𝓗𝓸𝓾𝓼𝓮 𝓸𝓯 𝓛𝓲𝓰𝓱𝓽

Opening the passenger’s door, a gust of cold air blows right over your bare legs. You swing them out, planting your feet steadily on the ground. As you exit the fancy vehicle, a wave of goosebumps rises from your thighs up to your arms; you tell yourself it’s the change in temperature. A normal bodily reaction to something as natural as a drop of a few degrees. It’s not because you feel exposed, out in the open. It’s not because you feel vulnerable. Forcing yourself to stand tall next to the car, something in you makes you pause before completely closing the door. A futile Ariadne’s thread.

Your eyes scan the nightly landscape, illuminated in that yellow glow of streetlights that reminds you of late summer mistakes and secret conversations. You tell yourself it’s normal, to check your surroundings, even if somewhat familiar. You tell yourself you are not checking if-

The sound of the driver’s door closing behind you makes you jump. 

“Okay, remember what we said?” a much too cheerful voice, compared to your internal monologue at least, thrills up from behind you. Soon enough Kiera appears beside you. Her luscious curls reflect the yellow glare overhead, creating a haze effect around her that reminds you of those pictures taken in neon-lit club bathrooms. 

The smile she gives you is not dimmed by your clear… unsteadiness. You can’t help but muster a fond smile, for her, too. She closes your door for you.

“Yes, okay, okay” you concede, your hands up in mock surrender, “this night is for fun and lightheartedness only”. Interlinking your arms and starting to lead you towards the club, she nods, clearly pleased with your answer. Well, how could she not be? She basically organized this whole thing just for you. Just to take your mind off the recent happenings. You knew that, deep down, there was more concern than she let on, and you weren’t sure if it was for you or about you. Not that you can blame her, with how you have been behaving recently. It’s not that you are going crazy, or being paranoid. Your worry, and frustration, in your opinion, are well rooted. Gods, if you met him here too- 

“In the end the guy I told you about came tonight” the lilt of her accent snaps you out, once again, from your spiraling thoughts. Not that she’s unaware of it. You sigh, faking grimace, 

“Kiera…”, “I’m not saying you need to marry him” she defends, teasing lacing her words, “I’m just saying that he’s fun AND that you need a fun distraction”. Okay, she has a point. 

The clicking of your heels accompanies your eyeroll, “Right, is he cute at least?”

Your friend just smiles, tilting her head sideways. 

“You tell me, he’s standing there”.

Your gaze follows hers, finding your shared group of friends. There’s Raymun, proudly standing with his new beauty of a girlfriend, Rowan, or Red, as she introduced herself, under his arm; then, impossible to not notice, Dunk stands next to them, seemingly gaping at something the redhead just said, his ears turning bright pink. The same comment must have earned a laugh from Tanselle, because she’s covering her mouth sheepishly with her hand.

Lastly, the new recruit. Tall, quite built, with light curly hair that contrasts well with the sharp features of his face. Not exactly your type, but it’s not that you want to actually have something happen between you. As a friend for a fun night, he works.

“Remind me again of his name?” you ask the bubblegum haired girl beside you.

She refrains from commenting, but you know she has taken your question for interest. “His name is Steffon, Raymuns’s cousin”. Steffon. You hope you’ll remember it throughout the night.

As you approach your group, you notice that Kiera maintained her promise. Her boyfriend, Valarr, is not in sight. You didn’t ask her not to bring him, she offered not to invite him. Going as far as just telling him she was going out tonight, not even mentioning which club you were going to party at. Pious Valarr understood. 

There must have been some way in which… he always knew where to find you. Not that you thought Valarr would actually tell him, but maybe, somehow, he found out through him. Just the thought makes the hair at the nape of your neck rise, how could he always know? Yes, of course he knows where you live, but you are always so careful to check that you’re not being followed, that there is no beast lurking in the shadows, awaiting to ambush you when you least expect it. And yet, since you ended things, you’ve run into him so often.

You always feel his gaze on you, first, smothering. A mantle that wraps around you like a constrictive snake.

