|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 5:56 pm
"You were reading a ******** script," Eles tried to explain, but the boy was wrenched apart in such a raw state that he hadn't seen before. Both revolting and transfixing, Eles didn't understand what he was seeing. Didn't know what to do about it. But Malory clutched so fiercely. Buried himself against Eles as if he could crawl under the blonde's ribs and hide from whatever had so disturbed him.
Hands settled over those wracked shoulders that shuddered against him. "You were fine," Eles insisted. "Where the ******** else would I go, huh? Have some ******** faith in me." But Malory wasn't listening, was he? Malory was elsewhere. Isolated. It was as if they resided on different dimensions that intersected only briefly, and then never again.
All of this from a ******** starseed. A starseed that was supposed to heal. Adam sabotaged him for how he'd slipped away last time, he was certain of it.
"Open your mouth. Hey," And Eles pawed at the boy's pallid forehead, pushed against it to tilt his face upward. "Need you to spit it out, okay? Mal?" A few frantic pets through the boy's hair and he cupped that wretched face, shook it gently. "Need you to spit out the ******** starseed for me or I'm putting my fingers down your throat."
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 5:56 pm
Open your mouth.
Spit it out.
The commands barely registered, but the song was fading and Malory knew he had to do something or be left again. He had to be good. If just for a bit. If he could be good…
Opening his mouth, he revealed a couple broken shards that had yet to disappear. They fell with a couple clumsy peh pehs from the still crying boy,
“I’m sorry,” he finally managed as the song ended.
“What the hell,” Malory groaned, his eyes trying to focus past the…tears? Had he been crying? And then the pain registered, fresh and with a wretched new whole body filter, so yes, of course he’d been crying. s**t that hurt. Everything. Hurt. Focusing up at Eles, he gave a dismayed and dramatic look of the World’s Biggest Victim, and asked, “Did that,” a groan, “...really heal me?”
What the <********> was wrong with the Negaverse?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 5:57 pm
Frowning, Eles brushed the broken bits of soul off his shirt and onto the floor where they were promptly forgotten. What the ******** was that apology? What the ******** was all of that?
The curse drew his attention for sounding much more like his boy. "You look like s**t," Eles greeted with a relieved smile. Whether Malory wanted it or not, Eles wrapped his arms about the boy's shoulders and gave him a firm squeeze. He sighed, then, though the coil of tension in his core hadn't fully unwound.
Malory wasn't dead, so. Good news there. But as for being healed? "I… Don't know? I'll check. But you were saying some ******** up s**t about being left alone. If you were that sore about it, you could've told me not to go."
Eles reached down and jabbed a knuckle into each rib.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 5:58 pm
“I feel like s**t,” Malory groused in full b***h Face for Eles, for his reflection in the room’s many glass panels, and most especially for whoever gave Eles those starseeds. They must have been laced with some kind of nightmare juice, maybe something they sourced off of youma.
“I don’t remember,” he shook his head then hissed as his brain apparently decided to be sea sick in its cerebrospinal fluids. “There was some horrible music. I don’t know,” Malory sighed, ready to comfortably merge into Eles’s chest and limbs and see if he could siphon off some of the pain onto his boy.
His grip turned hard, at the jab to his ribs, leaving Malory rocking back with a gasp. When he could manage to get the words out, Malory groaned, “Not healed.” A beat, then, “Did you try yours?”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 5:59 pm
"You were hearing things." Eles hadn't heard anything but his own frantic footfalls and Malory's hyperventilation. Not even some passing car's shitty radio.
He cursed for the news, however. "They're real starseeds. That ******** must've lied to me about them being useful for, I don't know, literally ******** anything. I'll make it up to you." A lesson he would learn on pain of death. He thought that Adam was being truthful. He felt confident that he understood what starseeds could do. It made sense. But that instinct, the one that told him Adam couldn't possibly be lying, it failed him. It misled him into risking a priceless boy while throwing away a couple nobodies.
And if Adam thought his deal was still good after violating one of Eles's caveats, he'd best be expecting a shiv between his ribs and piss in his morning coffee.
Eles hadn't realized he'd been clenching his jaw until he heard Malory's question. Arms shifting around the boy, he squinted down at him. "Mine? No, the second one was in case the first didn't heal you completely." Pulling it from where he'd pocketed it earlier, he showed Malory the glittering blue gem.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 6:00 pm
“Don’t make it up to me,” Malory grumbled, pressing his face into Eles’s shoulder with a shudder for the new wave of pain that rippled through him. “Or do…don’t.” Unable to make up his mind he settled for adding, “It was sweet, you’re so. Sweet.” And in his hurt and unhappy voice, it sounded like a complaint. “They didn’t even taste good.” An actual complaint came quickly on its heels.
Looking at that blue with its soft glow of life, Malory felt a little torn. He didn’t want to look at it ever again. But he kind of wanted to keep it by his bed. He also wanted to drag Eles down with him to share in the suffering. But if Eles was suffering, then who would take care of him? The saddest and most hurt boy in the whole world?
