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Ness’ lips are scalding, almost, on Kaiser’s icy skin. The room—their room, still so alien, so sterile, so hazy, like all of Blue Lock is—isn’t even particularly cold, and still, Kaiser is freezing. He’s always been freezing.
Ness is a good cure for that, of course; temporary as all cures are, but one, nonetheless.
It’s ridiculous, a little bit, how fucking hot Ness runs, always. Like he’s pulsing it, like he’s filled with it, like he’s stuffed full of raw heat. His skin brushes Kaiser’s, and Kaiser has to fight the impulse to claw at him, to press him closer, closer, closer, to steal some of his heat, to steal all of it, perhaps. He’s always been a thief, he’s always been right where he doesn’t belong. Ness’ mouth nuzzles into Kaiser’s jaw, Kaiser’s throat, his gasp needy and desperate and boiling.
Kaiser stares at the ceiling. Ness is heavy, warm, soft hands rubbing over Kaiser’s body, and like this, Kaiser doesn’t have to move at all to stay warm. Usually, he always has to be moving. Usually, he always has to be running. He’ll freeze to death if he doesn’t.
Something itches at the very back of Kaiser’s throat. Squirms low in his belly, like nausea, like premonition, like resignation, like something else entirely. Builds and builds and builds, curls hot in his belly, warming his insides with every roll of Ness’ hips, pressed close, close, close, so Kaiser feels it. So it heats up the inhuman blood in his veins. He curls himself around Ness and chokes, and squeezes, and tightens, and drains.
“I’m gonna come,” Ness pants into the crook of Kaiser’s neck, shuddering violently, Kaiser’s nails in his back. Radiating pure, unadulterated heat. “I love you. I—I love—” he slumps down, panting, filling Kaiser up with warmth, and Kaiser thinks Here we go again. Ness coughs.
.
Ness is cradled in Kaiser’s lap, with Kaiser leaned over him, scrutinizing his upside-down face closely. Squishing his cheeks together until his pink, plump lips go all pouty. Ness’ face is all red with how Kaiser has been squeezing and tugging at it, but perhaps that is just Kaiser’s physical closeness. Gross.
“I told you I’m fine,” says Ness. “Really!”
It feels unreal, all of it. Like it’s just so out of reach for Kaiser’s fingers, Kaiser’s grasp. Kaiser’s hands are so very cold. Ness’ face is hot, hot, hot against him.
“Hmm,” Kaiser says. “So it seems.”
And he could have sworn…
But, well, Ness is right here. He’s looking at Kaiser with his round eyes, framed by long, dark lashes, looking directly at Kaiser, and he’s right here. When Kaiser’s hand slips down to his pulse, for the tenth time in five minutes, it’s beating alright. Leisurely. Perhaps a little faster than if usually does, what with their proximity and all. Yuck.
“You never usually worry about me,” Ness murmurs, muffled a little by Kaiser’s rough handling of his face. “Ah! Not that I am complaining or anything! If anything, I—”
“I’m not worrying,” Kaiser says, which is the truth. “I just thought—”
What did he think again? His vision blurs. When it clears again, Ness smiles, the expression blooming over his face so sweetly it is sickening.
“Okay,” he says, softly. He stays right there, in Kaiser’s lap, for ages. Nobody comes to disturb them here in the monitor room, usually. The screens are flickering behind them, displaying their last match—though Kaiser was sure there’d been another after—but Kaiser doesn’t pay them any mind. He has memorized all of it already. Ness stays right there for ages, until whatever had been all messed up in Kaiser’s ribcage settles down again. Until Kaiser can feel it in his bones.
Like this, it’s almost warm. Ness isn’t slung atop him, not wrapped around him, but like this, it’s almost warm.
They return to their room, eventually. Kaiser nudges at Ness’ head and Ness bites back a whine and gets up quickly, obediently, perfectly. Smiles at Kaiser when Kaiser winces as he straightens out his legs, apologizes for it, for some fucking reason. Kaiser rolls his eyes.
They return to their room, eventually. Ness goes to bed, because he’s a perfect good boy who needs his sleep, and Kaiser goes to the bathroom, because he needs to take a leak.
