Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Don't look, don't look, the shadows breathe, whispering me away from you”

Stolen glances in hallways. Sneering at his face when he gets caught, but gazing longingly at the back of his head when he turns away, at the shiny blonde curls that bounce when he laughs. A raised eyebrow from a girl with colorful hair. Questions from his so-called friends. He lies, to them and himself. He pulls away and adds more bricks to his emotional walls.

“Don't wake at night to watch him sleep, you know that you will always lose”

He maps out the curve of the other boy’s spine, within arm’s reach, but galaxies away. The bump of his hip under a sheet, rising and falling in time with his inhales and exhales. Soft breaths blowing hair across his pillow becoming heavier and faster. Whimpers conveying a nightmare, probably full of prophecies, vampires, and scone shortages. A fissure appears in his heart of stone as he calls out an insult. He hears indignant noises from the other bed as tears collect at the corners of his eyes.

“But every night I burn, every night I call your name”

Suffocating as his lungs squeeze too tightly. Desperately trying to find any light streaming through the minuscule cracks in the lid of the coffin. He’s forgotten everything at this point. Everything except him. Constellations of moles and freckles on his face and skin. His name, a mockery of superheroes everywhere, keeps him alive as he chants it in a shaking voice. It becomes his mantra. When she saves him, when light floods his eyesight, he can only focus on one thing: seeing him. Before he spells open the doors to the dining hall, the hopeful glint in his eye hardens into indifference. When their gazes meet, and a chair crashes to the floor, his heart stutters. He’s weak. And he hates that he doesn’t hate it like he should.

“Every night I burn, every night I fall again”

Drags on a cigarette. Not caring at all about the protests from his father, or even his aunt. But he takes pause when he sees the concern on the Chosen One’s face. He talks down to him until it disappears, replaced with hurt and anger. It’s better this way, he tells himself, trying to ignore every other emotion he feels toward the boy he’s supposed to kill one day. In the dark, alone with his thoughts, all he wants to do is go up in flames. Because every time he riles his saviour up, he falls even more in love with him.

“Don't talk of worlds that never were, the end is all that's ever true”

A Visiting. A possible murder. An alliance with the boy who has become his reason to live. He tries to ignore their close proximity, the smile that makes him momentarily black out, the determination in his voice. But it’s hard to solve a mystery when all you can think about is that same boy telling you that maybe, just maybe, things don’t have to end in flames. False hope. He squashes down the fluttery feeling in his chest and scoffs at his delusions. He knows his destiny. And it’s blood, fire, and a fuck-ton of regret.

“There’s nothin' you can ever say, nothin' you can ever do”

The forest smells like him. It’s cruel, really, when all he wants to do is die, but his surroundings have the audacity to fill up every one of his senses with blue eyes and unpredictable magic. Rough hands on his face, trying to talk him out of his own head. A pleading voice reminiscent of a cigarette in a cold room under Watford. Then chapped lips come crashing into his own. And maybe his story is written in stone. Maybe neither of them have a say in the end. But they can be heroes together for a little while longer.

“Every night I burn, waiting for the world to end”

He never would have guessed they could both come out of it alive. Alive and together still. When the sun goes down and their bodies find each other, it’s hard to remember a time when he wanted to leave it all behind. There’s a part of him that thinks the war isn’t really over, that everything was all a dream, and he’ll wake up alone. Or dead. But it’s hard to keep such thoughts in his mind when fingers card through his dark hair, or when lips brush the shell of his ear, assuring him that everything will be okay. Does he believe him? No. But he believes in them. And that’s all they both need.