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youthguk · 28 days ago

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Dream eater | jjk (m) | one-shot

Jungkook is a Dream eater, and you, unknowingly, are his favorite feast.

· Dream fantasy (slightly) · Smut · Angst · Emotional intimacy ·

wc: 15k

warnings: smut (minors do not interact!), oral sex (f receiving), penetrative sex (f/m), intense mutual yearning and vulnerability, depressive undertones, angst

an: this one is for those who have ever felt like the world is generous to you with nothing but solitude.

Shards of diamond bright stars pierce Seoul's obsidian sky, their cold light drowning in the city's neon glow. Jungkook leaves his window open, it is not a choice, but rather a necessity. He stares at his ceiling, counting seconds until the hunt begins. Another night, another feast of fears.

Darkness claims him with a lover's embrace. Seoul's infamous nightmare eater surrenders to sleep, his consciousness already splitting at the seams. A traitorous thought whispers: what if tonight will be different.

But it won’t. Reality fractures and he watches his mortal shell from above: a sight that still unnerves him after so many years. Two versions of one being: the peaceful sleeper below, the predator above. His ethereal form sneers at its human disguise. He observes his sleeping form with dark amusement. Such innocent appearance, such deadly truth. With serpentine grace, he slides through the window into the night's waiting arms. The night was young.

His humanity dissolves, leaving only hollow echoes where warmth once dwelled. He exists between heartbeats now, a creature born of twilight and shadow. They call his kind Dream Eaters - night's elite hunters. He doesn't waste time with sweet dreams; terror is his sustenance. Each nightmare consumed fills the endless void within, a momentary relief for an immortal hunger. True sleep eludes him now. Instead, dusk shatters his being like black ice, releasing his hunting self into the dark.

Seoul spreads beneath him, a fever dream in concrete and steel. Skyscrapers rise like obsidian monoliths, their windows gleaming with artificial souls. In their depths, forgotten screens pulse with electric prayers, while he glides past - a phantom in this vast urban wilderness that still hasn't discovered his true name, even after countless nights of feeding.

Like a shadow made of stardust, he dances across Seoul's skyline, his ethereal form weaving between moonlit spires and rain-slicked rooftops. The city breathes beneath him, each exhalation carrying whispers of secrets too delicate for mortal ears. In his wake, silence blooms, the rich stillness of midnight possibility.

Night after night, he slips into dreams uninvited yet inexorably summoned. These sleeping minds call to him like sirens, their fears pulsing like dark beacons through the city's unconscious web. He moves between them with practiced grace, a thief of terrors, collecting their darkness like black pearls.

The nightmares he finds are symphonies of fear, each uniquely haunting. Here, a father's dream crystalizes into gray horror: baby's breath turned to cinders. There, a bride-who-never-was wanders an infinite gallery of white gowns, each mirror reflecting a different life unlived. A child runs through corridors of betrayal, pursued by a mother's face worn like a mask by something ancient and hungry.

Some dreams twist reality until it snaps: vast oceans swallow the sky whole, wolves with mirror-glass eyes hunt through endless forests, smiles split open to reveal universes of teeth. Each nightmare carries its own signature of dread, and each feeds him differently- sending electric shivers through his being, temporarily filling the endless void within.

Yet this beautiful, terrible dance leaves him hollower with each performance. The feast brings no joy, only momentary relief from an hunger old as starlight. In the quietest hours, when the city holds its breath, he questions whether he has become the very nightmare that haunts other nightmares- a shadow feeding on shadows.

Though neither mercy nor comfort fall within his nature, he continues his eternal duty as a void that consumes the dark.

In the waking world, he is barely there- an outline at best, a quiet presence with a heartbeat too soft to echo. His voice, when used, never quite fills a room. His laughter, when forced, folds in on itself before it reaches the walls.

His sanctuary lies behind walls of code and LED glow, where ones and zeros don't ask questions. IT specialist: the perfect camouflage for someone who exists in binary- human by day, nightmare-devourer by night. Here, in this digital cocoon, the absence of human connection isn't loneliness- it's salvation.

Jimin shows up sometimes, arms full of takeout and stories that move faster than time itself. Taehyung lounges on his couch like he owns it, flipping through half-read books Jungkook never finished. Jin nags him to open the windows and let light in. Yoongi doesn’t say much, but when he does, it lands heavy- sharp and unafraid. Hoseok once cried laughing on Jungkook’s kitchen floor after too much wine. Namjoon leaves poems folded in the spines of Jungkook’s abandoned notebooks, like quiet offerings to whatever ghost he’s become.

He’s grateful for them- a bittersweet anchor to reality- but even in their presence, he feels like a thread unraveling just beyond the edge of fabric. They don’t ask why he’s always tired, always pale, always late in answering, because they know better than to push. Still, none of them understand the weight he drags through each day, the way his hands tremble when someone mentions a dream too vividly.

The thought of accidentally stumbling into their dreams haunts him like a shadow he can't shake. Because what if- what if one night he sees Namjoon trapped beneath dark waters, lungs filling with infinity? Or finds Jimin screaming silently behind walls of glass that won't break no matter how hard he pounds his fists against them? Or watches, paralyzed, as Taehyung runs through endless corridors of flame, feet leaving burning footprints in his wake? He simply couldn't.

Sometimes, in moments when the night feels particularly heavy, he whispers desperate prayers to deities who've long since stopped listening, begging them to keep his friends' dreams far, far away from his hunger.

Reality slips through his fingers like smoke these days, all gossamer-thin and just as substantial. The walls breathe shadows, rooms fold in on themselves. Time stumbles forward in awkward lurches, dragging its feet across calendar pages that mean nothing anymore. The windows collect fog like secrets, exhaling quiet confessions into the dawn. His journals - half-burned, because some truths are too heavy to keep whole- gather dust in corners where light fears to tread. And that mirror in the hallway? It only remembers his face if he stares long enough to make it nervous, catching glimpses of himself like static between channels.

The only thing that ever feels real is the ache beneath his ribs followed by the loneliness: faithful shadows that never leaves.

And the slow, exquisite agony of wearing humanity like an ill-fitting coat.

It begins like breathing - not the shallow gasps of the living, but that bone-deep exhale when your body finally remembers how to let go. The surrender comes easy now, practiced as a prayer, inevitable as nightfall. His consciousness unspools like silk in water, each thread of reality slipping loose until he's floating free of flesh and bone and all those heavy human things.

The city cradles him in her concrete arms as he rises, weightless as midnight fog. Through layers of rust-worn pipes and grief-stained walls he drifts, each molecule of his being singing that ancient song of untethering. Seoul stretches below like a tired goddess, her neon veins pulsing dim beneath a blanket of shadow, her streets winding like whispered secrets. The streetlights flicker their morse code confessions to no one, while towers pierce the darkness like broken teeth, watching with eyes gone dull from seeing too much.

He drifts aimlessly through the night, a moth drawn to the flickering flames of human fear. It's funny, really, how terror became his true north- the only compass that ever made sense anymore. Because fear? That's the sweet poison that keeps his kind alive, the dark nectar they trade in whispers and shadows.

The night unfolds like delicate origami, each dream a different shade of darkness. First comes a whispered tragedy: woman dreams of her mother's voice echoes through a phone's dead silence, each unanswered scream carving valleys of helplessness into her soul. Then, a nightmare painted in motion - man’s caught in an infinite loop of terror, hands white-knuckled on a steering wheel that won't save anyone, least of all the child who keeps appearing in his headlights like a recurring heartbreak. And finally, there's the boy who could be a metaphor for longing itself, standing before an eternally closed door while flowers wilt and die in his grasp, hope rotting petal by petal in time-lapse agony.

He moves through dreams like a ghost through fog - quick, quiet, taking only what he needs to survive. Never lingering. Never looking too long at the faces of those whose fears he consumes. The moment that hollow ache inside him dulls to something bearable, he's already fading away, a shadow slipping between minds like smoke through fingers, nameless and untraceable as midnight itself.

And then your presence washes over him, unexpected and unmistakable in the dark. You are beautiful, he thinks, and the thought flutters like a trapped bird in his chest before he crushes it between his ribs. Dream eaters aren't meant for love, aren't built for the delicate dance of attraction. They consume fear, devour nightmares - they don't yearn for the very souls they feed upon.

It hits different this time. There's no screaming terror clawing at his consciousness, no desperate siren song of fear pulling him in. Your dream? It's barely a whisper, soft and hesitant like the ghost of a first kiss, tugging at something deep in his chest that he thought he'd buried years ago. And gods, isn't that the most terrifying thing of all?

The dream unfolds like an old photograph bleached by time - a street stretching endlessly into nothing, all washed-out greys and misted edges. Faceless figures move in perfect, terrible synchronization, their bodies flowing like water around invisible obstacles. There's something deeply wrong about the way they move, each step too precise, too rehearsed. Their features are smudged away by sleep's careless hand. They march onward, an army of beautiful emptiness, never breaking stride, never glancing down.

And then he sees you, a lonely figure kneeling in the heart of this indifferent choreography. The world spins madly on around you- a blur of faceless bodies moving in their perfect, terrible dance- but you remain still, an island of grief in an ocean of motion. Your hands- trembling like autumn leaves in a storm- cradle something (someone?) in your lap, the weight of it pressing crescents into your palms. A body, maybe, though the face is blurred into nothing, like your mind couldn’t bear to fill in the details.

He lingers at the edges of your dream like a half-formed thought, wrapped in shadows. He shouldn't care- you're just another dreamer, another midnight soul crying out in the dark. But here he is, watching the way grief pools in your hands like liquid silver, listening to the way your voice breaks around words meant for Death's ears alone.

"I'm here... I'm trying..." Your voice catches, breaks, shatters like glass in your throat. "please just- please wake up."

Your hands move with the desperate rhythm of someone trying to hold water, pressing against the faceless form again and again and again. Each motion is a prayer, each touch a plea bargaining with whatever gods might be listening. You're begging for warmth, for breath, for any sign that this horror cradled in your lap isn't as permanent as it feels. But the figure remains still, already dissolving. The crowd around you moves faster now, a tide of indifference with undertow teeth. Their gazes slide past you like oil on water, heads tilting just enough to say: we saw you fail, and we'll remember.

Jungkook can't help but lean closer, magnetized by something raw and familiar in your expression that makes his chest ache in ways he doesn't have words for. There's no panic painted across your features, no desperate thrashing against fate's cruel hand. Just pure, crystalline despair - the kind that settles in your bones like an old friend. He recognizes it instantly: the hollow resignation of someone who's danced this dance before, who knows with certainty that they'll waltz with failure again until the universe finally tires of their stumbling steps.

The colors begin to fade. That’s how it always goes, dreams eroding at the edges once the fear peaks, once the ending arrives. He's about to retreat into the safety of shadows, into the familiar dance of watching-but-never-seen, when something impossible happens.

Your head lifts, eyes finding him with unerring precision through the crowd - not searching, not begging the universe for mercy, but piercing straight through every careful barrier he's built, through the ancient veil between watchers and dreamers. Your gaze meets his with the quiet certainty of a key sliding home, soft as a secret yet steady as truth, seeing him with a clarity that defies all the rules that were ever written.

Jungkook stills.

His breath catches in his throat like a half-formed prayer. His body freezes mid-existence, every particle of his being suspended in perfect, terrible stillness. Because this? This is wrong. Impossible. This breaks every rule written in stardust and shadow.

Dreamers don't see Dream Eaters - it's the first law of their twisted existence, carved into the bones of reality itself. He is meant to be nothing more than a whisper between heartbeats, a shadow's shadow, the thief that slips between dreams like silk through trembling fingers. But your eyes don't look away.

“I’m sorry,” you say, the words barely above a whisper. “I really wanted to help. But I couldn’t. I guess I’m not good enough.”

And with that the dream shatters. Like a mirror hit with reality's sledgehammer. Reality folds like wet origami, space and time collapsing into themselves with the grace of a dying star. The sound doesn't just stop, it un-becomes, each frequency turning to static before dissolving into the void. Gravity forgets its own name, light breaks its promises, and the whole world turns itself inside out like a glove made of nightmares.

And Jungkook wakes.

He bolts upright in a body that suddenly feels too small for him. His breath comes in sharp, broken waves. The room around him doesn’t make sense for several long moments.

The digital clock's red glow illuminates 03:41 as moonlight streams through the perpetually open window, the silence broken only by his thundering heartbeat. His throat constricts as the impossible reality sinks in - dreamers aren't supposed to see Dream Eaters, yet you had not only seen him but acknowledged his presence with an apology that now echoes through his mind.

And he can’t even fall back to sleep now as his body and mind feel fully recharged for the first time in…years?

What the hell even happened and who are you?

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Daylight always arrived like a mistake in Jungkook’s world.

It slipped in sideways through the window, pale and apologetic, illuminating the floating dust and the edges of his too-quiet apartment. He lay there for a long time, not moving, watching the ceiling blur and sharpen as his vision shifted, over and over again. The sheets clung to him like a second skin, damp with the sweat of something he couldn’t name.

Your voice had followed him into waking. ‘I really wanted to help.”

His chest ached like he’d run miles in a body he hadn’t worn right in years. His limbs felt heavier than usual, but it wasn’t the familiar hunger. It was something deeper. Something quieter. A seed of longing lodged beneath his sternum, pulsing.

When he finally sat up, it was with the dazed caution of someone who’d witnessed a miracle and didn’t trust himself to speak of it aloud. The morning passed in a blur - coffee untouched, the hum of his computer ignored, a dozen emails blinking like signals from a world he no longer felt part of.

By noon, desperation overruled disbelief. He sat cross-legged on the floor, laptop glowing in the dim cave of his living room, typing with fingers that trembled too much to be steady.

dreamers seeing things in dreams?

lucid dreaming hallucination?

can dream figures see you back

person spoke to me in dream is it real

can people share dreams??

dreamwalking

spiritual visitation

ancient dream lore

Each query returned pages filled with contradictions and crystal shops. Forums full of strangers comparing stories of sleep paralysis and shadow men, Reddit threads dissecting shared hallucinations and “astral projection for beginners.” The phrase Dream Eater brought up one anime character, a few urban legends, and a horrifying deep-sea fish.

Each search result felt like chasing smoke - close enough to see but too insubstantial to grasp. None of it rang with resonance of truth, that quiet certainty that whispers "here, finally, are the answers you seek." How could it, really, when his entire existence was a footnote in reality's margins, a story written in invisible ink between the lines of what most people called "normal"? Still, he had to try. Had to know. The soft click of the laptop closing felt like admitting defeat.

But the memory of your eyes finding his through that veil of unreality haunted him like a half-remembered lullaby. You had seen him and that impossible fact echoed through his mind.

For the first time since forever, his thumb hovered over the cursed group chat icon.

[Jungkook]: anyone wanna hang out tonight?

[Jin]: the prophecy.... it's happening

[Taehyung]: screenshots or it didn't happen

[Hoseok]: HELLO??? WHO IS THIS AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH OUR HERMIT

[Yoongi]: squints suspiciously in elder

[Namjoon]: hold up let me check if hell froze over

[Jimin]: do we bring wine or whiskey

[Jimin]: omw with Both because this is clearly an emergency

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By seven, they arrived- five different energies orbiting his living room like planets around something newly magnetic.

Jimin swept in with enough takeout to feed an army and Taehyung materialized with his camera (because god forbid a moment go undocumented) and approximately one hundred and one questions burning holes in his tongue. Hoseok didn't just enter - he arrived, carrying sunshine in his pockets like it was spare change. Jin brought his particular flavor of chaos wrapped in sarcasm and perfect timing. Yoongi slipped in like a shadow with eyes that read novels in the spaces between words. And Namjoon brought books he forgot to give back two years ago and didn’t mention it.

