"Voices in Darkness"

“Do this… Do this for me?” There was a soft sound, like a sigh, a whisper of flesh against fabric as one slid away from the other. Fingertips teasing over sensitive areas, a sharp intake of breath.

“Like this? Do you…” words lost with thought as lips were pressed together, tongues moving in a different sort of language. Bodies shifted against one another, seeking answers to questions that hadn’t yet been voiced.

There were things in this world that mattered, groceries, getting the rent paid, whether anyone would remember your next birthday. Other things that should have mattered, commitments, promises made, but those were easier to ignore. Most things were easy to ignore in dark places where time existed only in the moments between flesh-contact.

Both knew that they could not afford to hesitate, nor to allow thought to intrude and ruin this moment. It had been waiting for months now, longer than that probably. Sometimes it seemed like two things were meant to be brought together, to exist within the same space, to revolve around one-another… Since the moment they had met, each had recognized within the other a spark of something that was echoed within themselves.

It was a need, a hunger, a fear… Even if it were true that things belonged a certain way, it came with no guaranteed success. Things could be forgotten, ignored, hidden… secrets kept or revealed at the most awkward of moments.

Nights are longer when you’ve nothing to occupy but a lonely bed, and miserable thoughts. Count cracks in the ceiling, watch shadows crawl across the walls, numbers on the clock face march along with no regard to emotional vulnerability. Some nights raced by so that it seemed the bleary eyes opening at the alarm’s sound had only closed just a heartbeat beforehand. Others dragged, slipping in and out of nightmare like dwellings upon matters of the heart. Or lack thereof…

So it comes to a moment of recognition, if it ever happens. Lips curve into a smile and hands linger longer than necessary. Hearts beat just a little faster as thoughts spin around the idea, the hope…

Maybe we aren’t doomed to be alone?

For these two it had begun before they met, before they existed even. Star constellations, butterflies in jungle climates, chance and happenstance… Serendipity? However, whyever, the moment came as it prefers to do. Unexpectedly.

It began with words, talking to a stranger so far distant that secrets could be revealed without fear of reprisal. Confessions of a fragmented psyche, admissions of a fractured spirit. Some small amount of healing began in those first months, as each knew within themselves that something had begun. Maybe it was wishful thinking, an arrogant certainty that the world would not give a gift such as this, only to snatch it away like a schoolyard bully…

Was that when it began, the mistake, the folly, the obsession?

Neither could actually say how long they’d known the other. It seemed that night they met they’d spent a lifetime together already… Before too many months, it had progressed to the point that one could easily remember events that they were never present to experience in the other’s lifetime. Knowing changed nothing, or perhaps it changed everything?

A phone rang late one early morning, the sun was still asleep but the moon had already slipped away for the night. One groggy voice mumbled a greeting as the other whispered urgently. “I need you. Please…”