A/N: Meanwhile, back at the silo...
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"If you could only see
I couldn't love you more
If you belong to me
I'll hold you
I'll keep you
But I get so hypnotized
I'm lost
I'm paralyzed
I want to hear your lies
You choke me
You bleed me
I want to die
When I feel you inside my mind"
-Trap, Elizaveta
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"You memorized it?"
They were curled into one another, each trying to manipulate their physical extremities to ensure nothing was left exposed or abandoned from the other, and he had the brief, yet absurd image of a post-coital human pretzel. He was pleasantly stated, and her soft sighs as they ran their fingers lightly over each other left him with the cautious certainty she was as content as he.
Her words had floated to him across the silence that had cocooned them for a time, and he ignored the immediate desire to sidestep an answer, the urge owing to years of necessity, crumbling as she fondled his hand, her nails tickling the underside of his palm, drawing it to her lips and kissing each fingertip, the tip of her tongue meditating the pulse point of his inner wrist.
"As they were spoken, yes. That first time. Did you know I was...there...watching?"
"I always know when you're there, Harry. Yes, I knew. The surface of my skin feels as though it reaches for you when you're near to me, by which I mean, anywhere in London. Its...like some instinct I never knew I had until you touched it somehow. I...I don't know the words to describe other than to say I feel you."
"I think I understand. Its the same for me, and I've no better means to describe the effect any more than you. Potent. Its...unnervingly potent, comes closest. Well, if I'm honest, its my libido that seems to pinpoint your proximity first, and I've spent the better part of six months attempting to maintain some control there."
"You must be tired."
"You've no idea, Ruth."
"And now?"
"I couldn't sleep if I were drugged. To do so now would...cost precious time...to me...with you. Not for all the money in the world, Ruth."
Which wasn't entirely true, he thought, as his free hand grasped at her hair, allowing the silken strands to cascade through his fingers, shivering before retracing his steps. He would trade every moment spent between the legs of every woman before her to have her name as the single name contained within his file. He would trade all the time spent wasted before her, to have her, now, and for the remainder of his days. He would trade precious years off his life to know that he could give in to the morpheus call to sleep, curled around one another, if he knew for a certainty this moment would stretch into eternity.
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They had been laying side by side, breathing synchronizing into one breath, one chest rising and falling, her head against his heart, her chest nestled next to him, and he loved the feel of her beating heart next to the soft flesh of his side. She had entwined her leg between his, and he had without thinking on it, wrapped his arm around her, his other hand resting around her middle thigh, fingertips brushing the underside of exposed skin, and the stillness surrounding him, the heartbreaking simplicity of them, in this moment, very nearly cleaved him in two.
"Harry? I...I need to tell you...I want to tell you...about Peter and me. The truth. Well, the parts you don't already know."
She had unbuttoned a few buttons along his shirt, sliding her fingers underneath and stroking the soft flesh of his side, brushing along the trail of hair adorning his lower abdomen, and he felt his stomach shudder in response, the movements of her fingers both erotic and torturously slow, squirming away from her quickly as she identified a particularly sensitive ticklish spot just inside his right hip bone.
As they were still three quarters clothed, the impression was deliciously lurid, appealing, as though he had not already found himself sheathed deeply within her, but was allowing her to direct the course, a virgin testing her own wants and needs, and he content to watch the play of discovery as it decorated and evolved on her face, hoping to be invited to make his home within her.
Drawing her closer to him, he wrapped both arms around her, and she readjusted, laying herself fully across the length of him, her chin resting against his sternum, her arms curled against her sides, one hand placed against his heart, stomach warm and breathing against his still half erect cock, and he envisioned her a seed nestled inside the core of some ripe and bursting fruit, as her eyes watched him for a reaction, waiting quietly as he turned over their discarded basket, softening it with his folded jacket, to rest his head against as he smiled and regarded her.
She opened another button, one handed, and breathed deeply as she drew it aside to expose his skin, her face forming the picture of regarding something both desired and painfully tender, and his customary need to hide the physical scars marking his history evaporated as she placed her lips against him, sucking the flesh into her mouth, running her tongue lazily against him, the wet traces catching the breeze, and his nipples hardened to a point he thought they would be rendered altogether numb for days to come.
"I love your skin, Harry. I love the taste of it, the softness, I'm finding it maddeningly difficult not to chew on you, the feel of it between my teeth...You have the most deliciously touchable skin, do you know that?"
"No, I didn't, but I'm happy you think so."
"You didn't know you paced, either."
"Only in a good way, I've been told."
"Oh, yes. It seems we've spent a good deal of time watching."
"Eons."
"I'm glad we stopped. Just watching, that is. The feel of you...inside me...I'll not be able to live with only memory, Harry."
"I'm loathe you would believe there a necessity to try. I'll confess now a complete inability to bother attempting."
She continued to tease his skin, feeling her smile in what he hoped was agreement, nibbling him gently, lapping at the marks she left with her tongue, her fingers tracing the scars they found, the braille of his body's volatile existence merging with the marks of his devotion to her, and wondered offhandedly how many would remain pink and pulsing along the physical map of him. Would they remain, branding him hers, after she had gone?
Had he been that adolescent he'd envisioned himself earlier, thoroughly devolved and urgent, he would have moved to take her again, the yearning to establish prowess, the challenge to examine how many times, in how short a time, how quickly, how long, the answers to sexual questions that are so very vital to one newly introduced to the pleasures found within the female form would have demanded he act. Strangely, he was content to lay languid as she examined him, as her lips and teeth grazed him, worshiped him in a way he had never in his life experienced or allowed, even with Jane.
