Bloom (If I Don't Know Who I Am, How Do I Know I'm Not a God?)

by Sarah

  Between strained-small sounds, baby’s breath catches on a flinch, and I go totally still as rich vanilla fills night air. Closing my eyes doesn’t help this time though. A rush of scarlet brims behind my lids and floods my ears with swift, soulful control.

  I’m turning entirely bound to me onto her back before I realize it. Little cuts glisten on both her knees as I bend one of her legs to look closer, and what’s seeping out doesn’t look like what I know it is. It looks more like her tears. Beading out in tiny glistening drops.

  Clear, but shining.

  Like spilled glitter.

  Like liquid starlight.

  Fawn flutters and twists, trying to pull away as I hold onto her knee. Brushing aside the tiny grains of sand that broke her skin. Watching intently as slick sparkles spread under my thumb and more melted tinsel glimmers out.

  “No, no no no no -”

  A grin tugs the corner of my mouth.

  “Look at me, brand new. Look - ”

  Tugging and pushing, “Look, please-” she echoes, and as I release one of her knees, she opens all the way up to me. Parting where she’s preciously pink with her own lighter pink fingertips, she takes my other hand from her kneecap and brings it to her petals. Spreading them with my thumb. Making them glisten even more while I look. Just like she asked.

  “Feel,” she breathes, shaking and arching as I do. I spread her bloom, feeling her open and ache at my touch - an instant, overriding reminder that there’s nothing else this soft. This binding. This mine.

  “You promised,” she whispers, tears sliding down her cheeks as she seeks my eyes. Finishing my half-undone jeans with delicate hands. Feeling her way up and down uninhibited longing before closing around me, drawing a groan from the pit of my chest.

  “You promised yourself to me.”

  She strokes me as she says it, so shy and sweet, my whole body falls for her touch. Swaying as she guides my sinking straight to her, and soaks me in a thousand tender petals.

  A breathless cry holds her mouth open as she lets go to grip onto my sides. My shoulders. My hair. Anywhere she can as I roll my hips. I can’t help it. Pure euphoria flows everywhere between us, but it’s heavy where gravity drags my need to hers. Weighing me down. Urging me to slide.

  Glimmering galaxies swirl and widen as I draw her middle up to mine. She’s too warm to do anything less now. Too warm not to press closer. Too warm not to push her hips down with my own so she can feel what I’ve held back. So she knows what it will be like when I’m inside. So I can part wet little petals with the weight of my length and find where they give in.

  Baby sacred and surreal yields wholly to me, holding my eyes on hers and her hips tremulously up as I fill her out with carefully steady pressure. Opening her deep. Feeling her bloom around every insistent inch. Holy warmth climbs up my spine the deeper I give myself, coating my vertebrae in molten gold while indulgent little sounds spill openly.

  Like she can’t take any more.

  Like she’ll cry if I don’t give it to her.

  Like she was made to never, ever get enough of me.

  Bathed in petals and basking in heartbeats, I don’t realize I’ve let my eyes close until I open them to find Fawn, lost in bliss. Leaning lower, moving deeper, so deep I feel rooted to her, I brush my nose along her nose and kiss the effort dappled at her temples. I kiss the tracks of tears I missed, up to ones that haven’t fallen yet, swelling in the corners of her lashes. I kiss her burning pink cheek and watch as skies for eyes open to mine as she reaches for my face.

  Dazed, her lids fall back down as she tilts her parted lips up. Wanting my mouth. Inviting me finally to hers.

  Fawn’s kiss is a daydream. Summer rain and honeysuckle. Sunshine and watermelon. I can’t kiss her enough, and as I open her lips with wider with mine, she arches desperately up. Like she wants all of me. Like she wants me to have all of her.

  Like not only am I a god -

  I’m hers.

  Bringing her legs over my shoulders, I lean down over baby breathless and hold her in place so she can feel all of me. Just like she wants. Pressed against all of her while she takes everything she’s soaked and shaking and so fucking pink for. I let her precious petals kiss the base while I kiss just under her soft bottom lip, watching her try to breathe through blooming all over her reason to.

  Forehead pressed to hers, I roll my hips so slow and smooth against this love it makes her eyes open under mine. Pleadingly soft notes ache in and out of her in time with my rhythm, and I know now we weren't playing with those promises.

  This feels just like we said.

  Like I'm Fawn’s.

  And she is mine.

