Crackerbox ✔

seven: blurry vision

Then he punches Danny in the face.

The first hit feels like powdered cocaine. It's hot and cold at the same time, blazing frost, a riptide that rips through the metallic thrum of his searing blood. The way Danny's face collapses like melted putty beneath Lee's bumpy knuckles is cruelly pleasurous, a forbidden drug he could inhale forever. It's an addiction, one long buried, one long gone, and it roars to life in his scar-marked veins.

He's angry. Of course he's angry. Maybe the therapist had been right after all, Lee thinks bitterly, but she hadn't, because he hadn't been taking his anger out on everyone else. He'd been hurt. Injured. A wounded animal.

His limbs feel brittle, paper-thin. They tick like clockwork, running on muscle memory, the network of tissue and veins Lee's spent so long trying to push away growing and spreading and bursting out of his skin. And damn it, he's so fucking cold, blood sticking to his fingers and turning them to ice, every blow carving his heart out of his chest and dashing it to the cobblestones.

Another face. Another name. He doesn't care anymore. He can't.

Someone lets loose a guttural, agonised shriek. For all Lee knows, it could have come from his own mouth. A pair of legs clock him in the side, and he reels his fist back in response, his scarred knuckles crashing against crooked teeth. A closed palm whacks him in the temple, his head snapping sideways. Lee spins, fireworks screaming and shattering and imploding in his fingertips as he draws his elbow back and brings it down, hearing a ragged cry erupt from the space below. He grits his teeth and smashes his elbow down again, vermillion rage spilling off his cracked lips, amber spite dripping from every pore.

Everything is numb, frozen, the phantom burn on his elbow splashing fractured terracotta over every inch of his skin, blackening and shrivelling and crushing the skipping, halting thing in his chest. Flesh against flesh, bone against bone, blood against blood.

"Lee!"

Skin splinters under his touch, parting like the Red Sea. Lee can taste the sharp tang of copper in his mouth, and it sears the underside of his palate like the flicker of hot wax. The push-back is less now, far smaller than he'd expect from three people, and it drives Lee wild. It turns the pain into pleasure, bloodlust coursing through his veins, the urge to hurt, punish, kill, rampant in every pore. It sends fire arcing through his flying fists and twines electricity around his ankles, the power condensed in his lithe body crackling in the air.

"Lee!"

He feels immortal. He feels infallible. He feels unstoppable.

"Lee!"

Lee stops.

His vision clears, the bright, blurry red fading from his line of sight. A spray of blood, stark and screaming, coats the wall behind him, the same crimson stuff dripping off his fingers in a steady trickle. Three crumpled lumps, bodies contorted and swollen, lie groaning on the ground. And in front of him stands the stock-still form of Jack Sang, face twisted in horror.

He wants to laugh. It's ridiculously hilarious, after all. The boy he's done everything for, would do anything for, staring down at what Lee's pretty sure has just become a crime scene. But because he's certain Jack already thinks he's got a few screws loose, he settles for a big grin. "Hey. Didn't expect you to be around this late."

"I take my eyes off you for one day, and fucking hell," Jack squawks, sounding extraordinarily flustered. In all honesty, Lee's surprised Jack's not freaking out even more than he already is. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that he hasn't worn his tie all day, the bandage taped against his neck poking out of his collar ever so slightly, and the very cause of it lies half-dead at Lee's new sneakers. Or maybe it's because shock is one hell of a drug. "What the hell, Lee? Do I have to bail you out of jail now?"