By Moonglow

*~*~*

Rating: G

Notes: I was pretty depressed when I started this earlier in the week, but lunch with Sunglow66 and Fluterbev's gorgeous pic of GM cheered me up no end. Hopefully that shows towards the end.

*~*~*

I barely noticed it at the time, it was that insidious. One day the door was bare, the next a poster had appeared. Stark white walls were transformed with warm green and colorful throws adorned the sofas. Scattered blue books and fetishes distracted me from the major changes until one day I looked around and didn’t recognize my former home. I bitched out of habit and for a brief while the living room was clear until the masks appeared one day. The explanation I got sounded perfectly reasonable, so I let it slide; they weren’t too bad once you got used to them, and he kept the weirder stuff confined to his room.

*~*~*

It didn’t take long to pack it all up. He was gone by the time I got back, just as I’d told him to be. The itch was still there, in the back of my mind, so the rest of it had to go. The air was thick and I couldn’t breathe in the heat, but they didn’t understand that; all they could feel was the cold from the balcony doors as the wind blew in from the bay. The silence was welcoming for once and anticipation hung in the air. Something was coming, and I was ready.

The air wasn’t clean in Sierra Verde, not like it should have been. Sweat and heat and blood and trapped air and more heat; the taste of her and the look of him weren’t enough to stop me wanting both - until it ended in the pools. Visions of fire and hell, death and destruction and I emerged through to the other side with my sanity barely intact. I couldn’t say the same for Alex, but then she hadn’t had what I had; his light to keep me grounded, even if I was guided by another.

*~*~*

I assumed we would go back to the way it was before, but there was a distance between us that I couldn’t broach. He tried, but I wasn’t willing to swim in his pool yet. Too much water and not enough land for me to retreat to made me hesitate and by then it was too late; the trust was gone. I’m not even sure it was there after he came back because he was so hard for me to read, not like before. Eyes that had been so open were now shadowed and I didn’t know what to do about it. So I did what was SOP for me; bitch and moan until he proved how much he really did trust me, regardless of my inability to show him in return. He trusted me to catch him, to keep him, to love him despite everything I’d said and done to him.

A new me, us, emerged from it all. Unlike the loft when he first moved in, I wasn’t two-dimensional anymore. Talking was imperative to him, so the new me was willing to accommodate him. I was willing to accommodate him in other ways, but he wanted to take it slow. So he did. It’s taken us weeks to get where we are now, with him plastered over my back, breathing my name as he slides into sleep with fingers curled around mine. I lie here listening to his heartbeat, matching mine to its cadence, and smile. He once told me it was about friendship, and in a way it was, but the new Jim knows it was also about love.

Fin

Send feedback to Moonglow

Go back to Story Page

Go back to Home Page