Warnings: Slash (Colt/Punk), Profanity, Smut, Heavily AU - Mentions of WWII.
"Brooks!" The sound of the Sergeant's voice rouses me from the half drowse that marching on not enough rations, and too much cold had left me in. We've been liberating Europe for a while now, and whilst sometimes it's okay, other times it's just the deathly drudgery of dealing with the half-mad remnants of the Third Reich. Then there are times like this. We'd all heard of these places, the concentration camps, but seeing them always makes my stomach turn. Starved, abused people herded like cattle, and left to die. Sometimes there are people shot in the back of the head, their bodies in open trenches, rotting in the open, other times they're left in pens, starving, trapped and alone. Nothing they've trained us for prepared us for this, and it never gets any easier. It never stops being something I'm going to have nightmares about for the rest of my life. "Brooks!" The Sergeant shouts again, and I come forward, knowing we're at another one of those awful places, another camp.
"Sir?" I salute vaguely and the Sergeant nods at me, a half-smile on his face. I know what he's going to ask, I know what's about to happen, but I hate doing this. It'd been foolish to tell them that I could speak German, but I did, and I can, a little at least, so I'm always put in lead for when we come to these places, always forced to try and talk to the half-dead people left behind in them.
"You know the drill, Brooks... Take these three, find someone alive enough to talk to us, and get them to tell us what went on here." The Sergeant knows full well what happened here, we all do, we've seen enough of these places to know that nothing but the worst, most terrible things have happened here. We've seen piles of ash six feet high, we've seen piles of shoes, piles of clothes, piles of the possessions of people, and this is another one of those places.
"C'mon, Punk." Ambrose laughs. He and his would be brothers are always assigned to help me with these little investigations. They're a tight knit little trio referred to half-jokingly as The Shield, because that's kind of what they are, three men willing to step in front of a bullet with a faster one of their own, a shield to the rest of the platoon. The camp is quiet, no sounds at all, and there's a part of me that's convinced that alls we're going to find is more corpses, or evidence of more of those forced death marches, corpses trailing in which ever direction they went.
"Hello!" Rollins shouts, and I almost want to smack him, if there were guards still here, it would have alerted them to our presence, but silence meets his call, silence that's broken by the sound of a quiet voice calling Hello back. We follow that quiet little call, and find a gaggle of people in a cell. The ones who were too old, or too young, or too sick, left to die of their own volition.
"Hello?" I step forward, and choke on my words. I can never remember how to talk when faced with these skeletal faces, can never remember that the people who did this to them are as human as the people dying before me. "Sprechen sie Englisch?" My German is rudimentary at best, but I've got more than the entire platoon combined, so this is my job.
"Ja, I do, a little." A voice from the back of the cell comes, and the crowd part, giving me a clear view of a too thin, too tired looking young man, who starts coughing. "You are American?" He asks me something like hope on his face, and an old man turns to him, saying something in German that's too rapid for me to follow. "Ja, ja..."
"Yes. We are Americans." I say slowly, and the man nods slightly, relief and awe colouring his features. He turns to the old man, and relates what I just said. The other people in the cell give a subdued cheer, and I smile awkwardly, stepping aside to let Reigns cut the chain on the cell door. "Are there any more people here?" The man who speaks English sighs, looking at me blankly. "Gibt es noch-"
"I know what you said." The man's voice is softly tired, and I nod, stepping aside to let The Shield into the cell to start moving people out of it. "I don't know." I nod, glancing at Ambrose.
"Yeah... We'll go take a look. You keep him talking." Ambrose smacks Rollins' shoulder, then Reign's back, and the trio start off down the corridor. The rest of the platoon file in, helping the prisoners out to the cold, then to the tents, offering them as much warmth there as they can. The Sergeant comes over to where I'm sitting with the guy who speaks English.
"So, you speak English?" The man beside me looks blankly at the Sergeant, and I have to hold back a smirk. The Sergeant's thick Boston drawl is clearly too difficult to understand.
"Sie sprechen Englisch?" I smile at the man, and he nods.
"A little, you have to talk slow and clear." He smiles back awkwardly, coughing once more.
"You are ill?" He nods in response to my question, and I glance hopefully at the Sergeant.
