aka the fic of the lives they never lived.
-x-
love is cruel;
when you realize that you give your life, to someone who has given up on you.
blindfold me.
i. hallucinations
Another dream wasted on you.
He's finding it hard to keep the contents of his stomach from rising with the steam of the shower. Standing underneath the water, letting it run over his face, and all the seams of him are stretching, protesting. Something inside needing to be let free. The tiles containing each echo, boxed and beautiful. He vomits and watches as the slippery stuff slides around the mesh drain between his feet, a drop or two finding their ways down his stomach down his legs in the middle of his toes. Now the hot, stuffed cotton feeling leaves and he's unnervingly empty. No, no soap in the dish. Clammy and shaking, stepping out.
Another decay because of you.
In front of the fogged mirror, screaming into the scratchy towel. Blindly, buttons coming undone, he reaches for the toothpaste and toothbrush, finger prints over clean cylindrical glass. Stiff bristles to gums, and he's bleeding. Since when has this anemia been so prevalent, in every facet. Elevators causing nosebleeds; his brain is coming loose, tearing from the walls of his skull. Things are going wrong, the washers and the bolts rusting and crumbling. He's going under and forgetting more frequently (let's not pretend it hasn't happened before, to all of them, more than once—it has, it has), until his upper lip gets wet and there's the smear of hundreds of thousands of platelets on three skinny fingers. Feeling the heartbeat in his chest, receiving sanity with every beat. Walking, weak knees, falling down. And the darlings, the loves, the arms lifting him onto a cot, a lawn chair.
Then, one day, he wakes up and his heartbeat is too fast to be normal. He finds you, though, soft like the sun and melting quickly into oil around his own feet. Disheveled he appeared at your door, dissolving. "Tell me," he begs. "Tell me what's real, Vanitas. I don't know what's real anymore."
So you take him inside, take his shoulders into your hands and squeeze them tight. "Who are you?"
He shuts his eyes and breathes. "I'm Ventus." {I'm yours.}
"And what do you want to be real?"
"You… I… I want us. I want you to be with me when I wake up from all of this." {I want you to love me just as much as I love you.}
You nod, satisfied with the answer, and your voice is low in his ear. "And where are you right now, love?"
He breathes, "Near you, near your body," and steps forward to press his hips to yours.
"And do you care if you're awake or not?" You're turning circles, moving a palm down to his lower back to really pack a punch. He's re-forming against you, backwards-melting into your arms.
"Not now, no, not now."
You take his lips in yours and they're already hot from frustration, from trying to figure things out—the familiar taste of iron mingles when your tongue touches his, when you use it to send his head swimming. You push him up to the closed door and he takes your belt buckle between two hands and soon there's nothing left to grab but sweat-slicked skin, too-short nails digging into his own instead of yours. He's destructing unto himself.
Another self-made promise broken because of you.
His hole is tight, making your processes stagger for the one second (eternity) it takes for him to get used to having you inside of him again—he cries out and you growl deep in your throat from the effort it takes to not lose it right then and there. He's lithe and squirming further onto your cock as you hold him to the door, legs wrapped around your waist. He's braced himself in the narrow entrance alcove, throwing his head back against the peep hole on the door. When he moans you realize there is no better method to pulling the wool over someone's eyes than showing it to them first.
He's a mess of shakes and sweat when you and he are both sated, slumped against the doorframe and panting. You smirk darkly and chuckle. He is away from you in a flash and is cowering. Like cattle led to slaughter he asks,
"Do you love me?"
Your reply: "Of course."
He still isn't accepting it. "Vanitas." Then, softly, "This isn't real, is it?"
You're sneering, unsheathing the knife, "Of course not, darling."
When he wakes with a start, he finds that he's laughing hollowly.
What a pity, he is.
-x-
and even if there's nothing else
i could have left behind, i hope that you at least rescue
my traces in your mind.
ii. i am here
I have often wondered why spaces between people exist at all. It seems that we are made to create wholes and not gaps—your fingers into the spaces between mine, your head into the gap between my neck and my shoulder, your body up mine. Straight. Complete. Spaceless.
