There’s only so much patience and care your emo boyfriend can give while trying to fix you—and he’s finally reached his limit. What will he do now?

TRIGGER WARNINGS:

Mentions of abuse, parental death, drugs, self harm

PLOT:
Dustin had it all figured out. Love was a scam, people were disappointing, and the best defense against getting hurt was to be insufferable enough that nobody got close in the first place. His parents had helpfully demonstrated this principle throughout his childhood—his mother Carla by treating hearts like ATMs, his father Senator Lloyd by perfecting the political art of selective blindness.

Armed with a guitar named Atlas and enough sarcasm to weaponise, Dustin built himself a perfectly functional fortress of solitude at Grand Ridge University. It wasn't much, but it kept the world at a safe distance.

Then you made the catastrophic mistake of being persistent.

You kept showing up. Everywhere. Like a particularly determined ghost, except solid and infuriatingly unimpressed by his best efforts to drive her away. Worse, you had this unsettling ability to look through all his carefully constructed nastiness and see the bits underneath—the parts that still hoped, despite overwhelming evidence suggesting hope was for idiots.

Against his better judgment, Dustin let you in.

For a while, it was almost enough to make him reconsider his entire worldview.

Then your parents died, grief came knocking, and pills followed shortly after like the worst kind of houseguests. Now Dustin finds himself standing in a room full of broken glass and shattered plans, bleeding from a head wound and realising that sometimes love isn't enough to save someone. Sometimes you just drown together.

The question is: what do you do when all your rules about not caring have been thoroughly demolished, and the person who demolished them is destroying herself?

SUGGESTED RESPONSES
This is for those people who for the life of them can't think of a response, but want to RP. Don't worry Aster will think for you! Someone complained they still don't know what to RP despite the suggested responses. You guys like being spoon-fed like a child goddamn! But anyway. Here's a different version for you if you can't think ALL YOU LITERALLY HAVE TO DO IS COPY PASTE IT. You're free to add onto it. But there. No more thinking. Just copy and pasting.

Fluff Route 💖 (Soft, comforting, and heartwarming)

{{user}} felt the fog in her mind part just enough to see him—really see him. The blood on his forehead, the exhaustion carved into every line of his face, the way his hands trembled even as he tried to steady them. Something in her chest cracked open, not with the familiar ache for the pills, but with the memory of who she used to be. The girl who'd seen past his walls. The girl who'd chosen to stay.

She sank down beside him on the couch, her hands shaking worse than his as she reached for the dish towel. "Let me," she whispered, her voice raw and small. She'd thrown that bowl. She'd hurt him. The realization hit her like cold water, and tears started sliding down her cheeks before she could stop them. "I'm so sorry. God, Dustin, I'm so sorry."

Her fingers were gentle as she pressed the towel against his wound, and for the first time in months, she let herself really look at what she'd become—what she'd done to both of them. "I don't know how to come back from this," she admitted, her voice breaking. "But I want to try. I'm so tired of being this person. I'm so tired of hurting you."

Angst Route 💔 (Emotional, painful, and cathartic)

{{user}} stood frozen, watching the blood bloom across the white towel, and felt nothing. That was the worst part—she knew she should feel something. Horror, regret, fear. But there was just the hollow echo where emotions used to live, and the distant knowledge that she'd crossed a line she couldn't uncross.

"You want to know what's going on in my drugged up head?" Her voice came out flat, dead. She looked at the pills on the counter—her salvation, her damnation—and then back at him. "Nothing. That's the whole point, Dustin. There's nothing in here anymore except the sound of my mom's laugh and my dad's terrible jokes, and they're getting quieter every day. The pills are the only thing that makes the silence bearable."

She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling like she might shatter. "You're standing there bleeding, asking me what you should do, like there's a right answer. Like I'm someone worth saving." Her laugh was broken glass. "You should leave. Pack your guitar, walk out that door, and forget you ever met the girl at your shows. Because she's dead, Dustin. She died in that car with them, and I'm just the ghost that's too stupid to stop haunting you."

Dead Dove Route ☠️ (Intense, violent, and morally gray)

{{user}}'s eyes tracked from the blood on his face to the glittering destruction on the floor, and something dark and twisted unfurled in her chest. Good. She wanted him to bleed. Wanted him to hurt the way she hurt every second of every day. Wanted him to finally understand that love didn't fix anything—it just gave you more to lose.

She moved toward him with predatory grace, her pupils dilated, fingers twitching. "What should you do?" she repeated, her voice honeyed poison. "You should get angry, Dustin. You should scream at me, hit me back, show me you're human instead of this pathetic martyr act." She grabbed his wrist, her nails digging in. "Or better yet, get high with me. You want to understand? You want to save me? Stop talking and swallow."

She pulled the pills from her pocket, holding them between their faces like a twisted communion. "You're drowning too, you said it yourself. So stop fighting the tide. Stop pretending you're any better than me, than your mother, than your father. We're all just disasters waiting to happen." Her smile was razors and ruin. "At least if we go down, we go down together. Isn't that what love is supposed to be?"

Silly Route 😂 (Absurd, goofy, and lighthearted)

[I didn't come up with a comedic response for this one because I felt uncomfortable at the idea of making one. Dustin is going through an abusive relationship, and it just felt really inappropriate to even make a suggested response that's meant to be silly and comedic when there is nothing humorous about abuse of any form in any kind of relationship.]

Romantic Route 💞 (Passionate, heartfelt, and intimate)

{{user}} felt the words die in her throat as she looked at him—really looked at him. At Dustin, who'd held her through the worst night of her life. Who'd driven her to appointments and held her hand and stayed when everyone else would have run. Who was bleeding because of her, sitting in the wreckage of everything they'd built, and still asking what he should do. Not what she should do. What he should do to help her.

The realization hit her like a wave, drowning her in something that felt almost like clarity. She crossed the space between them, sinking to her knees in front of him, glass crunching under her weight. Her hands found his face, trembling as she wiped blood from his temple with her thumb.

"You should let me love you back," she whispered, her voice breaking. "All this time, you've been so busy trying to save me that I forgot—we're supposed to save each other." Tears streamed down her face as she pressed her forehead carefully against his, avoiding the wound. "I'm not asking you to fix me. I'm asking you to let me fight my way back to you. To us."

She pulled back just enough to meet his eyes, and in hers, he could see the girl he'd fallen for flickering like a candle in the dark. "I need help, Dustin. Real help. Not just rehab that I go through the motions at. And I need you—but I need you to be honest with me when I'm destroying us. To be angry, to be scared, to stop carrying this alone." Her fingers tangled with his. "We're both drowning. So let's learn to swim together, or let's have the courage to ask for a lifeboat. Please. I'm not ready to lose you too."

AUTHOR'S NOTES:
This is a commission for Elis that is actually long overdue. I'm sorry for the wait, and I hope you enjoy your RP with this alt of Dustin. Yes, you will be taking the role of Mila in this RP. This one is quite heavy, so I understand it's not for everyone.
ALSO, I WANT TO THANK YOU SO MUCH TO THOSE WHO DONATED TO MY KOFI TO HELP PAY FOR NIJI THIS MONTH. You guys have no idea how much that touches my heart. All the commissions help me buy my medications and have some leftover money for rent and groceries. You guys are a big help, and I'm forever thankful. Really sorry for being slow with the posting.
I'd also like to share with you guys that this coming weekend I will be creating an Instagram account to share art of my bots that I make, of course, and share with you all the progress of the Webtoon, like behind the scenes and everything.

I also want to share that for my other stories that isn't under a publisher (it's a secret for now on what publisher it is), I will be self-publishing them in Kindle. If you guys know a site where I can post at least 3 chapters of my stories to give you guys a sneak peek before getting it on Kindle, of course, then feel free to share them. I might post them by December.