13. Bedroom
A/N: A fitting title for number 13. no? XD
Nothing much – if a bit of slash.
As children they signed a pact in the dead of night, camping together in an overgrown little cemetery up the street on a dare from Tommy and Allen. Their lips were sealed tight against the sting of the penknife and the pressure of the other's fingers, squeezing out a few drops of cherry blood to sizzle and mix in the dying coals of the fire. The wind had picked up then, dragging the branches of the autumn-bared shrubs against the crumbling granite angels and crosses so that Darren yelped and crushed the palms of his hands against his ears to stop the dreadful din from breaching his ear drums and his sanity. Steve just laughed, and pulled the younger boy along behind him into the little tent that rose – a gaping, gasping, grinning mockery of a mouth – out from between two twisted old oak trees. They spent that night curled against one another, sharing their heat and their air and their frightened dreams as the world outside scratched with angry claws against the thin canvas walls and threatened to crush them to powder.
And so they had been blood brothers, tied together with scarlet oaths and the garnet chains of mutual affection. They knew that the night could never hurt them - not on their terms, nor on anyone else's, as long as they were together. But, like all children, they did not understand was that together was not forever.
The separation, when it came, was almost surgical in its intensity; shock set in like an infection, followed by an eerie, sterile calm. There remained no urge to linger or mingle in the grey, to sully the purity of their colors in one another's arms; just a sudden change of direction with enough momentum to make both their hearts flutter and collapse against steady ribs. The rosy carmine of their cheeks paled to snow – ignorance and innocence gone, the smiles that childhood gave them quickly changed, twisting into grotesque grimaces in the overwhelming presence of the twilight. The rift between them shot away into the dark forever, endlessly; their gazes, unmettled, drew out the eyes of the abyss – and with them came a hungry, jagged smile that threatened worse than death.
Boyish wrath incited, they stared back. The fairer child-now-man was cruel and expressive, loud as the bells of the churches he had forsaken. His counterpoint and foil, the dark little child, lingered behind in the trail of carnage, casting furtive glances across the divide; his physiognomy was softer, kinder, and more resistant to corruption – but innocence served as no defense against discoloration. They shared the same beginning, and – though their lives may have wandered along the way – their fate would be the same. Shan and Leonard – even as children, everyone knew that they would stick to each other until the end. And they did.
In the end they both became tainted, because, inside, they were the same…
and there is not a soul (damaged, scarred, soiled, irreparable) in this world flawless enough to resist the temptations of fate. The were equally marred
And on that fateful night they knew they would, forever, be somehow together; never alone, it hurt to be so – a nail through the hand and another in the heart so neither could ever look at the other again without the faintest flutter of his heart and a rushing of blood in his ears. It was a dull hurt that sharpened with time, so by the final eve it was a clawing sensation at the back of their eyes, urging with terrible fury the desecration of the bond they had so foolishly formed, all those years ago; it was an escape, a means of drowning out the chaos, severing the limb from the jaws of death.
Their first kiss had been startling, like a chalice running over with ruby wine; there had been pressure, filled with fire and brimstone, eating slowly away at their bodies and minds; but what was the most frightening was the yearning for friction and heat and touch, when the world was so cold around them. The tension had built up around them until it was terrible, too terrible for them to stand – and then it was gone, in a rush of livid bliss. What was more frightening was that, even in the end, it never stopped.
It had left them broken in its wake; separated, desperate, needy, and so very much the same that the distance hurt like crucifixion. And, they would agree, better to die than live through so little and so much all at once. And then came something new - an urge that they shared, despite the miles, that pulled them apart and sewed them right back up in a way that felt so right, and that left them weak and trembling, a mass of limbs and teeth and licentious gazes. It drove them, and eventually it ended them, annihilation by mere proximity – but not until they bled each other dry.
After all, it was only a matter of time
before one of them woke up face down on the bedroom floor.