Will Henry gasped against the skin on the lean back before him. He dug his fingers into the pale and narrow hips and drove himself deeper. He tipped back his head and released a shaking moan. When the man before him shuddered and bucked those hips, Will fell forward, one hand coming up to card into the dark rumpled hair, the other reaching around to wrap around the length of him.
He pulled at the dark hair, his lips coming down against his neck to bite and suck. This caused all manner of hushed noises to flow from the man he held in his arms. He thrust and pulled his four fingered hand at a brutal pace, the squirming needy cries of the man under him driving him desperately forward.
Unbidden by thought, he groaned it into the shell of the pale ear, "Pellinore."
The man jerked to a stop under him and twisted around to look at him, anger and hurt in his eyes, "What the hell did you just call me?"
Will drew back, startled for a single moment. The eyes so soft and warm, thrown wide to communicate the distress and indignation, not right at all. And the cheeks and jaw not nearly sharp enough. Handsome, beautiful even, but not correct.
The man drew himself away from Will, shoving him back, by the chest, "Who the fuck is Pellinore?"
Will stuttered, his breath still shaky, "I'm...sorry… I'm sorry."
He got up, knocking Will back onto his haunches. He stood over Will and gave an angry and humorless laugh, "What's my name, Will?"
Will could only shrug. He had chosen him for the hair and the broad shoulders, for his long fingers and pale skin. Maybe Eric? Maybe Carl?
The man swore and pulled his on his boxers, then his jeans, "Go to hell, Will, you're a goddamned asshole." He was obviously upset, yanking his t-shirt on inside out before stalking toward the door,
"Don't fucking call me, Henry." Then he laughed again, "Shit, I even know your last name, I'm the asshole." Tears were in his voice and Will knew that he ought to feel guilt but he felt only loss.
The door slammed and Will let himself fall forward onto his pillows. He beat his hand against them then pulled them over the top of his head, muffling his shout into the mattress. He screamed against the fabric and screamed. He would scream until his throat hurt. He clawed at his skin, if he could turn the agony the lurched in his chest into something physical maybe he could bear it. He had been so close. For a minute he had had it, he had had it all back. He had had Pellinore in his arms again. He shouted again and struck his fists into the bed, the right one slammed into the wooden headboard and he cried out, twisting onto his back and cradling his knuckles against him. He thrashed back around and slammed his knuckles down on the wood. There were marks there already, from other nights like this one when he had been overcome. Pain was lancing through his hand but he continued smashing it against the headboard. Blood would blossom under the skin and turn his knuckles purple, they would ache for days.
Tears were slipping out of his eyes, rolling sideways down his face, "Fuck you, Warthrop," he whispered. It had ripped itself open again and his stomach was sick with the grief of it. How did it still hurt, how could it possibly still hurt? It had been so long. Almost a hundred years since he'd put that vile, loathsome, arrogant, beautiful man in the earth. How could he still grip Will so tightly that he felt he would never be able to properly breathe?
Will threw a pillow across the room and dug his head back against the mattress. Pellinore's smell was not there. Of course it was not there. The last time Pellinore's smell had been anywhere this mattress, this room, this entire building had not even existed. He had been wiped from existence so utterly that Will began to shake to think of it. Someone else had bought the house at Harrington Lane and demolished it. The Monstrumologist Society no longer met, their records gone. There was not a single piece of Pellinore Warthrop left. How would he stand to not press his face again into the curve of Pellinore's neck? To feel his long fingered hands tugging at his hair?
He would settle even for the long lectures and melancholic stupors where Pellinore had lashed out at him and refused to be touched. He would have taken a single day more. Even a day of deep obsession where Will existed no more to the doctor than the doctor did now, to Will. Will would have exchanged his next unnumberable days on the earth for one more drawn breath in the dark, Pellinore's long arms wrapped around him, or a single touch of his lips. How was it that he was cursed to forge unendingly forward as the world writhed under him and not have Pellinore to greet him in the dark?
How long had they lived with one another? Why had it not been long enough for this godforsaken parasite to infect Warthrop as well? Why was it only him? If it had passed along into Pellinore's blood he would be lying beside Will now. They would not have even had to pretend now. He might have pressed Pellinore's limits and kissed him in restaurants and on trains. He wondered now if Pellinore would have ever consented to marry him. He had amused himself with that thought when the world began changing. He would have had to convince him to go to Pellinore Henry, Will Warthrop was far too comic book. Will had spent entire nights creating pleas and bargains for a man who would never hear them. Asking him to forgo the name Warthrop would not be an easy battle. Although if he could not convince him, Will supposed he would not have minded being introduced as the Doctors Warthrop.
In 1953, when he had seen the book on the structure of DNA he might have simply endured Pellinore's obsession over it, rather than stand in unseemly tears in a book store. Will had purchased a copy anyway and read it until he near to had it memorized, sat in beside On the Origin of Species on his bookshelf. It had survived until 1987 when he had discovered the excisement of Rosalind Franklin in the work and burned it in a fit of horrific rage. Will found he could not bear the deliberate erasing of a scientist.
In the 2003 Pellinore might have curled up against him and joined him in a vitriolic and good natured tirade during a marathon of Monster Hunters. Werewolves in Wisconsin indeed. A professor of biology from a renowned university had appeared on that episode. Will had been able to form, wordperfect, Warthrop's thoughts on that.
What might Pellinore have said about Will's long and untidy hair that he had grown out in the 1960's and kept long until 1978? Ordered him to cut it, no doubt, or cut it himself in his sleep.
Will hadn't decided if Pellinore would take to the newest line of technology or revile it. He had always liked gadgets. Occasionally Will liked to imagine that he could change the background on his cell phone, smart phone, is that what they were calling it? He would have a picture of himself wearing a cheeky smile and the doctor scowling with unkempt hair. Pellinore would call him from the basement while he was sleeping, rouse him with endless buzzing rather than shouts. Maybe he would have set his ringtone to the recorded shouts of "WILL HENREEE".
God in Heaven he would have done anything only to hear an antagonistic shouting of "Snap to, Will Henry!"
Playfully, Will had taken to imagining thirty text messages in a row "Will Henry" "Will Henry" "WILL HENRY."
But Will would not know how Pellinore would alight in glee with the Human Genome Project, or if he would have tried, like Will, to update his wardrobe as the years pressed forward. He would never know if he would have prefered the Backstreet Boys or N'Sync, nor if he would be sick and irritable on airplanes. He would never feel the repercussions of sending dirty text messages to him during a colloquium nor endure lengthy and grammatically correct responses. Will would not ever hear Pellinore's opinions on the marriage of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, for surely he would have kept up with it. He would not know what he thought about Harry Potter or The Hobbit or the newest craze of turning books into half-hearted movies. Hell, he would not know if Pellinore would have held his hand in the darkness of a movie theater, or teased Will until they got themselves kicked out.
Will Henry would never know any of these things about Pellinore Warthrop, because in his arawakus immortality, Will Henry lay in a bed in 2015 that smelled only of himself, entirely alone.