cw: fem reader, murder, cannibalism (duh), very vanilla sex but hes hot, a little bit of sciency biology junk, jack is hinted to be southern
wc: 11.3k WOWZERS
a/n: i dont think ive ever wrote this much in two days, but i was having so much fun YAYAYAYAYYA
The smell practically hits you in the face—not the loud blaring TV. That comes second. The smell is metallic, sharp enough to coat the back of your throat the moment you push the kitchen window open. You pause with one leg over the sill. Something is wrong. That thought should be enough to make you leave. But you don't. You’ve never been particularly good at listening to the part of yourself that wants you to stay alive.
You ease through the window and land silently on the kitchen floor. The house looks exactly the way it has looked every time you’ve watched it from across the street. Nothing has changed. That’s what makes it worse. The glass beside the sink is still there. A jacket has been tossed over the back of a chair. Unopened letters sit on the counter. The refrigerator hums quietly in the background. Ordinary. Perfectly ordinary. You close the window behind yourself.
You’ve spent two weeks learning this house. Two weeks watching the man who lives inside it. You know his schedule better than you know some of your coworkers’. He leaves for work at 7:18 most mornings. He gets home somewhere between 5:40 and 6:10. He stops at the same grocery store on Thursdays. He occasionally goes to a bar on Friday nights. He doesn’t own a security system. He doesn’t have cameras. He doesn’t have a dog. And, most importantly, he always leaves the kitchen window unlocked. You noticed that during the first week. You spent the second week deciding what to do about it.
You told yourself it was curiosity. That’s always the excuse. Curiosity. Impulse. Hunger. None of those words completely capture what lives inside you.
From the outside, your life is almost painfully normal. You have a decent house in a quiet neighborhood. A reliable car. A stable office job. Coworkers who complain to you about their relationships. A neighbor who occasionally borrows sugar. A dentist who reminds you to floss. You pay your bills. You answer emails. You buy groceries. You smile at people in elevators. Nobody suspects anything. Nobody ever looks at you twice. And that’s exactly how you like it.
The hunger is simply another part of your life. Something you’ve learned to conceal. Something you’ve learned to schedule around. Something you tell yourself you can control. Usually.
You move through the kitchen. Your shoes make almost no sound against the floor. You reach the hallway and stop to listen. Nothing. The house is silent. You continue. The bedroom is at the end of the hall. You’ve never entered it before. That was intentional. Knowing someone’s habits is one thing. Knowing their private space is another. You’ve always believed there’s something intimate about seeing how someone lives when they think nobody is watching.
Your hand reaches for the bedroom door. It’s slightly open. Your fingers touch the edge. You push—and immediately know. The smell hits you. Metallic. Heavy. Fresh. You freeze. Your stomach tightens. Not with fear. With recognition.
For several seconds your brain refuses to make sense of what you’re seeing. The man you’ve been watching is on the floor. There’s someone else crouched over him. Tall. Far too tall. The stranger is dressed almost entirely in black. A dark hood obscures most of his head. His posture is unnaturally still, except for the occasional precise movement of his hands. He’s completely absorbed in what he’s doing. So absorbed that he hasn’t noticed you.
You stare. He stares at the man beneath him. You stare at him. For one bizarre moment, neither of you moves. Then you whisper, “What the fuck?”
The stranger stops. Completely. Your heartbeat kicks hard against your ribs. Slowly, impossibly slow, he turns toward you. You see the mask first. Dark blue, featureless. Almost skull-like in its simplicity. Then you see the eyes. Or rather—the absence of them.
You don’t scream. That surprises you. It seems to surprise him, too.
The stranger rises. He unfolds to his full height with unsettling ease. You take one step backward. He takes one step toward you. You stop. He stops. The room seems to shrink around you.
“You aren’t afraid.” His voice is low, distorted slightly by the mask.
You swallow. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t scream.”
“Neither did you.”
Silence. His head tilts. “What are you doing here?”
You glance toward the body, then back at him. “What are you doing?”
He doesn’t answer. Neither do you. It becomes an absurd contest of silence. Eventually you sigh. “I was here first.”
The stranger stares at you. “You weren’t.”
“I mean mentally.”
A pause. Then, unexpectedly, he says, “That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.”
The stranger moves closer. You immediately back toward the hallway. Not running, not yet. He notices. “You should leave.”
You raise an eyebrow. “You’re telling me to leave?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you shouldn't be here.”
That irritates you. You cross your arms. “Neither should you.”
The stranger becomes completely still. Something about that answer seems to catch his attention. “You’ve been watching this house.” It isn’t a question.
Your expression changes. “You’ve been watching me?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
“I noticed you.”
“When?”
“Earlier.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is.”
He’s totally lying out of his ass.
You stare at him. You’re beginning to realize something. He isn’t acting like a normal murderer. Normal people panic. They threaten. They yell. They try to convince themselves they’re in control. This thing doesn’t seem frightened of anything. Not you. Not being discovered. Not the police. Not consequences. Nothing. And yet he isn’t attacking you. That matters. At least, you think it does.
“What’s your name?”
The stranger doesn’t respond. You sigh. “Fine. Don’t tell me.” His head remains tilted slightly toward you. You turn toward the hallway. His voice stops you.
“Jack.”
You look over your shoulder. “What?”
“My name.”
You study him. “Jack.” He nods once.
“Y/N.” The words leave your mouth before you can reconsider them.
Jack stares. “You gave me your name.”
“So did you.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“Probably not.”
A strange silence settles between you. You look toward the body, then toward him, then back toward the body. You’ve spent two weeks stalking the man who lives here. And somehow, in less than five minutes, he’s become the least interesting thing in the room.
Jack notices you looking. “You should go.”
You hesitate. “Are you going to hurt me?”
“No.” The answer comes immediately. That frightens you more than hesitation would have.
“Why?”
Jack doesn’t answer. You watch him carefully. Then you notice something. His hands are trembling. Only slightly. Almost imperceptibly. But they are. You hadn’t expected that.
“You don’t like being interrupted,” you say.
“No.”
“You were focused.”
“Yes.”
“On him.”
“Yes.”
You nod slowly. Something about his responses is almost strangely human. Minimal. Direct. But human.
You step toward the doorway once again. Jack’s posture changes. Not aggressive. Alert. You stop. “I’ll leave.”
His head tilts. “You promise?”
You almost laugh. “Do I look like someone who makes promises?”
“No.”
“Good.”
You walk past him. As you reach the hallway, you stop and look back. Jack is watching you. Not threateningly. Almost curiously.
“You know,” you say, “for someone who breaks into houses and does whatever you’re doing, you’re remarkably concerned about whether I leave.”
Jack says nothing. You smile faintly. Then you disappear down the hallway. You climb through the kitchen window, close it, and walk away. You don’t run. You don’t look back. Not once.
