[closed/complete]
Characters: Famine (eatasam) and Pestilence (yourbane)
Date/Time: June 2, morning
Location: Their apartment
Rating: Medium
Warnings: Language, some implied sexual content
Summary: Famine is back from the dead.
Disoriented.
That was how Famine felt upon waking, his head swimming with not questions about where he was, but noise. Like the static on a television. White noise. The first thing he noticed once his eyes opened was the back of someone’s head. Logically, he wasn’t supposed to be seeing anything, let alone the back of someone’s head.
It took a couple of seconds for everything else to sink in. Like the fact that he was in bed, wearing the t-shirt he’d jacked from Pestilence the night before everything went to hell. That his dog was asleep next to that bed, that he was in his room.
That he wasn’t dead. Far from it.
A head rush assailed the slender Horseman from all directions as he slipped off the mattress and beelined for the window, throwing the curtains open so impatiently that they nearly broke off the rod. The view was normal. People were walking down below, and New York hadn’t been totaled. Everything was as it should have been.
That light gaze fell to the hands pressed up against the window pane. The cuts and the burns were still there. And judging from the pain at his hip, so was his other wound. Famine slipped a hand to his side, fingers brushing beneath of the cotton of the shirt to graze the laceration -- or what had once been one, as all he felt was scarring.
He was so fucking confused, and that sudden searing pain from touching the wound was not helping to clear that haze up.
The sound of the curtains being ripped open made Pestilence’s eyes fly open. “Gaunt,” he muttered petulantly, assuming it was the kitten until he rolled over onto his other side. Dark eyes widened. Chapped lips parted, but no words followed. Pestilence could only stare at the silhouette of his sibling standing by the window.
Was he seeing a ghost?
A figment of his own imagination?
Famine was dead, and if he fooled himself into thinking differently... Pestilence shut his eyes, then reopened them, but it didn’t make the vision vanish. It was still standing there.
Finally, Pestilence decided, “I’m dreaming.” It was a safe, logical conclusion.
And it was about the only conclusion that Famine could come to himself, because this wasn’t possible. It was about as possible as their limbs rotting off, but this couldn’t compare. Had he really died and been revived, or dreamed the entire thing? The marring on his body said otherwise, as did the pain throbbing at his hip.
He slowly turned his head to peer over his shoulder at the boy in the bed, suddenly aware of how familiar he looked. Pestilence. This was the room he shared with his brother, so it was only logical to assume Pestilence would be in the bed with him. But he wasn’t ready for the sight of his brother’s face.
“Pest,” he whispered disbelievingly. None of this made sense. None of it.
That voice. Why did it sound so real? Pestilence pushed himself up, sitting and looking blankly ahead at the figure assuming the shape of Famine. If this was a dream, why should he waste it by wishing he would wake up? The horseman’s stare narrowed into an accusatory glare. “You died,” he snarled, hands balling into fists clutching the bedsheets. “You weren’t supposed to die. I was in a fucking wheelchair for fuck’s sake. How did I outlive you?”
The onslaught of questions and accusations were cut off by the emotion welling up in his throat.
It was a good thing that the other boy had chosen to speak first, because Famine wasn’t sure his own throat would work. It felt like sandpaper. His post at the window was abandoned as he stepped closer toward the bed, holding Pestilence’s gaze until his knee hit the mattress. He tore his eyes away as he took a seat, hand flying back to his hip.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember much.” An elbow was balanced against his knee, and he dropped his aching head into a palm. He needed an Aspirin or five. “It was an infection. War was there.” But she’d been with him the entire ride, so of course she’d been there. There to witness every cut, every burn. And there to hold him in her arms as he slipped away.
Famine moved his other hand to his face, pressing the heels of both hands into the back of his eyes like it’d remove the pain and the pressure. But it proved ineffective. “I’m supposed to be dead, Pestilence. I’m not supposed to--”
He didn’t want to talk anymore. Nausea began to stir in his stomach the phantom pain throbbed at his side.
