"Oh, I'm very dead," Kavinsky assured. He dug the knife in harder than it needed to be, not because he thought Steve needed it, but because he liked the way that Steve responded to it, he liked that he knew how it got Steve going. The blood rolled over the edge of the knife and he kept, slowly, carving the words in with his precise cyrllic handwriting.

"I blew myself up, for everybody to see. Boom. What a fuckin' Fourth of July firework I was." He laughed, soft and lazily ecstatic. "I didn't even make it to eighteen, Stevey. And sure--sure I've been here for almost the whole two years, ya know. But you never asked either, did ya? You never gave it a second fucking thought."

He leaned into it a little, leaned up, until his mouth almost touched Steve's, his voice dripping with that demonic electricity that fed off Steve's enjoyment of the pain. No compulsion, just the vibrating energy of this moment.

"Did you like how young I am, Steve?"