Sleepwalker

By The Queen of Blueberry Toast 

Let this be a lesson to you! Too little sleep and too much techno are a bad thing.  
I'm still very broke, predeliction for writing this sort of thing and all.

~*~

Schuldich sleeps fitfully, his body writhing on the currents of the restless earth.  
Sometimes his lashes start to flutter as with dreams, but it's never for more than 
a handful of seconds.  In the slick blue light Tokyo breathes by night, Brad misses 
it now and then; thinks he's seeing things.  His own eyes are heavy and dim with 
the rest that hasn't taken him in nights.

He says to himself he doesn't need to sleep anymore, the words glinting sugary on 
his lips.  "I don't I don't I don't." Like a mantra he drinks them down.  To hell 
with "I can't sleep".  Fuck "I don't want to".  He believes he can live the rest 
of his life stumbling through the hyper-aware trance his heart's put him in.  He 
believes the thirty years most humans sleep away should belong only to other humans.

Tonight at least, he realizes he's not going anywhere near them.  The thought 
plunges through his nerves like feathers.  He's so giddy with his waking dreams he 
feels weightless and stupid and full of meaning, like he could walk though the pale 
space above him that's probably the ceiling.

"I don't I don't I don't need to sleep."

Beside him, Schuldich's breathing stutters in the sticky night air.  He's awake in 
an instant, looks like he hasn't even tried to close his eyes.  "What?" he asks 
softly.  "What did you say?"

Brad's gaze, slow and glaucous, meets his own.  "Nothing."

Some of Schuldich's senses have already flipped back on, but he has to lick the 
imaginary sugar off his lover's lips before he decides what he tastes is more than 
static from his dissolving mind.  "You want something."

He does, now that there's nothing to pretend.  He says so, and props his head on 
one hand so he's looking down now on the creamy body twined naked in the same 
sheets as his own figure.  "Tell me again how you sleep."  Not because I don't 
understand, not because I'm lonely.  Tell me because I want to hear it.

Schuldich runs his palm over his forehead and lets it fall to the web of their 
pillows.  "Telepaths can only reach true REM once for every time we go to sleep a
nd as soon as it ends, well, it's not so bad, we just wake up a lot during the 
night.  I've got a problem though 'cause I can't block other people out."

Crawford scowls faintly.  He doesn't think it's a problem, not in the least.  
But for now he just closes his eyes, and bends over his lover's lips, breathing 
in the vapors of his words, and mouthing them himself.  

"My head kinda melts."  He always says it just like that.  "I taste everyone 
nearby, and I *can't* wake up until my dream snaps me outta it."

He ends with another kiss, and lets one of his legs slide under the covers until 
it's pressed close to Brad's, a little of the satin that surrounds them 
caught there.  

His lover nods, pushes back and squeezes him in his arms, floating down along 
all of Schuldich's body.  Schuldich doesn't mind- he just snuggles his face into 
Brad's shoulder and tries to breathe slowly.  Falling asleep once is one thing, 
but he has to do it nine or ten times a night.

Crawford's hands help a little, reaching between his back and the swimming 
surface of the waterbed beneath them, fingers working on the electric little 
kinks sparkling on his spine.  The air conditioning comes on, joins the breath 
nibbling at his throat and the nonsense lullabies- "Yes, go back to sleep, you 
wretched little thing.  Dream on my mattress, dream all you want.  God, you're 
so beautiful," he doesn't remember the last time Brad said 'God'.  Just- "I don't 
need sleep, I don't I don't I don't" and then he's gone, dripping from the bed, 
careening like a shower of photons, lost and stippling all over the city in a 
torrent of himself half-mingled with other flavors, other voices.  Everywhere and 
nowhere.  Everyone and no one.  Though he never feels it, the sensation makes his 
pulse flutter for an instant.

Brad knows.  It took him a week to learn it, but now the sympathy is so great, 
his own body answers and he smiles a hard and shattering smile.  