"I'll send the medic over. Try and find out as much as you can, Brooks." The Sergeant walks off, and I nod at him, turning back to the man beside me.
"He is in charge?" The man beside asks softly, and I nod, the Sergeant is in charge of this motley crew. He's got a tough task, but he does well enough, strict but friendly when he has to be.
"Yeah... Where are the soldiers?" I ask, staring ahead, not wanting to watch the man coughing again. I want the medic to show up, I want someone to come over with a canteen, something, anything to make the awful coughing stop.
"Gone." The man says once he's stopped coughing, and a silence falls over us. "You are Brooks?" He asks me after a while, and I turn to him with a smile.
"I am. What is your name?" I'm horrible at guessing names, so I can't even begin to work out what he could be called, but I can tell it'll be Jewish. Most of the people we find in these places are Jewish, there's a few others here and there, but on the whole, it's Jews who are herded to their deaths in these places.
"My name?" The man smiles slightly, rubbing at his arm, looking mournful.
"What's that?" I nod down at the little scrawl of black on his arm, and he shakes his head, a strangely dead smile on his face.
"My name." He smiles at me sadly, and I stare at the numbers inked into his skin. I've seen these prisoner numbers before, and they never get any easier to look at. I have tattoos, I want more, but I've always thought of them as a way of expressing myself, of showing the World who I am, and it hurts to see an art form I love used for such a horrific purpose.
"You are not a number." I get him firmly, and he shakes his head, trying to laugh, but coughing once more. "Where the fuck is that fucking medic? Medic!" I can't take this anymore, there's only so much misery I can take in one dose, and this is it. I can't handle this without getting to give this man something in the way of good news, which I'm hoping the medic will bring.
"I'm right here, Brooks." The Medic squats in front of the man, and frowns. "I don't like this cough much."
"Yeah, I'm guessing he doesn't either. What is it?" I snap, the man is still coughing, his hand still moving over the ugly number on his skin. "Sind sie gut? Wasser?"
"I am okay. Water would be good." The man manages between coughs, and I stand, going to fetch a canteen myself, bringing it back quickly, pausing a little ways away to watch the medic examining him. The medic comes over to me, a frown on his face.
"I'm hoping it's not TB... But, I really don't like that cough. We need to get him moved, and probably quarantined as soon as possible." The medic talks quietly, and I watch the man coughing again, his eyes dropping closed for a few seconds.
"I'll talk to him, and then take him down to you in base camp." I walk over, and the man looks up at me, a timid little smile on his face as I hand him the canteen. "You are very ill." I tell him slowly, and he nods.
"It is why they left me here." I nod, it makes sense, if it is TB then there's no way he's going to survive, may as well leave him to die with the others.
"Do you know where they went?" The man looks at me, and I open my mouth to talk again, but he interrupts me.
"No... I did not hear them." He sips from the canteen, a sad smile on his face. He looks like he's not a man given to being so unhappy, he looks like in his real life he was probably a pretty happy person, but it's hard to be happy in one of these camps, it's hard to be happy when you're dying.
"Okay... Okay." I nod and sit back down, smiling when Ambrose ambles up to me, a tense look on his face.
"They're gonna need you, Brooks." He jerks his thumb down the corridor he's just come from, and I nod, rising to my feet, glancing over that the man I'd been sitting by. "We're gonna take him down to medical, then they'll ship him to a hospital when they can." I nod, and turn to the man. He'd clearly been trying to follow the conversation, but the speed, and Ambrose's drawl had thwarted him.
"I heard hospital?" He says to me, and I nod.
"Yeah. You are sick. You need to go to hospital." The man nods slowly, and I smile at him, holding my hand out to him. "Brooks is my surname, I'm Phil." I smile again, and the man takes my hand, squeezing lightly.
"Scott Colton... When they were alive my friends called me Colt." He smiles weakly, and I gently squeeze his hand back. I know how important it can be to have human contact, warm, honest, hopeful human contact, and though it's nothing more than a handshake, I hope that's what this is for Colt.