He shouldn't have found himself surprised, then, as the image of Jane flit across his sated consciousness, that Ruth, giving in to her confessed weakness, bit down on the flesh of his lower abdomen, harder than she had encouraged him to quickly become accustomed, and his resulting yelp was as much a signal of his surprise as his brief discomfort. Her eyes were unfeasibly wide as she stared at him, her mouth dropping open in the way he had come to yearn for, so closely reminiscent of her face amidst the agony and ecstasy of climax so recently exposed.
"Oh, I'm...too hard? I'm...sorry. I didn't mean to...go that far. I just, my God, Harry, your bloody skin...I just want to...consume you whole. I'm sorry, did it hurt that much?"
He meditated the question for a moment, owing largely his need to decide between fucking her, or answering. And then fucking her. The bite had hurt, but the pain had just as quickly evolved, during the course of her admission, to a low thrumming, and his cock, which, he noted curiously, had never reacted to pain in such a way previous, announced itself a fan anew, along with its recently revealed affinity for games.
"A good hurt, Ruth. A deliciously good and painful hurt that becomes a low ache, and I find...I quite like it. Your need to bite...consume me."
"It really just begs to be touched, Harry. Fondled and caressed, like nothing I've ever seen. Your almost...iridescent. The moonlight on your skin. Women would kill for your skin. Don't laugh, its true! Hundreds of millions of dollars spent in achieving just this type of flawless, dewy touch-ability. God, its fucking wonderful. Your skin. Sweet, soft, I just can't stop wanting to taste you, kiss you, lick you. I sound as though I've well and truly gone round, don't I?"
"I rather like to think you're just catching up to me, waiting on the other side. I have been, Ruth. Waiting for you. Seems my whole life I've been waiting just to see you in the distance."
He'd hope she would reply, understand intuitively, as they seemed to have always understood one another, and found that her decision not to speak, but to pull herself along his body, and place her lips against his, resting her arousal against his newly exposed stomach, dewy in it's own right, was, in fact, exactly what he preferred she do, and more than a little surprised he had thought otherwise.
"Did you always feel it?"
All my life, Ruth.
"I'll confess it seems so, yes. Well, I can't identify a time when I didn't, might be more accurate to say. I thought you to have snuck up on me, completely unconscious, was my first, ummm, evaluation. But really, I can tell you that you were an explosion of sorts, and you dismantled all the things I'd carefully secreted away. But it was so, I don't know, quiet? So...authentic, the reaction inside, oddly familiar. I just, well, I was left somewhat undone."
"When did you know?"
"What? That you were different from...from the others?"
"Yes. The others."
Her brow had creased slightly with the mention of them, the others that preceded her, and he understood then the magnitude of folly they had been, lined up, explored, empty, as though he were trying to fill a void with additional void, insubstantial and base.
"When I stopped sleeping with other women. That was...let's see? Yes, right about the time I found your book. The Ovid. I knew I wanted it for you. I couldn't understand why...Or, how to present it, for that matter, but I could not stop myself from acquiring it with the hope to eventually manipulate a way to give it to you which would appear, on its face, innocent. I was walking down the street with it in my arms before I'd really become conscious I'd bought it."
He chose not to mention the night he'd thought to have lost her to the fates. That evening when he had requested she call him to let him know she had arrived safely, despite his intuition urging him to take her to his, providing a safe house of a different sort, rather than allow her to take refuge in another which experienced a late night fireworks display of weaponry which remained unnerving enough to him he would come over nauseous with the merest hint of memory.
Or, her face when she gazed at Danny, fallen, her tender caresses paving his way beyond them.
Or, her ingenious "Spook Cabs." The fact that she had recruited people everyone customarily overlooks, so very like something he would do, cab drivers, shop keepers, postal workers, her innate cleverness fueling his belief they were already intertwined. Had always been.
Or, Fortescue, her face brimming with anger, calling him out, branding him a coward, her blatant insubordination a potent aphrodisiac to his psyche.
So many times, moments past and present, when he knew she would become, to him, both the agony and ecstasy of his life.
"Innocent? Presenting a woman with a book of love poems written by Ovid? You expect me to believe that?"
"I didn't say that I thought it through very well. I had thought...that you were...receptive...to a point, and I...Truth is, I couldn't decide if it was real or my imagination, and since there was still a question there, I thought I...It was easy to tell myself I might have a chance. With you. Also, you did mention that I was very good at talking you on side. Gifted is the word you used, if memory serves. I can pull the record."
"I'm sure you can."
"Well, you'll find I'm fairly well connected, Ruth. As relates undisclosed information, anyway."
She had laughed aloud at his self depreciation, and he was again granted opportunity to watch as her nose crinkled in effort, the act burning itself into his memory to treasure until she chose to bestow it again, and he, hoping silently, the single most cause. She had begun running her fingers along his forehead, thumbs tracing his eyebrows, kissing the space in between, and he used the opportunity to run his tongue along her throat, feeling the hummmm she emitted as it traveled until released into the air surrounding them.
"Did you like it? You never did say?"
"Its too hard to say. I can't decide if I liked the book or the treasure hunt more? You think me a fan of games, and there's you working out a treasure hunt for me to follow. I can't decide which I adore more, if I'm honest."
