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Being son of the sun was a blessing, watching every creature live and run. Eli would look at them and smile, tiny people with tiny lives but full hearts. There were hollow people too, but those the sun didn’t like to touch. There had to be a core for them to feed. Hollow people belonged to the dark.
Being son of the sun was a curse, watching creatures die and rot under his heat. Lives cut before their time and small misunderstandings ruining the base of their relationships. Eli had to see them whither like they did their roses, he had to care for them and mourn their parting. He drank their warmth and laughs right from their rosy lips like nectar.
The first time he met him, Eli had just parted with one of his lovers. He stood in the shadows of the trees at the limit of the meadow. His hair paler than the moon and he was clothed in darkness. Something about his face, impassive and repelling the sunlight, gleaming with its own dim shine, made Eli pause and stare. Never had he wanted something that repelled his nature with such a passion.
Victor , that was the name he gave Eli before vanishing in a dark cloud. When Eli turned around, his slumbering lover had vanished from where Eli left him.
He didn’t see him again for a while, but in the night, when Eli’s fire dimmed to a quiet spark, he tasted Victor’s name on his tongue. The foreign sounds, delectable and sharp, making his fire rekindle and threaten to light the sky anew. In those moments, he could almost feel the night whisper and stroke his naked spine.
Centuries passed and Eli grew restless, glancing at every shade he walked past. He stopped sleeping, hearing his name in the midnight wind. He stopped resting, feeling dark tendrils caressing his thighs. If only he would show himself to Eli again. If only he could taste darkness for the first time. He grew more feverish each night, the fire inside him growing and eager to make him into a supernova.
Eli knew he was watching from the shadows around him, watching Eli’s gold skin barely contain his essence. He wondered what he’d do if Eli exploded, what he’d do if Eli called his name. He wondered if all the night could spare him of the fire he so carefully stoked.
It was one night, trembling and gasping as the wind called Eli’s name and the night grazed its claws along Eli’s stomach that he finally gave in. All the air left his body is a single word, calling out for him. In seconds, the darkness had shrouded him and there was a weight on top of him.
“You called,” Victor said.
Eli let out a wavering breath, feeling the steam on his skin.
“You didn’t come back,” Eli whispered, breath catching in his throat when Victor’s thigh pressed between his.
“I came to you once,” Victor said.
His skin shone a pale white in the turmoil of shadows around them, a dim shine enough to keep at bay Eli’s golden one. He saw Victor smile, an upturn of his lips that Eli almost missed.
“I thought it was your turn to come for me .”
They looked at each other and Eli saw the crackling light in Victor’s eyes. He shivered.
“What are you?”
“So curious, are you?”
Victor smirked and closed the distance between them, pressing their lips in a kiss that tasted like raw power. Eli licked it right off, biting down on Victor’s bottom lip.
“ Tell me ,” he said. “Tell me how you walk with the darkness and still hold light.”
Victor nosed at Eli’s neck before laying down next to him, looking at the black sky.
“I am an errant god,” Victor said. “Lightning tore the night sky, and down I fell. The dark didn’t dare touch me for a millennium.”
Victor let out a humourless laugh, glaring at the sky.
“A god born of violence.”
No , thought Eli. A god born of misplaced light .
He looked at Victor's pale skin, shining like the moon but with such fierce power beneath it. Eli had the urge to lick it and taste the lightning in his tongue. He wanted to bite and let the electricity char against his teeth.
He ventured a hand, trailing Victor's side. The shadows parted and made a path for him, revealing naked skin sparkling under his fingertips.
"How do you feed?" Eli asked, remembering his missing lover.
"However I please," Victor replied, raising an eyebrow. "Now, will you kiss me back? Or do you, perhaps , need another century?"
Eli scoffed and paused his hand on Victor's stomach, wondering if he should go North to cup his face, or South to hold him in his hand. He saw the lightning crackling in Victor's eyes when he let the fire under his burn brighter and grabbed Victor's thigh just before kissing him.
Eli's fang pierced the inside of Victor's lip, making them both gasp. Eli lapped at the lighting hungrily, hand travelling up up up Victor's thigh. Victor opened his legs to make room when Eli finally touched him. He fisted a hand in Eli's curls and bit down hard on Eli's lip until sunlight poured on his tongue, gold and liquid like molten lava.
They drank each other's power until they were inebriated, until they couldn't tell where one's essence ended and the other's begun. With Eli's parent absent and the shadows cloaking them from Victor's, they gave into their most human desires.
Godlings were fickle and proud. Godlings were rebels, delirious. But they were also close to man, and though superior, they shared the same weaknesses.
Grass burned as shadows twirled around them as they moaned and gasped and grasped for each other like younglings. They bit and drank and tore each other to shreds and built each other anew.
They gasped vows and whispered promises. And when they finished, the stars threatened to burst and darkness draped over them.
"My dying star," Victor whispered, ogling how his shadows mixed in Eli's veins.
"My starry night," Eli whispered back, tracing the bursts of light appearing in Victor's skin like freckles on a mortal.
Eli could only guess what his parent would do in the morning, watching their favourite son bearing shadows. What Victor's would think knowing their estranged son could light the darkest night.
One thing he knew for certain, they could destroy each hand in hand.