they'll watch you waste away

1. borrowing misery from future

2. carrying grief of the past

@alleyspat : “ i got really good at making people feel comfortable even though i wasn’t. ”

The  discomfort  he  feels  isn't  something  stemming  from  selfishness  nor  his  usual  'don't care, didn't ask'  attitude  towards  certain  things.  Not  that  he's  the  type  to  shut  down  conversation  if  it's  something  he  doesn't  particularly  care  for,  or  wants  to  act  like  he  doesn't  care  for.  But  the  discomfort  comes  from  the  fact  that  Noah  can  relate  to  that  admission. 

It's  part  of  the  job,  people  would  tell  him,  just  pretend.  And  he's  good  at  pretending,  very  good  at  it,  but  he  doesn't  always  enjoy  pretending. 

He  pauses  his  tinkering  with  his  tablet  and  frowns  lightly  in  thought,  for  once  actually  putting  some  effort  into  carefully  choosing  his  next  words  before  he  opens  his  mouth. “ Don't  let  me  be  one  of  those  people.  Don't  make  yourself  uncomfortable  because  you  think  it'd  work  better  for  me.  I've  been  there  before,  am  there  regularly,  s'not  a  nice  place  to  be. ”  He  says  honestly,  felt  like  the  right  thing  to  do  given  Knox's  own  honesty . . . But  they  also  have  a  strange  dynamic  and  he  has  an  image  to  ( poorly )  maintain,  so  for  good  measure.  “ I  mean  eh-,  shut up,  dickhead. ”

"i won't... shut up i mean," he laughs at the last bit, a poor cover for the emotions just below the surface of the conversation. knox will spare noah any more tonight, simply for the fact that he doesn't want to get into it any more than he already has. this is only the second, maybe third, time noah has been inside his apartment. knox isn't sure when their relationship changed from using each other as punching bags to... this. it's not a complaint, knox realizes he's enjoying the company. a reprieve from the constant and pressing solitude of his new half-formed life.

She goes by his place, and finds not the worst-worst, but pretty high on the bad list: Knox is there, alive, but he's beat all to hell. Her mouth drops open; she doesn't know how he's even sort-of upright, but he's slumped in a chair with a bag of frozen peas pressed to his face and a glass in his other hand.

He's cagey about who hurt him and Ayesha knows by now not to press, and anyway, who doesn't seem quite as important at the moment as what now? And when he offers her a drink (in a voice that sounds as bad as he looks, cracked and croaking), all she can do is blurt out, "No, I wanna call you an ambulance!

"i'll be okay," his voice is even, despite the slight shake in his right hand. knox sighs and leans back against the chair to look up at ayesha. her face a mask of worry with a stark line between her brows. knox sets the cold glass he'd been holding to his bruised face down on the table. a darkening bruise stretches from his jaw to just under his right eye, "really did a number though, maybe i'm gettin' rusty."

knox laughs a little, which turns into a short cough that causes a full body cringe from the pain of it. it must look pathetic to her, his mind reels with an immediate knee jerk to just ask her to leave. better she didn't witness this, better that she stay out of it. the further from him, the safer. but he's selfish, and he likes her company.

after tossing back the rest of the drink, knox caps the bottle and slides it away from himself. the last thing he wants to add to his regiment for tomorrow is a hangover. the two shots have already lightened the burden of his pain a noticeable fraction. he stands from the table slowly, wincing, and walks with a slight limp to the living room.

it's rare for morgan edge to take meetings, these days. his company sprawls multi-nationally, offices in every major city across the world. galaxy holdings' shares climb and climb and its ceo becomes harder and harder to reach. after his acquisition of the daily planet, everyone can only speculate on his next move. and yet . . . here he sits, across from █████. you see ⸺ knox has a problem, and so does the kryptonian. there might be a deal to be had here. morgan leans back in his chair, tips of his fingers pressed together. " you're a difficult man to find, " he says. " though i supposed that's by design. remind me . . . how much do they want for your head? " he's cornered knox in a coffee shop, sat abruptly at his table. he'll be delighted if he runs. " wait. morgan edge, ceo and majority owner of galaxy holdings. that ⸺ " he points to a copy of the planet left behind on a nearby table. perhaps he's left it there; it's his picture sprawled across the front page, announcing his takeover. " i'd like to help you. "