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Silence, in its simplicity, is the purest suffocator of them all.
Silence rang through Black Sapphire’s mind—it was ironic how deafening it was, how it clamped its hands over his ears as he sat in his bedroom, alone and sobersided as he pored over a script that, for how proud he’d been when he wrote it, felt like utter garbage to read. His head felt too heavy for his shoulders, something like boredom or irritation stuffing its way down his throat and making it hard to focus.
He should put some music on.
Lazily flicking through records, slim fingers decorated with golden rings thumbed their way through vintage classics, eyes narrowly catching faint glimpses of their titles as he sifted them through. He landed mindlessly on a bossa nova album from 40 years ago and carefully slid the vinyl into his record player, dabbing the needle on its surface as gentle guitar melodies and soft rimshot rhythms sputtered to life and engulfed the space and peeled the hands away from Black Sapphire’s ears. What sort of radio show host would he be if he did not love music? At the very least, not a very good one.
He didn’t feel much like getting back to work, considering he was now questioning whether he should rewrite his script entirely, but he, resigning himself to his craft, to his job, to anybody who cared, slunk back down onto his sheets, mattress sinking under his weight as he idly felt around for papers previously discarded in his desperate attempts to rid his bedroom of any trace of quiet. He clicked his pen once, twice, ten or so times, the tip of it resting against his bottom lip, a habit that was going to die hard because, as much as Candy Apple called him gross for chewing on pencils, he never noticed fast enough to stop. He ought to put it to good use and sharpen his teeth or something.
Black Sapphire was given, at most, maybe 5 minutes to linger with himself. Because, like a prayer being answered—knowing him, maybe that was literal, maybe he’d known—an oozing portal flickered into existence just a few feet away from where Black Sapphire sat, blacker than void and dripping and speckled with eyes that stared through his very soul in penitence. It shifted from a slit of cosmic abstraction to a gaping black hole, and who else impatiently poked his head out but Shadow Milk, laying upside down and suspended midair, face falling directly in front of Black Sapphire’s.
“Boo,” He roused. His voice was flat but his expression was pleased, toothy grin stretching across his face, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Did I scare ya?”
Black Sapphire regarded him with a lidded gaze of mild amusement, and an incredible fondness he masked behind a trained smile. “Greetings, Master Shadow Milk. You need something?”
“Can’t I just come to give my well wishes to you?” Shadow Milk pouted, and though Black Sapphire chuckled in turn, he knew better than anyone that it wasn’t true. Lying was what his master was best at, wasn’t it? Shadow Milk only sought him out if he was in a mood—sometimes, if Black Sapphire got incredibly lucky, wished on a few falling stars, begged hard enough, that mood would be something good, high spirited but restless. Shadow Milk would jerk him around for some laughs, all in good fun, and then he’d run off to find someone else to bide his time with.
If he was not lucky, it would be anger.
Shadow Milk’s anger ranged. Black Sapphire rarely bore witness to the extremities—Shadow Milk was far too methodical to let one of his servants spectate his genuine fury, and with it, vulnerability—but he was subject to complaints. A great deal of them. He’d grown enamored by even the spite-fueled rants Shadow Milk spat at him, the closest he could ever get to loving somebody like him wholly, a beast he could not tame. He had given up on it long ago, but sometimes he betrayed himself.
Shadow Milk flicked his forehead and laughed in his face, and he felt the furthest pits of hell opening just for him deep in his stomach.
“What is it you’re so enraptured with anyways? Can’t peel your eyes away, even for little old me?” Shadow Milk drawled, flipping over onto his stomach and snatching Black Sapphire’s unfinished script clean out of his hands. He watched as Shadow Milk’s eyes traced over every word, an itch spreading up the inside of his throat.
“It’s my latest script,” He stated. Far too much love seeped through into his words. He hated it.
“It could use some work.” Shadow Milk shrugged, giving Black Sapphire a lethargic once over, flaying him open with his eyes. He tossed the papers back into Black Sapphire’s chest, who scrambled impotently to catch them, like a flailing, wounded animal. “But it’s not bad.”
Liar. Black Sapphire knew he hadn’t even read it. He wouldn’t have been so nice if he had.
“I’m editing it now,” Black Sapphire said, tapping the sheets back into uniformity on his legs, before setting them aside and hurriedly adding, “But it can always wait until later.”
“Oh, splendid. I’m awfully bored, you know.” Shadow Milk rested his head in his hands, a dramatic sigh fluttering Black Sapphire’s hair with warm breath, Shadow Milk still hovering inches from his face.
