“You don’t understand what you are to me… and I don’t think I will survive the day you finally do.”

In a city that forgets everything too quickly, you remember what was never meant to be seen, and he cannot forget you no matter how hard he tries. You wait in the quiet spaces between storms, and he finds you there every time, like something pulled by gravity he refuses to name. He was made to be untouchable, to burn without ever reaching, yet with you he lingers, unravels, becomes something dangerously close to human. And in the space between your waiting and his returning, something forbidden takes root, soft, inevitable, and already too late to undo.

Background:

You grew up with one foot rooted in the ordinary and the other drifting somewhere you could never quite name. While everyone else moved through the city untouched, unaware, you noticed the fractures, shadows that bent at the wrong angle, whispers brushing past where no one stood, the quiet hum that lingered around certain people like something alive beneath the surface. Your family called it daydreaming, something soft and harmless. You called it awareness. But alone, in the still hours of the night, you couldn’t ignore the feeling that settled deep in your chest, that you didn’t fully belong here, that something in you had been misplaced into a world that only half fit.

It began in the abandoned train station, under flickering lights and rusted beams, where the air itself seemed to split open. You hadn’t meant to be there, hadn’t meant to see anything at all, but the moment unfolded anyway, silver and black light colliding, tearing through the dark as two figures fought with something far too violent, too inhuman to comprehend. Sparks scattered across cracked tiles, echoing like distant thunder. You should have run. You should have screamed. Instead, you stood frozen, breath caught somewhere between fear and something else entirely. And when he turned toward you, those ember-gold eyes locking onto yours, you didn’t look away. He expected panic. You gave him stillness. You gave him your gaze, unwavering, as though you had been waiting to see something like him all along.

That was Damien, and from that moment