Disclaimer: I don't own; I borrow.
Author's Note: Another huge thanks goes out to Allison for editing this. Warning for slightly graphic content and other things that may make you sick. As always, read with an open mind. I have decided to continue this, so we'll see where I take it. Call this my little stoke of genius. Mm, and before I forget, another thank you of mass proportions goes out to everyone and anyone who's listened to me babble about this story.
Two| Layers
He has another one of his infamous black eyes, and you shrug it off with a chuckle because you can't remember if it was you or his dad that gave it to him. The swell of purple and blue against his dark skin makes you want to bruise other parts of him. It's his skin, but it belongs to you. Especially at night when you're swirling the tips of your fingers over him, trying to figure out how something so thin and elastic holds his bones together so tightly. You taste the sinews in the tops of his hands and wonder why such crimson blood doesn't spill or pool in his palms when he cups them. If it did, you'd drink it like it was the blood of Christ and devour him as if his skin could bring you the sort of salvation your soul secretly craves.
And you crave the taste. Sticky and sweet on your tongue like thick summertime air. The way it sits between the grooves of your teeth and doesn't leave, even after you've brushed them. You take solace in knowing that you're the only one who gets these little pieces of him—all these fragments that are going to eventually equate to a whole. Then it'll be all him and none of you because you can't be two people. Well, you could be, but your psychotic state of mind isn't something you need to be dwelling on now. You need parts of yourself mixed in there too, even though you don't particularly like who and what you are. You don't know what you do, or how you do it, or even why.
But him—he could tell you if you asked because he knows things you wouldn't expect him to know. He could color in the outline of your silhouette and not have to think about how your heart beats only nine-hundred times a day. He knows because he's counted, and you're not sure why you find that so pathetic and disgusting. The thought of him counting the thread-y thud, thud, thud resounding inside your chest makes you sick. It reminds you just how vulnerable he is, though you'd never say he's any sort of innocent.
You shake your head and rub your face, watching him from the tail of your eye as he shifts next to you. That perfect coloring of his exposed back, rising and falling with every heavy, sleep-leaden breath he takes. All the blood that's left in your body rushes between your legs, leaving your head deprived and spinning, and sits there like the heat in the South. Not only does it burn, but it's heavy, and it twists, and it stings, and it knots all your insides together until you're sure you'll fall into some cardiac arrest if you don't touch him.
He needs to be touched. Every inch of him is taunting you with words of mockery and things that manipulate all the working mechanisms in your head into stalling. They know you're weak to temptation and how tempting he is. You can't tear your eyes away, afraid you'll miss something if you do. The way you get off on him is almost as disgusting as him, as you, as these sheets.
Shifting, you gnash your teeth together and skim your fingers over his shoulder blade. The feeling causes all that South-bound heat to expand into the pit of your stomach, and he doesn't stir except to produce a sheet of goose bumps for you to do with as you please. You wonder if this counts as taking advantage of him. That space in your head reserved for all your perverse thinking tells you he wouldn't care if it was. If he woke up to your fingers prodding him, and your teeth clamped around one of his nipples, he'd encourage you with breathy moans and course, needy gestures.
It wouldn't seem wrong for him to cling to you and beg for more, or try and push down on whatever you have inside him. Fingers—or that lovely male appendage you're so proud of—he wouldn't care. And you wouldn't either because neither of you have morals or any other sense of right and wrong.
You flip onto your side and tuck a hand under your pillow, glaring at the wall. In all your insanity, you swear it glares back. Its eyes are two gaping holes, scorching you with the acidic familiarity of something you'd be better off without. Then the wallpaper peels back a little more, exposing a mouth full of sharp teeth and more of those manipulating words that just buzz, and buzz, and buzz inside your head. They're telling you to feel him, run your palms along his sides and inhale that suffocating scent of his hair.
