The heat beats against his knuckles, making the skin crack. Somehow or other he never gets burned. He watches the flames slice through each Shadow, feeling the force reverberate back through the pommel into his bones. He swings again.
The walls shift and bleed around him. He's touched them before, involuntarily. The dampness and the chill of them raises bumps on his skin under the jacket. But the Shadows are a far greater assault on his senses. The sharp tang that burns his nose after they take one down and the alien stench of them before that; the sweat they raise on his neck…the unfamiliar textures that brush against him. More than that they assault him from within, making his blood race and his breath rise, intoxicating him with his own adrenaline. Again. Again, and it falls to the floor.
Home run.
They don't look at each other as they connect at the junction of two dark corridors. They merely run on, side by side, strides matching, until they meet their next Shadow. Together they fall upon it, taking turns, one lunging in with his fists and the other cutting air and flesh into burning arcs. A wonder that the bones don't break as his fists slam into the enemy. He launches himself at what passes for its face and the blow hits. He knocks it to the ground. Now it's all theirs…
I've been waiting for this.
The heat beats against his knuckles. Against the raw places in his skin he can feel the other boy's pulse pounding as their fingers tighten together.
The walls shift around him. His vision swims when it comes at all. Sometimes he's left instead with blackness until he realizes his eyes are shut tight and he tries to open them again. His blood races and his breath begins to rise. Thrown against his walls their shadows mingle.
They don't look at each other as they connect. It's an unspoken rule, just like the rule that this will only happen after a night in Tartarus, and that afterwards they'll separate again just as they separate after a fight there.
Sometimes one hour isn't long enough.