The Monochrome Spectrum
1. Red: Passion, Anger.
In a single instant, the sky was falling. Stars exploded from the clouds and ignited flames in the depths of Chase's heart. A sudden, vicious wind came screeching past his ears, chasing the breath from his lungs, the tears from his eyes, ripping the bitter edge of pain from where it cowered in his soul. The blazing monochrome spectrum tore through his gaze, stirring hurricanes through a storm of emotion that brought new disturbances reeling through his mind, thoughts and feelings that felt more like betrayals. It was darkly raw and infested with obscurity, a shriek of glory, braiding his heartstrings into ribbons of charcoal-sketched anger; such beautiful pain, cloaking itself in the emergence of new, acrid ecstasy.
Rhythmic shocks of fire came bursting through his muscles, bringing life to the corpses of desire he had once hoped to leave buried forever. The walls of his love bowed and buckled before the might of furious tornadoes howling, desperate, in his chest, stealing the sorrows from his veins and blessing him instead with no more than a mist of pulsing confusion. Static waves of shadowed anger were channelled across the silver-grey beams of dark purity, absorbed into his skin until no trace of their fury was left on the surface. Each frozen shiver now flowed through his veins, integrating with his bloodstream and lodging itself in the hollow space behind his ribs.
Insidious tendrils crept through his throat, weaving themselves into the shape of words which refused to be spoken aloud, words which Chase himself felt no burning need to impart. The stranger's eyes, devoid of all emotion but an edge of fear-hued hatred, shot bolts of broken lightning into his own, infusing his body with the faintest touch of disfigured arousal and the familiarly instinctive beat of denial.
One glance was all it took to lose himself. A single glance, leaving him deafened to the clamours of questions and labels in his head, alone and helpless in a realm of his own fabrication. The slaughter of blind infection had begun, warping his thoughts into feelings he didn't recognise, much less want to acknowledge.
And yet despite the haze of mental protest, he was already beginning to unravel. Although he didn't know it, would never fully comprehend it, he had been fated to fall from the start, and under the hand of love's sweet sacrifice he would be the first to succumb to destiny's will.
2. Orange: Wisdom, Clarity.
Shock reverberated through Chase's body as he watched Beyal collapse, fear and worry colliding to form a tidal alloy of nauseated terror that swamped him in sudden darkness. It spurred remnants of rejuvenation within the exhaustions controlling his legs, fresh life that brought him to his knees in the dusty ground beside the monk and sparked frantic messaged along his nerve endings. His hand, no longer a part of him but taken over by concern, was led to rest against Beyal's back, supporting him in an upright position. "Beyal? Beyal, what's happening? Are you okay? Beyal!"
Beyal's eyes remained squeezed tightly shut, fingers pressed against his temples, sweat dancing on a forehead wrinkled with the pain of knowledge and maturity that reached far beyond his years. Apprehension trampled across Chase's heart when no answer followed the desperate questions, not even a simple acknowledgment that he was there, seconds stretching out into days, weeks, even years. In those few moments all of time and space became distorted beyond release, a world where nobody existed but Chase and Beyal and nothing was real but the connection they shared, a chemical bond of love and souls.
Then they flickered open again, revealing a dark shaft of wisdom captured in between the shades of grey, and Beyal's gaze seemed to pierce straight through Chase's skin into a torment of emotion shrouded in lies, a sea of blood so deep it left him physically incapable of broaching it. While the monk's face remained blankly impassive, his eyes were screaming out with newfound realisation, a blossoming awareness and...something else. Something Chase couldn't even begin to consider, lest it bound him too closely to his fantasies.
"I-I am okay," he stated simply, shaking his head as though to rid himself of a particularly invasive thought. "I had a vision,"
"What'd you see? Was it important?" Chase demanded, his rush of worry drowning him in sweet oblivion as to just how close they were sitting, the protective arm still held firmly against Beyal's waist and those inches, tantalizingly few, that still remained between them, their faces, their lips.
