i'm a ghost around this town and you're a phantom limb

VESPER

At Colt’s broken rasp, Vesper answers with everything he has left to give. His hand tightens against her hip, palm splayed wide and possessive as if to stake claim to the trembling body beneath his. He pins her down as his hips drive forward with a brutal, relentless rhythm, each thrust timed to the hard snap of his pelvis and the cruel perfection of his shadows dragging pleasure across her clit in tandem. His feet brace against the arm of the couch behind him, knees locked, toes curling from the pressure surging up the backs of his thighs. It’s not just fucking anymore, it’s a storm, violent and unrepentant, tearing through both of them with the same reckless abandon.

Her name leaves him in a low growl, ground out between clenched teeth. "Colt," he gasps, breath hitching as his chest drags across hers, the friction of his sweater rubbing her nipples raw in his mind where it clings to her bunched up and unwanted. His mouth stays open, panting over her throat, over the curve of her jaw, over the words he doesn’t quite dare to say. "I love fucking you," he says, voice wrecked and so hoarse it barely makes it out. But it sounds wrong even as he says it; too thin, too small for what claws through him. As though he’d meant something else entirely. Like maybe the word fucking wasn't even supposed to be there, or that there was something heavier, more dangerous, more true, tucked inside the world instead, and he’s too much of a coward to speak it aloud when his body is already giving him away and dawn is on the move.

Vesper's climax begins to crest like a wave too fast to outrun, the static buzz screaming along his nerves and up the backs of his thighs until he’s gritting out, "Gods, I’m gonna cum," on a breathless, broken warning. He covers her mouth with his—not a kiss, not even close—but a desperate collision of breath and teeth and heat, his moan snarled against her lips as if he can press himself deeper that way, as if he can melt into her entirely and not have to surface again.

rot gut whiskey's gonna ease your mind
but when the hell are you gonna ease mine?

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

COLT

I've been sleeping wide awake
Slow dancing 'round the cracks in the floorboards
Fighting myself while lying in a
Bed I made and can't ignore

She already thought herself on the edge, but he tips her even further, ensuring she'll tumble entirely into his oblivion. It's small things, just kindling amid what already blazes, but it feed the fire just the same. The way he holds her now through every thrust, like he means to keep her. The shift of his chest above hers, dragging the sweater higher with every pass, rolling sparks through her nerves. The sound of his voice coming undone against her name, like she's as much curse as prayer to him too.

It's all bearing down on her, each horribly perfect touch designed to tear her apart. Tension builds until he has her strung up in pleasure, so taut she isn't sure she can survive it this time. Through it all, his words rip through her with sudden force, hitching her breath for an entirely different reason. I love fucking you. For the briefest moment, one where a thought has enough time to emerge and begin to flutter, she hears three words instead of four. Her lungs catch on it, frozen in terrified caution and hopeful disbelief. Then she blinks, and the fourth word that'd always been there flares with all this heat between them, defrosting breath and turning wings into ash. She falls back into this rhythm of assured destruction, a smoky laugh of agreement curling from her throat in response.

When his voice spills out again, a warning between gasps, a raw "No—" pleads from her, sound swallowed as his mouth closes over hers. She doesn't want to lose him this soon, not yet, but the moment can't stretch further, least of all with him burying the last rebellion beneath his moan. There’s no line between them anymore, no thought left but his name; everything else is just noise and light and the inevitability of breaking together.

She gives in because she has to, because the fight has nowhere left to go, because surrender is the only way through. Everything inside her—breath, heartbeat, want—winds tight one last time and then snaps against his touch. The release scorches through her, a gasp of heat poured against his teeth. Her body curls up into him, hands wrapping across his back, nails biting for purchase as she drags him closer. Her tighten around him, meeting him with everything she has left, desperate to keep him as each wave of bliss pulls through her like a tide that might carry him away.

