It's… lonely.

He used to like being alone, but he doesn't know how to anymore. Right now, he misses you. You're only a few feet away, but he misses you.

He thinks about how someday, you'll be gone. Inevitably, someday, you'll leave him. Whether of your own volition or not. It'll probably be his fault. It always is. He always ends up being too much. Too weird, too creepy, too intense, too withdrawn, too angry. His default state is to repulse others. No matter how hard he tried when he was younger, it always ended in him being alone.

So he stopped trying. And for the most part, it worked. His life was better that way. Until you came along.

He thinks about much he'll miss you. How he feels like a part of him is missing whenever he's away from you. It aches to be at work or at the store without you. Even when he's upset with you or you're upset with him - and he's done horrible things to you, he deserves every bit of betrayal and hurt from you - it feels impossible to be separated. Your souls feel enmeshed, intertwined. Hopelessly tangled in tight knots, strangling each other, always burrowing into each other tighter and tighter. Scar tissue encapsulating a foreign body within a hard, sinewy casing of flesh. Impossible to ever escape.

How could he ever live without you? How had he lived for so long without you? You've burned him with the blistering light of the sun and opened his eyes to something he thought he was never capable of. He could never un-open them now. It's impossible to go back to life before you, now that he knows it's possible to have this kind of bond with someone else.

His soul will rip apart when you leave. He'll be left a massive open wound, exposed and raw, impossible to close. So big and deep it'd be foolish to think he could ever fill it. Forever carrying around your ghost. Subtly but irreparably changed from the man he used to be.

He doesn't want you to die.

Everyone else he wishes death would come for faster, but you he so desperately wants to shield from it. His awareness of death's omnipresence used to be a comfort. One of the few reliable truths in this cruel, confusing world. But now, it serves him anxiety at every opportunity. The thoughts of everything that could happen to you. Of all the different ways it could happen. The scenarios that scare him the most are the ones he'd cause. Where he makes a mistake. Where he loses control of himself. Where in a moment of weakness and indulgence, he goes too far.

A sudden surge of emotion tightens his chest and burns his eyes. It's going to happen someday. He wants to hold you so badly, hold you tight in his arms and never let go. He wishes he could keep you safe inside of him. He wishes you could merge into one being so that you would always be with him, that you'd only die with him.

He wants to lean over you and sniff deeply, engrain your scent into the folds of his brain permanently like a tattoo. He never wants to forget. Every aspect of you branded into his mind. He has pictures of you, recording of your voice, but smell is so ephemeral. It's something that can never be recaptured, and it'll be the quickest to fade.

The sky is light blue now. The sun hasn't quite risen yet, but the city is beginning to wake up. He rises and stands over the bed to stare down at you. Your soft, relaxed expression. Your curled up body and your messy hair. Your lips ever so softly parted.

You're a thorn digging itself deep into his side. You're the roots of a weed penetrating him, spreading through him, sucking him dry. You're a colony of maggots nestled under his skin, devouring him.

He wants to touch you. But he doesn't want you to wake up. He wants you exactly like this, in this sweet and special moment. Alive and unconscious. In this transitionary state of dawn, the light feels so cold and lonely. He aches to feel your warmth so badly. He wants it so badly he can't stand it.

Ever so gingerly, he eases his body into the bed next you. You shift and make a small cute noise, but don't wake. Slowly, he settles and enjoys the sound of your breathing. He could listen to it forever. The soft rise and fall of your chest. The puff of air in and out of your nose. Imagining all the folds and branches of your lungs expanding and contracting with every breath. Your diaphragm diligently driving the whole process. The draw of oxygen, the exchange of gases, enriching your blood.

He wants to slice open your wrist and press his own slit wrist together to mix your blood. He wants to share blood and lymph, all the little channels of fluids merging together and spreading into each other. He wants to share everything. All of your fluids, all of your organs, all of your skin. Cut open both your bellies and splay everything together. Share one breath, one pair of lungs, one heart. Splice together your bodies until you're one.

He buries his nose into the nape of your neck and sniffs deeply. Your scent sparks little fires all over inside of him. He wants to split you open here with a knife and stick his finger in. He wants to dig in with his tongue, feeling the bumps of your vertebrae and into the base of your head, up the hole where your spinal cord meets your brain. Pressing his mouth as far into your skull as he can, licking up all your blood and juices. Slurping up into the base of your brain. Drinking your essence like jelly.

His hand drifts down between his legs. If he's careful and keeps his motions small, he shouldn't wake you.

You're pulsing against your skin. He can see it on your throat, under the thin skin covering your carotid artery. It keeps pulsing, moment after moment. If only his other hand was free to put his finger over it and feel it, feel the pressure of your blood inside its walls. Feel you pulsing inside your shell, radiating heat out from your center. He wants to feel every process that keeps you alive. Wants to feel it from the inside, how hot and pronounced it'd be. Hold your very heart in his hands and see the power of it beating, all the chambers pumping in a rhythm. Watch it work perfectly in sync with the rest of your circulatory system, keeping you alive.

He doesn't want you to die. But you'll be so beautiful when you do.

Your blood slowed and spilled out from your veins. The life-like flush of your skin paled and ashen. The perfect, permanent stillness. So pretty in every stage of decay. His gentle strokes quickly become faster and more vigorous as he imagines how your body would digest itself, how you'd stiffen and blister. Your skin molting and body bloating. Your face full of maggots and collapsing in on itself.

Another pang of emotion hits him. He'd kiss you and love you as much as he could in those first couple days, while you still look like you. Trying to commit everything to memory, every little detail of your face and your feel and smell and taste even while they shift and morph as decay claims you. Savoring every last moment he has of you, even though you will already gone.

And then he'd take tokens of you to keep. A lock of hair, sealed inside a plastic bag. Make trinkets of your teeth and finger bones. Photos of your insides to remind him of parts he never got to know before. Your skull, lovingly cleaned and preserved so that he can still kiss your head when he gets lonely.

The bed is starting to shake a little from how how fast and hard he's stroking himself, but it feels so good he doesn't want to slow down. He's getting so close, just a little longer-

You stir a little again, and he freezes. It's… exciting to be doing this right against you, while you have no idea what he's doing. The idea of you waking up makes him nervous, but it's also sending jolts of pleasure through him. He keeps going and bucks his hips into his hand a couple times. It's enough to send him over the edge.

His orgasm ravages through his body while he cums on his stomach. He keeps stroking and bucking his hips as he rides the waves of of residual pleasure. He bites his lip to keep his moans silenced, but you're moving a lot now. It seems he woke you.

"Lawrence…?" You murmur softly.

"Shh," he whispers, trying to suppress his aroused breathlessness. "Just go back to sleep."

"…When did you come to bed?"

He manages to snag his shirt off the foot of the bed with his toes and flicks it up to himself to wipe up his cum. He's not nearly as worried about disturbing you now that you're awake. "I just did."

"Mm… you're warm. You feel so nice…" You voice is so soft and gentle and quiet. You press your back up against his body and nestle into him. His stomach is still sticky from the cum, but you don't seem to notice or care.

For a moment he hesitates, then wraps his arms around you and spoons you tight. The warmth and euphoria of the afterglow feels better than it ever has before when he gets to hold you. He's so happy you're here. You fit like it's where you belong.

Someday, you'll be gone and dead, and he'll miss you. He'll miss you so much that it'll destroy him.

But for right now, he has you in his arms.