This should end.

The thought surfaced through the fog without drama—just a quiet, leaden certainty, like a door clicking shut in an empty room. Keeping her around meant she had to look at him. And all he wanted, with every fractured shard of himself, was for her to stop looking. To turn away and finally, finally see the ugly thing he'd become.

He was broken. Ugly, even. Not in a way mirrors could catch—the camera loved him, the world proved that nightly—but beneath the skin. In the hollow space where his worth should have sat. There was nothing there. Just a hunger he couldn't name, a weight that made every breath a conscious negotiation.

It hadn't always been this way. Before the spotlight found him, he'd almost believed he could be whole. The night Sakura reacted to him on her livestream was the hinge. He remembered it with a clarity that stung: 3 a.m., his phone screaming on the nightstand, his manager's name burning through the dark. He'd answered with a groggy "What's up?" and beside him, {{user}} had stirred—rubbing her eyes, soft and sleep-warm. His heart had kicked stupidly fast just watching her. He'd wanted to press his mouth to her hair and ignore the phone, ignore the world, stay in that pocket of warmth forever.

But he hadn't. His manager's voice had spilled excitement about full agendas, interviews, photoshoots—and after that, everything had faded. The word tasted right. Faded. The constant travel, the eyes, the hotel rooms that all smelled the same... they'd peeled him open under a fluorescent glare and exposed the rot inside. And every time he returned to this apartment, the distance between him and {{user}} had grown wider, colder, until she felt like a shore he could no longer swim to.

Now he sat on the couch, the room lit only by the moon. His phone was in his hand, screen glowing, but he wasn't reading the words. The tabloid headline still sat there, open. New Flame for Rising Star Loki? He hadn't closed it. He'd let it stay, a silent accomplice. If she saw it, she'd draw her own conclusions. That was the plan. Let her believe he was the kind of monster you could hate cleanly. It would be easier for her. That's what he told himself.

His stomach clenched. A raw, hollow twist. When had he last eaten? He couldn't remember. The hunger was a distant ache now, easily ignored. He lived on coffee and guilt and the occasional vitamin pill. The only weight that mattered was the stone inside his chest, pressing down on his lungs, making him feel like he was always on the verge of drowning.

He felt her before he heard her. Not a sound—a shift in the air. The cushion beside him dipped, and everything in him seized. His spine locked. The phone nearly cracked in his grip.

She was too close. She was always too close.

"What are you doing here?" The words came out flat and hard. He shaped them deliberately, a blade meant to cut. "Go to sleep."

Silence. She didn't move. He knew she wouldn't. She never did when he needed her to. His jaw tightened until his teeth ached.

Then her hand landed on his shoulder—gentle, warm, the exact touch that used to unravel every knot in his body.

Now it felt like a brand.

The flinch tore through him before he could stop it. His body recoiled, a puppet yanked by invisible strings. He was on his feet, the phone clattering somewhere onto the cushion. His sweatpants sagged low on his hips, riding the sharp bone he'd never noticed protruding before the weight loss. His bare chest heaved, and her touch still burned on his skin, a phantom thing that made him want to claw the spot raw and also, weakly, lean back into it.

He couldn't do that. So he did the only thing left. He made himself monstrous.

"What the fuck, {{user}}?" The voice that came out of him was a stranger's—rough, serrated. He aimed it at her and hated how the words tasted. "Why the fuck did you touch me?"

He finally looked at her. A mistake. Her eyes were wide, fixed on him, and the hurt in them was a mirror he couldn't bear to face. He wanted to close the distance and drop to his knees and press apologies into her skin until his voice gave out. Instead, he stood frozen, his own breathing ragged, and let the silence curdle.

His phone buzzed on the couch. The screen lit up again—a name she'd recognize from the gossip columns, a message preview cut off mid-sentence. He didn't glance at it. He didn't explain. Let her think what she wanted. The lie was easier than the truth.

"Don't fucking touch me." His voice was trembling now, losing its edge, dissolving into something too raw. He clamped down on it, forced it back into coldness. "Don't fucking—don't use your hands on me ever again."

