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Arlo Thorne was a monster. And he was the worst kind of monster because he didn’t understand that he was one.
I love you, Cadoc. Don’t stop.
“You taste like regret but don’t feel like it.”
“Do not laugh into my open wound!”
This made me CACKLE
“When you asked me what kind of pain I had to need morphine…it’s the kind of pain that makes me want to forget I’m alive.”
“You can’t chase pleasure when pain is in your way.”
Chase the pain and make it pleasurable. Don’t ignore the pain and hope for pleasure without it. You can’t do that anymore.”
“You pick the girls, even though you know.” His lips tickled against my neck, and his thumb brushed over the head of my cock. “You chase the panic, not the pain. You bring the girls knowing you’ll have a panic attack, but you like it!” He barked out a woof. “You like the panic because he comes with the panic!” He howled at the sky. “You hear him in the panic, don’t you, Cadoc Dire?”
Betrayal. I was with another man. Guilt. I liked it. Shame. I hated liking it, but not enough to stop. Pain. I chased it.
“I hate you for healing me while making me sicker.”
Wherever this life took us, we’d go together because we were two pin-pricked voodoo dolls, tied together, feeling each other’s pain in different places.
“You keep peace without feeling peaceful. You do good for bad reasons. You are bad for your own reasons. You are loyal to a lake.” Keiran tensed, groaning at something. “You are Cadoc Dire.” He winced, stiffening on my lap. “The man who craves the temptation of the soot at the bottom of a lake while your head soars with eagles.”
“I told you, I’m not afraid of them. The thought of them simply repulses me.” His eyes found mine. “But…not yours. Not with you. Only you.”
“You’re a baited trap. A lit fuse. An unstable mix of chemicals.”
We were all just lost in some chaotic life that was dangerous enough to fear but not organized enough to face.
“To beat fear, you must beat your mind,” Keiran went on. “To chase chaos, you must become chaotic.”
“Because once he finds the chaos, all he’ll feel is pleasure.”
He felt him because I felt him. He felt him because we brought him here together. We were chasing fear, chasing pain, chasing chaos, and chasing Zander.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I’m sorry I think it! I’m sorry I feel it! I’m sorry I fucking want it,” he snarled, his fist pumping his cock even harder now, furiously. “I’ll never do it.”
Cadoc never learned tenderness until he met Zan, and even then, his love language was brutality.
I’d swallow every fucking drop of his cum, even if I hated it, just so that he never had to look at it.
True love
“Don’t die now. I can’t…I can’t live in this fucked up world without hating you.”
I love their hateful codependency
Maybe the second promise of our lives. First to Zan, to protect each other, and now to one another, to let our hate burn fierce, and fuel the fires of our lives. It was enough.
I lost myself in him. I found myself in him.
Cages feel familiar. I think I was in one once.
The war isn’t coming. The war is within.
I am half of something. Nothing whole. I spoke to you for two years; it’s not my fault you didn’t hear me.
I see him but do not know him. I feel him but cannot touch him. I follow him but cannot catch him.
I’m already dead, and dead things can’t die.
“I fucking pick you too, Zaden. Every goddamn time. I pick you.”
I looked at him, seeing and not seeing his face. “You know Finn?” “Yeah, and if you leave him, he’ll die because of it. And if you leave my boyfriend, he’ll die, too. He needs you, Zaden. He needs you to help him keep Keiran.”
“I’m scared of losing you. Of missing you. Of wanting you more than you want me. Of pushing you away when you get tired of my phobias. Of having you and losing you in the same lifetime. I…I don’t think I’d survive it.”
I needed him for my sanity, and no matter what happened in this fucked up world with this fucked up person, I’d pick him, too.
“When and if you’re ready, Finnegan, I want you in every way I can have you.”
I’d never been religious, and being in here somehow made me feel closer to the devil, but for whatever reason, my devil didn’t have horns and a pitchfork. Mine had skeleton paint and a bloody nose.
He was a poet and a riddler, a dreamer and a stalker, and he was mine.
“You taste like a broken heart and a nightmare.” “Yes.” “Like half of something, but no longer trapped in freedom.”
“You’re mine now. Shackled to me with no freedom.”
“I’m the actor, Cadoc Dire. I’m the secret.” He smiled dramatically at the gathering crowd. “And I’m about to be revealed.”
“You used rockets and launched bodies straight into the afterlife. I got punished for it.”
“Chase resolution.”
My mind broke so Zander’s body didn’t have to. My brain bled so Zander’s skin wouldn’t have to as badly. My mental capacity to love and be loved was obliterated so that Zander could love freely.
“Because, you dumb fuck. I see you, okay? I see it now and I saw it back then, but I never knew how to do anything about it.”
“To appreciate safety, you must first know danger,” he said quietly. “To understand sanity, you must experience insanity. To know bravery, you must conquer fear.”
“I need to terrorize you so I can make you feel safe. I need to cage you to protect you. I need to put you in danger so I can bring you to safety. I need to own you so I can give you back power.”
“You chased pain and survived, you’re still living after chasing chaos, and you caught rapture by the scruff of its neck before letting it get away. You’re still breathing.”
“Chase the pain!” Keiran howled. “Chase the chaos!” He ground into me. “Chase rapture and fear!”
“Chase death, Cadoc Dire.”
Zan was the life I lived for. He was everything to me, the light in my dark world and the only thing that kept me sane. But Keiran was my tether to insanity, my reminder to keep living despite the pain, the chaos, and the fear. Keiran was new hopes combined with old dreams, mixed in with the threat of disappearance.
