heres smth thats been in my drafts for a week and was written for @kkuyaseal
The bass thrums through the floorboards and up into your heels like a second heartbeat. You’re three tequilas in maybe four and the room has gone soft at the edges, the way it always does when you drink to forget. The bar is crowded tonight, all low amber light and cigarette ghosts curling toward the ceiling. You came here because it’s far enough from the apartment you used to share with him that you thought you might not run into anyone who knows your name.
He’s leaning against the far end of the bar, one elbow propped on the scarred wood, fingers curled loosely around a glass of whiskey he hasn’t touched in ten minutes. Anton Lee. Same dark hair falling into his eyes, same quiet way of taking up space like the room rearranges itself around him whether he asks it to or not. He’s wearing the black shirt you bought him two winters ago, the one that makes his shoulders look unfairly good. You hate that you notice. You hate that your body remembers the exact weight of those shoulders under your palms.
You turn away too fast and nearly collide with a guy who’s been circling you for the last half hour. Tall, easy grin, expensive watch. He smells like cedar and vodka and confidence that isn’t earned. His hand settles at the small of your back like it belongs there.
“Dance with me,” he says, not a question.
You let him lead you to the floor because Anton is watching now…you feel it the way you used to feel him watching you across a kitchen table at 3 a.m. when neither of you could sleep. The guy’s hands slide lower. You don’t stop them. You tilt your head back, laugh too loud, let your hair spill over his arm. You want Anton to see that you’re fine. That you’re desired. That you’re over him.
The song changes to something slower, filthier. The guy presses you close, mouth at your ear. “You’re trouble,” he murmurs.
You’re about to answer when the air shifts thickens like someone opened a door to a storm. Anton is suddenly there, a foot away, jaw clenched so tight you can see the muscle jumping. His eyes are black in the low light.
“Get your hands off her,” he says. Quiet. Lethal.
The guy laughs, turns just enough to size Anton up. “We’re busy, man.”
Anton doesn’t look at him. He’s looking at you. Only you. “Y/N.”
Your name in his mouth is a bruise you still press on when no one’s watching.
The guy tightens his grip. “She doesn’t want—”
Anton moves so fast you barely track it. One second the guy’s smirking, the next he’s on the floor with Anton’s fist connected to his face. The sound is wet, shocking. People scatter. A glass shatters somewhere. Anton doesn’t stop. He hits him again, and again, until blood blooms across the guy’s mouth and two bouncers haul Anton off, dragging him toward the back exit while he fights them like a man drowning.
You follow because you’re drunk and stupid and because some part of you has been waiting for him to bleed for you again.
The alley behind the bar smells like rain and garbage and the metallic tang of violence. The bouncers shove Anton against the brick wall and tell him to cool off or they’re calling the cops. He doesn’t answer. Just stands there breathing hard, knuckles split open, blood running over the face of the watch you gave him on your first anniversary.
The bouncers leave. It’s just you and him and the distant thump of music leaking through the walls.
He doesn’t look at you for a long time.
When he finally does, his eyes are wet. Not from pain. From something worse.
“You let him touch you,” he says. Voice shredded.
“You don’t get to be jealous,” you answer. Your own voice cracks. “You left.”
“I didn’t leave.” He laughs, bitter. “You kicked me out. Remember? You couldn’t stand the sight of me.”
“Because you stopped looking at me like I was yours.” The words come out raw, ugly. “You looked through me for months. Like I was already gone.”
He flinches. Takes one step closer. The streetlight catches the blood on his lip.
“I was drowning,” he says. “And every time I reached for you, you pulled away.”
“That’s not…” You stop. Because it is. You both did it. You built walls out of silence and slammed doors and separate beds until the space between you was wider than any ocean.
He’s close enough now that you can smell whiskey and the faint trace of the cologne he wore when you were still in love. His chest rises and falls too fast.
“I saw his hands on you,” he says, “and I wanted to kill him. I still do.”
His fingers flex at his sides like he’s imagining it.
You should walk away. You should call a cab and go home to the bed that still smells faintly of him on the left pillow you can’t bring yourself to wash.
