Heysátan - Sigur Rós

Leon looked up from his empty bag of vending machine quality potato chips when the door to his room creaked open, like the person opening it was fearful to face the dragon of a boy seated on the other side.

Emil was dying, bleeding out from the congregation of gashes across his bruised face, nose sprinkling dried rust onto his lips, mouth tickled with tiny welts. His clothes were dirty and the books in his hands scrapped to pieces, littering tiny moths of paper as he slowly closed the door behind, keeping his eyes to the floor.

Leon set the now crumb filled bag down, crinkling against the brazen sheets, surveying the frozen boy thoughtfully.

"Who was it this time?"

"Who do you think?"

Leon watched as the silver ghost let more important pieces of school supplied texts fall to the ground, shivering out of his palms and hitting the wood with a noise louder than the speechlessness in the air. Outside a church bell tolled.

"Come here."

Emil complied, setting his mud laden school bag to the ground, finally letting the destroyed books in his hands go, still not meeting Leon's gaze. He ambled toward the bed, disregarding his slight limp and his own bed a few feet away.

He barely made a rustle when he sat down on the edge of the sheets, fixing his eyes to the collection of mud across his feet.

"They took my shoes."

"Lift your arms up."

Leon reached out and slipped the shirt from off of Emil's tired shoulders, outside and leaves and tiny gnat bugs littering to the once immaculate white sheets. Birds whistled in response to the twelve chimes that echoed across the school grounds, flittering and screeching past the silent window.

There were a few scratches and welts on the pale skin, slightly dirty and throbbing to the rhythm of Emil's breath, deep and lackadaisical, a wave rolling against the beach. Leon reached out to sweep away the grim, feeling Emil twitch underneath his abrasive touch, keeping his pace methodical and unchanging until the whole of his canvas back was scarlet and rubbed clean.

Leon turned around and began to clean off his bed, brushing the stray remnants of earth into his palm, scattering the dirt to the ground. He then began to remove the wrappers and sheets of homework to completely aerate the mattress, keeping his sight trained to the blanch as Emil removed his pants, crusted mud crackling to the floor as he extracted his gnarled vine legs.

Emil crawled under the sheets, clad in nothing but his boxers, pulling the protective blanket up to his chin, back facing Leon's slouched frame, eyes stapled shut with abortive apathy.

He had not met Leon's eyes since entering the room.

It was quite a long while until either of them spoke, and Leon thought maybe Emil had fallen asleep, or slipped into a coma, or died, rigid in his bed, but soon Emil shifted his feet, curling into the fetal position he had assumed tighter and tighter until he became a mountain of disinfected bedding. Perhaps if he folded so far in on himself he would collapse, bending and twisting into a black hole that consumed all of his sadness, so he did not have to deal with it anymore, because disappearing was so much easier than saying a word.

Leon turned his head slightly to gaze out the window, eyes glinting golden in the miasma of sun that bleached the woods wound around their boarding house like a python. The mass of trees and dark soil was where Emil was dragged every month, every week, every day, pinned to the brambly bark and spit upon, screamed at, poked, prodded, tore to pieces, for no reason in particular. It was fun, a distraction to the overworked and fatigued teenagers forced to spend their days echoing poems that had lost their meaning and scrawling numbers that never really had a meaning in the first place. He was their entertainment, he was a toy.

A windup toy that was broken down and oxidizing, falling apart limb by limb until all that was left was the defective boy hugging his knees to his chest and praying for death.

Leon shifted imperceptibly and leant to the bed, feeling every vertebra settle as he spread out on his back, hands folded and strangling each other on top of his stomach. The birds warbled in the harsh daylight, twirling around and around the cyclone of Leon's brain, whipping his thoughts into faltering mush that leaked out of his mouth.

"Why don't you make it stop?"

Emil twitched beneath the surface.

"You act like I can."

"I could help you," Leon sounded like a bird, but Emil made no movement to sing along, cemented to the edge of the bed.

"I don't want you to."

There was slight anger beneath the coldness of his voice, and Leon knew he was not supposed to hear it, but it made him turn to the side anyway, face to face with the white of Emil's back.

He watched the way the mound of blankets rose and fell, trying to see if he could match it with his own shallow breaths.

"You make me want to die sometimes, do you know that?"

Emil's hand curled into his chest, rubbing sheets the scent of laundry detergent and teenage boy across his blazing skin, "I know."

His voice was mangled and slivered into tiny pieces, glass separating in the air with every icicle breath he let shudder out of him. Leon sat silently as the tears came, and went, with every slight convulsion that caused the bed to shake, a meteor alight in the atmosphere before burning to cold dead rock that sat mutely under the harsh afternoon light, curtains closed over his eyes and blood smeared across his upper lip.

Emil never cried for long, it was like he only had the energy for short, heated eruptions of emotion, before his body drained wholly, shutting down until he was only an unconscious accumulation of blood and hatred and thunderous loneliness that struck him to the core. He was so tired all the time, so he slept, on the edge of Leon's bed, on the edge of life.

Leon did not know why he had been chosen for this, the infantile bullying only capable by just as hollow and confused children, the weakness of both mind and body, the continual self-loathing that was inching around the recesses of his brain every waking second of the day. Because he really did hate himself so much, and Leon did not understand why, why, why, why? Why horrible things happened to Emil, why bad things happened to good people, why there were forces in the world hell bent upon destroying the timorous creature that could have gone to the moon and back.

He did his best not to disturb the hushed atmosphere of the room as he shifted closer to Emil, hands snaking around his sides, another layer of comfort to cushion him from the cold. Leon lowered his hands under the blankets; past the chilled ice cubes of his hands gored close against his chest, and to finally lie like the sun against his bare chest. Emil made the movement of a wounded dog, trying to skitter away, but trapped against the chain link of his sleep hampered mind and burdensome limbs draped across him.

Leon pressed his calloused palm against the pulsating expanse of skin, feeling it quicken and flutter away from his hold and into the air, thudding so loud he could hear it in his skull.

"I'll help you."

Emil clamped down onto his lip to keep it from discharging words, a piece of driftwood caught perilously against the tide of an oncoming storm as Leon pressed his lips to the back of his head, breathing in to the last of his cells, eating away all the sadness and stealing away his pain, caging it up in an embrace and sealing it shut behind quivering eyelids.

Hello.

I think every HongIce story I write is going to be based off of some Sigur Rós song. This song isn't really fitting since it actually has a pretty bittersweet meaning, but ah well, I like it all the same.

This is my OTP so I think I'll start writing for it more yes yes. I really do just love throwing characters I love in distressful situation (i.e. bullying.) I just feel like Emil is so tired all the time, he's barely alive.

Please review, favorite, and have a nice day.