this is the last time @sweeterthanficstion - Tumblr Blog

— almost spring || l.s.k

pairing: slasher(?)!leon kennedy x fem!reader

tags: set in 1974, DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT!! graphic depictions murder, suicide, death, and animal death. themes of religious guilt, religious trauma, and references to parental abuse. heavy depictions of grief, themes of obsession and other typical horror topics. if i've missed anything, as always, please let me know!!

summary: Leon loves you too much to let you leave, but not enough to let you live. Or: In 1974, you fall in love with a boy. A boy who loves too hard and too viciously, and on the eve of your departure for college, realises he doesn't quite know how to live without you. Leon takes you to the old homestead where his grief has festered, under the pretense of one last memory together. What you don’t know is he’s spent weeks convincing himself that if he can’t have you forever, no one else should.

word count: 14.8k (what the FUCK)

a/n: i am so fucking scared to post this. uhhh highly self indulgent. ik i promised you all more rockstar!leon but when have i ever stuck to my promises. i hope some of you like this, and if it's not your jam then i get it, please don't read it if any of those tags make you uneasy or feel obligated to just because i've posted it and you follow this blog. anyway, i hope the those of you that do fw this enjoy it :) slasher!leon is my baby, i love him dearly, i hope i did him justice and you love this fic as much as i do.

playlist ⭑ AO3 || back to the party ⭑ « future ⭑ present ⭑ past (coming soon) »

There is something so very wrong with this town.

You’ve known it for much too long; there is a staleness to the air and a stagnation to the people. Nothing ever changes, and yet nothing has ever felt the same. There is no comfort in familiarity here, past the tree line and in the prairie — the whistle of the wind does not soothe, nor do the roads ever lead home.

Soon, the prairie will settle into its stiffness as it always does. Even in summer, this ghost town remains cold and lifeless, a carcass of a place that you're not sure was ever alive to begin with. Yet where it’d usually bother you, you don’t find you mind so much this year, because by summer you’ll be gone.

Away from here and into the city; you will go to university, you will study, you will make so much money you will never have to worry about money again. You will leave this lonely prairie town behind, and you won't stop until you’ve driven a thousand miles and a mile and have reached the end of the world. Then, you think, you will be happy.

But for now you endure the biting cold and the terrible people, finish up your final semester of school, and wonder endlessly what the city must be like. You know it bustles with a life you yearn to love. Maybe you will find a home in an apartment on a busy street above a record store, suffocated between two more buildings, so cramped yet you do not mind because the air is thick with life and opportunity. You will crack open your bedroom window each morning and climb onto the fire escape. There, you will let the warmth of a morning coffee seep through ceramic and into your cold hands and you will smile as the sun rises to greet you.

You can’t wait, you count the days until summer on your fingers. You never did like autumn or winter anyway—not when this town already feels like shades of blue all year round.

The stupor you’ve let yourself fall into is shattered when there come two knocks at your window.

Leon walks into your life time and time again as if on stage cue, as if he’s practised being in your life a million times over. Through your window, he stumbles in like Romeo, a smile on his face and an autumn night's blush on his cheeks.

“God, Leon, you scared me,” you huff, the cold draft he lets in makes gooseflesh dot across your arms, makes you pout. You’re not really upset, but you feel like you should be. You’ve told him more than enough times that he shouldn’t visit you unprompted through your window at unholy hours lest your mother find out.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Leon placates you with a kiss to your temple, and then one to the corner of your mouth that tugs a reluctant smile from you.

He isn’t really sorry—no, not when it means he can kiss you like this. He thinks all the chiding he gets from you is worth it as long as his lips stay on yours.

Leon never did anticipate falling in love. It wasn’t a part of his plan. Then again, he never really had one. After the death of his parents, the world had dulled to something akin to a bitter grey, and he’d begun to see his life through a screen of black and white.

That was until you. You, sweet as summer rain and spring sunshine. You, with a heart that beats as loud as his. You came into his life and suddenly the world seemed brighter even despite the noose this prairie town hung around his neck.

Leon, who hasn’t believed in anything since he was twelve, kneeling in church pews, now finds that the only thing he believes in is the way your mouth shapes his name.

You give him hope—and that terrifies him. Hope is bright, and it burns his wrists like stigmata every time he reaches out for it. You are dangerous, in the way that only someone who makes him want can be. You make him want things he has no business wanting, things he never allowed himself to need.

Your hands are a vice that hold a power over him that you don’t even know of. But if Leon is to suffer under anyone's hand, he thinks, it might as well be yours.

You tap his chest once, twice, thrice. Pull him back to the now with such softness it chokes him. He worries he might crush you under his hold.

“Why’d you sneak through the window?” You ask suddenly, question catching him off guard, but the gentleness to your voice keeps him at ease.

“Well, I missed you.” Leon explains easily.

“I have a phone you can call me on, you know.”

“Yes. But I like seeing you.” He leaves unsaid the truth that drives him; he wants to ensure you’re real. Flesh and blood and tangible under his fingertips.

Because as of late, nothing feels real anymore.

Leon thinks the homestead must finally be getting to him. No, he doesn’t live there—thank God. But he goes there once a week for a reason he can’t explain anymore. At first, it was because the place was quiet, somewhere to quell the noise of his head for a few hours, and in his half-hearted hubris, he stayed. But now he’s convinced the darkness in those hallways has crept into his mind, like fish hooks in the flesh of his cheek, he is tethered there.

The homestead—like an accumulation of past horrors that have nowhere left to go—must feed on sadness, as all evil things do. The house breathes in his despair as if it is a living being, twists his thoughts until the line between his own mind and the evil that lurks there blurs. He wonders if perhaps it chose him—if it knows his heart better than he does, if it sees the rot taking root deep inside.

But then there you are again, his sweet summer rain, his spring sunshine—he forgets about the cold in the heat of your embrace. You are a stagnation he is grateful for, an anchor, his temporary reprieve from the vigour that is his mind. The world will come and go, he knows, this town won’t change, but that’s fine—he will memorise the cadence of your heartbeat beneath your skin, read the palmistry hidden in the lines of your hand, his future in each wrinkle. When that is not enough he will kiss you as he craves you and love you until there is nothing left of himself to give.

He knows he should tell you this, knows he should, but then you look at him—a gaze as soft as warm candlelight in the dark, and reach for him, like you don’t know what he’s capable of.

"You’re quiet," you say, fingers brushing his wrist, curling there like an anchor, like you could tether him to you instead.

"Just tired," he murmurs, shaking his head.

It’s not a lie, but it’s not the truth, either.

You sigh, shifting back on the bed, patting the space beside you. Stay. You don’t say it aloud, but he hears it all the same.

Leon hesitates. Just for a moment. Then, with an exhale, he climbs in next to you.

You fit against his side like you were made to be there, head tucked under his chin, one arm slung lazily across his waist. He is a furnace against you, all heat and warmth, and even though he snuck in from the cold, it seems like his heart has been radiating warmth all along.

Leon wonders if it’s because of you.

He lets his eyes drift shut, counting your breaths, feeling them against his throat, the soft rise and fall of your chest against his ribs.

When you shift to look at him, his heart stumbles. Your fingers reach up, tracing the sharp edge of his jaw, then trailing lower, down the line of his throat, pressing softly against his pulse.

He knows you feel it, the boyish way it races.

You hum, closing your eyes again, pressing close, exhaling warmth against his collarbone.

Leon watches you for a long time after that.

He tells himself he will let you go when you fall asleep. That he will climb back out your window and let the dusk swallow him up in its slow fade from ink to indigo.

But you are warm against him, your heart a steady rhythm beneath his palm, and when your lips part in sleep, you murmur something soft, something he can’t quite catch.

So instead, he stays.

The wind ripples through the prairie grass like it might be alive, the way it bends and sways, shushing against itself. The damp earth gives under Leon’s boots as he steps forward, moving without thinking, without deciding. The path is muscle memory, gravel that gives way to dirt under his feet. He ducks beneath the broken split-rail fence, his fingers graze the weather-worn wood, years of sun and wandering hands have worn it down. It no longer splinters.

The old house sits in the distance like a bad omen, its roof sagging in, paint peeling like it has been left out in the sun for too long. Its windows are like hollow eyes, watching, watching, watching. Always watching.

And it is empty here. It has been empty for a long time.

The trap is set just beyond the shed around the back, nestled deep into the brush. He checks it the way he always does, though he’s not sure why. He doesn’t need to anymore, no one is waiting for him to bring something home. No one will scold him for forgetting, or praise him for getting it right.

Maybe he set it to see if he could.

Maybe to see if something would stumble into it, to see if the universe would put something small and helpless in his hands.

Maybe so he could prove to himself that he wouldn’t do it.

