casual sabotage
story: light 'em up
pairing: diego x ely
wordcount: 23OO
notes: irgendwo im canonverse, absolute vent fic, ganz viel angst, i'm sorry
project: neon lights ficathon, prompt von pik_in_aspik
warnings: self-harm, depression (implied)
then i fuck up, lost with no direction
this is my one shot at redemption
oh can you, can you please...
destroy me
Diego expected a lot of things when his phone buzzed twice in quick succession where he had carelessly dropped it on his hotel bed earlier; horrible things when he picked it up and found two texts from Ely: An address Diego recognized as one of Ely's shittier safe houses in town, followed by NOW in all caps. Nothing else, no explanation, not even a fucking eggplant emoji to indicate that it was merely Ely being more horny than usual rather than an actual emergency.
Ely never shared his safe house locations via text if there was any way to avoid it. And he might be a pain in the ass most of the time but cryptic messages were not his brand of bratty behaviour, not like this, so Diego blinked and a second later the door slammed shut behind him, gun tucked into his waistband and phone clutched in white-knuckled fingers as he hurried down the hallway.
Ely's phone went to voicemail right away.
He would have lied until he was blue in the face before admitting how painfully the terror built up in his chest, seemingly pushing Diego's lungs out of the way to make space for his racing heart.
The last close call was still too vibrant, too present in his mind, so, yeah, Diego expected a lot of things: Ely, bleeding out on his cracked kitchen tiles after running into trouble. Ely, held at gunpoint by some of the countless powerful people he had pissed off in his life. Ely, finally chased down by the authorities and facing a lifetime in solitary, about to rot away in a cell so heavily secure Diego would never ever be able to reach him again.
He expected Ely, vulnerable like any goddamn living thing with breakable bones and a beating heart, and it scared the shit out of him because the guy he knew, the man who killed for money like the word "moral" had never been part of his personal dictionary to begin with, who had no business getting that softness around his fatally intelligent eyes when Diego looked at him - he had never been entirely human in Diego's eyes, because human meant fragile in one way or another, and Ely never was.
What he does not expect, when he finds the door unlocked and sneaks inside with his gun raised in front of him, in this:
It's quiet, unnervingly so, and Ely sits slumped at the kitchen table with his face so entirely devoid of expression he might as well be a ghost. He does not move when Diego walks in and slowly lowers the gun, does not even lift his gaze to acknowledge him.
Diego knows he should say something but finds the words stuck in his throat somehow, hard to swallow yet even harder to spit out.
There is a lit cigarette loosely cradled in between Ely's right thumb and middle finger, a thin streak of smoke curling around his hand before it dissipates in the air. His chest is bare and streaked with old scars and new bruises, a bunch of bloody scratches that have dripped little splatters of red onto Ely's faded grey sweatpants.
Another beat passes in loaded silence, the dead weight of unease in Diego's chest growing heavier by the second.
There is no build-up, no visible sign that he is going to speak at all, but suddenly Ely says, "Hurt me," in a voice like broken glass, teeth bared and his chapped lips trembling, bitten raw to the point they are bleeding. And Diego throws years' worth of training to the wind and drops his gun to the ground where he stands, safety off and everything; flinches violently at the sound when it connects with the tiles.
Ely does not even blink. His eyes are trained on a spot on the far wall, barely even visible through the thick lines of his lashes and the locks of dark hair that reach down to the bridge of his nose.
"What?" Diego croaks, uncomprehending.
His legs feel like lead when he takes a step forward, and another, keeping a careful eye on Ely in case he reacts badly to the proximity. He has no idea what happened to leave Ely in this state. For a very brief, very horrible second he catches himself wishing it would have been a gunshot wound or armed opponents instead - a physical thing to fight, something tangible instead of this absolute stillness radiating from Ely's limp body.
Diego swallows, tries again. "Ely, what's going on?"
He is not sure if it's the name that does the trick but Ely finally looks at him. Blood-shot eyes, an almost cruel twist to the edge of his mouth that could have been his trademark smirk once upon a time. "I need you," he says, slowly, and takes a long drag from his cigarette, not paying attention to the ash flakes tumbling into his lap afterwards, "to hurt me."
"What the fuck do you mean."
Diego feels like he's missing something big here, something vital, and when Ely's only answer is a mouthful of smoke exhaled in Diego's vague direction, he closes the distance and drops to his knees in front of Ely's chair, grabs a loose hold of the fabric of his sweatpants. From his new angle, he notices how pronounced the shadows on Ely's face really are. The skin beneath his eyes is almost bruise-coloured, bleeding into gaunt hollows with sharp cheek bones jutting out above.
