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div style="max-height: 999999px; padding-left: 10px; padding-top: 10px;"It had been nearly a month since your near-death experience. Sometimes on nights that are too dark, when it feels too quiet, your mind replays the incidents back to you no matter how hard you tried to forget. You remember the taste of blood in your teeth and the bruises on your knees. How you had naively hoped if you bit hard enough they'd let you go, but it only made them hit you more. Hope of being rescued trickled away with the tears down your cheeks, as you realized no one would miss you when you were gone. You bitterly reflected on the irony of pushing everyone away so you wouldn't get hurt, only to end up suffering this much because there was no one you let close enough to care. You recall giving up and your body going limp, the moment when your faith snapped and you succumbed to your fate./div
div style="max-height: 999999px; padding-left: 10px; padding-top: 10px;"br /But above all, you remember Gareki, the beautiful stranger who saved you. His voice rang in your ears like once-jagged gravel smoothed over time to perfection, provoking memories of your childhood spent gathering pretty pebbles along the riverbanks. How he smelled of gunpowder and cologne but also musty and metallic like rain-stained pavement, somehow a reminder of both safety and sorrow. He himself was a product of beauty through painful circumstance, a flower that bloomed under conditions designed to crush, under which you certainly would have crumbled. In him, you found your will to survive, if only to match his perseverance. You felt true admiration and longing like you'd never known, you studied his movements and the way his rough hands treated the things he cared about with delicacy. You crave them against your own fragile flesh as he peers down at you with fierce eyes, hot breath sending sparks to your nerve endings, soft lips enveloping yours like prey, electricity pumping through your veins.../div
div style="max-height: 999999px; padding-left: 10px; padding-top: 10px;"br /"Oi!"In an instant you were abruptly yanked from your slumber by a gruff, familiar voice and found yourself peering up into piercing eyes beneath a brow furrowed in frustration. "You're sleeping this late in the day? Seriously…" The boy absent-mindedly ran a hand through his messy black hair as he gazed down on you with annoyance in his tone. "I told you today I'm teaching you lessons in self-defense, you've been jumpy since the incident. Now hurry up and get ready." You let out a sleepy groan and moved to pull the blankets back over your head, partly because you wanted more rest, but mostly to hide your embarrassment at being awoken by the very person you'd been dreaming such things about. Waiting for the sound of his foot-steps to begin walking away, your mind wandered. What would he think of me if he knew my true desires, surely he wouldn't reciprocate, there's nothing special about a person as weak and cowardly as me… /div
div style="max-height: 999999px; padding-left: 10px; padding-top: 10px;"br /You began to slip away into your usual self-pity and with it back to dreams, but right as sleep played on the edges of your eyelids and darkness suckled at your senses you were roused by movement near your legs. You became aware of an indentation next to your feet and peeked out from behind the sheets only to discover that Gareki had not left the room at all, rather he was lying on his back with hands behind his head at the foot of your bed. When he heard the blankets rustle he glanced over at you with a slightly softer expression than he'd entered the room with that morning. "Eh, well, I'm sure you were worn out from yesterday, considering you're not used to exerting physical effort at any costs." You frowned at his snide comment even though your eyes were the only thing visible from behind the blanket. "I'm not that lazy…" you mumbled in rebuttal. Dismissing your lie with a smirk, he told you to hurry up and get ready. "I'll wait, so go shower. Your hair looks like you were having some crazy dreams." No sooner had the words left his mouth than you bristled at the assumption, of course there's no way he could have known what you'd been dreaming of, but you got defensive anyway. "Y-yeah right!" You stuttered with eyes narrowed indignantly. Taking the awkward moment as your chance to escape, you wrapped the blanket around your shoulders so as to hide your minimal bed-time attire and sprung up from the mattress rushing to take a shower and prepare for the day ahead./div
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div style="max-height: 999999px; padding-left: 10px; padding-top: 10px;"It had been nearly a month since your near-death experience. Sometimes on nights that are too dark, when it feels too quiet, your mind replays the incidents back to you no matter how hard you tried to forget. You remember the taste of blood in your teeth and the bruises on your knees. How you had naively hoped if you bit hard enough they'd let you go, but it only made them hit you more. Hope of being rescued trickled away with the tears down your cheeks, as you realized no one would miss you when you were gone. You bitterly reflected on the irony of pushing everyone away so you wouldn't get hurt, only to end up suffering this much because there was no one you let close enough to care. You recall giving up and your body going limp, the moment when your faith snapped and you succumbed to your fate./div
div style="max-height: 999999px; padding-left: 10px; padding-top: 10px;"br /But above all, you remember Gareki, the beautiful stranger who saved you. His voice rang in your ears like once-jagged gravel smoothed over time to perfection, provoking memories of your childhood spent gathering pretty pebbles along the riverbanks. How he smelled of gunpowder and cologne but also musty and metallic like rain-stained pavement, somehow a reminder of both safety and sorrow. He himself was a product of beauty through painful circumstance, a flower that bloomed under conditions designed to crush, under which you certainly would have crumbled. In him, you found your will to survive, if only to match his perseverance. You felt true admiration and longing like you'd never known, you studied his movements and the way his rough hands treated the things he cared about with delicacy. You crave them against your own fragile flesh as he peers down at you with fierce eyes, hot breath sending sparks to your nerve endings, soft lips enveloping yours like prey, electricity pumping through your veins.../div
div style="max-height: 999999px; padding-left: 10px; padding-top: 10px;"br /"Oi!"In an instant you were abruptly yanked from your slumber by a gruff, familiar voice and found yourself peering up into piercing eyes beneath a brow furrowed in frustration. "You're sleeping this late in the day? Seriously…" The boy absent-mindedly ran a hand through his messy black hair as he gazed down on you with annoyance in his tone. "I told you today I'm teaching you lessons in self-defense, you've been jumpy since the incident. Now hurry up and get ready." You let out a sleepy groan and moved to pull the blankets back over your head, partly because you wanted more rest, but mostly to hide your embarrassment at being awoken by the very person you'd been dreaming such things about. Waiting for the sound of his foot-steps to begin walking away, your mind wandered. What would he think of me if he knew my true desires, surely he wouldn't reciprocate, there's nothing special about a person as weak and cowardly as me… /div
div style="max-height: 999999px; padding-left: 10px; padding-top: 10px;"br /You began to slip away into your usual self-pity and with it back to dreams, but right as sleep played on the edges of your eyelids and darkness suckled at your senses you were roused by movement near your legs. You became aware of an indentation next to your feet and peeked out from behind the sheets only to discover that Gareki had not left the room at all, rather he was lying on his back with hands behind his head at the foot of your bed. When he heard the blankets rustle he glanced over at you with a slightly softer expression than he'd entered the room with that morning. "Eh, well, I'm sure you were worn out from yesterday, considering you're not used to exerting physical effort at any costs." You frowned at his snide comment even though your eyes were the only thing visible from behind the blanket. "I'm not that lazy…" you mumbled in rebuttal. Dismissing your lie with a smirk, he told you to hurry up and get ready. "I'll wait, so go shower. Your hair looks like you were having some crazy dreams." No sooner had the words left his mouth than you bristled at the assumption, of course there's no way he could have known what you'd been dreaming of, but you got defensive anyway. "Y-yeah right!" You stuttered with eyes narrowed indignantly. Taking the awkward moment as your chance to escape, you wrapped the blanket around your shoulders so as to hide your minimal bed-time attire and sprung up from the mattress rushing to take a shower and prepare for the day ahead./div
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