I hadn't really thought about Hell, not seriously, since I was in Sunday school. I got the standard children's stories of lakes of fire, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and all that stuff. It was that 'gnashing of teeth' that stuck with me, though the wailing didn't sound all that fun, either. Lakes of fire, though, I'd already been dealing with in my dreams about once a week for three years, that didn't bug me. It never really occurred to me that that might actually be a vision of Hell itself.

I'd learned about Sartre at some point in high school. I don't remember if it was something for a class or something that a friend had told me, and I didn't, and still don't, know a whole lot, but I remember the line about Hell being other people. There is no need for red-hot pokers. I remember trying to synthesize that idea with the idea of the lake of fire and failing, and just abandoning the line of thought.

My third year at university, I'd taken a course on Dante's Divine Comedy, and that had left me with a whole lot of imagery and ideas, but the idea of Hell at its base being a lake of ice where the treasonous were eternally frozen seemed much worse than the concept of a lake of fire. There was still the river of burning blood that made its way through the upper circles, though that was used to punish those who had committed violence to others; as far as I knew, I hadn't done anything that would warrant that sort of torment, and I figured that I would know if I had.

I didn't believe in biblical literalism, I didn't believe in Sartre, and I didn't really believe in Dante, so my Hell was maybe less the flame, and more the sword of Damocles. Not the burning of the fire, but the eternal threat of it. I tried to remember what Rita had said about getting away. You can maybe, maybe outrun it, if you run the rest of your life, and Manu will definitely help you, if running is what you want.

But... running the rest of my life? Maybe that was Hell. Maybe that was worse than being consumed. I didn't know, I couldn't know, if that was worse than burning. There was that future, that terrifying unknown, again. Which means that maybe Manu waking me was causing, not curing, the nightmare. Maybe the fire was one-and-done, a quick annihilation and it was all over, and whatever emerged from the other side would be... Well, that I couldn't know, but regardless of what it was, it wouldn't be tormented by that fire anymore.

"You're still awake," Manu said, lying next to me. We weren't touching, we were both staring at the ceiling. "I can feel you thinking." We had somehow got to bed. I imagined that he carried me, but I don't think he had the strength. Maybe he did.

"Uh huh," I replied.

Of course, part of the fear was that throwing myself into that flame was that the annihilation would tear me apart from Manu. If Manu could help me run, then maybe Manu helping me run would be our future together, and...

"It's only been a week," I said.

"Yeah."

"And you've been... um... been part of some of the... I mean, you've known, you know some of the deepest, weirdest parts of who I am, I think even parts I don't know, or, uh, didn't know about me."

"Yeah." I felt his head move a bit against his pillow, something of a nod.

"Can you... um... I..." I didn't know how to ask what I wanted to ask. I didn't even really know what I wanted to ask.

I heard the smile in his voice as he picked up the thread of my thoughts. "Can I assure you that no matter what happens, even if you're going to Neraka and being devoured by biting and stinging insects, I'll be right by your side the whole time?"

The answer to the question was there in the question itself. I didn't have to confirm that that was what I was thinking, I didn't have to actually ask the question because I knew his answer, I didn't have to do anything at all.

"You don't know," Manu continued, "if that's what you want to do. If you want to put yourself through Hell, or if you want to run away."

If it was Rita that had said that, I would have been pissed, but for some reason it didn't sting so much when Manu was reading my mind. Of course, that thought led me to wonder what it would be like having this conversation lying naked in bed with Rita. Which kind of led me to thinking about what would lead to lying in bed naked with Rita, which in turn just confused my thoughts even more. I wondered if I was too tired to be dealing with this at the moment.

"And you're going to need constant assurance that I'm by your side the whole time."

"Yeah," I said, staring at the ceiling.

"Possibly for years."

"Uh huh."

"Decades."

I didn't like that I said "Yes," but I did mean it.

I wasn't sure how I felt about him saying, "If it's a thousand years or more, I'll tell you every morning and every night that I'm by your side and I'm with you all the way."

"That's an awfully big commitment," I said.

"I know. Doesn't matter." His hand found mine, and our fingers laced together.

"People make so much shorter commitments to each other and can't keep them. My parents did the whole 'until death do us part' thing—fuck, my mom did it twice—and it didn't stick."

"Yeah." He was giving me space to talk, to think. Or even just to stare at the ceiling and not talk or think.

I took that moment. It didn't have to just be a moment. Much like his promise, if I needed to think in silence for years like a member of a medieval religious order, it would not be an issue. If I decided to take a break from the relationship, he would be there if and when I was ready to come back. When he said 'a thousand years or more,' he meant it, and not just in a hyperbolic young-person-in-love way. His feelings were fixed, solid, and very real, and it would make him whatever he needed to be for me.

I squeezed his hand, heard and felt knuckles pop as I did, and winced.

"I don't want to sleep," I said.

"Because of Hell," he replied.

I slid a little closer. Our legs sat side by side, our joined hands were pressed between our thighs. "Yeah."

"Tell me how I can help."

My foot slid over the side of his knee. "You do, already."

