146 Things To Do Besides Self-Harm [Taken from this.]
13. eat something you can’t resist
“Raphael?” a voice echoed through the dingy motel. Lights flickered overhead, casting an eerie rhythmic shadow to the torn walls of its hallways. There was no reply, just the scampering of mice across the cracked floorboards and the fluttering of a bird’s wings somewhere nearby.
Ragnor frowned, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his newly washed trench coat and scuffing over a pile of drywall. He called out again, this time in a voice more uncertain and inquisitive than the first.
No reply. Not even a bird this time, let alone the vampire he was trying to draw out. Magnus had told him it might be best to just leave him be this time, to let him suffer the loss of one of his own in peace like he no doubt intended. Raphael had never been one for company as comfort, a fact both warlocks were intensely aware of.
Yet, Ragnor couldn’t just leave him be. Not after the terrifyingly blank expression that had crossed his face the moment his clan member’s head had gone rolling across the uprooted grass. Not after the way he’d stared down at his hands, his arms, like he’d wished they hadn’t been there when he looked.
He swallowed hard, stepping through a gaping hole in one of the motel walls.
“Raph- Oh, there you are.”
Drawn at last by the sound of his voice, the vampire in question turned his head to glance at him. His eyes were wild, hectic and frantic and ferocious as they fixed unseeingly on the concerned figure at the makeshift entrance to his room of sorts. His jaw was working, teeth clenched firmly around the opening of the blood bag he had clutched between his paper white fingers. No doubt provided unknowingly by the local blood-bank, Ragnor noted absently.
Raphael didn’t even really seem to see him, like he was looking at him and knowing he was there but not really acknowledging that he was a living human being. It was something about the vacant expression on his face, the way he drank like he’d been starved all his life. Or maybe it was the red still speckled across his snow white skin, leftover from the fight that brought them to that moment.
“Raphy,” Ragnor cooed, hoping against hope that the dreaded nickname would somehow elicit a reaction from the vampire. It didn’t, dark eyes still fixed unseeingly on his hesitant figure as slurping sounds filled the ruined room.
“Raphael,” he tried again, stepping forwards this time. “Come on, I thought you’d been trying to avoid human blood.”
No response. Ragnor sighed, crouching down beside the absent man. He gave up, not bothering to say anything more. Instead, he sat beside him on the grungy motel floor and listened to him breaking, wondering how he was going to put him back together this time.