At the Altar of His Love

It was an altar of silence and noise; lullaby and threat in turn, its constant hum both obnoxious and indifferent to the pleas of its singular devotee. Yozora listened to its song, staring at the white wall across the corridor through a crack in the closet. White walls, white ceiling, some intolerable off-white for the privacy glass on the doors and the vinyl tiles beneath his feet. The fluorescent lights washed all color from the halls, as if they sought to drown what little life this place had left before it could be snatched up by the desperate, grasping hands of its inhabitants.

There were no inhabitants in the corridor, though, just the occasional rush of doctors and nurses. Yozora paid them little mind, his ears turned only toward the sounds from beyond the door in the wall opposite the medical closet in which he hid; the intermittent shuffle of shoes, the shaky breaths, the murmured words he did not care to hear. Over and over, the same whispers: come back to me, I'll keep you safe this time, come back to me, I'll keep you here with me. Little prayers of protection to ward off oblivion.

But if two ask for protection, Yozora thought, each for the other, then only one will be heard. The world already chose whom it would heed, Sora.

He rather agreed with the world's choice of protectee, even if he disagreed with whom it had chosen to defend him. We both want the same thing. It's just that his methods look like this, while mine...

Well, his wouldn't leave Sora calling out to an absent idol, flinching at every odd footstep, flash of light, approaching shadow.

What good is a guardian once he's bent and broken? If Yozora's methods were cruel, their conclusions were more compelling. The ward is kept in place; the warrior roams free. If one of their bodies need be broken, of the two...

Too late now, he supposed.

More sounds beyond the opposite door, inaudible to anyone but him; the scrape of a plastic stool, shoes against vinyl. The altar of noise and silence grew briefly louder as its hermetic seal broke, the door sliding open. Sora stepped out. He looked as wasted as all the other wraiths that occupied this place, bowed at their own altars. His eyes were swollen and haunted, skin stained in so many shades of gray. The harsh light carved hollows in his cheeks, rendered his hair lank and greasy. His shoulders slumped as if they carried the weight of the world itself, rather than the head of a single boy. Yozora could smell his rank misery; sweat and cortisol sweet compared to the hospital's base astringency.

Misery...or guilt? Yozora tilted his head. Why guilt? Do you still not understand that this is all he's ever wanted?

Harried eyes darted; first up, then down the corridor. Yozora remained still. Hidden in the closet, phased half-in, half-out of corporeality, there was little chance he'd be spotted. Yet it wouldn't do to underestimate Sora. He was quick, could even be clever. The only reason he was still moving was because he could resist Yozora's protection. Better to be safe than sorry, then, and avoid collateral besides.

When the only movement was a woman in scrubs at the other end of the corridor, Sora slid the door shut behind him. When there was no movement, he held out a hand and sparks of light—true light, warm and dancing and beauteously violent in its slicing through the cold sterility of the place—burst into existence. A further flash, and the Keyblade itself shone in his hand.

He turned it toward the door. A sharp point of light shot out; a seal stronger and stranger than a hermetic frame shielding the room beyond. Beams spun and swirled, then settled into transparency. It seemed like such an effort for so small a thing. As if the supernatural powers of the Keyblade could truly cocoon the boy upon his altar within, as if Sora could make his prayers of protection real via its divine intervention.

Things don't work that way here, sorry.

It tickled him to see Sora then hurry away in the direction of the bathrooms. No matter how much he wanted to keep watch—no matter how important the task—his body failed him. All bodies failed, in the end. It was part of the reason why Yozora preferred his methods. Removing one body from the equation also removed a point of failure. Still, perhaps that was what bound the two boys so closely; the inherent failure of their forms.

He watched Sora scurry around the corner, then straightened from his position against the wall. Now was the time, then. No matter their weakness, or how little either boy understood, Yozora still had respects to pay at the altar of noise and silence.

At the altar of protection.

It took little effort to bypass Sora's safeguards. Amusing, considering how hard he'd tried. Yozora phased first into the corridor, then up to the door itself. He could phase through the walls, but he'd rather—yes. He shifted a hand into the door's immateriality; its heart, its purpose. Even without a lock, the Keyblade had still managed to connect with the desires of the shut door. He could feel the magic, and how hard it tried to shield what lay beyond. Why deny himself the pleasure of penetrating; of ignoring its pleas, its cries. He stepped forward in his phased state, with his phased heart, and into the door. 

