#;mun writes

[noprisonersjustorder]

what other muses crave on sinday: kissy and sexy things 

what my muse craves on sinday: v̷̛͍͊̓̈́̈́̽͝ǐ̶̧̨̹̼͎̱̟̬̹̤̩̏͛̑̉͒̋̔̾͘͜͝͝o̵̢̠͓̪͕͍̥̘̺̩̘̼͚͂̋͠l̷̡͕̼̫̼͎̣̼͍͍̽̏́͂̿̔̃̔͗͂̎̃̐̉ͅę̴̯͎͈̞̫͍͎̰͍͇̇͂̔͊n̴̡̛̳͗̄͐c̵̢̘͔̟̹̺͙̹̀̉͌̀͊̀̇̋̓́̈͘e̵̙͍̺̣͕̝̥̩͔̲̭̩͖̓̋͛͜

[mediioxumate]

i was listening to mal blum the other night, and got slammed with the urge to write about the night of the assassination. cw for heavy grief, dysphoria, disordered eating, passive self harm, vomiting, the works. ~2k words.

alternatively titled, goro akechi and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad night.. 

Your body looks to me A way it never has before And is this what's making you so sad, And what you did this for?

Shooting Akira - no - murdering Akira, does not feel like a victory. It doesn’t feel like a step towards his revenge and salvation.

It feels empty and repulsive. It feels like the burn of the acid in his throat as he dry heaves into the shitty toilet in his tiny bathroom in his cramped apartment. Every space is too small - it’s like he can’t get out of the interrogation room. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t. Another violent shudder racks his body as he gags again. 

His hair is stringy with sweat, sticking to his forehead, and the fingers white knuckling the porcelain edge don’t bother to pull it away or back, and he isn’t sure they can. This shouldn’t have been this hard, he’s never been this bad - not even after his first mission for Shido. But killing someone in the metaverse, they just… disappear. Palace rulers and Mementos denizens simply evaporate. Just an hour ago, he’d seen Akira- Kurusu’s eyes go dead, saw the blood drip, drip, drip down his face before his head dropped with a wet thud on the table. 

Fuck. Fuck.

Eventually, he can finally stand on wobbly legs, wandering towards his bedroom and stripping everything from his body. He’s already disposed of his gloves on his way home, for the first time finding them itchy and restrictive and claustrophobic. Now, his palms are littered with indents from the way his nails fiercely dug into them, grounding himself with the sting. 

Akechi means to take a shower. But for the time being, he can’t seem to move back to the bathroom, another wave of nausea passing through him just at the thought. Instead, he turns slowly, cautiously towards the mirror in his room. 

Strange. It’s like looking at a picture - maybe some kind of abstract film. He’s looking through his eyes, but he can’t seem to place the boy in the mirror. Their scars match, and the hair is right enough, he supposes. With his make up sweated off, his complexion is uneven, and the bags under his eyes are so intense they could be some kind of weird fashion trend. The boy looking back at him feels so removed from what he’s crafted and built up. It’s the most intense dysphoria and dysmorphia he’s had since he was still being passed foster home to foster home. This body is not his. It looks different - and yet exactly the same. 

The hand in the reflection mirrors the movements of his own, drawing over the pallid skin of his torso, fingers lingering over the scars on his chest. His posture has deteriorated, hunching as he hopes to curl in, in, inward until he swallows himself whole. 

His hip bones and ribs jut out just slightly, just muscles on bone. It’s laughable. Strip away layer after layer, turn them into walls, and this is what’s left. Some sad excuse for a person. 

His eyes scan the frame in the mirror one more time before he resolves to shower. He needs to turn the stream on as hot as it will go, and scrub every inch of skin until it’s raw. It still won’t be enough - he’s never going to feel clean again and he knows it. How had he ever thought the clip of Okumura kicking it on national television prepared him for murdering Aki- no - Kurusu?

