More Than Darkness

Pairing: Connor/Murphy
Rating: NC17
Summary: Connor tries to make Murphy forget.
Warning: Angst.
Note: For cherryscott. It's a first time fic, in a way.
Disclaimer: True only in our heads. Boondock Saints characters borrowed from Troy Duffy. :) Everyone else belongs to themselves. No harm meant.



More Than Darkness

I thought I'd grown out of nightmares long ago, but I've been proved wrong. As soon as my heart starts beating normally, I get up, careful not to disturb you. It's raining outside, and the window's cool as I sit on the sill, my side pressed against the glass. I fall into something like a trance, watching the drops coalesce, dribble down, thicken, split again into two separate rivulets. I'm not sure how long I watch it. Long enough to forget the fear.

Long enough to pray that, when the lights go out, there'll be something more than darkness.

I don't even realise I'm doing it until I feel a pain in my hand. I look down; I've been gripping the cross on my rosary so hard that it's bitten into my palm, drblooblood. "God," I whisper. As though He will answer. As though He will tell me what I've done that's so wrong. I know, already. I've no right to demand answers from God when this room has become my Church, your body my altar. Though my love for Him has never waned, it has changed.

Would I still die for God? If it was all that I could do, yes.

I'd die for you in a heartbeat. I wonder if you know that, suppose that you must.

I press my fingertips to the glass, watch the elements rip through the night. There's a tree across the street, one of those straggly monstrosities that the city plant to try and make things look a little greener. Its branches are bending, snapping in the wind. I think it must be the only time it's looked anything close to beautiful. In the shadows it throws, something else moves. Grows, until I feel your warmth preceding you, see your sleepy eyes more clearly. You touch my shoulder.

"What's wrong?"

"Couldn't sleep." I look up, watching your face as you turn your body to sit beside me. "Nervous, I guess."

"About tomorrow?" Your hand is warm, sliding over my shoulder and curling up to grip the back of my head. I don't resist, can't resist, when you pull me towards you, rest your forehead to mine. "There's nothin' to worry about. Not when I've got your back, right?" I hear the smile in your voice and tilt my head to catch it with a kiss. I need your smiles right now. You pull gently at my hair, and I sit back again, feeling ridiculously like a child. "Come back to bed," you say.

"I don't know if I can sleep." Flashes of the nightmare come back to me; the lights going out, the deep loneliness, the silence. Oh, God, and the darkness drawing the life out of me.

You touch my cheek, brow turned down in the hint of a frown. "Come back to bed anyway." You get up, offering your hand to me. I look out at the rain again, can almost feel it on my face, icy and violent. Then your fingers are curling around mine and you pull me to my feet.

I'm going to die tomorrow. Glass will shatter, the lights will go out and all I'll have left is the darkness and my last breath. I remember the phrase, 'with his dying breath.' What do I use mine for? To pray, forgiveness for my sins? Or to tell you that I love you? Are they not one and the same thing?

Your lips come close to my ear, I feel the air move as you whisper warmly, "Stop thinking about it." You sit me down, kneel on the bare floor in front of me. "I won't let anything happen to you."

"I know." And I wish I could believe that you would be able to stop what's coming. I'll try to, I think, at least for tonight. My stomach flutters when you touch it, and I close my eyes when your fingertips pry their way into my shorts. Every time you touch me... God, you make me feel so inept. "Ohh." You curl your hand around me, and the roughness of it has me groaning, lifting my hips for more.

Your palm stills, two fingers extended to stroke more gently. You press your lips to the inside of my knee, a playful lick making me squirm. Damn you for knowing all my ticklish spots. Damn you because I love every time you rediscover them. Your breath huffs out, hot, as you chuckle at my reaction. I know what's coming next, when your palm rolls down, the tips of your fingers pushing lower to tickle behind my balls. I know, but I still jump, yelping your name. You rise up, climb into my lap and swallow your own name before I can get it out again. You still stroke, teeth and tongue attacking my mouth. You do this sometimes, and I know when you do because I can feel you starting to let go, become something wild, abandoned. You do it to make me forget.

