Love him
Love him, when you don't know him.
He is a boy too cocky and overconfident; his serpent eyes do not know yet how to fear you. Love him, anyway, when he offers a name that you never asked for, when you notice the blood under his nails and its smell cloying the already sweet aroma of his sweat, the smudges of dirt on his brow and cheekbones. He looks at you with none of the disappointment, hatred or disgust you have become familiar with, and instead of killing him where he stands, of tainting the blue of his chopped hair with red, of immortalizing the malign twist of that mean, mean smile in death, of filling the blank spaces of his limbs with needles, your heart beats, afraid, tenderly, because what is beginning to bloom in that instant is new and risky and troublesome, your skin feels warm as if you are back home, palms hovering near the fire of the chimney, and you love him without knowing it, love him the way he approaches you—innocently, unknowing, unaware.
Love him, when you can't,
when cold with dread, the memory of a meeting brings bugs to crawl beneath your skin, a fist to pummel the frantic beating of your heart, your lungs to fill with water, and you remember your lessons, you remember everything you know or thought you knew, the needles, the killings, the mountains of disjointed bodies, the torture chamber, Mother's voice, soft as silk, ingraining 'Family is all that matters Illu', Father's hand on your shoulder, a reminder of what could happen in the face of failure, and how none of those things matter, for a brief moment of rapture, when the boy keeps appearing with those all-knowing eyes and the too quick wit, and says with that viperine tongue of his, that you are the best, you are his favorite, that he will enjoy fighting you the most. And you say no, no, you never will, you do not react, do not crack with a sign of emotion, and you love him, love him for the appraisal and the notice he willingly gives when nobody else cares to. You have never been anybody's favorite, but for some reason, you are his.
Love him, when you pretend not to.
Love him, but don't show him. Love him, as if you don't hunger for his scalding touch, on a cheek, on the curve of a shoulder, sliding through the thick fall of your hair, and as you grow older, on a starving mouth, on the slope of your nose, under your chin, under your knees, under layers of clothes, between your thighs; love him, as if his name is not written on your soul like an ardent brand, and you do not live for the seconds spent in his company. Like his grin doesn't stake you, like you don't wish to mold your mouth to the shape of his, like your eyes don't follow the graceful edge to the manner in which he conducts his body, like when he off-handedly comments that you are beautiful your breath does not choke on its way out, like you don't drift off to sleep with the caress of his slippery voice on your ear, like he does not own the key to unlock your laughs, like you do not wonder what his blood would taste like against your tongue, what his bones would feel like crunching in your grasp during a fight—love him.
Love him, when he is broken.
He tells you things, sometimes, about his past. He speaks of monsters that are not like you and him, and of pain and boundless humiliation. He speaks of shame. His eyes are those of a doll, in such moments, wide and unstaring, lost somewhere far, distant, and you know where he is, you have been there too, many times. He becomes quiet, eloquent, pronouncing his words with slow deliberation, his vowels denoting gravity to what he says. He is different, but he doesn't stop being what you want. You love him then, when he is manic, and restless bloodlust spikes. Whenever you find him after an encounter with another one of his numerous toys, unexpectedly shattered, you love him, and put him back together, suture the wounds that can't be seen by treating him like there is nothing wrong— because in reality there isn't anything wrong with him, he is perfect, normal— you brush his sweaty hair back from his forehead, wipe the blood you wish you could lick with your fingers and the long sleeves of a suit, shirt, or sweater if you are wearing one, heal him even though he might not want to, wishing for the day when his bruises will be yours.
Love him, when it is inevitable.
When he truly smiles, and his eyes are like pools of light at the crack of dawn, with none of the malice he wears like a shield. When he cries and you don't think him weak for it; you admire the strength he has to do what you are no longer able to. When he is strange and so unlike anyone else that even when you can't fully understand, you feel welcome at his side. When he is excited, his aura trembling in bloodlust, his expression the one that makes others shiver, disgusted, and makes you roll your eyes at the heavens, secretly fond. Love him as you love all of the insignificant little things. The wrinkles on his forehead as he frowns because you sneaked into his room at Heaven's Arena and woke him again with a needle deep into his chest, a couple millimeters shy of puncturing his heart, more upset about being so rudely dragged from sleep at the tender hour of three in the morning rather than the threat of an assassin straddling his lap with a fistful of pins. How he walks on his tiptoes when he is trying to convince you to pick a fight, and you can almost picture a pair of dog ears on his head. The hidden shyness that drives the compulsion to cover his skin, be extravagant, be different, to bury any trace of humanity that can diminish his image. The way he blushes the color of his flaming hair when you compliment him. His long fingered hands, carefully treated, masculine yet delicate. The satisfied smugness he displays after mindless killings, the pleasure he feels for chaos and death calling out to a fragile, tentative breath inside you that longs for freedom although it (you) shouldn't. The superficial cuts mischievous cards dancing casually trough the air, back and forth, kiss on the inside of your elbows. Love the boldness, the choice not to dance to a rhythm that is not his own. Love the silly drawings he paints on his cheeks and the way he dons heels, like they were made specifically for combat and for him. Love that he is loud, impossible to ignore, everything you have been taught not to be. Love him, inescapably.
Love him, when you don't.
