Vanhattan

The ground is hard as brick beneath him, and as cold. Grass like so many long, frosted feelers pricking at his legs through his jeans. Breeze brisk and biting playfully at the soft skin of his cheeks until they turn to rosy pink apples.

He watches her across from him, watches the wind whip her hair into a brilliant red net over her face, watches her struggle to keep a thousand stray strands from sticking to the clear juice spilling from the corners of her lips. Peach juice, from the gorged fruit half-eaten in one hand, while the other frantically pulls at her hair. A small squeal of frustration comes keening from her throat.

She’s having a very difficult time.

He’s having a very good one.

She scowls at the smile that pushes its way onto his face.

“It’s not funny,” she says. Clenched jaw, protruding bottom lip. He longs to tug it between his teeth.

Compensates by taking the peach from her and sinking his teeth into a section of unbroken flesh. His mouth is flooded with sweetness. Coats his tongue and the insides of his cheeks and he slurps at the fruit to draw forth every last drop. Lets nothing go to waste.

“It’s a little funny.”

The only thing sweeter than the peach in his hand is the furrowing of her brow and the sudden burst of indignant color through her face. Maybe embarrassment? But what she has to be embarrassed of, with him, no less, he doesn’t know.

How is it possible she doesn’t know?

Nonetheless, she licks her hands as clean as she can, dries them on her pants, and clumsily drags what hairs remain out of her eyes and away from her lips with the heels of her palms. She pulls in a huge sigh of relief. Takes the peach back and begins the process all over again.

This time she flops down onto her back after she tears off a large chunk, and her hair fans out around her head like silky ruby thread. More droplets of juice gather in the corners of her lips.

With very little warning, he leans down and laps them up before they can dribble down her soft, white cheek.

A small, surprised breath tumbles from her mouth.

“Wasteful,” he explains. His grin is large, teasing. Wolfish.

But there are children around, families lounging in the belly of the park, flying kites and buttoning thick jackets around tiny bodies, and wolves are not welcome in such environments. So he tamps down those grumblings, interested snufflings. For now. While the sun, lazy and weary after so long a summer, and still with so much autumn left to go before it can really begin to rest, droops behind the tall treetops, the even taller skyscrapers behind them, turning the only visible patches of sky in the city vibrant gold-orange and sugary pink and deep, blood red. While she lay before him, long neck stretched bare and open and smooth, bright-eyed and gazing up at the sky in peaceful wonderment.

He swallows his mouthful and dives to her hand for another. Just to tide him off.


They spend all of the remainder of the day, and much of the night, writhing between sweaty, sticky sheets. Peaches and lilac detergent and sex. Occasionally honey, when they’re feeling adventurous. They keep a jar full of it next to the bed, with bowl of fruit and fresh bakery bread, and drizzle it over whatever strikes their fancy in the moment. Apple. Ciabatta. Toes. Apple again.

She moans about the sheets sticking to her legs, moans about laundry in the morning, moans about her hair needing a wash, moans for more. Grips his fingers between hers, and his head between her soft, round thighs. She moans about that a lot.

“Should I stop?” he asks.

“No!” It’s a broken sound. Breathless and desperate and utterly wrecked. With fingernails digging into the thin cords of muscle at his neck, and soft, round thighs twitching. So overcome with sensation that cankerous thought has no room to fester. “Nodon’t….”

“Don’t?”

“Pleasedon’t.” Her lips fall open on a shaky sigh. “Don’t stop.”

He doesn’t. He can’t.

Not now, not with every bit of her trembling and shivering and so hot, so very, very hot around him, sliding up to press his lips at her neck, her jaw, her ear, sweating, sticking, arching and toomuchtooquicknotenoughdon’t—

That happens a lot. And then they melt together, useless puddles of warm muscle and skin, and sleep until one of them stirs, or their stomachs growl, and it begins again. It goes on this way until morning, when the sky spills blue and white through the curtains he’d been too lazy—too focused—to whip closed when they first stumbled through the door.

He sleeps through the sun’s resigned arrival, through his weekend alarm, and only wakes to the smell of coffee and bacon and the suspicious lack of a warm, curved body next to him. He turns over, groggy and a bit swollen and sore. When he stands, he has to peel the sheet from his back.

He stumbles into the kitchenette, where there is salt and butter and fried egg in the air now, in addition to coffee and sizzling pork, and watches her.

She wears one of his T-shirts and loose shorts, and her hair is in a disastrous ponytail, dark and in clumps where the honey has congealed. Bare feet, toenails painted glittery red, in immediate danger of popping grease. Hands fumbling with the pans and bowls and whisks and spatulas, but getting the job done.

Then she looks over at him, standing in the doorway, and smiles. A brilliant smile, large teeth and puffy, kiss-reddened lips, spreads across her pale cheeks until they turn to rosy pink apples, and this is how they love each other best.

---

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

There is never any door-slamming. Object-throwing, fist-flying.

Their bruises are not the bright purple and vomit green that splotch over damaged skin. That is not who they are. When they strike, they strike to hurt forever. Their pain will last. They are too civilized for anything else.

It comes quietly, it slithers in like a rattlesnake, with the slightest of vibrations in the air. Coils up in their chests and makes a cozy nest of bone and blood and sinew, and begins to whisper. To nip at their insides, small cuts, small doses, poison like inky black flame twisting through their veins.

It burns. Thinking burns. And it weighs down on their shoulders and their chests until their necks and heads give out and curl down, down, down, to their feet, and their arms embrace their heads and necks and backs and whatever they can, hoping to stop the burning, block it out. If they can curl away from the fire, and become as small as possible, it might hurt less.

But she is there, and he is there, everywhere, all the time, every second of every minute of every hour of every day, and the hurt never goes away. The wounds have no time to breathe, no time to heal. Skin grows new over the old and layers itself, over pus and blood and seeping viscous fluid, thicker where it hurts the most, neck and chest, flaking off as ash and dust in places where the burning reaches its peak, hot as the sun.

And they find a painful comfort in these shells, cocoons of throbbing, aching flesh where even if it still burns, it is their own. They control this burning, it is of them, and any fresh wound he can slice into her, any tear she can rip into him, simply gather on the outside, nothing, nothing to what they feel within.

He cannot hurt me as much as I hurt myself.

She cannot burn me if I already burn.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

And trapped inside, they have nothing but themselves. Their vile wants and vindictive pleasures and a seed, just a small seed, a memory of what the outside could be. A distant sense, of peaches and lilac and pungent sex. Cool, sweet fruit wetting their lips, sliding down their throats. Sticky fingers that taste like honey. Chilly breeze, filthy white sheets, fluttering kisses and eyelashes, hugs and smiles and coffee and they’re suffocating, struggling for breath, for the rush of familiar, cool air, flesh flaking and dying faster, layer after layer curling into black scab and dropping away, raw, bruised hearts and toomuchtooquicknotenoughdon’t—


They do that a lot.

So the apartment floor is riddled with shed worries and broken ego. They don’t sweep much, because they know it’ll just get dirty again. But those kinds of messes don’t chase company away. Company can’t see the flecks of pain dotting the tile like they can, and if company can’t see it, maybe they can walk through the filth without seeing it, too. It’s much more convenient, more pleasurable, to attend to the fruit and the honey and the bread when it strikes their fancy, and to sweep only when the floor is lost.

Then, they sweep together, all at once, knowing that they miss more than they should, knowing that it will return, and this is how they love each other best.