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"Because none of them were that first family." He said grimly. "Nothing was the way it was. It was a compulsion too. I just. I couldn't cope with it, so I tried to seize it forever. My own son didn't even recognise me, I just."

And he clenched his hands. "I don't know ultimately. It just happened." And maybe it would keep happening forever, on and on and on no matter how hard he tried.

"I need to be able to stop." he said. "Who would even begin to forgive someone with their arms elbow deep in blood?"

Lawrence wasn't sure who Rodney classed as the only innocent person. It was beyond him to try and assess who was most deserving of that title in the whole bible. "I'd like tha- " he interrupted himself.

"...your parents?" he couldn't help but sound deeply concerned. Hopefully Rodney didn't mean actual corpses.

"Ahh. I see. They are here?" He hadn't been able to keep the bodies of anyone close at hand himself, everything was discarded and left behind. Not that he truly understood the function of keeping a person, preferring to keep expensive trinkets or small subtle trophies from his victims.

"You treat everyone with dignity and reverence, even them I suppose. Though they killed your brother, your brothers?" It went against everything he knew about emotion and hatred.

"I loved the kids too." he said "I just..they were going to leave, I didn't want them to. You send people on, I just." he brought his hand to his chest, clenched tight. "I want to bring them back, and in some twisted way stopping them for ever feels like that."

He wanted to touch Rodney but knew he wouldn't be permitted to. "I am more judgemental than you are, I used to think that maybe I was a god. I was just as able to giveth and taketh away."

He shrugged. "I'll go to hell if it exists, there's no question about that, I know you say it is possible to change things, to reverse what has been done while you are still alive. I don't know if it is something that I would ever be capable of."

Cold blue eyes looked the other man over and he inhaled slow. "Like, even now I still want you." he said. "I still want you and I would still kill you someday to try and keep you from leaving, from doing what everyone has done to me before. I would have to. It might not be now but it would be eventually."

The contact was unexpected for Lawrence and for a man so used to suspicion and distance in all things, was almost overwhelming, a sensory overload. Not sexual but something else and before he knew what was happening he was hugging Rodney back just as tightly, a fragile and slender shadow of a man. He realised then that he had wanted this without ever realising he had and maybe there had been other things he might have wanted in his life if he'd let them come to him and hadn't run.

"I don't even have you." he said. "It's like all the world is behind glass, I can't get close, I can't let them get close, it's all numb, muted and far away. I want to feel as intensely as you do, but there's nothing, there's just grasping at shadows and hoping to pin butterflies."

Lawrence smelled like Rodney's shower supplies. Something about his posture stiffened. "The closest thing to a feeling I've had since I got here was wanting to touch you. And I know if I do that long enough... I know where it will go, it can't go anywhere else."

He closed his eyes. "Maybe I should leave." he said. Because running was easy, it was familiar, maybe he could get on a plane to mexico.

If he stayed they'd find him. If he stayed this desire to touch Rodney, to possess him utterly would never be given room to fade. If he stayed he'd just be reminded every second of a life that couldn't be, a snapshot frozen in time until it was shattered. Rodney's hands on his knotted his insides.

He couldn't control anything about his life any longer, even this.

Lawrence moved his hands, still held by the other man to the sides of Rodney's head and he bowed to kiss the top of his head before sinking to kneel himself. "If you want me to." he said

He wanted to kiss him, deeply and properly but immediately twisted the desire back on himself. It was just another reason why he couldn't be normal and couldn't have normal things. His mind didn't fit the things people were supposed to do and never truly had. Instead he simply nodded, in a position as dazed as he'd been with his hands around the man's neck in the alley, as easily led as a child. He nodded. How had he gotten here, not to this location but this place in his life, so far from where he'd started.

"Yes." he said. "I'd rather like that." He ought to take in nature while he still had sight of it, he'd heard one could go for decades without seeing a single solitary tree in prison, void of art and any semblance of beauty.