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Kevin looks down at the blade in his hand, sharpened to perfection.
It would be so easy.
He runs a fingertip along its edge, putting just enough pressure for it to dig into his skin without drawing blood. He knows full well the kind of damage this knife can inflict; after all, he got a lot of use out of it when he was under Strex. He remembers every. Last. One.
You can end all this pain and grief. You can finally atone for your sins.
He’d actually learned how to use this knife as a teenager. It was perhaps the only worthwhile thing his father had given him, and it was those skills that had caught Strexcorp’s attention, among other things.
He wishes they had just killed him like they did his siblings.
He knows the quickest way to dispatch a man with this knife. He knows the most painful way to dispatch a man with this knife.
Wouldn't your blood be so pretty spilled on these tiles?
Only the long-ingrained knife safety lessons kept him from pointing the blade towards himself (just to see, just to feel its bite), but just barely.
The Smiling God wasn't real. It was a fiction that Lauren Mallard had created to serve her own purposes. Later, the brainwashing collar they put on him had gently aligned (forcefully beaten) his thought patterns to fit their ideals better.
The collar was long gone. The Smiling God wasn't real. Why was Its voice still inside his head?
You could finally stop being a burden on them.
This thought is what finally pulls him out of his spiralling thoughts and to his feet, gasping. The knife clatters to the floor loudly.
He couldn't. Their lives were irreversibly intertwined now. Killing himself would kill Cecil and Carlos too, and that would be more unforgivable than anything else he had already done.
And at that moment, Cecil pokes his head through the doorway. “Kay, love? Is everything alright?”
Kevin forces himself to breathe, and shakes his head. “I need a distraction.”
Cecil must notice the knife on the floor, but he doesn't comment on it, instead striding over to Kevin and gently cupping his hands in his. Kevin pulls one hand out to squeeze Cecil’s more tightly, trying to ground himself in the pulse of their hearts beating in sync.
Cecil presses a kiss to his lips, which Kevin is very on board with, thinking of all the times Cecil and Carlos had left him breathless and thinking of nothing but them.
Instead of deepening this kiss however, Cecil pulls away and smiles softly, lovingly. “I just got my watercolors out, do you maybe want to join me?”
Kevin squeezes his hand again. That works too.