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the day party poison dies its raining in the desert.
he hates the rain because it turns the sand to mud, makes it hard to drive. he hates the rain cause his fucking gun gets backed up and then he can barely fire anymore.
hes not used to getting wet. he doesnt like the way he looks too white and pink after a good rain. he doesnt like water in his boots and he doesnt like wet hair sticking to his face while they drive.
if he could have picked a way to go, it would have been in a blaze of glory, a hail of bullets, lazers charged and boys by his side.
it would not have been with white gloves around his throat, fists slamming helpless against the body on top of him, mud soaking through his clothes and the screams of his boys his killjoys his family in the distance as they struggle to get to him in time. it would not have been the way it had been, kicking the drac off, screaming at them to run, and then that hum that fills the air as a lazer charges toward you. the way the air heats up so it singes your skin and then the shock of the blast hitting you.
he's still alive when he falls into the mud. the first person at his side is ghoul, whos eyes are wide and words are stemming from his mouth, but nothing makes sense cause of the way his brain feels like raw electric is running through it. he is convulsing, he can feel it, his legs and arms shaking rapidly. ghoul sits on him to hold his back down, mud seeps into the burn and he cant open his mouth to cry out. everything hurts, and ghoul is screaming, screaming at him. party. party. please dont. and party can only look at him and thrash in the mud.
he knows he is going to die, he knows he's going to die and the last thing he's ever gonna feel is ghoul's hands wrapped around his, rain falling in his face, rain falling down ghoul's face as he screams his name. he wishes he could say something, he wishes he could stop shaking, he wishes it didn't have to end this way.
one of his wishes does come true, and just as he falls still, he closes his eyes, like he's going to sleep. everything won't hurt when he's asleep. the last thing he hears is ghoul screaming at him not to do this, and party has a vague feeling of sorrow.
then there isn't anything.
----
ghoul knows the anatomy of a death like no one out here. he remembers, the manuals that come with the heavy white guns and the words theyd taught him. the words still burn in his brain even though he hasnt fired for them in years.
your bli sactioned ray gun, when charged to full capacity, will exterminate your targets swiftly. in order to ensure your target is one of the five acceptable levels of dead, please watch for these warning signs.
the bli ray gun contains powerful electic shock bullets designed to ghost any target, bot or bleeding! as such, common side affects of death include convulsions, fires, burns, etc.
it was different when he couldn't think. it was different when it was people who weren't him, people who were other runners, and when he got free, it was revenge on other dracs. he hadn't ever had a chance to really watch someone die.
he sure as fuck didn't think he was going to be watching his best friend die today when he woke up in the morning.
but now it's just ghoul and party, and ghoul has one of his hands clenched in between two of his, holding it because he doesn't know if party can tell he's there. he needs to know. ghoul knows it's hopeless but he needs to know that he's not alone. he doesn't know what to do, doesn't know how to assure him that it's gonna be fine, everything is gonna be alright. he can't, he can't tell him that because it's a lie. the words are falling out of his mouth, and he feels like he's shaking, and he doesn't even care that there's fighting going on around them because right here, right now, party poison is fucking dying.
he can't stop just saying please, over and over again. please, party, please. don't do this. don't do this. and eventually party stops shaking, his eyes are closed and he's not fucking breathing, jesus christ what do i do if he's stopped breathing and he's shaking even harder still holding his hand and screaming his name.
----
kobra is the one who sees the commotion and god, if it undoes ghoul, it has to undo kobra in a way it can't hurt anybody else, because ghoul is still straddling his hips, holding his hand and begging him in a way he hasn't shown emotion in years. kobra shoves him off, and ghoul lands in the mud, still calling for party. kobra starts to beat on his chest, silent as ever.
none of them know where the dracs went, where the other people they had been fighting with went, because the whole world is suddenly this tiny square around party poison, and the whole world is filled with the smell of burnt hair and flesh and the sound of ghoul begging party to wake up, and kobra trying to get his heart beating again.
