For a heartbeat, when looking at Ty's still face, Miles thought that maybe - somehow - Ty hadn't been infected by the virus.
But then Ty lunged for him, and all hope disappeared like a burst of cascading glitter. The twinkle in his eyes darkened.
He didn't quite have time to process that his boyfriend wanted to kill him before Ty's hands met his throat and he was slammed violently against the metal shelves behind him. Pain coursed through him and the shelves rattled, metal edges digging into his skin. With another harsh shove from Ty, Miles found himself on the floor.
Miles cried out. "Ty, stop!" He scrambled to his feet, almost losing his balance. Though his knife had crashed to the ground, Ty was moving too quickly towards Miles for him to even consider sparing the time to grab it. Much to his brief relief, Ty didn't notice the weapon or make a move for it.
Ty threw a fist for Miles' face. Unable to react fast enough, Miles felt the blow land hard and let out another yell, losing his footing and meeting the welcoming linoleum floor once more.
Ty lifted his foot to direct a kick at Miles, who admittedly looked pathetically helpless while lying disoriented on the floor. But Miles was still present enough to notice Ty's intentions just in time, and reached up to grab Ty's foot, wrenching it out from under him. Ty hit the ground with a sickening thud and groaned. Miles had to disregard the way his heart ached and used the opportunity to dizzily stagger to his feet and attempt to run in the opposite direction.
He refused to allow himself to believe this was happening.
The store was large, and his friends were spread out all over it. Surely they'd be able to hear him if he called for them, but that meant nothing if they couldn't find him. Before Miles could determine which way he could make a possible escape, he felt a sharp pain dash across his upper arm and caught in his peripheral vision as his knife skimmed by, clattering to the floor a few feet away.
Before Miles could actually register that Ty had thrown the knife, the latter was on top of him. They were both sent careening forward and then plummeting for the ground in a mess of tangled limbs, both scrabbling simultaneously for the knife.
"Ty!" Miles gasped when Ty pressed his knee hard against Miles' back, sending signals of excruciating pain whirring through Miles' whole body. "I don't want to fight you!" He couldn't.
If anything happened to Ty that was Miles' fault, he knew he'd never be able to forgive himself. Even though Ty was infected - and obviously trying to kill him - he couldn't force the right energy into himself to purposefully fight back.
Ty either didn't understand what Miles had said or opted not to reply, because he grabbed Miles by a grip on his hair and slammed his head viciously against the ground. For a few seconds that felt a lot longer in Miles' head, he lost all feeling in his limbs and his vision flashed black and white, black and red. The pain was unbearable, throbbing in his every body part. He probably screamed, but if he did, the ringing in his ears was louder.
His vision returned in a foggy red haze when Ty released him, but it took longer for the feeling to return to his limbs. He felt hollow, disassociated, like he was hovering above his body and watching himself from above. He was waiting, aching, for feeling to return to even his fingertips. With Miles without the ability to move temporarily, Ty was the one who managed to get the knife, and by the time Miles could woozily lift his head, Ty's fingers had fastened around the handle of the blade.
"Ty, don't -" was all Miles managed before he was fully woken up by the knife in his palm. Ty buried the blade deep and pulled it out when Miles yelled, and a steady flow of scarlet accompanied the removal.
In a desperate attempt to find a way out of the situation, Miles grabbed Ty's shoulder and used it to drag himself to his feet. That motion caused flashing stars in his vision and a feeling like dreadful motion sickness, worsening when Ty easily managed to sweep him off his feet again via a hard blow to the back of his knees. Miles became dimly aware of his surroundings when his body crashed numbly against the floor. He couldn't tell if it was because the store was dark or if it was because his vision was failing him, but he found it increasingly difficult to make out Ty's blurry figure. Beads of perspiration gathered on his forehead while his body shuddered with each breath he took. Tiny streams of blood caught on his upper lip and he smeared a hand across it, smudging his cheek crimson.
Ty was really the only thing that he was trying to keep his eyes on, but at the rate Ty was moving, it was difficult to follow consistently. Which was demonstrated well when Ty lifted his fist again and Miles was too busy processing the movements he'd made five seconds ago to notice that it was coming, consequently finding himself victim to another throbbing blow and a quickly swelling eye.
Ty backed up a few steps to catch his breath; the one indication that he wasn't a machine. Miles wanted to move, but his body wasn't letting him. With groans and yelps and countless curses beneath his breath, Miles managed to use the shelves to pull himself up. His entire body was trembling, knees especially. His vision swam in and out of focus.
There was another slash at his arm, and though Miles let out a groan, the pain wasn't quite enough to knock him off his feet again. Ty was back up and standing, too, and was about to aim another swipe of the knife for Miles.
Miles, as sure as he was that this would be the death of him, couldn't let himself fight. Not Ty.
Gripping the shelf as he tried to catch his breath, Miles allowed himself a single soft whimper when the knife Ty held sliced another jagged line into his protectively-lifted forearm. "Ty, stop," he begged, practically a sob.
Ty, again, didn't reply.
"Ty," Miles warned as the boy he'd addressed prowled nearer again. He had hoped that maybe Ty's name being repeatedly uttered might strike some kind of recognition in his attacker, but it didn't seem to work. Miles feebly held his hands out before him, like maybe it would stop Ty, but Ty just pushed his arms aside.
Ty dropped the knife. Miles didn't even have an instant to contemplate what this meant before Ty had his hands on Miles' throat.
