A kiss with a fist is better than none [FINISHED]

@"Poptart"

''I'll see you soon, he said'', Sebastian muttered angrily under his breath as he stormed down the still eerily quiet hallway, a phone pressed against his so tightly against his ear it burned. He barely noticed it, however, the pounding of his head, and the heavy breaths almost breaking him in half taking precedence over everything but the itchy (disgusting) feeling of scales erupting all over his skin as slowly, but surely, his mind broke down once again, piece by piece slowly getting eaten by what felt like blood the madness and forever pulsing dark.

''Go to your appointments, he said'', he all but hissed into the phone, the machine barely holding together under the pressure of his clenching hand as it continued to ring, and ring, and ring.

''Hope everything goes well, he said'', he screamed as the line finally gave up all hope of ever reaching Hari in whatever godforsaken land of no telephone towers he was. ''God fucking damn it!'', the screamed continued once the generic, lifeless voice began reciting the same message he had already heard fourteen times this morning: ''The person you are trying to call...''

''Boyfriend'', he said to phone, now in pieces as a consequence of being thrown against the wall. ''No person. Just a god damn fucking boyfriend'', he whispered, his breaths growing heavier once again as he fell onto the bed, his head immediately finding its way to his knees, between his hands. He covered his ears, closed his eyes and tried not to throw up as he remembered why exactly he so desperately needed to hear his lover's voice right now.

Not that he had actually forgotten, the words of his instructor echoing through his mind like a broken record with each step he took. Month, he thought, feeling as if his stomach was rising up to meet his throat. A whole blood fucking god fucking damn it...

''Why the hell are you not here right now?'', he screamed, raising his head so he could look towards the Hari's part of the room. Not that they had their own parts of the room any more. Their stuff had, much like them, grown to like each other, and was now mixed all over, forming a working symbiosis. The other bed, however, was the one that was supposed to be Hari's so he thought of it as such as he yelled at it as if it had all the answers as to why his boyfriend had to choose this god fucking damn it week to go bloody camping.

''God fucking damn it, Hari, I need you'', he said, his whole body shaking at that point as he tried to hold himself together somehow. At some point of it, though, a part of him felt a bit guilty for cursing only at his boyfriend whose only fault was not being there when he fucking needed him because he was off doing god knows what in the god damned forest, so he added a few choice words about the teacher and the assignment itself somewhere in there as well.

None of it helped though and he could still feel the slow itching of his skin, the crawling of scales, he soundless movement of his power within his blood. ''God fucking damn it'', he cursed once more, quietly, almost at the verge of crying. Then, he heard the door click open.

RE: A kiss with a fist is better than none [Poptart]

''Where the hell have you been?''

Those were not the first words he had intended to say to Hari when he got back, especially not in that tone of voice. It was, however, the first thing that have come out of his mouth once he had raised his head yet again to see Hari crawling into his bed (his bed, the one for which Sebastian had just thought that it wasn't truly his as in separate from his own), having not said a word to him. In truth, he had barely had the time to catch the briefest glimpse of him standing up before he was already crashing down.

''And what the hell is that?'', he continued to speak, his voice laced with all the anger, and bitterness, and panic, and fear, and utter and complete hopelessness he had felt during the last hour or so, as well as the irritation of feeling those emotions in the first place mixed with some more anger, self-loathing and embarrassment. His mind barely registered the gold spilling all over the floor at first for it was irrelevant in the grand scheme of things which went somewhere along these lines: thank god you are finally here I need you I'm falling apart. His mind, however, as always when in panic, searched for a distraction, and as it seemed that Hari was not going to provide one, it latched onto the heavy thump it had heard.

''What in the name of God have you been doing this week?'', he asked, growing angrier and more desperate at each second Hari seemed to ignore his presence, which was the reason why the 'instead of being here with me' was left unsaid. Instead of it, he glared at his lover with all the heath he could muster, which allowed him to slowly begin noticing the wounds.

''Hari!'', he exploded standing up and reaching for his lover only to have his stomach rise up again. ''God fucking damn it'', he muttered, the dizziness almost making him fall back down on the bed.

RE: A kiss with a fist is better than none [Poptart]

''An expedition'', Sebastian repeated, his voice suddenly going ice cold, losing all of the explosive heath each of his words had carried just a moment before. ''Into the Forbidden Forest'', he whispered instead of yelling, his breathing slowly losing its utterly erratic pace until it became so slow and deep one could barely see he still did breath. The beating of his heart became the only sound he could hear for a moment, as his stomach stopped rising up to meet up with his throat and chat in favour of catching up with his knees instead.

''What in the ever lasting Hell were you thinking?!'', the calm finally exploded in the form of yet another scream, the force of it so loud this time that it actually hurt his throat to make it that strong. The erratic beating of his hurt turned down right frantic as the though of losing Hari forever took precedence over everything that was going on in his head up to that point, his mind not only grabbing onto yet another distraction, even though the today just didn't seem like the type of day that would willingly offer a distraction that would calm him, insisting instead of piling one fear on top of the other, but also making very sure to remind him that he had missed his boyfriend like crazy just this last weak, and was standing right here, right now ready to fucking fall apart just because he wasn't there to help him. The only reason it didn't also make sure to picture how the world would look without Hari in it-with him never being there again was simply that Sebastian broke down before it could even begin to think about getting there.

