“Druxy – Something which looks good on the outside, but is actually rotten inside,” from this prompt list.
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Once upon a time, Henry would have thought that sitting there watching someone sleep was creepy. And well, it still was. But it was far from the worst thing that Henry had done lately, so fuck it. He sat there and watched Sam sleep.
It was the only time Sam ever looked peaceful, when he was asleep. Not always, he had nightmares just like Henry did, but sometimes. Part of Henry hated that. Because they both had nightmares when they slept, but when Sam woke up, his were over. It wasn’t fair that he should get to have good dreams sometimes, that he should get to sleep peacefully. The universe should be punishing him at every turn for what he did, for what he was.
But maybe the universe didn’t care. Maybe Sam was right, and he really could do whatever he wanted.
For all that he hated it, Henry couldn’t bring himself to disturb Sam when he slept, curled up against Henry’s side, sometimes with his head on Henry’s chest, like he had now. He’d been doing that more and more. Used to be he’d start there and roll away in his sleep, but lately Sam had been gravitating towards him in the night, ending up tangled in Henry in the mornings. Henry wasn’t sure what to make of it.
He couldn’t disturb Sam’s sleep. Not because he was afraid of the ramifications or anything. Sam would hurt him if he wanted to and there wasn’t a lot Henry could do to stop that. It wasn’t because he felt bad for waking Sam up from a good night’s sleep either–though Sam did always look tired.
Sleeping like this, Sam looked vulnerable, and it was the only time Henry got to see him like that. He looked small, and content and weak and Henry could reach right down and put his hands on Sam’s neck and Sam wouldn’t stop him. He looked human. He looked like a tired kid who needed more rest.
He looked cute, if Henry looked at him long enough, forgot who he was looking at. Sam wasn’t an unattractive person, not physically. It was his personality that made him that way.
It didn’t matter. Henry knew that being attractive didn’t mean Sam was secretly a nice guy at heart. It didn’t mean he was redeemable or that he was actually just misunderstood or any of that. Monsters could be pretty too.
But at the same time, looking at Sam like this made Henry remember that Sam was what he’d been made into, that he was just a kid who’d been encouraged to be a monster by his father. And none of that excused his behaviour–Sam was old enough to know what he was doing, and he knew that he didn’t have to do it. Sam was just as much a monster as Solomon had been.
But he was a person too, and that was important. It was important because monsters were indestructible, monsters were huge and powerful and dangerous. Humans, humans were small, weak, they could be manipulated, they could be tricked they could lose. Sam was a monster, but he was human. He had to eat and sleep and shit like all of them. He had weaknesses. He wasn’t indestructible.
If he could learn to control his personality, Henry knew, Sam would be a lot more effective. He’d be able to use that cute face of his to get people to do what he wanted instead of threatening and maiming his way through life. He was the kind of person who nobody would think was nasty until they were being tortured by him. Sam would be able to convince people that he was a victim too, if he wanted.
And Henry was grateful that Sam would never do that, because it would make him so much more terrifying. That he went out of his way to make sure his exterior matched his interior made Sam less threatening, less dangerous. If he wrapped his rotten, festering cancer of a soul in this, in this sleeping, vulnerable, innocent-looking boy, hand curled into a half-fist on Henry’s chest, making weird noises every so often, Sam would be unstoppable.
Henry never planned to tell him that. But he would watch Sam sleep, watch him unconsciously pretend to be harmless, and remind himself that it could be a lot worse.
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How Best to Use a Sword 