And they all brought their eyes: wide and curious. Like they were witnessing the birth of something rare and wild and wonderful.

“You look… different,” Jimin said, biting into a tangerine like he was studying Jungkook instead of the fruit.

“Yeah,” Taehyung added, leaning in with narrowed eyes. “You sleeping now or what? The purple zombie rings are gone.”

Jungkook rolled his eyes, though a quiet thrill climbed up his spine at the idea that maybe, just maybe, something in him had shifted enough for them to notice.

“Must be lighting,” he muttered, sinking deeper into the couch.

“Oh, he bites now.” Jin gasped. “Our boy’s got fight in him again.”

There was laughter. Real, echoing warmth. For the first time in ages, Jungkook didn’t feel like he was watching through glass. He spoke and laughed, carelessly. He accepted the second drink and let himself answer questions without flinching. And for a few minutes, the ache inside his chest dimmed, dulled into something almost human. But beneath the buzz and the hum, the stories and the teasing, something itched.

You weren’t there. He needed to try again. Not to see you. Not to hold you. Just… for research. Just to know whether it was a fluke. A misfire. A one-time glitch in a cursed existence.

"Hey," he said, halfway through Jin's story about a botched blind date, "hypothetically…how would you find someone if you only knew their face?"

The silence stretched for exactly 0.3 seconds - just long enough for his words to sink into their collective consciousness.

And then, like a dam breaking under the weight of six years' worth of pent-up matchmaking energy, chaos erupted: “You met someone?”, “Wait, is this about a girl?”, “Who is she? What does she look like?”, “Oh my God, finally!”, “Is she real, or one of your AI clients?”

Jungkook tried to look annoyed, but the heat in his cheeks betrayed him. “She’s just someone I saw… briefly,” he said, and it wasn’t a lie.

Jimin leaned in. “Where?”

Jungkook blinked, the weight of their expectant stares pressing against his skin like static electricity. The truth sat heavy on his tongue, a leaden thing threatening to spill past his lips. "Somewhere near... Jongno," he managed, the lie tasting like copper. It wasn't completely false. "I think."

"You should go back," Namjoon offered with that gentle wisdom of his, like he was suggesting something as simple as retracing steps to find lost keys. "If it was fate or whatever, maybe it'll happen again."

He nodded mechanically, swallowing back a laugh that might have come out too bitter. Fate? No, this was something else entirely - something written in the spaces between sleeping and waking. This was you.

They didn't know. And this should always stay like that. The truth was a luxury he couldn't afford, not when it meant risking the warmth in their eyes turning to horror. Not when it meant watching their smiles crack like porcelain hitting concrete. Better to keep this cursed existence locked behind his sleep deprived eyes where it belonged, where it couldn't hurt anyone but himself.

But after they left- after the dishes were cleaned and the last echoes of laughter faded into memory- he found himself drawn to the window like a moth to streetlight, watching Seoul's fog paint poetry across the skyline in shades of maybe.

His reflection stared back at him, a ghost caught between worlds, and wasn't that just perfectly fitting? Because how do you find someone who exists in the space between sleeping and waking? How do you trace footprints left in dreams?

You looked at his cursed existence and didn't turn away. The fog crawled closer, wrapping the city in its gentle suffocation, and he pressed his forehead against the cold glass. The worst part wasn't the not knowing. It wasn't even the ache of remembering.

No, the worst part was the quiet voice in his head whispering: what if that was it? What if that single moment of being truly seen was all he'd ever get?

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The next few nights unfolded like a punishment disguised as routine. Jungkook slipped into the dark as he always had, body hollowed out and spirit stretched thin, the hunger beneath his ribs pulsing like it had a voice of its own. But tonight? Tonight wasn't about feeding on fear. Tonight was about finding you.

Never in his years of navigating dreamscapes had he been picky about whose nightmares he consumed. Before you, he'd been content to drift through the dark like some cosmic vacuum cleaner of terror, taking whatever scraps of fear the universe saw fit to give him.

But now he moved through dreams like a lovesick ghost, all his usual grace replaced by desperate yearning. Each mind he touched was just another disappointment, another "sorry, wrong nightmare" in his endless search for you.

A boy dreamed of being trapped in a theater where the seats whispered his secrets aloud. A woman dreamt she was back in her wedding dress, but the aisle stretched endlessly, her legs frozen mid-step. A faceless man sprinted down a corridor made entirely of mirrors, each one showing his worst mistake on loop.

He fed, but it was a hollow thing. Like trying to fill an ocean with raindrops. His essence ghosted through their nightmares as he searched their unseeing faces for something. Recognition? A glimpse of what you'd given him? But their eyes slid past him, unseeing and unknowing.

And wasn't that just the way of things? The natural order he'd accepted since forever? He was meant to be unseen, unnoticed - a shadow between heartbeats, a whisper between worlds, the thing that makes you question whether that nightmare was real or just another bad dream.

So why had you looked right at him and seen straight through to his core?

The ache followed him into daylight like a particularly clingy ghost, settling somewhere between his ribcage and his common sense. It wasn't just hunger anymore, this was yearning - and isn't that just the most inconvenient thing for a nightmare eater to catch?

So he did what any sleep-deprived supernatural being would do when faced with emotions: something absolutely ridiculous.

The notebook emerged from its tomb of tangled cables like some ancient artifact, blank pages accusingly white. The pencil felt wrong in his hands, like trying to hold onto stardust or catch morning fog in a jar.

He tried to draw you. And it was a foolish idea for someone whose artistic peak was stick figures in middle school. But how do you capture the way someone's soul looks when it's breaking? How do you sketch the sound of a voice that doesn't shake even when the world is falling apart?

The first attempt looked like something between a sleep paralysis demon and a badly photographed ghost. Your jaw came out looking like it belonged in a geometry textbook and your eyes were all wrong, missing that galaxy of sadness he'd seen. The mouth was either too soft or too harsh, never quite the perfect paradox he remembered.

But he kept going: page after page, like some possessed art student during finals week. It wasn't about getting it right. It was about holding onto that impossible second when warmth and sorrow danced together in your eyes, when your voice carried steel wrapped in silk, when your apology felt like a key turning in a lock he didn't know existed.

The final result looked less like a portrait and more like someone had given a pencil to a particularly emotional rain cloud. He stared at it, tasting failure like burnt coffee on his tongue, and wondered when exactly he'd lost his mind.

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Then, four nights later, the universe shifted on its axis. The feeling hit like a punch to the soul - not the usual gnawing hunger, but something electric. Something that made his phantom form vibrate like a tuning fork struck against destiny. The very air seemed to bend around him, dream-light filtering through reality's cracks in that impossible shade of lilac that screamed you.

He moved like a man possessed through the dreamscape, muscle memory pulling him across a city that existed only in shadow-space. Past landmarks that belonged to no waking map: a metal spire wearing its rust like a crown of thorns, obsidian rooftops with their hearts of green glass, a water tower that sang silence into the void.

And there you were.

You looked different in this light - clearer, sharper, like someone had wiped fog from a mirror. He watched you with the kind of intensity that would've been criminal in daylight, cataloging every detail like a drowning man counting his last breaths.

God, I'm literally stalking someone through their dreams, he thought, and the realization should've tasted like shame but monsters don't get to play by human rules, do they? And that's what he was now - something that lived in the spaces between heartbeats, feeding on fear like others fed on bread. So maybe this wasn't an obsession at all. Maybe this was devotion with teeth.

He stepped forward, and reality bent. The dream opened its arms like a lover welcoming him home, and he fell into your nightmare like he was always meant to be there.

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He feels it in his bones before his eyes catch up - that telltale whisper of wrong that makes the dream-edges curl like burning paper. Not because anything looks off. But because nightmares are patient things, content to wait until the perfect moment to shatter your happiness into glass.

The lights hit him like a physical thing, a cascade of stark white that makes his world spin sideways for a heartbeat. The air practically vibrates with sound - thunderous applause that seems to shake the very foundations of this dream-space, making reality tremble at its seams. His fingers part heavy velvet curtains just enough to see.

There you are, bathed in spotlight like some ethereal being stepped straight out of a fairytale. Silver and gold paint you in glory as you stand among your fellow dancers, clutching flowers like they're made of starlight. Your smile is soft and wide as you wave to the faceless crowd. Their features are a blur- a sea of mouths and hands and sound- but their adoration is unmistakable. The stage is yours.

And Jungkook forgets how to exist for a moment. Because you're not just beautiful, you're incandescent. Free. The weight of the world has slipped from your shoulders and left pure joy in its wake.

His heart stutters in his chest as he watches you spin across the stage, accepting another armful of flowers with a laugh that could make flowers grow in winter. Your happiness is a living thing, spilling from every movement, every gesture, until you're practically glowing brighter than the stage lights themselves.

This isn't fear or darkness or anything close to a nightmare. For a heartbeat, a dangerous sort of hope unfurls in his chest - what if the rules have changed? What if whatever cosmic force lets him devour nightmares has finally decided to let him taste sweeter dreams too?

Something shifts in the air like a record scratch in slow motion, like the moment before a glass hits concrete. A shiver crawls down his spine with icy fingers, and there's that familiar weight settling behind his ribs, cold and heavy as a tomb.

The applause warps, twisting into something wrong, something hungry. It's too sharp now, too insistent, like a thousand hands clapping in perfect, terrible synchronization. The lights stutter and snap, a violent morse code of white-hot panic. And the audience? Their faces blur and stretch like melting wax, features running together until they're nothing but a grotesque sea of emptiness. Then, cutting through it all like a knife through silk, a voice:

"Get off that stage." The words slice through the dreamlight like shattered glass, and then she materializes - all sharp angles and barely contained rage, heels striking the floorboards. She's a storm in human form, fury written in every line of her face, and when she reaches for you, her fingers are iron bands around your wrist.

"Mom, stop!" Your scream tears through the air, raw and desperate, but she's unmovable as marble.

The scene fractures - dancers reaching with helpless hands, voices rising in a desperate chorus. "Mrs. Y/L/N, don't take her away!" someone pleads into the chaos. "She has a god-given talent- please!"

But she might as well be carved from stone, deaf to everything but her own determination as she drags you backstage. Your sobs echo off the walls like broken music, and Jungkook follows because gravity itself couldn't hold him back now.

The dream twists and writhes around both of you, corridors sprouting like dark veins lined with ghostly posters and mirrors that reflect nothing but shadows. You're fracturing at the edges, voice splintering like crystal as you stumble in her wake, and something in Jungkook's chest aches with an intensity that threatens to tear him apart.

"Why?" Your voice breaks like shattered dreams. "Why are you destroying everything I've worked for?"

"A doctor,"she spits the word like venom, her grip a steel trap around your wrist. "That's what you'll be. This little... Dance fantasy? It dies. Tonight."

And your heart shatters. The sound of it must echo through the dreamscape because your next words come out raw, bleeding, "Please, I can't! I won't survive there. Don't make me live inside someone else's story, please, I'm begging you!"

"Your grandfather's deathbed wish," she wielded the words like a blade, each syllable precise and cutting. "Or did you forget? Did you think you could trade his legacy for…What exactly? Spotlights and pirouettes?"

The word “grandfather” hits you like a physical blow. Your soul folds in on itself like a dying star, grief and guilt gravitational forces too strong to escape. Your sobs aren't just sound anymore - they're poetry written in pain, each breath a verse of despair.

That's when Jungkook materializes from shadow and starlight, his presence suddenly solid as truth between worlds.

"Enough." Just one word, but it does the work. He moves like darkness given form, placing himself between you and her like a shield. And suddenly your dream bows to his will and your mother dissolves.

Reality bends. The backstage dissolves into the empty stage, now a hollow cathedral of shadows. You're there, crumpled on the floor like a discarded dream, flowers scattered around you like fallen stars. A single petal trembles by your ankle, then stills.

Moving silently across the stage, he watches your tears glisten like silver rivers on feverish skin until you lift your head and speak with a raw yet steady voice,"It's you again."

Those three words cascade through his reality like an avalanche, shattering every certainty he's ever known - this isn't merely coincidence or imagination or some flaw in the dream-fabric, but rather an impossible truth: among the billions of dreamers who forget him nightly, you alone can pierce his invisibility, can know him.

In that very moment Jungkook understands something terrifying and beautiful:

You’re not some glitch in his world.

He’s an aberration in yours.

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You're curled into yourself like a wounded bird when you finally meet his gaze again, your eyes tracing the planes of his face with the hesitant reverence of someone trying to piece together a dream from morning-fog memories.

"Where have I seen you before?" The words slip from your lips like a secret.

Jungkook's throat constricts around unspoken truths, but he plays his part like the supernatural being he is. He settles beside you- close enough to count your heartbeats, far enough that the space between you aches like a physical thing. Your sadness wraps around him like smoke, familiar as his own shadow.

"Nowhere," he breathes, the lie tasting like stardust on his tongue. "We're strangers."

But you just laugh, soft and worn around the edges, brushing away a wayward strand of hair with fingers that tremble ever so slightly.

“No way,” you say, shaking your head. “There’s no way I could make up a face like that.

His heart does this stupid little stumble in his chest at your words. You catch his expression, that deer-in-headlights look that makes him seem impossibly young for half a second and suddenly you're laughing, the sound pure and bright enough to make the dream-shadows retreat.

"Oh my god," you say, and there's a warmth in your voice he hasn't heard before, like honey in sunlight. "My subconscious really said 'here's an ethereally beautiful boy who blushes when you compliment him.' That's just... devastating, actually."

He turns away, but not before you catch the way his ears flush pink. It's not the embarrassment that makes his chest ache but the cruel irony of being seen so clearly by someone who thinks you're nothing but a dream.

"I'm nobody special," he murmurs to the floorboards, voice rough with something he can't name. "Just... just a guy."

The laugh you share is gentle as twilight. A fragile thread connecting two souls who shouldn't be able to touch at all.

But beneath his smile, something in Jungkook splinters like stained glass catching sunlight. Because you still don't know. How could you? To you, he's nothing but a beautiful fever dream, a figment spun from stardust and desperate wishes. Just another coping mechanism your mind conjured from the static between sleeping and waking. And maybe that's easier and safer. But it still burns.

He wants to say something about what just happened: about stages and spotlights and the way your mother's ghost left bruises on your dreams, but the words catch in his throat like broken wings.

"This was... a lot," he manages with a soft voice.

You laugh, but it's the kind of laugh that bleeds at the edges. Your eyes find the darkness above, searching for answers in the void.

"This?" The word falls from your lips like a tired prayer. "This is nothing compared to my real life."

And something in him shatters completely. "So this is just the tip of the iceberg?" he whispers, afraid of the answer.

"Yeah." You don’t elaborate further.

The dream-lights have long since faded, the phantom flowers scattered to dust. You sit there in the hollow dark, a masterpiece painted in shades of exhaustion, looking like the world took everything that made you shine and left behind only shadows.

"I haven't danced in six years," you confess to the darkness, each word heavy as lead. "Haven't even stepped on a stage. Med school swallowed me whole right after graduation. Now I work part-time in the emergency department. Night shifts, mostly." Your voice cracks on those last words like ice in spring.

His breath catches. The kind of work where Death sits in the break room, drinking coffee like just another coworker.

"I see things," you continue, voice hollow as autumn wind through dead leaves. "People bleeding out. Crying. Dying. Alone. I patch them up with steady hands and pretend my soul isn't unraveling stitch by stitch." The silence between you grows teeth. "Six years," you whisper to the shadows. "Six years of my life fed to the machine of parental pride while I slowly forget how to breathe."

