prompt 469. echoes of bondage
song. lighting field by sneaker pimps
strike me down/give me everything you got/strike me down/i'll be everything i'm not
The first time Soubi lets the words slip from between his lips, he wishes he could swallow them back up. All the years spent disciplining himself into perpetual silence, into the never-ending cycle of relentless control, wasted in less than a few seconds. The words had risen up like magma somewhere deep within him, slithering their way past the knotted gates of his throat that had crushed all condemning words before it. They felt smooth on his tongue, like silk, but they left a sharp edge that made him want to spit. Or cry. Or heave every other unspoken spell out of himself. He could feel the weight of them in his belly, felt the pressure rise up to his breast like water at the floodgates. They tugged at his organs, pounded up his esophagus and threatened to overflow. He had never felt so sick in his life.
The first time Soubi let the words slip from between his lips, he wishes more than anything that he could call them back to second time, he rolls them on his tongue, tastes their sting and utters them like worship. He wishes that they could grow into chains, heavy and solid against his frail third time, the last time, he whispers them like a prayer, like a lament, salty tears dropped on funeral ashes. He hopes that when he is dead they will follow him under, wrapped around his neck like the collar he always so coveted, but could never have.
The first time Soubi let the words slip from between his lips, it felt like failure. The second time, like rapture. And now, the third time, with the words breathed out like wisps of dragon smoke, left to tumble and curl around the slope of delicate shoulders that tremble when Soubi holds them oh so gently, it feels like nothing Soubi has ever felt before. With fear making his voice seep weakly from lips still aching with the ghost of bondage long past, he whispers them again. And again. And again, like a prayer.
They are the only rosary he's ever known.
"I love you, Ritsuka."