#moowhump

"Open up..." A raspy voice crooned at him, inches away from his face.

He recognized the smirk in his best friend's tone. He would've picked it up by sound alone, even in the middle of a roaring crowd. But in the tiny, disorganized chaos of their tour bus, Hemlock might as well be whispering in his ear.  

"What--...?" Luca slurred back, the last venue's smoke still clinging to his voice. His eyes had been idly closed for the last twenty minutes or so, as he laid slumped on one of the bus' old leather seats, carelessly wrinkling his dark tailored suit. The stench of sweat, cigarettes and alcohol haunted him like a spectre. It clung to them *both*, after every single show.

The tiefling snickered at his slurred response. "I said open up your fucking mouth, Sparknotes... I don't got all day..." 

But he did have all day. With twelve hours of road until their next city. They only had dead time in their hands, and very little to do, except getting as fucked up as possible.

Luca groaned halfheartedly, lifting his face towards the direction of his voice. It took every ounce of energy he had in himself. But his lack of motor ability wasn't all just exhaustion from playing the drums. 

It was drow pills. Opiates harvested, pressed, and imported straight from Kortevo. Luca'd made a habit of taking them to quell his own turbulent emotional states before each show. But the habit was starting to mess with his already poor executive function. Sometimes, it didn't even let him move.  

A firm hand held his jaw in its palm, thumb prying it agape with relative ease. Luca finally opened  his eyes to look at him. And it was no surprise, Hemlock was donning the same smirk he already anticipated he'd have. The tiefling grinned wider at him, eyes bloodshot red from the ephel root, only about three shades lighter than the tone of his skin. Luca stared tamely at him, his own pupils smaller than pinpricks, betraying the drugs already in him. 

"Stick out your tongue..." Hemlock spoke again, in that low, smokey tone he always had after singing through a whole concert. The order made Luca's loins burn. But he didn't obey it just yet. 

"What for...?" His legs quivered open for a brief moment, before squeezing together again. A thoughtless reflex. But Hemlock noticed it. 

He also ignored it.

"We're dropping acid. You need a pick-me-up..." Hemlock dug into his iridiscent jacket's pocket. "You keep falling asleep after the concerts, and you're ruining my whole vibe..."

"Sorry--..." Luca uttered, with Hemlock's fingers already in his mouth. They tasted like cigarettes and cologne. He left a small, crystalline grid cradled on his tongue. Tasteless. It started melting.

"Sparknotes..." Hemlock's voice dropped an octave, emphasizing his next sentence "You're about to have the trip of your life..." His fanged grin widened, brows quirking up with mischief as he placed another tab of stardust on his own tongue.  Luca blinked hazily at him, already entranced by that golden stare. A familiar sense of yearning bloomed, unprompted, inside his chest. 

He loved when those eyes looked at him. 

Hemlock's fingers lazily combed through Luca's long, brunet hair; tugging on it slightly as he pulled him in, to place a nonchalant kiss on the side of his face. 

"Happy one-year band anniversary... Sit back and enjoy... --if you can even sit..."

"--Wait, does this have stimulants in it?" Luca muttered, with a sliver of urgency. 

"A little... just to put a... uhh... a pep in your step." Hemlock shrugged one shoulder.

Luca let out a soft, miserable laugh. "Nooo, Hemlock! ...what the fuck?!--..."

"--Shhhh shhh, Luca... it's fine, it's alright... You like stimulants too, don't you?"

"Well, not right NOW I don't..." Luca sighed "I don't wanna get all paranoid in a can-sized bus like this, I'm gonna freak out..."

"Listen, it's not the bus... YOU are the one freaking yourself out... okay? Just relax.  Here-- come--" The tiefling sat on the worn leather seat, easily coaxing his best friend to sit up with him, and rest his head on his shoulder. Luca followed the change of position begrudgingly, but ultimately welcomed the new closeness. Hemlock's arm effortlessly wrapped around his smaller frame. 

"You mother-fucker..." Luca whined a soft complain, his eyes closing heavily once again, as the mixture of magic-infused drugs sank into his system, sorting itself in strange new forms as it filled his neural receptors. "My vision's blurry... I can't even fucking see-- If you fuck me up and I can't play drums anymore, I swear I'm gonna--"

"Shhh, shut up... just shut up..." Hemlock ordered without much bite. His hand wrapping around Luca's head to playfully cover his mouth. "Don't fuck with my vibe, okay?... just shut up... you'll be fine, you're always fine..." 

Luca thought to protest further. But he ran out of steam as soon as the first inklings of the hallucinogen started showing up. He pulled Hemlock's hand away from his mouth in a clumsy move; but when he did, the twinkle of something luminous and strangely beautiful followed its path through the dark. 

Red light, blue light, and shades of purple and silver passed through the air. Fragments of stars he couldn't help but slowly blink at, trying to make sense of them. At first they looked bright, but hazy, like seen through a damp glass; but as they moved, they eventually faded into nothing. 