He never speaks, when you meet. He doesn't even approach you. That alone scares you more than the idea of him cornering you, questioning why you ended things, demanding you to change your mind. 

He simply… stares. Lounging near a tree, at the end of the street, between people in crowds, those eyes continuously finding yours, somehow. 

You could have sworn that, one time, you felt his gaze locking with yours through the night when you went to close the curtains of your bedroom window. 

You questioned, if he was really there. Stalking. Just outside your house. You must have imagined it. You hoped you did.

The image of the very same lilac eyes you were starting to fall in love with focusing on your frame like a famished predator, analyzing, assessing, savoring, burned at the back of your mind. Such intensity that it could be mistaken for longing, if it wasn’t shadowed by a dark, awaiting, knowledge. 

The second time you looked outside, only the memory of violet remained on the glass.

In the open, when you don’t walk away quick enough, he smirks, or licks his lips like he’s relishing in a feast he’s about to indulge in. That’s when you usually turn around and leave, a shake in your fingers and a feeling you don’t want to name irradiating through your body.

The cheering voices of your friends bring you back to the present, their warm welcome grounding you in a space that feels safe. Quick pleasantries are shared between everyone, and you learn rapidly enough that Steffon is a fan of banter, light hearted jests and jokes already flying around when you enter the dimly lit club. The air is saturated with too much perfume and that distinctive, bitter, alcoholic smell that characterizes every club at this hour. The bass reverberates in your rib cage with a steady pulse that is begging you to sway in rhythm with it. You remind yourself of what you promised Kiera. Only fun tonight. No one knows you are here. He can’t know you are here. Everyone knows not to post or share anything that could give away your position, any hint that you are outside. Living.

Even if you know they mainly do it to soothe you, to not see you worried all night, you are still grateful, even if they don’t completely understand. 

You allow yourself to believe that everything will be okay after the first two drinks and a tequila shot, for good luck.

The pleasant alcohol-induced buzz is soon enough flowing through you, softening the sharp edges in your mind, blurring the unwanted noise with the messy background of reggaeton music and general shouting. The flickering lights paint the bodies around you like a surrealist movie, one that Steffon must be appreciating too as you dance lavishly with Kiera and Red, movements alluring and synchronized as if practiced for months. You find that you don’t mind the attention.

Most importantly, you find that you feel good. Good when Tanselle starts snapping pictures that she deems aesthetically pleasing. Good when Dunk and Raymun start one of their, awful, breakdancing show-offs. Good when Kiera hugs you, sober as stone, because she hasn’t seen you so carefree in weeks, muttering something under her breath that you don’t quite catch, but that sounds awfully familiar to “forget that asshole”. Good, even, when Steffon himself steps in to dance with you, all charming and respectful, his hands never leaving your waist to trail somewhere lower, less appropriate. And good when another round of shots is served and the little amber liquid has your head delightfully spinning, so much that you almost tumble over your heels when you aim for one of the little sofas at the edge of the room. A hand steadies you, taking hold of your forearm.

“Easy there” Steffon muses, helping you sit down and claiming for himself the place next to you, “I didn’t think you were such a lightweight”. That wins him a snort, “and I didn’t think you could dance… acceptably” you counter. He smirks, almost preening, “I am full of surprises”. His cockyness doesn’t get lost on you, yet, talking with him is easy. The conversation between the two of you is light, shifting between topics without diving too deep into them, maybe because his interest can’t focus too much on one thing, maybe because you're too tipsy to care.

A, now buried, rational part of you knows your friends are giving you space to talk, alone, and that figment also notices how Raymun sometimes steals glances your way, silently checking if everything is okay every now and then. You catalogue it as the behavior of a protective friend, not of a surprised cousin. Everything is misty and nebulous and finally you don’t have to stay on high alert anymore.

You don’t exactly remember what Steffon asked you, when you notice. Your fingers subconsciously going to play with the necklace- that you don’t have anymore. Your body registers the absence first, the feeling of being without washing over you like a cold shower. Then, your hazy mind catches up, explaining to your consciousness that you didn't lose it, you gave it back. Willingly. Only then your floating soul snaps back into your body, dread spreading deep through your blood vessels at the realization that you forgot. 

