delga | { crushed by your breath. }

crushed by your breath. (original)
first love; both home and away
She has to wonder how she ended up here

He smirks; Corbin moves the shot glasses to his own pattern. Tim moves them back.

She doesn't think she can explain the need. She doesn't think she can actually turn to look at him without turning coy and quiet. Tyler, she knows, is watching intently, watching for signs of indecency. Her brother, she thinks, is far too overprotective.

But that's the way life is. She is the baby, her mother's prodigy and her father's little saint. God would lead her from temptation, Daddy always said.

In the corner, he leans down, re-emerging with a blue long necked bottle.

Tequila. How had he known? In the background, she can hear the faint twang of a guitar, making her mourn the deep quality of Bostonian nights. If she closes her eyes, she's there - in the bar, bien sur - and he's tracing patterns on the scarred wood. The air is hot with spice and incense and on the stage, an old man playing the saxophone.

The taste is bitter on her tongue, sharp in her throat - a satisfying kick to her chest.

He doesn't look at her but she knows he's watching; what else could he do?

Tyler is spinning the bottle. A blue haze marks the low-lit table top. Corbin cradles his drink with frank expertise. He's a scotch drinker, she thinks, with maybe an occassional penchant for margheritas, although she feels it's a decidedly feminine beverage. He laughs and she has to wonder how she ended up here; how she is simultaneously home and away.

Tim leans back in the high stool; he stretches his legs. She can feel his breath, warm and spiced, on her neck.

She remembers Luciano laughing at her, watching her with twinkling eyes. She is thrown onto the stage and she hides behind the microphone. She sings something familiar for the regulars - probably Tracy Chapman - and his eyes never leave hers. All the way through, he is silent and when she sits down again, he's a little more intimate - he ducks his head closer, he whispers a little more softly. But he doesn't touch her - that would be sacrelige.

Tyler is talking about Vegas - always Vegas, goddammit and always that nighttime land. It's the land of her mother's youth, if she remmebers correctly and she feels unreasonably defensive as her brother jokes of it as though he had the right to own those memories. She is sat on the couch, sat away from the three men, pretending to read but wanting - needing - to be with them, until the harsh lights, cradling a shot glass in her hands.

He took her home with gentlemanly care. She made warm cocoa and they curled up on her couch, reciting Eliot and Plath, each one trying to out-do the other in terms of obscurity. She won, she thinks.

Since then, not a word, not a touch, not a glance. He is an island and she wishes that she was there, lounging on the sands of his skin. She can taste the salt in her mouth, can feel the burn of liquor as it slides down her throat and settles, scorching her insides whilst his hands, just as warm, had brushed over her, bruised her with gentle persisitence. And she can't say no.

What would her father say? Would he permit such outrageous sin?

His breath was on her skin; his hands were on her body and suddenly, she couldn't move, suspended on high from his fingers.

His eyes catch hers; his fingers grip the shot. He strokes the smooth glass.

So much for God, she thinks.