ext_207032 ([identity profile] wede-fic.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] fellowshippers2006-07-03 08:22 pm

Fic: Simmerdim

This is for Rue.
Vigorli with mentions of Vig/Bean.
Eventually, NC-17
Simmerdim is the Orkneyish expression for midsummers night. This takes place in the Orkneys. Current day. Other details will become clear through the course of the story.




fra


2005


It was not a place one went for peace. Nor was it a place for quiet contemplation. It was a place one went to be scoured, scourged, beaten and made clean by the buffeting. A place to match the raging pain in his chest. A place to do battle with the great yawning emptiness of loss and grief.

From the worn and rounded hill near his cottage he could see the long thin wedges of land that split the sky from the jealous sea, the rocky shore the sea ravaged, angled and beaten stones, grey and squat in the twilight. Winds blew so cold and cross they stung his cheeks, bit his ears and tangled his hair like the angry fingers of a vengeful lover. It hurt.
It felt perfect.

He unlocked the cover of his camera and drew it to his eye, framed the streaks of dying sunlight filtered by clouds and pressed the button. It suddenly seemed to him that no matter the direction he swung the camera there was a shot not to be missed. Click, advance and turn, sight, focus, click advance. The light was dim when he finally lost the feeling in his fingers, capped the lens and made his way back to the stone house on the hill.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Days later he was trapped in his stone house while the wind tried to peel away the roof and the sea thundered on the rocks. He had no idea what the time or day was. Stacks of photos lay in scattered piles on tables and chairs, in no particular order, like tiny open windows of memory. He didn't want them. And yet he couldn't not look at them.

An offset profile, a sleeping figure draped, one long-toed foot at rest. The photos were black and white, his preferred medium, so they denied him the color of hair or eye. That didn't really matter. He knew them both like the small veins on the top of his feet or the way afternoon light always felt softer no matter where you happen to be.

~~~~~~~~~

He finally ran out of cigarettes and whiskey on the twentieth day so he swung up into the old truck and coaxed it to life for the drive to the shops.

It was sunset, or sunrise, he didn't know, both lasted an eternity here. This far up on the earth the horizon wasn't long enough to hide the sun at night in midsummer. Simmer Dim, the locals called it.


Town was busier than he remembered with a multitude of signs and people all proclaiming midsummer's day. They'd decorated the square, tarted it up, as Beanie would say but it was just another reason for him to shop and run. Before the day was out he'd done just that.

He cracked a new package of cigarettes open, tapped one and lit it, inhaling deeply that first heavenly breath of smoke. The truck cranked to life and ambled out of town and into the west.

By the time he'd swung the truck up to the stone house, the twilight had deepened leaving the beach and bay in purpled shadows. He sat in the truck for a long time, smoking and watching the shifting towers of clouds climb and fall, climb and fall.

In the early evening light the house looked like a huge squat heap of rubble so he grabbed a bottle of whiskey and headed down the sloping beach path. The tide was waning, leaving long dark wet crescents streaked with kelp and shells and what ever fetched up from the gulf current.

Out on the bay he could just make out the round, blackened heads of seals as they fished and played amongst the rocks. Dark sleek shapes diving and surfacing. He shook his head and smiled, no amount of money could get him in that water. It had to be nearly ice it was so cold.

The night was fine and clear, multitudes of stars shone in an ink black sky, now the sun had finally gone. It would only be this dark for a few hours and sitting there he remembered how much he loved the night, the dark. Nearly a month here and he'd not really been in the dark, just sitting in darkened rooms or the dark room or out photographing in the slanted summer light.

And suddenly the space in his chest opened up, like inhaling the first biting wind of winter and he sobbed out a breath, his first expression of grief since the break. It charged through him, tightened his throat, made him gag on long suppressed tears, kicked him in the gut with it's harshness.

He lost his sense of time and distance, the images of the wall in their room, the light reflected from the open window the profile shadow of Sean leaving and the hard, sharp, finality of the door slamming. It echoed through him like a voice in a well, the reverberations shaking him like fever.

~~~~~~~

He was dreaming. The softness of the sheets, the warmth of the fire felt incredibly real. But not as real as the gorgeous creature riding him. The room swam with flickering golden firelight, the shadows weaving, making him dizzy and the image of the man across his lap fade in and out of focus.

He thought he could smell the sea.

In moments his orgasm throbbed through him and the flitting of light cold fingers across his cheek and lower lip were the last things he felt before his eyes dimmed and sleep took him again.

~~~~~~~~

The harsh cold light of morning filtered through the lace curtains of his room followed by a lancing pain behind his eyes. He groaned and the sound reverberated around the quiet room and his skull with killing loudness. He groaned again and whatever he drank worked its way up the back of his throat.

He barely made it to the toilet before his belly emptied itself.

"Oh, god." He moaned and knelt, laying his head on the blessedly cool porcelain rim of the tub.

He wished he were dead.

~~~~~~~

When he finally made it to the kitchen, there was a pot of coffee hot on the stove and his cup was clean and set on the green tiled counter next it.

~~~~~~~

tbc…

[identity profile] oceansecrets2.livejournal.com 2006-07-04 04:38 am (UTC)(link)
What an atmospheric beginning! You really gave me a sense of the place (and I'm glad the water was too damn cold to tempt him into it...) making the warmth of the 'dream' all the more enticing.

[identity profile] laeglass.livejournal.com 2006-07-04 02:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Lovely, lovely images you paint with words ♥