Healing - a snippet
It's time for another one. I swear the next one will be happy. I swear.
Time: After the living room incident.Here.
Credit to: Katy for fucking them up so much with Dorian and for making the Alex thing so bittersweet.
Music: The Shake by I:Scintilla. Lyrics can be found here if you click on the song title. It's seriously amazing.
You tore into my world with iron hands
Just take it, I don’t want it as the hurt spans
So Blake-ish.
Words: 2421
Snippet Number: Drei
Warnings: Gore, self-mutilation, terribly, terribly written angst.
Nightfall. Drawn curtains. Phoenix asleep on the floor. It was too much, too early, too confused. Blake’s hands should have been shaking but he felt nothing like that now, his mind cold and clinical, his heart sealed once again.
There had been a letter opener in the desk drawer. It was more like a tiny dagger than a tool, some elaborate and showy thing that was probably meant to sit on a desk and look imposing. It couldn’t have been used much, if at all. It was too sharp for that.
Blake leant against the window, the glass cold through his thin shirt, and watched as fresh rivers of blood dried black on his skin. There was more black than white on his arm now but that was okay. Beneath the stains the skin was already mostly healed with the slashes nearest his wrist being the most fresh. He’d heard this sort of thing was meant to be methodical, some sort of controlling mechanism. All the method had done for him was make the highest cuts heal by the time he’d opened the lowest just in time for him to begin again.
Hours passed. Not many, but enough. His head felt a little fuzzy, probably because he was losing a fair amount of blood and hadn’t latched himself onto anyone properly for too long. He wondered if it was possible for him to die like this, through a gradual draining. He wondered if it would hurt as much as he expected.
He truly hoped so.
After the newest lines had started to disappear and his skin looked as perfect as always, he held the letter opener tip first against the pulse he could feel jumping angrily in his wrist. He’d seen it in a movie once. A girl pushed a knife all the way through there, some sort of biblical bullshit or something. It hadn’t killed her. Which meant it was fine for him, right?
But he waited, pressing the tip of the blade in just deep enough to really sting.
What the fuck am I doing? he thought vaguely. I have no excuse. I’m not drunk anymore. I’m not high. I’m not the one who had to leave. So...
He twisted it a little, eyes wandering to seek out the shape of the incubus slumbering on the floor only a few metres away. Was Phoenix the reason he was reaching a new level of ‘pathetic’ he had never hoped to see? He was part of it, sure. But there was part of Blake that couldn’t deny it felt normal to see himself bleeding and the world felt wrong if he wasn’t.
“Lie to yourself all you like,” Aston had said. “You’re never going to be anything other than what you are.”
And what was he? Not just a leech, not just a monster that needed to live parasitically off of others. He was less than that, worse than that. He was an experiment, bred to fight and bleed and consume and finally die like an animal. He had been born to be decapitated by the age of twenty-five. That had been the estimate and he’d been one of the oldest. Sure, he’d outlived that by a year but he’d got away. Were there any left, back in the city? Was he the only one?
Am I doing this for them? his mind whispered in a voice he rarely heard, one that was young and frightened. Because I ran from the suffering I was meant to endure?
Down. He pushed the blade down and kept twisting, digging, tearing. His skin made soft sounds as it gave way and there was a sick grating as the metal grazed against bone. The tip of the blade flashed crimson in the moonlight as it found its way back to the air. Blake stood poised for a moment and then let go of the handle. When he raised his arm up before him and turned it to the side, the blade made a cross with his arm and remained stuck fast.
“The both of you are fucking up each other’s lives.” That’s what Alex had said. Watching the blood pouring from the wound and coating his arm afresh to the elbow Blake knew the blonde had been wrong. He didn’t need Phoenix to fuck up his life. He was good enough at doing that himself. He should have felt guilty but...
The idiot knows. He doesn’t know the details but if anyone knows the truth, it’s him. It’s his fault for not running the fuck away before I take him down with me.
