Title: The Same Again

Reason: Written for Uniquely Pleasurable’s Heron Feather’s competition; check out the other entries here:

Other: Questions, comments, and everything else is of course appreciated. If you happen to find yourself with nothing to do for about five hours, IM me (Rusty99Arabian) with a topic of something like ‘So, I’m interested in how you portrayed unicorns…’ and I will happily talk about it until my fingers fall off or you leave.

---

The air seems to be especially thick today, the mix wrong for consumption by human lips and lungs. He, pinned beneath me, also seems to be having difficulty breathing, chest rising in bursts and gasps that makes mine clench all the tighter. His brilliant eyes are hazy as he watches me with the same expression that he showed in my room so long ago, and my eyes too are blurred with something I can’t quite pinpoint.

I lean in, running a hand down his bare chest, and he arcs up with a sound that fills me completely. I kiss him, and he kisses me in return, and then a crow flies past because this is a dream and I wake up and hate my life.

I roll over and scream into my pillow, because tomorrow things are going to be the same between us, and I am sick of it, sick in a way that makes me get up and throw the door closed behind me.

Tomorrow is not going to be the same, and whether it will be because I’m dead by his hand or gone from this place, I don’t care any longer.

Things are going to change.

---

I wake up because I’ve fallen out of bed. Bed is a stack of rocks six feet off the ground, and I’ve also woken up because my wrist is sprained, twisted, or broken. I fell out of bed because the support that prevented me from doing that in the past has fallen off, and it has fallen off because a potted plant fell over on top of it. The plant fell over because someone is knocking on my door with enough force to vibrate the wall.

At this point, I really am not in the best of moods.

I fling open the door, and manage to snarl, “What--”before I am shoved up against the wall and pale lips have affixed themselves to mine, lips that taste like sunlight and rain. I find myself slumping down, having never experienced anything like this before, and he takes the chance to press in, slipping a tongue like silk into my mouth and a hand around my waist. He is wearing a satin robe--black, of course--and it seems to be too much clothing for me, but the pain in my wrist, pinned between us, has gotten to be too much as well.

I certainly can’t back away through the wall, so I am forced to push him away with somewhat more pressure than I wanted to. Daiei’s whole demeanor is crushed, but resolute, and I realize that he expected this from the beginning. This makes me laugh, and gives me the courage to lean forward to lightly, lightly touch my lips to his, before pulling away to smile at his shocked expression.

“I broke my wrist, moron,” I explain, and hold up my arm to show him. He takes my hand and kisses beneath it, and this seems to have a more potent affect because the pain is gone in an instant. I smile, looking at it, then glance back to Daiei, where he stands in apparent terrified silence. This is going to be difficult.

I take a deep breath, trying to come up with something to say, and he takes the opportunity to twine himself around me, capturing my mouth with his again once more. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, and he’s so sure that I just let him carry things along wherever he wants. It feels better than anything else I’ve ever known.

Someone is going to have to do it, though, so I break him off again, catching his chin between my fingers. “How far,” I say, speaking slowly, “do you want this to go?” He is panting against my grip and the feeling is making me shiver in a way he probably doesn’t desire, and if he continues in this vein, I know he’s going to regret it.

“As far as you’re willing to let it,” he responds, shocking and thrilling me to the core, but I’m still confident he has no idea how far that is.

“You realize that you could be killed, right?” He nods, but looks no less resolute. I take another deep breath.

“Go out with me Friday,” I say in a rush, and am rewarded by the sight of his lovely eyes widening in surprise. “We need to talk.”

“Very well,” he responds softly, and lowers his head to smile, which is so endearing that if he suddenly took out a gun and shot me I wouldn’t have minded that much. The smile disappears as he looks up, voice hesitant. “Does that mean…”

“…you have to leave?” I ask, and he blushes and nods again. “No,” I say, “No, I don’t think so.”

He smiles, and life is suddenly, unstoppably, wonderfully different from before.

---

“Hold still!” Asher reprimands for the hundredth time, and Szymon glowers at him.

“I am wearing. A. Skirt,” he snarls, and I carefully fight the urge to smile. “I don’t care if you call it a kilt or drapes or what, that’s what it is.”

We have been posing in rotation for the last hour in the stifling hot studio, with no success. The good pictures are blurry; the others, atrocious. Asher especially is at his wits end, but Szymon is just as close to snapping.

“I have to wear one too,” I point out, trying to comfort him. He looks back at me and reaches out, hooking his fingers through the end of my necklace and tugging to get his revenge at what he sees as impertinence. I pout in protest, and the lights of the camera go off again.

“Success! I may have finally gotten something…” Asher thumbs back a tab on the digital display and sighs. “Daiei, you’re scowling. Look, guys, I know you hate each other, but is it too much to ask for you to get along for two seconds--" He stops in confusion, because we’re laughing too hard to pose any longer, even if we are going to flunk art without this, and when we stop because Szymon has pulled my head up and I’ve got my tongue down his throat, Asher takes up where we leave off.

We don’t know what Szymon’s family is going to do when he finds out, or my father. There are harsh penalties for things like this, punishments that include death, but until that day comes, we are together.

It looks like, on the whole, tomorrow is going to be the same as today, and that suits us just fine.