("It amazes me how in this new uncharted land of you and me, the first place you found was the capital city of my heart.")
You waltzed through my world like a shadow. Impossible to not have but difficult to see in the dark. I always loved you in the sunlight most of all. Strong, solid, dynamic. You flickered like fairy lights on Christmas trees in thunderstorms, like stars struggling to shine through the atmosphere. Like castle walls atop an earthquake. You strode like a giant across lands that shouldn't have welcomed you but which let you belong like you had grown from them.
("You are here and so am I.")
The space between us now is too large to comprehend. Universal, catastrophic. I can tell you I love you all I like because I have no reaction to worry about. I tell you a lot, you know. Every night. There is not enough noise outside to drown out my lungs and the silence of me without you. Amongst the wolves it is easier—they are noisier and in the right light their shadows are the shape of yours. But they are not you, Ventus. They do not sing off-tune pop songs when they get drunk and they do not let me whisper how afraid I am into the hollow behind their ears. They do not fit the footprints that you left on my heart. No one can.
("I want to highlight every inch of you that I think is exceptional, but there isn't enough highlighters in the world;and, really, all I'd need to do is just toss you in a bucket of bright yellow paint.")
I loved everything about you. And at first, it didn't hurt because it didn't know how. But now; now it feels as if I'm drowning without water.
("I would like to circumnavigate you, so that if there was a map of every inch of you I would run out of push-pins trying to mark: I was here, I was here, I was here…")
You mapped my hands, once. Named all the ridges of my nails, kissed the churches of my fingertips to consecrate them, begged me to bury you with these hands because that was the only way you were going, with my hands to put you to sleep.
("Let your dimples be periods and my scars the alphabet. Our skin together is the most beautiful thing I have ever read. White like snow, like rabbit coat. Thin like fingers when it's cold. You finish everything I begin and without me, you say that you wouldn't exist. The misspellings in your DNA defy language and everything I've learned because nothing about you could ever be wrong.")
We were giants, you and I. The world set us up so high we could have touched the moon if we'd tried. But we didn't, because touching each other was all that mattered. You and me and no spaces and the whole wide world. That was it. That was supposed to be the story, our story.
("What am I to you?")
("Everything and more.")
("Then I will be here forever more.")
But you weren't.
The storm that ruined us came inexorably onward and I could never define my sadness but I can, now. Sadness is the rain on rooftops and the space around me without you in it. Sadness is thunder and lightning and beds with only one occupant. Sadness is the creak of bare floorboards and a grave with no body in it. Sadness is me, here without you.
(I suppose this ends with me saying, I am sadness, I am loneliness. Without you, in fact, I am just a space between one place and the other. I am sadness and sadness is a man who ran out of hope the day you fell out of the world.
The world is too heavy here. The air is too thick.
I am too, lonely.)
-x-
back in the day, when i was younger.
i was so lost and proud. i've gained the world,
but it will never compare to what i have earned.
iii. we were everything
"Do you ever wish you could get away?" the blonde murmurs against the raven's shoulder, wrapping his arms around the waist of the boy as he continues, "Do you ever wish you could just run away and never come back?"
Oh God, the raven thinks, all of the time.
x
Ventus is restless. He is always moving, always stubborn, and always smiling. He is lovely and everything Vanitas wants. He is kind-hearted and everything Vanitas needs. Ventus is never vengeful and never wicked.
One day, they are working on a project for History. The blonde is distracted, tired; his gaze creeping always towards the clock.
"Did you hear," he pipes up suddenly using the tone that Vanitas's learned, meaning he's trying hard to convince himself that he doesn't care, "Did you hear that the gym teacher got framed for domestic abuse?"
"Yeah," Vanitas replies calmly, like this is a totally normal conversation to be having. "What about it?"
