HUNGER
of monsters and men
0:00 ───|────── 0:00
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•
It was a breezy Monday afternoon when the sun's glow was partially lost in the snow-white clouds, as if it were playing a game of hide-and-seek with the hooded sky.
Although there were no promising signs of rain, the day was far from being bright and warm, but it wasn't bitterly cold either.
Simply, it was as pleasant as it could get.
At a fine time like this, the halls of Auradon High stood quietly empty.
With the usual bustle of students absent from them, they were flooding with an eerie sort of calm. It was all hauntingly silent, there was hardly anyone hanging around in the corridors - it was lunch hour, after all.
Consequently, all chaos had been moved to the cafeteria, and some of this momentary zest could be heard echoing even on the school grounds where some of the students chose to be, wanting to enjoy the afternoon out in the open.
Nyx Hayden was the only one walking down these hallways, relishing the tranquility they offered, breathing in the scent of silence that blanketed the air.
Her face was buried in a chunky book that she had spent her weekend reading, held like some treasure in her cold fingers that were hidden underneath the sleeves of her baggy jumper. The only sound bouncing off the lockers was the squeaking of her shoes against the floors as she walked with her bag clinging onto her back and hanging down to the waistband of her skirt.
Nyx's sensitivity was lost in the enchanting jumble of words that her lonely soul had wandered off into, and her concentration didn't waver even a little bit.
That was until the absence of her awareness left her colliding right into someone, bringing both her feet and fascination to a screeching halt as she stumbled a step back.
"I'm sorry, I wasn't looking–"
Nyx's immediate apology died down on her tongue only halfway through once the warm ambers of her eyes found narrowed hazel ones, the oceanic flecks in them fliring with irritation.
"Hey," she greeted in a whisper, unable to comprehend why the boy in front of her looked so angry.
Azriel kept his gaze trained on Nyx for a couple of heartbeats, his face bland of any feeling.
Without replying, he simply went back to focusing his attention straight ahead.
When the trance of his hypnotic stare had finally ceased from clouding her consciousness, Nyx realized that they were both standing outside the cafeteria, right by the double doors that were thrown open, aiding a clear view of the circus happening inside.
But that wasn't it, no.
She had also just noticed another presence giving them company, currently the major source of the boy's displeasure.
Standing with her front glued to Azriel's left side was a platinum head.
Her metallic locks were a curly mess, beautiful like frost, and her eyes were a stunning jade, solid like stone and dark as a forest, there was a powerful crimson coating her plump lips, all of which belonged to a gorgeous round face with delicate features similarly curved.
She was no less than a dream.
It had only one name, there was only one person capable of carrying such grace – Layla Dean.
Layla had been tracing the solidity of Azriel's jaw with her index finger while her other hand was resting on his chest as fed on the enchanting features of the boy she had trapped in her clutches, sipping on him with a predator's leer.
When the nyctophile's voice sounded and her subject took the time to properly glance at her, Layla couldn't understand how a simple 'hey' had gathered more of his attention than her obvious occupancy.
She didn't return Nyx's greeting, not finding it fit to acknowledge the lone wolf who had always been a stranger to her.
Nyx wasn't bothered, she had hardly meant for the greeting to be for Layla.
The green in Layla's eyes squinted with distaste as she eyed the former's socks, only one of them had been pulled up to its complete length ending just below her calf while the other was rolled down to the lining of her shoe.
Nyx glanced down too, wondering how her habit was of any concern to the other girl.
Layla pressed her palm against Azriel's cheek, trying to force his face closer to hers.
Not liking her closeness one bit, nettled with her pressuring touch, the boy peeled himself away from her and took a step back, gently removing her hand from his face.
"Try it on someone else, I don't do easy fucks," Azriel told her dryly, his gaze not straying from Layla's face, finally giving her his full attention but not in the way she had wanted it.
His words were a verbal bullet to her, piercing at her chest with a sting so sharp that her heart churned. The jade in her eyes swam with humiliation, those dark pools of misty threads turned into teary webs.
'Easy fucks' was all that was echoing in her noisy mind.
Layla Dean wasn't one to throw open the door to her feelings.
Yet, Nyx Hayden had managed to read the indignity on her features, easily sensing how hard she'd been hit and how deep the pain had crawled.
The platinum blonde settled for clenching her fists by her sides, knowing well how there was nothing she could say that would make Azriel feel worse than he had made her feel, so she forced herself to project her emotions onto the third person.
"So you're hanging out with nameless losers now?" she took the first jab, trying to let her anger overpower the feeling of guilt that clawed at her for knowing that Nyx had no part in this.
While her words were meant for the raven monster, the cold look in her eyes was solely for the nyctophile.
"Explains why you've never made any friends." she stabbed again.
Even though Nyx knew that Layla was only saying this to relieve herself from the weight of Azriel's bitter dismissal, she couldn't help but feel a pinch at her chest that pricked her painfully, leaving her to wonder if this was how Layla and the rest of Auradon saw her.
