They were having sex. Hot, and rhythmic, skin brushing against skin in a comfortable, well practiced motion. It was probably because they've done it so much, that it was so good. He made a fists in the sheets, opened his mouth to moan and nothing came out, he bit his lower lip and breathed hard. Crawford's right hand carefully toying with one of Schuldich's nipples, Schuldich shuddered. His whole body was hyperaware, sensitive to caress right now. He had to make an effort to reach out and touch back, to remember that Crawford liked when he brushed his fingernails lightly at the small of his back. He released his hands on the sheets abruptly, ran hands over Crawford's back.
"God, I'm so close..." He panted into Crawford's ear, tightened his entire body around Crawford. "Stop -- Brad, just stop a moment." And Crawford did, his hips were still as he kissed Schuldich's cheek, his temple, his forehead.
When Schuldich felt more capable of handling the sensation again, he asked Crawford to move again. He was so lost inside feeling, he couldn't remember to try and pleasure Crawford back. It was difficult, when every breath Crawford exhaled against his skin made him shake. When he came, it was a great tension in his body, a sudden and almost unexpected ecstasy. His entire body went a little limp under Crawford, who was still moving inside him. He smiled up at Crawford, drew him down and kissed him on the lips. "Sometimes it's shocking how good you are." And they laughed comfortably, kissed some more. When Crawford finished off inside him, he didn't mind so much.
They spent a moment kissing, before Crawford rolled away to sleep.
Crawford was a good lover, considerate and skilled. Schuldich never had cause to complain about their sex life, their entire relationship was based on sex.
Before Crawford fell asleep, he placed one lingering kiss on the scar at Schuldich's left wrist.
Schuldich dragged himself to their bathroom. He used the toilet, splashed cold water on his face, ran it through his hair lightly. He always liked what he saw in the mirror. The high cheek bones and the fine chin that made his diamond shaped face. The dyed red hair with the jagged cut. His mouth was a little too fine for a man's face, and Schuldich's eyes were caught for a moment by that too-fine shape. Eventually he forced his eyes away from his own reflection, but admired the fine muscles of his torso as he turned away, and went back to the bedroom.
He was allowed to be arrogant. He knew what he looked like, and he knew what he looked like to everyone else. And it was his body, his looks, that probably kept Crawford with him.
Crawford was already asleep, the sheets half off the bed. Schuldich ran one possessive hand across his body, smiled and fell asleep pressed against him.
It was probably going to be a month til their next job. That's how it usually worked. A little lay-low time, just to be sure that no one got entirely too suspicious. So now, Schuldich basically didn't have anything to do.
It was night now. Schuldich couldn't sleep. Farfarello was chanting in his holding cell. Nagi was having a dreamless sleep. Crawford had taken his sleeping pills and would likely sleep uninterrupted for several more hours.
Schuldich was thinking, remembering. He didn't want to think, he didn't want to remember. But at night, when the household was still, when the world was quieter than it normally was, he couldn't help it.
Schuldich hated thoughts.
He remembered coming home from the hospital. He remembered the way Crawford took care of him, spoke his calm and reasonable words. He remembered being talked into coming to grips with things. He remembered thinking of God on his deathbed, he remembered wanting to spit in his face. How dare God do this. How dare God do this to him. A man with no morals, a man with no heart, a man who's joy it was to hurt...crying from unrequited love.
How fucking idiotic.
Schuldich turned and draped an arm around Crawford, held onto him tightly.
"Love you," He said against Crawford's back. "But you know that, don't you." He pressed his forehead against the wonderful skin of Crawford's back. He felt the crevices of old scars against his face. One scar from a bullet he couldn't dodge fast enough. One scar from Esstet's wonderful teachers, one scar from a car crash. They all had scars. Even Nagi had them, but he'd never say out loud who gave them to him. Schuldich knew, of course. It was simply out of respect he never said why to the others.
Never do anything to hurt the team. He smiled a bit wryly. "We're nothing without each other. I'm nothing without you."
He fell into an almost sleep then. His mind going a little blank, beginning to drift away. He started to feel restless again, however, he started to feel caged.
Was he really nothing without Crawford? Is that the way it worked? He was a possession now? Just some good god damn soldier to order around? A convenient fuck? Was he willing to settle for that? Was he just going to live the rest of his god damn life as Crawford's bitch?
Schuldich was getting more and more restless, more and more ferocious. He found he was clenching his teeth, digging his fingers into skin.
He loved Crawford, he did.
And it was fine Crawford didn't love him back.
He was god damn used to it. It was an acceptable situation. It was an acceptable situation. He did not require his love to be requited, he did not require a god damn thing of the world. There was nothing in the world he couldn't do, control, fuck, or kill. He didn't need some idiotic man to love him back to make him feel better. He didn't need the whole god damn universe to make sense.
And the ache was growing stronger. And he was remembering more and more.
Schuldich shifted his weight on the bed. Schuldich was feeling... Schuldich felt... barely contained. He sat up in bed and gnashed his teeth suddenly. He was getting stir crazy. He needed to vent. He needed some fun. He needed something to occupy him before he went mad and destroyed all the things he'd been working for, the balance he had with Crawford that he worked so hard to maintain.
So why the fuck did Schuldich feel so... so... stir crazy?
