ArchivedLogs:Love/Hate Heartbreak

Love/Hate Heartbreak
Dramatis Personae Anette and Killian
In Absentia	2016-07-29 "As you wish."
Location <BOM> The Spatters - Ascension Island
A comfortable three-bedroom cabin, sturdily built if inelegant. The front door opens up into a cozy sitting room with small bathroom; it is adjoined by a kitchenette with room for small table. The three bedrooms here -- two off the sitting room, one on the other side of the kitchen -- are not uniform in size nor layout, with the considerably smaller kitchen-adjacent room having its own screened-in porch. There's been a lot of tension in the air. Heavy, suffocating. As much spoken as not. And yet Killian keeps returning. Sometimes obviously, sometimes not. His moods have shifted between anger and a sadness that's always seen in the eyes of the animal he is rather than words he speaks. Tonight is no different from many in the past, though perhaps time makes each tiny slight so much more painful. Somehow the black and white dog has found its way inside, shaking roughly from wet nose to long white-tipped tail. Brown eyes linger for a moment on Anette's door as he trots past it, the click-clack of canine nails somewhat loud and unstiffled as he makes his way into the main room of the cabin in the slink of his gait. He may linger along the kitchen island, some scent distracting that only slightly more submissive part of his mind before he goes to the place he often does lately. The couch, of course, is where the dog heads. He jumps up onto it, circling once to curl himself into a ball. A prolonged sigh rises and falls his form as he settles there. Anette hasn't been much better. While not a complete recluse, she hasn't been as frequently spotted about the island as she usually is. If anyone were searching for a reason, it might have something to do with the needles and various paraphernalia sitting out on the dining table, recently used. It seems she has no shame, there's no attempt to hide or disguise it. Even when Anette steps out from the kitchen, pausing briefly to watch the all too familiar dog laying on her couch, she doesn't look concerned that he's likely aware of the recent drug use. She merely takes a bite of the apple in her hand before making her way over and settling down in a chair near him. "Hey." All too aware of the use and the obvious evidence lying scattered around, it's likely the exact reasion he didn't seek her out immediately. As the winged one sits nearby, the dog's head lifts slightly, ears tucked plastered against his the contour of him. There's the faintest wag in the tip of his tail that must serve as a greeting, but even that is soaked in unpleasantness and melancholy. Eventually, he sits up. The liquid transition of him drapes him in what was black fur to a black t-shirt and the jeans he so often wears. Killian's leaned back against the couch, arms outstretched over the back of it by the time canine features have given away fully to the rugged roguish details of him. Too-light eyes watch Anette from more their corners than directly, and there's a pregnant pause that weighs on the silence that follows. That glaze slants away from her to look to the table but not really seeing what lies upon it. "I've not been here for you, love, I know that." His gravelly voice is low, though not a whisper. "But you insist on trying to take yourself away completely. Have I angered you?" Anette doesn't push him. She sits and waits, chewing on her apple, for the dog to turn into the man. She gives him a faint smile, returning his tail wag of a greeting. She wears similar, black jeans and a grey t-shirt focused mostly on comfort. While his form changes, hers does not. Dark circles linger under tired eyes, frizzy hair pulled into a sloppy bun, and...faint scars up and down her arms. Again, she remains silent, waiting for him to speak before she speaks herself. "No...you haven't," she agrees, her voice oddly soft, so against that tough persona she usually wears. "Don't make this more than it is. No, you haven't...angered me. I just have...a lot going on right now." As she speaks, she refuses to look towards Killian. Instead, she leans back against her chair, staring up at the ceiling. For all the death that follows him and the life he lives, he too is softened in some manners here. Always with her, he's tempered and it shows even when stress puts years on the lines of his face, and the sluggishness of speaking is born from deciding the right words to say. "I've missed you." For the weeks, the months that he goes, only returning for brief intervals for whatever reason before getting caught up in something more. "I always do. You saw how angry I was when I smelled that shit on you again." Killian pulls his arms from the back of the couch, laying his forearms over his thighs to lean forwards. The posture is something of simmering, ire that's stifled with the hands that he clasps before himself. "If I was anyone else, I would consider that it's because I'm not enough." But his arrogance speaks plainly otherwise, the brief slight of an unamused smirk tugging at the side of his lips, "So I assume it's because I've been gone that you simply throw away whatever concern I have and do whatever the hell you want. I would rather you go back to Daken then keep-" He doesn't bother to finish the sentence, even the subject making him grit his teeth, the muscles in his jaw flexing in that characteristic tick of his annoyance. Anette stiffens as Killian speaks, keeping her face towards the ceiling but letting her talons dig into the arms of the chair. Unlike Killian, she's much less careful with her words, instead letting whatever thoughts come into her head spill out. "You knew, when you met me, that I was a mess. Since I quit the last time, I'd been struggling and when Daken came back, I panicked. I panicked and I used and it's not something I can just set down. Yes, I probably should but I can't. Did it ever occur to you that maybe I'm just not as strong as I thought I was?" His arrogance and admitance finally earns him a look in his direction, a brow raised in disbelief and rising anger. "Oh don't flatter yourself. And maybe half the reason I'm using is because I don't want to go back to him." She quickly rises to her feet, feathers ruffled as she turns her back to him, though she doesn't step away yet. "Whether you like it or not, I was in love with him. And seeing him again, it's brought a lot of things back. Things I'm not ready to deal with. And the constant threat of one of you ripping out the others throat. Can you really fucking blame me for wanting to not mentally be here?" Killian rises slowly, something very predatory in how he does so. Especially when he turns to her to close the distance, pausing too-close to where she's turned her back on him. Even if she can't see him, his breath is warm on her shoulder and the feathers ruffled where his chin nearly touches- but not quite. There's a chuckle, a sound