Beaten and broken enough, under the stream his thoughts wander to where he’s been avoiding all night. Akira is the only one who’s… gotten through to him, in so long. Of course he had to go and be the fucking leader of the Phantom Thieves. That really is just the way of Goro’s life, huh? He doesn’t want Akira to be dead, and doesn’t want to have it be at his hand. His apartment feels hollow and empty, and the thoughts he’d had, that maybe one day - one day he could bring A- Kurusu here. 

It was a stupid thought, he knew it was a stupid thought, and yet here he is, skin pink and stinging under the water, body racked with sobs bubbling out of his chest. He doesn’t know how to deal with regret, the new wave of nausea. He’s never questioned himself, ever since he saw the pale, lifeless form of his mother, he’s never questioned his drive to get back at the pitiful man that is his father. It’s always been worth it, always about him, damn whoever gets in his way, damn the collateral damage. Then he’d met Kurusu, and then Sakura-chan and Okumura-san and suddenly, his actions became a painful, stark reality. 

Until then, he’d always considered his targets collateral. Stupid elites and researchers who don’t know how to stay out of the way. Each one just another disposable pawn. But, suddenly, he goes from knowing unsettling details about Wakaba Isshiki’s daughter, to seeing her. Seeing her struggling to acclimate still, but also bouncing back because she has a support system - and the Okumura girl too. 

Goro Akechi thinks he might be fucking jealous. 

Jealous! After all he’s done, and all he’s been through, he’s fucking jealous. 

There’s no surface in the world abrasive enough to scrub himself of these feelings. Instead, in some kind of weird absurdity, he shaves every inch of his body from the neck down, leaving countless slips and nicks in the way. Nothing intentional - never intentional - but certainly not being cautious with his movements by any means. He runs the razor over his skin again and again, until there’s nothing else he could possibly scrape away, even if he wanted to. 

At some point, he realizes the water is running cold. And he’s shivering.

The steam against the cold water is a strange sensation. Some kind of awful, mocking poetry about his life he supposes, meshing things that simply should not be together. Hollow, cracking laughter fills his ears, and belatedly it registers that the sound is coming from him. Perhaps it’s him that’s lost it this time. Wouldn’t that be funny? Maybe one of the little thieves have finally caved, maybe that’s why he’s reacting - he’s been bested by his own trick! That must be it, right? That he’s having some kind of mental shutdown. It’s the only explanation. 

Why is that more comforting to him than accepting that he may have been attached to Kurusu? The thought is jarring, out of left field. He doesn’t need to accept that - doesn’t need to accept anything. Damn it- damn it.

He shuts the water off. 

For a moment, he considers sitting right there on the shower floor, considers sitting on the cold, hard ground until he dries off, dries up, shrivels away. Instead, he steps out of the shower, standing on his sorry excuse for a bath mat that’s just a dish towel, feeling the rivulets of water drip from his hair and travel down his raw, oversensitive skin. What’s your secret, Detective Prince? How do you exfoliate, Akechi? How do you stay so slim? How is your skin so clear? You have such a soft, young face! Do you even wear makeup Akechi?

He towels off. 

One more moment as he considers retching into the toilet again, it’s right there after all. His stomach is still churning despite being as empty as it possibly could be. But he’s exhausted, he doesn’t think he has the energy even for that, though he’s fairly certain sleep will not come either. Not that he deserves it. 

Quietly, he moisturizes his raw skin, despite the sting. Tomorrow, he has another TV appearance, where the capture and suicide of the leader of the Phantom Thieves will have just been announced. And he will make a statement against him, call him a coward. He will flaunt his assumptions about the age of the vigilantes, and he will call the death a cowardly tragedy. Desperately, he works to rebuild that walls that have crumbled tonight. The interviewers will rip him apart without his mask. 

All he can manage to put on are some soft, worn boxers before collapsing into the bed in the corner of his room. 

