Summary: Spencer realizes the BAU is a lot harder when you have someone waiting for you at home.
Content Warning: Bruises, guns, gun violence, discussions/mentions of death/dying, brief non-con (person saying "stop" and being ignored – no sexual contact), arguing, crying, lying
A/N: As promised, while there is no smut in this chapter, there will be TWO scenes next week. See y'all then!
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There are many legends surrounding lilies. The first of which arguably belonged to Lilith but would be attributed to Eve's tears as she was exiled from the Garden of Eden. The flower that resulted from the turmoil of one woman would bear the name of her predecessor, equally infamous for her desire. It would remain tainted, just like those women who made it, until another came along and picked it despite its off-white hue.
But the older I become, the less I believe that it was Mary's virginity that saved the lily from a life of solitude and insignificance. I think she just happened to be the first who was willing to see the beauty in the broken. The delicacy of the damned.
I thought of lilies a lot while Spencer was gone. It had been his own fault, for casually likening me to the flower while assuring me that it was perfectly normal to need a break from the burden of blooming.
He had tried his hardest to keep me happy, even when he was states away doing god knows what. I'd asked him if he could explain, but he told me he'd rather not. Since I got the feeling that he was trying to save himself as much as me, I let the issue go. But the fear and anxiety of his absence remained.
So, I thought of the lilies and how they reminded me of him. I pretended like the ghost of a memory was enough to sustain me through the winter of rest.
None of that pontificating changed that deeply unsettled feeling in my chest, though. It also hadn't made me any less excited when my phone finally made that wonderful sound. His name hadn't even popped up on the screen before I was practically shouting through the receiver.
"Professor! Hello!"
After a small laugh, he returned my greeting with his own.
"Hi, Bunny."
I was too impatient to listen; too loud to hear.
"I have very important news to tell you before you say anything else!" I shouted.
"What's that?"
"I miss you."
Upon further reflection in the silence, I realized that it probably hadn't been the highest priority. But Spencer just laughed, and from the many miles away, I could almost see him shaking his head in a sarcastic disapproval at my enthusiasm.
"I'll be home soon, Bunny. Promise." Then, not like an afterthought, but more like a begrudging admission that didn't suit him, he added on, "And I miss you, too. Every second of every day."
Pushing forward with a brutish intensity, I failed to notice the truth hidden behind his behavior.
"Will you come over when you get home?" I asked.
That was the first time I had been quiet enough to hear it.
My voice fell silent just long enough to catch a sniffle as he muttered back, "Uh... yeah. Yeah, I can."
Each word, half-blubbered and clearly broken, shattered me much the same. And in that moment, I cursed that naive, childlike joy that had let me mistake the abnormalities to be a product of crackling phone static and inferior airwaves.
I should've been listening. I should've heard it immediately, but it was already too late for me to stop the sounds of tears from being broadcast and burned directly into my brain.
"... Is everything alright, Spencer?" I asked, expecting the lie but hoping for the truth, anyway.
"It's fine. Promise."
I should've known it was a fruitless endeavor. But giving up seemed so much easier than fighting a monster I didn't know in a world so far away.
What kind of person would that make me? To force him to open up, knowing that I wouldn't be there to comfort him?
My mind was transported back to a day that felt like a dream; the first time that I'd seen him give in to the temptation to be honest. With his head in his hands and dripping with rain that he'd cast himself into in the hope of washing off the scent of the prison.
'Do you want to talk about it?'
'About what?' he'd asked.
'Wherever you just went. The 'somewhere else?''
And the way he'd first answered, 'No,' just to clarify seconds later, 'Best not.'
Trying to swallow the sound of yet another lie, I focused on the hopefully imminent reunion. I thought only about how he would feel safe again soon and tried to let my own voice drown out the sounds of him begging that were playing on loop in my brain.
'I want to hear your voice. I want you to tell me more nice things. Because I think I really need to hear nice things, and I... I really don't want to be alone... Please... Help me.'
"Okay... when are you all headed back?" I said just a little too loud.
