Chapter Text
Glass crunched under foot as he stepped towards you. You tightened your grip on the hilt in your hand, but the blade has been broken down so close to the base that there are only three inches of the sharp metal in place.
Blood, hot and sticky, oozes down your face from the wound across your forehead. It runs down over your eyebrow, down your cheek, dripping from your chin. You close your eyes, just for a moment, to collect yourself. Your breath leaves your mouth in hot, painful gasps.
Finally he stops.
You lift your head and look up defiantly at him.
His grin splits his lips- as shining and purple as his blood- and reveal his yellowed fangs to you. He’s missing one; you knocked it out last week. Your knuckles are white as you grip the sword even tighter still. Your legs complain, your body screams, as you push yourself up to your feet. You spit blood and smirk at him. His gun is slung across his chest and leaning against his hip. He raises a black eyebrow over a purple eye. A black as night bruise is on his cheek from where you ground the butt of your hilt into his cheek, egging him on to cry like a bitch. That had been fun.
“Can’t keep this up, Eribubblebutt,” you purr, using the best damn bedroom voice that you can.
“Admitting defeat already? I thought you’d have a couple more swweeps left in that wweak fleshy bag you call a body.” His eyes are narrowed as he looks over your tattered frame. There’s lust in his eyes, as well as burning hate.
You thought you would too. But you don’t. After fucking everything you had gone through, the very thing that gives up on you is your goddamn body. You laugh at him, because you would never admit that. You slide a foot back, ready to advance on him. He looks you over again snarling viciously.
“You reely think you can take me, wwith that sorry excuse for a swword?” He taunts, his finger coiling around the trigger of his gun. It isn’t Ahab’s crosshairs anymore. You had sliced that fucker right in half in his hands fifteen years ago. He never forgave you, even though this sleek little black gun was four or five times better.
“I could take you with a butter knife, slice you open from gullet to bulge and make a beautiful fillet. Slap you on the grill and slather you in butter and lemon and I’ve got a goddamn fish fry barbeque.” You lift the remnants of your sword and ignore the painful throbbing in your spine. “I’d invite the whole damn neighborhood to come eat if you actually tasted any good.”
He sneers, purple lips pulling back over yellowed fangs. A beautiful contrast. You spit blood again and then flashstep to him. He sets off three rounds and only one clips your side, sending you spinning mid-step. Unfortunately for him, it sends you reeling exactly how you wanted to be. You spin right into his left side, where purple blood drips down his arm, and you pin the gun between the two of you. Your fist grabs a handful of that asshole’s purple cape’s collar and you look right into his purple eyes as you slide those precious inches of metal between ribs, in through the gill and right into his fucking aquatic based fucking alien heart bladder system shit.
They widen and he gives a hitched little breath. “I fuckin’ heard,” he says a little breathlessly, “That you wwere lookin’ to die inna fight, I didn’t fuckin’ think you had the balls left to take me wwith you, you little shit.” This close, you can see under the bruise, under the injuries. He looks almost the same as he has for years. You’ve gotten older and all he’s had the nerve to do is grow out his goddamn horns. Fucking highbloods.
“Oh you know you like it, Eridork. How fucking romantic is that for you?” You twist the knife and send a shudder through his body. His claws are digging into your throat but you know you’ve got him so you don’t give one single fuck. “Never had a flushed little matesprit to leave this world with you, all you’ve got is me.”
Eridan smiles at you, all fangs and black tongue as he laughs. He leans in, and whispers, “Look wwho’s talkin’. Did all the bitches you say crawwlin after your swwag figure out you’re just a fuckin’ douche wwho livves in his brother’s shitty-ass apartment!”
“You fucker,” you drag him closer, crushing his mouth against yours. You bite hard, kissing those stupidly made up lips and making him bleed. He bites you right back, splitting your lip painfully but you don’t even fucking care. You press the knife in deeper and he gives a pain filled sound that you recognize as completely involuntary. When you yank back from the kiss, you lick your lip and swallow the blood. You look into his face.
He’s gritting his teeth, sweating and shining because of it. He’s purple and black and yellow and grey and he’s grinning at you still. He gives one shuddering breath and hisses, “You knoww killin’ your kismesis is against the rules of quadrants, Davvey.”
You yank the blade through his flesh, sliding it from side to front and making him gush violet purple. He gasps and his tight grip on your shoulder goes lax. His eyes become sightless in seconds, but you never look away from them. As he falls out of your arms and falls with a heavy thud on the purple and red splattered floor, you mumble, “I really wasn’t ever good at following the rules, Eridan.”
You crouch down beside him, angry and tired and feeling hopeless. Your hilt sticks out of his chest, still. He still has that manic grin on his face. His eyes are still open. You lean down, press a soft, tender kiss to his lips. Stupid, pathetic, hateful moron. Your jealousy and his possession drove the both of you to never have anything but each other- neither one of you could stand the thought of the other having someone they loved and cared about gently.
Glass cuts your knee as you shift down more and kiss his cooling, still bloody, still purple lips. You lick your blood, his blood, off his mouth and then look down at him. “Everyone fucking said you wouldn’t be good enough for me, or that you’d just disappoint me in the end.” They had said he could never pity right, never love right, all he could do was hate and fight. They said that about you too, but not to your face- not like they did to him.
The pale of your fingers, calloused from fighting and thickened with age, seem so strange against his throat, where you stroke grey skin and purple lines of his gills. Your fingers are numb, your whole body feels that way, numb and heavy and almost paralyzed with the finality of it all. Maybe they were right. In the end you needed him to kill you, to end your life with strife, the way you had lived.
Not to let you die of an uncontrollable group of cells in your body, rotting away in a bed somewhere with your hair gone and John and his family sniffling at your side. He wasn’t suppose to-
You choke for breath and suddenly the world is swimming. You reach for your throat but it just feels swollen, painfully so. You can’t breathe, and then your fingers can’t move. You feel your body slumping over, falling over his belly, with your arms stretched out and your breath coming in tiny, thread-like streams. Finally air is gone completely and you can’t move anything. You’re paralyzed.
You’re poisoned.
A memory, just on the edge of your mind.
“Hold your fuckin’ horses, Davve. Wwe can fuck each other all you wwant as soon as I’m fuckin’ finished gettin’ ready!” he applies bright purple lipstick to his lips, shining in the light of the room. You tease him for being girly, for being so fucking flamboyant, for putting on lipstick to fight. He just smiles and takes it. That should have warned you. He never takes it. He just gets more and more furious until he scrubs it off- on your shirt.
You would laugh, laugh until you cried, because he fucking poisoned you and he fucking killed you even after he was already dead! Instead you simply cry and wish, silently, and with your lingering coherent thoughts, wish that you had had the balls, years ago, to tell him how much you pitied him.
It was never just hate, you cared about him more than that.
And somehow, you know, deep in the darkness of your dying mind, he made sure you would die because he cared too.
He made sure you died because that’s what you wanted.
Good rival.
Best lover.