Heaven's Ablaze - Chapter 13
Title:: Heaven's Ablaze
Genre:: AU Vam Fanfic
Rating:: R
Summary:: His heaven is ablaze in my eyes
Notes:: This story is based on the album Dark Light. All lyrics are taken from that album, and are copyright of Ville Valo. I do not know or own the characters in this story. The storyline itself is property of me and me alone. This story deals with the themes of religion and a degree of pedophilia. If you have a problem with the themes, dont read it.
Links under the cut
Links
Prologue
Chapter 1 - Accident
Chapter 2 - Pot Luck
Chapter 3 - Warmth
Chapter 4 - Joseph on Wheels
Chapter 5 - My First Christmas
Interlude - Bam
Chapter 6 - Beginnings
Chapter 7 - Music
Chapter 8 - Time
Chapter 9 - Unfortunate Meetings of Unfortunate Friends
Interlude - Bam
Chapter 10 - Journies
Chapter 11 - First Crush
Chapter 12 - Contemptible
Interlude - Bam
Chapter 13 - Bath Tubs
I woke up that night to someone ringing the buzzer to my apartment. But it wasn’t just a normal ring. It sounded like someone was leaning against the button. I got up and picked up the intercom phone.
“Who is it?”
“’S me, Vil’. Lemme in.” I recognized Bam’s voice somewhere in between the slurs and my stomach sank. I knew he’d discovered alcohol with his friends but I never thought it’d come to this.
“Shit. Hold on I’m coming down to get you.” It was getting cold out again, after one of the warmest summers ever. The leaves were falling off the trees and it was dark earlier and earlier. I’d gone to sleep that night with a glass of red wine, thinking about him and wondering what he was up to; my usual routine. I’d given up, by then, of getting him out of my head. I’d just had to accept that he was there to stay. I didn’t know what it meant but I got on with things.
I see the seasons changing…
“Jesus Christ Bam…” I opened the door and found him leaning against the wall, covered in what was presumably his own sick.
“Vil… I feel…”
“Sick, yeah, I figure you must… come on we have to get you upstairs…” I wrapped his arm over my shoulder and supported him up in the elevator, begging him not to be sick until we got into my apartment; when we finally got in the door he broke free from me and ran to the toilet, and almost missed it before I helped him down on the ground and gripped his shoulder while his stomach got rid of the alcohol in it. Then I helped him stand, shakily, and wiped his face clean.
“God,” I said… not only was he drunk, but he looked like he was sick too; there was something going around the school and I was waiting until he got it; his immune system was not really up to scratch. His forehead was burning and he looked feverish and delirious, and not just because of the alcohol.
“Dunno wha’ happened,” he murmured, looking around madly. “Only had two drinks…”
I laughed cynically.
“Bam, this doesn’t happen to someone from two drinks…” He shrugged, and then turned around quickly and fell to the floor in front of the toilet again.
Once he was finished, and was simply sitting on the floor staring at the wall, I realized that I had to do something to clean him up… he couldn’t stay like that. Neither could I return him to his mother in such a state. She’d go spare. He was almost delirious by the time I’d decided what I had to do. I started the bathtub running and pulled him up again.
“Cmon, you need to get these clothes off and get in that tub. You’re a mess.” He nodded but didn’t move. “Bam if you can’t do it I’m going to have to do it for you… but… you should at least try.”
He shrugged and tried to take off his shirt but almost fell over; I caught him and sat him down on the toilet after I’d slammed the cover down.
“Okay, that’s not going to work. I’ll have to do it.” I sighed and pulled his coat and shirt off, and then had him stand up and hold on to the sink while I pulled his pants off.
“Leg up, kid. Now the next one. Right. In the tub.” He looked at me confused.
“With my boxers on?”
“Well you can take them off if you want… not that I’ve never seen a man naked before, I just thought you’d be more comfortable with them on.”
He shrugged and tried to climb in the tub; but I realized that wasn’t going to work and ended up picking him up and laying him in it myself.
He sighed and lay back against the end of the bathtub while I checked that the water wasn’t going to scald him.
