orifice | beyond the sea.

“He felt like the last bullet in a gun
meant for revenge, sealed with a kiss.”

Pete Wentz

He goes out on the steps for a smoke. He says that he needs the stars and he needs the air and no one understands, but Isaac has never truly given a fuck about someone since Nicole died, white and soft in his arms with blood pouring from her mouth. She comes to see him every night in the form of ether and light and when he wakes up, it's in a puddle of his own sweat and damp sheets and the sensation of feeling empty and cold and begotten. The door shuts behind him and for a moment, he glances over his shoulder before digging out a crinkling package of Lucky Strikes. The match is loud (too loud) against the strip on the small matchbook. He lights up and tucks it away, taking a long and weary drag before sinking slowly to the pavement.

The August air is simmering, even in the evening, and Isaac pulls at his throat, undoing two more buttons on the shirt so that whatever breeze exists sweeps over the crest of his collarbones. He draws long and hard on the cigarette for quite a time until it protests against his fingers. he drops it and tamps it out against the toe of his shoe, lighting up another. It goes on like this for perhaps four more cigarettes (or maybe five, Isaac never keeps track) before the sound of quiet steps echoes in the dark.

He could bring himself to care and look up, so he does, gray-blue eyes like weather and lips thin as he breathes in, lets the smoke settle. Jack is a shadow against the pavement before he is an actual man of tall stature with hands that might seem too large on any other body, but suit him perfectly. Isaac rises, perhaps out of courtesy, simply to stretch his legs from the cramped position on the steps.

"You're late," he says and the smoke curls from his lips like a separate body, thick and white ("It's Toasted" says the box, empty, that he crumples and drops into a can nearby).

"Fashionably."

"Late's late," Isaac says, not quite caring whether it's fashionable or not to keep a body waiting a half hour for the sake of appearances or laziness. Whatever it is, he finds it inexcusable (as life has always taught him to be early or punctual lest you want your head blown off).

Most would respond with a short "I'm sorry" or "forgive me" but Jack knows better. If the words come from his mouth, Isaac is sure to wrench his jaw from his face and shove it down his throat in the form of a fine powder. The walk instead of talk, Jack taking long and even strides and Isaac's own jaunty and quick, tapping on the pavement. They are a sharp contrast to one another, though in a way one might take them for brothers at night. Perhaps it is the like stance of their shoulders, or the way their eyes move, even as Isaac's are sleepy-looking and cold and Jack's are warm, but dangerously keen and if you look closely enough you could feel it like a bullet to the heart.

They move like this, side by side and Jack tells him about a knucklehead who found himself between a knife and a hard place and Isaac laughs like a gunshot, sweet and low in the dark.

-

Frank Sinatra croons from behind the door to Jack's bedroom and Isaac finds that the song could never be more true.

"This is a bad idea," Jack says when the door is closed behind them and the cigarette between his lips is at its end.

Isaac plucks it from his mouth and drops it into the stale cup of coffee at the door (probably forgotten in haste), listening to the hiss of it protesting its end.

"Who ever said I was full of good ones?" Isaac mutters and wets his lips. Jack breathes out, a mouthful of smoke. Their hands move carefully; Isaac slides the deadbolt forward and Jack turns the lock on the door behind him, slow and easy. Between the click and rattle of the chain, their eyes do not falter, like a game, and Isaac grabs hold of his shirt and establishes the lines and boundaries with his mouth and with his hands.

He pushes Jack down onto the bed and that is that.

You're getting to be--

"Turn the damn thing off."

A habit with me.

"I like it," Jack says between kisses as Isaac unbuttons his shirt and Jack pushes down his suspenders, hooking fingers in his pants already.

He mutters that the music makes him sentimental.

Jack says that maybe he prefers it that way.

-

The radio is soft in the background and Isaac is pinned beneath the weight of Jack's head on his chest. He'd like to get up, maybe tune the dial so it isn't on some soft crooning man. He wonders if this is how Jack sleeps, deep with eyelashes against his cheeks and his lips moving now and then, parted to make a noise or pressed tightly as if to ward away something less than pleasant.

Reaching an arm out, he pats the nightstand, small and dark and finds a thin box. Jack smokes most anything, he's found--yesterday it was Pall Malls, today it's Parliaments and Isaac is rarely picky, but they're not his favorites. "I wish you had better taste," he says quietly to the dark and Jack hears him, fingers tapping against his ribs sharply.

"Shut up."

It's gravelly and rough and it's what he wants out of his mouth.

Isaac chuckles in turn and Jack's head tilts a bit so that his chin is digging into his sternum just as Isaac picks up the small matchbook and lights up. Jack busies himself, fingers tracing with care the lines on his chest, the kind that make lions and knots out of ink and the words Gaoth na scrataí Bothair carved into his side from scar tissue--the straight edge blade of bone handle knife for gutting fish.

Jack edges up a bit and the sheets bunch between them. He lays between his legs and Isaac looks many things--unamused and pleased at once. He's difficult to figure, but Jack is smart and rests his full weight against him, pressing him against the pillows and mattress. Jack's voice isn't perfect and his accent, at least to Isaac, is clumsy (but Isaac has never been one for foreign language beyond his own).

"Stop it," he mutters, but Jack is no one's but his own and leans up so his lips brush his ear as he murmurs La Mer to him in a way that makes his throat go dry and his cigarette burn, wasted at his fingertips. He slackens against the sheets, and the energy he might have had before, and the hard hands with fingers that grip like iron wastes away. Jack's fingers find him from beneath the sheets, both of them still slick, and he pushes in with a subtle damp noise.

"Et d'une chanson d'amour--"

"Fuck--"

"La mer a bercé..."

He thrusts slow, to slowly and Isaac's cigarette finds the small plate for ashes on the floor while his arms find Jack's shoulders, drape lightly.

"Mon coeur pour la vie."

Isaac slides fingers into Jack's hair, his mouth leaning up to slant against his lips because he thinks that Jack shouldn't sing anymore. It isn't easy on the ears, and it certainly isn't easy on the heart.