"Time to go to work."  The words mangle his prayer and after them the wings 
growing like vines in his blood burst into bloom and start to fly with his senses 
half-willing in tow.  He thrills; his bones, his eyes, the sense of space his own 
mind feels, his cock.  He shakes a little with anticipation and his mouth is wet.

Schuldich's as good as comatose.  He can't wake him.  He *can't*.

As Crawford slips off the bed, he drags the sheet with him.  The liquid still 
cradling his lover shudders and sighs and settles at last.  Every muscle in 
Schuldich's face is smooth now- he looks serene and ageless, not quite an antique 
doll, and not quite spirit born of city smoke.  He looks like some synthesized 
force dreamed him up and left him lying in the real world by accident.  His smile 
has gone, and the heat flush from the summer night.  What there is of the moon 
overhead turns his russet hair a fragile underwater color.  

Brad catches his breath and tries to shake this spatter of images away.  He doesn't 
want to see the analogy machine of his own mind, just Schuldich swimming in the 
misty astral seas without his body.  No, maybe Schuldich isn't even here- his eyes 
are mute, and his lips blind to touch.  When he kisses him, it is without any of 
their wild fierceness their fucking and incidental makeout sessions brings; so 
tender it makes Crawford's mouth tingle with the subtlety of his own movements.  
Schuldich's tongue tastes of creme de menthe and stillness.

He sits for awhile now, and smoothes out Schuldich's floss so it falls against his 
shoulders rather than the pillows.  Even if his lover's already stretched out on 
his back, he takes a moment to straighten the sinew of his limbs, cross his arms 
over his chest, just gently like some flitting, holy thing.  

The lights come on.  Schuldich snaps into focus, but only so much as the bleary 
guise of Brad's eyes will let it.  No, he doesn't need perfect clarity he decides.  
Sight is overrated, beauty can be more profound than it allows. 

Crawford reminds himself one more time that they've already fucked at least twice 
that night.  His heart swells now, and the feathers it pulls through him, the 
feather from the nightstand he can't remember buying follows and strays through 
his lover's pubic hair, into his navel and his thighs, but the feather doesn't 
suit Brad, the purple glass orb ball he keeps tucked in the nightstand doesn't 
either, as enchanting as the little pink trails he weaves on his Schuldich's 
skin are.  

He keeps that at least though, palmed, for it's cool yet.  The bed swells again 
with the displacement of his weight.  At first he only holds Schuldich, rubs 
himself on the scent of his skin now and then, drowns in the satin pool of his 
still body as it holds itself like a saint.  The poetry of that form has almost 
overcome him every night this week, and with that sensation bursting in him now, 
he dances with his breath unable to cling to her hands.

In some ways he looks like a madman, like a mystic ready to tear his flesh open 
in the whispered name of what he worships.  His skin gleams and his eyes grow 
darker with every caress he laves his lover with- there's no place he hasn't 
touched him.  The inside of that creme de menthe mouth knows his own, every 
fine shred of down on his crotch and his belly, every rib, every nail, every 
outline of his insides he can feel with his fingers in his ass where he slips 
them now, and rubs his own traces into the oozy silk feeling there.

Though this he begins to laugh softly to himself and once more plunges his mouth 
into the sanguine and still one just below him.  The bed sways beneath them, but 
Schuldich, frozen in his reveries remains, tangled in the lamp light and the aqua 
sheets.

What's the point in trying? Brad can't help himself and so dips his cock into the 
his rosebud- just a little, just enough to make him murmur if he could feel it.  
Somehow he doesn't think Schuldich can- that or hear him, for he sighs against the 
golden hoop that graces his left ear- "Stay asleep, Schuldich.  Stay asleep for me." 

Drawing his thrusts slow and muzzy still, Crawford takes his lover's limp penis in 
his palms and begins to stroke it in between his own calculated and ecstatic 
movements, kissing the sleep smile now rather than opening it to his own mouth.  
Sometimes he takes him with his sex now, and sometimes with his finger tips, 
sometimes with his tongue in a pattern of facets so intricate he can't keep track 
of it in the wavering silence between him and the unconscious beauty. 