neither of them know how much time is passed when jet star yanks the both of them away from party's body. they both know he's broken up about it too, he's just trying to put on that game face of his where he pretends like he isn't all soft motherly instincts. everyone is muddy, there's tear tracks down both of their faces, and they're all still looking down at party laying in the mud, his limbs at all odd angles. kobra buries his head in his hands and lets out this noise that sounds like nothing ghoul has ever heard come out of his mouth before. ghoul
isn't sure why he's the one who eventually gathers dirty, muddy, burnt poison into his arms and starts walking back towards the car, but he is. he never realized how fucking tiny he was, just how skinny he was. his chest aches. he was just a kid, they all are just kids, they were just minding their own business, he hadn't even wanted to go outside today, ghoul should have just dragged him back into bed and kissed him everywhere while he still fucking could.
but now he's dead, and no amount of wishing is gonna change that.
when they get home jet digs him a grave out back of the diner. they bury him in his clothes, they bury him as party poison. kobra just kneels and looks at the ground for a while, mumbles things nobody can hear but himself while his eyes fill with tears. jet stays with him out there, just kind of holding him while he sobs. ghoul keeps his mask and his gun, because he knows party believes in the mailboxes and that stupid witch. whole lot of good that did him, ghoul thinks, but he goes out to the mailbox anyways and sits with his back against it, dead flowers and torn letters stirring softly in the wind around him.
i'm out here cause it's what you would have wanted. he says, fiddling with the mask and trying his best not to cry. i'm gonna put your mask in the mailbox, but i'm keeping the gun. you put too much fucking effort in it to give to the fucking phoenix witch. does she exist? by the way? i figured i should ask. are you okay without us? are you pulling feathers off of angels wings or whatever it is you do for fun when you're dead. i dunno. it's weird, not tripping over you when i'm trying to take all my shit off. that's the first thing i noticed. it's too fucking quiet and you aren't there to make it loud and. now i gotta go home i guess and sleep in my bed and you aren't gonna come crawling in in the middle of the night cause you're cold or you had a bad dream or you just wanted to come hang out with me. fuck, party, he holds his head in his hands and tries to ignore the way his voice cracks. why the fuck did you go today. why didn't you bitch and moan and whine till i dragged you back into our room and told you to shut up. why did you fucking die on me.
he feels he should leave it at that, and he slips the mask inside the mailbox and lets the lid slam shut. the stars are bright in the sky, satellites flying overhead, and ghoul just wants to scream. i dont know where the underworld is. he says. but if you're up there or whatever, i love you.
i never said it enough when he was alive he thinks, kicking a rock and starting back towards the diner. i never fucking told him enough. sure, party was always on him, dogging his steps. party was the first one covering him out in the field, the first person ghoul had ever thought of as something more than just another person to kill.
he doesn't like to say party saved him, but what else did he do? pick him up from a patrol where he'd been dropped and took him in with him and that kid brother of his. made him new again, new person, new future. he'd given him fucking chances that no body could have ever given him.
he can't stop himself from remembering their first kiss, that time party had told him he was more than a brother, that time he'd said yeah, i know what you mean and kissed him full on the mouth. he doesn't want to remember, he doesn't want to think about party, all tiny and jumpy and fucking electric from the moment he woke up till the second he went to sleep. he doesn't want to think about how he sleeps curled in on himself, how protective ghoul felt over him, how protective he still does feel over him even though he's not anything ghoul can protect anymore.
---
the week drags on. they don't do much of anything. kobra is a shell of a person, sometimes something will remind him of party, and his nose will scrunch up and he'll start to cry again. ghoul forgets sometimes that for a while, they were their entire world. jet just works on keeping everything running smoothly, making sure the wrong people don't ask the right questions. directing grievers to the back of the place and making sure that some kind of food is available to them if they want it.
ghoul has been tasked with the job of going through all of party's shit. which he has a lot of. more than any sane human should possibly be able to possess. stacks of cd's and notebooks upon notebooks of drawings and writings and the most beautiful songs he'd written, songs about rebellion and youth and death and all the things they lived everyday that he'd grown to resent.
