"Every time I feel like this is going to be over… going to get better…."
Collapsing shouldn't have been something that one did with such flippant attitude that it would leave them, and others, unalarmed.
Sleep had not consumed the battered body on the wooden floor in days, however, the door was open to the idea and it was welcome with outstretched, even begging, arms. Rope tears across skin, burning and making it pulse the way the same battered knees did when the weight of the upper body fell onto them. A heart beat is soft, but the blood in the crushed body of the man on the floor is rushing into his ear drums like a waterfall; nearly drowning out the sound of snoring beside him on the ground, just a few feet away.
Throat desiccated, as he had done nothing but cough up mucus and blood the day prior, it had been hard to swallow and his head was pounding to the beat of the throbbing pain as he lifted his head, blonde hair matted down with cold sweat.
Eyes struggle to focus, tired and abused, but they still do just adequately with the time allotted. From the slots of the rickety blinds, green eyes just barely see the outline of the soft, faint glowing dawn that was upon the colonial-style home. His hands smolder as he puts weight onto them, though he has nothing left in him to even make a mere sound of protest, only a few quiet, breathy gasps as he shifts his weight from his decrepit wrists.
His feet feel a hundred pounds heavier, though that had perfect reasoning when the reminder clatters in his ears. The chain drags across his skin and the floor, burning, bruising deeper, and he tugs on it, unable to even mourn the loss of simplistic movement any longer; which very well used to be a big deal.
His movement comes to a halt when the sound of heavy snoring fades away and gives way for mumbling. The soft voice from another man stops him from wallowing in self pity; he had asked for this after all... but waiting for death was much harder than leaping from a hotel room window like he had dreamed. He shakes his head slowly as a posed question, the skin of his neck searing from the rope.
No, he was not okay. He couldn't figure out the question he had been asked, it
was plainly brainless. He had been dragged up and down the two levels of the building enough to know that he had been in the worst room of the compound. The question was brainless and dense.
His frigid body is intruded upon, and he backs away though the voice coaxes
him closer. The larger man moving to sit beside his laidout body was motivated by a worry that only his victim could not comprehend - only cry about.
"Christian..."
It was beyond the blonde's ability to understand why someone had wanted to do
this to a man who had nothing left, nothing but cats to care for and nothing but
the vague concern about if his gray hairs where showing to the rest of the world.
Tears run down his cold cheeks when he's asked not to cry, and a palm overlaps them so that fingers may wipe the clear fluid from his eyes with such gentleness that he
couldn't help but rest against the warm flesh pressed against his own. The towering figure was unsuspectingly kind.
Christian is tired, drugs no longer coursing through his body at this hour, though he
knows if he made that anymore aware that the blue-eyed man would be back here, preaching him a sermon delivering him to evil and a dose of pills to make him even more complacent. This preacher however needed not to rely on drugs, and though the older
victim, bound to ropes and chains stained with blood and caked up in skin, had
nothing left to live for, he was still fighting to die on his own terms, and at his own hands.
Strong arms coax him forward, and he was too tired to fight against it, insted falling between them as they wrap around his body and care for him. The feeling was strange, it
was foreign and confusing, so much so that he could not determine his own emotions any longer. The drugs simply made him weak and complacent, his body asleep but his mind awake - trapped... This was not love, maybe unrequited on his own part, but these had been no conditions to fall for someone, and yet he was there, scooped up carefully into another man's arms and cherished as if he mattered. Originally, he had thought death was all he truly wanted, but a warm embrace was changing that. He, after all, had recognized his own jealousy against his friends. He has to keep his exasperated mind fully aware to ensure that he is not developing any feelings of affection for his kidnapper; one of them, at least.
The pain wasn't always there, mainly because he was numb a large portion of the time, but the words of a sermon always had lit embers pricking up in his brain.
The large hands around him do not stay in one place to long, but the grip stays strong, but gentle, making sure that he does not fall from the lap he has been pulled into, while
wandering to the small of his back.
There had been times where he was not in control of his own body, let alone the words pouring out of his mouth like an endless stream of rushing water. He could be made to do anything - all from words preached to him, he walked like a zombie, slow, hunched staggers until he was propped upright by a man far younger than he. He spoke words he did not mean to, and repeated them until he was told to stop. He stared out of his own eyes, but could not use them as his own. He was trapped in his own body, somehow, but now he was in control of himself, in this moment… yet, he still did nothing.
He nuzzles - and God, he hates his reaction - against the chest of the man holding him. He's tired, weak and giving in... But it's just so damn comfortable and loving that he wants to accept it while the other part of him is yelling obscenities at his true self.
He shifts, chain clinking as he made his legs more comfortable, and a chin rests on top of his head; thick, long black beard laying amongst the brassy blonde of his hair. He liked this - he hated that he liked this - but there are the days that he feels as if he belongs. It's cold here, but this man is always so warm. He thinks that maybe this man's leader has finally
transformed the old Christian into this new being and he had nothing to lose.
What was a man who wanted to die supposed to have been made into? He hit the breaking point when he realized he desired to jump out a fucking window.
He was not full with a zest for life now, just complacent and beaten physically and mentally. He knows enough to be aware that the man holding him is longing for him - for a man that wanted to jump out of his hotel room every Friday night... He was praying to his leader for this very man in his arms; someone he had no right to want, to keep like a
possession.
It was early July when Christian had planned on the final deed of killing
himself. A Monday night this time, and the arena in Baltimore, Maryland just
looked so small from the view out the hotel window. He was going to jump that
morning, but a knock on his room door sent him reeling away from the window that
he had to bash the safety glass out of. A smiling Chris Jericho was at his door,
asking for breakfast company, and made him fully aware that his friends deserved
some kind of note, an explanation of his depression and lack of will. The
pleasant - fun, really, breakfast had him rethinking, and tonight he would lace
up his boots and just go have one more match.
Kane.
There was no chance, and he knew it walking down the ramp but he still climbed
into the ring and got the fans on his side with ease. Christian was on top,
making an impressive showing for what he wanted to be remembered by and how. His
signature spear was met with a chokeslam. The lights had suddenly gone out, and
he didn't remember much after - he didn't even wake up in Maryland.
The blonde took a deep breath and held it.
Maybe this was okay.
This man was protecting him - he had since day one. Now he was here, sleeping in the most horrible room in the entire compound instead of his own warm bed upstairs.
This really was ok.
He could do this.
"I love you," it comes out so softly that he didn't know a voice so small could come from his own mouth.
"…Christian?"
The deep voice was so direct that he looked up into the brown eyes watching him without any hesitation at all, "I love you, Luke Harper."
It was not as if he hadn't uttered those very words before… This time, however, he was not under the influence of a sermon, or any drugs. The times before he was not of his own sound, mind and body. He was somewhere else, floating in obscurity... But here, here he was himself and Christian knew it, but Harper was studying him close, looking in his eyes and in that time self-consciousness swallows him whole, a childish, unknown feeling for the charismatic Superstar. Then again, the feeling of wanting to die everyday was once unknown too.
Christian had been told that he was loved with repetitiousness as frequent as it was allowed since he had been taken from the 1st Mariner Arena. Sometimes it had to be in
stolen whispers of secrecy, though the two other men in the compound had been
fully aware of the lust that Harper possesses for the blonde who was slowly giving up.
His thoughts are disturbed by whispers from Harper, squeezing him carefully and
suddenly there are moist lips pressed against his.
He could definitely do this.