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zephlovesspacestuff · 1 month ago

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Hiii :(

I’m going through a painful breakup. Could you please write me a long ass heartbreaking EJ angst (not involving death/ cheating/ anything like that, just falling out of love)

Actually any CP is fine, I just want to cry

Thanks in advance if you do decide to write this

hi baby, i'm sorry to hear :( shit fucking sucks i know. sending you much love and healing and this fic i did a while back. i actually closed my reqs for the moment but i already had this written and i couldn't not post it lol. kisses and hugs, i hope everything falls into place for you soon💗

Erosion (Eyeless Jack x GN!Reader)

CW: angst with no comfort, light mentions of cannibalism and blood

wordcount 3.6k

You never flinched when you saw him.

That’s the first thing Jack would bring up later, in one of those rare, quiet moments where he let memory bleed through the cracks in his composure. “You didn’t flinch,” he’d murmur like it still surprised him, like it was something sacred. He’d say it with that low, flat voice of his, but you’d feel it anyway; in the way he touched your hand after, careful like he might still ruin it.

And it was true. You hadn’t flinched. Not at the sight of his eyeless face or the oily, unnatural gleam of the scar tissue that webbed through his sockets. You didn’t shrink from the smell of blood on his breath or the uncanny stillness in the way he moved. You’d just looked, and maybe that was what did it. You looked at him like he wasn’t a monster.

You’d loved him. You really fucking loved him.

It was one of those rare loves that felt mythic in its stillness. No explosions. Just gravity. The kind that anchored itself so deep in your chest it changed the way you breathed. It was like waiting for snow to melt through black dirt. Messy, quiet, inevitable. Every time you looked at him, you thought, I will never love someone like this again.

You didn’t fall in love all at once. You fell the way water seeps through cracks in stone—quiet, insistent. You learned him like erosion. You watched how he touched things only with gloves, how he turned his head slightly when you laughed, like it was something foreign but not unwelcome. You caught him listening. That was always the first step. Jack always listened before he ever allowed himself to care.

He didn't speak much at first, only watching you with his unreadable expression while you chattered nervously to fill the space. The stillness was brutal. He sat like stone, like bone-deep control. He observed. Measured. Not like a man, but like something old and starved of gentleness. Like he wasn’t just seeing you, but weighing you. Testing if your softness would rot like everything else.

It took months for him to let you see him without the mask.

And when he did, when he sat on the edge of your bed in the dark and peeled it off like it hurt him, you didn't gasp. You didn’t turn away. You looked.

And he flinched harder than if you had screamed.

You never thought someone so dangerous could seem so… tired. But maybe that’s what you loved first. How exhausted he was from carrying himself like a loaded gun. You wanted to be the one he could hand the weight to.

And eventually, he let you.

Not all at once. Jack didn’t work that way. But there were little moments. His hand resting on your lower back longer than necessary. The way his body leaned toward yours in sleep, as if pulled by instinct alone. That one time he let out a sound halfway between a sigh and a low, guttural hum, when your fingers curled into the back of his hair.

And through all of that, through all the things he didn’t say, he let you touch him.

Do you even understand what that meant?

Jack, who lived in endless control, who dissected every instinct, let you in. Carefully. Like one mistake would shatter everything and he’d never recover. You were the first person who didn’t try to fix him. The first who didn’t flinch. And God, he needed that. He needed you. He needed someone to be soft and unrelenting in their care, someone who wouldn’t hand him their fear like a fucking gift and ask him to carry it.

He trusted you. Slowly. Brutally.

You learned his habits like a language. The pauses in his speech meant he was filtering thoughts through caution. A low twitch in his jaw meant he was hungry and trying not to think about it. When he touched you bare-handed, it was his way of saying I trust you not to run.

And God, you were so sure you wouldn’t.

You remember the first time he touched you without gloves. The way his hands trembled—not from cold or nerves, but from restraint. From the raw fact that he hadn’t let himself feel skin like that in years. The warmth of your body against his made him go still, like the contact struck some bone-deep alarm that he silenced only for you.

“Are you afraid of me?” he’d asked, low, in that scraped, worn-out voice.