There was a moment of vertigo. The fabric of reality had been bent to rebel against his presence, pushing back as he pressed on. But he belonged and the bends did not, and when his fingers found that rebelling spark planted at the heart of the door, it saw him—his intent, his desire, his power—and shuddered, shivered, faded away. The magic of the Keyblade could not resist him, and besides, this world knew him.

Sora might not understand, but you do. The boy in this room and I are kin in the only way that matters; in purpose.

The door's heart opened to him, and Yozora stepped through.

Gray was a strange color for love. Yet here it was, the same stain he'd seen on Sora clinging to the room like so much dust. The window across from the door looked out on a city of steel and silver skies, clouds bruised and hanging low. A gray rain beat down; constant, steady, nigh indistinguishable from the drone of monitors and machines. There was gray in the flooring and gray in the shadows, and gray seeped into every vein and vessel of the boy upon the bed.

"Riku."

Yozora approached, slow and silent. He was a sight, to be sure. He'd overestimated his powers in this world, underestimated Yozora's own, and paid the price rather dramatically. His and Sora's presumption that they would be able to cure themselves of any injury he inflicted had been a grievous error in judgement. Yet, despite all that shared arrogance, it was Sora's recklessness, his determination, his freedom of movement, that had put them irreversibly in harm's way. From there, Riku had only really had one choice; to take the hit, or not.

"I won't let you touch him," he'd said. 

"You can't stop me," Yozora replied, standing at the end of the bed. "Not now. Not like this."

Still, they'd got away in the end. Sora had snatched Riku's body up and run. It was an escape that impressed Yozora, as much for the fact that Sora had kept Riku alive throughout as anything. But there was something else to their retreat; a pause on Yozora's part. Maybe he just hadn't expected to see such a familiar look in those ocean eyes before he'd cracked Riku's skull open and they'd rolled back into it; red and blue blending into aquamarine.

It didn't matter, though. No amount of running could save them. Riku had taken the blow, and now here he was, and here Yozora was, and there was nothing he could do.

You should have locked him away. You should have trapped him somewhere. You should have turned him into crystal and ice, into shadow or stone or glass, and hidden him from the world until it was safe. But you let him go free, and all you could do to keep him that way was put your body between us. Pathetic.

And yet...

In the bruised, rain-wet light, Yozora reached out. His fingers savored Riku, traced the bandages about his shorn head, sought the singular disparity amidst those lines of gauze. Something curled and twisted deep in his gut as he touched the tube, snaking from Riku's skull to an ICP monitor nearby.

There's a hole in your head, in the very bones of it. There's a hole, and I could rip this tube out of it—and then what? How fast do you die? How slow? And what can you do for Sora then?

That's the price you pay for doing things your way.

And yet...

The thing in his stomach retched, arched, slowly unfurled as he drew his finger back down the tube, the bandaged skull, and over Riku's face. Gray skin was soft, dry under his thumb, eyes shut and shadowed, cheeks wan in places and swollen in others, blackened and battered. More tubes; from his nose, from his throat. The nasogastric, the endotracheal and its attached ventilator. Fingers skimmed around the side of his head, where he could feel the EVD leeching fluid so that the pressure in his skull wouldn't build.

What if it shifted, this thing in your brain? What other fluids might drain into it? Could your broken body remember how to breathe if I took this mask away? What damage could I do with this one in your nose, or this other in your throat? What could I scrape and tear and puncture and bleed?

And yet...

His fingers paused on Riku's throat, skin-paper thin and pasty above his gown. A tangle of wires ran down the side of it in a sharp, dark shock that slithered beneath pale cotton and clung to his chest. The constant beep from their monitor was the heart's own song; droning and dull, eerie in its desirability.

And if I made it beat faster, then what? Would someone come running? Perhaps Yozora would seal the door. It would not be hard. His power was greater than Sora's, after all. He could hold them back, keep them out for long enough to do what he wanted with Riku.

But what do I want to do with him?

He grasped the blanket and tugged it from beneath limp arms. They weren't yet wasted, but would be soon if Riku failed to drag himself out of unconsciousness. Yozora's eyes trailed over him, catching for just a moment on the IV slipped under his skin and into a vein; a tiny hole carved into his body, a penetration into his shell. It was a humiliating act of invasion, nonconsensual, yet necessary to ensure life dripped golden into him, a little worm of light crawling amidst the gray. Shameful.

And yet...

And yet...

Beneath the blanket, he was equally as pathetic as above. The unfurling, squirming something in Yozora drew taut as he took in the rumpled gown around Riku's thighs, his feet and thighs and calves all wrapped in various stockings and cuffs. Anti-embolism, sequential compression, so much required to keep him 'well'. Neither, however, were enough to hide the tubes strapped to his legs, nor the bag at the side of the bed filled with his urine, nor the catheter inserted into his penis.

