23:15h.
He had thought that obliterating himself would make it easier, he mused, splashing cold water on his face. He could smell the coffee Kenji had prepared to sober him. He smirked, looking up from cleaning his face to the bottle containing the dark forest green hair-dye Kenji had mixed up to stain his wheat-blonde hair. Strange parentage, that one, he snickered, then raised his eyes to the mirror.
He winced. Glitter and black eyeliner streaked carelessly down his cheeks, straying with the coercion of soap and frigid water. But his eyes, glassy green orbs, dismayed him most. They glazed, not surprising with all the alcohol he'd drunk, and he could almost see despair flickering in his pupils. A short gasp trapped in his throat, and he covered his face in fright. He lifted his head, trembling slightly, and stared himself in the face again. The world seemed to reel, then settled.
He caught himself, horrified and dismayed. His cheeks burnt with shame at his image, winking from within the steel frame. He smashed cloudy water on his face and snatched up the soap, scrubbing violently at the glimmering skin. His skin felt raw after a few minutes, but he ripped at the stinging flesh feverishly, keeping his head buried over the sink.
He finally rinsed, tying to fight off the sickening fire in his belly, and gasped for breath, sucking in much needed air that only seemed to free the flames licking at his mind. He relaxed, but then sighted his hands. They were grimy in the dim light, darkened and impure. Something within whispered a burning truth that it was merely shadow, but the mass of him ignored it. The cloth was already scraping away the foulness of his hands, palms and wrists. He sloughed off imagined dirt from his pale flesh, shaking his head all the while, somehow denying that it was him doing this, that he needed to do this, that something would seep through his flesh and quench the inferno of ashes within that blazed at his innards.
He trembled slightly, rubbing the cloth in unforgiving circles up his arms, spreading it to the insult of the stained shirt on his narrow chest, and over his shoulders, where the dirt seemed worse only because he could feel it's supposed weight, and not see shadows upon which to inflict the cloth. He lathered viciously, spots of bright red pinking the low bubbles. He pushed harder upon the cloth, closing his eyes briefly to feel the unadulterated pain, the tearing, thin flesh giving way to vein and nerve under the cloth, bleeding spirals of disinfected impersonal hurt that cleaned, made him feel the cleanliness within him, in his blood, almost restoring *something* so crucial that he had lost it.
Kenji looked up from the small folding table in the room, seeming totally out of place amidst the dungeon. He carefully shut the shattered windows from the burning smog with slit wooden blinds, moldering from the previous tenants. A dim light bulb lit the room, revealing piles of books in one corner, some neatly stacked - those were Kenji's - and the others sprawled across the floor like so many napping children, comfortable in their disarray. Old broken furniture lined the walls, occasionally to be dragged out to the street side on trash days in a vain attempt to get the city to take the musty stained cloth and cushion on rotten wood off to the dump. The floor was a vile pattern of circling green tiles, the same color in the gloom as the mold on the blinds.
The white-clad young man seemed concerned, gazing with uncommon intensity at a door in the wall, listening to the low hum of the plumbing, and the crashing of waves from a faucet within. He stood, frowning deeply, and called out, liquid tones assuring his companion, "Oi, Max? What is taking you so long?"
His cobalt eyes narrowed at the absence of response, and he stepped forward, stalking slightly as he had on the platform, smooth gliding grace defining his motion. One hand hung straight, clenched into an unwilling fist, as if preparing to meet the thin wood of the bathroom door with violence. But it was unlocked, strangely.
Max whimpered slightly, unheeding of anything but the bite of soap upon abused skin, and the rough, red striped cloth that circled his flesh in fiery pain. Then the cloth was wrenched from his hands with cool strength, and his arm restrained as he lunged mindlessly after his instrument of injury. He could only think, it was screaming in his head with bloodied enthusiasm that he needed, needed to cleanse himself of the blood and ash and still burning stains-
"Max! Max, stop this, please! Max!" A sharp, cool palm made intimate with his cheekbone, allowing a small gift of a flushed memory as the hysterical grin burnt off, the hand smoothing with the return of coherence, melting over his cheek in comfort, soft and dampened from the watery mess.
The quivering, soap-scathed boy subsided into a blaze of hoarse sobs, and slumped into Kenji's waiting arms. The Asian youth sighed with anguish, and whispered in quiet liquid tones until Max had calmed, sniffling slightly and trying to wipe burning tears from his fiery eyes with a pained, soap-encrusted hand.
Kenji smiled bitterly, and brushed the heated acid away with his thumb.
"Damn it, Max, why are you doing this to yourself? What's going on?"
Max merely curled into his companion's soaked shoulder.
Return to Fire and Water: A Story Arc
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