“No,” you said, and you meant it. He was many things, but not to you. Not dangerous. Not disgusting. You saw the monster, yes—but you saw him too. The man. The thing underneath. The part that still wanted, still longed. Jack didn’t believe in redemption, but he believed in you. Maybe that was worse. Maybe it was too much.

Because there’s something violent about being loved by someone who doesn’t think they deserve it. It’s beautiful. God, it’s beautiful, but it’s also fragile. Every kindness becomes a debt. Every mistake becomes betrayal. And you didn’t understand it at first. You didn’t see how love, to him, was a battleground where he was always about to be abandoned.

It was rocky. Of course it was. There were days he vanished for hours, came back with blood on his collar and glass in his fists. Nights where you reached for him and he flinched, not because of you, but because touch still felt like a trick. He didn’t know how to ask for closeness. He didn’t know how to keep it.

But you stayed.

You stayed when he shied away from your eyes. You stayed when he snarled through gritted teeth that he didn’t need anyone, even as his whole body leaned toward you. You stayed through the mutterings, the nightmares, the hours where he crouched on the kitchen floor gripping his head like something inside him was trying to crawl out.

And when he said “Don’t go,” barely audible, barely even him, you stayed.

Because you loved him. You loved every mangled, haunted part of him. You loved the way he dissected the world like a puzzle, loved the way he remembered every detail you’d ever mentioned. You loved that he never lied. That he didn’t know how to.

You believed in him.

And you thought it would be enough.

God, you thought it would be enough.

The beginning of the end started with a twitch. Not yours—his.

He hadn’t fed in over two weeks. You didn’t know that at first. You only noticed the tightness in his jaw, the sudden pauses mid-sentence like he was fighting something back. He got quieter. Still, somehow even more still. Like he was afraid that if he moved, he’d splinter. He sat on the floor more often, back pressed to the wall, hands loose in his lap like claws waiting for command.

You didn’t ask. You should have, maybe. But you didn’t want the answer.

Because you already knew.

You knew by the way he touched you. Gently, but from a distance, like your skin was a prayer he wasn’t allowed to speak anymore. You knew by the weight of his body beside you in bed, tense like a wound, holding his breath when you moved in your sleep. You knew by the silence after you laughed. It used to comfort him. Now it made him ache.

He was starving.

And it wasn’t just hunger. It was denial. He thought if he could just push past it, if he could go long enough without feeding, he wouldn’t need it anymore. Like a bad habit. Like an addiction. Like something love could fix.

But you were never meant to fix him.

And that’s what made it worse.

Because Jack did it for you.

Every second he went without tearing into someone’s chest, every hour he spent gritting his teeth as instinct clawed its way up his throat, it was all for you. Not because he saw the flicker in your eyes every time he came back, smelling like blood and rot, but because he felt it. Even blind, he felt it. The hitch in your breath. The spike in your pulse. The unconscious step you took back when he walked through the door. You tried to hide it. God, you tried.

But nature doesn’t forgive love.

You were still human. Your body remembered the old language of fear, even when your heart was fluent in devotion.

And still, you... stayed.

You stayed through the tension, through the growing silence. Through the weeks where he barely touched you. Where his voice became rawer, scraped thin by restraint. Where you found claw marks in the sink and didn’t ask questions. Where you woke up alone and found blood in the grass out back.

He always came home. Even when he shouldn’t.

Even when he knew the sight of him—trembling, soaked in gore, face slack from the afterglow of instinct—would make something in your chest twist violently. Even when your body stiffened in his arms, and you hated yourself for it. Even when you whispered, “It’s okay,” like a prayer, like a lie, like a desperate thread trying to hold it all together.

He always came back.

Because he couldn’t survive the guilt of not coming home to you.

So he’d run. He’d disappear into the woods, into the night, into the parts of the world that had long since stopped asking questions. You knew what he did out there. You knew he tore through homes, through throats, through families. Not because he wanted to, but because he had to. And when the haze lifted, when the blood dried and the hunger subsided, he always ended up at your doorstep. Sometimes hours later. Sometimes days. Eyes hollow, skin vibrating from adrenaline and self-loathing.

He never knocked. You left the door unlocked for him anyway.

And when he stumbled through it, like a dying man crawling back to his altar, you never said a word. You just opened your arms. Even if your stomach turned. Even if your hands shook. You opened your arms.

Because you loved him.

