Something something about gentle yanderes.
The ones who plead with you as you hide behind a locked bathroom door, begging for you to please let them back in. The ones that make you your favourite foods over and over until they can cook it perfectly, hiding all the burnt mistakes inside the bins. The ones who come home every day with gifts in and because they missed you so much during their eight-hour shift.
The ones who hold you so sweetly every night, hoping one day you'll aclimitise enough or become so touch starved that you eventually reciprocate their hugs. Maybe one day those hugs can evolve into more, into bare skin against bed sheets and breathlessness, but for now you allowing yourself to be held is a luxury they hold deeply against their hearts every night. Its progress from at first, when you first woke up in a home that wasn't yours, kept in a guest room until you were settled enough to move into the master bedroom.
Everything was taken at your pace, he is patient, and he wanted so hard to prove how patient he can be, thinking of you, knowing just how much he cares for you than perhaps you can stop being so terrified of him. Don't you know, sweet thing, that he would sooner burn off his own hands than ever lay them on you in anger? That he'd sooner cut off his tongue and feed it to himself before yelling at you or calling you something he would never dare say before his mother? How mother raised him right after all, raised him to be gentle and kind, he could never disgrace her memory and how hard she worked for his sake to ever harm you. He begs you to understand that no matter what you do, he would never dare to hurt you. He sits you down one night and makes a promise on his mother's well-kept grave that if he ever were to lay a finger on you in violence, then he will unlock the door and allow you to leave him. Because by the lord, he already doesn't deserve your sweetness in his life, and if he can't be grateful for you, he will not allow himself to have you. That was the first night you slept soundly beside him.
And he tries, you have to understand how hard he's trying for you, he doesn't expect you to be grateful. In fact, he expects you to hate him, to curse his name out and fight back like a cornered dog. He doesn't deserve any better than that treatment from you; he knows full well what a selfish, irredeemable man he is. How you were all set to live a beautiful life, but he stole you away from your rightful future because he could not stand that that future could never include him, as he wants to be included. Not as your friend, co-worker, or a stranger on the bus, he could never accept that role from the fates. So instead, he stole your fate from you.
You had so much promise, didn't you? So much potential? All that means nothing now as you lie down beside him on the couch, watching an old DVD copy of your favourite childhood film, the bright colours clouding together from behind your stifled tears.
