A/N: This is what happens when you type whatever comes to mind. Also, longest chapter… so far (and my favorite, if we're being honest).
Warning: Awesome-O says that this is GAY. Full of GAY. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I… I gots nothing. Really. Nothing. Sorry.
Summary: Challenge fic. 25 Random Words. The rules? Just use the word in a scene about the pairing. Chapter 15: Wont.
Remember:
"Blah" – Speech
Blah –Thoughts/Emphasis
Blah – Self Explanatory
15. Wont
"Ike…" the whisper is gravelly, but that is the fault of the owner, who treats his body less like a temple than a factory. "Ike…" However, the name spills softly, tumbling off a tongue that is saturated with nicotine, and lips that retain dark stains from nightmarish gildings. "Ike…" It is insistent, commanding, and possessing all in one breath that escapes like sulfur from Hell. "Ike…?"
It's the fourth time that brings Ike back from his dead state. Literally.
The car overturned on the icy path up the Colorado Mountains. They were visiting friends and family, as was the holiday tradition. Shadow was grumbling about something, it seemed like a million miles away, but Ike was paying attention, too much attention. Something darted out in the road—a deer maybe—and then they were over the rails, soaring. The next thing that occurred was the crash, and Shadow hit his head against the window. The spider web work of shattered glass startled Ike worse than anything he could recall.
He remembered reaching out—and then all light faded.
All Ike can see now is the stars, twinkling fuzzily overhead, and this smell of freshly dug earth. His limbs are stiff, and his ears are ringing with new life. Suddenly, his field of vision widens. Out of the night appears his Shadow, palm weeping a sickly crimson fluid.
"Put me back, Shadow," Ike murmurs, his breath unsteady and weak. "You have to put me back."
"No," the goth replies, eyes going hard, then soft, then hard, and then soft again.
"You can't play God like this," he says, lids heavy, as if he had been slumbering for a long time. It was probably true.
"I'll play whatever cards I can to have you!" Shadow declares like a madman into the chaos of the dark world. "I'll cheat! I'll kill! If I can't have you fair—"
"But you'll lose," he warns, feeling too warm arms wrap around his neck, swoop down his back, lifting him closer to a dirt and blood covered body.
"I refuse to let you go…" Shadow shook, fingers digging into cold flesh.
"Oh, Shadow, you know I love you," Ike said, hands twitching against legs that could still walk, still run, and still beat with heat and blood. Heat and blood. Ike's eyes went hazy at the thought of heat and blood. Shadow's legs had always been so strong between his…
"I am wont to let you die…" Shadow continued to speak with the same voice that had brought him back from the nothingness. With lips, and tongue, and breath. Yet, Ike slowly felt something escaping from him, fleeing, rising up and away.
"S-Shadow… what have you done?" he questioned, but the words did not register to deafening ears. Every bit of him was separating like milk souring on a summer day. "I… I don't think… I'm human… anymore…"
"Forgive me, Ike!" the man in his arms cried, holding on, but Ike continued to drift away in the fog. "I wasn't—I didn't catch your last breath! I couldn't save you, like you had saved me a year ago! I-I… I have done something terrible… I just wanted you in my arms again. I had a limited time… I…" There was a strange stillness as Shadow shifted, melting into Ike's slight frame. He smelled sweeter by the minute. "This time, you get to kill me."
"I don't want to," Ike rasped, limbs meant to shove the other away, yet pulled the living body closer. And closer still. Dry mouth on sweating neck. A pulse thinly veiled, wildly pumping. Images of sex flashing in Ike's mind.
"I want you to…" Shadow whispered, as if they were locked in a game of seduction, the goth initiating, like always, and Ike shying away. Modest Ike, blushing Ike. Shadow thrusting, Shadow taking.
"This isn't right…" Ike's hands, hands he could not see, were already biting ragged nails into skin flushed with eagerness. The dead boy struggled to stay in the realm he no longer had ties to. Except for Shadow, with memories burning into him, beating with the tempo of his heart.
"Right doesn't necessarily feel good," he said it, shifting them, pulling Ike up from the grave. Ike's hands were dancing then, the bones grating, but no flares of pain. It was a strange sensation of no sensation, as stiff pads seemed to scurry of their own accord, searching for something; listless and scorching with the heat rolling off the dark body in front of him.
"Shadow…" Ike's lips brushing over delicate, pierced cartilage, "Y-You have to put me back. Send me back…"
"You'll go back," Shadow promised, his face, oddly undecorated, floating in front of his eyes. Ike knew they should be hazel-green, but what color had death rendered the iris in so long a state? Were they pale and ill? Murky and soulless? Why was the goth boring into his eyes like this? It looked like he was waiting… What for?
Where was he again?
"Shadow… I…" Ike gasped uselessly, settling into his lover's broad lap. Unfocused, Ike's face stretches into a smile. Two bodies meeting every curve and crevice as if designed by The Powers That Be. "Where am I going? I just want to be… with you."
"I know. I'm coming with you this time," Shadow replied, a guilty relief hidden as Ike leans down, burrowing into the furnace that is Shadow's body. It made Ike so dizzy, dizzy, dizzy. Like the carousel ride…
In the summer night, because Colorado does become so balmy hot in June, the goth and the genius sneak into the visiting carnival. The goth switching on lights, musky smoke illuminating beams, quivering in the stillness of summer. Ike hops on a rusted unicorn, whose color should have been cherry red, but faded burgundy. Pleading, he demands faster and faster to spin, and Shadow complies, dark eyes gazing behind orange embers that flicker in the whirlwind…until finally, flushed and excited, the goth slams the emergency brakes, and the genius tumbles. Dark arms capture him and he is pushed into the gaudy mirrors, never acknowledging the shattered fragments and gleam of silver. Again Ike pleads, "Harder! Harder!" in excitement, flushing, eyes shutting in ecstasy, dizzy for different reasons.
"Shadow…" Ike whimpers, teeth skimming naked neck. "W-Where are we going…?"
The sweet scent wafting off Shadow was enticing, taunting before his tongue. It was the only thing tangible as Ike swiftly disappeared, swirling down an unknown black hole. He lost colors of the sun as it swept across the horizon like a poppy field set aflame. He lost the feel of a firm and warm body moving beneath him…
And he barely heard the parting words of the gravelly voice that woke him from forever sleep. Sure and deep as the silvery morning sea, as Shadow breathed last, he swore, "The other side…"
—END?—