His father’s voice still lingers at the edges of his memory, softened by time. A summer afternoon. Tall grass brushing his calves. A gentle hand guiding his own. See? Like this. It’s quick. They won’t feel a thing. A clean kill is a kind kill.

Leon doesn’t remember if he believed that.

So he isn’t sure why he returns each day to check the trap, but he does it anyway, yesterday—empty. And the day before that, too. He had exhaled relief both times. But today—

The rabbit is trembling.

It is small and wild, barely more than a handful in size, all matted fur and wide, scared eyes. Its hind legs twist unnaturally in the wire, kicking like maybe if it tried hard enough, it could get away.

The wind whistles through the tree line with the truth of its being. It wants to live.

And Leon knows, he could let it go. He could pry the trap open, let it bolt back past the underbrush, pretend none of this ever happened—that he didn’t set the trap, that he never saw it here at all. Pretend he wouldn’t have to do what he does next.

His hands are gentle as they press against its side, he can feel the rapid, terrified stutter of its heart, the warm way its flesh sings beneath his palms.

Leon’s mouth goes dry.

The knife feels heavier than it should when he pulls it from his back pocket, the weight of it strangely unfamiliar. His pulse thrums at the base of his skull, deep and insistent, a rhythm that does not belong to him, yet feels ancient, like he is familiar with the thrum of it.

The rabbit’s fragile body spasms against him, hind legs kicking up dirt, shuddering and thrashing as if it can still run, like if it can just manage to twist its body right, it might still get away. Claws like knives of their own scrape at his wrist, sharp pinpricks against his skin, weak but insistent all the same. He can hear its breath, sharp and fast, the pitiful, wheezing struggle of it.

It’s suffering.

Quick, it has to be quick. A clean kill is a kind kill.

There’s a sharp wet sound, the parting of skin, sinew, muscle.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

But still, the blood comes fast.

It spills in a hot rush over his fingers, thick and slick, seeping into the creases of his palms, painting his knuckles in something dark and final, soaking into the cuff of his sleeve.

His stomach turns.

Something ugly coils in his gut. He wants to call it nausea, but it isn’t—not entirely. There is something else, something worse, something hotter that curls low in his ribs, twisting there, sick and shameful.

Satisfaction.

The thought makes his skin crawl.

Leon shoves back, too fast, scrambling to his feet. His breath comes sharp, his fingers shaking where they hover in front of him, bloodied and trembling. His heart pounds, hammering a violent rhythm against his ribs.

He told himself he wouldn’t do it.

But he did anyway.

The blood is gone by morning but it still lingers on Leon’s hands like a phantom second skin.

He had scrubbed them raw, but no matter how long he had tried for, he could still smell the copper, still see the red. He rubs his hands together absently, like he can still feel the slick between his fingers, flexes his hands like the blood might come back if he catches the light just right.

But then your voice comes, your gentle talking. Something soft that drones on in its mundanity that cuts through the thick fog in his head.

He is sitting on the edge of your bed when he turns his head towards you, slow, like waking up from a dream, and for a second all he sees is light.

Sunlight filters in through thin lace curtains, spilling gold over your shoulders, catching in the strands of your hair, the fine edges of your form—he can make out the curve of your waist through the thin cotton of your dress, the swell of your hips and the lines of your thighs. Dust swirls in the glow, disturbed only by your movement as you tiptoe around your room, drifting from one thing to the next with a sort of absentminded grace Leon is sure he’s only ever seen you possess.

He thinks you look like an angel—wings of spun sunlight, gilding at the edges, a halo to match. The pretty cadence of your voice like angelsong that falls from gentle lips. He figures then, that you, bathed in heaven-yellow light, just might have been sent to save him. The heat of you is enough to keep him warm, stave off the cold that splits open inside him.

Your voice carries on, talking between verses, words scattered like leaves in autumn breeze, thoughts half-formed and entirely weightless.

He figures you don’t expect him to answer, not with the way you ask a question and move onto the next. He nods where needed and smiles where he should. Leon finds a comfort in it, the way you let yourself exist near him so easily, like he belongs here with you.

“—and Mrs. Adler brought peach preserves to service this morning, and I know you don’t like sweet things all that much, but I think you’d like hers.”

You look untouched by his morning, by the things you don’t yet know he’s done. You smell like linen and warmth, like candle wax and old wooden pews, like the incense that used to curl up toward the vaulted ceiling of the church. Like Sunday.

Your voice is light as you pluck up a book from your desk. “I wanted to bring you with me to service this morning. But you never showed.”

Leon says nothing.

You glance at him, then back at the book. “You’d have liked the sermon, I think.”

He doesn’t tell you where he was. He doesn’t tell you he didn’t show because he had woken before dawnfire slanted over the horizon, before the church bells rang, before the town stirred to life. Doesn’t tell you that while you had buttoned yourself into something light and lovely, Leon had stood over a dying thing and watched its eyes go glassy.

"Have you read this one?" You ask, flashing the battered cover of the book in your hand.

He barely sees it. Shakes his head.

You hum, tossing it onto the bed beside him. "You should.”

He won’t. But he won’t tell you that either.

You move again, the scent of you trailing in your wake. You step lightly over a pair of shoes left haphazardly by the door, bare feet on creaking wood, unbothered by the silence he’s wrapped himself in.

There is something about you.

Something radiant, something unbearable.

Something that aches to be looked upon.

He glances away, jaw tight.

You don’t know.

He should feel ashamed. Maybe he does.

“Leon?”

His eyes snap up.

You’re watching him now, head tilted slightly like a naive fawn, brow creased just enough to let him know you see something fraying, something untangling.

He doesn’t say anything.

You step closer, and it’s an unfortunate instinct—something old and hardwired—that makes him tense.

"You’re quiet," you say.

Leon exhales through his nose. "You always say that."

You huff a quiet laugh. "I know. But you’re quiet in a different way."

Again, he doesn’t answer.

You kneel in front of him, peering up at him like you’re trying to see inside. Like if you could, you’d splinter apart his chest and peek between the looms of his ribs to find his heart, like you might find love there, and not this sickness in its place instead.

It makes him ill, the way you look at him.

You don't know.

You don't know what he is.

“Are you okay?”

Push.

“Yeah.” He insists.

"You sure?"

Push.

"I said yeah."

"You don’t seem okay—"

Push.

"I said drop it."

It comes out sharp, harsher than he intends, and you still instantly. Caught in headlights.

Leon doesn’t raise his voice, not to you, never to you. To you, he is gentle hands that hold, soft lips that kiss, a kind heart that loves. You have never known him as anything other than that.

You blink up at him, lips parting slightly, your breath caught somewhere in the cavern of your throat.

Leon swallows, hard. Regret is instant and hits like a fist, shoving its way beneath his skin. But it doesn’t cool the flicker of anger, the frustration. It still curls hot in his gut, climbing its way up his throat like a vice.

“You’re being mean.”

It shouldn’t gut him the way it does.

You don’t say cruel, or violent, or dangerous. Just mean. Like he’s a child, a boy caught shoving another in the schoolyard. Like he hasn’t done things worse than this, than raise his voice.

It is like an awful stinging brand to the marrow of his bone. A verdict. A sentence.

Mean.

Not the thing he fears he is. Not the monster he’s convinced himself lives beneath his skin.

His mouth opens, but nothing comes. No apology, no defense.

He needs to leave, needs to wrench himself from this moment before it swallows him whole. Before he drowns in the guilt of it.

Leon stands abruptly, and you flinch. It’s slight—just the smallest flicker of movement—but he catches it, and the sight of it nearly drives him to his knees.

He shouldn’t be here, not when he’s still raw with anger, with whatever awful thing is stirring inside him, with the taste of it thick on his tongue.

So he doesn’t look at you when he goes, doesn’t wait for you to tell him to stay, doesn’t let himself want to.

He killed a man that night.

Leon didn’t mean to—truly, really, he didn’t. Doesn’t even remember the moment it happened.

The night had been old, an hour close to dusk that made him restless. Leon finds himself at the homestead once more, circling the bones of a place that no longer feels like home.

He had been leaving when it happened, the weight of his knife heavy in his hand. There was no rabbit, but that was a good thing, he thinks. A breath of relief.

And yet there had been a man.

Leon didn’t recognize him. Not from town, maybe passing through, maybe someone old or someone new. It didn’t matter, not then.

The night had been cold and blue, and there was no gilding light of yours to keep him warm. And that feeling—the sickening curl in his gut, the thing that makes his chest feel hollow and weightless all at once—he ached for it.

Wanted it.

So he gripped his knife.

And the moment it happened, there had been nothing. No divine intervention, no reckoning from above. The sky remained starless, silent, watching but not bearing witness. He remembers the sharp crack of bone, the whisper of a breath spilling from the man’s lips. Then, startling silence.

