tear you apart (a. kalim)
notes(s): hoo boyyy 😮💨this oens . got . Hooooo 😮💨😮💨😮💨 a little inspired by one of my favorite songs
“You came again.”
His voice drifted from the shadows before he did, warm, amused and unmistakably pleased.
Kalim stepped into the moonlight with an ease that made it seem like the forest itself had shaped him from silver and gold. Pale hair caught the light like silk, his jewelry glimmering softly against dark fabric embroidered with golden motifs. But it was his eyes that always held you captive.
Bright, too bright; like molten rubies reflecting firelight.
“You’re late,” you said, trying not to sound relieved.
Kalim grinned immediately. “I wanted to see if you’d leave.”
“And if I had?”
His smile tilted into something curious. “Who knows? You never do.”
The first time you’d met him, you thought he was some wandering spirit. Nobody could move the way he did — silent one moment, suddenly inches away the next. One blink and he would be standing several feet away beneath the trees; the next, his voice would drift right beside your ear, warm and amused enough to send a shiver down your spine.
It wasn’t only that he was quiet — it was wrong somehow, unnaturally graceful in the way predators moved before striking. Branches never snagged his clothes. Mud never stained his boots. Thorned vines shifted away from his hands like they feared touching him.
The wind stirred his hair as he took a step closer, gaze fixed entirely on you.
“You smell like rain,” he said absentmindedly.
You blinked. “That’s a weird thing to say to someone.”
“It’s true.” He leaned closer, inhaling lightly like he couldn’t help himself. “And cloves… and the flowers growing near the eastern hills.”
“You can tell all that just from smell?”
Kalim paused, like he’d almost forgotten normal people couldn’t.
A soft laugh escaped him. “Right. Humans can’t.”
His word should’ve unsettled you more than it did.
Instead, curiosity curled tighter in your chest each night you met him here. Because Kalim spoke about the world like he existed slightly outside it — as though he belonged to older things. Wilder things.
You crossed your arms. “You still haven’t answered my question from last night.”
Kalim’s grin flashed in the dark, quick and crooked. “The funny one?”
“The important one.”
You stepped closer. Close enough that the moonlight couldn’t fit between you anymore. “What are you?”
For once, he didn’t answer right away.
The river rushed beneath the old stone bridge below you, loud in the sudden silence. Somewhere deeper in the trees, an owl let out a low call and went quiet, as if it was waiting.
Kalim’s easy expression faltered. He looked at you — really looked — like he was weighing something heavy. His silver hair caught the moonlight, and for a second you saw something else in him so clearly it made your pulse jump.
“You actually want to know?” he asked, voice lower.
“Yes.”
“You might run.”
“I haven’t yet.”
That seemed to affect him more than expected; so much so that you could see his throat working as he swallowed.
His gaze lingered on your face with open fascination, like he was trying to solve something impossible. Humans feared the unnatural — everyone knew that. Yet every night, you still returned to the forest to meet someone with glowing eyes and secrets in his smile.
“You’re strange,” he murmured.
“You’re avoiding the question.”
Kalim laughed quietly, though it sounded softer now.
His grin returned at that, small and fleeting, but it disappeared just as quickly when you reached for his wrist. The moment your fingers brushed his skin, he went still. The kind of stillness that came right before something wild decided whether to bare its teeth or not.
Your breath caught as both sets of eyes looked down to where you touched him.
Up close, you could see it so clearly now: faint silver lines glowing under his skin, tracing along his veins like liquid moonlight. They pulsed once beneath your fingertips, dim and beautiful and deeply unnatural.
Kalim’s breathing changed, like he’d forgotten how to do it properly for a second. Then, he let out a slow exhale through his nose, almost like he was forcing himself back into control.
“You’re going to make this harder,” he said quietly.
“Make what harder?”
His jaw tightened slightly. For the first time, the easy charm he always wore wasn’t quite there to soften the edges of him. “Leaving you alone after this.”
That made the air shift.
You went still. “After what?”
Kalim finally looked up at you fully. The moonlight caught his eyes head-on and made them look almost wrong — too reflective, too aware, like something watching from behind a human face rather than through it.
Before you could react, his hand snapped up and caught your wrist. You had been holding his other arm, trying to keep some control of the distance, but he overpowered your grip with almost no effort. Warm fingers closed around your wrist like iron wrapped in velvet, and he spun you.
Your back hit the rough bark of the ancient oak behind you with a soft thud. Kalim pressed in immediately, caging you against the tree with his body. One hand pinned your wrist above your head, the other planted beside your shoulder. He wasn’t hurting you, but there was no give in his hold.
You could feel the tension running through him like a live wire, every muscle drawn tight beneath your hands as though he was restraining something much larger than himself. His breathing had gone uneven, sharper through his nose, and the silver lines under his skin spread farther up his throat now, glowing against the darkness.
“Kalim—”
“Don’t move,” he said hoarsely.
His head dipped suddenly toward your neck, stopping just short of touching you. You felt the warm rush of his breath against your skin as he inhaled once, deep enough to make his fingers flex around your wrist.
