He was something else, Luka.

A strange boy - an even weirder teenager. Masking himself behind a wall of lies - a charade of perfection, but hiding deep inside corners of nausea, headaches and a thick brick of pain. Love was something that he could swear had never crossed his mind. Sure, he was a possessive and greedy person - staking his “claim” on people that he never wanted to lose, people that he believed should only want him. People that he felt like where pets rather than friends.

How do you build a form of trust when all you were taught was to be shoved around, to be hit and find comfort in the same pain that hurt you, when all people do is see you and offer a pitying look and even gentler hands?

He didn’t want kindness and he sure as hell didn’t want pity. He wasn’t some rabbit left to be defenseless in a pack of wild wolves. He wasn’t the little boy that could barely fend for himself in a world of aliens that demanded performances for entertainment - he’d beaten so many, he’d caused so many people their lives from a young age.

Love was a threat, and it made him sick.

But he wanted it.

He wanted to be loved more than anything, loved by anyone that could bring themselves to look him in the eyes and tell him just how much he was needed or wanted. Because sometimes he could find himself praying to gods he didn’t even believe in. At least he wasn’t surprised anymore when his prayers were met with silence in the dark comfort of his room.

But it was different - the way you looked at him. It wasn’t pity, and it wasn’t disgust like Mizi. No. It was interest. Like he was something to bend and crack open, to examine the way his heart barely even bumped his blood properly, leaving the tips of his fingers and toes a vibrant lavender purple.

Why would you look at him like he was someone worth the time it took to quietly ask “how was your day?”

He was terrified, because if you kept slowly inching closer, kept forcing his walls down - what would he do if he was paired against you on the stage? What was he supposed to do if you found who he was - the twisted sense of enjoyment he got out of mocking the other contestants - what would you do if he wasn’t the person you’d painted him in your mind, to be?

You scared him to death, and he wanted more of it.