Idly, he wonders, now that Kurusu is out of the way, when Shido will dispose of him. How. It’s bound to happen, he can only simply hope that he gets there first. But even now, the fire is burning low. He’s tired - so, so fucking tired. This is all that’s been powering him for so long, but after tonight, he doesn’t want to do this anymore. Idly, his fingers trace the scars on his chest again. It feels dirty, and wrong, and attached to Shido. Seems he traded dysphoria for complete alienation from his body. But at least his chest is flat, right? At least his jaw is sharper, his voice deeper, his hips slimmer. At least, at least, at least. 

The affirmations are tired. It gets harder, each day to believe them, to justify any of this. He’s so angry at the world, he’s always been angry, and this has always been the only way. But each stumbling, criminal confession sits heavy on his doubt. And now it’s snapped and collapsing under the weight of Kurusu’s head hitting the metal table. 

His mind wanders, now, to the bruises and cuts on every visible inch of skin. The way Akir- Kurusu flinched when he moved, the hazy look in his eyes, no doubt from the drugs. He hadn’t even said a word, simply stared back at… back at Goro. Looked him in the eyes, lips forming a small, surprised ‘o’ as Akechi tried to monologue, to justify, to convince Kurusu and himself that this was the only way. He hadn’t flinched, hadn’t moved a muscle, even with a gun to his forehead, he’d simply let it happen. 

That brilliant boy, with so much fight in him, had just sat there. Just fucking sat there.

And Akechi, ever weak, almost thought about shooting the handcuffs off instead, defying Shido, taking him into hiding. They weren’t going to examine the body anyway, he could hide Akira at his apartment maybe, maybe he could still switch sides. Maybe it wasn’t too late for him. But as blood pooled around the guard on the floor, there was no coming back from it. He’s a murderer. Plain, clear as day. So he simply did as he was taught, did as he should have. And he shot the leader of the Phantom Thieves. 

Another laugh leaves him, weaker this time, quieter. And before long, the laughter twists and changes over to sobs. They’re rough, and his face feels gaunt and empty, like he’s taken all of the moisture out of it. 

He’s so worthless. He’s always known it, and now he can’t even muster the strength for his one cause, the one thing he’s dedicated himself to. Pathetic. All because of a stupid boy with messy hair, who was never afraid to disagree with him, who made Akechi believe, fleetingly, that he could have better, that there wasn’t just Akechi inside him, but Goro too. Akira with his stupid plush lips, stupid fake glasses, stupid competitive grin, the way he would bump his foot into Goro’s under the table at the jazz club, the way he danced his way into Goro’s life, attached there like a fucking parasite. The way he still invited Goro out, even after he said he hated him. 

And now, Akira is...gone. 

More laughter bubbles up in his chest, but this time he can’t stop. Hysterical laughter and sobs become one in the same, wracking his entire body until sleep finally, finally wins. 

[mediioxumate]

|| i come bearing the dumbest gayest short scene i’ve ever written im going to throw both of them

When he finally glances down, Akechi’s gaze is fixed on… him? Their eyes meet, and Akechi’s dart away quickly, cheeks flushing. 

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of.” Yusuke says, squeezing the hand in his. 

“Ah - Yusuke -” His given name is a… change. But hearing it is actually quite nice.

“If anyone understands the allure of the human expression, I do, Akechi-kun.” Yusuke continues, nodding. “I too will be entranced by the expressions of others, no doubt. You may observe me as much as you wish, it will not bother me.”

Akechi’s expression falls. “Of course, Kitagawa-kun.” Yusuke can’t place what the way the other chews at his lips means, but Akechi is a fairly straightforward type. If it’s important, he’ll say something.

[stewardofmidgar]

injury/hurt prompts bc reasons || {open} 

@shutupreno​ said: 

[nurse] bc Reeve works too hard not to get sick sometimes

[ nurse ] for one muse to take care of the other while they’re sick

Reeve shouldn't be at the office.

He should, in fact, be home in bed.

And yet here he is at the office anyway, his usual coffee swapped for an herbal tea he can't taste while he stares blankly at the screen, trying to get the curved lines of the thrice-damned Neo-Midgar project to make sense.

