❝ —LISTEN , I TOLD YOU . ❞ in recoiling defense , he shrugs himself away from parrish’s reach , digging the bruise - battered knuckles harder down the small of his pockets . here he was again , always evading & evading , —since when did running become a defense mechanism ? maybe it was from seven years back , & him , cowering behind the oak drawer , dodging the shattered throw of his father’s beer bottle . oh elliot , what happened ? nothing . absolutely nothing at all . it’s always nothing . ❝ the bastard started it , oh actually , he was fuckin’ asking for it . next time i’ll send him off to a month - long vacation hospital . i hate him . ❞ truthfully , he could have evaded that too . the fight . of course , in flight or fight , flight was always an option — , but not for him . silently , he falters into a long solitude of silence , waiting for the familiar phrase to fall from his boyfriend’s lips : well . . want to talk about it ?
He opens his mouth to speak, to offer some sort of
supportive words, you_’re not alone, you can
talk to me. Please, god, talk to me. _But he feels like a broken record,
like he’s running in circles in the same way a dumbfounded dog
chases its tail and doesn’t know what to do once it catches
its “prey.” He debates reaching for
Elliot again, part of him desperate to maintain some kind of physical contact –
that way it wouldn’t seem so much like he was losing
his boyfriend to the firestorm of destruction welling up around him, engulfing
him like an unavoidable natural disaster to which he could only be a trembling
witness.
“At this rate, you_’re
both _going to wind up in the hospital. What’re you gonna do then, El?
Stab each other with scalpels when you’re asleep in your beds?”
He’s running out of things to say,
he feels it in the pit of his stomach. Running out of ways to put an optimistic
spin on it, running out of ways to distract Elliot from the pain he felt. There
was only so many times they could go out to eat together before the lack of
money was noticeable, and road trips, no matter how far the distance they
spanned, had to end someday.
There’s worry creasing his face, and
his hands still itching to be anywhere but stuffed inside his own pockets,
longing to examine Elliot’s bruises, so only he could
convince himself the wounds wouldn’t, in fact, be permanent
this time.
“I love you, Elliot…
That’s about all I know how to say when this happens. God,
sometimes _I _want to land a few
punches on the bastard.” He dips his gaze away for a
moment, waiting for the tidal waves of emotion to retreat from the shores of
his mind and wash back out to sea. When he’s recovered, he looks
back at his love, the love that makes his heart feel like it’s
_burning _some days when he stares a
little too deeply into those blue eyes.
He isn’t about to back down from this,
not this time, not right now. He reaches forward, knowing full well he was
risking being slapped or kicked or whatever else Elliot was capable of doing
when he felt like a cornered animal, and takes hold of Elliot’s
arm, all but _yanking _one of his wrist’s
free and out into the open light.
“Jesus, these look worse than last
time…” He breathes, looking down at the purple and blackened
flesh stretched across Elliot’s knuckles. “This
needs to stop. I-I don’t know how, but – you need to
leave that house.” He pauses for a moment, eyes
alight with an idea. “Why don’t
you come stay with me? Doesn’t have to be for long,
but, just enough until you heal. Seriously, El, you need time outside of there.
Please.”