our field of dreams (engulfed in fire)
part nine — the killerverse masterlist
pairing: luke castellan x fem reader 5.3k
content: angst! pretty intense conversation
summary: the point of no return
notes: i have lived literally 10 lives since i last wrote for luke #MyBad. to my very patient and sweet readers thank you for not throwing tomatoes at me. title from loml by tswift if that gives you any insight at all
“I meant us. I can’t do this anymore.”
You blink back at him. You take in the sight of his eyes, which are red from relentless rubbing.
Have they been like that the entire time? You can’t remember anymore.
“What?”
It’s all you can think to say. It’s the only word steady enough to tumble out of your mouth.
Luke’s exhale is shaky as he passes a hand down his face. The wall he’s put up around himself cracks. He pauses for a second before he repeats himself, his voice unsure.
“We need to break up.”
The dock creaks. You fidget with a strand of your hair sticking to the back of your neck with sweat.
And then you laugh.
“Luke, you’re so not funny.”
The fear gripping at your heart washes away easily. You’re irritated, since you’d been so excited to show him the tickets, and he’s chosen right now to—to joke with you about something serious. He’s messing with you. He’s kidding.
He shakes his head again, training his eyes firmly on the ground. He won’t look you in the eyes despite how hard you’re trying to get him to. “I’m being serious.”
You glance around the treeline, on edge suddenly. Luke sometimes teases you about how you always lean closer to him when you’re nervous, but something in the back of your mind stops you from doing it now.
“Sure,” you huff, taking the envelope from his hands. The tightness of his grip has left crinkles in the paper, and his eyes trace your movements as you stuff it back into your pocket, not in the mood to look at it anymore. You wonder when you should start packing for your flight. “This has gotta be one of your most random jokes.”
He’s breaking up with you. You almost laugh again at the idea, but something in your throat stops you, a lump that you can’t seem to swallow. Luke begged you to stay in bed with him a few hours ago. He’d held your hand on the walk here. It’s a lame excuse for a joke.
He rubs his knuckles into the palm of his opposite hand, his eyes still drifting. Why won’t he look at you? “Killer, I’m not—”
“What did you actually want to tell me?” you cut in. Your heart is racing—in anticipation or curiosity, you’re not sure. Maybe both.
The cicadas start up a relentless chirping that quickly gets on your nerves. It makes you feel hot all of a sudden. You want to go back to your cabin. Or Luke’s, now that the air conditioner there is fixed. You forgot your camp necklace somewhere there and still keep forgetting to go look for it. Maybe he’ll help you search tonight, before it gets too dark out.
Luke opens his mouth to speak, and it feels like a strike across the face.
“I’m sorry.” His voice breaks at the end, turning warbled and so unlike him it makes you shiver. You’d been… scared, earlier. Scared of Luke, your best friend. But as you look at him now, it sounds like he’s scared of himself. “I’m not lying to you, I—I can’t do this. We need to break up.”
The air is muggy enough to worsen your exhaustion, an inescapable stickiness dragging your eyelids in the direction of the ground. Your head is cloudy.
“Sweetheart,” he says again, finally looking back up at you. It stops your heart in your chest. Luke is near crying, sadness clinging to the lines of his eyes. “You know that I— I have always cared about you more than anything. You need to know that. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Luke is serious, you realize.
The pitying expression on his face isn’t going to give way to the gleam of his smile. He isn’t going to pull you under his arm, making fun of how you’d actually believed him, smothering your face with teasing kisses.
Luke is serious, and he’s going to break your heart.
You nearly flinch when he steps closer to you, kicking up a bit of dirt with his sneakers. He slides his thumb into the curl of your fingers and pries them away from your palm.
You’ve been digging your nails into your skin. Hot crescent shapes embed themselves there, and he takes it upon himself to study the marks, turning your wrist over with his shaking hands.
“Please don’t touch me,” you choke out quickly, a reaction that has him stumbling backwards toward the water.
Not when you’re going to leave, you almost say. You can’t get the words out.
Luke’s eyebrows crease as the quivering in his hands gets worse. “Okay. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
You feel your fingers curl into your palms again, wincing now at the sting. “It’s okay.”
The words are an impulse you can’t control. Nothing about this is okay, but comforting him is second nature.