An infection. How ironic. Pestilence almost laughed, but he was too mirthless to muster the sound. He could only watch as his brother sat there on the bed, obviously in pain. From what, he didn’t know, but if those lacerations and burn marks on his hands were any indication...
Pestilence frowned to himself. He couldn’t remember his dreams ever being so vivid. As close as Famine was, mere inches away, the horseman still wasn’t completely convinced he wasn’t dreaming. He needed proof. He needed something tangible.
The horseman laid a hand on Famine’s knee. Smooth skin, the jutting cap, and up the thigh. His fingers roamed all over his brother’s leg, as if testing the flesh for authenticity.
“You feel... alive,” Pestilence decided, confusion lacing his whisper. He couldn’t believe it. Even after all the weird distortions of reality, it was hard to suspend disbelief. “Are you?”
Usually not one to recoil from a sibling’s touch, the younger man had stiffened, but only for a moment. He felt so detached from himself, so wrong, that anything outside of his body felt foreign. But those fingers, that voice, they were familiar.
Famine uncovered his face in order to look Pestilence in the eye, swallowing as gently as he could to prevent his throat from aching too much. “I feel like shit,” he revealed without a single note of amusement, leaving it at that as if that was a sufficient enough answer.
A couple of svelte digits trailed upward, tracing down the other’s nose, brushing the curve of a cheekbone. He, too, felt real. Alive.
Pestilence smiled. It wasn’t Famine’s pain that amused him. It was the simple sincerity of the statement. It was Famine.
Reaching up, he curled his hand around those reedy digits and leaned forward, closing the distance between their lips. What began as a soft, tentative kiss, became fervent, demanding, and desperate. Pestilence hadn’t been able to do this for so long. He thought he would never get the chance to do it again.
Under normal circumstances, of which there hadn’t been many in the last few months, Famine would have melted into the kiss, but now he felt guarded. Not because of his brother, but because this still felt surreal. Unnatural. Still he returned the kiss with equal fervor, placing his free hand on Pestilence’s cheek just before breaking the lip lock.
“Missed you, Wheels,” came his whisper before resuming the kiss.
This was probably about as much of a shove back into reality as he’d get.
Pestilence fisted a hand in the shirt Famine had pilfered from him. “You have no idea, Bones,” he muttered against his brother’s lips. The horseman couldn’t begin to describe the pain of never knowing when, or if, he’d ever see Famine again. The only way he could express a slither of that misery was by thoroughly ravaging the other horseman’s mouth.
Without breaking the kiss, Pestilence slowly laid back down on the bed, bringing Famine with him.
The pull was allowed, even appreciated, but then the pain exploded, coursing down the slender boy’s legs and forcing him to break away again with a moan of not pleasure, but discomfort. He squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his forehead to Pestilence’s while he waited for the unpleasant sensation to subside.
Even if the gash was gone, the pain still remained, like his other cuts had remained. The shoddy stitching job might have disappeared, but it left behind a scar, a reminder of how he’d lost his life in his sister’s arms.
Pestilence’s brows creased, knitting together. He hadn’t caused that. That much was obvious. He could feel Famine’s heart racing against his chest. The pulse strong but fluttering. Patiently, he waited for a few beats before asking in a murmur, “Where does it hurt?”
If the horseman remembered correctly, he still had a few leftover pills of oxycodone, but he would need to diagnose the source of pain first.
There was no verbal response, only a physical one as Famine reached out to take a hand, maneuvering that arm so he could brush his sibling’s fingers along the scar just above his pelvic crest. It ran about three inches in length, and was much too thick to be the product of a blade. This was the work of a beast.
As much as pain could often be attractive, this was not something he considered pleasurable. Not when it could get his knees buckling in seconds the longer he was without painkillers. He may not have been bleeding any longer, or suffering from the feverish infection, but whatever laid beneath still pained him.
‘Everywhere’ might have been the most accurate response to Pestilence’s question.