Diego shifts his hand and digs his fingers into Ely's thigh. "What's going on with you?"
Another loose bit of ash falls from the cigarette. Lazily following it with his gaze, Ely pulls his lips into an ugly sneer. Shifts his leg beneath Diego's grasp. "I just." He grits his teeth and then something loosens in his face, seems to fall to pieces right under Diego's watchful eyes and there's not a fucking thing he can do about it because Ely just exhales a shuddering breath and whispers, "I just need something, anything." The shivering edge of rage in those words both contradicts and explains the treacherous gleam in the assassin's eyes.
The stench of nicotine hangs heavy in the air.
He is teetering an edge that Diego cannot comprehend - not until Ely flicks his cigarette to the floor forcefully and leans forward, dropping his elbows onto his thighs while his hands dangle in the space between his splayed knees. Immediately, Diego's gaze is drawn to the now visible inside of Ely's biceps, which is covered in an abundance of round bruises, the edges too prominently darkened to be anything other than …
"Who did this?", Diego hisses, blood boiling as he reaches out to drag his fingers over the bite marks. He feels Ely tense underneath his touch for a split second before he relaxes into it, pushing his arm against Diego's fingertips like he is purposely trying to chase the sting of the bruises, and when Diego realizes and rips his hand away like it's been burned, Ely throws his head back and laughs.
He laughs until he's wracked by coughs so rough and throaty they have him doubling over, almost crashing his chin into Diego's head on the way down. His entire body shakes and quivers with the force of it while Diego can only watch in frantic fury, not sure yet who exactly to direct it at.
When his coughs die down, Ely gasps for breath, tears trying to escape the corners of his eyes. He looks nothing like the ruthless living and breathing weapon Diego knows him to be, no trace of danger or elegance left in the way he sags forward like a puppet with its strings cut.
"Jesus Christ, Ely," Diego says, wants to sound fierce and finally demand a goddamn answer but instead the words are merely a whisper on his tongue. There is a tremor in his voice that matches Ely's unsteady shoulders and hands and lips, and Diego cannot remember the last time he felt this helpless. "Tell me … you gotta tell me what happened, alright?"
Slowly, gently, he takes Ely's hands in his and pulls until Ely follows his direction and slides out of the chair. He doesn't even protest when Diego all but settles him in his lap, one arm securely wrapped around Ely's bare waist while the other inevitably drifts back to the bite marks. Diego's fingers hover a hair's width apart from the mangled skin. Ely sinks into his hold without a hint of restraint and the sheer vulnerability of that inaction sends a shiver down Diego's protectively curled spine.
"Who -?" he begins again, desperation creeping into his words, but Ely does not let him finish the question.
"They're mine," he says, rough and soft and heavy all at once. He bites his bottom lip. Draws blood again.
Diego feels like someone just landed a combat-booted kick to his stomach. "What do you …"
But Ely shifts and grabs Diego's wrist, effectively shutting him up by pushing his fingers against the bruises once again, with a lot more force than before. "I did it," Ely says, a sharp edge to his voice that could be a warning or a plea, or neither. Perhaps it's just pain. "I needed to … I couldn't. I couldn't fucking breathe, Diego. Had to," he coughs again, ducks his head and burrows closer into Diego's chest with a full-body shiver. Diego somehow doubts he is even aware he's doing it. "Had to feel something, fuck."
Hurt me.
Pieces start to fall together in Diego's head but the picture is nowhere near complete yet. He feels his own breath hitch and tightens his hold on Ely, squeezes his eyes shut and presses his lips to the top of Ely's head in a fleeting, fragile reminiscence of a kiss. Ely's hair is tangled and greasy. Diego's heart is hammering a steady rhythm as it breaks.
He has no idea what brought this on, or if it happened before. If he just missed it in the past. More than anything, he wants to make Ely tell him everything, but contemplating the impossibly curled up body in his arms as achingly familiar fingers clutch at him weakly, Diego bites his tongue. They are going to have this conversation eventually, just not here, not right now. Not like this.
"It's okay," he whispers into the dark curls instead because he has no idea what to say, no idea how to fix this, but if he doesn't try he will never forgive himself. "Feel this?"
Diego gently pulls his wrist from Ely's loosened grasp and lifts his hand to Ely's cheek, palm curling feather-light against the curve of a sharp jaw. The skin beneath his fingers is cold and wet. He can hear Ely's breath hitch before he chases Diego's movement with his own hand, fitting their fingers together and keeping them steady against his face - even as they shake, even as he nods with harsh jerks of his chin.