  Rapt and unrestrained in vulnerable belonging, my hips fall hard, pushing a high cry from somewhere deep inside her as instinct catches like a spark inside me.

  It starts at the base of my spine, and then it’s everywhere. Gripping gilded bones. Goading carefully flexed muscle. It surges through my veins and races up and down my back. Stronger and faster until that’s how I’m moving. Strong and fast, and there’s nothing else. Nothing anywhere but this girl, and how bad I want to give her my come.

  Clinging tight and trembling tighter, too warm for her own good flutters everywhere as I dig and push and bury the only pulse I have deep inside her petals.

  “Yes,” she begs. “Yes yes yes -”

  I come so hard the ground shifts. Goosebumps crawl up my arms. Heat rolls off me in staggering, overlapping waves, but even as my rhythm slows, none of my need lessens. I’m harder than ever and still coming as I sit back on my knees, pressing precious pink ones wide open, out into the orchids so I can watch Fawn take me, when something slick slides under my thumbs.

  I barely hear her gasp.

  Every sense and impulse I’ve got shifts to pearly kneecaps as the little cuts I’d forgotten about seep fresh at my touch. Glistening iridescent.

  Unallowed.

  Undeniable.

  I hum the second my tongue touches her hurt.

  Fawn’s blood looks like icy starlight, but she tastes like warm birthday cake.

  I hear her voice, I think, singing to me from somewhere far away, but it fades as new little drops bead up, and I close my mouth over them. Kissing where they come from until her skin gives like thin velvet under my teeth.

  I don’t mean for it to.

  She’s just so soft.

  Gripping the back of her knee, I roll my hips as I swallow, feeling heat tickle my chest as I slide entirely inside her. Swallowing hard this time so I can really feel it.

  Baby’s heart.

  Fluttering in my rib cage

  Warm inside me.

  Warm all over.

  Purring warm under my tongue and pulsing warm between her petals.

  So warm I blush as I push deeper.

  So deep it makes her heart feel like a skyful of butterflies behind my sternum.

  With another swallow, I’m rocking, making her bloom so full when something sharp splits between my shoulders.

  Breaking incoherently from her kneecap, I lick my lips. Incisive pain disappears as quickly as it hit me though. So fast I think I must have dreamed it.

  Straightening my back, I reach for her other knee, and hover over spilled and waiting glitter. Savoring the scent of her. So rich now, I can taste her heart, throbbing up to my mouth before it’s even on her little cut.

  Halfway through a deep breath, frantic, feather-light hands tap my arms and my grip loosens instantly. A reflex, and that’s all it takes for everything to spin.

  Faster than her wings, I reach out to keep hold of any part of Fawn. To catch her before she can disappear again.

  But she doesn’t.

  She shifts on top of me.

  Nudging me onto my back. Warning me, “No more. You can’t take any more,” while she takes me all the way. Hips to warm fucking hips. I hear myself moan as she holds onto my shoulders. Sliding. Searching for her rhythm as I dip my hands around her backside. Gripping pe
rfect little curves as I lift into her. Helping her ride. Watching her take me as deep as she wants. So deep I feel her heart start to ache in me.

  Rising lower with each fall, baby so close wraps her arms around my neck. Her braid sways between brandy-colored waves, brushing my cheek when she finally comes completely down, pressing softly swelled tits to my chest as she rocks.

  Slow.

  Slower.

  Until she can’t anymore.

  Hardly able to lift her head, she says something I can’t hear. I cup her jaw, tilting her face gently up while she pulls her lip from her bottom teeth, barely opening the wet little windows to her soul.

  “Help me,” she whispers, faint with effort as her pulse slips from slow to elusive.

  Sliding my free hand between us, I watch dainty brows furrow together over starry-dark eyes, and feel my way through fully soaked petals. Tracing where she holds me while steady need surges through unsteady legs. With my other hand holding her to me by the small of her back, and my voice low in her ear, I urge her to keep moving.

  “Keep moving, baby.”

  She does, so softly, and I slide and curl my touch. Seeking and finding her second heart. Stroking it between two fingertips until she can’t keep her eyes open anymore.

  Crying my new favorite song, Fawn falls forward, rutting mindlessly as she comes and I rise deep into her cadence. Agony slices through my shoulders. Excruciating then gone again, and I don't understand. I groan as I gather her to myself. Kissing all over her neck. Letting my teeth graze whisper-thin skin and sucking gently where it breaks for me.

  Just a little.

  Just until her wings settle down.