Something ancient and wounded bleeds into Jungkook's voice. "You don't deserve to be anyone's sacrifice."

Your laugh sounds like glass breaking in slow motion. "And yet."

Then your eyes find his and the world tilts on its axis because you're looking at him like you can see straight through to where his soul should be. Not as shadow-walker or dream-fragment. As something terrifyingly, wonderfully real.

"I remember your last dream," Jungkook's entire being stutters to a halt. "The nightmare with the faceless thing."

"Please don't," you breathe, folding smaller, as if you could origami yourself out of existence. "I don’t want to talk about it."

He watches your breath catch like fabric on thorns and nods. Some wounds are still too fresh to name and he can wait. Or never bring it up again if you wish.

“You know,” he says gently, “this is a dream. You’re not a prisoner here. This world is your world, it can be whatever you want.”

He rises to his feet like morning mist, extending a hand that holds universes in its palm. For a heartbeat, you hesitate, but some offers transcend thought and your fingers find his.

"You can wish," he whispers, voice soft as starlight, and snaps.

In a blink, the lights return. So does the thunderous ovation. The spotlight glows around you like a blessing. Cameras flash, dancers reappear like smoke. The energy floods back into the dream like breath into a drowning chest.

A laugh bubbles up from somewhere deep inside you: pure, untamed, tasting of forgotten summers, and you throw up a hand against the brilliant chaos of it all.

Before you can think better of it, your fingers are tangled with his and you're running backstage, dragging this beautiful fever dream behind you. Your giggles echo off the walls like wind chimes, and for a moment you're seventeen again, before the world taught you how to be silent.

“That was fun,” you breathe, brushing rebel strands from your flushed face. "Wish I could handle my nightmares with that kind of flair."

His answering grin is soft at the edges, but something in your expression shifts before he can speak. "I don't... I don't actually want this anymore."

He blinks, starlit eyes questioning. "Why?"

"Because I grew up," you say, voice barely a whisper now. "I have responsibilities. Real ones. Dreams like this... they're not for people like me anymore. Back then I was seventeen and stupid and…" Your voice catches. "I can't afford to be that person now."

"What do you want, then?" The question hangs between you like suspended stardust.

"Nothing," you finally breathe, the word falling like autumn leaves. "I just want to stop existing in the real world for a while."

And the way you say it - there's no bitterness there. Just bone-deep exhaustion and raw honesty. Something in him fractures, and the words spill out before he can catch them.

"Can I…" he pauses, voice going soft. "I know it's weird but... can I hug you?"

Your eyebrow arches, a spark of mischief dancing in your eyes. "Look at you, consent-king behavior,” you tease, lips curving. "Of course you can, you absolute masterpiece of my subconscious."

He lets out a soft laugh that catches in his throat. His arms find their way around you with gentleness, but when you lean into him something ancient and lonely inside his chest just shatters. The hug deepens and suddenly there's nothing ethereal about it anymore; it's all solid warmth and thundering heartbeats and the impossible reality of two souls finding anchor in each other through the veil of dreams.

For the first time since this curse claimed him, Jungkook feels real. Not a dream-walker, not nightmare-eater, just a boy being held like he matters. You stay tangled in each other's gravity as the dreamscape bleeds away like watercolors in rain, both pretending you can't feel the way your fingers clutch a little tighter with each fading second.

When consciousness claims him back, dragging him gasping into dawn's tender light, something's different. The usual hollow ache is gone, replaced by something electric and alive that makes his whole being sing. And in that moment, with Seoul's sunrise painting his walls in gold, Jungkook knows it with the certainty usually reserved for natural laws:

Even if it takes lifetimes, he's going to find his way back to you.

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Jungkook can't stop thinking about you.

You linger in his mind, seeping into every crack and crevice of his consciousness. Your presence is a ghost that haunts the spaces between keystrokes, between breaths, between the mundane moments when his hands forget their purpose and his thoughts spiral back to you like moths to flame.

He's memorized the cadence of your voice, cataloged every micro-expression that crossed your face, archived the exact weight of you against his chest like it's precious data his heart can't bear to lose. Time stretches like pulled taffy as he sits on his floor, back pressed against an unforgiving wall, absently tracing infinity symbols on a coffee mug that's as cold and forgotten as his attempts at productivity.

There's a quiet irony in how his relationship with sleep has transformed. What was once a velvet-lined prison cell where he performed his gim duty - has become something sacred. Something anticipated. Now he's a lovesick teenager checking his phone every five minutes, except instead of waiting for a text, he's waiting for consciousness to slip away so he can find you again.

But of course - of fucking course - that's when his brain decides to throw an absolute rebellion. Excitement pulses through him like caffeine. His body begs for rest while his mind runs circles. The very thing that once came without effort now eludes him.

When sleep finally deigns to take him, it's with all the grace of a drunk trying to fit a key in a lock. But none of that matters because he finds you. He knows the path now, could walk it blindfolded: past the skylight with its spiderweb cracks, around the chimney that leans like a tired soldier, beneath the neon sign that flickers like a dying firefly. This isn't wandering anymore, it’s muscle memory, this is gravity, the inevitable pull of two stars caught in each other's orbit. And there it is again - your window, soft light spilling through curtains, you're dreaming already.

He steps inside.

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The dream whispers into existence like a secret. Sterile white walls stretch endlessly, their fluorescent veins humming a synthetic lullaby that only hospitals know how to sing. The air tastes of antiseptic and quiet desperation.

You materialize before him - a warrior in wrinkled scrubs, squaring off against a bureaucrat whose clipboard might as well be a shield. Exhaustion paints shadows beneath your eyes, but defiance burns brighter.

"I need a day off," you say, each word precise as a scalpel.

The administrator's sigh could fill a balloon with disappointment. "We're understaffed. Again. Find someone to switch with you, then we'll talk."

Your jaw sets like concrete, shoulders bearing the weight of too many sleepless nights. "I've been on four night shifts in a row," you breathe, your voice carrying the weight of a thousand unspoken pleas.

He shrugs, armor-plated in indifference. "It's not personal."

Your laugh is sharp as broken glass. "It's exhaustion."

But then - your gaze catches on something beyond him, where Jungkook stands like a shadow. Your expression softens, relief bleeding into your features. "Oh, finally. Maybe you'll help me figure out a perfect excuse to give my boss so I can sleep for more than four hours."

Jungkook glides forward, midnight grace in human form. His head tilts, curiosity dancing in his eyes. "Exploitative boss?" he inquires, voice smooth as silk.

You nod, grave as a judge. "Master manipulator."

He considers this cosmic injustice for a heartbeat. Then, with elegant precision, he lifts a hand. One snap - and reality fractures. The administrator dissolves, leaving only empty air where bureaucracy once stood.

Your eyes spark with indignation. "Hey! I wanted to yell at him. At least here."

Jungkook's smile curves like a crescent moon. "Why waste dream energy on that?"

Before protest can bloom on your lips, the world begins to melt. Hospital walls dissolve like watercolors, sterile white bleeding into impossible color and the air transforms, becoming warm.

And suddenly - sky. Endless, infinite sky. Clouds drift beneath your feet like islands of sugar, while aurora colors paint the heavens in sweeping brushstrokes of pink and violet. You turn slowly, wonder breaking across your face like dawn.

Jungkook watches, memorizing the way joy transforms you. Then, with the gentleness of falling snow, he extends his hand, and you accept it. And together, you run.

You dance through dreams like starlight on water. No destination guides your steps - just pure, unbridled motion and laughter that tastes like champagne bubbles. Each leap between clouds is poetry, your movements fluid as mercury, untethered by earthly constraints. He watches, mesmerized, as this version of you. untouched by life's sharp edges, paints joy across the sky.

When exhaustion finally claims you both, you collapse onto a cloud that feels like silk, your hair a halo against the white. Jungkook settles beside you with careful grace, his hands folded in his lap. Silence stretches between you, sweet and elastic.

A laugh, soft as windchimes, escapes your lips. "I've been dreaming wrong my whole life."

He reclines, moonlight caught in his smile. "Most do."

You pluck a piece of cloud, tossing the ephemeral fluff at his chest. It dissolves like a secret.

"Rude," he grins, starlight dancing in his eyes.

Your gaze lingers on him now, wonder replacing mischief. "You came back."

"I did." His voice carries the weight of secrets that you are not ready to face yet.

"This is different," you murmur. "These dreams... seeing you again and again... it's never happened before."

Something tightens in his chest but he has to ask the terrifying question. "When you wake," he breathes, "do you remember me?"

"Yes." Simple and certain, you don’t even hesitate. The word ripples through him like waves through still water. "I remember all of it," you continue. "Every dream with you. And I never remember dreams - they usually fade."

Relief softens his shoulders; he hadn't realized they were carved from tension.

Your eyes find his, curious as cats. "So," you tease, "who are you, really?"

He hesitates, the question stinging more than expected. "I'm a Dream Eater," he says, leaning forward. "And my name is Jungkook. Did you know that already?"

You catch your lower lip between your teeth, considering. "Dream Eaters? Never heard of them. How did my mind even come up with that?"

He rolls his eyes skyward as you laugh, the sound pure as bells.

"Well then," you say, "I'm Y/N. A pleasure, Mr. Dream Eater."

He nods, something warm unfurling in his chest. "Likewise. Tell me about yourself.”

You hum thoughtfully, stretching like a cat in sunlight. “Imagine a very lonely girl,” you begin. “A girl who has a big, noisy family and few friends, but still feels like no one ever really gets her. Someone who works in a place where everyone is kind but exhausted. We bond over how much we hate what we do. I read romance novels when I’m not too tired, I go on runs to get out of my head, and the only time I feel like I’m me is when I’m asleep and nobody wants anything from me.”

Jungkook watches you as you speak. Every word feels like a note in a song he doesn’t realize he’s memorizing.

“And you, Dream Eater Jungkook?” you ask, inching closer. “Who are you?”

He stares at your hands, then up. “I’m an IT guy. I have friends. I’m not that close with my family, but we stay in touch. And as cliché as it is… I always feel alone. Not in the obvious way. It’s more like… the universe misjudged me somehow. Like I was born with the wrong fate. Like I’m stuck carrying something I never chose, cursed or something.”

You nod. “I know.” Your hand rises, slow and careful, and runs through his hair.

Jungkook's breath catches in his throat, every muscle going taut like a bowstring.

“No,” you state firmly now. “Someone with eyes like yours can’t be cursed.”

He laughs is that kind that wraps around your bones like honey-warm sunlight. His fingers find your retreating hand, catching you in a grip that's gentle as a prayer but sure as gravity. And there's something in your eyes that makes his heart stutter in his chest.

The world tilts and spins as he pulls you both down into the cloud-soft darkness, your combined laughter painting silver ribbons through the air. You land in a tangle of limbs and breathless giggles, his body half-draped over yours like the world's most perfect blanket.

Time stops. Or maybe it's just that neither of you remembers how to breathe properly anymore. His arm brackets your head, careful and strong, while his other hand hovers near your ribs like he's afraid you might shatter if he touches you. Your chest rises and falls beneath him in quick, butterfly-wing movements.

The silence between you crackles like lightning before a storm.

And then you look at him with eyes that Jungkook swears could drown worlds, lashes frozen mid-flutter, and his heart forgets every rhythm it's ever known. Your gaze drops to his lips just for a heartbeat, long enough to set his blood on fire. And he watches your hair catch the dream-light like captured aurora, wondering if his thundering heart might give him away.

Neither of you dares to move. His eyes trace constellations across your features - mapping the soft curve of your mouth, the way your breath catches when his thigh brushes yours. You don't pull away. Instead, you tilt your head, an invitation written in the language of almost-touches.

When you speak, your words ghost across his skin like butterfly kisses. "So..." Your smile returns, shy and knowing all at once. "Can you take me to other places too?"

His lips part but words fail him spectacularly, too busy fighting the gravitational pull of your mouth. You're watching him like he's something ethereal, something that exists beyond dreams and reality.

Words claw their way past the symphony of want thrumming through his veins. "I could," he whispers, each syllable a caress against your skin. "If you wanted me to."

"I think I do," you breathe, and your fingers that are still tangled with his against cloud-silk, tighten slightly. Something inside him unspools at that tiny pressure.

He shifts closer until the space between you becomes nothing but shared breath and possibility. His body settles against yours, solid and real in a way dreams aren't supposed to be. Your noses almost brush. But neither of you bridges that final gap.

The wanting hangs there between you, delicate as sugar, sweet as sin waiting.

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Jungkook wakes like shattered stained glass - all sharp edges and holy remnants, dragged from dreams by reality's merciless hands.

The dream bleeds away too cruel. Your phantom warmth haunts him still. Reality crashes through his consciousness like an uninvited guest: sheets cold as winter frost, his forgotten computer screen humming its electronic lullaby, dawn's sickly green fingers creeping through the blinds like unwanted prophecies. He lies there, a marble statue in rumpled sheets, watching the ceiling as if it holds the secrets to finding you in the waking world.

Time, he thinks, is the cruelest god of all - stretching endless in solitude, slipping through desperate fingers the moment joy takes root.

When the sun claims its throne in the sky, he moves. And it’s not from want but from the mundane tyranny of hours that refuse to pass unmarked. Emails become white noise, lines of code blur into meaningless symbols, breakfast turns to ash on his tongue. There's only one truth that keeps his heart beating: the promise of nightfall.

He counts heartbeats disguised as hours. The light softens like old photographs, his eyes burn like prayer candles. And finally sleep claims him like a lover's kiss.

And there you are, waiting for him.

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In dreams, you are free.

Jungkook makes sure of it: crafts entire universes with gentle hands and a craftsman's devotion. He builds you realms where gravity is just a suggestion, where shame dissolves like morning mist. The rules here drape around you like ribbons, weightless enough to forget they ever existed.

One night you're both cosmic wanderers, dancing through star-scattered void, your laughter echoing across light years as you spin through technicolor nebulae. "My knees!" you shout, delighted, breathless, "They don't even know what pain is here!" and his joy bubbles up like stardust, infectious and pure.

Another dream finds you towering like a goddess, him shrunk to pocket-size, playing an elaborate game of chase through a garden where teacups bloom like flowers. when you (deliberately) crush him beneath your heel, he gives an Oscar-worthy performance of despair.

He shows you the art of dream-weaving. How to coax reality into new shapes, how to whisper your desires into existence, to believe with your whole heart that anything is possible.

"This universe," he reminds you, voice soft with wonder, "it's yours. Completely yours. What do you want to make of it?"

So you create.

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One night, you materialize in wrinkled scrubs, your essence dimmed like a star fighting through smog. "I want something stupid tonight," you whisper, voice raw with reality's weight. So he gives it to you.

The air crystallizes into luxury - a red carpet unfurls like a dragon's tongue beneath your feet. Light fragments into a thousand camera flashes, each one capturing your metamorphosis as couture and tailoring dance across your form. The Met Gala rises behind you like a palace of dreams, while the Oscars beckon ahead, and somewhere beyond the marble horizon, Nobel laureates await your arrival. Your laughter cascades like champagne bubbles.

"We're absolutely shameless," you wheeze through tears of mirth. "Not a humble bone between us."

He sweeps into a bow that would make monarchs envious. “Welcome to your ego’s highlight reel.”

Pure delight propels you forward, arm threaded through his like a lifeline to sanity. The elite of every era gravitate toward you - Einstein debates quantum mechanics while you school him on cellular biology, Rihanna takes notes on your impromptu TED talk about mitochondrial DNA. Jungkook observes your radiance, wondering if happiness has ever worn a face so beautiful.

Then shadow creeps in, subtle as twilight. "If only reality had such magic," you murmur to no one.