Pestilence’s fingertips could distinguish healthy flesh from scars. The marred skin was smoother, softer, different. His fingerpads skimmed across the scar, mapping the length and width of it. This scar had not been here before - Pestilence knew his brother’s body well enough to know that much.
“Is this how you got the infection?” he questioned, careful not to apply too much pressure to the source of phantom pain. “We could see what painkillers do to help it.”
With a defiant shake of his head, Famine adjusted himself to tuck his face into the crook of his sibling’s neck. “Fuck the painkillers.” His words were somewhat muffled as he took a moment to breathe in the familiar scent of Pestilence’s skin. “You come first.”
Being without the other two had been hard, but not entirely miserable. He’d still had War at his side, until the end as it so happened, and he knew they’d reunite someday, somehow. Though laying there in his deathbed had led him to realize he’d never be able to say goodbye to his remaining siblings, nor reassure them that they’d meet again in another life. Because they would. He had to believe that.
And he would suffer through any pain in the world to be reunited with his fellow riders.
“Don’t be stupid,” Pestilence protested. Concern for his sibling outweighed his own physical needs. He couldn’t even snicker at the double entendre his brother made. The horseman knew Famine didn’t derive pleasure from pain the way he did. Not to the same extreme.
“The pills should be right over there, in the bedside drawer,” he said, canting his head off to the side. He kept them close by, obviously, because he couldn’t simply stroll out of bed to get them when they were most needed.
There was a childish huff against his neck as Famine leaned up, shifted off, and awkwardly crawled toward said bedside drawer. “I hate how you’re such a fucking doctor,” came his grumble as he retrieved the pill bottle, uncapped the top, and swallowed two of them dry. Having to rely on medication to feel better really didn’t sit well with him, but maybe that was his fault for moving in with a med student to begin with.
He paused, then, scanning the label of the bottle before relocating that gaze to the burn running down the inside of his wrist. It was an angry pink in color, but it didn’t hurt nearly as much as the scar. A burn sustained from burning Coney Island to the ground, or at least intending to.
The memories of receiving those wounds, including the one along his hip, began to flood back in a rush of images, and that nauseous feeling resurfaced.
“It must be miserable, being stuck with someone who cares about your health,” Pestilence snarked back. His eyes remained fixed on Famine, watching his every movement, following his gaze. The burned flesh didn’t escape his notice, and he made a mental note to find aloe vera. Later.
He had already made his one selfless act of the day. His fingers bunched in the folds of Famine’s shirt and gave a small tug. “Lay down again. I can’t kiss you from down here.”
No complaint or disobedience were given as the bottle was returned to the drawer. Not at first. The slimmer boy resumed his former position with a pained wince, planting his hand next to his brother’s head in order to balance himself.
“Don’t make so many demands,” he muttered against those lips, “I just came back from the fucking dead, remember?” Like we’ll ever forget that, Famine mentally added before claiming another kiss. Even if this wasn’t real, even if some sliver of his conscious was convinced this was still a dream, it was a pretty good dream. Or it would be until he woke up, still very much dead, still in that room.
But the dead had no mental function, and therefore didn’t dream. He’d have to accept that he was alive for now, and trusted Pestilence to help him realize just how alive he really was.
“You’re like my own personal Jesus.” Pestilence smirked, fully aware he was making a terrible 80s reference. He would have tacked on, ‘shut up and kiss me’ - but Famine beat him to the punch.
The horseman had every intention of seeing just how well Famine’s blood was coursing through his veins. Starting with one hand cupping the other horseman’s groin, and the other reaching up to tug on those reddish brown strands.
And that intent was returned, beginning with a hand sliding under the other’s shirt, resting against the steady beating of a heart. After a couple of beats, that shirt was yanked upward, the first of few articles of clothing to be pushed out of the way.
Words were no longer needed when the physicality was enough for confirmation. But they were beyond that -- they hadn’t seen each other for two weeks, been separated when they needed the other riders most, and Famine had died without the chance to say goodbye.
