Work Text:
“Adonis,”
His name left Casey’s mouth like a final breath. If he wasn’t careful, It might turn out to be. Leather shifted against the desert ground. The crackling of gravel under heels was not unlike an ember, burning hot. If it lands, it’ll send the tumbleweeds and cacti and city and everything surrounding them into rapture.
This was eternal damnation. This was the ruler that struck Adonis’s hand. This was the result of keeping promises.
“Yes, Casey?” he smirked.
“My full name is Casimiro. That’s what you should call me” he confessed. Though this wasn’t a confession from the books. Casey didn’t want saving or forgiveness. He gave his name to Adonis, asking for nothing in return.
This wasn’t something Adonis could quite understand.
He perked up one eyebrow and his ears followed.
“But Casey is…”
What is Casey? What does Casey look like? What does Casey feel like? Is Casey a name, or a person? What about Casimiro?
“Hmm?”
“Casey is easier. I don’t like you enough to call you something else. To me you’re just Casey. That’s all you’ll ever be.” he spat. The words rotted him from the inside out. As if there was anything left to even rot.
“And you look like a sewer rat, covered in grease and grime and...sewer-y things.” These last words left him in an airy chuckle. He was laughing. Adonis was on fire and he was laughing!
“Beg your pardon?” Adonis scoffed.
“Sorry, sorry. My apologies. I thought we were having a “Who’s the Biggest Liar?” contest.”
His laughter was a carnival, and Adonis was the clown.
A million bullets and arrows pierced Adonis’s lungs. His heart was an open wound that bled and festered. Casimiro was a potent poison, and Adonis, even with his condition, was not immune.
“You’re in love with me. You really aren’t any different, are you Casimiro?”
Casey looked straight through Adonis, not at him. Adonis’s eyes were see-through, a crystal clear Jello that might melt.
Adonis wished his entire person was made of Jello, perhaps the lemon kind he always liked, so that Casey might devour him entirely. So that nothing would be left of him. Not his form, or his sandy hair or amber eyes, not even his soul.
“You don’t really want to die, do you? You don’t want me to kill you.” Casey said. It was more of a statement than a question.
“How many more times will we have to go over this before you can get it into your thick skull? I’ve done everything I can to show you. I’ve consumed poison, I’ve walked through the desert barefoot. I’ve sliced my carotid artery and bled out in front of you to prove I can’t die. Would you like me to do it again? I know you threw up, but maybe it’ll be more enjoyable for you a second time?”
Adonis relaxed against the desert floor like it was a carpet in his own home.
“When I kill you, what will stop you from being reborn again?” Casey questioned. With his question came an icy wind that rushed through the desert, turning sand and clay into sparkling blue jewels.
“When you kill me?” Adonis asked.
“When.”
“Well, when you kill me, what stops me from killing you back, Casey?”
“You already have.”
Adonis opened his eyes. Casey was sitting up with his arms wrapped around his bent legs. They were brought close to his chest. His warm chest.
This is how Adonis knew Casey was lying when he said he’d killed him already. He’d felt his chest before. It was warm and coursing with hot blood. His arteries were doing their job, his heart was still there and spilling with liquid gold.
He saw the way it rushed to his face when it was hot out. He had seen it leak from cuts and wounds. He’d tasted it. If Adonis had to guess, Casey’s blood was the ambrosia the fabled Gods drank all day.
Casimiro was more than alive, he was well.
“You never answered my question from earlier. I’ll think about answering yours if you answer mine.” Adonis said, letting his anticipation slip.
“To love you, Adonis, is to hate myself. To love you, is to love fear and chaos and everything that is wrong with the world.” Casey replied.
“That doesn’t answer my question.” Adonis’s heart was a stone being tossed across the pond. He relied on gravity to keep him going, or else he might sink.
Casey shuffled back down to the ground, this time he lay on his side facing Adonis.
“I think it does.”
The Jello had melted. Adonis’s eyes were an open wound, bleeding and pooling around him. The blood was warm, but never as warm as Casey. It rolled down his neck and onto his shirt, leaving a stain that will never fade, and a scar that will never heal.
Casey planted his hands on Adonis’s face, rolling his thumbs gently over his cheeks and where his eyes settled into his face. With each drop blurring Adonis’s vision, Casey engulfed his line of sight more and more. His breath was as warm as his chest.
Adonis was snagged, like a fish to bait, and Casimiro reeled him in.