> After you’ve said your piece, the first words out of his mouth immediately make you recoil. At least, internally. You quickly find yourself in some very uncomfortable waters--no pun intended, for once. Of course, he sympathizes with your issue regarding immortality, but overall the things he says make it really clear to you that he doesn’t know what you’re going through. There’s so much that he says that you can’t even begin to unpack it all in your head, let alone respond to it.
> He might have a point about running away from your problems, though. Still, you wind up exhaling a half-silent scoff at what he says.
“You and Kay? Helping me with my problems? Kip, the two of you could not even begin to help me with my problems. I get that you have, a really REALLY fucked up past, and that it’s painful, and I’m not saying this to undermine what you’ve been through. But that being said, you don’t get to sit there and undermine what I am going through, what I will never not be going through. Your trauma can fuck you up a lot of ways, but guess what? This isn’t about you. You get to CHOOSE what happens from here, you get to do what you want, you’re--you’re allowed to fuckin’ HEAL if you want to, or you can wallow in pain for the rest of your life, but that’s your choice.”
> Oh, those are tears. Not tears of sadness, or happiness, or shame. Not the same tears you shed for Kay or Johnny. You’re mourning your own freedom, and you’re pissed that he doesn’t understand that. Your fists are balled up at your sides. Your brain is screaming at you, telling you you came to APOLOGIZE but gods damn it, Kay understood. Johnny understood.
“I can never heal. My hands and legs and chest and whatever else my molten upchuck touches will always be scarred at the least and on bad days? Fuckin forget it, I see bone and blood and puss. And I have to drag my ass out of bed every fuckin’ day and take care of myself, because nobody’s gonna do it for me. Have you ever had your skin glued to the floor with metal, Kip? Can you fucking IMAGINE, even, for a second, the two of us sleeping together and waking up one day to third degree burns because I ate some bad pasta and threw up on you while we were asleep? Why would you--”
> Your throat is hot, your face is hot, your stomach is hot. You make the mistake of thinking it’s just your temper, despite years of experience telling you otherwise. You open your mouth to say another thing and a fresh, hot, and glowing liquid rolls up your throat. You duck your head and turn away right before it pushes out of your lips and into your--luckily gloved--waiting hands. Gods. You need a moment. You feel so tired.