He’d settle for giving him a memorable hello instead.
Date/Time: June 2, morning
Location: Their apartment
Rating: Medium
Warnings: Language, some implied sexual content
Summary: Famine is back from the dead.
Disoriented.
That was how Famine felt upon waking, his head swimming with not questions about where he was, but noise. Like the static on a television. White noise. The first thing he noticed once his eyes opened was the back of someone’s head. Logically, he wasn’t supposed to be seeing anything, let alone the back of someone’s head.
It took a couple of seconds for everything else to sink in. Like the fact that he was in bed, wearing the t-shirt he’d jacked from Pestilence the night before everything went to hell. That his dog was asleep next to that bed, that he was in his room.
That he wasn’t dead. Far from it.
A head rush assailed the slender Horseman from all directions as he slipped off the mattress and beelined for the window, throwing the curtains open so impatiently that they nearly broke off the rod. The view was normal. People were walking down below, and New York hadn’t been totaled. Everything was as it should have been.
That light gaze fell to the hands pressed up against the window pane. The cuts and the burns were still there. And judging from the pain at his hip, so was his other wound. Famine slipped a hand to his side, fingers brushing beneath of the cotton of the shirt to graze the laceration -- or what had once been one, as all he felt was scarring.
He was so fucking confused, and that sudden searing pain from touching the wound was not helping to clear that haze up.
The sound of the curtains being ripped open made Pestilence’s eyes fly open. “Gaunt,” he muttered petulantly, assuming it was the kitten until he rolled over onto his other side. Dark eyes widened. Chapped lips parted, but no words followed. Pestilence could only stare at the silhouette of his sibling standing by the window.
Was he seeing a ghost?
A figment of his own imagination?
Famine was dead, and if he fooled himself into thinking differently... Pestilence shut his eyes, then reopened them, but it didn’t make the vision vanish. It was still standing there.
Finally, Pestilence decided, “I’m dreaming.” It was a safe, logical conclusion.
And it was about the only conclusion that Famine could come to himself, because this wasn’t possible. It was about as possible as their limbs rotting off, but this couldn’t compare. Had he really died and been revived, or dreamed the entire thing? The marring on his body said otherwise, as did the pain throbbing at his hip.
He slowly turned his head to peer over his shoulder at the boy in the bed, suddenly aware of how familiar he looked. Pestilence. This was the room he shared with his brother, so it was only logical to assume Pestilence would be in the bed with him. But he wasn’t ready for the sight of his brother’s face.
“Pest,” he whispered disbelievingly. None of this made sense. None of it.
That voice. Why did it sound so real? Pestilence pushed himself up, sitting and looking blankly ahead at the figure assuming the shape of Famine. If this was a dream, why should he waste it by wishing he would wake up? The horseman’s stare narrowed into an accusatory glare. “You died,” he snarled, hands balling into fists clutching the bedsheets. “You weren’t supposed to die. I was in a fucking wheelchair for fuck’s sake. How did I outlive you?”
The onslaught of questions and accusations were cut off by the emotion welling up in his throat.
It was a good thing that the other boy had chosen to speak first, because Famine wasn’t sure his own throat would work. It felt like sandpaper. His post at the window was abandoned as he stepped closer toward the bed, holding Pestilence’s gaze until his knee hit the mattress. He tore his eyes away as he took a seat, hand flying back to his hip.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember much.” An elbow was balanced against his knee, and he dropped his aching head into a palm. He needed an Aspirin or five. “It was an infection. War was there.” But she’d been with him the entire ride, so of course she’d been there. There to witness every cut, every burn. And there to hold him in her arms as he slipped away.
Famine moved his other hand to his face, pressing the heels of both hands into the back of his eyes like it’d remove the pain and the pressure. But it proved ineffective. “I’m supposed to be dead, Pestilence. I’m not supposed to--”
He didn’t want to talk anymore. Nausea began to stir in his stomach the phantom pain throbbed at his side.