"Yes. Yes, Chase, it was," Beyal nodded breathlessly, passion exploding through his eyes as those few inches were extinguished completely and they were kissing, rough, fierce, desperate, each clutching at the other with a need born of long-suppressed desire and silent confessions wrapped in false illusions. When they pulled apart, dishevelled and fighting for air, he realised with a degree of surprise that at some point during the kiss they had fallen into the ground's embrace, the jolt of the impact lost to a haze of bliss. Unable to speak, still mentally blinded, Chase could feel the remainder of his secret ocean's depth leaking through his body, bleeding into his heart.
Mystery blurred with the clarity in Beyal's eyes to form a spectacle of fragile perfection. Taking the monk's hand in his own, Chase sighed and finally summoned the energy to speak, his reluctance to admit to the inner turmoil of his heart leading him to instead waste breath on the first random thought to voice itself in his mind. "What was the vision?"
The slightest hint of a smile touched his lips, a gentle spark of amusement painting light across his face. "You should know by now that I would not be bold enough to initiate anything like what just happened unless I could be entirely sure of the consequences first. Does that not answer your question, Chase Suno?"
3. Yellow: Innocence, Naivety.
Fireworks came screaming across midnight's indigo canvas, shattering Chase into a cloud of coloured fire. Arrogant in a stream of careless pride, they moved like wild animals caught up in the thrill of the hunt, their cries no more than those of exhilarated pleasure, confidence spilling over into an audible representation of rapture's pinnacle. Their freedom was enticing, mesmerizing, hinted at like a fringe of lace adorning the tips of an eagle's wings, hiding in the glory-drawn explosions of what appeared as an embodiment of life itself. The force with which it drew his gaze was so strong that it masked him to Beyal's presence beside him, the warmth of a small hand laced together with his fingers.
"Chase?" the tiny, timid voice barely brushed against his ears, so quiet, so gentle, and yet he heard it clearly, even above the resonance of the fireworks and the generic buzz of awed spectators. It was only then that the awareness of Beyal standing there became apparent in an immediate, acute sensation of proximity, a rush of adrenaline breaking him apart as silent fire flowed into his veins.
Looking down at Beyal with a sudden swell of tenderness that threatened to overcome him, he felt the smile stretching his face become entirely involuntary. Youthful wonder illuminated the boy's face along with sporadic sprinkles of violent light reflected from the sky, his eyes wide and innocent as a child's. Sometimes living as they did, drowning in the crystal tears of blood and war and death, it became all too easy to forget quite how sheltered Beyal's life had been, how beautiful the joy upon his face was to see as he was exposed to the banal miracles that the rest of them had grown up with.
Impulsively he reached out to pull the monk close against his side, revelling in the teasing perception of skin-to-skin contact and the feel of their bodies pressed close together. With a soft kiss against his snowy white hair, Chase stood with Beyal in the midst of the amity and watched the fireworks chase each other across the burnt-out sky, feeling something of their flame spark a new life within the ash-caked ruins of his fading heart.
4. Green: Harmony, Balance.
Entombed in shadows, Chase stood as a silent onlooker and simply watched from deep within the darkness. Part of him wished he could reach out across the shutters of distant beatitude closing over the monk's face, but he was as certain as he was desperate that Beyal wouldn't thank him for it. Instead he stayed put, gazing out at the figure hiding behind a cloak of clouded peace, allowing the motionless beauty to exert its electrified pull over his heart. He couldn't help but marvel at the harmony aligning Beyal to the world around him, the dreams etched so clearly over his eyes, the haunting hymn rising and falling in his gaze to the swell of nature's chord.
"I love you," Chase murmured softly, chest tight with a bittersweet wave of realisation so powerful it hurt, a sense he couldn't quite define and yet had no need of any definition. It defined itself in the gentle touch of Beyal's beauty, the choral balance of peacefulness and wilderness smouldering quietly from a well of tranquillity that lay far beyond mortal reach. The whisper almost seemed to linger in the air, a soundless crescendo to the melodious contrast of wonder, perfect in all its complexities and contradictions and fearful connotations.
