issilly
when you finish him off, he sleeps deeply, exhausted, something you're grateful for. almost guiltily grateful, because he's still not okay with this, with you, with this thing that can't be called benefits if he hates himself for it afterwards. when he's dead to the world, body sated into a sweet slumber, he can't feel guilty about this. but neither can he feel your hand stroking the hair away from his face; he can't feel the tender kisses you mouth along his skin, still slightly sweaty from exertion. so fucking beloved, this guy, and he still doesn't get how deeply this consumes you.
you didn't go to the wake and you didn't go to the mass; couldn't bring yourself to, too wrecked by guilt and grief that continued to choke you, suffocate you, wake you up in the middle of the night with your pillow stained and your cheeks sticky and damp. but the burial... you made it to that, at least, though you watched everything from a long distance away and were barely able to see the casket laid into the ground. six feet down, and your heart fell with it.
he doesn't hide from the truth but this is one memory that he can't bring himself to face, shoving it instead to the neglected, abyssal depths of his mind: a game he never wanted to play, more like manhunt than hide-and-seek, blood and adrenaline roaring in his ears as his lungs burn for breath, every last energy devoted to increasing the distance between the hunter and the hunted-- then the endgame, where he's cornered like a rat and realizes that's exactly, literally what it is.
It's only afterwards that the regret and the guilt sets in, a low-bellied crawl that weighs heavily on his shoulders after all the anger seeps out and leaves him empty and hollow. He goes too far and does too much to leave his mark, leaves Tei painted in mottled flourishes of red scrapes and purpling bruises that yellow around the edges. Except Tei doesn't leave him without his own share of scars, leaves him painted with his own set of knuckle imprints and darkening impressions of teeth. Burst blood vessels splotch all over their bodies like some twisted Pollock. "Look," he hears. "Now we match."
"Plaid? Going with the catholic high school girl theme?" He fingers the skirt's fabric between two fingers, tugging it down. His other hand slides up, creeping over the edge of a knee-high at an ambling pace. Pressing close to Tei's chest, he savors the way the other's heartbeat picks up speed, the way those fingers tangle themselves in his hair. "Looks good on you," he murmurs, to which he gets a 'fuck you'; the laugh he gives back gets muffled in the kiss he paints against Tei's neck. "I think I'll leave it on..."
The chalk screeched down the board on the last letter, scratching deep inside his ears with a dying whine and it hurt and lingered, just like the ache in both his arms and the cramp in his dusty hands from clenching the chalk too tight. The chalk was barely a stump and now it was in pieces as he chucked it at the floor in a final burst of temper, then slumped out into the corridor. He glanced at the chalkboard-- "I must not break noses" repeated ad nauseum-- and rubbed his knuckles. If pricks wanted to mess with him because he looked like a girl then he was gonna mess up their face.
Even with the breeze that trickles in through their open windows, the air is still thick with a dry heat that makes them lazy, that slows their sharp movements down until they're as listless as a roadkill cooking on the asphalt. Then Tegan flicks on the radio and it's like their energy switch has been flipped on its head. It's not so hot that they can't stand each other's body heat, though, and they slide against each other to whatever's on; right now it's something hot and dirty, a blistering rhythmic dubstep that's slowly building up, prepared to nuke the 'waves. The air is warm but Tegan is hotter, pushing against his frame, and all he does is pull the other closer and soon the radio is ignored in favor of their own noisy composition.
It had to happen sooner or later, he thinks to himself when the long vehicle pulls up-- and then drives past him until the last window is at his side. It's a classy model done in a respectable black, a Rolls-Royce inspired make that has him re-evaluating the man's wealth. Well, the fact that he was found at all hints at the resources available to this man's fingertips. His sister might have stopped him but because she wasn't around, when the driver opens the door for him, he slides inside the limo without a word but full of questions that only his birth-father could answer.
"Take this and pack it for a sleepover," his sister tells him, fourteen years old and ten minutes short of midnight, and this is the first time of many. She glances at the door behind her before turning back to him, mouth pressed into a flat, flat line and that's what makes him swallow his question. "Only what you need." So he does, all by himself because he's a big boy, all of seven years, and it's all an adventure to him, this secret jaunting out in the middle of the night. They become furtive explorers of a night city and when he's a little older, he learns it was safer than staying home whenever their aunt entertained certain guests.
His dreams became long, twisted slideshows, half-remembered memories gone sour. Even the happy memories melted into this montage of guilt, into bruised skin and split lips, into blood staining teeth. Topsy never slept for long.
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