He cleared his throat, too, and I tried to pretend like he hadn't turned into someone else entirely as he replied, "Tomorrow afternoon."
It didn't work. No matter the number he had given, it wouldn't have been soon enough for me to stifle that burning desire to make it all better for him.
"If something is wrong..."
But the way he answered, "It's not" with such finality told me I had already lost.
I hated losing things like this.
"Please, just tell me," I begged.
Spencer did not give in. I could practically hear how he'd bit down on his tongue until it bled, holding it for a few seconds longer out of fear that the words he'd wanted to say might flow through with the iron.
"I can't wait to see you again," he croaked instead.
"Me either," I replied with an equivalent hoarseness.
I forced myself not to take it as a failure. I reminded myself that he wasn't struggling because of me, but because he was too far for me to matter like that. Because as soon as I hung up the phone, he would be alone again. Stranded and stripped bare.
Even in such a state, he managed to remind me, "Take care of yourself. I'll be home soon."
"You take care of yourself, too," I tried.
When I was only met with silence, however, I gave him the chance to end the conversation with as few tears as possible.
"Goodnight, Professor," I said.
And exactly as I knew he would, he whispered, "Goodnight, Bunny."
Neither of us hung up the phone. We sat and soaked in the staticky silence.
I considered all the things I could say. I thought extra hard about what I wanted to say more than anything.
I miss you, I thought to say again.
Please come back safe, like you promised, was only a reminder of the way he'd already failed.
I love you, I thought, but it didn't seem right, either. It seemed almost too cheap.
Then, seemingly at the same time, we realized that nothing made sense because it hadn't been my turn to talk at all.
"I'll be counting rabbits instead of sheep tonight," he said through a solemn chuckle.
My laugh, however, was genuine as it could be under the circumstances. I took a deep breath in, and then sighed before I spoke softly, "Don't let them keep you up, though. I want the night to go by as quickly as possible so I can see you again."
"God, I can't wait to hold you," he laughed, "I think I might never let you go again."
Hugging tighter to the plush bunny on my lap, I answered, "I hope you never do."
"Goodnight, sweetheart," he whispered to avoid acknowledging the inevitability of our next separation.
"Goodnight, Spencer," I answered much the same.
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The night was restless but quiet. At one point, I might have found the silence comforting. After all, what college girl really wants to hear the signs of occupation in her household while she tries to fall asleep.
But I missed it. I missed the soft sounds of Spencer's breath and the rustling of sheets when his happiness became too much to bear without a little wiggling. I wanted to hear him padding to the kitchen in the middle of the night because he couldn't sleep, and I wanted to follow him out to the couch to remind him that he wasn't alone in this anymore.
I missed the sound, but I kept the apartment quiet, because I wanted to hear his keys the second they began jingling and clinking against my door.
Sure enough, around 7pm, I heard it. Before my brain had even fully processed what I was hearing, my feet had already whisked me through the space and straight to the door just in time for it to swing open.
"Spencer!"
The same way I always did when we'd spent any modicum of time apart, I threw myself into his arms. Although I was no stranger to him struggling not to fall, nor dropping everything he was holding in exchange for me, I'd never quite gotten the response I received in that moment.
A sharp hiss of pain, followed by a whistling breath that he tried to turn into laughter.
"Oh!" I squeaked, jumping back with my hands up in surrender, "Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself? Did I hurt you?"
Spencer's breath was still heavy, and I hadn't missed the way he clung to a certain spot a little longer than the rest when he smoothed his shirt out. When heavy arms fell again, they didn't stay that way for long.
As if to prove that nothing was wrong, he pulled me into a significantly softer embrace.
"You know me. I'm not exactly known for my physical prowess," he sighed.
"Did something happen in the field?"
His answer came in the form of a kiss; with two hands on my cheeks and his body a healthy distance away. When it ended, however, I was not satisfied. I stole another few taps of his lips on mine before glancing at the spot where he'd lingered.
Like always, he noticed my noticing, and he took a step back.
"You worry too much about a stupid old man, Bunny."
"I can't help it," I whined, "He's my favorite stupid old man."
