InsaneJournal

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It is better this way, Firo tells himself, and he does not think of Ennis.

Better like this, because Ladd shuts up but for the occasional grunt. Better this way, because face down in blankets, Ladd can’t kill him.

Forty times now, Ladd’s killed him, that Firo can count; perhaps in the blur of awakening-death-awakening-death, he’s lost count of a few. Firo still has nightmares of that—chain, that worst night when Ladd killed him, again and again, all in succession; nightmares, or happenstance, because sometimes Ladd kills him in the morning before he can even wake up. Death is pain, so much pain, and more pain and horror on the rebirth to see Ladd’s curious blue eyes over and that blissful idiot grin, to see Ladd’s hand descend again before Firo could recover, to throttle, to crush the skull, to break through stomach to gut him, bare-nailed.

Better this way, to find some damn near-painless moonlit way to get Ladd to leave him be; treat an animal like an animal, came the thought, this animal knows nothing of power but for such games.

As Firo thrusts, as hard as he can bear, with sweat flying and his fingers slipping on the breadth of Ladd’s hips to grate pale thigh against hairy, he thinks he’s going to have nightmares of this, too. The air between them stinks; his cock burns; he will not think of Ennis.

Be sure to mark the back of his neck—

Firo balks at that as he’s balked at all of this. Even with Ladd’s mad heat around him, clenching, shuddering with Ladd’s grunting, tense silence – and so strange that, when Ladd is never silent, not even in his sleep – Firo can’t, can’t –

If you don’t, the others will think it you who took this for you’re making the noise, not he, and you’ll be fair game; do you want to avoid pain, hungry boy? Do you want to avoid fear? As new to you as all of this, isn’t it, to be afraid; you’ve never been afraid of anything before.

Firo bends, slowly, his hand a slow slide along Ladd’s spine to make the other man shudder with a wild soundless laugh; he closes his teeth in the back of Ladd’s neck and bites, until he tastes bright blood. His stomach growls.

--ah—

Firo’s mouth fills, half saliva and half blood, his cock aches, desire and anger; he spits, he comes, he rolls away with a violent, half-terrified, half-enraged motion.

Ladd laughs, the silent sound choking its way towards what normality is for the madman; bright, bright laughter. Resting on one shoulder, his cheek against the rough blanket, he reaches back, and dips the fingers of his hand in Firo’s remnant, unashamed. “Oh, Firo, Firo, Firo, you’ve made a mess of me—“

You need to tell him to--

“Go to sleep, Ladd,” Firo says, calm. “There’s no more games tonight.”

For a wonder, Ladd turns with nothing more than a grin that flashes, cold in the scarce moonlight, and settles himself for sleep.

Firo needs a shower, and he will not think of Ennis.

---

When Firo wakes up he sees not the concrete block, not the sky through their high, railed window, not the toilet or the bedsheets or the bars. He sees nothing but Ladd, his expression almost human this early, dressing, wincing as he bends to put his pants on awkwardly with one arm. His wince is unashamed, not even smirking.

Firo slides from the upper bunk. Ladd steps back to let him have the room to stand; Firo misinterprets the motion, keyed as he is, and half-startles towards a blow. Ladd, defiantly, does not flinch.

“You’re an interesting little toy,” Ladd tells him, beaming. “I am glad I met you.”

“Didn’t last night teach you anything, Russo? I’m not your toy.”

“Yes you are,” Ladd affirms, proudly, “because what better toy for Ladd Russo than one that never, ever breaks?”

The hairs on Firo’s nape stand on end.

You said he would submit – Firo thinks, desperately, that the voice responds – the animal is mad, hungry boy, and you can’t eat him in one swallow, so you must eat him in small parts, every day and every night until nothing of him is left; it is better this way, hungry boy, for you don’t have to fear that pain of death and reawakening; you can take him, in pieces and parts, again and–

Spittle fills Firo’s mouth, a slavering contradiction, for Firo thinks his throat has never been this dry. He can barely swallow. Firo also thinks the voice sounds hungrier than he is.

