CHAPTER 21 – EXTRA – Lighting Crashes

Oh, I see your scars

I know where they are from

So sensually carved and bleeding

Until you’re dead and gone

I’ve seen it all before

Beauty and splendor torn

It’s when Heaven turns to black

And Hell to white

Right so wrong, and wrong so right.

“Beyond Redemption” © HIM

“One thousand one... one thousand two... one thousand three...”

He neither blinked nor flinched when the deafening crash of thunder split the nocturnal sky asunder, because he had expected it all along. He stood by the open window in his bedroom, staring down into the backyard below him. The trees were bending and crackling in the wind, and puddles had formed along the neatly trimmed shrubs and flowerbeds. Soundlessly, Squall faced the gaping opening before him, and he allowed the faint drizzle of rain and wind to lick across his pallid skin like slithering snakes of ice.

It was freezing outside and he was wearing nothing but torn, light blue jeans and a thin white t-shirt, yet not even the cutting chill of the storm could bring him to close his window and lace down the blinds. It wasn’t even very late in the evening, but his room was plunged into thick darkness; he hadn’t turned on any of the lights. Instead, the lightning sparking up outside his windows illuminated the walls and his furniture, and it cast eerie, dancing shadows upon his face.

He didn’t even notice that he was shaking.

Another bright white flash suddenly arrowed through the pitch black sky, striking somewhere in the distance beyond the flickering lights of the city, and quietly, Squall continued to count, waiting for the roaring thunder to flare up once more.

“One thousand one... one thousand two... one thousand—”

“What are you doing?”

His voice faded and the counting stopped when that unexpected question severed the silence of his room. A cone of artificial light was now streaking through the door behind him, drenching his oak brown hair in an ethereal amber glow and bouncing off the plains of his creamy white skin. Squall turned, very slowly, to stare at the sharp silhouette of the man who had appeared in the middle of the doorway.

“... Counting the time.”

The man said nothing in response to that quietly whispered remark, which was as multifaceted as the boy’s personality. Instead, he took two steps forward, closed the door behind himself and walked across the dim room towards the frame of his stepson. His feet in soft leather house shoes were making no sound on the carpet. In the distance, he could hear the thunder rolling across the mountains, heralded in stride by its faster lightning kin.

Squall heard it, too.

The boy rotated his head back towards the window, facing it in silent and gritty revolt. Squall’s ivory colored drapes were billowing in the same gusts of wind that cut across his slender body and through the room, causing the stacks of paper on his desk to flutter erratically beneath the glass paper weights.

His world was about to shatter.

Kato approached the brunette languidly, finding Squall so gorgeous, standing there like the most flawless of all statues, pretending to be unafraid, yet swaying ever so lightly from side to side. The curve of his porcelain neck was so utterly perfect, framed by those delicate tresses of coffee brown hair in a harsh contrast of color. His skin had never been marked by a spot, ever; the only proof that Squall was alive and capable of scarring were the fine white lines etched into the insides of his wrists, which were completely uncovered right now. His body was wholesome and clean, no matter how many times it had been touched and tainted; Squall still tasted as pure as freshly fallen snow, just like he had the very first time.

He had adored the boy’s face ever since he had first laid eyes upon it at a shopping mall in Esthar. He hadn’t actually wanted to make the youth his own, however, until about three years ago. Something had happened then; he couldn’t remember what it was, exactly, but it had ignited within him the wish – the urge – to consume that boy, and to devour him fraction by fraction, night by night, until his hunger would some day be satiated.

He couldn’t just stop.

“You’ll catch a cold,” he crooned in a tone of false benevolence after he had stepped up to the brunette and placed one palm over the nape of the boy’s damp neck, caressing the cool, porcelain-like skin beneath his fingertips. Squall flinched at the touch, just a little, but he endured it soundlessly.

“You like thunderstorms, don’t you?” Kato continued in an even voice, studying nature’s intricate symphony of light and darkness outside. “I suppose you always have.”

