A voyage through Grissom's head if possible and set post-Immortality. Started as a chapter for Call Me Love but quickly took over me and became something else, more like a love letter-poem to Sara Sidle travelling with her Grissom forever now and to the azure sea that drowns all sorrows.
Nothing is mine but mistakes and hopes. Much thanks goes to WalkerTRngr for helping me, thank you, you are great!
The Nature of Liquids
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Your pale nakedness drifting along shimmering waters, rays of sun sparkle kissing your skin and you absorb the sun the same way you absorb my love and I'm drawn in speechless. "The waters are lucky to have you" you said, but it's the other way around and I envy them.
I envy this translucent liquid of endless shades of blue that cuddles every piece of you with a touch more gentle than I could ever teach my coarse fingers. It runs through your dark hair and flows down your shoulder blades, leaving droplets of light all the way down to your natal cleft and you are oblivious to the effect it has on me. You can't have enough of it even when your fingertips are wrinkled and your muscles are strained and it makes you smile and laugh and roar in ways I only hope to follow.
Liquids have no definite shape and tears in my eyes have neither shape nor shame. Today they are tears of joy and prayers of gratitude to whatever power brought you back into my life, the moment I thought it most unlikely. They run down my cheeks and I'm not sure if they taste saltier than the ocean spray on my face. I stand dumb at the realisation that this flavor is the same now as it was in my darkest times of regret and grief, when you left and I thought my heart was gone with you. A hollow chest, drowning in a sea of sorrow, that would be a fair description of me then. Profession has taught me to envision pain interlaced with the liquid of blood, bright red and with the distinctive odor and taste of copper. That is why I was stupefied with the absence of it, for my pain had no color, no smell and no taste, I couldn't touch it and I couldn't make it go away. It was an incompressible fluid and it had a fixed volume everyday, filling the shape of my emptiness from the minute I woke up, to the moment I drifted to sleep. Only dreams were pain free and lucid and I longed for them to come and take me to you. If just to gaze at your eyes again and touch your skin, your soft matter which mesmerizes me still after all the years I've known you, kissed you and made love to you in all the awkward and tender and wild ways we taught each other.
The strong amber liquid you poured in my glass just before you undressed and jumped into the water soothes me. Whiskey was always a faithful friend in lonely days, every sip lulling memories and bringing me closer to my dreams of you. In some strange unscientific way, it always tastes better when you are drinking with me, even if I know you don't really like it and you'd rather have a beer, cold and foamy like the wave you are chasing. I've put one in the freezer and it's waiting for your mouth just like I am.
Almost as much as I missed your kisses, I missed the little things we do for each other, like when you always fill the ice tray uncomplaining when I forget, because you know how much I like a single cube of ice to melt in my drink. A little cube of frozen water and joy, liquefying rapidly in this hot day or, on your searing skin last night when I let it roll from my tongue to your nape and you lightly shuddered but still pushed your back up against my chest offering your silky neck to my lips. This cube won't make it to your skin but I know that when you climb back to my boat and into my arms, the taste of whiskey mixed with your saliva will make my heart pound heavy and I will strive my best to please you, even if it is not in the words you hope to hear. Silence is the game we brought to bed every so often but though limited in words our love appeared, it was embarrassingly abundant in the fluids we shared and their taste and smell will forever linger in my memory. The first time I entered you and you gasped my name on a beautiful Sunday morning, I chased a tear on your cheek and it was a bittersweet substance I learned to dread, for just a little drop of it could make me undone.
And I almost was that day in the desert when you were brought back from the unliving but not the unloved. "You can't live without love" you said, the same way you can't live without water, but they can both sometimes drown you. That night of pouring rain was the most trying of my life and the volume of water overflowing the dry land threatened to flood my brain. It made me want to scream but I just prayed instead. I prayed like I only prayed once before, when I was a little boy and I wanted for my father to go to heaven, except this time I prayed for the heavens to spare you so that my life on earth wouldn't turn into a living hell. I expected you would fear rain after that, but I was amazed to find out you didn't. You loved the rain, maybe even more after it threatened to take your life away and every other hot day in Vegas you would run to the shower and let it soak you to your bones as if an unquenchable thirst took over you once more. Up to the day it really did and you left for the land of the rain and I was left whispering your name and hunting a thunderstorm. I had to learn that a man can become thirsty for love too, even when he soaks in the shower or shivers in the rain or drinks himself to sleep and then I could stand the craving no more. I followed you and I learned to love the rain too. You used to call for me when you stayed out of the tent, relishing at the pitter-patter and tasting the dewdrops on the lush greenery before you kissed me and we got soaked both inside and out. Happiness was a fluid after that and I would let myself bath in it until I sank so deep you were petrified to lose yourself with me.
But it's true you know, what they say, in losing myself I found myself and then I waited for you to find your way back to me. The rain became the river and the river flowed into the ocean and I gave up my spear. I became the lonely whale, searching for your heart, grasping the truth that "it is not down on any map; true places never are". One weird day I just stopped thinking and it was then that I felt your heart deep inside mine, and I knew you were always there from the beginning.
We both love the ocean. The sound of waves was our lullaby since we were children and we never minded the breeze. I like to watch and you like to swim. Why on earth did we end up in the desert? Still, it was there that our hearts melted together and they carried us all the way here in the cerulean blue, lovers fulfilling forever promises. "Demons and Marvels, Winds and Tides", there is this poem I want to whisper in your ears tonight. And as I look at your glistening body and moist eyes I'm certain that love is just a liquid too, an intermediary stage between losing myself and finding myself and I just want to let it carry me to you.
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Demons and marvels
Winds and tides
Far away already, the sea has ebbed
And you
Like seaweed slowly caressed by the wind
In the sands of the bed you stir, dreaming
Demons and marvels
Winds and tides
Far away already, the sea has ebbed
But in your half-opened eyes
Two small waves have remained
Demons and marvels
Winds and tides
Two small waves to drown me
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Jacques Prévert - Sables Mouvants (Quicksand)
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(My fascination with this poem started about twenty years ago just like with GSR and I just couldn't help myself)