Shallow

- Shallow -

It was the mouth, really.

That mouth screamed "sex". No one else realized it, but it was perfectly audible to him. SEX, SEX, SEX.

The fullness. The redness. The texture-- smooth and puckered in parts, dented in others, the redness fading into pink and then darkening into a dusky tint at the corners. It made him bite down on his own lip and swallow a moan. It made him want to see the tongue, make an informed comparison between the different shades of red.

And then he did see it and he was undone, every time. That mouth drove him mad with the need to smear it painfully against his own.

Also lick and bite and suck, draw and touch and feel and just keep lickinglickinglickinglicking. He would stare every second he could get away with it and plenty when he couldn't, letting his breath run away with him, letting his fingers start to twitch around his pencil, letting himself begin to squirm uncomfortably on his bench.

Those eyes were illegal, he'd decided that long ago. The mouth should've been safe. He had thought this before he realized that nothing was safe, before he realized that he could only stay angry, attain that crucial level of rage only if he looked away from that awful pout.

He was sure it was an unconscious pout, made entirely without its owner's knowledge. This made it worse, because this also meant the pout was perpetual, even deadly. Its owner had come back to school wearing it, and hadn't taken it off since. Whenever he wasn't chewing his lip, sticking his tongue out and humming tunelessly under his breath, whenever he shut up and closed his mouth, there was the pout, waiting for an unsuspecting observer to let down his guard.

The occasions during which the mouth would relax, cease its infernal movements, were actually rather rare. This made it much more imperative to keep watching, whatever he did. Not to stop. He couldn't stop, or he would forget the exact curve, lose detail on his exacting memory of the precise curve of the upper lip and its crazy little dip. He loved that little crinkle right below the unremarkable nose, which stuck out so blatantly above That Mouth.

In his quest to avoid Those Eyes, he found himself talking entirely to That Mouth, watching it move in return, watching it twist and smirk and twitch in a myriad different ways, all of them maddening and awful. He didn't even hear what he was saying: all he could hear was the rushing in his ears, the horrible drum of his heartbeat at his temples.

He couldn't concentrate on anything.

The mouth just kept moving, frowning now, flushed crimson inexplicably. There were little dents at the corners of it, perfectly ordinary folds of skin, but he almost shook with the need to lick them. Taste them. Know them utterly.

The movements paused, and the mouth was hidden behind a large, shiny apple. It was also red, and very annoying. The mouth was going to glisten afterwards, he knew that as well as he knew that he should really leave now. Forget dignity, forget what anyone thought. He had to be gone by the time That Mouth opened, wet and glistening and with barely a hint of tongue behind it.

He didn't leave.

"Can I have some?" he said absently, but he was already lifting the apple out of the way before the other could react.

His lips trembled against apple-slick, soft skin, and he thought he was going to fall. He had to hold on. This was important; it could be dangerous.

At least he didn't have to look anymore.