“You okay?” I asked; he didn’t answer. He’d either fallen asleep or passed out. I couldn’t wake him up, so I just sat at the edge of the tub, having pulled a chair in for myself, and held him up so that he didn’t drown. Once there was enough water in the tub, I turned off the faucet and took up a sponge and started to wash him gently, one hand under his arm to make sure he didn’t fall down into the water.
“Jesus Bam,” I said quietly, shaking my head. I never thought I’d ever have to do this for him, of all people. It was obvious to me that someone had fooled with his drinks on purpose to get him into this state, probably to make fun of him because he didn’t drink normally. I could have killed them. He was sweating and his breathing was labored, and I know as well as the next person that getting drunk when you’re sick doesn’t do anything for you. He looked so helpless in that tub, basically naked and flushed pink and collapsed and depending on me to hold him up.
I couldn’t stop my hand from moving to his face to brush some hair out of his eyes; I’d been sitting there looking at him for a good 10 minutes, having finished sponging all the sick off of him. He looked so peaceful.
When my fingers touched his face, though, he sprung to life. He jumped and water splashed all over me and the floor, and his hand grabbed mine on his face. He must have been slowly waking up by then and the touch must have shocked him back to life. When he realized where he was and how hard he was holding my hand, he just looked up at me.
And in the heart of this autumn I fall…
It was that look that did it.
He looked so scared, so helpless, and yet so thankful… it broke my heart.
And it sent me tumbling.
With the leaves from the trees
I bit my lip and shook my head slightly at him. The look on his face told me that he knew how I felt, told me that he felt the same.
And it scared me.
He hadn’t let go of my hand. He wasn’t holding it fiercely anymore. He was just holding it to his face and leaning into it, breathing heavily. I moved my other hand from under his arm and pulled the rest of his hair out of his face. Then I was pulling him out of the water and wrapping him, shivering in the middle of the bathroom floor, into a towel, and holding him close.
He wrapped his arms around me and snuggled his head into my chest, and we stood there like that for a while. I just listened to his breathing and to the water flowing out of the tub, and felt my heart slip away, out of my control. When I finally pulled him back by his shoulders, I think there were tears in my eyes. He reached up to wipe one away and I smiled at him and tried to ignore how I’d thrilled at his touch.
“You need to get some clothes on,” I said after a bit, my voice hoarse and thick. He bit his lip, still feverish, and nodded, though I knew he couldn’t walk.
I carried him to my room and laid him down on my bed and pulled out some sweatpants and a sweatshirt for him, as well as some boxers, since his were now wet.
When I turned to hand him the clothes I realized that in the time it’d taken for me to find them, he’d fallen asleep. He looked so peaceful I was tempted to just leave him like that.
But there was a problem; he was still soaking wet and sick. I couldn’t leave him like that. He had to get into dry clothes, but it didn’t seem like there was any waking him to do so.
I tried not to look at him as I peeled off his wet boxers and slid new ones on; I tried to do it without him waking up, but once I’d got them on he stirred again and opened his eyes wearily. He looked a bit scared at first but then he realized where he was and who I was, I suppose, and his face softened a bit. Something happened to my stomach when I was looking at him and I had to stand up quickly and walk away from him shaking my head.
“God… Bam…” I realized it was the only thing I’d been able to say for the past half hour but I couldn’t think of anything else… it was the only thing that came to me.
He looked close to tears, of frustration and embarrassment, when I finally caught my breath and courage and looked back at him on the bed. I sighed and sat down next to him, gripping his shoulder.
“It has to happen to everyone once,” I said, trying to be encouraging and probably failing miserably. He nodded and just looked at me again, like he couldn’t take his eyes off of me.
“What?” I asked him, blinking. It was a very uncomfortable situation for me. Very, very uncomfortable.
He shook his head slightly and looked away; it was almost a relief to have his piercing blue eyes off of me.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, after a while of us both sitting there staring at opposite ends of the room.
“What for?” I asked, turning to look at him again. I couldn’t help it. How could anyone not look at him?
“For all of this…” He waved his arms in the air feebly to try and make his point clear but I still wasn’t really getting it.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m glad I was able to help you.” He nodded and sighed. Silence again.
