He's got his arms around me, legs cradling mine, holding all my various parts together. This is exactly what I need right now--the only thing I could possibly need from him after all he's done for me. After being rearranged just-so, I need time to bring myself back together. He's keeping me steady, the heat from his skin nourishing me as I fall back into place. With him around me, nothing can reach me--except him. Justin is always here, right where I want him. So for now I'll simply exist in his warmth, melting in it even as it solidifies me.

I want him again; my body has recovered just enough to start aching--not from exertion or unfamiliar penetration, but from deprivation. This submission-as-healing feels good, harsh and wrong and the only thing I know I can grasp when everything else is slipping through my fingers. I know that rationally, I can't ask for it again, not without upsetting the delicate balance that keeps us at each others' throats... but I still want. I want, I'll always want but I won't ever give in until I need. The wanting is strong enough, though, that I stay here, curled inside him, resigned to having just this much and no more. Satisficing, compromising my wants for our better interests. But I still want.

I want, and I could assuage the small part of me that wants pleasure by turning in his arms and pressing him into the bed. Fuck him until we both scream and we'll enjoy the end result--but he's whole, or a damn sight more so than I am, and that bond is strong enough already. We know our pleasure inside and out, we've perfected me-fucking-him. I've spent enough time inside his body that his mysteries are all familiar, which makes me love them all the more, but leaves me wanting him to push, to demand to learn mine in return. I'm scared shitless that he will, that one day he'll tell me it's time to tie us together using the language I've been teaching him.

I know he'll do it, sooner or later, when he's no longer distracted by the fleshly pursuits of youth and the demands of maturation. He's growing so much faster than I did that it won't be the decades it would be were our positions reversed. He's already so close, though I can't imagine he realizes it; I barely see it myself. When will he gain the confidence to move forward, to trust his instincts and his abilities and stand up to what he's unwittingly building with every quiet moment after?

But for now I'm happily drowning in this lazy hour, enjoying the uncomplicated and unforced quiet. He's not talking, but it's not the tense silence of him thinking he'll piss me off if he opens his mouth, but rather the graceful echo of knowing that there isn't anything we can't say with our mouths closed. No smug grins or satisfied whimpers, no groans and laughter. Just our corporeal forms drifting back to baseline, hearts slowing, blood cooling, eyes drooping ever farther towards closed. Perhaps we should move; if we don't we might wake up in one body, our skin having fused during the night. It's absurd, but what's even worse is I don't think I'd mind much. He would always be inside me then, and I'm sure he'd have a field day rearranging me. Or not; I think perhaps he prefers watching me move myself around. He's a voyeur like that. He could help out occasionally; he's got an artists' aesthetic after all.

He moves just enough for me to remember he's there, a precious warmth behind and above and beside and all around me. His conscious seems to coat us like silk, thin and tenuous heat holding a universe's demons at bay. It's something I could do on my own; hell, there's not much I couldn't do on my own. The thing is, I think I like having the help. I don't need it, although when I'm feeling weak and tired I believe I do. No, I could survive just fine without him by my side. But it would be just that--survival. I would be alive, but I wouldn't be living. I would breathe and sleep and walk and move through my existence with all the interest and passion of a paint-by-numbers Virgin Mary.

Or maybe I'll listen to the more rational part of me that's saying we should succumb to sleep. With him where he is and me where I am, I've no fear of what will visit us when we're laid out unawares. Our dwelling is filled with his presence, and I'm lucky enough to be at the epicenter of it all, surrounded by that which radiates out from his person. My body is tired, my mind almost chafed from thinking so much. I need this break, this reprieve from being. Becoming is hard work, and I'm worn from being made and remade over and over again. I know I'll want it all again tomorrow, and the day after, every day until the next day doesn't bother showing up. The man behind me, he'll make sure that what I want, what I need, is waiting for me when I wake. It is perhaps the least difficult task he's ever been given, since the only thing I need when I next wake is something he gives without effort.

Himself.