Even In Dreams

by Society's Cavity

Darkhearted Damien has been haunting Pip's dreams for nearly nine years, and Pip is bent on ending the nightmare. However, when the two are finally reunited in an explosive encounter, Pip realizes he needs a lot more closure than previously thought.

21. Point of No Return

Theoretically, this should be the last chapter before the epilogue... but with only one POV switch, it is still twice as long as most other chapters in the story, so I'm having to break it up. One short chapter and an epilogue... and then the long, long ride is over!

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Chapter Twenty-One — Point of No Return

"I think he's got someone else."

Sara looked up at me from across the table with only the mildest of curiosity, her lips closed around the straw of her Frosty. The two of us had been sitting against the window at the local Wendy's for the past half an hour, trading gossip, and she was making rapid progress on her third frozen beverage of the afternoon. It was absurd, how quickly this had all become okay—spending time together as if we were childhood friends instead of mutually vested interests in the same apocalypse-bound hellspawn. But she'd been right. Who else could I talk to about this sort of thing? "Why do you think so?" she asked after a loud slurp.

"Because he's been acting like a psychopath for the last two weeks," I explained, glancing over at my untouched fries. Lunch had been a mistake. I hadn't had a real appetite in days. And for reasons that still seemed cruelly unfair to me, I usually wound up treating whenever the two of us went out on these would-be dates. "Which is, for the record, how I've been acting the last two weeks. And I've got you."

"Why, Philip, am I your someone else?" Sara batted her long blonde eyelashes at me. "I'm flattered."

"It's out of character for him," I plowed on. "He gets violent and he gets pissy—"

"Duh."

"—but he doesn't get flustered like he has been recently. I've never seen him so awkward. Not since we were little kids." This wasn't entirely true. Damien had responded pretty poorly to my groping him in the Sears parking lot and to my kissing him in the hammock, but those had been isolated and understandable incidents. Losing control of his fine motor skills because we'd both reached for the half-and-half at the same time... yeah, a lot less so. "There's something going on, and... I mean, nothing between the two of us has changed." Not in the past couple of weeks, I might have added as a disclaimer, but I truthfully didn't know if Satan had caught any of our saliva-swapping at the cabin, and if he hadn't—well, I wasn't about to divulge information like that unnecessarily. "There's gotta be someone else. He's too jumpy. He's too paranoid. And work wouldn't do this to him. He just doesn't care enough about it." I liked to think he didn't care enough about anything, but there was simply too much evidence to the contrary. My face wrinkled itself into an unsettled frown as I repeated, softly, "There's got to be someone else."

Sara didn't seem nearly as perturbed as I did by this theory. "You want to know something?" she asked casually, grabbing one of my stale french fries and drowning it in chocolate. "I think you're probably right." I tried to ignore the stabbing sensation this easy acceptance sent through my gut. "Damien's got an appetite about as big as mine. He had a lot of someone elses before he starting running around with you, and it wouldn't surprise me if he'd picked the habit back up." Sara shot me a lascivious wink. "The running around you two do is still the sort with your clothes on, isn't it?"

I swallowed heavily in lieu of responding. I had nothing left to contribute, anyway. No words. Just a tightening sensation in my stomach where my suspicion had been fed the validation I hadn't actually wanted in the first place. Ignorance is bliss, the popular wisdom went. And intuition was a bitch.

"But do you want to know something else?" No, I thought, staring at Sara pointedly. I was pretty convinced she could read minds and was just being obnoxious. I honestly doubt I do. But then she was leaning over the sticky little table with everyone in the restaurant watching, and I really had no choice but to listen. When she spoke, her words were a gleeful, conspiratorial whisper meant only for me. "I'd bet you all the money in the world that he's with the best imitation of you he can find."

I didn't know what was worse: the fact that this idea did actually make me feel a little better—because if it were true, at least he hadn't forgotten me—or the fact that I still felt like a selfish little kid who'd been forced to unwillingly share one of his playthings. Damien was... god, it was appalling to even think this, but... mine. Damien loved me, wanted me, and I loved him, wanted... I crossed my legs under the table. I could not stomach the thought of him with some girl I did not know. I did at least have the self awareness to realize how unreasonable I was being, that I'd been furious with Damien for his jealousy over Wendy and—ugh—Sara. But I could not contain these feelings. However petty it was, I felt jilted. The very thought of him with someone else... touching someone else...

"You're pale," Sara remarked, face indifferent. I believed it. I couldn't feel the pale, but I could feel the sweat. "Come on. Let's get some air."

Air was going to make me sick, I thought, as we stepped outside the restaurant; the cold went instantly to the beads of moisture along my hairline. But it did feel less suffocating out here, away from the deep friers and away from people.

"Does it really bother you that much?" Sara asked with a nosy smile, hands buried in the pockets of the parka that was still enormous on her, even in a teenage body.

"I don't know." I tried to keep my voice nonchalant, but Sara's eyebrows shot up into her bangs doubtfully, and I had to laugh. "Okay, yes. It does. Does that make me an awful person?"

"Makes you pretty normal," she replied, walking step-in-step with me. "Most people are a lot more jealous and possessive than they give themselves credit for." I thought that was a pretty sweeping generalization, but in all fairness I did have to imagine that she/he/it had seen a lot more of human nature than the average person. "But it's still shit, right? Feeling that way?"

"Because I don't know why," I admitted, exasperated. "Is it just ego-maniacal, teenage jealousy? Do I only want his undivided attention because I don't have it anymore? Or is it actually...?" I didn't finish the question out loud, but I really didn't have to. Sara's smirk was knowing. "I just wish he could put a freaking lid on it and give me some time to figure myself out."

"But that's exactly what he's doing."

"Well, could he do it with his pants on?"

"That's unfair and you know it." I did know it, and I felt embarrassed heat rise up in my cheeks as she said it, but it didn't make my feelings any less true. "He's finding other outlets for sexual frustration he isn't taking out on you. Would you prefer that he did?"

"No," I muttered churlishly, but then I thought... I don't know. Maybe. And any doubt that Sara could read my mind evaporated at that moment, because the smile that met my flaky internal monologue was the toothiest and the nastiest I had ever seen from her.

She grabbed my hand and pulled me off the road, and I'd learned by now the futility of resisting when she did this sort of thing; she was stronger than me and felt very little pity when I face- planted on the sidewalk as a result of my obstinacy. In this way, she was rather like Damien. And then we were behind a clump of trees and holy fucking shit she was Damien, and it was not Sara's warm hands but his cold ones pushing me up against the bark, his body engulfing me, his eyes on fire and staring straight through me into the darkest parts of my mind where I'd been feeding embryonic fantasies of exactly this.

But this wasn't Damien, it wasn't Damien, no matter how much the devil in front of me looked like, felt like, smelled like him. When his hand dipped down to the fly of my pants, I felt a thousand slimy creatures wriggle into life in my intestines, and I had to physically double over to keep from being ill. "Don't!" I screamed, or tried to. I was mute with horror. I heard Damien's impatient exhale above me, and it was sickening how close it was to the real thing. Only the churning in my gut made it possible to tell the difference.

"If you'd just use your imagination, we could resolve this whole thing a lot quicker."

"N-no," I whispered into my knees, afraid to come back up. "It's not... n-not the same..."

"I know it's not. That's why I used the word 'imagination.' Damien is great at using his."

Satan crouched down in front of me in the body of the boy I loved, and a pathetic part of me wanted nothing more than to cry. When I met his eyes, they were cold and pitiless. "Well, I'm not Damien," I whispered. "I don't even understand Damien. Just the thought of this..."

"You can't do it?"

"You're not him!" I choked in disgust. And he smiled. "I don't... How can he do this if it's not me?!"

"Are you an idiot?" The line sounded too natural in Damien's voice. "He doesn't want to do it with you." The demon rolled his eyes and amended, "Well, he doesn't want to want to."

"That doesn't make any sense!" I protested defensively. "You said yourself that he's in love with me!"

"He is."

"So how could he... do this with someone else?!"

"Because he's in love with a little church boy who would never be dirty enough to do this with him." He leaned in close to me, and he was a perfect replica in every way... but the closer he got, the sicker I felt. "But you are, aren't you? You don't feel apprehensive like this when he's the one next to you, do you?"

Not by miles. "He's my friend," I reasoned.

The devil's eyes were filled with a cruel sort of laughter that suited Damien's face to a T. "And how far have your fantasies taken you beyond that? I'm not wrong, am I? That is what you've been doing while he's been acting out his fantasies with body doubles, isn't it? You want to know if you can want the same thing he does... if what he wants scares you." He smiled at me, leering and seductive. "And when it's him... it doesn't scare you, does it?"

