Actor Rafayel x you (non-mc) as his non-showbizz girlfriend. angst.
𝗕𝗲𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿 𝗶𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗲𝗮𝗸. Especially if you’re not part of that dazzling, cutthroat world.
You never thought it’d be this hard. You told yourself love was love, and that behind the flashing cameras and glimmering premieres, he was just Rafayel—your Rafayel. Not the actor the world worshipped. Not the onscreen heartthrob. Just him. Just yours.
But lately, it doesn’t feel like he is.
You sat in the softly lit penthouse you both called home. Candles flickered on top of a small cake you picked up that morning, the wax slowly pooling as the minutes turned to hours. Your anniversary. Two years.
Your fingers trembled as you typed, “Rafayel, where are you? Shouldn’t you be home by now?”
It took him ten minutes to reply.
> “I’m with MC. We just finished shooting and the production team invited us to eat outside. So you don’t need to wait for me.”
You stared at the message. Read it. Reread it. It didn’t hurt because of what he said—it hurt because he didn’t even apologize. Like he’d forgotten. Like it didn’t matter.
You didn’t text back.
MC.
You knew her name before you ever met her. She was his first love—a part of his life from long before you arrived. He never hid that from you. He told you, once, that their story ended long ago. That what they had was over.
But now?
Now they were cast in the same drama. And the world, blind to you, started shipping them. Every interview. Every tweet. Every video edit, every comment and Rafayel never said a thing to deny it.
One week after your forgotten anniversary, you snapped.
You dressed simply. Jeans. Hoodie. Cap. And you went to the set. You knew where they were filming—of course you did. You’d helped him memorize lines, listened to him stress about this scene or that shot. And yet, he never once offered for you to visit. Never once asked if you’d come.
You stood behind the crowd near the monitors. Nobody noticed you. Just another fan in the sea of them. That was all you ever were, wasn’t it?
Then you saw him.
Rafayel stood across from her—MC—laughing softly. A sound you hadn’t heard from him in weeks. His hand rested on her back, gently. His eyes sparkled when he looked at her. You felt like a stranger, intruding on something real.
Then the scene started.
It was a confession. He looked at her with so much longing, you forgot it was acting. The way his voice broke on her name, the way his hands reached for hers. And when he kissed her… the world spun.
But you reminded yourself—it was a job. Just a script. Just a role.
Until the director yelled, "Cut!"
And Rafayel didn't pull away.
Their lips still touched. They were laughing. Flushed. Embarrassed by the cheers of the staff, by the teasing, but neither of them denied it. She tucked her hair behind her ear, he covered his smile—and you realized:
You never made him smile like that.
You couldn’t breathe.
Your legs took a step back. Then another. The voices faded. Your heart didn’t shatter all at once—it cracked, slowly. Silently.
You stood alone, surrounded by people who adored him. But none of them knew him. Not like you did. And maybe that’s why it hurt so much.
“Why is it her and not me?” Your voice trembled. “I’m his girlfriend… I stayed by his side longer than her… I supported him in his dreams… but I guess I’ll always remain a fan. Someone who cheers him on from the shadows… but never gets to stand beside him.”
You didn’t leave a note. You didn’t scream or cry. You just… left. The penthouse felt too big that night. You packed slowly. No drama. No chaos. Just… an end. Quiet and unseen, like you always were.
Caleb as your boyfriend x you as non-mc, birthday angst.
The bass thumped through the walls of the club, the air thick with perfume, alcohol, and neon lights. People danced like nothing in the world could touch them. But you sat stiffly in the booth, surrounded by people who belonged to a life you didn’t quite fit in.
Caleb’s birthday.
You’d dressed up. Spent an hour doing your makeup. Wore the dress he once said he liked—back when he still said things like that.
You hadn’t known MC would be there.
She was dazzling tonight, even if her lipstick was a little smudged and her laugh too loud from the alcohol. She was everything you weren't—familiar to Caleb, easy to be around. A shared history written in inside jokes and old stories.
She sat on his left. You, his girlfriend, on the right. But somehow, it felt like you were always outside the picture frame.
"Pipsqueak, I told you not to wear skirts—people are gonna stare at you at this point." Caleb said it teasingly to MC, pulling off his jacket and draping it over her lap like it was second nature. Like her comfort was instinct. Like you weren’t even there.
You stared down at your lap. At your own bare thighs, goosebumps rising from the cold. You wore a dress too. But he hadn’t even glanced your way.
Gideon caught it. Always did. He looked at you like he understood. Like he pitied you. He slipped his jacket off and offered it across the table.
You shook your head quickly. “I’m fine.”
But Gideon just smiled softly and insisted. “If my girlfriend were here, she’d be proud of me.”
You took it. Grateful, but humiliated.
Caleb didn’t even notice.
The night dragged on. You didn’t drink. Didn’t dance. You watched Caleb feed MC water between shots, steady her when she tripped in her heels, laugh when she whispered something in his ear.
You should’ve been used to this by now.
You were always understanding.
You knew they had a past.
But it didn’t stop the slow, aching stretch in your chest every time his eyes crinkled with laughter that wasn’t meant for you.
You followed them out to the car. Gideon had gone home already. MC stumbled toward the passenger seat, giggling about something only Caleb could hear. You reached for the handle—just a second too late.
She beat you to it, crawling in and immediately passing out. You looked at Caleb, hoping—praying—he would tell her to switch. That he'd remember you were here, too.
But instead, he just looked at you like this was normal. Like it was okay. “I hope you don’t mind sitting in the backseat instead.”
You stared at him. The man you loved. The man who hadn’t touched your hand once all night. “…Yeah,” you murmured. “It’s fine.”
You sat behind them the whole ride, like a stranger hitching a ride in her own relationship.
Caleb kept glancing at her—tucking her hair back gently, adjusting her skirt when it rode up, smiling softly at her nonsense muttering.
And you watched.
Watched and understood.
Because you knew that look.
It wasn’t lust. It wasn’t friendship.
It was tenderness. That raw, unguarded kind that you hadn’t seen from him in months. Maybe never.
You bit your lip hard enough to taste metal.
You weren’t even mad. You were just… tired.
Tired of being the afterthought.
Tired of being on the outside looking in on your own relationship.
When you got home, at Caleb's apartment. he carried MC to the guest room and tucked her in. Like a scene from a romance film.
You went to bed alone.
He didn’t even come to check on you.
And that night, you curled up on your side, arms wrapped around your own body, and whispered into the dark: “Just once more. I wouldn’t mind being burned if it means keeping you.”
Caleb as your boyfriend x you (non-mc), birthday angst.
𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗯'𝘀 𝗽𝗼𝘃
Caleb had never noticed it before—not really.
The way your smile never quite reached your eyes these days. The way your fingers fidgeted in your lap when MC leaned a little too close. The way Gideon looked at you with something that resembled… pity.
He thought things were fine. You never complained. You were always understanding. Supportive. Gentle. So he convinced himself you were okay.
That night at the club, he hadn’t thought twice about offering MC his jacket. She was cold, drunk. He didn’t even see your bare arms shivering just inches away. Didn’t notice the way your lips pressed into a tight line when MC clung to him in her usual, tipsy way.
Didn’t realize how wrong it all looked—until much, much later.
It wasn’t until he saw Gideon hand you his jacket, and you hesitated, almost embarrassed, that something in his chest stirred. A flicker. Just a flicker.
He should’ve checked in.
But MC laughed, and his attention shifted again. It always did.
Caleb had always thought love would be obvious.
Loud. Chaotic. Unavoidable. Like the kind he saw in movies, or felt years ago, when he was young and stupid and MC was the girl next door with a crooked smile and dreams bigger than both of them.
But maybe that was the problem.
He didn’t realize love could also be quiet.
Like someone sitting on his right side all night.
Someone who didn’t need to speak to be loud.
Someone who didn’t cry even when he deserved to be yelled at.
He didn’t realize until you were gone.
Caleb noticed your silence the morning after his birthday.
No good morning kiss. No breakfast for two. No light footsteps moving through the kitchen.
Just... silence. The kind that made his chest tight.
He walked into the living room. Your phone was gone. So was your jacket. The dress from last night? Folded neatly on the chair.
His heart sank.
A note sat on the table, your handwriting small, almost apologetic.
> “Happy birthday again. I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye in person. Take care of MC. She needs you.”
He read it twice. Then again. And again.
Then he said your name out loud, like maybe if he spoke it enough, you’d answer.
You didn’t.
Day 2.
He texted.
No reply.
Day 3.
Called. Straight to voicemail.
Day 5.
He showed up at your workplace. Your co-worker said you took leave. “Needed space,” was all they offered.
Day 7.
Gideon found him sitting on the floor of his apartment, surrounded by takeout containers and empty glasses. “You look like hell,” Gideon said, pulling him up by the arm.
“I think she’s gone,” Caleb croaked. “For real this time.”
Gideon didn’t say I told you so. But the look in his eyes said everything. “You hurt her, man. You didn’t even notice. I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt, but damn, Caleb… the way you looked at MC that night? You should’ve seen yourself.”
Caleb ran a hand through his hair, chest aching. “She’s just my childhood friend.”
“No,” Gideon said, dead serious. “She was your future. And you treated her like a seat-filler.”
One week later, Caleb finally found you.
You were at the park, sitting alone on a bench with a takeaway coffee cup in hand, face tilted toward the pale sun. You looked peaceful.
And he hated himself for wanting to disturb that peace.
Caleb stood there for a moment, just watching. Then took a slow step forward.
You noticed him before he could say your name. “I thought you’d be with MC.” Your voice wasn’t bitter. Just… tired.
Caleb winced. “She’s not the one I want to be with.”
Silence.
“I was stupid,” he continued, swallowing down the guilt. “I didn’t see what I was doing until you left.”
“No,” you said, calmly. “You saw. You just didn’t care until I finally walked away.”
Caleb froze. Because you were right.
And it hurt. Because he deserved it.
“You looked at her like she was the only one in the room,” you whispered. “And I was there the whole time, Caleb. I was there.”
He stepped closer, voice raw. “You have every right to hate me. But I—God, I miss you. I miss us. I’d do anything to fix it. Anything.”
You looked at him then. Eyes glassy, but steady. “And if MC called you drunk again tonight?" Your words were like a dagger. “If she needed you again? Would you leave me in the backseat again?”
“…No,” he whispered. “Not anymore.”
You nodded slowly, letting his answer hang in the air like fog. Then you stood, brushing off your coat. “I don’t want to be your second choice, Caleb. Not anymore. I loved you enough to accept crumbs. I loved you enough to believe your silence meant safety. But I love myself more now.”
His hands trembled, he didn't think twice as he sank down on his knees, kneeling infront of you. “Please. I swear I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you—”
But you shook your head. “I don’t want you to make it up to me. I just want you to feel it.”
And with one last look, you turned and walked away.
Caleb kneeled there long after you disappeared, clenching his fist, throat burning.
And for the first time in years, Caleb finally understood:
as you guys know my grandparents got scammed almost a month ago, some man told them he was going to send them medical equipment they needed for $500 dollars, we were desperate, not only they lost all the money they had, my grandpa has gotten significantly worse, he's starting to lose vision in his good eye and my grandma is losing mobility as well (evidence), I know I sound annoying always coming here and begging for money for my grandparents and for my college, I don't know how to anticipate the grief, losing my grandpa everyday to his illness, losing my college education cause I can't afford it, in México the situation it's just getting worse and even though I feel lonely I have found a community here and I'm forever grateful for that, even a dollar goes a long way and all the money will go to their medical needs since I'm very sure I won't be able to cover college expenses, please share and donate if you can, you can help via p*ypal or any way you want through ko-fi, here's the link! 💕 thank you sm
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The way you write Sylus…so accurate like wth 😍 I love how you’re exploring him! Just putting this idea out there, simply because I love this trope (and if it inspires you even better) but the amnesia trope would hit so hard with Sylus x reader… but imagine it’s Sylus who forgets about her for a wild few moments…days or months 👀 and yet remembers ms.hunter just fine 😭 i mean the angst….im sorry but i cannot…but i wanna think about it because ow
Kieran and Luke really trying to remind Sylus that reader is his right hand, that they’re super important to him, but Sylus can’t quite grasp the connection…not that he doesn’t feel anything 👀 oh he feels something. But it’s confusing because how could he not remember someone as beautiful as you, can’t quite grasp how he could forget someone like you…
He finds familiarly in ms.hunter…of course he would, how could he not you think, so you spiral more, perhaps even accept this is how it was supposed to be, in fact it might be better that way, maybe it’s what you deserve for ever thinking he could be yours or would like you the same…
You try help him remember, with the help of Luke and Kieran, but it’s always surface level, you feel embarrassed sharing those small moments that meant more to you, what if had misread them, you don’t want to mislead Sylus, you never knew his true feelings, besides there’s ms.hunter too…
He laughs with her, remembers her, because of there shared history…you never could have come between that, this just proves it’s…you’re forgettable, only a small part in his story in the grand scheme of things, your storyline in his life might have run it’s course now…
…so maybe you leave, maybe you resign. Sylus doesn’t understand, it hurts, his heart, his body…you telling him you’re leaving is painful to him, but you’re just a loyal employee right? He shouldn’t stop you from moving on if you wish…even if every part of him wants to stop you…but it’s the right thing to do, being a good boss, maybe he’s different now he can’t remember too, shouldn’t force you to stay…
But he’s confused because ms.hunter has told him you were special to him, he trusts ms.hunter, doesn’t believe she would mislead him, but maybe she got it wrong, maybe you are special to him but it’s not reciprocated so even if every bone in his body wants to beg you to stay, he doesn’t stop you…
So you leave…
Maybe months pass, maybe it’s been a year…does Sylus end up remembering? Maybe comes searching for you…maybe he never does
💔💔
You are so big-brained for this, honeybun.
This is giving The Vow, minus them being married. But damn it all, retrograde amnesia has impeccable timing.
Right when you and Sylus started to reach a pivotal point in your partnership—your relationship—he lost any recollection of you.
You’re already grieving. Already beating yourself up. The person who’s been almost invincible to you went down, and you couldn’t be there to shield him. There’s a glimmer of hope when he cracks his eyes open after days of being unconscious.
You’re holding his hand, knelt at his bedside, tears brimming in your eyes, a watery smile on your face.