“Would you like to hear—”
“Let me get a good look at you,” Shadow Milk interrupted, yanking Black Sapphire forward by his cravat, nails clinking against the gold that framed the sapphire on his chest. With his free hand, Shadow Milk cupped his jaw with clawed fingers, and Black Sapphire let his head be turned left and right, eyes tenderly falling shut at the touch. Shadow Milk did not have the hands to caress him gently the way he would’ve liked, but the pinching was warm on his cold skin.
Black Sapphire had always had a high pain tolerance, anyways.
“Do you really only have two piercings?” Shadow Milk crooned, tugging Black Sapphire’s face frontwards again so they were eye-to-eye.
“I’ve never thought to get any more,” Black Sapphire admitted, dissolving.
Shadow Milk’s eyes narrowed to slits, the side of his mouth furrowing upwards in obvious thought. “We’re going to have company soon,” He said finally, decidedly. “And I want my favorite lackey all dolled up for the occasion. Come on, up, rise!”
Favorite. What a sickening word. Black Sapphire helplessly clung to it every time it was thoughtlessly uttered, etching the lines and the curves of each letter deep into the backs of his eyes. He savored the way it dripped from Shadow Milk’s lips like honey, felt it in the way Shadow Milk pulled him upright by his collar, turned him around by his shoulders, and shoved him forward. He did as he was told, waiting expectantly for another command like the loyal dog he was, having his wishes met in the form of Shadow Milk pulling the stool under his vanity out for him to sit at. What a gentleman he was.
“Should I start you off easy? Inner lobe, just to test the waters?” Shadow Milk spoke—mostly to himself—as he hovered behind Black Sapphire, watching himself in his vanity mirror. His hands felt heavy on Black Sapphire’s shoulders, the weight of his touch suffocating him and making him whole and pushing him deep, deep into the dirt.
“Ah, who am I kidding. You can handle the big boy stuff, can’t you?” A theatrical raise of his hand into the dead space of another one of his little portals, and Shadow Milk pulled out a handful of jewelry and dumped the metal unceremoniously onto the dark wood before them, the blunt din fighting against the smooth tune of the song that floated out of Black Sapphire’s record player.
He watched credulously as Shadow Milk poked at the random assortment of silver he’d pulled from somewhere Black Sapphire would never know. “An orbital would suit you. Or, how would you like a daith?” Black Sapphire did not have the heart to tell him that he didn’t remember what those meant.
“Whatever you decide, I trust your judgement,” He replied coolly, though he felt as though someone had set every one of his organs on fire.
“Hah!” Shadow Milk laughed, raspy and, Black Sapphire hoped sincerely, excited. “You flatter me.”
With a small smile, Black Sapphire waited for Shadow Milk to pluck a needle, candle, and matchbox out of another sliver of cosmos, summoned at the flick of his wrist. The lack of any sort of cleanser or sterilizer besides the fire or anything that could’ve made a sorry attempt of soothing Black Sapphire’s nerves confirmed what he had already suspected—that this was not about him, and had not been about him since the very beginning.
Had it ever been? In all the years they’d known each other?
Probably not.
“Help me out here,” Shadow Milk chirped, sorting through earrings with one hand while the other diligently held the needle over a flame he’d lit at some point while Black Sapphire was lost somewhere distant. He still hovered a few feet in the air, though his elbows now rested on the vanity, leaning over it the way a teenage girl might, just shy of kicking his feet back and forth. Personal space was not a luxury Black Sapphire was permitted. Not that he minded all that much. The brush of their shoulders was a delicacy he knew only he was rewarded with—a simple thing, and he needn’t want more.
Every glance at the needle sent him shivering with want.
“This ones quite gorgeous.” The jewelry occupied his thoughts away from the longing that bled down to his bones, and kept the flush off of his cheeks. He pointed flippantly at an industrial bar that was encrusted with small white stones, and Shadow Milk picked it up, watching it flicker in the firelight, before he set it off to the side.
“I’ll do that one later,” He yawned, pulling the needle away from the flame. He picked up a small hoop, a little charm in the shape of a four pointed star dangling off it, and slid it down his pointer finger as he snaked his way through the air, circling around to Black Sapphire’s right, like a vulture, going in for the kill.
“What have you chosen?” Black Sapphire screwed his eyes shut, because the sight of the red hot needle in his master’s hand raised eager goosebumps along his arms, and he knew that it was an inglorious thing to be anticipating.
A tug at his ear, and he flinched. If Shadow Milk noticed, he did not say anything. “This ear of yours looks as though it could use a rook. I’ll— oh, quit moving, would you? I’ll stab your eye out.”
