A/N: Hi, everybody! I guess you don’t have to ask if you’ve missed this fanfic, since we all know that Lawrence being a psycho and Adam being submissive and heartbroken in an adorable way is a plot that never gets old! XD Anyway, if we’re trying to be humble for a second, I hope it’ll be worth the wait, even if there’s no real sex in this chapter…

5: When Everything Else Is Lost

Lawrence has never killed. And that’s good.

But for the first time sine he started this, he’s actually afraid of doing it.

The control scares him in the same time as he would stop existing without it, he’d be drained of air and his face would fall apart.

Everyone he’s ever raped has meant nothing to him. They hadn’t been people, they’d been things. His things, his own little toys that screamed and cried and begged for mercy.

He’d owned them.

And he will never own Adam. He knows that somehow.

He’s seen guys fighting back before. It’s not the first one someone’s told them that he doesn’t own them, and it’s certainly not the first time he’s taken it back as soon as Lawrence uses his sharp tones and his sharp fingertips in his scalp, but it didn’t help, didn’t make him feel better.

Even when Adam took it back, it didn’t change anything. He was still himself, and that was enough. His eyes had been wide, terrified, but Lawrence had still seen it.

He’d looked straight into them and seen Adam, this frail little creature who was so beaten up, so lost and so lonely, but never belonging to anyone. Always going somewhere, always his own.

And not even if he wanted to, would Adam ever be able to change that.

Maybe that was what was special with him.

The fact that Lawrence would’ve given the world to be like him when he was younger.

The thought strikes Lawrence like a whack over the head, and he gets so surprised that he actually lifts his chin from his hand and stare with lazy surprise on a point in front of him, like the thing that astonishes him is written on the dirty wall.

If he’d been like Adam, if he’d belonged to no one and being so free that he couldn’t even keep himself trapped if he knew that things would get even worse if he tried to break loose…

Maybe things had been different.

Maybe not even He would be able to touch him if he’d been like Adam.

Maybe Adam is the only one of his prisoners that he will never even be able to kill. Because he’s the same collection of damaged goods that Lawrence once was.

Maybe Lawrence is filled with a need to fix him that’s so big that it just gets bigger, fills every cell in his body, expands it and makes him bigger and that’s when it turns into rage, that’s when he realizes what he just thought and stands up, slams his door open, strides through the hallways and can see through the doors how they all hover up on their beds when they hear him passing.

They don’t matter. They’re not important.

Adam is important. He’s so incredibly, senselessly, fucking important that Lawrence can’t have him there, can’t have anything that he attaches to like he attached to Him, like he depended on someone who saw him the way he sees the ones that are now startling at the mere sounds of his footsteps.

He was just a thing. Just What-Makes-Me-In-Control.

And Lawrence will never be that again.

That’s why when he unlocks Adam’s door again, with keys that rattle in the rhythm of his shaking hands, when he opens it and sees Adam snapping out of the light sleep he’d drifted into, the knife in his hand would reflect light from the window if it hadn’t been so dark outside, if the darkness hadn’t closed around him, if he hadn’t been hunted back into the corner and had no way out.

Fortunately, that’s when he felt nothing again.

Adam’s eyes widen when he sees the knife shaking in Lawrence hand, the chains around his wrists rattle when he freezes up.

Then it all seeps out of Lawrence again. Like when you let the air out of a balloon.

Who the hell is he trying to fool?

Himself? Isn’t he passed that by now? Hasn’t he been staring into the ugliness of his own soul for years now?

The knife falls out of his hand and makes a tinkling sound as it hits the ground. Then Lawrence looks up at Adam, who’s still looking at him with wide, frightened eyes.

“I… I’m sorry.” Lawrence stutters. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Than he looks down at the knife again and says – more to himself than to Adam – “I’m not like this…”

Why does he tell him that? Why does he tell either himself or Adam?

Lawrence bends down and picks the knife up. Closes the door and walks up to Adam, who hasn’t moved since that door opened, hasn’t even blinked.

“You… You know,” Lawrence says, almost childlike, fingers on the tip of the knife. “You know… I’m not like this. Right?”

