resentment is a powerful force. so is a blackout.
The argument starts before they even leave the party. Not loudly, not even enough for anyone but them to notice.
It’s the kind of fight that’s been simmering for weeks - exhausted resentment sharpened into quiet cruelty. Two people who know all too well how to hurt each other. Every word, every sentence carefully crafted to hurt without sounding like they’re trying to.
They’ve just left a close friend's birthday party where they spent the entire evening pretending everything was okay. Both of them spend the night entertaining other people, just enough to be noticed. Just enough to get a reaction.
But maybe the real issue has nothing to do with tonight at all.
By the time they say their goodbyes and step out into the night, neither of them is speaking, the drive home unbearable.
Aeri stares out the passenger window while he keeps both hands locked around the steering wheel. Neither can bear to look at the other, the tension sitting between them like a third passenger.
When they finally pull into their building's underground garage, relief should follow.
It doesn't. Instead, the silence somehow gets worse.
The elevator ride to their floor passes without a single word exchanged.
The apartment door clicks shut behind them.
Their shoes land beside each other in the entryway. His keys hit the console table. Her handbag follows a second later.
Ordinary sounds.
The sounds of home.
The sounds of a life they've built together.
And somehow that only makes everything worse.
Photographs line the hallway walls, a half-finished bottle of wine still sits on the kitchen counter from last weekend. Her cardigan hangs over the back of the sofa. His laptop remains abandoned on the dining table. Evidence of them everywhere.
Evidence neither of them seems to know what to do with anymore.
He’s standing in the kitchen, jaw tight, tie loosened, refusing to look at her.
The calmness just makes Aeri even angrier.
“You know,” she says finally, arms folded tightly across her chest, “your ability to emotionally shut down the second things don’t go your way is actually second to none.”
“Right. Because this conversation has been incredibly productive so far,” he spits out, the sarcasm in his voice sharp enough to cut through the apartment.
“Don’t speak to me in that tone.”
“What tone would that be, hm?”
“That condescending one you use when you’ve already decided I’m too emotional and you’re above actually talking to me.”
That gets his attention, eyes snapping up to meet hers, and for the first time all night, he actually looks at her.
"Above talking to you?" he repeats incredulously. "That's what you think?"
A short, disbelieving laugh escapes him, a sound that only makes Aeri angrier.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city glitters against the night sky. Headlights snake through the streets below. Neon signs glow between skyscrapers. Thousands of apartment windows burn gold in the darkness.
Normal.
Alive.
For a moment, neither of them notices the lights several blocks away flickering.
Then flicker again.
Aeri is too busy glaring at him to pay attention.
"You know what your problem is?" she says.
His jaw tightens.
"My problem?"
The lights in the apartment blink once, twice.
Both of them pause.
"What was-"
Everything goes black, the apartment is swallowed whole by darkness.
The refrigerator dies mid-hum, the air conditioning cuts out. Even the digital clock on the microwave vanishes. For one strange second, the silence is absolute.
One second their home feels lived in.
The next it feels abandoned.
Then, somewhere in the distance, sirens begin to wail.
Aeri turns toward the windows.
Across the city, entire sections of the skyline are disappearing into darkness, one building at a time. Streetlights blinking out, traffic signals dying. Almost like someone had pressed the off button on the city.
"What the hell?" she breathes.
Neither of them notices the argument has stopped, too engrossed in the outside world.
Far below, car horns begin sounding through intersections stripped of traffic lights. Emergency vehicles weave through the darkness, red and blue flashes cutting across entire blocks.
A notification lights up Aeri's phone screen.
EMERGENCY ALERT.
WIDESPREAD POWER FAILURE REPORTED ACROSS THE CITY.
PLEASE AVOID UNNECESSARY TRAVEL.
The apartment suddenly feels much larger than it did five minutes ago. The air feels thicker somehow.
Because now they’re trapped. No distractions.
Phones barely working. No signal. No estimated time. Somewhere in the city transformers are exploding into darkness while entire blocks lose power one after another.
For a while, neither of them speaks.
The city burns quietly beyond the windows - not with fire, with absence.
Entire sections of the skyline sit dark against the horizon, interrupted only by the flashing red and blue lights of emergency vehicles weaving through the streets below.
Aeri lowers her phone slowly.
"No signal."
"Yeah."
The answer comes automatically, flat and exhausted.
He rubs a hand across his face before disappearing down the hallway.
For a second, she thinks he's walking away from her again. Of course he is.
Then she hears drawers opening, cabinets, rummaging. The soft clatter of something being moved around.
A few moments later he reappears carrying a lighter and a thick cream-coloured candle she'd bought months ago and promptly forgotten about.
Of course he remembered where it was.
The tiny flame sparks to life on the third attempt.
For a second it burns weakly, then steadies, spilling soft amber light across the apartment.
The candlelight casts shadows across his face, softening some angles and sharpening others. For a moment he looks unfamiliar. Not because he's changed. Because she can't remember the last time she actually looked at him.
Aeri hates that she still notices how beautiful he is even now.
The silence stretches so long it starts to feel sentient.
