#meaning that everything is under gravity's sway rather than the body's desire to hold itself

[eldritch-edward]

A new chapter of @marcellebelle 's Tin Can Man came out the other day.

I enjoyed it.

Edit: Bonus rendering under the cut.

[novelconcepts]

Prompt: Dani and Jamie's second time. Or first time post Bly/post "do you want company?" It seems like there'd be interesting emotional ground to cover there: Dani, still Pretty New to This (being with a woman, sure, but also with someone she actually has romantic and sexual feelings for), but also on the heels of a MAJOR trauma. And Jamie, who had every intention of giving this thing time and space to take root between them, but has suddenly had to go all in, all at once. (1/2)

So there's all that baggage, but also, you know, the thirst. Anyway, I think it would be interesting in the hands of someone with your knack for using sex as a vehicle t explore character dynamics/emotions. (2/2)

It’s not planned. Not that the first time was a plan, Jamie thinks. The first time was less a plan, more a tumble--a leap--a decision. You’ve shown me yours, it’s only fair, she’d thought, with the dizzy exhilaration of making a choice you might very well regret come morning. Dani had spent so much time walking through the dark alone, not a hand to grab, not a light to shine. It had only seemed right, for Jamie to meet her halfway. 

And tumble they had--into Dani’s bed, into this thing Jamie hadn’t been looking for, but hadn’t quite been able to look away from, either. They’d fallen onto the mattress, every move fresh and new and exhilarating. Jamie hadn’t done this in years; Dani, not at all. And there had been something to it, something nearly immaculate that Jamie had almost felt unworthy of--the way Dani muffled laughter against her skin, the nervous skid of her voice pressed into Jamie’s neck as she’d stood there in jeans and damp hair. It had been soft, and careful, Dani gently folding her jumper and setting it aside, Jamie stretching every new beat out as long as she could stand until it was clear--more than clear, certain--that Dani was ready for the next. 

It had been lovely, and almost simple, and for all the nerves in the world, it had felt like stepping into the light for the first time.

And then, not a day later, everything changed. Change is good, Jamie knows; organic and expected, even if not exactly predictable. Change is right, Jamie knows; a world without change isn’t natural. Still, she’d thought--hoped, maybe foolishly--that they’d get time before the change swept in. That it would be a gentle shift over months or even years, rather than a sudden assertion of new facts. 

Facts like: there are things in the world neither of them are prepared to handle.

Facts like: those things have grabbed hold of Dani in ways Jamie can’t reach.

Facts like: even now, outside the gravity of the manor and the life they’d begun there, the shadows are darker than she could ever have comprehended.

Truths, every last one, and Jamie has never been one to argue against truth. The world is set by laws and regulations--one season drifts into the next, the weather speaks for itself, no one can stop the spread of roots beneath the earth. These are good things, true things, rational things she has based her adult life around. 

And still, she wishes. Wishes she could have had more time with Dani’s nervous skidding laughter. More time sitting back, her favorite shirt on the floor, watching with amusement as Dani gently folds her own top and sets it aside. More time making it all as easy as she can for Dani to learn. 

Instead, they’re both learning--and it’s not the kind of thing any past relationship can prepare for. Not for the way Dani disappears into her own reflection sometimes, gazing for hours into the passenger mirror as though unable to keep her eyes from searching for something Jamie can’t see. Not for the quiet uncertainty of Dani’s smile, so unlike the bright, hopeful expression she’d worn when Jamie had kissed her that night. They can’t prepare for eyes that change color without warning, for beasts lurking unseen, for a promise made without fully understanding the consequences. 

They can’t prepare. But they can walk into it together. That matters. 

At first, Dani hadn’t seemed to want to touch her. Or hadn’t seemed able to touch her, maybe; she’d hugged herself close, put her hands in her pockets, kept her distance. But, slowly--as they’d made their way through England, as they’d bought plane tickets and planned for adventure across the pond--that had dissolved. Slowly, she’d come back. One day at a time, a little nearer. Brushing Jamie’s hand on the flight over. Her shoulder pressed lightly to Jamie’s in the car rental office. Her body sliding past in a hotel room.