Because he was still him.

Because if you didn’t hold him, who the fuck would?

He wept once. You only saw it once.

You were sitting on the floor, his head in your lap, and he was still sticky with blood. He hadn’t changed. Hadn’t spoken. You were combing your fingers through his hair like it was a ritual, like touch could ward off the rot in his mind. And suddenly, his shoulders locked up, and he made this sound. Not a sob. Something quieter. Rawer. Like something breaking inside him.

“I tried,” he rasped. “I tried, I tried, I tried—”

You hushed him. You pressed your lips to the crown of his head, despite the blood caked in the strands, and whispered, “I know.”

But you didn’t. Not really. You couldn’t possibly.

Because you didn’t know what it was like to wake up with blood under your fingernails and a name you didn’t recognize in your mouth. You didn’t know what it was like to spend hours shaking, hoping you hadn’t gone too far this time. Hoping you hadn’t become what you always feared. Hoping the next time you walked through that door, you wouldn’t see revulsion in the eyes of the only person who had ever seen you and stayed.

And that’s the part that made him want to die. Not the hunger. Not the guilt. Not even the kills.

But that fucking look on your face when you tried to hide how afraid you were.

Because he would’ve ripped himself apart to make you feel safe. And the cruelest part of it all? He already was.

The thing about endings is, they never happen all at once. They don't knock. They whisper.

You still kissed him in the mornings. Still made coffee while he sat wrapped in a blanket like penance, still let his cold hand brush yours in passing. But something had shifted. Subtle at first. Molecular. You didn’t know it then, but it had already begun: the withering.

It wasn’t his fault. Not really. He hadn’t changed. You had just finally accepted that he never could.

You used to think he was a tragedy, a thing broken by the world, by the sharp teeth of circumstance and cruelty. Something to mourn. Something to heal. But time had worn that delusion down to the raw bone of truth.

He wasn’t just broken. He was built this way. Hurt was written into him. Etched into the dark sinew of who he'd become.

He was made to suffer, and to make others suffer by existing. And he hated it. You know he did. Every time he came back with blood on his teeth and a tremble in his shoulders, every time he whispered your name like a prayer he didn’t think he deserved, every time he curled around himself on your kitchen floor like a dying animal, you knew he fucking hated it.

But knowing that didn’t make it easier.

Because love couldn’t stitch his biology into something human. Because no amount of tenderness could override instinct. Because he was trying so hard to be good, and still, he fed.

And you tried to hold on. You fought to hold on.

You helped clean the mess when his body slackened post-feeding, wiped the blood from his jaw with shaking hands and kissed the sharp edge of his mouth like forgiveness. You whispered, “You’re not a monster,” like a vow you didn’t believe anymore. Because monsters choose to harm, and he didn’t choose this, not really. But he did hurt. He would hurt again. And the aftermath always ended up in your lap, like grief you never asked to carry.

Jack knew you loved him. That wasn’t the question. The question was whether that love was survivable.

And the answer started showing up in small ways. In how you didn’t reach for his hand as often. In how you stopped looking at him when he spoke. In how your voice softened too much, like you were soothing something on its deathbed.

You began to leave rooms before he entered them.

He noticed.

Of course he did. He couldn’t see your eyes but he could feel the absence of them. He could smell guilt like blood in water. He could hear the way you sighed after you thought he was asleep. Like the weight of him was something you couldn’t hold much longer. And worse, like you were mourning him while he was still breathing.

He asked you once, in the dark, “Are you afraid of me now?”

You didn’t answer. You couldn’t lie to him. Not when your heart was already a ghost in your chest.

The silence was enough. It was everything. He flinched. Not visibly, but internally. You felt it like a knife lodged between you. He rolled away. Didn’t speak again until morning.

You watched him, in the light of day, moving through your shared space like a haunting. Like someone trying not to take up space. And it hurt—god, it hurt—to see him so small. To see a creature built of fear and hunger trying to fold itself down into something harmless just so you’d stay.

But what neither of you ever said out loud, what gnawed at the edges of your mind every day like static, was this:

He didn’t need you to stay. He needed you to love him. And they weren’t the same thing anymore. And that was the real decay. That was where the love began to rot.

Not because you wanted it to. But because you realized... You were never enough to save him.