He saw Squall’s features curling as he gazed into the eye of the storm and inhaled the moist, heavy air that seemed laden with sparks of electricity. The dark haired boy looked entirely emotionless, and yet Kato knew that he was falling apart on the inside. Squall had never expressed any intense feelings around him - he had smiled, but never laughed, cried, but never wept - and this mediocre display of sentiments was starting to drive the man insane, a little more every day. He handled the boy accordingly – like a perfectly crafted doll, a mere object, capable of conveying nothing but a very small spectrum of emotions, while stirring so much more in those who surrounded him.

So much more.

Squall had never asked for this, never wanted it, yet the man behind him needed it as much as he needed the air that they breathed. He had stepped over the boundaries of wanton affection long ago and entered a realm that could only be described as insane, carnal addiction.

Addiction. Infatuation. Compulsion.

Madness.

‘Tsk. Such harsh connotations. Then again... perhaps they’re true, after all. But who is here to judge me?’

When he traced the fingers of his right hand from Squall’s neck down along the subtly muscled left side of his back, he felt the boy freezing up through the thin fabric of his shirt. Squall’s body stiffened and inched away; it was an impulsive, futile sliver of motion that hadn’t occurred willfully, because the brunette knew just how pointless it was to run away or oppose his stepfather.

Deep down, his resistance had been broken long ago.

“Take off your shirt.”

Squall continued to stare outside, watching how the raindrops beat on the smooth glass surface of his windows more heavily now. The water pearled on his skin and continued to soak his clothes, until the jagged barbs of coldness seemed to penetrate even his bones.

He didn’t even realize that he was crying.

Biting his lips, tasting the rainstorm roaring through the city, Squall wanted nothing more than to scream. He felt the words heavy on his tongue, just as he felt the man’s hands on his body and his contempt like poison pounding through his veins, but he denied the presence of them all.

Perhaps he could’ve run away and escaped this nightmare... but how far would his feet have carried him? How long could he persevere, like this? With nowhere to go, and nearly everything he wished to protect being right here, in this very house, what good would a hasty flight do? He knew what they said – ‘you can run, but you cannot hide.’ He had never found more truth in any other statement. When you had no place to run to, all the roads in the world only led to nowhere, and nowhere...

... Was here.

As a shiver rippled through his spinal cord, he suddenly pushed his hand under his shirt, slowly sliding his palm up along his fluttering ribcage, to his shoulder. His skin felt alien to him; he didn’t even know his own touch. His hand was cold, too cold to feel real, but his frozen core was no longer capable of warming the rest of his body.

It was trying to keep him alive.

He knew that his primal instincts would struggle to preserve his existence at all costs, even when he himself had long given up the fight, ready to submit to the shadows luring in the back of his mind. Yet, although he wasn’t willfully battling for survival, he honestly believed that he wasn’t trying to kill himself, either – that he’d never cut himself that deep, or bleed that long, or ever allow the pain to drive him entirely over the brink of insanity.

Perhaps he was just fooling himself.

His hand tugged on the light, soft fabric of his t-shirt, pulling it over his arms and his head in one calm, deliberate motion. His hair, slick from the rain, stuck to his skin, and it smelled of a foreign ocean, one far away... one that he had never seen.

Quietly, he dropped his shirt to the floor.

Then, the pure, vaguely spicy scent of water was ruined by the smell of something else; he knew the stench of that aftershave, inside out – couldn’t not know it. When the man tilted his head down to him, he was too close for Squall to escape any aspect of his being, be it smell, or touch, or sound.

He watched as lightning cut the firmament into halves.

‘One thousand one... one thousand two...’

He didn’t have to count to know that the storm was right there with him in his room.

Strong arms snaked around his waist from behind in a loose embrace, and he felt his stepfather’s jaw resting against the side of his head, at the height of his temple. The tall man was breathing evenly, his chest in the white polo shirt rising in a dominant rhythm against Squall’s back.

... Squall wanted to kill himself.

He knew that the black haired man wasn’t hugging him; he was simply looking for the most convenient access to his body, without having to look Squall directly in the eyes, face to face, while he performed his dirty biddings.

Somehow, neither one of them had ever been very good at facing their demons.

“Squall...”

His name rang stale on Kato’s tongue, embedded with a kind of craving that was as deadly as the razorblades stored away in a drawer in Squall’s bathroom. The man didn’t fumble with the button of his jeans; he opened it easily and weaved down the zipper, just like that, his hands steadied by years of practice. Squall wondered whether this was the way it was supposed to be; somehow, he had always assumed that there would be more insecurity and wariness involved in the act of undressing one’s lover.

