[attr="class","mitchel"]He regrets saying it as soon as the words have left his lips, not because it’s rude or bad or untrue to how he’s feeling, but because it’s insipid and pathetic and so, so ungodly lame.

This isn’t him. This isn’t something he cares about. When has he ever given a fuck about who has the time of day for him? He’s Onyx goddamn Straub. He is literally a murderer. He kills people for a living. Why does he give a fuck who Andres is sleeping with?

He told me he loved me, insists a tiny voice that he thought he’d Old Yeller’d long, long ago, he did and that was supposed to mean something.

But this wasn’t Schrodinger’s Torracat, was it? He could not say that Andres’ I love you meant something while also saying it meant nothing. Only one of those was correct. One of those came with meathooks and claws and teeth and fangs and one of those was a safe bet that left him unscathed.

Mostly.

So here he was-- at the center of a tornado of thoughts that seemed like they lasted an hour but probably only took five seconds-- gaping across Andres’ kitchen island at him as he decided where to go from here. Run it back or jump.

Onyx has never made anything easier on anyone in his life-- himself included-- and he is not about to start now.

But Andres poses a good question.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

It isn’t like Andres is parading around other people under his nose-- for the best interests of all parties involved, honestly, because Onyx had come a hairsbreadth to killing that one kid that had walked out of Andres’ apartment before they’d fucked-- twice!-- and honestly didn’t think he had the self-control to hold himself back any longer.

But that almost makes it hurt more. Like Onyx is just another shitty notch in a card house of them, all collapsing at the same time. Death by a thousand cuts.

Would it hurt more if one of them meant something? Onyx didn’t want to go down that route, and yet, that’s the avenue he was being led to: he was just one of a number of various conquests. Line ‘em up and watch them fall.

All the same, he doesn’t have an answer for it in that exact moment. Not one that he was confident in. So, like any good coward, he spins it back on the person in question:

“I don’t know, Andres. What do you think it means.”

It isn't a question. It's a trap.

[attr="class","mitcheltag"]andres buenaventura mission: affection's confections

[attr="class","blboxbl"]

Andres swallowed feeling the beginnings of a storm forming in the back of his head. A great many things happen all at once and for a second he felt like every wire in his brain were crossing. Happy, angry, confused, petty, bitter, excited, hurt. Everything mixes in his brain like a blender and he's not sure how to feel at this development. He just knows dinner is off the table because he needed to focus. [break][break]

He lands on anger as Onyx decided to avoid answering him. Fine. If only one of them could be straightforward he'd rip the bandaid right off.[break][break]

"Who I fuck is none of goddamn business." [break][break]

Why he slept with other people didn't matter right now. Onyx had no right to complain. If he cared, he would've said something else by now than just condescend to him about it. [break][break]

"You don't get to be pissy about it either." [break][break]

Because it's true. And while, there had been that mixed jolt of excitement that Onyx cared about him that much, everyhting else with it had soured the sentiment. And instead of keeping it inside it comes out, nasty and venomous. [break][break]


[break][break]

+ onyx straub || affections confections (ee) [break][break]

[attr="class","mitchel"]Andres’ face does this weird thing where it goes oddly blank. Like he’s trying to spark out and recede-- like he had at the picnic, where they both just drop the gloves and walk away because Onyx doesn’t want to fight and Andres uses escaping as a self-defense mechanism.

But Onyx wants to fight, tonight.

Or, not really. He would prefer not to, honestly-- hard to believe, I know! But he doesn’t like fighting with Andres. It doesn’t have the same zing as it used to. Like drinking flat pop. the bubble just isn’t there. But he’d do anything-- anything-- for Andres to feel.

Something real. Something that-- maybe it isn’t good-- but it isn’t pain, either.

To his delight-- he has to swallow the smile-- Andres’ face hardens, and, hoo, boy, he definitely ain’t running from this one. He spits back at Onyx’s dumbassery with logic.

And Onyx is two seconds away from saying yup, you are correct, it is not, have a nice night and twenty-two-skiddoing right out the way he came in.

He realizes he has no ground to stand on. He realizes he’s on a sinking ship. But--

“Oh, sorry. Probably old fashioned of me to think I love you meant something, huh?”