The words strike like arrows. What can he say? His power extends to the horizon of dreams - he can architect castles in clouds, orchestrate symphonies in starlight, birth entire cosmos from your smallest smile. But he cannot heal the wounds reality has carved: the suffocating job, the mother's bitter words, the six years stolen from your timeline.

His domain ends where consciousness begins. In these ephemeral realms where you dismiss him as fantasy, a figment born of neurons firing in the dark.

Perhaps that's mercy's greatest gift because knowing his truth would shatter more than the dream. So he offers only a gentle smile.

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That night, he materializes behind you like stardust taking form, his presence a whisper against your skin.

"Close your eyes," he breathes, the words a spell woven in twilight.

His hands eclipse your vision with butterfly-gentle pressure, as if touching a dream too precious to risk breaking. The world shifts beneath his will - air crystallizing with electric possibility, carrying notes of steel and starlight and synthetic sweetness, like neon memories dissolved in rain. He speaks to reality itself, and reality bends.

"Okay, now open," he commands softly. Your eyes flutter open and the gasp tears itself from your throat, pure wonder given voice.

Before you unfolds an empire of light and shadow - a metropolis that touches the stars. Streams of vehicles paint luminous rivers through the sky, weaving between towers that pierce the heavens like silver needles. Landing platforms hover like geometric clouds, while the stars themselves peek through the urban tapestry, diamonds scattered on black velvet.

"Is this…Coruscant?" The question trembles with awe. His silence speaks volumes, curved in a smile you feel more than see.

Laughter bubbles up, bright with revelation. "You remember everything I say?" But reality's chains rattle, even here. Your hand cuts through the air, dismissing magic. "Well, of course. You're just my mind playing tricks, recycling old dreams."

His smile fractures at the edges. "Right," he whispers. "Just mind tricks."

But when your fingers find his, intertwining like fate's own threads, none of that matters.

"Quick," you grin, the universe reflected in your eyes, "we've got worlds to explore before morning steals you away."

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Jungkook melts watching you stumble through broken alien phrases, your pronunciation absolutely butchering three different languages at once. There's this six-eyed creature that just stares at your earnest bow, probably wondering what strange cosmic phenomenon dropped you into their path. And then, an absolute menace of a droid, barely reaching your knees, starts chasing you down demanding payment, beep-screaming about galactic credits. You scramble behind Jungkook like he's your last hope in the universe, fingers clutching his jacket, breathless giggles muffled against his shoulder. (He pays your debt with a shirt button because of course he does, you disaster.)

Later, you both claim a spot on the edge of a glowing walkway. Your feet dangle over an ocean of lights, streams of vehicles painting stories beneath you like shooting stars learning to dance. The sky above is alive, breathing with the pulse of ship lights, and sometimes a cruiser glides past like a metal whale, momentarily stealing the stars.

Your laughter settles into something softer now, something that fits in the spaces between heartbeats. Neither of you speak. Neither of you need to.

And if Jungkook knows the dream is slipping away like stardust through his fingers? Well. He keeps that knowledge locked behind his teeth. Instead, he drinks in the sight of you: the way city lights paint constellations across your skin, how perfectly you slot into this impossible moment like you were born to exist in worlds that break physics. Like you were meant to dream in technicolor.

But there's a question that haunts him, cruel as dawn's first light: When the sun rises and reality claims you back...

…will even a whisper of him linger in your waking thoughts?

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Jungkook's life has shifted in ways that feel like poetry written in invisible ink- you can only see it if you know where to look.

On paper, everything's the same: same apartment with its midnight creaks and perpetual scent of dust-and-tea memories. Same 7:30 alarm that screams into existence like an unwanted prophecy. Same mundane rituals: toast crumbs, news static, lines of code marching across screens like obedient soldiers. (And yes, that one stubborn fern that refuses to surrender to his chronic plant neglect.)

But there's something different now that whispers instead of shouts. Something that feels like stardust caught in his bones.

You see it in the way he carries himself, like gravity's finally made peace with his soul. In the way he moves through space like he's remembered how to belong in it. He's incandescent now, lit from within by some strange, soft fire.

His friends notice because of course they do, they're annoyingly observant like that.

"You look," Jimin declares one night, sprawled across Jungkook's couch like he owns it, soju bottle dancing between his fingers, "like God himself came down and gave you a spa day."

"Sleep," Namjoon squints at him, "you're actually sleeping?"

Jungkook's lips twitch. A maybe floats between them like a secret.

"Oh my god," Taehyung breathes, dramatic as always, "you're in LOVE."

The way Jungkook's eyes skitter away is all the confession they need. And then they're all talking at once, voices tumbling over each other like eager puppies: "Who is she?" and "Does she live here?" and "When do WE get to meet her?"

Jungkook smiles, sleeve-covered hands hiding trembles, letting them believe the flush on his face comes from the heater's gentle rage.

But there's this soft, aching thing in his chest. Because how do you tell your best friends that the person who rewrote your whole existence lives in a different layer of reality? That the only one who's ever seen past your skin and bones and into the truth of you... only exists in dreams?

Later, when his apartment's empty except for shadows and memory-echoes, he stands at his window. Forehead pressed to glass like a prayer, watching Seoul's heartbeat flutter beneath him.

The loneliness has evolved into something gentler now - no longer the razor-edged beast that once tore through his chest, nor the arctic waste that froze his bones.

But it's there. Because no matter how many times you laugh in his arms, no matter how many universes you explore together, you're not here. And he is. You both exist but in different verses of the same impossible song.

And sometimes he wonders if he's asking too much of the universe. If he's being greedy. Before you, he was nothing but shadow-stuff and nightmare-fuel, cursed to feed on other people's fears. He couldn't even dream of being perceived, let alone loved. And now he has the audacity to want more? To want daylight happiness?

Greedy, absurd boy.

But every moment he spends awake feels like holding his breath underwater. Every sunlit hour is just time he could've spent learning the constellations of your smile. So he closes his eyes. And waits for sleep to bring him to you.

The moment he slips into the dreamscape he feels your presence hitting him like the first breath after drowning, like gravity remembering its own name. And then you're there, crashing into him with the force of a supernova, arms wrapping around him as if he might dissolve into stardust. He catches you and pulls you close like you're made of moonlight and wishes.

"Thought you wouldn't come," you whisper into his collar, voice rough like you've been holding back for too long.

A laugh escapes him, soft and broken-edged. His hands trace constellations up your spine. "Do you ever…" he starts, then swallows hard. "Do you ever worry that one night we just... won't find each other here anymore?"

You pull back just enough to meet his eyes and there are already tears catching in your lashes. "Every single time I close my eyes."

His smile cracks at the corners because it’s exactly the same for him. Every night he lies awake wondering if the universe will finally notice its mistake- if whatever cosmic glitch allowed him to find you will correct itself. Maybe you'll stop dreaming of him and he'll be left holding nothing but memories and maybes. It's too perfect. You're too perfect. And he's never learned how to trust perfect things to stay.

"Jungkook." Your voice drops to something serious, something that makes his heart stutter in his chest. He meets your gaze. "I don't…I can't," You take a shaking breath. "I don't think I can face reality anymore if I'm not sure you'll be waiting here."

His heart stops. Instead of answering, he lifts his hand and traces your cheek with feather-light fingers, trying to memorize you in atoms and angles.

"I'll be here," he breathes, like a prayer, like a promise. "I don't understand any of this, but I swear I'll find you. Every night. No matter what."

Your eyes flutter closed at his touch, and in that moment, he knows exactly what tonight's dream should be.

The dreamscape ripples like disturbed water, reality shifting beneath your feet with all the grace of a universe rewriting itself. The salt-sweet breeze finds you first, carrying whispers of infinity, and when your eyes flutter open, the night sky stretches above you like a confession written in starlight.

The ocean sprawls before you, endless and moonlit, each wave a silvered promise rolling towards shore. You're both barefoot in the sand, the wind playing with your hair like an old friend while the sea hums ancient lullabies. Jungkook watches you the way people watch miracles unfold - careful, afraid to blink.

You're statue-still, eyes locked on the horizon like it might vanish if you dare to look away. The air between you tastes like possibility.

"You mentioned wanting to see the sea," he murmurs. "Why?"

You sink to the sand, pulling your knees to your chest like armor. "I've never seen it before."

His heart stumbles. "Never?"

A shake of your head, eyes still drinking in the waves that reach for your toes like shy lovers. He wants to ask more - what landlocked piece of the world kept you from this? But dreams have their own grammar, and some questions dissolve like sugar on the tongue. So he sits beside you in comfortable silence, letting the night wrap around you both like a blanket woven from sea spray.

When you finally turn to him, your eyes hold the weight of unspoken galaxies. And gravity seems to lose its grip on reality - the space between you collapses until you're breathing the same air, until his hands find your face like they've mapped this path in a thousand previous lives.

Your lips meet in a hesitant dance of breath and longing until something breaks inside the moment like a dam of restraint giving way to raw need. His hands tangle in your hair as your mouth parts with a soft, stuttering sound, fingers clutching desperately at his shirt while the kiss transforms into something urgent and wild, teeth grazing and breaths mingling as he tilts your head back to taste you deeper.

The sea's roar crescendos with your passion while you shift into his lap, knees straddling him and hands sliding up the curve of his neck, the weight of your body against his making him finally feel real. Your shared heat and the pressure of your hips leaving him dizzy with want.

Jungkook pulls back only enough to look at you, eyes tracing your face like it’s something sacred. Your skin is flushed, glowing under the silver wash of the moon, hair tangled from his hands. You’re still straddling him, your chest rising and falling in rhythm with his. There’s a silence that lives in that moment, but it’s not empty.

Then he grins, soft and breathless. “Good thing this is a dream,” he murmurs, brushing his lips across your jaw. “Sand won’t bother us here.”

You laugh, quiet and giddy, the sound catching in your throat as he leans in again, kissing the corner of your mouth, then your cheek, then lower. He shifts, laying you back gently onto the soft, impossible sand. Moonlight spills across your skin like liquid silver, turning you into some ancient deity's forgotten masterpiece. He freezes, a worshipper before an altar, lungs forgetting their purpose as his eyes trace the sacred geometry of your existence. Time holds its breath with him.

Then he’s kissing your neck, slow and open-mouthed, leaving heat wherever his lips touch. His hands slide over your body like he’s memorizing you, like he’s terrified you’ll disappear. When he begins to undress you, his fingers move with a kind of careful urgency- unwrapping you like something he’s dreamed of holding all his life.

His lips trail down your collarbone, your chest, and lower, leaving warmth. Your breath catches sharply in your throat as pleasure ripples through you, your back arching delicately from the sand as a soft, yearning moan escapes your lips into the star-strewn night.

And when he comes back to you, body pressed to yours, both of you tangled in breath and want, you meet him with the same hunger. You pull him close, undress him with shaking hands, touch every inch of him with awe.

When Jungkook moves inside you, it feels less like an act of desire and more like the inevitable culmination of something the two of you had been building quietly between shared glances, trembling silences, and the quiet ache of always parting too soon. There is nothing rushed in the way your bodies meet: only a slow, deliberate joining, a stretch of time that suspends itself in the hush between heartbeats, as if the dream itself knows to hold its breath for you.

His weight settles gently over you, his mouth still hovering just above yours, the warmth of his breath mixing with your own as his hands frame your face with a tenderness that feels as overwhelming as it is fragile. Your eyes lock for a long moment, and in them there is no fear, only the echo of something deeper - yearning, devotion, maybe even a kind of wonder neither of you dares to name aloud. And then, without speaking, you arch toward him, and he begins to move.

The rhythm he finds is unhurried but purposeful, a slow, steady push and pull. His body presses against yours with the kind of urgency that isn’t frantic but is no less desperate - an urgency born from knowing how fleeting dreams are, how quickly time unravels beauty when it’s finally within reach.

His lips don’t stay still for long; they trace your collarbone, your throat, the curve of your jaw, trailing warmth that pools and spreads through your chest until your breath begins to shake beneath him. You can feel the way his body trembles slightly as he deepens the rhythm with intensity, as though every inch of his skin aches to be closer to yours, as though touching you more completely could somehow anchor him here.

When you moan his name, it comes out cracked at the edges, too soft and too honest to be anything but real, and he answers not with words but with a kiss that claims nothing, demands nothing, only offers himself and his quiet awe that you are here with him.

The dream sky above flickers faintly as a gentle reminder that even eternity here is borrowed. You feel it in your bones that this moment, as vivid and consuming as it is, will dissolve like sea foam the moment morning claims him back. That awareness sharpens everything. It makes each thrust feel more tender, each stroke of his hands across your sides more necessary, more desperate to memorize. Your fingers slide up into his hair, tugging him closer, your mouths finding each other again with increasing hunger, and when your hips rise to meet his, your bodies move in perfect synchrony.

It builds slowly, swelling until you can’t distinguish where you end and he begins, until the world narrows to the slick heat between your thighs, the throb of his heartbeat against your chest, the soft, breathless groans that pass between your lips like confessions. The pleasure comes in waves: deep and consuming, rising with every movement and whispered sound, until the moment it crests and breaks, flooding through you with a force so overwhelming you have no choice but to let go and ride it.

He follows you into it, burying his face in your neck as he comes undone, his body trembling with the effort of holding back everything he feels and failing in the most beautiful way. There are no words left, only breath and warmth and the weight of his arms around you as he collapses gently beside you, pulling you into him like something he’s afraid to lose.

A blanket materializes like a whispered wish, impossibly soft and warm against your skin. Jungkook pulls you closer, your bodies fitting together like puzzle pieces finally finding home. Your hands can't help but wander, mapping his skin in the aftermath, memorizing the geography of this moment. His lips ghost against your temple while you rest your cheek against his heart, letting its steady rhythm become your anchor.

The ocean serenades you both with its ancient song, waves kissing the shore in perfect tempo. Above, the stars hang in velvet darkness, too perfect to be anything but dreamscape magic. Words feel redundant here, in this pocket of forever where touch and breath say everything your voices can't.

But dreams, those cruel architects of almost-reality, never let you linger long enough.

The world starts to unravel: the sky loses its certainty, the breeze thins to whispers, and the ocean's voice becomes a distant echo of itself. Reality is calling, persistent as always. You tilt your face up to his, and his fingers find their way to your hair, tucking it behind your ear with a tenderness that aches.

"I wish this part didn't end so soon," you breathe out, voice trembling not with fear but with the weight of knowing what comes next.

He brings his forehead to rest against yours, eyes closed like he's trying to freeze time through sheer will. "So do I," he whispers back.

As the dream dissolves: the beach, the stars, your shared warmth all fading into morning light, he holds onto everything: the curve of your body against his, the ghost of your kiss, and the exquisite agony of loving someone who only exists in the space between sleeping and waking.

˚　　　　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.　　　　　 . ✦　　　　˚　　　　 . ★⋆.

　　　. 　　˚　✭　　　*　　　　✦　　　.　　.　　　✦　˚ 　　　　 ˚　.˚　　　　　✭　.　　. 　 ˚　.　　　　　　　　　　 ✦

When the dream opens again, it does so like a breath drawn after drowning- sharp and sudden and full of overwhelming relief. You’re already there, standing beneath a sky that isn’t real, though it holds more meaning than any sunrise you’ve ever seen. The moment your eyes meet Jungkook’s, you don’t wait, and neither does he. There is no hesitation or unsure beginning. You run into each other’s arms like you’ve been holding your breath for days, like everything depends on this collision of bodies.

“I don’t want to waste one second of the limited time we have here,” you whisper into the space between his breaths, your arms wound tight around his neck and your chest pressed firmly to his.