Turning his eyes up at his boy and ignoring the strange, nonsensical whisper of panic that he was about to leave and never come back, Malory asked, “What are you going to do with it?”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 6:01 pm
"Are you still ******** up?" Gently prising the boy from his shoulder enough to look at him, he then stared at the deep dark that were Malory's irises. But even when he squinted, stared as best he could, he couldn't find the edge where iris ended and pupil began. "Can't tell. Your eyes are too ******** dark."
Beautiful goth b*****d, he thought. Make up your damn mind.
Eles resumed the hug silently. Where his left hand rested on one of Malory's shoulders, his right hovered half a foot away from his own face, where that ultramarine essence of life lay captive between his fingers. He thought that, if he stared at it long enough, he might deduce the starseed's duplicity. He might sense a fake with that selfsame instinct that was so firmly convinced that Adam spoke the truth. Those shining planes belied nothing, however. It hadn't even the decency to reflect his sins back unto himself the way that Malory's did.
Like he hadn't deserved a punishment. No turnabout this time. How infuriating.
"I don't know," Eles replied as his gaze remained on the gem. Then, after a stretched silence, he repeated himself. "I don't know. I don't think they're fake. They can't be fake. I didn't think he could be so good a liar that I wouldn't pick up on it. Am I stupid?" Eles looked Malory in the eyes.
"No, wait, don't answer that." Better that he didn't hear the answer. Not from Malory. "But I can't let you eat it in case it ******** you up again. Or worse."
Not that he knew what could be worse.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 6:01 pm
“******** up on you,” came the sulky, unhelpful reply as Malory tolerated the manhandling and inspection.
You’re stupid. I’m stupid. We’re all so stupid. The only smart one in this house is Darkest Knightsbane, and he doesn’t have thumbs. Malory gave a small, stupid laugh to go with his stupid boy and his stupid pain, which was followed by a stupid little wheeze.
“Maybe it’ll turn me into a youma,” he offered. Then, in an utterly solemn tone, Malory asked, “Would you still love me if I turned into a youma?”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 6:02 pm
Eles rolled his eyes for the petulant comeback. A part of him wished it was true, but that part of him was quickly packed away for a time that it could surface without ruining everything. Where that weakness would be met with the incomprehensibly grand indifference of the disaffected universe.
"Do I need to put you to bed? No, you'd find a way to hurt yourself there, too." Huffing, he nearly covered that mouth with his hand before more words came at him.
Words that had him pausing with a familiarity that he grasped at, but never caught. His lips parted with the expectation of carrying an answer, but his mind hadn't conjured it. But it lay there, taunting, just beyond the borders of where his perception could reach. Somewhere in the deep, in the underpinnings of reality where human comprehension was trussed up by the incomprehensible, it waited. Goading him. Mocking him with his petulant inability to remember.
And no amount of staring at Malory had allowed him to reach it. He blinked, then belatedly turned his thoughts to the question.
His answer almost sounded offended. "Obviously. Might even love you more, but I doubt your Triad of Assholes would feel the same about it. Means I can't let you have that chance." Then he pushed the glistering blue gem, deep as the ocean, into his own mouth.
Time to see how ******** this gets.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 6:02 pm
Malory decided he’d find a way to hurt himself on his nice comfy bed out of sheer, incomprehensible spite. He knew Eles wasn’t liking him being hurt this way at all, and neither did he but he was already hurt! So what was a little more if only to hurt his boy a little more? Pausing that line of logic, he scrunched up his face and nodded. He was still like, super stupid. And very ******** up.
Maybe especially since it still felt like something close to a good idea.
The answer was nice and reassuring. If he woke-up a youma tomorrow, Eles would still love him, and yes, probably more. Or they might both wake up as youma tomorrow, and like frolic through the city, scaring and exhausting people until some mean old senshi turned them into dust. Malory hazily imagined their ending as the starseed disappeared into Eles’s mouth.
Smiling a little he gave a low hum of satisfaction, that Eles had decided to share in it with him.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 6:02 pm
It cracked between his teeth, then crushed in two. Eles half-expected some sweetened, chewy center to greet him afterward. Like a good dream, if dreams had a taste.
Somewhere that shouldn't have been, he heard a woman's voice. Faint as it was, the melody carried just enough that he nearly recognized it. Or, he thought he did, until he heard a thock so unpleasant that he jumped for it. A stiffness spread down his spine, muscles tightening until they cracked. Until the bones beneath shattered and crumpled in capitulation. Until those bones weren't a spine at all.
