Black Noir is known for having a knack of taking over the piano when anyone from your agency is sent to play for Vought. You’ve been warned of this, and although you have played for Vought before, you’ve never come across the mysterious hero. Something you are very grateful for. But your luck can only last for so long.
Under My Skin by @venus-haze
Just when you think you don’t have a chance with Black Noir, an investor gala gives you a new opportunity to get under his skin.
Baby We’re Happy by @the-ferret-of-fandoms
Noir and Reader struggle with a baby, his work, his issues, the media/public etc. I'm not really sure what I'm doing, as per usual. Signing is in this font
The Almost Last Moment by @ebonyslasher
A Touch of Comfort by @/ebonyslasher
Imagine by @editorandchief
Fearless Love by @tweetiescookie
You were the first person to show that Black Noir could be loved and cared for too
Build A Bear by @narcissiah
black noir hcs by @supesoup
Matter of Trust by @mlmxreader
Noir doesn’t trust strangers, and he certainly does not trust the Deep or Homelander.
Domestic by @/mlmxreader
Black Noir isn’t home often, but when he is, you couldn’t be more grateful for what time you get with him.
ᝰ Soldier Boy
SOLDIER BOY MASTERLIST by @zepskies
AFFECTION by @anundyingfidelity
During a mission, Soldier Boy receives a hug from you unexpectedly. He likes it.
A Simple Misunderstanding by @kaleldobrev
Hughie might of overheard something he probably shouldn’t have between you and Ben
Soldier Boy/Ben Masterlist by @/kaleldobrev
Soldier Boy as a Girl Dad by @eclecticqueennerd
ᝰ Billy Butcher
i'm yours by @geminiwritten
you find out that butcher slept with maeve, and attempt to ignore your feelings by going m.i.a. and going home with a complete stranger, only to awake the green-eyed monster living inside of butcher
Undercover by @/geminiwritten
you have to go undercover as butcher’s wife to vought’s annual supe celebration - prompt (that i don’t remember where i saw it, i’m sorry!): “I bet you one hundred dollars that you’re hard right now.” *he stands up and drops $100 on the table*
can’t get too close by @storiesforallfandoms
in which they have feelings for one another, but he’s afraid to admit it after losing his wife. instead, he decides to sabotage her dates, and she’s tired of it
One Mistake by @all-alone-he-turns-to-stone
Homelander got you. According to him, Butcher made one mistake, and it was to fall in love with you. He thinks you’re his weakness. But it’s actually the opposite, he makes you stronger. Jokes on Homelander, he’s the one that made a mistake by bringing you here…
I Guess So by @mind-empty-just-fictional-people
butcher is furious when he learns you’re a supe.
ᝰ Sam Riordan
Don’t Be Embarrassed by multifandomfanficss
You take care of Sam and he takes care of you.
An Extraordinary Existence by happy74827
After the major confusion the group faced just a couple hours before, they all take a moment to reflect what exactly their intentions are
Stay With Me | @/happy74827
Sometimes all we need is a hug, or in Sam’s case, words of assurance.
No Ordinary Life | @/happy74827
The group had almost ran out of options on what to do with Sam, but Andre had decided there was still one more option to explore. And that option, was you.
Soother | @h0nkch0c0late
you have the power of serenity inducement. Most often you don't use it, but when it comes to Sam, it helps more than you think
Pampered | @/h0nkch0c0late
Sometimes your boyfriend just needs a little pampering. Too bad you don't know how the fuck to do it.
grounding | @24hlevi
sam always listens to the rules you set, and he's always a good boy just for you
ᝰ Jordan Li
called it ! | @lilyswritings
academic rivals to lovers with jordan li. need i say more?
Third Time’s the Charm | @writingbyshiloh
Can you write something where Jordan and fem reader are childhood best friends and Jordan had always been in love with her but they feel insecure because they don’t know if reader will like them in both forms romantically
Nosebleed | @/writingbyshiloh
Worth | @psychostxr
What a Creep | @/h0nkch0c0late
Jordan has always been protective over you, especially when it came to Rufus.
NIGHTS LIKE THESE | @inklore
SEX WITH JORDAN IS TWO VERY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES. | @/inklore
She Likes a Boy (And I’m Not Just a Boy) | @slasherscream
You and Jordan are friends with benefits, and Jordan is trying so hard to be okay with that. Somehow, they still fell in love with you despite their best efforts to not fucking do that. But you’ve only ever fucked them when they’re a guy, so they assume you’re only interested in them one way. Just like everyone else. You’ve never said anything to make them think any different so it’s obvious, right? So they take what they can get. Which is only half. And they keep you at a distance, because anything else will kill them.
Play Date | @jordanli-dribbles
A smutty one-shot about Jordan crashing your COD play ‘date’.
Study Date |@/ jordanli-dribbles
Movie Night | @celianity
having your nemesis attend your roommates’ movie night takes a turn when some unresolved desires flare back up
The studios keep cooking up deeply traumatized white guys with big doe eyes who are capable of staggering amounts of emotionally driven violence while looking like a sad wet cat
Something I adore about Gen V and The Boys universe in general is how they don't bypass characters' disabilities and/or struggles with the 'superhuman' excuse. Cipher calls out Marie for self-harming, Emma's eating disorder is continuously pointed out, and in the latest episode both of them have a *very* pointed moment where they sorta admit that these issues are deeper than just using these behaviors to access their abilities. They're unhealthy mechanisms that both of them use not just for their powers but for stress, trauma, etc and the show treats it as such. I also loved Sam finding out that his schizophrenia is genetic, and he would've had it either way. I think that lifted a bit of weight off of him in regards to his resentment of his parents because it's no one's *fault* exactly that he's like this.
