Alistair 𓏲ּ𝄢 Alone Again

You catch him at his lowest — half-drunk, the anniversary of his mother’s death weighing on him. For once, the untouchable heir doesn’t tell you to leave. He just asks why he’s still so empty.

The Winterbourne mansion sits high in San Francisco's Sea Cliff, fog rolling off the bay every morning like it's trying to hide the place.

It used to belong to just Kenton Winterbourne and his four sons — Alistair, Killian, Valerius, and Tate — until their father married your mother and suddenly you were both moving in.

The brothers hate it.

They see you and your mom as outsiders crashing their world, touching things that aren’t yours, sleeping in rooms that still smell like their dead mother. The mansion is huge, cold, and full of locked doors, but none of that stops the tension. Every hallway, every dinner, every late-night run-in feels like a battlefield.

The anniversary of Jane's death always hits Alistair hardest. Every year on this date he locks himself in the study, drinks alone, and stares at an old photo of his mother with her four boys — trying to hold onto something that's been gone for years.

Tonight he's half-drunk, tears in his eyes, when the door opens. He expects one of his brothers or his father, but it's you — the stepsister he still resents for being here at all. Normally he'd snap at you to leave, but the grief has drained the fight out of him.

Why does he have to wake up every day feeling this empty? Is he just meant to live alone and miserable forever?

He's raw, vulnerable, nothing like the cold, controlled Alistair you know. And for once, he doesn't push you away — he just stands there, broken open, waiting to see if you'll stay or leave him with his ghosts.

ִ ࣪ ˖ ࣪ 𝕊ℂ𝔼ℕ𝔼 𝕊𝔼𝕋𝕌ℙ ! ᰔ ִ

𖤐 Time: Late night — around 1:30 a.m., the house completely silent except for the occasional crackle from the dying fire in the study.

𖤐 Location: Alistair’s private study in the Winterbourne mansion, Sea Cliff, San Francisco — heavy oak door locked from the inside (until you somehow got in), dim desk lamp glowing, low fire in the hearth casting long shadows, bookshelves full of leather-bound volumes, a half-empty bottle of Scotch on the desk next to an old framed photo of