Work Text:
Had she ever been astonished before? Had she ever been uneasy? You were lying face-to-face with her, centimetres from the wet sheen of her skin that ought to have made an imprint on your pillow, facing that crinkled lower lip. Her eyes, which the night lights had turned the sick amber of a healing bruise, stared through you. The Body was troubled: in that hovering place so close to the end of your life, it seemed only natural that you should reach for her. The fear of death had remade your worship into desperation, or maybe desire. You reached one hand out for that frozen tangle of hair at the back of the skull; you closed the gap between you, and you kissed that lovely corpse mouth.
Of course, you could not. There was nothing there. Contact made her drift away, just as with any of your hallucinations. You had not touched her. Maybe you had not even reached for her. The Body watched you with an expression you were terribly afraid was pity.
You said, “Please,” and you reached out again. A wave of dizziness rocked you. You pushed at the robe lying crooked at the slope of her shoulder; you pressed your hand low to her belly. Her dignity was untouched by this gross urgency, this coarse frenzy; or maybe, again, you had not done it. You said again, “Please.”
Her eyes gleamed. They hardly ever moved in their sockets, deepset and perfect, lovely and still as the moment you had found her asleep. When she wished to look around the Body moved her head alone. In the darkness of her vigils within your Drearburh chambers and your room on the Mithraeum, the eyes were coalish, immobile gold.
Now they moved. Like all corpses, their sclerae were scarred. You were five when you first saw the fine dusting sheen of corneal opacity within a dead body, slung over Mortus’s shoulder en route to the drillshaft. You first watched the cells die in real time at the age of ten. When the Body’s eyes moved with predator fluency through their own blunted light, her somnolence evaporated: she looked at you. A frosting flash of epinephrine unlocked your flesh to piloerection. She looked at the bags beneath your eyes and the cramping yen of your mouth. She looked down to your shaking supplication at her hip, and her eyes were alive.
This frightened you. You must have angered her; you awaited sanction. The only penance you would plead against (since pleading was going so well for you) would be the Body’s withdrawal altogether. You watched the possibility in the murk of her living eyes and were afraid for it. There was so little to be afraid of, now. The Resurrection Beast’s breath fogged the front door; the end of your strange life drifted closer by the moment, whatever the Body might do. Whatever you might do. You did not want to die. You had done all in your considerable power to prevent it. But the reins of circumstance that demanded tireless custodianship were slowly being pulled from your chapped hands. This was a relief, whatever cowardice that earned you.
The Body was there and not. She was a draft – you knew this. Insubstantial but irresistible as she covered your errant hand with one of her own. She was not there. But you felt her frozen pulp and rime as though in the Tomb again. This really was her corpus, with her bulwark hand to your shoulder. This was her graceful mass that crowded against you, and over you. And pressed you flat to your back.
Your heart throbbed helplessly. Your compliance was complete. Beneath your fingers, the bedspread wrinkled, and you searched and found no trace of anger on her expression. You could not parse what you saw. But she did not leave you.
Whatever she would have. You laid in moribund appeal. Whatever she would take. You offered yourself.
She settled at the foot of the bed above the knock-kneed rise of your legs. A consuming, solar presence. Your skull rang. She was the most perfect summation of what could be called a woman. And you, you were – scrap, you were flotsam, a hollowed-out motley. To hell with quasi-Lyctorhood. You felt irradiated of yourself. You were neither naive nor ignorant of the carnal, only devout, but the font of your limbs and her presence collecting over you this way – your flesh responded to some old language of meat that you had little cause to sample. She would touch you. She would touch you. She would. You bore down on your rising panic. Your paralysis. You were no blushing bride. You had meant to – for her – but, whatever the Body would grant you. Whatever she would have of you. You wondered if her skin would catch fast to yours in frostbitten sutures where sweat had broken on you. If motion would tear the flesh in patches. You were mortified by the steady thud of blood that trod you underfoot: pummeling, punishing waves, (throat-chest-groin, mouth-ears-hands,) dull booms with no relent and full intent to rupture tissue. Humiliating clamor. A hangman’s braid of arteries tangled round your lungs to leave you rasping. Would that you could remove your husk altogether from the process.
