stressors | inbox;

[ you are dreaming.

the night reeks of old pine and termite shit and the faint bitter layering of old cigarette ash. in the dark, there's nothing but your own lungs at work and the cot creaking metallic beneath you, noisier than any barracks-issue. constellations smear the windows of your little cabin like crushed flies; moonlight steeps the dank floorboards blue, blue, blue-green-blue, flecking shadows across a ragged plank, magazines stacked on folders, the old workstation you used to bang on as a kid, all clacking keyboard, a heavy-headed monitor, and a system that coughs static and dust every time it boots up. in the still and the black outside, things are scuttling and slithering and prickling needles high; but nothing dreams out here but you.

close your eyes. press your palms flat against the bed. military routine does something to you -- files you down to gristle and grim conviction, works you until your bones grind through patterns in reflex. tomorrow's chores: collect water. check the generator at dawn, before the day goes bone-bleaching. track the weather report for the week to measure out your next restock in town. carve open one can of soup or beans to take with the bread before it goes bad. read the new magazines out on the porch 'til just before noon. there's a fleet's worth of stories buried in this state: warped little skeletons pulled out of the thin, glassy lakes up where civilisation clusters; radioactive coyotes bounding out of the canyon where they used to dump nuclear waste; a man with the wings and head of a moth who defends hitchhikers on the backroads.

they say the egyptians believed that the sky wasn't real space -- it was a woman, a goddess, who covered the planet with her body. according to the mythology, the stars were just a part of her skin. they still made pretty good progress on working through star tables, though -- and they tracked the nile's flooding based on an astronomical calendar. don't ask me how that fits together.

this is not a desert story, nothing to clip out of a newspaper or a magazine's gloss. you are not dreaming the easy curling voice, the railing's clank beneath your knotting fingers, the history of a people who watched the stars and crumbled away to dust. the dream is that there's someone else to tell it to you.

but it isn't the story that matters -- rumors come and go, but how many times have you heard that voice? a hundred. a thousand, in countless ways -- through daylight, yawning bright; echoing down the barracks halls, tugging at your rucked-up collar (take it easy, cadet); skimmed across the library's rooftop through sand-scrubbed shadows and silence. i should've known i'd find you up here. a laugh, warm as a firing engine, and the press of his palm against your spine. sorry i'm late.

that's a story too. here is the dream: the way you close your eyes. how your hands bunch tight like there's a railing out here to hold onto.

how you pretend you're still waiting. ]

[ you're on top.

it's one moment -- a flicker-flash -- a star of a heartbeat that prisms and shatters, blue-blue-blue, light slung in a thousand directions before every ray spins together again. here you are with a torso caught between your knees in the dark, wrists and fists tumbled to either side of his head, ground grating white beneath knuckles and fingertips, a heaving breath that you grind down with a laugh still caught in your lungs and sweat a long gleam down your spine. he's still fighting it, fingers banded along your arm as his heels scrape leverage through the dust and his hips twist against you -- but he's laughing too, and the thrum goes singing to your bones with the adrenaline of a good fight.

one heartbeat. one second, one sliver of a night and its thousand-thousand refractions: the broad sling of his shoulders with his fists pulled up, his gaze flashing down as you snapped a kick at his kneecaps, drove in swinging. dust smearing down your spine as you rolled. circles after circle, pacing in silence. static twisting beneath your ribs, nameless and bright. a bigger opponent means you aim for the weak points: throat, stomach, knees. unless you can hold him down, you lose the second he touches you. but you know him -- know how he moves: in strides, not springs. careful before he's ever showy. salt on your tongue, the way it must taste on his. a new bruise clouding the thick of your right shoulder, pulse after bright pulse, dizzy-swarming-blue-green-blue before it clears. the faint half-smile he'd cracked, one moment -- the last -- before you lunged and toppled him.

he'd have gone easy on you if you gave him the chance. he always does, sure as newton's first law. the trick is not to let him.

but that was heartbeats back -- and your pulse is pounding still as you brace a hand above his head, pin the other arm with your knees rooted at either side. you won this, and he knows it: frame settling beneath your hand, his mouth a too-sharp set as your shadow sweeps over his darkening, starless eyes, as you bow your head -- thighs bracketing his ribs, breathing the faint rime of salt -- as you lean in to tell him --

"got you."

happy. that's what this is: your mouth's curl irresistible, electricity prickling up your spine in a dull scorched trail, the way it feels to twist instinct into practice and feel him thud and give way beneath you. here and now, newton's third law spinning light out of violence, surer than anything you've ever known: you're right where you're supposed to be. ]

Edited 2017-03-23 09:41 (UTC)

hey

[ sent at some godawful hour of the morning (read: probably six). and then, because who the fuck knows how this companyman makes friends, let alone tracks them - ]

it's keith

w7d1, night

w7d3, night

CH. 4, BACKDATED A LITERAL MONTH BECAUSE YOU TOOK TOO LONG