It had been so quick. The knife had driven up into his chest, right through the middle. A clean kill is a kind kill, after all.

A sharp breath had hitched in Leon’s throat then, something close to horror, maybe regret. It had come and gone in an instant, but it had been there, lodging itself in the back of his skull. And now, standing over the body, hands tacky with cooling blood, he should feel something more. Should feel wrong.

Shouldn’t he?

But the sky does not split open, and the earth does not swallow him whole. He is not cast down, nor is he lifted up.

Instead, he feels nothing at all.

The man had barely struggled, hadn’t screamed nor kicked. It hadn’t wanted to survive the same way the rabbit had.

Leon tells himself that should make it better. He shouldn’t feel guilty if the man had no fight in him. If it had been quick. If it had been easy. Still, something churns deep in his stomach, a sickness that lingers behind his ribs. It gnaws at him as he kneels down, as his fingers skim across cooling flesh.

No. His mind speaks with a finality he cannot defer, if he stops now, he’ll feel it. The ache. The emptiness. The unbearable weight of knowing what he’s done.

So he keeps going.

And when the body is found by the old railway tracks the next morning, it is dismembered. Skin peeled away, ribbons of flesh left in its wake.

First the sheriff is called. Then the detectives. Then the priest.

Because this is the sort of town that still believes in damnation. That still believes a man’s soul can be unspooled from his body if his sins are dark enough, if his death is brutal enough.

It is gruesome. Unnatural. The town hums with the news of it, a low, uneasy sort of murmur curling through the streets like a thick fog.

He’s heard the same thing all day long.

Did you hear? A man by the railway this morning. A single knife wound, right between the ribs. Someone knew what they were doing.

But Leon didn't know. He didn’t, he didn’t, he didn’t. He tells himself that over and under and over again until it is the only thing he knows.

Leon tries to ignore how his breath catches in his throat when he hears it, tries not to flinch when his boss leans over the register and mutters, It’s just not right.

Leon stares at the rows of screws and bolts and lockboxes, every object neat and harmless, and tells himself again:

It wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t.

His stomach twists. Not in fear, not quite, but in something close to it.

Because if there was no judgment the night it happened, will it come later? Will it slip through the cracks, find him in the dark?

He hadn’t even meant to come in today.

But staying home meant sitting still.

And sitting still meant thinking.

So instead, he came here, the little hardware store on the far end of town, wedged between the Deli and the Grocers.

He hadn’t even been rostered today, but Leon had insisted. Said he didn’t mind, needed the extra hours.

The truth was, he needed noise. Needed the consistent, clang of metal and the hum of fluorescents, the ache in his arms from hauling boxes of nails and guttering and rat traps.

He figured the busy come-and-go might be enough to keep his mind from wandering. But it isn’t.

Not when every passing face is a little too curious, a little too eager—everyone loves a mystery. Not when the newspaper sits folded by the register, inked with a headline he doesn’t dare read. Not when the wrench in his hand feels a little too much like the weight of his knife.

The bell chimes.

There you are.

Sunlight at your back, hands curled around the strap of your bag. Your presence is enough to ease the ache in his chest like a balm, a smile like the sun on your lips.

You lean up against the counter and for a minute you look like a timid animal—smiling still, but fiddling with the strap of your bag, like you’re not sure whether to stay or go, like coming here was a decision you second-guessed the whole way over. Leon hopes you’ll stay. Of course, you do.

“Hey, handsome,” you greet like always, but the words come out funny, like they don’t quite fit the shape of your mouth. You clear your throat and try again, “I— uhm, m’sorry about last night.”

Leon’s mind lurches. A hop, a skip, and a sharp turn into the white hot memory of last night—blood, copper-bright under moonlight, a gasping mouth, wide open eyes. You know, you know, you know.

“I didn’t mean to push you so hard,” come your next words. And each one comes back in pieces, a slow realisation, like waking up from a dream. Oh, he thinks. Not that.

He’d half forgotten how he’d treated you the night before, all sharp edges, words that cut. He’d forgotten the way you’d wavered. You’d just tried to help, his sweet girl. He’d worried you. And then, because that wasn’t enough, he’d hurt you some more.

Mean, you’d called him.

The guilt that had been sitting heavy in his stomach shifts, grows roots, spreads like ivy through his ribs. He stays silent for a beat too long, and your lips—your pretty, angel lips—pull into the softest frown.

And guilt is a tidal wave that pulls him under.

“I didn’t— no, I’m sorry.” He says, ducks his head into your line of sight, enough to give you a half smile, enough to nudge your lips back up a little. The relief that comes with it is instant. “I’m sorry, alright? Was my fault, I’ve been a bad boyfriend.”

“S’okay,” you beam easily, like that’s all it took. A barely-there apology, no penance required, and your heart is in his hands once more. Yours to give and his to hold.

It’s okay, you say. It makes Leon’s stomach curdle, because he thinks, if he pressed a knife to your throat, you would only look at him like this—soft, bright, sun-warmed—and show him where to cut.

The thought is sudden and unwelcome and it makes his insides turn out, makes him sick and sour. He couldn’t hurt you, wouldn’t, won’t.

You’re his summer rain, spring sunshine.

Easily, you reach into your bag, unaware of the thoughts in his head, and slide that same book from the day before across the counter.

“I think you’d like it,” you say, and Leon doesn’t have the heart to deny you any more.

He takes the book, pages curling and spine breaking, and flips through it. “I’ll read it.”

You beam again. The sun.

Leon doesn’t really read the book.

He tries, he really does, but it’s hard to focus on the words when the only thing on his mind is how you’d kissed him earlier that night.

He’d climbed through your window like he always does, and you’d pulled him into a desperate kiss the second he’d stumbled into your room. He hadn’t had a choice but to melt into your arms. It felt like coming home.

He presses two fingers to his lips, still warm from where you’d kissed and sucked and bitten, giggled into his mouth so bright and easy. He feels his pulse thrum beneath his touch and licks his lips to savour the taste.

The book in his lap is half-forgotten. Its cover is a little torn, pages aged and dog-eared. It feels like a piece of you he gets to carry in his hands.

Romeo and Juliet.

He finds it ironic you wanted him to read it so badly. His eyes dart over inky text, words that swim and shift like the river that bends behind the homestead, a gentle rush of water.

He finds a passage, one that you’ve underlined in red pen.

These violent delights have violent ends, it reads. A strange sort of line for you to find interest in, he thinks. He wonders why you picked it, what went through your mind when you highlighted it.

His eyes skim back up the page, trying to garner some context.

Love-devouring death do what he dare—

It is enough I may but call her mine

A hollow sort of breath escapes him, and he thinks about you. Your gaze, eversoft and unwavering, like you see his jagged edges and want him all the same.

And the thought creeps in once more, his knife, your throat, those eyes he loves that would shimmer with tears.

He thinks about you beneath him, if you’d dig half moons into his shoulders with your nails, if you’d let him drag the knife over your chest and press the blade to your sternum. How you’d gasp so prettily. He wonders what your blood would look like, taste like. It’s thrilling in a sick sort of way.

He snaps out of his thoughts in time with the sweet call of birdsong.

A bluebird perched in a tree across the river, awake at an hour like this.

He snaps the book shut and moves to make his way home, dusting dirt off his pants and walking his way down the bend of the river back towards the homestead.

The mud beneath his boots squishes with each step, reeds parting as the sun rises to greet the sleepy town like always, shades of pink and purple bleeding into a midnight sky.

It is not until Leon nears the tree line once more, that he hears another strange sound. A voice, gentle and soft, laughing prettily from somewhere deeper in the brush.

Leon finds himself following the curious sound back down the riverbend, the sound of laughter is light and bell-like. It carries through the trees like mist, weaves through the reeds and cattails. He stills.

Further down the creek, where the water teeters off and runs clear through the rocks, a figure stands with their back to him. A girl, he realises. Young, bright, wearing a dark dress, she stands knee-deep in the water, her arms crossed against the chill, head tilted back as she watches a boy shrug on his shirt, press a gentle kiss to her forehead, and disappear back into the brush, leaving her alone in the shallows.

Leon should leave.

He should turn around and walk away, pretend he never saw her, pretend he wasn’t here at all.

But then she hums, a soft, sweet little thing, and something in his gut pulls.

He doesn’t remember wading in. He doesn’t remember the moment she notices him—just that she turns, eyes going wide in the dark, lips parting like she might speak his name.

His name.

For a split second, the world narrows to the space between them. To her breath, sharp and hitched in her throat. To the way she sways slightly in the water, caught between fear and recognition. She isn’t a stranger, is she?

The silence between them feels like a choice.

Then, the choice is gone.