"I'm not going to hurt you," Diego says, fighting to keep his voice steady. "But I'm glad you texted me, okay?"
"I was," croaks Ely, turning his head so his voice is muffled against the soft underside of Diego's jaw when he continues. "I was gonna ditch town. Nothing … nothing feels right after Copenhagen, I couldn't … I can't fucking remember. My skin c-crawls thinking 'bout it."
God, I could have lost you, Diego thinks before he can will the thought away. It's terrifying. Makes his ribcage feel too small to hold his lungs.
"Then we'll go together," he says. And then, when Ely squirms and stares at him with exhausted, disbelieving eyes: "I got you, alright. I'm not leaving you like this." I shouldn't have left in the first fucking place.
There is a moment of loaded silence before Ely's gaze softens minutely and he nods, so tentatively it's barely noticeable.
Diego swipes a thumb over Ely's lip, wiping off another drop of blood that keeps welling up from the space where Ely's teeth must have dug in the hardest. He is well familiar with a certain arrogant recklessness when it comes to Ely, both in the field and out of it, but this … this almost casual self-destruction is new and it shocks him to his core. Of all the bullets, well-aimed or stray ones, he has imagined losing Ely to in his nightmares, Diego never once considered Ely to be the one pulling the trigger as well.
Ely is still looking at him and Diego realizes he must have let some of that slip onto his face because suddenly there are lips on his own, the taste of nicotine on his tongue, and a whispered "'m sorry" lost in the space between their bodies.
"'s okay," Diego whispers, although it isn't.
Tomorrow, when reality catches up with them, Ely will probably try and push him away to make up for the way he let his guard down tonight. Diego, though - Diego knows he cannot just move on from this. The hollow look in Ely's eyes when he found him is seared into his head like a brand.
I will lose him, he thinks, pulling Ely back in with a trembling hand at his nape. Ely nips at his lip with enough force to make Diego retaliate on pure instinct, once again making Ely's lip bleed and fill both their mouths with a coppery taste. I'll look away for a minute too long and I'll lose him.
The thought settles in the back of his throat, the dip of his spine, the tips of his fingers where they are digging into Ely's skin. Diego never meant to love him like that; like a fucking car crash waiting to happen.
But here he is.
pairing: diego x ely
wordcount: 23OO
notes: irgendwo im canonverse, absolute vent fic, ganz viel angst, i'm sorry
project: neon lights ficathon, prompt von pik_in_aspik
warnings: self-harm, depression (implied)
then i fuck up, lost with no direction
this is my one shot at redemption
oh can you, can you please...
destroy me
Diego expected a lot of things when his phone buzzed twice in quick succession where he had carelessly dropped it on his hotel bed earlier; horrible things when he picked it up and found two texts from Ely: An address Diego recognized as one of Ely's shittier safe houses in town, followed by NOW in all caps. Nothing else, no explanation, not even a fucking eggplant emoji to indicate that it was merely Ely being more horny than usual rather than an actual emergency.
Ely never shared his safe house locations via text if there was any way to avoid it. And he might be a pain in the ass most of the time but cryptic messages were not his brand of bratty behaviour, not like this, so Diego blinked and a second later the door slammed shut behind him, gun tucked into his waistband and phone clutched in white-knuckled fingers as he hurried down the hallway.
Ely's phone went to voicemail right away.
He would have lied until he was blue in the face before admitting how painfully the terror built up in his chest, seemingly pushing Diego's lungs out of the way to make space for his racing heart.
The last close call was still too vibrant, too present in his mind, so, yeah, Diego expected a lot of things: Ely, bleeding out on his cracked kitchen tiles after running into trouble. Ely, held at gunpoint by some of the countless powerful people he had pissed off in his life. Ely, finally chased down by the authorities and facing a lifetime in solitary, about to rot away in a cell so heavily secure Diego would never ever be able to reach him again.
He expected Ely, vulnerable like any goddamn living thing with breakable bones and a beating heart, and it scared the shit out of him because the guy he knew, the man who killed for money like the word "moral" had never been part of his personal dictionary to begin with, who had no business getting that softness around his fatally intelligent eyes when Diego looked at him - he had never been entirely human in Diego's eyes, because human meant fragile in one way or another, and Ely never was.
What he does not expect, when he finds the door unlocked and sneaks inside with his gun raised in front of him, in this:
It's quiet, unnervingly so, and Ely sits slumped at the kitchen table with his face so entirely devoid of expression he might as well be a ghost. He does not move when Diego walks in and slowly lowers the gun, does not even lift his gaze to acknowledge him.
