Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Colour Me Yours ❯ Colour Me Yours ( One-Shot )

title: Colour Me Yours
part: 1/1 complete
date: August 2007

author: Thanatos_Aire (Airi M.)
contact: death.in.a.box13 @gmail.com

genre: Shin Kidou Senki Gundam Wing
rating: NC17/18+
warnings: dark/angst, slight profanity, blood, glossy lemon, bondage, S&M with emphasis on the latter, references to death and self-harm, present tense 2nd Person POV (anonymous), Prevs-era

cast: 5115
notes: The obvious don't-try-this-at-home-kids warning definitely goes for this fic.
I am very disappointed with the second half as it just seems to have fallen flat. Other than that, some of my favourite lines I've ever written are in here. But I still think I could have done better. ><;
blurb: Done for Shenlong's “Art of” contest this year.

trailer: Heero needs Wufei to add a little colour to his grey world.
disclaimer: I don't own, claim to own, or make profit off the use of any copyrighted elements, including GW canon, which have been borrowed without permission

Not to have felt pain is not to have been human.
-- Jewish Proverb

You desire to know the art of living, my friend?
It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.
-- Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Night descends across the winter sky like the black wings of a raven. Satin fades to velvet as the striking sherbet fades to deep indigo-navy. Twilight is gone and only the night remains.

You shiver.

In anticipation? In excitement, hope, fear? Do you even know yourself?

You sit by the window in wait, watching the darkness fall about the world. Those shadows play along your face, gliding across the angles and contours and wrapping around you like a secret, like a hug, like a blanket.

The moon peeks out from behind the watchtower. She slips away from it until finally fully revealed. Her light is brighter than the stars' or colonies', bathing you in cold as she watches with lowered eyes. She remembers you as you do her, those nights on the lunar base when you first were allowed this particular brand of night.

The moon turns away. You do not.

It is only here, sitting beside the window, where there is any light at all. The rest of the room is nothing but shifting shadows, dim gleams that disappear at every other angle, false beacons, the emptiness of gloom. It is only here that you get your addiction fix. It is only here that your empty outlines get coloured in.

It is only here where he will come to you.

Dusk bleeds away. Your inhibitions follow.

Here you can falter, here you may err. Here he will take you, and possess you, and love you `til you quake with weakness. Only here. You must stay put.

He enters the room on silent feet. You remain still. There is the silhouette of someone there in the watchtower, and you follow it moving, pacing, until the heavy blackout curtains are drawn shut. The room is nothing but utter darkness now. It is void of any colour or shape, just like how you feel inside. Blank, empty, nothingness.

But where the moon's light was cold, his dark is warm. His presence at your back is comforting, in a twisted threat of a way. Because here is where he takes you, and night is when he does so.

It isn't ever like this during the day, in the light, in the sun. There, then, you are friends, comrades, partners. Here, now, you are forces, master and pet, owner and object.

You always did love nighttime more.

He touches your temple and you flinch, still not prepared yet. He grunts and you shove your training away, push the instincts down, swallow the mindless reactions. Your sigh lets him know you are ready: he cannot see either in the dark. You like it that way. Despite everything he has taken, you refuse to give him that. He may have your body, your emotion, your dignity, but he has never seen them. Never has he glimpsed your face in the throes of feeling, never has he glanced upon the flesh he marks and kneads, never. It is but the one thing you control still.

But it is alright; you gave up almost everything else. You never had belonged to yourself, was always the object owned by J or the pawn the war sacrificed. The government owns your labour, the colonies your freedom, the Preventers your life. He owns you. And you let him, you begged of him to, you thrust it upon his hands bloodied just as much as your own. He took, and in return you protect him from the very things you relinquish. He is not a field agent like you, he is not a war-hero like you; he is owned by no one in return for owning you.

And so he asks, is tonight another journey? Will we transform tonight and become these people so broken that daylight renders us prisms and moonlight shatters us into recycled feelings? You nod but he cannot see in the dark, remember? You do not, not for a moment, but finally you offer a non-visual answer.

