Stay or Suffer

Sleep threatened to arrive every minute, every second, but Evan fought it off. It was all too familiar, from two nights earlier, when he'd slept alone in the spare bedroom. The last time it had been its own kind of hell: heat, tension, a body that refused to settle, every drift toward unconsciousness snapped apart by a surge of **** sexual need that didn't belong to him.

But this time it was different.

Evan sat upright against the headboard, the lamp casting a harsh, artificial glow across the unfamiliar room. Shadows clung to the corners, too still, too quiet. The house itself felt like it was holding its breath.

A glance at his phone.

1:45 a.m.

Not even close to morning.

Fingers dragged down his face slowly, pressing into his eyes until brief bursts of colour flickered behind his lids. Exhaustion weighed on him, thick and heavy, but it didn't matter. The second sleep even approached...

Pain.

Sharp. Precise. Intentional. Not constant. Not overwhelming. Just enough. A warning shot across his nervous system. A reminder.

Stay awake.

Or else.

Jaw tightening, Evan shifted his legs over the edge of the bed, planting his feet flat against the floor. The cool wood did nothing to ground him. Nothing about this felt grounded.

It felt controlled. Like something was watching. Measuring. Adjusting. Waiting. A breath slipped out, slow and unsteady.

"Okay," he muttered under his breath to the unseen ****. "I get it."

But that wasn't true. Not really. Because if he got it, if he truly understood the scope of what he'd done, he wouldn't be sitting here trying to bargain with something that clearly didn't care.

Another wave hit. Not pain, this time. Something worse.

Memory.

Stacy's voice. Tight. Controlled. Breaking at the edges as she described it. The way she had felt the night she hadn't slept. The way her body had been handled, corrected, punished for trying to stay away from him. At the time, it had sounded awful.

Now...

A sharp pinch.

Evan sucked in a breath, back snapping straight as the sensation twisted low and fast, gone as quickly as it came but leaving a lingering echo behind. His hands clenched reflexively against the mattress.

"Fuck," he hissed.

The word barely made it past his teeth. Silence swallowed it whole.

Heart pounding, he stayed there, frozen for a moment, waiting to see if it would happen again. It didn't. Not immediately, at least. It was waiting for him to relax, to let his guard down, to start to slip away into slumber.

That almost made it worse. Because now he, in return, was waiting for it. Anticipating it. Flinching at nothing. A humourless breath escaped him, somewhere between a laugh and something more strained.

"So this is what she dealt with," he said quietly, realizing how much worse this was than the **** he'd encountered, the intense arousal shaking him awake over and over again.

As he came to terms with this realization, he felt a weight shift inside of him. Not from the pain. Nor from the exhaustion. But from the blame.

It settled in his chest, heavy and immovable.

Stacy.

For the past two years, that name had carried its own kind of charge. Frustration. Resentment. The quiet, simmering belief that she had ruined things. Changed his dad. Changed the house. Taken something that had been simple and made it complicated.

Made it worse. It had been easy to blame her. Easy to point at the symptoms and ignore the cause.

Now, the cause was sitting in a spare bedroom at nearly two in the morning, too afraid to close his eyes.

"If I'd just talked to her," he murmured, thinking of the girl from his class he'd planned on using the potion on.

The thought had come before. It had lingered at the edges. Tonight, it hit harder. If he'd just been normal. If he'd just taken the risk. If he’d just accepted the possibility of rejection like everyone else...

None of this.

No magic potion.

No reality rewrite.

No Stacy on the other side of a wall, being slowly, systematically broken into something she never agreed to be.

A slow exhale left him, shaking slightly on the way out.

"Yeah," he said under his breath. "Good job, man."

Another flicker of exhaustion pulled at him. Eyes closing. Just for a second. Just...

Pain.

Immediate. Sharp and targeted enough to rip a startled sound from his throat as his whole body jolted forward.

"Ah, shit!"

The echo of it lingered, low and throbbing, as he doubled over slightly, one hand braced against his thigh. That hadn't been a warning. That had been correction.

Message received.

Don't sleep here. Don't stay here. Don't be away from her.

The thought landed fully formed, heavy and undeniable. The rule. Not implied. Not abstract. Direct.

Stay with Stacy or suffer.

Fingers tightened slightly around his phone as he picked it up again, thumb flicking aimlessly across the screen. Bright colours filled the display. Soundless videos. People laughing. Dancing. Living lives that made sense.

None of it stuck. Nothing held his attention. Every few seconds, his focus slipped. Back to her curled up in that room. Alone. Hurting.

Because of him.

The pain he had felt moments ago was what Stacy had been suffering with whenever she fell asleep without him. And it was all his fault. A knot twisted low in his stomach, tight and uncomfortable.

"I wish I could fix it," he said quietly.

The words felt useless the second they left his mouth. Because he couldn't. That had been made very, very clear down in the store at Thirty-Fourth and Vine.

This magic was irreversible. Also, it wasn't done. Madame Ruth's voice echoed in his memory, calm and certain in a way that made his skin crawl.

"You should listen carefully," Madame Ruth had said, "The worst thing you can do is fight it."

Whether he and Stacy wanted it or not, this was their new reality. And what worried him is all they'd done so far is try to fight it. How bad was it going to get?

Another minute passed. Then another. The clock ticked forward, slow and relentless.

1:52.

1:53.

1:54.

Time stretched. Pain came and went. Never enough to incapacitate. Always enough to keep him on edge.

Eyes burned. Head throbbed. Thoughts looped. And underneath it all, something else began to settle in. The understanding that if this continued, if he kept resisting, Stacy would keep suffering. His actions were making her pay the price. The magic wasn't interested in fairness. It was interested in results.

A quiet, grim resolve began to take shape at the edges of his exhaustion. He didn't know how to fix this. Didn't know how to make her not hate him. Didn't know how to make any of this okay. But maybe...

Maybe he could make it less bad. For her. Even if she never forgave him. Even if she never...

A soft knock cut through the silence.

Evan froze.

The sound felt too loud in the stillness. Too real. Had he imagined it? A moment of delirium in his exhaustion?

A second passed.

Then the door cracked open slightly. Stacy stood there.

Christmas flannel. Slightly rumpled. Hair loose, falling unevenly around her shoulders. The lamplight from the hallway caught the exhaustion in her face immediately; dark circles, glassy eyes, cheeks flushed, tension held tight around her mouth like it was the only thing keeping her upright.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Then...

"Evan," she said.

Her voice wasn't sharp. Wasn't angry. It was tired. And something else, something more urgent.

"I, uh..."

She hesitated. A flicker of something crossed her expression. Frustration. ****. Maybe even a hint of embarrassment.

"I need you."

Evan didn't move right away. It took him a moment to process what she had said. What she was asking. Then, seeing the look in her eyes, the desperation she was carrying, he stood. Stacy was his responsibility now. And if she needed him, he was going to be there for her.

Because whatever this was, whatever the magic was doing, forcing, shaping, it was happening to both of them. But one of them had bought the potion, and the other hadn't.

Tonight, as long as she let him, Evan was going to take care of Stacy.

"Okay," he said quietly and followed her out into the hallway.