#If I move to Berlin he’s gonna be my lifeline

[doveboycreature]

I think I’m destined to be taken advantage of by my employer

[alexsunmners]

ok sorry but ur so unbelievably amazing at angst, i'm thinking warren w/ #2 from reasons not to kiss her? ur so wonderful babe!!

Warren Worthington iii + this prompt list

a/n; this didn’t end up fitting the prompt at all but fucking whatever i like what i wrote also the ending here is so bad byE i can’t end drabbles to save my goddamn life jesus christ anyway this is canonverse set in berlin and just a heads up there’s a lot of discussion of negativity and injury so if that bothers you then maybe don’t read it? idk anyway @havokangel @mvximoff @rax-writes @emmcfrxst pls validate me even tho i didn’t proof read this

also for extra effect listen to earth by sleeping at last while reading 

no one ever taught you how to love. your war paint and scarred hands could never hold her like she deserves.

You’re lying back on the shitty, too-thin mattress on Warren’s floor, staring up at the ceiling as moonlight streams through the grimy, cracked window, illuminating your features in sharp relief. There are shadows hiding half your face, but the darkness doesn’t quite disguise your split lip or the dark bruises forming along your jaw and cheekbone or the way you almost seem to wince when you breathe. Lying there, you look half dead, battered and barely moving, but somehow you’re beautiful, even like this. He doesn’t want to think too much about it, but every time he glances at you, it’s like the breath is knocked from his lungs and he never wants to look away because god knows there’s little enough beauty in this world. 

The moonlight makes the tear that slides down your cheek look like stardust and the soft shaky sigh you let out tugs sharply at his chest because all he wants is to brush the tear away and hold you and tell you everything will be okay, and the sheer fucking absurdity of that almost makes him laugh at himself. Nothing is going to be okay. Not here. 

“I can’t-” you break off, starting again, closing your eyes. “I can’t be here. I can’t do this. This-fighting. I can’t. I feel like I’m fucking drowning. I can see the fights when I sleep, I can’t escape it, it just-it never fucking stops.” Your voice is quiet and fragile, as if the slightest wrong step would shatter you irreparably. “Doesn’t even matter to me who wins the fights anymore. Not really. I’m just-fuck it’s all-basically the only time I ever fucking see anyone is when I’m fighting and it’s so-I’m so goddamn lonely. It aches how lonely I am. Like-worse than the bruises or whatever.” Your hand moves to press lightly at your ribcage, and Warren almost flinches as you wince, a low hiss of pain escaping you. 

“I think that’s probably worse than a bruise this time,” he says, voice flat, carefully devoid of anything that might sound like pity. He knows how much you hate it. 

You sigh and shrug, then flinch again, still staring up at the cracks in his ceiling, a brief, humourless smile curving your lips. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I got a fractured rib. But that’s-god that’s so not the point. I feel-I feel like I’m just-slowly slipping underwater-like I’m losing my grip and just slowly running out of air and it’s going to kill me. I don’t-it’s not about the fighting. That’s fine at this point. This-numbness doesn’t feel-survivable. I mean-like-god, Warren, don’t you feel it too?” Another tear slides down your cheek and his finger twitches slightly as he fights down the urge to brush it away. Your breath hitches and your voice is unbearably soft as you say “I mean-I know you can fight. But this-it’s like-do you ever feel like-like your humanity or whatever is just-slipping away? Like you’re just gonna fuckin-lose sight of the good parts of you and the good parts of like and they’re all just gonna slip away from you and you’ll just-lose yourself and there’ll be nothing left to help you find it again.” 

It’s quiet for a long moment and Warren doesn’t know how to put what he feels into words because that’s how he’s felt since he arrived here, how it’s been in his head for fucking years at this point. He’s lost count of the times he thought he was going out of his goddamn mind, of the times he thought he’d been pushed far enough to lose whatever decency he had left. He’s felt like he’s been slowly drowning for so long it feels fucking normal. He still feels like it. 

But it’s more than that. Different to that, now. 

He’s been here for almost four years and you’ve been here for just over two and when you arrived, he didn’t think anything of you. Didn’t spare you a thought other than his usual appraisal of a new arrival. A month or so after your arrival, you got drunk together after a fight. It hadn’t been intentional, but he had been drinking alone and you had wordlessly sat down opposite him and held a hand out for the bottle of vodka. It started becoming a regular thing to drink together and somewhere along the way the two of you started talking. 

He doesn’t know what to call whatever exists between the two of you. Friendship doesn’t feel right. There are no friendships here. But he cares about you. God, does he care about you. It scares him a little when he thinks too much about it. Warren’s given up on love, had given up on it long ago, but when he looks at you, all he can think is that he would give his life to protect you without a second thought. Sometimes he thinks if you hadn’t been dragged into the fighting ring, he would have just lost himself entirely. Lost his grip on any semblance of decency, on his sense of self, on his sanity. He thinks maybe you saved him. 

He doesn’t believe in love anymore but he loves you. He doesn’t know how to say it, not even to himself, but he loves you. 

The exhausted, resigned sigh you let out drags him back to the present moment and you scrub a hand over your face, running your thumb lightly along the split in your lip as you say quietly “I don’t feel like myself. Don’t think I even remember what I used to feel like,” and the soft note of acceptance in your voice is fucking heartbreaking because he can remember when you still cried after the worst fights, when you weren’t covered in scars, when you still talked about Berlin like it was temporary. He remembers when you talked about getting out, about escaping and now you’re just lying there like you don’t even have the energy to think about leaving and even though he knows it’s not, it feels like his fault. You saved him and he wants to save you back but he doesn’t know how to even start. He wants to tell you it’ll be okay, wants to brush your tears away and hold you and comfort you but your knuckles are so bruised and swollen he doesn’t even think he can hold your hand without hurting you more. 

Warren rakes a hand through his hair, his wings fluttering reflexively behind him as he shifts, leaning back against the wall and stretching his legs out in front of him, body stiff and aching with exhaustion and half healed injuries. He glances over at you, the moonlight and shadow making you look like some kind of renaissance painting about beauty and suffering and it’s almost poetic, except there’s nothing poetic about being in pain. Nothing artistic about the bruises and the blood and the fraying sanity. You turn your head and catch him staring and he doesn’t drop your gaze. There’s a silent question in your eyes, like you’re waiting for an answer, for something to hold onto. A lifeline. 

“I-I remember,” he breaks off, voice uncertain. Swallowing hard, he tries again. “I remember what you were like. Before this. It’s not-you haven’t-who you were then. That person isn’t lost.” 

You’re quiet for a long moment, studying him with an intensity that almost feels like it’s burning through him but he doesn’t look away. When you speak, your voice is scarcely above a whisper, a little hoarse. 

“Thank you.”