You want him to hold you, but you aren’t sure if it would make it worse.
The thought is almost dystopian. Luke has been the most consistent form of comfort in your life. Associating his touch with hurt sounds paradoxical.
His entire face crumbles. “I can’t do this to you anymore,” he says, the words coming out rough. “I’m so sorry, killer.”
It’s a trick of the light, but his hair looks a little longer, the way he used to like it when you were kids. The way it’s styled is why he looks younger, but the look on his face is why he looks older beyond his years. He looks tired. Weary. You think he’s been needing more sleep.
“What happened?” You scratch at your arm. “Are you—can you tell me what happened?”
You’re standing about a foot away from him. With how much your chest aches, you would assume that wasn’t the case.
He exhales quickly, and then clears his throat. It sounds gutted. “Nothing. Nothing happened.”
“Luke.”
You think about him at six-years-old, that year when he got really into hockey. You weren’t as into it as him, preferring to watch him skate through the glass, but he refused to play without you. He taught you how to skate himself, amused when you would fall but there to help you up every time.
After you realized that life as a skater was not for you, you elected to play goalie for him instead. Getting pucks shot at you was probably the last way you wanted to spend your free time, but Luke made up for it — he made you hot cocoa after the walk back to your house every single day.
You think about Luke, standing on a chair to reach the microwave, his nose red from the cold. He would let you stir in the cocoa powder and would pour the whipped cream straight into your mouth even when your mom would get upset with him.
You can’t reconcile that version of him with the one standing in front of you right now.
“It’s nothing,” he says, firmer this time. He swipes at his eyes again, and the tears lingering there are gone, like a trick of the light.
You can still feel the imprint of his palms on your spine from a few hours ago. The spot where he likes to press his face into your neck has practically carved a crevice into your skin.
You know Luke Castellan better than you know yourself.
It’s why you know he’s lying, and it’s why you can’t tell the difference between your own heartbreak and anger.
The lump in your throat wanes while the heat in your chest rises.
A lifetime of friendship. Years of having no one but each other, years of being in love with each other. And he’s throwing it all away under flimsy excuses and without being able to look you in the eyes.
Your eyes burn with the sting of frustration. You were going to leave camp together. You were going to spend the rest of your lives together, and Luke won’t even give you a proper reason as to why he’s doing this.
“If you’re breaking up with me, then at least be honest with me.” The fabric of your shirt sticks insistently to your lower back. Your voice breaks halfway through, and you force out a bitter laugh alongside it. “You’re lying. Why—Why are you lying? It’s me, Luke. It’s just me.”
He turns to face the water, clearing his throat, and if you didn’t know any better, you would’ve thought he was getting choked up about this.
He trips over his words, starting and stopping before he rips the bandaid off with his teeth. “I’m not lying. I don’t want to—I won’t keep you in a relationship where you aren’t loved the way you should be. I can’t do it. You don’t deserve that.”
It takes a few seconds for the words to sink in, but when they do, it feels like a blow to your chest.
He thinks he’s doing what’s right.
In some sick, convoluted way, Luke thinks he’s protecting you, just like he always has. And he’s trying to protect you from himself.
If he wasn’t actively breaking your heart, it would be almost funny. Luke thinks he doesn’t love you right.
You don’t think anyone could ever love you like he does. Quietly, loudly, silently, when you’re away, when you’re together, when you’re asleep, when you’re not paying attention— Luke Castellan loves you more than anyone else in your life.
He loves you when he rubs the sleep from your eyes and kisses you awake in the morning. He loves you when he dunks your head underwater just to wipe the water from your face when you come back up. He loved you when he asked you to run away with him, and he loved you when he went on your quest with you. He loved you when he would chase you around at recess until your legs didn’t work anymore, and he loved you when he would let you lay on his chest so your back wasn’t pressed against the rocky forest floor.
“You think you don’t love me the way I should be?” Frustration makes your head hot. You itch to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he understands. “Luke, you—you’re such an idiot. I know what love is because of you. You love me better than anyone else in my life. You always have, and… you’re all I have.”
You know that he’s going to tug at the hair at the back of his neck before he actually does it. His nose wrinkles when he squeezes his eyes shut. He’s having a hard time looking at you. “Stop.”
