"you have lost
too much love
to fear, doubt and distrust
its not enough
you just threw away the key
to your heart" ~ gotye
_____________
You wake with an actual sense of restful sleep, your eyelids cracking open painstakingly. The scent of smoke and something faintly charred causes you to crinkle your nose. Your body feels heavy, achy, but alive. For a moment, the memory of what happened crashes over you—the ferals, the desperate scramble for survival, the brutal fight you put up before being rescued by a stranger. You swallow hard, your throat dry, but when you push yourself up, the soreness in your muscles reminds you how close you came to not waking at all.The room is dimly lit, with only the soft crackle of a small fire to break the silence. A rough blanket that wasn't there when you fell asleep is draped over you, and as you glance around, you see Reid seated by the fireplace, sharpening his machete. The fire seems to be mostly out with a few embers giving off an orange glow. The light coming from the window tells you the sun has just risen. You marvel at the fact you actually slept through the whole night. How long has it been since that's happened? Reid's focus is fixed on the blade, quiet and composed, but you can feel the tension radiating off him.
Your stomach growls painfully, and you glance toward the small can of beans sticking out of your pack nearby you found back at that house—your last desperate search for supplies before everything went to hell. You grab the can and your pocket knife, stabbing into the top and prying it open, too hungry to care about appearances, devouring the food with reckless abandon with your fingers. The taste isn't the best, but your stomach screams for more as the hunger from the past few days creeps up.
Reid's eyes flicker up briefly, watching you in silence before returning to his task. You’re too drained to speak right away, but the silence between you feels heavier than before, thick with everything left unsaid.
“How long was I out?” you ask between bites, barely pausing. Sauce stains your lips and your hand, but you can't be bothered. You imagine you look like a rabid beast. No, a ghoul that just found a new victim. The mental comparison makes you cringe inwardly.
“From sundown to sunup,” he replies, his voice low, almost distant. “Long enough.”
You swallow another mouthful, feeling the rough texture of the beans on your throat. You don't even chew most bites, justwolf down what you can. “I shouldn't have survived...” You leave the sentence open-ended, reflecting on the events of the previous day. Whoever this man is, he has combat experience and a lot of it. He has all the gear and expertise to survive with ease and you've just met him.
His hands still for a moment, the machete now resting in his lap. “You shouldn’t have survived," his voice is blunt, and you can't tell where he's going, "But you did.” His eyes meet yours, and for the first time, you realize he has radiating green irises.
There's an edge to his words, something unspoken lingering just underneath. You glance at him, catching a flash of something in his eyes—relief? Frustration? It’s hard to tell. Finally reaching the bottom of the can with no remnants of beans left, you set the can down beside you, your appetite fading under the weight of the conversation and as the mass of beans settles in your starved stomach. You grab a cloth from your pack, wiping your mouth and fingers as best as you can. A sticky sensation from the sauce remains.
“You didn’t have to stay.” The words slip out before you can stop them, a hint of vulnerability in your voice that you didn’t mean to reveal. “You could’ve left,” your voice slightly cracks, and you choose to believe it's because you're thirsty (not because the revelation makes your heart stir).
Reid’s gaze locks back onto yours, his expression unreadable with his eyebrows ever so slightly furrowed. “Could’ve,” he repeats, but nothing more follows. He doesn’t elaborate and doesn’t offer an explanation.
YOU ARE READING
Devour [yandere! harem! Dandy's world x f! Reader]
Romance[F!READER INSERT] You lost everything to the apocalypse, but the wasteland gave you something unexpected: an overprotective soldier, obsessed childhood friends, and a ghoul unlike any other, still clinging to fragments of his humanity. Survival mean...