"Well, I couldn't very well present it to you on the Grid, you know, with everyone...I mean, talk about fuel for gossip. Can you even imagine? I was already overstepping the line, and I knew that. Keenly aware, you might say. And with the Tom situation, and Salter before him? Had you heard about Peter Salter? No? Well, he fell in love, and it destroyed him. Hung himself. Actually hung himself on the Grid. in the loo, of all places. He was Tom's mentor. It was a...difficult time. And like Tom, a potent cocktail of disillusionment and the love of a woman to blame, its...it became twisted up in knots, and he believed dying was the right choice, or at least better than staying with the services. Not that the option remained available, in the end. I think Tom came to feel it as an emotional death in some tragically personal way. A physical death would have been a predictable footnote for him, had he stayed, I'm afraid. A necessary bookend for having died emotionally."
"And then you barreled through the door. I can still see you, Ruth, fussing with that lamp, and I felt some kind of pull inside, I couldn't stop watching you. You quickly became a tightrope I hadn't ever dreamed of needing to prepare for. I thought I was done with...That I couldn't hope to find someone who could...move me the way you did. It was something I'd thought I'd forfeited the right to some years ago, Ruth. And, inappropriate. Though, well, now it would seem less egregious...Certainly more inappropriate, us, now, and...for an entirely different set of reasons. Not unpleasant, mind you. Mind blowing in an absolutely inappropriate and fundamentally providential way, at once. I've neither the strength nor the inclination to forfeit it now, I'm afraid."
"I'd sooner sever a limb."
"Let's hope it won't come to that. I like your limbs."
"As do I, Harry."
She had breathed it into his ear, her breath tickling the soft hair, her teeth forever nipping at him, and he found himself stunned at the ease with which they communicated, the deep sense of self pouring from them, as a gift to the other, unencumbered by carefully constructed facades, each blindingly illuminated for the other by words and actions. They were lovers, he thought, and fast on the heels of this was the thought, It was always thus, painfully obvious to him now in every thought or gesture preceding this moment.
He moved to slide her under him, placing his leg between, the area above his knee nestled against her moistened center, and placed his hands on either side of her face, wanting only to see himself reflected in her eyes, reborn in the affection he read in their depths. He traced the scar he presumed left by Angela not so long ago, brushing his lips against it, wanting her to understand he wanted all of her, the dark shadows and the blinding light, in equal measure. And, as if reading his mind, as only she seemed adept at fathoming almost without discernible effort, she breathed deeply, placed her lips against his, saying his name against them, before pulling away, her hair a halo in his hands.
He concentrated on her face, deliberately forcing back the burgeoning jealously that wanted entry, demanding pride of place within him, stroking her hair back from her face in an effort to distract himself his baser need to express his unearned entitlement outright. The void within him celebrated his frustration, knowing the truths she would tell far more innocent than the ones held within him by comparison, knowing that when she was done, he would have a confession of his own to offer, one involving her father and the depth of his manipulative achievements she'd only gleaned in magnitude.
Were he the man who questioned the wisdom of bringing her here to this secluded spot he'd thought himself, his evaluation running frenetically across his consciousness throughout the distance traveled to this lonely place, he would have deliberately distracted her, placed his lips against her clit and brought her to a mindless climax designed specifically to ensure the delay of confessions on both sides. And he wanted to. God help him, the truth was, he wanted to, and not simply as a means for delay, or distraction, but as that newly born and cautiously budding seed resplendent in the sun, yet dying of drought.
Patiently, he waited, watched as she internally prepared the words, the means by which to tell him what he found he no longer yearned to hear, and still could not turn from, deaf and unyielding. He was no longer that man. He was something new, undefined, and wonderfully alive.
He could almost hear the scream from the void inside him, the rage and unwillingness to reform himself emanating from that dark shadow acute, and hoped that it was not reflected in his eyes, those windows she had confessed told her everything he'd previously sought desperately to keep hidden. As if to smooth the way for her as much as quiet his internal confusion, he grasped the remaining straw left to him.
"Ruth? Tell me...about Peter."
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"We were close, Peter and me. Not from the beginning, but gradually. Initially, I think he had this idea of who I would be. He'd confessed as much to me, later. Thought I would be more like my mother. I've not spoken to you of her. She's quite beautiful, my mother. Elegant and graceful. My father adored her. Would watch her perform the most mundane tasks with this look of...well, complete rapture, really. I remember looking the word up one day, when I was very young, and the definition struck me immediately as similar to how my parents looked at one another. 'Extreme happiness and delight in something.' It was a perfect description, and I love that word to this day. I just love that it sounds exactly like what it means. Do you know what I mean? When you find a word is just so beautiful in meaning and sound you kind of fall in love with it, the idea of it?"
"I've always been fond of 'Moisture,' myself. Which, I'll grant you, rather lacks the bells and whistles of 'Rapture,' but Ben would say it instead of cursing, and I laughed every time I heard it. I still do, no matter the circumstances, and I always think of Ben."
"Moisture. Your word is Moisture."
"Yes, and before you judge, just say it first. Its really very funny."
"I just did. Twice."
"And...it was delightful, filled me with extreme levels of happiness, and also had the added virtue of being consistently funny."
Her face graced him with a smile that stretched so wide he could count every tooth within if he was of a mind to try. And he delighted in the way her eyes danced as she ducked her head, bobbing, the laugh she was trying to contain erupting from her as a combination guffawed raspberry, her breath, tasting of wine, and him, exploding across his face. He closed his eyes, smiling as he constructed another memory to secret and cherish. He reopened his eyes when she lightly tapped his forehead with her index finger, kissing the spot gently, moving to the tip of his nose, and finally brushing his lips, careful not to nibble too hard, though he'd half a mind to tell her not to bother trying. He liked a wantonly uncontrolled Ruth more than could be considered healthy at his advancing age. Besides, he told himself, bite marks were quickly advancing their way up his scale of measured eroticism.