I shook my head slowly.

"But this—" and he gestured sweepingly at his stolen body "—does scare you."

I nodded with less hesitation, and he took the hint. With one last, merciful smile, he was Sara again, casually adjusting her parka and looking no worse for the wear while I waited for my heartbeat to slow into discernible pulses again.

"Then you have your answer." Did I? I felt like I could taste blood in my mucus, as if I'd just run several miles. Sara was smiling. "But be prepared to fight for him."

"Fight for—?"

"He's in love with the church boy." She clapped me on the shoulder bracingly. Were we friends, when he was Sara? There was no hint of the pseudo-Damien who had just forced himself on me. "That's the weakness of all demons. We want what we can't have. Damien won't want you to want him back."

I frowned, straightening myself to a shaky but still-standing position. "That's... moronic."

Sara giggled and nodded in agreement. "Can you blame him, though? That's what makes you different, as far as he's concerned. What makes you special. The fact that you're not under his spell is the only proof he has that you're still your own person."

Still my own...? "Why wouldn't I be my own person?"

The laughter I got in response wasn't mocking—it was laughter shared between two people in on the same joke. "Because he—!" But when she saw that I wasn't laughing along, she stopped, and though the open-mouthed smile never left her face, it transformed into something incredulous. I wasn't in on it. And, obviously, I ought to have been. "But he... he had to have told you. Isn't that why your big reconciliation took so long? Why you've been taking so long to figure out if boning him is okay?" When I shook my head slowly in absolute cluelessness, she shook hers, too. "You're joking," she said, mouth smiling but voice a whisper. "You're joking..."

"I'm really not..."

"But he killed you."

These were not shocking words to hear. Largely, I suppose, this was because they made no sense to me. For a little while, I didn't even say anything in response, because I was waiting for Sara to drop the other shoe, continue this train of thought and drive it home somewhere it might actually have contextual significance. But that was it. "Uh..." I wiggled my fingers, holding them up for her inspection. "I'm... not... dead, though...?"

"Well, no freaking shit," she replied with an eye roll. She smacked me on the cheek, like I needed the reassurance that I was still standing there in the mortal plane. "That's the point. He killed you, so I had to bring you back. You seriously never had this conversation?"

No, I seriously never had, and the one I was having right now was still seriously not revelatory. This was all... nonsense. My heart had stopped when Sara held up that keychain to me, because it had put two unpleasant puzzle pieces together in the nastiest way possible. But I couldn't attach these words to anything meaningful. "I honestly think I would remember dying," I told her.

"You don't remember being dead, because I never let you reach Hell, but you do remember dying," she told me, and her smile was fading, because she really seemed surprised to have to lecture me on this. "Shit, you told Damien the story!"

"What story?"

Sara's eyes were squinted like she couldn't even see me properly. "The story of you—freaking exploding into bits at that party when you were a kid! Jesus Christ, I don't know about you, but that would've raised some permanent red flags for me!"

I paused, and the very first sensations of doubt began tingling in my fingertips. I did remember that. Vividly, I remembered that. But I had survived that. "I didn't die," I said, slowly, and I wiggled my fingers again... though I did not hold them up to Sara this time. "I hit the ground."

"When did you hit the ground?"

When did I hit the ground...? "I don't..."

"Remember that part," Sara hissed, and there was serious impatience in her voice—though I didn't know whether it was more directed at me or Damien. Evidently, this wasn't a conversation I was supposed to be having with her. "When did you hit the ground? What were the other kids doing?"

I tried to think, but—honestly—I wasn't sure. I could visualize the trip up.That part was easy. Damien's shades had grabbed me with their sharp little claws and hurled me up into the sky—and it was like slow motion, like falling in reverse. I remembered taking a mental inventory of all the shocked and awed faces of the kids at the party, turning their gazes from elephants, from clowns, from Cartman's enormous pile of birthday presents, all to look at me. But the part that came next had always been unclear, because it was the part that had never quite added up. I was ripped to shreds, I exploded, and I'd always known that objectively that couldn't have been true... that I must have just blacked out from the pain of whatever Damien had done to me... but I realized now that was impossible. Because I hadn't woken up on the ground. I was conscious when I hit the ground. I could still recall hitting the ground. And I'd looked up and smiled because a stiff upper lip was all the band-aid I ever needed and...

And I remembered. "They were leaving," I thought aloud, and all at once I could see nothing else but the backs of the could-have-been-friends who'd all been kicking off the party when Damien shot me up into the sky. "Everyone was leaving."

"How long were you in the air?"

And I didn't know. I had no idea. The nothingness in my head was the new and horrible context for everything Sara was saying to me. I looked at my hands, and though I couldn't wiggle my fingers this time, I could see that they were trembling.

"Hours," Sara answered for me, and the doubt made its way to my throat, hot and painful. "Because we were putting you back together." And that was insane, that was fucking crazy... but was it honestly any crazier than being blown to smithereens by the son of the devil and hitting the earth again in one piece? I couldn't meet Sara's eyes, because she was right... why hadn't any of that clicked sooner...? "Dark magic has killed you twice and brought you back twice."

"Twice?"

"Do you think you survived that escape from the hospital because Damien's got the powers of a saint?" My head was spinning. I could hardly concentrate.

"But if that's true..." God, and if it was true? "If it's true, why wouldn't Damien have told me?"

"Hell if I know." Sara was looking at the ground and shaking her head. "I was sure that was the excuse he was using to keep you away from him."

Would that have kept me away from him, though? Even if it were all true... if he'd actually killed me... "You said you brought me back..."

"Damien doesn't have that kind of power."

"But would he have...?" There was pain in my voice that I heard before I felt. Sara's face was full of pity and understanding, and I had to remind myself that she was more the devil than Damien and even more the liar, and only some of this could be real.

"He wouldn't have, the first time. Not when you were kids. He'd have let you die." I swallowed something horrible and felt it writhe in my stomach. Damien had told me as much... but it was worse, it was so much worse to think he'd actually done it. "But not the second time." I met her eyes, then, because this part I wanted to believe. "The second time, he never even meant to kill you. Only to remake you in the only way he knew how."

"But that's—that wouldn't have kept me away!" I blurted out. "Why wouldn't he have told me that? That I'd meant enough to him right from the beginning to pull some stupid stunt like that? That would've won him loyalty!"

"Loyalty is exactly what he's afraid of."

"Why?!"

"Because 'loyalty' to a demon is a polite word for 'slavery.'"

"But I'm not—"

"But you should be, and that part intrigues even me." Sara's eyes glowed like a cat's in the dark, but it was still mid-afternoon and perfectly sunny outside. "Retaining your free will and humanity even after resurrection by a devil... it's very impressive. Especially to Damien. But if you admit that now you want him the way he wants you? It opens up the possibility that he really did kill you, that all he brought back was his own desire with your face slapped on top—just some object to fetishize."

Indignity welled up in me. That was bullshit. "I have always wanted him," I insisted.

The gleam of Sara's eyes was not natural. I didn't know whether she was aware that she was letting so much of her actual nature slip out right now. "You've always wanted to fuck him?"

"Well, of course not!" I snapped. "I was a kid when we met! I'm not anymore! That sort of thing can change with or without demonic interference, I'd think! But I have wanted to be by his side way before you ever got involved!"

Even her smile was supernaturally bright. "It is convenient, though."

"What's convenient?! That of my own free will I could possibly fall in love with someone who's proven over and over that he feels the same way?!"

"My goodness," Sara purred. "Are you in love with him?"

YES my brain screamed, because oh my fucking god of course I was! I had been in love with him for months, maybe years, and I'd been wasting all this time not processing it because he and his father had kept me at such a distance that all I could possibly feel was impatience. I did not say this to Satan. What I said instead was, "I am not your slave. I am not his slave. And if his thinking that I am is why he's been pushing me away, then that is what I am going to go tell his stupid ass right now."

Sara's eyes and smile were very nearly human as I tightened my jaw and clenched my fists and steeled myself to go do exactly that. She leaned forward with a hug that was only as warm as a normal girl's might have been and whispered with encouragement, "Good luck, then." I pushed her away, because I didn't trust a single goddamn thing she did anymore, but her expression seemed so genuine.

"I... Thank you," I said begrudgingly after a few awkward moments of silence, because she didn't follow up her comment with any sarcastic nastiness, and it felt rude to simply leave her good wishes hanging in the air like that. Feeling distinctly uncomfortable but certain that I really did need to confront Damien—about a whole host of things—I turned to head for the parking lot where my bike was waiting for me.

