Blossom in Chaos

Hello there, you may call me Saria and I love telling stories Using this space for my original drabbles

AO3

You knew how to be a monster.

That was the terrifying part.

Not because you were cruel all the time. Cruelty would have been easier to survive. Easier to name. No—what made you dangerous was how well you understood softness.

You knew how to smile.

Not the exaggerated kind. Not something sharp enough to warn people away. Yours were warm smiles. Easy ones. The kind that settled over people slowly until they relaxed without realizing it. Until they trusted you with unlocked doors and exposed throats.

You knew how to say the right words.

You always did.

“I understand.”

“I’d never hurt you.”

“You can trust me.”

And the worst part?

Sometimes, when you said those things, you sounded honest.

Maybe you even believed yourself for a moment.

That was what stayed with her after everything ended—not the shouting, not the fear, not even the damage left behind. It was the memory of your voice at 2 a.m., soft enough to feel like shelter. The way your hand rested at the small of her back. The way you looked at her like she was something precious while quietly teaching her to disappear inside your shadow.

Monsters, she learned too late, were rarely monsters all the time.

Real monsters understood timing.

They knew when to bare their teeth.

The idea didn’t die all at once.

It started with hesitation—small, almost polite. A pause before the pen touched paper. A second thought before the sentence finished. Nothing dramatic. Nothing worth mourning.

At first, she called it “waiting for the right moment.”

Then “burnout.”

Then nothing at all.

Her notebook remained open on the desk, spine cracked, pages expectant. Once, it had been filled with frantic ink—half-formed thoughts, messy dialogue, lines that tripped over themselves just to exist. Now, it sat untouched, as if it had learned not to ask anymore.

She still sat there sometimes, pen in hand. The ritual remained, hollowed out. She would write a word, stare at it, then cross it out. Not because it was wrong but because it wasn’t right enough.

Perfection crept in quietly, dressed like discipline.

It said: You can do better than this.

So she waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Until the words stopped coming at all.

The silence grew comfortable, then permanent. Not heavy. Not loud. Just… there. Like a room that had been emptied so gradually she couldn’t remember what it used to hold.

One day, she flipped through her old pages.

They were chaotic. Imperfect. Alive.

She didn’t recognize the person who wrote them.

Or maybe she did.

Maybe that was the problem.

She closed the notebook gently, as if not to wake something that had already gone still.

The pen rolled from her fingers and hit the floor.

The coral reef wasn’t on any map.

Divers said the water above it felt strange—too warm, too still, but when Crystal saw it through her mask, she understood why people kept coming back.

It was beautiful.

Pale branches of coral stretched across the seafloor like frozen lightning. White, pink, and soft blue, twisting together into delicate shapes that looked almost… intentional.

She swam closer.

Her flashlight swept across the reef, and something caught the beam.

A ring.

Silver.

Looped around whqt looked like finger except it wasn’t a finger.

The coral had grown through it—around it—over it. A shape buried within the reef that looked disturbingly human. Knuckles swallowed by calcified branches. The curve of a wrist disappearing into the stone-like growth.

Crystal's stomach tightened.

Then she saw more.

A shoulder. A rib cage. The hollow shape of a face.

People. Dozens of them.

All fused into the coral like statues beneath the sea.

The current shifted.

Something brushed her ankle, something hard.

She looked down.

A pale coral branch had curled around her fin.

You will search for me in another person, I promise.

You won’t mean to.

That’s the cruelest part.

You’ll meet someone new in a room that doesn’t smell like rain and old books. They’ll laugh at your jokes without asking you to explain them. They’ll touch your arm easily, confidently, like affection is a language they’ve always spoken fluently.

You’ll tell yourself this is different.

Healthier.

Quieter.

But one night, they’ll tilt their head a certain way when they’re thinking, and something inside you will stutter. Not because they look like me—they won’t. Not really.

It will be the pause.

I used to pause like that when I was choosing my words carefully, trying not to wound you with them.

You’ll kiss them, and their mouth will be softer. Warmer. They won’t taste like coffee and apologies. You’ll think that’s a relief.

Still, when they pull away, you’ll search their face for the storm you once claimed you were tired of.

You’ll miss it.

You’ll miss the sharpness. The way we collided instead of fit. The way loving me felt like holding something fragile and dangerous all at once.

You’ll search for my stubbornness in their silence.

For my laugh in their restraint.

For my hands in the way they reach for you in the dark.

And when you realize they are not me, you will feel guilty for wanting them to be.

I won’t have to haunt you.

No one noticed the way he always sat with his back to the wall.

They noticed other things. The sharp suits. The careful smile. The way he laughed a second too late, as if measuring the sound before letting it out. They called him composed. Controlled. Unbothered.