"Punk... My friends call me Punk." I smile at him, and he nods slightly, his lips forming my nickname, not yet brave, or sure, enough to actually give it a voice. "This is Ambrose. He will take you to get better." I smile at Colt, and then turn to Ambrose. "Slowly, and clearly, then he'll understand." Ambrose nods. I offer a hand down to Colt, helping him to his feet. I don't know why I did, but I couldn't help but give him a hug, a warm, reassuring embrace, letting him know that whatever he's faced in this place is over, he's safe, he's free, and we're going to help him.
"Danke, Punk." Colt whispers very quietly, and I close my eyes. He stinks of death and a lack of bathing, but it's the purest, most honest embrace I've ever felt in my life, it's a moment burned in my memories forevermore.
The war carries on, and I don't see Colt again, but I can't shake the memory of him. He'd been no different to far too many other people I've seen in these awful places, so many starved, dying people have crossed my path, and yet only Colt stands out to me. When I close my eyes, it's his face that looks back at me. When I raise my gun to fire at the enemy, and the fact that they're people, with lives and hopes and families comes to me, it's the look on Colt's face as he stared down at that number branded into his skin that comes to my mind, and pulling the trigger is made so much easier. When they scream, it's Colt's voice sadly telling me that hideous tattoo is his name that drowns out their pleading.
Finally, we're told the war is won, and we get to go home. I've never really considered what I was going to do with my life once I got back home. I'd always expected to die in Europe, I'd thought the only way I was getting back to the United States was in a box, but I'm very much alive when they discharge me, and pin a medal, I don't think I deserve, to my chest.
I go back home to Chicago, and I stall. I've no idea what I want to do, no idea what I can do, no idea how to carry on with my life. Everyone around me seems so driven, so focussed, wanting to move on, wanting to forget. I guess it's easy for them; they don't close their eyes and see death. They can lie in a quiet, dark room at night, and not hear phantoms screaming and begging in German, or broken English. I can't. My mind won't let me escape the horrors I've seen, my soul won't let me forget the brutality I witnessed, won't let me forget the brutality I inflicted. Victory in a war is hollow for those who fought for it. Victory doesn't feel much like victory when you're a soldier. People tell me that I'm not a soldier anymore, but the stains in my mind tell me that there's nothing I can do about the lives I took, there's nothing I can do about the lives I didn't save by my inaction, or my action. I was, and I think I will forever be, a soldier.
In the end, I learn how to tattoo. I cover myself in bright, beautiful pictures, but in my mind, I can see a too thin arm, and an ugly, crude number etched into the pallid and dirty skin. It doesn't matter how good I get, it doesn't matter what I'm tattooing into someone's skin, alls I can see are those ugly numbers.
"You're a hard man to find, Brooks." It's rare that anyone addresses me as Brooks; it's even rarer that someone with German accented English comes to my store. I glance up from the sketch I was working on, and stare. Time has been good to him, he looks healthy, filled out, human.
"Colt?" I stare, and he laughs, coming closer to me. I stand numbly, and almost collapse into the hug he gives me.
"No one calls me that anymore." His voice is soft in my ear, and I can't believe he's here, that he's alive. In my mind, I'd killed him. In my mind, he was a spectre along for the ride, but he's not dead, he's flesh and living blood, standing in my store, whole and healthy, alive and well.
"I'm an old friend." I smile at him once he lets me go, a wry smile on his face.
"You are." He takes a seat on one of chairs in my store, and looks at me. I've never been looked at like this before, assessing, appraising. "You look different... Tired." He frowns, and I nod. I am tired. It's strange that I'm less able to sleep safe in my bed than I was on a battlefield where death lurked around every corner.
"Civilian life isn't easy to adjust to." I smile awkwardly at him, and sit back down behind my desk, unable to keep from staring at him. I can't believe he's here. I can't believe he's alive. I can't believe he'd tracked me down, and is sitting staring straight back at me.
"When I went to the hospital, I asked about you... Every week, I asked if you were okay. My English got better because of you." He smiles at me, and I stare at him. I don't know what to say. He had a thousand other more important things to ask about, thousand more reasons to practice English than asking about me.
"Why?" I think it's a petty question, but the look on Colt's face tells me he'd been expecting it. He smiles at me kindly, and shifts in his chair, a hint of discomfort crossing his face briefly.
