White Crayon

WARNING: mentions of past lovemaking. Semi-explicit. Ye be warned.

He is the one thing you cannot get enough of. He is special and perfect and breathtakingly beautiful. Yet you fear you've made it trite and unconventional, not-perfect for him. But you will fight for it, like the golden and red on your robes urge you to.

AN: I quite like the idea of James as an artist.

There is an eerie silence in the room – a sort of transcendental, like for a moment, the world has gone quiet. Not a sound, but his heart beating with yours.

He lies next to you, his legs almost obscenely spread, silently staring up at the ceiling. The blankets are nowhere to be seen and you briefly wonder if they had ever even been there in the first place – your eyes trail to the clock on the nightstand, two AM, but you never want to leave.

You wonder if he would be upset, were you to reach out and touch him.

The idea that for him, this is a mere casualty, strikes you more than once, and it makes fear bubble up in your chest so you try to push it out of your head and you try to pretend that this is not what it seems to be, this is not what he makes it out to be, because this is love and this will last.

You know he'll disagree either way.

With his ever-present grace, he turns onto his side and fishes a pack of cigarettes from his jeans. Clothes are littered all over the floor, and how he is making out which are yours and which are his, you have no idea. When he has lit the cigarette, he turns back to lie next to you once more, setting it between his lips and taking a drag.

You remember those lips touching yours and you want it back.

The idea that you may never have it again, hurts.

You wonder if he let anyone else kiss him before. You wonder if any of his past bed-mates know what he tastes like. Have they had the honour of sampling his mouth with their tongue? Did he let them drink him as he'd let you?

You lie in bed and count your wrongs.

But this, this, is not one of them. This is love and this will last.

But then you think, that this, this is like that one white crayon you rarely use. Running off with him like that, sporadically leaving the castle and taking him to the Hog's Head. Making him yours, over and over and over again. It is the white crayon, and that is never a good thing.

It swirls around in oblivion, somewhere in your head, so far away that half the times, you don't even know you have it until it faces you with such excruciating power it can not be ignored. You can only use it, it will only serve its purpose, when used on the right canvas. When the correct setting has been chosen.

What if you chose not black paper, but some other, less powerful grey paper? What if you made this white crayon, not love, but lust? What if you screwed it up by being so disregarding of the rules?

Did you tread on the unspoken vow? Did you disrespect him like all others did? Are you one of them, merely here for the play, not for the stay?

What if you turn out to just be one of the many that has graced his bed?

What if this is not love, and it will not last?

His long fingers wrap around the neck of a half-full wine-bottle, offering you his cigarette without a second glance. When you bring it to your lips, you can smell him on it, and a faint hope that it will taste of his lips fills your heart. When he takes a swig of the wine, a single trail spills, dripping down from the corner of his mouth – and the contrast with his milky white skin is so entrancing, you might just cry from sheer appreciation. He reaches up to brush it off, but before he can do so, you kiss him there – beautiful pale scent and skin, and it's by far the best sampling you've ever had.

The bitter tang of the wine mixes perfectly with the brackish taste of his salty skin – and you remember earlier, when he had let you drink the wine while it spilled down his chest and dipped into his navel.

His eyes lock onto yours, the silver swirling with an intensity that would frighten any lesser man. But you have seen it all before, the disapproval, the pleasure, the want. Nothing can surprise you, not after tonight. You have made sure every possible emotion has been played at least once on his features, nothing left untouched. You can read his every look, and you know that although now, he is feigning disapproval, he will be moaning your name later.

"If you want another go," his voice flows smooth, like satin, and you envy it – how it does not hitch once, how it makes you want to have him all over again, "I'll need a minute."

The words strike harder than they should have.

This is not the first time he has been here. You are not the first man to have him. This does not make you special. It hurts, deep inside your heart, and you fall back to the mattress next to him, unwilling to let him see your weakness.

He seems to not notice or care, as he simply takes back his cigarette and lets the bottle drop to the floor carelessly. You hear the faint thunk, followed by a swish, indicating some of the liquid has spilled, but cannot will yourself to mind. You like his reckless nature in a situation like this.

You like how his hands had clawed at your hips and how for a moment, he had seemed free.

You wonder if he looks like that, with everyone else as well. You wonder if he has a sex-face – a mask – he puts on in front of all his lovers. Does he mask his pleasure with them, feigning indifference? You wonder if you were the first to sense the freedom, to see the silver swirl dark with passion. Did the others hear him groan their name? Did they care?

Was yours the first to fall so freely from his lips?

