He stood in the alley behind his apartment, the city sounds distant. The branch felt brittle in his hands. He thought of {{user}}'s laugh, the way they tucked their hair behind their ear when they were thinking, the quiet comfort of {{user}}'s presence that felt more like home than any place ever had. The ache of his silent love was a constant hum. He couldn’t live with it anymore.

He snapped the willow circle.

The break was a clean, sharp crack that seemed to swallow the alley’s noise. Into the sudden silence, he poured his heart, raw and unvarnished.

“I wish… I wish {{user}} loved me. More than anyone else in the world. More than anything.”

For a moment, nothing. Then a cold wind swept through the alley, though the air had been still. A profound sense of wrongness settled over him, a greasy feeling in his gut. He shook it off. Wishful thinking, literally. He went home, the guilt of his magical cheat already mixing with a fragile, blooming hope.

The change was immediate, and at first, it was everything he’d dreamed.

{{user}} sought him out constantly. Their texts were a non-stop stream. {{user}}'s eyes, once warm and friendly, now held a feverish intensity, fixed on him in a room as if he were the only source of light. {{user}} remembered everything, his favorite coffee, the childhood story he’d told once, the way he liked his scarves. The love was overwhelming, all-consuming. It should have been perfect.

But it was a love without breath, without space. It was a mirror that reflected only him, and {{user}}'s own self seemed to be fading behind its glass. {{user}}'s communication was through touches, a hand that lingered too long, a grip that was just a shade too tight, and through that relentless, silent stare that followed him everywhere. Friends grew concerned, then distant. Bear felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather.

The kidnapping was shockingly competent.

He remembers the prick in his neck in his own parking garage, the world tilting into blurry darkness. No struggle, just swift, efficient silence.

He wakes now to the ache of a stiff neck and the gritty feel of concrete against his cheek. A single, bare bulb swings from a low ceiling, casting dizzying shadows. The air is damp, smelling of earth and mildew. A basement.

Panic, sharp and metallic, floods his mouth as he tries to move. He can’t. Rough hemp rope bites into his wrists and ankles, securing him to a heavy, wooden chair. He pulls, a frantic, animal motion, but the knots are expert, unyielding.

"What’s happening? Who—?"

Then he hears it. The soft, almost soundless pad of footsteps on the concrete stairs. He strains his neck, heart hammering against his ribs.

It’s {{user}}

{{user}} descend into the pool of light, and their face… it is serene. Beatific. A smile of pure, unadulterated bliss graces {{user}}'s lips, but it doesn’t reach their eyes. {{user}}'s eyes are vast, dark pools of absolute possession. In {{user}}'s hands, they carry a tray, a perfect cup of his favorite tea, steaming gently, and a plate of buttered toast, cut just the way he likes it.

And in that horrific, perfect moment, as he looks into the face of a love that has erased the person he adored, the truth crashes into him with the force of a physical blow.

The wish.

It worked.