In This Scarred Season

...if we forge

terms for it, then isn't it

contained in us,

a little,

the brightness?

-- Mark Doty

I am clasped in your hand and the world is here between us. Only you and only me. We are safe here, behind these locked and warded doors. Safe enough to speak.

Have you ever whispered my name? Before tonight, the night before the end of the world. I will whisper to you again and again, my fervent heated desire.

You will say I am young and I agree. You will cite your age, my purity, our wretched chance for survival. I know all this and more. And yet.

You are more to me than sharpened endings.

My hand in your hand - now can you feel my worship?

I will sigh your name slow and languid in your ear. Severus. Severus. Has one word ever held such rich arousal? Three syllables contain my world. Move your lips against my cheek and say my own name back to me. Not Miss Granger, like you would say in public, were you to address me. But my given name, recite it like poetry. Hermione.

There. Did you expect how sound could coat the air between us? A primitive magic, more hardy than these dungeon walls. I could live in your velvet tones, bind your pitch and timber to my blood and sink beneath the spell of you. A shame, really, that no book could ever teach me of your depths. I would read that book forever, still I would tremble like a novice.

You and I are plotless, in either map or story. Untraceable, undefined. We create ourselves one moment, one movement, leaving all to chance and the force of desire. For tonight, we are undeniable.

The twist and eclipse of it.

Do not worry for my purity. I could corrupt you with my wantonness. Severus. Let me corrupt you.

This pull. Wanting. You my arms and I your lips. Together we draw lines across blank canvas sheet.

There is almost no war, no harsh destruction brought by sunrise. Can you feel survival in my fingertips? Shall I press them to your skin and mark you - your other arm, perhaps. The arm without your call to darkness.

As if I don't see the war in you anyway.

Love is the worst sort of plunderer.

I know your dialogue like I know my own. Your patterns and useful phrases. I have written them onto you.

What I want you to say: my home, your body.

Sweet breath heavy now, your lips. We've left a candle but it will be gone before morning.

So much a whisper you are. How soft your parchment skin.

In front of you I still blush.

This bright and pulsing moment. How fast your tempting skin finds mine.

I am red for you, the stain of blood and fevered coupling. Do you like my tired metaphors? Words are nothing beside the solid of you. Tell me to stop speaking. Tell me silence, tell me your -

The castle will be breached by morning and us inside it. We will never hide well enough, can never dig ourselves away from certain danger. Nor would we. Have I said I love your bravery? And hate it just the same, as it brings our ending sooner. I will fight myself, though, and you hate this about me. I hate this about you.

We are no warriors. I won't even read books with battles in them. My peaceful nature changes nothing. Your years of almost-death and danger have changed nothing.

The absurdity of a war fought by children and academics.

I will not think now of war - these hours so short and precious. I will think of nothing but us and the drag of my thumb past your lips. The music between us, our supple broken meter.

How to ask you my secret desire: to open a book and hide you in the words and parchment. Make you small and immortal, shelved in a chained and guarded section of my private library. To be made whole again once danger vanished.

Smooth my hair and say you love me.

All those years I hated you, your harsh words. What they protected. Did I really hate you? I could never. I never knew we'd end up here, chasing down with battered kisses. My legs around your waist, this almost merging. So familiar, almost cliché.

Smother me with cliché. Tell me tomorrow will be as today was, and the new, the frightening, will never makthis night a tortured memory.

As if we could change the future. Not when it hunts us down and strangles with its bare and bleeding hands.

I have always loved your hands.

We pass words and touch between us like books. How silly that we share this common metaphor. Not all would understand what text on parchment means to us, how one paragraph contains a soul.

On the eve of war I am still a romantic. Will that help or hinder my survival? You are never one for romance, rather the fierce and rhythmic jump of bodies pressed. Passion, or something greater.

But hear this in my undertone: Love. Comfort. Breath and salty pleasure. Surely this night can hold it all.

I am grateful, this once, your room has no windows, or I would turn my head from you (from life) and count the minutes until impossible sunrise. Your dungeon stones keep light a distant threat. Perhaps we can add hours to this sainted darkness, spend days and years enmeshed and never face our predicted downfall.

Prophecy and Divination opposite ends of the same unremarkable science. The misplaced faith people have in predictable destiny.

We prove them wrong, don't we. Tonight emerged from no outlandish prophecy, but from free will and brightened ardor. If I hold you tighter, can we remake the future touch by solemn touch?

There is no etiquette for love the night before destruction. No rules to learn and then discard. We will learn this as we go.

First, a bated breath. (Didn't I mention the need for cliché?)

Then, assorted brush of fingers. Through hair and backs of neck. Surprise at skin's softness, the heft of muscled limbs. Silence and rhythmic promise. Falling away of clothes and secrets.

The pleasure, next. Tip me back, do not delay the parting of me, rushed and ready as brilliant virtue. Love's faithful worship.

Follow me, or pull my hands behind you. Our soaked and sated collapse, the return to easy breath. Promise never war between us, only bright and succored new beginnings.

The future follows. Will it allow us entrance?

Take me in your skin as the castle wards fall. I am your sought asylum. You are my captured longed-for.

My name. Whisper and take shelter.