This blog is for me to reblog dark fics away from my main blog. Also for easier access when I want to go and reread any of them. I sometimes post original work, but not often.
- Most shit here is dark content, but they'll probably be other content as this is just a place for me to reblog fics I enjoy. That being said, most things here will have yandere behavior, non/dub-con, or other disturbing content that can be discomforting or triggering. Viewer discretion is advised. Don't like, don't read 👍
But what about a sort of reincarnation idea? Here's what I have, Reader in his first love fell in love with yandere, but he was in love with someone else and ends up killing us. But before reader dies they profess there love or something similar and blacks out. Only to be reincarnated back to their past self with there old memories.
Aaaand you can basically take over from there if you do this request in any way you want, idk I'm not good at ideas🤷♂️
Don't worry lovely, there are no stupid requests on this blog, in fact I think this is a wonderful idea!
You hadn't expected to wake up in a sweat, laying in your own bed, like nothing has ever happened. Like you didn't just get murdered by your own crush. Sitting up and quickly pulling up your shirt, you're surprised to see....nothing. no stab wounds, no blood, just regular untouched skin. You throw yourself off of your messy bed, standing in front of a full body mirror you remember getting for a great deal, examining your face closely.
Was that all really just a dream? Just a paranoid filled nightmare? It all felt so real.....
You notice a black stripe around your left wrist. That wasn't there before.
Inspecting closer, it doesn't look like tattoo ink, you aren't really sure what it is at all, but this means that it wasn't a dream. It's all real. But how...how did you go back in time? Was that even possible or is it some sort of divine punishment? Your thoughts are interrupted by a knocking at your dorm room door, you quickly smooth your frazzled look before stumbling over to open the door, peeking out with a scared look.
A handsome man stands outside, next to your friend, Camille. It's your crush, Julian, with your friend. You vividly remember his crazed eyes as he stabbed you for 'trying to get in his way.' which was absurd to you then and now, but his eyes seem so calm now, hazel green eyes glancing down to your own before looking back to Camille. "Hey! Are you ready for our hang out?" She said, her distinct voice bringing you back to the current situation at hand.
You remember this, this was when you officially hung out with Julian, that means it must still be early fall. It was summer when he killed you, that means you travelled back a year in the past. "...right, sorry Camille, I must've slept through my alarm haha!" You replied, a nervous smile appeared on your face.
Maybe this time, things will be different.
Wrong. So utterly wrong. You've been trapped in this loop for way too long, the ending never changing. You always die by Julian's hands. Your entire forearm being covered in those back stripes, like a blackout tattoo, evidence of your repeated lives.
You're body feels tired and sluggish now, not even jolting up when your eyes open back up to your dorm room, you can't bring yourself to care anymore. You just want to sleep, preferably forever. Aggressive knocking interrupts your self loathing, forcing you to rouse up from the comforters on your bed, dragging bare feet to the door of your dorm.
This cycle, you isolated yourself, because maybe if you just stop showing up and caring, Julian won't kill you. But that would just be too good to be true, as the very man you fear is standing in front of your dorm, waiting for you to answer. Odd, a rotten feeling coils in your stomach, Julian's never here without Camille.
"Open up, [NAME]" he said with a halfhearted scoff, he's definitely been sent by Camille to try and get you out of your dorm, apparently just attending classes isn't enough for her to stop worrying. Cracking open the door, you peek out to look up at the towering man, maybe your lackluster appearance will drive him away. Julian raises a dark eyebrow at your current state, bags under your eyes, messy hair, still in your sleep clothes, and frankly you stink from bed rotting over the weekend. "Jeez, you look terrible, no wonder Camille was worried." Was that...concern in his voice? You felt paranoid, he always disregarded you in favor of Camille, him showing interest made you want to puke. In fact, you did.
Slamming the door closed, you ran into the adjacent bathroom, puking up what little you ate into the porcelain toilet bowl. Flashes of Julian stabbing you, drowning you, torturing you, all the previous ends hitting you like a freight train. It ended just as fast as it came, disorienting and disgusting you. You just wanted it to be over already, a permanent death, is that so hard to ask for?
Julian stood outside the door, confused and annoyed, what the fuck is your problem? All of a sudden you started avoiding Camille and him like the plague, more him than Camille, and it was hurting her, shes really fucking worried y'know? Even though he really didn't like you, he found his interest in you growing, and seeing you look like a hot mess, eyes staring up at him like they know what he is, cemented it for him. You're a lot more than just Camilles guy best friend.
On his walk back to his own dorm, his thoughts drifted to you, now that he thinks about it you never did show any interest in Camille. Checking his phone, he notices a text from his darling herself, immediately replying to it with no hesitance.
Cammie❤️: Jules, did you check up on [NAME]? How is he?
Julian: he's a hot mess lol
He gritted his teeth, even if you didn't like Cammie, it still bothered him when she brings you up. Julian just can't see why she's friends with you, even before the switch in behavior, you were just....odd, couldn't do anything for her like he can, and yet she's worried about a nobody like you. He's both interested and annoyed.
Julian texts back and forth with Camille, quelling her worries the best he can and redirecting the conversation elsewhere, he really didn't want to talk about you again. Throughout the day, the back of his mind was drifting to you, the strange blackout tattoo you suddenly got, the freak behavior, you seemed to really hate his guts too. Or maybe that was fear, you definitely know something, but he's covered everything up perfectly...
Just thinking about you makes him pissed.
A/N: I had some fun with this one! Maybe I'll write a part two (人*´∀｀)｡*ﾟ+ this is male centered but you could replace it with they/them instead of he/him in your head! I do think if I make this a series, this yan will be more of a... Yandere hater, for maximum slow burn!!
tw ( yandere , stockholm syndrome kind of ? , reader has already been kidnapped )
lol i havent posted since january i think ... long overdue
you thought that if you stayed in there long enough, he’d go away. unfortunately, you were wrong.
“…you locked the door,” he said eventually, as he slid down to sit against the door, “that’s okay. i’d be scared too,” he added, softer.
don’t speak, you reminded yourself.
“it’s quiet in there, yeah?” his tone stayed even, careful, like anything sharper might send you further away. “i bet it feels safer in there for you, doesn't it?”
a small pause.
“gets lonely, though,” he murmured. “you know it does.”
his hand pressed lightly against the door.
“did i do something wrong?”
fuck.
he sounded so sincere.
that was the problem.
he would always make you feel guilty, his stupid words, the way he would just say them so gently, as if his words were full of concern rather than control-
“i just…” he exhaled quietly. “i’ll give you space, okay? i mean it. just… open the door for me.”
“please.”
your fingers trembled as you turned the knob.
he moved back the second he heard it, shifting away from the doorway without hesitation… just like he promised to give you room.
his eyes found yours immediately, softening in a way that made your chest twist.
“that’s better,” he murmured.
your grip stayed tight on the door.
ready to close it again. he noticed, but knew to not comment.
WARNING: incest/pseudocest, Harry Potter (a marauder), non-con, jealousy, big brother’s jealous of his little sister, mentions of perceived favouritism (from parents, perceived by Remus), the reader is female, reader is one of those popular, nice, valedictorian sort of girls, he does love you but he also hates you deeply (I am more than willing to go further into this bit and explain it all), etc.
Huh. I think I once wrote a Remus Lupin x little sister!reader/oc before and then I just… didn’t revisit that ever again.
It was this thing where the reader was from the Harry Potter era and you had already lived your life. Well, up until the age of seventeen of course, but still. And you time traveled back to the marauder’s era (not on purpose) and were found by the Lupins in some sort of field. Clothes tattered, shivering with the cold, starving.
And they, being the kind people they were, decide to take you in.
And Remus- Remus does love you. He loves you to pieces.
(But he can see it in his parents eyes. He can see how their irises lock onto the ugly scars crawling up his arms. And he can see how they soften when they look at your own pure, untainted flesh.
He can see how they wish.)
Then Hogwarts comes. And it’s alright—great—for that year or two that you aren’t there. That you aren’t a part of his day to day just yet.
And when you do get your Hogwarts letter, it’s a joyous occasion. He’s happy for you.
It’s different when you finally do get to Hogwarts, though.
You’ve always liked to cling to him. You’ve always liked being his little shadow.
And you still do it sometimes. Unconsciously. Feet going to follow his own before you even realize you’re not even going in the same directions.
It would be cute if it weren’t for the comparison it invited.
You had a way about you—a feel to you. No one would ever assume you were his little sister and no one would ever assume you were found with matted, filthy hair and watching the world with wide, darting eyes when you were taken in.
(These days he finds himself pressing his lips into a line to stop himself from saying what he wants to say whenever you’re brought up. That they had found you. That you had been a weak, small thing. That once upon a time, you were not so beautiful.)
(It was a spiteful urge but it was his nonetheless.)
There was a smoothness to your movements, a glide, a slowness that had people watching. And your smiles, he knew them well, they would have people taking small pauses just to take you in, just to see you.
Next to you, he was dirt. But it wasn’t something you went out of your way to cause. Anyone standing next to you would look awful by simple comparison.
(He hated it.)
And then he thought, maybe you’d struggle. Maybe you’d make shit grades and have to run to him just like you used to when you were little and you got even the smallest scrape and-
And you never did.
You never thought to seek him out for academic help and you clearly didn’t need to.
You were acing your classes much easier than he ever did. Much quicker than he ever did.
And, fuck, you’re popular??
(It’s much too humbling. The fact that his little sister was much more loved by the world than he would ever be.)
Somewhere along the way between his own self hatred and his burning envy it all begins to melt together in a churning pot of hatred.
Not the kind of hatred that would make him hurt you (physically) but the type that makes him slam doors in your face, walk out of the room once you walk into it, and barely restrain himself from rolling his eyes whenever you come up.
And, yeah, he feels bad whenever he sees that sad, kicked puppy look on your face whenever he dismisses you but it’s either this or he starts saying shit he doesn’t want you to hear. (Like the words ‘I hate you’.)
And the thing is… when summer comes you’re mostly fine again. He talks to you. Not a lot. But he does talk to you. Then school rolls back again and suddenly he can’t stand to breathe the same air as you all over again.
It’s an exhausting cycle for the both of you.
Then, maybe, somewhere along the way, you start hanging out with people outside of your usual friend group. People that look unseemly standing next to you.
People like Severus Snape.
Now, Remus has never had any personal issue with the boy. That part is all James and Sirius.
But he may begin to.
It’s not just the fact that you two talk now. That in itself would have been manageable. (Irritating but manageable.)
It is the fact that the two of you are tied at the hip.
And you- you defend him. You stand by Lily and you defend Snape.
(And you look disappointed whenever his eyes catch yours, the admiration once in your eyes now fading. Like you expected better from him. Like you expected him to be braver.)
(It’s maddening.)
Remus has an animal crawling under his skin. A hungry, prowling, pacing animal whose ears twitch with irritation and whose lips curl back to reveal teeth.
Despite all of it, despite everything, Remus is as he’s always been—a werewolf.
Sometimes, all it takes is a full-moon for him to realize that he’s been itching to eat.
——
Maybe he should’ve noticed it sooner.
Maybe he should’ve known that all those times his eyes flickered too low and lingered too long were not just flukes. Maybe he should’ve known that something else lied with all the anger, the envy, the hatred that swirled around in his stomach whenever he saw you around Hogwarts. Maybe he should’ve known that these things eventually boil over.
Maybe he should’ve known.
But he didn’t.
(And it was all going to come down to this anyway, so what does it matter?)
There’s something exhilarating about it all. About this. About you.
Remus stuffs his nose against the side of your neck—right where his teeth would go, if he ever took the liberty. He can’t help the chuckle that slips from him at the weak whimper you give him.
His blood is wild in his veins. His heart is quick, pounding like against his rib cage like any other four legged creature, howling to be let out.
Remus knows how all this must look to you. He’s an animal. A beast. And he’s got his teeth ready to eat you up.
(And he does. And he will.)
His laugh rumbles through his chest, through his body, and right into you.
The full moon, the stars, the long arduous wait for sunrise—none of it matters.
He won.
A noise of pure and utter satisfaction leaves through Remus’s mouth, leaving his jaw hanging slightly ajar.
And then, he’s shoved up inside you—keening, eyes nearly rolling back.
You give a choked sob beneath Remus. Writhing and pinned. Cunt stretched out around him in every way that has him breathless.
He presses a kiss to your cheek just as a tear drips down, mouth catching the glistening fluid and smearing it over his top lip. Remus drags his tongue over the pink flesh with a slow reverence, giving a drawn out swallow as salt settles on his tongue.
He loves it.
(Your fear, your distress, your heartbreak—all of it is his.)
He slips his hands into yours, pinning them back on either side of your head in an intimate, almost loving manner. Like a boyfriend would.
Remus pulls his hips back, slowly, gently, then slams them forward, delighting in the sounds he knocks out of you. (A sob, a scream, who can tell the difference?)
(Just as your mortification, your horror, is all his own so too shall be your lust.)
Remus begins to move into you, starting off at a steady pace that would’ve had any other guy his age wracked with exhaustion. He watches your expression, how it twist and falls and contorts, with morbid fixation. And he lets loose an animalistic sound of pure and utter joy when your mouth finally, finally falls open in a choked moan.
(He’ll likely regret this later. He’ll likely regret this tomorrow. But tonight all he can think of is moonlight and the one night he was able to defile that which must never be. The one night he got his dirty, werewolf hands on his dearly beloved, dearly detested little sister.)
Remus doesn’t know if it’s hatred or love that has him ramming into you as the tip of his cock finds that tender spot inside you, that little thing inside you that had your back arching into him. All Remus knows is that tonight is the night of all nights.
And that tonight your big brother will get you screaming. Whether you like it or not.
—-
Don’t know if it’s obvious but for Remus this is him on the day of the full moon. He will be regretting this tomorrow BUT the whole day of the full moon thing just took away those barriers he had in his mind. He was always willing to do it. He just never did. But now, without any restraint or morality to hold him back, he did it.
SUMMARY: Y/N rebels consistently in church; Priest Anton teaches him a lesson to make him stay.
Y/n wakes up one day with his memory wiped out and his mind a mess. He goes to a Church for salvation and soon becomes embroiled with the handsome, all-knowing and almost otherworldly head priest, Anton. But soon, the priest’s affections become crazed, spiraling into a deadly obsession that threatens to ruin Y/n. (Perhaps the Priest Anton has had something to do with memories. But Y/n will never know that.)
referenced from my fic called twisted faith on my wattpad (linked in profile)! long overdue side story of what would’ve happened if Y/n ran away from him! welcome back anton; been a while since I wrote you…yes i do have something also pretty similar to this on my profile which i only remembered abt after this was written but still I hope you enjoy this!
art done by the incredibly reverenced_cicada!!!
please comment, reblog; and like this if you enjoyed it!!
**
He doesn’t remember the ruin; the blood soaked fingers that thread through his hair. Softly, gently, lovingly. He doesn’t remember his trembles beneath him, the soft, strangled moans, the claw marks left on his back. Y/n didn’t remember any of it — his memory is closed and bottled and gone and his mind is a mess. He remembers scratching at the door of the church for mercy, and being welcomed.
Y/n remembers first meeting him, the man clothed in white; the man with silky golden hair and cerulean blue eyes. The man who was so devastatingly and damningly beautiful that people stopped to stare at him; the man with the gentle smile that swallowed your rage. The man named Anton.
“Poor thing,” Anton had told Y/n, and his fingers had been warm then. Y/n would’ve mistaken anything for warmth; he was so horribly starved of touch and affection that even the simplest of words could feel like the sun to him. And so he basked in it. “Poor thing,” Anton said quietly, “you are at the mercy of God. At me.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Y/n choked out. He knew the emptiness gnawing at his brain. Chewing at nothing, with a bottomless hunger that had yet not been satiated. His fingers had clutched at the priest’s robes; he had nearly cried out from reprieve at seeing another human; another life form. He had stumbled on the bare roads alone. Something about the priest had seemed so familiar and it filled Y/n with indescribable relief.
“You’re trembling,” Anton had murmured softly and gently in return, his fingers brushing Y/n’s cheek. “How fortunate, then. You have stumbled upon the one place that you can be saved. The only place you will be saved.”
Y/n had drunk his words in at the point of time. He had been — ah, what’s that word? He had been docile, yes he had. He had been so painfully and ridiculously pliant to the priest’s needs then, so much like a lamb that had been reared for him, the shepherd — that he now laughed at the absurdity of it all.
The priest, who had been so charming at first, was a vicious monster. The smile never left his face; that ineffable mannerisms he had that was so graceful; so powerful, so divine…and yet Anton robbed people of their lives so easily; with a careless flick and a sanguine, saccharine smile. His fingers were bloody when they traced Y/n’s back, when they touched his face…when they left a crimson, unforgiving trail.
He will kill me, Y/n always thought, he will kill me one day. He will murder me; like he has murdered so many of his foolish believers who throw themselves at his feet…
“When will you kill me?” Y/n had begged once, after the thirty eighth slaughter, after the last of the flames had been snuffed out and burnt carcasses lay on the floor again. “Why did you welcome me? Why did you — why did you let me live and why do you treat me so well? Why do you treat me like I’m special — when you are simply going to kill me?”
Oh, yes, Anton treated him so differently. During service Anton rebuked those who tormented Y/n for being a new believer. Y/n watched as others poured their savings out for Anton and he didn’t bat an eye at them. But with Y/n…why? Y/n’s memories had not yet returned; and he was beginning to accept the bleak reality that it would never do so. And so now he was left to spiral here, in this crazed madness where the priest ruled this place like a cult and he had no answers and only him —
I should never have come, Y/n found himself thinking over this all the time, I should never have been on that path, walking towards the church. This is not holy: this is not divine.
