YANDERE SUMMER FLING X READER
currently playin' - brooklyn baby! Enjoy!
The air on the coast didnât move like the air at home.
Back in the city, the heat trapped itself between concrete slabs, heavy and stagnant, smelling of exhaust and asphalt that had been baking since May.
Here, the heat was laced with salt and the sharp, thick humidity that clung to the skin like a second coat of clothes.
He hated the way the humidity made his clothes stick to his collarbones, hated the fine grit of sand that somehow managed to migrate into the soles of his sneakers before he even stepped off the wooden boardwalk.
Most of all, he hated that he was here at all.
The entire trip was supposed to be a mandated period of "de-stressing" after a school year that had chewed him up and spit him out, but to Cyrus, it felt like an eviction.
His sanctuaryâthe dark, cool perimeter of his bedroom, the hum of his PC tower, and headset pressed against his earsâhad been traded for a rented beach house with creaking floors and screen doors that rattled every time the wind picked up.
If he were home, heâd be halfway through a new quest on his new favorite video game, or at the very least, sitting on the counter while his older sister ranted about whatever text her ex had sent her at two in the morning.
He used to think her voice was the most grating sound in the world.
Now, standing outside the local beach shack while the sun beat down on his shoulders, he would have given anything to hear her yap about some guy named Tyler.
Instead, he was stuck waiting for Camilla, his youngest sister. She was inside, hovering over a rack of cheap, rubbery flip-flops, taking an eternity to choose between neon pink and neon yellow as if the decision would alter the course of human history.
Cyrus kicked a stray pebble into the dust, his brow furrowed into a permanent line of irritation. He was sixteen, old enough to be left alone for a week at home, but his parents had insisted he come along, mostly so theyâd have a built-in babysitter for a nine-year-old who possessed the attention span of a fruit fly.
The voice was closer than it should have been.
Cyrus stiffened, a sharp spike of adrenaline hitting his chest so hard he nearly tripped over his own feet.
He hadn't heard anyone approach over the low, rhythmic thrum of the surf fifty yards away.
He turned his head slowly, his jaw set in a defensive line, expecting one of the local kids who had spent the last two days staring at him like he was an alien that had crashed into their quiet tourist town.
Instead, it was you. You were sitting on the weathered green bench beside the shop's ice cream cooler, leaning back with an ease that made Cyrus feel even more stiff and awkward by comparison.
You wore a faded shirt that looked soft from too many washes and denim shorts, but what drew his eyeâwhat made him frown in immediate suspicionâwas the small badge clipped to the pocket.
It looked official but small, like something a park rangerâs assistant or a junior lifeguard might wear.
What the hell are you? he thought, his mind immediately conjuring images of over-eager camp counselors or scout leaders who took themselves too seriously.
He bit the inside of his cheek, swallowing the sharp comment that rose to his throat. He didnât have the energy for a fight, not on Day 1.
"Yeah," he muttered, keeping his eyes fixed on the shop door.
You let out a small, low humâa sound that hung in the warm air between you for a second.
Cyrus braced himself for the follow-up, the inevitable, annoying string of questions people always asked when they saw someone new.
He internally rolled his eyes, preparing to give the shortest, coldest answers possible to make you go away.
But the questions never came.
You simply shifted your gaze back out toward the road, your hands resting casually in your lap, completely indifferent to his hostility.
Cyrus kept his head turned away, but his eyes darted sideways, catching the curve of your shoulder, the way the light hit the side of your face.
You weren't even looking at him anymore.
It irritated him that he had braced for an intrusion and received nothing but quiet compliance.
When Camilla finally burst through the door, clutching a pair of neon pink sandals like they were a prize, Cyrus didn't waste a second.
He grabbed her by the strap of her tote bag and dragged her down the steps, but right before they hit the sand, his eyes flicked back to the benchâyou were still there, watching the gulls.
In a town that small, you couldn't really hide. Over the next week, Cyrus learned the geography of the place through sheer repetition.
Their rental house was a three-story graying box with white shutters, and three doors down, across a narrow gravel lane where the beach grass grew tall and sharp, was your house.
He knew it was yours because he saw you on the porch one morning, helping an older man haul a crate of heavy-duty fishing lines into the bed of a truck.
