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“I didn’t think dying would be so…” Flame trailed off, thinking all too loudly in the silence.
“Easy?” Parrot finished the sentence for him, voice flat.
Then Flame huffed, dully amused.
“Yeah. I mean- not for me, atleast.” He admitted, a small grin sat on his face, content in his spite fuelled existence.
Parrot could only hum in acknowledgement.
He didn’t turn to look at the man sat next to him, letting Flame’s words sound out into the universe. They weren’t meant just for Parrot.
It was an announcement of resignation.
A pillar built to be immortal, turned gloriously ephemeral.
A reservation that set the third place at a table where two already sat.
A one way ticket to the plane beyond that Flame clutched onto with every passing breath and waved above his head like a white flag of surrender.
Flame would be out of reach soon.
But within these final hours of the day, within these final hours of Flame’s beating heart, it was just two people.
Flame and Parrot.
Sitting on a shitty lounge that creaked with each twist and turn. Stained with spilt coffee and cups of noodles, lumpy with springs that would dig into your backside when you sat at the wrong angle.
Who could be considered content with the rare mundane, watching the world shift.
Perched on a brick balcony after Spoke hazardously moved the couch outside, sourcing the world beyond the musty apartment as entertainment.
Encircled by concrete apartment complexes, the only saving grace of the unfortunate living space being the way the jungle of pavements and monuments parted to reveal the setting sun.
Parrot swallowed dryly, refusing to shift his gaze towards the other, holding the brim of his mug at the edge of his mouth to hide how his teeth sunk into his bottom lip.
The steam frothed upwards, causing a ring of water to condense on his nose and around his mouth. With the tattered sleeve of his dress shirt, he wiped it away before continuing to lightly chew around the brim, teeth creating a rhythmic clinking sound against the porcelain.
Flame sighed from where he splayed himself out, arms spread out across the top of the couch while one leg was thrown on the arm of the lounge, resulting in an almost obscene manspread.
Parrot had observed him when they first sat down and couldn’t withstand the overwhelmingly human urge to screw his face up, judgement all too visible.
Flame hadn’t been able to care less than he already did, and instead turned towards Parrot who sat cross-legged beside him.
“Yo, bro, didn’t we have a rule at some point about no feet on the couch?” Flame announced, completely needlessly, moreso in an irksome manner just to watch the twitch in Parrot’s eye and the flutter of his wings.
Following the others silence, Flame sighed again, louder, and as a more obvious call for attention.
“What?” Parrot said, less of a question and more of a statement of acknowledgement.
“Bro, can I have your coffee?” Flame asked, polite and innocent enough that Parrot blinked hard. Flicking his eyes between the mug in hand and Flame’s face pressed into the back cushion, he could only slowly sound out his question.
“Why?”
Flame shrugged, “Well you haven’t been drinking it, and, like, I don’t want you to leave to get another one, bro. You said you’d stay.”
Parrot watched the watery coffee swirl around once more before wordlessly placing it in Flame’s waiting hands, held open like a beggar receiving a reward on a winter night.
Flame snickered victoriously, hands clasped around the cup as he blew on it, before slurping it loudly. Once upon a time, Parrot would have hissed at him to stop, prickly from a mix of annoyance and disguised endearment at the upsettingly chaotic way Flame and Wemmbu guzzled their beverages.
But now Parrot wished for anything to fill the silence, drawing his hearing away from the persistent clicks of the clock on the wall. One of the only items that survived the many scuffles that broke out within the confines of the apartment.
A persistent reminder of the time that drizzled out of their grip.
Thankfully, Flame broke the silence again. Filling the frostbitten void that permeated within Parrot’s mind, numbing his thoughts.
“Y’know bro, maybe I would have started dying sooner if it meant people would be more willing to give me what I want.” Flame considered flippantly, tapping his index fingers against the mug to a fast pace tune that once appeared on the radio many years ago.
If it would have even let me, Flames thoughts uttered bitterly, matching the acerbic flavour of the coffee as he slurped at it again. Flame had never truly mastered control over his facial expressions, obvious in the way he pursed his lips and squinted at nothing particular in distaste before swallowing.
