Chapter Text
Forever is honest god is a lie
Give me your promise pray, then I die
Let me connect us let us entwine
Let me distract you from the death and my grime
My soul is just itching for your bloody nails
In front of your fury my anger it pales
Your hands aren’t shaking your aim isn’t off
I’m caught in your crosshears but it isn’t for love
Alex felt the moment Nigel’s hands reached around his. An embrace of sorts, or the closest thing to one they had ever shered. It wasnt like their usual touches. Fists in clothes the blood on knuckles and the terrifying certainty that if one of them was a beat out of time the other would fall.
No.... this was gentle, reverent, almost. He could feel those fingers slide around his own and against the cool water slick metal of the shotgun.
"Pray for me." Alex’s breath stuttered at the words. "Pray for yourself," Nigel continued, his lips wrapping around the words like an ivy plant spiderwebbing around a haunted ruin. A whisper, scared, yet....
The barrel sat, a dark contrast right under his right eye—that place where his long lashes would kiss his cheek if he dared to blink. "We are one now."
Everything happened in slow motion yet also far far too fast for Alex to do anything about it. It was the work of two movements. A controlled pull and the softest push to his trigger finger.
It's so interesting the way the body falls after instant death.
A person is conditioned since they are little to catch themselves, to do... something to break your fall and as you grow that instinct grows with you. You start falling less and when you stumble you manage to catch yourself. Even when you do fall there are these small shifts — your subconscious trying to minimize the damage.
This.... this was different.
The shot was deafening. He couldn’t look away.
The fall was just that a fall. Not of a person but that of an inanimate object. No twitch no miniscule movement to attempt to catch himself. Graceless. The force of the blast the only thing giving the motion a direction.
Alex could taste the blood.
Nigel wasn’t —
no...
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
There was a mantra rising in his head:
Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!
This wasn't happening.
Alex didn't feel the agonizing hit as his knees made contact with the ground, he just felt the dirt under his fingernails as he desperately clawed closer to Nigel’s rapidly cooling body.
He could barely see through his increasingly blurry vision.
The rain is cold....
Cold.
It’s too cold. He’s too cold.
Nigel. Nigel.
Nigel.
He's— Too cold.
Closer. Need to warm him up.
He was going to throw up.
His hands shook as he dragged the corpse into his lap. One of Nigel’s stunning blue eyes remained open; the other was gone along with half of his skull. His fingers moved of their own volition grasping at that empty space trying and failing to keep it— keep him together.
He was up to the wrists in blood. That beautiful intellect was now caught in chunks on his sleeve and under his fingernails.
It wasn’t just his hands that shook... Alex was shaking all over, a devastating chill.... one he hadn’t felt since the day he found out he was the reason for his mother’s death entering his bones that same all consuming pain . He sobbed, half-screaming, bowed over —
Nigel.
Nigel.
Nigel.
Nigel.
God, he couldn’t be dead, could he? He was just promising him eternity. He couldn’t just—no.
It wasn't possible.
He wanted to yell at him, at his stupid eye—the one that was now unseeingly pointed at the heavens—but he couldn’t muster anything more than gut-wrenching whimpers and frantic breaths, his hands scrabbling to grip onto his skin as if he only needed to hold him close enough to keep him from the reaper’s blade.
You can’t have him
He thought deliriously.
"Fuck you, he’s mine! You can’t have him!" he snarled up at the universe itself.
"Give him back! He belongs to me!" He was full-on screaming now, his voice almost as raw as the wounds he was digging into his own palm from clenching it over Nigel’s stomach.
"Give him back!" He roared, and the ground vibrated.
Alex had no idea what he was saying, just that he wanted Nigel back—alive, breathing, calling him "Jack" in that voice that made him want to claw his ears out and simultaneously beg Nigel to sing for him.
And to think he had been too consumed by fear and the paralyzing shame that he was just as fucked up as Nigel was that he so vehemently refused to accept the title.
Funny how a single moment can change your entire understanding of yourself.
The moment that bullet left the chamber, Alex knew with a bone deep certainty that this was it for him. In that breath, all the passions he had ever experienced in his 17 years of life had narrowed, sharpened, and focused on Nigel Colbie, becoming an obsession never seen before. And just 32 milliseconds later, his world had shattered and splattered on the ground in bloody rivulets, slowly being washed away by the torrential downpour.
Nothing had a point anymore and if it wasn't for the desperate need to keep whatever remained of his spade close Alex would have already turned that gun on himself.
And he would... just after a moment.... he just needed to hold him for a second more..... then— then he would join him...
So he screamed. The sound that left him wasn't human - it was a beast on the verge of a berserker sort of rage.
"Give. Him. Back." Each word was a command and a promise of retribution should he not be obeyed. The ground shook as if to warn the approach of yet another passing train. But no train was coming. Instead, a lightning struck in the distance, the clap of thunder followed, and on it it carried a voice that only Alex could hear through his sobs.
"Don't waste this gift a second time," it seemed to say, and with another boom from the sky, Alex's eyes shot open in his dorm room.