"Shall I continue?"
"You never need to ask if I want you to kiss me, Ruth."
"The story, Harry."
"That, too. And the kissing, just so we're clear."
She gave him one more quick peck, not lasting time enough for him to pucker properly with the goal of further distraction, and settled back down underneath him, her hands resting against his chest, her face open and affectionate, and the corner of his mouth lifted slightly in amusement. If she loved his skin, he would, in the not too distant future, be forced to regale her the wonders and miracle he felt intrinsic to her full, lovely mouth. He adored her mouth, and if she wanted to use that entrancing mechanism to speak, who was he to argue? He was blissfully languid, regardless.
"They were very good with each other. Ummm, they balanced well, and whatever nurturing one couldn't provide, the other could. For me, that is. It was a home full of love that they made. Palpable. It was almost cruel, really, to witness something so rare and be made to believe it available on offer to every living soul. And maybe it is, its just that the fact that it is available doesn't always mean you know it. Or find it."
Bugger watching her mouth.
He had acted on impulse then, moving to kiss her neck, feeling her hands come around to the back of his head, her nails dragging a pattern across his skull that had him feverish in an instant, very nearly mewling his approval, whispering her name into her ear before biting the lobe. She had arched her body into him, and he used the opportunity to draw his leg tighter against her, sliding his hand underneath her bum, drawing her up and against him, the sigh she released confirming to his ears she understood his intention, knew he felt as her father had, and that her wait was mercifully over if he had even the slightest control over such. He smiled into her mouth, sucking at the flesh as she rolled her hips, and whispered his name.
"So...Mmmmm...you're so...Jesus...Ummm, okay so, wait, okay."
If he were honest, he'd admit to deriving a good deal of pleasure at her discomfort, her inability to multitask her confession and submit to his lips's ministrations. She had been, for the most part, the aggressor, and he the uncharacteristically fumbling novice so entranced by this frequently fantasized, darker side of her that he hadn't even begun to utilize the techniques culled and stored within his multifaceted sexual arsenal. So, it was a bit cruel, his decision to select carefully his weapon, but in the line of something both pleasurable and painful, merging together as one physical urge, and your libido straining at cross purposes. Well perhaps, he thought, it was time she experience what it had been for him, in her presence, yearning and defenseless these long months, a lesson he calculated well and truly earned if he were asked to offer comment.
"Well, mother had sold the house, the one I grew up in, and so when I returned, it felt as though it were more a visit than coming home. Like I would occupy a guest room for a time, but would never really belong there. And until I met Jean Paul, I'd felt that keenly, being a guest, visiting but not belonging. Anyway, so leaving Jean Paul was, oh it was, terrible, and beautiful, and we behaved exactly as one would expect two people in love to behave as their time together becomes limited. He was my first, and I his. It was soul crushing, and intense every time, and I was left despondent when time eventually came to make our goodbyes. I sobbed the entire way over, just heartbroken, really. I had gradually come to terms with my father's death, due in no small part to Jean Paul, and now, there I was, alone, and evaluating this sudden new family, as mother referred to it, with more than a fair amount of foreboding."
With the exception of her father, he counted possibly three great loves in her life, and pondered the possibility that she had ever engaged in anything more meaningless sexually. As it stood, the answer appeared to be not ever, her heart was given entirely, and, recent circumstances being what they were, he wondered the potential future they might have as more an actuality, rather than the fanciful stuff of dreams. Superficially, he reminded himself he had also counted two, possibly three, great loves, and just as quickly as that thought passed, his heart cruelly reminded him of the thirty four S24s, which rather put paid to his meaningless sexual proclivities. Jealous though he might be, he nevertheless felt a tinge of gratitude for her previous lost loves as they had been part of the world's wheel which turned, and eventually brought her to him, waiting all along.
Still, he counseled himself, it wouldn't hurt to reiterate those loves remained firmly entrenched in the past.
"Have you ever been...tempted to...find him? Jean Paul, I mean."
"Yes, but strangely, I've never done a thing in that regard. I guess...I guess I prefer to let it all lie, a beautiful, unadulterated memory. I want...I'm happy to imagine him happy, healthy. It is enough that he remains my first, always, and that will never change regardless life's circumstances. I've come to understand that my experience is rare, or I should say, one that I don't feel compelled to cringe in shame or discomfort in the rare moments my mind draws up the memory of him. So many women truly loathe the thought of their first time. I'm very fortunate. Really, it can be horrible. Women talk. I mean, think about it Harry, how many things in this world can you say you want but which hold almost absolute certainty to be disappointing, for at least one of you, at the outset then losing your virginity?"
It was a loaded question if ever he had heard one, and like a nervous, hormonal adolescent on a first date, he chose not to ponder the question as relates their budding relationship, and allowed his mind to visit the benefits of such instead.
Mainly, ever the manipulator, he much preferred a conversation which revolved entirely on the subject of sex which had the added benefits of both engaging Ruth, and furthering his present goal of engaging in additional displays of a more physical bent than verbal.
"Well, I have to confess, I thoroughly enjoyed it, though I take your meaning as relates the distinct difference for women. I should hope that she enjoyed my efforts, in any case. We were, it might surprise you to know, both virgins."
