t h e . s t o r y

The Story
[by victoria p.]

Rating: PG-13

Summary: This is the story and they are the story and the story never ends.

Notes: Written for Karen at the request of dancinguniverse. Thanks to Nifra for handholding. I'm not sure Faulkner isn't spinning in his grave over this, but really, it had to be done.

Date: July 8, 2005

"Did they--"

"They must have-- It was a war."

"Men--"

"Men in war, yes."

Quentin curls around Shreve in the early morning chill, the heat banging in the pipes but never actually warming the room, their mingled breath taking on the shapes of Henry and Charles Bon, of the ghosts of two men closer than brothers, huddled close in the rain-drenched, moth-eaten, flea-ridden excuse for a tent, unable to tell where one ends and the other begins, parchment pale skin and sleek water-dark hair and rain lashing the canvas like the hand of God, another overseer's whip, cruel against the backs of slaves at the Hundred, Sutpen's Hundred.

"Achilles."

"And his Patroclus."

Quentin isn't sure he likes where this is leading but he knows it's going and he and Shreve are following along, because this is the story and they are the story and the story never ends it just gets told and told and retold again, by Miss Rosa Coldfield and Grandfather and Father and him and Shreve and twenty years from now two boys will sit in this gray unheated room at Harvard that smells of old socks and old books and sweat and dust and semen, and they will tell this same story of two men as close as brothers and the sister who comes between, always the sister, and how one always dies young, because that's the way of the story and it can't be changed.

"It can't be changed."

"Because they don't want to change it."

Quentin shakes his head and thinks it's not because they won't but because they can't because this is the story and the story is when everything else is gone, it has a life of its own a will as indomitable as old Miss Rosa's and ten times as long-lived and Quentin knows this down deep in his blood and his bones and Shreve never will no matter how many times they tell the story and how many ways they pretend it isn't their story and--

His train of thought is cut off by warm lips against his, a tongue slipping into his mouth warmer still and tasting of sleep (sleep is death's rehearsal, the little death, no, not that, no-- yes, warm mouth and warmer fingers curling around hot, hard flesh -- this isn't how the story goes.

Yes, it is.

Words spoken against his lips, his neck, his jaw, yes and please and fuck, and he is saying those same words, please please please, a prayer to some trickster god, this isn't happening, but it is and he is and they are and--)

The kiss is sweet and warm and Quentin kisses back on instinct, hours, days, months, years of want and need merging into this moment, this exchange of breath and spit, a secret language spoken only at such convergent moments and then forgotten until the next time it is needed.

They move against each other, familiar and strange, fitted together in ways that can't be talked about or thought about or admitted to and yet, and yet, and yet this is how the story goes, has always gone, will always go and they are powerless against it, letting it carry them on the rising tide until they are tossed upon the shore, every word they speak or write washed away by white water, until their mouths are full of stones, and only the blank stretch of shore, no longer safe, remains.

When they are done, when the kisses have become soft and unfocused, their bodies soft and satiated, Shreve continues to talk, to whisper, words from a different story, not theirs at all, and Quentin turns away, repudiating this change, because the story can't be changed, not and stay the story, stay the same, he can't stay Quentin and do this and he can't not do this and his thoughts blur at the edges until he falls asleep in Shreve's bed, with Shreve's hand upon his hip.

end

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Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to their respective owners and/or creators. I own nothing and intend no infringement on any copyrights.