But Jack watches the window long after you’re gone. He expected fear. Everyone is afraid eventually. Some people simply need longer. But you didn’t look at him like he was a monster. You looked at him like you were trying to figure out what kind. That is different.
And somewhere across town, you’re thinking the exact same thing. Neither of you knows it yet. But the other has just become a problem. Not because one of you discovered the other’s secret. Because, for the first time in either of your lives, you’ve encountered someone who might actually understand it.
---
Morning arrives reluctantly. You know this because the first thing you become aware of is the gray light pressing through your curtains. Not sunlight. Not really. Just the pale, washed-out suggestion of morning. You remain completely still beneath the blankets. Your alarm hasn’t gone off yet. Your eyes are closed. For a few seconds, you don’t remember where you are. Then you inhale. Your bedroom. Your house. Your sheets. The faint smell of laundry detergent. The low hum of the air conditioner. Safe. Normal.
You open your eyes—and immediately remember last night. The window. The bedroom. The body. The stranger. Jack. You stare at the ceiling.
“…Fuck.”
Your voice sounds rough. You rub both hands over your face. You didn’t sleep well. That’s an understatement actually. You barely slept at all. Every time you’d begun drifting off, your brain had dragged you back into that bedroom. That mask. That impossible height. Those empty sockets. The sound of his voice.
You roll onto your side. Your stomach twists. You close your eyes again. Maybe you can sleep for another hour. Then the hunger hits. You go completely still. It’s different from ordinary hunger. Ordinary hunger is an inconvenience. A rumbling stomach. A skipped meal. Something you can ignore until lunch. This is deeper, painful even. It seems to originate somewhere beneath your ribs. A hollow, aching sensation that makes every other thought briefly disappear. You haven’t eaten. Not last night. Not at all. And now your body knows it.
You stare at the clock. 6:17 a.m. You could get up. Make breakfast. Something normal. You sit up. The room tilts slightly. You wait. Your stomach clenches again. You press a hand against it. “Not today.” You say it quietly, as though your body is something separate from you. Something that can be reasoned with. It doesn’t work.
You get out of bed. Your feet touch the floor. Cold wood. You walk to the bathroom. Your reflection looks exhausted. There are faint shadows beneath your eyes. Your hair is a mess. You look completely ordinary. That almost makes you laugh. You look like someone who stayed up too late watching television. Not someone who spent the previous night trespassing into a stranger’s house and discovering a creature in a mask.
You turn on the faucet to the coldest it allows and splash your face. For a moment, you consider calling in sick. You don’t. You have to go to work, work is useful. Routine is useful. Routine keeps you from thinking.
You shower. You dress. You make coffee. You stand in your kitchen with both hands wrapped around the mug. The smell makes your stomach turn. Not because coffee disgusts you. Because nothing ordinary is enough. You stare through the window. Your neighborhood is waking up. A woman across the street walks a dog. A man backs his car out of his driveway. Someone’s sprinklers click on. A delivery truck passes. Normal. So painfully normal.
Your gaze drifts toward the street. You imagine police cars. Yellow tape. Neighbors whispering. People asking questions. You imagine what would happen if someone else disappeared. You imagine two deaths in the same week. You know how quickly people notice patterns. One tragedy is terrible. Two is a story. Three becomes a warning. You don’t want a warning. You don’t want your name anywhere near one. You don’t want people in your neighborhood looking at one another and wondering who might be responsible. You don’t want detectives knocking on doors. You don’t want anyone asking why you were awake at strange hours. You don’t want anyone looking too closely at you.
You set the coffee down. Your hands are shaking. You look at them. “Get a grip.” You say it to yourself. The hunger answers with another slow, painful twist. You close your eyes. For several minutes you stand there. Then the thought comes. Quietly. Almost reasonably. You could leave town.
You open your eyes. No.
You could.
That’s the problem. You know the roads. You know the towns around yours. You could drive somewhere slightly unfamiliar. Somewhere nobody knows you. Somewhere your face doesn’t belong to a name. Somewhere you wouldn’t have to worry about anyone connecting anything. You could go a couple towns over. You could disappear for an evening. You could come back before anyone noticed. Your fingers tighten around the mug. You hate how practical the thought feels. That’s what scares you. Not the hunger itself. The planning. The way your brain immediately starts calculating distances and possibilities.
You put the mug down. “No.” The word is firmer this time. You walk away from the kitchen. You should get ready for work.
By 7:04, you’re sitting in your car. You stare at the steering wheel. Your phone rests in the cup holder. Your work bag sits beside you. Everything is ready. All you have to do is start the engine. Instead, you sit there. Your stomach twists. You close your eyes. And suddenly you remember Jack. Not the body. Not what he was doing. But him. The way he’d stopped when you spoke. The way his head had tilted. The strange lack of surprise when he realized you weren’t screaming. And then something else. His hands. Trembling. How odd.
You open your eyes. The answer comes immediately. Because whatever Jack is—he isn’t completely unaffected by what he does. That should make you feel better.
It most certainly does not.
You start the car. The drive to work is uneventful. That’s almost disappointing. Traffic. Red lights. Radio. People crossing streets. A school bus. A woman carrying groceries. You pass the coffee shop where you sometimes stop before work. You don’t today, you’re afraid you’ll see someone you know. You’re afraid you’ll have to smile. You’re afraid your face will give you away.
By the time you arrive at the office, the hunger has become background noise. You can function through it. You’ve done this before. That’s the part nobody understands. You’re good at functioning. You can sit at a desk while your body screams at you and answer emails with perfect grammar. You can smile at coworkers. You can ask someone how their weekend went. You can sit through meetings. You can laugh at jokes you don’t find funny. You can look completely normal. Because you’ve had practice.
“Morning.”
You look up. Your coworker is standing beside your desk. You smile. “Morning.”
“You look exhausted.”
Your stomach drops. You force a laugh. “Didn’t sleep.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” The lie comes easily. Too easily.
They nod. “Coffee?”
You lift your cup. “Already on it.”
They smile and walk away. You wait until they’re gone. Then you stare at your computer. Your inbox contains forty-three unread messages. You could cry. Instead, you start answering them. One by one. Normal. Normal. Normal. Normal.
You make it through the morning. Barely. At lunch, you sit in the empty lounge. You open your lunch. You stare at it. Your appetite disappears. You close the container. For a while you simply sit there. Then your phone vibrates. You glance at it. Unknown number. Your heart skips. You don’t answer. It stops. A few seconds later, another notification appears. Not a call, but a text.
You stare at the screen. You don’t recognize the number. Your thumb hovers over it. Then you open it. There is only one sentence.
You didn’t sleep.
You stop breathing. You read it again. Your stomach drops. You look around the empty office. Nothing, nobody. You type:
Who is this?
The response comes almost immediately.
You know.
You stare at the screen. Your fingers go cold. You type nothing. Another message.
