Beltaine
by Ashura
Yaoi (2x1), lime
disclaimer: you know
it, and i'm too tired for it.
archive: desolation
angels (http://www.dreamwater.net/ashura),
when I get to it.
****
It was all too much for me.
The way your eyes glittered in the firelight like some feral
creature—inhuman, but not animal either—a satyr perhaps, or some creature other
children, who grew up differently than we did, would have been taught to fear
long ago in fairy tales.
I was never taught fairy tales, so I never learned to fear
them.
Until that night.
Why did you touch me?
Why did I let you?
Why aren't you here, so I can ask you these things, instead
of whispering them into the recycled colony air where not even the wind will
carry them to you? Was it just the
earth? The way it lives and breathes so
hard you drown in it, in the very /life/ of it? Or maybe it was the adrenaline of warriors trapped, the way we
needed to do /something/ when we were forced to do nothing.
I remember it perfectly—every touch of your skin, every
heartbeat felt through the pulse of the world, the way your hair brushed my
chest as if it too were alive.
Everything was alive. How dizzy
I was, how dazzled by your smile and the darkness in your eyes, how entranced
by the glow of your skin in the firelight.
You told me there was magic in the woods.
You said it so seriously, so honestly, that I had no choice
but to believe you. And though I didn't
recognise it til you told me, I could feel it too—its tingle across my skin,
its subtle weave through my mind, dulling some senses and heightening others.
I think you had no choice but to kiss me, the same way I
could do nothing but kiss you in return.
I remember how your silhouette shifted as you stood, the bright crimson
of the flame licking at the edges of it—and how that heat was nothing compared
to the tender brush of your fingers across my face.
I remember how gracefully you knelt to kiss me, and how I,
precognate, knew what you intended and how I would respond to it. I had never been kissed before. I am afraid now that I will never be kissed
the same way again.
Sometimes, I am afraid that I was dreaming.
But I wasn't. Not
even my wildest fancies could have perfected the image of you, of the ragged
syncopation of your breath and the scent of woodsmoke and pine that permeated
you. I could never have created the
euphoria of that kiss, or the way I clung to you as you bore me down onto the
dirt.
We didn't think. We
didn't speak. I suppose we should have,
or I wouldn't be wrestling now with these doubts. We were drunk on the air, intoxicated by the heady late night in
springtime, driven by something so base and primal that not all the training in
the world could have quelled it. It was
the magic in the woods that you breathed into my ear, and it devoured us
alive. I was the stolen child and you
were the creature who led me astray—but you were carried along too, even as I
was. It was the first time I remember
you ever not having words—only moans, whimpers, soft intonations of sound with
more meaning than language could ever have given them.
And I was the loud one, crying my desperation to the starlit
sky as you drove into me, my voice no longer my own, all my hard-won control
surrendered utterly to you. I remember
the sting of our frenzied joining—it was my body that hurt, but I thought the
whimper of pain was yours. It made no
difference. Divisions of flesh were no
longer important, or even distinguishable:
me from you, you from me, us from the universe and we from the earth, it
was all greater than we could ever hope to be.
I remember how you asked me with your eyes, and I answered
with a moan, and you made me yours in a way no-one else will ever be able to do
again. Did you realise that was what
you were doing, Duo? Did you know how
these events beyond our feeble mortal control would bind me to you so
desperately?
Do you miss me?
I woke up with dirt on my face, and your hair was
tangled. It hurt me to walk, and I saw
the marks my nails had left in your back.
And we said nothing.
I waited for you to smile at me, to tease me, to say
something—I don't know what to do when you won't speak. And maybe you were going to, or maybe I
would have found the courage in the end to ask you what had happened between
us.
But the war went on, and we went with it.
And now I'm sitting on top of simulated grass breathing
artificial air, staring out at the swirled sapphire marble that is the planet I
may fight for but never entirely comprehend.
And I think I understand a bit of what makes men fight, and what makes
the emotions of mortals run so high.
It's the earth, pulsing like a heartbeat inside all of us, alive in a
way this colony can never be. And maybe
that's why we're mortal after all, because no matter what technology we have,
we will never be able to create the same magic that consumed us that night when
we hid in the woods.
And maybe I'm thinking too hard.
But I want to ask you these things. I want you to tell me that you remember it
too. That you are bound the same way I
am.
And that someday we might make magic again.
~Owari~