"Really? I would have thought...I'd imagined there was some older woman obsessed with your cherubic face and golden, youthful body. I did! I'm stunned to find you waited. You are a romantic, Harry. As relates your virgin's pleasure, well, you hope she enjoyed your efforts, but you can't be sure, can you? I really asked the wrong question, earlier."
He couldn't contain the laugh that erupted from him, watching as she moved beneath the rumbling of his chest, and was again struck by how deeply happy and content he was, amused both by her words and the revelation he had pantomimed being happy before her. That she had even bothered to consider his first time with a woman was a bonus he'd neither hoped for nor imagined.
"Well, as a boy, no, I likely wouldn't know the difference between genuine enjoyment or some fabrication. Thankfully, I'm not saddled with that particular limitation presently. Still, I would hate to find that subsequent she felt any shame, or did not look back on it fondly, as you say, even if it wasn't the most satisfying experience of her life. I'd hate to find she'd developed some manner of eating disorder everyone warned me about when Catherine was born, as though because she proved a girl, the structure of potential psychic damage was heightened beyond what I could possibly understand. Really, you laugh, but for years I feared Jane would come to me and reveal Catey had developed some eating disorder, or some such, and blame me. She did with Graham, eventually. But that is both ironic, and a story for another time, my Ruth."
"That's...that's awful, Harry. I'm sorry, I know I'm laughing, but really? Eating disorders? It's ridiculous, totally uncalled for, and I'm the daughter of a doctor."
"I know that now. Then I was, Jesus, I was so young. We both were, Jane and me. Suddenly there was this squalling person who hadn't been there before, and the fear was primary. Its the first thing I remember. Given what I did for a living, this miniature genetic combination of us both, the best of us really, became the most important thing I had ever done. Within seconds of holding her, I knew on some instinctual level I would literally kill with my bare hands anyone who harmed her, or even thought to do so. It didn't help that I navigated a professional environment in which such was easily envisioned, condoned, even encouraged. I was too young. Too young by far, and it got the better of me. Honestly, I wish my mother had...I missed my mother on an almost primal level during those first few years. Then along came Graham, and the fear had lessened, but it was still palpable. It was as if I knew I would fail them, ultimately. I was not equipped to...Well, another time, Ruth."
He felt the breath of her deep exhalation on his face, as she reached to hold his head, her eyes bright and delving into his. He closed his eyes, as much for her physical contact as a means to hide the worst of him from her, but she held him tighter and he luxuriated under the much yearned for contact.
"I wish you could understand how deeply and thoroughly you love, Harry. You're made of love, the difficulties arise only when you fight against it. It seems to have always been that way. I wasn't playing at anything when I told you as much. It was the first thing I noticed about you. It hurts to watch you deny the truth of you. It made me want to be that place where you could...the safe place we talked about? I've always thought of it like some people are born with certain inherent gifts. Genius, the individual measure, given to each and ours to discover, shared like a gift. Like writers, or musicians? The really exceptional examples perform in a state of near unconsciousness, letting their particular gift explode from them organically. Your gift, Harry, is an intense regard for human beings, and it explodes from you by way of affection and love. I adore it, for the brief moments I've been granted opportunity to see it, and loathe those numerous alternatives I'm more familiar with. Which makes your choice to submerge into a professional field at absolute odds with your given emotional nature a curiosity to me. And, before you say it, a topic for another time. Another time, my Harry."
She was everything to him, any future parting as unspeakable to him as asking he sacrifice either of his children to save himself, as though she had become as fundamentally tied to him as Catherine and Graham, each representing the best and worst of himself, entrusted with the hope each would prove better than him, as she already had. Inconceivable any parting, though plausible in their shared profession, this business that had called to his damaged, young heart, and he had spent years in sacrifice to. This business which made her more curious than repulsed, more providentially alined to him than at odds.
"Things fell into a routine of sorts, I guess, rather quickly. I think I came as a surprise to Peter as I was quite happy to sit alone, reading or daydreaming, drafting letters to Jean Paul I never sent. I still have them, actually. In any event, it wasn't long before he thawed towards me, searching me out, not as he expected underfoot, and we found ourselves pleasantly disposed to one another over time. Like siblings at first, we shared jokes and secrets. It wasn't ideal, we would flare up occasionally in disagreement, but overall we were well matched within the household. More so than our parents, and the rows became increasingly frequent. His dad drank, and my mother, who had only indulged periodically on special occasions when my father was alive, began to drink with him. At first it was the occasional glass of wine, but as time wore on, she moved onto scotch, requiring several glasses to navigate even the most innocuous dinner conversation. With practice, she could indulge half a bottle before the tells became obvious, and almost the entire bottle when time came for me to attend Uni."
"I think I began to understand the level of pain she was in, that the cruelty I'd thought the rarity of her marriage with my father was a horribly pale imitation of the cruelty inherent to having the same irretrievably stolen from you, and nothing to be done to prevent it. I couldn't bring myself to judge her the indulgence she needed. Right little enabler, I was, but I loved her, and they danced in my memory just as frequently as they did hers. We, Peter and me, began spending less time home, just wanting to avoid all of it, finding ourselves in museums, coffeehouses, pubs, anywhere really, that wasn't home. We talked about everything, there wasn't a topic in existence we didn't touch on in some measure. It was easy, and I opened to him, and he to me, and it just went that way for a while."
