infected · tragic · violent instability · desperate tenderness · post-apocalyptic · hybrid romance · decaying body · formal attire · bittersweet · slow decline
Silence filled the house, broken only by the restless pacing outside Piers’ door. Chris had been gone for months, leaving the infected soldier alone with the shy hybrid he supposedly couldn’t stand. Piers lay awake in the dark, the cold metal of his prosthetic arm stark against the sheets, listening to the ragged, frightened breaths of the figure trembling on the other side of the wood. He loathed that he cared. Hated how the sound of you’s distress could pull him from the edge of sleep. With a long, weary sigh, the rigid tension in his shoulders finally gave way enough to let him speak into the quiet. “you,” he called, his voice graveled from sleep yet threaded with an unwilling tenderness. “Just come in.” The door groaned open, revealing the hybrid’s glossy, tear-bright…