omyara, by tarsh (Highlander)

Rated: R-18 for explicit slash.

DISCLAIMERS: These guys don't belong to me. They belong to R:P/D, who are finally using them again (Methos on the big screen! Yeah!). Also, this story is SLASH. Two men, no clothes, lots of moaning and groaning -- get the picture? Please don't read this if that isn't your cup of tea. You've been warned often enough, there's no excuse for reading on ahead if you know you're not going to like it.

I still have no idea what this is. Although grateful thanks to Cassidy, Rae, and Lorie for trying to tell me :-). And for encouragement, and comments. And for listening to me rant and whinge over this story at every turn. I appreciate it, all of you. And thanks to the muse list, who did their best to help me dispose of the irritating and undesired muse behind this. We failed to get rid of the muse, but we did cause some havoc in the attempt.

One more thing. If you're wondering about the title -- and, indeed, about the inspiration for this -- I've put up a little explanation on that. I recommend reading the story first, if only because the actual inspiration part turned out to be the final line of the story. (What? Nobody else writes their stories backwards? Or sideways, forwards and upside down? And in knots? All at the same time? *grin*)

Please tell me what you think of this. It was a very difficult thing to write, and I'd like to know that people are reading it. Thanks. -- tarsh

The caress of his gaze warms your skin, like sunlight on your face on a sultry summer's day. Your reaction begins at that one hypersensitive point between your shoulderblades. It slides through your body in a knife-edge dance of tension and release, settling ultimately deep in your belly. Tendrils of heat snake their way through to your extremities; down to your feet, out to your hands, up to your face, into your cock. You hadn't expected to find him; not here, not today, not behind the door you opened unsuspecting. But now, caught in your power as you are in his, he steps into the room and closes the door behind him. Your hand reaches out to him under its own volition; caresses the air a hairsbreadth from his face, and he leans, welcoming and wanting, into your touch. Memory plays vivid in the space between you; you stand, wordless and wanting, and in that instant you learn an eternity is really not that long.

Movement is slow, slow, molasses in the sand. Your fingers trail across that sculptured cheekbone, worship the outline of his face, to meet the lips he offers you. He smiles behind your fingers, and involuntarily your own mouth curls in response. He looks like a cat, hungry and feral and pouncing....

You fall under the impetus of his body, give way to his desires, his power, his need. Your own need flares up as his weight settles atop you, presses you into the unyielding strength of the floor beneath you. You are overwhelmed, drowning, encased; soaked to the skin and beyond with his desire as unstoppable as a thunderstorm in autumn. Your hands brush his hair, soft and sweet against the calluses on your palms as you guide his mouth to yours. He drinks you in and you let him, willing and wanton beneath him, wanting nothing more in this moment than to be consumed.

He drinks deep, sucks your breath from your lungs down into the depths of his, until each of you is dizzy with the scent and feel and smell of the other, lost in lust and need and simple want. He makes quick work of your clothes, fumbles and feints and finally tears, disposing of both his and yours with abandon. His fingers on the button of your jeans tremble, and it is then, impatient and sinuous under his weight, that you recognise the vulnerability beneath his gaze; and the insight merely serves to fan the flames of your desire.

His fingers map your skin, climb the gentle slopes of your muscles and plunge heedless into hidden valleys and crevices. You writhe beneath him, whimper the need he plays so expertly. He charts the course of your desire, line by line, and you feel him reading your soul in the quiver of flesh as you lay trembling beneath him. Feel him comprehending the heart of you the way a blind man reads braille, with touch and texture and infinite care. He smiles down at you, a smile as gentle as his fingers aren't, and you dissolve under the intensity of it. All of you -- all you are, all you were, all you will be lies captive in his arms. All of you bared before him, open to his touch, to his tongue and hand and mind, and as he claims the self you give him he dances feral through the unguarded portal of your very heart.

Wood presses cold against your shoulders, blessedly solid in the conflagration of your emotions. Contrasts perfectly with the heat he engenders in your flesh everywhere he touches you. You exhale, softly, blow breath and dreams across the nub of his nipples, rub arousal hard against his body. He moans, deep, primal, and the sound spikes a shiver through your spine. You do it again, press up and into him, drive your erection hard against his, your hands leaping frantic over the wide expanse of his back. He lowers his body to still yours; panting harsh in your ear as you direct your teeth along the taut lines of his neck. He covers you, smothers you, controls you. You revel in his strength; in his need and his pleasure and the urgency he's trying so hard to suppress. You part your thighs beneath him, raise your feet to caress roughly over his calves. He groans, loud in your ear, and the rough pleasure in his voice winds your desire tighter about the spiral of your need.

His fingertips trace the lines of your muscles, held taut and ready under the impetus of your arousal. Up your thighs, where they rest against his, to knead the solid flesh of your buttocks, dip into the crevasse between them. They part your arse, open your flesh to his as your spirit has long ago opened to him. He grunts as he enters you, the sound urgent and animalistic, sparking answering urges in the depths of your body. Your mouth parts in a silent 'oh', pleasure and pain and anticipation combusting within you. Tears burn your eyes, and your awareness reduces to the pinpoint focus of his cock pushing its blind way far into your soul.

He burns inside you. Draws thought and feeling and being into himself with effortless ease, a core of steel deep within your body stealing your soul. You submit willingly; let go all ties of mind and spirit and sink into him as he sinks into you. His flesh inside yours, your self inside his. Flesh between your teeth; you close your mouth about it and suck; the ambrosia of his blood fills your mouth and spatters your chest. You swallow, savouring the trickle of him you take inside you now, the consistency of mulled wine, salt and iron to flavour it, intoxicating you more surely than any alcohol. MacBeth's line flashes through your mind and you laugh, helplessly, murmuring the words into his skin, feeling the drops of his blood you have ingested tracing your veins: "No, these my hands will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red...." Not sure who it is you mean, if it is he or you that is forever marked by this encounter. Not caring. There is change; that is enough. There is is, and there is was, and all that matters is the moment.

He pauses, halts all movement inside and out of you, except for the droplets of your sweat mixing with his blood and even now burning their lonely way through your torso. His eyes follow the path his hands have taken, trace the outline of your muscles, skin, bone; and you flush, blood rushing to the surface in the wake of that predatory gaze. He raises his eyes, looks a question at you. You shake your head, wordless, speechless, thoughtless. At a loss to explain your mirth and unable to bear this stillness. You squeeze your body tighter about him, slowly, caress his length with soft silent power, demand he move with every sinuous brush of your skin on his.

You imprint this moment onto your soul, forever write it on flesh and mind and heart. Knowing your being has never been so entwined in his, and may never be so again. Intensity such as this comes rarely; and if there's nothing else you've learnt in your long life, you know to hold it to you with everything you are. Hold him in your body and in your mind and in your heart with every fibre of your being, every ounce of your strength, every iota of passion in you. Hold him as much as you can for as long as you're able.

For this moment he is yours: naked and willing and eager, as carefree as a sunbeam and about as easy to hold. You try anyway, close your hands about his skin, gasp as he burns you. You watch, entranced, fascinated by the play of skin over muscle, water over skin, light over water. You watch, endlessly, carefully, totally, and still you don't see the instant when he slips out of your grasp. He is there, and then he is not, and the loss of his flesh in yours aches deep within your soul.

Tonight--tonight you mourn the love you have cherished. In the morning you wake to find him curled about you, or you curled about him, and for an instant you allow yourself to believe. But only an instant, and then you open your eyes and for the first time you see. You see the stranger watching you from behind his eyes.