Beyal blinked once, and as their eyes met he saw a flash of recognition there, resurrected bridges pulling them back together as he was transferred from the beat of a midnight eulogy to the harsh realities of a world that left him shackled to disillusionment. In that fleeting moment they were magnetised, with the awakening of a force that brought them to a new realm of mystery's dimension, a realm that could be voiced so easily and yet was never to be fully understood.
Then he smiled, skin heating up under the glowing caress of a dusk-pink blush. "Chase?"
"Yeah?" he asked awkwardly, feeling his own cheeks begin to burn under the weight of such painful embarrassment and those three words, so saturated in meaningful truths but made so trivial by no more than the mundane blur of everyday life.
And somehow, beneath the answering darkness, the illumination of a face lost in desire and thoughtless beauty, trivialities withered and died and became compressed into perfect diamond mirrors as Beyal sought him out through shimmering eyes. "And I, you, Chase. I love you too,"
5. Blue: Peace, Sincerity.
Despite his best efforts to blink them away, the last vestiges of lingering sleep still yawned in Chase's eyes, and his mind remained fogged over with the utopia of his dreamworld. Shifting a little in an attempt to rid himself of the exhaustion that threatened him, he pulled the body in his arms closer against his bare chest and let out a peaceful sigh. With the stars of a secret smile shining across his lips, he tilted his head at an angle that set his cheek to rest against Beyal's hair, feeling the tension leave his body as relaxation coursed through him once more. "Bey? Are you awake?"
"If you will stop calling me Bey, then yes, I am. If not, then I remain asleep until you finally remember that my name does, in fact, have an extra syllable that you seem to have mislaid," he mumbled in return, surprisingly coherent considering the early hour, fidgeting a little under the heated crush of the sleeping bag. Even through the veil of darkness, Chase could build up a vivid picture of those charcoal-grey eyes, so calmly content with a mingling rush of love and peace, shining out from underneath a tumble of tousled white hair, still caught up in the arms of the borderline that separated dawn's onset from the final, limp brush of night's hand.
"Huh," Chase faked annoyance, but the illusion was somewhat spoiled by the grin spreading over his face as he lifted the monk's chin to kiss him, just briefly, on the lips. As they pulled apart, he felt the aching arousal of dreams and fantasies long-ago fulfilled bleed through his veins, a heady infection that left him reeling with sensuality and cast a strange fog of nostalgia over him. It was steady, senseless pain, something he couldn't pretend to understand but nonetheless wished he could somehow shift. "It could've been worse. Anything's better than Monkfish, surely. At least Bey's kinda cute...as nicknames go, anyway,"
"Perhaps you are right. However, it still stands to reason that my name is neither Bey nor Monkfish, contrary to what Dax may have you believe, and therefore I would much prefer it if you would refer to me simply as Beyal. Which goes for everyone, but you especially," he said, with an innocent look to counter Chase's feigned air of wide-eyed astonishment, the touch of laughter that hid behind his words softening the otherwise harsh admonishment.
"Aww, c'mon, Bey, I'm your boyfriend! I'm allowedto give you nicknames!" Chase protested, unable to hold back a chuckle at the dismayed expression on the little monk's face.
"No! No, you are not in any way allowed to give me nicknames! In fact, you should be discouraging them!"
"Oh...well, damn,"
Eyes narrowed, Beyal began a cutting retaliation, but before he could get beyond the first few words they were cut off by an irritated squawk resonating from Bren's corner of the makeshift campsite. "Oh, crag, Romeo and Romeo are at it again. Could you keep it down over there, guys? I'm trying to sleep!"