rumbled deep in his chest and quieted in a breathiness that makes it sound almost devilish. "Darling," He starts, his hands tempting to lay upon her sides to hold her at her waist. It's a light touch, but a possessive one. "I can't name a one of us who is stable. And I desire you as much for your faults as your strengths. Just.. not one that could tear you from me." If these were any other words spoken, it could just as easily be a threat with the way he says them. But instead, he offers a grooming sense of idolization, of adoration, in the manner he almost purrs in the harshness of his tones, "You know how much I wanted you to stop. How much it bothers me. And yet you did it anyway. Do you really tire of me so easily? Maybe I've just failed at entertaining, given my absences. I don't... give a fuck about him, or your past. But I would rather you be mentally here, with me, than not at all. If you don't want me," Here the shapeshifter hesitates, admitting to the difficulty of the next words even as he continues to speak just behind her ear, "You only need to say so." Anette tenses again but she doesn't move away when Killian steps closer to her. Even when he lays his hands on her waist, all she does is flatten her wings. Maybe a defensive maneuver, maybe just to give them more room. "All I do is fuck up. These last few months, I thought I could finally be happy. That I could let myself be happy." She takes a deep breath and, despite her efforts to suppress them, tears burn her eyes, though she continues holding them back as much as she can. "Is that what you think this is about? That you're not enough? Do you think I'm going to leave you for...him?" The voice grows with a dangerous cocktail of anger, frustration, and pain. "I don't want you. I don't want him. I don't want anyone right now. You're right, the drugs don't just hurt me. They hurt everyone." She begins scratching at her arm absent mindedly, talons grazing one of the fresher marks, leaving superficial white scratches behind. "I just need space. I can't handle my own life right now and I don't need to be worrying about who else I'm dragging into my messes." The way he holds to her increases in pressure slightly, more along the lines of passion and want than any sort of ill-guided emotion. Whatever he takes away from her wings flattening goes unspoken, and he continues to keep his head just next to hers with his scruff-lined chin touching just slightly to the curve of her neck. And in that dark sort of silence that he keeps, he listens and internalizes. What can't be seen from the angle he stands behind her and how he closes his eyes when he sighs against her in the warmth of his breath, is the flickering changes of his pupils into canine brown-gold. "If you aren't happy, love, then I've not properly taken care of you." His tones remain stable despite whatever burns within him, kept hushed inspite of his natural coarseness. Even as he words of rejection reach him, it's hard to tell if it's expected or not. He would try to plant a light kiss on her neck as she draws her reasons to a close, lines furrowed across his brow in a tension that reads into the pain that he won't otherwise say. There may be a flush of red to his features, though whether that's because of his prior anger or because of this, it's hard to tell. "Are you sure?" Strain just barely touches what he manages to say. In the silence, Anette can pick up every slight movement and touch, from the scruff of his chin to every sigh against her neck. In response, she merely stiffens again, head drooping as she stands her ground. A few tears escape, falling down her face though she makes no move to clear them. "Please stop..." she whispers, when he goes off into self-blame. The kiss onto her neck convinces her to step away, finally turning around to face them and wiping the tears off her face and trying to quickly regain her composure. "If you were smart you'd have walked away ages ago. Believe me, I'm doing this for your own damned good, just as much as my own." Her request for him to end his affections is given no verbal response, though he does lift his head a few degrees. "No." He states bluntly in reply to her comment of his own good, watching her as she steps away from him. His eyes are no longer the seablue of his human state, lost still to the hues of the canine that is his reprieve, comfort, affection. "I'm selfish. I keep what I want for as long as I want it. I've walked away from things my whole life for the freedom of anything that's not a cage. I chose not to walk away from you, though these last months, it may have seemed like I did. And for that, love, I'm sorry. But I will only leave if that's what you wish." The shapeshifter pauses to look across to the table with all her items on it, the beginnings of the display of his grief reiterated in his expression before he slowly returns to let his gaze fall over her one more time, "Though perhaps you made this decision some time ago." "We're both selfish," Anette says simply, crossing her arms over her chest. "Hurting you would kill me. I'm not asking for much. Just time and distance. Until I can figure out...everything." She follows his gaze to the table, her entire body tensing once more. "Whatever makes it easier," she replies to his theory, returning to that stone-cold form, her voice cold and emotionless, her golden eyes distant, as she puts up mental blocks and barriers. She quickly turns her head back to Killian, though she can only return his gaze before dropping her eyes down to the floor. "Unless you have something more to say...I think it's time you left." Killian stands where she'd left him, his looming dark-clothed form off-set by the way his smugness has left him almost completely. Drained of that arrogance for the sake of her and the fact that she's sending him away which he cannot yet fathom, he's left watching her for a moment which stretches seemingly indefinitely. It's almost long enough that could leave one to wonder if he'd heard her at all, or perhaps he's ignoring her recommendation altogether. Eventually, the tension of shoulders and jaw alike are repressed in a hard swallow as canid eyes drift up to her face perhaps in hopes that he could see into her eyes. But, denied this, he drops his head in a nod of his head that has some peripheral anger to it- a hint of the unsteadied, uncontrolled temper that lies beneath, "As you wish." It's short, these words, clipped in his low volume. And he never recovers from that nod of his head, his form melting, changing, rearranging as long hair grows where clothing once was, as limber white legs catch him as he drops to the ground. The dog's ears remain back on its head, its hackles risen, its tail hooked low between its hocks as he pads across the room. As he's forced to pass a little closer to her to exit towards the front door, there's a glance spared at her, before his head is ducked lower and walk turns into a trot that exits him from her cabin.