Venom with venom. Old, festering hurt meeting newly torn flesh.

“Or more like I was right and you do just say that to everyone.”

He shrugged, grabbed a towel, and began to clean up the mess he’d made of the kitchen, as though all of this was beneath him and none of it mattered.

[attr="class","mitcheltag"]andres buenaventura mission: affection's confections

[attr="class","blboxbl"]

There's a flash of cold fury that runs down his spine. The same he'd felt in the woods. The same he'd felt the last time he'd put his hands on someone. The shock is evident. Andres had never been one to hide how he felt, to his detriment. But the momentary lapse only makes his eyes narrow and teeth clamp shut, damn near grinding them together. [break][break]

Because he'd meant it. He really meant what he said. Why else would he tolerate so much shit tossed his way? Even now, this was just the tip of the iceberg. Most would say this is a mistake. Onyx had said it to his face. [break][break]

Onyx had said it without saying it. Without a word, the deafening silence he'd woken up to the day after had broken his heart. And everytime after he'd leaned on false hopes only to get disappointed again. [break][break]

"I don't." The assertion is dark, deep. Because Andres had such a hard time making relationships in the first place. Yeah, he got around but it was superficial. The few friends he had were ex hook ups or he lost friends because he hooked up with them. Pushing for something more was always off the table. Even now, Onyx had rejected him. Andres just let him come back as he pleased. The insinuation he said it to anyone after debating for countless nights if he should was beyond callous. Onyx is proving just why he didn't want to. And he never would've if he hadn't thought they'd die.
[break][break]

"You don't get to hold my feelings above my head either!" He snapped. "Not when all you do is come around for a cheap fuck!" [break][break]

Not like Andres stopped him. Even if Onyx didn't believe he felt the way he did it didn't matter. Those feelings would linger and sour like milk. And he was helpless to do anything but suffer through it. He feels familiar stings in his heart and in his eyes but he forces himself to hold strong. [break][break]

"I don't know what your problem, but you need to handle your shit elsewhere. It's not my fucking problem to be constantly available to whenever to feel like you can barge in!"


[break][break]

+ onyx straub || affections confections (ee) [break][break]

[attr="class","mitchel"]Whether or not Onyx meant to put out the bait, Andres is rising to it. It’s just like back in that shitty club, when he’d pissed him off so much, Andres had hunted him down to yell at him some more. Elation and misery rising in equal peaks.

Andres’ voice echoes, somehow, across the small kitchen, gone low and dark and it thrills and hurts in the same measure. Both of them their own kind of electricity, salt and sugar in the wounds.

“Could’ve fooled me.”

Onyx, of course, is not introspective enough to understand the hypocrisy of his own feelings. He’s just too fucking dumb. Andres’ volume keeps rising, crackling like a fire. Onyx, the useless bastard that he is, doubles down, and digs in his heels. Neither of them is running from this fight.

“I came around to bake you cookies, dickhead,” he snaps back, gesturing to the evidence of that around him. “Or to watch movies, or have a beer, or check on you when you’re fucking sick.”

It's not my fault you're easy, he doesn't say, because that would be pointing right back to the stinging crux of the issue.

It was, in simplest terms, a difference of lifestyles. Onyx’s normal was so distant from anyone else’s normal. He didn’t have a regular place of residence; he lived in hotels and squatted in abandoned buildings, slept at bus stops and in alleys, ate most of his meals in cheap bars or snorted them up his nose. Andres offering his home-- his life-- was something new and bright and just the right semblance of safe that it rubbed him the right way.

He crosses his arms and turns away, going about setting up another baking sheet with little dough balls. He’s not goddamn leaving until he bakes these goddamn cookies, goddamn it.

“Shouldn’t have given me a fucking key, then.”