Later, through the casual gossip his mother dragged home from the fish market, he found out your parents ran one of the boat charter services near the pier.
That explained the badge.
It explained why you always looked like you belonged to the salt and the sand, while he felt like an oil slick on clean water.
He tried to keep the wall up. Every time he took Camilla down to the waterâwhich was often, because his mother was perpetually "exhausted" from the heatâhe would see you.
You were always around the fringes of the beach, sometimes sitting near the rocks where the tide pools formed, sometimes just leaning against the wooden piling of the boardwalk with a half-empty bottle of soda in your hand.
The real trouble started on the fourth day. The afternoon had bled out into a bruised, purple twilight, and the wind had turned sharp, carrying the chill of the deep water onto the shore.
Cyrus was shivering, his arms wrapped tight around his chest as he sat on a faded blue towel.
Camilla was entirely unbothered, her small hands covered in wet sand as she tried to build a fortress before the tide came in to claim it.
Cyrus was miserable. His skin felt tight from the salt, his fingers were cold, and he was thoroughly convinced he was the most pathetic person on the entire eastern seaboard.
He looked up so fast his neck cracked. You were standing three feet away, your shadow long and dark against the cooling sand.
"What?" Cyrus snapped, his defense mechanisms instantly locking into place. "Of course I'm here. I have to watch her."
"Oh, no offense or anything," you said, rubbing the back of your neck with a sheepish, slightly awkward gesture that didn't match the confidence you'd shown on the bench.
"Just... thought you would've whined to your parents about how boring this place was by now, and they would've let you leave. You know from last time we met. Dumb assumption, huh?"
A hot, prickling rush of blood went straight to Cyrusâs ears.
He scowled, his hands clenching into fists inside his pockets. The sheer nerve of youâstanding there in your stupid, comfortable clothes, calling him a whiner when he was currently freezing to death for the sake of his family.
He opened his mouth to tell you to go straight to hell, to take your little badge and your little beach house and drown in the Atlantic, but before the words could leave his tongue, you moved your hand.
"Nice hair, by the way. Teal streaks? That's cool." You pointed toward the left side of his head, where the dark brown strands were split by two distinct bands of teal.
Cyrus froze. The anger in his chest didn't vanishâit curdled, turning into something heavy and defensive.
At school, those streaks were a target. They were the reason people called him a freak in the hallways, the reason the older guys on the soccer team poked at his head when they passed him in the cafeteria until heâd eventually stopped looking people in the eye altogether.
He searched your face for the smirk, the twitch of the lip that would give away the joke, but your eyes were just quiet, looking at the color against his skin like it was a shell youâd found near the water.
"Yeah, whatever. Thanks, I guess," he mumbled, his voice dropping an octave.
He looked down at his knees, his throat tight. He wanted to tell you to leave, but Camilla was only a few feet away, her ears perked up like a hound's. If he said anything vulgar, sheâd repeat it at the dinner table before the plates were even cleared.
And to his absolute horror, you didn't leave. You sat down. Not on the blue towel he had carefully laid out to keep the earth off his skin, but right in the cold, damp sand, completely unbothered by the way the grains coated the hem of your shorts.
You just sat there, your knees pulled up to your chest, watching Camilla struggle with her sandcastle.
The days began to blur together, measured not by the hours on a clock but by the shifting of the tide and the predictable appearance of your figure against the horizon.
Cyrus never gave you an inch though. He stayed wrapped in his towel, his chin tucked into his collar, answering your casual remarks with short, jagged grunts or single-syllable dismissals.
He was an expert at being unlikable. Heâd practiced it for years to keep people from getting close enough to hurt him.
You didn't push, but you didn't leave either. Youâd tell him about the horseshoe crabs youâd seen by the pier, or how the weather was going to turn sour by Thursday because the gulls were flying low.
And because Cyrus spent so much time pretending not to listen, he ended up memorizing everything instead.
He learned that you hated the taste of fish despite living in a town that practically ran on it, he learned that you could tell the difference between a high-tide line and a storm-line just by looking at the color of the grass on the dunes.
He knew your name nowânot because heâd asked, but because heâd heard your mother call it from the porch one evening when the wind carried her voice down the lane.