Spencer laughed, and the sound was anything but begrudging like it had been before. I looked up at his eyes and wondered when exactly it was that he'd learned to hide signs of tears. Images wrecked my brain of him patting cold water against puffy eyelids and massaging petechiae ridden eyebrows until the world stopped looking like a saline-smeared dream.
"I've got to change out of these clothes before they melt into my skin," he said to hide a groan of pain. His hand still lingered on the one spot before slowly shifting lower. With a brief shudder that remained in his hands and his voice, he continued, "Pick a place to eat, and I'll meet you in the bedroom."
"How scandalous," I teased.
"Take your time! I need to make myself presentable!" he said, and I'd written it off as a joke. A mockery of the many times I'd made him wait hours because nothing looked right.
I shuffled through menus of local restaurants from the drawer, trying to consider which one might be far enough away from where he'd been. The thought struck me that any take-out or delivery would be too similar to the sad, lonely hotel room nights he'd had. Deciding that it wasn't too late, that I could easily still go find something for me to make in our own oven for us to enjoy from the comfort of the couch, I walked to my room without much thought.
I didn't stop to consider what I might find behind my door. What monsters might be lurking in the safety of my home, what terrifying lies might have sneaked through the cracked doors. It hadn't even occurred to me that I might find something ugly standing in his place.
Perhaps that ignorance, either willful or innocent or pure, was what led to the sharp inhale of breath when the door finally opened to reveal the truth behind the facade.
There stood Spencer, with his shirt hung halfway down his back but still secured tightly around his wrists. In the middle, tucked between protruding shoulder blades, was a splotch of darkness against the beige. A kaleidoscopic pattern emanating from a center of darkness that resembled a black hole.
As soon as I'd seen it, the red and purple mottled mess was covered once more. Spencer, still turned away from me, must have heard the sounds of panic mounting.
Slowly, he turned to see me fall apart for good. Because the turning meant presenting me with another pair of bruises and the look of silent, exhausted shame.
"W-What are those?" I heard myself ask, but it seemed muffled under the rushing of blood as it tried to treat the pain that permeated every cell of my existence.
"Bunny..." he whispered, tired and guilt-ridden as he stepped closer only for me to step back.
"Spencer... What happened?" I asked again, as if I would ever get an honest answer.
"Nothing. It's fine," he lied, just like I'd known he would. He insisted upon it, picking up his pace and bringing the bruises into higher definition with each approach.
My mind was racing, struggling to comprehend what I'd known to be true.
"Were you... were you... shot?"
I was begging him to address it the way I'd asked him to before. There was no excuse of the miles between us, no matter how much it felt like it at that moment. But when he put his hand on my cheek, I realized how steady it had become without the weight of a secret on his shoulders.
The burden had shifted to me, and I was ready to collapse under it all.
"They're just bruises," he said with a nonchalant shrug that should have been painful, considering the placement of marred muscles.
"You were shot?" I repeated, hoping he might hear the way I'd needed his acknowledgement. "Th-three... You were shot three times?"
Exactly like before, he held my face in his hands and forced me to look him in the eye.
Not at all like before, his warmth felt like flames against my skin.
"They missed," he said like a joke.
But I wasn't laughing anymore. The happiness had fled me immediately, replacing itself only with the bitter sting of winter wind that fed the fire. Each burned, albeit differently, and left me bare and confused with what I was meant to do.
"N-No. No, they didn't," I sobbed in the absence of frozen tears, "I'm looking at it right now and th-they didn't miss, Spencer. They didn't miss at all."
"I'm still here, okay?" he insisted no matter how hard I shook between his hands, "Everything is fine. It's okay."
"No, it's not—" I choked, struggling in his grasp that became more and more unrelenting. His fear of letting me slip away reared its ugly head, shooting through his arms that wrapped around me in a vice-like grip.
Through it all, I blubbered, "—This is not fine, Spencer, this isn't..."
His heavy breath was the only sign of his suffering. The rest of him seemed almost impervious to the pain, like his mind had wandered somewhere else than this mortal plane. He held me cautiously, but with enough determination that I actually started to feel rooted to something again, however tenuous that connection seemed.
