Dreamcatcher Imagines - Oneshots | (Girl x Girl)

🐱 Haunted - Handong

Handong x Female Reader
Babysitter(?) au
Status - ongoing (1 part) ⚠️
Warnings - angst, alcohol use, suicidal thoughts, fluff ending

This one is loosely based off of the song Halloween by Noah Kahan. I attached it above if you want to listen.

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"Everything's alright."

At least, that's what I said when my dad's unofficial girlfriend—or maybe better worded as 'my babysitter disguised as my dad's girlfriend'—yelled after me, worried, when I rushed out of the house immediately following one of our arguments—which seemed to be occurring more and more frequently in the recent weeks.

But everything wasn't alright.

And that only hit me several drinks in at this stupid party I showed up to when the cheap, tacky, overly-sexualized costumes adorning the people around me did nothing but remind me of her. My ex. The ghost that would never stop haunting me. After all, that's what this holiday was about, right?

'Halloween': the one day of the year where the ghosts of your past come back to haunt you.

She would've appreciated the irony of it all. Called it poetic even. But nothing about the dull sting of a broken heart slowly fading into an inescapable sensation of emptiness in the pit of my chest as the alcohol finally took hold of my mind to remind me of how alone I really was felt poetic to me. No one cared to warn me that Halloween became a year-round event the second you lost someone you loved.

And, to think, it used to be my favorite holiday.

Now I was regretting ever going out tonight. But I just couldn't be home any longer. Not when I was being watched and questioned every waking moment. Feeling like a prisoner in my own home. Why couldn't my dad have just left me there alone? He never seemed to care about me anyways—even back when mom was still alive—always gone on 'business trips,' never checking in. So why did he seem to care now? Or did he only invite a woman to live in our house so that he'd feel a little less guilty about neglecting me?

And, to make matters worse, he just had to pick the most unbearable woman on the planet.

Handong was her name. She wasn't much older than me, which only made her role as my middle-aged father's girlfriend even stranger—though I supposed no one else thought so with how common it had become in this day and age—but honestly they couldn't even really be called partners; she barely looked at him, let alone touched him. She didn't have a job. Though, maybe the term 'couldn't' was more appropriate considering the wealthy family she came from expected her to assume the role of housewife and strictly discouraged her from seeking a profession of her own. And since she didn't have my father or any other children to take care of, I consequently became the main subject of her concern while he was away.

Though, the word 'concern' felt a little too generous. Well, at least I thought so with her incessant prying into my private life and constant inquiries on where I was going and what I was doing every single time I walked near the door feeling more like an interrogation method than a genuine care for my well-being. Her own reluctance to speak about herself along with her sarcasm that she seemed to use at every available opportunity—god how I loathed this woman's sarcasm—were not exactly traits that convinced me of the 'caring' personality she supposedly possessed.

But, that was before tonight.

It didn't take long for me to start feeling the after effects of alcohol and that mixed with an excruciating heartbreak didn't bode well. Still, I kept drinking. Some girl stood in the kitchen with her back to me and the blue wig she wore with her costume reminded me of her. So I drank. A boy in the hall was wearing the same converse shoes she used to wear. So I drank. The playlist blaring through the house just happened to switch to one of the very limited amount of eerie sounding Taylor Swift songs in existence, triggering a memory to flash through my mind. So I walked outside—not caring that it was rainy and I'd probably get sick in the cold—and closed my eyes, downing my drink and allowing the memory to drown out my senses.