“You’re my best friend.” It’s hard, knowing that the words don’t even begin to cover the extent of what you feel for him. It’s hard to think of the words that could describe it. “I don’t want anyone else’s love. I don’t need it.”
“You aren’t getting it.” He rubs at his temples. He’s irritated, now, just like you.
“Then help me understand!” you cry, desperate. “You’re not making any sense, aren’t you seeing that?”
Luke sighs, a ragged sound that tears from his chest. His eyes crack open finally, the darkness of his irises being nearly swallowed up by the red in his eyes.
This whole conversation is giving you whiplash. It seems like he’s hurt one second, broken up about this just as much as you, but he’s apathetic the second after.
It sounds like you’re begging because you are. You wish he would give up this stupid game and come back to camp with you.
You’re beyond desperate now, because your best friend is looking at you, and you know before he speaks that you’ll never forget the look on his face.
“I don’t love you,” he says simply. “You deserve better than that.”
Your stomach lurches. The blood rushing in your ears cuts out the sound of the insects hiding in the green behind you.
It’s me and you, killer.
You think about the way he pulls you into a hug sometimes, just so he can mumble jokes in your ear. Just yesterday morning, he’d cut your toast for you since you’d been half asleep at the table.
You know Luke loves you. It’s why you don’t believe him, and it’s why you scoff, the sound thick with disbelief.
“You know me, Luke. You know I’m not stupid enough to believe that. I’ve known you for my whole life. You can’t just—how do you fake the way we felt about each other?”
He shakes his head. You can’t tell if he’s averting his eyes again because he’s feeling guilty or because he’s lying. “I realized that… you’re a lot more serious about this than I am. And I—I care about you. I don’t want to be a dick. You deserve someone who is just as serious about the relationship as you are, and—”
You take a step back, and Luke trails off, losing track of his words.
Embarrassment makes your face so hot it burns. You know you aren’t crazy. It had felt like a fact that Luke was serious about this — he still is. He has to be.
“You said you didn’t think you could leave here without me.” Tears prick at your eyes before you blink them away. “Luke, we—we talked about our future together. You said you wanted a…”
You stop yourself from finishing your sentence. Admitting it would hurt more, but the reminder of it makes anger surge through you.
Luke wanted a family. He told you he wanted a family, and it turns out it all was a lie.
For a split second, he looks almost… upset. But it’s gone before you can call him out on it, and his gaze freezes over again.
“I didn’t know what I wanted, alright? I still don’t. I—Look, come on. Killer, we’re kids. We’re still figuring our shit out, yeah? Isn’t that what everyone says? I thought I had feelings, but—I dunno. I was drunk when we kissed. Really drunk, and so were you—”
The sick feeling in your stomach is swallowed by a hollow emptiness. Luke keeps talking, muttering about how he was confused, and how you were too, but none of it is real enough to process.
“Luke,” you say, willing yourself to keep your voice steady. He stops talking, and the silence in the clearing is enough to make your ears ring. “You have to understand why I don’t believe you.”
There’s no point in you explaining, because you know him, and you know he understands.
Your perception of love is based on each other. Even when you didn’t see how much further your feelings went beyond friendship, you’d always known that you loved each other. It was as factual as the color of the sky or the pull of the Moon on the sea’s tides. The Earth orbited the Sun, and you and Luke loved each other.
Did you? Or had you made that all up? Were you so blinded by your own feelings, the strength of your own emotions, that you’d assumed he felt the same way? Had he not loved you this whole time?
You think back to that morning on the dock, the day after you’d first kissed. Luke had insisted on keeping your relationship a secret because of Chiron.
How much of it was because of Chiron, and how much of it was because he didn’t actually love you?
Luke scoffs, and you feel your entire body draw tight with tension.
Whatever ‘care’ he claimed to have for you seems to disappear as he cocks his head, a disbelieving smile playing on his lips. “Are you being serious?”
Images of the two of you at this same spot a few years ago flash through your head. I hope you know it’s been a definite yes for the past decade, he’d said.
You think you’re going to be sick. You’ve never been truly afraid of Luke. Afraid for him, sure, but you’ve never looked at him and felt anything other than completely and utterly safe.
Of course, you’ve seen glimpses of it in other people — brief moments of fear. Luke’s reputation as the best swordsman at camp wasn’t made up out of nowhere. People have left sparring matches with him joking about how scary he can be, and it’s something you’ve always chalked up to how good he is. And he’s really good. So good that the placement of his blade at your throat can feel just as gentle as the caress of his own hands. He’s had your life in the palm of his hands more times than you can count, and it’s never occurred to you that Luke is someone you should be nervous around.
But Luke steps closer to you, and… you remember suddenly that he’s always been somewhat tall. It only becomes really obvious when he uses his height like this — like a weapon.
His presence is only magnified by the cold, relentless stare he drills you with. The shadows under his eyes darken each second you don’t respond, and you begin to understand exactly why people find Luke so scary.
The look in his eyes is terrifying.
“Y’know, I didn’t believe it when people said it,” Luke says, something sharp in the way he mutters it, “but holy shit. You really are as conceited as people say you are. Is it really that hard to believe someone doesn’t love you?”
He steps closer to you, and you’re surprised you find yourself moving away from him.
Because this is Luke.
Isn’t it?
He was the only person you trusted enough to let close to you when your mind was rewritten with the strength of poison. A few nights ago, when he was half-asleep and just as lovesick as you, he reminded you how excited he was to leave camp together.
The light feeling in your chest whenever you see him, the one that feels like a million butterflies in your stomach, has been replaced with the paralyzing feeling of dread.
Deep down, you realize it.
You have passed the point of no return.
He won’t be able to apologize, pressing kisses into your hairline while he cradles the back of your head. There will be no coming back from this conversation.
Luke takes another step closer, and you don’t fight him on it.
“I don’t expect you to get it,” he continues, so close you can feel the warmth radiating off of his chest. “I mean, you’re daddy’s favorite, right?” Luke smiles at you mockingly, baring his perfect white teeth. “His perfect daughter. His pride and joy. And it’s the same way with your mom! I bet you could run back to her and have her welcome you back with open arms, too. Even after you got up and abandoned her like that.”
You had no idea it would be so easy for Luke to take your heart in his hands and wring it out. He’s pressing into a bruise, poking and prodding at it and waiting to see how you react.
“You don’t get what it’s like to have to beg for scraps of attention from your parents like a fucking dog. Attention is all you’ve ever known.”
The words come out easily, like he’s been waiting forever to say them. Jealousy and hurt is woven between every syllable.
“It’s all you’ve ever gotten from me, your mom, your dad…” He’s half-smiling when he speaks. “I can’t even blame you. It’s not your fault you can’t believe some people might actually not like you.” He laughs gruffly, rubbing at his neck. “Give me a goddamn break.”
You blink hard and try to think about the feeling of Luke’s arms wrapped around your shoulders. A lump rises in your throat when the thought of it only wracks your body with discomfort. “You don’t mean that.”
Please, you want to beg. Take it back before you can’t fix any of this.
“I don’t?” he asks, a sick smile spreading across his face. “And how do you know that?”
Something inside of you shatters. You shove him backwards with shaking hands, your jaw clenched in anger. “What is wrong with you, Luke? Are you even listening to what you’re saying?” It’s a weak attempt at trying to knock some sense into him. “You… you don’t even sound like yourself right now.”
His eyes roll. “Yeah. ‘Cause the gods forbid that anyone is fucking honest with you for once.”
His words embed themselves into your skin and fester there. “Luke,” you say desperately, though you aren’t sure what you’re begging him for.
“Can you stop trying to fix me?” His voice rises so much a flock of birds erupts from the treeline. “There’s nothing wrong with me. You can’t make me better by—by figuring me out, or whatever the hell you think you’re always doing.”
“I’m not trying to fix you, asshole, I’m worried about you!” you cry, your voice wet and hurt.
“You’re not trying to fix me?” he echoes, amused. He rubs the heel of his palm against the spot you shoved him, his hand twitching. “Isn’t that why you ran away with me in the first place? You left your shiny house and your perfect family because you felt bad. All you’ve done is pity me our whole lives, and try to fix whatever the hell is wrong with me. I’m sick of it.”
You bite down on your tongue to stop yourself from crying, drawing blood without realizing. Each of his words has the intended effect — you don’t think you’ve ever felt so hurt in your life.
“I left with you because I loved you, Luke.” You take a step closer to him, trying to stop your legs from shaking. “That hasn’t changed. Everything I do is because I love you.”
He held your hand on the way here. You wonder what you did wrong.
Luke shrugs. “Sorry that you feel that way, then,” he continues, driving the knife in further.
Your voice is thick. You know this can’t be him talking, but it’s hard to remember that when it feels like your entire world is falling apart. You shake your head in denial. “You can’t push me away, Luke. It won’t work.”
You remember a conversation you had, a million miles away from here, with a man you know you’ll never see eye to eye with.
But promise me. He’s going to need you. Stick together, no matter how bad it gets, you understand?
Your throat feels dry.
“Leave me alone, yeah?” His voice is fraught with anger. He inhales once before saying, “It’s over.”
He turns around, heading back the way you came.
Panic shoots through you. Luke is leaving. He’s going to leave you here and it’ll never be the same again.
Without thinking, you reach out and grab at his shirt, tugging him back towards you. You release the fabric as soon as he’s close enough. The thought of coming in contact with his skin makes you too nervous to hold onto him for any longer.
He looks stunned at your outburst, his resolve slipping for the briefest moment.
You speak through gritted teeth. “Luke, you are— you can’t seriously think I’m going to let you walk away from this. You’ve been my friend for my entire life, and you think I’m going to let you go without a fight?”
His jaw clenches, and you press on, frantic. “When we left Connecticut, I made a promise to you. ‘I’m with you forever,’ remember? Unless you’re choosing to forget that, too.”
Luke is quiet, his expression unreadable. You know he didn’t forget it. The promise is repeated to each other all the time, whether it’s with your words or kisses pressed to shoulders.
After a second, he drags a hand down his face, working a hand over his jaw. “Please don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
“You are the one who is making this hard.” You refuse to cry in front of him, but he seems to test your resolve with every second he stands in front of you. “Luke, I gave you everything I have ever had. Fuck, I even promised your dad—”
Luke freezes, and for the first time since the conversation started, you think you catch a glimpse of the real him. The mention of Hermes stuns him, his eyes shining with shock and hurt. You’ve dug your hands into a lifelong wound that hasn’t quite healed over yet, and you know it.
“My dad?” He repeats slowly. “What did you promise him?”
You don’t quite know what to say. So you tell him the truth.
“I saw him during the last trip to Olympus.”
“That’s when you saw him,” Luke says lowly, his tone dangerous. “I asked what you told him.”
Luke’s tone is so biting, and the admission comes out easily. You can’t tell if it’s because he’s scaring you or because you don’t want to disappoint him.
“He asked me to promise to stick together,” you admit, wincing at the sound of your own voice.
Your heart drops when Luke staggers backwards, and the words pour out of you.
“And of course I said yes, Luke. I didn’t have to promise that to anyone. I was always planning on doing it. And—I just thought that he wanted peace of mind, or something, I didn’t—”
“You—how could you do that?” He runs a hand through his hair, his jaw clenched. “My dad? You went to speak to my dad?”
“He came to talk to me,” you explain frantically, panic rising quickly. “I think—He’s an asshole, but he was worried about you.”
Luke laughs. “Yeah, well, he’s about a lifetime too late, isn’t he?” His chest has started heaving, his anger boiling over. “Gods, what were you thinking? I didn’t need you to go behind my back and make little promises with my dad about me. He didn’t care about me when I was a kid who needed him, and he didn’t care last year, either. He doesn’t get to worry about me.”
“I’m sorry.” It’s honest. “I wasn’t thinking when I said yes.”
“Yeah, you weren’t.” It’s harsh and it hurts, but you understand exactly why he’s so upset. His laugh is bitter. “He doesn’t deserve a say in my life, and I just… I can’t believe you promised him that.”
“I know, and I’m sorry.” You’re floundering now, because you know exactly what he’s thinking. He thinks part of your loyalty is because of a promise you made to his dad. But it’s not. Not a single second of your relationship has been because of him, and you’re desperately trying to communicate that to him. “But I hope that you understand why I did it. It—none of this has ever felt like an obligation to me, staying with you is just—”
“I get it,” Luke says, cutting you off. “You did it because you’re a people pleaser, yeah? You always have been.”
