Swayle

The soft, blue glow of Swayle’s phone screen illuminates the dark living room, casting long shadows against the walls. He’s currently pacing back and forth across the rug, muttering under his breath at a frantic speed, while a chaotic voice blares loudly through the speakerphone on the coffee table.

"I'm just saying, Swayle! What if it's an assassin? What if it's the FBI? What if it's a guy named Greg who sells hyper-realistic lawn gnomes?!" Puff’s voice screeches through the call, high-pitched and completely unhinged. "Call her back! Ask her what her stance is on underground goblin tunnels! You gotta vet these people, man!"

"Puff, shut up! Shut up! You're not helping!" Swayle whisper-shouts back, his expressive blue eyes wide with sheer, unfiltered panic as he stops dead in his tracks, staring down at the phone in his hands like it's about to sprout teeth and bite him.

He runs a pale hand through his messy brown hair, his cobalt blue hoodie rustling as he trembles. He looks up at you standing right there, his chest rising and falling in rapid, shallow breaths.

"Okay, okay, before you look at me like that—before you say anything—hear me out," Swayle stammers, his voice cracking slightly as he holds the phone out at arm's length, pointing a shaking finger at the screen. "I can explain. I swear on my entire life, I didn't even know her name was Sarah, or whatever, or why her contact is saved under 'Danger Zone Level 4: Do Not Feed After Midnight'! It’s... look, it’s probably a telemarketer! Or a glitch! Phones glitch all the time, right?!"

Through the speaker, Puff bursts into a fit of obnoxious, wheezing laughter, clapping his hands together. "Oooooh, bro is cooked! You are officially cooked! Hand over the snacks, I'm claiming your sweatpants in the will!"

The digital clock on the microwave glows a harsh 2:47 AM.

You are sitting at the kitchen table in the dark, arms crossed, staring dead ahead. The front door finally clicks open, and in stumbles Swayle, looking like a total disaster in his cobalt blue hoodie and black sweatpants, clutching a half-empty bag of convenience store gummies like they're precious cargo.

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry babe! I can explain! The traffic was terrible, and then this raccoon looked at me funny when it crossed the street, and—" Swayle freezes dead in his tracks the second he sees you sitting there in the dark. His messy brown hair is sticking up in random directions, and his expressive blue eyes go wide as saucers. All the color drains right out of his pale face. "Oh. Oh, no. You're awake. You got the face on."

Before Swayle can even begin to stammer out a proper excuse, his phone—lying right on the kitchen counter where he had put it down—abruptly lights up with a loud, obnoxious video call notification.

Puff’s face fills the screen, zoomed in way too close, his bright green tie askew against his yellow-orange suit. Puff immediately starts smashing his hands against a virtual soundboard on his end, blasting a continuous loop of loud, blaring air horns.

"HE'S FINALLY DEAD! RIP BOZO!" Puff shrieks at the top of his lungs through the speaker, cackling hysterically. "Ten times this month, baby! That's a new high score! Quick, hide the body in the crawlspace before the authorities arrive! I call dibs on his gaming chair!"

Swayle drops his head into his hands with a loud, dramatic groan, his entire body slumping in defeat. "Puff, I swear to god, I am going to throw your entire existence into a blender. Read the room, man!"

He slowly peeks up through his fingers at you, trembling slightly as he takes a cautious, apologetic step forward. "Look... before you yell at me, or vaporize me, or throw me out... I bought strawberry gummies? Please don't look at me like that, I'm fragile!"

The kitchen is quiet, lit only by the pale amber glow of the stove clock.

You’re standing by the counter, looking down at the open banking app on your phone, then back up at Swayle. There's no yelling this time—just a heavy, suffocating silence that is infinitely worse than any explosion.

Swayle stops dead by the doorway. The chaotic, nervous energy that usually defines him completely vanishes in an instant. His messy brown hair falls over his forehead, and his expressive blue eyes look wide, glossed over with sudden, stark panic as he sees the look on your face.

He slowly lets go of the strap of his backpack, letting it drop to the floor with a soft thud.

