*****

Holding close, surrounded by taste and scent, the scrunch rasp of stubble against soft inner thigh as I probe and taste. He’s open and exposed, reacting to my touch with helpless exhalation and arching, yearning judders. Absorbing, sucking, teasing, pulling the very essence of ’him’ in sanguine salt musk. It’s in these moments, when I control and restrain with tongue and hands and anticipatory intent, that I know what he was. That I come close to what he became. How he felt. How he died.

A hitching moan as my mouth leaves, tongue ceasing its probing and a slither, shuck up to his mouth, letting him taste as I explore again. His eyes are open, fixed on me. Greedy, dark, graced by a rim of night blue, the only time I watch my reflection without the steeled internal wince. His eyes are filled with me as I thrust forward, his lips murmuring soundless benediction and I regret the ending as I rejoice in the taking. 

Pounding deeper, harder, refusing to blink, trying to burrow into him with gaze and flesh and fluid, wanting to absorb him inside so we would always have this purity of silence. I see the want mirrored in him even as the sorrow of the inevitable shadows his gaze, and we’re flying, arching away, frozen, overtaken by the mechanics of completion. His head is thrown back, neck straining, mouth open in soundless cry, and I wonder how someone who always has something to say never has the words in the really big moments.

Sight and sound gone. Heart pounding. The flicker fuck of abstract image. Shaking, straining, already mourning. Collapsing into ready arms, I think that this must be what it is to drown.

I suppose that’s why they call it the little death.

Shivering, holding him tight, mouths close, sharing air with slowing breaths, I watch as my space in his eyes gradually shrinks, allowing the tattered robes of yesterday and the Cassandra curse of tomorrow to resume their places. 

The resentment must show in my face, for the open, grateful wonder in his folds into the familiar, sad resignation. He smiles and my heart clenches. He’s so beautiful, face flushed, swollen lipped, freckles from a sun he still fears a little scattering his nose. I’m fascinated with the crinkles around his eyes that will one day become permanent markers better than any tattoo. Lines from laughter I created, graffiti stamping, ‘Xander wuz here’.

He sees something in my perusal; the smile broadens into a grin and he pulls me tight, tilting his head to set an affectionate kiss where my left eye once lived. A laugh burbles from his chest into mine and he reaches for the blankets, letting us cocoon in make believe isolation. I smile and, twisting into familiar sleeping positions, hold him tight to my chest. I’m filled with the sudden fear that he will vanish, that I will wake in adolescent damp sheets alone and shamed; or worse, I fear the morning I will wake and his body will be cold and heavy in a way that it never is in this miraculous life. I know he’s on loan; unlike with Anya, I never daydream of companionable old age. Too much survivor guilt to discount the power of the jinx.

The ‘need’ to hear his voice is compulsive though, so I shake him a little and allow my mouth free-rein over my brain.

“Knock knock.”

The sigh is eloquent but he plays along, knowing me, understanding the fears he sometimes reflects.

“Who’s there?"

“I forget.”

“I forget who?”

“Um… I forget the joke.”

He is silent for a long, telling moment, then his head shifts and I yelp as he nips my nipple between his teeth. A kiss of apology before his arms tighten, letting me know he understands. He’s here. He’s ok. We’re ok.  I can’t help the small sigh as I relax. I can feel his smile. “Go to sleep, you daft git.”

Unable to prevent my own smile, I tilt my head and kiss the top of his head; his hair is sticky and sweat soaked, curls tangled and tasting of the impromptu raspberry cream pie fight that had led to where we are now. 

Listening as his breathing evens out and he relaxes into sleep, I have the startling revelation that we are more than ok; we’re wonderful, we’re still flying.
 

*****