“I suppose betrayal is always a bit of a surprise, by definition,” the villain purred. “But really. You should have seen this coming. Clever thing like you.”
The hero glanced up.
The villain took a half step back at the expression on the hero’s face. They could have coped with fury, bloody vengeance or disgust. The hero looked…
They weren’t crying, but their eyes were wet with unshed tears, and just lost. The rigid anger of their shoulders wasn’t anger back up at the world at all, so much as a desperate effort to keep themselves from crumbling entirely. The hero had always seemed so strong, not unshakeable, but shakeable in the way of an earthquake-proof building.
The villain gulped. Whatever they were about to say died in their throat, so they covered it with a cocky smirk.
They were not an earthquake-proof building. So it was safer, better, to be the earthquake.
“I suppose I’m flattered,” they continued, to see if some anger - some spark of hope, of spirit, of life - might be found. “You really fell hard for me, huh? They do say love is blind.”
“Yeah.” It was croaky.
The villain wanted to snarl. To grab the hero by their stupid cosy jumper and shake them until their defences clicked into place again. Didn’t they know it was suicide to show their bleeding, broken heart so obviously? To not even try and hide it? It was embarrassing.
The villain closed the half step between them, and - the hero simply looked at them. They didn’t raise their hands to defend themselves. Nothing. The hero had tipped their head back, so sweetly, so vulnerable, as the villain pressed a line of kisses up their throat.
“Get everything you wanted?” the hero asked.
“Yeah.” It was…not croaky. The villain pulled their smirk a little wider. Just in case. They dragged their fingertips along the hero’s side, and it wasn’t simply an excuse to touch the hero at least one last time, it wasn’t. “You were great!”
The hero didn’t even have the decency to flinch. Nothing. It was if the villain had killed them. They simply continued to stare.
The villain dropped their hand like they’d been burnt and for a second - just a second - the smirk faltered. Everything stuttered. The world beneath them split open.
The hero clearly clocked the fissure, because their head tilted. A fraction. The smallest thing.
“Great,” the hero echoed, then. “I’m so happy for you. I’m sure it was all totally worth it.”
The villain flinched. Then they laughed, like the hero had cracked a joke, real funny like, and ruffled the hero’s hair. “Better than great.” Because the hero had been perfect, brave and gorgeous and kind. and the villain was never going to be able to say that now. They were never going to have it again. “That thing you did with your tongue, man…”
The hero finally flinched back. One of the tears finally spilled over, heartbreak and humiliation cracking across their expression.
It was supposed to feel like victory.
It was all supposed to feel like victory.
They’d got everything they wanted.
It didn’t feel like that at all.
So, in the end, it was the villain that fled.
They didn’t dare look back.
