Moonlight Sonata

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"Moonlight Sonata"

By Michi M. Chu

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When he was younger, he used to sit at the piano and practice his lessons, his posture perfect and hands delicately outstretched. Practice made perfect, and perfect was what he strove to be. There was no possibility that he be less than perfect; it was not an option. Thus, he would play the same piece, sometimes for hours on end, over and over to the steady tick of the metronome. He didn’t mind so much, though, not as much as one would think. He would perform, sometimes, and they would praise and laud him. Beautiful boy, talented child. He didn’t care for their empty sycophancies; he didn’t perform for them. He performed for himself. When he played music, it seemed as if it transported him to another world, distant from the impersonality of his reality. Music was a magic all its own, one that he could feel moving through him as sure as the air that circulated his lungs and the blood that pumped through his veins. So he sat there and closed his eyes as his fingers danced over the ivory, his hands animated and fluttering with a life all their own.

Now his long-fingered hands dance over ivory, a different type of ivory, but ivory nonetheless. The other’s skin is slightly pale, but not nearly as pale as he. One is cream – warm, soft, smooth, sweet, pure, irresistible, and decadent, as if anything one did with him was sinful. The other is moonlight—cold, pale, silver, ghostly, ethereal, just as beautiful and just as intangible, impossible to hold onto, as if one is never meant to possess him.

He has no trouble holding onto him, however. From the moment they enter the room they hold onto each other, lips never breaking contact as their hands tug at the silk noose of ties and fingers run deftly over the constraints of buttons. Their mouths tear ravenously at each other, brutal in their tenderness. They have no time to be gentle; they have no time for niceties. The need and the hunger are too overpowering, telling them to rush, rush, rush. Get in, fuck, get out.

Kisses are hard and urgent, not loving, lingering caresses. They are all lips and teeth and tongue, hot and wet, the softness of lips harsh and demanding. They are not embracing so much as claiming and devouring: nipping, sucking, biting-- leaving red marks and purple bruises upon the silken canvas of pale skin. Fingers entangle in soft strands of hair, sometimes pulling, often caressing, sometimes simply holding.

Clothes fall to the floor in ungracious heaps, looking reproachful as they are strewn carelessly by their owners, being hurriedly discarded. Cool night air wafts in through the open window, languidly billowing a ghostly curtain, the caress of its wintry fingers raising goosebumps upon bare skin. The iciness bothers neither of them, flushed as they are with the consuming heat of arousal. Hands meet flesh, fingers trailing, splaying, scratching, hands running, grasping, squeezing, touching, feeling -- playing. He plays him like an instrument, and like music the pleasure moves through the both of them.

They do not communicate so much as in words, but with their beings. Skin begs, touch me, taste me. Words can say stop but moans and gasps cry out for more, please, more. Bodies show desire, souls are full of need.

They know no dominance; in the beginning, it was about winning and losing and who was the victor, the other his captive. Now they realize they have nothing left to lose, for they have already given up everything for this moment. Now there is only desire and each other.

He pushes him down onto the yielding softness of the mattress, pinning him down, immobile, helpless, weak and vulnerable. There was a time when that meant everything to him, when that position of absolute power over his rival could have overpowered all other impulses. He would have done anything for that power then, to be able to degrade and debase his rival, to make him beg, at his mercy. He had promised himself that once he had gotten to that point, then he would reject him like he himself had once been rejected, simply stopping and leaving him there in an act of retributive cruelty: leaving the other wanting, needing, unfulfilled. Now that he is actually in that position, now that he actually possesses that power, he does not even have the ghost of a thought of leaving, knowing that he could not bear himself being wanting, needing, unfulfilled.

And he is Dark although he is light, and the other is Light although he is dark. Now they are Light and Dark and shadow, moving against one another, reflecting off of each other, pressing and caressing. Mouths meet; hungry and desperate, bodies align with each other; searching, seeking, arching, aching. Arousal meets arousal and friction is sweet and torturous.

He moves over him like moonlight, liquid and pale. He pours his kisses like silver rain over the planes of his body, burning marks of hot wet sensation. He licks a trail of mercury in the moon-shaded darkness, slow and teasing, drinking in the wine of ecstasy of the other’s responses.