It takes him a moment to realise that his screen is black-- that someone has switched it off. Making an inarticulate noise of protest, he turns to see Reno giving him a stern look, tapping his EMR against his shoulder for all the world like a schoolteacher about to lay down the law.

"I'm almost done," Reeve protests, aware of how hoarse his voice is.

"You've been starin' at that screen for ten minutes," Reno answers, "an' you ain't typed a thing. And it took ya over a minute t' notice when I turned it off. You didn't even notice me come in, yo. How'd you even get here?"

"...I slept here," Reeve admits, almost sullen. "I knew I was coming down with something and I didn't want to--"

Reno cuts him off with a wave of one hand; it's a mark of how tired Reeve is that he doesn't even make a token protest. The other hand takes his phone from his pocket; a swipe of the screen and he's calling.... probably Tseng. "I'm takin' Reeve home," he says to the man on the other end. "Yeah, he's pretty sick, yo. Shouldn't be on the trains alone."

He shot Reeve a look that dared him to protest, and Reeve just weakly raised one hand. He took another sip of his tepid tea and winced. This was going to be a fun ride home.

[ofblackhcnds-archived-blog]

( Since he came out of that place, he hadn’t been the same.His father had noticed instantly. Mike, ever a troubled boy, was now something else completely. Withdrawn. Quiet. The moment he’d walked through the door, having been brought home by his father himself, he had retired wordlessly to the bedroom he’d been in before he’d been wrenched away from him. The greeting of his cousin earned nothing from him. Very unusual. )

( Standing outside of his bedroom door, Spencer presses his ear to the wood and listens keenly. Faint tearing, though he can’t make out what it is. Perhaps if he hadn’t not seen his son for a year, he would have simply walked in and seen what he was doing... but he knew that Mike needed time. Space. After all, he was back in a free environment now, wasn’t he? )

                                            “Mike...? Are... you gonna come down and eat?”

( Nothing. Not a sound. The father sighed, made his way back down the stairs, eyeing the worried look on his nephew’s face. A hand reaches out, ruffles Joe’s mop of black. )

                                                                                         “Don’t worry, kiddo. Mike’ll be back soon.”

                                                           ( Neither of them are convinced. )

( Untouched plates. Piles of food in attempted offering, none of them so much as looked at; stacked and circled like a sacrifice to the Gods rather than dinner for his son. He hadn’t heard so much as a peep from the boy’s bedroom either, though the faint shuffling in the room had assured the father that he wasn’t dead. That much is a valid concern with such a volatile, self-destructive child. )

                “Mike?”

                                                                ( Nothing. )

                                                                                                                       “...I’m coming in.”

( Spencer waits a few seconds, then a minute, and then he gets the courage to finally open the door. He finds his son sitting cross-legged on the bed, not moving a muscle. Long sleeves and steepled feet; blank face and vacant eyes. Unfed, unwashed and unfazed. Concerned, the parent approaches, sits tentatively by the catatonic child. )

“Mike...? Are you... are you okay? You haven’t eaten; you haven’t come outside, Joey’s getting worried...”

( And the silence goes on. It’s as if Harmon doesn’t see him, doesn’t see anything. Just the blank wall of his bedroom, solid as ever, followed by the monotonous glaze of white that runs rings into his ceiling. Both males sit in stifling quiet, the father’s breath in his throat, the child’s breath in his mouth. Neither of them say a word, but a hand reaches out to touch the boy’s forehead in order to diagnose the apparent delirium. )

( A hand snaps up, tight and cold around his wrist. The father can barely believe it; those digits, so much smaller than his own, have him in a vice-like grip. Black, as if dipped in tar. )

                                                                                                                 “Don’t.”

( Spencer is stunned. No sooner does he recover, parting his lips to say something, the dipping voice of his son cuts through the air like a knife. His syllables are smoothed over by puberty and some other God-awful thing inside of him. That voice... three-dimensional, as if layered by a grown man’s... deep and eerie and coated by an almost echo-like quality, and it makes the parent’s heart catch in his throat. )

                  “Don’t touch me.”