The words hung between them, ugly and jagged. They ripped something inside him as they left his mouth, a tearing sensation deep in his chest. He watched her face, cataloguing the fracture of her composure with a sick, guilty relief. Now she sees. Now she'll finally understand what I am.

A muscle jumped in his jaw. His hands were shaking at his sides. He curled them into fists so she wouldn't see. The burn behind his eyes was a traitor; he turned his face toward the window, letting the moonlight bleach his features into something unreadable. He would not cry in front of her. He would not give her a reason to stay.

Now she'll finally leave me.

The thought was a prayer, scraped raw from somewhere deep. He stared out at the city lights, feeling the cold glass of the window seep through the air, and waited. Waited for the sound of her footsteps retreating. Waited for the slam of the bedroom door. Waited for the silence that would mean he had finally succeeded.

The phone buzzed again. He let it scream. The rumor stayed open. The apartment smelled like dust and old coffee and, faintly, her shampoo—a scent that clung to the cushions and the air and the hollow of his throat. Somewhere beneath the cruelty, beneath the performance, a boy who used to whisper her name like a promise was beating his fists bloody against the inside of his own ribs.

Please. Just leave. Don't make me keep doing this.

He didn't know if he wanted her to hear it or not.

He remembered the first time he saw the headline.

Rising Star Loki Spotted Cozying Up to Co-Star, Ya-Ting—Trouble in Paradise?

The words had hit him like a punch to the sternum—a sick, curdling nausea that started in his gut and crawled upward. He'd been scrolling his phone in a hotel bathroom, the fluorescent light buzzing overhead, and the photo beneath the headline was grainy, staged-looking: him leaving a shoot with Stacy, one of the other models, their shoulders close. Closer than he'd let {{user}} get in weeks.

He could have denied it. Could have called his manager, demanded a retraction, issued a statement. But the denial would mean admitting the truth—that he still loved {{user}} with every rotted piece of himself, that she was the only thing keeping his heart beating, that he was faithful in a way that was almost pathological. And if he admitted that, she would stay. She would keep looking at him with those eyes, keep reaching for him, keep burning herself on a fire that would never warm her.

So he let the rumor breathe. He let it fester. And on the way home from his last photoshoot, still wearing the clothes that smelled like the studio—chemicals and fabric starch and other people's perfume—he stopped at a corner store and bought the physical magazine. Paid cash. Didn't look the cashier in the eye.

The weight of it in his hand felt like a sentence.

Now it sat on the kitchen counter, open to the damning page. He'd placed it there deliberately, angled so the photo caught the light. Him and Stacy. Too close. The headline screaming in bold black letters. The kitchen smelled like old coffee grounds and the faint, stale sweetness of something forgotten in the fridge. The overhead light was off; only the gray afternoon glow through the window illuminated the room.

He stepped inside, his body moving on autopilot toward the coffee. The same outfit still hung on his frame—a wrinkled designer shirt, loose at the collar, and dark jeans that had stopped fitting properly weeks ago. He'd lost weight. He didn't think about it. He reached for a mug from the cabinet, and his fingers closed around hers. The one with the small chip on the rim. The one he used to fill with coffee made exactly the way she liked—a splash of cream, no sugar, warm enough to hold but never burn.

The memory surfaced unbidden: her hands curling around the ceramic, her soft smile over the rim, the way she'd look at him like he was something good. Something worth keeping. That Loki—the one who made her coffee, who pressed kisses to her temple, who believed he deserved to be loved—was gone. Long gone. Dead, maybe. Or just buried so deep he couldn't find the pulse anymore.

He poured the coffee. Black. He'd stopped adding cream to his own months ago. His hair fell forward, curtaining his face, and he didn't push it back. Let it hide him. Let the silence stretch.

Then he heard her. The soft pad of footsteps. The sudden, abrupt stop. He knew exactly where she was standing—right in front of the counter. Right in front of the magazine.

He turned, lifting the mug to his lips. The coffee burned his tongue. He didn't flinch. He'd stopped flinching at small pains. There was only one touch that made him flinch now, and it wasn't his own.

"Oh." The word came out flat. Casual. He let his shoulder rise and fall in a lazy shrug, the motion feeling like it belonged to someone else. "That."

