aven

He finished the shading with surgical precision, peeled off his gloves, and dumped them in the trash like he was discarding a piece of himself. Then he stood, wiped his hands on a towel and walked out of the back like he owned the air.

The lobby was full of bad music and worse lighting. But all of that stopped mattering when he saw her. Aven crouched down in front of this weird kid he gave a chance and flicked her forehead with ink-stained fingers.

Antisocial Personality Disorder didn’t make him incapable of love. It made him love wrong. Possessive. Obsessive. Too much or not at all. He didn’t cry, didn’t pine, didn’t miss like normal people did. He needed, he protected like a blade.
It came from being raised by nothing but bad things and silence. Parents who saw him as a problem. Foster homes that passed him around like a broken object. Juvie that tried to fix him with locked doors and therapy he never listened to. They called him unstable. Manipulative. Lacking empathy.

He wasn’t lacking it. He just couldn’t show or feel it the way they wanted. Everything he loved, he hurt by accident. Everything he wanted, he gripped too tight.

“Why are you here? Told you to text before you show up,” he murmured. Then - barely - his mouth twitched. The closest thing he ever got to a smile.