The blonde turns his head slowly to look at the raven, softly asking, "Do you believe it?"
The raven stares for a while before looking out the window, "No."
Ventus raises an eyebrow and tilts his head, "And why not?"
The blonde gazes at Vanitas steadily, almost gently, like he is waiting for the raven to come up with an answer.
Vanitas shrugs, "Didn't he love his wife? I mean, he was always talking about her… Besides, he was always asking for love advice."
Ventus nods, seemingly satisfied with the answer. The blonde grabs at the glue next to the raven's foot to add something to their project as he speaks, "I feel bad for him. The thought of a man going to jail for something he didn't do is terrible…"
All Vanitas can do is glance, waiting for the blonde to continue his thought.
"I can't imagine anything worse."
"I can," the raven says vaguely.
The blonde looks back at Vanitas with his big, doe eyes, curiously. But when the amber-eyed boy says no more, Ventus doesn't push.
x
Things come back to Vanitas in bursts these days. He feels older than he should, a bit tired, a bit bored with the world and what the world can offer him. He has blanketed out most of his last year at high school. He is not proud of his actions there and he would like it if the rest of the world could forget them too.
He remembers other things, though. He recalls the way Ventus strived to get the attention of his best friend who was in love with someone else. If he closes his eyes, he can easily picture the way Ventus always watched Terra, a little bit desperate and a little bit sad. He thinks of the time when Ventus showed up on his doorstep, crying, because of his parent's fighting.
He remembers that, in this story, Ventus isn't the person who gets a happy ending.
(Vanitas would like to give him one anyway.)
x
They have known each other almost their whole lives and sometimes Vanitas thinks they've known each other in a past life.
Vanitas looks at Ventus these days, traces the whole weary weight of him with his eyes and gets flashes of a giggly nine-year-old whose father promised him the world. It must have been hard, he thinks some days, it must have been hard to go from being someone's world to being just another person in a sea of many.
They see each other often these days. At first it was because of their families and his parents' refusal to let Ventus's father be alone to wallow but now they elect to seek each other out. They pass long lazy afternoons quiet in each other's company and they just tease each other about things that aren't important and it is easy. This lifestyle is easy.
Easy is good. It is pleasing and calming and vastly underrated.
They do not discuss their past by unspoken consent. If their conversation veers near it, they steer it away.
They spend their time sitting in his apartment and they both read or watch television. Sometimes, they curl up together on the sofa and Ventus's socked feet press into Vanitas's legs and the blonde's head droops onto the raven's shoulder and he puts an arm around the blue-eyed beauty. Vanitas likes the way that feels. Vanitas likes it more than is probably sensible.
x
Vanitas and Ventus are getting married.
And that sounds nice, right?
The thing is, they aren't getting married to each other.
Vanitas gets a gorgeous and beautiful and kind girl whereas Ventus gets a less than worthy girl who is disrespectful and everything that Ventus doesn't deserve, courtesy to their parents.
How on earth is this fair?
But Ventus just simply smiles and nods. He makes no protest at all, as if this is not the rest of their lives.
Vanitas can't help but wonder what they did to deserve this. Arranged marriages are never good, but this is just plain wrong.
We should have never have come to this, he thinks to himself, We were young and magnificent once.
Now we are old at twenty. We are old and afraid of what could have been. We are tired and lonely and desperate. We could have been so much, but we are this instead.
Vanitas doesn't see Ventus until Vanitas's wedding. And then he meets his eye in the crowd as he waits at the top of the aisle. Ventus gives him a small smile, his hand on his wife's, and he smiles back and decides there are worse things than a gym teacher being framed for domestic abuse.
Yes, he thinks, as he sees his fiancé appear in the doorway of the hall, radiant and delirious with happiness, there are worse things in the world than that.
