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Who cherishes you, who holds you close at night, who lays his lips on each and every one of your seashell fingernails and tells you sweet dreams? 1. A warmth you knew you wanted before you knew what it was. 2. The boy you fell in love with before you understood the name for the feeling.
(Monday morning: you lay in bed kissing for an hour and a half after waking up. He tells you you're beautiful. He tells you this every morning. You should be used to it by now. You aren't.)
To you Jake is an expanding list of things, matrices of data ever-growing, ever-lovelier. Little by little, the loneliness in your bones ebbs away. Little by little, you are no longer discretely "Dirk Strider", but half of a two-personed life. He won't go away from you, now, even if he goes. He won't stop being a part of you even if he leaves you. It is more dear to you than your own life, and more terrifying than dying ever could be.
(Tuesday afternoon: nothing to do for the rest of the day. You curl on top of him on the couch and end up fucking the way two bodies, compelled by gravitational force, must always collide. He is delighted. You are warm, and happy.)
You are in some way mutilated by his love for you. It transforms you into something different, and you have forgotten what it was like to live without it. Everything about him is kind and good and tender towards you, and perhaps this is what grieves you the most: he changes you just by existing, and you don't have any reason to stop him.
(Wednesday, during lunch: he feeds you by hand from his plate, bite sized pieces. You suck his fingers clean, and then he props you up on the table and sucks you filthy. It surprises you to discover, blushing and stammering with your fingers in his hair, that you will never develop an immunity to his smile, the way he bites at his lower lip and then runs his tongue over it.)
There will always be a whisper in the back of your thoughts, urgent and terrified, telling you to burn everything down and run while you still can. Especially when you're happy. Especially when you are content. The laws of give and take, equal and opposite reaction, must always hold true: the more you trust him the more vulnerable you will become to betrayal. You know this fact like you know the weight of your sword, just by holding it. It's just - at some point it began not to matter anymore, and you cannot retrace your steps.
(Thursday, evening, after watching Transformers again. You were squirming between his thighs, leaning back against his chest, being a provocative smartass. It was easy for him to pick you up and lower you onto his dick, easy for him to suck hickeys on your neck like a possessive teenager - because of the position. But it was difficult for you to climax without seeing his face, you told him afterwards, and he kissed you and said oh, me too, let's not do that one again, shall we? You told him: maybe in front of a mirror. The look on his face was superb.)
Maybe you're a fool. Maybe you're Icarus, and he's your sun.
These anxieties surface less and less over time, the longer he stays, the deeper you fall for him, the further you travel from the place and time in which you were alone. Before Jake, and After Jake.
You have an innate distrust of fairy-tale endings. It is a peculiar irony of your fate that Jake is made of them.
Friday night after Roxy and Jane have gone home, empty pizza boxes in the cardboard recycling bin, he's been massaging your back for over an hour. At some point you slipped halfway into that strange plane of consciousness, the state of mind Jake likes to induce in you - you don't know what to call it, but it's similar to how it feels to stop thinking and let your hands write lines of code, how it feels to give over to something pure and automatic. You'd like to keep going, let him put you under. You'd like to sink all the way down.
"I want you," you tell him, kissing his neck, touching him wherever you can reach. "I really, really do."
"Shall we mosey on over to the bedroom, then?" Jake suggests, palming your ass, semi-frantic with arousal. Your body thrums with satisfaction at the thick rasp in his voice, the way his heart is racing under his skin. Yes. You give this to him.
"Will you fuck me if we go to the bedroom?" you counter, grinding down into his lap, nibbling on his ear. You can't contain your grin, pleased with yourself for being awful.
"- Dirk, you utter pest, that is not cricket," Jake groans, and you have no idea what that means but you really approve of the way he surges and lifts you up off the couch with him. You squeeze his waist with your thighs and wrap your arms around his shoulders and Jake doesn't falter at all, because he's sturdier than concrete (and just as hard, now, thanks to you.)
The raw strength of his body makes you dizzy with lust, every step he takes echoing through you like stray voltage from a bare wire. It's almost - not quite enough, but - almost.
You're itching for something you can't name, something to get you the rest of the way. "I want -" you begin, and have to stop, frustrated, because you don't know. How can you not know? "I want -"
"Tell me," Jake croons, nudging the bedroom door shut with his heel, his grin pressed into your sternum, his hands squeezing hard enough to almost-hurt.
And what do you want, really?
He spills onto the bed backwards, letting you bounce on his lap for a moment, and you shudder from the base of your spine to the nape of your neck, shutting your eyes. Vivid mental images flutter through your mind at impossible speeds. He'll give you whatever you ask for, you know he will. He always does. Wanting things is counter-instinctive, for you, but he offers up an abundance, addicts you a milimeter at a time to his touches, makes it easy.
There's too much you could take - they say Persephone only ate six seeds but it was enough to condemn her and you - you've devoured so much of him you'll never escape. It's thrilling and terrible.
"I want..."
"Yes?" Jake murmurs, a note of pleading in his low whisper, dropping to the bottom of your stomach like a bullet falling through water. His face is pressed against your neck, breath warm and fluttering against your skin. His body is solid and whole and smells like him, and he's wrapped his arms around your waist to cradle the basket of your ribcage like it holds everything dear in the universe, and he is perfect, and you are already too hungry for him to think clearly.
"You can say it," Jake tells you, pressing an encouraging kiss to your jugular vein. "It's all right. Go ahead."
Maybe it's only because he thinks you can voice your desires that it's possible at all, but you don't mind not knowing.
