Chapter Text
12:01 a.m.
“do you miss him” mocking. pointed like the finger nails at his throat.
the other hand on his stomach keeping him in place.
don’t kiss me
“there’s no one to run interference anymore.” Kevin was well manicured hedge, full of thorns and dogwood blossoms. he was an obstacle but not a wall.
stop talking.
a wall is what Jean would need to keep Riko from him.
how long would it take him to build a wall to physically keep out the Moriyama empire? if he ripped the nest apart and like his living quarters name sake built a home . bloody , fortified by pain and black. like paint , maybe it would run right off of him . run rampant staining the ground, suffocate anything living.
you could call him a raven but his wings were clipped.
Jean had already built a wall though , around his his head. he trapped everything thing there, like he was trapped. closed it behind rusted gates and watched every hopeful feeling decay.
Rikos knee presses into the hing of his elbow, Jean watches his numb fingers drop the pairing knife.
“no one breaks my toys. i will never let you either.”
"i won't let you go."
Jeans fingers unfurl like a dolls limp limb, maybe he’s not even a real person. maybe someone gave a marionette a heart as a cruel joke. just enough to feel the strings of his life in the calloused hands of a rotting little boy.
the other mans hands trace methodical patterns to his throat. pressing from the sides .
into the thin ribbon of open flesh like it’s his personal life goal
to mock the desperate curving lines Jean had labored over fragile veins. Their both clothed in blood. Riko looks at home.
all Jean had wanted to do was go home . to France . he didn’t care anymore if it was in a pine box . he would cut a path through the ocean or himself to get there.
“kill me. “
“im not going to kill you.” breath ghosts over his ear. it scorches the shell of his ear, his cheek. Riko holds hell in his mouth and brimstone falls through the spaces of his words. “but it’s going to feel like it.”
the door opens. It’s James and Hadley. Seniors with signed contracts thanks to the gilded palms of the Ravens legacy. A golden blood lust in the fingers that hold down his wrist and legs.
and unquestionable social ladder climbing yearning in the degrading elements of his clothes.
everyone knows how this life style is dangerous.
The prince of exy stands in the corner and watches as his royal subjects obediently act out the artless play of aggression with Jeans body where his disassociation is the leading star.
sigh. heave. thrust.
Jean knows his part.
1:23 a.m.
the climax of the play. Jean presses his shoulders into the rucked covers beneath his back, he recites Verlaine and scripture and when all else fails he is flooded with silence.
his stomach clenches , his insides feel like tetris moving into the wrong slots. Hadley comes to hold his arms and James takes his place ready for act 2.
the fall of Jean
His teeth remained clenched. he wont cry. he wont scream. he wont be anything.
was he ever anything? Riko doesn’t seem to think so. Kevin didn’t or he would have come back for him.
1:57 a.m.
god has left
all the angels have died.
2:19
James is dressing his wounds ,as steadfast as he had raped Jean. no anger no lust . just an obligation. Hadley is no where to be seen.
Riko looks into his eyes searchingly, “i am your god.”
his heart aches with muscle memory of despair crushing his lungs , cell death spreading through his limbs .
he’s shaking apart like static snow and it’s to slow to be obvious but it feels like a natural disaster in his organs.
“kiss me “ and jean does. a blizzard rages in the crevices of his brain icing out his nervous system. he cant feel a thing.
and he kisses Rikos hand when it is extended to him. he blinks and breathes. repeat, repeat,repeat.
6:33 a.m.
Jean looks at the exy raquet in the corner of his room , the phosphines in his eyes translate micro mosaics of the dark room. Riko had said he was god .
He tries to picture the static in his eye’s as the sweeping arches of a cathedral Jean had visited with his family in Nice when he was very little. the same lacking feeling of holiness rested in the air.
Riko was no god.
“Dieu est mort”
“ nous sommes tous “