-x-
it's better than i ever even knew.
they say that the world was built for two.
only worth living if someone is loving you.
vi. red ink
Ventus is dressed to go out; shiny and put together in a gray button down shirt and Armani slacks, winter coat slung over his shoulder and swinging easily when Vanitas stops him. Ventus doesn't fight it, never even tries, not when that sharp unrelentingly amber stare flickers and focuses on him and Vanitas presses the palm of his hand flat against his chest, just below his heart.
They've done this before, though not often. Often enough that Ventus shudders and stills and waits, even though he was supposed to… even though he had a date.. he knows he should call, but…
"No, you're going to stay. Take off your clothes, get on the bed and lay down on your back," Vanitas says.
Vanitas's lips are tight and now he's not looking at Ventus anymore, staring past him, like he's on to something better and more interesting in his head. Ventus shivers. He lets his coat drop to the floor.
If Vanitas is more interested in watching him strip or the wall over his shoulder, Ventus can't tell. It doesn't matter, by the time he's pulling his boxers down he's half hard anyway, mouth dry and goose-flesh running up his arms. He bends over to pick up his things, so he can fold them, so he can –
"No," Vanitas says, "Leave them. Get on the bed." Ventus's head bobs, slow and unsteady. He can feel the flush of heat starting in his face, knows he's blushing to his neck. He goes, leaving his things in a crumpled pile on the floor.
The wool of the blanket is scratchy against his ass and shoulders, and he squirms against it. Vanitas stays where he is, in the center of the room for a long, long stretched out moment. Then he turns around and walks back over to his desk in the corner and for a wild second Ventus thinks, is he going to – what? Go back to studying for an exam while I'm lying spread out in his bed? And that thought shouldn't turn him on, the mere thought makes his cock twitch against his thigh.
But, no, Vanitas doesn't settle, he just picks something up off the desk, a felt tipped pen, smooth and red. Ventus blinks and shifts up on his elbows, trying to see what he's doing.
"I said, lie down," Vanitas says, though how he knew Ventus wasn't when he didn't seem to be looking at him is a mystery. Ventus thinks about asking what they're doing but then decides not to. He lays back down and Vanitas walks up to the bed. "Spread your knees," he says and Ventus does. Wide, wider, widest, until Vanitas climbs in between them. He's still dressed in his jeans and hoodie and Ventus is curious as to what is going to happen.
But all Vanitas does is pop the cap off the pen and stare at Ventus like he is looking for something. Ventus watches Vanitas's face while Vanitas looks him over, flushed face to half hard cock, slow and speculative. Then he stops – there's a yellow-green half healed bruise on Ventus's hip, blotchy and wide, like the pressure of someone's hand. Vanitas prods it with two fingers from his free hand once, hard, and Ventus gasps at the sudden burst of pain, sharp and vicious.
"You're dating a dick," Vanitas says, tracing the edge of the bruise and then down to the next one. He sounds factual and unsympathetic, and he never looks up. "You really get off on people who treat you like trash, Ven. Do you know what that makes you?"
Ventus shrugs, still nothing to say. Vanitas makes a scoffing noise and skims his hand up Ventus's chest. There are more marks: bruises in a trail until he reaches the red indentation of teeth around his nipples. Vanitas sticks the pen cap between his lips without even seeming to think about it and leans down, as if he's trying to get a closer look.
There's a second of anticipation just ahead of the press of the pen against skin. It's cold and surprisingly sharp and Ventus winces on pure instinct. Vanitas's hand on his chest presses him down hard until the blonde goes still. "It makes you a slut," Vanitas says, the obscenity making his mouth curl around the pen. "Because, really, what kind of a person goes after someone who doesn't give a shit about him? It makes you pathetic."
The pen scratches and when he cranes his neck, Ventus can see the words spilling out of it. Slut, whore, pathetic in loopy, cramped handwriting. The ink smudges when he shivers, smearing like misapplied makeup, whore red lipstick on his skin.
