessive of them, of all the things that surely Yoshikuni saw but couldn't have seen, couldn't have known the meaning of, couldn't have understood. What things here, that he took without asking, could he appreciate? You offered them to him, but I don't think he cared. It wasn't anything specific to you, it wasn't because of you, it was simply because you were somebody who fell into his way of thinking.
Those things you still believe even now. He touched you deeply, didn't he? Admired idol, Wada-senpai. You still say that name, the few times you dare mention, with some degree of fond familiarity. Stop it, Makoto. Just stop it. He was a horrible person and you're not seeing it and I don't understand how.
I want to know what I didn't have. What he had that made you go to him, what I lacked that meant you couldn't trust me. Are they like stars, Makoto? The school's stars, those responsible members of the Student Council. More than that, I think of Yoshikuni like the sun. Who could get close to that and survive? Any who dared would burn and die, lie destroyed before that force. So many people looked to him, but none of them could have known. None of them got close enough to know. You walked the surface of the sun, Makoto. You walked its surface and something in you died. I'm forceful in my touches and brutal when I fuck you and after the adrenaline I hate myself for it, but you still smile. You still smile. That's nothing, is it? You've hard harder, harsher, crueller. You've had it until it hurt, had it until it bled, had it until there was nothing left but pain pleasure pain pleasure and still wanted more.
I can't give you that. That side of you frightens me. Like that, I feel as far away as the moon. It's cold here, and everything's dead. And maybe, if I think about it, you're like the earth; you hold light and life, but need the sun to survive. Without that, you'd be cold and dead as the moon.
Would you? Would you though, really...?
I look at you, and know I can't do anything that he hasn't already done. I can't force or threaten his influence out of you, and love doesn't seem like enough. If everything is dead here, then we're just going through the motions. But it doesn't feel like that because it still feels like something and I want it to feel like more, but you don't admit that there was ever a problem and so I don't know where we are. You say you love me and I believe you, but I wonder if we mean the same thing. You don't seem to mean things like I mean them, don't seem to understand them like I understand them and I don't know which of us is wrong. I want to blame myself, because I don't want to blame you. I never want to blame you. You were never at fault, Makoto--!
It's not your fault. There's no fault. There's a problem, but that doesn't make it a fault. Not yours. If it's mine, I'm not sure I understand it. I could believe it entirely as being his, but you approached him, didn't you...?
When we lie together, I look at you and only see truth. Everything you say, you mean. You're too sincere. Even now, you're still too gentle. But you're broken, aren't you? How can you still smile? To even think that he still exists on this planet somewhere is almost too much for me to bear. How dare he--!... Far away from us, he's still a factor. Whose life is he ruining now? It's none of our business, but he shouldn't be allowed. Don't you think, Makoto?... I wouldn't bother asking you. You don't think he did anything wrong.
And you survived, didn't you? The sun. That heat. That pain. And you still have light, and life, and joy completely separate to those past events. And you still come back to me, so I can't call myself dead, not just yet. I don't understand and I miss what we had, but we're not dead yet.
There's still sunlight but it's far away, outside the bedroom window; I pull the curtains closed, going back to bed, and you.
end