A contagious loser with no capability of making friends.
Still, she pushed this thought away into the farthest corner of her mind to ponder upon later.
People say things all time, nobody dares to look beyond and understand what lies beneath the facade they always mock and mistake.
Tearing his eyes away from scanning the cafeteria, Azriel glanced down at Layla, his mask lacking any sort of interest.
"You're still here?" he acknowledged in a bored manner. "Fuck off already,"
Layla Dean had been a part of the crowd that had done everything in their power to catch the boy's eye. Despite how stunning she was, Azriel had rejected all her schemes without so much of a glance.
Consequently, Auradon had labeled him lucky enough for not just being approached by her more than once, but also to turn her down more than once.
Nyx felt pity for the girl, not because the raven head had given her no heed, but because she knew that Layla could do so much better than move from boy to boy, earning nothing real and only a meaningless tag on the list of the popular.
It was Layla's choice, it was her story to be written her way, Nyx knew she had no right to question or judge and so she didn't.
"You're a fucking freak anyway, hope this weirdo treats you like it," the veiled vision fumed bitterly, glancing at the nyctophile while directing the second part of her statement at her.
Nyx, in turn, realized that she had stayed for an exchange she had no business being a part of.
Before the brunette could ponder on it any more, Layla had already turned on her heel and stormed off into the cafeteria, getting lost in the crowd the very next moment.
Now that there was hardly any tension in the air, Nyx turned her attention back to Azriel to find him completely unfazed by Layla's words.
She noticed how his eyes were searching the large frenzied room as though he'd lost something.
Knowing who he was looking for, she dropped a small smile and told him, "I saw coach Webber drag the basketball team to the gym earlier, Warren was there too."
Azriel's jaw clenched as he averted his sight from the cafeteria and settled it on Nyx instead.
His best friend was not going to make it to lunch, so there was no reason for him to stay.
He simply brought out his earbuds from the pocket of his purple-lagoon coloured sweatshirt, plugged them in, tapped the screen of his cell phone once, and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his charcoal jeans that appeared lazily tucked into the linings of his high-tops.
Nyx couldn't help noticing how he'd left the laces open, and she couldn't remember a time when they were tied.
His habit brought an upward tug to one of the corners of her flushed lips.
"Whatever," was all Azriel replied with before walking around Nyx and continuing his way down the hall.
Nyx turned around and watched the raven monster fade further away into the darkness, not caring enough to glance back at everything he left behind with every step he took ahead.
Music was her escape too.
Silence never lasts, there is always an end to it, chaos can flood any second ,and the only way to not succumb to it is to drown in some calming mayhem of our own.
Maybe Azriel thought similarly.
She pictured the boy in her mind, sketching him struggling to surface from the middle of a bottomless pit of his troubles, unable to figure out if he had braved his demons or given in to them.
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•
The school campus had cleared out faster than it had last Friday.
Everyone was hurrying their way back home to sink into a large puddle of homework that they'd been given on the first day of the week itself.
Mondays felt like seven hours of sitting through the scratching of a fork against a blackboard – nobody could tolerate it.
For the second time today, Nyx had entirely devoted her attention to the book she couldn't wait to finish but, at the same, didn't want for it to end.
She had discarded her sense of awareness for later use, assuring herself that not a single soul would be lingering around in the quietest, most lonesome part of Auradon High – the counselor's office.
The girl had two weekly sessions that lasted for an hour, one on Mondays and the other on Fridays – a great way to start and end the school week.
She happened to be the only one who had an after-school session, so unless any sports practices or club meetings were happening, the building was pretty much empty.
Consequently, only the presence of Nyx and her counselor was guaranteed, and maybe even the janitor.
Nyx hated these sessions, she hadn't benefitted from all those hours she'd spent in that room with someone who was just a stranger with a name and a professional license to pry into other people's matters.
Still, she kept her mouth shut and sat through them without any complain, having mastered the art of pretending like she was getting better with every sundown and sunrise, as if the burden of her problems was lessening with every second she spent with that counselor.
According to her, said counselor couldn't care enough to press the girl's matters more than she could handle.
If Nyx wanted to climb out of this hole that she had dug for herself, she was going to have to burn through it with a fake smile in spite of the weight of her troubles slumping her shoulders.
The brunette didn't take her focus off the bundle of pages that she held securely in her hands even when she had reached the counselor's office, so far off she was in the maze of words that had her wrapped in a spell.
She absentmindedly dropped her bag down in one of the cushioned seats before settling down in the other like she did every time.
"What the actual fuck do you think you're doing?"
Now, Nyx knew that she was the only unlucky one to have to stay back after school for a session on Mondays and Fridays, so the seat next to her, along with the others in the small waiting area, would very obviously be left empty.
So why today was it talking?
It took a long moment for Nyx to recognize the thundery voice, the coldness it held, making even a grumble sound better than the softest of songs.