Small touches. Glancing, testing, experimental touches. Nothing big. Nothing like what they’d already uncorked in a bedroom back in Bly. 

The weeks unfold, and every night, Dani curls a little closer. Sometimes, Jamie finds herself unable to sleep at all, with Dani’s head on her chest. Sometimes, it feels so much like playing champion that she feels too small, too fragile, unworthy of the honor. Dani, groaning in her sleep, clutching at Jamie’s shirt like she’s in danger of sliding away, seems not to notice. Dani is fighting her own battles, and she’s doing so without letting Jamie so much as hand her a weapon. 

The weeks unfold, and the air between them seems ever to tighten. Every time Dani catches her eye and holds. Every time Dani takes her hand without looking. Every time Dani stands, swaying, her body leaning forward as she had in a hallway once upon a lifetime ago. 

And still: nothing. Jamie doesn’t push. Jamie can’t bear to see the crease in Dani’s brow, the flinch from an unexpected touch. Dani is not fragile, she is sure; Dani Clayton is still so much stronger than either of them could have imagined, she knows. Still. Still, she can’t be the thing to break any part of Dani open. 

Dani has to come to her. 

And, without plan, without intent, Dani does.

They’ve been on the road for almost a month, two people learning one another without the easy fall-back of sexual intimacy. It is unlike any relationship Jamie’s ever had--though, in fairness, she supposes she figured that out about Dani before she even knew they’d wind up here. Before she could even guess. Dani has always been different. 

In a past life, she would be building the blocks of their future on physical touch. On hands sliding into clothes, on lips tracing and tongues tasting. She understands that much very well--that a person can give so much up without meaning to, can have so many trunks unlocked by simple virtue of getting naked. It’s easy, watching people, learning what they need. Easy, if you’re willing to pay attention. 

But it’s easy, in its own way, learning Dani this way, too. Learning how she leans into uptempo pop-rock, and turns up her nose at twangy folk-country. Learning how she claims not to be hungry, only to steal half the food off of Jamie’s plate. Learning how to read the serious cast of her eyes when she’s thinking, how it’s different from the purse of her lips when she’s about to spiral into panic. It’s easy in every way, as she’d never expected it to be. 

Except for this. Except for the electricity. She can’t for her life find a way to read that--because it’s always there. Always between them, this intangible heat springing up at a moment’s notice. One minute, they’re laughing--Jamie bending to pat a retriever who has bounded across the park to make a new friend, Dani chatting idly with the middle-aged woman apologizing for the dog’s exuberance--and then: 

Then it’s like they’re back there, back at Bly, back in that bedroom. Back with Jamie’s arm looped gently around Dani’s waist, Dani’s hands framing her face, all warm breath and lips not quite touching. That same heat, that same lightning-in-a-bottle irresistibility, punching up between them. 

It’s in every shop, the aisles so slender, they find themselves pressing tight as they inspect wares. In every diner, Dani leaning nearly out of her seat into some unseen gravity Jamie can’t seem to help producing. In every hotel room. 

Every single hotel room.

It’s hers, Jamie thinks, even as her heart pounds and her fingertips seem to go numb with anticipation. It has to be hers. Dani’s choice. Dani’s willingness to, once again, tumble with her into something new. 

It’s hers, even as Dani seems to burn on the other side of a bathroom door Jamie has left cracked open while she showers. Dani’s choice. Dani’s willingness to want this with her, for her own reasons, and not simply because they’ve done it once before.

It’s hers, even as Jamie slides into bed with the quiet uncertainty of yet another night not quite there. Not quite ready. Dani’s choice. Dani’s willingness to set aside the thing she insists is watching her, waiting to pull her under. 

The air seems especially fraught tonight, somehow--she thinks maybe it’s the August of it all, pushing in through the cracks in the windows. August in the American Midwest is hotter than she anticipated, a deeper heat than she’s felt in a long time. There’s a thick quality to the humidity she doesn’t like, and she finds herself wishing for the affectionate chill of autumn. 

