screams softly you guys have been all too kind to me! Though thank you for the reviews and everything and oh lord *scoops you all up in a group hug* this is the best possible thing that could have ever happened 3
I hope that I don't disappoint you from here on out though I have a feeling my charactising as such has gone a little down hill though
I promise up and down that i'll fix it soon after hmmm maybe a few chapters and the earlier cutesy lovey dovey need to brush my teeth to get rid of the cavities will come back eventually.
Thank you so much!

Radiohead - How To Disappear Completely

"You look rather shaken today Doctor, you're lucky I'm your first appointment today." Elizaveta said, tucking a lock of hair between her ear as she took as seat in front of the Dutchman. "What happened?"

Lars was unbelievably aware of how he walked into work, his secretary asking if he was alright and instead of shooting her down he simply asked for her to kindly cancel all appointments apart from the one he knew he'd regret avoiding until the next day. He was pale, hand shaking with the effort to stay in one piece.

"These sessions aren't about me Mrs H-Elizaveta." He said, his knuckles straining under how they were balled at his sides. She didn't relent, her stare expectant until he gave in with a quiet murmur of a curse under his breath. "Who am I dealing with?"

"Who are we talking about?"

"Who else would we be talking about?"

"What happened." He ran his hands down his face, submitting to the dominance she was displaying in those two words. She was so certain she would get what she wanted and who was he to deny her in his state?

"He killed somebody."

She straightened up impossibly further and nodded, her eyes distant for a moment. "Ah. I see."

"You don't look very surprised." Lars muttered. "Does his job seriously involve such...brutalities?"

"I'm afraid so. I don't believe neither him or I have been very honest with you." Sadness trickled into her tone, sympathy almost overbearing. "But it's not something for me to gossip about, when he's ready to tell you he will."

"I've seen a dead body on my apartment floor I think it's my right to know exactly what's been going on."

Elizaveta shook her head dismissively. "Again it's not my tale to tell. I can however say that this has been going on since he was able to walk. The reason he ran away was to escape what had taken away his childhood."

"And what was that?"

"I don't know what. He didn't get the escapism he required, obviously, unfortunately I threw him into the exact same thing he was attempting to get away from...unknowingly." She leant in, her hands coming on top of his. "Please don't hate him for it. If not for him or for you do it for me. It just hurts me to know he's lost control again."

"Control over what exactly?"

"His composure. Whatever triggered him into being so careless about where the body ended up will have more affects than you being traumatised."

"So he's not a dealer."

"It's funny you believed that to be honest." Giving his hands a squeeze she pulled back again, wiping the flat of her palms against her jeans. "He exists on a different plane of existence to us, but for some godforsaken reason you got close enough to see what his reality actually entails. And I apologise profusely on his behalf for that happening."

"Godforsaken indeed."

"Doctor may I ask you a personal question?"

"I think by this stage we're both on a first name basis, but please feel free." He said hollowly.

"Do you believe in God Lars?"

"I don't think so. Once maybe I did, perhaps a higher power not named but now I'm not too sure." The bitter feeling in his blood of a riddle now solved made his tongue move sluggishly, hesitant, unwilling. He closed his eyes and sunk back in his seat, professionalism long gone and inner turmoil ripping him apart in it's place. "I've just had my world pulled out from underneath me, how can you expect me to have any kind of belief in something said to be merciful?"

"Because of this, just think about how boring your life would have been if you hadn't come across him. You two are twined so close by fate that it'd ruin the balance of the universe if something came in between you. Do not let this fuck it up, in the end what did you expect? A fairytale ending and a perfectly broken boy you could piece back together? The shards and splinters that make up your unfortunate case of a boyfriend are glued down so far apart from each other it'd be impossible to rip them up and put them together." Fierceness dribbled all over every syllable, an order almost. "Even if you do not love him anymore for the love of god do not fucking leave him the way he is now."

He stuck his nose in the air defiantly the way he might have his caregiver when he was a young child and she growled under her breath. He was not falling out of love no, that was an omen he was doomed to being for the rest of his life. He was scared.

"What you've been gifted is better than any mercy, than anything could give you Lars, you've just had your eyes opened to the real world now take it all in or leave this world completely because there's monsters hiding in the cracks of every person. Even you."

Lars opened his mouth to protest and she shushed him with a single glare. Her reasoning was boarding insane. Her morals scaring him but making all too much sense in his head and that terrified him.

