Characters: Apollo Hallewell, Johnathan Valentio, Naho
Ships: Apollo/Johnathan
Warnings: Blood/Body Horror, mentions of abuse
Short Description: Short story (roughly 3000 words) of Apollo's infection and mutation, written mostly so I can get a feel for how I want to write his canon a bit better. Split in two because it's a longer piece.
It was raining. Raining all around him, the droplets of glass hitting the pristine floor, the white lab coat, the darkened flesh.
The droplets grew crimson as they cut through the doctor’s skin, the biting sting like a loving embrace as he fell to the filthy floor. There was something dull in the background, faded noise as cracked pupils turned to pinpricks as they passed beneath the blinding fluorescent light.
They were so pretty when they hit the rain just right.
The nothing became everything as the man suddenly hit the floor, gasping as the impact clawed the wind from his lungs. There was ringing in his ears as his head made contact with the tile, then the spine, then the flesh. The coat was frayed and stained with blood as he slid the final foot to a stop, red brushed across the floor and dripping from a dozen good cuts. And the noise, god the noise, why was it all so much?
Glass danced and shattered as it fell to the floor and peeled from the broken containment cylinder. Something was dripping from the elevated base, thick and viscous as it pooled slowly onto the tile. There was a foreign, alien chitter from the mass, the noise devolving into gurgling as it seemed split between the creature before it and the entity behind it.
It had never made noise before.
Perhaps it hadn’t needed to.
Tendrils of viscous black mass glimmered from within, like silk draped over a ruby lamp. It shimmered with a dozen hues when the light hit just right, glass falling into its mass and melding with that silken flesh. And as the man on the floor whimpered with pain, the dripping became focused. Densified. Silent.
And then it screeched.
The Sun’s light seemed to die with that scream, the ever-present fog of the planet below them spitting from the abyss, blotting out the sun. The screech grew to sound strained, freakish as it touched upon the fallen doctor’s skin, felt his pain and wept. And then that screech turned to an angered howl as it swarmed to its amica, black and ruby glistening as it pooled between the man and his former lover. It would keep the pained one safe. It would keep them safe. Away from him.
Aqua eyes gazed upon the mass, wide and full of anger. Full of shock. A perfect man cast aside for something inferior, one that had clung to filthy humanity rather than ascend to the light. The organism was to be his greatest ally. His greatest weapon, the blessing that would deliver them from the sun’s scornful eyes. And it had chosen him.
The perfect man stepped back. Once. Twice. Hatred bubbled within his flawless chest, constricted his impeccable throat and fail-proof heart. Blonde, cropped hair glistened in the dying light, catching on the tubing and ventilation canisters on either side of his jaw, glinted on the edge of pointed ears that twitched with rage. But the face remained stony, all that bitterness focused in eyes that sat just perfectly inside his skull.
All the work he had done to reform this useless hybrid, everything he had given to him thrown back in his face. “You will not leave this place. No abomination will,” he spat, a tongue that once shaped words of love carrying malice upon his lips. In its coiling the mass had crept across the fallen doctor’s skin, tendrils caressing the frayed fabric and swallowing shards of glass that had embedded themselves in the sinew. Pain-dulled eyes focused slowly on the man standing before them, barely able to hear above the ringing.
And then those eyes took in the blanket of silk and crystal. “J-John? John, help me-“ he stuttered, blinking away both blood and tears as crimson began to drip down his face. The panicked murmur drew the attention of the organism, its central mass curling upward from where it had been blanketed atop his glass-shorn thigh. Black silk fell upon his torso as it slid upwards, gurgling before a sweet coo emanated from mock vocal chords that vibrated within its crystal interior.
And that was enough for Valentio to take his leave.
“John? John, where are you going, y-you can’t leave me-“ the doctor pleaded, frozen with fear as the cold of the organism’s tendrils spread across his flesh, the central mass always hovering just in front of his face, creeping closer and closer to his frantically beating heart. That soothing chill sought out every bleeding part of him, blanketing his skin and engulfing him in viscous silk. The organism continued cooing, moving, obsidian and ruby pressing beneath his clothes to caress his skin.
Footsteps echoed distantly in his mind, breathing growing quick and labored as the mass extended up his chest, the pressure causing his feeble human lungs to constrict. A foreign heart pounded harder against its holographic casing, the hard light shell glowing brighter and brighter the closer those searching tendrils grew. They swirled around his skin, circling his heart and enticing the protective casing to brighten until it could do so no more.
Circuitry glowed bright and cold in warning, shining through fabric and flesh. The Sun glared from his chest, reflected in the organism’s depths. Time stood still.
A croaking plea.
“Johnathan?”
An angry hiss.
It didn’t like that name.
“Johnathan?” Stop. “John?” Stop it.
