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Sometimes, right before you fall asleep, I break through the waters of your consciousness, and I am there with you.
It usually only lasts a few moments. Sometimes I wonder passively if you looked in the mirror that one of my eyes might be staring back at us. I wonder how you’d react. If you’d remember me then.
But then you’re asleep - we are asleep, and I don’t have the facilities to think about fuck all.
You’ve only let yourself sleep a couple hours per night. Or at least, I think you have. Harrow, time moves so strangely when you’re attached to someone else’s skull. Moves even weirder when that person is absolutely batshit.
You’re trying to keep yourself awake. You don’t trust your blood wards that confidently, and it's strange to see you so doubtful of your own abilities. Remember when we were young together on the Ninth? You don’t, but I do. You were wicked. You were unstoppable. You were God.
Now you are a crazy person with a very bad headache who still can’t hold a sword correctly. I’d be smug about it, except that I actually hate seeing you like this.
You linger in that place right before sleep. The place where I am. I can see through your eyes, and I can tell that they are open just slightly, and that your vision is blurry. I can feel that your hair is wet; you must have braved the bath. It's so long, Harrow. It's brushing your shoulders now.
Your bed is soft and familiar to us both. I really hated those days you spent refusing to sleep. I’d kept resurfacing again and again as you went about your days. I’d wake up and we’d be in the kitchen, or above Cytherea’s strangely-attractive corpse, or wandering those halls that have giant windows on both sides, and made me feel like we were going to float away. The worst was when you were in Ianthe’s bed, I’ll admit.
In a bout of sheer dumb luck, I’d been awake enough when you punched your way through the Saint of Duty’s gut. Even I hadn’t seen that one coming, and I’m in your head. The tradeoff was having to taste the soup you made. Nonagesimus, it was not good.
I really should have gone out that way. It's much cooler than a fence post. I’ll be sore about you punching through the wrong Gideon’s stomach for the next myriad. I was the one who’d given you the idea, after all.
You groan softly, and I shush you automatically. You can’t hear me, but you stop anyway.
I don’t sink back down. You don’t fall asleep. We lay together in silence, as we did that one night at Canaan house when I’d actually used that awful cavalier’s bed. I don’t notice anything amiss until you shift slightly between your sheets.
And then I realize that you’re totally fucking naked, Harrow.
It would be strange enough to imagine my hands on you, sliding against your slight curves. But of course, I’m inside you - I don’t care if you’re naked, Harrow, we’re not going there - so I feel the cool sheets against your stomach, against your thighs, and against your small breasts.
Oh, fuck. Take off the damn sheet before I give you an aneurysm.
You wrench the blanket down and kick it away. I feel everything. The sheet sliding down your skin, the sudden, cold air on your naked body, but mostly I feel the shock that comes with the realization that I am dead and you heard me.
Now, please don’t look down. If we had gone full lyctor, I am positive you would have been bathing in your clothes until something inevitably killed us, and then you still would have beaten my ass in the afterlife.
You heard me, Harrow. You can hear me, or whatever it means when I don’t have a voice and I’m only speaking in your head, and you don’t even know who I am. I’m a stranger, or I’m another voice in your head (because let's face it, you have several), but you can hear me.
All I’ve ever wanted was to be heard by you.
You don’t look down. Either because I asked you not to, or because you’re too close to sleep to move your head. You do, however, do something far worse. You run the flat palm of your hand over your lower stomach. But I hadn’t explicitly asked you not to do that, so we can categorize that under my bad .
That unfettered hand dips just a little too low, and I feel the rough scratch of those dark curls I had definitely never thought about before brush the tips of your fingers. I say, stop , and you groan in protest.
Your right hand stills, but I hadn’t accounted for your left, and just like the little shit you are, you go straight for your left breast and cup your little fingers around the soft flesh.
And fuck Harrow, does that feel good.
Your body responds to pleasure differently than mine had, and it briefly leaves me reeling. I really shouldn’t have any access to my memories, but I remember anyway. When I’d done this to myself, it felt electric, like there was a current running through my muscles. You are much more sensitive than I was. Warmth pools beneath your hand, and even as the skin of your breasts tightens your nipples to a point, that heat travels very slowly to pool between your legs.
This wasn’t how I planned on losing my virginity, Nonagesimus. I don’t even know if this counts as getting to third base. It's your hand.
It doesn’t matter that I had never thought I’d be able to touch you. It doesn’t matter that you were the only thing I could think about it in my cell back at Drearburh. It doesn’t matter that I’d selfishly begun to hope after our dip in the pool at Canaan House. It doesn't matter because I’m dead and when I gave my whole life to you, you threw me into a box so you wouldn’t have to deal with me anymore.
You should have killed me back at the Ninth. You should have punched through my gut. You should have drowned me in the pool. You should have eaten me and let me be useful. Instead, I’m just a passenger on this fucked up ride, and your skin is so fucking soft, Harrow . Don’t stop.
I don’t know if you heard me that time, but the pads of your fingers dig into your breast. It doesn’t matter how many times I’d thought of doing that in my cot at night when I couldn’t sleep. I never could have accurately imagined how you feel. And honestly, my hands were a lot bigger.
You make a terrible noise. If I still possessed the facilities to be embarrassed, I would be. As it stands, I’m just really turned on. But I can only experience that through your body, and it makes me wonder, exactly how wet are you ?
Your body leaps to answer my question, freeing your right hand from my earlier command, and your fingers slide through those thick curls between your thighs. Your breath is so loud now, and it hitches when you find the dampness there, either from your own surprise or mine. I feel so present, so alive, as if I’m above you, as if it's my hand between your legs, sliding through the slickness there.