Idk. I just like when superhero media has the balls to say 'Yeah, these people are super but they're also human'
Literally. It was in your nickname on campus: Charmlight. You could bend light, make it shimmer, refract, sparkle, and if you really wanted to, use it to distract, dazzle, or disorient someone. Basically, weaponised glitter.
You used to joke that you weren’t dangerous, just aesthetic.
But that was before everything went to hell.
Before the woods. Before Elmira. Before Sam Riordan became a name everyone whispered about for reasons that made your stomach twist.
Now, a year later, the world looked different. Godolkin University had rebuilt. Students strutted around like the massacre never happened. And Sam, Sam, was one of them again.
No longer the haunted boy you’d once found hiding in the labs, trembling and wild-eyed. Now he was a name on posters, a Supe who’d fought beside Homelander, whose nervous grin was plastered on Vought’s PR feeds. Everyone wanted to talk to him. Everyone but you.
You’d tried. You’d waved. You’d smiled. He never waved back.
So you stopped trying.
You didn’t get sent to Elmira, but you may as well have. You stopped showing up to labs, skipped training sessions, stopped answering messages.
Being near Sam hurt too much, the boy who’d once held your hand in the dark now standing beside Homelander, the monster who made your stomach twist with fear.
So when this new semester started, you promised yourself: no more Sam Riordan.
And for a while, you kept that promise.
You hung out with Marie and Jordan and Emma again when they came back from Elmira, it felt safe, familiar, even if everything still buzzed with unspoken tension. And then there was Greg.
Greg with the shy smile and the plant powers and the voice that always went soft when he said your name. Greg who showed up to lab with coffee for both of you. Greg who made you laugh when everything else felt heavy.
He made you laugh. He called you “princess” because of your bratty attitude when something doesn't go your way. He bought you cherry sodas from the vending machine after training. It was easy with him. Safe.
Until Sam came back.
Now he was everywhere. In the quad, at team meetings, on the stupid supe social feed. Godolkin’s golden boy, the reformed rebel. Everyone loved him he was popular.
Vought-polished, interview-ready, walking God U’s campus with Cate and the Homelander crowd like he’d been rewritten. Students stared when he passed; professors pretended not to.
Except he wasn’t looking at the cameras.
He was looking at you.
You could feel it, the burn of his stare from across the training hall, the way his jaw clenched when Greg’s hand brushed yours, the way he suddenly started hanging around the group again, pretending it was coincidence.
You tried to ignore it. Tried to smile when Greg leaned close, explaining how his kinetic field worked, tried not to flinch when you caught a flash of blonde hair and blue eyes in the mirror.
But Sam noticed everything.
The way you laughed too hard at Greg’s jokes. The way Greg touched your elbow when you passed through a crowd. It made something in Sam tighten.
Something ugly, new, and raw.
Every time Sam saw you two together, his jaw would tick. He’d tear open cans of energy drink like they’d offended him, shove his hands in his pockets, pretend he didn’t care.
You told yourself you understood.
He’d been through hell.
But understanding didn’t make the quiet sting any less.
When the group finally ended up in Stan Edgar’s bunker, half refuge, half prison, you hadn’t expected to talk to him at all.
The bunker smelled like metal and dust and too many people in one small space. Dust hung in the air like static. Dust hung in the air like static.
You sat cross-legged on an old couch, tapping your nails against your phone screen, trying not to think about the way Sam paced nearby in a white tank top, muscles catching the dim light.
Emma was talking to Jordan. Marie and her sister were arguing quietly. It should have felt crowded, but all you could feel was him.
The tall, restless boy on the other side of the room.
Sam looked different now, steadier, but still dangerous in a way that made your chest feel too tight. He ran a hand through his hair, then looked straight at you.
He didn’t say your name at first; he just looked at you.
That look you used to know, the one that saw straight through your glittery armour, except now it was sharper. You could feel it like static crawling up the back of your neck.
You focused on your phone screen, scrolling absolutely nothing, pretending not to notice. It didn’t help.
“Something funny?” Sam’s voice broke the low murmur in the room.
You startled. “Huh? Oh—no, I’m just—” You dropped your phone. It hit the floor, clattering against the concrete. Perfect.
When you bent to grab it, he was already there, crouched, picking it up in one easy movement. Up close, he was all warm skin and restless energy; that faint scent of metal and soap. He handed it back, eyes unreadable.
“You drop things a lot when I’m around,” he said. Not mean, not teasing. Just a statement.
You tried to laugh. “Gravity hates me.”
His mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “Greg doesn’t seem to mind it.”
You froze, clutching your phone. “Greg?”
“Yeah,” he said, leaning back against the wall, crossing his arms. The motion made the fabric of his tank stretch, his forearms tight, veins standing out. “He’s always around you lately.”
You forced a bright, brittle laugh. “We’re friends. Remember those?”
“I remember,” he said, and the way he looked at you made your pulse jump. “Just didn’t think you needed new ones.”
“Sam.” You sighed, voice soft, trying to sound calm. “You can’t be mad at me for moving on.”
“I’m not mad.” His jaw flexed. “Just weird watching someone else get what I—” He stopped himself, breathing hard through his nose.
You blinked, heart hammering. “What you what?”
He looked away, toward the far wall where Emma and Jordan were laughing about something, then back at you. “Forget it.”
You took a step closer before you could think better of it. “No. Finish that sentence.”
His eyes found yours again, darker now, something raw flickering behind them. “What I miss.”
The room was still buzzing with low conversation, but it felt like the two of you were sealed off, a tiny pocket of air humming with things neither of you wanted to name.
For a second, all the restless anger in his posture eased. His shoulders dropped. He looked almost shy again, the Sam you remembered from before everything went sideways.
Emma’s high-pitched giggle cut through the tension. "Okay, Jordan, enough!" she laughed, shoving Jordan lightly toward the heavy bunker door. "We need more snacks. Like, yesterday."