Forgot that he gave you that necklace. Made out of your favorite precious metal, two small chains connected on either side of an elegant circle, inside of which a three headed dragon was nested comfortably. Its eyes of vivid rubies that reminded you of pomegranates and blood the first time you saw it. His house sigil. You had thanked him at the time, kissed him.

How foolish, back then you didn’t realize how discordant his actions have been. Disappearing for days, while wanting to know what you were doing. Gifts and expensive dinners interspersed with questioning about where you two stood. Questions that never got an answer… the first time you brought the topic up, confused and frustrated, he suddenly kissed you so hard he knocked the air from your lungs. His eyes boring into yours, pupils blown wild, muttering a “you’re so hot when you get angry” that you couldn’t even contest because his tongue was in your mouth, his feverish fingers running over your body, then your bare skin, his mouth and teeth mapping every single feature that made you, you. 

He ravished you so vehemently, consumed you so utterly and downright sinfully that night, that the morning after you didn’t even remember that you were disagreeing on something. You could only focus on the way he had whispered “mine” into your hair before sunrise came, as you lay tangled and naked together.

“Do you zone out often? Or is it my company that’s not entertaining enough for you?” You swallow, hard, sobriety taking hold of, a part, of your senses, and perceiving that Steffon definitely regarded the second option he presented you with as absolutely impossible. You rack your brain for a witty remark, something sarcastic that can get you out of the embarrassments of having stared into the void for Gods know how long, when something terribly familiar catches your attention just outside of your peripheral view. No, not catches. Commands.

You obey like muscle memory, turning and angling your body towards the siren’s call. The flashing lights alternate instants of red with blinding whites and a heartbeat of pitch black darkness.

You see him for one split second. You recognize him in less.

Aerion stands on the other side of the room, sharply dressed, as if he had been there for ages and it just took you too long to notice. His apparent calmness is betrayed by the small tick in his jaw, a clench that foretells something worse. His violet eyes appear almost black in the flaring beams, the lack of amusement and complacency in his expression leaving way to something else. You feel it lick at your skin. There’s only hunger in him tonight.

“I need some air” you excuse yourself quickly, your voice almost trembling. Standing up hastily, you turn on your heels to put distance between you and him. It’s always him.

How did he find you? How did he know? 

You’re outside before you even realize it, the street deserted at such a late hour. Even the streetlights look dimmer.

Or maybe it’s your sight that’s unfocused. Did you stand up too quickly? Are you drunker than you thought? Surely you can’t feel as if there isn’t enough oxygen in the world because of him, right?

There’s hands on your waist. Grounding for a second, then, caging.

“I didn’t think you would be so eager” the voice that has been talking with you all night is definitely closer than before. “But I can’t blame you”. Now that he’s so close you can smell the cologne on him, something fruity with an underlying sickly sweetness that reminds you of rotten apples. It makes you want to gag. “I’d want me too”.

Steffon leans down, pinning you against the cold bricks of the club building. You can’t tell if he’s inebriated or just plain stupid, and you expect him to get off of you and apologize when you basically claw his hands off your hips, about to tell him that there’s no way this was going to happen- when he just seizes both of your wrists, a glint you have never seen surfacing in his eyes as he tells you “I like a fight”, the sickest sneer you have ever seen in your life on his lips.

There’s a split moment in which panic bubbles in you. Several different scenarios in which you either wrangle yourself free, and some in which you don’t, cross your mind, devising for the best plan of action, something, anything. None of them come true.

Steffon’s head tilts back at inhumane speed, a choked sound leaving his lips as his hair gets pulled into a bruising vice. Another sound, sharper, almost like a gurgle escapes him when a punch straight to the stomach makes him keel in two. Dropping to the floor in front of you.

Aerion stands behind him, a fury in eyes that can only be read as murderous. His lips are pulled back showcasing his teeth like an apex predator, and it’s only when Steffon whimpers another time that you see the ungodly angle at which his arm is wrung behind his back, Aerion’s brutal force threatening to pop it out of place at the slightest provocation.

