"i know you're used to people giving up on you, but i won't give you the satisfaction of becoming one of them." / for mari & avery ((::
Amarion will never know why it pisses him off so much, thosewords. He doesn’t know if it’s the assurance they always fail to provide, theconfidence in which they’re being spoken, or the fact that he’s heard them somany fucking times before, but he knows that he hates it, despises it more thanmost things. Even more than he hates the way Avery watches him, with a calculatedgaze that is both cautious and unamused, impossible to read. He makes Amariontick on most days, the calm that surrounds him causing a twitch in Amarion’smuscles that keeps him glued to an ashtray.
Today, those words make him nauseous. Tomorrow they’ll makehim see red and fill him with rage. It’s different every time, but it’s neverpleasant. Because it’s not true. Those words, every variation of that sentence.It’s always a lie, and he always proves them wrong. The word never is too largefor him, for all of them. It’s incomprehensible and requires too much trust,the one thing that Amarion Rostom has never earned nor deserved.
For Avery to say never means no matter what, and for him tosay no matter what means that he doesn’t know Amarion very well. Mari didn’tneed his reassurance, or his pity, or whatever the fuck it was Avery felt whenhe looked at him. He wasn’t a sob story and he wasn’t desperate enough to letAvery think that he was. Amarion’s never needed anything more than what he’sgotten for himself, stolen for himself, by himself. Letting someone in was aweakness he couldn’t afford, and a time consuming objective he didn’t care for.Avery’s generosity wasn’t something he was grateful for, and it wasn’tsomething he would be lost without. Amarion would take and take and take for aslong as Avery would give, but when that door closed Amarion would never knockagain.
I won’t give up on you. The words are still reverberatingthrough him when he lifts his head, bleeding knuckles throbbing and themirrored glass surrounding his feet catching the light from the windows. Bilethreatens to climb its way from his throat, so he doesn’t speak yet in fearthat his stomach will betray him. Instead, he allows tired eyes to return thegaze Avery has settled on him. He finds solace in the fact that when he doesso, he feels nothing. Finds solace in the fact that Avery means nothing to himand that his empty words do nothing but dissolve in the acid of his gut. Heshould apologize for the broken mirror, but he won’t.
“Don’t talk to me like you know me.” He says at last, tonguecoated in a disgust even he wasn’t expecting. “Don’t talk to me like you’re somepermanent fixture in my life, and don’t start to think that you are one. All I’ve got is myself. I don’t need shit else.”