Parrot only stilled, untangling his crossed legs and planting his bare feet on the floor, dress shoes long abandoned besides Flame’s at the door. Thrown askew in the corner as Flame’s were, not bothering to enforce the habit of lining the pairs neatly, side by side, a sudden meager task as each tick of the clock softly rattled against the drywall.
Leaning the back of his head against the top of the couches backrest, he traced the lines of the browning patches on the ceiling with his eyes, indicative of water damage over the years.
Parrot could feel it again, the sickly sweet taste of selfishness that he swallowed down to no avail. It painted his gums and tongue, pink and raw, trickling down his throat like honey and coating his insides in the sticky addiction.
He hated it.
How aware he has become of his sins, of the self-serving emotions that rippled through his heart.
How ignorance was a virtue he could never pursue again.
“I would have given you anything, if it meant you weren’t dying.” Parrot conceded. A confession to the priest, spoken as low as a prayer, yet Flame heard.
Flame sat up straight, clutching the coffee as a lifeline as he stared at the side of Parrot’s face. Parrot turned, meeting Flame’s burning gaze head on. For the first time, Flame could read every emotion that bubbled underneath Parrot’s skin and threatened to burst out of his tear ducts.
Pride, revulsion and something much more disquieting, coiled in Flame’s chest as he dutifully looked away into the darkening streets below.
Flame and Parrot.
Individuals who hadn’t felt so human in a long time.
Flame gives up on pretending that the taste of the beverage was a comfort, setting it onto the concrete beside his feet with a tinkering thunk. The dark liquid rocks and spills over the sides, dribbling down into a ringed puddle following the bottom of the mug.
Flame clicks his tongue, a small laugh brushing past his lips, “I don’t really like coffee.”
A meaningless admission, a concern that held the weight of nothing and everything at once. Flame resumed his slouched position on the couch, wiggling to dislodge a spring that prodded his tailbone.
“Then why did you ask for mine?” Parrot accused, blank faced, fiddling with his sleeves in the absence of the mug while Flame finally sunk back into the pillows.
Silence fell like the setting sun once again. Flame hesitated, thinking so awfully loud, Parrot turned to look at him.
Parrot tilted his head to better inspect the man beside him, Flame’s teeth clenched as he began to flex his fingers. They tightened and slackened repeatedly before he massaged the top of his thighs as if chasing away a pain, wiping away the nervous sweat off his palms.
“A lot of people like coffee, bro. I just thought- I don’t know, it’d make me feel more, like, human y’know bro.” Flame stuttered around the words, hyper aware of the vulnerability he displayed in the admittance of his insecurities.
He repeated the motion of running his hands along the fabric of his pants, feeling the bumps and frays of loose string and twine.
Parrot hadn’t made a sound, so Flame turned towards him, subconsciously tilting closer as he watched the others' faces, for something cruel, a kind of judgement that could only come from an illusion of an angel that the winged man was.
The ring of light that sat above Parrot’s head cast long shadows from the ridges of his eyebrows down his face, extending the dark eyebags into streaks of shadow and turning sharp cheekbones into something haunted.
Yet Parrot’s face only softened, shoulders turning lax as he uttered wistfully, “I get that.”
The melting rays of sunlight glistened in Parrot’s eyes, the vivid colour reminding him of a distance memory.
Orchids of green apples and pears, rings of golden wheat that gently fluttered with the wind. Biting into the produce, spilling saccharine juice down his chin, the growth always so eager to impress. A gratitude for the sun that sat by Flame’s side and leaned against his shoulder, chuckling at the livestock, sunhat poking into his cheek, a recognition of the tenderness that the farmer cared for them and their seed.
So Flame looked away, into the yellows and oranges of the sky, just as familiar yet not so eager to emerge the past in the future he had such little time with.
Yet the sun's warmth didn’t reach him from his deathbed.
Flame was made all too aware of the chill that seeped up his spine and into his ribcage. Heartbeat just the slightest bit slower, thoughts no longer running to deliver messages so eagerly.
Emboldened by his ego left bloodied and slumped at the door, he shuffled closer to the other, obnoxiously loud as the lounge creaked.
