#dcgtooth

He’s married. So don’t get any ideas. I’m not that kind of guy.

But Liv was that kind of woman. A cheater, a woman with her legs wide open. There was no truth to what Hallen says and Liv could tell. It might as well have popped out to her in bold lettering. The notion makes her uneasy, the idea that her and Hallen alike suffer from the same impulse. To want what they can’t have, to indulge in cynical masochist behavior that neither of them knew how to stifle. 

“Just some guy..” The blonde repeats, echoing Hallen’s own words. Her eyes dart inside her mug of wine, watching as the crimson liquid stills before her. Liv’s brows furrow in thought, wondering if she should approach this lightly or go all in. Did either mechanism even matter? They weren’t good at these things, this situation unfolding before them was proof of that. But Liv loved her brother. She loved him more than she loved most things despite not being able to say it without scrunching her face like she’s just sucked on a lemon. 

Her lips purse then, nodding a tad, “We’re both that kind of person, Hallen,” She admits, an unspoken confession. Perhaps he could put it together himself. “Me especially.” The admission feels like razors to her throat. Liv never enjoyed being vulnerable like this, but now it had to be done. She couldn’t watch her brother grovel and revert into himself anymore. 

For a moment, she thinks she should tell him about Martin. About how he might have killed her husband to be or made him vanish. This was hypocrisy at it’s finest. Liv wanted the truth but she was hiding within the trenches of her own lies. “I slept with all of Luke’s friends. All of them. Some of his coworkers too. I lost count after a while. Most of them...were married. I sometimes went for the wives too..I didn’t care. I hurt him and I just — didn’t care.” Now she does, which was obvious, and that scared her. “I don’t want you to end up like me.”

You shouldn’t be here.

In truth, he might have been right. But the impulse festering within Oliver would never die, even if he leaves it alone. It’ll always be there, a fatal reminder, living inside him. So, he comes, he comes and he stays. He plants himself on the concrete outside Hallen’s home and faces the street. He’s illuminated by only the moon and a streetlamp. One hand reaches up to loosen his tie again, now fully taking it off and letting it hang around his neck. He feels moist, damp. Sweaty. He probably was. It was warm out tonight, that was a given, yet he was sitting here.

“I know.” Oliver says to the air, though he knows Hallen will hear. Every part of him will hear it and it’ll swallow him whole as it always did. Oliver was a beastly thing these days, it seems. It’s as if he’s turned into some hungry monster with a jaw that unhinged, feasting on attention and doubt. “I wanted your attention. I don’t know why. But I did.” He says what he said to his husband, the same sentiment. The truth. It makes his skin crawl, little beads of sweat accumulating just along his neck and hairline. He wipes those areas with a gentle hand. “I told him that. Eli.” Oliver’s voice breaks at the mention of his husband’s name, obviously sensitive in regards to him. He fears things might never be the same. Maybe that was for the better. “He — He doesn’t tell me how he feels. About a lot of things. I guess I just — I just wanted someone to —” Putting it into words was difficult. Mostly because it was shine a light on one of Oliver’s most obscure desires. To be hurt. Does he feel he deserves it? Was it cynical? Even he didn’t know, hence the same that oozes from every word.

“I wanted to be hurt. I like when...people want me. I just want people to like me. I wanted you to like me. I’m sorry, Hallen.”