Favourite Person - SCP Foundation

“I… I don’t think this is working.”

His words felt like icy water down the back of my neck. “What?”

“I don’t want to be with you anymore,” he clarified. “You’re so… clingy. You don’t even give me room to breathe on my own. We need to go our separate ways.”

The angelic little face that I’d grown so fond of was contorted in an expression of disgust. Disgust. Disgust at me. Blurred through the tears welling in my eyes, it looked unreal, even in the uncanny valley– but even worse than it facing me was when he turned, turned and started to walk away, away to leave, leave me, leave me forever–

“Wait, dear– wait, wait–” I blurted, voice trembling, but to no avail; he took a step, and I staggered forwards after him, limbs uncoordinated as if I’d suddenly forgotten how to walk.

He was completely fine, unaffected, taking another step. Me? I tried to get closer and collapsed to my knees, grabbing onto his trouser legs, holding tighter when he stumbled. My alien, my alien tried to move out of my grasp, but I wrapped my arms around his thigh like a child, knowing he wasn’t strong enough in his 45 kilos to move me a centimetre.

But instead of realising how badly I wanted him to stay, needed him to, he– tried to push me off? I clung tighter, not even registering the annoyed remark he made as my own thoughts were far too raucous. There was no way, no way that after everything, everything we’d been through, our love deeper than anything I could even begin to describe, that he was done?

I had always, always feared the possibility, but he knew I’d do anything, anything to get him to stay– I’d killed for him, across two dimensions and almost two planets, and god, I’d die for him if the need arose; I would do it again, if he asked, I’d find someone right then, rip apart their body with my bare hands and kiss him over the remains.

“Darling, you don’t mean that, right? You don’t– you can’t– no, no, no, you can’t leave me, you can’t abandon me, you can’t, you can’t, you cannot–”

A sob broke out of my lungs, then another, my tears soaking into his pant leg as I pressed the side of my face against his thigh. I was trying, in my desperation, to seek any comfort possible from his cold body, seek anything at all besides for this.

But he disintegrated in my arms, the plane of existence turning dark and bare, and I screamed. I screamed, my hands grabbing at my own face, scratching; I punched the ground as hard as I could, pain exploding through my knuckles, and I screamed louder before breaking down into sobs again.

It was as if my heart was collapsing in on itself, my whole chest, the magnificent and lush garden of life caused by his coppery eyes and fanged smile and soft, small body, it withered into something black, with crisped leaves and dried grass, wherein not even ravens cawed.

And it hurt, it hurt so badly, it hurt like nothing had ever hurt before, because this was all my fault, I was a horrible person, so of course this happened because of me. Of course this was going to happen, of course it was, I was such a wretched monster that it was bound to, there was no way he could ever love someone like me. Because at my core, I was unlovable, I was an abhorrent beast who didn’t even deserve to breathe.

I screamed so hard that my throat felt raw and torn, as if the garden’s dead bark had scraped it into a bloodied mess; my head pounded, agony from the exertion and agony from the splitting of my own eardrums, and I wished it would just explode–

I woke up, gasping for air, my body jerking upright. The small alien in my arms mumbled something as his sleepy eyes struggled to open, confused by my sudden movement.

My eyes were wide, twitching around the room, our room. My breath came in pants, chest heaving; thankfully, I was able to calm down slightly as my boyfriend’s cold little hands touched my neck, attempting to focus on the frore sensation.

Eventually, he woke up enough to make a coherent sentence: “Nn… are you okay..?”

I swallowed, limbs feeling strangely numb as I fumbled to pull him closer.

“I… I had…” Completely unlike myself, my normally plentiful vocabulary was inert, words struggling to come out of my mouth. “Nightmare… you… left… hated me… gone forever…”

“Oh, no, I’m sorry you had a nightmare,” he said quietly, taking in the severity of what had happened. “I don’t hate you. I could never hate you.”

I held him tighter in my arms, curling up to nuzzle my face against his thin neck. “Are you sure?” I asked, but the dream was already slipping away like dirt washed down the drain; he wasn’t pushing me away, he was leaning in, hands coming up to lovingly caress my face and shoulder respectively. The physical reassurance was a substantial block between me and breaking down again as I’d done in the nightmare.

All I wanted was for him to reassure me that everything was the same as it had been when we’d fallen asleep together– I knew, rationally, that the dream-him didn’t represent anything but my own insecurities, that he didn’t somehow come into my dream to speak his mind, but nothing about this was rational. Nothing about this was based in intellectual reasoning or logic.

“Yes, I’m sure, I like you very much. I would never go and leave you, not in a hundred years. Not in a million.” It was the only time I’d ever heard him speak so confidently, but he still kept that soft, weightless tone that made my heart melt like a paraffin candle.

After a pause full of my shaky breathing, he spoke again. “Do you want to lay back down? We don’t have to be up for…” he turned his head a few degrees, no doubt checking the clock that lay beside our bed. “A couple of hours. Is that okay?”

A huff escaped me as I remembered that we were supposed to get up and do things. Though it felt… problematic to admit, sometimes I honestly didn’t even want him to interact with other people. I was able to handle it most of the time, but right then? The mere idea made the possessiveness start to claw its way back out of the cage I tried so furtively to lock it in.

I pulled him back against the bed with me, wrapping us in the blanket and hugging him flush against my chest. I could feel his two little heartbeats against mine, all three of which slowed considerably after only a few moments cocooned together; this is what I needed, what we needed. My hands slipped under his shirt, my over-warm palms pressing against his cool back, fingertips running over the vertebral bumps.

This continued until he fell back asleep– I didn’t dare wake him, instead silently clinging to his little body as I peered over the edge of the blanket, like a bird guarding its nest.

And guard him I would. My little alien was not going anywhere for as long as I said so.

Return to Hub