He nods, his voice caught somewhere between a laugh and a vow, and with a single brush of his hand against the air, the world changes.

Like mist before sunlight, the dreamscape dissolves - first the endless ocean retreating into nothingness, then the wind falling silent as if holding its breath, and finally the star-strewn horizon melting away.

And in its place appears something smaller and impossibly intimate: a bedroom, quiet and warm, the walls washed in golden light, the sheets still slightly rumpled like they’ve been waiting for you. It’s not dramatic, not grand, but it feels like a secret dream you never dared to say aloud.

“This feels so real,” you murmur, your voice already faltering as his hands begin to move slowly, working their way beneath your clothes as if they’re peeling away layers of exhaustion and everything that’s ever kept you from peace.

He undresses you without words, his fingers trailing down your sides with a patience that makes your skin tremble. When his lips touch your collarbone, your breath catches. When his hands slide lower, your knees weaken. And when he kneels before you, his eyes dark and full of something deeper than want, you whisper his name like it’s a confession.

His mouth is already on you, and he’s not simply tasting but studying the language of your body with the kind of patience that feels rarer than touch itself. Every movement is deliberate, almost aching in its care, as though he knows this is a dream and still doesn’t want to rush through it. His hands grip the backs of your thighs with that same quiet devotion, fingers spreading you open.

He dives in like a man starved of connection, like every slow drag of his tongue is an attempt to carve himself into your memory, so that even when you're awake, some part of your body will still pulse with the imprint of him.

At first, it’s soft, barely there, just the warm press of his mouth against you, lips brushing your folds. But then, when you gasp and your hips lift slightly, when your fingers curl in the sheets beneath you, he groans softly into you, like the sound of your need fuels something deeper in him, something greedy*.*

He licks you slowly at first, flat strokes that leave you trembling, your thighs tensing around his head even as his hands hold you open. But soon he changes rhythm, finding the place where your body begins to stutter and focus, and he stays there, working his tongue in tight, purposeful circles, pausing only to suck gently, and then again, firmer, just enough to make your voice crack when you call his name.

You reach for him without thinking, fingers sliding into his hair, anchoring yourself in him as the heat begins to mount. Your breath comes in shallow bursts, thighs shaking around him, and still he doesn’t let up. He wants this - to see you unravel, to taste what the world outside has never let you give.

“Why…” you whisper, the words breaking apart as your thighs begin to shake. “Why can’t this be real?”

It’s not a question you expect him to answer, it’s rather a confession or cry of longing too deep for reason. And if he hears it, he doesn’t stop, only moans into you, as if your heartbreak feeds his hunger, as if the taste of your pain is folded into your pleasure.

His tongue moves faster now, more focused, and the tension inside you coils to a near-breaking and all-consuming point

Your body begins to shake; can’t form words anymore. Your moans become breathless sounds, fingers digging into his scalp as your hips lift in desperate rhythm with the wave he’s building inside you. His grip tightens, keeping you grounded, and when he draws your clit into his mouth again, sucking slowly, deeply, your entire body snaps.

You come with a cry so raw it doesn’t even sound like your voice. It shudders through you, thighs clenching, stomach fluttering, your hands fisting the sheets and his hair and nothing at all, your back arching as the dream holds you still in its palm.

But he doesn't leave you. Jungkook stays between your legs, lapping at you gently, slowly, kissing you through the aftershocks like he’s coaxing every last tremble from your bones, like your pleasure is the only thing that matters in this moment.

When he finally pulls away and rises to meet you again, his mouth shines with you, and his eyes are dark with a mix of tenderness and awe that stirs something so deep in your chest it almost hurts.

He kisses you slowly and deeply, and you taste yourself on his tongue. You pull him closer, hands sliding down his bare back, and you know that even if this is only a dream, it is more real than anything else your life has ever given you.

When Jungkook enters you, it’s like the world narrowing to a single point of gravity, your body drawing him in with a heat that pulses low and deep in your belly. He presses into you with a slow, deliberate movement, his length stretching you inch by aching inch, and it’s enough to make your mouth fall open with a breathless gasp that doesn’t even sound like your voice. He’s thick and warm and impossibly hard, and the way he completely fills you sends a tremor through your thighs that you can’t control.

Your folds part for him, slick and open, your body welcoming him with the kind of wet, desperate readiness that makes his breath hitch above you. He pauses once he’s buried fully inside, one hand gripping your hip as the other slides beneath your spine, grounding you against the slow burn of pleasure already curling through your abdomen. The stretch stings in the most exquisite way, that sharp-edged fullness melting quickly into something sweeter, something deeper, something that makes your body cry out for more before you even realize what you're asking for.

When he begins to move, it’s a rhythm that’s devastating in its precision: deep, dragging thrusts that grind against your most sensitive places with such focused care you’re not sure whether you want to weep or scream. Each roll of his hips draws a whimper from your throat, your legs trembling as your body adjusts to him again and again, as though each motion is a new kind of claim. He kisses you through it: your shoulder, your jaw, your lips, his mouth greedy and soft and utterly wrecked with affection, like he wants to press himself into every inch of your skin and never come up for air.

He shifts you gently, guiding your body into his hands, pulling your hips back into his lap as he settles you onto all fours. You sink into the soft sheets, your spine curving as his hand steadies your waist, and when he slides back inside you from behind, the angle is so deep and so precise it knocks the breath from your lungs. You clench helplessly around him, the sound of your bodies joining filling the room with a rhythm that feels ancient, necessary, almost holy. His name leaves your mouth again as a cry drawn out and trembling, the only word that still feels real in the haze of heat and motion and want.

Your hands fist the sheets, your knees spreading wider, every nerve ending in your body tuned to the relentless drive of his thrusts. His grip on your hips tightens, and he leans over your back, the heat of his chest brushing your spine, his voice a broken thing in your ear.

“You feel… so fucking good,” he murmurs, not as a boast, but as a reverent truth, like he still can’t believe the way your body accepts him - tight and slick, made perfectly for him.

When his hand slips beneath you again, finding that swollen, throbbing place that already pulses from his mouth and now from his cock, you come apart so quickly and so violently, your entire body stutters around him. You cry out, broken and breathless, your climax crashing through you with a force that turns the world white at the edges. You feel yourself clench around him, wet and pulsing, and it takes everything in him not to follow you right then.

But he’s close and with a few more thrusts, rougher now, less controlled, he spills into you with a sound so low and guttural it feels like it echoes inside your own chest. He collapses against your back, his arms wrapping around your middle as you both breathe through the aftermath, tangled and shivering, still connected, still pulsing with the echo of each other’s release.

And when the high fades and the pleasure ebbs into something slower, quieter, he doesn’t pull away. He stays inside you for as long as he can, holding you in his arms like he’s afraid that if he lets go, you’ll dissolve into smoke with the rest of the dream.

You fall together onto your sides, your legs entwined, the thin dream-woven blanket curling around your bodies, soft and warm as moonlight. You press your cheek against his chest. His hand strokes your back slowly, like he’s still trying to memorize you. The sea outside the window murmurs, and stars flicker faintly above, but neither of you speaks because nothing could possibly be enough.

"I don't want the real world." Your voice cracks. "It doesn't have you in it."

He pulls you closer, like maybe if he holds you tight enough, reality won't be able to pry you apart. When he finally speaks, his voice carries the weight of every 3AM thought that's ever kept anyone awake, "I know. Me too."

You look up at him, moonlight catching on unshed tears. Not crying because what's the point when the sun will rise anyway? Your fingers twist in the blanket like you're trying to anchor yourself to this moment, to him, to anything that might let you stay. "Please," you whisper, "I want to stay here. With you."

This isn't just a dream anymore. It's the truest thing you've ever known, wrapped in fiction because reality doesn't know what to do with something this raw. He says nothing, only presses his forehead to yours and breathes you in like he's trying to memorize the way your souls fit together.

And just as the dream begins to thin at the edges: flickering like film exposed to light, you look up at him, eyes full of that same pleading ache, and he lowers his forehead to yours. If you could stay, you would.

But dreams never ask permission before ending.

˚　　　　✦　　　.　　. 　 ˚　.　　　　　 . ✦　　　　˚　　　　 . ★⋆.

　　　. 　　˚　✭　　　*　　　　✦　　　.　　.　　　✦　˚ 　　　　 ˚　.˚　　　　　✭　.　　. 　 ˚　.　　　　　　　　　　 ✦

Jungkook wakes to emptiness, the kind that sits heavy in your lungs like smoke. The silence wraps around him like a second skin, suffocating in its completeness. There's no gentle transition between dreams and reality today - just a harsh snap from one world to another, leaving him raw and aching.

The bed feels too big, too cold, sheets twisted around him like they're trying to hold something that isn't there anymore. His chest feels hollow, carved out, each breath a little too shallow to fill the spaces where warmth used to live.

He lies there, staring at a ceiling he's known his whole life but suddenly feels like it belongs to someone else's story. His body shakes, not from cold (never from cold), but from something that lives deeper, something that has made a home in his bones and refuses to leave.

When he finally moves, it's pure instinct - frustration and grief tangled into one sharp motion. The pillow hits the floor with a soft thud that gets swallowed by the morning quiet. It doesn't help. Nothing helps. He sits up, fingers threading through his hair like he's trying to hold his thoughts together, eyes fixed on the slice of pre-dawn darkness outside his window.

His voice breaks the silence like glass shattering in slow motion, barely a whisper: "Why is it like this..."

But there's no answer waiting in the shadows. And yet, somewhere beneath the weight of his despair, something small flickered: thin, untrustworthy, but still breathing. He told himself he would see you again. A new day would bring a new night, and with it, the possibility of return. That had been the pattern, and though dreams rarely followed logic, hope was a creature that clung to even the most frayed of patterns.

The hours that followed passed in a haze. He moved through the day as though he had been placed behind a pane of glass: everything visible but inaccessible, everyone’s voices distant, every color dull. His body obeyed routine, but his mind remained curled around the shape of your absence.

When darkness finally returned, he didn’t hesitate. Sleep claimed him without struggle, and with it, the familiar ritual unfolded: the rooftops that stretched like memory, the path laid down by repetition and longing, the same constellation of buildings that had always, without fail, led him to your window.

But it was dark. No light pierced the glass, no shadows moved within. The bed lay pristine, untouched - a monument to absence. He waited. Minutes bled into hours as the dream stretched around him, but your silhouette never materialized. The emptiness felt louder than any scream.

Night after night, he returned. Each visit more desperate than the last. The room remained a void, sterile and cold as a tomb. His hope withered, then died. No trace that you'd ever existed. The question gnawed at him: had you been real? Or worse: had something taken you?

The days blurred together, each one weighted with loss and questions that found no answers. Had you chosen to vanish, or had the choice been stolen from you? The uncertainty was acid in his veins.

Before you, he'd been a ghost among the living, feeding on others' darkness, trapped in endless observation. But that emptiness was nothing compared to this. This was different. This was knowing paradise and being exiled. This was having his soul split open, filled with light, then sewn shut around the void you left behind.

The universe had cursed him twice: first with invisibility, then with the memory of being seen. Being known and loved by you. Only to have it ripped away without warning or farewell.

And now, more than ever, Jungkook felt the weight of solitude like a second skin - in a universe that had always been generous in showing him different angles of emptiness.

there’s a final part to this story already finished and available exclusively here .

Thank you very much for reading my stories. Finding readers who resonate with my writing means the world to me. I can't even put into words how grateful I am. 🖤

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kyri45 · 7 months ago

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PREV / ALL / FIRST /NEXT (ISAT Sky: Cotl!AU!)

The Universe listened, and its creatures will follow to help.

Here comes the boy! :D Ready for the Grand Finale?

The next, and final part of "The Void" is coming on December 29th, 1PM ET

1K notes · View notes

shaiyasstuff · 3 months ago

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time | rafayel

synopsis : You’ve spent your entire life within hospital walls, your world limited to sterile rooms and ticking clocks—until a peculiar boy named Rafayel stumbles into your ward by mistake. In the days that follow, his presence becomes a quiet comfort and his stories become a glimpse into a life you’ve only ever dreamed of. content : angst, non-cannon!au, subtle mentions of death

Tick. Tock. Goes the clock.

As the minute hand shifts, as the hours run.

Time waits for no one—and no one can stop it.

You stare out at the storm beyond the glass. Sheets of water blur the world outside, painting everything in smudged greys and shadows.

On gentler days, you might have opened the window, let the wind thread through your fingers, pretended you were anywhere but here.

But not today.

Today, the sky weeps like it knows something you don’t.

The quiet shuffle of shoes breaks the silence behind you.

“Y/N, you shouldn’t be out of bed,” the nurse says gently, stepping into your room.

You don’t turn around immediately. What’s the point?

“I’m already dying,” you say flatly, your voice void of drama, just fact.

She doesn’t reply right away.

When you glance back, her expression is soft, pitiful. Like you’re some fragile thing behind glass, a creature slowly fading.

You scoff inwardly. They always look at me like that. Like I’m something to mourn before I’m even gone.

“Still,” she says eventually, her voice carefully chosen, “you should be resting. The doctor will be making his rounds soon.”

You let out a hollow sigh and drag yourself away from the window, bones aching with the weight of it all.

Slowly, you settle back into the bed, the sheets too crisp, too white—too much like a shroud waiting to be pulled over you.

Outside, the rain doesn’t stop.

—•

The door creaks open and in walks the doctor, his white coat pristine, clipboard in hand.

He offers you the same smile he always does—gentle, practiced, and far too optimistic for a place like this.

He flips through the charts, murmuring numbers, notes, things that no longer mean anything to you.

“You’re getting better,” he says, voice warm, like he believes it.

They always say that.

You don’t bother replying. Instead, you stare past him, toward the rain-streaked window.

If I’m getting better, why am I still dying?

You’ve heard those words your entire life. Encouragement wrapped in lies. Hope spoken over wounds too deep to ever close.

As if saying it enough could erase the truth written in your blood.

You were diagnosed when you were just a child. Something rare.

Something cruel. Something that’s kept you here—in sterile rooms, under dim lights, where life passes by without ever truly touching you.

You don’t remember what it’s like to breathe air that doesn’t smell faintly of antiseptic. Or to sleep without the hum of machines.

Your parents were gone before you ever opened your eyes to the world. Your mother left behind more than her love.

She left you her illness—an inheritance carved into your very bones. Your father, too broken to stay, faded into silence.

It was your aunt who picked up the pieces.

She raised you with calloused hands and tired eyes, soft lullabies whispered over hospital beds, birthday candles blown out under fluorescent lights.

She tried to give you something close to a life, even if it existed only within these four walls.

She gave you everything—

But even she can’t stop time.

And time, as always, is running out.

You didn’t even flinch when the doctor left—just the soft click of the door, and then silence.

You stayed where you were, sinking deeper into the pillows, eyes fixed on the rain. On the distorted outlines of a world you’ve never really known.

You imagine it, sometimes.

A life without machines or medications.

A version of you that could run barefoot through wet grass, arms outstretched, laughing like you weren’t always on borrowed time.

A version of you that was free.

You let the thought linger, painful and persistent, when suddenly—

The door flew open.

Your body jolts instinctively, startled, eyes darting to the sudden intrusion.

There, standing awkwardly just inside your ward, was a young man.

He looked… out of place.

Like he’d stumbled into the wrong room or the wrong world altogether. His hair was an unusual shade of dusky purple, slightly damp from the storm, strands clinging to his forehead in soft waves.

But it was his eyes that made you forget how to breathe for a second—astonishing bluish-pink, like the sky at the edge of dawn. Like something pulled straight from a dream.

And those eyes—

They looked up at you, wide and sheepish, as if he was the one who wasn’t supposed to be there.