Jordan grinned, already heading out. "Marie? You coming? Vending machine run." Marie glanced back at you and Sam, hesitated for a fraction of a second, then nodded silently, following them out.
The reinforced steel door groaned shut behind them with a final, echoing clunk.
Silence slammed down. Thick. Suffocating.
Dust motes danced in the single overhead light’s harsh glare, suddenly the loudest thing in the room. You were alone. With Sam. The air crackled, heavy with everything unsaid.
Your phone felt slippery in your clammy hand. You stared at the scuffed concrete floor, tracing a hairline crack near your boot. Anything to avoid looking at him.
Anything to avoid acknowledging the raw vulnerability in his whispered confession: What I miss.
Your cheeks burned. Why did Marie have to leave? Why did Jordan pick now for snacks? The silence stretched, tight as a wire about to snap. You could hear the faint hum of the bunker’s ventilation system. Hear Sam’s slow, deliberate exhale.
"So," Sam finally rasped, the word rough, scraping the quiet. He hadn’t moved from leaning against the wall. His gaze was fixed on you, intense and unnervingly direct. "Greg."
It wasn't a question. It was a statement loaded with something dark and possessive. You flinched, instinctively stepping back, bumping against the worn armrest of the couch.
"Sam," you breathed, your voice barely audible above the hum of the ventilation. "He's just Greg. He's nice."
"Nice." Sam pushed himself off the wall, unfolding his lean frame with predatory grace. He took one step, then another, closing the distance until you could see the faint pulse in his temple, the way his blue eyes seemed to pierce through your feeble defences. "He buys you sodas. Calls you princess." He spat the last word, his lip curling. "He touches you. Like he owns you."
"He doesn't!" The protest sounded weak, even to you. You clutched your phone tighter, the plastic casing digging into your palm. "He's just… friendly."
"Is that what you call it?" Sam stopped inches away, the heat radiating off him palpable. His gaze dropped, lingering pointedly on your thighs where Greg's hand had brushed earlier.
A slow, unsettling smirk spread across his face, devoid of warmth. "Friendly." He let the word hang, heavy with implication. "You used to be friendly with me."
You swallowed hard. "Things change." You tried to inject steel into your voice, but it trembled.
"Do they?" His smirk widened, sharpening into something dangerous. He leaned in, his voice dropping to a low, intimate murmur that sent shivers down your spine despite the stifling heat. "Because I haven't changed. Not about you."
His breath ghosted warm against your ear. "I thought about you. Every damn day. Even when you stopped looking at me. Even when you pretended I didn't exist." He paused, letting the confession sink in, his eyes locked onto yours with unnerving intensity. "Especially then."
The manipulation was subtle, insidious.
Wrapping his longing in a barbed wire of accusation, making you feel guilty for moving on. He didn't say he missed you, he said he thought about you, twisting his own absence into your perceived betrayal.
Your breath caught, trapped somewhere between disbelief and a terrifying pull. His proximity was overwhelming, the scent of soap and clean sweat mingling with the metallic tang of the bunker.
His gaze slid deliberately down your body again, lingering longer this time on the curve of your hip, the line of your thigh pressed against the couch arm.
"Missed this," he murmured, the rough scrape of his voice unnervingly intimate against the bunker's stale air. His lips brushed the frantic pulse point beneath your jaw, a feather-light touch that ignited sparks beneath your skin. "Missed you."
It wasn't gentle; it was possessive, an assertion. "Ever since the woods." His breath was hot on your neck. "Ever since I saw you in that lab coat, hiding me."
Another kiss, lower this time, near the sensitive curve where neck met shoulder. His hand settled firmly on your waist, fingers pressing possessively into the fabric. "Always wanted to do this. Taste you here." His tongue traced a slow, deliberate path upwards.
You gasped, a sharp intake of air that sounded deafening in the silence. Your hands instinctively flew to his shoulders, not pushing away, but gripping the taut muscle beneath his thin tank top. "Sam…"
It was a protest choked by sensation.
He pulled back just enough to lock his stormy eyes with yours.
The raw need in them was terrifying, mixed with a dark certainty. "You miss it too," he stated, his thumb brushing the frantic flutter in your throat. "Missed me. Missed how I knew you. Really knew you."
His other hand slid lower, tracing the outside seam of your leggings, his palm heavy and warm against your thigh. The pressure was deliberate, suggestive. "Not like Greg." He spat the name, a venomous dismissal.
"Pretty boy with his plants and his sodas." His fingers tightened, pressing your thigh firmly against the couch armrest, a subtle shift that mimicked the friction of riding. "He'll never let you feel this."
His voice dropped to a rough whisper, lips brushing your ear again. "Never let you lose control. He'll keep you safe. Bored." His gaze was intense, manipulative, searching your face for confirmation. "Safe feels like hell now, doesn't it?"
You couldn't speak. His words were hooks, sinking deep into insecurities you hadn't voiced.
The comparison was cruel, designed to isolate. His proximity, the heat of him, the possessive weight of his hand anchoring your thigh, it short-circuited thought.
Your power flickered instinctively, tiny sparks of light dancing erratically around your clenched fists, betraying the chaos inside. He saw it, a predatory gleam flashing in his eyes. He leaned in again, capturing your lips this time.
It wasn't tender; it was claiming.
A desperate, bruising kiss fuelled by a year of silence and simmering jealousy, designed to obliterate Greg, obliterate safety, obliterate everything but the raw, dangerous connection crackling between you in the suffocating silence of Stan Edgar's forgotten bunker.
He broke the kiss abruptly, leaving you gasping, your lips tingling.
Before you could react, he moved with startling speed. His hands slid firmly beneath your thighs. A sharp lift, a controlled pivot, and he sank onto the worn couch cushions, pulling you down with him.