"Why... You were the first person to be nice to me in a long time." He smiles at me again, and then turns to look at the pictures covering the walls of my little store. "For the longest time, for a time that felt like eternity, I was slaving in the camp. My family and I had been separated, they were sent to Poland... To Birkenau." He trails off, and I stare at him. Birkenau, Auschwitz, they went to die, and Colt knew that, the look on his face tells me he knew that.
"I'm s-"
"Don't tell me you're sorry. I already know you are. I knew you would be." Colt turns to me with a smile. "You're a good person... I could see it in your eyes. It's why I wanted to know you were okay." He stands, coming closer to the counter, his eyes locked with mine, and I rise to my feet, not sure what to do with myself. "I needed to know that someone as good as you could survive that war." His hand hovers near my cheek, and I stare at him, frozen to the spot. I'd like to lean into his palm, I'd like to nuzzle against his skin, if only to confirm that he's real, that this isn't my imagine playing tricks on me again. I might not have been visited by apparitions of Colt before, but more times than I can count, I've fought battles in empty spaces, had conversations with ghosts of brothers-in-arms, I have no doubts that my mind would summon Colt up to torture me.
"I don't know that I did." My voice is tiny, so small it's almost as though I didn't speak the words aloud. Colt's hand rests on the back of my neck, drawing me forward, his forehead resting against mine.
"Your eyes... They're still good. You're still here." He tells me, his voice low and soft. I close my eyes, and for the longest time we exist, nothing but the press of his forehead against mine, his hand on my neck, his breath on my face. Outside of this moment, there is a whole World, but for me, for then, there was nothing but stillness, nothing but quiet, nothing but the warmth of a life I knew I'd saved. When Colt steps away from me, the spectres creep back into my mind, but they're old friends now, an almost welcome heavy weight on my soul.
"So..." I sit back down heavily, my breathing feels fast, my heart is pounding, my head light, but I'm not sure why. "So, what are you doing these days?" Colt goes back to his seat, and I'm almost grateful for the distance between us. He'd been too close, and the things I'd wanted him to do to me then were neither right nor proper.
"I'm working... A German teacher in a High School." He smiles, and I nod, surprised that people would want their kids learning German, surprised that Colt would want to be reminded, but really I can't comment because I don't know. I can't say if I was him I'd disown the country that murdered my family, and almost killed me, because it's never happened to me, it's unlikely to ever happen to me.
"That's... Good?" It sounds more like a question than I'd wanted it to, but I couldn't help it, it is a question, and I need an answer for it. I need to know that he's okay, that he's happy, that he isn't lost and stalling like me.
"It's better." Colt smiles, and I nod, not really sure what to do now. "I would always ask if you were alive." He looks at me, not just looking at me, but seeing me, and I feel desperately uncomfortable under his gaze. "I couldn't take the thought of you being dead, but I never dared to hope you'd get to keep your goodness." He smiles, fidgeting in his seat, his fingers twitching.
"Uh... You wanna grab a coffee?" I stand, and he smiles at me again, rising to his feet. "There's a place nearby, it's cheap... The coffee isn't great, but it's... It's cheap, and I know teachers don't make a lot." I laugh, feeling like an idiot.
"I imagine you don't make too much either." He waves around my little store, and I shake my head. I make barely enough to stay open, but I've no idea what else to do. Normal jobs seem so beyond me, no one seems willing to hire me, so this is the only thing I can do. It's not a bad job, the people who come through my doors are interesting, or charming enough, everyone has a story, and as I tattoo them, I get to forget mine in listening to them talk.
