#horushours

You had stopped counting the hours weeks ago; time had become background noise, like Sylus's voice in meetings.

At first, you had dismissed it as tiredness, because, Onichynus's boss, right?. But the days turned into months, and he never changed; it seemed as if he was already used to you being there.

He no longer looked for you. He no longer said "what do you think?" after outlining a plan. He just nodded, gave precise orders, and left before you could finish speaking.

And yet, you stayed. Out of habit. Out of loyalty. Out of a kind of love that merges with vocation. Because you had been a perfect team once.

You invented, he executed.

He dreamed of controlling the chaos of the world, and you of deciphering it. Sylus had told you one night, between ballads and glasses of whiskey:

“You are indispensable.”

And that had been enough for you to believe.

You believed that “indispensable” had a softer tone than the professional one, that behind the word lay a silent promise, a kind of alliance. You believed so much that you changed without realizing it, undergoing a metamorphosis that enveloped you in a cocoon of lies and dreams that were no longer yours.

Less rest, fewer mistakes, less “I.”

More precision, more silence, more him.

And time doesn't care…

Because now “she” was here, that new figure with a bright smile and a warrior's spirit; the air in the mansion changed. Sylus smiled more, and not at you.

Now decisions were made in another room, and the projects that had once been both of you now bore only his name.

It wasn't the lingering silence of his "what do you think?" anymore, but now his mangy "what are you doing here?" And you understood...

And it hurt slowly. That kind of pain you don't feel the need to shout, but rather you let accumulate like dust on shelves.

One night, one of the many where your work seemed endless, and after gallons of coffee, you were granted a break.

That night, while you were putting away files that Luke and Kieran had brought in the morning, you heard him come in. The sound of his footsteps was the same as always, confident, restrained, dangerous.

Your gaze didn't rise until he spoke.

"I didn't know you were still here."

“Nor you” you replied without turning around.

There was a short, awkward silence. You didn't stop typing, the sound the only familiar and comforting thing in that room. He watched you for a few seconds, curious and anxious rubies that appeared when Sylus didn't understand something.

"You've been distant lately."

"No, I'm just more efficient."

He frowned, taking a step closer. "Did I do something?" You gave a short, hollow laugh.

"That question comes fashionably late."

You turned, and Sylus could finally see your eyes, eyes that once shone despite the dark circles under their eyes, now empty and tired.

Your hair was disheveled, and you trembled occasionally; a twitch in your eyebrow from the amount of caffeine consumed that day, a figure that seemed straight out of a poorly edited dream. Sylus grimaced a bit.

The blue glow of the monitors painted his skin with an almost spectral light. In the end, that's what he became, a ghost of what was indispensable.

You or him?

"You know what hurts, Sylus?" you asked, lowering your voice.

"Surprise me."

"That I... changed for you." The silence fell like a drop on glass. You took a deep breath, letting the words out, cold but shaky. “From day one, we clashed on everything. I didn't think like you, I didn't work like you, and yet I tried. I learned to follow the plan, to keep quiet when I had to, to not contradict you in front of others. Because I thought that was what you needed.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I didn't ask you to change.”

“No. But you also weren’t human enough to stop me when I did.” You paused trying to calm down “The worst part? That I stood too long inside your abyss, that for years, i didn’t knew who i was anymore”.

A spark crossed the air, invisible but real. You turned back to the screen, moving the cursor meaninglessly. Silence appeared for minutes, as if it was mourning with you something only he failed to notice was no longer there.

Trying not to be too disturbing to your new found friend, you murmured, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the same as between lightning and a lightning bug.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“That you were my almost. You were almost a friendship. Almost appreciation. Almost love. But never enough to not make me feel replaceable.”

He didn't respond. And in that lack of response was everything.

In the days that passed, no one noticed the change. You still arrived on time, you still made every task praise worthy. As if that conversation had only been the product of Sylus's nightmares.

But he noticed; he realized that you no longer sought his approval; you no longer waited for his gaze.