He moves before he can think. A hand to the throat, a push, the sudden burst of movement as she fights. She is stronger than he expects.

The river churns around them, frothing and thrashing as though it too wants to resist him. She fights the way people pray—desperate, reckless, full of blind, furious belief. Her hands scrabble at his wrists, her legs kick up mud from the riverbed, silt blooming dark in the water like ink spilled across a page.

Her mouth breaks the surface for just a second—one precious second—and the sound that leaves her is something raw, something torn from deep inside her ribs. A sob. A name, maybe. His. God’s. Does it matter?

Leon holds her under.

The water surges. His own breath is sharp, his pulse loud in his ears. Her hair floats like ribbons around them, tangling between his fingers, dragging across his arms. His grip tightens, his body locking against the current, against her twisting, bucking frame.

She looks a bit like you, he thinks. Hair the colour of yours, eyes that cry the same way yours do.

A cold thought slithers up his spine.

This is the closest he will ever get to killing you.

He swallows hard. Tightens his grip.

He wonders if this is what Othello felt, pressing a pillow to Desdemona’s lips. If this is what Achilles felt, watching Patroclus fall to his knees in borrowed armor. If this is what God felt, when he sent the flood.

It takes longer than he thought it would.

Long enough for him to feel the strength ebb from her body in slow, rattling increments—until the fight is just... gone. Her hands fall away from his wrists. Her body goes slack. The water cradles her gently, like a lover.

And still, he cannot let her go.

The water laps at his knuckles, soaks through his sleeves. He swears he can still feel the hum of her voice in his bones.

His breath comes in sharp, uneven bursts. His arms are trembling. His body is betraying him, as if it knows this is wrong.

His hands are shaking.

He watches the last breath slip from her lips in a plume of air bubbles, scattering like stars on the surface of the water. The last thing she gives to the world.

Then, finally, he releases her.

Her body floats. He staggers back, the bank uneven beneath his feet. His breath comes sharp, uneven. Her hair fans out like a halo against the pale shimmer of the current. His hands are still shaking, still caught in the phantom of her struggle, in the memory of her weight against him.

Something in his gut twists.

This should be enough.

He tells himself that, standing there, breath sharp and uneven, blood roaring through his skull. This should be enough. This should quiet it. This should—

He swallows hard.

He won’t know until he sees you again.

It’s not until he’s made his way back to your window, climbing inside, finding you curled up in the sheets, warm and still and alive, that he realises he’s still shaking. He winds his arms around you, pressing his face to your shoulder, inhaling deep, trying to sink into the scent of you, the presence of you, the proof of you.

By the time the boy returns to the riverbed, the creek is empty, the water is still, and the girl in the dark dress is nowhere to be found.

The church is suffocating. Stained glass windows cast slanted beams of bleeding gold and bruised violet across the pews, coloring the mourners in fractured light. The air is thick with incense and stifling heat, the smell of day-old lilies gone soft at the edges, too sweet.

You sit in the second row, hands white-knuckle tight in your lap. There is a rawness that scratches your throat from the inside out, like you’ve swallowed something sharp and it’s lodged there, unable to go down. Someone is speaking at the podium, a voice that barely cuts through the static hum in your skull.

She was kind. She was bright. She was loved.

You hear every word, yet they pass you like wind through hollow bones.

When they lower her into the earth, it doesn’t feel real. You try to remember the last thing she said to you, the last time you braided her hair, shared a secret, laughed until your sides ached. But the memories blur at the edges, overtaken by a litany of others—the riverbank, the reeds, the way they said she looked when they found her. Her dress fanned out, the outline like wings beneath the water. Her body ghoulish and still, face turned heavenward as if waiting for someone to find her.

You picture her gasping for air.

The thought guts you. Tears slip past your lashes before you can stop them. Hot and soundless. You bite down on the inside of your cheek until copper floods your mouth.

Leon’s hand finds yours.

His fingers press into your palm, grounding, warm, as if trying to anchor you to something beyond the weight of your grief. You squeeze back, hard enough to bruise.

He lets you. Lets you hurt him. Lets you crush his hand in yours like the pain might balance out the weight of his guilt. He welcomes it, craves it, almost. Because this—your grief, your need, your trembling trust—it’s the closest he’ll ever come to redemption.

Because he knows the weight of the dirt being shoveled onto the coffin. Knows what it’s like to hold someone under, to feel the last of their fight fade out through their limbs. He knows the exact hue her lips turned when the light went out behind her eyes.

And now he sits beside you, the architect of your mourning, and lets you draw comfort from the same hands that stilled her heartbeat.

He wants to be good. For you. Just for you.

He watches your grief with something sharp twisting in his gut. He hates this part. Not the killing. That, he can live with. But this aftermath, the raw pain in your voice, it makes him sick.

And yet it sickens him more, how much he loves the blind, aching way you cling to him. As if you still believe his hands could do nothing but hold. That he would never hurt you. As if you don’t feel her ghost breathing between you.

Autumn gives way to blistering winter, winter on the cusp of newfound spring. The town exhales, slowly, warily, like it’s forgotten how to breathe without bracing for bad news. The snow that had settled itself over everything—over gravestones and shuttered windows, over street signs and the lonely traffic light in town—begins to thaw.

And with it, Leon watches you come undone by inches. A thousand little deaths, none of them final. He thought by now your aching heart would’ve healed, warmed with the coming seasons. Instead, you stop painting your nails, you don’t come into town anymore, don’t visit him at the hardware store like you used to.

When he comes by your window some nights, he hears you crying. Can’t bear himself to climb in. Wouldn’t know how to offer a semblance of the solace you deserved. He feels like he’s losing you.

There is no more bloodshed, no more bodies to be found because Leon’s knife has been tucked neatly into the drawer next to his bed ever since the funeral service.

Because what does it matter, if you don’t look at him like you used to? If your laughter doesn’t chase itself down the hallway of his heart anymore?

What use is ruin without worship? Worship without ruin?

But still, violence has since become as familiar an organ as his heart is to his body.

He starts dreaming of you dead, some nights. Face turned heavenward, just like hers had been. Eyes wide open, but the light gone out. And he wakes gasping, as if the world could not possibly go on without you in it. As if the truth of the little death behind your eyes is enough to absolve the sins he has committed.

It reminds him of the deer.

He must’ve been eight, maybe nine. The sun was low in the sky, his father was tired. He’d hit a doe just outside of town, off the road, she didn’t die right away, staggered then crumpled there beside the road, steam rising from her body.

And every day after, they passed her in the truck on the way home.

The first day, she looked like sleep. Legs tucked beneath her like she might stir if the wind coaxed her kindly enough. The second day, her eyes were gone—eaten out, maybe, or just caved in by time. The third day, her ribs peeked through the belly, white as the moon. The fourth, there was nothing left but a smear on the road. A black shape. A ghost of something that had once been soft.

Fur turned to hide. Hide to sinew. Sinew to rot.

He thinks of that deer when he dreams of you.

And each time, you rot faster. Fade sooner. The curve of your mouth less familiar, the slope of your nose wrong, wrong, wrong. Until the shape of you is something unrecognisable, just an impression pressed into the backs of his eyelids.

So, in the wake of what he knows, Leon finds himself by your window again. You’ve left it open like always, but he still finds himself knocking. Three gentle raps.

“Come in,” you say quietly, letting him into your dying warmth. You’re curled on your bed in the half-light, the bulb in your bedside lamp sputtering with the soft whine of something close to death.

“Hi, sunshine.”

You glance up, tired-eyed, a little smile tugging at the corner of your mouth. That nickname again—ridiculous and ill-fitting now, like summer clothes in winter.

“I think your lamp’s giving up,” he adds, stepping inside. “Probably tired of listening to the same sad music on repeat.”

You roll your eyes, but it’s fond. “So fix it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He moves toward the nightstand with mock solemnity, fiddling with the bulb as if it requires real effort. It flickers back to life with a reluctant hum.

He turns to you then, the soft yellow glow softens his face.

“Better?” he asks.

You nod. “Yeah. Thanks.”

He kneels beside your bed, brushing the hair from your eyes with the backs of his fingers. Then, he hooks one finger beneath your quilt, pulls the blanket down just to kiss your chapped lips softly.

You don’t feel like you deserve his kindness or the warmth he offers you so freely, like you should live in the shape of your sadness forever. But you let him anyway because grief makes you greedy. He kisses your cheeks next, one then the other, your nose last. His hands cradle the sides of your face, rough palms that have never felt softer to you.

He loves you, this you know. And you will hold onto it selfishly if it is all you have left.

“I hate seeing you like this,” he admits softly. The words are like a sinking stone in your chest. For a breath, you feel ashamed—like your sorrow is a burden he’s been forced to carry. He’s hurting too, you’ve known that for a while. Known it in the quiet ways: the heaviness in his eyes, the weight of his smile.

