#anyway its hurt lati hours since hes too happy uwu

[latikaa-renaz]

prompt1: crux

Crux – day 1

 It’s worse, on the nights where the air in his apartment lays still and heavy. Where the darkness of his small room becomes as suffocating as the memory of hands grasping at his skin to pull his flesh apart slowly. The nights where he has neither the companionship in his bed to fill his every sense with distracting heady pleasure, nor the safety and comfort of the animals that he’s taken in. His skin crawls as if thousands of angry insects have burrowed their way into his very bones, a hive of angry pests made of the years of  his own resentment and despairs.

It’s so much worse, on the nights after his father manages to pry his way back into Latika’a’s life. Every time he thinks he’s gotten to a point of healing… the man’s slimy ways ruin it, and send him back to being the frightened slip of a man he once was. Reduced to the shivering form on his worn mattress, pulling the threadbare blanket around himself when his fresher linens and comforts felt like too heavy of a burden to bear. Who is he, to deserve such extravagances? Not when just a brief encounter with the dark eyes laying everything about Lati bare… hit him this deeply.

And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? How can he feel healed or worthy of all that he knows he’s earned, when it all comes crumbling down in a scant bell of stolen time? How can he be better with the man still living? He knows… he knows so well that he’ll always be haunted by the decade spent as the man’s toy, that he has so many hands to take when he’s ready to be rid of the bastard.

The cowardice is like a brand, his head unable to make his weak heart realize how little Tiberius bas Vulpes should matter anyway. It just makes lonely nights all the worse, when he hasn’t the strength to do anything but quietly shatter in the silent darkness.