You should eat.
Your entire body goes still, it seems taunting. You don’t know how he knows. You don’t know how he got your number. You don’t know how he knows you’re hungry. But somehow, impossibly, you’re certain. Its Jack.
You lock your phone and place it facedown. Then you sit there for several minutes, staring at nothing. Your hunger suddenly feels different. Because now you’re aware of something else. You aren’t alone. Maybe you haven’t been alone since last night.
And somewhere in the city, behind a dark mask, Jack is probably wondering the same thing about you. Because he saw the way you looked at the body. He saw how little you reacted. He noticed the hesitation before you left. He noticed that you didn’t call the police. And perhaps most importantly—he noticed that you never once asked him what he was. You asked what his name was. But that’s different.
You pick up your phone again. You stare at the message. Then type:
How did you get my number?
Three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. Then:
You’d be surprised what people leave behind when they think nobody is watching.
Because that makes total sense. You stare at that sentence.
Are you watching me right now?
This time, the typing indicator doesn’t disappear. It remains there. Three little dots. Three little dots. Three little dots. Then:
Maybe.
You look toward the office window. Across the street, people move through the afternoon. Cars pass. Someone walks beneath a row of trees. Nothing looks unusual. Nothing looks wrong. But for the first time since you began living this secret life, you find yourself wondering whether you’re the one being watched.
And somewhere outside your field of vision—something tall stands perfectly still. Watching. Waiting. Learning. You don’t see him. Not yet. But Jack sees you. And neither of you understands why the realization feels less like a threat than it should. Because you’re both beginning to suspect the same thing.
You make it through the rest of the day on pure stubbornness. The messages sit unread on your phone after that last "Maybe". You don’t open them again. You don’t answer. You don’t even look at the screen when it lights up once more around three o’clock. You just keep typing, keep nodding, keep existing in the narrow lane of normal.
By the time you leave the office, the hunger has stopped being background noise. It has become the only sound left inside you.
You sit in the parking lot with both hands on the wheel and try to talk yourself out of it the way you always do. You list the risks. The distance. The possibility of cameras. The chance someone might notice you missing for a few hours. The fact that Jack somehow already knows too much.
None of it matters.
Your body has decided.
You drive home first. Change clothes. Leave your phone on the kitchen counter so the location doesn’t travel with you. Grab the spare keys you keep for nights like this. Then you get back in the car and point it toward the highway.
Almost three hours.
You don’t put on music. You don’t listen to the radio. You just drive with the windows cracked and the night air sharp against your face, trying not to think about how empty you feel. Every mile makes it worse. By the time the town signs start changing, your hands are shaking on the wheel and your vision has narrowed to the stretch of road in front of you.
You choose carefully. Not the first quiet street. Not the second. You circle until the houses grow farther apart and the streetlights thin out. You park several blocks away from the house you actually wanna hit, kill the engine, and sit for a long minute with your forehead against the steering wheel.
Then you get out and walk.
You don’t remember the details the way you usually do. There’s no careful observation, no quiet inventory of the house, no moment where you hesitate at the window or the door. Hunger has burned all of that away. There is only the need, and then there is the man who answers the door when you knock with a plausible enough story.
It is over faster than it should be.
You don’t take anything with you. No carefully picked pieces for later. No small, private trophy the way you sometimes do when the hunger is manageable and your mind is still sharp. Tonight you are too empty for ritual. You eat what you need and leave him where he falls. You leave the house the same way you entered it, moving on instinct alone.
The walk back to the car feels longer than it should. Your legs are unsteady. Your mouth still tastes like metal. The night air is cooler now, and every sound seems too loud—your footsteps, a distant dog, a car turning onto a parallel street. You keep your head down and your hands in your pockets and force yourself to breathe normally.
When you finally reach the car, you unlock it with shaking fingers and slide into the driver’s seat. The interior smells like your own laundry detergent and the faint trace of the coffee you never finished this morning. Familiar. Safe. Ordinary.
You close the door.
Put the key in the ignition.
And freeze.
Because someone is breathing in the backseat.
Slow. Steady. Close enough that you can hear it over the sudden roar of your own pulse.
You don’t turn around immediately. You keep your eyes on the dark street ahead and force your voice to stay level.
“…Jack.”
A soft shift of fabric behind you. The quiet creak of leather as he adjusts his weight.
“You drove a long way,” he says. His voice is the same low, slightly distorted sound from the bedroom. “Three hours. Almost.”
You swallow. Your hands are still on the steering wheel. “How long have you been here?”
“Long enough.”
You finally look in the rearview mirror.
The mask is darker in the dim interior light. Featureless. The empty sockets somehow still watching you. He is folded into the backseat with that same unnatural stillness, as if the limited space doesn’t bother him at all.
“You followed me,” you say.
“Yes.”
“From my house?”
“From the moment you left the highway.” A pause. “You were distracted.”
You let out a short, humorless breath. “I was hungry.”
“I know.”
The words hang between you. You should be terrified. You should be calculating exit strategies, weapons, the nearest person who might hear a scream. Instead you just sit there, staring at his reflection in the mirror while the residual tremor of feeding slowly leaves your hands.
“You didn’t take anything,” Jack says after a moment. “You usually do.”
Your fingers tighten on the wheel. “How would you know that?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to. The silence is answer enough. He's gone through your house.
You start the car. The engine turns over smoothly. Headlights cut through the dark. You pull away from the curb and begin the long drive home, acutely aware of the tall shape in the backseat who makes no move to stop you, no demand, no threat.
Just watches.
After several miles of quiet highway, you speak again without looking back.
“Why are you here, Jack?”
A soft shift behind you. When he answers, his voice is quieter than before.
“Because you finally fed,” he says. “And I wanted to see what you looked like afterward.”
You glance at the mirror.
The empty sockets meet yours.
“And?” you ask.
Jack tilts his head the same way he did in the bedroom—curious, considering, almost thoughtful.
“You look less empty,” he says. “But not less hungry.”
You face the road again. Your pulse is still too fast, but it no longer feels entirely like fear.
“Neither do you,” you answer.
For a long time, neither of you speaks. The highway unspools in front of the headlights. The night presses close against the windows. And in the backseat, Jack settles into the dark like he belongs there—silent, watchful, and somehow more dangerous for the simple fact that he hasn’t tried to stop you from driving home.
You keep driving.
The highway stretches out in long, empty curves, broken only by the occasional pair of headlights moving the other direction. The car feels smaller with him in it. Not because he takes up space—though he does—but because the silence between you has weight. You can feel him watching the back of your head the same way he watched you through the office window. Patient. Unblinking. Certain.
Miles pass before you speak again.
“Why are you watching me?”
Jack doesn’t answer right away. You hear the soft shift of fabric as he adjusts in the backseat. When his voice comes, it is low and measured, the same distorted calm from the bedroom.
