[Halloween Fics] - ONE
ONE
It was one of those nights - one of those nights where Riku felt the weight of his own skin crush him. Like a deep-diver gone too far under, he could feel the pressure liquefy his insides and push the essence of himself out through his skin. It poured from his eyes at such a pace that he feared that he would lose all of himself entirely. He wore a blindfold sometimes to prevent it all from leaking out.
Breathing wasn’t enough to let him know that he was still alive. Riku knew that he could draw the edge of Way across his arm and his free-flowing blood would tell him that he remained among the living, but even that couldn’t be sure. Even corpses bled if you cut deep enough.
Nights like this, Riku knew what he needed. It was simple, or it should have been. But things are rarely simple. Wet fingertips and sandy palms on skin, a laugh hanging in the hooked air - these things were never simple. And yet they had been, once. He would have torn off his coat and let his desperation guide his feet across hidden paths and through enemies nests - through a Scylla and Charybdis passage of would-be mentors and countless adversaries. But it was not to be.
Instead, Riku buried himself away. He hid his core deep, like the seed at the very center of a Paopu fruit. Unlike the fruit, however, the seed would rot long before the flesh.
He rotted. In that basement deep underground the mansion of the unfamiliar land, the seed of Riku’s being rotted from the inside-out. DiZ would glance at him and his not-there eyes once, perhaps, and then turn back to his experiments. Riku cared little for DiZ and everything that the delusional hermit stood for. DiZ clung like a drowning man to a tentative promise of redemption, but Riku knew better. Redemption was those who walked in the light, those who chose the light.
But none of that mattered on those nights. Riku didn’t want salvation or redemption. What he wanted was so close… and yet so far.
Since he couldn’t get what he wanted, Riku compromised. When DiZ’s all-too-negligent gaze turned elsewhere, he would steal out of the underground bunker that he considered to be his own personal hell and turned his face to the air and sun that beamed down impartially on even him. Riku couldn’t help but feel betrayed that the light would touch someone like him even when he was this thing.
The sun was always setting in Twilight Town, even at night. At midnight, when darkness should have blanketed everything in sharp velvet, the sun could still be seen far to the west. Riku hated it - that last glimmer of light that seemed to offer nothing but false hope .
As Riku hoped, Roxas was in his room at this late hour. He looked so much like Sora when he slept that it made Riku furious. The same stupid open-mouthed innocent sleep that Riku hadn’t gotten in years. But he was too calm to do anything stupid. Too many years of being told to be patient had finally affected him that way. He slid the chain off his hood and held it in his gloved hands. One could say it was too easy, but he didn’t care. Not this time.
The chain just looked right around Roxas’ throat. Then again, maybe it was just because Riku had seen him wearing the Organization’s collar before. The smile on Riku’s face was illuminated by the half-twilight half-moonlight pouring in through Roxas’ open window.
Bad idea, keeping that open. Riku thought to himself as he crouched on top of Roxas. The chain was looped around Roxas’ neck and each end was in one of Riku’s hands. Even the most gentle tug would strangle him. I’m not the type to take you to Neverland…
Roxas awoke then. His adrenaline was faster than his senses and was already pounding his blood into a frenzy before he even realized that there was a chain around his throat.
“You- ” Roxas choked immediately.
“Yeah, me.” Riku smirked down at him. “Miss me?”
Roxas couldn’t move. This man with the copper skin and the molten-silver hair was too strong and had his arms pinned. There was absolutely nothing he could do.
“You’re just a body, right?” Riku grasped both ends of the chain with one hand as Way to the Dawn appeared in the other. The tip of the blade rested just inches away from Roxas’ cheek. “Just skin. Do you think if I peel it all back, you’ll be Sora underneath?”
A bead of sweat formed on Roxas’ brow and trickled down between his fear-widened eyes. Riku leaned forward and licked it up, pressing bared teeth against Roxas’ pale skin.
“Let’s find out, shall we?”
Crossposted.
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