He’s a little groggy, voice smoky in his throat, and you help him sit up against his headboard. He studies the faces around the room—Luke, Kieran, Ms. Hunter. But when his gaze swivels back around to you, he looks confused. It’s like he’s looking right through you rather than at you.
He snatches his hand away from yours. Who the hell are you, and how did you get into his house? His base?
The room is rife with tension. Everyone feels the shift in the atmosphere.
“Who are you?” Sylus asks, halfway vexed.
You’re stricken with something cold. You laugh anxiously, figuring he’s playing a cruel joke. “Come on, boss-man. Don’t play games like that with me. Not now.”
He couldn’t be more serious. He stares at you impassively, not a lick of humor on his face.
The false amusement drops from your features. Your stomach lurches.
Everyone springs into action, trying to lighten the mood. Still thinking he’s playing a sick, cruel joke.
“C’mon, boss! You know her! She’s your right hand!” says Luke, though his voice cracks the slightest bit as if he’s also disbelieving that this is all just a terrible nightmare.
“Yeah! She’s been with you for years!” chimes in Kieran. The distress in his voice is also noticeable.
Emcee smiles nervously, doing her best to lighten the load. She smooths a shaky hand down your rigid back to soothe you before taking hold of Sylus’ hand between her smaller ones, directing his attention to her. He doesn’t snatch away this time, gaze softening when it descends on her.
“Sylus. Do you…remember anything?”
He gazes at his lap for a moment, pensive. “I recognize you, sweetie. The twins. But this woman…” His eyes flit to you. And where their intensity would normally light a fire in your belly, it turns your blood to ice. “I haven’t the foggiest who she is.”
The four of you spend the next few months trying to get him to remember you thereafter. But it’s of no use.
He tries. He really does. He remembers vague things before his concussion. Feels like he should be more familiar with you, given your history as explained by the twins. To him, you’re like a specter. Someone who’s there, but not really.
You start to spiral, too. You still stick by his side, stepping in where you can. But you’re still a foreign concept to him, given he’s used to working alone. He gets snappy with you a few times, but you still persevere in hopes that maybe someday, he’ll remember.
You get so desperate for him to remember, you try everything. You take him to places where small sparks of your relationship started to flicker, long before your feelings were revealed. You talk about minute things that could hopefully jog his memory. It’s embarrassing to you, to house such small, seemingly insignificant things in your heart about him. But you’ll do anything to get the Sylus who started to show a glimmer of passion towards you back.
You even let the twins convince you to kiss him. To reenact the catalyst of your relationship. And you do, one day in his office when he’s unassuming. You pour everything into the union of your mouths. When you pull away, he looks shocked, and for a moment, you think maybe you’ve reignited something. But he gives you that blank stare again after asking, “What was that for,” and you’re beginning to lose hope.
Eventually, he feels so terrible for not remembering you that he makes love to you out of pity. He might not know who you are, but everyone says he should. And he surprisingly feels terrible, watching you run yourself ragged, trying to get him to remember you.
At some point, the grief is too much to bear. He might never get his memories back. He won’t ever look at you the same, and it fucking hurts. So, you run away.
Everyone advises you against it. Everyone fights for you to stay, Emcee being the most vehement about it. You loved him through it all once. She’s sure you can do it again. She’s convinced you can capture his heart all over again.
But you’re not. The way he looks at you now can’t compare to how he looks at his precious dove. He humors you, yes. But he recalls the feelings he has for Emcee as strongly as he does the previous night. To him, you’re like an annoying gnat buzzing around that he just…tolerates.
You don’t want to complicate things more than already have been. So you leave. After six months of fighting for a place back at his side, you leave. And maybe you’re a coward for jumping ship. Maybe he’ll remember once you’re long gone, and maybe he’ll do everything to find you.
For now, the burden of a heavy heart is too much to shoulder. It’s almost as bad as the beginning of your relationship when you’d wordlessly pined for him while he was oblivious to your affections.
Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe he was meant to forget you all along. You should’ve never tried to meddle with fate to begin with.
"You know," you say, gritting your teeth against the pain pounding in your skull, "your horns are so pretty. I don't know why I never said that." You can feel your blood pooling around you, warm despite the chill that has started to seep into your extremities.
"Let me heal you," he whispers, his voice cracking slightly at the edges. You said no once, a long time ago when the two of you were merely wary acquaintances-two separate predators carefully maneuvering around each other's space. He'd respected that no, let you patch yourself up with unsteady hands and even unsteadier breaths. You let yourself bleed and scar over and he tracked those changes like a man possessed.
You're not looking at him. Your eyes are shifted slightly to the left, gazing at something that he cannot see but feels all the same.
She appears like she always does: careful fingers-talons really for how long and sharp the nails are-wrapping loosely around his neck, a shock of hair spilling over his shoulders, curling and uncurling as though even after a millennia its unsure as to what form it wants to take, eyes glimmering behind bangs that do nothing to hide their intensity.
She's staring, like she always does. Like they always do.
"Let me heal you," he says again. But you're not listening. You're too busy staring at the face of someone you'd seen before-different expressions, different circumstances, different attachments but still, truly and undeniably her. You smile at this one, the one whose very soul pulses in tandem with the man above you. You smile at her, at the way this shade of her attaches to his shoulder, his back, his neck, with such possessiveness you marvel at his ability to breathe.
You smile and she bares her teeth at you, sinking further into him until there is no beginning or end to him and her. Blood pools where her nails dig into his neck and it drips down to join the mess that pools around you. He does not see the scratches, the blood. You do, and you watch as it drops down to mix with your own. In that moment, you taste desperation and a love so fierce it rewrote the very fabric of the universe.
They belong to the cosmos, to birth and rebirth and destruction and living.
Your place is with the dead.
With a laugh, you look up at Sylus, your focus shifting from the man in front of you to the dragon he once was to the cosmic force he will be and you smile. A bloody thing filled with tales of ghosts and destiny and letting go.
"No," you whisper, "you don't need to heal me. I can do it."
And so you do because that's what you're meant to.
And so he watches. Because that's all you'll allow.
Okay so! I've talked about this story just a bit on here but I don't think I've gotten into the nitty gritty really and I won't now because my notebook is at home lmao and I had originally changed it from that to be where you and MC knew each other when you were young but now that it's looking like everyone and their mother knew each other from childhood, I'm gonna keep it as a you know of them but you do not know them personally.
Anyway in this universe, you as the reader, are capable of seeing ghosts. This is an ability that you have always had, but you do not consider it an evol-you have not registered it as such and you do not care to.
This is what you know of your ability:
1. you are capable of seeing ghosts and they are capable of seeing and interacting with you once they realize that fact,
2. you are able to get rid of those ghosts-the more attached and secured to a place/person a ghost is, the more difficult it is to do so,
3. ghosts feed off life energy-the chosen person becomes weaker the longer they are attached to the ghosts with some people eventually wasting away-on the other hand, life energy-more specifically-blood is needed to get rid of these ghosts. You need a mixture of a your blood acting as the conduit and the haunted party's blood as well.
4. You can force the ghosts to answer your bidding, but it's a messy process and you hate hate hate doing it
You're a retired (read: you were fired) hunter who, while physically capable of doing the job, quite literally could not bring yourself to eliminate the wanderers. Somehow, your ability made it so that you saw the person the wanderer once was instead of the monster they had unwittingly and unwillingly become. Their inhuman screeches were cries of pain, the arcs of energy that erupted from their being was blood spraying the ground, their defeat was the eruption of a soul. It was wrong, it was inhumane, and you just couldn't do it. So now, you work in an indistinct shop in an unremarkable corner of the city. You have a manger that you saved back when you were more proactive with your ability and who has since decided that the two of you are blood tied and you will never lose this job so long as she willed it (you are a shit employee though so you're not sure why she even keeps you around).
You, following your retirement, had planned to keep a low profile, to hang up your cape as the sole ghost hunter. You just wanted to live your life and keep your head down and ignore the way the very city cries out in phantom pain from a wound that would never heal. You ignored it all until you couldn't and now you're once again the person to go to if someone has a ghost problem they can't fix.
And it's fine. It's okay. You pretend to do your day job and you help people out. One of your excursions had caused you to end up in a warehouse on the outskirts of the city. You were just finishing up, carefully cleaning up all traces of your blood when you hear footsteps. You swivel, catching a shock of white hair and red eyes, before you're pulled off your feet.
"My," the man had said, amusement curling in the air between you, "what do we have here?" Whatever has you suspended in the air drags you to him with an ease that frightens you. You do struggle slightly, but the answering squeeze that knocks all air from your lungs is enough of a warning.
You come to a stop right in front of him, the wisps of energy holding you up, curling into the air like smoke. Just barely catching yourself from falling face first, you push back slightly, trying to give yourself at least a modicum of distance.
"What the fuck," you hiss, voice catching as you see whatever energy he'd utilized to grab swirl around him almost lazily. The man, tall and imposing, stands in front of you, his face impassive, almost bored.
The ghost tethered to him, eyes just as red and just as piercing, peers over at you from his shoulder. The gaze sharpens the longer you stare.
Your eyes snap back over to him the moment he clicks his tongue and his energy moves towards you.
"Hey man," you say, forcing a chuckle out of your throat and putting your hands up in surrender, "I don't know who you are or what you got going on and I don't care to. I was quite literally leaving before you got here." You back up a step, keeping your eyes on him and his swirling energy all the while. You know that if he were to strike there was less than a second of a chance for you to do anything. Your eyes do not stray towards his ghost-the one that has now decided it wants nothing more than to perch across his shoulders like a gargoyle, its hands refusing leaving his neck. It has wings-you notice-gigantic ones that span across the width of the room. You force your breathing to be normal even as the ghost tracks your movement with a suspicious amount of intensity.
He lets you back up until you're almost at the exit. His head is tilted and his hand taps carefully on his slacks before he stops.
It's quiet for a second. Two.
Gun shots sound to your left as a figure you had not even known was here, materializes out from behind one of the pillars of the warehouse and shoots at the man. His ghost, a sickly looking thing that sniffles with every movement, clings to his back like a knapsack. It's eyes, wide and empty like all ghosts should be fixates on you.
The mans energy whips out and crushing the bullets before rushing towards the other man and wrapping him up much more violently than it had handled you. You bite your cheek until blood pulls into your mouth. The man had not even looked at you but you could practically taste the power that coils around him.
"Pity," the man says, his voice sounding so utterly bored you wondered if almost getting shot was a nightly occurrence. "I would've thought someone going through the effort of setting up such an elaborate ambush would've had more to show for it than a random girl and bullets." He doesn't even let the man finish speaking before he attacks, disintegrating him where he stood like it was nothing.
You stare at where the man once was. The ghost, somehow looking even more sickly sits on the ground and stares at nothing before turning to stare at you, its face twisted into a snarl as though it were your fault the man had been killed. It stands, awkwardly, its body already starting to wither and rot away without the presence of its chosen life force.
"And then there was one," the man says, ignorant of the ghost that stands by his side, unknowing of his own shade perched on his shoulder. You, however, unfortunately, are all to aware. You bite harder on your cheek-let the blood fill your mouth, stain your teeth, and go down your throat.
Three things happen at once.
The energy from before rushes towards you, intent pulsing through it. The ghost without a tether dashes towards you, its hands transforming into large pincers.
You open your mouth and say a singular word, blood oozing out of your mouth to dribble onto the floor.
"Kneel"
With a screech that burns your own ears, the ghost falls back, its body jerking as its forced to kneel. The other ghost, perched on the man's shoulder falters, its wings tucking into its frame. The nails on the man's neck digs deep and with a grunt he falters too.
The energy dissipates and you use that split second to disappear.
That's your first meeting with Sylus. You hoped it was the last. He refused to let it be so.
nonmc stays after sylus rejects her because she's obvi loyal and still wants to pay him bnack for whatev he did back then. taking her in and such. things are rocky and akw between them. they don't joke anymore or talk like they used to out of respect for his and mc's relationship or whatev they have atp. she's damn right a brat to him. sylus's enemies see things are dif with them. they take that and run with it. sylus and nonmc go to a meeting or deal or something and the guy they're seelling to is an ass and points out they're not close anymore and he could buy nonmc from sylus atp because who doesn't want the most feared assassin of onychins working for them right ?
“Angst butter.” I am copping this.
Damn.
Who doesn’t want those bragging rights? Stealing the Boogeyman’s right hand from under his nose?
A spit in the face. A shot to his pride. And then, whoever employs you spreads rumors that you’re a marvel in bed, making Sylus more murderous.
When the gentleman propositions you, right there in front of Sylus, maybe you don’t even think about it. If anything, it pisses you off, thinking you can be sold like uncut gems.
You’re a murderer, but you’ve got some sense of self-worth. And though it eats you up to remain at his side, you still owe him everything. Can’t envision your days without being in his shadow, no matter how rocky things have become.
So, you move without his orders. Soundless as a cat while the gentleman’s antagonizing Sylus, taking down his two bodyguards before he’s done running his fat mouth.
You use more force than typical. You haven’t known temperance lately, venting your frustrations, this tension, out on anyone with an ugly mug and a death wish.
After you’ve felled his guards, you snatch the man’s head back by the scruff of his neck before slamming his face against the table. The thwack of the impact reverberates off the walls, and Sylus winces with taut lips, watching everything unfold.
Teeth gritted, rage powering you forward, you do it again until you split skin, and the man’s blood drips a corrupted red onto the table.
“Please stop,” he grovels, garbled and wet.
Of course. They always beg for their lives when you show up to collect. They don’t think about the effect of their words when they’re spewing them.
You shove the man’s face up against the table, snatching your pistol from the holster at your waist. Pull back the slide, chamber a round, and flip the lever to fire before pressing the muzzle against the back of his head.
He whimpers, voice shaky, weak, saturated with blood. He splays his hands on the table in a truce, but you’re in no mood to show mercy. So, you stomp on his fingers, pinning his hand down beneath the heel of your boot. Twist.
He wails in pain. Fucked up music to your ears.
Finger curled around the trigger, you peer at Sylus through the wild riot of your hair. Breaths labored, chest on fire.
“Say the word, and I’ll do it.”
He watches you through narrowed eyes. And for a brief moment, doubt flickers over his visage as his gaze flits from you to the man sniveling beneath your barrel. Back to you.
“Say the word, and I’ll paint this fucking table with his thoughts.”
Sylus releases a weighted breath. His lips thin with irritation, fingers tightly wound together in his lap. Outwardly, he appears composed, but you know better.