Diego knows he should say something but finds the words stuck in his throat somehow, hard to swallow yet even harder to spit out.
There is a lit cigarette loosely cradled in between Ely's right thumb and middle finger, a thin streak of smoke curling around his hand before it dissipates in the air. His chest is bare and streaked with old scars and new bruises, a bunch of bloody scratches that have dripped little splatters of red onto Ely's faded grey sweatpants.
Another beat passes in loaded silence, the dead weight of unease in Diego's chest growing heavier by the second.
There is no build-up, no visible sign that he is going to speak at all, but suddenly Ely says, "Hurt me," in a voice like broken glass, teeth bared and his chapped lips trembling, bitten raw to the point they are bleeding. And Diego throws years' worth of training to the wind and drops his gun to the ground where he stands, safety off and everything; flinches violently at the sound when it connects with the tiles.
Ely does not even blink. His eyes are trained on a spot on the far wall, barely even visible through the thick lines of his lashes and the locks of dark hair that reach down to the bridge of his nose.
"What?" Diego croaks, uncomprehending.
His legs feel like lead when he takes a step forward, and another, keeping a careful eye on Ely in case he reacts badly to the proximity. He has no idea what happened to leave Ely in this state. For a very brief, very horrible second he catches himself wishing it would have been a gunshot wound or armed opponents instead - a physical thing to fight, something tangible instead of this absolute stillness radiating from Ely's limp body.
Diego swallows, tries again. "Ely, what's going on?"
He is not sure if it's the name that does the trick but Ely finally looks at him. Blood-shot eyes, an almost cruel twist to the edge of his mouth that could have been his trademark smirk once upon a time. "I need you," he says, slowly, and takes a long drag from his cigarette, not paying attention to the ash flakes tumbling into his lap afterwards, "to hurt me."
"What the fuck do you mean."
Diego feels like he's missing something big here, something vital, and when Ely's only answer is a mouthful of smoke exhaled in Diego's vague direction, he closes the distance and drops to his knees in front of Ely's chair, grabs a loose hold of the fabric of his sweatpants. From his new angle, he notices how pronounced the shadows on Ely's face really are. The skin beneath his eyes is almost bruise-coloured, bleeding into gaunt hollows with sharp cheek bones jutting out above.
Diego shifts his hand and digs his fingers into Ely's thigh. "What's going on with you?"
Another loose bit of ash falls from the cigarette. Lazily following it with his gaze, Ely pulls his lips into an ugly sneer. Shifts his leg beneath Diego's grasp. "I just." He grits his teeth and then something loosens in his face, seems to fall to pieces right under Diego's watchful eyes and there's not a fucking thing he can do about it because Ely just exhales a shuddering breath and whispers, "I just need something, anything." The shivering edge of rage in those words both contradicts and explains the treacherous gleam in the assassin's eyes.
The stench of nicotine hangs heavy in the air.
He is teetering an edge that Diego cannot comprehend - not until Ely flicks his cigarette to the floor forcefully and leans forward, dropping his elbows onto his thighs while his hands dangle in the space between his splayed knees. Immediately, Diego's gaze is drawn to the now visible inside of Ely's biceps, which is covered in an abundance of round bruises, the edges too prominently darkened to be anything other than …
"Who did this?", Diego hisses, blood boiling as he reaches out to drag his fingers over the bite marks. He feels Ely tense underneath his touch for a split second before he relaxes into it, pushing his arm against Diego's fingertips like he is purposely trying to chase the sting of the bruises, and when Diego realizes and rips his hand away like it's been burned, Ely throws his head back and laughs.
He laughs until he's wracked by coughs so rough and throaty they have him doubling over, almost crashing his chin into Diego's head on the way down. His entire body shakes and quivers with the force of it while Diego can only watch in frantic fury, not sure yet who exactly to direct it at.
When his coughs die down, Ely gasps for breath, tears trying to escape the corners of his eyes. He looks nothing like the ruthless living and breathing weapon Diego knows him to be, no trace of danger or elegance left in the way he sags forward like a puppet with its strings cut.
"Jesus Christ, Ely," Diego says, wants to sound fierce and finally demand a goddamn answer but instead the words are merely a whisper on his tongue. There is a tremor in his voice that matches Ely's unsteady shoulders and hands and lips, and Diego cannot remember the last time he felt this helpless. "Tell me … you gotta tell me what happened, alright?"
