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You can’t describe the sharp recoil in the depths of your stomach when you try to pull away, only to realize that the dampness of his blood-soaked shirt clings to your own, tethering you to him before it falls back with a sickening sound as it disconnects.
Holding him in your arms, almost cradling his head as his body weighs against you, you’re doing everything you can to hold him up while keeping your eyes fixed on his hands, tender as they were now with the force he had struck them with before, blood engraving into their creases from clutching the array of wounds across his torso.
It was too dark out to fully survey the extent of the damage against him, aside from the visibly darker patches on his clothes. There’s a moment of panic at that, where you hands aimlessly twitch, unsure where to go, because you can barely see the depth of the cuts in him, can’t tell how many there are, can’t tell how deadly they are, can’t get the damn bile in the back of your throat to slink back into your sloshing gut and stay there.
It doesn’t help either that he chooses to open his damn mouth when you’re desperately trying to form a coherent thought. It almost hurts your ears (and something else, you think, in the depths of your chest) when he coughs, and his whole body shakes with it. You feel his eyes on you, calculating something you don’t understand.
“Why are your hands shaking?” His brows crease, his eyes half-libbed (don’t you dare close your eyes), before finding the nerve to roll them at you (nevermind, keep them closed for all I care). “Ah, are you doubting me already?”
You feel like you barely hear him as you try to force a thought to form, let alone process the tone that lies beneath every syllable he breathes out. You definitely can’t answer him. You only manage to force out, “Let me—I’ll help you sit up, or should I…”
Your brain, the ever-useless thing that it is, stalls for a moment far too long as your hands continue to stay put in their uncertainty, your voice dissipating, because apparently your body is not your own as it doesn’t want to listen, and you’re tipping on the edge of panic the longer you don’t actually do something—
The slap of skin hitting the concrete ground brings you back to yourself, and a part of you finally moves as your head snaps to the sound, his hand positioned on the ground.
The smallest grunt slips past his lips. “Sweetie, I don't know whether to applaud the gall you have to assume that a few half-baked cuts can tame me, or—”
An attempt to sit up is made, and his body immediately tugs him back down before you can even register the alarm in your head and scold him for what a stupid idea it is to try that right now. A deep groan is pulled from him as he falls back against you, hoarse and almost painful, and you feel his muscles tense when you instinctively place a hand on his shoulder in a meek attempt to stop him from moving again. You suck in a breath that sounds pathetically close to a sob. Too much is happening in too little time for you to fully process any of it.
For a moment, you clutch at your heart with your free hand, breathing nearly as irregular as his. It feels like it’s going to thump thump out of your chest.
You feel an urge to punch him square in the face, at the same time your eyes start to feel glassy.
He doesn’t try to move again at the moment, at least, and that’s the only thing giving you reason to maintain your hold on your dwindling sanity right now. Stubborn as he is, at least it looks like he knows when to quit. Sometimes, anyway.
Though he doesn’t know when to quit with his ever-running mouth, it seems.
“Your hands are freezing, you know,” he murmurs, almost…sad? Pitying? You can’t tell, and it only makes your head hurt more trying to rationalize why he would sound like that. “Perhaps I should warm them…”
“Don’t say stuff like that.” You push, a little too quick, too loud, and you wince at yourself. Shake your head, try not to linger on it, or the sudden heat running up your neck. You mutter, “And we’re both too unstable for that right now.” That, too, you instantly regret, because you absolutely would not have admitted anything like that out loud around him if you weren’t too busy trying not to panic.
A violent shake of your head, a gaze up into the ashen abyss above. I’m really just fucking up left and right tonight, aren’t I?
“Can you just do what I say?” you burst, faster than your body can will itself to move, but as loud as your mind is screeching at you to get him somewhere safe. But your mind is unhelpful, as it always is, because it can’t stop asking questions that don’t matter now and that you don’t need or want an answer to. Why do you have to fight me on everything? Why am I even helping you? Why can’t you leave me alone? Why did you do this for me? Why? Why?
None of those questions tumble past your lips. You don’t allow it. You don’t quite know if you even could if you wanted to when you finally look at him fully, where small beads of sweat slowly travel down his temple as his brows furrow, his eye twitching.
Yet he has the nerve to look at you like his pain is just a moderate annoyance. And maybe it’d be convincing to anyone else. But you know better.
You know it hurts. He just doesn’t want you to see it.
For some reason, the thought of that hurts you.
“Please,” you plead. You’d cringe, recoil into yourself at the tone of it, if you didn’t need your body to stay strong for him.
A brief pause, one where you very carefully choose not to look in his eyes, before a smallest sliver of mercy finds its way to you when you swear you can feel his resolve crumble, the tension in his body loosening as he sighs. “It’s your lucky day, sweetie. I’m not exactly in the mood or position to negotiate right now.”