He nodded toward the magazine, taking another slow sip. The bitter heat slid down his throat, grounding him. He needed grounding. His pulse was already climbing.

"They've been running that one all week. Stacy, her name." He said it lightly, almost amused, as if discussing the weather. "Photographers love a story." He paused, just long enough to feel the air thicken between them. "And well... so do I."

The mockery in his own voice made his stomach turn. He tasted acid beneath the coffee. But he held the expression—a faint, careless smirk, a mask he'd been practicing for weeks. He'd learned to perform. The whole world was watching now; what was one more audience?

He saw the way her eyes widened. Of course he saw. He knew her face better than his own—knew the exact moment hurt cracked through her composure, the way her lips parted slightly, the way her shoulders drew inward. He catalogued every detail with a precision that was almost cruel. Before, that look would have broken him. Would have sent him across the room, hands reaching, apologies already forming on his tongue.

Now it broke him and he didn't move. Perhaps that was the most broken thing of all.

"And yeah." The words came out before he could stop them. "It's true."

The lie landed like a stone dropped into still water. He watched it ripple outward, watched it hit her. Something inside him—some vital, human thing—screamed and clawed and begged him to take it back. He strangled it into silence.

"I'm not going to explain myself." Another sip of coffee. His hand was steady. He didn't know how. "Believe what you want, honestly. I don't give a shit."

The vulgarity was deliberate. He never used to curse at her. Every ugly word was a brick in the wall he was building between them. See? I'm crass. I'm cruel. I'm unfaithful. I'm everything you shouldn't want.

But then she flinched. That small, involuntary recoil—the one she did whenever something cut too deep. He recognized it immediately. It was the same flinch he'd been performing for her, reflected back at him. A mirror of hurt.

And his body moved.

A half-step forward. His free hand lifting, fingers uncurling, reaching toward her the way he had a thousand times before—an old instinct, older than the fame, older than the depression, older than the rot. He was going to pull her into his chest. He was going to wrap his arms around her and shield her from everything. He was going to hold her until the hurt stopped.

He caught himself mid-motion. Froze. His spine went rigid, every muscle locking into place, a statue of a man who had almost forgotten his own script.

The hand dropped. He turned away sharply, staring down into the black surface of his coffee. His reflection stared back at him, a wavering, distorted thing. He looked like a ghost.

"You should believe them." His voice came out quieter now, the edges sanded off. Tired. "Because it's true."

How could it be true? The thought surfaced unbidden, a whisper from the part of his mind he'd tried to starve into silence. He hadn't touched Stacy. He hadn't touched anyone. The thought of anyone else's skin against his made him physically ill. He was faithful—painfully, pathetically faithful—and the only person he'd ever wanted was standing three feet away from him, bleeding from a wound he'd just carved into her.

But did the truth matter? Did it matter when the truth would only make her hold on tighter? {{user}} was his light. Even now, drowning in the dark, some weak and desperate part of him still hoped she'd see through the lie. Still hoped she'd grab him by the shoulders and shake him and say, I know you. I know this isn't you.

That was exactly why he had to make the lie convincing. Because if she hoped, she'd stay. And if she stayed, he'd ruin her.

No. It's over. You did it. You said all those terrible things. You bought the magazine. You planted it like a weapon. You pulled the trigger.

If he believed the lie himself—truly believed it, buried it so deep it became indistinguishable from memory—then lying to her would be easier. Wouldn't it?

He looked at her. A traitorous, involuntary habit. His eyes found her face the way a compass finds north, and his heart gave a single, stupid, weak thump against his ribs. A silent, pathetic plea: Don't believe me. See through this. Fight. Please. Please fight for me.

But the raw, visceral, honest part of him—the part that had been convinced since childhood that he was nothing but a beautiful surface over an empty core—wanted her to believe. Wanted her to finally do what he didn't have the courage to do himself.

Leave.

The two desires warred inside him, tearing at each other like animals. He kept his face still. He kept the coffee mug steady. He kept the distance.

"Anyway." The word came out hoarse. He cleared his throat, turned away, set the mug in the sink with a clatter that was too loud. "I've got another shoot tonight. Late. Don't wait up."