"Please, don't let them take this night away from us."
I didn't ask who they were. I didn't want to know.
"Okay?" he pressed at the same time he pulled away from me.
I tried not to think of how much it felt like him leaving again.
"Okay..." I nodded, trying not to lie in my answer. "Okay, I'll try."
I'd given it my best effort, too. I swallowed the tears no matter how much of the heavy liquid filled my lungs. I choked on the words unsaid, let them turn to knots in my stomach that made every step excruciating.
When he tried to change his clothes again, I winced when I looked away. Like him, I tried to force my mind somewhere else when he quietly asked for my help with changing into softer fabrics. My shaky hands were still more steady than bruised pectorals.
I had promised him he wouldn't be alone; that I would comfort him and care for him when he hurt. Of course, I'd never pictured it would be quite like this. I had never seen brutality like that before, much less written on the skin of the man I was almost certain that I loved more than myself.
All the pillows in the world didn't seem enough to prop him up from the pit he'd reappeared from. Although his muscles began to relax, I could still see that far off look in his eyes.
That was, until I called from his side, "Are you comfortable?"
Spencer smiled, then. A light, airy look peeking out from behind the clouds and shining amber-colored rays onto skin that had lost its color. No matter how much it healed me, though, I remained steadfast and stubborn in clinging to the fear that I'd rewritten into tension that continued to rock the world around me.
With his arm out, he offered shelter from the tumultuous waves.
"Come here," he said, the tiredness finally crackling through his voice, "I missed you."
At first, I tried to lean against him. But each ounce of pressure on his chest seemed like so much pain. I hadn't wanted him to suffer, but I wanted to be closer. I yearned for the feeling we'd had before. I chased that quiet understanding — the sharing of our souls.
I climbed onto his lap, missing the apprehension that flashed through his eyes and instead focusing on how at home his hands felt on my hips. They still grew tighter when I leaned forward to kiss him.
But when we broke apart, there was a small protest that felt like the bruises on his body.
"Bunny, wait..."
My fingers were fumbling with his buttons, either looking for the evidence of pain, the excuse of my actions, or simply trying to be closer to him. It didn't matter why to me in that moment. I didn't take the time to pause, knowing that I would fall apart without the haste and haphazard courage.
"I'm fine, Spencer. It's fine," I mumbled against his lips.
The response led to him turning his face away. He craned it far enough that the shadow cast highlighted the pounding pulse in his neck.
"No, stop—" he ordered more adamantly. He begged me while trying to grab my hands that had stopped all coordinated effort. Instead, they had turned to fists and claws against the exposed skin of his chest that morphed into a temporary mark that felt permanent.
"Just let me do this, I just need to—" I blubbered, abandoning actual attempts and resorting purely to force through a strained throat and clenched teeth, "—I need to try, please."
"— Bunny, I said stop!"
It wasn't the sound of his voice, the underlying panic when he realized exactly how broken we were, but rather the way his hands still held me softly despite my insistence. He cradled me like I had been the damaged one, like I should still be handled with care no matter how much the shards dug into his skin.
I crumpled on top of him, collapsed with my whole weight onto the bruised body of the man I loved. He didn't even wince; only held me tighter as he sat up and pulled me closer.
"It's okay," he called as softly as he could while still being heard of wails that felt foreign on my tongue. Spencer pet my head, rocking us in the small space that felt crowded by too much all at once.
"Shhh," he hushed, "it's okay, Bunny."
But it wasn't. The lie only stung more, like lemon and acid on scalded skin. I cried harder, clinging to him like it might stop the inevitability of him leaving for the last time.
"I don't want you to die," I sobbed. I refused to let the potential grief slip from ruthless, greedy hands trying to force roots through the drought-stained soil of him. "I don't want to lose you."
"I'm still here," he said more to himself than me, "It's okay."
But it wasn't.
"I don't want to be alone again, Spencer! Please!"
"You're not," he persisted although he was growing weary and gruff, "I won't let that happen to you."
