Christmas #2
The second year is harder, because it burns like liquor on the way down. What little spirit she had mustered for the holidays is consumed by pyromania, by a mouth and body swollen with bruises and bites, by the tenderness between her thighs. Neither of them spoke, and the only noises heard for that one long night when bells were meant to ring out and the world begin anew were the sounds of battle - the battle between them, the Ihateyousomuch or Neverletmego battle that's raged ever since they were sixteen years old. Sex isn't absolution, she should've realised; but then it takes two to tango, and only one to keep the secret.
"Explain that."
"What?"
"Explain it."
His voice is harsh, hard with emptiness, and she presses her face into the pillow to let a few quiet tears disappear inobtrusively into its softness. "I don't know what that was."
He presses his body to her back, angry and hungry and snarling in her ear. "Yes, you do - or was I being too subtle for you? This is all you want from me, so now you've had it you can get out."
"Chuck -"
"Out."
Blair flips over with lightning speed, and although there's not a whisper of clothing or an inch of space between them she doesn't care. Her skin is on fire, her face is on fire, her heart is on fire with sadness and rage. "Don't you make me out to be a whore," she hisses. "Because I'm not. You don't get to call me a whore, because the only one around here who thinks the best way to heal his wounds by getting them licked is you." She's breathing hard, near enough directly into his mouth, and she damn well hopes that sharing breath is enough to make him feel it. "And I am not one of your pay-per-view whores, so just you try and kick me out."
"Whore," he says aloud, and she slaps him. Once one cheek is red, warm beneath her fingers, she backhands him across the other one and lets the reward come through in his gritted teeth.
"Adulterous whore," he offers, and she hits him in the mouth hard enough to draw blood and make them both pant.
"You always did like being hurt, didn't you?" She sneers, one perfect fingernail raking down his cheek and raising a cruel mark. "Like being spanked because Mother wasn't around to do it, right?"
It's his turn and he grabs her by the nape of her neck, by the long hair growing there in dark, glossy waves. She shrieks in astonishment and pain, and he bites down on the soft creamy verge where shoulder moves into throat. Marked, irrevocably - the bruise it leaves is scarlet, sinister, ready to be deep purple and sloe plum blue. Her fingers scrabble uselessly at his chest, bringing up further welts, and then a well placed kick sets them tumbling off the bed and onto the cold floor, ripping at each other like creatures depraved, deprived by circumstance, denied one another for too long and sent to the dark recesses of one another's minds for use only in the cultivation of sticky sheets and sheens of sweat and the burning below the waistline which can mean pleasure or pain.
They're not sure when it turns into sex, because the feelings are so similar: anger, ecstasy, blind panic. All they know is that she's on top and sobbing and he's below and he hates her. The moments after are silent, painful; then he holds her close, one ripple of two people like one body and lets her cry for hours, tears and sweat mingling on his chest.