"I liked trees."
The girl turned to face the boy in the passenger seat. He was staring out the window at the passing woods. His skin was milky in the moonlight. His eyes were hollowed and dark.
"And now?" She prodded softly. Reluctantly, her gaze returned to the yellow stripe down the middle of the road.
"I don't."
"Why?"
He breathed deeply - shakily. His hands fidgeted in his lap. He looked away from the forest lining the road and into his empty palms. "When I see trees I see him."
Malia nodded, readjusting her grip on the wheel. She didn't ask him to explain further. She knew he was still hurting, even now, months later. It would be a long time before he forgot, if ever. Stiles knew this. He knew he was broken. He twiddled his fingers more, mesmerizing himself with his nimble joints and his palms which didn't seem as vast and strong as they once did. No more did he look at his hands and see tools for touching and soothing and helping and healing. He looked at his hands and saw that they were covered in blood and pain and were turned into weapons.
"Are you sad?" Malia asked.
The boy's mouth quirked. He stuffed his bloodied hands between his thighs and his gaze trained sightlessly over the dash. "No." He was quiet for a few minutes. She waited. "I'm empty…" Seconds later he seemed to regret his statement. "I'm full."
Malia chuckled quietly, head cocking to the side. "Okay, Stiles. Whatever you say."
"No, I-" He stopped, grinning gently at himself. With a deep breath, he reiterated. "I have this huge weight filling my chest. It presses on me and makes it hard to breathe… It makes everything feel pointless... Empty."
"Okay."
He nodded, as if agreeing with himself. It did make everything seem pointless. The weight made it hard to smile and laugh and love. Though he didn't know quite what the weight actually was, he could guess. Maybe it was depression. Inevitable death. Guilt. There were plenty of possibilities. None were for certain.
The car was quiet as they approached a secluded stretch of beach.
"I used to be good at art." Malia said as the car rounded the last corner. It pulled to a halt in a tiny parking lot above the sand.
Both of them stared at the crashing water, silent. Still.
"I was smart." Stiles supported.
"I was a fast runner."
"I was funny."
Inside the car was peaceful. Neither said a word.
Malia turned the car off and sat, facing the waves, her seatbelt done up and her key in her hand. She felt too heavy to move. Stiles sniffed, releasing the air in a shaky breath, and cleared his throat.
"I guess in the end we were too weak to uphold our potential." The boy offered, covertly rubbing tears from his cheeks. "Everything we could have been… now look at us." He laughed quietly; a dark, mocking sound, unnatural when coming from his soft, pink lips.
"Hey," Malia hushed, taking his hand and undoing her seatbelt. "At least we're together." She tried.
"I'm broken," the boy reminded her. New tears stung his eyes. He looked away from her, embarrassed.
The girl nodded, averting her gaze towards the ocean. She rubbed circles into the back of his trembling hand. "I'm here."
She had somehow managed to convince him to strip naked for the second time that night.
Malia had taken his hand and was leading him into the water. The sand curled around his toes. The wind was needy and clung to them as they waded through it, its tendrils pulling at them, and Stiles reveled in the feeling of being wanted by something even as common and worthless as the air. He breathed deeply, closing his eyes, and allowed the girl to guide him through the shivery water up to his ankles, then his knees, then his hips, then his ribs. They stopped when it licked at her collarbone. He gazed towards the sand and the road and civilization and he felt very distanced from it all. It was a comforting feeling. He was on the outside of everything. He was out.
"I'm glad you're here." He told Malia.
She grinned, her eyes training on the ripples they created, not meeting his eyes. "I... I don't know what to say to that." She confessed, a smile poking dimples into her cheeks. It made Stiles grin.
Malia felt elated. She bent her head and covered her face with glistening fingers. She couldn't believe where they were; where Stiles was on his road to recovery. She had missed him. She had thought she'd lost him. But maybe... maybe he would come back. Maybe he was coming back. Unable to find words in the salty night wind, Malia met Stiles' searching eyes and put a palm to his cheek. She pulled him closer until their naked, wet bodies were flush against one another.
"What are we doing here, Stiles?" she murmured.
He took his time to answer. "We're avoiding sleep."
"No, not here, at the beach. I meant here. You and me... together." Her head gestured downwards, to where their bodies were pressed so tightly together they were almost indiscernible from one another.
