written for a much larger spanning narrative created alongside my friends. somehow the closest to writing gay sex i've ever gotten, despite the lack of nsfw content, and the fact i've written actual gay sex.
talk of blood & surgery. stay safe.
the first seven minutes are a blur. two are spent assessing the situation — his best friend collapsed on the doorstep, missing their heart. a further two are spent bringing them inside. the last three are spent in a panic.
his panic crystallises into determination — focus on the facts and what can be done, not what has happened, and what might happen. remember what he learned.
silver, for healing.
gold, for life.
copper, for energy.
clay, for sculpting.
he has never been more grateful for the hours spent memorising the uses for alchemical materials.
eight.
nine.
ten.
the minutes continue to count away in the back of his brain. he has to stay aware of the time passing, but he needs to keep space in his mind to calculate every part of what he’s doing; there’s no room for error here.
lines drawn in chalk. symbols for stabilisation, for binding, to call upon the magic inherent in the world. he’s always been fuzzier on these details — magic is not his realm of expertise. he works better with concrete facts and materials, measurements and ratios.
he remembers the hand guiding his, teaching him the shape of magic. he remembers the patient tone of the explanations. given the only person who could remind him is bleeding out in his kitchen, he hopes he remembers exactly what was said.
eleven.
twelve.
thirteen.
he can feel it in the air now, the crackle of potential energy. it’s the same energy that is always present, but it feels different to him now. it’s under his control — or perhaps more so his suggestion — as he shapes the ritual he’s crafted, willing and hoping and praying for the right outcome.
fourteen.
fifteen.
sixteen.
seventeen.
a heart begins to take shape, beginning as a rough approximation of an organ — nothing more than a vague memory of a diagram — but as a minute passes, and then another, and then one more, it contorts into an anatomical sculpture, filling out the details. then, all at once, it stops. the room is still.
twenty-one.
twenty-two.
twenty-three.
anxiety fills the one organic heart still beating. if this hasn't worked, he doesn't know what he'll do. it's been twenty-four minutes, and he knows he's been lucky enough his friend has made it this long. there will be no time to do anything more than this. he picks up the heart, turns it over in his hand. looking for where he went wrong, what he missed.
the heart begins to beat.
once.
twice.
thrice.
the anxiety drains away, leaving only relief. all is not lost — not yet. there is a heart now, but he cannot guarantee their body will accept it. it's all he can do to try. he places the newborn heart in the weeping chest cavity, with all the tenderness in his heart filling the artificial one. he holds his hands over the wound, making a silent prayer, the desperation and panic and worry of the last half hour washing through him in an instant. he thinks of just how much he cares, and he begs this one thing to go right for him, even if he has to lose everything else.
once more, he can feel the magic of his ritual shifting under his suggestion. the heart begins to beat again, a slower rhythm, accompanied by the rush of blood for the first time in forty minutes. the wound seals beneath his hands, though not enough to prevent a nasty, fresh pink scar across his friends chest. he runs a finger across it lightly, and all he feels is pride. perhaps he should feel relief, glad that he has saved them. perhaps he should continue to worry, his friend is still unconcious — not out of the woods yet. there are a million emotions he should feel, but all he has is a sense of self confidence and a blind belief that if he has done this, then perhaps there is more he can do.
he wants to feel the high of success again. he wants to feel the magic change and shift under his control once more. he's handled it once, why not again?
it is here that he starts to forget the hand that guided him, the voice that taught him, the connections that made him; he is beyond that, the things he can do are bigger, better, greater than study sessions in a tiny dorm. something tells him to leave it all behind, to chase something new, to take an opportunity and ran with it as far as he can. it's hard not to listen.
in less than a week, he leaves it all behind. some things, like hearts born of dedication to the person they belong to, don't stay behind. they find their way back, whatever it takes.
three years and four weeks later, he walks in on his friend collapsed in a pool of their own blood, and he starts counting the minutes again.