He grasped the handle of the letter opener with fingers that were slick with blood and pulled suddenly, flicking blood across the room and wrenching a cry from deep in his chest. He didn’t hear it through the pain, the blissful moment of rawness before his body would start to heal it all away.
On the floor by the sofa, Phoenix’s eyes slammed open and he was standing up before he was aware he was awake. His head was pounding behind his eyes, the result of holding back tears for too long and so it took him a few moments to process what he was seeing. He watched as Blake raised the blade to his lips and licked it clean, blood welling up from a new tear in the soft flesh of his tongue. By the time he had opened his eyes to see the redhead, Phoenix had crossed the room.
“Stop it!”
A large hand seized Blake’s uninjured wrist and pulled the blade away, holding it up in the air above them, a tiny sword proud with victory. Blake turned calm amber eyes to a pair wide with fear and blinked.
“Why? It’s all going to be gone within the hour.”
“That’s not the point.”
Blake tried to wrench his wrist free but found himself too weak. His head reeled. It was almost refreshing, not being able to do anything. It had been too long. Maybe he was losing blood more quickly than he had thought. Maybe he could die from this after all...
“Blake, stay with me, you bastard!”
His eyes refocused and he found himself slumped back against the window. His uninjured right arm lay uselessly at his side, the letter opener on the floor. His other arm was being held upwards now and Phoenix’s hand was wrapped tightly around the throbbing wound. A weak laugh slipped from between his dry lips.
“’m not gonna die. Not from this. Calm down.”
“Yeah? Well you were gone there for almost a minute so don’t you dare tell me to calm down.”
Through the calming fog now wrapping his mind, Blake realised it had been years since he’d seen Phoenix so upset. It had been his fault then, too.
“The kid was right,” he mumbled. “We’re not good for each other, are we?”
“What-“
“I should go back to the states. Let them get rid of me.”
“Wait, you-“
“Would be the good thing t’do-“
“Shut up!”
Blake fell silent as Phoenix grasped his chin with one hand and glared at him. The redhead’s breathing was ragged and his eyes shone with further unshed tears. Squeezing Blake’s injured wrist enough to send shocks of pain through his arm, the redhead shook his head.
“What the hell has been wrong with you recently?” he hissed.
“Recently?”
“Yes, recently. The past few months all I’ve seen you do is fuck yourself over on pills and booze. I’m not sure I’ve seen you sober in weeks. You keep going silent for hours at a time and then jumping in when it makes the least sense. You’ve gone and taken blood from random people, even from Alex. Things have happened, important things and yet even after all the shit with Dorian you won’t talk to me.”
“Aren’t I always like this?”
“No. So what is it? What’s wrong with you?”
For a moment, Phoenix thought he saw an answer in Blake’s expression. The hollowness flickered, filled in, and for an instant the leech looked young and frightened. The moment passed and instead a sick smile curved his lips.
“Haven’t you heard?” he murmured, words a little slurred. “Everything. Everything is fucking wrong with me.”
Phoenix made a noise of exasperation and sought for words for a moment. Finding none, he leant forwards and caught Blake’s lips between his own. There was nothing gentle or romantic about the kiss and by Phoenix’s standards it was clumsy and inelegant. Yet he held it until the taste of blood started to make him nauseous and once he had drawn away and opened his eyes he knew it had been the right thing to do.
Blake’s eyes were closed but tears had spilt from beneath his lashes. He couldn’t bring himself to open them, now. Whether it had been the kiss breaking through his tangled logic or the way the blood had stopped flowing from the healing wound he wasn’t sure but his mind was too clear again. He flinched as Phoenix rested his head lightly against his forehead and brushed warm fingers over his cheek.
“So?” he whispered.
“So what?”
“Is it what happened with Dorian?”
“No. Yeah. I...I guess that’s part of it.”
“And?”
“I don’t-“
“Is it Alex?”
“Among others, yeah. That’s part of it too.”
“And the rest?”
Blake bit back the words on the tip of his tongue, the ones he had kept silent all these years. It wasn’t time for that story. It would never be.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said quietly, eyes still closed. “But only one. Will you let this go if I do that?”
