Howl | M
Teeth: biting here, biting swiftly, biting near, biting sharply, biting clear, biting softly, and biting dear: as dear were the dotted, little nubs of Harry’s mouth and like a quill full of ink, Tom had signed him with a smile.
And that he started at the dimple and with a flourish of a peck — leaving nothing unturned, unkissed or unmet — and then he grazed along the bottom as he figured his own name, as he crossed through all the ‘T’s and curled each and every ‘O’ that would follow to the letter and were the red carpet for another, before he did this at the top and thus mirrored what he’d done. And then he finished with the thumbprints of an inky, paper trail smothered with what he wrote and stained with Harry’s tongue.
When it peeked out to meet him and at the same time, found his thumb when Tom shifted with how he cupped him between the night and against the wall.
Because the jaggedness of the rocks was unwelcomed to his love: that he squeezed in-between them and padded at his palm was the back of Harry’s head and the minutiae of his thoughts; that he steered him with own hand and with the only other he had left, thumbing at the scratches left behind before he did this; and that he soothed him and loved him with just as roughly as before, more than gentle as he bruised the bottom half of Harry’s mouth with tugs and red and felt him backing into his hand. And just knowing he wasn’t hurt meant everything to this man, as Tom cradled his every turn and left him ravaged to the bone.
And feeling whole when they parted — and there were stars in Harry’s eyes; Tom could trace the constellations and know that soon, they would hide. Because fluttering behind the lenses, before he slipped them into his pocket, was a forest at its height upon the awnings of midsummer and that all it took was a fire and a strike of lightning to burn it down — down to the ashes that would stay and be swept up by an early winter, as it thumbed and as it lingered with pupils blown out.
Uncaring that the public could stumble behind their backs: this was Tom when he bracketed and pressed Harry against himself, stowing him to his chest so that no one would find him like this. And at the same time, Harry held him with the fierceness of a snake, unwilling to let go of what had sheltered it from the worst. And his eyes were like Tom’s as he pulled him even closer, that Tom had to widen how he held Harry from the wall.
Fingers spread behind his head: that was the signal before they rutted and chased each other from the dark. And if at the end there was death, they were resurrected before it caught them. Because a ‘Tom’ or a ‘Harry’ flushed deeply at their necks was what lifted them from the grave when they slumped into each other’s touch.