The world is burning
"I think I deserve a bit of fucking honesty for once," the tall blonde says after a while. "Just once. Just this once, stop fleeing and face me."
Her voice is ragged and sizzling, raw in its power and in its emotion. The quiet and ever soft please that follows almost immediately is barely heard, almost slips by unnoticed but you know it's there because it's her, and even if she were to go hellblazing all guns blasting the girl would still apologize for the trouble. The infinitely kind and stupid soul she is.
It's a while since either of you spoke, a long and loud silence settled over the echoes of the last words like a blanket of mist over a fire, dousing the embers. Not all of them, it seems, as the forcefulness is still there, under the tan, freckled skin of your friend. The friend. The only one that matters right now. Or ever. You can see it, sizzling the air and stinging your eyes. And you can see the fire in her eyes right then too, bright and blazing, and you feel like she could burn worlds and reduce them to cinder with the effortless weight of a single gaze. It's amazing, terrifying and beautiful at the same time and you can't quite find the strength to look away from it.
Some would say that of your eyes. Some have said it. She has said it. Beautiful, deep, bright like stars in the night, like their favourite colour. As powerful as a god's blood, if gods could bleed. They can, in fact, bleed. You know it, you've seen it more than once. How scared you were when it seemed to taint the world so much that it was all you could see, all you could feel, all you could scream. That's why you ran, that's why you always run, because even gods can bleed and you can't be a god-killer, not again.
You can hear yourself speak before your mind even catches up with what you should be saying. You can feel the hotness in your chest echo the one that, strangely but not surprisingly, has been hinting at your loins for a while now. And the heat becomes white hot, unbearable, it spreads all over like thunder and lightning, both needle-thin and tidal-like, destroying every single foundation of your being. It's molten and you're drowning in it, slowly, painfully.
"Well what do you want me to say exactly?", you begin, unsure of what you're even saying, but saying it anyway because if you don't you're sure you're going to be consumed on the spot. And anger can only sustain one for so long. That, you know by experience. So you have to let it out, you have to let the pressure flow out before you blow. You didn't want it to be here, so close to everything being done. It couldn't be here, not today of all days. And yet, here you are, on the farthest balcony you could find, hidden from the rest of the party, alone with the one person you can't trust yourself being alone with. And you don't want to say it, any of it, but you want to, you need to, desperately so. And she looks at you with those eyes, those fucking eyes, and you can't anymore. So you let it flow, halted, weird and breathless.
"You want me to say that I haven't been able to get you out of my head since the day you came crashing down through the walls of the fortress I spent years building around myself? On your own and with only that damned smile to boot? That despite your frankly infuriating unending joy and hope for this godforsaken world and its bunch of asshole idiots I can't manage to be irritated by you? That before I even knew it I found myself unable to help but be instantly comforted by your warmth, or that I can't even fall asleep anymore without your arms around me? That you smell of orange and honey and somehow of the sea and I can't walk into a goddamn room without being reminded either of it or the absence of it?! Hell, I've been thinking poetry about the way your brow crinkles adorably when you're problem-solving; and sometimes, in my most deluded moments, that from the way you look at me, I pray to all the higher powers I know of that that problem is me because there's so much in your eyes and I can't fucking read it! Me! I can't read it! How ironic is that?! And still I hope... Or perhaps I should tell you about how I sometimes can't take my eyes off your neck, I mean do you know how hard it is to not just give in and sink my teeth in there? It pulses, and you keep flexing it whenever you get ready to throw down! Or that I wonder far too often what it would feel like to run my hands all over you and what sound you would make as I unravel you with nothing but my fingers…? That I feel like an angel each and every moment you look at me like that because I'm simultaneously floating and falling? That I fucking hate myself for even thinking these things because you're not mine. You're not even mine to want anymore, and that's not even broaching the subject of what I've done, what I have done to you. I almost killed you and, and, and-", you can't help but feel the tears that have been rolling against your lungs fall free upon your cheeks now, "I almost killed you…"
You take a deep and shuddering breath, it aches all over but you're not finished.
"I have been nothing but pain for you, pain and sadness and an unending headache. And still you come back. You come back to me and bring me back in, always. I can't quite figure out why or how you can still look at me after all of that, all of the damage I caused, all of the blood I've spilled… Or- or that despite everything, all of that, even if I hadn't fucked everything up, if I deserved anything but your contempt and hate and anger for a single second… Should I tell you about what I've done to give you my blessing? That although I cannot deserve anything ever again, I have the gall to not be able to fucking stomach you with them and I had to come up with not two but three new mantras just to keep my mind off of things and to be able to smile in your direction like I mean it because I have to be so happy for you because you deserve the world and now that you have it, after everything, I'm not about to take that away from you, not even get close to threaten it, by acting out of line and letting all those fucking hints that I am iredeemably smitten and in love with you, and have been for the past years, even surface for a single second because I fear it would destroy what happiness you have finally found and then me in turn because I can't even think about hurting you in any single way without feeling like I'm going to die? Because I know it! I know… You deserve the world, and I deserve to die…", your voice is threatening to give out.
"Is that what you want me to say?", you barely manage to croak out.
Your throat was already sore before but now it must be raw and bleeding, you think, as you realize you can't quite recognise the voice coming out of you as it too dies in the distance. You can taste the acid in your mouth. Then it's like the darkness before creation: there's silence and nothing, and all that nothing is cold, so cold. And scary too in it's deep silence. You've always been weary of silence. Silence meant many things: disappointment, the prospect of anger and pain, loneliness, death... You can feel the shiver crawl up your spine. And before anything else can not happen, here you are, combusting and burning away at the stake of your own stupidity, your mouth tasting like iron, your chest on fire and your lungs in cinders as you begin to realize the implications of what you've just voiced.
"Yes," you finally hear from the distant void that has devoured the world around you, somehow softer than any breeze you've ever felt and somehow louder than the Sun itself. "Yes, that's what I want", you hear her say.
And before anything else can not happen, there she is with her arms and her gentle strength and her love, holding you despite the fire licking your soul and the cataclysmic blaze consuming your whole being. You're burning up, it's like a fever. And you know when it finally dies down only ashes will remain, ashes to be scattered in the wind. Yet, despite all of that, here she is, holding you tighter than she's ever held you, gentler than you deserve, and her eyes. God, her eyes. They roam your face, as if painting you in the deathly glow of your final instants. Let the fire blind her to what just happened, erase the memory of this moment, you almost wish. You want to be selfless but you're not, and you know it, so you let yourself burn atop the pire of her gaze and hope that whatever comes after delivers you from this unbearable conflagration.
And in all your glorious selfishness, your unreserved desire, she has the gall to smile at you with that beautiful and ever-loving smile.
"That's what I've always wanted," she whispers gently.
That's when it clicks. You are the world. That's why you're burning.
***
So I had this idea while reading a fic a while back and when I came back to it yesterday I couldn’t decide if I wanted to make this about Supercorp, Bumbleby or OCs of mine, so I just “duck it, I’ll make it about everything!”
Definitely not polished enough, but I’m too lazy to rework the kinks right now so, here, take this.
