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He would burn for this. Hair and skin and bone would turn into fine ash, his voice – into a forgotten wind, his mind – into a glass ball on a shelf. Whatever poor excuse for a soul he had inside would die in relief, having existed too long shrivelled and mute, and drowning in blood for years and years and years. He revelled in the wait, for the bones to break through skin and scar, and for hands to rip him apart.
He knew where his blade was. Within a hand’s reach. He also knew he wouldn’t be touching it. Not tonight.
A soft exhale a touch from the back of his neck.
His chest froze and he squeezed his eyes harder.
He would burn for this, and he would do it himself is the Universe refused him the mercy. Gasoline, lit match, only the black skies as a witness. If he woke up tomorrow, he would make sure to never see or hear another soul. No matter how hard they summoned, he would be gone. He would make sure of it.
Nails cutting into his palm, blood from his lip bitten raw perfuming the air. He wished he could say it wasn’t him doing it, it wasn’t him bleeding himself to death, but the only other one in the room would never do anything like that, now, would he ?
He grit his teeth, the sound disgusting in the breathing quiet and the apparition behind him stopped, soft rustles falling back into place.
- We don’t have to do anything. Not tonight, not ever.
He shook his head. If he waited a little more, his skin would split at the seams and the whole black fog that gave him life and voice and hatred would spill on the fine sheets. His own fin sheets, because if he was going to destroy himself tonight, he might as well desecrate the only place he had ever felt safe.
His own little temple, he thought in the dead light of the night. His own shrine. No masters or kings, not here. Only him. And, now, the ghost.
- Pretend I am whoever you want. I won’t mind.
Another shake of his head.
A warm palm spreading between his shoulders.
He choked, air escaping his burning lungs with a sound loud as a gunshot in the still night. No movement behind him but he knew the apparition was there. The heat was climbing his body, sweat dripping down and his ribs growing tight. One hand. That was what it was offering. And the grace for him to delude himself the fire turning skin into paper was a sign of affection.
He wanted to scream at the ghost because how dared it offer him its pity and tell him to imagine something it knew he had never had ? Like telling a corpse to imagine life, the apparition was touching through flesh and bone and viscera, to the metal core that made his soul. Wrapping its warm fingers around his beating heart, it squeezed hard enough he felt tear wet his lashed. It hurt. The palm was still on his back, the fingers of the ghost’s other hand on his shoulder, and yet he could feel it burn his blood away. Evaporating, until nothing but charred bones would remain to greet the cold morning light.
Until the ghost got up tomorrow, leaving a scorched, marked, branded blade in the place of his remains.
Not a corpse. He was no human and the shell that would remain even if he didn’t burn to nothing would not be a body. Would not carry the signs of a life passed. It would be a grotesque monument of his greed, of the desperate, clingy, disgusting desire to exist where he didn’t belong. A blade would be easier to dispose of, being the useless unwanted object it was.
He would make sure that was all that was left of him. The fire would burn high and cleanse his mind and spirit. No soul, no beating heart, no face to curse every time he saw it in a mirror.
No need to pretend to do something he had never even imagined.
The hands pressed him gently forward, almost no force behind, and paused. A question.
He answered.
Getting up on his knees, the soft of the bed moving beneath him, he turned and clicked one of the far lights into life. In the sharp monochrome, the apparition’s face was shrouded in darkness and he let out his last breath. In the image of what he knew was what he could have been only if…Only if. Looking at the ghost, almost making out its features, he allowed himself to fall on his back, it following while still keeping them apart.
He let his eyes roam over the apparition’s blurry features. In the dark he couldn’t make its face out and that was not okay. He needed to see. Needed to be able to tell who was, at any given moment, breaking him down.
The ghost watched him back, light hair catching the colours of the gas light. It didn’t blink, light eyes meeting his and then dipping down, along his neck and chest, arms and hips. And then back.
- You are beautiful.
He hissed at it. The ghost, in response, blinked once more before settling its palms on his chest.
He started, pushing back on the bed and trying to escape from the touch. It hurt. It hurt so badly.
The apparition’s warm hands melted through skin and rib, setting his lungs on fire and it hurt. He couldn’t breathe. It swung a leg over his hips and he curled his fingers in the bedding. The ghost had him where it wanted him, caged but alive. Or, as alive as he had ever been. One couldn’t be truly present if even his own name called for someone else.
The apparition leaned closer and he couldn’t breathe. Of course, he couldn’t. He was a dead man walking, a wet mess of blood and raw, pulsing meat, a soulless, heartless, breathless mind without a connection to anything. The world had rejected him long before he’d rejected it and now he was paying for that. Piece by piece, the ghost was stealing everything that made him himself. Every little morsel still fit for consumption, until there would be nothing but dried skin left.
And that was what he was going to burn tomorrow.
Maybe the cold metal scrap of metal in the place of his soul would remain and some small woodland creature would see it years in the future and he would be remembered. He would have existed. Not now and not by humans, but he would be remembered.
He wished with the kind of fever, not even the ghost’s hands could create that he would be remembered.
- Are you with me ?
He was but was it with him ? Was there anything under the apparition’s thighs aside from a cooling corpse ? How did the ghost hide its revulsion at his decomposing chest, how could it stand to touch the burnt flesh of his lungs ?
The ghost threw its head back, pale golden hair catching the light, and accepted him in its body.
His back bowed and yet he couldn’t close his eyes. The apparition paused, spine in a graceful arch, a living breathing picture of fire and brimstone, of life and sky and water and air, and all he could do was stare, hands down on the bed at his sides. Its form glistened with sweat, muscles on display, bone and power in every shadow. A true study of vitality deeply rooted in the ground, an unmovable object and an unstoppable force in one body, a warrior and soldier, a god and a ghost.
The man carrying his name and history, his past and future, the one who had stolen his breath and soul and blade.
Blue eyes met his. The other man’s pale lips opened as if to say something. Hesitation. And then…
Heat, heat everywhere. In the hands pressing him down and burning through his chest. In the tongue taking his voice and mind away. In every line and curve of their bodies melting together in the flames. In the tight feeling of a body inviting his inside and stealing the last of his cold breath. In the face that never blurred, eyes meeting his, features not letting him forget who was killing him and leaving nothing behind.
Nothing.
He knew it was morning before he even woke up fully.
He knew he wasn’t alone before he even shed the remains of sleep from his blurry mind.
In the grey winter day he let his eyes dip along the line of the bared shoulder right by his chin. Pale hair touched his face and his lover murmured something too low to hear. He tugged the quilt higher, covering them both to their eyes, and then pulled the other man by the waist until they were flush to each other.
Because they fit. They always had. Whether it had been in hatred or pain or destruction, they were mirror images and puzzle pieces and two sides of the same coin at the same time.
Perfect balance.