Until Sunrise
Oh my love, what I wouldn't give for you.
Darrien's teeth were at his throat, and there were dark winged angels, fluttering around in his hair, filling Tucker's ears with heavy wingbeats and stuffing his mouth with feathers. There was a hand against his scalp, wrenching him back then holding him gently like a broken doll. There was a snapping of something in his neck. Some muscle or tendon or vessel caught in the fray.
Tucker thought about angels. Their fiery swords and their eyes that saw everything and how you couldn't look directly at them even as they spoke to you. They were holy and terrifying and brilliant and painful and round and sharp and blinding and all seeing.
He felt so cold. Colder than he'd ever felt before. Colder than any human had ever felt before, he was sure. And then there was a wrist at his mouth, wet and dripping, and he was lapping at it like a newborn with no understanding of existence and only a slight, instinctual understanding of survival. Ears folded, eyes closed shut with blood, a gentle lapping at his neck that soothed him in waves and shivers.
When he was full he slept, and when he woke he ate, and when he was full he slept again.
Finally he woke and his ears were clear and his eyes were clean and he could see the sharpness of everything and anything, vibrating with energy and purpose. He looked at his hands and saw his colors muted with death. Oh how much it drained from you. But it was nothing he couldn't carry.
He saw Darrien, weary but brilliantly outlined in the contrasting shades of the world. Of the candlelight flickering shadows across his face and shining on the brilliant white of his fangs. Of the shadows surrounding the pale starkness of his bloodied arms, crisscrossed with angry marks of hunger.
When Tucker reached up to him, he leaned in willingly, closing his eyes and relaxing so easily into his hold.
"I love you," Tucker whispered.
And then he wrenched Darrien's head from his shoulders in one decisive heaving of his arms.
The angels exploded in flight like a startled murder of crows, falling back to earth in scatters across Tucker's arms. The body stayed upright for a moment, hands twitching in search of something to steady themselves. A spasm shot through, jerking it wildly back and down. It landed heavily on the floor, and Tucker sank down to meet it on his knees, the head still blinking and thrumming in his hands.
His fingers pressed so tightly into the skin. Tucker could feel the muscles twitching, trying to realign themselves with the state of things. Nerves and impulses and thoughts coursing in one final burst through a reanimated corpse. A closing performance on an empty stage in a theater with a single audience member, clapping with everything they could muster.
Blood. So much blood. It dribbled from Darrien's lips and nose. It came from his neck in great spurts and coated Tucker's hands and arms, slick and cold, painting his pale body a brilliant dark red. It looked black in the dim room. He was becoming a shadow.
"Master," Tucker spoke, and the eyes flickered open one more time, dark but searching. Tucker brought the head to him, and he kissed Darrien without hesitation.
He kissed him hard. The last kiss he would take from this man, and the last kiss he would take from this lifetime. His tongue ran across Darrien's lips, tasting him, clipping the edges of his fangs.
Tucker tried to memorize everything about this moment. The way his fingers felt digging into the cold skin of Darrien's face. His mouth against Darrien's twitching lips. The sharp pain of Darrien's fangs against his tongue. The hunger that churned in his stomach as he kneeled in veneration of his passion.
Blood fell. He could hear it pattering on the floor like heavy rain. Darrien tasted like a storm.
Do you understand?
_I did this for you. I did this because I love you so so deeply, there is nothing I wouldn't do. I did this because I saw the pain. I saw what an eternity does. I saw it stretching ahead of us, an endless sea of existence, and I saw what it did to you. The doubt it filled you with. The aching loneliness and fragility and meaninglessness of it all. _
You are not like the others. You needed an end. You yearned for it. I could see it in your eyes. The desperation that hung so very heavy across your shoulders and face. How hard was it some days, to lift your ancient body from that grave of a bed?
I love you so desperately, with every single thing inside of me. With every lifetime I've lived. With every breath I no longer need to take. I saw how I could make it better, and I did.