They did not notice the exits.

They did not notice how his fingers brushed the rim of every glass before he drank, or how he never finished one completely. How he memorized faces the way other people memorized names.

When someone dropped a stack of plates in the restaurant, he didn’t flinch.

He froze.

Just for a second.

A stillness so complete it looked deliberate.

Across the table, Lisa kept talking, unaware. She’d learned not to comment on the quiet shifts in him—the way conversation sometimes drained from his eyes without warning. The way he scanned rooms, not people.

Later, walking home, she slipped her hand into his.

He hesitated.

Not long. Just enough.

Then he intertwined their fingers, tight—too tight.

“Everything okay?” she asked softly.

He smiled, already steady again.

“Of course.”

She didn’t press. She simply squeezed once before letting go at the door.

She had learned his subtle signs.

It used to sit in her chest like sunlight—warm, blinding, impossible to ignore. His laughter was gravity; she orbited without thinking. Every touch felt inevitable, like fate finally getting something right.

Now it feels like a bruise she keeps pressing just to see if it still hurts.

It does.

They still know each other’s coffee orders. Still reach for the same inside jokes. Still stand too close in doorways. But something has shifted—tilted slightly off-center. What once felt steady now feels staged. What once felt safe now feels sharp.

She replays it, searching for the fracture line. Was it the silence that grew between them? The things they didn’t say? Or the moment she realized she loved who he was with her, not who he actually was?

The strength of it makes it worse. Weak things fade quietly. This one claws.

The card was waiting on her kitchen table when she came home.

No envelope. No stamp. Just her name written in looping red ink.

Be Mine.

Lena lived alone. She was certain of that.

She told herself it was a prank. A coworker, maybe. The paper smelled faintly metallic, like pennies pressed between fingers. She tried not to notice that.

At 11:58 p.m., her phone buzzed.

Did you like it?

Unknown number.

Her stomach tightened. She typed back, Who is this?

Three dots appeared immediately.

Turn around.

The apartment was silent—too silent. The refrigerator hummed. The clock ticked.

Slowly, against every instinct, she turned.

Another card sat on the counter behind her.

I’m closer than you think.

Her breath hitched. The lights flickered.

The phone buzzed again.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

The power went out.

In the darkness, something warm brushed her ear.

The duck showed up the morning after the fight.

It stood in the middle of the apartment courtyard fountain like it had always lived there—bright white against the algae-green water, head tucked back with the confidence of a tenant who paid rent.

Maya noticed it first while taking out the trash. Her eyes were swollen. The kind of swollen that comes from saying things you can’t take back.

The duck blinked at her.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she muttered.

It didn’t move.

By noon, it was still there. By evening, it had claimed the fountain entirely. Neighbors gathered, took pictures, debated calling someone. No one did.

The next morning, her boyfriend came down with his suitcase. He paused when he saw it.

“Huh,” he said. “Weird.”

Maya looked at the duck. The duck looked at her.

It didn’t chase him. Didn’t quack. Didn’t protest.

It simply stayed.

By the third day, the duck had a name, a small pile of lettuce offerings, and a kind of quiet permanence.

Life is a collection of beautiful, ordinary moments.

She doesn’t realize it at first. She’s too busy waiting for something bigger—something that looks like an ending or a beginning, something worthy of being remembered. She thinks life will announce itself with fireworks.

Instead, it keeps happening quietly.

It’s the way the kettle clicks off before it screams. The way sunlight lands on the same spot of the kitchen floor every morning at nine. The familiar weight of her phone in her hand, even when no one has texted. The mundane mercy of routine.

She learns this slowly, almost unwillingly. On evenings where nothing goes wrong. On mornings that don’t feel special but don’t hurt either. On days that pass without leaving scars.

She notices the sound of laughter through open windows. The comfort of knowing which floorboard creaks. The way her body relaxes when she finally sits down after a long day. None of it will make headlines. None of it will be retold as a grand story.

I just want someone to be truly happy because of me. Someone who is happy to see me, happy to hear me, happy to know me.

It doesn’t feel like too much to ask. Not really. She’s not looking to be worshipped or saved or made into someone else’s reason for living. She just wants her presence to be a kindness. To walk into a room and feel the air warm instead of tighten.

She imagines it in small ways. A smile that comes easily without effort. A voice on the other end of the phone that lifts when it’s her name. Someone who listens, not out of obligation, but because they want to know what she’ll say next—even when it’s ordinary, even when it’s messy.

She’s spent too long being tolerated. Loved, maybe, in theory. But always with conditions. Always with the sense that she takes up just a little too much space, speaks just a little too much truth. That her affection is something to be managed rather than welcomed.

