"You have enough?" Caliste asks, all anger and contempt. His mouth stays half-open, after. Showing teeth, like a frightened dog about to strike. His spine is one long arcuate line over Vladi, and if it wasn't for his weight trapping him down Vladi would sweep a hand over its strange knobbly ridge, his vile propensity for tactile learning.

"No," Vladi scowls, despite himself. His body is overwarm and tense with the urge to flee. "Fuck you," he adds, for good measure.

Caliste scoffs. Vladi knows it's because this is what got them here in the first place, his back pressed to the cold floor of their deserted workroom and Caliste leaning over him with his thighs framing Vladi's middle, a pretense at pretend-fighting the both of them understand is about something uglier, about the amorphous animals trapped in their ribcages and the instincts that are native to and nest in their hindbrains. He squirms, struggles against Caliste's grip; Caliste presses him down with a surprising amount of strength.

"Stop fighting," Caliste growls. His eyes are empty and plastic, black-on-black of the adrenaline-wide pupils pushing back against the dark of his irises, jittering in their orbits like he's searching for something in Vladi's face.

"Then stop fucking holding me," Vladi snaps back. Like that'd be enough to pacify him; like this isn't the necessary cresting of months of frustration, and he isn't tired of running, and he doesn't want to show teeth, too, just this agonizing once, to crawl back to his place when this is over with the sense of finally having fended for himself, that caustic satisfaction of knowing he can make himself lethal.

He plants his feet on the ground under him, tries to buck Caliste off in a strong lurch that unbalances Caliste momentarily. He leans on his hands to anchor himself, crushing Vladi's bones together in a way that makes him yelp in pain.

"This is all your fault," Caliste says after righting himself, vicious like he doesn't only mean the ache in Vladi's wrists, and Vladi goes still.

Bursts of shame needle at his skin in waves and something else underneath opens wide, a final and inevitable collapse, like a sinkhole caving in. He feels cold and wet with sweat all over, sickly. Disavowal comes to him instinctively; the words stick to the inside of his throat like a bite of food half-swallowed.

The truth, which the selfsame electrical processes supply to him helplessly, autonomously, is that he was never built for this, the harshness and the egocentrism; that he's a nauseatingly gregarious being driven by the pathetic need to be please, and that he's wanted to please Caliste for years, to be worthy of him. He shakes his head for fear of what he'd say if he spoke instead, wriggles his body weakly against the floor.

Calise's expression twists suddenly. He looks like he's going to cry, like he hates the fact of crying more than he does Vladi seeing it; like he's younger than Vladi's ever seen him and this isn't what he was made for, either, it's just that he's better at keeping nature at bay than him.

"You always." Caliste starts, clicks his tongue. His voice wavers when he speaks. "You do this to me. You make me so angry. I don't want to be angry at you, but you make me."

His hands loosen around Vladi's, soft in a way he's never felt him. Vladi knows he'd be pulling at his bracelets if he wasn't still sitting on him like this. He wants to thrash under him and scream, get another cruel rise out of him for the sake of not letting them see each other like this, unwound and complicated. Doesn't. Only blinks at him, frozen, afraid beyond fear, as Caliste brings his head close, still watching him.

You know, you know, you know. 

"Don't do it," Vladi says, pleads. 

Caliste kisses him anyway.

Vladi exhales. Breathes in. Closes his eyes, surrendering at last. Caliste's fingers brush the length of his arms lightly as he drags them to his face, pressing into the angle of his jaw, the soft give of his cheeks. He feels himself in layers, dismantled, incohesive; yields to the one that wants to touch Caliste's side under his clothes instead of the one that wants to push him away and run. 

"Just be good for me," Caliste says after a moment. Pulling away. Slow, gentle.

Vladi chases him blindly, then opens his eyes again. Sees the way Caliste's T-shirt rides up to his navel when he pulls his hoodie off. There's a brand new kind of ache inside of him, a brand new kind of lack; one he understands he's not meant to survive and will have to despite. 

He's about to ask what Caliste means when Caliste brings his fingers to his lips, tentative. Humiliation blooms white-hot at his center, unfurls its searing offshoots through his chest. He grits his teeth for a long second. Finally gives in, trying to forget himself. He's slammed back into his own bones by the low sound Caliste makes, the salt of his skin, the hardness of his nails when he slides his tongue over them.

"I want you," Caliste whispers, curling himself over Vladi's body, chest-to-chest, lips pressing against the side of Vladi's neck, the tender point behind his ear. "Please don't make me lose you."