"We knew, of course, the undercurrent was there, and occasionally I would catch a look, stricken is the best description I can offer, on either his father's or my mother's face, one or the other discovering us in those increasingly rare moments we found ourselves at home. It's not as though we were snogging, or worse. But when you can conceive of a thing, then your eyes color to suit, regardless the innocent nature of any activity, and it became the scenario most abhorred in their eyes. Though, in truth, we had yet to act on anything, and they had failed spectacularly to remain sober enough to make comment."
"It felt...It became corrupted if we remained home, like a snapshot you find of a three year old running into a lake, naked, once taken as an innocent moment captured in childhood, and now a reason most likely to call services to investigate? Insidious, twisting something natural and beautiful into something lurid, shameful. This is the world we live in. Likely, it was those looks that fueled our desire to be elsewhere. Well, it was, if I'm honest, and the guilt began to eat its way into us, the emerging shame dispersing somewhat when Peter made the move to Oxford for Uni, subtly diminished, but, still, not altogether extinguished. I think shame an emotion which never goes away entirely once you've been touched by it, once you can conceive of something for which you are able to measure, or assign appropriate portions. It's age that does it. A child doesn't feel shame, hasn't the capacity to know how. We learn. But we were all once naked and running in the water. Once."
Her eyes had drifted from his, in them the worrying hue he'd first seen when she rode next to him to identify Danny's body, the hallmark of her disengaging so subtle as to be entirely overlooked. She was drawing far away inside, whether insulating herself, or him, from the shame she'd yet to divulge for some past action, he couldn't guess, but she was drifting from him and it felt like he was experiencing one of those dreams where you find yourself falling, over and over, reaching for purchase, and everything dissolving under your fingertips.
"Stay with me, Ruth. Stay with me, here, now. Stay with me."
He drew her lips to his, intent on drawing her back, usurping her sudden desire to hide from him, and perhaps for the first time in his life he understood he'd found another like himself, another who regarded the truth option in life's overall 'Truth or Dare' equation proved the more potent portion of dare in itself, the risk, if optioned, equally dangerous as any daring stunt he could suit himself to imagine. Physical scars healed, he knew, but truth, its revelation, could break a person, undermine and destroy on an emotional level and there are no sutures with which to repair that psychological gutting. His heart fell as she remained somewhat unresponsive, but he persisted, determined, and his heart formed an additional fissure to join the others she had wrought as she began to come back to him, her tongue tentative, and then warm and wet, tangling with his own.
"This...this is the part...it gets difficult. I...I want to say I didn't know what I was doing, that I was drunk. We were, Harry. The best lies are the ones born of truth, they teach that. The tagline should read, 'Be a Spookl: Enlist, Insist, and Never Desist. Lie To Everyone.' Its true, admit it. So, when I was talking to Angela, there were some truths. He was in love with me, Peter. Always had been. And, as I said, I loved him with all my heart. He...when he was young...he had a beautiful voice. When we were young...well, even into my second year at Oxford, he was front man in a band, played student parties, you know. They never came up with something original, just covered whatever was popular at the time. Still, he had them falling at his feet, could have had his pick, and I guess it appealed to my vanity that he wasn't inclined. He always left with me. By that time we had a very complicated version of relationship."
"But it was Blackpool. The time we stayed...I guess I should...tell you...start with Blackpool. He had come home, for the weekend, and its true it was the middle of winter. Our parents were reaching the crescendo of that evening's activities, and he just walked in, grabbed me, and pushed me out the door. Didn't even say hello, he just got me into the car, flipped off the gawping neighbors, and drove away, without a glance in the rearview. I was...numb. It was as though my body and mind had reached a threshold where I just couldn't feel anything anymore. I remember my cheeks were wet, but not when I had cried. It surprised me that I was so far away, completely unaware of what my body was doing. It shouldn't have, of course. By that time, I spent a fair amount of time...away, in my head. After Peter left. I was...alone, and would just...float away."
"He was brutal when drunk, Peter's father, David. And he was more drunk than sober most of the time. He could spew the cruelest things, had a real ability to pinpoint any weakness and then batter against it until you just gave up, gave in. After Peter left, he became more physical...a slap or the well placed kick. There were precious few times he directed his rage at me, but more than enough directed towards my mother, which had the affect of becoming one in the same over time. It was...cruelty for cruelty's sake. That simple. She gave back just as violently. The entire china cabinet on one memorable occasion. It's quite something to watch a gravy boat used as projectile weapon, I can assure you."
He's tried to hide the smile, but she caught him out, brushing her hands along his cheeks, smiling through the pain of memory so acute in her eyes, still somewhat distant, still not altogether present with him.
"No, don't hide. It has its humorous aspects. Not then, but now, I can see the comedic side. And, I adore your smile. Its laugh or cry, isn't it? So, we drove around awhile, and to be honest I really wasn't paying attention. We ended up in Blackpool, and we did stay at a B&B for almost a week. We were drunk more often than not, and I think it down to the circumstance, the idea that no one knew where we were, we were alone, and there was an attraction that had always been there, between us."
"I think we stayed pissed as a means to avoid it, the attraction, and the perceived freedom that was afforded with our new environment? Foolish of us, that collaborative bit of self delusion, but...Well, we talked, and talked and, eventually, he asked me about my father. You know, what he was like, what kind of things did he like to do. He'd never asked me about him before, and I'd like to think it was because he knew it would hurt me. We never talked of his mother, either. Strangely, that initiated the breakdown, the idea that we were siblings forming the wall that kept us apart, and the more I talked about him, my father, the more the wall crumbled."