Some waking little delusion in him reminds Brad it's time, almost time, might be 
time soon.  He begins to watch the ginger of Schuldich's lashes, hoping they'll 
lay still as the rest of him.  No flutters yet, not there, though with resistance 
flowing through it, the cock in his hands surges and begins to drip.

"That's it, stay asleep, lovely.  Don't dream."

As he brushes his tongue to his eyelids, they begin to quiver like the skin of a 
newborn bird.  Somehow Crawford isn't surprised.  He can never come on dreams 
along with Schuldich, even if half of him doesn't want to, doesn't need to, just 
needs to want what there is of him left in the bedroom and the real world.

He takes one parting push to his embracing body.

And Schuldich's eyes fly open.  Their figures lock together like two ivory gears 
for an instant, but that belonging once again to the telepath grows pliant.  He 
yawns, and drags his fist over his eyes.  "What are you doing?" He doesn't sound 
angry, or anything but faintly more wakeful than his lover.

Crawford's too tired to lie, too tired to be hurt by the ruin of his prayers.  
Not yet.  When he speaks the strange logic of his walking nights, it makes sense 
to him.  "I don't even know."

A few incoherent noises answer them, and from their syrupy noise Brad pulls away, 
and sits now on the edge of the bed, embraced only by foamy lights and the smoke 
from the cigarette that turned up on his nightstand.

Schuldich's shrug sounds a little wet against the sheets, for he has drawn his 
legs together, and the liquid still gathered inside him clicked a little on his 
skin.  "Ok, so why did you do it?" Why did you even try, but he doesn't quite get 
the rest out before the bed churns beneath him.

"Because I'm in love with you."

But he doesn't just say it, his shields tear open like tattered curtains.  The 
room is flooded with them, heavy, wet and bitter.  Cloudy almost, lucid somehow.  
Schuldich gasps noiselessly to himself and begins to drink.  They feel so solid in 
his mouth he has to lick his wrist to make sure there's really nothing tugging at 
the buds along his tongue.  "I thought so," he says after awhile, and 
bites himself.

"Fucking hell..." the velvety voice he knows so well has grown faint and thick by 
the time it finally breaks the silence gathered around them.  "Just... 
fucking hell."

"You didn't want to sleep if I couldn't."  Coming from him, it sounds like an 
absent remark about the weather.

"I don't ever want to sleep again, I just want... to be with you."

Schuldich's lips slide over his tears like drawn butter, hot and slick.  They 
make him gasp, gag a little on his sob and the smoke and the night and...

"OW!" Schuldich wakes up.  He's sitting in the middle of his living room.  His 
muscles still ache where he's fallen, and so does his cock, but not as much as 
the gouge mark on his shin.  One of the end tables lays sprawled before him, a 
sharp, black shape dripping bits of fallen glass and water and lily threads from 
the broken vase.  Outside the moon glows above a swarm of fireflies and stars, 
melting into each other.  Then a hall light, then a shadow and something warm 
settling on his shoulders.

"Are you ok?"

"More or less," he snorts a little, and leans back against the terry robe that 
follows him whenever he sleepwalks.  "Hora, hora.  This keeps up, you're gonna 
have to tie me to the bed for non-recreational purposes."

"Frankly, I'd rather you broke a hundred of my vases."  A kiss falls on his 
throat, and then another, and stingy fingers play over his torn skin.  

"I had that dream again."

Now the weight moves from his shoulders to his chest, squeezing him tight, 
tight enough his ribs creak.  "I can't help the way I feel.  I know I shouldn't 
have said it, that I wouldn't mind going without sleep for the rest of my life 
for you.  I like it when you wake me up in the middle of the night.  It makes 
me feel like... you need me."

"Oh shuttup, Brad, and get me some bandaids."

Crawford just chuckles knowingly and hoists his lover into his arms.  Schuldich 
sips an answer at his gaping and unguarded thoughts.

/How could anyone in their right mind, let alone YOU and that cursed imagination 
of yours, think WE of all people would have a stormy, uncomfortable relationship.  
It's just ignorant./

"Damned if I know, Brad.  Damned if I know." 

~*~

Fin