An infection. How ironic. Pestilence almost laughed, but he was too mirthless to muster the sound. He could only watch as his brother sat there on the bed, obviously in pain. From what, he didn’t know, but if those lacerations and burn marks on his hands were any indication...
Pestilence frowned to himself. He couldn’t remember his dreams ever being so vivid. As close as Famine was, mere inches away, the horseman still wasn’t completely convinced he wasn’t dreaming. He needed proof. He needed something tangible.
The horseman laid a hand on Famine’s knee. Smooth skin, the jutting cap, and up the thigh. His fingers roamed all over his brother’s leg, as if testing the flesh for authenticity.
“You feel... alive,” Pestilence decided, confusion lacing his whisper. He couldn’t believe it. Even after all the weird distortions of reality, it was hard to suspend disbelief. “Are you?”
Usually not one to recoil from a sibling’s touch, the younger man had stiffened, but only for a moment. He felt so detached from himself, so wrong, that anything outside of his body felt foreign. But those fingers, that voice, they were familiar.
Famine uncovered his face in order to look Pestilence in the eye, swallowing as gently as he could to prevent his throat from aching too much. “I feel like shit,” he revealed without a single note of amusement, leaving it at that as if that was a sufficient enough answer.
A couple of svelte digits trailed upward, tracing down the other’s nose, brushing the curve of a cheekbone. He, too, felt real. Alive.
Pestilence smiled. It wasn’t Famine’s pain that amused him. It was the simple sincerity of the statement. It was Famine.
Reaching up, he curled his hand around those reedy digits and leaned forward, closing the distance between their lips. What began as a soft, tentative kiss, became fervent, demanding, and desperate. Pestilence hadn’t been able to do this for so long. He thought he would never get the chance to do it again.
Under normal circumstances, of which there hadn’t been many in the last few months, Famine would have melted into the kiss, but now he felt guarded. Not because of his brother, but because this still felt surreal. Unnatural. Still he returned the kiss with equal fervor, placing his free hand on Pestilence’s cheek just before breaking the lip lock.
“Missed you, Wheels,” came his whisper before resuming the kiss.
This was probably about as much of a shove back into reality as he’d get.
Pestilence fisted a hand in the shirt Famine had pilfered from him. “You have no idea, Bones,” he muttered against his brother’s lips. The horseman couldn’t begin to describe the pain of never knowing when, or if, he’d ever see Famine again. The only way he could express a slither of that misery was by thoroughly ravaging the other horseman’s mouth.
Without breaking the kiss, Pestilence slowly laid back down on the bed, bringing Famine with him.
The pull was allowed, even appreciated, but then the pain exploded, coursing down the slender boy’s legs and forcing him to break away again with a moan of not pleasure, but discomfort. He squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his forehead to Pestilence’s while he waited for the unpleasant sensation to subside.
Even if the gash was gone, the pain still remained, like his other cuts had remained. The shoddy stitching job might have disappeared, but it left behind a scar, a reminder of how he’d lost his life in his sister’s arms.
Pestilence’s brows creased, knitting together. He hadn’t caused that. That much was obvious. He could feel Famine’s heart racing against his chest. The pulse strong but fluttering. Patiently, he waited for a few beats before asking in a murmur, “Where does it hurt?”
If the horseman remembered correctly, he still had a few leftover pills of oxycodone, but he would need to diagnose the source of pain first.
There was no verbal response, only a physical one as Famine reached out to take a hand, maneuvering that arm so he could brush his sibling’s fingers along the scar just above his pelvic crest. It ran about three inches in length, and was much too thick to be the product of a blade. This was the work of a beast.
As much as pain could often be attractive, this was not something he considered pleasurable. Not when it could get his knees buckling in seconds the longer he was without painkillers. He may not have been bleeding any longer, or suffering from the feverish infection, but whatever laid beneath still pained him.
‘Everywhere’ might have been the most accurate response to Pestilence’s question.