“My apologies.”
Shadow Milk scoffed, and he must’ve leaned in closer, because Black Sapphire could feel his breaths against the curve of his ear, and it made him shiver. “You don’t need me to count to 3, do you? That’d be embarrassing for both of us.”
Black Sapphire opened his mouth to respond, but whatever he was going to say promptly fled his mind, because he felt his skin break under the gentle caress of the needle, hot and sharp and exhilarating and acrid and hot . His hands balled together in his lap; he did not dare open his eyes. As casual as Shadow Milk had made this all sound, it hurt. A whole lot, an acerbic pulsing that throbbed to the side of his temple, a pain that the coolness of the earring sliding into its new home didn’t ease in the slightest.
“C’mon, open up. What do you think?” Shadow Milk cooed, still inches from Black Sapphire’s ear, judging by the volume of his voice. Black Sapphire mustered a one-eyed glance up at himself in the mirror, and found that in his stupor, he’d failed to notice that Shadow Milk was holding his hair back, deft fingers tucking it securely behind his ear with one hand, his chin tucked up on top of Black Sapphire’s head, smiling at himself in the mirror.
“It’s stunning, of course.” Black Sapphire felt as though someone had ripped his feet out from underneath him.
“Isn’t it?” Shadow Milk smiled at him—smiled at his reflection in the mirror. “Let’s give your other ear some attention, hm? You pick the next one. I’m in a good mood.”
“The industrial would look quite nice.” Shadow Milk had wanted to do that one anyways, hadn’t he?
“You do have good taste, don’t you?” Shadow Milk asked it like it were fact, not just cheap bluff, and he must’ve known he didn’t have to try hard, because Black Sapphire chuckled and the sound of his own laugh—honeyed and foreign and filled with a love he didn’t recognize—made his ears ring. Black Sapphire caught a glimpse of Shadow Milk’s toothy grin in his peripheral and swiftly averted his gaze.
The clink of metal against nails was the only warning Black Sapphire had before the needle was inserted again, into his left ear now, ripping through his skin like a hot butter knife, in and out one half of cartilage, and he felt Shadow Milk stop and angle the needle further downwards before he continued. Whatever rationale, whatever dignity and whatever composure he had left told him that a professional should be doing this, or maybe somebody who was not only here to hole-punch his face to stave off boredom (Black Sapphire’s best guess as to his true intent; he knew Shadow Milk didn’t really care about “dolling him up” as long as he was presentable at best). But rationale died fast when Shadow Milk placed a hand under Black Sapphire’s chin to frame it in the mirror after he’d finished inserting the bar, grinning at his own handiwork and obviously proud of himself, though Black Sapphire felt as if he’d done something good too by simply sitting there and letting himself be handled.
The next piercing Shadow Milk decided on, now above announcing them as he worked, was on the tragus. It hurt around the same as the industrial did, but by now everything had begun to swim together in a constant, dull throb, and the needle began to grow cold.
But there were hands holding his face, and they were warm. Black Sapphire did not allow himself the privilege of looking directly at Shadow Milk as he worked—that probably would’ve been difficult anyways with all of the piercing business—but his eyes chased Shadow Milk’s reflection in the mirror, watched his eyebrows crinkle together when he was focusing and then watched his lips dip into a wry grin whenever he finished chipping his newest notch into Black Sapphire’s skin. How positively delighted he looked, staking his claim. Like he hadn’t done so enough already.
Black Sapphire was nowhere near as willowy as his master, face scrunched and unsightly, though Shadow Milk did not comment on his obvious discomfort. It wouldn’t have mattered even if he did—this sort of pain was banal and mortal and not something Black Sapphire minded, and also not something he thought Shadow Milk would understand anyways. He tried not to look so displeased, mostly for his own sake, averting his gaze in the mirror, though letting his eyes get glassy as his mind fogged over made the pain of the needle inserted into already throbbing skin a little less. This was.. number five? He tried to remember the name for this type of piercing, but all of the information he’d subconsciously gathered on the subject from Candy Apple’s nonsensical ramblings had escaped him. Not like he was trying too hard, anyways.
“I’m bored of this.” A sudden stirring, a ringing bell in his ears. Black Sapphire blinked and turned his head blindly to meet Shadow Milk’s gaze.
Black Sapphire did not say anything as Shadow Milk floated forward, taking a pointed seat on the vanity and crossing his legs. He watched as Shadow Milk lazily stuck the needle in his mouth, licking it clean of blood, casual as though he did this all the time, as though the gesture didn’t make Black Sapphire want to tear his own skin off, in some odd mix of disgust and captivation. Shadow Milk dried the needle on his pant leg and hovered it over the candle flame again, now withered away into a shadow of what it’d been, no more than the spark of a bigger fire. Not once did he meet Black Sapphire’s eyes. Not once did Black Sapphire wish he would.