He soon realized any sort of movement seemed to bring these stardust particles forth. Not just when Hemlock and himself moved. But also, when the motion of the road outside of their window reached his eyes. The city lights flashed by so quickly it felt as if they were traveling through space. 

"What the fuck is this..." Luca breathed out, astounded at the sudden visuals. It wasn't his first time tripping. He knew hallucinogens usually took a while to settle in. But not these. These soon had the lights of their tour bus burning holes into his mind, colorful and gooey, like molten stained glass.  

Luca noticed his pulse starting to rush and pause in erratical beats. The world entered through his ears muffled, as if he was watching comet showers through a crystal ball. A sense of heat and euphoria creeped up his chest, trying to lift him up. But his body was too heavy to be pulled by it. 

 "This-- hits way too quick...!"  He whispered, a half-smile in his face. Pupils now blown wide, to finally take the world in. The warm shoulder underneath him felt like his only tether to the world. The last refuge of his sanity. But his mind was aching to explore. His thoughts and memories, dreamlike and fleeting, coursed behind his eyes like a thousand rotoscope frames.    Uncoordinated, he held onto his best friend's arm.     He looked up at Hemlock, whose ecstatic grin could've lit up the whole world. And in a way, it did. Galaxies also shone in his eyes. Divine fire burning behind them, and incinerating everything else in their path. Hemlock laughed, nearly vibrating with euphoric purpose. 

"HEY! What'd I tell ya??" Hemlock breathed in the stars with each laugh, and Luca watched in awe and amazement. His heart consistently fluttering out of beat  "...We *are* everything, Sparknotes... we are the center of this goddamn universe. Just you and me... "

"Just you and me..." Luca's voice came out surprisingly fragile, almost tearful. As if he had suddenly divinated something he wasn't supposed to know. Some piece of knowledge strictly forbidden to him. 

In a moment, the lights had quickly changed. Pulsing bright, then dark. Lonely stardust flowers; in vast, open fields of night. 

Otherwordly screams rang through the labyrinthine hallways of his own unraveling mind. 

Water filled every orifice. Feet-first into the black. 

The tick of a metronome echoed just as deep inside of himself as he was inside of it. 

"Hemlock--..." His own voice called softly. But it wasn't truly him who did. 

Still, a sudden vision of his last moments caught in his throat. 

Was this his future? Or his past?

The vivid string of crimson slid from underneath the blade, falling down his chest in a perfect perpendicular line to the horizon; Where the sun, reddened by the twilight, followed the exact same trajectory. 

His wrists, bound in heavy shackles, trembled over his docile, mud-smattered lap. A sound between awe and a plea leaving his lips after the impact, losing itself in the cold air of the field; where he, the prisoner, the pariah, was supposed to die. 

Supposed to.  

The pain arrived later, like the clash of shield against rock. It knocked his air out, and wrung the warmth right out of his limbs. But still, it let him speak. 

"Please... I won't hurt you..."

"You demon, you WITCH!!" A young, fair-haired soldier, not much older than himself, dug the dagger deeper into his ribcage, churning out the heart that, by now, was supposed to be entirely stopped. Cut to bits.  And yet, there he knelt, in the freezing mud, still very much in pain, but very much alive.

The prisoner wept silently. In truth, despite the faint flicker of his own survival instincts, perhaps he still longed for death, more than he longed for this strange, unknown existence; with no anchors, no allies, and no memories to fasten him to the earth. His only reverie being the very instant he'd found himself in the same shackles that now glistened with the beginnings of rain.

He sighed shakily through his tears. Dark, long hair falling in helpless waves over his shoulders, bouncing in unison with the repeated, increased violence inflicted upon his heart. A heart that, defying his own will, or any worldly explanation, still kept him alive. A work of dark magic, no doubt.

It wasn't long until the soldier gave up on the task. The increased paranoia of the situation making his steps unsteady over the mud. Breath ragged with the effort, and the fear.

The prisoner, defeated, did not look up to see him. He didn't need to. Not when the unmistakable, metallic sound of an unsheathed blade reached his ears. 

The air, now dense with rainfall, weighed the cloth against his bruised shoulders. From the heavens, water fell over his head like a crown of ice. 

He closed his eyes. Head raising just barely to expose the pale length of his neck; as a last gesture of servitude: He'd make it easy. One clean swing, and it would be over. Right? It would have to be. He *wanted* it to be. 

He didn't witness the shadow of the blade raise. Drawn back, like a sentence. Nor the dark arrow, passing through the nearby woods, ripping clean through the air, to deprive its recipient from another breath. 

A whistle and a thud, and that was it. No condemnation. No death. 

The rain still hammered against his skull. But only the blood-curling gurgle of his executioner, in his last franctic moments, made him finally open his eyes again. 

The vision dizzied him with horror and utter confusion: The soldier, pale and stiff, with an arrow lodged accross his throat, fell to his knees right in front of him. Blade discarded to his side, unsullied. 