Please…

You can hear him swallow. He needs this just as much as you do, but he is too proud to ask for himself. When he asks about you it is not just for you but him as well. Perhaps one day you will take that from him and these nights will not be only at your discretion. Then again, perhaps one day neither of you will need these nights.

Fear spikes through at your heart. You quelch it, unwilling to move so quickly tonight. It was an endless day -- you need an endless night to regain your balance; and jumping into the game so soon will make the dark recede faster.

His voice, dark and rich and low and slightly ragged, tells you to get ready. You stand from the window, and with one last longing look in the direction of the curtains, you strip naked and kneel at his feet. You kiss his thigh to show you are ready and then obey his order to divest him of his own uniform.

Your calloused fingers run across his skin, feeling the goosebumps and the scars, and despite the darkness you find his tattoo. Your eyes cannot see it, but your mind knows it is there and your skin remembers where it lies.

He shivers as you lick along the heavy outline. It is too dark in the room to see it so it is your memory that provides the red and metallic gold colours your mind shades the dragon as. His breath hitches as you nip along the delicate details. It is too dark in the room to see it so it is your memory that provides the chocolate and metallic orange colours your mind shades the tiger as.

His voice again, rough with need, orders you to the shared bed. You are blind in the closed-off room but your feet recall the way as you count off steps silently. Left, right,

left, right,

turn thirty-degrees…

The mattress creaks with your weight as you crawl across it until your knees hit the pillows. You lean forward and grip the bar at the head of the bed with both hands, then rest your forehead on it. His hand trails down your arced back, beginning at the nape of your neck and finishing at the cleft of your bottom. It is your turn to shiver.

His touch enflames your skin, the throbbing screaming hollow inside finally benumbed enough that it dies down from the searing pain to a thrumming ache. He is here, he will fill that void, he will help. He is your personal hell, your personal heaven; he is the very air you breathe, the rainbow paint for your grey world.

Your throat catches the whimper before it comes into existence. You wince, wishing your training hadn't been so thorough. Sure it might mean you would have died during the war, but it is better than being dead now in peacetime.

His nails dig into the skin of your hip. Flesh is so easily ripped… But he does not give you even a small amount of release now. It is too soon. Later, wait patiently, later you will bleed out and it will be a grand death. Here it would only be a bandage on something not yet wounded.

He flicks his wrist and the fingernails jar into your buttock, leaving four distinct scrapes. They do not bleed, not yet, but they burn. Oh how they burn -- you need more, it is not nearly enough. It is a warm-up to something bigger, something more fulfilling and satisfying. It is a teaser for what will come later. Please, you murmur, hoping to get on with it.

But no, you wanted a long-lasting night. He will not go easy and give it to you quick. He will go easy and draw it out for you. Agonisingly slow, just the way you like it best.

You break the silence with your quiet voice. It is guttural, coarse with emotion, and unfamiliar but it is yours.

You tell him of what you have done. He listens despite the fact he knows already. It is always the same mistakes, the same moments of weakness, that you speak of each time. He has heard them all, knows of them all, and yet you never feel forgiven at his repeated absolution. He hums once you have finished your list of wrongdoings. Tonight's included things he has not heard in a while. You recall the latest nightmare that spurred those things tonight, but are cut off as he announces your punishment.

You accept, knowing you are unable to beg for more. You have tried in the past but he refuses. It is part of your punishment he jokes, but you can find no humour in it.

His hand lands on your bottom with a thunk but you do not move away or make a noise. He is already back near the window, shuffling through the clothing. He returns and there is the distinct swish that says he has your belt in hand. Doubled over for more control, for louder smacks, better grip. You want to ask for the buckle again, but remain silent; he never grants you that wish.

It is too dark to see him or the belt or even the bed beneath you, but your memory comes up with the sepia tone that your mind colours in the belt. The tarnished silver of the buckle he never lays on you, the faded bronze of the fingers he grasps the leather with…

The belt makes a whomp sound as it cuts through the air to kiss your bottom. It lands again before you regain the lost breath forced out of your lungs from the power behind the swing. He goes slowly at first, giving you time to suffer with the lack of fulfilment. Each blow falls heavy, falls precisely though it is pitch black and he cannot see you. That is how many times you have done this; yet it is still not enough.

