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So this is how he dies.
On the pavement, a bullet in his chest somewhere between his ribs and shit, this is uncomfortable.
Death isn’t supposed to be easy; Lex’s life was anything but, but still. He was hoping for some mercy but life’s gonna fuck him up good until the last second.
Maria and Marcus are gone. Fucking friends they are. Lex doesn’t want to die alone but that’s how it’s looking right about now.
Hurried footsteps quickly approach him. It’s hard to remember all of a sudden. The fresh wound in his chest throbs with his every heartbeat and the following wave of pain erases all thoughts flying through his mind.
Two figures emerge from the backyard. Billy. Petra. God bless ‘em.
The moment they see him, they change.
Lex sees it happen. Something bleeds from them, a part of their being liquefying or petrifying inside of them at the sight of him lying in a growing puddle of his own blood.
They’ll probably be changed forever. If they’re really unlucky, their lives will be divided into ‘Before Lex died’ and ‘After Lex died.’
Lex doesn’t want that for them. He didn’t want it to happen this way.
They fall to their knees on either side of him. Billy’s already weeping. Petra’s irises waver behind the film of tears sitting heavily in her eyes.
“Don’t get teary-eyed,” Lex whispers to her and speaking hurts along with everything else. “Gotta be strong for him. Petra, he needs you.”
Realization dawns on her face, the implication of the impending mourning process shaking her. That brief expression of terrified vulnerability is burned away by a stubborn determination.
“Stand up,” Petra insists harshly as she herself stands. “Lex, stand up!”
But she’s not fucking Jesus Christ; she’s just a goth girl with mascara dragging down her cheeks carried by tears of sorrow and panic and heartbreak.
She is half of his heart. She is one of his loves.
The other half of his heart is forcing himself under Lex’s right arm. He’s thoroughly hysterical, sobbing and drooling, nose running and as warmth pours from the hole in Lex’s chest, he still maintains all emotional warmth because this boy is so beautiful.
Lex plants his lips against Billy’s temple.
He groans as they haul him to his feet. His knees buckle. They somehow keep him upright.
Every step forward is another painful pant fallen from his lips. Petra keeps a hand against the bulletwound in Lex’s chest as if she could keep what remains of his life from spilling out of him.
This feels like the end.
“I love you,” Lex says as he trails blood down the sidewalk, the loves of his pathetic life under each of his arms. “The both of you. Remember that, okay? I didn’t leave you because I wanted to.”
“You fucking asshole, stupid-ass bastard, fucked face dick!” Petra screams furiously into the night.
It hurts when Lex chuckles. “I like when you talk dirty to me, love.”
Petra grits her teeth as actual tears stream down her cheeks. “You’re not fucking leaving us so shut your loud fucking mouth.”
Billy shakes his head viciously, sobs still bubbling from his lips. “You don’t get to leave us like this, please, no, no, no.”
But Lex’s eyesight is getting darker and the pain feels welcoming in a weird sort of way. Familiar, maybe.
“I love you,” Lex says without any concern for the punk rock facade because his time to say how he feels is running out. They know, they know he loves them, he tells them all the time but it’s important that the last words they hear from him are ones of his unconditional love. “Petra, Billy; I love you, I love you, I love you.”
All of them are crying. Lex smiles sadly.
God, he’s gonna miss them.
So this is Heaven.
He made it? That’s fucking hard to believe.
A life of underage drinking and illegal drug use and premarital sex; he was pretty sure that was a recipe for eternal hellfire.
His feet
are
a little sweaty but other than that, it’s not too hot here.
It’s bright. And it smells like Billy and Petra and fuck, maybe this isn’t Heaven because they’re not here.
Anywhere is Hell without them.
The afterlife is for all of eternity, right? That’s the deal? Lex can’t last all eternity without his heart. It’s unnatural. It’s not right. To keep them apart is a sin on God’s part.
His breath gets caught in his throat. It forces its way out his lips in a sloppy sputter, a whine of sorrow not too far behind it because it’s only been a few seconds but he misses them, he misses them, he misses them.
“Shh, shh.”
The angel with a hand on his cheek sounds so much like Petra and he wants to tell her,
‘Oh, if you only knew them, if you only knew what we had, you’d cry for all of us.’
His cries stay at the back of his throat, splitting in little bursts of noise reflecting the hollowness of his chest.
“Lex,” the angel with Petra’s voice urges and she’s wiping his tears with her thumb, “we’re right here. You’re okay.”
There are fingers digging desperately into his bicep and tears that are not his own trailing down the side of his neck.
This is like death: familiar.
Lex opens his eyes a little wider. Light floods into his eyes before they barely adjust.
