somthing from the archives: whispers in the dark - part 3

this is a short fic, everything comes to a head here, and then next week we get the epilogue.

Part 3

*Liz*

When Michael and I finally kiss it’s like I forget to breathe. All of a sudden I feel everything. I feel too much. Everything is too bright. It’s too loud. It’s frightening and overwhelming and it’s utterly Michael. I’m being crushed by him. Surrounded by him. Pulled into him.

He’s cowering behind the rocks. He knows the boy and girl are there. That they want him to come with them but he is scared. He doesn’t understand what is happening. He doesn’t want to take their hands.

He’s watching Max save me. There is power, energy curled up in his balled up fists. He wants to be the one who saved me. He wants to throw caution to the winds, he hates the fear that paralyzes him.

He’s sitting in a room. It’s full of kids. Unwanted. Unloved. Children in the system. All he knows of the system is that it hates him. It puts him someplace he begins to think is safe and then tears him out of it. He’s reviled and scorned and forgotten. He knows that he’ll slip through the cracks. He’ll never really have a place to call home. He’ll never have chocolate chip cookies and milk and a mother who’ll kiss his hurts and make everything all better. He sees the man, the one they say will be his father. He knows that he’ll never be loved.

He’s read my diary. He wishes he was more like Max, he wishes that I could see him the way I see Max. He wishes that I would think of him. But he knows I don’t. He understands me now. He’s always seen it, but now he knows it. In his eyes, in his mind I’m beautiful.

He’s in so much pain. His body bruised and battered. His eyes blackened. His chest purpled and blacked. He’d tried so hard to be good.

He watches me as I shut down after Alex’s death. He wants to take the pain that pours forth from my soul, he wants to take it and bear it for me. He wants me to smile, to laugh again. He knows I haven’t laughed in a long while.

He’s walked to school the first day. There was no one who would take him. He gets to the playground and there are all these kids, laughing and running and playing. He knows his life will never be that easy. He knows this and yet he’s only seven.

I can barely contain the tears as he pulls back for a moment. He is as stunned and breathless as I am. He pulls back and then crushes me to him.

Our kiss is wild. Savage. Visceral.

I need him.

There is nothing between us but skin. And everywhere he touches me I burn. His hands run down my chest, cupping my breasts, kneading them gently as I arch in response. He explores further, his mouth never leaving mine, as his tapered fingers hover over the heat that has pooled around my core.

He thrusts a finger and then two into me. Stretching my passage to better accommodate him. His fingers are replaced by his throbbing erection.

And he plunges into me.

I gasp.

The feeling is exquisite. The most exquisite pain and pleasure I have ever felt.

His thrusts are inexorably slow at first. He withdraws nearly completely before entering me again. The friction between our bodies, the feeling of his skin rubbing against mine is driving me crazy. I want to call down the moon. I want him to come inside me.

His thrusts are maddening. Slow and then fast. Wild. As I spiral out of control I feel his release.

I know then.

This more than lust.

This is love.

*Maria* 

Spinning.

Winning.

I’m dancing.

I’m moving.

I’m lying in the backseat of the Chevelle. While Max is on me, in me, beneath me. We weave ourselves through each other.

We become one. We become.

The stars are dizzying. They’re spinning. The world is bright spinning lights and everything is everything to me, to him.

We touch. We need it.

Everything is everything.

I burn. I ache. I feel the need to scream. I need to scream. I need the sounds. I need the voices. I need this. Whatever this is that is happening between Max and me.

I’m complete.

I’m satiated.

I can live with this guilt.

*Kyle* 

Isabel and I take the car back to the garage, and I drive her home. The ride is silent between us. I’m thinking of her. And of how she’ll never love me. I have no idea what her thoughts are about. Maybe about how we spent New Year’s in the car, on the road, in a silence so thick you could cut it with a knife.

We pull up to her apartment complex and everything is dark and silent. We do nothing to interrupt it. Moving from the parked car to her living room with little effort. She makes some popcorn, sticks in the movie, and settles down beside me on the sofa.

We’re bathed in the silver glow cast from the television set. I watch her as she watches the movie. As she laughs at Rudolph’s on-screen shenanigans.

She is beautiful when she laughs.

Her whole body glows.

I can see her happiness. And it hurts to know that I will never be able to give her that.

I’ve given up all pretense of watching the movie. I watch her as she watches.

I love her.

The realization is painful. I feel a vise around my heart.

She’s it for me.

“Kyle?” she questions me softly, “Are you all right?”

I’ll never be all right.

I was foolish. I fell in love with a happily married woman.

I close my eyes, breathe in for just a moment, before turning to her and smiling. Dear Buddha, it has never hurt so much to smile. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I manage to mutter before pretending to turn my attention back to the movie.

I feel her watch me after that. But I don’t shift my attention away from the flickering television.

*Max *

stars run in circles lights red yellow green blue primary colors primal feeling I need I want I yearn the most basic level the love that isn’t love I feel I want to feel I need to touch I want I need so much more in the back seat of the Chevelle we dance we join we become one in climax after climax her skin is so soft beneath me she is soft she is curves where I am angles she is my geometric opposite my perfect fit everything is everything and spinning and wild and lights and music and beauty and lust and a red haze of passion and a red haze of lust there is betrayal here there is loss but I feel passion and I feel lust and I am sated I am complete this is guilt I can live with

*Michael* 

I hold her in my arms afterward.

We are silent.

“I saw you,” she says quietly.

“I know,” I say, “I saw you.”

“What about Max and Maria?”

“What about them?”

“Do we tell them…or was this between us just tonight?”

I can’t speak as I feel my heart constrict. I struggle to find the strength to answer. “It’s up to you Liz.”

“But I…” her voice trails off uncertainly before she swallows and tries again, “Michael I chose you, but if you don’t want me that’s okay…you can tell me.”

“Not want you? Liz are you crazy?” I put her hand on my hard erection, “Can you feel how much I want you?” I put her hand on my chest, where my heart is beating in a frantic erratic pace, “Do you understand how much I feel for you? For only you?” I ask.

Her smile is all starlight and magic.

We kiss and once again lose ourselves to the passion of our embrace.

I move against her, in her tight sheath. Our sweat-slicked skin slides and surrenders itself to pure feeling.

I’m panting with need, with hunger, with the desire to lose all control. But I hold back for an infinitesimal moment and capture her gaze with mine before driving myself fully into her.

There’s no denying it.

This is love.

*Isabel*

“Kyle? Are you all right?” I ask.

The smile he gives me in response is painful to see.

I don’t understand what’s wrong. On the car ride over here, things were so silent. I’d never been so silent with him.

Are my feelings killing this friendship? Could I bear to lose him?

I want to say something, but he is determined to watch the movie.

I am selfish. I know this.

But I can’t deny my feelings anymore.

“Kyle?” I ask quietly.

And when he turns to face me, I hold his face in my hands and kiss him full on the lips.

He’s surprised at first. He doesn’t immediately react. And then he’s crushing my body to his, he lips ravish mine.

We make love bathed in the silver light of the television screen. It’s not right. But it’s real. And I love him. I tell him as he drives himself into me. And as he finds his own release he echoes my words back to me. He loves me.