Not peaceful. Not cooling-off silence. The kind that presses against skin. The kind filled with everything neither of them knows how to say anymore.
He drags a hand down his face before resting his head in his hands across the kitchen island with a frustrated exhale. “Fucking great.”
Something about that word snaps the last thread of patience she has left.
“Great?” she repeats incredulously. “That’s all you have to say right now?”
He lifts his eyes toward her slowly. “What the fuck would you like me to do, Aeri? Personally go and restart the city power grid? Don’t even start with me right now.”
“There you go again.”
“What does that even mean, Aeri?”
“It means every single time something becomes uncomfortable, you turn into this,” she gestures vaguely toward him, frustration bleeding into every word, “cold, sarcastic bastard that acts like he’s above caring.”
His expression hardens immediately.
“I don’t care? You think I don’t care?!”
“I think you care when it suits you.”
A short, disbelieving laugh leaves him. “Wow, Aeri. Wow.”
“Oh, don’t do that.” Aeri pushes herself away from the window closer into his space, adrenaline making her reckless now. “Don’t stand there acting offended like you haven’t spent the last three months emotionally disappearing every time I need anything from you.”
“Need something from me?” he repeats sharply. “Aeri, everything with you turns into a fucking emotional autopsy.”
The words echo harshly around the apartment walls.
For a second, neither of them moves.
Then her face changes. Not angry this time. Hurt. Genuinely hurt.
“You know what?” she says quietly. “You’re right. Forgive me for caring.”
His jaw flexes immediately, regret flickering too late across his face.
“Everything’s just dandy.” She laughs softly, but the sound is brittle enough to splinter. “Actually, you know what? Thank you. Because I genuinely thought I was losing my mind these past few months trying to figure out what changed.”
“Aeri-”
“No.” Her voice rises instantly, sharp enough to cut him off. “No, don’t suddenly start saying my name like you care now.”
Something dangerous shifts across his face at that.
Not loud anger, something worse. The kind that goes frighteningly quiet.
“You really think I don’t care?” he asks finally.
The calmness in his voice sends something uneasy through her stomach.
She’s too angry to stop now.
“I can’t remember a time when you did.”
A sharp breath leaves him through his nose, almost a laugh, except there’s nothing amused about it.
“Right.”
“Aren’t you even going to deny it?”
“Why?” he snaps suddenly, the sound ricocheting violently through the room. “You’ve already decided what kind of person I am, how I feel about you. About us.”
Aeri flinches.
His eyes lock onto hers immediately after, only seeming to make him angrier.
“Three months, Aeri?” he repeats incredulously. “Three fucking months of you picking fights with me in public, pulling away from me every time we’re alone, flirting with every fucking asshole that looks at you for longer than five seconds.”
“Oh, don’t turn this around on me-”
“You practically sat in that producer’s lap tonight.”
“At least he was paying attention to me.”
The second the words leave her mouth, she knows she’s gone too far.
His expression changes instantly, something much darker taking over.
He pushes himself off the counter in one abrupt movement.
Aeri instinctively takes a step backward.
He follows.
The movement is almost unconscious on both sides.
Another step.
Another.
Until her back collides with the cold window behind her.
Her breath falters.
He stops directly in front of her, close enough that she can feel the heat radiating off him despite the stale cooling air beginning to die with the blackout.
The darkness of the room casts harsh shadows across his face.
God. She’d never seen him look this furious before.
“You think I wasn’t paying attention to you?” he says quietly, face getting closer and closer to hers with every word. “Aeri, I spent the entire fucking night watching you.”
His laugh is bitter.
"I noticed everything."
Every glance.
Every time she checked to see if he was looking.
“Watching you laugh at things that weren’t funny. Watching you touch his arm every time you wanted to see if I’d react.” His jaw tightens. “Watching you punish me because you’re angry I’ve been working.”
“You’ve been gone even when you’re lying right beside me.”
“And you think this”- he gestures sharply between them - “makes it easier? Makes it better?”
His hand lands hard against the glass beside her head, the windows shuddering beneath the impact.
Aeri jumps.
The sound cracks violently through the room before silence rushes back in just as quickly, thick and suffocating.
For one terrible second, neither of them moves.
His breathing is uneven now. Heavy enough that she can hear it over the distant sirens outside.
And God, she hates that some deeply broken part of her still reacts to him like this.
Still notices the tension in his jaw. The heat radiating off him. The way his chest rises sharply beneath the dark dress shirt she helped button earlier tonight before they left the apartment pretending they still knew how to be around each other.
The candlelight flickers again.
For a moment, he closes his eyes and exhales heavily, like he's carrying something too heavy to put down.
The sight nearly destroys her.
Because suddenly she’s flooded with memories. The way he always presses absentminded kisses to the inside of her wrist while reading emails. The way he pulls her against his chest after nightmares he likes to pretend he doesn’t have. The way he held her when she was grieving the loss of her parents, looking at her with something so unbearably tender in his eyes it almost hurt to look at - a quiet, unwavering devotion woven through every shaking piece of her, as though he would have carried the full weight of her grief himself if it meant she didn’t have to.
The version of them before everything became exhausting.
“Aeri,” he says again, quieter this time.
