Some people laugh when they're upset. He lives with someone who turned smiles into a weapon, who bladed them in crimson and burned it into their face like a mask. He doesn't call attention to it. He doesn't point it out. He doesn't question it.

It doesn't matter.

Because he sees something else. Doesn't touch it just yet; instead crouches and stares at it and wonders when his heart is going to stop being the judder of metronome veins coiled up tight behind his ribs.

Remembers the way a knife eased into the skin of someone else's neck. The way it fountained out, slicking his hands, his knees, the floor beneath him, and he could barely breathe through the iron scent of it -

"There's something here. Shears." Spotted with dark blotches of copper. Too pale to be rust. Like a flip-knife drawn across a pale throat. "Pruning shears."