Content: Arthur/TMWTPF, Suicide, Eroticization of suicide, Shame and guilt over suicidal thoughts, Descriptions of suicide

It's late and Arthur has turned all the pictures to face the wall.

The man with the painted face sits at the end of the couch, languid and calm. He stares through the open V of Arthur's drawn up legs and Arthur looks away. ”You thinking about killing yourself?" he asks. "I can tell 'cause of the way you twitch when I look at you."

Arthur rolls his eyes over his sickle grin and flicks them away again. "Why are you asking me if you know the answer? Do you get off on me saying yes? Or describing how I'd do it?"

"Would it make you mad if I did?"

"...No," Arthur admits.

"Would it make you horny?"

This time Arthur feels himself twitch, feels blue diamonds glued to the pull of sinew and bone under his skin. He rolls over just enough to tap his fading cigarette over the ashtray on the coffee table. "Something like that, I guess."

The man with the painted face pauses to let Arthur wade into the mire of his admission. "Are you ashamed?"

Arthur sighs, a tinge of anger passing through him. "You know the answer to that, too. Yeah I'm ashamed. It's weird. It's just one more way that I'm a freak." He stubs out his cigarette before adding, "If my dick worked I'd have my hand around it every time I laid in front of you and described how I'd kill myself."

The man with the painted face tilts his head. "That's the only reason you're ashamed?" He's needling, prodding, digging his nails into Arthur's brain.

Arthur presses the heels of his hands into the valleys of his eye sockets and watches color bloom against the dark. ”When the man next door shot himself it was a huge inconvenience to everyone. The cops, the guys who wheeled his body out, the landlord, everyone in the building. They had to clean up the mess. They tore up the floor and ripped down the wallpaper. It was so loud." In the pressured blackness he sees blood sprayed over plaid. "It's the same whether you live or die. You're just an inconvenience. That's what I'm ashamed of."

The man with the painted face crawls up Arthur's body and hovers over him with his lips to his ear. "You ever think it's your fault he's dead? That you fantasize about killing yourself all day and all night and you've filled every room in this place with your thoughts? That they seep out of you and get sucked into the mouth of everyone around you?"

"Yes..." Arthur whispers. On his worst days, when he's on the brink of snapping in two, he opens the door to his apartment and there's a sea of dark mist on the floor. As he passes over the threshold it envelops his feet and breathes out into the hall. He can never seal himself off fast enough, can never keep it all inside.

The man with the painted face keeps going, burying himself deeper. "Your misery is contagious. I wanna drill a hole in your skull and suck it out of you."

Arthur rolls his head to the side and finds soft lips, tacky with paint. They slot their bodies together and Arthur wraps every limb he can reach around himself, tight vines of heat and pressure. Fingers press between the notches of his spine, climbing up until they're closed around the back of his neck.

"I want the tar of you in my lungs," the man with the painted face says, and he's so close that every word bites into Arthur's lips and teeth catch his tongue. He moves down to Arthur's neck, wraps his mouth around the tendon there, pulling Arthur's skin into his mouth.

"Tell me you'll be there when I die." Arthur's desperate, panting. "And you'll hold me like this when it's over."

"Yeah. I'll be there," He promises, his voice vibrating over pulsing blood.

It's late and all the pictures are turned to face the wall. In the dark they are alone.