I didn't make it far. "Oh," Sara's voice rang out, freezing me before I'd even stepped back onto the pavement. "One more thing." I turned back to her, my body stiffening. The girlish lightness of Sara's voice had disappeared entirely. It was suddenly businesslike, raw, almost masculine. Was she being serious? "Damien's my son, and I want him to be happy... which means I want you to be happy. But don't be naïve about what you're getting yourself into. Don't pretend he isn't the devil, because he is. Don't pretend he won't hurt you, because he will." She gave me a twisted smile. "A lot." She reached up into one of the parka's breast pockets and pulled out a shiny little tube, tossing it to me with that same grin. Her voice was bright again as she called out, "A present for you!"

Suspecting what it was, I barely caught it. I could feel the tube yield to the pressure of my fingers, and my stomach twisted itself up into knots.

When I looked back up, Sara was gone, and I was lost.

o o o

If Gary ever made a reappearance at the Walmart, he was careful to stay the hell away from me. Truthfully, I wouldn't have minded getting the occasional glimpse of him, just to know that he was still alive, but the coward in me was grateful I hadn't actually had to confront him again. Even without the ulterior motive of meeting up with him, however, I kept up my Sunday shifts. They weren't hard to come by; there were plenty of family-minded coworkers willing to pick up my weekday shifts in exchange for a weekend with the kids. For me, a day of mindless monotony was a weekend.

After fucking Gary, even looking at Pip had become a challenge. Maybe as some sort of karmic punishment, my mind had stitched together fantasy and reality into the sickest slide show imaginable—blonde hair dripping with snow, blood and shit smeared all over my couch, chapped hands covered in saliva and soil, glassy blue eyes frosting over with death, an unimaginably hot mouth on mine, and all the filthy pornographic imaginations of my dreams—and whenever the two of us were together, this was what looped behind my eyelids on an endless repeat. I could've been human, once—I really believed that. I really could've been everything Pip wanted. But then he'd acknowledged the demon inside of me that wanted more than that and made it real, and now it was impossible to smother. It would kill us both, eventually. But if I could keep Pip at a distance, keep this obsession on a leash, maybe it would kill us later rather than sooner.

As a result, I was seeing Pip less and less regularly. Shit, it had been at least a week since he'd stayed the night. And the effect this lack of attention was having on Pip was obvious. He'd become reproachful and suspicious every time I was too late to pick him up or too eager to drop him off, surly and withdrawn every time I inched away from him on the sofa or abandoned a drink after he'd taken a sip from it. I was trying my fucking hardest, I wanted to scream at him, whenever he'd narrow his eyes or cross his arms or snap something off-handed and contemptuous at me. I was walking a dangerously thin line right now. Every single thing my father had accused me of was true; I knew now with no shadow of a doubt what I wanted to do and was capable of doing to Pip. There was one gleaming exception to my dad's accusations, however, and that was that I had not corrupted Pip. But if he let me get too close, I was confident that I would. And I couldn't. He was the only thing in the world that I had not shattered to pieces—or at least the only thing in the world that I had successfully put back together after the fact.

I was in love with him, and I did not want to be in love with him, and I was going to hurt him, and I did not want to hurt him, but I was the son of the devil, and hot damn did I not want to be the son of the devil, and all of this was driving me completely insane. And he knew all of these things. More to the point, he was an in-touch-with-his-emotions, divulging-his-feelings-via-"I-statement" type of guy, so he could've been a hell of a lot more sympathetic to this sort of melodramatic inner turmoil. Sundays were my one day off from this stupidity. Sundays were a day of rest and repentance. A Catholic should've understood that even a devil shouldn't have to work so goddamn hard on a Sunday.

His bike should not have been in my driveway when I pulled in that evening.

I didn't even believe it at first. He'd beaten me to my own place a few times in the past—but those had been occasions when I'd been expecting him, even if he arrived with company I wasn't expecting. He'd never invited himself over like this, not even when the two of us were on more amicable terms. Besides, it was a Sunday. He knew better. This was a joke. He was not really here.

And yet when I pushed open the door, there he was, sitting on top of the couch with his shoes kicked to some distant corner and his hat and scarf leaving a sopping puddle on the kitchen counter. I actually felt faint.

"I don't know what kind of coffee table you're saving up for," he said casually in place of the lengthy explanation he owed me. "But I'm going to be really, really disappointed if it's not solid gold at this point."

"Pip..." I couldn't even close the door behind me. I just let the frigid air blow in, rustling my coat dramatically but leaving Pip as still as a gargoyle. The posture he had assumed was supposed to look relaxed, I imagined, but his body was too stiff. He'd been waiting for me. He'd been waiting for me for awhile. Against my will, the slide show began. "What are you doing here?"

He didn't answer the question. "Noticed an unfamiliar sweater in the closet when I was hanging up my coat earlier. Go shopping?"

Only the deepest, dirtiest paranoia could have made me react so stupidly, but for half a second my breath caught in my throat at the thought that Gary might have left something of his behind, and I actually started to turn for the closet—but I had bleached or burned everything that Gary had so much as touched because I wasn't an idiot, and Pip was only bluffing because of course he was. I caught myself almost instantly, but the damage was already done. The look in Pip's eyes was sharp enough to slice through paper—which was about how substantial my bones were feeling at the moment. "Why are you here?" I repeated, voice hollow.

Pip hopped off the couch and padded over to the front door to shut it, and I realized too late that I'd given him the perfect opportunity to close the distance between us. That was an enormous mistake on my part. At this range, the pressure of his scrutiny was so intense I could barely breathe. "I really don't care who she is. I don't want to know anything about her." Her. I might have permitted myself a private chuckle if he weren't close enough to catch it. "But I don't want you to bring anyone else back to this house without my consent." The command was unexpectedly stern—and took some balls, since he'd done the same thing himself. Admittedly, he had not—or, god, I hoped he had not—slept with the guys he'd brought home. I let him finish without interruption. "I want this to be my house."

"Is that why you're here?" I asked with a slow, uneasy laugh, shrugging off my coat primarily to give myself an excuse to look away from him. "To kick me out?"

"Not at all." He took a step backward, but it didn't lessen the pressure of his physical proximity at all. It just made the radius of the space he was occupying larger. "I'm moving in."

I laughed again as I opened the closet door and hung up my coat next to his, trying to make some sense of what was happening. "Don't think you can make that decision on your own. Deed's in my name."

"You offered me a place, here."

Technically, that had been true. "A few weeks ago."

"Well, my acceptance is belated, then."

I shut the door. What the hell was he playing at? "Pip—"

"I want to be here." And I realized at that moment that the distance between us was a liability for him, too. Because he was too close to me for me to ignore the pink that spread across his cheeks and into his eyes. "I want to be the only one here. With you."

These were the sorts of words he said to me in my dreams, which made me instinctively distrust them. My voice was icy when I told him, cutting off any blossoming hope in my chest, "Go home, Pip."

But he wasn't having any of that. The pink of his skin got deeper, and the indignation that I'd become so used to these past couple of weeks exploded in full, petulant force. "What the hell is wrong with you?!" he shouted. "You've been a total dick to me all week, and you've been brushing me off for longer than that. I haven't done anything to deserve it! Are you actually in love with this girl you've been seeing on the side, or is she just an excuse to get away from me? Because if that's all it is, I don't know what you're running from! Everything you've asked me to do for you, I've done! I am giving you everything you want!"

"I don't want you to give me everything I want," I growled, because there was nothing more dangerous than that.. and yet something flashed in Pip's eyes as I said it, something white hot and piercing and deadly.

"Of course you don't, because what you want is me," he said plainly, making a sweeping gesture from head to foot that was so much more lurid than it ought to have been. There was nothing nervous or timid in his voice the way there had been by the pond or hammock. This was openly confrontational, now. He was finally putting an end to the stupid little game we'd been playing. This was over at last. He would not ignore everything I'd asked him to leave unspoken anymore. So neither could I.

"Why are you doing this?" I hissed, because at least I could take some answers with me when this whole thing went to hell. "You've known for a long time how I feel about you, and I've asked you to let it fucking go. You know our friendship doesn't survive otherwise. So what the hell do you get out of this? What the hell is worth ending this?"

"I don't want to end anything. How you feel about me is how I feel about you."

His voice was deadpan and his eyes were hard, but I did not consider for even a second that Pip was telling the truth. "You're a fucking liar," I snarled, because ridicule was not something I handled well. I turned away from him, but he grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me back toward him with surprising violence. His whole face was glowing with fury.

"I'm not," he growled. "So quit acting like such a martyr! I have no motivation to lie to you! I've been keeping quiet for a reason, because I've been trying to figure out how I feel about you. Why is it so hard for you to believe that I might feel exactly the way you want me to?!"