“…Hi,” he said, voice low, almost uncertain.

You blinked, unsure if you were hallucinating.

Because no one ever just walked in here.

Not into your ward.

Not into your life.

Not like this.

For a moment—

Finally, time stood still.

The ticking of the clock faded, the rain hushed to a whisper, and the sterile world you’d always known seemed to hold its breath.

It was as if everything—the ache in your bones, the weight in your chest, the quiet grief that clung to your every breath—paused.

Suspended in the space between his hesitant smile and your stunned silence.

You stared at him, unsure if he was real.

Because how could someone like him exist in a place like this?

With his rain-kissed hair, eyes like fractured starlight, and the faintest trace of wonder painted across his face, he looked like he belonged somewhere far away from IV drips and white walls.

Somewhere alive.

But there he was, in your world.

Looking at you.

And for the first time in forever, you weren’t thinking about how much time you had left.

Just the way he looked at you—

Like you weren’t dying at all.

“Who are you?” you finally managed to croak, your voice thin and rough from disuse, like it had been buried too long beneath silence and sorrow.

The boy blinked, startled for a moment, then rubbed the back of his head with an awkward laugh.

“No one! I—I stumbled into the wrong room,” he said quickly, as if trying to make himself smaller.

He laughed again, sheepish and breathless, and something in your chest fluttered.

Not pain this time. Not the sharp reminder of your failing heart.

But something gentler, something unfamiliar.

Warm.

“I was looking for a friend,” he added, gaze flickering to the door and back to you. “I was going to, you know, gently open the door… but I, uh… tripped.”

He smiled—crooked, boyish, the kind that doesn’t belong in places built for dying.

You found yourself staring.

Not because he was strange.

Not because he didn’t belong.

But because, in all the years of your life within these walls, no one had ever stumbled in by accident.

And no one had ever smiled at you like that.

He glanced down, and for the first time, seemed to really take in the sight of you—

The pale tint to your skin, the too-thin frame lost in hospital linens,

And the delicate web of tubes threaded into your wrist like fragile veins made of plastic.

His smile faltered, just slightly.

“What is it?” he asked, voice lower now. Gentler. A look of quiet sympathy softening the brightness in his eyes.

You followed his gaze, then turned your hand palm-up, studying the bruises that bloomed around the needle sites like faded violets.

“My heart,” you said, voice barely more than a whisper. “It’s weak. Born with it.”

There was no bitterness in your tone, no trace of self-pity—just a quiet acceptance.

The kind that only comes after years of knowing the world wouldn’t change, no matter how much you wished it would.

You didn’t expect him to say anything.

Most people don’t.

Most people just nod, avoid eye contact, and retreat into awkward silences.

But he didn’t.

He looked at you—really looked at you. Not like you were fragile. Not like you were tragic.

Just… a person. A whole person.

And for the first time in a long while, you didn’t feel like a patient.

You just felt seen.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, glancing at you one last time. “I need to look for my friend now. Sorry again for… intruding.”

That crooked smile returned—brief, apologetic, but warm in a way that stayed with you even after he turned away.

Then the door closed behind him, soft and final.

And just like that, he was gone.

You remained there, staring at the spot where he’d stood, as if the echo of his presence still lingered in the air.

The room felt a little less sterile now. A little less cold.

A small smile tugged at the corners of your lips—faint, unpracticed, but real.

“How odd,” you whispered to yourself, fingers ghosting over the edge of your blanket.

As if, for a fleeting moment, something had shifted.

As if a stranger had stepped into your life… and left the door just slightly ajar.

—•

“I’m fine, Mom,” you groan softly, the corners of your mouth curving into a small smile as you watch your aunt fret over the IV line.

She doesn’t correct you. She never does when you call her that.

“The tube’s too tight,” she mutters, adjusting it with careful fingers. “It’ll leave a mark.”

“It always leaves a mark,” you murmur back, eyes fluttering closed for a moment.

“If you say so,” she sighs, finally settling into the chair beside your bed, her movements heavy with reluctant resignation.

You glance at her, and something about the way your eyes catch the light makes her pause—

There’s a glimmer there. A rare spark, like something new has crept in and taken root beneath the exhaustion.

“I met a boy,” you say quietly, almost conspiratorially.

Her eyes widen, surprised, and then soften as she sinks deeper into the seat beside you.

“A boy?” she repeats, the word falling gently from her lips, as if she’s afraid to touch it too hard and make it vanish.

You nod slowly, smile curling like the start of something delicate. Something impossible.

And for a moment, she doesn’t see the tubes or the monitors.

She just sees you—smiling, alive, dreaming.

And maybe, just maybe, hoping again.

You began to describe him, voice soft but animated in a way it hadn’t been in a long time.

“He had this messy, purple hair—like he’d just run through the rain. And his eyes…” You paused, searching for the right words, but nothing felt quite right.

“They were bluish-pink. Like… like the sky just before the sun rises. Strange, but beautiful.”

A small smile played on your lips, unbidden, delicate.

It stayed there as you recounted how he burst into your ward by accident, how he stumbled and laughed and apologized twice before disappearing like he’d never been there at all.

“He said he tripped,” you added, a quiet laugh escaping you. “He was looking for a friend but somehow ended up in my room.”

Your aunt didn’t interrupt.

She watched you with an expression you couldn’t quite place—somewhere between wonder and quiet relief. Like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

Like she was afraid if she blinked, this moment—you—might fade back into silence.

She leaned in a little, her voice soft but teasing. “And just like that, he walked into your life?”

“Just like that,” you murmured.

For the first time in what felt like forever, your world hadn’t been shaped by monitors or doctors or waiting rooms. It had shifted, even if just slightly, because of a boy who wasn’t supposed to be there.

And your aunt—who’d spent years watching you drift between days—

Listened, utterly intrigued.

Because someone, somehow, had grasped your attention.

And that meant something.

You chuckled, the sound light and fleeting, like wind chimes in the distance.

“Yeah,” you said, eyes still lingering on the memory, “he was… peculiar.”

Your aunt raised an eyebrow, amusement tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Peculiar how?”

You tilted your head, letting the silence stretch a moment as you searched for the right shape of the feeling.

“He looked like he didn’t belong here. Like the rain followed him in, and the hospital didn’t quite know what to do with him.”

Your fingers played absently with the edge of your blanket.

“He smiled like he wasn’t afraid to. Like he hadn’t spent years walking on eggshells around people like me.”

A breath, a beat.

“He looked at me like I wasn’t dying.”

The smile on your lips faltered, just a little. Not out of sadness—but something quieter.

A kind of wonder. A weightless ache.

Your aunt said nothing at first. Just reached out and gently tucked a stray strand of hair behind your ear, her hand lingering for a second longer than usual.

“Peculiar,” she echoed, voice softer now. “Sounds just like what you needed.”

You didn’t say it, but a part of you hoped he’d come back.

That maybe, just maybe, he’d stumble into your world again.

Soon, your aunt rose from the chair with a quiet sigh, her joints protesting softly as she stood.

She gave you one last lingering look, the kind that always felt like a silent goodbye—just in case.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” she said gently, smoothing down the blanket over your legs like she always did. “Try to get some rest tonight.”

You nodded, watching her gather her things with practiced ease. The hospital bag, the cardigan she always left behind, the thermos of tea she never quite finished. These were her rituals, and somehow, they were comforting.

At the door, she paused, glancing back at you.

“You’ll let me know if he comes back?” she asked, a small smile playing on her lips.

You nodded again, slower this time.

“Yeah,” you said softly. “I will.”

She gave a faint hum of approval before slipping out, the door clicking shut behind her—

And once again, you were alone with the rain and the quiet rhythm of your monitors.

—•

It wasn’t until a week had passed—seven long, uneventful days stitched together by rain, routine, and restless silence—

Before you saw him again.

This time, he didn’t tumble in by accident.

This time, he came with intent.

The knock was soft, almost hesitant.

You looked up from your book—more out of habit than interest—expecting a nurse or your aunt.

But there he was.

Standing in the doorway, slightly out of breath, with a tiny bouquet clutched in his hands.

The flowers were a mismatched bunch—fresh but imperfect, like they’d been picked out by someone who didn’t really know what they were doing but tried anyway.

Daisies, baby’s breath, a wilted violet tucked awkwardly among them.

His hair was just as wild, a little windblown, and his eyes—those strange, luminous eyes—met yours sheepishly.

“Hi,” he said, offering a lopsided smile. “I, uh… thought I owed you a proper visit.”

You stared at him, surprised, the weight of his sudden return settling over you like the hush before a storm.

Slowly, the edges of your lips curved upward.

“You found the right room this time.”

He chuckled, the sound soft and warm, like something that didn’t quite belong in the sterile quiet of your ward.

“I got these for you,” he said, almost shyly, setting the tiny bouquet on the table beside your bed.

The flowers looked a little tired from the journey, but they brought a color into the room that hadn’t been there before—something living, something real.

He lingered then, hands shoved awkwardly into his pockets, eventually settling at the foot of your bed.

He didn’t sit.

Just stood there, as if afraid that crossing any closer might break whatever this fragile moment was becoming.

You tilted your head, studying him. “How’s your friend?”

He blinked, caught off guard. Then, he looked away, scratching his neck.

“Oh… yeah. He’s alright. Bit grumpy about being stuck here, but fine now.”

There was a pause—something unspoken threading between you both.

“I didn’t come back for him, though,” he admitted, quieter this time. “I came back for you.”

You startled, caught somewhere between disbelief and quiet amusement.

“For me?” you echoed, brow raised.

He didn’t flinch. Just smiled, a little crooked, a little too honest.

You let out a breath, a faint laugh under your words. “What’s so interesting about a girl connected to tubes?”

Your tone was light, but there was an edge to it—years of fragility mistaken for invisibility, of being seen only through diagnoses and chart notes.

You hadn’t meant for it to sound bitter. But maybe it did.

He didn’t look away. Not even for a second.

“I don’t know,” he said simply, sincerely. “But when I left… I kept thinking about you. How you looked at me like I wasn’t supposed to be here.”

You blinked, lips parting slightly, surprised by the way he said it. Not like it was romantic. Not like he was trying to charm you.

But like it was just the truth.

“And the way you smiled,” he added, softer now. “It felt rare. Like something you’d only see once, if you were lucky.”

You didn’t know what to say. No one had ever said anything like that to you.

And for the first time in a very long time, you didn’t feel like the sick girl in the hospital bed.

You just felt… seen.

And maybe, somehow, worth returning to.

You cracked a smile—small, but genuine. The kind that tugged at the corners of your mouth before you could stop it.

“Take a seat,” you said, your voice lighter now, almost teasing as you nodded toward the chair beside your bed.

He hesitated for half a second, like he wasn’t sure if he was really allowed that close. But then he smiled—brighter this time—and moved toward the chair, sinking into it with an ease that made it feel like he belonged there.

He looked around the room as if seeing it differently now, like it wasn’t just another sterile ward, but something quieter. Softer.

“I was starting to think you wouldn’t come back,” you admitted, your fingers fidgeting slightly with the edge of your blanket.

“I wasn’t sure I would,” he replied, honest as ever. “But I kept thinking… maybe you were waiting.”

You didn’t respond right away. Just looked at him for a long moment, your heart aching—but not from the condition.

“Maybe I was,” you whispered.

He looked up at you, that same kind smile softening his features. It reached his eyes this time—those strange, starlit eyes that held a little too much depth for someone who claimed to be no one.

“I’m Rafayel,” he said gently, like he was offering you something fragile, something that mattered.

You repeated the name in your head, slowly, like you didn’t want to forget it. It suited him—something a little odd, a little beautiful.

Just like how he’d come into your life: unexpectedly, and now, unmistakably present.

You nodded, the corners of your lips twitching up again.

“I’m Y/N,” you said softly, as though it was the first time you’d said your name in a long while not just to be recorded or written on a clipboard.

Rafayel smiled at the sound of it.

“Well, Y/N,” he murmured, leaning back in the chair like he had nowhere else to be, “it’s really nice to meet you… properly this time.”

And for a moment, just a moment—

You forgot about the tubes.

You forgot about the clock.

And all that existed was this quiet in-between, where a boy named Rafayel had returned, just to know your name.

You both talked, the conversation blooming slowly at first, like something tentative learning how to grow.

Mostly, it was him—Rafayel—filling the room with his voice, animated and unfiltered, his hands moving as he recounted wild, ridiculous stories about the world beyond the hospital walls.

You listened, eyes wide, smile tugging at your lips as he told you how he and his friend had tried to build a kite from scratch—only for it to crash into a police car.

Or how they’d once climbed onto a library rooftop just to see the stars, only to be locked out and spend the night freezing with nothing but vending machine snacks for dinner.

“That’s why he’s in the ward across from yours,” Rafayel said, rubbing the back of his neck with a sheepish grin. “Sprained his ankle and his ego.”

You laughed—really laughed this time, soft and warm.

The sound felt foreign in your throat, unfamiliar but freeing. You couldn’t remember the last time someone had made you laugh like this.

As he spoke, you found yourself leaning in closer, eyes shining, clinging to every word like they were windows into a world you’d never touched.

And somewhere between his stories and your laughter, your heart—weak and fragile as it was—ached with something deeper.

Longing.

A desperate, quiet yearning to be there, out there, anywhere but here.

To feel wind in your hair. To trip on your own feet. To make mistakes and live through them.

To be normal, even if just for a moment.

But for now, you settled for this.

For Rafayel’s voice.

For the stolen sunlight in his smile.

For the way he made the world outside feel a little closer.

Like maybe, one day, you’d reach it too.

He turned to you, the laughter still lingering in his expression, though it softened as his gaze settled on yours.

“So,” he asked, quieter now, “how long have you been in here?”

You looked down for a moment, fingers tightening slightly around the blanket draped across your lap.

“My whole life,” you said, the words falling gently but heavily, like something worn smooth over time. “I’ve never run. Not even once.”

You glanced up, sheepish, your voice dipping into something unsure—something almost apologetic. “It sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud.”

But Rafayel didn’t laugh. He didn’t look at you like you were strange or broken.

Instead, his face shifted—quiet, thoughtful, like he was carrying your words in his hands.

“It’s not ridiculous,” he said softly. “It’s… heartbreaking.”

And it wasn’t pity in his voice.

It wasn’t the clinical sympathy of doctors or the quiet sorrow of nurses who thought you couldn’t hear them whispering outside your door.

It was something else entirely. Something real.

Something that hurt just to hear.

You blinked, caught off guard by how gently he said it.

“I think,” he continued, leaning forward slightly, “if the world knew you were in here all this time, it would stop for a second. Just to say it was sorry.”

You smiled faintly, heart aching in that quiet, bittersweet way it always did when someone reached too close.

And you thought—

Maybe that’s why he came back.

Not because he pitied you.

But because he saw the girl who had never run, and still smiled anyway.

Tick. Tock. Goes the clock.

You smiled at Rafayel, trying to hold onto the lightness of the moment, but something shifted. A subtle tightening in your chest. A pinch—sharp, brief, but enough to make you draw in a shallow breath.

You winced, almost instinctively pressing your hand against your sternum.

Rafayel noticed instantly. “Hey—are you okay?”

Before you could answer, the door opened, and your aunt stepped in—face immediately drawn in concern as she took in the way your expression had faltered.

“What’s wrong?” she asked quickly, her bag slipping from her shoulder as she rushed to your side. “Y/N?”

“I’m—” you began, but your voice trembled. “It’s nothing. Just… a little pain.”

Already, she was calling for a nurse, checking the monitors, brushing the hair from your damp forehead. The room seemed to blur, the laughter from moments before dissolving like a dream chased away by morning.