“You smell completely human.”
You glance at the rearview mirror. The empty sockets are fixed on you.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is,” he says. “It doesn’t align with your behavior. Especially not with the fact that you’re a cannibal… and you’ve never caught a disease.”
The words land heavier than they should. You stare at the dark road and force yourself to keep the wheel steady. Your first instinct is denial, the same careful blankness you’ve practiced for years. But denial feels pointless now. He already watched you feed. He already knows the shape of what you are.
You drive another mile in silence while the implications settle.
He isn’t human.
The realization doesn’t arrive with shock. It arrives the way most of your important thoughts do—quietly, almost clinically, like a fact you’ve been waiting to confirm. The height. The stillness. The mask. The way he moved over the body without urgency or panic. The way he looks at you now, as if studying a specimen that has somehow refused to behave according to the rules.
You exhale slowly.
“There’s a gene,” you say at last. Your voice is quieter than you expect. “Rare. So rare that most people who study it think the old records are incomplete or fabricated. It causes a craving. Not a preference. An almost painful want for human flesh.”
You can feel him listening. The quality of the silence changes—sharper, more focused.
“There have only been three other confirmed cases,” you continue. “All of them ended the same way. They turned the hunger inward. Became autocannibalistic. Started with the easy places—skin, fingertips, the soft parts they could reach without dying immediately. The medical files usually labeled it as severe OCD. Compulsive self-harm. Sometimes schizophrenia. No one wanted to write down what it actually was.”
You risk another glance at the mirror. Jack hasn’t moved, but something about his posture has tightened.
“I haven't succumbed to that,” you say. “Ive made sure to keep mine stayed pointed outward. I don’t know why. I’ve spent years trying to figure out if that makes me luckier or worse.”
The car hums around you. Outside, the first familiar exits begin to appear—signs pointing toward the towns that lead home.
Jack’s voice is softer when he speaks again.
“And you’ve never been sick.”
“No.”
“Not once.”
“No.”
A long pause. Then, almost thoughtfully: “That shouldn’t be possible.”
You let out a short, humorless breath. “A lot of things about me shouldn’t be possible.”
You don’t ask what he is. The question sits on your tongue, heavy and obvious, but something holds it back. Maybe the same instinct that kept you from screaming in the bedroom. Maybe the quiet understanding that if he wanted you dead, you already would be. Or maybe you’re simply not ready for the answer yet.
Instead you keep driving, the night pressing close against the windows, while the tall shape in the backseat considers you with the careful attention of something that has finally found a puzzle worth solving.
And for the first time since the hunger began, you realize you are no longer the only monster who knows the rules have changed.
Jack is quiet for a long time after you finish speaking. The only sounds are the tires on the highway and the low rush of air through the cracked windows. You can feel him turning the information over the same way you once did—testing it for weak points, looking for the place where the story should have collapsed.
Then he asks the question you knew was coming.
“How do you know you have the gene?”
You keep your eyes on the road. The answer is simple. The weight behind it isn’t.
“My mom.”
The words leave your mouth flatter than you intended. You grip the wheel a little tighter and force yourself to continue before he can fill the silence with another question.
“She had it too. Same hunger. Same… wrongness under the ribs. She used to tell me it felt like something was trying to claw its way out from the inside.” You pause, tasting the old bitterness of the memory. “She was one of the three. The last one they ever documented before the files got buried or lost or deliberately misfiled under psychiatric disorders.”
You risk a glance at the mirror. Jack hasn’t moved, but the quality of his attention has sharpened. He is listening the way something listens when it has finally been given a piece of information it cannot find anywhere else.
“She tried to keep it outward for as long as she could,” you say. “Hunted the way I do. Careful. Distant towns. No patterns. But the hunger got louder as she got older. Meaner. By the time I was twelve she had started… turning it on herself. Small things at first. The kind of injuries people write off as accidents or self-harm. Then bigger. The doctors called it severe OCD with psychotic features. They put her on every medication they could think of. None of it touched the craving. It only made her slower. Less precise.”
Your throat tightens. You swallow it down and keep talking, because stopping now would feel worse.
“She made me promise two things before they institutionalized her for the last time. First—that I would never tell anyone what I was. Second—that if the hunger ever started pointing inward the way hers did, I would end it before it got that far.” You let out a short, humorless breath. “She didn’t want me to become another case study with missing fingers and chewed wrists. She wanted me to stay functional. Invisible. Human enough to pass.”
The highway lights begin to thin as you near the more familiar stretches of road that lead home. Jack remains silent behind you, but the silence no longer feels empty. It feels heavy with calculation.
“She died three years later,” you finish quietly. “Official cause was complications from self-inflicted injuries. Unofficially… the hunger finally won. I was fifteen. I’ve been managing it alone ever since.”
You don’t look at him again. You don’t need to. You can feel the shift in the air—the way his focus has narrowed, sharpened, become something closer to fascination than simple curiosity.
For the first time since he appeared in your life, you realize you have given him something more dangerous than your name or your hunting ground.
You have given him context.
And monsters, you are beginning to understand, are never more interested than when they finally understand what kind of hunger they are sitting across from.
A sudden discomfort settles over you—tight in the chest, sharp behind the sternum. It isn’t fear exactly. It’s the quiet, crawling awareness that you’ve spent the entire drive treating him like a strange but understandable version of yourself, when the truth is you still have no idea what sits in your backseat.
You glance at the mirror.
“What exactly are you?”
Jack is silent for a long moment. When he finally answers, the words are quieter than anything else he’s said tonight.
“I don’t exactly know.”
Thats all.
You don’t press. Something about the way he says it makes further questions feel useless. The admission hangs between you, unfinished and strangely honest, until the familiar turn onto your street appears in the headlights.
You pull into the driveway. Kill the engine. Reach for the door handle—
And before you can even blink, you hear the soft click of the back door opening, the faint shift of weight, and the quiet sound of it closing again.
When you turn, the backseat is empty.
Jack is gone.
---
Months pass.
At first you expect him everywhere. In the rearview mirror on the drive home. Standing too still beneath the streetlights across from your office. Watching from the dark edge of the parking lot when you leave work late. You check the locks twice. You change your routes. You keep your phone face-down more often than usual.
Nothing.
Eventually the hypervigilance dulls. You decide he must be the kind of thing that only stays in a town for a couple of weeks before moving on—some restless, predatory migration you don’t understand and no longer need to. The anomaly of him settles into the background of your life the way most impossible things eventually do. You make peace with it. Or at least you stop looking over your shoulder quite so often.
The hunger, of course, does not.
---
One night you find yourself in a quiet house on the other side of the city. The woman who lived here is already cooling on the kitchen floor. The kill was clean. Efficient. No mess beyond what was necessary. You’ve been careful. You’ve been thorough. And now you are deep in the familiar, almost meditative rhythm of separating and organizing—organs sorted, meat portioned, everything arranged with the quiet precision that keeps the rest of your life intact.