He comes over for a few more coffees after that first time. We talk, and I find I like him a lot more than I'd expected. He tells me a few things about his life in Germany before the war, a few stories about the family he lost to the Nazis, a few stories that made me laugh, and mourn them for him. They sounded like good people caught in a horrible situation. Every time we drink cheap coffee together I feel more like I'm becoming his friend, and it puts the spectres of my mind at rest. The longer I spend with him, the more I feel like a real person, and not a collection of horrors held in a person-shaped shell. The first time he asks me out to dinner, I'm surprised, I don't quite know what to say, but I agree easily enough. Its dinner between friends, I know, but Colt's eyes have never lost that hint of awe. When he looks at me, I feel like so much more than a lost soldier, I feel like a person, I feel whole, I feel like I have some value in a World that places none in me. I know I'm worthless to most people, but when Colt looks at me, I feel precious. I don't feel like his friend, and I know that's dangerous. We've both faced so many dangers in our lives, and I don't want to bring danger back into Colt's life, not after I helped take him from somewhere so atrocious. We eat out a few more times, never anywhere expensive, never anywhere too classy, and it grows comfortable, it grows to be something I can handle, until one night it changes.
"You can come in." Colt smiles as he speaks, and holds the door to his little apartment open. Inside there's not much, a couch, a radio, and papers scattered all over the table. I hear the soft click of the door closing, and Colt's warmth near my back. I turn to him, realising we're too close but not doing anything about it. "It's not much, but its home." His smile softens as he looks at me, his hand reaching out to hover near my cheek. Unlike the time in my store, this time I can't stop the urge to rest my cheek against his hand. This time his fingers mould to the curve of my face, his thumb stroking under my eye. "Punk?" His voice is as heavy as his gaze, and I feel almost transfixed, like when I'd be on the battlefield with my gun raised, my eye looking down the sights, lining up a shot, and instinct kicked in, blocking out everything else. I lean forward, and brush my lips over his, then pull back, panicked and fearful, barging past him, and out of his apartment.
I expect him to ignore me from that moment on. That night I didn't sleep, the sounds of gunfire in my ears, and Colt sitting, coughing in the concentration camp behind my eyelids. I expected the next few nights to the same, but the next morning my mind is changed. Colt's standing outside of my store, two cups of takeaway coffee in his hands, and a tense look on his face.
"Can I come in?" He pitches his voice kindly, like he was expecting me to tell him to leave, but instead I nod, and open the door, letting him into the store. "Last night, Punk..." He sighs, scrubbing at his face with his hand.
"Look, I'm sorry... I got caught up in the moment, and I-"
"No." He steps closer to me, his hand on my face again. "No, don't apologise. I've wanted to kiss you for so long, since the first day I came here." He leans forward, and I shrink back a little, he smiles at me though, resting his forehead against mine.
"That's a long time." I mutter, stepping away from him, and fussing with some random papers on the counter. "I'm sure it wasn't worth the wait." My back is turned to him, but I can hear moving, can feel him standing closer to me, can feel his warmth through our clothes.
"I'd have waited twice as long for half as much." He stands closer still, almost pinning me to the counter, there's nowhere for me to go, and as his lips brush over the nape of my neck, there's nowhere else I want to be.
"Colt, please." I mutter, and he steps away from me, letting me move away from the counter. "I shouldn't have done that, you know I shouldn't have... It's not-"
"Why did you kiss me?" He hands me a cup of coffee, and I blow on it, staring at the murky liquid. "If you regret it, if it's something you want to take back why did you kiss me in the first place?"
"Because I wanted to... Because I still want to... Because." I sigh, and look up, meeting Colt's eyes. He never just looks at me, he always sees me, sees every part of me, and it almost scares me how much he does see me.
"Because." He nods, as though that were answer enough. He stays for maybe an hour; we talk of nothing, of work, our lives outside of our friendship. Colt's life is full of tales of colleagues and students, mine of bikers, and former soldiers. I don't really have a social life exactly, I have my books, I have my tattoos, and I have my spectres. There's a part of me that would like to add Colt to the list of what I have, but I don't listen to it. I can't have him, not in the way I think I want him, I have to content myself with nightmares, novels, and bikers. Once he's finished his coffee, he comes over to me, his hand tilting my chin up, making me face him. His lips whisper over my forehead, and he steps away with a soft smile.
"We'll work up to a real kiss." He promises me with a smile, and I nod, silently hoping for that to be true.
We do work up to a real kiss eventually. A kiss that even thinking of makes my breath quicken. One kiss turns to several, even manages to progress to laying on Colt's couch, listening to the radio, and kissing each other, our hands growing bolder every time.