                                                                                                             “I--I-- you’re my son--”

( Fingers suddenly curl into fists, quake at how tightly they are closed together. Fuck this man, and fuck the rest of them. Daddy Dearest hadn’t come, had he? He hadn’t tried to rescue him, hadn’t spared him the trauma of it all-- why should he even be made to look at him? He does though, teeth grit and eyes glaring. His father hurriedly stands up for he sees Hell in them. What had his baby seen...? What the fuck had been done to him...? )

                                                                    “Get. Out.”

( The man doesn’t have to be told twice. He walks out without a word, closes the door with a succinct click beside him. Lips quiver, eyes burn with unshed tears-- where has Mike gone? Heartbreak stains every step the man takes until he makes camp at the top of the stairs, crumpling in on himself, weakened to the point of silent tears; sobbing into his palm so that nobody hears him. He cries for a number of reasons: he cries because he’s lost his son; he cries because he can’t do anything to help him; he cries because of Mike’s unspoken words. The fire in his eyes had spelt them clearly to him, for when he’d declared that he was indeed his child he could see them like his own face in a mirror, impeccably: )

                                                                            I’M     NOT.

[ofblackhcnds-archived-blog]

"Anna has died." (oh shIT I WENT THERE)

            ( HE’D BEEN PREPARED FOR THIS. As they’d parted ways in the corridor, Anna herself had warned him that that would be the last time he would see her alive. )

                            ‘I love you. Goodbye, Mike.’                           ‘D-Don’t say that. You’ll-- youuu’ll come back out and I’ll--’                           ‘I’m not coming back out, Mike. I can feel it. I’m going to die.’                           ‘But--but I have s--something--’                          ‘Tell me now.’

            ( Dear God, why hadn’t he? It is with a stunted reaction that he slowly looks up at the doctor. His face is grave, falsely so for Mike knows better. There isn’t a trace of visible deception on his face, but it doesn’t stop the half-deranged young man from tearing past him and into the room himself. Despite multiple grabs at his front and shirt, he manages to evade the refusal of entrance as he stumbles into the room and scans the beds for her. )

            ( A--10. That’s her “room”, and it is with defiant strides that Mike shoves his way past the pale green curtain, ignoring the clinical stench. The elongated beep of her life monitor is what catches his attention first, head slowly, and then violently, shaking from left to right. )

            “No.”

            ( The thing is approached, smacked harshly on either side like an elderly person trying to navigate tech before he takes to shaking it. By now, doctors and nurses alike have stumbled past the curtain, only to find the equipment knocked over, a sobbing man shaking a lifeless girl and demanding she get up; crying about how it wasn’t funny any more; about how he loved her and that was why she had to make it out. )

            ( A touch to the shoulder results in the young man lurching to face the offender, fist thrown at their face. Man, woman-- who cares? Equality, right? Grabs intensify then, and he’s outnumbered as he’s dragged from the ward, kicking and screaming and calling them liars, damning them to early graves and demanding that he have his Anna back. He’s sat down in a seat, pinned to it by two stronger men and urged to ‘calm down’. )

           “N--No, she can’t be-- she CAN’T BE--”           “Sir. I know this is hard to accept, but--”           “YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT! YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING! GIVE HER--            JU--UUST GIVE HER BACK TO ME! JUST GIVE ANNA BACK TO ME--!”

            ( It’s all he can do to cry at that point, sobbing into the heels of his palms, akin to a child who had lost its mother in a supermarket. A kind nurse sits on his left, strokes his back before he screams at her to STOP TOUCHING HIM, and remains close until he calms enough. It takes hours before he collapses into the same nurse, passing out from exhaustion and, he would argue, heartbreak. He always loses; his life is a joke--

                                                    AND HE’S NOT LAUGHING ANY MORE. )

[halfblindhunter]

I don’t understand that when I press my hand to my flesh my first thought is I’m alive, followed by I can feel pain, trailed rather closely by the ever-damning urge to tear my flesh off. Perhaps a part of me believes that maybe if I am hurting then I have a reason to cry, I have an excuse, I don’t need to tell them I’m hurting if it’s a physical pain.