“You’re so quiet today,” Shadow Milk continued, words drawn-out and far too syrupy. His fingers, needle pinched by his pointer and middle fingers, began to sift through the jewelry he’d pulled again. So he was not done yet. How reassuring.
“I suppose there just isn’t much to talk about, is there?” Black Sapphire was exuberant as always, the way he'd been trained to be. Though the facade wasn’t doing much for him now.
“Really?” Shadow Milk was obviously disinterested. Black Sapphire didn’t mind all too much. “Suppose you’ve been cooped up in here all day. Come here.”
Shadow Milk turned, some little piece of metal in his hand that Black Sapphire couldn’t see all too well. He leaned forward, planting a foot on the stool in between Black Sapphire’s legs, who, in turn, inched backwards, though it was all instinctive—physical proximity didn’t suit them.
“I’ve been busy.” Idle chatter. And a lie, at that.
Shadow Milk didn’t answer. A single, clawed thumb pulled Black Sapphire’s mouth open by his bottom lip, and it took an incredible amount of volition for Black Sapphire to not bite down as hard as he could, though he certainly thought about it—fantasized about it might’ve been a more accurate description, actually. And he thought he would’ve, if Shadow Milk had taken any longer. But there was metal in his skin again, pierced through his bottom lip, the warm pinching of a needle that had been heated just for him. And then, the taste of iron, bitter and familiar, like a homemade meal.
The issue was that the taste of iron didn’t go away. Even after the needle was removed and Shadow Milk’s hands were out of his mouth and he’d stopped mindlessly prodding at the wound with his tongue. Something warm began dribbling down his chin, and he watched as Shadow Milk’s eyebrows crinkled in mild annoyance.
“It’s not supposed to be bleeding that much,” He remarked, wiping Black Sapphire’s blood and rubbing it between his thumb and index finger like he were examining some unknown substance. He almost looked bored, expression now flattened out into stoic indifference.
“It’s,” Black Sapphire stopped, swallowing hard to keep his own blood from flooding his mouth. “Not a big deal, I'm sure. It’s fine.”
“Oh, marvelous.” Shadow Milk grinned, boredom replaced with the ruse of something unreadable, something distinctively belonging to him. “You had me so worried for a moment! So glad you’re just swell, aren't’cha?” A crude attempt at brushing the injury off as nothing more than a mild inconvenience, Black Sapphire was sure; it wasn’t like he hadn’t done this before. Nothing seemed new with him anymore. Just tedious.
“I’m more than capable of taking care of myself. I’ll handle it if anything happens.” Black Sapphire found himself almost begging Shadow Milk to just get it over with and leave, if he was going to soon anyways, instead of this pointless buildup to a weak goodbye. Might as well just rip the bandage off, no?
“Ooh, so independent,” Shadow Milk cooed. “I like that about you, you know? You don’t need me to nurse you or anything whenever you get into an accident.” A dig at somebody else. Probably Candy Apple. Black Sapphire hated the smile that crept across his face at his words.
“Well, I know how busy you are.” He felt as though he really was praying now, praying for this game of cat and mouse to end, praying for something to happen. His lip ached.
“Yes, yes, you know.” Shadow Milk waved his hand in front of his face dismissively. “I’m leaving now. You take care, okay?” His words were rushed and irritated and every letter clawed at Black Sapphire’s skin and he hated everything about this, every time.
“Of course. I’ll have this all healed up before our guests arrive.”
“Mhm, great. Awesome.” A flick of his wrist, and there was a blue-eyed, abyssal portal carved into the air above Shadow Milk’s head once again. A hasty once over, and the leftover jewelry on the vanity disappeared, dissipated into nothing, though Black Sapphire certainly noticed that he left the needle and the stubby candle right where they were.
With a theatrical bow, Shadow Milk was gone. His supernal little gateway closed with a sharp whish of air, and it left ear-splitting silence in its wake. Even the music, which still prattled on in spite of everything, felt muted and distant, as though it were coming from somewhere far away and unreachable.
Black Sapphire reached up to poke at the jewelry-filled gash in his lip. When he pulled his fingers away, he found that it still gently oozed blood, and he furrowed his eyebrows. Oh well. No use crying over spilt milk—if it got infected, he’d just go bother Candy Apple about it. She knew about these things. Probably. He really hoped she did.