"Hey! Bren! Uncalled for!" Chase shouted indignantly, trying his best to wriggle out of the sleeping bag without causing any injuries - Beyal, for his part, remained mute as a sharp elbow caught the side of his head. He was already halfway free of the fabric when he felt a sudden touch against his hand, glancing down to see the monk looking up at him questioningly, which effectively replaced any desire he may or may not have had to kill Bren in that moment with a glowing inner warmth of sudden security. "Bey? What's up?"
There was silence.
"Sorry. Beyal,"
"Thank you. However, I do not understand. What did Bren mean by referring to us as 'Romeo and Romeo'?"
Chase stopped for a moment to consider the question, only just beginning to process the full reality of Bren's sleep-lagged taunt. As the childhood memories of studying Shakespeare's famous story, coupled with mental images of the sappy, lovelorn stars of the play, hit him, the respite from his anger vanished as quickly as it appeared and he all but exploded out of the sleeping bag's cocoon, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust, a yell that seemed to linger in the air and a very confused Beyal in his wake.
6. Indigo: Depression, Isolation.
Nothing. There was no sound. No change. No possible reason he could see for his sudden jerk into consciousness, and yet suddenly he found he was sitting bolt upright, far too alert for the current level of darkness gracing the sky; midnight had barely brushed the hands of his watch and yet the adrenaline quelled any remaining notion of sleep he might otherwise have had, leaving him wide awake and on the very cusp of panic.
Bren's soft snores travelled, loud and clear, across from the other side of the clearing, whilst if he squinted he could just about make out the shapes of Dax and Jinja curled contentedly into each other. It was all altogether too normal, he decided.
Unconvinced, he carried on scanning the vague shapes surrounding him, eyes narrowed as he attempted to track the source of his unease. Just beyond the blurred lines of the trees, the final dying embers of the fire gave periodic gasps, painting the blank silhouettes with feeble orange light; just beyond, he could see the shape of a cloaked figure sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring into the flames. The shadow's head was bowed, face obscured by a thick curtain of white hair, and Chase's vision was obscured by the branches that webbed the gap between them, but nonetheless he knew exactly who it was.
Beyal.
And he was fairly sure that the little monk was crying.
As quietly as he could, body stiff and rigid, he tugged at the zip of his sleeping bag and slowly eased his legs out, inhaling sharply as a breath of cold air tiptoed across the newly exposed skin. Flinching involuntarily at how loud the sound seemed against a backdrop of deathly quiet, he began to make his way across the camp, thorns grasping at the soles of his feet as the wind sank barbed-wire teeth into his bare arms.
Chase was left standing there, ghostlike, for a good few seconds before finally deciding to speak up, surprised that the usually hyper-aware boy hadn't yet noticed him. "Beyal? Are you alright?"
Startled, Beyal spun around, shock and fear flashing across his face in quick succession as he saw who it was and tried to regain his composure. "Chase! I - well, hello. Why are you not asleep like the others?"
His voice was nonchalant enough, but all the nonchalance in the world wouldn't be enough to hide the red rims around his eyes, or wipe the tears away from his damp, blotched cheeks; the isolation crushing him down seemed to stark in the ethers of his...his loneliness. That was the world. He looked so small, so lost and lonely, as though the weight of the world had been thrown against him and him alone, leaving him on the losing side. Biting his lip, Chase dropped to the ground beside him and passed over the monk's question completely. "Don't pretend, Bey. What's going on?"
"Nothing. I could not sleep," he replied quietly, one hand clenching into a tight fist that showed his barefaced lie for what it really was. "Please, Chase, I...I wish to be left alone for a while,"
"Nope. Not happening," he gave something that could almost have been a smile and shuffled closer, putting an arm around Beyal's shoulders and shifting so he was more comfortable against the dusty soil. "Sorry, but you've been crying, and there's no way I'm leaving until you tell me why,"
Leaning his head against Beyal's, he glanced upwards at the expanse of sky and stars forming a blur of ancient indigo far above him, deep and dark and coldly alienated from the weight of the moment. After a moment, the monk finally seemed to relent and allowed himself to relax into Chase, still not saying anything, but his tension seemed to flood away with the birth of a sweeping twilight breeze.
