Paying
Silence
by Mairead Triste
But I was hot and tired and worn out and busy being grateful that both Jim
and I came through everything with whole skins, and it had been a long, long
time since the last time—a long enough time that the possibility didn't even
occur to me.
It should have.
A bitch of a day. My first thought on entering the loft was cold water—how
to get it on me and in me as quickly as possible; nothing more than that.
Sink—shirt off—cold water on to run and cool so that it might hopefully drop
below tepid by the time I'm done washing my hands and ready to soak my shirt,
wring it, and put it back on wet.
"I swear—I don't know how you can stand it, Jim—you had that vest on—it
would have killed me... I'm going to get some ice water and a cold beer
and then I'm going to soak in them—either or both, I don't care..."
Just words, just babbling. Just the normal beginning of the normal process of
taking the strain and adrenaline and blood of the day and putting all that shit
back into its little compartments where it belongs. Just words.
Words that got cut off as I felt him behind me, words that dried to scaly
bitterness on my tongue as my breath caught high in my throat—oh God he's gonna
do it again— It's automatic, trying to turn my head towards him. This thing
is a connection, after all; and it's perfectly normal to seek that human
interface in these circumstances—eye contact, body language, expression—the
give and take of the human animal. Normal.
Not normal. His hand is in my hair but only for a moment; only long enough to
suggest without words that Blair Sandburg had better keep his eyes face-front.
Then, gone.
And I can't; won't, even; pretend to myself that his hand wanted to linger.
Why would I need to torment myself with thoughts like that; when I have him to
do it for me?
It's not rape. If it were rape, I wouldn't be rock-hard and dizzy right now,
would I? It's not rape. How can this be rape when all I want is for him to bend
me forward over the sink and wrap those powerful arms around me and squeeze me
and hold me tight while he fucks my ass?
"Take it out."
Oh please—something, someone give me strength—let me pretend that this is
the last time... or the first time; that something more will come from this;
something more than hot gushing lust and dues of silent retribution. I can't
feel, can't hear myself breathing—but I know that I am, because ever so faintly
he's vibrating behind me, quivering; the way that he always does when I'm
panting and frightened and out of my mind.
Cool air feels so good; my hands are cold from the water, and they feel good
too. I can smell myself, rank and sweaty—that's all a part of it, somehow—he
never comes at me when I'm clean; only when I'm dirty enough to break through
the icelock he keeps on himself. Dirty—I'm dirty for you, Jim; for you to smell
and breathe in and that would delight me, enchant me if you could just let the
rest of it be clean—this feeling between us; purity for me, darkest blackest
filth for you.
For you...
"Hhss—"
A strangled noise, choked off at the source; the only indication that the man
behind me feels anything at all about the fact that I'm standing at the kitchen
sink jerking off with my hair in my face and my pants making a leisurely,
swaying trip down my legs. It would have been a groan. He would have groaned for
me, with desire for me, if only he hadn't been...
Jim.
Faint motion of knuckles against my backside through the thin cotton of my
briefs, obviously accidental as he jerks away with a low, sibilant hiss; and
suddenly I'm weak—so weak in the knees that it seems impossible that I won't
slip down to the floor in a puddle of cold water and hot come; but if I fall—if
I fall here, unlike anywhere else in this intermeshed, hellishly woven existence
we've carved out for ourselves—if I fall back towards him and his hard-on and
his busy hand...
He won't catch me.
He won't touch me.
"Tell me..." He thinks I'm a Sentinel at times like these—his words are so
quiet; such a huge amount of passion and loathing and rage; all squeezed down to
the bare minimum whisper, words I wouldn't even hear if I weren't straining with
all of myself to listen for the electric sounds of his repressed lust.
And this is the worst of it, really. His senses want it
all—sight-smell-touch-sound. As long as...
As long as I don't look him in the eye.
As long as the smell of me reminds him of corruption.
As long as we touch only ourselves; and never each other.
As long as the sounds are mine, and the splinter-whispers of his are
ignored...
As long as all these conditions are fulfilled; as long as everything is done
in this neat and controlled and despicable way, Jim— Then you aren't a fag,
are you? Not a man who would need to be ashamed of himself.
Where do I begin? Where did we begin? How do I bring myself
face-to-face with something that every cell in me knows shouldn't be
shameful—should be, actually, a celebration...
Would be a fucking blazing light in this universe if it weren't for... If he
had the balls to...
But no. I can't blame him. Can I? Should I? I'd sure like to. But no. I
started it, and I started wrong. One night—the first night; him drunk and
morose and hurting over that kid informant that he did everything he could to
keep safe and still it wasn't enough—I reached out to comfort, to offer. I
tried... I tried to kiss him, I think, but he pushed me away—I thought he would
yell, or kick me out, and the darkest part of me wondered for a moment if he
might hit me, and what would I do if he did?... And the next thing I knew he had
his own half-hard cock in his hand and my face held tight against his shoulder
while he stroked. It was over before I knew it, and in my shock and heat and
worry I said nothing.
I should have said... something. Anything. And just fucking trust me
on this one—if I had known, if I'd had any goddamn idea that I'd spend the next
years of my life paying for my silence, I would have just opened my mouth and
let run. It is, after all, something I know I can do.