It’s there that he finds it: blood smeared over the sink, some splattered over the tiled floor. What looks like blood clots blocking the drain. The bathroom is icy, and when Kaiser walks closer, closer, closer, he can make out blue petals soaked in half curdled, dark red blood. It’s nearly dried, only still jelly in some places.
His mouth is dry.
“Ness?” he says, walking back over to the door. “Ness, what the fuck is this?”
No reply. When he looks back again, blood quivering weirdly in his veins, the bathroom is clean. And when he slips back into the adjoined bedroom, Ness is asleep and breathing and his skin is hot and his heart is beating when Kaiser presses fingers under his jaw. His breath is deep and satin-soft.
Kaiser swallows. Then he pisses and goes to bed.
.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Kaiser finds himself say. It hurts in his throat, like it’s barbed. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Ness is bent over the toilet, throwing up quite violently. He looks at Kaiser, blinking bleary, hazy eyes, his pupils so wide one can’t really tell them apart from his bleeding-heart irises anymore. Still he smiles; or tries to, at least. There’s a bit of petal stuck between his teeth. His hands keep smearing blood over the toilet seat.
“I’m o—okay,” Ness says, feverish. His face is so pale. It looks like glass, almost, with how sweaty it is. “It’s okay, I am—”
Clearly not okay, that’s for fucking sure. Case in point: this is right when another barrage of coughs wrecks through Ness’ body, interspersed by reedy wheezes and colorful gagging. It’s terrible. It sounds like a hefty breeze rushing through a desolate, half-rotten cabin. Rattling, uprooting. Totaling.
Ness hacks up a large clot of blood and petals, and there’s some flowers in the mix that seem to have survived the travel, whole and soaked in blood. Kaiser’s knuckles are white where he’s holding on to the doorframe of the stall.
“Ness!” someone exclaims behind them, panicked. When Kaiser tilts his head, it’s Yoichi Isagi.
Yoichi Isagi, who’s now hurrying to Ness’ side, hands waving through the air. Despite everything, Kaiser manages to get pissed off at this. Feels it boil through every inch of him, electric, like touching a live wire. Who the fuck does this guy think he is? Who the fuck said he could touch—
“Get away from me,” Ness manages to hack out, the words cut apart forcibly, struggling when Isagi puts a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t touch me, Yoi—” then he coughs again, so deep his entire ribcage twitches with it. Kaiser’s vision blurs just a little.
Isagi’s face whips towards him, wild. “Will you call for help already?! What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Kaiser turns on his heel and runs.
.
Ness’ throat bobs. “Open wider,” Kaiser says, and Ness obeys, he always does. He’s a good dog, after all.
One with very white, very sharp dog teeth. They’re slick with spit and rough on top, smooth on the sides, when Kaiser brushes his fingertips over them. Digs into Ness’ molars until it hurts. It’s pristine, however, the inside of Ness’ mouth. Pink and twitching and sharp and white and hot and wet. His throat twitches, too. For a moment, Kaiser is almost tempted to push his fingers inside there, too.
To check, of course.
“I don’t see anything,” he says. Ness nods; or tries to, at least, it seems. Kaiser lets go of him, then.
He’d said he felt like there was something stuck in his throat, earlier. And Kaiser—
Well, Kaiser doesn’t know, actually. He had to check. But there’s nothing there, nothing in Ness’ mouth that shouldn’t be there. When he presses his hand over Ness’ chest over the Blue Lock-branded bodysuit, Ness’ heart is beating normally, and he’s breathing normally, too. Strange.
“Kaiser,” Ness says, softly, almost careful. “Are you okay?”
And what kind of fucking question is that? Kaiser looks at him incredulously. Ness looks back with his bottom lip pinched between his teeth, draining all the blood from it until it’s pale, pale, pale. Here we go again, Kaiser thinks, incomprehensibly.
They’re training. Or were training, rather. Ness’ hair still sticks to his forehead with sweat, and they’re not here—at Blue Lock, that is—alone, the rest of the team is here, too, but Kaiser has never really known what to do with those idiots. They’re useful sometimes, and Ness is useful a lot of times, and anyhow Ness trails after him like a lost puppy and the rest of them have never liked Kaiser to begin with, and he’s very fine with that. So they were training, alone, and now they’re sitting here on the pitch, alone, and it’s so very strange to train inside, Kaiser thinks, with a ball between them. The gym, yes, but this…
Well, it’s not like it matters much.
