Fate Fighter

For you, who worked hard today as usual, I want to lay down a red carpet on your way home

Arctic Monkeys, “Do I Wanna Know,” AM

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The silence stretched on, and Jaejoong could feel the frustration building up within him. Serenity was not going to tell him the gruesome details of what had happened to him. He was sparing Jaejoong from all of it, sheltering him as if he were a child whose innocent nature would not be able to withstand the cruelty of the world, should not be tainted by its horrors. Serenity was the one who had been battered and broken; the one who had been used like a weapon, a tool; the one whose life had been in peril. And yet he was still trying to protect Jaejoong from the anguish that he would surely feel if he knew exactly what had transpired. He was still trying to be the goddamn hero. Didn’t he know that it only made Jaejoong’s heart ache all the more acutely for him?

“Don’t lie.” He murmured; there was a tremor in his voice. He felt a hot prickling at the corners of his eyes – when had he begun to cry? And why? Was it because it seemed like Serenity was so drained that he could no longer cry for himself? “You knew I would come here. Otherwise you wouldn’t have asked. You knew I would’ve wanted to see with my own eyes that you were alive. That you were okay. Well, are you?” He took a step closer to the other man, not caring that Serenity would surely notice the unshed tears in his eyes.

He turned around and faced the other man, Light’s tremulous whisper had already drifted away and been worlds apart. “Listen. Everything was alr–” Not. In front of him was not the face shielded with enmity that he had been used with.The sight was harbored with pain and fear. How could those tears be formed for the sake of a failure? He understood, but he’d rather choose not to. He did not deserve such gesture of kindness and empathy. It frightened him to return Light’s liquid gaze, even more than the times those beautiful eyes aggressively sought to capture the darkest shades of his thoughts. His brain felt like a hard drive at capacity, his soul brutally crushed.  

Don’t cry. He could not steel himself for such simple words. Omitted from his lips was only a protracted sigh of surrender. The threat in those doe eyes was not idle.