Angry

Always.

Simmering just under the surface, with a smile on top for decoration but not much else. When it slips it crumples, cracks, fractures into something pained and resigned and helplessly pragmatic; really, what else can be said or done to fix this? So all he has left is a quip and a shrug.

Beneath it, though, he burns. What's down there, deep, is throwing itself against the bars of the cage he's built painstakingly with easy words and slow breaths. He's terrified, and that only feeds his rage, because he's powerless against it and how could that not infuriate anyone? At war with himself, and he's already lost.

And so he knows that it's won, but he puts on his broken grin anyway, because he knows something else.

Even if it controls what he might do, he still controls who he is, no matter how scorching the heat or how violent the turmoil.

That's enough.