There was a time when he thought he couldn’t have cared less about the other’s pleasure. He realizes that is not true now. It is no longer about himself, it is about him. Yet, it was always about him. At first it was about control and power over him, now it is simply about him. White teeth nip sensitive skin, heated breath ghosts over wet flesh, chilling and thrilling. Sensation washes over the both of them like moonlight, and he feels the other’s pleasure as if it were his own.

The dark haired boy beneath him breathes in soft gasps and sighs and pants. His chest rises and falls with each intake of air; breathing rapid, heart fluttering, pulse quickening. He can feel each tremble of his breath, each quiver of his heart. He can feel the thunders of their susurrations run up and down his spine.

When he finally enters him, the feeling is indescribable. It is heat and it is pleasure and white-hot bursts of sensation. It is colour and light exploding in his vision. It seems not to be just physical, although they tell themselves it is merely that. They seek only to lose themselves in the pleasures of the flesh. With each thrust and each stroke, they move together, giving and taking. It should be animalistic and it should be primal, but their contrasts and converses make it seem almost beautiful, as if they were dancing…now slow and sensuous, now passionate and frenzied.

And they are lust and they are passion, and they are sin and they are salvation. There is no love. It really is not possible for there to be love, since neither of them has ever truly known it. Rather, it is inexplicable attraction and tension that goads them. They are enemies although now they might be lovers, and they are lovers although they will soon be enemies. In this room that lies between velvet darkness and the wan moonlight, between reality and fantasy, love and hate swirl together as passion, and to love is to hate and to hate is to love until the two are so intermingled and mated that it is impossible to distinguish one from the other.

The room fills with the harshness of their endearments, the sound of names murmured in lovers’ breaths, the softness of moans and sighs. And they are lost in the sea of sensation, like the crashing waves of the moon-painted tides in the middle of the night.

Then comes the moment when they both cease to exist completely, diving into the translucent waters of oblivion, music climaxing in a crescendo. They are no longer two but one being, essences intermingled and mixed until it becomes impossible to distinguish where one ends and the other begins. Individually, they no longer exist, in that moment, when both time and tide seem to come to a complete halt, they are reborn as a whole other entity. In their completion, they lose themselves, and in the act of losing themselves, they are made whole.

Yet that is but an ephemeral existence, and eventually, when the milky haze of pleasure lifts from them, they are forced to return to the unforgiving angularity of reality. Now they are separate, completely opposite yet so similar. While they complement each other, they seem to be lacking something, somehow incomplete. They have doubts and fears and insecurities, imperfections and flaws and all too human shortcomings. They are no longer perfect; they are no longer whole. But they lay together like a portrait brushed with a wash of wan moonlight, quivering with deep breaths shakily drawn, bodies still reverberating the last tremors of pleasure; sated, but not happy, conscious of the feelings of loss and emptiness.

They look at each other, drops of moonbeam-silver melting into verdant liquid green. And, impulsively, he does what is quite possibly the tenderest thing he has done all night.

He brushes aside hair the colour of raven feathers from the other’s face with a slightly trembling hand. Then, closing his eyes, he slowly leans down and plants a single kiss upon his forehead.

He holds it there for the briefest of moments, but the dark-haired boy can feel the brand it burns into the depths of his being. It is a simple gesture, yet so poignant in its unabashed simplicity, in that it has nothing at all to do with lust and everything to do with everything else. It is soft and sweet and fleeting, much like the elusive unspoken emotions of their traitorous hearts.

They know the moment cannot last forever; there is no way to stop the rising of the sun or the coming of the day. When dawn inevitably breaks, her rose-tinted fingers streaking the sky, the moment will be over and gone, fading to the status of a mere memory, or even possibly an unusually vivid dream. Yet, like music, it will remain within the recesses of their beings, playing over and over again as it harmonizes with the melody of their souls. Like music, it speaks to them. And they know it will not be long until the music and the moonlight beckon to them once more – calling them to sensation, to completion, to emotion, to passion, and to moon-streaked perfection.

They know they cannot last forever, but for now, it is enough. And they lay there in the moon-dipped darkness, swathed in silence, neither of them offering lyrics for their song.

Like music, they have no need for words.

~finis~