Her fingers were cool against his skin as Vincent let himself sit there, helpless and slack. His brain was too jumbled to protest as he felt more than heard her words brush against his cheeks, breath warm with the scent of pastries or cinnamon. It was a jarring contrast to the hollowness swirling in his gut and the emptied contents of his stomach, acidic and rancid between them.

Words tossed themselves over and over in his mind - running, stumbling, and falling flat again - as he made an effort to respond. But there were no words anymore. There was only panic and a sickening feeling that something, someone, was missing— never to be recovered.

(Was this how she’d felt, then? Was this desolate depth the bottom of a sunken grave?)

Vince made to push the woman aside. He knew her now. He remembered the hospital bed and the vials he’d saved, for her sake more than his own. Was it some cruel trick of fate then? Was he meant to fall apart in the hands of the only woman he knew who might, in some distant way, relate even slightly to his own sentiments? (Hah, he hardly dared give anyone the credit of suffering as he had suffered. For years, toiling, and castrated at another man’s feet—)

“Please,” he scoffed, ill-naturedly. (Perhaps a beg, in some other light.) “Don’t try to understand.”

He needed out. He needed away. He needed… oh Merlin. He needed a waste bin.

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