Especially now, with Dani stretched out beside her on the sheets. It’s too hot for much; Dani had looked almost apologetic, stepping out of the bathroom in a long t-shirt and underwear. Jamie, who’d spent the previous night tossing and turning in an ill-advised pair of sweatpants, tried to look easy shrugging. 

“S’too bloody hot for anything else, right?”

There had been relief in Dani’s eyes, but slipping between the sheets had felt like stepping into a house without turning on the lights. The air is simply too heavy to be allowed. The bed is simply too small. 

Dani is simply too close and too far at the same time. 

It has to be her, Jamie thinks again, a constant mantra against her own desires. It’s a personal doctrine, a requirement. It has to be--

Dani is breathing in the dark, slow, hitching breaths that sound almost like a nightmare. She’s laying on her side, facing Jamie, two people curled not quite to meeting, and every time Jamie opens her eyes--Dani is gazing back. In the dark, it’s hard to make out the mismatched colors. In the dark, she can almost believe both of those eyes are still blue. 

Dani, breathing deeply. Saying nothing. But one hand, Jamie realizes, is moving. One hand, drifting almost like a dream, resting lightly along Jamie’s hip. 

She doesn’t speak. Doesn’t close her eyes. Only shifts, slowly, her legs straightening against the warm rustle of stiff sheets. Dani’s hand remains where it is, a fixed spot in a room which seems suddenly to be adrift. 

Jamie, slowly, raises a hand to match. A light brush of fingers, curling around until Dani exhales and lets her own body inch nearer.

Dani, who seems so far and so impossibly close. 

Has to be, Jamie thinks, the only words coming to mind as the hand on her hip drifts up, slowly sliding along her ribs. Dani’s palm is warm, her fingers trembling, slipping up under the cotton t-shirt. She rests there, halfway up a ribcage which seems suddenly too brittle to hold the crash of Jamie’s heart, waiting. 

Jamie, slowly, matches her. 

This will be, she is sure, as far as it goes. Dani is pushing her own boundaries tonight in ways Jamie hasn’t let herself even think about, but it’s so hot, and the air is so heavy, and there is simply no way--

Dani’s legs, bare and smooth, are brushing her own. She drags in a breath, aware Dani can feel it beneath her hand, and can’t find it in herself to be embarrassed. Not with the way Dani is curling closer, the bed--already so small--shrinking to nearly nothing. 

Dani, who has been close, but hasn’t looked at her quite like this in weeks. Dani, who has been so distracted by her own reflection, by the monster she senses beneath the waves. Dani, who seems now, for the first time since leaving England, to see only her. 

“We don’t have to,” Jamie hears herself breathe. “We don’t--”

Dani makes a noise: maybe a laugh, maybe a bid for silence. Her hand is sliding higher, her fingers tracing the underside of Jamie’s breast with the barest contact. Jamie swallows the next words, her own hand flexing in response. 

Dani is nearly on her pillow, she realizes. Her head lifts slightly, her eyes searching Jamie’s, and there is a moment where Jamie thinks, She’ll run now. She’ll flinch back. She’ll do it again, and it will hurt again, and there’s nothing I can--

Dani is kissing her, and if Jamie had feared a loss here--if Jamie had feared Dani might forget how to do this, or how to want her--there is no point entertaining that fear any longer. Not with Dani’s lips pressing gently once, twice, then harder. Dani, banishing the rest of the distance in a single fluid motion, sliding across the mattress and pressing Jamie down onto her back. 

It is not planned, she can tell--from the heady breath catching in Dani’s chest, from the dark glaze in Dani’s eyes as she gazes down at her. Dani is as surprised as she is, even pressing her body down, her hips rocking against Jamie’s almost accidentally. A flush rises in Dani’s cheeks, her lip pulling between her teeth. 

Jamie nods. Words, she senses, will break the spell--whatever it is Dani needs to do here, to prove to herself here, does not need words. Consent, though. Consent requested and freely given. That much feels right.

