𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 || Cillian Murphy ¹

ten (edited)

Fall had settled into Dublin, crisp and golden. Mid-October leaves in shades of rust and amber littered the sidewalks, crunching underfoot. The air was cool enough for scarves, for cupping a warm coffee between her hands as she walked to work.

Three weeks had passed since that cold, stinging night on Auden's front stoop. Three weeks of stubborn silence on both ends. 

At first, she had expected him to show up – at her apartment, at the gallery, anywhere. She had even rehearsed what she would say when he did, mentally crafting a speech sharp enough to wound. But he never came. 

Instead, there was only this suffocating absence, this gaping, unresolve between them. 

She told herself she was still angry. Angry that he kept pushing and pulling, blurring the boundaries he had set himself. Angry that he had stood on her doorstep that night, demanding answers he had no right to ask for. 

But it was useless. The truth was, she missed him.

It was embarrassing how much she missed him. 

In an effort to fill the empty spaces he had left in her mind, she had been spending more time with Patrick. 

And it helped, if only a little. Patrick was easy.  He made her laugh. He was attentive. He took her out to restaurants, introduced her to people in Dublin's art scene. She could feel how much he wanted her, and there was something inherently thrilling in that. Even though it wasn't real.

No matter how much she tried, her thoughts always circled back to Cillian. 

The depth of his blue eyes, so reminiscent of a clear summer sky. The quiet way he smiled at her, as if just looking at her was enough. The way his touch had burned into her skin like an ember still smoldering. 

It was fucking scary. 

Auden believed had been in love before. She had met a man during her graduate program, a time when she confused stability for passion. James was steady. Dependable. He was patient with her father, and her uncontrollable need to take care of him. But when her father died, his stability crumbled. The emotionless reality of their relationship was too much to ignore in the face of something like death.

She never cried over him. Or maybe she did – maybe the tears for her father were also over losing him. Auden would never truly know. 

All it did was solidify her one truth, the one constant that Michael O'Donovan had lived by and instilled in his daughter: love wasn't safe. It was fragile. It could be here one moment, gone the next.

And, just like her father, she had built a wall around herself – a wall that had been there way before her father got sick, way before James walked into her life.

Way before she ran into Cillian at that cafe.  

Yet, he had been the only one to notice the cracks.