Perhaps it will never be enough.

You find the rhythm, rocking into it, and are silent until he speeds up to a lovely waltz. Then your gasps join the thwacks and he is essentially playing music on your bottom. You try to imagine how pink your skin is but are distracted as he swings harder. He welts you with the belt fast and hard and you struggle to breathe, small whimpers escaping your throat.

You strain, tense, trying to get more from it. You want this, need it, cannot bear to be lacking its feel and colouring.

You stare blankly at the pillow beneath you, not that you can see it but you know it is there and you stare at it anyway despite there is nothing to look at. It is all dark. You find yourself still moving back into the whacks that dance prettily across your sore flesh. He gives you more at your choked sob, until your movement is more of a vibration than a to-and-fro, back-and-forth, one way then the other. It hurts now, the pressure ontop of the older weals, but it is still not enough and you cry because it is so close but still out of reach.

It is still not enough however. He knows and puts more force behind the swings, the doubled-over leather making just as loud a smacking sound as the leather-on-flesh thwacks. You choke, biting your lip, as the edge of the belt digs in, splitting the skin. He cannot see it so he continues, but even if he had known… This is the only thing keeping you alive with him, so he gives you as much as you can take.

But no more.

No, he still refuses to go further, to scar, to risk an awkward trip to the base infirmary. Perhaps you need that too -- that limit, that concern.

But for now, you need the pain more than the comfort. It is so much more fulfilling, satisfying. It lingers, reminding you of itself. That is what you crave, for it to linger for so long that you will not need another of these nights anytime soon.

That prickling heat on your buttocks, signalling the tiny lines of welling crimson, can do that for you. The bruises help. But he knows from the way your stifled moans change pitch that he has drawn blood and he is always careful to only tease when it comes to such things.

So he flings the belt off to the side and kneels up on the mattress beside you, one arm around your waist to keep you immobile as the other drops down with rough spanks. Quicker, more powerful now, you begin to make noises at the pain. Anyone else would be screaming, sobbing, fighting to get away; you merely keen, gasp raggedly, and fight to get closer.

He shifts, your thigh touching his, and he swings up from below now, catching the curve of your bottom and where it joins the top of your thighs. He had not really abused that piece of flesh with the belt but it is just as well. It is more sensitive anyway, almost enough by itself. Almost.

You buck, breath catching in your throat even as your eyes roll up into your head. Pain is pain is pleasure. You need more. He gives it.

It is a strange thing, pain. When you are numb it lets you feel alive, but when overloaded with feeling it makes you numb. It almost seems made for you, does it not?

With your body tingling from the hormone rush, your bottom stinging with the thwaps of belt and palm, your mind skittering around the overall effect of it all, it seems right. You almost feel real, instead of as an apparition almost just floating through life or going through the motions. Here you are grounded, yet here you are flying.

The globes of your buttocks bounce up and fall back into place at every hit, and the moment your lips round around enough air to breathe out his name, he stops. You shove into him with a cry, you need more why did he stop oh gawd… You were almost there. A few more hot welts dappled across your flesh and it would have been done.

Do you not remember your wish to have an unending night?

He is willing to give it to you.

Two hands light down on the backs of your knees and slide up roughly, his fingers pushing into your thighs, palms scrubbing across the planes of your bottom. They pause at the small of your back. He shifts to kneel behind you then lets his hands slip along the arched ribs to your neck. They wrap around that delicate anatomy, and you let your hands and head drop from the headboard.

His thumbs push into the nape of your neck, fingers digging into your throat. His thighs pressed up against your sore backside makes it burn even more and you hiss at the welcomed sting. Digits lace around your windpipe and your breathing begins to come out like wheezes.

You twist your hands into the pillows, shoving your face into them as well, but your hands need to grip. Your training is still with you, damn it all you like, and it is dangerous for him to be so near when you are so close to death. But it is not worry that races through your body -- it is joy.