And then came the Tuesday when the rocks were empty.
Cyrus arrived at four, Camilla trailing behind him with her plastic bucket. He walked down the wooden steps, his eyes automatically tracking to the standard spot near the old jetty where you usually sat while your parents finished their shift at the docks.
The spot was empty. There was nothing but a piece of driftwood and a crushed aluminum can.
A strange, hollow sensation opened up in Cyrusâs stomach, like the drop of an elevator. He huffed, a sharp, angry sound, and threw his towel down with more force than necessary.
Whatever, he thought, his chest tightening. Who cares? You're probably off being weird somewhere else.
He sat down, his eyes fixed on the horizon, but every thirty seconds, his head would jerk toward the boardwalk, expecting to see that stupid badge or that casual, easy stride.
The sun went down slow and agonizingly bright, painting the water in shades of orange that made his eyes ache.
By the time he dragged Camilla back to the house, his mood was so foul his mother didn't even bother telling him to do the dishes.
The next afternoon, you were there before him. You were sitting on the timber of the jetty, your legs swinging over the edge, looking as though youâd never left.
Cyrus didn't even wait to lay down his towel. He marched straight up to the base of the rocks, his face dark, his fists bunched in his pockets. He stood directly in front of you, blocking the sun, his doe eyes wide and furious.
"Why didn't you come yesterday?" he demanded, his voice cracking slightly on the last word. "You thought I was gonna miss you or what?"
You didn't flinch at the venom in his tone. Instead, your lips curved into a soft, small smileânot a mocking one, but the kind of smile someone gives a stray cat that finally comes out from under the porch.
"It was my mom's birthday," you said, your voice level and calm. "Had to help with the cake. Took her a while to blow out the candles." You shifted, plopping down into your usual spot in the sand, just a foot away from where his shoes were dug into the earth.
The anger died in his throat, leaving behind a dry, metallic taste.
He looked down at you, and for the very first time since they had met on that green bench, he didn't look away.
He analyzed your face. You weren't even looking at him anymoreâyour eyes had drifted back out to the water, watching the way the white foam broke against the dark stones.
Cyrus's gaze traced the line of your jaw, the slight curve of your nose, the way a few stray grains of sand had dried against your cheekbone.
A sudden, terrifying wave of heat rose from his neck, flooding his cheeks with a dark, visible flush. He tore his eyes away, looking blindly at the surf.
"Dâdid your mom have fun yesterday?"
The words felt clumsy, heavy like rocks in his mouth. It was the first time he had ever initiated a conversation, the first time he had asked about something that didn't directly involve Camilla or the beach.
You perked up instantly, your head snapping back to look at him, your eyes bright. "Yeah, actually. We took her out to eat at that place by the marina. She had the lobster."
You looked up at him, your gaze lingering on the teal highlights near his temple, the blue-green strands shifting slightly in the sea breeze.
Cyrus stayed quiet after that. He sat down on the sand next to you, his knees nearly touching yours, and for the first time in sixteen years, he didn't feel the need to pull his hood up to hide his hair.
The days that followed were a quiet sort of torture. The defensiveness didn't disappearâit was too deeply ingrained in him, too much of a shield to be dropped all at onceâbut it softened at the edges.
He could hold a conversation now for three, maybe four sentences before the familiar panic would set in, the old voice reminding him that his voice sounded too high, too whiny, too strange, causing him to drop the thread and go silent again.
But you never filled the silence with noise. You just let it sit there between you, comfortable and heavy with the smell of salt.
But with the comfort came the sickness.
It started as a small flutter, a strange, nervous twitch in the pit of his stomach whenever you sat down next to him.
Within a week, it had grown into something large and feral, a nest of sickly, heavy butterflies that clawed at his ribs every time your shoulder brushed his.
Sometimes, when you laughed at something Camilla did, the feeling was so intense Cyrus felt like he was going to choke.
It felt like something thick and sweet was rising up his throat, wanting to gush out over the clean sandâa terrifying, desperate need to say things he didn't have the vocabulary for.
He liked the way you didn't look at his hair like it was a mistake. He liked the way you knew the name of every bird that landed on the pier.
And he hated himself for it.
He hated it because this place wasn't realâ it was a three-week intermission in a life that was waiting for him back in the gray city.
