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Killer’s face is flushed with shame. He just keeps on talking. Before the other man can do something drastic or burrow further into the aching, self-loathing spiral he’s fallen into, Dust wraps his fingers around his chin and tilts it up. That shuts him up quick.
They’re both tired. It’s late, later than either of them usually stay up and mindlessly talk, much less whatever this is. Dust doesn’t need to have their boss’s abilities to see the guilt wafting off of him, his tense shoulders and tight fists, the way he hunches like he’s ready to sprint out the door.
He’s not good at this, he knows. Both of them aren’t. They’re two strains of the same avoidant and deflecting guy, something that always ends up with the worst coping mechanisms. Dust has seen him flat on the floor, blacked out with a shattered bottle nearby. Killer’s watched him stumble through hallucinations and medicate with a smoke in one hand and rows of scars on his arms. He’s not going to be good at this, because he can hardly stand himself.
“You didn’t mean it.” He says, because he knows. Killer is leaning into his touch.
“No,” the other rasps. “I didn’t.”
That’s all he wanted. Dust feels the tightness in his chest ease. “Then I don’t care otherwise.”
He’s sure there’s a better way to do this. Softer, an approach that eases him the right way. But all he knows is this, and Killer won’t take anything kind or gentle in the same breath that someone like Tori or their dead friends would do for them. Dust wouldn’t either.
This is as kind as he can remember. “Come to the training room.”
It’s better than saying things they don’t mean. It’s better than saying “I love you,” it’s better than admitting you can still care under a thousand layers of thick apathetic LV and hundreds of executions. It’s easier not to talk. It’s better to be quiet, like being hushed under your bed while an unwanted doctor walks around in your bedroom.
Killer's rasp “Alright,” and this is routine that they settle into, relaxing into the safety of sharp knives and biting attacks and breathless strategy. There's more scars that litter his bones that are inflicted by the other than there are from himself, and they take pride in that. He's left his own marks all over him, enough to distract him from the way cracks keep coming from his hollow soul like they're stretching out and reaching, longing for something.
He can’t be good for Killer, not the way he needs. Dust isn’t even capable of it for himself. What they both need is someone stronger than them, someone stable and kind and stupid enough to love them both. Maybe not even that, but enough patience to work through the mangled scar tissue that remains of whoever 'Sans' was.
But Dust can at least do this- take his mind off it briefly. Better than the bottle or the case in their pockets. Better if it’s him. (He's selfish, because he wants this. He wants it to be this way, so he can at least keep Killer to himself without mockery or without question. In this way, at least he feels like someone wants him, someone needs him for a use that he can do, that he's good at. A breath of something he can fulfill properly.)
(Dust will never admit to himself that he wants Killer, and he means it in the way that he feels so alive when Killer grins at him. When the knife splits the air between them both, sharper than the corners of those teeth, cutting and biting through him, leaving him dripping blood inside and outside. His love is draining out of him every time they meet on the training room mats, leaves marks on the floor and on the glint of Killer's knives, and he's satisfied- to exist. To stain him, briefly, temporarily. Because anything more than that would be too much to commit, and Dust can't keep a promise to save his life. Killer can't either.)
(But he needs him.)
(He's realized he needs him. And anything more words than what's unofficially allowed to be spoken between them is a burden. Because all Dust wants is whatever scraps he can get from Killer, if it's his dust, his bones, his tears and sweat or the taste of his blood in Dust's mouth, he'll do anything. Because Dust's love is metallic, it's blood, it's sharp. It's hungry. It's so, awfully, lonely.)
(He wants more every time he sees Killer. And to know that Killer is dying, slowly, rotting inside like a carcass in the dirt from the agony of his soul makes Dust feel something twisted and slimy, but most of all, satisfied. Because it means he'll always come back to Dust for more blood. That Dust will always see him, even if it's lying with his back in a puddle of his blood.)
He won’t say he’s good. That doing this doesn’t serve him in some way, because nothing he does is selfless or kind anymore. But Dust never claimed to be good the way he used to be, the way Sans never really was. He wants this. He wants him so badly. And this is all the love Dust has left to show him.