He keeps looking down at the knife, and he gets annoyed when Adam doesn’t answer. When he looks up, he sees that Adam wouldn’t even be able to answer if he tried, his whole body’s still so tensed up it would probably crack in the middle if you touched it, like frozen paper. And Adam doesn’t even seem to get that he’s supposed to talk.

“Answer,” Lawrence says harshly.

Adam’s gaze flickers down, the first movement he’s made since Lawrence entered the room, and then looks up. He’s starting to relax, he even dares to shake his head a little.

“No,” he says in a thin voice. “Of course I don’t. How the hell would I know that?”

“I…”

Lawrence looks down on the knife, the drop of blood that seeps out when he presses it against his thumb.

He feels exposed. He feels like an anorexic teenage girl, small and thin and pale, standing naked in front of Adam’s terrified eyes twice as terrified as him, frail and cold, with ribs shining through his skin.

He feels like there’s not one part of him that Adam can’t see. So to him, the mere idea of Adam not getting that he’s not like this is completely unthinkable.

And even with that, he really doesn’t get why it’s so important to him that Adam really sees all of this.

Sees that the only reason Lawrence is like this is that he doesn’t want to be like Him.

But Lawrence still doesn’t tell Adam. About Him, about what he’s doing, about how there’s been so many others, and none of them has been like him. He just says it again, for no reason at all.

“I’m not like this.”

“Then why the fuck are you doing it?” Adam sputters out and closes his eyes briefly, like Lawrence’s stupidity is just exhausting. “How the hell do you expect me to know that you’re not like this when this is what you’re doing? Haven’t you seen ‘Batman Begins?’”

Lawrence shakes his head.

“No, I never saw that.”

Pause.

“Was it good?”

“Yeah, it was good,” Adam says and nods. “A little overrated, but good.”

Lawrence nods. Then they’re quiet again.

“Either way, I really think you are this way, or you wouldn’t do it,” Adam finishes off with new courage. “But could you please just leave me alone now?”

Lawrence shakes his head.

He really does feel nothing.

“Adam,” he says and looks up again. “I came here to kill you, and I obviously can’t do that. But I still can’t leave you without… Doing something.”

When he sees the look on Adam’s face, that look of utter hopelessness, faith that he could get out of this if he tried and bitterness that he doesn’t dare to try at all, Lawrence almost wishes that he hadn’t said it.

But the lust still rises in him like a dark fire.

“Lawrence…” Adam begins, freezes up again. “Please…”

“Don’t,” Lawrence says, almost remorsefully, and walks up to Adam’s bed. Without dropping the knife. “Don’t say anything.”

Adam looks at him for a few seconds. Then he closes his eyes again and sighs, a sigh with the same surrendering as his expression, opens his eyes to look at the knife in Lawrence’s hand. And nods, a very small nod.

But Lawrence can’t do it straight away. There’s a question in his head that’s meant for Adam, it’s been gnawing in the back of his head ever since he first saw him sleeping in the bar, because Lawrence has to know why he feels connected to him, why he’s the only one this far that’s not just a thing, but a person. Living, breathing. Hurting.

Lawrence has to ask. Because the sadness over Adam’s feature is something he’s seen in himself.

“Adam,” Lawrence exhales when he sits down on Adam’s bed, already has to touch him. “Have you lost someone?”

He’s very cautious about subtly lifting the knife so Adam can see it, rests it against his leg while he’s stroking Adam’s cheek. Adam’s gaze flutters down on it, but back up again almost straight away, like he wants to focus on the upsides of this.

He knows he has to answer. So he nods, once again, it’s almost invisible, and Lawrence nods, too.

Adam’s lost someone. That explains a lot.

Then it’d be weird if he didn’t feel connected to him.

But when he knows this, for sure now, what he planned to do instead of killing him is pretty hard, too.

Lawrence sighs, it seems to come from deep inside his heart.

He wishes Adam was just a thing. Not a person. Especially not a person who’s lost someone.

“I can’t do it,” he says with another - as deep or even deeper – sigh following that last one.

“What ?” Adam asks, but while he does, he actually already realizes what Lawrence means.

“Rape you.”

They’re quiet for what seems to be an eternity, look at eachother.

The fear in Adam’s eyes fades down a bit, but it’s still there, and both Adam and Lawrence know that it’ll always stay there no matter what. And for a part, that’s Lawrence’s fault. But on the other hand, Adam has always been afraid, he’s been afraid all his life, Lawrence just made him feel it.