Silence is hateful. Hateful.
Jim, in those moments, is hateful. Hateful and closed to me; closed and
needing me so much that sometimes I think I can feel my soul being sucked right
out of my body. Take this; take me—This is my body, given for you. And I don't
scream, 'I'm not your fucking martyr', because, surprise-surprise—after all
this time, that's just what I am; as he's shown me, in this one place in my
life, I am.
Nails pierce. Blood spreads. Dark things whisper at the edges of my vision.
And on and on I go.
Hungry, and thirsty, and silent.
"Tell me..."
Silent, until he tells me to talk.
And here it is at the worst—he wants me to talk, he needs me to talk; and
this is the equivalent of I'll-show-you-mine/you-pretend-yours-doesn't-exist; as
hideously childish, and as unfair. I tell myself that I talk because I want
to—even though it hurts me, even though it's hard—and not because he's
stumbled onto this tainted and grotesque grownup thing that frightens me as much
as it sickens me as much as it excites me. My momma used to warn me about
perverted men like you, Jim—only she never told me that you'd be goddamn
beautiful enough and strong enough and decent enough to make me want to fall at
your feet and beg you to let me...
"Lick you—Jim; I want to lick you everywhere... I want to—I want to chew on
your nipples and eat my way—down—and..."
I can feel his breath on me; the only caress he ever offers. I focus on it as
if I could dial it up, feel the whole world of Jim touch me in that tender place
on my shoulder that goes hot/cool with his breath.
"Suck you—your—cock; in my throat... really deep inside. Oh God—I'm really
close, here..."
And more restrictions, and more rules—these words have to be chosen
carefully, because I know from experience that not enough of the truth will piss
him off and too much of it will frighten him away no matter how goddamn hot I've
gotten him... And can somebody tell me why I do this? Why I let him fuck me over
and fuck with my head and not fuck me until I just want to shriek?
"But I want it to be your hand, Jim—oh yeah—your hand around me when
you—fuck my ass... Jesus..."
Blurred motion behind me, sensed somehow. A vast, spinning absence of sound
and vision that speaks straight to the center of my heart; tells me that, no
matter what kind of twisted situation I've gotten myself into, Jim is gonna come
all over me in a few seconds; he's gonna lean close to me and then both of us
are going to experience one of those blazing, luxuriant, mind-blowing
simultaneous orgasms we seem to have mastered effortlessly, falling in sync even
though we've never really touched.
"Do it, man—Jesus fucking Christ I want you in me—I want... Oh Jim...
fuck—"
A horrible travesty of passion here—I'm straining back towards him, as far
as I can get and still stay standing, and I swear to God I can feel him
straining towards me; hurting to touch me so bad it's amazing his cock doesn't
just rip free from his body and go for it—and here we push towards each other
fiercely enough to spin the world off its axis and yet he's back there and he's
in charge and he's not touching, not touching me; fucking a nonexistent ass
while I fuck his nonexistent cock and then we come, his seed hot on my spine
while mine jets over my chest, my chin, down into the flooding, pounding sink to
whirl away and disappear into an empty, empty dark hole.
Vanished.
Gone.
Like Jim.
The edge of the sink is convenient and cool; a lovely, serviceable place for
me to rest my head—if I have to throw up, once I get done with cursing me and
him and the terrible, terrible silence; this is the place to do it. I can rest
here and breathe, listen to my heart return from racket and roar to sad,
thudding existence; rest easy and remember that I really am a good person and my
life is mine and alone does not mean lonely.
I don't throw up. That's good. I rest on the sink with my eyes closed until a
clinking noise and a press of air tells me that Jim is here—he's here, he's
close, he's here for me—and it almost galvanizes me when I open my eyes and see
his hand on the counter edge, only a centimeter or so from mine.
Touch that—such a beautiful hand, how could I not? The tenderness and
strength and everything that hand means to me is thick in my throat as I creep
over, fingerwalking until I brush him, could be accidental if it wasn't so on
purpose and his hand is there, there for me warm under mine— And whipped away
so fast you might have thought my touch carried contact poison. Which I guess,
as everything inside me crashes down and darkens, it does.
He brought me beer and water. That was the noise. He remembered that I wanted
beer and ice water, and by God here's a glass of ice water and a frosty, opened
bottle; sitting and melting on the counter because Jim's dad made sure to raise
a polite and courteous boy, a considerate boy, a boy his father could be proud
of.
There is a certain clean and simple beauty in the way that droplets form and
connect, condense, conjoin; and I can watch that easily and let my mind fall
apart in the rancor of shrieking silence as he walks away, starts his shower,
throws off his boots with an achingly familiar thump and a sigh. They join so
easily—trickle towards each other, and then they're absorbed—and then there's
just a bigger drop, one drop where there used to be two, trucking along a little
faster from the dual momentum.
I always expect to hear a 'pop' when they perform that little miracle of
amalgamation. I'm always a little disappointed when I don't hear it. Jim
could hear it—the sound is there, somewhere; and Jim could hear it if he would
only listen— But I can't.
The process, at least on this level, is utterly silent.
It had been a bitch of a day. By the end of it, Jim had managed to take taciturn
to new and masterful levels. That should probably have tipped me off.
