your jaw steels. your hand twitches. your fingers jump. if any moment has ever reared its head where you just wanted to swing, it is this very moment right now, right here. it’s tight in your throat, your chest. swing. you imagine it. you’re red behind the eyes when your pupils swim into the irises, enlarge from the thin slits into a massive pool of black. your hands twitch again and your shoulders move with the bulk of it, oxygen in, oxygen out. don’t you dare don’t you dare don’t you DARE bring her into this! anger’s in your gut, and it burns. you have to struggle to keep your hearing up and running, focus in hard. color practically changes in your sight.
jess. your heart does a flip, then a flop, a backwards, upside down somersault. jess. and now you can protect her, can’t you? you can protect her, you can protect karen, you can protect so many people now. you’re more, now, but all you can think is--
“don’t you dare bring her into this. don’t you dare try to use her against me to cover up your recklessness. that is not something i’ll tolerate. she doesn’t need me to protect her, but more than that, don’t use my feelings so you have an excuse to go on a suicide mission!”
the end of that heightens. you hear it. it’s like a plane dipping down and then zipping up in a sharp line.
your hands are shaking at your sides. your throat’s closing. it’s tighter and tighter and tighter with each passing motion. your jaw’s stuck even harder, trembling, shaking, and exhausted by the sheer clench. you’re shaking and you know it, and your eyes burn. she’s not the only cryer here.
“i am always going to have to make sure you’re safe, too. if for one and a half seconds you could stop being selfish and tenaciously shredding through everything to insist on the heart of something, you’d realize that the shit you pull affects other people. affects the people who love you. you’re not being safe. you’re going in guns blazing and fucked be anyone else’s strategy or thought if it doesn’t adhere to your desired adrenaline rush. i know what that feels like. i have been there. and i have learned that it doesn’t help anybody.”
to think. you saying you’ve learned. what a concept.
“’i’m not asking you to protect me.’ are you kidding me? what? has our entire relationship with one another been one-way blind? because i’m going to protect you. but you’re sitting here giving me no choice but to do this your way and tell me you’re bringing the fight to me. you’re trying to do this alone, together. do you not fucking see that, karen?”
