Sweeter Than Wine

Notes: this was written for a challenge, which is why it's so short: Describe a kiss in 200 words or less. My first shot, and it's 387! Ah, well... I cut it for the challenge, and then expanded it a bit for this. It ended up expanded and incorporated into the sequel to "Like a Thunderbolt, He Falls".

The heavy fog made the place into any place, or no place. No place fit his mood better. Beneath his feet the Chesapeake slid higher as the tide came in, the sound eerily muffled. Limbo. Home of unbaptized babies and virtuous pagans...

The faint scent of cinnamon hung in the still air. He must have brought it with him when he'd fled the kitchen. He should have known better: you can't run away from what's inside your head. He closed his eyes, remembering...

Frankie tasted of coffee and cinnamon in the morning. He'd thought at first it was in his mind, because Frankie looked like cinnamon, but it was true. He hadn't found out why, but he remembered the taste of him. It was sharp and invigorating, but his kiss wasn't sharp. It was sweet and yielding, his lips parting, their breath mingling, tongues caressing each other. Frankie's eyes were always open when they kissed, dark and soft; if Face opened his, as he sometimes did, he could see himself reflected in those dark irises just as surely as he was in Frankie's soul... Morning kiss in the old kitchen, love proffered without price tag... enough to break his heart even then.

Cinnamon and coffee. Breakfast even at fast-food places. Frankie’s kisses, engraved more deeply into his soul now than when they’d been there for the taking…

He'd never get away from Frankie. Sometimes he didn't want to. Others...

"Face? You out here?" Murdock's voice came out of the fog. He'd crept up on little cat... on big sneakered feet.

"I'm here," he answered. Murdock joined him. They stood silently for a moment. The only thing the fog was revealing to them was each other. The rest of the world was unseen, unreal. Even the sound of the water was like a dream, very far away.

"How close to the edge are we?" Murdock still wasn't used to the dock yet, after only two visits, and he sounded a bit worried.

Face knew where he was in relation to the edge of the dock and the Chesapeake Bay. But that was hardly the only edge he was getting near... "I don't know," he said. "Too close."

Murdock shook his head. "You can only get too close if you don't want to go over," he said. And then, moving slowly but without hesitation, he leaned in.

A gentle kiss, which led to another, much less so.

No caffeine, Face thought, pure wine...

And then he stopped thinking. About anything at all.