#(hefindsdannyhotrnbye)

No... he doesn’t feel better. If anything, his chest burns hotter, a pressure that no punch could bleed out. Would another strike ease it? Two, three— one after another until Danny’s face was unrecognizable? The thought tempts him for a fleeting, vicious moment... then sours. The first blow had been cheap, stolen when the other least expected it. Anything further would just be foolish, opening the hellish gates or brutality. And still, some buried part of Atlas wants cruelty. Wants it to escalate, to spiral until he doesn’t have to think about what he feels at all.

❝ You let me believe you were the fucking victim!? ❞ The words come out like a snarl, jagged and completely unrestrained. What is left of his control fractures, anger rushing in to fill the cracks he thought were long sealed. He trained himself to master his temper, to bleed it out in controlled spaces, in rings and gyms. But Danny has unraveled all of it with nothing more than a truth revealed too late.

It isn’t just betrayal, though. That’s what unsettles Atlas most. It’s the pull that coils tight in his gut, the wrongness of his own fascination. He should hate this man, but hatred will not explain this intensity; explain why his pulse spikes when he looks at the killer with blood running from his lip, eyes still unflinching. That dark intrigue is harder to shove away than the rage.

Atlas shouldn't want to know, and yet he aches to ask: what finally made you act? what did it feel like the first time? How did you hide it for so long? Why did you stop? The questions would sound like admiration if he spoke them aloud, and that thought makes him sick. Yet the sickness does not dull the growing fascination.