You landed straddling his lap, knees bracketing his hips, the sudden intimacy stealing your breath. His hands locked onto your waist, fingers digging possessively through the fabric of your shirt. His gaze, dark and intense, held yours captive.
"See?" he breathed, voice rough with triumph and something darker. "This." He shifted deliberately beneath you, the hard ridge of his arousal pressing unmistakably against the thin barrier of your leggings.
The friction was immediate, electric. "This is what you miss." His hands slid lower, gripping the curve of your hips, urging you forward with insistent pressure.
Manipulation wrapped in velvet touch. He pressed kisses against your jawline, your cheekbone, feather-light yet demanding, while his hands guided your hips in a slow, deliberate rhythm against him.
"Tell me he makes you feel like this," he murmured against your skin, punctuating the words with a sharp upward thrust of his own hips that forced a choked gasp from your throat.
His fingers tightened, digging into the flesh above your leggings' waistband. "Tell me he knows how wet you get just thinking about me."
The words were a weapon, twisting your body's undeniable response into proof of his ownership, erasing Greg with every calculated press and grind. His gaze burned into yours, daring you to deny it, searching for the flicker of surrender he knew was there.
He didn't ask if you wanted this; he forced the confession through your body's traitorous movement, his hand firmly guiding your waist, grinding you down onto him with relentless, possessive pressure. He knew you wanted this.
"Say it," he breathed, his lips brushing yours again, a promise and a threat tangled together. "Say you missed this."
You couldn't.
Words were ash in your mouth.
Only sounds escaped, low, involuntary whines that rose from your chest, turning into breathy mewls as the friction intensified. Your hands, trapped against his shoulders, clenched and unclenched, nails scraping the worn cotton of his tank.
Every nerve felt raw, exposed.
The bunker’s stale air thickened with the scent of exertion, soap, and the sharp tang of your own arousal blooming beneath the fabric separating you. He shifted subtly beneath you, angling himself to hit the perfect spot with each grinding circle he forced your hips to make.
With the pressure against your clit through the leggings was relentless, maddening. Your head fell back, eyes squeezing shut against the overhead light’s harsh glare, a desperate whimper escaping as sensation threatened to overwhelm you.
Your thighs trembled against his hips, muscles straining with the effort of maintaining the rhythm he dictated.
"Look at me." His command was low, guttural. You forced your eyes open, meeting the storm in his gaze, jealousy, possession, and a terrifying vulnerability he’d never shown anyone else. He saw the tears welling, the frantic pulse in your throat, the way your lips trembled.
A dark satisfaction flickered across his face, he thrust up sharply again, wrenching another sharp cry from you. "Only me." His hand slid from your waist, fingers tracing a deliberate path down your spine, pressing firmly against the small of your back to arch you harder against him.
As the increased pressure became electric, stealing your breath, your hips stuttered, losing the controlled rhythm, grinding down desperately now, seeking relief from the unbearable tension coiling tighter and tighter.
The rough fabric of his jeans, the hard ridge beneath, the damp heat building between your legs, it fused into a single, overwhelming sensation. Your whines climbed higher, sharper, dissolving into mewling gasps as you chased the peak he was ruthlessly orchestrating.
Your power flared uncontrollably, tiny, frantic sparks of light bursting around your clenched fists like dying stars, illuminating the dust motes dancing violently in the charged air. Your forehead pressed against his shoulder, muffling the helpless sounds escaping your throat as your body moved frantically against his, driven by instinct and his relentless manipulation.
The climax slammed into you with brutal suddenness.
Not a wave, but a detonation. Your entire body locked, back arching violently against his restraining hand as a ragged, high-pitched cry tore from your throat.
Sensation flooded you, white-hot and obliterating, radiating outwards from the core where you pressed desperately against him. Your thighs clamped around his hips, trembling uncontrollably as the aftershocks ripped through you.
The sparks flared brighter, momentarily bathing the grim bunker walls in chaotic, shimmering light before flickering out. You slumped forward, forehead pressed hard against his collarbone, breath coming in ragged, shuddering gasps.
Silence descended, thick and heavy, broken only by your uneven breathing and the frantic thud of your own heart against your ribs. You felt utterly spent, exposed, hollowed out.
His arms encircled you, holding you tightly against his chest as your tremors subsided. He didn't speak. He just held you, his own breathing rough against your hair. The silence stretched, filled only by the fading hum of the ventilation and the phantom echo of your own shattered cries.
Outside, the heavy bunker door remained stubbornly shut.
Sam shifted beneath you, his arms tightening possessively. His voice, when it finally came, was a low rasp against your temple, devoid of its earlier sharpness, replaced by a chilling certainty.
"That wasn't just friction" He smoothed a hand down your spine, the gesture almost soothing, yet laced with triumph. "That was us. That spark, that… chaos." His fingers traced the damp fabric clinging to your lower back.
His other hand slid up to cup your jaw, tilting your face up to meet his gaze. His eyes were intense, dark pools reflecting the harsh overhead light.
"He doesn't know you. Who screamed at Homelander's hologram on the news." His thumb brushed your bottom lip, still swollen from his kiss. "He'll never push you. Never touch the darkness because he's too afraid of it. Too afraid of you." He leaned closer, his breath warm on your cheek.
His gaze held yours, stripping away any pretense. "I'm not afraid. I want it. All of it. The light, the dark, the goddamn glitter explosion. Because I am it too." His voice dropped to a near whisper, intimate and manipulative.
You trembled against him, the aftershocks of your climax mingling with the cold dread his words instilled. He was twisting your vulnerability, your undeniable response to him, into proof of something deeper, darker.
