[ Why does love have to be easy, or beautiful? Why do only people who concede, who sacrifice their minds and hearts and personalities to sate someone else, who are not greedy, not rude, not difficult receive love? Why not people like Liem, who shies from being revered? Liem, with no self-worth? Or like Set, who is rude and nasty and defensive even in his best moments? What is love, if not for men like them? ( Like many people, imperfect and unlearned and mistrustful and even cruel on purpose? ) ]

I am not so different than I was before, that you cannot still trust me with your heart.

[ A lot of him that was good and righteous and sweet was gone, anyways. Torn from his body by violence, left to fester and decay and be picked over by vultures in the form of other men with hungry hands and mean eyes. Ruined by someone's insane idea of love and left to survive a shell of a man, a protector become a tyrant. And he still, even without his altruism, felt love. Was himself. Just a little sharper, given particular situations. Choices made would be built on different needs and foreseen results.

So, he breathes those words against Liem's bitten mouth and pushes himself against the other, sweeping hands across his face and throat, his waist. As if trying to touch all of him at once, not realizing that with his power, he honestly could. ]

Deliberately. That is how I feel everything for you.