Warnings: Non-explicit sex, body horror, references to canonical character death
When the boy woke, it was dark. Moonlight streamed in from the bedside window, and not a single candle was lit. He had been brought back to the cabin and laid into bed, tucked in and warm once more. The boy shifted in the sheets, and saw his love sitting aside his bed, face peaceful in sleep. As if sensing that the boy was awake, he too stirred.
"I don't get it. Does this happen on a ship or by a pond?" the woman draped her hands around the man's neck. The man lifted a hand to her forearm and leaned into her embrace. He said, "Both."
"What? On a ship by a pond? That doesn't make any sense."
"No."
The woman splayed her hands across the man's back, feeling around the scars from a time long gone. She said, "If you're going to tell a story then tell it right. Where are they? On a ship or by a pond?"
The man gripped the flesh just above her hips and pulled her close. There was the feel of her breasts pressed against his chest, skin separated only by the flimsy shirt he had yet to shed. He replied, "Neither." The woman giggled in his arms and smashed her lips against the side of his face.
"Why am I even bothering?" she not-quite-sighed when she released her hold. "We're only here to use each other. We'll never see each other again."
"Yet you are entertaining my story."
"If it means I get what I want," she grinned at him. "Aren't we all like that? Nothing has meaning except here and now, using each other for our own agendas. Come here, boy, and kiss me already."
"What are you saying?" the boy's love asked him. He blinked at him in confusion, eyes still drooped with sleep.
"Nothing," the boy said. "Go back to sleep."
"No," his love said. "We haven't eaten yet, have we? Besides, the moon's out. Let's go eat on the quarterdeck."
The boy rubbed his eyes and got out of bed. "Sorry for ruining our plans. Didn't think I would faint like that." The other waved his apologies away. He said, "Don't ever apologize for being sick. It was my fault for giving you so much to drink, anyway."
His lover went over to the fireplace with a match, and lit a candle with a flame from the hearth. As he made to put out the embers, the boy called out, "Wait." His love paused his movements. "I want to stay here."
"Okay."
They went over to the table in the middle of the room, where his love had prepared a tray to take up to the bow. The food was displaced from the tray and replaced onto their former positions on the table, and then they sat down for the meal.
"Do you ever wonder what would have happened if we hadn't met each other?" the boy said very quietly between chewing.
"Dead."
"Besides that."
His love hesitated to take his next bite and seemed to take a moment. He said, "I don't know. I don't think I want to think about it. Could there be anything worse than both of us dead?"
The boy thought back to chairs and a clenched phone and mother, mother, why are you crying?
remembrance of an apartment shrouded in darkness with bills on the table and a slowly spinning fan. of a low hanging fruit he looked up upon and shook 'till it fell from the tree and cradled and waited for it to wake up
"I envy you," the boy said, eyes half closed. "For being able to not think about it if you don't want to." He didn't wait for a response before streaking across the table and slamming his lover's hand against his heart. "Do you feel this?"
Ba-dump. Ba-dump.
"This heart of mine."
"Stop it," his love said. "Are you still drunk?" He pulled his arm back. The boy ignored him and said, "This wicked heart of mine."
"Go—"
The boy crawled atop the table and grasped the jaw of his love with two hands. He paid no mind to the food and plates he shoved his way past. "I envy you so, so much." Those grey eyes staring up at him. Unworried. Unafraid. Untouched. With another lunge, the chair tipped and they are both thrown backwards onto the floor. They are sent rolling by the fall, and in the end, the boy found himself underneath his love.
"Was it love or was it envy then?" The woman asked.
"I'd like to think it was both."
"Ha? It's either one or the other," she straddled him and laughed. "There is no in-between." The man considered that for a moment, then said, "Mayhaps so."
His love tried to roll off, but the boy held him by the shoulders. "What are you doing?" the other asked, all pain and hurt.
"Akira," the boy breathed out. "Have you ever felt guilty for having been born?"
His love didn't look him in the eye. "No. Why?"
"I am but a wooden puppet. Nothing more and nothing less," was the vague response. All wooden angles and metal screws and broken strings. "'You have me.' isn't that what you said? Give me reason, please."
"That's not what I meant when I said that," his love said.
"I know."
"If you know then why?"
"You're the only one," Goro explained. "There's only you, and it will always be you." It was as simple as that.
"Goro," Akira's voice was uncharacteristically steely, yet stricken with emotion. "You're not a puppet whose purpose is only to dance at the whim of another."
—hush child hush if only your father if only you were never born
"I am. I couldn't live without my revenge, still cannot." Primrose and cypress weaved themselves throughout his ribcage.
"Don't live for me. Live for yourself."
Goro laughed and brought Akira down so that they were near flush against each other. The words that came out of his mouth were his but not his: "Who else do I have to live for but you, Akira?"
"What?" The woman lifted her head up. "Is that the name of the woman whom you're imagining me to be? Well alright, I don't mind."
"No, I'm Akira."
"Ha? I don't understand you. I thought your name was Ren?" said the woman. "Ren and Akira, what a couple they would make."
"The one I love isn't here anymore, and his name isn't Akira," said the man. The woman huffed a bit and said, "Obviously not. You wouldn't be here with me if you were."
"Would I?"
"I know men like you. All honorable and eternally faithful to their love," the woman mocked. The man, for the first time this evening, looked her directly in the eye. "Is that so bad?"
"It's pretentious. In the end, all that'll be left is hatred and nothing else."
"Are you speaking from experience?"
"Ha? Don't kid me."