You now returned to the mansion before dawn, a big smile on your face and cologne that wasn’t his. You turned on your office lights, and began building things without purpose, for him ant least ,machines that turned just for the pleasure of it. You liked the sound of the gears, the smell of hot metal, the fact of creating something that had nothing to do with him.

Build something that's yours.

Something you decided to do.

It didn't hurt anymore. But it didn't heal either.

Sylus watched you through Mephisto's mechanical eyes, occasionally resting on your window.

You laughed with someone you were talking to on the phone, a laugh he no longer knew.

You talked about your dreams, dreams he'd never heard of. Things you would never have dared to try if you'd chosen him.

You didn't say anything to him anymore, and he didn't know why that weighed so heavily on him.

But now he knew. Art is a lie that tells the truth, and she had become his most honest work: You stayed, but not for him anymore.

Because a dragon will never stay with the firefly, because its light comes from different emotions.

Where the fire burns proudly, the light that learns to shine on its own will never stay.

You were walking back from what you would pitifully call a date.

He’d received a call during dinner, he said it was important.

It wasn’t from work.

It was her.

You had to end your first night out before it even started, just because she needed help. With what? You didn’t bother to know.

Not anymore.

The night stretched wide and heavy, stitched together by a thousand silent stars. The air was cool, almost too still, the kind of quiet that makes thoughts louder.

“Laying down to watch the stars?”

His tone cut through the silence like frost: cold, faintly irritated, as if the very idea of rest were a sin.

You’d asked to stop here, after passing a small clearing where the moon seemed to shine brighter than anywhere else. Without waiting for him, you’d walked toward it.

He followed, boots pressing against the grass with impatience.His tone cut through the quiet like frost, cold and faintly irritated, as if the very idea of delaying were a sin. You had requested it, after passing by a nice soot where the moon seemed to shine brighter than anywhere else. Without waiting for him you went there.

He followed, boots pressing against the grass with impatience.

“What are you doing? I told you not to. I don’t have time for this.”He looked up then, but only for a heartbeat, as if the stars themselves had insulted him by daring to be calm.

You didn’t move. Your body already melted into the ground, arms folded behind your head, a small smile resting on your lips.

“How unusual from you, colonel, you who built your life around the stars on the sky, have you become to used to them that you don’t find them beautiful anymore?” you asked, as if the last line held another meaning that only both of you knew, you closed your eyes, unwilling to watch the way he frowned when words hit too close “Then perhaps that’s your fault,” you murmured, voice soft, almost swallowed by the wind. “You rush through life so fast, you fail to see how slowly the Earth spins.”the words seemed to hang in the air, shimmering like starlight; quiet, but impossible to ignore.

You raised one arm toward the sky, fingers tracing invisible constellations. “Breathing shouldn’t be a survival instinct,” you continued, knowing he’d call it yapping if he could.

He shifted, restless because she was waiting.

“It should be something we enjoy… something we do willingly, something we take time to care about.”

A small sigh escaped you as you turned your gaze back to him. Your hand hovered, palm open, as if offering him one of the stars you’d caught.

“After all,” you said softly, “the real luxury is living. And if you rush through life, you don’t get to enjoy it...you only suffer it.”

He stood there, silent. The impatient anger in his eyes dimmed, replaced by something heavier, a weight he couldn’t name.

For a moment, he looked at you. Then at the sky. “But maybe rushing through it… is what I’ve been doing all my life,” he said quietly.

You smiled faintly, not looking at him. “But is it worth it? The sun can wait for the Earth to spin around it, why can’t you wait?”

He let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh.

“The Earth can only circle the Sun,” he said, voice low. “No matter how much the stars yearn for the Earth.”

You looked up then, your expression unreadable.

“Because the Sun’s gravity pulls harder than the stars ever could,” he continued, almost to himself.

“The Sun can’t wait, because there is only one sun but millions of stars. And the Earth… doesn’t know how to love a light that isn’t born from fire.”

You closed your eyes as his footsteps faded into distance, tears slipped free, not from surprise, but from understanding.

You understood when he answered that call.

You understood that she is all he knows.

