“I don’t need you.”
It sounded less grounded than the villain had wanted it to. It sounded like something someone had told them to say, and they were just repeating it with half hearted determination. They said it again, “I don’t need you.”
“No,” the hero agreed. They were grinning. “You don’t.”
The villain floundered. They, in all honesty, wanted a fight. To prove something, they supposed. That they really didn’t need the hero. That they weren’t in the wrong, here. “What?”
“I said,” the hero said slowly, and the beginnings of a grin curled at the edges of their mouth. “You don’t need me.”
“I don’t need you,” the villain repeated, and the hero nodded encouragingly. It just made the villain want to hit them.
The hero lounged against the doorframe, halfway in and halfway out of their apartment. And truly, that was the worst bit of it all—the hero wasn’t showing up outside the villain’s house, or driving by the villain’s work to see if they truly looked happier without them. But the villain was.
They wanted to scream, and kick, and throw plates onto the ground.
‘Leave me alone.’
But they couldn’t say that, because the hero had. They had cut contact and blocked numbers and ignored the villain’s car as it went by. Still, the villain felt haunted. As if they would never be clean of the hero, parts of their soul forever dirtied by it all.
The hero’s smile, and the way their voice sounded when they knew the villain would cave to their wishes.
They just wanted the hero to—
“Leave me alone.” It slipped out against their better judgement. From the way the hero’s grin widened, they knew it had been the worst thing they could have said.
“Darling, I have,” the hero said, their tone saccharine. Pitying. “You’re the one outside of my apartment.”
It felt like being burned alive, the frustration of it. The way it rose in their chest but had nowhere to go, leaving them shaking with nothing and everything trapped under their tongue.
“That’s not what I meant and you know that—“
“What, you miss me that bad? I thought you—“
“Shut up,” the villain snapped. The hero raised an eyebrow.
“It’s eating you alive, isn’t it?” They sounded pleased.
“It’s not,” the villain protested.
“I told you, you don’t need me.”
“I know,” the villain grit out.
“But you want me.”
Something in the villain’s brain stalled.
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t need me. You never have,” the hero said it like it was a fact. “You want me, though. Even as the sound of my name burns you, and the memory of me rots in your mouth, you’re going to want me.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I?” The hero’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You can go out to every bar in this city, kiss a hundred people who look like me and get just drunk enough to forget you’re not mine anymore—but you’re never going to stop missing me.”
The hero knew, of course they did, how hard the villain had tried to forget it entirely. The disaster they had become trying to be clean again.
“No matter how many shots you take to block out the memory of me, you’ll always be mine.”
“You’re insane,” the villain finally managed. The hero simply tipped their head to the side in acknowledgement. “That’s not-what’s wrong with you—“
“You’re the one who misses me.”
It stung, deep in the villain’s stomach. It took them too long to remember how to breathe—too long after that to think of what to say.
“If I’m lucky, I won’t ever have to see you again,” their voice quivered, slightly. “But knowing us, the next time we meet it will be in hell.”
The hero laughed and closed the door in their face.
The villain blocked them. Avoided the side of town the worked in. Moved three cities over.
It didn’t matter.
The villain could still feel the hero under their skin.
Later, whenever someone would ask, “Have you ever been haunted?”
The villain would think back to the hero.
And say, “Yes.”
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occasionally fleshing out bits of pseudo-canon AU lore in outtakes is very fun. for today's shitposting, it is VITAL for you guys to know the extracanonical lore of Just How Fucked things have accidentally gotten with hunter & amity's sparring. mainly there having been one Incident (TM) where amity (unintentionally!!) hurled hunter into a wall at JUST the wrong angle and broke several Pretty Important ribs. and amity called darius first because 1) the healing coven is Like That and 2) if lilith found out then lilith would be mad at herrrrr :(((
so it ends up being, like. the first and only time that darius has been Genuinely Furious with both of them.
like. he was still 100% the right person to call. since amity and hunter both wriggle free without Actual Consequences.
but he is. So Fucking Mad.
anyway. i'm keeping this background lore for every single shitpost today about amity fretting @ darius. amity being like "do you hate me because you think i'm my mom and trying to ruin hunter's life 🥺" and darius being like "....i cannot fucking BELIEVE you think i'd hate you for THAT and not the GRUESOME ATTEMPTED MURDER???"
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