Willing
**
The taste of blood on willing lips. The feel of nails tearing into skin. Sweat mingled tears sliding down flushed cheeks. Gasps, moans, cries. Rough stone floor, bunched up clothing, enveloping shadows. Violence and passion and lust and hatred.
Clothing hastily put on, straightened, and adjusted. Without so much as a goodbye, the two part ways, rushing back to their respective rooms while hoping to avoid anyone who would question their dishevelled appearance.
The night passes quickly, with tangled sheets and fevered dreams, sore bodies and sated minds. Acting for roommates, pretending that the bruises came from trips or bumping into walls, scratches the result of clumsiness and bites carefully hidden.
Eye contact is avoided at breakfast. It's too easy, almost, with their set positions on opposite sides of the room. One commands attention from others, the other shies away. Both hide.
A run in. One sneers and mocks, the other hides back as others take the brunt of the abuse.
Classes are attended, lessons learned, notes taken, sleep and daydreams bringing about brief escapes. One catches the eye of the other as they pass in the corridor, and one nods to the other in confirmation of an anticipated, clandestine meeting.
One lies and slips away, the other walks boldly through the halls, commanding attention and bringing about none. They clash, in every sense, as they meet. Rich and poor, good and bad, sweet and sour, male and female. Pale skin and pink lips, freckles and wild, fiery tangles, sleek perfection and moon kissed hair.
They are violent with each other, both breaking free of their overly protected lives, taking out aggression with fervour that neither had entirely realized they possessed. Bruises on aristocratic, unblemished skin, whispers of violence on sweet young flesh. Pain and pleasure intermingle until one becomes the other, and sensitivity peaks.
Panting, they part. Glares, and hopes that this secret will remain safe with the other. No words, as there is never a need for them. Action and intention speak more than anything either could hope to say.
They retreat back to their lives, wishing for love and future and for everything to become simple. Nothing will, but they are willing to hope. Family and friends push in on them, demanding more than they are willing to give, assuming more than they really ought to, forcing their views and ideals onto the reluctant two. Opposite ideology pressured onto them, and they both retreat to the simpler world of pain and pleasure and flesh and wordless passions.
Time slips past, and everything changes, except for the brief, intense encounters they have both come to rely upon. Less often, now, but charged with more aggression and passion and now and then with the slightest tenderness, soft caresses intermingled with ferocious gropes.
They both cling to these brief moments, their shelter from the storm growing ever dark around them. Thoughts of peace and kindness are beginning to fade from the hopeful eyes of the good, and thoughts of invincibility and superiority are being exorcized from the minds of the wicked. Those around them are changing more than ever, becoming hardened and softened and broken, but they resist. They are both already twisted, desensitized from the onslaught of time, because of their interludes of ferocity and pain and the realization that nothing is ever good and sweet, a realization instilled in both at an age that should have been innocent and carefree.
They meet, now in cheap rooms and darkened alleys instead of hidden closets and shadowed corners. Their interludes become longer, lasting hours rather than minutes, though they feel less sated and feel more wanting with the time they have, which is never time enough. They come together fiercely, and linger together longer, and slowly realize that nothing else matters to them beyond this flesh and touch and passion. Hatred no longer glints in their eyes, but rather something that neither is comfortable with.
It is when they fall asleep in each other's company, secure together, that they decide that this must come to an end. No longer can they slink around together, feigning hatred when something else now drives them. No longer can scratches and bruises be proof enough that they are only angry. Neither one has a life that needs rebelling against, and they decided that this is the end of their shelter in each other's tightening embrace.
They leave, walking in opposite directions to separate lives on rival sides of a war that has gone on too long, much longer than any had expected, and tell themselves that they will never again come back to the cold comfort of their violent, willing torture. They lie convincingly to themselves, and immerse themselves into the reality of their lives, so far apart.
The further they slide into the mundane, grey world of their family and friends, the more they look back on their brief moments, and realize that those passionate moments were who they were, had shaped them more than all the events happening around them. They both regretted the loss of the color in their worlds, and pined for those moments to happen once more.
Finally, one cannot stand it any longer, and goes to the other. They look at each other, reappraising memories and correcting mental views. Words do not come, but slowly they come together, and embrace, and share their first kiss that does not taste of blood and anger and hatred, but rather tears and want and fear.
They are not suited to the each other's world, so they both abandon family and friends and ideals. They speak to one another, and are surprised at what the other has to say. They forge life together, and refuse to bend to anyone's will. They do not live in fairy tale happiness, but neither wallows in misery.
They leave much behind, but both are willing.
**