You are so absorbed that the sound almost doesn’t register at first.
Footsteps.
Soft. Measured. Moving through the living room.
You freeze with a knife still in your hand. Your pulse spikes hard enough to make your vision sharpen. She lived alone. You’re certain of it. You checked. You always check.
Someone is in the house.
You move on pure instinct. There is no time for cleverness. You abandon the body, abandon the careful arrangement, and stumble as fast as you can toward the sliding glass door that leads to the small backyard. Hiding inside would be stupid—too easy to corner, too few exits. Outside is better. Outside has options.
You slip through the door and press yourself into the narrow shadow beside the railing, heart hammering, breath held so tightly your lungs burn.
Inside, the footsteps reach the kitchen.
You hear the soft scuff of shoes against tile. A pause. Then a faint, wet squelch—the unmistakable sound of something being lifted from the organized mess you left behind.
Then silence.
No scream.
No panicked breathing.
No voice dialing emergency services.
No approaching sirens.
Just the heavy, waiting quiet of a house that should not be this still.
You force yourself to wait. Count the seconds. Listen for any sign of retreat or approach. When nothing comes, you ease forward just enough to peer through the glass.
Everything looks exactly the same as you left it.
The body. The carefully arranged organs. The tools. The low kitchen light still casting its pale glow across the floor. Nothing appears disturbed.
You wait another full minute before you trust yourself to slide the door open again and step back inside.
The air is cooler than it was. Or maybe you are simply colder.
You approach the body slowly, eyes scanning for whatever changed. At first nothing stands out. Then your gaze drops to the neat row of organs you had already set aside.
The kidneys are gone.
Both of them.
A quiet, incredulous sound leaves your throat before you can stop it.
“…Aw man. I was looking forward to those.”
There is only one person who could have taken them.
Only one person who would have known exactly which pieces you preferred.
Only one person who could have entered, claimed what he wanted, and left without a single wasted movement or unnecessary sound.
Jack.
You straighten slowly, staring at the empty space where the kidneys should have been, and feel the old, familiar weight of being watched settle across the back of your neck once more.
He never really left.
He was simply waiting.
You finish the job in silence.
The missing kidneys leave a small, irritating gap in your careful arrangement, but you adapt. You clean. You package what remains. You erase every trace of yourself from the house with the same practiced efficiency that has kept you invisible for years. By the time you step back into the night, the only evidence left is the cooling body and the faint, lingering sense that someone else was there—someone who took exactly what he wanted and nothing more.
The drive home is quiet. Your hands are steady on the wheel. The residual adrenaline has faded into something heavier, something that sits low in your stomach and refuses to settle. You tell yourself it’s just the interruption. The reminder that your private rituals are no longer entirely private. That he can find you whenever he chooses.
You already know that isn’t the whole truth.
When you pull into your driveway, the house looks the same as it always does. Dark windows. Quiet porch. The faint glow of the porch light you always leave on. Nothing out of place. Nothing warning you.
You unlock the front door and step inside.
The atmosphere is different.
Warmer. Occupied.
You freeze in the entryway, keys still in your hand, and listen.
There is no sound of movement. No creak of floorboards. No soft shift of fabric. But the silence itself feels altered—like a room that has already adjusted to the presence of something tall and still.
You move carefully through the living room.
And find him.
Jack is on your couch.
Not perched. Not looming. Simply… settled. One long arm rests along the back of the cushions. His posture is relaxed in a way that should look impossible for something his size, the dark coat open, the mask still in place. The empty sockets turn toward you the moment you appear in the doorway, as if he has been waiting for exactly this.
He looks, somehow, almost comfortable.
Like he belongs there.
Your pulse kicks hard against your throat. You don’t reach for a weapon. You don’t demand answers. You just stand there, staring at the tall, masked figure who has made himself at home in the one place you have always kept separate from everything else.
“You’re in my house,” you say. Your voice comes out quieter than you intended.
Jack’s head tilts the familiar fraction. “You left the window unlocked.”
Of course you did. The same careless habit that once made other people’s homes accessible has finally turned against you.
You set your keys down on the side table with deliberate care. The soft clink of metal against wood sounds too loud in the quiet. You can feel his attention on you—heavy, focused, unblinking. It drags across your skin like a physical touch.
“You took the kidneys,” you say.
“Yes.”
“I was looking forward to those.”
“I know.”
Something about the simple acknowledgment sends a low, unwanted heat curling through your stomach. He didn’t just take them. He knew which ones you wanted. He chose them on purpose.
You step further into the room. The distance between you shrinks. Jack doesn’t move, but the air seems to tighten around the space he occupies. You can smell him now—something cold and metallic beneath the faint scent of night air and your own detergent clinging to the couch cushions.
“You’ve been watching me this whole time,” you say.
“Yes.”
“Even after you left.”
“I never left.”
The words settle between you, heavy and intimate. You should be angry. You should feel violated. Instead, the tension in your body has shifted into something sharper, something that makes your pulse beat harder in places it shouldn’t.
You stop a few feet from the couch. Close enough to see the faint scuff marks on his coat. Close enough to notice the way his fingers rest against the cushion—long, still, and just slightly tense.
“Why now?” you ask.
Jack is silent for a moment. When he speaks, his voice is lower than before.
“You looked lonely while you worked.”
The observation lands too accurately. You feel heat rise along the back of your neck. He watched you in that kitchen. Watched the careful way you handled the body. Watched the focus that settles over you when the hunger is finally quiet. And then he took something from the middle of it, as if claiming a place in the ritual itself.
You hold his empty gaze and refuse to look away.
“You’re still wearing the mask,” you say quietly.
“Yes.”
“Even here.”
A pause. Then, softer: “Would you prefer I take it off?”
The question hangs in the air between you, charged and dangerous. Your mouth goes dry. You become suddenly, acutely aware of how close you are standing. Of the size of him. Of the fact that he has been inside your home long enough to make himself comfortable on your furniture. Of the way your body has not yet decided whether it wants to step back or step closer.
You don’t answer immediately.
Jack waits, perfectly still, the empty sockets fixed on your face as if he already knows the shape of the tension coiling low in your stomach.
Outside, the night is quiet.
Inside, the space between you feels smaller with every second that passes.
You don’t answer the question about the mask.
Instead you turn and walk into the connected kitchen, the soft sound of your footsteps the only reply you offer. The fluorescent light clicks on above the counter. You open the freezer and begin rearranging the carefully labeled packages already inside, making space for the fresh influx waiting in the cooler by the door. The cold air spills out across your wrists as you shift things around with practiced efficiency.
Behind you, Jack remains on the couch. You can feel his attention following you into the kitchen, steady and unbroken.
“Why the kidneys?” you ask without looking back.
There is a brief silence. Then his voice carries easily across the open space, low and slightly distorted.
