Take Me

Chapter Twenty-One

"I want to find someone who's really magnetic but who isn't going to do anything bad to me. It's hard."

- Lana Del Rey                       

♔ Chapter Twenty-One ♔      

"You want me," Luke claimed. He was sitting with me in my bedroom. He hadn't left me since the nurse's office. I'd gone home to avoid the ambulance. I wasn't expecting my mum to be back yet, she'd probably went back to work to slip in a few extra hours.

"I don't," I stressed. I needed Luke to know that.

"Okay," he agreed. "Let's play a game. It's called 'let's not pretend like you don't want to fuck your brother', okay?" he sassed, folding his arms and smirking like he'd won.

"I don't like this game."

"Tough stuff, Tommy boy, we're playing it. You want me. You want me so much it's delusional. You're delusional," Luke croaked. His voice was a tang of cruelty and love and humour, but laced with some kind of truth.

"Please, don't," I told him. "Just don't."

"I'll stop when you finally fucking admit it. I want to hear you say you want me, that you love me, that you'd plunge the deepest depths of Hell to try and get me back. And then you'd plunge the deepest depths of my body once you had me."

"But you already know, Luke. You know I love you," I confessed, dropping down on my bed beside him.

"Do I?" he asked, looking over at me with a dead and inquisitive look, his eyes glazed over and slightly off-putting.

"What does that mean? Have I not made it clear enough?"

"Stop avoiding it, Tom," he urged me suddenly. "Tell me the truth. And after that, if you want me to go so you can get your fucked up happily-ever-after with Prince Darling or loving Isaac, then I will. I'll leave forever, because you're the only reason I'm here."

"What?"

"You still need me, you still want me, I'm all in your head, you idiot. The only reason I'm still around is because you're too mentally insane to actually take in trauma like normal people," he barked. "You did this all to yourself, and we both know it. Just like right now, you're so afraid to admit to me, a ghost who isn't even real, that you love me. Who else is going to find out? It's the fear of admitting it to yourself, isn't it? You're so afraid to admit you love me, and why? I know why, Tom. It's because I'm already gone, and admitting that just makes it harder, doesn't it?"

"Fuck you, Luke," I cursed.

"We both know you'd rather fuck me," he bragged, pulling that face he pulled when he knew he was right.

"Go fuck yourself," I yelled at him. He looked entirely unfazed.

His dead, nimble fingers went to his bare, dripping chest. His hands caressed over his svelte, slender body, and slipped into his dead swimming trunks. He knew I was looking, and I knew he knew, but I didn't give a shit. I couldn't take my eyes away. He started jerking himself off.

"What are you doing?"

"Fucking myself, like you asked," he smiled. "Unless you want to come and offer up that ruined, blistered arse of yours?"

I found myself smiling back at him. I didn't care how inappropriate he was being, or how much the situation called for me to be mad or upset, because I was done feeling like that. At least for now.

"Can ghosts really fuck?"

"There's only one way to find out." The swimming trunks dropped.

"Oh god," I gasped, unsure of what to do next. Do I make the first move, or does he? I didn't understand. Waiting for someone who wasn't real to make the first move seemed stupid, so I reached forward and took him in my hand. I heard him purr emptily.