And then I zone.
And then I die.
And then I wake up screaming.
Every night, the dreams are more vivid, more detailed. What has he betrayed this time, I think, as I sink into sleep; how will I die, how long will it hurt before I wake up and wake him and he comes up here and holds me until I stop screaming?
I tried fighting it with sex. Once. When I was coherent again, she was wrapped in a blanket in the corner of the room, terrified, and Sandburg was holding me tightly, keeping the tremors from tearing me apart. "I'm sorry," I whispered to her, "the dreams aren't usually this bad."
But I didn't move towards her, didn't leave the safety of Blair's arms because if I did I'd lose it, completely. I needed that touch, that skin--his skin--warm against me.
It meant he was alive. It meant *I* was alive.
"What do you fear?" Incacha asks me, in my dreams, and then Blair is *gone*, just *gone*, and then I zone.
And then I die.
And then I wake up screaming and his arms are around me and I pray he'll never leave.
I don't know why these nightmares are so terrifying. I've dreamed about dying before. Hell, I've dreamed about killing Blair before--and that was a shock, painful, frightening, but not like this. Actually damn near losing him--that was this scary, had this raw-edged screaming-horrors quality to it.
But he came back.
He didn't leave me.
He came the hell *back* because I needed him.
And I need him now. The other night he stayed out late, really late, didn't get home until I'd been awake and out of control for an hour. He found me burrowed into his bed, shaking, still trying to scream his name through a raw throat, all my senses dialed up to *find* him when he wasn't there.
He soothed me and made me tea and didn't make me go back upstairs. I slept next to him on that damn bed and woke up wrapped around him.
"What do you fear?"
This is not me. Only it is, this *is* me, this is the me who couldn't protect Sandburg because I'm always pushing him away; this is the me who still wishes I didn't have these senses, even though then I never would have met him. This is the me that I would be without him, zoned and dead and...
And without him.
That's the part I fear the most. Being without him. He could walk away. He could die. I could push him away and then I could die and then...
He's downstairs, reading. Fiction, I can tell, because he reads bits aloud to himself when he reads fiction. I don't know who wrote this one, but there's poetry involved.
The scars and twisted tendons, the stumps of struck-off limbs,
The aching pit of hunger and throb of unset bone,
My sanded burning eyeballs, as light within them dims,
Add nothing to the torment of lying here alone...
The shimmering flames of fever trace out your blessed face
My broken eardrums echo yet your voice inside my head
I do not fear the darkness that comes to me apace
I only dread the loss of you that comes when I am dead.
It's not particularly good poetry.
But it is exactly what I feel, and I curl up around the pain and try not to let it shake me apart.
I'm a grown man, for chrissake--a grown man who never needed anyone, never, a control freak who drives his roommate up the wall with rules and restrictions and who drove his wife away with silence and who now, inescapably, *needs*.
I fall asleep curled around the need and the pain.
And this time the dream--or maybe my subconscious--decides to really communicate, here.
Hell, it beats me with a clue-by-four.
We're talking, laughing, leaning into each other, and suddenly his mouth is on mine and instead of kissing him back, I throw him across the room and beat him bloody. Then I pack his stuff and throw it and him out of the loft.
When I get to work the next day, his ID is on my desk. I spend the next week looking for him, but I can't find him.
And then I zone in the middle of a bust.
And then I die.
And as I'm dying, the only thing I can think of is how he felt against me in that one moment when he kissed me, his body warm and his cock hard and his tongue strong and rough-textured against my own. And I realize I've lost him, really lost him, that I will never, ever find him and apologize and beg him to just say my name, just touch my shoulder, just love me and forgive me and never, dear god, never leave me again.
Because then I die.
And when I'm done dying, there's nothing there. No animal spirit waiting for me, no nothing except aloneness.
"I only dread the loss of you that comes when I am dead."
And I wake up screaming and covered in blood, because I bit through my bottom lip in my sleep. I can feel his hands on me, hear his voice, smell him over the scent of my own blood. He brushes his hair out of his eyes and leaves a red streak on his forehead, and he's rocking me gently and it's worse than usual this time, because this time I'm *hard* and I'm scared to death and I'm going to come from just him holding me and caring for me like this.
Only I don't, because he somehow talks me down and cleans up the blood and walks me downstairs into his room, where he brings me off, gently, with his mouth and his hand.
And then he whispers to me that he loves me, that he always has, and that he'll never leave me.
And then I fall asleep, and I dream of his eyes grown old, smiling at me from underneath iron-gray curls.
And then I zone.
And then he pulls me out of it with a touch, and the smile in his eyes reaches the corners of his mouth, and he tells me he loves me.
And then I wake up, and he's breathing warmly against my chest, and my lip hurts, and I pull him closer and go back to sleep.
