rareslash | "Iodine" - Pink Floyd RPS

Title: Iodine
Author:

theratman
Fandom: Pink Floyd RPS
Pairing: Roger Waters/Syd Barrett
Rating: R (for subject matter and mention of sex)
Warnings: Self-mutilation, blood, mention of drug abuse
About: Sort of a sequel to Heaven From Hell, From Syd's POV.
Disclaimer: This story is entirely fiction and I in no way mean to imply that any of it ever happened.

Beauty, burning into my skin. Watching as it snakes into the jagged canal of broken flesh, like a dark river - at first, before it deepens into burnt orange, it looks almost crimson red, like the blood that beaded there before. Trickling down over the skin, dripping stains into the sink. It's the only real reason I use iodine - even if really I ought to be worried about infection, it's too hard to concentrate on, too hard to remember. But this... I always remember to do this.

Maybe that's why I let him do it. Although, at this point, I'm not sure he'd stop even if I asked him to. But it doesn't matter. I don't want him to stop. Sometimes I try to tell myself that I do, but I know really I don't. If I did, I wouldn't let him keep doing this. I wouldn't do this to myself.

Or maybe it isn't so much that I let him do it as that I need him to. It's that release. Better than the sex, better than the acid. I love him for giving that to me. I do love him... but I love the way he makes me feel.

It's all quick for him, like an animal with it's prey, but he doesn't know what it's like on the receiving end. Feeling the first twinges of pressure against my skin, the first nagging sensation of pain mixed with the sultry feeling of his mouth against me, the humidity of his hot breath pulsing against my skin in a rush. Then the pain building, washing over my brain - basic animal instinct, not coherent thought, screaming in my mind as the feeling mounts, nerve-endings aching for release under his merciless teeth, until in a rush the blood breaks free and gushes into the open air, burning like fire before cooling against my bare skin a fraction of a second later. He can't imagine how that feels. Well, then, considering the look in his eyes when he pulls back with his mouth dripping red, maybe he can.

The iodine starts out red, too, like the blood, but it's not hot when it touches my skin. It's more perfect, precise, dripping slowly from the bottle, teasing me. Maybe that's why I always opted for iodine, because of how it reminds me of him. Cold and smooth like his nimble fingers, bringing delicious pain like his luscious mouth.

But there's always the doubt - somewhere between when the liquid dries sticky on my skin in the sallow light of the bathroom and when I glance up at the washed-out copy of myself in the mirror, the uncertainty settles into the back of my mind. That terrible, itching unease that creeps over me when I see those old marks, purplish and crusted over, an ugly mockery of what they used to be. Those are the ones I cover up - the ones I can't stand to look at anymore.

There have been more of those, too - he's gotten rougher. Strangely I never feel it's cruel until I see the old wounds, knit together with dried blood like a surgeon's stitches, if they weren't so messy. I don't understand how something so beautiful can turn into a broken wreck like that. It's those that make me want to stop - maybe just out of vanity. Maybe out of shame.

It's strange, but I never seem to think about those marks when I'm with him. When I'm feeling the coiled metal springs digging into my back as he pins me down, the searing pain that gives way to pleasant warmth, the soft dampness and wonderful ache of his teeth on my skin, I forget about all the old scars and dried blood. Even if I did think of it I don't think it would matter. I don't think I would tell him to stop.

But that's why I use the iodine. If I wanted to, I could make the wounds myself, but it's not the same as when he does it. When he gives this to me, it makes me feel whole like nothing ever has. But when it's over, when the bed has grown cold after he's left and the fresh wounds are sticky and drying, the only evidence that he was ever there at all are the rumpled sheets and the dark, bruised skin he left behind. But the iodine brings him back - at least, when I use it, I can get back that feeling he gives me. The tingling cold as it slides over my skin, a cooler version of his velvet kiss, mixed with the first bitter-sweet slice of pain as it touches the open wounds, caressing the flayed skin like his silky tongue. Dark liquid swelling and dripping from my skin, falling onto the perfect whiteness of the sink. It's a momentary glimpse of beauty before the whole mess is washed away down the drain.

It's always like this. I've come to expect it, watching the beauty he gave to me wash away and leave only emptiness in it's place. It's hardly a steep price... for how he makes me feel.

I know he doesn't love me. Maybe I don't love him, either - sometimes it's hard to tell, when I'm getting too caught up in the reek of antiseptic and newly-bleeding sores. I don't think either of us would mind, though - so long as he can rend me apart for his sadistic pleasure and I can bask in the freezing warmth of blood and iodine.

And all my wanton lust was iodine;
My masquerade of trust was iodine;
And everywhere, the flare of iodine.
- Leonard Cohen