Proof Greg was inadequate. "Sam…" you breathed, voice shaky. "It wasn't…"
"Wasn't what?" he interrupted smoothly, his hand tightening on your jaw. "Wasn't real?" He gave a low, humorless chuckle. "Your body doesn't lie. Not like your words do." He shifted subtly beneath you, the hard ridge of his arousal still pressing insistently against your core through the damp leggings.
A reminder.
You flinched at the truth in it. the terrifying allure of the chaos he embodied.
Safety had started to feel suffocating. Greg’s kindness felt… distant. Sam’s intensity was a drug you’d forgotten the potency of. "Sam," you whispered, voice thick with exhaustion and confusion. "It’s complicated."
"Is it?" He tilted his head, a predator assessing wounded prey. "Seems simple to me." He leaned forward, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to your forehead.
It was unexpectedly tender, jarring after the bruising intensity moments before. "You’re mine," he murmured against your skin, the possessiveness velvet-coated now.
"Always were. You just forgot." His hands slid down your back, settling possessively on your hips. "Greg’s a nice distraction. Like a pretty plant." His voice dropped, intimate and dangerous.
He pulled back to look at you, a faint, genuine smile touching his lips, the first glimpse of the boy you remembered. "Tell him you need space. Tell him it’s not working. Be kind." His thumb traced your jawline. "Do it today. Before he gets hurt."
The manipulation was breathtakingly cruel. He framed it as concern for Greg, twisting his own jealousy into a shield. He used the intimacy he'd forced, the vulnerability he'd exposed, as leverage.
He offered tenderness after the storm, making his claim feel like salvation instead of captivity. Your legs were still trembling around his hips, the phantom echoes of your climax mingling with the chilling certainty in his eyes.
He wasn't asking.
He was rebuilding your world, placing himself firmly at its centre, using the aftershocks of pleasure as his foundation stones. The bunker door remained shut, sealing you inside his carefully constructed reality.
the universe is loud when you’re gone (and you might be the one that truly gets me) 𝜗𝜚 sam riordan.
after cate’s injury leaves him hallucinating across campus, sam spirals and ends up wrecking your dorm. you find him and use your empathic regulation powers to help steady him.
cws ᝰ .ᐟ meant to take place s2e3 ,, reader has empathic regulation powers ,, gender neutral (you/your) ,, sam experiencing a schizophrenic episode (hallucinations, paranoia, emotional distress) ,, first meeting
If anyone tried to stop him, he was going to break their face. Not because he wanted to. Not because he liked it (except maybe he did sometimes, but he hated that, hated knowing it). But because Cate was lying in a room full of machines and none of them could fix the part of her that mattered. The part that made the world quiet.
And he couldn’t sit still when the world was this loud.
They said stable. They said resting. They said a lot of things and none of them included the word awake.
He paced the hallway, his fingers flexed at his sides, nails a fraction away from digging into palms, from breaking skin. He couldn’t tell if he wanted the pain or just wanted something real to prove he wasn’t dreaming on top of a nightmare.
Cate always knew how to pull him back. Press a hand to his cheek. Whisper calm into the bones of his skull. Lie, maybe, but soft lies, ones that made breathing stop hurting. He hated her for that. He needed her for that. He didn’t know the difference anymore.
He inhaled. Too sharp. It scraped. The air here tasted like antiseptic and electricity and someone else’s panic. Not his. No, his burned from the inside out, slow and hot and stupid, like he swallowed gasoline.
They took her.
The thought lashed through him, sudden and senseless, because no one took her, she was right there behind the glass and tubes, but it still felt like someone took her. Like someone cut out the one steady thread he’d been clinging to and expected him not to unravel.
His head hummed. No — rattled. Shook. Too many wires in there and every one of them sparking. He didn’t just want her awake. He didn’t want her safe. He wanted her functional.
He wanted the quiet back.
Not the absence of sound so much as the absence of the chaos inside his skull, the chatter that dressed every moment in its own bad commentary, the tiny nags that turned ordinary things into accusations. He wanted the hush Cate could make, the skill she had for folding the noise down and away. He wanted her to press her palm to his forehead and tell the television in his head to change the channel.
Instead he was in the quad, sun doing that mean thing where it looks kind and feels sharp, sitting on a blanket that would probably get grass stains and thinking, absurdly, that eating a sandwich outside made you a normal person. A person who could be trusted in public. A person who could not be suspected of being dangerous.
It wasn’t until the sandwich started talking that he admitted, reluctantly, that maybe he did actually need Cate.
He blinked at it once. Twice. Bread. Tuna. Lettuce. Mayo he didn’t even like, because he’d grabbed whatever was closest from the communal fridge like someone who didn’t have several layers of psychological hazard tape wrapped around his brain. Totally normal sandwich.
When it spat out its contents at him, that was the moment the little dam inside him snapped and he thought, oh. Right. We’re doing this again.
He stood up fast enough to send his bottle of water rolling across the grass. Someone glanced over. He ignored them. He ignored the sandwich too, which had started singing, some deranged version of a lullaby that felt like it was dragging nails down the back of his skull.
He paced. Sharp little back-and-forth lines cutting through the green lawn, headphone cord tangling in his pocket, breath pushing out in short bursts like he’d forgotten how to breathe. A group of students laughed near the fountain, and the sound started to seem more and more distant.
He whispered under his breath, too fast, too low, too desperate to pass for casual. “No, I’m not talking to you. I don’t need — I don’t— she’s fine, I’m fine—”
Someone walking past gave him a wide berth, like he was a live wire. Fair.
He kept moving. Couldn’t stop. Still talking to no one. Or everyone. Or — whatever was crowding in behind his eyes. A squirrel paused on a bench and stared at him with unsettling intelligence, like it knew every one of his sins and found them pedestrian. He pressed the heel of his hand into his eye socket until stars flared.
