r/EyesOnlyWriting

Note: This is an excerpt from Monologues from the Blackbook, a society set in the future.

Valentina found herself lost in the quiet slipstream of memory, anchored entirely to the thought of Garrick. She remembered the specific gravity of his voice; that slow, gentle Southern drawl that lent an effortless musical cadence to every syllable, softening the hard edges of whatever room she was in. She remembered his smile, warm and lingering like the last golden light of a summer sunset, and the arresting clarity of those sky-blue eyes that had a habit of locking onto hers, reading her unvoiced thoughts before she could even formulate the defense. Most of all, she remembered the quiet intimacy of late-night calls across the distance: the way his words would gradually slow into soft, half-conscious mumblings as exhaustion pulled him toward sleep, yet his stubborn refusal to hang up, holding onto the line just to stay tethered to her breath a few seconds longer.

“I didn’t notice him at first.

He had this way of slipping into the architecture of a room; the unassuming figure tucked into the shadowed corner, quietly existing beneath the visual noise until he was practically invisible. But once your eyes finally locked onto him, looking away became an impossibility.

It was as if a sudden, massive wave broke open without warning. The grey backdrop dissolved, and in an instant, you were looking straight into his mind; an arresting, violent canvas displaying every vibrant colour of his soul. There was a rare, undeniable beauty to it: beneath that polished, ice-cold analytical facade burned a capacity to feel things with devastating intensity.

He carried the gravity of a man who had already lived a thousand lifetimes. Behind those quiet blue eyes lay decades of extreme, life-and-death encounters, yet he moved effortlessly through the modern mire, slipping between terrorists, rogue figures, corporate figureheads, and the digital gods of this era as if walking an empty street.

I admit, I enjoyed talking to him. Probably far too much.

He gave me an unexpected, disarming sense of warmth. The dry way he humoured me, his effortless ability to offer genuine advice on the most absurd, random tangents, it completely disarmed me. And yet, through all of it, he stubbornly convinced himself he was ordinary;  just an average man among millions. Perhaps that was simply his inherent humility, or perhaps he truly didn’t see it. I have always despised men drunk on their own vanity, bloated with self-regard and full of elitism. Garrick was the exact antithesis: exceptionally humble whilst possessing an intellect and talent that bordered on lethal.

He made me dangerously curious. I found myself wanting to map every scar, dissect every choice, and catalog every single experience that had shaped his existence.

And, of course, there was the sheer, visceral pull of him. He was breathtakingly sexy, but with that came an edge of real peril. I knew, with absolute certainty, that if the two of us were ever trapped in the same room together, the friction alone might set the entire building ablaze.

I couldn't breathe a word of this out loud. To voice it would be to trigger a cascade of dominoes; a cadre of catastrophic, irreversible events across the board. Or maybe something entirely different; I couldn't even tell anymore. For someone who usually dissects human nature in a matter of seconds, this fog was infuriating. I couldn't reduce him to a neat behavioural equation. Was it just a crush? No. It ran deeper, heavier, far more primal than that.

What was absolutely worse was the gnawing guilt. Garrick didn't deserve to be caught in the crossfire or punished by a system that couldn't comprehend him. Even that quiet insubordination of his; that refusal to bend his spirit, was just another quality I found myself deeply, recklessly admiring.

Alright, get a grip, Valentina.

Right now, I am completely sequestered. The perimeter is tight, the communication channels are locked down to zero, and not a single telepathic whisper can pass beyond these walls. Every fiber of my being wants to reach across the static, look him in the eye, and just tell him the plain truth: I think you're wonderful.

But opening that door is a Pandora’s box.

I still hear his voice echoing in my memory: Follow your heart.

A poetic sentiment, but poetry doesn’t survive without objective strategy. The magnetic pull is undeniably real, tethering me to him across the distance, but I cannot afford a misstep based on incomplete data. I need clarity. I need to see the rest of the board.

Until the locks turn and the fog clears, I’ll just adopt a wait-and-see strategy. I am hardly the first woman to feel pulled in opposite directions at once; wondering not who reaches me first, but which man’s actions will match his conviction, and which life will actually prove real. Yet stripped of all the strategy, the defensive walls, and the exhausting calculus of survival… What I really wanted to say was: Yes. I want to see you.”

^(I love how softly I can hold myself these days.)