Tucker kissed Darrien's lower lip, then the corner of his mouth. Darrien's eyes fell shut and didn't open again. The angel wings lay limp, stuck in patches of blood and gore.
He knelt there, praying in open ended thoughts to himself. To a God he didn't believe in. To angels that were too bright and far away to look at. To a love that had always been required. To a lifetime of servitude that had ended in brilliant violence.
At some point he rose and gathered up the pieces of his former Master and brought them to his bedroom. It sagged beneath their combined weight. Tucker knew from a decade of life that dead bodies were always heavier. He kept the curtain open so he could see the stars. He didn't know how long he had.
He bunched up a pillow, leaning Darrien's head against it. His thumbs brushed over the eyelids, lifting them. Holding them while they became accustomed to their new placement. Darrien stared at him impassively in the dim light. His body lay disconnected below, flat on its back, palms raised upwards. Tucker sat beside him.
"And you know I really do love you," Tucker mumbled, as if to continue a conversation. He pushed his messy curls back from his forehead and a palmful of blood left a wet trail. The moonlight caught it like oil on blacktop, shimmering erratically.
"And I think it's strange when people say that. They always say it too late. Much later than they ever should have. But I also think... I don't think I ever really needed to actually say it. Because I think we both knew."
The head didn't respond, because Darrien was dead. Tucker smiled, chuckling at himself.
"I think that there was a time where I was in denial. You too, probably. Or maybe you were just too stubborn. I know that there were some times when I'd look at you and I'd just think, now! Just say it to him. Just open your mouth and say you love him you fucking idiot."
"And there were times, you know, I actually considered, before this. Before all of this. Just leaving the curtain open. Letting you wake up and then sleep again forever. It would have been painful and violent but you would have been happy. I think."
His gaze drifted from the head to the window. Black cut through with flecks of gold and round, ancient ivory.
"I think this is much more poetic, don't you?"
He looked back to his Master, who looked back at him without seeing him.
"I believe that we will see each other again. We were drawn to each other from the start. From the second the universe started. When you shook my hand that first day, and our skin touched, and I felt how your hand fit into mine. It was something that I could never explain to anyone. Anytime someone asked me why I stayed. And I kept telling myself the same bullshit reasons, over and over."
"And then that day when I came in, and you... I don't know what the hell you were doing. Something stupid probably. Something I had to clean up after, like always. Sitting against the wall, a body in your lap. Blood all over your clothes and the carpet and seeping into the floorboards. You were looking down, so fucking pathetic and sad and miserable. Coated in gore and desperation. And when I came in you looked up at me, and you looked in my eyes, and you looked at me like I was the only person in the world who could help you."
Tucker looked away shyly. Darrien did not.
The blood gathered around the head had become so thick it was no longer pooling. It simply stagnated, soaking down into the mattress in an uneven halo.
A sudden stabbing pain doubled him in half, and Tucker jerked tightly into a ball. The bed shook. The head fell to the side. Tucker cried out, reaching a hand out to right it.
"It hurts Master," he whimpered, holding the head upright. Darrien didn't answer.
Tucker struggled closer, jostling Darrien's body now. He let the head fall back, reaching down to hold Darrien's open hand. He squeezed it. It was cold. But it had always been cold.
"That day I knew I would do anything for you. Absolutely anything."
His insides were churning with a heavy heat that became sharper. There were blades of flames licking and stabbing at his insides. Tucker gave a low whine, twisting beside Darrien, not letting go of his hand. His fingers dug into the dead skin, meeting the rigor mortis of bone and muscle. He was sobbing now, unable to see through his tears. They streaked through the blood on his face.
"I would kill for you," he choked out.
He whimpered pathetically. A line of flame cut through his vision.
Tucker thought of angels.
"I would die for you," he gasped.
His head was filled with a pressure he couldn't fathom. He was exploding from the inside out. He was being lifted. His arrival was being announced by blaring trumpets. He was going back to the start of the universe. He was