1/13/2011

Once upon a time two men?brothers both?had a long talk that was frank, and honest, and at times impressively painful. This was typical for them and for their family. Get all four of the children and both of the parents into a room together and it was soon impossible to speak at less than a shout. So they had this talk. Then they had breakfast. After breakfast they talked a little more about less painful things and went to look at furniture for the new house John was living in. As Simon cleaned his guns unnecessarily elsewhere in the house, John made a few calls. One of those calls was to Morana, and required that he leave a message: Talked to Simon. Come over when you're free and we'll figure out something for lunch. Not Chinese, not pizza.

When reality sliced into shivering pieces and Morana Stepped into John's home a little after noon, she was freshly showered with her hair pulled back into a neat French braid and just a little bit of lip gloss for makeup. She didn't need more than that, with the rather satisfied glow supplying color and sparkle to her eyes. She was also not wearing the same clothing she'd started the day in, had opted for dark jeans, sky-high knee boots, and a crisp white button-up shirt instead of the business suit. There was the back of Simon's head over the edge of the couch in the great room, his almost-black hair shining in the light pouring in through the triple-paned windows. Over his suddenly-hunching shoulder was a view of the Three Stooges doing what they did best. As the trio yukked it up on-screen he deliberately stopped wincing and looked over his squared shoulder at her. Just as she had done to him the night previously, he examined her from head to toe before meeting her gaze. "Hello," he said, grave as a greyhound presenting a paw to be shaken.

Her smile turned up slow at the sober greeting. She tick-tapped her way across the floor to one of the chairs, slid into it with a casual drape that showed just a hint of her collarbone and the sparkle of a necklace there. "Hello, darling. How is my beautiful liar today?" Dark brown eyes flecked with black swung to the television and she laughed suddenly.

"I'm well, thank you." He was as composed as sculpture, his expression serene and untroubled. "How was your morning?" He wore a gray-and-black windbreaker, another pair of those much-loved jeans, the sneakers of the night before. The jacket was zipped down far enough to show that there was a small oval of gold hanging on the chain that held his crucifix.

"Busy, but productive. A few meetings?terribly boring for the most part." She waved a hand to brush off the events of the day. "I'm glad you were able to talk to John, darling. Have you changed your mind about staying here for your visit?" The tilt of her head to the side was winsome and charming.

"I might." His tone made no promises and allowed for no predictions one way or the other. "There are other things I need to do while I'm here." Behind the squared black frames of his glasses his eyes skipped left, down the hall. Then they returned to her. "He's in the shower. He should be out in a few minutes." Simon, of course, had no idea how often they might or might not have made showers and other events communal, and so hedged his bets.

His face and his control were lies, but the words were true. At least, he believed them to be. But only one Benandanti registered on her radar, and that was the man in the room with her. That sat her up from the casual drape?as if a jolt of electricity had gone straight down her spine. Her eyes went wide, sparked violent blue, then narrowed on him. "Darling. You know better than to lie to me." Brown and blue and not a hint of black: that was her gaze when it skipped down the hall the same way he'd looked earlier. Without waiting for an answer, she stood and tick-tapped her way down the ramp with long strides on those heels, those terribly long legs.

"...I wasn't lying," Simon said to her retreating back.

The sound of running water gained gradual prominence over the canned laughter from the screen as she moved, set to the tick-tapping of those terribly high heels at the ends of her terribly long legs. She shot a quick, suspicious glance back at Simon as she opened the bedroom door without so much as a knock. Running water came clearer to her ears, but there was still no feel of John at all. She stepped into the room, let the door slide shut, and crossed the width of the bedroom toward the bathroom. "Benandanti. If you're playing games with me?" She couldn't feel him. Simon was still a burning presence, just there, like a sunburn just beginning on her skin from this distance. But John wasn't there at all.

The tenor of the water shifted in the bathroom, changed pitch and tone. A shower curtain rattled against its rod, hiss-click-click. And John's voice came unmistakably through that closed bathroom door: "What?"

Her eyes went very, very wide. She stepped back a pace in sheer shock and surprise. "I can't feel you." She barely breathed it. And then her mouth twisted down again, into suspicion and paranoia. Construct, golem, Simon had done something?options flickered through her mind along with a surge of black and red. She walked forward quickly, opened that bathroom door without so much as please or may-I.