"Please don't leave me," I whispered, having finally grown weary, too.
"Shhh," he hushed again, "I'm here, sweetheart."
And he was, I reminded myself. I let his presence remind me even when my mind couldn't focus. The warmth from his skin broke through the frost and my body reminded itself of the sun's constant and equally inevitable return. I let out a breath, feeling some small part of the fear dissipate like a cloud in early winter air.
When I began to relax, Spencer followed suit. The fight left us, and we found home in the abandoned battlefield. The tears were quiet, almost peaceful in their steady rain.
"I'm here," he assured me.
And he was. For now.
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The steady, unrelenting rhythm of the water dripping through rust-stained pipes sounded nothing like music. It was too quick to be wind chimes, too intermittent to be rain. It soaked through rust and algae, carried the sickly-sweet scent of bleach and assorted opium byproducts.
Beneath my feet were things I'd grown accustomed to as a boy. Friendly, curious roaches that, like me, scattered away from the light. Carcasses or crawling, I paid them no mind. They were not the one I was looking for.
In that strange sort of way, my companions in the sewer-like structure recognized my plight. They saw themselves in faulty wings affixed to my back and how my body had also grown tolerant to the poison littered through the heroin manufacturing facility.
I think it had always been their plan to lead me to him. I think they had been trying to help.
For a brief second, I felt more at home than I ever had before.
The man, my target, the predator wielding knowledge and experience, almost tried to run before he heard the demanding click of a gun about to fire.
"Put your hands up," I ordered into the near silence.
Behind me, the water continued to drip in a rhythm that I'd finally recognized as identical to my own heartbeat.
"Damn," the man muttered with an equally distant laugh, "I knew I should've done more cardio. Even the stickbug caught up to me."
Right class, wrong species.
Unwilling to give a taxonomy lesson, I let it go and ordered again, "Put your hands up."
Hesitant and begrudging, he followed my orders. He turned to me with a heaving chest and a terrifyingly empty smile before he sighed. Stretching his hands higher, he expelled the new breath with a dark, nicotine tainted chuckle.
"Honestly, just fuckin' kill me. The second they find out I got caught, it'll be over for me anyway."
"I'm not going to get your blood on my hands just because you want me to. If you want to die, do it yourself."
There was no empathy for my plight, no concern for how his death might scar the still living. The sanctity of life meant nothing but a toolbox for his exploits. To make that crystal clear, he droned, "Do you honestly think that if I had a gun, you'd still be standing there like a little action hero?"
"I think you're smarter than people give you credit for," I hypothesized instead of answering. "Smart enough to know you're a worse shot."
"Says the man whose hands are shaking."
And I could see myself from the third person, from his eyes as he watched my gun rock in slow-motion. I knew I should care about steadiness, but the twitching trigger finger reminds me that each of the new positions remains fatal. It does not matter if I am shaking. It only matters that I am sure.
"Adrenaline is a powerful force. Makes your reaction times quicker," I remind him.
He remains silent for a moment, contemplating something about the man he sees in front of him — the man I see from his eyes.
"Interesting you think I'm smarter than people give me credit for. I think the opposite about you."
He was right, but I disagreed on principle. In doing so, I proved his point but also made my own. It was not my intellect that had duped the others into thinking I was smarter than I knew myself to be.
"What can I say?" I shrugged without moving the trajectory far enough to matter, "I'm a good liar."
Through steel toed boots, I felt impossible roaches scurry over and through my bones. I felt tainted blood rise like bile into my mouth as I remembered every evil thing that I'd been capable of doing to land me there, in front of a mirror that looked like another man.
"No, you're not," he said, proving my point even better than I could.
"I seem to have convinced you to believe that."
His hands lowered, ever so slightly, until they came to rest on the back of his head. My fingers came micrometers closer to firing three bullets straight into his chest.
I've done it before. I'll do it again.
It seemed like he could hear me, the melodic taunt of the jaded ringing through my mind.
"I'll give it to you, you do have a good stare. You got that cell block D type game."
The cement walls of solitary returned, closing in on me in place of bars.