"I don't want you to!"

He let out a massive groan and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "That makes no goddamn sense!"

"It makes all the sense in the world if you're not a complete moron!" I wondered how cathartic it might be to just choke the shit out of him. This was over anyway, right? "I am genuinely happy just being your friend. You do not need to give me anything more than that. I've tried to make that pretty fucking clear, but obviously the message has not gotten through to you. I don't want you to force yourself into any sort of relationship with me. You're not some slut who needs to throw her legs up to impress me!"

"That's not—" Pip was so red in the face that his eyes were actually watering. He might've been readying himself to choke me, too. "Don't fucking insult me like that! I'm not throwing myself at you just to please you! Maybe in the beginning, I considered—"

"Get out of my fucking house."

"But I never made the move, do you not understand what the fuck I am saying to you?!" I didn't. I did feel about two heartbeats away from an aneurism, though. "I love you, right?! And no, I never considered the possibility that that love would become anything other than platonic, because why the hell would I? But then you kissed me, and—and how do you not see how that had me reevaluating everything about my feelings for you?!"

"You weren't interested in me before then!" I snapped, because he hadn't been; my subconscious had clung very tightly to this truth. "You weren't interested in guys at all! Shit, you told me yourself that the kiss was revolting—"

"Well, it was. You spat another guy's blood into my mouth—"

"So explain to me how that had some magical effect on your heterosexuality?"

"Because it opened up the possibility that this guy I'd been totally fucking obsessed with for nine years had some equally profound obsession with me, and until you stopped inviting me over, I was literally getting off to the thrill of that on your couch every night!"

Even if they weren't true, the words brought the slide show in my head to a screeching, fiery halt. I put a shaking hand over my eyes as both my vision and sense of balance began to tilt sideways, but I didn't actually close my eyes, because I knew I would see nothing but Pip on my couch with his hand down his pants god fucking dammit. I took several long breaths before I could trust myself to speak again. "It's not... the same..."

"Why can't it be the same?" He didn't even miss a beat. I might've felt like passing out, but his lewd confession hadn't rattled him at all. "Why is everyone in the world allowed to be attracted to you but me?!"

I dropped my hand to look him in the eye. This was a conversation I'd had with myself so many freaking times it seemed surreal to be having it with Pip. "Because none of them are you!"

"What the hell kind of pedestal is that?!"

Great question! Not on my life was I going to answer it. "You are straight."

"So were you until the night at Stark's Pond! How many guys did you screw, again?"

Thankfully, I was able to quash the impulse to retort just the one, on the couch you've been jerking off on. But I figured there was no reason I couldn't still ruin his day. "You wanna know something about all those girls I screwed, the ones I only remembered in bits and pieces?" The ones I left in bits and pieces. "I remember them now, just like I remember everything about you. All blondes. Blue eyes, too, just like yours. I might've been fucking girls, but the one I was after was you. So tell me: was it me you were imagining while you were fooling around with Wendy?"

Pip took so long to answer that a pathetic little part of me actually dared to wonder, shit, was it? But it wasn't, because it couldn't be, because Pip was not just another one of the girls, because Pip had a stronger will than that, a will I had not—god dammit I had not—broken, a will that could still resist the demon nobody else could. He wasn't shouting anymore when he responded. "I liked Wendy. I did. Why is it a weakness if I like you, too?"

Because your rejection is the only proof I have that you're you. If you give me everything I want, how do I know you're not just a fantasy I made for myself? But I couldn't say that to him. "When people want me, it isn't... real," I tried to explain. "It's just human nature to be attracted to the things that are worst for you."

"So what you're saying is that I cannot possibly be attracted to you because I have, unlike the rest of the species, risen above human sexuality."

"I'm not..." Pip was purposely being a dick. "It isn't human sexuality. That's the point. Women, men, it doesn't matter who they are—if they are attracted to sin, they are attracted to me."

"And I am sinless."

"Pip—"

"In a way, this is all very flattering," he prattled on, and I sort of wished he would start yelling again. This self-righteousness was a lot worse. "But Damien... how perfect do I actually have to be before you'll believe that you're not the one in control of my consciousness?"

The room went just a little darker—like someone had turned off a bathroom light behind me. The conversation had already been reminding me, unpleasantly, of the ones I'd had with dream-Pip during my prolonged return to the Motel 6. But what he was asking now ventured far too close to the rhetorical, self-analyzing questions he'd asked then to be a coincidence. "What the hell makes you think I don't believe you're in control of your own consciousness?"

Pip didn't reply. He just stared at me. Hard. So I stared back. I could see my reflection shining in his wet eyes, and it was only me, now, but it sparked the suspicion all the same.

"You talked to my dad."

Saying the words aloud gave them a horrible sort of power. The rest of the lights went out, and for several seconds all I could see was an ugly mottled gray while I contemplated the implications of what I had just said. It was impossible... As heinous as my father was, he wouldn't ever have actually approached Pip, because that violated so many boundaries that it... I clenched my hands into fists and could feel heat flaring in my palms. I waited, but Pip neither denied nor confirmed my charge.

"Pip, did you talk to my dad?"

He said nothing, but as my vision flickered back to me, I could see everything in his eyes. I could see nothing but his eyes.

"... when did you talk to him?"

"It doesn't matter."

There was nothing inside of me but air, swirling in violent currents that crashed against the weakening walls of my body. "Are you out of your fucking mind?! It matters a lot!"

"It only matters if you think he's controlling me. And he's not." Pip took a few steps closer to me and put a hand on my arm, a gesture which would have previously started my blood boiling but which now served only to underscore how utterly numb I was. I could hardly feel his touch. "I know that it's a big fear of yours, the possibility that I'm just your puppet and that I've only been telling you what you want to hear this whole time. But here's the truth." Wouldn't a liar say the same thing? Wouldn't I say the same thing? "I have been attached to you from the moment you sat down across from me in the South Park Elementary cafeteria, which has nothing to do with what you and your dad did to me the afternoon of Eric Cartman's birthday party. I've become less offensively cheery and a little less naïve since then, and I'll admit that does have something to do with what you and your dad did to me... but it's also got something to do with every single person I've interacted with since then. Yes, of course you changed me. You were the first person I ever considered a friend. You're the first dude I've ever... y'know, considered..." He gave an awkward little shrug. "And if we're being honest, maybe some of that is the result of demonic attraction. But my will is still mine. If you asked me to give you a rim job, for example, I would not."

I smacked Pip's hand away with an irritated growl. "Pip, I am never going to ask you to give me a rim job."

"Okay, good, because I think I just established that isn't happening. But what would you like me to do?"

"Pip, I do not want you to do anything to me."

"Only you do," he said, crossing his arms, and he was back to being a brat. "You keep shutting me down, but I know for a goddamn fact that you want this. You're wasting everyone's time playing the stoic when, fact is, I just might want this, too."

Sensation was beginning to return to my extremities, though mercifully not all of them were equally affected. Pip's pinched expression wasn't much in the way of a turn-on, even if his insistent confessions would be fuel for my fantasies-come-nightmares for years. I kept my voice carefully level as I responded. "Let's say that everything you're telling me right now is true—though, for the record, coming here with my father's blessing does not put a lot of points in that basket." Pip pouted. "That doesn't change what an incredibly bad idea this is."

"Why is it such a bad idea?"

I just gawked at him. How fucking stupid was he?! "Because feeding my libido and your curiosity might be fun for one night, but it wouldn't be worth the cost of losing you the next morning!" I was fairly confident that, at this point, I had already lost him, but I kept talking anyway. "Pip... do you have any idea what you are asking from me? What you're asking me to do? To you?"

Pip did an admirable job of not looking timid. "I think I've got the basics pretty much down, yeah."

"Pip, I'll—" I bit my tongue, trying my hardest to ignore the slide show that had started back up in hyperspeed. "You can't just casually hop into bed with the devil and expect not to get burned! You can't imagine how painful it would be. How humiliating it would be."

"That remains to be seen." He was defiant, challenging again. "Will you hurt me? Will you humiliate me?"

I gagged. "God dammit, you that know I..." I couldn't even speak for several seconds, just kept opening and closing my mouth in mute fury. "Intentionally, no, I wouldn't. But..." I was about to explode from frustration. "God fucking dammit, Pip, you know me! Yes, I will do all of those things to you just like I've done them all before! I am the worst kind of monster, and you aren't. Sleeping with me would utterly corrupt you."

"That remains to be seen, too." The assuredness—the arrogance—in his voice was insufferable. "I'm not nearly as fragile as you're implying. You've already killed me twice, and yet here I am." He really had spoken with my father, then. I felt the wind kick back up inside me.