“They’re the only thing that tastes decent to me.”
You pause with a frozen package in your hand. The simple honesty of the answer settles somewhere low in your chest. You resume stacking, creating a clean row of empty space along the left side of the freezer.
“Just the kidneys?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing else is worth the effort.”
You close the freezer door and lean your hip against the counter for a moment, considering. The practical part of your mind—the part that has kept you alive and unnoticed for years—clicks into place with surprising ease. You have always worked alone. Always taken everything. Always managed the risk and the disposal and the quiet logistics of hunger by yourself.
But he is already here. He already knows. He already takes what he wants whether you agree or not.
You turn to face him through the open doorway. Jack is still settled on your couch, tall and dark and watchful, the empty sockets fixed on you with that same unnerving patience.
“You take the kidneys,” you say. “I take the rest.”
The words hang in the quiet kitchen air. Simple. Direct. A partnership offered the same way you might negotiate the division of any other resource.
Jack doesn’t move, but something in the quality of his stillness shifts—sharpens. Interest, maybe. Or something closer to hunger of a different kind.
“You’re offering me a share,” he says.
“I’m offering you the only part you actually want.” You wipe your hands on a dish towel and toss it onto the counter. “In exchange, you stop taking from my kills without asking. And you stop appearing in places where I might put a knife through you by accident.”
A beat of silence.
Then, softly: “And if I agree?”
You hold his empty gaze from across the room. The tension that has been coiling between you since you found him on the couch tightens another degree. You can feel it in the space behind your ribs, in the way your pulse refuses to slow, in the quiet awareness of how large he is and how easily he has made himself at home in your space.
“Then we both eat,” you say. “And neither of us has to work quite as hard.”
Jack tilts his head. The gesture is small, almost thoughtful. When he speaks again, his voice is quieter than before—lower, closer to something that might almost be approval.
“All right.”
Just that.
You nod once, as if the agreement is already settled, and turn back to the cooler by the door. Your hands are steady as you begin unloading the remaining packages, but the back of your neck feels warm. You can still sense him watching you from the couch—silent, present, and now bound to you by something as simple and dangerous as a shared appetite.
The night stretches out ahead of you, suddenly longer than it was an hour ago.
And for the first time, you are not entirely certain whether the hunger you feel is only for meat.
A couple of nights later you are crouched in the dark behind a modest one-story house, fingers resting lightly on the handle of the back door. The lock is old. Easy. You have already checked the windows, the driveway, the quiet street. Everything is as it should be.
You ease the door open a fraction—
And freeze when a tall shape materializes out of the shadows directly behind you.
“Easy, suga.”
The low, distorted voice is close enough that you feel the faint vibration of it against the back of your neck. You go rigid, pulse spiking hard, then force yourself to stay still instead of spinning with the knife already half-drawn.
Jack.
Of course it is Jack.
You don’t turn around. “The house is empty, isnt it?”
“Resident got picked up hours ago,” he says. “Party across town. Won’t be back till late.”
You let out a slow breath through your nose and finally glance over your shoulder. He stands too close, the dark coat blending into the night, the mask catching the faintest edge of distant streetlight. The empty sockets regard you with that familiar, unreadable patience.
Then the word catches up to you.
“…Suga?”
There is a slight southern twang in the way he said it—softened, almost lazy, buried under the usual distortion of the mask but unmistakable once you notice it. You file the detail away immediately. Another small piece of him that doesn’t quite fit the rest.
Jack ignores the question entirely.
He tips his head toward the house next door instead, the one with the single porch light still burning and a car parked neatly in the driveway.
“Neighbor’s home,” he says. “Alone. Lights have been off for twenty minutes. Better option.”
You stare at him for a beat longer than necessary. The casual endearment still sits strangely in your ears. The fact that he has been watching this street long enough to know the resident’s social plans sits even stranger. And beneath both of those things is the quiet, unwanted awareness of how easily he had closed the distance between you without making a sound.
You close the back door again, carefully, and straighten.
“You’ve been here the whole time,” you say quietly.
“Long enough.”
Of course.
You look toward the neighboring house. The porch light casts a pale circle across the small front lawn. No movement. No television glow behind the curtains. It is, objectively, a cleaner opportunity than the empty house you had chosen.
Jack waits behind you, silent and still, the faint southern softness of that single word still lingering in the air between you like something he has no intention of explaining.
You adjust your grip on the knife and start moving toward the other yard without another word.
He follows.
Close enough that you can feel the cool displacement of air whenever he shifts. Close enough that the partnership you offered two nights ago suddenly feels far more intimate than a simple division of organs.
And neither of you mentions the word suga again.
Not yet. Youre so going to use that against him later.
The neighboring house is quieter than expected.
You move across the dark strip of lawn between the properties with Jack a silent presence at your back. The porch light throws a thin wash of yellow across the front steps. No dog. No security camera. The side door near the garage has a lock that yields with almost insulting ease. You slip inside first. Jack follows, closing the door behind you with barely a sound.
The man is in the living room.
He should have been asleep. The lights were off. The television was dark. Everything about the house had suggested an easy, quiet night.
Instead he is half-risen from the couch the moment the floorboard creaks beneath your weight, eyes wide, already reaching for the heavy glass ashtray on the side table.
He is faster than either of you expected.
The first swing catches you across the forehead before you can fully close the distance. White pain explodes behind your eyes. Blood, hot and immediate, runs down into your left eyebrow. You stagger half a step, vision swimming, and that half-step is enough for him to try for a second blow.
He never gets the chance.
Jack is on him in a single, brutal motion. There is no careful restraint this time. No measured efficiency. One long arm locks around the man’s head and there is a sharp, wet *crack* that echoes through the small living room like a gunshot. The body drops. The ashtray hits the carpet and rolls.
Silence rushes back in.
You press the heel of your hand to your forehead, blood seeping between your fingers. The cut is shallow but messy—right at the hairline, the kind of thing you can pass off tomorrow as a clumsy moment with a cabinet door. Still, it throbs in time with your pulse, and the metallic scent of your own blood mixes unpleasantly with the newer, heavier smell already filling the room.
Jack stands over the body, breathing harder than you have ever heard him breathe. His hands are flexed open at his sides. For a long second he doesn’t look at you. When he finally does, the empty sockets of the mask seem darker than usual.
“You’re bleeding,” he says. The southern softness is gone from his voice. What remains is flat and tight.
“I’ve had worse.”
He doesn’t answer. Instead he steps over the body and reaches for you, one gloved hand hovering near your face as if he means to examine the cut himself. You hold still. The moment stretches. Then he drops his hand without touching you and turns back to the work that still needs doing.
You both move quickly after that.
