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He should have known Glanni was way more trouble than he was worth. Honestly, he should have turned and walked away from the whole of it. Leave it to someone else to deal with. Yet the man's sparkling gray eyes, full of wickedness and mischief drew him like a moth to the flame.

The games of cat and mouse got more involved. Chasing Glanni rooftop to rooftop, through tight alleys, into sewers and underground labyrinths. Sometimes he would leave one crime scene and end up at another. The worst was when he found the building full of deceased residents. Glanni had spiked their water with some sort of poison and had been extorting them for money. Their money ran dry and their lives were all snuffed out.

The trail of dead bodies didn't end there. Young ones, mostly boys, a few girls, would be found with bullet wounds in their heads. From the looks of their injuries, they didn't make a jump, fell, somehow injured themselves and Glanni would snuff the life out of them as well. Íþróttaálfurinn wasn't sure if it was from mercy or self-preservation. Glanni never shot anyone. Always came at him with a knife, or his nails and teeth.

It made the news time and time again. "Dead Found: Glanni Glæpur Suspected in Foul Play", or something similar. It surrounded Íþrótt, the words mocking him, showing everyone how much of a failure he was. A collection of these articles made their home under the cot in his balloon. Faces of those he couldn't save staring at him through grayscale images.

He finally caught the lithe man in a dark alley. Grappling with long limbs to try and keep them down. The criminal hissed at him and fought hard against the solid body of muscle trying to pin him to the brick wall.

Íþróttaálfurinn thought maybe he had won when the man slumped against him. Then Glanni began to whisper sweet words into one pointed ear, the words wrapping around Íþrótt on a breath smelling of decay and decadence. About how Glanni has just been waiting for this moment, how he imagines what the hero looks like under his armor, how cute his little pointed ears are. That silver tongue snakes across the edge of an ear before biting down hard.

The elf cries out in pain, letting go of the criminal. Feeling ashamed and aroused, he glares at the taller man. The man who smiles wickedly before melting into the night. The man who he has just come to realize he desires in some twisted manner.

Íþróttaálfurinn curses himself. The only thing he had that could be stolen, gone into the night with the tall criminal.

The next time he comes close to the criminal, Íþróttaálfurinn is bleeding on a bar floor. Red streaking across the black and white tiles as he pulls his body forwards. Glanni sitting on a dingy leather booth couch, watching the display before him. Cooing soft words of encouragement, how well the elf is doing, that if he makes it over, perhaps Glanni would grace him with a gift.

In that moment Íþróttaálfurinn knew he would do anything for that gift. Whether it would be more pain or the promise of pleasure, only the leather-clad criminal could say.

Íþrótt's fingers gently wrapped around a thin ankle. The limb jerked free and a heel came down on the meat of his hand. Venom dripped from Glanni's lips, who had given the lowly hero permission to touch? Apologies tumbled from deep within the elf, pain in his hand forgotten as the criminal walked away.

Íþróttaálfurinn lay on the floor until the pain in his hand subsided. Struggling to stand, dizzy from the blood loss and pain in his legs, he tried to follow after the man who walked away. Until many hands pulled him away, treating his wounds and asking him questions.

The headlines and articles under his cot became a solid reminder. No matter where Glanni would show up, Íþróttaálfurinn would follow. Be it a trap or not, Glanni was bait enough to draw him. The weight of the faces staring up at him bored holes into his back as sleep evaded him, following Glanni to yet another place, to more faces he couldn't save.

His eyes opened slowly, they hurt from lack of sleep. What had roused him though was the weight settled across his body. Glanni stretched over him like the world's most ill-fitting blanket. A sigh tumbled past Íþróttaálfurinn's lips, arm wrapping around a thin waist to draw the man closer. His weight settling onto his body and into his heart like a weight.

Sunlight hitting his eyelids roused him for a second time. Even in the warmth of the sun, Íþróttaálfurinn felt cold without the comfortable weight of the criminal pressed against him.

His thoughts were being consumed by the criminal. The pain in his chest where his heart once sat, beating only for the criminal who thought nothing of him. A little lady said that with time, all wounds heal. But such an open and visceral wound had no hope of mending.

He had a choice, stay around and let the pain fester and infect every part of his life. Or he could leave, go so far away that he could maybe escape the disease known as love.

It's impossible for him to tell which scars came from which time. Were they inflicted in the throes of passion, or left only to bring pain. How deep had Glanni cut for him to feel constantly like a weeping wound, constantly singing in pain.

He had cut so deep that in the darkness of this room not even Íþróttaálfurinn could not see them anymore. Not like it particularly mattered, he was in Glanni Glæpur's clutch for the foreseeable future.

Nails dug into the meat of his bicep, "You're mine for eternity Íþrótta," the words dripped with the promise of fatal pleasure.

Glanni Glæpur was the crutch of this disease.