Except, Harrow, I would have known where your clit was. And maybe you do, but you are clumsy and exhausted. Use the pad of your middle finger. Get it wet first, you bozo. A little higher.
There.
For someone so used to being in control, you take directions like a champ. Your breath is audible now, your voice higher than I’ve ever heard it, and it somehow makes me feel queasy without the privilege of a stomach. But you’re doing so well, circling your clit with your finger, and I’m overwhelmed. I want to be selfish. I need to know how you taste.
I think it as softly as I can. I offer the idea. I ask so nicely, like a good boy. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.
But I did throw myself on a metal fence for you, Nonagesimus. Throw a girl a bone.
Turns out you're amenable, which proves there actually is a first time for everything, and you raise your fingers to your face. In a moment of panic, I almost tell you to stop, and I’m almost positive you’d listen to me, but then you inhale through your nose and I can smell you.
I know what you smell like, Harrow. Your hair, your clothes, your sweat. It's been the backdrop of my entire life. The whole of Drearburh was bathed in your scent. This was new, though, and it was glorious.
Put your fucking fingers in your mouth.
You close your eyes, and the world fades away to only sensations. The blankets beneath you could have been my cot back at the Ninth(if we were being generous), or your grand bed at Canaan House. Your mind settles on your own bedroom, and in your imagination, the scene unfolds like a flower blossoming. This wasn’t me. In all the years I’d known you, I had never seen your room.
This is slightly distracting. The room is just as old and suffocating as the rest of the Ninth, but there is an elegance to it. The drapes are moth-eaten and faded in places, but they hang with a certain grace that could be seen as charming. There are candles burning that cast an orange glow on the room, and it feels welcoming, even if I know that some part of a corpse was used in making them. There is greasepaint set out on an old vanity, and I can smell it just slightly. Maybe I’m romanticizing it. Or maybe that’s you.
Either way, the room is forgotten when you place your fingers on your tongue. Because the taste of you is exactly like the smell of you, but so much more. And also because in your mind, they aren’t your fingers at all.
We’re half asleep. I can tell, but we aren’t slipping away just yet. You’re as stubborn now as you had been your entire life, and you won’t let yourself fall under without a fight. Good to know some things never change.
Someone is above you, featureless, faceless, practically formless. But if I squint, if I let myself hope, if I am selfish and self-centered, she has broad shoulders, and long fingers, and arms shaped by two decades of sword-wielding. You don’t know me, Harrow. But I’m above you, and you’re tasting yourself on my fingers.
And you taste amazing.
I’d forsake every dirty magazine in the Nine Houses for just one more taste of you. Sorry, Frontline Titties of the Fifth. I hardly knew ye.
This is where I lose control. Shame and sadness don’t exist when you’re beneath me, breathing hard, sucking slightly on my fingers, your fingers, as they slide out of your mouth. There are a few things that really break the immersion: I don’t have a body, for one, and the person you’re seeing is nothing but a black hole that’s groping you. This is a shame for us both; I was very attractive when I was alive. I was probably a pretty hot corpse for a few hours.
In your mind, I run my hand down your lithe frame, which is really your left hand, but we are ignoring that for the sake of the fantasy. I am the hand and I am the body, and the body feels like you, but the hand is too rough in your imagination to be your own. I don’t know who is guiding who anymore.
You arc yourself into my hand - your hand - and I can feel your bones more than anything else. You never ate much, Nonagesimus, but the months of vomiting and sleep deprivation have not been kind to you. Despite that, you feel fucking brilliant.
I am a looming black cloud above your prone form, but I still manage to push myself up onto one of my arms as the other makes its way back between your legs. We are less shy this time, and I take my time learning all the warm, damp places that make your breath hitch. We are beginning to get very warm, our body flushing hot with pleasure.
I need one more thing, Harrow. Just one more, and then you can lower me back down into my tomb. You can roll the rock back over me, sweetheart, just please let me put my fingers in you.
You’re so wet that there is almost no resistance, but you’re so damn tight that I’m unsure I could fit another in you. You’re determined, though, and then my two middlemost fingers are buried in you up to the knuckle. You fucking keen from that, and I’m damn lucky I don’t have a mouth because I would have let out the most shameful sound in response.
I curl my fingers, your fingers, our fingers, and it takes so little to make you cry out. The softest amount of pressure, and your back is arching off the bed. You poor, repressed little nun. You're bucking into my hand now, grinding your clit against the hard part of my palm. I can feel our orgasm looming, and I’ve never been more desperate.
The fantasy fractures slightly when you take control of your other hand, the one I wasn’t using to make your legs shake. It slides against the sheets and reaches out until your fingers find something hard and smooth. It's so cold it feels like the metal is biting into you.
My sword.
You come like an avalanche. Like dying. Like prayer.
Fuck all those dumb ass sermons you used to recite. Fuck what is buried, what lives and sleeps. They can burn Drearburh to the ground for all I care, but I would kneel at your altar every night. I never gave a damn about the Locked Tomb, Harrow. It was always just you.
When the beautiful sounds of your orgasm fade away, the sorrow that fills you is mine. The vision of the Ninth falls away, fades to black as if the candles had all extinguished in unison. Your fingers retract, and your body folds in on itself, turning to its side. The metal of my sword is so cold against your skin that it practically burns.
You’re too far gone to cry. You don’t even know who you’d be crying for. There is a warm, sticky sensation at your nose and ears, and I know I’ve pushed you too far. You fall asleep, taking me with you, and I know I’ve been selfish. I have been, just like you so eloquently put it, a disgusting little cuckoo .
So I sink back down into my coffin, and die for you all over again.