You can see physical pain, but emotional pain, mental pain, the pain centred from the years of verbal flailing… that’s invisible unless you wish people to see it.

Sometimes that curtain is hard to open.

Sometimes it’s better that way…

But as the nails dig into my skin and leave angry red marks, as my eyes blur with tears and my skin burns, I feel like I’ve just lost a little… bit… more.

It was easier when we could just stop caring.

But it’s never that easy, is it?

[ofblackhcnds-archived-blog]

I’m Sick (Joe/Mike);

Pairing: Mike/Joe.  Warnings: Cousin/Cousin exchange. Summary: We’re all a little bit sick inside.

       He should have never agreed to come with him. Joe had known from the second that he’d told Mike he would accompany him to the house party, he’d hate every second of it. The stench of alcohol, the suffocating atmosphere, people fucking room to room-- it’s his idea of hell.

       Needless to say, when he tears from the crowded room and stands in the darkened hallway in order to catch his breath, he feels miles better. Eyes swivel to take in the features of the stranger’s house, head turning to the side to catch the reassuring scent of wooden banisters. A constant in this vomit-infested, weed-happy, drunken charade. Why had he even said he would come?

       The door to the room hosting the majority of the people opens, light coating the hallway in its pastel glow before it’s shut out again. That silhouette, he’s sure of it, it’s Mike. For a short while, all he can do is stand there, stare at him, watch the slight sway of his body and know that it has little, if anything, to do with the alcohol he may have consumed. Mike just is that way, and with his charming vocabulary and his lyrical perspective on the world, it’s hard not to love him - even if he is insane.

       “Hey,” Joe calls after a long moment of silence, watching as the young man’s head turns in his direction, eyes locking on his in the dark. Even in the dimly lit hallway, he can see the grey of his eyes, the slight tilt of his head as he holds him within his regard. Then, he meanders towards him and leans next to him against the staircase.

       “Hey.” It’s a plain statement, devoid of feeling, but his eyes say all that is necessary. There’s a confusion there that Joe doesn’t quite understand, brow dipping to ask the silent question: what? “Why’re you not in the room? It’s fuuun in there, Joey. Lots of people.”

       Gatto smiles wryly. “That’s half the turn-off.”

        Mike scoffs, nudges his cousin lightly. “You gotta come out of your shell at some point.”

       “Who says I’m in a shell?” Joe replies, resting against the edge of the stair adjacent to his head. It isn’t comfortable, jabs into his skull - especially when he lets his neck relax, meaning his temple pokes almost gruesomely against the corner of the wood - but he remains still to look at Mike. There’s something about this young man, something that he can’t place. He’s his cousin, but he’s not; he’s his family, but he’s more. The bond they share is ineffable, and where most interactions would have been weathered by Harmon’s steely silence towards the beginning of their relationship, theirs had only been coddled. Joe, ever friendly, had kept pushing, kept asking him questions, given him his hat to remember him by, and now it’s ten years later and he still has the damn thing-- and now here they are, in a randomer’s house, staring at one another as they make vague, hushed conversation.

       Joe is distracted by his cousin’s hand coming into contact with his forehead, knocking on it lightly. Hands push at it, tut disapprovingly, but he can’t remain displeased.

       “How much have you had to drink?”

       “Enough.”

       The younger contemplates what that means. Enough for what? Because his definition of ‘enough’ - the mere scent of it within a ten mile radius - is different to Mike’s definition - the crushing weight of his own body as his legs refuse to keep him standing any longer - of it.