"I think this experience will show you more about yourself than Mathias. Accept your own demons and things become a lot easier Mr Peeters. We are not messiahs, we are not angels we are nothing but deceitful humans run by our own emotions and it may take you until your death bed to realise that."

"How can you expect me to stay under the same roof as a murderer?"

"Do you think he really wanted to be who he is? People in our profession, as such, don't have much of a fucking choice."

"So what's your involvement in his life at this point?"

"I'm his handler of sorts, his manager if you will. I only look for the best in a shit situation. He gave away one of his most taunting secrets and I swear to god if he loses control again because you're refusing to listen to him or me for even one minute do not think I will not be the one to put you down myself."

"Then you're no better than him."

"What makes you think you're better? It's in you too Lars, I saw it when I spoke of my husband. You have the same desire pumping through your veins." She stood up, swiping herself down. "That anger. That possibility for loss of control. I'm not condoning anything we do but please. Please don't disappoint me. I saw hope for something when he talked about you."

It was so wrong that he let her leave the room, just as he should have called the police on Mathias he should have done the same for her. But watching her leave with her back straight and her feet so sure he let her delusions latch onto his own and leave him slumped in defeat in his seat.

It was a lost cause.

And he didn't know what he was doing any more.

He wandered around after his short time with the Hungarian. With his hands deep in his pockets and his lungs desperate for air that he wasn't choking on before he chose to go back to the apartment, he was unsurprised to find it void of the man...thing perhaps that he'd been living with. Rather than linger on the thought he dropped into his bed, door locked behind him and stared out the window until he hoped that slumber would eventually consume him and devour him in ignorance once again. He should have known he was going to be denied of the pleasure of sleep, he'd just been brought to the surface of tranquillity and safety he thought he was in and rather lived in a word of fear and allowed himself to fall for one who bore hands that were soaked in blood.

A contamination, a poison riddling his system and crippling his mind until he couldn't bear the thought to leave but wanted nothing more than to run as far as he could away from the Dane.

His life was fine before this, sure he lived with his sister but it was the same things, drink, smoke, work, mark, work, smoke, study, sleep, repeat. Yet still he couldn't help feeling guilty for allowing himself to even consider the fact that the shake up in his 24 years of practically being a poltergeist to the world, not seen, not heard but still able to touch things had been the most incredible and disgustingly wonderful thing that he had ever been given. But also the worst. The irony in it was painful, a dark humour from a higher power that was probably laughing it's ass off at the self pity and disgust he was wallowing in.

He hated it, he hated that he actually agreed with what Elizaveta had said, he hated he was considering it. He hated that he still couldn't leave. He wouldn't and it hurt him more to think about it, there was too much he'd be deprived of.
On the other hand
he was still there in that house under the roof of another in the bedroom paid by another and still having to accept that even though the devil can be and indefinitely was beautiful, irresistible. It was unfortunate for him that he was utterly infatuated with him.

He could live with hating himself.

He just couldn't live with hating somebody who had done so much for him despite the mild trauma he'd caused.

Tipping his head back he screamed in frustration, hoping the whole of Belgium could hear.

The neighbours banged on the wall beside him and he was silent.

xxx

The Hungarian's words brewed in his thoughts until he remembered he actually had the ability to speak, his tongue felt fat in his mouth and his voice box stale from just the short time of it being out of use, he wouldn't speak just for the sake of it though, he would wait until he found the right collection of words to use before he gave into polishing the instruments needed.

Mathias came back to the apartment in the early hours of the next day, Lars still awake looking blankly at the wall, his eyes flitting to the other to a split second before he felt his stomach churn again. The other's coat was damp but it hadn't been raining in the city that day, he suspected he'd been elsewhere. The urge to regurgitate all over the floor dissipated once he'd turned away again and he settled for not looking at the other until he'd disappeared into the spare room and locked the door behind him.

It took days before Lars could remember how to look at the Dane, remember how to talk and remember how to so much as sit in the same room as somebody who still went about their day with a steel rod in their back and a relapse in an empty stare that made Lars feel like he was in the house completely alone.

And during that time he felt himself dwell on his own anxieties, felt habits he'd been trying to take control of purge his system until he was scrubbing, organising and re-organising, washing down and washing away his worries as a form of hope for control. As if keeping everything in order would make his life feel the same way so it'd stop feeling like he was living in the seventh layer of hell. Control could not harm him. In between wrapping his lips around a joint until his lungs felt like they were decomposing and chewing on the skin around the ends of his fingers he made sure all of the pencils on the desk in the bedroom were lined up in order beside the stack of books. Practical order everywhere he went that left him with a satisfaction that lasted only a few minutes before something seemed out of place and he was forced to it all over again.