There was water dripping down off the tip of John's nose. It ran down his forehead and cheeks. It tangled his lashes, it flattened his hair against his head. All of this was at her eye level. As he'd told her, he was upright and mobile, and the chair was tucked into a corner of the bathroom rather than waiting right next to the shower. She marched in and his eyes widened with surprise, then squinted shut as the water filled them up. "Um," said John, with the greatest of eloquence. "I couldn't hear you. What?" He'd been clutching the shower curtain around himself to stop the water from running out: she got a nice show of tight bicep and a look over his shoulder; which, from this angle, looked like someone had gone at that shoulder enthusiastically with a belt sander a while back.

"I can't feel you." Still quiet, suspicion bleeding and twisting into new paths as she took in the dripping sight of him and the edges of the impressive scarring on his shoulder?and probably his back. A step closer, two. "I. Can't. Feel. You." This time clearly, and her expression was very, very odd as she took one more step, right up to the edge of the tub, dripping water be damned. "Here. Here, you're barely there at the edges. What the hell did Simon do to you?"

His brow knotted up. He ducked back in, wiped at his eyes and stuck his head out again. "What are you talking about? I can still feel you." Perplexity reigned. "Simon didn't do anything to me. Well, he said I was nuts, but my ego's bigger than that." His elbow dripped on her pretty boots. With his hair flattened the scar in his scalp was visible, set like a jagged tribute to broken glass in lines zig-zagging outward from a central point near the crown of his head.

She really didn't care about the boots at all, just at the moment. She might, later, but not just now. "Right here, right now, I feel you less than I feel Simon on the couch." White fabric turned translucent with water running down her arm when she thrust her hand out, caught his face in the palm of her hand. The scars were nothing, less than nothing. His skin was warm under her hand, probably for the same reason that steam was billowing up out of the shower despite the vent fan blowing at full speed. John liked it hot. His cheek was smooth?clearly he'd shaved before he'd climbed in.

A bead of water twisted down his temple, found her finger, began a slow crawl over her knuckle. He blinked at her. "I swear to God I didn't do anything. Wait. I didn't go to confession yesterday." He looked briefly panicked.

"I don't know if you're lying to me or not." The advantage of those high, high heels? Her eyes were nearly at his level, even given the extra lift of the bathtub. And they were deep chocolate brown, without so much as a hint of Void or Presence; as if he were purely human and not touched by God. "John." Her other hand reached up, caught the other cheek, and then she stood tip-toes and closed the last few inches to claim his mouth, heedless of the still-running water that splashed and sprayed and soaked her jeans, her shirt, the shoes.

And, oh Christ, it burned the flesh right off his bones and he didn't care, even though the Morana he thought of as 'his' had apparently lost her freaking mind and was going to kill him, obviously this was just her goodbye kiss like the one she'd given him before she locked him up in his chair the night he went to Zeppa. But he didn't care, because he wanted her and she tasted like honey and every kind of sin known to man and a few that hadn't been dreamt of yet. He let go of the shower curtain and wrapped an arm around her, and the other, and wound that braid up around his fist.

And he kissed her.

And he went on kissing her, and somewhere in there it stopped burning.

One eye popped open as that registered even above and beyond the lush fantasy of her mouth. It stopped burning right about the time that the kiss pulled her to one knee braced on the edge of the tub and water went from a splash of spray to the edges of a cascade rolling down her face, her arms, soaking her in the edges of the downpour from the faucet. She was devouring him, the taste, the feel that wasn't burn, wasn't more than pure heat and lust and want.

He lifted his head and looked down at her heart-stoppingly perfect face with its endlessly fascinating eyes, to the effectively see-through shirt and skin-colored bra that was all that stood between her and his own chest. He looked past her, from the pool of water collecting on the floor to the open bathroom door, to the door beyond that hadn't closed. "Okay," he panted. "God, I'm sorry in advance." Then he threw his head back and bellowed, "SIMON!" This was not, she'd find out soon, what he was sorry for.

Faintly, down the hall, came a return call. "...what?"

The apology confused her, until the shout. She still jerked back when he bellowed, and the expression on her face was a study in relit suspicion, paranoia, betrayal, agony and the creeping edges of rage.

"WE'RE GONNA BE A FEW MINUTES!"

Simon and John had lived together for most of their lives, in one way or another. They'd shared an apartment for the second half of college, and after the accident John had taken the spare bedroom in Simon and Hilary's Upper East Side condo. The explanation was probably more than he needed. Still it was better to be safe than sorry, and John was rewarded by the shouted-back answer, "...call me!"