"I want you to not be wearing clothes," you begin, tracing circles into his muscles. "And I want you to make all the noises you make, and say the things you say and look at me the way you do, and keep touching me, and make my brain stop thinking complete thoughts, like when we have the, the kind of sex we had last Sunday, that kind. That's what I want."
"Mmm," Jake sighs, squeezing you tighter, like he appreciates the meandering attempt as much as he would have appreciated a clear-cut answer, sugar dissolving on your tongue. "Last Sunday."
"Yeah."
"That was a nice day."
"Yeah," you agree. He's stroking the shudders out of your spine, again. You feel limp - like your arousal is a separate tension, something you don't have to worry about, he'll take care of it. "I liked it. A lot."
"What parts were the best?"
You consider. "... All of them."
He's beautiful when he laughs. It makes your heart ache. "All right, then, darling," he tells you, and begins to strip you both naked. "I'll just play it by ear."
You relax, lulled by the motion of his hands, the way he breathes so steady, the way his chest rises and falls.
Jake spends far too much time prying you open, sliding his fingers into you, making you slippery with lube. It's messy. You don't mind, though. You aren't even bored. He likes it so much, it's nice, the way he watches you and gets lost. You rest your forehead against his, and inhale the way he stares like you're the most important thing in the world.
He arranges you on your knees, straddling his lap, facing him. He's propped up against the headboard - fingers still twisting and rubbing against your insides, until you whine, under your breath. "Jake -"
"I've got you," he tells you, kissing you slow and languid, dragging your tongue out of your mouth. He does. He's got you, you're okay. The bliss sinks through you like a slow-acting neurotoxin might; a steady slow progression of involuntary relaxation, the loss of your focus, a weakness you couldn't abide if it weren't Jake inflicting it. It's him, though. He's the one who brings you to this.
"I'm ready," you tell him.
"I know," he says, kissing you again. Your fingers curl loosely in his hair. "You're enchanting."
You smile, rocking your body's weight from one knee to the other. Faint regret. Flushed vanity. "I'm a pest."
"That too," Jake concedes, and releases your waist to guide the head of his erection into you, two fingers holding you open. Careful. Kind.
" - Jesus Mary Joseph," he blurts out when you drop onto him, your spine going rigid at the shock.
" - mmhm," you hum, shivering. Your eyes are wide open, hands gripping his hair too tight. The burn in your lower body is so good - just the right amount of hurt to bring out the full flavor of the pleasure, violent in its intensity like being struck by lightning. "... Sorry. More."
He bites into your neck and your head rolls to the side to welcome it, hips shuddering in his grip.
"Please," you add, when he makes you wait there. His thumbs spasm, digging into your stomach.
"Yes. Soon," he promises, licking at the bite, voice still shaking. "Count to ten."
Mentally you begin. One, two, three, four, five, six -
His arms flex like steel cords in the lamplight as he drags you up a few inches and then yanks back down, lifting his hips in tandem.
"-seven," you moan, dazed.
"There we are," Jake says, voice thick with amusement.
He does it again, and again, and again, until you are no longer counting aloud, but simply making noise: the soft hitch when he thrusts up into you, shaking your whole body, reducing your total capacity for air, and the low moan of loss when he pulls you up and slides out. You probably couldn't find your balance if you tried. But you don't need to balance yourself. He's doing that for you.
The things he whispers into your throat are almost too much to bear, but with every pull back down a few more of them force their way into the lake of your mind, spreading through the water. Love you. Perfect. Lovely. You breathe them in in gulps, gasping air, surrounded by him on all sides. His touch, his scent, the sight and sound of him, the taste of his tongue on yours. You don't know at what angle you are to the bed; you can't collect a point of reference, Jake drowns them all out.
He is the only thing left to hold.
- that's it, that's what you wanted.
Nothing exists, here, in this moment, but you-and-Jake. The relief of solipsism. The balm of not having anything else to pick apart or consider - of not even having the option, not being able to run your mind into the ground because your mind is off the tracks altogether. In his grip. Dangerous, but safe.
You're slurring out his name and mangled endearments, sweet and painful and true, but that's a dim echo compared to his voice telling you he loves you, how good you are, how much he wants you. A drug in your bloodstream. The sole axiom of your universe - the only requirement. You don't know anything else anymore.
"- yes, love, of course you can," Jake is telling you, moving your bodies with only his hips so he can reach between you and touch with his fingertips. It's white-hot iron. You're certain you can feel every distinct line of his fingerprints. You think you're falling to pieces. You're panting so hard it almost hurts.
"Go ahead," you hear, and a thing in the pit of your stomach listens.
The white fades from your vision like the vanishing fog that follows gods, or morning. You're resting in his lap, still - he's pulled out of you, he's just holding you and humming. It is in many ways something you barely believe to be real: who's holding you, who loves you, who tells you you're perfect. Surrounded by evidence, however, you can only marvel at him.
"I love you," you tell him, because you need to say it aloud.
"I know," Jake affirms; accepting every fragment of you, even this. In your blissful daze he's a mystery. How does he manage it? Answers drift to the surface - not ones you would have produced on your own, but ones he has taught you to think. These, and his limbs, cradle you to a state of deeper rest.
1. He loves you, in spite of everything and because of it.
2. The simple fact that he feels as much and as violently as you do.
"I love you," he murmurs into your skin when he thinks you're already asleep.
(Tomorrow: you will wake up, still tangled in his limbs, sweet and doe-eyed with sleep, and he will run his fingers through your hair and press his lips to yours and tell you good morning.)