"Then, do you mind me finishing this story?" the man asked. She didn't particularly care. She was here to enjoy a night of passion and nothing more, the woman told herself. She said: "If it means we can get on with this." and then she slid her head down once more.
Akira put a hand between them. "This isn't right."
"It isn't?" The marionette smiled. "What even is right and wrong anymore?" Those joints whirred indignantly. "Hey. Tell me." Primrose and cypress around a metal ribcage.
Akira stood up and took a step back. "Who are you?" he whispered. The corroded doll crawled after him and clung to his ankles. "I'm Goro," its mouth creaked open. "Who else?"
He took another step back but he slipped. The slippery red varnish on the floorboards had yet to dry. His back was against the wall now.
"Stop." Those cold hands wrapped themselves around his ankles. "Stop." Crude spindles outstretched, clamoring around his chest. Grappling his face.
"Please."
Face flattened against the partition, he squeezed his eyes shut.
"Akira?"
Slowly, ever so slowly, he peeled his eyes back. In front of him, the grody mirage bled away into the image of a kneeling pariah. Palms up, those limbs stuttered in the negative space between them, tentative and just shy of a caress.
There was no red varnish. No cypress. Lack of that screeching metal pitch. Only diamonds that couldn't be taken back — oh so glittering — laying in desolate solitude.
"I'm sorry." He declined the offer, despite the disappointment he could sense as a result. Placing a hand on the stiff wood of the floor, he pulled himself up. "I'm sorry."
Walking to the counter, Akira nursed the throbbing in his temple. "We can't stay here."
The boy's legs were like that of a newborn fawn, struggling to find balance, in his ascent. Of the two, Goro was taller, but he felt so incredibly small.
"W-Why?"
"We've been here too long," came the reply. "We're losing ourselves more and more with every visit."
Confusion. Befuddlement. Incomprehension. He heard himself ask: "What?"
"Don't you remember?" Consternation marred the features of his love. "I made a promise." There looked to be tears in his eyes. "Even if I can't see you anymore, I have to keep it."
An itch in his mind. Yes, there was a vow made in blood.
"If you were to die tomorrow — "
" — I'm fine with my life ending with you."
"But if you would live for me another day — "
"You promised you would do so too." Epiphany stuck the boy. After all, realization and remembrance always go together.
He looked up, and there Akira was, clutching his hand desperately. "I'll save you, no matter what." Came the promise.
Goro looked down at his hands, cradled so gently, and pulled them back to himself. He's touched, he truly is. He's no less touched than when Akira first made that promise to him. But even so. Even so…!
"It's been years, Akira." He doesn't quite know what he's saying, but his heart understood it to be something he'd wanted to say for a long time now. "You have to let go."
Those hands froze up, their form trembling so slightly that he almost could not see it. "W-What are you saying?" They reached for him again. "Goro —
"I'm saying that we can't do this anymore." He shuffled back. "You know it, I know it, even this place knows it."
"My time's up." Voice waning, he turned his head away.
"I can't give up on you." His love's hands wavered, as stubborn as ever. The precipice of despair loomed ever closer.
"Akira…" he uncurled his fist and gripped those shoulders instead. "Please. You have to understand."
"I'm almost there. There are people out there. Extraordinarily powerful people and experts on cognitive pscience. They've been helping me. I can — "
"I'm dead, Akira." There's wet warmth on his cheeks. "The dead can't come back to life."
The world went still. The sound of waves lapping at the sides of the boat, the whistle of the bitter wind, the waltz of white on that cold plane — it all ceased. Without the influence of sickly delusion warping their surroundings, it seemed as if time itself had come to a halt.
All that remained were the two of them, laid bare for each to see. A distance seemed to have grown in between them.
"I'm sorry," he was all he could hear. It echoed out into the void. Tears flowed down his face. Why, why? He wanted to stay here forever. It didn't matter if they would lose themselves. The golden chalice was poisoned but he wanted to drink it anyways. Yet that knot in his heart, slowly, ever so slowly, untangled itself, and let go.
"I'm so sorry."
"Ah, I guess you're finally awake." The woman sat cross-legged on her seat at the vanity, flicking her lighter. "You've been asleep for a while. Hurry up and get out."
Face buried in the sheets, he didn't respond.
"You didn't even finish that weird story of yours before you passed out. Not that it matters." She leaned back and enjoyed her cigarette. The man said: "Do you want to hear the end?"
"Do you want to finish the story?" At his silence, she gave herself a smug little smile. "Thought not."
A stretch of time came and left yet still the man did not budge.
"Hey." She took a drag. "Seriously, get outta here. I've got work soon and I can't trust you in here without me watching you." She crushed the butt into the ashtray. He didn't move.
"Ugh, what's with you?" The woman walked over and nudged him with the ball of her foot. "Quit moping. At this rate, I won't even wait. I'll just kick you out."
She yanked back the duvet and scrunched up her nose in disgust. "You're even crying?"
"Here's a word of advice." She dragged him up by the arm and tossed his clothes at him. "Get over yourself. You're young; you've got your whole life ahead of you. But you're wasting it away wallowing over some lost love. God, you're pathetic. Do you think that the world would stop just because you lost one person? Stand up and get yourself dressed. I haven't fallen so low that I would be your friend."
Mutely, he complied.
"Grow up. Look around you. There's an entire world out there. But because of one person you're going to die and give up on your dreams? What an idiot you are. The ones who remember the dead and give meaning to their lives are us, the living! So live! Live for whoever it is that you can't let go of, and get out of my apartment."
The woman slammed the door in his face.
Outside the apartment of a woman whose name he did not remember, the man named Akira stood.
It was Christmas.
Happy Valentine's Day :D