Adam isn’t sure if he’s supposed to be thankful for that.

“Then don’t,” Adam says simply, he looks Lawrence in the eye with a stubbornness that’s actually convincing, he wants to scream at him that he should stop nagging and whining about stuff that he can or can’t and just follow his heart. Do the things he can. But he doesn’t dare.

Lawrence just nods and puts the knife away. His fingers automatically find Adam’s hair again. Softly he starts running his fingers through the black strands.

Adam doesn’t know what to feel anymore. He wants to tell Lawrence not to do it, but he still wants him to do it. It would just feel good to reject him. Gain some control.

But it doesn’t really matter. He wouldn’t dare to resist anyway. So why would he even think about trying?

Lawrence seems so completely locked out of reality. He’s sunk away into his own dream world, and if Adam would dare to look at him, he would probably thing he looked… Almost innocent.

Yeah, because he really does seem to have a deep innocent side, a little sarcastic voice in Adam’s head adds. What do you think he’s doing to you in his head, Adam?

It’s right. A lot of Lawrence’ fantasies contain nothing but dark, sadistic sex, but not this one. Not the one he is in now.

He looks down on Adam, and even though he’s more attracted to him than he’s been to any of his other ones, he can’t think about sex.

Adam isn’t an object. He’s his own. Despite what Lawrence forces him to say.

He belongs to himself and the person who puts that light blue shadow over his face, that constant sorrow that’s like a link between them.

Lawrence knows. He knows what it’s like to have a grief so big and so old, so deeply rooted within that it’s become a part of him, one of those things you feel but don’t register, like a clock ticking on the wall. He knows.

And he knows why Adam even agreed to saying that he was Lawrence’s. Even though he must’ve known it wasn’t true. He knows what you’re willing to do to make the light blue shadow go away.

He knows how you can walk through fire and water and not even have a goal, neglecting himself for years just because it’s himself he’s trying to find, searching for himself in other people and just finding something you find oddly unsatisfying.

Lawrence used to think that when he was with Him, too. He doesn’t remember much of those years, he’s spent a lot of time suppressing every trace of it even though he’ll never be able to do that, life isn’t that kind.

And one of the things he’s absolutely sure he’ll never be able to forget is that thought.

Have I done enough soon?

That’s what he remembers. His body, thin and frail and not even finished, not even grown, pressed so hard into the mattress he could barely breath at all. A position when he had every single right to struggle, scream, put himself first for once. But still with only that thought in his head.

Have I done enough? Will you love me soon?

And now that he actually take the time to look at it, he sees that very thought in Adam’s face, too.

“Adam?”

Adam doesn’t answer.

“Adam, who have you lost?”

He can’t believe he’s asking this. Hell, he can’t even believe that he pays this much attention to Adam, but now that he does, he might as well go for the showdown.

He’s already in too deep.

Adam doesn’t answer right away now, either. He just stares at the wall in front of him, and Lawrence takes his fingers out of his hair, looks down on him. Waiting.

“Johnny.”

It’s barely above a whisper.

“Johnny’s your boyfriend?”

Adam barely seems to hear him. When he answers, it’s like he’s under hypnosis.

“He was more. He was…”

Adam stops right there. He doesn’t even bother to explain, why would he explain?

It’s true that Johnny was more than his boyfriend, but what the hell was he then? And even if he knew, how would he ever be able to explain?

How do you explain what Johnny did to him, how do you put a definition to someone who came along with light gleaming from his fingertips after you’d spent your life wandering through the darkness?

And more than anything, how can you name someone when you don’t even know if the light from the fingertips make up for what came next, for the darkness that crashed down like a tidal wave, filled his lunges and devoured him inside out? What do you call someone like that?

“Would you stroke my hair again?”

He feels Lawrence stiffening, probably from surprise. For a brief second, Adam thinks he’s going to bring that damn knife out again, but then he feels the fingertips in his hair again, stroking through his bangs, loving every strand, and he closes his eyes.

It can’t be normal to feel safe at a time like this.

Aw… I just love it when Adam’s had his heart broke! ;) Anyway, please review! We’re two waiting for it now, so it’s even more appreciated when you do!