“Oh, Y/n,” Anton sighed. “Oh, Y/n.” He stalked towards Y/n; his large strides making Y/n flinch and cower and summon the last vestiges of his strength to bare his teeth; like a dog that had yet not been tamed. The priest’s hands were cold this time round as he tipped the (h/c)-haired boy’s chin up. “You will never die. You are the Chosen One. The one who is my most beloved ordained proxy. The heavens have chosen you. I have chosen you.”
His words were sweet, coated in so much honey that Y/n wanted to vomit.
“You kill all of them,” Y/n choked out, “you -you cannot possibly believe that what you’re doing is —”
“You don’t understand,” Anton said sadly, “not yet; it seems.”
“Murder,” Y/n finished, “it’s fucking murder- do you hear me? I can’t believe I ever listened to you- I can’t believe I ever thought I would — kill me, just kill —”
“You were like this before,” Anton’s tone had hardened, but it held that tone of wistfulness from before. Almost stern; like a beguiling parent chiding a naughty child. “Then I went through all that trouble to do that…and still you rebel; still you fight. How many lessons do you need to learn?”
“Fuck you,” the words had slipped from Y/n’s throat before he knew it, “fuck your murderous tendencies and your cult and your deranged —”
Anton had taken his arm then, in a grip so tight it bruised, and had forced Y/n to stare at those unsettling eyes of his. Y/n had swallowed; Anton had looked hungrily at him; with thinly veiled desire and fondness and reluctance.
Reluctance…?
“It pains me to do this,” Anton said calmly, his voice soft. “But it seems punishment is needed for you. I shall not do something as extreme as what I did the last time…but you do need to learn a lesson.”
“No,” Y/n whispered.
“You will be declared holy. You will be consecrated. You will be freed from sin.”
The lessons would be the start of despair; of torment.
**
Y/n remembers his attempts at fighting. He remembers clawing at locked doors that won’t budge; the endless darkness that he was drenched in, the protest of not eating food and water. He remembers the corpses lined up in his mind, relentless and determined to make him miserable. He remembers screaming; until his throat is hoarse and until he is sure the Gods have grown tired of his misery. He remembers cursing God at his pain; at his situation.
“Will you surrender yet?” Anton asks softly. He holds a starved Y/n; his arms the only flicker of warmth. Y/n’s head, on his lap, the hallucinations driving him mad. He looks at the priest; he stares. He feels emptiness, hatred.
Starving himself had not worked; he had been forcibly fed. He had tried to stab the priest with a knife, and it had melted into a puddle of wax.
“Sin is resistance,” Anton tells him, smiling so serene, so beautiful. “I will purge you of it. You are Chosen, Y/n: remember that. I will allow no one to taint you; no one to touch you.”
Y/n remembers slipping into a haze. He remembers lips against his own. He remembers being too weak to fight back.
**
Days become weeks; and weeks — they become something completely indecipherable; slipping elusively through the cracks of time. Y/n doesn’t remember Anton ever harming him — not physically, at least; but Anton torments him. Anton bathes him; dresses him in all white, and prays over him with hands that linger too long on the throat. Y/n feels the anger dying in his mouth: but it is so bountiful, so full that it wriggles between his gum like cavities. Anton’s obsession is so sweet it rots Y/n’s teeth.
He speaks of the prophecy; at how they united together through divine matrimony — “You belong to me,” Anton says sweetly. He whispers quietly and presses their foreheads together while Y/n squirms and sobs.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Y/n says deliriously, “I cannot. I cannot — I cannot accept this: I cannot — I cannot live like this. Let me go, Anton. Let me go —”
Who was he before this? Has he ever been a person? What had the outside been like?
I am utterly isolated, Y/n realizes and he weeps; he weeps big, grieving, loud cries. I do not know anyone else except for him; why has Anton imbued me with only the knowledge of him?
Anton tilts his head and his voice is flat as he speaks. “You still choose to rebel.”
“I —”
“Was everything I did for naught?” He says tonelessly. He looks at Y/n. “I have gone to this extent and you want me to let you go,” he says. His tone is terrifyingly dark and Y/n is shaking, and oh god, the mantra of please let me go repeats in Y/n’s head and he’s stumbling and crying and —
“I declared that I would make you holy,” Anton says, smiling. But it is without mirth; it is completely empty.
“And so I will,” Anton says, “perhaps it’s time to purify you.”
Anton takes Y/n’s hand; very very gently. He pulls Y/n away; for once Y/n is out of that dark attic and he winces when light meets his skin and he wonders if the word purify has a negative or positive connotation to it because he’s free, and he’s seeing the outside world, and —
Oh.
There are hands tearing at his robes, there are harsh kisses pressed to his collarbone and Anton is undressing and there is an — altar; an incense burning in a censer and its smells sweet…Y/n hallucinates a lute playing; a pipe…
“After this I will give you a choice,” Anton says cruelly with a smile; “to leave. If you can walk, that is.”
**
Y/n learns that his moans are loud; strangled, like his screams. Or perhaps his moans and screams are blending together and he doesn’t know which is which; but he does know that they are ripped mercilessly from his throat and at least the constant thing in his life is that he is offered no mercy.
“This is what I was supposed to do,” Anton says, his voice a sigh. His eyes are impossibly dark and his expression is so cold and terrifying and warm at the same time…his fingers ghost over Y/n’s body and he shivers; he feels the touch glide up to his nipples and he feels teeth rest at the curve of his throat.
I can feel his pulse, Y/n thinks. I can feel him…entering me…breaking me…all of him.
Y/n knows his scream is loud when the priest pushes his large cock into his body; when he feels his walls tighten around painfully around him like they’re welcoming him, the traitorous hardening of his own cock that is left untouched. He feels delirious, delirious with painful pleasure when the thrusts become forceful and Anton is moving, he’s moving and pushing into him and each time Y/n accepts him, Y/n’s hands go to his back and they scratch and claw.
Their kisses are ravenous. They are dotted with sin, lined with pleasure and desire that should not exist. It is the forbidden fruit; they are falling from the Garden of Eden and Anton has claimed him. There are bottomless pools of blood in Y/n’s vision when he looks at Anton; when he cries for him to stop! And yet his own body aches; wants more. Y/n arches his back still, feels the delicate curve of his spine bending in submission and he twitches his hips while Anton takes more; he takes more and more and he does not stop.
“You will not leave,” Anton says in between his thrusts; as he nips Y/n’s ear. He smiles victoriously above Y/n’s body. “After I’m done…you shall be complete; perfect. I have held back for you.”
“Anton,” Y/n cries out. The name is stuck in his throat, hoarded in his mouth. Why is it all he knows? Where are his memories? Where is the past, the before? Where is his identity — is Anton right; does it rest with him?
(Chosen; chosen, chosen. You are the Chosen One. Why run away?)
“My darling,” Anton says; and he laughs. “Do you want me to continue? You want choices, don’t you? There it is. Do you want me to continue?”
Y/n whimpers below him. “Anton,” he repeats. His mind is broken; he cannot think but god everything is empty and the church is all he has, and —
“Beg,” Anton says, his voice stern. His fingers thrum against the expanse of Y/n’s flesh. He waits to take him apart, to peel him like a fruit and to devour him whole. The bruises on Y/n’s hip have a dull sort of pain. He cannot think.
“Do it, Y/n,” Anton coaxes, tone gentler this time. He kisses the tears off Y/n’s face. “Be good for me. You can do that, right? You can be so good…”
“Please,” the word leaves Y/n’s mouth. “Please ruin me. Please purify me. Please save me.”
Anton crashes his lips onto Y/n; drunk off his declaration; his plea, his piteous, soft cries. He knew Y/n would come around one day. He knew Y/n had to; he knew it was their fates intertwined, their destinies together melding into a singular line. The sex that follows is even more overwhelming; but it is glorious, it is divine.
After it is over, after Y/n is sprawled on the stained sheets and the sweet smell of the incense continues to permeate Y/n’s nostrils… Anton cradles him; soothes him after it’s over.
“Do you still wish to run?” He asks. Then, a more brutal question; “Can you still run?”
**
Y/n is given a choice. He remembers the ruin; the divinity; the purification. He is sanctified, he is pure, he is holy. He is made new.
Anton smiles. “Darling; do you still want to leave?”
Y/n feels a barrage of soft kisses on his forehead. The priest is gentle. The priest is kind. He is chosen.
(Forgive me, Y/n thinks to whatever God who has ignored him, Forgive me, for I no longer wish to be saved.)
**
PAST
“You disobey me,” Anton said quietly. “You slit your wrists; you run away. I have no choice but to start over; to erase your reality. To start from point one.”
“Stop,” Y/n screamed, “do you have enough of this? Do you have enough of —”
“I shall erase your memory,” Anton said, sounding pleased with himself. “Yes; that will be brilliant.”
“I will always run,” Y/n told him through his despairing tears, through the haze of pain and through the priest’s clutch on him. “I will run from you.”
Anton stared at Y/n, before he laughed. He laughed for a good minute; before he stared at Y/n like he had said something so painfully amusing.
“My darling,” Anton shook his head, “my dear. You will never stray from the divine path. You will find me. You will be helpless; you will knock on my door and you will beg for me.”
“No,” Y/n choked out, “I will not. I will kill myself before doing so.”
Anton looked fondly at Y/n. “You funny thing. I will bring you from the dead. You cannot run from me.”
The priest kissed Y/n for the last time; the (h/c)-haired male struggled viciously, but eventually slumped in the priest’s arms.
Anton smiled. Ah; yes, Y/n was his. Nothing could tear them apart; he was God; he commanded the will of the universe. He would wait. He would wait to purify him; to make him stronger; to make him holy…
To sanctify him.
**
please support me by reblogging, liking, and commenting
Where they fall in love with a solo rockstar. They go crazy… but, maybe they met someone to match their obsession? Or someone who doesn’t want to be involved at all. A rockstar hiding a secret, a rockstar at first glance but the leader of the most fear mafia.
Y/N L/N, the ace of spades
Y/N L/N
Boss of Innamorata
“Ugh… I’m trying to do my job.”
HUNTR/X
Rumi
Main dancer/Main Vocalist for HUNTR/X
“I fell in love at first sight… she’s just so… perfect…”
Mira
Choreographer/Main vocalist for HUNTR/X
“She’s mine, I don’t care who you are, you’re not getting in the way of my happy ending.”
Zoey
Rapper for HUNTR/X
“She loves me back right? She looked at me so she definitely does! I’ll make her see things the way I do!”
Saja Boys
Jinu
Main Vocalist for Saja Boys
“I don’t hear the voices when I’m with her… I need her.”
Abby
Main Dancer/Vocalist for Saja Boys
“I know she’s just acting like this for the cameras. She can’t resist me for long…”
Romance
Visual/Vocalist for Saja Boys
“Come on darling, I know you love me. Because I love you.”
Mystery
Lead Vocalist for Saja Boys
“She smiles like she sees me… for me…? I want her attention all to myself…”
Baby
Rapper for Saja Boys
“Jagiya! Pay attention to me… you can’t run from me…”
About the story
This is a Yandere story so it will mention darker themes like stalking, obsession, drvgging, stuff like that. There will be (probably) be no smut but if there is or anything like that there will be a warning.
If there is a topic that is really dark I will put a warning before the chapter and markers for when it starts and ends.
I imagined u to have similar music to Måneskin or Ado but you can choose what kind of music or you can make your own. I will be referring to Y/N as a rockstar. Y/N is kinda morally grey…
If anything is OOC or just is wrong lmk
I’ll update it when I feel like it so happy reading
Summary: it was too easy to run away ... maybe because Silas has a plan to get you to come back by yourself ....
Warnings: yandere, feelings of isolation, mention of murder, anesthesia, everything in the oneshot is a bit more on the darker side, so prepare for that
Word count: 4.3k
It had been too easy, you realise in retrospect. It had been harder before. If none of Silas’s men or security alarm had caught you, Otto would have—the 90 pound male Doberman—but this time, you almost walked out the front door with ease.
You lean your chin in your hand. Something's wrong. Terribly wrong.
You glance down at your hands, trembling as you remove the wedding ring from your finger and putting it in your pocket. The moon above you seems to stare right at you. The playground is empty, which probably is for the best. You haven't been able to breathe inside, but going outside is dangerous.
“Here, I got you a soda”, your friend says as she returns from the corner shop.
You take it in your hands, mumbling a “thank you”. Your friend sits down beside you on the bench, glancing at you from time to time.
“Are you thinking about him?”
You nod.
“It'll be okay”, your friend says. “Somehow.”
“He'll be furious”, you mumble. “He always gets mad. But … something is different. I shouldn't have been able to leave that easy.”
“Don't think too much about it. It'll only make things worse.”
You've been home for a few days and with every day that passes, you're scared it'll be your last with your family. It always feels like someone's watching … because there is.
“Boss”, SIC says into his phone. “They removed their wedding ring.”
He's hidden by shadows, standing too far away for you to see. But he sees. Oh, how he sees you.
“What?” Silas asks, anger growing in his throat.
“Should I go over there?” SIC asks.
“No. Don't. Come back.”
“Uh, are you sure? They might not be here long.”
“Then hurry. I have another idea.”
SIC gives you one last glance before stepping onto his motorcycle. Silas waits for him outside his house, Otto by his side.
“Shouldn't someone watch them?” SIC asks.
“I’m going to send them a message”, Silas says.
“A message? Won't that hurt them?”
Silas rolls his eyes and holds up a note. “Not one of the messages. I'll put this in Otto's collar and you'll take him with you and go back. Send Otto forward, stay hidden. Y/N will recognise him and then understand that I am watching. If they follow what's on the note, go get them. If they decide not to, simply walk over and get Otto, but don’t say a word to them.”
“What? Why?”
“I'm not going to chase them this time. I'm going to bring them to me by removing what they left me for … and I'll start with that friend of theirs sitting beside them. One by one, until Y/N comes crawling begging for forgiveness.”
SIC smirks. “Gotcha.”
You’ve barely touched your soda when you hear the sound of panting.
“Oh, where did that come from?” your friend asks.
You turn your eyes up and feel how every nerve in your body snaps, like cords being cut. You could recognise that dog among hundreds.
“What the fuck”, you breathe out and on instinct crawl higher on the bench. “No, no, no no—”
“What is it?” your friend asks.
Otto wags his tail, more than happy to see you after a few days of being apart. He barks happily. Your eyes scan the horizon with blurry vision, panicky searching for him. He has found you. He’s here to take you back.
“You know this dog?” your friend asks with furrowed brows. “He seems to know you…”
“It’s … uh, it’s his dog.”
Your voice trembles more than it should. Your breath hitches as you sit down normally again, hands shakingly reaching out to pet Otto. He’s ecstatic, licking your hands and barking as if you’ve been apart for months. You can’t see Silas anywhere and decide to turn your eyes onto Otto.
“If you’re here … someone else is too”, you whisper shakingly.
“Should we leave?” your friend asks.
“No use … Otto runs faster than we do.”
“Does he bite?”
“If he’s instructed to.”
You notice a paper locked onto his collar and pull it out, almost drop it when you try to open it. The handwriting is intensely familiar. To your surprise, there’s only one sentence.
“Put your wedding ring back on your finger.”
You hesitate. That son of a bitch. He basically releases you, psyches you for days ,making you absolutely paranoid, and then sends forward the only thing in that damn household you like with a demand? Who does he think he is?
You crumpled the paper and throw it. If he wants to get you, he’ll have to come get you himself. You’re not a doll for him to play around with. Not the butt of his joke. He must stand somewhere in the shadows and watch you with that grin on his face. It’s all a joke to him, isn’t it? That’s why he let you leave. He’s toying with you. But you won’t entertain him.
Someone comes walking out of the shadows of the other side of the playground. Your entire body tenses, eyes widening. You expect it to be him, but it’s SIC. You’re not sure if that’s better.
“Here, boy”, SIC says and pats his thigh.
Your heart stops. Eyes never leaving him. Otto turns and runs to SIC, getting into work mode. Your friend seems less scared than you. She doesn’t know who this is. Or what he does. Doesn’t know how close to death she is right now. You wonder what she’d say if she knew that she was face to face with the right hand man of the country’s most dangerous man.
You meet SIC’s dark eyes for a second, before they flicker to your friend, then back.
“If that’s how you want it”, he says calmly. “You had a choice and you declined it.”
Wait what?
He turns and walks, Otto following him.
You’re not sure why, but you fly up from the bench, hurrying after.
“What are you talking about?” Your words come out way too quick. “What is he going to do?”
SIC doesn’t seem to notice you. Or he doesn’t care. Otto doesn’t look at you either.
“SIC!” you say, louder than intended. Your voice trembles. “Stop doing this! I’m fucking scared, don’t do that! I don’t want to play your game, I just want to be left alone!”
SIC looks at you, still walking.
“How hard can it be to put on a little ring?” he asks, raising his eyebrows. “Hm? You’re selfish and you’re childish. You think Silas will come running after you again? You don’t think he has better things to do than to chase after you like a goddamn toddler every fifteen minutes?”
“Fine, I’ll put on the ring! I’ll wear it.”
“Cute, but I don’t ask twice. You’ve made your choice.” He stops and turns to you. “We both know it wasn’t actually about the ring, right? And if that’s the case … why didn’t you put it on? Why be so selfish and let other people take your punishment?”
“SIC … please …”
“It's not me you have to beg.”
With that said, he leaves. You watch him disappear into the shadows, hear his car's engine tone out.
You realise you haven’t breathed in over a minute. On heavy legs you drag yourself back to the bench. The soda is since long forgotten. Your breathing comes out hectic, rushed. Frantic.
