Disclaimer: I do not own Outsiders
The light at the end of the tunnel is not an illusion~
*D*N*
The darkness over the farm was as silent as a requiem, peaceful and blue-hue in the sleepy, crystallize heat of summer, so humid the crickets can't even chirp. Up in master bedroom of the cloud white farmhouse, the darkness was womb like, cooked with the heat that hadn't abated the daytime. Even with the window open with its fluttering white drapes. Tangled in the sheets their life together bedroom, a man and the woman slept, breathing slowly. Her head was on his chest, fingers curling their claim on him. They are a study in contradictions. The man is long, lean and lanky with summer skin and dark gold hair and the napalm scars of survival kissed across his skin. His woman is petite, curvy with chocolate hair and like dark copper from her black-Indian blood. Her skin is marked too, from childhood and more recently childbirth.
She's belonged to him since she was eighteen. Their older now: the woman's twenty, the man four years her senior. But by now, Olivia knows the liturgy of nights like this: these dark nights of Soda's soul. At first, she only groggy aware when Soda begins to toss and twitch in his dream, muttering louder, louder. She's only just lifted her head when she suddenly clasped in his arms and rolled under him. In an act of protection, not passion. So she's wide awake to feel his frantic pawing over her, once he has her down and spread beneath him. His hands, calloused from tending their horses and cattle, wasn't rough but it was firm, a medic's hands, quick and clinical as it moved over her body.
His brandy eyes are open, but blank in the moonlight, over-bright and unblinking in their intensity. Olivia sighed, a sorrowful release of air as she surrendered to his examination, making herself still while his hands ran over her limbs, pressing and squeezing over every inch. She could hear his quickened breath, heavy but controlled as he worked.
"Left arm, ok," he muttered under his breath, then moved onto her right one and did the same thing, then moved onto her legs, not seeming to notice that he didn't feel a solider uniform on her, nor Vietnam's soil under his knees, or roar of bullets over their heads.
"Left leg, ok", he said. "Right leg, ok."
His hands touched her shoulders, her neck, his palms sweaty with panic as he curses lowly. There's no trace of the teasing, tender, frisky man he was when they made love, when she came in his arms and surrendered herself with the eagerness of the converted. Roving hands and the sacred honeyed words are extinguished, the rituals of reverence forsaken and that's was the worse part of these nights for her: her husband is robbed of his grin, his warmth.
"Wound," he snarled furious, spittle flying from his handsome, honey-bee-stung mouth. "I can't find the wound. Goddamn, where ya hurt?!"
At this point, Olivia reached out and took his hand, guiding it to the swell of her breast -something that definitely wouldn't be on the body of an injured soldier over in 'Nam.
"I'm not hurt Soda," Olivia whispered quietly, hoping her words would reach her husband at this point.
It took a moment for that to process through his haze. She can see him blinking, his arms on either side of her, beautified into some masterwork for the innocence he's lost. So tragically beautiful. Next, his hands moved to her face, taking a firm hold of her chin and forehead and tilting her head back, then he leaned down over her, his cheek above her mouth and his left hand still resting on her chest.
Olivia chanced a kiss, brushed it gently on his cheek. Stroked his bright hair that always fascinated her. He stayed there like that for what felt like an eternity, but when he lifted his head again he muttered: "Frequency of breath twenty-four."
He took her hand, put two fingers on the inner side of her wrist and stilled there.
"Pulse fifty-four."
"I got to cover the burns. The burns need to be covered," he kept muttering, muttering. Olivia shushes him, stoking his arm.
"No, no," she cooed.
"Ya warm? Are ya in any pain?"
"I'm good, Sodapop. I'm not in pain," Olivia assured him calmly. "I'm safe. And so are you. You're back. You're home."
She couldn't see in the dark, but his hands were slower now, gentle and almost hesitant in a way that told her that he was coming out of it.
"You're not in pain," he said quietly, slumping, changing from some feral creature back into a man.
"No pain," Olivia agreed brightly, trying to compensate for the tears in her eyes, "Everything fine Sodapop. It's alright."
*D*N*
For a moment it was quiet, then Soda shuddered and he collapsed back on the hard bed beside her.
They lied quietly for a while. Something was slowly winding down in their bedroom, and the darkness of a far-off jungle retreating from their hearts. Slowly, the relearned how to breath. Then in one angry movement Soda was up and slamming his fists agaisnt the window frame, face in his hand before he carded it through his hair. He leaned agaisnt it, crucified with his arms spread.