Then, “Vil?” His voice was meek and small and child like and once again I started to feel my age.
“Yeah Bam?” I could tell he was scared. I could tell he didn’t know what to do. I could tell that this was all just as confusing to him as it was to me.
“Can… could… hold me?” he stuttered, biting his lip the whole time; the question came out in a jumbled mumble but I understood well enough.
Heaven’s ablaze in your eyes…
What could I do? What would you have done? Shook your head and turned away and left him laying there, shaking, sick, scared and lost on your bed? If you would have done that then you have an even colder heart than I had before Bam thawed it out. No. There was no other choice.
I opened my arms to him, took him, shaking, into them, and I held him close to me while he trembled on my lap. It was as he snuggled his head into my chest below my chin and wrapped his own arms around me that I knew.
I’d fallen in love with him; my angel, my saint, my best friend.
He was 13 years younger than me. He was 16 years old, a child still, and yet when I looked at him I saw someone a thousand times more mature than I would ever be.
He was perfect. Almost untouched and innocent in every way and I didn’t deserve to even be in the same room as him.
But I loved him.
With ever beat of my hammering heart, I adored him.
My angel, my saving grace.
Love’s our shadow on the wall, with the Face of God
He understood me. Everything about me was completely foreign to his sanitary world, but he understood it, almost without question.
It was in that moment that I realized I was completely enraptured with him. That very moment, when I pressed my dry, cracking lips to his damp, matted hair.
I knew I loved him. I couldn’t escape it, I knew that too. I’d never bring myself to leave, and if I didn’t, then there was no way I could avoid him.
I couldn’t hide it, either. Everything about my love for him was horribly wrong, but there was no way in hell I could have suppressed it. I knew what would happen if I tried.
Drunken stupors never ending. Desperate pursuits of magical white powder, leading to even more desperate pursuits of the money with which to buy that powder. Back rooms of strip joints and the front rooms of brothels, body on display, selling myself to drown my hopeless, unacknowledged love.
No. I wasn’t going down that path again. I’d left Vegas behind me; I wasn’t going to find it again in Philadelphia.
There was only one way forwards.
Genre:: AU Vam Fanfic
Rating:: R
Summary:: His heaven is ablaze in my eyes
Notes:: This story is based on the album Dark Light. All lyrics are taken from that album, and are copyright of Ville Valo. I do not know or own the characters in this story. The storyline itself is property of me and me alone. This story deals with the themes of religion and a degree of pedophilia. If you have a problem with the themes, dont read it.
Links under the cut
Links
Prologue
Chapter 1 - Accident
Chapter 2 - Pot Luck
Chapter 3 - Warmth
Chapter 4 - Joseph on Wheels
Chapter 5 - My First Christmas
Interlude - Bam
Chapter 6 - Beginnings
Chapter 7 - Music
Chapter 8 - Time
Chapter 9 - Unfortunate Meetings of Unfortunate Friends
Interlude - Bam
Chapter 10 - Journies
Chapter 11 - First Crush
Chapter 12 - Contemptible
Interlude - Bam
Chapter 13 - Bath Tubs
I woke up that night to someone ringing the buzzer to my apartment. But it wasn’t just a normal ring. It sounded like someone was leaning against the button. I got up and picked up the intercom phone.
“Who is it?”
“’S me, Vil’. Lemme in.” I recognized Bam’s voice somewhere in between the slurs and my stomach sank. I knew he’d discovered alcohol with his friends but I never thought it’d come to this.
“Shit. Hold on I’m coming down to get you.” It was getting cold out again, after one of the warmest summers ever. The leaves were falling off the trees and it was dark earlier and earlier. I’d gone to sleep that night with a glass of red wine, thinking about him and wondering what he was up to; my usual routine. I’d given up, by then, of getting him out of my head. I’d just had to accept that he was there to stay. I didn’t know what it meant but I got on with things.
I see the seasons changing…
“Jesus Christ Bam…” I opened the door and found him leaning against the wall, covered in what was presumably his own sick.
