There’s a feather-light grip on Shaw’s watch today, like the brush of a fingertip. It’s been there since the morning, when Erik woke to the sound of light footsteps and a deep humming in the hallway. He likes to keep track of Shaw’s position on days like this - or any day that breaks the monotony - but as unobtrusively as possible. 

DEEP ASS STARTERS.V: HELLFIRE (the beginning)

Erik’s chest heaves, his body heavy with exhaustion, fueled by rage,  adrenaline and the fervent desire to watch this monster b l e e d. He braces himself against the wall with one hand, panting for breath. His knuckles feel like fire, but the pain doesn’t stop him. It never has.

“Stop talking,” he grits out, eyes flashing like steel. “I don’t care.” Because this is how Shaw wins, always, his voice forcing doubt under Erik’s skin like a needle until there’s nothing left to do but give up, give in. Because Shaw knows better. Shaw knows Erik, knows him to his bones, knows how to shake the foundations of his conviction until it crumbles.

“It’s just you. It always was. It always will be.”

The room is shaking and so are Erik’s hands, but he grasps at the air and wrenches a length of pipe from inside the walls, sends it crashing into Shaw’s knees with all the strength he can muster. His nose drips blood, head ringing. A quiet buzzing in the back of his head warns him to stop. 

He ignores it, shoves back the blackness ebbing at the corners of his vision. The closer he stalks to Shaw, the harder it is to hold onto anything, his grip on metal slipping like water through his fingers, but Erik’s past caring. He’ll beat him bare-handed if need be.

His fist cracks into Shaw’s face and Erik swears, agony lancing through two broken fingers. It doesn’t stop him.

"'Rural'. Such a difficult word. Let's see how well you can say it, hm?"

The corner of his mouth twists upwards in return, the closest approximation of a smile he ever manages. He wants to request permission to go to sleep. He wants to. But Schmidt looks at him like he can see every thought in Erik’s head, and Erik has the crawling, heavy feeling that he’s lying to Schmidt somehow, that he’s hiding things, and if he doesn’t own up to it Schmidt will know anyway. 

“If you’re not tired.” Erik steps aside, as much to give Schmidt room to approach the small stack of paper and books as it is to get out of his way, and out of reach. In his less desperate moments, Erik prefers to keep as far away from people as possible. 

(Those other moments, he--doesn’t like to think about.)

The tension eases marginally from Erik’s frame, but he still eyes Schmidt warily, like he’s expecting a fight. 

Nothing to fear from the dead, Erik.

He wants to say, you don’t dream like I do. 

You don’t wake in the night feeling hands trying to pull you into the furnace with them, into the grave.

“Ja,” he says instead, quietly. Erik has an aptitude for languages, there’s no denying it, but he picks it up far easier when it’s spoken to him rather than written down. His attempts at reading and writing in English, in particular, are still flawed enough to make him nervous, should Schmidt choose to look over his work. “I think so.”

His breath comes sharp and shallow, thin chest heaving rapidly as light creeps in through the half-open door, obscured by Schmidt’s blood-stained figure. Erik is too tall and too thin, all bony limbs and wide shoulders trying to shrink into something smaller, trying to be invisible. 

He doesn’t realise the lamp is raised several feet in the air and trembling like a snake ready to strike until Schmidt points it out, and Erik almost drops it in response. It hovers shakily back into its rightful place. Erik smells iron and rust.