Parrot must have realised his intention beforehand, wing dutifully hovering above the space beside him that Flame slipped into before coming to rest against his side. The clock inside the apartment was muffled between Flame’s ear on Parrot’s shoulder and the thumping of his heart.
He supposed that in itself was a countdown as well.
The feathers unintentionally grazed across Flames hand, solid yet soft, refusing to bend to the breeze that wafted past the balcony railings. Parrot sat still, careful to not chase away the comfort the two of them sought, wings twitching from the contrast of chill and body heat.
Half muffled, due to his cheek being squashed against the others shoulder, Flame stammered out sounds and syllables. Seemingly unable to form the sentence that weighed down his tongue, he huffed defeated, mumbling a half hearted ‘nevermind’.
But Parrot remained intrigued, waiting. Nudging Flame with his knee as a reassurance, urging him to continue his thoughts.
“I think I miss them,” Flame swallowed, hands running along his pant legs again before he began to closely pick at the skin around his nails. “Is that, like- stupid?”
A small smirk appeared on Parrot’s face, peering down at the top of Flame’s head. “What, the ‘Immortal Demon’, admitting he has feelings? If only Spoke and Wemmbu were here.”
The lilt of humour seeped in, tone slightly rising in a tease.
Flame elbowed his side, hard.
Parrot grunted, a lumpy exhale as he slyly battered Flame with his wing. But despite the physical reaction to his jeer, Flame fell quiet.
No rebuttal or fiery match to his taunt, simply waiting for an answer, a rare commodity to find.
“I miss them too.” Parrot finally admitted after deliberation. Awake even as purples joined the fray of hues painting the sky, bleeding into the underside of clouds and intermingling with the light onto grey concrete.
Flame subconsciously bobbed his head, a visual acknowledgement, rubbing his cheek against Parrot’s shoulder.
Flame remembers a dog.
Ash-like fur that had to be sheared in the summer time due to its volume. Soft as it nuzzled under his chin, wet nose scratching at his shoulder for attention.
It bared its teeth only once in its lifetime, falling short. It died angry, so unlike its nature.
Swallowing an ancient guilt that rose with the occasion, Flame trailed the cars racing and honking below, rapidly becoming sparse as night fell.
“Do you think they, like… miss us?”
“...I’d like to think so.” Parrot hesitated, sinking blunt canines into his bottom lip and holding his tongue. A habit developed over the years, a restraint required to survive.
Say what you need, not what you want.
But his heart was leaking, the scabs slowly picked and peeling away as the blood welled to the surface.
Parrot could feel the other slowly melting into his side, too tired to keep his shoulders squared, too tired to hold himself upright. Flame gazed half lidded between the balconies bars, “Thank you for staying, bro.”
He mumbled, subdued, a quiet comfort as Flame pulled his legs onto the couch, proceeding to take up the rest of the expanse, his head falling onto the winged man’s thigh.
“Always, Flame.” Parrot didn’t mind, the apartment was so hollow now, sparse of furniture, sparse of life.
Once Parrot would have pushed and shoved for them to remove their feet, the four of them only had one longue, they could share. But with Flame taking up the space, he could imagine it wasn’t so empty.
“I- I didn’t want to be alone.” Flame’s voice rose in pitch, more squeaky, bordering desperate. Parrot rested his hand along his upper arm, finger nail oh-so gently tracing mindless patterns onto Flames dark skin.
Flame didn’t feel so warm anymore.
“It’s okay, Flame.” The man crumpled beside Parrot relaxed further, as if granted permission; an audible seal of approval.
Seek forgiveness, sins and unsaid words are entirely too heavy to carry with you into death. They will drag you down, cement themselves over your feet and hold you in place, a preventable purgatory when you were destined for an ending.
At this moment, Flame was with him. At this moment, Flame had Parrot, and Parrot had Flame. In this moment, Flame still lived, and Parrot couldn’t ask for more.
Then an evil thought brought an avalanche of emotion, pummeling through the foundations that held Parrot's stability, his grace.
Flame still lived, but not for long.
Once steady fingers, fit to dance across fine strings and instruments and to mold artworks of intricate detail, trembled so harshly as if he was shivering. The shapes traced over Flame’s skin whittled and writhed, no winding road to follow, no crevice to guide his nail to draw a perfect shape.
