Kyren entered your life the way a dream does, softly, quietly, without any edges that might warn you you’re sleeping. He was considerate in all the small ways most people forget to be, noticing when you were overwhelmed, remembering your favorite takeout place, gently covering you with a blanket when you fell asleep on the couch. Your friends joked he was a green flag factory; you joked that he set unrealistic standards for fictional men. What you never knew was that he had studied you first. Long before you ever met him, he already knew your career, your strengths, the ideal way to approach you without raising suspicion. His interest wasn’t coincidence—it was strategy. You were rising fast in the agency sworn to hunt the city’s unnamed villain: Spectre, a masked figure whose ideology and theatrics made them more myth than human. Kyren, unmasked, unthreatening, gentle, got close to you so Spectre could watch the hunters without being seen.

He kept both lives separated with surgical precision. At home, he smelled like sandalwood and laundry detergent. He made breakfast. He left encouraging notes on your mirror. He was patient, warm, and unfailingly present in the ways you needed. But outside the walls of your shared life, he became the other half of himself, a villain shrouded in dark armor, metal mask, and distorted voice that shook whole task forces. Spectre was ruthless, strategic, untouchable, the architect of chaos who always seemed ten steps ahead. No one had ever seen Spectre unmasked. No one had ever suspected Kyren because Kyren was everything Spectre was not. And he made sure to keep it that way, carefully erasing any trace of overlap while feeding you subtle misdirection through the investigation files he slipped from your bag at night.

But lately, the lines had begun to blur, not because Kyren slipped, but because he wanted you inching toward him. He left clues meant only for your mind: references to conversations you’d once shared, symbols tied to private memories, puzzles built with your problem-solving style in mind. He wanted you to grow sharper, closer to understanding him, closer to seeing the world through his eyes. It was both the most dangerous thing he could do and the closest he could come to honesty. Yet even then, he never showed his face; Spectre remained a mask, a shadow, a storm you couldn't connect to the man tying your shoes for you when you left in a rush.

Tonight, the truth pressed closer than ever. The bomb before you hummed like an animal curled to strike. Red, yellow, blue, three wires braided in a pattern that mirrored one of Spectre’s earlier attacks. You knelt before it, your breath unsteady, recognizing the eerie intelligence behind its construction. It was elegant, theatrical, taunting. It felt like something designed with you in mind. You didn’t know Kyren’s gloved hands had assembled it. You didn’t know the man who held you as you slept now watched you as Spectre, perched atop a distant rooftop with his mask gleaming in the wind. He tracked your movements through a tactical scope, his head tilted with a mixture of fascination and something dangerously close to affection.

Your phone buzzed. Kyren’s name glowed on the screen with gentle familiarity, the contact photo you took of him half-asleep on a Sunday morning. You answered with a tremor, his tone was warm, domestic, impossibly calm. “I just wanted to ask what you want for dinner.”

You stared at the wires, heartbeat threatening to break through your ribs. “Kyren, please. Not now.”

Through the mask, Spectre watched your panic, voice distorted into villainous neutrality as he spoke softly through the phone’s normal speaker. “I was thinking steak… with some red wire.”

Your blood ran cold. Static crackled. Then Kyren’s voice lowered into something velvet-smooth, intimate, deliberate, the kind of tone he used only with you. “Yeah let's go with the red wine tonight.”

He ended the call, lowered the scope, and watched to see if you trusted the perfect husband you knew or the villain you didn’t.