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It was mid afternoon when Punishment came back. |
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        Aramis knew enough not to speak when he watched Punishment walk back through the door. He knew anything he could have said now could have been taken out of context and become wildly misunderstood, so it was better not to say anything at all. He didn't even look directly at Punishment. Instead, he lifted his eyes off of the floor and fixed them upon Punishment's knees, watching as those long legs turned away from the door, towards him, and stepped closer.
        The closer Punishment came, the lower Aramis cast his eyes, not even wanting to chance a wayward glance into those pale blue eyes that could either be as welcoming as a cloudless sky or as cold as glacial ice. A string of words caught in his throat, something that he would have spoken without even thinking it; it hadn't even bloomed in his brain before it died on his tongue, and he felt it wither away into a hesitant breath. Soon, Punishment stood directly in front of him, not six inches away. As soon as he saw a knee bend, he knew Punishment would try to make eye contact; he immediately clenched his eyes shut and turned his face away.
        He first felt the fingertips press into his face, down near his chin and spread apart as they crept upwards, until Aramis felt the heat of Punishment's palm cup his face. He held his breath, a thousand possibile things could come from this, and they each played out in his head like a movie. An open-handed slap, a punch to the face, a rough, vice-like grasp of his jaw, and so on and so forth. Aramis was mentally preparing himself for that blow, and although he was convinced it would come, he didn't try to avoid it.
        It was a waste of time, waiting for that blow. For, instead of striking him, Punishment closed the distance between them with a kiss. Punishment's usually hard, unrelenting mouth softened to him, a delicate warmth flowing from the wonderous origin of Punishment's lips throughout his body to the very core of his being. With each pump of his heart, it seemed, the feeling only intensified. Like ripples into a tidal wave, the feeling grew until the blood in his veins was replaced with a brilliang golden light, his fingertips tingling and his head swimming in a tranquil sea of overwhelming relief. Again, the words which he couldn't even comprehend swelled in his chest, gained shape in his lungs and died prematurely on his tongue before they could be spoken. As if sensing it, Punishment pulled away, the broken kiss shattering deep inside of Aramis like a million stained glass windows all at once. He needed it again, craved it, couldn't live without it. Without a thought, he reached forward to embrace Punishment in his arms, which suddenly felt as heavy and lifeless as lead. But instead of pulling away again, Punishment embraced him, his arms crossing over Aramis' back and crushing the smaller man against him almost possessively. And finally, those words which had so eluded Aramis, which had rose up to the surface only to sink back down into an endless depth finally came to be, though it was not his lips who spoke them. It was not his mouth who birthed them, nor his voice who breathed life into them at long last. It was Punishment's.
"I love you."
         Aramis clung to Punishment as if he were the only thing keeping him from falling off of the face of the earth. For all his life, it seemed, he was waiting for that moment: the moment when everything he'd ever said and done for Punishment, all the suffering he'd endured, all the failed efforts, all the disappointments, all the sleepless nights and half-lived days, every "what if" and "why" and "goodbye" that had ever passed between them finally had a reason for happening. It was all for this moment, this present state, this here and now, when Punishment said what Aramis could not.
I love you.
         Three words. That's all it took to shock his dying heart back into vibrant life. He could suddenly feel his lungs fill with air, feel the creak of his knuckles as they strained to grip Punishment's clothes tighter, feel the blood rising to his face and enflame his ears. Everything was amplified. Even the breeze of the opened window against his skin felt like a hurricane bearing down on him. Hot, stinging tears streaked down his face, and Punishment promptly kissed each and every one of them away, laughing quietly at Aramis' overly emotional state. "Shhhh," Punishment hushed. "Everything's all right. We're going to be all right."
         "We" is a simple word. It is composed of only two letters: one vowel, one consonant. One would be hard pressed to misspell "we." It is a word used a million times a day by a million different people. And yet, it changed Aramis' world completely. There was no "I" anymore; nothing would be a personal, singular affair. "I" no longer existed. There was only "we." Aramis' entire existence now revolved around "we."
         He wouldn't have it any other way.
 Bleeding Apocalypse · Sat Jun 24, 2006 @ 03:05am · 1 Comments |
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