Flame noticed. Flame understood, a bygone loneliness had returned, not for him but instead for a friend. What a terrible feeling it was.
Yet in some cruel way, it wasn’t him who was going to be left behind to lament, and he didn’t regret it at all.
“I’m sorry I’m leaving you too.”
Sympathy.
“You should be.”
Scorn.
“You think I want to be alone after everything.” Parrot scoffed, the words hacked up from his throat and spat onto the concrete, rotting at their feet, the amalgamation thrashing and floundering with contempt.
Flame only laid there, mapping out the irregular shapes presently traced on his upper arm.
In another universe, where Parrot’s hand remained steady, it would have been a triangle, then an oval, then a star, then a rectangle, then another triangle, then a raindrop.
“I,” audibly gulping down the bulb of flowering emotion, Parrot swallowed, “I don’t think I can be alone Flame.”
Flame opened his mouth, before clicking it shut. He did this a few more times, thinking.
Flame noticed the cry within the words. Flame understood, and that was not something that came easily. But such words had resounded inside his head for decades, taking different forms, presenting as different vices and feelings, yet the idea was all the same.
“Bro, Parrot.” The winged man hummed, stoic acknowledgement that ground out through his molars, straining to remain level. “You aren’t gonna do anything stupid, right bro?” Flame questioned, voice so soft, so unsure.
Parrot’s eyes burned, but he refused to blink and refused to breathe. For a short while Parrot was still, stopped within a prior second, considering.
No. Parrot wasn’t going to do anything stupid.
Selfish, yes.
Unreasonable, maybe.
But stupid?
Parrot couldn’t live with a loss again.
So he wouldn’t.
Once he would have been afraid; obscenities, pity, atrocities, patronisation, thrown at his feet and others would expect him to grovel for the attention, submit to their comparison fueled by arrogance.
Succumb to regret and stay, stay with them, stay where they refuse to listen.
Parrot huffs out a laugh, remorseful and heavy, shaking his head in humour. “Well, none of you are going to be here to make the stupid decisions for me, are you bro?”
Flame noticed Parrot had ceased his tracing, fingers pressing down too hard and hands remained shaking too much for Parrot to consider it a comfort anymore. Flame noticed, he didn’t really notice things before. The irony of how late he arrived to observations now wasn’t, well, unnoticed to him either.
As he lay on the couch, heart giving out and body failing to respond, preventing him from lifting himself out of Parrot’s hold, he was almost scared.
He didn’t know how to die.
Why couldn’t it tell him how to die, make it simpler. Make it simpler for the both of them. Save Flame from the unknown, save Parrot from the anguish, something that could appease them both.
Flame would have missed Parrot, Flame would have told Wemmbu and Spoke about all the shit they had to deal with when they were gone. Flame would have told them how Parrot would miss them all. Flame would have told them that Parrot would come to them, further down the line, more stories and experiences to share.
“You’ll be okay, right bro? Like- you’ll be quick?” Flame whispered, hushed as the night encroached, stars making themselves known, dead yet alive at the same time as its light fizzled upon the earth.
“Yeah.” Thick and warbled, Parrot spoke after a sharp breath. “Yeah, I’ll be quick, Flame, I promise.”
The younger man's wing lay across his torso, draping him in white feathers, letting his head peak out above the ridge of his wing squinting at the last rays of sun.
Leisurely, Flame grasped onto Parrot’s arm, no strength left to do more than to pick at his sleeve, nudging his hand into place as Parrot followed his urging and adjusted his body to his liking. Once Parrot’s hand lay atop his head, Flame tapped the back of his hand, before letting his arm slacken, numb, dangling above the ground.
Parrot got the idea and slowly began to work his nails through the locs, the needed pressure reducing the tremors that raked through his bones. Flame exhaled lightly.
Flame remembers a man like him, older than him but with hair like him and an affinity for violence like him. Maybe it was how they found each other, such kindred spirits. Or maybe it was because of a deeper bond, something familial, that made them so alike.
Flame doesn’t remember details, only a night much like this one. He was younger, his feet not able to hang off the edge of the couch, and he couldn’t sleep. Hands were atop his head, scratching at his scalp, he coiled closer, warm and full and falling asleep to the feeling of comfort.
