"Susannah," His voice was the first thing I heard. I opened my eyes, to find an infinity of wildflowers, blushing shades of dusk's purples, emerald green and cobalt blue. Fireflies lit the spaces between the slim green stems, darting here and there like tiny auras in the night sky. The air was alive, humming a bold vibrancy, that pulsated in the swollen buds of the flowers and in the pupils of his eyes, the blue of the sky. "You're so infuriatingly beautiful."

I looked over at him, and there he was beside me, something dark and beautiful and embittered in my perfect fantasy. Silently, I took his hand, and he looked down at our interlocked fingers with a mixture of surprise and satisfaction. "Why is it that everything between us is a cognate of infuriation?" I heard the defeat, the sadness in my voice, and from his eyes I could see he'd heard it too." Why is it that anger is all we are?"

He smiled, but it was a bitter shadow of a smile. "Because we're not the type of people who'd be happy if we got what we wanted most. There's something in us that knows that."

I sighed, and leaned my head into his shoulder. He let out a surrendering exhale, before he moved, wrapping his arm around me, kissing the top of my head, he rested his chin above it, and I closed my eyes, swallowing the aching lump in my throat at the way we fit together like we'd been designed with that in mind. "I don't think we're happy this way either."

"But there's the game," He said quietly, "We keep eachother going."

"It just hurts, now." I said flatly. ""It just feels like we're just impersonating how we used to be. It doesn't feel real anymore, Paul. This is forced."

"Don't you get it?" He asked bitterly. "It'll destroy us. We'll destroy eachother. If we get what we want, we'll destroy it because that's who we are. If we allow this to happen, it'll obliterate itself."

"Then let me go, Paul. This game is sick, it's just how fucked up we are projected in eachother."

"I can't." He said flatly. "It'll always be like this. It'll always be me after you, it'll always be the same. I can't let myself be happy, but I couldn't possibly let you be happy with anyone else. It'd kill me."

"You're fucked up." I said, wiping away the tears running down my face., pulling away from him "Fuck you, How can you even say that out loud?"

"Because it's the truth." He said, his face expressionless. "You're the same way, you know. If you let yourself have me, you couldn't live with the fact that you belong to someone like me, that you could be consumed by the magnitude of what we have. It's too much."

"And what about you? That doesn't make sense. You can't let yourself be happy? You can't give yourself what you want?" I was so angry, I was spitting the words at him.

"No." He said. "I can't."

"Why?" I tried to keep my voice level, but the emotions were burning under my skin, the real words were digging into my tongue and searing my mouth. I was going to burst, I was going to shatter, I was going to implode.

"Because," He said, and I hated the calm of his voice. "That's who I am. I just can't let myself be happy, Suze. I can't have what I really want."

"Why?" I demanded. "That's not an answer. Why?"

He was silent, and with one fluid motion I slapped him hard across the face, the sound ringing in the air like ripples from a stone, expanding slowly until the impact stretched out all around us, trapping us inside its rings.

He looked down as I struck him, and caught my hand, holding it there. After a moment, he looked up, and in his eyes I saw so much, there was so much, it took my breath away.

His voice broke as he finally said,

"Because my entire existence is the embodiment of emptiness, and if you filled that, I would cease to be- I'd lose me. And so would you. This is the temptation, Suze, you and me. And we can't ever give in."