“Y/N, breathe”, your friend reminds you, holding one of her hands over your chest. “Let’s go to the cops, let’s—”
“That won’t work … oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck—”
“Get up. We’re moving.”
The note lays scrambled on the ground. It was a test? “You had a choice and you declined it?” What the fuck did that mean? What have you declined? And what have you, in response, opened yourself up for?
Your head is spinning. SIC has seen tour friend. Actively turned his gaze to her. That split of a second was all he needed to memorise her.
“You have to leave.”
“Let’s go home, Y/N, you look unwell. It’s going to be okay.”
“No, I’m actually serious. You have to leave.”
Or is it better for her to stay where you can see her?
“Should I call someone?” your friend asks.
Who can you call? The cops? You want to laugh out loud. The second you call the cops, Silas men will know, because of course he has people working for him in the police force. Besides, your phone is back at Silas’s house and your friend's could easily be tracked.
“Let's go inside, at least”, your friend says. “It's getting chilly.”
“We're not going home.”
You're sure Silas already knows where you live, but it's the principle. Your friend takes you to the corner shop she got the sodas from. The bright fluorescent light hits your eyes. But the warmth from the heaters makes you relax slightly.
“I feel so selfish”, you say as you walk around the aisles with your hands in your pockets. “You have nothing to do with this, but he'll drag you into it …just because you're connected to me. Guilty by fucking association.”
“I'm not scared”, she answers softly.
You should be.
If only your friend knew who she had been standing eye to eye with. SIC is a machine, no remorse, no conscience. He could have killed her right then and there and not have cared that you were sitting half a meter away. He's not like Silas. Compared to him, Silas is almost humble. Almost.
“Silas has two dogs”, you mutter and pretend to look at a bag of chips. “Just that one of them happens to be a thirty-six year old narcissist. You met both tonight.”
“He gave me the creeps.”
“Silas insists that he's my brother-in-law, but I only see a dog following it’s owner.”
“Should we get rid of it? The ring?”
Your eyes dart to your friend, horrified at the mere suggestion.
“Are you insane?” you breathe out. “He already knows I've taken it off and that has put me in trouble. If I get rid of it, he'll kill me.”
“Would he?”
“Well, maybe not kill, but I don't want to figure out what he figures out. I tried to put it on, I begged SIC, but … he said it’s too late.” You bite your lip. “I think I've done something really bad. Every time I try to push back he finds a way to cage me in. Wouldn't surprise me if I become the third dog.”
“I think you need to rest, Y/N. Let's buy some snacks and go to my house and watch a movie, okay?”
You think of your parents back home. You should go to them, in case Silas shows up, but maybe he won't go there if you're not there.
You grab the bag of chips you pretended to look at and go to the counter. The woman behind smiles at you and scans the bag.
“That'll be three dollars”, she says.
You pick out your wallet and give her three one dollar cash. All taken from Silas's wallet. Your own bank card has been cut in two and if you get a new one he can track that too. Cash is the only safe way.
“Thank you”, the woman says.
“Have a good evening”, you mumble and grab the bag of chips.
“You too, Y/N.”
You freeze in place. Eyes widening. Suddenly the cashier's smile doesn't seem the least sweet anymore, even though it hasn't changed. You stumble backwards.
Run.
Your nails dig into your friend's arm and hurry out of the corner shop, heart hammering against your ribs.
“How did she know your name?” your friend asks.
“Fucking hell”, you hiss, running your free hand through your hand. “He's stationed them out! That woman works for him. He's put her there to keep track if I walk in! That asshole. She heard what I said about SIC!”
You hit your palm against your forehead, groaning.
“Jennifer messaged”, SIC says and walks into the office, phone in hand. “The one we put in the corner shop, you know? She messaged that Y/N and their friend walked in.”
“Well?” Silas asks and leans back. “What did they buy?”
“Chips.”
“Chips? Seriously?”
“She wrote that. Said that they're going home to the friend to watch a movie. Sour cream and onion, if you want to know the flavor. Kind of basic if you ask me but who am I to judge?”
Silas leans back in his chair. “So … Y/N both ignored my warning, crumpled the note, talked back and is now buying snacks to watch a movie? Seems to me like they're not the slightest worried. What a joke.”
“What do you want to do?”
Silas thinks for a moment, jaw burn. “They're going to their friend's house?”
“Yes, it seems like it.”
“So their own home is free?”
“I'd guess their parents are home.”
Silas stands up, pushing the chair back. “Let's pay them a visit. Grab Otto.”
You couldn't focus on the movie and ate chips on autopilot. Couldn’t even tell what the movie was about, but now that you’re lying on the mattress in your friend’s room, turned to the side, you feel how you wish you had watched the movie, forced yourself to enjoy it, just so that you could have kept your mind occupied, because now that everything is silent and dark … the thoughts come back. You sit up slowly, glancing towards your friend before picking out the ring from your pocket, admiring it in the moonlight. The engravement on the inside makes your stomach twist. In some way, you do like Silas. A part of you can’t deny that, but you know that staying with him means giving up all of your dreams and the life you’ve studied to get. If you stay with him, all your decisions becomes his. Your life, becomes his. You’re his accessory, his. When he’s not the mafia man that comes home bloody, he’s almost normal … and you’re terrified to let that part of him take you under.
I shouldn’t have been so naive to mess with Silas about the ring. Why was I so selfish to just … throw the note away? In front of SIC?
You know it was because of just needing to put a little stick in the wheel, just something to annoy him, to show that he can’t scare you into being his obedient little dog. A little rebellion to have something for yourself.
But you know how stupid that is.
You rest your head into your hands, groaning.
“Get out of my head”, you whisper pleadingly. “Please, please, please get out of my head.”
“We both know it wasn’t actually about the ring, right?” SIC had said when you had begged him to explain. “And if that’s the case … why didn’t you put it on? Why be so selfish and let other people take your punishment?”
You know how Silas functions by now. He’s like an explorer in a jungle, cutting down branches in the way to get to their target. He’s going to use people you love to get to you. But how? Is he going to search every house until he finds you and kill every time he won’t find you? Or kill when he finds you?
Suddenly the house doesn’t feel safe anymore. You’re just waiting for him to come and get you … and that’ll put your friend in danger. You sigh and get up from the mattress, grabbing your jacket. If he gets here and finds that you’re not here … maybe your friend will be safe? Or … maybe you’re not here to protect her …
He wants you, after all. If you’re not here, he might just move on to the next and leave them be.
You give your friend a small squeeze on her shoulder before slipping out of the dark house. Your mind contradicts itself again. How are you any more safe out there in the open darkness than in there behind locked doors? You stop in the middle of the road, the streetlights shining above you, lighting you up like spotlights at a trial. Should you go back?
You’ll risk her life. Her parents life.
Every step you take can be wrong and result in death. Tears fall down your cheeks as you run home. Your feet barely touch the ground. Every step hurts.
The house is quiet as you enter through the back door. You stop and frown, listen for sounds … or the lack of it.
“Mom?” you ask hesitantly. “Dad?”
Their lack of answering rips your heart out of your chest. He hadn’t started with your friend, of course not, he had started here … where your most cherished loved ones live. With your heart in your throat you run up the stairs to their bedroom. Two bodies are lying in bed, above the covers, without as much as a movement. You turn on the lights and see them lay there. Your eyes search for blood, for wounds, holes … but nothing. Instead, you see a note taped on the headboard. Before grabbing it, you feel for your mother’s pulse. Alive? With confusion mixed relief, you grab the paper.
“This is the second note I’m writing to you this evening. Don’t let it reach a third one. Since I love you more than I probably should at this moment, I will give you ONE last chance. Your parents are not dead—not yet, at least. Just some anesthesia … but it scared you, didn’t it? Made you think they were dead? How did that feel, Y/N? Was it worth it? Would your little adventure be worth losing both of you parents? This time, it was just a scare. Next time I WILL go through with it. And don’t think that by staying by your parents side will do any different. Your friends, your extended family, are all in my reach. You can’t protect everyone at the same time, can you? If you want all of this to stop, you know what you need to do — S.”
New sobs escape you. You crumple the paper and throw it to the side before shaking your mom and dad, pleading with them to wake up. When they don’t, you continue to sit at the bedside, filled with nothing. Emptiness had never felt so large, so filling, before.
“I knew something was up the second I left”, you say out into the room, almost as if you expect either mom or dad to answer. “I should have realised … but I’m pretty good at acting first and thinking later. I just wanted to get away, I never meant for anyone to get hurt … I just wanted to be free. We live one life … why should mine be wasted just because that man has decided that I should be his spouse? It’s not fair. It’s not fair that I have to be responsible for everyone around me. Their life shouldn’t have to be in danger because of me. I know I’m not technically responsible, that it’s Silas, but … somehow it feels like my fault. And I hate it …” Tears roll down your cheeks and you don’t try to stop them. “I hate that I have become dangerous and I hate that people can’t look at me without thinking of him. I just wanted to get away … go home … be the old me again … and I thought that if I remove his ring, I would be my old self again … stupid. It’s all so stupid!”
You rise from the bed, glaring towards the hallway, almost expecting to see someone standing there.
“If I don’t want anyone I love to die, I need to crawl back to him”, you hiss. “Be a good little doggy. I need to sacrifice my entire soul for everyone. The trolley problem, right? But fine. I’ll come crawling on my knees. I’ll do what it takes because I can’t let him hurt any of you. If the only power I have is to keep you safe … then I guess I’ll do it. My only resistance that I can’t be punished for.”
You tuck a blanket over your parents and quietly leave the house. You wrap your arms around your body and walk on heavy legs through the night once again. This time, you don’t stop at the end of the city. You keep on walking and walking and walking. It never ends.
Until you see his house. Black and modern, with lights in the windows. He’s still up. Waiting for you.
You’re not sure if you should knock or walk right in. You’re way too tired. Way too painful. Your hand trembles as you open the front door and stumble in. Head turning directly to your left, to the door to his office. Closed. Light shines beneath it. You walk over and knock, heart sinking down to your stomach.
“Yes?” Silas voice asks.
“I’m … I’m back”, you whisper.
You can hear his lips turn into a smile.
“Come in, little thing.”
You open the door, heavy eyes setting on him where he sits on the couch by the window. Not by his desk. He hasn’t been working. Only waiting. Expecting.
“Look at you”, he chuckles, leaning his head back against the wall, legs spread. “Quicker than I thought.”
You want to sit down. Your legs can’t hold you anymore. He can see the way your eyelids flutter in exhaustion and defeat and stands up, strolling over to you. His hand creeps up to your cheek, cupping it.
“Such a good little thing you are, aren’t you?” he mumbles. “You gathered all those brain cells in your head and came back.”
“Stop fucking saying that …”, you breathe out, shaking your head in exhaustion, anger flaring back into your bones. “Stop making it into a joke … it’s anything but …”
He caresses your cheek, voice becoming gentler. “I know. I know.”
He catches your tear with his finger before it reaches your skin.
“Now that we don't have to fight anymore, you should go to bed—”
“Fight?” you questioned. “Is that how you view this?”
“How else? You were mad at me and left and I got mad at you when you removed your ring. Show me your hand.”
You lift both hands. He touches the golden ring on your ring finger.
“Good”, he said. “That was all I wanted. If you’d have put on that ring, I wouldn’t have had to let you see that side of me … but you’re stubborn, aren’t you?”
“So I should just let you dictate my life as you please then?” you hiss without looking at him. “As long as I do what you say, I don’t have to worry you’re going to murder my loved ones?”
Silas’s black eyes hardened slightly.
“Do you even acknowledge how lucky you are being able to speak to me like that and still not get killed?” he asks.
“If you hurt any of them you knew I'd never forgive you. That's why you didn't. Because you wouldn't want to admit you did wrong, so you'd rather have it look like a kind gesture. It wasn't. None of it."
“Really? How about you stop staring into the wall and at least look at me when you're accusing me so I might believe you're actually serious.”
You look at him. He scans your face for a few seconds before scoffing. He takes a step closer, until he can reach down and whisper in your ear. You stand perfectly still.
“You pretend to hate me”, he whispers, breath fanning your ear. “But we both know that's not true.”
“I hate this. Whatever you're doing now.”
“That's fine with me, because you're not supposed to see this side. As long as you behave … you don't have to.”
Behave. The words make you scoff.
“Let’s get you to bed now”, Silas says. “We will talk more in the morning … and while you sleep, I’ll figure out appropriate consequences for this dumb act.”
Before you can protest, he bends down and lifts you over his shoulder. You don’t even bother fighting back. Why should you give him the delight of your struggle? You’ve already lost. You’re exhausted.
He might have won the battle, but you will win the war. Somehow.
Otto comes out of the dining room and barks happily at the sight of you. His tail wags and he hurries after you and Silas up the stairs to the second floor, jumps into the bed when you’re placed down. You lay still, staring to your side, refusing to acknowledge him. Silas removes your shoes, throwing them to the side and tucks you in, still in the same clothes you’ve been running around in.
“Rest”, he orders, his hand resting on your ankle for a moment. “You’re home now. Where you should be. No more running around or I will cuff you to the bed with Otto’s leash. You’re mine.”
The Doberman jumps up on the bed. Silas pets him once.
“Otto will make sure you’re still here when I come back. Now that I don’t have to wait for you anymore, I will get some actual work done. Sleep well, little thing, don’t ever do this shit again. I miss you too much, you know, and you’re not safe out there alone.”
He leans down and kisses your forehead before alkig over to the door.
"Oh, and next time you compare my best friend to a dog ...", Silas says, smirking slightly, "... maybe you want to make sure no one listens."
With that said, he chuckles and leaves the room. Otto lays down beside you and licks your face. You reach your hand to pet his fur. With a sigh, you rest your head back on the pillows, cursing quietly with your arms crossed over your chest. Next time you’ll succeed. Next time.
I'm not ready to let you forget me (part 5 - finale)
*edit credit goes to the lovely @defuckingthrone-dot-com
You told your friends you want me dead
And said that I did everythin' wrong
And you're not wrong
An anon request for lovers to enemies -> playlist, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5
Summary: It’s been two years since Noah cheated on you, abruptly ending your relationship. However, the universe seems to have a peculiar sense of humor in its plan to reunite you.
Pairing: Noah Sebastian x reader.
CW: None really. Mentions of cheating, Noah can be an overall asshole and a tad bit of angst.
WC: 1.8k
AN: This is the final part in this fic. I hope all of those who've read it have enjoyed and thank you to the anon for requesting this idea, I hope that it met any of your expectations. I had so much fun playing with this trope.
Dividers: Silent-stories.
Maybe it had all been a fluke. Perhaps the vulnerable side of Noah you had witnessed in his candidness had been a fleeting glimpse into something you would never encounter again.
As you retreat to the bar and adhere to your initial plan for the evening—wallowing in self-pity with a few cocktails—you find Noah seated there with his friends, his usual smug expression restored.
This time, it irks you more, especially when he briefly glances your way but chooses to ignore you. It shouldn't bother you as much as it does. You thought that you had somehow moved forward, yet it feels like you've taken several steps backward.
After ordering a drink, you seek a quiet corner, or as quiet as can be found in a bustling bar within a Vegas hotel, and settle down, sipping contentedly on your cocktail while your eyes slowly scan the room.
"Excuse me, is this seat taken?"
You briefly glance up to find Noah standing over you, but he doesn't wait for a response before sliding himself into the booth beside you.
"Can I help you?" You can't help but let your attitude slip through, as you felt slighted by earlier and him choosing to walk away.
"Retract those claws, kitten. I'm here to apologize." Somehow, you don't believe him, but you choose to relax slightly and offer him a genuine smile.
"Go ahead." You encourage him.
"You realize that you're the only woman who's ever made me get down on my knees and apologize, right?" You catch a faint smirk at the corner of his mouth, as if he's suppressing the enjoyment he derived from that.
"And I would do it again." You retort, maintaining a composed face and concealing any indication of your own thoughts behind it, by taking another sip of your drink.
"I don't doubt that." He scoffs, settling back against the seat, and you feel his arm brush against yours. "I genuinely mean it. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have walked away earlier. It was just… a lot to process."
"And you've never been good with big boy emotions?" You quip, closing your mouth around the straw in your glass after apologizing, allowing him to continue.
He chuckles, despite the brief glare he had given you prior. "I suppose you're right. I've never really been good at expressing my feelings. But I also didn't know about your trip and whatever the guys had planned."
Your head perks up, and your brow furrows slightly as you pull your drink away. "Yeah, what was all that about? You said you knew I was coming?"
"Listen, all I knew was we had a show in Vegas. Apparently, Jolly, Sloan, and Nick had been planning this trip ever since. I only found out you were coming the week before we left. Apparently, Sloan asked what flight we were on."
Suddenly, everything began to make sense; the last-minute trip, the separate seats, and the fact that you were conveniently sat next to each other.
If you were a betting person, you would bet that she had also arranged the hotel rooms, given that this entire trip had been paid for using her hotel points through her work. "That mother—"
You grumble before Noah cuts you off. "I can't say it was the best idea, but I can't deny that I'm not happy it happened."
"Why? You realize that all this has only made us fight more than ever before."
"Yeah, but you're kind of hot when you're all fired up like that." Noah smirks, and you feel his eyes rake over you in a way that makes you squirm.
You hadn't expected that response from him. He was naturally flirty and charming, but there was some level of sincerity to his words, like he wasn't just trying to woo you.
"I still hate you." You clarify, and there's that smirk, wider than before, as he leans in close to you.
His mouth against your ear, he whispers, "I hear that hate-fucking is the best kind of sex."
His breath, hot against your ear, sends a shiver down your spine, between his words and the unexpected closeness of him.
