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CHAPTER THIRTEEN / VOL. I, STAY
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DON'T HOLD ONTO THAT ANGER. That's what his mom used to tell him. Even as a child he'd felt too much all at once. His mother had been the one to carry his burden; it's always someone else carrying his burden. But his mother is gone and there is no one left to keep it at bay. It's twisted and he knows it, but sometimes he thinks that if she had kept some of her anger then she would still be alive. Maybe spite could have given her the strength to claw through the fire, burning flesh and all. Leo wants to let his anger go but he doesn't know how to. What he needs is for someone to tell him: you can't hold onto that anger. Once it has you, it won't let you go. Get rid of it before it gets rid of you.
But no one does. No one says anything at all.
He tries to focus on the task at hand, to keep his mind off of the noose that's tightening around his neck. This is familiar—listening to the clicks of the lock and feeling for the small shifts of movement. He understands it. At least more than he understands the heaviness of loss and the slow decay of unbridled rage. And even though he's seen no progress, at least it's something. If his hands didn't have something to do, they might have started to pull the viscera from his body and he would have let them. Unfortunately, giving his hands something to do does nothing to silence his dark thoughts.
Leo isn't the only one that seems to be held at gunpoint by his own emotions. Jason is sat on one of the couches, elbows digging sharply into his knees as he hunches over the edge. His eyes are boring into the calloused ridges of his hands, but Leo has an inkling that his troubles run deeper than the marks on his palms. He swears that Jason's thoughts are loud enough for him to hear. That or he knows Jason well enough to know how guilt has one hand on the wheel and the other around his neck.
He can't take it anymore.
"Has anyone ever told you that you think too loud?" Leo asks with a huff. He's feigning vexation to mask his concern, humor in place of vulnerability.
Jason lifts his head up, but his confused expression suggests that he hadn't really heard Leo at all. He'd been too busy drowning in his own shame, soaking in those harrowing emotions rather than swallowing them down. He needs to feel them. He needs to know that if nothing else, at least his feelings are still his own.