Instead you say, “Then do something about it.”
The sound he makes is half-snarl, half-sob. He backs you into the wall so fast your breath leaves in a rush. His mouth crashes into yours like punishment. You bite his lip hard enough to taste copper and he groans into you, pressing closer, one hand fisted in your hair, the other slamming against the brick beside your head.
You kiss him like you’re trying to crawl inside his skin. Like if you bite hard enough you can leave marks he’ll never erase. His tongue slides against yours and it’s messy, desperate, all teeth and anger and six months of grief.
He pulls back just enough to speak against your lips. “Tell me to stop.”
You drag his head down again instead.
He lifts you easily hands under your thighs, your legs wrapping around his waist on instinct and carries you deeper into the alley where the shadows swallow you whole. Your back meets the cold brick again and you gasp at the contrast of his heat.
His mouth finds your neck, sucking hard enough to bruise. “You’re mine,” he growls against your skin. “You’ve always been mine.”
You would laugh if you weren’t so close to crying. “Prove it.”
His hand shoves your skirt up to your hips, fingers hooking in your panties and ripping. The fabric tears with a sound that makes you clench around nothing. Cool air hits you and then his fingers are there, sliding through how wet you already are, and he curses reverently.
“Still soaked for me,” he says, voice wrecked. “Even when you hate me.”
“Shut up,” you hiss, and bite his shoulder through his shirt.
He pushes two fingers inside you without warning and you cry out, nails digging into his neck. He fucks you with them slow and deep, curling just right, the way he learned your body years ago and never forgot. Your head falls back against the wall, eyes fluttering shut.
“Look at me,” he demands.
You force your eyes open. His gaze is molten, furious, devastated.
“I hate seeing you with anyone else,” he says, thumb circling your clit until your legs shake. “I hate that I still love you so much it fucking destroys me.”
You cum on his fingers with his name breaking in your throat like a prayer you don’t deserve.
He doesn’t give you time to breathe. He spins you around, presses your chest to the brick, yanks your hips back. You hear his belt, the zipper, the rustle of fabric. Then he’s pushing into you in one long, punishing thrust that makes you sob with how good it hurts.
He stills when he’s fully inside, forehead dropped to your shoulder, breathing like he’s been running for months.
“Tell me you don’t want this,” he whispers. “Lie to me.”
You push back against him instead, taking him deeper.
He fucks you like he’s trying to brand himself into your bones. Slow at first agonizingly slow every drag of his cock deliberate, making you feel every inch. His hand slides around to your throat, not squeezing, just holding. Claiming.
You reach back, fingers tangling in his hair, pulling hard. He groans and speeds up, hips snapping against yours, the sound obscene in the quiet alley.
“I missed you,” he says, voice cracking. “Every night. Every fucking night I jerked off thinking about you and hated myself for it.”
You moan, clenching around him, and he swears violently.
He turns you again, lifts you, your legs around his waist once more. This time when he slides home it’s face to face, foreheads pressed together, eyes locked. He fucks you deep and filthy and tender all at once, like he’s apologizing and accusing you at the same time.
You come again, harder, tears spilling over because it’s too much … too much of him, too much of everything you lost.
He follows right after, burying himself to the hilt and spilling inside you with a broken sound that might be your name. He doesn’t pull out. Just holds you there against the wall, both of you shaking, his face hidden in your neck.
After a minute( or ten)he lowers you gently, fixes your skirt with trembling hands. You watch him tuck himself away, zip up, wipe blood from his knuckles onto his jeans like it’s nothing.
The silence stretches, heavy as the night air.
“This doesn’t fix anything,” you say finally. Your voice sounds foreign. Small.
He reaches up, brushes a thumb across your cheek where tears have dried. His knuckles are swollen and bleeding.
You lean into his touch for one weak second before stepping back.
“I should go,” you whisper.
He nods. Doesn’t stop you.
You walk away on unsteady legs, his come sliding down your thigh, the taste of blood and whiskey still in your mouth.
Behind you, he stays in the alley long after you’re gone, staring at the place where you were like he’s trying to memorize the shape of your absence all over again