Domingo en fuego
I think I lost my halo
I don't know where you are
You'll have to come and find me, find me
Domingo en fuego
I think I lost my halo
I don't know where you are
You'll have to come and find me, find me
- Polarize, Twenty One Pilots
•••
"Hey guys." Michaels voice rings out among the group, and Luke stops moving. "I think you might wanna see this."
We've been walking for hours, and we're well into the afternoon. I'm not the best at guessing distances, but we have to be close to the capital. I don't know how much longer my weak, malnourished body can take this. Especially with Luke's sullen glances when he thinks I'm not looking, and Xavier's sympathetic eyes every time he sees me.
Michaels looking down at his hands, his fingers moving lightly in front of him, and I realize it's his smart computer that he's studying. Luke and Ivy move to stand beside him, and by the way their eyebrows furrow I can tell he's discovered something strange.
"It detects a massive open space below us." He says, pulling his lip between his teeth. "Bigger than any aquifer I've ever seen. It's a quarter mile wide and a quarter mile long."
"A perfect square." Luke says. "That is strange." He seems to think for a moment, before asking "Where is the center?"
Michael frowns. He studies the computer some more, before turning around and jogging about a hundred yards away to face us. "Right here."
The group follows Luke over to him like ants. Michaels kicking at the ground, his eyebrows pulled together. Luke bends down and swipes a hand over the ground, only to uncover blue metal.
His hand freezes, hovering over the spot. He glances up at Michael. "Do you know what this is?"
Michael shakes his head. "Not a clue."
Luke continues to brush the ash away, uncovered a giant trap door painted blue, about 6 feet wide and seven feet long. There's no button, no handle, but it's clearly an opening to something. Written on the front in black, bold letters, is AOSS.
"What the hell?" Luke mutters, and Michael squats down next to him to run his fingers over the seam of the opening.
"Is it meant to sound like ass?" Xavier asks quizzically. They ignore him. If I wasn't so numb, I might have laughed.
"I've never heard of it." Michael says, and stands up. "But I think I might know how to open this thing."
"How?"
He takes a look around, studying the broken shell of a building we're standing in. "I'm pretty sure this was built in the bottom floor of one of the Chicago banks. I've heard of them before. It's like a sort of vault."
"Wait a second." Luke sounds incredulous. "We're in Chicago?"
Michael raises an eyebrow. "Yeah? Why."
Luke seems to shake himself out of a funk, and turns his attention back to the task at hand. "No reason."
Michael sighs. "Anyways, I need the two heaviest people to come over here and stand on the edge of it with me."
Nobody volunteers.
"Don't look at me." Zay holds up his hand. "I'm a cripple, remember?"
"I'll do it." Georgia speaks up, a grimace on her face. She's holding her newborn in her arms, wrapped up in one of the only clean blankets we have left. She walks over and stands on the edge, looking passive.
Ivy agrees as well, and copies her actions. Michael is the last to step on, and the second he does a loud click is heard and the thing starts to sink.
All of them jump off. Then the platform rises, opening up into a large hole with ladder rungs down the right side of it.
"Bingo." Luke smirks, and moves to sling himself over the edge. His muscles flex as he grabs onto the rungs, climbing down just enough to see just his face.
"We'll send a signal when we get to the bottom, to tell you all if it's safe or not." Luke says, and jerks his head in Michael's direction. "Come on."
Three, four, five minutes pass of us all standing in silence as Michael and Luke make their way down into the strange hole. Then three sharp whistles ring out, and Ivy quickly gives out instructions on how to navigate the rungs safely and two at a time. Me and Xavier are the first ones to go, and the second my whole body is submerged into the hole it's like I'm breathing in new air. Fresh, and clean air. That's even more strange.
We reach the bottom fairly quickly to find a long hallway lit by lanterns, the walls, ceiling and floor all concrete. There's a huge set of double oak doors at the end. Luke and Michael stand at the beginning of it.
Luke's eyes flit over me for half a second before he shifts his gaze to Xavier pointedly, and a spark of anger moves through me. He's being so damn cryptic and I have no idea what to do about it.