And maybe it’s the blackout or the adrenaline. Maybe it’s the horrifying realization that she can’t actually remember the last time they touched without anger attached to it.
But something inside her snaps.
Before she can think better of it, she grabs the front of his loosened tie and kisses him.
Hard.
The kiss is a collision, sharp and desperate enough to bruise. For a terrifying beat, his body goes completely rigid under her hands, his jaw locking against her mouth as if trying to resist the sheer gravity of her. Then, a low, ruined sound breaks in the back of his throat, and his control shatters.
His hand leaves the window, his fingers twisting into her hair with an unforgiving grip to yank her head back, forcing her mouth open under his. He drives her backward with a sudden, bruising force. Her spine collides with the window again, the glass groaning under their combined weight. The glass is ice against her bare skin, a shocking, violent contrast to the suffocating heat of his body pinning her down.
There is no rhythm, no hesitation, no tenderness. It is a chaotic, desperate scramble to tear through the barriers between them.
"You want to talk about me disappearing?" he growls against her mouth, his breath hot and ragged, completely stripping away the polished, untouchable persona he’d worn all evening.
He doesn't bother with the zipper of her dress. His hands slide up her thighs, his fingers digging into her skin hard enough to leave marks tomorrow, bunching the fabric upward with a frantic, aggressive impatience until it’s tangled around her waist. He hooks his fingers into the waistband of her underwear and tears them down, the fabric ripping faintly in the dead silence of the apartment.
Aeri gasps, her knuckles turning white as she grips the lapels of his suit jacket just to stay upright. Her body is answering for her, a fierce, aching heat betraying every rational thought in her head.
“Look at me,” he murmurs, his voice cracked low with something dangerous.
Before she can comply, he grabs her face, thumb pressing hard into the curve of her jaw as he forces his thigh between hers, spreading her legs apart with enough force to steal the breath from her lungs. His other hand fumbles impatiently with his belt, the metallic clatter of the buckle ricocheting sharp and frantic through the suffocating silence between them.
The sound makes something low and dangerous coil in her stomach.
“Look at you,” he mutters darkly, breath hot against her mouth. “Still trying to act like you’re angry.”
He grips her underneath her thighs, hoisting her up off the floor. Aeri’s legs lock around his waist instinctively, her back scraping upward against the cold glass as he lifts her. She wraps her arms tightly around his neck, her fingers knotting into the collar of his shirt, clinging to him not out of affection, but out of a desperate need for leverage to keep herself grounded, in the moment.
The sudden, overwhelming fullness of him forces a sharp, breathless cry from Aeri’s throat, a sound that he instantly smothers with his mouth. The friction of the movement sends a violent jolt of pleasure straight through her, destroying the last remnants of her anger and replacing it with a wild, consuming desperation.
He begins to move inside her with a fierce, punishing rhythm, his hips driving into hers with a raw intensity that rattles her completely. "Aeri," he groans against her lips, his voice a ruined, breathless rasp. He pulls back just enough to look at her, his eyes dark and dilated in the darkness of the barely lit room. "Tell me you don't feel this. Tell me you still think I don't care."
She can’t speak. She can barely breathe. Every time his hips slam against hers, a new wave of pleasure crashes over her, making her arch her back against the window. The glass is slick with their combined sweat, a freezing contrast to the feverish heat radiating between them. She tightens her legs around his waist, burying her face in the crook of his neck as she bites down on his shoulder to keep from screaming his name.
He shifts his grip, one hand leaving her thigh to cup the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her hair as he pulls her face back to meet his gaze. His movements grow faster, more frantic, the friction building into a tight, agonizing coil deep within her belly.
"Look at me," he commands again, his breathing ragged, his chest heaving against hers.
Aeri forces her heavy eyelids open, her vision blurred by tears of sheer sensory overload. In the dim, crimson glow, she sees the raw vulnerability beneath his fierce expression - the desperation, the fear of losing her, the undeniable truth of his devotion that he’d been too proud to admit.
"I see you," she whimpers, the words trembling on her lips. "I know, I know."
That is his breaking point. He delivers a series of deep, rapid thrusts that push her over the edge. Aeri’s body convulses as a powerful orgasm takes hold, clamping down on him tightly. The intense pleasure ripples through her entire being, leaving her completely breathless and clinging to him for dear life.
The sudden tightening around him pulls a broken sound from deep inside him, the force of her climax unraveling whatever composure he had left. With one final, desperate thrust, he buries himself as deeply as he can, his entire body going rigid as pleasure crashes through him in sharp, staggering waves. He presses his forehead against hers, their heavy, synchronized breathing the only sound filling the confined space as the echoes of their passion slowly fade into the dark apartment.
For several long seconds, neither of them moves.
The apartment feels suffocatingly hot now, thick with the lingering heat of sweat and heavy breathing. Somewhere outside, sirens still wail faintly through the powerless city, distant enough to feel unreal.
But inside? Everything feels painfully real.
Neither of them speaks.
The candle continues burning quietly on the kitchen island.
Small, fragile, alive.
Stubbornly flickering despite the darkness swallowing the rest of the city.
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