Sleeping with ghosts.

This takes place in a probable future, when Uni has become more like the woman her mother was, in more ways than one.



Her hands are small, Gamma finds himself thinking, and he marvels at the way they look as they reach down, sliding just under his open coat, ghosting over his shirt and the skin and bone it conceals. Her fingers, white under black and just over grayish blue. The feather-like weight of her palm, warming him more than the fire burning steadily in the fireplace. He looks up and all he can see are her eyes and that small, rosebud mouth, sketched against the light (or near lack thereof) in the room.

Gamma has seen Uni under all sorts of conditions over the years, but he would have never imagined something like this. Dreamed it maybe, and dreamed it enough times to undo himself with longing, but there was a reason why he fought so hard to maintain that perfect distance, the small chasm between her back and his line of vision, spanning the length of his arm. The safe distance: the one thing he wasn't supposed to break. He was left to wonder, then, when he had let his guard slip and allowed her to turn around and touch him back.

"…Princess…?"

Gamma is choking now on the way he's always called Uni and she's still smiling, still all lightness and grace bundled neatly on his lap, legs straddling his waist, hands now drifting up and catching his face between them, holding him steady. "Gamma," she murmurs, affectionately, as though he were the now fully grown child and she the Guardian who always stood just right there, right where he could always see her and not be afraid of falling, "it's nothing, really." So calm. Always so perfectly calm.

When they kiss, though, Gamma tastes the need inside of her mouth and it's hot enough to burn him. Has she always wanted this? he wonders, as Uni coaxes his tongue out with her own, gazing straight into his eyes as they share one breath after another. She holds him still, with nothing but her lips and her hands. He does think about running, just once – a stray and blasphemous thought, as the memory of her mother comes to mind. That woman, though, is a name on a cold tombstone out behind an old willow tree, and Uni Giglionero is here, right here, breathing his name just against his ear just as her hands move down: one upon his shoulder (steadying) and the other burrowing gently between them, fingers reaching for the zipper of his pants. There's a sudden surge of panic, sharp and painful, built out of years of guilt and wanting. She kills it by kissing him harder.

Uni can't entirely untangle the knots he's made out of his heart in a single night and she seems to know this: it is in her smile and the rehearsed, guiding touch of her fingers. She is beneath Gamma but she controls Gamma, even while he moves inside of her, even if he grips her nearly hard enough to break someone who might not be as prepared as she is to face up to just how much he's needed this.

Gamma is above her but he follows her, tracing down paths familiar because he's traced the contours on another body, in another place. He follows Uni, as he has always done, as he always will. He wants to tell her this, but words have never been his strong point. He shows her instead, by sinking down, resting his head between her breasts, listening for her heartbeat. She smiles and pulls the sheets over them both, to give them a place to hide.

Outside, it begins to snow.

1 31 Days Theme: April 8, 2008.