One by one everybody else makes it down the hatch. When we're all standing in the hallway, breathing hard and sweating, Luke rips a lantern off the wall and begins to lead us down to the set of double doors.
There's a strange symbol burned into the wood, one I haven't seen before. Luke barely spares it a glance, too interested in what we're about to do, and draws two knives before bracing himself.
"Ok guys." He says. "We don't know what's behind this door. It could be cash, or it could be something else. Just be prepared."
With that, he uses the heel of his boot to kick the doors apart.
I don't bother to hide the gasp that rises in my throat. Nobody else does either, apparently, because in all honestly I'm pretty sure this surprises all of us.
"Well, this is definitely not a bank vault." Michael observes, ever the calm one.
The room is massive, hexagonal in shape. There's a large table sitting in the middle, with a dozen chairs seated around it. Hallways branch off each divided section on the wall, with doors lining every one. A huge chandelier rests in the center of the ceiling, illuminating the room in a blue light. My jaw drops. I don't know what I was expecting, but this was definitely not it.
Luke's eyebrows seem to almost touch his hair line. "What the-"
"Hell." Ivy mutters, swallowing. "What the hell is this?"
As if in answer, one of the side doors opens, and a man in a full blown tuxedo steps out of it. He's older, in his forties, with cropped black hair and faded grey eyes. A blue ribbon is pinned onto the fabric of his undershirt. His expression turns from confusion to all out panic when he sees us, and then he's turning around to run, but he doesn't get that far.
A dagger sails across the room from Luke's open hand and impales itself into the man's coat, pinning him to the wall mid stride. Luke's moving so fast I can barely keep up, running to grasp the man by the wrists and slam him up against the wooden door.
"Who are you?" He hisses, and the man stares wide eyed at the soldier in front of him like he can't believe this is actually happening. "What is this place?"
Ivy's beside him now, the rest of us watching from a safe distance. The man starts breathing hard, and starts to shake his head frantically.
"Ok ok ok! I'll tell you everything! Just.. let go of me, p-please." He's got a clipped accent, one that I can't place.
Luke hesitates. Ivy nods at him, her hand on one of the balisongs at her belt.
Luke lets go of him slowly, and the man lowers the one hand that isn't pinned to the wall. He seems to swallow hard, collecting himself, before ripping the dagger from his coat and slashing his own throat with it before anybody can say or do anything.
Luke swears colorfully, blood fanning out from the man's neck and spraying at both him and Ivy. He backs up, his hands in his hair, looking as surprised and confused as I feel. The whole front of his shirt is soaked in the man's blood, and we all watch in horror as the body sinks to the ground.
"Split up." Luke immediately says under his breath, just loud enough for everyone to hear. "All of you. See if you can find anybody else and restrain them. Hurry."
The soldiers do as told, forking off into pairs to open hallway doors and disappear down them. I can't seem to make myself move at first. My legs are shaking, shock rooting me to the spot. Then Zay is grabbing my arm and pulling me towards him.
"Come on, we're going with Ivy." He says, his voice strained. Ivy nods in encouragement, specks of blood on her forehead. With some effort I am able to obey.
We go into the one hallway nobody else has, Ivy armed with one of her balisongs, slinking across the floor with the silence and grace of a cat. I try my hardest to make my footsteps light, following in line with hers, and when we reach the first door I stop completely.
Stay here. Ivy mouths, before opening the door quickly and slipping herself inside.
Various thumping noises occur almost immediately from behind the entryway, and Xavier grips tightly onto my arm. It all goes silent almost as quickly as it started. Then Ivy's coming back out and slamming the door behind her.
"They're all dead." She says, shaking her head. "Like they all have self destruct buttons or something."
"What is this place?" I ask, my voice a low whisper as we start to move forward again. One by one Ivy pushes open the doors, and almost every one has a dead body behind it. Most of the rooms seem to be bedrooms.
"Some kind of bunker, from what I can tell." Ivy replies. "I've never heard of the AOSS, but it doesn't sound good."