“Dude,” Kaiser says, wrinkling his nose. “You’re asking if I’m okay?”
There are pictures flickering just in Kaiser’s periphery, now. Pictures of blood, of Ness’ chest spasming, of bouquets of blue roses dyed red. Pictures of Ness, tilting his head, looking at Kaiser with an empty sort of confusion, a fresh scar down Ness’ chest. Pictures of Ness, not moving at all.
Kaiser swallows.
“Yeah,” says Ness.
.
“Oh,” says Ness.
Kaiser turns lazily, looks up from where he was reading a book in bed. It’s still strange. Their room at Blue Lock is smaller than the dorm they used to share at Bastard München before moving out, so Ness’ bed is closer to his than it used to be. Now, they have their own rooms at home, too. It’s still strange.
Ness in question is looking at something cupped in both of his hands with wide eyes.
“What?” Kaiser says, annoyed. It’s late. He met Yoichi Isagi today; and tomorrow, he will begin to trample him. Who the fuck does Ness think he is to distract him like this? If he develops a cold, Kaiser will…
Ness looks at him with wide, animal-panicked eyes, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. Kaiser thinks maybe if he’d done something then, they wouldn’t be in this stupid fucking situation.
He wouldn’t be, that is.
.
“How do you feel?” Kaiser asks, and the words taste wrong in his mouth. All of this does. Isagi is outside, because he’s fuming. You’re doing this, he’d spit at Kaiser, digging his index finger into Kaiser’s chest like he wanted to stab him. It’s your fault that it’s like this. It’s your fault that this keeps fucking happening! Can you leave me out of your business? I have things to do! And you are killing him, you know?!
Ness looks almost serene, like this. “Like I told the others,” he says, and Kaiser didn’t know the others had been here; wonders who the others is (Grim and Gesner? Sachs, maybe? Ali? Or the Japanese players? But no, Ness never got along with those, not in any of the times this has happened, did he?), “I’m fine.”
And he is. He is fine. Right now, this time, he is fine.
It feels almost normal, like this. They’re at the doctor’s wing or whatever the fuck at Blue Lock, and it doesn’t look like a hospital in any sort of cinematic way—first of all, there are no windows, so there’s no sunlight that could spill in, that could backlight Ness until Kaiser can’t make him out at all—it’s just clean and sterile and functional like the rest of Blue Lock. Kaiser didn’t even know it existed before this, because despite everything, there don’t really seem to be much injuries here, do there?
“Okay,” says Kaiser, and then nothing at all.
What more is there to say? What is there to say at all? He’s so fucking sick of this. What’s the point?
So they don’t say anything at all, they just sit there. Kaiser in his chair next to the door, as far away from the bed as the space allows, and Ness sitting up on the bed. He seems calmer, like this. More steady. Steady like he’s never ever ever been, not since Kaiser beheld him crumpled up on the pitch for that first time, not when Kaiser saved and doomed him both. Is that not what he has done? Is that not what he is still doing?
In the expanse of his ribcage, Kaiser seeks for a part of him that cares, and comes up empty. He’s not human, he never has been. This is a human illness.
There’s color back in Ness’ face, blooming pink like dainty, stupid little tulips. Ness glances at him, then into his lap, fumbling with his fingers there. Kaiser lied, earlier: during that first year, they’d been… when Ness had still been nudging back instead of just simply taking, they’d been…
Well, it doesn’t fucking matter anymore, does it? Never has. Ness is Kaiser’s dog. Kaiser is Ness’ master. That’s all there is to it. If Ness had to fucking go and make himself sick with desire, that’s his own damn fault.
“I don’t love you anymore,” Ness says, slowly, careful. He snorts a little sound that could be a laugh, or a sob. “It’s so weird. It was so real, but I can’t even imagine the feeling anymore. Even though it was killing me, wasn’t it? I would have died.”
You already died, Kaiser thinks. Out loud, he says, “I know.”