“Stop,” Sylus commands, and the word moves through the room like a tsunami.
Through your crazed haze, your blinding fury, you don’t think you’ve heard him right. “Excuse me?” you laugh, incredulous.
His expression bodes no room for protest. He doesn’t repeat himself. Tilts his head slightly down, ingesting you with those cruelly gorgeous eyes.
You can’t believe this. Scoff, your foot sliding off the man’s hand back to the ground, arms falling listlessly at your sides.
The old Sylus would’ve let you splatter this guy’s brains at the drop of a hat. You miss the man he once was. You miss a lot of things that once were.
You holster your gun, returning Sylus’ ironclad stare with malice of your own design. The battle is wordless. You don’t have to say anything to demonstrate your defiance. It’s already evident in the tense set of your shoulders, the scowl screwing up your face.
You step off with a huff, stomping past Sylus to shove the doors of the meeting hall open and retreat.
Before, you never would’ve been so brazen. So openly disrespectful, behaving recklessly without his instruction. But now, you don’t give a shit. You’re all out of fucks to give.
You said there would be no hard feelings after he snatched your heart out and shattered it on the ground like waves scattered amid a rock face.
The way you write Sylus…so accurate like wth 😍 I love how you’re exploring him! Just putting this idea out there, simply because I love this trope (and if it inspires you even better) but the amnesia trope would hit so hard with Sylus x reader… but imagine it’s Sylus who forgets about her for a wild few moments…days or months 👀 and yet remembers ms.hunter just fine 😭 i mean the angst….im sorry but i cannot…but i wanna think about it because ow
Kieran and Luke really trying to remind Sylus that reader is his right hand, that they’re super important to him, but Sylus can’t quite grasp the connection…not that he doesn’t feel anything 👀 oh he feels something. But it’s confusing because how could he not remember someone as beautiful as you, can’t quite grasp how he could forget someone like you…
He finds familiarly in ms.hunter…of course he would, how could he not you think, so you spiral more, perhaps even accept this is how it was supposed to be, in fact it might be better that way, maybe it’s what you deserve for ever thinking he could be yours or would like you the same…
You try help him remember, with the help of Luke and Kieran, but it’s always surface level, you feel embarrassed sharing those small moments that meant more to you, what if had misread them, you don’t want to mislead Sylus, you never knew his true feelings, besides there’s ms.hunter too…
He laughs with her, remembers her, because of there shared history…you never could have come between that, this just proves it’s…you’re forgettable, only a small part in his story in the grand scheme of things, your storyline in his life might have run it’s course now…
…so maybe you leave, maybe you resign. Sylus doesn’t understand, it hurts, his heart, his body…you telling him you’re leaving is painful to him, but you’re just a loyal employee right? He shouldn’t stop you from moving on if you wish…even if every part of him wants to stop you…but it’s the right thing to do, being a good boss, maybe he’s different now he can’t remember too, shouldn’t force you to stay…
But he’s confused because ms.hunter has told him you were special to him, he trusts ms.hunter, doesn’t believe she would mislead him, but maybe she got it wrong, maybe you are special to him but it’s not reciprocated so even if every bone in his body wants to beg you to stay, he doesn’t stop you…
So you leave…
Maybe months pass, maybe it’s been a year…does Sylus end up remembering? Maybe comes searching for you…maybe he never does
💔💔
You are so big-brained for this, honeybun.
This is giving The Vow, minus them being married. But damn it all, retrograde amnesia has impeccable timing.
Right when you and Sylus started to reach a pivotal point in your partnership—your relationship—he lost any recollection of you.
You’re already grieving. Already beating yourself up. The person who’s been almost invincible to you went down, and you couldn’t be there to shield him. There’s a glimmer of hope when he cracks his eyes open after days of being unconscious.
You’re holding his hand, knelt at his bedside, tears brimming in your eyes, a watery smile on your face.
He’s a little groggy, voice smoky in his throat, and you help him sit up against his headboard. He studies the faces around the room—Luke, Kieran, Ms. Hunter. But when his gaze swivels back around to you, he looks confused. It’s like he’s looking right through you rather than at you.
He snatches his hand away from yours. Who the hell are you, and how did you get into his house? His base?
The room is rife with tension. Everyone feels the shift in the atmosphere.
“Who are you?” Sylus asks, halfway vexed.
You’re stricken with something cold. You laugh anxiously, figuring he’s playing a cruel joke. “Come on, boss-man. Don’t play games like that with me. Not now.”
He couldn’t be more serious. He stares at you impassively, not a lick of humor on his face.
The false amusement drops from your features. Your stomach lurches.
Everyone springs into action, trying to lighten the mood. Still thinking he’s playing a sick, cruel joke.
“C’mon, boss! You know her! She’s your right hand!” says Luke, though his voice cracks the slightest bit as if he’s also disbelieving that this is all just a terrible nightmare.
“Yeah! She’s been with you for years!” chimes in Kieran. The distress in his voice is also noticeable.
Emcee smiles nervously, doing her best to lighten the load. She smooths a shaky hand down your rigid back to soothe you before taking hold of Sylus’ hand between her smaller ones, directing his attention to her. He doesn’t snatch away this time, gaze softening when it descends on her.
“Sylus. Do you…remember anything?”
He gazes at his lap for a moment, pensive. “I recognize you, sweetie. The twins. But this woman…” His eyes flit to you. And where their intensity would normally light a fire in your belly, it turns your blood to ice. “I haven’t the foggiest who she is.”
The four of you spend the next few months trying to get him to remember you thereafter. But it’s of no use.
He tries. He really does. He remembers vague things before his concussion. Feels like he should be more familiar with you, given your history as explained by the twins. To him, you’re like a specter. Someone who’s there, but not really.
You start to spiral, too. You still stick by his side, stepping in where you can. But you’re still a foreign concept to him, given he’s used to working alone. He gets snappy with you a few times, but you still persevere in hopes that maybe someday, he’ll remember.
You get so desperate for him to remember, you try everything. You take him to places where small sparks of your relationship started to flicker, long before your feelings were revealed. You talk about minute things that could hopefully jog his memory. It’s embarrassing to you, to house such small, seemingly insignificant things in your heart about him. But you’ll do anything to get the Sylus who started to show a glimmer of passion towards you back.
You even let the twins convince you to kiss him. To reenact the catalyst of your relationship. And you do, one day in his office when he’s unassuming. You pour everything into the union of your mouths. When you pull away, he looks shocked, and for a moment, you think maybe you’ve reignited something. But he gives you that blank stare again after asking, “What was that for,” and you’re beginning to lose hope.
Eventually, he feels so terrible for not remembering you that he makes love to you out of pity. He might not know who you are, but everyone says he should. And he surprisingly feels terrible, watching you run yourself ragged, trying to get him to remember you.
At some point, the grief is too much to bear. He might never get his memories back. He won’t ever look at you the same, and it fucking hurts. So, you run away.
Everyone advises you against it. Everyone fights for you to stay, Emcee being the most vehement about it. You loved him through it all once. She’s sure you can do it again. She’s convinced you can capture his heart all over again.
But you’re not. The way he looks at you now can’t compare to how he looks at his precious dove. He humors you, yes. But he recalls the feelings he has for Emcee as strongly as he does the previous night. To him, you’re like an annoying gnat buzzing around that he just…tolerates.
You don’t want to complicate things more than already have been. So you leave. After six months of fighting for a place back at his side, you leave. And maybe you’re a coward for jumping ship. Maybe he’ll remember once you’re long gone, and maybe he’ll do everything to find you.
For now, the burden of a heavy heart is too much to shoulder. It’s almost as bad as the beginning of your relationship when you’d wordlessly pined for him while he was oblivious to your affections.
Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe he was meant to forget you all along. You should’ve never tried to meddle with fate to begin with.
angsty thought... sylus x non-mc!reader thought... probably ooc sylus but anyways
non-mc!reader who is sylus' partner in the current timeline but isn't a fighter, very much a domestic stay at home spouse who always looks after sylus and the twins... even giving mephie some love too... everyone loves you for the normalcy and peace you give them; the way the n109 zone just feels like home with you... that is, until mc comes into the picture...
it starts with sylus being less responsive, less attentive. he might be in the room with you but he's mentally off far, far away. he won't tell you what's wrong, no matter how much you try to coax it out of him; he won't budge. how could he tell you, his spouse in this life, that he's finally found his soulmate again? you try asking the twins if they know anything, the two boys looking sheepish when they admit that sylus has been working with mc... mc, who's a hunter sylus is desperately trying to resonate with... the twins feel terrible breaking the news to you but you're like their parent and they can't bring themselves to lie.
it gets to a point when you notice small things; mephie no longer follows you around during the day to keep an eye on you, the twins are no longer stationed at the house... and sylus? he's with her. he's got them looking out for her, while you're alone in a big lonely mansion. it's only a matter of time before his enemies realise he's left his dear spouse wide open and ready for the taking... and you can only wonder if he cares enough to notice that you've been taken as you're in and out of consciousness in this stupid black van, going god knows where.
I am up to my eyeballs in work so im putting this down to come back to it later because I think it's fun
Sylus has many businesses across many cities in many different fields. Some of them are more seedy and others more legitimate. He checks up on each of them very regularly, meeting with key personnel-those handpicked by himself to 1. have the privilege of knowing that he's their boss and 2. run the business in the manner he'd be proud of
You've been working for Caspian INC for almost 13 years now-working your way up steadily (honestly and sometimes not so honestly) until you made it to where you are now: Senior VP
That promotion honestly took you a little by surprise-you'd been so sure that it was going to go to your competitor, Brad, who'd been buttering up the CEO for months on end and consistently trying to undermine your hard work. And yet it was you who had gotten the conversation, you who had gotten the congratulatory email, and it was you who got to sit across from Brad when the announcement was made and revel in his disbelief and anger
With this promotion came extra security, which you had expected.
What you had not expected was to be called into a meeting and be introduced to the man who was actually running things: Sylus
It had been 8pm; you'd dismissed your team hours ago and all that stood before you and freedom was one last report that needed to be looked over and signed away. You were in the midst of reading it, when an incoming call interrupted your focus. It was a short one: a call to report to the CEO's office immediately, the tone was short and clipped-a significant contrast to the regularly jolly tone your boss took with you. Intrigued, you had gone, only to be met with the man who was decidedly not the boss you knew.
The first thing you notice is how big he is. How, even sitting, his presence fills the space, marking everything and anything around him as his. The shock of white hair captures your attention next, bright against the dark curtains your boss had insisted he needed for his office space. The red eyes were next and that is what captured and held your attention.
It isn't until someone shifts-you or maybe your boss (the one who has been here the whole time but whose presence noticeably shrunk by the sheer weight and magnitude of the presence of this man)-that the spell that has taken over you drifts away.
'He's hot,' you think, 'but that is not important right now.'
It is at this meeting that you learn 2 things: 1. Sylus is the actual CEO with your boss acting as the front man for things to seem a little more legit and 2. provided you don't fuck anything up, that will be your role to play in the future.
Part of you feels excitement, another part of you is wary. Why you? And why now?
He'd smirked then, slow and dangerous. It was the kind of smirk that spoke of years of slowly built confidence that settled into something unshakable. It grew with the sharp inhale you'd desperately tried to hide but could not manage. He rose out of his chair, slow and calculated with the kind of grace honed throughout centuries. He made his way towards you and whispered just a singular sentence-an explanation and an expectation rolled into one:
"You can handle it."
And so you would. Your boss-the public facing CEO one-retired within 3 years. His farewell had been quick and filled with the sort of laughter that only the retired can achieve. You'd taken up the mantle flawlessly, easily juggling the work of being the CEO with your duties as Senior VP. No one talked about hiring a replacement for the job you'd vacated so you hadn't asked.
You know that he's a criminal-wanted on many charges ranging from weapons manufacturing and racketeering to outright murder. But honestly? That is not your problem. Your money is green, the man is respectful, the crow you sometimes see perched on his shoulder is adorable, and those twins that sometimes pop up are funny.
So you work well with him-doing your best to keep the company thriving under your command. You work closely with your teams, manage them with the sort of ruthless efficiency you've had to learn at a young age. You go to board meetings, cozy up to investors, sit in at lunch and learns, organize company-wide events to boost morale, and through it all, report to your boss. The company blossoms under your care and you tend to it like a particularly loving gardener.
Years go by and everything is going as it should be until you notice that your monthly meetings with Sylus have become weekly. You're not entirely sure what's going on or why he feels the need to do this now, but that's not your business (maybe he's going through a micromanaging phase). It's annoying, but he's your boss so what can you do for real? Nothing, but complain about it to your cat and go about your day.
Things continue like this until one night you're woken up by frantic knocking on your door. You shoot up and look around wildly. It's 3 in the morning, there is no reason for someone to be at your door at 3am. You look down at your phone and see nothing. Cautiously, maybe stupidly, you go to open it, making sure a shard of glass is hovering above you ready and to pierce any intruders.
It's one of the twins-Luke-and he's hurt. Bad.
You, bedraggled and frazzled, snap out of your shock and grab him, pulling him into your apartment. Blood is spilling out of him, dripping onto your floor and you don't even think when you gently guide him to your white couch. He's partially conscious, slurring out that he "couldn't make it back to base" and that you were "the only person he knew that would help." You treat him as best as you can, stabilizing him as much as possible.
You call Sylus, Luke's head on your shoulder, and you hope-pray-the man answers.
He does, surprisingly quickly. His tone is teasing when he asks if he'd missed another one of your meetings, but you cut him off, quickly telling him about Luke.
He hangs up and it's as you stare at your phone in shock that you notice the shadows coalescing in the far corner of your room. Out steps Sylus like some sort of demonic being, eyes dark with intent, jacket hanging off his shoulders, and his evol flickering around him to give his already massive presence even more weight.
But he's so gentle when he assesses Luke, talking to him in low tones and moving his hair slightly as he reassures him, so soft when he calls his brother to tell him Luke's safe, so warm when he turns to look at you before taking Luke back home.
You sit there, in the wake of all this, staring at the bloodstain on your couch and shaking your head.
You try to (with some difficulty) push it out of your mind.
Except weekly meetings become weekly dinners, become daily text messages, become phone calls about any and everything. Suddenly you're seeing Sylus frequently at any time of day. You're seeing the twins a lot more too, although that one is generally at night and at your apartment. They've slept over often enough that you'd eventually just raised your hands in defeat and handed them a copy of your key, telling them the two bedrooms are theirs.
