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Reed's Armory -- A Malcolm Reed Fanfiction Archive .. |
Title: Becoming Water
Author: Kylie Lee
Author's e-mail: [email protected]
Author's Web site: http://www.geocities.com/kylielee1000/
Fandom: Enterprise
Pairing: Archer/Reed
Rating: NC-17
Category: Slash
Series: Sea Change
Sequel to: A Good Navy Man
Summary: Reed drowns in Archer.
Spoilers: Minefield
Comments: Sometimes, orgasm is called the little death. Many thanks to my little cabbage for ceaseless inspiration.
Beta reader(s): Leah.
Archived to Reed's Armory on 04/28/03.
The hand strokes up his body, curves around his shoulder, caresses his shoulder blade. He is only sensation. It rolls over him, slow and long and wet. He is somewhere beyond words. His skin is water, and Jon's hands break the delicate surface tension. They touch more deeply than Malcolm has ever been touched before, but miraculously, he remains whole. Jon's hands leave eddies behind, circlings of water, circlings of warmth and desire. The desire cascades. It crashes as it grows, enveloping Jon, whose flesh is water too, and where Malcolm and Jon touch, the waters converge. They are one water, one flesh, one being. A current of warmth links one to the other, its deep undertow rushing fast.
Once, he had a dream. He dreamed he'd drowned, was dead. His body floated on the waves, blank eyes reflecting the sun, only somehow he was inside that dead body, aware. He felt nothing--not the pull of the water against his fingers, not the pressure of his sodden clothing against his skin, not the cold. The sea had him, and it slowly pulled him under, the waves breaking first across his chest, then across his face, so that he was looking up at the sun through a layer of seawater. He couldn't shut his eyes. He continued to sink, a slow drift down through the black water, until he couldn't see the sun any more. He couldn't see anything at all.
Reeds are self-reliant. Reeds are fighters. Reeds stand alone. His father told him so, and his father was always right. He lay on the hull of the ship, impaled, and he was not afraid of death. But there was something his father hadn't told him, a truth he had learned by himself, out on the hull--a truth that changed everything. Someone had extended a hand, and he had rejected it, as he had learned to do. The hand had been extended again, and the second time, he took it. He chose to stand by someone's side. He had chosen to let go. He had chosen to accept help, to permit another to fight by his side, and in so doing, he realized that others had stood there before Jon: his sister, his father.
He had never been alone.
Under Malcolm's hands, Jon is warm and strong. Jon's sea-green eyes hold his, and Malcolm is lost in them. He touches, and Jon responds: a quick inhalation, a smile, a quiet, breathless word. There is only one thing in his world. He touches that thing, that man, delighting in his warmth. His lips stroke: neck, chest, belly. He licks the salt, tastes it, and it's not enough. He pulls his tongue along Jon's chest and feels rough hair against his mouth. Jon's heart beats, strong and steady and fast. A swell, an eddy of sensation, takes Malcolm and he nearly loses himself, but Jon is there, hand against Malcolm's neck, drawing Malcolm up, and as their mouths meet, the waves lap against his body. Jon is all around him, inside him. He rocks against Jon, slow and gentle, mouth full of green seawater, mouth full of salt and warmth and life.
Jon's eyes are green like the sea. His own eyes, Malcolm's eyes, are blue like the ocean. When he lay pinned on the hull of the ship, he couldn't see Jon's eyes. He could only see the blackness of space, the pinpricks of light that represented stars faintly distorted in the faceplate of Jon's EV suit. The reflection became the thing itself, the microcosm the same as the macrocosm, the atom the same as the solar system.
His father's ship sailed the green; his own ship sails the black. Fine ships both, cutting through water, cutting through space, bearing the same precious cargo: the sailors, themselves vessels.
They are the same, but his father doesn't understand that. His father called, spoke to the captain, but didn't want to talk to Malcolm. His old impatience with his father was, for now, gone. He felt only a slow sadness that his father can't comprehend what is so clear, so right to Malcolm. His father will always stand beside him, because Malcolm is his son, and whereas before, it had angered him, he now sees it as a truth.
Reeds do not desert. They do not abandon.
He can't bear it, the pressure of water against his skin as he's pulled under, pulled into the green water. He cries out, but he makes no noise. He inhales, but there's no air. Yet existence has been expanded, not reduced. A whirlpool, a vortex, pulls him down, deep and fast. He remembers. He's drowned before, but someone saved him: once a girl, long blonde hair swirling around her face, a mermaid; once an angry man, hands like iron, face like a mask; and once someone who gazed at him with such despair and tenderness that his heart had hurt.
"Let go, Malcolm," Jon whispers, and Malcolm lets go. He opens his mouth and exhales, and bubbles rise to the surface and break with cries of surrender. He shuts his eyes and looks up, as if in prayer, trembling on the knife's edge of ecstasy, and all around him is the water, enveloping him.
And he falls. He falls into the body of the captain, who will always be there to hold him up. The ecstasy binds them together, throbbing pleasure emanating from Malcolm's soul. Malcolm's soul, Jon's soul come together, waves curling on the beach, eddying and receding, then moving forward again, a cycle older than life. Their flesh, their desire is water. The saltwater breaks them apart and washes them clean. The tides are a cycle, and they are a part of it, moving together, one being.
The water pulls them under, and they drown.
~the end~