[looking at people younger than me] you have your whole life ahead of you [looking at people older than me] you have your whole life ahead of you [looking at myself] its over
like the betrayal’s always going to be worse if they cared about you and it didn’t matter. someone discards you because they didn’t give a shit, then you can be angry about that, you can feel vindicated in that, you can get over it. but if they can look you in the eyes and say “I love you. I would make the same choice again.” You will never sleep peacefully again, is all.
“I thought they cared about me, but they were lying this whole time.” <- tired. boring. removes all the nuance of this relationship to make it easier to move on from.
“I thought they cared about me, and I was right, and every minute they were there for me, every time they said they were proud, every laugh we shared leaning against each other bruised and breathless, all of it was real. and they still left me behind. They could put their love aside. I couldn’t.” <- insane. will never leave you alone. reminds you that even the worst people are still people and can still care about even the ones they hurt the most and that undoes neither the harm nor the love.
shipping a consensual, safe & sane pairing all the while i'm shaking my head in disapproval so the audience knows i still love wildly toxic abusive fictional dynamics
zeke yeager x reader. 750 words. angst, mentions of suicide, canon compliant drama.
"you piss me off beyond belief."
"you are beyond belief," zeke sighs, tossing a baseball up and down from his spot laying on the couch. "reject god. you're a grown up."
"i'm already agnostic, zeke. that's not a revelation."
the war chief has no reaction, eyes stubbornly on the ceiling. "you're a revelation."
"are you high?"
"you wanna smell my breath and find out?" he huffs. "creep."
you roll your eyes, striding up to him from the front door of your apartment. you love the banter usually, but there's a time and a place, and this isn't one of them. "when were you planning on telling me?"
he doesn't even have the good grace to pretend he doesn't know what you're talking about. "you were bound to find out when i didn't show up at the bar anymore."
ass. son of an ass. adopted son of an ass. a grandson of an ass. asses all the way up and down and sideways too. "still would've liked to have known before everyone else. i had to see it in the newspaper. the newspaper."
"we don't even exist, legally. why should i tell you anything about the war?" he stretches his arms out, back arching against your cushions, no doubt rubbing that nasty tobacco smell all over them. you don't know why you put up with it. "i'll just be gone for a while. i won't die. i can't die."
zeke says it with the conviction of someone who's tried. and if he's to be believed, he has. cutting lengthwise in the bathtub until you bleed out is hard enough; harder still, according to him, is waking up after with the cuts already healed.
"sometimes," you sit down on the tail end of the couch, expecting him to pull his legs up, which he does, "i think you like making it hurt. that your existence is just some divine punishment."
he sighs, stormy eyes closing. "for you or for me?"
"both." you put your hands over your face, anywhere but here looking much more inviting. "obviously."
he sits up then, wrapping one hand around your shoulder. not romantic. friendly. or like a comrade. "trust me. it hurts me more."
you scoff, roll your eyes. "surely. my sparse emotional hurt could never compare to yours." at this, you push his hand off of you. "you and the beast feel so much more than i ever could."
"oh, don't bring the ape into this," he sighs, runs a hand through sweaty blond locks. "even without the beast, it's enough."
he's lying. you know he is. this is just physical for him. stress relief, a release of tension. you are a body for him to dump his worst fears into.
but then he takes your chin between two fingers, and kisses you like he means it.
it doesn't matter if he doesn't. not if he slides his fingers up your thighs and touches you just the right way, in the spot that he knows better than anyone else. he presses you down against your own couch, upholstrey velvet, secondhand, and tangles his fingers into your hair. his kisses are like fire, full of need and sorrow and passion you doubt that he feels. but as long as he makes you believe it, just for a moment, that's enough.
his kisses taste like empty promises.
you lay on your tiny mattress an hour later, his cigarette a paltry offering to the gods that observe outside your bedroom window. his chest heaves, flaxen chest hair catching moonlight, gray eyes in full view with his glasses on your bedside table.
you like him like this. uncertain. vulnerable.
"when will you be back?"
he says nothing for a full minute, suddenly finding your ceiling terribly fascinating. "…two months, at least," another puff of his cigarette, smoke making pirouettes in the chill night air, "six at most."
"and colt inherits in a year." the implication is best left unsaid. our time together is shorter than we thought.
he sits up then, fabric from your thin blanket pooling just under his stomach, concealing his now sated need. "yeah…. you gonna be okay?"
rich, coming from him.
"does it matter?" you quip, not giving him the satisfaction of sitting up to face him. "you'll be dead anyway."
"true." he takes another drag, but pulls the window up higher this time. "but i should ask anyway. just to be nice."