       “What do you--”

       “Joey,” the cousin interrupts, tilting his head as he looks down at the other. They’re too close, but they always have been; Mike is a believer in sharing personal space aside from when it comes to his own. He shares it with Joe for a more complicated reason, a motivation he doesn’t quite have the nerve to pick apart yet. He just knows that being close makes him feel better. “Do you ever think about how insignificant we are? We’re all, just-- vomit-stains. On a carpet.”

       Gatto eyes him for several seconds, trying to decipher whether it’s the drink or the persona talking. “I… never really thought about it like that. Are-- you trying to tell me you feel sick?”

       When his cousin doesn’t reply, Joe fears he’s going to throw up where he stands, mouth closed because he’s feeling the urge to spew his guts so powerfully he can’t speak; feet shift, ready to move himself aside, but he’s unprepared for a warm hand touching his face.

       “I’m sick,” Mike replies, fingers splaying against the other’s face. Joe figures it’s part of his game, his image-- his cousin has images so vivid that he has no heart to deny them. He’s seen his bedroom, his walls, lain witness to the poetic madness that circulates his brain like blood does his body. Whatever he sees in his mind’s eyes must be mirrored in reality, otherwise it distorts what little of reality he can accept. “I’m sooo sick, Joey.”

       “You’re drunk.” Joe smiles, raising a hand to lock fingers gently around his wrist. What he doesn’t anticipate is the sudden movement of Mike’s head, nose touching his. Hands instantly raise, settle above his chest, as if a thin layer of air has stopped them from touching. Perhaps that much is better. “You’re really drunk.”

       “I’m drunk,” Mike murmurs in response, nodding his head certainly. The fact doesn’t stop him from inching forwards until his mouth touches the other’s. Joe, stunned to the core, doesn’t respond, even when his cousin pulls away and stares at him. Gut churns-- was he just kissed? Eyes squint at him in the darkness, voice low and smooth. “And I’m veeery sick, Joey.”

       “Stop it,” Gatto breathes, far more shaken than he ever wanted to be. “You’re… you’re not sick.” He pauses as Harmon leans in again, catching his lips once more. Why is this happening? How? And why isn’t he doing anything to stop it? A hand raises, settles on his chest to push him away-- but curls into fabric instead, pulling him vaguely towards him. It’s all the incentive Mike needs, lips pressing more firmly against the other’s. Pulling apart again-- eyes half-lidded-- a strange guilt in his stomach. “You’re not sick.”

       He closes in then, really gives it his all. Because despite being cousins, Joe doesn’t think he could love anybody more than he loves Mike - and wherever said love falls on the spectrum - familial, romantic, platonic with benefits and so on - it still exists. A hand moves to the back of his head, tugging the red beanie from it so that he can run a hand through ruffled hair, tongue coming to meld against his with a stilted moan of surprise. He’s vile… kissing a family member is vile… but he doesn’t stop, throws a figurative ‘fuck you’ to the judgement in his head as he inches in closer and feels Mike’s body against his own. It’s satisfying, in a roundabout way, though both know they’re not supposed to fit.

       When he pulls away, Joe is panting. Harmon is not.

       “Do… do you feel anything?” Joe rasps despite himself, annoyed that Mike isn’t as affected as him. At least, not externally-- but damn it, he wants to see it. He may just have to try again… “Like, at all. Can you just pretend to be impressed with me? For once?”

       Mike says nothing for the longest time, simply staring at him with a flat frown and an almost critical glint in his eyes… before he softens, gives his cousin an odd smile. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while now. I’m sick.”

       He walks away shortly afterwards, leaving Joe to stand there in solid confusion, frustration brewing in his stomach like a witches cauldron. What the hell is it with that man? He’ll only express emotion when it comes time for him to leave, behaves as if he has him forever until it’s made clear that he doesn’t. Part of him, a very shallow part of him, feels spiteful, longs the leaving date to crawl in closer, make its mark on Mike’s life again. Because then it has impact-- HE has impact.

               “Fuck…” Joe grunts, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “I’m sick.”