There is no lingering. No careful ritual. The fight has left the night sharper, more urgent. You handle the larger portions while Jack takes the kidneys with the same precise efficiency as before. But he doesn’t leave once he has them. He stays. He helps. He holds what needs holding, clears what needs clearing, and matches your pace without a single wasted motion. The partnership you offered two nights ago settles into something quieter and more concrete under the low kitchen light and the copper scent of blood.
By the time the house is clean and the cooler is packed, your head has stopped dripping and the edges of the cut have begun to stiffen. You wipe your face one last time with a damp cloth, check your reflection in the dark microwave door, and decide it will look like nothing more than a clumsy accident by morning.
Jack is already waiting by the side door.
Neither of you speaks on the walk back to your car. Neither of you speaks on the drive home. The city slides past the windows in long, empty stretches of sodium light and shadow. You are aware of him in the passenger seat the entire time—the size of him, the faint metallic scent that clings to his coat, the way he keeps glancing at the side of your face where the blood has dried in a thin, dark line.
When you pull into your driveway he doesn’t ask permission.
He simply gets out of the car and follows you inside.
The door closes behind both of you with a soft, final click. The house is dark and quiet and suddenly full of the two of you. You set the cooler down in the kitchen. Jack remains near the entrance to the living room, tall and still, watching as you move to the sink and turn on the water to clean the last traces of blood from your hands and temple.
The cut stings under the cold stream.
You can feel his eyes on the back of your neck.
Outside, the night continues without you.
But inside, the silence between you has changed again—no longer simply the quiet of two predators dividing a kill, but something heavier, closer, and far more difficult to ignore.
You're at the freezer when it happens.
The last of the packages is in your hands, cold plastic damp against your palms, and you are halfway through shifting the older cuts aside to make room when the air behind you changes. No footsteps. No warning. Just the sudden, solid presence of him closing the small distance between the living room and the kitchen in a single quiet movement.
Then his hands are on your waist.
Large. Firm. Unmistakably deliberate.
You freeze with the package still suspended over the open freezer drawer. The cold air spills upward across your arms, but it does nothing to touch the heat that flares low in your stomach the moment his fingers settle against the sides of your body. His grip is steady—not bruising, not tentative. Simply there. Claiming the space as if it has always belonged to him.
“Jack.”
His name leaves your mouth quieter than you intended. You feel the faint vibration of his answer more than you hear it, the low sound traveling from his chest into your back where he has stepped close enough that the front of his coat brushes your shirt.
“You’re still bleeding a little,” he murmurs. The southern softness has returned to the edges of his voice, roughened now by something heavier. “Right here.”
One hand leaves your waist. Fingertips, cool through the thin leather of his gloves, trace the edge of the cut at your hairline with surprising care. The touch is light. Almost gentle. It still sends a sharp pulse of awareness straight down your spine.
You set the package down on the counter without looking. The freezer door remains open, forgotten. You turn your head just enough to catch the dark shape of the mask over your shoulder.
His hand returns to your waist. Both palms settle more firmly now, thumbs pressing lightly into the soft give of your sides. He draws you back a fraction of an inch until your shoulder blades meet the solid plane of his chest. The difference in height is impossible to ignore. You have to tip your head back to keep your balance. The movement bares the line of your throat.
Jack’s breath catches—quiet, but unmistakable.
For a long moment neither of you moves. The only sounds are the low hum of the freezer and the too-fast rhythm of your own pulse. His fingers flex once against your waist, testing the shape of you, and the simple pressure makes your breath stutter.
“You’ve been watching me for months,” you manage. Your voice has gone rougher. “Showing up. Leaving. And now you’re in my kitchen with your hands on me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The answer comes against the side of your neck, close enough that the distortion of the mask brushes your skin.
“Because you smell nice,” he says. “And you let me this close.”
Something in the words undoes the last of your careful distance. You reach back without fully deciding to, fingers finding the heavy fabric of his coat, gripping. Jack makes a low sound—almost a growl—and the hands at your waist tighten, turning you the rest of the way around until your back hits the edge of the counter.
He cages you there easily. One gloved hand braces beside your hip. The other slides up, slow and deliberate, to cradle the side of your face. The leather is cool. The care in the touch is not. His thumb traces the drying edge of the cut again, then drifts lower, following the line of your cheek to the corner of your mouth.
You can feel the heat of him even through the coat and the mask. The sheer size of him fills the space, blocks out the rest of the kitchen, leaves you with nothing to look at except the dark, featureless face tilted down toward yours.
“Tell me to stop,” he says.
The words are quiet. Rough. Offering an exit you both already know you will not take.
You don’t tell him to stop.
Instead you fist your hands in the front of his coat and pull him the rest of the way in.
The sound he makes is hungry.
His mouth finds yours through the mask first—awkward, urgent, the hard edge of it pressing against your lips—before he seems to remember himself. There is a brief, sharp movement. The mask is gone. You don’t get a clear look at what lies beneath before his real mouth claims yours, hotter and more desperate than you expected. The kiss is deep, open, edged with the same controlled violence he used on the man who cut you. You taste copper and cold night air and something darker underneath.
His hands are everywhere after that.
One stays at your waist, gripping hard enough to bruise. The other slides under the hem of your shirt, palm dragging hot across the bare skin of your stomach. You arch into the contact with a sound you barely recognize as your own. Jack answers it with a low, approving noise and lifts you onto the counter in one smooth motion, stepping between your thighs like he has every right to the space.
The freezer still stands open beside you, forgotten. Packages of carefully portioned meat sit abandoned on the cutting board. None of it matters. The only thing that exists is the solid weight of him pressing closer, the scrape of his teeth against your lower lip, the way his fingers dig into the soft flesh of your hips as if he is trying to memorize the shape of you through fabric.
You drag your hands up the hard line of his chest, under the open coat, finding the heat of him through the dark shirt beneath. He shudders once—actual, visible reaction—and the evidence of it sends a fresh pulse of heat between your legs.
“Jack—”
“I know.” His voice is wrecked already, the southern edge thicker now, frayed with want. “I know. I’ve got you.”
He kisses you again, deeper, and the last of the night’s violence and hunger and months of watching finally collapses into something neither of you is interested in stopping.
The kiss turns messy almost immediately.
Jack kisses like he does everything else—focused, thorough, and just a little too intense. His mouth is hot against yours, the faint metallic taste of the night still clinging to him, and when your tongues meet he makes a low, rough sound that vibrates straight through your chest. One of his hands stays locked at your hip, holding you in place on the counter. The other slides higher under your shirt, palm dragging over your ribs until his thumb brushes the underside of your breast.
You arch into the touch with a sharp inhale. He takes the invitation without hesitation, pushing the fabric higher, baring skin to the cool kitchen air. The contrast makes you shiver. Jack pulls back just far enough to look down at what he’s uncovered, and the expression on his face—now that the mask is gone—is hungry in a way that has nothing to do with kidneys.
You finally get a proper look at him.