“I always broke my toys, before,” Ladd said, grinning; he hands Firo his own pants, busies himself getting a cup of water, a complexity of motion one-handed. “Ah, poor toys, too weak for me, for I am the strongest. I would not let it be said that I was malicious, though, oh, no, Firo; I just wanted to find out how they worked, and a shame that they could not be put back together; howsoever did I mourn them—“

Firo drinks the water when Ladd offers, and near chokes when Ladd says:

“But you, no matter what I do to you, you always go back together; and Ladd Russo is glad, for the world has at last provided a toy to match his strength.”

“Shut up, Ladd,” Firo says, “or I’ll—I’ll—“

You haven’t the imagination, do you, hungry boy? A short life you’ve had, and what have you done in it but fucked a warm whore who can’t say no and hugged a happy brother who always says yes; you, who can fight to break or kill a man but can’t deal with this, relentless – for this animal will break you with his unstoppable madness, and he will not stop, until you kill him, and you should kill him, hungry boy—

“I don’t want to kill you, Ladd. Don’t make me kill you.”

“You can’t kill me,” Ladd says, “Ladd Russo can’t die.”

“I’m the only immortal here, you madman—“

“Only because I need you to be one,” Ladd says. “I don’t like broken toys, they’re no fun.”

Relentless. He’s worse than a child. Firo imagines a stretch of long nights ahead of him, for no logic keeps Ladd away, he doesn’t figure that if Firo can best him once, he’ll best him every time. Firo imagines having to fuck this madman or hurt him, break him or kill him, every broken night, just to get sleep without that threat of fear of death, for death comes cold and hard and heavy, fear that could drive any man mad; except Firo can’t go mad and won’t kill Ladd, for Firo doesn’t kill at whim or will, no matter that every night of scarce sanity will cost him so; it hurts, it’ll cost him to stay Firo.

Szilard Quates was a murderer and a madman. Firo Prochainezo is neither.

“Shut up, Ladd,” Firo says, calmly, “or I’ll fuck you up with a baseball bat next time.”

“The toy likes to play with toys,” Ladd says, near-startled; for a moment Firo feels an almost-relief - at last, a threat that keeps him back - until Ladd grins, and then all hope and relief shatters on that bright manic smile.

Before he leaves the cell, Ladd tugs down the back of his collar to bare the bite on his nape.

---

It’s not Maiza, because of course Maiza can’t come to see Firo in prison; Firo’s in prison solely to keep Maiza out. Every man must take the fall sometimes; Maiza’s blithe smile reassured Firo that at the least, these years would be nothing compared to an eternity as Maiza’s brother.

Nevertheless, it’s still not Maiza, and Firo’s heart sinks.

“You look—tired—“ Ennis says.

“How much longer?” Firo asks, achingly; Ennis strokes the back of his hand with gentle fingertips.

“As long as it takes,” she says.

There’s no way to tell her how much every day costs him. She does not have the words, nor demands them, which is a good thing because they sit there in silence more telling than any words—

“Czes,” Firo says, to startle himself. “Can you bring him, next time?”

“Yes,” Ennis says, so assuredly that he wonders if she could have said no if she had so wanted.

---

“It’s not like that,” Czes says, with his boy’s voice and his god’s eyes, as they walk across the gravel court. Drifts of rotting leaves soften the martial crunch, occasionally, and Firo wonders where the leaves come from, for there are no trees here.

Firo checks back to see Ennis is far enough to avoid overhearing, and she is. Just where he told her to stay. No. Where he asked her to. Asked.

“There’s memories,” Czes says, and his voice trembles though his gaze does not waver. “Images. Perceptions. The occasional thought that feels like, what do you call it now? Déjà vu? The memories where he and I overlap experiences,” and now the waver in his voice is not that of a boy’s but of a man’s, still aching, “are the strongest, but there are, definitely, no distinct voices. He is like an aftertaste, not the meal itself.”

For a time Firo continues to walk in silence but for the gravel’s friction beneath his feet. Across the other side of the yard he sights through the lines of stationed guards, to map Ladd’s path, the thick grace of the man accompanied by another, slighter male of Firo’s age and built, who likewise wears his hair in his eyes, and a girl that Firo would consider too beautiful for someone like Ladd Russo, but that she walks with such pride at his side.

“Any voices you hear,” Czes says, apologetically, “must be your own. Are you well, Firo?”

He hears the sound of Ladd’s laugh, the other male’s, manic and delighted. The woman lifts her head to smile at the pair of them, achingly warm; Firo wonders why Ennis never looks at him like that, like her life is dependent on his presence, especially because, well, it is.

“Of course,” Firo says.

---

When Firo gets back to his cell, Ladd’s already there, sitting with his height hunched on the bunk.

“Is it your birthday?” Ladd asks.

“No, why--"

The move Ladd makes reads as all threat, even one-armed; Firo moves, flies, to pit skill against that boxer’s strength, desperation against madness, fear against Ladd’s fearlessness, and inside his head there’s something laughing, maniacal, hungering, someone or thing, kill him eat him take him break him kill him eat him—

Ladd does not feel pain, in that blanket of insanity. Firo’s going to kill him before Ladd feels anything.

Firo lets himself fall, and Ladd’s hand closes around his throat.

The worst of this death is the knowledge of coming back. Perhaps the pain would be bearable if it could progress, onwards; instead immortality guarantees nothing more than a repetition of this pain, forever and a day of breathless aching desperation, that yearning, striving – blackness – to return to the feel of the body drawing itself back together, to the sound of laughter, ceaseless, insane; to have died so many times and live only once, he’s breaking apart –

Firo stops his own crazed laugh only when Ladd prods his stomach with something. Hard.

“Now that you’re reborn,” Ladd announces, “I guess it is your birthday. I have a present for you. A toy for a toy.”

When he opens his eyes, Firo sights up the length of a baseball bat to Ladd’s smile at the other end. How the hell Ladd got that – the woman, no, the youth from the yard, however loose his overalls, he couldn’t have smuggled him something like that—

“Say thank you,” Ladd prompts, and puts the heel of his runner across Firo’s throat.

It is better this way, fighting again, and for a moment it feels honest, fighting for his life instead of death, Firo’s fists quicker than Ladd’s, his feet fleet, his weight less but his skill more; Ladd fights back, swings with the bat that Firo breaks his arm on breaking the bat in two, and he heals without noting the pain or the break; for he fights, fights, and not until Ladd is face down over the toilet, blood weeping from his split scalp and laughter jarred loosed from his lips does Firo halt, again, hissing –

hungry boy you know you want to take him take him oh how this will cost you

“Ladd,” Firo rasps, through a throat more weighted with hunger and fear than pain and effort, “why are you so insane? What voice tells you to – to act so mad – assured --?”

Ladd spits blood across the steel bowl and looks back over his shoulder, grinning, with blooded teeth. “Ladd Russo doesn’t follow orders unless he wants to. No voices. I’m not insane, I’m Ladd Russo.”

“You just…act on your nature?”

“Unless someone asks me particularly nicely to do otherwise,” Ladd says. “Are you asking me, nicely, little toy?”

It is better this way, Ladd’s way, to surrender to that for there’s not a voice; Czes told him so, there’s no Szilard you can blame this on, hungry boy, no route for escape, to distance, this is you, this is all you, hungry and terrified, terror and fear; how far will fear take you from yourself unless you claim yourself, there’s nothing at all here, nothing to blame, but for three concrete block walls and one of bars; there’s only Firo Prochainezo and Ladd Russo. One of them is insane and the other is an animal, and here in this cage of mind and mud and metal, Firo knows which one is which, and it is far, far better that way around than the other.

His teeth find flesh even through Ladd’s shirt, coarse and thick as it is, and Ladd makes a sound like an animal when Firo closes his jaw.

“Firo Prochainezo doesn’t ask,” Firo says, thickly; his mouth leaves damp marks on Ladd’s shirt, and as he rips that fabric free from the broad muscle below, it doesn’t occur to him to think of Ennis.

“Oh, good,” Ladd says. “I do like toys that like to play.”

---