Title: Tactile
Feedback: Any and all constructive criticism would be lovely, whether e-mailed or left in a review.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. 'Tis rather unfortunate.
Pairing: Jack/David
Notes: Thanks to B and Charlie Bird for their suggestions of changes, and everyone who reviewed at my LJ for their feedback.

Tactile
By Angel of Harmony/Harmony/Jen

Awake in his bed, as the filtered moonlight carves shadows across his heaving chest, David Jacobs wipes his mind of grey tweed and starched linen.

(you win)

But he knows it's not enough to trade fine suits for red bandanas, harsh sneers for cocky grins—it's too dishonest, one lie too many in a sea of yellowed newsprint hyperbole. This is a truth that cannot be improved. And so he proceeds, systematically, to erase three weeks' worth of memories, reducing them like day-old headlines to so much chalk dust. Rallies and fights melt into family suppers and arithmetic lessons, and betrayal is once again an empty word with nothing more than academic meaning.

(i quit)

But even when the images are faded, and the sounds of cheers and laughter and bravado mere echoes in his mind, tactile sensations linger on the surface of his skin. Twenty-four hours have passed since a hand thrust against his breastbone sent shockwaves through his bloodstream, twenty-four hours since the jagged edges of old bricks made angry red indentations across his shoulder blades, but the feelings remain terribly, remarkably, painfully vivid.

(i'm certain you let my hands wander your hips)

And no less painful, no less vivid, are the psychic tendrils of every touch before then, every gentle pat and playful grip and firm embrace, a thousand tiny touches that dance across his arms and chest in a never-ending cycle of shameful muscle memory.

(just to leave me desperate now)

And so he lies, with gasping breaths, on a bed that's too hard in a room that's too warm, both hands pressed against his own flesh: one cupped and moving to the rhythm of memories he yearns to forget, the other ghosting the imprint of day-old fingerprint bruises.

(baby i'm falling away)