Current mood:	cold
Entry tags:	fanfiction, mcdohl/ted, rated pg-13, suikoden, thousand paths

Suikoden: McDohl/Ted
Title: The Heart Beats
Completion: Complete
X-posted: medraxellion.livejournal.com
Words: 263
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: McDohl/Ted
The Prompt: “While love is heaven on earth, the death of love is living hell.”
Author's Notes: Written for my Thousand Paths Challenge.

In the past soft padded fingers danced across his pale chest, igniting ivory skin to turn cherry with each embarrassed, aroused flush. His heart often skipped a beat as his ear pressed against the tan chest of his lover, listening for the slow and steady beat of his heart. He held the childish hope their hearts would someday make the same rhythm, forming a familiar pattern that would make them so close they would become one.

Now his ear lay against the cold chest, listening for the slightest throb of a heart beneath his lover’s skin. No beat. No warmth. No life. There was nothing he could recognize except the cold, pale body of his lover.

The young lord McDohl jerked awake with a start, his body flushed with heat in such a cold night and his clothes stuck to him with a panicked sweat. His heart was still speeding from the adrenaline as he gazed about the room. In the window he saw what was last of the night and the slumbering figure of his servant Gremio. It was a nightmare. Just a nightmare. He had never held the dying form of his lover. He had never pressed his ear against cold, clammy skin with hopes to hear the soft familiar beat of a heart. Yet he could no longer remember the rhythmic beat of his lover’s heart. Despite knowing he had not witnessed the event as his dream had claimed, he knew the truth. Ted was forever dead.