Into the Night

Disgusting love

The man of a thousand names held up the halves of his shirt. They clung together by a few strings, made for each other, but doomed to part.

"Aww..."

The other man lay on the bed with his sweat drenched head propped on his arm.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay the night?" Ash's bass-like voice dripped with a palpable seduction, pleading for him to reconsider. He rubbed inviting circles in the black sheets in front of him. He hoped he'd take his pants off again and let him fall asleep to his scent swirling in his nose.

"You could fall asleep in my arms, wake up to my lips on yours..."

The primal lust that plagued Ash converted into the tooth rotting sweetness that Sella couldn't stand. The kind that wanted to hold hands, banter, and cuddle. Yet it came along with the neatly packaged dream of a white picket life.

"If I don't get back soon Aunt Lily will probably freak out," Sella answered honestly. "I'd rather not risk her coming here looking for me. She might light the house on fire and smoke us out."

They already burned down a Ferrari. Escalating to a house fire didn't sound too far fetched to him. Lilian may not have a maternal instinct in her heart, but she still had a heart. It was malformed and mostly scar tissue, but she cared for him like the son she never had nor bothered to want.

"I'll call you when I get back, okay?"

Ash collapsed on his back, straining the well worn bed. Where was he supposed to go from there? Information needed to be exchanged before they could go any further. Yet they bypassed that important step from affection to gratification, leaving them to play catch up.

"Yeah, that's..."

Not even one day together and he was already lying to him.

"... okay."

Sella pouted at his glumness. He leaned down to make eye contact with him, his quickly growing obsession. He smiled sardonically at him.

"Come on big guy, don't be that way," he pleaded with a hand on his cheek. "I really do like you, I don't know where this is going but I want to see where it takes us. If I could stay, I would, but that would complicate things."

Ash stared past him with a secret clawing at the back of his teeth. Instead of a confession, a question squeezed past.

"Would you have to love me to accept me for who I am?"

How queer, Sella thought.

"No, I think that I would have to accept you for who you really are before I could ever truly love you. Otherwise, who's the man I've convinced myself I'm in love with?"

Sella answered without giving it much thought. He spoke off the cuff, before dropping the two halves of his shirt on his new lover's chest. He didn't know why he was obsessed with scent, but if it made him more comfortable who was he to deny him it?

Ash cradled his head against it with closing eyes. After the past few hours of doing most of the work, he earned the rest. He couldn't deny him one last request before he left, so he sat close to him with his hand running through his hair. He did so until he could hear a soft snoring.

Sella cautiously came to his feet, trying not to rock the bed too much. His heart tumbled on his way to the door, when a stray paper fell off the officer's dresser. He bent over to pick it back up and stared at what he began to recognize as a list of names, addresses, and occupations of local and even distant sex offenders.

"Why would he have this just laying around his house..."

And with that thought he heard a scratching, a clawing, a sound that shouldn't exist in the aftermath of their union. Ash snored away, to used to the sound to even notice it anymore.