❛ you don’t love me ? ❜ / i lied this one is for df
There is no answer benign enough to not carve open ren’s skin, hands slick with cruor as he sought to exhume him, convinced he was cowering beneath it, nestled alongside the affliction dan feng had condemned him to. neither of them balk before the cruelty exclusive to their aberrant connection, their penchant for hurting one another oscillating between deliberate and unintentional. that is why he can admit it uninhibited, going as far as to resolutely hold his gaze, submerging himself beneath that volatile, crimson tide and thrusting cloud piercer through him; no, that too would have been too merciful. ❝ I love you.❞ he recites it as if it were a mantra yet the absence of fondness, that dark, cavernous void that had once prospered with it, transforms it into apathy, as if the high elder were merely stating a condition he found himself burdened with. his hand rises to rest against ren’s cheek, lithe fingers cradling his face with an indifference that belied his devotion to the man standing before him. with his next admission, their mouths so close that it was a shared breath, almost despicable enough to dare to kiss him, all he intended to do is twist in the blade he had slid between ren’s ribs. ❝ but not as I did him, never as I did him.❞