There’s no noises here. The sterile, monochrome paneling of the Blue Lock complex always does look like it should whirr vaguely like in science fiction, like there should be blinking, colorful lights everywhere, but the lights are icy cold LEDs and there are no noises here, nothing. The sheets rustle a little when Ness shifts. It doesn’t look comfortable at all, this bed, and there’s only one in this room, too, all by itself. Kaiser isn’t sure when Ness will be cleared to play again. Isn’t sure if that even matters.
“Do you think you could have? Maybe? Ever?” Ness asks, then.
“No,” says Kaiser, and Ness smiles, just a little. He doesn’t even have the decency to look sad anymore. Fucking asshole, really.
.
Kaiser kisses Ness on the mouth, frames Ness’—hot, hot, hot, nearly febrile—face in his palms. The inside of Ness’ mouth tastes like copper, like iron, like sickly-sweet floral-taste. He coughs, and Kaiser bites. The petal doesn’t really taste like anything at all.
“Kaiser,” Ness gasps, wheezing, sobbing, twisting underneath Kaiser. “Kaiser.”
There are things Kaiser can give Ness: flesh; blood; meat; a hand in his hair; clarity; control; routine. There are things Kaiser can never, ever give Ness, as well. It tastes like blood and bile in Ness’ mouth, and in Kaiser’s, too, and still, he kisses him. Ness gags, coughs, twists. When Kaiser pushes his shirt up, impatient, there’s no scar going down his chest, no mark at all, the skin unblemished under Kaiser’s palm as he rubs down it. Twitching, spasming, diseased.
Kaiser’s head spins and spins and spins. He bites another petal to pieces. It never does change anything.
.
Ness is gone. Kaiser checks in their room first: in the bathroom—they have a bathtub in their little en-suites, whereas there are only showers in the communal bathrooms, naturally, and Ness likes to mope in there sometimes, whether soaked in water or not, likes to sit there for hours while Kaiser is busy scoping out the competition, because he’s useless and sulking and attention-hungry and inconvenient—then back in the bedroom, under all the blankets—when Kaiser glances around, he’s ripped off all the sheets, too, for some reason, but hey, he’s thorough—then under the beds.
It’s there, pressed to the cold, hard, dusty floor, reaching his hand under the bed and feeling the linoleum under his palm, that he starts feeling like a fucking idiot. Why the fuck would Ness be under the bed? What fucking sense does that make?
He still checks the wardrobe, despite everything. Despite the fact that Ness isn’t nearly small enough to fit inside there. Perhaps Yoichi Isagi could; and Ness would laugh at that if he were right here, and if Kaiser’d said that out loud. But he’s not, because he’s fucking useless. Kaiser grits his teeth hard.
Fine. Fucking fine. He’ll give Ness a fucking chase, if that’s what the guy craves so fucking badly. Pathetic! He’ll see. He’ll fucking see.
Kaiser tears into the cafeteria, next. At this time of day, nobody is really eating—most everyone will be training already, either on the pitch or in the weight room or on the treadmill—but there are people chatting here, too. Two, that is. Pink and blue, Isagi’s fucking entourage.
“Where’s Ness,” he calls out. Hiori and Kurona blink at him blankly for a moment too long, and Kaiser turns and stomps off. Useless.
Ness isn’t in the common room, either. There’s baldie, the other shark-tooth and the guy with the glasses, not sitting together, but not not sitting together, either, and they glance at Kaiser askance when he looks around, when he checks behind the TV, and it boils inside him too much to check under the couch.
“Have you seen Ness?” he demands. Glasses—Yukimiya—looks at him like he’s fucking insane. It screams and blares sanguine in Kaiser’s skull, so he leaves before his head can explode and he’ll get kicked out of Blue Lock for killing someone, or something.
He needs this, after all. He needs a better offer. He needs to publicly execute Yoichi Isagi in front of the entire world, to prove his superiority, to escape the shadow of Noel Noa, to show the whole world that Michael Kaiser is the best there ever has been. Then—then, he’ll be worth something. Then everyone will be beneath him. Then he’ll be at the top of the world, and nothing will be able to get him anymore.
Ah. Noa.
