“ you see the good in everything. that’s why i like it when you look at me. ” ( vow )
prompts for the feels / accepting
He is a smudge of dark among white and green of the apartment. A lean figure of blacks and greys among white furniture and green flora. It’s accurate, he supposes, for the way he’s always lived his life, especially as of late, a morose-looking figure among a team of cheer and enthusiasm. Someone that was unchanging even as the world around him changed - like a black stain mark on a page. Unending and never really removable, ink that could not be merely wiped away.
And it’s because of that, that he can see what lies beneath all the cheer, all the comfort of a home well lived in, all the mixed scents of flora and dried herbs, of coffee grinds and warm candles long since put out. Blood and flesh. It’s a scent that’s clung to the other man for as long as he’s known him which, admittedly, had not been very long. A scent that had puzzled him at first, until he learned, and now had become a small comfort.
The problem with being a monster is that it takes a monster to see you as you are. And, as Tomura saw him clearly, so did Vow. Not as a dark smudge in a world of ever changing bright colors, but something with more depth, more darkness, the void that consumed all and gave little back.
But - that’s not true, is it? Bran has given much back, so much of himself in the process. And he didn’t absorb life around him, he encouraged it, from the small graces of Tomura’s slipping humanity to the - admittedly sometimes criminal - kindness of Reginald. He tried to tend it, like a garden, but sometimes he felt the weeds were too many.
Regardless, the comment - the confession - near whispered between them as a coffee is held out draws as much comfort as it does fear. Not of Vow, who was as soft as he was not, who was as kind as he could be vicious, as giving as he was hungry, but of himself. Of, if that was seen, what else could be gleamed? How many of his failures were obvious?
He almost withdrawals, reflective eyes going red as he looks away, towards sheer curtains that hide them from the world, but not the world from them. For a moment he wishes Vow were on the other side, away enough so that he could not see, but that Bran could still see him, observe him, enjoy him from a safe distance. Because, while he consumed killed and consumed to feed? Bran had killed and left flesh to rot out of ego. While Vow lived as he lived because he needed to survive, Bran had done so much worse simply because he could.
“I do not think -” His voice is as soft as ever, as deep and clear as it has ever been, but there’s fragility in his expression, he knows this, which is why he keeps his gaze trained away. “I do not think what you are thinking of doing is wise.”
Because while Bran can see the good in everyone else? He does not see any good in himself - just ruin and rot. And no one, not even Vow, could devour that.
