Mortality

Mortality

Flutter of dark tangled lashes, lost in dreams. Nightmares?

Visions of the past, future, memories of mere hours ago. Will never know, wasn’t like they shared things like that. Shared fists, taunts, hard punishing kisses, but nothing inside, nothing that would render them vulnerable.

Vulnerable.

When he was awake, full of fire and anger, pale blue eyes taunting and daring to knock him down just so he can spite you by getting right back up again, it was the last word you’d use.

But here, now.. calmly dreaming, tan muscled body curled in against his own, breath soft and steady in a child’s blind trust, Angel can see it. It’s in every boneless line of his body, melting down into the mattress, tangled in the sheets and in him, warm thigh sprawled over one of his own to drive the distant steady throb of Lindsey’s pulse through his dead, silent body.

Soft flutter of lashes again brings his eyes back up to that innocent devil’s face, brows the slightest bit together teaming with the sullen, swollen lips to have just the hint of a pout, silvery tracks of silent, almost invisible tears barely visible down the high cheekbones. Whether from pain or pleasure, he wasn’t sure, but he’d been staring intent into those blazing, spitting eyes, glossy and brimming, as they’d given up the fight, the hot slide of tears slipping down into tangled, sweat dampened dark hair as his body had drove relentless into the hot gripping clasp of Lindey's, in the dark heated dance they never could deny.

Hadn’t been able to resist rasping his tongue over that dampness, he could still taste it there, the warm salt of the tears, the cooler, more acrid salt of sweat, mixing with the heavy copper tang of the blood he’d already been lapping at, lush lips having been split and bloodied from his fist, hearing the harsh hitch of breath in response. Heady, dancing over his tongue, sliding it over his lips as if hoping a trace remained there, each taste, the blood, the tears, the sweat, overwhelming him in the mortality of the man lying so trusting in his bed.

Lindsey’s swollen, reddened lips are slightly parted, stained with blood and bruised, Angel biting at his own lips to keep from ducking his head to taste them again. Doesn’t want to wake him, ruin the silence, the peace.

There’s a slowly purpling bruise high along one cheek, skin around it pink and tender, lazy beginning of a black eye from the fight earlier and he glances down at his almost healed knuckles, strangely hypnotized by the fact that there will be no remaining trace of the hit on him long before the full effect of it appears on the man beside him.

Farther down, beneath the slightly lifted chin roughly darkened with a few days of stubble, there are a dark rainbow of colors, bruises old and new circling the tanned throat. His fingertips almost throb in remembrance, feeling the fluttering, racing pulse underneath them, steady and then pounding, as his entire body vibrated from the drumming beat, getting lost, caught up and drowned in it as his lifeless flesh remembers its own until he was startled into awareness as the racing pulse turned thready. Always letting him go before it stops.

So far.

As his eyes drift over the peacefully sleeping man again, muscled legs tangled in the sheets, soft cock lying against one raised, bruised, thigh still slightly wet from the viscous fluid drying slowly over his taut belly, up over the dark mottled patches on Lindsey’s ribcage that were the perfect shadows of his fists to the swollen, red nipples he’d bit and worried earlier until the boy’d begged, back over that too pretty face made all the more so with its marring of blood and bruises to the long, tangled hair dark on his pillow, he wonders.

Watching the soft, steady, deep rise and fall of that broad, muscled chest, feeling the heat radiating from the expanse of tanned, bare skin, tongue again licking over his lips for the taint of sweat, of tears and blood artfully wrought from the all too willing form, to the arm twisted high over Lindsey’s head, bright steel cuff chafing the skin along his wrist, just over the thin, pink scar, a circle of reminder, the other side tethering him fast to the headboard, he wonders.

What it will feel like, life pulsing then slowly fading under his hands, fearless blue eyes flickering with the sudden awareness that this time, this time he isn’t stopping. He knows it will happen, the day he can’t hold back and lets the life slide away from the so alive, so vital and hot blooded, fighting, body entwined with his.

He knows he will be the one to crush it from him, watch it fade. He knows Lindsey knows it, too.

His right, his and his alone.

As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all the rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.

Shakespeare Sonnet 73