Not that they were lovers. Not that he would know.

He didn’t have a concept of sex, or desire, or pleasure in itself. They were words with dictionary definitions, but no meaning. The only thing he was vaguely beginning to understand was romantic love, and all the horrors it was able to overcome, or at least shove to the side for a little while. Love was purer than a newborn baby and sweeter than sin, and its allies had always been patience and forgiveness, since the very beginning of time.

To Squall, however, love only had one meaning...

‘... Seifer.’

Yet even so, the brunette had long recognized Kato’s dealings for what they were – more powerful than love.

He could feel the coarse fabric of his wet jeans sliding over his hipbones and falling to the ground, pooling at his bare feet. Squall didn’t look down; in fact, his gaze hadn’t strayed from the window once ever since Kato’s entrance. He wanted to close his eyes to a truth that he could feel even when he could not see it, pretending that the blood pulsing angrily beneath his skin wasn’t red and that the man behind him wasn’t undressing his body.

Squall Leonhart was nothing but a broken toy in twisted hands, unable to escape this torturous reality that was no one’s but his very own.

Fingers hooked under the waistband of his boxers, and his consciousness tilted when the last bit of fabric on his body was guided along his tautly muscled legs to rest on the floor with his jeans. His defenses, however meager they might have been, fell with his garments, and the last light in his eyes was corroded like the heart beating in the black haired man’s chest.

A hand pushed against the middle of his back, right on the concave curve of his spine; there was no force behind the gesture, because Kato Kearan needed none – not now, not yet. Squall’s eyes flitted to the side briefly, looking scared and haunted, but then he stepped out of the pile of clothes by his feet and mechanically moved his legs in the direction he was being steered.

His palms brushed along the wall that was now right in front of him, caressing smoothest, finest satin wallpaper that felt so fragile underneath his calloused fingertips. He stopped only inches from the solid barrier, his detached gaze sliding from the window on his right to the shadowed whiteness he was facing. He splayed his fingers, seeing how they almost melted into the fair tapestry; the howling wind, carrying the rain across his bare skin like frozen needles, didn’t even faze him, nor did the hand that was still placed upon his back.

Then, his head connected with the wall. He let out a low, off-pitch sound that was situated somewhere between a groan and a yelp, wincing when the man pressed up against him and kicked his legs apart. His steel blue eyes flung wide open in shock and the white within them became more pronounced as he stared in fear. When Kato slowly pinned his naked wrists against the wall with one hand, however, Squall shut his eyes again, as tightly as he could.

He could no longer even cry.

“Look at me.”

His right cheek and ribcage were being crushed against the rock-hard surface, and his frenzied mind was already searching for a safe abode where it could endure the terrors that were to be unleashed upon the brunette in due time. Squall Leonhart had to survive, by all means that his stalling defense mechanisms could come up with, even if it ultimately required submission; he had to detach himself from the brutality of the situation and bear with it like that, because if his mind would’ve allowed him to feel the full magnitude of his pain...

... It would have killed him.

“I said, look at me!”

His consciousness was frothing with despair, but somehow, amidst the shambles that were his life crashing in all around him, he managed to force his eyes to open. He didn’t want to see, he didn’t want to hear, and he certainly didn’t want to feel, but that choice had never been his to make.

Numbly, he tried to turn his head, which was already positioned at an unnatural angle. Kato was crowding him against the wall, his own face mere meaningless inches from Squall’s. The brunette boy’s eyes met Kato’s, and his blue orbs were dark with suffering - but not nearly as dark as the soul of the man who was standing between his stripped legs, holding him down. He was keeping Squall’s wrists with his left hand, positioning them high above the brunette’s head.

Squall couldn’t have broken his grasp if he had tried.

“S... Satisfied...?” the brunette finally hissed flatly, his lips trembling as he spoke.

He expected to receive some sort of reprimand for his defiant response, but the ebony haired man only sneered languidly at his remark. Squall glared at him, hatred smoldering in the corners of his eyes, intended to veil the resignation buried beneath the surface. He didn’t know why Kato insisted on maintaining eye contact – he usually didn’t – but each time Kato raped him was a little bit different, and never any less painful.