More times passes, and our boldness reaches the next stage. Colt brings up the subject of sex carefully, as though he genuinely wouldn't mind if I was never ready for it, but I agree, I want to know what it's like to be claimed by him. It's only when the night we decided on comes that I panic, my mind filling with all kinds of fears, both real and imagined.
"I... I'm not sure about this." I whisper, and Colt smiles at me, his hand on my cheek. We settled on Christmas Eve for this, the sound of soft festive music in the background, and snow against the window pane.
"We'll take it slow... Just like kissing. Or we can stop, it's your choice." His voice is soothing, like he was talking to a frightened animal, and in some ways he really is. I'm scared of what will happen, I'm scared of what this will feel like, I'm scared that he'll decide to walk away from me once he's had me. I'd been scared when he'd kissed me properly for the first time, and now I'm petrified.
"No... I'm just." I sigh, and he smile at me, stroking my hair.
"If it hurts, if you don't like it, we'll stop." He kisses me, my hands creeping up to cup his face, one of his wrapping around my waist, the other cradling the back of my head. "I won't force you, Punk. If you don't want this tell me." His lips brush my own as he talks, and I can feel a shiver working its way through me.
"I want it, I'm sure. I want you... I'm just..." I try to glance away, but Colt's hand in my hair keeps me from turning my head. "I'm nervous. It's wrong." I mutter, it's been playing on my mind so much, every sermon I can remember from being forced to Church on Sundays as a child told me that this was a sin. Whilst God died in Europe for me, there's a lot of people who still believe, there's a society that thinks what we're doing now is damning our eternal souls.
"Punk?" Colt tries to step away, but I cling to him, not wanting him to let me go. When he holds me, the spectres are silent, when I'm in his arms my mind is free, my soul feels light and clean. If that's wrong, then there's nothing I can do about it, because I crave being clean, I crave being free. I kiss Colt, and he moans into the kiss. I rarely initiate kisses between us, I want to but I never have enough courage, but tonight I feel bold, I feel like I can muster the courage to take what I want, and what I want is Colt inside me. He guides me back towards the bed, my knees brushing the edge of the mattress. "Strip?" He asks, pulling his sweater off, then starting on unbuttoning his shirt. I pull my shirt off without undoing the buttons, the undershirt follows quickly, and I sit back, staring at Colt, ignoring the little smudge of black on his arm. I can't bring myself to think about that tattoo, not right now.
"Do you have something?" I ask him, and he leans over me, his chest pressing against mine, the feeling of his skin against mine is utterly perfect, but my mind is thinking of trying to get something into to my ass. Women get wet, men don't, and a cock isn't going into my asshole without something to make it slick. Colt nods, and from his pocket pulls a little bottle of something, setting it down beside me. "Okay." I gently push at his shoulders, and wriggle out of the last of my clothes, watching Colt slick two of his fingers. The first finger that brushes over my asshole has me tensing up, and Colt smiling wryly at me. He shushes me softly, stroking over my hole again. I can't help but think how dirty this is, how wrong it should feel, but it feels good, far too good. His touch ignites something in me that feels wanton, that feels like it shouldn't exist in a man, in a soldier, but it does, and Colt's fanning the flames of this feeling to the point of them feeling like they might consume me.
"You're so small." He whispers in my ear, his voice sweet and thick, like molasses. "So small, so tight... So soft." He kisses my temple, his fingers still brushing over my hole lightly. One finger presses against my asshole, and I whine. "Shh... Shh..." He tells me gently, and I turn from him. I can feel a burning on my cheeks, and I know I must look ridiculous. "Look at me... Please look at me." He whispers, and I turn to him, meeting his eyes. "Your eyes... Every night I think of them, I see them staring at me, and I think of how good you are. When I was in the hospital, as I got better, as I got stronger, I know how I'd taint your goodness. In my mind, I'd taint your purity so much, I still do. I've wanted you from the second I was strong enough to want someone again, Punk. You've no idea what you do to me." He smiles down at me, and I lie there staring at him, not really taking in what he's saying. I'm just lying on my back, my legs spread, staring at his eyes. The face that surrounds them is fuller, the body they're part of isn't starved and dying, but they're still the same, still slightly awed as they watch me. "I think of you so much... Do you think of me? Tell me you do, please... Tell me it's not just me." His finger presses against my hole again, and this time it slips inside. The initial penetration is so strange, the feeling of his slicked finger inside of me, not moving, not going deeper, just inside me isn't something I can explain.