All he would ever love no matter how much he is surrounded by beauty, warmth, and love... because none of it will ever be hers.

You started looking for him without saying it. Waiting for him without admitting it. Noticing the small gestures: how he seemed to drift away when talking to someone, the way his eyes absorbed the light, how his brow furrowed right before he laughed. And with every detail, your heart wove an illusion.

Every coincidence became a sign. Every held gaze, a promise. Every word, a prophecy you invented yourself.

“What were you talking about?” he asked one afternoon, approaching with a distracted yawn. “Nothing important,” you replied, though inside your voice screamed the opposite.

And it was enough. A phrase. A fleeting glance. A brush of his arm against yours. Tiny crumbs of attention you turned into constellations. Love didn’t strike you like lightning; it just wrapped around you slowly, like a warm tide you never noticed rising. Every day you saw him, your chest filled with a soft hope, a gentle anxiety. And every night, that same hope withered into silent tears.

Because you knew the truth. You knew he didn’t look at you the way you looked at him. You knew the coincidences were only that: coincidences. Yet your mind and heart argued every time you saw him smile. It was an impossible love, but the kind that hurts sweetly. The kind that feels real only in solitude. The kind that burns without touch.

“Do you see me the way I see you?” you’d ask silently when you caught him staring for a second, only for him to look away right after. Sometimes, you believed he did. Other times, that he was simply looking through you. Maybe you were caught in the middle of his daydreams, the ones only he could see when he drifted off into his thoughts. You hated yourself for reading so much between the lines. For thinking maybe your delusions could bend the universe in your favor: like the rain that started the day he arrived late, soaked and drowsy; the coffee he spilled by accident when he passed by you, the one that ran down to your feet and made him look at you; that one time when, instead of leaving, he stayed beside you, just a breath away.

“What were you saying?” he asked that day, joining the conversation. You looked at him, and for the first time, you held his gaze without running away. “Nothing,” you whispered, handing him a stack of papers. “I’m done.” And inside you thought: I’m done pretending you don’t matter.

That night, you cried. Because during the meeting at the association, you realized you loved him, but he didn’t love you—not when his eyes lit up as he turned to look at her, and there was no cure for that. That even if you were never something, he already lived inside your thoughts, in every word you wrote, in every song that made you remember. Holding back your tears as you closed your eyes, you tried to focus on the music playing through your headphones, soft melodies your only comfort. And as the singer’s voice dissolved into the air, you understood: he had been your mirror. Your reflection of desire, but never your destiny.

You built defenses, walls, everything to stop feeling again. But one laugh of his was enough to make them crumble. One greeting was enough for your foolish, hopeful heart to bloom again. And still, with your soul torn apart, you knew you had to let him go.

That day, he came closer than ever. He greeted you naturally, as if he somehow knew it was a goodbye. You only looked at him and smiled. Not with sadness, but with gratitude. “Are you okay?” he asked, sensing your unusual calm. “Yes,” you said, looking into his eyes. “Just… finally breathing.”

And it was true. For the first time in a long while, you breathed without your chest hurting. You watched him lean back at his desk, but now without that old ache. You no longer searched for him desperately. You no longer feared his smile. You knew you had loved him because you were able to let him go. Because you turned him into poetry, because there was no other way to have him.

Love, you wrote, isn’t always about fighting for someone. Sometimes, love is accepting that they don’t belong to you. And letting him go is your final act of love.

He never knew. He never read your words. Never heard the echo of his name between your lines. But you did. And that was enough. Because even as the world kept spinning, even as your heart still whispered his name in dreams, you knew it had reached the end.

He was the storm. You, the air that held him as he passed.

And when it was all over, you took a deep breath and, in silence, almost tenderly, you said your farewell:

He smiled when you understood, took your hand with a confidence he didn’t feel, and led you to the pier. “Come with me, darling,” he said as he looked at you. His eyes, teary from the sand and from the emotion that crossed them in bursts, witnessed how the moonlight, once the spotlight that illuminated a dream he didn’t know how to make real, that incandescent light, now shone upon his reality.