He jumped out of bed and paced the floor. He started to feel more and more caged, until finally he walked out, shutting the door as quietly as he could behind him - resisting the urge to slam it. He wanted to growl at people, he wanted to shout at them. He wanted to sink the point of his knife into flesh and reclaim some of his mind back from all the squealing things that were fucking outside his skull.
People, why the hell were they like that? So damn loud? So damn certain of themselves? All it took was a little boredom on his part, and they were dead.
He flipped on the too bright light, the silence broken by the buzzing.
Bees, great electric bees filled his ears, and Farfarello's chanting mind reasoned away the world.
It was a sharp agitation, a growling need to just do something, anything.
When Crawford woke up, it was to a familiar feeling. A fractured sense of foreboding, a light chill. He tapped into the future, the world meshed into itself in front of his eyes, a strange and to him, obvious shifting. Five minutes from now, preventing Schuldich from trying to stab at him with a steak knife. He listened to the words he used to calm Schuldich, made a few mental improvements in the dialogue. He got up, and pulled on his workout sweats.
He'd torn the TV from it's stand, he'd shattered lamps against the wall. He'd made long long cuts on his legs. He'd cried until his eyes hurt, he'd destroyed everything he could touch on sight. Long, too perfect slashes on the couch, coffee on the floor from a cold mug of it left on the living room table. Breaking things had calmed him a little, given him a bit of an outlet from this horrible sense of being driven.
There it was, the noise, the world thinking around him in some incomprehensible slur. His walls cracked, the little leaks of whispers. Like headphones, on someone else's head. He could hear them, tiny and high, far away, barely understandable. Twisting and twisting and hungering and reaching towards him, at him, devouring his brain in strands.
He couldn't breathe.
He couldn't see.
He couldn't fix it.
"Schuldich."
He couldn't breathe.
He couldn't hear.
He didn't know how to.
"Schuldich, look at me."
It was trying to destroy him, hack him up into tiny pieces. It was trying to destroy him, kill him over and over again, and remind him forever.
This scar says he doesn't love me back.
This scar says I should have died.
This scar says I am worthless.
"Schuldich." Crawford's voice, harsh and insistent. "Look at me, damnit."
And it all cracked suddenly, it all tumbled away. The word, "no" tore itself out of him, without warning, shocking himself, a scream. His muscles clenching hard and thrashing. Rage, murder, pain, loneliness, caged despair. The whole world thinking around him, tearing him into pieces.
Remember who I am.
Remember who I am.
Remember who I am.
"Please, god..." it was out of him, a prayer, a litany, "Please, god."
Love me back.
Love me back.
Love me back.
His arms were grasped hard. He could see perfectly Crawford's features. Crawford's gorgeous, sexy eyes. He wasn't wearing his glasses. Crawford's face was almost too beautiful to be safe, almost feminine, but there was too much arrogance in his neutral face. He was male, obviously male, obviously dominating. Schuldich could see the light purple, faint outline of a vein in the white of Crawford's eye. As perfect as a snapshot, a drawing. Still, and silent.
And he realized he was being talked too. He'd been listening all this time, not understanding.
First it was the voice, then it was the words.
"It's alright. Calm down, it's alright." And he was being pulled down to Crawford's shoulder. "Calm down now." Instructions. Perfect. Exactly what Crawford would say.
A finger traced the shallow scar on his forehead. "I shouldn't have let him do this." Crawford was talking almost as if this was normal. "You may have done something incredibly stupid, but still, smacking you with a golf club was a bit much. You didn't work for a week after that."
It's always about work.
Lips touched that scar, softly. "I shouldn't have let him do it." Crawford kept talking. Schuldich thought distantly, that Crawford probably felt better with some noise in the room.
Crawford talked too much, and but the words were soothing in their complete lack of pretense, the way the topic meandered all over the place (That was an expensive tv, he'd ruined. They should buy one of those new ones, the flat ones that didn't take up too much room. A new DVD player, what movies did he want to buy? Perhaps they should get a new job soon, so that he didn't have so much time to himself like this. He was a good worker, part of the team. They were a good team. They had a good balance.)
He didn't pay a great deal of attention to what Crawford was saying until he felt his left arm being drawn up, felt the scar receive a light kiss.
"This scar means you belong to me."
As precious as a shot glass, a favorite pair of shoes. He closed his eyes, realized that he was relaxed, realized that before this, he was a tight tight knot.
The room was a mess.
His breath was coming in easier now, and Crawford was holding him less tightly. And the world was quieter.
"I suppose that means you'll take good care of me." Far far far away, barely there at all. His own voice was tired, sore from yelling as loud as he could, his thoughts came at him randomly. "Shine me up, good as new, put me on a high shelf so I won't break." He closed his eyes. Crawford was wearing no shirt, he felt warm against the skin of his chest. "Take me down to play with me.... Have your fun... put me back... if I break you can get a new one... downtown.... On sale..... thirty-nine-ninty-five... and you'll think, 'I needed a new one anyways.'"
He laughed, put both his arms around Crawford. For a moment, the world vibrated around him again, threatening to come down on him one more time.
Crawford stroked his hair, and kissed his temple.
The quiet came back, again.
It was the only thing Crawford ever gave him.
The rest, he had to take.
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