It was a start, anyway.
Beyal gave a shiver as the wind began to pick up, and Chase immediately pulled him closer into a hug, his voice becoming gentler as he spoke once more. "It's okay, y'know. To feel sad or scared or whatever. It's totally natural to feel that way. But sometimes it really does help to talk about the things that are bothering you, to rant or get advice or just let it all out. So I guess what I'm really saying is...I'm here for you. I'm always here for you. And if you need to talk, I'll listen and try to understand,"
The monk managed a watery smile, his eyes suspiciously bright under the steady glow of the moon. "Thank you, Chase,"
"It's okay," he murmured shakily, suddenly overcome by something he couldn't quite put a name to, hands moving upwards to rub Beyal's back as the monk turned his face into Chase's chest, shoulders trembling under the force of suppression and raging sorrow. "It's okay, Beyal,"
And in a moment, that one brief moment, bound to them by a unity deeper than they knew...it was.
Somehow, inexplicably, impossibly...it was okay.
7. Violet: Sorrow, Sensitivity.
Breathing heavily, Beyal sank back against the sand, soulless eyes pleading from far behind closed doors. With shaking hands, Chase knelt beside him, head bowed in an attempt to overcome the dullness of his heart as it crushed itself to pieces on the blades of his ribs, the mere chasm of a ghost lost to the rich temptation of the underworld.
A long, jagged gash split the white cotton of the monk's robes, tore into the blank canvas of his skin, impossible to miss in all its garish crimson fullness. Even as he watched, Chase could see the light fading, a heavy collision as fear was thrown against the lure of a shadow-drawn angel's silken warmth, his urge - no, need - for death as chillingly plain as the torment lacerated into his body. Not yet trusting himself to speak, he sat there with his fingers absently twined through Beyal's, hating the venomous grief that bled from his eyes and formed starless waterfalls against his cheeks.
"Chase...I will be okay," Beyal said huskily, his smile all too weak, caught within tendrils of agonised conflict that cruelly emphasised the hollowness of his expression, those empty eyes which sent chills snaking down Chase's spine. "I just need to...to sleep. To go to sleep for a while,"
The force with which those words slammed into Chase was so great it was almost physical, knocking him off-balance as dread crept through his blood and sparked a relentless tidal appetite of purpose somewhere deep within him. Tears cut through his skin once more as he reached out to run his hand tenderly across Beyal's face, trying to trace life back into the bloodless skies of grief. "Oh, no...no, Beyal, you can't sleep yet. Not yet. Please, please will you hold on? For me? I need you, Bey. We all do,"
"I love you, Chase," the whisper soured as it reached his ears, a stab of sorrow and the alien taste of the sleek glass blade that lay behind it. As the last of his strength finally abandoned him, Beyal leaned against his chest and Chase pulled him close, struck by how small and fragile the monk felt encased within his arms; as the barriers collapsed inwards, all the darkness building itself up inside his soul released itself in a sudden sob that wrenched at his gut.
"Beyal! Don't close your eyes, damn it! Can you hear me? Beyal? Come on, Bey, stay with me; you'll be alright!"
"Chase," he spoke simply, but beneath a mist of rain and emaciated shadows his eyes were starting to lose focus. "Please let me go. I cannot fight anymore. Just let me sleep,"
"No," Chase whispered blindly, the world around him slipping away into oblivion's seduction. "You have to fight. You have to keep going. And if you won't do it for me, do it for...for Glowblade. For Jinja and Dax and Bren, and everyone else who cares about you. Do it for all the Monsuno out there that still need your help, Bey, just...just keep fighting. I can't lose you, okay? I love you too much to let you go,"
Eyes fluttering closed, Beyal's face creased under the grasping weight of an unimaginable pain. Then, just as suddenly, they snapped open again, flaring into life with a sharp ascent of flame and the birth of a new will to live, to love, to survive. Wordless, he shook his head, mouth set into a line grim with determination, and wrapped his arms around Chase's neck with a strength he'd never known the monk possessed.