What exactly he’s mourning, you do not know. But you wish you could fix it anyway.

“I know,” you murmur softly at last. “I’m sorry.”

Leon studies you quietly, looks at you like you're precious and breakable all at once. He kisses you softly once more, draws your hands from beneath the blanket and holds them in his own, lacing your fingers together like they belong together.

“Come with me,” He says, nodding towards the window, the rush of dying winter air billowing the lace curtains.

“Where to?” You ask, confusion lacing your brows together.

“Does it matter?”

It doesn’t. So you follow him. Sneak out your window like Rapunzel. Leon helps you down, your bare feet skid across the shingles, arms windmilling once before you tumble—soft and graceless—into the sleeping brush below.

He braces for the worst, and yet you laugh. Something soft and sudden it startles the birds from the trees, and it’s like colour floods his being.

He takes you somewhere secret, a quiet hush-hush between gentle laughter the whole way through the thinning woods.

The trees are not dense where you live on the outskirts of the prairie, they stretch like spindles toward the sky, bark peeled back by time and winter wind. They do not grow thick here, only tall—long, reaching limbs that vanish into the mist. As a child, you once imagined climbing them straight into heaven, fingers grazing the stars.

You walk shoulder to shoulder. The snow has thinned, melted to slush along the roots and rocks, and the ground sighs beneath your steps. You spot the first crocus bloom peeking out beside a fallen log, delicate and purple as a bruise. The woods are waking. And so, maybe, are you.

The radio tower rises suddenly, like a relic summoned from the earth itself.

It stands at the highest point of the valley. Its metal skeleton weathered and rusted, cables like veins strung between its limbs. Once, it must have pulsed with light and signal, voices skipping across the hills in Morse-coded static.

He takes your hand. Leads you up the narrow ladder, each rung groaning under your weight, your breath fogging in the air. Higher and higher, until the town becomes a scatter of lights behind you. Until the forest is a patchwork of charcoal and frost, stitched into the earth like a quilt pulled tight.

And when you get to the top, your skirt catching on the edge of old wire, tearing it free, you feel alive for the first time in a long time.

The wind cleaves straight through you, sharp and unforgiving, but you like the way it bites your skin, whips your hair about in all sorts of directions.

“This is magic,” you say, words coated in disbelief. The entire town looks like a tiny playset from up here.

“It’s something, isn’t it?” You hear him before you feel him, the brush of his shoulder against yours as he leans against the rusted railing with you. The tower creaks gently under your shared weight.

You just stand there, taking it all in. Your breath puffs in the chill, slow and even. He hasn’t seen you breathe like this in months.

“I can’t wait to leave this town,” you say suddenly, voice soft, threaded with something close to wonder.

Leon doesn’t move. Just watches the way your eyes drift toward the horizon, like you’re already halfway gone.

“I used to think I’d miss it,” you go on, “but now… I don’t know. I think I’m ready for college. To move on, maybe. To start something new.” You laugh, quiet and a little sheepish, turn to look at him. “Isn’t that awful? I feel like I’m supposed to stay here. Be sad forever.”

He opens his mouth. Closes it again.

“It’s not awful,” he says, but the words taste like a bitter lie. It is awful. It’s so horribly awful that you’d ever imagine a life for yourself in which he doesn't exist.

New city, new people. Where does he fit in that picture?

A strange kind of panic stirs in his chest. You, leaving. You, gone. He can’t bear the thought of a world without you. One where he doesn’t get to hear you laugh, see you smile. One where you don’t follow him around or ask him pointless questions just to hear his voice.

He imagines your bedroom window with the light switched off.

The thought unmoors him.

He can see the homestead from here, a darkness exuding so potently the shadows flicker in the corner of his eye all the way from up here.

He glances back at you, and thinks consciously, for the first time in a while, how easy it’d be to keep you.

The voice in his head is gentle. Persuasive. It sounds a little like love.

So he makes his decision, albeit painstakingly, but with the sort of deliberation that feels, in some twisted corner of his mind, like mercy.

He tries not to. For weeks, he tries. Tries to reason with himself, the way one might try to wean a wild thing of affection. A rabbit. A dog. Something dumb and soft and unknowing, something helpless with a heartbeat. He tries, desperately, to let you go in ways that might make it easier. Like if he staves the copper-in-his-mouth urge off for long enough, it’ll suffice.

But it doesn’t work.

He sees you in his dreams every night. Lit from within. Haloed in memory. He sees your silhouette in every open doorway, hears your voice in the trees. A vision, beautiful and doomed all at once.

So when the crocuses come into full bloom, when the world begins to thaw and the promise of spring begins to breathe warm into the soil, he asks.

Come with me. Where to? Does it matter?

And again, it doesn’t, because your trust bleeds deeper than your rationality, because you were born with a lamb’s heart and a martyr’s bones.

So you follow him, blindly, faithfully. Like you always have, like you always will.

There is a stillness to you that day, a gentleness in the way you’re soft with sleep and chilly air, hair tangled, sweater sleeves pulled over your hands to stave off the biting morning cold. He watches you trail after him through the tall grass and thinks, with a pulse of something close to reverence: you have no idea.

The knife is a secret that rides in his back pocket. He feels it in every step.

He hates how easy it is. Hates how willing you are to go wherever he leads. It fills him with something hot and guilty and half-divine.

The walk is long. The sun shifts slowly overhead, dappling the earth through branches just beginning to bud. Wind stirs the field grass into waves. You talk, quietly. Fill the silence with idle nothings—how the birds chirp louder now, how the bees have started to come back, how it finally feels almost like spring. Your voice has always been birdsong to him. He can’t quite bear the thought of never hearing it again.

The path to the homestead is overgrown, wild with creeping vine and honeysuckle. Nature reclaiming what man abandoned. The trees part at the prairie’s edge like curtains drawn open, and there it is—the house.

It’s worse than he remembers although he was just here a few days ago.

Peeling paint, sun-bleached boards, the screen door hanging crooked on one hinge, yawning open like a jaw. A place haunted by the many lives before it.

“Creepy,” you murmur, your voice light but not mocking as you stop at the threshold to the front door. You glance back at him, lips lifting at one corner. “Weird choice for a date.”

He swallows the laugh that wants to crawl up his throat. Instead, he says, “Thought you might appreciate the quiet.”

You hum thoughtfully and push the door open with your palm. Inside, the house sighs as the door swings open. Dust blooms in the shaft of sunlight that follows you in, and the air smells like mildew and old wood.

“You really used to come here?” you ask, glancing at him over your shoulder.

He nods, jaw tight. “Since I was a kid. When I needed to be alone.”

You tilt your head, puppy-dog cute in your innocence. “That sounds sad.”

He shrugs, and in the moment of silence that follows, you don’t press. You never do. That’s what makes this harder, that endless, bottomless trust. He could feed you poison and you’d thank him for the sweetness of it.

You reach for his hand without hesitation, squeeze it once, and that’s what undoes him a little more, how easily you slip your fingers into his. How warm they are. How much they trust. It makes him feel divine and monstrous all at once. Like a god with a worshipper who doesn’t yet know the mausoleum she stands in was built for her bones.

You explore without fear. Toe across warped floorboards and peer into the cold fireplace, play peek-a-boo with the torn curtains and warped doorways. You run your finger along the mantle and leave a line in the grime.

“Feels like something out of a ghost story,” you murmur, half to yourself.

Leon just watches you from the doorway.

Because you are the ghost. Or maybe he is. Maybe this whole house is just some purgatory he’s invented for the both of you to fall into together.

He follows you in eventually, his footsteps slow and careful. Like one wrong move might wake something sleeping under the floorboards.

He follows as you drift from room to room, with the kind of reverent curiosity reserved for relics or tombs. He should tell you everything, spill it like bile. Let the sickness come up and out and give you the chance to run.

“You okay?” you hum.

No. No, he’s not.

But he nods, because lying feels easier than truth, and because you already look so proud of him for letting you in.

You end up in the living room, where the couch is sunken and moth-eaten, but you sit anyway, curling your legs beneath you. Leon finds his place beside you, close enough to share your warmth. You lean your head on his shoulder with a long, contented sigh, and he swears he hears the altar creak beneath you both.

“I like it here,” you murmur. “It’s quiet. Feels like the rest of the world doesn’t exist.”

It doesn’t. Not anymore. There’s only this moment, this house, this version of you, of him.

And something in Leon whispers soft and sweet, that he doesn’t have to do this. He could keep you instead. Love you right.

He turns his face into your hair and breathes you in.

He thinks: I’ll take it back. I’ll take it all back.