There is a sense of unrealness pervading you, this really cannot be happening.

He looks at you then, eyes dousing you in awareness.

He doesn’t break eye contact when he hammers Steffon’s face into the wall.

Once is enough, because he goes limp down onto the dirty pavement, obeying like a beaten rug.

He takes one step towards you. Then another. You notice you are shaking when he takes your wrists in his hand, assessing the damage. His hands are warm, they always are. The contact sends a jolt up your bones that makes you want to run. 

You don’t snatch your wrists away.

“You never listen, do you?” His tone isn’t accusing, merely stating a fact. You can see the way he already starts to take you in, that dark need of closeness that harbors in his movements every time you are near.

You want to recoil and drown in him at the same time. Why does he feel safe? You know he isn’t. Is he?

You will yourself not to look at the unconscious man behind him.

“Why are you here?” Is that what you were supposed to ask? To say? It’s clear why he’s here.

Aerion just scoffs, closing another inch of distance between you, his head tilting to one side as he runs his tongue on his teeth. 

“This should be the part where you thank me for saving you” he titters, his thumbs gently pressing into the point where Steffon’s own fingers have just been, as if to erase the lingering memory altogether.

You, finally, will yourself to take one step back, retrieving one of your wrists in defiance. Or maybe it’s shame.

Shame that such a small touch can make you feel as if the time spent apart means nothing.

You falter. He notices.

Seizing the opportunity he closes, once again, the space between you two. He breathes you in, high on your presence, his now free hand going to rest just above your pulse point on the side of your neck. Effectively blocking your head from looking anywhere but at him. He doesn’t squeeze. He doesn’t need to. Your hand goes to rest on his wrist. Ready to push him away, clearly. 

He says your name in a way that is almost beseeching.

“Didn’t I tell you that there’s no one you can trust?” That conversation you two had now feels like yesterday. It felt sweet at the time. A voice at the back of your head you want to suppress whispers that it could be sweet now too.

“You know how wretched this world is.” His words are honeyed in the way molten resin entraps small lives, crystallizing them in amber. “They don’t deserve you, your kindness, your attention.” He does. He does, he does, he does. 

Now right under a streetlight- has he been walking you backwards towards the wall?- you see the feral attributes on his devilishly handsome face. His hand sneaking up to have his thumb swipe at your lips, you feel his breath fanning across your face. There’s only him. Him, him, him.

Aerion closes the distance inch by inch, your noses brushing together as his other hand pulls you flush to him by your waist.

“I’m the only one that knows how to cherish you. How to please you. How to protect you ". He hums when you lean forward slightly, almost appraising the way your subconscious didn’t forget who you should orbit around. His thumb moves through your parted lips, pressing the pad on your tongue, and he has to gather every ounce of restrain as not to take you then and there.

“You are mine, darling” and how true that is, in his mind, since the first time he saw you.

“Stop pretending you don’t know that”.

His hand gets replaced by his lips. Fervorous and unstoppable and oh so sweet on yours. They claim with practiced ease, making you sigh into them, making you want more. More of the flames licking at your skin. More of the bliss clouding your mind. More of the way the fire in him makes you want to melt and never let go again. 

He keeps your head still, his hand cradling it in a firm but painless grip. His tongue sneaks in your mouth and you both almost moan at the sensation. Aerion’s body cages your in, an unbreakable shield between you and the world, locked from the outside. His heat radiates even through the layers of clothing, the other hand now inching under the hem of your dress, but stopping at the level of your bare tight. Thumb stroking the inner flesh.

His strong hand grips there, a silent reminder that he can touch whatever belongs to him. That you belong to him.

You missed this. You missed him. You missed him. Fear coils around your spine.

You push him away with all the might you can muster.

He barely stumbles back, but doesn’t fight you. Both of your chests are heaving, and you already feel the presence of upcoming tears in your eyes. 

Yet, his are adoring, a satisfaction in his expression that makes your stomach drop.

You shake your head, gathering yourself quickly as you move away from him.

You beeline for the club entrance, having to sidestep Steffon, still unmoving on the ground.

