This content is protected against AI scraping.
Warren Caldwell belongs to asininestars.
Using Lauren the Corgi’s Promptober list.
CWs for gore, disembowelment, deathbeds, body horror
***
Warren clutches his stomach, trying to hold in his guts. Blood and other fluids leak out between his fingers, rank with that thick organic scent of pre-rot he feels like he’s lived with every day since the war. It hurts so much that he barely feels it. The pain is too big, filling up all the spaces his intestines were taking before.
The look on Ira’s face as he lowers Warren to the ground, on the other hand–the pain of that bites into every part of him.
“It’ll be alright,” Warren tries telling him. It’s a terrible lie, but anything that can clear the agony from Ira’s face.
Ira shakes his head at him, refusing it. He knows better. Warren knows he does; Ira hides how much experience he has with suffering, but Warren is the one who holds him in the middle of the night. His arms hurt, suddenly, with knowing he won’t be able to anymore–
Warren’s focus snaps back. Tears are starting in Ira’s beloved golden-brown eyes. “We’ll get you help.” He says it in that watery, desperate way people do when they know they’re saying the impossible.
Warren sets a hand to Ira’s face and smiles at the prickle of stubble beneath his palm. “I love you. Ira, it’s all right.” Oh he does, he loves him so, so much. It’s pouring out of him, more bottomless than his own life. All he wants in the world is for Ira to not hurt when Warren is gone.
“It’s not.” Ira’s smoky voice is an angry rasp. The tears well over, spilling down his cheeks. “Theo, what am I supposed to do?”
Warren–Theo? Can he be Theo in these final moments? Yes, it’s Theo who knows this conversation so well. He’s the one who heard it a thousand times, over a thousand death beds; different each time but also always the same.
He wants to say something to Ira. Reassure him, share his wonder at how easy it is just now to be Theo, in this particular moment. It’s never been easy before.
But his entire body hitches on a wave of agony. All he can do for a moment is breathe through it–and oh, that’s hard. His lungs don’t seem to be working right. Twice the amount of work for half the reward.
Oxygen depletion, his mind supplies professionally. Blood loss, not enough of the red stuff left circulating to get air where it needs to go.
Theo forces his words out before the wave of pain has fully released him. They hardly have time to wait for him, do they? Ira needs to know before his clock runs out. “I don’t mind. I don’t mind, Ira. My life is shit. You’re the best thing in it. All I want is-” Another wave of pain steals the rest of that thought. Unfair! Theo cries out in his mind. At least let him finish!
Ira holds him through it, tight and steady. His arms are so warm and reassuring; who could imagine a better, more peaceful place to die?
“No.” The word is tear-stained and sodden. A hopeless denial of reality. Theo’s heart cracks open at the grief in it. Maybe he would rather be Warren. Would Ira hurt less if he’s Warren?
A little voice in his mind cries out that he wants to at least die at himself.
But then Ira says it again, firmer. “No.” There’s something new in his expression. A grim determination Theo dislikes the look of. “Theo, I can,” he hisses. “I know how. I can do it. He taught me how.”
Theo doesn’t know what the hell Ira is saying…and then he does. “No,” he breathes. Panicked, he grabs for Ira’s face. He means Zion. He means the Sarkic magic he’s spent his life trying to escape. “No, Ira.”
“Yes, Ira,” Ira whispers. Theo hiccups a laugh, horrified to find humor in this moment. But a terrible calm is descending on Ira, a fatal acceptance smoothing the lines of his expression. And something else is stirring, behind his eyes and under his skin. Theo can feel it. “You think I could live with myself if I let my cowardice kill you?”
“Ira, please.” Ah, and there is death, reaching for him like a hand. Theo is surprised he can feel it coming so clearly, and also that it’s such a relief. He’s trapped in this body with the last threads of its strength seeping away, his sight going grey around the edges and swimmy in the center. Yes, and the rattle in his chest, like his trachea is collapsing and every breath is struggling to suck air past it. No no no, this couldn’t come at a worse time. He needs to shove Ira back, to save him. His hands scrabble and fumble like butterflies at his husband’s shoulders, all his power and coordination swirling down a drain. “Don’t do this. Please. I’m not worth it, I’m not worth this!”
Ira doesn’t even deign to argue with him about that one. Theo realizes with a sinking heart that he probably just sealed the deal by saying it.
It’s not visible, whatever happens next. Theo feels it some other way that reaches in past his shuttering senses. It feels perhaps as if Ira’s gravity has increased so Warren is tipping in toward him. Ira reaches up to rip his own shirt open, sodden and gore-colored with Theo’s fluids–and then he pulls out one of the knives Warren always tucks away on himself and stabs himself in the gut.
For a horrible, confused moment, Theo thinks he misunderstood. That Ira meant he intended to die together with him. He’s trying to figure out whether that’s worse or better, when Ira pushes him down on his back and flops on top of him, his blood pouring down to mingle with Theo’s, wiggling until their wounds align.
And then, Theo can feel him.
Their wounds are sealing together while Ira peppers kisses across his face again and again. “I love you I love you I love you,” he’s muttering feverishly as though it’s an incantation.
Their bodies are sealing together. It…tickles. It itches. Oh that’s awful, Theo’s intestines are itching. He makes some mutant sound of giggly protest against Ira’s shoulder.
Blood pumps from Ira back into Theo’s body, warm and full of good oxygen. He’s weaving their circulatory systems together. Somehow, the tingle in Theo’s fingers and toes feels like Ira. There’s an awkward double beat in his veins because their heartbeats aren’t quite lined up.
And then, stranger, their nerves: Theo can feel Ira’s warmth from the inside, hm and are those…are those Ira’s legs?
The magic is unmistakably Ira’s. It laces through Theo’s every fiber and oh, it feels so, so warm. It’s hugs and love and Ira’s grief and hope. Theo knows he shouldn‘t–he shouldn’t be encouraging this–but who could resist grabbing for that? Pulling it close like a blanket?
The thickening grey fog of oblivion begins to clear back away. Warren is…he’s appalled. He’s appalled.
The worst is that he thinks he could kill to keep this. How many times has he wished he could crawl into his lover and live there? Ira in his nerves, in his veins, in his heart: it’s as good as he always imagined.
“Not for me,” he whispers in despair against Ira’s neck. “Please, not for me.”
Ira’s hair tickles against the side of his face when he shakes his head. He gathers Warren up against his chest and starts fumbling to his knees so he can lift him. “I’m not leaving you behind, Theo.” Ira sounds strained, but he starts walking, carrying them out of here and toward help. “You’d do the same for me in the same situation.” He nuzzles against the side of Warren’s head. “It’ll be okay. As long as I’ve got you, it’ll be okay.”
The magic keeps flowing between them in time with their heartbeats. But Warren can feel the strange stir of it, the bitter taste of a power that feeds on suffering to redirect its energy where Ira chooses. Sweet Ira. Gentle Ira who only wants people to be happy, clutching Warren’s agony in his hands and wielding it.
It’s awkward as hell, with their bodies fused together, but Warren clings tight with Ira’s hands under his thighs like piggybacking from the front. “It will be okay,” he repeats. He’ll make it be okay, somehow.
Mentions