Regret (a smutty short)

Warning for sap!
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“You have to stop this.”

“Stop what?”

“You know what,” I whisper, lost somewhere in the haze between being asleep and being awake.

“Why?”

Why is a difficult question. I open my eyes, but there’s little to see. The moon has already fallen past the trees, and the light coming through the parting of the curtains above the bed does little to illuminate the room. All it does is make the shadows darker, emphasize how dusty the corner of the dresser has gotten, and suggest that the lumps of blanket alongside me might contain a body.

“I miss you,” I finally answer. My voice sounds so small. So lost.

“Don’t.” His voice sounds so confident. So firm.

His fingers stroke the hair near my temple. I can feel the tears coming again. They start with that uncomfortable pressure in my throat that only gets worse when I try to swallow it back. There’s a buildup in my sinuses. A sting along my eyelids.

“I do. You know, they say going through divorce is the psychological equivalent of going through the death of a loved one?”

“Do they? Who says that?”

“They. You know.”

“I don’t know.”

“People. Shrinks. Them.”

He laughs. The low, throaty roll of it fills the darkness of the room. It rolls into the shadows and vanishes into the places where the light does not touch. I slide my fingers about my throat to squash the lump swelling there.

“Aren’t you the one who says that shrinks aren’t people? Shrinks and lawyers and tax collectors?”

“And three quarters of everyone else.” Somehow I speak past my clutching hand.

My eyes close, and he is there. The tip of his nose is cool along the heat of my cheek. Cooler than the air, or maybe that’s my imagination.

“And three quarters of everyone else,” he echoes. “Did I fall into that three quarters?”

The question bobs my throat against my palm. I feel the first tear gather to slowly burn its way free of my eye. From there the passage is swift: past the indentation of my temple to get lost somewhere in my hair. The hair he’d been petting a breath before.

“No.”

Silence fills the room again. It is not a comfortable silence. It’s the sort of silence that creeps under the skin and makes it ripple in too-familiar places. The sort of silence that makes the air heavy in the lungs. Makes the light seem dimmer than it already is.

“I think they’re full of shit,” he declares.

“Who?” I’ve already lost track of the conversation.

“The people. Them. They. The ones who say divorce is like death.”

I sniff, but another tear falls. This one from the opposite eye. More follow in short order, as though they’d been waiting for that moment of weakness to lay siege. I keep wiping at them with my fingers. They won’t stop, and now my hands are too wet to be of any use.

“I agree.” I speak despite the tears, despite my fear that he will hear them in the tremble of my voice.

“Of course you do.” I see his hand move at the edges of the light. “Death is worse. A lot worse.”

“Divorce is worse,” I argue selfishly. “It means you can’t ever let go. Not really. It means the person you love is still out there. Somewhere. Somewhere that you can’t be. It means being terrified to go to the market because he might see you, and he might be strong and happy and beautiful, and all you’d be is a ghastly mess breaking down by the tomatoes or the grapefruits because you saw him and the misery of the past few years came racing up to eat you from the inside out.”

“But,” his pause is filled by the muffled sound of my sniffing, “at least with divorce nobody’s dead.”

I’m silent as I think about this. Silent as he reaches beneath the covers, shifting the blankets to gather me close. He pulls me through the fragments of light bisecting our sleeping space. I wonder if he sees the tears. I know he has when he bows his head to kiss at my damp skin.

“Do you regret it?” His voice is a quiet rumble in my ear.

I don’t answer. Not at first. Instead I pull my fingers slowly from about my throat, slide my palm away from the tremble and heat. My head hurts ever so slightly. Just behind my eyes.

“I miss you.” It’s an answer of sorts. It’s also an evasion.

He is quiet in return. Perhaps he’s thinking. Perhaps he’s fallen asleep. His hand is heavy at my side, spilling over from my waist. It moves just as I resign myself to the silence. The awful, uncomfortable silence.

He strokes my thigh. The top of it at first, and then down. Up from the inside of my knee. His fingers are still cool despite their rummaging about beneath the duvet. He cups his hand about my balls and squeezes gently. Tugs. It’s an answer of sorts. It’s also an evasion.

“Do you miss me?” I cannot help but ask.

“Of course,” he whispers.

I wonder if it’s true. I wonder if he’s just saying it because he knows it’s what I want to hear. His fingers knead along the base of my cock, knuckles digging in along the skin. I’ve been hard since he crawled into the bed alongside me. I can’t help it. Hard even through my crying.

“Then stay.” My voice is too loud. Much as the light emphasizes the darkness, the volume only emphasizes the quiet of the room around me.

There is no response. Just the passage of his hand upward. Squeezing from the base to the tip of my cock, sweeping and stroking. He knows just where to grasp, just how to push on the downward angle. Years of touching each other lend themselves to easy familiarity. He catches his nail at the edge of my circumcision scar, and my moan breaks the silence.

“I’ve missed that.” A laugh eats at the edges of his words.

My hand is on my throat again. I’m swallowing against my palm. Swallowing as my eyes water more than tear. Swallowing as my heels dig against the bed, legs tangling in the blanket tossed across them. I grip tight, digging at my pulse with my fingers, bruising my neck as his hand works. Up and down and up again in rapid succession.

My climax hits me hard. Cum seeps warm along my cock, pouring generously toward the scruffy base. I’m too enthralled with the moment to care about the mess. I cling to the tingling heat, to the oblivion of gasping lips and hips that rock and rock without any input on my part to keep them moving. Hard, and hot, and then over. Too fast.

“You’re right,” I murmur as the darkness of the room comes filtering back to my senses. I’m lost between the haze of orgasm and the haze of sleep. I stare at the lamp cord on his side of the bed, stare where the moonlight has just caught the slopes and line of it spilling over the side of the end table. “Divorce is better. At least then you know the other person is alive and well. At least then you know they’re happy.”

“What if they’re not?”

“Not?”

“Not happy.”

“Oh.” I lick at my lips. They’re salty from my tears. I don’t remember touching my mouth, but I must have. “There’s still the potential. They might be happy at some point. And.” I pause, struggling to find the words. “And. I guess that’s what life is, right? Potential. And death. It’s the lack of potential.”

“I hope you’re happy.”

“I’m not.” He’s not touching me anymore, but I wasn’t happy even when he was. We both know it.

“But there’s potential.”

“You were my potential.”

“That sounds like regret.”

“Maybe.” I’m reluctant to agree.

“Hm.” He’s silent again. I imagine monsters in the closet. Eyes beneath the bed. “Divorce would have been kinder.”

My fingers curl against my collarbone, and I sigh out as the tears come storming up again.

“Yes,” I whisper in assent. “I miss you.”

He does not answer this time. The silence suspends from the cobwebs in the corners of the room. I roll against the mounds of duvet and tuck my face into the cool of his pillow. I’m lost in the haze between sobs and sleep.