A/N - Andddd I'm back! A kind of unique pairing here, but one I really like.

Pairing: Damien/Pip


They say that the last enemy that will be destroyed is death. But who ever said I was the enemy? I didn't ask for this; never wanted to be a part of it. Just got caught up, I guess. Pulled into a world that I confess I've never truly understood. I've lived an unconsciously devious life. I've always done what I was told, followed my instructions. Not without consequence. I have felt, for the better part of my life, suspended—hung like a marionette. Dangled above by strings that I cannot see nor control. My existence is a haze of greed, lust, envy. And all I really want is to feel…

Something different.

Something loud, and incredibly close—something that deafens the ache of my consciousness and makes me scream. I want to be hit with emotion, struck hard in the chest by it. I want to be blown through like a bullet, I want to be left to rot.

Mostly, I just want to be alive.

Even death can dream.


I watch him from across the hall. Does he know how long I've followed after him? Does he know that I've spent most of my life watching him sleep? Dream?

Does he know that I want to be inside his skin? To be so close to something so endlessly good that I just cease, entirely. That I become him, like a tree growing up through a glass house. I've known him since I was a child, and I covet him like a jewel. He's simple, unaffected. His life is marked by small sorrows and great tragedies, and yet a million smiles have passed his lips and a thousand splendid suns have broken through his eyes in the springtime. He lives, truly.

My eyes follow the way his knees bend as he bows his back to scoop the letters off the floor. The ones the postman left earlier, along with a package from Johannesburg, where I know he has a relative. He stands and my eyes move across his figure, tall and lithe and made beautiful by age. Gone is the gangly, underfed orphan of our younger years, replaced instead by a tall and languid young man.

His hair is still a startling gold, kept short and tousled and tucked beneath a tattered paperboy cap. His eyes, green, glitter behind a pair of black-rimmed glasses. His legs, long, are covered by slender gray jeans, the king that taper at the ankle, exposing the laced leather boots he inherited from an old roommate. His torso, toned, is wrapped in the confines of an oversized gray cardigan, the kind you find at the second hand store. His whole person screams 'I own at least two cats and read Dostoyevsky for fun'. I would enjoy removing every piece of clothing, feeling the fabric slip between my fingers, almost as much as I would enjoy feeling his naked skin beneath the pads of my thumbs.

I turn my head when he looks up at me. Sometimes I wonder how it is he doesn't remember me. Sometimes I'm grateful he doesn't. Sometimes I'm certain he knows exactly who I am, and just doesn't feel the need to say anything.


"What do you want from me?"

It's Tuesday, and the bistro is quiet. His voice cuts through me like a knife. That refined Anglo inflection makes the hair on my arms stand stock straight. I force my face to remain impassive and sink my teeth into the Danish I've neglected all morning. My mind is racing. Does he know me? Has he always known? Or is it something else?

Has he noticed the way I watch him? Heard the groans from my lips on the witching hour, when my hand follows my mind to places I can only imagine he'd ever touch? I remain silent, and sip at my tea.

I don't look up when I hear the metal chair scrape back against the pavement. I don't look up when his cool fingers close around my wrist, or when he removes the cup from my grasp.

"I asked you a question."

"And I didn't answer," I reply softly. I move my eyes to his. The effect is similar to being punched in the gut, hard.

"I know you."

My hands are beginning to shake. I should leave, I should run away. But I can't. I'm glued, rooted to the spot and unable to make head nor tails of my thoughts. I can't think to speak, can't reason to lie. So instead I sit, and I stare across the sidewalk. There's a woman, walking her dog—

"I know you. I know I do. What do you want from me?"

"Why would I want anything from you?"

"I see you."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes, you do."

It's silent. I keep my eyes trained on the ground until I hear the tell-tale sign of the chair against the concrete. He's gone. My heart is throbbing in my mouth.


"Listen. I want you to stop following me, okay? It was alright before, but now it's just—Christ. It's not normal, you understand? It's not…healthy. Alright?"

He's standing so close I can hardly move without breathing in his scent. That floral odor, like honey and nectar in April. I lean my back against the door, my hands buried deep in my jeans pockets. I flick my hair out of my eyes, blinking. His eyes are confused, hesitant. He watches me for a signal.

"No."

His eyebrows furrow. He takes a step back.

"What do you mean? You've got to. You've got to leave me alone."

He sounds frantic, but I can't sympathize. I've never had to feel that sensual sting, that shiver of the spine that suggests that something otherworldly is standing in your presence. I've never had to feel my own evil, not the way he is now. I wonder, momentarily, if he ever looks over his shoulder for me.

