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It smelled like freshly washed denim. Underneath skies that seemed too dark for a six o clock evening. He remembers the taste of salt, coarse and rough as it glide across his cheeks and into the corners of his mouth. The shores were crashing against rocky beaches, shinned by the glow and twinkle of the stars that hung above them.
He remembered their hands, all over and everywhere, searching for something he himself had not wanted to discover. The sweater he wore was a dark green, and it failed to protect his torso from the chilly winds and hot breaths that peppered across his body.
He said no, shouting it across sandy beaches, devoid of life and he hoped to god that those above are seeing what they’ve done. The word a mantra engraved onto chapped lips, bruised and battered, purple and pink.
He wants to forget, because anything had to be better than all of this. He felt like his insides were eating him raw, scraping at every nook and cranny of security he might have once had. He realises that he’s been stolen from something that he will never get back.
The beach tastes like silent prayers and a struggle to cope. Soft fabric clings onto his pale figure, and it feels like that of a burning log fire licking away at burnt skin. He watches the family pile into the ocean, porcelain blue sparkling like a thousand lazulis.
He tastes the bile that seeps into his mouth, relishing in sugar water that came from ice pops that they brought in the cooler. Grape lines his lips, and they stick with a purple that seems too familiar for comfort.
He did not want the others to know, what would they think when the strongest failed to defend himself from such a situation.
He feels his knees shake, tremble before he falls onto the ground.
Crash, the waves roar violently into the open.
Technoblade does not feel okay. Because although he pretends that he has the ego of a politician he knows well enough that he is broken.
They broke him.
It was his fault, because he should have read all the red flags that heeded him before. He should have pushed them away, done something to protect himself. But he couldn’t.
Technoblade still smells that freshly washed denim when his family rushes towards him, coughing up the storm that raged inside his heart. He feels long calloused fingers tread through knots that have built from the lack of self care, and he winces from the soreness of his scalp that he had previously pulled and torn upon. He catches a glimpse of blonde hair, crusted from the salt in the water and dirty from something of a natural pigment.
Voices fade to and fro his consciousness, and he’s vaguely aware of a plastic bottle that reaches his lips. Water glides down his throat and he accepts it’s intrusion hastily.
It was another hour before he could even tell them, stifled crying, shoulder’s shaking and fingers digging tightly into the palm of his hand. He felt shameful, smelled the sourness that Emanated from himself as he went off with the account.
Across an orange sunset that stretched upon a horizon, techno feels a warmth that he had not felt on so long. Hands wrapped around his back as a form of security and safety; something to lie back upon. The tears had stopped running, and his mind calm watching waters glide gently across fine sand.
This moment he shares starts to smell a lot like freshly washed denim.