Flip the Coin [BL]

Chapter 520. Effortlessly

Henry’s POV

Exchanging a few jabs, laughing at your jokes, getting furry ears gifted by you yet again, with you wearing embarrassing pink ones for my sake, getting you a plushie like I wanted inside the circus, although you wouldn’t need another puppy, and then riding a boat into the murky water.

The numbness receded further; I could feel the sun on my skin, the arms around me, and the water splashing on me. You really made me feel alive again at an astonishing speed.

Playing like we were on a normal outing, no apocalypse, but more so, no people to save and you, powerless and alive.

I missed burning for you.

I love you.

I love how you are alive, making me believe that I, too, didn’t die that day in the mountains.

Playing, getting tired, and again carrying you up.

"Did you like your first date?"

Yes.

I loved it; you so effortlessly let me forget my fears, just like always.

Teleporting away to search for a bathtub, I didn’t want to take either of the ones in our rooms. While I wanted to make the restaurant a home, I didn’t want to destroy our other home in the process, and both tubs had too many fond memories tied to them.

I went upstairs and looked through the rooms, but the bathtub that seemed the most spotless was Mrs. Howard’s, Emma clearly putting in a great deal of effort while cleaning hers.

Seeing it also being a freestanding tub, I filled it with hot water before acidifying the metallic drain pipe below, melting the opening shut.

Then I turned off the water supply for this bathroom and teleported to Kenny.

I got new clothes and a big washbasin for myself and went to the kitchen.

After I unclothed myself, I looked at my arms, at the continuous attempts of the crystalline surface to save me from destroying everything around me.

How funny.

The crystalline counterparts were not only protecting Kenny but also doing the same for me.

With the distance from the heartbeat I thirsted to feel, although I was still hearing it, the whispering grew louder again.

The water I got for myself was cold ; the industrial kitchen seemed barren, black, white, and steel.

Not many of the colors I felt so sickened by , but also no red.

"Henry?"

"Yeah? "I looked down and saw that the darkness had wandered up my upper arms, together with the milky barrier.

"Don’t drown in the bathtub!"

I looked down and smiled.

"I won’t."

I hurried up and clothed myself, not forgetting the red ears on top of my hood.

Walking out and sitting by Kenny’s side.

Touching his heart and laughing yet again.

"But if you insist, you can have a kiss."

Hearing that, my eyes wandered to his lips.

A healthy color, not the pale lifelessness—but I couldn’t shake off the picture that had burned itself into my mind, gripping me with fear.

A fear that made me wish for the numbness again and made me spill words that I didn’t want to say.

"I’m sorry," he apologized, his face twisting in the same pain I was feeling.

I, too, am sorry for being so weak, so twisted, and so broken that I couldn’t withstand seeing you like this.

That it would result in my filthy thoughts coming to the surface:

-I should have kidnapped you much sooner.

"I’m sorry."

It’s not your fault. It’s mine.

-I should have taken you captive the moment you came back, battered and full of blood from the battle with the giant.

"It’s not your fault." It’s mine.

-I should have long before taken you. The moment I saw you for the first time in person in the club, with your friends, when I still thought you were a murderer.

-I would have fallen for you either way.

-And by the time the apocalypse started, you wouldn’t have leveled up.

- You would have been weakened.

-And although I would have been the villain, you wouldn’t have died twice; your leg would have remained intact, your flesh wouldn’t have burned, you wouldn’t have had to kill, and you wouldn’t have left me.

"The paper planes are gone," destroyed, like everything else I’d touched—the confession just broke out of me.

Trying to give a fruitless warning, even though I wouldn’t let him go anyway.

"It doesn’t matter; I will draw you a ton more."

But if I touched them, they would get destroyed too.

"I hurt them; they are gone," I repeated mechanically.

Just because I loved them, just because I held them close to myself, the paper planes died.

"I don’t want to hurt you too." Stay away.

I am scared.

The pictures of the lifeless corpse played repeatedly in my mind, as did the coldness he had emitted.

Lost in that scene, I only came back to myself when I was flipped around on the bed.

Kenny was straddling me, his face grave as he pushed my other sleeve up, looking at what I didn’t want him to see.

"NO!" I tried to push him away, deathly afraid of losing control and really killing him.

Of smelling the scent of his acidified flesh again.

But he had mounted me steadily, suppressing me by grabbing my wrists, forcing them above my head, while I trembled, shook, and shivered.

"NO! PLEASE DON’T!" I yelled, reinforcing my arms in thick crystals, trying to shake him off.

"Shhh, shhhhh." As if reassuring a wild animal that didn’t know what’s good for itself, he let me thrash with a secured hold on me.

Bending down, he continued to whisper in my ear.

"Shhhhh, it’s alright."

No, it’s not.

It had never been.

It will never be.

I am scared of you; I am scared of myself.

I AM SCARED, SCARED, SCARED, SO SCARED!

"NO—" I yelled, not able to pull away from his sudden strength, only to be silenced.

Silenced by his lips on mine, his tongue so effortlessly entering my mouth, so easily taking away my bravado and my breath—just like before, just like always.

My heart, which had seemed to have stopped with his inside the mountains, shuddered and started to beat again in the usual overwhelming, painful way it did whenever I was near him.

I moaned, electric currents wandering all over my skin, bringing another kind of numbness.

Him rocking his hips, him rubbing his right thigh between my legs, him making me delirious with lust.

My eyelashes fluttered, and when I opened my eyes, I found red staring at me, a smirk swirling in his eyes before he closed them, before he attacked me further.

My head had gone empty, real and groundless fears swept away; in its stead, only the typical nervousness, the usual hunger, and the endless thirst remained.

Fire that couldn’t be extinguished.

I really missed burning for you.

I really missed bleeding for you, caught by emotions that always seemed to chase me, that would never let go of me after picking up your scent, and that would eventually—