The hallway ends in a large room that can only be described as a massive kitchen. Four large freezers rest against the back wall, rows of sinks and stoves lining the ones next to it. At least a hundreds cases of bottled water rest beside the huge things. Two large tables sit in the middle, both much simpler than the one we saw when we first came in, both empty.
"Good lord." Xavier mutters. "No wonder these people named themselves ass."
"This is insane." Ivy says under her breath, before turning around swiftly and starting to make her way back down the hallway. Her ponytail swishes behind her. "I need to find Luke. Tell him what's going on."
Me and Xavier have to jog a little to keep up with her long legs, falling into step behind her. "You guys really don't know what all of this is?"
"Not any more than you do." Ivy sighs. "The government keeps secrets from the military too, you know. We're not necessarily considered special to people like Nasim Kieran. I mean look, she bombed a whole damn continent."
We burst back out into the main area, only to find Luke and the others already there. I don't think I realized just how much our numbers have finished. We're down to ten, not including myself.
Luke is whispering idly with Michael when the fifth door is slammed open, two more soldiers dragging a kicking man into the room. He's also wearing a tuxedo like the others, with the same blue ribbon pinned to the fabric. He's flailing his arms and doing everything he possibly can to escape, but he's not making a sound.
Luke's eyes dilate the second they land on the man. "Tie him up."
The soldiers, one I recognize as arrow girl, slam the writhing man into one of the big chairs and pin his wrists to the arms. Somebody pulls a coil of rope from their belt, a girl I don't know the name of, and ties his arms to the chair and his upper body to the back. Still the man doesn't make a sound, glaring ferociously at the people around him.
Luke leans over him, his hands resting on the man's knees. His expression is a dangerous sort of calm. "You get one chance to do this the easy way. Who are you?"
The man doesn't answer. I realize now that his cheeks are beginning to turn a bit blue, and his chest is no longer rising and falling. He's holding his breath. Luke notices a few seconds after I do, and then he's slapping the man so hard the chair reers backwards and Ivy has to catch it to keep it from falling over.
Luke grabs the man's face in his hand, squeezing so hard he has to gasp for air. "I'm gonna ask you again. Who are you?"
The man wheezes for a moment, before spitting straight into Luke's face. He doesn't even flinch. He just wipes it off with a steady hand, before smiling one of the most terrifying smiles I have ever seen in my entire life.
He pulls a knife off of his belt, and digs the tip of it into the man's chin. "You're gonna regret that."
"Luke." Ivy says, her voice strained. "Cut all you want, just don't damage his vocal chords."
"Oh I won't." Luke snickers. "In fact, I have other things in mind. You see sir, I've been in your position enough times to know what will make you talk. I know every part of the body that's most sensitive to pain. Like, per say.." Luke's hand moves so fast I barely see it at all, slicing a clean cut through the man's right eyelid, completely dividing it. "Your eyelid."
This earns him a scream, blood spraying out of the wound as the man struggles to open and close his eyes. Luke smirks wickedly, and for a brief moment I'm almost scared of him. It's like he's enjoying this.
The knife is digging into the man's chin again. "Don't make me get your dick out."
"A-Alright!" The man stutters, tears and blood running down his face. He has the same clipped accent as the other one. "I'll talk, just please put the k-knife down."
"Not gonna happen buddy."
The man stops wheezing for a second, before he seems to realize something. Then he whips his head forward, jamming the knife into his own throat.
Luke swears again, jerking the weapon out as the man coughs and twitches, crimson spraying out onto the table in front of him. Ivy grimaces as if she just saw a cockroach, turning away.
As the life leaves the man, his head slumps forward, and that's when I see the black marks.
"Hold on a second."
I walk forward and lean in close to look at the back of the man's neck, pushing his hair out of my way. As I thought, there's a tattoo. It's black ink, simple, with four interlocking letters merged into a single symbol. A, O, S and S.
"I've seen this before." Ivy says, frowning.
"It was on the door when we came in."
"No, not then." She shakes her head. "Before all of this. I don't know where, but I swear I've seen this on something."
Luke moves over to step in front of me, getting a closer look at the thing and sweeping me to the side at the same time. My hands tighten into fists at my sides. "Yeah." He mutters. "Yeah, I've seen it too."