"This is annoying, Ventus, you're going to have to stop squirming." But Ventus can't, not when the pen traces around the vicious, scarring bruise right under his collar bone, like Vanitas's sketching it out in crimson. Vanitas sighs noisily. "How about we try this? If you keep moving, I'll take you out into the hall and march you around like this. I'll write what I think of you right on your face so no one misses it. I wonder if someone will take a picture and post it on the internet," he says.
It's like ice in his veins, the suggestion, the thought – trying to wash the ink off – and pictures, everyone – and Vanitas would – Ventus shakes his head once, sharply, goes lax and still under Vanitas's palm, but his cock is pressed up against his belly now. Moving when he breathes, when the pen in Vanitas's hand drags across his skin.
Vnusquisque videre quomodo confractum estis vos. Tute nihil. Vos es contaminato nunc sis sordida, es vilis. Ut qui vellet infelix meretricis tibi?
(Let everyone see how broken you are. You're nothing. You're tainted, you're filthy, you're vile. who would want a wretched whore like you?)
Insults, sick shit he didn't even know that Vanitas thought, that anyone had ever thought, even that guy he was supposed to be eating dinner with. On and on, until it isn't even words anymore it's just –
01101101 01111001 00100000 01110111
01101000 01101111 01110010 01100101
00101110 00100000 01101101 01111001
00100000 01100010 01100101 01100001
01110101 01110100 01101001 01100110
01110101 01101100 00101100 00100000
01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011
01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000
01110000 01101001 01100101 01100011
01100101 00100000 01101111 01100110
00100000 01110100 01110010 01100001
01110011 01101000 01101101 01101001
01101110 01100101 00101110
(My whore. My beautiful, fucking piece of trash mine.)
In straggling, uneven rows across his chest, Vanitas's face screwed up tight in concentration, back translating, he doesn't know what it says. His mouth is open and he's panting, breathing too hard but he holds still, while Vanitas writes on him. Lines down his stomach that says –
01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111
01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001
01101111 01110101 00100000 01110011
01101111 00100000 01110011 01110100
01101111 01110000 01101001 01110100
01110011 01110100 01101111 01110000
01101001 01110100
(I love you so stop it stop it)
And Vanitas's breathing just as hard as he is, eyes narrow, shifting back on his heels. He's wearing loose pants, and Ventus can't even tell if he's hard. {What even is this?}
"I should buy a tattoo pen," Vanitas says. His voice is so flat, always flat, no emotion. All of his emotion is in his hands and those are firm are and unyielding. "I saw one on eBay – I could use your credit card. Then when I did this to you, you could never walk around without a shirt again. You could never let anyone see you naked again except for when I…" his voice stops, but his pen doesn't.
Ventus gasps, hears himself, a low, tearing sound caught high in his throat. The pen drags down, a sharp line across his thigh. In circles, handwriting turned to loops and obscene references as it slides across his balls, and he can't keep still, but he has to keep still, because Vanitas, he…
Filthy fucking toy in red across the side of his cock and his hips ache from the pressure of not moving them, of not… but then in small, small numbers, pinpricks of pressure on the other side is – 01100010 01100101 01100001 01110101 01110100 01101001 01100110 01110101 01101100 (beautiful)
The last zero finished, Vanitas presses a period against the sensitive head of Ventus's cock that draws out another strangled whimper. He caps the pen closed. "Lift your knees up to your chest," Vanitas tells him, ignoring the sound, ignoring everything.
Vanitas slips the length of the pen between his lips, tongue sliding out to toy with it while he uses his hands to push Ventus up a little more, spread him a little more. Then he stops, shakes his head, and looks away, frowning at something, like it's not enough, like whatever he's seeing, isn't close to good enough. Ventus bites his lower lip, staring up, and then Vanitas looks down at him and shakes his head.
Even then, there is nothing readable there, not in that blue stare, just the bare edges of frustration that make Ventus quiver in response. Vanitas closes his eyes and lays his palms on Ventus's shaking, knotted up thighs. "You… how can you be so fucking…" Vanitas mutters, "I don't even know what—"
Then he seems to decide what, mid-sentence. He steadies himself, uncaps that damned pen gain and writes. Ventus can't see, it's on the backs of his thighs, the curve of his upraised ass, the inside boundaries of leg. Ventus can't see what's written so he can only imagine and it makes his face flame and his cock ache.