A low, rumbling sound rolled out of his chest — not quite a growl, not quite a whine. Something in between.
“Geez… you smell even stronger this close,” he whispered against your throat. His voice had changed, rougher, like gravel under moonlight. “It’s driving me crazy. I keep trying to ignore it during the day, but here…”
He pulled back just enough for you to see his face. His eyes were brighter now, almost luminous, with his pupils narrowed into sharp vertical slits. The silver markings pulsed hotter, racing down his arms. Then, his ears began to shift — lengthening, sharpening, tufts of silver fur appearing as they rose into clear, wolfish ears that flicked toward every small sound you made.
A werewolf. That’s what he was. The realization hit all at once as you stared up at him beneath the moonlight. The sharp ears flicking toward every tiny sound, the glow beneath his skin, the low rumble still vibrating in his chest like he couldn’t fully hold it back anymore.
The words died down from your throat, but the pounding of your heart distracted you enough from your hand involuntarily reaching out to touch the tufts of silver fur on his ears.
You didn’t speak. You couldn’t, not really — not with your heart hammering so loudly it felt like it should’ve given you away. But your hand lifted anyway, almost instinctively, as if something in you had decided fear wasn’t the only thing allowed to exist here.
Your fingertips brushed the soft tufts of silver fur at his ear. Warm. Far softer than anything about him should’ve been. Kalim’s breath hitched so sharply it sounded like it broke.
“What are you—”
“Are you going to hurt me?”
The question cut through whatever he was about to say.
For a second, the forest felt too loud again — the river rushing beneath the bridge, leaves shifting, the distant call of something alive and unaware of what was happening here. His ears twitched under your fingers, but this time he didn’t lean into it. He forced himself still, like movement itself might be dangerous.
When he spoke, his voice was quieter and honest in a way that made it worse.
“…Yes,” he admitted, dropping his head against your shoulder once again.
Kalim’s jaw tightened immediately, like he regretted the word the moment it left him, but he didn’t take it back. Instead, his head pulled back but his gaze strayed away from yours, as if looking at you directly was making it harder to speak.
“Not like that!” he added quickly, panicking, though it didn’t fully fix anything. “Not the way you think!”
Kalim exhaled sharply through his nose, like he was trying to force the words into something coherent before they turned into something worse. His grip on the tree behind you tightened again, splintering it slightly under his fingers, then loosening like he caught himself.
“I don’t want to,” he said, voice lower now, strained in a way that made it sound like it cost him something to admit. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Then, quieter — honest in a way that stripped him bare:
“But my head is full of you.”
His eyes flicked up to yours for a second before dropping again, like he couldn’t handle the contact for long.
“I can’t think properly when you’re here. I can’t—” His breath caught, and you felt it in the way his body tensed, like something inside him was pressing harder against the edges of control. “Everything in me is loud. Too loud.”
“And when you’re this close…” he continued, voice roughening, slipping further from calm, “all my instincts do is scream at me to keep you here.”
His jaw tightened, fangs just barely visible when he spoke again.
“To not let you leave.”
A pause stretched between you, thick enough to feel physical.
Kalim finally looked at you again, and this time there was no attempt to soften it—no grin, no charm, just something raw and conflicted sitting behind wolf-bright eyes.
“I’m fighting it every second,” he admitted. “And with you touching me like that…” His ears twitched under your hand again despite himself, betraying him. “…it makes it difficult.”
“…So what,” you said quietly, voice steadier than you felt, “you’re just supposed to stay away from me forever?”
For a second, something almost pained flickered across his face.
“I should,” he said immediately.
But I don’t want to.
The words echoed in your head as if on cue. His hand, once braced against the tree beside your head, slowly dropped and then came up to cup your face.
Up close, you could feel everything about him at once: the heat in his palm that didn’t match the cold night air, the faint tremor running through his fingers like he was holding himself together by force alone, and the sharper edge beneath it all that reminded you he wasn’t ordinary. His claws brushed your skin as he settled his hand against you, not enough to hurt, but enough to make your breath catch anyway.
Kalim sucked in a sharp breath at the contact like even that small movement was something he had to endure. “…Sorry,”
“Do you want to?” Your voice cut through the thick tension. “To stay away forever, I mean.”
“O-Of course no—”
“Because I do not mistake you for death.” You stepped closer toward him, your hand wrapping around the one cupping your cheek. “Not even for an instant.”
Kalim’s breath caught so abruptly it almost sounded painful. His eyes widened slightly, the silver glow beneath his skin glimmering from the moonlight. For once, he looked completely unguarded; like nobody had ever said something like that to him before.
Your fingers tightened gently around his hand, grounding him there against the tree and moonlight and the wild thing trembling just beneath his skin.
“Well then,” he said at last.
A pause.
His smile came after it — different now. Less easy, less boyish. Sharper at the edges, but not unkind. Something that belonged more to the forest than the village lights far beyond it.
His fangs caught the moonlight as he exhaled a quiet laugh, eyes never leaving yours.
“Just whatever will I do with you?”