“... Not quite.”

The man chuckled thinly and brushed his nose against Squall’s temple in a mock display of affection. He could see the panic flitting across the boy’s face and he felt the brunette tensing at the insidious touch, so in return, he quickly firmed his hold on Squall’s scarred limbs.

The boy was going nowhere tonight.

Squall stood with innate, casual grace, naked and caught between the wall and the one person he despised the most in this world – even more than his own, biological father, who had never given a damn about him or Raine in his life. Squall could feel the weight of the world on his shoulders and the rainstorm cutting into the parts of his bare skin that weren’t covered by Kato’s figure. He tried to move, but he couldn’t; Kato’s groin was pressing against his lower back, and he could feel the hardness of the man’s arousal even through his khaki pants.

‘Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think.’

Don’t think, because you will fall.

Despite his frantic anguish, there was a flame ablaze somewhere deep within Squall’s soul, and it burned more brightly than the sun that had preceded the storm. He was afraid, without any hope whatsoever, and every dream he had ever dreamt had died long ago, but even so, he wasn’t going to be defeated. Clamping his teeth down upon his lips, Squall pushed his shoulders off the wall with his elbows, against Kato’s weight, giving himself just enough room to turn his head straight forward and face the wall in rebellion. He stared at it as his hands clutched to fists, and he focused on the random pattern on his wallpaper until his eyes were burning with tears of strain.

When his stepfather laid his right hand upon his hipbone, he bucked. Squall ricocheted to the side out of reflex, away from the unholy intimacy that made his skin crawl beneath the surface and his heart beat out of time. At least, he tried to get away, because in the end, Kato’s unwavering grip rendered every attempt at escape useless. Even if Kato hadn’t been physically stronger than his stepson, even if he hadn’t been capable of snapping any of his bones without half trying, the man still had other means of subduing his protégée. He knew exactly how to shock Squall – how to frighten him into submission – because when everything was said and done, the selfless brunette kid was just so very predictable.

‘There was a time when I thought that he might talk - which could’ve stirred some trouble and caused some bothersome complications, I will admit - but the sweet little thing adores his mother so much, he’d do anything to keep her clueless. Anything. If this were any easier, I’m not sure I’d be enjoying myself nearly this much. Then again...’

Kato’s hand suddenly slid off his body, and Squall’s face paled. He knew what was going to happen next, not because he could see it or hear the man undoing his own belt buckle, but because of years of experience. Having the knowledge of precisely what was going to be done to him was, perhaps, worse than the first time, when he had been caught off-guard and by surprise. He had struggled so hard back then, without any concept of what else to do to stop the maddening pain being inflicted upon him. He had yelled and cried until his throat had been raw and sore, only to surrender and lay still in the end. At some point, he had realized that the more he resisted - the more his body thrashed and tensed in response to the man’s violations – the more it was going to hurt him. He had learned his lessons over time, because they had been burnt into his memory by brute force, and gradually, he had found his own ways to cope.

Still... that didn’t mean that he wasn’t scared.

There was an eruption of stifled, terrified sounds from Squall’s closed mouth when he felt the blunt tip of the man’s erection sidling against him, and he tried to twist to his right, away from the touch. Kato was cooing something that he couldn’t understand, while yanking on Squall’s wrists and positioning himself more carefully between the teen’s parted legs. Eventually, he would have to let go, of course, to maximize and savor his own pleasure. For now, however, he enjoyed the sensation of Squall writhing under his grasp, while he manually coaxed his lithe thighs further apart with one hand, feeling the strong muscles snapping taut beneath the skin. The pleasure that touching the boy induced upon him was nearly unbearable.

When he was satisfied with the way their bodies lined up, he raised his hand to his mouth and spat into his open palm. A shudder lanced up the boy’s spine at the primitive sound, and Kato could feel him jolting in alarm. He gazed at the back of the brunette’s head... that tousled, damp mess of hair glistening softly in the play of lightning outside; he knew Squall had to be freezing, standing naked next to the open window, right in the draft, but he no longer cared whether his child would catch a cold or not. Honestly, who was he kidding? He had never cared at all. He could feel the chill of the air just like Squall, but he found that it added an interesting twist to his playtime.