So this want settles deep in her chest, quiet but persistent.

To be chosen, not for what she gives, but for who she is. To be someone’s relief instead of their effort.

Not a miracle.

Just mutual joy.

“I can’t take a chance like that. I’m too afraid I’ll ruin everything.”

The words sit between them like a glass set too close to the edge of a table. She doesn’t look up when she says it. Her hands are folded, careful, as if even her fingers might make a mess if she lets them wander.

She has ruined things before. Not loudly—no slammed doors or shouted accusations. She ruins them by caring too much. By asking the wrong questions at the wrong time. By loving with a kind of intensity that makes people step back, palms raised, saying that’s not what I meant.

So she learned to hesitate.

She learned to measure every feeling twice before speaking it aloud. To treat hope like a live wire: useful, powerful, but only if handled with gloves. Safer to keep it coiled. Safer to admire it from a distance.

He wants to tell her that some things survive mistakes. That not everything shatters on contact. But he sees the way her shoulders are braced, already apologizing for an ending that hasn’t happened yet.

Fear, after all, is just love that doesn’t know where to go.

They called it a box office failure.

The posters came down first—corners peeling, faces fading in the sun. Then the screenings shrank to matinees no one attended. By the third week, it was gone, replaced by something louder, brighter, easier to digest. The headlines were kind in that cruel way critics get when they’re done caring.

He watched it alone on a Tuesday night, long after the world had decided it wasn’t worth the time.

It wasn’t perfect. The pacing lagged. The ending refused to explain itself. The lead character lingered too long in silences that made people uncomfortable. It asked for patience in a room trained to want spectacle.

But there were moments—quiet ones—that felt like someone had reached through the screen and recognized him. A hand hovering before a door knock. A breath held instead of released. A choice not made because it would have hurt someone else.

When the credits rolled, he didn’t move. Let the names pass. Let the music finish.

Outside, no one was talking about it. No rewrites, no sequels, no redemption arc. Just a number at the bottom of an article that said it hadn’t earned its keep.

Still, it had done something else entirely.

It had been seen—by him.

“I’m not a violent dog; I don’t know why I bite.”

That’s what he thinks as his teeth sink in—shock before pain, apology before blood. He never learned how to warn properly. Never learned how to growl without being punished for the sound. Every sign was trained out of him until silence became survival.

They say dogs bite when they’re scared. When they’re cornered. When hands come too fast, too familiar, too sure of their right to touch. He doesn’t remember the first time it happened, only the aftermath—the recoil, the shouting, the word aggressive stamped onto him like a verdict.

But aggression implies intent.

This is reflex. This is muscle memory shaped by raised voices and closed fists. This is a body that learned pain arrives before kindness does. That learned gentleness is often a trick.

He hates himself most in the seconds after. When the threat is gone and the room goes quiet. When he sees the mark he’s left and feels something in his chest fracture open. He wanted to be good. He tried so hard to be gentle. He just didn’t know how to protect himself without teeth.

They’ll say he’s dangerous now. They always do.

When it’s done with love, it’s done well.

That’s what her mother used to say while kneading dough, while sewing hems no one would ever notice, while bandaging scraped knees with a gentleness that made the pain feel forgiven. Love wasn’t loud. It didn’t announce itself. It showed up in the way she stayed up late to fix a mistake that could’ve waited. In the way she rewrote letters she’d never send, just to get the words right.

So she learned to do everything that way.

She loved carefully. Too carefully. She cooked meals no one thanked her for, memorized coffee orders, listened harder than she spoke. When she loved someone, she did it with her whole body—hands first, heart second, pride never. She made space. She made time. She made herself small enough to fit where she was wanted and when it ended, people said it simply hadn’t worked out.

But love done well leaves marks.

It leaves folded shirts still warm from the dryer. It leaves habits you don’t know how to unlearn. It leaves the quiet knowledge that you gave everything honestly, even if it wasn’t enough to make someone stay.

Years later, she still does things with care. Still takes her time. Still believes in the worth of effort.

I learned that the night the walls began to thrum.

At first, I thought it was machinery—some hidden engine humming behind the steel ribs of the place. But engines don’t falter when you draw close. They don’t stutter when you whisper a name.

This did.

He had warned me not to open the chamber. Said I wouldn’t understand the sacrifice. That genius demanded intimacy. I thought he meant years, sleep, sanity.

I was wrong.

It hangs there still, suspended in glass and wires, veins threaded into copper, ribs pried open like a shrine. Alive in the most unforgivable way. Each beat is slow, deliberate—patient. Waiting.

I feel it when I try to sleep. A rhythm that doesn’t belong to me, syncing with my pulse until I can’t tell where it ends and I begin.