"I can scan it." Michael says, stepping over with his smart computer. "See if it comes up in our records."
Luke nods, and moves out of the way. Michael opens a little latch on the bottom of the black box and presses a button, and a bright green light flashes out, fanning over the tattoo.
A few seconds pass by in silence as Michael types away. Then he swears, shaking his head, and clicks the thing off. "Nothing. At all. I've seen it too, but I can't put my finger on where."
"It's seriously not on the data base?" Ivy asks. Michael nods.
"Alright, so we have a weird symbol, lots of blue, and a trap door leading down into a massive underground bunker filled with suicidal people in fancy suits." Luke closes his eyes. "Wonderful."
"This is obviously a North American complex." Michael says. "Hence the blue. But I have no idea what the symbol means, or why these people are so desperate to keep it a secret that they will take their own lives."
"I need to think." Luke presses the heel of his palm between his eyes, and looks around. "Well, we might as well stay here tonight. Scope the place out. Everyone pair up again and we'll try and drag all of the bodies into one room to burn."
We do as told. This time I grab Ivy, and Zay ends up going with Jess and Ashton. I think he can tell I'm not in the mood to talk. We take one of the opposite hallways, and start opening doors and emptying rooms.
"You're awfully quiet." Ivy observes, as we both grab the feet of one of the deceased and drag him out of the room and into the designated burn one for the hallway. It doesn't bother me as much as it should. Maybe I've seen so much death at this point that it really doesn't matter much to me anymore.
"Not much to say." I retort quietly, grabbing onto women by her heels. She's terribly light, like a feather, her pantsuit swallowing her tiny dead frame. And cold. So, so cold.
"I know you like Luke, you know." She says.
I drop the women's feet in surprise, but force my expression to remain neutral. I breath in deep, calming my frazzled nerves. "I'm trying not to. He obviously doesn't feel the same way I do, not anymore."
"He does." Ivy sighs. "I see the way he looks at you, when you're not looking and he thinks he can get away with it. I've known him for three years. He can be an ass, but ninety percent of the time it's for a good reason."
"Like right now?" I ask, leaning up against the doorframe. "Like Calum's death?"
Ivy flinches a little at the other boys name, and I instantly feel guilty. She remains calm, however, tossing two bodies across the hallway like they're nothing but plastic balls. She's silent for several long moments.
"No." She finally replies. "This is the other ten percent. I don't know what's up with him this time, and I can't seem to get through to him."
"Me neither." I reply, and move to help her pick up a particularly obese dead guy and haul him to the room. He's the last one left in this hallway.
"Have you tried?" Ivy asks. "More than once, I mean?"
I think back to our confrontation that night in the alcove, him telling me to leave him alone for the last time. I haven't spoken to him since then. It's been five days, going on six. My frustration has only grown as each one has passed by.
"No." I admit, sighing deeply. "I haven't."
Ivy makes sure the concrete walls are solid, that nothing will burn up and destroy the whole place, then she uses the lighter on her belt to set the room filled with bodies on fire. The flames lick slowly along the clothes, the flesh of the deceased, until it's filled up the entire room. The smoke will just have to build up until it dissipates.
Ivy closes the door and turns back around, leaning up against the wall beside it. "Maybe you should just try talking to him."
"I have. It didn't work." I cross my arms over my chest. "He's a stubborn bastard, that's for sure."
Ivy's mouth quirks up at the corner, but the little smile is gone faster than it appeared. "Yeah, he is. But he builds up this little wall, and once you can break through it he'll open up. It just takes a little effort, and I think you might be the only one who can do it this time."
I quirk an eyebrow. "Why?"
"Because you're new. Different. Maybe your way of crashing into people's lives will work the same way with his wall." She moves off of the wall, slaps me on the back, and turns to leave. "Good luck, Alex."
With that, she's gone, her long ponytail swishing behind her.
***
The rooms in this place have bathrooms. Actual bathrooms. With showers, that have soap. And hot water. Actual soap and hot water. Not to mention the actual beds with actual sheets and an actual mattress.
I think I'm in heaven.