I'm tired of running from the conversations
Screaming in the silence, all alone
I'm frustrated, I can't take it
But I'll fake it, then I'll hate myself again

VESPER

Vesper feels it before he hears it, that hitch. The way her thoughts snag like fabric on thorns, catching on the words he hadn't meant to give her. Whether or not he'd done it on purpose is irrelevant, not when her reaction is instant and piercing; reverberating through him with enough clarity to knock the air from his lungs. His breath stutters, eyes squeezing shut as if that could block out the way her mind briefly opens like a wound, soft and terrified and hopeful all at once. She hears three words instead of four. And gods, gods, he feels it bloom inside her like a flame caught in the rafters; brief, brilliant, and destined to collapse the structure.

He doesn't stop moving. Can’t. His hips keep their punishing rhythm, shadows still coiled tight against her, desperate to coax every last flicker of ecstasy from her even as something larger looms like a storm on the edge of the world. Because he knows what comes next, they both do. Her moaned no isn’t confusion or resistance. It’s grief, it’s please don’t leave yet, and it hits him like a blow to the chest, hollowing him out mid-thrust until it feels like his own body is resisting itself. He couldn’t stop the tide of his release even if he wanted to—not now, not with her gasping and burning beneath him—but as it surges through his spine and crashes into him with a full-body jolt, his mind reaches for hers. Not to speak, not to reassure, just to feel. To bury himself in the white-hot detonation of her orgasm. To steal the pleasure of it from her thoughts and make it his own. To lose himself inside the vivid, visceral glory of her as she breaks beneath him, not because he’s cruel or greedy, but because he doesn’t know what else to hold on to. Because he can’t handle what waits for him in the silence after. What waits in the knowledge that this is temporary. That every heartbeat between them is counting down to departure.

So his shadows don’t release her and neither does his hand. He clutches at her hip like he’s drowning, even as the last shudder rips through him and his moan slants open-mouthed against hers, no finesse, no softness, just breath and heat and raw, unfiltered need. He stays inside her, pressed as deep and close and still as he can manage, forehead bowed to hers like maybe if he stays perfectly still, he can delay the collapse.

But something vast and cold is already crawling up his spine. A black star devouring the light from the inside out, feeding on the warmth they’ve made. It’s not the absence of pleasure that terrifies him, it’s the absence of her, the unbearable closeness of the moment right before she’s gone; right before he leaves her, lest he force her to contort herself around him even more to fit into the shape she thinks she sees.

rot gut whiskey's gonna ease your mind
but when the hell are you gonna ease mine?

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

COLT

I've been sleeping wide awake
Slow dancing 'round the cracks in the floorboards
Fighting myself while lying in a
Bed I made and can't ignore

For a few heartbeats she can’t tell where his shivers end and hers begin. Everything inside her pulses with the same rhythm, fading, fading, fading...until there’s nothing left but the ache of where he still is—somewhere he'll always be, no matter the distance he tries to set between them.

His weight presses down, not heavy, but felt. Each of them is gripped with fear of moving, but certain things can't help but shift. The heat between them begins to thin into smoke, unwilling to linger even if they are. The moment won't hold them back, and breath comes out however hard she tries to hold it back, breaking whatever fragile truce they’ve made with the silence.

She wants to say something, anything, but the words pile up behind her teeth. The wrong one will ruin whatever this still is and the right one doesn’t exist. Instead her hands loosen on his back, spilling through his hair like it's water as she lets them fall away, dragging the last idea of comfort with them.

The firelight flickers across his face, trying to pretend there's still warmth left. She eases herself back into the embrace of the couch, a sigh into the world that's full of a truth she won't say any louder than letting blankets reclaim her body. The distance at least lets her see the stars again, her gaze trailing across the pattern of a constellation on his cheek, a faint smile answering it's subtle shine.

The air's heavy, smelling of the sweat they worked up and the way a fire gets when it begins to burn out into charcoal and dust. "I'm gonna miss you sugar."

I'm tired of running from the conversations
Screaming in the silence, all alone
I'm frustrated, I can't take it
But I'll fake it, then I'll hate myself again

VESPER

It’s the coldest come down he’s ever known. Not in body—that still thrums with aftershocks and residual heat—but in mind. In the space where her thoughts should echo, there’s only quiet. Not peace, not calm. Absence. A door slamming shut with all the finality of winter wind, its breeze catching in his chest like a warning. Normally, pleasure lingers for him. Echoes. Most people bask in it for seconds, but Vesper usually feels the resonance curl outward, doubling back like waves on the shore. But now? Now it just ends. Gone like a candle snuffed in a dark room, the smoke already forgotten.