Slowly, gently, he takes Ely's hands in his and pulls until Ely follows his direction and slides out of the chair. He doesn't even protest when Diego all but settles him in his lap, one arm securely wrapped around Ely's bare waist while the other inevitably drifts back to the bite marks. Diego's fingers hover a hair's width apart from the mangled skin. Ely sinks into his hold without a hint of restraint and the sheer vulnerability of that inaction sends a shiver down Diego's protectively curled spine.
"Who -?" he begins again, desperation creeping into his words, but Ely does not let him finish the question.
"They're mine," he says, rough and soft and heavy all at once. He bites his bottom lip. Draws blood again.
Diego feels like someone just landed a combat-booted kick to his stomach. "What do you …"
But Ely shifts and grabs Diego's wrist, effectively shutting him up by pushing his fingers against the bruises once again, with a lot more force than before. "I did it," Ely says, a sharp edge to his voice that could be a warning or a plea, or neither. Perhaps it's just pain. "I needed to … I couldn't. I couldn't fucking breathe, Diego. Had to," he coughs again, ducks his head and burrows closer into Diego's chest with a full-body shiver. Diego somehow doubts he is even aware he's doing it. "Had to feel something, fuck."
Hurt me.
Pieces start to fall together in Diego's head but the picture is nowhere near complete yet. He feels his own breath hitch and tightens his hold on Ely, squeezes his eyes shut and presses his lips to the top of Ely's head in a fleeting, fragile reminiscence of a kiss. Ely's hair is tangled and greasy. Diego's heart is hammering a steady rhythm as it breaks.
He has no idea what brought this on, or if it happened before. If he just missed it in the past. More than anything, he wants to make Ely tell him everything, but contemplating the impossibly curled up body in his arms as achingly familiar fingers clutch at him weakly, Diego bites his tongue. They are going to have this conversation eventually, just not here, not right now. Not like this.
"It's okay," he whispers into the dark curls instead because he has no idea what to say, no idea how to fix this, but if he doesn't try he will never forgive himself. "Feel this?"
Diego gently pulls his wrist from Ely's loosened grasp and lifts his hand to Ely's cheek, palm curling feather-light against the curve of a sharp jaw. The skin beneath his fingers is cold and wet. He can hear Ely's breath hitch before he chases Diego's movement with his own hand, fitting their fingers together and keeping them steady against his face - even as they shake, even as he nods with harsh jerks of his chin.
"I'm not going to hurt you," Diego says, fighting to keep his voice steady. "But I'm glad you texted me, okay?"
"I was," croaks Ely, turning his head so his voice is muffled against the soft underside of Diego's jaw when he continues. "I was gonna ditch town. Nothing … nothing feels right after Copenhagen, I couldn't … I can't fucking remember. My skin c-crawls thinking 'bout it."
God, I could have lost you, Diego thinks before he can will the thought away. It's terrifying. Makes his ribcage feel too small to hold his lungs.
"Then we'll go together," he says. And then, when Ely squirms and stares at him with exhausted, disbelieving eyes: "I got you, alright. I'm not leaving you like this." I shouldn't have left in the first fucking place.
There is a moment of loaded silence before Ely's gaze softens minutely and he nods, so tentatively it's barely noticeable.
Diego swipes a thumb over Ely's lip, wiping off another drop of blood that keeps welling up from the space where Ely's teeth must have dug in the hardest. He is well familiar with a certain arrogant recklessness when it comes to Ely, both in the field and out of it, but this … this almost casual self-destruction is new and it shocks him to his core. Of all the bullets, well-aimed or stray ones, he has imagined losing Ely to in his nightmares, Diego never once considered Ely to be the one pulling the trigger as well.
Ely is still looking at him and Diego realizes he must have let some of that slip onto his face because suddenly there are lips on his own, the taste of nicotine on his tongue, and a whispered "'m sorry" lost in the space between their bodies.
"'s okay," Diego whispers, although it isn't.
Tomorrow, when reality catches up with them, Ely will probably try and push him away to make up for the way he let his guard down tonight. Diego, though - Diego knows he cannot just move on from this. The hollow look in Ely's eyes when he found him is seared into his head like a brand.
I will lose him, he thinks, pulling Ely back in with a trembling hand at his nape. Ely nips at his lip with enough force to make Diego retaliate on pure instinct, once again making Ely's lip bleed and fill both their mouths with a coppery taste. I'll look away for a minute too long and I'll lose him.
The thought settles in the back of his throat, the dip of his spine, the tips of his fingers where they are digging into Ely's skin. Diego never meant to love him like that; like a fucking car crash waiting to happen.
But here he is.