There was a breath in Yozora, struggling to get out. He stared at it; that limp cock, half-hidden, thin tube violating its hole. Pathetic. Pathetic. Pathetic. How could you ever think this was the right choice? How could you ever think this would save anyone? You bought him a moment with your body, yet still I could take him. I could take your life, too.

"I could take you." His voice was dry, and obscene in that dryness. It desecrated the altar of silence, of noise, ruined it with implication. He wanted to do it again. He needed to. The constant drone of it all was suddenly unbearable as he stared; at the broken body, at the colored lines on black screens, at the fog of breath against plastic, at the piss in the bag and the tubes in his veins and his throat and his brain and his cock and all around him, surrounding him as if to present him as the perfect sacrifice, the perfect symbol, the perfect—

The whole scene was cast in shadows, gray as the rest of the room. When had he moved so close? He loomed over Riku, gripping the sides of the bed. He stared down at him, stared, stared, and felt that tension again; this time, between his legs.

"There's nothing you can do," he whispered. He wondered if, deep within the darkness, Riku could hear him, could feel him there. He wondered if he was trapped inside himself, screaming, or simply asleep. It didn't matter either way. "There's nothing you could do." 

Yes, there was nothing. Riku couldn't even bathe himself anymore, couldn't eat, couldn't piss, couldn't breathe. What could he do then? Yozora's cock throbbed as he took in that sickly skin, washed clean. Had Sora done that? No, it must have been the nurses. But which was better, in his mind? The loss of privacy before strangers, or the humiliation of being bare before a friend, before someone you had sworn to protect? The mortification of leaving them behind to wipe down every line and crease of you, into every crevasse and crack. Was Sora present, he wondered, when the nurses changed his urinary bag? When they scrubbed away his excretion? Did his heart shudder with guilt and love and shameful embarrassment to see every thin wire and hollow piece of plastic sliding deep inside his beloved friend?

Perhaps yes.

And yet...

"You make him sad." That was true. "You make me—" 

The words failed. Not a fading, but a sudden stop. Something shifted. The world tilted. It wasn't enough to dislodge the thing in his gut, yet something spilled out anyway; tendrils of bile and acid slipping up his throat and across the bed to entangle with tubes and drains, and draw him in, further, deeper.

His cock ached.

I didn't come to kill you. I came to see you.

He did not think of respects to be paid then. Did not think to clap his hands together or toss a coin in a well. This was not prayer. This was not prayer. There was no dignity in this, nothing worth acknowledging, no need to humble oneself in the presence of this pointless, pathetic vulnerability, this uselessness, this cradle of fluids and cloth and plastic and steel and worthless flesh encased in silence and noise. There was nothing here, nothing; no longing, no lust, no need, no want—so much want—and still he drew himself onto the bed in one swift, perfect motion, unhindered by the baseness of the body below, unhindered by the righteousness that broke it, and kneeled. He kneeled and loomed and stared at it, at this unerring, unwavering symbol of defense, of protection, of what one could—would—give to keep another safe; at the symbol of someone who saves.

No, there was nothing here. There was not. There simply was not.

The snap of a button, the zip of a fly. Both were loud here; another obscene disturbance.

How long did he have? As long as he wanted. Sora couldn't stop him, and if Sora couldn't, no one here could. No one anywhere could. Riku certainly couldn't, and that was his own fault. Or was it mine? The thought flitted past. He let it go. He had nothing to be sorry for. Aren't you grateful? You should be grateful. You get to show him just how much you'll give up to keep him safe. Aren't you grateful for that? Aren't you grateful you get to sleep and surrender while I have to do what you couldn't? Aren't you—

"—grateful for this?" Words dragged themselves through gritted teeth as he freed himself from his pants. Yet he got no further, hand a traitor as it reached out and wrapped around Riku's cock. He was soft as velvet, more hairs around the base than remained on his head. His fingers gripped the head, slid up, down, revealed the glistening pink beneath his foreskin and the penetration of his urethra.

Yozora's cock twitched, and his lips with it; teeth grinding, jaw tight. Then he lowered his hips and pressed them together, so careful to avoid tangling them with the catheter—and why? Why did he care? Why treat this moment with such reverence? Why do this when his enemy was laid bare before him?