The adrenalin sings in those delicate veins and the lack of oxygen is making you dizzy and high. You cannot breathe, pushing back against him as your body instinctually struggles for air but the motions rub your hot bottom against him and cause the pain to flare up. It clears your head.

You close your eyes to enjoy it more.

You cannot breathe. There is the distinct feeling of vertigo though you are kneeling on a bed and it is too dark to see anything. Streaks of colour light across your eyelids, flashes that jerk and disappear, and with the sting of your abused flesh it is like magic. Like fireworks that act like a fountain, filling that emptiness inside of you with their warmth and hues and company.

You cannot breathe, but can feel more than ever the way your heart thumps against your ribcage. You can hear it beating with hollow resound, how it echoes in your head throbbing. You can taste it, the blood welling up under your tongue. If only he had done this while working you with the belt; it would have been over a long while ago.

Your lips twist into a smile. Your gasps are shallower, useless. Almost there, your body shudders under him, against him, with him. Can you feel him shaking? He is more afraid of it than you are.

In the darkness behind your eyelids there is a phantasmagoria of visions, of pasts, of memories remembered and forgotten. Faces appear, places rush by. Words and phrases begin to rise in your head, and your body bucks, the stress singing in your ears. You go limp and welcome the unconsciousness that hovers over you. It comes from the darkness, it gives forth darkness. It is beautiful--

He lets go.

His fingers release and you try to cry out at the injustice of it. Nothing comes out but a strangled whimper. His hands leave your skin and he allows your body to collapse. Curled up on the pillow, you lie on your side coughing and gasping, crying wordlessly without a sound. You shift and there is a sudden weight lying against your thigh. It takes a few long moments for your oxygen-deprived brain to realise it is only your member, erect and weeping.

You take in sweet cool air. Each inhale is like a blinding white flash across your eyes, spinning in the black of the room. The darkness around you is heavy and thick. He knows it was not enough.

You raise a hand to your throat, touching it gently, diligently as though it were openly wounded. Your fingers cannot feel a thing, but the skin around your neck is tight and sore and you smile. There will be a collar of bruises in the morning; his sign of ownership of you and your mark of slavery to him.

You wish you could see it. Here in the darkness and without a mirror, you cannot admire it. Instead your imagination paints it a deep purple hue, tinged blue and ringed with yellow-grey. In your mind it is lovely.

But it is still not enough.

The mattress dips as he moves, his warm hands positioning your weak limbs. You cry out at the sudden shock of feeling in your legs, but the sound comes out nothing more than a stifled whine. As you lie there spread-eagle, it is as if your holey aura is leaking. You feel hollow, as if all your blood is seeping out, empty as if sliced open and picked at. You murmur to him to fill the emptiness, even if it is just with pain. It is better to be hurting on the outside than to be numb all over.

At least then you could feel something other than lost emptiness.

As you pant, sucking in hoarse gasps, he moves. Closer, hovering, kneeling above you. You cannot see him in the pitch black of the room and neither can he see you, but your skin slicks against his and you can feel him there even without the physical contact.

Something whispers on your skin and you realise it is his hair. It falls and slides on your chest and throat and both shoulders, like water, like ink, like blood. The room is too dark at night to see even with him up so close, so it is your memory that must surrender the ebony colour you give his hair. The room is too dark at night to see even with him up so close, so it is your memory that must surrender the coffee colour you give his eyes.

Chapped lips alight on your own. You open up, submitting to his tongue's explorations. His hands trail down your limp arms to grasp your wrists and haul them up to the headboard. Hold them there he tells you in a harsh whisper, and you nod and cling to the bar you had been gripping just minutes before.

He kisses you again -- ravaging your subservient mouth, plundering your vulnerable mouth -- before trailing his teeth along your jaw-line. He rakes his teeth down your throat, pauses on the artery for a moment, and scrapes across your clavicle. Your breath hitches.

This, this will be enough. You tell yourself it should, it needs to be, that he will finally provide you release with this and there will be no more afterwards. Until tomorrow night at least…

His lips close over your heart. His teeth pinch at the flesh there, and you jerk as he draws blood. His hands trail down your sides along the ribs and grasp hold of your hips. You cannot buck them any longer, not with his weight ontop of them. He moves away, down a little to lick at a nipple. He bites that too though not nearly as hard before moving to your navel.

