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 Credit to the movie "Hard Core Logo" for two lines of lifted dialogue
that ended up inspiring this entire piece.
  
  Disassembled by levitatethis	

 "Watch out, Cupid stuck me with a sickness// Pull your little arrows out
and let me live my life." -Metric, Sick Muse

 I

 "Loving you is more trouble than it's fucking worth."

 "Then why do you stay?"

 Chris ignores the huff in Toby's voice. "I've got nothing but time in
this place. Might as well make it interesting."

 "What a romantic." Toby narrows his eyes. "I could walk away," he says
and the lie flips Chris' stomach as much in lust as in irritation at the
lack of absolute follow through they are both aware of. Words have never
just been words between them. No need to make them worthless now.

 "You could try," Chris replies coolly. "But it wouldn't change a goddamn
thing."

 "You know me so well," sarcasm attacks first and after a brief pause Toby
continues. "So what do you want to do about this?" His annoyance is clear
as day, uninterested in playing nice, and Chris appreciates the lack of
kid gloves.

 "I have no fucking idea."

 Chris has had this conversation many times in his head. In reality, he
just can't find the words.

 II

 There are very slight differences in approach when working over men
versus women. For the most part, however, there are more similarities in
the sexes than self-help books would make one think.

 Chris loves to bend people to his will. He gets hard at the thought and
the subsequently careful execution of the chase, the trap set with
precision and patience, only to be topped by the rush of release once he's
gotten what he came for. There is power in controlling the lives of others
like a god amongst men. Yes, on occasion he has enjoyed the company sought
along the way, basked in the heady pleasure of mutual affection, but it's
fleeting, never long for this life.

 After a childhood with little sense of self-determination, forced to roll
with the punches just to stay on his feet, Chris learned the hard way what
survival entailed. Rare trips down memory lane were found at the bottom of
a bottle, but those also meant giving up control, a priceless commodity
not to be traded recklessly. He accesses those remembrances with little
frequency and verve. The cost of them is too high to risk.

 It's all about staying focused on the chessboard and seeing all the
pieces in their place, anticipating the directions they may go in and the
set of events that could follow. It's about knowing the present so well he
can read the future. For this he needs a clear head.

 Toby is the riddle he can't quite figure out, try as he might. And
attempting to put perimeters on what binds them, trying to contain it
within something pliable--something which can be molded--only seems to
twist the unexpected dagger deeper.

 When it comes to Toby, Chris feels everything but control.

 III

 From a personal standpoint, Chris does not automatically tie in sex with
a profound emotional connection. That doesn't stop him from giving the
other person as much pleasure as possible before the axe is dropped. After
all, if one is going to go out they might as well do it with a bang. Chris
likens it to having a caring side--or the closest thing to it.

 There are a few people in Oz he thinks about fucking. He's imagined
Sister Pete (many times) splayed out on her desk, her legs up in the air,
over his shoulders, as he fingers her nipples (eliciting the moan he knows
waits restlessly on her tongue) and thrusts into her. He's contemplated
blowing Mukada, if only to see the Father come completely undone and
finally let go of all the strident pent up sexual tension surely coursing
through his veins. Cloutier is a passing thought, one that makes Chris
think he suffers some diagnostic association with sex and God (it's the
notion of an all powerful--desirable--force).

 Sometimes Schillinger flashes through his mind and the memory is enough
to make him hard and angry all at once. He doesn't like the lingering
reaction his body still has for the sonuvabitch, but he can't totally
exorcise it. It's coupled with something primal and cruel, cold and
judgmental; something the universe visits upon him in retribution and
shrugs its shoulders as if to say, `but of course, did you really expect
anything else?' 

 He would fuck Robson up the ass as much for the taunting tightness
accompanying each resisted pounding movement as for the message to
Schillinger that Robson was no more than a hack replacement for someone
like Chris--like he said, inexplicable lingering ghosts which won't go
away, but make him cringe and recoil, make him want to stare long and hard
at a bottle of moonshine.

 He thinks about O'Reily often, wants to taste and feel along the lines of
his body and the heat of his skin. For all Ryan's incessant talking, Chris
loves the thought of putting his mouth to better use. He can't help but
laugh that if O'Reily knew how his professed reputation for straightness
only makes Chris want to prove the opposite true, O'Reily would stay mute
on the point.

 Chris gives pleasure to take it away; own it. Nothing exists beyond the
moment. He is driven by impulse and likes it that way. The incision he
makes is clean and easy, a steady cut to the bone, limiting infection and
other long term ailments waiting in the wings to take root. 

 Touch and go, wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am, I'll call you--

 Didn't your parents teach you never to talk to strangers?

