Title: all the words that i know Author: AJ (another_juxtaposition@hotmail.com) Rating: R, language and CJ/T sex Archive: Ask please. Disclaimer: I'm just a kid in the sandbox. Notes: Part two in the soon-to-be-finished three story, three fandom, one lyric challenge. I'm a day late and a dollar short,but I promised Christine I'd pull this off eventually. Summary and title from The Cure's "Open". Summary: “and the way the rain comes down hard/that’s how i feel inside . . .” for my girl in circles and rain. * he finds her. she expected as much. after all, she gave him the key precisely for these reasons. and maybe. maybe a few more. always unspoken, he has the rosetta stone, after all. after all. he has the key. heavy in his hand. she was waiting, elbows on the kitchen table, fingers smudged with newsprint. what's red and white and black all over? never understood the humor, but her laughter rang true. she's the better liar, pushes, no, throws the thought away. these are the things she wants to forget, these are the things she remembers . . . she wants to be devoured. his hands are heavy. her shoulders bend under pressure. she turns into him. she gave him the key. * We were, after all, aware. "Anything I should know?" "I'd tell you if there were." And trust questions both sides, slipping into the ambiguous region of lust, of desire. He answers, lips against her neck, thumbs on her hips. She moves with him. * corona bottles spilled on the kitchen floor. her feet slide. sticky. later, she will wipe the stains with yesterday's newspaper. * Purple bruises mark the conception of. She bites her cuticles. He takes her hand out of her mouth. "Fuck me," she says. He doesn't move. So she moves for him. And then he follows, and then he slides, and then his hands make her bones feel fragile. Fuck me, she says, and she knows he understands what she doesn't. Somewhere, this makes sense, power dynamics aside, and all she thinks is fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. fuckfuckfuckfuck. She bites her cuticles. everything loses meaning at some point. * silence and she breaks it. she breaks it with red marks thrown on his skin. she gave them to him. she gave, she gives. she takes his words and makes them her own, all their words. and everyone says, "clever girl, witty girl, smart girl," hands on her back, and they aren't hers but she takes the credit because she gives, she gives and she gave and this. isn't hers. isn't the girl's who is afraid of quiet. of silence. of the sounds she doesn't can't expect. she rolls over. the lion escaping from the zoo. he groans. she craves salt. needs, wants, craves, desires. words that run together, words that he could distinguish, words that they know. they know too many words for their own good and so they speak in different tongues. the tower of babel has been written into both their histories, but she's never been one to look for religious significance. Iwanttheworldtostopforamoment. run-on sentences, and she doesn't care and says nothing. preferring silence. (what?) (you know what.) * I hate how you know, how I expect you to know, how you never say anything at all. (she breathes.) he sleeps beside her. thighs against thighs. she turns on the light. he lays still. she hears his words, everywhere. * She breaks. She breaks in pieces that scatter across linoleum, and worries that she's made a mess. He notices, he doesn't notice, he notices, she can never tell. Yet he has the key. Yet he comes when she expects. He came for her in Los Angeles, a damsel in distress, drowning. In her own chlorinated, professionally cleaned pool. He was no knight in shining armor, shifting, uncomfortable, but details fade in dreams. So she expects, so she thinks, perhaps this time. She doesn't change, doesn't know why she wants him to. Expects him to. Because. Because, because, because . . . He watched her fall into a pool once, but she dragged herself out, found a towel. He watched (as if to make sure she was worthy, worthwhile, a good investment) and she said yes. She always says yes, after all. She breaks in pieces that scatter across the linoleum, and later, she'll collect them. To remember to forget. * Then, more reasonably, she wonders: is failure the feeling of drowning when all you can feel is flesh against air, flesh against flesh? she breathes deep, through her nose. climbs in the shower. washes those sins away, washes that man right out of her hair. soap residue clinging to the shower door. she almost cries. catches herself just in time. * Everyone loves me now, she thinks, she smiles. She likes the world better now that the world loves her, so she says, so she convinces. But all that ever really mattered was him, and he's never been part of everyone, always been the one to stand outside the consensus, drawn in, pulled in, resigned, his objections clear bright loud in sighs, in stares, in a hand rubbing his beard. His head. Everyone likes the world better when the world likes them. Everyone. (repeat three times daily, close your eyes, cross your fingers, and fall into bed) * (let him silence you) * seul, sole, soul. she took french in college and threatened to run away to paris. now all she remembers are single phrases and the desire to run. plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. when he asks, she says, it doesn't translate well. things get lost, suspecting he knows anyway. she dreams about words slipping through cracks. she dreams in french, and when he answers, she understands. * He watches her now, with those eyes. She is always naked in front of him, but he never undresses her. It's never skin, only bone, only marrow. It unnerves her, sometimes, all the time, but she sees through him. Thinks she does. Wishing, wanting doesn't mean it's real. Otherwise, things would be different. (she says) Things they never admit: each other's weakness the other's strength. She expects him. She expects him to fracture under her weight. * After all, not everyone can have happy endings, or we'd never know what happiness is. She doesn't think she wants a happy ending, just an ending. But she doesn't think she believes in endings. Here he is, after all. After all this, after all that. Thighs against thighs. She expects, and he arrives. Key heavy in his hand, hands heavy on her shoulders. She always says yes, after all. * after all, he is all the words she knows. * (darkness fall. the curtain rises. send feedback.)