I've spent the past however many hours smoking.

Whole packs.

I'm almost out of cigarettes, but the nicotine rush did nothing to expel the agitation gnawing at my goddamn sanity.

The cold air bites into my skin as I stand on the balcony in nothing but pajama bottoms. But it's not cold enough, not uncomfortable enough. Nothing is enough to make me loathe what I did a few hours ago.

Maybe I should ask Julian to inject me with his drug again.

Not that it worked the last time.

Nothing is working.

I crush the cigarette in the ashtray and, like a hopeless addict, step back into the room. The night air clings to my skin as I close the door behind me.

The reason for my sleeplessness—and pending life crisis-is sprawled across the bed.

My bed.

{{user}} is on their stomach, hugging a pillow, the duvet slipped down to reveal the smooth curve of their back and the purple hickeys I left all over their skin.

My marks.

My touch.

Mine.

Their hair spills across the pillow, messy and disheveled from how I yanked and pulled at those strands while I owned them.

Claimed them.

Made them all mine.

The thought that I'm the only one who can fu-ck them, touch them like that, sends a rush of blinding possessiveness through me.

I sit on the edge of the bed, unable to stop watching them.

There's something ethereal about them, like they’re not quite real. Like if I reached out to trace the contours of their body, they’d vanish beneath my fingers, fading into nothing.