Outside of the common room, he makes a sharp turn on his heel and changes course. He comes face to face with some of the other Blue Lock guys, some of which startle a little, all of which look at him with wide eyes when he asks about Ness. Are the translators busted? Or are they all idiots? Well, it doesn’t fucking matter. Of course they can’t fucking help him, nobody can. He’s the only one who can do it, the only one who’s fucking worth something, anything at all.
Noa’s room does open with the smack of Kaiser’s palm to the button, so it’s not locked. Noa is inside, too, staring at a few monitors displaying their training and their match against Barcha, he’s pretty sure. The bee is there. Buzz buzz, Ness had said after the match, snickering, despite everything. Kaiser had called him a fucking idiot.
“Where’s Ness?” he demands, disappointed to see that the answer wasn’t that Ness had simply been here, receiving orders or notes about his training or some shit like that.
Noa doesn’t look at him at all. His face is cut into sharp planes by the flickering monitor light, by the way the rest of the room is cut into darkness. His shadow paints over Kaiser, the lights blinding.
“Don’t waste my time,” says Noa. “You know where he is.”
For some reason, this floods Kaiser with a sort of violent ambivalence that makes him nearly fall over backwards under the weight of it: relief and bone-deep irritation. “No, I fucking don’t,” he hisses, “clearly, that’s why I’m here. Where the fuck is Ness, master?”
Noa doesn’t reply. Kaiser stomps off before his throat gets too tight to breathe.
Muscle-head Kunigami is in the weight room. He ignores Kaiser completely. He really is becoming too much like Noa, and Kaiser tells him that much, spat out in the space in between them. Kunigami rolls his eyes.
Isagi isn’t found anywhere. Isagi the—the thief—
This time, in the cafeteria, there are the others. Grim and Sachs and Ali and Birkenstock and the rest of the fucking idiots. They’re all sweaty, so they likely came here from the practice pitch, and—
“Was Ness with you?” he says. Sachs stares at the floor. Grim twirls at his hair.
Gesner stares Kaiser right in the eyes, furrows his brows just a little, like he’s disgusted. Kaiser feels the urge to grab his skull and bash it into the wall repeatedly. Hasn’t this guy learned his fucking lesson yet? Second-rate fucking striker. Important only to fill in the few holes Kaiser leaves behind. Hasn’t he learned his fucking lesson yet?
(Third-rate, the back of Kaiser’s mind supplies, ever helpful. Second-rate is what you are. Noel Noa is king, or have you forgotten? And how could he ever?)
“Will you stop fucking acting clueless?” Gesner spits. The only thing that saves his face from being bashed in is that Kaiser’s vision blurs so severely—blooms like watercolor on wet paper—that he does fall backwards, this time.
.
On the other bed, Ness is lying, dead. On the other bed, Ness is lying, in full bloom. Kaiser did finally find him right there.
On this bed—Kaiser’s bed—Ness is splayed out underneath him, glancing up at him with glittering eyes. His throat, his Adam’s apple, keeps bobbing, up and down, up and down, up and down. His hand, fingertips so very careful, trail over Kaiser’s tattoo. Kaiser’d told him to do it. Ness had looked at him for a moment like he’s a human child on Christmas, like this is the best day of his life. Kaiser swallows and swallows and swallows.
“Do you remember what it means?” he asks, tilting his head. He refuses to look at the other bed.
(Ness had looked at him weirdly when Kaiser told him earlier he can’t possibly sleep in the other bed tonight. What’s wrong with it? he’d asked, almost defensive, like he was worried about being dirty. Glancing and glancing and glancing at his bed sideway, as if to figure out what Kaiser means.
The Ness on the bed—the body—is icy to the touch, even against Kaiser’s cold hands. Dry. There are full, chubby roses blooming out of his mouth, tearing at the edges of it with their thorns, ripping skin like paper, but there’s no more blood, just a thin sheen of something slick and clear over the flowers. His ribcage—its ribcage—has burst open underneath the pressure, too.
It’s whatever. The bed is much warmer with Ness in it, anyway. The bed is much colder with Ness in it, anyway)
“The impossible,” Ness murmurs, softly, reverently. His eyes go half-lidded, and there’s something like a smile on his face. He looks… happy. Like this, he looks happy. “Didn’t you say you wanted to go over game footage again? I can help you. I swear—we can come up with something to defeat Yoichi. I brought your blue light glasses too.”
