#ariedward

He says my name so many times, I almost forget that it's me he's calling to. He shapes the syllables in such broken desperation, and I feel unrecognisable to the amount of love in his voice. The shape of me made briefly whole by his pain. I want to say, 'why are you crying?' and 'It's just me.'

There's a wound just below my heart, and it's pouring through the layers of fabric. My throat has all but turned to dust, and every bone now shudders when I try to move. There's a pain, of course, and it spreads like a disease to the nerves in my fingers and toes, twitching, aching.

He says my name again. Maybe he screams it. There is static in the air, now, and on my tongue. I make out the shape of his face and wonder when I was able to see beauty in a time like this. I wonder if it had been him that made me know that the colour of his eyes nor his skin is brown, but the colour of life itself. The very thing that forced me to take in a slow, agonising, breath.

There's blood in my mouth. Copper. Iron. Something like a needle, or dirt.

I want to make his name, but my tongue has become laden with the pain. I can feel salt on my lips and realise it's his tears. I feel the bullet move between my ribs, with all the weight of love itself; I realise I had taken a bullet for him. I would laugh, had it not been a fountain from my lips, if I'd tried. Such a romantic expression declared often and bravely, and yet it's me, of all people, to see it through.

He's calling me names now. Stupid bastard. Son of a bitch. What were you thinking? He's alive to call me names. The very corner of my lips twitch as the light of the room becomes too much, and I close my eyes. There's a buzzing in my ears now. The static. The sound of death, I imagine. The pain is easing up, but I know adrenaline. I know the edge of consciousness like an old friend I never quite expect to see again.

Now I know it for what it has always been. A labour of love. A gun shot wound in the shape of every word he'd ever said to me.

My tongue is so heavy, but I make out a single word before every muscle unwinds, and my breath is released from the chasm of my agonies:

--

The first truth. He tastes like some sweet fruit and the cool rush of ice in the heat. The sun comes down on him and the smell of something like fruit and earth - mixed oils on his black skin - rises like a cloud with his sweat.

The second truth. He is the most beautiful man he's ever met. His eyes are the colour of life, as if flowers would bloom from the very part of him. There was no truth too heavy for his hands to hold. No part of his skin not warm enough to touch. No god on heaven and earth as sacred to behold.

The lie. He does not love him. He does not spend every morning and night craving him. His mouth does not feel dry without the touch of his lips. His skin does not feel wrong without his touch. He does not yearn for him with every cell of a broken heart that keeps his rotten blood pumping. He does not feel like a lost sinner abandoned at the pit of a burning altar when he is left alone.

Ari stood still in the creeping hallway and watched the darkness in Edward’s eyes burn like the lick of flame that takes down a village. He glinted the way the knife would catch the spattered sunlight.

All of Ari's words turned to dust on his lips, except a small whisper in his hoarse throat that made the shape of his - Edward's - name. 

He felt like a moth catching the flame of a candle, though Edward was as capable of being moon or sun. There was a force about him now, that same force that used to pull the tides, that scorched the earth beneath their feet once. The same force Ari had felt when they’d first kissed, now balanced in Edward’s unshaken hand. Something not unlike fear. Not for himself, but for the man he'd known once, who would never be that man again.

“Ari,” Edward formed his name like he hadn’t spoken in months, and then he smiled. That violence in him had grown like new skin. Good.

“You’re hurt.”

“Not as hurt as this bastard is about to be,” he spat blood on the floor, and Ari thought he was an angel. 

“You are so scared of being known.”

“I don’t even know myself. Or maybe I do now."

“Will you go after him?”

“Of course, wouldn’t you? If it were Alicia?” Eli’s surprise was not poorly hidden, and then there was grief in his eyes and smile.

“You love him?”

“If this is love, then I am out of hesitation, I will go where he goes."

“If you need anything.”

“This is not your fault, nor your fight.” Ari stood, slowly and with a grunt of pain. “This is for me and me alone.”

“No.” Eli gripped his forearm as he stood, and faced Ari so he could not look anywhere else. His eyes were intense and uncomfortable, but that was not why Ari felt tears in his eyes. “I am your brother, do not dare shut me out again - I won’t have it, do you understand me?”

Ari nodded.