Page 120 of Fragile Facade
The room is silent and still despite how tumultuous my thoughts are. I’m making this about me again, but fuck, I can’t help it.
Because I’ve led him to where we areon purpose.I turned him into my loyal little lapdog. For as long as I’ve been rivalling him, I’ve wanted this power so I can hold it over his head. So, why the fuck am I not doing that? Why am I not forcing him to bow down to me? Why does he get away with things I’d never let anyone else get away with?
Why does his flushed skin excite me rather than repulse me? Blushing is a weakness. I’ve mastered the art of morphing my face into the exact expression I want it to wear, and anyone who blushes doesn’t have that skill. It means he’s mundane, not in control, and beneath me. I am superior to all these pathetic fools who can’t master their facial expressions, so why do I give him a pass? Maybe because it feeds my ego to know I’m the one who makes him blush…
Inwardly, I worry that he’s simply the coerced man I turned him into. I tricked him into loving me, so it can’t be real, can it? But maybe he tricked me, too. I’ve never been a protective person—at least, not towards another person. Sure, I helped save my brother, but I did that for selfish reasons. I wanted to be able to say I did it. But I protected Soren tonight without a selfish thought in my mind. Or did I? Maybe I publicly made him mine, and it embarrassed me to be tied to a man the town doubted.
Fuck. What is real?!
How can I be sure?
He asked for ninety seconds with me, and the pressure of that is too much. These are his ninety seconds, yet I’m the one freaking out because everything I know about myself doesn’t align with this version of me who loves a man. Something changed, and I don’t know whether to blame him for it or take credit for it.
Because whatever piece of me got left behind in Krypt’s bedroom that night we played piano… Well, it got added back to me when Soren said he loved me in the same room. I’m unfamiliar with this old part of me, resenting it as much as I’m cherishing it.
“What’re you freaking out about?” he asks.
“Nothing.” I shrug my shoulder to get him off it. Standing, I pace the room, giving him my back because I don’t want him to see my face. I can feel his eyes on me, though, and it sets me on edge enough that I leave the room. Walking into the adjoining room, my boots scuff the stone floors and my throat tightens up, questions and answers and insecurities getting clogged there because I refuse to let them out.
The town is turning on him. He loves me. I love him. I don’t understand any of it. He says love is ‘fucking getting it’ and now I’m doubting my ability to love because I sure as hell don’t get it. It just happened. Was Psych right? Do I use love as a strategic tool to further my own agenda?
But other than giving me attentive praise, good sex, and a god complex, what the hell does Soren do for my agenda? He’s nothing but a pain in the ass who entices my mind. But… I sought him out years agobecausehe’s a pain in my ass who entices my mind. My life was stagnant, and then he started fighting back, and things have been exciting since. I’d be bored without him constantly challenging me, but I never saw the feelings coming. I just wanted to prove to him that I’m a more worthy opponent than Death, and now look at where we are.
In an abnormal relationship that has no boundaries and no real goals. No definition. No idea what love means for us, yet claiming to feel it regardless. We’re liars and hypocrites for declaring an emotion we can’t grasp, yet we’re both too stubborn to admit we don’t know what it is.
I’ve wandered so far that my feet stop in front of the grand piano in the music room. I fucking hate it. I love it. I want to play it but I don’t want to touch it. What will my music say? Will I know what it’s implying?
I sit, confused by the feel of the bench beneath my ass. It’s nostalgic, yet unfamiliar. Holding my hands above the keys without touching them, I look down to take in the whole picture. My swollen knuckles, split and still bleeding, above ivory keys so aged but pristine. How do the two go together? My hands cause harm when balled into fists, but if I spread my fingers and place them on the keys, they create such beauty.
I know Soren is listening. I’m trying not to care.
When I place my fingertips on the keys, my ribs crack open and my heart pours out. Horribly, at first. The notes are all wrong, misplaced and stuttered. The music isn’t flowing. My fingers are too swollen to reach where they need to. But as they loosen and my heart bleeds, I begin to create music. It’s real, honest, from the depths of me that I haven’t touched in so many years. I bring life to feelings that don’t make sense.
Love conflicts with my personality. Shame hurts my ego, but compassion feels foreign and right. Self-appreciation is my main setting, but appreciating Soren becomes natural.
I’m all twisted up, doubting myself when I haven’t doubted myself since before I killed our parents. That night I played piano with my brother and lost a part of me to that music. It’s returning to me now, savage and abrupt. It hurts because I want it, but heals because I need it.
My music turns into a song, and when I close my eyes to feel the notes, I realize what they’re saying. They’re telling me it’s okay to be vulnerable with him, that it’s not a weakness to love a man who doesn’t know how to love because neither do I—our version of it can be different. The song tells me that together, we’ll live forever, even if we die. It’ll be a twisted trip from here to there, the afterlife he seeks and the control I crave. And the hardest part about all of it is the realization that I don’t have to manipulate him into any of it. He’s here willingly, and I think that might hurt the most.
I’m worth it. He sees me as worth it.
The piano music bounces off the echoey walls of the asylum, and the hush that falls over the halls is respect. Because the patients are listening, and whatever they’re hearing from my music is the same way I feel in bed, listening to Soren play the violin from his room. The ability to feel and heal in private.
My bloody, busted knuckles aren’t hurting anyone but me at the moment, and as I shift the sadness into something dark and beautiful, my eyes water while they stay closed. Especially when Soren’s back presses to mine, his ass behind me on the wide bench seat. He sits there, listening, breathing, letting me feel his heart beating in my chest while I remember what it feels like to play piano.
I sense it. His music is desperately hoping to join mine. I’m so afraid of it that I play louder, hoping to drown out the sounds of his violin if he attempts to play with me.
But then I hear it. The strings of his violin mix with the keys of my piano. I choke on some sense of self, a feeling of home like I’ve never had before as our music melds, meshing together seamlessly despite how deeply it hurts.
Then he playswithme, and our music becomes a real song.
And the notes of his violin are declarations, so I press the keys and step on the pedals, admitting to everything that’s hard to say. And it feels good, so good it hurts more, that healing kind of pain that rejuvenates your soul but drains your energy.
Because the town turned on Soren.
Because I love Soren.
Because I don’t know how to cope with either.