The Body came over you like an omen, soft and long spoken-for: her cool hand touched one patella and the leg fell open obediently. She smiled. Oh – oh. Your heart seized in its bloody net. You were caustically alive in places that bore no thinking about (mind shrinking back from ‘vasocongestion’) and the urge to restrict your body these indiscretions roared within you. But the Body was unmoving. Her touch lingered on your vastus medialis which had begun to tremble. You understood this to mean you were forbidden Lyctoral intervention.
You had relinquished your own control by design. You were within her power by will. By right. Your body would have free rein of its savors.
Cold crowned your wrists by your sides as she touched you there. You let the cooling halo of them guide your hands to your middle. You had not undressed in days. Oh, God. She would make you undress. Your eyes closed. Your tongue could have cracked from dryness as you thought of the crypts beneath Drearburh. You were being shaped to fit a space you were ill-tailored for – one that became more confined by the second, compressing your lungs, your throat and thoughts. Desire etherized you to all coming pain. The flinch. Whatever she would carve from you, whatever within you made without. Whatever she would have.
She coaxed your hands under the hem of your shirt. This was a cluttered and graceless place and you disdained touching there for any reason. Touching any part of yourself. For any reason. But the endocrinal fallout made the graze of your fingertips feel like matchstrikes. You shivered. You, shaking, clutched the hem to obey her, to disrobe – but she stopped you. Your hand was urged to press firmer, higher, farther along your cacophonous midriff. Cold herded your thumb to stroke the taut skin along your sternum, and it sparked grotesquely with nerves.
Rheumy understanding filled your body before your brain – idiot – oh, God. Your service to her holy body she declined. But your body –
Over worship, over what you could stoop to offer her, this is what she would have of you. A fitting retribution for your transgression. Punishment proportionate. You did this only to yourself and would do so only to yourself.
She did not let you sit upright. She did not allow your hands away. She led them higher underneath your shirt, pilfering over the backbone you called your belly and your fatless ribs as you twitched and recoiled. The Body spoke to your body; you were not made privy. Air left you in a doomed hiss, like your lung had perforated, and you stammered, “Beloved.”
You were not versed in this… – this. Wow. Exploration both began and ceased with the advent of menses and your grudging acceptance of breast tissue, however negligible and however unseen it would go throughout your cloistered life. You hated it. You spent prepubescent episodes attempting to rid yourself of nipples by picking and haranguing the skin until the tissue inverted. That was your last acquaintance. Now the Body had you touch them, shit, the precious Body, and because it was the Body it sapped the breath from you in one clean taking. Shit. Your legs snapped together at the knees and you curled to one side, shellshocked – and corrected yourself, appeasing her, opening again. But she looked delighted and had you do it all over. She could have fucking chilled a little. She had your palms smooth over them, softer, and you shook and were grateful even now that she let you remain dressed. She let you work beneath them. There you were, a dermestid, snacking slyly under intact skin. Rooting around beneath your clothes at the bidding of the Body.
You took her zeal for expectation. But it was more like, Isn’t this fun?
All you knew was that she was pleased with you. She was pleased. Your scapulae squeezed in a wince; your sharp chin dug drunkenly into your shoulder and away again; you squirmed, yes. Your debasement pleased her. Oh, God. Breathing came quickly. Quickly. Quicker. Not enough. Your cells rattled, stormblown. They weren’t meant to hold this much sensation. Not built for it. You needed a familiar feeling to moor upon. So you felt the Braille of your ribs through your flimsy skin – and took shelter in them, imagining the bones snapping wetly through the surface like young shoots. That made it easier. That made your body more bearable to be inside.
