[ He stares at her, feeling a muddle of bewildered anger stir that isn't quite like any anger he's felt before. Not toward her. Her abject pose makes him want to backhand her, and he realizes he's made a fist only when his fingers ache at his sides, the air around his arms seeming to thrum, the way a helicopter's rotors exist in a blur of motion. ]
[ He takes a deep careful breath, and lets the tension out instead, willing it to float up into the stratosphere and dissolve. ]
[ Easing his fists open, he steps away from her. It's an effort to remember that she isn't a threat. That she made a simple mistake, even if that mistake triggered a landslide of bad memories. It's a greater effort to remember that he's angry -- not with her, per se -- but at being triggered at all, angry at the way his brain is always pressing against his skull, making everything cluttered, red-smeared, suffocating. ]
[ Most importantly, he must remember that anger is an easy catchall emotion, a defense against powerlessness, which is why his temper is always so out of proportion to the situation at hand, a soup of chemical imbalances sloshing around in his system. ]
[ He tries to bury the rage under a layer of calm. Takes another breath, before trying to recapture that moment of mutual understanding they'd shared before. ]
Why did you want to do it at all?
[ His voice is slightly acerbic at the edges, but his gaze is clearer. The storm is passing, beat by beat. Inside, he hopes her reasons are something stupid -- like gossip she'd overheard, or sex tips in Cosmo, or some bad porn she'd stumbled across on TV. ]
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Date: 2014-11-08 09:37 pm (UTC)[ He takes a deep careful breath, and lets the tension out instead, willing it to float up into the stratosphere and dissolve. ]
[ Easing his fists open, he steps away from her. It's an effort to remember that she isn't a threat. That she made a simple mistake, even if that mistake triggered a landslide of bad memories. It's a greater effort to remember that he's angry -- not with her, per se -- but at being triggered at all, angry at the way his brain is always pressing against his skull, making everything cluttered, red-smeared, suffocating. ]
[ Most importantly, he must remember that anger is an easy catchall emotion, a defense against powerlessness, which is why his temper is always so out of proportion to the situation at hand, a soup of chemical imbalances sloshing around in his system. ]
[ He tries to bury the rage under a layer of calm. Takes another breath, before trying to recapture that moment of mutual understanding they'd shared before. ]
Why did you want to do it at all?
[ His voice is slightly acerbic at the edges, but his gaze is clearer. The storm is passing, beat by beat. Inside, he hopes her reasons are something stupid -- like gossip she'd overheard, or sex tips in Cosmo, or some bad porn she'd stumbled across on TV. ]