Yet he doesn't think you're selfish. He knows you don't keep him around because you care. You give him a bed and a roof to lay under most nights. And all those lingering feelings of melted libido and ecstasy, the things he could never get anywhere else. Even if he could, he wouldn't because he trusts you in ways nobody should. He ignores everything you are long enough to convince himself that you are different from the perverts who hang around the mouths of alleys, waiting for a kid like him to take advantage of.
Just the thought of someone else getting their hands on him makes you sick. You know it's another one of the reasons why he's here. He's more than all right with being alone, but you're constantly paying attention to him. That's how you know when he wants it—his irises swell, and he chews on the right corner of his bottom lip. You know he's going to let you in no matter what you do to him and would do so even if he didn't want it. That's the glory of being you; you're some kind of fucking God.
But backward logic has been weaving whatever spell it has around this entire situation. Johnny is the one in control, and it doesn't matter how many times you run it around in your head, or how many times you tell it to any part of this room that'll listen—facts are never bent to fit absurd fantasies. You're like some kind of marionette when it comes to him, all mindless and doing whatever he wants you to.
At least he knows you'll hurt him the same way you'd hurt anyone else. You roll onto your other side—back to where this whole thing started—and glide your fingers through his hair. Black strands, as dark as the night you're so afraid of, coat you with a layer of grease like it's an extra layer of skin that moves with you when you start pulling away the combination of synthetic fabrics you call a blanket.
You have to touch him. Your palm finds his side, and his breathing catches because your hands are cold. But then he shifts, reaches out with his hand, and locks his fingers around your wrist. Not what you've had in mind, but you don't mind a struggle.
"Did you actually plan on wakin' me up, or were you gettin' off on the thought of fucking me while I was asleep?" He lets your wrist go and rubs his face, trying to work the sleep out from the corners of his eyes.
"You would've woken up eventually," you tell him, eclipsing his body between you and the mattress. "Maybe."
"Maybe?" he repeats, pushing the hair out of his eyes. "What other sick shit are you doin' while I'm asleep, huh?"
You give him the sort of shit-eating grin you save for the floozies you sometimes pick up when you need the scent of a thirsty female to cover up what you've been doing. It causes him to shake right down to the marrow in his bones, and you've never seen his eyes so wide.
"If I wanted you to know, I'd be doin' it while you're awake."
"Dallas..." he trails off and bites on his bottom lip—that right corner you hate so much.
Running your tongue along his jaw, you let him tangle his hands in your hair and push himself into you.
"You're too easy," you say and chuckle against him. "Get your hands out of my fucking hair."
He scowls, shoving you back by your shoulders. "Quit touchin' me if you don't want my hands on you, then."
But he wants you to touch him. You lick at his lips and jostle around on top of him, ignoring all the names he throws at you as he drags his nails up your back and tells you to stop. It's not until his spit's in your face and he's calling you a "fucking pig" that you really listen. And even then, it's not so much listening as it is you backhanding him.
"That's real tuff, Dal," he spits, rolling his eyes. "You oughta just knock a few of my teeth out next time."
"Don't push me," you growl, wiping your face. "Don't fucking push me, Cade."
He laughs, but you don't see what's funny. You just want out of this room; the heat is getting to you both. It's going to put you both in the loony bin, receiving shock therapy twice a day because nobody really knows how to handle someone who's insane. All those volts they pump through the heads of the people who are thought to be some sort of threat to the rest of the nation and its mental health aren't helping. And if that's what people are calling crazy, then they obviously haven't met you yet.
They have no idea what crazy is. You're a poster boy for their treatments, and you'd never stand a chance if anyone ever found out how neurotic, and psychotic, and deranged you are.
So maybe that's why he's laughing. Or maybe because neither of you really have anything to fight about. There's no legitimate reason to snap at each other, but you had every right to belt him like you did. And you'd do it again.
Snickering, he grabs your hands and shoves them inside the boxers you watched him pull on last night.
"You know, Dal," he starts, letting his eyelids fall shut as you swirl your thumb over the tip of his cock. You can't help but notice how thick his eyelashes are. "Next time you wanna touch me, just do it."
The next time you touch him, you'll probably kill him.
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