You ignore their cackle of triumph, although a small smile stays on your face for the rest of the day.
Mephisto shows up too, the mechanical bird coming into your apartment through the flap you’d had Sylus make just for him, seeing almost daily use once he manages to strike up a shaky truce with your cat.
You're friends. And that's such a nice feeling. You're steadfastly ignoring the fact that you've unfortunately developed a strong crush on the man.
A year goes on like this and you’re content to pine from behind the scenes because no way are you gonna fuck up your bag by mixing business with pleasure. So what if you ogle the man those few days a week he comes by your apartment to share a drink and unwind? So what if you smile a little too wide when he genuinely compliments you, his tone teasing and affectionate all at once. So what if you kick your feet up a little when he responds to your text, just as flirty, just as dangerous? So what? Your heart may be aching a little but you’re an adult. You got this.
It’s one of those nights he’s come over to your place. Luke and Kieran are out causing mischief elsewhere and so it’s just the two of you. You’re sitting on your balcony, gazing out into the city as you quietly nurse your drinks. He’s contemplative tonight, almost morose and you sit with him in silence, sure that he’ll share what’s bothering him with you whenever he’s ready.
“Do you believe in past lives?” He asks. He’s not looking at you nor is he looking out at the city. His gaze is downward, on the melting ice as he swirls his almost empty cup around you. You’re quiet, for a second. Two. Acknowledging the weight of the question he’d just asked you.
“I think it could be possible,” you start, looking at him from the corner of your eye. He’s turned to look at you, his own gaze intense, “I’ve thought about it, you know? About how we could all just be living out our lives multiple times in different eras and different fonts. There is the part of you that remembers-the small snatches of deja vu we get from here and there. And then there is the part of you that forgets the you from before, that gets to see this new world with fresh eyes. It’s beautiful to think about.”
He doesn’t answer right away, just nods his head in contemplation.
“And what if you remember? Would you want to?” His voice is soft. You turn to look at him fully and see that his face is blank-empty of all emotion. But his eyes betray him-as they often do, you realize-and in them you see a sea of conflicting emotions so intense it takes your breath away.
“In some ways, yes,” you say, not taking your eyes off his, “I would want to remember-especially if there is something I could gain from it. But in other ways? No. I think I would be too preoccupied with what was to enjoy what is.”
He nods and doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the night.
You don’t see him for a while afterwards, the daily text messages dwindle until they’re barely anything and the weekly dinners become weekly meetings become monthly dinners become monthly meetings until it’s 3 months without much between you two. The meetings are short too-perfunctory. As though he has more important things on his mind than being in those meetings with you.
Luke and Kieran tell you he’s busy and you nod even though you feel a little more empty. A little more lost. You fill up the absence with work and the company thrives even more-record sales across the board.
You tell yourself that it’s fine-that maybe this is for the best. Your professional and personal life should be kept separate anyway. No need to add complications to your life by completely and utterly falling for your boss.
Not that you did!
(But it was a close one. Too close. That whisper of something more had tugged on your heart and you could feel that you were on the precipice, the point of no return. It’s a good thing that he stepped back, honestly. This way the comfort-the security-of his friendship wouldn’t translate to longing for the safety of his arms, for the warmth of them. It wouldn’t transition to lingering gazes and soft smiles that melted further under the glow of firelight. It wouldn’t be anything more because he’d given you that space. That breathing room. You’d be okay. You always are).
And so you fill the silence with work, with hobbies that you pick up and drop on a whim, with friends you reach out to after who knows how long, and your sweet little cat who bears witness to the quiet moments where you succumb to that small bit of loneliness.
You live and grow with this distance.
He comes to you at work. The company is in the middle of acquiring another and you’re up to your eyeballs in legal documents, ledgers, investment meetings, and company reports. It’s 1130pm and you can feel exhaustion weighing on you. Hard.
You don’t even think he’s real at first. You think he’s some sort of messed up waking night terror that’s manifested in the left wall of your office. You blink, trying to see if it would go away and when it doesn’t you blink even harder, sitting up straight and shaking your head to try and dispel the lingering exhaustion.
“Sylus-” you start, moving to stand but he’s already in front of you, gently urging you to sit back down.
You blink up at him, nonplussed, as he gently pats your head and asks if you’d been sleeping at all. At your silence, you hear him hum and before you know it, you’re in your apartment, carefully being pushed into your shower and handed your pajamas to change into. It’s in a daze that you do it, and you come out of the restroom to see him sitting at your couch, glass of wine in his and just as contemplative as the night before he’d distanced himself.
You ask him what he’s doing here, sitting on the chair a little ways away from him. Something flickers in his eyes-an emotion ripples through the calm of his face, too fast for you to really understand it.
He doesn’t answer right away, his eyes stay trained on you, taking in the bags underneath your eyes, the somewhat defensive way you’re sitting, the guarded smile you have fixed on your face.
“It’s been a while since I’ve had this,” he says, swirling his cup full of the cheap wine you and your friends had bought the night previous. When that doesn’t get much of a response beyond a light hum, he speaks again.
“Luke and Kieran have been asking to see you-something about a paintball tournament the three of you have together?” That was months ago and the three of you already have plans to go gocart racing. You nod.
“..Mephisto misses you.” You say nothing.
You let the silence sit, let it permeate the space around you two until it festers. Grows rancid.
“Forgive me,” he says finally, his eyes are on you, intense in their sincerity. He moves to stand, coming to a stop just in front of you-not crowding your space, but trying to demonstrate his seriousness all the same. You look at him and sigh, heart already made up even as your mind hisses at you to stand a little taller.
You ask him what had his attention for so long and so he tells you.
Of soul-ties. Of a bond undying. He tells you of dying and then rebirth. Of ending one life only to start another but still being tethered to someone. He tells you of his search-of decades upon decades looking for them and suddenly being given that chance. He tells you of their amnesia-their hostility and their disastrous first meeting. He tells it all to you-his friend (his best friend?)
There is pain there, when he tells you of a love undying. A sharp prick in your heart that grows with each subsequent poem he recites of their fate-bound love. There is an ache that builds across your belly and travels up to your chest to make a home for itself. There is pain, yes.
But there is warmth too. The sort of warm that grows with each confession because he’s comfortable enough to tell you about them. And that means something coming from a man like Sylus. And so you push away your heartbreak, push away your inappropriate feelings and you focus on the here and now. You focus on your friend.
You tell him, with as much seriousness as you can muster that he fucked up. Bad. That it’s gonna be hard to get over a bad first impression but with your help, you’re sure he can swoop MC off their feet.
And so you become his wingperson in his attempts at wooing MC. You drag him through a Love Seminar created by yours truly, crafted from a failed relationship years ago and copious amounts of romantic comedies.
He tries to make fun of you for that but you tell him that he’s already losing in the love department so he absolutely cannot talk and he shuts up, although a smirk remains.
And so your monthly meetings move back to monthly dinners, transition into weekly meetups, and daily pep talks. You try to be the best friend that you can be, teasing, warm, and strictly platonic.
You try and you try and you try, ignoring the way your heart feels heavier with every chuckle that passes his lips at a joke you make, every smirk that softens into a smile the longer you talk, every instance of casual affection between the two of you.
pairing. caleb x fem! childhood friend! non mc! reader (x childhood bsf! zayne)
synopsis. caleb planted a seed in your heart when you were both young, nurturing it without meaning to until it sprouted and blossomed. it shouldn't have grown this much, not when you knew you could never have him.
warnings. slight ooc caleb (i have not read homecoming or wtv that chapter is called BC BLUESTACKS DOES NOT WANT ME TO FINISH LONG AWAITED REVELRY OR WTV THAT CHAPTER IS CALLED IM STUCK ON CH12...), NOT canon compliant oops (no higher being placing a curse on zayne, no experimentation done on mc and caleb bc josephine is a good person this time BYEEEE), reader has neglectful parent(s) in the beginning kind of, mentions/descriptions of crying, mc is female (she doesn't have a name in here either). if there's anything i'm missing, please let me know!
rating. sfw but make it lowk very angsty but fluffy ish at the same time.
wc. 8.2 k
a/n. live love laugh angst (but with a happy ending) and live love laugh not proof reading and SORRY FOR NOT UPLOADING THIS EARLIERRR uni sucks booty fr !! also, i've come to the decision that i will just make this into a mini series, having about 5-10 chapters maximum !! the ideas keep coming, and i'd like to take a different approach to this prompt/world i've build for this nonmc! reader in an actual caleb series much like my rafayel one! also decided to make it into a mini series bc i cant keep writing and expanding on this and leave yall hanging for longer IOEOIFJAWEOI
YOU’RE EIGHT YEARS OLD WHEN YOU MEET CALEB. it was in the last days of summer, right before the leaves began turning red and yellow and orange. you remember your dad telling you that an older lady moved into the house across from yours, that there two kids living with her: a girl younger than you and a boy your age though a couple months older. he said something about the girl having a special condition but the words went through your ear and out the other because you didn’t care about them; you knew you wouldn’t talk to them anyways.
then, your dad left to go to work and you were all alone.
you were always alone, and you felt that loneliness every second, acutely aware at how it bleeds into your soul and makes you so, so sad. it’s what makes you head to the park two houses down the street and sit at the big, oak tree there. your favorite thing to do is climb it and sit on one of the bigger branches around its middle, feeling as if you could reach the sky and escape these heavy feelings. you blame your dad for making you like this: for making you think that the heavens can help you escape your heavy feelings. he told you once, on a night where he was in charge of tucking you in while your mom worked late at the hospital, that he loves the sky and how it makes him feel like all of his worries are nothing but a speck of dust. he made you think that one day, you could reach the sky and feel what he felt. if you reached out enough, you would be free.
but today you had no energy to do that.
as soon as you reached the oak tree, you sat down and rested your back against the trunk. your eyes watered instantaneously, cold tears dripping down your cheek and to the tip of your chin as you tucked your knees into your chest, your arms holding them in place so they could keep your weeping heart warm. you were so lost in your overflowing sorrow that you didn’t notice a boy running to the tree, not even when he stood three steps away from you.
“why are you crying?”
you snapped your head upwards.
the boy looked surprised, his purple eyes as large as the moon as he stared at you. his back was to the sun, covering him in a golden glow. he didn't say anything as he knelt down, his brows furrowed.
you hiccuped and looked away, angrily staring at your house from where you sat. “go away, stranger.” you see the older boy that lives next door when you avert your gaze from your home. it’s zayne—you recall your mom telling you that you used to have playdates together when you were younger. obviously, you don’t anymore. you don't even speak to one another—perhaps, he thinks being friends with a girl two years younger than him is not worth his time.
you don’t blame him for thinking that; after all, your own parents probably think the same.
before your mind spirals into the inky void that tells you bad things, the boy speaks up. “my name is caleb! now i’m not a stranger, right?” you glance at him from the corner of your eye. caleb grins at you, his smile as bright as the sun. it’s too blinding, you decide, and drop your gaze to the ground. “i guess not…” you mumble.
“so that means we’re friends!” caleb laughs when you quickly look at him again, surprise evident in your features. “now you can tell me why you’re sad!”
you wrack through your brain to come up with an excuse and end up stuttering out, “b-but you don’t know my name!”
“you’re y/n, right?” he laughs again when your jaw drops in comical way, gasping for air in between his next words. “ha! g-gran… talked t-to your… parents!” caleb wheezes, tears in his eyes. “y-your parents told us about you!” once he calms down, caleb lets out a sigh as he sits next to you, nudging your shoulder. “c’mon, you can tell me why you’re so sad now.”
you look back at your house, frowning at how lonely it looked. “i… i don’t think my parents love me.”
“what?”
“i mean,” you rest your head on your knees, your voice now muffled. “they’re never home and they never spend time with me.”
your dad is often away, being the colonel and all, which means he’s gone for months at a time. it wasn’t always like that, but things changed when that forsaken tunnel appeared above the city. your dad was one of the first to answer the call, to fly in the sky to protect the world from wanderers. so it isn’t his fault and neither is it your mom’s that they’re never there. she’s a doctor, a colleague of your next door neighbor's parents.
it is not your fault they are both needed by more people and by more important matters.
caleb’s about to say something when a girl calls out his name, running until she stands in front of you two. you don’t pay attention to her, and instead keep your eyes focused on your house. you wish your parents were home more, that they’d spend more time with you. the girl ends up leaving after she speaks to caleb, who watches her go with a careful eye.
“sorry about that,” he says, scratching his cheek. “gran sent her to tell me it’s time for lunch, but don’t worry! i’ll stay here with you until your parents are back!”
you blink at him, feeling your eyes start to burn. “you’ll stay?”
“mhm!” he smiles, and this time you actually don’t turn away. caleb laughs softly, leaning forwards to wipe away at the tears that fall from your wide eyes. “why are you crying again?”
you didn’t even notice that you had stopped in the first place. “i-i don’t know.” you do know.
it's the first time someone ever stayed with you in a long time.
caleb, surprisingly, calmed you down in a matter of seconds. he stayed with you until the sun began to set, when the blue sky became tinted by orange and pink. he made time go by fast, making you smile and laugh until your cheeks and stomach hurt. and he was surprisingly attentive, noticing immediately the way you perked up when you saw your mom’s car drive down the road and stop in front of your home.
“you ready to go now?” caleb stood up and stuck his hand out, waiting for you to grab it.
“your hand is warm,” you mumble, gripping tightly onto his hand as you lead the way back to your house.
he giggles and nudges your shoulder. “my hand is warm?”
