bury me in your gold — adam.

     Adam couldn’t stop his body from trembling.

He was a sprawl of frantic energy, all his synapses in ecstatic motion, and it felt as if every part of him was about to rip at their very seams, as if every tendon and bone in his being were becoming undone and unmade. Fear and shock rose up his throat, like pungent bile, and no matter how arduously he tried, he couldn’t swallow it back down. It was there to stay and persist, Adam thought, a lump coalescing there that was as permanent as Malcolm Nox’s death.

The death haunted him less than the long, numerous months he’d spent confined and cribbed by this house of molten gold and mahogany bones. Each one of them were the sinews of greed and glutton, Adam mused darkly. They craved so much, the world decided to offer them nothing as a sick, twisted jest. There was nothing left now except a rotting corpse and shattered dreams, delusions of grandeur scattered across the blood-scented floors like worthless litter. His indrawn breath swirled around the lungs but Adam was still gasping and breathless, for something, for someone.

The sunlight on Beryl’s dark lashes glistened as if it were powdered gold. Whatever Beryl touched seemed to become gold, and that included Adam, whose body was luminous with it. He brought the smooth, translucent knuckles of his Midas’ hands closer to his mouth to kiss it, before moving onto the wrists, the fingertips, the map-lines of his palms. It was a worship, a ritual, a reverence. It was a plea spoken through tongue and teeth, and he hoped Beryl would hear it loud and clean.

     “Give me all of your love,” he whispered.
     “You already have it all,” Adam exhaled.

Then, the world dissolved into reds and golden inches of honey-scented skin. It became feral and soft, all at once. Beryl’s hair against the white pillows was like spun silk. Adam was drowning and then resurfacing, only to drown again in the ocean of ivory sheets and faux fur blankets, tides washing over him. Between their clenched teeth, their hungry lips, and their fiery bodies, crackled a sort of electricity, a form of violence, that coursed through Adam’s body, sending each nerve-ending ablaze with a strange, euphoric fire. He was drowning before but now, in the spur of a moment, he was burning, the flames crawling their way down each vein and capillary of his.

     It felt raw,
     it felt holy.

He knew each jutted rib of Beryl, and the spaces in between them. He knew where to press to make him sing hymns, and which place to caress to bring this to an end. This sort of secret, esoteric knowledge excited Adam, as well as comforted him. At least with Beryl, he could foresee and decipher. He bit the staccato of his pulse beneath skin over the neck and heard Beryl's moan seconds before it left his cherry-red lips.

When the fire sizzled out, they collapsed upon the white sheets like fallen Rome, dressed in remnants and debris of themselves, young gods sprawling over mundane ruination with pieces of ichor caught under each other’s fingernails. The silence seemed to sift over them like ashes.

Adam’s breaths hadn’t slowed. His hand sought out the other’s, and laced the two together, a shared heartbeat throbbing in the space between their fingers. “I wanted the grandeur and wealth I once had back so badly, you know, before Malcolm died,” Adam turned, propping his chin up with his elbow planted on the white sheet below. “But, now I know that everything golden can never stay golden. Wealth and riches — they are like cupping water with your fingers. They always slip away, at some point.”

Adam’s eyes washed over the other’s countenance and physique, shaped so divinely.

     “Now, I just want you.”