"Pip—"

"Your dad told me something interesting, you know." The thought of my father telling Pip anything made me feel like shitting out my intestines. "He told me that I couldn't stop you from becoming the antichrist because you already were the antichrist." The appraising look he fixed me with did nothing to assuage the intestine-shitting threat. "But that's a load of horse crap."

Words felt beyond my ability, but I coughed them out anyway. "That might be the only truth my dad's ever told, Pip."

"It isn't. From the moment you stepped into this house, you have been a human just like you promised you would be. No arson. No murder." God, I came close. But I couldn't tell him that. "I don't always know how honest you are with me... but you are good to me. You're not the antichrist when you're with me. I paid enough attention in Sunday school to know that Armageddon doesn't start without you at the head of its army... and you are not that man anymore. I trust that completely. I trust you completely. So here's what this really boils down to: Do you trust me?"

The question was a dagger right in my gut. He shouldn't have had to ask it, even if my suspicion had given him no alternative. I had always known the answer, no matter how much I was fighting it now. "Of course I trust you," I murmured.

"Then please trust that I want this."

"But do you?" I asked, and I was doing it again, but it wasn't so much an issue of trust as it was an issue of how fucking dumb Pip was. "Or is this just more experimentation?"

At last, there was something slightly abashed in his expression. But he'd committed himself to honesty, and he couldn't deflect the question. "It's... a little bit of both," he admitted, but to his credit he did not look away. "I swear that I am really fucking in love with you. But obviously I can't be one hundred percent sure if I want to be... you know..." He bit his lip and bounced his head side to side. "Fucking. In love with you."

"That's a really big 'if.'"

"Is it, though?" he asked, eyes squinted. "I'm not afraid of you anymore. It doesn't matter how close you get to me... I'm not scared. I'm not even uncomfortable. I've never done it with a guy, so I can't guarantee that it's going to be my cup of tea... but if there were any guy in the world I'd want to do it with, it'd be you."

"It could be awful."

"We have legitimately been through a lot worse than awful sex."

I laughed, if only a little. I couldn't get over how completely ludicrous this conversation was. "What is it that you really want from me here, Pip?" I asked him, exhausted.

His response was so simple and so stupid. "Everything," he replied, looking up at me with wide, earnest eyes. "I can't stand the thought of somebody else having a part of you that I don't. I've been chasing after you for years, and now that you're finally here, finally mine... I want everything from you."

Want everything but this, I had begged his phantom an eternity ago. But no matter how much I willed it to be otherwise... I loved this stupid kid like crazy, and I wanted everything from him, too. I bent down and pressed my mouth against his, closing my eyes like a woman. The kiss didn't taste like blood or charcoal this time. It was the only time I'd ever kissed Pip gently, and it felt, tasted just like Pip had in my dreams: like sunshine, like gold, like the open sky, like every broken thing in the world that had ever been discarded. I felt like fainting as I pulled away.

"Please," I asked him, so weak I could hardly stand myself. "Just give this a little time. Really... think about whether you want this."

"I've been thinking for awhile," he protested, hands on my chest, and I had to get rid of him now before I completely lost the will to do the right thing.

"Go home," I urged again, but my voice wasn't unkind this time. "I'm not trying to be a dick. I just want you to give this a little more thought. Shit, I need some time to think all this over, too."

Pip looked like he was about to argue again, but then he tightened his lips, looked down, and nodded. "... okay." He removed his hands and took a step backward, and the effect was like the sun disappearing behind a cloud. I was so far gone. He really did need to get out of my house before I lost my mind. "I'll... go get my stuff."

"Are you okay to bike back home?"

"I'm fine," he said, not meeting my eyes as he wandered off into the kitchen. "It's not that far."

Good. There was no way I could get behind the wheel right now. "I'm going to go get out of these clothes, then."

"Call me later."

"I will." It wasn't a lie, but it was a weak promise. My skin was itchy, now, and I needed to distance myself from Pip. I didn't even wait until he'd slipped on his shoes before making a beeline down the hall and into my bedroom.

I did the right thing, I told myself, closing the door behind me and pacing over to the bed on unsteady legs. My hands were too shaky to undo any buttons, so I just sat my ass down and took a deep breath. Sending him away was the right thing to do. I could still taste him, and it was making me feverish. I tightened my fingers around the edge of the mattress to steady myself. This was too much... this was just way too fucking much, way too fucking fast, and Pip needed some time to really reconsider whether he wanted this... even if it was true that I'd wanted this for an entire lifetime.

I wanted a glass of water. I wanted a cold shower. I wanted Pip. He was offering me everything... and I was having to fight everything in my own nature not to take it. I didn't want to hurt Pip... but if he let me, I would. I still saw Gary's hunched and bloody figure on my couch every time I closed my eyes, and I was smart enough to realize that it was less a nightmare than a ghost of things to come. "Do you hate me?" Gary had asked, "Or do you just hate Pip?" I couldn't believe in Pip's promise that anything good could possibly come of acting on this desire, because nothing good had ever come of my desires. Only corpses. I destroyed everything I touched.

But Pip was right in that I hadn't managed to destroy him. I had put my hands on him, and he was still here, shining and golden and self-righteous. I gripped the bed tighter, trying to suppress thoughts of how shining and golden he actually was. I did the right thing, I repeated to myself, because that was better than admitting how desperately I wanted to do the wrong thing.

I really needed the glass of water. I'd just pushed myself up off the bed to go pour myself one when the door swung open as if reading my mind.

It was Pip. His cheeks were wildly red, but his face looked determined.

"Pip..."

"So, after thinking it over, just now," he announced, eyes on a spot about a foot to my left, "I have come to the conclusion that if I give this any more time I will literally explode."

Well, shit. I couldn't be expected to make two good decisions in the same day. Pip had barely finished his sentence before I'd crossed the room and pinned him to the wall.

He didn't struggle, didn't resist—just grabbed desperate fistfuls of my shirt as I tangled my hands in his hair and opened him completely up to me. His mouth parted at the first swipe of my tongue against his lower lip, and while he wasn't defiantly aggressive the way he'd been the night he first confronted me about my feelings for him, there was nothing hesitant about his responses, either. His hands at my back urged me closer, and my body happily obliged, and honestly I was pressing him so roughly into the wall that I was afraid he was going to peel away with the wallpaper tattooed into his back. "This is a really fucking bad idea," I muttered into his open mouth, attempting to take a step back as I belatedly registered the effect this full-frontal contact was having on me—but Pip grabbed me by the belt loops and held me in place.

"It isn't," Pip replied, breath catching in his throat. He rose up on the balls of his feet to whisper directly in my ear, and I twitched against him. "You can feel that, can't you?"

I was so sure that he was giving me locker-room style shit that I almost hit him—but it occurred to me as his fingers pulled me even closer that, no, unholy fucking hell, he was talking about himself. With his hips pressed into mine, I could feel him going stiff against my stomach. What blood didn't rush to my face and neck dropped as immediately to the lower half of my body as if it were liquid mercury. I staggered, shifting my weight to my elbows, where they held me—feebly—against the wall. "You can't—"

"Don't tell me what I can or can't do, what I do or don't want." His high, breathy voice betrayed the hard line he was trying to take, though; he was just as surprised by his body's reaction as I was. "I'm not promising that this is going to go off without a hitch, but I'm obviously not being coerced into anything, here." Not yet. My elbows dropped to Pip's shoulders, because my ability to hold myself upright was rapidly fading. "Please. Just... trust me."

"I do trust you," I growled into the wallpaper. "The one I don't trust is me."

"Will you be able to stop if I ask you to?"

He let me take a step back this time. I looked him in the eyes and saw the redness of lust but absolutely none of the fear that should have been flooding him right now. "No," I answered emphatically, because I'd already discovered that firsthand. "If you open this door, you won't be able to stop whatever shit comes tumbling out."

But Pip just smiled and shrugged, and he was so stupid and so beautiful I wanted to screw him and strangle him at the same time. "Maybe I'm willing to take that risk."

"You're an idiot."

"I'm tired of having doors closed in my face." He pushed himself off the wall, and I was grateful to see that the wallpaper didn't go with him. For every step forward he took, I took another one back, until my calves were against my bedframe. That son of a bitch. "I'll admit that this has gotten a lot gayer a lot quicker than I expected but..." Pip laughed, looking with a mixture of embarrassment and exhilaration at his crotch. "Look, I'm genuinely turned on right now. I want to see where this can go."