Before you can respond, Folio's voice calls for him, and Noah swiftly slips away, giving you a wink in return.
There he is again, the same old cocky guy you've always known. Despite the frustration, it's strangely comforting, knowing that beneath it all, he remains the same.
"I come in peace." Sloan says as she approaches you at the bar.
"Why are you acting like that?" You laugh and reach out for her hand, pulling her towards you.
"Because." she pouts. One glance into her eyes reveals the slight glassiness from a few too many drinks this evening. "Noah mentioned he told you about the whole plan. I thought you would be mad."
You shake your head and sigh. "I'm not mad."
"Just disappointed?" Her pout deepens, and you can't help but laugh.
"No! I mean, a bit, but I should've expected it from you. Meddling in my life is your second favorite pastime, after breaking boys' hearts."
"I do really well at the first one, don't I?" Losing her pout, Sloan stands up straight, as if proud of her accomplishment in your eyes and flips her hair over her shoulder. "But I don't want to break this one." She confesses, shuffling closer to you before her head turns, and you follow her gaze towards Jolly and the rest of the guys.
"Then don't. Let yourself actually be happy with a guy for a change." You gently nudge your hip against her, and she looks back to you, nodding in agreement.
"And you should let yourself get a guy."
"Like who? Noah?"
She instantly shakes her head and scoffs, dismissing the idea with a wave of her hand. "No. But I did see that cute waiter from the other night over there." She points to another table where a group of guys are sitting together. To your surprise, she's right. The waiter from the other night is sitting on the edge of the couch, talking to his friends.
With a nod and a quick pep talk from Sloan, you head over to his table, holding your head high as you try to think of anything flirty enough to catch his attention.
"Fancy seeing you here." you purr down at him. The guys' eyes shoot up to you, and surprise quickly turns to delight.
"What a nice surprise." he flashes you a smile and shuffles over, patting down for you to join him and his friends.
"Stare any harder, and you might just set him on fire." Jolly quips, passing Noah and patting him on the back with a chuckle.
Noah's eyes have been fixed on you ever since you approached the waiter from the other night and sat down. "What on earth is she doing talking to him?" he struggles to hide his annoyance at the thought of you entertaining someone else.
He doesn't notice the look shared between his friends, who are all watching him. Instead, he remains fixed on you with a heavily possessive stare.
Noah's jaw clenches with every giggle, every arm touch, and every movement that brings you closer to the guy you're with. He quickly looks away whenever he catches your head turning in his direction, afraid that you might see him staring.
"What are you going to do? Stop her from leaving with him?" Nick asks.
"If I have to." Noah replies.
At that moment, he notices you moving from the seat, your hand still holding onto the waiter from the other night, and watches you move through the crowd of people.
He tries to follow after you, but he doesn't know what he'll do if he catches up. Will he tell you not to go with him? Will he ask you to leave him with him instead?
He has no real plan of action, except for a determination to rush over and stop the lift after he sees you both stepping inside.
The doors close just a second too soon as he finally reaches it. "Fuck!" he grumbles under his breath and looks towards the doors leading to the stairs. Quickly, he runs over to them, pushing through the door and taking two steps at a time, determined to catch up with you.
David, as you learn the waiter's name to be, is a pleasant guy. Despite the fun and flirty nature of your conversation, Noah's words remain heavily on your mind.
Between his apology and his comment about hate-fucking being the best type of sex, your eyes constantly wander to the bar until you spot him.
Convinced you've caught him staring, you can't resist the urge to tease him and decidedly invite David to join you for a nightcap in your room, slipping away with him.
It only takes a quick glance back at Noah's direction to see him already making his way through the crowd towards you.
You've got him right where you want him.
As you reach the lifts, you pull David inside, pressing the button for your floor. When you catch Noah heading in your direction, your hands move to the front of David's shirt, grasping him tightly and pulling him closer as the doors close.
Once alone with him, you push him back and reach for the buttons, pressing for the next floor. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have invited you up. I was just trying to make someone jealous." You confess, feeling a pang of guilt as you meet his gaze.
"Is it the guy from the other night by any chance?" He asks, and you remain silent, making him chuckle as he steps out of the lift on the next floor.
"I think you don't have to worry about trying to make him jealous. I think he's already there." You catch the way his eyes move across the hall, and you peek out of the lift to see Noah standing at the door to the stairwell.
As David passes Noah and enters the stairwell, you watch him approach you, and step back into the lift, him following, a slight smirk playing on his lips. "So, you were trying to make me jealous?"
"I never said that."
"You didn't have to."
He backs you into the corner of the lift, and your back presses against the cool, mirrored wall as you gaze up at him. "I hate you." You growl, Noah taking a step closer and closing the gap between you.
"I know, you've said." he says with a smug grin, trapping you between his body and the lift wall. His arm stretches out, and his hand rests just above you.
For a fleeting moment, your eyes meet, and you catch a glimpse of the heat in his own eyes. They unmistakably flicker down to your mouth.
"Kiss me then." you can't help but smirk as you watch him lean in towards you.
Your lips meet in a passionate exchange as the lift doors finally close, sealing you together on the ride back up to your shared floor.
If you truly hate him as much as you claim to, then why do you find yourself waking up in his bed the next morning?
*edit credit goes to the lovely @defuckingthrone-dot-com
You told your friends you want me dead
And said that I did everythin' wrong
And you're not wrong
An anon request for lovers to enemies -> playlist, part 1, part 2 , part 3, part 4, part 5
Summary: It’s been two years since Noah cheated on you, abruptly ending your relationship. However, the universe seems to have a peculiar sense of humor in its plan to reunite you.
Pairing: Noah Sebastian x reader.
CW: Mentions of cheating, Noah can be an overall asshole and a tad bit of angst. Unwanted touching/groping/kissing, implied further S/A (male victim) via intoxication and mentions use of GHB. Please remember to take care of yourselves and be safe.
WC: 3.9k.
Dividers: Silent-stories.
The next day is your final full day here. By Monday morning, your trip would end, and you’d return to your usual mundane life. Instead of embracing the time you had left, you spent it sulking, wallowing in self-pity over the sting of betrayal you felt from Noah and the rest, but especially Sloan.
You never imagined your best friend would pull you back towards the guy she knew had shattered your heart.
When she tried to talk to you through your hotel room door that morning, you ignored her and hid until later that afternoon, after finishing off the bottles in your hotel room minibar.
As you exit your room, you catch Folio standing at the door to his room beside yours. You consider not disturbing him and trying to slip past, but you have no reason to be upset with him. Besides, his boyish grin always made you have a softer spot for him.
You clear your throat before speaking. “How did the show go?” Their festival performance was today, and while you knew Sloan would be there, probably stageside with how close she and Jolly had gotten over the weekend, you decided to ignore her invitation: “When you’re ready to stop being mad at everyone, you can join me at the festival.”
You weren’t mad at everyone; just Sloan, Noah, Jolly, and maybe even Nicholas with his recent behavior and invitations to both of you. Folio, as well as Matt, was probably the only one you hadn’t yet found a reason to be mad at.
“Crushed it, obviously,” he says with such pride that it makes you laugh. “Can’t do a show without crushing.” His response shouldn’t surprise you; he always took pride in his performances and his ability to improve with each one. “We were planning to go to one of the escape rooms later. You should join us.”
“Oh, I don’t—“
“Come on. It’s your last night here, right? You really want to spend it wallowing in your room?”
“Well I planned to do it down at the bar, actually.” You laugh. “Besides, I really don't think it's a good idea seeing Noah right now. I imagine him and his ex performing today made them pretty cosy, especially after the other night.” You roll your eyes at the thought and do your best trying not to appear irritated by it. You fail.
“About that…” There’s a near guilty expression on Folio’s face which causes your eyebrows to narrow.
“Yes?”
“It's not what you think. She wasn't… that wasn’t... Noah was with me the whole night.”
You scoff and shake your head. “You don't have to defend him Folio, he’s a big boy.” It almost doesn't surprise you that Noah would rope one of his friends into lying for him, into defending him when he was in the wrong.
“I’m not! We were together the whole night. The banging and the moaning you heard, that was us. He said it would be funny and I stupidly agreed.”
“Oh…” The tension in your body fades as the irritation you felt before now slowly dissipates with nowhere for it to be aimed. You'd have gladly held it over Noah for the rest of time, but if it hadn't been true, how can you?
“Like I say, I really think you should consider joining us today. It’ll be fun.”
It's the last thing he leaves you with before slipping into his own hotel room and you actually find yourself considering it.
You caved, and as soon as you enter the escape room, Sloan greets you with a usual sarcastic remark, breaking the pout you had been wearing and forming a smile.
You couldn’t stay mad at her, and you hoped none of this was intentional. However, you knew you needed to talk to her sooner rather than later to prevent yourself from overthinking it.
“Ladies first,” Jolly says, gesturing towards the open door of the escape room.
Stepping inside, you find it to be a replica of a music studio, fitting for a band that had just finished a show.
Turning back towards the door, instead of seeing Sloan or anyone else enter, Noah follows and you catch Sloan’s apologetic expression as she mouths an ‘I’m sorry’ to you.
At that moment, the door closes, and your eyes widen in realization.
Crossing over to the door, you try to open it despite hearing the distinct click of the latch locking into place. “Sloan, this isn’t funny,” you call through the door, but her muffled response only adds to your frustration.
“You both really need to talk.”
You shoot a glance at Noah, your eyes narrowing. “Was this your idea?”
He chuckles and holds up his hands. “Don’t blame me. I had no idea they were going to do this. I didn’t even think you’d want to come after last night.”
“I didn’t,” you grumble, almost angry with Folio for tricking you into coming.
While Noah sits in a nearby chair, you start searching the room for clues or any way to escape.
Your brief search yields to nothing, and you grow more frustrated with Noah for not helping you. “Are you really just going to sit there and not help?”
“Why should I? I thought you worked better alone anyway,” he retorts.
You scoff. He really chose his moments to be difficult. Trying to ignore him, you resume your search, but come to a halt as the familiar chords of ‘Just Pretend’ start playing. Out of all the props in the room, he had to pick up the guitar and see if it could work.
It makes you roll your eyes to hear that song. Even though you've been avoiding the band for the past two years, you've heard it thanks to TikTok and the millions of girls who’ve been obsessed with calling it ‘the perfect love song’. It’s far from a love song, and you don’t delude yourself into thinking it could be about you. But right now, as you hear the change in lyrics, you can’t help but wonder if it could be.
Stepping towards where he’s sitting, you lower yourself slowly onto the edge of the near by chair and listen. He’s completely engrossed in the song, but his voice sounds a lot more broken and raw than it ever does when he sings it live.
Sloan had said that you both needed to talk, and maybe she’s right.
When the song ends, you take a moment to gather your thoughts before breaking the silence. “Folio told me that what happened the other night is ‘not what I think.’” You pause, your gaze settling on Noah, who avoids meeting yours. “He said you were with him all night and that she wasn’t there.”
“Yeah, well, Folio needs to mind his own business.”
“He’s only looking out for you,” you say, feeling the need to defend him. You know it was coming from a place of care for both you and Noah. “Why did you act like you were with her?”
Noah shrugs. “Thought it would be funny.”
“No, I don’t buy it,” you say.
Sighing, he finally resigns himself, if only slightly. “I thought it would make you talk to me. Even if it meant you were angry, you’d at least stop ignoring me.”
“And you couldn’t think of a better way to do that?”
“What can I say, I’m an asshole,” he admits, his voice devoid of gloating. He sounds defeated, as if he’s accepted being tarnished with that label.
“You weren’t always like that,” you say, your voice softer. Your fingers twitch, itching to reach for him but hesitant to offer him any form of comfort beyond your words. “And you didn’t have to become an asshole to get me to talk to you.”
“Really?” His gaze finally meets yours. “Because you ignored me every chance you had.” He slides forward towards the end of his seat, pushing down and onto the floor, coming onto his knees in front of you, reaching for your hand.
Every other time he tried to reach for you during this trip, you pulled away, refusing to give him even a chance to get close. But this time, you let him take your hand in his own.
“Call me an asshole all you want. Tell me you hate me. Tell me you never want to see my face again. Just never stop telling me those things. I hated these last two years without you, and I can’t go back to not hearing your voice ever again.”
This time, he’s down on his knees in front of you, and it’s not because of any request or attempt to humiliate him. There’s a genuine apology written across his face, and you hear it in his voice—the way he grows soft, almost desperate to not let you go again.
As much as you want to forgive him, to let him back in, even at a distance, you can’t shake the memories of what happened. Between him ghosting you, the pictures and videos of him and his ex, and the sound of her voice in his room the other night, it pains you to even consider letting any of that go unaddressed. But the thought of asking about it makes your throat tighten.
“What happened?” You finally choke out and his head, which he had lowered to rest against your lap, finally raises and he looks up at you. “With… her. What happened? You went on tour with her and then you ghosted me.”
You sound more emotional than you mean to and you force a laugh trying to push the urge to cry back down because you’ll be damned if you sit here crying to your ex, over him, in some stupid escape room.
Noah doesn’t answer, instead he pulls himself back away from you, his head lowered, chin tucked against his chest as he slides back onto the chair, avoiding looking at you.
“God, if you cheated on me could you atleast have the balls to admit it.”
“I don’t know.” He mumbles.
“That’s such a poor excuse.”
“I don’t know.” He says it more firmly and finally lifts his head to look across at you. “We were all out. I had something to drink and the next thing I remember I was waking up in her bed.”
You can’t help the scoff you let out, shaking your head because it feels like he's using every cliche and excuse right now. “So you got drunk and hooked up with your ex? Then felt too ashamed to even tell me so you ghosted me?” Your voice slowly rises a few octaves, despite you not meaning for it to. You’re angry and upset and you can’t hold it back.
“It wasn’t like that.” He starts and you continue shaking your head, pushing up out of the chair as you begin to pace the small room, looking back over at Noah.
“Then what’s it like, Noah, huh? Because right now it sounds like you’re just a coward who cheated and couldn’t own up to it.”
“I don’t know, okay? I don’t remember what happened. I don’t know how I ended up there with her, but I did.” His voice sounds strained, like he’s trying to hold himself back from becoming too upset and you see the shimmer of wetness in his eyes.
“Noah?” You move back over to the chair you were sitting in and lower yourself onto the edge reaching for him.
The moment you do, he’s quick to use the front of his shirt to wipe away the tears which start rolling down his cheeks.
“You really don’t remember?” You ask, your voice soft as you tentatively reach out to him, laying your hand over his and he silently shakes his head in response.
“She sent me a video.” His voice breaks a little and he clears his throat. “I can guess from there what happened. She threatened to send it to you if I didn't break up with you and get back together with her.”
“And that’s why you ghosted me?”
“That and I was ashamed.” He forces a laugh and it makes your heart break, witnessing this side of him, the side which was often reserved away from everyone, including you.
“Noah did she…” You trail off as he shakes his head in response to your words before shrugging.
“I don’t…”
You nod and take his hand in your own, raising it towards your mouth as your turn and press a gentle kiss against his palm. You don’t need to press him anymore, you understand.
Whatever happened inside the room must've satisfied Sloan enough to have the door unlocked, because you hear the click a few moments later before seeing it open and your best friend walk in as if she was your savior.
In some ways, maybe she is.
Back at the hotel, Noah retreats to his room, and you can see the dark circles forming around his eyes. After today’s physically and emotionally taxing events, including the escape room, you didn’t object to him needing some alone time.
While everyone else disperses, Nicholas surprises you with a knock on your door.
“There’s something you need to see,” he says.
You invite him in and watch as he pulls out his phone and steps towards you. He scrolls and taps on the screen until he’s satisfied with what he finds.
“What’s this?” you ask, taking the phone and looking down to see a video open and paused on the screen.
“What really happened,” Nicholas says. “Noah hasn’t seen the full video. Matt managed to get the full thing after talking to a few guys who were there that night.”
Moving across the room towards the bed, you settle on the edge as you take a breath and press play.
You hear the same giggle, the same high-pitched, dragging-out “Nowah” that makes your skin crawl. You really don’t want to watch this, especially when she comes into view. It makes your stomach turn and bile rise up your throat. Why do you want to watch your boyfriend making out with another girl, especially the ex he ghosted you for?
Except that isn’t what starts playing out on the screen in front of you. Noah, who looks barely conscious, is being grabbed and groped by the same girl. Her chest is pressed to his face as she giggles, acting like he’s the one behind the actions when he’s merely a puppet for her amusement.
You want to look away, to turn it off. In your mind, you’ve seen enough, but you can’t stop. The phone trembles in your hands as you watch the rest of the video.
Her fingers rake through his hair, tugging up his heavy head and cooing something almost unintelligible against his lips. Noah speaks enough for you to catch a faint word—your name. It leaves his lips and tightens your chest. Did he think it was you? Did he want it to be? Was he calling out for you? Regardless, your name is quickly dismissed by his ex, who says, “She’s not here right now, baby, but don’t worry, I’ll help you forget all about her.” The moment her lips meet his in a forced kiss, you push the phone back, shaking your head.
“I-I can’t, I’ve seen enough.” You can piece together the same puzzle that Noah did.
In his mind, he believed he had cheated, but the reality was he had been gaslit, shown only the edited version of the video where his ex was all over him and then kissing him. Waking up beside her the next morning made him reach an easy conclusion.
You want to vomit; the thought of everything that happened makes your stomach churn, and it hurts your chest not only for what you saw but also for Noah. The thought of him being burdened by this, holding onto something he thought he needed to be ashamed of and how you treated him, suddenly makes you feel guilty. You shouldn’t have been so hasty to block him, to try to cut him out of your life. What if every spam account he watched you from was his way of trying to reach out? What if he had been trying, but you just pushed him away, driving him further back every time?