Pestilence’s fingertips could distinguish healthy flesh from scars. The marred skin was smoother, softer, different. His fingerpads skimmed across the scar, mapping the length and width of it. This scar had not been here before - Pestilence knew his brother’s body well enough to know that much.
“Is this how you got the infection?” he questioned, careful not to apply too much pressure to the source of phantom pain. “We could see what painkillers do to help it.”
With a defiant shake of his head, Famine adjusted himself to tuck his face into the crook of his sibling’s neck. “Fuck the painkillers.” His words were somewhat muffled as he took a moment to breathe in the familiar scent of Pestilence’s skin. “You come first.”
Being without the other two had been hard, but not entirely miserable. He’d still had War at his side, until the end as it so happened, and he knew they’d reunite someday, somehow. Though laying there in his deathbed had led him to realize he’d never be able to say goodbye to his remaining siblings, nor reassure them that they’d meet again in another life. Because they would. He had to believe that.
And he would suffer through any pain in the world to be reunited with his fellow riders.
“Don’t be stupid,” Pestilence protested. Concern for his sibling outweighed his own physical needs. He couldn’t even snicker at the double entendre his brother made. The horseman knew Famine didn’t derive pleasure from pain the way he did. Not to the same extreme.
“The pills should be right over there, in the bedside drawer,” he said, canting his head off to the side. He kept them close by, obviously, because he couldn’t simply stroll out of bed to get them when they were most needed.
There was a childish huff against his neck as Famine leaned up, shifted off, and awkwardly crawled toward said bedside drawer. “I hate how you’re such a fucking doctor,” came his grumble as he retrieved the pill bottle, uncapped the top, and swallowed two of them dry. Having to rely on medication to feel better really didn’t sit well with him, but maybe that was his fault for moving in with a med student to begin with.
He paused, then, scanning the label of the bottle before relocating that gaze to the burn running down the inside of his wrist. It was an angry pink in color, but it didn’t hurt nearly as much as the scar. A burn sustained from burning Coney Island to the ground, or at least intending to.
The memories of receiving those wounds, including the one along his hip, began to flood back in a rush of images, and that nauseous feeling resurfaced.
“It must be miserable, being stuck with someone who cares about your health,” Pestilence snarked back. His eyes remained fixed on Famine, watching his every movement, following his gaze. The burned flesh didn’t escape his notice, and he made a mental note to find aloe vera. Later.
He had already made his one selfless act of the day. His fingers bunched in the folds of Famine’s shirt and gave a small tug. “Lay down again. I can’t kiss you from down here.”
No complaint or disobedience were given as the bottle was returned to the drawer. Not at first. The slimmer boy resumed his former position with a pained wince, planting his hand next to his brother’s head in order to balance himself.
“Don’t make so many demands,” he muttered against those lips, “I just came back from the fucking dead, remember?” Like we’ll ever forget that, Famine mentally added before claiming another kiss. Even if this wasn’t real, even if some sliver of his conscious was convinced this was still a dream, it was a pretty good dream. Or it would be until he woke up, still very much dead, still in that room.
But the dead had no mental function, and therefore didn’t dream. He’d have to accept that he was alive for now, and trusted Pestilence to help him realize just how alive he really was.
“You’re like my own personal Jesus.” Pestilence smirked, fully aware he was making a terrible 80s reference. He would have tacked on, ‘shut up and kiss me’ - but Famine beat him to the punch.
The horseman had every intention of seeing just how well Famine’s blood was coursing through his veins. Starting with one hand cupping the other horseman’s groin, and the other reaching up to tug on those reddish brown strands.
And that intent was returned, beginning with a hand sliding under the other’s shirt, resting against the steady beating of a heart. After a couple of beats, that shirt was yanked upward, the first of few articles of clothing to be pushed out of the way.
Words were no longer needed when the physicality was enough for confirmation. But they were beyond that -- they hadn’t seen each other for two weeks, been separated when they needed the other riders most, and Famine had died without the chance to say goodbye.
He’d settle for giving him a memorable hello instead.