“Vil… I feel…”
“Sick, yeah, I figure you must… come on we have to get you upstairs…” I wrapped his arm over my shoulder and supported him up in the elevator, begging him not to be sick until we got into my apartment; when we finally got in the door he broke free from me and ran to the toilet, and almost missed it before I helped him down on the ground and gripped his shoulder while his stomach got rid of the alcohol in it. Then I helped him stand, shakily, and wiped his face clean.
“God,” I said… not only was he drunk, but he looked like he was sick too; there was something going around the school and I was waiting until he got it; his immune system was not really up to scratch. His forehead was burning and he looked feverish and delirious, and not just because of the alcohol.
“Dunno wha’ happened,” he murmured, looking around madly. “Only had two drinks…”
I laughed cynically.
“Bam, this doesn’t happen to someone from two drinks…” He shrugged, and then turned around quickly and fell to the floor in front of the toilet again.
Once he was finished, and was simply sitting on the floor staring at the wall, I realized that I had to do something to clean him up… he couldn’t stay like that. Neither could I return him to his mother in such a state. She’d go spare. He was almost delirious by the time I’d decided what I had to do. I started the bathtub running and pulled him up again.
“Cmon, you need to get these clothes off and get in that tub. You’re a mess.” He nodded but didn’t move. “Bam if you can’t do it I’m going to have to do it for you… but… you should at least try.”
He shrugged and tried to take off his shirt but almost fell over; I caught him and sat him down on the toilet after I’d slammed the cover down.
“Okay, that’s not going to work. I’ll have to do it.” I sighed and pulled his coat and shirt off, and then had him stand up and hold on to the sink while I pulled his pants off.
“Leg up, kid. Now the next one. Right. In the tub.” He looked at me confused.
“With my boxers on?”
“Well you can take them off if you want… not that I’ve never seen a man naked before, I just thought you’d be more comfortable with them on.”
He shrugged and tried to climb in the tub; but I realized that wasn’t going to work and ended up picking him up and laying him in it myself.
He sighed and lay back against the end of the bathtub while I checked that the water wasn’t going to scald him.
“You okay?” I asked; he didn’t answer. He’d either fallen asleep or passed out. I couldn’t wake him up, so I just sat at the edge of the tub, having pulled a chair in for myself, and held him up so that he didn’t drown. Once there was enough water in the tub, I turned off the faucet and took up a sponge and started to wash him gently, one hand under his arm to make sure he didn’t fall down into the water.
“Jesus Bam,” I said quietly, shaking my head. I never thought I’d ever have to do this for him, of all people. It was obvious to me that someone had fooled with his drinks on purpose to get him into this state, probably to make fun of him because he didn’t drink normally. I could have killed them. He was sweating and his breathing was labored, and I know as well as the next person that getting drunk when you’re sick doesn’t do anything for you. He looked so helpless in that tub, basically naked and flushed pink and collapsed and depending on me to hold him up.
I couldn’t stop my hand from moving to his face to brush some hair out of his eyes; I’d been sitting there looking at him for a good 10 minutes, having finished sponging all the sick off of him. He looked so peaceful.
When my fingers touched his face, though, he sprung to life. He jumped and water splashed all over me and the floor, and his hand grabbed mine on his face. He must have been slowly waking up by then and the touch must have shocked him back to life. When he realized where he was and how hard he was holding my hand, he just looked up at me.
And in the heart of this autumn I fall…
It was that look that did it.
He looked so scared, so helpless, and yet so thankful… it broke my heart.
And it sent me tumbling.
With the leaves from the trees
I bit my lip and shook my head slightly at him. The look on his face told me that he knew how I felt, told me that he felt the same.
And it scared me.
He hadn’t let go of my hand. He wasn’t holding it fiercely anymore. He was just holding it to his face and leaning into it, breathing heavily. I moved my other hand from under his arm and pulled the rest of his hair out of his face. Then I was pulling him out of the water and wrapping him, shivering in the middle of the bathroom floor, into a towel, and holding him close.
He wrapped his arms around me and snuggled his head into my chest, and we stood there like that for a while. I just listened to his breathing and to the water flowing out of the tub, and felt my heart slip away, out of my control. When I finally pulled him back by his shoulders, I think there were tears in my eyes. He reached up to wipe one away and I smiled at him and tried to ignore how I’d thrilled at his touch.