You relish the feel of that top fold getting caught on his incisor. The piercing, the run of blood. You tilt your head to look but you still cannot see. Past experience must offer your mind's vision the crimson-coloured line.

He moves further down, biting down at the juncture of torso and thigh, that sensitive area in your crotch. You yelp at the acute pain. His tongue sweeps across your perineum and he bites at the junction on the other leg. You twitch, yelping again. He moves up, nipping the bottom tuck of your navel. It is not as good as the top, but he has abandoned it for your other nipple before you can enjoy it however slightly. From there he goes to your neck again, trying to catch the skin in the hollow base of your throat.

He growls and swipes at it with his tongue instead before assaulting your mouth again. Your bottom lip is punctured, the bittersweet taste of copper flooding your mouth. He laps it twice before descending again. This time he follows the path by licking and sucking at the bleeding bite marks. You moan at each one, the sting of his saliva reawakening the injury, the vacuum strengthening the way the injury pulses in time with your racing heart.

It is like fire, like liquid heat, like a running burn. You love it.

Your throat hurts, feels raw the more you try to vocalise something. What comes out is a pale comparison to your voice: ragged, cracking agony. That is all it is, your voice, your body, your soul, your mind. Dark, glorious, beautiful agony.

Tears clamber down your cheeks as he pushes your thighs apart. Your sore bottom skids across the bed sheets, adding to the ache a sudden sting. But you barely notice; you are too busy trying to figure out if you have ever cried outside of these nights.

They do not taste salty on your lips or tongue. They taste instead of sweet liberation, relief.

He lets you have them, he knows you need them. Perhaps you need them more than him, more than these nights. But he and these times in the dark are the only things that bring them…

If there had been a way to view them, the tears, what would it look like? You will never know since they come only in the black of night, but your imagination draws them as clear trails rivering down your face: from the outer corner of your eye down your temple to drip into your ear, from the inner corner of your eye down the side of your nose to pool either by your nasal passage or that cleft above your lip, from the middle of your lower eyelid down across eyelashes and cheek to swing off either into your mouth or under the line of your jaw.

You buck under him, arching your back so your stomach pushes up against him. He hisses, a pair of fingers pinching at your hip, his nails digging into the bone.

His breath lands on the puckered entrance hidden between your legs. You writhe, knowing what he will do and needing it so badly. Your member stands proud, bouncing with every twitch of your arm or leg or chest or hip, waiting still since coming to bed. You try to beg of him, voice broken, please you need more. You cannot form the words past the rawness of your throat; he cannot hear the words past the thrashing of your body.

His tongue appears again, but it disappears with a sharp Fuck when your leg moves of its own accord. The mattress squeals as he changes his position and you hear the swish of the belt again. No, no, that is not how it happens…? You do not care, you would willingly take more lashes, would beg for more lashes, but he has never given you more before. The headache coming on from the asphyxia will not let your mind work out why he has brought the belt back, not until your ankles are clasped together.

You jerk at the unexpected action, but he pays no attention and binds your ankles together. His hands fumble in the dark but he draws your ankles up to tie the belt to the headboard. Your knees bent and feet leashed above your head, he breathes heavily in the dark. There, he murmurs, saying you cannot move now. He is right. You are tethered, bound, and a familiar feeling of magnificent pressure rises up inside.

Your lips move, breath barely forming the words as you beg him to do more, to gag you, to tie your knees together, your elbows, collar your throat and attach it to the bed as well. Please… You ask for him to use a girdle or a corset or to just tie shoelaces tight around your middle, anything. Your wrists are still loose, please…

He pays you no heed, ignoring the cracked breath that is your voice. His mouth returns to the now- revealed cleft, his nose bumping ever so slightly against your upraised buttock in the blackness of the room. Then he travels purposefully up the underside of your thighs, nipping and marking them, drawing blood from the backs of your knees. You shiver at the pain, eyes rolling up again in pleasure.