 But who can say no to the enticing glint of a wolf's smile?

 IV

 Chris doesn't like surprises unless he's the one behind them. Being
caught off guard is an unforgivable weakness, but sometimes the taste of
sin is worth the fall. Sex is power; sex with want and need so deep it
burns is the delirium of enlightenment. It is the freedom from this mortal
coil.

 If he could have forever with Toby, he would take it without blinking. He
has considered what he would bargain away for it, determining much of his
world to be expendable. The realization weighs heavy and whispers the
light breath of liberation away from restraints which tether his past to
him and threaten that no good will ever last.

 Oz is a backwards world in which the perfect mark--a self-loathing,
yuppie lawyer--found his way into a con man's heart and awakened the (once
thought to be dead, if it ever existed in the first place) soul within.
The implications make Chris nervous. Pushing Toby over the brink isn't the
surprise. Toby doing the same thing to him, however, is. Talk about a game
changer.

 Chris plays denial with unbelievable odds, fighting against the
unexpected when he notices how much is out of his hands. He accepts the
battle, the flash of anger in Toby's eyes, the growing space between them
stretched thin. He rolls his tongue over sarcastic retorts, stares down
his nose in challenging condescension, touches Toby with bruising fingers,
wills himself to turn the other cheek and render Toby obsolete. Yet he is
never free of Toby's presence. Chris feels him like a sixth sense,
breathes him in like oxygen. The further apart they are, the harder the
collision when they crash back together, the more undeniable their fate.

 Still, Chris tries to call the shots, acts cool and dismissive part of
the time, gives in to feelings of sated happiness the other half. He can't
ignore the fact Toby is the only person he has ever wanted--needed--to
feel the same way in return. Making Toby drown in a sensory explosion,
reducing him to the most brilliant state of bliss is as much for Chris as
for Toby. And when Toby flips the tables, seizes upon Chris in a
metaphorical display of predator-and-prey, taking over the upper hand,
Chris feels matched and no longer like the singular lone entity prowling
the periphery. The frightening aberration is the romantic imprint, the
mistake made right.

 It would be easier in black and white, the way it used to be; to go back
to the life he once led. Believing himself to be the aggressor, the role
he was born to play, use to work. But Toby gives as good as he gets,
somehow able to push Chris back on his heels, rendering him unsure and
intoxicated at being fixed in someone else's (someone worthy's) gaze.
Subverted expectations make the world go round.

 Chris used to think Toby had blurred his vision and muddied the truth.
Turns out he had simply uncovered it. Reality is not always a welcoming
state of mind. It reveals kinks and weaknesses, and poses troubling
contentions. 

 The world is a minefield.

 V

 He gets lost in Toby.

 Grasping for solid ground, Chris stumbles to stand and gets caught in the
whirlwind. The heat of Toby's body pressed to his sears and Chris battles
the doubting voices telling him he is undeserving of such adoration,
warning him his past is the scarlet letter which will one day burn so
bright as to blind Toby and punish them both.

 Toby's lips brand his body and alter his genetic makeup in the
transformation from two-bit con to wanted man. Chris chokes back the
instinct to fold himself into Toby's body and burrow deep into his space
until he can longer breathe or run away and accept an existence that makes
allowances for no one else.

 "Chris," Toby whispers against his skin, trailing his tongue along the
curve of Chris' hip.

 Chris arches up, rubbing his hardening cock against Toby's chest and
shifts his lower body in a bid for more friction. He runs his hands
through Toby's hair and murmurs affectionate words he feels he has no
right saying yet can't contain. He knows they are an anomaly, knows this
never existed before in any shape and form, and will never happen again.
This is what Toby does to him--removing every single protective layer and
stripping him bare, then reveling in what's left, paying homage to it as
if it means something.

 Chris tries to pull him up. In his mind he flips their bodies and
stretches out over Toby who mewls beneath him. He runs his hands along the
familiar lines of Toby's torso and thighs, the jutting angle of his hip
and palms Toby's cock, listening for the sweet sound of surrender tripping
from swollen lips. Chris sees Toby reaching for him, hands on Chris'
biceps, legs around Chris' waist, eyes hooded but focused. Chris sees it
all.

 But Toby doesn't let him take control and Chris snaps back to reality
quickly, realizes he's still lying on his back with Toby between his legs
exerting enough pressure to keep him in place. Chris tenses and feels Toby
hesitate. A pause button is pressed and for a few seconds time freezes. A
question has been posed and the answer hangs in the balance.

 They wait...

 With his eyes closed, Chris slowly exhales and lets go. His limbs melt
beneath the smile Toby presses to his chest.

 No control...no control...

 And in the end it's love.

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