Before Speech (the blind assassin remix)
He comes to her bed still smelling of Jayne's blood, his hands and body covered in it. She hates that Simon let himself be marked by Jayne in this way, and she knows that already she's losing him. He only pays attentions to her when he's trying to solve her like she's a puzzle, and never when she wants to play. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see sparks of green whenever Jayne stands too close to him.
She remembers how the knife felt in her hand, heavy and smooth, and how easily it cut through Jayne's flesh. She thought that she could find the answers she needed there, but was disappointed to see that his blood wasn't anything more than platelets and plasma, exactly like hers. All it did was remind her of the blood that would come later.
Simon tells her that he's fixed Jayne and strokes her shoulder. In the space between his hand and her body, he's telling her, I can't fix you. She lets out a sob and shrinks into a corner of her bed. Simon follows her there.
He'll steal you away, take you away from me, and I'll be alone, she cries and it's so easy for Simon to pretend not to know what she's talking about. He pulls her onto his lap and she places an ear against his chest, listening to the opening and closing of his heart.
All alone when they come for me, she whispers softly this time. And you'll be his. In the dark where it's warm and safe.
Simon's mouth is hot when he kisses her, and she devours him because she knows this will be the last time. The heat that comes from their bodies won't be enough to keep him in her bed. He'll find his way into Jayne's and she won't be able to stop it. She leads Simon's gaze back to her by opening herself and taking him in, but she knows that this is only momentary and there won't be another time.
For one brief moment his love flares brilliant green, so bright and so sudden that when it fades she feels the heat of her body drain with it, feels him slip away into the darkness in one airless breath. She shivers against his burnt and singed skin, a hand splayed across his chest like crushed spider legs, and doesn't answer when he says her name. There's nothing for her to say that wouldn't lead to more empty promises, so instead she traces the curves of his lips with her fingers and searches for the truths he's hidden there. Touch is the first language, before speech or taste. It doesn't lie, not the way words do.
I'll never leave you. I promise, he says before she can silence him, and his mouth has found the space between her neck and shoulder. Her lips are parted to the sky and a sob escapes in the form of a sigh, long and silent, as he spells out his lies in kisses across her breast, in kisses that are also words.