You kiss him before he can say it. Just a brush of your lips against his jaw, soft and searching. He turns to meet it, and your mouth finds his. He doesn’t deserve it, but he kisses you like he might anyway. The kiss lacks the desperation Leon feels bone-deep. The desperation to seek penance for the sins he is still yet to commit. Like if you forgive him now, none of it will matter. His hands tangle in your shirt, mouths barely parted but pressed in urgency nonetheless.

“I missed you,” you whisper, and he almost confesses everything then. Almost lays it at your feet like a bloodied offering.

But he just kisses you again and again and again. Slower this time, gentler, thumb brushing your cheek as he pours himself into you. And it becomes so easy to believe he can have this, that he can be this man, the one you see.

You shift into his lap, lithe and loose-limbed with leftover kiss. The taste of him still lingers, something like salt-sweet sweat.

Leon doesn’t move, but his eyes follow the curve of your face. Studies you for the last time, tries to memorise the way your eyes glimmer with life and your smile curves just for him.

Your hands sweep up to brush the hair from his face, curl gently behind his ear. You kiss the corner of his mouth, light as breath, then trail along the line of his jaw. Fingers wander, slow and idle, tracing the path you’d just followed with your mouth, down the strong column of his throat. You feel him swallow.

Hands gentle as ever, sweep down and drag across the front of his shirt, slip lower still, curving down the arc of his waist, and that’s when they catch the edge of something tucked into his waistband.

He stiffens beneath you.

You tug gently, Leon grabs your wrist. The suddenness startles you.

You try to yank your wrist free. “Leon,” you say, confusion cinching your brows together. Again, you yank. His grip tightens. “You’re being weird—”

You finally pull free, and your hand reaches to pull out what hides at his back. A hunting knife glints in your hand.

It is sturdy and sharp. Worn, but cared for. It gleams faintly in the low light, jagged edges that startle you.

You laugh, not because it’s funny, but because you’re confused, and confusion always sounds like humor when you don’t know where else to put it.

“Is this—what, for bears?” you tease, turning it over in your hands. “What kind of date are we on, woodsman? You planning to skin me for my hide?”

It’s a joke. It is. You look up at him, expecting a smile, something muttered quietly under his breath, a quip in place of the look that meets you. But Leon doesn’t laugh, nor does he move. His eyes remain on the blade in your hands like it’s already covered in blood.

The silence grows roots between you.

Your smile falters. “...Leon?”

He swallows once. You see his throat bob, his jaw tighten.

“Why do you have this?” Your voice is smaller now, thinner. You offer it back to him. “I mean—you don’t hunt, right? You hate hunting.”

He doesn’t take it, just looks at you, and for the first time, you don’t recognize what’s in his eyes.

“Leon?”

A terrible pause. And then, finally—

“I was going to kill you.”

It doesn’t make sense.

The words land all wrong. Scattered in the space of your mind left for you to pick up and put together. Leon watches you, kind enough or cruel enough to let you do the math of your own undoing.

“What?”

He exhales hard, like something has at long last cracked loose in his chest. Like confession is a kind of relief. Like honesty makes this better.

“I was going to kill you,” he repeats, and this time, the words sink through your chest like a stone in water. A slow, sinking dread that blooms in the pit of your stomach.

Leon watches you with something close to awe. Or grief. It’s hard to tell with him now—his expression something unreadable. A blankness you’ve never seen before.

“I brought you here to— well, to end it. I couldn’t take it anymore. You, leaving. I couldn’t... I couldn’t let the world have you. Couldn’t bear the idea of you forgetting me.”

The silence that follows is so thick and cloying you can hear your pulse in it. Feel it inside your skull, pressing behind your eyes.

You stare at him, and for once, you don’t have any words. Just a mouth full of dry cotton and a heart knocking hard against your ribs.

“But I changed my mind,” he says quickly, urgently, like that undoes the violence in the intent. “I did. You kissed me. You looked at me like I was still—still yours. And I realized I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to hurt you. I never did.”

You feel dizzy. The room tilts.

“I love you,” he says. “God, I love you. And I didn’t want to lie to you anymore. So I’m telling you now. I’m being honest. Doesn’t that count for something?”

You shake your head minutely. Like you’re trying to knock the thoughts loose from where they stick to the walls of your skull. Like maybe, if you shake hard enough, you’ll wake up in your own bed, sunlight on the sheets.

“You were going to kill me,” you say, and the words taste foreign in your mouth.

Leon has the audacity to startle. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?”

You blink slowly. “You said you brought me here to kill me.”

“I said I couldn’t do it. That I changed my mind.” His voice rises without meaning to, cracking like dry wood. “I’m trying to be honest. That’s supposed to mean something.”

You realise you’re much too close for comfort. Your knee still brushes his while you sit on the moth-bitten couch. The only thing you have to defend yourself, the knife still in your hand.

But he sees it. Sees your weight shift. Sees your eyes flick to the door, to the window, away from him.

“No—hey. No.” His voice drops to a ragged whisper. “Don’t— I’m right here.”

You’re trembling now. Not just because of what he’s said, but because of how quickly he changed. Because that blank, even calm has cracked open into something panicked.

“I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m not,” he says again, as if repetition makes it truer.

Your mouth opens. Closes.

“You just— You said it so calmly.” Your voice cracks, trying to find reason between all this madness.

Leon runs both hands through his hair, rises to his feet, pacing two steps before turning back. His chest rising and falling in tight, uneven pulls.

“I wasn’t calm,” he says. “I was trying to be honest with you. You want me to lie instead? Pretend I didn’t think about it? Would that make you feel better?”

“You’re scaring me.”

“I changed my mind,” he insists, voice splintering now. “I’m telling you, isn’t that worth something? Honesty, even now—especially now—should count.”

But the weight of his confession is not lightened by truth.

There is no nobility in admitting you once intended violence to the thing you claim to love. There is only a new kind of intimacy, one born not of affection, but of proximity to death.

You study him. The trembling of his hands, the wet glint in his eyes. And it is terrifying, how reasonable he sounds in his unraveling.

And more terrifying still, how he looks at you. Like a prophet does fire.

You are the last divine thing he believes in. Can’t you see? The only living being in the vastness of his mind that could save him. He has never known a love as pure as the one you had bestowed upon him.

And so, he has built his altar.

He has knelt at it, trembling, devoted.

He has prayed to keep this—you. The purity of your love before it spoils. Before the world takes you and reshapes you into something that no longer needs him.

He would rather die by your hand than live in a world where you turn your face away.

And if you won’t kill him, if you recoil from him now, if you leave, then the death he imagined will come just the same. Not with blood, but in absence. In the slow, shriveling death of being forgotten.

You watch him. You feel the weight of his stare, of his worship, like a noose of silk. Lovely. Crushing.

And something inside you—call it instinct, call it survival—begins to recoil.

“I need to go,” you say, though the words come like a foreign tongue. Your voice doesn’t sound like your own.

It takes him a moment to hear you. Or perhaps he simply refuses. His head tips, slightly. His brow furrows.

“What?”

Your legs shift beneath you, unsteady. You glance toward the door, the night pressing up against it. Your mouth is dry. “I—I need to leave.”

He rises a little, not all the way as if he is following your movement with his own.

“No,” he says, soft. “No, you don’t.”

“I do.” You stand. You don’t remember deciding to do it. You just know that you must. You have to get out, you have to get away, before this becomes something you can’t change.

His voice cracks as he rises after you.

“Don’t.” That’s all. Just that one word, full of ache.

And then—

“I love you.”

There is something utterly childlike in the way he says it. Not manipulative, not cruel. You’ve never realised just how blue his eyes look when he says I love you.

“I love you.” He says again. “I love you so much it scares me.”

It scares you too.

And as if he sees the fear in your eyes, he continues, hands coming up in surrender, palms open. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says quickly, restlessly. “That wasn’t—this isn’t how I wanted it to happen. I just… I thought if I told you the truth, that it would mean something. That you'd understand. I only meant—fuck, I just wanted to be with you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

Your back bumps the wall. You didn’t even realize you were retreating.

Leon doesn’t notice just yet, caught in the undertow of everything he’s kept hidden. He keeps talking, words spilling out in a desperate, clumsy rush.

“I was going to do it. I was going to end it. I wasn’t gonna let you go alone. We’d be together. Just us. No one else.”

The room contracts.

“Together?”

His face softens like he thinks you understand, like this is the moment he wins you back.

And then the silence tilts and shifts, because you do understand. Finally.

Not just what he said. But what he’s done.

He killed her. He drowned her in that river. The revelation is enough to make your lips part in a silent sort of scream, a gasp for air.

Leon’s mouth is still moving. He’s saying something about fate. About love. About how he never wanted to hurt anyone but sometimes the darkness just wins.

Your vision goes hot around the edges. Your stomach churns. You double over without grace, the knife drops from your hand in an unceremonious clatter, and you slap the wall for balance. You’re going to be sick.