Surely the afterlife doesn’t have shitty appliances pushed up against the wall. The fucking television looks to be from the 19-fucking-50s. Rabbit ears, the whole shebang.
He tries to move but a pain shoots up his side and his mouth falls open because
motherfucker
, the afterlife should be without suffering at the very fucking least.
“Lex, stop,” comes the teary plea from whoever is clinging to him and tucked into his neck. “Stop, stop, stop, stop-“
Lex stops moving, a silent apology to the broken voice of wilted desperation that sounds so much like Billy.
He rests again, no intention of moving if it causes that reaction. He doesn’t know what’s worse, the white-hot pain or the pathetic begging from an angel with Billy’s voice.
Lex lays still for at least another hour. He dozes lightly. Every time he blinks awake, he finds that another piece of his consciousness awakens within him.
When he finally opens his eyes fully and his mind mostly awake, he’s faced once again with the horrid decoration and this isn’t the afterlife.
It’s a home. Not his. Not anyone’s he knows. He’s in a hospital bed in the middle of a living room, so a doctor from their handbook? Most likely. Those guys were always operating out of shitholes and this was definitely one.
Wait. That means he lived.
Frantically, Lex scans the room for Petra and Billy. He doesn’t have to look long.
Both of them are right here on the bed with him, sitting close.
Billy’s facing him where he’s pressed against his hip, a bloody pant leg folded under him. He picks at his fingernails in his lap. His tears seem never ending. He must have been crying for hours, his eyes are so red.
And Lex realizes by his posture and attentive gaze that Billy has been waiting for him. His beloved has been waiting at his side for him to wake, and if that isn’t the most romantic thing Lex has ever heard of, then he doesn’t know what is.
“Why are you crying?” Lex asks and his voice is shredded with the exertion.
Billy goes to answer, opening his mouth, but then he’s choking on another sob that shakes his whole body thoroughly.
“Come here.”
Billy doesn’t wait another second to fall into him, hands grasping, clawing, gripping him so hard that bruises begin forming under his nails.
“Lex, Lex, Lex-“
“I know,” Lex soothes him, an arm weakly wrapping around the boy’s waist. “I scared you. But I’m right here, love. Right here.”
Billy’s rambling dies in a series of whimpers broken up by more tears and Lex can’t help but smile softly because he’s so taken with this boy, the one who’s crying for him, broken up over him, the one who so clearly loves him with his entire being.
Petra watches them where she’s sat on the edge of the bed inches away from the bloody gauze wrapped around his chest.
She looks eerily stoic, dangerously so, a subtle atmosphere of volatility surrounding her like it would only take one wrong word to violently end her silence.
The shimmer across her eyes, however, reveals her true feelings.
Lex gathers the energy to gently reach out and hold her cheek, wiping away a single tear. Initially she leans into his palm, her chin wrinkling for a brief moment before she inhales a shaky breath.
“You fucking bastard,” Petra whispers, shaking her head out of his featherlight grasp, “you selfish prick, I hate you, I hate you,
fuck,
I hate you so much…”
Lex isn’t that surprised by her response. And he isn’t hurt at all.
Because he can see that Petra’s suffering.
She thought she was going to lose him, just as she had those she cared about before, that she would be abandoned again by someone she loved.
She was angry on her own behalf and on Billy’s, furious that Lex would leave them both like that, bleeding out on the street.
“I’m sorry,” Lex says to her, his hand still hanging in the air. “I’m sorry, Petra. I’m not leaving you.”
“Good,” she spits as another few tears fall down her cheeks.
She peeks at his hand a few times before her defiance crumbles. She grabs his fingers, folds them and holds his fist against her heart racing with bittersweet nerves and overwhelming love and a newfound lease on their life together.
She’s careful of his wound as she leans over to kiss him.
Her lips are the morning dew. A fresh breath of air after moshing in a stuffy punk club all night. The slow movements of their lips together are reverent and gentle as they begin to remember each other after what feels like forever.
Near-death experiences mess with time perception.
And then there’s a hand on his neck, pulling and urging him impatiently to turn his head and Lex breaks his and Petra’s kiss with a smile before turning his head to meet Billy.
His chapped lips are salty with sorrow. The sweetest fruit bordering on sour rot. Billy’s lips move frantically as if telling him the story of his rollercoaster of emotions. Lex calms him with a hand on his cheek and a slow suck of his bottom lip.
They lay in the makeshift hospital bed together, Lex with his arms around Billy and Petra. He plays with the back of Billy’s hair, rubs his thumb up and down on Petra’s shoulder.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Lex promises them quietly.
And he means it with his entire being because as long as he’s with them, it’s Heaven.