Red Roses, Aster, and Peonies

22

Alfred threw up, clutching his aching head instead of holding back his hair. He was going to take a shower, so it didn't matter if it got dirty.

Ivan was in the bedroom, all the way on the seventh floor, sleeping. It was almost seven at night, and they had been up 'til midnight the night before, so he couldn't blame him.

He yawned, gripping his stomach before flushing the toilet. The human bathrooms weren't on any floor higher than the fourth, so he was on the fourth. He could hear the slight chatter as people walked through the halls lazily, ready to go to their rooms for the night.

When he stopped hearing the sounds of people he left the bathroom, his body feeling woozy and his brain scrambled. He went up the stairs to his room, his body getting worse as he got higher in altitude. He hated the sinking in his gut, the sense it would just be better to end it.

He glanced at the bed when he got into the room, seeing that Ivan was asleep as he went into the bathroom, looking around, and looking at himself in the mirror he had broken so many times, that had been replaced so many times more.

His shirt was thrown to the side, and he watched himself breath in the mirror, watched his own chest rise and fall, showing he was alive. His eyes went lower, to the skin that hung on his body, his ribs poking through just a little more than they had a week before.

He sighed, and clutched his head again, feeling like he had altitude sickness. It was a horrible feeling, but at least he knew he couldn't vomit any more than he already had.

His brain seemed to giggle in anticipation, getting ready to show a gag reel of all the things that he'd messed up on just this week- or really, one thing. The thing that dug in deep, like a knife. Well, more like a hatchet.

"Baby, watch your claws," Ivan hissed, feeling them sink into his back, "you got to pull them back, you're hurting me."

"I'm sorry," he whimpered, "I'm so sorry."

Even though Ivan's next words were: "It's okay, sweetheart." his brain changed it to be: "You should be, damn demon."

He couldn't suppress the hiccup that came from his throat. He sniffled, his hand reaching up to clear the tears gathering around his eyes on impulse.

He held his hands out in front of him, glaring at each claw. They glistened in the yellow light of the lightbulb, around three centimeters long and curling like cats. They'd grown through good eating habits and a little bit of a better mentality.

He stuck his thumb claw in his mouth, gripping it between his canines and breaking it off, feeling the thorn on his tongue before he spit it out, clutching his hand. It hurt, and was bleeding. He'd broken the quick.

Alfred looked at his left hand, his thumb still throbbing. He glanced at his wedding rings a few times, tapping the black one skeptically. His hands flopped down to his sides, and his eyes closed, and he wasn't done with his claws.

He didn't open his eyes, just took the claw on his pointer finger and breaking it, before doing the same to his middle finger, flicking his hand and wincing as blood specked the white marble counter.

He coughed, getting down to his knees, reaching up to break off the claw on his ring finger but not being able to do it, and looking down at his rings and thinking: 'Ivan would be disappointed now, wouldn't he?'

'Yes he would, of how he married someone so weak, so depressive, so unfixable~' some dark part of his mind purred, and he put his head between his knees like it would block out the sound, 'He made a mistake, you can help him fix that.'

"What do I need to do?" he whispered to himself.

"Take of the rings, write a nice note, and kill myself," he whispered back, like there were three sides of his mind fighting and he didn't know how to fight it. One was neutral. He was neutral. He was going to be corrupted into one side of the scale, the white of death or the black of life.