As soon as she put a face to it, her head snapped to the right, the tangy smoke in her irises widened considerably the instant she locked gazes with the person sitting a hand's length from her.
Nyx Hayden had unknowingly tossed her bag into Azriel Logan's lap.
A laugh tickled up to her throat, poking at her lips to find an escape, but Azriel's irritated scowl made her force it down with a cough.
She quickly reached for her bag and pulled it to herself without wasting another breath, amused at how she didn't doubt that he wouldn't hesitate to throw it at her if she did otherwise.
"I'm sorry," Nyx's voice came out breathy as she apologized.
Azriel didn't care.
He broke the stare that they had settled in and closed his eyelids, leaning back in his seat and using the wall behind them to support his head that had been tilted backward, arms crossed with the sleeves of his sweatshirt rolled up to his elbows, and his bag lay placed on the floor.
Nyx couldn't help but admit that the boy's side profile was just as pleasing as his whole, a threatening kind of attractive.
His Adam's apple was strained and noticeable, prominent veins began at his bandaged wrists and ran up to his elbows after which they seeped underneath his clothing, for once his jaw wasn't clenching in anger, there wasn't any sign of his signature impassiveness on his face.
His features were in a calm state of rest.
He looked so beautifully disconnected from the world.
Realization soon hit Nyx like a bullet train, smashing like glass against her distracted thoughts.
Azriel Logan was sitting outside the counselor's office, right next to her, the last place she'd expected him to be.
"What are you doing here?" tumbled off her tongue before she could think better of it, a slight furrow in her brows.
"Minding my own business, you should try doing it," he answered dryly, keeping his eyes sealed shut.
Nyx felt anything but offended at his words.
They were both surprised that she wasn't inching away from the raven monster, but the pair did a remarkable job at concealing their feelings.
If Azriel was new to counseling, she wasn't going to ask him about it, it was not her story to know. Even though she wanted nothing more than to make conversation with him, there were boundaries she knew not to cross.
"Quit staring at me," Azriel snapped.
It was then that Nyx noticed how she was no longer admiring his features.
Instead, she was being held captive under his dominating watch, his one-of-a-kind eyes holding the fire in hers in a deadlock.
Swallowing her stutter, the girl nervously licked her lips and looked away, "I-I wasn't. . .It's just that I haven't seen you around here bef–"
"Do you ever shut up?" Azriel cut her off with a hiss, unclenching his jaw before going back to resting his head against the wall and curtaining his sight.
While the raven monster was losing himself in a quicksand of his thoughts, the nyctophile was trying to sort out the haze that clogged her senses. She told herself to stop talking, not understanding why she felt like rambling her gut out now that she was sitting next to him.
"I'm not usually this talkative, you're j–" Nyx began, not knowing if she was trying to start a conversation or to mend the mistake she thought she had made by asking him why he was here.
It was the counselor's office, obviously he wasn't here to celebrate.
Azriel cut her off once again, his eyes flung open as he tilted his head to give her a warning, telling her to back off with a frosty glare, "I don't care."
After clearing that out, he let the havoc in his mind pull him back, forcing him to shut the world out.
Nyx glanced down at her hands, a distracted smile on her lips as she said more to herself, "Yeah, I've heard that before."
Azriel wasn't the only one who had told her that he didn't care about what she had to say, most of their peers had made it crystal clear that they weren't the least bit interested in who she was as a person.
Even her parents found it tedious to make time for their daughter.
After a moment of doing nothing, Nyx peeped at the boy next to her, a spark teasing her chest as she drank in the sight of him.
He sat motionlessly, his chest rising and falling at a steady pace, and he almost appeared asleep.
Not wanting to disturb his state of tranquillity, she sank lower in her chair and went back to reading the book in her hands, wordlessly appreciating Azriel's silent company.
Little did Nyx know that what she thought was Azriel's wonderland was a hell of his own.
It was around five minutes of quietude later that the door to Nyx's left opened and a ginger head appeared, revealing Miss Rose, the school's counselor, her emerald eyes sparkling like rubies. She smiled at the pair. Nyx returned her gesture with a smile of her own, one that she had reserved specifically for this woman, it was as pretentiousness as Miss Rose's efforts of dealing with her students.
"Azriel Logan, I'm guessing you received the letter regarding your counseling sessions that start from today?" Miss Rose asked in a delicate voice.
"Do I look like I'd be setting foot here otherwise?" Azriel replied, turning his head to look at the lady.
The counselor ignored his statement and turned to Nyx instead, "Will it be alright if we reschedule this for Friday?"
The girl contained her relief, thanking the stars for her luck, and nodded.
Nyx stood up with Azriel. "Good luck, she sucks at her job," she whispered to him when he stepped past her.
"See you," she added when he reached the door.
Before walking inside, Azriel scoffed and said over his shoulder, "I'm not counting on it."
And then he was gone, leaving the girl to gaze at the closed door longingly.
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•