Your head throbs in time with your heart. “Please don’t do this to me. You’re saying this to be mean, Luke. You don’t mean that.”
He sighs. “I’m just being honest, sweetheart.” Venom drips from his tongue, burning the wound he’s made in your chest with his words alone. “Why d’you think I kept you around even when I didn’t feel the same way?”
His words ring in your head.
Kept you around.
You feel the urge to crawl out of your own skin. It doesn’t feel like yours.
Every kiss, every brush of your hands under a table, every time he’d pulled you into his arms with a lopsided smile…
It’d been because you were easy.
As one last act of kindness, Luke turns around. He is nice enough to break your heart with his back turned.
You feel flayed open. You know none of those words were an accident, each one chosen to strike at the chords in your heart. He knew exactly what would hurt, and as you watch him walk away… you aren’t sure that he feels bad for a single one of them.
Monsters aren’t afraid to take any form — even if it means they look like your best friend.
But it takes a monster to know one, doesn’t it?
It’s desperate and cruel, but you want him to understand exactly what his words have done to you. Maybe he would finally be able to see what he’s done, and—fix this, or apologize, or realize how insane he’s being.
Your voice wavers when you call out to his retreating form. “You need me just as bad as I need you, Luke. Or else…” You inhale sharply. “You would’ve left me about a hundred times over now.”
His figure grows smaller as he heads towards the gap in the trees.
“And I knew it, Luke,” you say, your throat tight. “You couldn’t have… you didn’t just like me when you got to put your hands up my shirt. You weren’t just using me. It was real. I know it was.”
His shoulders roll. He does not turn around.
When you know someone as well as you know Luke, it’s easy to find — a red hot laceration carved into his skin, one that will never quite heal.
It’s a vulnerable spot for you to dig your fingers in and hurt.
Your stomach rolls with unease as the words fall from your lips. “For someone who hates their dad so much, you sure are similar.”
Luke doesn’t stop walking, but the pinch in his shoulders lets you know that he heard you. Dead grass crackles under the soles of his shoes.
“You’re walking away, just like he did. Guess you had to learn it from somewhere, didn’t you?”
He stops moving.
When he turns around to face you, he looks more like a stranger than the other half of your soul.
The fury burning in his eyes would have scared you a few minutes ago. But you soak up his anger readily, almost desperate for any ounce of true emotion from him. His indifference was fake, you’re almost sure of it, but this is real.
The way he barely contains his rage as he stalks through the grass is real. The feeling of his breath fanning over your skin is real. The shame and guilt surging through your bloodstream — it’s all real.
You regretted the words immediately after you’d said them. You had said it to hurt him, and it had worked. But you don’t feel any better now that you have.
“I am going to say this once.”
He’s standing up straight to make himself taller. You look into his eyes and try to remember the little details of his face. He’s staring at you so intensely you wonder if he’s doing the same thing.
“Stay away from me. It’s over,” he says, and it is final.
There’s a cut by his lip. His eyelashes are so long that they brush against his cheeks when he blinks. A light sunburn kisses the top of his face.
You tear your gaze away from the freckles he insists don’t exist so you can look him in the eyes.
You don’t see anything.
“In a few hours, you’re going to realize what you’ve said to me. And it’s going to hurt, Luke.” The words you spit at him in your own moment of rage already sting with regret. “It’s going to hurt the same way you hurt me, and I think it’ll hurt worse.” You watch his jaw work, his teeth grinding together. “And when you stop putting on this act, I am going to feel sorry for you. Because I won’t be there to comfort you when you realize what you’ve done.”
He smiles, and for a second, you can see the boy who drew smiley faces with sunscreen on your back. The same one who bought you flowers when he was jealous about you having a crush on someone else, and the same one who looks for you after nightmares.
The illusion shatters when he cocks his head. “I’ll make sure to remember that.”
For the first time in nineteen years, Luke Castellan turns away and walks out of your life.
notes: surely u guys saw this coming right HAHA. i love luke castellan but i never said he was smart. can you guys believe its been like 1.5 years since the last part like woah my deepest apologies guys. i listened to lover u shouldve come over while editing this and woahh when i tell you 5:04 in the song came on and i was fighting for my life lol
thank u for pre reading my lovely lovely locknco & mayswift u guys rock. <3
