oh, this my weapon, this my loam. this my blood, this my bone.
It is amazing the way that they can slice at one another. They barely know each other and yet they seem to have already found all of their weak spots. Her words are daggers and they find their mark again and again; he can barely think around the way that the wounds open up beneath her touch, the way that they blossom and the blood flowers on his chest. If only he could staunch it. If only he could go back in time before they crossed paths and something about them exploded before they could contain it.
But he can’t, and they are here, and he can only deal with the fallout.
“You have no idea how low my self-esteem can be,” he says and even though he knows it’s a lame excuse for a comeback, he says it with venom anyway. He scrambles to find defenses because she pulls it away so deftly and he’s left raw and aching beneath the cold air. He’s left stinging beneath the truth because of course he hates himself. Of course he views the world through the lease of his own self-loathing.
Of course she saw that immediately.
Of course, of course.
But it only makes him want to double down and he stands his ground, hating the weakness that she has exposed in him like rot under the floorboards. “Does it matter?” he says, his ears lying flat against his skull amongst the mess of his mane and forelock. “Does it matter why I would choose to be myself?” He jerks his head to the side and his antlers sweep sharply as he looks to the horizon, his chest heaving as he tries to catch his breath. For a second, he is quiet, contemplative, the poison seeping in further.
“Could you blame me?” He glances back, quieter now.
“Can you blame me for trying to minimize the damage?”
@[Brinly]