"I wasn't in D block."
It's too close to the yard, the wide open, I think to myself. Freedom is fleeting and shaped like a gun.
But he is not interested in poetry or pondering the psychology of prisoners kept in a place without sunlight. He does not notice the way I don't flinch when a roach falls onto my shoulder. All he sees is the scared little boy who developed a phobia only to weaponize that fear into forgetting his own existence.
"Oh, you're definitely a bad liar."
Maybe he's right.
"Ain't no fed like you ever been in prison and lived to tell the tale."
Maybe I was never alive there at all. Maybe I was gone long before Mexico.
The darkness that used to be comforting started to feel like ice and fire. It burned my veins, starting from the contaminated scar from Lindsey's knife, already covered in Nadie's blood.
"If I killed a guy like you... I'd be a God among my men," he said, and I laughed.
"I must be a better liar than you think."
Because I am already dead.
"Sure, kid. Tell yourself that."
It was the most comforting thing he'd ever said. It was a shame, then, that it was followed by a threat he couldn't act on.
"All I know is, if my barrel was aimed at your head, my hands wouldn't shake."
I thumbed the hammer back of my gun, listening for the click like cracked exoskeletons of the roaches beneath my feet.
"Lucky me that we're not in that situation then, huh?" I asked, despite the bird's eye view of the memory revealing the shadowy figure behind me. The vengeance of the debts from my past I'd yet to repay.
Danger.
He laughed, and the remaining roaches scattered at the sound until I was the only one remaining.
"You sure about that, smartass?"
You're in danger.
Unable to think to fire, I turned to face the visage of evil over my shoulder just in time to hear the symphony of gunfire that, sure enough, did not shake.
And when the bullets hit, hard and fast and unforgiving, I thought only about how badly I wanted to see her again.
It's going to hurt.
I woke with a powerful jolt, but the girl in my arms barely moved in response. It wasn't until my embrace became tighter and threatened to crush her in my futile attempts to reassure myself that it had all been a bad dream.
When she couldn't ignore the mounting pressure any longer, my Bunny began to whine.
"Y're holdin' me too tight, Spencer..."
Her hands wriggled out from between us so she could cover swollen eyes. The poor girl fought waking with everything she could.
But when she finally did open her universe -colored eyes to see the wonder in my own, she still managed to smile for me.
"God, it's so much better waking up in the morning with you in my arms," I whispered.
The sleepy, airy laughter she returned felt like the first clean breath after months underground. I took another deep inhale, trying to force my body to relax. Hoping it would recognize the safety in her perfume and the feel of her sheets and skin pressed against me.
"Are you alright, Bunny?" I asked her to avoid answering the question myself.
"Yeah. I'm alright. Bit of a headache."
Judging by the squint to her stare and the tension in her jaw, I knew that she had been downplaying the pain. I thanked her for her efforts, no matter how fruitless, with a gentle kiss against an undoubtedly throbbing temple.
I pulled her closer, hoping she would feel the same reassurance she provided so freely.
"I'm sorry I made you cry."
My Bunny stayed quiet. She chewed on her lip until it was raw. Then she turned to me with an implicit beg, a plea for the balm of also chapped lips.
Unlike usual, we did not meet in the middle. She stayed a healthy distance, allowing me to close the gap at my own rate. Even when I paused before we made contact, she didn't move. She didn't look, either. There was no piercing stare, no intimidation at play.
She kept her eyes closed and her lips slightly parted as she waited for me. The chaste contact ended too soon for her liking. She chased after my lips until she'd caught herself.
"Tell me it won't happen again," she whispered to the space between us. Glassy eyes opened to reveal waiting tears on her bottom lashes. Her lips I'd just kissed quivered. "Tell me, even if it's a lie."
The desperation stung like the rainbow halos on my chest.
"I'm sorry, Bunny. I can't."
"Does the job make you happy, at least?" she urged. The poor girl tried her hardest to find any shred of hope worth clinging to. She sought any answer that might bring her closer to me, and unknowingly cast me further away by doing so.