Dani presses down to kiss her again, even as Jamie is arching up to meet her, and it isn’t gentle this time. Isn’t easy and slow and stretched carefully out, each beat elongated until crashing hearts can level into something sustainably enthusiastic. This is a month of waiting, a month of electricity, the sweat-slide of muggy August air pressing down around them. This is Dani leaning out of the grip of whatever she most fears and into the desire she’s been fostering since a kiss in a greenhouse. 

This is Dani’s hand’s exploring, her fingers in Jamie’s hair, tracing Jamie’s jawline, pulling Jamie’s shirt up over her head. This is Dani’s mouth at her ear, gasping in surprise when Jamie’s hands close around her hips and jerk her down against one bent thigh. This is Dani rolling to meet her, one hand fumbling beneath her waistband, fingers searching and finding and stroking until Jamie’s breath is a hot spike in her chest. 

It’s the kissing, she thinks, she’s missed most. No one has ever kissed her like Dani does--not like a secret to be hidden away, or a private scorn to look back on later, or even a hot glee no one should ask to understand. Dani kisses like she wants to be here. Dani kisses like she never wants to be anywhere else. Dani kisses her in this hotel, in this bed, with her fingers curling and her hips grinding mercilessly, with exactly the same excitement as in a hallway--in a grove--in a greenhouse. Every time, no matter what Dani Clayton carries, she kisses the same way. 

She believes, in some part of her, that Dani will build those walls again when her hands have finished their pleasing work. That Dani will roll off of her, lay on her back, stare blankly at the ceiling as she waits for her beast to rise up. 

Dani doesn’t. Dani makes soft, urgent noises against her upturned jaw, kissing and sighing as Jamie’s back bows off the mattress, and Jamie has barely found equilibrium again--legs trembling, hands buried in Dani’s hair--when she slides not off, but down. Down the mattress, kicking aside useless sheets, dragging the underwear off Jamie’s hips as she goes.

“You don’t have to,” Jamie begins, but Dani is looking at her around the almost leisurely kisses she trails down a shivering body, just looking at her as her mouth explores still-new territory, and Jamie sees no point in arguing. Not with the way Dani is sliding half off the small bed, her hands insistent and hopeful as they guide Jamie’s legs up over her shoulders. 

No words, Jamie decides again, letting herself sink into Dani’s kiss. Letting herself rock against Dani in slow, easy rhythm, she grips the sheet in one hand and Dani’s hair in the other, guiding her with gentle pressure. Dani hadn’t done this, the first night. Dani had, in fact, spent much of that night on her back, shivering all over with excitement and trepidation and pleasure. Teach me, she’d said in a voice half-shy, half-brazen, and Jamie had complied with the joy of one who knows this kind of education can take a lifetime. 

Teach me, Dani had said then, but now, it seems to be a different instruction. Let me, maybe. Let me learn. Let me want this. 

Far be it from me, Jamie thinks dazedly; her mind may worry about going too far, about pushing Dani out of her comfort zone, but her body is familiar with this ride. Her body is all too delighted to find Dani picking up the signals of what she likes, Dani testing with soft kiss and rough lick to find what works best. 

And maybe now, Jamie thinks with a mind wiped nearly blank, Dani will pull away. Maybe now, Dani will vanish on her without warning. Maybe.

Except, no--Dani is curling against her once more, one thigh draped over Jamie’s hips, moving against her with slow, indulgent thrusts. Her hand curls around Jamie’s shoulder, her breath coming in fast little puffs as she picks up speed, and it’s all Jamie can do not to flip her over and take the wheel. All she can do, to curl her fingers around Dani’s thigh, digging in as Dani presses against her, slides away, presses against her. It does not feel, she recognizes, as though Dani is trying to reach a conclusion of her own. It feels only as though Dani is desperate to feel her, to keep herself present, to make absolutely certain neither of them can forget she is in this bed. 

