best_enemies | Short Fic: "Red Crayon", G, Theta, Koschei (Reply)

Title: Red Crayon
Author:

cruentum
Characters: Theta, Koschei
Rating: G
Summary: Colouring within the lines.
Words: approx. 700

A sweep of the red crayon, just along the printed stark black in the book. The sharp edge teetered along the curve of the outline, stopped before it caught itself, just that nanometre between beginning and end. Tongue in the corner of his mouth, he swept the same spot with the flat of the crayon, around, until the red bloomed brightly.

"Won't you-"

"Not now!" The point of the crayon broke on the third long sweep. The broken shard skittered across the book and table, a small dying sound as it hit the wooden floorboards after rolling off the edge. The next sweep of red on paper was accompanied by the marrow-deep scratching of harsh colour along rough fibres.

The thin white nanometre wide line, and the red all around it. Full, blooming red. Eyelashes almost touching the paper he followed the black outline once more, edged the crayon along black ink frayed at the edges, around the minuscule drops of ink amidst the outer red colour he'd drawn. Hitching breath, he set the crayon down at the final point of the nanometre wide white space, just within the black ink and drew it along the empty space left, filling the last of the white with the eyejarring red, until even the centre of the sphere bloomed in even perfection.

Hot breath on his ear, and he didn't see the frown, widening eyes- It was like a hand on his shoulder, a word in his mind with sweaty pads of fingers along his temple, that pushed his arm forward, the jagged crayon point shot in deep, ragged motion from centre to outline, so that the even red saw bleeding colour in the movement's wake. The black ink raced closer, panicked gasps saw the first splots of uneven print as the crayon still moved, unforgiving. The red line in his mind's eye, the trajectory expanding until the point crossed the black ink, shot out the picture and off the page. His heart beat in anxious gallop.

He forced his eyes closed and the trajectory up in his mind until nothing else existed, the extrapolation of inside the lines to the breaking of them to the nowhere beyond. Forehead creased, fingers so tight on the moving crayon he pushed back against the trajectory, forced it back from nowhere, back into the perfect round of black ink and red. Pushed, pulled, pleaded, begged: thin, white lips moved with spit-wet sound.

Muscles coiled the motion stopped. He inched his eyes open, prepaperd to encounter destruction and chaos, but the jagged point had halted just inside the black outline, ragged edge touching one of the even splots of ink that marked the boundary. The sigh of relief came tinged with a throaty sound of hasty inhale.

The hand inched past his shoulder and face, sweaty fingers sinking lower until the thumb rested on the centre of the sphere and followed the deep, cutting red trajectory of the crayon to its final point, then smeared a red cloud where the crayon would have gone. Deliberate smudge along the sharp, black ink, blurring the line.

The voice was s low, seductive in his ear and raised wetness to his eyes. "One day you won't be able to stop me-" and when that caused a a hitch in the breath, a tremble to the fingers around the crayon. "this-" nail of the thumb tracing the bleeding trajectory, "is me in you. And it will always be there. Reminding you."

The hand slapped the crayon out of his fingers and it followed its broken point off the edge of the table to the floorboards, a louder echo to the subdued mourning sound of earlier. No more words and retreating steps as the ragged red bled out of his mind. Shoulders hunched he sat over the paper, body tense, red colour swimming on rough fibres.

And then, at the edge there, where sharp, black ink was smudged with bleeding red, it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended.