hi, i'm neul !

hi i draw - lulumineul on x/ig/tt

[lulumineul]

[lulumineul]

5th anniv rosa chibi practice :333333333333

[lulumineul]

Paper plane

[hunterrami]

One of the rituals jiejie Caleb and MC shared was MC applying lip balm to Caleb's chapped lips. Caleb would hand MC a green apple flavored chapstick and MC would apply it to her jiejie without question.

But as they get older, MC starts nagging her jiejie, saying things like "You should take better care of your chapped lips or else no boy is going to kiss you!"

And every time Caleb hears this, she has a mental breakdown because what do you mean her sweet meimei is taking care of jiejie's lips just so she can kiss boys :( What do you mean her meimei is imagining her jiejie kissing other people on the lips that weren't hers :(

[versadies]

“lord i’m 500 hundred miles from my home.”

WEAVED – A SHORT 5-PART SERIES !

SYNOPSIS. Across countless lifetimes, you are reborn again and again—be it a confident adventurer, an Akademiya scholar, a celebrated opera singer, or even a shy librarian. Though each life is different, tragedy always finds you, leaving behind unanswered questions and grieving love. (or, a 5-part series where we explore your different lives)

PAIRINGS. alhaitham x gn!reader, diluc x gn!reader, neuvillette x gn!reader, zhongli x gn!reader, u̴̯̥̇͝n̵̩̿͘n̵̘͂͛a̶̻̽m̸̟̑̌e̵̜͂ḑ̶͈̃͐ x gn!reader

TIME. new chapter will be posted twice a week at 21:00 GMT+8 ! (all parts are already completed in my draft and are already scheduled!)

MASTERLIST.

part one // tba - june 21, 2026

part two // tba - june 22, 2026

part three // tba - june 28, 2026

part four // tba - june 29, 2026

part five // tba - july 5, 2026

AUTHOR’S NOTE. it’s already been two years since i’ve last posted but unfortunately this doesn’t mean i’m back due to real life commitments. but please do know that i missed writing and talking to you guys ! consider this my gift for all the love and support, i hope you like what i’ve prepared <3

TAGLIST. tba

DISCLAIMER. ai was not used to write this fic. likewise, please do not feed ai my work. do not plagiarize, repost, or translate anywhere.

[lulumineul]

OH MY GOSH

[hunterrami]

young 🍎🍐🍏

[applefishcake]

childhood bestfriends caleb and nonMC!reader, who he's secretly in love with while she thinks he likes someone else

warnings. angst, fluff, rejection, she fell first he fell harder, caleb is down bad, groveling, miscommunication, caleb sucks at feelings, slow burn, childhood friends to lovers, he gives her a nickname adjacent to pipsqueak preview. "I love you," he says, pressing his forehead against yours. You want to tell him that it's not fair to treat you the way he does and expect you not to fall for him. That holding your hair when you vomit, falling asleep at your bedside when you're sick, and his eyes closing in on you in any room is not fair. "Then prove it to me." wc. 8.4k (she's hefty...)

You proposed to Caleb for the first time when you were nine years old, with a flower ring.

The winter air had nipped at your flushed cheeks as you stepped into ice, holding it out to him. Your breath had puffed into the air like a dragon, and you nuzzled your chin further into the wool of your scarf to keep warm. It had been the only flower left after fall had faded away, yet its white petals stood brilliantly in between your fingertips, weathering against the cold.

The child in front of you was closed off. Eyes narrowed, fists balled inside his pockets, and usually adorning a solemn look on his face. Though, it had certainly gotten better since you first met him as one of Grandma Josephine’s adoptive children. Back then, he hadn’t even spoken much—only keeping MC tight at his side, as if she might disappear if he didn’t. He wasn’t rude by any means…just, cautious. Too aware for a child of his age.

But without a doubt in your mind, he was the most handsome boy you’d ever seen.

He’d raised his brows. “You just met me last week.”

“It’s love at first sight.”

He rejected you, naturally, but it did little to make a dent in your childish heart. Not when his purple hues gazed into your own, with a softness that didn’t seem intent on hurting you.

The next two decades becomes a perpetual cycle of this encounter—in which you learn that Caleb is a very caring person.

In that time, you learn a lot about him, aside from his gorgeous face. You find that he’s fond of nicknames. Pipsqueak for MC. Splints for you, when you launched yourself off a swing and broke your wrist trying to impress him. Safe to say, it didn’t impress anyone but your doctor, who was baffled you managed to fly so high into the air with your 11-year-old legs. Caleb held your other hand tight in the emergency room as you wailed helplessly, waiting for the doctor to ease the pain. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t cry just a tad longer to keep your hand in his.

“This thing is so ugly,” you whine, picking at your cast as he walks you back home. “Do you think I’m gross now, Caleb?”

“It’s not ugly. You need it to get better.”

“I thought you’d fall in love with me if I went high enough,” you sniffle fake tears, which he reads in an instant. “I did go pretty high up, though. So maybe you like me at least.”

He laughs, and you scowl, insisting that you aren’t joking. So instead, he smiles and holds your free hand in his again. Your heart skips a beat. A childish, but innocent love fluttering in your chest. “Come on, splints. Let’s go watch TV, and I can sign your cast.”

The broken wrist is so worth it.

With MC being two grades lower than the two of you and thus having a different schedule, it doesn’t take long before you’re doing practically everything with Caleb. He’s your seatmate in class, the two of you walk to and from school, and there doesn’t seem to be a moment where you aren’t glued at the hip. Throughout all of this, you make sure you shoot your shot whenever the chance arises—even when it doesn’t arise at all.

“You get any chocolates for Valentine’s?” you ask as you plop down in your seat with your lunch, not-so-conspicuously eyeing his desk as his friends begin to crowd around the two of you. It didn’t take long for Caleb to adjust to ordinary school life. After his initial bumpy introduction where he seemed hesitant to get close to anyone his grandma would introduce him to, he was quick to adjust to a level of charisma even you haven’t gotten to. 

By now, he’s charisma personified. You, yourself, have no idea how quickly he adapts to things. Though, you do recall that after an exam measuring his intelligence, he was told he couldn’t lower his grade by two years to be with MC. So you suppose he’s rather bright—almost as much as his face.

“Too many,” one of his friends groan, dragging his hand down the side of his face. “Life’s so not fair, dude.”

“Just a few,” Caleb laughs, turning to feel me stare at him expectantly. “Most of them are obligatory. I just helped a couple people out during gym.”

You glance at his friends. “How many is a few?”

“At least five,” another one grins. He wiggles his eyebrows at you, and his friend snickers at his shoulder. “You jealous?”

It’s not like your crush on Caleb is new news. In fact, it’s practically common knowledge at your school, given how open you are with your affection with him. Asking him out with a giant poster on orientation day, sending him notes with hearts littered everywhere during class, and refusing to be subtle when you’re discussing it with your friends…it tends to add up. Most people believe your relationship to be strange, but those who matter thought of it as the norm, so it doesn’t really matter. 

“Jealous? I don’t think so, why?”

“Most girls would be if their boyfriend got a bunch of chocolates,” he responds, to which Caleb immediately reminds him that you’re not dating. Then his friend sighs. “It’s cute when girls get jealous, isn’t it?”

At this, your ears perk.

“Should I be jealous?” you ask Caleb, making his friends erupt into snickers. “Do you think it’s cute too?”

He rolls his eyes and flicks your forehead softly. “Do you ever ask normal questions, splints?”

Throughout your childhood together, everything involves him. Family dinners, graduation, holidays, all of it. Of course, this means that MC is there for all of it too. You’re helplessly in love, but you’re not stupid. You know what love looks like from the movies their grandma would play on their TV. He cares for her with a different look in his eyes. He protects her with a lovingness in his voice that he doesn’t spare for you. 

The same fingers that flick your forehead touch her arm gingerly, like she could crack in half if he holds too hard. He doesn’t touch her very easily either, whereas he often falls asleep with his head fully leaning against your shoulder on the bus ride home. He wakes up at the crack of dawn to make her lunch, while the two of you munch on sandwiches from the school cafeteria during lunch breaks. He scolds you when your clothes are tossed on the ground while he folds hers without her having to ask. He never enters her room to protect her privacy while he lounges in yours like he owns the place.

Your Caleb, you have found, is different from MC’s Caleb. 

MC’s Caleb is easy to depend on. Trustworthy, perfect, and never makes a mistake for the life of him. He never loses his cool in front of her, never has a hair out of place, lets her win at all the board games, and always has this clear but dazed look in his pretty purple eyes. Your Caleb has none of that. Your Caleb teases you mercilessly when you lose the card game for the fifth time in a row. Your Caleb passes out on his desk while studying for an exam, essentially drooling on his notebook to lie to MC that he’s naturally talented at math. Your Caleb sends you stupid videos about plane models and forces you to sit through a thirty-minute explanation about it.

You know he likes her. He knows you know he likes her. She doesn’t know anything at all. All jumbled up, like a wordless pact ready to crumble at any moment. 

Of course, this means that he prioritizes her over you at times. All the time. It’s to be expected. She’s family, you’re not. You’ve grown used to it, and so has he.

MC doesn’t notice though, because she doesn’t have to. Because to her, Caleb is just a slightly nagging but cool adoptive brother. Nothing more, nothing less. And you’re one of her childhood friends, and Caleb’s best friend. Nothing more, nothing less.

The first year after you graduate high school is a dramatic shift from your cozy hometown. You somehow manage to get into the same college as Caleb–and you attribute his tutoring to be the main culprit—though in different majors. It’s a lot to convince him to go so far from home given that MC is still at home, but after a lot of reluctant discussion, he agrees.

“Take off your shoes at the door,” he reminds you as you barge into his dorm room after a particularly difficult exam for one of your classes. You do as he asks, grumbling about how he has no mercy for the fallen, tossing them haphazardly beside the door and prancing past him. He takes the time to tidy them up, as if he’s expecting it. “How was your exam?”

“Awful. I went through war.”

Caleb grins as he sits down at the coffee table beside you, watching as you bury your face into your arms. “And whose fault is it that they didn’t want to study?”

“Yours.”

“Funny,” he snorts, and you feel his large hand ruffling the top of your head. “It’s alright, splints. I can tutor you a bit earlier on the next one.”

“Even you can’t save me for this class.”

“Is that a challenge?”

He ends up cooking up something quick in his makeshift kitchen (essentially just a rice cooker), while you laze around on his bed, scrolling aimlessly on your phone. Once he’s finished, you scarf down his food like a man starved, lips stretching widely. At times like these, you’re oddly grateful for his hopeless love toward MC. How else would he have learned to cook such good food?  “You should honestly be a chef, Caleb. Actually, no, that would mean other people would eat your food. I guess you can just be my personal chef when we’re married.”

Caleb remains completely unaffected, wordlessly cleaning the plate in front of you. “I didn’t realize I was engaged.”

“Well, now you know. Not sure if you remember, but I had fireworks for you and everything when I proposed. Plus an orchestra.”

He hums, looking up as if he’s in thought, and then nods. “Now that you mention it, that does sound familiar, splints. How could I forget?”

You shrug. “You tell me.”

His face falls as you pace to the door and begin to put your shoes back on. “Where are you going? Aren’t you done with class?”

“Going out. I deserve it after that exam.”

“With your friends?”

“No, with four guys,” you joke, but he doesn’t seem to find it very funny. “I’m just going to a club. I won’t be back too late.”

He’s already grabbing his jacket. “I can come.”

You push him back with your finger by the nose, and he blinks in surprise, making you laugh. “No need. You have exams too, y’know.”

“I’m done studying.”

“Liar.”

Though it takes some convincing, you eventually have him sit at his desk once more. He manages to nag a whole lot as you leave, reminding you to call him once you’re done so he can pick you up, but you just wave him off as you leave out the door. You take your time getting ready–dolling yourself up to hide the dark circles beneath your eyes. As you get ready, you video call MC, where she asks how you and Caleb have been doing in her absence. She rants about her days with her grandma, complaining about how quiet the house is when Caleb isn’t home, though she indulged in the beginning. She asks you to show her your outfit once you’re done, and she beams brightly in your screen, squealing about how you’d likely get a boyfriend soon that you can tell her all about.

You just smile, because you don’t know how to tell her that the only boy you want is wrapped around her unknowing hand.

The club is loud. Where the music rumbles through your feet to the tips of your fingertips, and the lights are flashing in a dimly lit room. Your friends flock to a table and order drinks while you let yourself feel the music and crack a joke or two once in a while.

A group of guys approaches you with easy smiles and louder voices than necessary—confidence sharpened by cheap cologne. One of them leans against your table like he’s done it a hundred times before, asking your name, where you’re from, if you come here often. The usual.

You answer, choking out a laugh to humor his unfunny jokes alongside your friends, while the swigs you take from your drink become deeper and deeper. 

He’s not bad at flirting, you think. Subtle, and not too glaring about it. But you don’t particularly enjoy humoring it, and it becomes gradually more apparent as your eyes keep drifting elsewhere and you keep having to ask him to repeat himself. You’re growing bored. Irritated.

Because he’s not Caleb.

It hits you in strange, inconvenient flashes. The way this guy stands just a little too far away. The way his voice doesn’t quite reach you over the music, even when he’s close. The way you don’t feel that familiar, grounding presence like an anchor holding you to the ground.

You find yourself glancing past his shoulder. Half-wishing to see Caleb there. Watching. Hovering.

But there’s only strangers. Blurred faces and flashing lights.

“You okay?” the guy asks, tilting his head.

“Yeah,” you say too quickly. “Long week.”

He grins, like that’s an invitation. Says something else—something about getting you another drink, maybe dancing, maybe getting out of here.

You nod again. Smile again.

Across the room, your friends are already disappearing into the crowd, dragged toward the dance floor by laughter and hands you don’t recognize. One of them glances back at you, gives you a look that asks ‘you’re good, right?’ before she’s gone.

You sit back down at the table when the guy steps away. Maybe to grab drinks, maybe because he senses your attention drifting. You don’t really care which.

The music swells in your chest. The lights flicker. You wish you could enjoy yourself, but it’s particularly hard today.

You take another sip. Then another. Your phone rests face-down on the table, but you flip it over anyway.

No messages.

Of course not. He cares, but not like that. Not in the way that he would spam MC’s phone whenever he didn’t know where she was or how she was doing. No, not like that at all.

Another sip. The glass is nearly empty now.

And suddenly, you’re pressing send before you can even register what’s happening.

[you]: hi

The answer comes immediately, the grey bubbles popping up on his end of the screen.

[futre hubs <333]: do you need me to come pick you up?

[futre hubs <333]: i can

You’re not sure why you feel like shit, but you hate it. In moments like these—moments where the alcohol lets you lower your walls and truly think—it hits you like a truck, like a deeply sinking feeling in your chest. The years of rejection after rejection that the two of you frame like a bit—as if your feelings have become so miniscule that it no longer even phases him. 

It hurts, a bit. More than you let yourself feel.

You’re not sure how much time passes. Maybe minutes or maybe an hour. There’s buzzing throughout your body. The grip on your waist belonging to the man you’ve been half-heartedly entertaining suddenly becomes harsher, snapping you out of your trance. It feels unlike Caleb, but you let it sit anyway. However, the hand moves to your wrist, and you’re being pulled out of the crowd towards the wall.

Too touchy. He’s saying something into your ear, and you feel his breath against your skin. You don’t like it. Too close. The buzzing feeling feels more like an alarm now.

The words either go unheard due to the music or don’t deter him. You want to go back. Back to Caleb. In the moment, you begin to think—almost as if the world is in slow motion. Perhaps the drinks, you think. You wonder if Caleb will leave you. You wonder if he’ll leave to go be with MC. You wonder if the years you’ve spent expressing your love to him meant as much to him as it did to you, or if he just found it plain annoying. You wonder if now that you’re in college, he’d want to explore other people, and he’ll finally find an outlet to get rid of you for good. 

But you know he wouldn’t. Because he cares for you. Just not as much as he cares for her.

You wonder if he’s ever looked at you with the same softness he does with MC.

Someone pulls you away from the man and into their chest, and the worries dissipate in an instant. His scent. His warmth. You knew he’d come. He always does. It only takes a warning glare from Caleb before the man disappears into the crowd again, and you feel the grip on your wrist loosen. Caleb stares down at you, your back still to his chest as you blink wearily, almost in slow motion, and he sighs. He doesn’t give you the same smile he gives to MC when she’s in trouble. 

A part of you wishes he wasn’t always there for you—not when it’s so different from how he’s there for her. 

You sit idly in front of a convenience store parking lot while Caleb fetches you some water and ice cream. You have your knees to your chest, arms pulling them close as you shiver against the cold autumn breeze. You should’ve brought a jacket. The buzzing, hot feeling of the alcohol is subsiding too quickly.

“Drink.” You feel a water bottle press against your cheek from behind, and Caleb plops down beside you with a plastic bag. He notices how you’re holding yourself together and frowns. “Are you cold?”

“No.”

“I told you to grab a jacket.”

“You nag too much.”

He snickers and twists open the cap of the water bottle for you to drink, which you sip carefully. He strips his jacket off and drapes it over your shoulders, and you immediately bury yourself in it. It smells like him.

“What kind of woman do you like, Caleb?”

“You and your questions.”

“I want to know.”

He shifts to face you, motioning for you to lift your arms. He grabs either side of his jacket and pulls it shut, fumbling with the zipper until he manages to zip it to your chin. You can barely claw your hands out of his sleeves—the fabric almost engulfs you—but he just laughs. “My type? A woman who brings jackets when it’s cold.”

You scowl, making his laugh echo louder. “Other than that.”

“A woman who goes to class in the morning.”

“...Other than that.”

“A woman who doesn’t leave her clothes all over my floor when she feels like sleeping over.”

“Something else.”

“A woman who eats healthy, balanced meals. A woman who doesn’t steal all my pens and then still ends up asking me for more. Maybe someone who doesn’t pass out drooling on my pillow. Or someone who doesn’t let half the world know that they like someone—hell, maybe even the entire world.”

Caleb glances at you, chuckling to himself, but stops the moment he sees that you’re not laughing with him. Your head hangs low, your feet shuffling anxiously. His face twists, and suddenly the air thickens.  “Splints?”

You pick at your sleeves. “So just not me?”

“I was just kidding around.”

“Jokes have some truth to them.”

“Not all of them. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay, Caleb,” you finally meet his eyes again, and shrug. “I know you like someone else. I’m not an idiot.”

Silence commences, like a bell dropping on your head.

Caleb shifts his weight, one hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. It’s a nervous habit you’ve seen a hundred times—usually followed by some half-joke, something to smooth things over.

But nothing comes.

The space between you suddenly feels too small and too big all at once. You try to act normal. You really do.

You fiddle with your sleeve again, smoothing it down, then pulling at it, then smoothing it again. Anything to give your hands something to do, so they don’t reach for him out of instinct. 

Caleb glances at you. Then away.

Then back again, like he’s trying to solve something written across your face but can’t quite make out the words.

“Hey,” he starts, softer this time.

You hum in response, not trusting your voice yet.

Another pause. God, it’s awkward.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he mutters again, quieter now. Not defensive. Unsure. “You know I think you’re amazing.”

Just not enough.

“I am pretty great,” but it comes out too soft.

Neither of you knows what to do with another stretch of silence. So you opt to drink some more water instead.

“Why do you like me so much?” He eventually mutters out as he bites his bottom lip, eyes falling to the ground like he can’t bear to watch your expression. “You could do a lot better.”

You smile, but it’s half-hearted. “How could I not?”

He pauses, as if choosing his words carefully before his voice comes out in a soft whisper. “You mean so much to me. You’re smart, beautiful, and everything good in between—whoever gets to call you theirs is the luckiest person I know. And you know I’d do anything for you.”

Despite their sweetness, his words feel like judgement wrapping around your heart in vines, squeezing just before it’s about to pop. You wish you could block your ears out for what comes next.

“But it can’t be me.” Caleb’s lips purse, brows furrowing as he looks away. “I can’t give you what you want.”

The rejection hurts more than you realized it would. You want to tell him that it’s not fair to treat you the way he does and expect you not to fall for him. That holding your hair when you vomit, falling asleep at your bedside when you’re sick, and his eyes closing in on you in any room that you’re in is not fair. 

Instead, you nod. And you swear to yourself that you’ll swallow this sickening lump in your throat that makes you want to hurl and sob at the same time. That you’ll bury it deep in a graveyard within you that even the closest person to you would never know of. Especially him.  

“I don’t want it, either,” you snort back, immediately perking up to slap his back in what results in a jolt. His shoulders tense as he blinks wide at you, unsure of the sudden shift in atmosphere. “I don’t want feelings that belong to someone else, dumbass.”

Once it sinks in that you mean it, a smile finds its way onto his face, though something flickers beneath it, like a flash of something you don’t want to look too far into.

Not because you still had hope, but because whatever existed between you had never been something as simple as a crush. It had roots—tangled deep into your souls and impossible to pull free without tearing something open. You wanted to keep what was left. Even if it lingered just a little longer, and even if you pretended not to see the splintering strands in the string tying you together.

So you let it settle. Let it rot somewhere you couldn’t feel it.

The two of you fall into the kind of closeness that you’ve always had, and time passes as if it was always meant to be this way. It’s easier this way. For a while, it does work, but nothing ever really stays under wraps. Despite your incessant protests in telling yourself it’s fading, the scars he’s inflicted on you are just that. Scars. Unmoving yet subtle.

The thinning thread finally snaps a few years later, when MC develops feelings for a coworker in the Hunter’s Association. The day the cracks in the glass bridge holding you together shatter beneath your feet into a million different pieces.

“When’s the last time you’ve slept?”

He’s sprawled shirtless on the couch of his apartment in Skyhaven, freshly out of the shower after you arrived to visit him for the first time in months—only to see that he’s nearly overworking himself to death. Despite him going off to the DAA after college, you’d kept close contact, the connection between the two of you never wavering regardless of your restricted time. It only changed after news of MC broke out. Worried, you’d rushed to Skyhaven to make sure he was doing okay, which you’re clearly glad you did now. You’d practically had to drag him to the shower to keep him from passing out next to the front door in his gear.

Caleb, clearly, is off. You suppose you don’t blame him. The woman he loves is yearning for another. Almost poetic, really, but you don’t like seeing him this way. Especially when you know what it feels like yourself, even if you’ve gotten used to it. Gotten over it. He looks like a kicked puppy. Hurt, like a dog who’s just been scratched by its owner. 

“I dunno.”

You peer into the empty abyss that is his fridge and frown. There’s a few measly apples sitting inside, and a half-eaten protein bar that’s been there for god knows how long. “What the hell have you been eating?”

He responds with a grunt, letting his head fall back against the sofa. You decide to make do with the instant noodles he has stashed in one of the cupboards and bring it over to him once it seems mostly done. With a fork, you stick out a few noodles to his face, urging him. “Eat.”

“Not hungry,” he mutters.

“Don’t care. Sit up.”

He opens one of his eyes to peek at you, which somehow urges him forward. There’s darkness beneath his eyes—even stubble littering his chin from a few days worth of not shaving. You want to reach out and poke fun at him, but the state he’s in deters you. Instead, you silently feed him, watching him chew his food while staring at your hands. It makes you wish you put on a fresh set of polish before you came.

You twirl another small forkful and hold it out. He leans forward this time without being told, taking it quietly. His shoulder brushes yours as he settles back against the couch, and you can feel his skin through your shirt.

“Thanks,” he mutters, voice rough from disuse more than anything. “For coming.”

“Yeah,” you say, quieter now. “Someone had to make sure you didn’t rot in here.”

He huffs a faint laugh, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Probably would’ve. Dramatic way to go out, huh?”

You nudge his knee with yours. “Starving to death in your own apartment? Real heroic.”

A ghost of a smile flickers across his face. It makes your heart flutter. Stupid feelings.

“…thanks for coming, splints,” he says.

Your chest tightens—sharp and sudden. It feels like it’s threatening to feel something that’s not yours to feel. So instead, you look down at the bowl, pretending to focus on separating another bite. You twirl your fork, more carefully this time. “I had to. You weren’t responding, so I thought you died, or something. Open.”

He rolls his eyes, but obeys anyway. “Bossy.”

“Learned from the best.”

His lids flutter shut, voice dropping to a lower hum. “I missed this.”

Your hand stills. “What?”

He shrugs, eyes still closed. “You being here.”

His hair is sticking to his forehead, still damp from the shower. Before you realize what you’re doing, you brush a stray strand of hair off his forehead. You speak quietly. “You look like shit.”

“Wow,” he mutters. “You have a way with words.”

You frown, and without thinking, your hand lingers at his temple for just a second longer than it should. His skin is warm, still hot from the shower.

“Idiot,” you whisper.

He catches your wrist. Not tight, not stopping you. Simply holding it there for a moment that feels too long and not long enough at once. Your eyes meet for a fleeting moment, and then you’re looking away, setting the mostly finished bowl of noodles onto the coffee table to pull away.

“Don’t make this a habit. I’m not flying out here every time you forget to eat.”

“Could,” he murmurs. “You would.”

You don’t respond to that, because he’s not wrong.

“…Is she okay?”

It slips out of him like instinct. Like breathing. And just like that, everything shifts. You don’t answer right away—instead, your fingers tighten slightly around the fork.

“She’s fine,” you say eventually. Leave it, you plead in your head.

“Did she say anything?” he asks, sitting up a little more now. There’s something in his eyes, like he’s searching. “When you talked to her.”

You shrug, trying to keep your tone even. “Just normal stuff.” Stop, you think. Please stop talking.

“Like what?”

“Like her job. Her grandma. Nothing serious.” Shit.

He frowns slightly. “She didn’t mention him?”

There it is. It’s always about her.

You know he’s in a vulnerable spot right now, but it does nothing to ease the sudden flame roaring in your chest. Whether it’s from years of repressed hurt or shame, all it amounts to is a relentless ball of rage inside of you that leaves your nails digging crescents into the palms of your hands. You stare at him, chewing on the inside of your cheek as you inch away from him. 

“Does it matter?”

Caleb’s face relaxes. “What?”

“Why does it matter what she thinks about him? She likes him, end of story, no?”

“I just want to know if he’s a decent guy.”

Your ass. “That’s not really your business, Caleb, but sure. He’s a great guy. Amazing, honestly. He’s really gentlemanly and checks every single box. He lives above her apartment, so they’re right next to each other. He treats her gently, too. I’d bet every girl would jump at a chance to date a guy like that.”

You’re not sure where the words are tumbling out of, but it’s too late to go back. Neither do you want to.

“I wonder if he has a brother. Maybe MC could set me up or something.”

“Oh. Is he…” Caleb’s back straightens, and you notice his fingers digging into his thighs. “...handsome?”

“Didn’t you hear me? I’m telling you, he’s perfect. His face could pay for the Linkon rent by itself.”

He suddenly stands, and you glare up at him through your eyebrows. “Why are you talking like that?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you scoff.

He narrows his eyes. It’s something you haven’t seen in a while, since Caleb rarely gets upset at you. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, splints.”

“Can you just spit it out? What am I saying differently?”

“You’re angry.”

You stand, following suit. He looms over you to have his shadow essentially engulf you, and you wish you could kick his ankle so he falls to the ground. “Maybe if you weren’t so irritating, I wouldn’t feel so annoyed right now.”

“What?”

“It’s hard to watch, Caleb,” you hiss out in exasperation, throwing your hands into the air. “It’s always pipsqueak this, pipsqueak that, pipsqueak what. Seriously, we’re not kids anymore, you need to get over it!”

You’re not sure if you’re talking to him or yourself anymore.

“Can we calm down and talk? If I’ve been talking too much about it, I can stop, so—”

“We haven’t seen each other in months, Caleb! And all you want to ask me about is how she’s been? Why don’t you ask her yourself, if you’re so curious? Oh, but you can’t, because you always have to be perfect in front of her. So instead, you dump all of this on me. Your goods and bads, all of it, just for me to get kicked to the curb like I’m some dispensable object.”

“What?” his balks. “Dispensible? Are you serious? As if I haven’t gotten you out of every little thing you’ve gotten yourself into the past decade of our lives? As if I haven’t picked you up every weekend from your friends’ places at three in the morning? Like I haven’t called you every single week—”

“Well, I want you to stop that!” your words spit at him like weak knives, growing louder by the second. 

“You didn’t seem very against it the last forty times.”

“I am now.”

“What has gotten into you, splints?”

“Don’t call me that right now,” you glower, and you try to ignore the hurt flashing across his expression. “I’m just sick of seeing you follow her around like some wet dog. She doesn’t see you like that, can’t you see that?”

Your breathing begins to stutter, and you suck in a deep breath through your nose. Your chest stings, and you pray that you don’t lose composure so the tears threatening to bubble at the corners of your eyes remain hidden.

“You told me that you couldn’t give me what I wanted. Well, she can’t either,” you bore holes into his chest, too afraid of what you might see if you look up. “If I can get over my stupid feelings, so can you.”

But you’re not over it. Not at all.

He opens his mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. For the first time in a while, you’ve rendered him speechless, and it feels even worse than what it felt to be rejected years ago. You’re not sure how your nails haven’t drawn blood at this point. You’d rather that they do, so you have some excuse to use the restroom.

“It’s not fair what you do, Caleb,” you try to will your tears to stay at bay, but you can’t help them. They sting, blurring your vision as you drop your head in some pathetic hope that he won’t face them head on. “How you treat me when you don’t like me like that is not fair. At least MC doesn’t know, but you—you know, and yet you—”

The rational part of you says that it’s not entirely his fault. Sure, you insisted on staying by his side. Sure, you insisted that you could push down your feelings. Sure, you’ve promised a lot of things, but it’s his fault too, for being the way he is—so kind, so thoughtful, just so him. 

You wipe desperately at your tears. It was a lost cause from the start.

“Please don’t cry.” His face drains of color, apparent even against the dim lighting in his apartment. He steps towards you, and you take a step back. “Please don’t cry, splints, just not that.”

But when your tears refuse to cease dripping down your cheeks, your face flushing in humiliation, you feel both his hands cupping either side of it. He tilts your gaze up, and you realize that he’s only inches away from you, so much so that you can feel his breath against your skin. It’s moments like these that you lose yourself in his beauty. The deepness of his eyes that seem to peer into your very soul is one of the first features that you fell in love with as a child, and it hasn’t changed since. Damn him. You blink, eyes wide while his own flicker to your lips. 

“Be as mad as you want. Hit me, hate me even,” he whispers, his nose almost touching yours now. His thumb pad smooths your tears away. “But don’t waste your tears on someone like me.”

You think you might be imagining things. Because with the tension that nearly suffocates you and his lashes almost fluttering against your skin, you think he might be about to kiss you.

A sharp pain jabs you in the chest. Is it pity? A consolation prize dressed up as something softer? Is it to smooth things over, to make this moment easier for him to leave behind? Or is it rebellion? Something reckless from the fact that he can’t have her? Your tears have dried up, but the rest of your body seems to weep, as no excitement, no butterflies course through your veins. 

Why is it always something else? Why is it never you? It only hurts—because even now, you’re just the place he empties everything he feels for her.

Instinctively, you press your palm into his lips to push him away, and it feels like the air itself has stilled.

His breath lingers against your skin. Yours stutters like it’s forgotten how to exist in the same space as him. The air is so thick you could slice it with a knife.

Eventually, he pulls away. Caleb stares at you with an expression you haven’t seen before, though you don’t look long enough to analyze it. Wordlessly, you gather your things, stuffing your jacket into your bag and stumble over to the door—all while he stays locked in a petrified state, like he’s processing what he just did. Your gaze remains fixated on the wooden panels of the floor while you pack, refusing to look any higher in case you might see anything other than his feet.

“Don’t follow me,” you tell him as you leave. 

You don’t wait to see if he hears you.

The journey home feels like there’s a gaping hole in your chest, and all you can do is stare out the window as you feel the vibrations of the train through your fingertips. Outside, the world blurs past in streaks of dim lights and shadowed shapes, and you wish that your feelings were as fleeting as the buildings blurring by. 

You try to count the number of trees you see. Not on the warmth of his breath against your palm. Not on how close he’d been. Not on the fact that, for a second, you almost let him.

If you hadn’t pushed him away, would it have meant anything? Or would you have just been a mistake he’d regret in the morning?

Your phone buzzes frantically in your pocket, and you pull it out to see his name in big bold letters. He’s texting you simultaneously, apologizing in so many different ways that they all start to blend into one message you don’t plan on reading. You refuse to give into what your heart wants. It’s hurt you too much in the past. So instead, your thumb hovers above the ‘mute’ button.

You press it and shut your eyes.

Even if it’s difficult to adjust the first few weeks without him, you can’t bear to face him either. He shows up at your door. Nearly every day for some time, knocking softly and asking if you’d be willing to talk. When you simply plug in your earbuds and bury yourself into your bed, he apologizes through the door and leaves you something to eat. You tend to throw it out at first, but after a while, you figure it’s just a waste. Just like that, a month goes by. And then another. Then another. Until you can’t count them on one hand anymore. He comes by once every two weeks or so now, likely busy with his work.

Despite how much your body seems to miss his presence, you wonder if you should distance Caleb permanently. It’s a daunting idea. One that you never would’ve thought just a few years ago, but the embarrassment runs deeper than you want to admit. The feelings you’ve tried so hard to hide clearly aren’t hidden. Is this sustainable? 

Regardless of what you think, he comes around like clockwork.

“Are you in there?” He knocks gently on your door, voice soft. He probably knows you are.

“No.”

He chuckles from the other end. “Right. Happy birthday, splints.”

You glance at your phone calendar. He’s right. 

As usual, he begins to talk about random events in his life that he hasn’t had the opportunity to tell you, and while you usually muffle it out, you decide to quietly shuffle over to the door today. To tell him, maybe, that you don’t want to keep doing this. Or maybe just to hear his voice, you don’t know. Either way, you slide your back down the door where he’s on the other side, pulling your knees into your chest.

“I don’t know if you’ve read my text, but–”

“I don’t read them.”

Caleb stops, and you can almost hear his breath hitch. You usually don’t give him more than a few words, much less a full sentence, so it seems to have taken him aback. After the brief remission, you hear him clear your throat. “Splints, can you open the door? I want to talk—apologize to you.”

Silence.

“Or I can do it out here. That’s fine,” he sighs. “I want you to know that it’s okay if you want to hate me forever after this. I won’t keep clinging to you if you at listen to what I have to say, but I really just—I need to say that this is my fault.”

You half-heartedly hear his words drone on, his confidence wavering every so often while you pull up his chats on your phone. You have no idea how you hadn’t folded and read his chats until now, though it might’ve been more so for your own peace than anything. There’s too many to scroll up to, so you read the most recent messages, squinting in the dark against the light of your phone. 

[1:41PM]

[caleb]: are you eating well?

[caleb]: i made this today

[caleb]: [image attached]

[caleb]: your favorite dishes :) i’ll drop them off at your place later

[caleb]: i hope you’re not just throwing them out…wouldn’t blame you tho

[caleb]: at least take care of yourself :)

[8:13AM]

[caleb]: hi splints :)

[caleb]: you probably watched it already but that movie you wanted to see came out a week ago. I went to go see it

[caleb]: i still think it’s kind of bad…but it was entertaining

[caleb]: unless you wanna argue about it ?? :3

[5:32PM]

[caleb]: ranked first today

[caleb]: i was excited to celebrate it with you and then remembered :/

[caleb]: it doesn’t feel as good when i can’t tell you lol

[caleb]: hope you’re okay

[11:23PM]

[caleb]: i wish i hadn’t been so stupid

[caleb]: i didn’t deserve you back then

[caleb]: i still don’t

[caleb]: i shouldn’t have lost my cool when you were over here. didn’t like hearing you talk about that guy like that

[caleb]: im sure he’s a good looking guy, and i know you’re particularly weak to good looking guys…

[caleb]: i was being childish and i wish i could’ve explained it to you then

[caleb]: i know you don’t owe me anything and you don’t have to listen to what i have to say

[caleb]: but i never wanted to make you feel used, and i never did. if that even sounds believable lol

[caleb]: it was never about her

[caleb]: there’s so much more i want to say but i’ll say it in person

[caleb]: miss you a lot

[caleb]: sleep tight

You wish the tightness in your chest would go away. You wish you didn’t feel his sorrow through him. And you wish you didn’t care about your own feelings for him.

“I love you, splints,” he murmurs, and your attention tears away from the chats, your phone nearly clattering onto the floor. Your eyes widen, suddenly regretting that you missed the first half of his speech. 

“Not in the way you say it to your friends, or the way you say it to family. You’re my life, and you’ve been my life since the day you gave me that ring. I care for MC, but what I feel for you is different. It’s always been different. I realized that years ago, but I was afraid that it wouldn’t be fair for you. I thought you deserved someone better than someone who doesn’t know how to understand their own feelings.” Your throat dries. “I thought it wasn’t fair because I’d already put you through so much.”

“At the same time, I’m a selfish guy, you know? I couldn’t let you go either, because I couldn’t bear to see you with someone else. I wanted it to be us, and the only way I could think of existing without feeling like I was ruining you was to stay how we were. Stagnant, I guess,” he chuckles, but it feels sad. Weak. “I’m an idiot when it comes to you, you know.”

You don’t respond.

Not because you don’t have anything to say—if anything, there’s too much. It crowds your throat, every word scraping against the next until none of them can make it out. Your fingers hover uselessly over your phone, screen still lit with a conversation you can’t even remember reading.

‘I love you.’

The words echo, but they don’t land the way you once dreamed they would. They don’t bloom or soften or fix anything. They just sit. Too heavy. Too late.

Your chest tightens, aching outward like it’s trying to break free. Because you’ve wanted this—God, you’ve wanted this—for so long that you stopped letting yourself imagine it could ever actually happen. It should feel like relief. Instead, it feels real, but fragile.

Because you remember too much. The almosts. The waiting. The way you learned how to swallow your emotions when he built a wall between the two of you—and that doesn’t disappear just because he finally found the words.

Your hand curls slightly against the door, fingers brushing the cool surface.

Even with all that, you still miss the warmth of his skin. How his hair felt through a towel as you dried it. How he’d flick your forehead when you’d get a question wrong during one of his tutoring sessions. How he’d tease you about your grades or interests, and learn more about them anyway. How he’d message you throughout the day about random endeavors. How he’d always be there. How with just a call of his name, he would’ve crossed the continents for you. His eyes. His lips. His face. His painfully handsome face.

You remember him in all parts of your life—and not a single moment you’ve spared has gone without him. You remember how he held your hand when you’d broken your arm, and the way he’d lifted you into the air and embraced you when you were accepted into the same college as him. You remember how he’d pet your hair as you complained about him going too far for the DAA, promising he’d visit often. And he did. He always kept his promises.

Your body moves on its own, as if this was how it was always meant to be. The door slowly creaks open.

“…We’re a mess.”

A faint, tired smile is all you can give him. Still, when he sees you, the world seems to stop for just the two of you, and it takes him a moment to fully register that you’re really there. That you’re not just a figment of his imagination, and he hasn’t truly lost you forever as he’d feared. “This doesn’t mean you’re completely out of the woods. I’m still mad.”

“You should be,” he whispers out, nearly breathless.

Hesitantly, you step towards him. He reaches his arm out, brows furrowed cautiously like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to even blink right now. The tips of his fingers twitch towards you. You raise a brow, and he swallows the lump in his throat, retracting back until you nod. 

Realizing you don’t have shoes, you step onto the fronts of his shoes one foot at a time, taking his hand until you’re flush against him and he’s already engulfing you into a crushing embrace. His arms wrap around you, strong and warm. He smells good. Though you can’t confidently say the same for yourself given the state you’re in, he drops his chin into the crook of your neck and inhales deeply, like a man starved.

“Note to self,” you mumble. “Don’t propose to any handsome guy you see.”

Caleb laughs, airy this time, and you feel it against your collarbone. “I thought you were going to leave your husband out here to die in the cold.”

“I should divorce you. We’re not even married yet.”

He grins, lopsided. “You should.”

“I won’t.”

“I know.

You bury your face into his chest, fingers digging into the fabric on his back. “I don’t want a version of my life without you, Caleb. As annoying as you are.”

He pulls away for a brief moment and places a kiss on your cheek, his own dusting red. Flowers feel like they’re blooming on the spot he pecked, but somehow, it feels natural. You’ve always been close to him physically throughout your upbringing, even if it never involved lips–that was new territory. You cross your arms, relying on his hands around your waist to keep you upright. “Tell me more.”

“You nag too much.”

He kisses your nose. “Hm?”

“You’re emotionally repressed.”

“Ouch.” He kisses your temple.

“You’re too good at things you don’t try at.”

Your jawline.

“You’re unstable. You’re too protective. You’re stupid.”

“I love you,” he says, pressing his forehead against yours. His lips hover above your own, just centimeters away.

Your lashes flutter against his. “Then prove it to me.”

“I will,” he whispers, just as his mouth slots against yours, and a warmth blooms throughout your chest. You melt into him, like you always have and you always will. “I’ll prove it to you for the rest of my life.”

[hunnismokah]

morning YAWWWNNNN

[dark-night-hero]

Imagine a zombie apocalyse au ft. Caleb.

Imagine the first thing that caleb ever said to you was, "Duck!" Followed by a gunshot seconds later, loud and violent and too close. You barely managed to throw yourself down before something behind you collapsed with wet, rotten sound against the pavement. And for one horrible second, all you could hear was ringing. Then came your breathing. Sharp, panicked and painfully human.

Imagine you stayed crouched on instinct, fingers gripping the rusted pipe you had been using as a weapon, heart beating so violently on your chest that might as well burst through your ribs. Then a pair of boots stopped in front of you. "You good?"

Imagine the way you looked up slowly. The stranger standing there held a pistol loosely in one hand like it weighed nothing at all. The sunlight caught briefly on the barrel before he lowered it. There he was, tall, broad shoulder. Dark jacket streaked with dirt and old blood. A rifle strapped across his back. Alive. Which honestly felt stranger than the gun. because by then, months into the apocalypse, you had gotten used to seeing more corpse than people. The dead were predictable, people weren't.

so Imagine, you stared at him silently. The walker behind you twitched once on the ground, half its skull missing. "If you said yes too fast," The stranger continued casually. "I'm gonna assume you hit your head." That made you blink. Then looked at the dead walker, then back at him. "...I had it handled." He snorted immediately which made you feel somehow offended. "No you didn't." "I did." "It was literally reaching for your neck." "It was under control." "Sure."

Imagine the way you narrow your eyes as he grinned. And somehow, soomehow that irritated warmth in his expression felt more dangerous than the walker ever did. Because people who still smiled like that in the apocalypse? Were either crazy, or the kind of people that made you forget that the world ended. Both were dangerous. So as the stranger crouched beside the corpse and started checking its pockets, you stared at him.

"...What are you doing?" "Looking for cigarettes." You looked at him like he was joking. Then he actually pulled out a crushed pack from the walker's jacket. "No fucking way." "See?" He said proudly. "Today's a lucky day." "You're digging through a corpse." "Adaptability is important." "That thing literally tried to eat me." "And now it's donating supplies. Circle of life." You barked out a laugh before you could stop yourself. And the sound startled you more than him.

because Imagine, you genuinely couldn't remember the last time you laughed. So as the stranger looked up immediately his pruple iris met yours as his eyebrows lifting slightly in surprise before his mouth curled into a softer grin. "There." He pointed at you. "That." "What?" "That face, keep that around." He stood up again, slipping the cigarette into his pocket. "Means you're still human." Human, huh. You almost forgot what that felt like.

Imagine you should have left after that. Really. Because that was the rule now. Don't trust stranger, don't stay in groups too long, don't tell people where you sleep, don't get attached. Attachment got people killed. You learn that early. The world ended, and suddenly everyone became capable of terrible things. You had seen people abandon family members to save themselves. Seen strangers kill each other over canned food. Seen a man beat another man for a half-empty water bottle.

Imagine the dead were monsters because they had no humanity left. The living were monsters because they still did. So yes, you absolutely shouldn've left. Instead, you found yourself sharing canned goods with a stranger inside an abandoned laundromat while rain hammered the roof overhead. "So," He said through a mouthful of food. "You got a name?" You hesitated and he noticed. "Fair." He admitted with a small nod. "I could be a serial killer." "In the apocalypse?"

"Timing's rough, I know." "...You could rob me." His eyes flicked towards your backpack. "You own exactly one pipe wrench and three crackers." You narrowed your eyes at him. "You checked my bag?" "It was open." "You're an asshole." "And yet," He pointed at himself dramatically. "The asshole saved your life." You rolled your eyes and he laughed again. God, he laughed so easily. Like the world wasn't rotting around him. Like death wasn't waiting outside every door. It made no sense. "What's your name then?" You asked eventually. "Caleb." He said, offering a hand. You stare at it suspiciously for a full three seconds before finally shaking it. And his grim was warm, stead, and real. "Nice to meet you." He said. And weirdly, it sounded genuine.

Imagine traveling with Caleb happened gradually. Not because either of you asked. It just... Happened. The first few days were temporary. Then temporary became a routine. You scavenged together, ate together, slept in shifts together. And somewhere along the line, surviving stopped feeling like a lonely thing which honestly scared you more than the walkers did. Because dependence was dangerous and Caleb was dangerously easy to depend on.

Imagine he knew things, too many things. How to siphon gas without swallowing fumes, how to identify infected water, how to reinforce doors properly, how to ration food, how to move quietly through buildings. And most of all, guns. And god, he sure knows how to handle guns like they were extensions of his body.

"You're holding it wrong." You glare at him for where you stood, in the middle of an empty parking lot. "I'm holding it." "Barely." "I hate guns." "You'll hate getting eaten more." You groaned framatically while he stepped behind you. "Relax your shoulders." He instructed. His hands adjusted your stance carefully with warm palms and gentle pressure. Suddenly, you become aware of how close he was. "Don't lock your elbows." "You sound like an old man." "You shoot like one." You scoffed. Then immediately nearly lost control of the recoil after firing.

Imagine the way Caleb burst out laughing. "Oh my god- your face-" "Shut up!" "You looked personally betrayed by physics." "I hate you." "No you don't." And the terrifying thing was, he said so confidently like he already knew. And maybe he did.

Imagine that night, Caleb talked. Not constantly, but enough. Enough to fill the silence that used to suffocate you when you were alone. He told stories while cleaning weapons, while checking maps, while sitting beside weak campfires. Sometimes it was stupid stories, sometimes it was the embarrasing ones, sometimes it was stories about her. Pips. You never learned her real name at first. Just that nickname.

"She used to steal my hoodies constantly." Caleb muttered once while staring into the fire. "Then deny it while literally wearing them." You smiled faintly. "She sounds awful." "She is." But his expression softened immediately after saying it. And god, that look. You noticed it every time he talked about her. Like his entire face changed without him realizing. "She hates vegestables." "She talks in her sleep." "She gets lost in grocery stores somehow." "She cries during movies but acts like she doesn't." "She's tougher than people think."

Imagine every single story sounded precious coming from him. Not because of words but because of the way he said them. Like he carried her carefully even in conversation. And you, you listened quietly while something ugly and aching slowly grew inside your chest. Not anger, not jealousy exactly. Just... Awareness. Awareness that you were temporary. That Caleb has somewhere to go, someone to find. And you? You were just the person walking beside him until he got there.

Imagine in one particularly cold night, the two of you sat on top of an abandoned convenience store roof. The city stretched dark around you. No lights anymore, no traffic, no life. Just empty buildings and the distant groan of walkers wandering through the streets below. And Caleb sat beside the fire cleaning his knife carefully. The orange light flickered across his face. And you tried not to stare but failed iserably.

"This someone you keep talking about," You said eventually. "What would you do if you find her?" Caleb looked up immediately and the expression on his face, it genuinely startled you. Not angry, worse, he was certain. "Nah," He said quietly. "Don't joke like that." His tone remained light. But something underneath it wasn't. "She knows how to survive." He continue after a moment. "Pips is smart. Stubborn too." A small smile tugged at his mouth. "Probably yelling at people somewhere right now."

"I see." You nodded slowly and silence setteled again. The cold wind drifted across the rooftop. Then, "What would you do if you find her?" That made him smile properly. Soft, unthinking, in love. And it hurt embarrasingly bad. "Find somewhere safe." He said. "Heard rumors about a secured place. N109 zone. Well protected, functional power, and farms too." "Sounds fake." "Probably is." You huffed quietly. "But if it's real," Caleb continued, eyes flickering toward the dark skyline. "I'd take her there." Her. Not us.

and Imagine, really, why would it be us? You weren't anything. Not officially. Not emotionally. Not in the way that mattered. The two of you were just survivors sharing road because surviving alone was harder. So why did you chest ache every time he smiled like that over someone else?

"Wait-" You stared at him increduloudly one afternoon while scavenging an airport hangar. "You were an actual pilot?" "Yep." "You're lying." "I'm offended." "You said aviation school." "I graduated." "No way." Caleb looked unbearably smug. "You wanna see my license?" "You carried your pilot license through the apocalypse?" "Well now you're making it sound stupid." "Because it is stupid." He laughed so loudly it echoed through the hangar in which you did ended up laughing too.

Imagine there was never a single quiet day with Caleb around. He filled spaces effortlessly. Sometimes with jokes, sometimes with stories, sometimes with sheer existence alone. And slowly, dangerously, you started building routines around him. Waiting for his voice in the mornings, listening for his footsteps, sleeping easier during his watch shifts. Like your body itself had started believing Caleb meant safety. Which was the dumbest possible thing you could do during apocalypse. Because safety wasn't real anymore. And neither was forever.

Imagine then you found her. No, she found him. It happened near an abandoned medical checkpoint outside the city. You remembered hearing running footsteps first. Then a weak voice. "Caleb..." The reaction was immediate. You watched as Caleb froze so suddenly beside you that you nearly walked into him. And then he was moving. Fast, faster than you had ever seen him move before. And the girl stumbling towards the checkpoint looked half-dead already, sweating, shaking, varely conscious. But the second Caleb caught her. You understood something. Oh- that's her. Because you had never seen him look at anything the way he looked at her.

Imagine it wasn't relief, not happiness either. It was something deeper. Like finding oxygen after drowning. "Pips." He breathed. The sound of it almost made you look away. She collapsed against him almost immediately. And Caleb held her so carefully it made your throat tighten. You stood there awkwardly holding your rifle while realizing something horribly pathetic. You never stood a chance.

Imagine, MC was sick, not bitten, at least you didn't think so. But she burned with fever badly enough that even touching her forehead for a second make your palm feel hot afterward. Her breathing came unevenly, weak and shallow, and every now and then, her body trembled hard enough that Caleb had to tighten his hold around her to keep her steady. And you... You did not ask questions. In apocalypse, poeple stopped asking questions a long time ago.

so Imagine you kept moving. "Left." Caleb muttered while checking the bloodstained map in his hand. "There should be a maintenance corridor." You glance down the dark hallway. "Should' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there." "Have faith." "I had faith once, then society collapsed." That actually made MC laugh weakly against his chest. A tiny sound, something so fragile. Caleb immediately looked down at her like she has hung the moon. "You still with us, Pips?" "Mhm.." God, that look again. You turned away first.

Imagine the facility was massive. Some kind of old evacuation site connected to an abandoned research building near the edge of the city. Suspicious as it way sound with the amount of military trucks still littered the parking lot outside, rusting quietly beneath overgrown weeds and dried blood stains. And inside, it smelled worse. Rot, mold, old death. The deeper you went, the quieter it became and somehow, that was worse than noise.

Imagine your flashlight swept across overturned hospital beds and scattered papers on the floor. And every now and then, you caught movements behind reinforced glass doors. Walkers, trapped inside rooms. Their dead fingers dragged slowly against the window as you passed. Stratch, stratch, stratch. MC flinch weakly at the sound making Caleb adjust her closer instinctively.

"You okay?" "Cold..." Your eyes flicked towards her. She was shivering now despite the fever. Not good, not good at all. "We need to stop soon." You said quietly. Caleb nodded grimly. "There should be a rooftop access point somewhere above us." "Please tell me this place has the aircraft." "If the rumors are right." You sigh. "Again with the rumors." "Hey, rumors are all we got left nowadays."

Imagine the first sign something was wrong came from the silence. No walkers, none. Not in the hallway, not behind doors, not banging against walls. Nothing. You slowed slightly. "Sooo.." You murmured. "EIther we got lucky-" "Or it's worse." Caleb finished immediately. "See? That. That's exactly the kind of optimism I hate." A faint grin tugged at his mouth. Then- click. You froze.

"What was that?" MC whispered weakly. Your flashlight lowered slowly towards the floor. A wire. Thin, nearly invisible, connected to a rusted can near the wall. Your stomach dropped. "...Fuck." caleb's expression hardened instantly. "Don't move." Too late. Because somewhere deeper in the building, there was a clang. Then another, then another. Metal crashing violently against metal. Your eyes widened. "No, no no no-" A siren suddenly screamed alive overhead. Red emergency lights flooded the hallway instantly.

and Imagine then came the sound. Groaning, hundreds of them. From below, from above, from inside the walls themselves. "Oh you have GOT to be kidding me." You hissed and the building erupted. Banging, screaming, bodies slamming against the doors. Walkers flooded into the hallways from every direction. "What the fuck did that trigger?!" You shouted. "Probably an emergency lockdown system!" Caleb barked back. "WHO THE FUCK BUILDS THAT?!" "THE GOVERNMENT?!"Fair enough. "Move!" You snappened immediately.

Imagine the three of you started running, your boots slammed againstthe floor whie red lights flashed overhead violently. Walkers poured from stairwells and broken doors, drawn by the siren echoing throughout the facility. One lunged from the side and you buried your knife in its skull without slowing down. "Straight ahead!" Caleb yelled, MC coughed hard against his shoulder, trembling badly now. "Caleb-" "I got you." God, even now, exhusted and terrified, his voice soften for her automatically. And you hated how much hearing that hurt.

Imagine the stairwell was chaoes, bodies crowded below, rotting hands clawed upward through gaps in the railing. You nearly slipped on blood while forcing your way higher. "Door!" You shouted and Caleb kicked it open, hard. The three of you stumbled into another corridor breathing heavily. Then stopped, your stomach dropped instantly. "...No." The hallway was packed with walker. At least fiftly, or maybe more. The emergency lights painted them in horrible flashing red as they turned slowly towards the sound of you. Dead faces, open mouths, clouded eyes. Then they started coming towards your way.

"Run!" You slammed the door shut immediately while Caleb shoved a cabinet against it. Bodies crashed into the other side violently, the metal groaned. "Window!" You shouted. "No jump." Caleb snapped after one glance, "Too high." The room itself looked like some kinf of old administrative office. No exits, no escape. Only another hallway leading deeper inside the facility. And somewhere above, a helicopter waited. So close. You could practically taste freedom. Then MC made a small broken sound. You turned immediately. Her condition was getting worse, sweat drenched her skin completely now. Her breathing came shallow and uneven and she looked barely consious against Caleb's chest.

"We don't have time." You muttered. "I know." The door behind the cabinet shook violently. BANG, BANG, BANG. Wood splintered as more frowls filled the hallway outside. You started pacing automatically, brain working too fast. Think. Think. THINK. "There." MC whispered suddenly. You followed her shaking hand towards a map hanging crookedly on the wall. Your eyes narrowed. "...Maintenance bridge." Caleb looked too. "It connects to the west wing." "Which connects to the rooftop acccess." You finished.

Imagine the way relief flickered briefly across his face, then disappeared. Because noth of you saw the problem immediately. The bridge crossed directly over the main atrium, where the horde was gathering and thousands of footsteps ehoed below already. Draw by the sirens, by you. "...Shit." You whispered. The door cracked loudly behind you. One dead arm shoved partially through the splintering wood. MC looked close to passing out completely now. And Caleb, Caleb looked terrified for the first time since you meet him. Not for himself but for her. You saw it clearly. The desperation, the fear, the helplessness. And somehow, that hurt more than anything. Because even at the end of the world... Even now, he loved her so much.

Imagine the west wing was falling apart. You could feel it in the walls. Every few seconds, the building groaned somewhere deep beneath your feet like something enormous was twisting inside its bones. Dust drifted constantly from the ceiling. Pipes screamed while metal shrieked in the distance loud enough to make your teeth ache. The whole place sounds echausted. Like it had been dying for a long time and only now decided to collapse properly. And honestly? You understand that feeling.

Imagine the way you shoved another cabinet against the stairwell door while Caleb checked the corridor ahead. "Clear." He whispered. The hallway beyond flcikered under failing emergency lights, everything painted in unstable red. Old blood stained the walls in long brown smears. Abandoned luggage littered the floor alongside military bags and overturned stretchers. People ran here once, you could tell. The evidence of panic still remained everywhere.

Imagine MC coughed weakly behind you and Caleb immediately turned around. "You okay?" She only hum in return, but you could easily tell that she wasn't. And Caleb, the panic in his eyes everytime he looked at her. You noticed it more now. The way he adjust his grip instictively whenever she trembled, the way his voice siften automatically around her, the way exhustion disappeared from him whenever she needed something. And you looked away first, because there were some things you could survive easier by pretending not to see.

Imagine the rooftop access was close, that was the cruel part. So close. Only one more connecting hallway between you and the emergency ladder leading towards the helipad. Only one hallway. But unfortunately, it was also the exact direction the walkers were coming from. You heard them before you saw them. That horrible collective sound. Dragging feet, wet groaning, bodies colliding endlessly into each other. Too many, far too many. The emergency siren overhead still blared intermittently through the building, distorted and dying. Every scream of the alam pulled more dead things inward like a beacon.

Imagine the hallway ahead opened into a wider terminal junction, and beyond it, the maintenance access leading toward the rooftop. And you almost laughed when you saw it, because of course, of course the only escape route sat directly behind a moving wall of corpses. "Fuck." You breathed quietly as Caleb followed your gaze before immediately saying, "No." You looked at him. "You don't even know what I'm gonna say." "I know exactly what you're gonna say." The walkers shuffled closer in the distance. You counted automatically. Thirty, maybe forty or more.

Imagine, the corridor itself was too narrow to fight through. Too loud, too cramped. One gunshot would bring the entire damn building down on top of you. You look to your side and see MC swayed weakly against Caleb's chest. "We can still go around." He muttered quickly. "There is no around." "We find another route." "And waste how much time?" Your voice came out sharper than intended. "Look at her Caleb." His jaw tightened immediately because he knew. MC's condition was getting worse by timme. Even standing looked difficult for her now. She needed medical attention immediately. Not later, not tomorrow. Now.

Imagine another distant crash echoed through the building as you could tell the walkers stirred louder, closer. Your brain started calculating instinctively. The distance, noise and movement patterns. If something loud pulled the horde sideways, even briefly, there would be enough time. Not too much, but enough. And just then, your stomach dropped before you can even fully formed the thought. Because you already knew, there really wasn't another option. Not dramatic sacrifice, not heroism. Just math. A simple, horrible math.

Imagine, if nobody distracted them, all three of you died here. That made you swallowed hard before quietly saying. "I can pull them away." "No." Immediate and sharp. You almost smiled despite yourself. Still stubborn. "Caleb-" "No." "We don't have enough ammo." "We fight through." "We won't make it halfway." "We try anyway." "Then what?" Your voice cracked sharser this time. "She collapses? One of us gets grabbed? You know how this ends." "We don't know that." "Yes we do!" Your voice echoed harder tha intended through the hallway and the walkers immediately stirred louder, closer. Shit.

"Caleb." You whispered roughly. "This isn't a movie." "I know that!" "Then stop acting like there's a magically another way out of this!" His breathing turned uneven. Angry. Panicked. "No." He said again, quieter this time. "I'm not letting you do that." And something painful twisted in your chest hearing that. Not because it fixed anything, but because it didn't. Reality stayed cruel no matter how badly he wanted otherwise. "You're not letting me?" You repeated softly. "You know what I mean." "Do I?" "Don't do that right now." "Do what?" "That thing where you act okay with this!"

Imagine you stared at him and there it was. Fear. Raw, ugly and despirate. Not anger. Fear. Because Caleb already understood what this could mean. Your throat tightened painfully. The walkers slowly crowded deeper into the junction ahead now, bodies pressing together beneath the red emergency lights. The deads were moving patiently towards you. MC whimpered weakly against Caleb's chest. That sound alone nearly shattered the entire argument apart. You close your eyes briefly then you looked back at him. "She needs you alive."

Imagine the words tasted bitter. Not because they weren't true but because they were. Caleb looked away sharply for the first time. Like hearing it out loud physically hurt him. "We can all make it." He muttered and you almost laughed. Not cruelly, just tired. "You don't even believe in that." Then there was silence. A heavy one, because he didn't. So as the building groaned violently again around you. Like somewhere below, another barricade finally gave out and that sound alone made your stomach drop. No more time. That was it, this was the movement.

Imagine the way you stepped closer before your courage disappeared completly. "Hey." You muttered softly. Caleb looked at you immediately and God, that expression. Exhausted, terrified, desperate. Human. And suddenly you wanted something horribly impossible. One more night around a campfire. One more stupid argument. One more morning hearing him complain dramatically about canned food. You wanted more time. But the apocalypse didn't care what people wanted. It never did.

"I promise I'll make it to N109 zone." You said quietly. Something in Caleb's face cracked instantly. "Don't say it like that." "Like what?" "Like you're saying goodbye." Your chest ached so badly it almost made you angry. Because none of this would've been easier if he treated you carelessly. Instead, Caleb made surviving beside him feel dangerously close to living. And maybe that was crueler. "I'm not." You lied softly. "You better not be." The words came out rough. Almost shaking. And your eyes burned suddenly. God. Why now? Why did everything have to hurt now?

Imagine the walker were close enough now that you could hear their teeth snapping. You checked your gun quickly, not enough bullets. Not enough time. "Listen to me carefully." You said. "Once I move away from the hallway, you run straight for the ladder access." "No." "Caleb-" "No." "You hate to." "I said no!" His voice cracked violently this time. Then MC stirred weakly again between you both. "Caleb.." She whispered painfully and that broke something in him immediately.

Imagine you saw it happened. Her. You. Reality. All colliding together at once. His grip tightened around her while he looked at you helplessly. And somehow, that hurt more than if he chose easily. "You need to come back." He said suddenly. The words hit so hard you forgot hwo to breathe for a second. "What?" "You hear me?" His voice shook now. "You need to come back." The horde surged louder down the corridor. Closer. Then even closer. You forced yourself to breathe again. "That's not really something I can guarantee." "Yes it is." "Caleb-" "I'll wait for you."

Imagine the way your throat burned instantly. Why would he say things like that? Why now? You looked away first. Because if you kept staring at him like this, then you might stay. And then all three of you would die here. "Ten minutes," You whispered roughly. "If I don't make it to the hellpad yen minutes after you get there. Leave." "No." "Yes." "I'm not leaving you behind." "You have to." "No!" "CALEB!" That shout cracked violently between you. Even the walker react to it immediately. Your breathing turned ragged.

"So what?" You hissed. "You stay? Die with me? Is that your plan." His silence answered enough. Your chest physically hurt, because some selfish, ugly part of you almost wanted him to say yes. Wanted proof that losing you would matter. But then MC coughed painfully against him again. Then there was reality. Always reality. You soften immediately. "Please." You whispered this time. "Please don't make this harder."

Imagine the way Caleb stared at you like he was trying to memorize your face. Then slowly, painfully slowly. He reached for the chain around his neck. The one with dog tags, and that stupid little apple charm. The one you had seen him touch absentmindedly during quiet nights. Seen him hold it while talking about home. About flying. About survival. His fingers shook slightly as he prssed it into your palm. "Return it when we meet again." Your throat tightened instantly. You curled your fingers around it carefully. "...Fine." "You promise?" You swallowed hard. "...I promise."

Imagine, the deads were close now. Close enough that you could smell it. The blood, rot and wet decay. You stepped backward slowly. Raised your gun. Then looked at Caleb one last time. "Come to think of it, I never actually told you my name, didn't I?" That made him pause. "It's (Your name)." You smile at him. "And just you know. You're cool as fuck, Caleb." And for a stunned second, he laughed. Small, broken, disbelieving. Then you watched his face crumpled immediately afterwards. "Please." You heard him whispered again.

and Imagine, you almost stayed. Like, really almost stayed. But then the horde turned the corner and your body betrayed you. You stepped into the open hallway and screamed. "HEY FUCKERS!" Every dead head snapped towards you instantly. The entire horde shifted. Towards you and away from the ladder. Exactly as planned. So as your heart hammered violently and as adrenaline flooded your veins so hard your hands shook.

"That's right." You breathed shakily while backing away slowly. "Come get me." Behind the walkers, you saw Caleb hesitate. Of course he did. He was still looking at you instead of running. "NOW!" You shouted. He still didn't move. "CALEB!" That finally broke him. And you watched him grip MC tighter before sprinting towards the ladder access while the horde chased after your voice. And that was the moment when relief hit so hard it nearly made your knees buckle. It worked. Holy shit, it actually worked. But then the dead started moving faster, so you turned and ran.

Imagine the way the corridor slammed against bloodstained floors while walkers poured after you endlessly through the site. You shoved over stuffs, kicked open doors and made as much noise as possible. And while every instinct screamed at you to hide, you just kept drawing attention. Because if even a few broke away and notice Caleb and MC. It would be over. So you ran louder, harder, faster. When a walker lounged from the side corridor. You shot it instantly and the gunfire exploded through the building. More groans answered immediately.

"Oh you've gotto be kidding me..." You almost laughed at yourself as the now were coming from ahead too. Great, fantastic. You swerved sharply into another hallway while your lungs burned violently. Your legs already ached from exhaustion. Too many days running, too little food, too little sleep. The apocalypse slowly ate people before the walkers ever touched them. Still, you kept moving. Because somwhere above you, Caleb was escaping. Caleb was surviving. And stupidly, that mattered enough.

Imagine far above the building after God knows how much time have passed by. The helicopter blades thundered alive. You almost stumbled hearing it as relief had once again crashed into you so suddenly it hurt. They made it. And a laugh escaped you breathlessly. "Thank God..." And for one tiny moment, everything felt lighter. Worth it. Then pain esploded across your shoulder. A walker slammed into you from a side doorway hard enough to send you crashing into the wall, your gun flew across the floor in the process as the walker snapped its teeth inches from your face. So you shoved your knife upward desperately into its skull.

Imagine the way your breathing turned ragged instantly. Everything hurt. Your shoulder, your ribs, your legs. And somewhere nearby, more groans echoed. Closer, too close. So you forced yourself upright shakily as blood dripped slowly down your sleeve, one you couldn't tell if it was yours or not. Then you felt it, heard it, above you, the helicopter sound grew louder. Then slowly, it started dafing away into the distance. Your chest tightened painfully. Ten minutes. Maybe he waited longer. Maybe he fought them. Maybe he searched for you until very last second. Or maybe, maybe he just understood what this really is. Not bravery, not heroism. Just survival choosing who got to continue.

Imagine as you leaned briefly against the wall, exhausted beyond words. Caleb's dog tags rested tightly in your hand. Cold, heavy and real. Just then you heard more footsteps, not human, never human anymore. You laughed quietly to yourself. Tired, hollow and half-breathless. "Goddammit." Because maybe love really could kill a person. Not quickly, not romantically. But in choices, in sacrifices, in wanting someone else to live more than you wanted yourself to. And that somewhere deep down. You already knew, you were probably not making it to N109 zone.

[ⓒdark-night-hero] 2026° ko-fi?

:I'm thinking if I should make it a whole series of something because this has sooo much potential as one. PS. Told ya'll Caleb is yet to come home I'm this banner. And I basically lost him to Zayne, like wtfffg

Tagged: @younghideoutberserker @booakaishia

[lulumineul]

I'm in complete shambles

[abyssyby]

“Pet.” is one of Kyros’s first words.

Around a year and a half in of his gentle little life, Sylus takes him and Lucian on a trip to a petting zoo. Acres and acres of trees and foliage, trimmed to perfection. The heart of the zoo sits a pond with ducks and other avian life, surrounded by the barns and gates of mammals and rodents.

Lucian couldn’t stop yelling “Bunny! Bunny!” in your ear, you had to excuse yourself to take him to the floppy eared babies lest you go deaf prematurely.

Kyros is silent. Tiny fingers grip Sylus’s one, and he watches.

His face taken over by his wide eyes and wondrous gurgles, he is the epitome of joy as he wriggles in his baby bjorn, strapped to his papa’s chest.

Throughout the day, he hears pet.

“Do you want to pet it?” the woman asks, holding up a turtle to Kyros. The amphibian’s head pops out and in directly affected by the distance of his small hand to the animal. Scaredy, Kyros notes.

“Pet the goat!” Another zookeeper invites them over. Kyros notes how their—his and papa’s—shadow seem to weigh on the goat’s horns and tilt him forward.

“Scaredy.” he murmurs to himself, but reaches out to pet the animal anyway. His eyes shine when the goat finds serenity in the scratches behind the ear papa gives him.

“He likes pets.” says papa, who now taps his finger over a bird. One ignored for his unpresentable feathers and grumpy disposition. Despite having been told it nips, Sylus approached it anyway. “He was just scared.”

Kyros likes the zoo. And has a general understanding of pets now.

And when he’s finally set down on the grass, his overalls a big sack on his body, and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, he wanders away— fast.

Sylus nearly trips over dirt and what he doesn’t want to think is poo chasing after him. “Kyros!”

“Pet, pet,” is squealed back. A voice crunch and crisp— his first loud word of the day. Knees raising legs lead him through an uncoordinated waddle towards the center. And the lake is fast approaching.

“Kyros!” Sylus sprints—doesn’t have time to think how on earth his son is outrunning him with a head-height of 40 inches and marshmallow legs. “Wait for papa!”

“Pet!”

Sylus resorts to his evol. Black wisps of smoke cradle the child just before he dives into the lake, his canvas sneakers’ tips wet with the momentary dip into the edge. And he’s floated back to Sylus’s arms.

“Ah, papa,” Kyros whines, reaching out anyway for Sylus’s anticipatory embrace. “Pet.”

“Which, angel?” he wheezes. Thinks age is finally catching up to him as his heart’s thundering rings in his ears and liquifies his knees. He huffs, “You scared me.”

Kyros watches his face. The crease in his brows, the part of his lips as he heaves lungfuls of air, the way his hair is windswept from running. He doesn’t quite understand what had just happened, but he pokes at a drop of sweat rolling down Sylus’s brow. Before his hand rises to his hair, going up and down in a familiar motion. “Pet, pet.”

Sylus softens. Sighing and leaning to his son’s touch. “Thank you, Kyros.”

“Okay.” Kyros pets his hair more, patting down bangs and sweeping nonexistent dirt.

“What did you want to pet, angel?”

Kyros stops. Turns over his shoulder towards the lake, and says. “Dak.”

Oh, right. Of course. Sylus has completely forgotten why they were here in the first place.

A conversation early in the morning of a Tuesday, when Kyros crawled under his covers and asked him to read a story through blurry eyes and a dry throat. “The soft little duck—“

“Dak sof?” Kyros had chirped, cheek squished upon your empty pillow. “Sof Kyros.”

“Kyros is squishy.” Sylus corrects through a yawn. “Ducks are soft.”

“Touch dak.”

“Okay,” Sylus grumbles, closing the book and ignoring Kyros’s whine of protest. “We’ll go to a zoo.”

“Soo?” Kyros brightens. Simultaneously, Sylus scoops him up and places him on his chest. His palm goes up to his son’s hair and strokes lightly.

“Mm. Petting zoo.” Sylus promises, drifting away. “Pet ducks.”

“Pet dak.” Kyros agrees, eyes growing heavy at the silence that befalls them. “Sof dak.”

And now, he confirms it. With his pant legs rolled all the way up to his thighs, shoes completely soaked in the water, Kyros pets a duck. “Oh, sof dak.”

You are on your way, with your own toddler in your arms, to scold both father and son for being in the lake, barely a foot away from the “Do Not Swim” sign. But you can’t help but delay at the sight of them. Taking firm but short steps, firing up to call their names, but not after a photo or ten.

Of course, definitely before the staff step in.

But not now, you wouldn’t dare to intrude in Kyros’s petting zoo.

[lulumineul]

Im not normal

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

"this fic uses em dashes, so it must be ai-generated" real humans use em dashes.

"this fic has long paragraphs with overly described details and scenes, so it must be ai-generated" real humans can write like this.

"this fic has inconsistencies, so it must be ai-generated" real humans make errors and mistakes. that's why we have this thing called plot holes. sometimes writers are tired and they don't remember what they wrote in the last sentences or paragraphs, let alone chapters.

"this fic sounds robotic and unnatural, so it must be ai-generated" not every writer writes in their native language. sometimes they can sound 'robotic and unnatural' if they wrote in their second or third or fourth language (and kudos to them).

"this fic has a prompt left in it that the author forgot to delete, so it must be ai-generated" the 'prompt' the author accidentally left in their fic could actually be a part of an outline that was meant only for them, so they could keep track of what they would write.

"this author posts too often, no human writes this fast, so they must use ai" 1.) you don't know how fast someone can or can't write, how much time a person has in a day or how motivated/skilled they are. 2.) the frequent updates you see could be something that has already been finished and sitting in the author's drafts for god knows how long. just because it's recently posted doesn't always mean it's recently written.

my point? no, you can never know if a fanfic is 'ai-generated'. unless the author says they use ai, you're just assuming, suspecting and witch hunting. chances are that you're not going to 'stop ai fics from being created', you're just going to wrongly accuse genuine writers of using ai and ruin their day at best, make them want to quit writing or sharing their works at worst.