His thighs flex when he moves, brushing his long golden hair back, the locks falling into his face annoying him. He brushes them from his cheek, and you watch his abs move under the blanket of silk skin. Those thighs, that had been straddling you as he rode you, allowing you to come into his body and grab his frail hips. His body that had twitched so deliciously at the tug of yours, forcing yourself deeper as he begged you to go harder.

It had been everything you had imagined it to be, yet somehow had fallen short in memory. You needed it to be love, you needed it to last.

And he was already treating this as a quick shag, a momentary release. When you see him focus on the ceiling once more, the light of the pale moon outside reflecting in his eyes, you outstretch your arm, and glide a finger over his abdomen. It tenses and relaxes under the touch, and you dip your finger into his navel before going upwards. Reaching the hollow of his throat, you halt, and wrap your hand around his neck instead. You turn his head so you can meet his stare, and next to surprise you see only the cold empty stare he regards the rest of the world with.

And that hurts.

"I love you," you say – you want him to know that this is not to you what it seems to be for him, "I love you."

His look turns that tad bit sterner, and that can not be a good sign. Even if this is his way of rejecting you, you will fight for him. Because this is real, and you cannot let this go. This is your white crayon, and you'll be damned if you let grey paper mess that up.

"You do not love me," he says, yet he takes your hand in his like he cannot go without it, "you think you love me. I let you bed me and that tends to make people feel very giddy, but when you wake up in the morning, the feeling will have subsided and you'll feel resentment and understand that it was just the sex that had been particularly good. It has nothing to do with love."

It cuts like a million pieces of glass through your heart, but you will not give up. You can fight for this. You know you can make it if only you try hard enough.

You drape your sweaty mess of limbs around his and kiss his temple – his body glides so perfectly under yours, you know then and there, that it is not a feeling you can give on. You will never let go.

The radio plays quietly on the background, and you can feel his heart beating under your hand. Flattening your palm, you press it against his chest and wait to feel it hitch when you kiss him again, tasting the wine and the nicotine and that purely addictive flavour that is solely Lucius'.

You press your body closer to his and count your wrongs.

"The only thing I will feel in the morning are your lips against mine," you kiss his chin, where he tastes clean and soft, where it's nice to run your tongue across the flesh so you can feel it ripple in your mouth, "I love you, and I will not let you go."

He sighs delicately, and even that is beautiful. The light makes his skin glow and you want to make love to him all over again.

You wonder if the urge to touch him, has ever been this strong with any other person. Did he let them cuddle into him like this? For a moment, you wonder if he would have really let you have him, if it was just sex.

"You'll grow tired of me," he swears, as if that is reason enough to stop this right now – you see white insecurity flicker and you know.

He doesn't want to be your white crayon – he wants to be your black crayon, the one you'd be nothing without. What would you do, if you had no black crayon left to finish a work? To begin the sketch and add the shading. You would be useless without your black crayon, you would be talentless, unable to bring what you see to the canvas.

You made him be this casualty, this once-in-a-lifetime thing. What you really need him to be, is the certainty, the promise that he will remain with you, from start until completion.

"I could never grow tired of you," and you mean that too – because so far, you've had some slips, some fouls, some faults, but this will not be one of them, "I will never grow tired of how you taste and how you move, I will want to hear the sound of your voice until the day I die. You have been my motivation for living since I first saw you. I love you, not only with my body but with my heart. I love you, Lucius. Not the idea of you."

He cups your cheek and presses a chaste kiss to your lips.

With a bit of reluctance, and a slide of his leg wounding around your hips, he says: "and I love you, too."

Later, when your finger touches his thigh, you realise that it does not matter how many men were in this position before you – because you will make sure you are the last.

AN: this idea came to me when I realised that I only ever use my white crayon on a black piece of paper, because otherwise I will feel as if I've cut its powers short.

Basically, Lucius and James ran off to have their happily ever after together. I know this sucked. But I don't give a fuck, because I had to get it out my system. This is loosely based on 'het is een nacht', by Guus Meeuwis, and well. I had written a piece called 'white crayon' very similar to this one, but better devised and with the 'you lie in bed and count your wrongs' as a reoccurring theme. I also wanted to write a songfic to go with 'het is een nacht' since I can't listen to that song without getting JamesLucius flashes, so yeah – you should really listen to it though, even though you won't understand, it's a marv song. Then, my HD crashed and I lost it all.

So, instead of spending months trying to write 'white crayon' as I'd written it before, I decided to combine the two ideas and make something less good so I could leave it alone, well and done, without it bugging me.