Stiles shrugged, a rare smile gracing his face. "I think it was sort of inevitable. You and me... You saved me, Malia. You pulled me out of the dark." He pressed his words into her shoulder and her neck and her ear, cementing them to her skin with his lips.
"Okay. I pulled you out of the dark. Now what?" Her voice was rough, struggling to stay even as the boy's teeth and tongue played along her collarbone.
"Now I make up for my sins." Stiles rumbled. "I want to create enough pleasure to match the pain."
Malia suddenly found the air stiflingly hot. The water soothed her burning skin but everything exposed was scorching. Her hands traveled up the boy's jaw and neck and carded through the short hair at the base of his neck. "Pleasure?" she murmured, her breath coming in short, fast huffs.
He nodded against her cheek. "Pleasure. Starting with you."
The girl's hands raked down his spine and she pulled herself up on him, wrapping her legs around his waist and pressing her lips to his in a frenzy. One primal thought had taken over her mind.
Closer. Closer. Closer. She could never be close enough. She loved him. He loved her.
When a moving, dark shape caught the corner of her eye, she froze. Stiles froze. He saw it too. But as they stared they relaxed. It was not a threat. It was a graffiti artist, stealing through the night towards the cement wall cupping the beach. A heavy bag was flung onto the sand. It was opened, and the man in black started creating.
Stiles sunk lower in the water, until the waves lapped at his chin and lips, and Malia hugged closer to him. He felt invisible and it was wonderful.
"We have to be quiet." He whispered on Malia's cheek.
She grinned and nodded.
"You can't make a sound," he continued, voice rough, pressing into her hair.
His hands were pressing along her back and her bum and her thighs. They were caressing and touching and feeling her skin in ways Stiles hadn't for too long a time. His fingers found a stiff nipple, only an inch below the surface of the surging water, and rolled it between a finger and a thumb. His lips found a sweet spot at the base of her neck and she groaned. The fingers left her nipple in a second.
"Shhh..." he breathed. "Quiet, Malia."
"Stiles," she whined, breath laboured. He tweaked the other nipple. She bit her lip, stifling a squeak. "You know you're making this kind of hard."
He didn't respond. He grinned a funny little grin and licked a hot stripe across the base of her neck. Malia swore she felt her skin burn at the touch. She was clay in his hands, moving and shifting as he wished, completely at mercy to the damaged boy supporting her. A particularly strong wave coasted across her lips and she pulled his head up to kiss him through the taste of the sea. His fingers once again found a nipple and she moaned into his lips as they shared hot, wet, open-mouthed kisses.
Suddenly, the world was blue and red. Their heads shot up towards the beach as a siren pierced the air. A cop car approached the secluded stretch of sand, making the graffiti artist drop everything and run. He left his bag. The officer moved to get out of his car before deciding he was tired. He turned the car around and left.
Once again, they were truly alone.
Actually, Malia was truly alone.
As the cop car left, she realized how tight Stiles' grip had become. She started to protest, squirming and palming at his arms and chest before her eyes trained to meet his. They were wide. Empty. Unseeing. His lips were parted and an unmistakable expression of fear had twisted his features.
The sudden flash had sent his delicate mind into a state of shock.
"Stiles?" she murmured. He didn't respond. "Stiles?!" Her voice rose, an unfortunate panic filling her tone.
She repeated his name over and over, frantic, slapping at his chest and shoulders and cheeks.
"Stiles!"
"Stiles," A voice cooed.
The boy blinked. He tried to scream, but his throat was tight and sore and closed. He choked, trying to cough. He struggled desperately to get away from the thing whispering his name an inch from his face. It had a putrid black tongue in an oily, toothless maw and its face was wrapped in ragged white. It taunted him with his name and the boy flinched at every syllable. When his feet finally hit the right angle on the dirt floor he used the new-found leverage to push himself away from the beast. He got a few inches before the pain in his throat was doubled. He stopped, gagging and dry-heaving. Through the dim light he realized that he was tied to the foul creature - the bandages cocooning it had started to cocoon him too, starting at his throat.
"NO!" He protested, voice rasping and dry. His mind went into a fierce and immediate panic. Not again not again not again not again. This couldn't happen - not again.
He clawed desperately at the white strips of gauze, flailing and screaming and kicking and fighting like he never had the chance to when it overtook his mind.
But it was futile.