The music of the waves was soft, an echo that seemed to rise from the deepest part of the sea’s heart. Everything smelled of salt, sometimes a faint trace of tamed despair, it smelled like nights that refused to end. You let your fingers slide through his hair, surprised by how soft it was, almost as if the ocean had forgiven him. That was him: spontaneous, imperfect, luminous, always finding beauty where others saw only routine.

That was why you loved him.

The kiss came without warning, warm and slow. The vanilla of your balm mixed with the salt clinging to his lips, as if it were a blessing from the ocean. And for an instant, you thought that if love did have a taste, it must be that one—sweet, salty, almost burning. When you parted, both of you wore smiles stretched by the complicity of those who’ve shared something that can never happen quite the same way again.

You watched him carefully, as if trying to memorize him: the straight nose, the eyes like the colors of that day’s sunset, when, after almost losing you, he decided it was time to confess what he felt. And behind him, a barely perceptible shadow, the sea embracing him in a melancholy that did not belong to the night.

He had that almost sickly beauty everyone desired, but only the brave could look at without fear.

He covered your face with kisses when he noticed your attention had drifted, one on each cheek, another on your eyelids, one more on the tip of your nose. You closed your eyes, surrendering to the game once again, breathing in his scent mixed with the sea breeze. The entire night seemed to rest upon that suspended instant.

You laughed. You danced. You forgot everyone else. No one would have guessed it, but neither of you had expected the night to end that way. It had started with an argument, about how he seemed to spend more time with his “ beloved bodyguard.” Tired of a discussion without end, you’d walked out, with him following behind, trying to explain himself. And outside, when both were surrounded by the salty air of truth, you began to learn to recognize your own feelings. During the bright colors of sunset, you confessed everything you felt.

The music of the tide had grown louder, and he watched you dance. There was something in you that seemed to contradict the world: an ancient sadness hidden beneath your smile. He remembered how you had just apologized for being, now, in such disastrous condition, and that was when he told you, almost without thinking: "We all look pathetic some nights… but you’re beautiful, even more so tonight".

You didn’t blush. You simply looked at him with tenderness, with that calm that comes when one is too tired to pretend. You leaned closer and let his breath dry the tears you hadn’t realized you’d cried.

For the first time, neither of you felt the need to hide anything.

His hands, firm at first, now trembled slightly. You took them gently, as if that were a kind of unbreakable promise, and between the two of you.

“I wish the sun wouldn’t set,” you whispered, watching the moon shine brighter than ever. “I don’t want this to ever end.”

He smiled, closing his eyes, brushing your nose with his.

“It doesn’t have to end, right? Let’s make it eternal.” The stars’ glow reflected on the water, and the air seemed to dance with joy around you, but for the two of you, the world had shrunk until it fit between your intertwined fingers. Then he said, kissing the knuckles of your hand as he sealed his promise: " Tomorrow we can turn back time, darling. We can go back, and I’ll fall in love with you all over again".

You didn’t answer with words. You only kissed him, and in that kiss, time seemed to stop. Behind you, the sea kept breathing, slow, heavy, eternal. The moon shone in happiness with the stars, and the air leapt with excitement.

Surely the night wasn’t eternal. None ever is. But the memory was.

Sometimes, in the years that followed, you thought of that night while watching the sun set over the sea from your window: of the salty skin, the moon, the way he looked at you as if seeing you for the first time, every time. You knew that even as the world kept turning, a part of you both had stayed there, in that place where time had chosen not to move.

You learned to love each other in many ways after that, with more silences than words, with days that no longer smelled of the sea but still of home. Of paint and laughter. Between tired chuckles he said one afternoon: “Do you remember that night? I promised I’d make it eternal.” “And it was,” you answered, brushing a bit of paint from his cheek, the evidence of your small war of brushes. “It’s not like any other night.”

The love that began with an argument and unfolded into a night before the calm of the sea survived the seasons that changed the tide, the noise of the waves, and the changes within you both. Because when you found each other, you learned something time could never erase: that love isn’t always about lasting, but about stopping long enough to be yourself inside the other.

