DISCLAIMER: Frank belongs to Scott Lobdell. Victor belongs to me.
NOTES: Thank you to Tan and Diamonde for the last-minute read-thru, and to White, who is like that book . . with the words . . that are different from the words you've got already . . whatever that's called.
The poem is "Lucky" by Tony Hoagland.
DATE: July 10, 2000.
Sweet
"because the tastebuds at least are not broken
because there is a bond between you
and sweet is sweet in any language."
I'm not afraid. I am . . haunted, and desperate and sorry, but I am not afraid.
That's why he's here, he knows I'm not afraid of him. That's why I'm here, too. I am the closest to happy that I can remember being since my father died when I was very young. Which isn't very happy-- but considering who I am and who he is, it's a miracle.
He's a killer. I've seen him after a particularly uneventful job, shaking with shunted adrenaline and blood-need, and hours later, slumping back into the apartment with dripping hands and clouded eyes. I've seen him. Tear into someone. And I lay here with my cheek pressed against his back, my hand resting on his waist-- which rises and falls minutely-- and I'm not afraid.
I haven't been afraid in a very, very long time. I was five. Lon McAvey. My mother met him in the diner where she worked on the weekends.
DINA AND AMY SCHLICHTING KILLED BY BOYFRIEND, SURVIVED BY LITTLE FRANKIE SCHLICHTING, FOUND IN A CLOSET, IN A POOL OF HIS OWN PISS.That's what the newspaper might have said, if they'd be able to prove that Lon had been the one that night, with the drug-gleaming eyes and rust-edged shovel. And they might have been able to prove it if little Frankie had been able to crawl out of that tight prison of fear long enough to testify against him. Or, perhaps, it wouldn't have been necessary-- perhaps if Frankie hadn't been afraid, he would've been able to save his family, wouldn't have cowered beneath the months of abuse. Or perhaps it doesn't matter. I'm not afraid anymore.
"Vic."
His breathing goes still under my hand. The air prepares for its predator.
"Yeah."
I sit up and he rolls over to look up at me-- dark, amber-glinting eyes unreadable. I prop my hand on the pillow beside his head, fingers falling into a pool of tangled blond hair. Most of the time, I assume that if I ever tried to leave him, he'd kill me. But then, at quiet night times like this, with his hand coming up around my wrist, wary, and a slightly parted mouth that has moved insincerely too many time to ever quirk honestly again . . I realize that no one can predict anything about this man and he'll probably kill me eventually anyway. But it doesn't matter-- I'm not afraid to die, and I don't want to leave him.
I lower my mouth to the space just at the corner of his, and swing my leg around to straddle him. I ask him with my hips to fuck me, and he does, eyes unflinching into mine. He twists and bucks up under me, into me, and I screw myself down onto him. I wrench in his grasp until my hand is around his wrist, clutching, as his is on mine, and that is how it is between us-- both of us clinging to the other without ever really touching. In my maddened, pistoning, bed-rocking haze, I think-- Lon McAvey has nothing on Victor Creed. Vic could rip him clean halves. I think, FUCK. Yeah.
When I come, I shout his name, and his hand hovers, clenching, above my shoulder as he thrusts one, two more times and follows me.
I collapse on top of him, panting, waiting for my heart to slow to the conditioned and measured beat of Vic's heart below it. My hand slips off his wrist, to his shoulder, where my thumb moves softly in small circles. I exhale long against his broad chest and think about how I ran into Lon a few years ago, running a strip club in Manhattan. I wrapped my coils around him, squeezed until I felt the shudder in his breath, and listened to him beg me for his life. I didn't kill him. It would be easy to kill him, I thought, but I wanted him to suffer like I did. I wanted him to live in the shadow of his fear, like I did, for years-- and hide in a closet, maybe, and give himself a scar on his hand where he bit through the skin trying to stifle his screams.
I clench my left hand around the mark in my palm briefly and sigh. That was a long time ago. Fear is a distant country, with some killer's hand on my wrist docking me. Vic's hand comes up to touch my hair.
"Frank?"
His voice is low and calm, and I can't imagine fear in it, ever.
"Yeah."
There is a long silence. "I'm sorry."
"I know." I press my mouth softly to the skin beneath my cheek, then rest my head and close my eyes. "It's okay. Go to sleep."
-end-
sweet is sweet