See You At The Bitter End
Like the naked leads the blind / I know I'm selfish, I'm unkind
Sucker love I always find / Someone to bruise and leave behind
(Every You Every Me – Placebo)
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It's terrifying, how nothing ever stays, don't you think?
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She stood at his doorstep.
How many times she had vowed never to come back here now? Ten, twelve? She couldn't tell.
The night was cold and windy, an announcement that fall would come soon, and the thin fabric of her camisole wasn't enough to soothe the chill on her skin. She knocked and held her arms together, toes curling against cobblestone.
A pause. Then, the door opened.
There was a disapproving sigh held between Laxus' too-tight lips, she could tell. But he said nothing as he granted her passage and she didn't waste time.
Mirajane stood barefoot in the middle of his ever neat living room. Not much to be seen there, a couch, a shelf full of records, a coffee table.
She turned to look at his back while he locked the door. There was hesitation in his motion. He was probably asking himself whether to indulge her self-destructive actions or not.
Again.
Mirajane closed the space between them and pressed her lips between his shoulder blades.
There wouldn't – couldn't – be time for him to make his mind. Her fingers travelled along his bare torso and pulled him gently towards the sofa.
Mirajane pressed his shoulders down and sat on his lap, a silent plea in her eyes. Shame made him look away in silence. His initial refusal stung in the first few times, but not many things could hurt her these days, and she proceeded to kiss his jaw, his neck. The scent of dewy grass and misty mornings that was all Laxus blurred her senses. The warmth of his skin melted into hers, a sweet invitation to lose herself in that, in them.
Never being one prone to patience, her kisses soon enough turned into bites. Long nails scraped the back of his neck, closed in the ends of his hair, desperate and wanting. It must have hurt, but again, he remained silent. He'd let her have her way, he always have.
Lowering a hand between her legs, Mirajane touched herself and moaned against his chest. She needed that, that frantic distraction, a moment of solace in which her mind was not filled with those memories again and again, rewinding like an old movie. She needed the friction of their bodies, the drops of sweat she'd lick off of his collarbone, the tips of her nerves screaming for release.
"Please," she begged against his chin, grinding against his erection. Her fingers worked fast but not enough to erase the screams, the agony, her sister's particles vanishing in the air. Please please please, she needed to forget, only if for a moment.
When his hands finally closed around her waist, she sighed – moaned – in relief. Maybe her fingers shook a little as she pulled him out of his shorts only to find him already hard. In some nights, when she was feeling particularly bitter and the alcohol ran wild in her veins, she would point that out to him. That his judgemental stare was hypocritical as she pulled her underwear and guided him inside. That they wanted the same thing as she eased around him with disregard for pain.
There wasn't much talking nowadays.
Knees held steady against the cushions, she rode him with no care and no rhythm. Physical discomfort was both a welcome and an unforgiving distraction. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the frenzy of her movements, letting her hold on the Dragon Slayer's neck be the only anchor to reality. Laxus let her use him.
(He always have.)
She bit him and clawed him and used him until her brain went haywire, then blank. Against her ribcage, her heart hammered as she spent the remains of her orgasm resting her forehead on his shoulder.
Laxus waited for her heavy breathing to subside and slowly removed the damp fabric stuck to her skin. She shivered, clinging to his body for warmth.
He stood up and carried her to the bedroom, lowering her to the mattress with a care that might be unfamiliar to others, but between them has become a recurring thing. The feeling of her head sinking in his pillow, the familiarity of the scent on his sheets, the SoundPod left carelessly forgotten on the nightstand still going through his playlist.
She hated all of it.
His lips travelling up her legs, raising goosebumps on her now-too-sensitive skin, moving along her abdomen, her breasts, her collarbone. Caressing her, embracing her, she hated it all because eventually he would reach her face and kiss the tears she hadn't realized she'd been shedding and then she'd remember why she shouldn't keep coming back to his place after the nightmares.
Laxus offered her love and solace and forgiveness. He made love to her the way he thought she deserved it, slow and tender and intimate. She wanted none of those things, only to forget. She wished that he'd lay some of his own frustrations on her, that he'd use her like she did, that in the end she would be numb.
At least in the end he'd roll over and pretend to be asleep, so she could leave without feeling the need to say something. For that at least, she was thankful.
After looking for her clothes, Mirajane left once again to the empty streets of Magnolia, accompanied by nothing but the empty promise to never repeat that mistake.
But if she did, Laxus would let her. He always have.
.
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You don't want to hurt me / But see how deep the bullet lies
Unaware that I'm tearing you asunder / There's a thunder in our hearts, baby
(Running Up That Hill – Placebo)
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It hurts until it doesn't anymore.
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He doesn't remember what led him to take her in the first time she'd showed up at his doorstep.
Laxus wished he could believe anyone would have done the same when she has been so… broken. Though wiser minds wouldn't let her deal with things in her hate-fucking ways.
He wouldn't dare to judge other people's life choices when his own life was filled with a plethora of bad ones. How could he, in good conscience, decide what was or wasn't best to anybody? His sins long surpassed hers in both quantity and quality. He was so good in fucking everything up that helping her fuck herself up would be just another item in the never ending list of wrong decisions he carried upon tired shoulders.
Laxus wished he didn't know the real reason he'd let her rip his heart out of his ribcage and crush it every night was because of love. Love, such a dangerous, despicable sentiment. Corrupted him when his father was expelled from the guild and he sought to destroy the world; corrupted her when her sister died and she sought to destroy herself.
If not for love, he wouldn't know what loneliness was, the same way one does not know what it feels like to be cold by never knowing warmth. Laxus wished pretending he didn't love her would make his loneliness disappear.
Laxus wished way too many things and deserved none.
Every time after Mirajane leaves, he is left to stare at the shadows in the walls, a cigarette dangling from his lips, feeling everything and nothing. He reassures himself with the fact that this isn't about him, that there is no space for his emotions to invade her grief.
(Most nights he'd rather reassure himself with scotch, though.)
If only he would be selfish enough to enjoy the sound of knocking on his door, sadistic enough to be pleased when she came to him so damn shattered. Obnoxious enough to relish on his own lustful desires. Cruel enough not to care that she'd been hurting herself. But those were mistakes his heart wasn't willing to make, for a change.
Laxus only wished she wouldn't hold his hand so tight when he kissed her tears away.
A/N: I started writing this in 2020 and, as you can see, through a pathetic Placebo phase. Edited a little and dumped here to pretend I still have original ideas. Curses FF for not letting text to be aligned right for extra pretending this is deep.
Credit for prompts are from pretty-bad-au-ideas on Tumblr.
