A/N: Since this is in 1st person POV, it's Malik's POV. And, look! A fairly up-to-date update! XD

Tainted – Part Six

The moon shone luminous and sharp. It made the black of the ocean shimmer silver and green, and when I closed my eyes, I fancied I could see my dreams dancing across the surface in monochrome.

The strands of his hair were sheer wisps of smoke fluttering around his head. The moonlight permeated his skin and he looked like a china doll. Except porcelain isn't porous and translucent. I could see the hint of veins beneath the veil of his skin, and they were a roadmap of broken bits to his heart.

I had never looked at him in quite this manner before.

Whenever my gaze landed on him, it was with desire. Always lust need want sex sex sex. It oozed out from his pores and laced through his words. I wanted him, he knew it, and he never did say no. And in the end, everyone is satiated and it begins once more. Work, talk, lechery; rinse and repeat.

Never did I stop and actually look at him. And standing besides him on the pier, at half past one, I took the chance to finally do so.

The shadows frolicked along the curves of his cheeks and slept in the dips beneath his eyes. They framed his lashes and I could barely tell where the penumbra ended and the richer black of his eyes began. They leaked further along his face in small rivulets and placed bars over the mauve of his lips. He never did have rosy red lips. They were a muted plum that bled into his ceramic skin, cold in appearance.

But I had learned soon enough of the biting heat of those lips.

I admired the symmetry of his face and, for the first time, realized how beautiful he was.

I wanted to remember the slight tilt of his chin and the way he seemed separated from reality. So I focused on him with the lens of my eyes, and, with a click of the shutters of my lids, captured that moment. I stored that snapshot into the back of my mind, and the beauty of it all was that I didn't need negatives to produce the image. All I had to do was look through the folders of my memory, however dusty they may be, to find it.

"We should do this more often," I mused aloud. We never spent much time together out of the bar or our respective apartments, most notably our beds.

He turned his head when he heard my voice, and that perfect pause of eternity slipped past as our eyes met. "You mean go out?"

"No, I was referring to practicing the art of breathing."

He rolled his eyes at me and I gave him a small grin in return.

He leaned more heavily on his arms and his fingers dangled over the metal railing as he turned his head back to stare out at the ocean. "I love nighttime," he murmured out of topic.

I committed myself to the study of his profile and, instead of trying to bring conversation back to the former thread, continued my stitches in this new direction. "Why?"

There was silence and I thought that maybe my inquiry had been lost in the wind, but he responded soon thereafter. "It hides imperfection."

"Does it really?"

He nodded absently as he spoke. His voice, with its minute inflections, suddenly seemed vulnerable and I had the desire to kiss it as if it were something tangible. "Mostly. It's not accusing like daytime. It doesn't probe and try to strip away your defenses to char the ugly deformities beneath."

I pondered this and looked at his face, at the shadows and the eerie light making him look older and so so tired; I was sure it was an exhaustion that ran deeper than the corporeal. He looked beautiful and tragic and everything that he tried not to be in daylight, and I longed to ask what defects he harbored. "But sometimes shadow only proves to heighten flaw."

He turned his head to look at me once more and his mouth stretched into a faint smile. "Perhaps." A pause. "But the night is beautiful."

"I can't argue with that."

We both spent the next moments in quiet reflection and admiration. His eyes were trained on the swelling of the sea, his thoughts somewhere that I could only speculate of. And as for myself, I'd returned to watching him. I wondered how ugly he thought himself beneath his darkness and waited for someone to press pause on the recording of time. Then I would have an excuse to capture him on the film of my mind once more.

He was the first to move. There was some quiet shuffling before fingers, clammy with cold, pressed against my cheeks and his breath skirted over my lips. Our mouths met in practiced choreography and he tasted faintly of mint, and it was over all too soon after it started.

"Here," he murmured as he pushed away. He shoved a hand into his pocket before drawing out a small key, which he pressed into my palm. When I cast him a curious glance, he just shrugged. "It's a key to my place. You're already over there enough as it is, so I figured I'd just give you this so you can come over whenever you want."

I fingered the metal, slightly warm from his body heat, before slipping it into my own pocket. "Whenever?"

"I wouldn't protest the company." It almost sounded sadly wistful, but I hadn't the time to wonder about it as he had already pressed our lips together once more. His body molded against mine and I took from him what he was willing to give.

Early morning saw us back in the familiar territory of my bed, and we were back in routine.

Rinse and repeat as needed.

-TBC-