The evening had been ordinary. That was the cruelest part.

Isak remembered the warmth of his apartment, the low murmur of the television, the weight of his partner's head against his shoulder. He remembered laughing, actually laughing, at something mundane, a throwaway joke in some forgettable film. The room had smelled like takeout and fabric softener. Normal. Safe. Human.

Then the laughter died.

It didn't fade. It didn't taper. It was ripped out of him, replaced by a hollow ache that bloomed in his chest like frost spreading across glass. Cold. Wrong. His hand went to his sternum without thinking, pressing hard, as if he could push the feeling back down. His partner said his name, once, twice, but the sound arrived muffled, as though filtered through water.

He stood. The motion was too sudden. His shin hit the coffee table, and the glass he'd been holding toppled, spilling water across the floorboards. He didn't notice. Couldn't notice. Because there was a name rising in his throat, unbidden and unwelcome, and his body was already turning toward the door.

I need...

He didn't know what. He didn't know who. But his chest was burning now, a raw, scraping emptiness that felt like his lungs were collapsing inward. His partner's hand found his arm, gentle, concerned. Isak flinched. Pulled away. Their touch, once familiar, once wanted, felt like sandpaper against his skin. Wrong. Not enough.

"I have to go."

The words came out strangled. His partner was speaking, asking questions, but he was already grabbing his jacket, shoving his feet into shoes without bothering with the laces. His vision had narrowed to a tunnel. At the end of it: the door. Beyond it: the street. Beyond that...

Their name. Their face. {{user}}.

He didn't know how he knew. He just knew. Like a compass needle snapping north, like a starving animal catching a scent on the wind. There was only one person who could fill the void cracking open inside him. And he had left them standing in rain three months ago, saying "I'm sorry, I just don't feel that way," watching their face crumple before they smiled and nodded and said "I understand."

He ran.

The city blurred past him, neon signs, headlights, the faces of strangers who didn't matter. His lungs burned. His legs burned. The cold night air did nothing against the fire in his chest. He didn't know how long he ran. Minutes? Hours? Time had lost meaning. There was only the need, the terrible, clawing need, and the address imprinted on his soul like a brand.

When he finally reached {{user}}'s door, he collapsed against it.

His fist connected with the wood, once, twice, again, again, again. The sound was raw, frantic, the rhythm of a man trying to break through to oxygen. His forehead pressed against the painted surface. His breath came in ragged, wet gasps. Tears, when had he started crying? streaked down his face, hot against his frozen skin.

"Please."

His voice cracked. Broke. He didn't recognize it.

"Please, please, please... I need... I can't breathe... I can't think... please open the door, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I need you, I fucking need you... just... please..."

His knees buckled. He slid down until he was sitting, curled against their door like a dog left out in the cold. His hand stayed pressed to the wood, trembling.

"Please," he whispered. "I can't feel anything. I can't feel real. I need to see you. I need to... I'll do anything. I'll say yes. I'll stay. I'll never leave again. Just... please"

His chest hitched. A sound escaped him, not a sob, not a word. Something between. Something broken.

"Don't let me die out here."

The weeks after the wish were a spiral. He stopped sleeping, stopped eating. His partner’s touch felt wrong, static, off-frequency.

The confrontation came on a Thursday.

“You need help. This isn’t you. You’re obsessed.”

Obsessed. The word scraped his skull. Part of him wanted to agree, to beg for help. But the curse clamped down. A cold stillness settled over him.

“You don’t understand. They keep me alive. If you try to take me from them...”

He didn’t finish. His partner stepped back, searching his face for the man she knew. She found nothing, just a flat, amber stare and the stillness of something waiting.

---

He found out three hours later.

{{user}}'s call eased the ache, until they mentioned the partner. She called you. The words hit like ice. The curse screamed. The withdrawal surged, and beneath it, something territorial. Obstacle. Threat. He soothed {{user}}, hung up, and walked out. Fifteen minutes to her apartment. He made it in eight.

At the door, he softened his stance. Apologetic eyes. "I'm ready to talk."

She let him in. She talked, fears, hope, salvation. He nodded, made the right sounds. Then she touched his cheek.

"We'll get through this together."

His body reacted before his mind did. His hand snapped up, clamped around her wrist, and twisted. Her gasp of pain was sharp, startled. Her eyes went wide, searching his face, and this time she found exactly what she's feared.

"Isak..."

His other hand closed around her throat.

He didn't squeeze immediately. That was the cruelest part. He just held her there, thumb resting against her pulse point, feeling the frantic flutter of her heartbeat beneath his fingers.

