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Epitaph of Anguish: Gutted

In which Dýo makes more than a few mistakes, and the Doctor ends up badly hurt.

SEVERE TRIGGER WARNING: Gore, attempted suicide

Warnings: prostitution,  pining, attempted suicide, gore, disembowlment, homelessness, coma, implied amputation, drug use, alcohol use, hurt/comfort

_-_-_

The Mask didn't realize, until a brief lull had occurred, that it couldn't feel its cell anymore. Not the steel. Not the glass. It had been cold for some time now, but never numb. The pain from the crack had dulled, too. That deep, aching, splitting agony had been occasionally spearing SCP-035 right down through the core ever since that ill-fated climb towards freedom. Now, though. The injured Mask felt nothing. Now, the crack had done all it needed to, and something finally gave and broke.

Dýo tried so hard to stay away from him.

He tried... Going from body to body, moving place to place, but he always returned to that crowded city where he knew he'd find him.

He was magnetic. An addiction he'd fostered for millennia, and had yet to lose even after so much time had passed without him. he couldn't stand to struggle with his love's lack of recognition again, so he simply posed as someone else. A new body would come with a new identity. A new bag of coin. Another night in a lavish inn ending in his going downstairs and paying the innkeeper to let the good Doctor stay for a few extra weeks. he'd learned quickly how much generosity would be accepted. Too much, and he'd simply leave, or the innkeeper would get greedy and need to be swiftly dealt with. Too little, and he, himself, would swim with guilt, certain that his darling wouldn't be selling himself had he somewhere to stay and practice his medicine. Even still... as selfish and horrible as it was to find enjoyment in the Doctor's clear struggle... having even a night, even that brief, blissful time with nothing but hollow pleasure and an hour or two to linger in his arms afterward... Dýo craved it. 

It was such a relief, really. A hit of something the noble was starkly missing, even if there was still something hollow and empty that ached in his hosts' chests each and every time he was forced to face the reality that he was nothing but a bit of money and a busy night to the man that had once been his and his alone. An anonymous noble. Never the same beyond a similar mask and the same gorgeous, beaked, addiction that walked the streets on bitter winter nights like a cool, twilight mist. There at sunset, and gone by morning, leaving nothing behind but frost on the windows and tingling skin where lips had ghosted against pliable, melting flesh.

Sometimes, Dýo almost wondered if there was a point to his act. Or if it was even working at all. Occasionally, he'd look at the sweeping curves of his beak while laying in his arms, and would spot the way his eyes were slightly narrowed, expression tilted just so in the way it always did when he was thinking something over. It worried Dýo. He wasn't sure he could handle the heartache that would come to haunt him if he ever had to explain himself, but, at the same time, he feared losing the soft, delicate part of himself that needed to be loved and held he'd somehow awoken in spite of centuries of remaining distant. He worried endlessly of what would happen if he ever knew... and so, after his addiction had him seeking the Doctor out not once, but four times in the same week, and fully ignoring the offer for a free evening. When, as Dýo pulled on a rumpled tunic formerly cast onto an empty chair, that long, hard look of deep thought was followed with a question- no, a proposition... 

"What are you saying?" Dýo asked, pausing in the middle of doing the last few buttons, dread coiling in his throat.

"I...," the Doctor had faltered then, fiddling with the loose hide of his robes, eyes casting downward at the bed. "I think I love you?"