Aerion doesn’t stop you. He doesn’t even follow you.

You hate yourself for stealing one last glance at him before disappearing through the doors. He was smiling.

You're almost sobbing by the time you reach Kiera. Her words are frantic, telling you how they couldn't find you, asking you what happened. Everything your friends say is just a senseless chatter in your ears, as you beg Kiera, please, to take you home.

You take the back exit.

You don’t really remember the ride home, too preoccupied with wallowing in your shame and embarrassment. How did you fall for it again? Why does he keep looking for you? Why does he always find you?

Part of you says its destiny that wants you together, the other stays silent.

Kiera offers to stay with you for the night. It doesn’t take long for her to do two plus two. You refuse, you can’t bear to look at her. To look at yourself.

She still tells you she’s only a call away. You thank her, sincerely. 

Then you close the door with every lock it has, and you go straight to the shower. Hot water is scorching your skin before you realize it. Washing away the feeling of Aerion - it's still there - from your body. Washing away the memory of his voice - it’s still ringing in your ears - when he called your name. Washing away how you felt in that moment, because you liked it.

There’s a puff of smoke curling around Aerion’s lips, as he leans on the wall where you just stood moments before. Seeking your warmth.

The brightness of his phone screen lights up his features in a way that seems mythical, his gaze following the red dot as it travels through streets and alleys obsessively. Like a dragon making sure his treasure reaches its destination safely.

He sees your location pulling up at your home address. It stands outside for a while. Then, it stops inside your house. You must have left your phone on the small table in your foyer.

Good. Just in time to see his present.

A broken sound catches his ear, his focus shifting to the crumpled silhouette on the sidewalk a few feet away. He only gives a bored exhale in answer.

Steffon coughs a few times, and when his unfocused eyes land on Aerion, there’s a battle between fear and anger in his irises. 

“You said” he chokes out “you said you would only punch me. Once”.

Aerion could have killed him, for what he did, but meeting you put him in such good spirit.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to cave in the worthless face of the vermin at his feet again. He steps closer, leisurely, and he preens at the way Steffon, futilely, tries to scoot back from him.

Aerion bends down, the world tilting, following his movements, until his face is only inches from the nose he previously broke.

“I told you” he starts, patronizing, a sharp edge in his voice that promises more violence if only the fool rolling in the dirt dares to object, “that you should only make her uncomfortable.”

There’s disgust in his steely eyes.

“And yet, here you come, touching what is mine. Leaving your filthy handprints on her.” Before Steffon can reply, a pale hand slides around his throat, unforgiving. Squeezing just enough to hurt. Just enough to remind who is in control.

“You are lucky you are still fucking breathing” one of Aerion’s eyebrow lifts, mockingly, “kinda”.

With that, he stands up, tossing his now consumed cigarette next to the curly haired man, as Steffon pitifully and greedily inhales more smoke than air.

There’s no need to explain what he would do if he ever saw Steffon in proximity of what is his again.

Still, Aerion kicks his ribs. Hard. For good measure. To feed his wicked and immoral pride.

With the melody of ragged breathing behind him, the dragon can finally go back to his lair.

You don’t know how much you stayed under the water stream. The only thing you want now, as you step in your cold bedroom to dress, is to sleep.

Sleep away this godawful night and have some hours of reprieve from your thoughts.

You shiver as you search for a comfortable shirt. Not even the soft material of your towel can keep you from feeling like freezing. Why is it so cold?

You turn around to close the window. 

It should be already closed. 

You always make sure of it before leaving your house.

A sick, sick feeling takes hold of your body. Daunting and frigid and oh so true. 

Your eyes scan your room. Expecting the worst.

But your empty room stares back at you. Unchanged.

Except…

The moonlight catches it, making it shine almost derisively. 

You looked for me. Here I am. It says. 

Three red eyes stare at you through the darkness.

The necklace Aerion gifted you resting elegantly on your pillow. 

Back to its rightful owner.

Just like… you.

If you reached this point, thank you so much for reading! It would mean a lot to me if you could let me know what you think of this little piece of my writing! Lots of love!