When You Were Young

He’d ridden in this hearse before, but with a different man. The two looked the same, had the same body, but their insides were different. They had different souls.

Cicero could concentrate on driving when Aidan was in the car. He didn’t nearly run red lights or narrowly avoid sixteen-car collisions because he was too busy making kissy faces at Aidan to pay attention to where he was driving.

Thus, the ride had an altogether unfamiliar atmosphere. He never once felt the need to screech loudly, “Stop, Ailill, that’s a red light!” or, “SLOW DOWN, YOU’RE GOING SIXTY IN A TWENTY-FIVE!”… but he almost missed it.

It wasn’t really the yelling he missed, though. He could yell if he really wanted to, and Cicero would barely spare him a glance. What he missed was Ailill.

The car stopped, crunching hard against the gravel, and Cicero opened the door for him, but the dinner was different too. He remembered his and Ailill’s first date, when everything had gone wrong. His dinner with Cicero was perfect—delicious food, lovely atmosphere, and no bothersome looks from the other patrons. The black-haired man smiled kindly across the table at him and softly took his hand, but it wasn’t the same.

“Would you care for a dance, darling?”

He wondered why it couldn’t be the same, feeling the warm palm beneath his fingers. Their dance was perfect, no missteps, but somehow Aidan could find no comfort in lying his head against Cicero’s chest.

---

“Cicero, I’m begging you… please, just let me,” Aidan pleaded one night, tears in his eyes, fingers clutching the man’s shirt.

The black brows knitted uncomfortably. “I don’t…”

“Please… please, Cicero…” Aidan whispered desperately, his voice cracking as he leaned heavily against him.

The golden eyes darkened sadly. “Fine, Aidan. I’ll let you kill yourself. But… you have to kiss me first.”

Aidan looked up, surprised. “Y-You’ll let me?”

“Yes. But we don’t stop kissing until I say so. We go as far as I want to.”

The blond’s eyes dropped to the floor. “…O.K.,” he whispered sadly.

Cicero sighed. “You’re pitiful, Aidan,” he said, his voice immeasurably sad, as he stood from his chair, pulling Aidan up with him. He put a hand at the back of Aidan’s head, gently caressing the long blond strands as he leaned in, soft. His lips felt the same as Ailill’s, the hand coming to rest on Aidan’s waist in the most familiar way, and it made a lump form in Aidan’s throat. He couldn’t enjoy even a kiss from those lips, because somehow he could always tell the difference.

The tall man held him close, resting his chin atop Aidan’s head. “I don’t want you to do it, Aidan,” he murmured tremulously, his voice thick with tears. “Please, just stay… I’ll make you happy, I promise… I love you…”

Aidan pulled away, shaking his head. “No. No, Cicero… I’m already dead. The body you’re kissing is hardly more than a soulless corpse.”

“No. No, I won’t believe it.”

“…It’s true,” Aidan stated simply, never one to deny fact.

Cicero sniffed for a moment before suddenly straightening. “Then kiss me so that we’ll have something to remember.”

Aidan complied as best as he could, collapsing back against the wall when his dizziness made his legs weak.

“You’re killing Ailill,” Cicero breathed as they parted, his hands on either side of Aidan’s head as he leaned against him.

“By kissing you?”

“No… that upsets him, but he prefers you alive.”

Aidan looked away, staring out the ornate window. “Too bad for him, then,” he growled, yanking Cicero down for a deep kiss while bitter tears streamed from his eyes. “He should have thought about that before he deserted me.”

“…I won’t desert you,” Cicero murmured softly, resting his forehead against Aidan’s.

“You don’t matter,” Aidan hissed, his eyes red from tears and his voice harsh and grating.

Cicero flinched as the words pierced his heart, pulling away quickly. “Then kill yourself, Aidan. Put yourself out of your misery. You’re so self-centered… you don’t care at all for the people you’re leaving behind. So do it. I don’t care,” he growled, the lie echoing against the walls as he stalked out, slamming the door shut behind him.

When he found Makura standing out in the hallway, looking expectantly at him, he finally allowed his tears to show. It was easy to cry on Makura’s shoulder, because Makura always understood and he never asked questions and even Ailill’s loudest sobs were muffled at least slightly by the boy’s presence.

“I don’t want to love him, Makura… I don’t want to…”

“Sire?” Makura asked, concerned pink eyes shining up at him. His blue hair curled prettily around his face, lovely against his flour-pale skin.

Cicero wanted to kiss him, but didn’t trust himself enough to do it. “It’s nothing,” he said, trying to force a nonchalant tone into his voice but failing. “You’ll be glad, though—Aidan’s dead.”

Makura’s eyes widened as he walked away, mouth hanging slack. “Sire?”

---

It was the end, finally. The end would be a welcome release after so much suffering…

But really, he didn’t want to die. He wanted Ailill to stay with him, he wanted his parents to be alive, he wanted for things to be perfect again. But he knew that it couldn’t happen that way, and he couldn’t see any other solution. His heart was rotting away as it was, the wound left by Ailill’s betrayal festered beyond hope of recovery.

The knife carved a jagged half-heart deep into each of his wrists, Aidan watching as it entered through one side of skin and poked out the other. It was painful, but pain didn’t matter. Nothing was as painful as losing Ailill.

“This is what comes from loving too much…” he whispered, slumping against the wall and lazily writing his own makeshift suicide note in blood on the wall…

My love lost drives me to suicide.

His head lolled against the windowframe as he let out a last fluttering breath.