Control wouldn't hurt him as long as he didn't hurt himself.

Height, texture, boldness and colour of books, pencils, coffee cups, papers and clothing controlled the constantly changing situation of everything in the apartment. He barely ate whenever he started to clean, either for hours before and after work or the couple of days he wasn't present. The desire to control at least something, whether it be the timing of his breathing, or the amount of times he blinked in a second was nearly impossible, the organisation of the objects around him however was not.

He was sure if he'd seen anybody that so much as mattered to him once he would have become unresponsive, domineering, tense if something was out of place on the other person like how he used to get when a single hair would escape his sister's perfect curls, or if a single smudge of lipstick was left on the edge of a cup, or if the stitching on a shirt was fraying out of it's holes.

So Lars let himself obsess over the most pointless things. Everything meticulously placed and remembered until every room in his living space and office had the similarities to a prison. Or a hospital. Or, where he began to think he'd fit in, the mental hospital where arms were strapped down and the patient was forced to bite down on rubber as electricity suffocated the nerve endings in their brain until they were calm, numb, pliable and subdued.

If Mathias came back he was aware of the habits he'd picked back up again and made sure to tip toe around everything, his shoes left at the door and everything about his existence leaving barely a smudge anywhere in the apartment. He cleaned elsewhere, and Lars never touched the spare room that Mathias had started resting in whenever he came back, a hushed whisper about giving the Dutchman some space. To not not be a pest. Vermin. To be the one to break the tightly wound up control he'd been trying so hard to keep to contain the so called beast his patient had accused him of having in himself.

He could barely leave the house to go to work, it was chaos in the outside world everything was misplaced and filthy and sent him into dark thoughts with jittery hands to clean up everybody else's faults. Crippling anxiety followed him until he was behind the office doors and it would feel as if teeth weren't ripping at his nerves and invisible hands were telling him to wash his hands 12 times over in a space of 3 exact minutes. 4 to lather hands in soap, 4 to rinse them off, 4 to dry them. His sister talked to him once, telling him she was going back to Frankfurt and he nearly broke down into something similar to an asthma attack when she tenderly touched his forearms and squeezed at his shoulder-blades in an embrace. Sweat beaded on the nape of his neck, slick his hands, stick his shirt to his back. Going outside to the dim, dirty and secretive world full of conspiracies, deceit and sugar coated smiles became something he dreaded. Everything he'd learnt about dipping his toes into wonderland with Mathias had slid off like the drops of sweat on the ends of his hair and left him worse than he had been before.

Or maybe it was withdrawal from denying himself his living, breathing heroine. Maybe the obsessive need for control became the filler for somebody who lacked for all intents and purposes the very word entirely. He was just as euphoric and just as dangerous. And with even worse symptoms when the user was going cold turkey from it than the initial drug itself.

He lived in fear of pushing anything out of line in case his thoughts went with it and the beast ran rampant in it's place, that he'd throw himself under the oncoming bus with the name Mathias stamped across it that had a one way ticket to a place he did not know and did not want to know. Where the demons and darkness in the world was celebrated and the idea of normality was something along the peasants.

It was a lie when Elizaveta had claimed Mathias had any kind of control. Lars knew what control was, he drowned in it, thirsted for it, injected it into his veins like the Dane did his precious illegal stability. If he had control he wouldn't have let it spill from ribs, bruise airways until they were too swollen to inhale, cracked the tips of somebody's spine and left them on the apartment floor until he could find the will power to move his legs. Control had trickled from between the cracks in Mathias' lips the moment he was able to walk, there was no possible way he had any idea what the word meant. Control was a solid, touchable object Lars could brush his fingers against and use like a shield in the figment of his own imagination and it became a reflective physical element of his being in only a few days.

But oh it could only last a few days, it only lasted a few days before he realised just how badly he needed to hear the whimsical words from the Dane's mouth, longed for his touch from spidery fingers and the blunt and to the point requests that either agitated or fuelled a strange kind of lust that Lars couldn't believe he was even missing by this point. Again he began to let it wear off, the spontaneous period of cleaning, cleaning, cleaning hunting for control, control, control faded until it was barely even translucent.
He began to try and tune back into the static noises of real life, changed the channel in his head with an invisible remote until he remembered what life really looked like and in his state tried again to stumble into Mathias again and find him. Even if he were under the same roof he was undetectable. Moving so fast and so quiet Lars thought he were simply being haunted.