"Straight to hell," I replied, but there was no conviction in my voice, because he was pushing me down and my resistance was gelatin. Pip climbed up onto the bed after me, pinning me into place as he put his hands on my shoulders and his knees on either side of my thighs. I caught his eyes, mildly awestruck. "You've got some serious nerve," I laughed, "trying to pull that virgin shit on me." Pip looked down at me with a self-satisfied smile.

"Don't worry. You'll see once clothes start coming off that my sexual expertise extends only as far as my R-rated movie collection." At the very thought, the weakening part of my brain that was still fighting this flickered off like a dollar store flashlight. Pip bent down to kiss me, and I let him.

For about a second.

In the space of a heartbeat, Pip was on his back on the mattress, and I was the one holding him in place, both of his wrists forced over his head in one of my hands, both of his knees spread shamelessly apart by mine. He made a gasping, muffled noise of surprise into my mouth, and it was wildfire through my veins... but it wasn't one that consumed me. My pulse was racing and I was already just as hard as Pip, and if he was going to crawl into my bed like this after repeated warnings not to I no longer had the wherewithal to kick him out... but I could still think. I was horny as hell, but I was still human. And that was new. Maybe it was a sort of fear that was keeping me sober—a knowledge of all the horrible places this could go layered on top of the unconditional trust of Pip's that this wouldn't go to any of them. His arched spine and uplifted jaw and breathy, wordless encouragements were the most sexualized yellow lights imaginable, signs of submission that warned my volatile libido to proceed only with the utmost caution.

When I slipped the middle and ring fingers of my free hand under his shirt, he betrayed the first real sign of doubt, eyes blinking open and meeting mine in self-conscious agitation. And I found that I could obey the signals after all and that Pip's stupid trust had not been unfounded. Because I stopped. "This is kind of a big part of what you're wanting us to do right now," I explained, voice impatient. This new-found self control wasn't going to nullify the serious blue balls I was going to have if he pussied out now. "The sans-clothing bit you were mentioning."

"Right, okay," Pip squeaked, and beneath my fingers I could feel his abdominal muscles tensing. The little liar. He was scared as shit. Fear was only part of what I could feel, of course, because there was also his skin, which was so hot it felt like he'd been lying out in the sun... but the fear was really the more important thing to keep in mind, here.

"We do not have to do this," I reminded him, words I'd previously spoken to no one ever. Even now, I doubted how much I actually meant them. "In fact, if the idea of my seeing you without a shirt on has you this worked up, we probably shouldn't."

Pip shook his head, blonde hair tugging free from where I'd trapped it beneath his pinned arms. "No," he insisted, attempting to steady his voice. "I want this. I want—" But he did not finish the second sentence. That was the green light. I pushed his shirt up over his shoulders, and when I pressed my mouth to Pip's collarbone, his words died to a gasping moan. His hips bucked up involuntarily, and mine met him halfway, and even gayer than the sensation of my hard-on crushing against his was the thought as I released his wrists and tugged his shirt completely off that holy hell he is cut. The shadows cast dramatically across the room by the setting sun exaggerated every line of his torso, and he was a liar if he tried to tell me this was all from bicycling, and holy shit I was such a fucking fag but I could not keep my hands and mouth off his skin. He arched into every touch, every lick, every bite, and the obscene sounds he made to accompany each one had me pressed so tight against the fly of my slacks I thought I might bruise. When my shaking thumbs had traveled down to his hipbones and my tongue had reached the wiry blonde hair beneath his navel, he finally pushed me off.

"Pip," I groaned.

"No, it's—I don't want you to stop," he panted, propping himself up on his elbows. His whole face was pink and shining with sweat. "But I am wearing more saliva than clothing right now, and you don't even have your shoes off." Objectively, that was true. My feet were already hanging off the edge of the bed, so it was no big deal to kick off my shoes and socks. When I sat up on my knees to start undoing buttons, however, Pip stopped me again. "Wait," he said, pushing himself fully upright. "It's not fair if you..." He leaned forward and grabbed my hands, forcing them back to my sides. I tilted my head and raised an eyebrow at him, but it was a few seconds before he could summon the bravery to say his next words. "Let me."

Nothing about Pip's amateurish attempts to get my shirt off should have been erotic, especially when that shirt was a Walmart polo. But the way his breath hit my clavicle as he was unbuttoning the collar, the way his fingers trembled when they landed on my belt and then upwards onto my bare skin... it was all but debilitating. I leaned forward to help him slide the shirt over my arms and head, and then it was his turn to assess what the hell he was getting into. I didn't cut the same figure Pip did, I knew. I was taller than Pip and broader in the shoulder, but I wasn't an athlete, barely ate, and was given the illusion of color only by the setting sun.

Pip was an absolute wordsmith, however, and he let none of that stop him. "You've put on weight since the last time I saw you shirtless," he commented, brushing my ribs experimentally with his fingertips. And all I could do was gawk at him—because what the hell kind of thing was that to say when you got someone's clothes off?! Pip obviously noticed my look of open-mouthed incredulity, because he hurriedly added, "I mean—I meant that as a compliment. You look—healthier. Good. It's good. You look good."

I wasn't sure my eyebrows would ever go back down. "Uh huh. Well. Consider me seduced."

"Shut up," he muttered, fingers continuing to trail the ridges of my ribcage and abdomen without direction. "I'm not you. I've never done this. I can lie back and squeal moronically all day long, but I don't know how to..."

With every fiber of my being, I wanted to assure Pip that I had never done this, either—but I had, and it was the biggest fuckup of my life, and it was bad enough not to be able to admit to it, a thousand times worse to lie about it. "It's not difficult," I told him, and I reached up to place an encouraging hand on his. "Just keep doing exactly what you're doing right now. I'm hard as a rock, okay? You're not doing anything I don't want. And if you do?" One of his fingers brushed a nipple, and I had to pause to catch my breath. "We've survived worse than awful sex, right?"

"This isn't awful," he whispered, looking up at me with wide eyes as his thumbs made a slow line down my sides to my hips, settling just beneath the waistband of my slacks.

"No," I agreed with a weary laugh, shaking my head and combing one of my hands through his damp hair. "It's not." And I pushed him back down into the sheets.

It was a dream, this soft, faltering exploration of bodies. It was not the violent descent into sin my father had prophesied—but it was also a far cry from the aching celibacy I had assumed was the only alternative. It was a dream, this Pip who could offer himself completely up to me without compromising any of the indomitable will that had first attracted me to him nine years ago. The guy beneath me on the bed was still the friend I'd been so terrified of losing—just a friend sporting a pretty impressive erection. But, hey, original sin was part of the whole Catholic shtick. Maybe Pip deserved some sort of allowance for that. Adam fucked Eve, after all. That fruit wasn't forbidden anymore.

Of course, Eve didn't have a schlong, and it would've been a lie to say that wasn't causing me a substantial amount of grief. Above the belt, Pip was enough like a chick that I was confident in my ministrations—and Pip's highly audible responses were all the reassurance I needed. Below the belt, however, he was like Gary, and that had been a bloody fucking disaster. Every so often, my hands would dip lower, ghosting over the crotch of Pip's jeans, but I was genuinely terrified to go further. Once we took that final step, there was no going back... and if I fucked it up, I would lose absolutely everything I'd fought my father and myself to keep. About the sixth time one of my hands made this cowardly retreat, though, Pip grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked me down to growl in my ear. "If you do not quit doing that," he threatened, "I am going to rip your nuts off."

"Didn't peg you for the S&M scene," I joked feebly, but Pip wasn't playing along. There was no smile on his face—just a red-hot combination of pent-up sexual energy and frustration. I bit my tongue and looked to the corner of the room, where no childhood friend was expecting me to feel him up and flip both of our worlds upside-down. "Pip... this changes everything. Are you sure you still want to do this?"

"Jesus, do you not see my pants?!" He gestured dramatically. "I am sure."

He wasn't. The silence that descended on the two of us after I'd unbuttoned his jeans and slipped them and his boxers over his hips was so thick and penetrating I couldn't even hear the wildlife outside anymore. The sun had set at some point without my noticing it. Only moonlight trickled in to illuminate Pip, completely exposed to me. My lungs weren't working. I could feel myself suffocating, and the pain was excruciating. Slowly—because seconds of complete stillness passed between the two of us—the demon in the pit of my abdomen began to stir. And then, there it was: that debilitating fire in my cock, that red haze of lust that completely superseded all judgment. I took my next breath as a devil, and as that devil I licked my palm and reached out to wrap my wet hand around Pip. You fucked up, I thought, almost mournfully, as he let loose a ragged moan and shuddered into my touch. Because now all I could think about was fucking him.