“You need to get some clothes on,” I said after a bit, my voice hoarse and thick. He bit his lip, still feverish, and nodded, though I knew he couldn’t walk.
I carried him to my room and laid him down on my bed and pulled out some sweatpants and a sweatshirt for him, as well as some boxers, since his were now wet.
When I turned to hand him the clothes I realized that in the time it’d taken for me to find them, he’d fallen asleep. He looked so peaceful I was tempted to just leave him like that.
But there was a problem; he was still soaking wet and sick. I couldn’t leave him like that. He had to get into dry clothes, but it didn’t seem like there was any waking him to do so.
I tried not to look at him as I peeled off his wet boxers and slid new ones on; I tried to do it without him waking up, but once I’d got them on he stirred again and opened his eyes wearily. He looked a bit scared at first but then he realized where he was and who I was, I suppose, and his face softened a bit. Something happened to my stomach when I was looking at him and I had to stand up quickly and walk away from him shaking my head.
“God… Bam…” I realized it was the only thing I’d been able to say for the past half hour but I couldn’t think of anything else… it was the only thing that came to me.
He looked close to tears, of frustration and embarrassment, when I finally caught my breath and courage and looked back at him on the bed. I sighed and sat down next to him, gripping his shoulder.
“It has to happen to everyone once,” I said, trying to be encouraging and probably failing miserably. He nodded and just looked at me again, like he couldn’t take his eyes off of me.
“What?” I asked him, blinking. It was a very uncomfortable situation for me. Very, very uncomfortable.
He shook his head slightly and looked away; it was almost a relief to have his piercing blue eyes off of me.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, after a while of us both sitting there staring at opposite ends of the room.
“What for?” I asked, turning to look at him again. I couldn’t help it. How could anyone not look at him?
“For all of this…” He waved his arms in the air feebly to try and make his point clear but I still wasn’t really getting it.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m glad I was able to help you.” He nodded and sighed. Silence again.
Then, “Vil?” His voice was meek and small and child like and once again I started to feel my age.
“Yeah Bam?” I could tell he was scared. I could tell he didn’t know what to do. I could tell that this was all just as confusing to him as it was to me.
“Can… could… hold me?” he stuttered, biting his lip the whole time; the question came out in a jumbled mumble but I understood well enough.
Heaven’s ablaze in your eyes…
What could I do? What would you have done? Shook your head and turned away and left him laying there, shaking, sick, scared and lost on your bed? If you would have done that then you have an even colder heart than I had before Bam thawed it out. No. There was no other choice.
I opened my arms to him, took him, shaking, into them, and I held him close to me while he trembled on my lap. It was as he snuggled his head into my chest below my chin and wrapped his own arms around me that I knew.
I’d fallen in love with him; my angel, my saint, my best friend.
He was 13 years younger than me. He was 16 years old, a child still, and yet when I looked at him I saw someone a thousand times more mature than I would ever be.
He was perfect. Almost untouched and innocent in every way and I didn’t deserve to even be in the same room as him.
But I loved him.
With ever beat of my hammering heart, I adored him.
My angel, my saving grace.
Love’s our shadow on the wall, with the Face of God
He understood me. Everything about me was completely foreign to his sanitary world, but he understood it, almost without question.
It was in that moment that I realized I was completely enraptured with him. That very moment, when I pressed my dry, cracking lips to his damp, matted hair.
I knew I loved him. I couldn’t escape it, I knew that too. I’d never bring myself to leave, and if I didn’t, then there was no way I could avoid him.
I couldn’t hide it, either. Everything about my love for him was horribly wrong, but there was no way in hell I could have suppressed it. I knew what would happen if I tried.
Drunken stupors never ending. Desperate pursuits of magical white powder, leading to even more desperate pursuits of the money with which to buy that powder. Back rooms of strip joints and the front rooms of brothels, body on display, selling myself to drown my hopeless, unacknowledged love.
No. I wasn’t going down that path again. I’d left Vegas behind me; I wasn’t going to find it again in Philadelphia.
There was only one way forwards.