“mhm.” it’s very warm, akin to the blankets you wrap yourself with during the cold days of winter.
and just like that you were at your front door, shyly waving goodbye before going inside. the doorbell rang shortly afterwards, yet before you could open the door, your mom had already done so. you left and headed up the stairs and into your room, telling yourself you’ll eat something after your mom retires for the night.
but that never happens.
because the strangest thing happened afterwards: your mom came up to your room and talked to you, apologizing for making you feel lonely and abandoned.
you know it was caleb’s doing: why else would your mom be like this?
without meaning to, caleb planted a seed in your heart that day.
when you’re ten, you realize that you’ve changed the slightest bit. you’re a little more outspoken, a little more confident in yourself; and your world that was once monochrome is now full of color, full of warmth and life.
you have memories where you’re laughing until your stomach hurts, where you’re learning to love apple and bake apple pies to perfection, where you’re learning to do cartwheels with the little girl while his laughter echoes in the air. it’s all thanks to caleb—he reached out to you, deciding to integrate you into his world. you’re forever thankful that he decided to talk to you two years ago, thankful that he spoke to your parents about your feelings because otherwise you would be stuck in the dark.
caleb has brought light and warmth into your life, and now you are never cold and lonely. he even sticks to you like glue at school, never leaving you alone for a second in the classroom because somehow you always manage to be in the same class as him. sometimes you grow tired of having to keep up with the energetic boy, sometimes the fatigue wearing your bones down and rendering you useless. caleb seems to know when that happens, or maybe he doesn’t. what matters is that he seems to time his golden smile; it is a smile so radiant that it melts away what weighs you down.
and always being with him has made you adopt some of his habits, his attentiveness being the one that shines through the most. it’s what makes you notice your next door neighbor. days of careful glances makes you learn that he’s always reading on the porch of his house or he’ll do the same inside by the window, that he’s never with any other kids his age and that he’s never at the park.
maybe you should talk to him and—
“y/n~” caleb nudges your shoulder. you jerk in surprise and wobble on the tree branch you both sit on, gripping tightly onto the wood while you lean forwards from your lack of balance. the boy yelps and takes a firm hold of your arm, stabilizing you. “you scared me!”
you huff, glaring at him. “you scared me! i could've fallen just now, dimwit.”
he pouts, “but that's your fault! you weren't listening to me.”
“yes i was!”
“oh yeah?” caleb raises an eyebrow. “then what was i saying?” he snickers when you don't reply, gently nudging your shoulders this time because he learns from his mistakes, you know! “see? i was right. you keep staring over there.” he gestures in the general direction of where you keep staring. his finger touches the green leaves of the tree, the tips fading into a yellow color.
autumn is coming. not yet, but it will be there in due time.
you decide to tease him a little. “pft, you’re pointing at the leaves.”
his lips curl into a frown. “you know what i—”
“caleb!”
the eight year old girl comes running up to the tree, huffing as she points up at your best friend. “i-it’s time for dinner!” she tilts her head over at you, beaming. “gran said you can come, sis!”
caleb looks at you, “you coming?”
you smile at the girl before shaking your head, moving towards the tree trunk. “i need to do something,” you grunt, shimmying down whereas he just jumps off the branch and lands with a thud. the girls gasps and you gape at him with wide eyes once your feet hit the ground, “are you okay?”
“a-okay!” he grins, standing up proudly as if he didn’t just scare the living daylight out of you. caleb flexes a boney arm, “i’m strong, after all!”
“yeah, okay hercules.” you chortle, rolling your eyes. “i’ll see you around.”
you watch as he and she wave goodbye at you, caleb hooking their arms together as they disappear into their house afterwards. you notice that there's a tightness in your chest when you see them hold hands or hook their arms together—it happens sometimes, not always. like right now: your chest tightens a little, feeling heavy. you chalk it up to wanting to do that with caleb one day and go your merry way.
your mom is startled when she opens the front door just as you reach out for the doorknob. she holds a container with cake inside. “goodness,” she chuckles, leaning down to press a kiss against your cheek. “you scared me.”
“are you going next door again?” you move to the side so your mom can walk out.
she hums, “i am! i left some—”
“can i come this time?” you usually don't go to the dinners your mom has with zayne’s family every friday, always heading to hers and caleb’s house instead despite your mom’s best efforts in convincing you to join her. you always had an inkling that she wanted you to spend time with the older boy next door.
your mom beams at you so wide that you’re taken aback as she drags you to the li’s front door. did it really mean that much to her that you want to join this time? well, you’re on a mission to get close to zayne so that he can have friends too.
speaking of the devil, the door opens immediately after your mom presses the doorbell, revealing the older boy. his eyes widen the slightest bit when he sees you, though he quickly regains composure, his features relaxing. with a small smile, he greets your mom. “hello, mrs l/n.” he directs his gaze at you next, “hi y/n.”
you blink in surprise. “…hi zayne.” you didn’t expect him to remember you because you don't particularly remember much about him.
he steps aside just as his mom appears from behind, momentary shock melting into a warm smile. “y/n! i’m so happy to see you! will she be joining us?” her eyes flit up to your mom, who nods excitedly.
you’re ushered inside and into a seat not even a second after being welcomed in. “we always have a plate and cutlery out in case you stop by,” mrs li says. a lump forms in your throat and it’s hard to swallow. you feel awful, knowing that every time you chose to stay with caleb, the li family had hope that you’d stop by and eat with them.
still, you somehow manage to smile at the older lady. “i’ll make sure to come with my mom from now on.”
“really?”
you nod. “of course,” holding out your pinkie, mrs li laughs and hooks her own with yours. “i promise.”
mrs li heads into the kitchen with your mom, leaving you and zayne alone at the dining table. he sits in the chair next to you and you fidget in your seat, not sure how to break the stifling silence. what would caleb do in this moment? he’d probably say something stupid or just go ahead and ask to be friends… that’s something only he could do easily, but for you? that’s a challenge.
“you look worried.” zayne says, looking at you from the corner of his eye.
you frown and play with your fingers, “was it that noticeable?”
zayne hums as the two moms come back with pots of food while chatting about your dad. “you aren't doing a good job at being subtle.”
his comment makes you huff through your nose, the corners of your lips curling upwards. caleb says that to you all the time, claiming that you make it is easy for him to read you.
“smiling suits you.”
you stop breathing and stare at the boy with raven hair, slowly blinking while the moms plate the food and continue talking. zayne glances at you again and then looks at his plate, eyebrows furrowed as he picks up a fork and pokes at the carrots, nudging them into a corner. “did i say something wrong?” he mumbles.
he didn't say anything wrong… it’s just that no one has said that to you. not even after your change, even if it was a small one.
not even caleb.
you shake your head, “no.” coughing, your eyes shift to his hands, seeing how he stabs the last carrot on his plate and places it in the corner along with the rest. “you… you still don’t like carrots?” you vaguely recall a memory from when you were about five: you and zayne were eating a plate of oranges when he suddenly spat it out and a chewed piece of carrot was then laying on the table. his mom had cut small pieces of carrot inside his bowl alone with the oranges, trying to trick him into eating them.
zayne’s hazel eyes widen. “you remember?”
with a snort, you answer, “you spit out the carrots every time your mom tried tricking you into eating them. that’s pretty hard to forget, if you’re asking me.”
his ears flush the lightest shade of pink, making you giggle as your fingers wrap around his plate, rotating it. with your other hand, you grab your fork and take his carrots.
“…thank you.”
“i should be thanking you,” you hum, “i love carrots.”
whereas you and caleb are polar opposites and only have a thing in common, you and zayne are not. you’re so alike: reserved and quiet, both sticking to what you deem is the vicinity of your personal bubble. it was easy to befriend him again; by the end of what remained of summer, you had introduced him to caleb and her. it did take a month and a half of convincing, of relentless pleading that convinced zayne to follow you to the park where she and caleb were playing as usual.
caleb and zayne didn't get along well right off the bat, and they always argued. it took you aback in the beginning, not used to seeing caleb argue so… pettishly with someone. much less with zayne. zayne baffles you every time he mutters under his breath about how caleb is ‘so annoying’ because all he does is talk about dinosaurs or is ‘a child’ during friday dinners at his house. well, he is a child, so he’s not wrong there. but with that logic, he should also be calling you a child and yet he doesn’t.
zayne does, however, get along well with her.
you see it in zayne’s attentiveness to the young girl, you see it in the way his voice softens when he speaks to her, and you see it in the way he hangs onto her every word as if it were something sacred.
you also see it in the way his ears sometimes turn the lightest shade of pink when he speaks to her.
when you think about it, they’re both alike in that way.
the sun is in the sky, bright and warm like the boy next to you.
“he’s trying to steal her from me,” grumbles caleb. he swings his legs back and forth while the two of you sit on a tree branch, zayne and the girl sitting underneath on the other side of the tree. she’s teaching him how to braid a crown of flowers, and you can see the small curl of his lips. he’s smiling a shy sort of smile only reserved for her.
“he can’t steal her from you because she isn’t an object.” you tear your eyes away from them and focus on the brooding boy beside you, taking note of how he pinches his brows together and pouts, mumbling something under his breath. while the branches and its leaves provide good shade from the sweltering heat, there is still sunlight that peeks through gaps, and golden specks manage to coat caleb’s figure. “that means you can’t have her either, cal.”
your words have him turning to you quickly, his eyes wide. “i can’t have her?”
“of course not!” your silent admiration of seconds ago dissipates as you scoff, flicking his forehead. he yelps as you continue, “she’s a person! you can’t have people; that’s weird.”
“but that monster is stealing my best friend!”
you frown, blinking once. “zayne isn’t a monster.” but caleb sure seems like one at the moment, you think. a monster of green envy.
“yes he is!”
“zayne is not a monster.” you repeat, irritation beginning to bubble in your chest because caleb wouldn't be saying such things if he didn't have this weird rivalry going on with zayne. “don’t say that about him.”
“why are you defending him anyways?” caleb narrows his eyes at you. “you’re supposed to be my friend—”
friend. best friend. you realize he hasn't ever really called you his best friend because she’s his best friend while you think he's yours. if he doesn't think that of you, then you can’t think that of him… right?
you both whip your heads to the ground, clambering down the tree as zayne calls out both yours and caleb’s name. if his voice hadn’t betrayed the frantic feeling swirling in it, maybe you wouldn’t have this overwhelming sense of dread. when you both round the tree trunk, you see that his face is pale, and he’s holding onto her. she’s trembling, her face paler than zayne’s as if all the color had been drained from her features, and she’s heaving and trembling uncontrollably. the sight makes your stomach drop to the ground as caleb dashes forwards, dropping to his knees while yelling about getting granny josephine to them. you honestly don't remember running to their house, asking josephine to help the little girl—it’s all a blur. all you can remember is how the two boys finally had something in common other than their care for the younger girl: their expression.
they were both horrified.
and you wonder if you looked like them.
your eleventh autumn was just like any other, but this time it was different because of him.
you decided to stay the night after having dinner at zayne’s so he could help you study for your science test on monday. caleb would have been the one helping you, being in the same classes and all, but he was helping her study. while you do love and care about her, you care more about your grades because surely the tests in middle school are harder than the ones in elementary, right?
you’ve been inside zayne’s room before. more often than not, after dinner, you’d end up in there with him while talking about everything and nothing. sometimes you’d both be quiet, content with just being next to each other while reading a book on his bed, and sometimes you both would talk about current hobbies and interests.
“where will you sleep?” zayne’s voice comes from near his bed while you head towards his desk.
“in your bed, duh.” your eyes skim over the surface, chuckling at how tidy it is… until your eyes fall on a haphazardly hidden pieces of paper underneath zayne’s stack of notebooks. weird, you think. zayne likes keeping notebooks, books, and papers separate from each other.
“why would you sleep in bed with me?” he asks.
“we used to sleep in the same bed when we were children.” which is true: your moms have a photo book with evidence in it from your younger days together. “i don’t see why we can’t if we’re still children.”
you hear him huff through his nose. he’s probably pinching it right now. “you’re eleven and i’m thirteen. you’re a child and i’m a teenager.”
“didn’t you say that teenagers are fourteen-year-olds and up the other day?” your fingers wrap around one of the notebook’s spine, carefully lifting it and whatver notebooks are on top and pull the pieces of papers out.
your eyes scan the contents of one of the pages, highlighted words aiding in your understanding of what it is that you’re reading. medical school… majors… he’s looking at colleges.
“well, yes.”
you turn around and hide the papers behind you. “so that means we can share the same bed, right?”
zayne sighs, shaking his head while his lips curl upwards just the slightest bit. “you win this round, miss know-it-all.”
you grin at him and bring the papers out. “you sure i’m a know-it-all?”
the older boy stares at the papers you wave in the air, staying silent as if trying to find the words to explain something to you. you raise your eyebrows. “staying silent makes you look like you were hiding something from me.”
“well… i am. was, i was.” zayne corrects himself and sits down at the edge of his bed, patting the space next to him. you take a seat and eye him. “i’ve been trying to tell you this past summer that… well…” he sighs. “i skipped grades.”
“oh—” you gasp, eyes widening to the size of saucers. “so this means…”
majors.
medical school.
he’s grad—
he exhales slowly. “i’m graduating from high school this year.”
you feel the world go still. you hear your breathing. you feel cold. suddenly, you feel deep and heavy dread wash over you.
after this year, zayne will leave.
your best friend is leaving you.
“why are you crying?” zayne panics, clumsily wiping the tears you didn’t know were falling down your cheeks. the pad of his thumb is a little rough against your skin, but his touch is soft. he’s trying to be gentle, and it makes you feel more gloomy.
“i don’t know,” you mumble, hiccupping as you look down at your hands, watching the tears he doesn’t manage to wipe away fall onto them. “it’s just…” do you tell him? that you don’t want him to leave you alone? sure, caleb is a great friend but you’ve come to realize, since the incident last summer, that she will always be his top priority and—
majors. medical school… her.
“you’re doing this for her, aren’t you?” your voice is quiet.
you love her, you do. she’s like a little sister, and you obviously care for her like they do. but they care more, they love her more. you don’t quite understand the intensity of their love for her. and despite their burning ardor in wanting to be there for her and how it always ends up making you invisible, you can’t bring yourself to ever hate her. she’s innocent, just living her life while the two boys flock to her. she didn’t ask for their attention or love, it’s just that she’s so easy to love.
“…don’t tell her.” zayne’s hands fall from your cheeks and grab onto your hands. his touch is cold, unlike caleb, but it doesn’t make you flinch away from him. you let him take your hands into his, holding them carefully. “please.”
you huff through your nose. “if that’s what you want,” you answer. “it isn’t my place to tell them, anyways.”
it’s quiet, peaceful almost if you weren’t so caught up in the sinking feeling your chest. your heart just sinks and continues to sink in black ink, growing heavy. zayne’s voice timidly calls out your name. “you’re still crying. there’s more to it, isn’t there?”
“i don’t want you to leave.” because if he leaves, you’re afraid that you’ll have to admit the ugly truth you know, deep down, about caleb. it’s a truth that is so clear to everyone, a truth that you see every single time they’re in their own world. a world that pushes you and zayne out like the waves when they leave shore and retreat back into the ocean.
the older buy chuckles, and you look at him through your wet lashes, noting how his hazel eyes flicker with quiet care in them. “i’m not leaving yet.”