"Always... I'm always thinking of you." I whisper, my eyes ache to close, to give myself some space to adjust to the feeling of his finger in me, but I can't bring myself to break eye contact. "Every tattoo I do... I think of those numbers on your arm." My voice is tiny, and Colt slides his finger deeper into me, dragging a keening moan from me. "Every tattoo I want to be beautiful, I want it to be perfect, but alls I can see are those numbers."
"I'm sorry." He whispers softly, and I shake my head, staring up at him, I can feel a smile on my lips, and he looks confused.
"Don't be sorry... It's just a thing... I want to make it better for you. It's like every piece I do, in my mind it's to make those number go away, but I know they're still there..." Colt slides a second finger into me, and I have to close my eyes, my breathing speeding up. I don't know if it hurts but it is intense. He stretches my body slowly, reapplying the slick substance from the bottle often, opening me up for him, and when he finally enters me, I have to tell him to stop. I need time to get used to this, I need time to understand how it feels to be filled with his cock. He braces himself over me, and stares down at me.
"You okay?" He asks me softly, and I don't know how to answer that, I don't think okay covers how I feel. I'm hot and full, my body is filled with a fire that I think should burn, but it only soothes me, scorches the well of frigid ice in my heart, melting the icy bonds I've forged to keep everything I've experience in check. I can feel tears trickling down the sides of my face, running into my hair, and Colt stare at me. "This hurts?" He sounds horrified, and I shake my head, clinging to him.
"No... No." I pull him down to me, forcing him to lie on top of me, his weight anchoring me in the moment. "It's just... It's everything." I whisper, and he nods against the side of my neck.
"It's okay, I'm here, I've got you." He tells me softly. I can feel him inside me, all around me, and I feel safe, for so long I've not felt this way, I'm not sure I ever have felt like this, like nothing could get me, nothing could hurt me. It's exactly what I've been missing my whole life, and I never knew.
"I'm okay." I press my head back against the pillow, meeting his eyes. "You can move, I'm okay now." My tears have passed, and I feel freer for having shed them. He moves slowly, his hands slipping under my shoulders, pulling me tighter to him. His lips moving over my neck. He moves slowly inside me, pausing often, letting me adapt, adjust, get used to, and enjoy being filled with him. Every so often some shivery burn of pleasure runs through me, something that makes my quickening breath catch, and my body ache for more of it. I don't know what it is, but it's good, and when he changes the angle of his movements that pleasure gets stronger, and I can't keep from moaning, loud and deep. "Again, do that again." I gasp, and he kisses me, his thrusts speeding up, that pleasure burning through me. My cock is hard, weeping between us, and I can feel his thrusts beginning to falter, he's getting close, and I want, I need to be there with him. I take a hand from around his shoulders, and work it between us, taking a hold of my cock, stroking it in time with his thrusts, my moans, hoarse and low, his breath hot and heavy by my ear. "Gonna come." I manage to grind out, my ability to talk almost lost to him. Colt doesn't say anything in response, just speeds up slightly, his movements making shivering pleasure course through me, and I come. My mind shattering at the feeling of my release tearing through me. As I gather myself, I can feel the first pulse of his cum inside me, warm and liquid coating the inside of my body, his hips stuttering against my ass. Colt gathers me close to him once he's pulled out of me, his arms around my waist, holding me tightly against his chest. I lie listening to his heart beating, feeling his lips pressing a kiss to my hair.
"Thank you." He says softly, and I shake my head. I don't want to be thanked for this, I don't want to be thanked for something I'm so grateful for.
"Go to sleep." I mumble, there's nothing else to do, nothing else to say tonight. Tomorrow we'll deal with this but for now, it's time to sleep. The consequences of this we can face tomorrow, I'm too tired to face them right now.
It's early, the first pale rays of dawn battering against my eyelids, and there's a well of cold in bed beside me. I sit up, and hold back a sigh. Colt's sitting on the edge of the bed, his back turned to me.
