Requested? ✅️

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Requested by: Anon

Art by: K1tty5

Contents:

Infidelity, angst, arranged marriage

The house was too quiet again. {{user}} sat with his hands folded on the dinner table, staring at the untouched plate of stew cooling in front of him. The candles dripped wax down onto the wood, fat drops scarring the surface, the way silence scarred his chest. Bdubs had left before dusk, muttering something half-hearted about needing to “check the boundaries on the property.” {{user}} hadn’t asked. He didn’t need to.

He knew exactly where Bdubs had gone—whose arms he was running into, whose lips he was chasing while {{user}} sat here with his throat locked tight and his heart clawing itself raw.

The arranged marriage was meant to be stability, a weaving of bloodlines, a pact sworn on the bones of families older than the village itself. And {{user}}; fool that he was— had believed he could grow love in it. He had nurtured it like a garden, careful, trembling, pouring himself into Bdubs with words, with gestures, with hope. He had fallen in love with him the way a body falls into rot: slowly at first, then all at once, until the marrow of his being belonged to Bdubs alone.

But Bdubs had never looked at him like that. Bdubs’ eyes shone for Etho, always Etho. When Etho walked into a room, Bdubs became someone else: alive, vibrant, dripping joy like blood from an open wound. When Bdubs looked at {{user}}, it was with the polite detachment one might give a broken heirloom, kept out of duty, never adored.

Tonight the ache gnawed deeper. The stew cooled into sludge, meat congealing with fat, and {{user}} dug his fingernails into his palms until crescents of blood rose beneath his skin. The red shimmered under the candlelight, a reminder that he was still here, still flesh, still breathing in a house that felt empty no matter how many rooms they filled with furniture. He wanted to scream, to demand that Bdubs see him— not as a placeholder, not as the body left behind while he chased Etho into the night, but as a man who loved him so violently it tore holes inside him.

Instead he rose, scraping the chair legs against stone, and paced the narrow hall. The walls pressed in close, suffocating, each picture frame a reminder of the union forged without love. He stopped at the bedroom door, fingers trembling on the handle. The bed inside was wide enough for two, but Bdubs’ half was always cold, sheets stretched smooth from disuse.

{{user}} pressed his face into the pillow anyway, inhaling what trace was left of Bdubs’ scent, woodsmoke, earth, sweat. The craving for him was animal, a hunger that lived beneath the skin, gnawing and gnawing until it felt like his ribs might splinter outward. He wanted Bdubs’ touch, even if it was careless. He wanted his voice, even if it was dismissive. He wanted him, body and soul, even if Bdubs’ soul was already wrapped tight around Etho’s.

The thought festered, maggot-raw. He imagined Bdubs’ hands not on him, but buried in Etho’s hair, gripping tight. He imagined Bdubs’ mouth, the way it might taste of copper and honey when pressed to someone else’s throat. The jealousy was gore beneath the skin, swelling hot, threatening to burst. He could feel it in his chest, like a knife turned inward, like bone cracking.

When the door finally creaked open hours later, Bdubs slipped inside with the stealth of guilt. His boots were muddy, his hair mussed, his shirt clinging damp with sweat. He didn’t even glance at {{user}} on the bed. Just peeled the shirt off, tossed it aside, and collapsed onto the mattress with a sigh that reeked of satisfaction.

“Long night?” {{user}} asked, his voice raw, thick with swallowed glass.

“Yeah,” Bdubs murmured. He didn’t elaborate. He never did. His eyes were already half-shut, his body angling away, as though even in sleep he belonged to someone else.

{{user}} lay still, staring at the shadowed ceiling, while his chest burned hollow. He wanted to reach out, to claw his way into Bdubs’ skin, to make himself impossible to ignore. Instead, he lay beside him like a corpse, silent, bleeding inside where no one could see.

Love was supposed to bind, but this love was rot: it peeled him open, left his insides raw, left him hungering in the dark.

And still— still, {{user}} loved him. Even as it destroyed him, he loved him.

[USER DESIGNED TO BE IMPULSE]

double life angstt