And unfortunately, the hammer fell permeantly on Thursday night.
Over a dinner of boiled corn and local shrimp, his father had clapped his hands together and announced that the car was packed. They were leaving Saturday morning, before the traffic on the highway got too thick.
Cyrus didn't finish his food. He went to his room, locked the door, and lay on the small twin bed with his face pressed into the pillow until the fabric was damp.
He felt sick, a deep, physical nausea that made his hands shake.
Right when he was finally starting to give you those small, hesitant hugs goodbye when the sun went down. Right when he could handle sitting on the exact same blue towel as you without his heart trying to burst through his sternumâthey were taking him back.
They were pulling him away from the only person who had ever looked at his weirdness and called it cool.
By the time he walked down to the beach on Friday evening, the sun had already slipped below the horizon, leaving behind a dark, indigo sky that felt cold and infinite.
The wind was high, whipping the grass on the dunes into a frenzy. You were there, your legs dangling over the dark water.
Cyrus approached like a man marching to his own grave. His hands were trembling so violently he had to shove them deep into his pockets to keep you from seeing. He sat down next to you, his breathing shallow and ragged.
When he told youâthe words coming out small and broken, like twigs snapping underfootâhe watched your head tilt to the side.
You looked confused, your eyes wide in the twilight, as if you hadn't realized that summer could actually end, that people didn't stay on this beach forever.
The sight of that confusion broke something vital inside him. The sickness in his throat rose up, hot and salty, and before his brain could register the movement, Cyrus leaned forward.
His lips hit yours. It wasn't a perfect kiss; it was clumsy, desperate, full of the terrifying weight of sixteen years of loneliness and three weeks of unspoken wanting.
He tasted like the salt from his own skin and the cold air of the evening. He stayed there for three seconds, his entire body rigid, before he pulled back, his chest heaving.
His long, dark brown hair fell forward, obscuring his eyes, but he couldn't stop the tears that had been building since dinner.
They spilled over his lower lids, hot and heavy, tracking down his nose as he pouted, his mouth trembling.
He reached into his pocket, pulling out a crumpled scrap of a receipt and a leaking blue pen heâd stolen from the kitchen counter.
With frantic, shaky movements, he pressed the paper against your palm, scrawling his phone number in messy, jagged lines.
"Please," he choked out, his voice small, terrified, cracking under the weight of the air. "promise. You gotta promise to text, okay? Piâpinky promise."
He lifted his right hand, his small finger hooked in the air between you, trembling like a leaf in the ocean gale.
He waited for your hand to move, waited for that familiar, solid warmth to lock around his own and anchor him to the shore.
You let out a small, soft laughânot a mean one, but an exhale that sounded like the wind through the screen door.
You reached up, your thumb cool against his skin, and gently wiped away a tear that had pooled near his jaw.
"You're so beautiful," you whispered, your eyes blinking up in the dark, your gaze fixed entirely on the teal highlights that split his hair, glowing faint under the rising moon.
The pinky never came. Your hand stayed on his cheek, warm and soft, but your fingers didn't move toward his.
Cyrusâs heart didn't just breakâit felt like it had been hollowed out by the tide, leaving nothing but a cavity where the cold water could rush in.
His head throbbed with a dull, heavy ache. He felt too muchâway too much for a Friday night on a beach that wouldn't remember his name by Monday. He slowly let his hand drop, the paper fluttering down between them onto the damp sand, forgotten.
He didn't say anything else. He just leaned forward, his forehead resting against your shoulder, his arms coming up to wrap tight around your neck.
He held on with everything he had left, his face buried in the soft fabric of your shirt, smelling the salt and the old cotton and the end of summer.
"I love you," he whispered into your collarbone.
He didn't need you to say it back.
He knew what this was now. The Cyrus of June would have laughed at the phrase summer fling, would have called it something out of a bad movie his sister watched on the couch.
But the Cyrus of July, with his face wet and his fingers numb, understood the poetry of it.
He understood that some things were built only to be washed away by the next high tide, leaving nothing behind but the shape of where they used to be.
and then next summer Cyrus comes over again only to never leave after that and stays with you and loves you to death and yada yada yada happy ever after dw
feel free to give me requests !