And the worst part? You still. Fucking. Stayed. Because leaving would hollow you out. Would turn your body to raw, weeping loss. Would unravel every moment you ever shared. But staying was its own kind of agony. It was watching him shatter and trying to pretend you hadn’t been the one to drop him.

So you stayed. You loved him in past tense, quietly. You smiled when you didn’t feel like it. You kissed him on the forehead instead of the mouth. You washed the blood out of his clothes and whispered, “It’s okay,” knowing it wasn’t.

And every day, he died a little more knowing he was losing you while you were still right beside him.

Erosion. That’s what it was. Slow. Silent. Unforgiving.

He used to picture the end like something cinematic. Violent. Devastating. You in a fit of fear, maybe screaming at him to get out, to stop hurting, stop being what he is. Or worse, you running from him, phone to your ear, the word monster trailing behind you like a scarlet ribbon. He imagined his own version, too, one where he lost control, finally, fully. Where hunger and madness swallowed him whole and he ended you because he couldn't survive without you.

But it didn’t happen like that.

No, it ended on a Tuesday.

He thinks it was Tuesday.

There was blood on the floor again. More than usual. His hands had trembled the whole way back, and he collapsed in the entryway like he always did, because your home was the only place he could fall apart in without fear of being killed for it. It used to be sanctuary.

This time, he didn’t even get a word out. You walked in barefoot, hair still damp from your shower, wearing the t-shirt he used to love you in, and you didn’t gasp. You didn’t flinch. You didn’t ask if he was okay.

You just sighed. Soft. Barely audible. And got the mop.

And that’s when he broke.

No screaming. No rage. Just his knees to his chest. Fingers clutching his skull. A low sound in his throat, cracked and animal.

He sobbed. But there were no tears. Just sound. Just shaking. Just pain with no exit.

You didn’t stop cleaning. Didn’t pause. Didn’t look. Just scrubbed the blood from the tile like it was ketchup, not evidence of the agony he’d tried to drown in.

And it didn’t hurt that you didn’t hold him. Not really. He understood. He always understood. He had lived without warmth his entire life. He had adapted to absence like some animals adapt to the dark.

But what gutted him, what turned the sobs to silence, what made his stomach hollow out like a carcass... Was the way you looked at the stain and not at him. The way your body moved around him like a chair or a table or a spilled drink. Like he wasn’t suffering. Like he wasn’t even there.

And for the first time, he wondered,

Do you think I deserve this?

Because once, you had looked at him like a question worth answering. Like a wound worth treating. Like something sacred that just needed love to stop unraveling.

Now, he couldn’t be sure.

Now, he thought maybe you’d stopped seeing a man trying to survive, and started seeing the thing that killed to keep breathing.

He didn’t ask that, though. He just asked, “Are you afraid of me?” Again. Voice low. Unsteady. Hoping.

And you didn’t look up. Didn’t stop. Didn’t speak.

Because what was left to say?

You had already said everything in the way you didn’t say anything anymore. The silence was a scalpel. It cut clean.

He didn’t leave right away. He couldn’t. He lingered like breath fogging a window. Like a stain of blood in old floorboards.

He hovered in doorways. Sat on the couch even when you didn’t sit beside him. He kept asking.

“Do you want me to go?”

“Is this what you want?”

“Do you still…?”

You never said no. But you never said yes, either.

And that was enough. Eventually. It wasn’t a door slamming. It wasn’t a fight. It wasn’t anything, really.

One night, he just didn’t come back.

And you noticed. Of course you did. The absence was a shout in the quiet of your routine. No blood on the porch. No heavy, trembling footsteps. No murmured apologies into your neck while he tried not to fall apart. Just… stillness.

And what's worse? You didn’t cry. You sat in the kitchen for a long time. Fingers wrapped around a mug gone cold. Eyes on the doorway. Waiting for something you no longer had the strength to want.

He’s gone. But you still flinch when the floor creaks at night. You still reach for two mugs instead of one. You still whisper, “Be careful,” to an empty room.

Because it ended. But it didn’t stop.

#jesus fucking christ #oh my god this was so good OP #KUDOS KUDOS KUDOS #ONE MILLION TIMES KUDOS #ripped my heart right out fr #reblog.txt #eyeless jack.txt #save file.txt

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