Thirteen Is Never Lucky

[ten_of_swords]

When Gorlim arrives, the room... the room is exactly like the one he just left.

The scents.

The furniture.

Gabriel's crib is at the foot of the bed, the couch still has Námo's discarded tunic on it, boots on the floor, the sapphire curtain on the window...

Although the room was decidedly vacant at the moment.

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[ten_of_swords]

He frowns.

"For me to bathe you, tend to your wounds, and put you to bed?"

Ruin wraps his arms around Gorlim's waist.

"I do not want to spend another night watching you sleep, recovering from pains he has inflicted while I ... wait ... for it ... all to pass."

[gorlim.livejournal.com]

He allows this.

Nervously.

"Let me kiss you and be gone, my lovely. And promise you all you want tomorrow."

He is anxious for the night to pass.

[ten_of_swords]

"I have been patient. I have endured your hedging, your teasing, your distance, your promises. I have believed you each time, always hoping."

Fingers tighten.

"Go to him tomorrow, lay with me tonight."

His voice, his hard eyes that burn with need, show he will take no rejection.

[gorlim.livejournal.com]

Gorlim is growing impatient. The unsettling insistence of his instincts that something is not right will not leave him, whether it is from the lingering echo of whatever nightmare he had awakened from, or could it be some shadow of his lover's need through their bond? His worry, his desperation...

It was not like him to insist so fervently. Usually his Namo knew the best way to calm a flighty dove was by patient coaxing. Demands were a new thing.

Perhaps trying a new trick?

One that would not work.

Gorlim pulls away, slowly but firmly. "You know I want to. But I made a promise, and I must see that through!"

[ten_of_swords]

"No, I do not know you want to."

His hands clutch quite firmly now. Inhuman strength.

"You made promises to me. Months ago."

Ruin tugs Gorlim toward the bed, his eyes never leaving Gorlim's. His fingers tug at Gorlim's laces as he crushes his lips to his lover's.

[gorlim.livejournal.com]

Habit fights through startlement like any well-tuned reaction-instinct, and he kisses back automatically. But his body does not eagerly obey the application of force. Nor does his mind. And once the shock wears off, he pushes back, tugs himself away, staring with frightened or angry eyes.

[ten_of_swords]

He yanks him back against him.

"Stop running, dammit."

Ruin spins them around, pushes Gorlim onto the mattress. That way, Gorlim could not easily slip away. Not with the Vala's body pressed hovering above his own.

"I will not beg, Gorlim. I have done enough begging. I have pleaded. I have cajoled. I have loved. I am done with being on my knees for you. We are lovers, and we will act as such."

Laces are yanked free, buttons and fastenings broken by forceful hands. Not hurtful, for Námo would never strike Gorlim, but uncaring in their pursuit.

[gorlim.livejournal.com]

"Namo, stop this," he hisses, squirming. "At least slow down. You needn't be so pushy."

He'd have stayed with a little argument. But force only makes him wish to fight back.

[ten_of_swords]

"My soft seductions, quiet request, have gone unheeded by you. Now you cannot ignore them."

His mouth covers Gorlim's, tongue thrusting forward as fabric is pulled away, scarred skin revealed. With one arm pressing on Gorlim's chest, his other hand moves to the laces of Gorlim's breeches.

[gorlim.livejournal.com]

He squirms a bit, not QUITE rejecting him, not any longer, not exactly, but uncomfortable all the same. A muffled objection, recieving the kiss but giving back little. A shove here, a tug there, feeling trapped and smothered and too focused on the reality of the now to wonder if it might not be real after all.

[ten_of_swords]

He sits back, panting quietly, yanking clothing from his body. Baring him to his hot gaze.

"Why? Why make me do such things in order to be treated remotely as I should be? Welcomed by the man who says he wishes to wed me in his own way?"

Ruin unlaces his shirt, but does not remove it. His tatto would then be noticed. But he does shed his trousers, hard and ready as he presses against Gorlim. Warm-cool skin against Gorlim's as he kisses him again, then kisses his neck, no longer caring about the voiced discomfort his lover had of feeling vulnerable.