  As I drag my lips to her lips, all of her fluttering goes languid. Weak. Then stops. A smile tugs the corners of her mouth, but she can’t hold it. She can’t hold anything. She gives a small sigh, and her eyes close as she slips against my frame, sinking completely onto me, but I can’t hear her pulse anymore.

  I can’t feel it inside me.

  I can’t feel it in her.

  Panic spikes in my chest, but that’s as far as it gets before agony sears through my shoulders again. Fawn falls beside me, into the flowers as I sit up, and I reach for her, but blinding pain buckles all of me.

  There’s tearing this time.

  Skin. Sinew. Spine.

  I scream but it doesn’t stop.

  Not even when everything goes black.

  TEN

  I’m on my hands and knees when I come to, and the first thing I remember is screaming.

  Then the pain that caused it. Searing heat slashing through my shoulders. Splitting tendons. Razing cartilage.

  Then the flowers. The ones that didn’t move until she did. The pink orchids all around me now. They used to be white, I remember.

  Before we -

  A innocent giggle turns my head, and the sea storm of memories flowing through me is nothing compared to the heat I feel when I see cognac-colored curls and lacy, white-gold wings.

  Naked as a new bloom, Fawn stands just a few feet away, watching two bats chase each other across a tangerine and lavender streaked sky. She turns to me, and her eyes look different, but I can’t tell how before she looks back to the bats, and everything sways.

  My head spins, idles, and tilts somewhere between lucid dreaming and deja-vu.

  I can’t stop remembering.

  My name. My stunted, blunt-force childhood. The sound of skateboard wheels and the way the fog feels, first thing in the morning. My first lines, first bars, first overdose. Every kiss, every needle, every unfamiliar room I ever woke up in. Every time I wished I hadn’t.

  The sharp, slow misery of getting “clean”. The bottomless pit of staying that way. No more pills. No more lean. How lost. How low. How lonely and wasted and hopeless.

  As a whole lifetime settles in where pitch dark just was, the most recent parts come through clearest.

  Hart’s apartment. Marvin’s birthday. Somebody’s friend of a friend who thought I was cute. Black lights. Spilled Sprite. The stranger with the flame.

  Magnus.

  Varsity velvet and unraveling gravity. Keep breathing and sea-soaked pennies. I thought it was the mushrooms, but he was helping me.

  Just like I helped Fawn.

  Squinting through twenty one years of sudden and total clarity, I watch the girl who looks teenage but I know is fathomlessly older, tiptoe through flowers we turned turned pink together, and I remember her most of all.

  Flirting in the mirror. Chasing each other through Inner City. Holding hands under the canopy. Whispering to the flamingos. Her fingertip on my lip. My palm on her pulse. Braided promises. A thousand petals. Spilled glitter and warm birthday cake and her heart, beating inside me -

  She’s making her way to me now, bringing hints of jasmine flowers and coconut milk, and the downy scent of me, all over her. Shaking pink petals from messy auburn locks, she beams brightly, and I remember Magnus telling me I couldn’t have her. That this was against the rules. That I’d tear her apart.

  I remember dying.

  I remember her dying.

  “I didn’t know this would happen,” she admits, fluttering up and laughing a little as she slips a couple petals from my hair too. Her smile dips slightly as she slides her hand down, running her fingertips from my shoulder to my elbow.

  Following her touch with my eyes, I notice not just pale pink stardust - the trace of her all over my skin - but rills and streaks of red. Some dry. Some still wet.

  I know it’s blood.

  And I think it’s mine.

  But I don’t understand.

  “I don’t think this has ever happened,” Fawn says, soft with awe. Holding my hands in hers. Warmth flows from the contact and there isn’t anywhere I don’t feel it.

  “They look good on you,” she continues, her strange gaze drifting above and behind me.

  I tilt my head. “What does?”

  Baby lighter than the flowers I laid her down on tips forward, and heat washes over me as her bare chest brushes mine. Smiling, she reaches around my side.

  “These.”

  The second her fingertips brush the edge of one, they both flutter. I laugh. I can’t help it, and laughing only makes them beat harder, lifting me from the sand. It takes a second to find my balance, but only a second.

  Then floating is as natural as breathing.

  Joy-stunned and hovering a few inches in the air, I look over my shoulder to find wings. Barely bigger than Fawn’s and just as thin, they feel every inch as sore as they do ticklish. Yearning equally to fly higher and to fold and be stroked, they’re matte black. Rain-soaked ash. Dead of night black.