"Hey." I plaster myself to his back, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. I know I shouldn't have, because he tenses up, his face turned from me, staring at the ugly tattoo on his skin, the tattoo that made him less than human, a brand that made him worth less than cattle. Every tattoo on my skin I chose, I wanted these designs marked on my flesh, but Colt's was forced on him, and I want nothing more than to take the misery it inspires away from him. It's the last thing I can give him, the last piece of his very much-deserved freedom.
"My number." He says softly, his hand rubbing over the numbers etched into his skin. "It's strange, but I can't remember the time before I had this here." He laughs, and I hate that sound, hate it more than I thought it possible to hate a laugh, but it's easy to hate it, because it's not a happy sound, it's a bleak resigned, miserable one. Laughs like that should be relegated to nightmares and bad dreams; they should never come from Colt, never.
"I can get rid of it, cover it up somehow. Today if you want, think of it as a Christmas, uh Hanukkah present." I tell him softly, my lips against his skin, and he laughs, a real laugh, a laugh he should only ever laugh with. He turns to me, his hand cups my cheek and he kisses me. As we kiss, I move to straddle his lap, my hands in his hair, arching into his hands as they skim down my back to rest on my waist, his fingers stroking my skin softly. When he breaks the kiss, his hands move to cradle my face, his fingers running through my hair lightly. There's an impossibly soft smile on his face, and I stare at him. I don't know what that smile means, but it's making my hear pound like I've run a marathon. "What?" I whisper, and his fingers stoke over my face gently.
"All I ever wanted was for you to be alive, I never thought that the good in you would survive too, but it did." He smiles at me with that same smile, and I can feel a blush creep over my cheeks.
"Colt..." I don't know what to say, there has to be something worth saying in this situation, but I don't know what.
"I told you last night that I wanted you, remember?" He asks me softly, his hands still cradling my face, and I nod, trying to read the emotions in his eyes, but failing miserably. "I want all of you, everything." He smiles again, and I'm still staring speechless at him. I think I understand, but there's so much that's wrong with this, so much that'll go against us. He's survived so much already, I don't want him to be tied to me, I don't want him to suffer because of some unnatural perversion I've inspired in him.
"Colt." I try to pull away from him, but his hands don't move, he doesn't tighten his hold; his hands just stay softly against my skin. "Colt... Last night, we shouldn't have, you know that... We did this together, but you have a life, a job, a career..." If we keep going with this, he'll lose all of it. It'll come out somehow, and I can't risk that happening to him. It was wonderful, these last few months have been the best of my life, but I can't keep him, I can't let him risk everything for me. "You can't throw it all away for me."
"I have an existence and a way to fund that existence. Right here, right now, I have a life. I don't care. I've been looking so hard for you, trying to find you for years. You're what I want, Punkers." I stare at him, no one's ever called me that before, but I think I like it, and he laughs at me. "You're a good man... You've good heart, and I need more, I need your goodness in my life."
"But, what about the consequn-"
"Tell me you don't feel something for me, tell me that you didn't enjoy last night, tell me I'm wrong, tell me that when you close your eyes you don't see me, because every time I close my eyes I see you, I see your eyes, your face... I see a soldier with the most beautiful face smiling at me, saving me, saving my life. If I have a life, it's because you gave it to me, and I want to give it to you." I close my eyes halfway through Colt's speech. Every word he said I've thought, every sentiment I've echoed. He's right, he's so painfully right, and even if we're wrong, he's so right it can't matter.
"So... You want me to do that cover-up today?" I lean forward, closing the space between our lips, we might not have said it yet, but like kissing, eventually, we'll tell each other I love you properly.
Thank you to my dear Rebellecherry, and littleone1389 for the reviews. :3
Up tenth we have White Christmas. A request from my erstwhile writing partner alizabetianrose. Hope it was okay my dear! For Christmas I'd liek reviews for every single chapter of Rhizo you didn't review! ;)
Not much is set in stone for these fics - so if you'd like to fire me a song and pairing combo in a PM, I'll have a listen and see what I can come up with.
You can't give me an apple for Christmas like my students are already doing , but you can give me a review! ;)