Albatross
by B. Cavis

Albatross
by B. Cavis

She sits on his counter, legs open and back straight up and down. The red mark on her wrist hasn't faded; she chafed herself playing Gibbs's "let's talk about bondage" game in that room with the cuff around her wrist.

He keeps his eyes on that bracelet of rosy, broken capillaries. It looks obscene against her skin; sexualized, scandalized red against pale white.

He cocks his head to one side, and it strikes her all of a sudden how very silver he is today and how very much she likes him silver.

"Does it hurt?" he asks, and she shrugs.

The beer is cold and crisp. Her mouth is warm.

*

He pulls the quilt back and drops her onto his sheets. She looks dark against the white cotton, and he wants to pause and watch the beauty of her contrast, but she doesn't let him. She drags a hand across her collar bone and then dips it between her breasts, calling him up onto the bed with her movements.

The seduction of her skin and her curves and her breasts overtakes him, and he stumbles up onto the bed with her, heavy between her splayed legs.

Heavy.

Her legs are bent and her knees press up hard and solid underneath his hands. He molds his palms around her bones. Her mouth is underneath his again, and he can feel her tongue against his but he isn't consciously aware of how it got there. His brain is gone. His body is going through the motions it loves without thought or command.

He can't have thoughts or commands right now.

She missed a spot shaving, and the soft hair underneath his thumb is a source of fascination. She tries to move that part of herself away from him-- tries to hide her imperfections and her flaws, but he holds tight.

If she's flawed, she's human. If she's human, she's on the same level that he is. If she's on his level, maybe, it's not so bad to have her in his bed; not so bad to destroy her.

And he will destroy her. It's in his nature to destroy the things of beauty in his life. It's familiar. Comfortable.

He doesn't feel guilty or embarrassed. But he has a feeling that in the morning he'll be ashamed of something. It feels... inevitable.

His socks are still on. She's sticky and wet under his wandering fingers.

*

There's something pulling at him-- telling him to get out of bed with her and not screw up whatever the hell they are to each other. Not to fuck each other over with the swift movements of their hips and their hands and their mouths on each others.

He never liked being pulled.

He can still see the image of the bride, wrapped in white sin, and it shakes him. That is a perversion. That is a distortion of what it's all really about.

Of what *this* is all about.

She's hot and tight and liquid underneath him. Thick and substantial and wrapped in her own skin. No white here. No lace. He looks down at her to try and replace the image in his mind with something else.

She looks up at him to try and do the same.

*

She is aware of her mistakes and her misjudgments. She is aware that in a few hours, she is going to have to face up to her decisions and that there is no way for her to escape her self imposed fate.

She is trapped. She can't get free and the fact that she's not sure if she would if she could scares her.

She is trapped.

His skin is soft and pale underneath her cheek. His chest hair is rough against her fingertips, and there's a burn between her thighs that won't let her forget what she's done.

He's asleep, of course. He put it out of his mind with the ease of the emotionally experienced. He's had more practice at regrets and regretful actions than she has. He's more... accustomed to them.

The post-coital thoughts are hers to bear.

She wonders if he knows that he called her "Katie" when he came. She wonders if he knows that she called him "Jethro," or if he minds. What would a love call him, she wonders, and puts the thought away.

She wonders if she's a lover. Does one time put you on that list? Are you marked as something intimate and clean after only one trespass into another's body? She wonders if her actions and his can be detected by the rest of the world.

Are they obvious?

Does she want them to be obvious?

They are dark against the white of the sheets. The light doesn't touch them; creeping across the carpet to try and save them from the darkness and finding nothing but their discarded clothing on the ground.

They are outside of the light.

Maybe they like the dark.

FIN