one.
two.
three.
get out of their room. start making his way down the impossible stairs carrying someone a foot and a half taller.
four.
five.
six.
seven.
eight.
they reach the bottom of the stairs. he laments how much further the distance is this time. the minutes feel twice as long as they ever have.
nine.
ten.
eleven.
twelve.
thirteen.
fourteen.
fifteen.
he places them down on the table in his personal laboratory, a table he thought he would never, ever have to use again. his hands don't shake as he cuts down the now-faded scar, but when he pulls out a still, unbeating heart, he trembles enough to nearly drop it.
sixteen.
seventeen.
eighteen.
he cleans the heart of blood, trying not to think about how his clothes are stained the same hue. he turns the heart over and over in his hands, once again trying to determine why it is silent. this time, it does not begin to beat in his hands.
nineteen.
twenty.
twenty-one.
he doesn't know what to do now. he barely understood what he was doing the first time, and he kept no documentation of what he had done. with three more years of experience, he prays that he can figure it out. there is no time to find someone else. it was only ever going to be on him. it's all he can tell himself; he is the only person who can save them now.
twenty-two.
twenty-three.
twenty-four.
alloys this time, metallic mixes blending healing, mending, life, restoration, everything he can think of. perfectly measured ratios according to precise and exact math. he can do numbers, he can do chemistry. he knows and understands how to calculate the way materials will interact with each other. he doesn't know how to do this.
twenty-five.
twenty six.
twenty seven.
he begins drawing practiced lines in chalk. for a moment, he swears he hears a voice guiding him. he remembers that the voice doesn't remember him, or how to lead him through this. his hand slips, smudging the lines at awkward angles. his emotions are making him clumsy. he pushes them to the back of his mind, to a part deeper than that keeping count of the minutes.
twenty-eight.
twenty-nine.
thirty.
finished with his work in chalk, he draws one final line in the red of his own blood. it's dangerous, he knows, to involve yourself that deeply in a ritual — you open yourself up to losing yourself in trying to balance the scales. there is no result without equal sacrifice. however, he needs this to work, more than he thinks he needs the blood on the tips of his fingers. he believes he's done this well enough not to worry about the repercussions. men and their ego.
thirty-one.
thirty-two.
the heart begins to beat again, softly, as if it knows it is seperated from the body it resides in. something snaps in his own heart, and he can feel the worry and panic and concern for his best friend starting to build. he calls for help, but then he remembers. he's the only person who can do this. he's the only person who knows how.
thirty-three.
he sends away the friend who came to help. she's gone now. she will be gone for longer. he cannot focus — all that is important is helping the slumped figure on the table. the emotions will not crystallise, they stay cloudy and confusing at the forefront of his brain.
thirty-four.
thirty-five.
thirty-six.
he places the heart back into their chest, hands atop it again, willing and begging and praying. he wants to know it will work. the doubt is worming into his mind.
thirty-seven.
the heart takes, but the wound does not knit closed. without thinking, he wipes his hands on his coat, letting the blood stains seep in further. he begins searching through the room, knowing he keeps surgical thread around somewhere. back in the beginning, it was hard to know what he would need. he's glad he got what he did.
thirty-eight.
thirty-nine.
forty.
forty-one.
the scar is going to be worse this time, stitching holding the skin together. looking at it makes him want to cry. he is the only reason the heart could have stopped again, and he is entirely at fault for what happened. the guilt crashes over him in a mighty wave — sadness and longing and fear swirling around inside him as he sees the consequences of every single thing he's done since the creation of the heart. exhausted, he collapses in a chair at their bedside, both hands wrapped around one of theirs, praying and begging desperately that they will wake up. that they'll remember. that they'll forgive him for it all. he is shaking with the effort of not breaking down, of not falling apart right then and there, but he knows if he lets it go, he'll sob until he passes out, and he can't sleep until they're awake. he won't move until they're awake.
he won't leave them behind again.