His fingers soften on her hip, the grip gone slack as his weight dips faintly to one elbow. The other hand curls in the pile of blankets bunched by her ribs, needing somewhere to go. He wants to raise it—to press his palm to her cheek, to kiss her again, gently this time—but what would that do? What would it mean?

He still can’t tell her what he is. Still can’t be the man she deserves, not with what he knows and how he knows it. The secrets coil tight around his ribs, a noose of his own making. He can’t give her more without betraying the truth he’s never allowed himself to say. One more night would only deepen the ache, sharpen the edges of goodbye, and he’s already bleeding beneath his skin.

So instead, he lifts his head just enough to look at her. She’s wrecked, but gloriously so. Limbs sprawled like she’s sunk into the cushions themselves, her breath still ragged beneath the rise and fall of the blanket. Her hair’s a mess of gold and shadow against the pale fabric, wild and damp with sweat at her temples. Firelight tries to kiss her skin back to warmth, catching on the slick curves of her chest beneath his sweater. She looks like a goddess ruined on the altar of herself, and he has to bite the inside of his cheek not to lean down and worship her all over again.

But it’s her eyes that undo him. Not the brightness of them—though they shine with everything she’s not saying—but the way they hold him like a memory already fading. Like she knows he’s not hers to keep, even if she wanted to be kept.

Her words land like the softest blow, and he flinches before he smiles. His throat works around something jagged. Say it. Say anything. Say she can visit. Say you’ll write. Say this isn’t the last time and you'll only be up North. But the words sit heavy and inert on his tongue, as if even touching them might make it worse. So he exhales, slow and barely audible, and offers the one thing he can give her. Something impossibly true

"I’ll miss you too."  The words fall with surprising weight, not rehearsed or polished like so many things he’s said before, but raw and unguarded. And as soon as they’re spoken, he feels their truth settle into the hollows of his chest like smoke clinging to embers. He will miss her—is already missing her—even as he lays beside her, even as her warmth lingers beneath his skin and her scent clings to him. It’s a truth that startles him with its sharpness, not because he hadn’t cared, but because he hadn't realized how much until just now. And still, it doesn’t shift the axis of what must come next. It doesn’t change the gnawing fact that he can’t be what she needs, not without exposing every secret, every thread of darkness stitched into his mind. So he swallows the rest—the explanation, the apology, the ache—and lets the silence reclaim him, his hand falling quiet in the blankets between them.

rot gut whiskey's gonna ease your mind
but when the hell are you gonna ease mine?

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

COLT

I've been sleeping wide awake
Slow dancing 'round the cracks in the floorboards
Fighting myself while lying in a
Bed I made and can't ignore

It's strange, how easy it is to shift from needing every inch of him pressed against her like a second skin, certain she couldn't exist without another press of his fingers or curl of his breath, to accepting the hollow feeling that follows. He’s still there, close, but she can feel the drift beginning, like water rushing in through a crack now that they've parted. After the way they burned, everything else can only feel cold by comparison.

She doesn't let him go, not completely. Her legs remain tied against him, pressing in quietly whenever he shifts too far. If he means to make it out of here whole, he'll have to wait until she's fallen asleep. If she were braver, she'd slip into the shower, let the sound of the water hide the opening and closing of her front door—but she's never been brave with him. So she remains, selfishly wrapping what's left of the moment around herself like time is just another blanket she can wear, until it too becomes threadbare.

His admission presses in on her chest and her head tips back with it, slow and grateful. Something better than unbothered. Not loud, but honest. Her eyes shut briefly, as though savoring its echo, and she sighs softly to make room for it inside her. "A shame then," she muses, lips twisting a bit, as if this is some shared joke between them now and not an exit wound making a mess of the night. "That you're such a good employee." She has warned him before about being too good, and now he's gone and done it again. She can't blame him though, work matters, she knows. As much as she doesn't like it, she understands it.