[gorlim.livejournal.com]

"I do welcome you!" he objects. "I--I have tried to treat you well. I have tried!"

Had he tried so poorly as to earn this kind of displeasure?

Perhaps so.

His struggles grow a little less insistant, but do not cease entirely. And he does not move to welcome his lover into him, nor does he respond with pleasure. Against these arguments, he might have agreed to slow attention, but so careless a seduction, so thoughtlessly using bodies with no regard for the person residing in them?

He pushes himself backwards, tries to sit up, to move away, to slow the course of the act against the tide of desperation.

[ten_of_swords]

"No. You will bring me to arousal. Touch me, love me, and then leave me. Aching and needful and rejected."

He follows Gorlim's journey as he moves away from him some.

"Not tonight. You will not go to him, lay with him, and not with me."

Ruin's hands hold tight to Gorlim's hips as he bends his head to his stomach. His tongue traces along the myriad of scars there, paying slow, sesual attention to each one in a way Námo would never dare.

[gorlim.livejournal.com]

Gorlim gasps and balls his hands into fists, eyes wide. He doesn't feel his nails bite into his skin; he only feels the pain -- intense, searing waves of remembered agony reexperienced by the simple act of retracing the paths of old blades. Before him, he sees once more the faces of his tormentors, half-lit by firelight in a freezing late-autumn fog. He hears their cackling, croaking jibberish, he can smell once more burning flesh and filth and blood and metal, and his breath catches even as he tries to cry out, his throat tightening in panic and nausea.

[ten_of_swords]

Soft fingers move along the scars decorating Gorlim's sides as his mouth continues to taste the raised flesh, moving lower on his belly.

"Battle scars you were afraid to show me. Never allowed me to touch."

[gorlim.livejournal.com]

"Stop," he begs weakly. "Please. Please. Don't--" He chokes as fingers trace over the record of his torture, his lover's fingers, his lover's scent mixing with memory and fire and the hardness of lust against his skin.

[ten_of_swords]

Ruin lifts his eyes.

"Fine."

He grabs Gorlim's wrists, pressing them cruelly over his head against the mattress. A knee makes its way between Gorlim's knees, the Vala's breath short.

Lips press to lips as another hand drifts down Gorlim's body to touch him intimately.

[gorlim.livejournal.com]

Now he can neither move back, nor forward, nor squirm nor roll to the side. He is trapped, and vulnerable. His arms caught fast, the knee pressing against him, the sickening dizziness of the body's response to sexual stimuli which, without the participation of his will, brings no pleasure. Only the stomach-knotting pain that is shame, and fear, and doubt, and regret.

There are tears in his eyes as he answers the kiss with passive distaste.

[ten_of_swords]

He pulls back enough to whisper into Gorlim's face raggedly.

"Even now you would deny me with your passive distaste for the act. Why keep me as your lover if you cannot make love with me?"

A finger penetrates, tests, touches.

[gorlim.livejournal.com]

It is guilt that stays his struggles, holds his tongue, and blinks back the tears. Guilt stirred ever more by the Vala's arguments -- guilt born of his own inherent self-hatred, tended for Ages upon Ages in the gardens of Melkor's torment.

He does not struggle now as the phantom touches him, only flinches and tenses when the sensation draws pain; and when next his mouth is opened in a kiss, he gives in with disheartened acceptance, his tongue, his lips making the correct movements with the awkward incompleteness of a sulky child performing some hated chore.

[ten_of_swords]

There is the care Námo would take.

Lubricant used to ease the way, to lessen the pain of joining.

But his large hand does not release Gorlim's wrists as he moves forward, entering with one sure thrust, groaning as he kisses him. He uses his other hand to balance with, so any arousal Ruin had wakened is abandoned to his own pleasures.

[gorlim.livejournal.com]

There is a muffled gasp, but no more. The puzzled eyes are glazed in contemplation: a half-escape into a world neither Ruin, nor Namo, nor even Melkor had touched, altered, or understood.

