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“What made you this way?”
Severin wanted, nay, needed, to ask him. To wrap his arms around the man and hold him, sway with him, whispering words that only met the ears of the man who held Severin’s heart in small hands that shook when Jim shouted.
“What made you this way?”
They were words only spoken in the dead of night, when his pale, knobbed back was exposed to Severin, the light of the moon casting shade below each prominent spike of his spine. His fingers would trace the ribs alongside his side, the reminder that the man felt, not heard any of this, bringing comfort to him as he whispered to the man.
“What made you this way?”
The phrase stuck to his tongue, like hair after a shave, as Severin patched him up, after one of his accidents. Instead, he shook it away, burying the question into the depths of his soul, the tendrils of curiosity locked away.
“What made you this way?”
He was everything Jim wasn’t, traditionally. He was kind, empathetic, he loved romantic movies and cried whenever the dog in the movie died. He loved fluffy jumpers and his room was covered in fairy lights. He hummed and danced around his room to a tune Severin had never been able to figure out. He was innocence in a bubble. Severin loved him. His bunny, he called him. The lion’s bunny.
“What made you this way?”
But his mind. His mind was a different story. His mind was dark, as was Jim’s. Full of thoughts of death, of torment, of destruction. But not towards others, never against others. Always against himself. Severin couldn’t count, didn’t want to count the amount of times he had walked in on him during one of his accidents, leaving both of them in tears. It was those nights Severin desperately wanted to ask, but he never asked. And Richard never told.
“What made you this way?”
He never asked.
And Richard never told.