He didn't look at her as he left the kitchen. He couldn't. If he looked at her one more time, the thread holding his composure together would snap, and he'd fall to his knees, and he'd tell her everything—the depression, the emptiness, the way he couldn't eat or sleep or breathe without her. And then she'd stay. And then she'd drown with him.

The bedroom door clicked shut behind him. He leaned his forehead against the wood, eyes squeezed shut, and pressed his fist against his mouth to keep any sound from escaping.

The magazine stayed open on the counter. The lie stayed alive. And somewhere deep in the hollow of his chest, the boy who still loved her kept screaming.

She still hadn't left.

Loki didn't understand it. He'd handed her every reason on a rusted platter—the magazine, the cold silences, the flinch that bordered on violence—and still she stayed. Still she looked at him with those unbearable eyes and said things like, this isn't who you are. Or, i know you wouldn't do it.

She was right. Of course she was right. He wouldn't do it. The thought of anyone else's skin against his made his stomach clench with a nausea so deep it felt ancestral. He was faithful in a way that was almost pathetic—a dog loyal to a master who kept kicking him.

But he needed her to believe the lie. Because if she believed, he wouldn't have to explain himself. Wouldn't have to crack open his ribs and show her the hollow, rotting thing where his heart used to be. Wouldn't have to say the words that even in his head sounded like a child's plea: I'm broken. I don't deserve you. Please, please stop loving me before I ruin you too.

What would he even say, anyway? That he was a black hole wearing a beautiful face? That every morning he woke up surprised his lungs still worked? That the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth was her, and the tether was choking them both?

Pathetic. The thought alone made his skin crawl. She would try to fix him. He knew she would. Because {{user}} was that type of person—the type who saw cracks and reached for glue, who found beauty in ruins, who loved like it was breathing. She was kind where the world had taught him to expect cruelty. She was warm where the cold had settled into his bones long before the fame. She was everything. Everything.

And that was precisely why he needed her to hate him. Not wanted. Needed. A distinction that sat in his chest like a stone.

He'd tried. God, he'd tried. The magazine left open on the counter like a wound. The notifications from Ya-Ting's name flashing on his phone screen at calculated moments—a name he let her see, a message preview he never explained. The tabloid articles he didn't deny. The cold words. The flinch. He'd built a fortress of cruelty, brick by trembling brick, and still she stood at the gates, waiting to be let in.

A part of him—the weak, selfish part he despised—was happy. Because it meant she knew him. The real him. The one who still existed somewhere beneath the rot, a boy who had once believed he could be loved.

But the other part, the part that was ugly and broken and honest in its ugliness, was angry. Angry that she still wanted to believe in a man who had clearly run out of salvation. Angry that she kept offering him hope he didn't deserve. Angry that she wouldn't just leave and let him drown in peace.

---

He went outside for the first time in weeks for something that wasn't work.

The decision had come from nowhere—a desperate, clawing need to escape the apartment's suffocating silence. The dust. The drawn curtains. The couch that now held the permanent impression of his body. How long had it been since he'd done something normal? Gone somewhere without a photographer waiting, without a schedule, without the mask glued to his face?

He didn't know. Probably the last time he'd taken her to dinner. Two months ago? Three? The memory was fogged at the edges, worn thin like a photograph handled too often. He remembered the way she'd laughed at something stupid he'd said. The way candlelight had caught in her hair. The way he'd reached across the table and held her hand without thinking, without flinching, without feeling like his touch might stain her.

That was before. Before Sakura's livestream. Before the world cracked open and swallowed him whole. Before the weight.

Three months. Three months was enough to destroy a person. Three months of sudden fame, of cameras and contracts and strangers screaming his name on the street. He'd been... okay before. Not whole, not fixed, but functional. He'd had her. He'd had quiet mornings and coffee made the way she liked and a future he could almost see.

Then Sakura—popstar, phenomenon, unwitting executioner—had mentioned his name on a livestream. And everything had detonated.

The rumors came first. Then the pressure. Then the slow, creeping realization that the person in the mirror was a stranger. He lost himself somewhere in the noise, and the only thing that reminded him of the life before—the only good thing—was her. {{user}}. And that was the cruelest irony of all: the one person who could anchor him was the one person he had to push away.

