Re: Marvel: Cris & Sam
He didn't stop her from standing. He climbed after her, frenetic expulsion of some latent reserve of energy, and he was right there when she started beating her finger against her sternum. She told him before, when she was like this, fragile, he couldn't get mad like he did. She couldn't take it. She was already shattered now, like that pipe on the cement, nothing, acridity bubbling still on shards, but he couldn't just sit there on the bed. He couldn't. Cris wasn't good at that kinda thing. He never had been.
'You're like this,' she told him. ¿Para qué?
"I DON'T WANT YOU TO BLINK AND BE BETTER." It wasn't a yell, but it was close, something that he cut off as hard as he could at the 'fuck you.' He paced, away from her, over to another one of the old, metal chairs, plasticine leather for cushions, foam stuffed beneath them flattened by decades of asses. It was obvious from the tension in his muscles, he wanted nothing more than to pick it up and hurl it, but he didn't. He forced himself away from it, jaw tight and twitching, and his hands balled into fists. Faster. Faster. He prickled. "I'm not trying to change you! You always think I am! You always think you know—I'm trying to tell you—I'm just—" He turned on Sam. "Fuck you too." Vicious. "You're what you are. I'm what I am. But, it's all just you. What you feel. Me? I'm pressure. I'm too much. I'm not the right guy." Cris came close to Sam, and he snatched the hand she was using to stab herself with her finger, and he held it, to keep her from bruising the skin beneath the denim. "Mami, I don't got any pride left either, huh? I was on my knees for you. Asking you to stay with me. Begging you. Asking fucking NEIL to help you, the last fucking thing I wanna do. I feel things and all you tell me? 'Oh, you didn't really love her, papi. Oh, you don't know me. Oh, Cris.' I can't make you believe anything, mami. I got all this stuff I wanna say and I can't—"
He dropped her hand. He walked to the chair in front of the door, hesitated, and circled back. He knew she was compressing stuff and it was eating at her—Micah, Ian, Joey, now Neil, all this stuff she thought was on her, or stuff she couldn't forget, and he couldn't help with that, no matter what he did. He knew that. He knew this wasn't his stuff. It was her. She was right about that.
"I don't think you want it—this. I think you'd give anything to not have it." Cris palmed his eye, wiping away some fringe of tears. "I don't know what you're feelin', lo sé, but—All I want—I'd stay, begging and pleading on my knees, every day, if I thought it would help you, if I thought you wanted it." He went back to the girl and he stared down at her. "You keep tryin', mami. Whatever you want. To push me away. To confirm whatever it is you got in your head, about how it's all gonna end up like it did before. To prove to yourself that you deserve the shit that happens to you. You do whatever the fuck you want. I'm not goin' anywhere. You got that?"