Immediately, Miles' panic mode kicked in at a peak he hadn't known existed. With remnants of memories still at the front of his mind from the last time he'd been choked - the night he'd found Harvey dead - Miles became significantly more terrified of what the outcome of this would be, should he not start fighting back.
Ty's hands fastened, restricting Miles' airflow, before he lifted Miles' head away from the shelf it had been resting against and proceeded to drive it back against the metal edge. With a jarring noise, the impact sent a jolt through Miles' whole body, leaving his vision fuzzy and his limbs tingling.
Ty repeated this motion, strengthening his grip.
Miles was rapidly losing his ability to breathe properly and all feeling in his body was absent; all he could sense was the unexplainable pain that pounded in his head, worsening with each time his head hit the shelf. Blood was starting to trickle through his hair.
He blinked multiple times in rapid succession, trying to force his vision to focus on something - anything - in order to allow himself to concoct some kind of solution to this situation that didn't mean harming Ty. All the while still desperately clinging to consciousness.
Ty lifted his knee and sent it to Miles' stomach. Any breath that Miles had had left abandoned him then. Quickly feeling his ability to keep his eyes open draining, Miles was becoming only vaguely aware now of Ty slamming his head once more against the shelf. The only thing that was clear was the pain, until there was a grating noise behind him, followed by the shelf and its contents scattering to the floor.
Miles was well aware by this point that if he didn't get his act together, he was going to die.
At the hands of Ty.
With the last of his strength, Miles pushed himself away from the shelf and sent himself and Ty collapsing to the ground. Blinded by his foggy-red, star-dappled vision, Miles searched sightlessly for the knife that Ty had dropped. His fingers met the blade first and then he grabbed it by the hilt.
There was no hesitating - Ty would be able to make another move on him in the next instant if he took a second to reconsider.
While Ty was wriggling to crawl out from beneath Miles, Miles plunged the blade fiercly down into a place he hoped would put Ty in enough pain to slow him down.
But not to kill him.
Miles hit the wrong place for that.
Immediately after Miles had stabbed the blade down, he tugged it back out and tossed it as far away from him as he could manage. Out of reach from him, but also Ty.
His ears were ringing and pulsing with the sound of his thumping heartbeat; he couldn't hear anything else. His eyes were flashing from red to black and back again. Without a second thought, he established well and truly that this was the worst pain he had ever experienced.
Was he about to die?
Probably.
It took almost a full minute for Miles to acknowledge that Ty had stopped moving altogether.
Through his cloudy sight, Miles leaned down close enough to make out Ty's face, searching for an expression of any kind. He grabbed Ty's face frantically in his hands. "Ty?" His voice was high-pitched with distress.
No response came. At first this didn't strike Miles as unusual, since he'd been unable to get a response out of Ty for the entirety of the fight. Miles lifted his wounded hand away with a grimace, leaving a smear of crimson on Ty's cheek. With his able hand, Miles pat Ty's face in a desperate attempt to get some kind of reaction out of the motionless boy.
He could feel himself swaying; he wouldn't be able to keep his eyes open much longer. But until he had confirmation that Ty was responsive, he wouldn't let his eyelids flutter shut.
Miles started to shake Ty with his uninjured hand, doing everything he could to try and get Ty to do something that indicated he was alive. Miles rolled him over, but still got nothing.
It was when Miles slipped his hand under Ty's neck to prop his head up that he felt a sticky fluid leaking through his fingers; a feeling he'd become familiar with by this point. "No," he muttered disbelievingly, blinking furiously to try to give his vision clarity. "No, no, no. Ty, come on."
He shook Ty again, refusing to believe that the blood on his hands was Ty's. Should he believe that, he'd have to accept that his mission to awaken Ty stood no chance at success. And he wasn't ready to accept that.
Miles' ragged breathing was the only sound as he checked Ty all over for a stab wound that Miles could have inflicted with that knife; a wound anywhere else to prove that he'd hit somewhere that wasn't Ty's neck. He could feel tears welling up in his eyes as his search proved fruitless, and he couldn't find the will to blink them back as the sickening revelation dawned on him that Ty wasn't going to wake up.
"Ty, come on," Miles said again, feeling his body begin to shake with real terror now instead of strain or pain. "Ty, you're not dead. You're not dead."
No matter how many times he repeated that sentence over and over to himself aloud, it didn't help.
He didn't kill Ty.
He couldn't have killed Ty.
But Ty didn't move a muscle no matter how many times Miles begged him to. Ty's chest had stopped rising and falling and beneath his head was a sticky, increasing pool of blood.
Miles finally lay down, feeling his body thank him as he did. He grabbed one of Ty's arms, ignoring the pain in his own, and wrapped it around him, pressing his bruised face firmly against Ty's side.
If he tried hard enough, he could imagine that he wasn't on the floor of a store begging a corpse to awaken, but instead just giving Ty the same affection he always had. If he tried hard enough, he could pretend he wasn't crying, he could forgot the Ty's blood was staining his shirt, he could ignore that Ty's fingertips were growing cold as he clutched them to his chest.
If Miles tried hard enough, he could pretend he wasn't about to die while playing make-believe in his imagination with himself and his dead boyfriend.
Miles tangled his fingers in Ty's shirt. He'd been on plenty of dates with Ty in the past, but this was the first time they'd lay on a store floor and bled onto the surface beneath them, laying for so long that their blood pooled together. It wasn't very romantic, but it was the first time Miles had had Ty's arms properly around him since the latter had been Altered. Even if Ty's arms were limp and Miles had put them around him himself.
Ty was dead, and Miles was halfway there.
Miles' fell asleep with his head to Ty's unmoving chest.
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