How was he so beautiful, trapped in the failure of his flesh? Unmoving save for the barest rise and fall of his chest and the stiffening of his cock in Yozora's hand, pressed alongside his own; so still, everything so still.

I can't disturb a tube. But I could. I could rip and tear them out of your mouth and nose and brain, from your veins and your cock. I could leave you hemorrhaging, pressure building in your skull, fluid staining every surface of this room until it floods out all the gray; a rain of everything you are and could ever be, dripping, draining, and you couldn't even struggle, couldn't flail, couldn't gasp. And I could, I could, I— 

His hand moved up and down, fast. Too hard, too fast, but he had to, he had to because he couldn't do it. And he wanted, eyes darting over that broken body and its wan features, fault lines where he'd crushed and cracked and concussed it. There were bruises and bandages and they were beautiful, and he couldn't move a single thing out of place, couldn't rip, couldn't tear, couldn't. It wasn't even wouldn't. Even with a hole drilled in his skull and tendrils draining him, he couldn't. Even with his nose stuffed with indignant tubing and his throat held open at the mercy of a machine, he couldn't. Even with his arm and cock pierced, he couldn't.

He couldn't do it.

Kin. Yozora had called him that. Kin in conception. Kin in purpose. Kin in self.

Not a mirror, no, but everything Yozora wanted to be laid perfect upon his altar, and he could not bear to break him anymore.

Instead, he stared down at shut eyes, the delicate crease of his lids, and ground their cocks together in his fist. Harder, faster, rubbing and rubbing and desperately wishing and hoping and hating and reviling. They were both stiff against his glove, smooth and swollen and hot against his bare fingers, and Yozora wanted him, wanted to be him, wanted to phase into the IV and crawl inside his veins and up and through him, suffuse into his very being, wanted to love him and what he could be; the thing Yozora couldn't. He wanted to worship, wanted to break and kill, wanted to steal every tear of Sora's sorrow and affection, every second of his care, wanted to prove with shattered bones and inflamed brain and pathetic flesh and piss and machine-enforced breath that he would save Sora with his everything.

He wanted—

Yozora bent forward even as his back arched, caught between the wild jerk of his hands and the trembling in his knees and the ever-present awareness of every drain and bag and piece of polyurethane held so precariously in place. He was caught by the fragile body under him, not allowed to move beyond the pulse and shudder of the cock in his hand. He was caught, and so he pressed closer, pressed cold, chapped lips against plastic and desperately sought their matched pair parted around the tube beneath. Sweat dripped down his forehead onto the face below, left shapes like bruised, rain-wet light on the window. Breath fogged the mask, a heart beat faster. Whose heart? Longing, longing, longing.

I will infect you, you contaminant. I will force myself into you, into your purpose, just like you forced yourself into mine, into me. I will bleed into you through every piece of this apparatus keeping you alive. I will be you. I want to be you. I want you. I am you.

Close. He was so close. He could feel it, could feel himself twitching, everything inside him coiling into itself, ready to release, to spiral out of him and into this machine that was Riku; to become another part of the symbol, this effigy to failure—to protection—to beautiful, perfect failure. He couldn't. He shouldn't. He wanted. He would.

I— 

"I want to wear it too." His voice broke around the gray of the room, choking his throat like so many tubes. "I want—that shape. A body—broken." His eyes widened. The weight of it all; the violence, the hunting, the trapping, the hiding things away, of being the thing you protected from, because in the end what else could he do? "I don't want that. I want this. I want this shape. I want a shape that shows the world how far I'll go."

To protect what matters most. To save what matters most.

Almost, he ripped the ventilator away. Instead, he let his lips rest against it, eyes stinging. It's more than respect, more than acknowledgement of kinship, of deed, of purpose or self. It's worse.

He stared down at Riku and his eyes burned because he could not weep.

Could you love something so loathsome?

I could. I do.

He came, noiselessly, one hand still gripping their cocks together. He rubbed himself through the spasms, and then kept on going past the point of pain. Every sound—every drop of rain, every beep of a monitor, every intake of breath—burst loud in his ears, and the thing in his gut dislodged and leaked free, even if only for a moment. He came, body uncoiling, desperate to slip inside, so pathetic, and did not stop until he felt Riku's cock twitch in answer, sticky white oozing out around the catheter, tacky strings tangling them together.

His other hand came up and held his face, gentle against that delicate cheek, that broken body. For all the intensity of his fist, he'd barely shaken the bed. His thumb laid against the mask, and then he leaned forward one last time and phased through—half there, half not—and felt the ghost of lips against his own. Cold, dry, soft, gray; the tube in both their throats.