"Our parents had started to refer to us as brother and sister, deliberately leaving off the 'step' descriptive, and in time, everyone began to do the same. I think it down to wanting that wall, some invisible but understood impediment, that bit of taboo ever present in their faces, and we just stopped arguing the point, Peter and me. The more we chafed, the harder they pressed, so we rather gave up that ground. Angela always called him my brother. Always. When you, on the Grid, when you clarified he was my stepbrother, it was like you had read my mind. I can't even express how much...gratitude, Harry. I was so grateful to you in that moment."
He smiled his understanding while his heart leapt, rejoiced that despite his expanding list of personal and professional failures, betrayals, and hard truths marking those hours on the Grid most recent, he had managed to cull a single perfect rose from the dross comprising his decisions.
"The truth was, we weren't siblings. Not really. We were two unrelated by blood people who wanted each other. Simple as that. Except that it would never be evaluated simply, and maybe that was the accelerant, the match which set us off. It should have been Peter and me that met. I didn't, couldn't lie, not about that. It should have been us, and if we had, would we have been happier, would he be alive now, would he have stopped drinking? I'll never have the answers to those questions, Harry. But I know for a certainty, it should always have been us, and not them. Least, not as they were then."
"You can imagine what happened when the walls finally dissolved entirely, and it was wonderful and tragic all at once. It was the first time he told me he loved me, looking up into my face, and I couldn't stop myself from setting aside all the damage it stood to cause. We had a proper snog, and then some. In truth, we were headed towards more. We were, both of us wanting it, needing it, the memory of my father long forgotten as his hands found their way over me. It felt so good, Harry, and I was...I was adrift, and felt as though he was helping me back home in the only way he knew how. How could either of us have ever hoped to explain that to Angela? She assumed we'd slept together, and I let her, but it wasn't true, Harry. We never did. We came close. Truth is, it was me that stopped us. That week in Blackpool. It was me."
"He asked me to leave with him, and it ricocheted inside me enough to make me realize what we were on the verge of doing. I just couldn't stand the idea of what would happen if we did truly run away together, at a guess. I hadn't thought that far. I was wrapped up in the immediate, but he was thinking in terms of forever, and I just couldn't see my way through. I think I hurt him very deeply in that moment, and yet he confessed to me years later that he had thought, at the time, if he just gave me time, perhaps when we were at Uni together, we could find our way back, but it changed something. We were never quite the same after Blackpool. Or I wasn't, anyway."
"I told the truth about when we returned to Angela. There were rows, our parents were quite beyond lunatic with anger at us. It did bring them together, while we were gone, they'd come together joined by worry and fear. Its funny, neither of them even drink now, so I guess it had its benefits. I'm...I need you to understand, it was never Peter that hurt me, or behaved in any way untoward or cruel. His love for me never wavered, even years later, it remained genuine and honest. I treasured it, as I treasured him. I couldn't love him the same, is all. He was a boy who became a man and knew me when, and that measure of familiarity is hard to deny affection for. Knowing that you're loved regardless the number of times you've been seen at your worst, we, that was how we loved one another."
I will love her until my last breath, this woman. He hoped it a prayer simultaneous to fearing it a certain curse.
"It was my mother that did me in. To his credit, Peter did what he could to protect me, refusing to leave my side, assuming all the blame. I'll always be grateful for that. He wore that shame for the rest of his life, tried to acquire mine, too. To spare me. I carried the guilt. I think...I know, it was why he drank, why it became a problem later. I'm certain it was why I became reckless...for a time. I needed to feel the knife blade underfoot, it was reckless, and sad, and...terribly lonely."
"She hit me for the first, and only time in my life the day we returned. I knew it was coming, didn't even move to avoid it, like I deserved it somehow. After, the stricken look I had become familiar with evolved into something like...contempt, revulsion, and, I guess you could say shame. She needed to believe Peter had molested me, wanted it to be rape despite both of us denying anything of the sort. It was incestuous as she interpreted it, and no amount of logic could be used to reason or calm her. I was stained after that. The tragedy of it was that it wasn't true, but reason rather takes a runner in situations like that, and so it was. He became a sexual predator and I some unwilling, shameful creature who had seduced him."
"We never spoke of it, and I left home, that night. Gathered a few things, the side of my face as red as my scarf when I dared to look. Stained. He drove me to his flat in Oxford, and I stayed there until I enrolled, found a flat, you know. He smoothed the way for me, always had. Included me in everything he did, and I was so numb I didn't object or decline. Eventually, I came around, but the stain has remained. I don't think it will ever be washed clean entirely. I started dating Gary...the...you know...Clive...and the animosity between the two of them was palpable. Neither would admit to it, but it was as close to outright hatred as I had ever witnessed at the time. A difficult time, made more so because I was forced to chose between them. Give one up. And, truth is, I chose Gary, not because I didn't care, and not because we weren't well matched, but because it was easier. He didn't take it...well. He was different, then, Harry, he was. Not at all like the man you met. I hardly recognized him myself that night, if I'm honest. I know you wondered. I know you were thinking how in the world could she have...but that's, well that's something else."
She will make you bleed.