Paint relief, sudden understanding, and greed in place of the grim twist to Morana?s mouth and jaw and eyes as his second shout echoed through the room and down the hall. The burn of Simon moved off, and she still couldn't feel more than the faintest hint of John's presence despite that she was practically wrapped around him. "How?" The question came while she bent long enough to pull free one boot, the other, and let them fall into the puddle of water on the bathroom floor. They were ruined anyway.

"I don't know, but we've got about thirty seconds before I go off like a goddamned fire hydrant, so hurry it up." The instant the second boot hit the floor he hauled her into the shower and returned to kissing her, a frantic and hungry devouring. The hands tugging at her shirt buttons were trembling with need.

She peeled the soaked jeans over her hips and the panties went with, caught on damp skin and shaking hands while he devoured and she consumed. As soon as the jeans were gone she reached up, dragged one hand through his hair, the other over the sandpaper-rough skin of his shoulder, his back, the scars. Her teeth caught on his lower lip?right there, where she'd bitten once before, scarred once before, and this time the bite didn't draw blood.

He'd seen her naked more than once. But this was daylight, and he wasn't drunk or drugged, and his soreness from the wreck could go f**k right off as far as he was concerned. The water had slicked her braided hair back. It ran down her skin like diamonds scattered over bronze. He'd never seen anything as beautiful in his whole life, even if it was a little blurry, even if his head was still spinning with how fast it had all happened. Didn't matter. Only one thing did. "Hang on," he said as the shower's fiercely hot spray needled down on them, and picked her up.

Direction she was happy to follow, all things considered. Her legs wrapped around his waist, and if she were the type she'd send a little prayer of thanksgiving to God for His skill as a sculptor. As it was she just caught his mouth for another hungry kiss while one hand dug into his shoulder and the other slapped against the tiled wall for bracing and balance. He'd made a comment about a fire hydrant, but she was a lit firework and the fuse was running short.

In some alternate universes?there had to be more than one?John hadn't died. Not only hadn't he died, he had never had anything to do with death, had never gone into forensic pathology. He'd made it just into college in all those alternates and dropped out, because he discovered that porn paid so much better. He pulled her up his body with one arm until she was the one on top kissing him, slid himself back and forth against her as he poured greedy and inarticulate noises into her. Then John found the right spot, the right angle. He let go, and gravity took over.

Thanks, gravity.

Morana certainly moaned when he slid home. Then moving hips and muscles and the water pouring down over them both caught her up and the moan turned to a choked cry, the cry to a scream that she muffled by biting his shoulder while her nails dug in again. They'd spent weeks enduring every touch through open flames; this was a damned miracle. No big surprise that she made him bleed again. But after three weeks of aching every day for her, after a year of wondering, just the possibility of having his biggest question answered was enough that the pain didn't matter. It was just another goad, just another thing to push him that much closer to the edge. She coiled up around him, and he pinned her against the wall and held her there while he thrust into her, ground against her. Three strokes. That was all it took. He'd be posting his name on some internalized wall of shame if she hadn't already locked up around him, wasn't already sobbing into his shoulder. Righteous. He followed her home with a ragged-edged groan like she'd just torn his heart out of his chest.

He was quiet as his breathing slowed afterward, as the hot water stung his shoulder and washed the blood welling around her nails away. She had the longest legs, he thought hazily; even with the one knee drawn up her heel was still dug into his a**. He breathed a little more. He turned his head, set his lips against her neck, and muttered there, "We going for a run now?"

Fireworks. The world should have exploded, the universe ended with that earth-shattering bang of climax and shuddering, screaming release. She was blind and every breath was a ragged gasp for air while the running water drenched them and she clung around him. Pardon her while she tried to remember that she had a body and that therefore, it was capable of things like thought and words.

She pulled free her fingernails from his skin, flexed her hand and when his words sank in she laughed. Soft, because she was still catching her breath, but definitely a rib-shaking laugh. "It's more efficient for calorie burn." Her mouth moved over the print of her teeth in his shoulder, whisper of a kiss. "But this is?" She didn't have words. "John. How?"

She laughed, which clenched her up around him, which made him hiss out a reaction to overstimulated nerves through clenched teeth and lose his grip. She slid an inch down the wall before he caught her again. "Don't know," he said a few breaths later. "Don't care." Scars writhed like fresh torment under her hands as he hoisted her back up. "Five minutes." His forehead tapped the wall again?gently, because the bruise was still there.

"All right." She tipped back her head, let water fall like rain over her cheeks, her closed eyes, the slide of her hands over his skin from scar-torn to smooth and back. And she laughed again, low and rich, while her leg tightened around his waist. "Slowpoke."