[attr="class","mitcheltag"]andres buenaventura mission: affection's confections

[attr="class","blboxbl"]

His heart constricts in a familiar way as Onyx derides him and hurt pulses and pools inside him. Every second they locked eyes together is another second of pain, old and new mixing together. He may not mean it, but it dredges up old pain and claws at hidden scars. Gasoline floods his system and the indifference Onyx gives him is the spark. He wouldn't let him trample on his feelings any longer. [break][break]

"What do you know when you only come around when it's fucking convenient?" [break][break]

He sneers, pain and doubt coating soft memories with a lens of cynicism. He forgets, for a moment, what he really felt when he looked at Onyx. [break][break]

"Halloween? The hospital? New years?" [break][break]

He glares as he continues his list. [break][break]

"Cookies? My flu? All just convenient excuses to show your fucking face and get your dick wet right?" [break][break]

The words cut his throat as he manifested the worst possible thoughts his anxieties had ever offered him. But he just keeps going even with the cracks in his voice. Any attempt to keep it level was useless as his emotions flood his words. [break][break]

"Did you even mean- I should've never listened to you when you were high off morphine, you fucking parasite." [break][break]

He wouldn't have cared so much. He wouldn't have gotten his hopes up. He wouldn't have shared his keys- his home with a man that didn't care about him.
[break][break]


[break][break]

+ onyx straub || affections confections (ee) [break][break]

[attr="class","mitchel"]Onyx tongues the roof of his mouth in a half-assed attempt to stop more words from spilling errantly out; he doesn’t understand Andres’ point of reasoning. Of course he comes over when it’s convenient? As opposed to… when? It isn’t like Andres is having big life-changing events happening every single goddamn day. Despite what this interaction might hint towards, this isn’t a scripted fucking TV show.

“You’re really good at putting words in my mouth, Andres. Like watching a fucking puppet show.”

He was also intrinsically wrong. For the first time in this whole fucking charade, Andres was wrong. Onyx hadn’t come over hoping to get his dick wet. He’d just wanted to see Andres. It wasn’t (entirely) his fault that Andres did funny things to his brain. It wasn’t (entirely) his fault that the little lizard in the gocart sitting and spinning endlessly on top of his primal instincts got put in the driver's seat whenever Andres showed more than a little bit of skin.

“I couldn’t ever have just wanted to see you? You’re so fucking set on being the victim, here.”

The oven timer goes off half a beat after Andres’ last statement and Onyx has to force a long breath to reach over and gently press it, so as not to break Andres’ kitchen, but he doesn’t break eye contact the entire time, because…

…what had he said? What had he done?

He doesn’t want to know, he decides. He’s better off not knowing. Knowing himself, it was probably horrible, whatever it was.

“Probably not,” he says, and it’s the first break in the clouds, an air of defeat in his voice as he swaps the baking sheets and sets the fresh cookies on two pot holders to cool. A crack in the armor, a give to the take.

[attr="class","mitcheltag"]andres buenaventura mission: affection's confections

[attr="class","blboxbl"]

His smiles, all teeth. Bitter and sharp and tight. "I don't fucking see you correcting the script, Onyx." Everything he had to go on was speculation. That maybe Onyx did want to seem him. That maybe, this was special. That maybe Onyx did care about him in the kind of way Andres did. Maybe not as fervently, but something close enough.

He would've been fine with that. [break][break]

Onyx calls him a victim and Andres doesn't hesitate any longer. "Blame my dazzling track record, 18 years in the making." [break][break]

andres buenaventura has always excelled in things he set his mind to. Even being the victim. He just had a natural talent for it. [break][break]

For a moment he felt his brain shut down from the shock. Something thumps hard in his chest his eyes unfocused for a moment as he stared blankly back. The memory replays. He remembered the horror at his balcony and the pooling blood and the delirious man at his feet. He remembers how stupid a decision it'd been and waiting for surgery to finish. He remembered the constant trips to see Ziadem, a bird he was convinced hated him and his partner but had no one else to let her know if her trainer was ok. [break][break]

He remembered how fragile Onyx had looked in his bed and how cold he felt when they'd told him he'd lost his eye. [break][break]

And he remembered how Onyx had called for him. How he'd tried to reach out for him and move when he barely had the strength to stay awake. [break][break]

And he remembered their kiss. Something gentle, and affectionate. Something that wasn't just angry and sloppy biting. He'd made a big deal about it, staked his final moments in needing to do it. And Andres had held that close to his chest so tightly. [break][break]

And for what?