That hair, though... it was so alluring, so impossible to resist. Smiling cruelly, Kato released Squall’s wrists, allowing the brunette’s hands to slide downwards along the wall. He brought his now free left hand to the boy’s head, raking it through the mussed up, dark brown tresses with demanding urgency.

God, Squall was beautiful.

Repressing a groan for longevity’s sake, Kato inclined his gaze and wrapped his large right hand around the length of his own arousal, haphazardly slicking it with saliva as he performed long, slow strokes up and down his shaft. He only bothered with lubrication at all because Squall was – after all these times – still too tight to be fucked dry, the way he would’ve preferred it. Kato loved the sharp friction, the feverish heat, the constriction, but doing the obstinate boy this way was impossible to accomplish. He knew, because he had tried. Of course, he had never taken the time to get Squall accustomed to the intrusion, nor had he ever kissed him or brought him to orgasm even once.

After all, this was about nobody’s satisfaction but his very own.

When Kato gripped the boy’s hips firmly with one hand, he guided himself with the other, savagely entering the boy who was quivering beneath him. His movements, both sharp and quick in nature, were ruled by nothing but obsession and impatience. The moment he had managed to force his way inside that forbidden passage, past the first, nearly impossibly tight ring of clenched muscle, he thrust into Squall hard enough to break him. The boy thudded flat against the wall as he sank into him, and Squall’s sight whitened out momentarily. Wincing, Squall let out a hoarse, aborted gasp that had been meant to be a scream. His whole body tensed and shuddered, fighting to no avail against the invasive motions performed by the man who was supposed to love him like a father.

“D-don’t...” he choked in a strangled voice, barely managing to grind out the words through clenched teeth. Pain was splashed all over his face, and bitter tears stung his glassy, almost translucent eyes as he attempted to arch away from the tormenting physical contact. His head, pressed sideways against the wall, pitched back when Kato ignored his plea and sheathed himself almost entirely in his body, and the boy gave a hitched, croaky moan of anguish. Tears fell down his cheeks and burned his flushed skin, easing none of his torment.

The man cooed pleasantly and wrapped one hand around the boy’s throat from behind, keeping his grasp just slack enough to where Squall’s skin wouldn’t bruise. The boy was wheezing, sobbing, jerking beneath him. He was so fucking hot. Kato breathed heavily down the nape of the boy’s neck as he continued to fuck him, and his voice was coated with carnal lust when he spoke.

“Just let it happen.”

And Squall had to let it happen, because he no longer had another choice.

Kato didn’t give the brunette near enough time to adjust or allow the intense, tearing pressure of being penetrated to dull. Instead, he rocked against the brunette’s pelvis in a harsh, violent cadence, and his thrusts bit far inwards. He filled the boy completely, and Squall tried to ignore the nauseating squelching sounds that were invoked by Kato continuously slicking his erection with spit for better purchase. The brunette had nothing to hold on to for comfort or balance; he simply stood tilted against the wall, supporting himself against the impact of Kato’s constant movements with his elbows and hands that were balled to desperate fists. His chin was bent against his chest, and his pained, contorted face was veiled by dark curtains of waterlogged hair. His thin legs were quivering dangerously, threatening to give in underneath him, while he squeezed his eyes tightly shut.

“Fuck...!”

The black haired man growled, and the long muscles in his arms contracted when he clutched a fistful of Squall’s hair and yanked the boy’s head into his neck while he drove into him more harshly than before. Squall let out a low, stifled sob of both loathing and hurt, hating the man more and more with every pained gasp that was coaxed from his mouth. He was so shattered, so broken, and yet still so unbelievably stubborn and proud.

Kato was determined to stomp even the last glint of Squall’s pride.

The man’s rhythm eventually became erratic and more primitive in nature as his desire seized complete control over his motor functions. He continued to penetrate the boy deeper and harder, not minding the warm sheen of blood now lubricating his thrusts, but savoring that ungodly tightness that he longed for every single day. Squall’s naked skin felt cold, almost the way he imagined a corpse would feel, but on the inside, he was hot and smooth as sodden silk. He was like an obsession, a curse, sent by the Devil himself to bring a beautiful implication to the word ‘sin’. There was nothing that compared to the exquisite feeling of the frigid, acerbic brunette being impaled to the hilt upon his manhood, whimpering and groaning and weeping in childishly subdued agony.

