#zachorge

[ricorper-tow-blog]

perchance.

When the world keeps me awake at night, I can feel his arms around me and know safety is near.

            I don’t know how I got this way. Well; I do—if I sit, and breathe deeply, and break it down logistically. I know why my head is the way it is. I know why…I am the way I am.

            Broken and splintering.

            In my heart of hearts and other clichés, I am aware that I am very much a product of my own misgivings and mistakes. An upright family, a proper upbringing. Snobbery and deception; sneaking around with a married man while pretending to be well-to-do and unproblematic. Closeted and for some reason unsure of ever telling anyone. Pursuing a degree in language that fascinated me—wanting to be able to communicate with everyone about everything. What a narcissist I was, expecting anybody at all would want to speak to me. About anything. At all.

            And when I wake up with a racing heart and the moon is nearly full, I can feel myself slipping back to the dark places I was months before I met him—in the street, in the middle of nowhere. Some rainy alcove in which the world turned differently. How friendly he seemed; with a generous face and a knowing smile. Knowing eyes; too, for ones that didn’t see. And God, was I thankful they couldn’t see me.

It was barely eight months after the bite—working odd jobs and trying to keep my head above water. For what reason, I still don’t know. A new town every couple of weeks, filling in the blanks and keeping my head down. Making sure nobody noticed the big-eared, long-limbed, skulking figure sweeping the floors of cafes or the orderly picking up trays to take to patients who were that much safer after he left.

            Everyone was always safer after I left.

            Those nights, though—these nights, rather, because it was one of those nights now, just before the full moon—where I woke drenched in sweat, clothes sticking like fresh blood to my skin, pulse racing and jaw cracking with the force I applied to it to grind my teeth—I didn’t want to leave.

            Fear propelled me. It always had, in a way—fear to pretend, to be normal. Fear pressured me into unhappy places; bullied me into corners I could not get out of. It kept my adrenaline spiked, wore my nerves down. It made me jumpy, when people touched me unexpectedly. I had night terrors [still do] ages after…him, I had…nausea and migraines and dizziness and shortness of breath; all the things inside of me shredded by paralyzing anxiety. It made me make even worse decisions than before. It told me not to tell him what I was; who I was, what I’d done. A murderer; a—a psychopath; maybe, a monster, I don’t know…! The only one I knew for certain was the last, that I put others at risk by becoming—the thing that made me…what I am.

            The cycle continues, and…all that.

            Fear propelled me into lurching awake; gasping for breath, grasping for nothing. I’d wrap my hands around the air’s throat and squeeze, trying desperately to bring oxygen to myself. Sheets were discarded; kicked off in a frenzied flail. Spit flew; wood creaked protest. Sometimes I’d scream. Sometimes the scream sounded more like a howl. I clung to the nothing in the dark and tried to come back from the edge I’d nearly fallen from. It was the constant sensation of missing a step on the stairs, prevailing gravity pulling me down headlong.

            But he’d be there.

            He’s here now, with me, strong arms secure around my heaving middle. His face, half-buried in my back, is alert, but not overly-concerned. His pulse is quick, but does not match mine. Mine falls to match his as I lean back against him, inhaling his scent. He gives me space, gives me air when I need it. But what I need most right now is to be held, and he knows it. Instinctively, he knows it, and he keeps me in his arms—arms that despite everything, endure and show no fault in strength. Stripped of any protection I had over myself; whatever quirky, self-deprecating joke I could come up with, however I could make my mouth move to deflect suspicion, I huddle to the shelter he provides in skin and whispers, feeling the barely-there touch of his fingers stroking my arms. I try to remember to breathe regularly. He tucks his nose against the crook of my shoulder as he shifts upright and, moving with caution, rocks us both from side to side.

            “I’m here,” he says. Zachariah is firm and steady to my shaken and stirred. He smells like pine sap and good black coffee. I close my eyes and inhale. “I’m right here,” he reiterates, concern creeping into his hoarse words, voice still muzzy with sleep – but once a soldier, always a soldier, and I think he was a soldier, somehow, some way. I still don’t know everything about this man; this man I’ve fallen for, but that tracks with all my choices. Better not to know, probably. Best to not ask.

But because he was a soldier, he wakes at the drop of the hat to endure my nonsense. Almost every other night. When I’m frantically tearing at the bedclothes, feeling like I’m being choked or changing in my sleep; shifting shape to become something massive, grotesque, and lethal. He reminds me to the beast, there is a human side. Even if that human side stays racked with guilt that in endangering him, I became a self-fulfilling prophecy – I did this to him, made him stay. A bite worked better than a collar. The leash of love was tenuous at best. Clearly I had to ruin something to keep it, just as anyone who’s been with me before knows that’s what it takes. I had to be broken before I could hold still, and now I’m frozen with fear. Forever.

            Frozen, but he warms me. He warms me with his gentle sighs against my ear. Zachariah wraps the blankets back around us. His arms close around mine, not a cage, but a reminder that I have something to lean on. He wavers between sleep and awareness now, pressing a kiss against the side of my face from where he can reach. I curl back against him, hiding in the blankets, hiding in his arms. I watch the moon outside peek in through the window, a laughing, rounded face full of possibilities. Pale and mad, says the tarot. I don’t know why I think of it, it just—comes to me. The tarot of the Moon; indicating doggedness, madness, obsession, losses…to my Moon, Zachariah is the Star, the shining example of perseverance, creative problem-solving, and steadfastness. A star in the North, because the moment I saw him on that rainy street, I imagined I saw a way home.