Your body is tight with tension, drawn taut like a bowstring, shaking with such force there is almost an audible hum. So close, his hands run down your chest to rip open the bite marks, sending jolts of fire through your ravished form. You are drunk on it.

Idly, your mind questions, in the black of the room what colour is this pain? This pleasure? This addiction, this therapy…

You quiver. Again, in anticipation or excitement, does it really matter? All you care about now is being his, being red instead of grey.

You yearn for the feelings these nights elicit. The pain is proof you are alive, the pleasure proof you are capable of feeling. Those other emotions welling up inside your chest tonight are made tangible, made solid and viewable and understandable through the abuse of your nerve endings. It is difficult to explain it to yourself why exactly, how it is, what it does for you, much less explain it to another but he took it in stride and understood enough. That is all that really mattered: that he could give you this.

He shifts and in one quick motion, thrusts into you without warning. You shriek with anguish at the abrupt, excruciating burn. He had not slicked his way, had not stretched the tight muscle, and is not giving time for you to adjust to the sudden fullness. It is how you like it on these nights.

Sh, he reminds you. You are only in your shared quarters at Preventers; there are people sleeping on the other side of the wall. They must not hear this.

But oh -- the ripped feeling consumes you. The rest of the aches and stings merely niggle at the back of your head now. You want it but it hurts worse than you expected, than you remembered. How it hurts, so good…

You soak it up, soak it in. He shoves, almost violently, with a frenetic need. He slams, thrusts, with such power that you rock back from the force. The mattress cries, your wounds weep, and he grunts as he takes you. You merely take it, not moving voluntarily or making any noise save the gasps for air.

More, more, you chant soundlessly.

You are almost there, the bite marks and belt marks making their presence known as your stomach crunches with each thrust and his thighs rub up against your bottom. It drags a searing fire, prickling like sand or broken glass along your skin. You savour the feel.

His hands tighten in your hair, tugging, pulling your head back. The pinpricks of pain are not enough to do anything, not until he crushes his lips onto yours. Contorted and writhing in sufferance, you cannot control anything and take what he gives.

He closes his teeth around your tongue and the pain is too much. Your mind overloads and those sparks of colour return to your dark vision, and it is finally enough. Finally.

You shatter, fall, fly, implode; it is all of these things, your climax.

A vicious shiver runs up your spine as your body convulses almost as in a seizure. Limbs strain against their positions, the muscles working but unable to do anything. You cry his name, an apology, a question of forgiveness, it does not really matter; it did not come out intelligible.

Your teeth clench about your own tongue and the added pain finishes it off.

The bites sting as they get doused with your completion. It is a lovely little ache. You lie panting, chest heaving for air your bruised throat has trouble providing, but it is alright. You feel. Your whole body is filled with heat, mind swimming and skittering but not at those memories. You feel. You are not empty for now, not plain grey, imprisoned in J's cage.

He comments on how you have never come so early in the game before. When you do come, it is so hard you pass out, but this time it feels better, different, more of what you had been looking for in these dark nights. You say nothing and he moves away, giving you room to breathe.

If he had climaxed, you do not remember.

He leans up to untie the belt and though you find the energy to whine for it to stay, he releases your ankles from the bed and from each other. You cannot figure out where in the dark room the belt has gone to as his hands feather down your flesh, laying your feet down on the mattress gently.

You manage to rasp out a thank you but he remains silent. You do not know what that means. Is he angry, tired, too busy thinking? It is nothing but black inside the room so you peer into the darkness where you think his face is and try to give it features. The bronze skin, delicate black eyebrows, that pink jagged scar on his temple from the war.

He lies down beside you, a hand trailing along your sternum idly. It is more of an intimate lover's touch than the touch of one's master or owner or -- He sighs, your name dying on his lips.

Are you perfect yet?

Yes: perfectly broken.

He says that perhaps the night should end here. You shake your head, groping for him, and breathe that no, it was beautiful but… you still need more. No, no, that is not correct -- you want more. The need has been satisfied for now, but you feel compelled to go further, to see if doing it again will allow you to live longer in the day than the last times have.