“I can see why you haven’t shown him. How long have you had this?” When you look at Nicholas, you can see the struggle in his eyes at trying to keep this from his best friend.
“A few months,” he confesses, twisting his mouth. It’s as if you can see the guilt gnawing at him. “I don’t know if showing him would make things worse.”
“Definitely worse.” You whisper. You knew beneath the hardened cocky exterior was a softer heart, one Noah tried to protect and failing to do so always opened up a possibility for him diving off the deep end.
“Have you spoken to her?” When the question leaves your lips you shake your head, dismissing it yourself. “Sorry, that was dumb, of course you wouldn't.”
“We’ve tried. She refuses to get back to any of us, even her team have now told us to ‘stop harassing her’.” He rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “She's here you know, at the hotel.”
At those words it's like you see red and suddenly every ounce of logic you have dissipates and you’re carrying yourself from your hotel room and downstairs, walking throughout the hotel as if you'll miraculously bump into his ex in the hallway or casino.
On your way, you pick up the addition of Folio and Matt, followed by Sloan and Jolly. Sloan tries to reason with you, but Folio urges you on, as if you’ll start a fight with her.
“What are you going to say to her?” Sloan asks, trying to pull you out of your rage filled trance.
“Nice to meet you. I’m the girl whose life you ruined, just like Noah’s.” You make a vague gesture, causing Jolly to chuckle. You hear a thump from his direction, indicating that Sloan hit him in response.
“You really can’t think confronting her here is a good idea.”
“Why not? She keeps hiding behind her team and everyone else. Better to catch her when she least expects it.”
“I thought you didn’t care about him.” Sloan’s voice is softer this time, and it stops you in your tracks.
You had said that, tried to act nonchalant about him, but now you’re ready to dive headfirst into his battle for what? Because you still cared?
You didn’t have time to debate Sloan’s question, and that all slips away when you catch a familiar face.
Noah’s ex.
She’s surrounded by a small crowd of people you can only assume are part of her crew. You quickly pull away from your group and head towards her, calling out to her.
You don’t know what you expected when you come face to face with her, that somehow you’ll spew everything you’ve been thinking about and holding in since he ghosted you for her, but now you’re left silent as you stand before her.
She’s beautiful, and you were never blind to that or envious of it, but now you see that there’s a distinct sneer at the corner of her lips, as if she’s looking down on you rather than at you.
Just as one of her crew approaches to gesture you to move away, you sidestep them and come towards her.
“I know what you did.”
She lets out a laugh, looking around as if appalled by such an odd accusation from a stranger. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Noah,” your eyes meet hers, and you notice the dimming of her gaze. The cocky facade she maintains slightly falters. “I know what you did.”
As she prepares to respond, her eyes divert behind you, and you hear your name being called.
Following her gaze, they fall on Noah, who is coaxing you away. His face remains as sunken as before. Since his confession, he has lost all of his composure, and you can’t help but wonder if it’s due to the exhaustion of holding onto it or if he has finally stopped pretending to be someone he’s not around you.
“No, she needs to acknowledge what she did.” You insist, turning back to face her.
“What I did was merely have some fun.” She rolls her eyes and crosses her arms over her chest.
“That’s what you call fun?!” You feel a hand on your shoulder as Nicholas steps up to you, attempting to calm you down as your voice rises.
“A few drops of GHB to relax him. He was so tense that night.” She glances past you in Noah’s direction, a smirk tugging at the corners of her lips. “He passed out before any real fun could occur, though.” Her mouth curls into a pout, and you feel an instant urge to lunge at her, but Nick’s hand restrains you.
“So, what you’re implying is that nothing happened?” You raise an eyebrow.
“Apart from the video your little friends apparently got ahold of, no.”
“So, you put him in your bed to make him believe he cheated? Why? Because did wanted him back?”
“I didn’t make him believe anything; he came to that conclusion on his own. It sounds like a guilty conscience to me.”
Your hand twitches, and you feel Nick move down and grasp at your wrist, as if silently preventing you from lashing out at her.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She attempts to move forward and pass you, and Nick pulls you back, out of the way, as you turn to look over at Noah.
This moment should be filled with joy as you both reunite, victorious over the evil that once plagued you. Yet, instead of embracing each other, you find yourself standing there, staring at Noah, an apologetic look etched on your face.
You had known she was manipulative, but you never imagined she would resort to such extreme measures, framing Noah for cheating while making him believe the worst had happened to him.
The way Noah looked at you was a mix of shame and disappointment. You had never lashed out at anyone the way you had her, never had to be restrained and pulled away from a potential fight. You didn’t even think you had the skills to fight beyond the occasional hair-pulling and slapping. But you had been ready then. It was all thanks to Nicholas’s presence, which prevented you from confronting her in the hotel’s public space.
Imagine how that would've looked. Another story for her to spin in her favor.
“I’m sorry,” you murmur, unable to lift your gaze from the floor. Shame washes over you, not just for your actions but also for not being able to bear the disappointment in Noah's eyes for much longer.
You had always prided yourself on being level-headed, but around Noah, everything changed. Whether it was his behavior or your own emotions getting the better of you, the intensity of your feelings for him surpassed anything you had ever experienced with anyone else.
“Noah, please,” you take a step towards him, reaching out to him. But instead of embracing you, he turns away, it's his turn to walk away now, and shaking his head, he retreats from you, leaving.
When you look over to your best friend, Sloan, she offers you a comforting expression before moving in. Your lips tremble as you whisper, “I didn’t mean for this to happen.” She gently shushes you, pulling you into her arms. It feels so familiar now, after her months of comforting you. She doesn’t even hold the cruelty of your words from the previous night against you.
You don’t deserve her, and maybe on some level, you don’t deserve Noah either.
*edit credit goes to the lovely @defuckingthrone-dot-com
You told your friends you want me dead
And said that I did everythin' wrong
And you're not wrong
An anon request for lovers to enemies -> playlist, part 1, part 2 , part 3, part 4, part 5
Summary: It’s been two years since Noah cheated on you, abruptly ending your relationship. However, the universe seems to have a peculiar sense of humor in its plan to reunite you.
Pairing: Noah Sebastian x reader.
CW: none really. Mentions of cheating, Noah can be an overall asshole and a tad bit of angst. Brief joke from Noah about suicide. Please take care of yourselves.
WC: 3.6k
Dividers: Silent-stories.
Upon returning to the hotel, you presume that your time together has come to an end, allowing you to finally bid farewell to Noah and the rest of the Omens. However, Sloan's unexpected bomb shatters your hope.
"You agreed to what?"
"Dinner and karaoke. I genuinely didn't think you'd mind. You've always been a karaoke fan, and what's wrong with a free dinner?"
"The issue is that he'll be there. What part of this being a girls' weekend are you missing?"
"What part of this being a chance to humiliate your ex are you missing? I'm simply setting up the opportunity for you."
Sloan understood how you felt after Noah had ghosted you. Between the heartbreak and depression, there was also the sting of humiliation. You always wished you had the chance to make him feel the same way he made you feel.
"Alright, but I won't pretend to enjoy it."
"I wouldn't expect you to."
When you bump into the guys again, you find Noah approaching with a grin stretching across his face, looking like a cat who got the cream. You can't help but feel a surge of anger and desire to slap his smug face.
"I won you a prize." he exclaims, holding out his hand to show off a packaged mood ring he won from one of the kids' arcade machines in the hotel. Despite your desire to ignore him, you can't prevent your attention drawing to him when he steps in front of you, blocking your way.
"Wow, thanks." you reply, your voice dripping with sarcasm.
Before you can stop him, he reaches out and grabs your left hand with his larger, tattooed hand. Using his other, he brings the packet of the mood ring to his mouth and rips it open with his teeth. With the ring free, he slides it onto your wedding ring finger, and your mind goes blank for a moment.
The color of the ring quickly changes from a vibrant rainbow of colors blending into one another to a solid black.
"It's black." he comments, and you finally snap back to reality.
Your gaze rises to meet his, and you flash him a harsh glare. "Like your heart." you retort.
Slipping the ring off, you move it onto your middle finger before flipping him off and taking a step back as Sloan calls over to you.
At dinner, you were seated next to Noah, who spent a majority of the evening occasionally fidgeted with his own ring. You swear you noticed him switching it to his left hand whenever your waiter made a flirtatious remark aimed at you.
And now, you've reached the karaoke room, where you should've anticipated Sloan's performance of Lana Del Ray's 'Young and Beautiful'. It's her signature song, so much so that she has you recording most of it for her Instagram story.
As you go to post it, Noah shuffles closer to you, peering over your shoulder. Despite your best efforts throughout the night to make it clear that you're not interested in engaging with him, he still seems to act oblivious.
"A new post for your story?" he asks over your shoulder, and you don't look up from the phone screen, rolling your eyes.
"Depends. Are you still stalking them?"
In the months following Noah ghosting you, you tried to resume your usual life, including posting on social media. You then began noticing random spam accounts appearing in your viewers' list, despite deleting and blocking the band account and his spam accounts that you were aware of.
One night, after sharing this revelation with Sloan, she made a conscious effort to post something obvious and pointed to him for you. Initially, you felt mortified, but then you recognized the familiar spam account name—the one that had been consistently watching your stories since you blocked Noah everywhere. From that moment on, you no longer felt guilty about making every pointed post possible, always including a song that reflected your current emotions.
However, that all changed when you decided to message the account that had been non-stop watching you for nearly five months after your 'breakup', sending them a simple message: "Please stop. I don't want you in my life anymore."
The next day, the account was deleted.
You would have considered it a success until one of his close friends' names started appearing in your story viewers. You could have easily posted things to a closed list or even privatized your account, but you decided that if he had been that desperate to stalk you, then he could and you would put on a great show of proving that you had moved on, regardless of how true that actually was.
"You knew about that, did you?" He doesn't even bother to deny it, which causes a surge of irritation because no one would be okay with their ex stalking their online life.
When it's time for the guys to choose their song again, Noah steps up to select one. He's opted to sit out due to their performance tomorrow, claiming he needs to 'protect his voice' beforehand.
You roll your eyes at his excuse, but you're quickly silenced by his song choices. Each one becomes more pointed than the last, revealing the underlying narrative of his pathetic attempt at an apology.
After the first song, "Gives You Hell" by the All American Rejects, you stare off at him, daggers in your eyes. He shrugs off his choice with a cocky grin.
The second song he chooses, "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More 'Touch Me'" by Fall Out Boy, feels even more appropriate and fuck boy like from him.
Noah's face lights up with pride in his song choice, which only irritates you more. Your jaw clenches as you bite back, wanting to confront him for his obviousness.
Naturally, his friends are oblivious or indifferent to the situation. They've always seemed friendly enough and liked you when you were together, but they never got involved in your relationship drama back then. Perhaps they feel the same way now. It's better to remain blissfully ignorant than to become caught in the middle.
"You're not having any fun." Sloan whines, plopping down next to you and offering you a sip from her half-empty glass. You had already finished yours, during your annoyance with Matt and Folio's rendition of "Gives You Hell." Surprisingly, Nicholas' rendition of a Fall Out Boy song fails to improve your overall mood.
"Watching you eye fuck Jolly while singing 'Young and Beautiful' is hardly my idea of fun." You sigh, your voice devoid of any hint of bite. You genuinely enjoy listening to Sloan sing the same song repeatedly. It's her go-to choice, especially when she's caught the eye of a guy. Strangely, when she performs Lana songs, they seem to captivate her men even more.
"Well, since you're up next, you need to cheer up, and I've already chosen a song for you." She beams, and you raise an eyebrow in skepticism.
"Sloan, what on earth did you do?"
"Oh, you'll see."
When it's your turn, you step onto the designated 'stage area' of the room, taking the microphone and scanning the screen. Within seconds, the chords to Carrie Underwood's 'Before He Cheats' begin to play, and you let out a scoff. You glance over at Sloan, who has now positioned herself between Nicholas and Jolly, and shoots you a wink.
It was one of your go-to songs when you were cruising through bars back in college. The lyrics always resonated with you then, and they continue to do so now. As the song begins, you launch into your own performance, tipsy enough to feel bold and lock eyes with Noah.
Every Instagram story you've posted over the past two years has featured a song dedicated to him, but now you finally get to sing one to his face—a perfect one that calls him out on the behavior you'd been suspicious of.
The cocky signature grin he's been sporting for his past few song choices fades, and you feel a slight surge of pride for being able to do that—for making him lose that ego he's been so proudly displaying.
As the song concludes, you take your bow, giggling as you hand the microphone off to Jolly, who swiftly transitions into his own rendition of Poison's 'Talk Dirty To Me'.
"I'm heading to the bar for another drink. Anyone want one?" You ask, taking orders for everyone except Noah, who simply holds up his bottle of water.
Approaching the bar, you're greeted by the same waiter who had been trying to flirt with you earlier that evening. "What a pleasant surprise." he remarks, and your cheeks flush slightly.
"Well, perhaps I was hoping to cross paths with you again." you reply, even though you weren't entirely interested in him. However, you couldn't resist entertaining a bit of harmless flirting, especially after dealing with Noah this weekend.
"I'll be off in a few minutes. Maybe I can buy your next drink?" he offers, sliding the suggestion your way as he wipes down the bar.
A small smirk tugs at the corners of your lips. "Okay, then." you nod before relaying the drink orders for Sloan and the guys.
Leaning against the bar, you find yourselves engaged in a playful back-and-forth flirtation, even genuinely giggling at some of his remarks. However, the moment is interrupted by an abrupt silence when you hear Noah's voice behind you.
"I was wondering about where you got to." His hand slides across the bar, his fingers barely brushing against your arm on purpose as he reaches for the drinks laid out in front of you. "I thought I'd lend a hand."
"I was happy to assist." The waiter interjects, but you remain silent, your jaw clenched, and you swear your eye twitches at the brief contact Noah makes with you a second time, as if deliberately trying to ward off the guy who had been flirting with you throughout the night.
"No need, friend." Noah responds, and you wait for the poor guy to step away with a slight dejected expression before turning to Noah with a hiss.
"What on earth was that?"
"I should be asking you that. Are you actually entertaining this random guy?"
"Random guy? I don't know, he must be better than the guys I already know." You huff, moving yourself away from him as you take Sloan and your drink, leaving the remaining ones for Noah to carry.
"What does that mean?" He calls after you, and you briefly turn your head, shooting your retort over your shoulder.
"You're smart. Figure it out yourself."
When you return to the karaoke room, you find a corner to settle into, sipping your cocktail mix while watching the last few songs of the evening unfold. Time seems to fly by, yet you can't shake the feeling of Noah's eyes on you, a notion you stubbornly refuse to acknowledge.
Back at the hotel, Sloan is already entwining your arm and guiding you towards the bar, insistently, pouting her lips and fluttering her lashes as if she can manipulate you into folding as easy as she does any man.
"No more. I'm ready for bed." You attempt to pull yourself away, but Jolly swiftly intervenes, taking a tipsy Sloan into his embrace, promising to take her for one final drink.
As you turn away, you overhear the final words of a conversation between Nicholas and Noah, your name being mentioned, drawing your attention. "You can't keep lying to her, you know?"
Lying? What could he possibly be lying about now?
Instantly, you find yourself yearning for some fresh air, feeling a surge of anger as you impulsively charge towards them, deliberately pushing between them.
"Woah, what the—" Noah's voice catches your attention, but he quickly loses his annoyance when he realizes it's you pushing past him. He calls out to you, but you ignore his attempts, determined to create as much distance between you and him as possible.
You had a reason for choosing to hide away on the rooftop balcony pool. Besides the quieter ambiance, you enjoyed toeing the line of where the diving section of the balcony opened up to the pool below.
It was Vegas, so it wasn't entirely quiet. Amidst the bustling crowds below and the soothing hum of music emanating from the hotel, there was no opportunity for deep contemplation. Yet, you almost didn't mind the constant stimulation. If you allowed yourself to dwell on Nicholas' words, you risked losing control and spiraling back to the emotional turmoil you had endured after Noah abruptly ghosted you.
From the corner of your eye, you catch a glimpse of something, and your gaze is instantly met with the unwelcome sight of Noah. A sigh escapes your lips. "Noah, what are you doing up here?"
"I was searching for you, believe it or not."
"Why?"
"Because you looked upset."
"And let me guess, you felt guilty or blamed yourself? Wow, an egotist and an asshole all rolled into one."
"Are you going to keep calling me an asshole throughout our time here?"
"Depends on whether you continue to behave like one."
"Fair point." He paused, shoving his hands into his pockets. "Will you at least come back from the ledge? You're making me anxious."
"Why? Do you think I'm going to jump?" You chuckled, deliberately walking along the darkened ledge of the balcony as if balancing on a tightrope.
"No." You heard the hint of doubt in his voice.
"You're lying."
"Okay, maybe."
"So, you think that I'm suicidal now?"
"I think you'd do anything to get my attention."
You nod to yourself, mulling over Noah's words. Your mouth opens as if to laugh, and you flick your tongue against your teeth. Before you can respond, you take a step away and glance down over the edge. With a couple more steps, you cast a look over your shoulder to him. "We'll see about that."
Without warning, you charge towards the edge of the open balcony, hearing Noah call after you as you jump over the ledge.
It feels exhilarating, your heart pounding in your chest as you plunge into the water of the pool below and you surface, you hear a splash behind you. Wiping your hand over your face, you look in the direction of the ripples and see Noah resurface beside you.
He had jumped in after you.
"Did you—" He briefly chokes on a mouthful of water, spitting it out as he treads water in the same way you are, keeping himself close to you. "Did you know this was here?"