[dark-night-hero]

Imagine fighting with Zayne. technically, it was't even a fight.

Imagine the sheets were heavy with warmth, the kind you rarely got to enjoy with him beside you. A day off. Finally. You had counted down the days, held onto this one as a promise, your one certainty against his endless shifts and emergencies.

Imagine you felt the bed dip, the absence of his weight pulling you half-awake. At first, you thought nothing of it. Water, maybe. The bathroom. He would come back, slip under the covers, curl around you again. So you let yourself drift back into sleep.

Imagine that was until the soft brush of his fingers slid a strand of hair from your face. His lips pressed to your forehead, gentle. Tender. Apologetic. Your eyes fluttered open, and there he was, already dressed in his usual attire, white coat on his arm like a sentence.

Imagine the way your stomach dropped. "Zayne?" Your voice was rough with sleep, but sharp enough to make him pause. "What are you doing? Where are you going? It's your day off." He sat at the edge of the bed, his hand covering yours, eyes weighed with something that felt like guilt. "I'll be back as soon as possible."

Imagine the way the words rang too familiar. You had heard them before. Not an emergency. Not this time. If it were, he would've said so, you knew that much. Which meant... Of course. Only one other thing carried that kind of weight.

Imagine you let out a small, bitter laugh before you could stop it. He froze, glanced at you, then looked away like he couldn’t hold your gaze. "It's MC, isn’t it?" You asked quietly. You tried not to let the bitterness leak out, but it clung to your voice anyway. He hesitated, then sighed. "Today's the only time she was free. I'll be back before lunch. Even sooner."

but Imagine it was never about the lunch. And inside, you were crumbling. God, don't do this. Don't sound like the jealous lover. Don't sound like you're accusing him. You know who she is. You know why he does this. You promised yourself you'd be stronger.

Imagine and still, the words tumbled out. "Does it… Does it have to be you?" A stupid question, you knew the answer before you even finished asking it. He was her doctor. Always had been. His entire path had been built around her.

Imagine he didn't flinch, didn't scold. His eyes only softened, like he could see right through to the place your insecurities had been gnawing at you. "She's still fragile." He said, voice low. "She lost her brother. Her grandmother. This time matters, for her mind, for her heart." And that's when something inside you snapped.

"Right." You pulled your hand back, heart hammering. He chose this life. He chose this field for her. He was hers before he was mine. And maybe… Maybe he'll always be. "It's fine. You didn't just take cardiology for yourself. You took it for her. You wanted to look out for her." Your laugh came out cracked, trembling. "God, I sound so bad. So jealous. So insecure. I'm sorry. I'm giving you such a hard time."

Imagine the gossips you had overheard, the whispered comments at the hospital, the way friends glanced between you and her. It all pressed in at once. You had tried so hard to ignore it, to tell yourself you were enough, but it was finally breaking you.

Imagine Zayne leaned in, his voice suddenly sharp with urgency. "That's not it. You're not- Listen to me. That's not what this is. I love you. God, I love you." But you cut him off, chest aching, eyes burning. "If you love me, then stay. Don't go."

Imagine the way his breath hitched. Pain flickered across his face. "I can't-" "Yeah." You laughed again, brittle this time. "I know. You don't have to finish. I'm sorry for asking."

Imagime the silence after that was unbearable. You couldn't look at him anymore. Why did you say that? Why did you make him choose, even for a second? You already know the answer. You knew it the moment you opened your mouth.

Imagine he hovered, torn in two, his hand twitching like he wanted to reach for you again. Then, slowly, he leaned down, pressed a long kiss to your forehead. "I love you." He whispered, like it was a vow. Like if he said it enough times, you would believe it over everything else.

and Imagine, you didn't say it back. You couldn't. Not when the hollow inside you was louder than his words. You only closed your eyes, waiting for the door to shut, for the silence to settle in where he used to be.

[ⓒdark-night-hero] 2025°

: non mc speaking, i will before be insecure to the girl he started pursuing cardiology for.

[lulumineul]

[iamaslutfor3dman]

sukuna with an absolute nerd

He honestly had no idea how he ended up here.

One minute he was at the club with his friends, fucking around, being insufferable little shits—and then he saw you.

Sukuna couldn't put a finger on it at first, but something about you felt familiar. And you looked fine as hell, he decided to get up and try to chat.

You just stood there for a full minute, staring at him.

"Sukuna?"

Hearing you say his name made him squint. Okay, yeah. Definitely met before. But where? High school? College? Some messy hookup he mentally deleted?

The club was packed, neon lights flashing, the bass making the floor shake, but somehow it felt like it was just the two of you.

"Have we met before?" he asked, squinting slightly.

"...It's Y/N. You used to bully me."

Oh.

Ohhh.

There it was.

Sukuna remembered now. You. The nerd. The absolute gremlin who sat in the back of the class pretending not to exist, sneaking Green Lantern and X-Men comics behind your textbooks like some low-rent super spy.

You were worse than him back then. And that was saying something. He at least pretended to care about passing. You spent more time in the comic book club than actual classes. You were even the damn president. Like it was an achievement or something.

It had been, what, five years? Maybe more? And somehow, the memory of you—tiny, awkward, buried in a pile of comic books—was still burned into his brain.

He leaned on the bar, his grin lazy and obnoxious. "So? You still a comic book freak? Or did you move on to...I dunno, astrology charts and crystal magic bullshit?"

You raised an eyebrow at him, unimpressed. "Still a nerd."

He snorted, tossing back a sip of his drink, "Love that for you."

--

About an hour and thirty minutes later, Sukuna found himself standing in your flat.

Honestly? He thought maybe you two were gonna hookup or something. Normal people stuff. Flirt at the club, stumble into an Uber, make some mistakes you pretend never happened in the morning.

Nope. Not even fucking close.

You showed him around a bit, all casual, while he tried to hide the way his brain was short-circuiting.

Because yeah—you were still a nerd. Still a massive, certified loser just now, you had money to fund that loser lifestyle. This was insanity.

One wall—twenty goddamn feet tall and thirty feet wide—was crammed with comics and manga. The rest of the apartment looked like a pop culture fever dream exploded. Posters. Art prints. Drawings. Entire shrines dedicated to everything from Bratz dolls to Barbie movies.

He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, staring around like he was in a zoo exhibit.

"...What do you even do now, loser?" he asked, almost awed.

You shrugged, flipping on a light shaped like a Hello Kitty head. "Chief Editor at Marvel."

Sukuna just stood there.

Blinking.

Processing.

"You're telling me," he said slowly, voice filled with genuine horror, "that you made a whole-ass career out of being a nerd?"

You grinned. "Jealous?"

He opened his mouth, then closed it. No words. Just pure, vibrating confusion and rage at the universe for allowing this.

One second he was minding his own business, trying to process that you made more money than God drawing superheroes in spandex — and the next, you were standing in front of him with a goddamn whiteboard.

A whiteboard.

Where the hell did that even come from?

"Okay, so," you said, clicking a marker open like this was a college lecture, "the Marvel multiverse is basically a system of alternate realities that exist parallel to each other. Each universe has its own version of events, characters, and histories—"

Sukuna stared at you. This couldn't be happening to him. Not to him.

He was Sukuna. He threw chairs at referees. He got suspended from bars for fighting bouncers. He had a reputation for being a menace to society and somehow you — a girl he once bullied for reading comics — had him held hostage in your living room explaining the fucking multiverse.

You pointed at a diagram you had somehow drawn in thirty seconds flat.

"So you see, Universe 616 is the main continuity—"

Sukuna rubbed a hand over his face. He wasn't drunk enough for this.

"—but then there's Universe 1610, which is the Ultimate universe," you continued, getting way too excited, "and that branches off when—"

He blinked slowly, feeling his soul leave his body. He could hear the words you were saying, technically. But his brain had tapped out somewhere around ‘alternate realities’ and was now just playing elevator music at full blast.

"—so technically, Spider-Man could meet himself, but it’s a different version depending on the timeline—"

He slouched deeper into the couch, legs spread, arms crossed, head tilted back to look at the ceiling like he was praying for mercy.

"This is my karma," he muttered under his breath.

After about twenty minutes of explaining the entire multiverse, you finally noticed Sukuna slumped like a corpse on your couch, eyes glazed over.

You clapped your hands once. "Okay, enough theory. Wanna see what I'm working on now?"

He lifted his head with a grunt, like a man who had been through a war.

"Is it another 'alternate timeline' bullshit thing?" he asked, voice raspy from pure despair.

You just laughed and padded over to your desk, grabbing a thick black folder. You tossed it onto the coffee table with a heavy thud.

He raised an eyebrow, sitting up a little. Big folders usually meant important shit. Or lawsuits. Both of which he was familiar with.

He flipped it open lazily — and then froze. Inside were full script pages, production notes, and concept art.

For a Marvel movie.

Not just any Marvel movie.

The Marvel movie.

The one the entire world was foaming at the mouth over.

"You—" he croaked, throat suddenly dry. "You're working on this?!"

You shrugged, all casual, like you hadn’t just rocked his entire worldview.

"Yeah. I'm helping with the script, character designs, and some marketing stuff. Also, I pitched an idea for a post-credits scene. They loved it."

Sukuna just stared at you, flipping through the pages like they might catch fire in his hands.

Character sketches. Dialogue rewrites. Your notes, in red ink, scribbled all over million-dollar ideas like it was nothing.

You were so deep into it that you were the reason a movie he was planning to illegally stream might actually slap.

He put the folder down carefully, like it was a bomb.

"This is a prank," he said flatly. "This is God punishing me. I bullied you for drawing Green Lantern in high school and now you're out here running the fucking MCU."

You just smiled sweetly and plopped down next to him.

"Guess who's playing the villain?" you said, nudging him with your elbow.

He blinked."...Who?"

You leaned in dramatically, whispering, "Pedro Pascal."

Sukuna immediately flopped back against the couch like he had been shot. Maybe throwing himself into the sun wouldn't be too bad.

"You’re living my dream," he muttered, staring at the ceiling again. "I hope you know that."

You grinned wider. "I do. Thanks for the free motivation, by the way."

He turned his head to glare at you, but there was no heat behind it. Only deep, deep regret.

------

Is this self indulgent? Maybe. Do I care? Absolutely not. Also, yes, I will be first in line for Superman and Fantastic Four—fight me.

also so sorry for disappearing. getting back to posting again I promise 😤

[lulumineul]

[lulumineul]

📸📸