How long had it been? Truly been? How long since he'd seen those eyes, filled with such pain and torment, hate and loathing, since he'd seen them in person and not just haunting his memories. This whole charade, he'd been so careful about. He'd spent a great deal of time agonizing over that look, the lack of the look, walking by and not speaking a word until provoked. The lash, the sting. And he'd been gone.
Now he was here before him. He wasn't ignorant anymore. There were those eyes again, beautifully dark, dangerous, enraged. Their slight almond shape was contorted, pulled far longer by his anger, slitted against him.
Where was the boy who taught him love? Where was he who had gone to such great lengths to prove to both of them they felt? Had he been wrong to constantly question him? Had that been his undoing? He'd never know. Feeling or not, his stomach wrenched, trying to tear itself free of him. Would it hurt this much to be held in such contempt if he did not feel? Was this just more proof?
How ironic. He was still teaching him how to feel. He was teaching him pain, sorrow, longing. He longed to run forward and embrace him, wrap his body around him like a spider to a fly, to entangle him in his arms as surely as spider-silk, to mummify him and keep him for his own. Even as he threw himself forward, lips dumbly speaking his own hatred for those easily read regards, he wanted to drop his weapons and leave himself vulnerable. Love me, hate me, it was all the same, wasn't it?
It was passion. It was the passion that love and hate shared, one that only those who could feel could possess. It was a madness, an insanity that only those of the right mind and heart could obtain. It was the same frenzy, striking one another, tenderly, desperately, seethingly, murderously. It was all the same. It was the same proof.
And he'd come to love him so dearly, he without the ability, he who knew not of what love truly was. He'd come to cherish him, to live within him and through him. He'd come to desire only his company, any night alone more than he could bear. From the abandonment he had his own resentment. He knew he was wronged, that the accusations pressed upon him were of fabrication that only a true sadist could devise. Shooting the messenger had only felt better for fleeting moments. The damage had been done.
Here they were, flames licking up his arms, seeking to consume him, obliterate him. Wasn't it all the same, love and hate? Wasn't it the same to want to consume one with the flames of passion, be it to assimilate or obliterate? Even as he was enveloped, as they crawled into his hair, sending gold and crimson toward the ceiling, tempting the black smoke to descend, was he not as beautiful as in the throes of love and lust? The arch of his back, the keen of his voice, the rasp, the wheeze, it was all just as it had been once before. It was the same conflagration now as it was then. It was still twistedly beautiful.
If he said to cease existing, he would. He would drop his weapons and lay his scarlet-stained brow to the floor and accept whatever fate befell him. He would cry out with his dying breath and he had eons before, when they had been young and foolishly intertwined, carefree and careless. He would mumble sweet nothings with his dying breath, if just to be free of that gaze, that stare that shook the foundations of his soul.
If he said to kill him, he would. Perhaps it was better that he not exist, such an abomination, such an ruthless creature, intent on taking everything with him that he could, pulling it down with him to wallow in his self-made misery. If he said 'kill me quickly' he would lavish him with the exquisite affection that systematic slaughter can only contain. He needn't know that once he was laid out in his own lifeblood, he would take his own life and lay with him for the final time.
Obsession, yes. It was disgusting and perverted now, something so easily wrought of such unfounded passion, such unrealized potential for good and evil both, from the disregard of right and wrong. If one didn't feel, there was no morality involved, the epitome of the antisocial, the poster-child for sociopathy. He would prove himself, surely. He would, and he would relish it. He would prove his pain, his torment. He would make him understand. He would make him know the price of feeling, even as his thin body was broken and battered.
He would do anything for him. He would destroy him. It was all the same, wasn't it? It had to be. There was no other way.
Again they clashed, sparks flying from blades and burnt fabric, faces mere inches from each other, each set of lungs heaving from their passion, so close, shaking. The intimacy was still alive, still there in their battle-worn physique, still on the surface, filling them with adrenaline, their minds fogged by it and wonderfully so. They broke apart and met again, the blades breaking the air beside his ear, curving around his head, nearly taking it off, but singing instead and returning to its owner. The retaliation, the feint. Backwards, sideways, parallel and perpendicular, feeling the edge part the seems of his clothes, feeling the fire-heated metal cut his skin like butter, slide by on a stream of blood, sending it into the flames. The pain was exquisite, the cry muffled and lost as surely as in sheets, hips twisting, spine curled. Sparks flew, the follow-up blocked, for the moment, panting faces inches apart once more. Poetry in motion.
They broke, the flames rushing, pinballing toward their victim, his movements just enough to keep him from being incinerated. The moment his eyes were locked, he rushed forward, blades swinging, blows barely countered. He refused to ease, pushed forward until the metal met flesh once more. He didn't cease, slashing, mauling his opponent, driving him into the floor until he curled on himself, barely still on his feet.
The flames flickered and died and with sad, defeated eyes he gazed up. They'd once been so close, they still were. There was no sorrow here, only acceptance. Fate had decided and it was not to be as clean and pure as perhaps once it had been.
Those eyes didn't stare as they had before. They seemed wiser now, understanding, but yet remorseless. His lips were moving again, numbly uttering his innermost desires, twisting them, trying to lessen the blows, entreating now, asking for a vow. This wouldn't be the end. He needed it to not be over yet. So desperately he needed it to not be over.
Beautiful, empty lies, of course, never apart. It isn't over, they lulled. There's more, somewhere else, somewhen else. Someone else. What beautiful lies, that for a moment, he bitterly believed them, wished sorely for such naivety to overcome him again. So badly he wished he could believe it, but instead was honest with himself and denied.
It was a fair attempt. It was a softened blow to return his own, the fires dead, the passion spent. Breathless mumblings, promises never meant to be kept, the same now as then. It made his lips curl, smiling bitterly, oh how he yearned for it to be true.
But it wasn't to be. He wouldn't see him again; he knew that down in his stomach, even as it still fought to free itself. There was nothing that could bring them together again, his throat tightening at the understanding, his chest tight. Beautiful lies should be, and were, crushed. There was never again. The flames had died, the passion was spent.
He said this even as he excused himself, breaking himself with every truthful word. It was the last he saw those eyes. It was last he saw that carefully voided expression. He was beyond compare, the ice on his features truly the only way it could have ever been.
He was gone. They were over.
That is how you broke a non-existent heart.