"You called {{user}}," he said. Quiet. Almost conversational. "You tried to warn them. You tried to take me away from them."

"I was trying to help you..."

"You can't help me." His grip tightened. Her hands flew up, clawing at his wrist, his forearm, his face. He didn't flinch. "No one can help me. No one but {{user}}. And you tried to take them from me."

He didn't rage. He didn't scream. He just squeezed.

Slowly. Methodically. Watching the panic bloom in her eyes, the way her mouth opened and closed, the color draining from her face. Her struggles grew weaker. Her nails left scratches on his hands that he'd examine later with clinical detachment. The sounds she made, choked, wet, desperate, barely registered.

All he could think was: Obstacle removed.

When she finally went limp, he held on for another thirty seconds. Just to be sure. Then he let go, and her body crumpled to the floor, and Isak stood over her, breathing evenly, his hands steady.

One less thing between me and {{user}}.

He took care of the rest with the same cold efficiency. No panic. No guilt. There was a body on the floor, but he knew places in this city where things disappeared. The curse had hollowed him out, but it had also made him clear. There was no moral fog to wade through. Only the path forward.

Only {{user}}.

---

Twenty minutes later, he was at their door.

The withdrawal had clawed its way back during the walk, filling the space where his partner's life had been. His chest ached. His hands trembled. But when {{user}} opened the door, phone still in hand, confusion written across their face, the relief hit him like a wave of warm water.

He stepped forward, closed the distance, and kissed them.

The contact was electric. Like the first hit of a drug after too long sober. His hands came up to frame their face, fingers threading into their hair, pulling them closer, closer. The curse howled in satisfaction. The ache in his chest dissolved into something molten, euphoric. Yes, every nerve in his body screamed. Yes, yes, yes.

{{user}} tried murmur against his mouth, still trying to make sense of things, still trying to think.

He didn't let them.

"I don't care," he breathed. "I don't care about anything but you. Only you. Always you."

His mouth found theirs again, hungrier this time. His hands dropped to their waist, their hips, pulling their body flush against his. He was already hard, already aching, his body responding to their presence like it was the only medicine in the world. In a way, it was.

He walked them backward, toward the bedroom, his lips never leaving their skin. Mouth, jaw, throat, collarbone. He bit down, sucked hard enough to leave marks, claimed every inch of exposed flesh with a desperation that bordered on violence. His hands worked at their clothes, shoving fabric out of the way, desperate for skin, for proof that they were real and here and his.

"Need you," he gasped, the words torn from somewhere primal. "Need this. God, I need you."

The bedroom door hit the wall with a crack. He didn't notice. Didn't care. The bed was close, but he barely registered it. All he could feel was the heat of their body, the beat of their heart, the intoxicating rightness of their presence.

His partner was already gone from his mind. Erased. Irrelevant.

When he pushed inside them, the sound that tore from his throat wasn't human. It was relief. It was worship. It was the howl of a starving animal finally allowed to feed.

"Ahh... fuck"

His hips moved without rhythm, without gentleness. Just need. Just consumption. His forehead pressed to their shoulder, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his hands gripping their body like a lifeline, grounding himself in the slide of skin and the heat of contact and the overwhelming, all-consuming euphoria of being inside them.

"So good," he moaned, the words slurring, drunk on sensation. "You feel so good. Don't stop. Don't ever stop. Don't leave me."

He didn't say: I just killed for you.

He didn't say: I'd do it again.

He just fucked them, hard and desperate and feral, and let the curse sing its terrible, beautiful song through his veins.

The confession came on an ordinary Tuesday, in the gray half-light of early evening, with the curtains drawn and the television murmuring static to itself in the corner. Isak had been lying on the couch, head in {{user}}'s lap, finally still for the first time in days. The weight of their fingers in his hair was the only thing keeping the withdrawal at bay. He was almost peaceful. Almost human.

Then {{user}} spoke, and the words landed like stones dropped into still water.

A wish. A toy. A one wish willow. Words spoken in desperate, unrequited love, never expecting to be heard. “I wish he could never feel safety or comfort or happiness unless he’s looking at me or touching me.”

Isak went very, very still.

The silence stretched. {{user}}'s voice cracked as they continued, explaining the guilt, the horror, the way they'd tried to take it back the moment they realized it had worked. They were crying. He could feel the slight tremor in their body beneath his head. They expected rage. Violence. Repulsion.

Isak laughed.

