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When he wakes up in the middle of the night, there's a man in his room.
The intruder is no more than a silhouette, a phantom shape of shadows against the wall in the far corner of his church house room, but Credence knows that long coat swirling. The arrogant set of the shoulders.
He also knows it's not him, not really.
Where there should be disappointment, the understanding instead works its way into his pulse, flushes a shivery blush of anticipation over his skin. Stirs his prick where it lies trapped in the tangle of his nightshirt. Because as much as he knows this visitor, so too, it knows him. It knows him better than anyone--better than himself, or God, or even ma. Knows he's been looking at that man. Just the way he wants the man to look at him.
As though commanded, the shadow, the man-shape, moves across the room and Credence supposes in some way that it is. His to command: even if the instruction is given always without his looking. Without his knowing knowing.
He's glad of it now, that secret movement, that dark and sympathetic push-and-pull that happens only when his back is turned. The night is for such quiet things--things that can't and never should be said out loud under the light of God's bright day. The shadow moves like liquid, coat hem skimming and billowing around each slippery step, its face obscured into something blessedly anonymous. No one needs to see the way he trembles underneath the sheets, or hear the whimper that leaks into his frosty exhale. Only the shadow sees, and there's no harm in showing what he's already failed to hide. It's written the book on him, every word etched out in slick black ink.
Credence lifts the bedspread and his slender throat all in the same smooth motion, a gesture of subservient invitation nearly fluid now for how many times he's been given occasion to practice it. And the shadow moves in time, reaching down to press his pale knees apart in smoking hands that prickle with ice and heat. A moan--as half-formed a suggestion as the interloper itself--leaves his open mouth on a sigh and shadow fingers curl around his neck to chase the vibration.
He feels as fragile as a trapped sparrow, hollow bones and frantic thrumming wings, a butterfly pinned to the lepidopterist's board. An ice-heat hand skims along one quivering thigh, threadbare nightshirt dragging up and up and up in the face of its burning, inexorable path. Another moan bubbles its way up out of his chest this time with heat and Credence could swear that there's a smirk hidden someplace in the satisfied tilt to the shadow's head, however faceless. Prickling knuckles graze his aching length, a sleeping limb come to life in a wash of pins and needles.
The fingers squeeze in warning, windpipe slotting a perfect fit against a buzzing palm as Credence tries to thrust into the feather touches--there's no propriety, no pretense here under mother's lonely roof with no one but his own shadow for company. It wants what he wants, always sure of just exactly how to take it from him. His best and only friend, all dreams and little hurts and sweeping plans.
Just as he fears that he might shout into the still night, might spill--that electric grip glides up over his chin like slipping the noose only to seal his voice firmly in. He's lifted and flipped, hips roughly propped at the apex of his coltish legs, face pressed into the pillow that he bites obediently onto like a beaten horse taking the bit.
He hears the swift series of muffled pops--a row of buttons being hastily slipped free--and as much as he knows that they aren't there, are neither done or undone, the sound still has him dripping a spidery thread onto the sheets between his knees. The nightshirt slides down the smooth skin of his back like a drift of snow collecting on the eaves and he groans against a mouthful of feather-stuffed linen.
Without further warning, the mattress buckles and shifts with the sudden acquisition of weight behind him, steady hands gripping tingling and tight, thumbs gently probing and parting. Credence pants and squeals and squirms at the slow building pressure--the exquisite fullness... yes, back inside, back where you belong… The bed is shaking as though the ground beneath will split and swallow them up, split and swallow just as he does, taking back again all his want and rage and frustrated heartsick love.
His shadow lover seeps into his sweating flesh at every point of touch, absorbs into his skin like an orchid takes the rain. Pounding, stretching fullness becomes something more like whole and underneath the hail of his every wheezing uh uh uuhh, Credence shudders out his release with such force it stings. It leaves him as a shadow, a trail of smoke, sticky and black to ghost along the crumpled counterpane and away like a whispered confession.