Hurt
[OOC: This is a DeathxKenny fic. Why? Stop asking me questions! Who am I, your mom!?]
It didn't always hurt. Sometimes, it was peaceful and soft and gentle, others, it happened faster than he could register, and he didn't feel anything. This time was one of those. He had been showing off for a girl, how he could put his cigarette out on his hand, but he was too busy looking at her bust to notice that his coat had caught fire. He ran out of the house, probably killing everybody's buzz while he was at it. His foot tangled in a garden hose, he tripped and cracked his head on the pool-side concrete, then slipped under the water. Kenny thought about how much of a relief it was not to have to burn to death before the gentle rocking of his descent into the water eased him quietly into familiar oblivion.
"Good evening." The voice was piercing, not so much a voice as it was a chatter, like thousands of people in one tone, with baritone and soprano, children and grown swirling together.
"Not really." Kenny snapped back.
They were in the nothing. He wasn't really sure why Death waited with him while he was there. The monstrous form had been absent before, often when he went to one of the afterlives. The blond wondered idly if it was his duty, to return him to the world of the living, if the job worked both ways.
"Don't feel so down." Death tried, placing a bony hand on the shoulder that Kenny didn't really have, but he was clinging so desperately to his usual form that it was clad in orange.
"It didn't hurt for very long." Kenny admitted after a moment. He was often reluctant to start conversations, because there was never a warning before he was torn out of the warm comfort of Death's embrace.
"I've see worse." Death said with a chuckle that rattled Kenny's vision, made his head spin.
"Did I drown?" He asked suddenly. Early on, before he understood, he would panic when he was drowning, but he so rarely found the energy to anymore.
"No. Head trauma." Kenny gave an oddly peaceful smile, staring off into the expanse of indescribably beautiful nothing. It wasn't like he imagined nothing to be; it was more than just black, it was beyond it, like a deep void that morphed into color when he stopped focusing.
"Head trauma is probably my favorite. Doesn't hurt for very long, not usually." He leaned back, and there was pressure that was both hard and soft.
Death was holding him. He didn't often hold him, just after he hadn't died for a while. This time, there was a month-long gap, much bigger than the usual week-long break he got. It was of his own doing, too. If he had just been a bit more careful, none of it would have happened, and he would still be alive, at the party, staring at the nameless bimbo's chest. It was nicer to be leaning back against the jutting angles he could only guess were under Death's coat. He knew it was probably wrong of him to think, but he didn't really care.
"You're pretty chatty." The monster commented, because the only things that Kenny ever said - usually - were angry curse words or demands to be let back.
"I'm tired." Kenny explained.
"It will be over soon." Death assured, its voices in the blonde's ear, warm and cold un-breath tickling the neck that wasn't really there. It said that too often, and Kenny wished it didn't, but he knew that the god was just trying to make him feel better.
"You won't be here for very long." The thing said sadly, running its fingers through Kenny's hair, undoing tangles, soothing nerves that weren't connected to anything. The sensation was so much more intense than it was in the real world, because it was Death, and he was touching Kenny's soul, a bony finger brushing softly over his cheek, down to his neck, the ghosting of teeth on his un-skin.
"I don't hate you. I say I do, but I don't." There was a gentle laugh from the black and white mass wrapped around the blond, this one making every wonderful sensation that Kenny had ever felt go off at once. He returned the laugh, only it was dry and tired-sounding, not because of its lack of sincerity, but because he had just died, and dying was always an exhausting ordeal.
"I know you don't. It's okay if you do, though. You have every right." Kenny turned to look at Death, smiling softly, but there was no bony form, no hidden face that he could never distinguish out of the shadow of its hood, just his pillow.