Ficorpio
Chapter 1
The seventh time the toxic bastard humiliated me in public, I awakened to the truth.
I was the devoted victim in an old-school MM romance, doomed to endure a hundred rounds of abuse before the story would finally release me.
So I faked my death and disappeared.
Someone else could play the pathetic fool. I was done.
But after I failed to appear at Julian Mercer’s side for an entire week, he panicked. He called me over and over, almost frantic.
“Elliot Bennett, where the hell are you?”
A hand plucked the phone from mine. Then a lazy voice answered, “Don’t worry. He just woke up, and he looks beautiful.”
Today was Julian’s birthday.
I arrived at the private karaoke suite early and carefully decorated the entire room before settling in to wait for him.
It was the first time in five years of pursuing him that he had invited me to his birthday party. For the past several nights, I’d barely slept, caught between excitement and nerves.
When Julian arrived, he pressed his lips together and offered me a polite smile.
“Thanks.”
One of the friends behind him laughed. “Never knew you liked all this flashy stuff, Mercer.”
Julian’s expression chilled for a moment, but he quickly joined in their laughter.
“Well, it’s a birthday. It’s supposed to look festive.” He turned to me. “Elliot, pour everyone a drink.”
The moment he spoke, I hurried to my feet.
“Sure.”
As I poured the drinks, one of Julian’s friends teased, “Look at you, already acting like the perfect husband.”
Julian’s face went cold.
“Whose husband is he supposed to be?”
The room fell silent.
My hand froze in midair, the bottle suspended over a glass. Everyone there had seen this kind of scene often enough that no one seemed particularly surprised.
A few seconds later, Julian looked up with the faintest smile.
“Elliot, I’ve always thought of you as a friend. Don’t get the wrong idea.”
His tone remained mild as he added, “I’m sure I’ve told you before. You’re not my type.”
I pressed my lips together and said nothing.
He didn’t like me, yet he had never refused a single thing I offered him.
He let me linger at his side in that uncertain space between friendship and romance. In public, he claimed we barely knew each other. In private, he held me and kissed me.
The silence became unbearable. One of his friends hurried to change the subject.
“Who queued this song? Come on, somebody sing.”
The party resumed. Everyone laughed and shouted over the music as if nothing had happened.
I went to the restroom and splashed cold water over my face, trying to steady myself. But when I returned, I stopped outside the suite.
Julian and several of his friends were talking inside.
“Why did you even invite him? He’s ruined the whole mood.”
“I only asked him here so he could help pour the drinks.”
“You seriously don’t feel anything for Elliot? He’s been chasing you forever, and he’s still pretty damn cute.”
Chapter 2
“I’m sick to death of him. If you think he’s so great, you date him. Honestly, if you managed to win him over, you’d be doing me a huge favor.”
Someone laughed before asking, “That’s what I don’t understand. If you don’t like him, why don’t you just send him away whenever he clings to you?”
Julian lounged back with a cigarette between his lips, his voice careless.
“He’s the one choosing to make a fool of himself. Why should I go out of my way to humiliate him?”
He paused, then gave a lazy chuckle.
“Besides, what’s wrong with keeping an obedient little errand boy around? He comes whenever I call.”
His friends immediately began flattering him.
“That’s Julian Mercer for you. No one else could get away with that.”
“Exactly. You’re letting Elliot indulge himself while making your own life easier. Clever.”
Then Lucas Reed, Julian’s childhood friend, happened to glance toward the door.
He saw me standing outside.
Lucas reached over and smacked Julian, who was still basking in everyone’s praise.
I walked toward him slowly, feeling like a complete fool.
Julian Mercer smiled at me as if nothing had happened.
“Did you invite me to your birthday party just so I could pour your drinks?”
I’d thought he might at least try to defend himself. He could have claimed everyone had drunk too much, that his friends had only been joking around.
But he couldn’t even be bothered to pretend.
“Yes.”
One word. Blunt and unapologetic.
Still, I needed to hear the truth as clearly as possible.
“Julian, in all these five years, have you really never felt anything for me?”
“No.”
Another short answer, each letter cutting straight through me.
So this entire time, I had meant nothing to Julian.
I’d believed that if I held on long enough, one day he might finally come to love me.
There were so many other questions I wanted to ask, but when the words reached my lips, I swallowed them all.
Only then did I realize tears were running down my face.
I wiped them away and stepped past Julian.
“What are you doing?” he demanded. “Elliot Bennett, why are you trying to press yourself against me?”
“I’m not. You’re blocking my way. Move.”
I only wanted to take back the birthday gift I had just given him.
It happened to be behind him.
“I won’t bother you again.”
After I left, I rushed to the shore, desperate to clear my head.
I stared out at the deep blue water, but Julian’s mocking voice seemed to echo in my ears once more.
“He’s the one choosing to humiliate himself…”
The words struck like thunder, reverberating through my mind again and again. The sky tilted, and the ground spun beneath me.
A second later, everything went black.
While I was unconscious, I had a long dream.
In it, I was the protagonist of an old-school toxic MM romance novel, and Julian Mercer was the other male lead.
The novel’s plot was the story of our past.
Chapter 3
It had all begun one night in high school, when a group of guys harassed me on my way home. Julian stepped in and drove them off.
“Don’t be afraid,” he told me. “I’ll protect you.”
What followed were five years of me trailing after him like a lovesick fool.
He looked down on me, yet reveled in my devotion. He flirted shamelessly with other men, then ordered me to pick him up from bars. If he suspected me of being involved with anyone else, he beat me black and blue, only to pull me into his arms afterward and say, “You’re mine. I won’t let anyone take you from me.”
In the novel, we remained trapped in that endless cycle, tormenting each other while repeatedly questioning and reaffirming our feelings.
I was destined to be struck with a bottle. Hit by a car. My family would go bankrupt. Only after abusing me for a hundred chapters would Julian finally understand his own heart and realize he truly loved me.
Then it would take him a single chapter to win me back.
And that would be the end of our story.
The rest of the plot unfolded before my eyes, page after suffocating page, until I wanted to throw up.
No wonder Julian called me pathetic.
I had been written as the devoted victim all along.
As the seawater soaked through me, every trace of love I had ever felt turned cold and indescribably bitter.
Fuck that.
If I survived, I would never follow the script again.
When I opened my eyes again, a smooth male voice broke the silence.
“You’re awake?”
Still groggy, I blinked until a familiar face came into focus.
Adrian Sterling.
“What happened to me…?”
“You collapsed on the shore. I brought you back.”
Everyone in Crown City knew the Sterling family. When it came to wealth and influence, they stood at the very top, and no one dared challenge them.
Adrian himself was someone most people kept at a respectful distance. He never smiled. No matter who stood before him, his expression remained cold and unreadable.
When the rest of us had still been in school at eighteen, he had already taken charge of Sterling Holdings and begun handling the corporation’s affairs.
Adrian and I had only crossed paths a few times at business dinners.
In the novel, though, he was the disposable second love interest, dragged into the plot for no reason except to create a misunderstanding. Julian suspected there was something between us, flew into a jealous rage, and beat me.
Of course, he’d attacked me instead of Adrian because he wouldn’t have dared lay a hand on Adrian, wouldn’t he?
The more I thought about it, the more aggrieved I felt. Embarrassment soon followed, and I decided it would be best to leave as quickly as possible.
“Thank you. I’m sorry you had to deal with me all night. I won’t impose on you any longer. Let me buy you dinner sometime.”
I pushed aside the covers and started to get out of bed, but Adrian abruptly pressed me back down.
“You spent the night here, and now you think you can leave with nothing but a thank-you?” He leaned closer. “I saved your life.”