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“I don’t need you,” he repeats. “I can survive without you. At least until the curse takes me. But I can do it. I can live on my own.” I swallow, too afraid to say anything. “But I pick you,”
“I pick you as mine. I pick you to turn me into something I’ve never been before. I choose you to show me a way of life I’ve never lived. I don’t need you, Krypt. I fucking want you.”
He’s an idiot! He’s fucking mine. “I want you,” he repeats. “Don’t. Stop wanting me.” “I can’t.” He can’t. He can’t. He can’t.
I’m going to kill him with my want, and he has no idea how dangerous my love can be. My love is warped. It doesn’t feel the same as it does to others. It’s alarming and scary and dangerous. It’s a complete fall into obsession and the obliteration of everything else. If Remiel becomes the focus of my love, it will annihilate him. Wipe him out. Strip him bare and turn him into a husk of his former self. He’ll die.
I’m overstimulated and incapable of processing my thoughts. Because, for once, they’re mingled with feelings I can’t fathom. Feelings I’ve never felt before. Feelings I don’t understand. Feelings I can’t name. This was supposed to be about fear. Now I’m the one who’s terrified.
I’ve been in more pain, suffered more, hurt emotionally harder, and been the most terrified of my life since meeting Krypt, yet the feeling of life is so intense it makes me feel truly alive for the first time in my pitiful existence.
being near him now, it’s not sex I’m craving. It’s him. His attention and his anger. I don’t deserve more than that, but I want it anyway. I want him to understand me and become as sick as I am, to understand that maybe we’re matched because we’re both so broken. His brokenness led him to me, and my brokenness helped empower him. We’re matched in pain, but both undeserving of each other.
“Don’t treat me like a boyfriend, Remiel.”
“You already fucking branded me and made me yours, so… let me be yours. Let me play pretend.”
“Fuck you, Remiel! Fuck you for being the worst hero!” I smack his face and he throws up all over my lap. “Fuck you!”
“Remiel!” I scream in his face. Because his six minutes were cut in half by that pill, but it’s me who is experiencing a highlight reel of all my regrets.
I should have paid more attention to him. I should have seen this coming when he acted differently today. I should have taken that mad sheen in his eyes more seriously, and I should have let my brother and Ghost help me. I should have treated him better, showed him how strong he is, proved to him he’s important to me so he never had to ask. I should have answered all his questions instead of goading him about what it means for me to snap.
Because I got attached. I don’t know what love is, but I know what obsession is, and Remiel is the focus of my life. I’ve never had an obsession quite like him, and the loss of it feels too much. It’s impossible. It’s wrong. There’s no longer a Krypt if there isn’t a hero.
How fucking dare he test me like this?! How fucking dare he show me that I’m not as strong as his family curse? How fucking dare he try to leave me when our bargain is not yet met and my monsters were just starting to warm to him?
“You are important to me.”
Every time I look at the way you swallow or the bob of your throat, I’ll shatter. Because it broke me, Remiel.”
“Please.” “Please, what?” He leans forward, making the manacles rattle. “Please… please kiss me.”
To kiss is to consume. It’s a claim. A chance to steal oxygen and mingle exhales.
I’m a twenty-eight-year-old man, and Remiel Sauder is the first person I’ve kissed.
He does it again, opening and closing slowly, kissing me with no tongue but every emotion ranging from lust to fear to shame and pain.
It hardens my cock but softens my heart, slowing time and defying my instincts.
I groan, but it’s not a savage sound. It’s relief and longing, surprise and mercy. From a kiss with no tongue. A kiss with impact. A kiss that scares me and tastes like blood. Because I feel it everywhere. I feel.
“I want you, too, Remiel. I pick you, too.”
“And I want your sickness to meet mine, and whenever we get too tainted and Moros can’t handle us anymore, I want to die sick with you.”
This part of your body is forever tainted. Every time I look at the way you swallow or the bob of your throat, I’ll shatter. Because it broke me, Remiel.
It breeds dark people, but it also creates a community of tainted loyalty. We might be twisted, but we’re twisted together,
“I kind of hope we… if there is a we, I hope it becomes more of a partnership. It doesn’t have to be equal. You give what I need and I give what you need, even if it’s unhealthy. Love, to me, is caring enough about someone to know what they need and wanting to give it to them. It doesn’t have to be romance and kindness and compassion. It can be rough and unhinged and aggressive if that’s the language we speak it in.” He looks up at me. “I barely know you, Krypt. I don’t know what you need because you’ve spent this whole time bringing me back to life. So I can’t love you, and you can’t love me
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Because my concept of love is obsession, and it’s morphing into something that comes with feelings and regrets.
A simple touch. Comfortable. I’m not a man who enjoys being touched in such a way. My hands cause harm and my body is a weapon, but with Remiel’s leg against mine, I don’t feel so dangerous. I feel at ease. So much so that the monsters inside me slumber.
I’m sick for wanting you, but you’re sick for taking me. We’re sick, Krypt.”
“And?”
“I like it.” He leans in, lips brushing my jaw. “Might even say I’m fucking obsessed with it.”
Nothing about us is healthy or even moral, but sometimes, two wrongs do make a right, and together, we’re something close to warped perfection.
Turns out, I do need him. He needs me.
We’re already weaved together, warped and twisted so all our parts meet, and I don’t want him to free me.
“Guess I am gay after all.” “No,” he growls, fingers digging into my nape. “You’re mine.”
“How can you do it?” he asks. “Do what?” “Hold my eyes.”
“Because mine are finally open,”
He closes his eyes, breathes deeply, and when they open again, every single one of his inner beasts blink back at me. Oh, there he is.
“Finally,” I groan, digging my fingers into his forearms. “I’m not the hero.”
“You’re fucking nothing, Remiel.”
“I’m not nothing,”
“I’m whatever you turned me into. You woke up all my hidden parts, and this is what you get. I’m yours, Krypt. Keegan. I’m fucking yours.”
Please, accept me. Please, want me. Please, show me I’m important to you.
“We’re sicker together, remember?”
“We’re sicker together, Krypt.”
“Mine,” he says, barely audible. “Even though you freed me, I’ll always be yours.”
Open your eyes and see me, Krypt. Look at me as yours and remember all the ways we fester together to create something poetically eternal. See my sickness and let it match yours, and when we’re combined as one, love me as an obsession.
“Mine. Are you mine?”
“Remiel, are you mine?”
