To be honest, I even want them to be in pain just so they can be feeling something for each other; five seconds of stilted dialogue just won't cut it.
Enjoy.
Gift
She's a loaded gun with his best interests at heart; perhaps that's worse. Perhaps if she meant to shoot him or stab him or scratch his eyes out, it would be different. As it is, every last injury she inflicts is out of love. As it is, every drop of blood spilt is for them; perhaps that's better.
Sometimes, human care and comfort is all that's needed. It strips away the vicissitude, the vice of their daily darkness, and makes the world that little bit more palatable. She pours tears – beautiful tears – onto his sheets when the door creaks in the middle of the night and the smaller body moves in beside his. He turns over (of course he does), and lets the tremors tell him about her day and her life so far. There's a safe zone in that little world of bed and bathos, where it doesn't matter who's with whom or who's done what to whomsoever. Sometimes she needs to cling to the remnants of her old life, and that's okay.
Sometimes she needs to cling to him, and that's alright too.
He never forgets her face: each look, each expression of derision or desire or destiny forming slowly, licking up her features like fire. He never forgets the sideways looks across the room when she knows he's looking. They only play his game – the bathroom wall, the doorway, the floor – because she knows she can't take his hand anymore. She'll take that closeness, that fleeting closeness, tinged and mixed with the bright lights in her head. She'll take that little piece of what they used to be.
She'll take just a little, and he'll give just a little more.
They don't speak often, and when they do it's to trade barbs or pleasantries. But when they see, or catch sight of, or spy, every layer is stripped away. There's a beating heart across the room, bleeding, breaking, not a real live human in a shell of flesh and bone. There's a counterpart, an other half, one part of an intrinsic formula that's written all over their skins, coding for the end of the game, the end of the dance, the end of deception and waking in a sweat with bed empty, hands empty. Peel back the lightness and the soul is black, sanctified because there's only one who can sin worse. Sometimes, he doesn't turn over, and just feels the smaller body breathe against his back.
It's okay.
It's not everything, but it'll do.
Fin.