How to Break a Human
"Hey," there's a snap against his forehead, and Holland reaches blindly. His hand lands upon—upon her mouth, the contours of her lips resting against the sensitive part of his palm. She bites him. "Hey, wake up."
And he always hates this part.
"I love you," she says, the same way she says his name, without thought or infliction just—says it, like it is, a total acceptance of the word, and he imagines the darkness catches his reply.
He tries.
But—
Talho rolls away, adjusts the strap of her top. He can see the shadowy ridge of her spine when she bends to put on her shoes, and is overcome with wanting to put his hands around her and squeeze until she dissolves into him and
And she doesn't look at him the way he thinks he looks at her.
She has been with other men.
She'd said that once. A total detachment from her body. Aware of it, but only as a separate entity, a mechanism of skin and bone, flawed and quick to break.
His hands are full of knots and snares to catch her.
So it's funny, then, how easy it is for her to leave.
He buys her a set of earrings. They're expensive. They're all he's got, and he's done this sort of thing before, and she still goes with it, still knocks an arm around his neck and stretches onto her toes and puts a kiss on him for thanks.
He buys her presents for almost everything.
Everything's the excuse, apology is the reason.
He won't sleep with her. He'll have sex with her and carry her for miles and buy her anything she wants but he can't—can't stop himself from dreaming, and dreams such wicked things.
Sometimes she cries in her sleep and he'll sit up watching her, sick, knees tight against his chest and wanting to break something—to break her, so she'll know what it's like. So she'll stop tearing him down.
It can't ever work.
He remembers meeting her. Remembers the way her eyes dragged, so tired, how she kept walking after his brother, did as he asked, held her gun with awkward proficiency—how terribly young she'd been. So much younger than the man she shared a bed with—a decade younger, even, and she'd lost her baby-fat quickly.
He'd looked at her a lot, then. Something that wasn't war.
The best part of running away was that she'd run with him.
"It's life," she said, with new hair and new clothes and a milder face—hands on her stomach, "It's our baby."
He can't run from this.
Not without her.
Never could, anyways.
He wakes up not breathing, and almost struggles but smells Talho, her neck against his face, and his eyes are wet from dreaming.
So he hides within her, holds her and hopes that he'll be the one to die first, and she runs her fingers down his ribs and continues to break him down.