You ask in that raped voice if he will help. He is silent for a long time before kissing the corner of your mouth. What ever you need, he finally answers. Where shall we take this second journey tonight?

You sigh, thinking. His fingers feather over your flesh making random designs, slightly tickling, but you appreciate the gentle touch just as much as his harsher ones. You do not understand why, because it does nothing for you like the others do, but that problem is beyond your comprehension and so you discard it for now.

That bondage earlier, when you had begged for more, it was… what is the word? Glorious, marvellous, awe-striking; nothing seems to do it justice. You want to see if it is just as good if he does it again, if he does more. You ask him if he will.

He accepts.

First, he tells you though, the lamp must be turned on. You panic, grappling with him, sobbing in that gravely voice, no no, no light. There must not be any light. It would not work, he does not understand. The dark is the only place this works, night is only time when you are able to do this. You cannot be this person, this owned thing, in the light.

Because the light can show you things. It lets you see. The dark steals that ability, forces you to become someone other than the person in the light. It allows you to be who you are inside when all the light does is trap you into being the person on the outside. Does it make sense? No? But it is true, it is real, not everything must be as logical as J wanted you to view the world as.

He struggles with himself. If, he replies slowly, there is only dark, then how to do the tying? He cannot see you in the dark, can only imagine the way you look sprawled on the bed, olive skin naked and torn, chocolate hair unruly, azure eyes finally showing emotion. Well, no; he cannot imagine that last one. He has never had the opportunity to see it, and it cannot take shape in his mind until he has.

By touch, by feel, by trial and error, you cry: it does not matter, he must do it and do it quickly. He refuses, worried you will be harmed.

You laugh.

It is a fatalistically empty sound.

You cannot explain to him how you are already hurting. The outside will finally match the inside, that is what these nights have been about. Why does he not understand? Through all this time, all these nights…

Your skin is so unmarred for your soul to be so scarred. These nights allow them to equal out, for you to feel properly placed in your own skin. If your outside is not empty, filled with marks and colour, then perhaps neither will your inside. That is all you have ever wanted.

But he will not… What else is there to do? You have tried this on your own before and it failed miserably. You need him.

Do what you will Wufei, you murmur, resigned to watching the night recede. Beside you, he is tense, rigid, and you can feel him trembling with anger. He cannot understand and that bothers him, he cannot help you and that upsets him, he cannot shed his skin like you here in these nights and that tears at him.

He moves away, off the bed completely, and you falter ever so slightly. Panic and fear rise up again in your chest, but his voice breaks the silence. If you want to hurt, then he will hurt you.

You did say you wanted this night to go on until dawn.

And so with relief you allow him to do whatever it is he wishes to in the black void that is the room. He owns you after all, and you need to feel his love, to see the colour of it.

He slides the belt about your throat, pulling it tight and you must sit up or choke. He tugs you around; disoriented in the dark, you sit on your ankles. It stings, a deliciously sharp ache as you put pressure on those blushed globes, but he pulls you up onto your knees.

Your hands are pulled between your thighs and he secures your knees shut together with… You wriggle a little and come up with another belt. His own probably. You do not know when he had left to search the clothing piles for it, but it does not seem important so you allow the question to disappear from mind.

The position forces you to lean forward as he wraps the end of your neck rope around his fist at the back of your head. He forces himself back inside, pushing your head to the mattress so your spine arcs up towards him behind you. You gag, choking as the action tears at the prior injuries. There is blood running down your thighs and it is not just from the bites or whip cuts.

It makes you light-headed, noticing it. Concentrating on the feel of the warm, sticky lines across your skin, you roll your eyes back involuntarily. There is a point where pain becomes pleasure, when there is so much that your brain is overloaded and confused and it begins to feel good. You are there, basking in it, hoping that it will not reach the point where pleasure becomes pain.

One hand bruising your hip with the grip and the other tugging at your throat, he takes you in long, slow, deep strokes. His lips find your back and his teeth mark that flesh as well. Once you begin to react, to squirm with a rising need to reach the peak, he releases your hip and searches the sheets for a moment, pausing in all other motions.