He didn't answer, not right away, and I didn't say more, not right away.

When he did, it was a beautiful offer. "Should I stay home?"

I knew he meant from Thanksgiving.

"I will, if you need me to," he continued. "I can tell my family—"

"Nope," I interrupted. "If you stay home, you're not lying for me, and I don't want you to stay home for me. You have commitments. And given what we've just been talking about, these are people I'm going to be meeting some day, and I'd rather my first impression of them not be, 'the weird kid that kept Manu away from family Thanksgiving'."

Manu chuckled. "Yeah, okay, that makes good sense. What do you want your first impression to be?"

My mouth opened, and closed. "Uh. You know, I don't... have you told them about me?"

"No, not yet."

"Okay. Uh... just be honest, I guess? Though you should probably not tell them about the, um..."

"Magic?"

"Yeah, that, and maybe downplay the obsession?"

He full-on laughed. "No worry on that front." He squeezed my hand, and my heart fluttered. "But you will be mentioned."

That made me feel pretty good. I rolled on top of him and enjoyed the sound of the air being pushed from his lungs. "Well, if we're not going to sleep..."

"Time for contemplation over?" He asked, a grin spreading on his face.

"Contemplation later. Sex now," I replied, smothering his grin with a passionate kiss. "Besides, if you're leaving next weekend for a couple weeks, we've got to make up for that lost time somehow."

Manu adjusted himself underneath me, and the feeling of the motion against my chest and my pussy was more than enough distraction from the contemplation. I shuffled, too, and pressed my labia against his hardening cock, and there were more kisses and more, and it wasn't long before my hands were on his chest and his hands were reaching up to touch my chest and I was riding him.

"I probably won't tell them," Manu said after one particularly sloppy kiss, "about how nice your breasts feel, too."

I laughed, the sound a sort of strangled giggle-moan-gasp-guffaw that was all I could get out between exertion and distraction. "You mean... you won't..." I puffed between motions, "talk about sex... with your grandmother?"

His turn to laugh, and the motion threw me off my rhythm, which also sent me into more laughter. "You'd be surprised," he said. "Never," he puffed, "with my parents... but my grandmother is... shockingly frank."

Our lovemaking slowed as the giggles overtook us for a moment. My motions took over first, and his hands returned to my chest, but the laughter was always just there under the surface.

And where laughter was...
The Wind does not require the Grass
to answer—Wherefore when he pass
She cannot keep her place.

The Lightning—never asked an Eye
Wherefore it shut—when He was by—
Because He knows it cannot speak.

... I was suddenly in a threesome with Emily Dickenson.

Manu picked up the thread, in hoarse and breathy voice, and finished the ancient poem:
The Sunrise—Sire—compelleth Me—
Because He's Sunrise—and I see—
Therefore—Then—
I love Thee— 

"I love Thee—" I repeated, and again, "I love Thee—" and more and more those three words I said and he said and as the first light of the sun came through the window my I love Thee—s, and his, grew faster and less coherent and continued right through our mutual orgasm and into my descent on top of him and his wrapping me up in his arms and our continued, slowing kisses, and even into my dreams where the words kept me cool and calm, meditating in the middle of the burning woods, safe and secure from the shapes and sounds in the smoke.

And that's how I woke, calmly out of dreams, with the words I love Thee— on my lips. Manu was still asleep, and I again didn't want to wake him.

I stroked his hair from his still-sweaty forehead, admiring his peaceful look in his sleep. The fires stayed away from me when I was in his arms. It was truly a thing of beauty.

My own poetry came to me, not a new poem but one I'd written in my second year, when I'd imagined being in love again:
If there was only Heaven and Hell
Then all that is not Heaven is Hell
And all that is not Hell is Heaven
So where does that leave the world
And all that we find there
When the world is not Hell
But could be so much better
And the world is not Heaven
But could be so much worse

You are not an angel
You are not a devil
You are just a person
Your soul is not dirty
Your soul is not clean
Your soul is yours
It is broken with your sin
It is glowing with your sainthood
But all in all
It is you

I could feel the words sinking into his sleeping mind, curling around his dreams, twisting around his thoughts, hiding in the corners of his brain, changing, subtly, unnoticeably. He wouldn't be different from what he had been; in fact, very clearly (to me, anyway) he would just be more what he was. More what I needed him to be, if I were honest, but what I needed him to be was what he wanted to be, too.

It felt like a violation, but also, it felt like an appropriate violation. In a sense, in a very strange sense, it felt an awful lot like the sort of thing I ought to be doing. Like it was the not just the right but the responsibility of someone with a supernatural power to make sure it was used and used well.

Manu shifted, which brought my thoughts back to the moment. Not hard to do, considering every movement brushed against something erogenous.

"Mmm," he muttered. "My eyes aren't even open and I like what I'm seeing on top of me."

"Oh yeah?"

"You make a perfect blanket, Chameleon." His eyes did open, then. "You had warm dreams."

"I did?"

His arms wrapped around me and he rubbed my back. I made a noise I wasn't sure I knew how, something between a purr and a moan. "Much less... hellish, this time."