No chance of that, thinks Jamie, weariness and arousal making the strangest bedfellows. All night, Dani could keep this up--all night, with sweat running down her back, with her lips tracking every inch of Jamie’s skin, drawing her tight and shattering her control. She wouldn’t mind. It’s too hot to sleep, anyway. 

“Okay,” Dani says, her voice half a coiled groan, as she eases a hand down to tease at Jamie once more. “We’re okay. We’re here.”

“We are,” Jamie agrees, turning her head, kissing Dani with what she hopes is all the long, steady promise of a bedroom and an offer to keep company. Whatever that means. For however long Dani wants. “We are absolutely fine.”

For the first time, she’s pretty sure they both believe it.

[existence-overwhelming]

Wayward Branch

Starter for @theratinthewalls​

    }}– 🌌  –{{

Throughout the finite expanse of Eternity, a kaleidoscopic main of hues and tints illuminated the endless play of memories and events that’d come to pass, were currently and had yet to be. But these plays transpired within the confines of each dimensional commune, trapped and destined to forever retell and depict and portend all possibility of a given dimension. Yet the colors remained. And said shades danced across the innumerable iridescent pearls brimming within each pillar of potentiality. Each like a mote of probability, delicate vessels of creation’s capacity for finite infinity. Within, an unending litany of outcomes and results begetting parallel instances of being differing from one another by an iota with every divergence, thus making the twenty-third incredibly different yet still similar to the 3,432,129th.  It then stands to reason that, due to Eternity’s incredulous probability, a pearl or even a dimension as a whole shall spawn something that would interfere with, nay, risk the continuation of creation’s existence.  A true statement--errors, hiccups in the Code woven by Eternity, begot ግጭት መቀላቀል which threatened the sanctity of the cell occur with steady frequency.  An unfortunate fact of being.  But through meticulous efforts and processes beyond the finite’s magnitude of understanding, the entity tasked with the cell’s protection nipped said problems in the bud. Yet some were allowed to exist due to their nature not exceeding that ruinous threshold. Or perhaps it was because certain columns of potentiality were fabricated by the entity itself in an effort to test what was and wasn’t possible? Maybe their existence in of itself was to be as what one might constitute as erroneous and as such were, in fact, not acting out and instead acted just as intended?  Some things transcended comprehension as a whole.  Some things were out of reach when attempts to name or bequeath meaning or an inkling of clarity to were made.  None could come to grips with the unknowable aside from the unknowable, and as such, none could predict that entity above all others’ course of action.

There’s a momentary idleness that sweeps across the Collective in a singular wave that disturbs the eternal congregation’s goings-on wherever it passed over, only to give way to the continuation of the norm in its wake. Redirection of a fraction of its attention. In an instant, the entity known by few knew what it knew. Though this isn’t to say said information was forgotten, just set aside in favor of the big picture. What you or I might understand as memory was selective for this echelon of being--all dependent on whether employing more than an insubstantial modicum of fathomless apprehension to monitor a specific point of interest in the abstract amalgamation could be justified. So in regarding this whiplash of effect’s cause, the entity knew what it knew, what it needed, what it always, what it’d shunted to the side.  A shift and the prior focal point flicks from one column to another, one that undulated and writhed in a manner akin to how a pool of worms struggles to achieve locomotion. Countless abyssal tethers stretched from between the incredulous reaches of what you and I might understand as the ceiling and floor of the cell. They bowed and bent in ways unnatural even for them, arrested by contractions and extensions like some dying animal wracked with labored breath. Each decrying their contents’ actions in the frequency only the entity and Collective could perceive.

