The ghost of you is close to me

[Gabriel Lee]

It wasn't that Gabriel felt nothing, that his expressionless face indicated total absence of emoton. He felt too much. In the moment he felt it all--the overwhelming, crushing despair, the sadness, the indescribable loss. He felt these things because Bongju felt them, and through their connection the feelings swept over him too.

But what good would it do to let Bongju know that? It wouldn't change anything. Gabriel remained stoic even when he was grabbed. He anticipated the punch, the well-deserved beating for robbing Bongju of the man that he loved. No one could sink to their knees and beg without loving someone so deeply that they would forsake their pride and dignity.

It touched him. It did. And he couldn't show it.

"Please..." He didn't have a chance to finish his plea. Lips crashed against his and again his hands flew up, to Bongju's side. Gripped the side of his shirt just as tightly as something seized him from within. Gabriel kissed him back for a fraction of a second.

But fairy tales didn't come true. They didn't live in a land far, far away--they lived in the here and now, in the present, where even a kiss couldn't change the course of fate. Gabriel pulled away, pulled back. His heart felt like it would burst in his chest and he couldn't completely school his expression. Something like longing flickered across his face before he abruptly, silently turned away again, jaw tight and teeth clenched.

[Ahn Bongju]

Fairy tales were not real.

It killed him. It killed another part of his heart that Gabriel rejected him. For a brief moment, he was sure he'd gotten through to him. When Gabriel started to kiss him back, hope swelled anew... only to be dashed to the rocks cruelly by the way he was pushed back and Gabriel turned away. Crushed, Bongju watched his back and struggled to make sense of his scrambled wits.

Then his arm snapped up and his hand grasped Gabriel's arm in a bid to stop him before he got too far away. The time for punching was past. Kissing didn't work. Begging hadn't even worked. Everything he did just pushed Gabriel further and further away from him, rather than eliciting an emotional response. He wanted Gabriel to get angry, too. He wanted him to be indignant, to fight or soften. He wanted him to stop acting like a robot moving on automatic.

"Then kill me." This time his voice was tense with barely suppressed emotion. His grip tightened. Don't leave me like this. "Because I won't stop."

[Gabriel Lee]

Gabriel stopped as--yet again--he was grabbed and held on to. His eyes narrowed--not out of annoyance but at the fog rolling in, smothering everything around them. "I won't."

He couldn't.

There would be deaths--many to come, but not this one. Gabriel reached up; his fingertips landed feather-soft on the back of Bongju's hand. "If you want to die that badly, find someone else. Not me." Gabriel turned his head just far enough to catch a glimpse of him out of the periphery of his vision. His heart swelled, throbbed, ached at the sight of him.

"Nothing you can say or do will change what has already happened. Let go."

[Ahn Bongju]

His fingers curled inward slightly. Why these mixed signals? Why was Gabriel fighting it? Because... it seemed like he was suppressing his feelings. Their connection was ragged and ugly and barely there but it was still there and he was starting to feel twinges of... something. Somewhere in there, he was sure his Gabriel still resided, despite the nasty things he'd whispered into his ear.

Only you can kill me. The words were a ghost on his lips, dying before they could make their escape. It wasn't true, actually. Bongju could kill himself in other ways. Maybe. He knew that others touching him destroyed him. It was the one method he had yet to really try. Avoiding the touch of others, he wore sweaters and long sleeves all year long to keep himself relatively safe from that. He didn't know if it could kill him, though. If it would just leave him in more agony... that was what stopped him from doing it.

But Gabriel spoke as if it was as easy as that; just finding a new way to die.

He dropped his hand. He stepped back. One step. Two. His gaze stayed fixed on Gabriel, though, betrayal running thickly through his veins.

"You," he said after a long moment, "will wish you had killed me."

[Gabriel Lee]

Gabriel smiled softly but not in amusement. There was nothing remotely funny about the situation, nor about Bongju's declaration. A quiet chill stole over Gabriel at his tone and at the darkness that fell over him in that moment. It wasn't fear... Maybe it was anticipation. Maybe he wanted out, too, just the same way that Bongju did.

"I probably will," he acknowledged in quiet acquiescence, taking a step back and away from Bongju. Would that he could lift his hand against him. That he could strike out and end it for Bongju, who seemed to have nothing to live for after Gabriel--his Gabriel--was stolen from him. It would at least be a fitting end, dying at the hands of someone he loved. Better than becoming another victim of what was to come.

But the fragment of that Gabriel who still lived on in this body wouldn't allow that to happen and so, his hands were tied. It was the one thing that even he couldn't overcome; he couldn't force this out of the body that he had stolen. Gabriel, for the first time that evening, hesitated. He looked at Bongju, studied him like a scholar would have perused a fascinating text, and then he turned again.

It was no good pretending to himself that Bongju was a stranger to him. From the first moment that he saw him, he knew--he knew him. He knew everything about him; the knowledge seemed to erupt from out of nowhere, triggered by his face. He denied it to the bitter end but knowledge, the bond, wasn't physical. He couldn't wrench it away or throw it away. It was there, between them, a corrosive and painful reminder of what they once were and could never be again.

Gabriel bowed his head as he walked away.