"Damien," he mouthed, a virgin's prayer. Nobody else had ever touched him before—his reaction was too extreme. Slow, teasing strokes became quick, merciless pumps, and Pip was falling completely apart beneath me. This was closer to the nightmare, now: Pip wordless and senseless on my bed with his golden hair spread around him like a halo but his thighs spread open like a whore's. I kept one of my hands tight around him while the other drew jagged pink lines down his torso with nails that occasionally stopped to draw blood. Pip didn't seem to notice the tiny rows of red beading up along his belly, but I did. My kisses traveled down from his neck and throat to his stomach, where the taste of his blood made mine burn like lava. "Holy fucking shit," he was chanting, and I was so close now that I could smell him, and... what the hell. When in Rome... I unclenched my fist so that I was merely palming his erection, and then I drew my tongue in one long swipe along the underside of its length. The taste was so overwhelming that even if Pip hadn't jerked and sputtered out "holy crap, stop!" I might have, anyway. I looked up at him, and he was a mess. "I'm just... right there," he admitted breathlessly, and that was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard. He should've just let himself come. Now he was inviting more... and I was in too prime a position not to take advantage of that offer.

After yanking my own pants off without fanfare, I drew myself into a seated position on my knees and grabbed Pip by the ankles, pulling him up and toward me. His gasp of surprise turned into a clipped shriek of terror when my hand slid in between the cleft of his backside. No turning back now. We were here.

"Damien—"

"This will hurt a little," I whispered to him, words I had said before, in some far-off nightmare... and yet I couldn't stop myself from saying them again. I put two fingers in my mouth, then brought them down to the juncture of Pip's inner thighs, but he jumped completely off the bed at the sensation. With no small amount of irritation, I growled over at him, "What the hell are you doing?"

"W-wait a minute!" he stammered, dropping down to the floor at the foot of the bed to rummage through his jeans. "I've—I've got something for this."

"What do you—" But then I saw. When Pip hopped back onto the bed, still visibly hard but also visibly flustered, he was holding a little tube in his hand. I thought it was Neosporin at first, which made zero fucking sense... until I realized that it was some truly retro tube of KY jelly. I wasn't even aware they packaged lube like that anymore. I looked at him with a gaping mouth. "Where in the fuck did you even get that?" I asked, stunned.

Pip looked down at the tube... and kept his eyes exactly there. He steadfastly refused to answer the question or to make eye contact. And there was only one explanation in my mind.

"Holy shit, Pip... Did my dad give that to you?!"

Pip looked up with embarrassed, childlike guilt in his eyes, and I groaned, pinching the bridge of my nose with my fingers. Not only did I lose about half of my erection immediately, I snapped right out of my demonic haze. There was literally nothing that could have done the job more effectively than the thought of my father getting involved in my sex life. What the hell was his game, here?! He'd warned me to stay away from Pip... and his answer to my refusal to do so was to supply the guy with sexual aids? Yet the longer I stared at Pip, sitting there expectantly with his arms wrapped around his chest and looking smaller and smaller by the second... the more I understood.

You want me to break him, I thought with disgust. You want me to drag him down through the mud, turn him into a whore like all my other toys, and prove myself wrong about him. But I wouldn't. There was no way in hell.

"Pip," I started, but I couldn't finish what I needed to tell him, which was that he needed to leave. Because he had that look on again, that brave, almost defiant expression that made me fall head-over-heels in love with him. And how many times had he turned to me with those brave eyes only to watch everything around him shatter to pieces as a result? I couldn't do it again. I wouldn't. "Here," I growled, extending a hand. I made my decision in a second flat. "Give me some of that."

The amount of jelly that Pip squeezed into my hand was absolutely ridiculous, and it completely betrayed the expression of solid steel he was trying to maintain. I couldn't help myself; I chuckled grimly. "Afraid?" I asked, knowing that he was and knowing that he would deny it.

"No," he replied, predictably. But the color was draining out of him, and I could see that he was softening a little.

"Good." He was the worst liar; he could never meet my eyes after giving me a line. "Because there's no reason to be." I rubbed my hands together for a few seconds to warm up the lubricant, then reached down to slather it over his half-hearted erection.

Both of Pip's heads jerked up abruptly. "Woah!" he gasped, grabbing my arms. "Why are you—"

"There's only one way that this is happening," I told him, looking him dead in the eye. His face was nothing but blue-eyed astonishment. "And it's not going to hurt you."

Pip's look of patent disbelief was insulting to the most personal degree. "I just figured—"

"Well, figure again," I told him shortly, jerking out of his grip so I could finish what I'd started. Pip's entire body shook and curled around me, and I didn't want to admit how much it turned me on... though now that I had stripped down, there was no way he could've missed the effect if he only opened his eyes. The car wasn't the only ostentatious thing my dad had given me. "However much it might wound your pride, one of us has a much higher tolerance for pain than the other."

"It's not that," he rasped, unable to speak properly. I grabbed one of his hands so I could coat his fingers, but he didn't seem to notice. "I just thought you'd want to—"

"Fuck you, like I fucked all your female counterparts? I do," I said, because that was the truth. We were in bed together now, and there was really no denying that I'd been seconds away from taking him exactly like he'd assumed I would—right before he'd leaped off the bed to go grab my dad's little gift. Maybe I'd thank my father later; he'd inadvertently saved Pip a third time. "But even you're not sure if you want that. I am not going to rape you just to satisfy your curiosity. If this is all just another gigantic mistake of ours, and I'm betting good money that it is... and least let this be one that doesn't leave you bleeding."

Pip blinked stupidly at me for a few seconds, then looked down with an red-cheeked smile. Was a kindness from me so unexpected? He mouthed what might have been a silent thank you before leaning forward to kiss me, pressing himself against me as he did so. The sensation of his bare skin on mine sent another agonizing wave of heat through me. I wanted so badly not to want this so badly, wanted to return to a point in time where merely being next to Pip would have satisfied me. Because right now, merely being next to him was so unsatisfying I felt ready to explode out of my skin. I grabbed Pip's fingers and positioned them in the last place I would've imagined anyone touching tonight.

Pip let out a wet gasp, breaking away from me. "I don't—"

"It's not going to fit right otherwise," I choked out, not wanting to explain the intricacies of what needed to happen right now, because it was really about the least erotic pillow talk in the history of sex. But if the two of us were really going to do this and do it in a way that didn't play right into my dad's sick little game... we did have to take this mortifying first step. "Don't make me do it myself." Please.

"I don't know if I can," he mouthed, and his stricken expression nearly killed me. He remembered doing it to himself, I realized with anguish. He remembered how much it hurt. It won't hurt me the way it hurt you. His fingers were trembling. It was rape for you. It is sex to me. But I couldn't tell him that.

"You've got half a tube of KY Jelly on your fingers," I laughed breathlessly, trying to keep the atmosphere light, because this was never going to happen if either one of us starting thinking about Eric Cartman. "I promise you: you can." Please. "Please."

With a hesitant twitch of the mouth, he did his best. He was slow and cautious, and I tried not to shudder as he pushed past that initial ring of muscle... but of course I did. Pip stopped instantly. "I'm so sorry!" he started, and he began to pull away, but I reached around to hold his wrist in place. "Are you okay?!"

"I'm fine," I promised him, but my insides were wriggling. "God that's weird," I panted, trying to adjust to the slippery intrusiveness of it. "It doesn't hurt. It's just... it's just fucking weird."

"It's weird on my end, too," said Pip, and when I looked into his deadpan eyes I laughed. He laughed in response, and he was perfect.

"Try another," I urged him, and he did. I grunted, and he moaned, and that made it all worth it, and this was the most repulsive thing I had ever done but Pip was still hard. All of this was a terrible mistake, and I was fairly certain that I was taking advantage of his sycophantic nature somehow, but I could justify this as long as Pip was hard and as long as I was the only one with anything inside of me. I want to be inside of you, I thought desperately as his fingers twitched and pushed deeper. But I can't hurt you again.

When I finally pulled his fingers out of me, he began to tremble, and when I took his swollen length in one still-slippery hand to guide him into position, he looked up at me with the face of a frightened child. "You're... you're sure you want to...?"

No, I thought. This is the biggest mistake of either of our lives. I am still not sure that you are really capable of knowing whether or not you want this, that this isn't going to break you like you've never been broken before, that this isn't exactly what my dad wants. Even with you inside of me it still smacks of rape. But I am sure that I want you like I have never wanted anything in my life. So what I told him, voice breaking, was: "Yes."

I slid down slowly onto him, over him, around him, and he screamed.

"Holy shit," he gasped at the halfway point, fingers clawing at my back as he struggled for breath. Even just a few inches deep, I could feel him twitching inside of me, and I tried to tell myself it wasn't the most incredible thing I had ever felt. "That is..."

