Re: Livingroom: Marta / Seven
Seven knew about acid. He knew about feeling corroded, burned-out and made hollow from the inside so that it spread and his flesh and his bone sizzled away, and all that left was a hard, hot core of fury - somewhere inside that anger was something darker, more sad, but it was wrapped up tight in molten heat. It was that acid that melted his edges into blades meant to cut the defence of her anger (that paled, silhouetted in the corona of Seven’s own, burning bright, he knew). It wasn’t on purpose in the sense that it wasn’t a conscious choice. It was just a thing that lived in him, that churned in the middle of him and built up like steam boiling under a lid that had been bolted down years ago.
He felt each quickening rise and fall of her chest like a dip in the gravity of their little universe, right there in the universe where it swirled poisonous novas together into something huge and ugly and dangerous. Felt it like the air from her lungs seared his skin, left pink and white blisters across the backs of his hands. The gravity shifted and reeled him in because he could barely hear her over the chatter that hadn’t entirely faded away around them, yeah? At least, thankfully, he managed to lean in and make them out without having to take a step further into her orbit. That relief, its cause was both a conscious desire to not physically intimidate her, and a fear that he might not be able to step away again.
The thundercloud in his face grew darker as she spoke for him again, business as fucking usual, lighting crackling behind the blue of his eyes. “If it were up to me,” he began, and his voice trembled now, like the air of a storm before the noise and the electricity rolled in to lay waste. “Then we wouldn’t be in this fucking position. I would have figured out how to stop you from leaving.” He gestured at her with a wave of his hand, then at the air behind him, meant to indicate the broad expanse of agony that lay in their past. “How to stop you from abandoning her. And yeah, I used to give a shit about you leaving me, too, but I don’t anymore.” His voice had flattened out from its quake somewhat, and he actually didn’t sound bitter at this last - because it was true, yeah? He'd accepted that what she'd done was for the best.
“It’s just her. And the fact that you think she’s ‘tiny’ enough to keep something like this from her?” Another humourless laugh then, almost a scoff, but not quite meant as mocking. It even sounded a little pained, stretched tight and full of cracks where old hurt bled through, even creeping into his expression as he stared at her. “Just goes to show how fucking clueless you are about this shit, Marta. She already wants to meet you, she’s decided. So we’re doing this. And you don’t get to dictate my feelings about it, and I would never use my feelings to justify hurting her.” It was pointed, and yeah, now it was cruel, but that didn't mean it wasn't also the truth.