Those innocuous sounds, in all their raw sweetness, were music in his ears.

Squall felt the man pulling out almost completely, pausing, waiting, before pumping his erection even more quickly than he had, driving the brunette against the wall for what felt like eternity. Every thrust hurt more than the one that had preceded it, but after a while, Squall gradually became number to the pain. His body was starting to shut down and his mind drifted somewhere between stupor and unconsciousness, granting him the only kind of salvation he would ever receive.

Squall didn’t notice the man altering his pace again after several agonizing minutes, by trading short, quick thrusts for deep and slow ones. The boy was shrouded in scarlet clouds of barely blunted pain, and he still felt the dark, throbbing vibrations of Kato’s movements carving themselves through his body like hot scalpels; no matter how numb he would ever feel, he couldn’t take much more of this.

However, when Kato suddenly let out a low, guttural cry and buried himself fully in his stepson’s body, he ultimately stopped moving and went very, very still. Then, the brunette could feel the muscles all over his stepfather’s body spasm, and he knew that it was over. His pain spiked one last time, nearly causing his knees to buckle and a hitched scream to rise in the back of his throat, but when he felt the man’s seed filling him with each greedy burst of desire, he was so perversely thankful.

After he had climaxed, Kato removed his hands from Squall’s frame and languidly placed them next to the brunette’s on the wall as he leaned forward. He didn’t notice that the knuckles on the boy’s fists were white from the strain of clenching his fingers together; breathing heavily through his mouth, Kato rested his forehead at the base of the dark haired teenager’s neck to work through the sensual aftershock of the orgasm that was still coursing through his system. Squall, meanwhile, was panting as he wrestled down the pain and fought for a breath that didn’t reek of his stepfather. He bit back the tears that were already staining his skin, swallowing again and again at the nausea wrenching his stomach into a tight, twisting coil.

Finally, the man pulled out, and despite the painful feeling of extraction, Squall was most abhorred by the warm trickle of thick, whitish liquid that eased down the quivering inside of his thigh. Pure terror wrought itself around his ribcage and up and down his back when he began to fully understand what had just been done to him, but he told himself over and over that it didn’t matter. It had happened many times before and it would keep happening again – he couldn’t change a thing about the inevitability of it all.

Squall told himself that it was alright, and yet he knew that it wasn’t.

Nothing about this was, or ever would be, alright.

The brunette gagged and swallowed, shuddering against the taste and the feeling of wanting to throw up but forcing himself not to. He could hear Kato languidly adjusting his pants, not saying a word. Squall continued to lean limp and empty-eyed against the wall, semi-consciously feeling the coldness and wetness of the air circulating through his floor-length window. He shivered and instinctively clasped his arms around his torso to hug himself and block out his environment, not even realizing that he was slowly sliding down to the floor.

He felt so dead inside.

Kato glanced at his stepson, who was cowering on the ground, his bony knees now drawn tightly to his chest as he slowly rocked back and forth. Squall’s eyes were wide, almost black and his pupils fully dilated, and their focus was turned far inwards. The dark haired boy was reliving the memory of the sexual abuse somewhere in his mind, and his body was reacting to it with forceful, jerking twitches.

It was really kind of a pitiful sight.

Squall continued to stare blindly into the darkness of his room, not seeing anything at all. He still felt the man inside his body, a lingering imprint of that horrific sensation stamped forever into his brain. Thick, hungry moaning noises droned in his ears so loudly that he could hear nothing else, and gruesome images of his stepfather’s lecherous face flashed before his eyes, making him sick.

Maybe it would end, some day, or maybe he’d always be the man’s plaything – but in either case, the nightmares and memories would never go away.

Through the haze that coated his mind and the painful feeling of long, notched thorns tearing up the insides of his body, he didn’t even realize that Kato had walked out of the room and shut the door behind himself without looking back once. Squall continued to sit in that fetal position, trembling deep within, feeling his heart slowly dying in his chest. He was reaching out for anything that would save him from spiraling into insanity, but there was nothing.

