rugbytackle | Take Me to the River

Title: Take Me To The River

Story line: Wet!Viggo Challenge

Pairing: S/V

Warning: Angsty, not my usual light stuff

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: No knowledge, no dough, no harm

Archive: Rugbytackle

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Despite the ice filming the surface of the midnight black river, it failed to cool his face. Frantically, he scooped and shoveled into the remorseless mirror needing to find relief from the burning that seemed to center behind his eyes.

Numbed yet charring from within, he threw himself in, hoping that somehow the full immersion of his soul would quench the ache. His abandoned shoes mocked him from the barren shore.

Diving deeper, he swam until his lungs felt they would burst from the lack of air and pressure. Breaking the surface, he wanted to scream as the burning continued unabated. Again, he forced himself down, then again, and again.

His body wearied. Limbs almost too heavy to regain the surface. Fleece and worn down jeans became chains around his legs and arms - sirens of the rocky underworld calling him home.

Choking he flailed out and caught the splintered ancient wood of the fishing pier. Lovelorn trees gained their revenge by driving wicked spokes into his whitened fingers. The momentary flare of new agony woke his inner sense of self protection.

Clawing, he crept his way by inches measured in time by a warped clock constructed by Dali himself to torture fools. The river chuckled madly as it stole the last warmth greedily from his stiffened legs.

Blue lined lips shook as they grimaced in the last effort to heave his exhausted form onto drier land. Shaking wildly now, he began crawling over the decaying leaf graveyard. Unconsciously, his near silent whimpers escaped to be lost in the fetid compost of death beneath.

Yet, still he pushed on, driven by a greater instinct for survival that was less a deliberate decision and more by his innate unwillingness to give up or give in.

It could have been an hour or a day before the lights of the cabin began warming the trail before him. Moaning, he gave one last heroic effort and rose to his shaking knees and scrambled for safety over the silvered porch.

Three attempts and the knob twisted spilling him into the threshold and welcome heat. Cursing, he dragged himself over to the fireplace and lay panting like a deer run to ground by maddened hounds.

A giant shudder racked his frame and he crept closer to the fire desperately trying to warm his hands and feet. The rush of pin pricks of pain across his fingers drove a low yet triumphant howl.

Moaning, he forced the pain to wash through his body. Tiredness bore him down into a trap of endless night. Like a warrior, he fought it, forcing his ice white fingers to work at the frozen zipper of his jacket. Unbidden tears warmed his face as they spilled in fiery trails down his arctic bitten cheekbones.

Panting and moaning with mindless fear, he wrestled free of the jacket's handcuffs. Grinning insanely, he tore at the snap closures of his western shirt. The clinging fabric of the arms almost became the end as he screamed angrily within their binding force. But finally clear, he celebrated briefly by wrapping the nearby blanket around his chest.

His sodden, clammy jeans pulled at his mind tearing him back to awareness of other danger. Baring his teeth in rage, he raggedly worked the sullen fabric down his shaking legs.

Now naked, he piled another blanket over his trembling form, risking a move closer to the fire. Despite the flare of pain all over his awakening skin, he flew into dreamless sleep, exhausted beyond bearing.

The weak winter sun cut across his eyes forcing him back to life. Aching all over from the residual of his ordeal, he felt once again the raging fire behind his eyes that flared with all the delights of hell.

Unable to cry, he burned as he silently moaned "Sean....."