Sweet Hatred
Chapter 122: memories iii (Skin)

Chapter 122: memories iii (Skin)

TW: suicide attempt, suicide

My grip on the rifle had gone too tight, like I needed something to hold me back from doing something reckless. Like dragging him into my arms and shielding him from ghosts that had already done their damage.

The wind moved again. Cold. Restless. Ivan didn’t say anything else, and that silence—his silence—felt worse than any noise I’d ever heard on a battlefield.

He laughed after a while. Just a short, breathy thing. Forced.

"Shit. Sorry," he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "Didn’t mean to dump that on you."

He always did that. Brush pain under the rug, wrap it in sarcasm. Pretend it wasn’t bleeding.

"Why’d you tell me?" I asked, my voice low. Rougher than I meant it to be.

He shrugged. Still not looking at me. "Because I knew you wouldn’t pity me. And because..." His voice faltered. "I think if I didn’t tell someone, I was gonna explode."

I turned to him. He looked tired. Not the kind of tired sleep could fix.

And it hit me then, like a shot to the ribs, I’d gotten used to him. The noise. The teasing. The stubborn smile that somehow made all this shit feel less heavy. And now, knowing this... knowing what was beneath all that brightness, it made something tight coil in my chest.

I didn’t know what to say. So I stood there, beside him. Guarding more than just the perimeter.

Ivan exhaled slowly, like something inside him was unraveling. "You saw them, didn’t you? The scars."

I didn’t answer. My grip on the rifle stayed locked, jaw clenched so hard it ached. I didn’t trust my voice.

He took my silence as confirmation and kept going, his voice small but steady, like someone telling a story that doesn’t belong to them. Detached. Practiced.

"At first, I thought I could get used to it. You know... his hands. His body. The way he’d breathe over me like I was something he owned." He swallowed hard. "I told myself, if I just waited long enough, it’d stop. That maybe I’d stop feeling anything at all."

My stomach turned, a cold rage rising up from the pit of me, coiling like smoke under my ribs.

"But it didn’t stop." His voice broke there, and I caught the quiver in it. "So, I tried to ruin myself. Thought if I made myself ugly, carved enough lines into my skin, he’d finally stop touching me."

I still didn’t look at him. My chest felt like it was about to cave in.

"But that didn’t work either," he said, almost laughing, but it came out twisted. "So, I stole a bottle of painkillers. Thought that would be it. Clean. Quiet. The end y’know."

I turned to him. Slowly. He didn’t meet my eyes.

"Woke up in a hospital two days later. Puked my guts out for weeks. Got a fucked up ulcer for my efforts." He smiled bitterly. "Couldn’t even die right."

I wanted to speak. To say something, anything. But my throat felt welded shut.

"That’s when I realized..." He exhaled. "If I couldn’t do it myself, maybe someone else could. Maybe some bullet would do me the favor."

"That’s why you joined the army," I said, barely above a whisper.

He nodded. "Yeah." Then he looked at me, really looked, and asked, "What about you? Why’d you join, Kael?" Then that practiced smile. "Someone like you should be running corporations and doing shit no?"

I stared at him.

And for a second, I thought about lying. But all I could do was breathe.

"I didn’t want to be home anymore," I said. "Didn’t want to be around people who told me I was lucky to be alive, when every day felt like a slow kind of dying. Didn’t want to be around the man who drove my mother to suicide." My breath seized. "I saw her body dangle from the fucking ceiling and it was too late to help her."

His eyes didn’t leave mine. "Guess we’re both pretty fucked up, huh?"

I didn’t smile. Couldn’t.

I just looked at him... this boy with scars on his skin and a war behind his eye and all I could think was:

You were never meant to die, Ivan. You were meant to be saved.

Ivan laughed quietly, but the sound cracked at the edges. "Sorry. This got awkward, didn’t it?"

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. I just looked at him. His eyes were wet, and not from the cold.

And for the first time since I’d met him, Ivan didn’t try to hide. He didn’t grin or joke it off or tug at my sleeve to shift my attention he just let it be, just let me see him. All of him. Bruised, broken, beautiful.

He wiped at his cheek half-heartedly and met my gaze. "Don’t look at me like that," he whispered, voice thin with a laugh that didn’t land. "You keep looking at me like that, Kael, and I might just fall for you."

But I still didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure what to, all I knew was that my chest felt like it weighed a thousand tons. So I did what I could only think of at that moment.

I just leaned in and... kissed him.

Not like I planned it. Not like I even fully thought about it. My body moved before I could catch it. Before I could give myself reasons not to. His lips were cold, chapped from the wind, but soft, so soft. And for a second, neither of us breathed.

His fingers caught the front of my uniform. And he didn’t pull away.

But then it hit me and I pulled back.

Barely an inch, just enough to breathe, just enough for shame to creep in and wrap around my ribs like barbed wire. "Shit," I whispered. "I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—"

But Ivan grabbed my collar before I could finish and pulled me back, eyes shining and brimming as they locked onto mine. "Don’t be, please...." he said, breath hitching. "Don’t you dare be sorry."

His voice cracked.

"You’re the only one who’s ever made me feel like I wasn’t disgusting," he whispered. "Like I could talk and not be... touched. Like I could exist and not want to rip my skin off." His hands trembled as they curled into the fabric over my chest. "You didn’t cross a line. You gave me something real. Don’t apologize for that."

And before I could even think to stop him, he kissed me again, harder this time, but messier too. His tears brushed my skin, salty and hot, mixing with the cold of the night and the silence we didn’t need to fill.

And I didn’t pull away. Not this time.

But after that night, We never spoke of it again.

Not the kiss. Not the trembling hands or the tears in the dark or the weight of silence pressed between our lips. We just carried on—one mission after another, uniforms stiff with grit and grief and whatever the hell we were pretending not to feel.

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