"Guilty." You shrug, a playful smile tugging at the corners of your mouth.
You had come up for some air and when you saw the pool below, you couldn't resist the temptation to dive in. It had been Noah who had interrupted your original plan, accusing you of trying to hurt yourself or get his attention.
"Wow. You're an asshole." He remarks, shaking his wet hair and pushing it back with his tattooed hand.
"Are you really that surprised?"
"No."
There's a brief pause before he speaks again, his voice softer with his confession; "I missed you."
"Ever heard of a phone?" You quip back without a moment's hesitation or time to ponder the meaning of his words.
"You blocked me."
You pause, wondering how he knew. Unless he had simply assumed. Or did that mean he had tried to reach out to you?
"Well, it's what you deserved."
"You're right."
That surprises you even more than the idea that he had tried to contact you. Noah had never said that you were right, about anything. In fact, most of your fights had stemmed from the fact that he was always so adamant against agreeing with you.
"Well, I can't say that I missed you." You're partially lying, but you hope he won't notice.
"I didn't expect you to."
"Well, good, because I didn't."
For a moment, everything between you falls silent. Your bodies inch closer as you continue to tread water in the deeper end of the pool. Your legs barely brush against each other, and you feel the gentle touch of his hand against your arm beneath the water. Then, you catch his gaze lingering a bit too long on you, flickering between your eyes and your lips. You don't need to ask what he's thinking; you already know.
"Don't even think about kissing me."
You burst the bubble which had been created around you both, delighting in popping it and watching as his expression shift from soft contemplation to sudden flustering.
"I-I wasn't."
"Good. Don't." You shorten your words and start swimming towards the pool's edge, pulling yourself out.
Your dress is soaked through and clinging to your skin. It had been a good plan until now, but the effects of the alcohol are wearing off, and you wonder if Noah's decision to jump in after you, assuming you were attempting something more dangerous, held any genuine meaning. Perhaps he did still care?
For a fleeting moment, you glance back at him as he attempts to climb out and turning to face him, you take a step closer, your foot poised to press down on his hand, halting his movements.
When your eyes meet his, he looks up at you with a soft expression, his dark brown eyes wide as they focus on you. "What did Nick mean earlier when he said you had to stop lying? Lying about what?" You hold his gaze, your foot pressing down gently against his fingers.
"Oh, nothing, just—ow." His voice breaks as you apply more pressure, deliberately pressing down on his fingers.
"Try again."
"Okay. Damn. To myself. He wants me to stop lying to myself."
"About what?"
"About you. About wanting to apologize."
You step back, releasing his hand from beneath your foot as you absorb his words. "Then do it. Get on your knees and say that you're sorry." You say it with a sense of confidence, despite his scoff at your request, but you remain steadfast, your gaze narrowing at his still wide brown eyes.
Instead of refusing, he climbs out of the pool and kneels at the edge, taking a near-pathetic wet dog stance in front of you.
"I'm sorry." he begins, clearing his throat before continuing, hearing a clear plea in his tone. "I'm truly sorry. For what I did. I shouldn't have…" His voice trails off, and for a moment, his gaze flickers away, almost as if he's ashamed.
Good. He should be.
It shouldn't be satisfying to see him in this vulnerable state, but you never imagined you'd have the infamous Noah Sebastian begging for your forgiveness.
"I should've apologized then. And all the millions of times I was watching your instagram. I wanted to, I did. I've been wanting to. I wanted to reach out and apologize the moment I knew you were coming."
Suddenly your brain latches onto those few words; since I knew you were coming. How did he know? Not even you knew, not until the other week. It was a last minute trip, one planned by—Sloan.
"Get up." You interrupt his ramble and you watch as he struggles to process the instruction as if he doesn't know whether you've accepted his attempt at an apology or not.
When he stands, he nods, shaking his limbs and himself off like he's an overgrown wet greyhound. "Yeah, let's head back inside."
You start to walk ahead of him, pulling yourself out from his reach when you catch his hand coming behind you in your periphery. You haven't responded to his apology and won't be giving him the satisfaction of even the slightest touch.
"What on earth happened to you two?!" Sloan, who had been flirting with Jolly earlier, is now walking away from cozying up to Nicholas. You narrow your eyes at her.
"Someone fell into the pool." Noah answers, and your gaze shifts to him. You fix him with the same disgruntled expression.
"I'm going to bed." you dismiss yourself, walking away as Sloan reaches for you, grasping your arm as she hurries to catch up.
"Did you really fall in the pool?" she asks, her brow raised in curiosity.
"Yes." you reply through gritted teeth.
"All that to get a man to dive in after you. I know you said he's an asshole, but—"
You come to a stop, pulling your arm from her grasp and turning to face her. "But what, Sloan? Should I give him another chance?"
Her mouth opens to speak, but no words come out, and her eyes widen in realization.
"Because I'm starting to think these strange coincidences aren't just that. Not to mention the way you've been flirting with Jolly and now Nicholas."
A brief flash of guilt crosses her face, and everything begins to make sense. Noah and his band may have had a concert in Vegas this weekend, but your run-ins with him had been anything but coincidental, as you had suspected.
"So much for you mocking me for being hung up on a guy for the past two years, huh? You're such a great friend, Sloan. So great." You turn to walk away, but she stops you.
"I thought—"
"You thought what, huh?"
"That seeing him would finally give you the closure you've been seeking. That maybe one last time being together would remind you that he's not worth your time."
"Yeah, I've come to realize that". You nod, taking a deep breath as you ponder Sloan's words. "I've also come to understand that my friend is more manipulative than I could have ever imagined, considering I never would have expected you to throw my heart back into the ring with him." Your voice cracks, but you manage to utter your words before pushing past her and finally walking away.
He’s lowkey disgusted by humans so I don’t see this going down well, not for Michael, anyway. He’s almost angry with his darling for making him feel so intensely, so for a very long time he’s just going to be generally cold towards them. However, this completely changes once they’re put in any kind of danger. Whether he likes it or not, he’s infatuated, and making Michael infatuated comes with very intense violence towards anyone who threatens his darling. After he initially sees them in danger, Michael starts watching over his darling. He’s a very scary guardian angel.
Lucifer
He finds his darling very interesting, but a lot like Michael he hates them for a while. So, he genuinely hates humans. Lucifer isn’t exactly disgusted by his darling, more like he doesn’t understand why he feels the way he does when he’s with them. He’s generally going to try to ignore his darling because he’s mad at them and he’s petty like that sometimes. Eventually, though, he ends up becoming extremely controlling and possessive. If his darling is close with the Winchester’s, he’s going to throw a fit. It’s almost like betrayal to him and he takes it very personally.
Raphael
He’s almost as bad as Lucifer when it comes to being controlling, he’s just addicted to the feeling of being in control of his darling. He’s kind of scary, though, he genuinely believes that his darling belongs to him so he’s willing to go to extremes to make sure that he’s the only one they see. That being said, he’s very open to isolating his darling if he feels it’s necessary. When Raphael isn’t in heaven sorting things out or dealing with his brothers, he’s watching over his darling. Like most Angels, he’s absolutely addicted to making sure that his darling is safe.
Gabriel
Literally the only semi-normal one. Gabriel at least tries to keep his intense feelings under control, and he has an almost normal relationship with his darling. He’s very playful so it’s easy to miss how smothering he can get with his darling, and he often uses the fact that he’s an angel as an excuse if his darling starts to catch onto his odd behavior. Gabriel is desperate to keep his darling by his side, he often puts himself in danger just so they can be out of it, and while he knows it’s weird, he keeps his darling away from his family. He doesn’t trust any of them and it shows horribly.
I’m like slowly doing the ideas I had written down, and this was one of my favorites bc I absolutely love the Archangels, especially Michael. I’ll only do these when I’m out of requests, though!
characters: eyeless jack, hoodie, masky, ticci toby, jeff the killer, ben drowned, slenderman
all works are reader insert [character x fem reader]
author's note: dead dove: do not eat. the following works may contain dark, explicit content, including rape/non-con, dub-con, stockholm syndrome, ‘yandere’ tropes, abuse, death, violence, and similar themes.
please read at your own discretion.
if you wish to see more content, please consider commissioning me! ♡
creepypasta boyfriend quiz
eyeless jack
tili tili bom | one | two | three
a field of red spider lilies | one | two | three | final
feverish and faint
first encounter
when you’re sad
punishment
kinks
hoodie / brian thomas
solace | one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | ten | eleven
feverish and faint
first encounter
when you’re sad
punishment
kinks
masky / timothy ‘tim’ wright
solace | one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | ten | eleven
Warnings: obsessive behaviour, possessive behaviour, oblivious reader, inexperienced reader, mentions of abuse from Cullens
Alec:
Alec has to be subtle about his affections and intentions with you
Your ‘family’ already hate him, they have since the day Edward was introduced to the volturi and could report to the Cullens every thought alec has had of you
His courting had to remain subtle for his forbidden flower, for his sweet Juliet to his Romeo
He found that at first his best option for being close to you was ask for a dance at one of the balls that the volturi threw for the introductions of new members of big time clans
These balls were for the most part mandatory, meaning your family couldn’t just lock you away and you could spend time with other vampires with minimal fear
Alec would walk to to you with one of the volturi kings next to him so that If you accepted a dance with him, they could distract the Cullens long enough for Alec to slip the two of you onto the ballroom floor
He never was one for dancing before you, coming from a poor village in the medieval times he never really had to learn
Even after joining the volturi, he copied basic moves whenever he had to dance with someone for the sake of politeness
But after meeting you and realising that you came from a different time period to him, he begged some of the female volturi members to teach him some steps to dances from your time
He tried to master them but sometimes you still have to correct him, to which he’ll claim that you must be seeing things to save himself embarrassment
He also tried to learn courting culture from your time, but he never could do with all the politeness from it
He preferred being improper with you, it gave him the opportunity to see the real you
So he’d sneak up to your room after the Cullens locked you up for the night
He’d sneak through the window and the two of you would spend the night talking and laughing together, considering neither of you needed to sleep
It made him feel closer to you, made him feel special to have that time with you
He knew that no one else had that experience with you, and that made his worries of you being taken from him
He’s done everything in his power to make sure the vampire clans know that he has claim on you and is courting you, he’s seen the newer clans looking at you like a piece of meat and he thought it best to show who you belong to
If any others try and intrude on your time together, they’ll be hissed at viciously and the volturi kings will be told of the interference to their plan to match you with either Alec or Jane
His last act of devotion to you was to swear you that he will free you from the Cullens grasp, and you can only pray he’s truthful
Jane:
Jane isn’t the most loving person
She struggles to express most emotions, but showing her adoration and love is the hardest
So she tries to court you in more practical ways, such as acts of service
Anything that you need doing, she will have the task completed by sundown
Your struggling to find clothes because the Cullens only give you childish clothes? Jane had handmade clothes tailored to match and compliment your body type and skin colour and she leaves them in your room for you
You’re thirsty but you don’t have any blood to feed with? Jane killed a human for you two to share during your teatime
She even asks for it to be baked into pastry’s even though neither of you can digest food anymore so you both end up coughing it up
You need entertainment while you’re locked away in your room? Jane will sit outside your door and read your favourite books and poems to you and keep you entertained
She also tries to work on her physical affection for you
She offers you an arm when you walk together through the garden at night, she places her hand over yours when you need comforting, she will place small kisses on your hand when greeting you in private
These are all things she never thought she’d be comfortable with until she met you, so she’s slowly improving in private
When she’s feeling extra possessive, she will cover you head to toe in her signature scent either by spraying you with perfume or briefly holding you and rubbing her cheek against your neck
This means she can put a subtle claim on you to show that you are hers and that anyone who tries to touch you will feel the wrath of her painful stare
Her final act of devotion from when she saw you last was swearing to free you from the Cullens so the two of you could stay near each other forever
She does all of this and yet your still completely oblivious to the affections her and her twin hold for you
Johnny (post meeting you)
Johnnys methods of courting is mainly just trying to help you discover more of yourself and help you separate your identity from the one forced upon you by the Cullens
I suppose it would fall under the category of quality time as he will spend hours upon hours with you helping you learn a new skill or remember an old memory
He helps you acclimate to the more modern parts of society that the Cullens never taught you about, such as dating culture and party culture
He tries to find things for the two of you to do that he thinks you’ll enjoy the most
An example of this is him taking you to a petting zoo and letting you control all the cute animals because it made you feel better then hunting with the Cullens
He also used his power to his advantage and he will shape his shadows to make shadowy animal figures for you to admire
He will also get very secretly proud of himself every time he sees you’ve enjoyed yourself doing an activity he chose out
He’s also very big into PDA as he’s less afraid of what the Cullens will do to him
He’s always got an arm around your shoulders or waist when you walk or he’s holding your hand as you talk to each other
But always with permission, he understands that you can have a slight touch Phobia because of your time with the Cullens
He was also raised as a lord, so all of his courting will subconsciously be very gentlemanly despite his playful and rough persona
So that means the sidewalk rule is being obeyed, he’s always taking your arm when you walk together and he’s always generally acting with honour and decency
He’ll do all this and you’ll still swear that he hates you though
will i ever finish a project before starting another on an impulse? probably not. this one’s been rotting in the corner of my mind for months now (I even made a pinterest board for this universe), so i decided to write it down.
imagine small town vibes, your brother’s best friend, the golden boy of the town (who is the vice captain of the school’s basketball team), being so down bad for you (final boss of avoiding people, and a future film student wants to leave town) and ruining all your future plans (unknowingly), following you around like an incessant, kicked puppy? yeah, that’s basically this story.
warnings: fixed last name for reader. but nothing else yet! this will be a bit more sweet and fluffier compared to my other works.
Ashford was a cursed town, that much was certain. Everyone who took their first breath in the damned place took their last breath inhaling the same salty air, as if the ocean itself had a retention policy. The population hadn’t changed in something years—no one could ever agree how many, because Ashford High stopped teaching statistics after three different teachers quit mid-semester and drove straight out of town, never to be seen again. Babies were born, people died, and somehow the math still refused to budge. Ashford didn’t grow. It simply… persisted. Like mold. Or a bad rumour. Or that one substitute teacher who smelled like cigarettes and despair.
Y/N Adler had clocked this early, the way some kids learned multiplication or God. He learned stagnation. He learned it in the peeling paint of the movie theater that only played remastered classics and never anything new. He learned it in the way teachers spoke about opportunities elsewhere with a tone that suggested they’d missed theirs. Ashford was a place that raised you gently and then sat on your chest until you stopped trying to breathe.
Y/N refused to stop.
He occupied the back row of every classroom like a permanent shadow, hood up, legs stretched too far into the aisle, notebook open to pages that were never what the syllabus required. His notes were scripts, half-scenes, scraps of dialogue stolen from overheard conversations.
Observations sharpened into weapons. He didn’t want to be seen here. He wanted to be watching, recording, someday reframing Ashford as a cautionary tale with better lighting and a bitterly accurate soundtrack. Film school. Writing. Anything that involved leaving this place and never looking back except to mine it for material.
Then there was Leon.
Leon Adler, identical twin in bone structure only, captain of the basketball team, beloved local hero, proof that Ashford did, in fact, reward compliance. Leon thrived here. He wore Ashford like it was tailored for him— broad shoulders, easy grin, future already outlined in pep rallies and alumni newsletters. Y/N loved his brother in the resigned way one loves gravity. Leon was unavoidable. Leon was everything Y/N wasn’t, and that was fine. Y/N had made peace with that.
What he hadn’t made peace with was Ezra Reese.
Ezra Reese, vice-captain of the basketball team, golden retriever incarnate, human embodiment of you good, man?—and, cruelly, Y/N’s brother Leon’s best friend. Ezra was everything Y/N was not: tall in a way that felt intentional, like he’d decided to grow into someone impossible to ignore. He laughed with his whole body. He listened like it mattered. Ezra had hazel eyes that lingered, soft and curious, and smiling like life had personally promised him a sequel. He had a habit —an infuriating habit— of slinging an arm around Y/N’s shoulders in the hallways, of leaning down to murmur dumb jokes during lunch, of looking at Y/N like he’d just said something clever even when he absolutely hadn’t.
Ezra had always been friendly. That was the worst part. Friendly could be dismissed. Friendly could be rationalized. Except lately, Ezra’s friendliness had developed… texture. Hands that stayed a second too long. A casual arm slung over Y/N’s shoulders in the hallway, like it belonged there. A lean-in during lunch, voice low, asking what Y/N was writing, like the answer wasn’t none of your business, please stop existing so loudly.
The first time Y/N caught the look—warm, open, almost hopeful—he nearly tripped over his own feet and had to pretend it was intentional. The second time, Ezra guided him through a crowded gym with a hand at his lower back, easy and protective, and Y/N spent the rest of the day acutely aware of his own pulse. It was horrifying. It was inconvenient. It was deeply unfair. Because Y/N was not built for distractions.
He was built for leaving.
Yet there Ezra was, showing up everywhere like a narrative device Y/N hadn’t approved. Sitting too close on the bleachers. Smiling like Y/N was funny when he was being objectively unpleasant. Looking at him like Ashford wasn’t a dead end, like Y/N was already something worth staying for.
Leon noticed nothing. Leon noticed rebounds, free throws, and whether the team bus smelled weird. Y/N watched his brother laugh with Ezra, watched Ezra’s eyes drift back to him every time, and felt the town tighten its grip. Final year. Final chance. And Ashford, petty and ancient and cruel, had chosen its weapon well.
Y/N hated that it worked.