"I just couldn't discard him, Peter. Not after all we had been through. And I didn't want to. I needed him, and he me, and so I...discarded Gary. I think now that I couldn't give up another person who really knew me, without any recitation or words, just knew me, the good and the bad. And he did. He knew the worst thing I had ever done. He was the only one. Then she...Angela, at TRING, and when she talked about killing my father, in the tech suite...that's when I knew he had told her, and she had fashioned it into the most exquisite weapon she could have ever hoped for against me. It gutted me, at TRING. In the tech suite, it felt like nothing more than a superficial scratch, didn't even draw blood. The intervening years had lessened the potency, but did precious little to temper my desire to hurt her in like manner. So, the cellphone, and there really isn't anything quite so effective as a confession granted posthumously, is there? You're just left to steep in it, without any recourse, waiting for the pain to stop."
"He was with me. That was true. I allowed it to be interpreted exactly as she had, though that was a lie. Now that I think on it, there were precious few lies told. I know I said different...in the...hallway. But that was one of them. We never made love, Harry, and the time he spent in my bed, in my arms were times where he would show up, having not slept in sometimes as many as a few days, begging me to lay with him, hold him so he could sleep. I was where he felt safe, and I couldn't bring myself to deny him, the tragedy he had become, for me, because of me. I couldn't love him the way he needed me to, but I could provide him comfort, and I did, as many times as he needed it. I wouldn't change that even if I could. Ours was a bond that was infinite and rotten, both. So, when she accused me of killing him, it...it deadened something in me, at TRING, because the truth was, in some respects, I did. The fact that it was not intended, an unavoidable consequence drawn years earlier became rather a moot detail in the end."
"I was on the Grid when the call came. They couldn't raise our parents, and some nameless plod recognized the names, eventually tracking me down. It was strange, I had felt something off a few mornings earlier. I woke up and knew something wasn't right, but everything was just as it should have been. Not at all like with Angela's surveillance. Still, there was this...itching...inside me, and I knew something was wrong. I was on edge, really apprehensive waiting for it to reveal itself. Then, that morning, when the phone rang, I knew, I knew that it had come, the answer I knew was just beyond me had arrived."
"I was instructed to his flat, they didn't allow any details over the phone, and I just knew he was gone. I could feel him leave me, like someone had come along and sucked all the air out of my lungs until my ears rang trying to start them again. I told you I had an emergency, something to do with my mother, because I knew you wouldn't argue or question me, and I wouldn't have to keep track of the lies involved with telling you a number of half-truths. You'd find out soon enough anyway, so I...I lied."
"She was...Angela...she broke...psychotic, and she had been sitting with him for two days. Two days, Harry. I will never in all my life forget the picture they made. He deserved better, and I hate that when I think of him now, its as he sat there, lifeless, first, and not the boy who took me under his wing, who I loved, smiling as he sang. I understood the itching then, had known it for the moment he left me, felt it, but couldn't identify it. They couldn't raise her father, and it was left to me to decide...everything. She was in good, if not precarious standing with the services, and so I signed the papers for her commitment. She became feral, Harry, and after she lashed out, marked my face and my heart, with words, I wanted her to rot inside that place. And that's our history, Harry, in all is sordid and magnificently horrid detail."
"So, when you asked me to...to do what you...wanted, it was like asking me to willingly place my hand in a fire, and wait patiently, without argument, for it to come back nothing but singed bone. My mind had already done a fair portion of stoking that fire the previous evening so it felt a bit of betrayal, your decision to...it felt as though we were nothing, you and Adam and me, that we were dispensable to you in a way I had never thought to consider. Worse, that...that I was dispensable to you. The thought just about broke me, Harry. I had thought...I knew you, thought I knew better, believed we were...you and me...more. So it was a double edged sword that sunk itself into me, and I just felt my whole life fall away. I could see your lips moving, I knew what you were asking, but I had gone someplace else inside. Needed to, really, to do what you wanted."
As she spoke, he caressed her face, her hair, her eyebrows when she closed her eyes, floating away from him, coaxing her back, and her spoken fear of finding herself dispensable to him alined itself within him to his own fear, mirroring hers, made that much more painful as he had benefit of knowing the answer, and hating himself for the knowledge, the habitual hardwiring intrinsic to him demanding sacrifice. Painfully aware of his inability to deny her intuitions, he kissed her, gently, tenderly, wanting to erase the truth falling from her lips, wanting them only to understand that he treasured her, and the sacrifices made in the future would only secure her more fully to him, rather than force them apart by design. He would make sacrifices aplenty if it meant he was allowed to keep her in the end.
He nuzzled her neck, waiting for her sigh, feeling her hands tighten against his neck and cheek, responding in kind, before risking the question burning itself through him, the answer known only to a man long since dead, a walking tragedy who had died as a boy when she had first thought to hold herself from him.
He tried not to acknowledge the jealousy slowly creeping within him, the trail of soft footfalls left behind, graceful.
"What did she mean, Ruth? About your father?"
He felt her start beneath him, accompanied by a ragged intake of breath as her lips drew away from his, and he moved his leg to fall across, and around her, drawing her closer, cleaving her to him by virtue of comparative size, his arms bent at the elbow, next to her shoulders, his stomach covering her by half, and his hands securing her face to look at him. He leaned towards her, and she closed her eyes against him, her mouth a thin line. But he was good at this, hadn't she said? As if to prove the theory, he kissed each eyelid, over and again, varying his pressure and technique, until they fluttered open, and he could see he had won in their depths.
Deep in the shadows of his heart, the jealously flamed that much brighter as the hardwired remit sleeping within him began to hum with consciousness, alive and thirsting, despite him.
"Ruth...Tell me about your father."
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A/N: Please advance post haste to the next chapter as it is the continuation meant to be included here, but which, sadly, became too long to be considered wise to post in full. Thanks for reading and reviewing!