Title: Your Eyes Open

Pairings/Warnings: 1x2, language, angst, descriptions of m/m sex, inspired by Keane

Sometimes, when the rain patters against the windows so soft it sounds like the whisper of your fingertips across my skin as they stroke scarred flesh, I remember those lazy days in the tropics when it was just the two of us, a rundown shack, some stray cats and a bed that creaked under our combined weight.

And I remember the way your mouth moved down my body, open and trembling, leaving a hot trail against every piece of skin it tasted and I longed for you, way down in my gut, so deep it almost hurt as my breath heaved and I clutched your sweaty skin in fingers too shaken to truly hold on.

I wonder if you ever think about me like that anymore – like I am the balm to soothe your ache, like I am the tinder to stoke your flame, like I am light you need to see, like I am the air you need to breathe.

Often in my dreams I return to that place where I laid my body fully against yours and listened to your heart beat as the rain came pouring down, cool in the dense heat, condensation fogging and running down both sides of the window, displaying evidence of where our storm fronts met.

You were so hot – an inferno burning inside of you, an inferno fed by my bones and blood, boiling over and into you and you lapped it up with an eager tongue, swallowing every ounce of me I had to offer.

But now, as I watch you gesture with weary impatience and a heavy heart at men who will never understand you, who obey you only because of a past riddled with accolades and who know nothing of your pain, I see the emptiness in your eyes and I know why you don't touch me that way anymore.

We were right to hide ourselves away from the world, then, to keep the flame between us alive with whole days spent on the worship of our bodies over sweat dampened sheets and misshapen pillows on a worn out set of box springs.

I want to kiss you with the passion of a thousand suns, hold your face in my hands and suck on your lips until I can recreate that spark within you so that you remember how to hold me against your body and kiss me like you care and love me like you used to.

But I don't – I can't – there is a barrier between us deeper than the ocean and vaster than all of space and instead I just stare at you and silently I implore you to do what I cannot and notice me, cross the room, lift me into your embrace and run your teeth down my neck until I'm begging you to make me come.

Because I need you – I need you to do that for me – and I want you – I'm hard just thinking about you but you don't even know – and all I want is to feel your hands on me again, touching me, stroking me, intimately, making my chest heave and my insides ache and my body relax with release.

How did we get to this place where I want you so badly it hurts and I can't even ask you for help because I can see in your eyes that you can't help me anymore because you don't want me at all?

You don't even look at me as we leave and I am just a shadow behind you, following you, always following you, like an abandoned puppy who doesn't quite realize it's been abandoned yet – doesn't know it's not wanted any more.

And we undress in a silence louder than the thunder that crashed around our shack and rattled the window panes – louder than the pounding of my body against the wall – louder than your breath in my ear in the days where you would pant and moan and press your cheek against mine so that I heard every whisper of "I love you" like the roaring of the ocean in my head.

In your eyes I see that you are nothing but ice inside in a room cooled by artificial air with a bed so big we don't have to touch and cool sheets and goose down pillows and everything is just so nice and quietly meaningless.

But my body still yearns for you to reach out towards it, begs for your fingers like North begs for the arrow in a compass, needing your body to orient me again in that all-consuming way that only your skin can.

I can't sleep and instead I sit up and stare at you, face bathed in moonlight, eyes closed, breathing even, lips parted ever so slightly and I wonder if maybe like this I can say the things I need to say, do the things I need to do – that maybe in the middle of the night I could unwind time and fabricate a dream where you still burned for me.

Holding my breath so that you won't feel my presence I lay my face next to yours so that our noses are almost touching and I realize that this is the closest we've been in a very long time and I realize that I don't think I can stop.

As I watch you sleep I find my lips long to seek out their estranged partners, my chest tightening with held back breath and overwhelming desire and I don't think I can stop myself and I don't think I can go on and I feel stuck but then at some point I have to breathe.

And without thought, just blinding need, I place my hand on your hip buried under the sheets and I breathe in quickly before I kiss you, my lips feather light, merely a ghost upon your own.

Your eyes open immediately and I am caught in your stare and I am tempted to close my eyes but then this is the closest I've been to you in so long and I am selfish and I want to see them – want to see if this kiss means nothing to you as I've suspected it would for so long.

But I am mistaken and there's something there, just a flash and you close your eyes, lift your hand and place it on my neck, holding me there as your mouth opens a little wider, willing but not initiating though I don't care.

I slip my tongue against familiar quarters to memorize them all over again, edging lips and stroking cheeks and drowning in the taste of you until my heart is pounding in my chest and blood is rushing in my ears and I am so needy it hurts but I don't move, afraid to end this blessing.

You sigh against my mouth and I feel it all the way to my bones, my fingers tensing in the sheets – against your hip, against the bed – and every part of my body down to my very soul begs you to kiss me back, to engage me, to love me like you used to.

And you do.

You are like a brush fire, all that was needed was a spark and suddenly you are sweeping the plains of my body, gripping the back of my head and sitting up so that you can press yourself against me and we are one again, moving against each other in tandem again.

I straddle you as our kisses become sloppy and my skin feels tight, like it might crack and burst and everything that was me would come spilling out into your arms and I want nothing more than to feel your fingers moving through my body.

When you fill me I bite down on your lips and I want to cry out but I don't, afraid to do anything that might disrupt this, that might make you stop, because I think if you stop I might not be able to continue.

My face is wet and I know I'm crying and I can taste the salt in my mouth and I'm sure you can too but I don't wipe away the tears as I don't think I can remove my hands from where they dig like sutures into your skin.

I'm reminded again of the thunder that rocked our little haven so long ago as my body tremors with the same ferocity against yours, each movement of my hips shaky, unsure, slower than I'd like but then I savor each thrust, each second you're inside me and it makes me tremble even harder.

You barely have to touch me and I feel myself come between us as my body slumps gasping and useless against you and I bury my face in your neck and curl my fingers into your back, pleasure moving through me with such intensity I can feel it behind my eyes and all the way down to my toes.

And then you join me, pulling me down onto your lap hard, thrusting up into me and we are so close, me wrapped around you, that I feel everything – the shiver down your spine, the exhale of your breath, the tightening of your muscles and then how they slacken and the whisper of my name on your lips.

I am reluctant to unfurl myself from your frame, afraid I may never get another opportunity to hold you like this as you stroke at my hair, lift my head from your shoulder and kiss me again, tenderly, like the past few months meant nothing and really, to me, they didn't.

Our bodies are sticky and spent but your eyes are dazzled by moonlight and I smooth your sweaty bangs from your face over and over and I cry because I know that this is it and I can see in your eyes that in the morning you won't want to know me anymore.

It's too close, you say, it's all too close and I hear it like I'm under water and I cry harder as my heart shatters into a million tiny fragments and I press my hand against my mouth to muffle my sobs.

You hold me, still, and let me cry but you don't – I've never really seen you cry so I don't expect you to but then I feel lonely mourning the death of us by myself and I wish you would pick up the shroud and join me, as though your suffering could ever make me happy.

We sleep curled around one another like a farewell kiss and I lay awake a long time listening to your heart beat, the patter of rain on the windows and the air conditioning unit kicking on in twenty minute intervals.

I do not feel alone now, not the way I have lying in this bed every day for so many months but then I realize that maybe it would be better if I did, so that tomorrow, when you were no longer here with me, I would be used to it and I would have nothing to miss.

But then I feel foolish because I know that I will always miss you – you, my first true love.