"Did I hurt you?" Soda asked in a tight voice, entire body tensed. He didn't want to ask the question, didn't want to even consider that he might have, but batshit as he was sometimes, he was enough of grown-ass man to own it.
"No, no," Olivia breathed, getting up herself, padding closer to him so she could cradle his chin, tipping his face up ever so slightly towards the light coming from the bay window, taking in the snarl of pink napalm burns piercing his left side. These were the moments she knows she had made the right choice to break all the rules, and love this man outside her race. To see only the bleeding color of his soul.
He didn't say anything, but he took a deep breath that he held, then released in a slow, controlled blow. He wrapped her up in him, shushing her now that he felt her tremble, his mouth in her soft hair.
"I'm sorry..."
"Soda, no...everything you saw...it was bound to leave a mark."
His arms tightened.
"Don't want to be mark," he gritted out.
She shook her head agaisnt his chest, long chocolate waves of her hair stroking the skin of from his stomach to his thighs.
"No shame, Soda," she reminded him. Taking his hand again, she brushed agaisnt the marks on her stomach; left by agonizing pain and unbelievable bliss. Then she brushed his own, a modern St. Thomas. One day, she hoped, they wouldn't need proof to see how much he owned her. "We all have our marks."
"I haven't had one like that in a while," he finally muttered, grumbled. And Olivia gave a weak smile at how much he sounded liked Ponyboy in that moment. Then he looks like Darry as his brow pinches, weary. It's quiet again, in the silence and the heat.
"Thank you," he muttered, voice rough. Olivia nodded.
"Always, she promised.
Now her husband's touch was slow and tender, so, so tender. His warm palm cupped her bottem for a moment before slipping over it, all up her back to her shoulders, the crown of her head, dark like a Madonna. From his height, he could only see the ascending roundness of her breasts that fed their son, the hips that carried him with full joy. She tilted her head up, her mouth hovering just below his own,and he dove into her full, sad smile with the hunger that only came after nightmares. Her bottom lip felt utterly soft, melted chocolate and water in the jungle; one of his hands traveled to cradle her head, tilting it back so he could bite it's pillowy softness.
Olivia whimpered and the sound of her exhale was an ave in his ears. She went on tiptoe to kiss him, hands moving up his chest, scars and all, pressing her bare, bread-warm breasts to him; small as pomegranates, just as supplicating. He wrapped his arms around her hips and pulled her up closer to him, drawing her deeper as he hooked one leg up, up, released.
"Left leg, ok," he murmured, and Olivia laughed. Not cause it funny...its not. But what can you do to fight a devil, other than laugh in its face? Laugh and live.
"Right leg, ok." He wrapped his arms around her hips and pulled her up closer to him, drawing her deeper into the kiss. Olivia gave him more of her wight, trusting him with the burden, until all her limbs are wrapped around him, arms 'round his necks, legs around his hips. Completely dependent upon his arms to hold her close, to keep her from falling.
"An' you," Soda breathed, turning them back towards their abandoned bed. "Are ok, too."
He set her down to complete the rite with darken eyes. The Eucharist of her skin is whole and waiting for him, and no matter how bad a sinner he was-and Olivia didn't know, no one did, can't know, ever- she still arched, reached for him, taking him by the shoulders and tugging him down to their alter. Take this and eat of me.
*D*N*
They lie still afterward, sweat glistening like baptism on their skin. Limp, filled with him, Olivia's skin prickled with the feeling of being watched, and she lifted her head to find his brandy eyes peering into her.
"I love you," he reiterated, soberly this time, pushing her hair away from her face. Some of his fingers on his left hand are discolored, pink from napalm, scared otherwise from nicks during his youth that tell of all he has endured to find her. To say those words.
She smiled and kissed him, then told him the same. And the final thing that seals their oath is the cry of the living, breathing child conceived from it.
Soda groaned and rubbed his face. But he's grinning, loving every bit and every second of their boy.
"Sound's like Mowgli's up," Olivia hummed, and Soda's eyes danced as he said the name. Mowgli Sean Curtis: named for the protagonist of the first movie he saw when he got out of 'Nam alive. A movie about a boy who survived of the jungle. Who made it out. The thought process had been simple; if he can make it out, so can I.
"He takes after Pony...interrupts at just the wrong time," he laughed. Which was humorous getting up with her to check on him, tugging on necessary bits of clothing. Olivia laughed like a bird, and after draping an arm around her, he lead the way down the out into the hallway that lead to their son's room, flipping on the light.
Here's to our vets, who serve and protect.