            With home in him came home with Brooke, my head in her hands as she tried to sing the pain and sorrow away. Her diligent, yet trembling hands preparing meals fit for kings, not the likes of me. I found home in the way she’d tease me. How she didn’t think I was crazy, or unsettling, or violent. Dangerous. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that those same, loving, careful hands could sweetly drown any who came close enough; threatened enough, to merit submerging them. Maybe it was in the way her lullabies left me wandering through sleep so deep and dark it felt like a forest of closed fingers. Squeezing the life out of me, or the worry. More likely it was because she was the most dangerous person I had ever met–yet oh, how she made me feel so safe.

            Home was in Tristan. In the arrogant toss of his hair or the cocky, hollow places of his put-on smile. It was in the way he tried to show no concern whatsoever. How his jaw would set and his eyes would drift when he thought no one was looking. It was in that ridiculous accent he had—put on as well, I reckoned, as linguistics did happen to be my meagre background. But beyond all appearances of masks, Tristan was steadfast and warm as fire. The threat of a burn was still there, but he stayed seething in his embers, only offering light and the strangest form of comfort. Dangerous, in his own way.

            And Zachariah had his dangers hidden like knives on an assassin; lock-picks on a thief. They crept guerilla through the trenches I perused looking for answers while at war with myself. I came face to face with a few of them, in the way he’d sometimes freeze mid-motion; a practiced gesture of defense or something similar. There was power in him long before I meandered into his life—power that kept him coiled and ready to spring before he even had haunches or hide to change to better do so. He was steely-sinewed in make, built on a foundation of concrete. Unshakable. Lovable. Safe.

            “I love you,” I say to him. He answers with a squeeze. His lashes bat my skin—a soft reminder that he’s still there. Zachariah, for all lean muscle and calloused hands, is always soft reminders. He exhales, and I remember to do the same, finally.

            “I love you too,” he says, after a long moment’s silence in the semidarkness. Somewhere outside, a creature chirps. Leaves rustle. He catches it all before I do, turning slightly toward the window before I even have a chance to register the noises. His arms around me tighten just a fraction before he relents, pulling away enough to draw the blankets around us just a little bit more. I tuck my head down against his arms and scrunch into a ball against him. Hiding. Always hiding. He does his best to accommodate, never once complaining. He says it’s fine. I say it’s not. Round and round we go; but it’s silent, this time, as opposed to the variations wherein I drop the sugar dish and assume he’ll hate me forever. It’s different than when I think I’ve lost him when all he’s done is ducked out for a jug of milk. It’s not my full-blown panic leading up to the full moons wherein I check the locks three times and trace, re-trace, re-re-trace a course through the woods with a piece of chicken on a string to keep my…other self distracted.

            “It’s alright.” It’s like he knows. Zachariah’s mouth tugs at the corner, and before I can protest, he’s kissed my head, returned to stroking my arms. I feel my heart slow a little more; closer to his, now—just a couple beats away. The branches outside bow and sway, nodding absently on an unfelt wind. Ghosts lapse in the moonlight; timeless and tranquil, mist unfurling tendrils of pre-morning dreams across silver-frosted tall grass. I shut my eyes, shut it all out, and let Zachariah guide me as he always does.

            “Just breathe with me, alright?” I nod a little, just enough to let him know I’m listening. He heaves in. Holds. I mirror. He releases, I follow. We match rhythms for a while, and eventually, he hums—a low note, meditative and serene. I try to match, but mine wavers. I open my eyes and Zachariah grins–I swallow, wondering if he’s annoyed or I’m not following correctly and—

            “Howling,” he says distantly.

            “What?” I ask, confused.

            “S’like howling,” he says, one hand drifting up to rub my neck. The sensation is just enough to be felt, not too much to feel held down. I lean into it. “I make a sound, you make a sound…it’s nice,” Zachariah adds. “I can always find you that way. And you can find your way back to me.”

            He wants to find me. But is it because of what I did? Did I trap him? Why did I do this to him? He could’ve had anyone nice; anyone normal. He could’ve been meeting friends of Brooke’s who didn’t feel like drowning or devouring him [maybe?], or perhaps even he and Tristan could’ve been a “Thing”, as it were, before I stumbled in and all but fell into his arms like a complete and utter arsehole.

            “Find your way back to me, George,” says Zachariah, more slowly and with more focused purpose. I snap out of the thoughts by the sound of his gravelly voice and nod again. “In?” He breathes. I breathe. “Out.” We both release.

            This keeps up till the windows are pale with the threat of dawn, and I’m not sure which comes first—the light of day or the peace of sleep without further fears.

            Fears that felt like dreams which felt like memories.

            I much preferred the ones I had awake, but the next best thing to that was falling asleep at his side, knowing I’d wake again to something better, brighter, and mine—

            No matter how much I insisted to myself he could do better.

            Maybe we could be safer with one another. Maybe cycles could be broken. Maybe I was not a complete monster—

            Yes, those were the dreams.