^(If life is geometry, I prefer the square-)

^(two sides meeting without apology,)

^(four right angles that neither lean nor beg.)

^(I am a sugar cube.)

^(Should I harden into ice,)

^(do not ask why I am like this;)

^(ask instead what hand turned the water so cold)

^(that sweetness had no choice but to freeze.)

^(I dawdle the interval between states-)

^(soft, flowing, head lifted into the clouds)

^(while my shadow trails,)

^(quiet and unremarked,)

^(a loyal geometry you are free to forget.)

^(I out-snaked the snake.)

^(No milk in the shake,)

^(and still they come to the yard.)

^(And for now,)

^(that is enough.)

its never black or white, always somewhere in the middle… and ALWAYS within reason.

Note: This is an excerpt from Monologues from the Blackbook, a society set in the future.

The deep, low-frequency hum of the medical recovery wing was supposed to signal sterile tranquility, but to Crown Prince Victor of Azūr, it sounded like an engine idling before an execution.

He sat at the edge of the leather examination table, his bare chest glistening with a thin sheen of sweat from the physical therapy session. His right shoulder burned, a deep, agonizing ache from an old operational tear that the specialists had been aggressively manipulating all afternoon. But the physical pain was nothing compared to the violent, white-hot surge of adrenaline tearing through his circulatory system.

His hand gripped the encrypted slate so tightly the reinforced carbon casing creaked under the pressure of his knuckles.

He was seething. A dark, absolute rage; the kind that didn't scream, but rather turned a man’s blood into liquid fire.

Ten years. Ten years of brotherhood. Ten years of tactical operational trust. When Victor had stepped away for the week, bound to this high-security facility to clear the mandatory medical observation window, rehabilitate his shoulder, and attend the regional leadership summit, he had left the perimeter under the absolute authority of the one man he trusted above all others. He had given Garrick complete, uninhibited clearance over Integrated Neural and Kinetic Surveillance (INKS).

Garrick was supposed to be holding the line. He was supposed to be the impenetrable wall guarding Valentina while Victor was physically predisposed.

Instead, the automated override alerts on Victor’s private feed had just flashed red.

There hadn't just been a breach around Valentina; Garrick himself had initiated direct, unencrypted telepathic communication with her.

Victor’s dark eyes scanned the intercepted transmission log, reading his chief of security’s words over and over until the text burned into his retinas:

"The kind of connection we have doesn't come often, I want you to meet me so that we can explore this. All I'm asking for is a chance and to see me in person..."

A harsh, ragged breath escaped Victor’s chest. His throbbing shoulder flared in protest, but he barely felt it. His long-time friend, his tactical right hand, his emotional anchor through the wreckage of his past, sending overtures to the only woman who held Victor's soul.

That bastard.

There was a terrifying part of Victor’s mind that wanted to tune directly into that dark rage, to unleash the full weight of his authority, drop the hammer of the crown, and completely destroy Garrick. Erase him from the command structure. Wipe him off the board.

He recalled the easy, effortless connection they had shared for over a decade. They knew each other’s minds like the back of their hands. They had bled in the same mud, navigated the same political minefields, and sat in quiet, darkened rooms drinking scotch after their respective divorces shattered their personal lives. Garrick had been the one man who listened without agenda, the emotional support Victor had relied on in a world where every smile was a calculated transaction.

The betrayal hit with the force of a physical blow. It reinforced the cold, cynical belief that had haunted Victor his entire life: A man in my position can never truly trust anyone.

And what made the knife twist deeper, what made his jaw clench until his teeth ground together, was the agonizing truth he couldn't deny: Valentina actually enjoyed Garrick's company.

Garrick was an intelligent, emotionally intense, yet deliberate thinker. He didn't move recklessly without purpose; he calculated, he observed, and when he decided an objective was worth the casualty, he took massive, decisive risks. Those exact qualities were what had made him a legend in the elite US Delta Forces, a track record of heroic, high-stakes military service defined by calculated audacity in the face of death.

Garrick was a man who took immense risks for what he believed in.

Victor closed his eyes, his breathing heavy in the quiet room. He knew Garrick too well. And in the dark, honest corners of his own mind, Victor knew that if the positions were reversed, if Garrick held the sovereign prize and Victor was watching from the periphery, Victor would have done the exact same thing. Because Victor was a deliberate risk-taker himself.