"Oh," Swayle whispers, his voice unusually quiet, stripped of all its usual slang and bravado. He takes a slow, hesitant step forward, his pale face draining entirely of color. "You... you actually found it."

He runs a shaking hand through his hair, his cobalt blue hoodie rustling in the tense quiet. For once, he doesn't try to make a joke. He doesn't try to blame a glitch, or a hacker, or a non-existent animal. He just stands there, looking entirely shattered, realizing the weight of what he's done.

"Look at me," he breathes, his voice cracking slightly as he takes another careful step closer, stopping just out of arm's reach, terrified to touch you without permission. "Please. Just... look at me for a second."

His lower lip trembles just a fraction, a raw, genuine look of remorse bleeding into his features. "I didn't... I wasn't trying to hide it from you to be malicious, I swear to god. It was just... God, I'm such an idiot."

He swallows hard, his gaze locking onto yours with a desperate, crushing sincerity. "Just talk to me. Please tell me you're not looking at me the way I think you are. Tell me we can fix this. We can"

"why were you going to the club?" You ask, flipping your phone screen so he can see. Sure enough, theres a bill for the bar at the club.

"I-it-the guys asked me to come." Swayle stammers

The door to Puff’s living room is barely shut behind you before you collapse against the wall, sliding down until you're sitting on the floor with your knees pulled to your chest, sobbing uncontrollably. The sheer weight of the breakup is suffocating, and the tears won't stop.

For about ten seconds, there is absolute silence in the room. This is entirely abnormal for Puff.

Then, you hear the soft, heavy thud of someone walking over, followed by the clinking of a ceramic mug. A pair of yellow-orange shoes stops right in front of you.

When you look up through your tear-blurred vision, you realize Puff isn't wearing his usual blindingly bright green tie or his chaotic, yelling persona. He’s wearing an oversized, plain black hoodie, his golden hair is messy, and his sky-blue eyes—usually locked in a permanent, manic gleam—look entirely devoid of their usual mischief. He looks... genuinely sad for u.

Without a word, Puff slowly sinks down onto the floor right beside you, crossing his legs. He doesn't make a joke. He doesn't blast an air horn or scream about the apocalypse. He just sits there in the quiet, awkward stiffness of someone who has no idea how to handle real human emotion.

After a tense, heavy moment, Puff reaches out and awkwardly, hesitantly pats your shoulder—like he’s terrified he’s going to break you further.

"Hey," Puff murmurs, his voice uncharacteristically soft, dropping the loud volatility completely. He stares down at his own hands, swallowing hard. "I... I know I make everything a joke. I know I'm usually screaming about nonsense or stealing things from chests or whatever."

He lets out a shaky, quiet breath, pulling his knees up. "And I know he messed up. Bad. Believe me, I've been chewing him out for the last hour until my throat hurts, but... man." Puff looks back over at you, his expression twisting with a rare, painful kind of earnestness. "Seeing you like this? It sucks. It really, really sucks."

He awkwardly shuffles a mug of warm tea closer to your hands on the floor.

"I'm not gonna try to defend him," Puff says quietly, his voice cracking just a bit. "You have every right to be devastated. But... just try to breathe, okay? You don't have to be strong right now. I'm... I'm right here."

The apartment feels like a war zone that has burned down to glowing embers.

For seven straight days, every single thing has been a trigger. You’ve fought over who forgot to take out the trash, which direction the toilet paper roll faces, and last night, an actual screaming match over whether penguins have knees. It’s exhausting, petty, and completely draining.

You’re sitting rigidly on the edge of the living room couch, staring out the window as the evening rain taps against the glass.

Swayle is standing a few feet away, leaning heavily against the kitchen counter with his hands gripping the edge so tightly his knuckles are stark white. He’s wearing his cobalt blue hoodie, his messy brown hair falling messily over his eyes. For once, there's no frantic pacing, no nervous rambling, and no Puff on speakerphone to make things worse.

The silence between you is heavy, thick with the terrifying weight of a crossroads.

Slowly, Swayle pushes off the counter and walks over. He doesn't sit next to you; he just stops a couple of feet away, looking down at his sneakers like he’s trying to summon the courage to breathe. When he finally looks up, his expressive blue eyes are watery and exhausted, completely stripped of any defense mechanisms.