He did not want to need her.
He especially did not want to need her because she was in a bed somewhere being called stable which was code for not dead yet but don’t ask too many questions. And relying on someone was weakness. Reliance meant fragility. Meant vulnerability. Meant—
A lamppost flickered and became cartoonishly alive, “You break things, you know!”
“I know.”
That was new. He wasn’t usually agreeing with the hallucinations. Was that a sign of progress? Decline? Did it matter?
He walked. Or he thought he did. His legs were moving at least, long, restless strides cutting through the quad and into the shade of the academic buildings, where the air felt colder.
Concrete underfoot.
Birds.
Voices.
Laughter that sounded like scraping metal.
He rubbed at the back of his neck, nails digging crescent moons into skin. Couldn’t feel it. Could feel everything else. The quad was behind him now, sunlight sliding off his shoulders as though the day rejected him the same way people did. “Normal” stayed in the grass with the sandwich. Normal never followed him home. A breeze passed and each blade of grass shivered like it was whispering behind his back.
Freak freak freak—
“Say it again,” he muttered under his breath. “Say it again and see what happens.” A student crossing the courtyard looked at him and quickly looked away. He didn’t blame them. He wouldn’t look at himself either.
The voices started, considerate at first like they didn’t want to scare him. Then louder. Closer. Familiar.
“You never could hack it out here, Sam.”
Luke.
Except not Luke. Luke didn’t sound like disappointment curdling milk. Luke didn’t hiss.
Sam’s hands curled into fists. “Shut up.”
He passed the glass doors of the science building and caught his own reflection which began to speak to him. “You don’t fool anybody.” He flinched, stumbled back as though pushed. Hallway lights buzzed overhead, too white, too hot, like interrogation lamps.
And there, at the far end of the hall, a puppet leaned against a locker. “Where’s Cate, Sammy? Thought she could fix you?”
His breath hitched. His throat tightened so fast it hurt. “Don’t call me that.”
More puppets blinked into existence, peeking out of open classroom doors, hanging upside-down from the ceiling tiles, perched on drinking fountains with button eyes too shiny. One sat crumpled by the fire extinguisher, head tilted, tongue sewn down, as if even the hallucinations were tired of hearing him talk.
“She saved you,” one giggled in a child’s voice. “And look what you let happen to her.”
“She—” his voice cracked, thin as the fluorescent hum, “she saved herself.”
A lie.
Or maybe the truth.
They tangled in his head until he couldn’t tell one from the other anymore.
He didn’t realize he’d started walking faster until he was practically jogging, sneakers slapping the tile too loud, breath too loud, heartbeat too loud. He reached the stairwell door and slammed into it with both hands like he was trying to stop the building from falling on him. “She’s not like you. She’s not—you don’t get to talk about her. You don’t get to—”
“You’re poison,” a voice breathed against his ear, warm, intimate, almost loving. Cate’s voice. Perfectly mimicked by whatever part of him wanted him dead the most. “You kill everything good.”
His knees nearly buckled. He pressed his forehead to the metal door, palms flat, trying to feel the cold. Trying to stay here. Trying to stay anywhere but inside his head.
“I’m trying,” he choked out, voice splintering. “I am trying. I am—”
A puppet slid into the stairwell window, pressing felt hands to the glass to mockingly touch Sam’s as it whispered,
“Try harder.”
Something inside him twisted, sharp and hot and rising like bile. He shoved the door open and stumbled into the stairwell, taking the stairs two at a time, like if he moved fast enough he could outrun his own skull. Luke’s voice followed him down the concrete steps, soft, wistful, cruel,
“You were better locked up.”
And Sam laughed, a short, manic sound that scraped the back of his throat, because maybe he was right.
It didn’t build slowly. It just hit, like stepping through a doorway he didn’t notice he’d opened. One second: campus. The next: a world with seams showing. He was moving too fast, the swing of his arms sharp enough that a passing freshman flinched out of his way. He didn’t notice. Didn’t feel the shove of wind or the sun anymore.
Calm down. (But how do you calm down when your brain has teeth?)
Someone laughed. A real laugh?
“They’re watching you.” A puppet in a letterman jacket whispered from atop a trash can. “They know you break.”
He jerked his head like shaking water out of his ears. “Don’t— don’t start that.”
Another voice, high, sweet, dripped down from a tree branch. A cheerleader puppet dangled upside-down, pom-poms stained a sticky dark red. “Cate would have stopped it~”
His stomach flipped violently. Instinct, panic, grief. He picked up speed, half-run, half-limp, like he could outrun neurons firing in the wrong order. Every sound stabbed. Talking. Metal chair scraping pavement. A phone ringing. A crow cawing.
Cawing turned into a puppet voice mid-sound: “Saaaaaam~”
He slapped the side of his head, just enough to try to reset the audio. Didn’t help.
He did it again, harder. “Stop it. Stop it. Shut up.”
A student nearby startled; he heard it, vaguely, like through a tunnel. Someone said “Jesus, is he okay?”
Then suddenly everything was cheap set foam. Props. Puppets. Campus tables turned to cardboard. The sky a painted backdrop. A faculty member puppet waddled by, blood trickling cartoon-bright from button eyes. “Institutional support!” it chirped. “Report your feelings to student wellness!”
His fingers dug into his scalp, tugging at his hair, nails scraping until his skin stung. Trying to pull the noise out. Trying to hurt just enough to feel present. “STOP TALKING!”
“You’ll hurt someone,” one puppet hissed.
“You already did!!” another sang.
“They should have left you underground.”
He slammed his head against the brick once, twice. Enough to remind himself there was a skull. A border. A body. It didn’t work. “I want to be good.”
Cartoon confetti rained from nowhere, mean confetti, like it bit on contact. Puppets clapped. One exploded into plush organs and giggled while it did.
