Novelette {Oneshots}

Baby Came Home ✧ 𝚂𝚊𝚙𝚗𝚊𝚙

𝙺𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚗𝚊𝚙

⚠️ 𝚃𝚆𝚜: mentions of abuse towards the end - please be careful if you're triggered by this!!

𝙳𝚎𝚜𝚌: Day 3 of the writing event. Mood board above, quote was "Does it hurt?"

Despite it not being part of the prompts, I got a lot of ideas for this from the song 'Baby Came Home' by the neighbourhood, hence the title.
Would recommend playing while you read.
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"Baby, what are you doing here?" I sigh to the boy stood miserably outside my apartment, hand outstretched limply towards the doorbell, but not looking inclined to actually press it. He looks drenched to the bone, pastel clothes reduced to a murky, washed-out mix of the colours they used to be. The boy wearing them looks just as hollow, if not more, hazel irises now sunken husks in a milky haze.

If I didn't know better, I'd believe their red tint to only be the reflections of the light pouring into the street from behind me. But this is Karl, and despite looking like no other, this night is the same as all of the past ones. "Come inside," I more demand than offer, tugging his sleeve until he's through the door, bathed once more in the familiar glow of the ruby lights that he's come to love.

Even if he'll never admit it to, I know he adores them. Ever since the first night, we've both come to find comfort in them, no matter the shadow such a rich colour can almost ominously leave behind. It's strangely beautiful, how the darkness compliments his features. How it cradles his face welcomingly, dusting his cheeks in a rosy glow.

The lights seem to glitter against his skin, leave him looking angelic and his scarlet lips glowing. That's where temptation tends to take over, where the boy before me is painted more as the devil than an angel. It's always after that I get that realisation though, when I've already become so envious that I've resorted to leaving red marks of my own on his skin.

"What happened to you, angel?" I ask, too stunned by the usual to care about the answer. His eyes are half-lidded, drunken as if by habit. "Nothing more important than what's about to happen to me," he utters, then suddenly we're closer, and my hands have already found home in his hair by the time my lips find their place against his. Kissing anyone you love is captivating, but it's a little different with him. Made better with that rush of dopamine, that urge take more, have all you can get.

Kissing Karl Jacobs is intoxicating. Like a rush of adrenaline, so powerful that you're left having to take more, made to become addicted until you're taking more than you can get.

And that's the problem with him, it always has been. How with anyone else, you're soaring, but with this boy, you're left drowning.

It's that knowledge that keeps me here. The fact I know I'll feel empty when I can't knot my hands into those chestnut curls, get lost in those hazel eyes. When I can't be so close that I can count every freckle in the constellation that adorn his cheeks, trace my fingers over every mark. Then leave my own, in the form of shining, scarlet moons to accompany the sea of stars.

When we pull away, it's always unwillingly, always out of necessity and never out of anything else. It's always the same with him, like some sort of ritual. He'll chant my name like a mantra, do anything in his power to keep me there with him, keep contact in some sort of way. Which I'm always willing to do, unable to deny the pleading look in his eyes, or those angelic whines when I give him just what he wants.

"You never answered me," I press, trailing slow, open-mouthed kisses down his jaw. Each one earns me a gasp, sweet as cherries and smooth as velvet. "I left the key in my other bag," he lies through red lips, and I pull the bottom one between my teeth, threaten to draw a darker crimson from the skin beneath.