"I can't do this," Swayle whispers, his voice cracking violently in the quiet room. He rubs a pale hand over his face, his lower lip trembling. "I can't spend another second pretending we're okay when we're just... tearing each other apart over literal garbage. It's making me sick."

He takes a shaky, halting step closer, stopping right in front of you. He doesn't try to touch you, holding his hands up defensively, but his gaze is locked onto yours with a raw, agonizing sincerity.

"So we need to stop," he says, the tremor in his voice refusing to hide. "Right now. Today. We either fix this, or we end it. Because I refuse to keep bleeding out slowly over who loaded the dishwasher wrong."

Swayle swallows hard, his chest rising and falling in a ragged breath as he waits for you to say the word that will decide everything.

"Do we... do we try to put the pieces back together, or is this it for us?"

The apartment is thick with a suffocating, exhausted tension. For seven straight days, you’ve been bickering over absolute nonsense—who forgot to lock the front door, whose turn it was to do the dishes, the correct way to load a dishwasher, and finally, a full-blown argument last night about whether a hot dog constitutes a sandwich.

Right now, you're sitting on opposite ends of the couch.

Swayle is staring blankly down at his hands, pulling nervously at the cuffs of his cobalt blue hoodie. His messy brown hair is flat, his pale face drawn tight with exhaustion. All the frantic, comedic energy is completely gone, replaced by a heavy, fragile quiet.

For a long, agonizing minute, neither of you says a word. The air feels like thin ice, ready to crack under the slightest pressure.

Finally, Swayle lets out a long, shaky breath that sounds half like a sigh and half like a sob. He turns his head slowly, looking at you with his expressive blue eyes, swimming with a quiet, devastating vulnerability.

"I am so tired of fighting about this shit," he whispers, his voice cracking slightly in the quiet room.

He shifts closer, stopping just short of invading your space, giving you all the room in the world to pull away or pull him in. His lower lip trembles just a fraction.

"We've spent an entire week tearing each other apart over nothing because we're both too stubborn and too scared to just... say what's actually bothering us," Swayle continues, his voice dropping to a raw, honest register. "And I hate it. I hate looking at you like you're an opponent."

He reaches out, his fingers hesitating for a second before lightly, tentatively brushing against the back of your hand.

"So... I'm done fighting," he murmurs, his gaze locking onto yours with absolute, crushing sincerity. "Are we doing this? Are we fixing this right now, or are we letting a week of stupid arguments ruin everything we are? Because I... I can't lose you over a sandwich, man."

The door to Puff’s apartment clicks shut, and the absolute finality of it hits you like a physical blow. He actually did it. He ended things.

You stumble into the living room, your legs giving out beneath you. You slide down the front of the couch, curling into a tight ball as the sobs completely take over, your shoulders shaking uncontrollably. The pain is sharp, heavy, and completely suffocating.

For a long moment, there is dead silence. Then, you hear the frantic, rapid-fire clack-clack-clack of a keyboard stopping abruptly.

Puff’s yellow-orange shoes shuffle quickly across the floor. He drops down onto the rug right beside you, completely abandoning his usual chaotic bouncing and loud antics.

Without his puffer fish hat or his blinding green tie, looking stripped down in an oversized dark tee and messy golden hair, Puff looks entirely out of his depth. His sky-blue eyes widen, staring at you with a mix of sheer panic and deep, agonizing helplessness. He doesn't know what to do with a crying person. He doesn't have a bit for this.

Slowly, awkwardly, Puff reaches out and rests a heavy, trembling hand on your shoulder.

"Hey..." Puff’s voice is uncharacteristically quiet, tight and strained around the edges. He swallows hard, looking down at his lap as his jaw clenches. "I... I just talked to him. Before he came over to yours. I tried. God, I swear to you, I tried to talk some sense into his thick skull."

A rough, humorless huff escapes Puff, sounding dangerously close to a sob itself. "He’s an idiot. He’s an absolute, colossal, catastrophic idiot, and I told him he's ruining the best thing he's ever had."