Nothing, except...

Gulping down the bitter, metallic taste on his tongue, he shifted onto his knees and his gaze gravitated towards the bathroom.

‘Please... I... can’t... I can’t...’

His right hand reached for the wall, and his fingers trailed upwards tentatively in search for something to hold on to and give him more leverage. The whole concept of trying to feel for anything, however, caused his body to go into rapid convulsions; fresh, distorted memories licked through his psyche like flames, burning down everything in their path.

“Oh... god...”

Squall yanked his hand back and pressed it to the front of his head, trying to keep it from spinning. His stomach heaved and he doubled over, sobbing into his open palms as all his strength finally drained from him. His voice was so hoarse it was nearly gone, and it hurt too much to even breathe, but at this point, he had lost every bit of control he had once held over his emotions. Squall cried, wept, not caring at all that his windpipe seemed to be scarring from the friction and his throat was so cramped up he could hardly stand it.

Pain washed over him in intermittent waves, gaining and fading in power until Squall was barely conscious, but somehow, he managed to hold fast and not allow himself to be drowned completely in that black, fathomless sea of suffering. Hiccoughing through chapped, aching lips, he focused his flat gaze upon the bathroom door once again, and he dug for just the smallest fraction of willpower laying dormant deep within his hollow core.

‘I... I-I have to...’

Gritting his teeth with a hiss, he struggled into a squatting position. From the waist down, his torso was screaming at him in agony for performing that rash movement, and it felt as if he had been stabbed by a hundred knives. His sight was blurred from the tears and his eyes stung like open, septic wounds, but when he succeeded in clawing for one of the curtains flapping quietly in the vanishing breeze, he somehow managed to drag himself upwards and onto his feet.

His body felt much too foreign, like it wasn’t even his own. His soul and flesh seemed to have separated, and he didn’t have near enough strength left in him to fight against that disconcerting feeling. Instead, he sent his muscles deliberate commands, forcing them to obey as he slowly swaggered towards the bathroom.

The large, neatly tiled room was as dark as his bedroom, but he knew his way around – he knew what he was looking for. He stumbled along the cabinets on legs that were ready to collapse, running his fingers along the cherry wood surface. His feet were dragging on the icy tiles, but at least the coldness kept him grounded. Another pale white flash of lightning struck the sky, illuminating the room and the mirror before him.

He didn’t want to see his reflection.

Cutting his eyes to the floor, he tried to ignore the fact that his mind was turning in revolutions and quickly wrapped his hand around the handle of one of his countless drawers. With almost reverent patience, he pulled it open, revealing nothing but towels, unopened toothbrushes, paper-wrapped soap and perfectly stacked Kleenex boxes.

His fingers slid between the soft terry cloths, scanning them languidly. It took a moment before he found what he was searching for - something hard and narrow, carefully wrapped in a pale grey towel that rested at the very bottom of the drawer. He picked it up gently and laid it upon the counter before him, where he quietly unwrapped it.

With a strange, detached glint in his eyes, he stared upon the thin, silver aluminum-clad cutter that gleamed brightly while the lightning continued to rage outside. He could hear his heart pounding in his chest and blood rushing to his ears, making him feel more than just lightheaded. He no longer took any notice of the cold, nor the drying blend of blood and semen on his thighs.

This was his very own addiction, and he wanted nothing more than to give in to it.

Grasping the cutter in one hand, he knew that he could burn away the shadows and the pain with the tool he had been given. He raised it to his face and unsheathed the blade with his thumb, watching it flicker in the light. The world before his eyes was tilting now, and he felt his stomach cramping in response.

With a small groan that came low from his throat, he shifted around and eased himself unto the bathroom floor before he would’ve simply caved in. He drew his knees to his chest and crumpled against the cabinets, the cutter still firmly placed in his hand.

He needed this so much.

Squall didn’t lose any time, because it was the only thing he didn’t have to lose. Almost instinctively, he slanted his left forearm and rested it on his bent knee in order to expose his wrist. Squall could see the delicate veins running blue beneath his skin, and he knew that his radial pulse was there, somewhere.