"No, I don't, Phillip," I say his name softly, and his eyes go all hazy like he isn't sure what to do with himself. Two steps and our noses are almost touching. He leans in like he wants to, like he's considered it before. I lean in because I've considered it a thousand times, but before the sensitive skin of lips and lips can touch, he's gone. The slamming of the door tells me 'not far', and I smile.


It's been two months. Our lips have touched seven times. Our hands have tangled twice. Mostly, though, we just sit in his apartment and watch the pictures flash across his old TV screen. I like Casablanca the best.

Tuesday comes again.

"Phillip? What are you doing?"

I've opened the door, and he's standing in the center of the living room, or what doubles as a living room and part of the dining space. He's holding a canister of kosher salt in one hand, and the other is clutching his opposite hip, a nervous habit I've noticed has worsened over time. His body is framed by a ring of the white crystals, his eyes alight with something I can never quite place.

"A ring of salt will protect you. The book said that. So you can't come near me, alright? I've got a bloody ring of salt. And you can't touch me. So don't even bother."

I shake my head. I can't help it; it's so ridiculous, I can't even stop myself. I've crossed the room in four quick strides, and in two more I'm standing with both my feet over the barrier of salt that he's poured senselessly all over the floor. He swallows, and his hands are clutching at the leather of my jacket.

"I don't want this. I don't want to love you," he whispers softly. I drag my fingertips through his hair, trying to remember what it felt like when we were children and his locks had nearly touched his shoulders. I can't. It's all faded, all old and misshapen—my memory is fading. The idea makes me feel frantic, and I clutch him tighter against my chest.

That night, we fuck for the first time. He moans my name when he comes, and falls asleep against my chest. I watch the streetlights from the city dance across the ceiling. I listen to his breathing. I count my heartbeats.

I feel awake.


The cat has taken a liking to me. Pip says it reminds him of me, the way its fur is black and its eyes are bright and blue. I call him 'Cee-A-Tee'. He sleeps at my end of the bed. I don't ever say it, but I envy the cat a little. It's so gentle. It's life so simple and full of fleeting joy. It's always well-fed and watered.

It's loved.


It's been nearly two years. We've kissed one thousand, seven hundred, and eighty-two times. We've clasped hands nine hundred and twenty-six times. We've fucked more times than I can count or recall. Mostly, though, we just sit in our apartment and watch the pictures flash across the screen of our old TV.

I hold his thin body against my chest as the muted scenes of Breakfast at Tiffany's cast their glow across our faces. I can feel it in his bones, sense it at the very center of my wasted core. He's not happy.

I don't flinch when his soft English inflection breaks the silence.

"Damien. Do you love me?"

"There's no such thing."

"You don't mean that."

He waits for me to confirm that he's right, that I don't mean it. That I love him without ends or beginnings, that I will always care for him in the right way. The decent way. But I don't.

Instead, I press my lips against the nape of his neck and whisper that I'm tired. And then I peel myself away from him, and disappear into the blackness of the hallway.

I collapse on the bed in a fit. My heart is hammering so hard that I can taste blood in my mouth. My limps are twitching, shaking with the adrenaline that could have only come from him. I do love him. Without ends or beginnings, without borders or walls. I love him so much I want to scream.

I feel my breath coming from between my lips in fractured gasps. It's almost like feeling alive.

Like being free.


It's Tuesday. I wake up in the blue darkness of twilight, and the space beside me is empty. I don't flinch. Instead, I crawl out of bed, my feet tracing the lines in the wooden floor. The closet is open, but it's only hangers on his side. Hangers and a tie he never liked, something his grandmother had sent him for his birthday once. I step into the living room, and nothing's all that different. Just muted, like that film. Quiet. Almost like we were asleep.

I sit down at the table. I don't have to look to know that his hat is gone from the hook behind the door.

My fingers close around the salt shaker. I knock the crystals into my palm, reminded of how he'd tried to protect himself from me. From this. And maybe he'd been right after all. Because even without the strings, I never could tell him.

The truth.

I dump the glass out on the table and run my finger slowly through the white dust. I can feel Cee-A-Tee mewling against my back.

'I miss you.

The cat misses you more, though.

We are still young.'

I sit back in the chair. They say the last enemy that will be destroyed is death.

The first?

Life.


A/N - Thank you for reading! Look forward to reviews for this one..curious what everyone thinks!