9: Shipwrecks and Stupid Questions, Part VI
READ THIS ISSUE 9, IGNORE ALL OTHER ISSUE 9s
¡Hola amigos! Aprendo español. I’m learning Spanish this year in preparation for a trip in the summer.
Anyway, hi. It’s been a strange one. A couple days ago, our hamster Rainbow Tables — named for a computer hacking tool used for cracking password hashes — passed peacefully in his sleep at the hands of our local vet, at the ripe old hamster age of 2.4-ish years. He will forever be remembered for his stressfully ingenious and persistent escape attempts, and also his adorable face, which you can see here.
So that’s been … sad. Definitely sad.
ON THAT NOTE. Here’s some more writing :)
Part VI of SHIPWRECKS AND STUPID QUESTIONS occurs one section break after Part III (if you’re not caught up, you can read from the beginning here). I’m classifying it as follows: NSFW, but not in a way where I’ll bother adding any more notes.
Here goes:
He took my hand, like we were newly paired-up teenagers, pulling me to the bedroom. Towards my bedroom, which — no, don’t, don’t think about how many nights he’s spent there, about how many more he might, if he ever would again —
‘What are you doing?’ I said, when we reached the foot of my bed.
Killian grinned. ‘What does it look like?’
He let go of my hand — I tried to ignore the pang that followed — and then his palm was splayed over my sternum, his fingertips brushing my collarbone, pushing just hard enough against my chest to unbalance me.
I could’ve recovered if I’d wanted to, easily. Instead, I let myself fall backward onto the bed, and a second later he followed, landing on top of me, still with that devilish smile, his hands threading through my hair as he kissed me and I lit up with the heat of his body all down mine.
It was everything I’d wanted, everything I’d missed since we’d broken up — if you didn’t count all the other, far more painful things, that is, the things I tried only to think about when I had a pen in my hand and an instrument in front of me — but alongside the elation was something else, something needling at me from inside my rib cage.
Not the knowledge that this was undoubtedly a bad idea — a terrible, brilliant, absolutely awfully good bad idea — but something else, something worse, and when we resurfaced for air and he kissed me on the forehead like it was the most natural afterthought in the world, I realised what it was.
Hope.
Fuck.
Don’t, I thought to myself as I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled his mouth onto mine again.
Don’t think this means anything, as his heart thundered against my chest, as I saw his pupils dilating when I grinned up at him and started unbuttoning his shirt, as he let his eyes close and I stared for one moment too long at his unrealistically thick eyelashes, at his sculptor-cut face that was straight out of all my dreams and nightmares at once.
Don’t think he wants you back, as he hooked his fingers into my waistband and tugged down, as he kissed my ribs, my hip, my thigh, as I felt his breath on my skin and tried not to shake as he lowered his head between my legs.
Don’t —
Thanks as ever for reading, and I hope you liked it as much as I enjoyed writing it ♥ Also, an additional Bonus Thanks™ to everyone who’s ever let me know they like reading my stuff, at any point in time, because oh my god I’m not kidding that stuff is heroin to me. Delicious, metaphorical, don’t-think-about-it-too-much-it’s-not-meant-to-be-a-one-to-one-analogy heroin.
PEACE.