Until they collapsed into a hole that shouldn't have been there. And he should have shrieked with the way his nerves each split themselves apart in a blinding agony, one so white-hot and insidious that Eles knew, instinctively, that he was being incinerated. And he opened his mouth to say something, to say anything, to make noise enough to alert his poor stupid boy to the fact that he would soon be a pile of ash and please don't let the dogs eat him in case they would catch this crematorium disease —
But what came from his mouth was a wordless breath. A thin spume of wending smoke that spanned the space between them.
He remembered that voice, but he remembered the rhythm more. Tap-tap-thock. Tap-tap-thock. The nagging urge to vomit grew overwhelming and his overcooked mouth flooded with bile. If he said a word, if he made any noise at all, she would find him.
And worse, she would find Malory.
Go, he mouthed as he pushed the boy away — better that he leave now. Better that he wasn't caught up and burned in all this heat.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 6:03 pm
Watching through the dreamy daze of pain and dregs of whatever the ******** that was, a little high from love despite it all, Malory tried to decipher what was happening to Eles. A shock of some kind, then a sudden stiffness, a ramrod straight down his boy’s spine. There was something wrong with his torso, a stomach ache? No the posture was wrong. He was losing something and where there was pain, the horror was even more vivid across his features.
Was he seeing something different? Vaguely, Malory remembered the way the shadows had begun to stretch and spread, and supposed he might have also seen some things. Were starseeds like drugs? Was that why the Negaverse ate them? He couldn’t imagine doing this for fun. At least not more than once.
Sympathy began to seep through his own pain, and Malory reached out to place a comforting palm on Eles’s head only to pause at that, Go. The pleading horror of it. The fact that Eles was looking at him, seeing him, while still holding that horror.
Was it fear?
Ah, but what a horrible way to feel it, to a delusion in the safety of Malory’s home. It won’t count, he decided, reaching a cool, almost chilly hand and placing it against that fevered brow. “No,” he answered firmly, “I’m much too stupid for that.” At least, when in the safety and comfort of his own home.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 6:04 pm
Stupid, self-destructive boy. He tried to swat that hand away before the flames caught it, but the effort to raise his own burning arm felt insurmountable. Fire chased up his forearm as if it were made of tar paper. It dropped to the floor, now useless to him.
He struggled to breathe around the burning — the blaze that made home in his body belched out so much smoke. A sickly smell, like spoiled pork, filled his nose. With it, the sulfurous stink of burning hair. His own breath smelled charred.
And that tap-tap-thock ever circled him, biding all his dread, savoring it like a last delectable meal. Like he would only cease his burning when she finished her song, and there would be hell to pay before she ever considered halting his suffering. He wasn't a good boy, after all. He squandered his potential. Wasted it on pretty little albatrosses that he so readily wore around his neck.
Something in him burned and churned and he sank to the floor. Curled on his side, arms wrapped about his stomach to hold that hurt inside. "******** you," Eles whimpered around his mounting torture. "Just ******** leave. Leave or she'll make you wish. You died."
Eles tried to swallow. He dry heaved instead.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 6:04 pm
Eles began to struggle, but so much more feebly than Malory had ever seen. More than the clear pain, the attempts to struggle, it was the slow slide to acceptance that Malory found upsetting. Well past his own pain, the sight of Eles giving up disturbed him, made something interesting into something a little bit, well, unacceptable.
You don’t get to give up. Even if you are afraid for ******** once.
Sucking in air at the renewed bite of his ribs, Malory slid slowly down to the floor to join his boy. Still out of it and now pissed off, he very ungently lifted Eles’s head by its blonde mop and let it rest on his thigh. “No, she won’t,” Malory sneered, “because if she is waiting for you there, you’re not going back.” ******** the Negaverse, honestly. If it couldn’t get its s**t together, then it could do without a Faustite. And certainly without an Eles.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2025 6:05 pm
His breaths hardly bore the character of his words. "Don't. Touch me." His stomach seized again. He choked on a cough. "You'll." Swallowing, he struggled against a wracking shudder. "Burn. Yourself."
That ********. Trying so hard to care about someone that was going to die. That was hoping to die. That could have used the rest that death promised. He would be the last, and then there would be nothing. Impassive, empty, blessed nothing. But he couldn't keep his hands to himself. No, he always had to find ways to help. To make himself such a troublesome and endearing thing. A target and an assurance that his loyalty would demand a terrible cost someday.
That smell turned acrid as it overcooked. Eles choked on the smoke. Eles choked —
And coughed, hacked hard enough that flecks of spittle left him as his body bent in on itself. That song, her hum — he began to doubt that he was hearing it. That it was anything other than some imagining baked into his thoughts. No, burned into them.
He was sideways. On the floor. No, not the floor. No, on —
And he startled as he tried to scramble upright, to make distance between his burning body and the boy who held him close, but a fist was in his hair and the smoke was gone and all that thumped against the floor was his own heart in his ears. Eles let out a breath. "********," he groaned as he slowly crumpled against the floor.
"What the ******** was that. That was awful." Breathing a sigh, he added, "We're never doing that again."
Ever. On pain of death.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
