☀ coincidence

head in hands, awake before dawn and yet his days seem like they're getting shorter and shorter. because his bones are aching and he's only seventeen, but he's lived and loved enough to make him cruel. 

catch him snickering. catch him laughing. catch him with liquor in his hand because that's what they promise will make it all go away. but it doesn't. it just makes him feel all in himself, pressing against the edges, so full his skin might burst, and what a way to go that would be. 

it's happenstance he's at that party. he and ollie give each other all the hurt they can without getting physical and he's howling at the world to hurt him in turn. where's his mark of cain when he needs it? when he wants it? 

but he meanders there and he's half-drunk and he's thinking maybe i could forget it all if he just keeps going, but it comes back up in the backyard and he hates it, he fucking hates it. 

and then someone pretty rubs his back and tells him it's going to be okay, and he gets him some mouthwash and knox thinks that this is the nicest anyone's ever been. and nicer still, is when he opens his lips, presses powdered snow to his gums and tells him he never has to come down. 

☉

☀ crisis

his art project wins. and he gets accolades and thanks, but he doesn't really care about those, because he's ten years old and his art is shit. he shows his father because he saw a movie once where the boy was just like him - dead mother with a dad who's trying his best - and he just wants to hear your mom would be proud, son. 

it's flame and embers and laughter until his face is red. you want to impress me, boy?

he does. he really, really does. because he's scared of something he truly, really cares about ending up in that fireplace, curling and crumbling and cracking. 

he's telling this story and he's laughing about it, and he's laughing at the big, bad wolf. the room is curling with smoke and he's coughing a bit as he tells it, but they're listening, enraptured, because there's nothing more raw than pain. there's nothing stronger than someone who can laugh/shrug/hack it off with the scars to prove it.

but when he's finished and eden says she's so sorry and ollie says it isn't going to work anymore and knox says i cheated on you anyway, he thinks they're all just villains from his stories, spinning in an orbit, going round and round and round

until the weed makes him sick and he decides it isn't for him. because it still makes him low, low, low, and no one wants to be around a sorry sap like that anyhow. 

buzzkill.

☉

☀ teacher

this is how you manipulate. this is how you change a person. this is how you reshape. you must break them first; you must bend them until they snap. you will pick up the pieces and you will put them back together, but do not fret when it doesn't look the same. 

they will leave their splinters inside of you and you will never know a moment's peace.

she claims it is for your own good. she's a lesser demon, in the grand scheme of things. the two of you will have your fun, but don't forget that this isn't real. none of it's real. it's ever-expanding and it's all nonsense, because none of it matters. 

the people you/he leave(s) behind don't matter. you/he is/are just one person. one body. one person. 

just me it's just me he thinks and the voice is gone, but it lives under his skin. it whispers visions of a past he'll never forget as long as he's alive and every time, he shudders and he scratches his neck and he thinks i must face them. 

so he goes to the monster and he says let me make you proud. 

☉

☀ disaster

it's not his fault. it's not his fault that someone else on the crew wanted to open up the boxes, that he was ordered to pry it open with a crowbar, that it sat there so tantalizing, that he had the world at his fingertips and it still wasn't enough, and here was wonderland, tempting him with a winter cold enough to freeze him to the bone. 

it's not his fault they were ambushed, that someone caught wind of the stash and came at them with teeth and knives and the shaking of the world. 

but that's not how he sees it. a failed delivery means a stain and the mark must be made, brought to the world, ripped from his back, dripping scarlet so he can see what it is. so he can feel his own failure.

it's not his fault and yet with his debts repaid, he thanks his good fortune. because with a pocketful of silver, under the night sky, he finally knows what it means to be free.

☉

☀ distinct

strong jaw. proud nose. eyes ice blue and piercing. he's no sculptor and so he turns to paints. he splashes blue and green and silver upon himself, chasing away the red. upside down, electricity up his spine, he tastes it upon his tongue and the world is an explosion of color.

he spins in lights and sweat and rolls in a sea of dreams. hands on his shoulders, the small of his back, gracing his waist, telling him in a million and one different ways the world loves him.

and the monster has his grievances, but with a knotted claw extended knox, with eyes black as night, gets what he wants. 

he is loved and he is alive and the hole in his heart is leaking lifeblood, but it doesn't matter because there's so much red in the mosaic he's painting he can't see it. he can't see it, but it's so fucking beautiful and he wants to drown in it. 

☉

☀ devolve

on top of the world. the monster waits with knives like teeth, ready for him to fall. and he totters, spinning on his axis, and drool gathers in its mouth. it's hungry and it's wanting and it's whispering to him that he's getting too close to the sun. 

but he stretches high, stands on his toes, and he bellows to the world that it can't touch him anymore. 

he loses the only love he knows and he cuts his losses, the balloons holding his heart, and he watches it drift as he invites strangers into what's left behind. they set up campfires and the embers burn, and his lungs are charcoal-black, but it's better than the shaking from that incessant cold. 

because she's looking over her shoulder now and keeping her distance and he doesn't have the right words in his mouth. i'm sorry i can't love you like you want me to and i didn't mean to break him/us/you. 

big shot, waltzing with the monster, asking him what about now? what about now? it's always that grating chuckle, ice in his veins, demanding more, more, more. and so with his heart gone, he sells his soul. 

and it breaks him. 

