Zevwarden angst, because we like to torture each other with it? [pretend there's an eyes emoji here because the face I'm making is ridiculous] Prompt for Ellanis and Zev: “When I have a bad dream, just listening to you breathe calms me down.”
<3 just remember i love you! and you asked for it! <3
Screams echo in a chorus as sharp as any blade inside his skull. Jagged and broken edges, a choir of shattered glass and blood. It stains his hands, the taste of rust between his teeth, drips and leaks from beneath his eyelids. Wet. Thin skin stretched to the point of cracking, his blood running black where it weeps from him.
Ellanis craves. Fingernails long and ragged and he digs them into the too soft skin of his palm. Voice too fractured to use, whispers and shouts at the same volume and both coming out between coughs flecked with blood. Purple skin turning green and yellow, the whole of him a bruise.
No, he is past that now. Nothing but black veins and taint. The blight under his skin gouging and clawing and reshaping him. Too late, goodbyes never said. Something stronger calls his name and croons its sharp song and Ellanis can only seek it out like a puppet seeks out a master to pull its strings.
Vision clouded, lungs weak. Tears too thick to be just salt water on his face. Gasping. Ellanis sags, drops to his knees in the dirt and doesn’t wince when they bend under his weight. Cane long gone, lost and forgotten, but he digs his hands into the bare earth and compares the black of rich soil to the spiderwebs of tainted blood pulsing on the back of his hands.
Too many voices singing in a gnawing harmony. Curling around himself, head lowered to earth. Ellanis screams but the Call inside his head drowns out the sound of his desperation.
It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
It wasn’t supposed to come anywhere close.
Too late, once again. His shoulders shake, a violence in his bones, and Ellanis rips his hands from the soil to tear at the flesh binding him. Corrupting him. Rivulets where his nails bite into his arms and Ellanis can’t feel anything but the need to hunt and to find and sing.
Thick, hot blood spilling across his fingers. Too black to be his own, Maker it can’t be his own. A ghoul’s blood, a darkspawn in the making and Ellanis has traded everything for a life free from the blight.
But apparently, everything was not enough.
“Amor,” One voice not tainted, not hollow and jagged and searching. Ellanis closes his aching eyes and he remembers a ghost of a memory. “Fight this, Ellanis, you are so strong. This is nothing more than a dream."
A dream? A nightmare made flesh, but. Ellanis can recall the glint of golden hair in the sunshine, how warm someone’s skin is against his own, the light in their eyes when Ellanis kisses their cheek. But he cannot remember who and it doesn’t matter as he is no longer allowed these.
Light flashes, breaks the sky into a single shattered line and the whole of Ellanis shakes with the thunder. Green and black against white.
No, that’s not right. Ellanis blinks his clouded eyes and trains them to the sky. It isn’t… It isn’t familiar in the way the sky is, the stars are wrong and out of place, they aren’t warm or sparkling or-
"Ellanis, caro, wake up it is just a nightmare. You can fight this.” Again the voice, safe and familiar as the sun. “Wake up amor.”
Gasps, clean air filling his lungs as Ellanis bolts up in their bed. Hands on his shoulders, warm and sleep-heavy weight. Eyes flying open as he screams and the sound of it tears at his throat. Whole, terrified, one voice in the place of a tainted and broken choir.
Scream breaking into sobs. Ellanis’ chest aches. It heaves with his tears and the hands on his shoulders shift down his back, one resting on his shoulder blade and the other running up and down his spine. “I am here amor. I am here.” Whispers in the dark. A voice like the sun.
“Zevran-” Ellanis’ voice cracks, shatters. The back of his hands are pale and bloodless but they are not the color of rot and ruin. They are whole and Ellanis doesn’t know how to reach out with them.
Arms encircling him. Bare skin against skin, the warmth of Zevran’s chest against his spine has Ellanis shuddering. Zevran’s hands seek out his own, calloused palms and rough fingers. Tangling together.
The echo of a choir formed from broken glass and blood fades as Ellanis concentrates on the rise and fall of Zevran’s chest. His breathes are deep, slow and even and Ellanis tries to match them through his tremoring tears. Calm, safe, trust in the way Zevran’s arms around him sooth the racing of his heart.
Moments stretching into minutes, tears made of salt water drying on his cheeks. Ellanis closes his eyes and squeezes Zevran’s hands. They linger in the dark, no sounds beyond their breaths and their hearts beating out of sync. Zevran rests his head on Ellanis’ shoulder, waits for the hiccup in Ellanis’ chest to peter out before he places a kiss to the side of his neck.
“Will you be alright?” Lips ghosting over his skin, a murmur just loud enough to be heard.
Ellanis pauses, the taste of rust lingers in his mouth and the vision of black veins still creeps along his skin, but it holds far less power while Zevran’s arms around wrapped around him in a protective circle. Blackberries and vanilla. Home.
But he doesn’t want to lie. “Eventually.” Eventually Ellanis will find the cure, eventually he will cleanse the taint from his blood, from his bones. Eventually the muffled song in his head will ring clear and Ellanis knows all of these may eventually be true.
“I’ll be fine. Thank you, love.” Ellanis brings their joined hands up to his chest and holds them over his heart. Turns his head ever so slightly to rest it on top of Zevran’s. Breathes. Slower, and more even.
Zevran doesn’t say anything, simply places a line of feather-light kisses across Ellanis’ shoulder. Stays up with him until the exhaustion pulling at Ellanis’ eyelids becomes too heavy to ignore any longer.
A nest of blankets, skin against skin. Ellanis tucked under Zevran’s chin, one leg hooked over his calves and he never left the circle of Zevran’s arms. Finds the sleep of true exhaustion where even nightmares cannot harm him.
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