Parrot’s fingers dutifully worked throughout his hair, a solace as the beams of oranges and yellows retreated.
Flame felt warm again. The sun caressed across his face, soaking in every pore and every scar, every unshaved hair and every misshapen dent across his nosebridge, every crack in his lips and every wrinkle.
The light dimmed, softer now, not so overwhelming that he would have to shield his eyes. A final beam reached above the horizon kissing his forehead and bidding him well, aware that it would not see him in the morning.
With a brother beside him and an angel wing over him, the sun underneath him and the clock behind him.
Flame smiled oh-so gently as he waved the ticket wildly above his head, ‘come and collect me, for I am all that there is to take’.
…
“Flame.”
Silence met the voice, no dislodging of air or grunt of cognisance.
“Flame?”
Parrot squeaked, repeating the other’s name, rolling over the syllables as his tongue heaved to deliver the sound. Silence remained, no birds nor revs of engines.
“You can talk to me.”
He stopped petting the man, bending his wing back into position, a dull ache sprouting from the unnatural twist it took to resemble a blanket. Maybe Flame would whine, nudge him again to resume his gentle massage.
“Just talk a bit longer.”
Flame’s head lay limp, unmoving and unnatural, and already so cold. His mouth parted as if he had more to say. His eyes were fogged over like a windshield coated in a layer of frost, something so starkly life-leaching yet peaceful in the way death could only be.
Despite how his eyes brimmed with hot, unshed tears, Parrot was content in the knowledge it had let him off so easily, so easily many would argue the injustice of it.
He pressed the bottom of his palms into his eyes so hard, that when Parrot pried his eyelids open, stars danced across his vision.
Lodging his hands underneath Flame’s head and cradling it like fine china, Parrot lay him back down onto the longue. It was such a poor excuse for a resting place, Parrot almost felt guilty, but the floor wasn’t any better.
Pushing Flame’s corpse so that it wasn’t lying on its side, Parrot arranged his arms to fold neatly over his stomach, refraining from allowing the man’s hands to graze against the ground.
The cup of coffee caught his vision, mildly below room temperature and left out in the open. Parrot obediently picked it up, the bottom sticky and carried it to the kitchen. He blankly watched as a small mosquito floating in the mixture was poured down the drain, long dead in the dark expanse.
No tea towels or paper towels sat upon the cracked counter tops or hid within the countless drawers and cupboards, so Parrot just left it upside down on the rim of the sink.
He then walked to the door, grabbing each shoe that had been left in a huddle in the corner and aligned the pairs aside each other. Parrot grabbed the strings, looping them around and around in the formation of a bow. Yet when his quivering fingers slipped, the arrangement undid itself.
Cross, tuck, tighten, loop- it’s not tight enough.
Try again.
Cross, tuck- one string was left too short.
Try again.
Cross, tuck, tighten- he crossed it the wrong way.
Try again.
Cross, tuck, tighten, loop, wrap- it slipped from his grasp.
Try again.
Cross, tuck, tighten, loop-
Cross-
Cross, tuck-
Cross, tuck, tighten-
It wasn’t working.
Emerging from the fog of numbness that plagued his heart, anger radiated. It scalded his arms and down his back, Parrot threw the shoe across the apartment as if it had been the one to personally burn him.
With a loud bang, the shoe rattled the drywall, and despite everything this tiny home had been through, it was that action that pushed the clock to its breaking point.
Dropping to the floor after the shoe, the glass shattered outward, sprinkling the glistening shards across the floor. Frame bent out of shape from the impact, no longer circular.
With the world darkened around him, the glass was almost indistinguishable, a barbarous round of minesweeper. No ticks of the hands could be heard, whether from the lack of drywall to prattle against or the fact it broke so efficiently it stopped working all together was unknown.
Yet the silence prevailed again, no longer held at bay by conversations held into the late night or screeched absurdities in the early morning.
The moon rose higher, light winking at him from down the street that wasn’t concealed by the shadow of the apartment block, the sun’s warmth couldn’t reach him in the night.
Parrot feels cold.