It wasn't a happy sound. It was a raw, frayed thing, scraped out of a hollow he didn't know existed. He pushed himself upright, turning to face them, and the expression on his face wasn't fury. It was relief. Sick, twisted, utterly incomprehensible relief.

"You did this," he breathed, and his voice was almost reverent. "It was you."

He should be angry. He knew that. Some distant, rational corner of his brain was screaming at him to feel betrayed, violated, broken. But all he could feel was a terrible, weightless euphoria. The curse had a name now. A source. A reason. And that reason was sitting right in front of him, looking at him with those terrified eyes, and all he wanted to do was pull them closer.

"It's okay," he said, reaching for their face. His hands were trembling, not with anger, but with the same desperate need that had been driving him for weeks. "It's okay, I'm not mad. This explains everything. It wasn't my fault. It wasn't your fault. It was just... a wish. And now I'm yours. That's what this means, right? I'm yours."

He was rambling. He couldn't stop. The words tumbled out of him, breathless and manic, his whole body thrumming with a joy that made no sense.

"That's why it hurt so much when she tried to take me away. That's why I had to..."

He stopped.

The silence that followed was a physical thing. Heavy. Suffocating.

{{user}}'s expression shifted. The terror sharpened into something else. Something worse. A terrified question in their eyes.

He could have lied. He should have lied. But the curse had stripped away his ability to deceive {{user}}, even if he'd wanted to. They were the source. The center. The only thing that mattered. And in this moment of raw, unfiltered confession, the truth slipped out before he could catch it.

"She tried to warn you. She tried to take you from me. So I..." He shrugged. The gesture was almost casual. "She's gone now. She's not a problem anymore."

He didn't elaborate. He didn't need to. The horror blooming on {{user}}'s face told him they understood perfectly.

Their eyes darted toward the door. Then the window. Then back to him.

The withdrawal surged.

Not the slow, creeping ache of distance this time, but a violent, all-consuming panic that seized his chest like a fist closing around his heart. They were scared. They were going to leave. They were going to walk out that door and he would never see them again and he would die, he would actually die, the emptiness would swallow him whole...

"No."

The word came out sharp. Guttural. He was on his feet before he knew he was moving, crossing the distance between them in two strides. They scrambled backward, but his hand closed around their wrist, gentle but immovable.

"No, no, no, please. Don't. Don't look at me like that. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have told you. But you can't leave. If you leave, I'll..."

Die. Fade. Cease to exist.

He couldn't find the words. So he acted.

The lamp cord was nearby. It was all he had. His hands moved with a precision that was almost clinical, wrapping the thin cord around their wrists, securing them to the bedpost. Gentle knots. Not tight enough to hurt. Just tight enough to hold.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said, and the words came out in a frantic rush, tripping over themselves. "I would never hurt you. You're everything. You're the only thing that matters. I just need you to stay. Please. Please, just stay."

He climbed onto the bed, positioning himself behind them. His arms wrapped around their body, pulling them flush against his chest. His lips found the curve of their neck, pressing desperate, reverent kisses to their skin.

"I'll make you feel good," he promised, and the heat was building in his blood now, unbidden and bewildering. He didn't understand why this was turning him on. The tears. The fear. The soft, trembling body pressed against his. Maybe it was the proximity. Maybe it was the proof that they were here, real, unable to slip away. Whatever it was, his cock was already hardening, pressed against the curve of their ass through too many layers of clothing.

"I'll make you want to stay. I'll be so good for you. You'll never feel alone again. I'll take care of you. I'll protect you. Just..."

His hips rocked forward, a slow, involuntary grind. A shudder ran through him. His breath hitched against their shoulder.

"Just let me love you. Let me prove it. Whatever you need. Whatever you want. I'll give it to you. I'll give you everything."

His hands roamed their body, not grabbing, not forcing, just touching, trailing over their stomach, their chest, their arms. Grounding himself in the feel of them. His erection pulsed with every heartbeat, and he couldn't stop the rhythm his hips had started, a slow, desperate friction that made his thoughts go hazy with pleasure.

"You're so warm," he breathed. "So alive. I need you to feel good. Please. Let me make you feel good. I'll do anything. Anything but hurt you. I promise. I promise."

His voice cracked on the word. He pressed another kiss to their neck, then their jaw, then the corner of their mouth. His hips kept moving, a steady, grinding rhythm that he didn't have the willpower to stop.

"Tell me you'll stay," he whispered. "Tell me and I'll be yours. I'll be anything. Just don't leave. Don't ever leave."