The bandages were like snakes, smooth and slow, but steadily crawling over his neck, then his jaw, then his chin. Stiles yelled one last, piercing yell, echoing ripped and bloody from a collapsing windpipe. The champion bandages continued, slowly and tightly over his ears and nose. He pulled in one last breath and then stopped.
He stopped.
He gave up.
The boy lay there, limbs loose and beaten, eyeing the creature sitting contentedly across from him, smiling and humming as he died. He held the breath and all sound faded but the pumping of his own heart and then that faded too and then everything was no more.
The girl was now only feet from the beach. She readjusted her grip on his shoulder and arm and tugged with one last heaving effort. They both fell in the shallows of the ocean. Malia sucked in a fortifying breath and pulled herself up before bringing her weight down onto the boy's chest. She smacked his cheeks and his chest and pressed against his throat, hoping the panic of restricted air would stun his mind back into reality. He was breathing, yes, though shallowly, and Malia prayed that those few seconds she had lost her grip and he had sunk to the sand at the bottom of the ocean had not done too much damage.
Then she was crying on his belly. She slapped forsakenly at his chest, sobbing his name and pleas and promises in order for him to wake up.
Those seconds stretched to minutes and were painful and quiet, the water lapping gently and soothingly at their sides.
She lay on his stomach, quieted, rising and falling with his breath, and studied his eyelashes and jawbone and the moles on his cheek intently. She touched his arms and ribs for the sake of touching, for the comfort of his soft, salty skin and the faint warmth he gave her.
Her eyelids fluttered. She closed them, focusing her entirety on willing him awake, willing his mind not to be lost. Not now. Not again.
Minutes later, that seemed like eons, he opened his eyes. The boy blinked a few times, exhausted for some reason. He didn't say a word. He was comforted by her weight and focused on matching his breathing to hers. After a few seconds he couldn't help himself. He quietly laced his fingers with hers.
Malia opened her eyes. She blinked a few times, exhausted for obvious reasons. She didn't say a word. She pulled her taken hand up to her mouth and kissed his knuckles. She kissed his cheeks and kissed his nose and kissed his lips.
"Can I make you mine if I let myself be yours?" her voice was quite and soft. It pulled at him like the waves, drawing him in to her.
Stiles nodded.
She staggered to her feet, wiggling her wet toes in the sand, and walked over to the abandoned bag of paints. She peered inside. The owner was quite the graffiti artist. The old black canvas duffel held spray paint and some tubes of paint and medium and rough brushes. She pulled a tube of dark blue and returned to the boy.
"Promise me you'll remember that you're mine."
He nodded again, still bathing in two inches of the warmest shallow water, reveling in its tiny, salty tongues lapping at his legs and sides and splayed arms. He was spread out beautifully again, lean and pale like the crescent of a moon lording over them.
Malia squeezed some paint onto her fingers and dabbed it over the tips of them all before kneeling beside her lover.
So, so gently, she brushed wet hair away an pressed a finger to his forehead. The paint bled out from her finger, staining his pale skin. She pulled the line down over his nose bridge and lips and chin and neck, continuing until she had split him perfectly in half. He blinked at her, features soft and breathing slow. Malia squeezed more paint out and covered her palms. She pressed a pigmented hand into the right side of his chest, the paint mingling with the water droplets decorating his skin and running off tainted.
"This half can be yours," she murmured. The girl pressed her other palm into the left side, over his beating heart. "But this half is mine."
The boy only nodded again, his eyes following her every movement, finding beauty in every hair caught by the wind and every grain of sand decorating her smooth, wet legs.
Malia continued to paint, his body her canvas, until the stars were reflected in his skin and her fingers pulled lines over the hills and valleys of his ribs and thighs and her hand prints cuffed his ankles and wrists and the shape of her lips decorated his cheeks.
When she had finished she sat back, staring at her masterpiece. He looked like a soldier in war paint. And how true that was. Against all odds, the soldier had come back alive. Wounded, but alive. She liked how her hand cupped his heart and how her fingers cupped his face. She admired how he looked completely hers. Stiles was hers. And she was his.
The girl lay down beside the boy and they stared at the stars and were tickled by the tide as it faded with the night. They breathed in harmony and their fingers found each other, tangling together desperately like rose vines, clinging to each other for safety and life and love.
Dawn soon came.
