[He gags, tastes liquid copper, spits it out across the grass. They're still here for some reason, despite the fact that he's...this. They've seen him at his most revolting, were hit with the flash-flood of what it was to crumble, huddling on the floor of a burned hospital room, caked with tears and snot like the pitiful, disgusting little creature he is.]
[Lift your arm, Tim.]
[He's eight years old again. Complying to the commands that manage to crack through the ringing in his skull, the ache that's knuckled down behind his temples and squeezed his eyes shut. He lifts his arm, and there's nowhere to put it, nothing to do with the ragged edges of the flesh that's been shorn away and bared blank white bone.]
[They look...a mess. Tired, panicked, on edge. Looking smaller than they should without the safety of a sweater to lend them the illusion of volume. The marks chasing their arms match his own. They've both fallen to that vice, in times where it suited them. Where there was nowhere else to go. A knife they once pulled on him, before realizing it wasn't the right knife for the job - not the kind of knife they typically saved for strangers.]
[Glazed eyes and shallow breaths, and - an instinct he knows, vaguely, is overstepping some kind of boundary, because it's too soft for the clipped, tired exchanges they both share. The urge to brush hair out of their eyes in a gesture that would certainly be out of line.]
I've a - 's a jacket. In my - if you want it. [In his pack, not far from where he lies. A brown hoodie, carefully folded, clean but nonetheless slightly musty-smelling.]
[It arrived unstained with the dried brown-black of a dead man's blood.]
no subject
[Lift your arm, Tim.]
[He's eight years old again. Complying to the commands that manage to crack through the ringing in his skull, the ache that's knuckled down behind his temples and squeezed his eyes shut. He lifts his arm, and there's nowhere to put it, nothing to do with the ragged edges of the flesh that's been shorn away and bared blank white bone.]
[They look...a mess. Tired, panicked, on edge. Looking smaller than they should without the safety of a sweater to lend them the illusion of volume. The marks chasing their arms match his own. They've both fallen to that vice, in times where it suited them. Where there was nowhere else to go. A knife they once pulled on him, before realizing it wasn't the right knife for the job - not the kind of knife they typically saved for strangers.]
[Glazed eyes and shallow breaths, and - an instinct he knows, vaguely, is overstepping some kind of boundary, because it's too soft for the clipped, tired exchanges they both share. The urge to brush hair out of their eyes in a gesture that would certainly be out of line.]
I've a - 's a jacket. In my - if you want it. [In his pack, not far from where he lies. A brown hoodie, carefully folded, clean but nonetheless slightly musty-smelling.]
[It arrived unstained with the dried brown-black of a dead man's blood.]