“keyword being yet,” you mumble, gripping onto his hands now. “…i’m being dramatic, aren’t i?”
zayne opens his mouth to say something, but you cut him off. “i should be happy that you’re doing something so cool. i mean, skipping basically all of high school and graduating super early? that’s so cool… and i’m here crying like a baby over it.”
“but your reaction is reasonable,” zayne says. “i’d be upset, too, if my best friend told me all of sudden they’d be leaving at the end of the school year.”
best friend. not just friend.
“i’m your best friend?”
“naturally.” zayne responds quickly. “you know me better than anyone, just as i know you better than anyone.”
just like that, your tears stop falling and the sun peeks out from the cloudy sky inside you.
the rest of the night goes smoothly: zayne helped you study for your science test, which you both found boring after an hour because all of the questions were easy, and you spent the rest of your time talking with him. you wanted to know of his plans, what he’s thinking, about what he wants to do after graduating. you both fell asleep in the midst of your conversation, though you wake up at three in the morning because you felt weird. your own body was telling you that you forgot to do your night routine. so when you wake up, all blurry-eyed and dazed, the first thing you can see is your sleeping best friend. after a couple of blinks, your vision clears up and you’re aware that you’re close to him. in fact, you’re close enough to see and count his dark eyelashes. you pout, no way he has prettier eyelashes than i do. the thought goes away as quickly as it had formed in your mind, replaced by the icky realization that you fell asleep without brushing your teeth. so you sit up, gently waking zayne so he could do the same. when he stirs awake and stares at you with squinting eyes, he knows what you mean when all you do is wordlessly point at your mouth despite the sleepy haze of his mind. and just like that, you both silently head to the bathroom and brush your teeth next to each other, quickly going back to his bed and falling asleep once more.
when morning came, you both find yourselves staring at his mom with confusion as she giggles and repeatedly asks how you both slept during breakfast. you think she must have seen something while you both slept, though you decide to let your suspicions go when you bid the li family goodbye and head next door to your house.
mom will probably tell me about it later tonight, you think just as you shove your house keys into the lock. you push the door open and kick your shoes off your feet, sliding them to the side and slipping into your slippers when you step inside. you hear someone running down the street, and right when you’re about to close the door, you hear your name being called out.
“i didn’t see you at all yesterday!” caleb runs up to you, a bright grin plastered on his lips. with his back to the sun, he looks as if he's bathed in gold. “pips missed you, you know? what were you up to that—what’s that?”
you blink once and suddenly he’s in your bubble, burning fingers gingerly touching your eye. you close it on instinct, and he runs his thumb over your eyelid. you can see yourself reflected in his eyes from this close. his warmth seeps into your skin, and you have the urge to lean into his touch. your heart lurches and skips a beat, feeling excited and calm at the same time.
“what’s what?” you cough, taking a step back.
he frowns, his thumb now under your bottom lashes. “your eyes are red and puffy. are you sick or something? you feel oddly hot.”
oh, that’s right. you cried yesterday, and you feel as if your heart is ready to jump out of your chest and into his arms where it wishes it could be.
“i’m fine. it’s just that i watched a sad movie after dinner with zayne,” you sigh, gently pushing his fingers away from your eyes. zayne’s words echo in your head, a quiet reminder that you can't tell caleb because he’d tell her right afterwards.
caleb huffs through his nose, his lips curling into an amused smile. he shakes his head once, his purple irises reflecting the warmth he radiates. “you do cry a lot while watching movies, don’t you?” he leans back and tilts his head at you. “alright.”
you furrow your eyebrows. “alright… what?”
“even though you’re clearly hiding something from me, i believe you.” caleb pinches your cheek, the amusement in his lips softening. “i’ll see you later?”
“yeah…” you say, dazed, but shake your head quickly. “wait, what are we doing?”
caleb laughs, the hand pinching your cheek now covering his mouth, “don’t tell me you forgot that we’re supposed to study for the science test on monday?”
“about that…” you look away from him. “zayne helped me study for it last night.”
his silence has you taking a quick glance at him. caleb seems shocked and his eyebrow twitches, though it disappears and is replaced by something you can’t quite describe. a forced smile of sorts? “he helped you study?” he asks. “then what’s your verdict? will the test be easy or hard?”
you scratch your cheek, thinking. “well… even though he helped me study for a bit, i say the test is going to be very easy.”
“guess that means i won’t study.” caleb shrugs and ruffles your hair, a real smile on his lips now. “talk to you later, short stuff.”
“i am not that short, cal!” ever since he’s grown an exact inch taller than you, he acts like you're a midget now.
you watch as he waves goodbye, walking backwards for a couple steps with a laugh before twisting around and heading down the street. he’s probably heading to the small dessert shop nearby to pick up some of her favorite doughnuts—it’s what he does every saturday morning.
your twelfth autumn marks your first one without zayne.
he left at the end of summer, right as the tips of the green-yellow leaves on your favorite tree began turning a slight orange, barely noticeable. his disappearance had gone unnoticed until yesterday, half way into the fall quarter and midway into october. you’re in the middle of reading a book, one of your dad’s that he let you borrow, on his bed laying on your stomach while caleb helps her do her homework at his desk. he has a singular picture on it that he puts down whenever you're over, but you never ask why he does that.
“where is zayne?” she wondered aloud, tapping her pencil against her chin. “i haven’t seen him around lately.”
“huh,” caleb clicks his tongue in thought. “now that you mention it, neither have i.”
both their eyes land on you, though you don’t bother looking up. with practiced ease, you reply. “i haven’t seen him around.”
“but you go to his house every friday? and he’s your best friend? surely you know something.” she leans forwards in her chair, trying to get a better look at you.
“i go every friday because i made a promise to his mom,” you retort, finally looking up. with a shrug, you continue, “his mom hasn’t said anything about his whereabouts, so i’m just as clueless as you bunch.”
the girl drops it, a smile now on her lips. “your dad is coming home soon, right?”
you blink in surprise. “you remember?” you mentioned it in passing, it was when she and you were watching caleb during basketball tryouts. you told her that your dad would be coming back soon from the fleet, how you were excited to finally see him after so long.
caleb huffs a laugh through his nose, “of course she remembers, short stuff.”
you grimace, rolling onto your side and reach out to grab something in your vicinity, which happens to be a pen on his bedside, and fling it towards him. “you are literally just a couple inches taller than me, cal.” he’s actually a whole head taller than you now, and caleb's growing into his features. his cheeks have started losing their softness, his eyes a little sharper now. he has a natural, boyish charm, something that makes everyone notice him at school.
he loudly laughs, the pen stopping right in front of him before he swats it away. it lands with a clatter against the floor, somewhere in his room. with a huff, you lay on your back. “better work on that aim, short stuff~” he sings, getting up from his desk and heading over to his bed. you look up at him, your lips pursed as he pinches your cheek, purple eyes warm with mirth. his hair falls over his eyes, making its color look deeper. “how else are you going to get into the aerospace academy with me?”
you raise your brows, “you're acting as if you're already in.”
“well—”
the girl hums. “so you both want to leave me.”
just like that, caleb is back at her side and you’re all alone. “i would never leave you, pips.”
“pinkie promise?”
you watch from the corner of your eye how he wears a soft smile as they wrap their pinkies, his touch lingering.
you aren't stupid; in fact, you pride yourself in being so smart and attentive. so, you know that the tightness in your chest is because of caleb, because of the feelings you harbor for him. you aren't stupid, so you already know that caleb can never be yours, that he can never feel that way for you.
because he is hers.
with a sigh, you close your eyes and will yourself to calm your aching heart. you should be used to the ache that settles in your chest when this happens, but here you are.
later that day, right as the sun begins to set, you bid her and granny josephine goodbye. the taste of her apple pie from dinner lingers in your mouth.
“you don’t have to walk me home, cal.” you say, chuckling as you bump shoulders with him. instead of walking across the street, you walk down the sidewalk.
he hums, following you, “just let me be a good friend, short stuff.”
“you just love rubbing it in, don’t you?” you grumble, stepping into the park. your feet take you to the tree until you’re in front of it. you look behind you, raising an eyebrow at caleb. “i’ll stay here for a few minutes, so you can leave if you want.”
“i’ll stay.” at his confirmation, he moves past you, a faint scent of apples lingering in the air along with the sweet, woody smell from the oak tree as he scales up the trunk with ease. “your turn!”
“yeah, yeah.” you huff, rolling your eyes as you climb the tree and make it to the branch caleb chose to sit at. you breathe in and out slowly.
“the tunnel makes the sky look ugly.”
you snort, slightly baffled at the sudden proclamation from the boy. “where did that come from?”
“what?” caleb shrugs with a laugh, shoulders shaking slightly. “it does make it look ugly. like, really ugly.”
your quiet giggles get louder, and you throw your head back. “that is the first time i have ever heard anyone say that.” you wheeze, your laughter so strong you wobble on the branch. caleb wraps an arm around you to keep you from falling, his touch making you still instantly.
“you need to be careful,” he says. “one of these days you’re going to end up falling and i’ll fall with you.”
“if i ever fall, it’ll be because of you.” you cough and attempt to shimmy away from him, though his grip slightly tightens, preventing you from getting away.
the brunette absentmindedly taps on your arm with a finger. “i’d never let you fall… you know that.”
he’s saying that because you're his friend, and he is fiercely protective of those he cares about: the people in his inner circle. you are a part of it, you know that, and yet your heart cannot help but to stupidly flutter at the illusion of a hidden meaning behind his words.
“…it’s getting late.” which is true—the oranges and pinks of the sunset are now bleeding into a purple hue. “i should get going now.” you don't wait for him to say anything; you just climb down the trees as quickly and possible and book it to your home.
caleb is not far behind you.
stepping on the first step of your house’s porch, you stop and turn around. you’re eye to eye with caleb.
caleb wears a boyish grin on his lips, something that makes your stomach flip. “i have something for you.”
“oh? and what would that be?” the corners of your lips turn upwards.
“how about you close your eyes?” you shut your eyes, hearing intently to the boy shuffling. you feel a warmth brush against your cheek, trailing over to the back your neck. “give me a second.”
you hold your breath. caleb’s fingers work nimbly, and something cold hangs around your neck. there’s silence for a beat; he’s still close enough for you to hear his breathing until he leans away. “open your eyes.”
they flutter open at his command, and flitter down to see a necklace. there is a cloud with a wispy appearance right at the bottom, and small translucent beads hang from it in white and blue. the chain around your neck is decorated with solid white and blue beads.
“do you like it?” caleb scratches his neck, eyes carefully watching your reaction.
your voice comes out quiet, shy. “i do.”
you hear the smile in his voice. “i’ve been trying to give it to you since your birthday.”
“what?” looking up from the necklace, you blink at him repeatedly. “but my birthday—”
“i know.” he laughs softly, shaking his head. “i’ve had it since last year, and… i just didn’t know how to give it to you. i thought now would be a good time.”
i thought now would be a good time.
his words echo in your mind, and you take a deep breath. you also have something you want to give him: it’s sitting in the drawer of your desk, in a small box. “do you… do you want to come inside?”
you’ve never invited anyone inside your house, inside the walls that is your safe space. zayne is the only one who has stepped foot inside, who has made it up the stairs and into your room on more than one occasion. caleb used to bug you about that when you two first met, into the early months of your friendship. he thought it was weird that you were always over at his home while he had never gone inside yours. his complaints stopped when you introduced zayne to them—probably because he didn’t want to be around him despite the desire he had to discover what lays hidden in your home. you like to think that he finally decided to wait until you were ready to show him what’s inside.
caleb’s eyes are wide with surprise. “you want me to go inside?”
“i also have something for you.”
despite the poor lighting of the porch lamp, caleb is still akin to gold. he smiles and you turn around to unlock the front door, your heart thumping loudly in your chest. when you open the door and hold it open for him, caleb is all too quick to walk inside, following you up the stairs into your room after you shut the door. his eyes scan the inside of your room as soon as you turn on the lights, shuffling over to your desk as he stands by the doorframe. the color of your walls are a light blue, strings attached to the ceiling with paper clouds hanging at the end. he realizes there’s glow-in-the-dark stickers on the ceiling after squinting. there’s a book shelf in the corner of your room, right besides your desk. the top shelf has a few trinkets: a small airplane, a blimp, a cap.
he assumes it's your dad’s cap, the one that goes with his uniform.
the second shelf has a couple of books, a stuffed animal in the form of a snowman, and a picture: the last one you took with your parents. last summer, you and your family took a trip to verona. in the picture, your dad has you hoisted onto his shoulders, an arm on your legs to keep you steady while the other is wrapped around your mom. everyone wears a smile, yet yours is the brightest one out of the three. caleb’s chest swells with pride, knowing he did the right thing all those years ago when he found you crying at the big oak tree.
the third shelf has a picture, one where it’s you and him. he remembers when, where and who took the picture. it was on your last day of school, your fifth grade promotion ceremony, and your mom took it. again, your smile is the brightest one. though, upon further inspection, he realizes your picture is different from the one he has on his desk. you’ve decorated it with small stickers, ones of golden and purple swirls that sit on the frame.
then there’s more books. another picture frame—is that zayne? you and zayne as children… oh, well you look at that? another picture frame of you and zayne. a recent picture, it seems, decorated in the same manner as his. he’s not sure when or where or who took this picture—
“think fast!”
caleb blinks and the flying box stills in front of him, floating in the air before it can hit his chest. “uh… why?”
“gotta be on your toes if you want to be in the aerospace academy with me.”
he laughs. “look at you, already acting as if you’re in.”
you shrug. “you do the same.”
“touché.” his eyes look down at the box. with a hum, he grabs and opens it, blinking once. inside sits a necklace, one with a small, silver sun on it with a purple gem in the middle. “…a sun?”
“you remind me of the sun.” you mumble. “you’re warm like it, too.”
caleb beams so wide his cheeks start to hurt, and there's faint blush on his cheeks that spreads to the tips of his ears. “i’m like the sun?”
“mhm.”
“funny… because i got you a cloud because sometimes you’re calm and happy, sometimes you’re gray and gloomy, and there are times when you’re like a storm.”
you stare at him, wide-eyed, and he continues. “tell me when you feel like there’s a storm in you.” he gets closer to you so that he can tap on the necklace that hangs around your neck. “so i can shine the sun on you... i will never hurt you with my warmth.”
it’s a silent promise that he’ll be there for you.