“Then why aren’t you?”
His vision swam. His knees dipped. He gasped, hand on wall, nails scraping mortar. Students — real ones? — skirted away, confused, scared. He couldn’t tell which faces had seams.
If she didn’t wake up … if she never touched him again and made the noise drop out … He didn’t know what he’d do. He didn’t know who he’d be.
He only knew he’d burn the world down before he let it swallow him whole.
A puppet hanging from a bulletin board turned its yarn head. “Hero check! Failed. Try crying harder!” confetti gun blast to the face. He didn’t run so much as collapse forward in motion, legs carrying him out of instinct more than choice. Through the lobby. Up a flight of stairs. The hall stretched, too long, then too short, jerking like a bad camera cut.
His hand hit the door. It wasn’t his. Didn’t matter. Vought would fix it. Vought always fixed it.
(Would they?)
They’d paint him smiling, golden boy glow, tragic past, healing journey. He didn’t care right now. He shoved the door open so hard it banged the wall and cracked plaster.
Inside: quiet. A bed, two desks, posters, the boring, beautiful mundanity of people who didn’t have puppets peeling out of the drywall. He slammed it shut, like the hallway voices might have hands. The room should have been safe. But sound crawled anyway, whispers behind vents, laughter under the mattress, the hum of a desk lamp like a mosquito burrowing into his thoughts.
Something tore, inside or outside, didn’t matter. He began tearing through the room like it had insulted him personally. Drawer ripped out, thud, pens skittering like beetles. Chair kicked, wood splinter biting calf. He grabbed the mattress and flipped it, a grunt punched out of him. Sheets snarled around his legs. Breath harsh, cracked knuckle bleeding down his wrist again.
He smashed a mug, ceramic crunch skittering like bones across a tile grave. Shadows twisted into puppet silhouettes. They tittered, delighted. “Stop watching me!” he roared, throat raw, spittle shining on his lip. “I’m not— I’m not—”
Good? Safe? Real?
He punched the desk until something in his hand popped. Not enough, desperate for sensation that proved a boundary existed somewhere. He turned to the wall. Pressed his forehead to it, panting, shaking, small sounds breaking loose in his throat like sobs choked before they could form. “Please,” he whispered to nothing and everyone. “Shut up. Just… stop.”
Then the doorknob rattled. Click. Door swung open.
You stood there, framed in fluorescent light and disaster. Eyes flicking from him, wild-eyed, fists red, breathing like a kicked dog, to the ruin around him.
Silence.
“Either this is avant-garde performance art,” you said, very flat, “or you really hated my roommate’s new desk.”
His vision jerked, focus snapping between you and the wall breathing behind you and the confetti melting into the rug. Sam bared his teeth without meaning to, something animal and cracked. “Don’t come in here.”
He didn’t even know what he was warning you about. Himself. The world. The puppet perched on your shoulder whispering look at him break.
Your brow knit, like you were trying to see the invisible thing he was reacting to, and then — flat, unimpressed: “…okay, yeah. This is definitely not R.A.-approved behavior.” You took in the overturned mattress. The broken mug. The bruising rage still vibrating off him. Then you nodded very sagely. “You… spontaneously lost a fight with interior décor?”
Somehow your tone threw him harder than any hallucination.
“I said stay back!”
His voice cracked on it, like even he heard the fear in it. You raised your hands in exaggerated surrender. “I mean yeah, I was planning to walk straight into the bleeding guy mid-breakdown, thanks for stopping me. Truly. Close call.”
Sam’s brain tried to process that. It tripped over itself.
Were you being sarcastic?
His brain spun the question in circles. Sarcasm. Mocking. Or normal people joking. Or knives hidden under tone. He couldn’t tell — he never could — so the thought looped and frayed and—
Words useless. Always useless. Cate did the talking for him, really. Or she did the silencing. Same thing, right?
Your expression shifted mid-thought, recognition lighting across your features like a bulb warming. You squinted, then pointed at him with incredulous disbelief. “Aren’t you Sam Riordan?”
You watched all of that happen, the spark, the spiral, the crash, in two heartbeats. And something in you softened, posture lowering a fraction. Not afraid, but careful. Handling volatile chemicals. Or, you know… a six-foot superhuman hallucinating reality like a scratched DVD.
“Right,” you said quietly. Your voice changed. Smooth, level, the kind of tone nurses used, or people kneeling beside a cornered animal trying not to startle it.
And Sam realized, in a distant, delayed way, he was the animal in this analogy.
He paced anyway. Sharp turns. Fingers flexing like claws he didn’t choose. Jaw tight, breath ragged, heart punching ribs. He growled at something over your shoulder. “Stop talking— I said STOP—”
You didn’t flinch. That made it worse. Everyone flinched. Everyone ran. Everyone knew.
But you just breathed. Centered in the debris like you’d been born in crisis and never forgot how to walk around it. Sam kept muttering, fragments, apologies, threats, prayers. Didn’t know which was which. His head wouldn’t hold still.
Then something shifted. He didn’t see it. Didn’t hear it. It was… pressure. Like the room inhaled and held the breath. Not a hand. Not a force. A weather change. His heartbeat stuttered, confused. The puppets flickered. Sound dropped, muffled, like someone wrapped reality in a blanket.
No. No, no, no—
Calm crawled into his bones.
Warm. Heavy. Quiet.
Too quiet.
He jerked, muscles sparking, fight-or-flight with nowhere to sprint. Adrenaline demanded chaos. Panic demanded noise. Fear demanded he RUN or BREAK something or DO ANYTHING to keep the world from swallowing him.
But the world… softened.
