Original Slash: Limited (repost)

[kat_lair]

This was originally written for and published in the Gay Flash Fiction online zine, now reposted here as their copyright has ran out.

Title: Limited
Author: Mistress Kat / kat_lair 
Fandom: Original slash fic
Pairing/Category: m/m, experimental
Rating: PG–13
Word count: 444
Summary: There is no number four

Author notes: Thank you to moth2fic  and razorxrosary  for looking over the story and for alexhogan  from the GFF team for a more thorough edit.

Limited

First

I’m high again; higher than a drag queen’s heels, higher than the neon lights, higher than the sky that opens up, the rain plastering the t-shirt to my chest.

I didn’t mean to, but I didn’t mean not to either, so what does that mean? Try saying that ten times fast.

My face hurts from grinning and I can feel drops of water clinging to my lips as I duck inside the club, the bouncer waving a lazy hello. I’m a good customer, yes siree.

I have my own section of wall to lean on, hips cocked in invitation.

I’m on display.

I’m a one-man show.

I’m yours for the taking.

 

 

Second

You don’t come here for relationships, you don’t even come for the good times.

You come to see and to be seen. You come for the music that makes your bones reverberate, for the blue drinks and the little pink pills and for the you wanna? and for the yeah, fuck yeah.

You come for the sex, and, ha, if you’re smart about it, you come inside a rubber.

Yeah, yeah, the joke’s on you; doesn’t mean you don’t find it funny. You’re gasping from laughter, folded in two like a fifty pound note.

And of course that’s when you see him.

 

 

Third

He walks over, swagger and sweat and a smile full of teeth. He’s after that one thing and yeah, fuck yeah, he’s going to get it.

His hands are rough and calloused, a working man’s hands on a working man’s body, and man, he sure is working it.

He gets pulled into an empty stall, the walls gritty with dirt, but it doesn’t matter because the skin under his hands is smooth and whiter than the tiles have ever been.

It’s messy in the best of ways, sharp open-mouthed desperation and he hikes his legs higher, spreads them wider, and he loves it like this, he does, he does, he does, he—

—can’t remember the colour of his eyes, only that they were closed the whole time.

 

 

There is no number four

We will not leave together. We will not wake up in the same bed and argue over the morning paper while the coffee goes black and bitter from neglect.  

Our breaths will not mingle under the covers, our socks will not get mixed in the laundry pile, our Christmas cards will not say and.  

We will not learn from our mistakes and we will not share our hurts.  

We think this is as much as we dare to ask for. We take no chances, we make no promises, we sing no foreign songs from the heart.

 

Fin.

 

Comments

[slashxmistress.livejournal.com]

Wow-ouch. That is very beautiful in a melancholy kind of way.
The pov's give it a transitory feeling that's a great analogy for a one night stand. It works for me :)

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much. I played with the povs in part for the sheer experimentation and in part to convey that kind of mixed-up, sometimes removed, sometimes intimate feel so I'm pleased it worked for you. Thanks for taking the time to read and comment, means a lot to me.

[planetkiller.livejournal.com]

I love this in a crazy kind of stalker love. Thanks for posting.

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

There is nothing wrong with a crazy stalker love, I would totally bring you tea while you skulked in the bushes outside my window :D Thank you for reading and commenting, makes me all warm and smiley!

[sadiane.livejournal.com]

Guh, I love that last line!

This feels, rather oddly, like some sort of fictional origami, all foldy and twisted up on itself, and like it should be nothing but then suddenly, one last spin and it's a paper crane, beautiful and fragile in totally unexpected ways.

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

You have no idea how happy I am that the last line worked for you. Some of the comments I received about it was that it makes no sense, which I guess logically it doesn't, but I refused to change it anyway because it makes sense to me and it was what brought the whole thing together for me.

Also, thank you so much for you feedback. Your comparison to fictional origami was amazing, I actually choked up a little bit, this has to be the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said about my writing.

[sadiane.livejournal.com]

Crazy people! 450 words of experiments fic, and they require the last line to make instant and perfect sense without having to think about it? Well, it makes sense to me, but then I obviously have a fondness for the strange metaphor - see above.

Now, if only I could get my brain to write fiction that is a comfortable with bizarre descriptions as it is describing other people's fiction. Though my first though was more in the line of "Dude, this is all spinny"

[kat-lair.livejournal.com]

Hee! "Dude, this is all spinny" describes so much about my life... *g*