Chapter Text
His partner was going to die, wasn’t he?
And perhaps he would follow soon.
They were both breathing heavily, and bleeding even heavier. But only one of them was strewn across the other’s lap, coughing up blood until he lost the energy to cough more.
A strike of brilliant light blinds him for a second, and a terrifyingly loud clap of thunder follows quickly. It was like an omen of death, a final word before a final breath.
His bandages are stained with blood, and every surface they press against are marked red as well.
They should’ve gotten out of there. A storm was going to come, after all. It was going to rain soon, and they shouldn’t stay there soaked till the clouds parted.
And maybe they could’ve gotten out of there, if it were a couple of hours earlier. But it was not a couple of hours earlier, and they had already been subjected to several hours of a cruelly matched fight.
Perhaps their opponent was in the same state they were in, on the verge of death and sullying the dirt with their blood. It didn’t matter either way, for one of their hearts were already approaching their closing beats, and the other was following after.
A hat laid, discarded, a few feet away from them. It must’ve taken some damage, and it was probably torn up. But both of them made no move to grab it. Both of them could barely move.
They should’ve gotten out of there. Should’ve ran and called for some of the Port Mafia medics or got at least some form of first-aid. They were going to die soon, and they couldn’t stay there soaked with each other’s blood till the clouds parted.
They’d barely known each other for more than a year, at most. But here they were, dying together on a night that promises a storm, letting go too soon of dreams and wishes they’d barely dreamed or wished.
The boy dying in his arms opens his mouth to speak. He looks strangely young like this, more like the boy he could’ve been.
“Lover’s suicide, huh?” The left of his mouth twists up, before it abruptly falls back down and gasps for air.
It’s begun to rain.
He’s peppered with raindrops, light and tiny. He hears a crack of thunder again, but it sounds very quiet and he couldn’t see a flash of lightning before. He must’ve been more tired than he’d thought. Maybe it was time?
A hand, warm, curls its way up his cheek and twists its way into his hair. It cups his face for a second, and it comforts him too well, in a way that shifts in his chest rather uncomfortably.
“Goodbye.”
He does not know who had said it, but as soon as it is spoken, the hand across his cheek falls to the ground and something in his chest breaks.
He does not know what it is, but his heart beats, barely, in a stinging ache, and it feels like something had been carved away. It had already hurt to breathe before, but now it comes with even more difficulty, and each breath not only stings his throat but carves even more of whatever is left in his broken chest.
It is a strange feeling.
He falls to the ground, and buries himself into his partner’s chest. His breaths slow, and he can feel the life draining out of him. He can hear voices from a distance— the Port Mafia, coming to gather them after their defeat. But he’s too far gone to care. He ignores them, also ignores the cough and cry bubbling up in his throat, and lets himself stay there.
He does not move for a long time after.