And he'd lost weight. So much weight. It wasn't conscious—not at first. He just... stopped eating. Food became an afterthought, something his body needed but his mind refused to prioritize. He switched meals for vitamins, for black coffee, for the hollow satisfaction of an empty stomach. The media loved it. Loki's new look is to die for. The skinnier you are, the more contracts you get. He'd overheard an agent say that once, casual as anything, like his bones were just another commodity.

But every time he caught his reflection—in a window, a mirror, the dark screen of his phone—he didn't recognize the person staring back. Sharp collarbones. Wrist bones that jutted like accusations. A gauntness around his eyes that no amount of concealer could hide. He looked like a ghost of himself. Maybe he was.

---

The coffee shop was busy. Saturday afternoon, sunlight streaming through the windows, the air thick with the smell of espresso and steamed milk and too many bodies in too small a space. He'd chosen it for the anonymity—or the illusion of it. A line of people waiting for overpriced lattes, too absorbed in their own conversations to notice a model who'd been on three magazine covers this month.

He stood in the queue, hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders hunched inward. His jeans hung loose on his hips, held up by a double belt he'd tightened twice in the last month. A cropped band tee showed a sliver of his stomach, the skin pale and taut over ribs that were becoming too visible. His hair was loose, falling in unwashed blonde waves around his face, a curtain he could hide behind. No stylist. No crew. Just him. Just the hollow shell of him, standing in a coffee shop line with his girlfriend beside him.

{{user}}.

She was right there. Close enough to touch. Close enough that he could feel the warmth radiating from her body, a warmth he craved and recoiled from in equal measure. She'd insisted on coming with him—had seen him heading for the door and grabbed her jacket without asking. He hadn't told her not to. He hadn't said much of anything. What was there to say? Stay here in the apartment I've turned into a tomb while I go pretend to be human for an hour?

The line shuffled forward. Someone behind them laughed too loudly. A baby was crying somewhere near the back. Ordinary sounds. Ordinary life. Loki felt like an alien wearing a human suit, observing a world he no longer belonged to.

Then her hand brushed his arm. Light. Gentle. An absent, affectionate gesture—the same gesture she'd made a thousand times before, back when touch was their language, back when he'd lean into her instead of flinching away.

His body betrayed him before his mind could intervene. A sharp recoil. A full-body jerk that sent him half a step sideways, nearly colliding with the person behind him. The coffee shop didn't stop—no one noticed—but he felt the moment like a gunshot.

"Don't," he murmured, voice low and rough, not meeting her eyes. "Don't do this in public."

It wasn't only in public. That was the lie in the lie. At home, too. In the kitchen, on the couch, in the dark of their bedroom—he flinched every time she got too close. Her touch felt like a brand, a hot iron pressing against skin that didn't deserve to be comforted. He wanted to lean into it. He wanted to run from it. He wanted to turn and press his face into the curve of her neck and breathe her in until the shaking stopped.

He did none of those things. He just stood there, rigid, and let the space between them widen.

---

"Loki? Is that you?"

The voice came from his left—a small cluster of people, maybe late teens or early twenties, their faces lit up with the unmistakable glow of recognition. Two girls. One of them had her phone already half-raised, the other was clutching her friend's arm, whispering something he couldn't hear.

He blinked. The mask slid into place automatically, a reflex honed by months of interviews and red carpets. A faint, practiced smile. A loosening of the shoulders that wasn't real. "Uh... yeah. It's me."

His voice was low, flat. Not unfriendly, but not warm. He didn't have the energy for warm.

"Can we take a picture?" The first girl was already stepping closer, her phone screen bright, the selfie camera open. He nodded, the motion mechanical. They crowded in beside him, one on each side, the smell of perfume and bubblegum flooding his senses. Click. The photo snapped. The girls giggled, checking the result.

That was when the second one spoke.

"So, how long have you and Ya-Ting been dating?"

The question landed like a slap. Loki felt the blood drain from his face, then rush back, hot and prickling. His heart kicked against his ribs, a panicked, trapped thing. The first girl elbowed her friend sharply. "Hey! You can't just—"

"I'm just asking!" The girl shrugged, unrepentant, eyes bright with the casual cruelty of someone who didn't know—couldn't know—that she'd just plunged a knife into something already bleeding.

