Page 119 of Fragile Facade
I try to blink. I can’t.
“Killian, look at me. Look at me standing right fucking here. You’re the one who’s hurt.” He touches my bloody knuckles. My eyes shift to the blood dripping down from his temple. He touches it, and I bristle, jittering worse than Facts does. Soren smirks at me, and I don’t understand why. Pressing his blood to my lips with his fingers, he says, “Oh, please. You’ve brought me way closer to death than any of them ever have, baby.”
Baby.
A crack in my character. Enough of one that I can rip the persona away and see something more than encroaching blackness. I suck in a quick breath, my throat spasming around it.
“Ninety seconds, Kill. I need it with you.” He leans in, wrapping his arms around my neck and holding me there until I settle enough to hold him back. I pull on his lower back, pressing us flush together so I can feel his heart in my chest, physical proof that he’s here, alive, okay.
Still mine.
I lean my temple against his bloody one and breathe.
42
HIS STRINGS, MY KEYS
RIOT
Soren’s fingers are gentle,but the antiseptic stings. He’s quiet as he cleans my knuckles, and I’m quiet because no one has ever taken care of me before. I figured I never needed it. I can take care of myself, and no one is good enough to fix me, but this is nice. He’s doting on me… because he brought me to the patient ward of the asylum, so we don’t have to go back to Vile House yet.
“You worried a few split knuckles are gonna do me in? I’m tougher than that, sweetheart.”
Soren pours acidic liquid onto my open wounds and I hiss through the pain. “Don’t be a dick right now. I need… I just need you not to be a dick.”
I smile as he cleans up the last knuckle but doesn’t let my hand go. “Tell me. Uh, what do you need?” I ask. When he looks at me weird for asking, I add, “Never been good at that part. I know what I need. Not anyone else.”
Though that might be a lie because I’ve always understood when he needs a brush with danger and death.
He drops the gauze and leans back against the stone wall of the empty family visiting room we’re hiding out in, hand in mine, resting on my thigh. The room is mostly dim, the only light coming from a few lamps in the corners. I’ve spent a lot of time in the asylum, but never in here. It’s quiet and empty, big enough for hiding in and open enough to contain our energies.
He rubs the scabs still healing on his jaw, the three words grounding him. “I’m trying to keep a level head and believe what Krypt said about everyone just being scared.”
“But?”
“But it fucking guts me when I’m doubted. I had to tolerate that gang for years and now that I’m out I’m still fucking paying for it. They doubt me. Again,” he snaps, eyes closing and breaths deepening to calm himself. “So, just don’t doubt me.”
“I don’t.”
“You once mocked me for being the guy who craves the spotlight but succeeds in the dark.”
“I did.”
Slowly, Soren leans over until his cheek rests on my shoulder. It’s so jarringly perfect that I stop breathing, loving this moment more than I ever thought I would. “Right now, I just want to hide in the dark with you.”
I’m conflicted. On one hand, I want to ask him why he picked me. On the other hand, Iknowhe picked me because I’m strong enough to handle him. He sees himself as superior to his family, and I see myself as superior to him. Soren is a mindfuck because he lies to himself, believes in himself to an ungodly level, and sees literally every other person as beneath him. But somewhere along the way, he unknowingly put me on a pedestal. I’m eager to stand on it, but I wonder if he knows how many different masks I wear while looking down at him from my platform.
He wanted Death? I got it for him.
He wanted someone to not stop when he said no? I did that.
He needed the Sauder curse to end? I fucking ended it.
He wanted to stop trying so hard to hold himself together? I fucking gave him that.
He wanted to hold my hand? You’re goddamn right I manipulated him into wanting it by holding that little girl’s hand.
He wanted to be superior? I did that for him when I sacrificed myself in Reaper City, putting him first just to be the stitch in his side for the rest of his life.I’mhis saviour!
