TITLE: Fireflies or Lightning Bugs
E-MAIL: eli @ popullus.net
RATING: PG-13
POSTED: Sept. 8, 2004
SUMMARY: Another mission, another ending.
NOTES: After Salieri's hot summer cicada-filled day got me, the fireflies wanted a piece of action, too. Writen in 90 minutes for the Contre La Montre laundry list challenge (something cold, something purple, a tree, bare feet, a physical wound).
DISCLAIMER: Read
When the air is dense, holding Daniel much more kindly than the broken tree at his back with its blackened and jagged trunk standing just taller than his head, the fireflies come.
What pass for fireflies, at any rate, on this world without oceans. One of those things has next to nothing to do with the other, but one difference always heralds more and they look like fireflies, bobbing and darting and letting go, giving in to float in the visible night, lined up like a string of party lamps without the constraining cord. They come to him, perhaps drawn by the way he bends the atmosphere, sucked into the counter-current his presence creates in the full humidity and then swirling down and away, pulled along Jack's length, his legs stretching out farther than Daniel wants to look.
Instead, Daniel's eyes follow the path of one drunken light as it breaks from the pack, blinks out, in. It hovers uncertainly above Jack's tight fist where his fingers are clenched on the ground, hanging on. Daniel's own hand flexes deeper into the grass by the root at his hip, the slick and narrow blades a surprising slice of coolness between his fingers when the bug almost skims in for a landing before blinking out again.
A stuttering sigh reaches through the air, cutting through the silence that has settled and drawing Daniel to its source. Pushed momentarily upward on Jack's breath, two fireflies dance: one joint step in, one away, circling each other and going dark, black dots spinning against a water-grayed curtain. They come to an abrupt halt, their lights trembling, and Daniel imagines an arm-straining dip at the end of a tango. Another stirring of the air and they are pushed up, flying higher again. Watching Jack's lips part further, realization forces the grimace on Daniel's lips into a more amused curve.
Maybe he should brush them away to find another stage before someone innocent gets hurt.
A new light flickers bright and hopeful at Jack's shoulder. Under the indigo glow of the moon alone Jack's skin looks as slick as Daniel imagines the grass staining his pants feels, the moisture leaving the air to merge on that bare surface and form a barrier that sweat doesn't penetrate, not because it isn't necessary, but because there is nowhere for it to go. Even as he reaches down to touch that shine, Daniel's breathing stays shallow. Every moment is made up of many factors, but like Jack's skin, Daniel's lungs recognize a loosing battle with the thick world around them.
The two points of lightning weave away, free. Determined not to wonder where, Daniel instead wonders about things within his reach, like that pulse, hard and quick at the base of Jack's throat, beating out a ragged rhythm against Daniel's two fingers pressed there.
As if feeling the stroke up to his jaw that Daniel is thinking about wanting to make, Jack's head rolls restlessly in Daniel's lap. His eyes blink open, vague and unfocused for moments longer than whenever anyone stands over him and gives him a brisk shake. Jack stretches, twisting up when Daniel bends down to keep from seeing whether those dark eyes clear. He's awkward without help, his burn-streaked toes flexing against the scorched ground beneath them, a noise that isn't one of wanting breaking from him. But then their mouths brush, press, open to the heat and Daniel closes his eyes, shutting them tight and wishing for forever.
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