She turns to rest her head in the crook of a cushion, gaze lifting to find him. It catches on the terribly attractive way he sprawls in the afterglow of unraveling—every line of him softened for a second, each breath stitching him slowly back together. Sweat gleams along his collarbone, catching firelight until it looks like he’s burnished bronze. His hair’s tossed, pale strands clumping together in chaotic curls, a display of her handiwork that she's deeply satisfied with. He looks ruinous and rebuilt all at once, and the sight of him makes her ache in a way that isn’t entirely physical; something half hunger, half heartbreak.

She considers, for just a moment, not accepting this. Refusing it with every part of her to see if shoving back on truth could alter it, something she's admittedly not well versed in. The world has broken, awful parts to it, and she has always taken them in stride, knowing there's balance. Sunshine and storms each have their place. This though, him leaving, it feels like a storm she should do more than shelter from.

Her teeth catch on her lower lip as she studies him, cradling the blue of his eyes like they might hold an answer she hasn’t learned to ask for yet.

I'm tired of running from the conversations
Screaming in the silence, all alone
I'm frustrated, I can't take it
But I'll fake it, then I'll hate myself again

VESPER

Vesper huffs out a low laugh, the sound wry and paper-thin as it brushes against her shoulder. "Bein’ a shitty employee’s a lot harder when it’s the family business," he mutters, voice rough with the ache of things he can’t fix. His brow furrows faintly, not with amusement exactly, but with the hollow kind of irony that tastes bitter even in the back of his throat. One hand curls lightly in the blankets near her ribs, as if pretending he’s not still holding on.

They don’t move much after that. The hours bleed together in slow waves, marked only by the soft crackle of dying fire and the small, unconscious shifts that happen when two bodies cool and settle. Time has no edge to it here, just a deep, strange stillness that wraps around them like the dark outside the window. Her leg remains hooked over his, her cheek occasionally brushing against his collarbone, and even as sleep threatens to drag him under, he resists.

He doesn’t want to lose this; doesn’t want to wake in some colder bed weeks from now and wonder if he imagined the rise and fall of her breath, the press of her knees against his hips, the shape of her mouth around his name. But this can’t be a beginning no matter how much of her he wants to carry with him, it would only weigh her down if he stayed. There’s too much of him she’ll never know, too much he’ll never be able to say. He can feel it humming at the edges of her mind, that instinctive reach for something solid, some truth that won’t slide out of her grasp once he’s gone. And gods, he wants to give it. Just once, to tell her everything.

But that’s not how this ends.

So he watches instead. Watches the slackening of her muscles, the gentle drift of her mind as it finally begins to slip beneath the surface of sleep—not the tense mimicry of it she held onto before—but the real thing, the soft, unguarded kind that only comes when she thinks he might still be here when she wakes. He’s not sure what part of that lie he hates more: the fact that he let her believe it, or the fact that some part of him wishes he could make it true.

Still, he lingers, longer than he should. Long enough to smooth a stray curl behind her ear with a tenderness that makes his throat tighten. Long enough to map the constellation of her own freckles, to memorize the curve of her lip and the warmth still gathered in the dip of her collarbone. Long enough to fix her—this version of her, sweat-slick and quiet and shining in the glow of firelight—into the deepest part of his memory like a star pinned into place.

Then, slowly, he exhales. It’s silent, final, and filled with the kind of grief that doesn’t deserve a name. Careful not to stir her, he slips from the couch, shifting just enough to press his feet to the floor without making a sound. The hand that had held her for hours curls into a fist for a moment, then releases, empty. He doesn’t dress, instead, with a whisper of darkness, he misty-steps into the kitchen. No creak of the floorboards. No rustle of fabric. Just the shadows peeling back like they’ve been waiting for him. There, he gathers the scattered pieces of his clothes, one by one. His coat, his belt, the shirt she’d pushed from his shoulders. But he leaves the sweater where it is, tangled around her like a second skin. He tells himself it’s to avoid waking her.

And then he’s gone, slipping out into the dark that always seems to call him back, into an emptiness that settles with a heavy familiarity around his shoulders.

~FIN

rot gut whiskey's gonna ease your mind
but when the hell are you gonna ease mine?

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!