a/n; wrote this real quick before a lecture instead of doing my readings also listen to lord huron’s ‘the night we met’ when reading for Extra Pain also @kurtwxgners @mvximoff @rax-writes hope u enjoy

she is so good. she is so good, and you cannot ruin one more good thing

It’s somewhere around four in the morning, but it doesn’t really matter to him. He doesn’t really sleep much these days. Hasn’t for a while. Sitting up in the bed, Warren looks down at your sleeping form tangled in the sheets beside him. Your eyes flutter slightly in your sleep and the moonlight filtering through the room is making you look like you’re glowing. His heart twists in his chest and he tries to ignore the way you seem to reach for him in your sleep. You’re beautiful like this. You’re always beautiful, but seeing you in the bed beside him could be enough to bring him to his knees. All smooth skin and graceful curves, you are perfect. Too perfect for someone like him.

He remembers the way you clung to him only hours before, how soft your lips were against his skin as you kissed his scars and tattoos and told him he was beautiful. You weren’t supposed to care about him. You were never supposed to trust him the way you seem to. He is battered and scarred and damaged and all he knows how to do is hurt people and he’s pretty sure it might kill him if he let himself hurt you. His heart is screaming ‘stay’ with every fibre of his being, and it feels like there’s some unknown outside force pressing him back into the bed with you, even as his head whispers ‘go’. 

He knows which one he has to obey. 

The sheets are warm around him as he pushes them reluctantly aside, wings reflexively stretching out behind him as he rises to his feet, leaning down to tug his clothes back on. You shift slightly in the bed, reaching out towards the spot he just vacated and the gesture feels like a knife to the heart because it’s so much harder to leave knowing you want him to stay. He starts towards the door, knowing this kind of clean break has to happen. Knowing it’ll be so much harder to make himself leave if he waits till you’re awake. 

His body seems to rebel against him, and he stops by your desk, only really half aware of his actions as he grabs a scrap of paper to scrawl a message on. 

I’m sorry. I’m not good for you. Take care of yourself. 

He leaves it on his pillow and pads silently out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him as he leaves, trying to forget how painfully numb he feels as he walks away from you. You are far too good for him, your trust too willing, your eyes too earnest and kind. You are too perfect for him to know what to do with so he leaves. It’s better this way. He can’t break what he never lets himself hold.