Hated that the town felt less unbearable with Ezra around. Hated that the idea of leaving now came with an asterisk. Hated that for the first time in his life, Ashford wasn’t just a place he wanted to escape—but something that might, if he wasn’t careful, convince him to stay.
so, there we go! my babies, actually. my favorite trope— avoidant loser x golden retriever. ashford is gonna be a series, there’s just too many characters to explore: we have our resident and tired english teacher at the school, the owner of the bakery, leon adler, our skater boy, the town detective, etc!
last night i was sleep deprived enough for me to decide that i want to write dual pov for this book (bad decision, i know). so expect more chapters from ezra’s pov!
warnings: idiots in love.
Ashford was the kind of town where the biggest scandal of the week could be summarized as “someone’s cousin from out of town parked weird at the grocery store.” Dreams there were modest. Gossip was not. If two people stood too close in the hallway for longer than six seconds, someone’s aunt had already written a Facebook paragraph about it.
And at the center of this deeply thrilling ecosystem was Ezra Reese, Ashford High’s very own golden retriever in a varsity jacket.
Vice-captain of the basketball team. Reliable. Friendly. The kind of guy who said “good morning” to teachers before they said it to him. He stayed late after practice to stack chairs. He helped freshmen find classrooms like a friendly NPC in a tutorial level. The janitor once trusted him with the spare key to the gym because, quote, “you seem responsible, son.”
Ezra Reese had the reputation of a boy destined for extremely wholesome local legend status.
You know the type. Thirty years from now there’d probably be a framed photo of him somewhere in the school hallway. Maybe a plaque. Maybe a newspaper clipping titled LOCAL BOY DOES GOOD THING. Maybe a slightly embarrassing mural where his face looked 12% too heroic.
That was the boy Ashford saw.
What Ashford did not see was Ezra Reese internally combusting every time one very specific person walked past him.
Enter: Y/N Adler.
If Ashford was a quiet pond, Y/N was the rock someone threw into it just to see what would happen. Sharp where Ezra was soft. Quiet where Ezra treated silence like a personal enemy. Y/N carried notebooks everywhere instead of basketballs and spoke exclusively in sarcasm and mild disdain for school spirit. He walked down hallways like the entire building had personally offended him.
The first time Ezra heard him speak was during a pep rally. Y/N leaned toward Leon— his identical twin in face and complete opposite in personality— and muttered: “Is this a pep rally or a cult meeting with worse choreography?”
Ezra laughed. Loudly.
Which was unfortunate because the gym had gone quiet at that exact moment.
Y/N turned his head slowly and looked at Ezra like he’d just discovered a very enthusiastic labrador that had wandered into a philosophy lecture. And that— tragically, irreversibly— was the end of Ezra Reese’s peace.
Leon had introduced them properly later that week. “That’s my brother,” Leon said, the way someone might present a slightly feral cat that occasionally bites.
Ezra, being Ezra, stuck out his hand with a big friendly grin. “Hey, man.”
Y/N looked at the offered handshake like it might explode. Then he shook it anyway.
Ezra remembers three things about that moment. One: Y/N’s hand was warm. Two: Y/N smelled faintly like ink and coffee. Three: Something in Ezra’s brain quietly, catastrophically rerouted his entire personality.
At first he told himself it was curiosity.
Y/N was different. He didn’t clap when everyone else clapped. He didn’t laugh when everyone else laughed. He didn’t look at Ezra like he was impressive.
And for a boy who’d grown up being liked by default, that was devastatingly fascinating.
Y/N looked at him like he was just… a guy.
Ezra discovered, to his horror, that he wanted to change that very badly. So he did what any mature, emotionally balanced seventeen-year-old would do.
He hovered.
Not obviously. No, no. Ezra Reese was a professional.
He simply appeared near Y/N at extremely convenient times.
Walking past in the hallway? Casual hand on Y/N’s shoulder. Totally normal. Lunch table conversation? Leaning over to ask what he was writing. The answer was always some variation of: “None of your business.” Ezra would grin like that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Crowded gym after practice? Ezra guiding Y/N through the crowd with a hand at his lower back like it was purely practical and definitely not something he’d been thinking about doing for three weeks.
He also developed a highly specialized emotional weapon known as The Puppy Dog Eyes™. This maneuver was deployed whenever Y/N looked like he might walk away.
Which happened frequently.
Ezra was not subtle.
His friends knew this.
The basketball team definitely knew this.
The cafeteria lady knew this.
There was a sophomore who once whispered, “I think Reese is in love with Adler’s weird twin.”
The only person who somehow did not know was Leon.
Which was frankly impressive.
Meanwhile, Y/N had the deeply unfair habit of existing in ways that made Ezra Reese forget basic motor functions. Sometimes Y/N sat in the bleachers during practice with his hood up, pretending he wasn’t watching. Ezra would notice immediately.
Suddenly every shot mattered. Every dunk felt like a performance. Every joke he made got about 40% louder. It was humiliating. He was humiliating.
And the worst part? Y/N would roll his eyes and call him “ridiculous.”
But he never moved away when Ezra’s knee bumped his on the bleachers. Never shrugged off the arm Ezra slung around his shoulders. Never told him to stop sitting too close.
Which meant Ezra Reese lived in a constant emotional state best described as: hopeful panic.
It became routine. Ezra orbiting Y/N like a very tall, very athletic satellite.
The vice-captain of the basketball team— protector of freshmen, stacker of chairs, beloved Ashford golden boy— reduced to following one sarcastic boy around the school like a loyal dog who had chosen his favorite human.
And honestly?
He didn’t even mind.
Ashford was small. Predictable. The kind of place where everyone already knew what your future was supposed to look like.
Scholarships. Basketball. Staying close to home. Being the kind of person people nodded approvingly about at the grocery store.
People thought Ezra Reese was loyal to the town. To the team. To the life mapped out neatly ahead of him.
They were wrong. Because the truth was very simple.
If Y/N Adler stood up one day, grabbed his notebooks, and said he was leaving Ashford forever…
Ezra Reese would be right behind him. No hesitation. No questions.
If that meant trading the jersey for a cramped apartment somewhere loud and confusing. Even if that meant sitting through terrible student films where nobody understood the plot. Even if that meant pretending to understand metaphors about existential dread and capitalism—
Fine. Whatever.
A dog, after all, goes where he’s called.
Even if the call sounds like a bored voice from the back row of the bleachers saying: “You’re staring again, Reese.”
And Ezra— grinning, shameless, completely gone— just shrugs. “Can you blame me?”
end notes? ezra is kind of my favorite character. he’s like my son, icl. and writing his pov came kind of easily, that’s why it’s longer than Y/N’s prologue.
do comment! i love reading them and replying to them!
𝒫𝔯𝔬𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔱𝔶 𝔬𝔣 𝔫𝔬 𝔬𝔫𝔢 𝔢𝔩𝔰𝔢
Leon Kennedy x male reader
Summary: What's worse? Once-human monsters caked in blood and hungry for flesh… a towering doctor who kept you locked inside Rhodes Hill Care Center since you first began remembering things… or the man willing to do anything to have you all for himself?
Tags: No use of Y/N. Male reader. Dark Leon S Kennedy: dangerous, lethal and charming. Flirting. Possessive behavior. Overprotectiveness. Gore. Protective Leon Kennedy.
ℳ𝒶𝓈𝓉ℯ𝓇𝓁𝒾𝓈𝓉 - gif
Words count: 6000
Rhodes Hill Care Center had never felt like a place built for healing.
Even before you understood what hospitals were supposed to be or learned from overheard staff conversations and the fragmented mutterings of other patients that normal places did not keep people behind reinforced glass and keycard doors.
Something about Rhodes Hill was wrong.
Its corridors were too bright in some places and too dim in others, fluorescent panels humming overhead with a nervous, air carrying the layered scent of antiseptic, old mop water, latex gloves, metal trays, stale coffee gone bitter on nursing desks, along the colder smell you could never quite name as a child but knew now as medicine.
Your ‘room’ sat in the lower level, one of the smaller observation units set behind thick glass panels framed in dull institutional steel, walls painted an almost-friendly off-white that yellowed under artificial light, a color someone had once selected believing it would soothe unstable minds.
Not that it worked.
Thin seams ran between wall panels and in the corners you could see where years of repeated cleaning had worn the finish down to a smoother, shinier sheen.
A small vent high above the bed exhaled a steady stream of cold air that smelled faintly of bleach and dust. Every few minutes it clicked as the system cycled, a sound so familiar it had become part of your pulse.
The bed was narrow, white and too firm, made with military precision by nurses who tucked the sheets so tightly that slipping beneath them felt like being packaged.
Pillow thin enough to flatten beneath your cheek in seconds, a rolling metal stand stood near the wall for IV bags even on the days you were not hooked up to anything and there was a monitor mounted outside the room behind the glass, its dark screen sometimes reflecting your own shape back at you at night when the hall lights dimmed.
The door was not really a door in the way doors should be, more a controlled access panel with a magnetic lock and a detector, meant to be opened from the outside, except on the rare days someone remembered or decided that a supervised walk would keep you cooperative.
Tonight the room seemed smaller than usual.
You sat on top of the bed, knees bent, bare feet against the stiff sheet, listening.
The routine had stretched too far.
Usually by this point someone would have come, a nurse to check your vitals with clipped efficiency.
Another to ask the same useless questions in the same practiced voice.
Then maybe, if the day had gone the way Dr. Gideon liked and if whatever numbers or samples he wanted from you had satisfied him, you would be granted a little freedom, a reward dressed up as treatment with few supervised laps through Rhodes Hill’s inner corridors or, on especially rare evenings, time in one of the common areas where the long-term patients drifted around bolted furniture and muted televisions.
No one had come today.
Hours had passed, ache in your back from sitting too long, growl of your stomach and constant creeping shift of thunder somewhere far above the buried concrete levels of the facility.
A same routine had ruled your life for as long as memory could hold.
Wake, needles, questions, testing, silence and observation.
Another tray of food slid to you with as little conversation as possible, another evening listening to footsteps beyond glass.
Ever since the first days you could remember clearly, Rhodes Hill had been your world. The basement units had been your house before you knew houses belonged above ground.
The other patients, unstable and unpredictable in ways that could turn frightening without warning, had still become the closest thing to family you had. Not because you understood the true meaning of family, but because you understood presence and the way some people looked for you when they were frightened.
Understood the woman who enjoyed attention and sang beautifully, enjoying hearing her talk profoundly of anything she wanted as you learned progressively everything about life.
Understood the man with bandages around his eyes who you offered as the substitute for (his eyes) while he moved inside the place with that medical auctions for drip and grumbly whined to you about everything.
Although he was easily irascible, describe the way deep down he seemed to like your presence whenever you had the opportunity to step out of your ‘room’
Dr. Gideon liked to phrase it differently.
Therapeutic social exposure, he called it when he allowed you out.
Baseline interaction opportunities.
He liked making cages sound clinical.
Sometimes he had you brought to one of the exam rooms where the counters shone under surgical light and the tray instruments lay arranged in exact rows. There he would take always more blood, tapping a gloved finger against your vein with a patient sort of fascination before the needle did it’s thing.
On his kinder days, or the days he wanted something from you that cooperation would get faster than restraint, he would let the suggestions of the others sway him. A nurse would mention fresh air in the atrium levels, doctors chiming in would say increased privilege might produce better behavioral outcomes.
And then you would be allowed out.
Never alone but always with eyes on you, by it from a nurse, an orderly or security.
Even then, those walks had meant everything. The polished corridors, sharp turns where one department bled into another and glimpses through reinforced windows into rooms that smelled of chlorine or medicine.
Would it really hurt to go out and take a look around?
Maybe you could check in on your friends if they weren’t already in bed.
Sliding off the bed soundlessly and dropping to your knees, feeling the cool change from contact with smooth floor even through the thin fabric of your white pants. Lower yourself all the way to flatten yourself and reach beneath the frame into the shadows where dust gathered in gray ribbons and forgotten things sometimes hid, fingers finding the taped underside of the support bar exactly where you had left it.
Peeling the tape free and drawing out the bracelet you had kept and constantly used throughout the years.
White plastic, slightly yellowed with time, with the embedded amber yellow chip still intact under its smooth surface. An ID bracelet from a newcomer girl who had arrived disoriented and terrified.
You had stolen the bracelet in the confusion of her first week as she came to check on your vitals, quick hands and quicker panic, afterward she had vanished from your orbit as so many people in Rhodes Hill did.
Moved, perhaps, or taken elsewhere.
You had felt bad in your own way, a small sour knot of guilt that never fully dissolved, but guilt had not stopped you from hiding the bracelet or using it.
Thanks to her, you had slipped out on late nights when the lower ward ran thin on staff and half the building seemed to doze under storm-heavy skies, wandered the sleeping corridors and traded whispers with the few patients still awake.
Shared contraband snacks, laughed quietly in laundry alcoves and sat under the emergency stairwell lights listening to stories from people whose memories came in cracked pieces.
That was as close to belonging as you had ever gotten.
You crouched by the door and pressed the bracelet against the outside-detection point built into the panel seam. It took a few seconds of stubborn pressure and angle adjustment before the reader acknowledged it, followed by the tiny mechanical click, one of the most beautiful sounds you knew.
The lock disengaged and you backed away instinctively as the door slid open with a muted hydraulic whisper, breath catching in your throat from the thrill of it even after all these years.
The basement was so claustrophobic at times, floor polished linoleum and walls lined with occasional observation windows and storage closets.
Thunder grumbled above the concrete earth as you moved quickly.
You knew where to place your feet to keep them quiet, knew where the camera blind spots curved near the corners or which stairwell door on this level complained if opened too fast. In a few moments you were climbing from the basement, hand gliding over the cool rail, pulse ticking faster as you emerged upward into the broader heart of the facility.
The main lobby looked different at night, large enough to suggest the illusion of openness, furnished just well enough to make visitors believe in Rhodes Hill’s polished mission statement if any real visitors still came. You had memorized its shape over years of stolen glances and supervised crossings.
“Excuse me.”
The voice struck surprised and immediate across the lobby.
“What exactly are you doing out here?”
You turned toward the irritating noise with instant annoyance and found a nurse marching toward you, shoes clicking briskly on tile, expression already pinched into reprimand. You still couldn’t remember her name, she had not worked here long enough to sink into your internal map of the place.
She carried a medical record tablet tucked tight in her hands as the irritation on her face came in small precise shifts, flattening of her mouth first, then the slight draw of her brows inward followed by an exhale through the nose that lifted her upper lip just enough to make her look disgusted before she’d even finished hearing your answer.
“No one came to check on me,” you said, already defensive. “This is usually when Dr. Gideon lets me go out.”
She sighed heavily in annoyance, dramatic enough to make sure you heard it. Her shoulders dropped with the breath and her eyes rolled very slightly toward the ceiling before settling back on you. “You are going to put me in trouble with this attitude,” she said, voice tight with that fake patience staff used when they had already decided you were the problem.
“Honestly, I would expect more discipline from someone who has been here as long as you have.”
Something shifted at the edge of your vision and both of you looked.
A man had just stepped through the front entrance, tall, broad-shouldered and dark jacket still damp from the storm outside, leather catching the lobby light in worn matte streaks.
Blond hair, a little longer than severe professionalism would allow, falling in a loose lock near the side of his cheek.
Face with the kind of rough, worn handsomeness that didn’t need help from expression, though there was plenty of it buried under the restraint if you looked close enough.
Tiredness lived around the mouth and at the edges of the eyes, experience sat in the line of his shoulders and the way he moved, balanced and watchful even in stillness.
Dull blue eyes that settled on you immediately.
The nurse straightened instantly.
“Mr. Kennedy, welcome. Dr. Gideon has been expecting you.”
His gaze rested on you for a beat longer before moving to her with maddening calm.
“Funny,” he said, one corner of his mouth lifting just a little. “I don’t remember getting an invitation.”
The flicker of his gaze came back to yours as if he couldn’t help it.
“Well, he’s waiting for you,” the nurse said, already turning, then shot you a look from the side and muttered “you come along”
“Can’t have that, can we?” he replied smoothly, and the ghost of a smile remained at his lips as he fell into step behind the two of you.
His eyes cooled when they rested on the nurse after the tone she had used with you, a faint tightening near his jaw that suggested he was filing away details he didn’t like.
The hallway beyond the lobby stretched long and clinical, lined with offices on one side and internal windows on the other where blinds were partly drawn, your footsteps and the nurse’s clicks and the heavy, controlled cadence of Mr. Kennedy’s boots created a strange little rhythm through the corridor.
“So how long have you been working for… uh, Dr. Gideon?” he asked.
“Not long,” the nurse said quickly. “I just recently joined the team.”
Lightning flashed beyond the distant windows, bright enough to bleach the hall for a heartbeat. Your shadows leapt onto the wall to your right in stretched black forms and, for that instant, you saw all three of you projected there.
What caught in your chest was how close his shadow ran behind yours, broad and looming and near enough to seem almost joined.
“We care for quite a few long-term patients here,” the nurse continued, smoothing her tone into strict professionalism. “All undergoing experimental therapies developed by Dr. Gideon.”
“Experimental therapies?” he repeated.
“Yes. It’s all very cutting edge. The facility keeps a low profile due to the sensitive nature of the research.”
He nodded once, slowly, but you could still feel his attention on you. It was absurd how aware you had become of it in such a short time.
Not because he was the first attractive man you had ever seen, though the sheer difference of his presence in this place gave his attractiveness a sharper edge, but because he didn’t looked at you like data or a case file.
Every time you glanced behind and found his eyes already on you, something small and hot tightened under your ribs.
Swallowing turned difficult, air seeming to drag a little thicker in your throat, hated that he could do that with so little effort.