“Hey—hey,” Leon murmurs, stepping toward you, “you’re okay. Let me help—”

His hand touches your arm and you recoil like it burns.

“Don’t touch me.”

You shove him back, and Leon stumbles, caught off balance, eyes wide with something that doesn’t look like understanding.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” you say again, voice trembling with something more like fear than anger.

And when you look at him again, his sad blue eyes look like steel.

“You don’t mean that,” he says, quietly. “You’re just upset, confused.”

“Don’t— Don’t make me feel naive.” You’re panting now. “You killed her. You killed her, Leon.”

“No, you don’t. You don’t get to say that. You don’t get to look at me like—”

You scramble to run before he can get all his words out.

But you barely make it two steps before he tackles you down, a mess of limbs and a flurry of panic. The floor rushes up too fast, your elbow cracks against it, and the air punches out of your lungs.

And in the struggle, his hands come down around your body; a vice, or a lover’s embrace, either way, suffocating.

“Let go,” and it’s only now you feel the wetness on your face, your tears cascading in tremulous waterfalls, warm and salt-bitten. “Please, Leon, let go.”

“I love you,” Leon says again, like it’s all he has left to offer, the only language his mouth remembers. “I love you, I love you.”

His breath is hot and frantic against your cheek. His hands tremble with a fevered sort of need, fight for purchase on your wrists, clammy with the truth of the sins that stain them. You can’t tell if the suffocation comes from his body atop yours, or from your sobs, which are so sharp now, so relentless, that breathing has become an afterthought.

You push at his chest with whatever strength remains in your trembling arms, but he’s stronger in desperation You try to push and push and push, but he’s twice as desperate now, pain scrambling to keep you still, to keep you his.

Your nails sink deep into his forearm, crescents of etched into his skin. Red half-moons rising where his skin breaks.

He shoves you down and slaps you across the face.

Blood floods your mouth, copper and bitter and warm against your tongue, eyes wide in shock. For a few short moments that feel like lifetimes, you can’t move.

“You hit me,” you gasp, like it’s the worst of what has happened tonight. Like the fact of it is worse than all the other truths.

“You wouldn’t stay still,” Leon insists, eyes wider and lip trembling. “I’m sorry, you just wouldn't stay still—”

Your lip bleeds a beautiful crimson down the corner of your cheek, where his knuckle must have split the delicate skin. He watches it bead and bloom and thinks of all the times he’s kissed you, those beautiful, soft lips.

His thumb brushes your lip softly, shaky and slow, across the middle first, then through the blood.

Leon lowers his head, lips close enough for your exhales to catch in each other’s throats. He could kiss you. He could kill you. The truth of it is terrifying.

His lips press to yours gently first. And for a few fleeting moments it’s familiar. Sweet and soft, like the boy you knew before. Then, his lips crush to yours in desperation. That’s all he seems to be now, desperation.

You feel him tremble when he tastes the blood he put there. The tremble spreads through you. It’s all you can do not to scream.

You don’t kiss him back.

You cry into it instead, into the curve of his mouth, into the silence that has swallowed everything else. You’re crying so hard your teeth clack against his, your body shuddering under the weight of it all. And still, still, still, he holds you like he thinks it might save him. Like he can love his way out of what he’s done.

You can taste your own grief with every press of his lips to yours, a dirty salt and a biting copper.

And Leon, poor Leon, believes it means something. Still, despite everything, believes in the truth of your love.

You may call it naivety, the way he trusts you so blindly, so much so that he doesn’t notice the way your hands shift. Doesn’t feel the tension coiling in your legs, your knees folding slow beneath him, measuring distance and breath. He’s too caught in the fantasy.

And in this moment of vulnerability, you shove him.

Leon falls back with a grunt, too slow to catch you this time. He looks nearly stunned as you scramble to your feet, clawing at the base of the stairs, using the banisters to pull you to your feet before you make a break for the door.

You twist the handle, but it doesn’t budge. Panic floods you like a tidal wave, and you’re lucky enough to duck when Leon lunges for you, letting out a startled scream as you instead make a break for the stairs.

Leon falls backwards with a startled grunt, his balance off-kilter, arms too slow this time to catch you. His eyes are wide, wild and stunned, like he’s just been slapped awake.

Your palms slap the floor, catch the base of the stairs, claw at the banister. You drag yourself upright with what little strength is left in you, and bolt for the door.

Legs like jelly, every step threatens to send you toppling forward and back into the ground.

Hands slip over the knob, slick with sweat. Won’t budge. Locked, you realise. It’s locked. It hits you like an awful riptide, your own breath turning on you, as the panic settles in, and you barely even manage to duck as—

Leon lunges, and the scream that escapes you scratches its way up your throat, raw and aching. You pivot as fast as you can and crash into the banister. Hands seize it like a lifeline, dragging yourself up with trembling legs, each step is like a jolt to your nervous system.

Up, up, up, you take the steps two at a time, Leon on your heels like thunder. You don’t need to chance a look over your shoulder, don’t dare when you can already feel his presence in the thick air, in the pulse of the house, in the way the walls seem to close in around you.

You hear him behind you, a string of sweet nothings that pleases for you to come back to him.

But you're smarter than that, even if a part of you wishes you weren’t. A part of you that wishes you could be naive enough to crawl back into his arms and accept the twisted love he would kill himself to give you.

Your legs carry you down the hall, dizzy with panic as your vision blurs at the edges. You don’t know where you’re going, how you’ll escape.

Door. Door. Try a door.

The first one doesn’t budge, stuck fast, even as you rattle the handle desperately with sweaty hands.

You sob once, a sharp breath that tears from your throat, and keep going.

Second door—same. Jammed. Locked. A curse splinters out of you, but you keep moving, legs burning.

Behind you, Leon’s boots thud against the last step. The floor creaks under his weight.

“I didn’t mean to—” he pants, his voice echoing down the hallway towards you. “You have to know I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

You scream, sharp and terrified, and shove your weight into the third door. It finally gives under your weight and you waste no time in shoving it open and hurling yourself inside.

But Leon’s shadow looms in the gap, the sliver of space that you’ve not yet managed to shove shut. His hand slams against the other side of the door, rattling the handle as he tries to force it open.

The cry that escapes you breaks his heart, but he can’t let you get away. Not again. He loves you too much for that.

“Baby— sweetheart, please.” He begs, near hysterical, “I didn’t mean to– didn’t mean to scare you– You know I didn’t.”

You push back with everything you have, shoulder braced to the wood, feet skidding on the floor. Your heartbeat roars in your ears, and you don’t realise you’ve replied until his voice comes back, soaked through with desperation.

“Stop? Stop? Why would I stop,” He emphasises his words with a harsh shove that makes you gasp in fear, “You don’t understand,” He convinces himself, “sweetheart, let me help you understand, open the door.”

“Stop!” you shriek, voice splintering. “Stop talking!”

He gives another push. The door swings open a few inches, and you see his eyes, once a cerulean, beautiful blue, now glassy, sanguine red.

“I can’t live without you,” he breathes, and it’s worse because it sounds true, his face is twisted with it. “You have to understand. I love you. I just wanted– I just needed—” You, you, you.

You scream to drown it out, wordless and panicked, and shove with everything you have. By a stroke of luck, his grip slips. The door slams shut. You lock it—if it even locks, you don’t know, don’t check.

Tucked into the corner by the door is a bookcase nearly half as tall as you. You move quickly, throw your weight against it, but even so it’s heavy.. It does little but groan as it moves, sluggish and stubborn even as you push it with all your might.

Leon slams into the door again, so hard the frame begins to splinter. A terrified sob claws its way out of you.

“Please,” he begs, his voice echoing through the door.

Another bang, the walls rattle, a picture frame clatters off the wall and bursts across the floor in shards of glass.

“I know you’re scared, just— just let me in.”

The bookcase drags into place with a final grinding shriek of wood on wood. Your muscles scream. You heave again, one last time, and throw your weight against it until it finally, finally, topples over, crashing to the floor in front of the door with a thunderous bang that shakes the walls.

And at long last, silence greets you again.

Leon stops banging against the door, the handle doesn’t tremble nor do the walls shake any longer.

Your hands tremble against your thighs as you double over, gasping for breath, chest tight with sobs you finally let spill out. You don't know how long it lasts, this fleeting reprieve, but you don’t dare take it for granted.

Staggering back, you survey your surroundings.

The room you find yourself in is useless. No closet, not a back door. Just a battered desk, a thin rug, cracking wallpaper, and…

A window.

It’s small, too small even, but maybe—

You scramble to scale the desk in one desperate movement, knees thudding against its surface as your fingers feel along the window’s seam. There’s a metal lock, but it’s rusted shut. The glass is old and stubborn, and no matter how hard you yank, it won’t budge.