☉

☁ illness

it gets under your skin and lives inside you. and when it hooks its claws, when it makes its home, it's impossible to get it out. not without taking yourself with it. 

he throws himself into the brambles. money goes in and out of his pockets and his throat is slaked with snow, his mind stretched to a thousand and one different planes of existence. and so far away, so above it all, the things he does are insignificant. 

stolen goods under his palms - living, breathing animals with dreams and love and heart, crying to the pokemon on his shoulder, but she's just as cruel.

it gobbles him up from the inside out, turning his veins black. he checks them, sometimes, sees they're still blue, consoles himself with this fact. he struggles to hold it in, this thing that is bursting at the seams, and he holds it back with whatever he can pawn, whatever can make him forget. 

and then one day, stomach sour, feeling not right with the monster's demands, the look in its eyes when it tells him this is the most important thing he'll ever do.

the youngest is six years old and she's crying as they're shoving him back, replacing her bonds, sealing the door. what the fuck are you doing, man? we gotta go. they're waiting. 

he holds a hand to his heart and he doesn't feel a thing.

☉

☁ survival

he lives in a loop. he gets up and he dirties his hands and he stays awake until the dawn. there are blisters on his wrists and on his ankles, thinning patch on the back of his head (where he's pulled, incessantly) and his eyes are always glassy and he's always somewhere else. 

he starts to make mistakes and pride swims away from him and the lashes come back, but he's doing his best. tripping over himself, talons out, grasping at anything/one nearby. he opens skin, pours blood from everyone who's ever made themselves known to him. 

and they hate him for it, and they distance themselves from him, and with nothing left to break around him, he turns on himself. 

☉

☁ patient

he strikes with needles, liquid forget-me-not, and feels his heartbeat all over his body. boys, boys, boys. their hands in his hair and their fingers gripping his bones, curving under his ribs, remarking his skeletal body is such a fucking turn-on. 

he doesn't know who he is or what he is or why he is. he obliterates his self - no more loathing, no more guilt, no more promise. he floats and he feels and he is abstract. 

there's a last ditch effort, though, when she comes to him on her hands and knees and begs him to see reason. 

come back. come back please, knox. 

she gets what she wanted.

☉

☁ scratch

SPOILER: Click to show

the mirror's cracked. he draws his hand over his face. silver paint dribbles down his chin. a dozen different bottles lay at his sides. he hums to himself as he arranges them in a pattern of stars. 

reckoning will come and it will be soft and gentle, because he's ready. mania subsided, every inch of his life obliterated from memory - whose? 

jagged, bleeding, gaping holes left in a few. collateral damage. but that's what happens when a star dies. it collapses in on itself and explodes, leaving dust and ashes in its wake.

he just manages to break the surface. spinning on drugs of every shape and form, he can't tell fantasy from death, if he's already tumbled into the other side. but there's silver and red, an angry, dark, gruesome red dripping from his mouth. 

the monster grabs his throat and spits, we're not finished yet.

☉

☁ method

hazy days and a weight on his head. and eden is there, a ghost beside him, and then she's gone. and summer is there too, white-faced and angry. sad. loathing. hateful. real. why is it real? why is it real? 

it should be golden and he shouldn't feel this heavy. but breath is pain and existence is torture and it's in and out in and out in and out in and out in and out in and out in and out in and out in and out in and out in and out in and out in and out in and out -

is this his eternity?

he'd done it wrong. should've crossed with knives and let the monster free instead of poisoning it from the inside out. 

he comes to and he's screaming this, but the voice isn't his own. its bloodied and mangled and every muscle is so tense that the world is black edges, fuzzed, but people are watching, and they are terrified, and then he's back out. 

back under. in the thick of it and willing to be spent. wrists heavy, heavier than they were, ankles much the same. he sees himself smiling, winking to the nurse, saying kinky, but that's just a dream too. 

"oh, hello," he says and looks down at the three little rows in front of him. a being of twisted lines, a shivering silhouette, black and blue and red, mouth a gaping maw with empty, soulless eyes, dips its head respectfully, acknowledging him. 

"take it, old friend. it's yours. for a job well done."

"but it didn't work. i couldn't make it stick," he says. he dips his head, presses a finger to one side of his nose. slides down, inhales, leans back swooning/gasping. 

the reaper shrugs its shoulders and says, "if at first you don't succeed, - "

and knox laughs and his head goes back to the table, leaving one line left. he knows he can't take it, knows that last one is the door out of here. he'll be flung back to the surface and all his aches will come back and the weight of the world and of his failures will press against him.

the reaper stands and touches his cheek with a fondness knox has never known. cradled, tilted, fingers slide to his neck, and force him down. and he breathes in stardust and the figure comes closer and it's not a reaper at all. warm breath whispers in his ear and says, 

"try, try again."

☉

☁ frame

"i'm convinced this is the most you've never talked." the boy's lips are flat. there isn't any amusement there and the joke's as dry as the sahara. knox doesn't move, doesn't twitch, and certainly doesn't say a godsdamned thing. they've been sitting in silence for over an hour. he stares ahead, at the wall, hating that he can still see ollie in the corner of his vision. 

"maybe you should try to kill yourself more often." and at that, he blinks, and he turns his head with his brows furrowed, ready to spit obscenities his way, but ollie is smiling and knox hates him for it, because it makes him smile too. 

"you're an asshole," knox says, but there is a fondness there that makes him wince. ollie shrugs, as if to say, so they tell me or what else is new? 

and then he does the thing that will make knox love him forever - really love him. not hate-love him or selfish-love him, but really love him. to love him enough to do better by him, to do better by himself. 

"seven years. did you know that's all it takes? for every cell in the human body to die and reproduce? you can be someone else in just seven years." ollie takes his hand and he kisses his wrist and then he sets it down before knox can make his muscles work again. 

by the time he does, ollie is standing, and knox says, "what can i do to make you stay?" 

and ollie turns and says, over his shoulder, "seven years, knox. that's all it takes."

☉