Amarion should leave. He should collect his shit and go, pack his rucksack and track down his car, hope that it hasn’t been towed or fucking ticketed. Because he can’t stay here, in this place, with this boy. He can’t. He shouldn’t. He won’t allow himself to. He should have known, the second the rust on his heartstrings started to crumble, he should have known. He couldn’t stay.
But he wants to.
There’s a slight crimp to the skin between Amarion’s eyebrows as he takes in Jonah, unresponsive. The faint beard, whispers against his skin, and the mess of tousled brunette that has something like endearment boiling in pit of Amarion’s stomach and the hints of smile tugging at his lips. The blue of his eyes, an imprint of color that Amarion thinks will haunt him for weeks after all this is over. The tone of his voice that warms Amarion’s blood and the comfort of his fingers when they touch Amarion’s skin. It’s poison, all of it. And it’s killing him, from the inside out.
The muscles of his forearm are starting to twitch, and the clarity piercing his mind was starting to blur as he comes down. Sick, he feels sick. He has to swallow bile and acid when Jonah touches him, grit his teeth to keep the rage and white noise burning inside his throat silently, the smoke of it cooking his brain. Get it together, Amarion. Turn it off.
He does. His mouth sets into a straight line, and the doors within his chest swing shut, the yellow caution sign nailed to them lighting back up. Warning: Emotions Beyond This Door. Keep Locked! He blinks away the last of the wetness clinging to his eyelashes and holds on with every ounce of concentration he has to the faint inebriation coursing through him.
“Okay,” he says. It’s not like he can feel anything anyway.
Without hesitation he brings the cloth to Amarion’s wounded knuckles, pressing the alcohol soaked bits right into the tears of skin. Four seconds for each affected joint is the rule, allowing him to try and clean up certain bits before they scab over all wrong. He’s quiet as a mouse while he works, then moving on to squeeze a dollop of the antibiotic onto his fingertip. He spreads it over Mari’s knuckles, the excess being rubbed into his cuticles.
Part of him thinks it’s kind of funny, really, how fucked up everything really is. They drive each other up the wall, spitting venom back and forth until it finally hits a nerve. It’s like being bound to the seat of a rollercoaster that never stops, or purposely touching the top of the stove even when your mother told you not to. He thinks its because there’s too much of the same energy bouncing between them that’s just as exhilarating as it is infuriating; what Jonah hides, Mari expresses with great pride. He’d stress-laugh if it weren’t for the onsetting pain that wraps around his throat, pulsating to the beat of his heart. He’d fucking laugh till his lungs gave out if he could, but it isn’t the right time.
“If you punch enough walls, you’ll fuck your hand up real bad.” It’s said as he wraps the bandage around his knuckles, voice light and airy. It’s more so Mari won’t get their sheets all dirty than anything else honestly. “You’ll also make Ollie mad, so, let’s refrain from doing that again, yeah?”
When he’s finally done, he takes a seat right beside him, fingers messing with a particularly loose thread that dangles from the aforementioned rag. He’s tired, exhausted even, both physically and emotionally, and without a clue of what it is that can be said to fill the silence.
For once, he’s speechless, and maybe it’s a good thing.