“and if you do?”
“then you can hit me!”
his fingers twitch, his foot taking a step forwards. but there’s a knock on your door before it’s pushed open. both you and caleb watch, confused.
your mom has a night shift and wouldn’t be back until morning.
caleb doesn't see a thing before you’re already leaping forwards into the arms of a man in a black uniform, his cap falling onto the ground. he recognizes the man as the one that holds you on his shoulders in the picture on your bookshelf.
your dad, the colonel of the farspace fleet.
caleb smiles to himself, his hold on the tiny box in his hands slightly tightening. he will be there for you, whenever you're sad or happy or mad.
cw: body horror, gore, minor character deaths, cannibalism (?), sylus is a shape-shifting eldritch horror, decapitation, dead animals, smidge of fluff, abuse, sylus just wants to make you happy, a continuation of this, not proofread, mdni
Sylus wanted you to remember him so badly. The kindness you’d shown him as if it were second nature, despite what he was—what he was becoming.
He recalled it so vividly, as clear as the coppery moon pinned to the night sky.
He was changing. His metamorphosis. He was confused. Losing himself. Teetering on that frayed edge between man and beast.
He remembers wandering the woods. Searching for something to satiate the hunger sinking its talons into his stomach lining. No matter what he consumed—wild hares, mushrooms, berries, deer—the pain wouldn’t subside. It hurt so much, it singed his throat like magma.
He recalled clawing at his neck until it was raw, swollen red, and welting with scratches—when did his fingernails grow so long?
He fainted in the midst of the forest when the pain overwhelmed him, overhauled his senses, and he screamed something inhuman. Something beastly that made the trees fall silent, and darkness greeted him with her deceptively tender embrace.
—
He awoke the next day to the sun’s treacherous glow. The hunger was still there, low in his throat, burbling like heated liquid. However, he had other matters to attend to.
He was incredibly sensitive to the sunlight where he once freely walked beneath it. So sensitive, it scorched his skin until the scent of cooked meat salted the air and smoke furled from his exposed limbs.
He sought refuge in a cave. Dark, dank, lonely. He didn’t know what was happening. Why he felt so hungry, why the sun detested him, why his nails were elongated and blackening.
To further aid his misery, a new pain crept in. Sunk deep into the marrow of his bones, into his very being.
He screamed a blood-curdling scream as his bones broke and rearranged themselves. As his spine felt like it was being ripped in twain, and something began to sprout from his shoulder blades.
He’d never felt such despair, such agony as he curled into himself on the cold, unforgiving ground, tears scorching down his face, sobs welling in his throat.
He was never a religious man, but he prayed for a swift death. Anything to end this pain. To take away this voracity. He wasn’t sure what he had done to warrant such cruelty—why his body was rejecting him, why his bones shuffled about beneath his skin, why his head throbbed and bled as something sprouted from it.
He just wanted it to end.
And for a moment, it did.
—
He wasn’t sure how long he had been out. How long his transformation took. But when he awoke in the cave, moonlight spilling in alongside every amplified sound, scent, sight, and sensation, he knew he was no longer the man he was four days ago.
He felt something primal scraping at the base of his skull. Something beastly. He tested his voice, his throat raw from screaming, from trying to rip the hunger free, and he was surprised to hear a growl in place of his usual drawl.
He looked down to note that his clothes were in tatters, and hard, obsidian skin covered half of his body. His hands were in similar condition, the soft, warm ivory skin traded for…were those…scales? Talons?
The hunger puppeteered him, propelling him to stand, outweighing the terror that began to seep in. He would deal with his new form later. Something smelled sweet, arresting his senses—so bewitchingly so, he couldn’t ignore it, driven by instinct and a primal need to quench this unyielding thirst.
He exited his safe haven, his prison, leaving a clump of sloughed-off flesh and blood in his stead. He wandered the forest like something half-dead, like something cursed to patrol the earth for eons, when the saccharine scent grew stronger.
He could feel everything—hear everything, smell everything—saliva puddling in his cheeks as the potency of that aroma grew with each stumbling step forward.
He came to a clearing, shrouded by broken branches and bowing trees. The forest dwellers fell silent as if commanded to do so by his presence. He peered through the branches, noting a fire burning in the center of the clearing, along with the sounds of laughter, conversation, and music. But above all else, he smelled it—that dulcet scent that powered him through his torment and led him here.
He studied the group of people gathered around a campfire. Their scents varied, some of them stomach-turning, and the others faint. But he recalls one that peered through them all like a lighthouse beaconing through a storm. And he watched you like a predator on the prowl as you stood from a log, brushing your hands off on your thighs, and wandering towards the opposite side of the clearing.
He followed you from the shadows, led by your aroma like a fish on a line. He ducked between trees and bushes until you were isolated, turning away from him to relieve yourself. Gods, even your bodily fluids made his throat burn. Made his tongue loll about in his mouth, that inhuman hunger festering into something more potent.
You were oblivious to his presence. He could’ve easily leapt from the inkiness to tear into your throat. Something in you called to him—sang to him like a siren, something deep beneath your flesh. Something corporeal that begged to be consumed.
He felt his canines elongating in his mouth, and it spilled open, saliva pouring in heavy rivulets from his maw. He reeled back on his haunches, preparing for an attack. His bones shifted again, though the pain was a little more bearable than the first time. In place of a scream, he grunted an animalistic sound, something reminiscent of a buck.
He leapt from his hiding spot, poised to rend your flesh from your bones, but he stilled. He was stricken by something. Something cold, something petrifying. Fear? Regret? Pity?
You turned to him with alarm flashing across your features. Limned by the coppery spill of the moon, you were something ethereal. Possessed the beauty of a goddess descending from the heavens, coupled with that all-consuming aroma.
You neared him cautiously, holding out a placating hand with half a smile on your face. “It’s okay, little fella,” you said with that mellifluous voice, the sound of it rivaled by the twigs breaking beneath your feet. “I won’t hurt you.”
He took a cautious step back on his hooves to match every one of your steps toward. Eventually, you cornered him. And weren’t you so foolish? So trusting, holding out a hand and walking into his trap like every fiber of his being wasn’t screaming for him to tear into you.
He found himself bowing slightly as your knuckles grazed his antler (?) before your soft hand found his nose, and you began to pet him. He chuffed at the gentleness of your caress, still burning to possess that scent. To consume you wholly.
But you had shown him a glimmer of tenderness when he was confused. When he was in agony. When he was falling apart, unaware of what he was becoming.
Your voice was sweet as you crouched, a fond crinkle to your eyes as you pet him a little more confidently. You chuckled as he waggled his ear, smacking your wrist non-too-gently with it.
“There, there, little guy,” you cooed, manipulating him with your kindness. Your patience. “I won’t hurt you. I promise.”
You were a strange one, stroking over the fur of a killer like your life wasn’t in danger. Like he couldn’t rip you asunder and lick your bones clean, leaving only your memory in his stead. But he bowed despite his instincts, his eyes blinking shut, and he allowed you to pet him longer, driven towards a peace he hadn’t known for four days by the gentle croon of your voice and the devastation of your fingers scratching behind his ears.
Someone called to you, disrupting the moment. He remembered himself, standing on his hooves like a shaky fawn, startling you. You fell onto your rear with round eyes when he darted back into the forest, sparing a glance before running towards safety.
He watched your friend come to you. Listened to them admonish you for wandering so far off from camp. You laughed sheepishly, and his ears were tuned to the sound of your footsteps before you were completely out of sight. Your smell still lingered, clinging to every branch and tree trunk you passed.
His stomach still churned. Still screamed at him, that hunger ever-present, the need to sink his teeth into something. But he decided tonight, it wouldn’t be you. It couldn’t be you—not yet, at least. Not when you’d been so kind—the sunlight in a world slowly sinking into darkness.
So, he redirected his newfound hunger to a hermit residing deep within the woods. Her blood didn’t completely assuage the gnarling feeling in his belly, her agonized screams, the crunching of her bones between his teeth.
But it was a start.
—
He was pleased to know you hadn’t lived too far from where he initially encountered you those days back.
He tracked your scent to a quiet, unassuming lake house. And he watched you live and thrive through your windows from the shroud provided by the forest, still ensnared by your aroma, but drawn to you by something…deeper than hunger.
A burning need to protect you. To provide for you. To return your kindness tenfold, where you had nearly signed your death sentence.
He wanted to express his gratitude. But by day fourteen, he was mostly beast, the only glimmer of humanity buried within his psyche tuned only to you.
He showed his thankfulness in the only way he knew how, given his new form, initially with dead, mangled cats set up on your porch like an offering laid upon an altar. But you always disposed of them after screaming bloody murder. Were they not to your liking?
He tried harder, this time dropping larger offerings at your front door while you were out. He was aware of your habits, including when you came home and when you left. The deer didn’t seem to satisfy you, either. So, he took to cleaning their bones with his unnaturally long tongue and sewing them together with moss and twine into necklaces and other adornments.
That caught your interest.
But you still didn’t seem satisfied, never once taking his gifts into your home. So, he opted for more drastic measures.
That man who had been coming to your home some nights, pushing you around, slapping you, berating you? He didn’t see Sylus coming when he ventured to your home one evening, the pungent odor of alcohol wafting off his skin, his soul rotten. Sylus swooped down from the treetops, courtesy of his wings, and he had never tasted a human so foul as he tore into the man’s throat.
No matter.
He would do anything to make you smile like you did all those nights back, even if it made him vomit.
Of all the presents he had left on your doorstep—the fruit from the forest, the deer carcasses, the intricately crafted bone jewelry, the buck skulls littered with wildflowers—that man’s severed, green, bubbling head perched on your rocking chair on your porch seemed to sate you.
You didn’t scream. Didn’t retch. Didn’t cry for help from your neighbors. Instead, you—
Summary: You’re desperately in love with a man who already belongs to another.
Ikigai (n.) (Japanese): "A reason for being," the thing that gets you up in the morning.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
She’s holding a gun at him.
Normally the sight of someone pointing a gun at Sylus wouldn’t floor you so much. It might make you a little worried. Sometimes it’d be humorous. Right now isn’t either of those times. No. You were flooded with a concoction of emotions, a sick and twisted storm that came up from the depths of your stomach.
Anger. Fear. Jealousy. And strangest of all, relief. Relief that maybe, just maybe, your eyes might be wrong for once. That the string from Sylus doesn’t lead to her. How else would you explain this?
Soulmates don’t do this to one another. They don’t spend days trying to force the other to cooperate. They don’t perpetuate lies to one another. And they certainly don’t press guns against one another’s chest and scream about how they murdered their family.
You want to intervene. To stop this nonsense right now. But Sylus’ gaze tells you otherwise. His very soul says otherwise. So you wait. You wait for something good to happen.
Bang.
Who knew such a familiar sound could make your blood run so cold? Never did one sound cause you so much turmoil. Everything goes blank at that moment. One second you’re standing a fair bit of distance away from the pair, the next you’re at Sylus’ side, pressing down on the wound that strangely won’t heal like it normally does.
Miss Hunter is one the ground, unconscious once again like the first time you saw her. You don’t hear her breathe. In fact, you don’t hear anything but your pounding heart and:
”My dragon is dead.”
It’s her voice. A voice so full of grief and rage that it puts what you heard shouted earlier to shame. A voice that weighs on you, drapes itself across your shoulders in a cold embrace. Your skin prickles at its touch. Bile wells up in your throat.
”My dragon is dead.”
There’s flashes of a different Sylus overlaying the one before you. One with horns, a gemstone in the center of his chest, and a long tail. You’ve seen this Sylus before. It happened the first time you two met. So the sight of him doesn’t change anything for you at all.
What does change things is that he seems paler. Pale from blood loss, something anyone from the N109 Zone would recognize immediately. He’s more ragged than you remember the former dragon being. Beaten. Broken. Defeated. So unlike the Sylus you know from both timelines. You can’t bare this image any longer. You look to a familiar sight: his eyes.
Whatever emotions and thoughts that swirl in those eyes evade you. You can’t look at them for long because that red doesn’t give you comfort. That red eats at you, devours you like the fiend he once was probably would’ve done to you. So you look elsewhere.
That’s when you see it. The thread, his and Miss Hunter’s thread, transforms before your very eyes. Standard red, the red of all threads, warps into the red of Sylus’ eyes. It shines and shakes until letters begin to dance out of both of their hearts. Those same letters curl along the thread, spiraling up and down it. You know it means the second you see them.
Messages on each other’s skin. How fitting.
Soulmates are never apart. But the fact that universe decided to give these two a way to communicate no matter the distance makes your heart burn. Even worse when you think of the applications: secret love notes on one another’s forearms, little doodles on the hand that remind them of each other, entire discussions taking place on their skin (discussions you’ll never be privy to)…
Wells of feelings, of emotions, churn in your threadless heart. You stare at Sylus’ with contempt, pain, and grief. The same sensations from your talk with Sylus on Miss Hunter’s first day come back. And it’s all because of some stupid thread. That thread made you this way, so you decide to gaze even further down.
You already knew you’d be getting glances of the old Sylus the further you looked down. Any dragon parts should not faze you.
The giant claymore through his chest does.
_”There’s so much blood,”_both you and the Miss Hunter from the past think.
Rational thinking is out the window.
“It’s stuck…” you hear yourself whisper. You don’t feel your voice come out from you when you do. You don’t feel your lips mouth the words. You don’t even feel the vibration of the sound in your skull.
It’s all overtaken by the weight on your chest. An elephant in the room that made its home right on your heart. Sitting there, waiting. For what, you don’t know. All you know is that you want that blade gone.
Your hands move on their own. They try to catch the imaginary blade, to yank it away from the chest of your beloved. As if that would do any good. Your hands meet air, and your tripped up brain still isn’t convinced to abort this useless mission.
“I-it won’t come out…” your voice comes out broken at first. “It won’t come out!”
Now you’re screaming. Large palms latch themselves to your shoulders, and you’re forced to face the dragon before you. Blood drips from his mouth. Yet, the same mouth seems to be forming words.
“Gamayun,” they read; it’s still not enough to bring you back. At least not to the present.
You hate your job as an auctioneer. Standing on a grand stage in front of sleuths of people who’re eager to buy whatever it is you’re selling with their blood money as you spin tales about this and that. Jewels, relics, weapons, protocores, and other such things are presented by you as you barter for the highest prices imaginable.