The Wraith's lair, the detached madness, the seeing and feeling through someone else's skin. He becomes a puppet -- Namo's puppet, a body whose actions are dictated by his caresses, thrusts, and kisses.

Meanwhile the mind, outside the immediate experience of whatever pain he may feel, sits quietly baffled like a child in a corner -- imagine a pouting lip, a prematurely-creasing brow, and the too-large eyes that ask the question he dares not voice for fear of sounding foolish:

Why?

He thought they were all right. He thought they'd worked this out. He'd thought they were working and they knew that, didn't they? What went wrong? What sign did he misread, what gesture went misinterpreted?

And then, slowly, through the mind's deep abysses wherein strange alliances of thoughts are made, he begins to wonder -- a question like the pounding of a drum, it distracted him somewhat from the experience, yet was no less painful.

He began to think.

Is this what it was like for Eilinel?

He imagines the two awkward youths on their wedding night, their bodies still barely past the lanky teenagehood of every limb seeming vastly disproportionate to its intended use or owner. He imagines, and tries to remember, how it had felt to both be new, to have only as vague preconception resembling assembly instructions more than intimacy or romance.

He tries to remember their life then. Yes, they had been happy. But happiness had different levels, and one sacrifices certain things for one's lover. He thinks, and remembers her shyness, her blushing cheeks, and how she had wept against his chest that night, how they had held and wept against each other, thinking they understood the perfect joy and perfect pain...

...but did they? Could they ever know each other so well? Could any couple?

And now he thinks of how quiet she was, of how gentle and loving and how... passive she had been, after that first night. How she had given him all, as they had been taught to expect a wife should do. Had it been like this for her every time? Surely not every time, and she had wanted the children so badly, but...

...Had he put her through this, night after night, for lack of either of them knowing how to change it? And had she simply learned to accept it, as he is beginning to learn now, as he is feeling the seeds of acceptance and beginning to understand how one could learn to let it be this way, for the sake of a loved one, for the sake of not knowing how to stop, for the sake of one's sanity telling oneself it was always like this, and the pain wasn't his fault... no, not his fault, not his intention.

He closes his eyes against the blinding glare that is the experience of seeing things in a whole new light, and realizing he'd been wrong since the beginning, been blind since the start.

She had never wept after that first night.

But there are tears on Gorlim's cheeks now: both for his own fear, his own shame, and for the sake of the best-loved girl he now thinks must have suffered the same for the sake of their marriage.

[ten_of_swords]

Ruin doesn't slow in his pace, but he does give kisses, nuzzles, murmured words of love and desire. He has a sense of what Gorlim is thinking, feeling, but not the exact thoughts. He's sure that whatever the Man is thinking, the god will suffer for later.

Whatever revelations, justification, or explanations, there would be suffering when this was over.

Always suffering.

He hated it.

He hated being the one who had to do it. Why him? Why did he have to know these things? Why did he have to start caring all over again?

It wasn't FAIR!

His hand clenches on wrists, eyes shimmering.

In the guise of another, his eyes could find the release of tears.

It was a role.

Always a role.

[gorlim.livejournal.com]

He doesn't notice, or in the silent chaos of his troubled mind, interprets nothing from the Vala's tears. He gives as Namo might expect him to, the touches, kisses, but not the heart, not the passion. That doesn't seem to matter right now anyway.

He wants the woods. The trees would tell him what had happened. Their sympathy, their perfect self-awareness... a tree could not be uncertain of itself. They guide his confusion... if not into understanding, then at least into more manageable pathways.

He could go to the trees, if not to his Vala.

[ten_of_swords]

He doesn't care about heart or passion.

Ruin never did.

The act progesses as it should, with his lips taking Gorlim's as body took body. Regardless of interest, friction leads the way to completion. With Gorlim passively accepting the attentions, it's easier. Swifter.

Ruin throws his head back as his body arches, thrusting deeply as orgasm washes through him. Then he releases Gorlim's wrists, panting as he pulls away from the man.