His breath slowed without permission. Chest loosening, shoulders unhooking from his ears. “What—” His voice cracked. Embarrassing. Young.“What did— I don’t—” He blinked like a drunk surfacing from a nightmare underwater. The puppets? Gone. Or fuzzy. Like they knew they weren’t welcome.
He could hear himself breathe.
Just himself.
When was the last time the inside of his head wasn’t a war zone? Relief hit him so fast it hurt.
Which meant he hated it.
Instinct curled in his gut, the only shield he’d ever trusted. Don’t trust this. Don’t get used to this. Don’t let it in. His knees sagged a fraction, a glitch in posture, like his body forgot how to hold itself upright without panic as scaffolding. He stared at you. Wild. Suspicious.
Terrified.
Relieved so brutally it felt like breaking.
“What… did you do,” he accused. Awe edged with fear, like touching fire and not getting burned.
You shrugged lightly, hands still relaxed at your sides. “Call it… emotional first aid.”
His eyes narrowed, trying to parse the joke. Trying to decide if you were real. If this was a trick. If the silence would suddenly scream again.
You didn’t push closer. Didn’t crowd him. Just stood there, steady in the quiet you’d poured into the room. “Feels weird, right?” you murmured. “The not-wanting-to-implode thing?”
Sam swallowed. He didn’t have an answer. He didn’t have language for peace anymore.
You moved. Not frantically, deliberately, like if you did anything too quick he’d bolt or go feral or crack the wall in half. Which, honestly, he looked capable of. You stooped, picked up a hoodie you’d left on the floor, flung it vaguely toward a chair. “So,” you said lightly, like you weren’t shaking inside from being in a room with what was essentially a nervous nuclear warhead, “I’m just gonna… pretend I had ‘cleaning’ on my to-do list today.”
Sam blinked, slow, heavy-lidded. He hadn’t sat yet. He hovered near the door like a cat that wasn’t sure if it wanted to be inside or burning the house down. You thumbed at the messy desk, sweeping stray pens into a cup. “Feel free to sit. Or stand ominously.”
He didn’t laugh. But something in his shoulders loosened, like he recognized the joke but didn’t know where to put it inside himself.
You pointed at a truly heinous ceramic frog your roommate had made in Intro to Ceramics, mottled green, bulging eyes, teeth for some reason. A demon amphibian. “Also? Kinda rude you didn’t break that earlier. If you’re gonna go full mental spiral, at least take out the frog of nightmares. I have suffered.”
He finally moved, and sat on the edge of your bed. Stiff posture, hands braced on his knees like he was afraid he’d float off or fall apart. His breathing evened out a fraction. He was watching you. And not in the glossy-poster “Golden Boy” way you’d seen on sponsored feeds, not marketing gaze. Hunting gaze. Or maybe listening gaze. Like he was trying to memorize every second without understanding why.
You tossed another shirt into a pile. “We don’t have to talk about… whatever that was. We can pretend you just really, really hate my furniture.”
He looked… heavy. Melting. Like someone had poured warm molasses into his bones. “What’re you doing to me,” he murmured. Not accusing this time. More… dazed. Wondering. His voice distant, like someone waking from anesthesia.
You froze mid-fold of a sock. Then shrugged. “It’s just my powers making you feel more calm than you really are.”
He squinted, trying to focus on a thought that slid out from under him every time he reached for it. “Feels… nice,” he mumbled. “Like… warm. In my head.”
You lifted your brows. “Pretty sure that’s called relaxing. You should try it recreationally.”
He leaned back against your headboard. His brain looked like it had put itself in low-power mode. And he just stared at you, like he’d never encountered safety before and wasn’t sure if he was allowed to touch it.
And Sam drifted.
If drifting could be desperate.
His eyelids sank halfway, lashes low like gravity finally noticed him. A slow breath. Then another. Muscles unwound by degrees, suspicious at first, then surrendering like someone loosening fist after fist they forgot they’d been clenching. He felt—
God, he didn’t even have a word that wasn’t catecatecate ghosting through his skull like a phantom limb.
But this wasn’t her. This wasn’t empty.
This was … presence. Weight without pain. Awareness without punishment. Not a switch flipped. Not a mind wiped clean. Just… room. Space inside his own skull he hadn’t seen in years. He could breathe in it. The world didn’t shatter. The floor didn’t tilt. Nothing in his blood screamed. It should’ve alarmed him. It didn’t.
It thrilled him. (It terrified him.)
He watched you move around the room, casually, like gravity lived in your pockets and followed your steps. Folding clothes, muttering at a stack of papers, brushing crumbs off your desk. Mundane choreography. No pity. No demand. No “Sam, focus.” No “Sam, breathe.” Just existing. Letting him exist too.
He sank further into the pillow, breath dipping into some low, sweet frequency he didn’t know he could hold. He felt syrupy, not slow from fear or restraint or sedation, but soft in a way that felt earned. Deserved?
(No. Don’t think that. Don’t get greedy.)
(But god it felt good.)
His fingers curled loosely on the blanket. He could feel his pulse in his wrists. Steady. Steady.
Oh.
Oh, he liked this.
His jaw loosened. The constant internal alarm, the one shrieking you are a problem / you are dangerous / you are failing every second you breathe, slipped to a low murmur. Then a whisper. Then nothing at all.
Silence.
True silence.
He nearly choked on it.
He’d forgotten peace could be audible.
He stared at you, pupils darkened, a little wild with the revelation. There was hunger behind it, not violent; starved. Like a stray realizing the hand offering food wasn’t pulling away.
His throat opened to speak and closed on the words. Words weren’t built for this. His world had language for violence, doubt, control, obedience. Not this warm, stupid softness spreading under his ribs like sunlight. He would’ve agreed to anything if it meant not losing this.
He’d chased numbness for so long — this was worse. Better. Dangerous. Alive.
If you stood up and walked away, he thought dimly, he’d follow.