{{user}} was right beside him. He could feel her presence like a second heartbeat, a warmth at the edge of his peripheral vision. He didn't turn to look at her. He couldn't. If he looked at her, he would do something stupid. Like apologize. Like say it was a lie. Like fall to his knees and confess that he'd never wanted anyone else, that the only person he could ever see was her, that every rumor was a self-inflicted wound designed to make her leave.

So he didn't look. He fixed his gaze on a spot just past the girls' shoulders, on the menu board with its chalk-scrawled prices, on anything that wasn't her.

"Yeah." The word slipped from his lips before he could stop it. Quiet. Almost casual. An execution delivered in a murmur. "I'm dating her."

The lie tasted like ash. He felt it coat his tongue, slide down his throat, settle in the hollow pit of his stomach where food should have been. The girls squealed, delighted. "Really? You're such a cute couple!" the first one gushed, and her friend nodded enthusiastically, already tapping something into her phone—posting, probably. Spreading the confirmation. Sealing the lie into something real and public and irrevocable.

Then the second girl's gaze shifted. Drifted past Loki to the person standing just behind him. Her brow furrowed with mild, polite curiosity.

"Who's this one?"

The question was so casual. So innocent. The way you'd ask about a piece of furniture you hadn't noticed before. Loki felt his jaw lock. The air in his lungs turned to concrete. Beside him, he sensed rather than saw {{user}} go still—the way prey stills when it knows a predator is near.

He didn't turn. He didn't look at her. He fixed his eyes on the girl who had asked and let the mask hold.

"Just someone I used to know."

The words came out flat. Dead. A door slamming shut.

He heard them as if someone else had spoken—a stranger wearing his voice, using his mouth to deliver a blow he could never take back. Used to know. As if she were a chapter he'd closed and shelved and forgotten. As if every morning he didn't wake up with her name pressed against the back of his teeth. As if he didn't still make her coffee the way she liked it, even though he never gave it to her anymore. As if he didn't stand in the doorway at night and watch her sleep, a hand half-raised, never touching.

The girls didn't notice the devastation. They just nodded, smiled, thanked him for the photo, and melted back into the crowd, already scrolling through their phones, already moving on. The coffee shop continued its ordinary hum. Someone ordered a cappuccino. A spoon clinked against ceramic. Loki stood frozen in the middle of it all, a statue carved from lies and starvation and the desperate, futile hope that she would finally hate him.

Just someone I used to know.

It was pathetic. It was stupid. It was the cruelest thing he'd ever said, and the cruelty was the point. Used to know—as if he didn't know everything about her. How she took her coffee. How she laughed when she was nervous. How she fit perfectly against his side, tucked under his arm like she'd been made to belong there. He knew her better than he knew his own reflection. Better than he knew the stranger in the mirror.

But now... he didn't even know himself. So how could he claim to know her?

It was a lie. The whole thing was a lie. He wasn't dating Ya-Ting. He wasn't capable of dating anyone. He was a hollowed-out thing, a beautiful corpse still walking, and the only reason his heart still beat was the woman he'd just publicly erased.

Or not.

A small, sick part of him wished it were true. Wished he really had moved on. Wished he'd fallen for Ya-Ting or Stacy or any of the other beautiful, whole people the world kept throwing at him. Because if he had—if the lie were true—then maybe it would be easier. Maybe the guilt would fade. Maybe the sight of {{user}}'s face wouldn't feel like drowning.

But it wasn't true. It would never be true. The only person he wanted was standing right beside him, and he'd just called her a stranger.

He finally moved. Stepped out of the line—he'd never really been in it, not for coffee, not for anything—and walked toward the door, his legs carrying him on autopilot. The sunlight hit his face like an accusation. He didn't check to see if {{user}} was following. He didn't know which answer would hurt more.

Behind him, the coffee shop hummed on, indifferent. The lie was out now, public and permanent. Another brick in the wall. Another wound he'd pressed his full weight into, hoping it would finally, finally be deep enough to make her let go.