Penance
The clock was tick tick ticking at a steady and oppressive rhythm.
As Gilbert drew on his cigarette, the flame flared and crackled, inching closer towards him. He paused and the flame died. He lifted his head and exhaled, pushing a stream of smoke into the air. The smoke formed into a thin swirling cloud that hung, unmoving, in the airless room.
He brought the cigarette to his lips again.
"Will you forgive me?" Ivan whispered softly, brokenly.
Gilbert paused. His eyes flicked down from the ceiling to where Ivan lay draped over him, arms wrapped around his torso and face pressed into his naked midriff. He turned away, sucking some more on his smoke. He patted Ivan awkwardly on the head and Ivan squeezed him.
"What's there for you to be sorry for?" he croaked from a strangled throat, and winced. Ivan simply squeezed tighter to him.
He had been drinking. This was not an attempt at a pathetic excuse; it was a fact that he had been drinking before ringing at Gilbert's apartment. Then, inevitably, a fight broke. It was just shouting at first, he recalled, but he couldn't remember what it was about.
He remembered pushing through the door, ignoring Gilbert's snarling demands for him to leave – Go home! He remembered grabbing Gilbert by the throat and slamming him up against the wall, tightening his grip as Gilbert struggled and choked for breath, spitting and spluttering insults. He remembered hitting him, punching him, battering him.
One could trace the litany of cruelty he had inflicted from the marks littering Gilbert's body. There was a cut above his eye and a bruise along the side of his jaw from a wildly-swung fist. And there was a hand-shaped mark wrapped around his neck from the chokehold he had held him under. Other traces of abuse scattered in welts, scrapes and bites across his arms, his chest, his torso. Oh, but he had plenty to be sorry for, and more.
"You hate me," Ivan said, his tone reproachful.
"No," Gilbert said.
"You wish I was dead," Ivan continued bitterly, childishly.
"No," Gilbert said again.
Ivan let out a weary sigh, and in a small voice, he mumbled, "You're not being fair."
The silence ticked by as Gilbert smoked and Ivan stewed in further self-flagellating pity, until he could bear it no longer. He lifted his head and looked to Gilbert's indifferent expression, smiling a thin hollow smile.
"You do hate me," he said. "And you do wish I was dead. I know that's what you're thinking."
Gilbert stared into Ivan's bloodshot eyes, careful to keep his expression neutral. It would be dangerous otherwise. He turned aside and stubbed out his cigarette in an overfilled ashtray. He needed to remember to empty it later.
"I don't hate you," he said slowly, deliberately. "And I don't wish you dead."
Ivan's eyes lit up. It was pitiful how much the words meant to him.
"I forgive you," Gilbert said in a tone of finality.
Relief broke through Ivan's face, and generously he said, "I forgive you too, Gilbert."
A/n: A commission request for a dark and violent human!AU RusPru. It sort of morphed into some kind of emotionally manipulative pillowtalk post hatesex. I just hope it meets your expectations, anon commissioner!