Rafayel stood frozen by the chair, his gaze locked on you, worry carved deep into his face.

But he didn’t move closer.

The nurse arrived within seconds, and in the flurry of movement—voices, machines, footsteps—Rafayel looked toward the door.

He caught your gaze just before he turned.

“I’ll come back,” he said, gently, as if promising something to a fragile thread.

And then he was gone.

Your aunt stayed by your side, murmuring soothing words even as she pressed the call button again, just to be sure.

You clung to her voice, your heartbeat a little too fast, a little too uncertain.

It was just a scare. That’s what they said afterward.

Just a scare.

But somehow, in the stillness that followed,

The emptiness left by Rafayel’s sudden absence,

Hurt more than the pain in your chest.

—•

It wasn’t until five days later that you saw him again.

The door creaked open slowly, almost hesitantly, and there he was—Rafayel, standing in the doorway with worry carved into every line of his face.

His hair was messier than usual, like he hadn’t been sleeping right, and his eyes—normally full of mischief—held something heavier.

“You okay?” he asked, voice quiet, but urgent. Like the question had been burning on his tongue since the moment he’d left.

You smiled softly, the kind of smile that said I’m still here, and nodded. “Yeah. It was nothing serious… just my heart reminding me it’s still broken.”

His shoulders relaxed slightly, but only slightly. As if he hadn’t quite forgiven himself for not being there.

Your gaze drifted down to the object tucked under his arm—a weathered hardcover, the edges slightly frayed from time and love.

“What’s that?” you asked, curiosity breaking gently through the quiet.

He followed your eyes, then looked down at the book like he’d forgotten it was even there. A sheepish smile spread across his face as he crossed the room and held it up for you to see.

“It’s a book I used to read as a kid,” he said, almost bashful. “Full of adventures. Castles, forests, treasure maps… the works.”

He placed it carefully on your bedside table, as if it were something precious. His fingers lingered on the cover for a moment before pulling away.

“I thought you might like to see it,” he added. “Figured… maybe if you can’t be out there just yet, I could bring a little of ‘out there’ to you.”

You stared at the book, heart catching somewhere between affection and ache.

Because it wasn’t just a story he brought to you.

It was a piece of himself.

And somehow, that made all the difference.

You smiled, quiet and tender, the kind of smile that belonged to borrowed moments.

“Thank you,” you murmured, your voice soft as a thread of wind.

He sat down beside you without hesitation, the same familiar way he had before—as if no time had passed, as if the fear and the ache of five days ago hadn’t pressed like a shadow between you.

Rafayel leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, eyes flicking to the window where the sky was beginning to clear. He didn’t look at you when he spoke, but his voice was filled with something fragile.

Hopeful.

“When you get better,” he began, with a small smile of his own, “maybe I’ll teach you how to make memories. Take you on your first adventure.”

You turned to look at him, your smile still in place—but it ached now.

Quietly. Deeply.

Like a wound dressed in warmth.

It was a lovely thought.

The way he said it, like it was just waiting for you to wake up and walk into it.

Like your future was something you could still build, just outside these four walls.

But you knew better.

Time wasn’t on your side.

The moments you had were dwindling, like sand slipping through cracked fingers, and no amount of dreaming could stop it.

Still, you nodded.

“I’d like that,” you whispered, even if your heart already knew the truth.

Because sometimes, kindness wasn’t about promises that could be kept—

It was about the ones beautiful enough to believe in, even if it’s just for a little while.

—•

That was the last time Rafayel saw you sitting up, eyes bright with something close to life, voice soft but steady as you dreamed of adventures you’d never take.

The next time he returned, the room was quieter—heavier somehow. The hum of machines felt louder. The air, colder.

You were lying down now, body thinner, smaller, almost swallowed by the white sheets. Your skin had lost its warmth, and the color in your lips had faded to something pale and fragile.

But when you saw him—you still smiled.

Barely, just a faint tug of her lips. But it was there.

And it shattered something in him.

He forced a gentle smile in return, despite the way his chest ached, and sat beside you, his hands folding tightly in his lap, as if to stop them from shaking.

As the minute hand shifts, as the hours run.

He watched you for a moment, as the silence stretched and settled like dust between you.

Then your voice broke through it—faint, steady in its resignation.

“I’m dying,” you said. Not as a question. Not even with sadness.

Just truth.

Simple. Soft.

Like it had been waiting there all along.

Rafayel’s heart twisted.

He looked at you, really looked at you, and saw the acceptance in your eyes.

The way you had made peace with something most people spent their whole lives running from.

He reached out, gently wrapping his fingers around yours—cold, delicate, barely able to curl back.

“I know,” he whispered, voice trembling despite how hard he tried to keep it together.

And he sat there, holding on to you as tightly as he dared, while time continued to pass—

Indifferent.

Relentless.

Cruel.

Your voice is barely more than a breath, but it carries the weight of something final, something tender.

“I’m really grateful to have met you,” you whisper, your lips curving into the faintest smile, worn thin by pain.

“Even if it’s just for a short while.”

You don’t have the strength to say more. You just look at him—at Rafayel—as if you’re trying to memorize his face, to hold on to him in the places memory doesn’t fade.

He doesn’t answer right away.

He just stares at you, his expression caught somewhere between sorrow and awe, like he’s never hated silence more.

Slowly, he leans in and takes your hand in his, his thumb brushing gently over your cold skin, grounding you to the moment.

“You changed everything, you know,” he murmurs, voice low, raw. “I came here by accident. But you… you were the only real thing I found.”

You feel the tremble in his touch, the heaviness behind his smile.

“I’m the lucky one.”

The monitors hum beside you, soft and steady, reminding you that time is still passing—even if it feels like the world has stopped just for this.

But in his eyes, in the warmth of his hand wrapped around yours,

you know this is what it means to be remembered.

To have mattered, even for just a little while.

And somehow, that’s enough.

The room is quiet now.

Not the sterile kind of quiet you’ve grown used to—the cold hush of beeping monitors and echoing footsteps in the corridor—but something deeper.

Still.

Like the air itself has softened around the two of you, holding its breath.

You lie there, weak and sinking, the weight of your own body almost too much. Yet his presence keeps you tethered. You can feel it. Not just the warmth of his hand in yours, but the way he’s with you.

Fully. Without distraction. Without pity. Without fear.

He doesn’t speak. And you don’t ask him to.

You’re too tired for words now, too worn down to wrap meaning around the ache in your chest or the thoughts swirling gently in your mind.

But somehow, in this silence, there’s no need. It’s all there.

In the way his eyes meet yours and don’t look away. In the way he breathes a little slower, as if matching your fading rhythm.

You study him quietly—his rain-soft hair, the way his lashes cast faint shadows on his cheeks, the tired crease between his brows that wasn’t there the first time you met.

You wonder how someone like him—so full of stories and motion and laughter—ended up sitting here, perfectly still beside someone who’s running out of time.

He shifts slightly in the chair, not to leave, not to speak. Just to be closer. His other hand rests lightly on the edge of your blanket, fingers brushing fabric but not asking for anything.

And still, he says nothing.

There’s comfort in that. In not being asked to explain. In not being told to fight or hope or pretend.

He’s just here.

You let your gaze drift to the window.

The sky is beginning to dim, clouds stretching thin across a lavender horizon. The light filters in quietly, painting the walls in a soft, grayish gold.

For once, it doesn’t feel like something you’re missing. It just feels like something you’re allowed to witness.

He follows your gaze, and for a moment, the two of you sit like that—watching the world go on without rushing to catch it. And you feel something pass between you.

Not love. Not friendship.

Just understanding.

He knows.

He knows what’s coming, even if neither of you say it aloud. He knows that this is all that’s left, that some goodbyes don’t need to be spoken to be real.

That some endings aren’t loud—they’re gentle. Quiet. Honest.

When your fingers twitch weakly in his grasp, he responds instantly, not tightening, just holding on with the kind of steadiness that says: You’re not alone.

You breathe, shallow and slow, and the silence settles around you again.

Not empty.

Not mournful.

Just still.

And in that stillness, the two of you stay—no promises, no expectations.

Only presence.

Only this.

Rafayel felt it before he saw it—

the faintest twitch of your fingers in his hand, not like the gentle, fading flutter from earlier, but something tense, strained.

As if your body, fragile as it was, had just remembered it was breaking.

Then came the sound.

A sharp breath.

A cough.

Then another, harder—rattling through your chest like something trying to claw its way out.

His head snapped toward you, eyes wide. “Hey—hey,” he said quickly, shifting forward in the chair. “It’s okay, I’m here.”

But you couldn’t answer.

You coughed again, your body jerking slightly against the bed, your face twisting with pain.

The monitors beside you beeped faster, shrill and urgent, and Rafayel’s grip on your hand tightened instinctively.

Your lips were pale now, your breath shallow, uneven, like you were chasing air that wouldn’t come.

Panic surged in his chest, but he swallowed it down. He leaned closer, his free hand brushing your damp forehead, eyes scanning your face for something—anything—to hold on to.

“Y/N,” he whispered, voice trembling despite everything. “Just breathe, alright? I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

Your gaze met his, glassy and unfocused, but still there.

Still you.

And for a moment, just a flicker of a second, Rafayel swore you were trying to smile again, as if even now, you didn’t want him to worry.

But the coughing didn’t stop.

It came in waves, tearing through you like lightning through a tree, loud and cruel and final.

And Rafayel—helpless, terrified—could only hold your hand and call for help, his voice cracking in the stillness that was no longer calm.

The door burst open a moment later, nurses flooding in, machines pulled close, gloved hands moving fast.

They asked him to step back, to give them space.

But he didn’t let go of your hand. Not until they made him.

And as he stood there, heart pounding, watching them surround you, watching you struggle through every breath—

He felt it.

The fragility. The edge.

The moment when time, which had once stood still for you, began to slip away for real.

He stood there, frozen, as chaos moved around him—machines rolling, voices shouting, urgent footsteps echoing down the corridor.

They were wheeling you away.

Your hand slipped from his, limp, fingers trailing against the sheet until they were out of reach.

Someone pushed him gently aside, murmuring something about protocols, about staying calm, but Rafayel didn’t hear them.

Time stood still.

The world had narrowed into that one, terrible image—

You, pale and gasping, swallowed by white sheets and machines, being rushed through sterile halls as if time could be outrun.

But time didn’t move. Not for him.

It hung there, heavy and cruel, stretching the seconds into something unbearable. The space where your hand had been felt impossibly empty, and his own fingers curled uselessly in the air where you used to be.

You didn’t look back.

You couldn’t.

And he—

He didn’t move.

Didn’t follow. Didn’t breathe.

Just watched.

Watched until you disappeared around the corner and the hallway was quiet again.

And then he stood there, alone in the echo of a life that was slowly slipping away.

Time waits for no one—and no one can stop it.

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hellsitegenetics · 1 year ago

Note

Blast the Book of Genesis, Chapter 1 from the Bible so we can finally know what was the first creature God created.

[1:1] In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,

[1:2] the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

[1:3] Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.

[1:4] And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.

[1:5] God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

[1:6] And God said, "Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters."

[1:7] So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so.

[1:8] God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

[1:9] And God said, "Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so.

[1:10] God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

[1:11] Then God said, "Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it." And it was so.

[1:12] The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good.

[1:13] And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

[1:14] And God said, "Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years,

[1:15] and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth." And it was so.

[1:16] God made the two great lights - the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night - and the stars.

[1:17] God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth,

[1:18] to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.

[1:19] And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

[1:20] And God said, "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky."

[1:21] So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

[1:22] God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth."

[1:23] And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

[1:24] And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind." And it was so.

[1:25] God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

[1:26] Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."

[1:27] So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

[1:28] God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."

[1:29] God said, "See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.

[1:30] And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so.

[1:31] God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

String identified:

[1:1] t gg G cat t a a t at,

[1:2] t at a a a a c t ac t , a G t t ac t at.

[1:3] T G a, "t t gt"; a t a gt.

[1:4] A G a tat t gt a g; a G aat t gt t a.

[1:5] G ca t gt a, a t a ca gt. A t a g a t a g, t t a.

[1:6] A G a, "t t a t t t at, a t t aat t at t at."

[1:7] G a t a aat t at tat t t at tat a t . A t a .

[1:8] G ca t . A t a g a t a g, t c a.

[1:9] A G a, "t t at t gat tgt t ac, a t t a aa." A t a .

[1:10] G ca t a at, a t at tat gat tgt ca a. A G a tat t a g.

[1:11] T G a, "t t at t t gtat: at g , a t t at tat a t t t t." A t a .

[1:12] T at gt t gtat: at g , a t ag t t t t. A G a tat t a g.

[1:13] A t a g a t a g, t t a.

[1:14] A G a, "t t gt t t t aat t a t gt; a t t g a a a a a a,

[1:15] a t t gt t t t g gt t at." A t a .

[1:16] G a t t gat gt - t gat gt t t a a t gt t t gt - a t ta.

[1:17] G t t t t t g gt t at,

[1:18] t t a a t gt, a t aat t gt t a. A G a tat t a g.

[1:19] A t a g a t a g, t t a.

[1:20] A G a, "t t at g t a g cat, a t a t at ac t t ."

[1:21] G cat t gat a t a g cat tat , , t c t at a, a g . A G a tat t a g.

[1:22] G t, ag, " t a t a t at t a, a t t t at."

[1:23] A t a g a t a g, t t a.

[1:24] A G a, "t t at g t g cat : catt a cg tg a aa t at ." A t a .

[1:25] G a t aa t at , a t catt , a tg tat c t g . A G a tat t a g.

[1:26] T G a, "t a a ag, accg t ; a t t a t t a, a t t a, a t catt, a a t aa t at, a cg tg tat c t at."

[1:27] G cat a ag, t ag G cat t; a a a cat t.

[1:28] G t, a G a t t, " t a t, a t at a t; a a t t a a t t a a g tg tat t at."

[1:29] G a, ", a g at g tat t ac a t at, a t t t t; a a t .

[1:30] A t at t at, a t t a, a t tg tat c t at, tg tat a t at , a g g at ." A t a .

[1:31] G a tg tat a a, a , t a g. A t a g a t a g, t t a.

Closest match: Naumovozyma dairenensis CBS 421 chromosome 11, complete genome Common name: Budding yeast

(I could not find an image of this organism, so here is an image of Naumovozyma castellii instead.)

#tumblr genetics #genetics #asks #requests #sent to me #christianity #yeast #long post #such a massive post for absolutely no payoff LMAO

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andvys · 1 year ago

Text

Dancing with our hands tied | Prologue

I knew there was no one in the world who could take it I had a bad feeling

Warnings: mentions of injuries, bruises and scars, mention of the upside down, this is post s4, enemies to lovers. mentions of death and the upside down. readers features are not mentioned, besides the accident with the hair dye in the past

Pairing: Steve Harrington x fem!reader

Summary: You and Steve have never seen eye to eye, and it never changed, not even when you were pulled into a world of monsters and risked your life to save him. But tension had always been between you both, something that neither of you ever wanted to admit -- but how much longer can you take it when the pull between you gets stronger and stronger each second you spend by each others side?

Word count: 3.6k+

Author's note: A new fic and another shoutout to my queen @hellfire--cult 🤍 thank you for working on the ideas for this story with me, I'm so excited for this one!

You’re running through the darkness, barefoot, the soil feels wet and slippery beneath your feet, twigs and branches scratch your skin open, the air feels icy cold, the wind blows through your hair and goosebumps arise on your skin, though not because of the cold but because of the growling behind you, the creatures that reach for you, that scream for you, that want your blood and your flesh.

Your lungs feel on fire and so do your legs, but you don’t stop running.