The prisoner waited for a second arrow. But it never came. 

Instead, the ominous drum of a horse's hooves drew the prisoner's gaze from the helpless sight beneath him. A lone knight, on a large black beast, riding his way. Death itself? An omen of sorts?

Man and beast stood where the soldier once had. Carrying with them a vague scent of ash, and the stench of slaughter. By his foreboding countenance, this man could be nothing else but a warlord. Gaze dark under his brows, pensive and intense. Betraying a mind that moved  a hundred paces faster than he, in his thirst and starvation, could ever possibly comprehend. 

"Name?"

The rider spoke. Deep, resonant, and clear, even through the storm. He had addressed him directly, gave him a piece of dignity that, in his situation, felt entirely foreign. He had miscalculated. This man could not be a mere butcher. He was something else.

A second or two passed, before he could utter an answer, barely audible. 

"...Luca..."

"Luca." The knight repeated it. The word flowing with such grace from him it nearly sounded like a different name. He did not seem fazed by the blood, still wet over his chest. Or anything else, for that matter.

"I've freed you from your enslaver. By law. You now belong to me."

The prisoner's eyes widened, taking in the sight of his new Lord. Letting the idea of a second chance at life, albeit unknown under his command, slowly sink in.

"Come." The order was simple. Spoken with a refreshing lack of cruelty. Luca's tears returned in silence. His bleeding heart, once pierced, now had finished repairing itself. Curled inside his ribcage like a newborn animal, hidden from his master's eyes.

A trembling sigh escaped his patched lips, awakening him from an already uneasy rest.

It was this, again. 

The pressure over his eyes, the heaviness of his limbs, the paradoxical shivering he simply could not help. All the marks of another nightly fever. And judging by the current pain in his joints, it was definitely getting worse each time. 

Luca complained softly from the discomfort of his sleeping mat, when a large hand sat over his forehead. It was almost unbearably hot. The fingers gently brushed the long, wavy strands of his sweaty hair, away from his clammy skin, stoppping to cup his cheek, presumably examining his condition. 

Luca was pale. Not even the chronic bit of sunburn over his nose seemed to retain much color. The breaths came out of him shallow. Difficult. 

"Luke...?" 

A familiar voice spoke. Crossing the haze of his fever just to call his name. Luca knew he was supposed to answer. But he couldn't. His eyes, glassy and dark with exhaustion, opened just enough to see his adoptive brother's large silhouette, watching over him.

"You're burning up bad... " Haddad mumbled, voice rough with sleep. The urgency in his demeanor in partial conflict with the care of his touch. "I'll go get you some ice and water... Be right back..." He got on his knees, ready to crawl out of the tent.

"--Hem..." The nickname escaped Luca in a whimper. A knot instantly forming in his throat as he protested; was he going to cry? 

"P-please don't leave me..." 

"I'm not leaving you, Luke we just need to cool you down... --You're sick..."

"P-Please..!" Luca sobbed dryly; his voice small as his hand clung weakly to his brother's coat. His expression betrayed an intense anguish, product of re-living the same traumatic separation over and over in his mind. Given his current state, and after all he'd been through this last year, past and future still blended into the same horrifying ordeal in his mind, it was still difficult to distinguish between the two.

But no amount of protest would stop Haddad from doing what was necessary to take care of his younger brother. Taking Luca's hand, he easily removed it from his person, placing a brief, apologetic kiss on his knuckles. 

"I'll be back in a minute, I promise..." And so, without stopping to hear anything else, he exited their tent. 

In his overheated state, Luca felt as if each second extended past itself, into another hour of waiting. His tears had already dried out the very moment his fever started. But the painful, uncontrollable shaking continued. 

When Haddad came back, not two minutes after leaving, Luca was still somehow startled at his return. His awareness of his surroundings had dulled down by the weight of the fever. The artificer's usually brilliant mind was not the same under the influence of the illness that had overtaken him recently. 

If this continued for another day --Haddad thought-- they would need to stop with the home remedies and find a proper healer for him. And fast.

Wrapped in soft, tightly woven linen, a piece of fresh snow was placed onto Luca's forehead. The contact with his skin, however benevolent, still felt like red hot metal, straight out of the crucible. His body jerked, answering to the pain in kind.

He was given cool spring water, carefully poured into his lips. Its cold burnt his throat on the way down. But after it settled in, Luca could swear a piece of his own lucidity had been brought back. He felt heavier now, but less sore. After so much shaking, his body finally begged him to stay still. 

"Rest down... I'll take care of you" Haddad reassured him, while tucking a clean, light bedsheet around him. Luca glanced up at his brother with certain difficulty, gaze still heavy with exhaustion. 

"Thank you, Hem..." Luca let out a deep, shaky sigh; weathering another rogue shiver from his fever. Resting his head back on the mat, Luca finally let his eyes close: Now he'd done something to take care of his overheating, it was safe to assume he was going to feel better in the morning. Most likely.

Haddad, next to him, smiled faintly in response.