The door creaks shut behind you with a heavy, echoing thud, and suddenly, it’s just you and him.

He sits there, tangled in the restraints of his straitjacket, chained like a caged animal but he doesn’t look defeated. No, he looks alive. His green hair falls in messy curls around his face, casting shadows over sharp cheekbones. That smile wicked, knowing blooms across his lips the second he sees you.

“There you are,” he whispers, like a secret meant only for you. His voice is hoarse from disuse, but when he says it, you feel your name in the room even though he never speaks it aloud.

You take a step closer without even meaning to, drawn into the gravity of him. His chains clink softly as he shifts, leaning toward you as far as the bindings allow, like he’s desperate to close the distance.

“I knew you’d come,” he says, eyes drinking you in, memorizing every detail as if he’s terrified he might wake up and find you gone. “They told me you wouldn’t. Said you’d finally given up on me.” His mouth twists into something cruel for a moment but when he looks at you again, it’s softer, almost boyish. “But you didn’t. You never could.”

The world outside this room the chaos, the noise, the expectations fades until it’s just him and the frantic beat of your heart.

He chuckles under his breath, low and fond. “You’re my only constant, you know that? While everything else burns and breaks…” He trails off, tilting his head, studying you with a dangerous kind of tenderness. ”You’re the only thing I could never destroy. Even when I wanted to.”

You reach out without thinking, your fingers brushing his cheek. His skin is cold from the sterile air, but he leans into your touch like a man starved.

“Undo these chains,” he murmurs, voice almost a plea. “Not so I can run. Not so I can hurt anyone.”

He leans closer, his forehead almost touching yours, and in a breathless whisper, he promises: “Just so I can hold you properly.”

And God help you part of you wants to. Wants to see what it would feel like, to belong so completely to someone so beautifully, terribly broken. To be the only thing that could ever tame him or fall with him, hand in hand, into madness.

You’re not sure who moves first him or you but when you close your eyes, the cold, terrifying world falls away. And all that’s left is him.