WARNING: This is a slash story, which means it contains male/male erotic content involving consenting adults. If you're not of legal age or are offended by such material, please go find something else to read.

Title: I Don't Know
Author: Elefwin
Email: elefwin@narod.ru
Rating: R
Category: Drama/Angst
Summary: A reflection of sorts, from Severus' point of view. When a relationship gives you insomnia...The title sums it up anyway.
Disclaimer: The characters belong to Rowling, JK (happy lady). The twist of subject belongs to some fellow fan. Only the irony of subtext is mine... So sue me '-)

I want him so bad it frightens me. I used to deceive myself, to blame him for my fears, but it is me, my desires that terrify me. He seems to know although I had never told him. He always knows. He's got a damned flare. Sometimes I think he can smell my thoughts along with everything else. Never told him this, too, but I can imagine him laughing at that. I would tell him much more only to hear him laugh. And I never will.

He is... I thought I knew who he is, what he is. Another lie, I do not know. He's been called many, many things... I remember words deliberately chosen to sting, burn, stain. As they did. And none of them had stuck because none of them was entirely true. Truth... It is so easy to speak truth around him, it is so hard to be true. Truth and loyalty, two more words, right? Two good words, but it does not matter after all. The good, the bad, there are no words for the mystery he is. Every time I grasp desperately on that elusive yet most beautiful something, and every time it inevitably slips away. Leaving me angry. Alone. And hungry for more, always more.

Hunger... When I ask him why he is doing this, he says it appeases his hunger. I wish he stopped smiling at that. No, I don't. If there is something I fell in love with, it's got to be that smile. So bittersweet it screams of him. Bittersweet. Light and dark, truth and lie, loyalty and treachery, love and hate, beauty and agony, pleasure and pain, man and beast... It is tearing him apart, that is why I hold him so tight tonight. He is bittersweet poison on my lips. How much is a lethal dose?

He can be so unbearably tender. It is something I don't want, it twines round me like ivy feeding on my weakness, and I hate being reminded of my possessing some. But my protests are pushed aside and kept at bay by those steely damned tender hands. Yes, he makes me forget. Myself, everything. The blessed oblivion. I am always aware, I am afraid of my desires. But he lets me forget all my cravings but one. The blessed one.

Do I love him? Hate him? I don't know. Too close, these two. Too much like us. I could kill him, and I would kill for him and be damned if I let him know that. If he doesn't smell it on me. If he doesn't know everything ever since I kissed him back. Was it despair? Frustration? Was it, with him? What does he want to forget in my arms? Does his way to oblivion go through my body? And do I care? Guess I do, I always loved precision. Would he tell? Whenever I feel like asking, there are things more... acute... to feel. I am drugged with him, and addicts do not ask sane questions.

I don't want the answers. Not when I have a perfect shelter, my face buried in his fragrant hair, our languid bodies mingled together sharing every pulse of life left... Not now and never, even if we survive the storm coming. I'm hopeless. I should be going, but we're so close it wo 481 uld be a pain to part, and I stay wrapping myself tighter around my... Nevermind what he is since he is mine. I want him too much to care.

I should know better. But I don't want to.

Thus I don't know.