In a frenzy of fear their lips met time and time again, starved with the simulacrum of assurance each craved from the other and driven half-crazy with the desperate hunger of lust, sinking into the swell of comfort relinquished from the fury of their love.
"I love you, Bey," he choked out, the sentence lost beneath a fountain of warm copper richness that melted his tongue into a pool of bloodied hatred, crushing his windpipe under sickening fingers of greed. The ground swallowed their entangled bodies into its depths, and they were reeled in past the layers of hidden hatred that curdled on their lips, kissing and crying and veiling themselves within the confines of outlawed freedom.
Abruptly Beyal pulled away, still entwined with Chase in both body and soul, eyes grown wide with fright and the unwanted dawn of realisation. Stricken, he watched as Beyal's face began to change, morphing into something new, something dark, something...something terrifying, touched by the hands of demons. It was only then that it became clear to him; this was real, not the product of some nightmare or velvet hallucination this time. Beyal was dying, here and now, right in front of him, sleeping in the cradle of a love carved too achingly deep to deny.
And he was helpless. However far into himself he embedded the dream of resurrection, there was no way to restore daylight to the tumorous void of Beyal's eyes, no possible way to beat the pulse back into his wrists or breathe despair into his lungs. This was it. This was real. This was his broken fantasy, the final shards of his fairy-tale mirror, slashing his veins and darkening his cheeks with tears.
Somehow pushing them both up and off the floor, he found it within himself to hold Beyal safe and tight within his arms, lips trembling under the force of a thousand suppressed curses and silent, bitter screams. Carefully, he took the monk's cold face in his hands and kissed him once, with painstaking gentleness, on the lips, soft and sweet and everything he would never be able to feel again.
"Do not cry, Chase, for I am not truly gone. I will be with you always, in your heart, in your mind. I would never leave you. Not even for a moment. I love you, and you must promise me that you will always remember that,"
"Only if you promise me you're telling the truth," Chase said thickly, in a voice rich with the salt of painless grief. "If you'll stay with me...if you promise not to leave...then I...I'll do anything for you, Bey. Anything,"
"Then I, too, give you my word," Beyal's smile was convincing enough, but his body was slowly becoming limp as the fire was stolen from his blood. From clouded, dying eyes, he looked up at Chase one final time, made young under the caress of frightful apprehension, an angel's kiss goodbye as reality became fiction once more.
And then it happened. Not with a howl or a hurricane scream, but quiet, lost to the satin touch of a last breath and a sigh of blissful senselessness. The barest insinuation of death.
Those beautiful eyes flickered with a gasp of swelling hypnosis, binding the pair together in a mask of woven wonders as the life they'd yet to live caught them in the feathers of a blinding charade, the masquerade of innocence now limply torn and bloodstained. He felt Beyal's arms slowly move to return the embrace, tight in an illusion of false security; the monochrome spectrum, blazing in all its shades of raw emotion, flared briefly with a rush of starlit charcoal and then faded into nothing but a swirl of ash and dust.
And Beyal fell still and silent in his arms.
So peaceful he could have been sleeping, soundless under a blanket of fire.
The shadows of his heart leaking into Chase's body, cold and black as ink.
Numbly, Chase stared into the carnage of his once-untold peace and reabsorbed himself, deep into the eternal complexities of the lifeless monochrome spectrum.
Hey, guys! It's me, the newbie to the Monsuno fandom! Those of you on Tumblr may already know me as 'primevalandthepoets' or from my Monsuno RP blog, 'queen-of-darkspin', but if you don't then, well, hey there!
Anyway. This is my entry for Theanimekitty89's Monsuno Couples Contest. I hope you all enjoyed reading it!