The first time he said anything after the incident...his words were clouded with his judgement and brief burst of irrational fear that over rid any other rational thought.

When he saw him again, or rather evidence of his being still being alive became somewhat hard to look over, the dull slosh of water broke the soundlessness that had been looming the apartment for his time away. He slipped through the barely open bathroom door and looked down upon the Dane who had himself submerged in the bath that stood alone in the centre of the room, his arms wrapped around himself and knees to his chest as he lay on his side and the surface of the water didn't even shift to show any struggle for the need of air.

When it appeared as if too much time had gone by, Lars rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and pulled the other back out. Mathias took in deep breaths, greedily inhaling air before practically throwing himself away with a shudder from the Dutchman's hands. His own hands still twitched from the water splatters left all over the floor.

"What the fuck is going on?" His own voice sounded hoarse, despite the amount of talking he did for his job the words sounded raw.

Tired eyes stared across at him, the other's shoulders hunched in as if to protect himself, the back bone gone from previous days. "Please don't." On weak looking legs he got out of the bath, the furthest side from Lars and began to dry himself off, the thin fabric of his sweatpants and plain white shirt doing nothing to hide the bones jutting out from under his skin.

Lars walked around to his side and grabbed at the withered shoulders, weight he had hardly noticed had visibly slid off Mathias' bones and forced him to stand straighter. "Mathias why the fuck was there..."

He shook his head. Mumbling protests and trying to worm his way out of the Lars' grip without touching him. From how his hands were trembling at his sides he was trying to repress physical contact altogether.

"Mathias answer me."
"Mathias for fucks sake just say something."
"Mathias tell me why you fucking KILLED somebody for m-"

"BECAUSE IT'S WHAT I DO." He yelled, his hands came up and he shoved the Dutchman away from him. Lars hit the ground painfully and he did nothing but sit still and stare up at the man who resembled an animal caught in the headlights of a car. Mathias looked at his own hands like they were rotting road kill, his lips curling in disgust. "I don't fucking deal drugs you dumb fuck. Why would I sell things to people that I hate myself for taking in the first place? I didn't want you to get involved. I didn't want to tell you. I didn't want to have to see fear in your eyes when you so much as glanced at me Lars. I didn't want you to look at me...like I was a monster. I know I am, I'm what mothers warn their kids about at night. I kill for a living, I model for a living I bat my eyelashes and caress people's corpses at the same time for survival. But never did I want you to think me as anything less than human. Enough people already think that."

"What did you expect me to think?" He tried not to let the other's outburst get to him, the small insult swarming in with the truth.

"To not find out in the first place." Mathias trembled, his body slackening and he slid down the opposite wall, his arms wrapped around his body again and his grimace distorted his face further. "Lars you don't understand how fucking desperate I was to get a lid on all of this, that desperation was so much worse when I thought you were going to know. Because I know...I know it's wrong...and...fuck it...I'll leave in the morning." He said quieter. "I'm sorry."

if he loses control again because you're refusing to listen to him...

"Don't go." He said, surprising himself. His tone was harsh, but honest. He honestly...didn't want the other to go. The truth had been pried out of Mathias' unwilling hands and ripped apart by them too for Lars to see. Elizaveta had been right, he wanted to try to piece back together a broken little boy who would never be able to be a full person in their life time. "Don't. Go."

"But why?"

He crossed the room but remained unsure of why, however when his hands rose and he saw the other flinch back and close his eyes, his arms dropped to his side limp and he shifted impossibly closer to the firm stand of the wall.

"Don't do that." The Dutchman growled out just as the other smiled weakly.

"It's better to not see it coming." He ground his teeth together and arched his chin up to give cleaner access to the Dutchman. "Go for it."

He thought Lars was going to resort to violence.

When he tried again his hands ended up on either side of the Dane's face who locked up instantly at the touch, both eyes opened wide, pupils pin pricks. Lars brushed his thumbs against his cheekbones in soothing circles as the other shook, his fingers curled in his scarf. Strange to see somebody so dangerous crippling under the weight of the fear of rejection. Fear of being left alone. Strange to see such a man curling in on himself to protect himself and stranger still to see that man holding onto him like an anchor. Pulling him in he hugged him to his chest, nose buried in the mane of hair alongside his fingers and he murmured to him in his native tongue that he was forgiven.