"Connor... Conn." I pull you back, waiting till your eyes focus on me properly. "Don't." I move back, pulling you down with me. "I want you to..." I swallow, my vision filled with your wide eyes.

"Want me to what, Murphy?"

"Fuck me. Please." Until tomorrow, just do this for me. Let me receive what I've only ever given. I bite my lip and correct myself. "Make love to me."

I can see it in the way your eyes flicker down my body; the question that you're burning to ask. What's gotten into me?

"You sure?"

I nod, reaching to push off my shorts. "Positive." I need this. I've been needing it for a while, but now it just seems imperative. It simply has to happen. "Don't think about it, Conn. Just..." You drag my shorts away from me, and my words die in my throat. I should have known that you wouldn't need to be asked twice.

You sit up, reaching for my hand. I don't need to be asked either, curl my fingers around you and stroke fervently, eyes never leaving your face. I listen to you gasp, feel you slipping through my fingers when, panting, you pull back. "Jesus," you whisper. "Slower, Murph. We've got all night." You touch my lips and my eyes, and I want to confess to you. I want to tell you everything. But then you lean in and kiss me, and I can't say another word. I love how you kiss me; the way your palm curves to hold me into it, the way you seem to find one part of my mouth sweeter than the rest and slide your tongue over and over until my own is almost numb.

You ask me in a hushed voice if I'm ready. I nod, noticing for the first time that you're nervous, too. I should have realised that I'm not the only one who doesn't know what this feels like. Your warmth leaves me, not for long, and then you're back and sliding your hands beneath my knees to lift them.

It's warm, softer than I thought it would be, when your finger circles, enters me. Not painful or uncomfortable, just... Odd. And there's another, and you're looking down at me so I part my lips and exhale, whisper your name. You tell me to breathe and, God, I would if it weren't for you leaving me breathless and shaking. Shaking, and this is just the beginning.

You push yourself up, hands coming to rest above my shoulders. You don't take your eyes off me, and that's faith that I see as you lower again, the slide of your cock a sweet burn.

"Connor." I grab at your shoulders, your hips, pulling you into me. I meant it when I asked you to fuck me. I want to feel it. I want it to be with me still, when I'm alone in the dark.

You lean your weight on one hand, stroke my hair with the other and it just makes it so much more of you. Gentle and strangely beautiful, though you move against me, inside me, with a desire, a strong sense of purpose. You want to feel it, too. You want me to remember. How do you think I could ever forget this? The smell of your skin, salt and winter, the sound of your quick breaths like flashes through the night, the way you move, your shoulders hunched, teeth chewing into your lip. How could I ever forget something as beautiful as you?

I had no idea, really. That it would be this powerful. Then you touch me, and you curse in one breath, swear your love to me in the next and it should seem obscene somehow but it doesn't and I want to cry those words with you but I can't seem to find my voice any more. Your hand wrapped around me makes it impossible. The look in your eyes, like you've found heaven, kindles something painful within me. I can't name it, can't think when your fingers splay with the gradual widening of your eyes.

It's like a dream when you come, your hand slipping all over me forcing me to follow you. You shudder, tensing and relaxing, speaking words in tongues that run into one another and become almost meaningless. And still your eyes are on me, dark and wild. Is that how I look to you?

You finally collapse, shifting to leave my body. I feel full. I feel empty. God, above it all I feel loved.

*

When the morning light finds us, we are little more than limbs wrapped around one another, hearts beating and lungs drawing in breath. I watch you in silence; it only takes you a minute or two to notice the change in the rhythm and wake.

You look right back at me, a new intensity in your stare. Now I know what it is that's gnawing at my gut. Regret. That I didn't ask for this sooner, because you look so alive this morning and I feel so...

"I can hear y'thinking, Murphy." You smile, kiss me. "Tell me."

"I'm going to die today. Alone in the dark." I look at you, expecting shock, expecting fear, or at the very least for you to tell me not to be so fuckin' stupid.

But you say nothing, just pull me closer and whisper to me. "Not alone, Murphy. Never alone."

end.