There were plenty of rooms for us each to have our own, since there's only about ten of us in total. We chose the ones in the middle hallway, because there was less bodies to clean out and there was barely any blood in the rooms. Luke sauntered off into the room on the very end, while the rest of us chose the ones at the front.
The kitchen proved to be ever so useful, with tons of frozen meals in the fridges and tons of water. I'm more full then I've been in weeks, and it feels so damn good.
When I get into the shower and let the water run down my back, it's ecstasy. There's even shampoo and conditioner in two dispensers, and three bars of soap. I scrub at every ounce of my skin with it until I feel clean, and run the shampoo through my hair twice before moving on to the conditioner. For a brief fifteen minutes I forget about my grief, my longing, my problem. By the time I step out, the air steamy around me, I even feel a little better.
Still, I'm so numb. More numb than I ever have been. But I know that won't go away anytime soon.
I use some blue towels hanging on a rack next to the shower to dry off, and stare glumly at my filthy clothes. I walk back into the room to the massive oak wardrobe that I was too scared to open before, and pull the doors aside.
There's six women's suits and five men's suits hanging on the rack. Below them are neatly folded sleeping clothes, underwear for both men and women, and three bras in different sizes. I choose the smallest one and slip in on, along with the underwear, and then take out one of the dress shirts from the suits and pull it over my head.
The bathroom even has toiletries in it. A simple hairbrush, toothpaste and a tooth brush. I scrub my mouth clean and spend ten minutes getting the knots out of my hair, before finally flicking off the lights and shutting the door.
I debate just going to bed, but Ivy's words ring out in my mind like a loudspeaker. Because you're new. Different. Maybe your way of crashing into people's lives will work the same way with his wall.
I make my way over to the main door, open it, and step out into the hallway. Everyone has long retired by now, going to their separate rooms to rest. The place is still lit up brightly with lanterns, however, and I have no problem finding Luke's door.
I don't bother knocking, because he probably wouldn't let me in. Instead I test the knob, find it unlocked, and let myself in.
He's sitting on the bed, thumbing a dagger from the ring on his belt. The cut running from his temple down to his chest is just starting to scab over. His black hair shines in the light of the lanterns, and when he looks up in surprise, I swear my heart jumps in my chest.
"Alexandra." Luke blinks a few times, as if shaking himself out of a daze. "What do you want?"
I shut the door behind me and not so discreetly lock it, leaning my back up against the wood. "I want to talk to you."
"You are." He says. "If it's not important, I'd rather be alone. Thanks."
"It is important."
Luke puts the dagger down. He seems to be doing everything he can not to meet my eyes. "Make it quick."
I clasp my hands together in front of me, taking a deep breath. Here goes nothing. "What's wrong with you?"
Luke coughs, and then he stands up. "Depends on what you mean. I'm pretty sure I might get arthritis when I'm older. This cut is kind of throbbing. I might be dead before I turn thirty." He shrugs, and nothing about his posture matches up to the sarcasm coming out of his mouth. "A lot of things, actually."
I can't help it, anger flares up in my chest. "Bullshit. I know you're just trying to play tough guy. I'm not stupid. What's really wrong with you?"
Luke shakes his head, his eyes dark. "Too many things, Alexandra. Too many things."
"Well why don't we start with why you're ignoring me?"
He flinches slightly as if I had moved to punch him. His shoulders are tense, his hands clenching at his sides. "I wish you wouldn't have came here."
I grit my teeth, holding in all the nasty things that are starting to unfold on my tongue. "Well here I am. And I'm not leaving here until I get an answer."
"Because Calum is dead!" Luke yells suddenly, and I know I've hit a nerve. "He's fucking dead, all because of me. That's what's fucking wrong."
"MY WHOLE FAMILY IS DEAD!" I scream back, the anger seeping into every word I say. "Every single one of them, all dead, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it, did you ever think about that?"
"At least you have a family!" Luke is shaking, his eyes two beacons of pain in this atmosphere we're stuck in. "Good God Alexandra, why can't you just appreciate what you had?"
"That's not fair." I reply angrily, taking a step closer to him. "You have a family. These soldiers, they're your family. And most of them are still breathing just rooms away from this one."
