[Lost] - Sugar and Spice

[lslaw.livejournal.com]

My hand is bleeding; I must have cut it on the jagged stump of the bedpost and not noticed. I often don't when I'm in a destructive vein. It's not something I can finely control yet; I am furious or I am not and, short of redirecting my rage into lust, there's not a lot I can do but let it burn out inside me.

The cut is large, but it will heal clean and it won't scar; I've come to know which ones will and which won't, and I've only gained one new scar since I got back. Once my hand is cleaned and dressed, I draw back my collar and examine the pale, rough crescent on my collar. At the mere sight of it, the memory stirs and I feel a flicker of the pain and pleasure of small, sharp teeth digging into my flesh.

I go back to work. Later, we'll fuck, and I'll let myself get lost in her for a while. It's inevitable; as inevitable as the moment when the afterglow breaks and she leaves me lying alone. As inevitable as the day, tomorrow, next week, or a decade or more down the line, when she disappears from my life and takes another piece of me with her.

I've been stabbed, and it doesn't really hurt. It's like being punched; uncomfortable, rather than painful. It's when the blade comes out that the pain blossoms.

I know Venice leaves my side for her own reasons, but I wonder if she knows that it hurts that way. I'll never tell her, of course, but while she doesn't understand me, not the way she thinks she does, God knows she gets close.

That's why I come back, even knowing I'm going to get hurt; because for all that she sneers at what she sees, she does see me, and that's a good feeling.

-

A day, a night and a morning run, and after breakfast, home. The cut on my hand is aching and I know that Sophie will want to look it over, change the bandage.

Bizarrely, however far she might push me, sex with Venice is never as transgressive for me as just having Sophie in the house. I can still remember thinking that it didn't count if we were in my part of the Hollow, but I couldn't make any excuses about the kitchen table. That was how I knew I'd given up on seeing Maggie any time soon.

Sophie will have got in late and be sleeping or studying, so I get a little work done before I go in. Experience has shown that once I see her, the day will become more pleasant, but less productive. I keep waiting for the desire to ebb and for us to be comfortable, alone in the same room for more than an hour, but we have yet to make it all the way through a movie.

Sophie isn't afraid of me, and that makes me feel... not better about myself than I do with Venice, but good in a different way.

She'll be gone, soon enough. She was just going to stay for a little while, but every day she seems more settled, more reluctant to leave; I know that I'm more reluctant to let her go, although I know that she has to. I know that if she is still here when Maggie comes back, the chances are that I'll never see her again and I don't want that.

"It doesn't matter how much is on offer, you always want more, don't you?"

I blush to remember Venice's words. She hits so very, very close to the heart of me, but still thinks that I could ever want her enough to stop caring. Maybe once, and maybe it would be easier to still be made that way.

Maggie has my heart and Ciara my soul; Venice surges and boils in my blood like a tidal surf, pulling me in and pushing me away. When Sophie goes, it will break a little more away from me; a fragment of my dreams, perhaps, or the marrow of my bones, leaving an ache in the core of them.

I miss her at lunch, and it's close to evening when I see her, standing in the doorway of the farmhouse and smiling as I approach.

Some day, I won't have any more pieces to give, but not today.