#nyckierre

His heartbeat roars in his ears the moment his eyes focus on Pierre. He’s sprawled on the ground almost like a ragdoll, skin pale and visibly clammy. The twitch of his chest is faint, barely-there, with breaths that come so quickly it makes Nyck feel like he’s the one starving for oxygen.

And perhaps he is. He realizes, now, that he hasn’t taken a breath since stumbling upon Pierre’s body.

In stark contrast to the paleness of Pierre’s skin are the splashes of deep crimson splattered across his chest and dribbling down from his lips. Nyck stumbles forward, his feet betraying his mind’s need to see and understand exactly what has happened by following his heart’s hesitance at experiencing Pierre’s last moments of life.

No, no, surely not. Surely there’s something –

“Pierre?” Nyck whispers, his voice gentle and weak as he pushes himself forward, trembling legs be damned. He collapses as soon as he makes it to Pierre’s side, taking in the magnitude of the wound. There is a gash in his chest he had not noticed before, angry and red and bubbling with every breath Pierre tries to take. The blood pouring from his lips makes sense, now, with the blunt force trauma to his chest so obvious.

His lungs - they must be -

“Pierre, Pierre, please.” Nyck tries again, his voice louder and more urgent as he reaches a quivering hand forward to test the pulse at Pierre’s neck. The beat is feather soft and all but non-existent, like his heart is merely whispering within the confines of his ribs instead of singing with power the way Nyck is so used to. The way he breathes sends a shiver down Nyck’s spine and straight to the core of his soul. The inhales are wet - gurgled and shallow, with a desperation of a rasp to pull air into lungs that may not have the space left in them for oxygen anymore. The exhales are almost worse, rattling with blood that continues to bubble out from the corner of Pierre’s lips. He is choking, suffocating, on the very same blood meant to keep him alive. 

Nyck swallows a mouthful of bile and nearly vomits on the spot. He moves his hand from Pierre’s neck to the side of his face, and only then do hazy, unfocused blue eyes flutter open to meet his gaze.

“Pierre! Hang on, okay? Just hang on. I will get someone to help, just - just don’t go anywhere.” it hurts too much to say ‘don’t die’ even if that is exactly what he means. There is a spark of recognition in Pierre’s eyes that lasts the span of a heartbeat, before that clarity becomes fear, and then that fear becomes chilling horror. Nyck’s blood runs cold at the expression on Pierre’s face, and he grabs his bloody cheeks between both of his hands. “Hey, it’s okay, it’s alright.”

“Run,” Pierre chokes, coughing up an alarming mouthful of blood. He barely manages to pull in a breath to finish his plea, “Please, run. Now.”

“What? I - I will, I will run and get help.” Nyck assures him, though the fear in Pierre’s eyes only seems to grow. Confusion settles over him like a thick and heavy blanket, one that has him trapped and struggling to squirm his way out. 

A soft flicker of movement twists the shadows around Pierre’s body, and Nyck whirls around so quickly it nearly makes his head spin. A gasp claws its way up from the back of his throat when his eyes settle on another presence, a man, looming over him far too close for comfort. He startles, scrambling backwards until his hand accidentally hits Pierre’s arm, and only then does he sober up enough to recognize the man’s face. The panic quells, and his frantic breaths begin to calm as he pulls himself back up to his feet.

“Christian! Please, Pierre – something’s happened to Pierre. We need to get him help, he can’t breathe.”

Christian remains stoically calm, and Nyck watches as his eyes trail down to Pierre, still struggling for air on the ground. Nothing flickers across his face, not one single flash of surprise, of pity, of empathy -

He merely watches Pierre for a moment, head cocked to the side in interest, before his eyes finally trail their way back up to Nyck.

“I’m afraid it’s too late for him, Nyck. He made his bed, and now he has to lie in it.”

“He…what?” 

At that moment, Pierre makes a strangled sort of sound, something that is suspiciously close to Nyck’s own name garbled through a mouth full of blood and breathless lungs. Nyck looks back down at him, noticing the way his chest no longer moves and his eyes, oh, god, his eyes - they’re glassing over. There’s still life left in them, a defiant spark against his fate, but it is merely a blip, destined to fade out.

Nyck feels Christian’s hands on him in the exact second Pierre’s eyes flutter closed, followed by a burst of fire and pain that erupts at the center of his neck. Just as soon as Christian’s arms had grabbed hold of him, they’re gone, and Nyck looks down to see blood pooling from his neck, dripping onto Pierre’s lifeless body on the ground. His heart roars viciously in his ears, pounding away and unhelpfully spilling more blood even quicker as his hands come up in an attempt to stop the bleeding.

“What did - what did you -” Nyck sputters, stumbling on his feet as blood crowds his throat and pours from him quicker than he can attempt to stop it. He turns, and Christian is gone completely from sight. It’s almost like he dreamed him up, like he was never really there at all.

But the gaping wound in his neck says otherwise. As quickly as the blood spills, so too does his consciousness and strength wane. He sways slightly, before his knees completely buckle and he falls listlessly to the ground, ragdolled next to Pierre. Fear ignites in his veins, a strong sense of self preservation running through him as he tries to push through. 

But mere will alone is not enough to fight the demons of blood loss. It is not enough to clear his airway or keep his heart pumping in his chest. It was not enough for Pierre, either, whose body is cooling rapidly beside Nyck. This is not where he wants to die, this isn’t where he wants things to end –

But, he thinks hopelessly, it surely wasn’t where Pierre wanted his life to end, either.

“P-Pierre…” Nyck gasps, coughing out blood with a horrendous gurgling sound. He can’t breathe, oh he can’t breathe, and is this what Pierre felt only moments ago when he was gasping like a fish out of water to pull anything into his crowded lungs? If Nyck had the energy, he would be sick. “Pierre.”

Logically, Nyck knows Pierre is already dead. He watched him take his last breath, with Nyck’s name pressed against his dying lips. He can see the stillness of his chest, and yet he still desperately calls for something, anything.

Anything he can have, anything his slippery, bloody little hands can grab on to, not to die alone.

“Pierre!” he calls out again, desperately, spitting blood from his mouth in the process. His next inhale provides him with a lungful of blood, and he begins to choke feebly against the same forces that took Pierre from him.

The struggle for air hurts more than he ever imagined it could, the way his chest burns and aches and spasms for oxygen that can no longer make it in. His entire body shakes viciously with the need to breathe, god he just wants to breathe -

It’s only a few moments later his head hits the ground right next to Pierre’s, his lips only centimeters away from the shell of Pierre’s ear. He heaves a dry sob, which makes it no further than the drowning mess of his crushed lungs, and wheezes out, “Please. I’m so sorry, Pierre.”

His heartbeat stumbles, falters, and then halts as soon as the words leave his bloodstained lips.

.