“The impossible,” Kaiser repeats. He tightens his grip around Ness’ wrist until he’s squeezing, until he’s grinding the fragile little bones together, but Ness doesn’t wince. Doesn’t even make a face. It’s like he’s not noticing it at all. “I make it possible. Every day, I do what no one else ever could. Every day, I—”
Ness nods. “Yes,” he says, and he sounds more sure of it than he ever has about anything else, steady, deep, metallic.
Kaiser tries to etch his face, just like this, into memory. The flutter of his lashes, the sparkle in his eyes, the twisting of his curls, the grease-shine of his nose, the swoop of his full lips, his chin.
But he’s never cared enough for that to work, has he?
.
Ness collapses during the match.
It’s quite gruesome, actually: instead of sending the ball back to Kaiser’s feet—instead of showing Yoichi on the bench exactly why the hero of Blue Lock will never, ever win—Ness convulses. Coughs wetly, so violently it shakes his whole body, gags in a way that Kaiser feels everywhere. Drops do his knees, his hands deathly pale against the bright green of the fake pitch grass.
Everything pauses. Everyone pauses.
“Ness!” Gesner yells. At least Kaiser thinks it’s Gesner. There’s too much rushing in his ears to really make it out.
Grim hurries to Ness’ side, lifts him a bit more upright by the shoulders. His lips are moving, but Kaiser can’t make out any of the words. There’s red, blood red all down Ness’ chin, all down Ness’ jersey, his eyes glassy, his face porcelain-pale and dewy with sweat. He opens his mouth as if to speak, but instead, he coughs again, his whole ribcage spasming with it.
A clot of blood lands on the pitch in front of him. There’s a blue petal stuck to his chin. Grim wipes at it, but there’s so much blood that it doesn’t really do anything but smear the blood around. But stain everything in its vicinity. The blood-jelly on the pitch bleeds into the green of the grass.
But Ness’ jersey is already red to begin with, so what does it matter? If Kaiser tilted his head just so, it wouldn’t be visible at all, soaked into the fabric.
“Is this how it happens, then?” asks Yoichi Isagi, who is right next to Kaiser, somehow.
.
The room is dark and quiet. Kaiser is pretty sure Ness is asleep already.
He should be, too. Why can’t he just sleep? He’s never had much trouble with sleeping before. He fucking loves sleeping. He loves sleeping so much he takes another nap during the day because sleeping at night isn’t enough.
And still, now, he’s lying awake. His eyes have grown used to the darkness, but the ceiling still feels unfamiliar despite it all, so that doesn’t change much. Perhaps that is the problem.
It itches. Somewhere in Kaiser’s ribcage, deep down in his pelvis, at the back of his throat, behind his eyes. In one of those places. Perhaps more than just the one. Who knows? At this point, who the fuck even knows anymore, really?
Ness is fine, too. He’s snoring faintly. Earlier, during dinner, he’d chatted with Gesner while waiting in line for his food, his face pinched into the familiar smile even despite how Gesner kept pinching his cheek and pulling at it and tilting his head to scrutinize him. Knock it off, Kaiser’d barked across the room. Ness had been the one to apologize; Gesner had just shrugged and left.
Ness is fine.
Still. Still, still, still.
With an irritated huff, Kaiser peels himself out of his bed and stalks over to Ness’ bed like he has done so many, many times before. There’s no use in being delicate. None of this means anything; none of this is more than battering diseased flesh against diseased flesh. It never has been.
Ness stirs awake when Kaiser pulls back then blanket and slips under it, on top of Ness. Makes a Whuh sort of sound when Kaiser pulls at his underwear to get it off, peeling his own pants and underwear—he runs colder than Ness, always colder, and Blue Lock is especially cold, so he sleeps in long pants and long sleeves—off, then his shirt, then discards all of the fabric off the side of the bed.
It’s all so fucking stupid. All of it is in the way.
Ness’ skin is warm and soft against Kaiser’s touch. Alive. “Kaiser?” Ness says, high-pitched in the dark. Like this, Kaiser can barely make out his face.