It’s terrible. But manage through it with a plastered smile and beautiful suit as you egg the nouveau riche on. They were, of course, your only real entertainment during work. Seeing flocks of people with too much money raise paddles to try and upstage their rivals never ceased to make you smile. They spend their money on such useless things.
You found joy in the little moments to survive. A man buying a prized jewel for his wife. A child’s eyes lighting up at some obscure antique. People happily finding that one missing piece for their collection. Those are the moments that keep you going; they’re what get you on stage.
That, and people watching. Some days you’d have the same crowd; other days an entirely new one. The auction house was just that kind of place. People come and go like the tide.
Because of that, it took a lot for anyone to truly catch your eye. So as you prance on that stage in your tailored suit, you pray for someone, anyone, to end your boredom. Today hasn’t been a good day for people watching. Nor has there been any of those sparse happy moments.
”Now, before we get to the real stars of the evening, I bring forth a more humble prize, an unassuming masterpiece. A rare gem not all get to have their eyes on, let alone own.”
As you spoke, you stand in front of the display case, blocking the object from view. Your gestures are dramatic, your voice is loud, and everything about you screams at the crowd for them to look at you and only you.
You play upon their greed, upon their pride and need to feel special. Because this next piece is yours. It’s something you crafted and begged for your boss to let you put it in. All the profits will go to you.
”Now, this piece has quite the history, ladies and gentlemen. A diamond rumored to bewitch and curse whoever is foolish enough to wear it.”
A different sort of a silence falls over the crowd. But you smile to yourself. You’ve planned for this exact scenario, the moment where weariness and fear begin to set in among the superstitious gang members of the N109 zone.
”What I have behind me is the infamous Hope Diamond, plucked away from the ruinous cage a silly museum once held it. Now, it rests in a crown of great value once again. Jewels are made to be owned, after all. Who in their right mind would listen to rumors of a curse when they could own such a beauty? Why do they let it rot in storage when it should be owned by the most powerful, rather than seen by the eyes of the poor?”
As you speak, you allow the guests to fully see the necklace you’ve crafted. It’s some of your finest work. It had to be, given what you were selling.
”Why would anyone allow such silly thoughts to stop them from owning such a gem? Who would be foolish enough to pass over such a beauty because of a little fear? Life is all about the unknowns and adventure. Perhaps previous owners didn’t know this, and fell because of their weakness.”
You add flare to your words, putting your heart and soul into selling this crown.
”And who knows? Maybe our lucky buyer will be the one to break this curse?”
You play to your audience well. Everyone here is full of greed, whether that be for money or power. And what better display of power is there than proudly wearing a cursed diamond?
Your ploy works. Guest can’t take their eyes off of the beautiful necklace. You mentally pat yourself on the back before calling out prices.
”Can I get 100 million for it?”
The resounding gasps warm your heart. Exactly what you wanted. Low-balling a gem as famous as the Hope Diamond, beginning bids at less than a third of its value, gets people to sit up. It makes them hope they can win. And it makes them spend like there’s no tomorrow. After all, even the criminals of the N109 zone love a great deal.
”150 million!” One familiar guest yells.
That’s all it takes for chaos to unfold.
”200 million!” Goes another.
”300 million!” And another.
”500 million!” And another.
You go all over the place, calling number after number, until the price reaches 800 million. A price higher than the original value of the gemstone.
”Going once,” you call. “Going twice…”
You let yourself pause, long and dramatic as you walk around the stage. You lock eyes with all those who had previously bid, but they shrink back in shame. The price was just too high. And you open your mouth to seal the deal.
That is until a new voice calls, “1 billion.”
You barely keep your composure.
”1 billion from Number 109.”
Silence. You call once, twice. More silence.
”Sold!”
The display case is wheeled away behind you. You barely notice the crew moving. All your attention is the man who just bought your piece. Because the amount it sold for was beyond your greatest dreams.
But there’s little time to dwell on it. There’s more things to be sold. So you resume your job, calm and collected, as you weave stories to the ignorance and prideful people.
The new guy continues his streak, showing off his wealth by spending an exuberant amount of money on practically nothing, or coming in and snatching away someone else’s prize at the last minute with a ridiculous bid. The reactions he gets each time almost causes a smile to cross your lips at inappropriate time. And he could tell, judging by how he stared at you.
Despite how far you are from the man, many details stand out to you. The first is how he, for some reason, seems to flicker. Back and forth his appearance shifts. From human to something more. Something with horns, scales, claws, and a tail. A dragon. He stays that way for a moment before returning to what you assume to be his normal look, a human.
The next thing you notice is his hair. The bright silver contrasts the darkness of the auction room, and his own black/red attire. It’s a beacon of color, matching well with his pale skin.
You can’t see his eyes from here, but you do feel them on you as you leave the stage. You don’t quite know how you feel about that.
As soon as you slip out of a view, you drift to your little private room and instantly deflate. You’re alone now. Away from prying eyes and soulmate threads that shake you to your core. You can be you here. You don’t need to pretend anymore.
The slight bit of reprieve is enough for you to regain your strength. Because you know your boss doesn’t like for you to hang around when you have a client as big as the new man. He hates when you go anywhere near them. And since you’d rather not be fired, you quickly move out. Only to be greeted by a strange sight.
The same man is backstage. Now, you can see him in full detail. He smells a bit of gunpowder and cologne. A perfect face, broad shoulders, and beautiful eyes. Oh how his eyes make you stop for a moment. That red; that blazing red. He had the red of soulmates, the red of fate, in those eyes.
You can’t help but stare. The only thing that gets you to rip your eyes away from him is the call of your name. Your boss. He says something about giving the man a tour and a few special gifts. The usual treatment for someone who spends so much at your auction house.
What’s weird is that you’re doing it. You employer values your orator skills too much, but he also trusts you too little to let you do something like this.
”And why ever would it by my responsibility to do this? Tours aren’t my thing.”
”I was curious about the crafter of my crown.”
The first words the strange man say to you give you pause. You turn away from your boss to look directly at him. Your crown, the Hope Diamond, sits precariously on his head. He stares into your eyes as he crooks it more with one hand, teasing you.
”You told him I made it?” You address your boss this time, weirded out even more.
He never gave you credit for your past creations and contributions to the auction house. Your boss only cares for the pretty words you spout. Not the endless nights setting and resetting jewels. Not the countless hours of researching and scouring the world for the perfect gem. None of your other work goes noticed. Why would that change now?
Looking at your boss again, he’s nervous. Cold sweat on his face. A subtle shake in his shoulders. The way he leans away from your guest in fright, something he’s never done with anyone else. You pretend not to notice. He opens his mouth to speak, but another voice cuts him off.
”I asked him about you,” the mystery man interrupts. “I was curious about the person bold enough to sell a cursed jewel. Who’d willing want anything to do with such misfortune.”
”Strange words from the man who bought it for such an exuberant price.”
He lets out a breath; not a laugh, but not a scoff. Just some acknowledgement of your words and the boldness they carry.
”Besides, I for one like to see things with my own eyes. Only I myself can make such a judgement with my own knowledge and experience. Whether that be about curses or people.”
”And why’s that?”
”Because people love to twist the narrative. A pretty lie always garners much more love and affection than a bitter truth.”
That seems to resonate with your guest. He smiles at you. And in that smile lies something you’d rather not dig into. In the N109 Zone, you know better than to dig into things that don’t concern you. It’s how you’ve survived this long.
Knowing that, you keep your guard up as you stare at the stranger. He stares right back, scanning you. He looks at you as if it’s only now that he truly takes you in.
”Mr. Qin?” Your boss breaks the odd tension between the two of you.
”Ah, yes. The tour,” Mr. Qin turns to you and offers his arm to you. “I’d like to get started now, if you don’t oppose.”
”Why ever would I?”
You turn to your boss, trying to hide a smug smile when he reluctantly presses the key to his private stash in your palm. You never go down there; other staff do, but you’re different for some reason. Maybe because you’re not originally from the zone? Or maybe because you have principles, line you won’t cross, unlike them?
The two of you leave, and descend below the stage. You arm still rests on his as you walk down the familiar stairs. You’ve walked down here dozens of times. But you’ve never been able to enter the treasure trove that laid in it. Today was different.
”You seem awfully chipper,”
”I’ve never been allowed near his majesty’s treasure room,” you smile up at him. “And now you’ve allowed me to do so.”
That seems to catch Sylus off guard. But he quickly recovers.
”You’ve worked for him for how long now?”
”About a year."
”You’d think you’d have earned more trust by now.”
You shrug.
”I’m just a simple spokesperson. A seller, if you would. And trust isn’t a thing here.”
Sylus lets out a chuckle. It sends delightful shivers down your spine.
”A spokesperson who crafts crowns made of cursed gems?"
”Crowns? I believe you mean crown. I’ve only even made one crown out of a rumored to be cursed gem.”
He laughs a bit as you finish descending the stairs and begin to maneuver down the winding hallways.
You speak again, “I used to be a jeweler before I fell out with my past employer.”
”Fell out? That’s not what I heard.”
”Fell out? Murdered? Same thing,” he chuckles a bit before you continue. “We had irreconcilable differences and moral standings.”
The rest of the walk to the room is silent. But something to had shift in Sylus. He looked at you more now, glancing every once a while as if he was trying to figure you out. But you just focus on the key in your hand and what was in store for you.
The moment the door appears before you, made of dark wood and carved with designs dotted with protocores, you almost pause. But then the sensation of Sylus pulling his arm away from yours snaps you out of it. You insert the key, turn it, and walk inside.
Your boss’ treasure room isn’t what you imagine it to be. It isn’t covered in jewels, or antiques, or protocores. Rather, a single desk with chairs on either side sit in the room. And on it, lies a single notebook.
Sylus doesn’t stop for a moment. He makes a beeline for the notebook, reads it, and his expression changes again. This time to something darker. But it’s only for a moment before he puts on the same cocky look before leaning against the desk.
As Sylus sits on the desk, something begins to peak out from his pocket. But it’s enough for your heart to drop. A detonator switch. You look at it for a bit before forcing your eyes to snap upwards. Sylus smirks at you.
”He knows,” you think. “He knows you know.”
Your survival instincts kick in at that moment. And you talk. You talk about your skills. You talk about your past. And you talk about your hatred of your boss. Then, he takes the bait.
”Sounds like you’re in desperately need of a new employer.”
_”You offering good sir?”
_He looks at you with eyes that say he knows what you’re doing. Eyes that know your words are just that of a person desperately trying to survive. Those eyes scan you, dig into you to try and discover something. You don’t know what that something is, but you hope they don’t find it.
_Then they suddenly change.
”You don’t know, do you?”
”Pardon?”
It wasn’t just his words that gave you pause. It’s his tone, the gentle and tame look in his eyes, and the overall sudden shift in his demeanor. But before you can ask questions, he shows you the notebook.
Suddenly, your blood is cold. You’re cold. Full of dread and fear and bitterness. You want to throw up. You want to scream. You want to cry. But you can’t do anything of those things. Because none of that would measure up to the feelings that that notebook gives you.
There are names inside of the book. Pages and pages and pages of names with numbers next to them. Ages. Victims. A log of people your boss didn’t want you to know where dragged here
You left your previous job because of trafficking. You burned that place to ash and strangled your old boss to death with her own thread of fate because of the children she kept chained up below her establishment. You told your current boss the day you signed on that if he did the same, you’d be out.
But he did it anyways. According to these records the man, Sylus, gave you, he’s selling people on your days off.
”I’m bit surprised I’m not on here,” your tone is bitter, and it surprises Sylus, judging from the way his eyebrow raises and his eyes shift. “He’s willing to break the terms of our deal, and yet’ll keep me free.”
Neither of you can speak after that.
”Do you know where they are?” You force the words out of your mouth.
”My people have already taken care of things. All that’s left is the aftermath.”
You both stare at the little device in his hand. Your heart pounds in your chest.
”Would like to do the honors, my dear diplomat?”
You stare at his open hand for a moment. You could take this and run. You could ruin his entire plan. You could betray him. Your eyes flit back and forth between his hand and his eyes. There’s no weariness in them. No worries or judgement. Just curiosity.
Then you replay his words in your head. _His diplomat. You were hired. And because of that, you take the device from his hand, cautious and watching. But, at the same time, anticipating your new future._
”It would be my honor,” you fiddle with the device for a moment. “But one more thing."
”And what would that be?”
”My benefit for this deal. It’s hardly a good one if one party isn’t satisfied.
Sylus laughs at you and summons his Evol to pull you close to him. You don’t struggle. In fact, you embrace the red energy swirling around you.
”Name your price.”
You’re a bit surprised at his nonchalance. But you take it.
_”Don’t betray me. Don’t lie to me.”
”And I ask the same for you.”
”How do you know I’m not lying to you like your former boss?”
You smile. “I don’t. Just as you don’t know if I’m lying. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
He shakes his head at you playfully.
”If I do, will you add me to your roster of murdered employers?"
”Absolutely.”
”Then I look forward to it.”
”As do I,” and the you press the button.
Explosions ring out. Rubble falls around the two of you, people dying left and right with screams. And yet, you feel so at peace. It’s serene and lively here with Sylus, his Evol shielding you as his grin widens when he sees your expression. Are you smiling too? You can’t tell because all your senses are drowned out by the pounding of your heart.
Something touches the top of your head, and you look up. It’s Sylus. His hands situate something onto you and you touch your head. It’s your crown. He adjusts it carefully, cautiously, and a wide smile crosses his lips.
”There,” he mutters. “It suites you.”
You just stare into Sylus’ eyes. You look at his red, and you love it. For once, the red of fate isn’t so lonely.
And you snap back to the present. You wish you hadn’t. You wish you could stay in that time and place before your life got complicated. Before you fell in love with the wrong man. Before said man’s soulmate appeared and wrecked your life.
Your vision steadies. But you wonder if you’re still stuck in some weird medium between another time and your present. Why else would Sylus look so scared?
In Sylus' "Lost Oasis" memory story, the protagonist teaches a local teenage boy how to fight an Ignis Wyrm he'd captured. For her demonstration, she enlists Sylus to play the part of the Ignis Wyrm since the two were roughly the same height.
I've included the below images of both of them for comparison/reference.
I wanna try my hand at that self aware Caleb au. Mostly because everyone’s versions/interpretations of it are so cool but also because that part in Caleb’s myth where he was like “I want to be in the same world as you, instead of just watching you” is rooted in my head