"You love me," I said, by way of explanation.

Something about that statement made him tense up. "I do," he said, "and you love me. But... that's not it, is it?"

I was confused by the response. "What?"

"Love is wonderful. Your love is wonderful, and so is mine. But it isn't keeping you from that Hell, right?" His hands were drawing circles and hearts on my back that didn't line up with his tone or his words.

I gave the most honest answer I could. "I don't really know. I don't really know what it is, in the first place. Because at this point it feels like something other than traumatic memories of a house fire, right? And you can provide me a shield, a shelter from the fire, but... But I don't know if that's what I need, right?" I kissed him sweetly. "It's a wonderful shelter and I need it now, I think? Or I want it now. But I probably shouldn't want it forever." I was back into uncomfortable thinking. I rolled off to lie beside him, causing him to pull up the blankets, which was nice because I was cold, too. "I dunno. You'd give it to me forever, without a second thought, if I asked you. And that might be a perfectly fine way to live? But it's... I dunno, it's not really artist material, right? I'm supposed to be exposing truths and exploring the human condition and whatever else poetry is supposed to do. Finding a beautiful shelter kind of gets me out of the rain, so to speak, and makes it harder to—"

"You never seem to have a problem getting wet while I'm around," Manu joked, and I laughed. "But yeah, I get you."

I knew he understood. "So... maybe what I need is to get out from under that protection sometimes. To let myself just... be in that Hell, so to speak." I looked at the sun's pattern on the ceiling, thinking.

"You... you've been in one Hell or another for a long time, huh," Manu said, hesitantly.

I thought back to the broken glass of my dream. That was relating back to an incident almost ten years ago. There was the house fire when I was a kid, that prompted all those dreams. And then my parents' general indifference, from... well, from day one, really, I suspect. "God. That's a thought."

"Sorry, I—"

"No." I cut off his apology. "No, it's worth thinking about. And that's part of why I love having you around. You make me... uh..."

"Question?"

"Sounds a lot nicer than, 'you make me think,' I suppose."

Manu chuckled. "Maybe you've absorbed all my questions. I never seem to have any."

"Except for your mad science processes."

"Yeah, that's fair." I felt his shrug. "I, uh... Are you hungry?"

"Yeah," I said. "Starving." I smiled at the sunlight streams. "I don't remember what I ate last, and I've been busy."

"Uh huh, you sure have."

I flushed. "What... last night, what..." I didn't even know what to ask.

He squeezed my hand. "Something stuck with me, anyway." He rolled towards me, kissed my cheek, and slid his hand over my stomach. "You said, and I quote: 'Look, I think maybe you—maybe we're—coming at this all wrong.' And I had to consider that." He kissed my neck for a little bit, and I squirmed in pleasure for a little bit. His hand moved down to my hip and held tight as his kisses turned to little nibbles. I moaned and gasped. His nose moved up my jawline, and he was whispering in my ear. "Sometimes it feels to me like we should be trying to sort things out a lot less, and just enjoying the ride a lot more."

"Mmm," I replied, processing as he started kissing again. "But I like the mad science..."

"Me too." His hand spilled over my thigh. "Just maybe we should be thinking more about the pleasurable outcomes of the experiments, instead of gathering information."

As his fingers curled between my legs, I was thinking a lot about pleasure.

We lay like that for a few minutes, him fingering me and kissing and nibbling at my face and shoulder, me letting the warmth and joy flood my mind and tint my thoughts. I'd told both Manu and Rita that we had the wrong approach to things, and they'd both taken it to heart, and I wondered how I knew that. Was I looking at things the wrong way? Seemed like I'd thought so the night before. As his finger sat lightly on my clit, I tried to focus everything through the lens of that energy, that sexual joy, that... creative flow that was bringing us together.

"Would it be so bad," he asked me, his finger dancing deftly, playing my body like a—I laughed internally at the metaphor—poet with a quill, "if instead of trying to figure out the source, we worked on what we can use that power to do with one another?"

It wasn't an earth-shattering orgasm, just a sort of calm, easy release of tension. His hand was wet as he withdrew it, and I couldn't help but take his wrist, right below where the flame-mark began, and pull his hand upwards. The smell of sex—earthy, solid, relatable—filled my mind, and I took a tentative kiss of his fingers, tasting his skin under my fluids. It wasn't all that different from just tasting him as I sucked him off, bitter-and-salty flavouring over skin texture and warm sweat.

Funny, I thought. Our skin tastes different, but our cum tastes the same. Or similar, at least.

"You're hungry," he said.

"Starving," I repeated.

"Breakfast?"

I nodded. "Yes, please."

He shifted. "In bed?"

Other forces within my body suggested that I wouldn't be able to stay in bed long enough for a meal. "I need the bathroom. I think I'll just sit with you in the kitchen and eat there?"

He kissed me once more before getting up. "Perfect. Any requests?"

"None," I replied, and he gave me one last, long look before slipping out of the bedroom, leaving me to stare at the ceiling and not think again for a while.