Lips parted to shape his name once more, only to be forced apart by the mass choking the words before they could form. Its amica didn’t need to speak. Not when all he could do was cry that name.
They would be conjunx soon. They would be one soon. No sharp-tongued disciple could love this perfect man the way it could, no honeyed words could sweeten the very soul the way it could. It was the only being good enough for this perfect man, this mosaic of shattered beings fit together in such a haphazard way. It would fill the cracks, just as it filled the flesh. It would love him the way the man who caged his heart had failed to provide.
Footsteps echoed in the empty lab as the disciple took to the stairs, ran up their steel spiral until they reached the glass containment doors that stood between damnation and escape. A circle of leaves flared to life on the back of his neck, glimmering white before the symbol was reflected on the glass doors. As soon as they slid open, trembling hands gripped the hard light handles and slammed them shut. A holographic lock extended out from the center, the cylindrical mechanism protruding towards waiting fingers.
A slot was plucked from the hologram methodically and a key of light was pulled from the back of the disciple’s neck. Not a sound could be heard as it was placed in the soft cushion of the compartment’s gel mesh, sinking into the shallow depths. Pushed back into the mechanism’s slot, the cylinder was pushed inwards and twisted. Light spiraled until it again sank into the glass, the facility’s aqua lights bleeding crimson as the quarantine procedure was initiated.
Lips that used to speak words of caring twisted into a tight-lipped grin that was anything but. A panel flickered to life beside him, asking for confirmation for further action. The tongue twisted cruelly. “Gamma override, executive order 3-A. Blackbox code 306-0092 Sario Omega confirmed for upload retrieval upon cleansing. Incineration procedures confirmed.”
A frustrated shriek could be heard from within the lab as the temperature began to increase, spurring the organism to quicker action. It had wanted to do this slowly, tenderly, but there was no time. The silver-tongued disciple could never stop his torture, could he? Perhaps the Sun had well and truly blinded him. The last of the silk began to push its way into the perfect man’s open wounds, prompting a sob to bubble up from his muffled throat.
Tears streamed down freckle-spattered cheeks, a hand weakly clawing at the mass as his lungs began to constrict, the organism pushing down his throat in its haste to engulf him. A gag was stifled as that cold ink pressed into the walls of his esophagus, his trachea, melding into the tender flesh. It had begun to swirl in his chest, the mass unable to fully seep into his tissue collecting around his heart and bleeding out of the crimson-stained skin. Protected from the scalding heat of the room from within the doctor’s veins, it concentrated on that blinding light in their chest.
Hallewell’s hand shook as it was brought to his chest, utterly petrified as he felt cold flood into tissue that should have been warm, should have been burning with life. His flesh shivered with ice, soothing and terrifying all at once as it pressed into his sinew and formed a protective film where blood still bubbled from his skin. Tendrils filled his veins and stained them black, sent shivers up his spine as ink began to press against the base of his skull, lovingly caress his brain stem.
Watch me, it seemed to say as an impulse that was not his own guided his hand upward, fingertips made to rest just above his heart. The temperature was rising, sweat forming on his skin while ice chilled his once-warm flesh. Let me make you whole.
The scream that tore itself from Hallewell’s throat would echo in Johnathan’s mind for decades. The hard light casing around his heart was pierced as the lab began to burst into flames, electronics and equipment sparking with the heat and catching papers and notepads alight. Molten silk dribbled from his nose and pooled in the corners of his eyes as the mass moved for him, beginning to drag the perfect man to his hands and knees. The cold turned to thorns and ice that ripped his very flesh from the bone, split his veins and nerves apart only to remake them with every inch they began to crawl.
Silk mixed with blood as it dripped from wounds it could not close, replaced the tears of pain as every motion became mind-numbing agony. The glow of his bastardized heart flickered and died as the hard light casing was shredded and coding dissolved within mere seconds. As they moved towards a ventilation shaft beneath the doctor’s main desk, his lungs began to heave, forcing the blood from a ruptured artery to bubble up from his lips.
The organism understood that their limbs could not handle more than keeping them upright, flesh and muscle too undeveloped as they warped beneath its conjunx’s skin. But they could make do.
Blood bubbled from his eyes, ink streamed down his cheeks and choked the doctor on his pain, seeped from every single opening as arms gave out and sent the man crashing to the floor just atop the ventilation opening. The entrance was small, and the organism realized that they were too large to fit through it. It could fix that too.
Another ear-splitting shriek ripped from the doctor’s throat, blood and ink turning the noise to a wet gurgle as his spine was snapped and bones were crushed to fold their body down the shaft. The concentration of the organism that had not yet sank into the cells split his skin, began to rip from his back and emerge blackened and solid. Bone was taken from the femurs and ribs and absorbed into the four tendrils that curled outwards from his back. Shards of ivory were broken and reformed into protective plating and spines as cells began to duplicate under the organism’s careful instruction.
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