Work Text:
Huff huff huff
What is this? What is this?
Blood. It was blood. Pooling around his back, on his hands, on his face, out of his stomach, on to the floor. Liters and liters of his own blood running to spill out beside him.
Is this it?
And It was. This was the last moment Moore would ever see, ever experience. Lying on the cold, hard, dusty floor of his school’s storage room framed with his own blood.
This was it.
Drip,
Drip,
Drip
Tears. Out of anger, fear, disgust. All of it, all at once.
What did Moore ever do? Was he too obvious? Was just his presence enough to enrage? Just enough to set them off? Just enough to be coerced down the three flights of stairs leading to the school’s basement, just enough to follow his coworkers blindly into the dark, just enough to be tricked, just enough to be bashed.
Just enough.
And that’s all he ever was, all he ever will be. This was it, just enough.
Moore breathed in. Though his ribs groaned in disagreement, his snapped bones pushing darkly into his lungs as his chest rose with a staggering, creaky inhale. Any of the air that managed to pass through his flooded airways and into his lungs was no different than the blood he was sitting in, mixing into a gurgling, hot mess of liquid. It was disgusting, and it hurt.
Tears continued to well in his eyes. And it hurt. It all hurt, so bad.
Damnit!
All he wanted to do was cry, he wanted to cry so so badly– and he couldn’t. Hufff, he heaved again. He tried to breathe, and he couldn’t. Again. Red rolled in his throat and in his nose as air fought against blood, the mixture bubbling and sloshing out as he choked. Blood sputtering out his mouth like rain, peppering his clothes and his face in a spotting, gross mess.
‘Gross’.
Choking on himself, on the blood spilled for just being… ‘Just enough’. The blood he’d spilled from his own irresponsibility.
It was his fault right?
And maybe they were right, that’d been one of the last things he’d heard from his colleagues... (Or, the group that’d brought him down here, that was.) Whatever they were to him now.
Murderers? Moore didn’t have time to care.
‘Gross’, among other things, had been used to describe him. As Moore was beaten, stomped, his head and limbs smashed into the cold, hard floor– and it more than felt applicable. Moore was a crumpled mess, unable to move and covered in his own blood, his nose and ribs completely smashed. He was mangled. He was gross.
He was weak, and he was dying. And, what? If he could heave through the murky liquid, the flooding in his throat and his chest, streaming like rapids out of his mouth, out of his nostrils– would it matter? To breath in the dust, the dirt, the wet damp of cloth–
Just to breath in all the scents that reminded Moore of him. Of his workshop, of the man he held so closely, too closely.
And maybe that was it, ‘Monsieur Wolfe’. Maybe that was the giveaway.
Moore eyeing him from across the hall every morning, stealing glances into Wolfe’s classroom when he’d be busy elsewhere, stammering over his words, over simple ‘Hello’s, adjusting his collar when Wolfe’d walk past.
Offering to be one of Wolfe's models and sitting in his studio, for hours. Staring at his hands as he worked, for hours, feeling Wolfe’s eyes wash over him, feeling the warmth only Wolfe made him feel… Feel it flood over him. Try to hide it. The overflowing.
Then walking home, dizzy and light– practically floating through the backstreets of France.
Standing in the hall the next day all loopy with heat, and staring at him again. Uncaring of the world around yourself. Engulfed in the colours, and feelings, and smells, the true world– swirling all around him, the force and the light that is your painter… That is your Wolfe.
That look, right then, that was just enough.
And it wouldn’t matter.
Because like a moth to flame,
Moore’s wings,
w
ou
ld
m
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lt
.
.
.
.
.
Drip,
Drip,
Drip,
Bzzzzzz
Moore tried to feel the floor, tried pressing his palms into the stone with what little strength he had left. But, no matter, he couldn't feel it. Not his pulse, not the cracks filling with the sticky, red liquid that his body should be able to feel thumping out of him.
All Moore could feel was the buzz of his nerves desperately trying to take in any last sensation they could, firing too fast and too weakly-- useslessly-- to take any actual information in.
Moore's head fell under the weight of the static, blood spilling and pooling into his hair as his temples laid against the floor. Not that he'd notice.
His body felt weightless, as if his very being was fading right out of existence. It was naueseating, the numbness.
Moore was dying. None of these feelings mattered.
Not the physical, not the emotional.
He was more similar to a corpse than a human. Even if he clawed up the stairs, through the dirt and the dust, he wouldn’t live. He knew that.
And no love, or remembrance, or care in the world could save him. Not from the blood, nor from the death he sat in.
Moore would die in this room, all alone. And it didn’t matter how much he cared for Wolfe, how much he loved him. Because he would never know, and Moore would never say the words.
No matter what Moore did, no matter the amount of effort or the amount of fear, no matter if his throat were cleared of the dripping, drowning blood– he’d never say the words “I love you”.
Moore clutched the ruby gem on his jabot, almost impossible to spot amongst the red-stained fabric, as if adjusting it would do anything now. He fidgeted, pitiful.
“Hrgll–” A broken blood-cutting hic shot out with Moore’s final thought. It almost made him laugh, the stupidity of it, Would he even say it back?