Luke swears, his hands coming up to wipe down his face. "Calum was my brother. One of the only constant things in my life, and now he's gone, because of me."
"Why?" I ask, exasperated, throwing my hands up in the air. "Why the hell was it your fault?! Because you were with me?? That's why you look at me like I kicked you in the balls? Because there's nothing in the whole damn world that you could have done to have prevented that from happening."
Luke shakes his head, pushing the hair out of his face with a trembling hand. "It was my fault."
"Why?!"
Luke swallows hard, his eyes finally meeting my own, and they're filled with so much guilt. Guilt that I don't understand, can't understand. "I can't tell you."
"Oh come the fuck on." I snarl, my whole body shaking with this delicious adrenaline I've uncovered. "What ever happened to Mister Honest huh? What ever happened to saying what needed to be said even if it had consequences? What ever happened to not caring about other people's feelings because they don't concern you? What happened to that Luke?"
"You want honest?" Luke's voice has lowered to a hiss, and goosebumps surface all over my arms. He takes a few steps towards me, but I stand my ground. "You want honest? I'll give you honest. I haven't been focusing on the task at hand, I haven't been doing my fucking job, because I spend almost every waking moment thinking about you." He spits the last word as if it were poison. "I can't get you out of my fucking head, Alexandra. Every time I look at you it's like I'm looking into the fucking sun, and everything else just flys out of the picture. You're the only thing that has distracted me from my position in my whole twenty fucking years of life, and it's driving me crazy. When I told you to leave me alone the first time, I wish that I meant it. I wish that I meant it so fucking bad, but I didn't. And now my brother is dead."
Silence. I don't know what to say. I can't even speak. Luke's face is ashen, sunken in and pale, but his eyes are blazing with a fire I've never seen before.
We're both panting, Luke's hands twitching at his sides. The redness around his eyes is even more prominent.
Then the dam breaks, and all at once, everything comes crashing down.
Luke moves so fast I barely notice until he's in front of me, slamming his body into mine, shoving me backwards against the wall. All breath leaves my lungs, my throat drying. We're lined up, hips to shoulders, fitting together like puzzle pieces. His palms are flat against the wall on either side of my head, bracketing us in. Our lips are centimeters apart.
Luke's breath mingles with my own, and I'm struck with an overwhelming urge to feel something. To feel something other than pain, other than loss. Something real, something of my own doing, of my own control.
Luke is frozen, unmoving but shaking at the same time, his eyes darting back and forth between my gaze and my mouth. He's so fucking beautiful. This close, I can see the freckles fanning over his nose and cheeks, the brightness in his blue eyes that I thought left days ago. His scent, ash and wood and now blood. His mouth, full and taunting, the black ring hooked in the right corner, and when he licks a stripe of wetness across his bottom lip I can't take it anymore.
My hands come up and I shove him backwards, effectively knocking him a few feet back. Hunger burning in my stomach, I flatten my hands against his chest and push him back until he hits the opposite wall, his eyes widening in shock, before I mirror his position from a few seconds ago and lean in until my lips are pressing against the shell of his ear.
"Then make me pay for it." I whisper, and then my mouth is on his.
Luke makes a sound low in his throat, his lips faltering over mine, before his hands come up to grip my waist and then he's kissing me back. It's bruising, hard and hungry, the taste of him on my tongue and his breath in my mouth. His fingers ride up my shirt, feeling over hot bare skin, and then he's sliding his hands down to my thighs and I'm jumping up to wrap my legs around his waist.
His lips are hot and the kiss is slick, his tongue invading my mouth and fighting with my own. I wound my fingers into his hair, pulling on the strands while my teeth sink into his bottom lip, and he moans desperately before pulling my shirt over my head. Luke turns us around, my back smacking against the concrete wall as his hands bite bruises into my sides, the intensity of the kiss racketing up the temperature in the room.
I want to touch him all over, drink him in like a fine wine. My mind is blurry with a fiery desire, fueling every nerve. My skin is burning everywhere he touches me, and when he pulls away to suck a mark in the curve of my neck it's like the atmosphere goes up in flames.