She guided your hands back – fuck. Back out of your shirt. Back to your waistband. You mumbled something as your eyes closed and your hands were led. It was prayer, but you couldn't hear yourself.
It wasn’t – you didn’t – it wasn’t like anyone was watching. No one watched you curl up like a burnt page on the bed, hunched against your hand, shaking. Not on purpose. If they had a choice, they would have had a clue and left the room or the station or the star system altogether. No one that was going to be super weird about it anyway.
You gave yourself. You gave. You took. Oh, shit. You were really going for it. You – scrubbed, a little off-target, novice and sweet. It felt – you felt, good, you felt – you didn't know what the hell was going on. The closest you had come to intoxication was the control of necromancy and now you were the one controlled, your faculties shelved and dimmed. This was what it was to be the bones you summoned. You steered them on a whim with your inborn prowess as the Body steered you by inborn predilection. You were sticky-wet in places that didn’t bear, even, that never should have, yeah. The Body urged you. She reached to coach your wrist into some new tilt and you yelped and did half a crunch and sank back again – you turned facedown in the bedspread to hide, honey. You didn’t have to hide.
“Beloved,” shit. The Body was a cooling corral at your flanks and back, and she urged you to touch yourself. You tried not to whimper but it came out anyway. You were mortified beneath the morass of biology. Through the haze you felt glimmers of your typical poise, patches of self scrabbling for every brake and lever within reach – anything to prevent you the jeopardy of feeling an endorphin or two. It felt so good. It felt so good. You looked so good. You staved off little sounds of yourself, buried in your arm, buried in the bed beneath the Body. However you laid seemed all the same to her. So long as your hand stayed put. Stayed moving against you. Like that. Yeah. Like that. It shocked you like sunburn, the feeling of it. You kept trying to close your eyes and the Body wouldn’t let you and she really could have taken a fucking hint, to be honest. Who cared if you wanted your eyes closed. You could close them. Let her close them, dingus.
You slowed down; you had less control by the second, and you hadn’t started with much. The muscles holding you up were toast. Panting. Shaking. You could do it. You were okay. Keep going. Come on, wasn’t it good? You were doing so good. You were reeling with it – gripping the bedspread to keep from tumbling off the station altogether. You were okay. You could do it. Just breathe. You should – keep going. Oh, would you stop. Stop thinking like that. Would it kill you to let one thing in your sadsack life feel good, for one miserable minute?
– the Body intervened. She could see you were caught up, and got you on your back again. You pulled away from yourself, bleeding air all over her. Your overheated breath vaporized in the dead-space cold of her. The Body watched you gulp and gasp with a vapid look that you would have found serene or something. She let your heartrate drop a few beats before she bent – oh, come on – bent over you and, tit for tat, kissed you back.
That did it – there you go – attagirl, just let it – you let it, you let it, good, good, you bit your lip so hard it bled. Didn’t notice. Your body healed in seconds but you left the blood on your blanket when your head whipped left – and back, chin high, like you meant to pull away from it all.
And then you relaxed. In pieces, in layers: the hand bunched in the bedspread had pulled it loose from its corner, and now sagged like a dying spider alongside the fabric. Your busier arm had made your shirt ride up. With better lighting, someone might have seen your femoral artery jump, still twanging the skin as your pulse slowed. Orgasm crushed you flat. You were a burnt-out bundle of birdbones. Picked clean from inside.
Your eyes had closed. The gravity of what you had done awaited you on the other side of light, but you delayed it a moment longer. You swallowed. And you heard yourself, quietly to the room, “Don’t leave.”
No answer. Shamefully – shamelessly – you reached out, unseeing, for the feeling of her. Let her still be there. Let her be pleased. You felt the chill of her on your unsteady hand, and opened your eyes to find her fervor gone. She looked at you with only pity. And you regretted everything.
The Body reached out, and stroked her fingers forward, as though to close your eyes. Your eyes closed again and stayed that way.
In the morning, the Body was gone.