Falling From Grace
© 2004 Black Tangled Heart
Disclaimer: The Virgin Suicides belongs to Jeffery Eugenides and Sofia Coppola. The song used is "6 Underground" by the Sneaker Pimps.
Dedication: To Kara and Petal, who have inspired me and brought me much happiness.
Talk me down, safe and sound
Too strung up to sleep
Wear me out, scream and shout
Swear my time's never cheap
I fake my life like I've lived
Too much, I take whatever you're given
Not enough,
Overground, watch this space,
I'm open to falling from grace
She doesn't know how he's heard about her nightly fornications on the roof. She doesn't care, either. She's unbuttoned the trousers of work uniforms and suits. She's peeled down jeans, had her own pulled open. Rough hands tracing her sharp hipbones, gaunt abdomen, smoothing across each individually displayed rib. Messy fingers through her messy hair. Her lip gloss smeared on dry mouths.
She's insistent tonight, though her face seems bored, blank. Her fingers are practiced, her nails blunt, her lips hot. She barely even shivers in the cool air, comfortable after so many nights up here. Broken shingles chafing her skin, tomato juice shaken up and spraying her down, rhythmic shoving. Her bored, blank face indicating that her mind is somewhere else entirely.
There is a higher place this girl is reaching for, he knows. It is not a place painted with angels or gilded gates. He doesn't know what lies in her eyes and resounds in her head whilst their bodies move, but he knows she is intent on finding another place, touching it with her white hand, kissing it with her pink mouth.
She was the still point of the turning world.
It seems as though she hasn't even looked him straight in the face. He wonders how she'll react when she does.
He's heard about this from other boys, but never really expected it. All the other girls he's ever fucked have thrown themselves at his feet, clothes undone, mouths slack. He feels suddenly inexperienced, cautiously touching her back, her neck. She doesn't seem to notice his apprehension. Maybe she's used to intimidating other people, with her carnality and ennui both. She stares past him as they fuck, clawing his shoulders, pressing herself up against his chest. He winces at the pain that comes in waves, but there's pleasure too, because she does this flawlessly without even thinking.
It's like a drug. She's addicting. Sweet like a heroin fix, shimmering like coke.
He lets his arms slip further about her back and slide down to rest on her waist. He kisses just below her collarbone, its edge like a razor. Her fingers curl into his back as her spine curls, her hair flowing like a white flame. "Lux," he rasps against her cold skin.
Most people never taste that kind of love . . .
She stops. Her face drains of what little colour lingers there, and rushes back. She pulls herself up and stares at him, mouth agape in silent shock. Her cheeks bloom with fresh blood roses. She grips his wrist and presses his hand beneath her dark blue shirt, up across her stomach to the edge of her breasts, where he can feel her shaking.
"Why did you leave." It's more a seething slice of fury than a question. She kisses him with the same fury before he can answer.
She remembers homecoming. His hand in her white tights, though he never stripped her of them. His kiss slick and sweet. Headlights bearing down cruelly on their bodies. And now she knows she'll do what she didn't do that night. She's been doing what she didn't do that night, with him in her mind every time.
He kisses her back just as hard. Her name is a gasp between the blur of lips and tongues and clicking teeth. "Lux." It's all that will scrape free of his throat. Her name like a chant, a prayer, an obsession. Devotion. His goddess on her incarcerated throne, ice in her eyes and fire in her hair.
She kisses him. Kisses him deeply, splits him open. Every pent up scream and tear threatens to burst out of her, but she holds it in. She'll wake her parents if she sobs how she needs to. Instead she shudders in silent desperation in his arms, head down, fists clenched, tears soundlessly streaming. "Why did you leave."
He marvels at her, her emotional spectrum. She's breathing hard, sharply. He takes her wet face in his hands. The words can barely slip past his lips, and they seemed paltry even before he'd thought so a thousand times. "I don't know." She inhales and he puts a finger to her lips. Silenced, she exhales, slumps toward him, fresh tears falling.
He does know. He knows exactly why he left her, though he'll never admit it to anyone but himself. He cared about her. About her smile. About how, even with a domineering family and her pale, saintly younger sister gone, sweetness and vitality flowed from her like tears. He cared. He'd never cared before. Never once had he cared about any of the naked girls in his room, even when they curled up next to him, with sweaty skin and meaningless I love yous and promises that were broken before they were even uttered.
It was so easy with all the other girls.
She challenged him. She made his pulse race. She made him care.
He presses his lips to the crown of her hair.
"But you're the best thing that ever happened to me, Lux Lisbon."
She has no words just then. She wraps her arms around him and pulls him close to her. It isn't with raw lust that they come together, like they have before. It isn't with need to reach a higher place, or for him to see her face again. It is a mutual yearning for comfort. Bare skin against bare skin; her top pulled up, his unbuttoned. Skin against skin, shivering from anything but cold.
For the first time, she doesn't want to get this over with. This isn't something meaningless anymore. She wants to feel every sensation, the pain and pleasure both. His hair as it tickles her cheek, the smell of his neck, the roughness of his voice and motions. The roof's broken shingles leave their mark on her body, but so does he.
I'd loved a lot of ladies, but not like that. That was real.
She's never made love before. Never gave physicality to the words. Never thought to enjoy such a thing; until now it has served to remind her of her own mortality. Of the blood under her thin skin, her heart behind her brittle ribs. She's fucked, yes. Fucked hard, fast, without care or meaning. Fucked slow, which bored her. But this is different. Wanting to remember every touch, every taste, one pleasure after another. She knows it will end and he'll leave. She doesn't know if he'll ever return, if she'll ever again feel the richness of his skin, the dark sweetness of his lips, hear his voice in her ear.
You're a stone fox.
But she has him now.
And she silently and completely gives herself to him. All of her. Her mind comes down from its high arc, and she is in every moment with him. Her heart unlocks itself from its chains. Her eyes bright with wonder, with childishness. She is a child after all, he reminds himself. Her downy arm, her shiny lip, her soft cheek. She brings herself into reality, and for once is eager to live in the moment. To see him to touch him. To laugh with him in the dark as they reunite. To live, together in a stolen piece of perverse heaven, atop the broken roof of a house in Michigan.
She has found her unreachable place, and reaches for it with both hands.
Her life is scattered around her on the roof. Spermicide and cola bottles, a tube of pink lip gloss, a pack of cigarettes. Until this moment she has reduced herself down to her body. Her heart and soul and mind have been forgotten, left to turn to dust. But they're in bloom now, like the blood roses on her cheeks.
She doesn't know how long they stay up there. It's longer than she'd ever stayed with any other man; they'd go home to their wives or their early morning shifts. She and Trip share cigarettes between the sharing of skin, and heart, and self. The sky is brilliant rose and gold by the time he buttons up his shirt and crushes his cigarette, before crushing her mouth in a kiss that would have been goodnight had it not been dawn.
"Goodnight, not goodbye."
"Do you promise?"
He looks away.
That girl drove me crazy, man.