It was like an avalanche really, or a house of cards collapsing on itself, considering how he had tried to distract himself from one soul-eating anguish with another, only for all three of them (a month, need, death) to combine in one giant, flaming ball of emotion, which like a ticking bomb, exploded, the timer finally reaching zero at the thought of...

''You idiot, moronic, self-centred, stubborn...'', he began cursing, not even aware of what he was saying any more as he just stood there, frozen to the spot, while his soul was a flame with anger, going so far as to even slip into another language in his curses, something that had never happened to him in his life.

''You could have died, you'', a string of foreign sounding words followed the statement as he stared at Hari's dark, dead-looking eyes and the circles under them, the bruises and cuts, the ripped clothes and the dirt finally making it too much for him, only he couldn't even puke because his body refused to move, the fear he felt pulling him down until he didn't even have strength to speak any more. The storm of words passed, leaving an exhausted young man in it's place, now covered in golden scales almost everywhere, traces of blood slowly tracking between them from places where he had clawed at them, trying to pull them away, without even realising that he was only hurting himself with that.

RE: A kiss with a fist is better than none [Poptart]

Warm hands against his cheek, he thought, staring emotionlessly at the floor, his mind blank as he took one sharp breath after another, his lungs still feeling like they were running empty despite each and every one of them. His chest still felt tight, too tight, so tight it hurt, because despite the hands against his cheek being warm, and soft, and loving, alive, all he could think of when he had raised his head to look his lover in the eyes was how they could have been cold, lost in some godforsaken place, a rotting corps, and he wouldn't even have known.

He wouldn't even have known the thought repeated itself, as the rage within him began rising again like a ocean tide, in a wave so strong it was impossible for it not to destroy what little solid ground was left for him to stand on in his mind.

He wouldn't even have known that his lover was dead, (stone cold, eyes empty of life, skin torn; he would not think of animal teeth; he could not, lest he died then and there) because his lover was a reckless, idiotic, moronic, (a string of words in a foreign language, the meaning of which he could barely remember right now) what was he even doing in that forest?!

Somehow it felt like being submerged under water, the way in which the images he saw inside his head pressed down him, vivid and harsh, as if they were really, memories instead of his worst nightmares. He was so drawn into them he could no longer see what really was right in front of him (alive eyes, warm hands, soft skin, words trying to calm him down). His breathing grew even faster and he still felt like he was not getting enough air.

Another image, drawn in the shades of black and whites this time. Grey tones, mournful tones. A funeral. Would have even there been a funeral? Would have there been a body? He doesn't know. He can't imagine (except that he can, and vividly so).

And the world wouldn't have regained colour after that he knows, it would go back to being drawn in the shades of grey, and this time that wouldn't be because he himself could have anything he could ever want, but because somebody else could never want anything ever again. And he couldn't-wouldn't have that not for another million years if he could help it.

Warm hands against his cheeks, he thought again, staring in the equally warm eyes pleading for him to calm down. Yet all he could see was deaddeaddead and all he could speak a curse, as his body slowly grew colder and colder. It was only when his throat started hurting from use that he had realised that he had actually spoken what he thought was just that-a thought.

RE: A kiss with a fist is better than none [Poptart]

There had always been some kind of warning, Sebastian thought, as the cold spread slowly through his body, reaching further and deeper with every breath he took, making everything move slower, seem less heated. Allowing him to think clearly for one long moment, without his emotions getting in the way by breaking him down. Some kind of warning that he was about to turn into a snake, he continued his thought, in that one endless moment where everything seemed to be frozen in time. Not even the hand holding his seemed warm any more. Everything was cold, everything frozen, stopped, as his body began to change, becoming smaller, drier, skin which was previously covered in scales now getting completely covered with them.

Even that first time, he thought, his body now more animal than not, and his thoughts becoming even slower now, as all the emotions which were breaking him so before slowly faded away. There was no place in a snake's clear, sharp, focused mind, not even if they appeared one at a time, let alone all at once. There was no room for them in this mind, in this body, and they were thus cast away, and that, for once, was a relief instead of a reason to hate the change. For once, just as for once there had not been a warning sign of the change, that first alarm bell which left him with enough time to react and stop himself before he actually slipped in into another skin. The change had been seamless, almost an instinctive reaction to a hurricane of thought happening inside his head, similar in many ways to a way in which a person would pass out when in too much pain. There was nothing he could have done to stop it, he realised, as he curled into himself once he was nothing more than a not that long, bright yellow snake on the floor. Even if he had not been stuck imagining a vision of the world in which Hari was no more, things would have happened exactly the same way. None of the ways in which he had trained himself to stop the change would have worked this time, because this time, the change wasn't just his power going out of control, not listening to him at all. It was a safety net, a panic room. His body found itself faced with too much emotion and a problem it could not solve. About to break, it took the only way out it knew: it change to something better equipped to deal with this sort of thing. Or something like that...

With the change finally finished, the long moment of freezing cold which had stopped the world and allowed him to understand both himself and everything else came crashing down as Sebastian finally realised what had actually happened. For another long moment he started up at Hari in disbelief, before another sort of panic finally set in. With an angry, panicked, and in a way almost embarrassed hiss, Sebastian moved his new, legless, scale-covered body with an impressive speed back towards the bed from which he had just stoop up, darting under it, and curling himself up in the corner furthest from the light, hissing angrily from there at the world, as if he couldn't believe what had just happened.