Child's Play

It was the sun that woke me up. It was the sun and not the horrible pain in my stomach, the terrible feeling of regret and guilt. It wasn’t that. Like I said, it was the sun. I could still feel you next to me, fingers lightly brushing my exposed shoulder and naked knees up against my hips. You looked so calm right then, so content and happy. I hadn’t brought that. It wasn’t me who brought those feelings. I couldn’t have.

It’s the things you know you can’t have that you want the most. I could have you. Hell, you wanted me to have you, but it was just so wrong. So very, extremely, overwhelmingly wrong. Our attractions were powerful, strong, but tainted. I wasn’t supposed to love you. You weren’t supposed to love me and for more than one reason.

It wasn’t because you had the same XY as me; it was because, with those two letters, it had made you a boy. You weren’t a man yet. Even if you claimed over and over again that you were, if anything, close to adulthood if you weren’t there already, I couldn’t convince myself. Somehow you managed to though. Somehow, you managed to trick me out of my clothes. Somehow you managed to trick yourself out of your purity, your innocence.

You sigh, a sweet sigh that smells like sugar. You smile at me. Those beautiful eyes that gazed so longingly up at me, the hands that held my shoulders and pulled me down onto you, those lips that had whispered those words to me last night. Those words… those words that meant everything to me. Those words that should mean absolutely nothing. My life and death. Those words that held my fate in its breath.

As much as I knew you shouldn’t touch me, the more I wanted you to. The more I tried to hold myself back, the more I threw myself at you. The more I tried to get control, the more control I lost. Why were you so beautiful? Why did you love me so much? Why did I love you so much? Why couldn’t this be right?

“Good morning Cole,” you whisper, your head on my shoulder, your hair on my neck. One of your smooth legs drifts over mine, one hand sliding over my skin to retrieve my own fingers and hold them in a gentle grasp. I mutter something back, something my mind forget the moment I spoke it and you laugh at me, putting my hands on you like you had the night before, laying on top of me like a stolen blanket, warming me with contraband heat. I try to keep you on my chest, safe, secure, but you don’t want that. You don’t want my watchful eye, my protective grasp. You don’t want my assassin gaze glaring back at everyone that looks at you. You wanted those things for me.

How could you protect me when, even as you tried, I was hurting you?

Even though my eyes wanted to cry, my voice wanted to scream, my body wanted to curl and shiver, when you sat up and smiled so warmly down at me, all I could do was stare. My eyes didn’t cry, my voice didn’t scream, and my body did not curl and shiver. Your touch, those small fingers that rested on my stomach, the narrow chest that gleamed in the sun from the open window, most of all, the softness of your features is what kept me still. A child. Just a boy with a grown man. An innocent playing with sin. Please, please, don’t let me ruin you.

You wince as you ease me into you. You bite your cherry lips and close your eyes. You try so hard not to whimper. You remember. Last night when you whimpered I started to cry. You remembered that. I hurt you. I’m hurting you now.

I shouldn’t feel this pleasure. I shouldn’t grab your waist and make these noises. I shouldn’t be letting you do this. I shouldn’t be laughing with you. I shouldn’t be rolling with you, changing positions, carrying out your initiated actions with more passion than you had showed. I shouldn’t be kissing you. I shouldn’t be on top of you, breathing heavily, sweating, enjoying it. Your arms can’t be around my neck. Your breath can’t be bursting against my skin. Don’t be in my bed. When I open my eyes, don’t be in my bed.

But you are. And you’re smiling. So grateful. Why?

“I love you Cole,” you whisper, keeping me against you. I nod.

Even if you can’t protect me, right now, your endeavor is what keeps me alive. So when your small arms squeeze me, when your adolescent lips kiss my ear and neck, I don’t stop you. Hopeless and pathetic, that’s all I am. A sad little shadow wrapped in the light of an infant angel.