It was like holding a crying child. The urge to protect and comfort was overwhelming. He was disgusted in himself but never would he regret forgiving.

"You stupid little mind fuck you can't...I was worried."

"Why won't you hurt me." Mathias whispered eventually into his shoulder. "You should hurt me. You should...despise me. Why the fuck won't you hurt me? Where did all that hatred go?"

"Did you want to be what you are."

"I didn't have a choice. It was them or me."

"Then I don't despise you." He pulled him back enough, pushing hair out of the blonde's face he tipped his chin up to look him in the eye properly. Mathias was still refusing to sit straight, his shoulders curled in. "Mathias you idiot I couldn't."

"I'm a mur-"

"You're Mathias. Nothing more. Nothing less." He swallowed past the scream of terror at his own words. "I was a stranger to his world. I still am. I didn't understand the language of anything and then you had to come in and smile at me like you understood exactly what my own silence meant. You've given me something that scares the living shit out of me but it will not leave yet."

Mathias stared at him with worry in his eyes and a frown on his lips but a relieved sigh on the end of his tongue.

"I will not let you leave yet." Lars said again.

xxx

He balanced on the edge of the roof, his toes hanging off the edge and still Mathias rolled back onto his heels and into the arch of his foot, putting his balance off but still he didn't fall. Lars watched from his peripheral vision as plumes of smoke evaporated into the air and those once warm eyes watched the skyline, heavy as if bored, glazed as if not seeing anything.

"Don't do it."

"If I die I'm selfish enough to ask for a beautiful death. Jumping off here wouldn't end beautifully." Mathias muttered, spreading his arms out to the city. "Flowers can grow from my corpse but I don't want to end up just another broken star. That seems to be the norm these days don't you think? Anyway, I deserve a punishment worse than death and staying alive is as close to that punishment as I'll ever get."

"Why don't you just stop?"

"Because then I'll be put down like a wild dog." He crouched down, arms around his knees. "If I backed out, that'd be too dangerous for them. For anybody I guess. So I have to keep doing it. Blood's a pretty colour anyway. I'm not complaining."

Mathias started balancing on one foot at a time, walking across the ledge from side to side and eventually his feet grew lighter and quicker and Lars' heart beat just as quickly in anticipation from watching the other's reckless movements, he half expected him to tumble down to the ignorant pavement below them. Eventually the Dutchman realised it was a long practised dance routine that took the other across the thin strip of concrete on graceful feet, empty laughter cutting into the mid afternoon sky that eventually was smudged out by the inky night as Mathias repeated his stepping over and over again, humming a tune to himself that sounded familiar but fell nameless to Lars' ears.

"By the time I was 11, I'd memorised every single dance in Swan Lake. It got to the point I could have probably done it in my sleep." Another spinning jump and he landed perfectly balanced on one foot, stopping himself just before his weight was tugged down by gravity. "My mother took me and it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen."

"I'd tried for years to pretend like the world was my stage, I'd wanted to perform it one day." He said with a light, hollow sounding giggle, still continuing on and his rhythm picked up in pace. "Naturally it's obvious I never did."

"You're graceful enough for it." Lars said, taking a few steps forward to try and stop him from going my further, from reducing his balance, from tumbling down to the death he said he would never want.

"Have more important things to focus on." Mathias however did stop, his stance even, his body entirely still and he smiled down at Lars tiredly. "You've been trying to take control of life again haven't you?"

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps that's a dumb idea."

"Control never hurt anybody."

"If control existed it wouldn't hurt anybody. However it's nothing. Just a concept people use to help them sleep at night. It's merrily something people spend their lives trying to find, they lust after, but it'll always be out of reach." The blonde turned back to the miniature world below them his body weight shifting dangerously over the edge. "Do you know how I know this?"

"...No. How do you know?"

"Because if control existed that means my body and mind would be within the boundaries of the control of life and death and I bet you I can prove that."

Lars skin went cold all over and he swore time slowed down and before the words left his mouth he could feel himself wishing he could pick them back up again and never say them. Swallow his tongue and stay silent and not join in on the little flirtation Mathias was playing with the grim reaper. "How?"

Mathias' eye contact lasted a split second before he let himself fall limp over the ledge.

The scream that left Lars' throat didn't feel like his own.