The nurse stopped at a pair of large double doors and ushered him inside a private office, larger than the basement rooms by a humiliating margin, lined with bookshelves, framed credentials, locked filing cabinets and a heavy desk of dark wood polished enough to gleam under the lamp with a fake skeleton nearby.
She turned back to you. “Wait here with him. I’m going to call for Dr. Gideon.”
Then she was gone, large doors closing behind her with a padded thud.
For a moment neither of you spoke.
Mr. Kennedy moved first, taking in the office with the clipped efficiency, gaze skimming the shelves, the corners, the window, the desk. He picked up a framed photograph from one corner of Gideon with his team, all of them posed in lab coats under bright sunlight. He studied it briefly, then set it back down and turned his attention to you.
“So,” he said. “How long have you been here?”
Leaning against the large door frame behind, careful not to put enough weight on it to lose your balance and crash into the hallway like an idiot. “Forever,” you muttered. “Since I could remember things.”
His eyes lifted to yours fully then. Serious, yes, but there was something gentler tucked into the severity and under all that roughness. The lines in his face made him look harder than he sounded, lock of blond hair falling loose near his forehead and softening the stoic cut of him.
“Anybody from outside ever come to visit you?”
His gaze moved over you again, quiet and unashamed, tracing the shape of your face, pause on your mouth, take in the fragile tension in your shoulders. Heat crept up your neck before you could stop it.
“No one I know of.” Then, because the words had lived in you too long not to come out when asked plainly, you added, “I was probably abandoned here.”
It had become the explanation that made the most sense after years of listening to others and collecting fragments of their histories. Parents who signed forms, guardians stopping visits, people left behind by those who could not or would not deal with what they had become.
He tilted his head slightly, the loose strand of hair shifting from said motion. His blue gaze stayed heavy on yours and this time the smile that touched his mouth was a little more visible, though no less strange for how soft it was.
“Hard to imagine,” he said, voice low. “I’d really like to know who’d leave someone like you here alone.”
The word hit you like a spark to dry tinder, heat exploded into your chest.
He watched the result with the faintest widening of that smile into a real grin, small but unmistakable, like he was entertained by how quickly he’d unraveled your system.
“Announcement: Code Six. Code Six. All staff, initiate emergency protocol.”
The words ripped straight through the charged bubble formed between you and the handsome stranger.
The doors banged open, nurses hurrying back in, visibly agitated now, composure fraying at the edges. “Mr. Kennedy, we need to leave immediately.”
“What’s happening?” You moved toward her on instinct and caught her shoulder.
Her head snapped toward you, eyes too wide now, breath coming quicker. “We all need to get out of here. Now.”
She turned toward the hall just as another figure lurched into view behind her.
At first your brain tried to place him as one of Gideon’s doctors because of the ruined remains of a lab coat hanging off his body.
His skin had the sick, waterlogged pallor of flesh gone wrong, gray-white stretched over features that no longer moved properly except in jerks, lips receding from the teeth in a permanent grimace while grayish-towards-the-black tears ran down his face.
His dead fingers twitched on the grip of a chainsaw he had as it was yanked alive and the engine roared.
A large hand seized your arm so fast you barely felt the movement until you were already being dragged back and crashed against a broad chest made of solid muscle.
Mr. Kennedy’s bicep locked across your frame to hold you close, hand on your arm calloused and strong even through the glove.
The chainsaw punched out of the nurse’s back and burst through her stomach in an obscene spray, her mouth dropping open in a soundless cry before the real scream came too late, cut short when the blade tore sideways through tissue and bone. Blood hit the floor in a red fan as her body dropped in a boneless collapse and the saw’s scream filled the office, chewing air and flesh alike.
Leon guided you behind him with astonishing gentleness for the violence of the moment, a firm push at your shoulder that placed his body between you and the thing wearing a doctor’s face before kicking a nearby metal-legged office chair that skidded hard across the floor and slammed into the zombie’s knees, opening its stance just enough.
He moved instantly cutting behind the arc of the chainsaw with a grip still tight on your arm to keep you moving with him.
“I think I want a second opinion,” he muttered while extracting a huge handgun.
He closed the distance on the chainsaw-wielding corpse with insane speed for someone his age. One step, pivot, boot driving into the back of the thing’s leg at the joint. It buckled and hit the floor hard, still trying to turn the screaming saw toward him. The magnum came level with the back of the doctor’s skull and fired.
Shot detonating the room at the revolver’s bark and the zombie’s head burst apart in a spray of bone fragments, blood and gray matter that painted the wall behind it. The body spasmed once and collapsed, chainsaw clattering loose from dead hands and skittering across the floor in a wild grinding spin until it finally choked out.
Your ears rang, too much had happened but fate kept firing more catastrophe towards you as snarling came from behind.
The office side door shuddered as more nurses and doctors in the same state as the chainsaw welding one was, shoved through with jaws working and hands clawing.
Mr. Kennedy stooped, caught the fallen chainsaw by the handle once the chain stopped whipping and hauled it up with caution, the engine coughed as he yanked and it came alive with a vicious buzzing roar.
He stepped forward, face nearly unchanged and set into an hard and stoic calm that somehow looked even colder with a blood-slick chainsaw in hand.
Before fully engaging the oncoming dead, he looked back at you quickly, eyes sweeping over you head to toe, checking for injuries.
When he found little more than shock, something in his features eased by a fraction.
“Stay behind me,” he said, voice rough. “Wouldn’t want that handsome face getting hurt.”
It should not have landed in the middle of all this.
Then he turned and met the first zombie, chainsaw carving upward into its torso with wet violence that drowned the creature’s snarl under the engine scream. Flesh split and blood sprayed hot across the desk and rug.
He drove through it without hesitation, letting the dead body open like a book fall to the ground in a puddle of infected blood before he wrenched the blade free and swung sideways into the next one.
The second corpse lost an arm at the shoulder in a spinning burst of black-red droplets and staggered, still advancing on blind instinct, only for Leon to step in and bury the chain deep across its middle. The body opened with gruesome resistance, then gave way. He shoved it off the blade with a jerk of his arms and pivoted around the third as it lunged, using its own momentum against it.
Blood sheeted over the floor by the time the last corpse dropped in two collapsing halves, the office looked less like a workplace than a butchered shrine.
You had ended up on the floor without remembering the moment you sat down, legs who had simply given up while staring at the ruin all around while your mind lagged painfully behind your eyes, trying and failing to fit what you had just seen into anything a human nervous system should be expected to accept.
Leon crossed the ruined office and lowered himself to one knee.
Blood speckled his jacket, fine spray dotted one cheek, hard planes of his face were still there, still stern and almost intimidating, but his hand when it came down on your shoulder was careful, voice scraping at an effort toward gentleness.
“You alright?”
You nodded, but the motion broke something in your throat when a sob tried to come with it, swallowing it down badly, hands shaking.
Getting back to full height he offered you one of his hands which you took.
Even hauling you upright while the other hand still controlled the heavy chainsaw, he made it look easy and when you stumbled the slightest bit, his body automatically adjusted to steady you.
“One hell of a first night together,” he muttered, mouth pulling into another dry and crooked almost-smile again.
Leon’s blood-flecked hand was still wrapped around yours when he moved towards the heavy emergency doors locked down by a lattice of metal braces.
Leon stepped forward, eyes narrowing once at the obstruction, then down at the chainsaw in his hand as if measuring one problem against another.
“Stay close,” he muttered, voice low and rough before bringing the chainsaw up.
The engine snarled back to full life in his grip with a vicious mechanical scream. He set the spinning chain against the middle brace, both hands steady on the weapon as the teeth bit into steel and orange tongues of fire spat from the point of contact in molten bursts, a storm of sparks showering outward and ricocheting against the walls in blistering little comets that showered over him in sheets, catching for an instant in his hair, hissing against the leather of his gloves, spitting harmlessly off his jacket and the hard line of his jaw.
He shifted to force the chain deeper, teeth chewing through another brace as orange spray intensified near the center seam.
A harsh metallic crack came from inside the housing, a jolt that kicked through Leon’s arms and then the front half of the tool split, blade assembly sheared away in a blur of smoke and slammed into the floor several feet off.
By then his other hand was already moving, Requiem drawn with smoothness together a compact flashlight snapped up in his off hand.
With a kick the metal keeping the door closed disintegrated completely.
The beam of light punched forward and tore a pale path through the darkness beyond the parted doors.
He barely turned his head enough for you to catch the hard edge of his profile and the blond strand hanging near his temple.
“Stay close,” he said again.
“Alright,” you swallowed and managed, though it came out smaller than you meant it to, more breath than voice.
You kept so near behind him that every step made you aware of his size, eyes snagging lower where there was a hatchet secured against the lower side of his back.
Its edge was darkened by fresh blood near the tip, sitting against the tight grey fabric stretched over his hips and thighs, making the contrast almost unfair. His pants fit too well not to notice, hugging the powerful build of his lower body in a way that made every shift of his bulky frame the more eye-catching.
He kept moving, gun raised and light steady.
“So,” he murmured after a few silent steps, his whisper pitched dry with sarcasm, “this one of your doctor’s therapy side effects?”
You stared at the line of his shoulders under the tight shirt and stuttered a little when you answered. “I—I don’t know anything. I swear. They never told me anything.”
He made a quiet noise that might have been acknowledgment.
“You can keep going?” he asked without looking back.
Terror had your heart in a fist, hands still shaking and the shard of broken bottle you’d picked up downstairs now dug cold and awkward against your palm.
“Yes,” you whispered. “I can do it.”
A tiny chuckle, more vibration than voice, nearly lost under the hum of the flashlight and the far-off alarms.
Due to him having his back to you, you caught only the edge of it.
“Good,” he said. “Lucky for you, you’re cute. Makes you easier to trust.”
Heat flooded up your neck and into your cheeks so fast it almost hurt. In the dark you were grateful he couldn’t fully see it, though part of you suspected he knew anyway.
“Are you a cop?” In a hushed voice, because your brain had found the first thing it could grasp.
His shoulders shifted almost imperceptibly and then a short laugh escaped him, dry and worn.
You remembered one of the patients on your floor with bandages around his eyes after an incident the staff always retold with too much relish.
He had attacked a police officer during some uncontrollable episode years ago and afterward, before they sedated him, had rambled to you about what cops looked like after asking him what they were and he had laughed so hard he cried.
“Used to be,” he whispered back, missing the way his face tightened briefly at that.
Nothing in his tone invited more questions and you understood that clearly enough.
Farther ahead, the corridor opened near an alcove where one of the wall switches or breaker panels had malfunctioned. The overhead lights there flickered on and off in erratic rhythm.
In the center of that broken strobe stood a figure wearing elegant clothes, skin the same dead, water-swollen gray as the others.
“Turn them off,” he rasped.
Click.
“Too bright...”
Click.
“Turn them off turn them off turnthemoff.”
Each flicker constantly made his frame twitch.
Leon’s arm shot out across your chest without looking, a silent bar of muscle halting you instantly.
Stay.
The message came through even before the slight angle of his hand reinforced it.
He slipped forward silently, flashlight beam dropping enough to keep from flashing directly across the zombie’s ruined face.
The hatchet came free from his lower back in one smooth pull while the zombie kept clicking the switch before Leon drove the weapon into the side of its neck.
Not a clean chop but a brutal sinking bite that buried steel into stiff tissue and half through the vertebrae. The zombie convulsed, fingers spasming on the switch so the lights flashed madly and Leon planted his weight, bicep swelling hard beneath the fabric as he forced the wound wider, using leverage and pressure as a tearing crack came, then the head came off.
It separated in a nauseating burst of blood and ruptured tissue, a geyser of dark arterial spray blasted upward from the stump in a violent fountain, pattering the wall, switch panel and floor. The body remained standing for the smallest impossible fraction of a second, pumping blood into the air from a neck attached to nothing, then folded and crashed sideways into the wall before sliding to the ground in a twitching heap.
Leon flicked the hatchet down to shake some of the blood free, then gave a tiny curl of two fingers without even really looking back at you, absurdly casual for a man who had just decapitated a once-human being with one arm.
Hurrying after him, carefully stepping around the corpse. Even on the floor the body still twitched, muscles spasming in ugly little aftershocks as trapped chemical energy and dying nervous discharge rippled through tissue that had not yet accepted it was finished.
“Do you know where Gideon’s office is?” he asked, not turning around, pistol staying raised and flashlight beam drifted with every measured step.
The tight shirt clung to his back in darkened patches where rain and blood had soaked in, shoulders broad enough to block half the hall. Each time he extended the gun, the muscles in his arm and chest shifted under the fabric with dense, heavy definition, bicep flexing as he adjusted his grip, large enough that the pistol in his hand looked almost secondary.
Nothing about him looked soft and yet he had checked your injuries twice already and kept placing himself between you and every horror in this building.
“Do you think Dr. Gideon is involved in this?” Asked after a moment of hesitation.
He turned his head just enough for you to catch part of his profile, lock of blond hair falling down the side of his face, brushing the stubble at his cheek with the motion.
“How about,” he murmured, thick with sarcasm, “for now I ask the questions and you answer them?”
That shut you up immediately, focusing instead on remembering on the times you had been brought through upper levels under escort or the few escape attempts that had made it farther than they should have.
“Top floor,” you said at last. “I saw him there before. Near the upper offices.”
Leon gave a quick nod and kept going, flashlight carving a narrow visible path through the suffocating dark.
After another stretch of hall, he tilted his head slightly and touched something at his ear.
“Sherry,” he said. “I’m getting close to Gideon’s office. Maybe I find something there.”
A woman’s voice answered in your earless emptiness, crisp and controlled, carrying the faint backdrop chatter of keys tapping quickly somewhere far away. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask me to find it for you.”
No speaker on the wall or person in sight, just the small device in Leon’s ear.
Leon glanced sideways and found you already staring at him with open curiosity, mouth of his edging up a fraction.
“Managed to find someone to help me out,” he said.
“You found someone in that facility who isn’t infected?” Sherry asked with genuine confusion.
Leon grunted approval. “Got there in time.” His side glance flicked over you once, warm and wicked in a way that made your stomach jump. “Saved the most handsome one, too. Honestly, if he’d turned, I probably wouldn’t have minded him jumping on me.”
Your gaze dropped so fast it almost hurt your neck, heat slamming across your face again while staring very intently at the floor as you followed him, gripping your pathetic glass shard harder than necessary.
Over the comm, Sherry made a quiet sound of disgust that still somehow carried amusement under it. “That is absolutely not the update I was looking for.”
You could practically hear the small scoff and the headshake behind her words, somehow even you could tell she was smiling despite herself.
“Contact me if you find anything,” she said and the line clicked dead.
The stairwell entrance came into view ahead, its push-bar door half open and emergency lights bleeding thin red along the frame.
Leon stepped toward it first, then a huge hand shot out from the darkness behind and lifted you clean off the ground.
One moment your feet were on the floor, the next your body was dragged backward against a mass of strength so overwhelming it made panic white-hot and immediate. The shard of glass nearly fell from your hand as fingers clamped around your upper torso and pinned your arms awkwardly as you kicked uselessly in empty air.
Dr. Gideon didn’t change into one of the mindless dead exactly, there seemed to be the same sight of the infection on his whole body but retrained his intelligence. He had always been tall, now the corruption seemed to exaggerate it, making him loom with grotesque emphasis.
Veins dark as spilled ink climbed the side of his neck and vanished beneath the collar of that torn coat, skin gone ashen and uneven, split at the temple, drawn tight over sharper bones.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked you first, rotten breath still carrying the dry, educated cadence you knew, only now threaded with something spoiled.
Then his eyes cut to Leon.
“And Mr. Kennedy,” he said, almost pleasantly. “You shouldn’t take other people’s things without asking first.”
Your whole body flooded with adrenaline so hard your vision narrowed, without thinking, you drove the sharp broken bottle neck backward into his arm.
It punched into the flesh above his wrist with a wet crunch and sank deeper than you expected. Gideon hissed, but not in pain, more annoyance, grip barely loosening.
Leon’s magnum shot cracked through the hall with force as the round hit Gideon in the head and snapped it violently backward, the impact so brutal you heard it before you fully understood it. Blood burst outward in a thick arc, droplets and heavier spatters painting the wall. Gideon’s hold failed all at once and you dropped hard to the floor, catching yourself badly on one arm, pain flaring hot from wrist to elbow as your shoulder jarred.
Scrambling up immediately and ran straight to Leon’s side as he was already sighting the gun again, stance squared, expression gone glacial.
The barrel smoked faintly in the flashlight beam.
"Sorry, doc. Guess that answers the custody question."
Said doctor answered with a roar, wound on his head knitted not perfectly but unfairly fast. Torn flesh shivered and pulled together, cratered ruin of bone sealed beneath a fresh spill of blood that cascaded down his face in dark streams.
Leon fired again.
The second shot from the magnum punched Gideon back a step, chest twisting with the force.
Then Leon turned his head sharply toward you.
“Run,” he said. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Running out of the hallway and into the bright white spill of the main lobby higher floor abruptly after the corridor’s suffocating dark, polished floors flashed beneath your feet.
Then metal bars dropped behind over the path you had taken in a thunderous sequence.
You spun just in time to see the hallway begin to close off even further as a reinforced wall panel descended from above.
Leon was still on the other side.
He had turned at the sound, Gideon somewhere beyond him in the dark passage. For one sliver of a moment, before the closing barrier cut him away, his gaze found yours through the narrowing gap, tension hardening around his eyes in concern before the wall sealed shut.
Suddenly, completely, you were alone.
Note: This was originally planned as a oneshot, but this first part alone ended up much longer than expected ✌︎. Let me know if you'd be interested in seeing a continuation.
