#johnhann

He has to crane his neck to the side to see the source of the voice, but the act sends a blinding pain across his body. Johann cries out in agony, shutting his eyes tight and pressing his hands against the deep wound that the Hunger had left him outside of parley. He almost forgets the voice and its words entirely as he desperately tries to cradle his injury, but it does not allow Johann that peace for long.

Rough hands covered in black and opal cracks slide their way onto both of Johann’s sides, one of them up against his wound. “I am very sorry for the state they have left you in, Johann,” John says, ignoring Johann’s hisses of pain. “Let me help—”

“Get off of me. You did this to me. You’re killing me. Stop acting like you are any different than this horrible nightmare you’ve made,” Johann seethes.

“Johann, please listen to me. I’m not really in charge here anymore. The Hunger no longer has the priorities I set, this isn’t ascension anymore, looking to surpass existence and its rules. It’s just hungry. It’s going to consume everything in its path.”

“So what? Is that why you brought me here? You saw me dying, failing to protect my Fisher, and you— you rip me away from it, to— to watch me die? To let me get consumed by all this…”

One of John’s hands grips Johann by the jaw. “You know I wouldn’t want that to happen to you,” he whispers. Though Johann’s eyes are still shut tight, he can feel John’s wavering breath hitting his cold face. He must be close.

“Then why? More lectures? More questions, more fucking information? I can’t give any of that to you anymore—”

“No, of course not. I didn’t bring you here for that, Johann, I just… I genuinely just brought you here to say… goodbye to someone. Goodbye to you.”

The words hurt more than all the wounds across Johann’s body. He hates that John’s words still affect him in this way. After all the years of hearing him out, shutting him down, and then forgetting him for a decade; it should've been enough to disenchant him. Except now, all it does is hurt him.

“Look at me,” John whispers. He’s even closer to Johann now. The tips of his hair tickle Johann’s forehead, breath mingled with the splattered blood on his cheek, and most painfully, the thumb on his face begins to caress the side of his jaw. “Please. Look at me.”

Against his better judgment, Johann opens his eyes. He’s greeted with John’s face, which has that same silvery allure that it had all those decades ago since they last met, now with all oozing colourful rifts that stream off of his skin. But Johann also sees the last emotion he ever expected on that painfully handsome face that he hates so much. Johann sees worry.

“You’re as beautiful as ever. Even when you’re like this.”

“John, stop it. I don’t want to hear this from you while I’m dying. We were never like this.”

“I have had these thoughts with you for almost a century. Never spoken because of our situation. Let me say it, damn it.”

“I’m dying.”

John shakes his head. His breathing grows even more ragged as he presses harder against Johann’s bleeding side. “No,” he says, “you’re not. I won’t let them. I will not let you die because of them. You’re going to live, and I am going to talk to you, I— I had a whole thing planned out. Our stage. Our chess game. Our dance. I just didn’t expect you to be in this state.”

Planned. John had plans for them. “John.”

“But you won’t die, you won’t, I will keep you alive. One of us is going to have to live. It’s going to be you.”

Johann cries. Tears stream down his face, finally breaking past his defences. “John. I don’t want to die here. I don’t want to die where they can’t see me—”

“You’re not going to die—”

“—I don’t want them to forget about me!”

John is fully on top of Johann now. His legs almost straddle Johann’s hips, and he presses his forehead against Johann’s bloody one, searching for that closeness. “That’s not going to happen. Not out there. And certainly not in here,” John says. He stares Johann down with wide, crazed eyes. He breathes a little too hard. “You’re going to be safe. Remembered. Stay, please. With me.”

Johann’s lip quivers.

John leans down and kisses it. He presses his lips hard against Johann’s and doesn’t back down. Johann, against everything he thought he learned over their time together and their time apart, closes his eyes and kisses him back. 

It hurts. More than anything, every movement hurts. Blood taints it all, spilling into their mouths as they deepen the kiss. John’s hands and body press so tight against Johann’s, agitating every single bleeding wound on him, and he sobs into John’s kiss. Johann’s heart hurts, aching that this is how it had to happen. This is how they finally end. That they were distant all the way through their strange, cyclical lives. That they could only close the gap as the cycle finally ends. And it hurts.

The pain suddenly sears to unimaginable levels, and Johann’s eyes fling open as he keens into John’s lips. What he sees are eyes, wide and unfaltering, staring at him with intense fervour. Two of them would be John’s, so close to Johann’s face it makes it hard to see the Hunger’s hundred eyes staring at the spectacle from all around the stage.

Johann opens his mouth to warn John, but John takes it as a sign to kiss even harder. The Hunger’s eyes narrow, their intensity increasingly scorching with rage, as Johann and John melt together in this dying embrace.

And then John starts to scream.

Long, tendril-like arms tear through the hard floors of the theatre stage they lay in and seize John. More dart from the curtains, dragging John up and off of Johann’s weakened body. They tear at him, digging into the rifts already in his body and tugging them to rip the skin even further. They drag John down into the hard stage floor, ripping him away from the dying man he had finally caught up to. John reaches towards Johann and screams the whole way down.

Johann throws his body at John even as it further tears at his wounds. He wraps his arms around John and locks him into an embrace, weakly attempting to pull him away from those arms. John tries to embrace him back, but it is no use; those twisting arms pull him further and further down by his arms, until they are both so close to the ground. Soon to be overtaken.

“John, don’t leave me here. Please don’t let me die alone.”

“Stay alive! Break the bonds, Johann, break—”

And then John is gone. Johann collapses onto the ground where John was, smearing blood in the process. John is gone, the stage is gone, and Johann is alone.