The Passing

I stood in the dark in the doorway listening to the quiet sound of his sobbing. He said there was no pain, and I believed him. No physical pain, but what is pain. Who knows what hurts most, he was only 36. In a few days he would have faded and gone.

I would go in soon and hold him, stroke away the tears, kiss them away, hold him to me as I had done now for several nights. He was in our bed but he slept so much I left him alone there when he wasn't awake.

I remembered how he had wept the last time I had fucked him, how I had made sure I would last for him, give him what he wanted most. Give it for as long as I could. How he had begged to be fucked each day, fucked hard, fucked long, my cock inside him stroking the damaged flesh. Stroking it for as long as I could.

I'd never meant to love him, and I wished he'd never come to me. But once he had I would not have let him go. Not even now, not ever. He would be gone soon and I would weep then for him, for me, for his gift to me, for his short life, for his beauty.

God he had been beautiful. Until a month ago it had still been there. There was nothing wrong with him I could sometimes think. Only days ago I had sucked his cock and made him ejaculate for the last time. We'd both been surprised when he went hard for me.

He'd stroked my hair, moaned "I love you, you know that, say you know that."

"I know that, I know that," I'd whispered up to him.

I sucked him gently, taking that cock, still so young and thick, and taking it into me. Into my mouth, loving it, running my fingers gently, my tongue gently, up the veins on it, running them over its hardness, caressing it, making him moan, wanting him to moan and forget. Forget everything. Forget he existed. Forget for a moment. I wanted him to pass then, to forget to live then, leave the world with that moan on his lips, his flesh in my mouth. God, I wanted him to go easily.

When do you start to love someone? How do you start? A look. A word. One day they turn their head to look at you and your heart bursts. You want them to look at you forever like that. Just like that. Their eyes sparkle, their lips are full and you want to touch them. You want your body to be part of them, to enter them, to take them, possess them, sink into them. God how I had come to love him.

That last long fuck, that endless night of me moving inside him. As he wept.

In the morning when we left it was dark still, the drive to the hospital, the cold, the knowledge that it was his last time to be filled, to be possessed. I'd never cared so much as him, hardly cared at all. But for him it was part of how he defined himself, being fucked, it was his joy. To lie under me, under any man he wanted to have. Have that man, many men, plow him, ride him, take him. fill him. He needed to be filled.

He had fought. We had fought together. Which was why he'd come to me. Why he'd become my lover, why in the end, now, perhaps he did love me. A man he never would have loved otherwise, never have moved to. Never have wept to.

After that long night I'd waited at the hospital all day, waited to be there when he opened his eyes, when it was done. Be there when he ceased to be the man he had defined himself as. Be there when he could never be fucked again. Knowing that not only had he lost that, but that the battle was being lost, the war we'd waged together for twelve years was not going to be won.

I had not been sure if he would do this in the end, if he would buy time by losing himself. A year and a half. Only another year and a half. How long that sounds in the beginning, how short it is as the days run out. One summer, one autumn, half a year gone suddenly, unstoppably, then a winter and a spring. One year gone. God, nothing more than one last summer and an autumn and it was ending. God I'd have to live alone through other autumns.

Afterwards he'd fucked me, I felt him move inside me, he wanted his cock inside me every night, in the end we argued. He wept. I gave him what he wanted. He I supposed taking the feeling of his cock in my arse, of hard flesh in soft, of raw power in yielding strength. Taking that and turning it about into the feeling of cock in arse, his arse, my cock. His non existant arse now, sewn up, gone. His rectum eaten away as his body was being finally consumed, now, as he lay on our bed weeping softly.

I went in to him. I lay beside him, cupped my body about his shell. I stroked his hair, I kissed his eyes, I kissed his mouth, dry, thin, transparent. His weeping tears draining him, leaving him dried out. He could have had a drip but had said no. It was time for him, he wanted to go, forget. He had lost what he had been, he was no longer a man, no longer a Greek god, a beauty made for sex and fucking. Perhaps he wept because he was already dead. Perhaps he was only a shadow, I held a shadow in my arms. I loved a shadow. God I had wanted him to win that war we'd fought so long, wanted him to live.