VIOLENCEᶠᵒʳVIOLENCE

An angel learning comparison could possibly be the most human experience you’ve consumed. The sense of belonging ripping through the fabrics of your own existence finally becoming a crisis of where to belong, It’s the heaviness. What is my purpose? Was this the common question to be human? Pointless? – “pointless?” Repeating aloud, distressed of the matter and this overwhelming emotion rushing through learnt emotions passing with a heavy, Confusion.

Your nose twitches into a sneer and you scoff. "Being human is miserable. Comparison just makes it worse." Your voice is pure vitriol, hatred and annoyance. You bring lit cigarette back up to your lips, taking a drag long enough to create that brief little buzz that does jack shit to quell the fire in your chest. (Maybe fighting fire with smoke isn't too smart, huh?) "You can observe and try to be like them all you want, but you'll never be one of them."

Way to rub salt in the wound.　You try not to think about it,　mostly:　your dependence on the attention,　how pathetic that simple fact makes you,　how much you simultaneously abhor and venerate Angel as a result of it all.　It coils your fingers into fists with agitation,　though you know you’re not strong enough to leverage any real change of your situation.　The both of you are nestled in blankets,　you a little too aware of how the fabric of black tank clings to your chest,　and you look to him with a certain numbness.　A blankness you cannot quantify nor qualify,　resonant issue at your core being that you could never discern exactly how you feel about him.　Love and hate,　one and the same.　Resenting the way he makes you feel and feeling powerless over your own desperation.　You’d strangle him if that was an option.　You know it’s not.　So you are looking,　eyes gradually taking on a radiance as you scrutinize his features.　Inked skin visible among the ocean of fabric.　His nose,　his hair.　Everyone looks for God somewhere.　Chasing an older Him to idolize.　

You roll onto your side,　a weak attempt at evading the discontent swirling within.　It is now that you feel most guilty.　Away from the fighting or the aggression or the violence.　Tenderness never an object the two of you were meant to possess　⸻　witness it,　maybe,　watch helplessly as it flits through the air and escapes toward a more worthy patron.　It doesn’t feel any better like this.　You suspect nothing will,　really,　that this is the sort of wound you have to live with.　Pull the stitches tight and snip off the excess suture.　

Toned arm snakes out,　across your neck and behind your head,　taking you into gentle headlock that drags you closer to him.　You hate this,　you really do.　You can feel the aggravation of your heart rate flare in your chest,　cradled by the ivory fangs of your ribcage,　dark crucible from which all this animosity has hatched.　Harder and faster,　it beats and beats.　You are terrified of him.　Admittedly,　you aren’t sure why he hasn’t killed you yet,　as though there is some lurking requisite he waits to watch play out in cinematic quality.　Maybe he likes the attention,　too.　You’d never be so audacious as to place a blatant assumption like that,　but you get very close.　

❛❛　Shut up,　❜❜　you utter,　voice husky from exhaustion.　Why does he toy with you like this?　For his own amusement?　It has to be something,　right?　All things have an answer,　a culmination of your misery the most likely.　You want to cling to him until your fingers bleed with the weight of your despondence.　Still,　you are here with him,　sick of feeling sorry for yourself.　Whether glassiness of your gaze carries stars or daggers,　both have terrible sharp points.　Both do damage.　❛❛　I know.　❜❜

A crawl closer,　bared knee catching against soft quilting beneath you,　and you rest your head against his chest.　He strokes your hair,　once,　twice.　You could sob with how much you like it.　You don’t,　obviously.　You cannot bear the stress of anything serving to emasculate you further:　you are here in another man’s arms,　his,　in a sense.　This fact is simultaneously intolerable and a great comfort to you.　The hand that moves to rest against his stomach is undoubtedly involuntary,　your body moving faster than your mind can reel in the sickly overflow of affection.　You wonder about his scars sometimes,　though you know better than to press the issue.　All your scars are emotional　⸻　relegated to the depths of your memory,　never therapied out because a man like you should be stronger than something like that　⸻　but you’d like to think the two of you aren’t so different.

Yeah,　in your fucking dreams.

You could kill him. He knows this, you know this, and as much as it is a comforting thought, it's equally as harrowing. Heart-wrenching, even. The thought of him leaving you in any way but especially by your own hands has left you gripping the edge of sink or dropping your glass onto the floor more than once. The salt rubbed into his wound is equally rubbed into yours. He's pathetic, but so are you. Levi would—

A huff through your nose. You open your tired eyes just enough to take in the blurred shape of your ceiling, white and bare. Arm stretches out to cage him as he tries to run away, weak attempt on his part. The anger dies down and leaves way for more curiosity, unending in (and out of) his presence. The motion is fluid, bringing him closer with his neck in the crook of your arm, a comfortable place for it to be. You could snap his neck or squeeze and squeeze until you can no longer feel his breath against your skin, but this moment is something neither of you are accustomed to— something you typically run from or crush in oversized hand, but have come to covet here. Most people who lay in your arms are thrown away quickly in favor of isolation, or wheeze their last breath. Your arms, your hands, were never meant for something like this, solely for fucking or hurting or killing; does Daeho know you are not the only dangerous person in the room?

Fuck, that's cheesy. Cringe, Mouse would say. It pisses you off, though, how true it is. Daeho has become another dangerous person alongside a man who reminds you of the biological father you only see (and can't feel) in memories, and the kid who reminds you too much of a past that's already too deeply ingrained in you. You hate how if he were to ever genuinely try to cut you out of his life, if he were to tell some authority or enemy about the little weaknesses he might see every now and then, it would drive you to a level of madness near that of what Levi put you in. You hate how if anything were to happen to him, it would drive you even more mad. You hate that you hate the thought of him going to anyone else to speak to them as much as he does with you, going to anyone else to get his rocks off in the same way he does with you, reacting to anyone else the way he does with you.

You close your eyes again as you gingerly pet his hair, pulling strands behind his ear. Corner of your lips twitches upward: Shut up. His voice sounds as exhausted as you (always) feel. I know. You know. You hum. He draws himself closer until his head is upon your chest, rather than trying to pull away. Maybe it's out of fear, or maybe he is just this desperate and pathetic— maybe both. Your fingertips graze the skin of his forehead, his temple, as you stroke his hair too gently. The scene is too soft, but you're pathetic and just tired enough to keep it that way.

You turn your head just enough to press a kiss to the top of his. Nestled in the crook of your arm, atop your chest, safe and yours and only yours. In your tank-top. Cute. Soft hair. Warm against your cold skin. Your smirk becomes more of a smile and you try to bring him impossibly closer, wrapping an arm around his waist to bring him mostly on top of you. Arm around his head moves lower, wrapped around his shoulder blades so you can hold the back of his head, pressing him further into you. (And this is for you, this time. You don't really care about his reaction as much as you care about how good he feels against you like this, how this him is just for you, how no one can take him from you here.)

He's pathetic for not leaving, and you're pathetic for holding him so he can't escape.

hostility, provocation, you name it. featuring both actions and scenarios where tension can fester; add +reverse to reverse the roles.