“I don’t know,” Phoenix said honestly. “If the reason the person I care about the most just shoved a knife through his wrist is me then no, I guess I won’t let it go.”
“It’s not you.”
“But things I’ve done, right?”
“Not all you. It’s not. It’s all fucking stupid and if you’ll let it go then I’ll try to as well.”
“You’ll stop doing stupid things like this?”
“Yeah. I’ll try. So we got a deal?”
“One thing, you said.”
Blake nodded and turned his wrist a little in Phoenix’s grasp. It hurt a lot less now but that furrow would take a while to heal. It seemed so stupid, now. How things like this ever made anyone feel better he’d never understood, not that it had ever stopped him.
“I hate seeing you with other people,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “I hate thinking that you can find something in someone else that I can’t give to you.”
Phoenix’s eyes widened but he stopped himself from speaking. He’d known this for years, true, but Blake had never been so honest before. Phoenix hoped he was being sincere in admitting this and not just confessing because of blood loss and shock.
“It makes me so fucking angry that I don’t know what to do,” he continued. “Because it’s my fault. I didn’t take the stupid one-time offer. And that’s fine, you know? That’s history. But I’m so pathetic it makes me sick. And it’s not just recently, Phoe, I’ve always been like this. I’m just no good at hiding it any more. I fuck things up for you. So yeah, it makes sense to fuck myself up a bit too. I can’t do anything else to help.”
“It doesn’t help,” Phoenix spoke swiftly. “How could you think seeing you like this would make me feel better about anything? You’re so...”
“Stupid?” Blake opened his eyes at last, irises flecked with molten silver. “Yeah. I know. You’ve gotta hate me.”
It was one of those moments. Phoenix could feel it. The air seemed tight suddenly. Cold. He couldn’t move as he held Blake’s gaze and knew they were both hearing Alex’s words in their heads. And not just Alex’s, but a huge number of people who had decided they understood. In one of these moments, they knew all those people were right. Of course they were. It was so easy. The one explanation that made sense, the one scenario that should follow this painful and endless moment.
This could be the one to end it. Start it. Make it real. Blake’s wrist slipped through Phoenix’s hand until they could lace their fingers together tightly enough to hurt. If it had been the other way around, what with the way Blake’s throat was aching with words, confessions seeming easier now he’d already started, maybe it would have been real already. But it was Phoenix’s move, this time.
“I...I don’t hate you.”
This wasn’t the moment. That could mean anything, anything from the answer he had wanted to give to a casual dismissal of Blake’s words. It was going to work like always. The cuts would heal and they would both act as if the night had never happened. How many nights had they lost in this game already? Thinking about it was useless. They weren’t coming back.
“How could I hate you?”
“I do.” This time, Blake spoke again before another opportunity could shatter the illusion that they were fixing things. “But whatever. We need to get out of here.”
“Yeah.”
Business as usual. A hasty exit from the strangers house and a long walk back to the town, hands clasped silently between them. There was no point in speaking if they were going to forget about this anyway. Usually, they’d say nothing at all. On this night, standing in the forest that divided the houses they had to return to, Phoenix found it impossible.
“I don’t,” he murmured, hands woven into Blake’s hair and lips trembling against the leech’s cheek. “I could never hate you. Remember that. You don’t have to talk about it. Just remember.”
“But-“
“And don’t hate yourself.”
“Why?”
“Because that means you hate me, too. Forget about the others. You’re everything.”
He raised a finger to Blake’s lips as the leech started to speak and shook his head.
“You know exactly what I mean. Don’t ask. Just remember.”
“Make me.”
The kiss was everything the previous one was not. And while the world was reduced to nothing but Phoenix’s lips against his own, Blake loved himself. Waving goodbye with shaking hands, he wished the one remaining wound in his skin would never heal so that he could remember this feeling forever.
But it healed. As always. And by then, he wanted to forget.
I was not in a happy mental place when I planned this. XD Can you tell? I feel significantly less like Blake now I've finished it though.