It was almost too easy.

Without hesitating for even a second, he settled the blade at a horizontal angle, parallel to the snow-white scars that already graced his limb. Very gently, he tilted the cutter and exerted just the lightest amount of pressure as he slowly drug the sharp edge across his skin.

When he felt the piercing spark of pain following that first incision, his breathing didn’t even accelerate. The blood that quickly oozed out of the finely cut wound across his inner forearm had a cleansing, soothing effect on him, and it stilled the virulent tremors in his heart. He studied the faint trickle of crimson liquid with dull eyes, and after a long pause, he altered the tilt at which he was holding his hand by dropping it just slightly below his knee, towards his feet. Again, he brought the edge of the blade against his tender skin, and he cut himself more slowly this time, feeling it sinking into his soft tissue with gratitude.

‘... What are you doing to yourself?’

He shook that qualm, that question, out of his head, glaring almost defiantly at his wounded limb. His breaths had become shallow now, but he continued to etch those angry, burning red marks into his wrist until he could no longer even see the pallor of his skin beneath the dark sheen of blood. By then, the determination in his eyes had kindled with acquiescence and a very hollow sort of sadness. Squall’s fears and the treble inside his head where thriving in the darkness still, but at least they had been blunted, overridden by the pulsating ache in his limb.

What else was he supposed to do...?

Unconsciously, he switched the cutter into his left, blood-coated hand. He shook at the insignificant weight of it in his palm, and immediately, his fingers pulled tight around the hilt. He didn’t remember where he had bought the blade or how much it had cost him, but regardless of the price, it had proven its worth to him tenfold. He had used a finely serrated kitchen knife once, that very first time about a year ago, but the blade had been too thick, too blunt, and his wounds had taken forever to heal.

He had learned since then, and Squall would never make the same mistake twice.

Something was thumping behind his forehead, but he ignored it. Darkness had long swallowed the glow from his slate colored eyes, but the proud glint in them had stubbornly remained. The edges of his vision had become fuzzy by now, but he blamed that strange condition on having cried so damned much. He wasn’t even bleeding very hard, he thought; the cuts had caused mostly capillary bleeds, perhaps some venous ones, judging by the steady flow and the dark red tint. It didn’t matter. Squall wasn’t ready to quench it yet.

Hypnotized, he smoothed the cutter over his right wrist, not breaking the skin just yet. He knew precisely how much pressure it took, and which kind of angle. His left limb was prickling, as if studded with fiery needles, and he begun to have trouble steadying the blade. This was his body’s way of sending a warning - a cue not to take too long this time, or else he would lose himself entirely.

With a hypnotic sigh, he pushed the razor-sharp edge into his flesh, and he didn’t move it at all for a minute or so. The metal was as much a part of his body as his bones and muscles; it mended him – it broke him – and he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

At least he didn’t know how to ask for more than this.

His lips were twitching softly, and he had to gouge his teeth into the flesh. He knew that his grasp on the situation was slipping slowly, and he would have to stop soon.

But not yet. Not just yet.

The blade was still buried in his weeping tissue when an odd, unexpected sound slashed into his daze, tearing him away from the gaping abyss that he had already wandered much too close to tonight. It was an even, mechanic tone that he hated, but knew all too well.

... His cell phone.

He listened to it ringing in his bedroom, on the floor beneath his clothes, trying to deny the fact that it even existed. The high-pitched tone was stifled by the fabric of his jeans, but as the noise continued to go on for what seemed like minutes, he could no longer manage to ignore it.

Someone seemed to be dying to talk to him.

‘Who...’

Hesitantly, he pulled himself up along the cabinets, making a dazed mental note to himself to clean up the bloody fingerprints that he left behind. With unsure steps, he staggered into the bedroom and fell unto his shins before the disheveled pile of his clothing. It was so cold in front of the window, and his naked figure almost went into seizures in response to the merciless temperature. Shivering, he rustled through his pants and extracted his small mobile phone, which was still chanting that bothersome, factory-setting ring tone. He flipped it open with blood-stained hands, prepared to hit the ‘end call’ button, when something inside of him froze up in realization.

... He knew the number burning in stark white digits on the display.