Fleeting Beauty
-The stars are far away and hold such beauty, but he shouldnt be here.
not now at least.
read on ao3 here
Prompt fill : ‘Do you want me to leave?’
It was sudden the way he awoke, one moment he was consumed in the darkness moments and words from the past echoing around him, bouncing around him, drowning him in the sea of darkness as it consumed him, dragging him down into its darkest depths.
And then he was awake. Eyes open wide and unfocused as his heart decreased in rate and he resettled back into the cold reality before him.
He was on his side facing the window, the view familiar but wrong. The pressure at his hip as a hand rested their, the pressure of a leg hooked over his own, a breath on the back of his throat, all wrong. Wanted and craved, but wrong.
He shouldn’t be here.
At least he shouldn’t be here still.
But he didn’t move, didn’t shift or try to escape to amend the sense of wrong, he just laid still breathing in and out in sync with the breath behind him warm and wet against his neck.
He continued to stare at the stars and returned to past thoughts about them, waiting for pressure around him to cease when the other awoke.
He would enjoy this while he could, moments like these were always so fleeting.
-
Hours passed before the body behind Rhys joined him in waking. The arm clutched tighter the breath seemed to exhale in a sigh and the leg shifted higher as if jack himself was trying to save the fleeting moment before them both. Before they both amended the wrong they had created in the first place when they could not stand a lover’s embrace, each consumed and haunted by their own past and present transgressions.
Rhys would be lying if he said he didn’t miss the times where this wrongness had felt right and the moments they had didn’t need to be cherished before the other pulled away, allowing the cold to embrace them as they would recreate the space between them tearing at the wound they weren’t successful in closing.
But for now, they didn’t move, barely breathed and clutched what they could staring ahead.
Had the stars always looked so lonely.
Many times, jack’s breath had hitched, many times Rhys had heard him inhale deeply as if bracing himself for what they knew was to come next once either broke their silence.
No word left his mouths only a sigh as he buried his head into Rhys back, intertwining his hand with Rhys own. Rhys couldn’t help but notice the absent pressure in their left hands as he squeezed back. The pressure had been gone for some time, muscle memory long forgotten.
-
Eventually it was Rhys who was the one to break their silence.
He too breathed in, and for once in hours he closed his eyes against the stars as they burned brightly at him.
He breathed out and opened them again staring at the glass instead of the stars. He saw them in the glass, a mockery of a reflection. Blanket barely covering them to the hips, still intertwined in a lover embrace and eyes staring back.
Jack stared at him through the reflection and he stared back, absorbing what he could committing the site to memory as he had done so many times before.
He wondered how many times where left.
The never knew, jack didn’t care. Rhys never dared to wonder.
‘Do you want me to leave?’
The words echoed into the silence as they word left Rhys mouth, familiar to the tongue but a stranger to his mind and heart as he spoke them, as his heart clenched and his mind screamed for him not to repeat the pattern to change it, to allow himself to stay.
He couldn’t.
But he couldn’t leave, he knew this. Jack knew this.
The words that left jack mouth, barely a whisper against his skin as he turned into Rhys back hiding his face into the hair line his arm and leg drawing Rhys closer melding them together as the cold left the space between them.
‘no’
Rhys had to shut his eyes, his breath stuck in his throat as he returned the gesture in kind, his hand gripping jacks closer and his face turning in to the pillow.
This wasn’t a mercy.
He came to expect little else. For jack mercy was very rarely an option, but for Rhys it was his option, forgiving those who deserved to be forgiven. Rhys didn’t think he could forgive jack for this.
Even still he allowed the hands to maneuverer him, pulling his face from the pillows with a gentle hand as he was turned on to his back jack shifting ever so slightly above him.
Rhys couldn’t see the stars anymore.
The sight before him was far more beautiful.
Perhaps it was why jack was so untouchable, just like the stars. A beauty to behold but so far way never tethered to one place or a person.
Jack was silent as his mismatched eyes stared deeply into Rhys own, his face and unguarded and bare for his to see. Emotions no longer hidden behind cold plastic but laid bare before Rhys.
Jack looked so human above him in these moments, he often forgot there was a monster laying under the skin, unrelenting in its actions to get what it sought.
‘your cruel’ was all Rhys could muster ad he laid below jack, breath relaxed as he stared into the depths before him.
Jack smile was full of sadness and never reached his eyes as he closed them leaning his forehead to Rhys in a moment of tenderness many couldn’t believe the man capable of.
‘I know’ was the whisper against his lips as the grazed one another, jack settling his weight just above him.
Rhys brought his hand up the rest on the face before him, thumb grazing the scar embedded into once flawless skin traveling upwards so that it rested in the mess of brown locks streaked grey adorning jacks head as jack moved lower, breath back at his neck.
Rhys sighed eyes looking to the ceiling as jack continued his antics.
He would stay.
He would stay because these moments where fleeting and jack was a dead man walking.
And it tore him apart inside as he turned back to the stars.
The most beautiful things to behold but too far away to reach.
Too far way to make them stay.
this is part 1 of a 100 Prompt challenge.
prompt: ‘do you want me to leave?’
my plan is to try and not make these all angst. 'try’ is the key word ;)
i hope you enjoy this is my first borderlands piece i have written in preparation for a long fic series i want to write for the rhack ship.
Thanks for reading and i hope you enjoyed it.
feel free to tell me what you think of it.
OldSephtis x