he drew too, beautiful landscapes and there's just pages and pages of the desert, of their car, of ghoul, a lot of ghoul, doing things he doesn't even remember doing. smiling, laughing, eating. there's a good portrait of him sleeping, cheek smushed against the trans am's window. he wonders how he never noticed him. he wonders how he sat still long enough to do these things.
in party's box, under all the notebooks and the stray pieces of paper with indecipherable words on them, there is a tape. just one, which ghoul immediately picks up as odd because it's the only thing he's seen that there has been one of. a cassette, not a cd, a cassette, like party was traveling back in time to before the analog wars when things like this existed. there's a note on the bottom, taped on, and in party's weird blocky handwriting, it says:
ghoul-
for all the things i was really, REALLY bad at saying.
i love you, a lot. sorry
<3 party
he pretends like his eyes aren't watering at the note, he pretends like he isn't gonna listen to this thing right the fuck now. he pulls out the oldest radio, his radio, the one that hooks in to the record player he'd saved up for years to buy off chow mein. that's why it was a cassette, he realizes, so only he could hear. he's the only one allowed to touch this thing.
his finger hovers over the play button once he's got everything arranged. jet and kobra are doing something, so it's just him. him alone with party's tape.
the second he clicks play he really fucking wishes he hadn't. there's nothing but a kind of static-y sound, and then poison's voice. hi! he says, cheery as can fucking be, and ghoul feels his heart sink all the way down into the soles of his boots. i wrote this one for you. he says. and then he starts to sing.
ghoul always forgot party had a voice until moments where he would catch him humming a tune, or if they got drunk enough, he'd climb on stage with a band and belt out words to a song only he knew since he was the one making it up. he hadn't ever recorded, they didn't have the capacity for that. apparently he had though, because his voice is drilling right into ghoul's ears, and tears are springing up again at his eyes.
he listens to it the first time and doesn't process what it means. he'd been too busy realizing that this was the last relic of party poison out there. this was the last proof party was real, was a person, not just a whispered legend. party was tangible, though he was volatile at at times, he seemed to be something of a god or a hero or a villain, he was ghoul's.
the second time he hits the play button he stops and listens to the words instead of just focusing on the cadence of his voice. he really wishes he'd just been shallow enough to just listen to the sound, and not have to dive deeper. the song he's singing is about him, about ghoul, and party, and how he loves him. how he loved him. hearing party sing things they'd talked about in private, their fingers laced under the covers, is a whole other level of emotional trauma. he plays it over and over again till he knows the words, all of them, right down to the minute second. then he stops playing the tape and hides it under the notebooks. he doesn't want anyone to have it but him.
sometimes during the day, while he's out running errands, or building bombs, he'll think about what party was telling him.
how long? till we find our way, in the dark and out of harm he'll mouth to himself. it struck him a long time ago it was party's way of saying that when it was all over, he wanted to end up with ghoul. he wanted both of them to be safe, to be happy. to be free.
you can run away with me, you can write it on your arm, you can run away with me, anytime you want. he'll sing, and it's his way of remembering. it's his way of knowing that it's okay that he still loves poison even though he's dead. they were gonna run away. he would have left behind the world for ghoul. and ghoul would have done the same if it had made him happy.
ghoul would have brought him the moon if it would have made party happy.
-----
it's not long after he finds the tape when the rumors start to surface.
you seen fun ghoul lately? double wielding. his and his smush's gun. on a revenge streak. he takes no prisoners. he leaves no drac alive. they sent 3 patrols after him yesterday and by the time the kid and jet star showed up there was hardly any killing to do.
they say he's got new ink, but it's not permanent, that's too expensive. it's always fresh, bright red against the skin on his arm. they say it says poison, they say that's why he's so good at fighting now, such a good ruthless shot. because he's heartbroken.
people will ask him, and fun ghoul won't respond, he just smiles to himself and traces over the part of the ink on his arm that they can't see. the piece of party that nobody but him ever gets to have. his last words to ghoul.
you can run away with me, anytime you want.