 Something of a limb manifests from the immense presence of the entity, a spindly appendage of tar and possibility urged into semi-definite shape so as to produce four pronged articulation hooks. It extends so as to wedge the prongs of what might be construed as fingers before said digits became rigid rods disrupting the seamless canvas of the pillar. They detach so as to begin parting the threads, but do not assume this means they were appended to whatever could pass for a hand. Nay, it’s more accurate to say they were loosely anchored to a point in which the entity deemed fit and this happened to resemble how you or I might consider to be normal for such protrusions to be on what we could only assume to be a palm. And, no longer needing to remain as such, the digits adjusted so as to allow a fragment of the beyond immense presence of the entity to pass through and manifest within the dimension.  It did so in a manner that befit necessity, fulfilled the purpose of its visitation to the pillar’s denizens. No longer an incredulous concentration of peerless presence, the abyssal essence of the Collective surged up in great spouts that whirled and curved to fill out the outline presented to it. Similar to a grand weave, the immense threads of the quintessence spun together and became interwoven as convoluted shapes seen in countless realities. And as such, that which constructed its form had a perpetual animation about it--much like a collection of threads and strings being waved endlessly. There were many angles and curves as a representation of a torso manifested around an impossible vascular organ of stark white, turning said visceral core as black as the void from innumerable threads layering and layering, from binding and binding, wrapping and wrapping. Then, as per the nature of the dimension, a vortex like the ever yawning mouth of a black hole spread out from where the lower torso might connect .  Several lengths then ran out along both sides to tether what we might know as arms to the rest of the body, cylinders and angles and curves which led up to what we might recognize as four-digit hands that more resembled the claws of a crane rather than actual fingers.  And what we might understand as a head manifested around the stark incandescent ocular organ, an angular ovoid of boggling size with a feline streak of black as the pupil. It formed as a circle, at first, before the edges oozed out and wove together to form articulate appendages akin to those of an Octopoda.  Then, once manifestations ceased to come into being, the waves of the vortex culminated beneath the three dimensional shape flared out until there was a flash of light. Physics bent the knee to the entity’s will, contorting under the strain until something gave. Stars erupted in discordant expansions and planets were knocked out of orbit as the gravity wells holding them in place were disturbed. Everything reverberated as an intangible deluge of presence cascaded across the cosmos. They quavered with anticipation for the next command, for their progenitor’s call, wrapped around its finger in a way that only things with a subconscious desire to return to and be whole could. Yet nothing was permitted to approach like a gravitational anomaly designed to repel rather than draw in.

 Countless eyes shifted in sync with the pupil of the entity’s ocular organ, gaze cast towards the boundless horizon of space. Billions of insignificant lights like smoldering embers dotted the abyssal void. Gaseous clouds of matter tinged the black with a multitude of vehement hues. Its foremost upper limb swayed and rotated until what passed for a hand could gesture to the exponential pinprick of color its mono-optic focused upon.  Digits then curled as the palm extended out, innumerable threads of its own essence spooling out from all four fingertips. They undulate and cross the distance before spinning together, weaving a hominid form with which to hover in place like a single celled organism. A twitch and its facial region ruptured, fissures dividing the forward region of the head before said divisions burst and became fragments. Then they halted but several inches away, caught in place, before new animation caused them to rotate like independent gyroscopes where they’d been pinned to. One side was as black as the material they were woven from, while the opposite mirrored the all-hue iridescent coloration of the Collective. Meanwhile, the crater left of the face was filled by a gravitational vortex of stardust and miniaturized stars.  Once woven, all four digits of the entity extended to propel their creation.  And like that, the manifestation was placed upon the speck of dirt known as Earth to its inhabitants, aimed towards a certain structure in a specific region of a particular country. There the manifestation would find the target of concern, Sysyphyx, the many faced deceiver.  It’d touchdown upon the planet and apparate within the confines of the mask wearer’s false residence, a cataclysmic event that’d sunder the roof and splinter the floorboards its limbs connected with. Yet there’d be no impact as one would associate with something physical like a meteor. Rather when it breached the atmosphere, all color drained away in its wake. Everything bereft of such light froze in place, caught in the moment they’d been affected. But this isn’t to say there was a moment where one person or thing was unaffected while another was. No, everything was afflicted with this monochrome stasis simultaneously. And once the manifestation towered before the deceiver, time came to an absolute standstill--all but she would be affected.  Then it’d direct the lack of a visage towards the horseman, silent for a long moment before a voice like a monotone chorus compressed into one voice broke the quiet.  “You are to desist.”