Live Now. Tomorrow, We Die. - SCP Foundation

It’s time to let him go. The way he kissed, smiled, and smelled. You have to let it go. The way his hands felt on your waist, the way he said your name, you have to let it go.

Because that’s who he was, not who he is.

Kit had never been the same after the first amnestic.

It was fair to say Gabriel has felt as lousy as shit doing it, too – inviting the cute, dark-haired man on another date and slipping it into his ‘purple rain’ cocktail with practised ease.

But, then again, he didn’t expect to fall in love.

He considered it part of his mission – make the man who saw too much, forget.

Make him forget. Make him forget with your wit and charm. Make him forget with your tongue in his mouth. Make him forget with a spiked drink. Leave… in the morning.

His interaction with Kit should have ended there. He shouldn’t have been around to see the amnestic trigger off sudden mood swings and confused, overwhelming emotions. The Amnestic Orientation manual hadn’t covered this. Maybe this happened to everyone they drugged and dumped. Maybe they all became broken and clinging to the sides of sanity.

But he had fallen for Kit hard and fast. He had fallen for the way he self-consciously adjusted his hair when he was flustered, fallen for the way he breathed Gabriel’s name in what eventually became their bed, even fallen for the fact that Kit was never quite normal.

He wanted so much to bring it up as a matter of ethics. Disclose exactly how fucked up Kit had become since that evening. But that would mean disclosing their relationship, and that would only have cause for trouble. Gabriel had worked hard to get where he was, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to give up the position for something as unimportant as the truth.

More often than not, Kit was already in his house when he got home. He had asked how, the first time, startled and on-edge, and Kit had just flashed a lockpick set at him and whispered the word ‘Easily’. Gabriel had gently swapped the kit for a key, and Kit would claim the window ledge overlooking the garden as his spot. It was as easy as taking in a stray.

He came home once, already calling out a greeting, to find dismal graffiti sprayed across the living room wall.

Live now. Tomorrow, we die.

It struck a nerve with him, considering his line of work, and considering how cheaply Kit had been treating life. He found Kit spaced out on his spot, a folding knife resting limply in his lap. Kit wouldn’t show him what he had done. Simply, he threw the knife across the room, and it embedded itself in the wall next to the nihilistic words.

Gabriel frowned at him. He'd been brought up to believe that there were certain things one didn't do in a house, and target practice was one of them.

Kit just smiled and Gabriel’s heart skipped a beat. Kit moved close to him, next to his ear, breath soft and warm.

"I won," He purred, and kissed him fiercely.

Live now. Tomorrow we die.

There was that fierce side that Gabriel loved. The side that would greet him with excitement, enthusiasm, and it translated into the bedroom, although Gabriel knew it had extended beyond a good fuck when he found himself in the pale moonlight, staring down at Kit as he slept, making sure he kept breathing, because it was the only time he could be confident the young man was alive and safe. It was becoming a fight, day after day, to know that Kit would be in his home when he got back, that he wouldn’t be arrested for a scuffle or sectioned for his madness, or dead on a slab somewhere.

So when he came home to a hole in one of the drywalls and blood staining the paint, he couldn’t help just to be glad that this had happened here. Kit was overwhelmed in the centre of the living room, holding out his knife towards Gabriel like he was a stranger. It took time to coax it from him and ease it from his grip, and even then Kit stayed on edge like the terrified stray he was.

When Kit finally let him get close, Gabriel held his hands until the bleeding stopped; his fingers grazed the sore knuckles until Kit whined and pulled away. Then he got out the first aid kit and methodically cleaned each one, kissing the top joints of each finger after every sting that caused Kit to squirm on the kitchen chair.

“We’ll be okay, baby,” he confided into Kit’s hair when they found themselves embracing, Kit trembling from fatigue and pure emotion. “I promise. I’ll be here for you. I’ll suffer with you. Cry when you cry. Laugh when you laugh, just please… try to laugh more. Please try to…”

Be with me. Don’t go to the place I can’t go, when your eyes glaze and you won’t even talk. I would do anything to fix you. Fix this.

Maybe it’s not about trying to fix something broken.

Maybe it’s about starting over and creating something better.

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