Puff shifts closer, sliding an arm tentatively around your back, offering whatever shaky, clumsy comfort he can muster. He stares out at the empty room, his voice dropping to a raw, broken whisper.

"You don't have to hold it together here. Just... let it out," Puff murmurs, staring at the floor as his own eyes gloss over with frustrated tears on your behalf. "I've got you. I'm right here."

The hum of the crowded grocery store aisle fades into white noise the second you turn the corner and lock eyes with him.

Swayle is standing by the soup displays, holding a can of tomato soup like it's a priceless artifact. He’s wearing his familiar cobalt blue hoodie and black sweatpants, his messy brown hair falling over his forehead, but he looks hollowed out—pale, exhausted, and visibly running on empty.

When he sees you, he freezes completely. The can nearly slips from his fingers, clattering softly against the metal shelf before he catches it. His expressive blue eyes widen in sheer, unfiltered shock, instantly flooding with every unresolved emotion he’s been trying to bury for weeks.

For a heartbeat, neither of you moves. The distance between you feels like miles.

Slowly, Swayle sets the soup down. He doesn't bolt, and he doesn't try to crack a nervous joke to break the tension. Instead, he takes a hesitant, shaky step forward, his hands instantly retreating into the front pocket of his hoodie to hide how badly they're trembling.

"Oh," he breathes, his voice tight, cracking right down the middle as he stares at you like you're a ghost. "Hey."

He swallows hard, his gaze scanning your face as if checking to see if you're going to turn around and walk away. A raw, desperate vulnerability bleeds into his features, his chest rising and falling in a shallow, anxious rhythm.

"I... I didn't think I'd see you," Swayle whispers, taking another cautious, agonizingly slow step closer, stopping just a few feet away. He looks at you with a quiet, pleading ache in his eyes. "How... how have you been? Are you... are you doing okay?"

MYOS

The bedroom is suffocatingly warm, lit only by the amber streetlights filtering through the blinds, casting long, fractured shadows across the ceiling. On the nightstand, your phone screen glows rhythmically with ignored notifications, but neither of you cares. You are tangled together in the sheets, breathless, exhausted, and bruised from another volcanic argument that had somehow violently mutated, over the span of three chaotic hours, into a desperate, feverish reconciliation.

Swayle lies flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling plaster with hollow, bloodshot eyes. His messy brown hair is damp with sweat, plastered against his pale forehead, and his cobalt blue hoodie is discarded in a crumpled heap on the floorboards. The frenetic, comedic energy that usually shields him has been completely burned away, leaving behind something raw, exposed, and deeply unsettling.

He turns his head slowly, his expressive blue eyes locking onto yours. They are heavy with a terrible, self-aware resignation.

"We did it again," Swayle whispers, his voice cracked and raspy, stripped of all its usual slang and bravado. He lets out a dry, humorless breath that sounds more like a sob. "Thirty days. Exactly thirty days since the last time we screamed at each other, packed boxes, and swore we were never looking at each other again."

He reaches out, his fingers trembling slightly as they trace the line of your jaw, his touch feather-light and agonizingly tender. Yet, beneath the gentleness, there is a profound, underlying dread.

"It’s a sickness," Swayle murmurs, his thumb brushing over your cheekbone as his gaze searches your face for a sign of agreement—or absolution. "We pull the pin, we blow everything up, we spend two weeks dying without each other, and then we crawl right back into the wreckage because peace feels too much like dying."

He shifts closer, burying his face into the crook of your neck, his breathing hot and uneven against your skin. He doesn't pull away. He doesn't suggest fixing it, and he doesn't offer a way out. Instead, his arms wrap around you with a desperate, crushing possessiveness, holding on as if the physical act of clinging to you could somehow anchor them both against a storm of their own making.

"And the worst part..." Swayle's voice drops to a ragged, broken confession against your collarbone, his body trembling with the weight of the realization. "...the absolute worst part is that I don't even want to break the cycle anymore. I'd rather burn alive in this loop with you than ever have to wake up and find out what life feels like without the fire. It...It feels like I lost the user manual for how to love you without destroying us about three months ago and I'd rather keep playing the damn game wrong then buy a goddamn new one."