Luke's dark hair tickles my chin, his stubble grazing my collarbones and the piercing a cool shock down my spine. I have never wanted anybody like this. Sex has always been more of a fun little pastime in my life, nothing too extravagant or memorable, but now I think I might die if I don't get to feel every inch of this boy's body.
I know he feels it too. He's touching me, kissing me, like he would die if he stopped. I pull his lips from my neck in favor of ripping his shirt up and off, flattening my palms over his shoulder blades as he takes my mouth again.
My fingers land on his belt, and he helps me undo it before ripping it off and throwing it across the room, the knives clanging on the concrete. I can feel him, pressing hard against me, and heat pools in my stomach to the point to where it's almost unbearable.
Luke grips my hips and turns us around to where his back is against the wall now, sliding down to the floor with me in his lap, never parting our lips. He's gasping, his pained little noises tangling with my breath as he continues to sear his lips against mine. It's easier this way, and I act on this realization by grinding my hips down hard onto his.
"Fuck, Alexandra." Luke lets out a strangled moan against my mouth, his fingers working on unbuttoning his pants. My hands come up to grip his shoulders, pulling my lips from his to press them to his neck. I can feel his hot breath against the side of my face, goosebumps surfacing all over my arms. My mind is blurry with desire.
He gets his pants off, before slipping his fingers under my waistband to pull mine down. We get tangled up in the garmets momentarily, Luke's arms flailing as he tries to toss them off to the side, until he finally gets them completely out of the way and we're left in nothing but our underwear.
Our mouths are still moving together, pulling and biting, and I'm pretty sure it's his blood I'm tasting on my tongue. I drag my nails down his back, and he gasps, pulling away to bury his face in my neck and bite down.
"Alexandra, if you want me to stop-" He graces his teeth along my throat, gripping my hips so tight they might bruise. He stops at the shell of my ear, and I realize just how much he's shaking, his voice like gravel and impossibly deep. "Tell me now."
"Don't." My voice cracks, and I pull him back to face me, to sear my lips against his mouth. "Don't ever."
Luke makes a high desperate sound that sends shockwaves of hunger through my bloodstream, and then he's pushing me back and getting our underwear off while I drag my nails down his back and kiss him harder. My bare chest flattens against his own, my back against the cold ground, his hips between my legs like they're meant to be there.
It's fantastic and rough at the same time. Luke's mouth says all the words he doesn't, urging me on with teeth and lips and tongue. I can feel him everywhere, inside and out, and every time he moves it's like a massive wave crashing against the shores of my core. He doesn't hold back at all, and I'm the same way, my nails digging into his shoulders, his back, his sides, moving with him until I can't anymore.
Everything just builds, slowly at first, then all at once. Luke's making needy little noises into my mouth, his kisses bruising, everything rising and rising until stars are exploding behind my eyelids and all I can think about is this one amazing feeling.
Luke tips over the edge just as I finish, his whole body shuttering as he struggles to hold his weight over me and keep moving at the same time. We're not kissing anymore, just gasping into each other's mouths, breathing in the same air until everything just smoothes out and goes still.
For a brief moment, I just look at him. All of him. The lean muscle, the delicate hands, the strong arms and washboard stomach. The freckles on his nose, the black strokes of his eyelashes. The sweat sheen on his forehead. Everything feels like it's been shot up with electricity, sparkling and buzzing on the edges with pure energy. He's so fucking beautiful.
I want to throw up.
"Oh my god, Alexandra." Luke whispers, his voice raspy. He closes his eyes, leaning down to rest his forehead on my shoulder. "What did we just do?"
•••
yes that happened
no this wasn't meant to be romantic or sweet at all if anything it's unhealthy they literally just used each other as a distraction to their own grief but you know
their relationship will get better, get healthy, soon enough. i promise
i've never written full on smut and this is kind of partial but i like it and it's the closest thing to explicit that i'll get atm so i hope y'all like it
anywho love y'all lots thanks for being amazing please vote and let me know what you think
see you in ten days. stay rad.
Xoxo
~Camryn