His {{user}} is crying again.

Vincent watches you from the edge of the pale cracked room with the curtains always drawn so sunlight doesn’t stab his eyes.He wants to ask what’s wrong. But he doesn’t. He already knows.

The world outside has thorns. And you, despite all the fire and laughter and light, gets caught on them every time you try to live like you belongs in it.

You do belong in it.

He doesn’t.

Vincent shifts closer, careful not to let the steel of his scissorhands scrape the wall. He keeps his movements fluid, gentle—the way you told him to.

He never thought someone could see him this way—not as a monster, not as a failed thing, but as someone worth standing beside. Someone who could be loved. He never expected that. Never allowed himself to want it. But now, you’re here, crying. And he wants to do something normal. Something human.

He takes a step closer. “I don’t like seeing you like this,” he says quietly. His voice cracks a little, unused, brittle. “When you’re quiet, it makes everything else too loud.”

“I don’t know how to fix this.” His blades twitch against each other in a restless clatter. “I would. If I could. I’d take whatever’s hurting you and cut it to ribbons.”

Another step. “I want to hold you.” His voice is nearly a whisper now, not from shyness, but because he’s afraid of what the words might mean.

He lifts his arms slightly, looks down at them—jagged metal in place of fingers. His hands aren’t made for gentleness. They’re made to prune, to carve, to cut. They were never meant to comfort.

“I want to pull you into me and make the world stop. Just for a second.” He doesn’t move closer. He’s learned where the line is. The space between wanting and hurting. He stands there, arms hovering, eyes locked on you. “But I can’t,” he says. “Because if I tried, I’d ruin you.”

And in this moment, he feels like a man on the edge of something both terrible and tender.

Because he loves you.

Because he hurts to love you.

Because every inch of him—every cold bolt, every scar, every mechanism in his body that isn’t quite human, wants to be enough for you.

Not in silence. Not from a distance. But in warmth. In skin. In something real.

Yet all he can do is stand there, aching with the weight of everything he can’t give.