"I know, I know, I just... I mean, you knew all those cops and you were going to the academy, I thought me getting arrested might have made it on the radar." He shrugs slightly. The kettle is whistling, and he pours two cups, letting it seep. Quietly staring at the liquid as it starts to take the tea leaves.
He's so tired of running. He's tired of running because he doesn't have the numbness to fall back on. And it's leaving him drained, leaving him exhausted. Like he just wants to curl up in his blankets and disappear. Sleep until he can find a reason to keep going.
The one good thing he'd ever had, the one person he'd ever loved more than himself- and his ghost had been... It hadn't been him. It couldn't have been. Not with how he acted, not with how he blamed him, not with...
"... You don't want to hear it." He laughs, but it sounds hollow. Empty. Tired. "You never want to hear it."
Because it's an excuse, huh? He hates his powers. He fears them. Waking in the middle of the night as a child with a corpse standing over his bed, or someone slipping into his skin and the terror that he might not ever get his own body back. Ben following him around like an albatross around his neck, a reminder of the fact he couldn't save him. Did Ben blame him? Did he as good as kill him?
The first taste of freedom from those ghouls was when he'd fallen down the stairs and the carefully administered pain medicine their mother and nurse gave him made him unable to see the usual specters in his training. And after he'd healed? Well. No hard thing to start stealing drinks from their father's well stocked bar or scoring some weed from an avid fan for a kiss and a wink. When Vanya cut him off from her pills - those few brief months where he had felt so removed from his powers it was absolute bliss- he'd had to go to other sources to get his fixes, and it snowballed from there.
And after Ben had died? After Diego left? After he turned 18 and was no longer Reginald Hargreeves's ward? He'd fallen, hard. He'd chased that high and never and tried to come down.
Because running was easier than fighting. Running was easier than talking. Running was easier than having yet another shrink look at him like he was crazy when he tried to open up about his powers, about the abuse all of the Academy suffered, about the people who came and haunted his dreams when he was sober. Than trying to explain why a locked door made him panic and how he couldn't breathe any time a space was too small, too dark, too closed off.
Because running was the only thing he's known since he was 13. And because that high is the only time he's ever known peace outside of that thin, dark place between life and death that he's always been just shy of crossing over.
((OOC note: Headcanon about the pills being shared/stolen is 100% collab between Ari and myself ))
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He's so tired of running. He's tired of running because he doesn't have the numbness to fall back on. And it's leaving him drained, leaving him exhausted. Like he just wants to curl up in his blankets and disappear. Sleep until he can find a reason to keep going.
The one good thing he'd ever had, the one person he'd ever loved more than himself- and his ghost had been... It hadn't been him. It couldn't have been. Not with how he acted, not with how he blamed him, not with...
"... You don't want to hear it." He laughs, but it sounds hollow. Empty. Tired. "You never want to hear it."
Because it's an excuse, huh? He hates his powers. He fears them. Waking in the middle of the night as a child with a corpse standing over his bed, or someone slipping into his skin and the terror that he might not ever get his own body back. Ben following him around like an albatross around his neck, a reminder of the fact he couldn't save him. Did Ben blame him? Did he as good as kill him?
The first taste of freedom from those ghouls was when he'd fallen down the stairs and the carefully administered pain medicine their mother and nurse gave him made him unable to see the usual specters in his training. And after he'd healed? Well. No hard thing to start stealing drinks from their father's well stocked bar or scoring some weed from an avid fan for a kiss and a wink. When Vanya cut him off from her pills - those few brief months where he had felt so removed from his powers it was absolute bliss- he'd had to go to other sources to get his fixes, and it snowballed from there.
And after Ben had died? After Diego left? After he turned 18 and was no longer Reginald Hargreeves's ward? He'd fallen, hard. He'd chased that high and never and tried to come down.
Because running was easier than fighting. Running was easier than talking. Running was easier than having yet another shrink look at him like he was crazy when he tried to open up about his powers, about the abuse all of the Academy suffered, about the people who came and haunted his dreams when he was sober. Than trying to explain why a locked door made him panic and how he couldn't breathe any time a space was too small, too dark, too closed off.
Because running was the only thing he's known since he was 13.
And because that high is the only time he's ever known peace outside of that thin, dark place between life and death that he's always been just shy of crossing over.
((OOC note: Headcanon about the pills being shared/stolen is 100% collab between Ari and myself ))