Work Text:
Two years before
There was a tickle on Goggles’s hand where a butterfly perched. Rider shooed it away. He sat next to Goggles on a park bench. The stars reflected in his green eyes as he held his boyfriend’s hand in his. “Death isn’t that long, when you think about it.”
Goggles giggled. He couldn’t help it; Rider always made him feel giddy. “Tell that to my Grandpa.”
Rider was distracted with something Goggles couldn’t make out in the dim night. He turned it over in his hands. “Mm.”
“He was barely moving for the past three years of his life– I think he just wanted it to end, but Grandma didn’t want him to go. She kind of guilt-tripped him, now that I think about it…” Rider didn’t reply. “Rai?”
Rider held up a white flower hesitantly. An anemone. He took off Goggles’s hair tie. “Keep going.”
Goggles could feel heat creeping up his neck and tugs at his hair. “...that’s about it. I didn’t know him that well. He died when I was seven.”
“What’d he die from?”
“Parkinson’s.”
He could hear Rider frown. “That isn’t fatal. Complications from it are.”
“Complications from Parkinson’s,” Goggles corrected himself.
“That’s better.”
“What were you saying about death being quick, though?”
“It’s not the actual dying that’s long. People always talk about ‘decline’, ‘the end’, ‘starting to see the light’, but it’s usually not the actual end. It’s just death’s preamble. Death itself takes half a second. The light leaves your eyes, your lungs stop taking in air, your heart stops pumping, and then nothing.”
“Huh.” Food for thought.
Rider removed his hands from Goggles’s tentacles. “You look so pretty, baby.” He held up his cell phone and navigated to the camera. He took a photo and showed the blue inkling.
The flowers had been smartly woven into his hair. The soft white glowed against the ocean blue. Rider always had a knack for making Goggles look good. He handed the phone back and smiled when Rider leaned in to kiss him.
“I love you.”
“I love you too, Rai.”
***
Blood dripped from Rider’s… everything. It was actively flowing from his stomach, staining the flowers that he had brought for his love. He coughed, and more red came out. This was going to ruin Goggles’s carpet (and door and paint job and basically everything in his apartment), but Goggles didn’t care. He screamed and screamed, but nothing would bring the light back to Rider’s eyes.
He was right. Rider wasn’t dying when he dragged himself to his boyfriend’s apartment, trailing blood. He wasn’t dying when he was too exhausted to speak. He was dying when his body said “sorry, you’re on your own” and took a fifteen.
Fuck.
Butterflies flew through the ajar door, circling Rider. All except one. It flew towards Goggles. If insects could smile, it would be doing exactly that.
He opened his bloody palm, and it landed.
They stared at each other for a minute before Goggles crushed it.