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Every nerve in Leslie's body felt flayed open, raw and in pain. Doubt warred with non-stop adrenaline, the worry of what-if and fear and the inevitable excitement, a confusing medley of emotion that overwhelmed him at every turn. He felt everything so much more acutely-- with so much more anguish-- while untainted by drugs. They normally sent him floating through the stratosphere in euphoria.

They made him palatable to the human world. They made him loose-limbed and easy, instead of revealing the truth of Leslie's pitiful reality: a hot mess wound tighter than a spring, a half-step away from violence at the very most, willing to destroy anything that looked at or touched him wrong at the worst.

His room was still ******** to high heavens from his tantrum-- the mess had been shoved to one side of it, including his broken mattress. He'd made some some sort of trash pile with the mattress balanced atop it, one that he still slept on. The rest of his quarters were barren and in sore need of repairs they wouldn't get, not unless it was Abbi lifting the hammer.

Leslie just...didn't care.

The maelstrom kept brewing, long after that spar. It was like Mexico all over again, with an interested party that wanted to pry back the veneer of Leslie's reality, to dig their fingers into his innards and pull until he unravelled. Of all people, Leslie hadn't expected a dumb ******** hipster to be the one to do it here.

He stared at the text with teeth clenched. He could always....just... turn him down. Texts weren't promises, and Leslie owed Isaac nothing. Isaac was the one who had lost, but that had been where others could see.

There were no cameras in the broken school. No fear dampeners, either.

Something churned in Leslie's belly. Abbi wanted nothing more from him than to kick both his ugly habits, but had said nothing about replacing them with a worse one. Maybe. Who ******** knew.

He sent no reply, just stripped down to his thinnest hoodie, a tank top beneath it, and the oldest jeans he had, showing up with a cigarette in hand.

"No weapons," Leslie said to the dark, his voice bouncing off the lockers. "Not this time."

That's all this had to be. Nothing more and nothing less: an exercising of violence, a way to flush it out of his system until the next time it crashed over him.

(And that was all, no more or less, that's all, that's all, the hunger is secondary, the hunger can be forgotten, smothered, erased--)

Leslie did not remove his zippered jacket: armor, against the coming onslaught. He felt exposed enough here, in the dim, Isaac's voice low in that dangerous way. Everyone thought he was was so nice, and yet here he was, ready to become a demon. Offering it to Leslie, and all of the cruelty with it.

A thick film of disgust seemed to cover every inch of Leslie's skin, shame rolling just beneath this. If he could just be normal, this wouldn't be necessary. If he could just be normal, then he wouldn't want to pull Isaac to the edge and down into the abyss.

But it was lonely, in the dark. And so he tugged Aleria's totem off, laying it down on a toppled desk. Close enough to give him the shield, just not within grabbing range. After giving Isaac a moment to do the same, if he liked, Leslie launched himself at Isaac with fists raised, all power and no finesse.

Leslie tried not think about his origins, and wasn't that an impossibility? We, as humans, are defined by our past, shaped by our actions, curated by our own self-generated content. And Leslie's feed was nothing but hurt, all the way down to the core of him. Peel it all back to reveal what's left to the world, and what was there?

(Would the desire to be hurt still exist, fundamentally within him, were he not a creature of trauma? Did it matter?)

Leslie'd never know. He knew what made him tick now, whether or not he wanted to admit it. He kept it hidden, even from himself, because wasn't that easier?

(It was. It always was, but the peace never lasts. Just a fight. Just. A. Fight.)

Without the benefit of a weapon, with Isaac being taller and broader-- Leslie was at a bit of a disadvantage. More than that, he wanted to lose. Oh, not easily: he intended to fight just as hard as ever, like a feral animal fresh loosed from a trap, starving and baying for blood. He just ...wanted needed to be made lesser. To be reduced to nothing beneath Isaac's boot, desecrated and in pain.

If it went no further than that-- then it was fine. It could all be fine. Leslie could be an agent of pure destruction, a whirlwind of fists and one collided with Isaac's jaw, knuckles stinging through the shield like a phantom pain, and--

And then Isaac's fingers wrapped around his wrist like a vice, their grip steely. He attempted to yank his hand away and failed terrifically. How was Leslie supposed to build up momentum if he wasn't even allowed to start?

Leslie never knew what he wanted. It oscillated between survival and revenge, to hurt and to heal, to find a place for himself that didn't sting with bitterness at the thought of it. And when his own self-loathing escalated, into something insurmountable and immense, burned into skin and seared into his soul, a brand and a scar too deep to heal.

Especially with the way that he worried at it, unable to forget. Isaac aside, his benders were evidence enough of his cyclical sins, a slave to the habits he formed and craved, unable to function without them, and trapped in a downward spiral because of them.

He hissed as Isaac forced him up against the lockers, face pressed to cold metal, ears ringing from the blow. This was familiar, this was terrible, this was what he'd wanted. His movements stuttered once the twist in his hair was done, rough and unyielding, eyes closing briefly for a quick, rough exhale. <********," Leslie spat, squirming to try and push himself away, torn between getting away from the absolute heat radiating off of Isaac's body, or away from the cold metal digging into his skin, "isn't what I need."

He jabbed his elbow back into Isaac's ribs, stomping on the other man's foot with his boot.

It was too much, too look at him. It was impossible to forget that Isaac was a man, that it was Isaac who was doing this to him, the look in his eyes too human. He closed his eyes and snarled before the other man's open palm collided with his face, stinging through the shield. It was hurt but not enough, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.

It wasn't that Isaac was hurting him too much. There was no too much-- he walked the line of life and death every time, and instead of answering he spat on Isaac's face, entire body vibrating with rage-hate-need-fury-sorrow-murder-hate-helpess-hopeless-worthless.

He didn't want this, but if Isaac stopped, Leslie knew he'd kill the other man himself. Leslie wanted to beg hurt me, but there needed to be more, extracted from him with brute force, C4 against the safe door, rigged to blow and spill out all of his hideous secrets.

Leslie felt hot from head to toe, straining to shove Isaac off of him, thin chest panting and panting and panting, a trapped animal, prey.

"Just," he breathed, headbutting upwards to collide his forehead with Isaac's nose, "just ******** hurt me."

Sprawled back on the floor, propped up on his elbows, dishevelled and a wreck and disgusting, both of them were, pain blooming from his belly. Aleria crooned, without much panic-- they have seen it once, they will see it again and again and-- that their shield was diminishing.

Good.

The laugh burbled out of him with reckless abandon, ugly and shattered. There was very little Isaac could do to him that he hadn't already endured. Didn't he realize that's why Leslie was the way he was?

"Prove it."