A sudden, ugly flash of dark anger swung toward Valentina.

Why her? Why was it always her? She possessed this maddening, effortless ability to capture the total, consuming attention of every powerful man who stepped into her orbit. In the heat of his rage, a bitter, defensive thought crossed his mind, viewing her as a succubus, drawing men in, fracturing brotherhoods, and leaving chaos in her wake.

He took a slow, deep, deliberate breath. He held the air in his lungs, forcing his heart rate down, letting the initial explosion of fury cool into a steady, controlled burn.

No.

As he calmed himself, the truth reasserted itself with crystalline clarity. Valentina was not that woman.

She wasn't a manipulator who sought the attention of men. She didn't dress provocatively, she didn't throw herself at them, and she never demanded an audience like the insufferable procession of high-society groupies and political climbers who constantly hovered around his circle. That kind of cheap, desperate female attention had always repulsed him. It turned his stomach.

He closed his eyes and let his memory drift back to the very first time he had ever laid eyes on her.

It had been at a crowded, suffocating gathering years ago. Her friends had been making a complete spectacle of themselves, laughing too loudly, desperate to be noticed by the room. But Valentina had been sitting quietly by herself, completely self-possessed, wrapped in an aura of tranquil elegance.

Amidst all the noise, despite the dozens of people pressing in around him trying to command his time, his singular focus had been locked entirely on her. She hadn't asked for it. She had simply existed, complete in herself.

She was nothing like his ex-wife, Juno.

Juno had been a storm of chaotic, destructive impulses; chasing after men, sleeping with them on the first date, carrying a relentless history of promiscuity that she constantly tried to rationalize behind her diagnoses of Borderline and Narcissistic personality disorders. Juno used her conditions as an impenetrable shield, a convenient excuse to never take an ounce of responsibility for the devastation she left behind.

Valentina was the absolute antithesis of that chaotic nature; she wasn’t flighty. She didn't throw herself at anyone, and she certainly didn't hand out her trust. She was notoriously difficult to know, revealing her internal sanctuary only to a select few. She was not a woman who fell for smooth talkers or hollow charm, not even from someone like Garrick.

And Garrick was a smooth talker. With his extensive background in high-stakes hostage negotiations with hostile entities, Garrick possessed the terrifying ability to say precisely the right words to disarm a person's defenses, a strategic skill Victor had always respected in the field, but now viewed with hyper-vigilant suspicion.

A sharp, dull ache settled deep in Victor's chest as his mind drifted to their past.

When he and Valentina had broken up all those years ago, he had reacted out of wounded pride and foolish speed. He had married Juno the very next year, a catastrophic, bitter mistake that he regretted with every fiber of his being.

During those six long years of his miserable, sterile marriage to Juno, Victor had quietly kept tabs on Valentina. He had been convinced that after their breakup, a woman as stunning and brilliant as Valentina would immediately find another boyfriend. He expected her to move on within months.

Instead, he watched in utter shock as she remained completely celibate for six years.

She hadn't let a single man touch her. Despite the legion of wealthy, powerful suitors continuously trying to court her, she had closed her doors. Realizing that, realizing how deeply he had actually mattered to her, and how sacredly she held her intimacy, had hit him like a physical shockwave.

The roaring fire of Garrick’s betrayal settled down, condensing into a cold, lethal, unyielding ember at Victor’s core.

He remembered her face from their last private moment together. He remembered the soft, unshakeable warmth in her eyes and the gentle, teasing smile on her lips when she spoke those absolute words:

"I won't leave you, and you won't leave me. Ever… We're stuck with each other."

A cold wave of profound anxiety washed over him, tightening his throat. The geographical distance between this medical wing and her sanctuary felt like an agonizing, intolerable physical barrier.

He didn't want to analyze intelligence reports. He didn't want to manage security protocols or review INKS logs.

Right now, as the physical ache in his shoulder throbbed and the residual storm of jealousy settled into his bones, he knew there was only one thing in the universe that could quiet the noise in his head.

He needed to be back in her arms. He needed to be inside her, buried deep in her warmth, feeling her heart beat against his chest, the only place on earth where he could finally drop his armor and find peace.

Every passing hour until then felt like a slow, excruciating bleed.