Writtenfrom Adam's POV. A short piece showinghis inner torment, knowing that he's fallen in love with Lawrence and yet must live without him.
Please R & R.
Beyond My Reach
I had spoken in a voice that wasn't my own. My words, my plea surprised even me.
Don't leave me.
Were those really the words I used? Had I actually expressed a need for the closeness, the companionship of someone else? I must be going crazy. After all I've been through, surely I'm permitted a few slip-ups, a few moments that I act in a way that contradicts my nature. Lawrence did the same when he severed a part of himself that kept him trapped.
…. Lawrence….
What is it about him that I can't seem to shake? What is it about him that makes me feel things I've never felt before? Surely I shouldn't feel this way about a man who…well, any man for that matter.
I need you.
He had been incapacitated when I said it. But does he still know? Did he still hear me? Or could he sense it in the way I desperately reached for him as he turned away from me?
I need you, Lawrence.
I need you.
I needed him then, even though he was paradoxically both my greatest threat and my only salvation. I was supposed to die at his hands. It's what the tape had said. But somehow, it all turned out. Rules are meant to be broken, I guess. And a loophole is sometimes a window out of hell.
Had I known then that it would have been all right in the end, I'm not so sure that I'd still cry for him, plead for him to stay with me. The touch of his hand on my face was…foreign at best. Strangely welcome, oddly comforting, yet totally unfamiliar. I wanted it. I needed it. How long had it been since I felt the caring touch of another human being? I can't even summon the memory to mind.
I was at the end of my rope. I'm sure he understood that. We both were. Anyone who had undergone such trauma would be stripped of his sense, reduced to a primal, if not infantile state. Surely anyone would cry for help. Surely anyone would enjoy the very presence of another person in such desperate times.
Surely…
But if that were truly all it was, it would have ended there. Some say that such fear, when shared, creates something transcendent, a bond that can't be formed in any other way. Images of his face wouldn't haunt me, keeping me awake at night. The sound of his voice wouldn't make me weak. The idea of…us…wouldn't bring the pleasure that it tends to elicit despite my best efforts to fight it. I see him and I want to reach out, to make the dream real, to imagine what could be if only…
If only…
But I can't do anything. I'm a prisoner of my feelings, odd as they are. How can I trust the way I feel? How would Lawrence react if he knew what was going on in my mind when I look at him? How am I going to live with this? I am bound not only by my own fear, but his commitment to his wife keeps me at arm's length at best. The proverbial chain around my ankle keeps me shackled even now, rendering me powerless, unable to reach that which I long for most.