Leon calls through the door, rattling it’s handle.. “Sweetheart… you can’t leave. You can’t. I won’t know how to breathe without you.”

You brace your palms on the frame and try to lift the pane, but it doesn’t move. Painted shut.

Rage rises in your throat—rage and helplessness and the sheer grief of it all.

“No, no, no, no,” You reason, like this can’t be it, this can’t be how it ends. This house will not become your grave.

The thought of that alone makes you sob, so you shove at the window harder, use the heel of your palm, then your elbow. Desperation overtakes the pain in your chest, and you pick up the ceramic lamp from the desk, raise it high, and smash it through the glass.

Fragments rain across the room, glittering on the floor like ice. Yes! You nearly want to cry with joy. The cool night air rushes in all at once, cools the tears glistening on your cheeks.

But then the door bursts open.

The old wood gives with a scream, the bookcase sliding uselessly across the floor. You whirl, heart in your throat.

There stands Leon, he looks wild, desperate, gaze flitting immediately to you. You bang your fists against the window, as if divine intervention might save you now. You can’t run, your legs wont move,stuck in place.

Leon’s large hand wraps around your ankle, yanks you off the table and into his arms instead. You fight, of course you do, little fits and bursts of energy that die one after the other just as quick as the last. You’ve got those rheumy eyes that he hates to see, shiny and so, so sad. Those sweet eyes of yours seem to plead with him, as if beckoning him to remember your love. Why do you look at him like that? He loves you now, do you not know?

The knife in his hand nicks at the soft skin under your chin— the knife, the knife, the knife he must’ve picked it up somewhere between the first struggle and this one— he truly doesn’t mean to, panics a little when he sees the pearl of blood bloat and dribble, but then it trails down the lines of your throat, pools in the cavern of your collar bone. Not enough just yet to leak.

God you’re beautiful, even like this. He really could love you forever. If only you let him.

“Stop,” you cry again, as if he’ll listen. Desolate despair shakes you in his arms, and Leon’s grip on the knife tightens anxiously.

“I don’t want to die.” Sobs blubber from your lips in desperate little fits.

“Stop saying that—” He grits.

You struggle fruitlessly, kick your legs at him and try to wrestle out of his grip. The horrifying realisation that you are going to die tonight sets in stone, and you plead in vain despite what little air you have left—waste your last breaths on words you have repeated so, so many times. Please, stop, no.

And you wish that instead, you could spend your last moments loving him. Your boy, your Leon. That maybe, if you had just tried harder, this wouldn’t have happened. If only you could reach out, through the cracks in his ribs, and hold his hellbound heart in your hands. Sew the beating flesh back together in hopes you can piece what is so broken. He is your Leon, after all. Yours, yours, yours.

So you reach for him, to hold, to kiss, to soothe maybe.

But like spooking an animal, you scare your killer. Worried he might lose you, you might make your escape, he presses the knife tighter. And fear itself is much like an animal, you flinch, and it happens fast. Faster than Leon anticipated it would.

A slip of his hand and the knife sinks in with sickening grace, one clean motion and your skin parts like silk. Blood spills down your neck in shimmering, shining rivulets. A rushing river of crimson that trails along the notch of your collarbone, then spills lower, soaking into the fabric of your shirt.

Your body slumps quickly and unceremoniously in his arms. Like the life drains out of you in a single breath. There’s so much blood, and Leon doesn’t even realise he’s dropped the knife until his feet slip on it while trying to hold you up. Horror blurs his vision, your blood stains his hands. It’s pungent, that copper, the tackiness of it the way it clings to his fingers, hands, forearms.

And Leon can’t help but think of the rabbit. The way it had kicked and writhed fruitlessly, he had felt like a god holding its limp body in his hands as it trashed and kicked, as he made the decision to kill rather than keep. The way the first blood of his first kill had stained his hands like absolution, although, this feels more like it.

Like the real absolution. Like the terrifying realisation of the truth. You are never coming back.

In Leon’s head, you had obliged to his plan easily. His little lamb, sweet and naive. You would’ve said yes, leaned into his touch like he was something to be worshiped. He would’ve died with you, wouldn’t have had to live in a world without you for more than a second.

Romeo and Juliet.

But now he holds your darling body dead in his arms, and can’t figure out why he did it.

He wants to ask you to wake up, to look at him, but your head slumps forward every time he jostles your body. And when he pushes you up by the forehead, smearing your blood along your face, the skin at your neck tears further, rips so sickeningly he can hear it.

Leon shudders.

He tries to hold you together in his arms as he sinks to the floor. Your forehead rests against his shoulder, limp now, your blood seeping through his shirt until it clings to his skin like a layer of guilt. He doesn’t realise he’s crying until he starts gasping for breath, until the sobs shake his chest so violently that he can’t hold on to you, not with how hard his hands are trembling.

Your warmth leaves you faster than he thought it would. But still, impossibly, your chest glows beneath his hand. Like the sun still lives in you, tucked beneath your ribs, a stubborn ember of life that refuses to go dark, even as his world turns to shades grey around you.

He presses his hand flat to your sternum, like he could maybe feel it flicker.

And with what little strength he has left, he decides to finish what he started—while your heart is still sunlit, warm with the memory of the girl you used to be.

The forest is silver in the early light, soft and damp from the night’s weeping. Morning stretches over the horizon in a slow yawn, brushing the treetops in bruised lilac and pale blue. The birds have begun to stir, distant and hesitant, like they know what he’s carrying. Like even the world has begun to mourn you.

Leon’s arms ache, but the burn is reminiscent of what he imagines Jesus felt carrying the cross. He walks barefoot now, shoes long forgotten, the underbrush catching at his trousers, scratching his ankles, but he doesn’t stumble. He knows where he’s going.

He doesn’t mind the way your limbs loll with the gentle sway of his gait. He holds you carefully, the way one might carry a sleeping child. His steps are careful and slow through the underbrush, as though he’s walking a sanctified path through the nave of a church.

The altar is only just up ahead.

He finds the clearing just as the sun splits the trees. Crocus blossoms bloom like bruises across the forest floor—lavender and cream, petals cupped open in the dying moonlight. He steps carefully through them. Then, as if enacting something sacred, he kneels, and lays you down.

He fixes your clothes first. Smooths the hem of your shirt. Buttons what he can. Then your hair, sticky and matted in places. He combs through it with his fingers, untangling, arranging, brushing it back behind your ears. There is blood on your face. Flakes and smudges, copper stains across your cheeks. He leans in and kisses you softly. Your lips are cold. Your skin stiffening. But he kisses you anyway, and the dried blood cracks under the heat of his mouth, melts on his tongue like salt.

Your eyes have gone glassy, that beautiful color he once loved, now hollow, vapid, gone. He closes them softly, kisses each eyelid like he’s saying goodbye.

He lays beside you for a moment, his shoulder against yours, and closes his eyes. Pretends. Pretends this is just one of your mornings. Pretends you’ll wake, turn to him, smile softly, call to him in your saccharine voice, Leon? Leon? Wake up, you’d say, a gentle playful grin.

They’ll find you like this, he thinks. Someone will see the door broken down, the blood on the floor, and follow the trail across the prairie and into the woods. They’ll find the two of you laid out like sculpture in the crocuses. He wants you to look like lovers. When someone finds you, they’ll say, look how gently he loved her.

And it was love. Wasn’t it?

Even this—this ruin, this horror—came from love. The kind of love that is known to shake the bones. That rips out reason. That makes you do things, unspeakable things, because how else could you hold onto something so bright? So human?

He knows what he did, but there’s no forgiveness that comes with it. No redemption in it either. He thinks of your eyes—lovely now still, yet touched by death. The way they looked at him in those final moments, not with hatred, but with sorrow, with recognition. That’s what gutted him most. Not that you feared him, but that you knew him, knew what he’d become, and mourned him before you died.

But still, still, still, you had loved him once. Before the fever took hold. Before he mistook obsession for undying devotion. You loved him then. And maybe, just maybe, that love still lingers in some soft, invisible corner of the world.

He is not naïve. He doesn’t think you’ll forgive him. But he hopes, god, he hopes, that wherever your soul went, it remembers him as he was. Not the monster who slit your throat, but the boy who learned how to love by watching you.

Maybe in the next life, he thinks. Maybe next time, it’ll be different. Maybe you’ll find him first. Maybe he’ll get to be yours again—just yours.

He takes your hand in his once more, squeezes your cold fingers tightly, and holds the knife in the other.

The serrated blade’s glistening edge finds the soft give of his throat. Leon’s chest rattles with the last breath of his.

He really did love y—

likes n reblogs r very much appreciated <3

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

this is the last time