Love him, when you hate him with the single-minded focus required for a long-standing mission. When the sole coherent thought in your mind is that of destroying him ever so slowly, of your hands pulling onto that lying jaw of his until its tied to his skull by mere strings of muscle tissue, of holding his eyes in your own as you tear his broad chest open and feel the ridges of his beating heart where your fingers would settle to finally have the traitorous organ in your grasp, of breaking through bone, flesh and intestines with the onslaught of claws, adorning him in pretty holes through which anyone would see the galore of gore, how those insides would crawl down the holes and fall— you dream of destroying him so thoroughly that he will cease destroying you in turn. When he comes to you covered in the odors of foreign bodies, when the spot under his chin is raw bitten, when the marks that haunt his smooth skin have no relation to fighting, when his keen stare wanders to another and he shines like he did the night he met a boy of eyes and complexion that resembled the dead, you hate him, hate him profoundly, hate him with a passion that erodes and you are not sure that there is not a hole of your own creation being burned into your stomach, where you often feel the intensity of your hatred reside.
Your hate flows like water from a well that refuses to dry and it does not end, because you can see his back as he walks away from you, hunting for his next thrill. Because he chooses Chrollo, and you don't say what needs to be said, you sit there, humor him, swallow every bitter pill, and let him leave. He chooses to run after him while you bite your knuckles, butcher your jobs, and you ask yourself in front of the mirror what was it exactly that you did wrong. Because he then glows at the sight of the pathetic green insect that keeps on pestering Kill; the child is suddenly all he speaks of, as if he is enchanted and charmed and amazed, and you find yourself marveling at your reflection again, asking yourself why you are not enough for him anymore. You hate him, you want his blood on your hands, and Mother was right, you should have listened, you ought to have stepped on the wretched worm of feeling wreaking havoc on your common sense, and you don't love him, you don't love him at all. Love does not contaminate you at the remembrance of his laughter or the volatile heat of his touch, or the showing of bare calves that's rare in its lack of intent or how strikingly handsome he looks with his hair down. When, as always, he eventually returns to you, you tell yourself you don't love him. You don't love him, when he comes to you bearing a box of your favorite sweets. You don't love him, when he leans his head on your shoulder, the scent of his fruity shampoo drifting to your nostrils, and animatedly gesticulates his way around retellings of what he has done and experienced without you. But you do. Love him, you mean. You never stopped, and it shatters you that it hits you so clearly, as he grins and talks and is just with you, near you, that you love him, like the first blossom that pushes through coats of snow at the end of winter, ready to begin again. Love him, brand anew. Cradle your newborn love and bandage it, like you have done over and over throughout the years. Love him, in the patient way you have learned to bear both the hurt and the affection, because, in the end, you know he will always choose you.
Love him, when he chooses himself.
When he does not choose you. He stands there, like nothing can touch him, like nothing can harm him, and you have been dead for what feels like eternity, after hearing about what Chrollo did to him in Heaven's Arena, but that becomes inconsequential, is absolutely nothing compared to how he obliterates you right then with a single sentence. You thought the heartbreak was the worst part, but you were wrong, and you are bursting from within, you fear that what composes you will escape through every pore, or that you might dissolve where you are, and you wonder, is this a nightmare? When he doesn't smile, when he doesn't joke, when his eyes remain dull, you understand you are not dreaming. You think you are not alive, as you examine him from his head to his feet, that your body will crumble at the seams at any given second, and you think that for the first time in your acquaintance, in whatever your relationship to one another is, you finally understand him and it hurts more than any poison or torture, it pierces right through you because you never thought to build defenses for this. You see him like you never have before, and although you continue to love him (would not be capable of letting go, even now) you wish that you didn't, wish that you were selfish enough to turn him away, to deny him and be the one to leave for once without a glance behind. When he looks at you, you wish you remembered the bittersweet denial of not loving him. When he says, I want you to kill me, and presents you with a contract, love him, do not pay attention to the lonely sound of your heart as it extinguishes, to the cries echoing in your head, to the screeching screams of hope as it dies. Love him, as you think that you should have killed him sooner, that if there was a way to tell your thirteen year old self not to lower his guard, you would. Love him, when he is cruel, the cruelest he could ever be, imploring for things you don't want to give. Love him, even though it kills you to. Love him, as you admit defeat, as you fold your feelings and give up. Love him, and you, too, decide to choose him. Yes, you say, and watch as your whole world turns to dust.
Love him, when you have done the unthinkable.
As he bleeds for you, because of you, love him, love the skinny boy dressed in rags, the only one who saw you, with your arm firmly embedded in between his shoulder blades. As you take your arm out and a stream of blood leaks, love him, adore him. As all you can do is take him by the hair and hold him so close that you can feel a weakening thrum resonating across every vein and cell. As the light vanishes from the eyes you see when your own close. Love him, like you did that first day a long time ago, innocently, unknowing, unaware of consequence, except that you are now the one with blood under your nails, and the time for childish games has been long finished. Love him like you do his blood, forever edged into your essence, into everything that you are and everything you never were nor had the chance to be. Love him, when you cannot see beyond the grey hue of his lips, the missed opportunities form like smoke from a cigarette, and you recall that you never got to taste them, not once— you never got drunk on the bubblegum that even now you can smell on his stuttering breaths. Love him, embrace him, inhale him one last time, allow your tears to entangle in fiery red and whisper reassurances that he probably cannot hear. Love him, when you don't tell him that you do, always have and always will. Love him, when fingers land on your cheek, barely conscious, and he murmurs that he is glad that it was you. Love him, when he thanks you, voice fading, and you feel yourself slipping away too, like a handful of sand through the gaps of his fingers. Love him, when the rain washes all signs of him away and you can't perceive the cold insidiously seeping into your veins.
Love him, when he is cold and still in your arms.
Love him, when he is already gone.