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Whiskey hears the noise before he fully rouses himself. He keeps his movement to a minimum, to maintain the illusion that he is asleep and not alert his bedmate.
It’s still night time, he can tell as much even without the aid of his glasses. The noise is clearer the more awake he is and he assumes Pizza thinks he can’t be heard, that his muffled sobs are too quiet to stir the other from sleep he hasn’t had in a couple of days.
‘Again.’ Whiskey thinks. He has an idea what his tears are for, he’s made a game of it with himself before to wonder when he needs the distraction. He hardly asks the Food Soul for the answer.
Many a time he would be tempted to take that black dagger to Pizza’s heart. Pierce him open and reveal all of its secrets, its joys and sorrows to him as if those would make Whiskey better understand the blonde that had chosen to follow him in the wake of his kingdom’s collapse.
Putting Pizza under the knife was an experiment at first, a trial to prove a hypothesis that had been stewing in his mind for a long time. Alas, the results weren’t what he was searching for, but the byproduct was… interesting, to say the least but overall not what he desired. He was ready to let this one and his knight escape with little harm as a sort of recompense for their participation, and yet—
Pizza had found him, days later and wearing the same tattered clothes as that day, without his knight in sight.
He’s stopped counting the years of having a second shadow. Whiskey never bothered to ask details after the first unanswered question, and Pizza never deigns to divulge the knight’s fate to him even in small talk that had begun to increase in frequency over the years.
The blonde hides it well, but Whiskey sees the occasional tremors when he catches Pizza staring too long, the way he keeps distance on some days. He was trained to be a doctor once, before he began dabbling in alchemy in earnest. He knows the signs when he sees it.
Out of curiosity, he would ask, then watch as Pizza slides easily into the role of a jester, putting on carefree smiles and becoming masterful in the art of misdirection. But for whom though? For Whiskey? The onlookers who slide pass them like water in a rushing stream? Or for the man in the mirror?
He doesn’t dwell much on it. There were many things that occupy his mind, traveling to be done, trials to execute. At the least, he remembers Pizza is now his companion and instructs him to keep up, if he wasn’t inclined to join him in his little ‘errands’ around whatever town they’ve reached. So long as Pizza doesn’t get in his way, he can overlook whatever he does in his spare time. He books a room the blonde can stay in, if he doesn’t plan to wander around. He buys him new clothes so he doesn’t wear Whiskey’s spares, a few trinkets to keep him occupied. One day, he returns to find Pizza shyly showing off a new suitcase he’d bought.
“I took a job. W-well, jobs. There were a couple of openings and I found this store selling a suitcase so you don’t need to have me share with yours.”
“Ah, then well done.” Whiskey didn’t think much of it. It was of little consequence to him, in fact, it was a boon so Pizza didn’t have to see what else he kept in his suitcase.
And so over the course of those long years and the shortening distance between them, it was then he noticed something.
Of course, Whiskey is aware that he himself cannot truly feel affection when he doesn’t know what that even means. Sometimes, when he allows his thoughts to wander beyond the fading memories of Lilia and the possible outcomes of his long running experiments, he thinks about such concepts.
In relation to the blonde who dogged his steps and shares his bed, what did he mean to him?
He is unsure, or at least, his mind refuses to grasp the answer staring at him. Unable to comprehend something so simple and yet so malformed in shape.
He had asked a solitary king once, out of the blue over a game of chess. The red-haired man had looked thoughtful before he spoke bluntly without the airs he often puts up.
“Have you fallen in love?”
Whiskey had mulled over the question, and answered in uncertainty, something he doesn’t do often but he trusts the man to be truthful, compared to a liar such as himself. Sure enough, the solitary king answers, “I wouldn’t think you capable of the purest of its manifestation, but it wouldn’t surprise me either way.” The man moves his pawn on the side of Whiskey’s bishop. Bait. There was a knight lying in wait.
“You needn’t take it to heart, what I think of your love. I say it’s the twisting, addictive sort. One that drowns and consumes the object of your desires until there is nothing recognizable of the old left. But you wouldn’t mind it, so long as it’s still recognizable to you, it is enough.” Whiskey doesn’t look up from the board, but he hears the words, comprehends them, feels his heart beating louder in his chest.
His fleeting thoughts recall that round ending in a stalemate. He wanders back to the present, to the single bedroom of an inn in the middle of nowhere with a blonde pining for the life he left behind so long ago.
He blinks at the far wall, listens to the sobs tapering into hiccups. Impulsively, he thinks he should try to be kind, for once.
“Pizza—”
And suddenly a weight tears the breath out of him, hands around his neck. He’s momentarily thrown off, and when he realigns himself, realizes the situation he’s in, a laugh tears out of his strangled throat.
It must feel scary, dragging yourself to chase an addiction that had uprooted your life and shattered it beyond repair. It must feel scary, to slowly be consumed by the thoughts that run opposite of what is moral. It must feel scary, to realize that you can no longer return to the you of the past. Whiskey understands none of that brand of fear.
For the briefest of moments, borne out of the moment’s adrenaline rush, he remembers the words of the solitary king, flourished with a chuckle, “Perhaps it is that new twisted form that you love instead.”
His heart is beating so loudly he thinks it has moved to between his ears. He doesn’t need his glasses to see that crying face framed by mussed up wheat gold hair, the meshed scythe laced with corrupted soul power poised to behead him held by a harlequin monstrosity that was the product of a bygone curiosity. In that moment—
Whiskey finds Pizza beautiful.
Uncaring of the weapon or the tight grip around his throat, he reaches up and caresses those tear stained cheeks tenderly. He hears Pizza’s shuddering intake of breath, yet remains straddled over him. He slowly brings his hands down, rests them against the sheets within Pizza’s line of sight.
“Well? It’s your move. What will it be?” He asks, his voice calm and measured, his lips losing a little of that ever present smile in a show of rare sincerity.
“You’re so cruel.”
He hears him. The hands never leave his throat, but he feels pressure against his lips, and knows his answer.