KISS OR KILL?

He didn’t want to, either.

The routine was the same every day. He found himself wandering around the warehouse, restless, so unlike him. Games weren’t so entertaining anymore, playing football just made him look around to see if you were watching, somewhere. Usually you weren’t. No matter how hard he tried, it seems you were always one step away from him. Right there, and yet so out of reach. He could smell the perfume on you, feel the ends of your long hair tickle the tips of his fingers, feel your warmth just enough to know you were alive, but not warm enough to satisfy his gluttonous desires.

He wandered, sighed, checked his phone to no new messages. Stared at the ceiling, tried to take a nap, but nothing could calm his heartbeat. And he’d end up in your bed, trying to focus on a video game instead of the scent you left behind every day. Waiting, checking the time, asking himself when you would be back today?

It was unusual, this awareness of something — of someone. It was unusual and uncomfortable and yet there was nothing in the world he was more comfortable with.

You had turned him into this; into someone who was starting to question himself, starting to pay attention to his surroundings as though he only just learned how to hear.

And when you returned, oh, that was his favourite. Agitated, every day again, because you’d told him a million times to stay out of your room. (It wasn’t a million times — Gaku would know, since he counted them all.) Snatching the trinkets he was fiddling with out of his hands like he’d looked into your soul without consent. You’d ramble on and on about the things that irritated you about him and he’d watch, curiosity written all over his face, yet he wasn't listening. Not really — he would let your voice embrace his senses but didn’t bother registering the words. You’d come to this conclusion too, naturally.

“You’re not listening at all, are you?”

“Nope.”

With a sigh you flopped down on your mattress and he found himself wondering if you’d sound like that under him. Imagined there was a lot he could learn from you there too, just as you had been pulling him into a life that wasn’t his own, but that made his blood pump with exhilaration he usually got from difficult kills.

But you never let him get that close to you. It was like the tides of the ocean, coming close with a force that could sweep him off his feet and then pulling away, like it was never there. Maybe that was what started his little habit of taking your things. You liked to collect, he found quickly, bringing home anything from vases you found beautiful to the entrance tickets of a museum to a bottle cap from the beer you bought at a club. You didn't leave traces of your presence anywhere but you brought mementos of your adventures with you everywhere. Found a purpose for them, like a bottle cap chain to wear off your combat trousers.

It was a habit Gaku couldn’t understand, but it made it easy for him to bring pieces of you with him. Maybe you had noticed your Kuromi soda can had gone missing, but if you had, you never let it show. Now it sat pretty on the windowsill where he found himself sleeping under most days, a useless item, one that Kashima or Kumanomi would insist belongs in the trash, but he found himself looking at it in the mornings when he woke up and wondered if you had come back yet.

It disappointed him that you hadn’t brought it up yet; he hoped, for several weeks, that you would storm into ‘his’ hallway, wasting your breath on him, because even if it was negative, your attention fed him like it was his last meal on earth.

For now, he would make do with this; with the scowl on your pretty little face while you put everything he touched back where it belonged, with the words full of venom thrown at him.

Gaku wondered if you knew that he belonged right here too, a fact he already realised the second you first gave him a slither of attention. But it was no matter, because he wasn't going anywhere, and someday you would realise it too. He was stuck in your orbit like a keepsake with your name on it, signed with the mark of your deep burgundy lipstick, and the only thing that would open the jar to free him was death.

What I find interesting is the implications of how personality shift. It seems to me like as a "weapon" he used to be fairly detached and apathetic towards just about everything, and only experience excitement during his challenging kills. totally love characters like that bc there's so much potential to do analysis like this and to explore the "what if..." part if they do start to notice things at all

i think the way you handled it feels realistic. this feels like obsession, imo. a bit stalkerish. no real understanding of bounardies. sort of going to do what he wants to do as long as it serves something for him. in this case, getting that little pump of dopamine whenever you're around or paying attention to him. in a way, since he knows he can get it through negativity, he sort of has that emotionally underdeveloped vibe of doing all the wrong shit for any type of reaction

i think there's def some complexity between really being down bad for you and lust, and i think that'd be so much fun to explore in another piece sometime!

now, moving onto your prose. i love it. you've come such a long way with your descriptions and prose since we really started yapping and you picked up writing again. it's incredible to see your growth. for example,

And yet your presence wrapped around him like a vine, made him crave, hungry. Turned him into a monster that wanted to siphon the blood out of your veins and the marrow of your bones.

something like this absolutely conveys the depth of just how much he craves you, how much he wants to bask in your essence and be in proximity. wants you. all of that. it's so deep, probably on a level that drives him insane bc he can't fully understand it. you've already written that he's pretty restless when it comes to you, so this totally goes hand-in-hand with that!!

another little bit that i particularly liked:

Usually you weren’t. No matter how hard he tried, it seems you were always one step away from him. Right there, and yet so out of reach. He could smell the perfume on you, feel the ends of your long hair tickle the tips of his fingers, feel your warmth just enough to know you were alive, but not warm enough to satisfy his gluttonous desires.

i like how you really dug into the idea of you being "so near, yet so far" and "right on the edge" of him all of the time. i can really envision how maddening that must be for him. how you're just RIGHT THERE, but he can't have you or touch you. 10/10

i think my favorite part of this entire fic is him being a little fuckin' klepto and taking your shit so he can have a piece of you with him, and that secret hope that it'd rile you up to get you to come to him.

overall, i think your flow in this piece is pretty good and i love that this was more a focus on character analysis, bc you gave a lot of insight into his character. i also think you played around with the idea well