[break][break]

"You didn't mean you 'didn't want to die without' kissing me?" his words are hollow, expression morphing into something unreadable. Not because of it's neutrality but because of how quickly he seemed to bounce between grief and fury. [break][break]

"You probably didn't mean it." the echo is stronger, colder. A statement and not a question. He mocks Onyx's own tone, pissed he had ever let himself become so vulnerable for him. [break][break]

"You didn't." Silence. Uncomfortable silence. In the low light of the living room Andres' eyes are wide, staring from the gloom. Almost too similar to Chuchi's preferred greeting. Another beat of silence, and then anger wins out.[break][break]

"Take your shit and get the fuck out. NOW!" So help him if he didn't move because Andres would grab him by the throat and throw him out himself.


[break][break]

+ onyx straub || affections confections (ee) [break][break]

[attr="class","mitchel"]“Maybe I don’t feel like arguing, since your mind is already fucking made up.”

It’s a combination of things: he doesn’t want to argue. He doesn’t think he’s worth defending. He doesn’t have the energy. Would Andres ever actually change his mind?

And then Andres treads those waters anyway and Onyx feels a pang of something inside of him, bouncing off and echoing like he’s a hollow bell. Because he doesn’t remember-- but he does-- but he doesn’t. It’s all been fuzzy.

For a second his hackles go down because he’d been worried it’d been something horrific. Like, Andres had saved his life and he’d done something terrible to him. Because all he remembered was a huge rush of feeling and everything was topsy turvy under the bloodloss and the morphine and the newly vacated hole in his head.

"Yeah, fine. I was leaving anyway."

He knows when he's not wanted. He's known it his entire life, ever since his parents told him so. Internalized, fostered, and used as a shield. If that's how Andres feels, anyway, and it's pretty clear it is.

He has, at least, been cleaning this entire time, and he softly tips mixing bowls upside down to drain on a towel next to the sink.

“Keep it. I’ve got nowhere to store it."

His voice has gone flat. He cracks his knuckles, bending them down with a thumb, one hand slipping into his pocket for the key fob he’s kept on him since it was handed to him. Like his one prized possession, even if he never used it.

As he passed Andres, he palmed the key and slapped it-- gently-- against his chest, leaving it there for him to catch or drop as he saw fit as he stalked towards the balcony door.

“For what it’s worth,” he says, because he’ll fucking die if he doesn’t get he last word, “I did mean it. And I’ve been trying to prove it.”

Because he has. It’s been fucked up but he really, really has.

A shrill whistle has his raven sweeping in to collect him. He high steps off Andres’ balcony barrier and is gone.

[attr="class","mitcheltag"]andres buenaventura mission: affection's confections

[attr="class","blboxbl"]

His burst of anger is matched by passive acceptance. Onyx doesn't even try to defend himself. He doesn't explain- doesn't add context or closure. He leaves it all squarely on Andres who has been doing nothing but overanalyzing his actions to determine if the guy felt anything for him. Not just a thing Andres imagined because it was easier. [break][break]

Just say anything to prove him right again. [break][break]

Anything to get his hopes up, like he always did. [break][break]

Onyx is a ghost and Andres can do nothing but internalize his last words. He knows how this kind of thing works. He knows, deep down, there might not be any coming back from this. [break][break]

He hates how Onyx was right. That this would end badly. He wishes he had died that night. At least he would've died happy. [break][break]

He's been pulled so tight he finally snaps, tears bubbling up to the surface quietly and dripping down his face as he watches Onyx go. He lets the key fall to the ground, vaguely remembering the spare he'd palmed into Onyx's hand while bed ridden. [break][break]

He remembered, vaguely, Onyx had comforted him. He wished he could have that now, when he really needed it. But his mouth doesn't open. He doesn't stop him. He just keeps crying, quiet, and forcing down his sobs. [break][break]

Because maybe, his spiraling brain thinks, maybe he had just been a convenience after all. Beneath treating him as anything more than a bedwarmer. If Onyx had really loved him, he would've said so. He wouldn't have looked like that. And he'd known it that night. He'd broken that night. [break][break]

Now he truly had time mourn and curse himself for seeing this coming. [break][break]

Onyx speaks one last time and he blinks away tears, searing this last moment in the back of his mind. And then he's gone. And Andres can jsut barely close the door before sliding down to the floor and letting out muffled sobs as he covers his face and hides amongst his furniture.

[break][break]

+ onyx straub || affections confections (ee) [break][break]