You run faster and faster, hoping to find shelter though this forest seems so big and never ending, there is no way out of this, no way out of here.

There is no shelter and there is nowhere to run – and yet, you don’t stop, you don’t let them get to you, you don’t let them touch you.

Rain starts falling, thunder rumbles through the woods and the ground beneath you suddenly starts shaking, making your knees buckle.

Desperation clings onto you, you can’t fall, if you do then you lose.

The sky becomes redder, shining angrily, the lightning now comes for you, crashing down on the ground right before you, causing you to yelp in surprise.

And that is all that it took, an obstacle thrown into the path that was destined for you to stay on. It caught you off guard, you no longer looked at the way before you, you slowed down and you slipped on the muddy ground.

You can feel yourself falling and it feels as though it takes forever for you to crash, you can feel the breath getting knocked out of you, you can feel the tear running down your cheek, you can feel the darkness taking ahold of you and despite knowing that you are going down, the fall still startles you, making you whimper in pain when you hit your head on something, your vision blurs and your skin aches and despite it, you push yourself up but it’s too late.

The vines are wrapping itself around your body, like snakes that are about to poison you. Panic rises in your chest and your eyes widen when you lift your head to see the creatures running towards you, getting closer and closer.

“No!” Your own voice sounds so unfamiliar to you, so filled with fear and desperation.

You struggle against the vines, though they hold you down so strongly. You try kicking against it, you try fighting against it but nothing helps, nothing will help you, nothing will save you.

Suddenly, you feel something sharp in your skin, in your legs, in your calves, in your arms, everywhere. You scream in pain – in pain and in anger. Tears stream down your face, blood seeps from the ripped open skin, the metallic taste now lingering on your tongue and that will be the last thing you will taste, the last thing you will see is the blood red sky, the last thing you will feel is how you’re being ripped apart.

But even now, as you’re slipping into a cruel death, all you think about is him.

You’re awaiting the darkness, the void – though it’s not what greets you when your eyes close. Light greets you. Bright, disgusting light that makes you want to close your eyes again. Fuck. You forgot to close the curtains last night.

A groan falls from your lips and you pull the blanket up higher, hiding your face from the sun that shines directly into your room. You pay no mind to your racing heart or the fear that still lingers from the dream you just woke from – you ignore it, as you always do.

This one was unlike all the others that have been haunting you for weeks now. Instead of hands around your neck, and the cruel blue eyes staring into your soul as he tried to kill you, it’s been the creatures that wanted you dead this time – and somehow they caused you less fear than he did.

You sink deeper into your mattress, enjoying the comfort and warmth of your bed.

Nothing awaits you today, absolutely nothing.

With a sigh, you lift your blanket and sit up, rubbing your eyes before you squint them open. You pull your legs up to your chest and prop your chin up on your knees, looking out your window as you get lost in your thoughts.

You are taken back to your dreams when the sun gets brighter, reminding you of the lights that surged through the red sky when the creatures – the monsters ripped you open. Not shying away from digging their teeth and claws into your delicate skin. – And to think that you once thought that Tommy and Carol were monsters.. Now you know what real monsters look like, feel like..

They never got under your skin like the monsters in your dreams did, not even when they thought they did. They threw cruel words at you, made up rumors about you that circled around school but as entertaining as it was to some of the students of Hawkins High, you just didn’t care what they thought of you, what they whispered about you whenever you passed by the gossiping girls or the boys who would smirk whenever you would walk through the hallways.

Just like all the other new freshman girls, you were fresh meat, a little lamb in the midst of a lion's den, ready to be ripped apart – or at least, that’s what you were meant to be. The first time Kelli Robertson approached you in order to intimidate you and to make it known who she was, she walked away with a split open lip after she tugged at your pigtails and made fun of the way you dressed. She never approached you again after this and neither did her friends.

You were no violent person but it had always been easy for you to lose your temper around girls and boys who loved to think that they were better than anyone else, that their status in school was something deemed special and meaningful outside of it, that they could push around the ones weaker than them.

Maybe you weren’t better than them, you gave them back what they gave to others, but at least they deserved it. And with them, you had the power to fight back whenever they came at you.

But when it came to him, you didn’t have much power to fight back – only luck was on your side, that night. A battered house you were supposed to die in, saved you. It’s ironic, really.

It’s been a few weeks since the evil had been defeated and you had won – since your friends had won, but not without scars and bruises.

Eddie almost died.

Max almost died.

And you, you almost died too.

Maybe you should have.

You drag yourself out of bed, like every morning, ignoring the sharp pain in your side, the ache that still lingers in your neck – you wonder if it will stay there forever now.

You hate to look at yourself in the mirror, but you still do.

You wash your face and brush your teeth and you stare at your reflection, hating what you see. The bruises that have not healed yet, the ones on your face and on your neck, the scar that he left for you to always look at.

With a sigh, you turn away and leave the bathroom. You make yourself a cup of coffee and sit on your windowsill. You pull your knees up to your chest, closing your eyes for a moment, you enjoy the way the sun feels on your skin. You missed it, the warmth, the smell of spring in the air and giving yourself this moment of peace every morning.

You feel the beating of your heart, the kind that fills your body with fear – the fear that will always linger now.

You can’t stand it.

And you can’t stand that the only way to get rid of it is to be around the person who hates you the most.

The one that ripped your heart out more than once, with nothing but cruel words.

You should stay away, but you can’t.

And besides, your words are just as cruel.

Walking into Family Video, a small smile tugs at your lips when Steve’s frown greets you. He is leaning against the counter, a pencil in his hand as he works on the crossword in the newspaper. He instantly straightens up when he locks eyes with you, a sigh already falling from his lips.

He has been seeing you more often than usual in the past few weeks – every time you walk in here, he ignores the relief in his chest and the pain when he sees those fading bruises on your skin.

By the look on your face, he can tell that you are up to no good.

You’re wearing a sweet smile on your face – one that could never be directed at him. An iced coffee in your hand that you got from the shop across the street, he sees you walk in there, every afternoon.

“Hey Steve,” you smile as you walk up to the counter, placing the cup in front of him. “I got you a coffee.”

Steve raises his eyebrows at you, glancing down at the coffee, not quite believing you or the sickly sweet tone in your voice, you even called him by his name, something that never happens.

“What’d you put in there?”

You chuckle, shrugging at him. “Nothing, I figured you could use some coffee and some company, you look bored.”

The store is empty and he already stacked up all the new tapes. Yes, he is bored but he doesn’t believe you for a second. You’re here because you are bored.

You tap your manicured nails against the counter, tilting your head and looking at him oh so sweetly – your lashes flutter, your lips are curled into a soft smile, you’re wearing a pretty blouse underneath your denim jacket and heart shaped glasses on your head, you smell like cherries. If you weren’t you, he would be flirting away already but unfortunately you are you.

The girl he cannot stand, even now, after you risked your life for a person that means so much to him, after you almost bled out and died fighting someone who was ready to kill you.

He ignores the pang in his chest when he looks at the faint bruises around your neck, you almost got matching wounds now – only his were caused by bats, yours were caused by someone else’s hands. He redirects his eyes to your face instead, not bearing to look at the marks any longer.

He looks into your eyes for a moment, trying to figure you out the way he always does – though you will always remain a mystery to him.

Tempting, he thinks – the coffee, not you, definitely not you.

With a sigh, he reaches for the cup and just as he goes to wrap his hand around it, you beat him to it, snatching it back.

“Oops, I changed my mind.”

You wrap your lips around the straw, keeping your eyes on him as you drink the coffee that you definitely did not order for Steve.

He clenches his jaw, eyes flashing with annoyance as they lock with yours again.

Satisfaction fills your chest, you love teasing him.

“Robin isn’t here, so what the hell do you want, Blondie?”

At that, you clench your jaw.

You can’t stand the stupid nickname that he hasn’t stopped using since Sophomore year.

You wanted that blonde you saw on Dolly Parton in the magazines, only for a bright yellow to end up on your head. You begged your sister to let you stay at home, but she pointed to the door for you to face the consequences of getting hair dye without her permission.

And since then, you went back to your natural hair color, not touching a dye in your life again.

Steve won’t let you live it down, always bringing up the nickname he knows you hate so much.

Though you don’t know whether he gave you the name because of the yellow hair you once sported or because you love the band so much.

“Well, I wanna rent a movie,” you shrug as you play with the straw. “I figured you could recommend one to me. You know, since you work here and everything.”

He rolls his eyes, “just get The Breakfast Club and leave.”

You put your hand over your heart, feigning pain. “Are you trying to get rid of me, Lego head?”

He clenches his jaw harder than before, you can tell that he is trying his hardest not to roll his eyes.

“I watched that movie last week. I wanna watch something else now. Give me a few recommendations or I’ll speak to your manager,” you tease him.

He shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose as he walks around the counter, nodding his head at you to follow him.

“I wouldn’t put it past you.”

You follow him, sipping on your coffee as you look down at the way his jeans are hugging his ass.

“How about Teen Wolf?” He asks as he walks into the horror movie section, he reaches for the movie and turns back to you, gripping the shelf as he gives you a fake smile.

“Hmm,” you scrunch your nose up as you pretend to think. “No thanks, I got enough Teen Wolf in front of me.” You gesture to his hair and the chest hair that peeks from his unbuttoned shirt.

You try to not look at the scar around his neck, the vision of him being held down against the ground while the bats tried to bite chunks of flesh out of him still pains you and makes shivers run down your spine.

With a snort, he rolls his eyes and puts the tape back on the shelf.

“What do you want, horror, action, rom-com–”

“Do I look like I’d enjoy a shitty rom-com?”

“Right,” he mumbles, scratching the back of his neck as he looks you up and down. You actually do look like you’d enjoy a shitty rom-com. Besides the constant glare or the frown on your face, you actually look like a sweet and approachable girl – that’s where he was wrong. You are unapproachable, you always have been. You’re rough and you’re mean, you never bite your tongue and you don’t shy away from fights or arguments, that is something that caught him off guard the first time he talked to you. The pink skirt, the bow in your hair and the innocent look on your face was a disguise for the little devil that was hiding behind those pretty eyes.

Your looks still don’t match your personality. – Even now, after the horrifying things that you have been through only weeks back, you are still you. Still the same mean girl he always knew you to be.

There was a shift in your behavior after last summer, something had changed in your eyes, a sadness lingered in them, one that hasn’t been there before, he doesn’t know what happened, if you had gotten hurt or if you had lost something or someone, but even if, that clearly wasn’t enough for you to change either.

Nothing seems to change you.

You are just cold and unreachable in your emotions – for the most part.

“Alright then no rom-com,” he sighs.

He continues to offer you movies, ones that you keep saying no to. He can feel himself growing frustrated the longer you do this, knowing damn well that you aren’t here for a movie, especially not for tonight, you’re hanging out with Robin tonight.

Once you make it to the last aisle, Steve is officially fed up with you. He leans against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest while you innocently look at the movies in the thriller section. You are sipping on your drink, eyeing some tape that you just reached for. You put it back and sigh, pretending to be bored.

While Steve had been trying to be less harsh with you than he was weeks before, he can’t help but roll his eyes at you.

“Why are you here?” He grumbles. “We both know you don’t want to rent a movie.”

You turn your head, eying him up and down before you start making your way over to him.

“How would you know?”

“Because I know you,” he mumbles as he takes a step closer to you. “I know you’re here because you’re fucking bored.”

You smirk, tilting your head up as you look into his hazel eyes.

“Get a job and let me do mine,” he rolls his eyes and finally brushes past you, making his way back to the counter.

“I don’t need a job, I have enough money to do… uh.. well nothing for the rest of my life. Just like you, Harrington. Why don’t you take that hush money we were gifted with and get the hell out of here?” You ask, curiously as you follow him. “You could be relaxing, traveling through the country, staying in fancy hotels, taking out hot chicks.”

“How fun,” he snorts as he stops by the register. “You go do that, if that’s what a dream life looks to you. Or get a freaking boyfriend or something and stop getting on my goddamn nerves, Blondie.”

“Who would keep your life so entertaining if I got too busy with a boyfriend?” You ask. “You’d die of boredom.”

Steve picks up the pencil he dropped earlier, trying to ignore you as he continues working on his crossword but you don’t let him obviously. You place the drink you teased him with, in front of him and lift yourself up on the counter, making yourself comfortable next to him.

He rolls his eyes, looking up at you through his bangs to find you looking at him already, a smirk lingering on your lips. You’re close enough for him to smell the perfume on your skin, sweet and flowery, another misleading thing, you’re not sweet, not in any way.

“You really think you have that much of an impact in my life?” He asks. Like the bruises on your body don’t anger him, because he couldn’t help you when you were fighting for your own and someone else’s life. Like he didn’t hold your hand when your cold body was laying in the hospital bed. Like he didn’t pray for you to make it out alive.

You bite the insides of your cheeks, blinking as you continue to look into his eyes.

You nod. “I think you would miss me so much if I was gone.”

He glares into your eyes, taking deep breaths as he moves his tongue along his bottom lip.

How can you speak of such things when you almost lost your life? He wonders.

“Yeah, you would definitely miss me,” you smirk and reach for your drink, only to be stopped by him when he reaches for it first, smirking back at you as he brings it up to his lips, wrapping his lips around the straw – not caring that your lips have touched it first.

Your jaw drops a little, only a little, though enough for him to be amused by the shocked look on your face – that is rare.

He takes a sip of your coffee, humming. “Mhmm, Vanilla? How’d you know it was my favorite?”

You purse your lips, squinting your eyes at him.

“Don’t look at me like that. You’ll give me the wrong idea and make me think that you have a crush on me or something.”

What an idiot.

“You wish, Lego head.” You snort and jump off the counter, letting your face drop into your regular expression.

He chuckles, tilting his head at you. “Right, I forgot, you don’t have such a thing as feelings.”

You blink, cracking your knuckles as you meet his eyes again.

Yeah, you heard that before and it stung, really badly.

“Not when it comes to you.”

He crosses his arms over his chest, looking at you with a bored expression.

“I’m so wounded.”

Nothing you would say or do could ever hurt Steve Harrington.

Not even the cruelest words from you would hurt him.

Because you don’t have the power to hurt him.

You don’t have an impact in his life.

You wouldn’t leave a void in his life if you just disappeared – not like he would in yours if he were to disappear.. But he doesn’t need to know that.

He couldn’t care less about you, he surely wouldn’t care if you left this town like you should have a long time ago, he surely wouldn’t care if you had died that night. You would have been long forgotten by now, a faceless someone in his memories.

“Heidi or Summer or Kayla will surely patch those wounds,” you smirk as you walk towards the door. “Or are you still getting over Nancy… you know after she rejected you… again?”

He nods at you with a glare, clenching his jaw at the reminder.

You chuckle and turn around, you open the door and step out.

“Look both ways when you cross the street, Blondie!” He calls out to you. “You don’t wanna end up in the hospital again!”

You flip him off, rolling your eyes at his chuckle that you hear before the door closes behind you.

The afternoon sun is shining down on you, leaving a warm feeling on your skin, a smile pulls at your lips as you glance at the growing flowers next to trees.

The sky is blue, no cloud in sight to hide the sun, it’s quiet, peaceful – almost too peaceful.

This is how it should be, right?

The war that was fought in secret is over.

But, there is still one upon you.

You and the man you just walked away from.

Will you make it out alive this time?

Or will you be left more broken than before?

I'm only doing taglists for friends & mutuals so please don't ask to be tagged! It's too stressful for me to keep track of that.

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#steve harrington #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington x you #steve harrington imagine #steve harrington angst #steve harrington series #steve harrington enemies to lovers #stranger things angst

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