The features beneath the mask are sharp, almost severe. High cheekbones. A mouth that looks like it was carved for silence and violence in equal measure. His eyes are… empty pits, deeper than they should be, and they catch the low light from the hallway with an unnatural sheen. Not human. Not even close. But the way they somehow track over your exposed skin is painfully, unmistakably wanting.
“Fuck,” he mutters, the southern edge thick in his voice. “Look at you.”
His hand closes over your breast, squeezing with deliberate pressure. You tip your head back against the upper cabinet with a quiet sound, and he leans in to drag his mouth along the column of your throat, teeth scraping lightly over your pulse. The hand at your hip shifts, fingers digging into the soft flesh just above the waistband of your pants.
“Been watching you,” he says against your skin. “Months. Watching you work. Watching you pretend you’re just like them. And the whole time you’ve been walking around with this body, smelling like that, and I couldn’t—” He cuts himself off with another rough kiss, deeper this time, almost punishing.
You shove at his coat. He understands immediately, shrugging out of it without breaking the contact of his mouth on yours. The heavy fabric hits the floor. Underneath he is solid muscle and heat, the dark shirt stretched tight across a chest and shoulders that make the difference in your sizes impossible to ignore. When you drag your hands up under the hem, his stomach tightens under your palms.
Jack’s breathing has gone uneven.
He pulls your shirt the rest of the way off and tosses it aside. The second your bare back touches the cool cabinet you hiss, and he uses the moment to duck his head and close his mouth around one nipple. The wet heat of it punches a sound out of you that would have embarrassed you under any other circumstances. His tongue works in slow, deliberate strokes while his free hand finds the other breast, kneading, rolling the peak between his fingers until your hips start shifting restlessly against the edge of the counter.
“Jack—”
“I know.” He mouths the words against your skin, voice rough. “I can smell how wet you are already.”
The bluntness of it sends another hard pulse of heat between your legs. You reach for his belt with unsteady fingers. He lets you, watching your hands work with that same dark, focused intensity. When you finally get the buckle open and drag the zipper down, the hard length of him strains against the fabric of his underwear. You palm him through it and he curses under his breath, hips pushing forward into your touch.
“Careful,” he warns, though it sounds more like a plea. “Been a long time since I let anyone this close.”
You stroke him again, firmer, and the sound he makes is almost pained. In the next second he is shoving your pants and underwear down your hips in one impatient motion. You lift up to help him. The second the fabric clears your thighs he is pushing them the rest of the way off, leaving you bare on the counter of your own kitchen with the freezer still humming open beside you and packages of human meat sitting forgotten on the cutting board.
Jack spreads your knees wider with his hands and looks down.
The expression on his face is devastating.
“Christ,” he breathes. One gloved hand—he still hasn’t taken the gloves off—slides up the inside of your thigh. When his fingers finally brush over the soaked heat of you, your whole body jerks. He parts you carefully, almost reverently, and then presses two long fingers inside without further warning.
The stretch pulls a broken sound from your throat. Jack watches your face the entire time, eyes half-lidded, drinking in every reaction as he works his fingers deeper. His thumb finds your clit and rubs slow, firm circles that make your thighs try to close around his wrist.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Let me feel you.”
You are already clenching around him, too wound up from the night, from the months of tension, from the simple fact of him standing between your legs like he belongs there. He seems to realize how close you are. His fingers curl, searching, and when he finds the spot that makes your vision white out he stays there, working it ruthlessly while his thumb keeps steady pressure on your clit.
“Jack—fuck, I’m—”
“I know, suga. Go on.”
The orgasm hits hard enough that you have to grab his shoulders to stay upright. You come with a sharp, helpless sound, pulsing around his fingers while he works you through it, murmuring rough encouragement against your temple. When the worst of the trembling passes he eases his hand free, brings the glistening fingers up between you, and—still holding your gaze—licks them clean.
The sight nearly undoes you all over again.
He pushes his underwear down just far enough to free himself. The size of him makes your stomach tighten with equal parts anticipation and nerves. Jack must see it on your face, because he leans in and kisses you again, slower this time, almost reassuring.
“I’ll go careful,” he says against your mouth. “But I am going to fuck you. Been thinking about it too long not to.”
You hook one leg around his hip in answer.
He takes himself in hand, lines up, and starts to press inside.
The stretch is intense. You drop your forehead against his shoulder and breathe through it while he works himself deeper in slow, controlled thrusts. Every inch drags another shaky sound out of you. By the time he is fully seated you are clinging to him, nails biting into the hard muscle of his back, and Jack is shaking with the effort of holding still.
“Okay?” he manages.
You nod against his shoulder. “Move. Please.”
He does.
The first real thrust punches the air from your lungs. Jack sets a deep, steady rhythm that rocks you back against the cabinets with every roll of his hips. The wet sound of it fills the quiet kitchen. His hands grip your thighs hard enough to leave marks, holding you open for him, and the look on his face is pure concentration—like he is memorizing the exact way you take him.
“Feel so fucking good,” he grinds out. “Knew you would. Knew it the second you looked at me over that body and didn’t run.”
You drag him down into another kiss to shut him up before the words make you come again too soon. He goes willingly, mouth open and hungry, hips never losing their rhythm. One of his hands slips between you to rub tight circles over your clit, and the dual sensation has you gasping against his lips within moments.
“That’s it,” he encourages, voice frayed. “Give me another one. Wanna feel it.”
You break with a broken moan, clenching hard around him. Jack’s rhythm stutters. He drives into you through it, chasing his own release now, the careful control finally fraying at the edges. When he comes it is with a low, guttural sound buried against your neck, hips pressed flush, body trembling through the force of it.
For a long time afterward the only sound in the kitchen is the two of you trying to catch your breath.
Jack stays inside you, forehead resting against yours, one hand still splayed possessively over your bare thigh. The freezer continues its low hum. Somewhere down the hall a clock ticks. The night feels very far away.
Eventually he lifts his head enough to look at you. The dark eyes search your face for a moment. Then the corner of his mouth curves—small, almost hesitant.
People are taking the whole “this person is performative for xyz” think too far and it literally shows. Like actually, it’s human nature to want to master a skill and share that with the world. If it’s performative to openly love things and have an open forum about them, then are your favorite authors, singers, and painters performative? We’re literally not letting people fully lean into who they are because we are in a very audience-driven society, and while doing things for brownie points is an issue, being seen doing something at its core is actually quite natural. Like why don’t you just turn the focus to yourself and indulge who you are. You’ll be a lot less miserable that way.
Idk when I see people who have been financially supported by their families make art I don’t think “their art isn’t real cuz they didn’t struggle”. I think WOW just imagine how much time and freedom they have had with their curiosity because they weren’t focused on survival
The world is violent and mercurial — it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love — love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.
kianamaiart
snowghoul
pixelskylines
andulkaphoto
vaporwave
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