He pulled back and stared at the body beneath him, at the white that stained his hands, his gloves, their cocks, Riku's thighs, the catheter, the cotton gown. He stared at the expelled, dislodged thing between them, and then swiftly, surely, put every strange, spilled emotion back in its place, set his wires and tubes and bags as they should have been, as he took in the mark he'd made them leave on themselves and knew it had to go.

He called forth his powers. Tiny drones darted about; cleaning, sterilizing, wiping away their come, wiping away his touch, wiping away disturbance. Yozora rose, phased back off the bed, saw that each fragile, fatal tube remained as it should be.

Disgust was sterilized. Frustration was sterilized. Hate was sterilized. Desperation and affection and kinship were sterilized. Arousal and obsession and love were sterilized. The bruised rain-wet light and gray shadow washed over them both as he looked upon the sterilized altar of a brutalized, broken boy. A protector of nothing and no one.

It is not a privilege to be as you are. There is no beauty in the failure of your flesh. The evidence of your sacrifice is neither loved nor longed for. I could tear the life from you. I should tear the life from you.

You have failed to save Sora. You have failed to save yourself.

And yet...

The beat of the heart monitor seemed as Yozora's own, even if the thing in his chest thudded out of time.

He banished his drones, let his hands finish the job. Pristine cotton was tugged straight over cock and catheter both, gown smoothed down, blanket returned to its place with clinical care. He did not look at Riku's face. He wouldn't.

He couldn't.

He stepped back, turned away, stopped. There was a noise. The frantic slap of shoes on vinyl. No gurney, no frantic exchange of information, of hospital codes. Not doctors or nurses then, but—

The door slid open and Sora stepped through.

Yozora observed with perfect silence as his mouth dropped open, eyes wide, dilated black. He saw the sweat on his brow, smelled the stench of panic in his pits, felt in phantom pangs the shake of his arms, his knees. Whose heart was that, he wondered, beating so loud, so fast?

Sora shut the door and summoned his Keyblade.

"You—!"

The room wasn't large. Yozora took one step, two, three, and was beside him. He was fast, but he had to give Sora some credit; he could have swung, but didn't, stood still and breathed heavy as Yozora stared down at him.

"How did you—"

"You can't rely on your powers here. Things you think you own, I can take. Attacks you make against me, I can stop. Bodies you thought were strong, I can break." His mouth didn't seem to want to add, "You should know. That's why he's here."

Sora grit his teeth. The grind of them—so tight, so close, sliding along and against—sent Yozora's mind spiraling back to just moments before, and he couldn't have that. Didn't want that.

Take him now. There will be collateral, but take him now. Prove your method superior. Bring this to its inevitable conclusion.

He raised a hand. Sora's grip tightened on the Keyblade.

The steady beep of the heart monitor beat loud in the silence.

His hand fell. "I'm leaving."

"You're—what?"

Yozora stepped past him. The light shifted, quiet interrupted by the audible flash of the Keyblade's dismissal. Arrogant. You believe when you should not, Sora. Then there was a hand on his wrist.

He paused, peered over his shoulder and down. There was Sora; brows furrowed, sweat on his cheeks now, the light of him swallowed by the gray. But—no, there was a little glow. It wouldn't be there, if he were all crystal and ice, shadow or stone or glass. Neither the gray, nor the glow.

"Whatever you're planning," Sora said, voice soft yet sure, "I won't let you touch him."

An echo. A sound like so much tinnitus.

Yozora removed his hand with a flick of the wrist, made to turn away, stopped when his eyes caught on Sora's mouth. It was open, confusion and uncertainty and that reckless belief in his own power—in finding the light in others, even when it wasn't there—spilling out in too many words. Yozora couldn't understand, and didn't want to. He had no answers to give whatever Sora was asking in his otherworldly tongue. The room was too small, too much.

The heart monitor beat away; obnoxious, indifferent.

I'll come back. I'll take him then. For now—

"Go."

Sora's gibberish strangled in a, "Huh?"

There was silence, but Yozora could see his half-raised hand threatening to touch him again. He couldn't have that. He escaped Sora's mouth and caught his eyes instead; those glassy, haunted things. All the rain in the sky could not compare to what they contained, could not be enough for this.

He had to leave, but Sora's gaze demanded parting words, demanded an answer from his fellow devotee.

So Yozora gave it to him.

"Go and weep like a widow at the altar of his love."

Two sounds; a beep, a breath. There was a single tear. Sora reached—but Yozora was already gone.