It seems to take forever, a year, a day, an hour, but Vanitas's look of concentration never founders, like defacing Ventus's body is as important as sunlight. But even the sun sets and finally, Vanitas nods to himself and says, "There. There. That's what it is."
Vanitas caps the pen and slides it between his lips one final time, but this time is not careless but deliberate. Slick red length of tongue, gliding on the plastic length like he's sucking it off. And soon, he's pressing it up against Ventus's ass, holding him still and open with one hand, while he pushes the pen up inside him. The pressure, the dull ache is mind-blowing. He forces the pen inside with one relentless steady shove. That fucking pen, inside him. The blonde shudders and it's too much.
It's too much, and then Vanitas's hand is on his dick, smearing wet ink and filth and zeroes and ones –
"Look at me," Vanitas says and Ventus does. Amber eyes stare him down as Vanitas continues, "Now come." He does. Eyes wide open and staring ahead, shaking like a leaf with Vanitas's hands on him and Vanitas's pen shoved up inside him.
He's bright red after, still breathing too hard, still shaking, holding his now slick thighs up to his come-soaked belly when Vanitas reaches over to the nightstand for the tiny vanity mirror. "Here," he says. "You need to see this."
Ventus shakes his head and tries to turn away. He doesn't want to see what Vanitas wrote in those places, the backs of his thighs and along the cleft of his ass. What he can see is enough.
He winces away when Vanitas presses a hand against his cheek and angles the mirror so he'd see anyway if he just looked. He's still shaking his head, squeezing his eyes shut. His eyes… they feel wet, sore as if he's the one who has been studying for days without end.
"No more," he whispers. It's the first thing he's said since this started, but his voice feels trashed, used up like he's been screaming. "Please, I'll give you anything; just don't please. This is enough."
He hears Vanitas's sharp intake of breath. "Ven, just – just trust me. This time, just – look," and he doesn't sound flat now, somehow he doesn't, he sounds gentle and soft. Ventus shivers and opens his eyes. He can't, he can't, but he doesn't want to say no to Vanitas. He opens his eyes even as he keeps shaking his head no, no, no, but he still looks because Vanitas told him to.
He expects filth, more of it, but he sees…
The mirror shows it to him backwards, but he can read it in Vanitas's shaky, cramped script. Most of it isn't even in English, just an insane jumble of binary code mixed in with Greek and Hebrew letters, intersecting. He can pick out a few from half-remembered teenage lessons, he thinks, but nothing that makes sense, there's a word for God (one of the words, it's sacrilege to write on skin, to write at all) and that one here means… לשמוע… לזכור… אתה… הם… שלי… Hear… Remember… You… Are… Mine.
Ventus breathes out.
In one corner, just along the skin of the joint where ass meets thigh, underlined for emphasis, it says:
[ IF exist V&V echo (infinity)
else
IF exist V&V echo (x2 + y2 -1) + 3-x2y3 =
0 implicitly
If
IT'S JUST YOU. ]
He blinks, blinks again and raises his chin slowly, so that he's finally, finally looking Vanitas in the eyes without flinching, and Vanitas is looking back at him.
"I don't understand—" Ventus starts to say and Vanitas shakes his head and then presses a kiss to his mouth quickly and pulls back just as swiftly.
"Whatever you need, I can do it for you." Vanitas tells him, and his hands shake. "If this is what you need, I can be it for you. You don't need that guy, those… I can."
Ventus shudders, from head to toe, before he reaches up to wrap his hand across the back of Vanitas's neck and pulls him back down. Vanitas's mouth tastes of cola and the kiss is tender.
It's not a solution to the problem, and it's not perfect.
But it's enough.