He smirks again, but it looks wrong. Uncertain. Wonky. Like he’s actively putting effort into not letting his face fall into something darker. “I’ll be cooperative. Though, maybe—” Another twitch when he tries to put some of his weight on his elbow, briefly but there, before a weak attempt to conceal it as if the pace of his words can cover it. “A place not so…exposed would be better suited for our little back-and-forth, sweetie. If you can bear to be with me any longer, that is.”
Why do you always know how to make my chest hurt?
You don’t realize how much your grip on his shoulders tightens until he winces, barely suppressing a hiss.
The back of your eyes burns.
Throat bobbing as you swallow, you look up, left, away, anywhere that isn’t at him before immediately failing, unblinking as you watch how his wet clothes crease when you force him to stand with you. He lets out a noise that sounds nothing like the Sylus you’ve come to know (the thought that you could ever possibly know him is so absurd that it would probably pull a bitter laugh from your gut, if the situation now allowed anything humorous to slip through its tender cracks), but you try not to linger on it, not unless you want whatever you just forced down your throat to come back up again. You don’t want to think about why his pain would have that effect on you, either.
A toned arm, only a few specks of the crimson mess marking it, while the rest decorates his lower body, is slung over your shoulder, tactlessly flopping and almost throwing you off balance under the unexpected weight. Quickly correcting yourself, you wound your other arm around his torso with only a mild sense of irritation (before an immediate guilt burns in the back of your throat, because what right do you have to feel any vexation towards him right now), keeping him as upright as you could despite the test of strength that his build requires.
It takes a second, then a minute, then another, each moment giving way for the pit in your stomach to deepen as the two of you just stand together after he mutters a hardened wait, in a tone you would’ve thought was an order if not for the smallest tremor at the tail end of it. In any other circumstance, you would’ve scoffed at the attempt to try to command you, glared at him incredulously, ask who the hell he thought you were, but you can’t muster that familiar urge to stand toe-to-toe with him now. It doesn’t matter how much he may try to break the thickness of the air with his lame attempts at dispelling your worries, dismissing his own pain. He can only conceal so much of it from you.
You get that feeling again, that you don’t like how much you hate the thought of him hiding something from you.
He doesn’t give you time to linger on what that hate means for long, thankfully. He’s just as merciful in finally falling as silent as he can, even when you know he has to feel the unsteadiness of your hands. With his body against yours, you feel the small flex in his leg once, twice, before he takes a cautious step, then another. You follow at first, then begin to lead when his steps grow more sure of themselves. He doesn’t protest or say anything else. You can feel him trying to control his breathing as you guide him.
Strangely, in the distance of your battered mind, an offhand remark about how you both almost look like drunkards staggering home together after a night out is planted, before quickly being uprooted, shamed for daring to input such a time-inappropriate idea in your head.
Or maybe it's shunned for its strange sense of familiarity. Not quite domestic—it’s too barbaric for that, oddly unfitting for him despite the brutality you’ve once (and still do, you force yourself to remember) intertwined with your identity of him—nor could you imagine Sylus willingly idling in the type of bars that you’ve become accustomed to, but the image almost makes it seem like something softer between you and him is possible. Something that actually...
That’s not a possibility, though. Despite the clear lack of self-preservation skills that you’ve demonstrated tonight, of which you’ll rightfully berate yourself for whenever you try to shut your eyes for the long nights to come after this is over, you at least like to believe that you aren’t an irrational person. That you know yourself well enough. Whenever you look at him, it's like his face ripples, churning and inverted, the man who once called you a disappointment and forced his hand on yours, standing in front of you. It doesn’t matter what mask he tries to put on at the moment. It doesn’t matter how disturbingly convincing the draw of his voice and intensity of his actions can be at times. It doesn’t matter that you’ve been feeling your muscles begin to tense less and less the longer you’ve been around him. It doesn’t matter that he goes out of his way to—to do shit like this, bleeding on your behalf—
No, no. Not for you. It isn’t for you. It’s for the sake of business.
Right. Whatever part of your mind had lent itself to that restless rambling pinches, seizes, and halts. Corrects itself.
There’s nothing between you two. This is transactional. This, like all things between you, is another debt to be repaid when the time comes. There’s some sort of use for you in his world, whatever that may be, that requires your heart to still beat. Whatever false emotion he tries to portray through his movements is just that: a display of his profession in deceit. In his eyes, you’re a cog in the ever-running, disciplined, obedient machine. You’re strong, and he sees that, but nothing beyond it. Just as you see nothing beyond his ruthless spirit, the blood that will forever stain his battered knuckles, the cruelty that encapsulates the foundation of his soul. It’s a mutual understanding of the other’s utility, and the knowledge to take advantage of it. There’s nothing else.
As the pair of you trudge forward, you try to catch a glimpse of him through the corner of your eye. You’re not too sure what for. Or, that's what you convince yourself.
You have to suppress a jolt, but the spark in your spine can’t be helped.
He’s looking at you. Unblinking. Indecipherable.
Something aches in your chest. You look away.
There’s nothing between you at all.