Tight, I thought, because he couldn't finish the sentence. I nodded mutely in response, eyes clenched shut, and hunched over to bury my face in his hair. This was going to kill me. I was going to die just like this. "I don't think I can take in any more," I whispered into his ear, voice thick. He smelled like his own girly-ass shampoo. This was unreal. "I think I am going to die."

"Does it hurt?" he whispered, shifting experimentally. He brushed something inside of me and I saw stars.

"No," I moaned. "Shit... shit..." I hissed as he did it again, all my muscles tightening at this invasive ecstasy. "It doesn't hurt... it doesn't hurt, I just can't move. Holy fucking shit there is a lot of you inside of me." Pip laughed appreciatively, and it was gratifying to hear that he was as breathless as I was.

"There is," he agreed, hands sliding down to my hips. "I don't know how to tell you this... but I'm not sure I even care if it hurts." He gripped hard into my sides and thrust up, eliciting a clipped moan from me as he pushed deeper, sliding with unbearable friction along whatever it was that had my vision going white. "This is... incredible..."

"Then reciprocate," I growled, as if having his cock inside of me was not enough to last me the rest of my life. I peeled his right hand off of me and guided it in between our stomachs, where I was still rock hard and aching. He wrapped a hand tentatively around me, and my nerves screamed so wildly at his touch I could have sobbed. He looked up at me with wonder, maybe a little thrilled at this effect he could have on me... or maybe just a little thrilled in general.

"Damien... I really..." And I realized I couldn't bear whatever else he had to say. There was an emotion in his voice that was utterly unfamiliar to me in scenarios like this. I couldn't stand for him to mix up something like love and sex. Because when this all went tits up—when Pip got over the rush of actually having a warm body on his dick—and he realized that he wasn't a fag like I was, I still needed him to love me. So I closed my mouth over his and rocked hard against him, because I found that I could move after all.

I wasn't so easy to kill.

It was a sweet sort of torture for the next several minutes. The deeper Pip penetrated—and mercifully, from my position on top of him, I did at least control how deep that was—the closer the whole thing came to real pain. But it was Pip... it was Pip... Pip, whose hips were matching and challenging the pace of my own with excruciating enthusiasm, Pip whose fingers were stroking me feather-light but fire-hot, Pip whose blonde hair became wrapped tighter and tighter around my fists each time I needed to let loose a scream that was not entirely pleasurable, Pip whose otherworldly blue eyes were staring straight into me as I came completely undone on top of him, Pip whose cock was ripping me open yet still hitting that—fuck shit fuck—spot inside of me that was ruining my ability to see, to think, to breathe. I recognized the heat welling up in the pit of my belly, but this time it was all tangled up in Pip—Pip who shone like the motherfucking sun—and I was afraid that it would burn holes in me on its way out.

And then he flipped me. At the last fucking second he reached up to grab my wrists and he rolled me painfully onto my back, and while I was making some inhuman, half-formed noise between arousal and agony, he slammed all of his weight into me, lighting up every single nerve ending in my body. My dad might've heard the scream that came ripping out of me from hell, and then Pip was coming into me, hot and wet and holy fucking shit unlike anything I had ever felt in my life. I couldn't breathe for the pain. I couldn't think for the ecstasy. So I just lay there, eyes rolled back into my skull, while my entire body throbbed to the beat of my weakening heart.

Pip muttered a trembling "sorry" and pressed a feeble, apologetic kiss to my shoulder, but he didn't pull out of me, not yet. I wasn't done, and so neither was he. My entire body was tensed to the point of breaking because he was still stroking me, undaunted by his own exhaustion—and fuck, I could feel it, wrapped around him the way I was, how sweaty and shaky and spent he really was—but he focused only on me, eyes and fingers only on me, like this was easy, like this was natural, like he'd been doing this for a lifetime. He slid out of me only once he'd gone completely soft—and the wet, slick noise it made had me groaning against my will—and then he dipped down for a second like maybe he had some notion of sucking me off—but I couldn't.

"Don't," I rasped, hitting him in the chest. "It'll kill me." I was so close already. "Just... you're doing fine..."

And he finished just fine, too.

On paper, maybe it was a little anticlimactic, simply coming into his hand like that. I couldn't remember the last time I'd ended the night with a girl on such a vanilla note. But it needed to end this way with Pip. It wasn't an angry, hellish burn like it had been with Gary; instead, it was an exorcism. I came in spurts, and each was blinding, but it felt like sunlight, not fire—a cleansing, reverse baptism. I didn't scream aloud the way I had when Pip had come into me, just grit my teeth and rode it out, leaking from two different orifices now but feeling cleaner than I had in centuries. Pip, I chanted in my mind, Pip, Pip, Pip, and even breathing was novel and new.

Neither of us spoke for about five minutes afterward, just lay there in our own sticky filth, catching our breath and waiting for reality to catch up with us. It caught up to Pip the quickest. He was the first to break the silence.

"That was about a million times better than jacking off on your couch."

"Shut the fuck up." But there was no anger or impatience in my voice. I was laughing like a kid, and Pip was, too, and he was crawling up my torso to give me a poorly aimed kiss, smearing spunk all the fuck over our stomachs in the process because he still had no idea how to do this.

"The next time, you can—"

"'Next time'?"

Pip raised his eyebrows at me, jabbing a bony elbow into my forearm. "Please do not try and tell me you do not want to do that again." I wanted to do nothing else for the rest of my life. At the moment, however, I was still winded and not a little bit sore.

"I'm not sure if you actually realize this, but what you did at the end there probably tore a gaping hole in my intestines."

Pip looked properly guilty at this and shifted into a cowed position on his knees. "I... no, I actually do. I'm so sorry. I got really carried away at the end, but I've never... felt anything like that in my entire life." His cheeks were red hot. "I swear I didn't mean to hurt you. It wasn't... awful though, was it? I mean, you still got off. I didn't—" But I was laughing again, and then Pip was attacking me again.

"You're an idiot. I'm fine. Christ, I never even lost the erection."

"I'll return the favor next time."

I sat up, too, letting the humor in the room dissipate. I looked him in the eye, because he needed to understand that what I was about to say was not a joke. "Look, I am not going to pretend that what just happened wasn't incredible, but you did see it, didn't you? How close I came to really hurting you?"

Pip nodded, gesturing to my eyes, like he'd seen something there. "I did." He put a hand on my knee, and it was bizarre how intimate that felt after what we'd just done. "But you didn't follow through."

"I could have. So easily."

"But you didn't." His words were steely, his eyes fathomless. He didn't remove his hand. "I have taken a lot of chances on you in my life, Damien. A lot of times, those gambles have been rewarded with one form of pain or another. But they have always been worth it."

"Pip—"

"You will always be worth it."

I lay back down. I didn't trust myself to keep looking at him, didn't trust the stupid shit that might come spilling out of my mouth. There were some things that I really should have said. He deserved to hear that he'd been worth everything, too, that thousands of years of bloody, predestined bullshit was all a willing price I would pay to be right here, right now with him, just like this. He deserved to hear that I loved him, loved him like I hadn't known demons could. But I was afraid that if I told him this, the rest would follow: that I didn't know where we went from here, that I honestly couldn't promise I would always remain this happy and this human, that when I hurt him I would hurt him badly, that I was so terrified of my father's blood in me I could hardly move, that as much as I trusted in his strength I still did not trust that it was strong enough to eternally resist corruption. I didn't want to ruin the victory of tonight with idiotic speculation about the failure of tomorrow. Pip lay down next to me, and I took his hand, because that, at least, was safe.

"What happens next?" he said to the ceiling.

"We take a shower, because both of us smell like shit." He hit me, and I could feel his smile even if I couldn't see it.

"I was serious about moving in, you know. Are you still willing to take me, once I turn eighteen?"

"Things have changed, now."

"They don't have to change much." His voice was shockingly nonchalant for a guy who'd just fucked the antichrist. "I mean, I am obviously not sleeping on that couch anymore."

"Of course," I replied, cordially. "Any other accommodations you'll need?"

"Just give me a cake and a closet."

"I can probably make that happen." I turned over to shoot him a grin, and he was stunning, all bright eyes and flashing teeth and blonde hair draped all over my pillows. I couldn't help myself. "I love you," I said, in a voice that was barely my own. Pip's smile was replaced with slack-jawed awe, and then that by a fit of nervous giggles. "Now say it back," I threatened with a humiliated growl, "or I will torch you."

I had to wrestle him into submission, because he wouldn't stop laughing, and holy crap we really did reek to high hell. Once I had him in a half nelson, I finally got what I wanted, couched in between loud, mirthful chuckles:

"I love you, too."