And in that infinite pause, the night remained alive. The sea that watched the moon will be there, even when they will not.

Some nights, when the wind smells of salt and the waves seem to laugh, it’s easy to believe that time, for a moment, stopped as it did back then.

That they still danced beneath the silver light, unafraid of dawn.

The table was set, the kitchen light on with a warm hue, as if the home were waiting awake, patiently.

You were there, sitting on the couch, with a book open and your eyes barely holding on. You didn't get up immediately; you just smiled at him, that kind of smile that, if you ask him—doesn't question, just welcomes.

"I thought you weren't coming today," you said, your voice a mix of relief and sleep.

He sighed, taking off his shoes, his coat, his gloves, his tie... everything that weighed more than it should have.

"Me too," he replied tiredly, plopping down next to you.

Zayne felt the weight of your body disappear from his side after a few minutes, and when he opened his eyes planning to ask why you left his side, he saw a plate, still warm. And although you didn't say "you have to eat," Zayne didn't ask any questions and took the plate from your hand. You waited for the sound of cutlery to break the silence.

He ate slowly, as if afraid of waking up in the night. The lights of the operating room, his racing heartbeat, the mechanical sound of the machines deciding who stayed and who went were still in his head.

But at home, everything was different.

The ticking of the clock sounded like a sleeping heart.

The air, warm.

The sound of pages turning and the almost imperceptible sound of cutlery hitting the plate filled the room with music.

And your gaze, the only constant.

“I don't know how you do this,” he murmured suddenly, placing his plate on the table.

You stopped reading, placing a finger between the pages as you looked at him.

“What? Cook without carrots?”

“Waiting for me without getting tired.”

You smiled, gently putting the book down.

“Because I know that, when you arrive,” you said, lowering your voice as if afraid the night would hear, “the universe rests a little… or at least mine does.”

Zayne looked at you then, and understood.

That heart in the galaxies that bears your form, that life that only turns when you breathe

His entire life revolved around a pulse: that of others, that of his job, that of the city.

But you were the only one who didn't demand him to save you.

You just let him exist.

Outside, the rain turned to mist, and the lights reflected in the windows like fragments of galaxies that had forgotten their names.

Zayne rested his head in your lap and closed his eyes.

You ran your fingers through his hair; he sighed at the touch, as if your touch traced orbits on his skin and rearranged the constellations of his weariness.

In that moment, there were no hospitals or alarms.

Only the sound of breathing, as two people who had survived the day.

And as he closed his eyes again, he thought that maybe that's what love was:

A gravity that holds without demanding movement...

a piece of the Milky Way held in a weary heart,

a pause where even the stars stop to look...

Then Zayne looked up at you. There was a suspended moment, a flicker where the world seemed to hold air.

His hands sought yours, timid at first, as if afraid of breaking something sacred. His fingers brushed yours, and a small, almost electric tremor ran up both arms.

You didn't say anything, but your eyes invited him closer.

Zayne leaned up a little, and when his forehead touched yours, the universe stopped for another second.

The first kiss wasn't an explosion, but a shared breath.

A brief, contained touch, but so full of silence that even the rain seemed to fall silent.

A heartbeat.

Two.

And then the gentle vertigo of meeting.

He rested his forehead against yours, his eyes still closed.

Maybe that's what love is... he thought, not knowing if he was speaking or thinking, he murmured, "Because all the nights under the stars seemed eternal if you weren't there."

Because in every galaxy, there's a point where everything stops;

And he had found his eternal calm right there,

in the chest of someone who didn't mend hearts,

but who knew how to put his own to rest.

From then on, when he looked out his office window, he didn't look for stars: he only followed the invisible heartbeat that guided him back to you, murmuring your name to make it immortal.

That soft, steady rhythm that seemed to come from far away, as if the universe itself were breathing between your hands.

The pulse of the cosmos.

His pulse.

Yours.

A/N 2: Also, I genuinely thought that people wouldn't like what I wrote, but it seems I was wrong. Thank you so much for interacting with my few works! I hope you like the future ones that I will make, as much!