am I a bitch if I request something with Eric that has an angsty ending 🫣
nope never, we love angst in this house <3
warnings: gn!reader, angst, guilt, mentions of blood, character death.
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it’s been three months since your life took the most unexpected turn, one you wouldn’t have been able to imagine even in your wildest childhood fantasies of dragons and princesses and enchanted castles and witches and knights who run valiantly against all odds with nothing but bravery running in their veins streaming next to their racing blood.
you’ve tried to think of this as another fantasy, a nightmarish, ghastly one but a fantasy nonetheless. a make-believe you’ll be able to break free from once the other players got bored of the game but you quickly realized that real life just doesn’t work like that.
real life doesn’t just stop. you can’t hit pause when you’re tired and need a break, you can’t break character because there’s no character to break just as there’s no princesses or armored knights willing to risk it all for their one true love.
still, you faked your belief as you wrote down stories and made your little drawings to match the tale. there were children here and despite it all, they deserve to have hopeful daydreams even if they’re counterfeit.
everyday during the afternoon, the children huddled around you. taking turns reading and passing the pages you’ve written of fairy tales you’ve heard or imagined. the look on their faces kept you going.
sooner, more people joined in. some of them wrote their own stories which you were grateful for because you were most definitely outnumbered by these children, and some were just there to read which you didn’t mind as well, fairy tales don’t have an age limit. everyone needs a little reverie to get by sometimes.
there was a guy who didn’t write or read, he didn’t draw too. he performed magic tricks with cards and coins and papers and pens. the kids loved him.
you later learned that his name is eric and he came from england to study law, “it was the one thing i was supposed to do and it’s gone now.” he wrote, sadness is engraved in his face you wonder if he’s ever known peace, even before the invasion.
“your career as a magician is going well.” you wrote back and he smiled at you, nodding, agreeing.
eric and you became inseparable. mostly because he followed you around like a shadow or a puppy who decided you’re his person and you didn’t mind it. you liked having him around, he was sweet and kind, he always gave you half of his food and his jacket when you got cold and his presence attracted cats for some reason.
seriously, you’ve never seen so many stray cats gathering around someone’s feet.
if you were to die tomorrow, you’d be glad you got to spend your last days with eric and you hoped he felt the same way.
on a particular night, you were sat in your designated corner of the safe house, wearing eric’s jacket, writing and drawing while he laid his head by your knees, watching your fingers at work, admiring you.
your eyes met a few times and you saw how his cheeks turned pink as well as his ears. he’s adorable, you thought. you wished you’ve met him under different circumstances even though you highly doubt you would’ve noticed him if the world wasn’t ending. guys like eric don’t get to have their moment until it’s too late.
your pen runs dry so you try another then another then another until you’ve tried all of your pens and combined none of them have enough ink for more than a sentence which you use to write to eric, “i’m going to the stationary, i need pens. won’t take long.” each few words are written in a different color.
eric sits up, “i’ll go with you.” he mouths, immediately getting up to his feet and offering you his hands which you take but shake your head at him.
“no.” you mouth, “you stay here.”
eric nods, understanding and you raise your eyebrows at him just to make sure. he nods again.
“i’ll be quick.” you mouth to him, taking a flashlight from the table and heading to the door, opening it extra carefully.
when you try to close the door behind you, it doesn’t move.
your heart drops then you see a hand keeping it open. eric squeezes himself in the small opening and closes the door quietly behind you.
you glare at him and push at his chest which he doesn’t react to. he just shrugs and links your arms together which you let him do because what else is there to do now?
you walk side by side, shining the light ahead, careful of your every step.
once you reach the stationary, eric pushes the door open lightly and you go in, try to switch the lights on but as usual, there’s no electricity so you wander around in darkness, in silence.
picking a pack of black pens and notebooks, you notice eric is doing the same, choosing the ones with cartoon characters on the cover and glittery colorful gel pens.
he removes the pen cap and starts writing, “i like your stories.” you smile at him, watching him writing again, taking longer this time. “growing up i didn’t like to read much, but i do now.”
placing your stack of notebooks and pens on a shelf, you take his and write back. “why didn’t you like to read?”