Before you can wriggle or gasp, something long and cold lies across your ribs. He pulls it back, shifting again to continue his sanity-stealing push-and-pulls. The metal in his hand twirls and the tip lands on your flesh without the rest of the edge touching.

It is a knife.

He always carries it with him, with or without his sword or gun. The sharp tip digs into the muscle in your back to the right of your spine, and you almost come just at the sensation of having your skin parted with such ease. Your sore throat works, trying to ask for more around the whimpers and moans that are your reaction. Blood wells up, overflowing as the blade drags through the delicate tissues.

It being pitch black in the room does nothing to help you visualise the scene: with your hands bound between your knees it is impossible to twist and view the marking anyway. Memories of war wounds tell you that the carved forms are deep enough that the tears they weep are dark, perhaps more black than red.

You almost wish you had allowed him the lamp's light. It would have been a pleasure just to watch those rivulets trail across your ribs to drip onto the sheets.

He tugs on the belt about your throat, tightening it and your breaths again become more strangled wheezes than anything else. He shifts his grip to hold it lower, closer to your head so he can grab a handful of your hair. Your concentration on following the careful knife strokes is broken by the lack of air mixed with the sensations of him inside.

He goes slowly, so very diligently because he cannot see, but it is wonderful the way it is. The steady drag as your skin splits opens, falling away beneath the instrument, opening up under the pen as he writes on your paper.

There is too much going on to focus on the carving, but you attempt to follow the figures to see what it is he is scarring into you. His fingerpad pats around gently, measuring out the distance before the knife rests down again, and you give up trying to read his work. You are dizzy again from the lack of air, coming closer to the edge of euphoria as he continues to take you, and with the unequivocal sensations of the warm blood running down your cooler flesh, you cannot seem to form a complete thought other than a simple, familiar litany: Thank you.

His strokes quicken, but the knife stays steady somehow, and the fingers in your hair tighten. This is all the warning you receive before his hand jerks, holding the dangerous blade away for the time it takes him to climax. His hoarse cry of your name is barely audible over the storming thrum of heartbeats in your ears, and as his other arm tugs back on the belt around your throat, pulling your hair some more, you too reach the peak and soar off of it.

As you glide down, you barely register the feel of him loosening the belts and finishing off the last mark on your back. His sigh as he sprawls you out beside him on the bed reaches though and ponder its meaning until crashing into a deep sleep mere moments later. Curled up in his arms, finally relaxed and at ease, you are the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

That is, you would be if he could see in the dark.

He honours your wish of no light despite you are gone and would never know, but still wonders if you will ever allow him the trusted privilege of seeing you so vulnerable. The real you has never appeared to anyone before, and he doubts he is worthy to be the first. But he accepts it, just as he has accepted these nights, because he loves you and admires all that you are. Even if most of it is fake and created by the light he needs.

So he kisses your forehead and dozes off, arms around you protectively: even though he has hurt you, he would never allow harm to come to you.

Too soon, it is morning and you are waking from a dreamless sleep. The heavy curtains have been pushed aside and easy refracted light shines through to the room, sundust floating about. You sigh, looking around the room: it is the same, but feels less like home than it had just a few hours ago.

He is coming out of the tiny bathroom, wet and naked but for a towel, and in his hands is the familiar first aid kit. You wince, struggling to sit up. He reminds you again how uncomfortable he is with the situation, that he obviously cannot give you all you need.

You purse yours lips and frown at him. You shove away the sheet, revealing your naked, abused body, and say he has given you everything you need.

Angry red welts mark your bottom. Your face is mapped with white trails of dried tears. Faint pink blushes your thighs. Your throat is ringed with a necklace of bruises of a beautiful blue. Purpled bites mar your chest. Your back is written on in brown ink.

Can't he see, you ask him even as you admire the battered flesh. All you have ever needed was to belong to someone who cared enough to put some colour in your grey world. And he has given you that -- he has coloured you his own.

You are perfect now until the colours fade back into your flesh.

But since he will colour you again when that happens, you tell him he is everything you need, and leave it at that.

He understands. He always has.

fini~