"In a way. Sometimes," I acknowledged because it still felt true. "I used to feel like I owed it to the world. Like I was just... wasting my life if I didn't spend it a certain way."
The past tense did not escape her.
"What changed?" she asked.
"You," I answered.
My Bunny was no stranger to shallow flattery, however. She'd spotted the easy, convenient answer, the escape from responsibility of true and raw emotion.
"You resigned before you met me," she corrected.
"Yeah, but that isn't what I'm talking about."
I waited, hoping she might understand so I didn't have to say it. But when I reached out to cup her cheek, she tilted her head like a lost, orphaned fawn who'd fallen for the affection from the hunter wearing its mother's blood. The lamb that succumbed to the charm of the lion, the girl lost in the woods and desperate enough to listen to the wolf.
She looked up at me and begged me for an answer, but there was none to be found. Only metaphors to describe the same, tired thing.
"When I heard the gunfire I..."
There were no words that could evoke the pain I felt in my chest. Nothing that would compare to the mottled ghost of lead and hatred on my chest, nor the way her small fists came down just as hard as she tried to fight the demons she hadn't been there to witness.
Deciding that there was no right way to explain it to her, I spoke in vague generalities that were equally unhelpful.
"It wasn't the first time I've been shot, but it was the first time I felt like that."
"Like what?" my clever, curious girl asked immediately. I couldn't blame her for trying.
I blamed myself for not being able to answer it more eloquently. I hated myself for not making the words more beautiful. I tried and failed to swallow the words that forced their way through alongside tears that started flowing. They fell from tired eyes before the shaky breath brought with it a painful admission.
"I was so fucking scared."
I witnessed the pain as it blossomed in her eyes again. I begged the world not to turn it to tears, but the universe refused to grant me even that most basic relief.
She tried to say my name, but her voice cracked before she could. It was for the better, though. I knew hearing her call to me would render me mute before I said what I desperately needed to.
"I didn't want to leave you all alone. Everyone else I love would learn to be fine without me but... I couldn't do that to you."
Gathering all the courage she could in an exhausted, pained frame, my Bunny pulled my face forward until our foreheads touched. She felt my unsteady breath and came to match its rhythm.
Through clenched teeth and a crackling voice, she warbled, "That's not true. They would be miserable, too."
So many memories resurfaced, the young man within me emerging to try to urge me to listen. The version of myself that was still capable of hope, still willing to believe myths about the happily ever after. I tried to picture it. I surrounded myself with the ones who were still left but found myself focusing instead of the gaps where the others ought to be if I hadn't failed them, too.
She must have felt me slipping away, because she pressed harder against me like a lamb that had just learned how to use its horns.
"You have no idea how loved you are, Spencer," she said as forcefully as she could without breaking, "You really don't."
My lips crashed into her with just as much enthusiasm; whether it was out of gratitude or an attempt to stop the hurt, I kissed her harder than before. I let our bodies take over where the words couldn't touch. Nimble fingers danced over bruised skin and managed not to leave pain in their wake.
Her hands healed me, her lips clearing my thoughts of evil until she was all that remained. I forced myself not to consider how the poison she pulled from my wounds would only serve to ruin her, instead. I tasted the metal of bloodied lips and tried to make it sweeter, instead.
She pulled away first. Her eyes were still shut, like she knew she was waiting on a lie.
"Did you catch the guy, at least? The one who shot you?"
"Yeah. We did," I said.
I lied to closed lids and felt no guilt for doing so. Not until her eyes opened with foolhardy, naive relief. Before she could dig her nails deeper into a wounded heart, I apologized for the only thing I could freely admit to.
"I'm sorry. I made you cry again," I whispered while wiping away dwindling tears. I smeared the liquid into swollen skin surrounding universe-colored eyes.
You are still so pure.
"Yeah, I think you owe me more kisses," she said so sweetly that I could not resist tainting the wonder of her once, twice, a million more times.
I kissed her just as she requested. I repaid the first of many debts and indulged in the same.
I will give you a lifetime of them, I promised her as I held her trembling hand over a bruised and beaten heart.
Just in case.