Enough to bend down and kiss him, however. He doesn’t usually kiss Ness; Ness gasps in surprise into Kaiser’s mouth. He tastes like toothpaste and mouthwash and water and Ness. Kaiser doesn’t bite down on his bottom lip, instead moves his lips against Ness’, lets Ness nudge his tongue against Kaiser’s teeth.
Ness is hard, between them. It’s easy for Kaiser to grab him, for Kaiser to sink down on him, for Kaiser to rock against him, feeling Ness pulse inside of him. It’s not as easy to press kisses all over Ness’ face. Doesn’t come easy, to him.
He does it anyway. Ness moans and whines and bucks his hips into nothing. Ness melts into a puddle underneath him. Kaiser thinks he’s never, ever seen Ness quite this…
This…
He seals his mouth over Ness’ again and sucks. Ness laughs, for some reason. Rubs his palms over Kaiser’s hips, Kaiser’s stomach. Kaiser doesn’t usually kiss him. He doesn’t usually kiss anyone.
He can’t for the life of him remember if this is his first kiss.
“Kaiser,” Ness says, nudging against him. His nose brushes Kaiser’s, then presses flat into Kaiser’s cheek when Ness kisses him, too. “Kaiser, I—I love you, Kaiser—”
Then Ness coughs. A pit opens underneath Kaiser and takes them both with it.
.
“I don’t know what to do anymore,” Kaiser tells Ness’ corpse.
The corpse, being a corpse, doesn’t say anything, predictably. It’s lying supine next to Kaiser on Ness’ bed—has it always been wide enough for two people to lie next to each other like this without touching? Well, it does have that curious pentagonal shape, so perhaps—still and silent and cold, colder even than Kaiser. Its skin rips open in places, thorns peeking out. Kaiser has cleaned away most of the flowers, however, so they haven’t dried it out all that much yet. Ness’ face looks almost like… well, Ness’ face.
The corpse, being a corpse, doesn’t say anything. Instead, it says: “Sometimes, it feels like it’s your emotions that are choking me and not my own. I’m really quite content with them, actually, you know?” Instead, it says: “I’m really cold now, but I did good, right? You’re warmer now, right?” (And Kaiser finds he is.) Instead, it says: “They’re so beautiful, the flowers. How could I kill them? They’re so beautiful. They’re all you. You’re inside of me, like this. How could I kill it? I’ll never get to have you, so I want to have this.” Instead, it says: “Oh God, oh God, oh God, but I have killed them, haven’t I? I have killed it before. I’ve killed it right now.” Instead, it says: “No, that’s not right. I have killed it before, but right now, it was you who killed it.” Instead, it says: “You don’t have to love me back. I know you can’t. That’s not the point. But you could never understand that, could you?” Instead, it says: “You’ve never known what to do. But that’s okay, Kaiser, I don’t know, either.”
The room is silent. Kaiser is silent, too. He folds his hands over his chest and pretends that he’s dead, too.
The room is silent. Kaiser screams and screams until his throat is hoarse. Kaiser tears at his hair until a bit of it comes loose. Kaiser shoves at Ness’ body. Kaiser begs.
“Just leave me alone,” he begs. “You don’t need to do this. If you—you know already, you don’t need to do this. Why the fuck are you doing this? I don’t need you. Do you hear me? You can just leave me alone. I’ll be just fine without you. This was temporary, anyway. You knew that, too, didn’t you, you stupid fucking mutt? You knew this never meant anything. So why the fuck are you sick?”
Instead, it says: “I love you.” Its voice isn’t the slightest bit scratchy.
.
“There you are,” Ness says, voice lifting up with it. Kaiser is still busy scrubbing blood from off the floor. It’s under his fingernails, by now. “I was looking for you! I got the recording you wanted!”
Kaiser turns for him. There’s Ness: standing in the doorway, crowned by the sterile light spilling in from behind. There’s Kaiser: on the floor on all fours, dried blood and dried blue petals soaking below.
When Ness closes the door behind him and turns on the light, Kaiser can make out his face at last. He looks at Kaiser with budding affection ready to bloom.
“Why are you on the floor?”