“didn’t find the point in it. especially fairy tales, i thought why read about something that won’t ever happen?”
you read what he wrote and think about your current mindset, how you agree with what he used to think.
“what changed your mind?”
he takes the notebook from your hands and your fingers brush against each other, leaving a tender sparkle in their wake.
“you.”
your cheeks feel hot, your whole face feels hot. suddenly you’re grateful for the lack of electricity so he wouldn’t see the colors your face is turning into.
“that’s ironic because i don’t believe in them anymore.”
he frowns but before he could write something back, a sound in the distance catches both of your attention. a sound you know too well because you know to avoid it.
you stare at each other and you quickly put all you’ve got into your bag. eric grabs your arm and pulls you toward the door but a creature blocks the way, standing in front of you with its heaving, heavy breathing body.
you curse in your mind at the way your heart is pounding, terrified that it could hear it from the other side of the door.
eric is standing closer to the creature, the only thing separating them is the flimsy glass, you try to pull him back, put more distance between them but he won’t budge, he won’t move.
slowly, he turns his head to the side, catching an emergency exit door in the furthest corner of the store. you follow his line of vision and see it too.
“go” he mouths and you squeeze his arm, silently asking him to move with you but he’s still.
more creatures are standing outside the store now, roaming the streets viciously.
“go!” he mouths more aggressively, you dash your way towards the exit door, you didn’t even notice if he was behind you or not.
not until you grabbed the handle and twisted it open then looked back and saw him still standing by the glass door, a smile on his mouth and tears streaming down his face. “don’t you ever stop believing.” he says and you get to hear his voice for the first time.
for the last time.
your hand smacks against your mouth, muffling your screams as you leave through the exit door, listening to the sounds of glass breaking and eric’s shattering cries.
somehow you’ve made it back to the safe house, you can’t remember how much you’ve walked or ran or what you saw on your way back. you can’t talk, not because it would kill you but because you can’t think, you can’t even cry. your mind can’t process what happened. you can see it, you can hear it but you can’t understand it.
going back to your corner, you see eric’s cards sitting by the stacks of your pages, you can feel his jacket on your shoulders, keeping you warm. you can still feel his presence, he can’t be gone. it couldn’t have happened…
for the next few days, you spent them in more silence than before. another thing you didn’t think was possible yet were proven wrong.
when you were asked about where eric is, you wrote down what happened. people hugged you, held you, gave you looks of sympathy as they wrote to you that it isn’t your fault but how wasn’t it?
if you didn’t go to get your stupid pens he would’ve been here right now, performing his silly magic tricks where he makes a coin disappear then pull it from behind someone’s ear, leaving a smile on everyone's tired faces.
the children also asked you where he went with their wide eyed gazes, they missed their magic man. you told them this was another trick of his, he made himself disappear and they gasped in response, delighted with that answer.
eric’s last words still ring in your head, bouncing off its corners.
“don’t you ever stop believing.”
he believed in your fairy tales, he believed in you.
you desperately want to break down, to say fuck it all and go out screaming but he told you to never stop believing. you’ll never forgive yourself for that night, you know that already but you can’t live with yourself if you let his sacrifice be for nothing so you wrote.
and you wrote and you wrote some more. you wrote until your fingers started bleeding then wrote again once they dried up.
you passed the stories around, all of them about a kind, brown eyed magic man and his adventures.
the magic man who can’t turn away when he’s needed, even if the person needing him doesn’t know how much they need his help.
the magic man who wins all of his fights against monsters, no matter how big or small.
the magic man who saves the day, saves the town, saves the princess and lives to tell the stories.
the magic man who stayed.
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tags: @hazzaismyreligion @fantastic-fox @sugarheart-riot @phyllosilicate-s @becca-alexa @quinnsfae14 @munson-enthusiast @lovinvane @ficsbypix @josephfakingquinn @munsonluvrr @eddies-puppet @mattyhealyssideburn @flawiette @joeydoeeyes @ho-for-joequinn-fics @etherealxwitch
